t copying Semitic
inscriptions; without such knowledge he runs the risk of confusing
different Semitic letters, which often closely resemble one another.
He should, however, be able to make squeezes and photographs.

The following are the languages and scripts which may be found in
Palestinian Epigraphy.

Egyptian, in Hieroglyphics. Greek.
Babylonian Cuneiform. Latin.
Assyrian Cuneiform. Arabic, in Cufic script.
Hebrew, in ancient script. Arabic, in modern script.
Hebrew, in square character. Armenian (in mosaic
Phoenician. pavements, also graffiti
Moabite. in Church of Holy
Aramaic. Sepulchre).

Tables of the chief alphabetic and numeral forms of the West Semitic
scripts are given in Illustrations X & XI; for the Greek, see
Illustration IV.

3. The traveller should have had practice in making measured drawings
of buildings.

4. For some branches of work a good knowledge of Arabic is
indispensable--not the miserable pidgin jargon usually spoken by
Europeans, nor yet the highly complex literary language, which is
unintelligible to the ordinary native, but the colloquial of the
country, spoken grammatically and properly pronounced. Work done
through dragomans is never entirely satisfactory, because it requires
the unattainable condition that the dragoman should be as much a
scientific student of anthropology and of archaeology as the
traveller himself.

5. The student for whom these pages are written should not attempt
any excavation, unless he has been trained under a practical
excavator, and has learnt how work, which is essentially and
inevitably destructive of evidence, can be made to yield profitable
fruit. There is plenty of work that can be done on the surface of the
ground without excavation.

[Illustrations X & XI: Table of West Semitic Alphabets & Numerals.]

II. Sites of Towns and Villages.

1. Nomenclature.
The sites of ancient towns and villages are usually conspicuous in
Palestine, and are recognized in the local nomenclature. They are
denoted by the words _tall_, plural _tulul_, meaning 'mound', and
_khirbah_, plural _khirab_ meaning 'ruin'. These words are commonly
spelt in English _tell_ and _khirbet_ (less correctly _khurbet_) and
we use these more familiar forms here. As a rule, though not
invariably, the sense of