THE FAMOUS MOABITE STONE. 207 



ware, cooking utensils, vases — ^many of a pattern similar to the present age 

 — are also found. Upon one large stone jug or vase can be traced a perfect 

 delineation of the mountains near here for a distance of twenty miles. We 

 have found several mill-stones used in grinding corn and plenty of charred 

 corncobs, with kernels not unlike what we know as yellow dent corn. 

 We judge from our observations that these ancient dwellers of our country 

 followed agriculture for a livelihood, and had many of the arts and sciences 

 known to us, as we found molds made of clay for casting of different imple- 

 ments, needles made of deer horns, and lasts made of stone, and which 

 were in good shape. We also find many trinkets, such as white stone beads 

 and marbles, as good as made now; also small squares of polished stones re- 

 sembling dominoes, but for what use intended we can not determine. I 

 have endeavored to give you a full description of the explorations so far, 

 and as we continue will keep you informed. — Amasa Potter, in Eureka 

 (Nev.) Sentinel. 



THE FAMOUS MOABITE STONE. 



In the same room with Alfred Yicker's pictures is a very clever repro- 

 duction, by a lady, of the famous Moabite Stone, which was discovered in 

 1869. The original, it will be remembered, was found at Dhiban by Eev. 

 F. A. Klein, a French clergyman, employed by the English Mission, in the 

 possession of the Brue Hamajdah, one of the wildest Arab tribes, who had 

 long kept it with great jealousy as being possessed of supernatural powers. 

 All attempts to purchase the stone through native agents failed, and even the 

 appeal to the Sultan did not suffice to give possession of it. In the end the 

 Arabs, fearing that they should be deprived of it, determined to destroy it, 

 and this they attempted to do by first heating it by a fire lit underneath it, 

 and then, when it was red hot, throwing suddenly cold water over it. It 

 was in this way effectually broken into pieces. But, fortunately, M. Cler- 

 mont Ganneau, the learned philologist and now Professor at the Sorbonne, 

 in Paris, had succeeded in taking what is called "a squeeze" or clay im- 

 pression from the face of the stone, and after it was broken Capt. Warren, 

 of the Palestine Exploration Expedition, took squeezes of the two larger 

 fragments. The stone in fragments was eventually secured for the French 

 Oovernment, and after great care the recovered fragments were put together 

 and the restored tablet now remains preserved in the Louvre at Paris. It 

 measures four feet one inch in breadth, having an arched top and squared 

 base, and being about ten inches in thickness. The model now exhibited is 

 made to a scale of a quarter the size of the original, and evidently with the 

 greatest accuracy that skill and patience could exert. The letters have 

 each one been copied faithfully, and all the joinings of the fragments, 

 where they show at all, so that we have before us in a portable form this 

 priceless and most interesting relic. The letters are in straight lines across 

 the face of the stone, and the}' are considered by the authorities in these 



