from any known Hebrew root. Professor Sayce cites Dr. Neubauer, but that scholar never made the grammatical blunder of deriving a segholate noun with initial נ from the root יצג. Further, Professor Sayce thinks that he has found another occurrence of his new word on a hemispherical bead from Jerusalem (Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement, l.c.), of which he says that "the letters are those of the Siloam inscription, and must therefore belong to the same period as the latter." Through the courtesy of Mr. Armstrong I have been able to examine the bead itself, with a cast published by the Palestine Exploration Fund, and find that the first two letters may very well be נצ, but that the character resembles that of the early Hasmonean coins rather than that of the Siloam inscription. The third letter is certainly not ג but ף. What these three letters mean I do not pretend to guess; and I do not see how one can reason from an inscription of three letters, not forming a known word, on a bead the nature and use of which are unknown. I will, therefore, say no more about the bead than that the inscription it bears is certainly not נצג.
W. Robertson Smith.
