that of the drill-bore (the terebra and rota of Pliny) are here traceable. The manual part of the engraver's work, as far as can now be seen, appears to have been performed by mere dint of friction-perhaps with fractured and cut diamonds, adamantine spar, or other exceedingly hard substance, with small aid of mechanism in its mode of application. Even the longitudinal perforation of this stone agrees to the above account; for it is not straight, and is but inartificially performed. If this gem has ever been mounted with metal, according to the general hypothesis of my letter to Sir Joseph Banks, that metal, can only have been introduced at either end, penetrating perhaps half or two thirds of an inch, without passing through the signet.-But, on further reflection, I rather think that the more ancient mode of portability, was attachment by means of thongs or other strings, to the walking staves of their respective possessors.

I think so, not only from careful inspection of the cylinders, and from reflecting on the great difference in dimensions, weight, and apparent age, between the largest and the smallest; but also from recollecting that both Herodotus and the writer of Genesis, speak of the signets and walkingstaves, or sceptres, conjunctively. In Clio, cxcv. Herodotus writes as mentioned in my first essay, that every Babylonian possesses a signet and walking staff, or sceptre; and I observe that Dr. Geddes has rendered Genesis, xxxviii. 18, &c. "What pledge shall I give thee? Thy signet, said she, with thy riband and the staff that is in thine hand:" and again in verse 26, he makes Tamar say, "Discern I pray thee to whom belong this signet, riband, and staff." The mention of the riband-which I could almost venture, in controvertence to my authorities, to call a thong* -seems to be introduced with no other view than as the connecting ligament between the signet and staff: Why else should it have been mentioned?-Indeed if the signets with which patriarchal shepherds travelled on foot in the land of Canaan, were three inches in circumference and two in length, like that which is here under notice, I don't know a

*This word, (Pathil) in the original, should be enshrined by the scholars of the Bryant school, among the glorious uncertainties of ancient literature. It is rendered riband, by Geddes; a cord, or twisted string, or a tape, by Gussetius; cloak, or "tire of thine head," in the old translations of King James's time; and by Bellamy; and in the common version-bracelets !

I

less inconvenient way of carrying them about, than by attaching them to staves or sceptres, in the manner in which we see in old pictures, small cruses suspended to the walking-staves of pilgrims.

The further and the more accurately we carry our retrospections into the motives and details of this hasty and imprudent transaction, the more does the local custom, and the meaning of the passage with regard to the mode of portability of the more ancient Sabæan signets, disclose itself; and the less susceptible does it appear of any other. No woman under such circumstances as Tamar, far less one allied to the patriarchal race, would have required a walking staff, much less a pair of "bracelets," in addition to an article so valuable as an engraved gem-as a pledge for a kid; and no foot-traveller on a journey, would have parted with his staff, had that and the signet been already separate, or easily separable; but would rather have replied, No,-I want my staff to protect and assist me on my journey, and the signet alone is of far more value than a kid: -In short, it is almost impossible to conceive that the trivial riband and staff would have been mentioned at all, had they not been connected with the signet. The way-faring genial impulses of Judah, appear to have been pretty much like those of other men, with the generality of whom upon such occasions, the most prompt preliminaries find a ready preference.

The observations of Bishop Newton on the sceptre of Judah, may here be referred to with some advantage. In the Hebrew language (as in the Greek of Herodotus) the same word (Shebet) signified both sceptre and staff, "particularly (says the Bishop) the rod or staff which belonged to each tribe as an ensign of their authority." The magiste

* Dissertations on the Prophecies, vol. i. p. 52, Svo. edit. Parkhurst's explanation of the word is virtually the same. See Heb. Lexicon, 6th edit. p. 713. He adds that "each tribe of Israel had this ensign of authority belonging to them." We might perhaps have supposed the engraving on the signet, to have been itself the distinctive mark of each particular tribe; but that Herodotus seems to bar this supposition when he states that every Babylonian sceptre was headed with a pomegranate, an eagle, a lily, or some other carved ornament; to use a sceptre without which, was unlawful. I assume here that the Babylonian and Hebrew customs, being the same, were of the same remote Assyrian origin.

rial staff of each of the Hebrew tribes, then, must have been distinguished from an ordinary walking stick, by some (ath) or mark bringing to mind the magisterial authority of the head or leader of the tribe; and though in the days of Judah and Tamar, the Hebrew tribes were but beginning to sprout from the parent stock, yet the Shebet of Judah himself, probably bore that mark which afterward distinguished his tribethe sign of the tribe being taken from the signet of the patriarch. It is not improbable that the zodiacal Lion, of which (as the future pages of this work will shew) the Chaldean cylinders afford several repetitions, is the scriptural "Lion of Judah”—the same which he bore on his signet, forming either the whole or part of its device, assumed, or ordained, at first perhaps for no other reason than because he was born under the sign Leo, it being the ancient usage of his Chaldean ancestry, to pledge themselves by their native stars--by those stars which were honoured by the presence of Baål, or which were ascending from the horizon, at the times of their respective births: hence probably the allusions to the Lion in that part of the death-bed prophecy of Jacob, which concerns his son Judah; hence too that self-opinion which supported the royal and warlike character by which the tribe of Judah was in after-ages distinguished.

I remember to have heard you say that, after a shower of rain, those who inhabit the neighbourhood of the Babylonian "heaps," walk forth to look for gems among the crumbled fragments of the ruined edifices of that great metropolis, which gems, after such rain-falls, and whilst they remain wet, glisten with their native colours and-more especially such as are translucent, with some portion of "their original brightness." Happy for the public had it been, my friend, if the long-wished-for shower of words from your pen, had in like manner, washed off from them the metaphorical dirt and rubbish which have hitherto obscured all monuments of this description: but, since you have consigned this first cleansing to my best endeavours; and since it is the glow-worm light which streams from these "stones of fire" upon the early scriptural writings, which so considerably enhances their value with all lovers of truth;

I must here beg leave to recal, for a moment, the more critical attention of my readers, to that passage of the second Commandment to which I have slightly adverted in my last: namely, that which expressly prohibited among the children of Israel, the existence of graven images as objects of adoration.

We are to recollect, that when this remarkable prohibition was uttered -when each of the descendants of Abraham was expressly restricted from making unto himself any graven image-they were in the very process of becoming a distinct people; that the Decalogue was the divine mandate and means which was to effect this entire and lasting separation from all other nations; and that previous to this, the Hebrews may be presumed, like their Assyrian ancestors, each to have possessed his signet. The every-day manner in which the signet of Judah is introduced in Genesis, so entirely accords with the mention by Herodotus that every Assyrian possessed a signet and walking-staff, that it would be over scrupulous not to believe that the Abrahamic family were, with regard to this customary article of personal property-this usual pledge to the honourable fulfilment of a contract-like those of their Sabæan neighbours with whom they were in constant intercourse. Judah travelled thus with his staff and signet to a sheep-shearing, where such pastoral business as the exchange of fleeces, or sheep, for other species of property, was not unlikely to be transacted, and his signet might for this purpose be wanted or it might be wanted to consecrate a customary sacrifice. But from the time of the promulgation of the Commandments, the Jews were thenceforth and for ever, to separate themselves from those, who, by mistaking concomitancy for causation, had fallen into the fatal error,-in which superstitious habits, and the long established custom of their ancestry, had but too strongly confirmed them-of worshipping, each his patron constellations, and of considering those constellations, with perhaps, "Remphan the star of Israel," as the presiding governors of his conduct, and arbiters of his destiny.

From all observances of this nature, the Hebrews were now to be weaned and withheld: and hence the wise interdiction by the Decalogue of the ordinary means of temptation and vehicle of crime.

In the Moreh Nevochim of Maimonides,* we read that, among the laws of Moses, were several which God caused to be promulgated, in order to restrain the Israelites from their propensities to the more ancient Sabæan worship. If the learned Rabbi is here guiding the perplexed in the right direction; among those restrictive laws must doubtless have been, "Thou shalt not make to thyself (that is for each man to possess as his own pe culiar property) any graven image: not the likeness of any thing in heaven above; or on the earth beneath; or in the waters under the earth.” -The awful threat which could not fail to operate as a most powerful inducement follows-"Thou shalt not bow down to them, nor worship them, for I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the sins," &c. The reason for mentioning in this prohibitory law, heaven, earth, and the waters, I conceive to have been-not that the host or mass of the Israelites knew, or were supposed to know, aught of the immortal inhabitants of heaven, but-because, long before this miraculous era, the Chephenes, or astronomical priesthood, in forming the celestial asterisms; had-chimerically, as it would appear to us at first sight; but not on second thought, at this vast distance of time and place,-combined fishes, with beasts, birds, and the human form: so as to constitute those Minotauric, and Dagon-like, Andro-sphinges; (to use a term of Herodotus,) and other monstrous combinations, which Berosus describes to have been represented within the recesses of the great Babylonian temple; and which we also find sculptured on some of those cylinders which are about to become the subjects of our critical inspection.

Presuming that preliminary matters are at length sufficiently clear, and that some degree of curiosity has been excited; and hoping that I shall have done something towards assisting the reader in the connexion of general historical considerations, with the particular facts which we

*Part I. Dean Prideaux observes on this passage, that among the opponents of the Rabbi have been those who argued that the Sabæans were an inconsiderable sect, and that consequently it was not likely that God should have ordained laws in opposition to their rites and ceremonies: but this the learned Rabbi confutes, maintaining-satisfactorily in the opinion of our profound countryman-that notwithstanding they were in his time reduced to an inconsiderable number, yet that the Sabæans of old consisted of nearly all the nations of the earth.