leads us to oonclude,” says Gesenius, “ that Heber was not an historical, hut only a
mythical personage, whose name was first formed from that of the people. This was,
doubtless, the case with Ion, Dorus, and iEolus.”
None of the above nations, however, attribute their descent to an Hamitic affiliation
through KUSA -■ and Hyde sustains that the Cushites migrated from Chusisldn, or Su-
siana, to the shores of the Euphrates and Persian Gulf; whence it is probable their
offshoots spread over Southern Arabia, and eventually crossed the Red Sea, in common
with Arabs of the Semitic stock, into Abyssinia and other Upper Nilotic provinces.
With the Ishmaelitish tribes of Arabia, as they are not included in Xth Genesis, our
inquiries have little to do. Their distribution has been worked up, as completely as
the subject admits, by Forster; although the attentive comparisons of Fresnel result
in but nine or ten nominal identifications of Arab tribes mentioned in the Bible, While
above forty biblical tribes are wanting in the lists of the Arabs. The purely Semitiah
families of Xth Genesis are allotted their own places in our Essay. To determine
KUSAfte occupation of Arabia is our object, now that, except as “ snn-burned-faces,"
they had no relation to African “ Ethiopia,” at the remote age of our historical
horizon.
No one will dispute that, in the idea of the writer of Xlth Genesis, the affiliations
of S h e h , H am , and J a f h e t h , catalogued in the Xth, assembled, when “ the whole earth
Was of one language,” on the plain of Shinar (Gen. xi. 1, 2), whence they were dispersed
by miraculous interposition. Among the number was KUSA, the father of
N im r o d ; and consequently Asia, on the banks of the Euphrates, was the primitive
starting-place of himself and children, viewed as men. Conceding to orthodoxy their
departure thence towards Africa, Arabia was inevitably their road and halting-place.
The only differences between debaters are questions of time: our view being that
the KUSAeans remained there for indefinite ages, and that their African emigrations
were partial, as well as chronologically recent; to be demonstrated, anon, by the
Arabian concentration of their several descendants.
The many scriptural citations of our preceding remarks establish that KUSAiies were
still in Arabia at a far later period: a notable instance being Z e r a h the Cushite, in the
time of Asa; to place whom in Africa, because the Lublm and Cushlm are united in
2 Chron. xvi. 8, when the Cushlm alone are recorded in the historical narrative (2 Chron.
xiv. 8-14), merely to accumulate proofs that no confidence can be given to either account
at all, is, to say the least, incautious. The KUSAeans were yet in Arabia, at the time of
Jeremiah’s (xiii. 23) interrogatory, “ Can the Cushean change his B k i n ? ” which contrast,
we have shown, applies to the dark Arabian tribes, abounding in Arabia then as
now. But, lest our application should be considered dubious, this fact must be contemplated
from a more philosophic point of view.
It is acknowledged by the highest ethnological Btudents of our generation, Prichard,
DeBrotonne, Jacquinot, Bodichon, Pauthier, and others, that wherever In Austral-
Asiatic latitudes, Hindostan for example, tradition yet pierces through the gloom of
time, the dark, or black, families of mankind (specimens of whom also survive there to
our day) have invariably preceded colonizations by the Whites, or higher castes. It is
also claimed by Kenrick, Bunsen, De Brotonne, and Lenormant, that the great Hamitu
migration westwards through Arabia antedates the Semitic: in other words, that
KUSAito were settled in Southern Arabia prior to the arrival of Vjourhomida, Jok-
tanidce, or Abrahamidce— Semitish tribes, like the Hebrews, of fairer complexion. The .
new doctrines advanced in this volume [supra, Chapter VI.] relative to the improving
gradations of type, in humanity’s scale, when we consider each family of mankind, one
by one, from the Cape of Good Hope to the Caucasian mountains, show how a dark
group of men ought to present itself in Arabia, as the immediate Asiatic successors of
the swarthy Egyptians: Egypt-proper; according to ancient opinions, now corroborated
by zoological facts, being far more Asiatic than African in itp natural history and phenomena.
What group answers all these conditions but the one to which, from immemorial
time, the name of KUSA has been appropriately referred? Even as late as the
fifth century after Christ, Syrian authors, cited by Assemani, designated Himyante
Arabs by the name of KUSAiies.
And this brings us to the point where Fresnel’s discoveries establish the entity ot a
fourth group of “ Arabs,” distinct from Semitish families, dating in Southern Arabia
from ante-historical ages to the present hour. .
Carsten Niebuhr, in 1763, first announced to Europe the positive existence m Southern
Arabia of inscriptions which old Arab authors had characterized as Musnad,
‘propped up,’ and had considered anterior in age to IsIàm, no less than to the present
Neskee and its parent the Cuphie writing of Mohammed’s day. De Sacy, 1805; with
his usual acumen, investigated the subject; Seetzen, 1810; Gesenius, 1819; Kopp,
1822 • and Hupfeld, 1825 ; chiefly from Ethiopia (Abyssinian) data, advanced its study ;
until 'wellsted, 1834, and Crittenden, (officers attached to the East India Company s
surveys,) discovered inscriptions of the highest interest, cut in the old Himyantic
alphabet, at Hisn Ghoràb, &c.
The learned critique of our friend Prof. W. W. Turner would greatly simplify an expository
task, could we herein digress upon these Himyaritic inscriptions, the earliest
date of which falls far below the Christian era. To his scathing refusal of “ one particle
of sympathy for Mr. Forster” viewed as translator ( ! ) of the Himyaritic, we beg
leave to add ours in respect to this gentleman’s more recent “ Sinaic Inscriptions—Voice
of Israel from the Rocks of Sinai” ; and to apply Turner’s just strictures to both of
the Rev. Mr. Forster’s fabrications. “ His wholly false and inconclusive method of
deciphering the inscriptions, the bombastic strain in which he dilateB on his achievements,
and above all the disingenuous artifices by which he seeks to disguise the hollowness
of his pretensions, render his performance [whether Himyaritic, or Sinaic, or,
worse than either, his last psendo-hieroglyphical !] deserving of all the ridicule an
censure it has met with.” It is sufficient now to mention, that Hunt’s refutation also
lies before us ; together with the Recherches sur les Inscriptions Himyariques de San â,
Khariba, Mareb, &p., through which Fresnel’s claim to the resuscitation of ancient
Himyar is universally acknowledged.
M. Fresnel’s IVth and Vth Letters to the Journal Asiatique, “ Djiddah, Jan. and
Feb. 1838,” give a sprightly account of his rencontre with a “ piratical grammarian
yclept Moukhsin; through whose and other fortuitous aids, he constructed the vocabulary
of a still living tongue, spoken at Zhafâr and Mirbàt, in Southern Arabia ;
which speech, now unintelligible to Semitic Arabs, is called Ehhlli by native speakers,
and JfoAri, or Ghràwi, by surrounding tribes. This extraordinary language, whose existence
was unsuspected until 1838 by modern philologers, possesses thirty-four to thirty-
five consonant articulations, six pure vowels, and as many -nasal — approximately, some
forty-seven different sounds ; among which three are utterly inexpressible m any European
alphabet ; and one is altogether too inhuman for any man but a true Zhafàrite to
enunciate ! Of the twenty-eight articulations current during Mohammed’s time in the
Hedjàs, two have become superfluous in the vernacular Arabic (Dàrig) of Cairo ; never--
theless the old Arabio alphabet of twenty-eight articulations is too poor, by nineteen
phonetics, for tribes living at Mirbàt and Zhafar !
[They completely destroy, Fresnel states, “ la symétrie du visage.” Even Moukhsin
thought the facial contortion ridiculous ; though he told M. A. d’Abbadie that none of
his tribe pronounced three of those letters on the left side of the mouthy “ Pour rendre
*le son du il faut chercher à prononcer un Z, en portant l’extrémité de la langue
sous les molaires supérieures du coté droit ”—such is “ Himyaritic euphony ! Having
humbly endeavored, “ in auld lang syne ” at Cairo, to imitate my friend M. Fresnel’s
attempts to rival Moukhsin’s mode of oral articulation, I was, and still am, at a, loss to
define the agonies of its intonation, otherwise than by reprinting how, while (this
letter) somewhat resembles the ‘LL’ of the Welsh, (it) can be articulated only on the
right side of the mouth — being something between ‘LLW,’ a whistle and a s p i t ! -
G. R. G.]