Page:A voyage to Abyssinia (Salt).djvu/343

 Ethiopic alphabet, some of them being precisely the same with the letters used at the present day, and others exactly resembling those met with in the inscription at Axum. The construction of these letters might indeed almost lead to the conclusion that they constituted a portion of a primitive alphabet, the whole being easily deducible from the simplest forms, varied without any great ingenuity to express the different sounds, as may be observed in the following arrangement of them;



and I cannot therefore help entertaining the hope, that some future discoveries in Abyssinia, or the countries adjacent, may give us the whole alphabet. and lead to a satisfactory confirmation of my conjecture.

While engaged in the examination of the ruins, the priests and several of the principal inhabitants attended us, very civilly pointing out every thing worthy of notice, and assisting us in the removal of some large stones, for the purpose of promoting the objects we had in view. They related to us also, with apparent pleasure, all the traditional stories handed down from their ancestors connected with the place, which I shall comprise in a few words; "that the building we had admired was erected by an holy man, who came from Misr' a long time ago; but that the spot on which it stood, had for ages, before been regarded as sacred, owing to the ark of the covenant, which had been brought into Abyssinia by Menilek, having been kept there for a considerable time previous to its removal to Axum;" which story may probably deserve about the same degree of credit as the one recorded by Alvarez, "that Yeeha was the favourite residence of Queen Candace, when she honoured the country with her presence." After having completed our observations, and given a trifling remuneration to the attendant