138 EEPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1890. 



by Professor Haupt, whose report to the Secretary will be found else- 

 where. 



The American Oriental Society has appointed a committee to pre- 

 pare a catalogue of the oriental manuscripts in the United States. A 

 member of the committee learned of a collection, numbering, it is said, 

 16Q Persian and Arabic MSS., formed by the late William B. Hodgson. 

 They were traced to the Telfair Academy of Arts and Sciences in Sa- 

 vannah, Georgia, and, after some correspondence, the trustees of that 

 institution passed a resolution authorizing the director to forward the 

 MSS. to the Smithsonian Institution, on deposit, for study. 



Mr. Talcott Williams, of Philadelphia, while on a tour through Mo- 

 rocco, undertook to make a collection for the Museum. Among the 

 objects thus acquired are many illustrating the manners and customs 

 of the inhabitants of that country. 



The preparation of the Smithsonian Eeport on the Progress of Ori- 

 ental Science in America during 1888 necessitated correspondence with 

 many of the orientalists of the United States, resulting in useful addi- 

 tions to the sectional library. 



ACCESSIONS. 



Through the good offices of the Hon. Oscar S. Straus, formerly 

 U. S. minister to Turkey, and the courtesy of Prof. Howard Osgood, 

 of Rochester, New York, the Museum has come into possession of a 

 cast of the famous Temple inscription discovered by the French arch- 

 aeologist, Clerinont-Gauneau, May 26, 1871, and now in the Imperial 

 Museum at Constantinople. The inscription reads: "No stranger is to 

 enter within the balustrade round the Temple and inclosures. Who- 

 ever is caught will be responsible to himself for his death." In the 

 account of Herod's Temple by Josephus (Antiq., xv, 11, 5) an inscrip- 

 tion is mentioned which forbade " any foreigner to enter the inclosure 

 on pain of death." And in a second description (Wars, V, 5, 2) he 

 states that the warnings were written " some in Greek and some in 

 Roman letters." Through this discovery light is also thrown on the 

 episode in Acts xxi, 28-31, where Paul was accused of bringing 

 Trophimus, an Ephesian, within the balustrade, and "all the city was 

 moved and the people ran together, and they laid hold on Paul and 

 dragged him out of the Temple, and they were seeking to kill him." 

 According to Clermont-Ganneau, this is the most ancient as well as 

 the most interesting Greek inscription which archaeological investiga- 

 tion in Jerusalem has produced. 



Mr. Theodore Graf, of Vienna, presented to the Museum a set of 

 photographs and a selection of heliogravures of his collection of GrsBCO- 

 Egyptian portraits. The originals were discovered near Fayum at a 

 place called Rubaiyct, in July, 1887. In producing these portraits the 

 brush was not used, the encaustic or distemper processes being resorted 



