[ I2 3 ] 
the perpendicular, in this element, is effaced. That 
this is fad, appears from two tetradrachms of Mens, 
an antient town of Sicily, at prefent going under the 
denomination of Meneo, now in my hands; on one of 
which the whole figure of this kind of Thau is per- 
fectly well preferved, and on the other a fimilar 
figure is vifible, though the original tranfverfe line 
has been fomewhat diminished. One of (6) Lord 
Pembroke’s medals of the fame town alfo prefents to 
our view a Thau completely formed. We meet with 
this letter in the Citiean infcriptions, fometimes as.it 
has been handed down to us by the Punic Medals of 
Sicily, and fometimes as it is reprefented in M. 1 ’ Abbe's 
plate of the Maltefe infcription ; part of it perhaps 
having been loft, in the courfe of fo many ages. 
However, that the earlier Phoenician Thau frequently 
bore fome fort of refemblance to the charader taken 
for the fame element on the Sicilian coins, there is 
great reafon to believe ; fince other wife it could not 
have refembled a crofs, as it moft certainly did. 
For that the antient Samaritan Thau , nearly agreeing 
in figure with the Phoenician, had the appearance of 
a crofs, we learn from fome good (7) authors. In 
the later periods, and perhaps to the time when 
the Phoenician alphabet itfelf began to be difufed, 
it might in certain countries, pretty remote from 
Phoenicia, have affumed a fomewhat different form, 
though this I muft not pretend abfolutely to affirm ; 
but that the infcription I am considering exhibited at 
(6) Num. Ant. &C. a Thom. Pemb. ct Mont. Gomer. 
Com. Colleft. P. 2. T. 87. Lond. 1746. 
(7) Tertullian. Hieronym. &c. Vid. Val. Ern. Loefcher. De 
CauJ '. Ling. Eb. p. 234. Erancofurti & Lipfiae, 1706. 
R 2 firft 
