No. 2 (two lines) is lying in the lane called Darb Tak el Tahun (Road of the Arch of the Mill), that runs south of the same garden. It is a roughly-shaped block of basalt, with more length than breadth or thickness, and presenting this appearance:

No. 3 (three lines) is in the orchard or so-called "garden" of Sayyid Umar bin Hajj Hasan, a little to the west of the ruined Bab el Jesr, the gate at the southern end of the third bridge which spans the Orontes, the whole number being four. This tablet is built up with common stones around it, close to the ground, in the northern face of the southern wall, whose upper part is of unbaked brick. It is remarkably well and sharply cut, with long raised lines separating as in No. 1 the three rows of writing.

No. 4 (total, nine lines) is at the north-west corner of a little shop belouging to Mohammed Ali Effendi, of the great Kilani house, the Emirs descended from that archmystic Abd el Kadir el Kilani. Its site is the dwarf Bazar, a few paces from the west end of the Jisrel Tayyarah, also called Jisr el Shaykh, the second of the four bridges beginning from the south. It is easily found: fronting it to the east is the Hauz or tank belonging to the small Jámi (Mosque) el Nún, and it is within a few paces of the French Vice-consulate.

To

This stone, unlike the others, shows two inscribed faces. the north, where its breadth is least, appears inscription No. 4 (four lines), with the upper part plain, after this fashion :

PLAIN.

1

2

3

The other inscription (No. 5), in five lines, is upon the western side of the wall. It is considerably larger than the other; hence the transcriber has called it the "long lines." The five compartments are here again divided by well-raised horizontal ribs, and the lower row of characters is not so easily read as its neigh

bours. The upper line also does not cover more than half the breadth of the stone.

Besides obtaining photographs and facsimiles, it would, I believe, be highly advisable to secure the stones, and Nos. 1 and 3 might be bought at a reasonable price. But this will require a Vizierial letter, intended to be obeyed, and not like the tons of waste paper issued during the reign of the late 'Ali Pasha. A direct order will at once enable the Governor-general of Syria to take the stones from their owners, paying just compensation, and to send them out of the country. When at Hamah I began to treat with the proprietor of No. 1, the Christian Jabbúr, who, barbarously greedy like all his tribe, began by asking a hundred napoleons. And if the purchase of the stones be judged advisable, the less said or written about them, on the spot at least, the better, as they may share the fate of Mesa's Stêle.

I borrow the following notice of the stones from Mr. Johnson's notes before alluded to:

"We should naturally expect to find in this vicinity some trace of the Assyrian and Egyptian conquerors who have ravaged the valley of the Orontes, and of their struggles with the Hittites on this ancient battle-field, and of Solomon, who built stone cities in Hamath (II Chron viii, 4), of which Palmyra was one. But we find nothing of the Palmyrene on these stones. The arrow-headed characters are suggestive of Assournasirpal. In the inscription on the monolith of Nimroud, preserved in the British Museum, in relating his exploits 915 B.C., he says: "In this time I took the environs of Mt. Lebanon. I went towards the great sea of Phoenicia. I received tributes from .. Tyre, Sidon, &c. . . . They humbled themselves before me.' And a little later, 879-8 B.C., Salmanazar V says: 'In my 21st campaign I crossed the Euphrates for the 21st time; I marched towards the cities of Hazael, of Damascus. I received the tributes of Tyre, Sidon, and Gebal.'

"Until the interpretation of these mysterious characters shall be given, a wide field is open to conjecture. Alphabetic writing was in use 1500 B.C., but the germs of the alphabetic system were found in the hieroglyphic and hieratic writings of the Egyptians upwards of 2000 B.C. Some of the attempts at picture-writing on these Hamath stones suggest the Egyptian system, which consists of a certain number of figures to express letters or syllables, and a vast number of ideographic or symbolic forms to represent words. Other characters represent Phoenician letters and numerals not unlike the Phoenician writing on the foundation stones of the Temple at Jerusalem, recently deciphered by Dr. Deutsch of the British Museum.

"In framing their alphabet the Phoenicians adopted the same

process previously employed in the Egyptian phonetic system, by taking the first letter of the name of the object chosen to represent each sound; as, A for aleph (a bull); B for beth (a house); G for ghimel (a camel) in the same manner as the Egyptians represent A by an eagle, akhem; M by an owl, moulag, &c.

"Some scholars have designated Babylonia as the true mother of the characters employed in very ancient times in Syria and Mesopotamia. And it appears that, besides the cuneiform writing found on Assyrian and Babylonian monuments, a cursive character was also employed identical with the Phoenician, and therefore possibly borrowed by the latter. Kenrick, however, remarks on this theory, that the occurrence of these characters only proves the intercourse between the two people, and not that the cuneiform was the parent of the Phoenician. We have in these inscriptions of Hamath a mélange of all three, and perhaps a connecting link between the earliest systems. To suppose them to be bi-lingual or tri-lingual only increases the difficulty of interpretation in this case, for there is not enough of either to furnish a clue to the rest.

"The Carpentras Stone' contains an analogous inscription; it comes near to the Phoenician, and has been thought to present the most ancient specimen of the Aramean series. This and the Palmyrene writing form the links between the coin characters and the square characters, and are supposed to represent a language in a state of transition. That the Hebrews borrowed the use of writing from Mesopotamia or Phoenicia has been universally admitted; and according to Gesenius the old form of their writing was derived from the Phoenician, and retained by the Samaritans after the Jews had adopted another character of Aramaic origin.

"Now, may it not be that in these Hamath inscriptions we have fallen upon a transition period, when the Phoenicians, or their predecessors in the land, were using the elements of writing then in existence, and before the regular and simple Phoenician alphabet had been perfected?

"The Carpentras Stone' has been considered by Gesenius to have been executed by a Syrian of the Seleucidan period. The Rosetta Stone' dates back to 193 B.C. The characters on these stones have much in common with those of Hamath. Champollion's Key to the Hieroglyphics' will be of aid perhaps in solving the present mystery. But we shall be surprised if the inscriptions of Hamath do not prove to be older and of greater interest than any recent discovery of Egypto-Aramean or hieroglyphic characters."

Dr. Eisenlohr, Professor of Egyptology at Heidelberg, in a letter

asking permission to publish these inscriptions, writes: "Though I believe we are at present not able to give a translation of them, I am still persuaded they will be of the highest interest for the scientific world, because they are a specimen of the first manner of writing of the people of that country."*

My conviction is, that the Hamah inscriptions form a link between picture-writing and alphabetic characters; and I would suggest that the most feasible way of deciphering them would be by comparing them with the Wusum" (w) of the several

Bedawi families, tribes, and clans. These marks are still branded on the camels, and are often scrawled or scratched upon rocks and walls, as a notice to kinsmen that friends have passed that way. I need hardly say that the origin of "Wasm" is at present unknown; it doubtless dates from the remotest antiquity, and it has probably preserved the primitive form of the local alphabets. For instance, the Anezeh mark is the circle; and this we find, to quote only two instances, representing the 'Ayn (eye, fountain," eye of landscape") in the Asmunazar or Sidonian epitaph,and in the Phoenician, or rather Canaanite, characters of the Moabite stone.

Again, the circle is shown on the sculptured stone of New Grange, and in the ornament at Howth (figures 68 and 71, Fergusson's "Rude-Stone Monuments; London, Murray, 1872). Captain Warren (p. 148, "Palestine Exploration Fund," No. IV, December 31, 1869) saw the signs ? and A upon the pointed archway of Sabbah, the ancient Masada; he also saw the former symbol upon the flanks of the Fellahín camels, and he "believed it to be a Bedouin mark for the district (?) or tribe. In Spain there are marks peculiar to districts and families, and the horses are all branded with them, just as we mark our sheep; and the camels here appear also to be branded according to their tribes or owners". Other Eastern travellers must have collected hundreds of these "Wusùm;" and were the want made known, we might soon produce a volume of lithographs, which would not only supply a special want, but also prevent future writers confusing, as lately done by more than one, Bedawin brands with "Naba

* I cannot, however, believe, with Mr. Johnson, that the bas-reliefs on the monument called Kamu'a Hurmul (the column of the Hurmul village) can date from the same period. The people declare that it was built upon a basaltic mound to denote the source of the Asi or Orontes; we (that is, Messrs. Tyrwhitt Drake, Palmer, and I) thought it the tomb of some hunter: our reasons being that 1, there are no inscriptions; 2, the rude alt-reliefs on the four sides represent weapons, and wild beasts wounded in the act of flight; and 3, the solid three-storied building is near the ancient Paradisus (Tapádeloos, or hunting-park), identified by Dr. Robinson with the ruins at Jusyat el Kadimah. Mr. Porter's "Five Years in Damascus" represents the solid square structure as it stood some twenty years ago-now the southern side has fallen to ruins, and the pyramidal capping will soon follow.

thæan characters." Messrs. Tyrwhitt Drake and Palmer neglected no opportunity when mapping the Sinaitic Tih or Desert of the Wanderings, and I have also been able to fill up sundry pages of note-books.

"Hamah of the Asi," or Orontes, the Hamath of Scripture (, arx; munimentum, e.g., Hamath Soba, or Zobah),* was the capital of a little kingdom at the period of the Exodus. Its king, Toi, yielded allegiance to David (II Sam. viii, 9); it was called "great" by Amos (vi, 2), and was, we have seen, ranked by an Assyrian monarch with the most important of his conquests. Originally inhabited by the Canaanites (Gen. x, 18), it is frequently mentioned as the northern border of the Land of Promise, although it has as yet formed no part of the "Holy Land." Every guide-book will tell how, under the name Epiphaneia, it became famous in the days of the Seleucidæ, and how Seleucus Nicator, founder of Apamea (Kala'at el Muzík, kept his stud of five hundred elephants and thirty thousand broodmares in the rich lands which the twin curses of Syria, the Bedawin and Misrule, have converted into the Great Syrian Desert; how subsequently it became, as it is now, a bishopric; and how, under the Moslem rule, it produced (A.D. 1743) the celebrated savant Abú 'l Fida (Abulfeda), Prince of Hamah, the worthiest scion of the Kilani house.

If Nablus occupies the most beautiful, Hamah certainly owns the most picturesque of sites in modern Syria. It has a cachet peculiarly its own, yet the general aspect of the valley somewhat suggested Bath. And it has its own sounds. Here the traveller hears for the first time the Na'úrahs, those gigantic undershot box-wheels, one of them said to be forty metres in diameter, which, creaking and groaning night and day, continually raise the waters of the Orontes from their deeply-encased bed to the level of the houses and the fields, and which serve adventurous gamins as merry-go-rounds. Each aqueduct and wheel, the latter built up of infinite piece-work, and with axles playing upon the summits of masonry triangles, has its own name--for, instance, El Mohammediyyahı, mentioned by Burckhardt in 1812; and each is the property of a (very) limited company.

The situation of Hamah is a gorge-like section of the Orontes (Asi) Valley, which, sweeping from the south-east, winds off to the north-west. The highest part of the city is on the southeast; here El Alaliyát ("Les Hauteurs") measures 140 feet

* We find the name again in Amathus of Cyprus and Laconia. It must be remembered that the Talmuds, the Targums, and the ancient Syriac version of the Old Testament all explain Hamath by Antioch-a city which must have had a name before conquered by Alexander. The northern trance to Hamath" would be viâ Seleucia.

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