The expulsion of the Hyksos conquerors of Egypt, while it brought oppression and slavery to their Semitic kindred who were left behind, inaugurated an era of conquest and glory for the Egyptians themselves. The war against the Asiatics which had begun in Egypt was carried into Asia, and under Thothmes III and other great monarchs of the eighteenth dynasty the Egyptian armies traversed Palestine and Syria, and penetrated as far as the Euphrates. The tribes of Canaan paid tribute; the Amorites or “hill-men” were led into captivity; and the combined armies of Hittites and Phœnicians were defeated in the plain of Megiddo. On the temple-walls of Karnak at Thebes, Thothmes III (b.c. 1600) gives a list of the Canaanitish towns which had submitted to his arms. Among them we read the names of Zarthan and Beroth, of Beth-Anoth and Gibeah, of Migdol and Ophrah, of Taanach and Jibleam, of Shunem and Chinneroth, of Hazor and Laish, of Merom and Kishon, of Abel and Sharon, of Joppa and Achzib, of Beyrut and Accho, of [pg 059] Heshbon and Megiddo, of Hamath and Damascus. One of the conquered places bears the curious name of Jacob-el, “Jacob the God,” while mention is made of the Negeb, or “southern district,” which afterwards formed part of the territory of Judah.
Two centuries later, when the troublous times which saw the close of the eighteenth dynasty had ushered in the nineteenth, the same districts had again to be overrun by the Egyptian kings. Once more victories were gained over the powerful Hittites, in their fortress of Kadesh, on the Orontes, and over the tribes of Palestine. Seti I, the father of Ramses II, records among his conquests Beth-Anoth and Kirjath-Anab4 in the south, as well as Zor or Tyre. Ramses II himself, the Sesostris of the Greeks, battled for long years against the Hittites on the plains of Canaan, and established a line of Egyptian fortresses as far north as Damascus. The tablets which he engraved at the mouth of the Dog River, near Beyrût, still remain to testify to his victories and campaigns. Representations were sculptured on the walls of Thebes of the forts of “Tabor, in the land of the Amorites,” of Merom and of Salem; and the capture of the revolted city of Ashkelon was celebrated both in sculpture and in song.
But the most interesting record which has come down to us from his reign is the account given by a mohar, or military officer, of his travels through Palestine, at a time when the country was nominally tributary to Egypt. The mohar made his tour during the latter part of the reign of Ramses II, the oppressor of the Israelites, so that the account he has given of Canaan shows us what it was like shortly before its conquest by Joshua. He journeyed [pg 060] as far north as Aleppo in a chariot, which is more than a traveller in Palestine could do now, and describes how his clothes were stolen one night, and how his own groom, or “muleteer,” joined the robbers. Among the places he visited were the Phœnician cities of Gebal, famous for its shrine of Ashtoreth, Beyrût, Sarepta, Sidon, and Tyre, which he says was built on an island in the sea, drinking-water being conveyed to it in boats. Old Tyre, on the continent opposite, seems to have been recently burnt. Hamath, Timnah, Hazor, Tabor, Horonaim, and perhaps Adullam, were also visited, and mention is made not only of the ford of the Jordan, near Beth-Shean, but also of “a passage” in front of the city of Megiddo, which had to be crossed before the town could be entered. Joppa, the modern Jaffa, was surrounded with gardens of date-palms, which have now been supplanted by oranges. The road, however, was not always good. In one place the mohar had to “drive along the edge of the precipice, on the slippery height, over a depth of 2,000 cubits, full of rocks and boulders;” while at another time his groom broke the chariot in pieces by driving over a slippery path, and necessitated the repair of the injured carriage by “the iron-workers” at the nearest smithy. Already, therefore, it is clear, Palestine possessed plenty of smithies at which iron was forged.
That Ramses II was the Pharaoh of the oppression, has long been suspected by Egyptian scholars. The accounts of the wars of himself and his predecessors in Canaan show that up to the date of his death that country was not yet inhabited by the Israelites. Not only is no mention made of them, but the history of the Book of Judges precludes our supposing that Palestine [pg 061] could have been an Egyptian province after the Israelitish conquest. It must have ceased to be tributary to the Pharaohs before it was entered by Joshua. Moreover, the name of the city of Ramses (Raamses) built by the Israelites in Egypt points unmistakeably to the reign of the great Ramses II himself. As has already been observed, the name was given to Zoan after its reconstruction by this monarch, whose grandfather, Ramses I, was the first Egyptian king who bore the name. As Ramses I reigned but a very few years, while his successor, Seti I, associated his son, Ramses II, with him on the throne when the latter was but twelve years old or thereabouts, it could only have been during his long reign of sixty-seven years that Ramses II brought the name by which he had been christened into vogue. It is possible that those Egyptian scholars are right who see the Hebrews in a certain class of foreigners called Aperiu, and employed by Ramses II to work at his monuments; if so, we should have another proof that the Exodus could not have taken place until after his death. The identification, however, is rendered very doubtful by the fact, that long after the time of Ramses II, a document of the reign of Ramses III speaks of 2,083 Aperiu as settlers in Heliopolis, and describes them as “knights, sons of the kings, and noble lords of the Aperiu, settled people, who dwell in this place.” If, therefore, the Aperiu were really the Hebrews, we should have to suppose that some of them who had obtained offices of honour and influence in Egypt remained behind in Heliopolis, the city of Joseph's wife, when their poorer and oppressed kinsmen followed Moses and Aaron into the desert in search of the Promised Land.
[pg 062]However this may be, the question as to the date of the Exodus, and consequently as to the Pharaoh of the oppression, has now been finally set at rest by the excavations recently undertaken at Tel el-Maskhûta. Tel el-Maskhûta is the name of some large mounds near Tel el-Kebîr and other places which were the scene of the late war; and M. Naville, who has excavated them for the Egyptian Exploration Fund, has found inscriptions in them which show not only that they represent an ancient city whose religious name was Pithom, while its civil name was Succoth, but also that the founder of the city was Ramses II. In Greek times the city was called Heroöpolis, or Ero, from the Egyptian word ara, “a store-house,” reminding us that Pithom and Raamses, which the Israelites built for the Pharaoh, were “treasure-cities” (Exod. i. 11). M. Naville has even discovered the treasure-chambers themselves. They are very strongly constructed, and divided by brick partitions from eight to ten feet thick, the bricks being sun-baked, and made some with and some without straw. In these strawless bricks we may see the work of the oppressed people when the order came: “Thus saith the Pharaoh, I will not give you straw.”
The treasure-chambers occupy almost the whole area of the old city, the walls of which are about 650 feet square and 22 feet thick. Its name Pithom—in Egyptian Pa-Tum—signifies the city of the Setting Sun; and since it had another name, Succoth, we can now understand how it was that the Israelites started on their march not from Goshen, but from Succoth (Ex. xiii. 20), that is, from the very place where they had been working. Etham, their next stage, seems to be the Egyptian fortress of Khetam, while Pi-hahiroth [pg 063] (Ex. xiv. 2), is probably Pi-keheret, which is mentioned in an inscription found at Tel el-Maskhûta as somewhere in the neighbourhood of the canal that led from the Nile to the Red Sea.
The Pharaoh under whom the Exodus actually took place could not have been Ramses II himself, but his son and successor, Meneptah II, who ascended the throne about b.c. 1325. His reign lasted but a short time, and it was disturbed not only by the flight of the Children of Israel, but also by a great invasion of Northern Egypt by the Libyans, which was with difficulty repulsed. This took place in his fifth year. Three years later a report was sent to him by one of his officials stating that “the passage of tribes of the Shasu (or Beduins) from the land of Edom had been effected through the fortress of Khetam, which is situated in Succoth (Thuku), to the lakes of the city of Pithom, which are in the land of Succoth, in order that they might feed themselves and their herds on the possessions of the Pharaoh.” The lakes of Pithom must be those of Bâlah and Timsah, on which Ismailia now stands, not far from Tel el-Maskhûta, and Khetam is the Etham of Scripture. It is possible that Timsah, “the lake of crocodiles,” is the yâm sûph, or “sea of papyrus reeds,” of Scripture, which the translators of the Septuagint erroneously identified with the Red Sea.
Among the incidents connected with the deliverance of the Israelites are two which especially deserve notice. When God appointed Moses to his mission of leading his enslaved brethren out of Egypt, He at the same time revealed Himself by the name of “Jehovah,” the special name by which He was henceforth to be known to the Children of Israel. It is unfortunate that [pg 064] this sacred name has descended to the readers of the Authorised Version of the Old Testament in a corrupt and barbarous form. The Hebrew alphabet was designed to express consonants only, not vowels; these were supplied by the reader from his knowledge of the language and its pronunciation. As long as Hebrew was still spoken, there was little difficulty in doing this; but the case was changed when it ceased to be a living language. A traditional pronunciation of the sacred records was preserved in the synagogues; but it necessarily differed in many respects from the pronunciation which had actually been once in use, and was itself in danger of being forgotten or altered. To avoid such a danger, therefore, the so-called Masoretes, or Jewish scribes, in the sixth century after the Christian era, invented a system of symbols which should represent the pronunciation of the Hebrew of the Old Testament as read, or rather chanted, at the time in the great synagogue of Tiberias in Palestine.5 It is in accordance with this Masoretic mode of pronunciation that Hebrew is now taught. But there was one word which the Masoretes of Tiberias either could not or would not pronounce. This was the national name of the God of Israel. Though used so freely in the Old Testament, it had come to be regarded with superstitious reverence before the time when the Greek translation of the Septuagint was made, and in this translation, accordingly, the word Kyrios, “Lord,” is substituted for it wherever it occurs. The New Testament writers naturally [pg 065] followed the custom of the Septuagint and of their age, and so also did the Masoretes of Tiberias. Wherever the holy name was met with, they read in place of it Adônai, “Lord,” and hence, when supplying vowel-symbols to the text of the Old Testament they wrote the vowels of Adônai under the four consonants, Y H V H, which composed it. This simply meant that Adônai was to be read wherever the sacred name was found. In ignorance of this fact, however, the scholars who first revived the study of Hebrew in modern Europe imagined that the vowels of Adônai (ă or ĕ, o, and â) were intended to be read along with the consonants below which they stood. The result was the hybrid monster Yĕhovâh. In passing into England the word became even more deformed. In German the sound of y is denoted by the symbol j, and the German symbol, but with the utterly different English pronunciation attached to it, found its way into the English translations of the Old Testament Scriptures.
There are two opinions as to what was the actual pronunciation of the sacred name while Hebrew was still a spoken language. On the one hand, we may gather from the contemporary Assyrian monuments that it was pronounced Yahu. Wherever an Israelitish name is met with in the cuneiform inscriptions which, like Jehu or Hezekiah, is compounded with the divine title, the latter appears as Yahu, Jehu being Yahua, and Hezekiah Khazaki-yahu. Even according to the Masoretes it must be read Yeho (that is, Yăhu) when it forms part of a proper name. The early Gnostics, moreover, when they transcribed it in Greek characters, wrote Iaô, that is, Yahô. On the other hand, the four consonants, Y H V H, can hardly have been pronounced otherwise [pg 066] than as Yahveh, and this pronunciation is supported by the two Greek writers Theodoret and Epiphanios, who say that the word was sounded Yavé. The form Yahveh, however, is incompatible with the form Yahu (Yeho), which appears in proper names; and it has been maintained that it is due to one of those plays on words, of which there are so many examples in the Old Testament. The spelling with a final h was adopted, it has been supposed, in order to remind the reader of the Hebrew verb which signifies “to be,” and to which there seems to be a distinct allusion in Exod. iii. 14.6
We must now turn to a second incident which is specially connected with the deliverance out of Egypt. This is the rite of circumcision, which was observed in so solemn a manner at the moment when the Israelites had at last crossed the Jordan and were preparing to attack the Canaanites. It was a rite which had been practised by the Egyptians from the most remote times, and had been communicated by them, according to Herodotus, to the Ethiopians. Josephus tells us that the rite was also practised by the Arabs, to whom Herodotus adds the Syrians of Phœnicia, as well as the Kolkhians and the Hittites of Kappadokia. A similar rite is found at the present day among many barbarous tribes in different parts of the world, and distinguishes not only the Jew but the Mohammedan as well.
The name of Moses seems to be of Egyptian derivation. It would correspond to the Egyptian mes or mesu, “son,” which is borne by more than one Egyptian prince [pg 067] at the period of the Exodus, and forms part of the name of Ramses, or Ra-mesu, “the son of the sun.” The Hebrew spelling of the word with a final h is designed to recall the Hebrew mashâh, “to draw out” or “deliver,” just as the spelling of the Septuagint, Môysês, was influenced by the etymology given by Josephus, which made it a compound of the Egyptian mô, “water,” and ysês, “to rescue from a flood.” Such plays upon words are common in ancient literature, and are still in favour in the East, and we must be on our guard against ascribing to them a scientific value which they do not possess. The name mesu, “son,” would be an appropriate one for a child who had been adopted by an Egyptian lady, and who was brought up at the court of the Pharaoh in “all the wisdom of the Egyptians.”
This chapter would be incomplete unless something were said of the illustrations of the law and ritual of the Israelites afforded by the monuments of the nations around them. These illustrations are to be found among the Phœnicians and the Assyrians. Among both we find traces of sacrifices and institutions which offer many parallels to the ordinances of the Mosaic Law. Besides the Sabbaths already spoken of, the Babylonians and Assyrians had various festivals and fasts, on which certain rites had to be performed and certain sacrifices offered; they knew of “peace-offerings” and of “heave-offerings,” of the dedication of the first-born, and of sacrifices for sin. The gods were carried in procession in “ships,” which, as we learn from the sculptures, resembled in form the Hebrew ark, and were borne on men's shoulders by means of staves. In front of the image of the god stood a table, on which showbread was laid; and a distinction was drawn between the meal-offering and [pg 068] the animal sacrifice. Certain unclean kinds of food were forbidden, including the flesh of swine and “creeping things;” and in the outer courts of the temples were large lavers called “seas,” like the “sea” of Solomon's temple, in which the worshippers were required to cleanse themselves. Many of these regulations and rites came down from the Accadian period.
As a specimen of the rites which had to be performed, we may quote a portion of a tablet which prescribes the duties of the priest in the great temple of Bel at Babylon. The tablet begins: “In the month Nisan, on the 2nd day, two hours after nightfall, the priest must come and take of the waters of the river, must enter into the presence of Bel, and change his dress, must put on a ... robe in the presence of Bel, and say this prayer: ‘O my lord, who in his strength has no equal, O my lord, blessed sovereign, lord of the world, speeding the peace of the great gods, the lord who in his might destroys the strong, lord of kings, light of mankind, establisher of trust, O Bel, thy sceptre is Babylon, thy crown is Borsippa, the wide heaven is the dwelling-place of thy liver.... O lord of the world, light of the spirits of heaven, utterer of blessings, who is there whose mouth murmurs not of thy righteousness, or speaks not of thy glory, and celebrates not thy dominion? O lord of the world, who dwellest in the temple of the sun, reject not the hands that are raised to thee, be merciful to thy city Babylon, to Beth-Saggil thy temple, incline thy face, grant the prayers of thy people the sons of Babylon.’ ”
Our knowledge of the Phœnician ritual is largely derived from a sacrificial tariff discovered at Marseilles in 1845. The stone on which it is engraved is unfortunately [pg 069] not perfect, but what is left of it runs thus: “In the temple of Baal (the following tariff of offerings shall be observed), which was prescribed (in the time of) the judge ... Baal, the son of Bod-Tanit, the son of Bod-(Ashmun, and in the time of Halzi-Baal), the judge, the son of Bod-Ashmun, the son of Halzi-Baal and (their comrades). For an ox as a full-offering, whether it be a prayer-offering or a full thank-offering, the priests (shall receive) ten shekels of silver for each beast, and if it be a full-offering the priests shall receive besides this (300 shekels' weight of flesh). And for a prayer-offering they shall receive (besides) the small joints(?) and the roast(?), but the skin and the haunches and the feet and the rest of the flesh shall belong to the offerer. For a bullock which has horns, but is not yet broken in and made to serve, or for a stag, as a full-offering, whether it be a prayer-offering or a full thank-offering, the priests (shall receive) five shekels of silver (for each beast, and if it be a full-offering) they shall receive besides this 150 shekels' weight of flesh; and for a prayer-offering the small joints(?) and the roast(?); but the skin and the haunches and the feet (and the rest of the flesh shall belong to the offerer). For a sheep or a goat as a full-offering, whether it be a prayer-offering or a full thank-offering, the priests (shall receive) one shekel of silver and two sar for each beast; and in the case of a prayer-offering they shall have (besides this the small joints (?)) and the roast(?); but the skin and the haunches and the feet and the rest of the flesh shall belong to the offerer. For a lamb or a kid or a fawn as a full-offering, whether it be a prayer-offering or a full thank-offering, the priests (shall receive) three-fourths of a shekel of silver and (two) zar (for each beast; and in the case of a prayer-offering [pg 070] they shall have) besides this the small joints(?) and the roast(?); but the skin and the haunches and the feet and the rest of the flesh shall belong to (the offerer). For a bird, whether wild or tame, as a full-offering, whether it be shetseph or khazuth, the priests (shall receive) three-fourths of a shekel of silver and two zar for each bird; and (so much flesh besides). For a bird, or for the offering of the first-born of an animal, or for a meal-offering or for an offering with oil, the priests (shall receive) ten pieces of gold for each.... In the case of every prayer-offering which is offered to the gods, the priests shall receive the small joints(?), and the roast(?) and the prayer-offering ... for a cake and for milk and for fat, and for every offering which is offered without blood.... For every offering which is brought by a poor man in cattle or birds, the priests shall receive nothing ... anything leprous or scabby or lean is forbidden, and no one as regards that which he offers (shall taste of) the blood of the dead. The tariff for each offering shall be according to that which is prescribed in this publication.... As for every offering which is not prescribed in this table, and is not made according to the regulations which (have been published in the time of ... Baal, the son of Bod-Tanit), and of Bod-Ashmun, the son of Halzi-Baal, and of their comrades, every priest who accepts the offering which is not included in that which is prescribed in this table, shall be punished.... As for the property of the offerer who does not discharge (his debt) for his offering (he also shall be punished).”
The words that are wanting in the document have been partially supplied from the fragments of another copy of [pg 071] the tariff found among the ruins of Carthage. It will be observed that there is no mention in it of the sacrifice of children, which, as we know, once played a large part in the ritual of the Phœnicians. This is explained by the fact that the tariff belongs to that later age, when Greek and Roman influence had prevailed upon the Phœnician colonists in the west to give up the horrible practice. The place of the child is taken by the 'ayyâl or stag.
The tariff of Marseilles and Carthage has lately been supplemented by some Phœnician texts found in the island of Cyprus, and written in black and red ink upon small pieces of marble. One of these has both faces inscribed, and a translation of its contents is worth giving. On the first face we read: “Expenses of the month Ethanim: On the new-moon of the month Ethanim, for the gods of the new-moon two.... For the architects who have built the temples of Ashtoreth, for each house.... For the guardians of the sanctuary and the overseers of the temple of Resheph 20.... For the men (who tend) the cattle in the presence of the Holy Queen on this day.... For two boys two ... For two sacrifices ... For two bakers who have baked the cakes for the (Holy) Queen.... For the barbers, for their work, two.... For the ten masons who have built the foundations and the temples of the Sun-god ... To Ebed-Ashmun, the principal scribe, who has been sent on this day, three.... For the dogs and their young....” On the other face we have: “On the new-moon of the month Peûlat: For the gods of the new-moon two.... For the masters of the days, incense and peace-offering.... For the images of the temple of the Sun-god and the other gods.... [pg 072] For Ebed-Bast of Carthage.... For the man who has bought the withered plants(?).... For the shepherds of the country two.... For the 'almâth and the 22 'alâmôth, with a sacrifice.... For the dogs and their young three....”
Here we evidently have an account of the payments disbursed by the priests of a temple on particular days. Resheph was a title of the Sun-god, and M. Clermont-Ganneau has pointed out that his name still survives in that of Arsûf, a ruined town to the north of Jaffa. The cakes baked for Ashtoreth, “the Holy Queen,” are the same as those which the Jewish men and women who had fled to Egypt after the destruction of Jerusalem and the murder of Gedaliah declared to Jeremiah that they would still continue to offer to “the queen of heaven” (Jer. xliv. 19). What is meant by the “dogs” is best explained by Deuteronomy xxiii. 18, while the barbers mentioned in the text were required to shave the priests. Mention is also made of them in the Assyrian inscriptions (see Lev. xix. 27, xxi. 5). The 'almâth, or “maiden”—a word which has acquired a special significance in the Christian Church in consequence of its having been used in Isaiah's prophecy of “the Virgin” (Isa. vii. 14)—here seems to mean the chief singer attached to the temple of Ashtoreth. The 'alâmôth are described in the sixty-eighth Psalm (ver. 25) as similarly employed in the worship of Israel. As for the “Masters of the Days,” they are the gods who, as among the Assyrians, were believed to preside over the months of the year. The month Ethanim, to which the first account refers, is mentioned, it will be remembered, in 1 Kings viii. 2, as being the month in which the feast of the dedication of Solomon's temple was held. That [pg 073] temple had been built with the help of Phœnician workmen, and it was therefore natural that the names of the Phœnician months should have become known to the Israelites in connection with it. The Israelites themselves were still contented to speak of the months of the year according to the order in which they came. It was not until after the return from the Babylonish exile that special names for the months were definitely adopted, and that the Jews henceforth called them by the Assyrian names they had heard in Babylonia.
Modern discovery has as yet thrown little contemporary light on the period of Israelitish history which extends from the conquest of Canaan to the time when the kingdom of David was rent into the two monarchies of Israel and Judah. The buried ruins of Phœnicia have not yet been explored, and we have still to depend on the statements of classical writers for what we know, outside the Bible records, of Hiram the Tyrian king, the friend of David and Solomon. It is certain, however, that state archives already existed in the chief cities of Phœnicia, and a library was probably attached to the ancient temple of Baal, the Sun-god, at Tyre, which was restored by Hiram. It was from the Phœnicians that the Israelites, and the nations round about them, received their alphabet. This alphabet was of Egyptian origin. As far back as the monuments of Egypt carry us, we find the Egyptians using their hieroglyphics to express not only ideas and syllables, but also the letters of an alphabet. Even in the remote epoch of the second dynasty they already possessed an alphabet in which the twenty-one simple sounds of the language were represented by special hieroglyphic pictures. Such hieroglyphic [pg 075] pictures, however, were employed only on the public monuments; for books and letters and business transactions the Egyptians made use of a running hand, in which the original pictures had undergone great transformations. This running hand is termed “hieratic,” and it was from the hieratic forms of the Egyptian letters that the Phœnician letters were derived.
We have already seen that the coast of the Delta was so thickly peopled with Phœnician settlers as to have acquired the name of Keft-ur, or Caphtor, “greater Phœnicia;” and these settlers it must have been who first borrowed the alphabet of their Egyptian neighbours. For purposes of trade they must have needed some kind of writing, by means of which they could communicate with the natives of the country, and their business-like instincts led them to adopt only the alphabet used by the latter, and to discard all the cumbrous machinery of ideographs and syllabic characters by which it was accompanied. It was doubtless in the time of the Hyksos that the Egyptian alphabet became Phœnician. From the Delta it was handed on to the mother country of Phœnicia, and there the letters received new names, derived from objects to which they bore a resemblance and which began with the sounds they represented. These names, as well as the characters to which they belonged, have descended to ourselves, for the Phœnician alphabet passed first from the Phœnicians to the Greeks, then from the Greeks to the Romans, and finally from the Romans to the nations of modern Europe. The very word alphabet is a living memorial of the fact, since it is composed of alpha and beta, the Greek names of the two first letters, and these names are simply the Phœnician aleph, “an ox,” and beth, “a house.” Just as in our own [pg 076] nursery days it was imagined that we should remember our lessons better if we were taught that “A was an Archer who shot at a frog,” so the forms of the letters were impressed on the memory of the Phœnician boys by being likened to the head of an ox or the outline of a house.
But before the alphabet was communicated to Greece by the Phœnician traders, it had already been adopted by their Semitic kinsmen in Western Asia. Excavations in Palestine and the country east of the Jordan would doubtless bring to light inscriptions compiled in it much older than the oldest which we at present know. Only a few years ago the gap between the time when the Phœnicians first borrowed their new alphabet and the time to which the earliest texts written in it belonged was very great indeed. But during the last fifteen years two discoveries have been made which help to fill it up, and prove to us at the same time what may be found if we will only seek.
One of these discoveries is that of the famous Moabite Stone. In the summer of 1869, Dr. Klein, a German missionary, while travelling in what was once the land of Moab, discovered a most curious relic of antiquity among the ruins of Dhibân, the ancient Dibon. This relic was a stone of black basalt, rounded at the top, two feet broad and nearly four feet high. Across it ran an inscription of thirty-four lines in the letters of the Phœnician alphabet. Dr. Klein unfortunately did not realise the importance of the discovery he had made; he contented himself with copying a few words, and endeavouring to secure the monument for the Berlin Museum. Things always move slowly in the East, and it was not until a year later that the negociations for the purchase [pg 077] of the stone were completed between the Prussian Government on the one side and the Arabs and Turkish pashas on the other. At length, however, all was arranged, and it was agreed that the stone should be handed over to the Germans for the sum of £80. At this moment M. Clermont-Ganneau, a member of the French Consulate at Jerusalem, with lamentable indiscretion, sent men to take squeezes of the inscription, and offered no less than £375 for the stone itself. At once the cupidity of both Arabs and pashas was aroused; the Governor of Nablûs demanded the treasure for himself, while the Arabs, fearing it might be taken from them, put a fire under it, poured cold water over it, broke it in pieces, and distributed the fragments as charms among the different families of the tribe. Thanks to M. Clermont-Ganneau, most of these fragments have now been recovered, and the stone, once more put together, may be seen in the Museum of the Louvre at Paris. The fragments have been fitted into their proper places by the help of the imperfect squeezes taken before the monument was broken.
When the inscription came to be read, it turned out to be a record of Mesha, king of Moab, of whom we are told in 2 Kings iii. that after Ahab's death he “rebelled against the king of Israel,” and was vainly besieged in his capital Kirharaseth by the combined armies of Israel, Judah and Edom. Mesha describes the successful issue of his revolt, and the revenge he took upon the Israelites for their former oppression of his country. The translation of the inscription is as follows:—
“I, Mesha, am the son of Chemosh-Gad, king of Moab, the Dibonite. My father reigned over Moab thirty years, and I reigned after my father. And I [pg 078] erected this stone to Chemosh at Kirkha, a (stone of) salvation, for he saved me from all despoilers, and made me see my desire upon all my enemies, even upon Omri, king of Israel. Now they afflicted Moab many days, for Chemosh was angry with his land. His son succeeded him; and he also said, I will afflict Moab. In my days (Chemosh) said, (Let us go) and I will see my desire on him and his house, and I will destroy Israel with an everlasting destruction. Now Omri took the land of Medeba, and (the enemy) occupied it in (his days and in) the days of his son, forty years. And Chemosh (had mercy) on it in my days; and I fortified Baal-Meon, and made therein the tank, and I fortified Kiriathaim. For the men of Gad dwelt in the land of (Atar)oth from of old, and the king (of) Israel fortified for himself Ataroth, and I assaulted the wall and captured it, and killed all the warriors of the wall for the well-pleasing of Chemosh and Moab; and I removed from it all the spoil, and (offered) it before Chemosh in Kirjath; and I placed therein the men of Siran and the men of Mochrath. And Chemosh said to me, Go take Nebo against Israel. (And I) went in the night, and I fought against it from the break of dawn till noon, and I took it and slew in all seven thousand (men, but I did not kill) the women (and) maidens, for (I) devoted them to Ashtar-Chemosh; and I took from it the vessels of Yahveh, and offered them before Chemosh. And the king of Israel fortified Jahaz and occupied it, when he made war against me; and Chemosh drove him out before (me, and) I took from Moab two hundred men, all its poor, and placed them in Jahaz, and took it to annex it to Dibon. I built Kirkha, the wall of the forest, and the wall of the city, and I built the gates [pg 079] thereof, and I built the towers thereof, and I built the palace, and I made the prisons for the criminals within the walls. And there was no cistern in the wall at Kirkha, and I said to all the people, Make for yourselves, every man, a cistern in his house. And I dug the ditch for Kirkha by means of the (captive) men of Israel. I built Aroer, and I made the road across the Arnon. I built Beth-Bamoth, for it was destroyed; I built Bezer, for it was cut (down) by the armed men of Dibon, for all Dibon was now loyal; and I reigned from Bikran, which I added to my land, and I built (Beth-Gamul) and Beth-Diblathaim and Beth-Baal-Meon, and I placed there the poor (people) of the land. And as to Horonaim, (the men of Edom) dwelt therein (from of old). And Chemosh said to me, Go down, make war against Horonaim and take (it. And I assaulted it, and I took it, and) Chemosh (restored it) in my days. Wherefore I made ... year ... and I....”
The last line or two, describing the war against the Edomites, is unfortunately lost beyond recovery. The rest of the text, however, it will be seen, is pretty perfect, and is full of interest to Biblical students. The whole inscription reads like a chapter from one of the historical books of the Old Testament. Not only are the phrases the same, but the words and grammatical forms are, with one or two exceptions, all found in Scriptural Hebrew. We learn that the language of Moab differed less from that of the Israelites than does one English dialect from another. Perhaps the most interesting fact disclosed by the inscription is that Chemosh, the national god of the Moabites, had come to be regarded not only as the supreme deity, but even as almost the only object of their worship. Except in the passage which alludes to [pg 080] the dedication of women and maidens to Ashtar-Chemosh, Mesha speaks as a monotheist, and even here the female Ashtar or Ashtoreth is identified with the supreme male deity Chemosh. Like the Assyrian kings, moreover, who ascribed their victories and campaigns to the inspiration of the god Assur, Mesha ascribes his successes to the orders of Chemosh. He uses, in fact, the language of Scripture; as the Lord said to David, “Go and smite the Philistines” (1 Sam. xxiii. 2), so Chemosh is made to say to Mesha, “Go, take Nebo;” and as God promised to “drive out” the Canaanites before Israel, so Mesha declares that Chemosh drove out Israel before him from Jahaz. Mesha even sets up a stone of salvation to Chemosh, like Eben-ezer, “the stone of help,” set up by Samuel (1 Sam. vii. 12); and the statement that Chemosh had been “angry with his land,” but had made Mesha “see his desire upon all his enemies,” reminds us of the well-known passages in which the Psalmist declares that “God shall let me see my desire upon mine oppressors,” and the author of the Book of Judges recounts how that “the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel.”
The covenant name of the God of Israel itself occurs in the inscription, spelt in exactly the same way as in the Old Testament. Its occurrence is a proof, if any were needed, that the superstition which afterwards prevented the Jews from pronouncing it did not as yet exist. The name under which God was worshipped in Israel was familiar to the nations round about. Nay, more; we gather that even after the attempt of Jezebel to introduce the Baalim of Sidon into the northern kingdom, Yahveh was still regarded as the national god, and that the worship carried on at the high places, idolatrous and [pg 081] contrary as it was to the law, was nevertheless performed in His name. The high-place of Nebo, like so many of the other localities mentioned in the inscription, is also mentioned in the prophecy against Moab contained in Isa. xv. xvi. It is even possible that the words of the verse in the Book of Isaiah in which it is named have undergone transposition, and that the true reading is, “He is gone up to Dibon and to Beth-Bamoth to weep; Moab shall howl over Nebo and over Medeba.” The inscription informs us that Beth-Bamoth, “the house of the high-places,” was the name of a place near Dibon, the name of which appears in the last verse of Isaiah xv. under the form of Dimon, the letter b being changed by the prophet into m, in order to connect it with the word dâm, “blood.” Kirkha, “the wall of the forest,” the modern Kerak, is called Kir of Moab and Kir-haresh or Kir-hareseth by Isaiah, and Kir-heres by Jeremiah, which by a slight change of vocalisation would signify “the wall of the forest.” The form Kir-haraseth is also used in the Book of Kings.
The story told by the Stone, and the account of the war against Moab given in the Bible, supplement one another. Dr. Ginsburg has suggested that the deliverance of Moab from Israel was brought about during the reign of Ahaziah, the successor of Ahab, and that Joram, the successor of Ahaziah, was subsequently driven out of Jahaz, which lay on the southern side of the Arnon; but that after this the tide of fortune turned, Joram summoned his allies from Judah and Edom, ravaged Moab, and blockaded Mesha in his capital of Kirkha. Then came the sacrifice by Mesha of his eldest son on the wall of Kirkha—so that “there was great indignation against Israel,” and the allied forces retreated back “to their own land.”
[pg 082]The Moabite Stone shows us what were the forms of the Phœnician letters used on the eastern side of the Jordan in the time of Ahab. The forms employed in Israel and Judah on the western side could not have differed much; and we may therefore see in these venerable characters the precise mode of writing employed by the earlier prophets of the Old Testament. This knowledge is of great importance for the correction and restoration of corrupt passages, and more especially of proper names, the spelling of which has been deformed by copyists.
Just, however, as the writing of two persons at the present day must differ, so also the writing of two nations like the Moabites and Jews must have differed to some extent. Moreover, there must have been some distinction between the more cursive writing of a papyrus-roll and the carefully cut letters of a public monument like that of Mesha. Indeed, that such a distinction did exist we have proof in a passage (Isa. viii. 1) which has been mistranslated in the Authorised Version, but which ought to be rendered: “Take thee a great slab, and write upon it with the graving-tool of the people: Hasten spoil, hurry booty.” Here words which were afterwards to be made more emphatic by becoming the name of one of Isaiah's children, were written in a way that all could read, not in the running hand of a scroll, but in the large clear characters of a public document. What these characters exactly were, a recent discovery has enabled us to learn.
Hebrew inscriptions of an early date have long been sought for in vain. We knew of one or two inscribed fragments from the neighbourhood of the Pool of Siloam at Jerusalem, and of a few seals which might be [pg 083] referred to the period before the Babylonish Captivity; but, unfortunately, none of these could be assigned to a definite date, and even the conclusion that some of them were pre-exilic was after all little more than a guess. The seals are usually distinguished by the absence of any symbols or other devices, as well as by a horizontal line drawn across the middle, which divides the inscription into two halves. The proper names also which occur on them are, in the majority of cases, compounded with the sacred name Yahveh. Several of these seals have been found in Babylonia and Mesopotamia, and may therefore be regarded as memorials of the Jewish exile. But the legends they bear are always short, and consist of little else than proper names; and as their date was uncertain, it was impossible to draw any solid inferences from them as to the character of the writing employed in Judah or Israel before the age of Nebuchadnezzar.
It is quite otherwise now. An inscription of some length has been discovered in Jerusalem itself, which is certainly as old as the time of Isaiah, and may be older still. In the summer of 1880, one of the native pupils of Mr. Schick, a German architect long settled in Jerusalem, was playing with some other lads in the so-called Pool of Siloam, and while wading up a channel cut in the rock which leads into the Pool, slipped and fell into the water. On rising to the surface, he noticed what looked like letters on the rock which formed the southern wall of the channel. He told Mr. Schick of what he had seen; and the latter, on visiting the spot, found that an ancient inscription, concealed for the most part by the water, actually existed there.
[pg 084]The Pool is of comparatively modern construction, but it encloses the remains of a much older reservoir, which, like the modern one, was supplied with water through a tunnel excavated in the rock. This tunnel communicates with the so-called Spring of the Virgin, the only natural spring of water in or near Jerusalem. It rises below the walls of the city, on the western bank of the valley of the Kidron; and the tunnel through which its waters are conveyed is consequently cut through the ridge, that forms the southern part of the Temple Hill. The Pool of Siloam lies on the opposite side of this ridge, at the mouth of the valley called that of the Cheesemakers (Tyropϙn) in the time of Josephus, but which is now filled up with rubbish, and in large part built over. According to Lieutenant Conder's measurements, the length of the tunnel is 1,708 yards; it does not, however, run in a straight line, and towards the centre there are two culs de sac, of which the inscription now offers an explanation. At the entrance on the western or Siloam side its height is about sixteen feet; but the roof grows gradually lower, until in one place it is not quite two feet above the floor of the passage.
The inscription occupies the under part of an artificial tablet in the wall of rock, about nineteen feet from where the conduit opens out upon the Pool of Siloam, and on the right-hand side of one who enters it. After lowering the level of the water, Mr. Schick endeavoured to take a copy of it; but as not only the letters of the text, but every flaw in the rock were filled with a deposit of lime left by the water, all he could send to Europe was a collection of unmeaning scrawls. Besides the difficulty of distinguishing the letters, it was also necessary to sit in the mud and water, and to work by the dim light of [pg 087] a candle, as the place where the inscription is engraved is perfectly dark. All this rendered it impossible for anyone not acquainted with Phœnician palæography to make an accurate transcript. The first intelligible copy accordingly was made by Professor Sayce after several hours of careful study; but this too contained several doubtful characters, the real forms of which could only be determined by the removal of the calcareous matter with which they were coated. In March, 1881, six weeks after Sayce's visit, Dr. Guthe arrived in Jerusalem, and after making a more complete facsimile of the inscription than had previously been possible, removed the deposit of lime by means of an acid, and so revealed the original appearance of the tablet. Letters which had previously been concealed now became visible, and the exact shapes of them all could be observed. First a cast, and then squeezes of the text were taken; and the scholars of Europe had at last in their hands an exact copy of the old text.
The inscription consists of six lines, but several of the letters composing it have unfortunately been destroyed by the wearing away of the rock. The translation of it is as follows:—
1. “(Behold) the excavation! Now this is the history of the excavation. While the excavators were still lifting up the pick, each towards his neighbour, and while there were yet three cubits to (excavate, there was heard) the voice of one man calling to his neighbour, for there was an excess in the rock on the right hand (and on the left). And after that on the day of excavating the excavators had struck pick against pick, one against the other, the waters flowed from the spring to the Pool for a distance of 1,200 cubits. And (part) [pg 088] of a cubit was the height of the rock over the head of the excavators.”
The language of the inscription is the purest Biblical Hebrew. There is only one word in it—that rendered “excess”—which is new, and consequently of doubtful signification. We learn from it that the engineering skill of the day was by no means despicable. The conduit was excavated in the same fashion as the Mont Cénis tunnel of our own time, by beginning the work simultaneously at the two ends; and, in spite of its windings, the workmen almost succeeded in meeting in the middle. They approached, indeed, so nearly to one another, that the noise made by the one party in hewing the rock was heard by the other, and the small piece of rock which intervened between them was accordingly pierced. This accounts for the two culs de sac now found in the centre of the channel; they represent the extreme points reached by the two bands of excavators before they had discovered that, instead of meeting, they were passing by one another.
It is most unfortunate that the inscription contains no indication of date; but the forms of the letters used in it show that it cannot be very much later in age than the Moabite Stone. Indeed, some of the letters exhibit older forms than those of the Moabite Stone; but this may be explained by the supposition that the scribes of Jerusalem were more conservative, more disposed to retain old forms, than the scribes of king Mesha. The prevalent opinion of scholars is that the tunnel and consequently the inscription in it were executed in the reign of Hezekiah. According to the Chronicler (2 Chr. xxxii. 30), Hezekiah “stopped the upper watercourse of Gihon, and brought it straight down to the west side of [pg 089] the city of David,” and we read in 2 Kings xx. 20, that “he made a pool and a conduit, and brought water into the city.” The object of the laborious undertaking is very plain. The Virgin's Spring, the only natural source near Jerusalem, lay outside the walls, and in time of war might easily pass into the hands of the enemy. The Jewish kings, therefore, did their best to seal up this spring, which must be the Chronicler's “upper water-course of Gihon,” and to bring its waters by subterranean passages inside the city walls. Besides the tunnel which contains the inscription another tunnel has been discovered, which also communicates with the Virgin's Spring. But it is tempting to suppose that the most important of these—the tunnel which contains the inscription—must be the one which Hezekiah made.
The supposition, however, is rendered uncertain by a statement of Isaiah (viii. 6). While Ahaz, the father of Hezekiah, was still reigning, Isaiah uttered a prophecy in which he made allusion to “the waters of Shiloah that go softly.” Now this can hardly refer to anything else than the gently flowing stream which still runs through the tunnel of Siloam. In this case the conduit would have been in existence before the time of Hezekiah; and, since we know of no earlier period when a great engineering work of the kind could have been executed until we go back to the reign of Solomon, it is possible that the inscription may actually be of this ancient date. The inference is supported by the name Shiloah, which probably means “the tunnel,” and would have been given to the locality in consequence of the conduit which here pierced the rock. It was not likely that when David and Solomon were fortifying Jerusalem, and employing Phœnician architects upon great public buildings there, [pg 090] they would have allowed the city to depend wholly upon rain cisterns for its water supply. Since the inscription calls the Pool of Siloam simply “the Pool,” we may perhaps infer that no other reservoir of the kind was in existence at the time; and yet in the age of Isaiah, as we learn from Isa. xxii. 9, 11, there was not only “a lower pool,” in contradistinction to “an upper one,” but also “an old pool,” in contradistinction to a new one. As Dr. Guthe's excavations have laid bare the remains of four such pools in the neighbourhood of that of Siloam, there is no difficulty in finding places for all these reservoirs. But they could hardly have existed when the Pool of Siloam was still known as simply “the Pool,” nor could the name of Shiloah have well been given to the locality if another tunnel, observed by Sir Charles Warren on the eastern side of the Temple Hill, had been already excavated. This second tunnel starts, like the Siloam one, from the Virgin's Spring, and was designed to bring the water of the spring within the walls of the city. A shaft is cut for seventy feet into the hill, where it meets another perpendicular shaft, which rises for a height of fifty feet, and then meets a flight of steps, which lead into a broad passage, ending in another flight of steps and a vaulted chamber. Niches for lamps were found here at intervals, intended to light the persons who went to draw the water by means of a bucket. As lamps of the Roman period were discovered in the chamber, the tunnel must have been known and used up to the time of the capture of Jerusalem by Titus, and it is probably not older than the reign of Herod. In any case, the comparative excellence of its workmanship goes to show that it was made at a later date than the tunnel of Siloam.
[pg 091]Whatever doubts, however, may still hang over the date of the inscription, there can be no question that it has thrown most important light on the topography of Jerusalem in the period of the kings. It is now clear that the modern city occupies very little of the same ground as the ancient one; the latter stood entirely on the rising ground to the east of the Tyropϙn valley, the northern portion of which is at present occupied by the mosque of Omar, while the southern portion is uninhabited. The Tyropϙn valley itself must be the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, where the idolaters of Jerusalem burnt their children in the fire to Moloch. It must be in the southern cliff of this valley that the tombs of the kings are situated; the reason why they have never yet been found being that they are buried under the rubbish with which the valley is filled. Among the rubbish must be the remains of the city which was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, and whose ruins were flung into the gorge below. Between the higher part of the hill, now occupied by the mosque of Omar, and its lower uninhabited portion, Dr. Guthe has discovered traces of a valley which once ran into the valley of the Kidron at right angles to it, not far from the Virgin's Spring, and divided in old days the City of David from the rest of the town. Here, as well as in the now obliterated Valley of the Cheesemakers, there probably still lie the relics of the dynasty of David; but we shall only know the story they have to tell us when the spade of the excavator has come to continue the discoveries which the inscription of Siloam has begun.