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had explored a seventh part of the Australian continent, observed that the regions through which he passed were very thinly peopled; and he considered that the total number of inhabitants could not exceed, and probably might be considerably under, 6,000. The tribes comprise but few individuals— often not more than forty or fifty in number, and rarely exceeding a hundred; and they are widely dispersed over large tracts of country. The gradual decrease of the native population has long been noticed. As long since as 1832, Mr. Handt, of the Church Missionary Society, wrote, "The aborigines are very fast wearing away wherever the whites get a footing. This arises from the consequences of those vices into which the Europeans initiate them. Satan has sent his messengers first, and they have been very active: I doubt whether the ministers of Christ will be as indefatigable." The process of decay has since, it is to be feared, advanced with accelerated speed.

Several attempts have been made to translate the Scriptures into the languages of Australia, but hitherto only detached portions have been completed. On one occasion, when a chapter translated by the Church missionaries into the language of the tribe among whom they laboured was read publicly, the natives of their own accord approached the reader, and when he had finished, one of them almost in an ecstacy jumped up and exclaimed, "Book for blackfellows! Book for black fellows!" Similar instances from time to time have occurred, showing that labour is not in vain in the Lord; yet the deep moral degradation of the natives is a formidable impediment to missionary efforts. The debased state of their intellectual and moral faculties has been ascribed to a politico-religious system, which, though purely oral, pervades the whole of Australia. The origin of this artfully-contrived system is wholly unknown. It consists, says Sir George Grey, of "complex laws which not only deprive the Austral of all free agency of thought, but, at the same time, by allowing no scope whatever for the development of any great moral qualification, necessarily bind him down to a hopeless state of barbarism, from which it is impossible for him to emerge; while those laws are so ingeniously devised as to have a direct tendency to annihilate any effort to overthrow them."

The Rev. Mr. Threlkeld has translated the Gospel of St. Luke into the Lake Macquarie dialect; but although his grammar of that dialect evinces some acquaintance with the idiom, no opportunities have yet occurred to test the critical merit of his version.

CLASS VI.-AFRICAN LANGUAGES.

COPTIC

SPECIMEN, FROM ST. JOHN'S GOSPEL, CHAP. I. v. 1 to 14.

ben taрxн HE пCAXI ne oroz nicaxi naqxh haten ø† oroz ne orнort ne ПІСАХІ. 2 флёнаухн ісхем гн Ђатен фѣ. атоноту йпеглі успі Ђен фнетлуюспи.

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сволгIтоту. непоод ан ПЄ ПІТШІНІ Алла гіна йтедеривере А потШІНІ. НАЦУОП Ихе Пютшіні йтафині фнетеротшіні ёрши нівєн сөннот Епікосмос. надхн Ђен пікосиос пе отог пікосиос лушпіёволгITOTY отог йпепкоснос COTWHY. 11 аді гл нетеноту отог нетеноту йпотшопу дршот. 12 ин ав статуong èршот адѣ ер ншот сер унрійнотѣннеөндгѣ спецран 13 ин ёте сволђен снод ан не отде дволђен фото йсаре ан не отде дволђен фотшу Приш ан не алла ётатилсот ёволен фт. oroz nicaxi aqep orcapę oroz aqywni ǹbphi йнтен отог аннат спецот йфрнѣ йпшот Йотун йиататуйтоту йпедот единг йгиот неи пвөині.

14

I.-GEOGRAPHICAL_EXTENT AND STATISTICS.

COPTIC derives its name from the town of Koptos in Upper Egypt. It may come possibly from the words Kah-Ptah, land of Ptah or Phtah, the tutelary god of Egypt; and it was once the vernacular tongue of Egypt, but it has for centuries been superseded by the Arabic, and it is now only cultivated by biblical students, and by a very few of the Coptic priests. The liturgy of the Coptic Church is still read publicly in this venerable language, but it is utterly unintelligible to the majority of the Copts, who are generally unacquainted with any language but the Arabic. These people are descended from the ancient Egyptians, but their race has been mingled with the Persian, Greek, Roman, Arab, and Turkish nations, to whom Egypt has been successively subject; for according to the Divine prediction (Ezek. xxix. 15, and xxx. 13), Egypt has been the "basest of kingdoms," and the prey of foreign powers; and no prince of pure Egyptian lineage has, since the year в. с. 350, swayed the sceptre of the Pharaohs.

Under this foreign domination, the population, the resources, and the civilisation of Egypt have (till within a very recent period) gradually decreased. According to Diodorus Siculus, this country,

in the time of the ancient kings, contained a population of 7,000,000. At the beginning of the nineteenth century the amount of population had dwindled down to 2,500,000, and subsequently, owing to the ravages of the plague, and the long-continued influence of a Turkish system of government, this number had become further diminished to 1,800,000 inhabitants. The most recent estimates, however, make the population of Egypt, at the present time, amount to about 2,500,000.

The diminished population of Egypt in modern as compared with ancient times becomes the more striking when we consider that the present inhabitants of Egypt are chiefly of Arabic or foreign origin, and that the Copts themselves form scarcely one-fourteenth part of the motley population now congregated on the soil of their ancestors. Their ranks have been thinned by persecution, by frequent intermarriages with Mohammedan families, and by the secession of many individuals to Islamism; and, according to a recent estimate, they do not now number above 150,000 souls. A few among them have joined the Romish and Greek Churches, but nationally they belong to the Jacobite, Eutychian, or Monophysite sect. Their distinguishing doctrinal peculiarity is the confounding of the Godhead and manhood of the Lord Jesus Christ,—a heresy which was condemned by the fourth general council (that of Chalcedon) A.D. 451. The Coptic hierarchy is in several respects not dissimilar to the Romish: it consists of a patriarch, or supreme head of the church, and a metropolitan of the Abyssinians, with bishops, archpriests, priests, deacons, and monks.

II. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE LANGUAGE.

The only language known to have derived its origin from the ancient Egyptian are the three dialects of the Coptic. This circumstance has invested the Coptic with peculiar interest in the eyes of the learned, particularly since the possibility of the ultimate recovery of the lost Egyptian language has been suggested by the ardent philologers who have devoted themselves to the deciphering of the hieroglyphic, hieratic, and enchorial inscriptions. In consequence of this connection with the ancient language of Egypt, it has been found that Coptic may not only be of service in recovering the literary treasures of that country, but also in solving the problem which has recently attracted so much attention. concerning the position held by the Egyptian in the scale of languages, and the nature of its affinities with the now isolated Indo-European and Shemitic groups.

Coptic would have been extremely valuable as an adjunct in these intricate investigations, had it been subjected to no further mutations from the true Egyptian type than those which the lapse of centuries naturally occasions. But when the successors of Alexander established themselves in Alexandria, the language of the court was diffused through the country; and, though the Egyptian language did not cease to be spoken, a Greek element was infused into it, many Greek words were adopted, and the Greek alphabet was employed even in writing the native language. Hence part of the Coptic language is essentially Greek, or rather an admixture of old Egyptian and Greek, so intimately blended, and so disguised by orthographical changes, that it is now sometimes difficult to resolve the component parts into their original elements.

There are, however, words and grammatical principles in Coptic which unquestionably entered into the ancient Egyptian language; and it is remarkable that affinities may be traced between these now obsolete forms of speech and corresponding forms existing in languages spoken at the present day in regions far remote from Egypt. Lepsius has shown that the Coptic possesses certain affinities with the Indo-European class of languages, and especially as respects its numerals, with the Sanscrit. Benfey and various other scholars have pointed out the relationship between its grammatical structure and that of the Shemitic class. Klaproth has detected a striking resemblance between many Coptic words and the corresponding terms in the Zirian, Mordvinian, Ostjakian, Albanian, and particularly the Tschere missian and Tschuwaschian languages: he has also found resemblances between Coptic and Samoiede words, and some instances of affinity between Coptic and the languages spoken in the region of the Caucasus. It is remarkable, however, that in addition to these extra-African relations of the Coptic, it has several points of contact with the African languages, even with those spoken by the negro

nations; so that whatever analogy may subsist between it and other groups of languages, it cannot properly be isolated from the African class.

There are three principal dialects in Coptic, viz:-the Memphitic, the Sahidic, and the Bashmuric. The Memphitic, spoken in the neighbourhood of Memphis, is the least pure of the three, and contains the largest amount of Greek words. The Sahidic dialect spoken in Upper Egypt, and further from foreign intercourse, is more purely Egyptian, and bears the nearest relationship to the original Egyptian language as we have it in hieroglyphic inscriptions, and in hieratic and demotic MSS. Whereas the Bashmuric dialect, spoken in a portion of the Delta, differs from the others chiefly by certain changes in the vowels and in some of the consonants: it is the softest, and the Sahidic is the roughest of the three dialects.

The Coptic alphabet with which these several dialects are written in MSS. and printed books consists of 32 letters, seven of which are of purely Egyptian origin, to be traced to existing hieroglyphics, for the purpose of expressing sounds not found in Greek: the rest of the letters are all Greek. Some uncertainty still prevails as to the correct articulation of some of the Egyptian characters in the Coptic alphabet, which are pronounced differently by different individuals, even in Egypt. But in no wise does that hinder the study of the language, which is now cultivated with greater earnestness than ever it was, and which bids fair to bring to light greater riches of archaic lore than have yet been discovered. The study of ancient Egyptian through the Coptic is daily gaining greater importance; and ere long we may hope to be able to read ancient Egyptian papyri and inscriptions, not with a certain amount of probability only, liable to difference of opinion, as is the case at present, but with actual certainty.

The Coptic bears strong affinity to the Shemitic languages, in the pronouns, suffixes, and affixes, especially; and also in some of its radicals. But it has in common with the Georgian, for instance, the use of infixes or particles, whether remnants of pronouns or not, which are inserted in the body of the word. The construction of the Coptic grammar is most regular-almost, it might be said, geometrical; and as it is a relic of the highest antiquity, it possesses a charm which perhaps no other language has in common with it in its aboriginal stamp. The few following words may give an idea of the affinity which the Coptic bears to the ancient Egyptian:

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English
hart

dedication

aik

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glory

teeth
flesh

to eat

the west, hades

to live

stone, etc.

III.-VERSIONS OF THE SCRIPTURES IN THIS LANGUAGE.

Although the Coptic possesses great interest in an ethnological point of view, its importance becomes unspeakably greater when we regard it as the favoured medium in which one of the earliest and most faithful versions of the Scriptures has been transmitted to us. The Old Testament was translated from the Septuagint, in all probability during the course of the second or third century. The New Testament was drawn immediately from the original Greek, but there is much difference of opinion concerning the period of its execution: by some authors it is attributed to the third, by some to the fourth, and by others to the fifth century. It is recorded of Antonius, who began to lead an ascetic life A.D. 271, that he read the Egyptian Scriptures; but whether it was the Coptic or the Sahidic version which he possessed, still remains doubtful.

The Coptic New Testament, in its general character, is conformed to the Alexandrine recension. According to Michaelis, some of its readings bear a striking affinity to those of the Latin version, and occasionally to those of the Codex Cantabrigiensis. The quotations of Origen, Eusebius, and Cyril, agree pretty nearly with the corresponding passages in this version. Several Arabic translations have been executed from the Coptic, and valuable Coptic MSS. are preserved in the Vatican, Paris, Berlin, Bodleian, and other libraries. In some of the MSS. of the Gospel according to St. John, the history of the woman taken in adultery is inserted, while in others it is omitted. The disputed passage in 1 John v. 7 is not to be found in any Coptic MS.

The project of publishing a printed edition of this version was first entertained by Thomas Marshall: he prepared the Four Gospels for the press, but died before their completion. The work was then undertaken by David Wilkins, or Wilkie, a Prussian, who, at the expense of the University of Oxford, brought out, in 1716, a complete edition of the New Testament, to which he appended a Latin translation. The text of this edition was formed from Bodleian MSS., conferred with MSS. from the Paris and Vatican libraries. In 1829, an edition of 2000 copies of the Coptic Gospels, printed in parallel columns with the Arabic version, was published by the British and Foreign Bible Society. The text had been prepared by the Coptic patriarch at the instance of Mr. Jowett. It was carried through the press under the care of Dr. Tattam of Bedford, in conjunction with Professor Lee. An edition of the New Testament, with emendations drawn from Berlin Codices, was printed by Schwartze, at Leipsic, in 1838. Ten years subsequently, another edition of the New Testament was undertaken by the same editor; but this later edition is enriched with copious critical and grammatical notes, and the text is chiefly drawn from Berlin MSS.

No complete edition of the Coptic Old Testament has yet been published, for several of the books are missing; it is, however, probable that they are not actually lost, and that they may yet be found in some of the cloisters of Egypt. The Pentateuch was published in 1731, in London, by Wilkins, the editor of the New Testament. The twelve Prophetical Books were printed at Oxford, in 1836, under the editorship of Professor Lee and of Dr. Tattam. Fragments of the Lamentations of Jeremiah, (consisting of chap. iv. ver. 22, and chap. v.), and the sixth chapter of the apocryphal book of Baruch, were inserted by Quatremère in his great work on the Language and Literature of Egypt, published at Paris in 1804. These portions constitute the whole of the Coptic Old Testament hitherto printed, with the exception of the Psalms, of which no less than five editions have appeared. The first two of these editions were published at Rome by the Congregation de Propaganda Fide, the one in 1744, the other in 1749: they were designed for the benefit of the Coptic Christians in Egypt, and the Arabic version was therefore printed in parallel columns with the Coptic text. A critical edition of the Psalter was edited in 1837 by Woide and Ideler, and printed at Berlin. Another critical edition appeared at Leipsic in 1844, under the care of Schwartze An edition consisting of 2014 copies of the Coptic Psalter, printed in parallel columns with the Arabic version, has likewise been issued by the British and Foreign Bible Society.

The Twelve Minor Prophets were published with a Latin translation by Dr. Tattam, in 1836. In 1846, the same scholar published the Book of Job, with an English translation. In 1849, Bardelli at Pisa, published the Book of Daniel without a translation; and in 1852, Dr. Tattam published the "Prophetæ Majores," Isaiah, Jeremiah, the Lamentations, Ezekiel, and Daniel, with a Latin version; in 2 vols. 8vo. We must not omit also, a magnificent edition of the whole New Testament, in Royal 4to., in Coptic and Arabic, printed with type cast for the purpose, and intended for the Coptic churches of Egypt; published at the expense of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, in 1847. There is also another edition of the Pentateuch with critical notes, and published in numbers at Paris, of which the first two or three numbers only have appeared.

IV. RESULTS OF THE DISSEMINATION OF THIS VERSION.

This ancient version has been the means of keeping alive the form if not the spirit of Christianity,

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