FROM THE TEMPLC ;':; OF OSIRIS AT PHILCE ;^ . { I I I* THE ONE PEIMEVAL LANGUAGE. London ; SrorriswooDEs and Shaw, New-6lreel-Square. i :• I*V? — O f-"^ — -^ < // f <»/ -X ^ ^-*-^ •^ ^ thl: ONE PRIMEVAL LANGUAGE TRACED EXPERIMENTALLY TIIROUCJH IN ALPHABETIC CHARACTERS OF LOST POWERS FROM THK FOUR CONTINENTS: INCLUDING THE VOICE OF ISILVEL FROM THE ROCKS OF SINAI : AND THE VESTIGES OF PATRIARCHAL TRADITION FROM THE MONUMENTS OF EGYPT, ETRURIA, AND SOTTTHERN ARABIA. WITH ILI.USTRATIVB PLATES, A HARMONIZED TABLE OF AI>PHABETS, GLOSSARIES, AND TRANSLATIONS. BY THE llEV. CHARLES FORSTER, B.l)., ONT OF THE SIX PKEACHEKS OF THE CATHEDRAL OF CANTERBURV, AND RECTOR OF STISTED, ESSEX ; HONORARY MEMBER OF THE LITERARY SOCIETY: AUTHOR OF " MAHOMETANISM UNVEILED," AND OF " THE HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF ARABIA." And tho whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. Genesis. SECOND EDITION. LONDON: RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET. 1852. UpioTOi' jiEv TravT(i)v TrcipaicaXu) rovg iieWoiTCiQ tJTuyj^a- j'eiv rrjhe rij jji€\o), JVa jiera Tratrric Trpofro^fjc kciI £7riyu£\£tac T))i' avixyviiiaiv TroujaiOfTai, kuI fir) irapipywQ avrrjv Bia- IpafiEiv. — CosMAs Indicopleustes. " Kude societies have language, and often copious and energetic language ; but they have no scientific grammar, no definitions of nouns and verbs, no names for declensions, moods, tenses, and voices." — Macaulay's History of England. DEDICATION. SIR ROBERT HARRY INGLIS, BART. M. P, FOR THK UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD, PRK8IDENT OK THK LITERARY SOCIETY, &c. Sec. See. My dear Friend, In former publications I enjoyed one advantage which I possess no longer. They were brought out under the countenance and sanction, successively, of two prelates of the Church, whose authority gave a claim on public attention to any work, however previously unknown the name of the author. While Bishop Jebb, or Archbishop Howley, lived, I felt that the fruits of my studies were the property of the superiors to whom, under Providence, I was accountable for the disposal of my time. They are gone to their reward : but there is a friend still left, to whom I can look A 4 2067276 VI 11 DEDICATION. with propriety to occupy their place in a Dedi- cation. Allow me, then, to inscribe the follow- ing pages with the name, and to place them under the protection, of the friend, whose inti- macy lias been a chief honour and happiness of my life ; and to take this opportunity of pre- serving, so far as my imperfect ability can preserve, the memory of a friendship of three and thirty years. The subject of the present work was suggested by a discovery, made most unexpectedly, and published in a former work, " The Historical Geography of Arabia." To that work, and its Appendix, I must refer the reader for the ac- count and decypherment of the great Hamyaritic inscription, found on the rock of Hisn Ghorab, a port of Hadramaut, on the coast of Southern Arabia. At present I shall only mention, that the decypherment of that monument stands now corroborated by physical facts, and by the main features of the locality. The inscription-stone is ^''white'^ (as Al-Kazwini describes it) ; a huge block of lead-white stone or marble, being the single stone of the kind or colour in the face of a black, or rather reddish-brown, cliff. The inscription itself is executed with a depth and beauty, and in a style so peculiar, that it can be DEDICATION. IX described appropriately only by the French term unique. It is the only inscription at Hisn Ghorab, a line or two on the summit, by the same hand, excepted. And the port, over the entrance into whose ruined fortress it stands, is the sole port for shipping on the coast east of Aden ; the first port, after Aden, for above two hundred miles. It is the only point where a castle could have stood ; the intermediate coast affording only sandy beaches on which the Arab boats run on shore for the night. It is, moreover, the first port of Hadramaut next Aden, conformably with Al-Kazwini's description of his first Adite castle. These particulars I state on the authority of officers of the Indian navy, and of one of the visitors to Hisn Ghorab itself, the officer who conveyed the original discoverer of its inscrip- tion, Lieutenant Cruttenden, I. N., to re-examine the place, in consequence of my publication ; and who, on his return to England, did me the honour to visit me, for the purpose of giving the information which inspection of the local- ity could alone supply. Lieutenant Berthon's account of the place, and its confirmations of Al-Kazwini, will appear in full in the proper place. X DEDICATION. The identity of I'onn of some liisii Ghorab characters with characters of Sinai and Kgypt, led me to test, experimentally, the sameness of the powers ; and the results justified the exten- sion of this experimental process to other cha- racters, of other alphabets, similarly identical in their forms Avith the characters of Egypt and Sinai. A Harmony of primeval alphabets, each letter of which (in the principal idioms) had been first verified by experimental decypher- ment, was the final result of these investigations. The Harmony is now before the reader in the accompanying table : the decypherments will be found in the body of the present work. In this connection it remains only to submit respectfully for the guidance of students of this work, two rules of decypherment by which, throughout it, I have been guided myself: the one, as a first principle for the recovery of lost alphabets ; the other, as a first principle for the division of words in unknown inscriptions : — 1. That, in comparing unknown with known alphabets, letters of the same known forms be assumed to have the same known powers. 2. That the old Arabic being here considered as DEDICATION. XI the primeval language, and the Arabic consisting mostly of triliteral roots, the principle of biliteral or triliteral roots be always acted on, in subdivid- ing into words the undivided inscriptions. In stating these rules, it is my object to invite qualified readers, not to take on authority, but to examine for themselves. And I will venture to add, that, if any competent to consult the Arabic lexicon, instead of beginning by criti- cizing, will begin by using the Harmon}^ of Alphabets on the principles above stated, they will soon be able to decypher for themselves ; and thus to double the evidences, by anticipating many of the decypherments of pictorial in- scriptions, from whatever quarter of the world, which have been already made, and which will appear hereafter, if it be so permitted, in future Parts of this work. If our translations sometimes differ, it will be held in mind that so do the text and the mar- ginal readings of the English Bible. Such dif- ferences must always be allowed for as inherent in the case. And the truth will often be brought out by them. But the subject addresses itself not to the XI 1 DEDICATION. learned only, but to the English reader. Sinai, especially, appeals to all who hold Revealed Keligion dear. 1 have, therefore, given trans- lations, not only of the inscriptions, but of their glossaries ; in order that all English readers who take an interest in tlie subject may examine for themselves. I cannot take leave without expressing my obligations to those who have contributed mate- rials towards the present publication. To Sir William Page Wood, Her Majesty's Solicitor- General, I owe the communication, and liberty to avail myself, of the unpublished Travels of the late Capt. Frazer, R. A. : a Journal reflecting new and highly interesting lights on the Mosaic records, both from Sinai and Egypt. To John Godfrey, Esq., of Brook-House, Kent, I am largely indebted for the use of his valuable collections of Egyptian and Etruscan antiquities ; and, still more, for a suggestion to which, under Provi- dence, it is mainly owing that the work is now brought out. To Hughes Ingram, Esq., of Yorkshire, I have to acknowledge similar obligations, in the free loan of works on Etruria. To George Richmond, Esq., I am indebted for bringing the aids of high modern art to the elucidation of hieroglyphic figures. And DEDICATION. XUl to John Murray, Esq., of Albemarle Street, I have to repeat the expression of my tlianks for his renewed and liberal kindness in placing at my disposal for the work, L*lates from some of the most valuable of his publications. Other traits of friendship I might record, in proof that " there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother." But it is sometimes the duty of friendship to refrain. A few words, before I take leave, upon the Harmony of Alphabets prefixed fo this work. This synopsis, has been formed, not theoreti- cally, but, as I have already intimated, from a large induction of experiments made upon pictorial inscriptions (the results of Avhich will be given as largely in the progress of the work) : inscriptions in which the powers of cha- racters could be ascertained by their occurrence, in the names of animals, or of other objects, decypherable by the Arabic, or in words expla- natory of the action of the figures, on the prin- ciple of legends and devices. It has been arranged upon the principle that, in the oldest alphabets of the world, compared between them- selves, identity of form in the characters implies identity of poAver, from their common nearness XIV DEDICATION. to the one parent source. But that the alphabets of Greece and Rome, in which the primitive powers of so many characters have been alto- gether changed, however useful as subordinate helps, can never, without experimental verifi- cation, be safely admitted as authoritative guides for the recovery of the lost powers of the primeval alphabets of the East. This part of my subject, if spared to complete the plan, will be treated of in full in an Appendix. In the mean while, a calm reliance may be rested in, that the English public will grant that fair and impartial hearing, and will exercise that wise suspense of judgment, by which only "knowledge is enlarged," and without which it is impossible that justice can be done to the treatment of any subject, upon a new principle, or in an untrodden way. I remain, my dear Sir Robert, your grateful and affectionate friend, CHARLES FORSTER, Stisted Rectory, February, 16, 1851. TRACED .UPHAbET OF THE SINAITIC INSCRIPTIONS : G D m He V fc z H TJi I ( I 2 1 Sh 1 e 9 a ti : J V N !) 1 '7 J i; V 6 A 6 J D 6 S t ^. * t f Ti h. PAllT I. THE VOICE OF ISRAEL THE ROCKS OF SINAI: OB, THE SINAITIC INSCRIPTIONS CONTEMPORARY RECORDS OF THE MHIACLES AND WANDERINGS OF THE EXODE. AT)VERTISE]\IENT TO THE READER. In the readings and renderings of inscriptions in the following pages, the Author, after an inquiry pursued for the last seven years, submits the results of his own investigations and impres- sions ; always subject to the corrections of fuller examination and experience. It will be remem- bered, at the same time, that, if the Sinai tic inscriptions be once proved and admitted to have been the work of the Israelites, the ante- cedent presumption that they must contain records of events of the Exode becomes of the strongest kind ; and gives great value and sig- nificance to any pictorial representations on the rocks of Sinai, however rude, corresponding in character with those events. DIRECTIONS TO THE BINDER. View of W:i(ly Ussaite Plate I. 11. III. IV. V. VI. VII. to face pag JJ » e 39 43 56 58 90 95 138 to precede p. 163 # ■fl ^ THE VOICE OF ISRAEL FIIOM THE ROCKS 01' SINAI. It is now somewhat more than thirteen hundred years, since a merchant of Alexandria, Cosmas by name, from his voyages to India surnamed Indicopleustes, visited on foot the peninsula of Sinai* ; and was the first to discover, or at least to make known to the world, the extraordinary fact of the existence, upon all the rocks at the various resting-stations throughout that unin- habitable wilderness, of numerous inscriptions, in a then, as now, unknown character and lan- guage. By certain Jews, who formed part of his company, and who professed to understand * If this visit took place, as seems not unlikely, at the time of his trade-voyage from Elath (Akaba) to Adule on the African coast, the date is fixed by Cosmas himself: TlafioyTt oSj' fj-ot eV to7s tSttois e/ceiVoiy TTph TOVTuv Twv iVioxJiSiv i1.K.o(Ji TTeVre, irXeov ^ iXaiTOV, ty rfi apxj? rrjs Pa(Tt\((as 'lov(rTlvov twv 'Voinaiiav fiaaiXius. — Cosmas Iiidico- pleust. ap. Collect. Nov. Pair., torn. ii. p, 140. Justin was proclaimed Emperor July 9, 518. The voyage to Adulc, consequently, took place about A. D. 518, 519. B 2 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL and interpret their meaning, these inscriptions, Cosmas further relates, Avere assigned to the age of Moses and the Exode, and ascribed to their own ancestors, the ancient Israelites, during their wanderings "in the desert of Sin." The high antiquity implied by this Jewish tradition, was corroborated to the eye of the Egyptian voyager by a most remarkable circumstance : namely, that many of the inscriptions in question were upon broken-off rocks, lying scattered over the vallies ; rocks which had fallen, at unknown periods, from the cliffs above, self-evidently by reason of the wear and tear of the winter torrents in the lapse of ages.* For as it is now ascer- tained that the inscriptions upon the fallen frag- ments still in being, in several instances are found inverted, it follows that the writing had been engraved before the rocks were broken off.f This admitted fact, though unnoticed by him, it * " In universum, inscriptiones temporis injuria leesse sunt : in primis rapidis fluviaium hlbcrnaium, quibus siccae illai valles nonnunquani in fluvios mutantur." — if. F. F. Beer, Studia Asiatica, Introd. p. viii. : Lip- sia>, 1840. ■j- " Magnus inscriptionum numerus reperltur in saxis in viam delapsis. HffiC, aut delapsas sunt posiquam inscriptiones facta sunt, unde non- nunquam has situ inverso descriptse sunt." — lb. The fact of the inverted inscription, speaks for itself. The assumption that those not Inverted were, therefore, written subsequently to the fall of the rocks on which they are engraved, is perfectly gratuitous. The just inference from the two phenomena is, that, in their fall, some inscribed rocks rolled over, while others slided down. FROM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 3 is essential to keep in view, if wc would estimate at its real value the relation of Cosmas. In other times, it might well be presupposed that the first announcement of this startling discovery must, at once, have attracted the curiosity of the learned world, and engaged the serious attention of the Christian Church. But, in the reign of Justinian, the world and the Church were occu- pied by other matters than researches into the far-distant past. The minds of men, buried in tlie labyrinths of controversy, or busied in tlie enactment of codes of human law, had little lei- sure, and less encouragement, for entering on an inquiry, which might, by possibility, throw light upon " the Law Divine." The curious report of the Egyptian merchant lay, accordingly, unnoticed, in his work entitled " Christian Topography." Nor was its repose disturbed from the sixth, until the commence- ment of the eighteenth century of our era ; when the geographical treatise in which it occurs (Cosmas's only extant work) was published for the first time, with a Latin version and notes, in the year 1706, by the celebrated Montfaucon. So total, in the long interval, had been the ne- glect of inquiry, that the editor was compelled to rest his belief in the existence of the Sinaitic inscriptions, wholly upon the unimpeachable B 2 4 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL fidelity of Cosmas ; wliicli lie most iustly pro- nounced to be beyond all question.* For this * Since writing the above passage, I have recovered what would appear to be the autograpli record, by Cosmas liimself, of his visit to the peninsula of Sinai. In looking over the plates of Sina'itic inscriptions, puhlislicd by Pococke, my eye was caught by the proper name Ko(r^^.av, in the Greek inscription No. 10, at the close of its second line. Upon closer inspection it was manifest that the first line, and the last two lines of this inscription, were detached fraj^ments, in difTerent handwritings ; while the second and third lines composed, apparently, a separate record, complete in itself. This record was the usual pilgrim invocation, so often found at Sinai, asking the prayers of succeeding pilgrims. The inscription was found and copied by Pococke near the summit of Mount St. Catharine, in the grotto where Moses is said to have fasted forty days. He describes it " as an imperfect Greek inscription, which seems to be older than the beginning of the Mahometan religion." The following is a fac-simile of the two centre lines : — HHHtT pernio IM A t< TOY NT t B D-. /V/\ VT 1 y /xvrjCT Trj0? Koa/j-av TO V 'f T e §S . . . . vavT lov Remember Cosmas, The voyager to Thibet. The characters TEBD, not forming any known Greek word, seemed at first enigmatic. The enigma seemed solvible by the proper name Thibet (arabice, i^ ^J<\ the ultima Thule, it hence would seem, of Cosmas's travels ; who, in this inscription, if correctly ascribed to him, styles himself TeSdfavTTjs, as afterwards, in his work, IvSt/coTrAeucTTTjs. The Greek here is most barbarous ; but so, also, is that of all these Greek inscriptions. If it be his, he learned to write better Greek in his monas- terj'. The literate monk may, in youth, have been an illiterate merchant or shipman (j'ruttjs) ; perhaps the latter. Poverty seems indicated by a pedestrian caravan. [For the correctness of this ascription, see Addi- tional final Note A., 2d edit., p. 182.] !> KutruMn, as a genitive, is authorized by an Apamean medal, rov KymoOirov Ae«,«.a» FROM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 5 honourable testimony to liis author's good faith, ]\rontfaucon, in the true spirit of supercilious scholarship, indemnifies himself by indulging in reflections on his credulity, and by contemp- tuously setting aside, without pausing to examine, the assigned date and origin of the inscriptions themselves.* To this point an Irish prelate, Dr. Robert Clayton, Bishop of Clogher, had the honour of being the first to direct public attention, by his publication of the manuscript Itinerary of the journey from Cairo to Mount Sinai of the Pre- fetto of Egypt, and by his munificent offer of the sum of five hundred pounds to the traveller who should copy, and bring to Europe, the in- scriptions of the Wady Mokatteb, or " written valley ;" which (though the opposite of credulous in his tone of mind) he believed and pronounced to be the work of the Israelites of the Exode. Bishop Clayton's praise- worthy efforts to awaken attention to the subject at home, were * " De hac univcrsa Cosmaj relatione, iMoiitefalconius editor, qui noiulum compererat ad montem Sinai inscriptiones re vera esse servatas (parva enim et imperfecta etiam turn erat fama earum et notitia) bene haec observavit : Qua; de visis a se inscriptionibus hujusmodi refert Cosmas, a nemine sueto in dubium vocanda : nam fide dignus ac sincerus scriptor est, si quis alius. An vero inscriptiones illa> veterum Ilebra-- orum in deserto oberrantlum fucrint, id saguci lectori .-cstimandum mit- timus. Nos sane Cosinam IIebra;orum mendacio deccptum probabilius existiinamus." — Moiitfaiicon ap. Beer, Introd. p. xiv. II 3 6 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL preceded in the East by the enterprizc of Dr. Eicliard Pococke (afterwards Bishop of Ossory), the first European traveller who visited the pe- ninsula of Sinai with tlie object of examining and taking copies of its inscriptions. By the publication of Pococke's Travels, and of a paper from the pen of the eccentric Edward Wortley Montague in No. 56. of the Transactions of the Eoyal Society, learned Europe at length was put in possession of copies of a few of those mysterious records of the past, and obtained the first specimens of the unknown characters emplo^^ed in them. Some slight additions were subsequently contributed by Niebuhr and others. But adequate materials for the alphabet remained a desideratum, until, in the year 1820. they "were happily supplied by Mr. G. F. Gray*, whose collection of 177 fairly copied Sinaitic inscrip- * Now the Rev. G. F. Gray. The ingenious device employed suc- cessfully by this gentleman and his fellow-traveller, Tomaso-el-Kooshi (or Thomas the Elhoshite'), a native of Palestine, to gain an opportunity of making their copies, was thus described to me by a friend of Mr. Gray, by whose permission the incident is given. Finding all efforts vain to induce their Arabs to stop for this purpose, they privately agreed, on reaching the station beside the Wady Mokatteb inscriptions, where they were to halt for the night, to loose the camels from their picquets while the guides slept, and let them wander over the desert. At day-break the Arabs missed their camels, and went off in quest of them ; while, during their absence of some hours, I\Ir. Gray and his companion quietly and uninterruptedly took copies of all the inscriptions within their reach. The anecdote may furnish a useful iiint to future travellers, not at Sinai only, but wherever inscriptions similarly located may occur. FROM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 7 tions appeared in 1830, in Vol. II. Part I. of the Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature. The appearance of this more abundant harvest (tlie fruit, like most that had preceded it, of British enterprise) at length reawakened to the nearly forgotten subject the slumbering curiosity of Europe, and engaged the studious attention of one of the first orientalists of Germany. The result was the publication, in the year 1840, by the late Professor E. F. F. Beer, of Leipsic (the friend and fellow-labourerof Gesenius),inhisAvork entitled " Studia Asiatica," of a collection styled by him Inscriptionum Centuria, or " A Century of Sinaitic Inscriptions ;" comprizing a selection of examples from Pococke, Montague, and Nie- buhr, to Coutelle, Roziere, Seetzen, Burckhardt, Gray, Laborde, Lord Prudhoe (now Duke of Northumberland), and Major Felix. To this Collection (the originals engraved in 16 Plates, and his versions printed in Hebrew characters) Professor Beer prefixed an Introduction, an Al- phabet, and his own translations. From this short account of the publication, we will now pass at once to the principles of inves- tigation on which the author proceeded, and the conclusions at which he arrived : inasmuch as the simple statement of these principles and con- clusions will best prepare the Avay for tlie widely B 4 8 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL different principles adopted, and the wliolly oppo- site conclusions arrived at, in the present work. Following in the steps of JMontfaucon, Pro- fessor Beer sets out with discarding, as unworthy of note or comment, the belief of Cosmas, and the affirmation of the Jews Avho accompanied him, as to the Israelitish origin of the inscrip- tions in the Wady and Djebel Mokatteb : records which he, in his turn, asserts to be of Christian origin, and of a date scarcely more than a century and a half prior to the age and voyage of Indicopleustes himself. It is essential to the subject, and due to the memory of the only scholar who has hitherto treated it, to examine the steps by which our author reaches these inferences. We will begin wdth his own statement of the numerical amount, and topographic extent, of the inscriptions them- selves. " The inscriptions are found in the neighbour- hood of Mount Sinai ; or, to speak more accu- rately, in the vallies and hills, which, branching out from its roots, run towards the north-west, to the vicinity of the eastern shore of the Gulf of Suez : insomuch that travellers now-a-days from the monastery of Mount Sinai to the town of Suez, whatever route they take {for there are many\ will sec these inscriptions upon the rocks FROM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 9 of most of the vallies through Avhich they pass, to withhi half a clay's journey, or a little more, of the coast. Besides these localities, shnilar inscriptions are met with, and those in great numbers, on Mount Serbal, lying to the south of the above-named routes ; as also, but more rarely, in some vallies to the south of Mount Sinai itself.' * " But the valley which, beyond all the rest, claims special notice, is that which stretches from the nei2;hbourhood of the eastern shore of the Gulf of Suez, for the space of three hours' journey [from six to seven miles], in a southern direction. Here, to the left of the road, the traveller finds a chain of steep sandstone rocks f, perpendicular as walls, which aiFord shelter, at mid-day and in the afternoon, from the burning rays of the sun. These, beyond all beside, contain a vast multitude of tolerably Avell-pre- * Throughout this work the figures refer to the notes at tlie end ot each Number. f A material beyond all others, from its softness, its redness, and its indisposedness to flake off, alike fitted to receive, exiiibit, and preserve the inscriptions. It has been observed to the author by a friend, that, while the inscriptions on granite in Egypt had often perished owing to the scaling ofl' of the outer surface, those on sandstone, in the quarries of Masara, are as fresh as if executed yesterday. Sinai repeats this experience. Burckhardt describes the inscriptions upon the granite rocks of Surbal as mostly illegible ; while those in the Wady IMokatteb are very generally perfect. The material, it appears, is that best suited to realize Job's aspiration, xix. 2.3. 10 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL served inscriptions ; whence this valley has obtained the name of Wady Mokatteb, or 'the written valley.' Adjoining it is a hill, whose stones, in like manner, are covered with writing; and which bears the name of Djebel Mokatteb, or 'the written mountain.' " Intermingled with the inscriptions, images and figures are of very frequent occurrence ; all the work of art, if art it may be called ; executed in the rudest style*, and evidently with the same instrument as that employed in executing the inscriptions : which figures prove themselves the production of the authors, by their very juxta- position to the writing. These drawings most fre- quently represent camels and men. But for the sake of readers desiring more accurate inform- ation on the subject, we will comprize, in a bird's-eye view, those hitherto described, giving the precedence to the figures of most frequent occurrence : * " The rude manner in whicli they are exhibited may well be sup- posed to be such as belonged to the time, when men fir &t began to inscribe on rocks tlieir abiding memorials." — Note from the " Pictorial Bible," p. 151., on Job xix. The engraver of the frontispiece of the present work made a similar remark to the author. His impression as an artist, when engaged upon it, was chiefly this, that the execution of the in- scriptions betokened the infancy of society. Laborde's impression on the spot was the same : " Tliese inscriptions come out clearly on the red ground of the rock ; and the irregularity of the lines betrays the unskil- fnlness of the persons who confided tlieir story to the custody of these rocks." — Journcij to Mt. Sinai, p. 262. FROM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 11 " Camels, standing, moving', running, laden. Mountain goats. Lizards. Serpents. Horses and mules. Dogs. Ostriches. Tortoises. " Men, standing, in motion ; lifting the hands to heaven ; looking down ; sitting, on camels, on laden camels, on horses, on mules ; standing, on camels, on horses ; leading camels ; armed with spears, swords, shields ; fighting ; drawing the bow (on foot, on horseback) ; hunting ; a man upon a cross, &c. '• AVhich images those who copied the inscrip- tions describe as often difficult to distinguish from the letters. The truth is, that the original writers sometimes employed images as 'parts of letters^ and, vice versa, images for groups of letters:'"^' From this well-dra^vn sketch of the numbers, extent, and pictorial or hieroglyphic character of the Sina'itic inscriptions, the author proceeds to the consideration of their probable origin and date. Their origin he pronounces to be Christian^ upon the strength of a single argument, or rather of a single character, which he denominates the emblem of the cross. " Sometimes, either at the * " Quas imagines liaiul ita raro tliflii-ilc a litteris disccini dicunt qui descripserunt. Ita factum est ut Uttcras pro ptiriihiis i/iiar/iinim, vt, vice versa, imagines pj-o lilterarum sj/mpler/mate, Jionuunquam clederint." — Beer, Inlrod. p. xii. 12 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL beginning, or at tlic end of inscriptions, are found crosses, in the form T; but they are of rare occurrence in the inscriptions hitherto tran- scribed, for they are observable only in the places cited underneath.* Yet rarer is another form of the cross f erect ; which has the form of a semi- circle, to the right, in its upper limb, taken, probably, from the contracted Greek letters X and P, in order to express, at the same time, the Cross and the name of Christ. But upon the rocks themselves I suspect crosses to be more frequent than one might conjecture from the copies. For Montague thinks the authors to have been Christians ; and Burckhardt seems to have held the same opinion, when he refers to the crosses. Which opinion, although, owing to their great simplicity, there is nothing ivhatever to favour in the arguments of the inscriptions * " Grei/ [Grayl, inscr. 142. (nostra 42.), crux basi imposlta. — Cf. Roziern, inscr. 26. ; Montagu, vs. 12. ; Grey, inscr. 85., inscr. 86. and 111., ubi basi impositae sunt. — Bis in inscr. Pocockii 59., et Seetzen 17.,sed ita positfE ut suspicionem moveant." — Beei; Introd. p. xii. nota; c,d, + " Grey, Inscr. 11., et aliquoties ap. Labordium." — lb. nota e. Alto- trether, five certain and tliree dubious exnmples of what our author terms the " Crux Christiana," out of some 200 inscriptions. Here are his specimens : JT |^ J-T r\ )• ^"""^ "^ *''^ ^^^ characters are obviously monograms. The last, an Egyptian hieroglyphic, which he converts into the monogram for Christ Jesus ! There remains one simple cross. I leave it to the reader to settle with Lovel, in " The Antiquary," whether it is not "a narrow foundation to build a hypo- thesis on." FROM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 13 heretofore explained by me, yet, on reading the characters, I seem to myself to discover some- thin <2: tendino; towards the confirmation of their Christian origin. For a certain sign occurs, which, although in form it does not differ from the letter daleth of this character, [my] inter- pretation of the inscription shows not to be a letter. That si^n has the form of the Latin letter Y ; and is observable, sometimes at the beginning, sometimes at the end, of the inscrip- tions. Compare, especially, inscriptions 100 and 99, in our eleventh table, which consist of the same letters and lines, and to the former of which our figure is added, both at the beginning and at the end. On account of this location in the inscriptions, I think this sign to be the figure of the Christian Cross which was used in some countries ; in which, perhaps, malefactors were commonly fixed on crosses formed in this figure of a fork. To which opinion it may seem an objection, that sucb a form of the Christian Cross is novel ; and certainly I have found no evidence of its existence : but this I think of very slight moment."* Having thus disposed of the authorship, tlie * The version reads so improbable that I give tlie original : " Cui sententiw obstare videtur, (juod talis Christiana? crucis figura [Y sc(7.] nova est: certe equidem nulltim ejus testem reperi ; sed hoc levioris momenti esse puto." — Introd. p. xiii. 14 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL Professor proceeds to settle the date. " In my judgment, it appears that Cosmas saw in the neighbourhood of Mount Sinai, in various parts, and those numerous, many inscriptions on stones ; which, both from their brevity, and the further proof arising from their great similarity to each other, I take to be the same with those very inscriptions of which we treat in this volume. But their real orio-in and meaning: were little known in the time of Cosmas ; for what he pronounces certain in this matter, is self- evidently false. Nor would this pious Christian have ascribed to Jews inscriptions wrought by Christian piety, had he known better. " He appears to have conveyed the first tidings of the existence of these inscriptions to the learned of his own age * : whence we conjecture * " Integra ejus verba afferimus, quum locus sit magnje auctoritatis. AaSuvres 6e Kal irapa rov Qeou rhy vSyLOV iyypdfoiis, Kal SLSacrKSfxtvoi ypdix/xara veoiarl, Kal (ianep iraiSeuTTjpiiJu Tjavxv tV ttJ (pVfJ-'p XP'^t'^^-f^^^"^ 6 Qfos, fi. err] elaffev avTovs KaraKa^ivcrai. to, ypdix/xara. "06ev eaTiv lSe7v, iv €Keivri rij hprjix(fj rov ^waiov vpuvs, iv Trdcrais KaTaTravaecr i, Trdv- ras Tovs XiOovs twv aijr60i, rovs Ik twv opecov a-KOKKufxi- vovs, yeypa/j-jxevovs ypd^fiacri yXvirrols 'E§pa'iKOis' uis avrhs iyuj we^ovcras TOVS r6Trovs fxapTvpS}. " A/riva, Kai rivis 'lovSaioi avdyvovns Snjyovvro rt^ilv, XiyovTis yeypdcpdat ovtws' &Trepffis [aTrapuis] TOvSe e/f (pvArjS rfjcrSe, trei TqiSe, /UTjfl T(^Sc icada Kal Trap" tj/mp TroWaKLS rivfs iv Ta7s ^evlais ypd(povaiv. AvTol Se, Kal ais uecaarl fiaddures ypdiJ.fx.aTa,ffvvexoiV;|i irapaSeddncaai kut' iice7uo Kuipovj TrpuToi Ka.5fj.Cj> Tcf Tvpiuiv PaiyiXu, e| eKeivov irapiXaSov "EWrjves ", Xotnhv /ca0e|f)y irocTa Ta (Off]." — Cosmce I/idicopleustce Topograph. Christiana, ap. Mont- faucon. Coll. Nov. Pair.,&c., t. ii. p. 206.; and ap. Beer, ut supr. pp. 3, 4. * " Ipse primus inscriptionum haruni nuntium viris eriidltis sua? fctatis tradidissc videtur. Undo conjicimus a;tatem harum inscriptionum haud ita brevi superiorem esse cevo Cusmaa." The language, consequently, must liavc utterly perished, and its characters must have been totally forgotten, in one or two life-times ! The scepticism which strains at gnats, has a marvellous aptitude for swallowing camels. a The runic and Greek cliaracters in the Sinaitic inscri|itions were apparently recognized by Cosmas; and, if referred to Uieir iiroper alpliabets, would have yiekU'd Ihe true interpretation." 16 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL calities, principally to Jerusalem, in expectation of seeing miracles, and from religious motives, was greatly on the increase ; insomuch that, towards the end of this century, Gregory, Bishop of Nyssen, judged it necessary to write against the practice in a separate treatise. That Mount Sinai should have been visited at that period by the inhabitants of Palestine or Syria, is, indeed, scarcely credible. Certainly we have no proof whatever of their doing so ; though we do not deny that Helena, the mother of Constantine, journeyed to that mountain, and there erected a sanctuary, as the traditions of the Monastery of the Transfiguration allege. But it may very well have chanced that this appetite for visiting the sacred localities may have kindled, in some tribes of Arabia Petra3a, a like desire of fre- quenting, from pious motives, for a time. Mount Sinai, and the vallies which witnessed the great miracles of Moses. " The only remaining question is, the space of time within which these inscriptions were en- graved. The internal evidence of the writino- is so uniform, that / doubt whether the oldest caji be parted from the most recent hy an interval of more than a single age. Those, however, who are un- conversant in paleography, should be forewarned against being drawn into an opposite opinion FROM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 17 by ill-preserved or ill-copied inscriptions, both Sinaitic and Arabic.' * To those who consider these as holding a middle term, or as marking the change effected in written characters in the course of ages, I answer, that inscriptions of this kind are inexplicable from their corruptness, and, therefore, from them no conclusion can be drawn ; but, rather, we must beware lest inscriptions should be confounded with each other, which are separated by an interval of a thousand years or more." Having thus settled the date to his own satis- faction, the author passes, lastly, to the con- sideration of their probable origin; which, upon the grounds which follow, he decides to be Nabatha^an. " The question arises, Who were the people who executed these inscriptions ? — a question of moment, since by its solution may at last be brou;2;ht to lio^ht the reo:ion in which Co O this character and language was formerly in use. In fact, as I have already intimated, I can have no doubt that Arabia Petrtea was that region, * The truth is, that the modern Arabic alphabet contanis many clia- racters adopted from primitive inscriptions at Sinai, in Egypt, and in other parts. In a single rock inscription from Iladramaut, bearing all the marks of high antiquity, I find, amidst the Ilamyaritic, from eight to ten Arabic characters, so perfectly formed that they would serve as models to cast types from. This identity proves that the Nishki cha- racters now in use were borrowed, not invented. Upon this subject, see an important paper by M. Sylvestre dc Sacy, in tlie final note 2. c 18 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL since I see no otlier wliicli can be put in compe- tition Avitli it. Here, in the ages immediately preceding our era, existed that people vulgarly known to the Greeks and Romans under the name of Nabatha3ans ; a people wealthy, skilled in the arts, and flourishing in commerce ; at first independent, and under their own kings — after- wards, by Trajan, subjected to Rome. Of this people and kingdom the capital was Petra, whose splendid ruins have at length been discovered and delineated in our days. But as to the cha- racter and language in general use in this king- dom, and in western Arabia Petraea, of these no monuments whatever remain to us.* * In this statement Pr. Beer is in eiror. Messrs. Irby and Mangles discovered a genuine Nabatlisean inscription at Petra, carved deep on rock, in five long lines. It was copied by these gentlemen, but their copy, unfortunately, was not preserved. After several fruitless attempts to procure another copy of this unique monument, I was unexpectedly favoured by a friend with the fac-simile of an inscription on rock, found by the late Capt. Frazer, R. A., in the Wadi Suttoun Bedtha, near Petra, which, on inspection, proved to be the five-line inscription men- tioned by Irby and Rlangles. It is remarkable, in disproof of Beer's theory, that the characters in this indubitable Nabatlisean monument, though belonging to the same alphabet, are differently and far more regularly formed and executed than those in any of the inscriptions west of Sinai. Captain Frazer perceived, and points out this diversity, in his notice of the Petra inscription : " Inscription from the Um Amdan, in the Wadi Suttoun Bedtha. The inscription is between the two centre columns [o( a monument with a fagade of four columns, about 20 feet from the ground], about nine feet long, and perfectly preserved. The writing bears a strong resemblance to those I saw east of Sinai, between which and those on the west, as at iracli/ Mokatteb, and Wady AUeyat, there is always a certain difference observable." — Extract from unpublished Journal. FROM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 19 " This lacuna in paleography and philology I consider to be now filled up by our inscriptions. I have no means, indeed, of demonstrating that their authors sprung from those tribes which properly constituted the kingdom of the Naba- tha^ans ; but it will readily, I hope, be granted me, that these inscriptions, if not perhaps apper- taining to the people of that kingdom, may well be attributed to tribes adjoining, and so akin to it, that their dialect would scarcely differ from the idiom of the Nabathteans in any respect, beyond the admixture of a few Arabisms, and thus would give no very imperfect notion of that idiom. But that the writing can have been the writing of any but the NabathaBans, I greatly doubt; for the free drawing and bold con- junction of the letters are such as I find upon the sculptured rocks of no people of that or of an earlier age, evincing the people to whom these inscriptions owe their origin to liave written much and calligraphically, and there- fore to have been highly cultivated and flourish- ing as a commonwealth."* * There is no credulity like the credulity of scepticism, wlicther theological or philological. Pr. Beer determines the Sina'itic inscriptions fo be Nabathaian, and their date the middle of the fourtli century. Now, as, in the age of Cosmas, all knowledge and tradition of their characters and contents appear to have been lost among the Arabs of the district, by whom he was sure to be attended, it results that the Nabatha;an c 2 20 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL Such is the account given by the hite Professor Deer of the origin, date, and authorship of those mysterious records, which, by his own admission, cover miles of chffs, and are found engraved on the fallen rocks, in all the vallies of the peninsula north-west of Mount Sinai ; in other Avords, on the acknowledged route of Moses and the Israelites from the Red Sea to Mount Sinai.* The slightness of his premises, and the incon- sequence of his conclusions!^, might well have language and letters (being those of the most polished and powerful people of Arabia) inust have flourished, and become unknown, between A. B. 350 and a. d. 520. * " My view of the Wady ^lokatteb is taken from the south-east. — The caravan which is seen in the distance is approaching from Suez by Wady Taibe and the coast. — My caravan stopped in a small plain near the sea, where it is said to have been passed by the Israelites. We then ascended Wady Taibe, and, passing near the Mara of Scripture (A in Howara), we traversed the great plain which occupied the Israelites the first three days of their journey. Suez lay in front." — Lohorde,p, 263. Thus it is to a locality on the western, or Egyptian, side of the peninsula of Sinai, and situated, therefore, unavoidably on the line of march of the Israelites, that pilgrims unknown to history and tradition are to be imported from its eastern, or Arabian, side, in order to explain, or rather explain away, the unparalleled phenomena of the Wady and Djebel i\Iokatteb ! f The rude execution of the characters of the Wady Mokatteb inscrip- tions in dotted scratches, and the facility of their execution on the face of its soft sandstones, are mainstays of Pr. Beer's argument (if argument it must be called), for their being the productions of passing pilgrims. When out of the Wady Mokatteb, however, he is not "out of the wood." His difficulties are only commencing. The reasoning which, amidst its sandstones, may pass with some, will not hold amidst tlie (granite rocks of Serbal, The same characters, in the same handwritings, are to be found FROM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 21 spared those who come after him the task of analyzhig this account in detail, had not the favourable reception Avliich it appears to have experienced, not in Germany only, but elsewhere, rendered a strict examination of it indispensable, in order, by anatomizing and clearing away a misleading theory, to prepare the way for the recovery and establishment of the truth. To this preliminary object I must now, therefore, address myself. 1. The single ground upon which the Pro- fessor's theory rests is, as already stated, the occasional occurrence of a character "j*, which he assumes to be the sign of " the Christian Cross." The occurrence of this sign, however, being too infrequent alone to sustain his hypothesis, this ingenious writer proceeds to strengthen it by the discovery, in another cha- racter, Y, of a second form of the cross. With singular simplicity he confesses, at the same time, that for this form he can produce no pre- upon the rocks and stones of this lofty and nearly inaccessible mountain, from its base to its summit, and in greatest numbers upon its highest peak. See Burckhardt's account ap. final note 3. One of its latest visitors thus describes the phenomena: " Huge masses and d6bris of red granite, that, rent from Serbal's side, and hurled down the rugged walls of the Wady, seemed to oppose our progress and efforts to ascend. It is altvai/s on this red rock that tlie inscriptions, which were numerous here, are found." — Capt. Frazer's MS. Journal. c 3 22 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL cedent, that it is unexampled and unknown in church liistory. Undaunted, however, by this consideration, he believes it to be the cross, be- cause, in some parts, the malefactor's cross may have been so constructed, or furcated instead of transverse ; and because, prior to the age of Constantine, when the transverse form "j" (as he freely admits) was the only form of the Christian cross, as emblazoned on the ensigns, and shields, and coins of the empire, the furcated form Y may have existed somewhere, and among some Christian people, as a sign of the cross. Now, as the absurdity of learned hallucinations such as these has not prevented their finding learned admirers, it becomes necessary for the truth-sake to bring this argument from the sign of the cross to an issue. It is clear that none wdio subscribe this discovery of the sign of the cross in the Sinaitic inscriptions, and who thence infer with Beer the Christianity of their authors, can, consistently at least, object to the extension of the argument. If the occurrence of the character -j- be a ground of argument at all, it ought to be so everywhere. To begin with the oldest country, and the earliest records of mankind, Egypt, heathen Egypt, discloses Professor Beer's sign of "the Christian cross " upon her monuments, from the FROM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 23 sands of Rosetta to the upper cataracts of the Nile. The cliaracter -f , for example, which, on its single occurrence at Sinai, appears to the heated imagination of this writer, at once the sign of the Christian cross and the monogram of the sacred names Christ Jesus, is, by the plain English common sense of Mr. Gray, pronounced "an Egyptian hieroglyphic;"* and is neither more nor less than that most frequent character of the hieroglyphics, so well known by the names of the " Crux Ansata " and of " the Sacred lau. Erom Egypt to whatever quarter of the globe we turn, to the old world or to the new, to Assyria, to Bactria, to Etruria, to Central Ame- rica, this sign of the cross reappears on the monuments and in the inscriptions of every heathen land. And while Professor Beer adduces, from Sinai, the forms -j- or Y? as indubitable forms of " the Christian Cross," and irrefragable proofs of the Christianity of the authors of the Sinaitic inscriptions, I can produce, from heathen Bactria, the figure of an Indo-Macedonian king, Azes, B. c. 140, mounted upon the double- humped Bactrian camel, and bearing in his right hand a cross, which might have graced the hand * " It is to be observed that there is aii Egyptian hicroglypliic of jnc- ciscly this form." — Grai/, II. c 4 24 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL of a standard-bearer of Constantine, or of a war- rior Bishop of the Crusades. The key to the whole mystery is shortly and simply this : the character misnamed the cross, is the letter t ; the Sinai t, the Egyptian t *, the old Hebrew if, the Assyrian t^ the Bactrian t, the Etruscan t, the Ethiopic t, or (to come nearer home) the plain, honest English t, the oldest at once, and latest, form of the letter, in the most widely parted alphabets of the world. * The Egyptian character in the form of a cross, if we include the crux ansata, or " sacred tau" is one of the most prominent and frequent of the hieroglyphics. Its power as t is curiously demonstrable from comparison of a definition in the Arabic lexicons with the subjoined wood- cut from " Wilkinson's Egypt." Under the root "eccded his time, as those which travellers to Mount Sinai now witness have confessedly succeeded it : the phenomena being alike the sure, though slow, Avork of the winter torrents, undermining the cliffs above. We are certain that the silent pro- gress of this work of ruin has occupied nearly fourteen centuries since the days of Cosmas : why, then, may not the similar progress of decay wdiich he beheld, have occupied twenty centuries before ? * Not such, however, is the reasoning of * T!ie ruluctance to admit the idea of a high antiquity in this case, resolves itself into causes altogether apart from the state of the evidences. Had the monuments been indubitably heathen, and the localities un- connected with events of Scripture history, would the same reluctance have appeared? The analogy of the treatment of all other antiquities by the learned show that it would not. The Israelitish origin claimed by Cosmas and his Jewish companions for the Sina'itic inscrijjtions is dismissed by modern critics, not only without examination, but without a single ground of objection alleged. The sole ground of objection which could be alleged, would be antecedent presumptions, upon the score of improbability, against a date of so high antiquity. For P. Beer's negative objection, from their not being mentioned by any ■writer before the time of Cosmas, is about as worthy of notice, as one against their existence, from their not being mentioned after till the time of Montfaucon. Now, to test the value of tlie improbability on the score of antiquity, we will take a neighbouring and cognate case, that of heathen Egypt. Egypt, from the borders of Nubia to the mouths of the Nile, abounds with written monuments of as high, and of far higher antiquity. The hoar old age of the written stones of Ipsambul, of Elephantine, of Philoe, of Masara, of Thebes, has been admitted and enhanced by the veriest atheists of revolutionary France. The critic who would arraign, on the ground of antecedent improbability, the dates of three thousand, or of four thousand years, for Egyptian monuments and records, would be scouted, and scouted most justly, by the whole FROM THE HOCKS OF SINAI. 29 Beer. While the fourteen centuries occupied in producing the one set of plienomena is a point inevitably conceded, he would allow, for the pro- duction of the other, the space only of 150 years ! Happily, however, for the truth, among the copies of Sinaitic inscriptions already procured, there are forthcomini}: some leo:ible documents of unquestionable dates ; and of dates, at the same time, completely eversive of Professor Beer's hypothesis. Some few Greek, and one Latin inscription, from the Wady Mokatteb itself, arc in our hands. The dates of these are self-evi- dently posterior, it may safely be added long posterior, to that of the unknown inscriptions, amonjr the countless multitudes of which these more recent superadditions are well-nigh lost. learned world. Away, then, with the shallow scepticism which would deny, on this sole ground, the coexistence, for a corresponding term of years, of the written records upon the rocks of Sinai: which would deny it for no other assignable or conceivable cause than this, — that, instead of being works of heathenism (like the Egyptian tablets in the neigh- bouring Wady Maghara, whose antiquity none affect to dispute), the Sinaitic inscriptions were the work of God's chosen people ; a written witness against an unbelieving world to the end of time, that " Israel (of a truth) came out of Egyjjt." Dut, in the argument from analogy, Egypt stands not alone. For tlie recently recovered monuments of Assyria, the claim has been advanced of an antiquity ascending nearly to the confusion of tongues. And, ujjon fair j)roof, we are ready to admit it. Upon one tenth of the proof producible fiom Sinai, we might rationally receive the obelisk from Nimroud, now in the Britisli JMus'jum, as a monument of the son of Ninus, b. c. 2000, or as of a date of three thousand nine hundied years. 80 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL Their style of execution, moreover, in more than one instance, marks comparative recency ; since, unlike all the unknown characters, in one at least of the Greek, and in the only Latin inscription, the characters are cut, not dotted out.* From these " little drops of light amidst a sea of dark- ness," I select two, because, within certain known limits, their dates are determinable : the one, Macedonian, belonging to the era of the Seleu- cida3 ; the other, Roman, belonging, at the latest, to the age of Trajan. The Greek inscription, of which the first lines only are legible, reads thus : — ^KA KO N r£ NOC( loVTo C C TPATJ LoTpTc £ rPA TA n/KNEMi Xl The date from the Macedonian Calendar, the month Panemos, corresponding with our July f, fixes this record irrefragably in the era of the * " The whole of the original inscriptions are on the shady side of the valley. — The few that are found on the opposite side are irv Latin [or Greek?]. The fornner are all executed with the same instrument, punched in a series of holes. The latter, and all the modern inscriptions, are cut with a different instrument, and in a different manner." — Gray, ap. Transact. R. Sac. Lit., vol.ii. parti, p. 147. ■(■ Hdvefios ' wofj.a ixr)vhs uapa M.aKe56aiu, 6 'lovKtos. — Suidas et Phavorinus in voc. FROM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 31 Seleucida3. And the tone of the engraver, some Syro-Macedonian soldier, indicating his novel experience of the character of a wild and savage people, argues an early period in that famous epoch. At the latest, however, the date must be before Christ 85 ; in which year Antiochus XII., after traversing Judea, invaded Arabia, defeated the Nabathseans in a first encounter, but was killed in a second. The language of the inscrip- tion, expressive of the vexation of a foiled in- vader, harmonizing with this event, I am willing to adopt this lowest date, which gives to this Syro-Macedonian record an existence of 1930 years : in other Avords, a date more than four centuries prior to that assumed by Beer as the date of its unquestionable predecessors, the un- known Sinaitic inscriptions. " The following Eoman inscription (observes Mr. Gray) is perfect and plain — but cut^ not dotted out." cesseNTSVR/ ANTe LATINOS ROMANO S This is the language of conquest ; of tlie invader, in the hour of victory; of a Roman soldier, in the pride of newly won empire, im- 32' THE VOICE OF ISRAEL pelled, on first sight of the supposed Syrian inscriptions, to blot out, as it were, in one sweeping sentence, the records and tlie race. The name Syri would seem to refer to the wars of Rome with the Seleucida3. But I am content, for my argument, to adopt the age of Trajan, the Roman conqueror of Arabia Petrtea : a date which assigns to this inscription an existence of upwards of 1730 years. Such is the undoubted antiquity of these com- paratively modern records : while their unknown precursors, according to Professor Beer, cannot lay claim to an antiquity of more than fifteen centuries. From consequences self-evident, and self- destructive like these, it is surely high time to return, and to resume the real facts of the case : facts which require only a fair and full re-state- ment, discarding all mere hypothesis, to conduct us to the conclusions plainly dictated, by the narrative of the Books of Moses, by the funda- mental laws of history, and by the first principles of common sense. Before, however, we resume the facts, it may be well to notice one precious admission conceded by Beer ; namely, that the genuine Sinaitic inscriptions bear upon their face, in the sameness of character of the hand- writing, and the whole style of their execution, FROM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 33 the clearest internal evidence of the whole of thcni being the work of a single age or generation.^ This premised, we pass on to the phenomena. Foremost amono; these is that so often stated by travellers, and so irrationally under-estimated, both by visitors of these sacred localities, and by critics at home, — the numbers, extent, and posi- tions of the inscriptions: their numbers (in the Wady Mokatteb alone) being computed by thou- sands f ; their extent by miles ; and their posi- tions above the vallies being as often measurable by fathoms as by feet. No difficulties of situation, no ruggedness of material, no remoteness of loca- lity, has been security against the gravers of the one phalanx of mysterious scribes. The granite rocks of the almost inaccessible Mount Serbal, from its base to its summit, repeat the characters and inscriptions of the sandstones of the Mo- katteb. The wild recesses of the Wady Arabah * " Supercst quajstio, quantum sit temporis spatium quo ha: inscrip- tiones facta; sunt. Scriptura; ratio interna tam est uniformis, ut anti- quissimas carum a rccentissimis intorvallo quod seculum multum excedat dubitem." — Beer, Introd. p.xv. Could words describe more accurately the " forty years " of the Exode ? f Lord Lindsay's computation of those in the Wady Mokatteb alone : " We now entered the Wady Mokatteb, a spacious valley, bounded on the east by a most picturesque range of black mountains ; but chiefly famous for the inscriptions from which it derives its name of the Written Wady : inscriptions, too (and here is the mystery), in a character which no one has yet deciphered, lliere arc thousands of them." — Letters on Egypt, Edam, and the Holy Land, vol. i. p. 274., 2nd edit. D 34 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL renew the phenomena in an opposite direction, and disclose them carried on to the extremity of the eastern head of the Red Sea ; while countless multitudes more may possibly lie still undisco- vered, in the numerous vallies branching out from the roots of Sinai, and as yet, it would ap- pear, unexplored. These circumstances, taken together, we might reasonably have thought would have barred at the threshold any theory, grounding itself upon the assumption of the in- scriptions being the work, or pastime, of chance pilgrims or travellers ; and that within a given period of from thirty to forty years ; and by hands from the Arabian side, while the great ?nass of tlie inscriptions are found on the Egyptian side of the peninsula.* But let us examine one point more closely, for it is a point of vital importance in this argument : the circumstance, namely, that very many of the inscriptions are found at heights which no chance voyagers could reach. Proof of this is presented to the eye in the frontispiece of the present w^ork: a view of the Wady Mokatteb from the south-east * " Extant hse Inscriptiones ad montem Sinai : vel accuratius, in val- Hbus collibusque qui inde ab ejus radicibus caurum versus siti sunt, usque ad littus orientale sinus Heroopolitani ; ita quidem, ut qui hodie a monasterio mentis Sinai proficiscuntur ad oppidum Suez, quamcunque viam eligunt — plures enim sunt, — inscriptiones has videant in rupibus vallium plurimarum per quas ducuntur, usque ad eas regiones littoris quas dimidio et quod excedet itineris confecto attingunt." — J9eer, In- trod. pp. i. ii. FROM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 35 (the first which has been taken of it), by Count Leon Laborde, originally published in his " Jour- ney through Arabia Petraia to Mount Sinai." In this drawing, if the scale of the heights be repre- sented by that of the figures at their base, the reader will see cliffs of an altitude to defy the passing pilgrim, covered with inscriptions nearly to their summits. Our next example shall be taken from the Djebel Mokatteb : a locality of which we have so often read, but which has not been described, and appears not to have been inspected, by any of our recent travellers.* This "written mountain" is stated to contain an inscription in forty-one lines, the dimensions of which may be computed by the scale of the characters. The first line of this inscription (the only part of it yet copied) is styled by the Arabs, from the magnitude of its scale, " The Title." Its characters are described as measuring each six feet in length: those of the forty lines beneath it, as being each one foot long.f Now, allowing the necessary spacing ♦ For the true site, and a description, of the Djebel Mokkateb, see Supplementary Final Note 15. ■f This scale is guaranteed by a commensurate scale from Burckhardt, at Mount Serbal, not on sandstone, but on granite. "Just below the top, I found, on every granite block that presented a smooth surface, inscriptions, the far greater part of which were illegible. I copied the three following. The characters of the first are a foot long." — Syria, 11.607. The signare litteris cubitum longix of Plautus (Ilud. 45. 2. 7.) shows the scale to have been one in common use with the ancients. D 2 36 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL for the intervals between the lines, and again, for the probable distance between the lowest line and the ground, it will result that this monument must rise to a height of from 60 to 80, or even 100 feet. On the cliff on the opposite side of the pass, we are informed, stands another in- scription, on a corresponding scale, in sixty-seven lines. The altitude of this may be propor- tionately greater. If these proportions be even approximately correct, and they rest on high authority, is it within possibility that either monument could be the work of pilgrims to Sinai, during their mid- day halt ? Mr. Gray's remarks upon some of the inscriptions copied by him in the Wady Mo- katteb, go, in different degrees, but with equal conclusiveness, to demonstrate the same impos- sibility. In the faces of perpendicular rocks, to travellers without appliances, 20 feet, or 12 feet, or 100 feet, are alike inaccessible. With this in mind, we will proceed to the descriptions and measurements of Gray. "No. 60. Rock highup (12 feet)." " 62. Same place." " 65. Fragment Mgh upy " 66. Rock high iip^ " 75. Rock high up^ " 77. Frag- ment high iip.''^ " 90. Vvook highup.''^ " 11. Rock high up in a remote place, — cross letter hardly aceessihley " 17. Fallen rock, inaccessible at FIIOM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 37 present'' " 29. Rock h'ujU up.'' " 5G. Rock liigh up." "61. Hock high up {about twenty feet^ in a pluce where the winter torrent has undermined the slope)." "72. Loose stone high up." " 78. Fragment high zip." "79. Ifigh up." The de- grees of altitude thus marked, are various, or undetermined. But Avhether the height be 12 feet (as in No. 60), or 20 feet (as in No. 61), or anything between or beyond these elevations, one thing is clear, namely, that their execution by chance travellers, or unprepared pilgrims, is a thing impossible.* *" Mr. Gray's statements of the elevations of many of the inscriptions in the Wady Mokatteb is paralleled by the independent testimony of Burckhardt, relative to the original positions of fallen inscriptions discovered by him, at the foot of the rock of Naszeb, or Warsan, near Suez, on * The absurdity of this theory has been exposed, with the sound sense and dry humour of an anti 3 38 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL the same route. " While my guides and servants lay asleep under the rock, and one of the Arabs had gone to the well, to water the camels, and fill the skins, I walked round the rock ; and was surprised to find inscriptions similar in form to those which have been copied by travellers in Wady Mokatteb. They are upon the surface of blocks lohich have fallen doivnfrom the cliff ; and some of them appear to have been engraved while the pieces still formed a part of the main rochy * AYhile the whole facts of the case, as thus far exhibited, demonstrate the utter untenableness of Professor Beer's hypothesis as to the origin and authorship of the Sinaitic inscrif)tions, there remains in reserve one consideration more : a consideration alone sufficing to prove, to the sa- tisfaction of every capable and unbiassed under- standing, that there was but one period, and one people, in the history of the world, to which, and to whom, those mysterious monuments can be rationally ascribed. The consideration in ques- tion is this : the physical character of the 'penin- sula of Sinai. This " waste and hoAvling wilderness," as it is expressively designated in the Old Testament, is described, by all who have visited it in modern * Syria, p. 477. FROM THE liOCKS OF SINAI. 39 times, as (in most parts) utterly destitute of sus- tenance/or man.''^ For flocks and herds, indeed, in the rainy seasons, its vallies, usually parched and withered (an oasis here and there like AVady Feiran excepted), yield a sudden, abundant, and short-lived vegetation. But, with the exception of a few scattered date-groves, of food for the use of man its produce is as nothing. Even the wandering Bedouin, who seeks pasture for his camels or his sheep, during the rains, amidst these wilds, must carry with him, we learn, his own simple and scanty meals. But what Sinai is in * " No reflection forced itself upon me so often, or so urgently, in passing over the track of the Israelites, as the utter and universal in- aptitude of this country for the sustenance of animal life. It seems really to possess no elements favourable to human existence besides a pure atmosphere ; and no appearances favour the supposition that it was ever essentially better, I am filled with wonder that so many travellers should task their ingenuity to get clear of the miracles, which, according to the narrative of INIoses, were wrought to facilitate the journey of that vast, unwieldy host ; when it is demonstrable that they could not have subsisted three days in this desert without supernatural resources. The extensive region, through which we were twelve days in passing on dromedaries, is, and ever must have been, incapable of affording food sufficient to support even a thousand, or a few hundred people, for a month in the year. There is no corn-land or pasturage ; no game nor roots ; hardly any birds or insects ; and the scanty supply of water is loathsome to the taste, provoking, rather than appeasing, thirst. Wliat could the two millions of Israel have eaten, without the miracles of the manna and the quails ? How could they have escaped destruction by drought, but for the healing of the waters of Marah ? A miracle that was probably repeated in Wady Gerundel, and at the other salt wells on their route to Sinai." — Dr. Olins Travels in Egijpt, Arabia PetrtBa, and the Holy Land, vol, i. p. 381. D 4 40 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL our days, it has been through all preceding ages. From the Deluge, if not from the beginning, it has been, is, and must remain to the end of time, the same " waste and howling wilderness." How- ever periodically traversed, it never could have been permanently occupied by mankind. This decisive consideration brings us back once more to the phenomenon of its multitudinous and mysterious inscriptions. To execute these mo- numents, it has been already seen, ladders and. platforms, or ropes and baskets, the appliances of a fixed and settled population, were indispen- sable. But no people ever could have been fixed and settled there, unless provided with daily suj)plies of food and water in some extraordinary way. Now the only people in the history of the world answering to this description, was God's People Israel, after their Exode out of Egypt: a fact which tells with a force of which he never dreamt upon the independent admission of Beer, that the Sinaitic inscriptions bear upon their face self-evident marks of their having been the work of a single generation. To Israel in the wilderness, it follows, and to her alone, every antecedent consideration con- nected with those monuments conducts, or rather compels the mind : their numbers, their diffusion, their localities, their elevations, their internal FROiM THE HOCKS OF SINAI. 41 tokens of being the workmanship of one and the same people, within the space of forty years ; and over and above all this, their existence in an uninhabited and uninhabitable wilderness, leave no alternative between this one sound conclusion, and a host of puerilities like those presented in the " Studia Asiatica " of the late Professor Beer. The next stage of investigation brings us to the inscriptions themselves ; and to the inquiry whether and how far the antecedent considera- tions are sustained by evidences apparent on the face of the characters. To this In'anch of the inquiry I would now invite attention. If the Sinaitic inscriptions be indeed, what Cosmas and his Jewish fellow-travellers believed them to be, the autograph records of Israel in the wilderness, it is only reasonable to presup- pose that the characters employed in them would bear a close affinity to the written language of Egypt. As Divine Providence never needlessly employs extraordinary, to the neglect of ordinary means, we are justified in assuming, where there exists neither proof nor presumption to the con- trary, that the Israelites in the wilderness used the characters and language which the}^ had acquired in Egypt, during a sojourn of two hundred and fifteen years. They may not, it is true, have written : but if tliey did write (as 42 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL from Dcut. xxvii. 1 — 8. we learn they certainly did at a later period of the Exode*), we might expect to find in any monuments of theirs the written characters of Egypt.f Of the soundness of this expectation, a single but decisive proof has been already given from Mr. Gray ; who, on the occurrence in No. 11. of his Sinaitic inscrip- tions of the character -f-, has this remark, " It is to be observed that there is an Egyptian hieroglypliic of precisely this fornix The cha- * The command given here by IMoses to the Israelites, to write all the words of the Law upon great stones, cased over with fresh plaster (clearly to facilitate the execution of the writing in small charac- ters), on their first crossing the Jordan, demonstrates the important fact that the art of writing was familiar to Israel in the wilderness. This fact, again, supplies a strong presumption that their knowledge of the art had not lain dormant during their forty years' sojourn in the penin- sula of Sinai. The existence of thousands of inscriptions upon the rocks and mountains, and in the vallies of Sinai (all in the enchorial characters of Egypt), meets this presumption. And from the coincidence of the probabilities with the facts of the case, arises evidence of a very valuable kind in support of the Israelitish origin of the writings. Upon the face of the case it is clear, that nothing but practice in the art of writing could, in the natural order of things, have enabled the Israelites, on entering Canaan, to cover the stone pillars with their whole written Law, as the expression " all the words of this Law " seems plainly to imply. Nothing miraculous, be it observed, is indicated in the transaction. They knew how to write; and were simply enjoined to apply the art to record, on a material soft at first, but afterwards hard as the stone on which it was plastered, the Law given them by Moses. Is it not probable that the jNIosaic Law, as a whole, was transcribed on these " great stones " ? the soft plaster admitting, at once, of close writing, and small characters, large blocks of stone (their number is imspecified) might contain, had it been the Divine will, not the Law only, but the five Books of Moses. + " I think it next to certain that Moses brought letters, with the rest of his learning, /;wM Egijpt." — Dicine Lcr/atioii, vol. iv. p. 163. ed. 8vo. J vf/vKt/- AfphaleC A'.evOTa^ en^/'f^^l J^AaSe/ .Vas<7r.t AtiAv7/;/,'v^rtvVir J^,// J?«4a- K * * 1 Ji ^7 . 1 V u O X} U Uc- V U z/ > irxi u 1/- ^ d >■ X- > 3 m ► . J^ X ^ A - X-^y. \ TD'' lt> 1 D •/ ' r 1 f ■ « 3- /< n .>f A^ « (r X k; 1^ i/in L^ 0" J yS/^ /I /^ X A >r Yt h > ■/^ X oi i' v\ a I k hx ^ n f, OU3 J A zj ^ ^ yj» :^ ^-N^ > ,b» . U ^ r^ i f ? ^ ? J>'^^ C^ ^ i fc.f ^ p?>,. iivJi^-J':) iJ" tuJ r- J ^ ? u c 1, t3 ,i- . 55 > 3 s ^^ r<^ 1 t I FROJI THE FvOCKS OF SINAI. 43 meter, it should be observed, is not only Egyptian, but it is the sacred tau, the most prominent of all the Egyptian hieroglyphics. From this identification with Egyj)t of a single character, the present writer has advanced the proof to the identification of the Sina'itic alphabet with the enchorial alphabet of the Rosetta stone '' ; and with the characters, also, found in the quar- ries of Masara, of a date prior to the age of Moses. The case is matter-of-fact. And a har- mony of the two alphabets, executed, not by transcript, but (to secure perfect accuracy) by tracing, is placed before the reader in Plate I. The general identity of the two alphabets is apparent at first view. But I would direct special attention to three characters: the old Syriac A, U*, the Hebrew ain, y, and the "^ Ethiopic koph, 4^, Of each of these characters, from both alphabets, there are here two or three different forms ; and forms so peculiar, in the koph especially, as to preclude all probability of accidental coincidence. So perfect, in truth, is the identity, that it is only the difi'erence of place and time that excludes the idea of the characters being formed by the same hand. The * As written in a MS. of the fourth Century, now in the British Jluseum. I had treated it successfully as h for several years, before I found it authorized hy this IMS. of ahout a.d. 400. 44 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL forms of the ain^ I may add, fidly justify Beer's tribute to tlie freedom, boldness, and calligra- phic beauty of the Sinaitic characters. The double 55, y\p( , is another point of corre- spondence, less obvious, but equally conclusive. Having stated and exhibited the identity of the alphabets, I leave it with reflecting readers to draw their own conclusions from this point of the evidences, as to the true origin and author- ship of the Sinaitic inscriptions. Before thus brinoino^ it to the test of a com- mon alphabet, the question had been argued "wdioUy upon the ground of antecedent considera- tions. It has been shown that the whole antece- dent considerations concur with the idea of an Israelitish origin, and are irreconcileable with any other. We will now proceed to further evidences of this origin furnished by the inscriptions them- selves. The best and simplest way of introducing these evidences to the reader, will be, as in the case of the Hisn Ghorab inscription, to lay before him the steps by which the results here- after to be submitted were gradually arrived at. It was in the summer of 1844, immediately after tlie publication, in a former work*, of an Appendix on the subject of tlie Hamyaritic in- scriptions, that the kindred subject of the Sinaitic * Thu Historical Geography of Arabia. FROM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 45 inscriptions was brought under my consideration, incidentally, by a friend who had visited Sinai, and who placed in my hands Mr. Gray's collec- tion of the inscriptions, to be met with only in the Transactions of the Koyal Society of Litera- ture. At a first glance I was struck by the clear identity of several of the characters with characters of the old Ilamyaritic alphabet re- covered at Hisn Ghorab ; and whose powers were already ascertained by the decypherment of the Hisn Ghorab inscription. From the discovery, at Sinai also, of these newly recovered letters, I was presently led on to notice among the Sina'itic characters, other characters of previously known forms and powers: some Hebrew, some Greek, and some Arabic. A little reflection upon these phenomena soon suggested to my mind, as the only sound and safe rule of experimental decypherment, the fol- lowing simple canon : That, in comparing an un- known with known alphabets, lettei^s of the same known forms he assum,ed to possess the same known 2)0ivers. For however, in Greece and the idioms of the West, this rule might prove uncertain, there was, in the nature of the case, a moral assurance of its certainty and safety, in the op- posite quarter, arising from the unchanging cha- racter of nil things in the East. The Sina'itic 46 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL Z2 and ^, accordingly, I treated as the Hebrew n (b); the "^ and "f, as the 1 (^0 ; the X>= ^^^ y , as V (ai7i) ; the D and 23 , as D and £= (^^'^(/) ; the ^ *, as u) («0 ; the J , as J (?z) ; the y, as the Greek v (n) ; the <^, as the Greek P (r) f ; the ^ , as the Arabic j ( /) ; the S ? as the Arabic 1 ; the H, as the Ethiopic H (^) ; the -f , as the Ethiopic 1^ (t) ; the ^, as the Ethiopic ^(koph); the U and PI, as the old Syriac u (^0 J ^^^^ ^^^^ y, as the Arabic i (A)? &c.J From the adoption of this rule as a first prin- ciple of decypherment, I proceeded at once to test the alphabet derived from it, by its expe- rimental application to the Sina'itic inscriptions. My first essay was made upon Mr. Gray's in- scription, No. 59.: a record in five lines, with * Another form of the m, of constant occurrence at Sinai, viz. Q , I since learn is a form of the »j in some Hehrew MSS. It is, in fact, the Arabic initial m, viz. ^, only this letter has its upper limb bent down to connect it with the adjoining letter in that cursive character. f The Greek alphabet, formed on the old Cadraeian, being of Phoeni- cian origin, its characters (excepting the few whose powers have been changed) are as available at Sinai as the Hebrew or Arabic. ^ I may here remark once for all, as a defect fatal to the alphabet of Professor Beer, that he has absolutely omitted altogether several of the principal characters at Sinai. For example, the U, (j, and I », the Hj the V>tl>e /\ , the .^1, the V, with other prominent characters of these inscriptions, nowliere appear in his alphabet. To attempt translation with such defective machinery, must, in tlie nature of things, tangle, instead of weaving the web. The omitted characters, moreover, are mostly characters of known alphabets, and known powers. FROM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 47 two slight outlines (apparently of water) one above the fourth, the other below the fifth, line. It is equally impossible to express or forget the sensation experienced, when my newly con- structed alphabet, formed on the principle just described, returned the translation given in the next page. 48 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL SINAI INSCRirTIONS. No. I. Gray, 00. -^-Qu/mnipcil opposite Ha last line ijitcne. The People with prone mouth drinketh [at] the water-springs The People [at] the two water- springs kicketh [like] an ass smiting with the branch of a tree the well of bitterness he heals. t3y2''1- — Deut. xxxii. 15. * Tlie original word *lii^> c /~~ ' Jtaru, Prono ore bibet, " drink- ing with prone mouth," is of frequent occurrence in the Sina'itic inscriptions; so frequent, as to mark the greediness wliich it expresses as hi^ FROM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 49 Dy. Popiilus. " The People." a£, am, Plebs. " Tlie common / . / People." ' • y")3. F/cxil sr, iiicurvfivit se genu. " Ap'-iil Arabes signifieationis J-, I j primigpiiia; vestigia lantum siipersunt : ut, proiio ore S ■ ' ■ ■' •— — I bibit, pj-o incurvavit se ad bibendum." — Gcsenius. ' I " To bow, sink down, as a man upon his knees." ? ^' > karaa, Os admovit vel immisit aqua: ; eamqiio sorpsit sen potaiit, non h.uiriens manu aul vase. "Drinking witli (lie mnutli, witliout using a vessel or hands." ^\ 1 V I I iX^ >'''/'"■, A qua abundavit /oc«j. (A water-spring.) 'J A place abounding with water. uu ma, Equidcm, profecto, quidera. Truly, verily, indeed. )6l V I I ^/ j_^i^'>^-i «(/«)"««, Two places abounding with water. Dy, Populus. " The People." >^, am, PIcbs. "The common People." ) Yamaha, Calcitravit asinus. Kicketh the ass. )J', haxara, Percussit fuste. .Smiting with a .<:tick (or stall). j. P., " The main branch of a tree." 1.1*- "'"i Pons, scaturigo, et viva? aqusc fluxus. ^" ' A fountain, s|)ring, flux of living water. yc, murrah, Amara res. Bitter. A bitter thing. Marah . , Curavit. j__il,. ''«/. Curans. "Curing, healing, ' -/ rcmedynig." The Hebrew XQI' S.inavit. similar in sense, has special reference to the cure here wrought, — the healing of hitter tiaters. "Aqua (amara et noxia) sanari AmtMT ubi salubris reditur, 2 lleg. ii. 22." — Gesenius in voc. a tiational characteristic. That this habit was a national characteristic of tlie early Israelites, is demonstrated by a passage of their history in the Book of Judges (vii. 3 — 8.). This context throws a striking light upon the propensity of their ancestors; and, in so doing, bears historical tcsti- * Tlie Samaritan r is of this form : viz. X . 50 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL At tlie foot of the inscription Mr. Gray has the following note : " A quadruped opposite the last line but one." Perfectly satisfied that the " quadruped " here noticed, as standing under the word ramah*^ Calcitravit asinus, "kicketh the ass," would prove, whenever copied from the original, to be the figure of an ass, a feeling of disappointment not unnaturally arose at Mr. Gray's omission to make a copy of the animal : the more, as these rude Sinai figures of animals are so easily drawn. mony to the correctness of the above decypherment. Its value as evidence, from its exhibition of the ;5ame people, after the lapse of centuries, na- tionally addicted to the same peculiar excess, were the passage less familiar, might demand its introduction in full. But the part immediately in point will suffice : " So he brought down the people unto the water. And the Lord said unto Gideon, Every one that lappeth with his tongue as a dog lappeth, him shalt thou set by himself; likewise every one that boweth doivn vpon his hnees to drink. And the number of them that lapped their hands to their mouth, were three hundred men : hiit all the rest of the people Lowed duwn upon their knees to drink water.''' It is only while transcribing this note for the press, that I observe, in the Hebrew text of Judges vii. 6, the ipsissima verba of the Marah inscription, as read and rendered by me from the Arabic nearly seven years ago: viz. '\])~\'2 l"n]N " The people bowed down," &c. The definition of the Hebrew root yiD, in Gesenius and Parkhurst, proves, here at least, the identity of the Arabic with the Hebrew, and the identity of both with the language of the Sina'itic inscriptions. For further remarks see final note 8. * O \f Q ^ J ^.sj-'C t> ramaham, with a servile final m : so "j„sj..^j, cum /♦ servili." Golius in voc. — The word ramuh. Beer reads 1?N1, Wahi (a proper name) : a reading set aside by the figure of the wild ass, standing beneath or beside the word, in all the four inscriptions. This one word, not one letter of which is to be found in Prof Beer's reading, thus proves his alphabet to be erroneous in three of its characters. FROM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 51 I liad now before me, to my own conviction at least, an apparently contemporary record of the second miracle of the Exode ; the murmuring of the Israelites at Marah, and the healino: of the bitter waters : while the mention, in the second line of the inscription, of " two water- springs" (^,1 Ac*, adaran^ literally two "places ahoiinding idth loater)^ corroborated by the two outlines, apparently included the fresh murmur- ing, or the opening of the rock of Meribah, which immediately succeeded. On communicating at the time this inscription, with my translation of it, to friends with whom I was in the habit of conferring on subjects of criticism, I expressed my regret at Mr. Gray's omission of the " quadruped," and particularly requested them to remember what I then stated : namely, that Avhenever a perfect copy of the inscription was taken, " the figure of a qua- druped " noticed by Gray would be found to be the figure of an ass. It was more to my satis- * V 1 I \/ ' From this group, P, Beer obtains, as usual, a proj)er name, «|>^>|y, by the process of omitting the final Greek V, nun, and of changing the power of the Greek q, rho, into >), vau: — a process which miglit make anything of anything. In the other characters we arc agreed ; and the reading ..A Ac, udaran, is obtained, simply by allowing to the Greek letters, «1 and V, their known powers. The reading, we have seen, is confirmed by the two water-springs. E 2 52 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL faction than surprise that, within the next clay or two, the prediction was verified. An oriental scholar courteously oiFered for my perusal Pro- fessor Beer's " Century of Sinai tic Inscriptions," a collection which not only I had not seen, but of the existence of which I was unaware ; and there, on opening the book, I found a duplicate inscription, and in it Mr. Gray's " quadruped," the figure of the ass. It was due to the cause of truth and know- ledge in their most sacred relations, immediately to communicate this wholly unexpected veri- fication of my decypherment to the friends, to whom it had previously been submitted.* I did so at once, in order that " in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word might be esta- blished." The proof of the correct reading and render- ing of the word ramah^ and of the true powers, consequently, of the three characters which compose it, was now placed above criticism. The correctness of the readings and render- ings preceding it, viz. dm kard^ ddar, and dda- * It was to the late Archbishop of Canterbury, and a mutual friend present at the conversation, that I made the request mentioned in a former page. I now sent His Grace a tracing of the animal. In the last con- versation I had with Abp. Ilowley, His Grace observed that he perfectly recollected the stages of the discovery, and the re([uest that had been made to him. FROM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 53 5 5=^ 1 ^ -< P^ ^ o ™ I — <5' -^ J \ 5 t I Q^ vll ^ .3 S P. ? I- o p< '^ O (u E 3 54 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL ran*^ Scanctioned by the clear Greek and Hebrew forms of the characters, was corroborated by the Avater-line representations of two wells or foun- tains, at least of outlines which might very well represent them. The name of the locality, MaraJi, the second word in the last line, was the only important word left requiring similar con- firmation. It received this confirmation in a way beyond hope, from the identity of form between the lower of the two wells in the inscription, and the bitter well of Hoivara, situated about fifty miles from Ayoun Musa and Suez ; a spring which all authorities asrree with Burckhardt o in acknowled^xino' as the true Marah of Exodus.^ The circumstance to which the discovery of this correspondence is owing is too remarkable to be suppressed. Shortly after the decyphennent of the inscription, I was favoured by a visit from a Eellow and Tutor of Cambridge, then recently returned from the East. This gentleman had passed four years in Palestine and Arabia Petraea, formerly so difficult of access, but which he * While correcting for the Press, I discover that Beer has given their true powers to the first radicals of this word, viz. 1)} or ^~, ad. And only for his confining liimself to Hebrew as the key, and his unaccount- able metamorphosis of the Greek H, r, into 1, vati, and of the Greek V, n, into "ID, bar, a common-place which he finds in all the Sinai inscrip- tions, he might have had the true reading. How he obtains his 1!2, for there is nothing to stand for it in Gray, might be inexplicable, were it not for his ingenious device of manufacturing one text out of three separate inscriptions. See Beer, pp. 738., Nos. .",1, 32- 33. FROM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 55 examined at leisure, by domesticating himself in the encampments of the Bedouins. Our common interest in the subject led to conversation upon the Sinai'tic inscriptions, which he had looked at only with the eye of a passing traveller. On my pointing out in Mr. Gray's collection, in answer to his inquiries, the inscription which records the miracle at ]\Iarah, with its two sketches of Avater- springs confirmative of the decypherment, my new acquaintance immediately observed, " Of the first of these wells I can say nothing, for I did not see it : but here (pointing to the second) is the well of Marah by which I sat. It is exactly of this shape, about five feet in diameter, and a stream running from it in the direction here delineated." *'° My informant further added, that, when he was about to taste the water, his Bedouins exclaimed Murrali^ murrah (hitter^ hitter)^ thus pronouncing undesignedly its Scrij)- tural name. That this exclamation is their usual warning here, appears from its being men- * "Tlic small oval pool occupies the centre of a mound of travertine. " — Forty Days in the Desert, p. 31. Mr. Bartlett's sketch of the Aiii Ilowara perfectly agrees with that in the inscription, an oval pool, with a stream issuing from one side. Viewed from the same point of the road, or the west, with the stream running to the left, even tlie dip in the out- line below, and the lesser curve above, correspond very exactly in the two delineations. The form of the well of Marah has thus apparently re- mained unchanged by the revolutions of three thousand three hundred years. The stream from it is quicklj' absorbed in the sands ; and this feature, also, is marked in the Sinai'tic outline ; tlie stream terminates. E 4 56 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL tioned by other travellers." If one miglit venture to judge of its effect upon readers generally, from the impression made by this eye-witness evidence upon those present at the conversation, the result would be satisfactory indeed. As it is now in my power, however, to present the correspond- ence to the eye, I subjoin the outline of the well of Howara, as viewed from the road to Sinai, the reverse of the view represented in the inscription. How interesting the circumstance, that a name and locality of the Exode, determined independ- ently by other considerations, should be thus fixed by the fidelity of a rude outline three thousand three hundred years ago ! I subsequently recognized in No. 31. of Beer's " Century," what, but for his perspicacity as a palteographer, the rudeness of the characters in this example might have concealed, a third occurrence of the same inscription, also accom- panied by the figure of the ass. " A threefold cord (Solomon tells us) is not quickly broken," but the triple evidence thus successively arrived at was yet to be fortified by another strand. For a fourth recurrence of the inscription, vdth. the figure of the wild ass standing, as in Mr. Gray's example, under the word rainaJi, was brought to liglit by my late friend, the Rev. Thomas Brock- man, Avho visited the Wady Mokatteb in May, Pi.n. Oray^ N'? 6^. J.^ " — — —- — , -/ ^^^ita^THifieo^ opposite- the Ozsi line ii^Jt one,. '^^ts:^^^ FROM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 57 1845, for the purpose of aiding the progress of discovery, with iny copies and decypherments of the examples of this inscription already in our possession in his hands.* This fourth example is in every light important ; but in none more so than in the confutation which it furnishes of Professor Beer's notion, that the three examples of the inscription alone known to him, though essentially differing in parts, might yet be, not separate records, but copies of one and the same monument. In Mr. Brockman's case this was impossible, for, when he made his fac-simile, he had the materials for comparison in his hands ; and his hand as a draughtsman was as true as his heart : "Such a faitliful chronicler was Griffith." The body of the inscription, it follows, was a com- mon-place : the record of the first rebellion, and first miracle, after the Exode, repeated, we may suppose, by Israelites of the class of Bezaleel and • I take tliis opportunity of mentioning that I\Ir. Brockman's j)apers have been entrusted to my care, with a view to publication. Their ap- pearance has been delayed, parti)', by the hope of recovering an important portion, consisting of his earlier journals, drawings, and copies of Sinaitic inscriptions, which unfortunately has disappeared in the transit of my friend's personal effects via Bombay. His letters, however, and journal of five months' residence on the coast of Hadramaut, including his dis- covery and sketch of the mouth of the Cave Canim river, (which escaped the notice even of the Hon. East India Company's surveyors,) with visits to ruins of high interest and anticjuity on the southern coast, contain materials calculated to inform, and, it is hoped, to interest the public. 58 THE VOICE OF ISEAEL Aholiab, upon diiFerent rocks. In confirmation of this view it may be worthy of remark, that the words dim ramali^ " The People kicked like an ass," were found by Burckhardt at the foot of Mount Serbal, " upon a large rock beyond the spring, and towards Wady Feiran."* In justice to a common -place of so high interest, both from its place in the history of the Exode, and as the first step towards real decy- pherment at Sinai, a Plate with fac-similes of the four inscriptions is annexed, illustrated by a drawhig from nature of the wild ass. f The pictorial inscriptions at Sinai, which thus represent rebellious Israel under the image of a restive ass, derive light and corroboration of the * Syria, p. 614. f Let the results arrived at in this one instance be tested by tlie doctrine of chances, and it will appear highly probable that the true alphabet alone could produce them. By Sir William Jones's computation, there are about 10,000 roots in the Arabic language. Assuming the language of the Sina'itic rocks to contain the same numlier of roots, there would be 9,999 chances to 1 against lighting upon the true meaning of any given word, by the mere force of unaided conjecture. My decypherment, however, of the alphabet, by wholly independent means, has enabled me, without the help of an illustration, to give to a sentence, common to four inscriptions, and consisting of 7 words, an interpretation the cor- rectness of which is now corroborated, as to one leading word, at least, in that sentence, by the juxta-position of a pictorial representation. Conceding, for the sake of argument, that the picture might be applicable equally to any one of the 7 words, still, even thus, the chances against being right become limited to 6 only, instead of 9,999, to 1. In other words, my decypherment of the alphabet has conducted me about \fi6G times nearer the truth, than conjecture would have done: an approxima- tion sufficient, surely, to satisfy the most incrLdulous. Beer PLATI iil. Rey T. Brcckman, Mtv 4.- m^ . 7j7P<=uJ ^ > " M> '/-, ] FROM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 59 most striking character from the Old Testament. The imagery of the Old Testament repeatedly identifies Israel with this animal ; and, in so doing, it identifies, by congruity, with Israel in the Avilderness, the notices and images of the wild ass upon the rocks of Sinai. The words of the Song of Moses, " Jeshurun waxed fat and kicked," following upon the description, " He found him in a desert land, and in tlie waste howling wil- derness," if not in designed allusion, agree, at least, very remarkably with these delineations. Jeshurun must symbolize an animal of the horse species. That the ass, or wild ass, was the animal intended, further appears from the imagery of the prophets. Thus Isaiah says of Israel, " The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib, but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider."* That the Song of Moses was here in the prophet's mind, appears from a later chapter : " Fear not, Jacob, my servant ; and thou Jeshurun, whom I have chosen." f Jeremiah is still more specific. This prophet directly symbolizes Israel in the wilder- ness under the image of a wild ass : " Where is the Lord, that brought us up out of the Land of Egypt, that led us througli the wilderness ; llirough a land of deserts and })its; througli a * Is. i. 3. t xliv. 2. 60 THE VOICE 01' ISRAEL land of drought, and of the shadow of death ; through a land that no man passed through, and where no man dwelt ? Thou art a swift drome- dary traversing her ways, a wild ass used to the wilderness^ * But the prophet Hosea brings the image still more home : " Israel is swallowed up; now shall they be among the Gentiles as a vessel wherein is no pleasure. For they are gone up to Assyria a ivikl ass alone by himself.''^ f It is impossible, therefore, for any image more appropriately to represent rebellious Israel in the wilderness, or under which she was more likely to be depicted by faithful Israelites of the Exode, than that which so frequently occurs upon the rocks of Sinai, the image of the wild ass. But the prophet Hosea, we observe, also com- pares disobedient Israel to " a swift dromedary traversing her ways." And this prophetic emblem, too, is repeatedly found sculptured at Sinai. Two of the most remarkable examples will be given as we proceed. The demonstrable decypherment of this one Sinaitic common-place, the first example of which comprized a record of two of the earliest and greatest events of the Exode, the rebellions and * Jcr. ii. 23, 24. This double image is reflected at Sinai, by the figure of Jehovah, or of the Angel of the Covenant, leading both animals. ■|- IIos. viii. 9. FROM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 61 miracles of Marali and Meribah, would have rendered slackness or delay inexcusable. Step by step, accordingly, the task of investigation was pursued, until several similar results had been arrived at ; and until all the Sinaitic in- scriptions as yet in our possession, all, at least, contained in the collections of Gray, Beer, and Burckhardt, had been carefully examined. The result was uniform. All that wTre in uncon- fused characters, and hence more clearly de- cypherable, approved themselves, like the Marah inscriptions, contemporary records of Israel in the wilderness. Anion o- the events of the Exode these records comprize, 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 : " Eor the horse of Pharaoh went in, with his chariots and with his horsemen into the sea, and the Lord brought again the waters of the sea upon them : " f they comprize, further, the miraculous supplies of manna and * Ps. xxxiii. \C. t Exod. xv. 19. G2 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL 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, de- scribing the holding up of Moses's 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. However to be accounted for, one peculiarity (the more remarkable because so little to be anticipated) characterizes the whole of these monuments already in our hands : namely, that not a single text of the Old Testament, not a single passage from the Books of Moses, is to be met with among them. This result is so contrary to every natural anticipation, that it is, in itself, no slight guarantee of the fidelity of FROM THE KOCKS OF SINAI. 63 the decyplicrments. For any arbitrary decy- pherment of Israelitisli monuincnts would be certain to abound with quotations from the Ten- tateuch, or with passages to be found in it. The most probable explanation of this total absence of Scriptural references and quotations, is to be sought and found in the contemporary character of the chronology of the Sinaitic in- scriptions : monuments which bear in their brevity and rudeness obvious marks of their being so many chronicles of the day ; some of which may have been written before the Penta- teuch itself; and all, most probably, before tliat sacred volume had been familiarized by use to the wandering Israelites. These reflections naturally lead us on to con- sideration of the circumstances which may be conceived to have given birth to those mj'sterious monuments. That writing, or engraving, on stone, was an art known to Israel in the wil- derness, is certain from what we read in Exodus of the fabrication of " the breast-plate of judg- ment." * " And thou shalt set it in settin2:s of stone, even four rows of stones. And the stones shall be icitli the names of the children of Israel, twelve according to tlieir names, like tlie engravings of a * Exod. xxviii. 15 — 21. 64 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL signet; every one with his name shall they be, according to the twelve tribes." That the art was not confined to a few, but imparted to many, is further certain, from what we read of Bezaleel and Aholiab ; who were in- spired by Jehovah with wisdom or skill for the works of the Sanctuary, and whose office it was to instruct other w^orkmen to work with and under them : " And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, See, I have called by name Bezaleel the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah. And I, behold I have given with him Aholiab, the son of Abisamach, of the tribe of Dan. And in the hearts of all the wise-hearted I have put wisdom, that they may make all that I have commanded them. Then wrou2;ht Bezaleel and Aholiab, and every wise-hearted man, in whom the Lord put wisdom and understanding to know how to work all maimer of work for the service of the Sanctuary, according to all that the Lord had commanded. And Moses called Bezaleel and x\holiab, and every wise-hearted man in whose heart the Lord had put wisdom, even every one whose heart had stirred him up to come unto the work to do it." * Now as writing or engraving characters on stones was part of this work, it is clear that numbers of ♦ Exod. xxxi. , XXXV., xxxvi. : see and compare passim. FROM THE ROCKS OF SINAT. 65 workmen were to be fomul in the camp of Israel wlio were familiar with this art; from whom still greater numbers, if not previously conversant in Egypt with the art of writing on stone, would acquire rude ideas of it. But by Israelites like these, what would be more naturally recorded daily upon the rocks amidst which they wandered, than the wonderful events of which they were eye witnesses from day to day ? And being good men, as the inspired pupils of Bezaleel and Aholiab unquestionably were, and as is attested to the conviction of the present writer by the fact, that not a single ungodly record is to be met with in the whole of the inscriptions we possess, what more naturally would be their constant themes, than, on the one hand, the daily mercies of Je- hovah, and, on the other hand, the daily ingra- titude and rebellions of disobedient Israel ? It will by and by be seen that these just antici- pations are met by the facts of the case. But it is not more certain that the Israelites in the wilderness of Sin possessed the art of writing or engraving upon rocks and stones, than that they possessed, also, time and oppor- tunity for its exercise amidst these wilds, such as never were or could be possessed, before or since, by any other tribe or people. Encamped in this, or the adjoining deserts, during the space F 66 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL of forty years, they had amplest leisure, and all needfid appliances, to facilitate the work of chro- niclers*; while the numbers of the workmen well solve the phenomenon of the multitudes, and repetitions, of inscriptions.f Eegarded, however, as all the circumstances lead us to regard them, as daily chronicles of the eventful occurrences of each day |, one seeming difficulty presents itself which must not be overlooked, but which it requires only fair examination to explain. How, it may be asked, comes it, that we read, at the very entrance of the peninsula, upon the rocks of the Wady Mokatteb, not only the first miracle after the Exode, the healing of the waters of Marah, but its last miracle also, the plague of the fiery serpents ? — a visitation * Even Dr Lepsius, "\vl;o agrees with Professor Beer as to the nature of the inscriptions, regards them as the work of a pastoral people, and not of mere passing pilgrims; an opinion seemingly borne out by their num- ber, their often elaborate, though rude, character, and the remote spots in which they are sometimes met with." — Forty Days in the Desert in the Track of the Israelites, p. 48. It has been shown that no " pastoral people " could subsist in Sinai without extraordinary supplies. Dr. Lep- sius's admission, consequently, is fresh proof of the Israelitish origin of the inscriptions. f " In a short time after leaving the mouth of Wady Maghara, the valley expands into a small plain, and again suddenly contracts. It is here, on the right-hand rocks, that the largest collection of the Sina'itic writings is to be found. They occur, indeed, in very considerable quantities, and must have been the work of a large body of men." — Forty Days, &j-c., p. 17. \ Not in point of fact, the elevations forbid this inference, but in their nature. FROM THE KOCKS OF SINAI. 67 which occurred nearly forty years after, upon the confines of Kadesh Barnea, and of the land of promise ? A moment's serious reflection upon " the manner of being " of Israel in the wilderness will solve this difficulty. The people, we know, were miraculously fed with manna from heaven : and why ? because the wilderness yielded no food for the sustenance of man. No similar provision was made for their flocks and herds: and why ? because, after the rains, the wildest wastes of Sinai abound, through every cleft and crevice, with a luxuriant spring of vegetation. The flocks and herds, accordingly, were main- tained, as those of his father-in-law Jethro had been kept by Moses himself in this very wilder- ness, by roving over the whole land. But roving flocks necessarily imply roving shepherds. And while the main body of the people pursued their stated marches, or remained stationary in their camps, their flocks and shepherds, there cannot be a rational doubt, wandered at Avill over the peninsula.* And while these retraced their steps * " One of the chief difficulties which I meet with in the narrative of Moses, is that of accounting for the subsistence of the numerous herds and flocks, that belonged to the retreating host. We hear of no miraculous provision for their support ; and it seems incredible that they could have subsisted upon the scanty verdure afforded by the flinty soil of the Desert, after making all possible allowance for its deterioration by the physical changes of three thousand years. They were probaljjy much less nume- rous than we are accustomed to suppose from the very general and F 2 C8 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL from the neighbourhood of Kadesh to that of Suez, what more natural or likely than for some faithful chronicler to register the plague of serpents beside the miracle at Marah ? the record of "judgment without mercy" upon those who had despised mercy, and sinned so grievously aofainst so o-racious a benefactor? In a vast majority of the Sinaitic monuments stand two words, fy^ and 1 5 1 5 the former at the beginning, the latter at the close, of each inscription : words which, from their position, and their incessant recurrence, whatever be their interpretation, must self-evidently stand as clues or key-notes to the sense. The first of these key-words is written in a great variety of forms, but its place in the inscriptions as the indefinite language used in the Bible upon the subject. And they were undoubtedly dispersed over the whole region lying between the long range of mountains, now known as Jebel Raha and Jebel Tih, on the East, and the Red Sea oji the West. This might easily have been done, as the country seems not to have been peopled, and the march between Suez and the neigh- bourhood of Sinai was unmolested by enemies. The stations and en- campments enumerated in the xsxiii. chapter of Numbers, were the head-quarters; while many of the people must always have been separated from the main body of the host, seeking food for their flocks of sheep and cat- tle in the neighbouring valleys." — Olin's Travels in Arabia Petrtra, vol. i. p, .ssa, &c. "Then, as now, it (the desert round Mount Seir) must have presented the same dreary waste, sand-hills beyond sand-hills, tufted with broom and other bushes, affording excellent pasturage; but, still, a dreary soli- tude, a howling wilderness." — Lord Lindsay, Letters on Egypt, Edom, and the Holy Land, vol. ii. pp. 22, 23. FROM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 69 grand initial formula, notwithstanding this variety, efFectually secures against the possibility of its being mistaken. Upon my first inspection of Mr. Gray's inscriptions, judging simply from the forms of the characters, I read, in the initial term t}^ ^ the Hebrew word tDV-, oin, " The People ; " and, in the final term I S I , the ineffable Name, lao, Jehovah : the only tivo icords which could sustain and account for the prominence and frequency of their return. The first result of these two readings was, the immediate decy- pherment, already before the reader, of the murmurings and miracle at Marah, — a decypher- ment established independently by the recovery of the omitted figure of the wild ass. The after consequence was, the clear and consistent decypherment of every inscription, at the head and foot of which these words occurred. It was not until large progress had been made in the work of interpretation, and until proof upon proof had been accumulated of the Israelitish origin of the Sina'itic inscriptions, that Professor Beer's publication fell into my hands. Upon looking into his pages, my surprise w^as great indeed to find the plain characters ly^-, to my eye so nearly identical with the Hebrew Dy, metamorpliosed into the Hebrew word Xzhw-, V 3 70 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL shalum, " Peace ;" * and the thousands and tens of thousands of unknown inscriptions, which till the vaUies, and clothe the rocks of Sinai, repre- sented as containing, merely, the proper names f of some straggling Eedouin pilgrims, prefaced each, by a Christian, or more properly a Maho- metan, salutation. Recovered from my first astonishment, I looked into the learned Pro- fessor's alphabet ; which, as might well be expected, proved in goodly keeping with this " specimen venientis aivi." In this alphabet, based chiefly upon arbitrary hypothesis, I could • I expressed my surprise at the time to the gentleman who first introduced Beer's treatise to my acquaintance, and informed me of his version of the initial TV^ , adding that the word would prove to be 6m, not shalum, and the quadruped mentioned by Mr. Gray, to be the figure of a wild ass. Little was I aware that the book which my informant held in his hand, contained a duplicate of the inscription, with the figure oi' the animal. f Prof. Beer'srenderings of the inscriptions might be summarily disposed of by a single consideration. Many of the inscriptions are common-places : the same sentences repeated on different rocks; probably, too, distant from each other. On the Professor's theory, they are all pioper names. It follows that his ideal pilgrims, not satisfied with clambering up the rocks, 7tnder which they had paused to rest, in order merely to engrave their names, must, in the cases referred to, have toiled from rock to rock, to repeat again and again the toilsome record of their pilgrimage. Tlie author of the inscription illustrated by the wild ass, for example, must have carved, or dotted in, his own name, at least four times. Upon a consequence like this it is needless to offer one word of comment. Beer, however, does not shrink from it. " Iste Amru fil. Choraischu figuram et nomen suutn, ut alii horum huminum, plus semel eadem ratione suxis tnsculpserit." — p. 4. FROM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 71 detect but six, or, at the most, seven sound characters. The rest was one charming amal- gamation of known forms with unknown powers, or of several wholly distinct known characters, under one and the same letter. My next step was to examine by what process our author con- verted Q-LF into \zhtV' This initial key-word, I have already observed, while never to be mis- taken, is written, in the Sinaitic inscriptions, with the utmost admissible latitude of form : very ge- nerally in full, thus, D^ ; sometimes contracted, thus, Q-^ , or thus, XP; and not unfrequently imperfect, thus Q'^, or thus QJA , evidently owing to the writer not being at pains to complete it by the connecting stroke : a carelessness inci- dent not uncommonly to frequency of repetition. This last form Q j jr , let me at once into the secret of Professor Beer's discovery ; who, mistaking the imperfectly formed character for two letters, assigned to its first limb ^ the power of the Hebrew schin^ to the second limb ) , that of the Hebrew lamed^ and thus ingeniously obtained his own reading of the word in its general, and perfect, biliteral form QJ^ , viz. the triliteral tlh^-, Peace. Even a cursory glance over the initial um* • Had Pr. Beer looked info the Samaritan alphabet, by many con- sidered the old or Mosaic Hebrew, he would hardly have fallen into the r 4 72 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL of these inscriptions, will show every impartial reader who will be at the pains to take it, that great variety of form which the German Professor has so strangely overlooked ; and by overlooking which, he has brought darkness out of light, and reduced to senses the most insignificant and absurd, monuments the most awful and mo- mentous in the annals of the world. Widely, however, as we differ in our readings of this word, the learned Professor is, at least, agreed with me as to the power of its final letter, viz. Q , ???, the Hebrew 72, mini. And this agreement, coupled with one point of union more, will now bring the matter to a short issue. Among the very few Sinaitic characters in which our wholly independent alphabets coincide, the form y is recognized by Prof. Beer, and by me, as identical with the Hebrew din, or y. Now let the reader consult only Nos. 38, 77, 89, 165, and 171, of Mr. Gray's collection, or Nos. 87, 88, 89, in that of Professor Beer, and he will there find the very word in dispute, (J^ , written error of making two characters out of one. For the Samaritan a!eph is ornamented with side-strokes exactly corresponding with those of the initial din at Sinai, viz. Ae, ^ t^ . And, if the power and unity of the character had not happened to be previously known, would supply the Professor's Sj»>, equally well with the Sina'itic character. This, indeed, is to be wise "above that which is written." FROM THE KOCKS OF SINAI. 73 with tlic undisputed and indisputable Hebrew I'orni y . * The simple fact is this, that the initial or capital letter is ornamented with side-strokes, j^, while the ordinary letter is written without them, y . Happily, however, there is an occa- sional departure from this rule, as X}^ , 5 X? which disposes of the question. f Om^ " The People," then, being the initial word of the inscriptions, who that keeps in mind the chosen scriptural designation of God's " People, Israel," can rationally hesitate as to the true authorship of these mysterious records of the past ? And as is their beginning, so also ^^lJ^7&^^^l^ Cli5 Ob ''Beer, no, 111. ^Gray, 153, <= 165. "iSSjSg. «Niebulir, Tab. xlix. ' Wilson, No. i. s Beer, 88, 89. Gray, 88, 89: the second examples are amir, but the initial monograms marked a are evidently identical. f As Pr. Beer, in liis own alphabet, admits the character V , to be the Hebrew n'm, and the character Q, to be the Hebrew mim, his shulum, on his own showing, is 6m, '> The People." 74 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL is their close, lao^ Jehovali, being the sole final term which could adequately respond to the initial term dm. The opinion of Cosmas, then, so long, and so unjustly contemned, is, after all, the right and true judgment: namely, that the Sinaitic in- scriptions were the Avork of the ancient Israelites, during their forty years' wanderings in the wil- derness. But from the settlement of their authorship there arises a further question, as to the language, or dialect, in which they were written. The word f S | , lao^ answering to the Greek law, in three letters, for the ineffable Name*, instead of the Scriptural word TV\T\\ Jehovah^ in four, alone sufficiently indicates that language, or dialect, not to have been the Hebrew of the Old Testament. Hebrew words and phrases, indeed, in common with all the Semitic dialects, it has been shown, and will hereafter more fully be proved, to contain, but its vocabulary is not the Mosaic Hebrew. But if it be not Hebrew, the reason of the case tells us that it must have been the ancient Egyptian: the vernacular idiom of the country and people, among whom the Israelites had sojourned for the term of eight generations, or of two hundred and fifteen years. To this conclusion, I have already shown, we are * That this was, also, ancient Jewish usage, is proved by Kircher. See Supplemental Note C. FEOM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 75 independently conducted, by the identity of the Sinaitic alphabet with those of Masara and Rosetta. But the ancient Egyptian, like the an- cient Hamyaritic, it will appear hereafter, was one of those primitive dialects of mankind, which, by a severe simplicity, by the nearly total absence of prepositions, conjunctions, inflexions, declensions, moods, tenses, voices, prefixes, afiixcs, and suf- fixes *, and what may not unappropriated be termed the accidents of speechf , prove their near relationship to a common origin, the " one lan- guage, and one speech," which obtained before the confusion of tongues at Babel. | Its near relation to the Hamyaritic is most apparent, in the number of purely Hamyaritic characters to be found, both upon the monuments of Egypt, and upon the rocks of Sinai. But the Hamyaritic itself is chiefly that portion of the Arabic, of which Arabic scholars, from Pocock downwards, have so often observed, that, while it occupies more than one half of all the Arabic lexicons, it rarely, if ever, is to be met with in any Arabic writers. * Tl'.e occasional occurrences of the sign of the future tense in verbs, and of the dual and plural numbers in nouns, are exceptions: sometimes doubtful exceptions. f The phenomenon exists to this day in some remote districts of Italy, where the idiom (probably the remains of the Oscan or Etruscan) is a language of roots, altogether devoid of adjuncts. \ In no other conceivable way could the one primeval tongue become the common parent of idioms dilfering so widely in character and con- struction, as the Semitic, and the Indo-Scythian, families of speech. 76 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL This was the statement of the case made to the present writer, at Paris in 1844, by one of the first Arabic scholars in Europe, who had been studying Arabic for thirty years without being able to account for the anomaly ; but observed, " The problem is now solved, this is the lost Hamyaritic." In the decypherraent, therefore, of all primitive tongues, the Arabic lexicon, more than one half of which has been heretofore a dead letter*, is the proper standard of appeal. ^^ And since the appeal, as will be hereafter experimentally shown, is attended with equal success in them all, it further follows, that all the primitive tongues are most nearly allied among themselves ; while their severe simplicity of structure indicates diverge- ment in the slightest possible degree from their common source, the one primeval language. ^^ But if Israel in the wilderness still used the language of Egypt, how, it may be asked, are we to account for the rise of the Scriptural Hebrew ? The answer seems easy and natural. The Scrip- tural Hebrew would appear to have been first imparted to Moses by Jehovah himself, upon the two tables of Commandments, and at the giving of the Law from Mount Sinai. The reason for * " Prajsertim cum tanta linguae pars in desiietudinem abierit." — Pocock, Spec. Hist. Arab. p. 96. " The Arabians tell us that the greatest part of it (the Arabic) has been lost." — Sale, Prelim. Disc. p. 34. edit. Oxon. 1806. FROM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 77 such a provision is to be found in the nature of the case. It was clearly the design of Divine Providence, from the first hour of the Exode, on the one hand, to sever the Israelites from all contact with the manners and idolatry of Egypt, whence they had so recently departed ; and, on the other hand, to isolate them, amidst the idolatrous nations by whom they were to be surrounded in the land of promise. But no effectual severment or isolation could take place, so long as the language remained the same. And as, at Babel, Almighty God interposed miraculously, hy diversity of lanfiuage, to dis- perse mankind ; so, by strict analogy, after the Exode, we might again expect Him to inter- pose, by peculiarity of language, to insulate His People Israel. This natural anticipation appears to be met by more than one significant intimation of Scripture. Thus, in the eighty -first Psalm, which treats especially of the thunders of Sinai, and the giving of the Commandments, we I'ead : " For this was a statute for Israel, And a law of the God of Jacob: This he ordained in Joseph for a testimony. When he went out through the land of Egypt : / heard a langu(i(je I understood not."* Of the several interpretations of this passage, none is so simple, or so clear, as that which • yoK'N ^nyn^ n^ neti' — Ps. ixxxi. .5, e. 78 TIIK VOICE OF ISEAEL refers the " strange language" here spoken of, to the voice of Jehovah, speaking, from Sinai, to Moses and the people in the Hebrew tongue, to them, as yet, a new and unknown dialect. In perfect accordance with this passage, and with this interpretation of it, are the words of Zepha- niah : " For then will I turn to the jicojile a fure language : that they may all call upon the name of the Lord, to serve Him with one consent.''''* This prophecy may most justly be thus under- stood and applied : " As, at the beginning of your existence as a nation, I gave you ' a pure language ' from Mount Sinai ; so, at the end, I will restore you ' a pure language,' a vehicle of thought and expression meet to celebrate my praise, and in which to call upon my name." For this last reason, especially, the Hebrew of the Pen- tateuch, thenceforward to become the language of the whole Hebrew people, may be regarded as a pure language or idiom revealed from heaven, less simple, because more regularly constructed, than any of the primeval tongues ; in order that no tongue polluted by heathen profligacy or idolatry might profane, by becoming their re- ceptacle, the lively oracles of God. nny"? nin^ dco d'ps xip"? mna ns:;' o'-ny ^x isnx tx -3 * Zephan. iii. 9.— HH^ DDEJ* FROM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 79 PASSAGE OF THE RED SEA: HORSE, AND FLIGHT, OF PHARAOH. " For the horse of Pharaoh went in, with his chariots and his horse- men, into the sea ; and tlie Lord brought again the waters of the sea upon them." — Exod. xv. 17. Were not commentators on Scripture so prone to be wise above what is written, it might be taken for granted of the expression here used by j\Ioses, " the horse of Pharaoh," that its literal would be accepted as its proper sense : that the war-horse of the king himself was here intended. The literal sense, however, was too plain and simple for some interpreters. Notwithstanding the unquestionable soundness of the Hebrew reading ny"l£) DID, and of its Septuagint version, 'in-jTog apa«), " The horse of Pharaoh," as it is correctly rendered in our English Bible, and notwithstanding, moreover, the separate mention, in immediate contradistinction, of " Pharaoh's horsemen " in the succeeding clause, we are called upon to understand the phrase, " the horse of Pharaoh," as put both for his horses and his horsemen : in other words, for the whole cavalry of the Egyptian army.* ^^ * The Commentary of Lucas Brugensis upon Exod. xv. 19., may be cited as an exemplar vitiis imitabiic of this fashion of interpretation. See Final Note 14. 80 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL Instinctively averse to all such trifling and tampering with the plain text of Scripture, it was with an interest and satisfaction not easily- described that, early in my acquaintance with Mr. Gray's Sinaitic inscriptions, I came, in his 86th No., upon what the previous decypherment of his Marah inscription and others enabled me to recognize as a contemporary commentary on the very passage of Exodus in question. In the fourth line of this inscription, the eye was arrested by a hieroglyphical character in the form of a horse. The Arabic •, /a, which formed the head and neck of the animal, being followed by q, the Greek ?7w, and by the Hebrew J/, din^ the royal name of Pharaoh appa- rently stood before me. To ascertain whether the contents of the inscription tallied with the name was the next and instant object. The decyphered inscription proved to be a record of the passage of the Ked Sea, and of the vain attempt of Pharaoh to escape from the returning waters by flight on horseback. The characters of this inscription were all sufficiently clear, and being mostly letters of known forms, on the principle of assigning to them their known powers, it was decypherable with comparative facility. The last word alone FROM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 81 presented an impediment ; for it was a mono- gram, and with the disentangling of monograms I was not, at this period, familiar. The sense required by the whole context was horse^ or icar-horse. But some time elapsed before I dis- covered that the last word was k-., rahat ; and that the Arabic word Lbj, signifies " A horse of ancient race," or, " Horses prepared for war." * Previously to the completion of the decypher- ment, the action of the hieroglyphic horse had perplexed me. ^ As he seemed neither to advance nor recede, I had set down the neck thrown backwards, and the disparted fore-legs, as sym- bolical, perhaps, of the haughty bearing of his rider. The full decypherment first undeceived me. The king is in the act of retreat ; his horse has just received the check of the rein, by which the head is thrown back, and the fore-legs are parted, while the hind-legs remain as yet un- moved. The whole action is one familiar to every horseman, who has suddenly and violently checked his horse. More than a year after the decypherment of * iiU I! Equi parati I)ello, ct Antiijua' stirpis eqinis. The second de- finition, applying to a single horse, marks that the first may have applied also, originally, to a single war-horse. G 82 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL tliis Pharaonic record, a copy of another Sinaitic inscription, discovered, not in the Wady, but in the Djebel Mokatteb, was sent me by a friend. It was taken from a fac-simile made with great care and exactness on the spot, by artists in the train of a French nobleman, le Comte d'Antraigues, then (May, 1779) travelling with his suite in the peninsula ; and was published originally in 1811, in the Posthumous Letters of J. G. Yon Miiller, the historian of Switzerland, a name so eminent in literature, before, at the call of Napoleon, he exchanged the path of " quiet and delightful studies " for the cares of state.* Remarkable as is the history of this inscription, and still more so the appearance of the characters, it seems to have lain altogether unnoticed by the learned, probably owing to its isolated publication in an unusual vehicle, a collection of miscellaneous family letters. Its best introduction now will be in the words of the Comte d'Antraigues himself, from his letter conveying the inscription to his friend Yon Miiller. * See Biorjraphie Universelle, Article J. G. IMiiller. The poet's moral liere holds true — " Known him I have, but in his happier hour Of social freedom, ill-exchanged for power." FROM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 83 " A cinq lieures clu matin, le 14 Mai, 1779, je fis lever toute ma caravane, et nous nous rendimes au Dshebel el Moukateb. Ce sent deux rochers tres-eleves, tailles a pie [pic?], separes I'un dc I'autre de 50 pas. II paroit que leur base a cte creusee par Taction des eaux ; mais, dans tout le desert, il n'y a pas que 5 puits d'eaii saumatrc; on n'aper9oit que des montagnes d'un sable fin, et impregnees de sel, que le vent disperse et accumule a son gre. Ces rochers, charges de caracteres tailles en relief, n'en porte aucun depuis leur base jusqu'a la hauteur de 14 pieds 2 pouces. La vallee a 547 toises de Paris* dans toute sa longueur. Les rochers sont converts de caracteres jusqu^a leurs som- mets : les li2:nes sont droites, mais leurs extrc- mites se replient jusqu'a la jonction de la hgne superieure, et forment une ecriture a sillons. Sur le rocher droit, en venant de Tor, il y a en tout 67 lignes ; 41 sur le rocher a gauche. Les caracteres ont un pouce de relief, et un pied de longueur. A cote gauche, il y a, dans la partie du rocher la plus elevee, les caracteres qu'on nomme le titre. Ce qui leur a fait donner ce nom, c'est ce que les lettres qui le composent, ont * 1 094 yards. O 2 84 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL G pieds de hauteur, et trois pouces de relief. Je Ics ai fait dessincr avec la plus (jrande exactitude. II faudroit six mois d'un travail opiniatre, pour dessiner la totalitc de ces caracteres * : c'est un livre unique peut-etre sous le ciel, et I'histoire d'un peuple peut-etre inconnu."f The scale alone of these records on the cliffs of the Djebel Mokatteb, apart from every other consideration, bespeaks the importance attached to them by their authors. A space of six feet for the characters of the first line, styled by the Arabs the heading or title, and of forty feet for the remaining forty lines of the shorter of the two inscriptions, with the necessary allowance for the intervals between the lines, and a height of fourteen feet from the lowest line to the ground, will give an elevation of, at least, from eighty to one hundred feet for the monument. Of this Von Miiller has preserved the only part as yet copied, viz. the first line. At the instance of a friend who happened to * See Supplementary Final Note D. •j- Extract of a letter from INI. le Comte d'Antraigues, ap. J. G. Miiller, torn. vi. p. S30. Von Miiller saw no improbability in the assignment of an Israelitish origin to these monuments : " Wie aber wenn in Beziehung auf den Aufenthalt Israels : zwo Tafeln ; Segen und Fliicbe ; oder Ge- scliiclitserzahjiing':"' — lb. p. 331. The writer whom Napoleon sum- moned to the offices, successively, of Secretary of State for Westphalia, and Minister of Public Instruction, will hardly, in our day, be taxed with credulity. At least, if he be, the charge will assuredly recoil upon the taxers. FROM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 85 be with me when it arrived, I attempted the decypherment of this line. And, after the ex- perience acquired in previous experiments upon ]Mr. Gray's, and Professor Beer's, Sinaitic in- scriptions, I was not a little surprized and dis- appointed to find this single line baffle every attempt to unravel so much as the first word. After repeated trials, I told my friend that, Avithout some collateral light, further efforts would be vain ; that the characters, notwith- standing some air of resemblance, were so unlike, in reality, to those of all the other Sinaitic inscriptions, that their alphabet afforded no clue ; and that the only opinion I could hazard was that the inscription was hieroglyphic ; that one character, at least, strongly indicated a re- presentation of something living, though whether animal or insect I could not say. I pointed out the character. Upon its vitality we agreed. The attempt at decypherment was renewed after my friend's dej^arture, but without the least success. The whole line was analyzed, without the decypherment of a single word : until, at length, the possibility occurred to me that the inscription might have been printed in Yon JMiiller's " Posthumous Letters " upside down ; an inversion of which I had found occasional ex- amples. It was barely a possibility, but I acted G 3 86 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL on it. I turned the volume upside down, when the first glance told me my conjecture was right. The well-known Sina'itic characters now came out in their accustomed forms. The nondescript hierogtyphic, which, even in its inverted posture, had struck me as indicating life*, proved to be the rude representation, or misrepresentation, of a horse, with his head between his fore-legs, in the act of running away : while hieroglyphic horses' limbs, and human limbs, seemed inter- spersed along the whole line, after the manner of Egypt, as seen on the Rosetta Stone. I now once more tried the lexicons, and with wholly different result. The words became, at once, decypherable ; and the subject proved to be identical Avith that of Mr. Gray's inscription, No. 68. ; namely, the passage of the Red Sea, with the horse and flight of Pharaoh. In the centre of the line stands the tyrant's name, written with the Arabic /, ^, the Hamyaritic r, ^, and the Hebrew din, "^A ^^^ horse's * The result, in this instance, proved the soundness of a canon laid own Dy a high authority in art: viz. that, however rude the delineation, where life is intended, life will appear. f The Hel)rew form nyiD. Pharaoh, the form of the name employed in this inscription, is still an Arabic form of the name : "^.) j pro .»£ i, Pharao (jn vcrsu Omajjae Ben-ali-Zalt)." — Kam.a\). Freytag, in rad. r •. Upon the omission of the diacritic point over the • {fa) in this inscription, and of the diacritic points generally in all the primitive monuments, I FEOM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 87 limbs, his own limbs, his helmet, and the royal emblem of the Pharaohs, the hawk's head, fill up the picture ; the subject of which is Pharaoh's headlong flight from the returning waters of the Red Sea*, first on horseback, and finally on foot. But as this belongs to the decypherment of the inscription, an interpretation of it is submitted, Plate lY. p. 90., followed by the necessary re- marks. In the inscription from the Wady Mokatteb (Gray, 68.), Pharaoh was represented, hiero- glyphically, in the act and moment of reining back his horse to fly. In this inscription from would observe once for all, for the satisfaction of readers conversant witli the modern Arabic only, that the absence of the diacritic points in Arabic IMSS. is the acknowledged test of their antiquity, the most ancient IMSS. being uniformly unpointed. Upon this head, and upon the high antiipilty of the Niskhi or common Arabic characters, erroneously supposed modern, See M. S. de Sacy, ap. Final Note 2. * Arab tradition is always worthy of attention. The drowning of Pharaoh, and the spot where he perished, are mentioned by Makrizi, the historian of Egypt, in his account of the Wady and town of Faran: " It is one day's journey (in a straight line) from the sea of Kolzoum (the gulf of Suez), the shore of which is there called ' the shore of tlie sea of Faran.' There it was that Pharaoh was drowned by the Almighty.'''' — Mak- rizi ap. Burckhnrdt, Syria, pp. 617, 618. Makrizi adds, " Between the city of Faran and the Tyh are two days' journey ; — a large river flows by." Upon this Burckhardt observes : " There is no rivulet, hut, in winter- time, the valley is completely flooded; and a large stream of water, collected from all the lateral valleys of Wady el Sheikh, empties itself, through Wady Feiran, into the gulf of Suez, near the Birhet Faraoun." This whole passage merits attention, in any attempt to fix the point of passage at the Exode. o 4 88 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL the Djebel Mokatteb is contained, at its opening, a pictorial representation of the sequel ; of the circumstances attending his own and liis horse's flight, apparently meant to express to the eye the last vain efforts of despair. It has been re- marked of this heading, that the whole line is hieroglyphical, after the manner of Egypt. But wliile the constant introduction of hieroglyphic characters into the Sinaitic and other rock in- scriptions, is a fact generally known and recog- nized by orientalists, it is one necessarily less familiar to the general reader. In first calling public attention, therefore, to this feature, it be- comes essential, 1st, that the general reader should not only be aware of the usage, but should keep in mind its acknowledged existence, at Sinai; and 2dly, that the particular examples of its ex- istence at Sinai should, where practicable, be illus- trated and verified by identical exemplifications of the same usage from Egypt. 1. The existence of the usage has been well laid down by Prof. Beer, in a canon already noticed ; who remarks that, in the Sinaitic inscriptions, letters frequently form parts of figures (of men or animals), and that figures (of men or animals) as frequently compose groups of letters. Had the learned Professor been as fully borne out in other points as in this statement, instead of FKOM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 89 every thing, he would have left little to be done by others. It would be easy to multiply au- thorities ; but as the point is not only indis- putable, but undisputed, we may safely rest the fact of the usage upon his statement. 2. The application of the hieroglyphics of Egypt to the elucidation of those at Sinai, is the next principle to be established ; and for the establishment of this principle we have a sure groundwork in the occurrence at Sinai of the most noted and characteristic of all Egyptian monograms, the crux ansata, or sacred tau. The Pharaonic inscription now before us, offers, j^erhaps, the best opportunity in existence of bringing this principle to the test. Eor if " Israel (indeed) came out of Egypt," and if the flight of Pharaoh was to be represented by Israclitish artists, there is every rational ground to j^re- suppose that the regal symbols of the Pharaohs, after the manner of the Egyptians, would appear on such a monument. The facts coincide witli the anticipation. The favourite hieroglyphic symbol of the hawk's head, or the hawk's head and wings, stands, intermingled with the limbs of man and horse, conspicuously along the entire line ; while the flight of the tyrant is depicted by a series of liieroglyphic legs, the last of which have their fac-simile in the legs of Ptolemy 90 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL Epipliancs upon the Rosetta Stone, representing, after the Egyptian fashion, the ascent of the king himself up the stairs of the temple at Memphis. For the more complete establishment of the correspondence, and fuller satisfaction of readers new to the subject, I have placed, in the accom- panying Plate I Y. over the chief symbols of this Sinaitic monument, traced fac-similes of the cor- responding symbols found upon the Pharaonic and Ptolemaic monuments of Egypt. It is remarkable, in connection with the em- phatic mention in the Song of Moses of " the horse of Pharaoh," that in the entire of the hiero- glyphic characters in the Comte d'Antraigues' inscription, there occurs but one perfect figure, namely, that of Pharaoh's run-away horse; which, in verification of Prof. Beer's second canon, is framed of a monogram of letters forming the word CSiy^, mumahak, "a horse excelling in speed." The other hieroglyphics consist, either of the body without the limbs, or the limbs without the body, the hieroglyphic for the rider oc- cupying, in one instance, the vacant space. All this, we know, is conformable with the prescrip- tive usage of Egypt ; and Egyptian precedent, it might be presumed, would preclude all liability to captious objections. In treating a new sub- ject, however, or rather the application of a known V) SINAI: PuteIV. <^J t \L\. (VO. A ^tH^VW X\ r /f ^nixLT/ A/> r' -^ /jfjj? it ^V5(J?7I!r^% Ur l-^ iA i^j jJ^ TRANSLATION. ILLUSTRATIONS. JglTPtue leg* of Ptolomy Epiphnni iglyphic lee«^ ap. ■' Hieroglyptie* igljphie flffure of PWIcidj Epiphai r^ -•^^; ^-- O.' ILLUSTRATIONS. ■Sf/f/it/^^i gK^i^/»^yti>il c FROM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 91 Glossaky to the Co3ite D'Antkaigues' Inscription. :? I;asa, Fugit : in fugam conversus fuit. Fleeing : turning to flee. -'•-»X.'_, t«.^^.t, aba, i/aiil/uO, Etjuus vclox : simulquc longus. A swift long horse. t_-'>--J) sliaba, Anteriores pedes simul sustulit pra; alaciitate cquiis. Lilting up both forefeet together through alertness (a horse). (/flixiiS^, kazkaza, Ce'eriter incessit. " Going swiftly." ('•««;, i»~o, suwar, Eques. " A rider." A horseman. jfiSJ^i, tiia/is, V'iolenter projecit. Dejecit. •^ " Throwing with violence. Dashing to the ground." C.-5 nyiS /«'■«". Pn.^nAOH. J-J r' f'O i-iy^T^ {inversuOmajjac-Abi-Zall).— Kam. ap. Freytug. Lix.', sala, Anii)lls didiictisquc passibus incessit cquus. " Going with long steps (a horse)." (,_„>^^'C, tiuimahhak, Egregius cursu rquvs. A horse excelling in speed. ,OvJ^5 njara, Cit<> praHorivit rq/ais, ut pnc mctu. -^ ' " Scampering swiftly by {as a horse ivhcn frightened)." f^a*., watacha, Violcnter pepiilit tnisitquc suis manibus. V_ "^ Removing forcibly, thrusting away with the hands. t_^JS:.' , i^.^^.aj^'C, nahaha. Iter fecit, ct quiilem accelerando : maiiohih, Celcr iiu'cssus, acceleratum iter. " Walking, going, travelling {especial/i/ quick)." i^*:>^i ^ »:>-., kfld, ki'idxal, Cus&is, g,a.\ea. A casque, a helmet. »^}^> IJiiid, " A helmet." — H'ilkins ap. liichurdsuii. 92. THE VOICE OF ISRAEL Glossary of Lower Inscription in Pl. IV. &J^ Dy. *— J lini, Populus: plcbs. The People M ^' f'J'*' """■«. Profectus fuit /)rr jr^ibnewi. /1 14. ^-' J »j«!, Territus fuit. Terrorem concepit. Terror-stricken. Filled with terror. zud, Habena antrorsum movit camelum suum ul viclius celoiuique incedcrct. Throwing forward the rein, l/iat the camel may quiclcn his pace. ' \ (^ ^'*) ma, Aqua. Water. I N j i <*^ /rto, Jehovah. Kcs extans : Persona: Hypostasis. rr^ A Being : Person : Hypostasis. O I F QJ?' A.C) am Populus. " The People." aj> nU. A.^. Populus. " The People." ^ w«5 7)iana, Tentavit, experimento prohavit. Essayeth. Tries by experiment. Uil) ma, Aqua. Water. Pharaoh, or nyiD DID' ««^ Pharaoh. (Exod. XV. I.) " The horse of Pharaoh " [if the body of the horse be letters.] ^ 11? wari, Retrocessit. Retrograde. ^^5 ana, Hahena tenuit, retinuit, fi/awOT. '^ Reining in, reining back, a horse. — ; 1? 1'ahat, Equi parati ad bellum. AntiquK stirpis cjmms, '■^ War-horses. >^ //owe of ancient race. FROM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 93 principle to a new subject, it is right to antici- pate objections ; and due to truth, not only to anticipate, but, where practicable, to place it above them. Upon this principle, I have placed over the bodiless horse in this Pharaonic monument, a bodiless camel, forming the obverse of a Bactrian medal. The medal is perfect : yet the head, neck, and limbs of the animal alone appear on the obverse, comprizing, at the same time, the hieroglyphic of its figure, and the letters of its name ; while, so perfect is the effect, that every one who has seen it (and for the sake of evidence this medal has been submitted to many without note or comment) instantly has recognized the camel by its disjecta membra. This one example from Central Asia establishes the rule ; and with the rule, the strictly analogous examples de- lineated in the heading of the Djebel Mokatteb inscription.* * The colossal scale of tlic characters in this heading, renders it im- possible that there could be mistake or illusion in the reduction. Upon a scale of such magnitude, the forms of the hieroglyphics must be so pronounced, that the artist's only task was fidelity in the reduction. The published copy bears all the marks of having been taken (as the Comte d'Antraigues states) "avec la plus grande exactitude," and by a skilful hand. The drawing of the patella, or knee-pan, in one of the hiero- glyphics, was pointed out by a draughtsman as designed with anatomical fidelity. The prominence of this i)art, in a correct drawing of the leg, is a principle of modern art : " The knee-pan must be shown, with the knit' ting thereof." — Peacliam on Draicinr/. 94 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL But the liigli importance of this heading, and, not improbably, tlie yet higher importance of the still uncopied forty line inscription over which it stands, suggested a further, and yet more searching, experiment. It occurred to me that if the hieroglyphics here were designed with anything of that anatomical accuracy so emi- nently characteristic, save in conventional forms, of the hieroglj^phic symbols of Egypt, the com- pletion of those bodiless figures by a skilful hand, mio'ht restore in full the form and action of the animal intended, which could be indicated only by the hieroglyphic letters. For the object being to combine pictorial with alphabetic repre- sentations, the amount of the resemblance was clearly limited by the necessity of the case ; since it is obvious that, in inscriptions of this com- pound nature, no more of the animal could be given, than could be given without interference with the alphabetic functions of the letters ; and, vice versa, no more of the letters could be de- signed, than could be designed without interfe- rence with the pictorial indications of the animal. These reflections suggested the thought of submitting the Comte d'Antraigues' inscription to an eminent artist, for the purpose of ascer- taining whether the experiment which I con- templated could be made. The experiment was I .. sraH. ?L W HTCMCnPHIC mSfRffTION FROM DJF.BEL MOKATTKR 1 Jj pubUshtii mtfUitiUv tiiiertnl V3 -^f ^ ir^^;j J illc-^JAtJ ^^bJixr-^l crt}y_hULt =iiii,ir-/'Ap T^ -^AT/jc^ ^ riM'MjJTcrr<^(\jT ^ ^^^ ^-^"^ FROM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 95 tried, and its result placed in my hands with the remark, that one thing was certain, that the fill- ing up of the figures was strictly what the action of the hieroglyphic limbs required, and that an artist could not correctly complete the hiero- glyphic horses, &c., in any other way. To present the filled-up draught to the best advan- tage for examination, my friend suggested a mode of distinguishing the additions from the original, and made a copy of the inscription com- pleted on this principle. In the process of com- pletion, the anatomical correctness of the im- perfect outlines became, in some parts, strikingly observable, the forms and proportions coming fully out, as soon as a touch of the pencil had introduced the proper supplemental line or lines. An attentive comparison of the fragmental origi- nal with the filled-up copy *, will enable artists, and readers conversant with the fragmental hie- roglyphics of Egypt, to judge for themselves. A su2:ii:estion here occurs which I would venture to submit. Might it not be well to repeat this ex- * See Plate V. In this lithograph, the inscription is represented in three stages : 1, as published inverted, in Miiller's " PosthniTious Letters ;" 2, in its correct position ; and 3, with the hieroglyphic limbs, — where the figure intended, and the mode of completing it, seemed clear, — filled up in dotted lines. By this arrangement it is hoped the reader may be better able to accompany the steps of the decypherment described in the text. 96 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL ^leriment, by filling up the hieroglyphic fragments of figures in Egyptian monuments in a similar way ? The conventional stiffness of their human forms would be a hindrance, but in other animal forms I suspect the results would be most satis- factory ; while, if they prove so (the introduction of limbs, &c., into the hieroglyphics of Egypt being a point universally acknowledged), they would decisively corroborate this first essay to bring out the pictorial representations, hinted at, rather than expressed, by the fragmental figures in this kind of writing. Another suggestion of graver moment re- mains to be made ; namely, the desirableness of copies being obtained of the two great inscrip- tions in the Djebel Mokatteb mentioned by the Comte d'Antraigues, the one in forty-one, the other in sixty-seven lines. For, while the in- scriptions of the Wady Mokatteb, or " Written Valley," have been repeatedly visited, and par- tially copied, those of the Djebel Mokatteb, or " Written Mountain," would seem to have re- mained, from that noble voyager's day to our own, wholly and most unaccountably neglected. With regard to the forty-one line inscription, especially, the contents of its heading, and the number of the lines or verses, might suggest a possibility, the remotest hope of whose realization FROM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 97 ought to awaken interest over Christian Europe ; the possibihty, 1 mean, that these forty-one lines might prove to be no other than the forty, or forty-two verses of " The Song of Moses," " graven witli an iron pen, and lead in the rock for ever." I state this barely as a possibility. I should, for my own part, have placed the like- lihood much higher, had it not been for the reflection that, out of nearly two hundred Si- naitic inscriptions, I have not met with a single passage or text of Scripture. Imagery, in the manner of Scripture, indeed, abounds ; but not one passage from the Pentateuch, not one en- tire sentence discoverable in the Old Testament. With fair minds, this admission may, in some degree, accredit the decypherments themselves ; inasmuch as arbitrary decypherments oilsraelitish monuments would (as our experience in other quarters shows) be sure to abound in texts and quotations from the books of Moses. The cause of the omission seems obvious, and would go far to fix, independently, the chronology of the Sinaitic inscriptions, namely, that they were en- graved, if not before the composition, before the publication (if the expression be allowable) of the Pentateuch. Notwithstanding, however, this unexpected blank, the contents of " the title," and the coinciding number of the lines or verses, H 98 THK VOICE OF ISRAEL still oblige me to state, and to cherish the possi- bility, that this forty-one line inscription may be " The Song of Moses." THE MIRACLE OF THE " FEATHERED FOWLS." (Exod. xvi. 13.; Numb xi. 'M. '.i-J ; Ps. Ixxviii. 27.) The Hebrew word ^btl^ (arabice l^U, salwa)^ the name of the winged creatures provided as food for the Israelites by this miracle, is ren- dered " quails " in our authorized version. In this rendering our translators follow the Sep- tuagint, the Vulgate, and all the ancient versions. It has with it, also, the authority of Josephus. Yet the true signification of the word has been treated as an unsettled question by commentators of name. Ludolf, followed by Scheuchzer, and by Bishop Patrick, advanced the opinion that salu should be translated locusts. The point has been argued by Ludolf with much ingenuity, and more erudition. The opinion, however, is noticed here only to show that, in the judgments of an eminent orientalist, and of a sound English critic, the orio;inal word admits of more than one inter- pretation. Since the word itself, as the name of FROM THE HOCKS OF SINAI. 99 some species of winged creature, occurs in Scrip- ture only in connection with this miracle, its sense was the more liable to be mistaken by interpreters, there being no collateral light by which to fix the meaning. The proofs, however, supplied by the Old Testament, that the salu of the Exode were not insects, but birds of some kind fit for the food of man, may safely be pro- nounced conclusive against the theory of the locusts : for it was fleshy such as they had eaten in Egypt, that the Israelites desired to eat ; and it ^viis flesh (*1XJi^), the Psalmist informs us, that was rained down on them from heaven, the flesh of " winged fowls " (C]3D P]iy) : " He rained flesh upon them as dust ; And winged fowls, as the sand of the sea." * The miraculous supply, therefore, consisted of vast flocks of birds ; the only question being as to the species. On the face of the case, two con- siderations militate strongly against the received version. First, as we read that the Israelites " spread them all abroad for themselves round about the camp,"f evidently to preserve them for future use by drying them in the sun, the birds must have been of a kind capable of being preserved by this process. But every species of the quail tiibe, * Ps. Ixxviii. 27. f Num. xi. 32. H 2 100 Till': VOICE OF ISRAEL from their peculiar delicacy and fatness, is, beyond most other birds, incapable of being preserved by drying; and, as Bp. Patrick justly observes, would be corrupted, instead of being preserved, by exposure to the heat of the sun. The assumption that they were not " spread abroad," but buried in the burning sands (a process described by Maillet), may be dismissed without comment as contrary to the Scriptural account. But, 2dly, the words of Moses, " He that gathered least, gathered ten homers," will be found, on due examination, altogether incom- patible with the idea of a bird of so diminutive <'i size as the quail, even of the largest kind. As this difficulty has been hitherto overlooked, it becomes necessary to expose it more fully. The difficulty lies in the scale of the measure spe- cified, the homer or omer. We will take Mr. Parkhurst's account : " "l/tlin, a chomer or homer, the largest measure of capacity ; in which, con- sequently, many things were frequently jumbled together. It was equal to ten haths or ejjliahs, and to about 75 gallons 5 pints English." The omer, therefore, was a measure several sizes larger than an English hogshead. Now, within the space of " two days and one night," the least successful of the Israelites secured birds enouo^h FROM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 101 to fill ten of these capacious measures, or to the amount of 750 gallons. As they were taken unprepared b}' the miracle, and were unprovided, therefore, with nets, they could avail themselves only of their hands, armed with sticks or other weapons ; a method which, as the subjoined vignette will show, they would have learned in Egypt.* * The scene here represented, meets also an objection urged by Up. Patrick against salu meaning birds, founiled on the Hebrew word f)DN, which he understands, with our version, in tlie sense of gathering : " And they gathered the quails. By this it is evident that they gathered some- thing lying upon the ground, and not flying in the air; for we do not gather tilings there, but tahe or catch them."' The root C|DX. however, H 3 102 THK VOICE OF ISRAKL Jjiit Ibr a single Israelite, in this way, and in this space of time, to kill quails enough to fill twelve hogsheads, would be in itself a miracle. The birds, therefore, of whatever kind they were, niiLst have been of a magnitude very different from that of the largest of the quail species ; of a magnitude, in other words, sufficient to allow the possibility of one man killing, wdth the hand, in two days and a night, as many birds as would be required to fill twelve or fourteen hogsheads. Before I had weighed the first of these diffi- culties, or perceived the second, not having been led to examine the question critically, I had acquiesced in the received versions of the word salu^ and taken it for granted that the birds intended by it were quails. I was first led to doubt the received rendering, by the occurrence of a word at the opening of a two-line inscription. The word was ^Uji'? nuliam ; its definition, " the name of a bird of a reddish colour resem- bling a goose." Observing no fewer than three examples of this inscription, taken from diiferent rocks, the contents promised to be answerably (S in Kal) signifies coUegit ad se, contraxit, retraxit, drawing towards one-self, calching, dragging back : the very action of the Egyptian fowler in the wood-cut, who catches and drags towards liim the wounded wild geese with his left hand, while he darts his throw-stick at others with his right. It is curious thus to find, in an Egyptian scene, so complete an exposition of a difficult, and iiitherto misinterpreted, passage of Scripture. FROM THE KOCRS OF SINAI, 103 important, or at least to throw light upon the opening word. The anticipation was fully jus- tified. The second word was ^^ or o^o, bahar, bahari, " the sea ; marine, maritime ; of or from the sea." These readings recalled to mind a passage in the Book of Numbers, with which they so remarkably coincide : " And there went forth a wind from the Lord, and brought salu from the sea." If the inscriptions be com- memorative of the miracle, the words nuham bahari, nuhams from the sea, explain the ob- scure Hebrew term ^b^^, f^alu^ by showing the miraculous supply to have consisted of flocks, not of quails, but of the casarca, or ruddy goose, — a bird of the goose species, but of stork-like height. It is thus described : " The casarca, or ruddy goose, is larger than a mallard, and seems even larger than it really is, from the length of wing, and standing high on its legs; the neck encircled mth a collar of black, inclining to deep rufous on the throat; the breast and sides are pale rufous ; the legs long and black. This species is found in all the southern parts of Russia and Siberia in plenty. In winter it migrates into India, and returns northward in spring. The flesh is thought very good food."* * Encytl. Brit. art. A user. H 4 104 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL No. 111. Beer. 48. The red geese ascend [from] the sea Lusting the people eat en at them. No. IV. PR. It. 46. 15V F^b o'Ohbyu The red geese ascend [from] the sea Lusting the people devour till nought is left. No. V. PR. IV, 47. S 3' 1 aU-; The red geese ascend [from] the sea Lustmg the people feed to repletion. ♦'j^-'? ntt/iam, Noinen avis rubra;, quae forma .inserpin refert. I " Name of a reddish bird resembling a goose."* FROM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 105 ,c<\.\ ''«*"'". ^fare, C_sO !V-'arine. ('I'iiis, and the > ^- ^^ ■ tirst word, answer, apparently, to our " sea- fowl.") I 3 Ifi) , had, Desiderio ejus captus fuit ; desideravit. "™ Inflamed with desire of any thing ; lOsting aftei QU, *,£.i ^'"' Populus: plebs. "The People." . - . ra/iu, Pprseveravit in edenda una re; pecul. grue. •TV Persevering in eating of one thing ; especially of stork. ^ u ^\, aram,\.<\. ^^\ Edit, voravit, absumpsit, ut nihil reliquum I'uerit ' Eating, devouring, consuming, until nothing is I left. u 1 1, , wara, Repletus fuit cibo. Replete with food. * Can the two birds in the Frontispiece, which Beer takes for ostriches, be representations of the nuham, or long-legged red goose ? If so, they illustrate the miracle. t Especially of stork. There is an agreement of congruity between this definition, and the appearance of the stork-like ruddy goose. 1U6 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL The completion of tlie decypherment of tins triple inscription*, it will now be seen, corro- borates the idea indicated by its first line : namely, that, whether the casarca, or a bird similar in kind from Egypt, was intended by the salu of Moses, or nuham of the Wady Mokatteb, the miracle of '' the feathered fowls " is here intended and recorded. If the two great difficulties opposed to the idea of the sah of Moses signifying quails, be now examined by the light thus obtained from Sinai, both will be found to disappear. For, first, ♦ The three inscriptions obviously record one and the same thing ; as Beer, by placing them in juxtaposition, has correctly perceived and admitted ; while the complete identity in all three in the first line, com- bines with the circumstantial variations, in each, of the second line, in a way to give peculiar force to the evidences of this decypherment. In the inscription No. 4S., the break between the fiist two characters, marking out the first to be the Hebrew 3, fixes the true reading of the first word, viz. nuham, which the continuous line in Nos. 46, 47., might otherwise have rendered less certain. But the second line, opening as it does in all with the same word, and closing in each with a different word (unless the characters be defective) is very striking. For the three closing words, if read J ^^-^ S »^ raha,^ >^ ^ *^ 1 i.\^ or ^ \ aran or arum, * S y i I, » »'"■«) are similar in force, each of them denoting the one idea of greediness and repletion : viz. ^. Perseveravit £n erfe/jt/a una re. Perseverance in eating one thing ; ^ \, i. q. M,i^, Edit, voravit, absumpsit ut nihil reliquum fuerit, Eating, devouring, consuming, until nothing was left; and '.» Repletus fuit cibo. Replete with food. a This woid reads jU i but the first J may stand only for the vowel point, as in the Rabbinical Hebrew. 1 would remark here, of the Sinaitic inscriptions generally, tliat many of the vowels appear to discharge the office only of the Hebrew vowel points. FROM THK HOCKS OF SINAI. 107 the flesli of the goose is as peculiarly adapted for the process of drying, as that of the quail is unfitted for it ; and might be hardened, instead of corrupted, by exposure to the sun. And, se- condly, with reference to the enormous supply of " ten homers," collected in two days and a night by a single man, the magnitude even of the ruddy goose, contrasted with that of the quail, substitutes an easy probability for a physical impossibility ; since the latter hypothesis would imply a slaughter of, perhaps, twenty thousand quails, where the forlner would not require one tenth, perhaps not one twentieth, of the number. It may deserve notice, in connection with the latter possibility, that the Indians on the Hudson river are known to average as many as two hun- dred geese in a day brought down by their guns, without any of the advantages providentially afforded to the Israelites.* But the light apparently thro-wn on this great miracle of the Exode, by the Wady Mokatteb inscriptions, is further important, as most satis- factorily explaining a text which has perplexed all the commentators, and of which no satisfac- tory explanation has yet been given. The reader will probably anticipate my reference to Numb, xi. 31.: " And there went forth a wind from the * Enc. Hrif. 108 THE VOICE OF ISKAKL Lord, and brought salu from the sea, and let them fall by the camp, us it were a day's journey on this side, and as it were a day's journey on the other side, round about the camp ; and, as it were, two cubits high, upon the face of the earth." The extravagant supposition entertained by some, regarding this most difficult text, viz. that, by the expression "two cubits high upon the face of the earth," we are to understand that the birds lay literally piled one upon another, to the depth of between three and four feet, over an area, on all sides, of from twenty to thirty miles, carries with it its own confutation. For, without questioning its possibility, if God so willed, such a supply would have provisioned, not millions only, but tens of millions, and must have caused pestilence instead of plenty among two millions of people. The palpable absurdity of a literal interpretation of the passage, under- stood in any sense of quails, has betrayed others into modes of evading the difficulty scarcely less absurd. The most curious is that originating with Josephus, who understood the phrase " two cubits high upon the face of the earth," to have reference to the height at which, in their ex- hausted state, they flew above the ground, so as to be within easy reach of the Israelites, viz. two cubits, or between three and four feet. From FROM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 109 attempts like these, \ve turn to the clear and easy literal interpretation of this text, supplied by the substitution, authorized by the foregoing Sinaitic inscriptions, in the rendering of the Hebrew salu, for quails^ of red geese. For the height of the casarca, or long-legged red goose, is stated by naturalists at three feet and a half, or precisely the Scriptural admeasurement of two cubits ; and this qncesiio vexatissima^ thus lite- rally understood, proves to have reference, neither to the depth at which the birds lay upon the ground, nor to the height at which they flew above it, but simply to the stature of the stork-like red goose, as described in the " Encyclopaedia Britannica." In corroboration of the light thus reflected from the rocks of Sinai upon this miracle, I would conclude this topic with, perhaps, the most striking illustration from natural history that a Scripture miracle has ever yet received. This, at least, it proves, if nothing more, that, of all feathered fowls, the anas tribe was that best suited, not only to supply the Israelites with abundant and curable food, but to offer themselves to their captors an easy and stupified prey. " The bernicke (one of the many species of the anas or anser) is of a brown colour, with the head, neck, and breast black, and a white 110 THE VOICE UF ISRAEL collar. These birds, like the bernacles, frequent our coasts in winter, and are particularly plen- tiful, ut times, on those of Holland and Ireland, where they are taken in nets, placed across the rivers. In some seasons, they have resorted to the coasts of Picardy, in France, in such pro- digious flocks, as to prove a pest to the inha- bitants ; especially in the winter of the year 1740, when these birds destroyed all the corn near the sea-coasts, by tearing it up by the roots. A general war was, for this reason, declared against them, and carried on in earnest hy knocking them on the head with clubs; but their numbers were so prodigious^ that this availed but little. Nor were the inhabitants relieved from this scourge, till the no7'th wind, which had brought them, ceased to blow, when they took leave." * It is only to transfer this scene to the coast of Sinai, and all the main circumstances of the Scripture miracle seem to rise before us. * Encycl. Brit. FRO.M THE ROCKS OF SINAI. Ill " THE ROCK IN HOREB :" OR TIJE MURMUR- INGS AND MIRACLE AT MERIBAH. (Exod. xvii. 1—7.) Ill the outline of the well of Marah (now ^in Howara), in Mr. Gray's inscription, No 59., we have already seen that it was a practice of the authors of the Sinaitic inscriptions, occasionally at least, to draw the localities of the events of the Exode which they record. The rude fidelity of this outline is, further, some warrant for the belief that, if they meant similarly to design other localities or objects, their representations, however rude, would be correct as to the forms ; enough so, at least, to give a just idea of them. This impression justified more attention to other rude outlines, apparently of rock or water, in the inscriptions of Gray and Beer, than otherwise they could have claimed. Among these was particu- larly noticeable an appearance of detached ruck, I 1 2 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL in Gray, No. 52. Whether so intended or not, its form might very well represent one of those shivered rocks, which travellers describe as lying scattered in the vallies of Mount Sinai. No inference, however, was drawn from this outline, until decypherment of the short and clear in- scription seemed to identify it with the rock and miracle of Meribah. Another and shorter in- scription (Gray, 50.), also accompanied by a sketch seemingly of rock or water, on decypher- ment, proved to relate to the same event. They are given, accordingly, together. If there was design in the outline, there arises a fair j)resumption that, in this shivered pinnacle, we may have the true form of the rock of Meribah, an irregular cone. If so, it certainly is not the same with that near Mount St. Catha- rine, called "the stone of Moses," Avhich is cubical, not conical ; being described by Shaw as " about six yards square," and by Burckhardt, as " about twelve feet high, of an irregular shape, approach- ing to a cube." The claim of this rock seems disposed of by the remark of Burckhardt, that the Upper Sinai, in which it lies, abounds with springs, some of which are close to this stone. If the rock of Meribah be still in existence, it may yet possibly be identified by its form, from Gray, No. 52. FROM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 113 These notices of Meribah will now be corrobo- rated by an inscription of clearer import, and a higher strain, recording, as read by the alphabet here used, the immediate sequel of that miracle. 114 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL No. VI. Gray, 52. 1116? Loose Stone: Apparently perfect. j J r\ ( / Q / / v.: ^v j^ ^.s The People the hard stone satiates with water' thirsting. No. VII. GRAY, 50. Loose Stoue : Fragment. The hard rock water a great miracle. Num. XX. 7—13. Ps. Ixxviii. 20. and cxiv. 8. FROM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 115 ?7/> / h'*'^ □» /•£, v' ^' ' Propinavit suis hausitque potu. Draws water. (Drawing of rock at Meribah ?) I J A I **A'«^, amaj, .Sitivit. Thirsting. > I I *IJ I. c) I, '-ad'. Lapis, isque durus. Saxum ; Petra. J ' • "^'V' LiV*' "A hard stone. A rock." IJ O it«, »««*> Aqua- "Water." r / 3 , UJ, lU^, /^'. "'C''". R« mapna ar mira. V^ / -^ O*--*-' U ' A great and wonderful thai I 2 116 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL BATTLE OF REPHIDIM: FIGURE OF MOSES WITH UPLIFTED HANDS. (Exod. xvii. 8 — 16.) The significancy of the rude figures and out- lines in the Sinaitic inscriptions, and their close connection with the sense, had been sufficiently established from Mr. Gray's collection, before I had seen that of Prof. Beer. When, accordingly, in his " Century," I opened upon an inscription upon the rock, " in a situation now inaccessible," which had been partially given only by Gray, containing, above, a single line in the unknown characters *, and a man standing over it with uplifted hands f, the whole inscribed in the outline of a great stone, I felt the probability stood high that the inscription contained a record of a cor- responding event of the Exode. The attitude of * 'J"he barbarous Greek scrawled underneath this line, is so obviously a superfetation, as to be unworthy of note or comment. The Saracenic name Ov[uipos, Omar, is an exception, because it indicates a ;jos<-Afa/w- metan date for these superadditions. f This pre-eminently Mosaic symbol is a commonplace at Sinai : " Homines — manus ad ccelum tollentes." — jSeer, Introd. p. xii. What a corroboration of the other proofs of designed allusion, here, to Moses at Rephidim ! FROM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 117 the figure pointed towards one event ; but the inference was to be drawn, not from the figure, but from the decypherment. The inscription was decyphered by the alphabet previously con- structed from experiments ; and proved to be the record of the battle of Rephidim, with the figure of Moses with uplifted hands,* and the names of Aaron and Hur, his supporters, with mention of the stone, and apparently the delineation of its form. • Tlie Sinaitic inscriptions once proved of Israelitish origin, it is ob- vious that any pictorial representations found among them, agreeinj^ with great events of the Exode, acquire an authority as designed agree- ments, which otherwise they could not possess. They become, in fact, aids and corroborations of decyphcriiiont, whenever tliey are accompanied by inscriptions. I 3 118 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL No. VIII. Beeb, 108. B. -3 3 K 1^ 9 o -^ Causing to le.an, propping, the bad;. J^7„» / ^l;^^ hanin, Aaron. >6> w, JS, *u)-, Hur. awn, Quidem, quin, immo, quinimmo. 'I'rul}', indeed, certainly, verily. 1 4 120 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL MIRACLE AT THE ROCK OF MERIBAH KADESH. Two great events of the Exode, the miraculous supplies of water from the rocks of Meribah, and of ]\Ieribah Kadesh, although separated by a space of forty years, are so identified with each other by their common name, and by the corresponding nature of the miracles, that they come naturally under the same head. The occurrence in the neighbourhood of Mount Sinai, of a prominent record of the one, if it did not raise, at least countenanced, the hope, that there might exist, also, some similar record of the other. It was not, however, with any such anticipation that I entered on the decypherment of the two-line inscription, of which the original and its inter- pretation are submitted in the next two pages. It was resolved into words, and its characters read, upon the principles already established by a long train of experiments, some results of which are before the reader in preceding pages. The words ^ nasi, Stinking ivith a stick, ^^, FROM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 121 sachar, The great vock^ ^^^, mid^ Flows, the loater^ ^^, hawi, Falling from above, following in immediate succession, pointed, indeed, signi- ficantly towards one or other of those miracles ; but were, at first, identified with that of Meribah. The remaining words of the inscription, however, so difiiired from tlie circumstances of that event, and so harmonized with those of the miracle at Meribah Kadesh, in the last year of the Exode, as to place it, to my conviction, beyond doubt, that this was the event here commemorated. Without further remark, I leave the document, with its scriptural illustrations, to the judgment of the reader. 122 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL No. IX. Gray, 27, I. The eloquent speaker* strikes the rock flows forth the water falling down The eloquent speaker* bowing the head takes his rod in his handt resounds the struck rock. * " And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Take thy rod, and gather thou the assembly together, thou and Aaron thy brother, and speak ye unto the rock before their eyes ; and it shall give forth his water ; and thon shalt bring forth to them water out of the rock: so thou shalt give the congregation and their beasts drink. And Moses took the rod from before the Lord, as he commanded him. And Moses and Aaron gathered the congregation together before the rock, and he said unto them. Hear now ye rebels ; must we fetch you water out of this rock ? And Moses lifted up his hand, and with his rod he smote the rock twice ; and the water came out abundantly : and the congregation drank, and their beasts also." — Kum. xx. 7 — 13. " And Moses was mighty in words and in deeds." — Acts, vii. 22. t " And thou shalt take this rod in thine hand." — Exod. iv. 17. " And Moses made haste, and bowed hia head toviards the earth."— Exod. xxxiv. 8. FROM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 123 / / c. •£•, wuwd, Eloquens ac disertus oj-rttor. -' -* C^> -^ The eloquent and skilful orator. U . m^ r"' Kfls?, Percussit. i',«,«J^*, winsfl/, Baculus : scipio. Li^ ' Strikes. A stick : a staff. I ^n [• ,.sj*;, pfcsy^Sj sachar, Ingcns saxum. Petra: scopulns v"'^ >^^^ A great stone. A rock. L , ^ «^-. sanio, Fluxit fl^wn. Flows the water. V /ON /(«'/, Decidit, delapsus fuit ex alto. {^T^'> \' ) Falling, descending from a height. V Y c »£•», t/5K'(7, Kloquens ac discrtus orator. II C V y ThR plnnnent and skilful ora Cy -^ The eloquent and skilful orator. Inclinavit caput eoque der / Bending the head and keeping it bowed down . 1 i~*\ I /C I ^,^|_), AiJWdAa, Inclinavit caput eoque demisso fuit if] Jj \^.Z-i (Jxoia, Prehendit manu baculum suum. '^ ' ^ He takes his stair in his hand. (~P r^ ^fOi sak, Sonus petrae: pt-c. percussa\ ^. Sonus ex lapidis in petram illisionc. Rei durse in solidam illisio. The sound of a rock : peculiarly when struck. J 24 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL But where the mh^acles of Moses are so re- peatedly chronicled in these inscriptions, and his scriptural character so justly preserved in this last, as " a man mighty in word and in deed^' it might seem not unreasonable to expect some mention of him by name. It was not, however, under the influence of any such previous im- pression, but simply in the prosecution of ex- perimental analysis of the inscriptions, that 1 discovered in Gray, No. 170., and in Beer, No. 27., two clear occurrences of the proper name, Mousi or Moses: I say clear occurrences, because the cha- racters of the name are clear*, and the contexts of the two inscriptions harmonize most happily with its introduction ; each supplying, in a leading point of the life of Moses, the dignus vindice nodus. Here again, without further remark, I submit the two records. * In the second of the two insL-riptions, p. 128, the similarity between the m and s, is not more than that which subsists between the correspond- ing Arabic characters, ^ and ^ which are often confounded. Gene- rally speaking, there is about the same liability to confusion of letters at Sinai, as in the Hebrew similars. This must always he attended to and allowed for. FROM THE ROCKS UF SINAI. 125 INSCRIPTIONS RECORDING THE MIRACLE AT THE ROCK OF MERIBAH KADESH. 126 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL No. X. Perfect. L-^ t^t' t ^y ^ Ac The People Moses provoketh to anger kicking like an ass. [At] the water-springs wanton the people raileth against Jehovah crying out. FROM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 127 / I p Dy. j*£-i "'"> l'o|iulus: plfbs. " The People." nC2> _', ah, Irasci, aegre fene, indignari. r C To be angry, to be vexed, to be indignant. ^6^^ — .^*i, ramah. i)A\\:\Ua.\\t asinus, mulus,equus. d -^ Kickcth the ass, the mule, the horse. I , r <^ \/ ,S£- iiclini, Anna abuiidavit locus. T 1 S I y ' A locality abounding with water. J "N T / SI ^^) asliin; Protervus. Wanton. j^ pi». ^^^ dm, Populus. " The People." Pi 1 << (=q k.,, ramata, Probro aflccit. Kaileth at. / \ \ 1 7(70, Jehovah. V, \ V \ Res exstans. Persona, / V L<^S 'V.J'' 'V.'' hypostasis. A Being : an Existence, a hypostasis. ^13 ^^^^ (7^«, (Uamavit. Clamouring, clamorous. 128 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL No. XI. Beer, 27. ^ ^ 1. I C^ „^ I 7^. Ti ir-.^r" ^ ^o p -^ ^o- n J FllOM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 129 DiJ= O]}, ^1 "'". Populus. " The People." 6 ^ 1*y3> Brutum. " A brute animal.' ^^XJ? baair, Asinus. " An ass." \.«, wara, Rppletus fuit cibo. -^■' " Keplete withjood." . mixar, Mordax asinus. A biting {ass). D^fD. '"'""'i Aquae. " The waters." ^r* , musl, nB*0. Moses. ■ 1 ,, war'i, Avertit, ab eo visum. ' J Sr''-' Turneth away his/ace from h /f^ / iC*l> Vao, Jehovah. "Res extans, hypostasis, ^ I ^^-^ Person.-!. Being : Kxistence : Per- sonality." Hypostasis, a term used in the doctrine of the Trinity."— JoA/json. 130 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL THE PLAGUE OF FIERY SERPENTS. Amidst so many records of the Mosaic miracles of mercy, is it probable that the miracles of judgment should be altogether overlooked ? This is a question which may be fairly asked ; and it can be answered satisfactorily. For the last great miracle of the Exode, on the Arabian side of Jordan, the plague of the fiery serpents, as will now be shown, is represented pictorially upon the rocks of Sinai, accompanied by an in- scription in four lines, which I will venture to say beforehand contains every element of proof that could be demanded or desired, for the pur- poses of clear and conclusive decypherment. For these purposes, the first of all requisites un- questionably is, the coexistence, in the same monument, of pictures of animals or other ob- jects, with their names, noun substantives, in written characters beside them. This requisite, I am prepared to show, is found, not once only, but several times, in the inscription to which we will now come. Another desideratum of scarcely less prominence, and of nearly equal conclusive- ness, is the occurrence, in any inscription of this FROM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 131 nature, of a series of words, which, in tlie process of decypherment, consistently and consecutively tell the known story of the picture. W^here these two requisites arc found united, the nature of the proof, if arrived at by experiment, is self- evidently as complete, not only as can be desired, but as can be conceived. Now I am prepared to show that all the three requisites are to be found in the pictorial in- scription about to be submitted. For, 1. we have, here, the picture of a serpent, in the act of descending upon a prostrate victim from above ; the curling folds of the reptile running down the whole length of the inscription, as though to mark out to the eye its connection with it. 2. We have the name serpent twice, and in two different words. And o. we have a full descrip- tion of the action represented by the falling serpent, and of the mode in which the creature, as described by all naturalists, entangles, and masters his prey. Having thus called the attention of the reader to the main points of its contents, I leave this record of the last judicial miracle of the Exode to answer for itself. K 2 132 THE VOICE or isuael No. XII. Gbay, 83. Kock : apparently perfect. Besides tlie serpent (here are two little figures standing o the letters marked +, and a camel beioie the last line but one. Ju.— > Destroy springing on the People the fiery serpents. Hissing injecting -venom heralds of death they kill The People prostrating on their b.%ck curling in folds They wind round descending on bearing destruction. FROM THE KOCKS OF SINAI. 133 IS I J Ji«J5 i/rf, Peididit, exitio dfdit. I -*' - ' ' Destroys, gives to destruction. T-il/ *£j Dy, dm, Viilpii? hominum, plebs: Populus. j J 1 " Tlie Peuple." J I M I i iL^j darn/i, Iinpetum fecit, irruit, supprvenit. \J I I ^ Kusliiug down upon from above ir~j (^'Ai^j sadad. Serpens. " The serpent." H r \ r- 5 ''■> 'sn'S. Caluit, ferbuit. I I J >•• Fire. Fiery. /■» I *V.', nirm, Interemit. -Jj kar, .Sibilavit S'j/jrnj!. -^ Hissing (a serpent). /,—>^j sam, Veneno sustiilit, lassitve, infecit. \ Infecting, destroying, with i)oison. xU^f) »«aHciV, Kuncius mortis, w..- Messenger of death. njfi n/f Q v\'< 11 raiiiad, Supervenit lis : pec?//, cxitium inferens fj I -^ Coming down upon: ;j('C. bearing destru A-^J Qy, dm, Plcbs: Populus. I '■ Tlie People." tlw.;^ sulci/;, Conjecit. stravitve earn in dorsi. ^ Prostrating ani/ one on his back. — 'x^5 «'^i'»~. Serpens. " The serpent." _^, mar, I.uctatus fuit, se obvolvit, implicuit «//f?i; ut humi ^ stt-rneret eu7H. Winding round to prostrate any one. * Therialtlho( this inscription is peculiarly wortliy of notice. In the examples marked with astrrisks, it is precisely the present Hebrew "7. K 3 134 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL No. XIII. Gray, No. 5'). Loose stone: uncertain. Oliserve the union of 7 letters. J- jy f- The People sustain on a pole erecting a standard * the male serpent fiery of molten brass. The people look towards the fire bowing themselves down sought by an evil thing offer up vows the tribes (the Hebrews). * The serpent upon a cross was an Egyptian standard. It occurs repeatedly upon the grai\d staircase of the temple of Osiris at Philoe. But an example, curiously illustrative of " the brazen serpent," is that given by Col. Howard Vyse, "Pyramids of Gizeh," vol. i. p. (i3 ; where the kneeling figures are in the act of erecting the cross standard, with the serpent upon it. The crux ansata is another form, only with the serpent in coil. It is very remarkable that two examples of it occur in my Frontispiece. One, apart from letters. Can this repre- sent the standard of the " brazen serpent ■? " FROM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 135 CD]}, *i. nw'i Populus: plebs. "The People." r TDy. Sustinuit, fulsit. Sustaining, propping. aj samat, Serpens mas. A male serpent U*. 7)ia/a, Pruna ignis. Calor febrilis in esse. ' A live coal of fire. Eeverish burnin bones. .ii*j katara, TEs fusile. Molten brass. UV' *.£, "'"' Populus. The People. * \\ I JV') nw)-, Conspexit /g:n««. Beholding We yi're. N s^ I I ,l^.'t)j danacha, Ilumiliavit, dcmisitque se,et caput suum. . \^ _J • \__ Humbling himself, bowing down the head 11 Q I » g- .f. mnrAd, Petitus fuit re aliquA mala. y ^ C Pursued by some evil thing. /Q I /"J Cjk'^, madx.d,T^vX\\.^xixxsX\\.\\.\cjusjnrnndtiin. j— I ^-^ C^ ' ; Taking, or tendering, n» onW, (I t»o»<'. Mk^^i ^ A'i'.^i (?/«!>, dmrat, Tribus, A tribe: pi. The \-/ /I t'lV'**""' "wn'T". " The Hebrews." rf K 4 136 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL Much learned research has been devoted by commentators to the question, as to the par- ticular species of serpent employed in this judicial miracle. The allusions in Isaiah to " the fiery flying serpent," have been not unna- turall}^ understood as liaving reference to this plague. And Bochart and others, taking the Avords of the Prophet literally, have collected authorities for the existence, in Egypt and other parts, of serpents with wings : especially a kind called the saraph. By D. Calmet, hoAvever, the properties of the Akousias or Jaculus, a serpent of such muscular power and velocity that it seems to fly, are thought to answer suffi- ciently, both to the Prophet's description, and to the circumstances of the miracle at Kadesh Barnea. The Sinai'tic inscriptions now, at length, come in to reflect tlieir light upon the point at issue. And, if they be admitted as authority, " the fiery serpents " of ihQ Exode were destitute of wings. At least, no repre- sentation of a winged serpent lias been found upon the rocks of Sinai; and the specimen in Gray, No. 83., is evidently that of a snake of the jaculus kind, springing or flying in virtue of its great muscular power. Happily I am enabled, now, to produce recent authority, in proof that this representation contains the truth of the case, as FROM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 137 respects the last great miracle of judgment upon Israel in the wilderness. The Journal of the late Captain Frazer, to which the reader is already indebted, contains a passage which, at once, throws light upon the j\Iosaic miracle, and establishes the authority, as an illustration of it, of the representation of the fiery serpent. " Ras AVady liasale. At o h. 28 m., a little excite- ment was got up among the caravan, by the appearance of a hannisli or snake in our path, of the adder species.* He was soon killed. This interested me, as it teas in the country ice were ajyproachinf/ that the Israelites ivere bitten by ser- 2Jents. Twellop (his Shiekh) and all the Arabs declare, that there is a serpent that flies, called ' Hannish Tahyar,' Flying snake, and that they are numerous in the mountains here, during the hot weather. They are about three feet long, and are very venomous, the bite being deadly. The only way q^ catching them is to shoot them, or throw a cloak over them. They come sometimes into the valleys. Mohammed Ali told me that he had seen them in the Hedjaz, skimming the ground like flying fish. They have no icings, but make great springs. Twellop confirms this. They have very small heads, and are of the colour of • " Tlic ciinr. nnd (km y flying serpent.' Isaiali xxx. 6. 138 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL the ground." {3IS. Journ.) Let the fact, and the description, be compared with the serpent delineated in Gray, No, 83., and it may be left to the reader to draw his own conclusion. INSCRIPTIONS REPRESENTING ISRAEL UNDER THE IMAGE OF AN ASS, OR WILD ASS. The constant recurrence, both of the word ramah {or the ass kicketh), and of the figure of this animal upon the rocks of Sinai, will fairly justify an expectation that the name, or names, for the ass, or the wild ass, noun-sub- stantives, would be found in other inscriptions. The expectation will not be disappointed. Men- tion of this animal, as the symbol of rebellious Israel, is introduced again and again, under one or other of his many Arabic name^; as ,*^, GLOSSARY OF PLATE VL r. The People petulant. , r the people a wild ass. * ^jjj trampling. Israel as a tortoise, • U>-* waluvak, " slow, slothful." For the device corresponding with this legend, see Frontispiece. > Pi FROM THE KOCKS OF SINAI. 139 No. XIV. Brer, C. 72. 89. J C J ,x i Atz. . ^s^ A z. The People a wild ass. The People wandereth to and fro. No. XV. * 00. N. ^« 1 *,z The People wandereth to and fro the people a wild ass. No. XVI. * 8«. C. 75. 3 6*? The People wandereth to and fro the people a wild ass. TIic two forms of llic in arc to be seen demonstratively in these identical insciiptions. 140 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL hamar, ^,.,,, mam, \ ?, fara, ^i, bdair, ^-, cu'r, &c. As this cumulative evidence is of great force and importance, both as illustrating the term ramah, and as authenticating the powers of so many characters of the Sinai'tic alphabet, 1 shall now lay before the reader some of the principal inscriptions in which this em- blem of Israel is found, under one or other of the above names. Among these inscriptions, the three which immediately precede are peculiarly valuable; be- cause they present three occurrences of the word -*=- or ,U?-, liimar or humr, an ass or he-ass, in the same chai'acters, characters of known forms ; and because they present, also, three double occurrences of the initial word, ^-, The People, written, alternately, with the initial a'in orna- mented with side-strokes, and with the simple and acknowledo;ed Hebrew a'in. The amount of this evidence is self-evident ; it is that of a " three-fold cord." The shortness and simplicity of the inscriptions renders a glossary needless. FROM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 141 INSCRIPTIONS REPRESENTING ISRAEL UNDER THE IMAGE OF A RESTIVE CAMEL. The prophetic Scriptures, we have seen, re- present rebellious Israel under the double image of " a wild ass used to the wilderness," and of "a swift dromedary traversing her ways." And under the same two-fold imagery we find her depicted upon the rocks of Sinai. The symbol of the camel, of frequent occurrence upon these rocks, is happily preserved in two pictorial inscriptions, of striking interest to the eye, and, as we will proceed now to show, of great import- ance to the evidences. The first of these inscriptions represents a restive young dromedary, led by a conductor,* and in the very action described by Jeremiah, crossinof from side to side, or " traversing: her ways." The second depicts an obstinate full- grown camel, just broke loose from his guide, the mouth open, the look sullen, as though riveted to the ground on which he stands. The human figure in both pictures is evidently that of "one in authority," for he bears in the riglit hand a wand or sceptre terminating in a triangle, an emblem of highest import which might suggest and justify the thought, that he * See the same figure, leading an ass, and a horse^ in Frontispiece. 142 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL who bears it may be no other than He who appeared unto Joshua " with his sword drawn in his hand," and announced himself " as Captain of the Lord's host." * The legend of each inscription corresponds with its device. It appears to symbolize " the Angel of the Covenant," who, alternately, controls and casts off his disobedient People. " The People of the Hebrews restrains with the rein Jehovah," are the words of the first inscription ; and the action agrees with the words, for the human figure is moving on, and compels the young camel to follow. " The People of the Hebrews casts oiF Jehovah," is the awful wording of the second ; and the action here also is in keeping, for the rein is thrown up, and the human figure, looking backwards, as though reproachfully, stands still. The attitude of the camel was at once recognized by a traveller in those parts, who observed on it, "That camel is a roarer. Once a camel puts himself into that attitude, nothing can move him. He is abandoned to die where he stands." What a picture of rebellious Israel, when her iniquity had come to the height, and her day of grace was past ! But the subject of these two inscriptions is not more important in itself, than their opening * Josh. V, 14. FEOM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 143 words are important to the evidences. The expression dm dniir, or dm dmran, " The People of the Tribes," or " The People of the Hebrews," which first presents itself to us in these inscrip- tions, is a statement, in so many words, of their Israelitish origin. The phrase occurs no less than twelve times in the inscriptions already copied ; and, of course, is one of continual recurrence. I had read it, " The People of the Tribes," for several years; and had justly re- garded it in this sense, as evidence of the highest value. But it is only very recently that I dis- covered incidentally in Richardson (what seems to have escaped the other lexicographers) that the plural .,1.^^, tawan, signifies, also, "The Hebrews :" * apparently as being synonymous with the denomination " Tribes." Either sense would be decisive for the Israelitish origin of the inscriptions ; but both, united, seem to proclaim it trumpet-tongued. I would add only, in this connection, that the word .,1,^-, (hnran, " The Hebrews," itself, occurs in Mr. Gray's Sinaitic inscription, N"o. 119.; and in connection, too, with Israel under the same image of a camel: " The People a herd of camels feeds in the desert wantonly." }^£.j umran, The Hebrews." 144 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL No. XVII. Gray, No. !■" ^ J=S6 H> The People a wild ass replete with water The People a silvan ass. Rock : Perfect. No. XVIII. Gray, No. 40 L-TJ Bending the neck He breaks m the wild ass. No. XIX. Gray, No. 133. The People at Marah drinketh like a wild ass. FROM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 145 Oy, ^j;, d;«, Populus. " The People." (•[r'*^ ? mam. Onager . A wild ass. (_>Jj, ?rawi, Potavit, explovit potu, /jfc. aqUiE. ■' -^ Drinking, drinking to replt-tion, esju'ciall!/ water. Oy> z*.^, dm, Populus. " The People." 1 r*, fara, Onager, Asinus Silvester. A wild ass ; a silvan ass. fc\^ JJ "ir LT-^JJ"^ (*^ The People a great docile camel cheers it mth conductor's voice Jehovah. FROM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 147 Oy. *£-i am. Populiu. " The People." ifcXc, ilrin, Invieem Infesti fuerunt et inimlcl. Mutually encountering as enemies. * •^"^ 5 daria, Lusus. Lusit, et re ludicra tempus fefellit. Play. They play, and playfully beguile the time. " The people rose up to play." — Exod. xxxii. 6. ; 1 Cnr. x. 7. Munster alone of the commentators has hit the true sense of this text. " Populus — surrererunt ut luderent.'l Alii vero referunt ad choreas, cantilenas, et ad alias res ludicras, quas exercuerunt ; atque ha-c videlur omnino penuina hujus loci esse sententia. Nam et postea dicitur, et audiens Jehovah vncem jnhiiantis dixif, ^c. Et respoiidit, Non est vox fortitttn prcEliantium in belio, ^c, vncem Indentium ego audio. Et verbum Ptiam Chaldaicum "I'^n, ridere, jocari.et ludere significat." — Munsterus in Exod. xxxii. 6. [Since the publication of the first edition, I have met with unexpected corroborations of the above decypherment. Mr. Gray's original MS. contains two more examples of this inscription ; and, in each, the figure of a man with a quartpr-staff, aiming, oi warding, a Wow.] Oy, *£> (tin. Populus. " The People." /i«,l«iO, dirtttw, Magni cameli. Camelus talis submissus etobsequens. -^ Great camels. A camel pliant and yielding on his pasterns. (So ap. Sil. lial. Cerberus ore submisso obsequens.) ( ^. .^^ Camel, velox.) ^ wabar, Pili caprini. Goats' hair. Pilosus (camelua, caper). '.', ndsab. In pedes surrexit. Erectum constltuit.' Rising up on the legs. Standing erect. • (Q. the goat in the attitude described ?) Oy, >£, Urn, Populus. " The People." jXJi idr, Fremuit sive mutivlt capra. Bleating, muttering {a goal). f^"^^ samar, Noctu sermones liabuit cum aliquo. -^ Holding converse loith any one by night. ^tf«l, /ao, Jehovah. Res extcin.i : Persona: Hypostasis. " -^ A Being : Personality : a Hypostasis. CDyi (t^i am, Populus. " The People." y*;'.» iSr, Fremuit sive niutivit capra. Bleats or mutters the goat. VI V.' '"'"• ^'ocavit ad se Ao;»i«(?j. Calling mc/i /o him. l ad, I'aravit, prseparavit, disposuit, ad aliquid. Preparing, disposing (onesnlf) /or ant/thing. luJiki), (/«(/«, Kesonanteni ex iuio pectorc argutiorein sonun% ipii {^Jl^"^^ dicilui . cniisit canuius. A camel crying from its inmost chcNt. ^'k^j (lam, Accumulata fuit n-i »r;', eam»f oppressit. I One thhiji heaped upun anul/icr, or oppressing it. H x if -i*, malit, .iMmentum, ciiuus ; quod inipellitur trahiturvc. -*«♦■£' amtr, Trilnis. The Trihes. (The Hebrews.) 164 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL No. XXIX. Gray, No. 61. Rock high up (about 20 ft.) : in a place where the winter torrent has undermined the slope. Perfect. jU S>- jX^ *iif — c The People of the tribes bridling restrains with the rein Jehovah Bitmg twists round his neck the wild asa. " Be ye not as the horse, or as the mule, Which have no understanding; Whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle. Lest they come near unto thee." Ps. xxxii. 9. No. XXX. Gray, No. 177. t_ — V r- The People kicketh hke an ass the people drives to the water Jehovah. No. XXXI. Gray, No. 44. Loose stone; perfect and plain. Beside it a quadruped. The People kicketh like an ass wantonly. FROM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 165 DVi (*^t ^f> PopulUb: plebs. " The People." j*^ !" J dmir, dmiran, " The Hebrews." " The great tribes." ,♦(» xama, Vi\ga\'\t,coniU\n\\t. pec. h3.henkjuinentum.' /♦■Cj gama, Capistravit. Haltering.; «j') Jao, Jehovah. Res extans : Persona: Hypostasis.^ ^ A Being: Person: Hypostasis. riXc, ddxama, Dentibus prehendit, momordil, rquus. Seizing with his teetli, biting (a Iwne). »*>* , i/iira, Obliquavit faciem suum. ■^ Turning his face sideways. 110n> j\y^^-i hama)\ Asinus. An ass: cspec. A he ass. Qy, z*"^? d»n. Populus. " The People " .^''•l> ramah, Calcitravit asinus. The ass kicketh. Dy. (♦*■' oin, Populus. " The People." J^, hara, Propulsio: pec. ad aquam. "Driving: especially to the water." I ci'j lao, Jehovah. Res extans: Persona: Hypostasis. St'^ a Being : a Person : a Hypostasis. Dy. /»•£, urn, Populus. " The People." t^'^ \i ramah, Calcitravit asinus. The ass kicketh. [" Beside it a quadruped. t_ ^ — Gray. Qu. This quadruped, also, a wild as» ?] jy^Jbt /lashar, Lubentia insolens, petulantia, Wanton glee, petulance. 156 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL No. XXXII. Beer, 55. i— i>'ucnvl"° ?^FVPll^?UiJ= The People the watei-si'ruigseek greedily [at] Marah The Peoi)le kicketh [like] a ■wild ass. FROM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 157 I I Dy. ^^, iJm, PopuUu: plebs. " Th(> People." ^1 1 \,^^ J'^i <'■«, Aqiift nlmndavit /rtcuj. A watfifing-plaoe. Y/ 1 I %-^iii h'li'i, Aquam appetivere, sitiverunt, fa;«i7j. ■^ \J ^~ Longing lor water, thirsting, camels. lLJ= t~\y. ^£-y am, Popiiliis: i)!*'l)8. " Tlio People." nJ^?. \-^ \, ramah, Cnliilravit n.SiVu/i. " Kicketh «.v nji n«.' ■', bar'i, Agreslis. sytvaticiis. Wild, sylvan. ^f- -»^»>.S /(O/)-, Asliun. " An ass." (t7/nwj, Canieliis. ) 168 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL No. XXXIII. Gray, No. 31. Loo,e^,.one: ^ Y M The People raileth reviling cursing A loud-braying ass vociferous. No. XXXIV. Gray, No. 18. C^e^i ^/>J61VX]]J> Apparently perfect. ^ J^'^ Jb I* <>£ /♦£ The People biteth [like] a mule • rushing daringly in famishmg. • " Be ye not as the horse, or as the mule, which have no understanding; whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle, lest they come near unto thee."— Pi. xxxil. 9. FROM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 159 '^ r-*"^ Dy. (^' ""'• PopuUis. " The People." 2 -) 9 .. I / I «— ^t) tvakd, Ohtrectavit, >^ ^ ^ " Railing at, HD"!. tf^ h rflJH/, .Tecit, dejecit. Dictertis impetivit. Impreca- *rr ^ tus fuit. Casting down. " Railing at, reproaching, imprecating." maledixit. g at, reproaching, cursing, execrating." Asinus claro rudens clangore. " An ass braying loud and clear." ^. - aja, Clamavit: edidlt sonum, vocemve. "^ 1 " Clamorous, noisy, vociferous " 1 Y CDJ?' i*^) ""'• I'opuliH. " The People dzania, Dentibus prehendit, momordit, equus, &c. Sei/.ing with the teeth. " Biting (as a horse)." 6^ \y r^' ' ~J y yj t^^? '"'g«', Mnhis. " ."k mule." (P.«o7»j xxxii. 9. con/.) r\ [ 'X C r^^y ? damnra, Audacter et impudenter irruit. M I'A \) ■' " Daringly and audaciously rushing in on any CJj "i kh Valdd famelicus et carens omni cibo. Sr Famishing ; totally destitute of food 160 THE VOICE OF ISRAEL No. XXXV. Gray, No. 1G. x^ r" J' i^'j'^^ ^ The People at Marah bleateth like a goat kieketh like an ass at the basins of the two water-spring's it drinks greedily with prone mouth. No. XXXVI. Gray, No. IIG. The People at Marah. V ;r t -^/ l^tl^ Hif ^^iv- ^CAss '> f ~>)/ ^1 ^\ s=, _- n* PCOpU 0( th« Dlt(T«- No. XXXVIIL ^1 Jiir- ci' -*. *». r^vntai. |«^. -Ttoh FROM THE ROCKS OF SINAI. 161 Dy, A^-i am, Populus. " The People. '• iff-ti »/iaraA, (at) Marali. >■ 1 naba, Mtitivit, freniiiit, c«pcr. Mutters, bleats, the goat. f^^-< I, ramah, C'alcitravit asinus. Kicketh the ass. *^^i Ja,Jiat, Rereptaculuiii aqiiie, locus quo confluit. The basiu of water, the place into which it flows. j^XS-, drf(/r. Locus aqud abunJans. A place of water-springj. J/^3, C . , * kara, Flexit se, incurvavit so genu. >^ Boning oneself, buwing liuwu on the knee. " Apud Arabes significationis prlmisenire vestigia tantnm supersunt ; tt^ prono ore bibit, /jro incurvavit se aii bibrndtun." — Gescnms. Drinking with prone nioutli, bowing (lovsn to drink. " Os admovit vet immisit aquce ; eamque sorpsit seu potavit, non haurians manu aut vase." — Golius. Putting the mouth into water and sucking it up, not drawing it with the hand, or with a vessel. (See Judges, vii. G.) M PL. VII. EXERCISES FOR STUDENTS OF THE ALPHABETS OF THIS WORK. ' ^^^ 1 ^ 7J= fAjyjf'^^ff^ y^ PyrqxJcjCif Betn, 182. _ ^ J7J'/6(A ■?n ^^^J^c^ ^^Yff^ iajv-pi y\miV<}hJb\^ 1 iHi ^u ir K \6i yi \lU riNAL NOTES. M 2 FINAL NOTES. Note 1. p. 9.] "Praster hrec loca, invenluntur tales inscrlptiones, ecsque multcE, in monte Serbal (Sslrbal), qui prope viarura illarum australem situs est; necnon, sed rarius, in aliquot vallibus quas a monte Sinai au- strales sunt." — Beei', Introd. p. yiii. Compare Burck- hardti Travels, p. 608. ss. ; and De Lahorde, Voyage de V Arabic Petree, p. 64. s. Note 2. p. 17.] The truth of the case (as will abund- antly appear hereafter) is, that the modern Arabic al- phabet contains not a few characters adopted obviously from those very Sinaitic, and other primitive inscriptions. The most important light yet thrown upon the history, and real antiquity, of this alphabet, will be found in the following letter of M. de Sacy : — " Lettre au Redacteur du Journal Asiatique. " Monsieur, " Vous desirez que je vous mette a memo de faire connaitre aux lecteurs du Jonrval Asiatique les resultats d'un Memoire que j'ai lu derniereraent a 1' Academic des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, sur quelques papyrus ecrits en arabe, et dccouverts, il n'y a pas long-terns, en M 3 166 FINAL NOTES. Egypte. Comme je no suis pas encore determine a pub- lier ce Memoire en partlculicr, et qu'il pourrait bien se passer dix ans avant qu'il parut dans la collection des Memoires de I'Academie, je me rends volontiers a votre desir. " C'est a M. Drovetti, consul-general de France en Egypte, que je dois la communication de ces j^apyrus, qui ont etc trouves dans un pot de terre cuite, bien ferme, a la surface d'un tombeau ; le tout enfoui dans le sable aux montagnes de Memphis, pres "des pyramidcs de Saccara, et au lieu memo d'ou etc tire le sarcophage de granit que Ton voit actuellement a Paris. Ces papyrus, de la grandeur d'une petite feuille de papier, sont au nombre de trois ; chacun d'eux etait roule, et pour les lire, et en assurer la conservation, il a fallu les derouler avec beaucoup de soin et les coller sur un carton leger, ce qui n'avait d'ailleurs aucun inconvenient, parce qu'ils n'etaient ecrits que d'un cote. Deux seule- ment ont fixe mon attention ; le troisieme est dans un tel ctat de destruction, et I'ecriture en est efFacee en si grande partie, que je ne pense pas qu'on puisse en lire un seul mot. Dans les deux dont il va etre question, il y a aussi des parties effacees, mais comme leur con- tenu est a peu de chose pres le meme, ils se pretent un secours mutuel, et a I'exception de quelques mots, on les lit avec une parfaite certitude de ne pas se tromper. Ce sont deux passe-ports, dont le premier est donne a deux Egyptiens et le second a un seul. Je ne placerai ici que la traduction du premier, parce que c'est celui qui ofFre le moins de lacunes. " ' Au nom du Dieu clement et misericordieux. Ceci est un ecrit donne par moi, Djaber, fils d'Obe'id, inten- dant de I'Emir Abd-almelic, fils de Yezid, et prepose FINAL NOTES. 1G7 au nome de Memphis, li, Samya felibcc i ^-ij L^--; imbeibc, corpulent, roux, ayant Ic nez releve en bossej louclie, incirconcis, et a. Fcloudj Halhe ^^Is, imberbe, roux, loiidic, incirconcis, tous deux habirans du monastcre d'Abou Hermes, du nome de iMempIiis, (attestant) que je leur ai pcrmis de se transporter dans le Said avec leurs fcmmes, Icurs provisions, ct Icurs mar- cbandises, jusqu' a la fin de scliawal do Tannce 133. Si done quelqu'un des intcndans de Teniir (que Dieu lul accorde le bonheur !) les rencontre, il ne doit leur opposer aucun empcehement Ecrit par Ibra- him, le P'" jour de la lune de schawal, de I'an 133.' " Au haut du papyrus, a la gauche du lecteur, on lit le mot c_^^jss~.j, il a etc transcrit. " La partie infcrieure du papyrus a etc roulee et retenue par quelques filamens qu'on a replies sur la partie roulee, et arretec par un cachet en argilc, sur le quel on lit: ^*^j^'^ u**^^^ l5'^ t^^ J'^ u^i'> ^*«^^'' a conjie tous ses inter ets au (^Dieu) clement et misericordieux. " Le second papyrus est delivrc par le meme officier, et date parcillcmcnt de schaAval 133. L'objet en est le memo, et le passe-port est donnc comme le premier, il un habitant du monastcre d'Abou Hermes, pour voyager dans le Said avec sa femme, ses provisions, et ses mar- chandlses, jusqu'a la fin de schawal 133. II est cachcte comme I'autre, et avec le meme sceau. 11 parait ecrit de la meme main que le premier, quoique le nom de recrivain ait disparu. " Ces deux papyrus semblent, sans doute, au premier coup-d'ocil, de bleu pen d'importance ; mais pourtant, sous uu certain rapport, lis sont du plus grand interet. En cff'et, ils sont eci'its dans le caractere nomme Neshlii, dont on attribue generalement Viiivention au cclebre vizir M 4 168 FINAL NOTES. Abou-AH Ebn-Mocla, mort en I'annee 326 de I'heglre, ou ti son pere Abou-Abd-Hasan, mort en 338 ; et comme leur date est certaine, on en doit conclure que ce carac- tere existait deux siecles au moins avant JEhn-Mocla. Je dis que leur date est certaine, et en efFet Tauthenticite de cette date est justifiee par I'histoire, qui nous apprend qu'en I'annee 133, I'Egypte etait gouvernce, comme on le lit sur ces passe-ports, par Abd-almclic, fils de Yezid, Voici a cet egard ce qu'on lit dans Makrizi. " ' Au commencement du mois de schaban 133, Abou- Aoun Abd-almelic, fils de Yezid, natif du Djordjan, fut nomme gouverneur de I'Egypte, et charge en meme- tems de I'intendance des finances, comme lieutenant de Salih, fils d'Ali.' Ainsi, a la date de nos passe-ports, Abd-almelic, fils de Yezid, gouvernait I'Egypte depuis environ deux mois. II en conserva le gouvernement, suivant Makrizi, jusqu'a la fin de Fan 135. II est utile encore d'observer que I'epoque de laquelle ces passe-ports sont dates, coincide avec celle de la chute des Ommiades, et du commencement des Abbassides ; que le dernier khalife Ommiade avait cherche un asile en Egypte, et que le changement de dynastie avait occasionne dans cette province des troubles et des hos- tilites. II n'est pas surprenant que dans de telles cir- constances, on ait soumis Ics chretiens indigenes de I'Egypte a une surveillance qui peut-etre n'aurait pas eu lieu dans des temps plus tranquilles. " L'ecriture de notre papyrus ofFre encore quelques clrconstances qui viennent a I'appui de leur haute anti- quite. 1° On nhj volt aucun point diacritique, ce qui, pour le dire en passant, rend tres incertaine la lecture et la prononciation des noms pi'opres des Egyptiens aux-quels ces passe-ports out ete donnes ; 2° on y re- marque, comme sur les medailles anciennes coufiques. FINAL NOTES. 169 romisslon de Velif de prolongation, dans certaines mots : ainsi on y lit k_^-^i^ pour < — ?l-i 5 c-^Ij^^ pour < — ''i=^^ 5 I — Jj et (j-»^J pour * >'!.' ct jj-'li«-' " Ces papyrus sont done Ics plus anclens monumens connus dc I'ccrlture Ncskld, et mcmc, si on execpte les medaillcs, de recriture Arabe en (jeiieral ; du moins sont ils les seuls monumens antiques de cette ecriture qui aient une date ccrtaine. J'oubliais de dire que Ic cachet est en caracteres coufiques. " Je me suis etendu a cette occasion, dans le Me- moire dont je vous ofFre ici, jNIonsicur, une tres-courte analyse, sur I'liistoire de I'ccriture clicz les Arabes, ct les prolegomenes historiques d'Ebn-khaldoun m'ont fourni certaines particularites, desquelles j'ai cru pouvoir con- clure, avcc quelque vraisemblance, que le caractere Neskhi cxistait long-tems avant Ebn-Mocla ; qu'Ebn- Mocla ne fut point, a proprement parler, I'inventeur d'une nouvelle ecriture, et qu^il iCy eut point im passage subit du caractere coufique au caractere Neskhi ; enfin, qiCavant le caractere coujique, ily avait un autre caractere tres analogue a celui dont on fait encore usage aujourdliui. "J'ai fait voire ensuite que la decouverte de nos papyrus faisait cvanouir les doutes qui pouvaient encore rester, sur Tattrlbution faite par M. le comte Castiglioni et par M. Froelm, au khalife Abd-almelic, de certaines monnaies avec figures, qui oflfrent des legendes en carac- teres arabes, tres approchans dc I'ecriture Neskhi. Enfin j'ai termine mon mcmoire par une derniere ob- servation que je vais transcrire ici. " ' J'avouerai,' ai-je dit, 'que jusqu'ici je m'etais refuse a reconnaitre le nom de la ville de Damas, ecrit en caracteres arabes, sur les monnaies avec figures, publiees par M. I'abbc Sestini, qui les attribualt a Leon le 170 FINAL NOTES. Khazarc, ct que M. Marchant. dans ses melanges de nuniismatiquc et d'histoire, attribue au khalife Abd- almelic, et consldere co)nme des essais de monnaic, dont la politique dcs Musidnuais a commence de rapprocJier le style et la fahrique du systeme monetaire des empereurSy j)our en favoriser le cows. De lii aussi, suivant lui, le melange du grec et I'ai'abe sur ces medailles. Je ne vois plus maintcnant de raison pour refuser de recon- naitre le nom arabe de Damas sur ces medailles, ni celui de Tiberiade tt'.^^ sur la monnaie frappee sous He- raclius, ou ce meme nom se lit aussi en grec. Peut-etre faudra-t-il meme reformer toutes nos idees sur la clirono- logie des differentes ecritures arahes, et admettre que le caractere Neshld, dontonjixait Vinvention au 3""^ siecle de riiegire, existait a peu prcs, sous sa forme actuelle, avant que les Arabes du Hedjaz requssent d''Anhar ou de Hira celui qui a donne 7iaissance au caractere coufique. " Agreez, monsieur, I'assurance des sentimens avec lesquels je suis, &c., «Le Bakon S. de Sacy."* The priority of the Ncsklii, by at least two centuries, to the date vulgarly assigned for its invention, is irrefragably proved by the evidence of the Egyptian papyruses, here adduced by j\I. de Sacy. But the truth of the case ascends far higher than this illustrious orientalist had been led to conceive. The real antiquity of the Neskhi is traceable, through the written monu- ments of Egypt, of Sinai, and of Southern Arabia, to the primitive ages and records of mankind. Its cha- racters appear, in their present forms, upon the Egyp- tian monuments, from the age of the earliest Pharaohs * Journ;il Asiatiquc, 2Jc series, tome vii. pp. 104 — 110. FINAL NOTES. 171 to that of the Rosctta stone ; they are repeated, amidst Hainyarltic characters, in the Sinaitic inscriptions* ; and, by favour of the Council of the lloyal Geographical Society, I have now in my possession a hieroglyphical inscription (obtained by Capt. Haines, I. N., now our political agent at Aden), bearing strong internal marks of remote antiquity, from the rocks of Djcbel Ilum- moum, in Southern Arabia, which, amidst its Ilamyaritic characters, contains eight or ten letters of the Xcskhi alphabet, so clear and perfect, that, were types cast from them, they might be employed, without detection, in an Arabic printed volume. The slmjile explanation is this, that the Ncskhi, like the Ilamyaritic, belonged to prior and primitive alphabets ; and that selection, not invention, was the only office of the alphabet-makers of after-times. Note 3. p. 20.] Those who adopt the Professor's theory are of course of a very different opinion. I give a specimen, but spare the name of the author : " The Wtidi jNIidcatteb, or Sinaite character. Professor Beer has ijroved, belonged to tlie Nabathaians. — In a sub- joined table of alphabets, I give the Sinaite or Naba- tha3an alphabet, as made out by Professor Beer. I add to it various alphabets of the cognate languages, from a comparison of which, as well as from the Professor's readings, one may satisfy himself that he has correctly represented the power of the Sinaite letters. When I first sate the inscrij)ti(ms in Wddi Miihaiteh, I loas satis- fied that they could tlius he deciiihered.^'' By this school of philology we are in little danger of Ijcing troubled with the TToWijs irelpas Tzksvralov sTruyivvrnjLa. * " Haud desunt inscriptiones, qua; utrum Sinaica; an Aiabica^ sint ncscias."— Beer, Introd. p. xv. 172 FINAL NOTES. Note 4. p. 26.] " Rupium saxorumquc superficies ncquaquam est prteparata ad inscriiotloncs excipicndas, sed naturalem ejus asperitatem auctores ita vicerunt ut Ijeviores superficici partes eligerent, unde inscrlp- tlones maxima varietate et sine ullo ordinc in rupe se excipiunt. Nee ipsi versus recta lineu scripti esse Solent, negligenter enini et festinanter factae sunt pluri- mjB ; id quod multis qua3 hodieque cgregie servatce sunt, imperfecta3 conditionis speciem facit et confusum asjiectum. Qute earum conditio ex eo satis explicatur quod auctores lapidem inscribcbant ipsi nullo artifice neque ullo instrumento ad incidendum apto utentes ; et vix eo consilio veniebant, ut rupibus aliquid inciderent, sed in transitu hoc faciebant." — Introd. pp. viii, ix. Note 5. p. 27.] " Scriptitram autem aliam quam Nabathreorum esse valde dubito : liber enim litterarum ductus, et audax conjunctio, qnalcm in lapidihus nullius populi ejus (Btafis vel superioris novi, pbpulum cui origi- nem debent hoec inscriptiones, et multum et ccdligraphice scripsisse indicavit, itaque cultum rebusque publicis florentem fuisse produnt." — lb. p. xvi. If this and the preceding note be not ode and palin- ode, I leave to the reader. Note 6. p. 37.] " On board the Cleopatra, May 24. 1845. — On the fourth of this month I set out for Sinai ; and on reaching the Wady Mokatteb, I and my people kept a sharp look-out for the writings. At the first graven rock which I espied, I ordered a halt, at about 10^ A. M. I then reconnoitred the neighbour- hood, and found that if we tarried three days, or even two, our water and provisions would not hold out till FINAL NOTES. 173 the convent, whither we must go to take in a six-days' supply for our return. The expense, too, of detaining the camels and Arabs would be not inconsiderable. I therefore determined to select only the best and clearest inscriptions for copying, and worked, almost unre- mittingly, from noon to sunset under a burning sun ; my servant, and the Arab Shieck and his boy, holding an umbrella over me in turns. The next morning, before sunrise, I went to work again ; and when the sun began to wax hot, I called my servant to bear the um- brelhi as before. lie, having something to do in the tent, called the Shieck ; and he, from out of a rocky cave where he lay, called the boy ; and forth came the poor boy from another shady retreat, to face the fierce glare of the sun, wondering what could possess the Frangee to stop in this frightful desert, to copy these useless, and (as he thought) unintelligible writings. I worked till noon* ; and then took a slight meal, and set forth on my journey. I reached the delicious Wady Feiran, with its pure running stream and groves of palm-trees, at 8 P. m. Here, again, the unknown cha- racters ahuund. They are found, also, in various other places ; and specially around the foot of ]\Iount Scrbal. To stop, therefore, and copy them all, would require more time and means than I can command ; and had I attempted to do so, I must at once have abandoned all thoughts of proceeding to Southern Arabia. I have done, therefore, what I could with the limited resources at my disposal. There is, as I learned from the Arabs, about two or three days north of jNIokatteb, a carving * One of his inscriptions sent to me is tlnis endorsed : " No. 17. Mem. Many after this too much cilaced to be read, and many inaccessible without a ladder." 174 FINAL NOTES. of a man and woman in large size, on a huge rock, with the unknown character below." — Extract of a letter from Rev. T. Broohnan. Can these figures be repre- sentations of Hagar and Ishmael ? They are towards, if not at, Mount Seir; and the Arabs conducted another friend of mine to an apartment high in the rock, ascended by a hidden staircase, called Beit Hagar, which they showed as the house of Hagar. Remains and traditions like these, in the East, are rarely without some foundation. Note 7. p. 43.] The honour of forming, and main- taining thi'ough life, the true judgment, as to the purely alphabetic character of the enchorial text, belongs to a single name and memory, that of Akerblad. Dr. T. Young's account of the view taken by that eminent philologist is in place here. My comparative table of the alphabets of Sinai and Rosetta will show which party was mistaken.* " Mr. Akerblad, a diplo- matic gentleman, then (1800-1805) at Paris, but afterwards the Swedish resident at Rome, had begun to decypher the middle [the enchorial] division of the inscription, after De Sacy had given up the pursuit as hopeless, notwithstanding that he had made out very satisfactorily the names of Ptolemy and Alexander. But both he and Llr. Akerblad proceeded upon the erroneous, or, at least, imjoerfect, evidence of the Greek authors, who have pretended to explain the diiferent modes of writing among the ancient Egyptians, a7id who have asserted very distinctly^ that they employed on many occasions an alphabetical system composed of twenty-Jive letters. The characters of the second part * See Plate I. p. 43. FINAL NOTES. 175 of the inscription being called, in the Greek inscription, ENCHOKIA GRAMMATA, or letters of the country, it was natural to look among these for the alphabet in question : and Mr. Akcrblad having principally deduced his conclusions from the preamble of the decree, which consists in great measure of foreign proper names, persisted to tlic time of his death in believing that this part of the inscription ivas tliroiujhout alphabcticaV'' — Young on Hierorjli/phic Literature, chap. ii. p. 8, 9. The comjmrative table, Plate I., brings the question to a short issue. If the Sinaitic characters be purely alphabetical, so must be, also, the enchorial characters of Egypt. All Europe acknowledges the one point ; and the identity exhibited in Plate I. of this work proves the other. It is a moral pleasure to be thus enabled, after the lapse of nearly half a century, to pay this due tribute to departed merit. Note 8. p. 50.] The reality, with regard to my reading the word forming tlie third line of this inscrip- tion as ramah, places the evidence for this decyphermeut still higher than it is stated in the text. For the de- cyphermcnt was made from the inscription itself only, without any reference whatever to Mr. Gray's foot-note ; Avhich lay unnoticed in a corner below, until my atten- tion was drawn to it by my own independent dccypher- ment of the word to which it proved to have such un- expected relation. Then, indeed, the importance of this pictorial authentication disclosed itself in all its force to myself and to the friends at whose residence the discovery was made. The remark at the time, of one versed in science, was, " This is mathematical." Apology is needless for bringing out the whole truth 176 FINAL NOTES. in this case : because, where all had been darkness, the first clear gleam of light is precious as the apple of the eye. Note 9. p. 54.] " April 27. AVe travelled over uneven hilly ground, gravelly and flinty. At one hour and three quarters [from Wadi Amara] we passed the well of Howara {^j^j;^ ■^,), round which a few date trees grow. Niebuhr travelled the same route, but his guides probably did not lead him to this well ; which lies among hills, about two hundred paces out of the road. He mentions a rock called Hadjer Rakkabe, as one German mile short of Gharendel. I remember to have halted under a large rock, close by the roadside, a very short distance before we reached Howara, but I did not learn its name. The water of the well of Howara is so bitter, that men cannot drink it ; and even camels, if not very thirsty, refuse to taste it. From Ayoun Mousa to the well of Howara, we had travelled fifteen hours and a quarter. Referring to this distance, it seems probable that this is the desert of three days, mentioned in the Scriptures to have been crossed by the Israelites, immediately after their passing the Red Sea, and at the end of which they arrived at Marah. In moving with a whole nation, the march may well be supposed to have occupied three days ; and the bitter icell at JSIarah, which was sweetened by Moses, corre- sponds exactly with that of Howara. This is the usual route to Mount Sinai; and was probably, therefore, that which the Israelites took on their escape from Egypt ; provided it be admitted that they crossed the sea near Suez, as Niebuhr, with good reason, conjectures. There is no other road of three days'" march, in the way from Suez towards Sinai ; nor is there any other ivell FINAL NOTES. 177 absolutely hitter on the whole of this coast, as far as Ras Mohammed [the extreme southern point of the peiunsuhi]. The cumi)lauits of the bitterness of the water by the children of Israel, who had been accus- tomed to the sweet water of the Nile, are such as may daily be heard from the Egyptian servants and peasants who travel in Arabia. Accustomed from their youth to the excellent water of the Nile, there is nothing which they so much regret, in countries distant from Egypt ; nor is there any Eastern people who feel so keenly the want of good water, as the present natives of Egypt. With respect to the means employed by INIoses to render the waters of the well sweet, I have frequently inquired among the Bedouins, in diflerent parts of Arabia, whether they possessed any means of effecting such a change, by throwing wood into it, or by any other process : but I never could learn that such an art was known." — Burckhardt, Travels in Syria, p. 472, 473. " Monday, March 19. We rose early, and set off with the rising sun. At 1 2 o'clock \vc entered among the hills. At 2^ o'clock we passed a large square rock, lying near the foot of the hill on our right. It is called Ilajr, or Rukkab, ' Stone of the riders,' and is mentioned by Niebuhr. Fifteen minutes beyond this, we came to the fountain Ilawareh, lying to the left of the road on a large mound, composed of a whitish rocky substance, formed, apparently by the deposits of the fountain during the lapse of ages. No stream was now flowing from it; tltoiujh tlwre are traces of running xoater round about. The basin is six or eight feet in diameter [why not measured?], and tlie water about two feet deep. Its taste is unpleasant, saltish, and somewhat N 178 FINAL NOTES. bitter ; but wc could not perceive that it was very much worse than that of" Ayim Musa ; perhaps because we were not yet connoisseurs in bad water. The Arabs, however, pronounce it hitter, and consider it as the worst water in all these regions. Yet, when pinched, they drink of it; and our camels drank of it freely. The fountain of Ilawarah is first distinctly mentioned by Burckhardt. Pococke, perhaps, saw it; though his language is quite indefinite. Niebuhr passed this way ; but his guides did not point it out to him ; probably because the Arabs make no account of it as a waterinoc- place. Since Burckhardt's day it has generally been regarded as the bitter fountain of Marah, which the Israelites reached after three days' march without water, in the desert of Shur. The position of the spring, and the nature of the country, tally very exactly with this supposition. After having passed the Ked Sea, the Israelites would naturally supply themselves from the fountains of Naba, and Ayun Musa; and from the latter to Hawara is a distance of about sixteen and a half hours, or thirty tliree geographical miles ; which, as we have seen above, was, for them, a three days' journey. On the route itself there is no water. I see, therefore, no valid objection to the above hypothesis. The fountain lies at the specified distance, and on their direct route ; for there is no probability that they passed by the lower and longer road along the sea shore." — Robinson, Biblical Researches, ^c. vol. i. p. 95 — 98. " Next day, starting at a quarter past seven, we reached the bitter well of Hawara at half-past two ; and watered the camels there. The Arabs never drink of it themselves. I tasted, and at first thought the water insipid rather than bitter, but, held in the mouth for a FINAL NOTES. 179 few seconds, it becomes excessively nauseous. It rises within an elevated mound surrounded by sand-hills, and two small date-trees grow near it. There can be no doubt, I think, of this well being the JNIarah of Scrip- ture, sweetened by Moses. The name Marah implying ' bitter,' seems to be preserved in that of the Wady Ainara, which we crossed shortly before re.acliing it. There is no other ivell, Hussein tells me, on the whole coast, ahsolutehj undrinhahleJ''' — Lord Lindsay, Travels in Egypt, Edom, ^c. vol. i. p. 262, 263. Note 10. p. b^r^ " About half a mile in advance of this conspicuous object (the rock of llakkab) we came to the Ain Hawarah, the " well of destruction," * a fountain on a small knoll close to the track, on its eastern side, which we were pursuing. It occupies a small basin ahont five feet in diameter, and eighteen inches deep, and to some extent it oozes through the sands, leaving, like the wells of Moses, a deposit of lime. I believe that I was the first of our party to essay to drink of its water ; but the Arabs, on observing me about to take a potation of it, exclaimed ' Murrah, mnrrah, murrali,^ {,'i, ^^ the fem. of ^ ) — ' It is bitter, bitter, bitter.' " This fountain has been almost universally admitted by travellers, since the days of Burckhardt, who first precisely indicates its situation, to be the true JSIurah of Scripture, as it is found in a situation about tliirty miles from the place where the Israelites must have landed on the eastern shore of the Red Sea, — a space • GoHus gives a very diflercnt version : " .»jb Stagnum, palusve, in quam quis facili} dcmcrgitur." N 2 180 FINAL NOTES. sufficient for their marcli, when they went three days in the wilderness and found no water. No other constant spring is found in the intermediate space. It retains its ancient character, and has a bad one among the Arabs, who seldom allow their camels to partake of it. Only one or two of our animals tasted it; and the Arabs left us to experiment upon its qualities, without even applying it to their lips." — Lands of the Bible, i. p. 170, 171. Note 11. p. 5Q.'] See preceding Notes 9. and 10. Its basin being a self-formed case of travertine, accounts for the unchanged form of the well of Marah. On the formation and properties of travertine, see Sir H. Davy, "Last Days of a Philosopher," dialogue ill. pp. 124- 133. "The crystallizations are formed with a won- derful rapidity, and they are no sooner produced than they are destroyed." — lb. p. 126. Note 12. p. 76.] In confirmation of this view, the groundwork of the present work, see ap. " Sylloge Dls- sertatlonum Philologico-Exegeticarum, Leidffi, 1772," a Treatise by Poller (an oi'ientalist of the Leyden, and of Albert Schultens's, school), entitled " Dissertatio Philologlca qua disquirltur de puritate dialecti Arabicas, t^omparata cum puritate dialecti Hebrsje, in relatione ad an tediluvianam hinguam.^'' The author opens his subject with a testimony prounded on the results of his studies. " Totum me ad se pertraxlt admlrabllis ilia purltas dialecti Arabicas, quaB mihi ex interiori cognitione fundamentorum ejus adfulgebat, quum in ejus paradlgmatlbus versandls occuparer. Ilia mihi videbatur non tantum Chald.aicam FINAL NOTES. 181 et Synacaiu purittite \ incere ; sed etiain dialectuia llebraicani supcraro, in relatione ad vetustissirnam et primcBvam illam linguain quain cum origiite mimdi ince- pisse, et in orbe antcdiluviano ohtinuisse, cum rcliquis viris doctissiniis tcneiuusj et dubio vacuum ccnsemus." His Thesis, in developeraent of the grounds of this judgment, is, " Dialcctus Arablcaj puriorem et anti(jui- oreni fonnaui Lincjuce antedduciancB distinctius ohtiuety quarn Hebraica."" This Thesis the author sustains through a series of examplet«, in which, in words common to both idioma, the Arabic forms bear the marks of being the original, the Hebraic, of being derivative, forms. The field occupied by this Treatise is defined in the following passage. " Per dialectum itaque Arabicam, et Hebraicam, propagines duas tnaximas Linguoe. ante- diluviancE indigito ; cujus ali;\i item dua3 sunt Chaldaica ct Syriaca, quie tarn arctc sibi coluerent, quam dialecti Linguae antique Grajca?, lonica, Attica, ^olica, ct Dorica. Ut ha3C clarius cdisseram, aio dialectum He- braicam esse propaginem Linguie prlmajva}, (juie ejus indolem representat in ea parte quie ad nos pervcnit in Textu Hebraso-Biblico. Ilcec vix est centissittui pai's illius liuffUCB antediluviancB ; hinc elicio Adamum, stricte loquendo, non locutum esse Hebraice, sed earn lingnam qua postea usi sunt in Farnilia Heheri, sic enim hoc absurdum sequeretur, quod Heber, jam tempore Adaml viverc debuerit. Arabicam quoties dialectum noniino, toties cam intelligo, quam locuti sunt Arahes Jemanenses, Heberi posteritas per Joktanum, Phalegi fratrem natu minorem. Per antcdihivlanam Linguam intelligo, cam (|ua orbis antediluvian us i)er IG fei'C secula usus, quae » 3 182 FINAL NOTES. tandem cocplt nomine Ilebraicaj, Aramncne, Arabicas, insigniri." — Policr, ut supr. p. 239 — 242. It is the Hamyaritic, therefore, which is here con- sidered as the primeval language of mankind. The opinions of Sale, and of Sir William Jones, upon the antiquity of the Arabic idiom (in entire harmony with that of Polier), are too well known to need quotation. Note 13. p. 76.] The principle of primeval language is strikingly exemplified in the Chinese. " It has been remarked by the great philologer Humboldt, that the Chinese and the Sanscrit languages exemplify the two most opposite methods of construction. The Sanscrit denotes all the relations and connexions of words, and of ideas, by grammatical forms, written, and expressed in pronunciation. The Chinese leave the perception of these relations to he the work of the mind. The use of some particles being excepted, of which the Chinese can, how- ever, in a great measure, dispense, this language ex- presses all grammatical relation of ivords by mere posi- tion, fixed according to certain invariable rules, and by the explanation of sense, which the context, or connexion, of the sentence implies.'''' * — Prichard, Physical History of Man, vol. iv. p. 541. The Celtiberians of Biscay are identified by Humboldt with one of the primitive races, the Iberians ; and it is very remarkable that the Celtiberian alphabet is nearly identical with the Hamyaritic. Dr. Prichard's account of this people supplies a curious nexus utriusque in the * Among the Grisons, I understand, there is a similar phenomenon of dialect with that already adverted to in remote districts of Italy ; a lan- guage destitute of the accidents of speech, and helieved to be primitive, a relic of the Etruscan. FINAL NOTES. 183 family of nations. " Passing from South-eastern Asia to the extreme western border of Europe, we fnul, on the flanks of the Pyrenean range, the remains of a people now known under the name of the Basques or Biscayans. There is no douhf. that these are the repre- sentatives of the ancient Iberians ; a people who inhabited the northern coast of the ISIediterranean, from Italy westward, before their occiqiation hy the Celtic nations. The national a})pellation of these people, in their own idiom, is Euscaldenscs ; and they term their language the Euskara, or Euskarian speech. Tliis language has been attentively studied, especially by the late cele- brated Baron AVilliam Von Humboldt; who, during a residence in Spain, devoted himself to this subject, and to the collection of materials illustrative of the ancient literature of the Iberians. He has hence come to the conclusion, which corresponds with that founded upon other data, tiiat the Iberians belong to the very earliest stock of European nations; and, so far from their lan- guage being derived from the Celtic (as some writers have supposed), it must have been in existence at a period long anterior to the migration of the Celtic nations into Western Europe. But the Eskarian has some re- markable traits of resemblance to the Finnish laniruafre, and, thence, to the general family of languages in High Asia." — Brit, and For. Medical Revieiv, No. xlviii. p. 464. Note 14. p. 79.] "Exod.xv. 19. Ingressus est enim eques Pharao cum currihus et equitibus ejus in mare.~\ Sincera est (quod etiam Epanorthotes annotavit) aliorum codicum lectio, equus Pharao: ita enim Hcbraicc est, ita Grajce, ny"l£3 D"1Dj 'Wos <\^apa(o. Accipitur autem cquus collective: quamobrcm Chaldrens vertit, Ingrrssa N 4 184 FINAL NOTES. ^st, nj^'lD ri1D1D> nndtitiulo equnrum Pharaonis, cam cnrrihiis sui.s, et cfpiitihus suia in mare. F. IVIagdalius, in siio Bibliorum Correctorio, notat, Equus legl debet, non eques ; nisi equltem pro ipso jumento ciii insidetnr acci- pcre velimus. Utrumque enim equcs significat, ut refert Aulus Gellius lib. 18. c. 5. Ha^c ille rectc Rabanus legit ex Grajco (nam Gra3cam translationem quantloque intermiscet), Intravit cquitatus PJiarao cum quadrigis et ascensoribus in mare: Xiriros enim etiam equitatum signi- ficat." — Luc. Brug. in Exod. xv. 1 9., ap. Crit. Sacr. 185 SUrPLEMENTARY EINAL IN'OTES TO SECOND EDITION. Note A., p. 4.] Since the publication of my first edition, I have been favoured by Mr. Gray with the original MS. of his copies of the SInaitic Inscriptions. Among these occurs a second Greek inscription, with the name Cosmas standing alone In the centre line ; while the Greek, in this Instance, Is both graphically and dialectlcally confirmatory of my reference of the first Inscription to the E(jijptian Cosmas Indicopleustcs. In the following fac-slmile, tlie reader will observe the Cojitic form of the a, and the ks pro kui of the Alexandrine dialect (sec Stcph. Thcs., tom. I. p. clxxxix. ed. Valp.): This document, like tlic former In barbarous Greek, seems to read — IvEMKMBEU Cosmas AND THE ReSUKRECTION. 186 SUPPLEMENTARY FINAL NOTES. Note B., p. 35.] " After an interesting examination of the vicinity of Tor, I proceeded to visit the Jehel Mokatteh, or Written Mountain, concerning which the learned have been so long divided in opinion. Inscrip- tions are found in many other parts of the peninsula, but in no part which I have visited are they so nume- rous as on this mountain. Yet I am not aware that any description has been published, or fac- similes of its writings been transmitted to Europe. Whilst Niebuhr resided at Cairo, he made a separate journey to effect this purpose, but his guide mistook the object of his inquiries, and conducted him to the sepulchral monu- ments of Sarbout el Kadem ; so that he returned with- out being able to accompHsh it. As the cliffs in the vicinity rise abruptly from the sea, and the neighbouring valleys are wholly destitute of pasturage, it was not without some difficulty that I could obtain a person at Tor to conduct me thither. Quitting Tor, we con- tinued our route on foot along the face of the Jebal Heman chain, here about 250 feet in height. — Pursuing the chain of El Heman, which here retires about 200 yards from the beach, at the termination of an hour's brisk walking, we arrived at Jebel Mokatteb, situated at the extremity of another small bay, about a mile in depth. That portion looking toicards the sea is covered with inscriptions, differing in some respects from those found in other parts of the peninsula. They have, as is there common, neither the rude figures of animals, nor have they the prefatory sign attaclied to them. Intei*mixed with the more ancient inscriptions, there are many in Greek, Cufic, and more modern Arabic. These latter merely record the names and date of the several visitors ; and the figure of the cross is fre- SUPPLEMENTARY FINAL NOTES. 187 quently appended to the inscriptions in Greek. In some other respects, also, the inscriptions on the Jebel Mokatteb are dissimihir to those found in other parts. Instead of hehuj rudeJij scratched upon the face of the rock, many of tJiem cxldhit proofs of havinq been executed with tolerable care, and the lines along which they are drawn are all placed horizontally ; and several which appear to have been executed at the same period, had evidently much labour bestowed upon them." — f^f ells ted, Travels in Arabia, Vol. IL, pp. 16. 20, 21. The locality here described is situate on the sea coast, about 180 miles from Suez, and at least 50 miles from the Wady Mokatteb. It would appear to have esca])ed the researches even of the latest and most successful explorator, M. Lottin de Laval. This evidently is the vicinity of the Comte d'Antraigues' inscriptions. Note C, p. 74.] " 'JivdXvacs Inscriptlonis Chaldaicas Antiqua3. Primo quidcni tres illos apices, seu trcs lodim in modum corona; ^^CT,,,^ dlspositos mysticum Dei No- men nirr i'Tchovali) olim significasse, Galatlnus, paulo post citaiidus, tradit, ut Joannes Fortius Ilortcusius Neophytus, in Libcllo dc Mystica literarum slgnifi- catione, docet his verbis : " Veteres (inquit) alia ratione scribebant Dei Nomcn nin'j ^lia legebant. Quidaiu id tribus lod, quldam tribus apicibus, ad trium Divinariun proprietatum, scu mirj} Sacramcntum indicandum, scribel)ant. Certe Nomen Dei tribus lod circulo inclusis olini mystice scriptum fuisse, supra cap. 7. dcclaratum est, ct clare ex Ilcbraicis antiquis aufhoribus docet Llliiis Gyraldus, 188 SUri'LEMliNTAKV FINAL NOTES. Synt. 1. Hist. Deor. fol. 2. Alii (inquit) rectius Jehovah cnunciant; quod apud antiquos quosdam Hc- bra30s legimus hac significatione notatum, tribus vide- licet Tod Uteris, quai circulo concludebantur, supposito puncto chamez hoc modo. ^JA Confirmant banc scri- bcndi rationem antiquissimi, turn irnpressi, turn manu- scripti, Hebra3orum Codices Vaticani, in quibus passim hoc uonien Dei , ^TW tribus hinc apicibus scriptum re- perias. Qua quidem scribendi ratione nil aliud denota- bant, nisi Sacrosancta? Trinitatis mysterium." Kircher Frodrom. Copt. pp. 209, 210. Note D., p. 84.] The impossibility of these records being the workmanship of chance travellers, unprovided with ladders, platforms, and other needful appliances, has Ijeen amply shown. Were any thing, however, still wanting to set the question at rest, it will be found in a report published in the " Archives des Missions Scientifiques," for January, 1851, from the journal of M. Lottin-de-Laval : who describes the character of the country, the sites of numbers of the inscriptions, the appliances indispensable for the task of copying them, and the difficulties and dangers to be encountered in their application, in terms to which nothing can be added. " A I'ouest du brun Wan-dick, a I'orient de la terre d'ombre ; la je trouvai la trace d'un loup {dyp') : et certes, si ces carnassiers sont nombreux dans la peninsule de Sinai, ils ne dolvent diner que fort rarement ; car il n*y a rien, absolument rien, que de la pierre, du granit, et du sable. La contree devient de plus en plus sauvage a mesure qu'on s'eleve : c'est d'une tristesse navrante ! un silence de mort regne dans ces gorges effrayantes, si SUPPLEMENTARY FINAL NOTES. 189 rarcment visltees, ct elles aboutissent a iin col presqne infranchissable. Au sortir tie cemauvais pas, a (|iiel(£ue distance, le pic gigantesque de Djebel-Cedre se dressa tout-a-coup ail fond dc la route coniinc iin nnir de donjon ; je cms iin instant qu il nous faudrait rctourner en arriere pour chercher un passage ; mais, a ma grande joie, line etroitc ouadi s'ouvrit dans unc coupure, et je n'avais pas fait cent pas que j'aper^us, sur les parois des rochers, des inscriptions SinaUiqiws, dont les caracteres se detachaient en clai?' sur un fond vigoureux. " Tirant aussitot un coup de pistolet (de Ouadi- Magara), le cheick Saleh ni'apporta mes echelles (30 feet in length), mes marmites, et les substances necessaires au montage. L'operation etait d'une difficult e extreme au milieu dc ce calios inextricable, et je ne savais trop comment m'echafauder. J'avais lie deux dc mes pilles echelles, dont j'appuyai la base avec des qiiartiers dc gres, sur la dcclivite rapide de la montagnc ; inais le vent impetueux, qui soutflait depuis plusieurs jours a travers les gorges de la pcninsule, les faisait osciller comme une hranchc de smile, mena^ant a cliaque instant de ni'em- porter avec elles dans Vahime. " Laissant Ouadi-Faran, je remontais au sud par rOuadi-Zreitt, qui est le dernier gradin du groupe Sinaitiquc. II n'y a peut-etre pas sous le ciel un coin aussi dcsolc ! Le sol est couvert de pierrailles noires et etincelantes ; il faut s'engager dans des fondrieres ou le sable crulc a chaque instant sous les pieds des cha- meaux, et au bout de cela, pour couronner I'oeuvre, on descend un affreux defile aboutissant au desert dc Gah, qui va du nord-ouest au sud-est. " Cette plaine desolee est le celebre desert de Sin des Hebreux. La tempete, qui soufflait depuis quinze jours 190 SUrPLEMENTAUY FINAL NOTES. sur r Arable, ctait la d'une effroyable violence. Le vent du iiorJ me tlessccliait jusqu'a la moclle ; et, pour combler ma miscrc, il ctait impossible de dresser ma tente. J'arrivai aux palmiers de Tor le soir du deuxieme jour, il demi mort, ct crachant le sang a pleine bouche." — Archives dcs Missions ScientiJiqueSf I" Cahier, Janviei', 1851, pp. 10—14. In proof of the tendency of learned Europe, in the last and present century, to return to Israel in the Wilderness as the true origin of the Sinaitic monu- ments, it is very remarkable that, while Yon Miiller saw no bar of improbability against this assignment, Niebuhr himself was ready to ascribe to the Israelites the Egyptian cemetery of which he was the discoverer, and which he is disposed to identify with the Kibroth- hattaavah of the Book of Numbers: " Ne seroient-ce pas ici les sejmlcres de la convoitise, dont il est fait mention Nomb. xi. 34. ; ou la Montague de Hor, dont il est parle Nomb. xxxiii. 38. ? Mais que ce soit un cimetieres des Israelites, ou des anciens habitans de ce pays, il ne laisse pas de fournir une ample matiere de speculations aux savants. II n'etoit point defendu aux Israelites d'employer les figures hicroglyphiques, ni d'avoir des images d'hommes ct de betes; il ne leur etoit interdit que de les adoi'cr, et meme encore au- jourd'hui les Juifs gravent toute sorte de figures, et meme des portraits, sur des cachets." — Voyage en Arabic, tome i. p. 191. ^ # University of Caiifornia SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 405 Hllgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed. 000 040 117 m