28 BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 



consider of what an archaical character the 

 Aramaic text must have appeared to a 

 Chaldaean in the tenth century of our era. 

 Though it may be urged that the Shemitic 

 languages varied very little in the course 

 of their prolonged existence ; or to quote, 

 as a case in point, the Moallakats, as being 

 still well understood among Arabs, after the 

 lapse of 1300 years: the political and re- 

 ligious revolutions of Chaldsea have been too 

 sweeping for the possibility of its language 

 preserving such an identity. The philolo- 

 gists of antiquity, and those of the middle 

 ages, being ignorant of the principles of 

 comparative grammar, were not able to in- 

 terpret the archaical remains of their own 

 language. I might add also that the pre- 

 servation of a work of the nature of "The 

 Book of Nabathcean Agriculture," during 

 two or three thousand years, is extremely 

 improbable. Such a preservation may be 

 credited, in the case of scriptural writings, 

 when they have become classical, but not in 

 that of an ordinary work, written in a care- 



