placed upright against the wall of the burying place belong ing to the family. Another less expensive method of embalming was, by injecting into all the cavities of the body a certain dissolvent; which, being suffered to run off after a proper time, carried with it whatever was contained therein liquified; and then the body, thus purged, being dried by the nitrous process as before, the operation was closed by swathing, &c. By the third and lowest method of em balming, which was only in use among the poor, they drenched the body with injections, and then dried it with nitre.-The Egyptians had a custom among them of pledg ing the dead bodies of their parents and kindred, as a security for the payment of their debts, and whoever neglected to redeem them was held in the utmost abhorrence, and denied the rites of burial themselves. They paid extravagant honours to their deceased ancestors; and there are at this day to be seen in Egypt pompous subterranean edifices, called by the Greeks Hypogees, representing towns or ha bitations under ground, in which there are streets or passages of communication from one to another, that the dead might have as free intercourse as when alive,

1751, Aug.

XXVIII. Long Meg and her Daughters,

SIR, Wigton, July 12. I WENT some days ago to examine that curious remain of British antiquity called Long Meg and her Daughters, about which it must be acknowledged all conjectures are extremely uncertain.

They are situated upon an eminence on the east side of the river Eden, near a mile from it, above a village called Little Salkeld; this eminence appears to have been all moor formerly, but now about half the stones are within inclosures, placed in an orbicular form, in some places double.I make seventy principal ones, but there are one or two more disputable; several lie flat on the surface, their greatest eminence not exceeding a foot, others yet less, and others perpendicular to the horizon; the highest of those in the circular range does not much exceed three yards, nor is it more than four wide, and two deep; but none of them have a regularity of shape, though the constructors seem to have aimed at a parallelopipedon. Long

Meg herself is near four yards high, and about 40 yards from the ring, towards the south west, but leans much; it being of what they call the free-stone kind, is more regular than those in the circle, and is formed like a pyramid on a rhomboidal base, each side being near two yards at the bottom, but a good deal narrower at top. (What I mean by the base is only the ground plan of the stone itself, for as to what is in architecture called base, it has none but the earth.) The others in the orbicular range, are of no kind of stone to be found in that neighbourhood, and the four-facing the cardinal points are by far the largest and most bulky of the whole ring; they contain at least 648 solid feet, or about thirteen London cartloads, and unless they are a composition, (which I am much induced to believe) no account can be given what carriages could have brought them there, nor by what means they could be placed erect when they came. It is to be noted that these measures are only what appeared above ground; we have reason to suspect that at least a yard is lost in the earth, which will make the whole amount to a prodigious weight more. Others are erect, but not of such enormous size, and others, as I said before, lie flat along, not thrown down, as I think, but so placed either by choice or design, and some of these are also very large. In diameter the ring may be eighty yards or more, and the circle is pretty regular, but how they came there and their destination is the important question, I am,

1752, July,

Yours, &c.

G. S.

MR. URBAN,

XXIX. ANCIENT INSCRIPTIONS.

I HOPE the gentlemen addressed will pay a proper regard to the proposal of the right reverend the bishop of Clogher, mentioned in your register of books for April last, and will

* A journal from Grand Cairo to Mount Sinai, and back again; translated from a M.S. written by the Prefetto of Egypt; with remarks on the origin of hieroglyphics. By the bishop of Clogher, 5s. Cooper.This book is dedicated to the Antiquarian Society, and his lordship observes to them, that as the journal particularly describes many places in the wilderness, where great

send some qualified person to take an exact copy of that very antique inscription on the rock at Mount Sinai. It may seem very daring in any one, whilst we have so few data, and while little more is known relating to this inscription, but that it exists, to adventure any conjecture concerning it, and yet I think one may guess something, from analogy about the subject matter of it. I believe it will prove to be historical, since I have observed that such ancient memorials have been preserved in that manner. "That the most ancient people," says Mr. Wise, "before the invention of books, and before the use of sculpture upon stones, and other smaller fragments, were wont to represent things great and noble, upon entire rocks and mountains, seems so natural, that it is easily imagined and assented to by all. And that the custom was not laid aside for many ages after, is plain from history. Semiramis, to perpetuate her memory, is reported to have cut a whole rock into the form of herself. Hannibal, long after the invention of books, engraved characters upon the Alpine rocks, as a testimony of his passage over them; which characters were remaining about two centuries ago, if we may believe Paulus Jovius. But, what is most to our purpose, it appears to have been particularly the custom of the northern nations, from that remarkable inscription, mentioned by Saxo, and several ages after him delineated, and published by Olaus Wormius. This was inscribed by Harold Hyldeland, to the memory of his father; it was cut on the side of a rock in Runic characters, each letter of the inscription being a quarter of an ell long, and the length of the whole thirtyfour-elis." These northern examples are indeed the most for this learned author's purpose, who contends that the white horse, in the vale of that name in Berkshire, is a monument of this sort, and was intended to perpetuate the

numbers of ancient characters are hewn in the rocks; if a person was sent to live sometime among the Arabs, he might get copies of the characters, and some helps by which the ancient Hebrew characters now lost, may be re-. covered. He adds, " I do not know whom to apply to, more properly to look out for a suitable person. As to the expence, I am willing to bear any proportion you shall think proper, in order to have this design effected." The Prefetto had with him persons acquainted with the Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, Coptic, Latin, Arminian, Turkish, English, Illyrican, German, and Bohemian languages, yet none of them had any knowledge of the characters which were cut in the said rock, twelve and fourteen feet high, with great in, dustry. The bishop declares that he does not make this proposal as a matter of curiosity, but as it may be of great service to the Christian revelation, by corroborating the history of Moses.

Mr. Wise's letter to Dr. Mead, p, 25. VOL. I.

L

remembrance of a signal victory obtained by the Saxons at Ashdown, under the conduct of king Alfred, over the Danes. But the custom was eastern as well as northern, as appears from that very remarkable instance which we have in captain Hamilton's Account of the East Indies. The author, after giving a short history of that successless attack, which the Dutch made upon the island of Amoy in China, A.D. 1645, adds, "This history is written in large China characters, on the face of a smooth rock that faces the entrance of the harbour, and may be fairly seen as we pass out and in to the harbour.”* This is but a late date compared with the monument at mount Sinai; but as the eastern people in general are extremely tenacious of their ancient customs, as appears from the travels both of Dr. Pocock and Dr. Shaw, the conjecture is not the less probable, that this Arabian inscription will be found to afford us some historical fact.

MR. Warburton, in the year 1715, caused a survey and plan to be made of the ancient Roman wall and military way, to shew the necessity of rendering it passable for troops and artillery, from the eastern to the western sea; but the rebellion, which had drawn his attention to this subject, being soon after suppressed, the reparation of the way was neclected till it was again wanted in 1745. Upon the suppression of the rebellion which then happened, the work was undertaken, an act of parliament having been passed for that purpose, and Mr. Warburton was among others, appointed to superintend the execution.

But he did not desist from his inquiries, when the principal view with which they were begun was disappointed; he extended his survey through the whole county of Northumberland, and discovered almost every day some remains

*Hamilton's Voyages, vol. II. p. 241.

of cities, castles, camps, or other military antiquities that had been hitherto totally unknown among us; the parts called the wastes appeared never to have been trodden by any human foot since the ruin of the buildings and streets, which he could easily trace by the foundations, though they were covered with grass.

An account of these discoveries he has now published, with representations of the Roman inscriptions and sculp

tures.

There are two walls which cross the north of England, beginning about three miles more eastward than Newcastle, and extending ten miles farther west than Carlisle, at the distance of near seventy miles. One of these walls is of turf, called Hadrian's vallum; the other of stone, called the wall of Severus, and were both intended to keep out the Picts or Scots, for which purpose Julius Agricola had before carried a series of forts or stations across the country in the same direction, and of equal extent.

Hadrian's fence consists of a bank or wall on the brink of a ditch, another bank at the distance of about five paces within it, called the south bank, and a third nearly the same distance beyond the ditch to the north. These four works are every where parallel to each other, and probably formed a military way from one part of the old stationary fence to another.

To Severus's wall, which is of stone, belongs the paved military way, which is now repairing; it is on the south side of the wall, but not in all parts parallel to it. On the north of this wall there is a large ditch, but no appearance of a bank, though the ground is in some places raised by the earth thrown out of it, and a little resembles a glacis.

Castles were placed upon this wall at unequal distances, which, however, except two or three at the east end, are all less than a mile; the buildings appear to have been squares of sixty-six feet, of which the wall itself forms the north side. The space between these castles was equally divided by four watch towers, each of which appears to have been about four yards square at the bottom; and as the centinels in these towers were within call of each other, a communication might easily be continued along the whole line, without the help of speaking trumpets, or subterraneous pipes, contrivances which have been feigned in times of gross ignorance; and as men are generally credulous of wonders in proportion as the time when they are said to have happened is remote, this method of communication appears to have