literature and the Semitic languages in their general rather than their special relations. The time is hardly yet come, perhaps, for sound generalization in regard to the origin, development, and scientific classification of the Semitic languages. At any rate I have not the requisite knowledge or leisure to grapple with such a question. All that I propose to do in opening this Section is to draw attention to the very enlarged proportions that have lately been given to Semitic research. Not only have our Phoenician materials been more than doubled since Gesenius wrote his famous text-book on the relics of that language, but Southern Arabia has yielded a mass of inscriptions from copper plates and sculptured rocks, which have brought the old Himyaritic language fairly within our grasp, and more recently Assyria has been added to the list, sustained inquiry having opened up to the investigation of scholars that ancient language, which, as far as our present knowledge extends, would seem to be one of the earliest members of the wide-spread Semitic family. Educated Europe was very slow to admit the genuineness of Cuneiform decipherment. It was asserted at first as a wellknown axiom, that it was impossible to recover lost alphabets and extinct languages without the aid of a bilingual key, such as was afforded to Egyptologists by the famous Stone of Rosetta. Our efforts at interpretation were therefore pronounced to be empirical, and scholars were warned against accepting our results. I have a vivid recollection, indeed, of the scornful incredulity with which I was generally received when, in 1849, I first brought to England a copy of the Babylonian version of the Behistun Inscription, and endeavoured to show that by comparing this version with the corresponding Persian text I had arrived at a partial understanding of the newly discovered records of Assyria and Babylonia. I did not assume to have done more than break the crust of the difficulty, and yet I obtained no attention. Hardly any one in England, except Dr. Hincks and Mr. Norris and the Chevalier Bunsen, was satisfied of the soundness of the basis of inquiry. Nor, indeed, did the study make much progress for a long time afterwards. Semitic scholars, like M. Renan, accustomed to the rigid forms and limited scope of alphabets of the Phoenician type, were bewildered at the laxity of cuneiform expression, where phonetic and ideographic elements were commingled; and refused to admit the possibility of such a system of writing being applied to a Semitic language, Biblical students, again, were not favourable at first to the idea of testing the authenticity of the Hebrew records by comparing them with the contemporary annals of a cognate people, and for a time ignored our results; while the Classicists of this country who followed the lead of the late Sir George Cornewall Lewis calmly asserted the superiority and sufficiency of Greek tradition, and treated our endeavours to set up a rival school of historical criticism, derived from a barbarian source, almost with contempt Struggling thus against disbelief and prejudice, our progress in this country was for many years slow and unsatisfactory; but at length, as materials increased, and competing intellects, engaged in the study of the inscriptions, arrived at almost identical results, the attention of Europe was aroused and Assyriologists received a more respectful treatment.

It would be out of place on an occasion like the present to trace in any detail the early stages of Cuneiform decipherment, or to attempt to apportion among the first pioneers in this difficult branch of study their respective shares in the credit of discovery Still, there are some names, both among the living and the dead, to which, even in this hasty sketch, I cannot help referring. The obligations which Assyriologists owe to the late Dr. Hincks and the late Mr. Norris can hardly be overstated, while there is still one among us who, if he did not commence work quite so early as his English fellow-labourers, carried on his researches with an energy, a perseverance, and a happy boldness, which soon enabled him to outstrip them. I allude to Dr. Jules Oppert, of Paris. If any one has a right to claim the paternity of Assyrian science, as it exists at the present day, it is certainly this distinguished scholar, who, having enjoyed the advantage of a personal investigation of the Assyrian and Babylonian ruins, now twenty-three years ago, devoted himself on his return to Europe to the prosecution of cuneiform studies with a vigour and ingenuity, neither deterred by opposition nor discouraged by neglect, which ultimately led to a complete success, gaining as he did for himself the Quinquennial Prize of the French Academy, and thus obtaining the attestation of the first critical body in Europe to the genuineness and importance of the studies on which he was engaged. This, indeed, may be considered the turning-point of cuneiform research; hitherto there had been doubt and disparagement; henceforward Assyriology took its place within the recognized pale of Oriental science, and the study of the inscriptions steadily advanced. France well sustained her claim to the prominent place which Dr. Oppert had first acquired for her. M. Menant, who was at an early period associated with him, exerted himself to popularize a difficult subject; while the indefatigable François Lenormant, following closely on their footsteps, has since pursued a brilliant career of discovery and daring research, which in his particular line of study has placed him far ahead of all competitors. Waldemar Schmidt in Denmark, Finzi in Italy, and Naville of Geneva, have also joined our band of Assyriologists; while Germany, although coming late into the field of Assyriology, has at once assumed a leading position in regard to the most essential branch of the inquiry, from which she is not likely to be soon displaced. It, is, indeed, a searching and elaborate critical power, combined with intense application and a thorough

mastery of the Semitic languages, rather than conjectural translation, however happy, or premature generalization, which is too apt to mislead, that is now required for the advancement of Assyrian knowledge; and as such qualifications are preeminently possessed by Professor Schrader and Dr. Prætorius, who are at the head of the cuneiform scholars of Germany, I am inclined to look to them as our future leaders in this interesting study. The contribution of England of late years to the science of Assyrian philology has perhaps hardly kept pace with its early promise. Mr. Norris s Dictionary and the three volumes of inscriptions which I have published for the British Museum have supplied, no doubt, very useful and extensive materials for scholars to work upon; while the independent labours of Mr. George Smith, of Mr. Fox Talbot, and of the Rev. Mr Sayce have thrown much light on the history and geography and half-developed science of the Assyrians, as well as on their mythology, and especially on their primitive legends and traditions; but, notwithstanding the wide extent of these researches and their great merit, as additions to our knowledge of the early world, I am bound to say that nothing has lately appeared in this country which, in my opinion, is equal in value, in a philological point of view, to the researches of Schrader and Oppert; and I am further inclined to think that until some accomplished Semitic scholar, such as the late Dr. Lee or the late Dr. Cureton, shall take up cuneiform inquiry in England and devote himself exclusively to it, we must be content, as far as critical accuracy is concerned, to follow in the wake of our Continental brethren. At the same time I am far from wishing to disparage the labours of the English school of Assyriology, or to deter young disciples from joining our ranks. What I complain of is-and I am fully as culpable as my fellowlabourers in this matter-that we have hitherto devoted ourselves to the sensational rather than the practical branch of the inquiry, and have thus built up a superstructure on insecure foundations Historical discovery and the illustration of obscure points of ethnology and chronology are no doubt more attractive studies than dry disquisitions on grammar and etymology, more attractive in their nature, and more likely to command the attention of the public; but the dry studies, nevertheless, are, or ought to be, a necessary preliminary to the others, whose very attractiveness, indeed, is almost in an inverse ratio to their philological value. While I congratulate, therefore, Mr. George Smith on his great achievements in recovering the lost history of early Babylon, in bringing to light the primitive traditions which the Babylonians held, in common with the Hebrew colonists who migrated from Chaldæa to Palestine, in fixing by means of Assyrian records the chronology of Western Asia, and giving for the first time a consistent and continuous account of the Assyrian Empire; and while I also congratulate Mr. Sayce on the general accuracy of his readings, and especially on his success in partially explaining the astronomy and astrology of the early Chaldæans; I do most earnestly recommend both of these scholars to pay more attention in future to the rudiments of the study than to its higher branches. It would be desirable, I think, in all future publications, to accompany the translation of every sentence with its grammatical and etymological analysis, especial care being taken to compare the corresponding roots and inflections in the cognate languages, not at random or from a fancied resemblance of sound, but according to the established rules of euphony and grammatical change. As matters stand at present, we are far from having overcome the elementary difficulties of phonetic representation. Notwithstanding, indeed, the numerous alphabets and syllabaries that have been published, there are still many cuneiform characters of doubtful power, while the vernacular names of the gods, which enter so largely into the composition of Babylonian and Assyrian proper names, and are thus essential to historical identification, are for the most part rendered conventionally and provisionally. For my own part, I should hail the determinate reading of these namesa result, which in default of direct evidence can only be obtained by a very large and laborious induction-as a more substantial advance in Assyriology than the discovery of a new dynasty of Kings or the complete explanation of the whole series of astronomical tables, Let me, then, impress upon all young Semitic scholars who desire to take up the study of the Cuneiform Inscriptions to begin at the beginning, to learn thoroughly the alphabet and grammar of the Assyrian language before they attempt independent translation, and only gradually to ascend into those higher regions of inquiry which will be brought before the Section by the experienced scholars around me. In the mean time we are doing good service in this country to the common cause in accumulating materials. Mr. George Smith, during his last two visits to Assyria, has added several thousand fragments of tablets and cylinders to the already large collection deposited in the British Museum; and our fourth volume of the Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia is now on the eve of publication. It is a satisfactory proof of the high place which Assyriology has now taken in the estimation of Semitic scholars that the communications which are promised for our Section are all, with one exception, connected with the study of the Cuneiform Inscriptions; and, indeed, as I make no pretension myself to any extensive or critical knowledge of the Semitic languages, it can only be to my early connexion with Cuneiform decipherment and the interest which I have ever taken in the subject that I am indebted for the high honour of being called to preside over this Section. I now declare this Section to be open, and invite the members to proceed to business.

THE DYNASTY OF MEDIA.

Prof. Oppert explained his views on the second kind of trilingual inscriptions. The Persian kings wrote their architectural documents in three languages and three distinct kinds of writing, the first of which is the Old Persian, and the third the Assyrian. The second kind had been called formerly by Rawlinson, Westergaard, and De Saulcy Median, but as this language is clearly a Turanian one, and as the known geographical names of Media are almost all Aryan, Prof. Oppert proposed, in 1851, to call that kind of scriptures Scythic, and this name was adopted by Norris and Spiegel. He now confesses that this denomination was erroneous, and is now able to prove that this second kind of writing represented actually the language of the second great dynasty of Asia, called Median by the ancient writers. As Herodotus (vii. 62) states, the Medes were called formerly Arioi, and they adopted afterwards the latter name. As Mada is itself the Sumerian word signifying land, this change of name coincided exactly with a Turanian invasion. The Turanian name became a geographical one, in spite of all Aryans inhabiting the soil, and who caused the Aryan name to survive the intruded one; to-day the land has the old name of Iran. Many reasons can be given to prove that, geographically, the second kind of the trilingual inscriptions was that of Media; the metropolis Rhagae is not quoted as the "city of Media," as it occurs thus in the Persian and Assyrian texts, but the Median text says Rhagae, as it quotes simply Babylon, Arbela, Pasargada, and Ecbatana. Common sense shows that the language placed between the Persian and the Assyrian, and before the Assyrian, must be the idiom of some considerable nation or dynasty. Prof.Oppert further proves that the double names given by Herodotus and Ctesias, to the Median kings, represent the same individuals; the forms from which are derived Dijoces, Phraortes, Cyaxares, and Astyages, are the aryanizations of Turanian words; the names given by Ctesias, Artaeus, Artynes, Astibaras, and Aspadas are the Persian translations of the Median meanings. In the Behistun inscriptions the Susian names Asina, Umbadarāma, Issainsakri, are thus aryanized to Athrina, Upadarma, and Cicikhri. The two dynasties of Media and Persia were quite different in race and religion; the accession of Cyrus marks that of the Aryans and the Mazdeism.

Prof. Oppert then explained the decipherment and the grammar, which he has quite modified since the publication of Norris's book, to which he had been greatly indebted.

RESTORATION OF THE CANON BEROSUS. Prof. Oppert then unfolded his discoveries in Babylonian chronology, which fix, in an undeniable way, and in accordance with the highly valuable statement of Mr. George Smith, the commencement of the historical times of Babylon at 2517 B.C. The Chaldæans knew the period of 1805 years, or 22,325 synodical months, equal to 24,227 draconitic months, after which the eclipses return in the same order. This period is quoted in the texts of Sargon, who states its end in 712 B.C. Prof. Schrader, in his reply to Prof. Oppert, confessed this point to be unattackable.

The date of 2517 B.C. as the date of the Aryan conquest stated by Berosus is confirmed by the famous list of the same author, combined with some valuable information given by Herodotus. The real figures of the Berosian dynastic canon are thus handed down in the Armenian text of Eusebius :

1 There is not a single number invented or changed. The corrupt Armenian text gives for the Median dynasty two numbers, 234 and 224; for the second, not named, the number is wanting in the text; but a marginal note gives 48. This 48 is only 2'24 misunderstood. The reign of Semiramis is not stated. All the ancient documents give 42 years. It is easy to change numbers, but more difficult to explain those which exist. The two numbers, 234 and 224, were believed to be identical, on account of their almost equal value. It is possible that the number 224, now well confirmed, was rejected by the compiler, on account of the curious coincidence that the first two dynasties according to this computation together lasted 458 years, which is the same number of years as the third dynasty itself lasted. But these hazards abound in history. The Roman Republic and the Parthian Empire both had a duration of the Salomonian number of 480 years. The three Prussian princes, the

These 1957 years, added to 560 B.C., the date of the end of the Median empire, will give exactly 2517 B.C. for the date of the Aryan invasion. The statement is corroborated by the cuneiform inscriptions. As the capture of Susa took place in 648 B.C., the capture of Babylon by the Elamites, and the accession of this dynasty 1635 years before, falls in the year 2283 B.C., which date, added to 234 of the first dynasty, equally leads us to 2517 B.C.

The canon of Berosus, restored only so far as it was applicable to Babylon, runs thus:

Medians Elamites

Chaldæans

Arabians Semiramis Assyrians...

...

2283 2517 22832059

2059 1601 1601 1356

1356

1314 788

1314 788

(?)

Phul, the Chaldæan This date of 788 B.C., established by M. de Saulcy, for the definitive accession of Phul and Arbaces, 3 is clearly confirmed by the eponymous list, which gives for the last annual officer of Assurnirar 792 B.C., three years before the downfall of Neneve. This is, moreover, the only date possible that will agree with the Solar eclipse of 809 B.C., and the sole date reconcilable with the unimpugnable testimony of Biblical history. Prof. Oppert had no time to explain that the scanty Assyrian chronological texts can neither be understood nor interpreted without the aid of the historical texts of the kings, and that all chronology neglecting or disdaining these statements will be overthrown.

Diodorus (ii. 3) states that the Chaldæans admitted from the oldest time until Alexander, a period of more than 473,000 years to have elapsed. As the antediluvian times fill up 432,000, they admitted 41,000 years from the Deluge to Alexander. Berosus gives to the two first fabulous kings 5100, and to the other monarchs of the mythical period 34,080, together 39,180 years. From 2517 B.C. to Alexander 330 B.C. are 2187 years, in all 473,367 years. But how can the evidently cyclical number of 39,180 years be explained?

As the Babylonians knew the period of the moon, they did not ignore the so-called Sothiac period, in which time the commencement of the year of 365 days turns backwards through all seasons. This period is known to be of 1461 short, or 1460 (4 × 365) tropic years. Or, the number of 39,180 years, attributed to the first postdiluvian heroic dynasty, is nothing else but = 17,520 21,660

12 Sothiac periods of 1460 12 Lunar periods of 1805

=

39, 180 years.

In

Moreover, the Egyptian Sothiac period finishes in 139. counting backwards we arrive to the dates of 1322, 2782, 4242, 5702, 7162, 8622, 10,082, 11,542 B.C. Searching the Chaldæan lunar periods retrospectively, they give the following dates: 712, 2517 B.C., and for the mythical time 4322, 6127, 7932, 9737, 11,542 B.C.

This marvellous coincidence is not a mere hazard. Prof. Oppert did neither invent nor change a single number. The chronology of Berosus is therefore restored. The Babylonians placed the Deluge in the year 41,697 B.C. Whether they are right or not, Prof. Oppert said he was not competent to decide. In all cases the reader can take for granted that the date of 11,512 B.C. reposes on a real historical tradition, and that the two periods, the Chaldæan moon period and the Sothiac period (whether it was Egyptian or not), have the same origin. Prof. Oppert, by mathematical calculation, fixes the date of a double phenomenon which struck the sight of men, consisting in an eclipse and in an apparition of Sirius, on Tuesday, 27th of April, Julian, or the 28th of January, Gregorian. But as at this epoch Sirius was not visible to Northern or Middle Egypt, on account of the equinoctial precession, civilization must start from a more southern point. This, to say the truth, adds Prof. Oppert, is a mere hypothesis, and he trusts that further investigation will either confirm or deny this special view of his.

PROF. OPPERT also read the following paper:

ALL chronologists formerly admitted, upon the authority of Symplicius, in his commentary on Aristotle de coelo, that Callisthenes sent to Aristotle the Babylonian observations during 1903 years, viz. from the beginning of Babylonian history. This number of 1903 has been employed by Prof. von Gutschmidt in a system of chronology in which this scholar attempted to show that the real system of the Chaldæans consisted merely in the supposition that between the Deluge and Cyrus 36,000 years were elapsed. But the number itself is a forgery of the Latin translation of Symplicius made by the Aldi, and the original number is not 1903, but 31,000 years. Now, Dr. Oppert proves that the erroneous opinion of Prof. von Gutschmidt is much older than this scholar, and comes perhaps from the middle ages; it is based on the 46th chapter of Isaiah.

*

It is highly probable that the true number was 41,000, and that this famous statement is nothing else but identical with that of Diodorus.

The pious substitution of 1903 for 31,000 results from the opinion that Cyrus began a new era for the Babylonians, which the documents prove to be quite inadmissible. Cyrus was a Babylonian king of Babylon, as Cambyses was an Egyptian king of Egypt.

Here is the arithmetical proof: Admit that from the Deluge to Cyrus there are 36,000 years, there will be 36,208 from the Deluge to Alexander (538-330-208). Then the corrupt text of Syncellus assigns the 34,090 years to the mythical period, and 215 from thence to Semiramis; that is, 34.305 years from the Deluge to Semiramis. Now the difference of 36,208 and 34,305, or the time elapsed between Semiramis and Alexander, is 1903 years. It is impossible, in consequence, to deny that the idea of Prof. Gutschmidt existed in the time of the Aldi; but, also, the forgery overthrows his system.

Dr. Oppert has furnished the proofs on which he founds his chronological ideas in a work called Palaea.

THE Rev. G. C. Geldart endeavoured to show: I. That the Assyrian formation in -ku, as dabsaku "I ripen," sarraku "I am king," had been only partially understood by the two sets of grammarians who had treated of it. On the one hand, the Revs. Dr. Hincks and Mr. Sayce had described it as a verb, because in it (as in dabsaku) the first personal pronoun is attached, after contraction, to a verbal base; on the other, Prof. Oppert and Prof. Schrader refused to call it a verb, because in sarraku the pronoun is affixed to a substantive. Mr. Geldart desired to reconcile these opposite statements by admitting the correctness of each, so far as it went; and supposing the query-whether the form might not have originated with substantival, and afterwards been extended to verbal, bases? But since the comparative antiquity of the inscriptions negatives the idea that sarraku is earlier than dabsaku, he proposed a broader definition of the usage of the afformative -ku, viz. that during the whole Assyrio-Babylonian period of Semitic, this affix was capable of attaching itself indifferently to verbal, adjectival, substantival-in short, to any bases susceptible of inflexion at all.

II. The probability was then pointed out that the ku form in Assyrian, corresponding as it does with that of the first person of the Ethiopic perfect, as gabar-ku "I made," was really the first member of the Semitic perfect in, as it were, an embryonic condition; i.e. as having acquired the form, though not the power, of a past tense. Because the strong similarity of the Ethiopic perfect as a whole with the same tense in the cognates, is unmistakable; and hence this ku form, itself identical with the Ethiopic ku, passes by means of the latter,

into a chain of connexion with the parallel forms elsewhere in Semitic. Assyrian dabsaku "I ripen," and Hebrew davashti "I softened," differ therefore only as foetus and infant, i.e. merely in stages of existence, but constitute one word.

III. It was then shown that in Chaldee, and even in Hebrew, there were instances of a similar combination of personal pronouns with verbal bases into a kind of tense; and that in Syriac, not only might dabsaku be compared with qotelno "I kill," but sarraku with malkono (John) "I am king." Hence this Assyrian inflexion, in its largest usage, was by no means unsupported by Semitic analogies.

IV. General Reflections. Our conclusions are suggestive of thoughts not uninteresting to the student of mind and of language. We are admitted as it were to attend upon the genesis of a tense. The recent Syriac formation unveils for us the primitive Assyrian process whereby in the early Semitic period, the form of the perfect was originated, though as yet unendowed with its peculiar powers. Then, in later days, the newer language, in want of a present, revives the archaic expedient of tense-making by means of pronominal afformatives consciously affixed. Again, how slowly the distinctions of time were evolved in the Semitic mind, we discern in the absence of any definite past tense in the oldest Semitic language. And how far inward conceptions may lag behind outward development, we learn from the fact that the Assyrian, with his high proficiency in science, mechanical and military, and his great attainments in art pictorial and scriptorial, left posterity to elaborate the distinction between history and prophecy."

IN opening the Turanian Section, it may be well to define its limits. I have been asked again and again what is meant by the term Turanian. I may, therefore, say that Turán originally referred to the countries bordering on ancient Persia. To the Aryan dweller in Persia, whatever was not Irán was Turán, and all foreigners were Turiyán or Turanees; but in early times of limited intercourse these terms were virtually restricted to the neighbouring countries on the north

and east of Persia-the Scythia of the Greeks. The Chevalier Bunsen, in a Report on the Results of Egyptian Researches in reference to Asiatic and African Ethnology, presented to the British Association at Oxford, in 1847, proposed to include under the term Turanian all languages of Europe and Asia which are neither Semitic nor Aryan. And in this sense it has been adopted by the organizers of the Congress.

Thus extended, the Section has to deal with a great variety