210 Recent Excavations at Carthage. slight variations in form being evidently due to carelessness ; they may be thus represented in the corresponding Hebrew characters : ron 1 ? ran 1 ? ton hyib -ivbi T1J BV and may be rendered " To the Lady Tanith Pen-Baal [Face of Baal], and to the Ix>nl Baal-Ilamon, the vow of ... ." Before considering the other portions of the inscriptions, it may be well to make a few remarks on this formula. The meaning of the first two words, and their application to the goddess Tanith seem to be undoubted. The Abb Barges has indeed suggested transferring the fifth letter to the end of the first word, but as his reading is based on his having mistaken the h (lamed) for a 3 (nun), an error clearly shown by Mr. Davis' inscriptions, this suggestion has no weight. The next word was read by Gesenius ihyihi, and translated by him "et hero." .M.de Sauley* has however proposed reading the first character D (pe) instead of i (vau), and the second 3 (nun) instead of h (lamed), making Pen-Baal, " lace " or " manifestation of Baal," as a title for Tanith. b The next letter (the fourteenth) was read by Gesenius and others 3 (nun), and by the Abbe Barges 3 (eaph) ; but it has been more correctly read by M. de Saulcy c as i (van) ; a reading completely borne out by the new inscriptions, in which the letter in question preserves its peculiar character, and shows itself quite distinct from the letters 2 (caph) and 3 (nun). With regard to the two next words ton $>r3>, "to Baal llamon," all the commentators seem to agree; but the two following have given rise to much difference of opinion, and they are unfor- tunately of great importance with regard to the meaning of the inscriptions. All seem to approve of dividing them into TO v*. Quatremere* interprets them hoc quod vocit ; Lindberg, e quisque vovit ; Gesenius, vir vovens ; De Saulcy, est res coto promissa ; Judas, basis sepultures ; Barges approves of the older reading by Quatremere ; I have ventured to take the simpler form, " the vow of." Such is the formula which occurs in a more or less perfect condition in the Revue Archeologique, 1846, torn. iii. p. 632. The correction with regard to the nun is confirmed by Mr. Davis'* inscription*. ' Revue Archeologique, 1846, torn. iii. p. 630. 1 Memoire sur 'juelquea inscriptions Puniques. Nouv. Journ. Asiat. torn. i. p. 15 (1828). De inscr. Melitonti. Copcnh. 1828.
