286 



ON LEGIBLE LANGUAGE, 



cularly ; both which methods are found in Chinese records, though the per- 

 pendicular is by far the most common. 



Attempts have been made to prove that the picture-writing of the Egyptians, 

 the Chinese, and the Mexicans has proceeded from one common source ; yet 

 nothing can be more fanciful, and, apparently, nothing more unfounded ; for 

 each possesses a distinct style, derived from an attachment to distinct classes 

 of images, for the most part of a local nature ; as the sea-horse, the crocodile, 

 the ibis, the ichneumon, the lotus, and papyrus, birds and other animals with 

 human heads, and men with the heads of birds and dogs, in the Egyptian 

 system ; the rabbit, cane, reed, flint, house, flag, and circle, in the Mexican ; 

 and cross, parallel, crooked, and angular lines, as the abbreviated symbols of 

 pictures, in the Chinese ; derived, for the most part, as Dr. Morrison inge- 

 niously conjectures, from the impressions of the feet of birds on the sand, 

 and the lines on the bodies of shell-fishes.* Each has had a distinct origin, 

 according as mankind in these diff'erent parts of the world, and under different 

 circumstances, have found a necessity for recording facts and ideas in remote 

 periods of antiquity ; and each, as I have already observed, has an obvious 

 tendency to run into arbitrary alid, ultimately, into alphabetical characters, 

 though of different forms and descriptions. 



Of all these, the system whose origin we are, perhaps, best capable of 

 tracing historically, is the Phoenician; and here the voice of history com- 

 pletely coincides with the theory now advanced. The oldest Phcenician his- 

 torian, whose writings have reached us in a few fragments and quotations, is 

 Sanchoniatho, who was contemporary with Solomon, and drew up a history 

 of Phoenicia, from existing monuments, and archives preserved in the college 

 of the Phoenician priests. This history was dedicated to Abibalus, the Phoe- 

 nician monarch, father of Hiram, king Solomon's ally ; and was allowed by 

 the king and the official censors appointed to examine it to be a work of great 

 truth and accuracy. In this history Sanchoniatho places mankind, on their 

 first creation, in Phoenicia; and gives us a genealogy of the Patriarchs, from 

 Adam, or Protogonus, as he calls him, to Taaut, Athoth, or Hermes, the suc- 

 cessor of Menes, the first king of Egypt. In a passage of this very curious 

 history, preserved by Eusebius, the author distinctly states, that picture- 

 writing was invented by Ouranus, king of Phoenicia, who appears to have 

 been contemporary with Misor or Misraim, the son of Ham ; and that Taaut, 

 the son of Misor, improved upon and abbreviated the picture-writing of Ouranus, 

 either during the reign of Ouranus or of his son Cronus or Saturn; and that 

 Cronus having given Taaut the throne of Egypt, upon the death of Menes, 

 the Egyptian monarch, the latter carried with him this improved picture or sym- 

 bolical writing into that country. And in another passage he asserts that Taaut 

 afterward carried forward this improvement to the invention of alphabetic cha- 

 racters. " Misor," says he, " was the son of Hamyn ; the son of Misor was Taaut, 

 who invented the first letters for writing. The Egyptians call him Thoth ; the 

 Alexandrians, Thoyth; and the Greeks, Hermes, or Mercury." He tells us, 

 in a third place, that having thus invented letters, Taaut ordered the Cabiri 

 and Dioscuri, the priests and sages of the country, to employ them in draw- 

 ing up a history of Phoenicia. 



This is a very curious and important relic of profane history: and it is in- 

 teresting to observe its coincidence with the Mosaic narrative. It makes no 

 mention, indeed, of the deluge, and it introduces two more generations in the 

 line of Cain, from Protogonus, or first-formed^ as the term literally implies 

 (the Adam of Moses), to Agroverus, or Noah. It places, however, the first 

 race of mankind in Phoenicia, which, in the latitude in which this term was 

 generally understood, included, as I shall have occasion to show presently, 

 the banks of the Euphrates, on which Moses fixes the garden of Eden: it 

 allows nearly the same period of time between the creation and the era of 

 Misor, or Misraim ; and nearly the same number of generations as Moses 

 does ; and gives, as closely as may be, the same names to the son and grand- 

 son of Noah, — Ham and Misraim being merely transmuted into Ham-yn 



* Chinese Dictionary, p. I. 



