IMITATIVE AND SYMBOLICAL. 



317 



which this term was generally understood, included, as I shall have occa- 

 sion 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 grandson of Noah, — Ham and Misraim being 

 merely transmuted into Ham-yn and Misor. There is coincidence enough 

 in the two accounts to reflect authenticity upon each other : and had there 

 been more, an advantage would eagerly have been taken of the Phoenician 

 narrative, by skeptical polemics, and Moses would have been boldly ac- 

 cused of having stolen his history from this quarter. 



This account of Sanchoniatho, moreover, is not only supported gene- 

 rally by the sacred records, but is distinctly corroborated in regard to the 

 point immediately before us, that of the invention of letters, by the suf- 

 frages of Porphyry, Eusebius, Pliny, Quintus Curtius, Lucan, and, indeed, 

 all the Latin writers. And although the Greeks entertained a somewhat 

 different opinion, and ascribed the invention of letters to a younger Taaut, 

 or Hermes, than the son of Misraim, and who flourished about four cen- 

 turies afterward, and was born in Egypt, as the first Taaut was born in 

 Phoenicia, nothing is more evident than that the Greeks were less acquainted 

 with the history of both Egypt and Phoenicia than the Romans, in conse- 

 quence of the greater range of the Roman power ; and that they con- 

 founded two personages of the same name, and who possessed the same 

 crown, and attributed to the one what ought to have been attributed to the 

 other. The oldest Egyptian historian is Manetho, who probably drew up 

 his dynasties about two centuries and a half before the Christian era ; 

 these only touch upon the subject indirectly, but, so far as they go, they 

 rather support than oppose the testimony of Sanchoniatho. 



There is some degree of doubt, whether Greece derived its letters from 

 Egypt or from PhoBnicia : the best authorities, however, incline to the last 

 opinion ; and suppose them to have been introduced by the Phoenician 

 Pelasgi, upon their settlement in Peloponnesus. The oldest Greek letters 

 are nearly Pelasgic in form ; and, according to the usual fashion in the 

 East, are written from right to left. This last, however, is by no means 

 a decisive argument ; for upon the earliest use of letters, in most countries, 

 there seems to have been no settled rule : and hence, in, perhaps, all of 

 them, we meet with letters running from right to left, and from left to right ; 

 in many very ancient specimens of Greek running alternately, the one 

 line in one direction, and the ensuing in the other, like the course taken 

 by a plough, whence it was denominated, from this machine, the plough- 

 ing style ; and in both Persia and Egypt, running perpendicularly like the 

 common style of the Chinese, instead of horizontally whether to the right 

 or to the left. 



That the Romans derived their alphabet from the Greeks is unques- 

 tionable : and hence, admitting the authority of Sanchoniatho, confirmed 

 as it is by a, variety of collateral evidences, the first invention of writing 

 seems to rest with the Phoenicians, and we are able to trace it to within 

 one hundred and sixty years of the flood.* 



I am purposely, however, using the term Phoenician in a very extensive 

 sense ; in that sense in which it appears to have been used by Herodotus, 

 and the generality of ancient writers, in consequence of Phcenicia being 



* SeeAstle,pp.45, 46. 64. 



