406 THE COPTIC ELEMENT IN 



"we have it as a distiiiguishing mark of certain persons of the future 

 of the verb. What it stands for in our English drop, as compared 

 with the Hebrew ARAPH, and EAAPH both meaning the same, I 

 cannot tell. Still, in a very large number of cases, I believe that we 

 shall find initial t performing the same office as initial p. There, is 

 however, this difierence between them. "While p, as a form of the 

 article, is banished from civilized languages, t remains. The Hebrew 

 ETH represents the Dutch het, our English the, the German die, the 

 Greek to, the Sanskrit tat and etat. The Hebrew demonstrative EL, 

 and the Arabic article AL or EL, furnish the Latin ille, and the 

 articles of the Romance languages. The true Hebrew article HA 

 may not only be intimately related to the Greek ho, he, but also to 

 the Sanskrit sah, the Hindustani yih, the Welsh y, and the Malay heJ^ 

 Still another form of the article is the Cushite Jca or Tcai, which is 

 connected with the Sanskrit numeral eha, one, the Hindustani 

 eh, koi, and the Malay coe, which, on account of its association with 

 he, must, I think, have arisen from an aspirated pronunciation of the 

 latter. The old Persian names Kai Kous, Kai Kobad, Kai Khosrou, 

 although the kai is generally supposed to mean king, when compared 

 with the Greek words Kalcos, Aiguptos, Kaisar, seem to afford 

 nothing more in the prefix than a form of the article. The same is 

 seen in the two Arabic words for heart, the one being LEB, identical 

 with the Hebrew, and the other KULB, both of which are adopted 

 into the Persian language. It also appears in the Maori Kapura, as 

 compared with the Tahitian pura, fire ; and in the Easter Island 

 Jco-tahai, one, as compared with the Maori tahai. A connection of 

 the Semitic and European languages being allowed, a very common 

 substantive prefix in Hebrew, that of the letter f2 or M, must not 

 be lost sight of, although it has nothing to do with the article; 

 MAGEN", a shield, from the verb GANAN", guard, protect, 

 MERKHAB, a carriage or chariot, from the verbal root RAKHAB, 

 ride, and MAGHREB orMAARAB, the west, from ARAB, {Aral. 

 GHEREB,) become dark, are illustrative examples. 



Among the various forms of the article mentioned above, that 

 which occupies the place in comparative philology next in importance 

 to the Coptic in P is the Arabic in AL or L. Every student is 

 familiar with this part of speech from its frequent occurrence in the 

 vocabularies of all civilized languages, testifying to the influence 



*^ Vide Benfey, Die AgyptiscLe Sprache, § 2. 



