482 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 112. 



Sliould the identity between Wacly Mokatteb 

 and Kibrotli PLutavah be considered conclusive, 

 then the antiquity of tlie Sinaitic inscriptions is 

 far more remote than the date fixed by certain ar- 

 chseologists and palffiorjraphiists ; the records may 

 prove to be, in truth and in deed, the handy-work 

 of the Israelites during their encampment there. 



The readers of the " Notes and Queries " need 

 scarcely be told that the inscriptions were first 

 noticed in the sixth century by C'osmas, a Graeco- 

 Indian merchant, who was hence surnamed Indi- 

 copleustes. But it is necessary to impress the 

 fact that Cosmas, though a man of intelligence 

 and of letters, considered that the alphabet in 

 Avhich the inscriptions were made, was unknown ; 

 but Iiaving visited the AVady in company with 

 certain well-informed Jews, his Hebrew com- 

 panions read and decii)hered several of the re- 

 cords, and decided that tlie Israelites of the 

 Egyptian Exodus were the performers of the in- 

 scriptions. All tliis Cosmas stated in his Christian 

 Topography (a work published for the first time in 

 1707 by the learned Montfaucjon), and concurs in 

 the opinion that the ancient Hebrews were the 

 scribes. This circumstance borne in mind, will be 

 proof against the theory conceived by Professor 

 lieer, brought forth by Dr. Lepsius, adopted and 

 fostered by Dr. Wilson, viz. that an Utopian Na- 

 bathasan Christian tribe executed those inscriptions 

 during their pilgrimages to the sacred localities on 

 Mount Sinai. Is it not strange that Cosmas 

 should not have heard that there was such a tribe 

 of scribes in the valley? Is it not unaccountable 

 that the knowledge of the alphabet should so soon 

 have been forgotten ? Cosmas flourished compa- 

 ratively but a short time after the supposed Na- 

 bathwans. 



But the advocates of the Nabathsean theory 

 argue that the Sinaitic inscriptions must be of a 

 comparatively modern date, since there are found 

 amongst them some Greek and Latin ones ; and, 

 moreover, the cross does sometimes occur in 

 various shapes. I venture to submit that the in- 

 scriptions bear self-evidence that they have been 

 executed at various dates. It is true that by far 

 the greatest number of them display indubitable 

 marks of remote antiquity ; but there are some 

 which must be pronounced juvenile when com- 

 pared with the great majority. The latter bear 

 marks of an execution resembling the inscriptions 

 on the ancient Egyptian obelisks, whilst the 

 former are rude and superficially cut, and already 

 almost effaced. I take, therefore, the Greek and 

 Latin, and indeed some of the yet unknown in- 

 scriptions, to have been cut at a comparatively 

 modern date. Who knows whether Cosmas and 

 his companions did not try their hands at a few ? 



Why should it be thought improbable that the 

 different monks on Mount Sinai, who occupied the 

 convent there at various ages, should have done 



their quota to puzzle the modern palajographist 

 and traveller? Is it absolutely impossible that 

 the prefect of the Franciscan missionaries of 

 Egypt, who visited the Wady in 1722, and his 

 companions, who were well instructed in the 

 Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, Coptic, Latin, 

 Armenian, Turkish, English, Illyrian, German, 

 and Bohemian languages, should have chiselled a 

 few in the characters they were most expert ? In 

 the same manner might the occurrence of the 

 cross be accounted for, if it were necessary, without 

 precipitating oneself to the conclusion that "the 

 occui-rence, in connection with the inscriptions of 

 the cross in various forms, indicates that their 

 origin should be attributed to the early Christians." 

 But is it possible that such antiquaries as Drs. 

 Beer, Lepsius, and Wilson, should be ignorant, or 

 affect to be ignorant, that the cross was an ancient 

 hieroglyphic, of a date long before the Christian 

 era, well known by the name of Crux Ansata, and 

 of the Diviiia Taw, and signified among the 

 Egyptians " Life to come" ? That the form of the 

 cross was used among the Hebrews i^ conclusive 

 from the fact that it was the ancient Hebrew mint 

 letter for the ri. What, then, is the value of the 

 arguments in behalf of the Nabatliaan theory ? 

 All the specimens that have been given hitherto 

 of the inscriptions, are no more in comparison with 

 the vast numbers which literally cover the highest 

 mountains, tlian a drop out of a bucket, including 

 even those given in the Philosophical Transactions 

 of 1766, in the Transactions of the Boyal Society 

 of Literature of 1S32, and by the Rev. Charles 

 Forster of this year*, and even adding the 1200 

 taken by M. Lottin de Laval. (See " Notes and 

 Queries," Vol. iv., p. 332.) 



MosES Margoi,iouth. 



the 



ON A PASSAGE IN GOLDSMITH. 



Goldsmith, in Tlie Deserted Village, has 

 lines : 



" 111 fares the land, to liastenint; ills a prey, 

 Where wealth accumul.ites and men decay: 

 Princes and lords may flourisli or may fade, 

 A tireai/i can inahe titem, as a hreuth lias made ; 

 But a bold peasanlry, their country's pride. 

 When once destroy'd, can never be supplied." 

 In this passage the fourth line, which I have given 

 in italics, is traced by D'Israeli, in Curiosities of 



* The One Primei-nl Lanpnage, Sec, by the Rev. 

 Charles Forster. The above is a compendium of two 

 letters which the writer addressed on the subject to his 

 Grace the Archbishop of Dublin, and the late Bishop 

 of Norwich, — to the former from Paris, to the latter 

 from Alexandria. See A Pilyrimage to the Land of my 

 Failiers, vol. i. pp. 6 — 15. 51 r. Forster's work did not 

 appear until about a year after the publication of part 

 of the writer's travels. 



