Page:An Essay on the Age and Antiquity of the Book of Nabathaean Agriculture.djvu/5

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PREFACE.
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Greeks and Romans and the great scholars of the last three centuries; as, ignorant of it, the former were even unable to decipher the earliest remains of their own language, and the latter could only supply its place by conjectural guesses.

One of the most successful workers in this new field of criticism is Dr. Daniel Chwolson, Professor of Hebrew in the University of St. Petersburgh, who first made himself known to Oriental scholars by the publication of one of the most able and profound works connected with the history and literature of the East which has ever appeared. Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus—the Sabians and Sabian Worship—has for ever settled many doubtful and long-disputed points in religion; has thrown new and irresistible light upon earlier Eastern history; and placed its author at once in the

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