"Sabæan odours from the shores of Araby the blest."
The next interesting result, however, of these Arabian discoveries is, that they disclose not only a civilized and commercial kingdom at a remote antiquity, but that they show us a literary people, who had their own alphabet and system of writing at a date comparable to that of Egyptian hieroglyphics and Chaldæan cuneiforms, and long prior to the oldest known inscription in Phœnician characters. The first Arabian inscriptions were discovered and copied by Seetzen in 1810, and were classed together as Himyaritic, from Himyar, the country of the classical Homerites. It was soon discovered that the language was Semitic, and that the alphabet resembled that of the Ethiopic or Gheez, and was a modification of the Phœnician written vertically instead of horizontally. Further discoveries and researches have led to the result, which is principally due to Dr. Glaser, that the so-called Himyaritic inscriptions fell into two groups, one of which is distinctly older than the other, containing fuller and more primitive grammatical forms. These are Minæan, while the inscriptions in the later dialect are Sabæan. It is apparent, therefore, that the Minæan rule and literature must have preceded those of Sabæa by a time sufficiently long to have allowed for considerable changes both in words and grammar to have grown up, not by foreign conquest, but by evolution among the tribes of the same race within Arabia itself. Now the Sabæan kingdom can be traced back with considerable certainty to the time of Solomon, 1000 years b.c., and had in all probability existed many centuries before; while we have already a list of thirty-three Minæan kings, which number will doubtless be enlarged by further discoveries; and the oldest inscriptions point, as in Egypt, to an antecedent state of commerce and civilization. It is evident therefore that Arabia must be classed with Egypt and Chaldæa as one of the countries which point to the existence of highly civilized communities in an extreme antiquity; and that it is by no means impossible that the records of Southern Arabia may ultimately be carried back as far as those of Sargon I., or even of Menes.
This is the more probable as several ancient traditions point to Southern Arabia, and possibly to the adjoining coast of North-eastern Africa, as the source of the earliest civilizations. Thus Oannes is said to have come up from the Persian Gulf and taught the Chaldæans the first arts of civilization. The Phœnicians traced their origin to the Bahrein Islands in the same Gulf. The Egyptians looked with reverence and respect to Punt, which is generally believed to have meant Arabia Felix and Somali-land; and they placed the origin of their letters and civilization, not in Upper or Lower, but in Middle Egypt, at Abydos where Thoth and Osiris were said to have reigned, where the Nile is only separated from the Red Sea by a narrow land pass which was long one of the principal commercial routes between Arabia and Egypt.
The close connection between Egypt and Punt in early times is confirmed by the terms of respect in which Punt is spoken of in Egyptian inscriptions, contrasting with the epithets of "barbarian" and "vile," which are applied to other surrounding nations such as the Hittites, Libyans, and Negroes. And the celebrated equipment of a fleet by the great queen Hatasu of the nineteenth dynasty, to make a commercial voyage to Punt, and its return with a rich freight, and the king and queen of the country with offerings, on a visit to the Pharaoh, reminding one of the visit of the Queen of Sheba to Solomon, shows that the two nations were on friendly terms, and that the Red Sea and opposite coast of Africa had been navigated from a very early period. The physical type also of the chiefs of Punt as depicted on the Egyptian monuments is very like that of the aristocratic type of the earliest known Egyptian portraits.
CHIEF OF PUNT AND TWO MEN.
One point seems sufficiently clear; that wherever may have been the original seat of the Aryans, that of the Semites must be placed in Arabia. Everywhere else we can trace them as an immigrating or invading people, who found prior populations of different race, but in Arabia they seem to have been aboriginal. Thus in Chaldæa and Assyria, the Semites are represented in the earliest history and traditions as coming from the South, partly by the Persian Gulf and partly across the Arabian and Syrian deserts, and by degrees amalgamating with and superseding the previous Accadian population. In Egypt the Semitic element was a late importation which never permanently affected the old Egyptian civilization. In Syria and Palestine, the Phœnicians, Canaanites, and Hebrews were all immigrants from the Persian Gulf or Arabian frontier, either directly or through the medium of Egypt and Assyria, who did not even pretend to be the earliest inhabitants, but found other races, as the Amorites and Hittites, in possession, whose traditions again went back to barbarous aborigines of Zammumim, who seemed to them to stammer their unintelligible language. The position of Semites in the Moslem world in Asia and Africa is distinctly due to the conquests of the Arab Mohammed and the spread of his religion.
In Arabia alone we find Semites and Semites only, from the very beginning, and the peculiar language and character of the race must have been first developed in the growing civilization which preceded the ancient Minæan Empire, probably as the later stone age was passing into that of metal, and the primitive state of hunters and fishers into the higher social level of agriculturists and traders.
To return from these remote speculations to a subject of more immediate interest, the discovery of these Minæan inscriptions shows the existence of an alphabet older than that of the earliest known inscriptions in Phœnician letters. The alphabets of Greece, Rome, and all modern nations are beyond all doubt derived from that of Phœnicia, and it has been generally supposed that this was formed from an abridgment of the hieroglyphics or hieratics of Egypt. But the Minæan inscriptions raise the question whether the Phœnician alphabet itself and the kindred alphabets of Palestine, Syria, and other countries near the Arabian frontier were not derived from Arabia rather than from Egypt. The Minæan language and letters are certainly older forms of Semitic speech and writing, and it seems more likely that they should have been adopted, with dialectic variations, by other Semitic races, with whom Arabia had a long coterminous position and constant intercourse by caravans, than that these races should have remained totally ignorant of letters, until Phœnicia borrowed them from Egypt. Moreover, as Professor Sayce shows, this theory gives a better explanation of the names of the Phœnician letters, which in many cases have no resemblance to the symbols which denote them. Thus the first letter Aleph, "an ox," really resembles the head of that animal in the Minæan inscriptions, while no likeness can be traced to any Egyptian hieroglyph used for 'a.'