ments of the different civilisations which, like strata placed one above another, have successively moulded the lives and manners of their inhabitants. The old houses may be those of the Rephaim, but the Israelites dwelt in them, the Greeks and Romans embellished them they have sounded with Christian hymns and the holy names dear to Christians before the Mussulman came, not to dwell in them, but to make them tenantless, save by wild beasts.* Greek and Roman remains are predominant; at least they attracted most the attention of our travellers. Let us take, for example, a city now called Kunawat, which is supposed to be the ancient Kenath. "At the Saracenic conquest Kenath fell into the hands of the Mohammedans, and then its doom was sealed. There are no traces of any lengthened Mohammedan occupation, for there is not a single mosque in the whole town. The heathen temples were all converted into churches, and two or three new churches were built; but none of these buildings were ever used as mosques, as such buildings were in most parts of Syria. Many of the ruins are beautiful and interesting. The highest part of the site was the aristocratic quarter. Here is a noble palace, no less than three temples, and a hippodrome once profusely adorned with statues. In no other city of Palestine did I see so many statues as there are here. Unfortunately they are all mutilated. We found, on examination, that the whole area in front of the palace has long ranges of lofty-arched cisterns beneath it, something like the temple-court at Jerusalem. These seemed large enough to supply the wants of the city during the summer. About a quarter of a mile west of the city is a beautiful peripteral temple of the Corinthian order, built on an artificial platform. Many of the columns have fallen, and the walls are much shattered. Early in the morning we set out to examine the ruins in the glen; it appears to have been anciently laid out as a park or pleasure-ground. We found terraced-walks, and little fountains now dry, and pedestals for statues, a miniature temple, and a rustic opera (theatre), whose benches were hewn in the side of the cliff: a Greek inscription in large characters, round the front of the stage, tells us that it was erected by a certain Marcus Lysias, at his own expense, and given to his fellow-citizens. From the opera a winding staircase, hewn in the rock, leads up to the round tower on the summit of the cliff. Beside the tower are the remains of a castle or palace, built of bevelled stones of enormous

"The ring of our horses' feet on the pavement awakened the echoes of the city, and startled many a strange tenant. Owls flapped their wings round the gray towers; daws shrieked as they flew away from the housetops; foxes ran out and in among shattered dwellings; and two jackals rushed from an open door, and scampered off along the streets before us" (p. 34).

size. The doors are all of stone, and some of them are ornamented with panels and fretted mouldings, and wreaths of fruit and flowers sculptured in high relief."

"Shulba is almost entirely a Roman city; the ramparts are Roman; the streets have the old Roman pavement; Roman temples appear in every quarter; a Roman theatre remains nearly perfect; a Roman aqueduct brought water from the distant mountains; inscriptions of the Roman age, though in Greek, are found on every public building. A few of the ancient massive houses, with their stone-doors and stoneroofs, yet exist; but they are in a great measure concealed, or built over with the later and more graceful structures of Greek and Roman origin." Just before, Mr. Porter visited a city, one of whose temples had long been used as a church, and in which the ruins of another church existed, which, according to an inscription, was dedicated by Bishop Tiberius to St. George in A.D. 369. At another city, Suweideh, are ruins heaped upon ruins, temples transformed into churches, churches again transformed into mosques, and mosques now dreary and desolate. Inscriptions were here, side by side, recording each transformation, and showing how the same building was dedicated first to Jove, then to St. George, and finally to Mohammed. It was the same at Bozrah, where there were found two theatres, six temples, and ten or twelve churches and mosques, besides palaces, baths, fountains, aqueducts, triumphal arches, and other structures almost without number. "In one spot, deep down beneath the accumulated remains of more recent buildings, I saw the simple, massive, primitive dwellings of the aborigines, with their stone-doors and stone-roofs. High above them rose the classic portico of a Roman temple, shattered and tottering, but still grand in its ruins. Passing between the columns, I saw over its beautifully-sculptured doorway a Greek inscription, telling how, in the fourth century, the temple became a church, and was dedicated to St. John. On entering the building, the record of still another change appeared on the cracked plaster of the walls; upon it was traced, in huge Arabic characters, the wellknown motto of Islamism: There is no God but God, and Mohammed is the prophet of God.'" Bozrah also has the remains of a large church, which seems to have been the ancient cathedral. "It is built in the form of a Greek cross; and on the walls of the chancel are some remains of rude frescoes, representing saints and angels. Over the door is an inscription, stating that the church was founded by Julianus, Archbishop of Bostra, in the year A.D. 513, in honour of the blessed martyrs, Sergius, Bacchus, and Leontius. Our guide," adds Mr. Porter, "called the building the church of the monk Bohira;' and a very old tradition reprezents this monk as

playing an important part in the early history of Mohammedanism. It is said he was a native of this city, and that, being expelled from his convent, he joined the Arabian prophet, and aided in writing the Koran, supplying all those stories from the Bible, the Talmud, and the spurious Gospels which make up so large a part of that remarkable book" (p. 71).

The churches that flourished in this tract of country were probably more largely composed of Jewish converts than those of whose antiquities we know the most; and consequently Jewish traditions and practices may have lingered in them to a much later date than in the churches around the shores of the Mediterranean. Mr. Porter and Mr. Graham hardly lead us to expect that we should find on the walls of these ruined cities of Bashan as many and as perfect records of the faith of their Christian inhabitants as struck the eye of M. Melcheoir de Vogué in the neighbourhood of Antioch. Still it is obvious that the English travellers had but little time for leisurely examination, and that their chief interest lay in the remains of the Rephaim, or of the pagan worship of Greece. We know that one of the many morsels of the Christian system that have found their way into the Koran-perhaps by means of the very monk just mentioned-is the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. The unchangeable Easterns have always maintained that doctrine; the Patristic scholar may have been struck by the large amount of Eastern testimony to the belief of the Church regarding it accumulated in the great work of Passaglia. It would be interesting, indeed, if some sculpture or painting in an old city in Syria were to show us how the contemporaries of St. Chrysostom and St. Ephrem were in the habit of representing it in art.

This, however, may be mere speculation. It is certain, however, that the two instances which we have dwelt on in this paper abundantly show that Asia Minor, Syria, and the countries about the Euphrates may be considered as inviting the Christian as well as the biblical antiquary to labour among their countless and marvellous ruins with every prospect of the richest recompense. A cry is now raised for the thorough exploration of Palestine; and there can be no doubt that Jerusalem and Galilee have the first claim on our attention. We trust to hear that cry swell into a demand for investigations that shall lay open to us the very abundant remains of Christian times that lie scattered over the whole East.

Literary Notices.

THE DECIPHERING OF CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTIONS.

(Concluded.)

COMPARED With the Assyrian and Babylonian inscriptions, which we are now about to mention, those of the two preceding classes—namely, the Persian and the Scythic, of which we have treated in the earlier portion of this article are few in number. It had long been supposed that the characters of this species were monogrammatic-each character, that is, being expressive of an idea. Grotefend, guided by the Aryan text, picked out the groups answering to the names of Cyrus, Hystaspes, Darius, Xerxes, and Nabuchodonosor. All advance, however, was slow: up to the year 1840 nothing of importance had been accomplished. Tychsen and Münter saw that certain characters must represent whole words. The truth is that the writing is both syllabic and monogrammatic. The monograms are degenerate hieroglyphicsthat is, originally they were images of objects, but those objects can be recognised at present in very few instances. The oldest style of character, called hieratic, was found on the vase of Naramsin (now unfortunately at the bottom of the Tigris): it bears no trace of wedge-shaped or arrow-headed limbs, each line being formed of a straight stroke, and the figure formed by the lines approaching very closely to a hieroglyphic form. Intermediate between this species and the modern is the archaic, bearing evident traces of a simplification from the hieratic form. In fact, the common opinion now is that all alphabets have been produced by gradual simplification from hieroglyphics, or actual pictures of the objects intended to be represented. Herr Weber of Berlin has shown the primitive identity of the Sanscrit devanagari and the Phenician alphabet; and we know that all ancient and modern European alphabets may be traced to this Semitic source. The old Phenician characters, again, bear a striking resemblance to those cuneiform letters which correspond to them in sound.*

* Whilst avowing our present conviction that alphabetic signs originated in pictorial representations, we are anxiously looking forward to the publication of Dr. Levy's treatise, "Die Geschichte der Semitischen Schrift." This learned

palæographer, now so famed for his researches in the old Phenician language and extant inscriptions, a worthy successor of Gesenius, - has undertaken to lay before his readers, in this long-promised work, the results of his investigations regarding the origin of the Semitic alphabet. So far he opposes the theory advocated here, and shares Hitzig's view, that the elements of words are to be found in, so to say, constantly-recurring monads, and that the sounds thus constantly recurring were noted by signs slightly modified so as to correspond with the slight variations of those sounds which are closely allied but not identical. See his Phinizische Studien, i. 47 et seqq., and iii., Vorrede: Breslau, 1856-64.

In 1845 Löwenstern gave as his opinion that the language of the third species was Semitic. At length a short sentence was successfully deciphered by M. de Longpérier. In 1848 M. Botta, whose magnificent work on the monuments of Nineveh astonished the European world, proved the identity of the inscriptions of Van, Khorsabad, and Persepolis, and in those obtained in the two latter places an identity of grammatical forms; he also showed that the same sound was sometimes represented by different characters. In 1849 M. de Sauley attempted an interpretation and analysis of the Elwend inscription. This was the first Assyrian text read, translated, and published with a commentary. The values which he gives to the Assyrian characters are alphabetic; and he tries to account for the great number of signs by supposing that the sign varied in shape according to the nature of the vowel inherent in the consonant; in a way analogous to that in which consonants are affected in the Ethiopic alphabet. It appears, therefore, that much more has yet to be done. Another memoir soon followed, based upon the same principles; but M. de Saulcy advanced no further than simply suspecting the syllabic character of the signs he was dealing with.

In 1849, aided by M. de Saulcy's acquisitions, the greater number of trilingual inscriptions in the hands of European scholars had been deciphered. It was about this time that Dr. Hincks set his hand to the work. He established the syllabic nature of the signs, and explained what had hitherto been considered as homophones (different signs expressive of the same sounds), by admitting the consonant, but changing the vowel-sound. This is now universally admitted. All investigators by this time were agreed that the language was Semitic, except M. Luzzato, who had made up his mind, on à priori principles, that the language was Sanscritic. The essay he sent out on the subject was an unfortunate production. In 1850 Sir Henry Rawlinson published a dissertation, in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, on the inscriptions of Babylon and Assyria, together with the translation of an ins cription on the Nimrod obelisk, but without any transcription or commentary. With this aid, nevertheless, M. de Saulcy managed to translate a long inscription of one hundred and fifty lines, obtained from the palace of Khorsabad.

In 1851 Mr. Layard published his inscriptions; and in the same year Sir H. Rawlinson published the Assyrian text of the Behistun inscription, with interlinear translation and an alphabet of two hundred and forty-six characters. Continental scholars have never forgiven him the literary misdemeanour of having retained this text in his possession for so long a space of time, without making it accessible to the public. They charge him with having acted in this manner in order to make it impossible for his discoveries to be anticipated. Our business is simply to state the fact, without at all entering into the case. He was the first who pointed out the polyphonetic nature of some signs-that is to say, that a sign which he had read as A, for instance, in the transcription of a proper name, must be read as PAL in another, &c.: in other words,