CHAPTER 29. ALPHABETIC WRITING UNKNOWN TO THE EGYPTIANS AND In developping the gradual formation of the present system of writing through the five stages mentioned in the last chapter, I have rather followed an ideal than a real connection between those stages, for it would be difficult to point out any nation in the world, among whom they have all existed in succession. Great improvements are generally slow in their growth, unless the people, who undergo them are acted upon by some external causes. The change from Picture-writing to Hieroglyphics would probably be easy to an intelligent and improving people; and from Hieroglyphics to the Word-writing of the Chinese, the transition was, probably, scarcely less obvious. But from these ideagraphic modes to the purely arbitrary and phonetic system which we call Alphabetic Writing, the interval is wide, and it cannot be proved that any nation has ever, by its own internal impulses, been able to pass it.* The case of the Chinese is a living proof of the truth of the principle; until they abandon the cumbrous system * Une seconde cause de confusion fut les figures matérielles elles-mêmes par lesquelles on peingit d'abord les pensées, et qui, sous le nom d'HIéROGLYPHES OU CARACTERES SACRES, furent la première invention de l'esprit. Ainsi, pour avertir de L'INONDATION et du besoin de s'en preserver, l'on avait peint une NACELLE, le NAVIRE Argo; pour designer le vENT, l'on avait peint une AILE D'OISEAU; pour specifier la SAISON, le mois, l'on avait peint L'OISEAU de PASSAGE, l'INSECTE, l'ANImal qui apparaissait à cette epoque; pour exprimer l'HIVER, on peignit un PORC, of inventing or combining a fresh character for every new word,-which is the plan they now follow,-and reduce all their vocabulary to a limited number of arbitrary elements similar to our letters, we may assert with confidence that their literature, whilst it increases in extent, will not equally increase in usefulness; but will ultimately become too cumbersome to answer any useful purpose whatever, until it sinks beneath its own weight. But I have asserted that there is a wide chasm between the last stage of ideagraphic writing, and the nearest form of a written language that has arbitrary symbols. Let us then see what is the case with the Egyptians-for they alone of the three ideagraphic nations, by their connection. with the Hebrews, concern the present enquiry. In this part of the subject, I am happy to find my views confirmed by so able a judge as Dr Wall; and shall therefore make an extract from his learned work concerning the difficulty which attends the later stages, as I have before described, in carrying the art of writing to perfection. The ideagraphic system of the Chinese has been now, and that of the Egyptians was formerly, such a length of time in use, that it can be hardly expected that any specimens of the primitive [i.e. pictural] writing of either nation should be still extant; though, from the extreme durability of the materials employed in Egypt, it is possible that some of her earlier records may have survived the ravages of time.* In America, however, at the time of its discovery by the Spaniards, all the writing un SERPENT, qui se plaisent dans les LIEUX HUMIDES; et la réunion des figures avait des sens CONVENUS de phrases et de mots. Mais comme ce sens ne portait par lui meme rien de fixe et de precis; comme le nombre de ces figures et de leurs combinaisons devint excessif, et surchargea la memoire, il en resulta d'abord des confusions, des explications fausses. Ensuite le genie ayant inventé l'art plus simple d'appliquer les signes aux sons, dont le nombre est limité, et de peindre la parole au lieu des pensées, L'ECRITURE ALPHABETIQUE fit tomber en désuetude les PEINTURES HIEROGLYPHIQUES; et, de jour en jour, leurs significations oubliées donnèrent lieu à une foule d'illusions, d'equivoques, et d'erreurs. VOLNEY, Œuvres Choisis, page 183, ed. Paris. 8vo 1842. # 66 Among the Egyptian legends of which the originals or copies have been was of the first grade, so that no species of it could have been of very ancient origin. That of the Mexicans was decidedly the best, though the Peruvians had made a greater progress in arbitrary signs. To register events they employed Quipos, or branches of trees with strings tied to them, which were variously coloured and knotted; and Acosta mantained, that by the different combinations of colours and knots they could express their thoughts as fully and accurately as we can by means of letters.* But there is strong reason to think, as Robertson, in his History of America, has justly remarked, that the Spanish jesuit was mistaken in the estimate he had formed of the utility and perfection of these Quipos, and that they were little better than numerical scores, the knots indicating numbers; and the colours, the subjects brought to Europe, there may be observed groups of images, whether mimetic or metaphoric, with writing of a different kind placed in vertical lines over their heads. Even some of the specimens given by Chainpollion in his Précis, appear to be of this nature, and it is likely that many such could be pointed out by any one who had access to the DESCRIPTION DE L' EGYPTE. The apparent difference of the writing in these renders it probable, that the time of making the insculptures was also different; and that the probability would approach almost to a certainty, if the records were even near so old as M. Champollion supposed. If that were really the case, the mimetic characters of the groups must have been originally pictural, and in process of time, when the art had improved, the other writing was superadded to supply the deficiencies of expression in the older style. What corroborates this view of the nature of the legends in question is, that Clemens of Alexandria, in his very remarkable account of the hieroglyphic system of the Egyptians, mentions a DIRECT MIMETIC kind of writing [ʼn μèv kupioλoYeîtai Kaтà μíμnow], i. e. a PICTURAL kind. Now it is to be observed that it is not of pictural CHARACTERS he there speaks, but of pictural WRITING, in which of course those characters must have predominated, and, if specimens of such writing existed in his day, the most probable way of accounting for their disappearance would seem to be that above suggested." "Son quipos unos memoriales, o registros hachos de ramales, en que diversos nudos, y diversas colores significan diversas cosas. Es increyble lo que en este modo alcançaron; porque quanto los libros pueden dezir de historias, y leyes, y ceremonias, y cuentas de negocios, todo esso suplen los Quipos tan puntualmente que admira.-Porque para diversos generos, como de guerra, de govierno, de tributos de ceremonias, de tierras, avia diversos Quipos o ramales; y en cada manojo destos, tantos nudos, y nudicos, y hilillos atados: unos colorados: otros verdes: otros azules: otros blancos y finalmente tantas diferentius, que assi como nosotros de veynte quatro letras, guisando las in diferentes maneras, sacamus tanta infinidad de vocablos, assi estos de sus nudos y colores sacavan innumerabiles significationes de cosas."-Acosta, lib. vi, cap. 9. * : to which the reckoning was applied. Besides, the signs under consideration not being drawn or insculpted upon any surface, the registers formed of them could not, except in a very loose sense of the word, be called writing. The pictural characters of the Peruvians were better entitled to that denomination, but they were very gross and imperfect. In such characters the Mexicans had greatly the superiority, and interspersed among these they employed other graphic figures of an arbitrary kind to represent objects of thought not perceptible to the sight. Still their writing could only be considered as an improved species of the first grade, for the prominent feature of it was picture representa. tion of events. Where men have not advanced beyond this first stage of the art, they readily exchange it for alphabetic writing, when they come within reach of that very superior method of communication; what they have had no great difficulty in acquiring, they do not particularly prize, and it is at once given up for a better system. Rut the case is very different with respect to those nations, which had proceeded through the different grades of ideagraphy to its final state, before they got an opportunity of making the exchange in question: the more cumbrous and difficult of acquirement their several systems have proved to be, with so much the greater obstinacy will they be found to have clung to them. In fact it is a very general principle of our nature to value things, not so much by their intrinsic worth, as by the difficulty of acquirement, even when that difficulty is in itself a proof of imperfection. National pride and prejudice also enlist themselves in favour of an old established practice associated with the earliest recollections of a people, and render the mind averse to instituting a fair inquiry into the merits of a foreign system. But besides the common causes of undue bias which must have equally affected the Egyptians and Chinese, separate ones may also "A splendid collection of the Mexican Hieroglyphs has been published in London, 1830, in seven folio volumes. The name of Augustine Aglio is that selected for the title page; which appears rather strange, if it be true that the materials were collected and the engravings executed under the direction and at the expence of Lord Viscount Kingsborough. It is said that the publication cost his Lordship near thirty thousand pounds; and the credit of the undertaking is very generally given to him, not only here, but also on the continent. In Paris M. Klaproth, I perceive, dedicated his Examen Critique (of the hieroglyphic labours of the late M.. Champollion) to this munificent patron of the arts. be assigned. That which peculiarly operated on the former people was superstition; and how powerful an influence it exerted in the continuation of their unwieldy method, is evident from this consideration.-that they could not have been entirely ignorant of the great superiority of alphabetic writing: as a conquered people they must have become acquainted with much of its nature, and of the advantage of adopting it, at all events from the commencement of the Ptolemean Dynasty; and yet five hundred years after this knowledge had been forced upon them, Clemens Alexandrinus speaks of the different species of Egyptian ideagraphy, intermixed indeed with a phonetic use of signs, as still practised in his day. The characters of their principal kind of writing they connected in some way with religion, and called them sacred; in consequence of which they never gave up the use of them, or adopted a mode of writing purely alphabetical, until they changed their creed.* It was on account of these characters having been originally confined to religious uses, and insculped in stone, that the Greeks distinguished them by a name implying both particulars, and called them hieroglyphs; but the word is now taken in a more general sense, and applied to ideagraphs of every kind, without reference to either the use made, the surface on which they are drawn, or the country they are found in. Of the natural tendency of the mind to the first species of writing, some proofs have been already given; and an additional one is, I conceive, supplied by man's frequent recurrence to it after all necessity for the expedient had ceased Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret. Thus, at the present day, there are primers filled with prints or imperfect delineations of the transactions described in their texts; the imagination being thereby called in to the assistance of the judgment to help the young and illiterate to understand writing of a more artificial construction. And in former times when reading was a far more difficult operation than it now is, there was a still more general application of pictural characters to this purpose. In order, therefore, to judge of Although Clemens includes the employment of hieroglyphs as letters in his account of the different kinds of Egyptian writing, yet he does not make mention of any kind purely alphabetic. The Egyptians, therefore, had no such writing till after his age, and the oldest they could have had was the GræcoCoptic. But all the remains of this writing which have come down to our times, were evidently the productions of Christians." |