132 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[March 2, 1883. 



say, written in Accadian, with Assyrian translations 

 either below or by its side, proving that the knowledge of 

 the forniiT had, even at the oaily time at wliich they were 

 compiled, died out except among the learned. For we 

 know that the si-cond or Assyrian version was in the 

 original texts and not niurely introduced in Assurbanni- 

 pal's time, not only from the incidental evidence just cited, 

 but by notes of the scrilies on the tablets themselves ; for 

 instance, some have a postscript, as follows : — " Conform- 

 ably with the ancient tablets and documents of instruction 

 of Ass ur and Accad in parallel columns," or, "According 

 to the tablet in parallel columns of Babylon." "This great 

 work on iiiaciic, ' says Lenormant, " consisted of formula; 

 of conjuration .ind imprecation, designed to repulse demons 

 and other wicked spirits and avert their action and to shelter 

 the invoker from their attacks ; also incantations to which 

 were attribut<d the power of curing various maladies. 

 Lastly, the third book contained hymns to certain gods. 

 A supernatural and mysterious power was attributed to 

 the chanting of these, which were, however, very diiferent 

 to the regular liturgical prayers of the official religion." 



The translation of a beautiful hymn to Ishtar is given by 

 Mr. Sayce,* from a text which is a copy of one in an 

 Erech library, and, as with all such tablets in Assurbannipal's 

 collection, has a statement at the end commencing thus : — 

 " Like its original written and translated palace of Assur- 

 bannipal. King of Assyria." Most of its Accadian and 

 Assyrian originals appear to have come from Erech, a 

 Babylonian city which, when all else revolted, had re- 

 mained faithful to Assurbannipal, and to which he gave back 

 an image of a goddess which had been taken away by the 

 Elamites sixteen centuries before. The British Museum 

 possesses over fifty contract tablets from Erech of the 

 Assyrian and Persian period, and one text relating to 

 repairs to a temple of the time of Demetrius. 



Larsa, now named Senkereh, was the seat of a tablet col- 

 lection that seems to have been largely a mathematical 

 one ; for in the remains we possess of it are tablets con- 

 taining tables of squares and cube roots and others, giving 

 the characters for fractions. There are from here also, 

 however, fragments with lists of the gods, a portion of a 

 geographical dictionary, lists of temples, ic. Mr. Loftus 

 brought from .Senkereli a number of triangular contract 

 tablets with lioles at the angles, through which cords were 

 probably passed to secure parchment or some other mate- 

 rial to them. Another tablet exhumed from this site by 

 the same explorer has been found to be a copy of one 

 given in the Cuneiform Inscriptions published by the 

 British Museum from an Assyrian text. The Larsa copy 

 is considered to be at least 1,000 years older than the 

 Assyrian duplicate. Such an instance as this will give 

 some idea of the great antiquity of the originals of 

 tablets in Assyrian collections; for doubtless the first 

 version of the text was very ancient when copied for the 

 Larsa library. This city is also famous for having presented 

 us with variant copies of a cylinder of Nebuchadnezzar. 

 In the "Early History of Babylonia," Mr. Smith trans- 

 lates two inscriptions of Sin Iddina from Larsa, and 

 it is from this city that some of the earliest contract 

 tablets are derived. To a liljrary at Cutha we owe the 

 remnants of a tablet work containing an account of the 

 creation and the wars of the gods, and, among others, a 

 very ancient terra-cotta tablet bearing a copy of an inscrip- 

 tion engraved in the temple of the god Dup Lan at Cutha, 

 by Dungi, King of L^r. 



The number of tablets and cylinders found by M. de 

 Sarzec at Zirgulla show that there too the habit of com- 



* " Records of the Past," t. 135. 



raitting so much to writing was as rife as in other cities 

 of whoso literary character we know more, Vjccause Assyrian 

 copyists state of them distinctly, that from thence the 

 originals of many of their documents are derived. Zirgulla, 

 however, is peculiar in respect to its scribes having appa- 

 rently preferred to engrave their texts upon cones, which 

 are very numerous at this site, and the British Museum 

 now has a line collection of them. 



A Member op the Societv of Biblical 

 Archeology. 



LOGICAL PUZZLE. 



By Richard A. Proctor 



rriHE logical puzzle has brought in some curious evidence 

 i of puzzledom, especially in the amazingly incorrect 

 applications of the syllogism (if so it can be called). It 

 may be remembered that my original remark respecting it 

 was that it should be obvious ; and that every example of 

 the application of the syllogism should be at once dealt 

 with correctly by ordinary common sense. But 1 find so 

 many suggested examples, which are not applications of 

 the syllogism, that I begin to think with De Morgan, that 

 it must be really difficult to many. 



Let me endeavour to do what is not always easy — let 

 me try to show how, at the first hearing, the syllogism 

 appears obvious to a clearly reasoning mind. It runs 

 thus: — (1) For every Z there is an X which is not Y : 

 (2) Some F's are Z'& ; . •. (.3) Some X's are not Z'z. 



When statements (1 and 2) have been heard, the mind 

 immediately pictures a set of JTs equal in number to the 

 Z's, and also pictures the Z\ divided into two sets, those 

 which are Z's and those which are not !Ps ; thus 



XXXX 



zzzz 



XX I XXXX XXXX 



zzxzzzz zzzz 



(the Z\ which are to the right of the line are }"'s, and the 

 line may fall anywhere to the left of the last Z^ for aught 

 statement 2 tells us.) Is not this enough? There are all 

 those A"s, and possibly more ; there are those Z'%, and no 

 more. Only the Z's to the left of the line are not Y's, and 

 all the A''s shown are not Vs. So there are clearly more 

 X's than there are Z's of the kind which can be X's of 

 the set shown ; some of these X's, then, cannot be Z's. 



I say the mind pictures this, meaning that in an instant 

 this sort of separation is as it were discerned ; and I cannot, 

 for my own part, conceive any mind which has once taken 

 in the meaning of the first two statements, hesitating for a 

 moment either in admitting, or in seeing for itself without 

 being told, that some of the A''s cannot be Z's. 



Apart from any picturing, the reasoning runs somewhat 

 like this : — 



The not-1' A's being as numerous as all the Z's are more 

 numerous than the not-i' Z's (for some Z's are l''s) ; since, 

 then the not-Y Z's can only a match a certain number of 

 the not-)' As, and not all, the balance of not-]' A''s, not 

 to be matched by any Z's, are not Z's. More A''s may not 

 be Z's ; but so many are certainly not Z's. 



As for any use this sj-llogism has — like the syllogisms 

 proper, it is barren. Among the tens of thousands of 

 readers of Knowledge, can one quote a case where either a 

 truth has been discerned, or an error avoided, by the appli- 

 cation of this syllogism ? 



Oddly enough, the greater number of those who have 

 tried to give examples of this syllogism, make either the 

 major or minor premiss inconsistent either with the 

 possible correctness of the conclusion, or with the conclu- 



