“Quod non fecerunt Gothi
Hoc fecerunt Scoti.”
It is also to be desired that the liberal proprietor of Maes Howe would take active steps to defend the highly interesting central chamber from the inclemency of the weather; the barrow was opened in July 1861, and already the interior has suffered from exposure.
The most interesting event of the day was the inspection of Maes Howe, which some one has lately suggested to be “simply a Norse fort.” It would be mere impertinence to offer a general description of this unique barrow after the studies of Mr Farrer (“Notice of Runic Inscriptions discovered during Recent Excavations in the Orkneys,” made by James Farrer, M.P.; printed for private circulation, 1862); lately popularised by Mr Fergusson in “Rude Stone Monuments.” The three mortarless loculi of huge slabs and their closing stones reminded me so strongly of the miscalled “Tombs of the Kings,” north of Jerusalem, that I felt once more in the “Holy Land.” It is a glorious monument of the great tomb-building race, or races whose animistic creed, the essence of fetichism, expresses itself in tent-tombs (chambered cairns) and cave-tombs (rock-cut chambers) upon the Siberian steppes, the Algerian plains, the Wiltshire downs, and the Scoto-Scandinavian islands. At Maes Howe we find all its characteristics—the stone circle which drove away the profane; the long passage which keeps warm the cave or hut; the vestibule for the funeral feast, and the various rooms for the dead to live in. And at the first sight of the Branch Runes,[314] otherwise called Palm Runes, I remembered having seen a similar alphabet in northern Syria.
A ride to Hums, of old Emesa (February 27, 1871), and a visit to my old friend the Nestorian Matrán (Metropolitan) Butrus, introduced me to the alphabet known as El Mushajjar, or the branched, one of the many cyphers formerly and, for aught I know, still current amongst Semitic races. Returning to England, I sent a copy of it to the Anthropological Institute, intending to illustrate a paper which was reprinted in “Unexplored Syria” (vol. ii., Appendix, p. 241): unfortunately the copy was lost.
According to the Matrán’s MS. there are two forms of El Mushajjar, one applied to Arabic, and the other to Pehlevi. Both are read from right to left, and the following is the Arabic form:
No. I.
The adjoined is the Pehlevi.
No. III. is the Norsk-Runic alphabet, read from left to right, as classified by Mr George Petrie, to decipher the palm-runes in Maes Howe.