THREE LINGUISTIC DISSERTATIONS READ AT THE MEETING OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION IN OXFORD. BY CHEVALIER BUNSEN, DR. CHARLES MEYER, AND DR. MAX MÜLLER. [From the REPORT OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF LONDON: PRINTED BY RICHARD AND JOHN E. TAYLOR, RED LION COURT, FLEET STREET. 1848. 6 starts high faqe. On the results of the recent Egyptian researches in reference to Asiatic and African Ethnology, and the Classification of Languages. A Discourse read before the Ethnological Section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, at Oxford, on the 28th of June, 1847, by C. C. J. BUNSEN, D.C.L., Ph.D. I HAVE begun to lay before the public in the first two volumes of my Egypt' the facts which the discovery of hieroglyphics has enabled us to establish as to the language, writing and mythology of the primitive Egyptians. I have attempted to explain them as the three documents or formations of those periods which precede the historical age, or the beginning of the chronological history of Egypt under Menes. In the first volume I have endeavoured in particular to show, how it is possible and necessary to treat the forms and roots of a language as an historical monument, exhibiting a series of mental developments, which, although it cannot be measured accurately as to time, constitutes a certain succession of facts, and thus marks the epochs of the primeval life of a people. In carrying out this plan, I have attempted to represent, in a way intelligible to every general scholar, all the facts of Egyptian grammar, viz. all the forms, formative words and inflexions of the language in their natural order and connexion; and secondly, to collect the Egyptian roots which can be proved to have formed the heir-loom of that nation, as they occur in monuments not more recent than the time of Moses, and in great part anterior to him by a thousand years and more. It is impossible to look on those forms and on these roots with even a superficial knowledge of the Semitic and Indo-Germanic languages, and not to perceive that the Egyptian language is no more a Hebrew than a Sanscrit dialect, but that it possesses an affinity with each of them, such as compels us to ask the question, whether it is a more ancient formation than either or no? This question becomes the more interesting and important, when it must be considered as demonstrated, that such an affinity cannot be explained by mere internal analogy; that, on the contrary, it is historical in the strictest sense of the word, viz. physical or original. I mean that the affinity alluded to cannot rationally be explained by a real or supposed general analogy of languages, as the expressions of human thought and feeling, nor by the later influence of other nations and tongues. Now the Egyptian name of Egypt is • Chemi, the land of Cham, which in Egyptian means black. Can we then have really found in Egypt the scientific and historical meaning of Cham as one of the tripartite divisions of post-diluvian humanity? The Egyptian language attests an unity of blood with the great Aramaic tribes of Asia, whose languages have been comprised by scholars under the general expression of Semitic, or the languages of the family of Shem. It is equally connected by identity of origin with those still more numerous and illustrious tribes which occupy now the greatest part of Europe, and may perhaps, alone or with other families, have a right to be called the family of Japhet. I mean that great family to which the Germanic nations belong, as well as the Greeks and Romans, the Indians and Persians, the Slavonic and the Celtic tribes, and which are now generally called by some the Indo-Germanic, by others the IndoEuropean nations. The most ancient traditions of Europe certainly speak of Japhet; for Japetos is, according to the Greeks, the father of that great Titan or benevolent man-god who brought the celestial fire to his suffering brethren on earth, and was doomed for such daring to linger on the heights of Caucasus until another divine hero should set him free, and reconcile him to the younger gods, who govern the world of mankind. I know that in saying thus much I assume a great fact. I take it for granted that the facts to which I allude, bear out the consequence I deduce from them: I mean, the assertion that the affinity of the Egyptian forms and roots with those of the Semitic and Indo-Germanic languages is one which can no more be explained by the general similarity, existing or supposed to exist, between different languages, than that between German and Scandinavian, between Greek and Roman, between Gothic and Sanscrit, which is disputed or doubted by nobody who has a right to speak on these subjects. I glory in belonging to a school which rejects altogether those etymological dreams and conjectures, those loose comparisons of single words without principle or analogy, and generally without any sufficient or critical knowledge of the idioms, in short, that unscientific comparison of languages, or rather of words caught at random, which made the etymologies of the seventeenth century the laughing-stock of the eighteenth. By its very principle the critical school admits of no claim to historical affinity between different. languages, unless this affinity be shown to rest upon definite laws, upon substantial analogy, established by a complete examination of the materials. That school demands the strictest proof that those affinities are neither accidental nor merely ideal, but essential; that they are not the work of extraneous intrusion, but indigenous, as running through the whole original texture of the languages compared, according to a traceable general rule of analogy. The very method of this critical school excludes the possibility of accidental or mere ideal analogies being taken for proofs of a common historical descent of different tribes and nations. It is on account of this method, employed by Grimm, Bopp, Humboldt and other acknowledged masters of that school, that I claim in this scientific assembly a place, and a distinguished one, for linguistic ethnology as constituting a principal branch of general science. Science implies method and a consciousness of the principles of investigation. Now I believe I may boldly say, the fact to which I allude, viz. that the Egyptian language betrays a strictly historical connexion with Asia, or, to speak more precisely, with the Semitic and Iranian tribes, is among those who have studied them according to the principles of the critical school of comparative philology, no longer an object of controversy, although the origin and primeval source of that connexion may be explained ultimately in very different ways, according to the different systems of the philosophy of the history of mankind. I hope I have contributed something towards making it easy for a general scholar to judge of those primeval facts of Egyptian history, and to contemplate them as monuments of the primitive art and science of mankind. Nor shall I in the continuation of my work shrink from following out boldly its ultimate consequences. As soon as I shall have established the reality of ancient Egyptian history and chronology, and reconstructed by its help the primeval annals of the historical age, I intend to treat the great fact alluded to, as a part of the Origines of mankind. Indeed it is for this object that I undertook the work. In the mean time, having been called upon to lay before the British Association for the Advancement of Science a succinct statement of the general results of my Egyptian researches as to the origin and history of language, with a particular reference to Asiatic and African ethnology, I shall endeavour to indicate the elementary parts of my system, and submit to your candid and scientific examination some of the results which I believe we are enabled to deduce already from the facts of Egyptology. There offer at the very outset two entirely divergent systems for explaining the general fact alluded to. Either the Egyptian language is a primitive one, from which those Asiatic and European languages derive their |