Page:Palestine Exploration Fund - Quarterly Statement for 1894.djvu/330

284 founder of Jebus was, beyond all question, a keen Tartan in preferring even a little water to high rocks.

Jerusalem has been besieged at least twenty-seven times, and only in one instance is any mention made of even a temporary scarcity of water. Vegetius well observed, "Difficile sitis vicit, qui quamvis exiguâ, aquâ ad potum tamen tantum in obsidione sunt usi."



the Quarterly Statement for last July the correspondence which appeared in the Academy on Dr. Chaplin's weight is printed without the replies of Mr. Tyler and myself to Professor Robertson Smith. Had they been given it would have been seen (1) that I have never said that netseg was "derived" from yâtsag; (2) that the explanation of netseg is due to Dr. Neubauer and not to myself; and (3) that Dr. Neubauer's reference of it to yâtsag is not "a grammatical blunder."

As, however, I have been compelled to write again on the subject, I take the opportunity of commenting on Professor Robertson Smith's letter, which my absence in Nubia prevented me from doing last winter. Firstly, as to the word on the "bead" found at Jerusalem. The Professor wished to make it instead of, though he confessed that with this reading he could not explain the word. My experience of Phœnician graffiti leads me still to maintain that the last letter is "certainly" not but, and that the word accordingly must be netseg.

Secondly, as to the weight itself. I gather from the Professor's communication that although he began his examination of the inscription with a prejudice against my reading, he was eventually forced to come round to it; but, in order to get rid of the obnoxious shel "of" he took refuge in the desperate conjecture that stood for ! The idea that the inscriptions on the two sides of the weight aie of different age and authorship, seems to me, I confess, to be preposterous. I have handled a good many Oriental seals and cylinders, and have never seen a clearer case of identity as regards both the form and the weathering of the letters. The only difference between the inscriptions is that one of them has been worn more than the other, probably owing to the weight having been usually laid on the side on which it occurs. And as Professor Robertson Smith himself acknowledged, unless my reading is adopted the inscription makes no sense. But ancient writers were not in the habit of engraving nonsense, whether on weights or on anything else.

[The letters referred to by Professor Sayce as having been omitted in the correspondence reprinted by us are the following.—] 