IMITATIVJE AND SYMBOWCAL. 



311 



racy and precision ; and as much more easy of attainment, as it would be 

 more definite and comprehensive.* 



I have thus drawn a sketch of what there can be little doubt would be 

 the case provided mankind were at this moment to be deprived by a mira- 

 cle of all legible language, and reduced to the state in which we may con- 

 peive the world to have existed in its earliest ages. The art of writing 

 would commence with imitative, and terminate in symbolical, characters ; 

 it would first describe by pictures or marks of things addressed to the eye, 

 and after having passed through various stages of improvement would finish 

 in letters, or marks of words addressed to the ear. 



This is not a speculative representation ; for 1 shall now proceed to 

 show, as far as the period of time to which we are limited will allow me, 

 that what we have thus supposed would take placie, has actually taken 

 place : that wherever alphabetic characters exist, or have existed, we have 

 direct proofs, or strong reasons for believing, that they have been preceded 

 by picture or imitative characters ; and that wherever picture or imitative 

 characters, the language of things, still continue to exist, instead of having 

 been preceded by alphabetic characters, they have a strong tendency to 

 run into them, and probably will run into them in the upshot. And in 

 this view of the subject I am supported by many of the most celebrated 

 philologists of the age, as Bishop Warburton, the President de Brosses, 

 Mr. Astle, M. Fourmont, M. Gibelin. 



The remains of Egyptian sculpture are but few ; but they are sufficient 

 to aflford us specimens of each of the kinds of writing I have adverted 

 to ; the pure hieroglyph, or simple picture-style ; the mixt, allegorical, or 

 emblematic ; the abbreviated or contracted ; and the alphabetic ; and the 

 valuable relics which are to be seen in the British Museum, more especially 

 the sarcophagi and the famous Rosetta stone, (as it is called,) erected in 

 honour of Ptolemy V., contain examples of most of them. They prove 

 to us also, the order of succession in which the changes were effected, 

 and clearly indicate the pure picture-style to be the most ancient. 



The magnificent ruins of Persepolis, the capital of ancient Persia, offer 

 monuments to the same effect The windows, the pillars, the pilasters, 

 and the tombs, are loaded with characters of some kind or other, imitative, 

 emblematical, or alphabetical. In many instances the pure picture-style 

 is as correctly adhered to as in any Egyptian specimen ; in others we meet 

 with tablets filled with what may indeed be abbreviated emblems, but which 

 appear to be letters, and which, at any rate, afford proof that the ancient 

 Persians had, at this period, made some advance from characters for things 

 towards characters for words. 



The prophecy of the utter destruction of Babylon has been so com- 

 pletely fulfilled, that, although the banks of the Euphrates, on which this 

 city stood, give evident proofs of magnificent ruins along their track, we 

 cannot exactly ascertain its situation. On many of the bricks, however, 

 which have been dug up from the midst of the general wreck, we find a 

 peculiar sort of character, evincing an approach towards letters, and 

 which are supposed to be abbreviated emblems, as emblems are often ab- 

 breviated pictures, employed by the Chaldean sages of Babylonia ; who, 

 according to Pliny, always engraved their astronomical observations on 

 bricks.t And even in Southern Siberia, as high as the river Trbit, or 

 Pishma, Strahlenberg asserts, that he found a variety of rude figures or 



* De Brosses, snr rOrisrin de I'Alphabef , t Plin. vil 56. 



