Now I have all along conceived that Sir W. believed the name of Joseph in the Hebrew text, to be an Egyptian word or words; the same bas invariably been the opinion of all commentators, so far as I know, not excepting even Calvin; for when he ridiculed the idea of explaining its meaning by the Hebrew, it was because he conceived it to be an Egyptian name, and that Egyptian words were inexplicable by the sense of Hebrew ones, and in this, I have here agreed with him. Nevertheless, all commentators have still continued to affirm the name in the Hebrew to be an Egyptian one, and have gone on also in the former way of attempting to interpret its meaning by the sense of Hebrew words; in which Sir W. has followed them, and this under the pretence, that Hebrew and Egyptian were such similar languages, or cognate ones, that although the Egyptian was quite lost, yet it might be collected from Hebrew what the Egyptian name meant to express: but here a difficulty, presented itself, for although aaneah may be a Hebrew word, yet Paaneah is not; both Abenczra and Bechai agree, "that it hath no fellow in Scripture." Gregory's Dissert. p. 64. What then is to be done with the P? Sir W. proposes, that it may be the abbreviated Ph' of the Egyptian article Phi, to which I object, as sending it back to Egypt, for as aaneah is a Hebrew word, it would be a strange medley to have an Egyptian article prefixed to it; but, answers Sir W., although aaneah is a Hebrew word, yet the Egyptian and Hebrew were such cognate languages that it is an Egyptian word likewise, and therefore he has only preserved the proper Egyptian article for it. This assertion, however, is only a supposition by Sir W., which he neither has proved, nor can prove; he explains away indeed the Scripture, and affirms, "that there is no evidence whatever, in the Hebrew of ch. xlii. 23. of Joseph's having employed an interpreter to translate one language into another;" but this again is an assertion directly contrary to fact, at least, according to the testimony of the ancient Jews; for the Jerusalem Targum renders that verse Interpretis loco stetit inter illos Manasses.

We must likewise require some better proof, that aaneah was an Egyptian word as well as Hebrew, than that the two languages were, as he asserts, cognate ones. So that hitherto no satisfactory account has been offered concerning that P prefixed to aaneach, and the case is the same concerning the ch or Heth which ends it, the real Hebrew word being, as Sir W. himself proves, aaneah, not aaneach; if then we take away those two letters from the beginning and end, the word is Hebrew, but with them, is neither Hebrew nor yet Egyptian, so far as we know this then is one reason at least, why Sir W. preferred the reading in the Samaritan text, which has ah or e, instead of ach, and thus he got rid of the last letter, but could find no other way to get quit of the first letter P, than by sending it back to Egypt; from which he supposes the whole word to have come and to belong, although he still explains the meaning of it by the Hebrew. Now the reason why the name in the Hebrew text has been so invariably presumed by all commentators to be an Egyptian word, has been only, because the Hebrew text was the original, and the Greek text a translation, hence they concluded, that the name of Joseph in the Hebrew was the original

name, therefore an Egyptian name; but of what language the name in the Greek text was, they seem not to have determined; they could not consider it as a Greek translation from Egyptian, because it was still unintelligible both to Greeks and Jews; neither could it be reasonably considered as an Egyptian word, in case the name in the Hebrew text be an Egyptian word, for then there would be two different Egyptian names for Joseph, and both originals. Encompassed with these difficulties, has Sir W., after others, still left this subject; therefore, I have proposed, as the only means to remove them, that since the name in the Greek text is found there in all MSS. of such an ancient trauslation, and also in the early Coptic translation made from the Greek, that the name in the Greek is in reality the true Egyptian name, which has been there preserved untranslated, and that the name in the Hebrew text is an attempt to translate the sense of the other into Hebrew; in which language, however, it is acknowledged by all parties, that it is not easy to deduce it altogether from any Hebrew roots; from which I conclude, that it is barbarous Hebrew, and was never intended to be offered as pure Hebrew, but intentionally made barbarous by some Jewish Scribe, who thus translated it; yet with the addition of two letters only, in order to imitate the sound of the original Egyptian word as preserved in the Greek copy of it, and that nevertheless the sense was still sufficiently intelligible to Hebrew readers. Now the two letters in question are those above-mentioned p and ch, which thus formed the whole name Zophnothpoaneach, in imitation of Fordou parx in sound; but this barbarous Hebrew, later Jews and modern commentators have rendered still more barbarous when they divided the name into two words, by joining the P to the beginning of the second word Paaneach, instead of the end of the first word Zophnothp, to which it was intentionally added, in order that, when joined to the preceding aspirate th, it might the better imitate the aspirated sound of the Greek : agreeably to this, Sir W. himself allows, with others, that there could be no such word as Paancah in the Hebrew language, but aaneah there may be and in the sense required of revealer. Thus then, I have shown how to get quit of that troublesome letter P without sending it back to Egypt, and thus making an incongruous medley of two different languages by prefixing an Egyptian article Phi to a Hebrew word aaneah. The case, is similar in regard to the last syllable ach, which was also added instead of ah for the very same reason of imitating the sound of the last syllable 7% of ανηχ. But the insertion of two such letters not belonging to the two Hebrew words still did not render the Hebrew so barbarous, but that the Jew Philo and all other ancient Jews saw glimpse enough of the sense to translate them by occultorum revelator, as they all have accordingly done. Now, whoever shall compare the account which I have here given of the means taken by me to remove the diffi culties, which have so much perplexed all others before, I am persuaded that they will find it to agree perfectly with my former account expressed in different words but with the same meaning; and likewise that I have not done Sir W. the injury of imputing to him such an easy and probable mode of removing the above difficulties, instead of bis maintaining that Egyptian and Hebrew were such cognate languages,

as to be both perfectly intelligible by natives of either country, notwithstanding that we read in Scripture of Joseph's being forced to make use of an interpreter to render his words intelligible to his brethren, when he spoke to them in the language of Egypt; for they had not the least suspicion, that Joseph, an Egyptian as they supposed, could be able to understand their Hebrew, when they spoke in this language to one another. I conceive then, that this connected explication of my former account, but to the very same purport, will be a more obvious mode of refuting the pretended misrepresentations alleged against me, than that of showing the coherence and truth of my former possibly less connected sentences; and it will at the same time both prove and explain the nature as well as origin of Sir W's misapprehensions.

I may however a4 still farther, that my method of removing the above-mentioned difficulties is not so altogether new, but that something similar to it has been proposed before, although not exactly the same, and may be found in Vitringa, who mentions, "that some persons conceived the Egyptian name in the Hebrew text to have been viciously writ in Hebrew letters, and thus viciously writ because it had been viciously pronounced by the Jews, who did not know the right Egyp tian pronunciation." Dissert. 1--6. Now this opinion still supposes the name to be Egyptian, like Sir W. and all others; for Patrick and Le Clerc suppose the same, and very lately Rosenmuller in his Scholia on Genesis" Hanc vocem Ægyptiacam esse non est dubium." ch.41 but the above opinion, and those of all of the others are still liable to the same objection, that while they all suppose the name to be Egyptian, they nevertheless explain it by the senses of Hebrew words, under the supposition that there is not much difference between Hebrew and Egyptian; which is an erroneous supposition, that has never yet been proved true, and which has been apparently contradicted, as above, in scripture, as well as incapable of being proved hereafter. Why then not deem the words to be Hebrew, if they are to be explained by Hebrew senses? yet barbarous Hebrew indeed; but in whatever respect they differ from pure Hebrew, I have shown the cause of this deviation to be not as in Vitringa, by the Fgyptian words having been viciously pronounced, but by the Hebrew having been viciously writ, and intentionally, in order to imitate the sounds of the original Egyp tian words; which deviation however consists of only two letters, one at the end of each word; and when these are withdrawn, the remainder is good Hebrew, as Sir W. himself has proved: there is moreover still another difference between the Egyptian and Hebrew words, that the first of the two words means, as I conceive, revelator in the Egyptian, which in the Hebrew means the contrary sense of occultorum, and there is a similar difference between the senses of the two other words. Hence it will appear; that I have fallen into no misrepresentation of Sir W's words, when I said "that he prefixed an Egyptian Phi to a Hebrew word," p. 408; for he himself has proved it to be a Hebrew word, so that I call it by its right name: but then he supposes that the same is an Egyptian word likewise, and thus after sending it in a balloon from Jerusalem to Alexandria, he deems it a native likewise of Egypt, and hence contends, that there is no such incongruous medley

in the connexion of Phi and aaneah, for they are both originally Egyptian words; but this is supposing what is still required to be proved, that aaneah is Egyptian as well as Hebrew. Now at least there is no similar word of the same sense in the remains of the Egyp‐ tian preserved in the Coptic dialect, for eneh there means eternal and anai means beauty, and both of them appear to have been ancient and original Egyptian words, if not imported from Greece or elsewhere; so that all the proof in question by Sir W. lies hid in that mysterious word cognate, which is thus able in an instant to transmute one language into another; and we must therefore inquire into the pretensions of this word to be capable of effecting such an instantaneous operation. Now if Hebrew be intitled to the appellation of being cognate to Egyptian because they are descended from the two brothers Ham and Shem; then for the same reason Celtic and Gothic are cognate to Egyptian and Hebrew, for these two languages did in like manner descend from the third brother Japheth, who doubtless spoke the same language as Ham and Shem. But can we from hence conclude, that any words found in Celtic and Gothic must necessarily be found in Egyptian and Hebrew likewise? There are indeed several similar words in all these languages, which have been retained from the original language of the three brothers, but the greater part of the words in each language are new ones invented by their posterity, and not descended from the original stock, which latter when met with are considered as antique varieties, and on that account held in the same esteem by etymologists as ancient coins are by medalists. But from there being many such antique words found common to all languages ancient and modern on account of their having all descended from one original stock, it can never be concluded that every other word found in one of those languages is to be found in all the others, nor yet in any one other. If this then be the meaning of cognate, it can never prove that aaneah is an Egyptian word as well as a Hebrew one, because in this sense they are cognate languages; and if cognate means any thing else, we cannot reason about it until we know what it does really mean. Thus far however we may affirm, as I conceive, with safety, that it seems to be a frequent defect in Sir W's derivations, that he first supposes a word to be Egyptian without any other plausible evidence than merely because it is a Hebrew word, and then afterwards deduces some etymologies from those Egyptian words of his own creation merely. The same seems to be the case in his derivation of Pharoah, so far as I can conjecture what he means, which can be known only by conjecture: the information, however, of scripture abovementioned sufficiently proves, that the native Israelites and Egyptians could not even understand one another without an interpreter; which alone is a demonstrable proof, that we cannot conclude any word to be Egyptian merely because it is Hebrew. So that upon the whole it appears, that what Sir W. has imputed to me as misrepresentations, are in reality misappre hensions by himself; and arising partly from his supposing all others to have adopted the same opinions as himself concerning the connexion between languages, and partly from his having himself adopted some opinions to which no other person can accede without some better evidence for them than he has adduced.

VOL. VII.

No. XIII.

H

There is still farther another article, which he has either misapprehended, or at least, which his account of it may mislead others to misapprehend: this is in speaking of the Ethiopian language, and his calling it the ancient Ethiopian, p. 411. by which he plainly means the Ethiopian into which the scriptures are translated. But this is not the ancient Ethiopian: we know not indeed what the real nature of the most ancient Ethiopian was, whether it was the same as the Egyptian, or different; but we know from history, that Ethiopia was before christian times overrun by bodies of Arabian rovers, who crossed the Red Sea, and have kept possession of it ever since. Hence they introduced the Arabic into Ethiopia, and it is into this later Ethiopic tongue that the scripture is translated; consequently this is the reason of its being so similar to Chaldee, as Ludolf and Bruce have shown. It cannot then be concluded from this later Ethiopian tongue being Chaldec, that the language of Ethiopia before this revolution was Chaldee also, or that either that or the ancient Egyptian were cognate dialects to Chaldee and Arabic, because this later Ethiopian is so. Now when Herodotus speaks" of the Ammonian dialect partaking of the Egyptian and Ethiopian" (p. 411.) he doubtless meant the ancient Ethiopian before the above Arabian possession of Ethiopia; which language, by the above passage, should seem to have been not very different from ancient Egyptian: the same may be concluded likewise from another sentence in Herodotus a little before, where he says, "that 240,000 Egyptians revolted to the Ethiopians, and being settled there civilised the manners of the Ethiopians, who adopted those of these Egyptians," lib. 3. and along with them doubtless their language also, in case it was not the same before. Now this confirms, that the ancient Ethiopian must have been a very diferent language from that which has subsisted there since the conquest of it by Arabs and other roving tribes; which latter language therefore affords no proof, by its having much Chaldee in it, that the ancient Egyptian approached nearly to Chaldee likewise; and this fact is disproved also by the remains of the ancient Egyptian still discoverable in the Coptic, in which ancient Egyptian very little Chaldee is found, or any remains of any other known and ancient language; on which account I have called it an original language, and very different from Hebrew, of which Chaldee is one dialect, Syriac another, and Arabic likewise.

But here again, on account of my calling the ancient Egyptian an original language, Sir W. makes an equivocal observation, which again tends to mislead readers just as what he said concerning the Ethiopian; for he says, "that when I speak of the Egyptian being an original language, I must be speaking of a language which I know, and consequently, as he concludes, of the Coptic." p. 411. It would have been more perspicuous, and more true, if he had said, "that I must be speaking of the ancient Egyptian, so far as it can be learned through knowledge of the Coptic," which is, in fact, now the only possible means of knowing any thing of it; and he who knows any thing of the Coptic must of necessity know just as much of the ancient Egyptian; for after deducting all such Coptic words as are either Greek, Latin, Arabic, or of any other known language, the remainder of the Coptic is