To return to the characters at the south-east angle of the Haram--on the wall and on the handles of the jars or vases. The letters on the pottery are like those of the Moabite stone; whence the age of the jars is inferred to be about the same, and their origin Phoenician: the position of the pottery shows it to be of nearly the same age as the wall, and hence the antiquity of the wall is deduced; the wall itself shows Phoenician marks, and so the builders are believed to have been Phoenicians. This seems to us a little too hasty. The Moabite stone gives us the _Moabite_ alphabet of King Mesha's time, which proves to be identical with that of old Phoenicia. Judea was geographically as near to Phoenicia as Moab was, and probably used the same alphabet, a supposition confirmed by the discovery of vase handles at Jerusalem with letters like those of the Moabite stone. It seems gratuitous to conclude that these vases were among the contents of a museum or were ever the property of Phoenicians, when the evidence goes to show that the language inscribed on them was common to all the races of Western Asia. Only for want of a better name has it been called 'Phoenician;' and Mr. Deutsch had already suggested the term 'Cadmean,' while Sir Henry Rawlinson had ventured the prediction that, should any early monument be found at Jerusalem, its inscription would be in this character. The Phoenician character was probably the only cursive character used by the Semitic nations, and the Hebrew character, Sir Henry believes, did not exist till after the return from the captivity. The vase handles therefore show us the kind of letters used by the Hebrew prophets, and the Cadmean masons' marks neither prove nor disprove the Phoenician origin of the Haram wall; but the identity of the vase-handle letters with those of the Moabite stone rather than with the alphabet of Assyrian tablets and gems, or of the inscription on the tomb of Eshmunazer (circ. B.C. 600) indicates the great antiquity both of the pottery and the south-east Haram wall. On this point we may add that we have compared (from the photographs) the letters of the vase-handles with those of the Moabite stone, and find the identity very apparent in the case of the _tau_, _shin_, _kaph_ and _mem_.