examples of which he had discovered on the site of ancient Meroë. This writing is intended to be read from right to left, and the words are always separated by two points. But its significance is unsolved up to the present time. In deciphering the demotic-Ethiopian inscriptions little assistance is to be looked for from the Ethiopian-hieroglyphic as, whatever strange variations these may contain, they correspond almost entirely to the Egyptian, in form as well as in the language which underlies them. Like our own Latin inscriptions, they are composed in the writing and language of an alien people. As we shall see, Lepsius afterwards became convinced that the key to the Ethiopian-demotic inscriptions of which we speak was not to be sought in the Nubian, but in the Cushite Bischariba language. On the domain of ancient Meroë everything was still to be done, for Cailliaud, through whom the monuments there had first become known, had seen and described them without technical knowledge of the subject. It was, therefore, reserved for Lepsius to dissipate, once for all, the popular conjectures of a “splendid primeval Meroë,” whose inhabitants had been the predecessors of the Egyptians and their instructors in civilization. He proved that all the native monuments which had been preserved there dated from a relatively late period, which should not be fixed before the time of the Ethiopian Pharaohs of the twenty-fifth dynasty. The majority, he considered, could be assigned to a much later period and had scarcely originated previous to the first century before Christ. The little to be found dating from an earlier age owed its existence to the Pharaohs and their artists. The fine granite rams which bear the name of Amenophis III., (eighteenth dynasty), and one of which at present adorns the Berlin museum, were transported thither at a later period. They came, probably, from Soleb. Ninety-two fellahin spent three sultry days in dragging down to the Nile on rollers the “fat sheep” which weighed one hundred and fifty hundred weight, and was to be transported to the Spree. Lepsius advised the purchase for the Berlin museum of the gold and silver ornaments discovered in 1834, by the Italian Romali. They were found in a pyramid at Meroë which had a Roman vaulted antechamber. This advice Lepsius gave after he recognized that they had probably belonged to a specially powerful and warlike Ethiopian queen, whose image has been preserved at El-Naga in rich attire, and with pointed finger nails, nearly an inch long. At present the ornaments mentioned form one of the embellishments of the Egyptian collection at Berlin.