118 REPORT 1856. 



we found them to be ia all places where the calcareous clay came into immediate 

 contact with them. There were ten adult male skeletons on this spot, and separated 

 by a foot of clay between each, five layers were found, being fifty in all. I may state 

 that toads in large numbers were found alive in this part of the pit. We had now 

 reached a depth of 42 feet in the shaft, the bones of another horse were turned out, 

 and then we came on loose sand to a depth of 5 feet. Six more skeletons were 

 here again exposed. The sides of the shaft were regular and smooth, the mark of 

 the chisel on the rock being as fresh as when first formed. Six feet more of the 

 loose sand being now taken away, hard bottom could be felt by the steel rod, and 

 there lay two skeletons, male and female, enveloped in sea-weed ; and in a large 

 amphora at the corner, which was unfortunately found crushed, were the bones of a 

 child. Some beautiful specimens of pottery, lacrymatories, beads, and a few coins, 

 were all that I got to repay my labours on this spot. I examined well on every 

 side, and in the rock below, for a trap-door or concealed passage, and an abrupt 

 perpendicular division in the natural strata or layers of calcareous clay appeared to 

 indicate the existence of such, but I found none. Evetything during the descent 

 had promised so very favourably, that I fully expected to have found a large chamber 

 leading on from the termination of the shaft ; but if such does exist, the discovery of 

 the passage to it utterly baffled all my researches. The deep fosse, the mode in which 

 the skeletons were found at the bottom, the six discovered immediately above these, 

 the fifty about the centre, and the bones of the horses, are exactly in harmony with 

 the description of Herodotus of the mode in which the Scythian kings were buried. 

 The substance which I have called sea-weed, from its bearing a stronger resemblance 

 to that production than anything else I can compare it with, may possibly be the 

 "grass" described by Herodotus as used to envelope the body. If such be the case, 

 the description is in all respects exact. 



This wonderful place of sepulture must therefore be Scythian, and date with the 

 very earliest colonization of the Greeks ; full 500 years b.c. That able osteologist 

 and comparative anatomist. Professor Owen, confirms this by pronouncing the creuiia 

 brought with me from the bottom of the shaft, as certainly not of Grecian, but rather 

 of Indo-European characters, and of the dolichocephalic variety. 



On the Plastic Origin of the Cuneiform Characters, and its Relation to our own 

 Alphabet. By James Nasmtth. 



Since Mr. Nasmyth first brought this subject forward in a lecture which he gave 

 at the Royal Institution in 1838, so much additional interest has been excited in 

 relation to the cuneiform character in consequence of the admirable discoveries and 

 researches of Layard, Rawlinson and others, that Mr. Nasmyth availed himself of 

 the opportunity afforded by the meeting of the British Association at Cheltenham to 

 recall attention to the subject. 



With this view he gave a complete practical illustration of the mode in which he 

 conceives the cuneiform character had originated ; secondly, how it was written; and 

 thirdly, how far he conceives it to have been the parent of certain portions of our 

 own alphabetic characters. 



In respect to the first part of the subject, namely the plastic origin of the cuneiform 

 characters, Mr. Nasmyth stated that he considered it was due to the simple circum- 

 stance of clay or plastic mud, in the form of bricks and tiles, having been employed as 

 the chief building material by the primitive founders of the cities on the banks of the 

 Euphrates and Tigris, that the cuneiform character owes its origin and adoption. 

 Mr. Nasmyth showed, by a practical demonstration of the most convincing kind, that 

 the peculiar triangular impression or indentation which is the distinguishing feature 

 or characteristic element and basis of all cuneiform inscriptions, is the direct and 

 inevitable result of the contact of the angle or corner of a hard or dried brick with 

 the side of a soft one. 



That the most perfect cuneiform characters can thus be inscribed on soft clay, 

 Mr. Nasmyth proved to the meeting by rapidly inscribing a vast variety of cuneiform 

 characters on plastic clay by the means referred to. He then proceeded to state, that 

 although he considered it highly probable that the first idea of the cuneiform had 

 thus suggested itself, yet as a brick would be found to be rather an awkward stylus 



