TABLE OF CHRONOLOGY.

161

Elizabeth's old "Consent of Scripture"" are the lights of the narrations of the Bible, and are registered so profitably that it should be blasphemy to affirm any one of them idle." Yet how are these lost by the wilful variations of the chronology of the Septuagint translation!

We subjoin a table of Archbishop Usher's chronology up to the death of Moses, calculated by the verbal statements of the Hebrew Bible, to enable every careful reader of these pages to reckon easily the possible juxtaposition of the patriarchal lives.

TABLE OF ARCHBISHOP USHER'S CHRONOLOGY.

162

THE BOOK OF THE DESERT.

May a diligent recurrence to the Hebrew dates tend to lead our readers to a fresh delight in the Book of Job, the true "book of the Chronicles" of this early time, which gathers together all the knowledge of God inherited by the men of the Arabian desert. What light does that book throw on the ethnological records of Genesis? "The Desert of Sinai," by Dr. Bonar, gives a fair introduction to its beauties. He says:

"There is no book in the Bible which so necessarily requires illustration from desert scenes and desert customs as does that of Job; and for the reader who has dwelt for a few weeks among these, this book assumes a double interest and attraction. Two or three times in the course of every chapter he lights upon words, figures, and allusions which seem robbed of half their point and power when interpreted in connection with European or even with Syrian ways, and laws, and scenery.

"From the first chapter to the last, the Book of Job is the book of the tent and the desert, as truly as Ecclesiastes is the book of the palace, Proverbs the book of the city, Canticles the book of the garden, Romans the book of the forum, Hebrews the book of the altar, and the Apocalypse the book of the temple."

MR. FORSTER'S RESEARCHES.

163

CHAPTER VII.

THE STONES OF ARABIA, ANOTHER READING.

AL KASWINI'S KEY-MR. FORSTER'S

FRIENDS-INSCRIPTION ON HISN GHORAB-THE TRIBE OF AD-THE MUSNAD-MR. FORSTER'S ALPHABET -THE PASS OF HAGAR-THE SECOND POEM-DATES ON INSCRIPTIONS— THE DYKE OF MAREB-ARABIAN PRINCESS'S EPITAPH-JOB'S DESCRIPTION OF THE PRICE OF WISDOM-THE EKKILI-ETHIOPIC ALPHABET -TABLE OF MR. MOON'S CHINESE AND ARABIC ALPHABET3 -BIBLE FOR THE BLIND-THE FRUITS IN ARABIA AND CHINA.

N the last chapter we collected, as we imagine, all the present information on the subject of Himyaritic inscriptions, which will be considered authentic by some of our readers; but whatever be the date of the most recently discovered tablets and stones, it cannot be denied that this subject conducts us to very ancient associations, for we have gone back to Noah,-and the leap into the "mystical" will not be so great if we now venture to present Mr. Forster's researches concerning the Rock of Hisn Ghorab. By a different alphabet, and with what he calls "Al Kaswînî's key," he has obtained results which are certainly much more "telling" than those of Fresnel; and, notwithstanding the storm of prejudice which for a dozen years has burst upon his devoted head, he has now published two new books on this his favourite subject, and continues to maintain his ground.

The Rev. Charles Forster, B.D. is no unknown novice;

164

HIS FRIENDS AND DEFENDERS.

his "Mahometanism Unveiled," and his "Geography of Arabia," had long been considered standard works; yet, for the sake of strangers to his writings, it is perhaps necessary to mention that his "Voice of Israel" has been so marked by the ban of modern scholars that many have been prevented from reading it. Yet he is a man of deep learning and piety. One of the six preachers of Canterbury cathedral, and Rector of Stisted, Essex, he was the intimate friend of Bishop Jebb, and presents his readers with an autograph attestation of the interest of the late Archbishop Howley in all that he advances; Lord Lyndhurst, no mean judge of evidence, was on his side; also Lord Harrowby and Sir R. H. Inglis. These may be mentioned as well known names; the research must stand on its own merits, and with Mr. Forster it is no mere question. of literature. He is truly a defender of the faith against the rationalistic tendencies of the age, and the investigations on which he has bestowed an earnest life are well worth some of the time which is often unsparingly lavished on lighter topics; though, perhaps, we may admit that the enthusiastic way in which he announced his discovery of the Sinaitic alphabet has aided to prejudice the cool heads of those who merely open and skim his book, and laugh at his superstructure as "too good to be true," without patience to examine his arguments.*

When Mr. Forster first heard of the inscription on the Rock of Hisn Ghorab, he was employed upon "The Geography of Arabia," for which he had had occasion to consult old Arabic authorities, among others, Schultens. The tidings of Captain Haines's in

*See "The Voice of Israel on the Rocks of Sinai," 1852; and "Sinai Photographed," 1862. Richard Bentley, New Burlington Street.

POEM ON HISN GHORAB.

165

scription, reported in the travels of Wellsted, recalled to his memory a rare tract of Schultens-whose title was "Monumenta Vetustiora Arabia," which spoke of engraved marbles among ruined towers in Hadramaut, near the Emporium of Aden. On reference to that work, he found mentioned two most ancient poems, discovered by Abderrahman, viceroy of Yemen,

between the fortieth and fiftieth

years of the Hegira, or about A.D. 660-670. Schultens had taken his information from the "Cosmography of Al Kaswînî," a far earlier writer, who had declared, that when Abderrahman discovered the inscriptions, the fortress had laid long in ruins, and also that the Arabs of the seventh century of our era referred the poems to the times of the Adites (their heroic age). These Arabs were able to translate the inscriptions, though in their ancient character, and Al Kaswînî, who wrote in the fourteenth century, gives the translation in the Arabic of the seventh. We here present the first four lines of the poem in its original characters, and add the proposed decipherment of the whole, by Mr. Forster, as translated from Schultens' Arabic and Latin.

WITT∙IXETE ID3A HYLITY [LI÷FYSHIS∙ISI HA HLA! X