Heading: (Palaeography)
Author: Forster, Charles
Title: The One Primeval Language traced experimentally through ancient inscriptions in alphabetic characters of lost powers from the four continents...
Place Published: London
Publisher:Richard Bentley
Date Published: 1852-1854
Description:

3 volumes plus large folding chart in separate slipcase, as issued. [iii]-xiv, [4], 190; vi, [4], 300; vii, [3], 343 pp. With 44 lithographed or engraved plates & maps, many folding, 4 in color; plus the folding chart in slipcase. (8vo) 22x13.8 cm (8¾x5½"), original cloth stamped in gilt.

Rare complete set of this significant work on the origin of languages, with much on archaeological findings in Palestine and Egypt, and on to Assyria, Babylonia, and Persia. The first volume is the 1852 second edition (following on the first edition of 1851); the second and third volumes, published in 1853 and 1854, seem to be first editions. (The separately published first volume appears to have met with popular approval, and a slightly expanded "second edition" was quickly printed, with two additional volumes subsequently published. Volumes two and three expand upon and continue the theories and postulates of the first volume.) Of particular note is the assertion in the third volume that the Lost Tribes of Israel wound up in present Afghanistan (called "Kabulistan: The Land of the Tribes" on a folding map), and there are four fine color lithographed plates depicting Afghan natives. The folding chart in slipcase is "A Harmony of Primeval Alphabets," and is quite scarce.

The title of Vol. I continues: "...Including the voice of Israel from the rocks of Sinai: and the vestiges of patriarchal tradition from the monuments of Egypt, Etruria, and Southern Arabia."

The secondary or subtitles of the three volumes are:

• Part I: The Voice of Israel from the Rocks of Sinai: or, the Sinaitic Inscriptions Contemp[orary Records of the Miracles and Wanderings of the Exode.
• The Monuments of Egypt, and Their Vestiges of Patriarchal Traditions: Forming the Second Part of "The One Primeval Language."
• Part III: The Monuments of Assyria, Babylonia, and Persia: with a New Key for the Recovery of the Lost Ten Tribes.

Some wear and bumps to extremities, some minor foxing and aging within, bookplates; very good.