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BOOK III,
Chap. IV.
ANOTHER

CHAPTER IV.

ANOTHER GROUP OF ARCHEOLOGISTS AND
EXPLORERS. THE SPOILS OF XANTHUS,
OF BABYLON, OF NINEVEH, OF HALICAR-
NASSUS, AND OF CARTHAGE.

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The Libraries of the East.-The Monasteries of the Nitrian Desert, and their Explorers.-William CURETON and his Labours on the MSS. of Nitria, and in other Departments of Oriental Literature.-The Researches in the Levant of Sir Charles FELLOWS, of Mr. LAYARD, and of Mr. Charles NEWTON.-Other conspicuous Augmentors of the Collection of Antiquities.

WE have now to turn to that vast field of research and exploration, from which the national Museum of AnARCHEOLO- tiquities has derived an augmentation that has sufficed to double, within twenty-five years, its previous scientific and

GROUP OF

GISTS AND
EXPLORERS.

ARCHEOLO

literary value to the Public. In this chapter we have BOOK III, Chap. IV. to tell of not a little romantic adventure; of remote ANOTHER and perilous explorations and excavations; sometimes, of sharp conflicts between English pertinacity and Oriental GISTS AND cunning; often, of great endurance of hardship and privation in the endeavour at once to promote learning-the world over-and to add some new and not unworthy entries on the long roll of British achievement.

EXPLORERS.

LIBRARIES

Two distinct groups of explorers have now to be recorded. The labours of both groups carry us to the Levant. What has been done of late years by the searchers after manuscripts, in their effort to recover some of the lost treasures THE of the old Libraries of the East, will be most fairly appre- or THE EAST. ciated by the reader, if, before telling of the researches and the studies of CURZON, TATTAM, CURETON, and their fellowworkers in Eastern manuscript archæology, some brief prefatory notice be given of the earlier labours, in the same field, of HUNTINGTON, BROWNE, and other travellers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Mention must also be made of the explorations of SONNINI and of ANDRÉOSSI.

THE

RESEARCH ES

or ROBERT

OF

HUNTING

TON IN THE

MONAS

About the year 1680, Robert HUNTINGTON, afterwards Bishop of Raphoe, visited the Monasteries of the Nitrian Desert, and made special and eager research for the Syriac version of the Epistles of St. Ignatius, of the existence of NURIAN which there had been wide-spread belief amongst the TERIES; learned, since the time of Archbishop USSHER. But his quest was fruitless, although, as it is now well known, a Syriac version of some of those epistles did really exist in one of the monasteries which HUNTINGTON visited. The monks, then as afterwards, were chary of showing their MSS., very small as was the care they took of them. The

BOOK III,
Chap. IV.
ANOTHER

GROUP OF
ARCHEOLO-

GISTS AND

EXPLORER3.

AND THOSE
OF SONNINI,
BROWNE,

AND OTHERS.

only manuscripts mentioned by HUNTINGTON, in recording his visits to three of the principal communities-St. Mary Deipara, St. Macarius, and El Baramous-are an Old Testament in the Estrangelo character; two volumes of Chrysostom in Coptic and Arabic; a Coptic Lectionary in four volumes; and a New Testament in Coptic and Arabic.

Towards the close of the following century, these monasteries received the successive visits of SONNINI, of William George BROWNE, and of General Count ANDRÉOSSI. SONNINI says nothing of books. BROWNE Saw but few-among them an Arabo-Coptic Lexicon, the works of St. Gregory, and the Old and New Testaments in Arabicalthough he was told by the superior that they had nearly eight hundred volumes, with none of which they would part. General ANDRÉOSSI, on the other hand, speaks Africa, &c., slightingly of the books as merely ascetic works, . . . some in Arabic, and some in Coptic, with an Arabic transHuntington, lation in the margin;' but adds, 'We brought away some of the latter class, which appear to have a date of six centuries.' This was in 1799. BROWNE died in 1814; SONNINI DE MANONCOURT, in 1812; Count ANDRÉOSSI survived until 1828.

Browne,
Travels in

p. 43.

Observations

(repr. in Ray's Coll.).

Andréossi,

Vallées des Lac de Nation, pass.

In the year 1827, the late Duke of NORTHUMBERLAND (then Lord PRUDHOE) made more elaborate researches. His immediate object was a philological one, his Lordship desiring to further Mr. TATTAM's labours on a Coptic and Arabic Dictionary. Hearing that 'Libraries were said to be preserved, both at the Baramous and Syrian convents,' hoe's Narra he proceeded to El Baramous, accompanied by Mr. LINART, and encamped outside the walls.

Lord Prud

tive, &c., as

abridged in Quarterly Review,

vol. lxxvii, pp. 45, seq.

"The monks

in this convent,' says the Duke, 'about twelve in number, appeared poor and ignorant. They looked on us with

Chap. IV.

GROUP OF

ARCHEOLO

EXPLORERS.

great jealousy, and denied having any books, except those Book III, in the church, which they showed us.' But having been ANOTHER judiciously mollified by some little seductive present, on the next day, 'in a moment of good humour, they agreed to GISTS AND show us their Library. From it I selected a certain number of Manuscripts, which, with the Lexicon (Selim) already mentioned, were carried into the monk's room. A long deliberation ensued, . as to my offer to purchase them. Only one could write, and at last it it was agreed that he should copy the Selim, which copy and the MSS. I had collected were to be mine, in exchange for a fixed sum of dollars, to which I added a present of rice, coffee, tobacco, and such other articles as I had to offer.' After narrating the acquisition of a few other MSS. at the Syrian convent, or Convent of St. Mary Deipara, his Lordship proceeds: These manuscripts I presented to Mr. TATTAM, and gave him some account of the small room with its trap-door, through which I descended, candle in hand, to examine the manuscripts, where books, and parts of books, and scattered leaves, in Coptic, Ethiopic, Syriac, and Arabic, were lying in a mass, on which I stood. . . . In In appearance, it seemed as if, on some sudden emergency, the whole Library had been thrown down this trapdoor, and they had remained undisturbed, in their dust and neglect, for some centuries.'

THE

RESEARCHES

IN THE

MONASTE-
RIES OF MR.

Ten years later, Mr. TATTAM himself continued these researches. But in the interval they had been taken up by the energetic and accomplished traveller Mr. Robert LEVANTINE CURZON, to whose charming Visits to the Monasteries of the Levant it is mainly owing that a curious aspect of monastic CURZON. life, which theretofore had only interested a few scholars, has become familiar to thousands of readers of all classes. Mr. CURZON'S researches were much more thorough

BOOK III,
Chap. IV.
ANOTHER

GROUP OF
ARCHEOLO-

GISTS AND

EXPLORERS.

than those of any of his predecessors. He was felicitous
in his endeavours to win the good graces of the monks, and
seems often to have made his visits as pleasant to his hosts
as afterwards to his readers. But, how attractive soever,
only one of them has to be noticed in connexion with our
present topic-that, namely, to the Convent of the Syrians
mentioned already. I found,' says Mr. CURZON, 'several
Coptic MSS. lying on the floor, but some were placed in
niches in the stone wall. They were all on paper, except
three or four; one of them was a superb MS. of the
Gospels, with a commentary by one of the early fathers.
Two others were doing duty as coverings to large open pots
or jars, which had contained preserves, long since evapo-
rated. On the floor I found a fine Coptic and Arabic
Dictionary, with which they refused to part.' After a most
graphic account of a conversation with the Father Abbot-
the talk being enlivened with many cups of rosoglio-he
proceeds to recount his visit to a small closet, vaulted with
stone, which was filled to the depth of two feet or more
with loose leaves of Syriac MSS., which now form one of
the chief treasures of the British Museum.' The collection
thus preserved' was that of the Coptic monks; the same
monastery contained another which was that of the
Abyssinian monks. The disposition of the manuscripts
in the Library,' continues Mr. CURZON, 'was very origi-
nal. .
The room was about twenty-six feet long,
twenty feet wide, and twelve feet high; the roof was
formed of the trunks of palm-trees. A wooden shelf was
carried, in the Egyptian style, around the walls, at the
height of the top of the door, . . . . . underneath the shelf
various long wooden pegs projected from the wall, . . . . on
which hung the Abyssinian MSS., of which this curious
Library was entirely composed. The books of Abyssinia

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