[Illustration: Fig. 50.--Facsimile of Hieratic Papyrus Prisse] The sarcophagus, which is preserved in the Louvre, was found in a rock-tomb near the site of ancient Sidon. The interpretation of the inscription upon it has exercised the skill of a host of scholars, and given rise to an enormous body of literature. Eshmunazar, whose mask and mummy are sculptured on the sarcophagus, speaks in the first person. He calls himself "king of the Sidonians, son of Tabnit," and tells how he and his mother, the priestess of Ashtaroth, had built temples to Baal Sidon, Ashtaroth, and Emun. He beseeches the favour of the gods, and prays that Dora, Joppa, and the fertile corn-lands of Sharon may ever remain part of his kingdom. Well-nigh in the words of Shakespeare's epitaph, he lays a curse upon him who would molest his grave; such an one "shall have no funeral couch with the Rephaim," that haunt the vasty halls of death. "I am cut off before my time; few have been my days, and I am lying in this coffin and in this tomb in the place which I have built. Oh, then, remember this! may no royal race, may no man open my funeral couch, and may they not seek after treasure, for no one has hidden treasures here, nor move the coffin out of my funeral couch, nor molest me in this funeral bed by putting in it another tomb." (_Records of the Past_, vol. ix.) [Illustration: Fig. 51.--Inscription on the Eshmunazar Sarcophagus] Such, broadly speaking, were M. de Rougé's materials for observation and comparison, and there have been few more striking examples of ingenuity of classification and inference than those which, his work supplies. In his excellent summary of that work which Canon Taylor gives in the first volume of his indispensable _History of the Alphabet_ (pp. 98-116), he refers the student who desires full details to M. de Rougé's posthumous _Mémoire sur l'origine Égyptienne de l'alphabet Phénicien_, and suggests that those readers who care only for results may even skip his summary. That summary necessarily includes much technical matter which will interest only the trained philologist; and in the superficial survey of the subject which is only possible, and perhaps desirable, in these pages, any details would be out of place. Nevertheless, the accompanying tabulated form of M. de Rougé's results may be followed by an example or two of the method which secured them, and also by reference to some earlier Semitic inscriptions which have come to light since 1859. M. DE ROUGÉ'S THEORY OF THE ORIGIN OF THE ALPHABET.