(1) The celebrated Rosetta stone, discovered near that place during the French occupation of Egypt in 1799, and now in the British Museum. This most important inscription, which in the hands of Young and Champollion has proved the key to the mysteries of Egyptian hieroglyphics, records events of no intrinsic consequence that occurred B.C. 196, in the reign of Ptolemy V Epiphanes. It is written in the three several forms of hieroglyphics, of the demotic or common characters of the country, and of Greek Capitals, which last may represent the _lapidary_ style of the second century before our era. The words are undivided, without breathings, accents, or marks of punctuation, and the uncial letters (excepting [symbol like capital Roman I] for _zeta_) approach very nearly to our modern capital type. In shape they are simple, perhaps a little rude; rather square than oblong: and as the carver on this hard black stone was obliged to avoid curve lines whenever he could, the forms of Ε, Ξ and Σ differ considerably from the specimens we shall produce from documents described on soft materials. Plate I. No. (1). (2) The Codex Friderico-Augustanus of the fourth century, published in lithographed facsimile in 1846, contains on forty-three leaves fragments of the Septuagint version, chiefly from 1 Chronicles and Jeremiah, with Nehemiah and Esther complete, in oblong folio, with four columns on each page. The plates are so carefully executed that the very form of the ancient letters and the colour of the ink are represented to us by Tischendorf, who discovered it in the East. In 1859 the same indefatigable scholar brought to Europe the remainder of this manuscript, which seems as old as the fourth century, anterior (as he thinks) to the Codex Vaticanus itself, and published it in 1862, in facsimile type cast for the purpose, 4 tom., with twenty pages lithographed or photographed, at the expense of the Emperor Alexander II of Russia, to whom the original had been presented. This book, which Tischendorf calls Codex Sinaiticus, contains, besides much more of the Septuagint, _the whole New Testament_ with Barnabas’ Epistle and a part of Hermas’ Shepherd annexed. As a kind of _avant-courier_ to his great work he had previously put forth a tract entitled “Notitia Editionis Codicis Bibliorum Sinaitici Auspiciis Imperatoris Alexandri II susceptae” (Leipsic, 1860). Of this most valuable manuscript a complete account will be given in the opening of the fourth chapter, under the appellation of _Aleph_ (א), assigned to it by Tischendorf, in the exercise of his right as its discoverer. Plate I. No. 2. (3) Codex Alexandrinus of the fifth century (A). Plate I. (4) Codex Purpureus Cotton.: N of the Gospels, of the sixth century. Plate II. (5) Codex Nitriensis Rescriptus, R of the Gospels, of the sixth century. Plate II. (6) Codex Dublinensis Rescriptus, Z of the Gospels, of the sixth century. Plate III. (7) Evangelistarium Harleian. 5598, _dated_ A.D. 995. Plate III.