INSCRIPTIONS IN BOOKS.
(Vol. vii. passim.)
Under this head the following translation of part of the inscription at Behistun may be classed. It is, I apprehend, the earliest of this sort of inscription:
"Darius rex dicit: si hanc tabulam, hasque effigies spectas, et iis injuriam facias, et quamdiu tibi proles sit non eas conserves, Oromasdes hostis fiat tibi, et tibi proles non sit, et quod facias id tibi Oromasdes frustretur."
See Rawlinson's "Translation of the Great Persian Inscription at Behistun," par. 17. Asiatic Society's Transactions.
The following is an extract from Maitland's Dark Ages, p. 270., notes 3 and 4:
"Terrible imprecations were occasionally annexed by the donors or possessors of books; as in a sacramentary which Mastene found at St. Benoit sur Loire, and which he supposed to belong to the ninth century. 'Ut si quis eum de Monasterio aliquo ingenio non redditurus abstraxerit cum Juda proditore, Anna et Caipha, portionem æternæ damnationis accipiat. Amen, Amen, Fiat, Fiat.'"
There is a curious instance of this in a manuscript of some of the works of Augustine and Ambrose in the Bodleian Library:
"Liber S. Mariæ de Ponte Roberti, qui eum abstulerit, aut vendiderit, vel quolibet modo ab hâc domo absciderit, sit anathema maranatha. Amen."
In another hand (alienâ manu),—
"Ego Johannes Exōn Epūs, nescio ubi est domus predicta, nec hunc librum abstuli, sed modo legitimo adquisivi."
Also page 283.:
"Liber B. Mariæ de Camberone: si quis eum abstulerit, anathema esto."
In the preface to a late publication (1853), Fragments of the Iliad of Homer from a Syrian Palimpsest, edited by William Cureton, the editor tells us:
"The Palimpsest Manuscript, in which I discovered these fragments of a very ancient copy of the Iliad of Homer, formed a part of the library of the Syrian convent of St. Mary Deipara, in the Valley of the Ascetics, or the Deserts of Nigritia. On the first page of the last leaf the following notice occurs: 'This volume of my Lord Severus belongs to the reverend and holy my Lord Daniel, Bishop of the province of Orrhoa (Edessa), who acquired it from the armour of God, when he was down in the province of the city of Amida, for his own benefit, and that of every one that readeth it. But under the curse of God is he whosoever steals it, or hides or removes it ... or tears, or erases, or cuts off this memorial from it, for ever. And through our Lord Jesus Christ may he who readeth it pray for the same Daniel, that he may find mercy in the day of judgment! Yea, and Amen, and Amen. And upon the sinner who wrote it, may there be mercy in the day of judgment! Amen. But at the end of his life he bequeathed it to this sacred convent of my Lord Silas, which is in Tarug (a city of Mesopotamia), for the sake of the remembrance of himself and of the dead belonging to him. May the Lord have mercy upon him in the day of judgment! Amen. Whosoever removeth this volume from this same convent, may the anger of the Lord overtake him in both worlds to all eternity! Amen.'"
Anon.
In some of Dugdale's MS. volumes in this College is the following, written by himself:
"Maledictus sit qui abstulerit."
Thomas W. King, York Herald.
College of Arms.