the symbols that represented living objects were turned.

The foregoing table, copied from Bunsen's Aegyptens Stelle,” exhibits the alphabetic power of the phonetic hieroglyphics in use in the times of the Pharaohs. Many others were added at later periods. The true character of the vowel-sounds is as yet imperfectly understood. Champollion observes, "The sound of the vowel-characters of the Egyptian phonetic alphabet, had no more fixity than that of the vowel-signs in the Hebrew, Phœnician, and Arabic languages, but was subject to the very same variations; and, as in the Hebrew and Arabic texts, most of the vowels in the middle of words were habitually omitted."* In the Coptic, which is descended from the Ancient Egyptian, the vowels are extremely vague; thus the word signifying "to fold up," is variously written kaλ, keλ, κελ, κολ, κωλ, without the slightest change in the sense. It has recently been supposed, however, that in early periods, the vowel-hieroglyphics had a fixed and determinate usage, while the pronunciation of them was slight and vague.

It is needful to remark, also, that some consosants, which with us are sufficiently distinct, were represented by the same character; thus B includes also V; F, V, and sometimes U, or W; R, L; T, Th, and D; K, G; and P, Ph.

* Gram. Egy. 30, 31.

GEOGRAPHY AND TOPOGRAPHY.

Ir has been a favourite hypothesis with those who reject the word of God, that the population and civilization of Egypt originated in Ethiopia, and gradually proceeded down the valley of the Nile to the Delta. Hence they have laboured hard to shew that the monuments are of greater antiquity as we travel upward, those of the Thebaïs being older than those of the Delta, and those of Nubia older than those of the Thebaïs. The inspired narrative, however, distinctly states that the plain of Shinar, in the west of Asia, was the grand centre from which the primitive families of men were miraculously dispersed to colonize the world.

And the whole earth was of one language and of one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. . . . And they said, go to, let us build us a city, and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence, upon the face of all the earth. Gen. xi. 1-8.

...

The family which proceeded towards the southwest, would, after skirting the wilderness of Arabia, find the first habitable land on the eastern margin of the Delta; and thence they would gradually spread themselves over that alluvial tract and up the fertile valley. Now, the evidence of the monu

ments fully confirms the inspired statement. Sir J. G. Wilkinson* observes, "Every one who considers the features, the language, and other peculiarities of the ancient Egyptians, will feel convinced, that they are not of African extraction, but that, like the Abyssinians, and many inhabitants of the known valley of the Nile, they bear the evident stamp of an Asiatic origin; and Juba, according to Pliny, affirms that the people of the banks of the Nile, from Syene to Meroe, were not Ethiopians, but Arabs. And if feature and other external appearances are insufficient to establish this fact, the formation of the skull, which is decidedly of the Caucasian variety, must remove all doubt of their valley having been peopled from the East." Again, the same author observes, "It has been the opinion of many, that colonisation and civilisation descended the Nile from Ethiopia, and that the parents of Egyptian science came from the land of Cush. But this notion appears, from modern investigation, to be totally at variance with fact: and the specimens of art that remain in Ethiopia, are not only inferior in conception to those of the Egyptian school, but are deficient in that character which evinces originality." Mr. Osburn* also, in his very valuable work just published, speaks to the same effect;-referring to an argument deduced from a superstitious notion of the travels of the soul after death, he says "This indirect but plain indication of the eastern origin of the first colonisers of Egypt, is confirmed by the dates of the monuments now in existence. The pyramids of Ghizeh, [or

* Man. and Cust., 1st Series, i. 2—4. + Ancient Egypt, p. 22.

Jizeh] in the burial-place of Memphis, are the most ancient of all the greater remains. Several of the tombs in their immediate vicinity also belong to the same remote period. As we proceed up the valley of the Nile to Beni Hassan and Abydos, the remains are those of the era of Osortasen [about the age of Abraham]; while at Thebes, and the regions to the south of it, we scarcely find a trace of anything that is earlier than the eighteenth dynasty.* More satisfactory proof could scarcely be desired that the progress of the first inhabitants of the valley was from Heliopolis upwards, not from Thebes downwards, as has been too hastily assumed by certain modern antiquaries. In this particular, therefore, the monuments of Egypt strongly confirm the scripture account of the first dispersion of mankind from the plains of Shinar."

The city of Heliopolis, named in the scripture On, was probably one of the earliest settlements of thrat Hamitic family that migrated southward and westward. It was situated at the very spot where the river divides into the branches that form the Delta ;-"where most probably the first spot of habitable ground would have been met with on the banks of the Nile by travellers from the north-east ; for at first, the arid sands of the desert were bounded by the pestilential swamps formed by the branches of the Nile, along the entire eastern boundary of the Delta." This place, which was considered as the most ancient of Egyptian cities, had been long deserted even in the time of Strabo; in the first cen

* The dynasties of Egypt will be treated of in the following chapter.