Слике страница
PDF
ePub

for the dead, or to such as were practised by the heathens on an idolatrous account, which is generally known under the expression tatooing; it is therefore likely that the two laws (Deut. vi. 13, and Lev. xix. 28) refer to the same practice; and Moses used the same Indian word tatoophet and the meaning of the text (Deut. vi. 13) is, "and they shall be for a tatooing between thy eyes:" that is, "you shall not actually mark your God in the skin itself, but wear a parchment between your eyes instead of tatooing.'

[ocr errors]

What chiefly marks this word as foreign and a barbarism, is its strange and uncertain formation; so as even the word hoio to be, which precedes it, adopts in Ex. x. 3, 16, the singular; and in Deut. vi. 13, the plural number. The word itself is given in the feminine plural, and yet the above verb is rendered in the masculine. The Rabbins form this word from two different languages, in one of which shall be (tat) two; and (phas) in the other language, (two) which is plainly absurd and unintelligible. The word in question is not reducible, by any legitimate grammatical analysis, to any known root in Hebrew, Chaldee or Arabic.

Burckhardt says, tatooing on the cheek, is practised at Mekka.

The result of our present investigation, we must express in the words of Niebuhr. (Rom. Hist. v. i. ch. 21, Summary.) "No man is able to trace to their [precise] sources, the streams of the existing generations, and races of mankind: still less to survey the chasm which separates the order to which we and history belong, from one of earlier date. It is the creed of all popular traditions, received and cherished even by the philosophers of Greece, that an elder generation had perished. *** The opinion which ascribes to giants the walls composed of huge rough masses of rock, of the pretended Cyclopean cities from Prenesti to Alba in the country of the Maisi, where the pillars of the city gates consist of single blocks of stone, and assigns to the same race the building of the walls of Tirgus. Such an opinion is the expression of an unsophisticated mind. It resembles that of the people in our Frisian districts, who are persuaded that they see the words of giants in the colossal altars which are found in greater or less state of preservation, in every place where our ancestors once inhabited. We must altogether ex

clude those nations with which our history is conversant in Latium, from any share in works that require the efforts of a numerous population, compelled in a state of vassalage to excute the commands of their sacred masters; and we must ascribe them to a period antecedent to all history: but such

efforts they do not surpass. The Etruscan walls are scarcely less stupendous. The raising and transporting of the obelisks hewn out of the rocks, is an undertaking still more gigantic and defying to our mechanical powers. The Peruvian walls are nearly as enormous as the pretended Cyclopean. Thus it is most probable that these immortal works belonged to the utterly forgotten progenitors of the present generation; and compared with whose architecture, that of the Romans was utterly insignificant. Nations, of a period in which the Greek authors of the Augustan age, as well as the philosophers of the last century, discerned only a horde of speechless savages on the young and uncultivated earth. Thus also the drains from the Lake Copias cut through thirty stadia of solid rock, and the cleaning out of which, surpassed the strength of Beotians in the time of Alexander, assuredly were the work of a people antecedent to the Greeks."* To this we may add as instances the Cloace of Rome, and the Temple at Ellora.

But all these accumulations of savage strength, are inconsistent with the mathematical and astronomical knowledge of our lost people; who, as we think, possessed knowledge of much higher acquisition. The modern geological observations on fossil remains and the temperature of the earth, would have left M. Baillie and his followers to enlarge their boundaries as far as Siberia, where we know with certainty that tropical plants and tropical animals lived and died on the banks of every river.

The subject is too curious to be dropped. Much remains yet to be done. We thank Mr. Higgins for his very learned, very interesting, and very amusing contributions toward this investigation.

The very curious and magnificent introduction with the plates accompanying it, prefixed by Mr. Higgins to his work now under review, is the best commentary and illustration of this passage in Niebuhr.

APPENDIX.

MONOLOGUE IN THE PŒNULUS OF PLAUTUS.-ACT. 5. SCE. 1.

Plautus, the dramatic author, was a native of a town in Umbria. He died one hundred and eighty-four years before Christ. Carthage was utterly destroyed one hundred and forty-six years before our era, and thirty eight years after the death of Plautus.

The plot of this play is as follows: A young Carthaginian, (Agarastocles) kidnapped from Carthage, is carried to Calydonia in Etolia, and sold as a slave to an old man, who adopts him, dies, and bequeaths to him all his property. This young man is in love with a young woman, who, with her sister and her nurse were also forcibly taken away, and sold to a person of bad character of Calydonia. The young man institutes a suit against the person who had bought these girls, who are suspected to be of a reputable Carthaginian family. Their father Hanno, a Carthaginian, who had sought them almost every where, arrives at Calydonia, and stopping before the house of Agarastocles, makes the following apostrophe or soliloquy in the Punic language.

It does not appear whether Plautus wrote it in the Punic or in the common Latin character. From the difficulty of accommodating the verbal sounds of one language to those of another, and from frequent transcribing by persons ignorant of the language and the meaning of the Punic, the words are manifestly confounded; and, in many instances, it is very difficult to distinguish them. There are sixteen lines in this soliloquy; of which, the first ten have been converted into Hebrew by Bochart, (Phaleg. ch. 2,) and the last six he suspects to be a Lybian repetition, but does not attempt to translate them. We give the Punic Words according to the edition followed by Bochart, and again after the edition of Mocenigus 1482, followed by Vallancey. We have consulted an Elzevir of 1652, and the edition of Frider. Hen. Bothe. Berlin, 1810. The Elzevir differs in a few words from Mocenigus, but Bothe adopts the arrangement of the words which Bochart had adapted to the Hebrew character.

THE PUNIC MONOLOGUE,

As corrected by Bochart. (Phaleg. lib. ii. ch. 6.)
1. N'yth alonim valonuth sicorath jismaconsith
2 Chy-mlachai jythmu mitslia mittebariim ischi
3. Liphorcaneth yth beni ith jad adi ubinuthai
4. Birua rob syllohom alonim ubymisyrtohom
5. Bytlym moth ynoth othi helech antidamarchon
6. Ys sideli; Brim tyfel yth chili schontem liphul.
7. Vth binimys dibur thim nocuth nu' Agarastocles
8. Ythem aneti by chyr saely choc, sith naso.
9. Binni id chi luhilli gubylim lasibit thym
10. Body aly thera yo yenu yss' im moncer lu sim.

The same from Mocenigus' edition of Plautus.

1. Nythalonim ualon uth si corasithima comsyth
2. Chym lach chunyth mumys tyal mycthibarii imischi
3. Lipho canet hyth bynuthii ad din bynuthii
4. Byrnarob syllo homalonim uby misurthoho

5. Bythlym mothym noctothii uelechanti dasmachon
6. Yssidele brin thysel yth chylys chon them liphul
7. Uth bynim ysdibur thinno cuth nu Agorastocles
8. Ythe maneth ihy chirsa lycoth sith naso
9. Bynni id chil luhili gubulin lasibit thym

10. Body alyt herayn nyn nuys lym monchot lusim.

(Hitherto, Bochart has rendered into Hebrew.)
Exalonim uolanus succuratim mistim atticum esse
Concubitum a belio cutin beant lalachant chona enus es
Huiec silic panesse athidmascon alem induberte felono buthume
Celtum comucro lueni at enim auoso uber hent hyach Aristoclem
Et te se aneche nasoctelia elicos alemus duberter mi comps uespti
Aodeanec lictor bodes iussum limnemcolus.

These six are regarded as a Libyan repetition. There are about a dozen more lines, or parts of lines, interspersed in the dialogue; all of which, (as well as the six lines above copied) are rendered into Irish by Vallancey; whose version, (Anno, 1781, in the Collectanea Hibernica, No. 8,) of the foregoing six lines, agrees in the general sense, but by no means literally, with the Latin version of Bothe. We have not thought it necessary to give the passage as spelt in the Elzevir edition, for the slight variances are sufficiently accounted for, from the causes we have assigned: nor have we deemed it necessary to exhibit any specimen beyond the continuous ten lines of whose Punic character no one doubts. In his Annotations, vol. iv. p. 598, Bothe says, he has followed the manner of writing the Punic, adopted by D. I. I. Bellerman of Berlin; which was published in three tracts in 1806, 1807 and 1808: he has also adopted the German translation of the 16 lines by Bellerman. He has also copied, in the German language, some observations of Bellerman on the connexion between the Hebrew, Phoenician, Canaanite and Carthaginian languages. To us, the remarks of Bellerman are ingenious conjectures only, void of proof. There are no authorities cited to confirm his view of the connexion between the Hebrew, Phoenician and Canaanite; a connexion whereof we entertain no doubts, but the question is, as to the extent. Writers perpetually forget that they have no claim to be believed for any assertion borrowed from others, unless the original authority be cited. Mr. Charles Fox used sadly to complain of this-so did Mosheim. "Ut enim fidem ejus nemo facile in dubium vocaverit, illi tamen qui solidæ student eruditioni, fontes rerum sibi merito cupiunt diligenter monstrari: quos, si res ita ferat consulere queant, ad omnem animi, tam suis quam aliorum dubitationem eximendam." Io. Laur. Mosheim, Dissertationum ad Historiam Ecclesiasticam pertinentium. 2 v. Altmavia, 1733—in Geddes' Martyr. Pro

test.

The following is the Hebrew translation of the first ten lines of this Soliloquy, by Bochart. The objection to it is, that the Phoenician is more allied to the Samaritan than to the Hebrew; and, secondly, that

this translation is neither Hebrew or Chaldee, but a mixture of both languages, with some Samaritan words. Grotius agrees that the last six lines are a Lybian repetition. The Pœni, or Carthaginians, Lybici, were bilingues. (Peni, Feni, Pheni, Bearla-Feni, means the Phoenic or Phoenician dialect of the Irish.)

Bochart's Hebrew version of the first ten lines of Plautus' Monologue.

נא את עליונים ואת עליונות שכורת יסמכון זות: כי מלכי יתמו: מצליח מדברהים עסקי: לפורקנת את בני את יד עדי ובנותי : ברוח רוב שלהם עליונים ובמשורההם: בטרם מות חנות אותי הלך אנטידמרכון: איש שידע לי: ברס טפל את חילי שכינתם לאופל: את בן אמיץ דבור תם נקוט נוה אגורסטוקליס: חותם חנותי הוא כיור שאלי חוק זאת נושאי ביני עד כי לו האלה גבולים לשבת הם:

בוא די עלי תרע אנא הנו: אשאל אם מנכר לו שם:

To shew the difference between Bochart's version and pure Hebrew, we exhibit a translation of the same passage into what we believe to be pure and classical Hebrew, without any mixture of Chaldee or Samaritan; as follows:

Another version of the same, in pure Hebrew.

[ocr errors][subsumed][ocr errors]

* We omit the Hebrew translation of Petit, for the reasons assigned by Bryan Walton, (after Grotius) in the 17th and 18th pages of the third Prolegomena to his Polyglott, (vol.i. edition of 1657.) Much of the confusion in this passage of Plautus, is owing to the transcribers, (or perhaps Plautus himself) inserting the vowels or the vowel points, which, undoubtedly, was not the early custom of the Phoenicians or the Hebrews; however convenient these points may now be, to fix the ancient traditionary reading and pronunciation, an use of them, which we are not at this day disposed to deny; but this would, undoubtedly, multiply the chances of error..

« ПретходнаНастави »