[148] Ritter (p. 31), where he mentions that Sinai appears almost simultaneously, as Serbâl, with the Egyptian Cosmas, and as Gebel Mûsa with the Byzantine Procopius, broaches another conjecture, which I shall here quote:—“Was there, perhaps,” says he, “a different tradition or party opinion prevailing in Constantinople and Alexandria on this point among the convents and the monks, which might have arisen from a jealousy to vindicate the more sacred character of one or other of the places? It is curious that at the same time such different views of the question should exist among the most learned theologians of their time.”
[149] This letter, which is here printed word for word, was addressed to the General-Director der K. Preuss. Museen, Herr Geh. Legations-Rath von Olfers. Perhaps its publication may serve at the same time to spread abroad a just respect for the principles on which the Egyptian Museum, that part of one of the most grand and newest creations of Berlin first accessible to the public, has been erected and decorated.
[150] [This might, not without some reason, be considered to assimilate with the style of painting which has lately made its appearance in England as a school—I refer to the pre-Raphaelite, which, whatever its own intrinsic merits may be,—and those, I suspect, are very few,—will at least have one good effect, that of calling the attention of English painters to the individualities in their paintings, and obviating the slurring sketchy style so prevalent at the present time, the upholders of which, after all, are the persons who condemn the pre-Raphaelites. The remarks of Dr. Lepsius will therefore apply to this new school of painting.—K. R. H. M.]
[151] [The Cheta are generally considered to be the Hittites.—K. R. H. M.]
[152] [Exodus, i. 11.—K. R. H. M.]
[153] It must be from some error that Burckhardt (Travels in Syria, p. 5) only allows the grave of Noah a length of ten feet, although the same number recurs in Schubert (Reise in das Morgenland, Bd. III., p. 340). It is well known how continually the number forty is used by the Hebrews as an indefinite number. The same seems to have been peculiar to all Semitic nations, at least, it may be pointed out frequently, and at all times with the Phænicians and Arabs; the numeral word for four and forty itself points, in these languages, to the general idea of multitude. Cf. my Treatise on Philological Comparison (“Sprachvergleichende Abhandlungen,”) Berlin, 1836, pp. 104, 139, and the “Chronology of the Egyptians,” vol. i. p. 15.
[154] See V. Hammer, History of the Osmanli Empire, part II. p. 482.
[155] Cf. Krafft, the Topography of Jerusalem, Bonn, 1846, and Plate II. No. 33.
[156] The king represented here is explained by Rawlinson (a Commentary on the Cuneiform Inscriptions of Babylonia and Assyria, London, 1850, p. 70,) to be the son of the builder of Khorsabad, Bel-Adonim-Sha. The same king is found on the buildings of Kuyunjik, Nebbi Yûnas, and Mossul, according to Layard, (Nineveh, vol. ii. p. 142, 144,) who, (p. 400), conjectures that the monument from Cyprus, now in the Berlin Museum, also belongs to him. (Cf. Bonomi, Nineveh and its Palaces, London, 1852, p. 127.)
[157] [Hesych. οὐραγίαν, τὴν ὄπισθεν ἀκολουθοῦσαν στρατίαν—K.R.H.M.]