Author Description

Excerpt from Journal of the Manchester Egyptian and Oriental Society, 1912 There is very little else that I would comment on. The three tortures, for two of which Dr. Gray mentions parallels, might be supplemented by the fact that aying, the first of them, is grimly prominent on the Inscription of Darius. Dr. Gray's explanation of the burning of Christians is very suggestive, and, I think, evidently true. The fire festival of which he tells us, in which cattle and birds were driven into the am'e, is a nice little piece of universal folk practice, observed in our own country, I believe, within living memory. It is paralleled largely in Frazer's Golden Bough. I have an impression that there is something to parallel the passage of the queen between the severed halves of the victims. Anyhow, one may compare Genesis xv. 17. On the question of the religion of Darius I am afraid I have come down on the other side of the fence from that which Dr. Gray occupies, even after studying very carefully and making large use of his invaluable article in the Journal of the American Oriental Society and his later work in the encyclopaedia. This, however, is a big question, and I must leave my reasons for the printed page. I will only therefore say how sorry I am to miss not only the actual reading of the paper, but the discussion of it, which, in the case of a paper so interesting, is sure to be full of instructive material. I earnestly hope that Dr. Gray will give us his paper in print. Nothing could be more proper than our own Journal. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing pa