Economy of miracle being a known law of Providence, the consideration just noticed supplies a strong presumption in favour of the idea, that the people of Shinar were comparatively unaffected by the judgment; and, consequently, that, in the land of Shinar we may, not unreasonably, expect to find one of the least adulterated relics of the primeval tongue. * But

"Those who have studied the subject with most care (and I would particularly instance M. Botta, the discoverer of the Nineveh marbles) have arrived at the conviction, that all the inscriptions in the complicated cuneiform character do, in reality belong to one alphabetical system; and they further believe the variations which are perceptible in the different modes of writing to be analogous, in a general measure, to the varieties of hand and text, which characterize the graphic and glyphic arts of the present day."

"The Babylonian is unquestionably the most ancient of the three great classes of cuneiform writing. It is well known, that legends in this character are stamped upon the bricks, which are excavated from the foundations of all the buildings in Mesopotamia, Babylon, and Chaldæa, that possess the highest and most authentic claims to antiquity; and it is hardly extravagant, therefore, to assign its invention to the primitive race which settled in the plains of Shinar."— Rawlinson, ap. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. x. part 1., Prelim. Rem., p. 20.

"The complicated cuneiform character may, I think, be divided into three distinct groups: - Babylonian, Assyrian, and Elymæan; and the two former of these groups will again admit of subdivision into minor branches. Of the Babylonian, there are only two marked varieties; the character of the cylinders may be considered as the type of the one, that of the third column of the trilingual [triliteral?] inscriptions of Persia of the other. The former is, probably, the primitive cuneiform alphabet. It is, also, of extensive application: it is found upon the bricks which compose the foundations of the primæval cities of Shinar; at Babylon, at Erech, at Accad, and at Calneh; and, if the Birsi-Nimrúd be admitted to represent the tower of Babel, an identification which is sup

a Compare Rich's Babylon and Persepolis, pp. 183-185.

the rise of the Assyrian Empire, (the oldest in the world,) in this very land, would naturally diffuse, both its spoken, and its written language: a presumption fully borne out by the phenomenon of those very singular characters, originating doubtless in Assyria, but used in common by the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Medes, and the Persians, in after times. For whatever the cir cumstancial differences in this whole class of characters, it is beyond rational doubt that they are of one family, and traceable to one stock.

Pliny, who regards alphabetic characters as coeval with time, and, consequently, as co-existent with mankind, has recorded his opinion (an opinion unconsciously tallying with the Scriptural account of the first post-diluvian settlement), that AsSYRIA was their birth-place : "literas semper arbitror Assyrias fuisse."*

A judgment so consonant with Scripture history, from so high a heathen authority, would naturally have directed attention, after the revival of letters in Europe, had those remote parts been then accessible, to "the plain of Shinar;" and to the recovery of any relics of Assyrian

ported, not merely by the character of the monument, but by the universal belief of the early Talmudists, it must, in the substructure of that edifice, embody the vernacular dialect of Shinar, at the period when the earth was of one language, and of one speech.' Rawlinson, ubi supra, p. 22. * Hist. Nat. Lib, vii. cap. lvii.

characters which, possibly, might still exist, whether at the seat of empire, or in its provinces. It was not, however, until a comparatively recent period, that those characters appear, for the first time, to have met the eye of the European traveller. And Sir John Chardin, in the 17th century, seems first to have brought home a specimen or two; and Dr. Shaw and Niebuhr, in the 18th, to have been the first to copy any of the few larger inscriptions.

If the novelty of these characters served to stimulate the curiosity of the learned, their strangeness would appear to have effectually repelled investigation. They were sonorously denominated, indeed, in terms, to unlearned readers, almost as enigmatical as themselves, clavi-formed, or nail-headed, cludi-formed, or key-headed, cuneiform, or wedge-shaped, from supposed resemblance to one or other of those implements, or conceived derivation from them. While the only sensible and significant name and origin, early and judiciously assigned in the term arrowheaded, has been of late capriciously laid aside, in favour of the unmeaning denomination from the wedge. The forms themselves, however, to the common eye, most plainly represent barbed arrow-heads and javelin-heads intermixed*, the

* See the engraving facing this page, and the engraving facing