Page:Observations on Man 1834.djvu/229

 ancestors; and more difficult to assign a reason why the people, who invented alphabetical writing, should not do this.

As to the Egyptians in particular, their continuing to use hieroglyphical writing, and excelling in it, shews, that they could not have invented alphabetical; for this, if we suppose it invented so early as before the time of Moses, would have abolished that, just as the use of the ten cyphers has all the other imperfect methods of notation of numbers. Nor does it seem very likely, that hieroglyphical writing should lead to alphabetical, but rather from it, since hieroglyphical characters are the immediate representatives of objects and ideas, and the mediate representatives not of letters, or simple articulate sounds, but of words, and even of clusters of words. It seems probable also, that the Egyptians would even be backward in receiving alphabetical writing from the Israelites at the time that the Philistines or Phœnicians did; as being then greatly advanced in the use of their own hieroglyphical writing, and prejudiced in its favour. And thus we may solve that very difficult question, why the Egyptians, who seem to have erected a kingdom early (however, I judge Nimrod’s to have been the first by the manner in which Moses has mentioned it), and to have brought it to considerable perfection before Joseph’s time, and to very great perfection afterwards, chiefly by his means, should yet have left no history of their affairs, nor even of the great empire under Sesac or Sesostris, and his successors. For they had no public calamities sufficient in any measure to destroy all their records, till the time of Cambyses; and the desolation under him being less in degree, shorter in duration, in a kingdom of greater extent, and two generations later in time than that of the Jewish state under Nebuchadnezzar, which yet did not destroy the Jewish records, could not have totally destroyed the Egyptian records, had they been more early, and superior to the Jews, in the use of alphabetical writing. Even the Greeks, who had no alphabetical writing till six hundred years after the time of Moses, have given a better account of their affairs, than the Egyptians. It ought, however, to be remarked in this place, that if we suppose the Jewish history to have been recorded by the divine appointment and direction, which is highly probable, this will lessen the force of the present argument, but not quite destroy it.

Thirdly, The late reception of writing amongst the Greeks, is both an argument, that it did not exist in any other neighbouring nation before the time of Moses, and also is consistent with its being miraculously communicated to him, to be made use of for sacred purposes, and for the preservation of the history of the world, and true religion, amongst God’s peculiar people the Israelites. I here suppose, that the art of writing was not known to the Greeks, till the time of Cadmus; and that he came into Greece, agreeable to Sir Isaac Newton’s opinion, about the middle of David’s reign. And indeed, unless the principal points