THE

BIBLIOTHECA SACRA,

NO. LII.

AND

AMERICAN BIBLICAL REPOSITORY,

NO. CIV.

OCTOBER, 1856.

ARTICLE I.

DR. LEPSIUS'S UNIVERSAL LINGUISTIC ALPHABET.

By Joseph S. Ropes, A. M., Boston, Mass.

Das allgemeine linguistische Alphabet. Grundsätze der Uebertragung fremder Schriftsysteme und bisher noch ungeschriebener Sprachen in Europäische Buchstaben. Von R. Lepsius, Dr. O. Prof. an d. Universität u. Mitglied der K. Acad. d. Wissenschaften zu Berlin. Berlin: 1855. 8vo. pp. 66. or, Standard Alphabet, for reducing Unwritten Languages and Foreign Graphic Systems to a Uniform Orthography in European Letters. By Dr. R. Lepsius, Professor at the University, and Member of the Royal Academy, Berlin. Recommended for adoption by the Church Missionary Society. London: 1855. 8vo. pp. 73.

[A brief historical notice of the author of this work, may not be uninteresting to our readers.

CARL RICHARD LEPSIUS is most widely known as an Egyptian scholar; the magnitude and interest of his contributions to that department of knowledge throwing comparatively into the shade his other labors. Yet these, also, have been by no means of small account: from the commencement of his career as a scholar, general archæological and VOL. XIII. No. 52.

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philological investigations have claimed a considerable share of his activity. He completed his university studies at Berlin, in the year 1833, at the age of twenty-one; his graduating thesis was "De Tabulis Eugubinis." The following year he published his "Palæography as a Means of Linguis tic Investigation" (Palæographie als Mittel der Sprachforschung), an essay of remarkable ingenuity, and went to Paris to continue his philological training. Thence he was soon drawn away to Italy, by the influence and aid of Chevalier Bunsen, at that time Prussian ambassador at Rome, and commenced with that celebrated man an intimacy, personal and scientific, which has powerfully affected his whole course since. He made his first public entry into the ranks of Egyptologists in 1837, by the publication of his "Lettre à M. Rosellini sur l'Alphabet Hieroglyphique," a little work whose views were, in many respects, decidedly in advance of anything previously made public, and which has not, even yet, been superseded. During the following years, his activity was unremitted and constantly productive: he made valuable contributions to archæological Journals, in France and Italy; he took the grand prize of the French Academy for two linguistic treatises, "On the relations of the Semitic, Indian, Ethiopic, Zend, and Egyptian Alphabets," and "On the origin and relations of the Numerals in the Indo-European, Semitic, and Coptic languages;" he investigated the ancient Italic languages, and published their existing relics (Inscriptiones Umbricæ et Oscæ: 1841); he edited a facsimile transcription of the most extensive remaining monument of the ancient Egyptian literature, the so-called Book of the Dead (Das Todtenbuch der Egypter: 1842), and a selection of a few of the most valuable Egyptian historical monuments then known (also 1812: plates only). In 1838, Bunsen had left Italy, and Lepsius followed him later to London, to bear a part in the preparation of the great work upon Egypt upon which he was then engaged. Their joint labors were interrupted in 1842, Lepsius being called away to take the leadership and direction of the Expedition to Egypt, sent out by the Prussian government in the year last mentioned.

It is with this expedition, most honorable and successful in its conduct and results, that his labors in the department of Egytian science have since been mainly connected. To follow its history may not be attempted here; its records are to be found written in the Letters from Egypt, etc. (Briefe aus Ægypten, Æthiopien, und der Halbinsel von Sinai, etc.: 1852: two separate translations of the work have appeared in England), and in the Introductory Notice (Vorläufiger Bericht, etc. 1849) of the Expedition and its Results, serving as prospectus to the gigantic pictorial work, the Monuments from Egypt and Ethiopia (Denkmäler, etc.), in which its collected treasures were to be laid before the eyes of the world. This, too, is now approaching completion. Of all the great works illustrating Egypt, it will be the most extensive, composed of the most carefully selected matter, and most accurately edited. Since the return of the expedition, in 1846, Lepsius has been residing in Berlin, as Member of the Academy and Professor in the University; occupied in part with the editing and publishing of the works already named. He has also, during the same time, been engaged upon a great historical work, the Egyptian Chronology (Chronologie der Egypter); of which only the first volume, containing the Introduction and Critical Examination of the Sources (Kritik der Quellen) has as yet been published (in 1849). He has also contributed to the Transactions of the Berlin Academy very valuable essays on special subjects in Egyptian antiquity; as, On the first Order of Egyptian Deities (published in 1851), On the twelfth Dynasty of Egyptian Kings (1853), Contributions from the Monuments to the History of the Ptolemies (1853). A volume of lesser essays, of a kindred character, he is understood to have had for some time in preparation; but it has not yet appeared. That he is nevertheless not entirely absorbed by his Egyptian labors, but finds leisure and inclination for the general philological studies by which he earliest distinguished himself, is shown by the little work, his most recent publication, reviewed below. He is, moreover, as Professor in the Berlin University, constantly engaged in imparting instruction, by lectures and

otherwise, upon the Egyptian Language and Antiquity. More than one American has already enjoyed his teachings, and made experience, in a manner to be gratefully remembered, of the kindness and attention which he is accustomed to show to his pupils.]

THIS unpretending but admirable essay of a distinguished German scholar, is the latest and, we think, incomparably the most successful attempt to construct a universal alphabet -so long the desideratum of linguistic science and a practical want of civilized life. What student of language, geography, or history; nay, what intelligent traveller, or even reader of newspapers, has not longed for some more accurate and trustworthy medium of names and sounds than that Roman alphabet on which the nations of Europe have rung such various and innumerable changes? The unfledged tourist, who vainly inquires for a railway "deépo,” or astonishes the natives of Vincennes by his interest in the “Duke de Injun," the school-boy who learns that there is a Russian fortress called "Ox-a-cow," the plain citizen who puzzles between "Sebastopol" and "Sevastopol," without dreaming of the mighty questions of literary and linguistic controversy involved in the small compass of that now familiar word (to say nothing of the scarcely settled controversy between "Sclavonians" and "Slavonians,"), all testify, willingly or unwillingly, to one common want. As the world advances and nations approximate, the confusion of our alphabets becomes worse confounded. We adopt a Polish combination of consonants, with German pronunciation, to express the native title of the great potentate with whom Western Europe was lately at war; and we straightway metamorphose it, by a quasi English pronunciation, almost beyond the hope of recognition! And while Dr. Bowring and others, by a correct English analogy, write zh to denote the French j, the native of Poland can make nothing of our sh until he has transformed it into sz. The word which German geographers intended us to pronounce Kamtchatka, is resolved by Anglo-Saxon organs into Kamskatka! The best

educated American might mistake, in speaking of thugs or of Runjeet Singh, without the aid of thag and Rana-djit-sing, in some continental vocabulary. And how long may some reader of future history blunder in the dark before ascertaining that Owhyhee and Hawaii are identical, and that the Otaheite of captain Cook is no other than the Taiti of the piratical French invader!

We need not multiply illustrations of the obvious fact that such a state of things is a serious inconvenience, not to say a disgrace to modern literature and science.

The great and increasing importance of international intercourse, the consequent study of languages, of their etymology, their multiplied ramifications and connections, the valuable results already obtained, call for every possible aid that can be rendered. And at the head of these may safely be placed the preparation of an alphabet so comprehensive as to include the sounds of every known language and dialect, so simple as to be easily applied to them all, and so elastic as to admit of expansion in case of future need.

The introduction and general acceptance of such an alphabet, Dr. Lepsius forcibly argues, must greatly facilitate the study of foreign languages, as well as of the nations, of whose characters these languages are the expression. To appreciate fully the weight of this argument, we must not apply it to those tongues of modern Europe which are so generally diffused that they can be learned from natives in almost any European or American city. But if even in these such blunders as we have instanced above are continually occurring, what can be hoped for where native instruction cannot be procured, and sounds must be acquired by a Frenchman through such a medium as an English or German grammarian can supply in his own alphabet, and vice versa? Let us try to imagine what notion we could form of the French nasals or the Slavonian gutturals, if no viva voce instruction existed. Something like the same state of helplessness and confusion doubtless exists now, in relation to the sounds uttered by remote nations in various parts of the world.