II. A s.virian Cuneatic. — These characters, like the Egyiitian hieroglyphics, are usually inscribed upon slabs containing likewise pictorial delineations of martial, hunting, or other scenes. See Cuxeifohm. The most noted places where they occur are at Behistun, Khorso-
bad, Kouyunjik, and Nimrud. See each in its order. All the great halls of the various palaces are surrounded in the interior with sculptured slabs set into the walls, and covered with representations of the great historical events of the reigns of the respective kings, such as battles, sieges of cities, the conquests of provinces, the building of towns, and of mounds for palaces and tem- ples, processions of captives, caravans bearing tribute from subjected nations, or presents from vassal kings, or taxes from the various districts of the empire, etc. Sev- eral hundreds of these have been removed, taken down the Euphrates, and shipped to England and France, and set up in the British ]\Iuseum, and that of the Louvre at Paris. These slabs vary in size from three to seven feet in breadth, and from tive to eleven feet in height ; and a part even reach thirteen and fifteen feet. Some of them have been brought to our own country, and pre- sented to Amherst and other colleges. These slabs be- come, as it were, leaves in the Assyrian historj'. Each chamber, in fact, is a volume ; for not only do we have the sculptures, but also inscriptions in a cuneiform or wedge-form letter, which furnishes a commentary on the events represented by the artist. Great progress has already been made in deciphering this language, as we have stated elsewhere, and we have most wonderful and interesting additions to our knowledge of ancient Nineveh (q. v.).
III. Phanician Recoi-di^.—Tliese are very fragmenta- ry and widely scattered. Thej' are in characters closely resembling the old Hebrew. JMost of them have been diligently collected and expounded by Gesenius in his Monumenta Phoenicia (Lpz. 1837). See PuncNiciA. A very interesting inscription relating to the history of one of the early Moabitish kings has lately been discov- ered. See MicsHA.
IV. Sii/ailic Inscriptions. — Wady IMokatteb, the cliffs of which bear these inscriptions, is a valley entering wady Sheik, and bordering on the upper regions of the Sinai Mountains. It extends for about three hours' march, and in most places its rocks present abrupt cliffs twenty or thirty feet high. From these cliffs large ma.sses have separated and lie at the bottom in the val- ley. The cliffs and rocks are thickly covered with in- scriptions, which are continued, at intervals of a few hundred paces only, for at least the distance of two hours and a half. Burckhardt says that to copy all of them would occupy a skilful draughtsman six or eight days. The inscriptions are very rudely executed, some- times with large letters, at others with small, and sel- dom with straight lines. The characters ajipcar to be written from right to left ; and, although not cut deep, an instrument of metal must have been required, as the rock is of consideraljle hardness. Some of them are on rocks at a height of twelve or fifteen feet, and must have required a ladder to ascend to them. The charac- ters were not known. The superior of the Franciscans, who visited the place in 1722, observes: "Although we had among us men who imderstood the Arabian, Greek, Hebrew. Syriac, Coptic, Latin, Armenian, Turkish, Eng- lish, Illyrian, German, and Bohemian languages, there was not one of us who had the slightest knowledge of the characters engraved in these hard rocks witli great labor in a country where there is nothing to be had either to eat or drink. Hence it is probable that these characters contained some profound secrets, which, long before the birth of Jesus Christ, were sculptured in these rocks by the Chaldreans or some other persons." This account excited profound attention in Europe; and it was thought by many that the inscriptions might have been formed by the Israelites during their stay in this region, and probably contained irrefragable evidence for the truth of the Mosaic history. Hence copies of them have been anxiously sought and secured ; but, with the exception of a few in Greek, the character and language were still unknown. " Before they can be all decipher- ed," says Laborde, "greater progress than has yet been attained must be made in the paleography and ancient
INSCRIPTIONS
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INSCRIPTIONS
lanpua^es of the East. The most general opinion is that tliey were the work of pilgrims who visited Sinai about the 6th centurj'." This seems to us very doubt- ful. The Greek inscrii)tions and the crosses, on which this conclusion chieHy rests, may indeed have been of that or a later age ; but it does not follow that those in the unknown characters necessarily were so too. — Kitto, rict. Bible, note on Job xix, 24. Kev. Charles Forstcr contends that they are records of the Israelites on their way from Egypt to Palestine {Sin(iiJ'ko((i(//-aplie(I, Lon- don, 18G2, foL). Better opportunities than had formerly been at the command of casual travellers were enjoyed by captain Palmer, a member of the exjjedition now employed in making a complete and exhaustive survey of the physical features and condition of the Sinaitic re- gion. His collection of transcripts from wady IMokat- teb and other localities exceeds 1500 in number, and he was much aided in the study of their meaning by find- ing several undoubted bilingual inscriptions where the Greek and Sinaitic characters occur together, and ex- press the same meaning. The result of four months' steady devotion to this object has given a complete al- phabet of the latter, so that captain Palmer can read and interpret any of the inscriptions with ease. Roth the alphabet and language must have been employed by a late Shemitic people — " in all probability a com- mercial community who inhabited, or at least colonized, the Peninsula for the first few centuries of tlie Christian tera." That many of the writers wore Christians is proved by the numerous Christian signs used by them ; but it is equally clear, from internal evidence, that a large proportion of them were pagans. It is interesting to note that captain Palmer's researches were pursued without the knowledge of professor Bcers's studies, though they mainly corroborate each other, and he bears testimony to the professor's acuteness and pene- tration. A writer in the Princeton Review (Oct. 1870), after giving the history of the discovery and decipher- ment of these inscriptions, thus concludes : '• It seems to be ascertained that the writers were natives of Arabia Petwea, inclusive of the Sinaitic peninsula; and, wheth- er they were subjects of the kingdom centring in Petra or not, they made use of the language and the mode