The One Primeval Language traced experimentally through Ancient Inscriptions in Alphabetic Characters, of Lost Powers, from the four Continents. By the Rev. Charles Forster, B. D. London: 1851. Part I. The Voice of Israel from the Rocks of Sinai, or the Sinaitic Inscriptions Contemporary Records of the Miracles and Wanderings of the Exode. 8vo, pp. 182. Sinai Photographed, or Contemporary Records of Israel in the Wilderness. By the Rev. Charles Forster, B. D. London: 1862. 4to, pp. 552. [pp. 533-565]

536 Sin~i~i~ 1~~scr~p~tions. [OCTOBER,
"The inscriptions are both literal and hieroglyphical, or I should rather say
pictorial, for they do not seem the symbols of timught conventionally expressed.
The letters vary in size from half an inch to six inches in depth, and they are
generally arranged in single lines, as if representing a name and date, and pro -
ceded by a distinctive group of letters, representing the word ~~~ or`pcace.'
A few of them are in Greek, but most of tl~em are in the ancient Nabath~an
character. The figures occurring at several places are very rode. They are
those of men with shields and swords, and bows and arrows; of camels and
horses both with and without their riders, seated or standing by their sides; of
goats a od ibexes, with large corved horns; of antelopes pursued by greyhounds;
of ostriches and geese, and unknown birds, indistinctly represented; of lizards,
tortoises, and other creeping things; and of divers qonint phantasics, which
cannot be characterized.
`~The prefect of the Franciscan missionaries of Egypt, who visited them in
~t22, and who was among the first in modern times to give precise information
respecting them, says in his account of them, which we had with us on our
journey:`They are cut into the hard marble (sandstone) rock, so high as to be
a,t some places at twelve or fourteen feet distance from the ground; and though
we had in our company persons who were acquainted with il~e Arabic, Greek,
H&jrew Syriac, Coptic, Latin, Armenian, Turkish, English, Illyrican, German,
and Bohemian languages, yet none of them l~ad any knowledge of these characters, which have nevertheless been cut into the hard rock with the greatest indostry, in a place where tl~ere is neither water nor any thing to be gotten to eat.
It is probable, therefore, that these uaknowii characters contain some very socret mysteries, and that they were engraved cit her by the Chaldeans or some
other persons long before tlie coming of Christ.' They are to be found not only
in Wadi Mukafteb, but in all the principal Wadis of the peninsula on the route
to Mo oat Sinai. Specimens of them were observed by Burckhardt on tlie heights
of Jebel Ser hal, and, what is most remarkable, we found one or two of them on
the rocks at Petra. The valley of Mukatteb opens oi~t to a considerable breadth
where the inscriptions are most numerous. After the large bend of the valley,
tl~ey are confined principally to the western side."
The gradual accumulation of mateAuls stimulated Luropean
scholars to ur~dertake the deciphering of these strange records,
in the hope of penetrating the mysteThy in which their origin
t}~eir auiliors, their design, and their character and contents
were enslirouded. Bitt fliis was attended with difficulties of
a veThy serious nature, greatly aggravating tl~e inherent perplexity of the task, which was no less than that of unriddling
the meaning of inscriptions in an unknown character, wl~ile
the langunge in which they were written, and their subject
and occa~io~~ could only be matters of doubtful conjectnre.
i~Iodern antiquarian research ii as, however, achieved repeated
trinmphs of tl~is very sort, as in the case of il~e Lgyptian hie