316 



ON LEGIBLE LANGUAGE, 



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, m the Chinese ; derived, 

 for the most part, as Dr. Morrison ingeniously conjectures, from the im- 

 pressions of the feet of birds on the sand, and the hnes on the bodies of 

 shell-tishes.* Each has had a distinct origin, according as mankind in 

 these different parts of the world, and under different circumstances, have 

 found a necessity of recording facts and ideas in remote periods of an- 

 tiquity; and each, as I have already observed, has an obvious tendency 

 to run into arbitrary, and, 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 Phoenician 

 historian, whose writings have reached us in a few fragments and quota- 

 tions, is Sanchoniatho, who was contemporary with Solomon, and drew 

 up a history of Phoenicia, from existing monuments, and archives pre- 

 served in the college of the Phoenician priests. This history was dedi- 

 cated to Abibalus, the Phoenician monarch, father of Hiram, king Solo- 

 mon'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 Hermets, the successor 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 Phcenicia, 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 symbolical writing into that country. And in another passage 

 he asserts that Taaut afterward carried forward this improvement to the 

 invention of alphabetic characters. 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 Cibiri and Dioscuri, the 

 priests and sages of the country, to employ them in drawing up a history 

 of Phoenicia. 



This is a very curious and important relic of profane history ; and it is 

 interesting 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, how- 

 ever, the first race of mankind in Phoenicia, which, in the latitude in 



* Chinese Dictionary, p. I. 



