who availed themselves of the Ægyptian learning and difcoveries, more than a thou Olympus and Plutarch, who hath written a fingle effay to expose his malice, might have filled a volume with remarks on his credulity. Upon the fuppofition that he actually saw some antient monuments, which were certainly erected by Sefoftris, and that the facred character of Egypt was properly a literal character, it is far from being clear that the age of Sefoftris was fo high as that of Mofes, by many centuries; but from the only inscription he hath given us, which was cut between the fhoulders. of a statue or of a figure, carved in bafs relief, upon the road between Ephefus and Phocæa, allowing the infcription to have been coeval with this monument, it does not appear that he could more than guess at the perfon for whom it was intended. The Syriac infcriptions of Semiramis, upon Mount Bagiftan, are yet more vainly urged from Diodorus, [B. 2.] to prove the earlier antiquity of an alphabetic character; fince the related fact, that there were any infcriptions at all, is far from being certain; and it is well known, that many Queens of Affyria were distinguished by the name of Semiramis. Ut qui regnavit fine nomine, mox Sefooftris. AUSONIUS. And the columns of Cfyris have as airy a foundation. thousand With respect to the opinion, that letters were invented by the Arabs, before the time of Mofes; confidering the rudenefs of their life and manners, and that Ægypt* was much farther advanced in * It is the opinion of Sir Ifaac Newton, that letters did not begin to be in ufe in Egypt till after the flight of the Edomites from David, about which time. Cadmus brought them into Europe; and that there is no the improvement of the arts, than any other country at this early period, where picture-writing especially was encouraged and improved, perhaps, as much as it was capable of improvement; confidering withal the firmness and ftability of the Ægyptian government, which left particular persons more at liberty to cultivate their genius, than a wandering uncer no inftance of characters for writing down founds being in ufe, before the days of this monarch, among any other nation befides the pofterity of Abraham, though he fuppofes letters to have been in the Abrahamic family before the age of Mofes. But had alphabetic writing been originally invented by the Arabs, we should probably have found their favourite animal the Horse, in the number of the primitive characters; whereas, upon a fuppofition of their being invented by Mofes at the Exodus, it was not likely to be inferted, as the Ifraelites at this time had no cavalry amongst them. *There seems to have been a strange fatality attending the Egyptian learning. The Ægyptians, doubtless, carried fome of the arts and fciences, and especially + Geometry, to an astonishing height, from + Diod. B. 1. their uncertain state of almost favage life; we may conclude, without prefumption, that if the Ægyptians were not inventors of the alphabet, as they most probably were not, their beginnings very early; haftening with rapidity to a certain point, at which they stopped, without getting one step farther and this, unless we suppose it to have been owing in fome measure to the want of alphabetic writing, appears to have been the utmost boundary of their understanding. They just came fhort of the knowledge of letters, as they did of Painting, Statuary, and Architecture; of which they boafted, notwithstanding, the difcovery and perfection; and claimed a fuperiority over other nations upon that account, which was too readily allowed them. In truth, they fo much refembled what the Chinese now are, and always have been, (so far as we can trace their manners) in almost every particular, as well as pride and idolatry, as renders it highly probable they were defcended from one common ftock; or, otherwife, that both these people have laboured under a fimilar kind of judicial blindness. In a qualified fenfe, the likeness might be urged as a striking example of the favourite opinion that prevailed in antient Ægypt, the doctrine of tranfmigration, which, we are told, continues to be a favourite doctrine in China to this very time. It is well known, that vanity and pride are amongst the chief motives of the Chinese, for it must be ascribed with much less likelihood to the invention of the ruder Arabs. Hunt for rejecting the advantages of alphabetic writing, which they have been fo long acquainted with: how far the fame narrow turn of mind prevented the antient Egyptians from receiving it, must be left to the opinion of the reader. It is ftrange, if these availed themselves of letters, even fo early as the reign of Solomon, according to the opinion of Sir Ifaac Newton, that we should have no certain knowledge of their forms, by any memorials infcribed upon their buildings or obelifks; whereas we only meet with now and then a detached fcrawl, resembling the Grecian Alpha or Tau, which were probably made use of merely as hieroglyphics: and the only letters, properly fo called, we can affirm to have been used as letters in Ægypt, are the Coptic. Thefe undoubtedly were borrowed from the Greeks, but not till after the entire fubverfion of their antient government. Nam poft Græcorum victorias (faith Bishop Walton *) Ptolemæum linguam, cum literis Græcis, in Ægyptum intuliffe nemo dubitare poteft, qui libros Coptos Græcis vocabu- ' lis refertos legerit, vel ipforum alphabetum cum Græco contulerit. And if the number of Ægyptian letters was only twenty-five in the age of Plutarch, which he affirms in Ifis and Ofyris, we may probably conclude Prolegom. 11. p. 7. that |