LANGUAGES OF THE INDO-EUROPEAN FAMILY. 291 



^eat distances to a hole prepared for or fit to receive it.'"* We at 

 once detect in it the Greek karabos and the Latin scarabaeus, from 

 which comes the French escarbot; nor are we astonished to find that 

 the Sanskrit for locust is carabha, since the locust belongs to a natural 

 order of insects closely related to that in which the beetles are found. 

 The Hebrew equivalent of Chrb, however, is the word AKRAB, 

 ■with which the Arabic agrees in form and sound, and which desig- 

 nates the scorpion and a warlike engine named from it. With this 

 word Gesenius I'ightly connects the Greek scorpios, the scor23ion, 

 which, according to Liddell and Scott, who quote Hesychius upon the 

 subject, is from the same root as skarabos, karabos, coming through 

 skorobaios, and also denotes an engine of war. The Greek karabos 

 not only denotes the beetle, but also the C7'ab, which we find in the 

 French ecrevisse and the German Krebs. Laboi, the lion, is the 

 original of the Hebrew LABI and the German Lowe; Thmei, truth, 

 is the Hebrew THOM and the Greek Themis. Ion is Coptic for 

 moon, and we find lo as a name of the same luminary in Argos. 

 Erman, pomegranate, iero, stream, las, tongue, ses, horse or mare, 

 SHMOUN, eight, are almost identical in form with the Hebrew words 

 denoting the same thing. Other words, such as maut, mother, me, 

 love, MEN, establish, ork, swear, rro, king, tei, give, exhibit manifest 

 connection with both Semitic and Indo-European languages. 



These examples are, I think, sufficient to show that the old Egyp- 

 tian, as far as its vocabulary is concerned, stood in the relation either 

 of borrower from, or lender to, two families of language, to neither 

 ■of which it has been generally supposed to belong. I propose to show, 

 however, that the Indo-European tongues, and probably the Semitic, 

 borrowed from the old Egyptian, by reference not so much to the 

 vocabularies of these languages, as to a feature which can only be 

 explained by the grammar of the Coptic. The Coptic definite article 

 masculine is p or ph, and in the Egyptian language is closely bound 

 up with many words to which it had been prefixed, and from which it 

 'has not been distinguished and separated by those who have trans- 

 .planted such words to other soils.''^ We must expect to find the 



20* Osburn, Monumental History of Egypt, i, 205. Cuvier, Le Regne Animal, Paris, 1817, 

 tome iii, 277. Carpenter's Zoology. Bohn, ii, 127. 



*i The sign of the masculine article is Theban pp., p, Memphitic pi, p, ph, and Baschmuric, 

 pe, pi, p. It is derived fiom the pronominal sufBx of the third person singular masculine, 

 which is /, the Coptic fei. This sometimes assumes the form of 6 or vida. — Peyron. Gram, 

 ling. Copt. ; Benfey, die iigyptische Sprache. 



