We are indebted to Dr. Prichard(104) for a comprehensive and satisfactory demonstration of the resemblance in manners, mythology, and in social and political institutions of the ancient Egyptians and Indians. These Nations agreed in religious and philosophical dogmas, in a superstitious veneration of animals and of the most conspicuous objects of nature, in the system of Castes, and in other features. Dr. Prichard’s German translator, the celebrated A. W. Schlegel, has attempted to account for these points of coincidence by the ordinary tendencies of human nature under similar circumstances, a theory which, though maintained with distinguished ability, must be felt to be essentially paradoxical. As Dr. Prichard observes: “No person who fully considers the intimate relation and almost exact parallelism that has been traced between the Egyptians and the Hindoos, will be perfectly satisfied with such a solution in that particular example.”(105) Dr. Prichard concludes that these features of resemblance must be ascribed to a common origin. But in the adoption of this conclusion he encounters a formidable difficulty, arising from the consideration that the Egyptian Tongue cannot, according to his views, be identified with the other languages of mankind. This difficulty, like many others of the same nature, will be found to receive a satisfactory solution from the comparison contained in Appendix A, in which are embodied a greater number of words from the Egyptian than from any other language of the African continent. It will thence be evident that the failure which has attended the attempts of the writers noticed by Dr. Prichard to identify the Egyptian with the Asiatic languages, has arisen from the predominant error of Philological writers,—viz. the expectation of finding in every respect a close and peculiar affinity between the languages of nations, who, though contiguous, must in all probability have been separated in the earliest ages of the world. Hence the unsuccessful issue of those researches of which the object has been to show that the Egyptian is a dialect of the Hebrew. But, notwithstanding the unfavorable result which has necessarily attended investigations conducted on a false basis, it will be seen, nevertheless, that the adoption of a wider range of comparison, agreeably to the principles explained at p. 16 and p. 87, and carried out in Appendix A, serves to render unequivocally manifest the original unity of the Egyptians not only with the Jews and other nations of Asia, but also with those of all the four continents. In this place I shall introduce, in illustration of this proposition, some additional examples, which possess an independent interest in connexion with Dr. Prichard’s inquiry into the mythology of the Egyptians, and with the analogous inquiries pursued in the last Chapter of this work.