EErORT ON THE CONGRESS OF ORIENTALISTS. 



233 



race, the unity of God, wlio made and rules heaven and eartli, 

 and along with that the unity of the universe when he had no 

 name for it. He had got as far as the Greej<:s, at a time when 

 the pseudo-Aristotelian book upon the world was written, in 

 which the cosmos is a system consisting of heaven and earth 

 together with the beings contained therein, and among the 

 many divine names only one God is accepted. (We may here 

 note, that the Babylonians had already reached this point at a 

 period yet to be determined, but which cannot be later than 

 500 B.C., and may be as early as 2500 B.C.) It would be im- 

 possible, however, to go over all the ground covered by this 

 interesting lecture, which ought to be read in full to get an idea 

 of its importance and suggestiveness. 



A paper of more general interest was that of Ahmed Zeki 

 Bey, of Cairo, which was entitled, " The invention of gunpow- 

 der and cannon attributed to German genius in the fourteenth 

 century, according to Arab authors." He began by referring to 

 the dispute between scholars, as to whether gunpowder had 

 been invented by the Chinese or the Spaniards. Though an 

 Egyptian himself, he had come to another conclusion. In the 

 libraries of Vienna, Constantinople, and Algiers was a manu- 

 script, bearing the title, " The honour and the advantage which 

 accrue to those who carry on war with the help of cannon." 

 This work was written by a Moor of Spain in Spanish (he 

 having forgotten the language of his forefathers) in the year 

 1635, and translated by a former interpreter to the Sultan of 

 Morocco. The author, like the translator, was a pious Moslem, 

 and took to heart the expulsion of his compatriots, who were at 

 the same time his co-religionists, from Spain, and this book 

 was written as a means of advising them liow to regain the 

 lost provinces. It is divided into fifty chapters, and in the 

 €ourse of the work he speaks of the invention of gunpowder, 

 which he attributes to a monk 265 years before his time — that 

 is, in 1370. He praises especially the Germans, who, he sa3^s, 

 were the cleverest masters in this engine of warfare. Clearly 

 the claims of Koger Bacon were, in his time, unrecognized on 

 the Continent. 



Papers upon Semitic pet-names, the superscription of the 

 book of Jeremiah, and the present primitive Semitic sacrificial 

 sites, the last by Professor Curtiss, of Chicago, were among 

 those next read. In my own speciality. Professor Oppert read 

 a paper upon the translation, which he had recently made, of 

 the great cylinder-inscription of Gudea, that containing his 

 celebrated dream, which I hope to touch upon at greater length 



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