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Chap. III.

MUSEUM

is important. Such a series serves to show both the defec- Book III, tive and the excessive forms of minerals, and their transi- HISTORY tional capacities. These five several collections are, it will OF THE be seen, over and above that other special Collection of Sky-stones or Meteorites,' which is already very nobly represented in our National Museum.

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UNDER SIR

A. PANIZZI.

BOOK III,
Chap. IV.
ANOTHER

GROUP OF
ARCHEOLO-

GISTS AND
EXPLORERS.

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 Antiquities has derived an augmentation that has sufficed to double, within twenty-five years, its previous scientific and

Chap. IV.

ARCHEOLO

literary value to the Public. In this chapter we have BOOK III, to tell of not a little romantic adventure; of remote ANOTHER and perilous explorations and excavations; sometimes, of GROUP 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- oF 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.

RESEARCHES

or ROBERT

HUNTING-
TON IN THE

MONAS

TERIES;

About the year 1680, Robert HUNTINGTON, afterwards THE 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 NITRIAN which there had been wide-spread belief amongst the 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

EXPLORERS.

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

Lord Prud

tice, &c., as

abridged in Quarterly Review,

vol. lxxvii, pp. 45, seq.

Chap. IV.

GROUP OF

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 ARCHEOLOnext 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 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

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 RIES OF MR. 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

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