164 THK BIETHPLACE OF ANCIENT 



It is gratifying to see that even alphabetical formg help to swell the 

 tide of evidence that flows in the direction indicated and required by 

 Faber's hypothesis. The presence of foreign words in a modern lan- 

 guage does not excite wonder, since the intercourse of nations and the 

 spread of knowledge make it a necessary result ; but it is worthy of 

 attention that almost all the sacred appellations of the Etruscans show 

 an eastern origin/" that the musical instruments of the Glreeks have 

 Syrian names,^^ and that words and phrases of almost pure Hebrew 

 occur in the oldest of Welsh poems. ^^ 



Another class of facts illustrative of the intimate connections ex- 

 isting between peoples prior to the historic period may be termed 

 geographico-philological. The author of that suggestive book, " India 

 in Greece," says that the names of places must be explained by the 

 language of the people inhabiting them if the ordinary theory of 

 ancient history be the true one ; in Greece this cannot be.^' What is 

 true of Greece is true of the whole ancient world. Names of places, 

 like the names of mythical characters, may in many (not all) cases, 

 after being subjected to the most arbitrary treatment, be made capable 

 of receiving certain far-fetched and absurd significations; but no 

 sensible man who has puzzled over ancient geographical nomenclature 

 ever felt satisfied with these. Mr. Pococke would reduce all geogra- 

 phical names whatsoever to the language of the Vedas, because he 

 finds that language serviceable (as no doubt it is) in explaining the 

 names which are common to Europe and Western Asia and to the 

 Indian peninsula. I believe that Bochart was far nearer the mark 

 when he sought to accomplish a similar task by the aid of a Phoenician 

 dialect manufactured for the purpose. The most important fact in 

 connection with this class of evidence is that the same geographi- 

 cal names are found in many different parts of the world, generally 

 applied to the same objects, as districts, cities, rivers, mountains, &c., 

 and even that several names frequently occur in exactly the same 

 geographical order and connection in different countries. Thebes in 

 Egypt, Palestine, Asia Minor and Greece ; Belka (Boulak), in Egypt, 

 Balkh, in Persia, and Phylace (Phulake), in Greece; Tentyra, in 

 Egypt, Tantura in Palestine, and Tyndaris, in Sicily and Marmarica ; 



50 Vossii de Icloiolatrise, L. ii., c. 57. 



61 Strabo, x., 3, 17. 



62 Davies, British Druids, 137, 564, 573, &c. 



63 Pococke, India in Greece, 22. 



