cation of the Nabatean coins and the deciphering of their legends. It may be added that a gem in one of the European cabinets, previously regarded as Phoenician, has been recognized as Nabatean, and its inscription read. This deserves notice as the sole extant specimen, so far as is yet known, of a work of art proceeding from that quarter. Another isolated specimen but suggestive of the wide range that these investigations may yet take, has been found in a bilingual inscription in the Capitoline museum at Rome, taken from a grave on the Via Portuensis. It is thus described by Lenormant in the Journal Asiatique :

"It is the epitaph, accompanied by the characteristic symbol of the candlestick with its seven branches, of a Jewess, named Ammias (feminine of the y of the Sinaitic salutations), who was born in a town called Laodicea, probably that of Cole-Syria, and died at the age of eighty-five years. The Greek text is accompanied by the formula of the Sinaitic inscriptions, written with the same orthography and the same characters, and replacing the Hebrew formula of the other epitaphs discovered in the same catacomb."

Strangely enough among the vast medley of inscriptions belonging to different ages and in different languages carved upon the rocks of Sinai, there is one which, as remarked by Levy (Zeit. D. M. Gesell., xiv., p. 483), appears to be in Sanskrit letters. The accurate knowledge possessed of Sanskritic palæography will enable scholars to determine its age approximately at least from the shape of the characters employed. It is in any event an interesting relic of the intercourse subsisting between India and Western Asia at the epoch to which it belongs. And it may not be without some religious significance. Possibly it may contain some indication of the spread of Buddhism westward, and thus, so far as it goes, tend to confirm the suspicion which has been entertained of its advance even into Egypt. Another inscription from a remote but opposite quarter is in the Numidian character, the same that is found in the celebrated Thugga inscription from the neighborhood of Carthage, and suggests pilgrimages from this quarter likewise.

It is even possible that these investigations may ultimately be found to have some points of relation with' scriptural studies. This possibility would be converted into certainty

in one instance at least, if the new rendering, which Levy proposes for a difficult and disputed clause in Prov. xxx. 31, could be shown to be correct. Among the things there stated to be "comely in going" is, as our version has it, "a king against whom there is no rising up." Gesenius, who suspects an Arabism, translates "a king who has the people with him." Hitzig assumes an error in transcription, and alters the text into "a king who has God with him." Levy finds, or thinks he finds, the word which occasions all the embarrassment in this passage, in the Sinaitic inscriptions as the name of a divinity, and on this ground, while he defends the integrity of the text, he adopts Hitzig's understanding of it.

This more than doubtful combination is, however, of trifling consequence as compared with the intimate bearing which this whole subject would have upon the verity of the Scriptural record, if the view taken of it in the works named at the head of this article could be substantiated. We must devote to it, therefore, a brief consideration. Rev. Charles Forster, "one of the six preachers of the cathedral of Canterbury, and rector of Stisted, Essex," has revived in these publications the theory of Cosmas in the sixth century, that these inscriptions were the work of the children of Israel during their forty years' wandering in the wilderness. This he has sought to vindicate and establish in the most elaborate manner. He has further wrought out an alphabet of his own, by which he undertakes to decipher in detail these records upon the rocks, adding a translation from which it would appear that they were designed to record the miracles and divine interpositions of that eventful period. In spite, however, of the indefatigable industry shown in these volumes, and of the elegance of their appearance, which in the case of one of them is really sumptuous, and notwithstanding the pious intent of their author, we are obliged in candor to say that they are not likely to be of any advantage either to science or religion, so far as their main scope and purpose is concerned. The visionary character of Mr. Forster, his readiness to substitute conjecture for facts, and his unfitness for the solution of so perplexed a problem in which the data are so few, the chances of error so numerous, and the rigorous accuracy of mathemat

ical demonstration so absolutely essential to safe results, is shown by a trivial circumstance at the very outset. Finding the name Cosmas on one of the Sinaitic inscriptions, he springs at once to the conclusion that this is an autographic record of the visit of Cosmas Indicopleustes to that region in the sixth century. (Primeval Language, p. 4, note.)

A careless and almost ludicrous blunder, which he makes in interpreting a Greek inscription found among the medley on the rocks of Sinai, does not tend to conciliate our confidence in him as an expounder of inscriptions in an unknown tongue and an unknown character. Some soldier, sent perhaps to chastise the predatory tribes of this desolate region for their treachery or cruelty, has scratched his judgment of them upon the rocks in the following uncomplimentary terms, KAKON FENOC, "rascally race ;" and then proceeds, according to Mr. Forster's explanation (ib., p. 30), orтoc CTPATIWTHO EгPAÐA ПANEMI XI. We lay no stress upon the fact that he reads OTTOC instead of AотIос (Lupus), as this was a very natural error and is doubtless chargeable upon the inaccuracy of the copy which he had. But he takes ПIANEMI to be the Macedonian month Panemos, and bases his estimate of the date of the inscription upon this hypothesis. This involves, in

addition to grammatical and other difficulties, the incongruous assumption that the two letters which follow are the Roman numerals in a Greek text. The true reading is IIAN EMH XIPI, "I, Lupus, wrote the whole with my own hand;" whereupon his entire argument vanishes into smoke.

Mr. Forster evidently has not the qualities which are requisite to success in deciphering obscure inscriptions. He has no conception of the patient toil and extensive learning necessary to execute such a task, nor of the pains which must be taken to guard against mistakes and arrive at correct and reliable conclusions. He says, p. xi., that any one "competent to consult the Arabic lexicon," by using his alphabet, can decipher inscriptions for themselves "from whatever quarter of the world" they may come. Nor has he the impartial and well-balanced mind which is needed to conduct an intricate investigation. He has a preconceived theory to sustain, and every thing is pressed, nolens volens, into its service. In his

transcription and analysis of the ancient legends, which he professes to unravel, he allows himself the utmost latitude. His alphabet is made up of a mixture of the Hebrew, Greek, Arabic, Ethiopic, and Syriac (p. 46). He omits letters ad libitum, assigns to the same cliaracter different meanings, and to different characters the same meaning, and often reads a whole group of characters as one, being governed apparently by the exigency of the case and the sense which he desires to discover. And then the result reached is no intelligible language, but a jargon, a mere jumble of unmeaning sounds. There are no inflected words, no personal endings of verbs, no prepositions or words indicative of relation, but a string of letters which he divides off at random into what he assumes to be Arabic roots, whose meanings he takes just as he finds them in Golius' Lexicon, without discriminating between what is ancient and what is modern, what is common to the Arabic, with the Hebrew, and what is peculiar to the Arabic; and even thus he is sometimes obliged to desert the Arabic Lexicon, and be helped out by the Hebrew. If the inscriptions as he reads them, that is, as transcribed by him into Arabic letters and divided by him into words, were put into the hands of the most accomplished Orientalist, we may safely venture to say, that he could make no consistent sense out of them; he certainly never would find the meaning in them which Mr. Forster professes to discover there. The language of the inscriptions, as he makes it out, is such as never was spoken and has no representative under the sun.

As the result he finds the facts of the Pentateuch corroborated in almost every line. We quote his own summary statement (Primeval Language, pp. 61, 62):

"Among the events of the Exode these records comprise, besides the healing of the waters of Marah, the passage of the Red Sea, with the introduction of Pharaoh twice by name, and two notices of the Egyptian tyrant's vain attempt to save himself by flight on horseback from the returning waters, together with hieroglyphic representations of himself and of his horse, in accordance with a hitherto unexplained passage of the Song of Moses: 'For the horse of Pharaoh went in with his chariots and with his horsemen into the sea,' etc.; they comprise, further, the miraculous supplies of manna and of flesh; the battle of Rephidim, with the mention of Moses by his office, and of Aaron and Hur by their names; the same inscription repeated, describing the holding up of Moses' hands

by Aaron and Hur, and their supporting him with a stone, illustrated by a drawing apparently of the stone containing within it the inscription and the figure of Moses over it with uplifted hands; and lastly the plague of fiery serpents, with the representation of a serpent in the act of coming down, as it were, from heaven, upon a prostrate Israelite.

"These references to recorded events of the Exode compose, however, but a small part of the Sinaitic inscriptions as yet in our possession; the great mass of which consist of descriptions of rebellious Israel under the figures of kicking asses, restive camels, rampant goats, sluggish tortoises, and lizards of the desert."

Mr. Forster finds a significant mystery in each of the rude pictorial representations that accompany these inscriptions; and even in the caricatured forms into which later travellers, sportively inclined, have distorted the shapes of the letters (of which "Pharaoh's horse" is an instance), as well as in zigzag or irregular lines, which modern copyists have introduced into their drawings (to which the fiery serpent and the stone at Rephidim apparently belong); all these he devoutly regards as coeval with, and illustrative of, the inscriptions themselves.

The following specimens of the renderings given will abundantly suffice; the first is supposed to relate to the miraculous supply of quails or "feathered fowls;" the second, to the destruction of Pharaoh's host in the Red Sea.

"Sinai Photographed," p. 159:—“Congregating on all sides to ensnare them, the people voraciously devour the red cranes, bending against them the bow bringing them down. Eating eagerly and enormously the half-raw flesh, plaguestricken become the pilgrims. In the desert, waters flow gushing down the smooth rock. The people thirsting, gives them water to drink Moses."

Ibid., p. 164:-"The waters permitted and dismissed to flow upon the astonied men burst rushing unawares, congregated from all quarters banded together to slay treacherously lifted up with pride."

The second example, we may add, purports to be the translation of five words which he finds in the original.

It has been seen that Mr. Forster first arbitrarily deciphers, then as arbitrarily translates, the inscriptions which he undertakes to read; that, apart from the extravagance of his methods, there is much in his results that is incredible, and that never could be accepted by any competent linguist; that his conclusions are not only entirely unsupported, but directly 37

VOL. XLII.—NO. IV.