The usual grammatical root in Arabic is composed of three consonants, as in the examples given above. Most of the Semitic languages are in too fully formed a state to allow us to see whether or no these roots, which are of course at the least dissyllabic, grew up out of single sounds; but a comparison with some languages of the Semitic family (_e.g._ Egyptian) which are still near to their early radical state, show us that they have probably done so.
The Coptic language, which is the nearest we can get to the tongue of the ancient Egyptians, is extremely interesting in that it displays the processes of grammar formation, as has just been said, in a more intelligible shape than we find in the higher Semitic tongues.
P. 98. We are here speaking, be it remembered, of families of _language_. The ethnology of a people is not necessarily the same as its language; so that when we speak of a family of language including the tongues of a certain number of races, we do not imply that they were wholly of the same ethnic family. This caution is especially necessary as regards the earliest great pre-historic nations who seem to have been what are called Cushites--anything but pure Semites (see Chapter V.)--but whose languages may properly be ranged in the Semitic family. The Egyptian, for instance, was more nearly monosyllabic than any other Semitic tongue (Chapter XIII.); yet such inflexions as it has show an evident relationship with Hebrew and other Semitic languages (see Appendix to Bunsen’s _Egypt’s Place in Universal History_).
Brugsch, _Recueils de Monuments Égyptiens_. Brugsch, _Histoire d’Égypt_. Brugsch, _Matériaux pour servir_, etc. Bunsen, _Egypt’s Place_, etc. (ed. Dr. Birch). Ebers, _Egyptian History_. Flower, W. H., _Races of Men_. Legge, _Chinese Classics, with Introduction, etc._ Lenormant, _Manual of the Ancient History of the East_ (trs.). Lepsius, _Chronologie der Egypten_. Mariette Pasha, _Abrégé de l’Histoire d’Égypte_. Maspero, _Histoire Ancienne des Peuples de l’Orient_. Maury, _Le Livre et l’Homme_. Rawlinson, _Herodotus, with Notes_. Rawlinson, _Five Great Monarchies_, etc. Rougé (Vte. de), _Examen de l’Ouvrage de M. Bunsen_. Sayce, _Ancient Empires of the East_. Tylor, _Anthropology_.