Page:Palestine Exploration Fund - Quarterly Statement for 1894.djvu/267

Rh matters, were good enough to compare the cast with the original in the disputed place, and could detect no failure in the reproduction. Of course, the metal cast cannot perfectly represent the texture of the stone surface, and the lines are not always quite so sharp as in the original, but they are all there.

It is not asserted that there is any difference between the lines on the cast and those on the original, except in the place where Professor Sayce reads and Professor Euting cannot read that word; and as five witnesses are agreed against Professor Sayce in saying that they can see on the cast every line that appears on the original, it seems reasonable to conclude that Professor Euting with the cast, and Professor Sayce with the original, really saw the same lines, but interpreted them differently. In point of fact, neither the cast nor the original shows a complete Old Hebrew (which would have, approximately, the shape of an English W), but certain detached pieces, which must be prolonged and connected by imaginary lines before we can get out of them the one letter  which Professor Sayce desires, or the two distinct letters  which Professor Euting suggests as possible. When it comes to filling up the missing parts of letters which either were imperfectly formed from the first, or have been partly defaced by wearing, the question is not one of pure eyesight, but of eyesight and judgment combined. And here the man who has the original before him has undoubtedly a great advantage over him who uses the cast, for he is in a much better position to judge how far defacing by attrition has been carried. Professor Eating's conjecture that the place where Professor Sayce reads may originally have contained three letters, corresponding to the  or  on the other side, implies an amount of wearing sufficient to obliterate entirely several of the principal lines. But the sharpness and depth of the lines that remain, and especially the sharp definition of their terminations, together with the absence of any trace, however faint, of lost lines, appear to be fatal to this hypothesis; and I am confident that Professor Euting would never have advanced it had the original lain before him. Whether Professor Sayce's is more defensible is a question that cannot be answered without going into somewhat complicated details. The of his  seems to me to be clear enough both in the cast and in the original. Moreover, the cutting is deep and clear, showing that in this place there has been very little wearing (as might indeed be expected, since the point of the spindle would naturally be less worn than the middle), so that it is out of the question to suppose that any material part of the letter has disappeared. If it is not a it is not a letter at all. But as regards the shin (which I again ask the reader to think of as an English W), the facts are not so favourable to Professor Sayce. The two middle lines of the W are there, no doubt, and to the right of them there is a detached stroke which would do very well for the right-hand stroke of the W if only it were connected instead of detached. One might