Shoreham.
Minor Queries.
Jews and Egyptians.—Has any writer ever started the idea that the early colonisers of some of the Grecian states, who are commonly stated to have been Egyptians, may have been, in fact, Jews? It seems to me that a good deal might be said in favour of this hypothesis, for the following reasons, amongst others:
1. The Egyptian tradition preserved by Hecatæus, and quoted from him by Diodorus, that Danaus and Cadmus were leaders of minor branches of the great emigration, of which the main body departed under the guidance of Moses.
2. The near coincidence in point of time, as far as can be traced, of the appearance of Danaus, Cadmus, and Cecrops, in Greece, with the Jewish exodus.
3. The letter, preserved by Josephus, of Areus, king of Sparta, to the high-priest of the Jews, claiming a common descent with the latter from Abraham, and proposing an alliance. It is difficult to explain this claim on any other supposition than that Areus had heard of the tradition mentioned by Diodorus, and, as he and his people traced their descent from Danaus through Hercules, they consequently regarded themselves as sprung from a common stock with the Hebrews.
I throw out this theory for the consideration of others, having myself neither leisure nor opportunity for pushing the subject any farther; but still I think that a distinguished statesman and novelist, who amused the world some years ago by endeavouring to trace most of the eminent men of modern times to a Jewish origin, might, with at least as much reason, claim most of the glories of ancient Greece for his favourite people.
J. S. Warden.
Skin-flint.—Is the word skin-flint, a miserly or niggardly person, of English or foreign derivation? and where is the earliest instance of the term to be met with?