Westward empire

by Elias Lyman Magoon

Ethnology, the science of nations, in its most recent and profound deductions, differs somewhat in detail, but the great conclusion is the same. The threefold branches radiate from a common stock, and in their growth from east to west, they mark the high road of universal progress, and adorn the stage on which the entire drama of ancient history has been performed. The prediction of Noah is the record of human destiny, and has been subjected to the severest test. Material vestiges of creation, and the earliest monuments of mind, alike place the origin of man in the central East. The people of the Brahmins come down from the Hindo-Khu into the plains of the Indus and the Ganges; Assyria and Bactriana receive their inhabitants from the high lands of Armenia and Persia. Those nations advance rapidly, and, in the remotest antiquity, attained a degree of culture of which the temples and monuments of Egypt and India, together with the palaces of Nineveh, are glorious witnesses. As the basis of preliminary improvement, they rapidly developed to a degree, then movement was stayed, and thenceforth their stationary remains mark the oriental boundary of the historic race. Ethnology testifies that Ham peopled Egypt, and that the primary emigration thither from Asia may have been ante-Noachian. The native name of Egypt is Chami, the black; and this fact is symbolically represented by the name of its predestined ancestor, Cham, Shem's eldest brother, Japhet being the youngest of the three. When the comprehensive fortunes of the triple founders of our race were foretold, Shem was called the elder brother of Japhet, but not of Ham. Gen. x. 32—"By these were the nations divided after the flood." Thus the great middle country in western Asia is the central point of the general view. On the south, the race of Ham includes degenerate Egypt, and all the sombre African tribes beyond. In the north Caucasian regions, the race of Japhet spread widely; and in central Asia the race of Shem. These general positions have been proved by the ethnologists, Pritchard and Bunsen, and are confirmed by the most reliable archæologists, as well as by the leading physiologists of the world, Morton, Cuvier, and Blumenbach.

But we will pass to the third and most copious means of demonstration, philology. It is believed that a furious religious war, long anterior to the historic Shem, drove a large multitude of oriental inhabitants westward, and that these became the primary stratum of European humanity, afterward superseded by the Japhetic race, wherever the germs of true history took root. The names given by the Pelasgi to the chief mountains of Greece, as well as the name itself of that mysterious people, point to an emigration from India, whence a twofold stream of emigration seems to have flowed. We have alluded above to the one which, under the auspices of the semi-historic Shem, passed through Persia and northern Arabia into Egypt, and adjoined the unhistoric Ham. At a later period, whatever of excellence that transition realm developed passed into southern Greece. The other current, the grandest and most prolific of all, passed through Persia, along the Caspian sea, over mount Caucasus, and thence through Thrace direct to northern Greece. The productive tribes, at their first appearance on the horizon, enter upon the prospective stage with the elements of language, and with this fundamental power eliminated for their use, they were formed into the social compact of progressive humanity.

The earliest inventors of the glorious art of writing deserve the most grateful regard. The search after them, and their several stages of discovery, tends to strengthen the view held by many, that the common chronology of history embraces too limited a period; and that hoary India, at an era anterior to human record, originated the first pictorial system and communicated it to the Chinese, whose records attribute their mode of writing to a foreign source. But the yellow races of the far East are destined to remain still in the dawn: the sun of civilization has never risen sufficiently high above them to give vital growth to any product they have either invented or received. But the old emigrants of Egypt soon reduced their pictorial language to rough hieroglyphic outlines, and then to signs yet more approximating sounds, which laid the foundation for European alphabets.

Assyria, Babylonia, and Persia, have left us no specimens of their writing, aside from the dubious carvings upon the lofty rocks of Asia. But this "handwriting upon the wall," so long ago interpreted by the prophet Daniel, is now laid open to general comprehension, through Layard and Rawlinson, as a most important link in the philological chain. It was indeed strange that when the Egyptians had broken down the thin partition which separated them from phonetic language, their last monuments should exhibit no nearer approach to it than the first. The cuneiform inscriptions of Assyria render the order of progression perfect, connecting the later achievements in literary research with the previous triumphs of Young and Champollion. We discover syllables at length; and if on the banks of the Nile, we found a full grown adult, but impotent and out of the way, we meet, on the banks of the Euphrates, with a vigorous child, yet imperfect certainly, but actually advancing, and in the right path. Leaving the cumbrous and astute paraphernalia of pictorial and symbolic characters, the speaking signs passed from the arrow-points of Assyria into the flexile and immortal worth of the Phœnician alphabet. As soon as this invention had been planted in a neighboring state, the alphabetic system was appropriated by the great leader of the Hebrews, when they returned to the land of their fathers, and became neighbors to the Phœnicians. Certain modifications supervened, adapted to their political and religious institutions; but the original names of the signs which constitute the Hebrew alphabet, strikingly prove their derivation from a hieroglyphic system, and indicate clearly a pictorial origin. Moreover, the first allusion to writing in the books of Moses is to the tablets of stone, "after the manner of a signet," by which we may understand engraved writing, like that of the Assyrian cylinders, or scales.

If the Shemitic tongues exhibit undeniable proof of their being derived from the western part of central Asia, the Indo-European languages present no less evidence of the gradual extension of these races from the eastern part. The Shemitic tribes never extended into Europe, except by temporary excursions. With the exception of Armenia, they have not lost ground in Asia, and have, from the beginning, penetrated into Africa, where no traces of Japhetic origin are discernible. Of Shem, the Arabic, Aramaic, and Hebrew are the three great monuments. Japhet nationalized the Sanscrit, Persian, and Greek, with all their descendants, the languages of beauty, power and progress everywhere.

In early Greece, a purely Egyptian element was planted by Cecrops, a native of Säis, in the Delta, but whether he was a native Copt does not appear. He migrated B.C. about 1550, and married a daughter of the Pelasgi, so it is not likely he introduced any of his own language. The same may be said of the colonist Danaus and his family, though he, as brother of the king Sesostris, was doubtless of unmingled Egyptian race. A much stronger element must be accounted for in the Phœnician immigration of Cadmus, and the constant intercourse kept up by that people with continental Greece. Crete should be regarded as the stepping-stone on the auspicious high way, the first amalgam wherein Egyptian, Pelasgic, and Phœnician civilization mingled, and, when properly blended, was transferred to the main land. Then came the purely Japhetic element, and gave tone and character to all. That great genius of Hellas, whose name has perished like that of the inventor of the plow, but who lives enshrined in the most intellectual of all monuments, worked upon this eastern element as he did upon every other capability submitted to his inventive and intellectualizing power. He rendered the limited alphabet of Shem universal, eliminating the signs for harsh, guttural sounds, and by preserving those which were rejected, in the series of the numerals. The twenty-two letters of Shem became the twenty-four of Japhet, and thus, by their combined energies, a philosophical alphabet was produced, at once the aggregate of all Asiatic idioms, and the guaranty of all European culture. It was the receiver and transmitter of the most noble treasures ever garnered in the realms of intellect and emotion, a pure medium for the investigating faculty of the senses, as well as the mightiest weapon for the plastic and vitalizing power of imagination, the Greeks ever possessed, and which imperishable heritage they have left as the richest gift to coming generations.

During thrice ten centuries of the early world, the various oriental nations followed in their development an isolated course; and two vast peoples, the Chinese and Indians, have remained to this day in a totally sequestered state. They are in the same condition of immobility now, as at the beginning of the historical nations, that is to say, only six, or at most seven centuries before the Christian era. Still, India, with its philosophy and myths, its literature and laws, is worthy of special study, as it presents a page of the primitive annals of the world. But before the brilliant rays of the East streamed toward us from Hellenic sources, every thing seemed obscure—as to an explorer of the majestic tombs of Egypt, the farther he advances within, the more is he deserted by light. The first reliable guide we meet, is the art of writing; and this, so far from being an invention of recent times, reaches back to the most venerable antiquity. The only key to an understanding of the literature of Media and Persia, and in some respects of Greece, is furnished by the languages of India, and especially by that preserved in the hymns of the Veda, some of which ascend to the remote era of B.C. 2448. A claim to antiquity so great would appear incredible, were it not sustained beyond a doubt by the Assyrian remains recently exhumed. Like the region of its origin, Sanscrit literature is perfectly anomalous, and bears a striking resemblance to the extinct relics of that vast area over which it passed, to become the parent of all those dialects which in Europe are called classical.

Escaping from the mummified civilization of Egypt and the inflexible East, we strike more boldly into the high road of all improvement, and observe how rapidly power of every kind passes from Shem to the irresistible Japhet. The continuous stream of humanity moves clearly and with increased speed through a new and broader channel. As Shem was employed to introduce all religions on earth, so is he made to perform the most prominent part in the theological culture of mankind. But conscious speculation, elegant letters, and beautifying art all belong to the younger Japhet, whose heroes are Hellenes, and whose magnificent progeny are the myriad multitudes of the entire Indo-Germanic stock.

Thus, by the light of linguistic research, we descend from the exalted cradle of the human race to the prepared field of their first grand development. As we approximate the sphere wherein all faculties are free, and each element of excellence soars rapidly to its culminating height, a historical unity becomes manifest in language, wisdom, arts, sciences, and the most comprehensive civilization. These innumerable facts are no patch-work of incoherent fragments, no chance rivulets flowing in isolated beds, but tributaries to one uninterrupted current, correlative proofs of one and the same grand development. Language, the last struggle of the agonized age of Ham, the first triumph of the reason of Shem, was the magnificent medium perfected by Japhet, and through which, under the auspices of the Periclean age, universal man might see all his glories simultaneously revealed. Five hundred years before the Christian era, all nationalities east of Athens had perished; then and there, in consummate literature, we behold God's vanguard on earth. To the Hellenes, the beautiful of every type was revealed.

In fullness, exactness, flexibility and grace, the Greek language surpasses all other linguistic forms, and remains the first great masterpiece of the classic world. As we watch the growth of a tender exotic plant, gradually removed to a higher latitude, and at each stage of its matured beauty experience fresh joy, so the philologist watches the tender shoot of the first European tongue as it unfolds under the mild skies of Ionia, passes to the isles of the Ægean, and finally strikes its strong roots in fruitful Attica. In infancy, it was redolent with the fragrance of festive song; in maturity it scattered abroad priceless worth in every style of literature, art, science and philosophy; till at last, touched by the hand of despotism, its living beauty faded, but even in death, like Medora, is still invested with the lingering charms of youth.