Diodorus Siculus, who did not neglect the statements of his predecessors, repeats nearly the same story respecting the Egyptian god Thoth, or Theuth. He also narrates the following tradition. on this subject, current on the banks of the Nile:-" The Egyptians say that it was this Hermes (Thoth, in Egyptian) who first fixed the precise articulation of the common language, and who gave distinct names to a great number of objects, previously unnamed; who discovered the art of tracing letters, and regulated the worship of the gods, and sacrifices.*"

In the works of several other Greek writers we meet only with passing indications, which add nothing positive to the vague statements already given, which are, however, favorable in general to Egyptian science.

Among the Latin writers, Lucan has left two well known verses. He was nearly contemporary with Diodorus Siculus, from whom he differs in his statement as to the origin of writing. According to the common opinion, it is to the Phoenicians that Lucan attributed the invention, but he expresses himself on the subject with a reserve which proves that he did not fully credit the opinion. His words are:

Phoenices primi, famæ si creditur, ausi

Mansuram rudibus vocem signare figuris.

"The Phoenicians, according to common report, were the first who ventured to figure and fix by rude signs the sounds of speech."

His subsequent words prove, however, that the sense which has been generally affixed to these two lines is far less decisive than has been supposed, since he immediately adds,

Nondum flumineas Memphis contexere biblos

Noverat; et saxis tantum volucresque feræque
Sculptaque servabant magicas animalia linguas.

"At that time Memphis had not yet discovered how to weave the papyrus-rushes of its flood; the images of animals, quadrupeds, and birds, alone served to engrave on stone the mysteries of language."

These five lines, therefore, taken consecutively, simply indicate that the Phoenicians first attempted to write the sounds of words, and that at that period the Egyptians still wrote by means of figures only, engraved on stone; in other words, when the Phoenicians endeavoured to write with letters, the Egyptians only wrote with figures. Lucan, consequently, must be understood to mean that, according to report, the Phoenicians first invented an alphabe

* Diod. Sic., lib. i. p. i. c. 76.

tical writing, whilst, at the same epoch, the Egyptians employed a figured writing; so that this author must be placed in the number of those who attribute the use of writing to the Egyptians from the earliest times, for their system of figured signs was really as much a writing, as the most simple alphabet.

We must, moreover, observe, that this poet-historian does not express himself correctly relative to the ancient usage of Egypt, in stating that at the period of the supposed invention of alphabetical signs by the Phoenicians, the Egyptians were not acquainted with the method of obtaining leaves of papyrus from the reeds of the Nile for the use of writing, since Egyptian texts exist written upon rolls of papyrus of the eighteenth century before the Christian era; and it is certain that the figure of such rolls, fastened by a ribbon, is employed as a figurative sign in the most ancient Egyptian inscriptions. Were the Phoenicians at that time civilized? Had they then invented the alphabetic signs of writing? We will leave the solution of this difficulty to the future commentators of the Pharsalia.

Another later writer, Pliny the Elder, who undertook, in his own manner, to write a History of Nature, comprising a general account of the heaven and earth, of gods and men, of laws and customs, of languages and arts, (and yet he has been generally called Pliny the Naturalist, and the Buffon of antiquity,) has related also certain opinions relative to the invention of writing, and added to them his own, in the following terms:-"I have always believed that letters had an Assyrian origin; but some writers, as Gellius, affirm that they were invented in Egypt by Mercury (Thoth), and others that they were invented by Syrians; that Cadmus brought with him sixteen letters from Phoenicia into Greece, to which Palamedes added four others during the Trojan war. According to Anticlides, letters were invented in Egypt by a certain Menos (Menes), fifteen years before Phoroneus, the most ancient king of Greece; and he endeavours to prove this by monuments. On the other hand, Epigenes, an author of great merit, assures us that among the Babylonians exist astronomical observations, which reach back a period of 720,000 years, engraven on burnt bricks. Berosus and Critodemus, who give the lowest amount of duration to these observations, carry them back 490,000 years; whence it will appear that letters are of the highest antiquity. The Pelasgi carried them into Latium.*"

In this passage it will be seen that the Egyptian pretensions still predominate. Anticlides attributes the invention of writing * Hist. Nat., lib. vii. cap. 56.

to Menes, the first king of Egypt, who caused the royalty of the sacerdotal caste to pass into the military caste. Gellius repeats the name of Thoth. Two considerations, however, oppose these pretensions; first, the astronomical observations made at Babylon thousands of years before Thoth and Menes; and secondly, the tradition that the Assyrians really invented letters, which was evidently the opinion of Pliny.

Must we, therefore, conclude from these passages that the idea of the invention of writing by several nations, as they separately attained a degree of perfect civilization, was adopted by the ancients? We can scarcely assert this; yet the facts contained in their writings would seem to confirm it, and will explain the diversity in their opinions. The tradition relative to the Babylonian observations infers also the usage of writing in these countries; the ancient classical writers, with their philosophical travellers, could not but have possessed some knowledge of the antiquities of the nations of the East, and of the marvels of their useful and luxurious arts; but this knowledge was vague, and but of little interest to them. Greece thought there was nothing more to learn, and Rome did not even wish it; her short sword sufficed for her highest ambition. The Ionic Greeks are unquestionably represented in costume, physiognomy, and name on the Egyptian monuments of the fifteenth century before Christ; but the Greeks scarcely speak of Egypt before the days of Herodotus. Homer tells only fables concerning them, and neither Greeks nor Romans shewed the least desire to investigate the annals of the people who had taught them how to live, by communicating to them the precepts of social life.

Another Latin writer, of equal weight and fame, Tacitus, has collected and transmitted to us the traditions of his period with that precision of expression and skilful arrangement of his words which pre-eminently characterize his writings. With reference to the additions which the Emperor Claudius wished to make to the Latin alphabet, this writer observes:-" The Egyptians were the first to express thought by the figures of animals, and the most ancient monuments of human intelligence are engraved upon stone. They also pretend to be the inventors of letters; it is from them, say they, that the Phoenicians, who preceded them in navigation, carried letters into Greece, and thus acquired for themselves the glory of an invention which they had received from Egypt." To these passages, taken from the most celebrated writers of classical antiquity, we might add others from writers of

* Annales, lib. xi., cap. 14.

a secondary order, without any additional value being given to the traditions above cited, which these authors have, in general, merely repeated, more or less accurately.

We shall also abstain from reviewing the opinions of those writers who are inspired by too exclusive a system, and who can only believe that Adam, the first of men, or Noah, who renewed the human race, or Abraham, the patriarch of the Hebrews, or lastly, Moses, their legislator, was the inventor of the art of writing. Ecclesiastical writers are, in fact, divided in their views as to these several persons, and unfortunately no contemporary monument exists by which these differences may be conciliated.

It is, at all events, certain that both written tradition and monumental remains concur in pointing to the East as the quarter in which the whole question as to the invention of writing is concentrated; and the evidence already produced sufficiently establishes this as a demonstrated fact. In other respects, to whatever country our views (perhaps preconceived) have been directed with reference both to time and place, there is another view of the question which cannot but attract our special attention towards the process adopted by the first man who fixed the first thought by the first sign. We may admit, with the most intelligent philosophers, that love may have inspired the first means, as it first caused to be felt the first wants of writing; we may also equally admit the operation of other passions and interests, since writing, which is useful to each, may have resulted from different sources; but the importance of the question does not perhaps entirely rest upon the examination of the fortuitous and numerous causes which might have conducted the human intellect to this incomparable invention; and the impossibility of obtaining certainty on such a subject, will shew the necessity of not dwelling upon it at any length. With more advantage we may speculate on the mode of thought which influenced the first inventor of the first sign; for mankind has been so much occupied during thousands of years in the cultivation of his intelligence, that, in all that concerns the art of rendering his thoughts permanent and sensible to the eye, and of eternalizing his expressions by attaching them to matter, we may believe, that every method he could imagine would be exercised in the attainment of such an object. We may therefore attempt without presumption to trace the steps of this proceeding, and from what man has effected since he has arrived at the perfection of his resources, to conjecture what were his early essays in this enterprise of the mind.

Inspired with the desire of fixing an idea, or recollection,

and instructed involuntarily by the shadow of the humblest plant on the earth, which represented its own figure, the figure of the object of his thoughts would unawares be drawn by his fingers; this figure would be a portrait, and this writing would be painting; but it would only delineate the forms of material objects, destitute of the expression of all accessory circumstances, both of time and place. The uncivilized tribes of Oceania are scarcely advanced beyond this first step in the invention of the graphic art. This invention is a real universal character, but only for the use of those people who (it may be said without jesting) have only one idea in their head at a time.

A step further would reveal the insufficiency of this first simple means. In painting a man, the individuality of the person was wanting, and such was also the case with places. It was this want of individual designations, that created the use of another kind of signs, each of which specially designated a certain person or locality, taken either from natural qualities, as the color of the features, or from physical position on a hill or in a valley; or, lastly, from other circumstances by which in the language the particular individual or objects similar to each other was previously designated. Thus, the characteristic sign for cities in general, as we learn from monuments, was a quadrangular figure, a single figurative sign representing the form of the object designated; but as each city had its own name, derived from peculiar circumstances, such as the city of the lion, or that of the serpent, the figure of a lion or a serpent was added to the square, by which means each city was distinguished from all the rest. To write these names, consequently, a symbolical figurative sign was added to the sign properly figurative, and this is the second step toward perfection in the art of writing; and beyond this the Mexicans have not advanced.

But in this state of civilization, although incomplete, there already existed a system of moral ideas; and the step to be made between the representation of physical objects, and the expression of metaphysical objects, was immense, and full of difficulty. Nevertheless, either by the effect of accident, or by a really premeditated invention, the nations of the old world surmounted this difficulty, and succeeded in producing signs for the graphic expression of such ideas as God, love, hate, &c.; arbitrary, indeed, and conventional, and special to each nation which separately arrived at this stage of the process, by means of more or less direct, and better or worse founded assimilations. For example, the figure of the heart was employed to express the idea soul,