certain arts was forged through the aid of words which designated
either the objects or the instruments of which the arts make use, or
even by the help of the proper names of these arts themselves. It
is thereby that Closter (KXuffr-^p), that is, the spindle, was held to he
the inventor of the art of spinning wool. The art of striking fire
from flint was discovered, it was said, by Pyrodes (nup<6tf>s), that is,
the burning, the kindled, son of Oilix (silez), the flint. The ‘ pise’
(luteum cedificium) had been invented by Technes (Tt'^v»js), art, incorrectly
written Docius in the manuscripts of Pliny; the rule (regula)
and not the tile (tegula), as one reads in some manuscripts, had had
for its author' Oinyrus, son of Acribe'ias. The name of this Cinyrus
is derived from the root canna; and a false reading has substituted,
for the name of Acribe'ias (axp//3sia, rectitude), that of Agriopas.
Chalcas (XaXxos, brass), son of Athamas (' ASagac, bard metal), had
made the first bucklers, &c.;”—just as, in king James’s version,
TiUBuLKalF, 'literally, the Glod-Vulcan, has become transmuted
into “ Tubal-cain, an instructer of every artificer in brass and
iron.” 363
263 Genesis iv, 22:—conf. Gliddon, Otia Ægyptiaca, p. 141, note.
Every one knows that whether “ GOD appeared in the flesh,” or “ w h o appeared in the
flesh,” of 1 Timothy iii, 16, depends upon 0 0 or ©C in the Codex Alexandrinus at the
British Museum; which biliteral, through pious handlings, is now effaced! ( C a r d i n a l
W i s e m a n , Connection between Science and revealed Religion, London, 1836 ; II, pp. 168-9.
See also the same fact in W e t s t e n i i Nov. Testament., II, p. 864 ; cited in B i s h o p M a r s h ’s
Michoelis, I, p. 577, notes.)
“ The history of Saint Ursula and of the 11,000 virgins whose innumerable relics are
shown, arranged in one of the churches, at Cologne, owes its origin to an expression of
the old calendars. Vrsula et Undecimella, W . MM. ; that is to say, ‘ Saint Ursula and Saint
Undicimella, virgins and martyrs.’ Ignorant readers have, as one perceives, singularly
multiplied the latter saint. Conf. Brady, Clavis Calendaria, t. 2, p. 334.” ( A l f r e d M a u r y ,
Légendes Pieuses du Moyen-Âge, Paris, 8vo, 1843; p. 214, note.)
Here is one Hebrew, another Greek, and a third Latin, example, out of hundreds at hand
(in Hebrew especially), to illustrate historical metamorphoses. Where ¿ither instance does
not suit the taste of a Boeotian, it may that of an Athenian. But for the orientalist I add
an inedited specimen, due to the kindness of a Persian scholar, my old friend Major-General
Bagnold, of the Hon. East-Ind. Comp.’s Service.
In the Arabic alphabet, adopted with slight modifications by Persians, the letter z jS y n ,
Z, is distinguished from the letter R k , B, only by a “ nuqta,” dot, or point, placed above
the former letter’s head. “ The author of the Anwarry Saheilly jocularly criticizes the use
of points by an amusing couplet, which I translate almost verbatim,and paraphrase:
‘ If Anwarry, within this world,
Could wish to live without its zêhimut
(misery) g p s i
Nature brings forth a filthy fly
To dung o’er the head of r è in réhimut
(mercy)
“ In the time of Pausanias, the people of Corinth, to whom the
circumstances of the foundation of their city were totally unknown,
recounted that this city had been built hy a king named Corinthus.
“All these personages of poetical fiction were attached, afterwards,
to the divers countries from which the Greeks fancied, themselves to
have originated ; deceived as they were hy resemblances of traditions
and the lying assertions of strangers emulous of being the parents
of their civilization. It is hence that Phoenicia, Media, Egypt, Libya,
Ethiopia, and India, were regarded as the cradle of these heroes,
all Greeks by their origin and their name,—traditions comparatively
modern, that have led more than one scholar astray, but of which
criticism has definitively ruined the authenticity.”
In justice to my friend M. Maury, I ought to mention that his
foot-notes sustain every statement with irrefragable testimony. VV e
behold, however, in Greece,—a country about which we possess
more information than concerning any other on earth,—thanks to her
ancient historians and to modern, archaeologists — how human ori-
gines, in one and the best-represented locality, are absolutely unknown.
If in storied Hellas such is the case, what must we expect
to find about man’s primordial advent upon our planet, among less
historical nations ? The prefatory remarks to the “ American Realm”
of our Ethnographic Tableau will illustrate another phase of this
argument.
The chronological deficiencies encountered everywhere else compel
a final return to the monuments of the Nile. Amid their petroglyphs
and papyri alone can we hope to weave a thread hy which to measure
the minimum length of time that a type of humanity must have
occupied that valley. In our former work,264 a synopsis of hiero-
glyphical investigations exhibited how Egyptian chronology stood
in the year 1853. Four years have passed, and I have nothing to
alter. Correct then, the same views are accurate now; for, with
the exception of an appendix to the Misses Horner’s translation265
of his travels, Chev. Lepsius has not more definitively treated on
chronology; nor, up to the spring of last year (1856), had he published
his Book of Kings; until the appearance of which, I have consistently
maintained since 1844, no professed system of Egyptian chronology
can, in the very nature of human things, possess solid or durable
claims to attention:—such as have recently appeared, worthy of respect,
being either likeM. Brunet de Presle’s,266 a re-examination of the classical
sources; or else like Chev. Bunsen’s second volume (ubi supra), a
264 Types of Mankind, 686-9.
266 Letters from Egypt, Ethiopia, &c. (supra, note 198).
Examen critique de la Succession des dynasties égyptiennes, P a rt I, Paris, 8vo, 1850.