276 OFFERINGS OF AMASIS. BOOK II. Samian Juno he presented two statues of himself, made in wood, which stood in the great temple to my day, behind the doors. Samos was honoured with these gifts on account of the bond of friendship subsisting between Amasis and Polycrates, the son of Eaces:3 Lindus, for no such reason, but because of the tradition that the daughters of Danaus touched there in their Minerva at Lindus. Gold thread, it Quod Nilotis acus compressum pectine Serum 4 Pliny (xix. 1) notices "the corslet of Amasis, shown in the Temple of Minerva at Rhodes," which seems to have been nearly pulled to pieces (as it would be now), to test "the 365 threads."-[G. W.] 2 These were not uncommon; and many have been found of kings who preceded Amasis in the same buildings where granite and other statues of the same period were placed. Pausanias (ii. 19) says "all ancient statues were of wood, especially those of the Egyptians;" and if in Egypt they were no proof of antiquity, still the oldest there also were probably of wood.-[G. W.] 3 Vide infra, iii. 39-43. The flight of Danaus from Egypt to Greece is not only mentioned by Herodotus, but by Manetho and others, and was credited both by Greeks and Egyptians; and it is certainly very improbable (as Mr. Kenrick observes) that the Greeks would have traced the colonisation of Argos, and the origin of certain rites, to Egypt, unless there had been some authority for the story. The foundation of the Temple of Lindus in Rhodes by the daughters of Danaus, when flying from Egypt, accords with the notion of colonisation and religious rites passing from the Egyptians to the Greeks; and the tradition of the relationship between Egyptus, Danaus, and Belus, connects the three countries of Egypt, Greece, and Phonicia See note, ch. 101, and note', ch. 107.-G. W.] 5 Cyprus seems to have been first occupied by the Chittim, a Japhetic race (Gen. x. 4). To them must be attributed the foundation of the CHAP. 182. AMASIS REDUCES CYPRUS. 277 flight from the sons of Egyptus, and built the temple of Minerva. Such were the offerings of Amasis. He likewise took Cyprus, which no man had ever done before, and compelled it to pay him a tribute." seems to have recovered her supremacy, and thenceforth Cyprus followed her fortunes; being now attacked by Amasis as a sequel to the Phœnician wars of his predecessor (supra, ch. 161; cp. Diod. Sic. i. 68). So, too, when Phoenicia submitted to Cambyses, Cyprus immediately followed her example (infra, iii. 19). Concerning the Greek colonies in Cyprus, see note on Book v. ch. 104. Mr. Blakesley says (note ad loc.): "It is impossible that Cyprus could have been reduced without a fleet, and Egypt did not possess one of her own." He then proceeds to speculate on the quarter whence an auxiliary naval force was at this time procured, and decides in favour of Samos. But Neco had made Egypt a naval power original capital, Citium. Before the Trojan war, however, the Phoenicians had made themselves masters of the island, which they may have named Cyprus, from the abundance of the herb cyprus (Lawsonia alba), called in the Hebrew, which is found there. (Steph. Byz. ad voc. Kúnрos. Plin. H. N. xi. 24.) According to Greek tradition, the conquest was effected by a certain Cinyras, a Syrian king (Theopomp. Fr. 111; Apollod. III. xiv. § 3), whom Homer makes contemporary with Agamemnon. (II. xi. 20.) His capital was Paphos. If we may believe Virgil, the Cittæans soon regained their independence, for Belus, the father of Dido (more properly Matgen, Menand. ap. Joseph. c. Ap. i. 18), had again to reduce the island (Æn. i. 621-2), where, accord-(supra, ch. 159), which she thenceing to Alexander of Ephesus, he built (rebuilt?) the two cities of Citium and Lapêthus. (See Steph. Byz. ad voc. Aáneos.) A hundred and fifty years afterwards we find the Cittæans again in revolt. They had renounced their allegiance to Elulæus, king of Tyre, and were assisted in their struggle by Shalmaneser (Menand. ap. Joseph. A. J. ix. 14), or more probably Sargon, his successor, whose well-known inscription, found in Cyprus, probably commemorates this event. After the fall of the Assyrian empire, Phoenicia forth continued to be. Under Apries she contended against Phoenicia (ch.. |161), undoubtedly with her own ships, not with "some Hellenic auxiliary naval force," as Mr. Blakesley supposes. Her continued possession of a large navy after her conquest by the Persians is marked in vi. 6, where her vessels are engaged against the Ionians, and again in vii. 89, where she furnishes 200 triremes (the largest contingent, after that of Phoenicia) to the fleet of Xerxes. ( 279 ) APPENDIX TO BOOK II. CHAPTER I. "THE EGYPTIANS BEFORE THE REIGN OF THEIR KING PSAMMETICHUS BELIEVED THEMSELVES TO BE THE MOST ANCIENT OF MANKIND." -Chap. 2. 1. The Egyptians from Asia. 2. Egyptian and Celtic. 3. Semitic character of Egyptian. 4. Evidences of an older language than Zend and Sanscrit. 5. Ba or Pa, and Ma, primitive cries of infants, made into father and mother. 6. m for b. 7. Bek not to be pronounced by an untutored child. 8. Bek, name of bread in Egypt. 9. The story told to Herodotus. 10. Claim of the Scythians to be an early race. 8 IF Egypt is not the oldest civilised nation of antiquity, it may vie 1. with any other known in history; and the records of its civilisation, left by the monuments, unquestionably date far before those of any other country. But the inhabitants of the valley of the Nile were not the most ancient of mankind, they evidently derived their origin from Asia; and the parent stock, from which they were a very early offset, claim a higher antiquity in the history of the human race. Their skull shows them to have been of the Caucasian stock, and distinct from the African tribes Westward of the Nile; and they are evidently related to the oldest races of Central Asia. (See note on ch. 15.) The Egyptian language might, from its grammar, appear to claim a Semitic origin, but it is not really one of that family, like the Arabic, Hebrew, and others; nor is it one of the languages of the Sanscritic family, though it shows a primitive affinity to the Sanscrit in certain points; and this has been accounted for by the Egyptians being an offset from the early "undivided Asiatic stock;"-a conclusion consistent with the fact of their language being "much less developed than the Semitic and Sanscritic, and yet admitting the principle of those inflexions and radical formations, which we find developed, sometimes in one, sometimes in the other, of those great families." Besides certain affinities with the Sanscrit, it has others with the Celtic, and 2. the languages of Africa; and Dr. Ch. Meyer thinks that Celtic 3. 4. 280 ZEND AND SANSCRIT DERIVATIVE. APP. BOOK II, "in all its non-Sanscritic features most strikingly corresponds with the old Egyptian." It is also the opinion of M. Müller that the Egyptian bears an affinity "both to the Arian and Semitic dialects," from its having been an offset of the original Asiatic tongue, which was their common parent before this was broken up into the Turanian, Arian, and Semitic. In its grammatical construction, Egyptian has the greatest resemblance to the Semitic; and if it has less of this character than the Hebrew, and other purely Semitic dialects, this is explained by the latter having been developed after the separation of the original tongue into Arian and Semitic, and by the Egyptian having retained a portion of both elements. There is, however, a possibility that the Egyptian may have been a compound language, formed from two or more after the first migration of the race; and foreign elements may have been then added to it, as in the case of some other languages. It is also interesting to observe that while the Semitic languages are confined to the south-west part of Asia, including Mesopotamia, Syria, and Arabia, the same elements are met with in the languages of Africa. Though Zend and Sanscrit are the oldest languages of the IndoEuropean family, still these two are offsets of an older primitive one; and among other evidences of this may be mentioned the changes that words had already undergone in Zend and Sanscrit from the original form they had in the parent tongue; as in the number "twenty," which being in the Zend "Visaiti," and in Sanscrit "Vinsati," shows that they have thrown off the "d" of the original dva, "two," of dvisaiti, and of dvinsati (as the Latin "viginti" is a corrupted form of "dviginti"); and this is the more remarkable as the original form is maintained in the "dvadeset," or "dvaes," of the Slavonic; and "twice" in Sanscrit is dvis. Another evidence is obtained from the Sanscrit verb asmi, “I am," where santi, "they are," is put for asanti, &c. The word "Bekos" is thought to be Phrygian; and Strabo, following Hipponax, says it was the Cyprian word for bread. (vii. p. 340.) Larcher remarks that deprived of its Greek termination, "os," and reduced to "Bek," it looks like an imitation of the bleating of the goats, which the children had been accustomed to hear; but it might rather be considered one of the two primitive sounds 5. (ba or pa, and ma) first uttered by infants, which have been the origin of the names of father and mother in the earliest offsets |