had been extremely cold during the night, so as to require more covering than ordinarily; to this temperature succeeded during the day an extreme heat, and a violent pestilential wind, which interrupted respiration and was very suffocating.* It is rare in Egypt to experience an earthquake so violent as this.

It was afterwards known from the accounts which reached us successively, that the earthquake was also felt at the same hour in foreign countries, and in cities situated at a great distance. I regard it as quite certain, that a great portion of the earth felt the shock at the same moment; from Kous to Damietta, Alexandria, the maritime coast of Syria, and indeed the whole of Syria in all its length and breadth. Many inhabited places disappeared totally, without the lest vestige of them remaining; and an innumerable multitude of persons perished. I know no city in all Syria which suffered less from this earthquake than Jerusalem; which indeed received only slight damage. The ravages occasioned by this event, were much greater in the regions inhabited by the Franks,† than in the countries occupied by Mussulmans.

We have heard that the earthquake was felt as far as Akhlat [in Armenia] and the adjacent countries, as well as in the isle of Cyprus. The rising of the earth and the agitation of the waves presented a spectacle full of horror and not easy to be conceived. The waters seemed to open in various places, and divided themselves into masses like mountains. The ships found themselves aground; and multitudes of fish were thrown out upon the shore.

The following incident is among the most remarkable of all those which we have witnessed. Several persons among those who visited me most assiduously, in order to confer on the subject of medicine, having advanced to the Treatise on Anatomy [of Galen], had difficulty to comprehend me; and I also had difficulty to make myself understood by them; because there is a great difference between a mere verbal description, and an ocular inspection of things. Having therefore learned, that there was at Maks a hill or mound, on which there was accumulated

*The Simoom, called by the Turks Samiel. The poisonous influence so long attributed to this wind by older writers, has in a great measure disappeared before the researches of modern travellers. See Calmet's Dict. Amer. edit. 1832, art. WINDS.

Abd-allatif seems to mean here the cities which the Franks then possessed in Syria and Palestine, in opposition to the portions of those provinces occupied by Mussulmans.-DE SACY.

a great quantity of human bones, we went thither, and found a mound of considerable extent, composed of the remains of human bodies. There was more of these, than of earth; and one might estimate the number of corpses which the eye perceived, at twenty thousand and more. They were distinguished into various classes, according as they had lain a longer or shorter time. In considering these corpses, we were able to collect more information as to the figure of the bones, their joints and sockets, their respective proportions and positions, than we could ever have procured from books.

We afterwards entered Misr, and beheld the streets and market places, which formerly were obstructed by the crowds which thronged them. Now, all these places are empty; one meets in them no living thing, except occasionally some passenger. The solitude which reigns in them, inspires affright in those who traverse them. Besides this, there is scarcely a spot, which is not covered with dead bodies, or strewed with bones.

* The fact here recorded by Abd-allatif, is similar to one mentioned by Ibn-Haukal and by Masoudi. According to these writers, the city of Tennis, [situated on an island in the lake Menzaleh, about twenty-eight miles S. E. of Damietta, and not to be confounded with the ancient Tanis,] was anciently a place of deposit for the dead, where the bodies were piled up in layers one above another; thus forming mounds of human corpses. The following is the passage of Ibn-Haukal on this subject: " At Tennis there are two large mounds or hills, built of dead bodies piled one above another. These two mounds are called boutoun, and seem to have been anterior to Moses and his mission; for after the time of Moses, the Egyptians conformably to their religion, interred their dead; and the Christians who succeeded them, also observed the same custom; while after them the country passed to the Mussulmans. These corpses are covered with wrappers of very coarse rough cloth. The skulls and bones preserve their hardness still in our day."

The mound of corpses described by Abd-Allatif seems to have a great analogy with these immense piles of dead bodies at Tennis. It is singular that the author does not indicate at all, in what manner or by what circumstance a like accumulation of more than twenty thousand corpses regularly piled, had been discovered and exposed to the view of the inhabitants of the adjacent places.-DE SACY.

As connected with the subsequent paragraph, the implication would seem to be, that the pile of bodies at Maks was similar to that afterwards described, and was formed of the corpses of those who had recently died of the pestilence.—ED.

Having come at length to a place called Ascordja Firaun, [i. e. the Basin of Pharaoh,] we saw all the open places obstructed with corpses and bones; indeed these heaps of corpses were higher than the [adjacent] elevations of the ground; so that they covered them over, and were more than there was earth to bury. As we looked from a more elevated spot, down upon this place named the Basin, and which is indeed a great hollow, we saw there skulls, some white, some black, and others of a deep brown; they were piled up in layers, and in such quantities, that they covered all the other bones. One would have said, that nothing was there but heads without bodies; and it seemed as if one beheld melons, which had been gathered and formed into a pile, like sheaves piled up in the threshing-floor. Some days afterwards, I revisited this spot; the sun had dried up the flesh upon the skulls; they had become white; and I compared them to the eggs of the ostrich gathered into heaps.

When I considered, on one side, the solitude which reigned in the streets and market places of Misr; and, on the other, these plains and these hills so overspread with corpses, I represented to myself a caravan which had quitted the place where it had encamped, and had transported itself to another place. This city, moreover, was not the only one which offered a similar spectacle; towards whatever quarter one might turn his course, he encountered a like picture, and often one still more frightful.

In the month of Dhou'lhiddjèh,* a woman was found at Misr, who had strangled a child in order to devour it. She was seized and drowned. After the time when this detestable custom had passed away, and people had ceased to speak of it and to see examples of it, there was no one found guilty of it, except this one woman.

We come now to speak of the state of the Nile during this year. Ibn-Abi'lraddad took the height of the water at Mikyas the 26th of Ramadan. It was one cubit and a half; instead of which it had been two cubits the In that same before. year year, 597, the river had begun to increase on that day; in the year 598, the commencement of the increase was deferred till the 25th of Epiphi. In all this interval, the river increased only four digits; so that there was a universal expectation, that there would be no inundation. The despair was general; peo

* The twelfth month of the Mohammedan year. † June 18, A. D. 1202.

July 29, A. D. 1202.

ple imagined that something extraordinary had happened to the sources of the Nile, and in the places where it takes its rise. Nevertheless, the river began at length to increase in a more sensible manner; so that at the end of Epiphi, it was three cubits. At that point, the rise stopped for many days; which occasioned extreme affright; because such a suspension was contrary to what ordinarily takes place. Soon after, however, the waters came in great abundance; they increased by very large degrees; and one might have said that mountains of water_precipitated themselves one upon another. In the space of ten days, the river rose eight cubits, and three of these at once, without any suspension. On the fourth of Tot, which was the 12th of Dhou'lhiddjèh,* the rise of the waters reached its highest point, which was sixteen cubits wanting one digit. After remaining at this point two days, the waters began to decrease slowly, and flowed off by degrees.

Such is the account which I had to give of the circumstances of the horrible scourge, of which I have traced the history. I finish therefore here this chapter, and also the entire work.

Praises to God, the sovereign Master of the universe! May God be propitious to the prince of his envoys, to Mohammed the prophet without letters, and to his holy and venerable descendants!

This book was written by its author, the poor Abd-allatif benYousouf ben-Mohammed Bagdadi, who implores the goodness of the most high God, in the month of Ramadan, in the year 600,† at Cairo.

*Sept. 1, A. D. 1202. † Commencing Sept. A. D. 1203.

ART. III. ON THE SAMARITAN PENTATEUCH And Literature.

By M. Stuart, Prof. of Sac. Lit. in the Theol. Sem. Andover.

The following article originally appeared in the North American Review for April 1826, and is here reprinted with the consent of the Author, and of the Editor of that Journal, without alteration. It has been selected for this work, as embodying a large mass of information, arranged and illustrated in a very lucid manner, together with interesting and able discussions of some important collateral topics. Professor Rosenmueller of Leipsic, without knowing the writer, once expressed to the Editor, in very decided terms, the high value which he set upon this article.-EDITOR.

1. De Pentateuchi Samaritani Origine, Indole, et Auctoritate, Commentatio Philologico-critica. Scripsit GULIELMUS GESENIUS, Theol. D. et in Univ. Literar. Fridericianâ Prof. Ord. Hala, 1815. 2. GULIEL. GESENII, Theol. D. et P. P. O. de Samaritarum Theologia ex Fontibus ineditis Commentatio. Halæ.

3. Anecdota Orientalia, edidit et illustravit GULIEL. GESENIUS, Phil. et Theol. D. hujusque in Acad. Fridericianâ Halensi P. P. O. Societatum Asiaticæ Paris. et Philosophica Cantab. Socius. Fasciculus primus, Carmina Samaritana complectens. Lipsiæ, 1824. [Also entitled] Carmina Samaritana e Codicibus Londinensibus et Gothanis, edidit et Interpretatione Latinâ cum Commentario illustravit GULIEL. GESENIUS etc. Cum Tabulâ lapidi inscriptâ.

THE existence of the Pentateuch, or the five books of Moses, among the Samaritans, written in the peculiar alphabetic character which they employed, and which differed much from the Hebrew square character, was known in very ancient times to such of the Fathers, as were acquainted with the Hebrew language. Origen, in commenting upon Num. xiii. 1, says, xai τουτῶν μνημονεύει Μωϋσῆς ἐν τοῖς πρώτοις τοῦ Δευτερονομίου, ἃ καὶ αὐτὰ ἐκ τοῦ τῶν Σαμαρειτῶν ̔Εβραϊκοῦ μετεβάλομεν, i. e. and these things Moses makes mention of in the first part of Deuteronomy, which we have also transferred from the Hebrew copy of the Samaritans. Again, on Num. xxi. 13, he says, xai Tovτῶν μέμνηται Μωϋσῆς ἐν Δευτερονομίῳ, ἃ ἐν μόνοις τῶν Σαμα Qε Evoμεv i. e. these things Moses mentions in the book of Deuteronomy, which we found only in the Samaritan copy. JeVol. II. No. 8.

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