"I desired to know about the table of woods and the sizes of the samples, only to govern myself in regard to the marbles, but all the samples of marbles I can get do not run so large as four inches square, nay, few above three inches square; cannot we therefore, dear Sir, make it of pieces three inches square, and so to contain more than 108 kinds. If not to be done so, I am afraid we shall not so easily get our required assortment. "At this very time there is a Council met about the Observatory, and another is fixed for Thursday next. I am, Sir, "Your obliged humble servant, E. M. DA COSTA."

To Mr. DA COSTA.

“Jan. 16, 1767. Mr. West repeats his thanks to Mr. Da Costa for his very instructive book, and must desire another volume, and whatever morning or evening he passes this way, will be happy to see him, as he has many questions to ask him. That ingenious Mrs. Thomas now lives very near Mr. West in the country, and will give Mr. Da Costa a meeting at Mr. West's in the summer.-In the mean time pray taste an Alscot hare."

“Jan. 18, 1767. Mr. West returns Mr. Da Costa's very curious Correspondence*, with thanks for the very great pleasure and knowledge he has received therefrom. He has gone through to 1760. If there be any more, he will be vastly obliged for the sight of them. He does not wonder at his acquiring Regal and Imperial honours in Natural History, on the true foundation of real merit, and the God-like sentence in all rewards for human knowledge +-Detur Dignissimo.

Mr. DA COSTA to the Right Hon. HUGH Lord WILLOUGHBY DE PARHAM.

"MY LORD, Bearbinder Lane, March 16, 1758. "The following paper consists of some observations made jointly by a foreign clergyman and myself on the subject of the Ammaa Dea, found in an inscription on an altar lately shewn to this learned Body. Permit me, my Lord, to observe to your Lordship, and this illustrious Society, that as neither my learned friend or myself are any wise adepts in illustrating antient inscriptions or monuments impaired by the devouring teeth of Time, we hope for your Lordship's and the Society's pardon from your known candor, rather than expect your applause from any attic salt or strong reasoning which occurs in it; and we were more bent to expose our own incapacity, than be in

Of this Correspondence with his learned Friends, Mr. Da Costa had filled Fourteen large Volumes; all which became mine by purchase, and are since regularly classed and chronologically arranged.

+ Mr. Da Costa was a Member of several Learned Societies on the Continent.-Some account of him and of his Family may be seen in Gent. Mag. vol. LXXXII. part i. pp. 29, 205, 512; and part ii. p. 329.

President of the Society of Antiquaries; of whom see the "Literary Anecdotes," vol. VII. pp. 470. 713.

any

any manner wanting, as lovers of Literature, to acknowledge our respect to the laudable institution of this truly learned Society. Permit me, my Lord, as an exordium to our paper, to slightly inform this Society of our proposed subject, viz. on the 26th of January last the Rev, the Dean of Exeter produced before the Society two small stone Roman Altars, found at Thurlmore in Northumberland, near to the Roman wall; and on the 9th of February Walter Bowman, Esq. pleasured the Society with an accurate and learned letter illustrating the inscriptions on them. The said gentleman found on one of the altars mention made of an Ammaa Dea, which he acknowledged was a deity hitherto unknown to him, and whose origin seemed to be uncertain and obscure. It is not only on this Ammæa Dea my friend and I have turned our thoughts, and therefore we beg leave to intimate to the Society that we do not intend any illustration, &c. whatever on these altars or their inscriptions, but purely confine ourselves to the subject as far only as relates to this hitherto unknown goddess, this Ammaa Dea, or her origin.

"After Mr. Bowman's paper was read, I had the honour to inform the Society, that as I thought the Hebrew word Ama signified a nurse, I imagined this Goddess might be a Dea Nutrix of Oriental origin; but I was mistaken in that etymology; for though ps, aman, signifies to nourish, and nins, amenet, is used for a nurse in Ruth, iv. 16, and in other places of the Scripture; yet the different sound and different analogy of the letters of each word, deter me from maintaining any derivation thence. I might perhaps allow the origin of the word Hammon or Ammonia from it, but even then it seems rather derived from îîè, Hama, the Sun, from п, Hamona, a multitude; or, most likely of all, and which is the most received opinion, from the Greek word aupos, sand. A greater equality of sound, and analogy of letters are found between Ammaa and the Hebrew word лs, which I before mistook to signify a nurse, but which in reality only and strictly signifies a maid servant. However, I cannot hence derive its origin; for the letters agree, yet the circumstances of things are very wide, and have no connection with each other.

"It is not foreign to my subject to observe, that between the Chaldæan word s'ns, Ammia, which signifies nations, Dan. iv. 5, and Ezra, iv. 10, and our word Ammaa, there is a great analogy of sound and letters, and that consequently this name in the inscription might be rendered by Nationalis dea sive Dea Nationis, which explanation may perhaps be applauded by many; yet this to me has its objection, in that the nations, in their inscriptions dedicated to their Gods, always added to their proper names the other names applied to them, as, e. g. Juno Ammona, Ceres Eleusina, Cybele Phrygia, &c. This may be collected even from Acts, xix. 28, where the enraged people did not call 'Magna est Dea Ephesia,' but 'Magna est Diana Ephesiorum.' "I am therefore entirely of opinion that this Goddess Ammaa had her origin from Chaldæa, and that the etymology of her

name

name is from the Chaldæan word sps, Ammà, mother; and whereas the Chaldaic language is the eldest branch of the Hebrew, it is certain that this Chaldaic word itself has its origin from the Hebrew words, Em, which also signifies mother.

"That Idolatry and Learning from their first institution travelled from the East to the West, is an axiom, I believe, not to be disputed. The Greeks received their divinities from the Egyptians, and the Romans theirs from both nations. Lucan justly remarks in these verses of his 7th Book on Egypt, of the deities adopted from that country,

Nos in templa tuam Romana accepimus Isim,

Semideosque canes et sistra jubentia luctus,

Et quem tu plangens hominum testaris Osirim.'

"These nations, therefore, with their exotic gods, naturalized and adopted exotic names. Cadmus, it is certain, brought the Greek letters from Phoenicia about the time of Joshua. From whence indeed is Cadmus himself but from the East? which his very name enough testifies, as is demonstrated by A. Hollewisch in his Grammatica Græca.' Whence are the names of the Greek letters derived but from the Hebrew alphabet, by changing Aleph into Alpha, Beth into Beta, Gimel into Gamma, &c. nay, Bochart, in his Canaan, p. 488, demonstrates, that the letters of other nations are primarily derived from the Hebrew. The first Grecian Philosophers, as Orpheus, Pythagoras, Plato, &c. from their thirst of tracing knowledge at the fountain head, visited Egypt and almost all the East, and from thence brought the sciences, hitherto exoticks, to their country, and with them their exotic names, which they adopted and naturalized. Will any one dissent from me in affirming that the Romans also borrowed some things from the Orientals, however that their arts and sciences they principally had from the Greeks; and also that after they had subdued Judæa, Egypt, and Greece under the Roman yoke, they naturalized many words, not only from those countries, but also from the neighbouring people, as the Osces, the Sabines, the Volscians, and even from the Gauls, the Germans, and the Spaniards, which no doubt is the origin of the barbarisms which crept in and corrupted the standard of the Roman language.

"These exotic words the Romans afterwards turned and naturalized to their own idiom, either by prefixion, duplication, interpolation, or by apenthesin of one letter; e. g. cumea and camea from p, cumah, stature or height; camelæ virgines from yaμiñas beai; and here from the Chaldæan word лs, ama, the Greeks formed papun, and the Romans, by a prefixion and duplication of the letter m on this word, formed mamma, equally signifying mother or nurse. Even the Germans (no doubt from the Teutonic) to this very day call a nurse Amma, and the Spaniards and Portuguese Ama. Nor can I here pass over in silence that the most ancient Romans, according to Cardanus, used the word Amma, without the least change of the Chaldaic word, for a

spiritual

spiritual or ghostly mother; so that Ammæa Dea comes to be the same as Mater Dea, sive Materna sive Nationalis Dea;' and from hence one may very justly judge or infer that this inscription was erected by the Centurion to the honour of the Diva Mater. However, it seems very strange, that among all the remains of antiquity, at least to my knowledge, no such a divinity as an Ammaa Dea has hitherto ever appeared; but, with your Lordship's and the Society's permission, I think it may be allowed me to imagine that this Centurion might himself have been a native of some conquered country, a Sabine or an Oriental, where the word Ama was used as Mater or Mother, or that his family might have been thence, and therefore that this Ammæa Dea, or Diva Mater, might have been a Penates of his own country, or of his particular family, to whom he erected this altar through an act of devotion. If I mistake not, my Lord, such instances occur, but at best I only offer it as a vague conjecture.

My Lord, I beg your Lordship's and the Society's pardon for troubling you thus with my rude and vague conjectures; but permit me to assure your Lordship and the Society that I think it my duty as a Member to participate with the Society whatever my capacity enables me to produce, towards the forwarding the study of Antiquity, for which this Society is founded, and to exhibit it to this learned body, as my tribute for the great honour done me. I remain, with great respect, my Lord, your Lordship's and the Society's most obedient and most devoted humble servant, EMANUEL MENDES DA COSTA." "MY LORD, Bearbinder Lane, March 22, 1759. "I presume to trouble your Lordship with the following extract of a Letter I received from Dr. Edward Wright*, dated at Edinburgh the 14th instant, relating to some antiquities lately discovered in Scotland, which if your Lordship deems worthy, I desire may be communicated to the learned Society of Antiquaries. It is as follows:- As you are a Member of the Society of Antiquaries, I must trouble you with an account of some antiquities lately discovered at Alloa in this our North Britain. In August or September last some workmen in digging a sandy declivity there, discovered several urns well preserved, containing ashes and burnt bones, which they, out of eagerness to come at some treasure that they imagined to be concealed in them, broke all to pieces, except one which was preserved by the care of Mr. James Laurie, Clerk of the Custom-house, and is now in the possession of Mr. John Erskine in Alloa. The inclosed

drawing is the figure of it as it was sent me by Mr. Laurie, with the following account of the discovery :-Dimensions of the Urn-Within the mouth 8 inches, greatest bulge 11 inches, height 12 inches. The above, and seven or eight more, full of white burnt human bones (except about two inches of earth on the top) were found in a sandy rising ground, at the head of * Of these Letters I have a large Collection.-See the "Literary Anecdotes," vol. IX. p. 812.

the

the town of Alloa. Most of them were larger than the above, and some of them as large again. The bones appear to have been burnt, and when touched, go to ashes. The Urns formed like half a circle, about a void space, which was laid with a large flat stone, built on both sides and at head and foot with dry stones, and a large flat one above. It contained a considerable number of large bones, chiefly of legs and arms, which appeared very fresh. The Urns were about a foot and a half, and the void space about three feet from the surface.

"Mr. Laurie likewise sent me a piece of one of the broken Urns, which I found to be a composition of the common micaceous rock of the country, grossly powdered, and clay, kneaded together in a rude manner, and of a red colour on the surface, to the depth of somewhat less than a line, which is evidently owing to nothing else than their being superficially baked, though Dr. Lister, in the Philosophical Transactions, is of opinion, that this red colour of the surface (which he had observed in some antique Urns found in the North of England), is the effect of some tincturing liquor or varnish. Though the composition of these Urns is but coarse, yet as the figure is elegant, I make no doubt of their being Roman; for amongst the antients, as well as with us at this day, regard must always have been had to the condition of the persons for whom any sort of works were intended; besides, that with respect to all the Roman remains in Britain, whether of a public or private kind, it must be considered that they are the works of military people, who had neither taste nor leisure for so much elegance, as is to be observed in those of that nation still extant in Italy and other countries nearer to the centre of their power. I shall add but one remark more concerning the above discovery, which is, that the spot where the Urns were found seems to have been the burial-place of a particular family, and that the large bones contained in the cavity built with stones seems to have been such as were too large for being put into the Urns, or were not enough burnt for that purpose.' I am, with great respect, &c. E. M. DA COSTA." Feb. 5, 1776.

"MY LORD, "The antique earthenware I have the honour to exhibit to the Society is from Sicily. Earthen utensils of various kinds are frequently found in the antient sepulchres in the neighbourhood of Palermo, and the Antiquaries in that island are in doubt whether they are Roman or Phenician, as my correspondent, who is an eminent antiquary there, informs me. I am, with with great respect, my Lord, &c. E. M. DA COSTA."

Mr. GEORGE EDWARDS * to Mr. DA COSTA. "I have just sold all my drawings of Birds, &c. to Lord Bute; I suppose for the King's use. He paid me for them 300l. G. E."

Of this eminent Naturalist see the "Literary Anecdotes,” vol. VII.

pp. 122, 559.-This Letter is not dated.

The