The sheepskin slips are literally black with age, and are impregnated
with a faint odor as of funeral spices; the folds are from 6 to 7 inches
long and about 31/2 inches wide, containing each about ten lines, written
only on one side.

So far as they have yet been deciphered, they exhibit two distinct
handwritings, though the same archaic character is used throughout.
In some cases the same passages of Deuteronomy occur in duplicate on
distinct slips, as though the fragments belonged to two contemporary
transcriptions made by different scribes from the same original text. At
first sight no writing whatever is perceptible; the surface seems to
be covered with an oily or glutinous substance, which so completely
obscures the writing beneath that a photograph of some of the
slips--which we have had an opportunity of examining side by side with
the slips themselves--exhibits no trace of the text. But when the
leather is moistened with spirits of wine the letters become momentarily
visible beneath the glossy surface.

These extraordinary fragments were brought to England by Mr. Shapira,
of Jerusalem, a well known bookseller and dealer in antiquities.
Mr. Shapira's name will be remembered in connection with certain
archaeological problems which have been solved by some scholars in a
manner not altogether creditable to his sagacity.

The Moabite pottery which reached Europe through Mr. Shapira's agency
and is deposited in the Museum at Berlin is now commonly regarded as a
modern forgery; but of this forgery, if it be one, it is asserted that
Mr. Shapira was the dupe and not the accomplice. The leathern fragments
now produced by Mr. Shapira were, as he alleges, obtained by him from
certain Arabs near Dibon, the neighborhood where the Moabite stone was