Rev. S. Rlidnitzky 5T^f. Clements OxFQKl) England ^viii.; trfo. , ^;. " Thim-rjth no evil." NoJ looking at everybody's actions through green spec- tacles. Closing our eyes to their faults, trying" to excuse their weaknesses. Hesitating to find fault, and not thinking of it -when found. Love covers a multitude of (other people's) sins. (ix.) Pu7-e (6). Taking a delight in things that are pure and true. Not rejoicing over another's fall, over hypocrisy, impure stories, and slander. In verse 7 we get a gathering up of the many threads on which love has beaded itself in the pre- ceding verses. III. Love is Eternal- (8). Prophecy is done with when it is fulfilled. Eloquence fades from the memory as time goes by. Knowledge becomes old- fashioned as fresh facts are discovered (9, 10). The knowledge of the child, though partly right, is lost in the fuller knowledge of the man (11). Life is to us a riddle now, but when we get to heaven the riddle will be solved, and we shall understand t;,ll the mystery of pain and sin. No longer looking at the reflection of God in the mirror of his works and our circumstances, we shall see Him face to face without a veil between (12). We cannot imagine ourselves living without a God to have faith in, or without a future to hope for. So these two will abide for ever. But greater than these is love, for God is Love, and, " This is life eternal, that they mit'ht know thee the only true God." So love is eternal, and the deeds of love abide for evermore. " The world passeth away, but he that doeth the will of God (loveth God) abideth for ever." 11 ORIENTAL RECORDS. MONUMENTAL CONFIRMATORY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. WILLIAM HARRIS RULE, D.D. 'E^ripavdrj 6 X'^P'^^s kol to avOos avrov e^eneae, to 8e piifia Kvpiov p.evei eis rov al'lva. Multae terricolis linguae, coelestibus una. LONDON : SAMUEL BAGSTER AND SONS, 15, PATERNOSTER ROW. CONTENTS Preface ...... The Creation ..... The Antediluvians . . . . .9 The Deluge ..... 13 The Tower of Babel . . . -34 The Four Cities of Nimrod ... 39 Ur of the Chaldees, and Haran . . -47 Sodom and Gomorrah .... 54 Egypt— Joseph . . . . -57 „ The Seven Years' Famine . . 65 „ The Bondage . . . -72 „ The Exode .... 83 The Wilderness of the Wandering . . .92 Joshua ...... 106 Gezer . . . . . .111 Solomon — -The Queen of Sheba . . . 114 Tadmor -in the Wilderness . . . .121 Shishak, King of Egypt . . . . 126 Solomon's Folly . . . . .129 Mesha, King of Moab . . . . 132 Syria — Shalmaneser, Benhadad, Hazael . .141 2094-337 CONTENTS, Assyria — Conquest of Samaria . . . 147 „ Judea . . -157 The Army of Sennacherib smitten . 173 Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, Tirhakah . 178 Manasseh . . . . 183 Lachish . . . . .186 Doom of Ashdod . . . 188 Nineveh ..... 191 Sin and Repentance of the Ninevites . 198 Assur-nasir-pal . . . .210 Babylon ...... 215 „ Nebuchadnezzar's madness . . -223 „ The Golden Image, and Plain of Dura . 227 ,, The Fiery Furnace and Den of Lions . 232 „ The Grove . . . . 235 Kings of Judah and Israel . . . .238 Kings of Assyria and Babylon . . . 239 Synchronism : — Tablet of Canon ; Bible . . 242 „ Assyrian Annals ; Bible . . 244 ILLUSTRATIONS. The Assyrian Grove . . . Cover of Book. Sinaitic Inscription . . . . .101 Letter of Theodore of Abyssinia . . . 116 Phoenician Alphabet . . . . .139 Plan of Nineveh . . . . . 191 „ Babylon ..... 215 PREFACE. HAVE endeavoured so to collate some of the most ancient monumental records with Holy Scripture as to show that they confirm those portions of Sacred History with which they correspond ; and sometimes to show that they throw fresh light thereon. Chiefly, yet by no means exclusively, in Egypt and Assyria, original writings of remote antiquity have been recovered, many of them older than the writings of the oldest existing histories, and all of them perfectly independent of the historians, whether sacred or secular. It is well known that the lan- guages of these records all ceased to be spoken many ages ago, and that the very characters in which they are written were lost. Some of the earliest ex- plorers of these recovered realms of knowledge are yet alive. Others whom they initiated into the new- found elements are now triumphantly pursuing the study ; but many of humbler class are driven to 11 PREFACE. confess with regret, and oven shame, that we neg- lected to launch boldly on the deciphering of hiero- glyphs and arrow-heads. However, we can devote attention to the translations they make ready to our hand, and use them for the prosecution of Biblical researches on an extended field. A few of the records now laid before the readers were made use of, some years ago, in another publication,' a far greater number have been, since then, accumulated ; and a part of the collection is given in the present volume. We may reasonably expect that, in course of time, as the store of new-found material enlarges, the entire mass of Bible History will be accompanied with similar documents, equally genuine; and that the result of such literary wealth will be a more intimate, and consequently, a far more intelligent knowledge of considerable portions of the Bible, with a more deep, lively, and reverential assurance of its perfectness and truth. It is to be feared that a tendency exists, in some minds, to overlook the distinction between History and Legend. This tendency seems to be betrayed in such expressions as, " Biblical Legend," when speak- ing of what we apprehend to be plain historical statements in Holy Scripture. I can only presume to ' Biblical Monumfnts. Croydon, 1S71-3. PREFACE. suspect such a tendency in some of those who happen so to speak, and feel confident that the authenticity of these statements cannot be obscured by the acci- dental confusion of a moment. When the thoughts of an archaeologist are for the time engrossed under the enchantment of his peculiar study, he may, imper- ceptibly to himself, adopt a familiar technicality with reference to a class of subjects to which it does not in strict propriety belong. It is my present object to promote that kind of deliberate comparison which Biblical Archaeology requires. It can scarcely be necessary to observe, that the Oriental records in this volume are very various. Some are strictly history; others are legendary; others are no more than mytho- logical or fabulous. But all have some value, if made use of with critical discrimination. With regard to a possible objection that the trans- lations are not all perfect, I apprehend that the translators themselves would be the very last to boast of their perfection, if that is to be understood of every word or sentence. But the translators and their work have been long enough before the world to gain the confidence they merit, and are certainly so far inured to the difficulties of archaeological research to be among the least credulous of men. Yet even the languages written in cuneiform are now sufficiently IV PREFACE. mastered for certainty in translation to be possible, and one of the chief Assyrian authorities, the late George Smith, of whom we may now speak the more freely as he is beyond the reach of this world's praise, assured me, in my very last conversation with him, that I might venture to publish, as final, his rendering of the inscriptions concerning the Creation and the Fall. I could not adequately acknowledge the constant kindness of Dr. Birch, Mr. C. T. Newton, C. B., Mr. Murray, and other gentlemen in the British Museum, in the assistance afforded me while pursuing my enquiries there. W. H. RULE. Croydon, February ^ih, 1877. ^^Jf^^vWSJi ^ ORIENTAL RECORDS. THE CREATION. Genesis I. i, 2. OSES is author of the most ancient history in the world. Herodotus, sometimes called the Father of History, is supposed to have written his history between 440 and 430 years before Christ. Confucius flourished about 500 years before the Christian era, and Moses died about 145 1. The first historians of their respective countries derived their only certain information of past events from written records and inscribed monuments. Tradition, whether • it came to them orally or in writing, brought little more than reports of events imperfectly remembered, facts indistinctly appre- hended, and fables which could not be reduced to history. But written monuments are the sure ma- terials of history, so far as their authors record the truth. They bear a visible testimony ; or even if they only exhibit poems, tales of imagination, superstitious legends, mythological fables, incantations, hymns and 2 2 ORIENTAL RECORDS. prayers to the gods, they have some value that can be estimated by the critical antiquarian, inasmuch as they contribute lineaments to some picture of humanity. Annals of kings, sepulchral epigraphs, and astro- nomical notices, supply the incidents and the dates for history. The object of the present work is, chiefly, to collect literal confirmation of historical portions of Holy Scripture from veritable monuments of contempora- neous antiquity, and, in a few instances, even older than Moses. Moses, however, stands on ground exclusively his own. His cosmogony has a character of incomparable simplicity. His account of the creation, and a con- siderable portion of the book of Genesis, is more than history. History, properly speaking, is the narration of what the writer has himself witnessed, or it may be what he faithfully relates after learning it from faithful witnesses. Come to him as it may, first of all it must have been seen. But no man saw the creation; no tra- dition has yet come to light with any credible account of it. Such an account, however, Moses wrote, de- scribing with great brevity, but admirable clearness, the beginning of the material creation, and the works of the six days, before Adam passed through his deep sleep, and became conscious of his own existence. It is indeed conceivable that the Author of our being would reveal to Adam, first of men, the relation now established between Himself and the created world, and inform him of the creation then perfectly finished. This information, committed to the know- ledge and memory of the universal patriarch, might never be utterly forgotten. The tradition might pos- THE CREATION. 3 sibly be cherished by a few, and even preserved, although imperfectly, by Noah. It is possible, but that is all that we can say, barely possible, that some primeval record, even in Paradise, might have been made by our first parent, or some confession of his fall, but there is nowhere any trace, or shadow of pro- bability, of such a document. The clear character of truth impressed on the account of the creation by Moses must leave the persuasion on our mind that it was written by inspiration of the Holy Spirit of the Creator. The first sentences of his cosmogony read thus ; " (i) In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. (2) And the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. (3) And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." This English translation may not fully convey the sense of the Hebrew original, which it is always needful for an expositor to consult and soberly under- stand, but the words we have before us are quite clear enough for our present purpose. The state of the earth before Adam, or rather, before the dawning of the first day of time, as time has ever since been measured, can only be conjectured roughly by means of truly scientific rese'arch ; and of such research, so far as it is or may be possible, we heartily acknowledge the value. But what is meant by the beginning, or how long the state continued which then began, when the earth was formless, and empty, and darkness was upon the face of it, is difficult even to conjecture ; for it seems that the duration of such a world could not be calculated by any standard that we now possess. Say that it continued so for many ages, and let the geologist 4 ORIENTAL RECORDS. conjecture as many as he pleases. There does not seem to be any occasion for controversy here. Pro- bably there is no other passage in Scripture relating to the subject. No monument can help us. As for tradition, as that has to be handed down to us, and there were no men to hand it down before the creation, tradition cannot help us either. All that we can look for is some intelligence of the ideas of the Chaldeans, and other archaic peoples, concerning the creation. Such intelligence may be gleaned from some fragments of the tablets brought from Nineveh by the late Mr. George Smith of the British Museum, and partially deciphered. More may be found even before bringing these sheets through the press. Mr. Smith believed that there are the remains of at least twelve, which he called " Creation Tablets," and that " the first fragment in the story is the upper part of the first tablet, giving the description of the void or chaos, and part of the getieration of the gods'.' " (i) When above were not raised the heavens : (2) and below on the earth a plant had not grown up ; (3) the abyss also had not broken open their boun- daries : (4) the chaos (or water), Tiamat (the sea) was the producing-mother of the whole of them. (5) Those waters at the beginning were ordained ; but (6) a tree had not grown, a flower had not unfolded. (7) When the gods had not sprung up, any one of them ; (8) a plant had not grown, and order did not exist ; (9) were also made the great gods, (10) the gods Lahmu and Lahamu they caused to come .... (11) and they grew .... (12) the gods Sar and Kisar were made . . . . (13) A course of days and a long time passed .... (14) the god Anu .... (15) the gods Sar and THE CREATION. 5 ,..."' Who, we ask, who ordained those waters at the beginning ? Nothing discovered in these frag- ments, nothing that we have yet seen from the same source, answers the question. The knowledge was lost, and could only be restored by a future revelation. On the reverse of this same tablet wisdom is attributed to Nebo ; but Nebo, if this be the name of any being that existed, could not tell. That knowledge could only come by revelation, as it was imparted after the fall of Adam to a few men chosen from time to time to be the depositaries of the precious truth. But there are two other fragments from the same series. The (supposed) second, third, or fourth tablet con- tains the following : " (i) When the foundations of the ground of rock [thou didst make] (2) the foundation of the ground thou didst call .... (3) thou didst beautify the heaven .... (4) to the face of the hea- ven .... (5) thou didst give ....""' One of the gods generated from the water is said to have laid the foundation of the earth. On the obverse of the fifth tablet is the following : " (i) It was delightful, all that was fixed by the great gods. (2) Stars, their appearance [in figures] of animals he arranged. (3) To fix the year through the observation of their constellations, (4) twelve months (or signs) of stars in three rows he arranged, (5) from the day when the year commences unto the close. (6) He marked the posi- tions of the wandering stars (planets) to shine in their courses, (7) that they may not do injury, and may not ' The Chaldean Account of Genesis, by George Smith, London, 1S76, p. 62. ' Il-id, p. G7. 6 ORIENTAL RECORDS. trouble anyone, (8) the positions of the gods Bel and Hea he fixed with him, (9) and he opened the great gates in the darkness shrouded, (10) the fastenings were strong on the left and right (East and West ?). (11) In its mass {i. c. the lower chaos) he made a boiling, (12) the god Uru (the moon) he caused to rise out, the night he overshadowed, (13) to fix it also for the light of the night until the shining of the day, (14) that the month might not be broken, and in its amount be regular. (15) At the beginning of the month, at the rising of the night, (16) his horns are breaking through to shine on the heaven. (17) On the seventh day to a circle he begins to swell, (18) and stretches towards the dawn further. (19) When the god Shamas (the sun) in the horizon of heaven, in the east, (20) . . . formed beautifully and . . . (21) . . . to the orbit Shamas was perfected (22) .... the dawn Shamas should change (23) .... going on its path.'" The date of this inscription, or the older legend it may represent, is not known; but certainly, at the time of its composition, uranolatry was grown into a system, and the Chaldean or Babylonian astronomy had become a science. With regard to the world before Adam we may observe, that what appeared to be an enlargement of our view of the first two verses of Genesis forced upon us by modern geologists, is by no means modern. Dr. Morrison, the eminent Chinese missionary, gives us a remarkable " extract from Chinese history." " Fang-kwan-shan says that Tae-kei'h, " the First ' The Chaldean Account of Genesis, by George Smith, London, 1S76, p. 69. THE CREATION. Principle," MOVING, produced Yang ; at REST, or still, produced Yin. From the pre-existence of Tae- kei'h, Yang and Yin were produced ; these existing produced Wan-wuh, /. e. " All things," exclusive of heaven, earth, and man. Wan-wuh existing, Shing- jin, " perfect men," were born. But {he adds), how is it credible that more than 10,000 years elapsed, as is asserted, (after the existence of Tae-keih) before Yang was produced, and the heavens spread ; and that 10,000 years more elapsed before Yin was produced, and the earth formed ; that 10,000 more passed before Yin and Yang united to produce the various material existences (expressed by Wan-wuh) ; and further, that 40 or 50,000 years more passed away, before the process of Yin and Yang was finished, and the Shing-jin appeared."* " Such a tale is contrary to all sense and reason. From Yaou (first king of China) and Shun to the present time is not more than three thousand and odd years. The three dynasties, Hea, Shang, and Chow, were not equal in duration to Tang and Yu, which preceded them ; and the latter dynasties of Han, Tang, and Sung, were not equal to the San-tae. How can it be believed that 40 or 50,000 years elapsed after the formation of the heavens and the earth before man appeared, or the earth and water were adjusted, and food supplied to human beings .'' or that if the world had existed so long, these things should not have been arranged before Fiah-he and his suc- cessors } It is evident that Pwan-koo, who acted at the separation of the heavens and earth, could not have been long before Fiih-he, perhaps a thousand years, certainly not 10,000 ; and the time of Fuh-he » ORIENTAL RECORDS. must have been very near Yaou and Shun, perhaps a hundred years, certainly not a thousand. No scholar should decline a thorough enquiry." ' All speculations apart, and fully agreeing with Fung-chow in discarding the fabulous events and periods abovementioned, we mark the statement that there was a belief, at the very commencement of the Chinese nation, that the world had existed many thousands of years before the creation of man. What Moses says of the division of light from darkness, and the creation of Eve, must have been believed in Egypt very early, for in the 115th chapter of the Book of the Dead, as translated by Mr. Good- win/ the following sentences occur : " I (Ra, chief of the gods), appeared before the sun. When the cir- cumference of darkness was opened, I was as one among you (the gods). I know how the woman was made from the male." ' A Fiew of China, by the Rev. R. Morrison, Macao, 1S17, p. 59, 60. ° Zeitschrift fur JEgyptische Sprache. It occurs in a number for 1S73 or 1874. I neglected to mark the place when I made the extract. THE ANTEDILUVIANS. HE longevity of mankind between the expulsion from Paradise and the Deluge, their exceeding sinfulness, and the curse which was denounced on them, are the distinctive features of this obscure period of human history, and the traces of them still remain in some of the legends which have come to light. The ages of patriarchs in " the book of the generations of Adam " would seem fabulous if they were not found in a volume confirmed throughout by such abundant evidences of authenticity. 1. Adam lived years 2. Seth . Enos . 3- 4- 5- 6. 7- 8. 9- 10. Cainan Mahalaleel Jared . Enoch was translated at the Methuselah lived years Lamech Noah .... age of 930 912 905 910 895 962 365 969 777 950 I am not aware of any Gentile genealogy which can be produced to answer to the genealogy produced by Moses (Gen. v.; ix. 28, 29). But it is well worthy of note that in the mythic or fabulous periods of most ancient nations, the lives attributed to men, and the duration assigned to generations and to dynasties, are lO ORIENTAL RECORDS. of enormous length ; but when history begins, or is supposed to begin, Hfe uniformly shortens, even as in Genesis we read that it was shortened after the Deluge. Some time before the Deluge " the Lord said, My Spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh ; yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years." (Gen. vi. 3.) The actual shorten- ing of life, after the Deluge, took place gradually, and it is remarkable that 120 years was the length of Moses' life. In the time of the Psalmist, as now, the average number was reduced to seventy. The antediluvian longevity according to Berosus, is enormously exaggerated by the superstition which confounds men with gods; and there were a few kings in Babylonia whose reigns, added together, covered a period of 432,000 years. Another fabulous chrono- logy makes a succession of eighty-six kings to live through 34,080 years, being for each king an average reign of nearly 397 years. Students of chronology are familiar with examples of the kind, which are, after all, no more than lengthened shadows of an archaic truth. As to the wickedness of men in the first 2400 years of the world, as we say, the " Creation Tablets " now quoted afford clear evidence, or, if any prefer to have it so, a distinct confession. One of Mr. Smith's frag- ments reads thus : " (i) He {i.e. Hea) called his assembly. He said to the gods his sons, {2) .... I made them (3) . . . . shall not stretch until before he turns. (4) Their wickedness I am angry at, (5) their punishment shall not be small, (6) I will look to judge the people, (7) in their stomach let food be exhausted, (8) above let Vul drink up his rain, (9) let the lower regions be THE ANTEDILUVIANS. II shut Up, and the floods not be carried in the streams, (lo) let the ground be hardened which was overflown, (i i) let the growth of corn cease, may blackness over- spread the fields, (12) let the plowed fields bring forth thorns, (13) may the cultivation be broken up, food not arise, and it not produce; (14) may distress be spread over the people, (15) may favour be broken ofi", and good not be given." The solemn malediction was to the full accomplished. "(16) He looked also to judge the people, (17) in their stomach food he exhausted. (18) Above Vul drank up his rains, (19) the lower regions were shut up, and floods not carried in the streams ; (20) the ground was hardened which had been overflown, (21) the growth of corn ceased, blackness spread over fields, (22) the plowed fields brought forth thorns, the cultivation was broken up, (23) food did not rise, and it did not produce, (24) distress was spread over the people, (25) favour was not given." ' What can this be, if it is not a remembrance of the original curse by a generation that has forgotten Him who uttered the sentences recorded in the book of Genesis .'' " Unto Adam he said. Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wafe, and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying. Thou shalt not eat of it : cursed is the ground for thy sake ; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life ; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee ; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground ; for out of it wast thou taken : for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." (Gen. iii. 17-19.) ' Chaldean Account of Genesis, by George Smith, London, 1S76, p. 154. 12 ORIENTAL RECORDS. Nor docs the fragment quoted above only exhibit a remembrance of the curse, but an evidence of its in- fliction. Rain was withheld, drought and famine followed, thorns came instead of harvest, " distress was spread over the people," for death must follow if there is lack of food, and " favour was not given " to miti- gate the calamity. But when the Deluge was over, the apostate race no longer cumbering the ground, and Noah had offered up the sacrifice of thanksgiving, " the Lord said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake, for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth ; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done. While the earth remaineth, seed time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease." (Gen. viii. 21, 22.) That the order of nature and course of seasons had been disturbed is here intimated, and that such dis- turbance had really taken place this recently dis- covered tablet expressly affirms ; and the language of the inscription is more nearly that of plain historic statement than is usually found in the Chaldean legends. The family preserved in the Ark would not fail to speak of the state of things in the society of which they were once a part, and to contrast the world they had entered with the world whence they had escaped. There are several other fragments apparently relating to the same period, descriptive of the corruption and misery of mankind ; but the texts are so broken up, and so much appears to be irrecover- ably lost, that we can scarcely hope to add much more from the Royal Library at Nineveh in confirmation of the Mosaic record. But Babylon has yet to be explored. 13 THE DELUGE. Genesis VI.-VIII. EW ancient monuments can surpass in value an Assyrian tablet containing an account of the Deluge, discovered and translated by the late Mr. George Smith of the British Museum. The learned translator considered that, while its original composi- tion could not have been later than the seventeenth century before the Christian era, it was probably written in the primitive Chaldean language, and may be nearly as old as the confusion of tongues. It appears to have been laid up early in the city of Warka, or Erech (Gen. X. lo), and eventually copied in Assyrian for the library of Assurbanipal at Nineveh. Now the first Chaldean empire dates from B.C. 2234 to 1976/ ending some years before the death of Noah ; and the History of Izdubar, on twelve clay tablets, of which the legend of the Deluge covers a little more than the eleventh, was probably written in the language spoken in Chaldea at that time. This conjecture mainly rests on the last two lines of the last tablet of the series : " The twelfth tablet of the legends of Izdubar. Writ- ten like the ancient copy." Traces of the primitive text, written in an archaic language no longer well understood, confirm the translator in this persuasion. ' Mr. Smith preferred to date this empire from b.c. 2500 to 1500. 14 ORIENTAL RECORDS. Izdubar, whom Mr. Smith beheved to be the Nimrod of Genesis, after being a conqueror of "kings and monsters," fell sick, and came to fear death, man's last enemy. The Babylonians, as it appears, believed in the continued existence in this life of a patriarch named Hasisadra, whom they supposed to be trans- lated to some remote region, and to be immortal. This is intimated on preceding tablets, and on the ninth Hasisadra is said to be dwelling somewhere by the Persian Gulf, in the company of the gods, and having the knowledge of death and life. Much that relates to Izdubar, but has no relevance to the Deluge, we pass over, and copy the principal portions of the eleventh tablet. " Colinnn I. — (8) Hasisadra' also said to Izdubar,' (9) Be revealed to thee, Izdubar, the concealed story, (10) and the judgment of the gods be related to thee. (11) The city Surippak' the city where thou standest not .... placed, (12) that city is ancient .... the gods within it {13) . . . . their servant, the great gods (14) .... the god Anu, (15) ... . the god Elu, (16) ... . the god Ninip, (17) and the god . . . . lord of Hades;* (18) their will he revealed in the midst .... and (19) I his will was hearing and he spake to me : (20) Surippakite * son of Ubarratutu ^ (21) . . . . make a ship after this .... (22) I de- stroy(.'') the sinner and life .... (23) .... cause to ascend the seed of life all of it to the midst of the ship.' (24) The ship which thou shalt make ^ (25) 6oo(.?) ■ Noah. Seio-iepos, Euseb. Praep. Evang., lib. ix. ' Nimrod. 3 Ev HAiouTToXet T77 iv 'ZnnTapoi.cnv , Praep. Evans;., lib. ix. ■* Ninkigal. ' From Surippak. 6 Lamech. ' Gen. vi. 5-7, 13. « Gen. vi. 14-21. THE DELUGE. 1 5 cubits shall be the measure of its length, and (26) 6o(?) cubits the amount of its breadth and its height. {2"/) .... into the deep launch it. (28) I perceived and said to Hea my lord, (29) The ship making which thou commandest me (30) when I shall have made, (31) young and old will deride me. (32) Hea opened his mouth and spake and said to me his servant, (33) .... thou shalt say unto them, (34) .... he has turned from me and (35) ... . fixed over me (36) .... like caves .... {'^'j) .... above and below {2>^) .... closed the ship .... (39) .... the flood which I will send to you, (40) into it enter and the door of the ship turn. (41) Into the midst of it thy grain, thy furniture, and thy goods, (42) thy wealth, thy women servants, thy female slaves, and the young men, (43) the beasts of the field, the animals of the field all, I will gather and (44) I will send to thee, and they shall be enclosed in thy door. "(45) Adrahasis ' his mouth opened and spake and (46) said to Hea his lord : (47) Anyone the ship will not make .... (48) on the earth fixed .... (49) .... I may see also the ship .... (50) .... on the ground the ship .... (51) the ship which thou commandest me .... (52) which in ... . " Coliinm H. — (i) Strong .... (2) on the fifth day .... it (3) on its circuit 14 measures .... its frame. (4) 14 measures it measured .... over it. (5) I placed its roof, it .... I enclosed it. (6) I rode in it on the sixth time, I examined its exterior on the seventh time, (7) its interior I examined on the eighth time. (8) With planks the waters from within it I ' The same as Hasisadra, by inversion of the elements. l6 ORIKNTAL RECORDS. stopped. (9) I -saw rents, and the wanting parts I added. (10) 3 measures of bitumen' I poured over the outside, (11) 3 measures of bitumen I poured over the inside. (12) 3 .■ . . . men carrying its baskets, they constructed boxes. (13) I placed in the boxes the offering they sacrificed. (14) Two measures of boxes I had distributed to the boatmen. (15) To .... were sacrificed oxen (16) ... . for every day (17) ... . wine in receptacles and wine (18) I col- lected like the waters of a river, also (19) food like the dust of the earth also (20) I collected in boxes with my hand I placed. (21) Shamas' .... material of the ship completed. . (22) .... strong and (23) the reed oars of the ship I caused to bring above and below. (24) .... they went in two thirds of it. " (25) All I possessed the strength of it, all I pos- sessed the strength of it silver, (26) all I possessed the strength of it gold, (27) all I possessed the strength of it the seed of life, the whole (28) I caused to go up into the ship ; all my male servants and my female servants,' (29) the beast of the field, the animal of the field,* the sons of the people all of them, I caused to go up.^ (30) A flood Shamas made,* and (31) he spake saying in the night : I will cause it to rain heavily, (32) enter to the midst of the ship and shut thy door. (33) That flood happened (of which) (34) he spake saying in the night : I will cause it to rain {or it will rain) from heaven heavily. {33) In the day I celebrated his festival, {2,6) the day of watching fear I had. (37) I entered to the midst of the ship and shut my door. (38) To close the ship ' Gen. vi. 14. ' The sun. ^ Qgj,. yii. i. * Gen. vii. 2-8. ■' Gen. vii. 7-10. * Gen. vii. 11. THE DELUGE. 1 7 to Buzur-sadirabi the boatman (39) the palace I gave with its goods. "(40) The raging of a storm in the morning (41) arose, from the horizon of heaven extending and wide. (42) Vul in the midst of it thundered, and (43) Nebo and Saru w::nt in front, (z|4) the throne bearers went over mountains and plains, (45) the destroyer Nergal overturned, (46) Ninip went in front and cast down, (47) the spirits carried destruction, (48) in their glory they swept the earth ; (49) of Vul the flood reached to heaven. (50) The bright earth to a waste was turned. " Column III. — (i) The surface of the earth like .... it swept, (2) it destroyed all life from the face of the earth .... (3) the strong deluge over the people, reached to heaven. (4) Brother saw not his brother, it did not spare the people. In heaven (5) the gods feared the tempest and (6) sought refuge ; they ascended to the heaven of Anu. (7) The gods like dogs fixed in droves prostrate. (8) Spake Ishtar like a child, (9) uttered Rubat her speech : (10) All to corruption are turned, and (ii) then I in the presence of the gods prophesied evil. (12) As I prophesied in the presence of the gods evil, (13) to evil were devoted all my people; and I prophesied (14) thus: I have begotten my people, and (15) like the young of the fishes they fill the sea. (16) The gods concerning the spirits were weeping with her, (17) the gods in seats seated in lamentation, (18) covered were their lips for the coming evil. (19) Six days and nights (20) passed, the wind, deluge, and storm, over- whelmed. (21) On the seventh day in its course was calmed the storm, and all the deluge (22) which had 3 1 8 ORIENTAL RECORDS. destroyed like an earthquake, (23) quieted. The sea he caused to dry, and the wind and deluge ended." {24) I perceived the sea making a tossing ; (25) and the whole of mankind turned to corruption, (26) like reeds the corpses floated. (27) I opened the window, and the light broke over my face, (28) it passed. I sat down and wept, (29) over my face flowed my tears. {30) I perceived the shore at the boundary of the sea, {31) for twelve measures the land rose. "(32) To the country of Nizir went the ship;' (33) the mountain of Nizir' stopped the ship, and to pass over it it was not able. (34) The first day and the second day the mountain of Nizir the same. (35) The third day and the fourth day the mountain of Nizir the same. (36) The fifth and sixth the moun- tain of Nizir the same. (37) On the seventh day in the course of it * " (38) I sent forth a dove and it left. The dove went and turned, and (39) a resting place it could not enter, and it returned. (40) I sent forth a swallow and it left. The swallow went and turned, and (41) a resting place it could not enter, and it returned. (42) I sent forth a raven and it left. (43) The raven went, and the drying up of the water it saw, and (44) it did eat, it swam, and wandered away, and did not return.' {45) I sent the animals forth to the four winds, I poured out a libation, (46) I built an altar on the peak of the mountain,* (47) by sevens herbs I cut, {48) at the bottom of them I placed reeds, pines, and spices. (49) The gods collected at its burning, the gods collected at its good burning ; (50) the gods like ' Gen. viii. 1-3. ^ Gen. viii. 4. ' The Ararat range. * Gen. viii. 6. ' Gen. viii. 12. ^ Gen. viii. 20. THE DELUGE. 1 9 flies over the sacrifice gathered.' (51) From of old also the great god in his course (52) the great bright- ness of Anu had created. When the glory (53) of those gods on the charm round my neck I would not leave ; " Cobinin IV. — (i) In those days I desired that for ever I might not leave them. (2) May the gods come to my altar, (3) may Elu not come to my altar, (4) for he did not consider, and had made a deluge, (5) and my people he had consigned to the deep. (6) From of old also Elu in his course (7) saw the ship, and went Elu with anger filled to the gods and spirits : (8) Let not any one come out alive, let not a man be saved from the deep. (9) Ninip his mouth opened, and spake and said to the warrior Elu : (10) Who then will ask Hea the matter he has done .'' (11) And Hea knowing also all things, (12) Hea his mouth opened and spake, and said to the warrior Elu : (13) Thou just prince of the gods, warrior, (14) when thou art angry a deluge thou makest ; (15) the doer of evil did his sin, the doer of evil did his evil. (16) The just prince let him not be cut off, the faithful let him not be destroyed. (17) Instead of thee making a deluge, may lions increase and men be reduced ; (18) instead of thee making a deluge, may leopards increase, and men be reduced ; (19) instead of thee making a deluge, may a famine happen, and the country be destroyed; (20) instead of thee making a deluge, may pestilence increase, and men be destroyed. (21) I did not peer into the judgment of the gods. (22) Adrahasis a dream they sent, and the judgment of the gods he heard. (23) When his judgment was ' Gen. viii. 21. 20 ORIENTAL RECORDS. accomplished, Elu went up to the midst of the ship. (24) He took my hand and raised me up, (25) he caused to raise and to bring my wife to my side ; (26) he made a bond, he estabhshed in a covenant ' and gave this blessing, (27) in the presence of Hasis- adra and the people. (28) When Hasisadra, and his wife, and the people, to be like the gods are carried away; (29) then shall dwell Hasisadra in a remote place at the mouth of the rivers. " (30) They took me, and in a remote place at the mouth of the rivers they seated me. (31) When to thee whom the gods have chosen also, (32) for the health which thou seekest and askest, (33) this be done six days and seven nights, (34) like sitting on the edge of his seat, (35) the way like a storm shall be laid upon him. (36) Hasisadra to her also said to his wife : (37) I announce that the chief who grasps at health (38) the way like a storm shall be laid upon him. (39) His wife to him also said to Hasisadra the remote : (40) Purify him, and let the man be sent away: (41) the road that he came may he return in peace, (42) the great gate open and may he return to his country." ' Returning for a moment to the assumed date of the Chaldean legend, 1650 years before Christ, or seven centuries after the Deluge, we observe that midway between the two dates Noah died. He had lived three centuries and a half to relate the true account of that great catastrophe. But at the same time a popular and partly fabulous account was current, dis- guised by the mythology then prevalent, no doubt, in ' Gen. ix. g. = Records of the Past, Vol. VII., p. 135. THE DELUGE. continuation of the false worship of the antedikivian world. " The nepJiilim were in the earth in those days." (Gen, vi. 4.)' No translation has yet explained what those ncpJiiliin were. The "giants" of the Septuagint (^v^avT&i) throws no light on it. Aquila uses a word capable of two meanings {hnTrlTnovTei), and Symmachus seems to take his rendering {^[aioi) from the context, " The earth is filled with violence through them." Certainly such beings as people the Chaldean pantheon approach more nearly than giants to the " fallen ones " of the Hebrew, and the apostates of Aquila, as his word may be understood. If so, we conclude that the mythology of the tablets originated in the apostacy that was already in the earth when it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and accounts for the Babylonian legend as it differs from the true account which Noah would give of the Flood, and which Moses restored and per- petuated. But the story of the tablet is valuable, as a poem written after the event. It has not the form which was taken for poems in later times, but it is as much an historical poem as Milton's Paradise Lost, or Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered ; or, to speak more accurately, it is a mythological poem founded on the fact, taken from the archives of Erech, a city of Nim- rod, where it was deposited from 3600 to 4000 years ago, and eventually translated into Assyrian. It is immeasurably superior to an attenuated tradition given by Berosus, but enlarged again by Abydenus. Moses, unlike them all, wrote the veritable history 3300 years ago. 22 ORIENTAL RECORDS. Moses represents the Deluge as a consequence of the wickedness of mankind. So does the tablet : and the tablet bears evidence of the gross demonolatry and nature-worship of that age. The gods named therein are Anu, Bel, Ninip, Hea, Vul, Nebo, Saru, Ishtar, Ninkigal, and a " great god " who is taken to be Assur. This is evidence enough that men had fallen azvay from the worship of the one and only- Great God; and enough of the fabled attributes, and senseless worship of those false gods, is now known, to show the depth of the apostacy which brought down His anger on the world; confirming the truth of what Moses wrote, that " the wickedness of man was great in the earth," and that " every imagination of the thoughts of his heart," evay figment of the thotights of his hearty "was only evil continually." (Gen. vi. 5.) They had utterly fallen away from their Creator ; and any dim perception of divinity they might have, was expressed under some false name, and embodied in the form of an idol to be worshipped as if it were a god. The writing on the twelve tablets is described as the history of Izdubar. Mr. Smith arrived at the conviction that Izdubar was Nimrod. I venture to pro- ceed on this assumption, and find that it agrees with the tenor of the Mosaic record. Nimrod was the son of Cush, son of Ham, son of Noah. He was founder of Erech, where, it is believed, the original " History " of Izdubar was deposited. Hasisadra (Noah), son of Ubaratutu (Lamech), is called the Surippakite, from Surippak, a city that THE DELUGE. 2$ before the Flood is here said to have been ancient, and the gods dwelt in it, I. 11-13. In other words, Noah, when building the Ark, was a man of Surippak. Shamas, the sun-god, is introduced as speaking to Hasisadra, and making the Flood, II. 30-34. The feast of the sun is celebrated in Surippak, where Hasisadra lives, II. 35. Surippak must have been near to navigable waters into which the Ark could be launched, and so the tablet represents, I. 27. Here Berosus helps us to find the situation of Noah's dwelling-place, for he says that " Chronos appeared to him in a vision, and warned him that there would be a flood in which mankind would perish," and that he also " commanded him that whatever writings he possessed he should conceal in the city of the situ (not in Sippara, but) i?i the coiuitiy of the Sipparenes." ' I take Surippak to be the city of the sun situate in the region of the Sipparenes, of which the metropolis was the great city of Sippara, near the confluence of the Euphrates and the Tigris. Surippak, the city of the Ark, may therefore have been at the head of the Persian Gulf, by the outflow of those rivers in the same channel, where now a tradition of the Arabs places that very city. This tradition of the Arabs, of which Mr. Smith is my informant, remarkably agrees with a tablet he mentions,^ containing geographical notices, and among them one of " Surippak, the ship or ark city." ' ... iv IIXiovTToAei TfJ kv SiTrTrapoKTif iiTrOKpvil/at^ Euseb. Praep. Evailg., lib. ix. ' The tablet is printed in Cuneiform Inscriptions, Vol. II., p. 46. The reference is in Mr. Smith's Chaldean Account, of Genesis, London, 1876, p. 169. 24 ORIENTAL RECORDS. The state of mankind, especially in Chaldea, was not forgotten in the time of Berosus, who says that Babylon was then a great resort of people of many nations, who lived disorderly like zvild beasts, araKrw 'n -n'l Gen. xi. 5. THE TOWER OF BABEL. 35 to an eminent authority, M. Oppert, was Barsip, or Bar-zippa, and might be literally translated tojigjic- tozver, a name suggested by the confusion of tongues. The mound which covers the site of that building is known by the Arabs as Birs Nimriid. The mound Babil is the ruin of the pyramidal temple of Bel, and answers exactly to the description given of it by Herodotus, so far as its original form is ascertained. M. Oppert, commissioned by the French govern- ment to examine and report on cuneiform inscriptions, translates that part of a very long inscription which refers to Borsippa,' and which we gladly receive as the testimony of Nebuchadnezzar, tending to establish the identity of the original structure with the tower men- tioned by Moses. Nebuchadnezzar is represented in the usual manner, as one speaking in his own person. "The tower, the eternal house which I founded and built. I have completed its magnificence with silver, gold, other metals, stone, enamelled bricks, fir, and pine. " TJie first, which is the house of the earth's base, the most ancient monument of Babylon ; I built and finished it. I have highly exalted its head with bricks covered with copper. " We say for tJic other, that is, this edifice, the house of the seven lights of the earth, the most ancient monument of Borsippa. A former king built it, they reckon 42 ages, but Jic did not complete its head. Since a remote time people had abandoned it, zvithont order expressing their words. Since that time the earthquake and the thunder had dispersed the sun-dried clay. ' So Mr. Loftus also translates in his Travels and Researches in Chaldaa and Susiana, London, 1S57. 4* 36 ORIENTAL RECORDS. The bricks of the casing had been split, and the earth of the interior had been scattered in heaps. Merodach, the great god, excited my mind to repair this building. I did not change the site, nor did I take away the foundation. In a fortunate month, in an auspicious day, I undertook to build porticoes(.^) around the crude brick masses, and the casings of burnt bricks. I adapted the circuits, I put the inscription of my name in the kitir of the portico. " I set my hand to finish it, and to exalt its head. As it had been in former times, so I founded it, I made it. As it had been in ancient days, so I exalted its summit." We follow M. Oppert in his description of the ruin, which he examined closely. The "head," which Nebuchadnezzar exalted, has been lowered amidst the inevitable wrecks of time, but a part of it remains, and the summit of the ruin measures 152 or 153 feet English above the level of the plain. The line of frontage on the north side, as you approach from Babylon, is in length about 460 feet. The total circuit of the ruin is about 2,290 feet. In the middle of the north side you may walk up into the mass by an ascending footway, without steps, until you get to the level of a platform 82 feet broad by 92 feet long. You are then 75 feet above the plain, and find your- self at the base of a cone of baked brick, on which rests an enormous mass of masonry. Having mounted this also, but not without difficulty, you have a magni- ficent view over the plain of Babylon, the minaret of Hillah guiding your eye towards the site of ancient Babylon on the north-east. Here you are in the midst of a heap of Nebuchad- THE TOWER OF BABEL. 37 nezzar's bricks, each stamped with the usual three Hnes of cuneiform ; and here you see, around and beneath, the wreck of the once majestic tower. Enor- mous blocks of brick-work have fallen from the riven mass above, all bearing traces of vitrification by fire. In many parts they are completely vitrified, but the layers of bricks are still visible, as well as the cement which joined them. The tower was excellently built, and of great strength; but it is cleft and shattered through and through. Earthquake, again, has heaved the whole mass, as when first it made the original structure a heap ; and lightning too, if it was electric fire that produced the strange effect upon the detached blocks which made M. Oppert ask himself what con- flagration would have been terrible enough to produce so strange an appearance. The monument, as now found, is tenfold more im- pressive than if it had lain untouched by the king of Babylon, whose explanation both confirms and sup- plements the narrative of Moses ; and now, when the believer in Holy Writ witnesses the second overthrow of the Tower of Tongues, and surveys from the top of the ruin the desolation of the city, he almost feels as though he heard the very sentence of dispersion pro- nounced, and reads with full intelligence the words of Moses : So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth : and they left off to build the city. Tha'cforc is the name of it called Confusion, because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth : and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon tJie face of all the earth. (Gen. xi. 8, 9.) ' Oppert, Expedition en Mesopolamie, Livre II., chapitre vi. 38 ORIENTAL RECORDS. The recovered plan of the site of Babylon shows the position of Borsippa, there marked Birs Nimrud, be- tween the inner and the outer wall. With regard to the name of the city, its derivation is unquestionably established by the sacred historian. The name Bab-il given to one of the mounds, and interpreted to mean " Gate of God," may possibly have such a meaning, but that cannot interfere with the authorised inter- pretation of the old word Babel. Among the fragments lately found by Mr. Smith at Nineveh, there is one relating to the Babel-builders, with sixteen lines partly or entirely deciphered. So far as it is legible it reads thus : "(i) . . . . them } the father .... (2) .... of him, his heart was evil, (3) . . . . against the father of all the gods was wicked, (4) .... of him, his heart was evil, (5) . . . . Babylon brought to subjection, (6) small and great he con- founded their speech. (7) . . . . Babylon brought to subjection, (8) small and great he confounded their speech. (9) Their strong place (tower) all day long they founded ; (10) to their strong place in the night (11) entirely he made an end. (12) In his anger also word thus he poured out: (13) to scatter abroad he set his face. (14) He gave this command, their counsel was confused. (15) ... . the course he broke. (16) . . . . fired the sanctuary."' Considering that often many copies are found of the same text, we may yet hope that another tablet, or parts of one, may come to hand, and supply the missing portions of this valuable inscription. Ex- cavations on the site of Babylon may also bring to light much more material of the same kind. ' Chaldean Account of Genesis, p. i6o. mM 39 THE FOUR CITIES OF NIMROD. Genesis X. 9, 10. HE genealogy known as the generations of the sons of Noah (Gen. x.) has already served the students of ethnology as the key to some of their most difficult subjects of research. We find there a line of descent from the father of the postdiluvian world to the first eminent founder of cities. Noah — Ham — Cush — Nimrod. Nimrod, we read, "began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord," not so much a shepherd, rather a subduer and leader-captive of men, whose name became proverbial ; " and the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar," verses 9, 10. Before proceeding to note the identification of the other cities, we must necessarily spend a few moments on Babel. The scriptural account of Babylon, as it began, is incomparably the best, if not really the only one yet known. " The whole earth was of one /?/ and of i/ie same ivords. And it came to pass, as they journeyed cashvard, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there. And they said one to another. Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. And they said, Go to, let us 40 ORIENTAL RECORDS. build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven ; and let us make us a name, lest we be scat- tered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the children of men builded. And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one lan- guage ; and this they begin to do : and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth : and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel (that is, confusion), because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth, and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth." (Gen. xi. 1-9.) Neither from these words of Moses, nor from any authentic source, can we gather that Babylon was built before the Deluge, as some writers are now anxious to affirm. There is no historic trace or monumental vestige of any such city on the present site, or near it. When it became part of the be- ginning of Nimrod's kingdom it Avas a half-built and deserted place, a blighted work. It should have stood first in every respect, but only the name remained, and scarcely that. To Accad and Erech it was nothing. For ages it was buried in obscurity. Until Nabopalassar, and after him Nebuchadnezzar, it had no grandeur, and never could be called "the golden city." It was lifted into majesty after the fall of Nineveh, when it was made the seat of a new empire. During those times of comparative obscurity there THE FOUR CITIES OF NIMROD. 4 1 were kings at Babylon, as at other cities, and a few- stray bricks bearing their names are sometimes found. During his visit to Nineveh in 1874, on re-opening the trenches, Mr. Smith obtained an Assyrian copy of an early Babylonian text written in the reign of Assur-bani-pal. It contains the name of a Babylonian king, Agu, king of Kassu, and Accad, king of Baby- lonia, king of Padan, and Alman, king of nations, and king of the four races. His great exploit was the recovery of images of Merodach and Zirat-banit, which had been carried away to Hani, a place north-east of Babylonia. The age was comparatively remote, but it left a long space of time between that king and the Deluge.' The most ancient Babylonian inscription as yet known is one of Sagaraktia, and if M. Menant calcu- lates well, may be dated B.C. 2000, about 350 years after the Deluge; and Khammurabi, who comes next, he places at B.C. 1500.' An inscription of his, trans- lated by Mr. Talbot, represents him as doing works by no means extensive, like those of a beginner: namely, a canal called after himself, Khammurabi ; a general assemblage of the people, to be repeated yearly; a lofty citadel on a mountain of earth, on the bank of the canal' Other inscriptions collected by M. Menant partake of the same character. As for the name of the city, it was " Confusion." In the inscriptions it is an ideogram; and as it is not spelt, it is idle to affirm that its form is Bab-ilu, and its meaning gate of God. The Arab, who knows a ' Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaologi/, Vol. III., p. 452. ' Baby lone et la Chaldce, p. 106, 107. ' Records of the Past, Vol. 1., p. 7, S. 42 ORIENTAL RECORDS. single mound by the name Babel, pronounces it Arabically Bab-il, but that means nothing. I make, however, this brief note, because the dream of an antediluvian Babylon, and a city so sacred as to be called, at any period of its history, the "Gate of God," has even already misled some. Bab-ilu, I strongly suspect, will not be found among the names of Babylon. Neither was " Babel " used by the Babylonians themselves, but Karduniya. Of this there are very many examples, and M. Menant furnishes many in the volume now before me. One, consisting of very few words, is as good as a thousand for our present purpose : " At this time Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, and Nebobaladan, king of Kar- duniya, entered into a treaty of peace together." ' Erech, the Orech of the Septuagint, perhaps known to the Greeks as Orchoe, is called Warka by the Arabs. It is situate about eighty-two miles south of Babylon, and forty- three east of the meridian of that city. Bricks stamped with the name Urukh, and dug out of the ruins, ready to crumble into dust with age, are now in the British Museum. They were laid into the build- ings of Erech at least 4100 years ago, when Nimrod was yet alive. The ruins of the ancient Erech, about ten miles from the left bank of the Euphrates, lie on some undulating ground surrounded by marshes formed by the overflow of the river, accessible only from the month of November to March, when Mr. Loftus made his explorations. From the top of the principal ruin in the centre of a hill, the spectator ' " En ce temps-lu, Salman-Asar, roi du pays d'Assur, et Nabu-bal-idin, roi de Kar-Dunias, firent un traite de paix entre eux." Bahylone et la Chahlee, p. 133. THE FOUR CITIES OF NIMROD. 43 surveys a collection of shapeless mounds within a circumference of about six miles, where was a strong rampart, of which now fragments remain, here and there forty feet in height. The chief ruin is a tower that even now measures from the base two hundred feet. It is built of brick, and is called " the Buvarieh," a word signifying in Arabic " bundles of reed," such being laid between the layers of brick. Two temples, one dedicated to the god Anu, and the other to the goddess Beltis, represent the religion of the primitive inhabitants. No doubt there are treasures here existing which would amply reward the antiquarian, and even without excavation objects of interest are found. Such are clay tablets, which have been imbedded in fresh clay so as to make an impression of the inscriptions of contracts, for the twofold purpose of indenture and duplicate. More than all these vestiges of life, is the countless multitude of tombs that surround the ruins. Raised slowly to the height of sixty feet from the ground wherein the sarcophagi were first laid, the necropolis had risen, each body having deposited with it some relics, which, if they could be recovered, would be to some extent an index of the varying costume and occupation of successive generations. But what is of inestimably greater value, beneath the ruins of ancient Erech must be sought the records of events unknown to our historians, and the works of science and literature that may yet ser\'e for the more abun- dant confirmation of that Sacred Volume which has defied the waste of time.' ' Balylone et la Chaldec, par M. J. Menant, Paris, 1S75. — W'arka. 44 ORIENTAL RECORDS. Assuming the Izclubar of the Deluge Tablet to be the Nimrod of Genesis, there is monumental evidence of his relation to Erech. On the last column of that tablet occurs the following passage : " Izdubar to him also said to Urhamsi," the sailor with whom he had made his voyage to search for Hasisadra, " Urhamsi, this account .... if a man in his heart takes .... may they bring him to the midst of Erech Suburi ! " as if to be brought thither were a matter for felicitation. They then proceeded on their return voyage, and, when they reached land again, ** the ship they left by the shore, 20 kaspji (140 miles) they journeyed the stage. For 30 kaspu (210 miles) they made the ascent, they came to the midst of Erech Suburi. Izdubar also said to him, Urhamsi the boatman ; Ascend, Urhamsi, over where the wall of Erech will go ; the cylinders are scattered, the bricks of its interior also for its mass are not made, and its foundation is not laid to thy height. One measure the circuit of the city, one measure of plantations, one measure the boundary of the temple of Namtur, the house of Ishtar; three measures together the divisions of Erech ....'" The city, therefore, was not yet built. The ground for the foundation of the wall was cut, and perhaps some part of the foundation was laid, and could be made use of as a footway ; but the lofty wall, above referred to, was not built ; and as for the works to be erected in the inside, the bricks for them were not yet made. The plan, however, was roughly drawn by marking out the ground in three equal parts, one for the habitations of future citizens, one to grow ■ Col. \'I. 5-S, 35-32. THE FOUR CITIES OF NIMROD. 45 provisions for the inhabitants, and one for the temple of Namtur, and house of Ishtar, with such buildings and land as were necessary for the priests and the purposes of worship, the three sections being surrounded by the six mile wall. It would seem that the work had been suspended during Nimrod's absence, but there were the cylinders, either covered with inscriptions as usual, if they were of clay, or if marble, ready to receive them. Here then is a contribution to the history of Nimrod and his kingdom. AcCAD, if a city, was long thought to be lost ; or it was supposed to be a region occupied by the people called Accadians. But it is mentioned in a tablet found by Mr. George Smith at Nineveh, containing the answer of a Babylonian astronomer to questions from the king concerning two eclipses. " Concerning the eclipse of the moon about which the king my lord sent to me," writes the astronomer, " I have made observations in the cities of Accad, Borsippa, and Nipur. That which in the city of Accad I saw," etc. " The site of Accad may be ascertained hereafter, but now it is demonstrated that when that city was supposed to be lost it actually existed, and the geo- graphical and archaeological question is therefore greatly narrowed.'" It also appears to have contained an observatory, where astronomical observations were made, interpreted, and registered. The same city is also mentioned elsewhere, and its name may perhaps occur often. It is found on a broken obelisk referring to the reign of Tiglath Pileser : " Merodach Baladan, king of nations, king of Sumir and Accad, son of Mili-sihu, ' Daily Telegraph, September 20, 1S73. 46 ORIENTAL RECORDS. king of Babylon, grandson of Kuri-galzu, the un- equalled king.'" Calneh, if we may believe the Talmud, occupied the same site as Nopher, which, again, may be identi- fied with the town called Nififer by the Arabs. It is situate on the left of the Euphrates, about sixty miles S.S.E. of Babylon. The identification, notwithstanding the Talmud, is as yet very doubtful. ' Paper to Society of Biblical Archwology, on "Canon of Berosus," by Mr. Georsfe Smith. 47 UR OF THE CHALDEES, AND HARAN. ^i^ Genesis XI. 31. R takes the name of Mugheir. The ruins He on the right bank of the Euphrates, on the side opposite to Warka, but farther north. The Mugheir, properly so called, is a tower seventy feet high, which rears its head on the northern extremity of the mounds which fill up the circuit of the ancient wall. It is an ancient Babylonian structure in excellent pre- servation, due to its perdurable material, bricks laid in bitumen, whence the Arabs give it the name " Bitumen," Mugheir. In each of the four angles of this tower was inserted a cylinder, or timing the corner-stone of the Old Testament, (.'') covered with inscriptions. It is believed that, in times of old, the men of Ur carried on extensive trade, by sea with Egypt, and by land with Syria. A native of Ur therefore would be, generally speaking, more prepared to travel than many of his neighbours. But not only with Egypt ; their communications would extend to the Persian Gulf, to Arabia and India. Erech, or Urukh, is believed to have built the wall of Ur, and was first king of that city. Mr. George 48 ORIENTAL RECORDS. Smith gave translations of ten stamps on bricks from Ur, namely, Warka, Senkereh, Niffer, and Zerghul,(?) which show that he was a great builder of temples for the worship of the gods Ur, Bel, Nana, Samas, Belat, and perhaps others ; all of them being substantial and extensive works,' needing much human power for their erection, with great constructive skill in the builder, showing by their accomplishment in that age that mankind were both prolific and robust. Ur of the Chaldees was the birth-place of Abraham. Here he was when the Lord called him at first, as one of the family of Terah, to enter on his memorable pilgrimage, and earn his title of Father of the Faithful. Ur has yielded at least one instructive monument ; a small tablet of black stone, with an inscription in the most ancient character, like that on the bricks from Erech. It is in the Louvre, and has been translated by M. Francois Lenormant." " Dungi, man of might, king of the land of Ur, king of the country of Accad. " Dungi, man of might, king of the land of Ur, king over the country of Accad ; the temple, the high place ; the temple, her place of exaltation, I have built. " To the goddess Nana, lady of the temple of heaven, to his sovereign, Dungi, man of might, king of the land of Ur, king over the countiy of Accad ; the temple of heaven, her place, I have founded it ; her grand enclosure, I have built it. "To the lady of the land of Mar (the West (?), his sovereign, Dungi, man of might, king of the land of ' Records of the Past, Vol. III., p. 9. ' Revue Archeologique, Fevrier, 1S73. UR OF THE CHALDEES, AND HARAN. 49 Ur, king over the country of Accad, the temple Rag- guksa/ her high place, I have built." This king Dungi is believed to have reigned three hundred years before Abraham, and the manner of worshipping the queen of heaven, as well as the temple, or high place, built to her honour, must have been well known to the son of Terah. No doubt the temple was so constructed as to last long. The ruins of such temples, as they were built in that country, remarkable for their colossal architecture, continue to this day, and the licentiousness of that kind of idola- try is notorious. It was indeed necessary that the future father of a family that was to be set apart for the service of the Most High should be sent away from such an abode, utterly separated from a religion and a society so desperately corrupt, and prevented from intermingling with other tribes no less depraved than they. The patriarch was therefore appointed to a life of incessant pilgrimage. High places, however, were not yet forbidden. Abraham himself built an altar on a mountain be- tween Bethel and Hai, and called on the name of the Lord. On a mountain, too, and even by divine com- mand, he built an altar for the sacrifice of Isaac ; and when the erection of high places was forbidden by the law of Moses, it was not because of their elevated situation, but to avoid the strange worship for which they were used by the heathen, and of which Dungi's high place is an early example. Separation from Ur, we must observe, was abso- lutely necessary. Like Erech, it was a great burial place of Lower Babylonia, and we learn from Erech ' Meaning not known. 50 ORIENTAL RECORDS. what was the character of the gods in such a place. The god Ana was its patron. He was the Pluto of the Chaldeans ; " the old Ana," " the original chief," " lord of the lower world," " lord of darkness," " death," " ruler of the far-off city," " layer-up of treasures." The chief temple of the city was called " the house of Ana." ' In Haran, rather than in Ur, the call of Abram took place. St. Stephen gives a brief but exact state- ment of the patriarch's removal from Ur, and after- wards from Haran, on his way to Canaan. " The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham, when he was in Mesopotamia, before Jie dwelt in CJiarran, and said unto him. Get thee out of thy coun- try, and from thy kindred, and come into the land which I will shew thee. Then came he out of the land of the Chaldeans, and dwelt in Charran, and from thence, when his father was dead, he removed him into this land, wherein ye now dwell." (Acts vii. 2-4.) The first migration from Ur, when Terah was head of the household, was no doubt led by himself, although Abram was chosen of God to be father of the elect family : " Terah took Abram his son, and Lot, the son of Haran, his son's son, and Sarah his daughter- in-law, his son Abram's wife, and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there. And the days of Terah were two hundred and five years, and Terah dwelt in Haran." (Gen. xi. 31, 32.) Joshua, shortly before his death, reminds the Hebrews of the idolatry of Abram's family: "Joshua ' Rawlinson's Ancient Monarchies, Vol. I., p. 1 15. UR OF THE CHALDEES, AND HARAN. 5 1 said unto all the people, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Your fathers dwelt on the other side the flood (Euphrates) in old time, even Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nachor, and they served other gods; and I took your father Abraham from the other side the flood, and led him throughout all the land of Canaan." (Jos. xxiv. 2, 3.) Ur, we may note, lay west of the confluence of the Euphrates and the Tigris, about lat 31° N, and long. 390 5^ E. Haran, in lat. 36° 50' N. and long. 48° 8 ' E., on the east of the Euphrates, " beyond the flood." It is evident, from the above quotations, that Abra- ham was first called when he dwelt with his father in Ur, and that the family went from Ur to Haran, it being the design of Divine Providence, whether known to Terah or not, that Abram should " go into the land of Canaan." It is further evident that, when in Haran, the family " served other gods." There is a well known tradition that Abram demolished the images which Terah, being a maker of idols, had made ; but this is not supported by any direct evidence, and therefore we pass it by; and later Syrian authorities yield a piece of information which coincides with the words of Joshua. The Syrian biographer of Ephrem Syrus, who flourished about the middle of the fourth century after Christ, says that Ephrem visited " Haran, a city much frequented by pagans, axvd full of idols .'"^ A bishop of Edessa, in the fifth century, was accused of having made a youth of loose character bishop of ' Biilioth. Orient., fos. Sim. Assemanni, Vol. I., p. 51. 5* 52 ORIENTAL RECORDS. Haran, a pagan city.' James, bishop of Sarug, early in the sixth century, discoursing concerning the gods of Haran, speaks with the utmost contempt of a favourite god of theirs, " Mari of the dogs," an idol with a dog's head, with which the people of Haran deceived themselves." Julian the Apostate is said to have offered sacrifices there in the temple of Jupiter, and Haran appears to have retained, even later, its notoriety as a place for the manufacture, as well as the worship of idols. The relative position of the city, the persistency of its pagan traditions, and the agreement of its ancient character as a chief seat of idol manufacture and worship with its reputation in later times, may justify us in regarding its prolonged existence and idolatrous character, so long after the establishment of Christianity, as both illustrative and confirmatory of the history of Abraham. The imperative com- mand to that patriarch to quit his country, and his kindred, and to come into the land that He would show him, could not be fulfilled until he had not only left his country, Ur, but his kindred who established themselves as idol manufacturers in Haran, and had come into the land of Canaan that should be given into the exclusive possession of his children. The command was not satisfied by the first migration, and therefore it was repeated at Haran, where his family incurred the brand of in- famy set on them by Joshua: "Now the Lord said'^ ' Billioth. Orient., fos. Sim. Assemanni, V'ol. I., p. 201. ° Ibid, p. 327. ' " Said," not " had said," which obscures the sense of the original "ip>*'3. The Lord said it then when they were in Haran. Compare Gen. xi. 31, 32 ; xii. 1-5. UR OF THE CHALDEES. AND HARAN. 53 unto Abraham, Get thee out of thy coiintiy, and from thy kindred, and from thy father s house unto a land that I will shew thee." (Gen. xii. i.) Having been brought forth from the land of the Chaldeans (Neh. ix. 7), he was sent out from Haran, and thus extricated from the entanglements of an idolatrous home. 54 SODOM AND GOMORRAH. Genesis XIX. HE geography of the Sea of Salt, or Dead Sea, is well exhibited in Smith's Biblical Dictionary by Mr. Grove. The destruction of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboiim, and Zoar, as described in Gen. xix. is familiar to every reader. There was a popular notion, and perhaps it yet lingers, that after the de- struction of the cities of the plain by fire, the very ground on which they had stood was covered with the sea, whence, perhaps, the name of Dead Sea. To account for such a submersion, it was necessary to suppose a miraculous depression of the Jordan valley after the fiery shower, which certainly was miraculous, and consumed the cities. But as no such miracle as the creation of a new lake is mentioned in any part of Holy Scripture, we have no reason to look for any physical confirmation or monumental record. The actual depth of the valley beneath the level of the Great Sea, or Mediterranean, is but part of the general configuration of the earth as created ; and we are not informed of any account, or tradition, of any such natural convulsion as must have attended a sudden sinking of the ground to the extent necessary for making a basin for the new lake, cutting off the Jordan from the Akabah, into which it ought to flow, and entirely changing the fluvial system of that land. Besides this, the cities did not stand on what is now SODOM AND GOMORRAH. 55 the bed of the lake, but on what is known by a distinct and singular name, the Kikkar of the Jordan, which "133 is translated " plain," although it has to be con- jectured why this particular plain should so be called. The name is probably archaic and special ; but be that as it may, it favours the belief that the con- demned cities bordered on the river rather than the sea. The extra-biblical notion of a submersion in the lake is therefore given up by those who have most carefully studied the subject. We agree that the site of the cities, the pentapolis, we may say, was in the valley or plain along the Jordan, and that there was no new formation of a sea in connection with the penal catastrophe in the time of Lot. It also follows that Sodom was not to be sought for in the bed of the Dead Sea, but somewhere near the river ; and the tale of ruins having been seen deep under water by persons in boats could only have originated in a dream, if it was not a gratuitous invention. About five and twenty years ago M. De Saulcy published a narrative of a journey of exploration he had made, with much labour and risk, around the Dead Sea, and therein related how he had found the ruins of Sodom, Gomorrah, and, as he tJicn thought, Zoar, the first and chief of the cities northwards of the lake, on the west of the Jordan ; and Gomorrah at the south extremity of the lake, near one of the streams which there flow into it ; but, to borrow a figure of his own, he was immediately overwhelmed and put to silence by an avalanche of derisive contradiction. Persons of reputation joined in the cry. Their honourable position gave weight to their opinions, but no experience of theirs, for they did not survey 56 ORIENTAL RECORDS. the ground, justified their confident rejection of the report. In the absence of a third party, who might have given decisive evidence on one side or the other, M. De . Saulcy patiently kept silence, and probably passed in some quarters as an over credulous enthu- siast. But he is now an Orientalist of long established reputation, and comes again, fortified with independent evidence.' A veteran traveller in Palestine, Fr. Lievin, has visited the ruins of Sodom, which he finds as De Saulcy found them. The eminent archaeologist, Clermont Ganneau has undertaken excavations in a very ancient cemetery by Gomorrah. M. Saulcy himself has again visited the ruins on both sites, and emphatically renews his statement to the following effect. North of the lake there is a mount called by the Arabs Gebel Sedouvi, " Mount of Sodom," and below the mount, ruins called KJiarbct Sedoum, " Ruins of Sodom," the Arabic exactly repeating the Hebrew name. Dip. These ruins do not lie in the route by which travellers in the Holy Land are generally con- ducted, but they are conspicuous enough not to be overlooked by those who pass near them, and to the eye of an archaeologist they are of sufficient age and proper Biblical character. They consist of blocks of hewn stone, regularly laid by the builders, but much overthrown and in confusion, yet not in such confusion as to conceal the regularity of construction when the walls were standing. The other towns of the penta- polis are not yet certainly identified. ' "Notes sur la Pentapole maudite," in the Revue Archeologique, November, 1S75. 57 EGYPT. JOSEPH. N the wilderness of Edom, somewhere on the track of caravans that came from Arabia and the East to trade with Egypt ; or where fugitives from lands northward, lands often invaded by predatory bands from Assyria and Media, came seeking refuge in Egypt, a company of Midianitish traders pursued their way towards the same country. At the same time a company of herdsmen lay encamped amidst their cattle not far from the trodden way. These were Hebrews, brothers, and in a fit of jealousy sold one of their number to the Midianites for twenty pieces of silver. When those slave dealers reached the north-eastern province, then known as the land of On, or it might be Goshen, they sold their newly acquired " property " to Potiphar, captain of the king's guard, an officer who bore the significant title of " Prince of the Executioners," or " Captain of the Butchers,'" quite proper for the pitiless minister of a despotic master. (Gen. xxxvii. 15-36.) The lad's name was Joseph. His age was about seventeen years. His father's name was Jacob. His great- grandfather Abraham, renowned ancestor of all the Hebrew people. He rapidly gained the confidence of Potiphar, and 58 ORIENTAL RECORDS. after some remarkable vicissitudes rose to the highest eminence possible for a subject, and lived as an Egyptian until his death, at the age of a hundred and ten years ; and it must be evident to every intelligent reader of his history (Gen. xxxvii.-l.), that he became perfectly acquainted with the language, manners, learning, and religion of Egypt. From the pen of Moses, who also became learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, we have a fiHl account of Joseph ; and in this part of the Pentateuch we may find the first lines of Egyptian history, which now come to light after many ages of oblivion in writings that were buried in tombs and temples, inscribed in marble, and written on papyrus. Brugsch-Bey, who has long been engaged in writing the history of Egypt from those very monuments, confirms a conjecture of some of his predecessors that the Pharaoh who sent for Joseph from the prison to interpret his dreams, raised him to be second in the kingdom, and eventually gave welcome to Jacob and his family, was a sovereign of the seventeenth dynasty,' Ra-Apepi II. He believes that this Pharaoh was then resident in Ha-Ouar, a city marked Avaris in the maps, within the eastern border of Lower Egypt, not far from On, or An, called Heliopolis by the Greeks. It lay on the way to Goshen, where the Israelites eventually dwelt, and which is also called the land of Rameses. (Gen, xlv. 10; xlvii. 11.) The author of the book of Genesis well knew the city of Rameses, and the second Pharaoh whose name the city bears. ' Thirty-one dynasties are counted, beginning- far back, bej-ond the possibility of certain date, and ending with the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great, b.c. 332. EGYPT. — JOSEPH. 59 The favour accorded to the young Hebrew slave, and afterwards extended to his family, as w^ell as the facility of refuge afforded to Hebrew fugitives or im- migrants long before the time of Joseph, to Abraham himself, for example, is easily accounted for when it is remembered that a Shemitic population had been for ages accumulating in that province of Lower Egypt, retaining the characteristics of their race, but naturalised in the country, speaking the language of Egypt and even forgetting their own. M. Brugsch devotes an entire chapter ' to an elaborate demonstra- tion of the existence of Shemitism in Egypt. At this early stage of Old Testament history, there are few monuments, if any, that can be called con- firmatory, but there are some highly illustrative, that show how accurately Egyptian manners are presented in the text of Genesis. There is also a striking similarity in the historic incidents. For example, the elevation of Joseph to be second in dignity to Pharaoh, is not without precedent. Under Osirtasen I., a king of the eleventh dynasty, a minister named Mentuhotep enjoyed an equal degree of royal favour. His history is summarised in a long inscription to be seen in the Museum of Boulac. He is there described as a man of authority, a legislator, at the head of all the royal works, Pharaoh's architect in chief, he had regulated his affairs, and tranquilised both worlds (Upper and Lower Egypt). He had been zealous in keeping up the worship of the gods, and in teaching the people of the country to do their duty. He had protected the poor, and defended the weak. Peace was in his ' Hisloire (VE^ypt, Vol. I., chap. xi. 6o ORIENTAL RECORDS. words, and the book of Thoth was on his tongue. The king, his colleagues, and the great men of the kingdom loved him. He had beaten the king's enemies, conquered the Asiatics, quieted the Be- douins, and pacified the Negroes. He was most mighty in the plains, and chief in the valleys of foreign lands. He issued orders to Upper Egypt, and gave order to Lower. He was a second self to his majesty, and had no peer. Within the palace and without the great men bowed low in his presence.' His mummy was laid in one sarcophagus, that in a second, and the two in a third. The three are now deposited in the Museum at Berlin." Divested only of Egyptian extravagance is Moses' account of the investiture of Joseph with honours after he had interpreted Pharaoh's dream, and advised measures to be taken for averting the horrors of a famine. *' Pharaoh took off his ring from his hand, and put it upon Joseph's hand, and arrayed him in vestures of fine linen, and put a gold chain about his neck, and made him to ride in the second chariot which he had ; and they cried before him, Bow the knee; and he made him ruler over all the land of Egypt." (Gen. xli. 42-44.) There is an Egyptian tale of the investiture of a royal favourite, by name Nefer- hotep, and after bating from it what is impossible, the remainder much resembles this. An inscription in memory of the good fortune of Neferhotep, translated by M. Paul Pierret, has been published in English.' As is usual in such compositions, the divine and the ' Histoire d' Egypt e, Vol. I., p. 92. ' Lepsius, AeUeste Texte des Todtenluchs, Seit 22. ' Records of the Past, Vol. II., second edition, p. 99. EGYPT. — JOSEPH. 6 1 human are so preposterously intermingled that one knows not which is which : but the performance of a grand ceremony gleams through the fable. " In the third year of His Holiness King Horus (a king of the eighteenth dynasty, under which dynasty Joseph was in Egypt), His Holiness appeared like unto the sun, in the palace of the placid life (the royal palace being so called), after having consecrated loaves there to his father Ammon ; as he left the chamber of gold, cries of joy and acclamations circulated all over the world, and the noise of them reached even to heaven. The divine father of Ammon (which was a sacerdotal title), Neferhotep, was called to receive recompenses coming from the king of millions of years (of life in the nether world), and which con- sisted of all good things in silver, gold, perfumed garments, bread, beverages, meat, cakes, in virtue of this order of my lord Ammon (a chief god). Let them give my favour before witnesses to the Kertab (another sacerdotal title), Repose-of-the-heart-of- Ammon, Neferhotep. Who replies. Numerous are the things which the god who is the king of gods giveth to him who knoweth him. He doth recom- pense him who serveth him, and he protecteth him who doth follow him of whom the sun is the body, and whom the solar disk doth ever accompany." In writings of this kind picture supplies the place of words ; and so, underneath the legend, Neferhotep is represented receiving the chain of gold, which is not mentioned in the text. There can be no doubt that Joseph received his investiture with the accus- tomed pomp, but it is certain that he openly and con- stantly professed himself to be a worshipper of God, 62 ORIENTAL RECORDS. not of Ammon-Ra, but of the God of the Hebrews, to whom he gave all the glory for the wisdom wherewith he was endowed. (Gen. xl., xli.) The person, however, who received recompenses from King Horus could not be Joseph, who flourished under another reign. Brugsch-Bey supposes that it was at Ha-Ouar where Apepi received Joseph's father and brothers, with their servants. There may not be any remaining record of their arrival, but there is a picture which, if there were no presumption to the contrary, might be taken for it It was found in a tomb by Champollion, has been often copied as a favourite illustration, and the legend is now translated by Brugsch.' "A family of Asiatics, of the descendants of Shem. For some unknown reason they are come. There are thirty-seven persons in the party, men, women, and children. They are in the presence of the governor of the nome Sar, Chnumhotep by name. A royal scribe named Neferhotep, presents to the monarch a leaf of papyrus, with an inscription dated in the sixth year of Osirtasen 11. The chief of the family, named Abu- sah, respectfully approaches the person of Chnum- hotep, and offers him the present of a wild buck. He is followed by companions armed with lances, clubs, and bows. Over the picture there is written, ' Come to present the cosmetic of Mesram, which the thirty- seven Aam's offer him.' " The mention of cosmetic may seem trifling, and it is quite possible that the translator may not have exactly hit the meaning, but it may remind the reader of the " little balm, and a little honey, spices and ' Histoire, Leipzig, 1859, Vol. I., p. 62. EGYPT. JOSEPH. 63 myrrh, nuts and almonds " sent down by Jacob from the country of the sons of Shem, if indeed Abu-sah was not the father of Joseph, Jacob himself But it would seem impossible to identify Chnumhotep with Zaphnath Paaneach. What this latter name,' given by Pharaoh to Joseph, may signify has long been ques- tioned, and perhaps M. Brugsch has found the key at last. He writes an Egyptian sentence, and trans- literates it thus: Za-pa-ii-nt-da-dnx, and then trans- lates, "Governor of the District of the City of Life," or "City of Aa-ankh," a name which, he says, is found to have been given to a city near San, or Tan, the Hebrew Zoan. It was there, in the field of Zoan, where the wonders were wrought that are recorded in Exodus. There it was, or thereabouts, that Joseph and his Hebrews lived. It may doubtless be objected that the title of a provincial governor would not be proper for one that was appointed to rule over all Egypt. But it may be replied that the service for all Egypt to which he was appointed was temporary, whereas the dignity and revenue of that governorship was permanent. This leaves the question undecided, but the conjecture, if that be all, is too happy to be passed over without notice." Just one more illustrative reference may be admitted here. It indicates the extremely timorous jealousy of strangers. When Joseph made himself strange to his brethren, "he spake roughly to them, and said to them, Whence come ye ? Ye are spies, to see the nakedness of the land ye are come." (Gen. xlii. 7-9-) » n»S reSS, the Egyptian Hebraised. (Gen. xli. 45.) ° Histoire, Ed. 2me., Vol. 1., p. 169. 64 ORIENTAL RECORDS. And this pretended insinuation was repeated. About the same time, Apepi (the same Pharaoh) sent a messenger to the Pharaoh of the South, who received him with the Hke rebuff : " Who sent thee into the land of the South .'' How art thou come to spy.'' " ' ' Histoire, Ed. 2me., Vol. I., p. i6i. 65 EGYPT. THE SEVEN YEARS' FAMINE. T has been too hastily taken for granted that there is no monumental sign of either the seven years' plenty, or the seven years' famine in Egypt. But whether or not there be any such signs in Egypt, it must be admitted that there are some in Arabia, which is nearly as good, for the famine extended far and wide beyond. There can be little doubt that Job lived in Arabia. All that is known of Uz, Teman, Shukh, and Naamah, the place or country to which Job belonged, and the countries whence his friends came to visit him, goes to mark them all as Arabs, by residence at least. The patriarch's allusion to writing with a pen of iron, and with lead in the rock, for the perpetual preservation of his story, marks a style of rock-inscribing which prevailed in Arabia, and agrees with the fact that inscriptions are found cut broad and deep in the living rock, and filled up with lead, in good preservation, except that the lead may be fallen out, from the Peninsula of Sinai to Hadramaut. At least one such rock-inscription, relating to the Egyptian famine, brought from Hadramaut, with other Arabian monu- ments, can now be laid side by side with the Mosaic history. In the year 1834, two British officers, Messrs. Well- sted and Cruttenden, cruising off the south coast of 6 66 ORIENTAL RECORDS. Arabia, eastward from our naval station at Aden, being in lat. 14° N., and east of Greenwich 48° 10', espied an opening in the tall cliff, and found it to be the entrance of a harbour running far inland, and overhung with lofty hills. On one of those hills they discovered what no European navigator had reported, the ruins of an ancient town of great extent, and apparently without inhabitant. A solemn silence brooded over what had been the site of no mean city, but is now a deserted solitude. It was afterwards found that Arabs of the surrounding desert, where they pitch their tents, wandering like the sons of Rechab, had some traditional knowledge of the place, and called it Hisn Ghordb, "the Castle of Ghorab.'" It had been a chief city of the Himyarite Arabs during some part, if not all, of an empire that lasted 2,500 years,= but at length, in the sixth century of the Christian era, became extinct. A few years ago. Captain Haines, C.B., commander o{ \hQ Pa linunts, when on service on the coast between Cape Tartaque and Hisn Ghorab, having met with the chief of a tribe of Bedouins, questioned him as to the origin of his tribe. " We are the sons of Ad, the son of Aws (Uz), the son of Aram, the son of Shem, the son of Noah," was the proud reply.^ In this newly explored region there are many rock-inscriptions of the kind alluded to by Job, the man of Uz, of the same lineage, and in a part of the same country. One of them was in the old castle. It consists of ten lines, ' See Kiepert's " Map of Arabia " for Ritter's Erdkunde. ^ Abulfedse Historia Anteislamica, Edit. H. O. Fleischer, Leipzig, 1831, lib. iv., De Regibus Arabum. ' Haines' Memoir of the South and East coasts of Arabia. EGYPT. SEVEN YEARS' FAMINE. 67 and is descriptive of the flourishing condition of the once well peopled city, and of the surrounding country, at a very remote period. The language and character are known as Himyaritic, and the following is believed to be a closely literal translation : "(i) We dwelt, living luxuriously . . in the Zenanas . . of this spacious mansion, our condition exempt from misfortune and adversity. Rolled in through our channel (2) the sea swelling against our castle . . with angry surge . , our fountains flowed . . with mur- muring fall . . above (3) . . the lofty palms . . whose keepers . . the dry dates . . flung broadcast over our valley date grounds . . they cast from the hand . . the arid rice. (4) . . We hunted . . the mountain goats . . also the young hares . . on the hills . . with ropes . . and reeds . . beguiling them . . we drew forth . . the struggling fishes. (5) . . We walked with slow proud gait . . in . . needleworked . . many coloured silk vest- ments . . whole silks . . grass green . . chequered . . robes. (6) Over us . . presided . . kings . . far . . re- moved . . from . . baseness, and stern chastisers of reprobate and wicked men . . and they noted down for us according to the doctrine of Hud. (7) Good . . judgments written in a book . . to be kept . . and we believed . . in . . the miracle mystery . . and in . . the resurrection from the dead . . by the . . breath of God. (8) Made an inroad . . robbers . . and would do us violence . . collectively we galloped forth, we and our generous youth . . with stiff . . and sharp-pointed spears rushing onward. (9) Proud champions of our families and our wives . . fighting valiantly upon coursers . . with long necks . . dun-coloured . . iron gray . . and bright bay (10) . . with our swords . . still wounding c* 68 ORIENTAL RECORDS. and piercing our adversaries, until . . charging home, we conquered and crushed this refuse of mankind." Richard Pococke, an eminent Oriental traveller of the last century, found ten lines of the Arabic poet Kaswini, which he published as a specimen of Arabic poetry, and it is now found to be a translation, line for line, and word for word, of the ancient Himyaritic rock-inscription of Hisn Ghorab. Albert Schultens published his transcript of the same, and also another from Kaswini, describing them as " poems of the highest antiquity, found on marbles amidst the ruins of a fortress on the coast of the Hadramaut, in the neighbourhood of the emporium of Aden.'" The second poem in seven verses as given in Arabic by Schultens, and translated by the Rev. Charles Forster," relates the interruption of prosperity after scveft years of abundance, and mentions Joseph. We must all unite with our late learned countryman in hoping that the original of this also may be found at Hisn Ghorab. 1 We dwelt at ease in this castle a long tract of time ; nor had we a desire but for the region-lord of the vineyard. 2 Hundreds of camels returned to us each day at evening ; their eyes pleasant to behold in their resting-places. 3 And twice the number of our camels were our sheep, ' This Arabic version suggested to Mr. Forster the translation of the original Himyaritic, at the seventh line, by " resurrection from the dead by the breath of God," instead of " resurrection-mysterj', and in the nostril- mystery." " Sinai Photographed. EGYPT. — SEVEN YEARS' FAMINE. 69 in comeliness like white does, and also the slow moving kine. 4 We dwelt in this castle seven years of good life, how difficult for memory its de- scription ! 5 Then came years barren and burnt tip : when one evil year had passed away, then came another to succeed it. 6 And we became as though we had never seen a glimpse of good. They died, and neither foot nor hoof remained. 7 Thus fares it with him who renders not thanks to God: his footsteps fail not to be blotted out from his dwelling. Here is a distinct mention of the seven years' plenty, and of succeeding years of barrenness and famine in Arabia, which exactly corresponds with the account in Genesis (xli. 54, 56, 57) : " The seven years of dearth began to come, according as Joseph had said : and the dearth was in all lands : but in the land of Egypt there was bread." "And the famine was over all the face of the earth : and Joseph opened all the store- houses, and sold unto the Egyptians ; and the famine waxed sore in the land of Egypt. And all countries came into Egypt to Joseph for to buy corn ; because that the famine was so sore in all lands." But although all countries came, it did not follow that all countries could be supplied. Joseph could not empty the storehouses of Egypt to satisfy the cravings of all lands, nor sell away the bread at any price, when money became less precious than bread. Such was the state of things when a lady in Yemen 7© ORIENTAL RECORDS. wrote, or when in her name were written, some im- pressive lines to be inscribed on her tomb. Ebn Hesham relates that a flood of rain had laid bare a tomb in Yemen in which lay a woman, having on her neck seven collars of pearls, and on her hands and feet bracelets and armlets and ankle-rings, seven on each ; and on every finger a ring, in which was set a jewel of great price ; and at her head a coffer filled with trea- sure, and a table with this inscription : " In thy name, O God, the God of Himyar, I Tayar, the daughter of Dzu Shefar, sent my steward to Joseph, and he delaying to return to me, I sent my handmaid with a measure of silver, to bring me back a measure of flour : and not being able to procure it, I sent her with a measure of gold : and not being able to procure it, I sent her with a measure of pearls : and not being able to procure it, I commanded them to be ground : and finding no profit in them, I am shut up here. Whosoever may hear of it, let him commiserate me; and should any woman adorn herself with an orna- ment from my ornaments, may she die with no other than my death."' The temporal saviour of Egypt was ever consistent with himself Inexorable with the Arabian princess, stern with his own brethren until he had proved them well, proof against the blandishments of Potiphar's ' See Niebuhr's Foyage en Arabic, pi. lix. The translation is by Mr. Forster. EGYPT. — SEVEN YEARS' FAMINE. 7 1 wife, no pressure of importunity could induce him to send bread out of Egypt in the depth of famine. He was faithful to his charge, yet susceptible of every pure and generous affection. While famine in Egypt from failure, or even from excess in the overflow of the Nile, would not, in any single year, be an improbable event, nor would an historian need to fortify his mention of it by monu- mental evidence, a succession of irregularity in the river, and famine in the land, for seven, would be most unlikely, and any such evidence is therefore welcome. On the tomb of an Egyptian, by name Buba, near the site of El-kab (Eileithyapolis), there is an epigraph relating his good deeds, and among others this is pro- minent : " When a famine broke out for many years, I gave corn to the city during each (successive) famine." The translator's note should be added. " No doubt the last part of the inscription which we have preferred to reproduce textually, because of its capital importance, makes reference to an historical event in the form of a famine that prevailed during many years in Egypt. As such a calamity occurs very rarely indeed, as history knows but of one example, the seven years' famine in the time of Joseph, and as the inscription given above dates from a time obviously that of Joseph, the curious and important fact results that the numerous years of famine which happened in Egypt while Buba was alive, directly belong to the same event as is related in Holy Scripture, when it speaks of the seven years' famine which took place in Egypt, and in other parts of the world also.'" ' Brugsch, Histoire, p. 17S, Ed. ire. 72 EGYPT. THE BONDAGE. HE historian previously cited observes that the king who arose that did not know Joseph, was of the eighteenth dynasty, and often made incur- sions into their country. This first unfriendly king was Thothmes L He carried hostilities into Meso- potamia, the " Aram-of-the-two-rivers " of the Old Testament,' and NaJiarina of the cuneiform inscrip- tions. Thothmes H. made his conquests in Arabia. Thothmes HI. exceeded them both in warlike opera- tions during a very long reign, and a long inscription at Karnac recounts several very long campaigns in Assyria and in Palestine. In those expeditions he collected vast numbers of prisoners, whom he employed in public works, together with the slave population previously obtained from Ethiopia in Africa, and from other countries. The Hebrews, welcomed into Egypt by the Hycsos, shepherd, or Asiatic kings of the preceding dynasty, are now treated as enemies, and made slaves. Like other slaves, they are employed in making bricks, hauling masses of stone, and heavy labour on the public works. Perhaps they are able to execute lighter and finer work, such as sculpture and decoration of palaces and temples. • nnra din, Gen. xxiv. lo. EGYPT. — THE BONDAGE. 73 "A very curious picture, discovered on the wall of a funeral chapel at Abd-el-Nurna, in Thebes, exhibits prisoners hard at work making bricks, and building the walls of a temple of Ammon. Task-masters, armed with clubs, watch their labour, and inscriptions tell that they are captives taken by 'His Holiness' to build the temple of the god his father. This ex- cellently illustrates the Scripture which says that Pharaoh set over them task-masters to afflict them with their burdens. 'And they built for Pharaoh treasure-cities, Pithom and Rameses.' " (Ex. i. ii.)' " The building of a city, it must be remembered, does not always mean the laying its foundations, but rather the enlargement and adorning, or the completion. Rameses H., called The Great, is said to have en- larged and beautified the second of these cities, which was founded two hundred years earlier, and to have given it his name ' City of Rameses ' on occasion of a victory over the Nethians. He made a triumphal entry there, as is related on papyrus, and in a stele which may now be seen."' This Rameses H. was the most likely of all before or perhaps after him to make use of his captives in extensive public works. He came early to the entire occupation of the throne. His father, Sethos I., had associated him in the government during the latter part of his reign, and had admitted him to some of the lesser functions of royalty even in his childhood. Brugsch quotes from a stele at Dakkeh in Nubia, erected in the third year of his reign, evidence that he was present at the public dedication of monuments, and laying the foundations of buildings. " When ' Histoire, p. io6, Ed. ire. ' Il'id. p. 15S. 74 ORIENTAL RECORDS. thou wast but a young child, wearing plaited locks, there was no monument erected without thee .... When thou wast a boy ten years of age, all the build- ings were in thy hands, laying the foundations." ' So early was he inducted into the arts of sculpture and architecture which were to minister to his pleasure and ambition through life, and of which there are vast remains existing, and frequent mention in the papyri. The third Sallier papyrus, for example, contains an account of the war of Rameses Miamon (for this was his title), with the Khita, or Canaanites, where he pleads with Ammon the merit of his architectural works, works which certainly made requisite the forced labour described by Moses. (Ex. i. ii.) The following is his prayer : "Then said King Rameses, What art thou, my father Ammon ? What father denies his son ? Have I not made thee monuments very many ? filled thy temple with spoils .'* built thee houses for millions of years .-• given treasures to thy house .'' dedicated to thee all lands .? enriched thy sacrifices ? I have slain to thee 30,000 bulls, with all wood of sweet scent, good incense coming from my hand. The making of thy court being completed, I have built thee great towers of stone above thy gate, groves everlasting. I brought thee obelisks from Elephantine. It is I who had eternal stones carried, guiding for thee galleys on the sea, conveying to thee the labours of all lands. When was it said such happened in other times .'' " ' When his wars with the Canaanites and others were quickly finished, he bent his care on the founding or ' Histoire, p. 137, Ed. ire. ^ Records of the Past, Vol. II., p. 63, second edition. EGYPT. THE BONDAGE. 75 enlargement of cities, which he not only adorned, but fortified. So, during his long and prosperous reign of sixty or sixty-six years, he surpassed every other king of Egypt in the number and magnificence of his works, showing how great a mass of wealth and skill must have been at his disposal, with a vast amount of human power, no small part of it being Hebrew slaves. But this gigantic oppression at length provoked a re- tribution that spoiled the whole of it ; and a later prophetic sentence reads : " I will make the rivers dry, and sell the land into the hand of the wicked, and will make the land waste, and all that is therein, by the hand of strangers : I the Lord have spoken it. Thus saith the Lord God, I will also destroy the idols, and I will cause their images to cease out of Noph,' and there shall be no more a prince in the land of Egypt." (Eze. xxix. 12, 13.) Egypt was in the height of her glory while Moses was known in Memphis as the son of Pharaoh's daughter. It began to decline when Pharaoh and his host were drowned in the Red Sea. But its fall was complete when the last Egyptian sur- rendered the kingdom into the hands of the Persian who roasted Apis, the sacred bull. Then was Ezekiel's prophecy fulfilled, and from that time to the present no Eg}^ptian has been prince over Egypt. Egypt abounds in monuments to this most mighty of the Pharaohs, and pride of the nineteenth dynasty, under whose crushing despotism the Hebrews groaned in bitter bondage. M. Champollion procured a draw- ing of a colossal statue of him, which once had towered aloft before a temple in the Wadi Esscbiia in Nubia, but then lay supine among the ruins. There ' Memphis. 76 ORIENTAL RECORDS. still it lies, not only a memorial of the man, but an enduring symbol of the degradation of Egypt through long ages of abandonment, after the unchecked pre- dominance of brute force, senseless idolatry, contempt of humanity, and defiance of the one living and true God- The statue is a vast monolith, one of several which once adorned the court of his palace-temple. It repre- sents the Pharaoh bearing a sacred ensign, decorated with a ram's head, in honour of the god Ammon. When the statue was erect, its head was surmounted with the pschetit, or royal mitre, cut from a separate block of porphyry, which rolled off when the colossus fell, and it is lost. The figure is nearly naked, having only a shanty about the middle, which is held on by a belt, with the royal legend cut into it, and carrying a dagger that once had a hawk's head on the hilt. It is a walking figure, having one leg advanced, and a female behind, perhaps his wife, comparatively diminu- tive, of course, looking meekly up to him, and directing his steps. An historical tablet of Rameses II., relating to the gold mines of Ethiopia, which poured their wealth into his treasury, contains extravagant ascriptions of divinity to him. It is true that every king of Egypt received the like, but if regal majesty could ever seem to be divine in the eyes of its worshippers, it might so appear when Egyptian royalty was at the very acme of its pride. Every part and member of the body of the great Rameses Miamon was honoured as the seat of some divine perfection. All Egypt, they said, lay at his feet in prostrate adoration.' ' See a paper on the subject of this tablet, communicated to the Society of Antiquaries, by Samuel Birch, Esq., London, 1S52. EGYPT. THE BONDAGE. 77 A colossal head of this Rameses is one of the most conspicuous remains of Egyptian sculpture in the British Museum. In the fifth or sixth year of his reign, according to the most probable computation, Moses was born. In his palace the Hebrew child was brought up, and there he received his earliest lessons in the wisdom of Egypt, and perhaps also in the state and art of that barbaric royalty. If the Jewish historian Josephus received a true tradition, the future captain of the Hebrew host was often fondled when an infant by this most mighty of the Pharaohs. He therefore could not have known the broken spirit of a slave, and must rather have imbibed a consciousness of social superi- ority, and fitness to be the leader of his brethren. It is remarkable that the very name given to the Hebrew foundling by Pharaoh's daughter was also borne by seven princes, at least, of African Ethiopia. The proper Egyptian name, as we read, was Mes, or MesH. Now Moses was eighty years old when he came back from his voluntary exile in the land of Midian; and if Rameses reigned sixty-six years, ac- cording to Manetho, and Menephtah II., his son, immediately succeeded him and reigned twenty years, that would make the exode coincident with the termi- nation of the latter reign. Menephtah left a few monuments of some victories of minor importance over the Libyans in Lower Egypt, but he did no great work, whatever he might have projected, beyond the erection of a few buildings. He did, however, lay heavy burdens on the slave- population for making bricks, as if to be in readiness for some extensive structures, just as the writer of the 78 ORIENTAL RECORDS. book of Exodus relates. Exactly in agreement with this prominent feature in the Mosaic history is the information of Brugsch-Bey, who found on a papyrus an order for forced labour. It runs thus : " For the execution of building for twelve years. The men for making bricks .... shall be taken to the works at the house .... to make the number of bricks daily, without any rest from their work in brick.'" We observe that when " Moses and Aaron went in and told Pharaoh, Thus saith the LORD° God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may hold a feast to me in the wilderness .... Pharaoh said, Who is tJie Lord, that I should obey his voice, to let Israel go } I know not the LORD, neither will I let Israel go." (Ex. V. I, 2). This disclaiming all knowledge of the God of Israel implied more than ignorance, more even than contempt. It had the strongest possible religious and political significance. Pharaoh was not merely ignorant : no intelligent Egyptian could be ignorant of the God of Abraham and of the Hebrews. The name of that God, to say nothing more, had been known for ages by frequent intercourse between people of both nations. But to know, both in Egypt and Assyria, was significant of homage to a king, and of worship to a god. In confirmation of the latter sense many quotations might be made, but I select one that is directly to the present point. An inscription found by M. Mariette, in the ruins of the grand temple of Napata on Jebel Barkah, contains a full account of the ceremonial of a royal coronation.' Among other ceremonies is that of accla- ' Brug-sch, Histoire, p. 106, Ed. ire. ' mrr. ^ Revue Archeologique, Mai 1S73. EGYPT. — THE BONDAGE. 79 mation. The assembled soldiery first make their choice publicly known by addressing a solemn prayer to the god Ammon Ra, shouting a recognition of himself: "We come to thee, Ammon. Give us our master, to make us live ! We do not speak to thee like one who does not knozv tliee." The soldiers having thus prayed, the priests receive them at the gate of the temple of Ammon, and ask them why they come thither. They answer, "We come to this god, Ammon Ra, that he may give us our master. We do not speak a zvord as if we did not know J dm: He is 02ir gnide." The Egyptians, like other heathens, had gods of their own choice and making. So Pharaoh, who certainly had not chosen to serve the God of Abraham, says that the God of the Hebrews is not a god that he acknowledges. He knows Him not. He and the Egyptians have never raised Him any acclamation. They say that He is not tJieir God. Moses, to whom the formula was familiar, repeats it as it was spoken. The gods of Egypt were set up against the one true and living God, by the king, the priests, and the idolatrous multitude. The insolence of Menephtah, when defying the God of the Hebrews, was but in agreement with the pride of the Pharaohs and their flatterers. A monu- ment of Heremhel, a king of the eighteenth dynasty, furnishes a complete example. Heremhel is painted in the character of a conqueror, carried by military chiefs in a rich palanquin, and attended by slaves carrying fans to cool him. Other slaves prepare the way for the cortege. Warriors follow, leading captive princes. Soldiers again follow, carrying shields, with a trumpeter marching before them. A group of 80 ORIENTAL RECORDS. functionaries, sacerdotal and civil, receive the king and pay him homage. The hieroglyphic legend is as follows : " The gracious god returns, after having subdued all peoples. His bow is in his hand, as that of the Lord of the Thebaid. The potent king. The glorious. He brings the chief of the vile countiy of Ethiopia. He returns from Ethiopia with the booty he has taken by force, as his father Ammon had ordained." The poor captive Negroes, perforce, give their acclamations, and address the Pharaoh with the following panegyric : " Bow down thy face, O Pharaoh, king of Egypt ! Conqueror of the new peoples ! Great is thy name in the land of Ethiopia, and thy war- cries in its places. Thy valour, even thine, O king, hath defeated nations. Pharaoh is the sun to shine upon me.'" The Hebrews " built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pithom and Raamses " (Ex. i. ii), otherwise called Rameses (Ex. xii. 37). A letter containing a descrip- tion of the city Rameses, which was either built or rebuilt by Rameses H., their great oppressor, has been translated from the Anastasi Papyrus HI., and not only tends to confirm the statement of Moses, but explains what is meant by a city of ni3|iipp treasures, or perhaps less correctly stores. A certain " clerk Panbesa salutes his lord," for whose information he writes : " I proceeded to Pa- Ramessu Meiamen (Abode of Rameses, beloved of the god Ammon ; being his proper name, and the entire sentence the full designation of the city). I found it flourishing in good things without a rival, ' Brugsch, Histoirc, p. 124, Ed. ire. EGYPT. THE BONDAGE. 8 1 like the foundation of Thebes . . . ., the abode of fehcity. Its meadows are filled with all good things, it is well provisioned daily. Its pools are filled with fish, its ponds with fowl ; its fields are verdant with grass." Choice flowers and esculent plants are in them. " Its threshing-floors are full of barley and wheat." Vegetables and fruits whose names are not yet translated abound in its gardens. " Sweet wine of the produce of Egypt, which is superior to honey." Varieties of fish are in its ponds. " The pool of Horus furnishes salt, the Pahura lake furnishes nitre." " There is a supply of provisions there daily. Glad- ness dwells in it, none speaks scorn of it. The little ones in it are like the great ones. They say. Come, let us celebrate its heavenly festivals, and the season feasts. The papyrus marsh is adorned with Menhu- flowers, the pool of Horus with the Asi-flower ; there are Sabara-flowers from the arboretum, festoons from the vineyards .... fowls in flocks." The virgins of Aa-nech-tu, well apparelled every day, and gaily adorned on the day of Ra-user-ma Sotep-en-ra, the War-god of the World, as Rameses is called, " on the morning of the feast of Ka-ha-ka, all assemble one with another to recite their petitions," and as the letter intimates they get plenty of sweet drinks, liquors, beer, wine, and "sweet refreshments from the lake Sakabaima, and garlands from the arbours. The sweet singers of Aa-nech-tu are of the school of Memphis. Joy remains there prolonged, unceasing. Ra-user-ma Sotep-en-ra, the War-god of the World. Ramessu Meiamen, is its god." ' ' Records of the Past, Vol. VI., p. 13. 82 ORIENTAL RECORDS. The rendering, treasure-cities, of our authorised version, might seem indefinite, but is fully justified by the native description now quoted ; and although an Assyrian text of a later age could not alone be trusted for interpreting the Hebrew account of an Egyptian matter, there is a cuneiform inscription which does afford some confirmation when it describes the golden Babylon as treasure-city of the god Merodach, and abode of the royalty of King Nebuchadnezzar.' The treasures, then, of this city were the provisions required for the delectation of a Pharaoh, and the place was built and furnished with immense labour, which required skill such as distinguished the He- brews, and made them convenient slaves to the Sesostris of Egypt, and, ages later, to the Sardana- palus of Assyria. ' Records of the Past, Vol. V., p. 131. ^3 EGYPT. — ♦ — THE EXODE. Exodus XII. -XIV. HE entire nation of Hebrew slaves, and also that mixed multitude of which Moses speaks (Ex. xii. 2,8), all being companions in hard bondage, had sent up one incessant wail of distress to heaven. The Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of the fathers of the Hebrews, heard their cry, and called Moses, who had taken refuge in the pasture lands of Midian, and sent him, with his brother Aaron, into Egypt, to demand release. They who have been companions in bondage shall rejoice together in de- liverance. Captives of many Gentile tribes, stolen from the neighbouring lands of Africa and Asia, shall march together, the vast multitude swelling as it goes on from Rameses to Succoth. The record of this gracious mission, and of the deliverance consequent, is given in the book of Exodus and the remainder of the Pentateuch, and needs not be repeated here. The Mosaic history is clear and graphic, and in that respect is such as only eye-witnesses could write. Arabian traditions and Roman tales, although they depart widely from his- toric truth, unite in giving corroborative evidence. There was such an escape of Hebrew slaves from 7* 84 ORIENTAL RECORDS. Egypt, and Arabians, Greeks, and Romans had heard of it. Tacitus, for example, professes to have learned from the general consent of authors that the Jews, as he too hastily calls them,' were driven out of Egypt by the advice of an oracle, because they had brought some fatal disease upon the Egyptians, that Moses offered himself to be their leader, that he actually led them through a desert, and then gave them the code of laws by which they were thenceforth governed." Perhaps Trogus Pompeius, half a century before Christ, was the first in whose writings was discovered this disguised tradition of an event which the Gentiles could neither understand nor forget. Eusebius, inde- fatigable collector of ancient writings, has many pages in his Evangelical Preparation ' covered with extracts from spurious histories of Moses, unfriendly indeed, yet not unworthy of perusal. All his authors had related fabulous tales about the mission of Moses to Egypt, and dark tales of what Moses himself records without a shadow of obscurity. But they relate, while they distort, the facts ; and the most absurd fictions of an Artabanus cannot possibly throw doubt on the memory of so great an event as that now before us. It was not to be expected that after the impoverish- ment of Egypt by the loss from the population of ' In the time of Moses, as for ages before him, and thence onward until after the secession of the ten tribes under Jeroboam the son of Nebat, this people were only known as Hebrews, like Abraham himself, or Israelites, after Jacob. The ^ews, cnrr, or men of the tribe of Judah, did not give their tribal name to all the nation until the Babylonian captivity, and that arose from the prominence then given them by the number of the captives brought from Jerusalem, and the deserved eminence of some of them. ' Taciti Hist., V. ' Proparaskeiie, lib. i.\. EGYPT. THE EXODE. 85 600,000 men, besides women and children, with an untold number of other captives, besides the sudden destruction of the army and the death of the king, there would be any monument erected to perpetuate the memory of so great and ignominious a misfortune. Pharaohs, worshipped as if they were gods, and served with more passionate devotion than their subjects would render to the gods whose names they borrowed, would not suffer any national record to be made of so dark events. There is, therefore, little hope of dis- covering any considerable notice of the Exode, or of the events relating thereto, in the writings or monu- mental inscriptions of the country. Dr. August Eisenlohr, Professor of the Egyptian language in the University of Heidelberg, had con- fessed his despair of finding in Egyptian records any thing relating to the events recorded in the book of Exodus, until the winter of 1869-70, when he studied in Alexandria the great papyrus which the late A. C. Harris had obtained during a journey in the valley of the Nile. This papyrus contains a history of the exploits of Rameses HI., perhaps the sixth Pharaoh after Menephtah, the Pharaoh of the Exode.' It is written in the form of a royal address to the officers of government and the people. After a long enumeration of all that he had spent on the gods of Thebes, ' Menephtah I. was the son and successor of Rameses II., the famous oppressor of the Hebrews. Sethos II. was the successor of Menephtah. Here occurs a confusion in the list of kings which corresponds with the disorder and anarchy complained of in the papyrus. Between the two Rameses the line of succession has been stated thus:— Rameses II., Menephtah I., Sethos II., Meiiephlak 1 1., Ameneynali, Sephliili, SethosSekht, and his son Rameses III., author of the history, who disowns all that were called l-:in"s between the second Sethos and his father. 86 ORIENTAL RFXORDS. Heliopolis, and Memphis, and other gods of Upper and Lower Egypt, in buildings and offerings, the last five of the seventy-nine sheets, of which the manuscript consists, are filled with an account of his wars, mari- time expeditions, and colonisation of the Peninsula of Sinai. As an introduction to this part of the history, Menephtah relates his accession to the throne, and the occurrences which preceded. The accession of Rameses III. is dated by Sir Gardner Wilkinson at B.C. 131 1, and the Exode is set down at B.C. 1491, or 180 years earlier, a period requiring six or seven reigns rather than two. Thir- teen or fourteen lines are translated by Eisenlohr from the beginning of this introduction : " A people of Khara {Syria) had inhabited the east of Egypt," says the papyrus ; " the land of Egypt was in a state of ruin. Every man did as he would. For many years they had no head who might preside over matters. The land of Egypt belonged to the princes in the districts. One killed the other through envy of his power. Other events took place thereafter in years of distress. One Syrian chief had made himself a prince among them. He brought the whole land into subjection under his sole rule. He assembled his companions, and plundered the treasures of the in- habitants. They made the gods like the human beings, offerings were no longer presented in the interior of the temples. The images of the gods were thrown down, and remained on the ground. His pleasure was in harmony with his plan." ' Then follows an account of the gradual restoration of order, with return of pros- perity; and finally, according to Rameses HI., the ' Transactions of the Society of Biilical Archceology, Vol. I., p. 355. EGYPT. THE EXODE. 87 gods made him king, the land was pacified, and he was reigning gloriously over both the worlds of Upper and Lower Egypt. On the publication of this part of the royal history, some stirring questions have arisen. Was the Syrian chief Moses .'' Was the plundering of the treasures the same thing as the spoiling of the Egyptians } (Ex. xii. 36.) Was that making the gods like men the putting the gods of Egypt to confusion by Moses' miracles .'' Was the consequent anarchy of the Egyp- tians, the state of things which inevitably followed the drowning of Pharaoh and his host .'' Dr. Eisenlohr gave a paper to the Society of Biblical Archaeology, fully setting forth the arguments for and against the conclusions as here suggested, and left the subject to await future discoveries and profounder studies. For my own part, I venture to think that the answers to these questions will be in the main affirmative ; that the Syrian will be found identical with Moses ; that the anarchy which preceded his coming into Egypt, had followed the destruction of Pharaoh and his host, and that the decay of Egypt between the death of Menephtah I. and the reign of Rameses III. was mainly as he described it. As to the route of the Hebrews from the city of Rameses to the Red Sea, it is not yet possible to lay it down on the map with any approach to cer- tainty. The geography of ancient Egypt is nearly lost. Of the seven branches of the Nile only two remain. The area of Lower Egypt is probably en- larged by an advance into the Mediterranean. The surface has been raised. The old cities have been lost in ruins, covered with the drifted sand. High- 88 ORIENTAL RECORDS. ways, canals, and tracks of caravans are unfrequented and forgotten. The names of hundreds of places have come to light, but where the sites were none can tell. Nor can any one certainly affirm where was Pihahiroth, or Baal-zephon, or perhaps Succoth and Etham. These all lay in the track of the Exode, or served to mark the way ; and whether Migdol was a military tower or a town, and whether Baal-zephon was a watch-tower, a beacon, or a city, are questions for the exercise of antiquarian ingenuity. According to a bold scheme lately revived by M. Brugsch-Bey, the Hebrews did not cross the Red Sea at all. He asserts that they struck away north- wards to a place on the Mediterranean, east of the outfall of the Pelusian branch, which place he calls Etham ; marched thence along the sea-side to another place to be taken for Pihahiroth ; and next, by a heavier march, with the Mediterranean on their left, and the Serbonian lake, or bog, on their right, he brings them to a promontory which the Greeks called Mount Casius, but which he changes into Baal-zephon. There they see the Egyptian army perish in the Lake Serbonis, which he makes to be Yam Suph, the sea of reeds. But the Hebrews, as his own map would show, march away over a neck of solid land, and hasten southward toward the Wilderness of the Wandering, leaving the Red Sea and Egypt afar on the right hand, and the Egyptians behind them sunk in the sea of reeds. But when this ideal route is compared with the Mosaic narrative, we find that material portions of the latter are quietly omitted. Without a moment's hesitation we leave this hypo- thesis, and avail ourselves of the information derived EGYPT. THE EXODE. 09 from the survey of the Isthmus of Suez in the year 1855, and other scientific surveys that were subse- quently necessary in order to the successful formation of the grand canal which is now a highway for Europe to the East. All agree in regard to the course of " the Red Sea canal," said to have been begun by Pharaoh Necho, and from time to time cleansed and deepened by other sovereigns. It passed by the " City of Eels" [P hrngroriopolis) on a line from west to east, re- ceiving its waters from the Pelusian branch of the Nile, and emptying into that part of the tongue of the Red Sea which is now called the Lake Timsah, and lies more than half way across the Isthmus, measuring from the road of Suez to the Mediterranean. At the junction of the canal with what is now the lake was the inland port for merchandise between Egypt .and the East. Boats from Bubastis or Memphis would here meet vessels from the cities of Arabia on the Red Sea and from Persia. An army, therefore, marching from Egypt into Arabia, and not desiring a conflict with the Phoenicians (which could be more certainly avoided by not going on a higher latitude than 30° 20' N.), would have to cross this continuation of the present Gulf of Suez at some part between where once was the Lake of Timsah and Suez." So far as this, the way was ready for the complete ' The map prepared for M. Voisin, Director General of the Works of the Suez Canal, by M. Larousse, Hydrographic Engineer in 1S66, can be had by reference to Suez in the Maps Catalogue in the British Museum. It exhibits most exactly the direction of the bed of the Red Sea, shown by lag-unes above the Road of Suez, the Lesser and Greater Bitter Lakes, trending- about N.N.VV. the old marshland again where the channel narrowed, on to the Lake Timsah with its interior port for trade inland. 90 ORIENTAL RECORDS. excavation of the new canal, except that the straight lines of its banks avoid the curvatures and indenta- tions of the sea and lake banks, as they were in the time of Moses, and would be found again by the spades of the excavators. So prolonged, then, the channel of the Red Sea would intercept the course of the Hebrews. We cannot trace it all along, but we know where it began. Sa?i, Tan, or Zoan lies on the parallel 31° N. in the maps,' Rameses is very near it, but a little southward. They journeyed from Rameses to Succoth (Ex. xii. 37), which lay about a day's journey due east. But "the Lord led them not the way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near ; for God said. Lest peradventure the people repent when they see war, and they return to Egypt ; but God led the peo- ple about," made them face about,- " the way of the wilderness of the Red Sea" (on the Egyptian side of, the sea). "And they took their journey from Succoth, and encamped in Etham in the edge of the wilder- ness/' (Ex. xiii. 17, 18, 20.) There they encamped, and there " the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children that they turn " (shifting their course again), " and encamp before Pi-hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea, over against Baal-Zephon " (which some believe to have lain eastward, on the other side the narrow sea, the natural boundary be- tween Egypt and Arabia), " before it shall ye encamp by the sea'' (Ex. xiv. i, 2.) ' UExode et les Monuments Egifptiens, Discours prononce a I'occasion du Congres internacional d'Orientalistes a Londres, par Henri Brugsch- Bey, etc. Accompagne d'une Carte. Leipzig, 1S75. EGYPT. THE EXODE. 9 1 Here they were, somewhere below the point where, from the time of Pharaoh Necho down to that of Trajan, the canal entered the Red Sea, but not pro- bably below Suez ; and from that place the vast multitude, with wide extended front, effected their miraculous passage. By a strong east wind the Lord fought for them, caused the sea to go back all that night, made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided. " The waters," shall we say, which filled what were afterwards the two lakes abovementioned, and " became a wall unto them on their right hand and on their left." (Ex. xiv. 20, 21.) It is quite true that we have not now quoted a written monument, but if the recovery of the early geography of the Isthmus makes the narrative of the Exode more clear, the effect is at least as good, and this trifling departure from the prescribed plan of our book may be forgiven. 92 THE WILDERNESS OF THE WANDERING. Exodus XIV.-XVIT. HEN the Hebrews had crossed the sea, and entered into the Wilderness of Arabia, where they were wanderers forty years, they found means to chronicle the incidents of their pilgrimage on the face of the rocks which line those valleys. A countryman of our own, the Rev. Charles Forster, was the first modern writer, as I believe, who called general atten- tion to the subject. His first endeavours to translate what are known as the Sinaitic inscriptions awakened intense interest, but adverse opinion very soon chilled the enthusiasm kindled by so extraordinary a dis- covery. Perhaps because the recently discovered Assyrian marbles, with their mysterious inscriptions, absorbed the attention of those who could have deciphered the characters sculptured in the Wadi Mokatteb, no sufficient care was taken by competent Orientalists to ascertain their meaning. Some very learned men hastily surrendered themselves to the prejudice that they were nothing more than mediaeval scribblings, and therefore beneath notice. Others felt no inclination to follow Mr. Forster in his earnest inquiries, or to run the risk of ridicule by seeming to put faith in what men of established reputation for THE WILDERNESS OF THE WANDERING. 93 learning had decried as an illusion. Dean Stanley led the way in opposition to Mr. Forster, but after- wards appeared to encourage reconsideration of the matter. But all were not incredulous. A controversy had arisen which could only be settled by actual investi- gation, and the governments of England and France both sent commissioners to the Wilderness of the Wandering, to examine and report. First of all the French government directed a competent antiquarian, M. Lottin de Laval, then in Egypt, to cross the Red Sea, take casts from the rocks, and send the casts to Paris. Soon afterwards, the British government caused some of the inscriptions to be photographed in situ. The casts, the photograms, and exact repro- ductions of both are now accessible, so that the matter may be removed from the region of blind controversy, and brought within the scope of science. Yet all have not chosen to accept the opportunity afforded them for practical inquiry, and some eminent Oriental scholars who still persist in believing that these inscriptions are of no value, have not yet fairly examined for themselves. I could array some names of great eminence against my own conclusion; but as I have not seen the inscriptions otherwise translated, nor am aware that one of Mr. Forster's antagonists has produced any refutation of his renderings of Sinaitic or Himyaritic originals, it is enough to say that they think them to be mere worthless graffiti, not in any case dating farther back than the first century before Christ, and many of them contemporary with the monkish settlements in the Peninsula. They con- sider that if their paleographic and philosophic value 94 ORIENTAL RECORDS. be something, their historic value is nothing. One brief writer pronounces them to be Christian; the work of monks. Others have nothing more to say than that no scholar can acknowledge them to be worth the trouble of deciphering. But so far as I can find, none of these objectors have made them the subject of serious study, no counter versions are pro- duced, and we therefore turn for authentic information to one who has earned our confidence by actual in- spection. In February, 185 1, M. Lottin de Laval crossed the Gulf of Suez from Egypt, and landed on that part of the Arabian shore where, as was thought most pro- bable, Moses and the Hebrews would have first set foot after their passage through the Red Sea, and sang their song unto the Lord because He had triumphed gloriously. (Ex. xv.) He soon found himself at what the Arabs call " the Wells of Moses," where the water is nauseous, very acrid, and more salt than the water of the Caspian Sea. One only of the wells afforded water that could be drunk at all, but even that would not be tasted a second time any where else than in the frightful desert where it oozes from the earth. Domestic animals in Europe would refuse to drink it. It seemed to be an imperfect filtering from the Red Sea. That, he thought, must be the place called Marah, " bitterness," in the books of Exodus and Numbers. Here his experience in ancient inscriptions enabled him to distinguish the veritably Mosaic, as he believed, from all that are later, certainly from the mediaeval ; and, concentrating his attention upon them, he made casts, or took " squeezes " of the inscriptions of higher THE WILDERNESS OF THE WANDERING. 95 antiquity. More than three hundred of these, with exquisitely beautiful drawings of the neighbouring scenery, wild and majestic as it is, are collected in the volume of plates which accompany the narrative of his operations.' Nothing less than a perusal of that narrative could enable any one to form a just appre- ciation of his perseverance, faithfulness, chastened enthusiasm, and reverence. The written character in these inscriptions partakes of resemblances to the Phoenician and the Himyaritic, but is distinct from both. Mr. Forster transferred many of them to a splendid volume of his own, with transliterations, translations and comments; honestly exulting in the issue of long-continued laborious literary work, in spite of all the contradiction and mistrust he had encountered. Great is our indebted- ness to him for those labours. Several inscriptions relate to the passage through the Red Sea, and his renderings agree precisely with the Scriptural account. " The wind blowing, the sea dividing into parts, they pass over." (No. i.) " The Hebrews flee through the sea ; the sea is turned into dry land." (No. iv.) " The waters permitted and dismissed to flow, burst rushing unawares upon the astonished men, congregated from all quarters, banded together to slay treacherously, being lifted up with pride." (No. v.) " The leader divideth asunder the sea, its waves roaring. ' Voyage dans la Peninsule Ardbique du Sinai el F Egi/pte moi/enne, Histoire, Geographic, Epigraphie : publice sous les auspices de S. E. M. le Ministre de I'lnstruction publique et des Cultes. Par M. Lottin de Laval, ancien Charge de Missions scientifiques, etc. Paris, 1S55-1S59. 96 ORIENTAL RECORDS. The people enter, and pass through the midst of the waters." (No. x.) " Moses causeth the people to haste like a fleet- winged she-ostrich, crying aloud ; the cloud shining bright, a mighty army propelled into the Red Sea is gathered into one ; they go jumping and skipping. Journeying through the open chaimel, taking flight from the face of the enemy. The surge of the sea is divided." (No. xli.) " The people flee, the tribes descend into the deep. The people enter the waters. The people enter and penetrate through the midst. The people are filled with stupor and perturbation. Jehovah' is their keeper and companion." (No. xxiii.) Again the inscribed rocks tell of the destruction of the Egyptian army. " Their enemies weep for the dead, the virgins are wailing. The sea flowing down overwhelmed them. The waters were let loose to flow again." (No. viii.) " The people depart fugitive. A mighty army is submerged in the deep sea, the only way of escape for the congregated people." (No. xxi.) On one of the rocks the landing of the Hebrews is described with a precision which must have startled ' The word rendered Jehovah by Mr. Forster may be represented in Arabic letters, ^!_J ivayeica. Once I find i-ijrl yaweija, and it probably occurs oftener. This is exactly the abbreviation adopted by the Karaite Jews in the East, as may be seen in their printed liturgies, thus 'V, which I take as a remarkable coincidence. THE WILDERNESS OF THE WANDERING. 97 the translator ; for the landing-place, or entrance from the shore into the first deep wadi between the rocks, to this day retains its name. It is now called the Wadi Sddar, being one of the chief avenues into the interior of the Sinai region, and is the way taken by persons coming from the Egyptian shore on the oppo- site side of the gulf, or from Suez at the head of the gulf on the Arabian side. Golius explains the Arabic word' to mean "a way that leads up from the water at a landing-place," as this wadi does. Dr. Stanley so mentions it. " A stair of rock," he says, "the Nukb Badera, brought us into a glorious wadi (Sidri) enclosed between red granite mountains descending as pre- cipitously upon the sands as the Bavarian hills upon the waters of the Konigsee. It was a sight worthy of all remembrance before we reached this, to see, in the first break of day, the sunbeams striking the various heights of white and red ; and to think what an effect this must have had as the vast encampment, dawn by dawn, in these mountains, woke up with the shout, ' Rise up Lord, and let thine enemies be scat- tered, and let them that hate thee flee before thee.' (Num. X. 35.) In the midst of the Wadi Sidri, just where the granite was exchanged for sandstone, I caught sight of the first inscription."' Dr. Stanley had not then seen what it would have delighted him to decipher in the lines following : " Pilgrims fugitive through the sea find a place of refuge at Sidr. ■ jc)w from ji.X«? rediil ah aquattone. ' Sinai and Palestine in connection luith their History, by Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, M.A. Fourth edition, p. 70. 8 98 ORIENTAL RECORDS. Lighting upon plain ground, they proceed on their pilgrimage full of terror." (No. Ixxvii.) Then we track them, by the imperishable way- marks, as they go journeying through the desert : " The Hebrews pass over the sea into the wide waterless desert, famishing with hunger and thirst." (No. xvii.) " The people make many journeys: they are pilgrims far in the vast wilderness." (No. xxvi.) The crying of the great multitude for water is con- tinually recorded, as if their terror of perishing by thirst could never be forgotten, nor the miraculous answer to prayer, nor their thankless discontent. " The people clamour vociferously. The people anger Moses. Swerving from the right way, they thirst for water insatiably. The water flows, gently gushing out of the stony rock. Out of the rock a murmur of abundant waters. Out of the hard stone a springing well. Like the wild asses braying, the Hebrews swallow down enormously and greedily. Greedy of food like infants, they plunge into sin against Jehovah." (No. xlvi.) The continuity of supply is well confessed : " The people drink, wending on their way, drinking with prone mouth, Jehovah gives them drink again and again." (No. xxxix.) Yet they fail to own the God who sustains them : "The wild ass drinks again and again, drinking THE WILDERNESS OF THE WANDERING. 99 copiously in the desert; the people, sore athirst, drink vehemently. They quaff the water-spring Avithout pause, ever drinking. Reprobate beside the gushing well-spring." (No. Iviii.) The people's gluttony at Kibroth Hattaavah is registered. " The people have drink to satiety. In crowds they swill. Flesh they strip from the bone, mangling it. Replete with food, they are obstreperous. Surfeited, they cram themselves ; clamouring, they vomit. The people are drinking water to repletion. The tribes, weeping for the dead, cry aloud with downcast eyes. The dove mourns, devoured by grief The hungry ass kicketh : the tempted men, brought to destruction, perish. Apostasy from the faith leads them to the tomb." (No. xxviii.) Devouring flesh rapidly, drinking water greedily. Dancing, shouting, they play." (No. xxxiv.) " The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play " (Ex. xxxii. 6), and we know the plague that followed. It is said that Moses " called the name of that place the graves of hist (Num. xi. 34), because there they buried the people that lusted. And the people journeyed from Kibroth Hattaavah unto Haze- roth, and abode at Hazeroth." It would not have been unreasonable to expect, amidst other remains, some traces of those burial-places; and here and there lOO ORIENTAL RECORDS. a traveller did entertain the thought, and almost be- lieved that he had seen the graves of those Israelites. Cosmas Indicopleustes, an Egyptian monk of the sixth century, so thought. Niebuhr, the traveller, in 1 76 1, copied some hieroglyphics from what he con- sidered to be tombstones. He found them in an extensive ancient cemetery on a mountain called SarbiLt-el-KJiadeni. It was unlike all the hieroglyphics he had seen in Egypt, for there was not any Egyptian god among the figures ; and so were all the tombs distinguished, both in form and situation. The Arabs of the desert still call them the "Jews' graves." Within the last few years they have been visited again, and a few sentences from one of the sepulchral inscriptions must be added to the rock-inscriptions we are quoting. It is given by Forster," as he finds it, and so I take it. " The apostates smitten with disease by God, by means of feathered fowls. Smitten by God with disease in the sandy plain, (when) exceeding the bounds of moderation. Sickening, smitten by God with disease : their marrow corrupted by God, by means of the feathered fowls. The people, given over to destruction, cry aloud. God pours down deep sleep, messenger of death, upon the pilgrims. The tomb is the end of life to the sick, smitten with disease by God." It is observable that the birds in these sepulchral hieroglyphics are said to answer exactly to a bird of passage which crosses the Arabian peninsula periodically. They come from the sea, as did those mentioned in the book of Numbers. Their flight ' Sinai Photographed, p. S4. t ^3 >n jj. b "^^ '..Ci Q~ ••Si '^ ^ THE WILDERNESS OF THE WANDERING. lOI darkens the air. They are a sort of red crane, standing about three feet high, " as it were two cubits high upon the face of the earth." (Num. xi. 31). When they reach Eg}^pt, people eat them as a deHcacy ; so did the Hebrews in that wilderness, with a voracity that proved fatal. An intimation of the tale of Miriam's attack on Moses, because of the Ethiopian woman he had married, is cut in the rock, and may be older there than in Numbers (chap, xii.), where we now read it at length. A translation of the inscription follows : " Miriam, prophetess of lying lips and deceitful tongue, she causes the tribes to conspire against the pillar and prince of the people ; convoked for tumult, perverted, full of strife, the people revile the meek and generous man : they load with reproaches the blessed one of God." (No. xlviii.) Again we have allusion to their servile discontent : "The people, the Hebrews, lusting after Egypt, fall into confusion." (No. Ixiii.) And a mention of the fiery serpents : " Bitten and destroyed by fiery, hissing serpents, the Hebrews are wounded for their crimes. Jehovah makes a stream flow from the stony rock." (No. Ixvii.) The quails, under a peculiar name, equivalent with red cranes, are not forgotten. " Congregating on all sides to ensnare them, the people voraciously devour the red cranes. Bending the bow against them, bringing them down. 102 ORIENTAL RECORDS. Eagerly and enormously eating the half raw flesh, the pilgrims become plague-stricken.'" With these extracts from Mr. Forster's last work on the subject, I have availed myself sufficiently of his labours, and we are now in a position to survey the whole with perfect indifference to any lingering con- troversy ; and accepting the translation before us as provisional, leave the texts to the few scholars whose knowledge of Hebrew, archaic Arabic, and Egyptian, qualifies them to approach the study without bias one way or the other. Two years after Dr. Stanley's less unfavourable observations in 1857, M. de Laval published the de- tailed narrative of his mission to the Wilderness, and by that time had found ample opportunity for study- ing, as well as editing, the inscriptions he had obtained, not at secondhand, nor by hand-copying, but by mechanical and unerring transfer from the face of the rock. After doing what no man before him had accomplished, Mr. Forster also having had no parti- cipation in his work, he devoted his concluding chapter to a calm consideration of the controversy ; and not committing himself to any championship of Forster, contributed, as he says, " new arguments in support of his views." He reminds his readers that in the year of our Lord 518, these inscriptions were seen by Cosmas Indico- pleustes, who described them as written in a language of very high antiquity, then lost, and were reputed to be the work of Israelites led that way by Moses. But as the inhabitants of the Arabian peninsula did not speak a language introduced by conquest at some time ' Ut supra, p. 159. THE WILDERNESS OF THE WANDERING. I03 within five or six hundred years by foreign con- querors, no inscription written within such a period could have been made in a language then lost. Those inscriptions, therefore, must have been as the natives reported, the work of people whose vernacular language had passed away with them. M. De Laval perfectly agrees with travellers who have seen the worthless graffiti, scratched with the points of swords, or some such instruments, in the softer kinds of rock. But he affirms that our Sinaitic inscriptions were cut into the hard granite with tools proper for the purpose, the surface having been pre- viously made smooth with much labour ; this labour increased by the great height of many of the rocks, — not accessible without ladders, and perhaps also scaffolding, to the numerous and skilful workmen requisite for smoothing and letter-cutting of the kind ; for the characters are large, many of them very large indeed, and deep. As for the Christian crosses which objectors tell us are of frequent occurrence, he says that such crosses are extremely rare; and when they do occur, have no relation to the inscriptions, being extraneous to them, merely cut in amongst them by modern hands. " As for the connection existing between the Sinaitic writing and that of Egypt," he avows, "we are perfectly of Mr. Forster's opinion, and shall support him with proofs. Twenty-two letters of the demotic Egyptian alphabet are constantly found in the Sinaitic inscriptions. With the exception of two or three variants, it is the same alphabet." And after dwelling at length on the above points, he delivers his conclusion in the following sentences : "We have not taken up with any party; we follow I04 ORIENTAL RECORDS. no system ; we have nothing more in view than the advancement of science. Now, the result of our ob- servations and long study in this matter is, that if these foreign writings are not the work of the Israelites, as many incline to believe; and if we must resign ourselves to think that a people so intelligent, so persevering as the Hebrew people, have not left in the indelible granite of the Peninsula of Sinai a single monument of their Exode, to thank God for being able, in the midst of so much misery and danger, to recover safety and liberty ; if we must give up all this, then they cannot have been written by any other than a Shemitic race, having the most intimate relations with Egypt, to which it owed its civilisation and its art of writing ; an Aramean or ante-Islamic people, going at once from the Hauran to the Red Sea ; and this, I think, could only be the colony of the Naba- theans, whose metropolis was Petra. Beyond these two peoples all is conjecture and darkness." This declaration of a veteran Orientalist who wrought hard amongst the written rocks of Sinai, month after month, assisted by competent workmen for the manual service of taking casts and impressions in paper for the French government, — but had no system to establish, nor any end to compass beyond the increase of knowledge, and the promotion of scientific truth — outweighs with me all the incredulity of gentlemen who have not yet produced one sentence of positive information to justify their adverse pre- judice. Three years, again, after the narrative and the plates of De Laval were published, Mr. Forster had returned to his favourite study, worked directly from the plates printed in Paris, and gave, as I can THE WILDERNESS OF THE WANDERING. I05 vouch after careful comparison, exact copies of all that he made use of, translated word by word, and wrote a critical justification of his version from page to page. Now, let competent persons do their best to revise, correct and advance upon the labours of De Laval and Forster, and I venture to believe that the fruit will be a more enlarged confirmation of the Mosaic history, with the addition of details that will much advance our understanding of it. As in the profound solitude of the Arabian wilder- ness, so under the mounds of Nineveh and Babylon, in remote regions where the voice of man seldom disturbs the death-like silence, monuments of highest antiquity have lain out of sight for thousands of years, inaccessible to nearly all mankind, yet protected by obscurity of situation from the destroying hand of violence. But now the silence is broken, and lost laniruacres take voice aeain. io6 JOSHUA. Joshua IX. URING fourteen centuries, at least, there has been a report on record of a very ancient monument erected in Africa by some Canaanites who settled there after the conquest of their country by Joshua. Some have doubted, and some have believed, but latterly few have ventured to accept the account with confidence. Yet it is unfair to dismiss even a tradition without examination, and the evidence that is accessible must therefore be produced. Moses of Chorene, historian of Armenia in the fifth century, writes as follows:- "When he (z>., Joshua) had extirpated the Canaanites, some of them fled to Agra, and went by sea to Tarshish, as it appears by an inscription which remains graven on pillars in Africa within present memory, and is exactly to this effect : * We, chiefs of the Canaanites, having fled from Joshua the robber, came to dwell here.' " ' This account of the Armenian evidently represents what he takes to be generally believed, and therefore it cannot have the weight of original evidence ; but evidence, as nearly original as could be expected, was produced about a century later by a trustworthy his- torian. Procopius, secretary and friend of Belisarius, ' A Joshua latrone profugi, nos praefecti Chananaeorum, venimus hie habitatum. Hist. Armen., Vol. I., p. iS. JOSHUA. 107 who accompanied that general in his African expedi- tion, not only wrote a history of the war with the Vandals, but incorporated in that work such informa- tion as he could gain of other matters. When in Numidia, in that part of northern Africa which may now be described as lying on the south side of the Strait of Gibraltar, he learned from the Africans themselves that the more ancient inhabitants had been called Maurousii, or Moors, and that they had been dis- lodged, either partly or entirely, by strangers from the East. He seems, like Josephus, to give in com- pcndiiDn a substantial repetition of the Old Testament narrative. He says that when the Hebrews had left Egypt, and were not far from the border of Phoenicia, Moses their leader, a wise man, departed out of this life, and Jesus, son of Nave (as the Greeks wrote Joshua, son of Nun), succeeded to the leadership. When these people were led into Phoenicia, he (Joshua) took possession of the country, and, displaying more than human bravery in war, attacked all the natives, easily gained possession of the cities, and had the fame of being invincible. At that time all the sea-coast from Sidon to the entrance of Egypt was called Phoenicia, and was inhabited by various tribes, namely, Gir- gashites, Jebusites, and others, known by their several names in the history of the Hebrews. But when they heard that the strange leader was invincible, they left their own country, and migrated into the neighbour- ing country, Egypt. Hence, when they could not find room, the land being too small for them (for Egypt had now been well peopled from a remote age), they passed along northern Africa, established them- I08 ORIENTAL RECORDS. selves along the coast so far as the Pillars of Hercules, and founded and established many cities of their own. The inhabitants, said Procopius, still used the lan- guage of the Phoenicians. They also built a fortified castle {(f)poupiov) in the city of Numidia now called Tangier. There, near an abundant fountain, might be seen two tablets of white stone {uTrfKai hvo iic XlOwv XevKcbv) which still preserved in the letters and lan- guage of the Phoenicians the following inscription : 'Hfiel'i ea/xev ol (pevyovre^ atro TrpocrooTrou 'Irjaov Tov XrjaTOv vlov Navfj. " We are they who fled from the face Of Joshua the robber, son of Nun." ' Here it is necessary to observe that these words were not inscribed on pillars, but the word aTrjXrj, stele, is employed technically, as was the custom of the Greeks, for a slab with its inscription. It is said there were two of these, made out of two stones. It is just possible that, according to a custom afterwards preva- lent in Egypt, as in other countries, one might have been in the language of the new comers, and the other in that of the original inhabitants ; but it was most probably understood by Procopius that they were both in Phoenician, perhaps one over each of the castle gates. The phrase aTro irpoawirov, like the Hebrew ••iSQ, " from the face of," is a Shemitism which gives an air of genuine translation from a Phoenician original. Five hundred years later, Suidas ' the lexicographer registered the inscription in his book; but it is evident ' Procopius, De Bella Fandalico, II., lo. " Suidas, Lex. S. v. 'S.aa/a.a.v. JOSHUA. 109 that he did not copy from Procopius, and it must also be noted that he speaks of the inscription as written on tablets, irkdice';, and standing in his time: a circum- stance which is not at all incredible, although Suidas was two thousand years later than Joshua ; for we have in our museums many inscriptions of more than twice that age. His words are, "And there are unto this time two such tablets in Numidia containing- these words : Hfxel^ icyfjbev XavavaloL, ov<; ehiw^ev 'l7jaov<; 6 Xrycrr?^?. "We are Canaanites, whom the robber Joshua drove out." But this is not all. We find another independent witness, not indeed of the stele, but of the emigration of Canaanites to Africa. It is produced by R. David Kimchi, in his commentary on the book of Joshua, chap, ix., in the words following : ni:D'? n^.'i-iK' '•d nrh rb^c>'\ nrni non'po ntj'i;> non'po mvyh tj'-nn 1DS1 -pnaxb i*? i^n mm'? mm na"pna i-'ttxncj' -n njD» ;y33 px ^xiB''' x'^vb N^n^ n^r nr ''jao njst;^ sin ^:jy:3n '•3 : ''P'''\^>^ XNnti' nmu fiiS^ nnn ^'O'c hv "And our Rabbis, remember to bless them, say that Joshua sent forth three writings when they came into the land. He sent to them, saying, He who wishes to be at peace, let him come and be at peace. And again he sent to them. He who wishes to make war, let him make war. And again he sent to them, He who wishes to depart, let him depart. He who believed in the Holy Blessed One, and trembled at his words, betook himself to Africa. Then Joshua 'said no ORIENTAL RECORDS. in his discourse, The Canaanite, he who departs from me, this man chooses to call the land of Israel land of Canaan after his own name, but prefers for a good land the land of Africa." This tradition of a double alternative to the Ca- naanites between peaceful dwelling in the land of Israel, or departure thence, unless they chose to try the chance of war, which was practically equivalent to a dismissal from the country, taken together with the fact of an extensive emigration to Africa, where for ages they spoke their language, and exercised their idolatrous worship, certainly throws light and confir- mation on the long prevalent belief that they possessed a stronghold near Tangier, and had set up an inscrip- tion there. The inscription, as preserved by Procopius, at once testifies their origin and demonstrates that the history of Joshua is not a myth. GEZER. Joshua XVI., XXI. OSHUA, as we read in the book which bears his name (Jos. xvi. i), drove out the Canaanites that dwelt in Gezer, an ancient city of theirs; and on the partition of territory among the twelve tribes, Gezer was given to the Levites of the family of Kohath, and so became a sacred city. (Jos. xxi. 21). But the Canaanites still occupied the city, in spite of the Levites, and perhaps it was a quarrel with them which brought Pharaoh, king of Egypt, to be their enemy. " He went up, and took Gezer, and burned it with fire, and slew the Canaanites that dwelt in the city, and gave it for a present to his daughter, Solomon's wife." Then, having absolute possession of the place, Solomon rebuilt Gezer. (i Ki. ix. 16, 17.) The sacred historians tell us that it lay somewhere between Beth-horon and the sea, on the borders of Ephraim and Benjamin. From another notice it appears to have been a place of strategetical importance, on account of its position ; but all this notwithstanding, after the last captivity all knowledge of the place seems to have been lost. The most learned geographers could not tell where to place it on the map. But one day, as M. Clermont Ganneau, in his study, was reading an Arabic chronicle of Jerusalem, he re- marked a passage in the account of an incident which 112 ORIENTAL RECORDS. took place in Palestine in the year 900 of the Hegira, or A.D. 1522. The chronicler was relating a skirmish of the governor with a party of Bedouin robbers in a village of the district of Ramie, of Palestine, now known as Khulda. The cries of the combatants, as they were cutting each other to pieces, could be heard, said the narrative, so far as the hill of Gezcr. Now for the first time M. Ganneau heard of this hill of Gezer, and all his predecessors in research had been equally ignorant of such a place. So he reflected on this piece of intelligence that the hill of Gezer was somewhere within ear-shot of Khulda ; and considering that not even the lusty Bedouins could send their voice to a very great distance, he took what he thought might be a sufficient radius, threw a circle on the map round Khulda, and saw the area within which Gezer would probably be found. After wandering for some time in vain, and when on the point of giving up the search in despair, he met an old country woman whose faithful memory treasured the otherwise forgotten names of the district. Perhaps she was of Canaanitish blood, for she told him at once that if he wanted to find Tell-el-Geze7' he must go to Abji-CJntche. Abu- Chuche was about three miles from Khulda : thither he went and found it. His first announcement of the discovery was received with ill-concealed marks of unbelief ; but he had seen considerable ruins, known by the Arabs as the Gezer, and was content. Yet the discovery was not complete. About four years after- wards he came into the same neighbourhood on some other errand, and there discovered, with emotions which none but successful searchers like himself have ever felt, a short epigraph cut deep into a rock in GEZER. 113 Hebrew and Greek letters, to mark the canonical distance, as one might say, it would be lawful for a person to travel from Gezer, "with its name written in the characters of both languages, and repeated twice.'" Rare indeed are inscriptions in Palestine, and M. Ganneau beyond all others has the singular felicity of finding some. The reader of the present volume has one before him, from Dibon of Moab, and may expect others to follow. ' La Palestine Inconnue. Lecture faite ;\ I'lnstitution royale da la Grande Bretagne (meeting of Palestine Exploration Fund) Paris, 1876, p. I 8-22. 114 SOLOMON. I Kings X. ; 2 Chronicles IX. OSES, and the sacred historians his successors, move heaven-guided down the path of time. As they advance, we often find them in unsought agree- ment with secular chroniclers, who, thinking of nothing less, grave the like records in marble, or cut them deep in the living rock, or depict them in the chambers of the dead. We are marking these coincidences. We pass by voluminous evidence of another kind, which is already familiar to the advocates of revealed religion, and confine ourselves almost exclusively to monumental witnesses. Some passages in the reign of King Solomon may be thus illustrated. When David had gained many victories, and was come near to the close of a long and eventful life, he gave his son Solomon possession of the kingdom. Solomon then began that intercourse with other nations which, on the one hand, lifted the children of Israel out of obscurity, but, on the other, unhappily interwove their history with that of the most idolatrous of Gentiles. The boundaries of Solomon's inheritance, as en- larged by his father's conquests, are not verbally defined, but may be conjectured. His dominion extended from the western bank of the Euphrates to the border of Egypt, spread far northward over SOLOMON. THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. II5 upper Syria, and southward approached Arabia, His merchant ships ploughed the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. His mariners, fraternising with the seamen of Tyre and Sidon, ventured on the Indian Ocean, and feared not the remote Atlantic. They went away through the Strait of Bab-el-mandel, cir- cumnavigated Africa, passed up the Strait of Gibraltar, and returned from Tartessus, past Carthage, home. His chief seaports were at Joppa on the coast of Palestine, and at Ezion Gaber in the land of Edom, and served him for trading in the east and west. He laid a highway of communication from Jerusalem over the desert, through Palmyra, across the Euphrates to all the great cities of the Asian continent. To say nothing of the palaces he built, and the cities he founded, the construction of the Temple at Jerusalem absorbed the treasure accumulated by David, and bequeathed to him for that special purpose. THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. Solomon's relations with Arabia cannot be forgotten. They are celebrated in the legends of the Koran, and related with pride in the traditions of Abyssinia. The historiographers of Kings and Chronicles (i Ki. x.; 2 Chr. ix.) tell us how the queen of Sheba, having " heard of the fame of Solomon," in his best days, " concerning the name of the Lord, came to prove him with hard questions," not with trifling riddles such as amuse our children, but witli hard questions of the wise^ such as Solomon himself mentions. (Pro. i. 6.) She did not come for the sake of merely political Il6 ORIENTAL RECORDS. alliance, nor did she ask him to burn incense to her gods, neither is it certain that she was an idolater, but there has been much needless questioning about the country whence she came. " She came to Jerusalem with a very great train, with camels that bare spjcej^, and very much gold and precious stones." )ur .- J ''^, speaking of this lady, calls he^ " Queen o. . . .itti." (Mat. xii. 42). Now this points to Arabia Felix, which lies south of Jerusalem, where spices, gold, and precious stones abound, and whence they would be brought on camels to Jerusalem, by a well frequented way, almost due south to north from Sheba, or Shaba, the capital city of the Himyarite Arabs. There is an often-quoted verse which accords with this allocation of the Sheba of our text : " India sends ivory, and the luxury-loving Sabaeans their frankincense.'" There is another fact in confirmation : that the brave Arabs gently submitted to the rule of queens. The annals of Tiglath Pileser tell of one of them, called Khabiba. Sargon mentions another, named Tsamsi. A part of the descendants of these Sabaeans migrated into Africa, and flourished under the sway of Candace. The queen of Sheba who visited Solomon reigned over those Himyarites who traded with African Ethiopia, formed frequent settlements there, and eventually emigrated thither. For some ages that race overspread the countries now known as Hadramaut and Abyssinia, carrying with them their barbaric civilisation, their language, and their heredi- tary sympathies. As for the language, it was written in the old Himyaritic letter now found inscribed at ' " India niittit ebur, molles sua tura Sabaei." Virgil, Georg., I., 57. «a. Letter of Theodore, Emperor of Abyss ii m '--■• o SOLOMON. THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. I17 Aden, and at Axum, with scarcely a shade of differ- ence. In course of time their language became fixed under the name of Ethiopic, or Ghees, the speech of the free ! it is now classic at Gondar, and counts with the few Oriental dialects which the more advanced Biblical students deem it right to know. It is the sacred language of the Abyssinian Church, and in it is written the national history, which, in one important respect, quite harmonises with what is commonly in- ferred from the narrative in Kings and Chronicles.' Solomon, exchanging gifts, gave her all that she desired. According to the Ethiopic history, which must not be too hastily accounted fabulous, she was numbered with his Gentile wives ; and, after her demise, a son of theirs, whom she had brought with her from Jerusalem to Sheba, and was aptly named Menilek, "from me to thee,"' succeeded to his mother on the throne, and, independently of lineal descent, which is never constant through many generations, every successor to the sovereignty of Abyssinia is held to be successor of Menilek, son of Solomon. It is worthy of remark that the same principle of succession, not dynastic, but elective, prevailed in Yemen before the dispersion of the Himyarites. There, as in Abyssinia, the crown descended not regularly from father to son, but any prince of the blood royal who had the strongest interest generally became king.' The same kind of succession was ' With our present knowledg'e, this will scarcely be disputed. Asseman gives a g-eographical solution of what was once a question. Dissertatio de Sip-is Nestorianis, Cap. x. ' t '^ ' " Preliminary Discourse" to Sale's Koran, Sect. I. no ORIENTAL RECORDS. allowed in the earlier times of Hebrew royalty, when solemn proclamation, rather than right of inheritance, made the king. Solomon himself was so proclaimed by his father David's command. The worship of the God of Israel was adopted at the same time, and pre- pared the way for Christianity under Queen Candace, whose treasurer went to Jerusalem from the Island of Meroe " for to worship ; " and by his conversion the way was further opened for the entire ingathering of the Abyssinians in the time of Athanasius and Fru- mentius. The Lion of Judah, emblem of royalty on the steps of Solomon's throne, is the device on the seal of the sovereign of Abyssinia, " King of Kings of Ethiopia." It is the facsimile of an impression from the seal of the late Theodore, attached to a letter written by himself shortly before his pitiable death, and addressed to the Queen-mother. The letter is in the British Museum, in the Magdala Collection of Ethiopic manuscripts.' Being written in Amharic, a dialect which I do not read, I am indebted to the Rev. R. B. Girdlestone, M.A., late of the British and Foreign Bible Society, for the translation.' The seal speaks for itself. The Ethiopic title on the edge is " King of Kings, Theodore of ' Oriental Manuscripts, 829, fragments. ° " In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, one God. The King of Kings, Theodore. May desirable (neivs) from the Queen-mother arrive. How are you ? I am well, thank God. And is thy mother, and Ena Fayzaro [the latter is a title, as much as princess] well ? Ask how all the men of my house are, and tell me. Have good courage, my sister. Whatever necessaries thou art in want of, say; this I am wanting, by the power of God, and send word to me. (Farewell) until God causes us to meet." The words printed in Italics are doubtful. The letter is written on a sheet of large folio paper, folded very small. On the ack, so folded, it is addressed to the Oueen-mother. SOLOMON. THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. II9 Ethiopia,'" with its equivalent in Arabic. Among the various titles accorded to the Emperor of Abyssinia is " Son of the Lion;'" and Ludolf informs us that he sometimes closes his letters with the sentence, " The Lion of the tribe of Judah hath conquered."^ Besides tracing the royalty of their nation back to Solomon, the Abyssinians recognise the origin of their national faith in the instruction concerning the true God originally received from the king of Israel by the queen of Sheba. Peculiarities in their Liturgy, as it stood before the arrival of the Jesuits, who managed to effect some changes ; a predominance of Old Testa- ment names, which they were not likely to derive from modern Europe, nor from Alexandria in the time of Athanasius, nor even in the time of Candace ; peculiar customs which are still retained, especially that of circumcision, although in course of time it differs from that operation as revived by Moses ; veneration for the seventh day of the week, on which they never travel, although they have always observed the Christian sabbath on the first day ; the large number of Jews in their country, and larger number in past ages, when they not only enjoyed perfect liberty, but possessed a considerable extent of territory' under their own independent government ; the very name of those Abyssinian Jews, who are commonly called Falashas* " Strangers," or " Pilgrims," as if in ■ ^'MU : \1^^ : -tP^C?! : U\^^'?.y : : = ©^^ : A^n^ : : 3 ^A : MQih : HTs^hU : ^l>^ : : Ludo\i,msi.,u.,\. I20 ORIENTAL RECORDS. traditional allusion to their immigration as a people distinct from the Arabs with whom they were asso- ciated, but from whom they originally differed as to race and religion ; and also the Hebraised character of their Christianity and their domestic customs ; all these thus taken together, make Abyssinia in itself a monument of the time when Jerusalem was a joy in the whole earth, and when the fear of the Lord's people rested on surrounding nations. Evidences of another class multiply ; evidences confirmatory of many passages in Holy Writ, attesting the truth of what is recorded therein, the truth of God, but the short-comings, the transgressions, and the declension of His people. TADMOR IN THE WILDERNESS. I Kings IX. 17, 18. OLOMON reigned over all kingdoms from the river (Euphrates) unto the land of the Philis- tines, and unto the border of Egypt." " He had dominion over all on this side (westward of) the river ; from Tiphsah (Thapsacus, a city near the passage of the Euphrates, where now is a place called Suriyeh) even to Azzah (Gaza, on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea, near Egypt), over all the kings on this side the river : and he had peace on all sides round about him." (i Ki. iv. 21-24.) "He built Gezer (a few miles east of Joppa), and Beth-horon the nether (now Beit-ur-et-tahta, on the road from Jaffa to Jerusalem), and Baalath (somewhere in the tribe of Dan), and Tadmor in the wilderness (where now stand the ruins of Palmyra)." (i Ki. ix. 17, 18.) These were all " fenced cities with gates and bars " (2 Chr. viii. 5), and there is reason to believe that Tadmor was the chief of them from the first; and certainly it became far more important than any of them, occupy- ing an honourable place in general history, and remaining to the present time a conspicuous object in its ruins. Josephus, the Jew, who wrote some time after the destruction of Jerusalem, describes the Tadmor of his day as a " very great city which Solomon built, and 122 ORIENTAL RECORDS. surrounded with very strong walls. The Syrians know it still by its original name (City of Palms), but the Greeks call it Palmyra." ' Pliny the elder had already written, no doubt from certain information, " Palmyra is a city noble for situa- tion, richness of soil, and excellent water. Its exten- sive fields are surrounded by a sandy desert, but it is exempt from the natural condition of the wilderness. It is a free and independent city between two great empires, the Roman and the Parthian," for at this time Palestine was a Roman province, " and on the first occurrence of discord between them is regarded with solicitude by both." ' The story of its long resistance to all the power of the Roman army when defended by the brave Queen Zenobia, and its fortunes following, are well known. The discovery of its majestic ruins in the year 1691, with Mr. Wood's volume on TJie Ruins of Palmyra, impressed the public of this country with a feeling little short of enchant- ment. But we take the note of Pliny as a Gentile monument of the durability of a great work whereof the city itself was but a part, and we remember some passages in history which it forcibly illustrates. In the depth of the Syrian desert, about midway between Damascus and the spot known of old as the Fords of the Euphrates, and on the ancient track of caravans into Mesopotamia and the further East, lies ' . . . mKK.v [i.iyi~,lplesx (P^ •> 1 ^ fJ>'fM\\ 1 » 191 NINEVEH. Jonah I. 2. SSUR, whose name passes to the country of Assyria, and whom the Assyrians deified, was the founder of Nineveh. " Out of that land (Shinar) went forth Assur, and builded Nineveh, and the city Rehoboth, and Calah ; and Resen, between Nineveh and Calah : the same is a great city." (Gen. x. 11, 12.) Nineveh retains its original name ; the two great mounds of Koyunjik and Nebi Yunus are on its site, and the ancient walls in almost unbroken con- tinuity certify its original extent. The city Rehoboth cannot be found. Calah is covered with the mounds of Nimrud, on the east bank of the Tigris, about twenty miles south of Nineveh. Shalmaneser I. (B.C. 1300) built a new city, or enlarged the old one in Calah. Assur-nasir-pal rebuilt the city and erected a palace during his reign. The sculptures in the Nimrud gallery in the British Museum were brought thence. The names of Tiglath Pileser II., Sargon, Esarhaddon, and his grandson, Assur-ebil-ili, the last king of Assyria, are also intimately associated with Calah.' Nineveh is said by some to have been founded by Nimrod ; but that is contrary tothe Hebrew text of Genesis,' which cannot be fairly made to favour any " G. Smith, Discoveries, p. 72, 73. ' nnrrriN ]Tj -iitt'M N'^ Ninrt Y^rr]o 192 ORIENTAL RECORDS. such interpretation. Assur-ubalid (B.C. 1400) restored the temple of Ishtar, and from this time Nineveh rose in importance. Shalmaneser (B.C. 1300) again restored the temple of Ishtar, built a palace, and made the city the seat of government. From this time successive sovereigns did similar works, until Assur-nasir-pal (B.C. 885) rebuilt both temple and palace in great splendour. After him, again, other kings added to the architectural features of the city, until Sargon (B.C. 722) made Dur-sargina a royal city, honoured with his own name, which much displeased the Ninevites. Then Sennacherib came to the throne, and at once set to work to restore the glory of Nineveh, the great capital of Assyria.' As it was during his reign that the state of the Israelites was most affected by relations with Assyria, the annals of Sennacherib can be most appropriately quoted for an account of Nineveh. " In those days, Nineveh, the exalted city, the city beloved by Ishtar: within which dwells the worship of the gods and goddesses. The ancient timin- of its palace, those of old time had stamped its clay with sacred{}) writing, and repeated it in the companion- tablets. A splendid place, a storehouse of every kind, and a treasury for all their jewels and regalia, they erected within it. Of all the kings of former days, my fathers who went before me, who reigned before ' Ut su'pra, p. 91, 92. ' Timin. The timin was the terra-cotta tablet, or cj-linder, deposited in the hollow of the foundation stone. Sometimes such a stone, with its timin, was at each of the four corners, or at everj' angle of a palace or temple. It was regarded with peculiar reverence, and intended to remain for ever. If removed, and found b}' a subsequent king, or in his reign, it would be the duty of that king to have it restored to its proper place. NINEVEH. 193 me over Assyria, and governed the city of Bel {i.e., Nineveh) ; and every year without fail augmented its interior rooms, and treasured up in them all their revenues which they received from the four countries. Not one among them all, though the central palace was too small to be their royal residence, had the knowledge nor the wish to improve it. As to caring for the health of the city, by bringing streams of water into it, and the finding of new springs, none turned his thoughts to it, nor brought his heart to it. Then I, Sennacherib, king of Assyria, by command of the- gods, resolved in my mind to complete this work, and I brought my heart to it. Men of Chaldaea, Aram, Manna, Kue, and Cilicia, who had not bowed down to my yoke, I brought away as captives, and I compelled them to make bricks. In baskets made of reeds which I cut in the land of Chaldaea, I made the foreign workmen bring their appointed tale of bricks, in order to complete this work. The former palace, of 360 measures long, adjoining the gardens of the great tower : 80 measures wide, adjoining the watch- tower of the temple of Lshtar : 134 measures wide, adjoining the watchtower of the house of worship : and 95 measures wide which the kings my fathers, who went before me, had built for their royal residence, but had not beautified its front. The river Tibilti ' had ruined the brickwork of it when it ravaged the quays of the central city.' The trees of ' Tibilti. Perhaps another name for the Tigris, meaning "The Stream of Fertihty." Most of the rivers appear to have had fanciful or poetical names: we there read that the Euphrates was called "Life of the Land;" and the Tigris " Babilat Nukhsi," or "Stream of Gladness," etc., etc. ' Central city. The old palace is called in the Bull Inscription, "The Palace of the Central city." 14 194 ORIENTAL RECORDS. its gardens had been burnt for firewood years ago. For a long time this river had undermined the front of the palace. In the high water of its floods it had made great rents in the foundation, and had washed away the tiniin. That small palace I pulled down, the whole of it. I made a new channel for the river Tibilti, I regulated its water, I restrained its flow. Within its old limits I walled up its stream. The low platform ' I raised higher, and paved it firmly with stones of great size, covered with bitumen, for a space of 354 measures in length, and 279 in breadth. That space I elevated above the waters, and restored it to be again dry ground. 1700 measures long: 162 measures wide on the upper side towards the north ; 217 measures wide in the centre, 386 measures wide on the lower side towards the south, fronting the river Tigris, I completed the mound, and I measured the measure. The timin of old times had not been for- gotten, owing to the veneration of the people. With a layer of large stones I enclosed its place, and I made its deposit secure. The written records of my name, 160 fathoms of bas-reliefs, I sculptured in the palace, but the lower part of the wall, next to the ground, I left to be filled up in future times. After- wards I resolved to have more tablets carved. I sculptured twenty fathoms of them, in addition to the former ones, so that I formed 180 fathoms of them altogether. The enclosure itself I increased beyond what it was in former days : above the measure of the former palace I enlarged it, and I liberally augmented its dwellings. And its fine buildings of ' Low platform. The old palace being- pulled down, its platform re- mained, but so low as to be nearly on a level with the neighbouring river. NINEVEH. 195 ivory, dan wood, ku wood, mcshiikaii wood, cedar wood, cypress wood, and pistachio wood. And in the midst I placed my royal residence, the palace of Zakdi-nu-isha.' Around it I planted the finest of trees, equal to those of the land of Khamana, which all who are knowing prefer to those of the land of Chaldea. By my care I caused the uprising of springs in more than forty places in the plain : I divided them into irrigating canals for the people of Nineveh, and gave them to be their own property. To obtain water to turn the flour mills, I brought it in pipes from Kishreh to Nineveh, and I skilfully constructed water-wheels. I brought down the perennial waters of the river Kut- zuru ' from the distance of half a kasbu ^ into those reservoirs, and I covered them well. Of Nineveh, my royal city, I greatly enlarged the dwellings. Its streets, I renovated the old ones, and I widened those which were too narrow. I made them as splendid as the sun. In future days, if one of the kings, my sons, whom Assur shall call to the sovereignty over this land and people, when this palace shall grow old and decay, shall repair its injuries, shall see the written record of my name, shall raise an altar and sacrifice a male victim, and shall then replace it in its place, Assur will hear and accept his prayers." "■ Although such extensive works as these were not accomplished when, by the word of the Lord to Jonah, Nineveh was described as " that great city, wherein were more than six score thousand persons that could ' Has-not-an-cqual. " Kutzuru. Still called the Khausser. ' The kasbu is seven miles. '' "Annals of Sennacherib" from Bcllino's Cylinder, by Mr. Fox Talbot. Records of the Past, first edition, Vol. I., p. 2S-32. U* 196 ORIENTAL RECORDS. not discern between their right hand and their left, and also much cattle" (Jon. iv. 11), it is evident from this detailed account of the vast improvements and additional works of Sennacherib, that such works could only have been conducted in a city already great. It is to be remembered that the predecessors of this magnificent builder had at their command immense bodies of artificers and labourers, with an ever-increasing revenue from subject and tributary states. The most choice of captives, and the richest of the spoil, were always taken to swell the population and enrich the treasury of Nineveh ; the native popula- tion of the capital of so great an empire being naturally large, independently of such accessions. It is evident from the remains of the palace of Assur- bani-pal, which are to be seen in the Nimrud gallery of the British Museum, that the art of sculpture was considerably advanced in the time of Jonah, with no scarcity of skilled workmen ; while the subjects of these Assyrian sculptures indicate what the cuneiform in- scriptions abundantly confirm, active warfare and national wealth, with much barbarity. With persons of one class, not knowing the right hand from the left, numbering 120,000, where, never- theless, the intelligence and culture of the greatest empire of that age were congregated, calculate as you may, the aggregate of all classes must have been very great. The city in those days was, no doubt, ill pro- vided with many things necessary for the health of the inhabitants : probably the mass of the population was poor, the city was certainly unclean ; but, beyond the shadow of a doubt, it was great. The dimensions of the royal city may even now be • NINEVEH, ig7 known by the extent of its walls, of which the remains are at this day conspicuous, in some places now standing fifty feet high, above the debris at their foot, and in circuit nearly nine miles. This is indeed con- siderable, but the area therein enclosed was not covered with buildings like an English town. There was the grand and spacious palace at Koyunjik, and the lesser palace at Nebi Yunus, with their stately halls, long galleries, and multitudinous chambers, with surrounding gardens and grounds, and at least four temples ; palaces, too, for gods and priests ; courts and high places for the worshippers. The temples were : two for Ishtar, the patron goddess, one for Nebo, and a ziggarat or temple-tower. Here dwelt lords and princes, the highest officers of state and others in long descending rank, each having his retinue of servants, and many, if not all, their harems. No room could be found for a general population within those enclosures, nor, from what we know of eastern cities, would such a population be admis- sible within the royal precinct. Outside that, covered again by outer walls, lay the great city far and wide, with its myriads and myriads of people, flourishing gardens, broad pastures, and much cattle, the whole covered again, as the wet moat covers the garrison, with the waters of the Tigris, the Zab, and the Khosr. 198 SIN AND REPENTANCE OF THE NINEVITES. Jonah III. E are indebted to Nineveh for a rich treasure of historic evidence, laid up in its ruins for nearly 2500 years. The cry of Jonah (chap. iii. 4), "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown," threatened an overthrow sudden, utter, and irremediable. The Ninevites repented. But repentance wrought by terror, produced but scanty fruit, and soon was over. Could the precise date of Jonah's mission be ascer- tained, that might serve as a clue to discover the actual state of affairs when this took place. In the absence of general agreement on this point, let us take what we find in the margin of the English Bible, and assume that the prophet entered the city in the year 862 before Christ. The monarch then on the throne of Assyria was Assur-nasir-pal, who reigned from 883 to 858, a period of twenty-five years. Ac- cepting these dates, we would say that Jonah was in Nineveh in the twenty-first year of that king's reign ; but even allowing a range of twenty years, more or less, from the first or second year of Assur-nasir-pal to the eighteenth year of Shalmaneser II., the character of the two kings is so similar, and the manners of the Ninevites at any time within the last SIN AND REPENTANCE OF THE NINEVITES. 1 99 half of the ninth century before our era so unchanged, that v/e can perceive what were the sins that provoked the Divine displeasure, and see how great was the need of repentance both in king and people. The Assyrians could not be exceeded in shameless barbarity. The annalist of Assur-nasir-pal, if not the king himself, boasts of it. Such sentences as the fol lowing need no comment : " I am a king, I am a lord, I am glorious, I am great, I am mighty, I have arisen, I am chief, I am a prince, I am a warrior, I am great and I am glorious, Assur-nasir-habal, a mighty king of Assyria." " Bubu, son of Bubua, son of the prefect of Nistun, in the city of Arbela I flayed ; his skin I stretched in contempt npoji the zvaliy *' To Suri which is in Bit-Halupe I drew near ; the fear of the approach of Assur my lord overwhelmed them ; the great men and the mul- titudes of the city, for the saving of their lives, coming up after me, submitted to my yoke ! " and notwith- standing their prompt submission and their meek reception of their conqueror, he says, " some slain, some living, some tongueless I made." " A trophy along the length of the great gate (of Suri) I erected : the rebellious nobles who had revolted against me, and whose skins I had stripped off, I made into a trophy, some in the middle of the pile I left to decay; some on the top of the pile ofi stakes I impaled ; some by the side of the pile I placed in order on stakes ; many, within view of my land I flayed ; their skins on the walls I arranged." This horrible operation seems to be repeated everywhere. " With my arms I destroyed 600 of their fighting men ; 3000 of their captives I consigned to the 20O ORIENTAL RECORDS. flames ; as hostages I left not one of them alive ; Hulai the governor of their town I captured by my hand alive ; their corpses into piles I built ; their boys and maidens I dishonoured." Again, in another place, " 200 of their captives in the flame I burned ; " " much booty I burned with fire ; many soldiers I captured alive ; of some I chopped ofl" the hands and feet ; of others the noses and ears I cut ofl" ; of many soldiers I destroyed the eyes ; one pile of bodies while yet alive, and one of heads I reared up on the heights within their town ; their heads in the midst I hoisted." " Their corpses like rubbish on the hills I piled up ; their common people in the tangled hollows of the mountains I consumed ; their spoil, their pro- perty I carried off"." " 200 of his soldiers, taken by my hands alive, I left to rot on the wall of his palace." " Their populace in the flames I burned." " 700 of their soldiers I there impaled on stakes." " 6500 of their warriors I smote down by my weapons ; the remainder in starvation in the desert of the Euphrates I shut up." " The living soldiers I crucified on crosses at the gates of the town." ' On the Bellino cylinder there is yet another example of diabolical barbarity : " The male children and the female children I burnt in the flames." This king may be considered pre-eminent in the practice of such atrocities, but all the Assyrians were guilty of the like. Greed and ambition were the first incentives to their hostile expeditions, and the revolts provoked by their tyranny were made pretexts for insatiable vengeance. Their kings sought to maintain by terror the empire thus acquired. How they im- ' "Annals of Assur-nasir-pal," Records of the Past, Vol. III., p. 39, seq. SIN AND REPENTANCE OF THE NINEVITES. 20I paled or flayed alive their victims may be seen in those sculptured war-scenes which adorned their palaces. To annihilate such a nation would be a mercy to mankind, and when Nineveh was threatened with destruction within forty days, both king and people felt the terror which falls upon the guilty. Yet they made profession of extraordinary piety. Sennacherib calls the Nineveh of his time "the ex- alted city, the city beloved by Ishtar, within which dwelt the worship of all the gods and goddesses." This Assur-nasir-pal calls himself "worshipper of the great gods," and under the beneficent protection of them all. His treasury was glutted with the spoils of conquered, yet unoffending peoples. His wealth con- sisted of extorted tribute, the loot of abandoned palaces, the involuntary gifts of remote tribes who sought to avert the threatened plague of Assyrian soldiery by emptying their substance at the feet of their chief, of whose terrible exploits they had heard, while, to borrow his own words, he "swept the country like a mighty whirlwind ; ravaged, destroyed, and burnt the towns with fire, cut down the woods, sowed the corn-fields with thistles, left the lands a desert, and carried off the inhabitants, small and great, male and female, with horses, mules, asses, oxen and sheep beyond number, until none were left." Therefore came the word of the Lord unto Jonah, saying, "Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it ; for their wickedness is come up before me." (Jon. i. 2.) For this the prophet cried, as he entered the city, " Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown." (Jon. ii. 4.) Smitten with guilty fear, as if all the countries he had wasted were coming 202 ORIENTAL RECORDS. with one vast army with vengeance to overthrow Nineveh, the blood-thirsty king arose from his throne, laid his robe from him, covered himself with sackcloth and ashes, and with his nobles caused a decree to be proclaimed and published throughout Nineveh, " Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing, let them not feed, nor drink water ; but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God ; yea, let them turn every one from his own way, and from the violence that is in their hands ; who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not ? " (Jon. iii. 5-9-) This confession of the violence that was " in their hands " is admirably proper. It suits exactly the picture of murderous violence depicted in the annals above quoted. One might suppose that the prophet had set their sin before them, and taught them their duty to put that habitual violence away. They repented, says our Lord, at "the preaching" of Jonah, which must have been much more than the first alarming cry. (Matt. xii. 41.) So the author of the book of Jonah says that they turned from their evil way, from the violence that was in their hands. (Jon. iii. 10.) But the change was prompted by fear, and the repentance, sincere for a moment, passed away. Nahum followed after Jonah, saw them relapsed into their old ways, and his prophetic denunciation gave no hope that the Lord would show forbearance any more. He, too, cried aloud, "Woe to the bloody city ! It is all full of lies and robbery. The prey departeth not. The noise of a whip, and the noise of SIN AND REPENTANCE OF THE NINEVITES. 203 the rattling of the wheels, and of the pransing horses, and the jumping chariots. The horseman liftcth up both the bright sword and the glittering spear, and there is a multitude of slain, and a great number of carcases ; and there is none end of their corpses ; they stumble upon their corpses." (Nah. iii. 1-3.) By this time Shalmaneser and Sargon have spent fury on the captive Israelites enslaved in Assyria, and toiling under taskmasters. He declares that the same "violence" that was condemned through Jonah is now to be visited upon Nineveh by the overthrow which was then threatened, but respited, and the respite is now withdrawn. " God is jealous, and the Lord revengeth, and is furious ; the Lord will take vengeance on his adversaries, and reserveth wrath for his enemies." (Nah. i. 2.) " It shall come to pass that all they that look upon thee shall flee from thee, and say, Nineveh is laid waste." (Nah. iii. 7.) The prophet glances at the circumstances which will attend the fulfilment of this denunciation. " The gates of the rivers shall be opened, and the palace shall be dissolved." (Nah. ii. 6.) " The gates of thy land shall be set wide open unto thine enemies : the fire shall devour thy bars." (Nah. iii. 13.) There were no native historians to describe the catastrophe which Nahum had so fully predicted in these few words, but some indistinct and clashing rumours have been col- lected, and the charred fragments of the palace and its furniture demonstrate how literal Avas the fulfil- ment of the prophecy. Notwithstanding the faults of Ctesias as an his- torian, we must be content to have him as our only informant of some particulars concerning the fall 204 ORIENTAL RECORDS. of Nineveh. He was a Greek physician in the Persian Court, where he spent seventeen years, and wrote a history of the Assyrians and Persians, for which he had the best accessible materials. Diodorus the Sici- lian copies his description, and all that I can do is to repeat what has been repeated often and again from this one source, but is acknowledged to be quite con- sistent with probability. The readers of these pages may observe that those Assyrian kings who distin- guished themselves as great conquerors made frequent incursions into Media, where they had many settle- ments and whither Shalmaneser carried his captives from Samaria. It is also well known that Babylonia submitted most unwillingly to the Assyrian kings, and that at this very time an Assyrian viceroy, with a strong military force, was resident in Babylon to hold it in subjection. From Media, therefore, and from Babylonia, trouble might always be apprehended, and thence it came. Cyaxares (so called by the Greeks) first king of Media, and the Assyrian viceroy in Babylon, the former as a declared enemy, and the latter as a traitor in revolt against his sovereign, united their forces, aided also by Scyths and by Arabians, and marched to Nineveh with a combined force of 400,000 men. After some fighting of doubtful issue, the king of Nineveh, whom Ctesias calls Saracus, retired into the city, shut himself up, and stood a siege. For two years the Medo-Babylonian army lay encamped outside, and Saracus, trusting in the strong walls and natural defences, lay within. Strong walls, extending to the Zab eastward, resisted the advance of the enemy ; and the main channel of that river, down to its junction with the Tigris, was a protection SIN AND REPENTANCE OF THE NINEVITES. 205 against the enemy on the east and south : the deep and rapid Tigris, flowing past the city on the west, was trusted as a yet more effectual defence, and Sara- cus felt secure. But during the winter rains, the Tigris, more swollen than usual, overflowed its banks, and softened the foundation of the wall ; probably where the north- western angle, or bend of the wall, approached the river, and gradually undermined it by force of the descending flood. At last a portion of the lofty wall suddenly gave way, fell with a thundering crash, and left a wide breach to be open to the besiegers when the waters had subsided. The sound of the ruin was a signal of death to Saracus. With his own hands he set fire to the palace, and threw himself into the flames. The enemy soon rushed into the city, and whether they, or the Ninevites, or both, cast the fire- brands, a general conflagration devoured Nineveh. Probably the inhabitants were spared, for they would fraternize with their Babylonian kinsfolk. Either as captives or as allies, they crossed the Tigris, gave their hands to labour, and Mosul arose quickly on the opposite bank ; a second, but meaner Nineveh, which continues to this day, a ruinous and filthy place. Old Nineveh, with all its grandeur, Avas but a city, or cities, of clay. Thick walls, indeed, were carried up high, but they were made of nothing better than sun-dried clay, sometimes defended with an outside casing of baked brick. Thus even temples and palaces were walled with perishable material. Co- lossal figures of winged bulls and lions, most of them human-headed, were at the portals. Sculptured 2o6 ORIENTAL RECORDS. marble facing adorned the chambers, but these ornamental accessories did not sustain any part of the barbaric piles. The precious rilievi represented kings, gods, and armies, warlike expeditions and royal hunts, sieges, conquests, triumphs, industries. Thus those halls of state became sculpture-galleries, reared to perpetuate scenes of kingly magnificence. After the sculptor had exhausted his utmost skill, the graver showered on all the available surfaces of his work in broad, historic bands, myriads of combina- tions of wedge and arrow-headed characters. The walls, weather-beaten and deserted, softened and fell, yet so slowly as not to overturn in mass, but gradually bury out of sight the costly works ; the soft heap saving them from atmospheric corrosion and brute violence for nearly twenty-five centuries. Charred cedar of Lebanon, and other precious woods fallen from roofs and floors, split and half calcined marble statues, found under the mounds, give proof that however far from perfection Ctesias may have been, he was not mistaken when he wrote of burning palaces. Within the last five-and-twenty years, with insight and perseverance beyond example in human history these records have disclosed ideograph and syllabary to the decipherers ; more than one or two languages have been recovered from utter oblivion, reduced to grammar, and may now be learned and translated as easily as if they were Attic Greek, or the Hebrew of Moses. They bring us the history, the mythology, the science, and philosophy of those great empires when in their greatest glory. While all this treasure lay safely guarded by all- SIN AND REPENTANCE OF THE NINEVITES. 207 wise Providence in the silent earth, the geographers of Greece and Rome beHeved Nineveh to be extinct with Troy and with Mycenae. Phny the elder wrote his Ninus fiiit .... iij'bs quojidant clarissima, but knew not on which side of the Tigris the once most famous city stood. Pausanias moralised on the dele- tion by cruel fortune of Ninus and Boeotian Thebes. Most people said that Nineveh was irrecoverably lost. Oriental tradition did indeed linger on her grave, but the Musulmans ignorantly built wretched little villages over the palaces and temples of Sennacherib, Esarhad- don, and Sardanapulus; while the Jews and Christians of Mosul, somewhat more enlightened, pointed to the mounds with a certain traditional respect. Seven centuries ago Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela visited Mosul, found that only a bridge of boats over the Hiddekel ' separated him from the soil once trodden by Shalmaneser, conqueror of Samaria. But he did not set foot upon it. He did not turn aside upon the track of the ten captive tribes, whose living progeny he had come to seek. He counted seven thousand Israelites in Mosul, glanced across the river, saw the wilderness, cried, " A desolation ! " "• gave a brotherly farewell to his brethren in the second Nineveh, and went on with his visitation of the Asiatic synagogues. We shall not now follow him, but wait here awhile, to take the benefit of recent explorations and scientific survey. Captain Felix Jones, " appointed surveyor in Meso- potamia," has examined the mounds, followed the excavators and antiquarians, surveyed the country all round, and sent his authenticated maps to the British ' Tigris, ' na-in 208 ORIENTAL RECORDS. Government, with minutely detailed written explana- tions. He inclines to the belief that Jonah's enumera- tion of its inhabitants has reference to the whole of the tract between the Tigris and the Zab, measuring from the juncture of the rivers high enough northward to include Khorsabad. He calculates the entire cir- cuit to be sixty-one and a half miles. " Koyunjik (he says) maybe properly called the acropolis of Nineveh," and the whole area, containing much cattle, as well as six or seven hundred thousand souls, would take the name of Nineveh. This, to my own mind, has all the evidence of certainty. One feature of the ancient cities, clustered on the plain within the circuit now marked out, and having their natural defence in the rivers, the marsh lands, and the mountains around, consists of a multitude of solid brick pyramids of considerable height, so con- structed that hundreds of persons might cover the sides of each of them. They are literally Jiigh places, but unlike those in Palestine ; and Captain Jones sup- poses that they might serve as places of assemblage for prayer, or adoration of the gods. No language can be better than his own for com- parison with the third and fourth chapters of the book of Jonah. He says that "these works, more than any thing else, speak of the populousness of the district (of Koyunjik and Nebi Yunus), and indeed of all Assyria, for they exist in every direction within the extended limits of that empire. Every homestead appears to have had one attached, and if really in- tended for sacred practices, we may imagine the solemnity of the scene presented by the assemblage of congregations around the various pyramidal altars SIN AND REPENTANCE OF THE NINEVITES. 209 in the open air. Any sufficient signal by day, or a sacred fire at night, displayed from the chief sanc- tuary, might have prostrated the whole nation, under the great canopy of heaven only, in simultaneous prayer." From the acropolis at Koyunjik a signal might summon all the surrounding population to attention. Swift messengers might " proclaim and publish through Nineveh the decree of the king and his nobles." Man and beast covered with sackcloth ; the king sitting in ashes ; the crowds upon the high places, crying aloud to God ; Jonah in retreat some- where on the hills you see marked on the map, east of the royal city ; every habitation empty ; the most high God unseen, yet present, relenting with the repentance of the people ; the impatient prophet, under his withered gourd, sullenly listening to the word of the Lord : " Should I not spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than six-score thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left, and also much cattle ? " All this indicates a scene of grandeur surpassing the powers of laneuaee to describe.' ' Notes on the Topographij of Nineveh, etc., by Felix Jones, London, 1S55. With three maps. 15 2IO ASSYRIA. • ASSUR-NASIR-PAL. Jonah III. URING the reign of Assur-nasir-pal, if the received chronology is not very incorrect, Jonah the son of Amittai was sent to Nineveh to call the Ninevites to repentance.' They repented at his call, and the city, threatened with destruction, was consequently spared. " The people of Nineveh be- lieved God" which obviously implies that the prophet delivered his message in the name of his God, " and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them. For word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes, and caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither ' The reign of Assur-nasir-pal began B.C. SS5, and ended in 85S. The journey of Jonah to Nineveh is dated at about B.C. S62, and we may say that it took place some time during that memorable reign. About B.C. S25, 33 years after that king's death, a predictive promise of the Lord by Jonah was fulfilled. (2 Ki. xiv. 23-27.) That promise was given, as we may reasonably suppose, about the time of the death of Ahab, or soon after, when Ephraim and Judah, which had been united in the fatal battle where Ahab fell, "saw their sickness and their wound, went to the Assyrian, and sent to the king of Jareb who could not heal them." (Hos. v. 13.) After that battle there was no war with Israel for three years, but then B.C. SS3, the first year of Assur-nasir-pal, the Syrian war was renewed, and most probably, the appeal noticed by Hosea was then made. ASSYRIA. ASSUR-NASIR-PAL. 2 11 man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing : let them not feed, nor drink water : but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightil)' unto God : yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands. Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not." (Jon. iii. 5-9.) The name of Jonah's God is not mentioned here, and it may be questioned whether Jonah proclaimed it. But considering the correspondence between Israel and Assyria mentioned in the book of the prophet Hosea, and the power of the two Hebrew kingdoms at the time, a power so great that this very king with all his ambition of conquest, when he led his victorious army from the Tigris to the Mediterranean, as his annals testify, did not encroach on either of their territories, it is not to be imagined that he was ignorant of the existence of their one God, to whom all their greatness would be attributed. In discussing this question we are also reminded that Jonah did not con- ceal the sacred name when, a very short time before, he was on board ship on the Mediterranean Sea, on his attempted voyage to Tarshish, but said to the sailors who cast on him the blame of the storm, " I am an Hebrew, and I fear the LORD (nin^). Wherefore they cried unto the LORD, and said, We beseech thee, O Lord," etc. " Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly, and offered a sacrifice unto the LORD, and made vows." (Jon. i. 9, 14, 16.) It is most un- likely that Jonah would confess the name of his God so freely and so successfully in the ship, and while preaching so boldly in the city suppress it there. The author of the book of Jonah says that the 15* 212 ORIENTAL RECORDS. sailors offered a sacrifice and made vows, and that the king commanded his people to cry mightily to Jonah's God. Neither the king nor the sailors made any promise, like Naaman the Syrian, that they would not worship any other god, or, to use the lan- guage of the Decalogue, that they would not have any other god in His presence, or before Him; but it would almost appear that, for that time at least, Assur-nasir-pal took the LORD into the number of his gods. A suggestion of a translator of his annals ' raises the question whether he did not, and I can do no more than mention it, and take this oppor- tunity for one or two further observations. The king gives a very pompous account of himself, such as was customary with all kings in their autobio- graphical monuments, the very first sentence justifying the conjectiu'e that Yareb, the name or title bestowed on him by the prophet Hosea signifies greatness, and then speaks, or is represented as speaking, thus : " I am great and I am glorious, Assur-nasir-habal, a mighty king of Assyria, proclaimer of the moon-god, worshipper of, exalter of Yav!' (Col. I. 1. 33.) " By help of Assur and Yav, the great gods who aggrandise my royalty, chariots and an army I col- lected." (Col. I. 1. ^6) " In honour of Assur the sun-god, and Yav, the gods in whom I trust, my chariots and army I col- lected." (Col. I. 1. 104.) Assur, the chief of their gods, retains his first place, and Yav is placed next to him, an honourable posi- tion, certainly, if Yav is no more than one of the many gods of which he boasts himself a worshipper. ' The Rev. J. M. Rodvvell, M.A., Records of the Past, Vol. III., p. 37. ASSYRIA. ASSUR-NASIR-PAL. 213 " I gave them battle ; on two days before sunrise, like Vav the inundator, I rushed upon them." (Col. II. 1. 106.) More remarkable is the next mention of Yav, being a literal repetition of Jonah's words, " the God of heaven, which hath made the sea and the dry land." (Jon. i. 9.) "An altar to Ninip my lord I therein consecrated : a temple for Beltis, Sin, and Gulanu, Hea-Manna, and Yav, great ruler of heaven and earth, I founded." (Col. II. 1. 135.) The name is also found in combination, just like the Hebrew Yah, in proper names. There is Il-yav, for a city, and Zab-yav, for a person. (Col. I. 1. 78 ; Col. II. 1. 24, 30, 39.) On this name Yav, on its first occurrence, the learned translator makes a note : " The god Yav may be the Yaveh of the Moabite stone." On reference to the.fac-simile of that inscription, I find in Phoenician characters an exact repetition of the Hebrew tetra- grammaton ; but in the Qmciforvi Inseriptiois of Western Asia, where the annals of Assurbanipal are printed, this and other proper names are not written phonetically, but in ideograms, as is usual in the Assyrian inscriptions. The determinative for a god is prefixed. i\Ir. Rod well, however, was guided in his rendering by indications, as he conceived, from other sources, and meanwhile I must refrain from making any use of it. With respect to the original name, about which so many conjectures have been hazarded, I will but venture a few words. Among the Sephardim, whose pronunciation I prefer to follow, I have heard it 2 14 ORIENTAL RECORDS. sounded Yc-Jio-vdh. As for the fantastic and bar- barous diversity of vocalisation in which some Jews indulge, by way of exhibiting their ingenuity, they are profanely ridiculous ; but something may be learned from better sources. The Karaites pro- nounce the name in prayer, which other Jews do not, and it appears to be written in their liturgies as they speak it, thus : '<\> with a vowel-mark for kametz (t), and to be read, as I suppose, Yavai. On examining the plates of M. Lottin de Laval, I find the name in the Sinaitic rock-inscriptions in precisely the same form, but understand that the character there taking the place of the Hebrew i may have the Arabic sound, and so be read as Ydzvdi. It remains, however, to ascertain what vowels would be required by the dialect of those inscriptions. Perhaps further examination may show that the sacred name so sparingly uttered by true Jews, if uttered at all, was variously spoken both by Jews and Gentiles ; and so the true pronuncia- tion was lost, not so much in the depth of reverential silence, for, as it is said in the book of Chozri, the vowels were written in the hearts of the people, as amidst the multitude of changes it underwent in articulation by speakers of many nations. As for the fact that the king and people of Nineveh worshipped Jonah's God, it is distinctly affirmed in the book which bears the name of the prophet, but concerning all that relates to the event recorded in that book the annals are silent ; and the insufficiency of a mere word, especially if the word is doubtful, to furnish monumental confirmation, may be learned from the example now before us. Babylon. 215 BABYLON. Daniel IV. 29, 30. S king Nebuchadnezzar " walked in the pakice of the kingdom of Babylon, he spake and said, Is not this great Babylon that I have built for the house of the kingdom, by the might of my power, and for the honour of my majesty ? " (Dan. iv. 29, 30.) Our present business is not to comment on the character of the king nor to expound the teaching of the text, but only to verify the history. It may be said that Babylon was built ages before Nebuchad- nezzar came into existence (Gen. xi.), as every one knows, but it must be remembered that the speech of the builders was confounded ; they were, in effect, driven from the ground, their work lay unfinished, and for aught we know to the contrary, it fell to ruin beyond the possibility of reparation. We may reason- ably imagine that it did so perish ; but, after the dispersion of the first builders, others renewed the labour, which was gradually prosecuted by successive generations, until shortly before the fall of Nineveh, head of the Assyrian empire, Nabopolassar, governor of Babylon, revolted traitorously against his master, and in the course of events, which we need not re- count, Babylon became the seat of imperial govern- ment, and Nebuchadnezzar built the city in the same sense as Augustus built Rome, and having found that 2l6 ORIENTAL RFXORDS. city brick, left it marble. The amazing activity of the king of Babylon, whose dreams were interpreted by Daniel, is attested by the innumerable bricks, with his name imprinted on them, that are dug out of the ruins. Another, and more express evidence is found in what is called " the standard inscription " of Nebu- chadnezzar, found in one of the mounds. " The double inclosure (the two great walls around the city and grounds of Babylon) which Nabopolassar, my father, had made but not completed, I finished. Nabopolassar made its ditch. With two long embank- ments of brick and mortar he bound its bed. He made the embankment of the Arakha (river). He lined the other side of the Euphrates with brick. He made a bridge over the Euphrates, but did not finish its buttresses (.f"). From ( . . . . name of a place) he made with bricks burnt as hard as stones, by the help of the great lord Merodach, a way (for) a branch of the SJiimat to the waters of the Yapur-shapn, the great reservoir of Babylon, opposite to the gate of Nin. "The Ingur-Bel and the Nimiti-Bel, the great double wall of Babylon, I finished. With two long embankments of brick and mortar I built the sides of the ditch. I joined it on with that my father had made. I strengthened the city. Across the river to the west I built the wall of Babylon with brick. The Yapiiv-shapn, the reservoir of Babylon, by the grace of Merodach, I filled completely full of water. With bricks burnt as hard as stones, and with bricks in huge masses like mountains, the Yap2ir-shap2i from the gate of Miila as far as Nana, who is the pro- tectress of her votaries, by the grace of his godship BABYLON. 217 (Merodach) I strengthened. With that which my- father had made I joined it. I made the way of Nana, the protectress of her votaries. The great gates of the Ingur-Bcl, and the Niviiti-Bel, the reser- voir of Babylon, at the time of the flood, inundated them. These gates I raised. Against the w^aters their foundations with brick and mortar I built." Then follows a description of the gates. " For the delight of mankind I filled the reservoir. Behold ! besides the Ingur-Bcl, the impregnable forti- fication of Babylon, I constructed inside Babylon, on the eastern side of the river, a fortification such as no king had ever made before me, namely, a long ram- part, 4000 ammas square, as an extra defence. I excavated the ditch ; with brick and mortar I bound its bed ; a long rampart at its head I strongly built. I adorned its gates. The folding-doors and the pillars I plated with copper. Against presumptuous enemies, who were hostile to the men of Babylon, great waters, like the waters of the ocean, I made use of abundantly. Their depths were like the depths of the vast ocean. I did not allow the waters to over- flow, but the fulness of their floods I caused to flow on, restraining them with a brick embankment Thus I completely made strong the defences of Babylon. May it last for ever ! " Thus far Nebuchadnezzar relates the vast works he constructed, or finished on his father's beginning, for the defence of the city by all means possible, and supplying with an unfailing abundance of water, in order to provide shelter and defence for the construc- tion of palaces and the rebuilding of Babylon on a scale of increased grandeur without fear of attack 2l8 ORIENTAL RECORDS. from enemies. Then, after narrating- what he did, on the same principle, at Borsippa, he resumes his recital of work done within the walls of Babylon : " In Babylon, the city which is the delight of my eyes, and which I have made glorious, when the waters (of the Euphrates) were in flood, they in- undated the foundations of the great palace called Tapratinisi, or. Wonder of Mankind ; a palace with many chambers and lofty towers ; the high place of royalty situated in the land of Babylon, and in the middle of Babylon ; stretching from the Ingur-Bcl (part of the double wall) to the bed of the Shebil, or eastern canal, and from the bank of the Seppara river to the water of the Yapnr-shapu, which Nabopolassar, my father, built with brick, and raised up. When the reservoir was full, the gates of this palace were flooded. I raised the mound of brick on which it was built, and made its platform smooth. I cut off the floods of water, and the foundations of the palace I protected against the water with bricks and mortar, and I finished it completely. I set up long beams to support it. I built up its gates with pillars and beams plated with copper, and strengthened with iron. Silver and gold, and precious stones whose names are almost unknown . . . ." [Here follow many names of objects, treasures of the palace, which cannot be translated.] " these I stored up inside, and there I placed the treasure house of my kingdom." ' Nabopolassar, his father, had reigned over Baby- lonia, it is said, twenty-one years. The last king of Nineveh sent him thither to resist enemies that were ' Rawlinson's Herodotus, II., 4S6, 4S7. BABYLON. 219 advancing against him in that direction, and to govern Babylon. liut the general played false, and made proposals of alliance to the king of Media, who was at war with his master. Uniting their forces, they marched together against Nineveh, which after much fighting and a long siege fell, and the provinces of the empire were divided between Cyaxares the Median and Nabopolassar, who appears to have be- stowed most of his energies on the city, now become the head of a great empire. It was he who laid the foundations of the two great walls, and began the other great works. Nebuchadnezzar witnessed those labours, and was no doubt privy to his father's plans for making Babylon the greatest and strongest city of the world. Those preparatory works made compara- tively little show, but gave him an immense advan- tage. The walls rose under his hand, but nearly half the work had been already done. The canals were opened, but they had been dug out by his father, and perhaps the bricks made for making the embankments good. As Solomon built the Temple, in good part with materials collected by David, so did Nebuchad- nezzar set to work in Babylon and the neighbourhood with his father's bricks, and timber, and copper, and gold, and his father's labourers and skilled artizans, ready to take his orders while he gathered in fresh tribute, made new conquests, and brought home a new force of slaves. In addition to the above extract, borrowed from Sir Henry Rawlinson, I might have appropriated from a large collection of M. Menant,' copious ' Babylone, etc., p. 197-218. 220 ORIENTAL RECORDS. accounts of temples and palaces, more than enough to substantiate his boast that he had built Babylon, and more besides Babylon, although not enough to justify his pride. The diligent survey and researches of Oppert, and the comprehensive studies of Menant, to say nothing of others whose names are our household words, make us as familiar with the site of ancient Babylon as, without actual inspection, we could be with Jerusalem or Athens. They have traced the foundations of the two outer walls, named in the standard inscription, and described and measured by Herodotus, the reports of the ancients being checked by the surveys of the moderns. The remains of the temple of Bel within the great quadrangle on the northern side, reduced from its colossal elevation of 500 feet, by the violence of Xerxes and the waste of time, first robbed of its fifteen millions sterling worth of solid gold statues of gods, and vessels for sacrifice, and at last used as a quarry for building Seleucia and Ctesiphon. South- ward, between the walls, Borsippa, the " Tower of Tongues," of which I have already spoken, standing just as it was seven hundred years ago, when Rabbi Jonathan of Tudela examined and measured it just as did M. Oppert very lately, recorded his results, and wrote : " This tower was struck with fire from heaven, which rent it from top to bottom." ' We trace the acropolis of the royal city, where stood the palaces from whose terraces Nebuchad- nezzar surveyed the placid flood of the Euphrates ' llinerarium D. Beujaminis cum Fersione et nolis Constantini UEmpcreur. Lug-d. Batav., 1633, p. ■j']. BABYLON. 2 2 1 twenty miles away north and as many south, with the city at his feet, the vast plain and palm s^roves along the river banks, the hanging gardens near, and temples and villages intermingled in the prospect. Closely adjacent were the mansions of Daniel and his friends, busy in the cares of state administration ; and here, too, the Chaldee magicians and the Baby- lonian princes with their craft and superstitions. Here the banquet hall of Belshazzar, and not far off the dens and the furnaces where suffered the victims of tyranny, and the witnesses to truth. Now, as the stranger treads the ground once trodden by king and prophet, he needs but little meditation to call up to view their familiar haunts ; to see where once the wharves bordered the river, and where the gates that were opened to the soldiers of Cyrus, or, erewhile to the captives from Jerusalem. Now a deadly silence broods over the scene. Rabbi Benjamin saw the desolation much more horrid, for in his day the empty chambers of Babylon were the haunts of wild beasts and serpents, and none could venture into them, but now all are fallen in. All is one undistinguishable heap, and you can only be assured that on this spot Babel was first built, and the speech of man was first confounded, that the great captivity of Judah found honour and consolation here, and that heathen scribes penned, even where you stand, proclamations of honour and worship to the God of Israel, and de- liverance to His captives. This was the proud and luxurious court of Babylon, the seat of dominion over the mightiest nation that was under heaven, at the time when their sovereign pronounced the brief soliloquy which brought down 22 2 ORIENTAI, RECORDS. upon him the judicial insanity described by Daniel ; and yonder, five or six miles south, Hillah, once a populous city, yet holds its place, and also marks a memorable site, where the plebeians of that age dwelt apart, with a broad intervening space to sepa- rate them from the courtiers and their lord. BABYLON. NEBUCHADNEZZAR'S MADNESS. Daniel IV. i6. HE tale of great works done is abruptly inter- rupted. The king, if it is he who writes or dictates the account before us, does not say what befell him suddenly, how he lost his reason, and ran wild in the woods ; but there are whispers from other quarters. Megasthenes, in the court of Seleucus Ni- canor, and, after him, Abydenus, who wrote on the Assyrians, collected a report current among the Chal- deans, that in spite of all the power of the gods Bel and Beltis, the Persians and the Medes would fight against Babylon and make the Babylonians captive. They said that Nebuchadnezzar, inspired by some god, foretold the coming calamity, and cried, " O that before this comes to pass, rather than my citizens were given up, some deep would swallow me up, some sea engulf me for ever out of sight ; or that I could flee away somewhither into the desert, where there are no cities, no track of men ; where the wild beasts have their own laws, where the birds fl)' free ; and I would roam alone among the rocks, and in the clefts of the earth. Gladly would I choose this, and come to a better end ! Having uttered this prophecy he instantly disappeared, and his son Evil-Merodach 2 24 ORIENTAL RECORDS. succeeded to the kingdom." ' Certainly this is im- pressive, and how far the account may have gained or lost in passing from hand to hand, matters little. There is, however, one very notable resemblance : Daniel says that an angel spake to the king ; the Chaldeans heard that a god inspired him. The remainder of the inscription, more than any such tradition, recalls the narrative of Daniel. " Four years(.'') the seat of my kingdom in the city which did not rejoice my heart. In all my dominions I did not build a high place of power. The precious treasures of my kingdom I did not lay up. In Babylon, buildings for myself and the honour of my kingdom I did not lay out. In the worship of Merodach my lord, the joy of my heart, in Babylon, the city of his sovereignty and the seat of my empire, I did not sing his praises, and I did not furnish his altars (with victims), nor did I clear the canals." = And there are other negative clauses, not yet trans- lated. But these few lines suffice to tell of an utter abandonment of all royal care. No joy in his palace. No erection of a place of strength. No treasure laid up. An utter cessation of public works in unfinished Babylon. No observance of religion. Even the canals uncleansed are choked with mud and water- weed. Only suspension of reason, or a paralysis of all energy, could account for this. There is but one apparent discrepancy between the text of Daniel and the inscription, which a few words may perhaps remove. ' Euseb., Pamph. Praep. Evang., Lib. ix., sub fin. ' Rawlinson, Ut supra, p. 4S7. BABYLON.— NEBUCHADNEZZAR'S MADNESS. 225 " Four years," according to the inscription, was the duration of Nebuchadnezzar's madness. " Seven times " it lasted, according to the book of Daniel (Dan. iv. i6),' well translated by Theodotion "seven seasons." ' But we must remember that summer and winter were the only seasons noted in Babylonia, and the Chaldee original says that they cJianged over the king. Now if seven seasons did really change over him, an eighth season began, and might be far advanced ; and according to the usual method of counting periods of time, it would be necessary to say four years. Between seven and eight seasons, there- fore, being equivalent with four years, the text of Daniel and the inscription of Nebuchadnezzar are in exact agreement. For this note I am indebted to Theodotion, who never saw the inscription. Daniel relates the king's recovery, and return to his government. The inscription tells what further work he did. "As a further defence in war, at the Iiigiir- Bc/, the impregnable outer wall, the rampart of the Babylonians, with two strong lines of brick and mortar I made a strong fort, 400 avimas square, inside the Nimiti-Bel, the inner defence of the Babylonians. Masonry of brick within them (the lines) I constructed. With the palace of my father I connected it. In a happy month and on an auspicious day its founda- tions I laid in the earth like .... I completely finished its top. In fifteen days I completed it, and made it the high place of my kingdom. [A descrip- tion follows of ornamentation of the palace.] A strong « •'TfTS_ prfsT -^-m rw3w ' Kal eTTTii Kaipol a.\Ka.yi\ijovTa.i. in' avTov. 16 2 26 ORIENTAL RECORDS. fort of brick and mortar in strength I constructed. Inside the brick fortification another great fortification of long stones, of the size of great mountains, I made. Like Shedini I raised up its head. And this building I raised for a wonder ; for the defence of the people I constructed it." ' ' Rawlinson, Ut supra. 227 BABYLON. THE GOLDEN IMAGE, AND PLAIN OF DURA. Daniel III. M HE erection of Nebuchadnezzar's golden image probably took place about the year B.C. 580. The old notion that the tsclcm ' of the book of Daniel was a statue in human form, raised on a pedestal, can scarcely be admitted. Such a notion is inconsistent with the exact statement of its proportions, three- score cubits in height, and six cubits in breadth, about nine feet broad and ninety feet high. It is not credible that a man so little addicted to burlesque as Nebuchadnezzar's general conduct indicates would have had any human figure, much less his own, elongated so ridiculously; nor, in the Assyrian sculp- tures, for this was Assyrian in style, although set up in Babylonia, is there, as we suppose, any instance of such distortion. The description of the pillar, or obelisk, and of the state solemnity at its dedication, is entirely explained by the inscriptions. An Assyrian king, named Assur-akh-bal, about 350 years earlier, erected a similar object in one of the cities he had conquered, and it is thus written in his annals : " I established true religious worship and holy rites throughout the land of Tsuki. As far as 16* 228 ORIENTAL RECORDS. the land of Karduniah, I extended the true rehgion of my empire. The people of Chaldea, who were contemners and revilers of my religion, I impaled and slew them. Over all the lands which border on the river Euphrates I imposed my laws. I made an image of my majesty: the laws and emblems of my true religion I wrote upon it, and in the city of Tsuki I fixed it up." Here we see how the people of Chaldea, called contemners and revilers of the gods of the Assyrians, would be dealt with ; and this glance discovers force in the circumstantial illustration of the incident in Daniel, and yet more force is given it by two verses of an oracle quoted by Justin Martyr, which shows that the old Chaldeans, perhaps coerced into idolatry in an earlier reign, might be very like the three Hebrews of sacred history : " Only the Chaldeans attained to wisdom, and the Hebrews, Chastely worshipping as God a self-born king." ' Excepting all that is necessary from the praise of the Chaldeans, although the ill character given them by Herodotus and the Romans may not always have been deserved, we learn what would be the idolatrous character of such a celebration at Babylon in the age of Daniel. Then, again, we hear from Sennacherib of a similar festivity which took place much nearer the date of the narrative before us. " On a fortunate and lucky day, during the public ' Movvoi XaXSaiot cro<{)i)jf Xaxoi', 176' aft 'EjSpaioi, AviTO'ye'i'ijToi' avaKTOi o'e^o^ofiei'oi 6ebv ayyios. JrUSl, Mart. Gohwt. ad Grcec, xi. BABYLON. GOLDEN IMAGE, PLAIN OF DURA. 229 worship of the people, I piously dedicated the founda- tion stone, I surrounded it with large saniat{}) stones; I strengthened its subiiki^), I erected sculptured tablets containing my name {i.e. annals), which extended in length a hundred and sixty palms. Upon these I wrote ...."' If the three Hebrews had, by any act whatever; countenanced the worship of Nebuchadnezzar's obelisk, recognised the memorials of the gods cut or carved in it, or failed to testify against the ceremonial, they would have denied the God of Israel. But there is yet, in some minds, a difficulty as to the tsclem being golden. It was, no doubt, "clothed in gold," or gilded, as were the gates and pillars of the temple in Jerusalem, and some of the obelisks in Egypt. So Brugsch describes two large ones near a temple at Assasiph, each a hundred and eight ells in height, and gilded all over." This image was erected on the plain of Dura (Dan. iii. 1-7), and it is now satisfactory to know where that plain was, as it seemed to have vanished out of sight, with the extinct topography of Babylon and its environs. But M. Oppert has actually found the place. Describing the ruins in the neighbourhood of Babylon, he says that " the group which touches nearest on the boundary of the city, southward, is that of Dura. After having followed the road of Diwaniyeh as far as the Nahr Eyub (river of Job), near which is found a sanctuary dedicated to this saint, as the Mohamme- dans account him, and leaving on one side an Arab ' Assyrian Texts, translated by H. F. Talbot, London, 1S56, No. I., p. 7, 8, 22. ' Brugsch, Hisloire, p. 109. 230 ORIENTAL RECORDS. ruin called Maauiery, you cross the long canal of Keriyet-Ali, go towards the plain south-eastward, cross the dry beds of old canals, and after a journey of eight kilometres, come to an old water-course called NaJir-Diira (the river Dura), and at length you will reach a number of little mounds on the south- east, bearing the name of Tolid-Diira, or mounds of Dura. Then, having travelled from north to south, you come to where the river Dura discharges itself after a course of nearly a myriametre, or nine miles and a half" The plain of Dura is therefore now known to have been an extensive plain south of Babylon ; and this is one of the frequently occurring discoveries which encourage every earnest student to believe that when the wealth of material, as yet undiscovered or unde- ciphered, shall be laid open to the eye of the learned, and when cuneiform literature has become a recog- nised and accessible department of liberal education, little or nothing of what has been hitherto obscure in Old Testament history will continue unexplained. With regard to obelisks, a few more words of observation may be desirable in confirmation of the view I have taken. Casalius proves that, in Egypt, they were dedicated to the gods on their erection with very great public solemnity,' and religious rites, no doubt, and in Baby- lon it is not likely there would be any inferior obser- vance. A Babylonian obelisk would somewhat differ in character from the Egyptian. Bands of imagery in relief would run round it, and the interspaces of polished marble would be covered with deeply cut ' Casalius, De Veterihus Mgyptiorum Ritibus, Cap. iii., De Obeliscis. BABYLON. GOLDEN IMAGE, PLAIN OF DURA. 23 I cuneiform inscription. The shaft would rest on a solid base, and be surmounted by a step-like finish. There are two such now set up in the British Museum, one of white marble, and the other black ; the former is a monument of Assur-nasir-pal, and the latter of Shalmaneser. Assur-bani-pal, in his annals, relates that when in Thebes he found two lofty obelisks covered with beautiful carving, set up before the gate of a temple, which, notwithstanding their great weight, he removed, and brought to Assyria.' Samas-Rimmon, an Assyrian king, a contemporary of Ahab, king of Israel, made an image of his magnificent royalty, wrote upon it the laws of Assur his lord, the decrees of his own ascendancy, and the full history of the deeds which his hand had wrought, and caused it to be brought into the city of Tsibara, a fortified strong- hold in the country of the Girubbundai.' Such ex- amples as these frequently occur in the Assyrian inscriptions, and furnish a reliable key to the signifi- cance of this passage in the history of Daniel. ' Records of the Past, Vol. I., p. 65, first edition. ' Ibid., p. 17. 232 BABYLON. THE FIERY FURNACE AND DEN OF LIONS. Daniel III. 15. T a grand assemblage on the plain of Dura, on the occasion of the erection of a lofty obelisk in honour of Nebuchadnezzar and his gods, three Hebrews refused to bow down before the image of his majesty. These faithful men were therefore cast into a burning fiery furnace, but they were miracu- lously delivered. (Dan. iii.) The prophet Jeremiah refers to this kind of punishment : " And of them shall be taken up a curse by all the captivity of Judah which are in Babylon, saying, The Lord make thee like Zedekiah, and like Ahab (two Jewish cap- tives), whom the king of Babylon roasted in the fire." (Jer. xxix. 22.) From this passage, as well as from an intimation in the book of Daniel, that the furnace was "wont to be heated," we might confidently affirm that burning alive was a national custom with the Assyrians who were now in possession of the city and kingdom of Babylon. A few lines in the annals of Assurbanipal put this beyond doubt : " Saulmagina my rebellious brother who made war with me, into a burning fiery furnace they threw him, and destroyed his life." ' Further on ' yliunds of Assurbanipal, col. I\'., lines 107-109. BABYLON. — FIERY FURNACE, DEN OF LIONS. 233 in the same document there is mention of another method of capital punishment, identical with death by lions, from which also Daniel (Dan. vi.) was delivered. Many of the followers of Saulmagina, it is related, made their escape at first, and so "with Saulmagina their lord were they not thrown into the fire. The burning fire they escaped from. The rest of the people alive, among the bulls and lions, as Senna- cherib the father of my father, into the midst used to throw ; lo ! again, I following in his footsteps, those men into the midst of them I threw," ' Saulmagina, it should be noted, was himself the viceroy at Baby- lon, where it appears the execution took place, and where the fellow conspirators were taken, "brought out, and placed in slavery." The authenticity of the book of Daniel the prophet is not at this day seriously called in question, nor are we now engaged in any controversy of the kind ; but we may quote a witness, in confirmation of its narra- tive of these events, from an ancient writing not included in the canon of Holy Scripture. When Antiochus Epiphanes attempted to suppress the worship of Almighty God in Judaea, but was triumphantly resisted by the Maccabees, this part of sacred history was no less certainly believed than the indisputable narratives concerning Abraham, Joseph, Phinehas, Joshua, Caleb, David, and Elijah. The aged Mattathias, exhorting his sons before his death, held up to them the examples of those worthies, and then continued: "Ananias, Azarias, Misael, having believed, zvere saved out of the flame. Daniel, in his simplicity, was delivered from the mouth of the lions. ' Annals of Assurhanipal, col. V., lines 6-9. 234 ORIENTAL RECORDS. And so do you, from generation to generation, con- sider that none of them who hope in him shall ever fail." ' Fictitious heroes, of whose presence there is no certain trace nor evidence, would not be so con- fidently held up to admiration in those crises of a nation's history when men's lives are in peril, and every man's ultimate and soul-sustaining hope must rest in assurance of the omnipotence and faithfulness of God, that God in whom his fathers trusted, and never were confounded. The deliverance of the three Hebrews took place about B.C. 580, and Mattathias gave this exhortation to his sons about 422 years later, B.C. 168, when he was an aged man. But it may fairly be averred that he had heard of it at least half a century before from ancestors of the highest intelligence and most direct information. For at least three generations they had been uninterruptedly high- priests and members of the priesthood from the day of Aaron. It is not conceivable that they would have cherished fables in the stead of history, especially when the events related were but of recent occurrence, and, if false, would have been openly contradicted by the Samaritans, who were in direct correspondence with official persons in Babylon, every moment ready to rebut any tale that would bring reproach on their government. ' I Mace. ii. 59-61. »35 BABYLON. » THE GROVE. 2 Kings XXIII. 6, 7. HEN good king Josiah suppressed the open practice of idolatry in Jerusalem, "he brought out the grove from the house of the Lord, without Jerusalem, unto the brook Kidron, and stamped it small to powder, and cast the powder thereof upon the graves of the children of the people, and he brake down the houses of the Sodomites ' that were by the house of the LORD, where the women wove hangings ' for the grove." (2 Ki. xxiii. 6, 7.) It is not yet generally understood what this grove was, and the same obscurity hangs over passages where the word ' is used in the same sense. We are indebted to Assyrian sculpture for a solution of the difficulty, and the act of Josiah gives occasion for an explanatory note. The prophet Ezekiel describes a vision he had had of abominations committed in the temple at Jerusalem a few years later than the death of Josiah, which no ■ D'lirii^n « prostitutes." ' C'n3, "houses," or "curtains" to cover and inclose. ^ iTJV?*^. This Hebrew word, rendered grove in our Eng-lish Bible is represented in the Greek Septuagint thirty-six times by oAo-os, grove, and twice by tivlpov, a tree. 236 ORIENTAL RECORDS. doubt vividly and accurately represented the same idolatrous practices again introduced. " He brought me to the door of the court ; and when I looked, behold a hole in the wall. Then said he unto me, Son of man, dig now in the wall : and when I had digged in the wall, behold a door. And he said unto me, Go in, and behold the wicked abominations that they do here. So I went in and saw : and behold every form of creeping things and abominable beasts, and all the idols of the house of Israel, poiirtraycd upo7i the wall round about. And there stood before them seventy men of the ancients of the house of Israel, and in the midst of them stood Jaazaniah the son of Shaphan, with every man his censer in his hand ; and a thick cloud of incense went up. Then said he. Son of man, hast thou seen what the ancients of the house of Israel do in the dark, every man in the chambers of his imagery.?" (Ezek. viii. 7-12.) Be- sides this, the prophet was shown women weeping for Tammuz, and men with their backs to the temple, worshipping the sun in the east. Such chambers of imagery were in Assyrian and Babylonian palaces, where also were altars for incense before the images, and the fashion was now intro- duced into Jerusalem and Judah. Imagery of the kind seen in the chambers of Solo- mon's temple may be seen in the galleries of the British Museum, and there the sacred tree is a fre- quently conspicuous object. It appears in the magnificently sculptured slabs of Assur-nasir-pal and his attendant gods. As it stands there, it is carved in marble. In a temple it would be a separate object, carved in wood, and erected near an altar. What BABYLON. — THE GROVE. 237 was its symbolical value I have not yet learned. Reduced to charcoal it might be pounded into dust, or if wrought in stone, calcined and then pulverised. Hecataeus of Abdera, describing the temple of Zerubbabel, as it was in his day, after the return from Babylon, carefully contrasts it with the eastern tem- ples in these explicit words : " There is no image therein, nor any sort of votive gift, nor any plant whatever, nor any thing you might call grove-like." ' Grove-like, indeed, is all that could be said, and barely tree-like, but rigidly conventional. And where it reads in our English Bible, " Thou shalt not plant thee a grove of any trees," the rendering of XT^"^ "^l^^ might better be "a grove," as/ierah, or "any tree." (Deut. xvi. 21.) ' "AyaAfia 6e ovk ecttu', ovhi audBqiiia to TTapdirav, ovSi (fivTevfia vavTeXui'; ovSiV, olov aAo-uiSe? fj tI toioOtoc. Hecataei Abderitse, Fragmentiun apiid Joiephiim contra Apionem, Cap. xxii. 238 KINGS OF JUDAH AND ISRAEL. JUDAH. ISRAEL. 1055 David Judah 1048 T)2i\\d. Israel a?id j/^udah 1015 Solomon „ 975 Rehoboam 958 Abijam 955 Asa 914 Jehoshaphat 892 Jehoram 884 Athaliah {queen) 878 Joash 839 Amaziah 810 Azariah 975 Jeroboam I. 954 Nadab 952 Baasha 930 Elah 929 Zimri (7 days) — Omri 918 Ahab 897 Ahaziah 896 J Oram {prorex) 884 Jehu 856 Jehoahaz 841 Jehoash 825 Jeroboam II. ' These Assyrian dates are no more than proximate. They are taken from Professor Rawlinson, and are found in his Herodotus, and again in the second volume of his Five Monarchies. The reign of Vul-lush III., for example, stands in this list B.C. S10-7S1, but according to the margfinal chronology in the English Bible, Pul (who is understood to be the same as Vul-lush) exacted money from Menahem, king of Israel, in 771, ten years onward in the reign of his successor. Canon Rawlinson, in Smith's 239 KINGS OF ASSYRIA AND BABYLON. ASS YRIA. • BAB YLON. B.C. B.C. 1130-1110 Tiglath-Pileser I. 1 1 10-1090 Assur-bil-kala 1090-1070 Shamas-Vul I. ?? Asshur-mazur 930-911 Assur-dayan II. 911-889 Vul-lush II. 889-883 Tiglathi-Nin II. 883-858 Assur-nasir-pal 858-823 Shalmaneser II. 823-810 Shamas-Vul II. Dictionary, s. v. Pul, nevertheless distinctly agrees with the received chronology, B.C. 771. The reader, therefore, must not be surprised at finding other variations of the same kind, which are, as yet, unavoidable, but having nothing to do with the accuracy of literal translation of Assyrian documents rendered by the same learned Assyriologues, to whom the chronology is confessedly perplexing. 240 KINGS OF JUDAH AND ISRAEL. JUDAH. ISRAEL. 758 Jotham 742 Ahaz 726 Hezekiah 784 Zachariali 773 Shallum 772 Menahem 761 Pekahiah 759 Pekah 730 Hoshea 721 Kingdom of Israel extinct 698 Manasseh 643 Ainon 641 Josiah 610 Jehoahaz 610 Jehoiakim 599 Jehoiachin 599 Zedekiah 588 Kingdom of yiidah extinct KINGS OF ASSYRIA AND BABYLON. 24I ASSYRIA. BABYLON. B.C. B.C. 810-781 Vul-lush III. ']%!-']'] 1 Shalmaneser III. 77i~753 Assur-dayan III. 753-745 Assur-lush 745-727 Tiglath-Pileser II. 727-722 Shalmaneser IV. 722-705 Sargon 705-681 Sennacherib 681-668 Esar-haddon 668-626 Assur-bani-pal 626-625 Assur-emed-ilin Nineveh destroyed 625 Nebuchadnezzar 561 Evil-Merodach 559 Neriglissar 556 Laborosarchod 555 Nabu-nahid Belshazzar' 538 Babylon taken by Cyrus ' The separate reign of Belshazzar has now been ascertained, but not, 1 think, the date. 17 242 SYNCHRONISM. Three documentary writings lie before us. One is part of a clay tablet found among the unsorted thousands of fragments, with here and there only one unbroken, or nearly perfect. On this fragment there are eleven lines of inscription, of which one is obliterated, and the others are nearly or entirely perfect. Each line contains a note of the chief event of the year in Assyria. Each year has its own cponym; name instead of number, together with the event; name and event being together. The list, or cano7i, that may be constructed from such materials has a chronological value in proportion to the care TABLET OF CANON. B.C. 732 Nabubeluzur, governor of Sihime. Expedition to Damascus. [The Assyrian annals mention an expedition against Syria, Israel, and Philistia, and tribute received from Yaukhazi (Ahaz), king of Judah.] 731 Nergalluballid, governor of Ahizuhina. Expedi- tion to Sapiya (Babylonia). 730 Belludari, governor of Bele, in the country. [No foreign expedition.] 729 Napharili, governor of Kirruri. The king the hand of Bel took. [Religious ceremonies in Babylon.] 243 taken to make the whole arrangement tally with the history, being in the exact order of occurrence, year following year without interruption or confusion. So far, then, as this tablet extends, i.e., from B.C. 732 to B.C. 723 inclusive, it is a true chronological index. Two are in the Old Testament, and collation with the Scriptural statement of events during the same period will show, that the inspired prophet and the contemporary Biblical history drew from the same source of actual occurrence. The collation was con- tinued by Mr. George Smith to the year B.C. 681. BIBLE. B.C. 732 Expedition of Tiglath Pileser against Syria and Israel in the reign of Ahaz. Isaiah (vii.-x.) relates the expedition of Tiglath Pileser, king of Assyria, against Syria and Israel, in the reign of Ahaz. 731 Isaiah (xiii. and part of xiv.) has predicted the capture of Babylon. 730 729 Pekah killed, and Hoshca made king of Israel ; he pays tribute to Tiglath Pileser. (2 Ki. XV. 30.) 17* 244 SYNCHRONISM. TABLET OF CANON. B.C. 728 Durassur, governor of Tushan. The king the hand of Bel took. Di . . . . {imperfect). 727 Belharranbeluzur, governor of Gozan. Expedi- tion to {imperfect). Shalmaneser on the throne sat. [Death of Tiglath Pileser.] 726 Merodachbeluzur, governor of Amida. In the country. [No foreign expedition.] 725 Tizkarnigbi, governor of Nineveh. Expedition to (probably Palestine). 724 Assursimuani, governor of Kalsi. Expedition to 723 Shalmaneser, king of Assyria. Expedition to ASSYRIAN ANNALS. 720 Expedition of Sargon, king of Assyria, against Qarquar (Aroer), Damascus, and Samaria. 715 Egypt makes alliance with Assyria. 712 Egypt stirs up revolt in Palestine against Assyria. 711 Sargon takes Ashdod. King of Egypt abandons his allies. 710 Sargon captures Babylon. 702-1 Phenicia attacked by Sennacherib, king of Assyria ; the king flees from Tyre to Cyprus. 702-1 Sennacherib marches through Palestine. SYNCHRONISM. 245 BIBLE. B.C. 728 727 In the year of the death of Ahaz, the rod of the smiter is broken. (Is. xiv. 28-32.) 726 Accession of Hezekiah, king of Judah. (2 Ki. xviii. I.) 725 Isaiah (xv., xvi.) prophesies against Moab. Ex- pedition of Shahnaneser against Hoshca. (2 Ki. xvii. 3.) 724 723 BIBLE. 720 Isaiah (xvii.) prophesies against Damascus, Aroer, and Israel. 71S 712 Isaiah (xviii., xix.) prophesies against Egypt. 711 Isaiah (xx.) prophesies against Egypt in the year of capture of Ashdod. 710 Isaiah prophesies (xxi. i-io) against Babylon. 702-1 Isaiah prophesies (xxiii.) against Tyre. 702-1 Isaiah relates (xxiv. to xxix.) Sennacherib's invasion. 246 SYNCHRONISM. ASSYRIAN ANNALS. B-C. 702-1 Sennacherib defeats the Egyptian army at Eltekeh. 702-1 Sennacherib attacks Judah. 681 Murder of Sennacherib, and accession of Esar- haddon. The reader has only to cast his eye down these parallel columns, and perceive that the successive prophecies of Isaiah, and the portions of narrative which accompany them, correspond exactly with the order of events which is preserved in the chronology and history of Assyria. There are some differences between the chronology of the tablet and annals, and the marginal chronology of the Bible; but it must be allowed that the tablet is a formal register of eponyms, SYNCHRONISM. 247 BIBLE. B.C. 702-1 Isaiah writes (xxx., xxxi.) against relying upon Egypt. 702-1 Isaiah's prophecy and narrative relate to Senna- cherib's invasion of Judea. (xxxii. to xxxvii. 36.) 681 Isaiah relates murder of Sennacherib, and acces- sion of Esarhaddon. whereas the Hebrew history does not adhere so strictly to dates, nor note them in the same way ; and that with regard to the difference between the tablet and the Hebrew, more than one explanation has been suggested. But while the same events are noted in Nineveh or Babylon as in Jerusalem, and in the same order of occurrence, the comparison of dates concerns the chronological student rather than the Biblical expositor. '^"^^P^^^^^F" A 000 048 449 3