Page:An Essay on the Age and Antiquity of the Book of Nabathaean Agriculture.djvu/109

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
BABYLONIAN LITERATURE.
93

libraries, in Greek no less than in Arabic manuscripts, contain considerable fragments of Nabathæan literature. I will only offer one example, because it presents the singular instance of a discovery made with extraordinary penetration, by a scholar of the great French school of the early part of the seventeenth century, and which, buried in oblivion for nearly two hundred years, has acquired an unexpected importance from the researches of modern criticism. In the preface[1] to his treatise, De Annis Climactericis et Antiqua Astrologia (Leyde, 1648), Salmasius, after having quoted Tenkelúshá according to Nasireddín Tousi, adds: “تنكلوشا‎ autem sive Tenkelus ille Babylonius quem memorat Nasirodinus, is omnino est qui Τεῦκρος Βαβυλώνιος Græcis vocatur, et fortasse in scriptis Græcorum perperam hodie legitur Τεύκρος pro Τένκρος, idque deflexum ex illo nomine Babylonio Tenclus. Nisi sit verius Græcos ad nomen sibi familiare propter adfinitatem soni vocabulum

  1. This preface is not paged; the catch word of the leaf is c. 3.