Part 3 (1/2)
Here we evidently have an account of the payments disbursed by the priests of a temple on particular days. Resheph was a t.i.tle of the Sun-G.o.d, and M.
Clermont-Ganneau has pointed out that his name still survives in that of Arsuf, a ruined town to the north of Jaffa. The cakes baked for Ashtoreth, ”the Holy Queen,” are the same as those which the Jewish men and women who had fled to Egypt after the destruction of Jerusalem and the murder of Gedaliah declared to Jeremiah that they would still continue to offer to ”the queen of heaven” (Jer. xliv. 19). What is meant by the ”dogs” is best explained by Deuteronomy xxiii. 18, while the barbers mentioned in the text were required to shave the priests. Mention is also made of them in the a.s.syrian inscriptions (see Lev. xix. 27, xxi. 5). The _'almath_, or ”maiden”-a word which has acquired a special significance in the Christian Church in consequence of its having been used in Isaiah's prophecy of ”the Virgin” (Isa. vii. 14)-here seems to mean the chief singer attached to the temple of Ashtoreth. The _'alamoth_ are described in the sixty-eighth Psalm (ver. 25) as similarly employed in the wors.h.i.+p of Israel. As for the ”Masters of the Days,” they are the G.o.ds who, as among the a.s.syrians, were believed to preside over the months of the year. The month Ethanim, to which the first account refers, is mentioned, it will be remembered, in 1 Kings viii. 2, as being the month in which the feast of the dedication of Solomon's temple was held. That temple had been built with the help of Phnician workmen, and it was therefore natural that the names of the Phnician months should have become known to the Israelites in connection with it. The Israelites themselves were still contented to speak of the months of the year according to the order in which they came. It was not until after the return from the Babylonish exile that special names for the months were definitely adopted, and that the Jews henceforth called them by the a.s.syrian names they had heard in Babylonia.
CHAPTER IV. THE MOABITE STONE AND THE INSCRIPTION OF SILOAM.
_The alphabet of Egyptian origin.-Discovery of the Moabite Stone.-Translation of the inscription.-Points of interest raised by the inscription.-Discovery of the Siloam inscription.-The translation.-The date.-Its bearing upon the topography of Jerusalem._
Modern discovery has as yet thrown little contemporary light on the period of Israelitish history which extends from the conquest of Canaan to the time when the kingdom of David was rent into the two monarchies of Israel and Judah. The buried ruins of Phnicia have not yet been explored, and we have still to depend on the statements of cla.s.sical writers for what we know, outside the Bible records, of Hiram the Tyrian king, the friend of David and Solomon. It is certain, however, that state archives already existed in the chief cities of Phnicia, and a library was probably attached to the ancient temple of Baal, the Sun-G.o.d, at Tyre, which was restored by Hiram. It was from the Phnicians that the Israelites, and the nations round about them, received their alphabet. This alphabet was of Egyptian origin. As far back as the monuments of Egypt carry us, we find the Egyptians using their hieroglyphics to express not only ideas and syllables, but also the letters of an alphabet. Even in the remote epoch of the second dynasty they already possessed an alphabet in which the twenty-one simple sounds of the language were represented by special hieroglyphic pictures. Such hieroglyphic pictures, however, were employed only on the public monuments; for books and letters and business transactions the Egyptians made use of a running hand, in which the original pictures had undergone great transformations. This running hand is termed ”hieratic,” and it was from the hieratic forms of the Egyptian letters that the Phnician letters were derived.
We have already seen that the coast of the Delta was so thickly peopled with Phnician settlers as to have acquired the name of Keft-ur, or Caphtor, ”greater Phnicia;” and these settlers it must have been who first borrowed the alphabet of their Egyptian neighbours. For purposes of trade they must have needed some kind of writing, by means of which they could communicate with the natives of the country, and their business-like instincts led them to adopt only the alphabet used by the latter, and to discard all the c.u.mbrous machinery of ideographs and syllabic characters by which it was accompanied. It was doubtless in the time of the Hyksos that the Egyptian alphabet became Phnician. From the Delta it was handed on to the mother country of Phnicia, and there the letters received new names, derived from objects to which they bore a resemblance and which began with the sounds they represented. These names, as well as the characters to which they belonged, have descended to ourselves, for the Phnician alphabet pa.s.sed first from the Phnicians to the Greeks, then from the Greeks to the Romans, and finally from the Romans to the nations of modern Europe. The very word _alphabet_ is a living memorial of the fact, since it is composed of _alpha_ and _beta_, the Greek names of the two first letters, and these names are simply the Phnician _aleph_, ”an ox,” and _beth_, ”a house.” Just as in our own nursery days it was imagined that we should remember our lessons better if we were taught that ”A was an Archer who shot at a frog,” so the forms of the letters were impressed on the memory of the Phnician boys by being likened to the head of an ox or the outline of a house.
But before the alphabet was communicated to Greece by the Phnician traders, it had already been adopted by their Semitic kinsmen in Western Asia. Excavations in Palestine and the country east of the Jordan would doubtless bring to light inscriptions compiled in it much older than the oldest which we at present know. Only a few years ago the gap between the time when the Phnicians first borrowed their new alphabet and the time to which the earliest texts written in it belonged was very great indeed. But during the last fifteen years two discoveries have been made which help to fill it up, and prove to us at the same time what may be found if we will only seek.
[Ill.u.s.tration.]
The Moabite Stone, erected by King Mesha, at Dibon.
One of these discoveries is that of the famous Moabite Stone. In the summer of 1869, Dr. Klein, a German missionary, while travelling in what was once the land of Moab, discovered a most curious relic of antiquity among the ruins of Dhiban, the ancient Dibon. This relic was a stone of black basalt, rounded at the top, two feet broad and nearly four feet high. Across it ran an inscription of thirty-four lines in the letters of the Phnician alphabet. Dr. Klein unfortunately did not realise the importance of the discovery he had made; he contented himself with copying a few words, and endeavouring to secure the monument for the Berlin Museum. Things always move slowly in the East, and it was not until a year later that the negociations for the purchase of the stone were completed between the Prussian Government on the one side and the Arabs and Turkish pashas on the other. At length, however, all was arranged, and it was agreed that the stone should be handed over to the Germans for the sum of 80. At this moment M. Clermont-Ganneau, a member of the French Consulate at Jerusalem, with lamentable indiscretion, sent men to take squeezes of the inscription, and offered no less than 375 for the stone itself. At once the cupidity of both Arabs and pashas was aroused; the Governor of Nablus demanded the treasure for himself, while the Arabs, fearing it might be taken from them, put a fire under it, poured cold water over it, broke it in pieces, and distributed the fragments as charms among the different families of the tribe. Thanks to M. Clermont-Ganneau, most of these fragments have now been recovered, and the stone, once more put together, may be seen in the Museum of the Louvre at Paris. The fragments have been fitted into their proper places by the help of the imperfect squeezes taken before the monument was broken.
When the inscription came to be read, it turned out to be a record of Mesha, king of Moab, of whom we are told in 2 Kings iii. that after Ahab's death he ”rebelled against the king of Israel,” and was vainly besieged in his capital Kirharaseth by the combined armies of Israel, Judah and Edom.
Mesha describes the successful issue of his revolt, and the revenge he took upon the Israelites for their former oppression of his country. The translation of the inscription is as follows:-
”I, Mesha, am the son of Chemosh-Gad, king of Moab, the Dibonite. My father reigned over Moab thirty years, and I reigned after my father. And I erected this stone to Chemosh at Kirkha, a (stone of) salvation, for he saved me from all despoilers, and made me see my desire upon all my enemies, even upon Omri, king of Israel. Now they afflicted Moab many days, for Chemosh was angry with his land. His son succeeded him; and he also said, I will afflict Moab. In my days (Chemosh) said, (Let us go) and I will see my desire on him and his house, and I will destroy Israel with an everlasting destruction. Now Omri took the land of Medeba, and (the enemy) occupied it in (his days and in) the days of his son, forty years.
And Chemosh (had mercy) on it in my days; and I fortified Baal-Meon, and made therein the tank, and I fortified Kiriathaim. For the men of Gad dwelt in the land of (Atar)oth from of old, and the king (of) Israel fortified for himself Ataroth, and I a.s.saulted the wall and captured it, and killed all the warriors of the wall for the well-pleasing of Chemosh and Moab; and I removed from it all the spoil, and (offered) it before Chemosh in Kirjath; and I placed therein the men of Siran and the men of Mochrath. And Chemosh said to me, Go take Nebo against Israel. (And I) went in the night, and I fought against it from the break of dawn till noon, and I took it and slew in all seven thousand (men, but I did not kill) the women (and) maidens, for (I) devoted them to Ashtar-Chemosh; and I took from it the vessels of Yahveh, and offered them before Chemosh. And the king of Israel fortified Jahaz and occupied it, when he made war against me; and Chemosh drove him out before (me, and) I took from Moab two hundred men, all its poor, and placed them in Jahaz, and took it to annex it to Dibon. I built Kirkha, the wall of the forest, and the wall of the city, and I built the gates thereof, and I built the towers thereof, and I built the palace, and I made the prisons for the criminals within the walls. And there was no cistern in the wall at Kirkha, and I said to all the people, Make for yourselves, every man, a cistern in his house.
And I dug the ditch for Kirkha by means of the (captive) men of Israel. I built Aroer, and I made the road across the Arnon. I built Beth-Bamoth, for it was destroyed; I built Bezer, for it was cut (down) by the armed men of Dibon, for all Dibon was now loyal; and I reigned from Bikran, which I added to my land, and I built (Beth-Gamul) and Beth-Diblathaim and Beth-Baal-Meon, and I placed there the poor (people) of the land. And as to Horonaim, (the men of Edom) dwelt therein (from of old). And Chemosh said to me, Go down, make war against Horonaim and take (it. And I a.s.saulted it, and I took it, and) Chemosh (restored it) in my days.
Wherefore I made ... year ... and I....”
The last line or two, describing the war against the Edomites, is unfortunately lost beyond recovery. The rest of the text, however, it will be seen, is pretty perfect, and is full of interest to Biblical students.
The whole inscription reads like a chapter from one of the historical books of the Old Testament. Not only are the phrases the same, but the words and grammatical forms are, with one or two exceptions, all found in Scriptural Hebrew. We learn that the language of Moab differed less from that of the Israelites than does one English dialect from another. Perhaps the most interesting fact disclosed by the inscription is that Chemosh, the national G.o.d of the Moabites, had come to be regarded not only as the supreme deity, but even as almost the only object of their wors.h.i.+p. Except in the pa.s.sage which alludes to the dedication of women and maidens to Ashtar-Chemosh, Mesha speaks as a monotheist, and even here the female Ashtar or Ashtoreth is identified with the supreme male deity Chemosh.
Like the a.s.syrian kings, moreover, who ascribed their victories and campaigns to the inspiration of the G.o.d a.s.sur, Mesha ascribes his successes to the orders of Chemosh. He uses, in fact, the language of Scripture; as the Lord said to David, ”Go and smite the Philistines” (1 Sam. xxiii. 2), so Chemosh is made to say to Mesha, ”Go, take Nebo;” and as G.o.d promised to ”drive out” the Canaanites before Israel, so Mesha declares that Chemosh drove out Israel before him from Jahaz. Mesha even sets up a stone of salvation to Chemosh, like Eben-ezer, ”the stone of help,” set up by Samuel (1 Sam. vii. 12); and the statement that Chemosh had been ”angry with his land,” but had made Mesha ”see his desire upon all his enemies,” reminds us of the well-known pa.s.sages in which the Psalmist declares that ”G.o.d shall let me see my desire upon mine oppressors,” and the author of the Book of Judges recounts how that ”the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel.”
The covenant name of the G.o.d of Israel itself occurs in the inscription, spelt in exactly the same way as in the Old Testament. Its occurrence is a proof, if any were needed, that the superst.i.tion which afterwards prevented the Jews from p.r.o.nouncing it did not as yet exist. The name under which G.o.d was wors.h.i.+pped in Israel was familiar to the nations round about. Nay, more; we gather that even after the attempt of Jezebel to introduce the Baalim of Sidon into the northern kingdom, Yahveh was still regarded as the national G.o.d, and that the wors.h.i.+p carried on at the high places, idolatrous and contrary as it was to the law, was nevertheless performed in His name. The high-place of Nebo, like so many of the other localities mentioned in the inscription, is also mentioned in the prophecy against Moab contained in Isa. xv. xvi. It is even possible that the words of the verse in the Book of Isaiah in which it is named have undergone transposition, and that the true reading is, ”He is gone up to Dibon and to Beth-Bamoth to weep; Moab shall howl over Nebo and over Medeba.” The inscription informs us that Beth-Bamoth, ”the house of the high-places,”
was the name of a place near Dibon, the name of which appears in the last verse of Isaiah xv. under the form of Dimon, the letter _b_ being changed by the prophet into _m_, in order to connect it with the word _dam_, ”blood.” Kirkha, ”the wall of the forest,” the modern Kerak, is called Kir of Moab and Kir-haresh or Kir-hareseth by Isaiah, and Kir-heres by Jeremiah, which by a slight change of vocalisation would signify ”the wall of the forest.” The form Kir-haraseth is also used in the Book of Kings.
The story told by the Stone, and the account of the war against Moab given in the Bible, supplement one another. Dr. Ginsburg has suggested that the deliverance of Moab from Israel was brought about during the reign of Ahaziah, the successor of Ahab, and that Joram, the successor of Ahaziah, was subsequently driven out of Jahaz, which lay on the southern side of the Arnon; but that after this the tide of fortune turned, Joram summoned his allies from Judah and Edom, ravaged Moab, and blockaded Mesha in his capital of Kirkha. Then came the sacrifice by Mesha of his eldest son on the wall of Kirkha-so that ”there was great indignation against Israel,”
and the allied forces retreated back ”to their own land.”
The Moabite Stone shows us what were the forms of the Phnician letters used on the eastern side of the Jordan in the time of Ahab. The forms employed in Israel and Judah on the western side could not have differed much; and we may therefore see in these venerable characters the precise mode of writing employed by the earlier prophets of the Old Testament.
This knowledge is of great importance for the correction and restoration of corrupt pa.s.sages, and more especially of proper names, the spelling of which has been deformed by copyists.
Just, however, as the writing of two persons at the present day must differ, so also the writing of two nations like the Moabites and Jews must have differed to some extent. Moreover, there must have been some distinction between the more cursive writing of a papyrus-roll and the carefully cut letters of a public monument like that of Mesha. Indeed, that such a distinction did exist we have proof in a pa.s.sage (Isa. viii.
1) which has been mistranslated in the Authorised Version, but which ought to be rendered: ”Take thee a great slab, and write upon it with the graving-tool of the people: Hasten spoil, hurry booty.” Here words which were afterwards to be made more emphatic by becoming the name of one of Isaiah's children, were written in a way that all could read, not in the running hand of a scroll, but in the large clear characters of a public doc.u.ment. What these characters exactly were, a recent discovery has enabled us to learn.