Jan. 10. 1852.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



27 



his history is entitled to credit. That such a 

 person as Job teas a real character, and that he 

 lived about the time asserted of him, I am about 

 to give a very remarkable proof, quite inde- 

 pendent of Scripture testimony. 



In Kaempfer's Amceiiitates ExoticcB, there is a 

 plate describing two processions, one after the 

 other : of the first but little mention is made ; of 

 the second, the place from which the procession 

 set out is not mentioned, but the place of its final 

 destination is Persepolis. It is separated, in 

 Kajmpfer, from the interpretation thereof, by a 

 few leaves ; but as I have not his Exoticm by me, 

 I cannot give an exact reference as to pages ; it 

 will, however, be easily found, since the inscription 

 ■contains twenty-four lines, and the plate, I think, 

 precedes it It is called " Inscriptio Persepolitana," 

 and is evidently among the rnost ancient of Cu- 

 neiform inscriptions. As neither the inscription, 

 nor the word I am about to point out, could pro- 

 bably be inserted in the " N. & Q ," I must be 

 content to describe the word in the clearest 

 manner possible. 



The lines, if I mistake not, measure about 5f 

 inches in length, and at about \\ inches from the 

 beginning of the second line (beginning at the left 

 hand, and measuring towards the right) is a word 

 compounded of four letters (five wedges), and 

 reading aiuh. Take a wedge and form them 

 thus, — sharp point to the right, near the top of 

 the group, is a ; sharp point dowmvards is i ; sharp 

 point to the left is u ; the two under wedges joined, 

 viz. sharp point to the blunt part of the second, 

 is b. 



It is remarkable that the Hebrew, Arabic, and 

 Persian-Cuneiform should have precisely the same 

 letters for the name of Job. It may lead to some 

 conclusion with which I shall not meddle. See 

 aijain D'Oyly and Mant, and the comment of 

 Bishop Sanderson on ch. i. v. 3., " and not impro- 

 bably he was a king.^^ 



Refer again to the plate, and behold him in two 

 places, i. e. in both processions, crowned. And 

 now examine the word following Aiub ; it is com- 

 pounded of four letters, easily distinguishable. 

 The first is a T, scil. the Coptic f^, the mystic 

 cross, as may be shown in the Chinese language ; 

 the second is a, compounded of the horizontal 

 wedge and the following perpendicular one ; the 

 third, or perpendicular line, is i ; and the last two, 



one under the other, is y, or the Persian , 



A NEW ZEALAND LEGEND. 



making altogether —A'j taij, being crowned. These 

 two words, therefore, represent the patriarch as 

 being a king, " Aiub taij," " Job crowned." 



T. R. Browne. 

 Southwick, near Oundle. 



The following legend was related to me by a 

 gentleman when discoursing upon the customs of 

 the New Zealanders. It is their account of th^ 

 origin of their land, and illustrates the absurdities 

 which they believe. 



" Old Morm (Query, rightly spelt) was a great 

 fisherman, and being at one time in want of fish- 

 hooks, he quietly killed his two sons, and took 

 their jaw bones tor hooks. As a requital to them 

 for the loss of their lives, he made the right eye of 

 his eldest son the morning star, and the right eye 

 of his youngest son the evening star. One day he 

 was sitting on a rock fishing with one of the jaw- 

 bones, when he hooked something extraordinarily 

 heavy, — whales were nothing to him. However, 

 this resisted all his endeavours, and at length he 

 was obliged to resort to other means to land this 

 monster. He caught a dove, and tying the line 

 to its leg, he filled it with his spirit, and com- 

 manded it to fly upwards. It did so, and without 

 the least difficulty raised New Zealand ! Old 

 Morm looked at this prodigy with wonder, but 

 thinking it very pretty he stepped ashore, where 

 he saw men and tire. The first thing he did was 

 to burn his fingers, and then to cool them he 

 jumped into the sea; when the sulphur which 

 arose from him was so great, that the Sulphur 

 Island was formed. After this things went on 

 smoothly, till the New Zealanders began to get 

 refractory, and so offended the sun, that his ma- 

 jesty refused to shine. So old Morm got up one 

 day early and chased after the sun, but it was not 

 till after three days' hard hunting he managed to 

 catch him. A good deal of parleying then took 

 place, and at last the sun consented to shine for 

 half the day only. Old Morm, to remedy this 

 evil, immediately made the moon, and tied it by a 

 string to the sun, so that when one went down it 

 pulled the other up." 



I did not hear on what authority this was given, 

 but I dare say some of your learned correspondents 

 may have met with it, and will be kind enough to 

 give it, and say whether this fable was believed 

 by all the tribes of New Zealand. Unicokn. 



Minor §.atti, 



A Dutch Commentary on Pope. — 



" As what a Dutchman plumps into the lakes. 

 One circle first, and then a second makes." 



Dnnciad, b. ii. 4C0. 



" It may be asked," says Bilderdyk in a note to his 



imitation of the Essay on Man*, "why the little stone 



is thrown into the water by a Dutchman in particular. 



The reason is, that the Duch sailors, when lying idle 



* De Mensch. Pope's Essay on Man gevulgd door 

 Mr. W. Bilderdyk. Amsterd. 1808, 



