130 OBSERVATIONS ON EGYPTIAN ETHNOGRAPHY, 
Joseph.” How then could a branch of the Libyan race, a people so comparatively 
obscure, have become the mighty Egyptian nation? How could families of mankind so 
widely different in their intellectual manifestations, have been derived from a cognate 
stock? 'T'o which we reply, that the Egyptians and Libyans were not in this respect 
more widely separated than were the Saracens under the Caliphs, and the wandering 
Bedouins; yet, both these were branches of the Arabian race, Egypt may perhaps be 
regarded as the intellectual centre of the posterity of Ham. 
The evidences of these opinions, it must be confessed, are as yet few in number. 
That the Libyan or Berber speech was once the language of all northern Africa has long 
been maintained by Ritter, Heeren and Shaler, and by Mr. Hodgson in his very inte- 
resting Letters from Algiers, during the period in which he held the United States con- 
sulate in that regency.* Prof. Ritter (whose work I have not seen) asserts that the Ama- 
zirgh, or Berber language, as detected by certain prefixes and affixes peculiar to it and 
the Coptic tongue, is to be found across the whole breadth of the continent, from the Red 
Sea to the Canary Isles; and he supposes, too, that the Hazorta tribes, like the old Bejas 
and modern Bishareens, were originally of the same parent stock. 'To these evidences 
we may add those of Prof. Vater, who traced some affinity between the Berber and the 
Coptic and Amharic, but not sufficient to lead to satisfactory results. 
I have before me an obliging communication from Mr. Hodgson, in which he informs 
me, that he also discovered what he believed to be incontrovertible evidence of the 
Berber origin of the Bishareen language, before he had read the work of Prof. Ritter ; 
and in an essay just published on the Foulahs of central Africa, he reiterates the opinion 
early expressed by him, that the Berber or Libyan tongue was spoken in the valley of 
the Nile, prior to the existence of the Coptic or monumental language; a theory which, 
he further remarks, is in accordance with the nature of things and the probable course 
of events. 
“Whilst the positive records of modern history,” observes Mr. Hodgson, “show that 
the Coptic tongue has been obliterated from the map of Egypt within” the short period 
which has elapsed since the Saracenic invasion, need we wonder that so few traces re- 
main of the language of that country in primeval and unrecorded times? These vestiges, 
however, have been detected by me, and, I think, with a strong degree of probability, in 
the mythologic and geographical names transmitted to us from the earliest periods of 
Egyptian history. The meaning of Ammon, Thebes, Themis, and Nile, and of Helio- 
polis (‘Tadij) and Apollinopolis (Etfu) have been explained from the modern Berber lan- 
guage; and the very name of Hykshos, who were called shepherds, means also shepherds 
in Berber. + 
“These etymologies serve, at least, as tokens of the existence of the Libyans in the 
* These Letters, which are addressed to Peter S. Duponceau, Esq., are contained in the fourth volume of the Transac- 
tions of this Society; and to this source the reader is referred for a mass of interesting details which ig necessarily ex- 
cluded in this place. The yaluable communications of Mr. Shaler, also addressed to Mr. Duponceau, are published in 
the second volume of the same work. 
+ “The phrase a shepherd fed his flock, is thus rendered in that language:—amiksa iksa thikhsi. These words, 
moreover, constitute a beautiful illustration of the genius of the language. In amiksa we have the formative particle 
‘am; and in thikhsi there is the feminine prefix th, a peculiarity alike of the Berber and the Coptic. The prefixes and 
suffixes t, th, are Berber indications throughout the whole extent of north Africa.” Vide also Hornemann, Voyage» 
Vocab. p. 481, 
