An abundance of popular literature has familiarised the public with the outer aspect of ancient Egypt, but the world is still far from recognising the message she sent to mankind. We must go back to ‘the Wonderland on the banks of the mighty Nile’ for the origin of all things which most interest us. It is the very cradle-land of language. Her tongue contains all the elements of the so-called ‘Aryan,’[464] Semitic, and Allophyllian or Turanian families, and dates long before the days of the present distribution. Bunsen’s ‘Egypt’ first noticed this fact at some length, without, however, dwelling upon its importance. ‘All Semitic pronouns and suffixes,’ says M. C. Bertin, ‘can be traced back to Egyptian, especially the Egyptian of the earliest dynasties’; he might have added much about other mechanical forms. Brugsch tells us (i. 3) that the primitive roots and the essential elements of the Egyptian grammar point to an intimate connection of the Indo-Germanic (!) and Semitic languages.[465] The Allophyllian or Agglutinative Turanian,[466] a _tertium quid_ which is neither ‘Aryan’ nor ‘Semitic,’ is also traceable in old Coptic. [Heading: _ORIGINS IN EGYPT._] What, then, do these facts suggest? Simply that the elements existing in Egyptian travelled from the banks of the Nile and evolved, discreted, and differentiated themselves in many centres. The word-compounding or Iranian scheme found homes in Eastern Europe (Greece, Italy, and the Slavonic or quasi-Asiatic half); in Asia Minor—especially Phrygia—in Mesopotamia, in Persia, and finally in India, where the settlement was comparatively modern. This explains how a philologist would derive Sanskrit from Lithuania. This saves us from the ‘Aryan heresy’;[467] this abolishes ‘Indo-European,’ and worse still ‘Indo-Germanic’—that model specimen of national modesty. Both are terms which contain a theory and an unproved theory. Again, the word-developing or Arabian scheme, absurdly termed Semitic (from Shem!), increased, multiplied, and perfected itself in Northern Africa and Arabia, while the Turanian, becoming independent and specialised in Akkadian, overspread Tartary and China. And this one primæval language of Egypt framed for itself an alphabet whence are derived all others. This is proved by the fact that each and all begin, as Plutarch tells us old Coptic did, with the letter A. Of its age in Nile-land we may judge from the cartouche containing Khufu’s name, left by some workman on an inner block of the Great Pyramid.[468] How many generations of articulate-speaking men must have come and gone before so artificial and artistic a system as the Royal Signature upon the Shield occurred to the human mind!