60 



Visit to Mount Sinai. 



[No. SS, 



what great political revolution the characteis of a written language 

 and the nation which used it should have been so totally forgotten 

 and unknown in the short space ot' the last 15 centuries, has not yet 

 explained. Professor Beer finds the characters to belong to a distinct 

 and independent Alphabet, " some of the letters are wholly peculiar 

 and their affinity with the Cufic" he goes on to say " is so great as 

 to lead to the supposition, that the Cnjic was afterwards developed 

 from this alphabet.'" These facts I think are hardly in favor of the 

 modern origin of these strange characters, which, and the nation 

 which used them, even in the days of Cosmas, who wrote in the begin- 

 ning of the 6th century, were as unknown as when Professor Beer 

 commenced his researches. Some of the letters, he says, have more 

 or less affinity with the Palm5'rene and particularly with the Estran- 

 gelo. In form several letters much resemble each other, as is the 

 case in other ancient alphabets. 



The words which are not proper names, Professor Beer re- 

 gards as belonging to an Aramcean dialect which, he supposes, may 

 have been spoken by the inhabitants of Arabia Petrcea or Naba- 

 thoeans before the present Arabian language spread itself over those 

 parts. 



The old questions as to the reason of these inscriptions being seen 

 only in the rocks west of Mount Sinai, their entire absence on its 

 eastern side, in Egypt, and in other countries west of the Red Sea, 

 and their prevalence in the great routes which lead towards Mount 

 Sinai and Jebel Serbal are still not satisfactorily answered. Professor 

 Beer thinks they are the only known existing monuments of this 

 Sinaitic language and character, although doubtless they exist in 

 other places. 



The suppression of these ancient languages and characters I am 

 inclined to attribute in great measure to the great religious and social 

 revolution effected by Mahomed and his followers, who esteeming the 

 Koran and its languages as alone needful, burnt the whole of the 

 superfiuous learning of the Egyptians, written on perishable papyri 

 but have left us from superstitious naotives and indolence, its hiero- 

 glyphics graven in imperishable characters on the glorious monu- 

 ments of that great and extraordinary country. 



The strike of the hypogene strata is nearly parallel with the 

 northerly direction of the peiuiisula. The dip is nearly vertical and 

 townrdvS the east. 



