be gathered from the following list of his works:—"Essay on the Nile and its Tributaries," 1847; "On the Sources of the Nile in the Mountains of the Moon," 1848; "On the Sources of the Nile," 1849; "An inquiry into A. d'Abbadie's journey to Kaffa," 1850; "On the Geographical Distribution of the Languages of Abyssinia," Edinburgh, 1849. He is also the author of various papers in the Journal of the Geographical Society of London, and of a work entitled "Origines Biblicae, or Researches in Primeval History," London 1834.—J. S., G.
BEKIESZ, Gaspard, commander of the Hungarian troops in the service of Poland, under king Bathory, born about 1530; died in 1579. He was distinguished both by his diplomatic and military services, under the reign of John Sigismond, prince of Transylvania. On the elevation of Bathory to the throne of Poland, he was intrusted, in conjunction with Gabriel, his brother, with the command of the Hungarian legions.—G. M.
BEKKER, Balthazar, a Dutch theologian of great celebrity, who had the boldness to combat some of the most deeply-rooted superstitions of his time, was born in Friesland in 1634. On the occasion of the appearance of the great comet in 1680, he published a work, entitled "Researches concerning Comets," in which he was the first to ridicule the superstition which assigned to these bodies a malign influence over human affairs; and the odium which that publication drew upon him was some years afterwards aggravated by the appearance of his famous work, "De Betooverde Weereld." In that work he attacked the prevalent notions respecting the power and influence of evil spirits, in a style which offended the scrupulous and outraged the bigoted of his contemporaries. The synod condemned his book, and deposed him from his office. Reduced to beggary, he bore his misfortunes with christian fortitude. He died in 1698.—J. S., G.
BEKKER, Elizabeth, a Dutch writer of some note, whose maiden name was Wolf, was born at Flushing, July 25, 1733. Besides some poetical pieces, she wrote several works in conjunction with Agatha Deken. She was a good linguist, and her works have been translated into various languages. She died November 5, 1804.—J. F. W.
* BEKKER, Immanuel, an eminent critical scholar, was born at Berlin, 21st May, 1785. He studied at Halle under F. A. Wolf, who is said to have pronounced him his most distinguished pupil. As early as 1810 he was appointed professor-extraordinary, and in 1812 professor-ordinary at the new-founded university of Berlin; in 1815 he was elected a member of the Berlin academy. He was soon attracted to the study of Greek MSS., and to the revision and emendation of the Greek authors, a task in which he has spent his whole life, and acquired a mastery not surpassed by any living philologist. From May, 1810, till December, 1812, he was reading at the imperial library at Paris, where, in 1815, he was again sent by the academy, in order to compare and copy the Fourmont MSS. for the Corpus Inscript. Græcar. Two years later we find him in Italy, preparing for the academy an edition of the "Institutiones Gaji," which had been discovered at Verona by Niebuhr. Here he remained for several years, searching the libraries of Milan, Venice, Florence, Ravenna, Naples, and especially Rome, where he enjoyed the assistance and friendship of Niebuhr. In 1820 he visited the libraries of Oxford, Cambridge, London, Leyden, and Heidelberg. The fruits of these assiduous researches were an almost incredible number of thoroughly revised and emendated editions. There will hardly be found a classical scholar not conversant with Bekker's editions of Plato, Berlin, 1814-21, 10 vols.; of the Oratores Attici, Oxford, 1823, 7 vols.; Aristoteles, Berlin, 1831-36, 7 vols.; Thucydides, Oxford, 1821, 3 vols.; Aristophanes, London, 1825, 3 vols.; Photius, Theognis, Moeris, Pollux, &c. His contributions to the Corpus Scriptor. Histor. Byzant., Bonnae, 1828, 599 alone amount to no less than 24 volumes. As recreations, as it were, from such harassing labours, he has published in the Transactions of the Royal Berlin Academy several Provençal and old-French romances.—(Fierabras, Aspremont, Flore and Blancaflor, &c.)—K. E.
BEL or BAAL, the chief god of the Phœnicians, Babylonians, and Assyrians. The power of nature which was adored under this name appears to have been the sun (see 2 Kings, xxiii. 5). Ashtoreth or Astarte, the female divinity with which Baal is often conjoined, represented the moon or queen of heaven (see Jer. vii. 18). The altars of Baal were usually erected on the summits of hills and the roofs of houses; his priests were a numerous body; human victims were sometimes offered to him in sacrifice; and the rites of his worship appear to have been of the most filthy and obscene character. Herodotus, who gives a particular account of the pyramidal temple of Bel at Babylon, says the sacrifices of this god consisted of adult cattle, of their young when sucking, and of incense; and in the apocryphal addition to the Book of Daniel, it is stated that meat and drink were daily offered to him. The worship of Baal seems to have prevailed not only in the east, but throughout the western and northern countries of Europe, and some traces of it exist even to the present day in the British islands. The feast of Beltane, which signifies the fire of Baal, is still observed in Ireland, and on that day fires are kindled on the tops of the hills, and the cattle are made to pass through them.—J. T.
BEL, Jean Jacques, a French litterateur, born at Bordeaux in 1693; died in 1738; author of "Apologie de M. Hondard de la Motte," Paris, 1724, 8vo, an ingenious and cutting satire on a portion of Voltaire's works.
BEL, Jean le, a Belgic chronicler; died about the year 1390. He wrote a chronicle of the wars of his time, which work Froissart used in writing his history. This work has been published by M. Polain, Liege, 1850; but it is inaccessible to the common reader from the limited number of copies published.
BEL, Kara, a son of Mathias, was born at Presburg on the 13th July, 1717. He was a distinguished scholar, and was appointed professor of poetry and librarian in the university of Leipzig, as well as counsellor to the elector of Saxony. He has left a number of works, principally on history and poetry, and continued the "Acta Eruditorum." Died 1782.—J. F. W.
BÉL, Matthias, a distinguished Hungarian historian, was born at Orsova, near Neusohl, in 1684, and died at Presburg in 1749. After having completed his education at the university of Halle, he obtained a mastership in the theological seminary at Neusohl, and afterwards was appointed head-master of the Presburg Lyceum. He wrote, "De vetere literatura Hunno-Scythica," Lips., 1718; "Hungariæ antiquæ et novæ prodromus," Norimb., 1723; "Apparatus ad historiam Hungariæ," Passov., 1735-46; "Notitia Hungariæ novæ Historico-Geographica," Vienna, 1735-42, of which, however, only four volumes were published.—K. E.
BÉLA, the name of four kings of Hungary of the Arpàd dynasty. Béla I., cousin to Saint Stephen, suspected of having been plotting against the king, fled with his elder brother Andrew to Poland, where he distinguished himself in war, and got the dukedom of Pomerania as his reward. When Andrew in 1046 was called to the throne of Hungary, in opposition to the tyrannical King Peter, who tried to Germanize the country, Béla promised his aid to his brother, under the condition of becoming his successor. Andrew availed himself of his brother's military prowess; but at the birth of a son to himself, he tried to secure the crown to the child. The result was a war between the brothers, which soon ended by King Andrew's death on the battle-field. Béla was proclaimed king of Hungary in 1061; he pacified the country, suppressed the last attempts of the conservatives to return to the ancestral idolatry, and regularized the trades, the coinage, the weights, and measures. He died in 1063. Béla II., called the Blind, was the son of the pretender Almus, cousin to King Coloman, who, infuriated by the unceasing attempts of Almus to create civil war, had him and the infant Béla blinded, in order to incapacitate him for the succession to the throne. However, after the death of Stephen II., Coloman's son, who left no direct heir, Béla became king in 1131. His queen, Helena, a Serbian princess, and her brother Uross, administered the kingdom in his name with a firm hand, but his reign was stained by the cruel murder of Coloman's advisers at the diet of Arad, by the instigation of the queen. He died in 1141. Béla III. was educated at Constantinople, at the court of the Emperor Manuel, who being without male issue, had adopted the Hungarian prince as his heir and future son-in-law, with the intention of incorporating Hungary with the Byzantine empire. This plan was defeated by the birth of a son to Manuel, by which the emperor's pledges were cancelled. Béla succeeded to the throne of Hungary in 1173, after the death of King Stephen III. He introduced the Byzantine court etiquette and forms of judicial procedure to Hungary, and died in 1196. His grandson, Béla IV., was one of the most remarkable kings of Hungary. As heir to the crown, he put himself at the head of the freemen, who, oppressed by King Andrew II., and by the oligarchy of his court, rose in arms for the restoration
