PREFACE. 



THE Twenty-Eighth Volume of the Journal of the Transac- 

 tions of the Victoria Institute is now issued. It is 

 "a record of the various important questions, which are 

 occupying the thinkers of the present day, taken up in 

 papers by competent authors, carefully investigated, and 

 impartially discussed at Meetings by those who have studied 

 the subjects considered; to whose opinions have been added 

 the statements of others Avhom distance has prevented 

 attending the Institute's gatherings in person." 



The papers and discussions in this volume are iipon the 

 following subjects : — " The Eeligious ideas of the Bab}'- 

 lonians," by Mr. Theophilus G. Pinches, M.R.A.S., of the 

 Department of Oriental Antiquities at the British Museum, 

 whose valuable researches have shoAvn, among other things, 

 that Monotheism, so far from not being known before the 

 time of Abraham — as some distinguished writers have urged 

 — is proved by the tablets to have been in existence in the 

 East in the third millennium B.C.* Colonel CONDER, R.E., 

 D.C.L., LL.D., the Rev. A. Lowy, LL.D., and others took part 

 in the discussion, and Professor Fritz HOiDiEL contributetl 

 some remarks, especially dealing Avith a moot point among 



* The late Canon Cook and others arrived at the same conclusion fi cm 

 the investigation of the earliest known Egyptian records. 



