442 



NA TURE 



[Aprils, 1875 



ornaments and apparel, till at last she is divested of 

 everything. Her detention, however, in the lower regions 

 caused the greatest disorders upon the earth, so much so 

 that her parents, the Sun and Moon, weepingly exclaim, 

 " Since the time that Mother Ishtar descended into Hades 

 the bull has not sought the cow, nor the male of any ani- 

 mal the female." To avoid the threatened extinction of 

 life, Ishtar has her jewels returned and is restored to 

 heaven. 



The design of this legend, as read on the broken Assy- 

 rian tablets, is not to be made out. In the Talmud, how- 

 ever, where the same legend is recorded in the recast 

 form of the monotheistic crucible, the import of it becomes 

 perfectly clear. After the restoration of the second 

 Temple, we are told that the men of the Great Syna- 

 gogue, headed by Ezra and Nehemiah, made every effort 

 to wean the people from polytheism and from the orgies 

 practised in connection with the worship of idols. To 

 this end the saints prayed that God might deliver into 

 their hands the demon of sexual lust. In vain did a pro- 

 phetic voice warn them that if their prayer were granted all 

 nature would at once become stationary, and then life would 

 become extinct. The zeal of the pious would not listen 

 to the utterance, and the demon had to be delivered into 

 their hands. For three days they kept him in prison and 

 in chains, but after the three days no fresh-laid egg could 

 be got in the land, and they had therefore to hberate the 

 demon, depriving him, however, of the power to excite 

 lust in the human breast for the first degrees of consan- 

 guinity (3 V/«i; 6()b : Sanlicdriii (30a: Yalkut on Nehe- 

 miah, ^ 1071). The moral of the Ishtar legend thus 

 becomes apparent, and we see how important the mate- 

 rials are which these Assyrian discoveries yield for the 

 study of comparative mythology. 



As to the importance of these cuneiform records to 

 philology, we can only illustrate it by one example. The 

 Hebrew expression ^n^'jj which, when joined with a 

 number denoting ten, makes the combined phrase denote 

 eleven, has caused the greatest difficulty to Semitic 

 scholars from the time when the first Hebrew lexicon 

 was compiled to the present day. Such great authorities 

 as Ibn Ezra (a.d. icS8 — 1176), and Kimchi (a.d. 1160 — 

 1235), take it to denote tlioughi, and say that the phrase 

 in question literally denotes "ten which are counted upon 

 the fingers and one in thought," or, as Simonis, who 

 espouses this notion, explains it, " Cos^iiationcs ultra 

 decern, i.e., numerus cogitatione sive iiicnle concipiendus 

 cum praecedentes numeri ad dis^i/os numerarentur." 

 To which Gesenius in his Lexicon adds, " This is unsatis- 

 factory enough, though a better solution is still wanting." 

 Now, from the cuneiform we learn that jnc'l? istin is the 

 ordinary expression for oiii-, thus yielding the long-wished- 

 for solution of this difficult word. 



Amongst the other discoveries which Mr. Smith made 

 and which he classifies under " Foreign Inscriptions," are 

 several Phcenician. The first of these, according to our 

 explorer, is a contract of sale, and probably belongs to 

 the seventh century li.C. " The Phcenician legend is 

 beautifully incised along the edge of the tablet, and Is 

 very sharp and clear. Transcribed into Hebrew letters 

 it reads — 



The sale by Almalek of ^the cultivated field. 



The words are divided by dots, and the meaning of the 

 inscription is clear." We, however, question whether 

 "the meaning is clear." It is greatly to be regretted that 

 Mr. Smith did not figure this inscription as he has done 

 in the case of far less interesting subjects. It is important 

 to pateography, inasmuch as it confirms the testimony of 

 the famous Moabite inscription that at the earliest period 

 of Semitic writing the words were not only written sepa- 

 rately but were divided by dots, and in this respect essen- 

 tially differ from the earliest Greek inscriptions. Our 

 reasons for doubting the correctness of Mr. Smith's trans- 

 literation are, that (i) we do not remember that TMI 

 signifies sale; and (2) the demonstrative pronoun has 

 not in Phcenician the scriptio plen^ Yod, but is simply 1, 

 especially in ancient Phoenician. Nor do we think Mr. 

 Smith's rendering of JJOD by cultivated happy. The 

 word in question is better translated icitaulating. 



We have said enough to show the extreme importance 

 of Mr. Smith's discoveries. Much, however, still remains 

 to be done, and Mr. Smith calculates that no less than 

 20,000 fragments of this valuable collection of terra cotta 

 inscriptions, portions of which are in the British Museum 

 and at the Louvre, still lie buried at Kouyunjik. It would 

 require 5,000/. and three years' work to recover these 

 treasures. Mr. Smith is perfectly willing to undertake 

 the labour of systematic excavations, and we earnestly 

 trust that the nation, either independently of, or through 

 the Government and the Trustees of the British Museum, 

 will be as ready to furnish this comparatively small sum. 



BANCROFT'S "NATIVE RACES OF THE 

 PA CIFIC S TA TES " 

 Th.e Native Races of the Pacific States of North America. 

 By H. H. Bancroft. Vol. I. Wild Tribes. (London ; 

 Longmans and Co.) 



IT is curious that the comparatively little known Pacific 

 side of North America should have had its ethno- 

 logy collected and digested, while this task has not been 

 performed for the more familiar Atlantic side. School- 

 craft's great work, principally devoted to the Indians east 

 of the Rocky Mountains, is quite of different character, 

 containing a great amount of original information, but 

 no systematic survey of all that is known. Bancroft's 

 plan, to judge from the present volume, is to compile 

 only, but to compile the substance of the whole existing 

 literature. His success has been remarkable, and his 

 work will be of the greatest service to ethnologists, under 

 one condition. Travellers' accounts of savages are 

 meagre enough already, but abstracts of them shrink 

 almost to the bones. Therefore Mr. Bancroft's book 

 should be used as a skeleton chart to guide inquirers to 

 the original authorities, but should not be treated as 

 making such reference unnecessary. 



The physical descriptions of the races of Pacific Ame- 

 rica, from the Arctic Circle almost to the Equator, are 

 carefully drawn up, though the want of engravings makes it 

 less easy to give precise ideas of them. There are certainly 

 two varieties of man in the district. One is the Eskimo, 

 with their fair complexion, thick-set robust make, and low 

 stature (not, however, so stunted on the Pacific side as in 

 Greenland). The other is the North American Indian, 

 with skin of more or less deep brown, slighter build, and 



