THE ONE PRIMEVAL LANGUAGE TRACED EXPERIMENTALLY THROUGH Ancient Inscriptions IN ALPHABETIC CHARACTERS OF LOST POWERS FROM THE FOUR CONTINENTS: INCLUDING THE VOICE OF ISRAEL FROM THE ROCKS OF SINAI: AND THE VESTIGES OF PATRIARCHAL TRADITION FROM THE MONUMENTS OF EGYPT, ETRURIA, AND WITH ILLUSTRATIVE PLATES, A HARMONIZED TABLE OF ALPHABETS, BY THE REV. CHARLES FORSTER, B.D., ONE OF THE SIX PREACHERS OF THE CATHEDRAL OF CANTERBURY, HONORARY MEMBER OF THE LITERARY SOCIETY: 66 AUTHOR OF MAHOMETANISM UNVEILED," AND OF 66 THE HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF ARABIA." And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. GENESIS. LONDON: RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET. Πρῶτον μὲν πάντων παρακαλῶ τοὺς μέλλοντας ἐντυγχάνειν τῇδε τῇ βίβλῳ, ἵνα μετὰ πάσης προσοχῆς καὶ ἐπιμελείας τὴν ἀνάγνωσιν ποιήσωνται, καὶ μὴ παρέργως αὐτὴν διαδραμεῖν. COSMAS INDICOPLEUSTES. "Rude societies have language, and often copious and energetic language; but they have no scientific grammar, no definitions of nouns and verbs, no names for declensions, moods, tenses, and voices."- MACAULAY's History of England. LONDON : ADVERTISEMENT TO THE READER. THE general interest in the subject of the present work, manifested by the favourable reception of its First Part, has more than justified the reliance there expressed, "that the English Public would grant that fair and impartial hearing, and exercise that wise suspense of judgment, by which alone knowledge is enlarged, and without which it is impossible that justice can be done to the treatment of any subject, on a new principle, or in an untrodden way." In entering upon the Second Part of this Inquiry, the author has only to repeat the expression of the same calm reliance, while he invites his readers to accompany him from Sinai to Egypt; from the scenes of the wanderings of God's ancient people, to the imperial seats of their alternate protectors and persecutors, the Pharaohs. The attempts formerly made to convert Egypt and her monuments into the stronghold of infidelity, and recently renewed, in a less daring indeed, but not less dangerous form, seem to call upon all who take a serious interest in the cause of revealed truth, to enter, with the author, upon an inquiry into the real state and merits of the case: an inquiry based, not on theory, but on experiment, and aiming only to ascertain whether the witness really borne by heathen Egypt be not, like that borne by every other heathen land, a witness to the literal truth, and historical fidelity, of the Books of Moses, and of the whole Word of God. When the literal sense of the Mosaic records has been questioned, and the historical authority even of the Gospel history impugned, on the evidence of the broken or pseudo-dynasties of Manetho, on the one hand, and of the supposed discoveries of self-denominated "Egyptologers," on the other, inquiry into the phenomena really presented by the monuments of Egypt is no longer a subject of learned curiosity-it becomes a matter of Christian duty. On this high ground it is that the appeal is now made, both to the English Public, and to the Christian world. We have lived to see the received Biblical chronology assailed, and the Gospel genealogies themselves set aside, by rationalizing theories built solely on the authority of the fragmental history of Manetho, interpreted by alleged discoveries on the monuments. To question, upon grounds like these, the received scriptural chronology, is alone a serious inroad on the credibility of the Sacred History itself. But to question, on any grounds whatsoever, the historical authority, the literal fidelity, the infallible exactness, of the Gospel genealogies, is to strike at the root of Christianity and Revelation. If the names in those genealogies, if any of those names from Adam to Christ Jesus, be names, not of individuals, but of families or nations, if a single link in the heraldic series of generations be thus broken, we lose all note of time. And every wild theorist, from the savans of the French expedition to the savans of the present day, may set up his own chronology, and make the world, at will, 7000, or 70,000, years old. |