3*0 ANTIQUITY OF WRITING. 



which gained credit from lon^ continuance, it was not ea~y to dis- 

 possess their minds of the belief of them. There is no doubt, hut 

 the G reeks received the history of the gods from the IMicaicians 

 and Egyptians, and applied them to their own either real or 

 feigned heroes. 



In the time of this Taaut or Hermes, Phenicia, and the ndjacent 

 country, was governed by Uranus ; and, after him, by his son Sa- 

 turn, or Cronus. He invented letters, saith Sanconiatho, either in 

 the reign of Uranus, or Cronus ; and staid in Phen'u ia, with Cro- 

 nus, till the thirty-second year of his reign. Cronus, after the death 

 of his father Uranus, made several settlements of his family *, and 

 travelled into other parts ; and, when he came to the south coun- 

 try, he gave all Egypt to the god Taautus, that it should be his ' 

 kingdom. 



Sanconiatho began his history with the creation, and ended it 

 with placing Taautus upon the throne of Egypt. He doth not men. 

 tion the delude, but he makes two more generations in Cain's line, 

 from Piotogonus to Agroverus (or from Adam to Noah) than 

 Moses. 



As Sanconiatho has not told us in what reign, whether of Ura- 

 nus or Chronus, Taaut invented letters, he might have invented 

 them in either reign ; " and we cannot err much," says Mr. Jack- 

 son, (in his Chronol. Antiq. vol. iii. p. 94), " if we place his inven- 

 tion of them five hundred and fifty years after the flood, or twenty 

 years after the dispersion ; and two thousand six hundred and nine- 

 teen years before the Christian asra ; and six, or perhaps ten years, 

 before he went into Egypt. +" Taaut, and his posterity, for fif- 

 teen generations, ruled in the upper Egypt, at Thebes, which was 

 built by the Mezrites. 



That letters were invented in Phenicia, doth not depend solely 

 upon the testimony of Sanconiatho ; for several Roman authors 

 attribute their invention to the Phenicians. Pliny says, the Pheni. 

 cians were famed for the invention of letters, as well as for astro- 



' Out of Phrnicia," (says Mons. Bochart, in his learned work, Entitled, 

 Canaan), ' issued a vast number of tribes, who settled themselves in all parts of 

 ibc world, in Egypt, Asia, Cyprus, the Isles of the Mediterranean, Sicily, Sar- 

 dinia, the African coast, Spuin, and several other countries." 



f The author is supposed, by Mr. Astlc, mistaken in 'In calculation. 



