Page:An Essay on the Age and Antiquity of the Book of Nabathaean Agriculture.djvu/109

Rh libraries, in Greek no less than in Arabic manuscripts, contain considerable fragments of Nabathæan literature. I will only offer one example, because it presents the singular instance of a discovery made with extraordinary penetration, by a scholar of the great French school of the early part of the seventeenth century, and which, buried in oblivion for nearly two hundred years, has acquired an unexpected importance from the researches of modern criticism. In the preface to his treatise, De Annis Climactericis et Antiqua Astrologia (Leyde, 1648), Salmasius, after having quoted Tenkelúshá according to Nasireddín Tousi, adds: “ autem sive Tenkelus ille Babylonius quem memorat Nasirodinus, is omnino est qui Græcis vocatur, et fortasse in scriptis Græcorum perperam hodie legitur  pro, idque deflexum ex illo nomine Babylonio Tenclus. Nisi sit verius Græcos ad nomen sibi familiare propter adfinitatem soni vocabulum