Egyptian belief and modern thought / by James Bonwick.

  • James Bonwick
Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Egyptian belief and modern thought / by James Bonwick. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    445/474 page 431
    Perier, comparing arguments for Hindoo and Arab, says “the last is incontestably that which ought to be regarded as approaching nearest the truth.” Further on he writes : “ This supposition does not satisfy us ; our judgment remains suspended.” Mr. Pritchard sees no such identity, Mr. R. S. Poole adds, “the Egyptian type, though nearer to the Arab than of old, is still almost essentially unchanged,” The Semitic origin of the Egyptians has been strongly urged on several grounds, especially the remarkable likeness of religious rites. Either Jews and Arabs got their faith and ceremonies from Egypt, or they and the Egyptians obtained them from some common source. Assyrian discoveries satisfy us that the Semitic people of the Euphrates were long preceded by a Turanian one. The very alphabet of the Semites, says the Rev. A. H. Sayce, “ was borrowed and adapted, in Assyria from Turanians, in Palestine from Egypt,” The learned Professor sees little help on the Semite origin question from the Bible ; saying, “ The Old Testament is relatively too modern. Its grammar and its vocabulary have already passed into a later stage of the development of language. They are too much akin to those of Arabic or Aramaic. And even apart from this, the Old Testament is both too scanty, and has been too much exposed to the corruption of copyists, and the misconceptions of a late tradition.” The Cushite is more intangible than the Semite. The so-called Hamites were occidental and oriental, the Ethiopians of old. And yet they should not be confounded with Canaanites. The accomplished author of “ The Great Dionysiak Myth ” says : “ I cannot but agree with Bochart, Kenrick, Lenormant and others, that the Phoenicians were a branch or branches of the Kanaanites.” The Philistines he would bring from Crete, though the island may have been originally peopled from Egypt. Mr. Zincke will not have the Egyptians either African or Semite. The Atlantidae have been supposed the ancestors of the Pharaohs. Plato heard of these lost but highly-civilized people from his grand- father, who gained his information from Solon, to whom the Egyptians had told the tale. M. Bailly, in his Letters to Voltaire, says : “ The Atlantidae made their appearance in Egypt.—It was in Syria and in Phrygia, as well as Egypt, that they established the worship of the sun.” Some thought they came from Northern Asia; and others from some island formerly existing in the Atlantic. The Asiatic origin of the Egyptians has been more generally con- ceded. The marvellous likeness of Hindoo and Egyptian thought, the simi- larity of social customs not less than intellectual and religious opinions.
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