MONUMENT OP JOSHUa's CONQUEST OF CANAAN." 241 



to say, the Arabs pronounce the name of another settlement 

 Jagasa, while the French call it Taxas; of which more 

 anon. 



The explorer who found this important tablet was, as I 

 have since learnt, a Monsieur Luciani ; and his discovery- 

 was first reported in tlie Journal of the Constantine 

 Archceological Societij for 1878. 



This, said Herr Kiepert (and I have since confirmed his 

 words), was the only inscription found at Ain el Bordj that 

 alluded to Tigisis ; but he referred me to a Latin account 

 of the bishops of Numidia which mentions Tigisis as a see 

 (N'otitia Episcoparum Ahimiduv, N 89). A subsequent 

 inquiry whether any effort had yet been made to recover 

 the Canaanite pillars Herr Kiepert could not answer, but 

 referred me for perusal to a description of North Africa, 

 undertaken by order of the French Ministry of Public 

 Instruction and of the Fine Arts, and to a history of 

 Byzantine Africa by Charles Diehl. Of the Constantine 

 Archseological Society and its labours I knew nothing ; but 

 these two books I decided to peruse after a pressure of 

 other work was over in the summer months, and then in 

 the month of October, when a European could walk and 

 dig in Algeria, to spend a holiday in seeing what had been 

 done or Avhat could be done at the Arab village of the Well 

 of the Castle to find the long-forgotten record. 



There was then little question in my mind as to the 

 accuracy of the story about the pillars; and there is less 

 now. Kanngiesser, in the note before alluded to, says : 

 " Procopius speaks of the pillars at Tigisis not as he is wont 

 to do when he is dealing with doubtful and unauthenticated 

 accounts, but with certainty. Even if he did not, as is 

 likely, see those pillars liimself, the ambassadors that came 

 from the Moorish chieftains, and the hostages whom they 

 brought, may well have given him precise information, 

 while the Roman officers may have easily convinced them- 

 selves of their existence." Procopius, again, after accom- 

 panying Belisarius upon his first expedition to Africa, as he 

 positively tells us, in all probability returned with him as his 

 assessor, when two years later he crossed over from Sicily to 

 quell a mutiny: the lawyer and assessor would naturally be re- 

 quired to help him in the trial of accused soldiers. The exploit 

 of Althias, by which he won "so great a name in Africk," must, 

 when it was known, have drawn many leading B^^zantines 

 to visit the scene of it, the well of Tigisis ; and if Procopius 



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