Page:Palestine Exploration Fund - Quarterly Statement for 1894.djvu/332

Rh moment he mentioned it to me, he has always "derived" it from a root nâtsaq with which yâtsag would be connected.

2em

The elaborate report of the late Professor W. Robertson Smith on this weight has a melancholy interest from its having been one of the last pieces of work to which that distinguished scholar set his hand.

Although apparently drawn up with much care it appears to me that there are in it some important mistakes, and respecting these I would beg to offer the following remarks.

1. Whilst allowing that the object itself and the much-worn inscription on it are ancient, the Professor found it difficult to believe that the less-worn inscription "can be anything but a modern forgery." If this is so, the weight must first have been found, then have passed into the hands of some clever scoundrel who cut, or got someone else to cut, a new inscription on it, and then have been handed to an ignorant peasant boy who sold it to a passing traveller for a silver mejidie, or 3s. 4d. Is this at all probable? Where was the profit to come from? What could have been the inducement? The weight would have sold as well without the second line of inscription as with it.

2. If Professor Smith was right in supposing that "the inscriptions on the two sides of the weight are not of the same date" (which I am not prepared to admit), it nevertheless appears to me that the weight was in use long after the second inscription was made, for the edges of the letters are certainly worn and rounded by use. This is particularly observable in the third letter from the right—the 'ain.

3. The suggestion that the less-worn inscription "exhibits a different and inferior technique" has occasioned me considerable surprise. I can discover no indication of this. If the "uncertain hand" which cut the (so-called) second inscription "could not keep a single direction truly" neither could the hand which executed the first. On this latter the first stroke of the second letter from the right is unnecessarily prolonged upwards as a fine shallow groove with a slight curve—obviously a slip of the tool—and the vertical stroke of the last letter on this side is not straight and could not, in my judgment, have been "effected by a clean and uniform saw cut." It looks as if a cut sloping very slightly downwards towards the left had first been made and, being not quite right, had been remedied by a vertical cut which left ever so little a projection of the first cut on its right side. On the less-worn inscription slips of the tool may be observed (1) below the horizontal stroke of the second letter (from the right), and (2) on the right side of the lower part of the upright (last) stroke of the fifth letter. None of these slip strokes are straight.