Plate 2 is perhaps more difficult to decipher than Plate 1. We know, however, that the demotic script was used only amongst laymen in matters of business and of money; and this no doubt represents some commercial transaction that took place between 500 and 200 B.C. The demotic was a complex cursive evolved from the hieratic; its invention, or at least its use to any considerable degree, does not appear to have been much antecedent to 600 B.C., and there was little necessity for its continuance after the second century B.C. It was probably about the beginning of the Christian era that the demotic finally disappeared before the Coptic, an alphabet derived from the Greek, of which Plate 3 gives an example. The Arabic heading which accompanies the Coptic rubric above the Psalm that begins below (the 118th [Greek: riê]), is in a hand of the latter part of the fifteenth century. Notwithstanding the lateness of the specimen, the script takes its proper place here as representing a script of the first century. Plate 4 is taken from a copy, written on vellum at {85}Nablús, of the Samaritan Pentateuch. Both in language and in letters it represents the old Hebrew of the days of Solomon, long anterior to the time when Ezra introduced from Chaldæa the square characters now called Hebrew; the ancient letters having been preserved by a small remnant in North Palestine. The writing resembles that of the Phoenicians, and the example given on plate 4, notwithstanding its lateness, does not exhibit a very much modified form of the character. Plate 5 is from an Abyssinian MS. of the sixteenth century, on the Life of the Virgin. The real origin of the artistic decoration is unmistakable. It is what we call Byzantine, but ought rather to be called Ægypto-Grecian. The people of Abyssinia, who were mainly Southern Arabs or Sabæans, received their instruction in art along with their Christianity a few centuries after the beginning of the era, and they have never abandoned them. As for the writing which appears on the plate, it is in the old Geez or Ethiopic language, and descended from that of the Sabæan people whose monumental inscriptions in Himyaritic language and characters are now attracting considerable interest. Plate 6 is from a Greek Gospelbook written on vellum, which was brought to England from Cyprus by Cesnola. The ornamental border at the top is somewhat freer and less stiff in style than those which we find in most of the Byzantine MSS.; and the writing is neater and less negligent than if it had been executed in the eleventh or twelfth century. It slopes a little backwards and has the breathings in their antique form as halves of the letter H. Hence I have assigned it to the latter part of the tenth century.