Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1867 edition. Excerpt: ...German, and illustrated by two others, Hebrew and Ethiopic, with none of which I am familiar. I will not weary you with any detailed account of these inscriptions, but I may be allowed to make a few remarks in illustration of them. Take, for instance, the first of my transcriptions and of the German collection, which corresponds to the 4c of the British Museum volume. The commencement is clearly " Raibuis and his brothers, the sons of Marthad and their tribe." Then follows the letter z and the word Amran; this probably is the same as dihoo amran, lord of Amran, where it must be remembered the tablet was actually found. Then follows an expression which is to be found in nearly all the bronzes of this series, with slight modification, "kakniir shimharu almakah zaharan mazandan," the meaning of which is that a dedication is made to a deity named El Mukah, the words zaharan mazandan being probably a specification of this deity, as one would say, Venus Aphrodite. Then follows a long passage of which I cannot even guess the meaning, save that it contains an allusion to "value" and "gold," and terminates with another proper name, "Am-Karib, son of SamhKarib, son of Hutferm lord of Tethurim." Another of these bronzes contains the names of a certain king of Hadaramaut; several of the marble slabs make allusion to the kings or kingdom of Saba (Sheba of Scripture), and perhaps the most interesting of all is the altar, on which it is recorded that it is dedicated by "Himathat, son of Wudthbin, the slave of K. Athitor;" th is frequently pronounced as s in Arabic. We thus obtain the name Asitar, which is unmistakeably the Astarte of the Phoenicians, or the Ashtaroth of our Scriptures. At the...
