FOURTH CHAPTER.

THE EGYPTIAN AND THE PRIMITIVE ASIATIC SEMITISM, OR COLONIZATION AND SECONDARY FORMATION IN A VERY EARLY STAGE OF LANGUAGE.

THE Egyptian language brings us some steps nearer to the solution of the general problem, and in particular for understanding the nature of what we have termed secondary formation. Egypt is connected with the undivided Asiatic stock ; for its language is much less developed than the Aramaic and Sanskritic, and yet it admits the principle of those inflexions and radical formations, which we find developed, sometimes in one, sometimes in the other of those great families, and particularly in the Semitic. As both of them in their historical form are much more advanced than the Egyptian, this language, if the principle of colonization be admitted, will point to a more ancient Asiatic formation, since extinct in its native country, just as the Icelandic points to the old Norse of Scandinavia.

The Egyptian language is also interesting as illustrative generally of another phenomenon, which we have traced through more modern formations; I mean the nature of the secondary formation. In order to obtain a clear view of this formation, as exhibited by the Coptic, we must first consider the words taken from the Greek. As to this admixture, we meet with an entirely new phenomenon: the Coptic has not only adopted single nouns and verbs, living roots, but also particles, especially conjunctions, in the proper sense, such as the Greek axxà, but. This forms no exception to the rule above deduced from that striking phenomenon in the Romanic and Germanic languages, that foreign particles are as little apt to expel native

particles as in general foreign grammatical forms to supplant the native; for the Egyptian language never possessed discriminating particles. In translating, therefore, from the Greek, the Copts were obliged to adopt the Greek conjunctions, for the same reason as they adopted the word Aaós, nation; for, owing to provincialism, Pharaohs, and priests, the idea of a nation had never been developed even into a word current among the Egyptian race, and capable of expressing that notion as the Bible and the Hellenes understood it.

The other secondary formations are also in entire conformity with those by which the modern tongues of Southern Europe, as well as those of Germany and Scandinavia, were produced. We have noticed already some of these phenomena in the first volume of "Egypt "—such as the change of the appended feminine sign of the old Egyptian t (the remnant of ta, the original pronoun of the second person, preserved in an-ta, thou) into a female article t or ti, e. g. t-mu, the mother, instead of mu-t. To this class belong also the formations of the definite and indefinite articles in Coptic. The first (pi or pe, masc.; ti or te, fem.; ni, n, nen, pl.) is an evident remnant of the pronominal formations, exactly as the Greek article and the masculine and feminine termination in the two first declensions are. The indefinite article (u) in the singular is, like the German and Romanic, an abbreviation of the numeral for one (ua); the plural (han) has its full substantive root in ancient Egyptian. The plural of a noun substantive has a termination only by exception; but, instead of the u of the ancient language, we find different decompositions of this long vowel, together with other forms, not discernible at all in the ancient language. One of them is the frequent in the Semitic, and analogous to the German Umlaut prolongation of the vowel of the root; an internal formation, so in Väter, the plural of Vater. Thus uhor means a dog; uhôr, dogs; aho, a treasure; ahúôr, treasures; bók, a servant; ebiaik,

servants.

A complete pseudo-declension is formed by prepositions connected with pronominal roots, thus:

By a similar mechanical process the deficiency of forms for the comparative and superlative degree is supplied in the ancient Egyptian, and the derivative pronouns formed. The most striking change in these formations is the Coptic phrase p.ek.si, ỏ σoû viós (corresponding to the old Egyptian pai.k.si); but the Coptic has lost the simpler ancient form of si.k, viós σov.

The same principle pervades the Coptic conjugation. It differs from the Egyptian as much in the loss of some very simple an cient modes for indicating the inflexion of the verb, as in the employment of a great number of auxiliary verbs for supplying an evident defect by new formations. These auxiliary verbs combine with the personal pronouns, and thus form a very periphrastic mode of distinguishing moods and tenses. The negative particles do the same; and the Coptic has a complete periphrastic negative conjugation, of which there is not the slightest trace in the old Egyptian. The old language seems to me to preserve the indubitable germs of two much more organic and higher forms. It exhibits a germ, first, of what I venture to call the Semitic conjugation, by which term I designate the modification of the predicate contained in each adjective verb, and even of the Iranian conjugation, which is intended to mark the modifications of which the copula is capable, according to time and mode of existence. Now the development of those germs in the Coptic is not. organic, as we find it in the Iranian and even in Hebrew, but, on the contrary, is effected by a purely mechanical process. The change is no real development. Thus the verb tre or thre, uniting

itself with the pronominal affixes, makes a verb causative, as the Hebrew Hiphil does.

The ancient Egyptian had incontestably the germs of the composition of words, to express, by the union of two, a third more abstract or ideal notion, for which the language had no simple expression. Such a union originally took place by juxtaposition, afterwards by means of the preposition n. Coptic formations, like mû-n-hoû, water of moisture, viz. rain, or om-n-het, to consume the heart, viz. repent, are analogous to the ancient language, but of much more frequent occurrence. In many cases the original simple expressions may have become obsolete by having become unintelligible. There must have been, besides, in progress of time, an increased consciousness of intellectual modes of existence; and this consciousness called forth, necessarily, new formations in the Coptic. But such formations are all conglomerations or agglutinations of words, not compositions. The component parts exercise no influence one over the other; no change is produced in the root by placing before or after it a modifying word or particle; but the ancient Egyptian language does exhibit such an attraction. The Egyptian root is not the unalterable particle, or rather primitive word, of the Chinese, and does not exhibit, in composition, the insensibility of the modern Coptic. Hûr, Horus, becomes in composition hr, her. Here a decided sensibility of the root is perceptible: it is affected by the substantive which follows it, and with which it is united. This is the same sign of life which a substantive exhibits in the Hebrew status constructus when followed by another substantive with which it is connected by what we call the relation of the genitive case: as iâm, a lake; ium (or iom) Kineret, the lake of Gennesaret; shânáh, a year; shnătadonái, the year of the Lord. All Coptic abstracts and derivative nouns, on the contrary, are formed by mechanical processes or mere juxtaposition. In order to make out of skhopi, to inhabit, a word for habitation, they were obliged to say, a place to inhabit, mê-n`-skhópi

Thus hap is judgment, manhap a place of judgment, tribunal. In a similar way they formed out of taio, honour, maitaio, ambitious, literally, loving honour. There is no power manifested by one word over the other, as in pıλódokos, or misericors, or barmherzig. There is a mere mechanical agglomeration of two words (sometimes connected by a preposition) having one accent. This is, of course, much less the case in hybrid words; for the Greek nouns used by the Copts have neither case nor number. Rem (native), with the preposition or n', both prefixed to a simple noun, form derivative adjectives; pe, heaven; rem`-pe, heavenly. Ref (probably from ra, to make, with the nominal formative ƒ), the maker, is used in order to form a verb or substantive denoting him who exercises the function or causes the action expressed by the verb, as naû, to see; refnaú, an inspector; ref-múút, afferens mortem, the killer. The intermixture of the article makes such formations still more clumsy, as, in order to express vision, they say sa-pi-naú, actio (TOû) videre.

Those who understand the principle of the formation of words in the Semitic and Indo-Germanic languages, will perceive at once that the first have some, and the latter an inexhaustible abundance of terminations, variously affecting the root, and indicating all the shades of the different modes of existence and action, which the Coptic expresses very incompletely and clumsily by mere agglomeration. The decomposing principle which we observed in the formation of the new Romanic words, especially the particles, prevails throughout in the Coptic. But it acted differently, because the Latin was a developed, perfect, inflexional language; the ancient Egyptian was, as we shall see, a form of speech only just emerging from the monosyllabic state and the absolute isolation of words.

The intrusion of foreign elements, from the time of Alexander, helped to destroy what there was of organic power in the Egyptian language; but it was not the original cause of that destruction. It was the effect of the slowness of the Egyptian mind,