161 
the gulf between it and some other. On the plain of Babel 
the impetus was given which has resulted in the evolution of all 
the marvellous number of dialects in which men think and 
hold converse at the present day. 
The earliest variations of the one language were probably — 
1 st, the uninflected, or nearly uninflected, represented by the 
Chinese and Tungusian ; 2nd, the inartificial, though inflected 
by prefix and suffix, now styled Hamitic ; spoken in various 
form by Menes the Egyptian and Urukh the Babylonian, 
and the early Canaanites, and represented to us in the Coptic. 
The relics of the ancient Egyptian preserved to us in this 
language, and in the little that is decipherable and intelli- 
gible of the earlier tongue, show us that the vocabulary was 
inartificial to a degree, preserving much of the presumed 
onomatopoeia of its primeval original. 
TeXireX f to drop/ AACnfS ‘lion/ 
nexeuen the { hoopoe/ cnrg,oop ‘dog/ 
are specimens of the evidently ancient appellatives used by the 
Hamites. The Shemite speech of Terah's tribe was probably 
evolved from an earlier Hamite modification of Noah's tongue, 
rather than started as an independent branch. And thus, though 
Abraham and the Canaanites had little difficulty in under- 
standing one another, Jacob and Laban used two different 
names (apparently mutually intelligible) for “ the heap of 
witness," and the children of Jacob at the court of a Pharaoh 
— that Pharaoh perhaps a Philistine shepherd-king — found it 
more convenient to employ the services of an interpreter. 
Belies of the Noachid speech exist, no doubt, in every 
tongue, modern and ancient, living and dead. Yet they 
should be sought for, it may well be imagined, and would be 
most likely to be detected in greatest number and earliest con- 
dition, — 1. in those tongues which have to all appearance 
altered so little from their primitive form, the dialects of 
China and the Tungusian division of the Turanian family ; 
2. in the Coptic, and in those offshoots of the great Hamitic 
Egyptian language which exist, in more or less degraded 
form, in various parts of Africa ; 3. in the language in which 
the sacred books are written, the Biblical Hebrew, which, 
though it bears marks of cultivated development, must needs 
(if our sacred records are to be listened to) contain much that 
has really directly descended from primeval times. 
