216 SIR W. M. RAMSAY^ ON EXPLORATION OF ASIA MINOR, AS BEARING 



knowledge of matters incidental to St. Luke and his history gave any 

 countenance to such an idea. 



It was refreshing to find Harnack refuted by Harnack, if only to 

 remind us that the " accepted conclusions " of mere critics and 

 scholars (based to a large extent on negative evidence) can have to 

 ihe scientific mind nothing of tJie nature of finalifij ; and that deductions 

 drawn from them can have no surer value than the nebulous data 

 upon which they too often rest. 



Dr. T. G. Pinches. — I have listened to Professor Ramsay's 

 lecture with much interest, but as it refers to the criticism of the 

 New Testament, whilst my own subject has to do with the 

 antiquities of the Old Testament, I did not expect to be called upon 

 to speak this afternoon. Referring to the antiquity of writing, 

 there can be no doubt whatever as to the testimony of the Baby- 

 lonian tablets upon that point. Among the most ancient documents 

 may be mentioned the archaic tablets* published by M. rran9ois 

 Thureau-Dangin, of the Museum of the Louvre, in which we seem 

 to see the growth of the sense of the necessitj^ of precision in the 

 matter of dating. Those which seem to be the earliest specimens 

 have no dates, but on some — perhaps later documents — we find 

 names of rulers, sometimes with their titles, but neither month nor 

 day, the necessity for inserting which, however, soon became evident. 

 As time went on, the scribes of Babylonia adopted methods still 

 more precise, indicating the date at first by the event of the year, 

 and finally by giving the regnal year of the king.f 



Another point in I'rofessor Ramsay's remarks which struck me 

 was his statement that the use of ink to write on pottery implied of 

 necessity the use of some softer material to receive the inscription. 

 From Babylonia and Assyria we get nothing of the nature of a 

 document on either paper, skin, or parchment, but that something 

 of the kind was used is implied by at least one colophon, written in 

 ink of a reddish colour (possibly originally black) upon a fragment 

 of a clay tal)let from Nineveh in the British Museum. This 

 reminds us that there are represented on the Assyrian sculptures, 

 scribes, one with a tablet and the other with something of the 



* Estimated date 4500 n.c. 



t The Assyrians used the system of dating by the names of oHicials, 

 wliich were chosen yearly, the so-called eponynis. 



