134 Mr. PETRIE'S Inquiry into the Origin and 



of a line ; the other a running character, which appears to be a mixture of Phoenician, Pelasgian, and 

 Egyptian." p. 184. 



He then presents us with four examples of Egyptian and Persepolitan cha- 

 racters, to show their similarity to the characters on the Kilmalkedar stone, and 

 concludes with a comment on the circumstance of a flowered cross being sculp- 

 tured on another side of it, as follows : 



" The cross was, and is still, a usual ornament with the Asiatic nations. The vestment of the 

 priest of Horus is full of Jf. See Caylus, VoL VI. PI. 7-" pp. 184, 185. 



That the inscription is, however, truly what I have stated it to be, a mere 

 alphabet wanting the A, which has been broken off, will, I am satisfied, be at 

 once apparent to every intelligent scholar ; and also that the three large letters 

 DNI, which occur in the middle of the inscription, and which Vallancey sup- 

 posed to be an Ogham, is nothing more than a usual abbreviation of DOMINI. 

 As to the object of this inscription I can of course offer only a conjecture, 

 namely, that it was an abecedarium, cut by one of the early Christian settlers in this 

 place, either a foreigner, or a native who had received a foreign education, 

 for instructing his followers in the rudiments of the Latin language ; for that 

 it was the practice of the first teachers of Christianity in Ireland to furnish then- 

 disciples with the abecedarium, or Koman alphabet, appears quite clear from 

 Nennius, and the most ancient Lives of St. Patrick, as may be seen by reference 

 to Harris's Ware, Irish Writers, Book II. c. 1. And I may add as a further con- 

 jecture, that this pillar-stone may have been originally a pagan monument, conse- 

 crated to the service of Christianity by inscribing on it in the first instance the 

 name of the Lord, before it received its second inscription, as it appears from 

 Evin's Life of St. Patrick that it was not unusual for the Irish apostle thus to 

 dedicate pagan monuments to the honour of the true God. In this work it is 

 stated that St. Patrick, coming to the plain of Magh Selga, near Elphin, found 

 three pillar-stones, which had been raised there by the pagans, either as memo- 

 rials of events, or for the celebration of pagan rites, on one of which he inscribed 

 the name JESUS, on another SOTER, and on the third SALVATOR. And, though 

 it is not expressly stated, we may conclude that he also marked each of those 

 pillars with a cross, such as is seen on the pillar-stone at Kilmalkedar, and on 

 every other ancient Christian monument in Ireland. The passage, as translated 

 from the original Irish by Colgan, is as follows : 



