Centuries before the Hebrews had left the Delta, a great empire bounded Nile-land on the Asiatic side, reflecting Egypt as the New World reflects the Old; in fact what Kemi was to the West, that Khita-land was to the East. The people were known to the Nile-dwellers as the Khita, Kheta, or Sheta of . The Hebrews from the days of Abraham to the age of Nehemiah and the Captivity, called them חתים, Khitím (our Hittites), or the ‘children of Heth.’[535] A hunting-inscription of Tiglath-Pileser (Tigulti-pal-Tsira) the First, b.c. 1120–1100, mentions the , Kha-at-te (Khatte);[536] he makes them dwell on ‘the upper Ocean of the Setting Sun.’ The Greeks translated from Hebrew Γῆ Χεττιεὶμ, and termed the race Χεττιὶμ and Χεττεινί. They are the ἑταῖροι Κήτειοι (Keteian or Cetian[537] auxiliaries) of Homer (‘Odys.’ xi. 520), whose leader Eurypylus, was slain with ‘the copper’ (Sword), and of whom many perished around him ‘on account of gifts to a woman.’
The cradle of this race, which took the lead of Western Asia during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries b.c., was the rolling prairie between the Orontes and the Euphrates. Joshua represents the Lord saying: ‘From the wilderness and this Lebanon even unto the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and unto the great sea toward the going down of the sun, shall be your coast’ (i. 4). In their palmy days they covered the interval between Egypt and Assyria, extending northwards to Phrygia and Cilicia; eastwards to Mesopotamia and westwards to the Mediterranean. They had walled and fortified cities as ‘Tunep or Tunipa (Daphne) in the land Naharayn’[538]—the latter here meaning Upper Palestine—Arathu (Aradus); Hamatu (Hamath, the high city); Khalbu or Khilibu (Aleppo);[539] Kazantana (Gozanitis); Nishiba (Nisipis) and Patena, which gave rise to ‘Padan-Aram’ and to ‘Batanæa.’ Their northern capital was Carchemish (the Gr. Hierapolis and the modern Yaráblus),[540] on the Euphrates, lately explored: some explain the word as ‘Kar’ (town of) ‘Chemish’ the Moab-god); others by ‘Khem’ or ‘Chemmis,’ the Egyptian Pan. It was captured by Sargon (b.c. 717), and became the head-quarters of an Assyrian Satrapy. Their sacred city was Kadesh (Κάδης, the holy), a synonym of El-Kuds, the Arabic name for Jerusalem; and even of the City of David it was said (Ezek. xvi. 3), ‘her father was an Amorite and her mother a Hittite.’ A Hittite tribe extended to the southernmost frontiers of Palestine (Gen. xxiii. passim); Hebron, one of their settlements, was founded, we are told, seven years before Zoan (‘a station for loading animals’), alias San or Tanis, the capital of the Egyptian ‘Shepherd-Kings.’ But the allusion must be to Sesostris-Ramses (II.), who also made San his capital under the name of ‘Pi- (city of) Ramessu,’ not to the original building by King Pepi of the Sixth Dynasty, who preceded Abraham by a thousand years.
The Hittites were governed by twelve ‘kings,’ probably satraps, under the Khita-sir or supreme chief. The ‘kings of the Hittites’ are mentioned as joining the Egyptians (2 Kings iii. 6).[541] Although the Hebrews were ordered utterly to destroy the race, their books prove that the Khita were often in intimate relation with the intruders, as in the case of Uriah the Hittite, one of the thirty of David’s body-guard. They worshipped Baal Sutech (Sutekh) the War-god, the ‘man of war,’ a counterpart of Amun, with his wife (Sakti or active energy), Astartha-Anata, and they also venerated Targatha, Derketo or Atargatis—two Syro-Greek words for one and the same person. The Egyptians at times rank the Khita as a ‘great people,’ and their habitat as a ‘great country’; holding them, in fact, almost as their peers: they also speak with reverence of their gods. Like their neighbours of Kemi, the ‘Hittites’ were a literary nation: the monuments of Nile-land mention a certain Kirab-sar (or sir), ‘writer of the books of the Chief of the Khita,’ and the determinative is papyrus or parchment. Hebron was also originally called Kirjath- (Kariyat) Sepher’—settlement of books.
The Khita were formidable opponents to Kemi between the seventeenth and the fourteenth centuries b.c. They fought doughtily against Thut-mes III. (circa b.c. 1600) during his Syrian campaign, when this ‘Alexander the Great of Egyptian history’ overthrew the chief of Kadesh, built a fortress on the Lebanon-range and mastered ‘Naharayn.’[542] Three centuries later, Kadesh was taken by Osirei or Seti I. (b.c. 1366). A few years afterwards took place the great campaign of his son,[543] Ramses II., or the Great, ‘who made Egypt anew,’ and who is famous as the Sesostris of Herodotus.[544] He was nearly defeated at the historic battle of ‘Kadesh, the wicked’;[545] but at last he succeeded in ‘throwing the foe one upon another, head over heels into the waters of the Orontes.’ Wilkinson (i. 400) shows a city with a double moat, crossed by two bridges: at the outer defence, formed by the river running into a lake, a phalanx of the Khita is drawn up as a reserve corps. ‘Wonderfully rich,’ says Brugsch, ‘is the great picture which represents the fight of the chariots: while the gigantic form of Ramses,[546] in the very midst of the hostile war-cars, performs deeds of derring-do, astonishing friend and foe, his gallant son, Prahiunamif, commander-in-chief of the charioteers, heads the attack upon those of the enemy. The Khita warriors are thrown into the river, and among them is the King of Khilibi (Aleppo), whom the warriors try to revive by holding his legs in the air with his head hanging down.’[547] This was the victory that gave birth to the first of Epic poems, the ‘Song of Pentaur the Scribe.’
The war ended by the Egyptian marrying the Hittite’s daughter, and making with his father-in-law a highly-civilised extradition treaty engraved upon a silver plate.[548] Another invasion, however, took place (circa b.c. 1200) under Ramses III. This ‘Rhampsinitus’ of the Greeks, a compound title, Ramessu-pa-Neter (Ramses the god), has left inscriptions concerning his ‘Campaign of Vengeance’ which cover one side of the temple of Medinah Habu:[549] amongst the conquered foes appears the ‘miserable King of Khita as a living prisoner.’
In later times the Khita became well known to Assyrian story.[550] Shalmaneser II. (b.c. 884–852) mentions the ‘Hittites and the city of Petra’ (Pethor); he takes ‘eighty-nine cities of the land of the Hamathites,’ and Rimonidri of Damascus. Tiglath-pileser II. (b.c. 745–727) speaks of the ‘city of Hamatti’ (Hamath) and the ‘Arumu’ (Aramæans).
According to Wilkinson (I. chap. v.) the Khita are represented on the monuments, the Memnonium, Medinah Habu, and elsewhere, as a shaven race with light red skins. Their dress is the long Assyrian robe falling to the ankles: the hair is crisply curled and at times covered with the tall cap of Phrygian type. A characteristic article, which appears in their hieroglyphs, is the pointed and upturned boot,[551] somewhat like the soleret of the sixteenth century. For armour they had square or oblong shields and quilted coats with bracelets defending their arms. Their weapons were bows, spears, and the short straight Sword, the modern flesh-chopper, then in use among their rival neighbours of the Nile Valley.
These gallant Canaanites[552] were proficients in the art of war. The army was distributed into foot and mounted men. The former consisted of a native nucleus called Tuhir (Táhir?),[553] the ‘chosen ones,’ and a host of mercenaries under Hir-pits or captains. Amongst these were the Shardana, Sardones, commonly translated Sardinians; Brugsch contends that they were Colchians, and derives from them ‘Sardonian linen.’ They were armed with horned helmets and round shields, spears and long Swords. The Kelau or slingers appear to have been a corps d’élite that waited upon the Prince.[554] The tactics included a regular phalanx, a herse or column of spearsmen like the Egyptian; and, although the cavalry rode horses their ‘strength was in chariots.’
‘Hithism’[555] became a study of late years, after the publication of ‘Hittite hieroglyphs,’ first discovered at Hamah, then at Aleppo, gave it an impulse. Two rock-inscriptions with bas-reliefs were discovered by the Rev. E. Davis (of Alexandria) at Ibriz (Áb-ríz), three hours south of Eregli, the old Cybistra on the great Lycaonian plain.[556] The finds at Carchemish added to the scanty store, and there are said to be Hittite seals in the British Museum. In Dr. Schliemann’s ‘Troy’ (p. 352), I find a Hittite hieroglyph on the stamped terra-cotta; the middle figure to the right is apparently the fist or fist-shaped glove, the Egyptian symbol of the hand. I shall presently notice the Lycian coin and a gold incision from Cyprus. Three legible characters—the bull’s head, the cap, and the bent arm—are traced to the so-called prehistoric statue of Niobe, Mount Sipylus. Evidently Hittite, too, is the bronze tablet in M. Peretié’s Museum, Bayrut.[557]
Modern discoveries enable us to characterise Hittite art as a blending of Egyptian with Assyrian, or rather Babylonian, both considerably modified. The former appears in the two sphinxes of Eyub, and in the winged solar disk, which was also borrowed by Mesopotamia from the Nile Valley. The bas-reliefs and gems of Assyria are reflected in the Hittite representations of the human figure; but the stature is shorter, the limbs are thicker and more rounded, and the muscles are not so prominent. At Boghaz-Keui some of the deities stand upon animals, a posture believed to be early Babylonian.[558] Here, too, the goddesses wear mural crowns, the decoration of the Ephesian Artemis, and Prof. Sayce thence infers its Hittite origin. At Eyub is found the double-headed eagle which is supposed to be the prototype of the old Siljukian and modern European monsters.[559]
The Hittite syllabary has systematic affinities with the Egyptian, as shown by the boot, the glove (or hand), the bent arm, the battle-axe, and the short straight chopper-knife. But before reading these ideographs it was necessary to determine the language, and here difficulties arose. Prof. Sayce denies that the Khita were Semites or spoke a Semitic tongue;[560] and in this he is followed by Mr. W. St. Chad Boscawen. But the former contended with scant success, that the Cypriote writing was ‘none other than the hieroglyphics of Hamath.’[561] Mr. Hyde Clarke believes that Khita, Etruscan, and Cypriote are kindred tongues; and detects their symbols upon the autonomous coins of Spain. Others have supported the Scythic (Turanian) origin of the Hittites: in our day this was inevitable. The Rev. Dunbar I. Heath bravely pronounces the language Semitic and made a gallant attempt at interpreting the syllabary.[562] But nothing final can be done under present conditions: we have not even collected all the characters.[563]
While the Khita were inlanders, the parallel shore-land of the Mediterranean—Syria and Palestine—was occupied by a host of Semitic and congener tribes. The former is a noble word and by no means the ‘invention of a Greek geographer’; Suríyyah denotes the rocky region from Sur or Tsur (זור = rock), a tower (turris), Tyre, the Zurai of Tiglath-pileser II., and the Tapau of the hieroglyphs. Thus ‘Syria’ and ‘Tyria’ would be synonyms. Herodotus (vii. 63) fathered a sad confusion when he wrote, ‘The people whom the Greeks call Syrians are called Assyrians by the barbarians.’ Assyria is from another root, אשר (Ashur), supposed to signify ‘happiness,’ and applied, as will be seen, to one of the gods. Syria is the hieroglyphic Khar, Kharu, or Khálu, the ‘hinder-land,’ that is, behind or north of Osiris (Egypt), and the Akarru or Akharu of the cuneiforms, both from the ‘Semitic’ root Akhr. ‘Palestine’ (Syria) is simply the ‘land of the Philistines,’ the Zahi of the hieroglyphs and mediæval Filistín; this powerful family, probably connected with the Hyksos, extended eastward from the confines of Egypt, and built Pelusium—‘Philistine-town,’ not town of πηλὸς or mud.
Beyond the Philistines began the Phœnicians—merchants and traders, travellers, explorers, and colonisers—the ‘Englishmen of antiquity.’ When Herodotus brings the Phœnicians from the ‘Erythrean Sea’ he is generally understood to mean the Persian Gulf, where the islands of Tyrus (or Tylos) and Aradus are supposed to be the mother-sites of the homonymous Mediterranean settlements. The popular derivation of ‘Phœnicia’ is from φοῖνιξ, which again may have been, more Græco, a mere translation of the Egyptian Kefeth, Kefthu, Keft, and Kefa, a palm-tree. But the question would be solved if it can be proved that the Phœnicians are the ‘Fenekh’[564] of the monuments and the Moslem El-Fenish. Mariette Pasha derived the term Punoi, Pœni, from Pun or Punt, by which he understood Somali-land; he is easily reconciled with Herodotus by assuming Punt to mean, as most understand it, the opposite Arabian coast.[565] Thus the ‘Port of Punt’ is the mythical Red Sea (primordial matter?), where red Typhon and the red dragon App or Apáp (Apophis) fought against the white god Horus—the prototype of Baldur the Beautiful.[566]
The Phœnicians left their mark upon the world. For many generations the Mediterranean was a ‘Phœnician lake,’ and they could boast of a general θαλασσοκρατία. This enabled their merchants and navigators to diffuse civilisation from Egypt and Assyria to the farthest West. They were the carriers of the world. Their ‘round ships’ or merchantmen (γαυλοί) and their long war-ships pushed far into the Northern and Southern Atlantic. The topographical lists of Thut-mes III. show a thickly inhabited country (Brugsch, i. 350–51), and, as Mariette Pasha says, a map of Canaan, composed of some hundred and fifteen hieroglyphic names, ‘is a synoptical table of the “Promised Land,” made two hundred and seventy years before the exodus of Moses.’ Among the settlements are Debekhu, now Baalbak, the Baal-city;[567] Tum-sakhu, the gate or shrine of Tum, the setting sun, now Damascus; Biarut (hod. Bayrut); Keriman or Mount Carmel and Iopoo, Joppa, or Jaffa. We find the Jordan in the Egyptian Iarutana, and Shabatuan is the Sabbaticus River of Pliny and Josephus.[568]
The chief cities of Phœnicia, Tyre and Sidon, were of unexampled splendour, depôts of the wealth of the East, as early as b.c. 1500. The arch-Homerid, who curiously enough never mentions Tyre, attributes all the finest works of art either to the Sidonians or to the gods. The eastern coast of the ‘Inner Sea’ was a centre of civilisation, a school of high culture which added beauty to necessary and useful technical products; and its arts and handicrafts became patterns to the world, even to Egypt, the mother. We have only a few inscriptions to remind us of its literature; but nothing can be more touching or more poetical than the epitaph of Eshmunazar, King of the Sidonians:[569]—‘Deprived of my fruit of life, my wise and valiant sons; widowed, the child of solitude, I lie in this tomb, in this grave, in the place which I built,’ &c. Phœnicia, too, gave not only her letters but her gods to Greece and Rome. Mulciber, for instance, was evidently Malik Kabir, the ‘Great King,’ father of the Cabiri, the patron-saints of Palm-land and the Pelasgi; this deity corresponded with the Egyptian Ptah, the Demiurgus-god denoted by the Scarabæus, a symbol as common in Phœnicia as in Nile-land. Melkarth,[570] again, whom Nonnius makes the Babylonian Sun, was the city-god; farther west he became Herakles, the Etruscan Erkle: the latter was an important commercial personage in Phœnicia, for his dog (according to the Greeks) discovered the murex. Melkarth is the Ourshol of Selden (‘De Diis Syriis’), who derives the word from ‘Ur,’ light.[571]
Another Syrian people, often occurring upon the Egyptian monuments, is the Shairetana, whom Layard supposes to be the Sharutinians near modern Antioch. They inhabited a country upon a river and a lake or sea. Their armour was a close-fitting cuirass of imbricated metal plates, worn over a short dress and girt at the waist; the helmet had side horns, and its upper dome was surmounted by a shaft-and-ball crest. Their weapons were javelins, long spears, and pointed Swords. The Tokkari, their neighbours, also carried for offence spears and large pointed knives or straight Swords. The Rebo had bows and long straight Swords with very sharp points. The same is the case with Ru-tennu or Rot-n-n, who often pass in review upon the monuments. They appear to have contained two divisions: the Ru-tennu-hir (upper Ru-tennu) were apparently the peoples of Cœlesyria, while the Ruthens or Luthens are mentioned in conjunction with Neniee (Nineveh), Shinar (Singar), Babel, and other places in Eastern Naharayn (Mesopotamia).
We have no knowledge of the Phœnician Sword except that supplied to us by the legend of the enigmatical Egypto-Argive hero, Perseus. According to Herodotus (ii. 91), his quadrangular fane was at Panopolis-Chemmis in the Theban nome: here his sandal, two cubits long, was shown to devotees; and the land prospered whenever he appeared, as is the case when it sees El-Khizr, the Green Prophet of El-Islam. The Greeks, whom we need not credit, made him the son of Jupiter by the ‘Acrisian maid’ (Danaë); and the Persians,[572] according to the Greeks, declared his son Perses to be the heros eponymus of their country, and the ancestor of their Hakhmanish or Achæmenian kings. His chief exploits were two. At Spanish Tartessus or in Libya (Herod. ii. 91) he slew, with the aid of a ‘magic mirror’ given to him by Neith-Athene, the gorgon Medusa, that old Typhonian head, from whose neck sprang Pegasus and Chrysaor.[573] At Phœnician Joppa (Jaffa)[574] he slaughtered the sea-monster (κῆτος) and saved ‘Andromeda,’ who is suspiciously like ‘Anat.’
In both these feats Perseus used a celestial weapon, the Harpé of Cronos, which Zeus had wielded in his duel with Typhon. The giant or bad-god had torn it from the grip of the good-god, whom he presently imprisoned in a cave; and it was not recovered till the captive was liberated by Thut-Hermes. The Greeks call this Sword Ἅρπη (Harpé),[575] and the name is evidently the Phœnician Hereba and the Hebrew Chereb; whilst its description, δρέπανον ὀξὺ (falx acuta, sharp sickle), identifies it with the Khopsh-blade of Egypt. Perseus performed his two exploits as Hercules slew the Lernæan hydra; and Mercury cut off the head of Argus (falcato ense), using the harpen Cyllenida.[576]
This legend has greatly ‘exercised’ commentators. The hero is connected with Io, Belus, and Ægyptus; while he is evidently related to the Cypriot Perseuth and the Phœnician Reseph[577] (flame or thunderbolt). The original fight is the eternal warfare of good, light, warmth, joy, with their contraries. It begins with Osiris-Typhon; it proceeds to Assyria, where Bel the Sun-god attacks the Tiamat or marine monster with the Sapara-Sword or Khopsh. In Persia it becomes Hormuzd (Ahura-mazda) and Ahriman (Angra-manus): in Jewry it is an affair between Bel and the Dragon; in Greece between Apollo and Python. The duello is continued by St. Patrick,[578] who banished for ever snakes from Ireland; and it makes its final appearance as ‘Saint George and the Dragon.’ This expiring effort of Egyptian mythology is held apocryphal by the Roman Catholic Church, and no wonder. Dragons do not, and never did, exist, except in memory as prehistoric monsters; moreover, the traveller in Syria is shown three several tombs of ‘Már Jiryús’ the Cappadocian, a saint who has spread himself from Diospolis-Lydda throughout the world. Under Justinian, the Theseum of Athens was dedicated to ‘Saint George of Cappadocia,’ and in Cyprus he had as many temples as Venus. The Saxon teacher thus invoked him:
He entered the English calendar when Henry II. married Eleanor, daughter of William of Aquitaine, the Crusader who chose the ‘flos Sanctorum’ for his patron saint. He is still godfather of the Garter, established by Edward III. in 1350; and the most feudal of existing orders wears ‘the George’ on a gold medallion, and celebrates its festival at Windsor on April 23.
One step in the Saint’s progress has been traced by M. Ch. Clermont-Ganneau,[579] an Orientalist whose archæological acumen is unsurpassed even by his industry. A bas-relief group in the Louvre shows the hawk-headed Horus, mounted and in Roman uniform, piercing with his peculiar spear (an hamatum, or barb-head), the neck of the crocodile Typhon, Set, Dagon,[580] Python—the Devil. This strongly suggests that Horus and Perseus, Saint Patrick and Saint George, are one and the same person.
The Hereba-blade has not yet been found in Phœnicia, but Wilkinson argues (II. ch. vii.) that the beautiful Swords and daggers, buried with the Ancient Britons and clearly not of Greek or Roman type, are Phœnician work. Carthaginian blades, however, dug up at Cannæ are now in the British Museum.[581] That the nations were congeners we see by the Pœnulus of Plautus, and by such names as Dido (another form of David) and Elissa (El-Isá, the royal woman); by Sichæus, who derives from the same root as Zacchæus; by Hannibal and Hasdrubal (containing the root Ba’al), and by the ‘Suffetes’—magistrates who are the Hebrew Shophetim or Judges.[582] The mercenary armies of Carthage, whose conquests are first alluded to by Herodotus (vii. 165), used Swords of bronze, copper, and tin: Meyrick (i. 7) also mentions brass; and the highly imaginative General Vallancey compares it with Dowris metal or ‘Irish brass.’ Dr. Schliemann (‘Mycenæ,’ p. 76) picked up, at ‘Motyë in Sicily,’ Carthaginian piles (arrow-heads) of bronze, pyramidal and without barbs (γλωχῖνες or hami); he found the same style at Mycenæ (p. 123).
The Swords of the Lycians probably resembled the Egyptian Khopsh; and the same was the case with the Cilician falchion. The latter peoples were also armed with the σάρισσα (Sarissa); the lance or spear, sixteen to twenty feet long, afterwards used by the people of Epirus and the Macedonian phalanx. It is opposed to the Larissa, the lance of the European Middle Ages, and to the Narissa affected by the Norrenses.
The most remarkable point concerning the Sword amongst the ancient Hebrews is our practical ignorance of its shape and size. Although shekels and similar remains have been discovered in fair quantities, that ‘iron race in iron clad,’ the Jews of old, has not left us a single specimen of arms or armour. This is the more curious, as we are expressly told that the blade was buried with its wielder.[583] And although we are assured (Gen. iv. 22) that Tubal-Cain, son of Lamech and Zillah, was the first metal-smith, there is no direct mention of iron arms amongst the Jews till after the Exodus. Gesenius proposes to make Tubal-Cain a hybrid word, ‘scoriarum faber,’ from the Persian ‘Tupal’ (iron-slag or scoriæ), and ‘Kani’ (faber, a blacksmith). He has been identified with Ptah, Bil-Kan (Assyria), Vulcan, and Mulciber; and only ignorance of Hinduism prevented mediæval commentators discovering him under the alias of Vishvamitra, the artificer of the Hindú gods. Maestro Vizani (a.d. 1588), a famous master of fence, attributes the invention of the Sword to Tubal-Cain; we should now place this worthy in the later bronze and early iron age. Unjust claims to discovery are made by all ancient peoples; and here it would be hardly fair to adduce Bochart’s ‘Judæi semper mendaces; in hoc argumento potissimum mentiuntur liberalissime.’
It is, however, amply evident that the Phœnicians and the despised Canaanites were highly-cultivated peoples, whereas the Jews were not. The latter are never alluded to in Egyptian hieroglyphs.[584] Even after they had established their principality upon the bleak and barren uplands of Judæa, they were dependent for their art upon their neighbours. Although gold was so abundant in the days of David that he could collect about one thousand million pounds (one hundred thousand talents of gold and one million of silver) for building the Temple, yet Solomon, the Wise King, was obliged to seek stone-cutters and even carpenters among the Σίδονες πολυδαίδαλοι. Judæa had neither science nor art; architecture, sculpture, paintings nor mosaics; comfort nor cookery. The Great Temple that succeeded the Tabernacle of Moses was mainly the work of Hiram of Tyre, the Siromus of Herodotus (v. 104), the Hiromus of Dius, Menander and Josephus (‘Apion,’ i. 17, &c.), and probably a dynastic name, as ‘Haram’ the Sacred.
Another learned master of arms[585] declares that the first weapon mentioned in Hebrew Holy Writ is the flammeus gladius wielded by the Cherubim (Gen. iii. 24), the ‘Chereb’ which the Septuagint renders Ῥομφαία.[586] On the Assyrian monuments the Kerubi (‘cherub,’ which derives, like the Arabic ‘Karrúb,’ from ‘Karb’ = propinquity) denotes the colossal figures symbolising the Powers of Good, and guarding the palace-gates. As they prevented the admission of Evil, they found their way to the entrance of the Garden of Eden, whence they warned off sinners and intruders. The ‘flaming Sword,’ which ‘turned every way to keep the way of the tree of life,’ was, according to some, the two-pronged blade, the Greek ‘chelidonian,’ which served as a talisman. Tiglath Pileser I. made one of these forked Swords of copper, inscribed it with his victories, and placed it as a trophy in one of his castles. But the Genesitic Sword is probably the weapon-symbol of Merodach, the Babylonian god and planet Jupiter. This revolving disc represented, like the Aryan ‘Vajra,’ the lightning or ‘thunderbolt’ with which our classics armed Zeus-Jovi;[587] and a highly poetical description of it is given in an old Akkadian hymn. Here it is called among other names littu (or litu), which is, letter for letter, the same as the first of the Hebrew words translated ‘flaming Sword’ (lahat ha-Chereb): it may also signify the ‘Burning of Desolation.’ M. F. Lenormant[588] suggests that the true meaning is ‘magical prodigy.’ But it is safer to stand by the disc-like Sword, which corresponds with the wheels of Ezekiel’s vision (chap. x. 9, 10). In the Chaldæan battle of Bel and the Dragon we again find the great flaming Sword, turning all round the circle when wielded by the deity against the ‘Drake.’ So the Egyptians had long before depicted the solar god with a glory of solar rays, a most appropriate symbol; and his enemy, Apophis , the serpent of Genesis, whom he destroys, is a monstrous reptile bristling with a dorsal line of four Sword-blades, like flesh-knives, typifying destruction.
The Hebrews borrowed their metallurgy, like all their early science, from Egypt. M. de Goguet remarked that they were not destitute of technological skill if they could calcine the golden calf and reduce the metal (probably by using natron) to a powder which could be drunk in water—aurum potabile.
The Hebrews called the Sword ‘Chereb’ (חרב, pl. Chereboth), a word that occurs some two hundred and fifty times in the ‘Old Testament.’ Its root, like the Arabic ‘khrb,’ means to waste, to be wasted; and the noun denotes any wasting matter.[589] Mostly it means a Sword (Gen. xvii. 40; xxxiv. 25, &c. &c.); in other places it is a knife (Josh. v. 2, 3). So we find in Ezekiel (v. 1), ‘Take thee a sharp knife [Chereb]; take thee a barber’s razor’: elsewhere it becomes a chisel (Exod. xx. 25); an axe or pick (Jer. xxxiv. 4; Ez. v. 1, and xxvi. 9), and, finally, violent heat (Job xxx. 30). The Arabic ‘Harbah’ signifies a dart.
We gather from the Hebrew writings that the Sword was originally of copper: hence the allusion to its brightness and its glittering: this would be followed by bronze, and lastly by iron, ground upon the whetstone (Deut. xxxii. 41). It was not of flint; the ‘sharp knives’ alluded to in Joshua (v. 2), were mere silex-flakes like the Egyptian. The Sword was used by foot-soldiers and horsemen, the latter adding to the ‘light Sword’ a ‘glittering spear’ (Nahum iii. 3). The ‘Chereb’ was not a large or heavy weapon, and we may safely assume that its forms were those of the Egyptian hieroglyphs. The weight of Goliath’s Sword is unfortunately not given (1 Sam. xvii. 45), like that of his spear and his armour; nor are we told anything about the blade which David refused because he had not proved it (ibid. 39). But the ease with which the son of Jesse drew out of the sheath thereof and used the Philistine’s ‘Chereb,’ suggests a normal size and weight (ibid. 51 and xxi. 9). It was much admired, for the victor said, ‘There is none like that’ (1 Sam. xxi. 9). From the same chapter and verse we learn that the blade was ‘wrapped up in a cloth,’ still an Eastern practice, ‘behind the ephod’ or priest’s robe.[590] And the fact of a man falling upon his Sword (1 Sam. xxxi. 4, 5) shows that the blade was stiff, short, and straight, like the Egyptian leaf-blade. Ehud the Benjamite, when about to murder Eglon, King of Moab (Jud. iii. 16), ‘made a two-edged Sword-dagger of a cubit length’ (or eighteen inches), apparently without a sheath. The frequent mention of the double-edged Sword (or straight cut-and-thrust?) suggests that there were also single-edged blades, back-Swords or, perhaps, falchions. It is hard to understand why Meyrick tells us that the Jews wore the Sword ‘suspended in front, in the Asiatic style.’ Ehud (ibid. 16, 21) girt his weapon under his raiment upon his right thigh, and drew it with his left hand. Again, we read, ‘Gird thy sword upon thy thigh’ (Ps. xlv. 3); and as Joab proceeded to assassinate Amasa (2 Sam. xx. 8), the ‘garment that he had put on was girded unto him, and upon it a girdle with a sword fastened upon his loins in the sheath thereof; and as he went forth it fell out.’ The allusions to the oppressing Sword (Jer. xlvi. 16; l. 25) recall the Assyrian emblem of the Sword and the Dove, which are both figured in one image. Perhaps we must so understand the Egyptian Ritual of the Dead: ‘I came forth as his child from his Sword.’ Apparently the Chereb was worn, as by the civilised Greeks and Romans, only on emergencies and not, like the chivalry of Europe, habitually in peaceful towns. The Cultellarii or Sicarii, whom Josephus and Tacitus[591] mention, were mere assassins, like the French Coustilliers and the English Coustrils or Custrils.
That the Hebrews were not first-rate Sword-cutlers, we may infer from the history of Judas the Maccabee.[592] A vision of Jeremiah the Prophet, preceding the victory over Nicanor, had promised him ‘a Sword of God, a holy Sword,’ not the short Machæra but the large Rhomphæa (2 Mac. xv. 15). After his war with the Samaritans and the Gentiles of Palestine, ‘Judas took the Sword of Apollonius (the Syrian general) and fought with it all his life’ (2 Mac. iii. 12).
And yet how general was the use of the Sword in Jewry we gather from the fact that it assisted in taking the Census: so David, by one account (2 Sam. xxiv. 9) mustered one million three hundred thousand ‘valiant men that drew the Sword.’[593] The expression ‘girding on the Sword’ (1 Sam. xxv. 13) denoted adults able to serve as soldiers, and also noted the beginning of a campaign (Deut. i. 41). It has been stated that Saul, son of Kish, used the Sword with his left hand, by virtue of being of the tribe of Benjamin. Of the latter, however, we learn (Judg. xx. 16) that many were ambidexters, fighting and slinging with the left as well as with the right. Finally, to be ‘slain by the Sword’ was evidently as great a misfortune as the ‘straw-death’ among those muscular Christians, the Scandinavians. The curse of David upon Joab was that there might never be wanting in his house ‘one that hath an issue, or is a leper, or that leaneth on a staff, or that falleth on the Sword’ (a suicide). All this makes the fact the more singular that no Jewish Sword-blade has ever been found.
Of the weapons used by the tribes neighbouring the ancient Hebrews we know little. In the famous muster of Xerxes’ army,[594] the Assyrians, according to Herodotus (vii. 65), used hand-daggers (ἐγχειρίδια) resembling the Egyptian. The Arabs (vii. 69, 86), like the Indians, were mere savages armed with bows and arrows; and we may note that the former mounted only camels, the horse not having been naturalised amongst all the tribes in the days of the ‘Great King’ (b.c. 485–465). The Philistine[595] weapons are known to us only by the famous duello between David and Goliath of Gath (1 Sam. xvii.). The account is full of difficulties for the ‘reconciler’ of contradictory texts; for instance, David is Saul’s armour-bearer, and yet unknown at Court.[596] Nor is it easy to discover where Gath is. It is popularly identified with Kharbat (ruins of) Gat: this heap of ruins lies west of castled Bayt Jibrín, the ‘House of Giants’ (tyrants), the Arabic name corresponding with the Hebrew Bethogabra. The field of fight has been found in the Wady El-Samt (Elah of St. Jerome), west of Jerusalem. The people of this part of Palestine, probably descended from the Hyksos or Canaanites, are a fine tall race, bred to fray and foray by the neighbourhood of predatory Bedawin:[597] armed to the teeth, they are adepts in the use of the huge ‘nebút’ or quarterstaff.
The plain of Philistia, which once supported five princely cities, appears very barren viewed from the sea; but the interior shows well-watered valleys, and the succession of ruins proves that the country belonged to an energetic and industrious race. Gaza (‘Azzah), at the southern extremity, was a place of considerable importance, on account of its fine port and its trade with the adjacent Bedawin. It must not be confused with modern Ghazzah.[598]
Goliath, the ‘champion of the uncircumcised’ (Philistines), and possibly a type of the race, wore armour[599] of ‘brass’ (copper); unfortunately the materials of his Sword and sheath are not specified.