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REPORT - 184 /. 
the northern continent of America. The southern German tribes lave^-; 
cessively formed, with a greater or less infusion of words into the Lam 
groundwork, the Italian, French and Spanish languages. 
II. The following nations form another compact mass, ^il repres® 
one physiologically and historically connected family; the 
the other tribes of Canaan or Palestine, inclusire of tlie “ 
spread their language, through their colonization, as that of the 
nians; the Aratnair. tribes, or the historical nations of Arara, Syna,. wf 
tamia and Babylonia, speaking Syrian in the west, and ^ 
in the 6 . 131 ; finally, die ArabirmSf whose language is connected (throiij 
Himyorilic) witli the ./E’Mwyjte, the ancient (now the sacred) Ungius^^ 
Abyssinia. We sliall call this second family, by the name now genen.' 
adopted among Gurwao Hebrew scholars, the ,Scniitie. , 
III. The language of the ancient Kgyptians has an equally oigamc 
ture, but much less developed than those two families, and . 
its rnoU and granimallcal forms both with the .laphetic and die 
This phenomeuop cannot he explained, except by the supposition ^ 
two groat families were originally connected with each other. Is ^ 
ask, the mcthoif employed to establish the affinity between the . 
branches of each family sufficient to solve this ulterior probifMi • 
not, which are the scientific elements of a new and higher melho ^ 
don? Beforo entering further into these questions, allow roe W P ^ 
you some ideas respecting the importance which these linguistic 
to me to liave as illustrating and explaining the general coarse ot 
zatioH of mankind. . 
It is only necessary to reflect on the names of the nations 
the two great Asiatic families, in order to be convinced 
linguistic facts are not merely interesting and important ^ 
view of etymological research and antiquarian erudition, I W*® 
them in the preface to my ‘Egypt’ somewhat in the 
versal history', as far as it is the history of the human mind and ^ 
in what we call the historical agc> is nothing but the history 
great families, the Japhetic and the Semitic, with an IkjIi 
of Egypt and the Egyptians. But the Egyptian language, ^ 
families, not only represtrits the primeval history of Egypt, but is . 
the only known historical monument of an earlier period of the 
and therefore (unless we would derive the Asiatic is* 
Nile) the record of the language and cirilization of primitive 
Of this period, thus recorded, we shall here say nothing more. ' 
we here developo the idea that Egypt’s ancient history itself 
middle ages of the most ancient w'Drld. But if we look into the 1» » , 
called historical age, into what may be termed, from a large point «i 
modern history of mankind, the principal parts of the great ' 
advancement are, in the three great acts which are before us, 
tiie following manner ethnologically. In the first, we meet on 
with the Bactrinns and Medians, the Indians and Persians; on 
with the Babylonians, and prob.ibly the Assyrians, the Jews and i ,• 
For on the very border of the ante-historical age, we fi**^*'. 
Genesis and Berosus, on the one side in the East, the BactriiTO! . j. 
Iranian state, on the other, the first great western empire of I ,• 
deetl of the world) of which we have any historical 
the Babylonian, or the kingdom of Babel (Babiru) on the 
primitive masters of the Babylonian empire in the primeval peri 
epoch spoke most probably the language of the undivided stock) I 
