^ DISSERTATION O N ^ifflss-: i THE JfEWlLY IDISCOITEREJD BY JOSEPH HAGER, D.D. Li/eras semper arhitror Assyrias fuisse.—^'PWn. Hist, Nat. lib. vii. cap; 57. LONDON: IRINTED FOR A. TILLOCH, AND SOLD BV MESSRS. niCHARDSONS, CORNHILL. WILKS AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS, CHANCERY-LANE. 1601, \ OH-O T O THE HONOURABLE THB COURT OF JDIRJECTORS OP THE EAST INDIA COMPANY. CHARLES MILLS, Esq. Chairman. JOHN ROBERTS, Esq. Deputy J Sir FRANCIS BARING, Bart. JACOB BOSANQUET, Esq. JOSEPH COTTON, Esq. The Hon. WM. ELPHINSTONE. JOHN HUNTER, Esq. P. LE MESURIER, Esq. and Aid. THO. THEO. METCALFE, Esq. EDWARD PARRY, Esq. DAVID SCOTT, Esq. GEO. W. THELLUSSON, Esq. JOHN TRAVERS, Esq. Sir WILLIAM BENSLEY, Bart. Sir JOHN SMITH BURGES, Bart. Sir LIONEL DARELL, Bart. SIMON FRASER, Esq. Sir HUGH INGLIS, Bart. JOHN MANSHIP, Esq. THOMAS PARRY, Esq. ABRAHAM ROBARTS, Esq. GEORGE TATEM, Esq. ROBERT THORNTON, Esq. STEPHEN WILLIAMS. E^q. 2t)149G4 \ HONOURABLE SIRS, Allow me the opportunity that your permission of dedicating this Dissertation affords, to mention a few of the obligations which literature owes you. It was reserved for you to make Europe ac- quainted with those antient inscriptions, which gave occasion to the present work, and which have been brought from a quarter of the globe hitherto but litde known; though it ought to have been an object of the first inquiry to every enlight- VUl DEDICATION. enlightened people, being the cradle of mankind, as is proved both by sacred and profane history, and the country whence astronomy, the most an- tient of all the sciences, was derived. These valuable antiquities, of which it is impossible yet to form a just estimate, are the first specimen of those literary treasures, which the learned of Eu- rope may promise themselves from the searches you have instituted in that country. In transporting these remains from Asia to Europe, you have, Honourable Sirs, given a fresh proof of that zeal for promoting useful knowledge, which you have hitherto so abundantly displayed, in the midst of those weighty and important con- cerns with which your Honourable Court is con- tinually occupied. It is to you the capital of British India is indebted for its extensive botanical garden, in which DEDICATION. IX which not only the various vegetable productions of India, but also of Europe, are to be found. — To you is England indebted for the establishment of a COLLEGE at Calcutta for facilitating to Euro- peans the acquisition of the Eastern languages, and particularly the Persian — a language which, by your care, will soon become as vernacular among Europeans, as it has hitherto been unknown and uncultivated. You have, in the stately edifice which your Honourable Company occupies in London, esta- blished a Museum for the reception of original manuscripts, Indian antiquities, natural produc- tions, and every thing curious which Asia can fur- nish. This institution, worthy of its projectors, cannot fail to enlarge our knowledge of the Ori- ental world, and to prove, at the same time, a source of the most rational amusement. Not X DEDICATION. Not contented with all this, you have taken upon yourselves the expense of publishing such works as to you appeared calculated to diffuse useful knowledge, respecting those distant terri- tories intrusted by Providence to your care and superintendance. — That splendid work, the de- scription of the Plants of Coromandeh still carry- ing on'; that, on the Fishes of the same coast, now in the press * ; and that on the Serpents of India, published some time ago, are proofs of what I advance^. ' Plants of the Coast of Coromandel, selected from Drawings and Descriptions presented to the Hon. Court of Directors of the East India Company by William Roxburgh, M. D. published by their Order, &c. vol. i. London, 1795. * By Dr. Russel. ^ An Account of Indian Serpents collected on the Coast of Coro- mandel, 8cc. by Patrick Russel, M. D. F. R.S. presented to the Hon. Court of Directors of the East India Company, and published by their Order. London, 1796. Your DEDICATION. XI Your liberality towards men of letters, is also proved by your generous subscriptions to such undertakings, as may have a tendency to advance our knowledge of Asia, and to illustrate its arts, sciences, and languages. This fostering care, I myself, scarcely arrived in this country, and a stranger, have experienced. While you give so many proofs, Honourable Sirs, of that refined taste and greatness of mind by which you are animated, in regard to the lite- rary world, it would be impossible for me to de- scribe how much the English nation in general is indebted to you in regard to Commercial enter- prise, the main spring of that industry, to which it owes its riches, power, and national prosperity, and how mightily you have contributed, and still contribute, to insure to Great-Britain that prepon- derance, which is the astonishment and envy of the world. Continue, Xll DEDICATION. Continue, then, Honourable Sirs, to give to your country, as well as to foreign nations, the same display of wisdom, zeal, liberality, fine taste, and every other virtue you have hitherto exhi- bited, and permit me in particular, revering the eminent qualities you possess, to subscribe myself, with the greatest respect. Honourable Sirs, Your much obliged, And very humble servant. London^ October 19, 1801. JOSEPH HAGER. PREFACE. all the travellers who, in modern times, have visited the ruins of Babylon, situated, according to the most accurate accounts, at about two hours' journey to the north of Helle^ ( aL*. ) a small town on the Euphrates, near Bagdad, no one seems to have taken notice of any inscriptions of a particular kind, found among these remains of antiquity. For neither Tavernier, and the other antient travellers, as Cartv^^right, La Boullaye, Balbi, Rauwolf, quoted in the first volume of the Universal History, where the remains of the tower of Babel are described ', nor the more recent ones, as IvES, Irw^in, Otter, Olivier, mention any inscriptions still visible among the ruins which they visited \ While they de- fcribe either the size of the bricks, of which these ruins are composed, or the bituminous cement, with which they are con- nected, or the height and circumference of the tower, called by ' Tavernier six Voyages, torn. i. liv. 2. chap 7. Univ. Hist. Lond. 1747. vol. 1. p. 332. * Ives's Voyage from England to India, Lond. 1773, p. 298. Irwin's Voyage up the Red Sea, vol. a. letter 4. &;c. a the XIV PREFACE. the Arabs the tower of Nimrod, they seem either to have neg- lected, or never to have discovered, any inscriptions, or im- pressed characters on the bricks. Pietro della Valle, the most circumstantial, and the most accurate among them, even carried some Babylonian bricks along with him to Italy j one of which he presented to Athanasius Kircher, then residing at Rome, to be preserved in his Musceuntj which is still extant in that city ' ; but neither he himself, nor that learned Jesuit, who was so much engaged in researches respecting Egyptian^ Chi- nese, and other kinds of Oriental literature, ever made mention of Babylonian inscriptions \ The first, then, by whom they were noticed, seems to have been Father Emanuel, a Carmelite friar, who, having resided some time at Bagdad, in his manuscript account, speaks of characters impressed on the antient bricks ftill re- maining among the ruins of Babylon, which, D'Anville says, would supply the literati, who are desirous of penetrating into the remotest antiquity, with entirely new matter for medita*- tion and study ^ After ' Al Gesii. " PiETKO DELLA Valle Voyages, trad. Franq. torn. 2. Kircher Turris Babel, p. 95. * Les characteres, que le P. Emanuel dit dans sa relation etre imprimes sur les briques, qui resteni des batisses aussi anciennes, que peuvent etre celles de Babylone, seroient pour les savans, qui veulent penetrer dans I'antiquite la plus recuiee, une matiere PREFACE. XV. After him Niebuhr, in his Travels to Arabia, mentions in- scriptions on the Babylonian bricks still extant, but without telling whether they contained characters unknown, or similar to any already discovered; only when speaking of the bricks on which they are inscribed, he says, that he saw inscriptions of the same kind on other bricks at Bagdad and in Persia '. The most circumstantial, and the most recent notice, therefore, respecting them, is that of M. Beauchamp, corre- spondent of the Royal Academy of Sciences, at Paris, who, by residing several years at Bagdad, had more leisure to ex- amine and describe the ruins of Babylon ; which he did, in his account inserted in the Journal des Savans, for 1790% and of which a translation appeared afterwards in the European Magazine for May 1792. In this account, the author, speaking of the remains of Babylon, says, " On the side of the river are those immense ruins which have served, and still serve, for the building of Helle, an Arabian city, containing ten or twelve thousand in- habitants. Here are found those large and thick bricks, im- printed with unknown characters, specimens of which I have prefented to the Abbe Barthelemy ". What kind of cha- racters, matiSre toute nouvelle de meditation et d'etude. D'Anville Mem. sur la position de Babylone, torn. 28. des Mem. de TAcad. des Inscript. ' Niebuhr's Reisebeschreib. vol. 2. p. 290. * Dccembre. ' BfiAUCHAMp's Account of some Antiquities of Babylon : Europ. Magaz, cit. a 2 A trans- XVI PREFACE. racters, however, these were, neither Beauchamp, nor that celebrated antiquary, who wrote with so much ability on the Phcejiician, Palmyrenian, and other inscriptions, thought pro- per to determine ; and it is only by his successor, M. Millin, that we have lately been made acquainted with the existence of some Babylonian bricks at Paris^ containing inscriptions which were sent by Beauchamp from Babylon^ and of which drawings or copies were transmitted to M. Herder, at Weimar, and to Professor Munter, at Copenhagen'. In the mean time, the Honourable East India Company, being always desirous to lend their assistance to those who may be employed jn the elucidation of Oriental Antiquities, and being in- formed that, near the town of Hidah, on the river Euphrates, there exists the remains of a very large and magnifcent city, sup- posed to be Babylon ; and that the bricks of which those ruins are composed, are remarkable for containing, on an indented scroll, or label, apparently a distich, in characters totally different from any now made use of in the East, directed the Governor of Bombay to give orders to their Resident at Bassorah, to procure from thence A translation into German of this account has been given byMr. Witte, Professor at Rostock, in hi.s Vertheid'igimg des Versuchs iiber den Ur sprung der Pjramiden in Aigypten, &c. Leipzig, 1792, La Bibliotheque Nationale de France possede plusieurs briques semblables, envoyees de Babylonc par le C. Beauchamp ; j'en ai fait parvenir des platres a M. Herder, a Weimar, et elles ont etc calquees pour Mr. Munter a Coppenhagiie Magas. Encyclop. an. 9. No, 3. ten PREFACE. xvii ten or a dozen oj the bricks, and to transmit them, carefidly packed upy as early as possible, to Bombay, that they might be thence for- warded to them in one of their ships sailing for England '. Thus we were gratified at the commencement of the pre- sent year and century, at London, with the first view of in- scriptions, which, on comparing them with the Persepolitan characters, as given by Le Bruyn, Chardin, Niebuhr, and other travellers, appeared to be of the same origin, bcino- only more complex, and connected by long lines, forming whole and half squares, stars, triangles, &c. so that they prove to be a different combination, though formed of nearly the same elements and nail-headed strokes. It is well known that for more than a century past, about which time the Persepolitan inscriptions were first discovered by European travellers, the opinions have been much divided re- specting these characters. Some have believed them to be talismans ', and others the characters of the Guebres, or antient inhabitants of Persia ^ ; others held them for mere hieroglyphics, and others for alphabetic characters, like ours ^ K^mpfer ' Extract of Public letter to Bombay, dated October i8, 1797. * Mandelslo Voyage; Amsterdam, 1727, torn. i. p, i. Philosoph. Trans.' vol. 17. p. 775. ' Gemelli Careri's Voyage Round the World, book 2. chap. 9. in the 4th vol. of the Colledion of Voyages, Lond. 1745. * Charu IN Voyages en Perse, torn. 9. Rouen, 1723, p. 108. supposed XViil PREFACE. supposed them to express whole ideas, like the Chinese cha- racters, but that they had been appropriated solely for the palace of Istakhar\ After that period, however, some of a similar kind were found also in Egypt; but as neither the Egyptian hieroglyphics y nor the characters observed on the mummies, had the least re- semblance to them, they served only to prove the connexion, which we know from history, that Pcrsepolis once had with Egypt \ — Raspe, on finding some others on a cylinder of load- stone, persuaded himself, that they were the same with the Chinese characters; and, consequently, that the Chinese writing had been formerly known and cultivated on this side of the Ganges K By the Babylonian bricks here exhibited, the whole diffi- culty in regard to their origin is removed ; as it is evident that Babylon, in point of cultivation, was much earlier than Perse- polis^ ^ndth^t the Chaldeans were a celebrated people, when the name of the Persians was scarcely known. To confirm this opinion, and hy it to prove that the Per- sepolitan characters were derived from the Babylonian, I have thought it necessary to begin this work by a brief examination KiEMPFER Amaenit. exotic. Fascic. 2. relat. 5. * Caylus Recueil d'Antiquites, torn. 5. pi. 30. ' Raspe Descript. Catal. of Tassie's Collect, torn. i. p. 63. of PREFACE. XIX of the antiquity, extent, and sciences of the Babylonians; and through scantiness of original monuments, to prove by astro- nomy, architecture, and languages, their well founded claim to antiquity. At the same time I have endeavoured to show that not only the Persians, but also the Indians, were disciples of the Chaldeans ; and that the Egyptians themselves, who pre- tend to be the instructors of all nations, probably derived their pyramids and obelisks from Babylon. Proceeding then to the Babylonian inscriptions, I have shown their similarity to that celebrated alphabet which the Indians call divine or ce- lestial, fdeva-nagarij because they believe that it was com- municated by the Deity himself in a voice from heaven ' ; and I have tried to prove that they were not derived from heaven, but from our earth, and from the borders of the Euphrates. I have confirmed my assertion by means of the Tibetan cha- racters, those acknowledged descendants of the Indian ones, and thus endeavoured to invalidate the opinion of that great antiquity and boasted originality of the Bramins. The whole subjed: might have been proved much better, and with more copious arguments, had I not been confined by the narrow limits of a dissertation, and, what is more, by the want of time necessary for describing matters of this nature. Thus, in treating of the Antiquity of the Babylonians^ al- ' Jones's Dissertat. Asiat. Research, vol. i. though XX PREFACE. though the original records of that country, with the cities of Babylon, Persepolis, Alexandria, and other towns, have perished, I might nevertheless have produced the testimony of authors who lived in a time when those records still could be con- sulted ; and thus I might have confirmed, by the testimonies of Manethon, Josephus, Diodorus, Castor, Vopiscus, vEmilius Sura, and many other Greek and Roman authors, the veracity of Ctesias, in so far as he ascribes a high an- tiquity to the Assyrian empire ; but of these I shall only quote Plato, who, in his book Upo7i Laws, asserts that the Assyrian empire was several centuries older than the war of Troy '. By the same authors, the great extent of Assyria might have been proved ; and the vast dominions of Semiramis, if the inscription of Polyce?ius * even should be rejected, might have been attested by several towns and monuments, which acknowledge her as their founder, or even bore her name ; and thus in fpeaking of Aram, I might have adduced the authority of Moses Chorenensis, that the Armenians also pretended to defcend from the Aramceans^ or that of ' See the Abbe Sevin Recherches sur I'Hist. de I'Assyrie, in the 3d vol. of the Mem. de I'Acad. des Inscript. and Freret Essai sur I'Hist. et la Chronol. des Assyr. in the 5th vol. of the said Mem. * Polyasn. Stratagem. Semiramis. ' Moses Choren. Hist. Armen. lib. i. cap. u. Strabo PREFACE. XXI Strabo, that their antient language was nearly the fame with the Syriac, I muft here obferve, that in treating of the origin, great- nefs, and power of the Babylonian empire, it became neceffary, among other things, to inquire into the origin of the name of Babelj and having found that this word, neither in the Hebrew nor in the Chaldaic idiom, signifies confusioUy I made no diffi- culty of declaring the truth. It certainly was never my intention to rejed: the authority of Moses, whose religious books I respect, and whose moral doctrines I revere. But having remarked, that Bel was ac- knowledged by sacred as well as profane authors, to have been either the first god, or the first sovereign, and founder of Babel^ or (according to the Greek termination) Babylon, and that NiNUS, his son, built a city about the same time, which he ordered to be called after his own name ; I was led to sus- pect, that as Nineveh signified in Hebrew the habitation of NiN ', Babel, for a similar reason, might be called the court, or the castle of Bel\ This opinion was corroborated by historical authorities. Thus CuRTius, speaking of Babylon, says, it was built by Semiramis, or, as it is the common opinion, by Bel, whose court is still shown ^ ; and Ammianus Marcellinus, recon- ' Seepage 26. " See page 3. ' Semiramis cam condidit; vel, ut pleriquc credidcre, Belus, ciijus rcgia ostcn- ditur. Curtius de reb. gcstis Alex. M. Jib 5. b ciling XXil PREFACE. ciling both opinions, relates, that Semiramis built the walls of the city, and that the castle had been built long before by Bel '. Nor am I the first who gave a different derivation to the word Babel. For I find that Professor Eichhorn, of Gottingen, in his enlarged edition of Simon is Hebrew Lexicon, has antici- pated me, who supposes that Babel may have been contracted from Bab bel, the court of Bel '; and M. Beauchamp, who, during his residence at Bagdad, seems to have diligently ap- plied to the Arabic, speaking of Babel, says, " a person fkilled in Arabic will not easily believe, that the word Babel is de- rived, as commentators pretend, from the root belbel, which in Arabic as well as Hebrew, signifies to corifoundK''' To these difficulties, a learned friend of mine, who has undertaken to defend the authenticity of the Pentateuch against the attacks of the German Professor Rosenmuller, and to whom I proposed them for an elucidation, replied, that the whole passage respecting the confusion of languages was inserted by some later hand; for he observes, *' if an ' Babylon^ cujiis masnia bitumine Semiramis struxit ; arcem enim antiquls- simus rex condirlit Belus. Ammian. Marcellin. lib. 23. * Sed fortassis contractum est ex Aj v_»lj porta, ecu aula Beli. Io. Simonis Lexic. Haeb. Chald. Halas. 1793, voce '723. ' Ibid. I must here mention an error which is in the text, page 2, lin. 6, where instead of hut haJal, it ought to be or balal; and the sense is, that con- fusion ought to be called either Belilah, or B'llbul, after the Rabbinic dialect, or, after the dialect of the ,5'fr,/)///r^, Mebilah, or Tebil ah, {\We tuegilah, (vom gaJal ; or iepbilah, (row j)alal) ; see David Kimchi's '71'7DD. attentive PREFACE. xxm attentive reader, in perusing the Pentateuch^ was carefully to include within parentheses, whatever is evidently posterior to the time of Moses, or occurs in the form of explanatory remark, it would be found, that the several interruptions of the original narrative would be removed, and its natural order restored." To this declaration, however, others would hardly subscribe, as they would believe that a door would thus be opened for declaring any passage in the Pentateuch to be an interpolation. — I would, therefore, in the mean time, prefer the answer given by Bochart, Phaleg lib. i. cap. 15. although not altogether satisfactory, that the / has been dropped also in other words, where it occurred twice, as in the word Golgotha^ for Golgoltha-, or in Kikaltha and Sosilthdy instead of Solsiltha and Kilkaltha. Before I conclude, I must again solicit indulgence, as I did in a former work, for the inaccuracies of style in a language, acquired at too late a period to make a due progress in it, and at the same time, for the imperfections in the execution of the work itself But as several months elapsed, after the arrival of these bricks in London, without any elucidation of them being undertaken, I resolved to say something, (however im- perfect) according to Horace : EST QUODAM PRODIRE TENUS, SI NON DATUR ULTRA. THE PLATES. PLATE I. — Copy of an Inscription from an unburnt Brick 13 inches square and about 3 inches in thickness. PLATE n. ^No. I and 2, Inscriptions from two cylindrical Stones in Tassie's collection. No. 3, from a similar Stone in the possession of Cardinal Borgia. PLATE III. — A Babylonian Inscription from another Brick — a cameo in Tassik's collection — specimen of an Inscription at Buddal — a Quadruped and Inscription on a Babylonian Brick in the possession of Dr. Hulme, F. R.S. PLATE IV. — Another Babylonian Inscription from a Brick. At the end of the Work is inserted an Inscription on a fragment of Jasper from Bahylon, and taken from the stone itself. ON THE JVEFFJLY BISCOITERED BABYLONIAN INSCRIPTIONS. CHAP. I. ANTIQUITY OF THE BABYLONIANS. 1 HE Antiquity of the Babylonians, says Freret, is one of those points of history respeiting which both the Greek and the Roman authors have been the leaft divided ' . Moses, speaking of the pos- terity of Noah after the dehige, tells us that " they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and dwelt there, and said one to another, Let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for ftone, and shme for mortar. And they said, Let us build a city and tower whose top may reach unto heaven '." This was Babel^ the capital of Chaldea, thus called " because the Lord did con- found balal, "^Sn, their language ^" The antient writers quoted by BocHART in his Sacred Geography, all agree with this account, as they attest that Babel, or, according to the Greek pronunciation, Babylon ^ was built of bricks and bitumen, of which there were ' Essai sur I'Hist. de laChronol. dcs Assynens, torn. 5. des Mem. dc I'Acad. dcs Inscript. ' Gen. chap. 11. ' Ibid. 4 Like Colophon, Ctesiphon, and other names. I cannot agree with Mr. Bryant, who derives it from Bel-on, the god of the sun. Analys. of Ant. Mylhol. vol.3, p.45. 3 such 2 ANTIQUITY OF THE BABYLONIANS. such abundant fountains in the neighbourhood, that it afforded excellent cement for buildings ' . They, however, will not allow that Babel was thus called from the confusion of languages. If Babel^ say they, was to signify confusion^ it ought to be called either Beli/ah, nSi^D, or Bilbul, S"i3^2, which is the name still given to confusion by the Rabbins "" ; but balal, SSi, to co?2fou?id^ being one of those verbs which double the second radical, confusion ought lite- rally to be called Mebilab, nSot:, or 'Tebilab, nS-fDn, and not Babel^ which word, according to grammatical principles cannot be de- rived from Balal^ S^3, or Balbal, Sa'?::, to confound. Of this difficulty Aben Ezra, one of the most learned of the Rabbins, seems to have been aware ^ He therefore endeavours to derive the word Babel from ba, Ni, to come; and bel^ 73, which he translates confusion. But and 1V^3 ps' to which they give a con- temptible turn. ^ same -A ANTIQUITY OF THE BABYLONIANS. same in size as the famous Pyramids of Egypt ' . It consisted of seven stories, according to the testimony of Herodotus, and in the eighth was the temple or chapel of Bel, which in Chaldaic, as well as in other dialedls, signifies Lord, Master, or God, and of which word AsDRUBAL, Hannibal, Abibal, Balthasar, Balsamon, Belphegor, and many other names were compounded*. This temple had a striking likeness to the celebrated pagodas of the Indians % which contain precisely the same number of stories. The great pagoda in Tanjore has even more stories, says Major Rennel, than the tower of Bel. They are all square, and look to the four cardinal points '^. In this Babylonian tower the Chaldeans, the philosophers of Assyria, made their astronomical observations, which were the earliest ever made ^ ; for though the Egyptians, their rivals, pretend that the Chaldeans were a colony from their country, and had all their learning from them, they must be considered, says Lalande, as the most antient astronomers, since Ptolomy and Hipparchus, who lived in Egypt, found no ' Herodot. lib. i. Bailly Hist, de I'Astr. Anc. p. 143 et 304. * See Selden Syntagma de Diis Syris. ' The Pagoda of VUnoiir has seven stories ; il y a un huitleme etage, says Gen- til, qui soutient le faite de la pyramide, mais I'escalier ne mene qu'au septi^me etage. ■* Le Gentil Voyage dans les Mers des Indes, vol. i. p- 577. Rennel Geogr. of Herod, p. 368. ' Principio Assyru, says Cicero, ut ab ultimis auctoritatem repetam, propter planitiem magnitudincmque regionum quas incolebant....trajectiones motusque stel- larum observaverunt, quibus notatis, quid cuique significaretur, memoria; prodide- runt. Qua in natione ChaJdai, non ex artis sed ex gentis vocabulo nominati, diu- turna observatione siderum, scientiam putantur efFecisse, ut pragdici posset quid cuique cvcnturum, et quo quisque fato natus esset. De Divinat. lib. i, ad init. where V- ANTIQUITY OF THE BABYLONIANS. ^vhere else observations of greater antiquity '. Or, if a system of stronomy, says B.,..v, was reai.y invented by the ESYPt-s, ^h/ did Pxo.EMv, Who resided in Egypt, malce no menuon of t^ Why did he qnote only the Chaldeans.' Why does he employ only the Chaldaic epoch of Nabonassak, an,l not a Greek or Egyptian one ? And why does he use only Chaldaic penods , Chal- daic elements, and Chaldaic observations '> , „ . tL same thing may be said of the Mians, -hofe ~^ equally boast of the antiquity of their astronomy, and who look Tpon other nations with the utmost contempt. For 'hough Bl.v hLself in his Treatise on the Indian Astronomy, assert that it r morettient than the Chaldaic, a learned -ronomer o h o country, who lately visited India for the purpose of acquumg a knowledge of the Indian astronomy from the Bramms themseU e , ma ntain? an opinion totally different.. After my return from h«Ua says he, I read for the second time, with the utmost attemion, Ae wok ofSvNc;LLt,s, who treats of the Indian astronomy, winch had read twenty years before, and it appeared to me to contam the wLle astronomy and all the methods of .he present Bramms ' And indeed, if the Indians did not receive all the.r astronomical knowledge from the Chaldeans, why, during the course of two rt"o"nd years and more, have they not advanced one step further anley were in the time of the Chaldeans? Why have they stdl . the same division of the ecliptic, and the same figures of the ' Astron. torn. i. p. i77- « Baixlv Traitc dc 1' Astron. IncL Disconrs prelim, p. Isxii. et p. 277. H-t. del' Astron. Anc. p. 182. ^ ' Le Gentil, torn. i. cit. p. 213- ' ^^^' zodiac ; -y 6 ANTIQUITY OF THE BABYLONIANS. zodiac ' ; the same number and order of the planets ; and the same instrument for measuring time as the Chaldeans ^ ? — And why do these pretended masters of the Chaldeans still believe the moon at a greater distance than the sun, while their supposed pupils enter- tained a contrary opinion two thousand years ago ^ ? These observations are applicable also to the Chinese^ who, in astronomical knowledge, were even inferior to the Indians when the European Missionaries first were admitted into China ; who be- lieved our globe to be square, and who, like the Indians, had not even a sun dial, with which the Chaldeans were acquainted since the time of Hezekiah +. For though the eclipse of Chong-Kang mentioned by Father Mailla, which they observed 2159 years before our 3era, may prove the antiquity of that nation ^, it does not thence follow, that they were of greater antiquity than the Chaldeans y who had astronomical observations made 1903 years before Babylon was taken by Alexander ^. ' The figures of the twelve signs of the (Indian) zodiac, says Sir Willi am Jones, bear a wonderful resemblance to those of the Grecian. The days of the week, of the Hindus are dedicated to the same luminaries as ours, and, what is more singular, revolve in the same order : Dissertat. on the Ant'iq. of tie Indian Zodiac. Asiat. Refearch. vol. 2. Dr. Buchanan attests the same of the Birmans: See Asiat. Research, vol. 6. On the Relig. and Liter, of the Burmas. * The clepsydra, ' Les Indiens placent la lunc plus loin que Ic soleil. Cette inconsequence est extraordinaire et unique dans I'Histoire de I'Astronomie. Ce n'est pas seulement le peuple, qui est dans cette crreur, ce sont les Brames memes. Bailly Hift. de I'Astr. Anc. p. 116. * II. Kings ao. Is. 38. Chron. 2. 32. Bailly, cit. p. 386. ' Hist. Gen. de la Chine, tom. i. lett. 6. ' Simplic. de Coelo, Comment. 46. As ANTIQUITY OF THE BABYLONIANS. 7 As to the Persians, whom Bailly reckons among the oldest civiUzed nations, and even older in regard to astronomical know- ledge than the Chaldeans, because their country was situated between India and Assyria, it will be sufficient to observe that, till the time of Cyrus and the conquest of Babylon, they were barba- rians ' ; that their first letters were Assyriac ' ; and that, besides the many Chaldaic words which their language contains, the very word " knowledge," or " science," danus/j, ^)j, is Chaldaic K It may be further observed, that Zoroaster, Butta, Brama, SiiAKA, Samanakodom, Godama, and other names of those ce- lebrated persons who diffused their knowledge through Egypt, Persia, India, Thibet, China, and Japan, are all originally Chal- daic. I shall not indulge in those etymological dreams by which, in our times, Vargas endeavoured to explain the whole geography of Naples from the Phenician language, and by which Court de Gebelin thought he could discover the primitive language of mankind. I shall only ask. Why is that celebrated prophet, whose rehgion is at present known to be the most extended in the world, called in Ceylon But, or Butta, in Ava Godama and in Pegu and Siam, Samanakodom ? Why is he called Samanakodom, and his disciples only Samaneansf And why Shaka in Thibet, and the great Bali on the coast of Malabar ? Father Paolino endeavours to explain the name of the Samaneans by the Sanscrit language, in which Samatta signifies " meek," because these people, he says, kill no animal. But this is the case with all the , ggg Herodot. * Tbemistocl. lett. ai. to Temenidcs. ' Thence, the celebrated Persian work Behar-danush, or The Garden of Knozv ledge, a book lately translated from the Persian into Englisli by Mr. Scott, London, 1799. GentooSf e ANTIQUITY OF THE BABYLONIANS. Gentoos, and for that reason alone the Samaneans are not exclusively intitled to the appellation of " meek." As to Go-dama, it signifies, he says, a leader of cows, which is an attribute of that deit}^ But this epithet, which might be tolerated when alone, is ridiculous and absurd when united with Samana^ or the Samaneans, who are con- templative philosophers, who observe celibacy, and lead a holy manner of life ' . Besides, he can assign no good reason why he is called Shaka, or Schekia, in Tangut, China, and Japan; or why he is styled the Great Bali in Hindustan. All this, however, is rendered clear by the Chaldaic language. Samana Nroti', in Chaldaic signifies heavenly ; just as azpli; in Greek signifies holy^ venerable^ worthy of reverence ^ ; and thence, not only the Sainaneans, on account of their holy manner of life, but also the philosophers in Galatia, were called crspohoi^ who, as Diogenes Laertius attests, led the same manner of life as the Gyjnnosophists or Samaneans in India ^. Their chief is called Sama- NAKODOM, or Godama, which in Chaldaic signifies theyfri/, or the most antient of the Samanea?ts, NOIp. He is likewise called Shekia which in Chaldaic signifies a prophet, ^''DD. We are told by Hesy- CHius, that Seches, according to the Greek pronunciation, was among the Babylonians the same as Mercury '^. Butta is the name of Mercury in all the languages of India. He is the planet of Wednesday, for the Indians assign to the days of the week the same planets as we do ^, and the same as Samanakodom ; for, ac- ' Viaggio alle Ind. Orient, p. 73. ^ Steph. Thence a-cuy;7ov signifies a sacred place, a sanduary. ' In proemio. * ^^X^Si t^^ 'EpjuS aV'^^p. BenSuAw'y/c/. ' See, besides others, Chambers's Account of the Ruins of Mavallpuram. Asiat. Research, vol. 1. Also, in Symes's Embassy to Ava, the days of the Birman week. cording ANTIQUITY OF THE BABYLONIANS. 9 cording to the testimony of Clemens Alexandrinus and Jerome, BuTTA was the institutor of the Gymnosophists. He is called Bal, or Bali, which is the same as Bel, and signifies Lord, Master, or my Lord, my Master ; as Jdom in Hebrew and Phcenician, from which the Greek word Jdofjis is derived. But, or Put, is a Chaldaic name, for one of the sons of Cham was Put, 013, the bro- ther of MisRAiM. These observations might be carried still further, were I not afraid of being thought tedious by enlarging on so dry a s\ibje6t. In regard to Brama, I shall only observe, that accordmg to the researches of the learned Dr. Hvde, the Persians, those neighbours of the hidians, called their most antient religion the religion of ABRAHAM, and that Zoroaster, their legislator, himself is never called otherwise but Ibrahim, or Abraham Zerdusht '. The same may be said of the Jral^ians, the neighbours of the more southern hidia, amongst whom Abraham was believed to have founded the famous temple of Mecca, to say nothing of the Egyptians, whom he instructed, as Josephus attests, in the Chaldaic astronomy \ Whilft we find then such a number of Persian words in the antient language of India, which prove the great communication which must have existed between both countries, there is no wonder if the name of Abraham, the prophet of Persia, had been likewise adopted in hidia, and the testimony of those authors confirmed who pretend the Bramms to have been disciples of the Persians ' ; and the Chaldaic name of the sacred fire, the worship of which is one of the principal ' Hyde de Relig. vet. Pcrsar. cap. 2.ct 3. » Antiquit. lib. i. cap. 9. apud Hvde cit. ' As the Indian alphabets are all syllabic, and every consonant without a vowel annexed, is understood to have an a joined to it, there is no wonder if from ^l^rabam was 10 ANTIQUITY OF THE BABYLONIANS. principal points of the religion of Zoroaster, shows the primxval origin of the antient religion of Persia. Atesh, ^'l, fire, from which the Parsees are to this day called Atesh-perest^ O^-^yr. /^'' °^ ^'^°^" shippers of fire, is clearly Assyriac. Esh, irK, which in Hebrew signi- fies>>-^, is in Chaldaic Esh-ta, Nnir'X, and by a transposition, which continually occurs in other languages, in Persian At-esb. It is from the same Chaldaic word Eshta, as Bochart and Hyde observe, that the 'Erta also of the Greeks, and the Vesta of the Romans, are na- turally deduced ' . The Cohans, from whom the Latin language was chiefly derived, frequently added the digamma to Greek words, and used to say wFjv, in Latin ovum, instead of wov, or oFig, in Latin ovis, instead of o^c, and Fi^TTCz^a., in Latin vespera, for 'zazz^oi. ; so that Vesta in the same manner was formed from 'Er/a. Both signify a fire place, and the sacred fire ; and this agrees with what is said by Ovid, who tells us that Vesta had no statue by which she was represented, and that she was merelyyfr^ * . He therefore says, that under the name of Vesta we ought to understand nothing but burning fire : Nee til aliud Vestam quam vivam intellige flammam. Had the case been different, Numa would not have eredled a was made Brahma ; and thus we see other Persian words in'the Sanscrit having an a annexed, as deva from 3iv^ appa from ah, denda from dend, &c. See Father Paolino's Amarasinha, p. 12. Symes's Embassy to Ava, chap. 14, ' Vesta «Vo Trig hixg, id est a foco in quo ignis colitur didta est, says Gesner, est enim Vesta quasi focus urbis appellata, ait Cicero De legib. Thesaur. Ling. Latin. * Esse diu stultus Vcstse simulacra putavi, Mox didici curvo nulla subesse tholo. Ignis inextinctus templo celatur in illo, Effigiem nullam Vesta, nee ignis habet- Fastor. 6. v. 295. seq. temple ANTIQUITY OF THE BABYLONIANS. 11 temple to Festa. For Plutarch, in his life of this legislator, relates that, in conformity to the dodlrine of Pythagoras, he would not suffer the Romans to have any statues or idols ; and, therefore, that during the first hundred and sixty years their temples were without images '. All this shows the antiquity of the Babylonians; for this sacred fire was carried by ^neas from Troy * ; it w^as worshipped at Athens in the Prytaneum, where the laws of Solon in boustro- phedonic writing were kept ^ ; it was also maintained at Delpbos, the most celebrated oracle of all Greece, and in many other places *. Moses himself adopted it in his religion ^ ; and though Diodorus SicuLus asserts that this custom was communicated to other nations by the Egyptians, its origin is to be referred to the CbaldeanSy as is proved not only by the etymology already adduced, but also by Zoroaster himself, who is said to liave been a Chaldean *, and whose very name is Chaldaic '^ . * In NuMA. * Sic ait, ct manibus vittas, Vestamque potentem, iEternumque adytis efFert penetralibus ignem. ^neid. 2. v. 296. ' Meursius de Alhcnis Atticis, lib. i. * See Histoiredes Vestales, par 1' Abbe Nad A l, in the Mem. de I'Acad. des Insc. lom. 4. ' Levit. 6. ' Stanley's Hist, of the Chaldaic Philofophy, chap. 2. at least the first and the most antient, and even the Persian Zoroaster Introduced Chaldaic sciences amongst the Persians. ' From y-iT, seed, family, posterity \ and ntor, a ruler, or governor (sec the book of Job) ; the Chaldeans believing that all men were under the dominion of stars ; and thence, probably, the Persian sitare, the German stern, the English star, and the Greek aV)j/3. CHAP. ( 12 ) CHAP. II. EXTENT OF ASSYRIA. As the Babylonians were of high antiquity, their empire also gra- dually acquired great extent. It is well known that Syria and Assyria are originally the same name ; the first without the article, and the second with the Hebrew or Chaldaic article n ; and, there- fore, these two names were antiently confounded. Thus Cicero, for instance, calls the country where the Chaldeans lived Syria ' ; and LuciAN, who was born in Syria, calls himself sometimes a Syrian, and sometimes an Assyrian ^ . Aram, anN, was the common name for Syria of Damascus, and Syria beyond the Euphrates. The Scripture also, speaking of the Chaldaic language, never gives it any other appellation than that of the Syriac, ^^2"lK ^ • The Syriac in- deed is so nearly conne6ted with the Chaldaic, that, as Georgius Amira, a learned Maronite, observes, those who understand the one, a few slight differences excepted, can understand the other '^. ' In Syria Chaldaci cognitione siderum, solertiaque ingeniorutn antecellunt. De DIvin. lib. i. * See his Life at the beginning of his Works, edit, of Reitziu?, Amsterd. 1743. ^ BocHART. Phaleg. Hb, i. cap. 15. Daniel, however, calls the Chaldaic □n^D p©'?, the language of the Chaldeans. But perhaps the priests of Babylon had their sacred language, like those of many other nations. * Grarnraat. Syriaca, Romse, 1596. 4to. name EXTENT OF ASSYRIA. ^^ But ArajH seems in the most antient times to have extended much further. Persia by its antient historiographers and poets was ^ways called /r^«, ^I^J and is said to have comprehended under that name also Assyria \ Besides, Persia precisely began where Cba/dea finished, and consequently could be considered as a continuation of that country. It may therefore be fairly concluded, that its name Iran was the same as the Chaldaic and Syriac name Aram, For we find the letter m, on account of its affinity, very often changed into an n. Thus, for instance, from basbamajim, ro'^'^n, the Persians seem to have made assuman, heaven ; and where the Hebrezv in the plural, or dual, has an m, the Chaldaic language itself uses an n. The Persians also can assign no plausible reason, why their country was called Iran, nor can they tell, why in modern times they have been called Parsi\ But both these difficulties may be easily ex- plained by the Chaldaic language. Pars, u^nD, which signifies ahorse, as well as horseman, proves that the Persians and Parthians, the latter of which is derived from the same root, were excellent horsemen; and this fact is sufficiently confirmed by the Greek as well as the Roman historians \ Besides, we know that the dominions of Semi- RAMis, the queen of Babylon, whose reign Freret, that severe critic, ' De Fatis Linguar. Orient.— Ling. Persic, in Menin sky's new edit. vol. i. * Eine Hauptbenennung dcsalten Persians, says Wahl, ist Iran, ihr Urspriing ist aber ungewis. Eben so ungewis bleibt der vvahrc Ursprung des Namens Perser. Allgem. Gesch. der Morgenl. Spr. drit. kap. 'Mr. Wahl is not satisfied with that derivation, because in the Persian Ian- guage, he says, neither /«r., nor fars, signifies a horse. To this I answer-First, that this is no matter ; for neither the Laplanders, nor the SamokiJes, nor the Scy- thians, and twenty other nations, called themselves originally so, but were first thus called by their neighbours, and then by all other nations. Second, we find the Per- sians thus called, not only by the CbalJeaus and Jrahiam on the west of Persia, but J4 EXTENT OF ASSYRIA. critic, has proved not to have been fictitious, extended over all Persia, and to the borders of India ' . The antient language of Persia called Pehlevi, has been found to be a dialect of the Chal- daw\ Sir William Jones maintains, that the oldest languages of Persia, as far as can be traced, were the Cbaldak and Sanscrit, and he even asserts, that the two antient alphabets of Persia were both manifestly of Chaldean origin ^ But we have the strongest proof of the influence of the Chaldaic literature in Persia in the Babylonian Inscriptions, which will be produced in the present work ; and besides, we have no occasion, either for the reign of Semiramis, or the conquests of Cyrus, Darius, or Alexander, to bring Babylo- nians to Persia^ and to India itself. The Chaldeans were the most celebrated astrologers of the antient world '^, so that a Chaldean and an astrologer became synonymous terms. By these means they also by the Indians, their neighbours on the east. In the Sanscrit, Parasah signifies a Persian, and a horse, or a horseman. The Germans also, who have derived so many words from the Persian, call a horse fferd, which manifestly comes from Pars, or Parth. Thirdly, were not the Persians also called A%oinj.sviot, and does not Mr. Wahl himself allow this word to be derived from agein, in the plural agemian? Now this is originally Arabic, as the letter ain shows; consequently, a name given to the Persians by the Arabians, their neighbours, just as Pars or Parsa by the Chaldeans. ' See Mem. de I'Acad. des Inscr. tom. 5. p. 391. * I had the patience, says Jones, in his Dissert, on the Persians, to read the list of words from the Pa-zend in the appendix to the Ferhenghi-gihangiri. This exami- nation gave me a perfect conviction that the Pehlevi was a dialect of the Chaldaic, and of this curious fact I will exhibit a short proof, &c. ' Ibid. Bayer also maintains that the Pehlevi, which he calls Parthic, is derived from the Assyriac alphabet, called Estrangheh. See Act. Erudit. Jul. 1731. * T«TO innoiys hcc^iScuMo-an av rig ir^oa-yiKOVTCiog, says DiODORUS, on ^ci}2ouoi fj-iyWriv s^tv iv ix9[ioXoytce tuv ociravrciov avSpwTrwv f%,Scr/, y.xt ^icTt 'TrKsiftiv l-Tri^iKiixv tiron^iruvTO tuvTvis Trig ^iu^toeg. Biblioth. Histor. lib. 2,, introduced EXTENT OF ASSYRIA. 15 introduced themselves at all foreign courts, and to all the sovereigns of Asia, just as the Bramins at present by astrology and fortune- telling find access to the courts of the sovereigns beyond the Ganges^ after having long before acquired the like influence in Hindustan ' . Thus the Cbaldaic religion and tenets were propagated at the same time v^ith the Cbaldaic sciences. We are told by Xenophon, that Cyrus first introduced the religion of the Magi\ or wise men, whom he became acquainted with at Babylon, among his countrymen, the Persians, who till that period had not even had temples, but, like other nations in a state of infancy, used to offer up sacrifices in the open air, on the top of their highest mountains * . And in regard to India, we have the recent testimony of an ingenious Englishman, who has made curious researches respecting the antient mythology of that country, and found the names of most of the Babylonian deities in the antient Sanscrit books, many of whom, he says, are to this day worshipped in India K I shall only beg his leave to observe, that these names have not been introduced into the Cbaldaic from the Sanscrit, but into the Sanscrit from the Cbaldaic ; for the Cbaldaic idiom, like the Arabic, can produce the root or origin and cause of each of its words. Thus, for instance, the word Parasab, which that gentleman quotes as a Sanscrit word, and by which, as he says, the Persians are denoted on account of the excellence of their horses, may be used in the Sanscrit, but it is originally Cbaldaic and Hebrew. It is derived from paras, d-i3, which signifies to di- vide the hoof, from which comes parasab, riDiD, division of the hoofs, or hoof, and Pharas, did, Persia, or a Persian, ' See Dr. Buchanan's Dissert. Asiat. Res. vol. 6. * Xenophon. Cyropaed. Z. and H. ' WiLFOKD on Egypt from the antient Books of the Hindus. Asiat. Res. vol. 3. I could l6 EXTENT OF ASSYRIA. I could here adduce several other words, which Mr. Wilford, and others who have written on this subject, believe to be pure Sanscrit', which, however, are either Persian, or Chaldaic, and Hebrew. Nay, when future researches shall make us better ac- quainted with the Sanscrit language, I fear that a number of them, now supposed to belong to it, will be found borrowed from other idioms, and chiefly from the Persian — a circumstance which will considerably diminish its pretended antiquity. Thus, though its partisans maintain, that the Persian was derived from the Sanscrit, it may be asked, why are the Persian words always more simple and regular than the Sanscrit of the same sound and signification ? Are not the simplicity and regularity of a language a proof of higher antiquity than the complex and corrupted language ' ? And, if the Sanscrit was introduced into Persia, why do we not find the Devanagari, their most antient characters, with which the Sanscrit was expressed, on the antient monuments of Persia, before it had its own characters, as, for instance, on the ruins commonly called of Persepolis, where we find those celebrated inscriptions in un- known characters, the most antient to be found in Persia, and which have no resemblance to any charadter of India f And why have the Hindoos themselves inscriptions on their antient pagodas in characters which they do not understand ' ? I shall not proceed further towards the east, though several ves- tiges, perhaps, of Assyrian literature and arts might be found far ' The Sanscrit is a very compound language, says Mr. Maurice, and delights in polysyllables, hid. Antiq. vol, 7. on the Literat. of the Anc. Ind. * As at MahavaTi-purani. See Chambers's Account in the Asiat. Res. vol. i. Sir William Chambers supposes, with reason, they might be in the P^/i cha- racter. It is to be wished we may soon obtain in Europe genuine copies of them. beyond : -.-TilT i- EXTENT OF ASSYRIA. 17 beyond the Ganges and the ImauSy but return to the west, and observe, that the Arabic language, that celebrated dialect, which at present extends over half ylsia and almost all ylfrica, 2iX\d in strength and copiousness is inferior to no other language, is a daughter of the Chaldaic. I shall not prove this by the history and the traditions of the Arabians themselves, who pretend to be the descendants of Ismail, the son of Abrahain, the Chaldean ; a slight comparison of the grammar and structure of both languages will prove that the Arabic approaches much nearer to the Chaldaic, than to the Hebrezv. — In like manner the Geez, or the most antient lan- guage of the Abyssinians, in which their books are written, has the greatest affinity to the Arabic ' ; at which, considering the small extent of sea, as Bruce observes, that divides this country from Arabia, we need not wonder % so that we may clearly see how the Assyriac language was gradually extended from Babylon to the centre of Africa and the ver>' sources of the Nile. But the clearest proof of the influence, which the Chaldaic lite- rature had in Arabia, appears in their numbers, for which, like the Greeks, they often use alphabetic letters instead of cyphers ; and also by the names of the days of the week, which were used among the antient Arabians, called Homerites. Both show their Assyriac origin, being exactly equal in number, and having the ' Arabicas enim maxime cognata, ac ejus veluti propago est ; iisdcmquc pene regulis grammaticalibus comprehenditur; easdem fere conjugationum sunt forma;, eadem pluralium sanorum et fractorum ratio, ut qui illam . . .calleat, hanc nostram nuUo negotio addiscerc possit. Ludolf. Hist. iEthiop. lib. i. rap. 15. et in Com- mentar. ad eundem lib. Cum qua (Arabica lingua) in grammatica maxime con- venit. Quippc in verbis eaedem pene reperiuntur conjugationes, carumque signifi- cationes, nee multum abludit conjugandi ratio, &c. quare qui unam intelligit, facile capit et retinet quae de altera dicuntur, ' Bruce's Travels in Abyssin. vol. i. p. 425. ^ same rs EXTENT OF ASSYRIA. same order as the Syriac alphabet; which proves that they were not only acquainted with, but also used it. The same order of the alphabet is still common among the Arabians of Marocco, at the western extremity of Africa^ who, being now so far separated from their brethren, the Oriental Arabians^ and from their antient neigh- bours, the Chaldeans^ must have been in possession of this alphabet at a very early period. What further proves the influence of the Chaldaic literature in Arabia, is the Cujic writing, the most antient of all the kinds existing, and of which few written monuments remain '. It was introduced before the Mahometan religion by a Chaldean^ named MoRAMER, and was called Cufic from Ciifa^ a city of Chaldea. The modern alphabets neski^ talik, dhani, and others, of which the Arabians, Persians, Turks, Tartars, and Malays make use, suffi- ciently evince their Chaldaic origin, the CuJic being not only in- vented in Chaldea, but an imitation also of the Estrarigbelo, an antient Syriae alphabet, of which we shall speak more hereafter. A greater difficulty is to determine, whether the Homeritic al-> phabet, the oldest which the Arabians possessed, and which has hitherto been sought for in vain, resembled in its fliape the Syriac f Had it been the same with the Persepolitan characters, as a German author believed '', we might easily discover from what nation it derived its origin; but as this author brings no proofs of what he asserts, there is no reason, why we should adopt his opinion. We ' A precious one I lately saw at the Bodleimi library at Oxford, containing several chapters of the Coran; written on parchment, and of high antiquity. Few libraries in Europe contain such Cufic fragments. The Bodleian library also contains two copies of the Kammua of the Talapoim, written on gilt palm-leaveSj and five Mex- ican hieroglyphic paintings, * The author of the dissertation De Falls Linguarum Orientalium, in Meninsky's new edition — (Mr. Ienisch.) can EXTENT OF ASSYRIA. ^Q can only infer from the facts above mentioned, that it was probably derived from Jssyr/a; and this seems to be confirmed by a curious manuscript treatise on these characters, written in ylrabic, and pre- served in the Imperial library at Vienna, to which Mr. Adler called the attention of the learned after his return, hi this treatise the most antient characters of the Homerites are called Suri, or Syriac^ and are said to have been deduced from the Syriac writing, and to approach near to it in form '. That the land of Canaan, or Palestine, and Phoenicia also be- longed in antient times to Assyria, is proved by the testimony of antient authors. Syria, says Pliny, quondam t err arum max' ma et plurimis distincta nominibus. Namque Palastina vocabatur qua con- tigit Arabes, et Judaa et Ccele, dein Phoenice, et qua recedit intus Da-" mascena, ac magis etiamnum meridiana Babylonia * ; and if we can believe Strabo, a professed geographer, the name of Syria ex- tended antiently from Babylon to the Black Sea ^ The inscription, therefore, which Darius Hystaspes caused to be erected at the Bosphorus, was not only in Greek, but also in As syriac '', which would not have been the case, \.i\)[\Q Chaldaic language had not been in use as far as these countries. The Phoenician or Cananean lan- guage also clearly proves its Babylonic origin, being merely a dialect of the more antient Assyriac ^ ; and even the Samaritan alphabet, ' See Mr. Murr's, of Nurnberg, Journal, vol. 15. * Hist. Nat. lib. 5. cap. 13. * Agx^r Si TO tjov Supwy ovo^ot ^iocT'sivoct «7ro [xiv rr^g BaSuAwKaj ^lyj^n r» 'I-\ ', may have received this art from their ancestors the Assyrians or Babylonians. But we have still stronger proofs than etymologies to attest the high degree of culture, to which the Babylonians had attained in the remotest ages, and long before the Persians flourished, by only taking a view of the structure of their capital, the most antient of the world, and, according to Pausanias, the greatest of all which the sun ever beheld ^ ; a city so celebrated, that its walls and hang- ing gardens were reckoned among the seven wonders of the world — It was built in the form of a square, the sides of which looked towards the four cardinal points, and was intersected by the Eu- phrates, which ran through the middle of it, dividing it into two parts, the eastern and the western ^ The streets were all straight, and regularly arranged; some parallel to the Euphrates, which flowed from north to south, and others crossing the former at right angles, and leading on both sides to that large river ^. The same regularity is observed in that flourishing empire of Asia, situated in the most remote part of our continent, and one of the oldest in the world. The greater part of the towns in China, says Du Halde, resemble each other in figure. They are all and Martial : Non ego pratiilerim Bahylonica picta superhe Text a Semiramia qua variantur acu, ' Exod. 38. ver. 23. * In Arcad. lib. 8. cap. 33. ' Diodor. Sic. Bibliotli. lib. 2. Strabo Geogr, lib. 16. Bochart. Phaleg. lib. i. cap. 12. :♦ Herodot. lib. i. Diodor. Sic, lib. 2. Bochart. Phaleg. lib, i. cap. 17, &c. squares, SCIENCES. 2^ squares, formed by four straight walls which unite at right angles. The Chinese follow this rule as far as they can, and the walls of their towns look towards the four cardinal points, or nearly so. The case is the same with their houses, the front of which must always look towards the south ' . As to Babylon, not only the town itself was square, but also the famous temple of Bel, which stood on the east side of the river, and, considering the regularity with which the city was laid out, must also have looked towards the four cardinal points, like all the other quarters into which this immense city was divided \ It is curious to observe, that the antient temples of the Greeks still extant are formed like the temple of Bel. The temple of Se.esta in Sicily, as well as those of Juno and Concordia at Girgenti, and that of Minerva at Syracuse, which 1 myself have visited, are of a square figure, and look towards the four cardinal points The temple of the Sun at Palmyra must have been square, and have faced the four cardinal points, as appears by the plan of it published by Wood ^. The temple built by Solomon, as well as that built by Esdras and Nehemiah after the Babylonian captivity, were likewise of a square form, and looked towards the four cardinal points \ Nay, ' La plus part dcs villes de la Chine se ressemblent ; ce sent autant de quarres oblongs, formes par quatre longs pans de murailles tirees au cordeau et unies ^ angles droits . ils observent cette regie le plus qu'ils peuvent, et alors les mura.Iles re- gardent les quatre points cardinaux, ou pen s'cn faut. Tl en est de meme de leurs maisons, qui doivent toujours regarder le sud. Descript. de la Chine, torn. .. p. 8. - See in the Univ. Hist. vol. 3. the Hist, of the Babylonians. ' Ruins of Palmyra, otherwise Tadmor, plate 3. ^ - Ezek. chap. 40 and 41. Talmud. Tract. miD. Walton Prolegom. ad Poly- glot, p. iS et seq. gygj^ 16 SCIENCES. even the Tabernacle of Moses and the Atrium were square, and directed towards the same parts ' . Whether this quadrangular form of the temple of Bel^ and of Babylon itself, was an imitation of more antient buildings, as, for instance, of Nineveh, which we are told by Diodorus formed a parallelogram, I shall not pretend to determine ' . The Tower of Bel was certainly not an imitation of these, being of a more an- tient construction ; and the same, no doubt, with the tower of Babel\ for the Scripture no where relates, says Bociiart, that this tower was destroyed ^ No antient author speaks of two towers erected at Babylon^ or in its neighbourhood ; nor is it probable that two buildings of such an immense size should be built on the same spot, one after the other. KiRCHER, indeed, an author of the last century, asserts, that NiNus and Semiramis built another tower a hundred years after the first was destroyed *. But as he does not produce a single tes- timony in favour of his assertion, neither the destruction of the first tower, nor the building of a second, is proved by it. This tower then, built of bricks and bitutnen^^ just as Moses relates of the tower of Babel ^y was likewise of a square figure ; and ' Exod. 36 and 38. * Nineveh, which Ninus ordered to be called after his name, as Diodor. Sic. relates, seenns derived from Nin, p:, a son, which was the name of Ninus, the son of Belus; and from neveh, rWH, a place of abode, or a habitation. The genitive before the nominative is of no consequence, as in Hebrew and Chaldaic the words are often transposed, and also duplicate letters omitted. Thence, instead of Nin-neveh, there may be Nineveh, just as BaheJ instead oi Bah-bel. * Phaleg. lib. I. cap. 9. * Turris Babel, lib. 2. cap. 3. * '£| uMVi hpuv yfxixixxTuv, On the sacred Letters used at Babylon'^. Respecting the nature, form, and shape of these letters no an- tient author has left us any information. The only characters hitherto produced, are the square Chaldaic, still usual among the Jews, and found also at Palmyra ; the Cuthean or Samaritan alpha- bet ; the Estranghelo or antient Syriac, which is likewise called Chal- daic * ; and the Sabean, otherwise called Mejtdaan or Nabqthao-Chal- daic, which forms a syllabic alphabet, as Norberg attests, and as was long ago mentioned by Abraham Echelensis^. Hence Bayer imagined, that the antient Assyrians might have used a syllabic al- phabet, joining vowels to consonants, like the Abyssinians, Indians ^ and other nations. But a writing has at length been found different ' DioDOR. Sic. lib. 2. Baghtan seems to prove that the Pcrs'ian language then-was usual in Media, for it signifies in Persian a place allotted fur gardens, which agrees exactly with what Diodorus says, of Semiramis having built there a garden {ttu^c^htov) of twelve itad'ia in circumference. * Herodot. lib. 1. ' DiOGEN. Laert. in Vita. See also Bochart Canaan, lib. 1. cap. 17. where it is said, that some thought the //f/^rewj might also have had two kinds of letters; a sacred, the present Chaldaic, and a vulgar, the Samaritan. * Nouveau Traite de Diplomat, vol. i. chap. 14. ' NoRBERG de Relig. et Ling. Sabasor. Commentat. GiJltjng. torn. 3. Aeraii. EcHELENS. apud Bayer in Act. Eruditor. Jul. 1731. L from 38 WRITING. from all these ', and in shape resembling none of the characters hitherto discovered, excepting those seen on the celebrated ruins of Chehil-minar in Persia, the inscriptions on which, says Anquetil, are the only antient literary monuments to be met with in that country ; for the daricks, or antient Persian coins, exhibit no let- ters whatever % and consequently they serve to prove the anti- qnit}^ of the nail-headed characters. And although the Babylonian ones seem to have at the top a shape somewhat different from the Persepolitan, this is to be ascribed only to the different workman- ship, or different style of writing, as is the case at different periods and in different countries. Thus we may see the same Persian characters, as represented a hundred j^ears ago by Herbert, who had no knowledge of our Babylonian ones, exactly nail-headed like them % and antient gems and cylinders found in Persia exhibit nail-headed characters exactly of the same kind *. The reason why the Assyriajts used characters shaped like nails may have been arbitrary. Thus we find that the Chinese^ at various periods, employed characters of different shapes ^ . Under the dy- nasty of the CiiEu, when that great empire was divided into six kingdoms, various sorts of writing were invented, in order that the inhabitants of each might communicate their ideas among themselves, without being understood by the neighbouring king- doms. Different kinds of characters were devised, some represent - ' See plate i. * Anquetil Recherches siir Ics ancienncs Langues de la Perse, torn. 31. des Mem. de I'Acad. des Inscr. p. 436. ' See Herbert's Travels. London, 1677, fol, p. 142. 4 See plate 2. . ' Amyot Origine des diftcrentes Sortes de Caractercs Chinois. Eloge de la Ville de Moukden. Paris, 1770, p. 127. ing WR1TIN(5. 39 ing the leaves of the willow, others the claws of a dragon, others bent rods, or suspended needles, 8cc. ' In the same manner the Chaldeans may have adopted the figure of a nail, an object very proper for the purpose. It is well known that the Romans used every year to drive a nail into the wall of the temple of Jupiter. Clavus annalis appellabatiir, says Festus, qui figebatur in parietibus sacrarmn cedium per annos singulos \ As let- ters in those times were rare, says Livy, nails were employed to mark the number of the years K The same custom prevailed also among the Hetrurians, who used to drive a nail into the wall of the temple of Nortia, an Etruscan goddess, in order to mark the number of the years ^ It needs, therefore, excite no wonder, if ' See ^n Explanation of the Elementary Characters of the Chinese, by the author, Lond. 1801, p. 22. and following.— A person, who calls himself an occasional Chinese transcriber to his Majesty and the Honourable East India Company, dis- pleased that I would not admit him a partner in my undertaking of a Ch'mese Dictionary, has published Proposals for a work, in opposition to mine, which he has surrounded with Chinese characters, to make a captivating show, as it seems, of his Chinese learning to the Vulgar, who cannot judge of such foreign figures, but which, however, to the Literati will prove his emptiness, and what they have to expect from him; for he transcribed them from tab. 21. and 23. of the 59;h vol. of the Plnlosophical Transactions ; and the Chinese motto, which has no meaning when applied to his Proposals, he transcribed from the 1st vol. of the Mem. of the Mission, of Peking, p. 323. without quoting either the one or the other : to all this he has added a passage of Fourmont, in which he speaks of others as ignorant. So that we may say of this transcribing doctor, in the words of Stob^eus, Homine impudent e nullum animal confidentius. * Festus de Verbor. Signific. ' Eum clavum, quia rarae per ea tempora littcrae fuere, notam numeri annorum fuisse ferunt. Livius, Histor. lib. 7. cap. 3. ♦Volsiniis quoquc clavos indices numeri annorum, fixos in templo Nortins, Etrusca Deje, diligcns talium monimcntorum auctor Cincius adfirmat. Livius ibid. nails 40 WRITING. nails were at first employed to supply the place of letters, that letters afterwards imitated the shape of nails. Most of the Roman characters, even, seem to be a mere compound of nails ' ; and though some of them appear to have a rounder shape % we find that the Greek, or Etruscan alphabet, whence they were derived, and which exhibit a more antient and original form, were all pointed, and acquired roundness only in the course of time. Thus, to give a single instance, the letter O in the Greek and Roman alphabet, corresponds, by its order, to the letter ain of the Samaritan or Phoenician alphabet, from whose shape it was derived \ Now this is still extant in the Samaritan as a triangle, thus A, or a compound of three nails ; nay, in the most antient Greek inscription we pos- sess, there occurs no other O but in a triangular form, and therefore it is easily to be confounded with the delta^ with which it has the same shape ^ ; and in the same manner the C, which at present is round like a half moon, was, following the Etruscan alphabet, com- pounded of two strokes thus < , if we adopt the very probable opinion, that the Latin C was derived from the Etruscan K; or, if we pretend to derive it from the third letter of the Greek alphabet, which is gamma (r), it was of course angular. But Velasquez has produced an antient Latin coin, in which the C is expressed ' As A E I V H L, 8cc. » As B C D G O P, &c. ' The O in the Nabatao-Chaldaic syllabic alphabet is likewise a triangle. See NORBERG, cit. * See the boustrophedonic Inscription brought by Abbe Fourmont from Amy. cliC, and the Greek alphabets in the ist vol. of the Nouveau Traits de Diplomat. pi. ID. In the Etruscan alphabet published by Gori, there is no O at all ; besides, all the letters of that alphabet are pointed. thus WRITING. 41 thus < , and according to the Mouveau Traits de Diplom. it is some- times so, sometimes like a F, and sometimes like an L ' . That the most antient characters of Persia resembled nails has been already seen ; and that they were derived from Baby/on, is proved not only by the greater antiquity and culture of the Chal- deans, but also by the testimony of Themistocles, noticed by pro- fessors Tychsen and Munter in their recent dissertations on the Persepolitan inscriptions, and before them by Niebuhr, in his de- scription of the ruins of Cbebil-minar, where this traveller very judiciously remarks, that the nail-headed characters to be met with in Persia are, perhaps, those antient Assyriac letters of which Themistocles speaks \ Or, if the authenticity of these letters should be rejected, we have the testimony of Herodotus, about Darius Hystaspes making use of 'Assyriac characters, and that of St. Epiphanius, that most of the Persians, even in his time, besides their own letters, employed characters borrowed from the neigh- bouring country of Syria ^ . But what is still more curious, is, that even the oldest Samscrit characters, which, on account of their antiquity, the Indians believe to have been transmitted from heaven, and which they therefore call devanagari, are manifestly compounded of nail-headed per- pendicular strokes ; which serves to confirm what has been before said, that the Indians derived their astronomy and literature from ' See the Nowveau Traite de Diflom. vol. 2.pl. 20. Nail-headed tops also ap- pear in the most antient Latin and Greek capital letters. * THEMiSTocL.Epist. 21. ad Temenid. Tychsen decuneat. Inscript. Persepol. Rostoch. 1798, p. 17. Munter Undersogelser om de Perscpolitanske Inscrip- tioner. Kiobenhavn. 1800, p. 29. Niebuhr Voyage en Arab. vol. 2. p. 130. Xpojira/ yu^ 01 •n'hCi^oi IT;p(riU/!' pra -TTipirixu ^oixutx. xcd tm (rvpu ypajj-jjiciTi. St. EpiPHAN. Haeres. 76. M Assyria 42 WRITING. Assyria through Persia^ whence they were convey'ed by the Bramins to India. The antient Samscrit characters, indeed, exhibited by Mr. GoLDiNGHAM, clcarly prove"what I have here afferted; for, in all the inscriptions on the ruins of Mahabalipuram, there is scarcely a cha- racter to be seen, which has not a nail-headed perpendicular line like the Babylonian inscriptions, which ought to be so placed, and not with the head at the bottom, as some might place them '. The case is the same in regard to the antient inscriptions of Keneriy exhibited by Anquetil*, as also with those of Ellora, Ekvira, and Salsette, published in the Asiatic Researches % in which, the addi- tional ornaments excepted, all the principal strokes resemble nails^ J A h /C cf^T so that we may say, if the more modern Samscrit characters have larger tops resembling the square Hebrew, this change must have » Goldingham's Account of the Sculptures of Mahabalipuram ; Asiatic Re- searches, vol. 5. * Anquetil du Perron Zendavesta, torn. i. pi. 4. ' Vol. cit. taken WRITING. 43 taken place in the course of time, or that some characters were originally composed of two nails, a perpendicular and a horizontal one. Of this we have a specimen in the antient Samscrit in- scription near Buddal ' , where the third character to the left mani- festly ai)pears to be compounded of two nails, a perpendicular and a horizontal one, while most of the rest resemble single nails ' ; so that we may henceforth rather believe the devanagari to be de- rived from the Baby Ionic nail-headed characters, than, as Sir Wil- liam Jones believed, from the modern Hebrew or square Chaldaic. What I here assert is confirmed by the antient Tibetan^ styled Uchen, in which the sacred writings of Tibet are preserved; for these characters, according to the testimony of the Lamas them- selves, are derived from the Samscrit^ and the holy city of Benares is held by them as the source of their sciences and their religion ^. Now the Uchen manifestly resembles the antient characters of Ma- habalipuram and Keneri. The ground of all the Tibetan letters, one or two only excepted, is an upright line with a nail-headed top, as and no greater prolongation of the upper horizontal line appears in most of them, than the proportion of a nail requires. These tops the modern Indians, it seems, have lengthened or increased so far, that they touch each other. The common cha- racters of India or Nagri are now-a-days united by a continued horizontal line at the top, just as the common letters of the jira^ ' Asiat. Research, vol. i. an inscription on a pillar near BiidJal, by Cha.rles WiLKiNS. * See plate 3. ' Turner's Account of an Embassy to Tibet, p. a8i and 282. bians 44 WRITING. bians in Mauritania, are united by a horizontal line at the bottom ^ The Indians, when they write, always begin by first tracing out the horizontal line to which they afterwards suspend or attach their letters as they proceed ^ . The Samaritan letters, as they appear on some Samaritan coins, with a kind of nail-headed tops, in this way — ^ "1 w -^ may likewise be deduced from the same Babylonian source, unless, as others pretend, these tops are to beconsidered as mere orna- ments. Ma zoo HI thinks that this form originated from the points made in the brass at each end of the letter before the line was drawn, for thus the Greek letters on the antient Heraclean tables appear expressed ; from thence he thinks the shape of these letters, which the antiquarians call gemmed, (gemmatas) was ap- plied also to medals. The Greek characters on the medals of Philip, the Macedonian, and of the first kings of Syria and Egypt, are all thus shaped ^. The Estranghelo, or Syriac square character may, perhaps, also have been compounded of nails placed in different directions : 1 w-x ::i^ :-^ -^ ^ ^ Among these the seventh character (thet) is remarkable ; for it is to be found exactly of the same form in the Babylonian inscriptions " This kind of writing is called in the Arabic manuscript of the Imperial Li- brary, quoted, Iraki, or the Chaldaic, See Kircher Prodrom. Copt, and Dr. Mor- ton's Tables. * See upon this the Alphabet. Brabmanic. Romae 1771. ' Maeochi Commentar. in Tab. Heracleens. Neapol. 1754, p. 123, ia4. as WRITING. 45 as on other monuments, which contain nail-headed characters ; and, what is more singvilar, it perfectly agrees with the daleth of the Samaritan and Phoenician alphabets, which, as any one may see, is a letter derived from the same original, and therefore easily to be con- founded. As to the Abyssinian, either the antient or Axumitic, or the Am- baric alphabet, its original characters, which bear a strong resem- blance to several Greek and Roinan ones, are likewise nail-headed ' . The same is also the case with the Kuzuri, or antient characters of Georgia\2in6. with the Runic characters of the North ^ which appear nail-headed. On the other hand, the Armenian, and other alphabets, are not nail-headed, though their form is such as might, notwith- standing, be derived from combinations of nails. Thus the JVelch alphabet, as communicated by the learned Mr. Owen, and pub- lished in Fry's Pantographia, though it consists of angular strokes only, and strongly confirms what has been said about the antient Greek and Roman letters, yet has no nail-headed tops, any more than the Ogam of the Hibernians *. ' See LuDOLF, Grammatic. Amharic. cap. i. * See Maggi Syntagma Ling. Oriental, qua in Georgite Region, audiuntur. Romse, 1670. p. 3. The Bible was published in this character at Moscow, 1743, in folio. ' These commonly arc included between two horizontal lines at the top and the bottom. ■* See those alphabets in Fry's Pantographia ; London, 1799, 8vo. a very valu- able work, if the many apocryphal alphabets it contains were omitted, and the genuine ones, which are wanting, were inserted. N CHAP. ( 46 ) C H A P. V. BABYLONIAN BRICKS. JO.AVING treated of the Babylonian writing in general, it remains to inquire, to what kind of writing the inscriptions on the bricks^ lately brought from Babylon^ belong ; which is the proper way of reading them ; and what may be their contents. As the country around Babylon was deficient in stones, this want was supplied by abundance of earth fit for composing excellent bricks. The tower of Babel, therefore, according to sacred and pro- fane authors, was built entirely of bricks ; the temple of Belus, the largest of all the antient temples, was built of the same materials ; and the banging gardens, the famous walls, and all the other edifices of Babylon, the bridge and obelisk excepted, were also of bricks '. These bricks served not only for building, but were employed as the most antient tablets for writing upon. It is well known that the first materials for writing were not paper or parchment, and that many centuries had elapsed before such commodious articles as pen and ink were invented *. The first and most obviovis tablet would be the earth itself, and we read, in the sacred scriptures, that ' See Herodotus, Diodorus, Strabo, quoted. * Nondum flumineas Memphis contexere biblos Noverat : in saxis tantum volucresque feraeque, Sculptaque servabant magicas animal ialinguas. LucAN. Pharsal. lib, 3. 222, scq. Jesus BABYLONIAN BRICKS. 47 Jesus Christ wrote on the sand '. But as this writing would soon be obliterated, to render it more permanent, rocks, or the walls of houses, would be employed, and the pen which would most readily suggest itself would no doubt be a 7iail, or other pointed instrument capable of making an impression upon such bodies. Thus, accord- ing to the teftimony of Pliny, bricks were used at Babylon for pre- serving astronomical observations ^ . On this subject Mr. Bryant says, he cannot help forming a judgment of the learning of a people where such materials were employed ; " for it is impossible to receive any great benefit from letters when they are obliged to go to a shard^ or an oyster shelly for information ^" , But Mr. NiEBuiiR replies, that he had seen in Persia^ where there is abundance of marble and sufficient knowledge of letters, inscrip- tions on bricks ; that he had found inscriptions still legible after six or seven hundred years; and that the Babylonian astronomers, in all probability, inscribed on bricks such observations only, as they wished to be preserved from alteration by copyists, or from the injuries of time ''. The Chaldeans also might have continued the antient custom of engraving on bricks^ even when they had better materials for writing upon. Thus we find that the Chinese^ though well acquainted with writing, and though the use of paper, ink, and pencils has been long known among them, still employ their abacus for reckoning, as the Greeks and Romans did in antient times ^; and the Bramins ' John 8. 6. ^ Plin. Nat. Hist. lib. 7. cap. 57. cit. ' Bryant's Analysis of Ancient Mythol. vol. 3. p. 126. •* NiEBUHR Reisebeschr. vol. 2. p. 290. * Martin. Histor. Sinic. lib. 1. in 49 'BABYLONIAN BRICKS. ill India, though sufficiently learned, and possessed of a copious alphabet and ciphers, perform their astronomical calculations and mathematical problems without either pen or pencil. For this purpose they use a kind of shells, called by Le Gentil cauris, by means of which, says he, they calculate eclipses of the sun and moon with astonishing speed and accuracy ' . The Babylonians then engraved their observations on bricks^ as Joshua wrote the law of Moses on stones'". For their flat and marshy country not affording stones or wood enough for build- ing, except the palm-tree, and bricks being the only material they possessed, bricks were used for their public monuments and inscrip- tions. Whether these bricks were inscribed singly, or whether they were united, so as to form columns, or monuments of another shape for writing upon, Pliny does not mention ^ Amongst the Egyptians, indeed, (their neighbours) the most antient learning was inscribed on columns. The columns of Hermes^ near Thebes, are famous in antiquity; and it is certain that many things were borrowed from them by the Egyptian historians and the Greek philosophers. Sanchoniathon and Manethon made use of them for their histories ^. Pythagoras and Plato both read them, and borrowed from them their philosophy ^. In Crete also there were very antient pillars on which was inscribed ah ac- count of all the ceremonies practised by the Cory bant es in their ' Le Gentil Voyage cit. torn. i. p. 215. ' Jos. chap. 8. ' Lib. cit. * History of Egypt, book i. chap. 3. inUnivers. Hist. vol. i. sect. 2. ' Ibid. sacrifices. BABYLONIAN BRICKS. 4(j sacrifices'. In the time of Demosthenes there still existed a Jaw of Theseus written on a pillar of stone *; and if the Babylo- nians had no pillars of stone, they must at least have had pillars of brick ; for Democritus is said to have transcribed his moral dis- courses from a Babylonish pillar'^. And that pillars of brick were usual in those times, we have the testimony of Josephus respecting two pillars being erected by the descendants of Seth before the flood, one of which was of stone, and the other of brick ; which, though not to be entirely depended upon, confirms at least the antient practice of erecting pillars of brick for inscriptions, and for preserving matters relating to the sciences and literature ''. ' GoGUET, Origin of Laws, Arts, and Sciences, vol. i. book a. chap. 6. ' Ibid. ' Clem. Alexandrin. Strom, lib. r. * Joseph. Antiquit. Judaicar. lib. i. cap. 3. These pillars were, according to Josephus, in the land of Siriad, (Si^ia^x or l.v/iix^x according to different copies) which the authors of the Universal History, vol. 4. book i. chap. i. sect. i. believe to have been rather in Egypt than in Syria, because the pillars of Thot, or Hermes, were in Egypt. But it seems more probable that Josephus understood F- ^- Heeren klccn liber d.e Politik, den Verker, &c. Gotling. 1 796. 2 th. p. 263. ' Athen. Dcipnosophist. lib. 12. n 6th, That 62 BABYLONIAN BRICKS. 6th, That several alphabets of other nations, particularly the Indian and Tibetan in the east, and the Greek and Roman in the west, V seem to have been originally derived from Babylon^ as is proved by their pointed shape and nail-headed tops. 7th, That there existed a perpendicular^ monogrammatic writing two thousand years ago at Babylon^ as is still the case in China ; and that this was probably the most antient way of expressing words, without symbols or images, by arbitrary groups and figures. 8th, That the PersepoUtan inscriptions ought not to be read per- pendicularly, as Char DIN believed ', and that their perpendicular situation round the windows or doors of the palace of Istakhar, is to be considered like the legend of a medal. Qth, That the nail-beaded characters of which they are com- posed, are of another combination, different from the Babylonic ; to be read horizontally only, and from the left to the right. Besides the above consequences, these bricks in a great measure confirm the testimony of Pliny, and other antient historians, re- specting the practice prevalent among the Babylonians of stamping astronomical observations and inscriptions on bricks; and, by posses- . sing a greater number of such characters we are better enabled by means of combination to attempt decyphering other monuments , with real inscriptions, such as an engraved jasper brought from the East at the same time as the bricks, and of which an impression, from the stone itself, is here annexed ^ • ' Chardin Voyage en Pers. cit. * The chara6lers for this very reason appear here on the reverse, and ought to be turned. THE END. D 000 014 584 7 £Mi^M :r ■*!»*-: