beginning letter "S" is not used from the one-word chronogram. Many lengthy examples of chronograms can be found in Germany and the countries that had been part of the Holy Roman Empire, such as Austria and Czechia, or Hungary and Slovakia. These often commemorate the building of houses in the form of prayers or quotations from the Bible. For instance, SVRGE O IEHOVA ATQVE DISPERGE INIMICOS TVOS ("Rise, oh Jehovah, and destroy your enemies", a slightly altered version of Psalm 68:2) gives 1625 as the year of building. One double chronogram, in Latin and English, on the year 1642, reads, "'TV DeVs IaM propItIVs sIs regI regnoqVe hVIC VnIVerso." – "O goD noVV sheVV faVoVr to the kIng anD thIs VVhoLe LanD." The English sentence demonstrates that the origin of the letter w as a double v or u was recognised historically. In Hildesheim in the North of Germany, the inscription "CVra BonIfaCII, PrIMo, QVo PraefVIt Anno Abbas SpeCtatos CoLLoCat Hos CeLares " showing the year 1770 can be read above the entrance of the Hospital of Five Wounds which was built in the year indicated. Hebrew numerals The great popularity of chronograms in Jewish tradition, and the extent to which they have been cultivated, may be explained by the fact that they are a variety of the Jewish mystical practice of Gematria. The earliest chronogram in Jewish literature is one found in a Hebrew poem of the year 1205 by Al-Harizi, while the earliest Latin chronogram is dated five years later. According to Abraham Firkovich, Hebrew chronograms date back to 582; but the inscriptions cited by him are probably forgeries. In the thirteenth century chronograms are found in the epitaphs of German Jews (Lewysohn, "Nafshot Zaddikim", No. 14, of the year 1261; No. 16, of the year 1275). In epitaphs It is evident, therefore, that for a period of five hundred years chronograms occurred in the epitaphs of European Jews. Thus the dates of the epitaphs of the family of Asher ben Jehiel in the first half of the fourteenth century are indicated by chronograms (Almanzi, "Abne Zikkaron", pp. 4, 6, 9); and among sixty-eight Frankfort epitaphs of that century four chronograms have been preserved (Horowitz, "Inschriften... zu Frankfurt-am-Main", Nos. 8, 29, 36, 68). The German Jews seem to have possessed little skill in the composition of chronograms, there being only about twenty-five (and these very simple) in a