344 
this writer is that “ during the last twelve years the study of the 
Egyptian texts has made such enormous progress that the 
Pharaonic language and writing may be analyzed almost as well 
as any text in one of the classical languages.” 
This eminent Egyptologist says (p. 6), “ It is certain that the 
cradle of the Egyptian race must be sought in the centre of 
Asia. At some epoch previous to all historic recollection, and 
impelled by causes unknown to us, the Egyptians quitted their 
primitive soil, directing themselves towards the west, in order to 
cross the Isthmus of Suez, and to seek a new country on the 
happy banks of the Nile. 
“ Diodorus, in the fifth book of his Universal History (p. 125), 
has preserved to us the description of an island which, according 
to the terms of his recital, is found in front of Arabia Felix, 
and which bore the name of the ‘Divine’ island. Notwith- 
standing the difficulty which has been found in fixing geo- 
graphically the position of that island, which probably must be 
understood of the coast of a part of Ai’abia Felix, still it is 
incontestable that the description of Diodorus, with regard to 
the products of the divine island, and the worship of the 
divinities, applies marvellously to the indications of the Egyptian 
texts as to their sacred land in the East. The name of 1 the 
divine island ’ at once recalls the name of muter ta , ‘ the sacred 
land,’ which the inscriptions agree to give to that country which 
recalled to the Egyptians the origin of their religious worship. 
“ To trust the texts which express themselves very distinctly 
in the sense indicated, ‘ the sacred land,’ from which the 
greatest divinities of Egypt took their origin, must be regarded 
as a prehistoric station of the Egyptians before their entry into 
Egypt, and as a resting station of the Cushite race before their 
dispersion over the different countries of Eastern Africa. If the 
texts recall a thousand times the mention of the sacred land, if 
the monuments delight to recall the ancient cradle of the 
greatest divinities forming the foundation of the Egyptian 
mytholog) r , they only confess clearly the direction of the road 
which the ancestors of the Egyptians took before arriving at the 
scene of their political life, and of their work of civilization.” 
The native testimony of India agrees with that of the Scrip- 
tures in bringing the race that peopled Egypt from the East, 
and allying these with other Cushite tribes. 
In all this we have the direct contradiction of the doctrine 
recently propagated on high authority, and evidently in the 
interests of a certain theory, — that Egypt was the cradle of the 
human race, in which the ape-like savage gradually developed 
into the civilized man. 
