alio 4- 3 1924 096 046 408 THE HECKMAN BINDERY, INC. North Manchester, Indiana JUST RWT SLOT TITLE 1_J _^ HEBREW INSCRIPTIONS >' aMMNIVS UBRARV NEW &3S51 000 ACCOUNT Name GCKiD BOOKS ACCOUNT INTERNAL I D. ill PERIODICAL ,D CUSTOM d STANDARD Q ECONOMY S THESIS BOOK- D CUSTOM D MUSIC D ECONOMY I AUTH 1ST D BINDING COPY LEAF ATTACH OS ^su mr fSInCY "'""'- :y'^^"=^ AOEXTIONAL INSTRUCTIONS PIS BD PAPER PRODUCT TYPE SPECIAL PREP ACCOUNT LOT NO ACCOUNT ITEM COVER SIZE X VOL THIS TITLE TACR^ 498-K 20 i^ 1 Cornell University J Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924096046408 Hebrew Inscriptions HEBEEW INSCEIPTIONS, FBOM THE VALLEYS BETWEEN EGYPT MOUNT SINAI, IN THBIE OKIGINAL CHARACTEKS, WITH TRANSLATIONS AND AN ALPHABET. By SAMUEL SHAEPE, AOIUOB 0? "TBI UISTOBI OF Kim. WITH TWENTY PLA T E S. I Oh that my words were noT written I Oh that they were imprinted on [moant] Sephar I That with an iron pen and a leaden hammer They were chiselled into the rock for ever I .Job xii. 23, 2i. LONDON: JOHN RUSSELL SMITH, 36, SOHO SQUARE. 1875. PREFACE. In the year 1820 Mr, G. F. Grey brought home from Egypt a number of valuable MSS. on papyrus in the enchorial character, and also copies of about two hundred inscriptions from the neighbourhood of Mount Serbal, chie6y from Wady Mocatteb. These latter were published in the " Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature for 1832." Some few are in' Latin and Greek; but the larger number are in the unknown character, usually known by the name of the Sinaitic writing. These I am here endeavouring to explain. The two best known works on these Sinaitic inscriptions are that by Professor Beer of Leipsic, of which the title is given below, * and the Rev. Charles Forster's " Sinai Photographed." Professor Beer considers them as neither Hebrew nor Jewish, but written by Nabata;ans, the inhabitants of the neighbourhood, mostly in the fourth century of our era. He forms an alphabet founded on the obvious Hebrew letters T 3 ^ a y tt^, and with this alphabet he transcribes the inscriptions into Hebrew letters. But he makes very little attempt to translate them, and he thus oSera no proof that his assumed alphabet is right. Had his characters when used consistently brought out a meaning which we could accept as probable, his efforts would have been of some value. Mr. Forster proceeds differently. He supposes that theae inscriptions were cut by the Israelites under Jloscs, and that they * Inacriptiones Yeterea, Uteris ot lingua hncusque incognitis, ad Montem Sinai eervatoi. Auctore E. F. F. Beer. Lepsioj, 1840. "^9 IV PREFACE. record the miracle of the Rett Sea being divided to let the Israelites pass. He believes that he can read the Bible narrative in them by means of the Arabic language, into which he translates without transcribing. Professor E. H. Palmer of Cambridge has had the advantage of examining the living rocks, and he is of opinion, as stated in his "Desert of the Exodus, 1871," that the Sinaitic inscriptions are in an Aramsean or Semitic dialect akin to Arabic ; that while a few are Christian, a large portion are Pagan ; that they are the work of traders and carriers, are of little worth, and have nothing whatever to do with the children of Israel. He adds, however, the valuable testimony to that of former travellers, that inscriptions are abundant on the road from Wady Feiran to the top of Serbal, and apparently uninjured by the weather. Neither Professor Beer, nor Mr. Forster, nor Professor Palmer have satisfied the conditions required for us to accept their opinions as final. We cannot trust Professor Beer's transcripts without translations, nor Mr. Forster's translations without transcripts. Professor Palmer's work has neither transcripts nor translations. The decipherer should produce first an alphabet or table of characters, and then to some extent a language, and, lastly, a probable meaning to each sentence. These three conditions are, I believe, complied with to a reasonable extent in the following pages. In Plates 2 — 20 are given rather more than one hundred of Mr. Grey's inscriptions which arc to be deciphered. These are transcribed into the Hebrew letters by the help of the alphabet in Plate 1. They are then translated as Biblical Hebrew or Chaldee, and each is accompaincd with such remarks as the case requires. The conditions are complied with, as I say, to a reasonable extent only, because it will be seen that the alphabet is not so simple as to have only one character for each Hebrew letter; and the sense produced is sometimes doubtful. But these Haws in the proof are not greater than might be expected and allowed in the case of inscriptions possibly incorrectly copied, and written in the very smallest number of letters. The flaws would have been .1 PREFACE, fewer, and the proof would perhaps have appeared more complete, if those inscriptions only had been produced which can be most certainly read. In 1860, Dr. Lepsius of Berlin published a number of the Sinaitic inscriptions for the Prussian Goremraent in his "Denk- maeler aus ^Egypten und iEthiopen," Several of these are Greek ; of the others, some had been published by Mr. Grey, but some were new to us. But I have not been able conveniently to make use of Dr. Lepsius's work, and I have confined myself to Mr. Grey's inscriptions. Though the Greek inscriptions are not translations of the others, they gave me the first hint to their meaning. Several begin with the word /xvriaOti, let him be remembered. This naturally leads us to look for the same thought in the others ; and it was not difficult to take the first letters in the very first of our inscriptions for nan b, for a memorial. With this beginning the task is plain. If the inscriptions are in the Hebrew language, or in a dialect of Hebrew, it is by no means an indeterminate problem to find the meaning by putting such a force upon each of the unknown characters as shall make good sense, taking care that each character, wherever it is met with, bears the same force. This would be easy if all the inscriptions were of one age, and cut with the neatness which we find in the Greek and Roman inscriptions. But unfortunately this is not the case. Many are very carelessly cut— perhaps by unlettered persons, who did not give to a letter always the same form. Thus, though we cannot say that we have here several alphabets, yet we have more than one form for some of the letters and some letters so badly formed as to leave their force doubtful! In many of Mr. Grey's inscriptions the letters are so entangled together, that I have thought it better to leave their deciphering unattempted, and they are not included in these pages. This recovery of a piece of lost knowledge, of the power of reading an interesting page of history, will probably lead travellers to enlarge that page by bringing home copies of the other inscriptions on and near to Mount Serbal. To those who have never amused themselves with deciphering PKEfACE. writing in an unknown alphabet, an English example may be interesting and useful. The following is an advertisement in the Daily News of October 5th, 1871 :— VrC. pbcyet. ranpz. gb. Setaneo. Asnfs. Iqyfsj. be. m. -'-^ Jqnaa. ms. ng. Manpzqsngq. be. ap. gyaa. seo. bz. cbegq. Liygs. gb, cs. gqsis. Naa. zj. Nsaa. hs. pne. cssg. ebh. The problem to be solved is the same in this case as in the Sinaitic inscriptions, namely: — Having a quantity of writing in unknown characters, let it be granted' — 1st. That the language is known, or has been rightly guessed (in the one case English, in the other case Hebrew); 2nd. That the characters have been used consistently, and always have the same force throughout; and 3rd. That the writing contains sentences which were written in order to be understood. Required the translation of the writing, and the force to be given to each character. I add the answer, namely, the transcription of the above, and the alphabet. In this case the transcription and the translation arc tlio same. Ist hue. Am coming back to England. Leave II. Hives on b [oard] . 2nd line. Shall be at Blackheath on L. C. till end of month. 3rd line. Write to me there. All ks aclL Wc can meet now. For a b c d e f g k read PUEfACE. Til E A LPIIABET. I For J read s >f k II — m )> 1 II w — »» m II . b n II n II a V II o 11 d t P II ° w II q II h r p For read t n V w z y It will be seen that the answer is not wholly satisfactory. In the alphabet we have the letter w twice, which should not be. In the transcription we have "Allksaell," which should probably be "All is well." We have single letters to which a meaning must be given by conjecture, and a proper name which may or may not be right. The writer, or the printer, may have made mistakes. But we cannot be far wrong in the meaning of the sentence. It may be usefully compared to our Sinaitic inscriptions ; the difficulties arc neariy the same in each case. There is, how- ever, this difference. In the English we have only about one hundred letters; all doubt would be removed if we had a larger quantity. In the Hebrew on the other hand, where we have a sufficiently large quantity, we have two other causes for uncer- tainty: the writing is by various hands, and the characters where repeated, are not strictly of the same form ; and, again they are not divided for us into words. But in each case the po'ssible eiTors are confined within very narrow limits, because in each language the ways in which the letters can be combined into words are limited in number. 32, IIiQiiBuiiv Place, September, 1875. WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR. The HISTORY of the HEBREW NATION and its LITERATURE. Third Edition. The HEBREW SCRIPTURES TRANSLATED, boing a Revision of tht Anthoriied Sogliib Old TeiUment. 3 tola. Second Edition. SHORT NOTES to accompany a Revised Translation of the Hebrew Scriptoni. The NEW TESTAMENT TRANSLATED from Griesbach's Text. Seventh Edition. The CHRONOLOGY of the BIBLE. TEXTS from the HOLY BIBLE, explained by the Help of tlie Ancient Monamenta. Second Edition. CRITICAL NOTES on the Authorized English Version of the New Teatament. Second Edition. The HISTORY of EGYPT, from the Earliest Times to the Conquest by the Araba, b.o. 640. Fifth Edition. ALEXANDRIAN CHRONOLOGY. EGYPTIAN INSCRIPTIONS from the British Museum and other aoarcea ; 216 Flatea, in Polio. EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPHICS. beioR an Attempt to Explain their Nature, Origin, and Meaning ; vith a VOCABDLABY. EGYPTIAN ANTIQUITIES in the BRITISH MUSEUM described. EGYPTIAN MYTHOLOGY and EGYPTIAN CHRISTIANITY, with their Inflaence on the Opiniona of Modem Chriatendom. The DECREE of CANOPUS, in Hieroglyphics and Greek ; with Trans- lationa, and an Explanation of the Ulerogl;phicaI Characten. The ROSETTA STONE in Hieroglyphics and Greek ; with Trans- lationa and an Explanation of the Uierogljphical Charactera, and followed b/ an Appendix of Kiogs' Namea. ON THE SINAITIC INSCRIPTIONS. INTRODUCTION. Wady Mocatteb, or the Sculptured Valley, is a small barren plain on the direct route from Egypt to the fertile oasis of Wady Feiran and to Mount Serbal, a route which must have been trod by the Israelites when they left Egypt for the conquest of the Amorites on the east of the Jordan, and the after occupation of Canaan. It has gained its name from the inscriptions which are cut on the face of the rocks and on the boulders of sandstone, sprinkled over the valley for a distance of several miles. These inscriptions are also found in smaller numbers in the fertile Wady Feiran, at the northern foot of Serbal. But there the rocks do not offer the same convenience to the sculptor. Some are also found on the mountain itself. But few or none have been found on the eastern side of the peninsula of Sinai, that is, on the side furthest from Egypt. Thus their situation tells us very clearly that they were cut by travellers from Egypt to Serbal, who went no further, but returned to Egypt after visiting the mountain. They were not cut by travellers who, like the Israelites under Moses, passed across the whole of the peninsula ; but we may safely say that they are the work of men who, as pilgrims from Egypt, had come to visit that holy spot. The entrance to Wady Mocatteb is about thirty miles from Mount Serbal; and from that spot another valley, Wady Maghara, runs northward towards Sarabut el Khadim. This is equally barren with the former, and is marked by hiero- glyphical inscriptions of a great age, some of the age of the pyramids, and others more modern, during the reigns of the great Theban kings. These were cut by the Egyptians who worked B . ■I INTRODUCTION. the copper mines in that neighbourhood ; and the tombstones of the miners yet remain there inscribed with hieroglyphics. The inscriptions in Wady Mocattcb are not in hieroglyphics, but in an unknown character, which, however, is readily seen to be allied to the Hebrew, and indeed to contain some Hebrew letters. They have usually and justly been considered the work of Jews ; but those who have examined them are by no means agreed either as to their age or their purpose. History gives us some little information which is of use in judging when these inscriptions were written ; at least it tells us when there were Hebrews in Egypt who are likely to have visited this spot afler it had gained its character for holiness. First, when the Assyrians under Sennacherib invaded Judea, in the reign of Hezekiah, B.C. 714, there was a flight of Jews into Egypt, chiefly from the South Country, or the parts about Hebron, who hastened there for safety from their murderous armies. " They put their riches upon the shoulders of young asses, and their treasures upon the bunches of camels," and carried them to Egypt ; and they are blamed by the prophet Isaiah, in chap, xxx., for doing so, for thus deserting their country in its distress. Again, about a century later, when the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar conquered Judea, and carried its principal in- habitants into captivity, there was a further flight of Jews into Egypt. At that time the prophet Jeremiah, and his friend Baruch, were both carried off into Egypt against their will by some of these fugitives. During the years which followed each of these misfortunes there can have been no lack of Jews in Egypt who must have wished to visit the mountain which their Scriptures told them was the holy spot where Jehovah had spoken to Moses, and had delivered to him the Ten Commandments, and the Levitical Law. It is not probable that any of them had come to Egypt through the peninsula of Sinai, and had visited Mount Serbal in passing. The route from Judea does not run so far to the TUB JKWS DHIVEN INTO EGYPT. 3 south. The visits to Mount Serbal were made by Jews who had come from Egypt for the purpose. By one of these Jews, who had fled from home and its dangers, we must suppose that Numbers xxxiii. was written. The writer seems to have had the earlier narrative in his hand, and he shows a full knowledge of the country from Egypt to Mount Shapher, or Serbal ; but, as after that spot his knowledge becomes less exact, we judge that he was one of those pilgrims who went no further, but from Serbal returned to Egypt. Many of the Jews who had thus settled in Egypt as cultivators of the soil, on the east side of the Delta, were led by the wise conduct of Ptolemy, about ii.c. 300, to move westward, and establish themselves as merchants and tradesmen in the new city of Alexandria, where they gained a knowledge of the Greek tongue, and very much dropt the use of Hebrew. But about B.C. 175, Antiochus Epiphanes, the Greek King of Syria, by his mad cruelty drove a further body of Jews into Egypt, who again added numbers to the Hebrew colony in the east of the Delta. A few years afterwards, when the Maccabees gained for their country its independence, Onias IV, the deposed high priest came also to Egypt, and obtained leave of the then reigning Ptolemy to build a temple in the cast of the Delta in rivalry to that at Jerusalem. Thus history shows us that for many centuries, from the rci^n of. Hezekiah, b.c. 700 downwards, there were always Jews "n Egypt, most of whom would have wished to visit the holy mount in Smai, and many of whom would have had the means to make that rather expensive pilgrimage, and who may have laboriously chiselled these rude inscriptions on the rocks. Such journeys may at times have been stopt by the troubles of war, and the marches of armies on the eastern frontier of Egypt; but the peninsula of Sinai was not closed a-ainst the Jews unt.1 Christianity was made the established religion of the Roman en.pire by Constantine the Great, in the beginning of the fourth century. Soon after that time monkish institutions spread among the INTRODUCTION. ChristiaoB ; Christian monks settled in the desert of Sinai, and in the oasis of Feiran. The village of Feiran rose in importance. Learned Christians settled there, and then the Jewish pilgrims would hardly have ventered there. We must suppose that by the time of Constaiitine the Hebrew inscriptions very much ceased in Wady Mocatteb, and then more particularly, but even before then, Greek inscriptions may have been cut there side by side with the older Hebrew inscriptions. From Exodus iii. 1, and iv. 27, it clearly appears that Serbal was the mount of God, because Wady Feiran, at the foot of Serbal, is the only spot where Jethro's flocks could have been feeding. Again, from Exod. x., wc learn that it was in order to keep the spring feast, afterwards called the Passover, that Moses asked the leave of Pharaoh for the Israelites to make a pilgrimage into the desert, and to sacrifice to Jehovah there. Hence it is very pro- bable that the pilgrims who cut our inscriptions made their difficult and costly journeys at that stated time, and probably once only in a lifetime ; for no inscription mentions a second visit. We must suppose that Exod. iii.-xi., containing an account of the proposed pilgrimage, was written after the account of the delivery of the Law in Chap. xix. 20, because it was from the delivery of the Law that the mountain gained its character for holiness and its name, the Mount of God. Soon after the year A.v. 530, the Roman emperor, Justinian, built a new monastery for the monks of Sinai, about thirty miles to the east of Wady Feiran and Mount Serbal. It was called the Monastery of St. Catherine. Up to that time, it is probable that Serbal had always been considered as the holy mount of the Pentateuch. But after that time opinions changed ; and the lofty peak overhanging Justinian's monastery, since called Mount St. Catherine, robbed Serbal of the honour of being visited as the holy mount, until in the present century our European travellers, by giving to us better maps of the country, have again restored to Mount Serbal its lost honour. The original narrative of the Israelites' march out of Egypt has been thrown into some disorder, and cannot be satisfactorily THE BOUTE OF THE ISRAELITES. compared with the maps. But the difficulty has been in part removed by the writer of Numbers xxxiii. 1-49 ; and from this we are further able to show that Serbal is the Holy Mount of the Pentateuch. In Exodus xix., the Israelites, after fighting with Amalek at Rcphidim, encamped in the desert before the mountain, and there they received the Ten Commandments. In verse 23, this moun- taiu is called Mount Sinai. But this is not a distinctive name, as Sinai was the name of the whole, or at any rate of a large part, of the peninsula. In Exod. iii. 1, and xxxiii. 6, it is called Mount Horeb, which again may mean no more than the mountain of the desert, and it does not help us to fix its place. But in Numb, xxxiii. 23, where the geography of the route is dis- tinctly traced, it is called Mount Shaphcr. Here the mountain has a name which will be useful to us, and a place on the line of march, by the help of which we can find it on the map. Thus the Israelites, after passing through the Red Sea, come (in Numb, xxxiii. 8) to Marah, of Exod. xv. 23. In verse 9, to Elim, of Exod. xv. 27. In verse 10, they encamp by the sea. In verses 1 1-15, the names of the places tell us that they are in the neighbourhood of the Egyptian copper mines : Dophkah the crushing place; Alush, the poundintf place; and Rephidim, the spreading place. They had left the sea coast, perhaps the place where the copper was shipped for Egypt, and had turned inland, towards the desert of Sinai, perhaps by the miners' road towards Sarabut el Khadim, where there are yet the ruins of an Egyptian temple. At Rephidim, the last of these three places, they fight with Amalek (Exod. xvii.). The men under Amalek may have been guards, or workmen at the mines, who would be met by the Israelites on the road between the sea, and the Egyptian buildin<'s at Sarabut el Khadim. In verse 16, they encamp at Kibroth- hattaavah, or the burial-place at Taavah, the Tih range of Numb, xi. 34. This is a spot now well known, marked by the Egyptian tombstones sculptured with hieroglyphics. From the burial-place the route would lead them southward 6 INTBODUCTION. through Wady Maghara to Wady Mocatteb, the sculptured valley. This barren waterless plain could offer them no resting-place, and is not mentioned as one of the stations; but in verse 17 they en- camp at Hazeroth, a village, which we must place at the entrancie to the fertile oasis Wady Feiian. Verses 18-21 mention four stations, of which the names all speak of fertility, and evidently point to Wady Feiran, namely Bithmah, the Broom-bushes; Rimmon-parez, the Pomegranate Gap ; Libnah, the White Poplars ; and Rissah, the Dew. In verse 22, they are at Kehelathah, the place of their assemblies; and lastly, in verse 23, at Mount Shapher, the mountain of Exod. xix. 2. Thus the writer of Numb, xxxiii. 1-49, explains the earlier narrative ; and the mountain to which he leads the Israelites is clearly Mount Serbal. The name of Slinper, IDIW, which he gives to it, may mean beautiful; but the numerous inscriptions in the valleys on the Egyptian side of the mountain lead to the con- jecture that its name had been Scphar, -\BV, written. The two letters V> and V, so nearly alike in sound, are often changed one for the other ; and indeed when one part of the nation used the Sh, the other used the S, as in the well-known case of Shibboleth and Sibboleth, in Judges xii. 6. This chapter of Numbers was perhaps written about the time of the carrying away of the Jews to IJabylon ; and we must suppose that before it was written the inscrijitions around this mountain were already numerous enough to have gained for it the name of the Written Mountain. The wind and rain during more than two thousand years may have destroyed those early writings. We need not for our argument suppose that any of them now re- main ; but they were the forerunners of those which are now read and copied by our travellers. Again, in Genesis x. 30, this important mountain is called Sephar, IDD, written, as may be shown when the translation of the authorized version is corrected. In that passage the Arab races are said to have their dwelling "from Mesha, as tlioucomest unto Sephar, a mount of the East." These words are meant to SERBAL THE HOLY MOUNT. describe the whole of the then known inhabited part of Arabia ; that is, the whole of the coast on the east side of the Bed Sea. Mesa, as Gesenius rightly judged, 'may be Mousa, or Mausid, at the southern end of that coast, while Mount Sephar in Sinai is at the northern end of the Arab district. The words alp n ^^ mSD, to Sephar, a mount of the East, may as well be rendered to Sephar, the mount which was of old ; for Sephar is not in the east, either as regards the Arab country or the Hebrew writer. The whole of the Arab coast is well described, from Mesha in the south to Serbal in the north. A needless difficulty had been made by describing Sephar as " a mount of the east." It may be thought that while removing one difficulty we have brought on another, by describing Sephar in the Book of Genesis as " the mount which was of old." But this is not an early passage. The generations of Shem, Ham, and Japheth are com- plete without the added passage of x. 21 — xi. 9. The original passage may have been written in Solomon's reign ; it makes the Arabs to be children of Ham ; and it brings from Shem only Abraham's descendants. The added passage was written much later, and it classes the Arabs more naturally as Shemites ; and it mentions many more tribes of men, after a further knowledge of geography had been gained. The time when it was written may be guessed from the names mentioned. The mention of Elam tells us that it was written after Sennacherib, in the reign of Hezekiah, had brought Elamites in his army to the invasion of Judea, as is said in Isaiah xxii. 6; and the omission of the Persians, that it was written before the conquest of Babylon by Cyrus, which gave the Jews an acquaintance with Persia, as seen in Ezekiel xxvii. 10, and iixviii. 5. After that time the Elamites would not be classed with the Assyrians, as they are in this passage. Thus it would seem that before the return from captivity, as remarked upon Numbers xxxiii., the inscriptions on Serbal were so numerous that it had gained the name of Sephar, written ; its place in the earlier narrative naturally gave to it the further name ol " the mountain which was of old." Serbal is a sienite raoun- 8 INTKODUCTION. tain, and though not the moat lofty in the peninsula, ia the most striking and remarkable. But while history thus leads us to think that there were numerous inscriptions on the Holy Mountain, even as early as the reign of Hezekiah, it is clear that these inscriptions in Wady Mocatteb, at a distance of ten and twenty miles from the mountain, cannot be those which gave to it its name. They have given to the valley the name of the Sculptured Valley ; there must have been others which gave to the mountain its name of the Written Mountain. We may conjecture that of the two the inscriptions in the valley are the more modern ; that the custom of cutting such was begun upon the mountain, and afterwards continued in the valley below. We may even conjecture the reason for this. The mountain is of hard sienite ; travellers must have found it very difficult to cut their letters on such stone ; and after a time some may have contented tlicmselves with carving on the sandstone in the valley, which, though hard, is not so hard as the sienite. When the easier custom was once begun, it was naturally continued. Moreover, of the numerous Jews who would wish to make a pilgrimage from Egypt to the Holy Mount, mauy might content themselves with getting a sight of it. They may have come as far as Mocatteb and Feiran without having the time or the wish to climb the mountain. Both they and their beasts may have been weary after a journey of two hundred miles from the banks of the Nile. Thus, if we may suppose that the writings on the rocks of Sinai extend over more than a thousand years, say from the reign of Hezekiah till after the reign of the emperor Constantine, we must suppose that those which have been copied from Wady Mocatteb are not the oldest. There yet remain at the top of Mount Serbal traces of letters scratched on the hard sienite, less deeply cut and perhaps of a ruder form than those in Wady Mocatteb. These await some active iateilig,ent traveller, who may make copies of them, and thus bring home materials for a further knowledge of the Hebrew people, of their language, and of the forms of their letters. THE INSCRIPTIONS. 9 Thus far we have been looking on these inscriptiona in what has been called the Unknown Character, and on their probable history, without regard to their contents. On deciphering them they appear to be Hebrew or Chaldee, each a short sentence containing a pious prayer to Jehovah for the welfare of the nation, and of Jerusalem in its ruined state. We find no mention of a king — the monarchy had passed away. We find no mention of the Babylonians and their crnclty; that had been forgotten in later troubles ; no certain mention of the Captivity, but we find one continued lament fur the scattered state of the nation, and the ruined' condition of the city. It would seem as if it had been the wish of the unhappy writers to show us how many words the language contained by which they could describe the sad state of their city, country, and nation, as cut short, laid waste, trodden down, crushed, broken, ruined, despised, rejected, cast out, scattered, wandering, and so forth. The inscriptions usually end with the word Jao, or Jehovah, and begin with either Dekerun or Shalem. Dekerun may mean " a memorial " to preserve the memory of the writer or of the nation; and in this sense the writers of No. 91a, and No. 1456 speak of their inscriptions on the rock as a token which is to be " tied about the neck." But the word is more often here used with its Levitical meaning, as an ofiFering to Jehovah. When the worshipper brought his animal to the altar at Jerusalem, the larger part of it was put aside to b^ cooked for the priests, and only a small portion was burnt on the altar. This portion was called " a memorial," as representing the whole, and thus any offering to Jehovah was called " a memorial." In that sense the word is used in these inscriptions. So the word Shalem, which may be taken as a verb, " Do thou prosper, or reward," rather means " a peace offering." Each of these inscriptions, being a proof that the religious pilgrimage had been performed, was an offering made to Jehovah. In No. 87 and No. M7, this offering is said to be made in performance of a religious vow. Thus, when these inscriptions were written, the regard for the Levitical Law was so far weakened that its ceremonial commands B * 10 INTRODUCTION. were understood figuratively ; its very words had gained a new meaning. The " peace offering," and the " memorial " portion of the burnt offering, were now duly paid by a prayer to Heaven, and not by an animal slain upon the altar. The writings of Isaiah, the lapse of time, and intercourse with foreign countries, had made great changes in religion. Two or three of our inscriptions, however, are said to be only part of the memorial ; and we must suppose that the other part was the portion of an animal burnt on the altar. Every one of the writers, when giving a name to God, uses the word Jao. Not one uses the word Elohim. One, indeed, writes £l-Shadeh-Jao, Gad almighty, Jehovah. This is what we should naturally look for. The outcasts who escaped into Egypt were mostly Jews, natives of Judea, who used the name of Jehovah ; the Israelites of the north, who used the name of Eluhim, could not so easily escape into Egypt when their country was invaded. The important word Jao, or Jehovah, is met with more than fifty times in these inscriptions. Twenty times it is written with the letter n between two simple strokes. This 1 read as in', because there is seldom any distinction made between the l and tile ». Nearly forty times it is written with the letter T between the same two simple strokes. This I read as tiiu same word, believing that the writer purposely omitted one stroke in his letter, and that he left it purposely incomplete, writing l for n. The frequency with which the word appears makes its meaning certain; and there is equally little room for doubt about how it was spelt. It agrees with what we learn from the Gnostic gems, and from the Ecclesiastical historians, who tell us that the sacred name, written as nin*, was pronounced lAO. The writers here seem to have written it as it was colloquially pronounced. In other inscriptions we have two marks thus, =, for the word Jehovah. This sign cannot be deciphered with the same certainty as the letters mentioned above, because it is met with only four times. But its place in each sentence leaves very little room for doubt. THE NAMIS OP JEHOVAH. 11 Another interesting word, of which the meaning is safely deter- mined by its place in the sentence, is Jerusalem. This long word the writers have twelve times represented by two single strokes thus, ", and three times by yy. The frequency with which we meet with the word makes its meaning certain. I venture to guess that » were meant for the first letters of the " City of Jerusalem," and yy for the first letters of a " ruined heap of ruins." These inscriptions have not the regularity of those cut by the Greeks, Romans, Assyrians, and Babylonians, people who had been used to carve on stone. They have often the easy and careless flow of penmanship; and they thus teach us that they were first drawn upon the rock with a pen or brush, and after- wards cut in with an iron pointed chisel and a hammer. These inscriptions are not like the chance inscriptions by Greek and Roman travellers on the foot of the musical atatue at Thebes. They are the very purpose of the pilgrimage. In order to cut them the traveller came prepared with suitable tools, such as he could not meet with in the desert. It was his intention to com- plete his pilgrimage by cutting one of these pious inscriptions. They are often on lofty rocks, in places chosen perhaps that the writing may be out of harm's way. The writer sat on his beast while he wrote thern. The patient camel offered no hindrance to this work ; but the horse was not always so quiet and obedient. The writer of No. 69 explains this difficulty, and says he is " slipping off, is thrown, the horse is rearing." The journey from Egypt to Mount Serbal and back again is about four hundred miles ; it cannot be completed in much less than a month. The traveller m'lst have been a man of some sub- stance, having with him a beast or beasts, whether camel, horse, or ass, to carry his tent and his food, with companions or servants to help him to pitch his tent, and to cook his morning and even- ing meals. If he made the journey on foot, he was twice as long on the road. The short pointed iron stakes, the tent-pins which fixed his tent, and the leaden hammer which drove them into the ground, may have been the tools which cut the letters in 12 INTAODrCTION. the sandstone rock. He must have brought with him a brush and some kind of paint, or gum with which paint could be made, to trace the letters before they were cut. The reed pen, which when pointed is used for writing on parchment or papyrus, if cut square at the end and hammered flat, becomes a fibrous brush of about a quarter of an inch wide. Such may have been the brush by whici) the letters were traced ; and it agrees with the even width of the strokes. The paint needed was only such as would remain upon the rock during the hour spent in cutting the letters, but some of it remains on Serbal to this day. If we attempt to put into chronological order all that we know about the pilgrimages to Mount Serbal and the writing in the neighbourliood, adding the probable dates for convenience' sake, but without pretending that they are right, it is as follows : — B.C. 1030, or thereabouts, in the time of Samuel and Saul, was written the history of the march of the Israelites out of Egypt, with the delivery of the Law in Sinai. This history gave to the mountain its holy character (Exod. xix. 3). It is only natural to suppose that in the reigns of Solomon and his successors many Jews may have made visits of curiosity and of devotion to this mountain, and they may have given to it the name of the Mount of God. B.C. 870, in the reign of Jehoshaphat, many large additions were made to the Book of Exodus, including chap. iii. — xi., in which Moses asks leave of Fliaraoh for the Israelites to make a religious pilgrimage into the desert, and to sacrifice to Jehovah there. In these chapters the niountain is called the Mount of God ; and thus we see that they were written after the history of the delivery of the Law, and after the custom had arisen of visit- ing that holy spot. B.C. 714, when the Assyrians under Sennacherib invaded Judea, and exercised great cruelty towar.ls the inhabitants, a number of Jews left their homes, where life was not safe, and they fled to Egypt for safety (Isaiah xxx. 6, 7). When these men bad established themselves on the banks of the Nile, and were at leisure from the cares of life, some of them may have THE niSTORY OF THE MOUNTAIN. 13 performed the pilgrimage to the Mount of God, in Sinai, and cut pious inscriptions on the rocks. Even then, or earlier, the writings there were numerous enough to gain for it the name of Sephar, or the written mountain. B.C. 700, in the reign of Hezekiah, or perhaps in the reign of his successor, was written Genesis x. 22 — xi. 9, containing a correction to the original history of the descent of nations from Noah. Here the writer describes this mountain as " Sephar, the mountain which was of old," thus telling us that it was already celebrated both for the early doings there at the time of the Exodus, and for the inscriptions which had been since cut there. At the same time Numbers xxxiii. 1-49 may have been written by some Jew, a pilgrim from Egypt to the holy mount. By his geographical accuracy he tells us that this mount was Jlount Serbal, overhanging Wady Feiran; and he gives to it the name of Mount Shcphar, which is only another way of writing Sephar. In my " History of the Hebrew Nation and its Literature," I have given reasons for thinking that about the time of the return from the Captivity, B.C. 538, the writer of the Book of Job visited Egypt and Arabia ; and he accurately describes these inscriptions on and near Mount Serbal ; and lets us understand that he had visited the spot, when he says in chap. xix. 23,21 — Oh that my words were now engraved ! Oh that they were imprinted on [mount] Sephar 1 That with an iroii pen and a leaden hammer They were chiselled into the rock for ever ! Not many of the inscriptions in this collection can claim to be so old as the return from the Captivity in Babylon, and to be those seen by the writer of Job. Nor are our inscriptions from the mountain itself; they are from Wady Moeatteb, on the road from Egypt to the mountain. We must wait until other travellers to this interesting spot have copied the inscriptions on the road up Mount Serbal from Feiran, and those on the summit of Serbal 14 INTaODUCTION. itself, before we can hope to see the oldest of these Hebrew inscriptions. This publication may perhaps remind our travellers of what a harvest there is there waiting for some reapers to gather. Even in Wady Mocatteb there remains a gleaning which should not be overlooked. For the date of the larger part of these inscriptions we have very little to guide us. They for the most part tell us of the unhappy condition of the people in words which would suit almost any century after the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebu- chadnezzar, B.C. 589; and we must be careful not to make too much of a word or two which seems to point to an exact time. No. 47, however, tells us that the people have been " removed far away," in the very words used in Ezek. xi. 15, 16. No. 48a is a prayer for the people which "is not;" and though such a word would equally well suit the later destruction of the city by the Romans, yet as this inscription is in the very earliest style of character, and by its position on the piece of rock is shown to be earlier than one which we shall give to the time of Nehemiah, it seems to belong to the time of the Captivity. No. 128 also is a prayer for the nation that is "driven forth," and for the "city that remaineth." The " remainder of the city " is also prayed for in later inscriptions ; but the two thoughts here mentioned, taken together, place it at the earlier time. It is quite possible that these inscriptions may have been written earlier than B.C. '538, when Cyrus allowed the captives to return borne. No. 48ft, which is by a different hand from that of No. 48a, already mentioned, and is therefore of a later date, is a piayer for the " counsel of the wail," which we may suppose to l)e Nehemiah's proposal to rebuild it, B.C. 445. Nehemiali's enemies charged him with a wish to prepare for a rebellion against the Persians. But his wall was not one to oppose an army, though it might keep oflF robbers, and allow the inhabitants of Jerusalem to sleep at night without fear. The word here used for the wall is not that used in the Bible for the fortification of the city, and may have been chosen to mark the character of Nehemiah's structure. No. 31 is also a prayer "to establish THE AOE OP THE INSCBIPTIONS. 15 the counsel." This does not mention the purpose of the counsel ; but it belongs to a time when Jerusalem was governing itself, and is of the oldest form of letter, and probably of the same date as the last. During the three centuries of quiet which the Jews enjoyed under their Persian and then their Greek masters, others of our inscriptions were probably written; but, with the above excep- tions, I can discover no peculiarity in them by which to fix their date. But when troubles came upon the nation, the case is altered. Our pilgrims then express their feelings more pointedly; and we are able with more confidence to put a date to their writings. No. 54 we may suppose to be of the tin)e of Antiochus Epiphanes, whose mad cruelty drove many of the Jews to seek safety in Egypt. It is a prayer for "the city of sighs." But a Jew living in Egypt was not safe from the power of the oppressor; Antiochus overran Lower Egypt for three years to- gether, as is said in Isaiah xx., where he is called the King of Assyria; hence our pilgrim expresses his anger in a guarded manner, and his prayer is " Slay the Buffalo." The Buffalo, in the Authorized Version the Unicom, is a name often used in the Bible figuratively for Egypt ; but Egypt is not here meant. A Jew's only wish for Egypt was that it had been strong enough to help them against their enemies. We must suppose that when the writer wrote BAM, the buffalo, he meant to be under- stood as ARM, the Syrians. In this guarded way the writer of Jerem. xxv. 26, threatens the King of Sheshak, when it was not safe to write against Babylon ; but the later writer of Jerem. li. 41, when Babylon was overthrown, explains the riddle. If the alphabet is read backwards, the letters Sh, Sh, K, will repre- sent B,B,L, or Babylon. The writing the alphabet backwards in one case explains the writing the word backwards in the other. No. 113 contains the prayer, "Utterly destroy the rich men," a prayer which, like that in No. 54, must be understood as having a double meaning. The word " rich men " becomes "Assyrians" by a change of the first letter; and, as we have 16 INTROOVCTION. remarked, tbe Greco-Syrian kings who held Syria, Assyria, and Babylonia, are sometimes called kings of Assyria in the Bible. No. 2b, with a prayer for the afflicted nation, adds " Strangle *, O Jehovah.*' This unknown character probably points to the Greco-Syrians, people who were oppressing the Jews, but from whom they might reasonably hope to get free. This conjecture is strengthened by No. 71, where we have the ' same unknown character. The nation or the city is " a ruin fainting [under this enemy], profaned, and trodden down." In Psalm Ixxiv., which is of this time, it is said, — Now the whole carved work [of tbe temple] at once They break down with axes and hammers. They have cast fire into the Sonctuaiy, They have crushed [literally profaned] the Tabernacle of thy name to the ground. In the Psalm, and in our inscription, we have the same word used — " profaned." No. 84 may, perhaps, be of the same time, when Antiochus had in his violence stopt the daily sacrifices in the Temple, and forbidden all Jewish rites, and had carried away to Antioch the gold and silver vessels of the Temple, tbe altar of incense, tbe lampstand, the table for the ceremonial bread, the censers, and the sprinkling vessels. Our pilgrim, praying as usual for the "crushed city," adds that " the renowned ornament is cut off." After a time the unhappy people were roused into rebellion ; and when at length the rebellion was successful, then we find one of our pilgrims venturing to speak plainly. No. 81 is clearly of the time of the Maccabee struggle for independence against the Greco-Syrian kings, which began B.C. 166. Its prayer is " Slaughter, Jehovah, the Syrians," words which came very naturally from one who may have been driven away from the "afflicted Jerusalem" by the cruelties of Antiochus Epiphanes. This was probably not written till after the death of Epiphanes, when, though the struggle was not over, a Jew was at least safe in Egypt. No. 91 contains a series of several inscriptions which belong to THE AGB or THE INSCRIPTIONS. 17 the very last days of the struggle for independence, when the Greco-Syrians were weakened by quarrels among themselves, and the prospects of the Jews grew brighter. No. 91fl declares that this inscription is " a print-mark of rejoicing." No. 914 says that " the guiltless city is awakened," and prays, " Clothe it, O Jehovah," No. 91c prays for "rest for one who is disturbed, the sleeper who is awakened." No. 9 1 y into 1'. The V they so far treated as a vowel as to use it for the Chaldce final N, in the words ))p)t and y^n for Hpy and Npn. As the harsh Hebrew » was softened by the Clialdees into y, and ^'"^K was written yiN, here it is yet further softened, and we have the word ^'^^< twice spelt simply "sn. We have also the words fin and fyp both softened into p30 and pTtp. It is certainly by no carelessness of the writers that we find the letter X often divided into two parts, which then represent the two letters pw. In No. 129, the division is made particularly clear by the space between them ; and at the same time it is equally clear that the two letters together stand for the one letter V. This letter is supposed to have had the harsh sound of TZ j and from the Septuagint we learn that the Alexandrian Greeks treated it as S. Fuerst, however, in his Lexicon, has well shown that it was occasionally interchanged with the p, as we have seen above ; and its form in these inscriptions tells us that at one time it had the sound of pm, being a compouod character formed by the union of those two. Another way in which the language was softened to the ear, was by the frequent insertion of the letter n into the middle of a word, and the addition of K at the end. Other peculiarities in the words it would be rash to dwell upon. The art of spelling had not then been reduced to regularity. The spelling in the Hebrew Scriptures is by no means uniform. The spelling in the PRONUNCIATION AND LANGUAGE. 23 English language did not become regular till more than two centuries after the invention of piinting. As a peculiarity of language, we may mention OM used for the objective me. As new examples of verbs in the unusual con- jugation Pilpel, we have hn, to sing triumphantly, and ptpT, thoroughly purified. The doubled form was used probably to strengthen the meaning. The conjugations Hiphil and Niphal are not common here. It, is customary with the writers on the Hebrew language to produce an assumed root for a word which may not itself be in the form of a root-word. In some cases these inscriptions give us the root required, which thus need no longer be called " assumed." In No. 34, we have the word yp inscribe, the regular imperative of yyp a root ass.umed by Gesenius. In No. 49 we have the word ppio, girded with sackcloth, a root assumed by Gesenius for the noun piv. In No. 172 we have StT/1, and in No. 125 we have t/1> both as participles for cut doum. This verb had before been known only in the conjuga- tion Hiphil. In No. 41, we have yw, save, the imperative of yw, a verb hitherto known only in Hiphil and Niphal. In the natural wish not to use more letters than are absolutely necessary, the copulative " and " is once only met in these inscrip- tions, aud the article " the " before a substantive very rarely. It is, however, often used before an adjective, when it is to be trans- lated " that which is." The Sinaitic Alphabet. In these inscriptions there is the usual variety of forms for each letter, due to the carelessness of the writer, or of the sculptor who cut them into the stone, or of the copier ; and due also to the difference in their age. H. AVe have two distinct forms for this letter. Nl and its varieties are the most common, k 4 and its varieties approach the printed letter. M 6, from our most modern inscription, is close to the printed letter. 24 INTBODUCTION. 3 is a very marked letter, except when it is made to face the wrong way, when it approaches the p. In form it is allied to the Roman F. i is nearly the same as the printed letter, except in its posi- tion ; it lies down. n is nearly the printed letter. n is of the Syriac printed form, except sometimes in the word Jehovah, when we have the *i. But if we are right in our con- jecture that in the sacred name the n was purposely written for an unfinished n, it proves that the letter n, so formed, was already in use, although not met with in these inscriptions. } is often a simple stroke, not to be distinguished from (, ], or >. Sometimes it slopes, as 1 (3). Sometimes as in i (1) it is the Egyptian enchorial letter, copied from the horned serpent, and then it approaches the v. t should be like the printed letter, but sometimes it is a simple stroke, and sometimes the head becomes so enlarged as to give it a different character. n is like the priuted letter, n 4 is reversed. 19 is the same as T, and in one case a double f. ' is a simple stroke, and often not distinguished from l, (, or i. Sometimes it is a long stroke, and thus very unlike the printed letter. 3 is like the printed letter, except that when badly made it approaches ], or becomes a simple curved stroke. b is usually a simple angle ; often like the Roman L, though sometimes it approaches the Greek small letter. D is usually like the printed final letter. It is only in a few of the earliest inscriptions that we have the initial form. But no distinction is shown in the use of these two characters. i is like the printed letter, but passing often into a simple stroke. is like the printed letter. y is like the printed letter, but often not to be distinguished from 1. D ia the same as 3, and thus of the form of the Roman P. THE SINAITIC ALPHABET. 25 y, when laid on one side, is like the printed letter. It is a com- pound letter formed of W and p joined together. But the two strokes are often not joined, and then it might be taken for pa;. p is like the printed letter, but facing the other way. p 1 is the early Greek Quoppa. . 1 is the printed letter leaning backwards, but often a mere wavy line. *i 4 is from our most modem inscription. It/ is of two forms ; one is half the y, and the other, which is the more modern, is like the printed letter. n is a cross. The figure of a simple cross has at all times been used for a mark or signature ; and in, the name of this old letter, came in Hebrew to mean a mark, as in Ezek. ix. 4, and a Signature, as in Job xxxi. 35. Here, when Job wishes that the accusation against him and his defence should both b in writing, he says, " Behold my signature," my in. From the use of the letter T as a simple mark, we gain the origin of the names of the letters of the alphabeta. These names have remained less corrupted in Greek than in Hebrew; and there we have Be-ta, a mark for B, Ze-ta, E-ta, The-ta, lo-ta, all compounded of Tu, a mark. The L in some of the names, and the M in others, may be the Hebrew prepositions ; and thus De-l-ta, is D for a mark, La-mb-da, ia Z by a mark. Ga-ni-ta, G by a mark, was afterwards corrupted into Gimel, a camel. In addition to the letters of the alphabet, we have in these in- scriptions several symbols. Seven times we have a' cross the symbol of Christianity. Four times we have two short strokes, thus, =, representing the sacred word Jehovah. Twice we have a three-sided character, which in one place, and probably in both, means the nation's oppressors. In two, the writers have put un- known characters for then: own names. In one. No. 25, there is a stop at the end. Style op Writing. There arc no stops to divide tiic sentences, nor even spaces between the words. These helps to the reader were not invented c* 26 INTRODUCTION. till a later age. Nor does a word always end at tbe end of a line ; sometimes one letter of a word will be found in a lower line. We note, however, a slight tendency to the use of final letters, of a shape different from those used in the middle of a word. Thus the 3 and 3, when at the end of the word, are sometimes length- ened downwards. We also have a final 1, a wavy line drawn downwards from the foregoing letter. But the same forms for the V or for the D are used whether at the end of a word or else- where. Thus more than half of our letters are of the square character as printed, and these may safely be pronounced to be older than the Maccabee coins, as several of our inscriptions declare them- selves to be of the time of the Maccabee rebellion, and older. These inscriptions have thus an important bearing on tbe question of the characters in which the Hebrew Scriptures were written in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah. We must wait for the discovery of earlier inscriptions before we can learn what characters were used by Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. Penmanship. Every work of man's band may be made with more or with less attention to neatness and elegance ; and ^he style and taste thus shown is of no little help in fixing the relative age of such works. The few inscriptions which we have here offer but a small field for such a study ; but even- here we can divide the writings into three groups — the rude, the plain, and the ornamental. We will begin with the last, as being most easily pointed out. In No. 16b, and 59a, we have the four letters of the word anbttf united into one character. The a is strictly rectangular ; and though the last letter in the word, it is drawn downwards and backwards so that the reader comes upon it first. The n is simply a loop which joins the other two letters. The whole clearly shows an aim at elegance. In No. 85, and No. 82, we have the same loop for n'at the bottom of the letter f. As No. 85 is of Christian times, we gain PENUAN8HIP. 37 a date for this aim at regularity and ornamental writing. No. 27 has the letters n and "i both made very neatly, and it is of the same late date. No. 76 is another example of careful writing, indeed of doubly careful writing, for while the lines, as usual, are horizontal, the letters are so placed that the Gnostic word he-he- he-he can be read downwards. No. 11 has a rectangular character drawn backwards, which I read as an unformed D. No. 16 has the o large, and strictly rectangular. In the book trade of Alexandria, as we learn from Eusebius (Eccl. Hist. vi. 23), two kinds of writers were employed. When an author was not skilled in the use of the pen he employed a Quick-writer to write down his words ; but when his book was to be published it was handed over to a Book-writer, who wrote it out neatly, and with regularity, as we see in the Greek MSS. of the fourth and fifth centuries. The inscriptions quoted above show us how the book-writers of Hebrew in Alexandria at that time formed their letters, and indeed how they ornamented the MSS. In the Greek MS. of tbe Bible, known as tbe Alexan- drian MS. in tbe British Museum, the capital letter which marks the beginning of a sentence is not always the first letter in the word. So here, when the word Cibjlf begins the sentence, the □, not the 12^, is the capital letter. No. 65 is of a very fanciful character, The first line begins with the word aVi:;, of which the □, the capital, is drawn down so as to be read a second time as the first letter in the word ppn, with which the second line begins. The inscription ends in the same way. The last letter of the word m^n, in the firat line, is also the last letter of the word nnh in the second line. No. 138 has the same fanciful arrangement. The same two words in the first line each lend the last letter to help the second line. The only differ- ence is, that here the last letter in the first line falls down into the middle of the second linei In No, 13, the second line has a capital letter of its own, and that not the first letter. It is a in the word Dp, and it is joined to the first word in the first line. The sand- stone rock in the valley of Mocatteb is not the material on which fanciful and ornamental peculiarities of penmanship would be first 28 INTRODUCTION. tried ; and we may be sure that all that we have been describing was borrowed from the book-writers of Alexandria. In particular, the flourish of the letters in No. 138 must have been copied from a MS. The custom of writing horizontally what was to be also read vertically, as described above in No. 75, is still to be seen in some copies of the Hebrew Scriptures. In them the words are so care- ' fully arranged, that by reading vertically you can read the name of the scribe and the date of his writing. These Sinaitic inscriptions teach us that the Jews in Egypt rightly understood the commandment in Exod. xx. 4, 5, and did not take it as forbidding representations of men and animals, when not meant to be worshipped. There are many figures on these rocks. No. 85 says, " Thus tread down lying Christianity ;" and it is surrounded by a number of figures, which Mr. Grey does not describe, which probably by their action explain the word " Thus.'' No. 82, in the same way, begins with the word " Thus," and is accompanied by a crowd of men and animals, which are to be "gathered in," as the inscription prays. No. 144 is in behalf of the pilgrim's " strong camel ;" and beside it is a figure of the animal with his burden on his back. No. 167 is on behalf of " the camel's foal," and the figure of the animal is introduced into the middle of the sentence. The aim after the ornamental is sometimes carried to an excess, and of this we have an example in No. 55a. Here we have a complex character of which the upper portion is the word 1% and the > is lengthened downwards so as to join the middle letter in the word y)p, while the head of the letter p seems to form the n with which the word n^n may end. In No. 86b the last letter in the word pt is made to serve as the head to an animal there drawn. In No. 117 the first word has the middle letter made rather tall, and its top ornamented with a cross, the mark of the writer's being a Christian. In No. 154 we have an example of the writing being the worse for the writer's aim at regularity. The line on which the letters stand hides the bottom of each, and makes some of them doubtful. FENMANSIIir. 29 This line has made it necessary to reject several of these inscriptions, as not to be read with any certainty. Of the work of the quick- writer No. 152 is a good example. The letters flow in wavy curves, and are yet kept distinct. In some of Mr. Grey's inscriptions. the letters are so much run together that I have not been able to disentangle them. In others it is not so difScult. Thus, in No. 3c, the word abw is a single character; O^ is a second, and liy is a third. In No. 22 -|> and IK are each a single character. In No. 27c pp is a single character, the same as that which is the lower half of the yet more complex character in No. 55a. In No. 26 the letters, though separate, have a marked slope. It is unnecessary to give more examples. Of plain simple writing the inscriptions on the stone No. 91 are a good example. The letters are sufficiently clear and well made, with no pretence at ornament. This is most certainly of ' the time of the Maccabee revolt. No. 29 and No. 30, which I place a few years later, in the time of John Hyrcanus, are equally simple and clear. Of the older handwriting, if we may judge from the form of the letters, No. 31 and No. 41 are good examples. As writing became more common, and the art of penmanship more studied, the form of each letter was naturally changed slightly and imperceptibly, by what was at the time thought no change, but only an improvement. In this way, after a time, great changes have been brought about ; and though our Sinaitic inscriptions certainly look very unlike the Hebrew of the MSS. which we have adopted for printed books, yet they show our present Hebrew letters in their earlier forms. These inscriptions perhaps range over ten centuries ; hut there is then an interval of five centuries more before we come to the MSS. We have no Hebrew MSS. of the Bible older than a.d. 900. Hence we do not know when the iiTcgular letters were reduced to their present uniformity and regularity. But the art of penmanship was much studied in Alexandria in the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries ; and the Jews of that city are likely to have followed the Greek scribes in their endeavour to make their writing regular. 30 INTRODUCTION. It is much to be wished that they had not so often sacrificed distinctness to the aim at regularity. If they left to us the sloping n of these inscriptions, it would not have become so like the f, and so often mistaken for it. If they had left the J lying down, it would not have become so like the 1 and the ). If they had kept the n and the n of these inscriptions, they would neither have been so like the n. In the same way the 3 would have been less like the 3, and the □ more distinct from the O- 'With a view to distinctness and the reader's convenience, I have had the article and the prepositions in these pages printed as separate words, and not as prefixes. It is unnecessary to remark that writings which may at first have been badly chiselled into the rock, and then after two thousand years badly copied, may now be wrongly transcribed into Hebrew letters and wrongly translated into English. A simple stroke has sometimes to be taken at pleasure for either the >, the 1, the t, or the 3. If it has a fork at the top, it may be either the 1, the j, or the ]/. If it is curved, it may be either 3 or ]. If it is curved and joined to the back of another letter, it may be 1 or ]. In the latest inscriptions there is no difference between T and -\. We often find the st broken into two characters, which are very distinctly to be read as one. That this is done by no fault of Mr. Grey's is' very clearly shown in No. 129. The lines are never broken into words, and they thus have to be divided at ])leasui'e. ]3ut notwithstanding these sources of error, it will be found that in every case the doubt is confined within very narrow limits. Here and there a wrong word may be produced; but it may be safely said that in no case is there any doubt about the general meaning of an inscription. Egyptian hieroglyphics were seldom correctly copied before we had gained the power of reading them ; and now it is to be hoped that future travellers will both add to the number of these inscriptions, and remove some of the doubts about those which we already have. But whenever they do so, I venture to foretell that they will bring home a strong testimony to the accuracy and MB. okey's ACCvaAcr. 31 care with which Mr. Grey made his copies ; and my wish is that, while making his inscriptions useful towards a knowledge of the Hebrew nation and its lit«rature, I may gain for Mr. Grey the credit that he deserves, and that this volume may be, to use the words of the writer of No. 145, " a memorial to be tied about the neck," ^J ■? rnxf piat. After these remarks I proceed to transcribe and to translate such of the inscriptions as can be read most safely, and to add a few words on the peculiarities of each. I am obliged to omit those that are cut upon a strong line, as such a line robs many letters of their distinctness. This the writer may have drawn upon the rock with a view to make his letters range in due order ; but the work- man with his iron pen and leaden hammer should by no means have chiselled it into the rock. They are here left in the order in which Mr. Grey published them. He probably placed those first which he thought that he had copied most correctly. I have also used Mr. Grey's numbers, adding the letters (a), (6), and (c), when there are several inscriptions on the same piece of rock; and adding the letter P for his word " perfect, " and F for his word " fragment. " HEBREW INSCRIPTIONS rBOM THl VAIXEYS BETWEEN EGYPT AND MOUNT SINAI, TBANSLATED XSD EXPLAINED. No. 1. : It jn p2i 33V P^T ^ : tn> pT ay npi Ti ipT ub}if in nn : n For a memorial for Abeg, a memorial for his foreign companion. Keep alive the broken lamp of the people who are rejected, O Jehovah. Refresh the smitten, heal tlte hurl. In the first line, the letters 3y are joined into one character, as are the p, and the IT. The 1 at the end of the line is a wavy stroke drawn downwards, as in No. 22, and' often elsewhere. In the second line, the pi are joined, and the three letters abof in the third line. A simple stroke stands for t, i, >, and ] alike. • The word p3l is Chaldee for Tnot. The name jay is not known. It may perhaps be the same as jat<, which we have in Kn]3K and Knjn of Esther i. 10, the names of two Persian noblemen in the court of Xerxes 1. At any time after the reign of Cyrus, a Jew may have taken a Persian name. The foreign companion was probably Abeg's concubine, to whom custom did not give the title of wife, as marriage with a foreigner was forbidden by the law of Deut. vii. 3, a law which had been enforced by Ezra and Nebemiah. It is true that the words here have not a feminine termination. But in these inscrip- tions unnecessary letters are usually dropt. In Proverbs v., love 84 BINAITIC 1NSCRIFTI0N8, forn'nt, a foreign woman, is blamed. In Jerem. iii. 20, and Hos. iii. 1, the man living with a concubine is called ■g-\, a friend, or companion ; here the woman is so called. For the word, ~\ is doubtful, and p*T badly written. The verb pn, to empty, would naturally drop the feeble letter, and be written pt ; but here we have an unnecessary n between the two consonants. This is frequent in these inscriptions. It seems to have been used to soften the roughness of the Hebrew language. No. 4. ■^"y ns n pDT "nan T" m : yt th ■• IT p-\ A memorial. The lamentation for the city, which has been laid waste, in misery. Refresh the city which hath been left, rejected, Jehovah. The word nv is for nmv, a cry or lament ; m is for nn, to make to breathe; liyn is the Hiphil of iNty, to remain. As in every case all unnecessary letters are dropt, so the word TV of the first line is shortened into T in the second. (See No. 3.) The " remainder of the city " might belong to the destruction by Nebuchadnezzar or that by the Romans ; and as two out of the four inscriptions which use those words, are of Christian times, we may rather suppose that this also is of the later date. TBANSLATED AND EXPLAINED. 37 No. 6. : pi n^y -ny }tnn ah abvf : hh A peace-offering for the nation which is made poor, made bare, the crushed city. By night. Here the usual word anh is spelt a^b, as in No. 55a and No. 59a. win may be the Hiphil of m)1, to be poor. The double n in Tiy is a doubly long wavy line. (See No. 23.) We may suppose that the writer cut this inscription after dark, when the air was cool. No. 10. : in' m a^ : Nsp n chv A peace-offering for her that is cut short; give rest, Jehovah. In 2 Kings x. 32 we have the same expression used. When the northern kingdom of Israel was lessened by the armies of Syria, " Jehovah began to cut Israel short." The word KSp has 'the Chaldee feminine termination. - , The word m is for the Hebrew nu. Tt is usually a verb, to give rest, and so used in No. 4 and No. 178; but it is used as a noun in Esther ix. 16, and 2 Chron. vi. 41. No. 11. pan n iv : pp Kpj n A peace-offering for the afflicted, who is made to wander about, who is guiltless, cut short. We have the word pan in No. 74 ; and judging from the way in which the D in No. 1 66, though the last letter in the word, is 38 SINAITIC INSCRIPTION'S, drawn back to be the first, I venture to read this imperfect character here as a O. In Jerem. zxxi. 22, the Jews and Israelites who did not return home when Cyrus gave them leave to do so, are said to be " wandering about," and this word is there used. The cross at the head of this inscription may be the Egyptian character for " life," but it was more probably meant for the symbol of Christianity. The writer would not have used a pagan symbol. He was a Christian Jew. He does not contradict the Jewish opinion, that the nation's misfortunes were a punishment for guilt ; he probably means that the nation was " guiltless " towards its Roman masters. This may have been written in the second century, when the cross had already become a symbol of Christianity, and while there were yet Jews professing that religion. No. 13. : nhn ppi -\-\y abv/ : IT jny h2 pm ap A peace-offering for her that is made bare, broken to pieces, cast off'. Raise up the broken lest she die, Jehovah. Or the first line might read as nbnp pi, as if " the assembly " were naked, broken to pieces. But the above is to be preferred. In Micah iv. 7 we have the verb N^n, to cast off, to remove far off; or our word may be the adverb riNVn, beyond. In pm the middle letter is not wanted. The Hebrew word is pn, pn, or pn ; but here the cases are frequent in which the letter n is inserted. The word ]}W is remarkable; for in these inscriptions the feeble letters are usually dropt. If we divide the words differently, and read VU '^3, we equally have to note the unusual presence of the feeble letter. The □ in the second line is, for ornamental reasons, joined to the W in the line above. This may be compared to the ornamental o in No. 16b. The artistic taste shown on any ancient monument is often good evidence of its date ; and the neat shape of the letter D gives tu TRANSLATED AND EXPLAINED. 39 this inscription a late date, at least not before the rise of Christianity. No. 14. : nvpT ipy ap iy : abv A peace-offering. Strengthen, raise up her that is bound, rejected, O Jehovah. The second word ly may be taken as the imperative of liy, to strengthen. The word ipy is Chaldee; it is also used in Gen. xxii. 9. No. 15. : x~ip abn; A peace-offering for her that is cut short; a peace-offering for her that has been torn to pieces. We have the first prayer in No. 10, and the last word in No. 99a. In the first line the writer seems to have omitted the letter b in the first word by mistake, and then to have added'the second line to correct the first, unless, perhaps, the side of the o lengthened upwards may be the h. In No. 16c a mistake has been corrected in the same way. In both lines the n is unformed, and looks like the two letters pw. But the meaning of the whole justifies our reading. This fault of breaking the jf into two characters is very common. The T in f^p hangs down below the foregoing letter. No. 16a. : Yp n able A peace-offering for her that has been cut short. This is the same as in No. 15, but in neither of them have we the Chaldee feminine termination which we have in No. 10. 40 SINAITIC INSCRIPTIONS, No. 16*. : \np pa* : MpT pjnt ■.anbv A memorial for her that is awakened, pieces crieth aloud. A peace-offering. She that is broken in The first letter in psi, o memorial, is wanting ; the stone had been broken. From the same cause the first letter in the second line is doubtful. The word yap may be from yvp, cut short ; or it may mean awakened, as in No. 91. I prefer the latter because of the next clause. The C3 in the third line is enlarged ornamentally, and drawn backwards, as in No. 69 ; the n is a loop between the last two letters. The word ^^p^, broken in pieces, may point to Daniel vii. 7, where the fourth beast, the Greco- Syrian monarchy, is said to devour and break in pieces its oppressed subjects. We shall see that the writer of No. 27a had also been reading the Hook of Daniel. Like No. 91, this would seem to belong to a time when the nation had been roused to resist its Greco- Syrian oppressors. No. 16c. : pi am pi m m pai : in' A memorial for her that is trampled on, ground down, cast out, destroyed, broken to pieces. The city hath passed away. There is not much that is doubtful in this remarkable inscrip- tion, except in the second clause, which, however, is very clearly written. The writer's evident love of alliteration helps us, though it may have cramped him. The first two letters in \^^y^ are TKANBLAVED AND BZPLAINKD. 41 joined, or rather transposed. The t in xi, and the same in mj are badly formed. From am, a hand-mill, Gesenius gels nm, to grind, which may give us our word m, ground down. Or we may read it as the verb Refresh, at the beginning of a new sentence. Refresh her that is cast out. In D1J we have the Niphal of the verb noi, to destroy. This is an unusual case of an inscription keeping the feeble inflection. In No. 3, and several times elsewhere, I have taken ")> to mean TV, the city. The writer here, being dissatisfied with that way of spelling the word, has written it a second time as nir. This goes far to confirm our conjecture, as neither way of spelling the word is quite right. In Hosea xiii. 3, and Eccl. i. 4, the verb i^m is used absolutely, as here, tor passing away, ceasing to be. Our inscription would suit either the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, or when the city was more completely destroyed by the Romans. No. 17a. A peace-offering for her that is cut short, favour the despised one. The letter x is here broken into two pieces. This is often the case, and shows that it is not the fault of the copy. No. 174. ■ VP n p = " pyt : y abio A peace-offering for the ruined heap. Jerusalem calls aloud. Make her that is cut short to rejoice. Here the second word is doubtful, because its last letter is joined to the following word. But our reading is supported by No. 18. The two strokes, which I write as », and read as meaning D * 42 8INAITIC I.VSCRIFTIONB, Jerusalem, occur too often in these inscriptions to leave us in doubt about the meaning. It was only natural for the pilgrims to save the trouble of cutting so long a word on stone, and one which is used by so many. If our word T is allowed to mean city, then i> may be the two fii'st letters of D^tt^lT T, llie city of Jerusalem. But the meaning of the two strokes is more certain than this explanation. No. 18. : VP n p nti* : Nm 'p Hp•^ ay " ■This is a memorial for guiltless Jerusalem, the people cast out like stubble or chaff. The last two letters in the well-known first word are united. It is rare to meet with a pronoun as we do here. As in No. 11, the nation is called guiltless. In Nos. 13 and 14 I have rendered pi as crushed and rejected. In Jerem. xiii. 24, the people are to be scattered as " chaff before the wind." The same word is here used. No. 24. ! IT- jn T^H A peace-offering fm her that has broken free ; lengthen the small, O Jehovah. The first word in the second line is doubtful ; but it is more clear in Dr. Lepsius's copy. We have the word in No. 2"), and No. 26. TRANSLATED AND EXPLAINED. 45 See No. 21 for the word p-|D. This inscription and that may be of the time of the successful revolt of the Maccabees, which began B.C. 166. No. 25, : HN my i»n ynp -p** : ion nsr y-i nnnn n 7 ym njn n my y\n n m Lengthen the wretched piece cut off of the congregation that is cursed. Show favour to the he-he-he-he, injured, remembered, desired. Raise up the outside ; answer the Knowledge, O Jehovah. We might render the last clause Knowledge or Gnosticism is afflicted, but the parellelism with the foregoing clause rather justifies the above. It probably means " Give answer to the enigmatical Gnostic prayer," The last word in the first line has an k of the form of the printed letter ; it ends, however, with a wavy 1 drawn downwards, as in No. 22. The second line begins with i, of the printed form. The word i^t also has the same 1, although in the other inscriptions that letter is not so formed. The ^ is of a Greek form. The sign for Jehovah is followed by a bar for a stop, as also, perhaps, is the word IDH. These perhaps are the only places where a stop is used._ The congregation is the nation, or perhaps the governing body in Jerusalem, of which only a wretched portion now remains. In Esther x. 3, the preposition b follows the verb ri}n, as here, but with a different force. Of the five letters which follow, the first is of a rather different form from the others ; hence I take it for the article, and leave the other four to form a Gnostic enigmatic word, he-he-he-he. The word pn, the outside, may mean the wanderers at a distance. The last word. Knowledge, again tells us that this is by a Gnostic Jew, who is proud of his yvuiatg, knowledge, or science, which the Apostle Paul speaks contemptuously of, in 4C SINAITIC INSCRIPTIONS, 1 Tim. vi. 20 — "the antitheses or oppositions of science, falsely so called." The " Pistis-sophia," a Gnostic treatise of the third or fourth century, written by an Egyptian Christian, tells us that the name of God was written aaa otwbt, the name of Jesus (ii. This seems to be explained as pp?", perhaps for Filim. The Holy Ghost was ^^yi>, perhaps for irvtvfia. The Trinity was aaaa, aaaa, aaaa. From such whimsical reasoning as this, I venture to conjecture that our four letters nnnn mean hyn, the temple of Jerusalem, which may 'well be called "injured, remembered, desired ;" as the inscription was written after the destruction of the city by Titus in a.d. 71. This would seem to be among the most modern of our in- scriptions. It has both the N and the T of the form used in the MSS., and it throws important light on the progress of the writing towards our present letters. No. 26. Lemjthen, show favour, accept. The first word here is the same as in No. 25; but its last letter here has the final form •], which is not usual. No. 27a. . -i« ^y Nnpm in : yby by . n-\n s""? my y For the rib. Favour the anointing oil of the ruin that has been cursed. For the congregation a white [garment, of holiness]. The letters here are peculiar, but mostly very distinct. In the first line b]> is one character. The n and the T arc ornamentally made. In the second line there is an unfortunate flaw, and the l is doubtful. The y at the beginning of the second line may be for the preposition bv, as elsewhere. TBAN8LATED AND EXPLAINED. 47 If our pilgrim had been reading Daniel viL 5, he may perhaps have considered the unfortunate Judea as one of the three ribs which the bear had devoured. The holy anointing oil of Exodus XXX. 25, literally the " compound compounded after the art of the apothecary," which might not be used except for anointing the priests, may here be taken to mean the priesthood. The flaw in the second line we may fill up by conjecture, and I read Kifia^ a garment, giving to the word its Chaldee form. We may support this conjecture by supposing that our pilgrim had been further reading Daniel vii. 9, where a " white garment " is mentioned as worn by the Ancient of days. No. 274. : VP r\b n abv A peace-offering for her that is weary, cut short. The word rh may be for iiN^. The letters are remarkably well made. Or we may read n^T as one word, cast off, as in ,No. 13. No. 27c. Tl pp ab):f ■■ ^» nty : Hr\y ""y A peace-offering for her that is shortened in her generation, the ruined heap of ruins. Help the city. See No. 22 for the words " ruined heap of ruins ; '' and see also No. 18, where we have " a sick ruin." The three letters ~t\y, of exactly the same form, end the first line in No. 1, but we divide them there into two words. For T, see No. 16c, &c. No. 28. Nsnp p3t : = pbi abv A memorial for her that is cut short. Heal the persecution, O Jehovah. The words at the beginning of each line are joined ornamentally. 48 BINAITIC INSCRIPTIONS, I understand a\t> as a mistake for ab\D, unless perhaps the b is to be borrowed from the group of letters above. The b in p^T is of a Greek form, as in No. 13 and No. 25. The two strokes = I take to mean Jehovah, as in No. 25. They end the inscription, and must be distinguished from the ", which mean Jerusalem. The verb pVli to bum, and purstte hotly, in Ps. vii. 18, and X. 2, means to persecute. The latter is a late Psalm, as is probably the former. No. 29. \i ■■ nm "133 chv) ■ in' -m ny A peace-offering for the bold Confederation; accept my city that hath been trampled on, O Jehovah, In the first line we may read KWi bold, like |yu of Isaiah xzxiii. 19, from iiy, to be strong. I understand 133 to be the same as inn, a confederation, or republic, the word used by John Hyrcanus on his coins. He governed Judea as an independent sovereign from b c. 135 to B.C. 106, as chief priest for the Confederation of the Jews. See Madden's "Jewish Coinage." Our inscription may be of that time. No. 30. : " naa abvr A peace-offering for the Confederation of Jerusalem, This is a fragment ; the final stroke may perhaps be meant for a stop. We have a stop at the end of No. 25. This confirms our word Confederation in No. 29, because its simplicity forbids our giving to laa its other meaning of already, now at length. Our two inscriptions must be of about b.c. 130. TllANSLATED AND EXPLAINED. 49 No. 81. •• -\23 pha n obit; : ry P A peace-offcing for her that is nipped off, made strange, ■tstablish the counsel. The 1 at the end of the first line hangs down below the forc- gomg letter. The word pho is known only in Leviticus i. 15, and v. 8. for nipping oflF the head of a bird, ar.d may well be used figuratively for the fallen nation. Wc have the "counsel" spoken of in No. 48A. This I venture to consider as one of the oldest in the collection. The letters o, n. and p are jicculiar. It may have been written when Judea was under the mild government of the Persians, perhaps about the time of Nchemiah. The complaint IS but slight that the city or country, has been "made strange. " Jeremiah, in xix. 4, makes the same complaint against forci-n customs. The prayer "Establish the counsel" is explainea In No. 48*, as being the counsel or proposal to rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, unless we take it as the timber which Nehemiah had from the king's forest for the purpose. SeeNehem. ii. 8. The word bears either meaning. The inscription shows satisfaction with the state of affairs at home. No. 32. : p-\ ')y y ]n ]q abv/ A peace-offering, a lean portion, for the crushed city. The word p is for ma ; ]n is allied to pn, leanness. I take y for city, as in No. 133 and elsewhere; and y for the preposi- tion by, as in No. 76 and elsewhere. The writer, remembering the more literal meaning of the word « peace-ofFering, " that of an animal or portion of food for the priest, calls his inscription " the lean portion of a peace-oflFering." In Levit. vii. 33, this word nm, a portion, is used for the priest's share of the animal brought to the altar. 60 8INAITIC INSCRIPTIONS, No. 34. : iDE^ yp mn chvf A peace-offering for her that is trampled on. Inscribe His name. For Tn, as in No. 29, we here have ^^*1, which I consider a mistake. The known word Vp]fp, a mark {see No. 91a), is supposed to come from yip, to make a mark. Here we have it in the imperative mood. No. 96a. : n"? y\i.n n p-n : ids abiif A peace-offering for His throne. Slioot at the wicked of heart. The complex character which I venture to unravel and read as 1D3, need not he considered doubtful. In Exod. xvii. 16, the nation is called " the hand upon the throne of Jah " ; and thus Jerusalem may be styled Jehovah's throne, and be here meant. To understand pni as meant for ^^^, to shoot, is allowable. The h is of the Greek form, and the inscription one of the more modern. No. 366. : pb inn p : □"?» A peace-offering. Make the watch-tower which has been smitten to rejoice. This is not satisfactory. The letter p had been badly cut, and it joins the upper line. Ilcnce, I conjecture that the two last letters have been cut again, and very clearly. We may take ph for the Chaldee np^, bruised, or from the Hebrew pph, to be licked up, as blood. No. 37. bv : p3 "vp ">}} y ch\o : m"? p : b:f « n A peace-offering for the utter ruins of the guiltless city ; prosper the injured Jerusalem ; make the people to rejoice. The last word in the first line is finished in the second line. TaiNSLATED AND EXPLAINED. 51 The three letters between the i and the a in the second line are each a simple stroke; yet the words are scarcely doubtful. No. 38. nv p KTT rwp 3T qv : rv pn The people is sacrificed, ensnared, trodden down, crushed, blighted, Jehovah. The word pmiv; is divided between the two lines. I take it for t\1V, blighted, on the supposition that its last letter has been made to face the wrong way, and is to be read as t]. No. 40. : p^-\ np « pu^ Change the girding of sackcloth for Jerusalem, the rejected city. The second letter in pm is doubtful, but the word may be read by the help of No. 157, where it is clearly written. Tlie verb ^^^ in Chaldee is to surround. We have nearly the same words also in No. 49. For Tp we have np, as in No. 56. No. 41. : yi ay a • in' pT yvf A peace-offering for the nation which has broken free from a wicked people. Help the rejected, Jehovah. Sec No. 21 and 24 for the word piD. In Lain. v. 8, it is 52 8INAIT1C INSCI11FTI0N8, followed by the preposition D, as here. This is badly written, ur rather of an early date ; the V is reversed, but no part is doubtful. I take j/Vf as the imperative of }>\!;>, to save, a verb known to have existed fi-om its remaining forms. This is probably of the time of the Maccabees. We have the D of the early form, as in No. 31. The letters ts are united, as in No. 4A. No. 43. : pT pn A peace-offerinff for the bed devoted to destruction, the scanty allotment. The 1 at the end of the second line is a wavy line drawn downwards. The Hebrew W\)>, a bed, is in Chaldce Dl^- This figure of speech is used by Isaiah in Ch. xxviii. 20, to describe the nation's crip|)lcd state when overrun by the Assyrians : — " For the bed is too short for a man to stretch himself, and the covering too narrow to wrap himself." In 1 Kings xxii. 35 p>n is the hollow or bosom of the chariot ; so here pn may mean the hollow of the bed, while D1J? is the frame. But I have left the usual rendering of the word, as above. No. 44. : Km:i it.-in'p nbv A peace-offering for her that is cut short, that has been made to flee away. The first and the second k are not of the same form. But they are both clear, and thus we see that both forms were in use at the sanjc time. TRANSLATED AND EXPLAINED. 53 No. 45. pv n» Qhiff ' IT pT d;; " peii^zi:::' '-- "- -^'-^'^^ -'^ ^«-"^-' ^^^ ^^-^ As in No 3, and elsewhere, I take > as city for -,.y. The py would, by Amos ii ,3, mean pressed down af by a weight; n Chaldee.t.s«#..erf. See No. 110 for the same word. L see No 104, where we have the word p,, purified, which may possibly be the ti-ue readmg here. ' The word 1. is elearly city here and in No. 76; and whether it be considered an original word, or a corruption of -,.,, i„ either case It may furnish an etymology for Jerusalem. We may con- sider cz<,w)-^. as abm T, the city of Salem. No. 46. : in' pb n py pv m : ab\i; A peace-offc-ing; favour the one humbled, pressed down, that was hcked up, O Jehovah. Of the various meanings which can be given to pw, it is best to take the Chaldee pw, humbled, and to consider it a participle grouped with those which follow it, for alliteration sake. The first letter in py is here plain, and it confirms our reading in No. 45. In 1 Kings xxi. 19, and xxii. 38, the verb pph is used lor dogs licking up the blood of one slain. No. 47. : pm pr\ p-\ py d'?k? A peace-offering for her that is pressed down, broken, cast out removed far away. ' The middle letter in the last word is of an unusual form ; but in 54 81NAITIC INSCRIPTIONS, Ezek. xi. 15, 16, pm is used for removed far away from Jerusalem, This word may possibly here point to the Captivity ia Babylon ; when, after the Return, a large part of the nation remained scattered. The other words we have in No. 16c or No. 46. No. 48a. : p in : n -yy "h n ay chv A peact-offering for the people which is not, for the city which is trampled on; favour, accept. The two characters in the second line I understand as an attempt to make the word fj) more plain. The word lV is for the more usual vh, not. This is on the same piece of rock with the following, and is of the same style as to the form and size of the letters. But being above the following one, it is older than that, and thus older than No. 31, both which we give to the time of Nehemiah. This, therefore, may be of the time of the Captivity, when the Jews were not a people. No. 4.8A. A peace-offering for the counsel relating to the wall, Jehovah. The letter v having been badly formed at first, a second letter has been cut over it to remove doubt. The word nw may be either wood or counsel. We have it in No. 31'. The word KillfK I take as the Chaldee iTif N, a wall, derived from the Hebrew verb jri^, to set up, or set fast. It may refer to the wall of Jerusalem, and possibly our inscription may be of the time of Nchcmiah, who rebuilt the wall. The use of this particular TftANSLATED AND EXPLAINED. 55 word, instead of the more usual word mn a wall, may even be exj^amed by the histoiy of the times. When Nehemiah had leave to build the no,n. or wall, for the protection of the inhabitants ' against robbery, there was great jealousy against him, as if he were wishing to fortify the city. Hence this more modest word may have been ehosen. We have the Hebrew verb rvu> used in Isaiah xxvi. 1, written on the return from Captivity, b.c. 537- Our city ,s strong, salvation setleth up walls and ramparts": that IS, salvation makes walls unnecessary. No. 49. ^^;^ ppw TO n 10 : pi MT vp A memorial for her that is guiltless, oppressed, girded with sack, cloth, made bare, broken to pieces. Cultivate the pasture which is cut short, fl Jehovah. In No. 11 Jerusalem is called "guiltless." In Ezekiel xxi 14, the sword of Nebuchadnezzar is said to be besetting the nation, where our word inn is used. The word ppw must be taken, not as the noun pw, sackcloth, but as a verb, to put in a sack, the root of the noun; and the two verbs girded, put in a sack, may be translated girded with sackcloth. See No. 40 and 157, where we have the two words nnn and pw. This inscription may refer to the Roman armies encompassing Judea, In the prophets, Judea is often called nn, a couching place for flocks as here; and in Jerem. iv. 3, and Hos. x, 12, the word >j,' to cultivate the soil, is used figuratively, as here. Compare the 'last character in this word with nr, in No, 1 and 18, and with i> in No, 22. 56 SINAITIC INSCRIPTIONS, No. 51. □"? n yw ■• ubv : ]V A peace-offering. The failiny, crushed people crieth out ; Jehovah, change. The last word in the first line is very doubtful. It is badly copied. We have nearly the same strokes in No. 58. But here it is best to take them as =h. For the other words the same characters are used for 1, y, and t ; and again, in the last two words, , , and 1 are each a plain stroke. Yet 1 think that there is very little doubt about any word, except t=lb. For py. crushed, we might perhaps read pt, purified as by Buffering. No. 53. : -\iy d7JiJ A peace-offering for thy congregation. Here the last letter is doubtful. In No. 25 we have my, congregation, meaning the nation- No. 54. : rtin i^j? abv> n : DV pT^ >^^^ : DNT n b A peace- offering for the city of sighing. The righteous people are willing. Slay the buffalo. The second letter in the second line I have ventured to think reversed, and I have written not p, but 3. I took exactly the game liberty in No. 38. The last letter in pns is badly formed. TRANSLATED AND EXPLAINED. 57 The last letter in the second line I take as belonging to a letter at the beginning of the third line. See the word run, sighing, in No. 2c. " The righteous people are willing," seems to be an answer to Isaiah i. 19, where the same verb is used; "If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land." The Buffalo, called in the A. V. the Unicorn, is often used as figurative of iilgypt in passages written after the return from captivity. But, in later days, though the Jews blamed the Egyptians for not having helped them against the Babylonians, they felt no hatred against them ; and these pilgrims to Sinai were living comfortably on the banks of the Nile. Hence I venture to think that the Greco-Syrians are here meant, perhaps by placing the letters in- a wrong order, and writing OXT for q~ik, Syria. This may have been done to conceal the meauing. See No. 81 for a prayer against a~iM, Syria ; and see No. 1 13 for another case of probable concealment of the writer's meaning. No. 55a. Npi nv yip T>* rhn \yb : " pi d;> A peace-offering for the crushed ruin, the nation cast off, the city cut short, the broken people of Jerusalem. I suppose that ny, the participle ruined, in No. 22, is here used for the substantive % a ruin. The second line ends with a complex character, which I venture to unravel by the help of other inscriptions. Thus No. 138 tells me to complete the word n^n, of which only the first two letters are clear. From No. £7c, and No. 97, I learn that the lower portion of this complex group is the word fip ; and lastly, the upper portiou of the lengthened 1 stands like > between y and 1, thus making the word Ty. 58 SINAITIC INSCRIPTIONS, No. 556. : pT ay A memorial therefore for the crushed ruin, the rejected people. The writer evidently quotes the last inscription which is on the same piece of rock. The Chaldee " therefore " seeras to say so. The last word in the first line, for the Chaldee feminine, has not H, but instead of it y. See No. 5 arc again written more clearly, in order to remove the difficulty. A similar case of double writing is seen in No. 16c. The W here, as in No. 138, approaches our printed letter. We must suppose that in this case the labourer who with the tent-pin and hammer cut into the rock the letters that had been painted there, cut them badly ; and hence they were painted a Kccond time nudcmeath, and then cut again. Na 63. : IN b vnn vhvt Prosper her that is crushed to the ground. For abjy we have the less usual word nbw, but with the final vowel changed, according to Chaldee custom. The word KHD is in Isaiah xxi. 10, as crushed, in the A. V. threshed. The last letter in the word mK, ground, is omitted. This was not done in TBANSLATED AND EXPLAINED. 61 carelessness, for in No. 103 we have the word also spelt with only two letters. As in Chaldee, the last letter was so far softened that the word was written y^^<, we can understand how it was sometimes omitted altogether. No. 64. : Kpy Kp ah\o A peace-offering for her that hath been vomited out, oppressed. Lev. xviii. 28, threatens the Israelites with being vomited out by the land, as the nations had before been vomited out. This would less suit a time after the destruction of Jerusalem by the llomans, when the unhappy Jew had no country to pray for. No. 65. : r\vh nppa A peace-offering for the city pressed down, crushed, cast off, mocked, weary. This is a fragment with some doubt about the last letters in each line, and it must be read by the help of other inscriptions, par- ticularly No. 138. The d in the first line is to be read a second time as the first letter in the second line; and the last letter in the second line is perhaps to be read also in the first line. Thus we gain the word nn^n, which, we have in No. 13, though there without the last letter. That the loop at the end of ^ is the letter n we learn from No. 139i, and No. 82. We have the word ppD in No. 83e. Our inscription written in this fanciful manner is of a late date, when the Alexandrian penmen were studying ornamental writing. 62 8INAITIC INSCRIPTIONSi, No. 67. Nxnp abvf : \-\ p : yp n i A peace-offering for her tJuit is cut short, and made lean, alienated. Show favour, accept. The sloping Btroke at the beginning of the second line is ^, and; it is our one example of the employment of the copulative. We may take yp as from yp>, to he removed, or from ypj, alienated. No. 69. : NpT nyo : DID vm Sluing off, bang thrown off; the horse is rearing. The word Kp^, emptied, may well mean that the saddle is emptied, or rather likely to become so. The word yn, to leap up, we have in Job xli. 22 (14). The writer was writing on the rock while sitting on his horse, in order to place his inscription at a height ; and he found it difficult to do so. No. 70. : pt py nbvj : in* ON nn A peace-offering for her that is pressed down, purified. Refresh me, O Jehovah. The word p; may be taken from ppti to purify. Here on is used for the objective me ; in the Bible it is always the nominative. Compare No. 82, where we seem to have ptpt. TRANSLATED AND EXPLAINED. No. 71a. 63 A peace-offering for the heap of ruins, fainting [under'] *, profaned, trodden down. The word mT may be for nn, sick; but there is an unknown character joined to the last letter, which makes the word doubtful. The unknown character may have had a concealed meaning ; in No. 2b, the same character means the nation's oppressors. No. 714. " py ay o^ : in' Mm A peace-offering for the people pressed down, the sick Jerusalem, O Jehovah. The Hebrew verb nn> '<* be sick, will justify our word Km, with its Chaldee feminine termination. Or it may come from ni^, to cast forth, a word used in Isaiah Ixvi. 6. No. 72. : yxp pT np spa ay nbv A peace-offering for the people guiltless, blasphemed, rejected, destroyed. A stone to be desired. The 3 in ]3K is not of the same form as that in the first line; the second line is added by another hand. " A stone to be desired" may be compared to "the stone which the builders rejected " of Psalm cxviii. 22. ^ 8INAITI0 IN8CBIFT10N8, No. 74. pDn n P3t ■? : in' pn ys For a memorial for her thai is wandering, the ruined heap that hath been gleaned, destroyed, rejected, Jehovah. This is a very scholar-like inscription. The i is carefully dis- tinguished from the > by the stroke sloping. In Jerem. xxxi. 22, we have the word port, to wander about, used for those Jews who did not return to Judea when allowed to do so by the Persians. (See No. 1 1 for this word.) In Jerem. vi. 9, we have bb'iy, gleaned, for the ruined state of the nation. We have not often in these inscriptions a word with its full number of feeble letters as here. The words with which the lines end are in each case divided, and continued in the next line. No. 9 in Grey's collection seems to be another copy of this inscription. No. 75. T n n abv pn^y rm an-\ rt y n : in' A peace-offering for the famine of the dig, which is trampled on, oppressed, the ruined heap, which is asleep, Jehovah. This is a very carefully written inscription, but the Gnostic writer's chief care was so to range his letters, that when read from top to bottom, we should find the word he- he-he-he, which we have in No. 25, and have there endeavoured to explain. In the first line the two letters between i and 1 are doubtful, but the language very much limits our choice. The rest is pretty clear. The 1 in TBANKLATED AND EXPLAINED. 65 the second line is a sloping stroke as often. The pair of letters 1 -i are alike in the second and third lines. Like No. 25, this may be of the second or third century of our era. No. 76. pt T PDt y pip"? d"? n M : NT D^^: y For a memorial of the purified city, the people licked up, bound, put in fear. The word oai, to bind, is in Exod. xiviii. 28, and xxxix. 21. The single letter below the whole I do not understand. The same letter at the beginning is for the preposition bv, as in No. 82. No. 78. : m MPT : Tj; abv A peace-offering for the congregation, the payment uf a vow. The verb pT is to spit ; it seems to be used here like our word to liquidate a debt. The i hangs down behind the •, but is to be read as if on the other side. The word i*T is Chaldee. No. 80a. : my '«3 p yn : Npn uy d'?» m O Beloved, a peace-offering for the people cast out ; favour, accept the poor of the City. We do not in the Bible find God so addressed as " Beloved," but see No. 122. In upi we have the Chaldee final K, while in 'N3 we )iave that letter of another form. In No. 44 we have, in 66 8INAITIC INSCRIPTIONS, the same way, the two forms for that letter. In the last word we have a final vowel more than is wanted. This prayer for the poor of the city reminds us of the custom of sending up alms to Jerusalem, which we read of in the Acts of the Apostles. No. 806. : ? abm A peace-offering for ?. This one word is followed by a complex character which I do not understand. It probably represents the writer's own name, as in No. 96A. No. 80c. A memorial of lamentation. A peace-offering for the people ; the Decree it determined. This badly written inscription has only one doubtful letter, the letter n. The writer has added an unnecessary letter to the word D)^ ; but perhaps he meant to continue his writing on that line. I Uke ilMT for the Hebrew /n, or the Chaldee KHT From the word ]CVt, I venture to think that our pilgrim is referring to Daniel ix. 27, " that which has been determined shall be poured out upon the desolator." He is satisfied that the destruction of the Roman power is at hand. No. 81. : " ray n p3t : Di« IT nat A memorial for the afflicted Jerusalem. Slaughter, O Jehovah, Syria. This carefully cut inscription is Hebrew, not Chaldee, as we see TRANSLATED AND EXPLAINED. 67 by the first word. It leads us to understand that the form of the M here is Hebrew, as we hare seen that the other form of that letter is Chaldee. This was probably written soon after the revolt of Judas the Maccabee against the Greco-Syrians, B.C. 166. No. 82. : p\'p\ n : yap m Thus gather in ; make her that hath been thoroughly purified to rejoice. This is a fragment. The first character has the n in the form of a loop at the bottom of the 1. The word may be for n?. In Jerem. xxiii. 3, we have the word {'3p in " I will gather up the remnant of my fiock," for bringing home the dispersed Israel- ites at the close of the Captivity, b.c. 538. This was written on some occasion of rejoicing ; perhaps on the Maccabee victory over the Greco-Syrians. See No. 76 for the word purified. This inscription was surrounded by numerous figures of men and animals, representing the crowds that were to be gathered in. The picture explains the word " thus." No. 83a. : Y"! in : apt ov \-)yi A memorial for the crushed people. Show favour, accept. These letters stand upon a line which hides the bottom stroke of each, and thus removes the distinction between i, 3, and i. There are several inscriptions in Mr. Grey's collection which are made illegible by such a line. The next line I do not understand. 68 BINAITIC INSCRirriONS, No. 836. : •• T n ppo A peace-offering for the wound of the people, mocked **, In Job XX. 24, i^n is to strike, to wound, though it more often means to changr. The word ppQ here confirms the duubtfu' readings in No. 65 and No. 138. No. 84. ST Ft : Ycn : rx< pn "vy NSTp ny ' : vhu A memorial. Show favour, accept the cruihed city, O Jehovah. The renowned ornament is cut off. All the letters in the first line are joined together. The h in the fourth line faces the wrong way. In Ezek. vii. 20, ^fy, ornament, is used for the costly temple-service ; and no doubt that is here meant. In No. 145c we have the word t<~ip, renowned; here it has a final K in addition. This may have been written when Antiochus Epiphancs, B.C. 167, stopt the daily sacrifices in the Temple. No. 85. : 12 Dm m These words are followed by a cross representative of Chris- tianity, as in No. 86b. Thus tread down lying Chrislianitj/. At the beginning of the line is the complex character, with which No. 82 begins. The word DiTI I read as loni ; the two letters are often inter- TEANSLATBD AND EXPLAINED. 69 changed. Buitorf, in his licxicon to the Talmnd, has the word DH as bruised. The word " thus " may perhaps have been explained by the action of the figures around, which Mr. Grey mentions, but does not describe. In No. 156 we render 13 as hnely, which is also its meaning in Hebrew; but here the cross of the hated Christianity points to its other meaning. No. 86a. : yip tt^P n Dbio : mv IT : ai"? ny ri A peace-offering for the stubble thai hath been put away. Favour the despised ruin ; O Jehovah, change. In No. 23 the unhappy nation is compared to stubble. In Ezek. xxiii. 22, we have the word nypi, alienated, turned away, which explains our word yyp. The word JiV is Chaldee, softened from the Hebrew 33!b, to demise. But perhaps the word is not s\b, but 1^ not, meaning that is destroyed; and the character which I have tLkcn as i in the second line, may be the middle letter of the word tt»ip in the first line. See No. 36a for a 1 so written. But yet more probable is it that this character, joined on as it is to another, is to do duty in both lines, as 1 in the first line, and as j in the second. We have examples to support this conjecture in No. 65, No. 138, and No. 172. No. 61 ends with the same prayer to Jehovah, in the word "change." No. 86i. -1 nb n cbv tVJ ■? «P3 p :pV^ This is followed by a cross for Christianity. A peace-offering for the rejected people, guiUless, on behalf of what remains, on behalf of the society of Christianity. The word pi, rejected, is divided, and the latter letter, at the 70 8INAITIC INBCRIFTIONS, beginning of the second line, bas been made useful as an animal's head. The next word might be read Kpi, but seeing what it follows, Mp] is more probable. In No. 72 we have the same word " guiltless/' which is here to be understood not as denying the justice of God's punishment, but the justice of the Roman government. The word p^ may be explained by npD^, a company, in 1. Sam. xix. 20. Our inscription may have been written by a Jewish Christian in the second century. No. 87. ni Dp : pon n : IT A vow of a profane [or unworthy] peace-offering. Increase her that it cut short, her that is wandering, raise up the generations, Jehovah. The word nt is Chaldee for a vow. The word pon, wandering, we had in No. 11 and No. 74. The last two letters in pi are joined in an unusual manner, which makes the word doubtful. It has the Chaldee plural termination. The writer was under a vow to make this pilgrimage, and the inscription is a proof that he had performed his vow. No. 88. : pT CDy p3T : n abv A sickly peace-offering ; make the rejected people to rejoice triumphantly. From ]r\, to sing, we have the duplicate form p]1, to rejoice thoroughly. Such an expression belongs to a time of triumph. See No. 91e. TRANSLATED AND EXPLAINED. Two lines from No. 89 : — 71 : nx "73 " pT qjr Mr. Grey's note upon this is " Uncertain." The rest of the inscription may have been badly copied. A peace-offering for the broken people of Jerusalem, wholly afflicted. No. 90. YP in : P3t : IT Mibu' B 9 A memorial. Favour her that is cut short, failing, O Jehovah. This is badly written. The Jt is divided, as is often the case. In Hebrew "hw is quiet, in Chaldee /ai/iny. The Greek letters tell us that it is of a late time. They may represent the writer's name. No. gia. A memorial for her that is wandering, tied about the neck, O Jehovah. This is a print-mark of rejoicing, O Jehovah. We have the word pon in No. 87 and No. 126. The T in Tj is a wavy line drawn downwards as in No. 22, &c. The word ypyp, for a print-mark, or incision, is used in Levit. xix. 28. It is a suitable word for an inscription cut in the rock. The first word in the second line, whether read as snn or K3n, is in either case the Chaldee this. The thought of a memorial being " tied about the neck " is borrowed in the very words from Prov. vi. 21. That the 72 SINAITIC INSCRIPTIONS, iDscription on the rock shonid be called such a memorial is not a more violent figure of speech than that used in Ezod. xiii. 9 where the unleavened bread eaten at the feast is said to be for " a sign to thee upon thy hand, and for a memorial between thine eyes." The inscription probably belongs to the time of the Maccabee success against the Greco-Syrians. No. 916. : trv lyabn : ynp spj n> abv v For a peace-offering for the guiltleu city, that is awakened. Clothe it, O Jehovah. The first letter I take as representing the preposition by. The word ynp I have usually rendered cut short; here I venture to take it, fip, ati)aA«n«i, which suits better with the word which follows, and with the next inscription, which is from the same piece of rock. Hebrew writing is full of words thus chosen playfully. If the nation has been awakened by the Maccabees from its sleep, it may be said to need clothing. The Hiphil form of the verb is unusual in these inscriptions. No. 91c. : • • YpJ DJ n Kps TO n abv y For a peace-offering for the rest of one who is disturbed, the sleeping one who is awakened, * • The writer has made the one letter y serve for the beginning of this line and of the last. No. 914. The translation here is less satisfactory, because the end of the line is broken. But the one confirms the other. We have here cpj, the Niphal of yip, as above we had the Hiphil form of a verb. The writer was evidently a man of exactness. TRANSLATED AND EXPLAINED. 73 No. 9\d. : vp ^^^ b i\y : Nm ■• of the other inscriptions. The division of the words may in some places be doubtful. We ijave ']^n, passed away, used absolutely in Eccl. i. 4, and Jercni. xxii. 10. We have the word \'\i~t, to sing triumphantly, in No. 88. The doubled form of the verb marks strong feeling. The above five inscriptions in No. 91 seem to be the work of one hand ; and the purpose of the writing shows that they are so. Each confirms the translation of the others, and they, no doubt, belong to the time of the Maccabee rebellion. They may be the peace-offerings and memorial offerings of five friends who made the pilgrimage in company, and who allowed one of the party, a better writer than the rest, to imprint upon the rock these words for himself and his four companions. The two letters yy, which seem to mean Jcsusalem, may represent the ny >y, ruined ruin of No. 22, or perhaps 'y % a ruin of ruins. As the Jews of Egypt gave to these words the softer sound of Ai Ai, they may be originals of the », which more often mean Jerusalem, as in No. 17. The inscriptions with the word or letters » maybe more modern than these. 74 gINAITIC INSCRIPTIONS, No. 91/. A peace-offering for her thai is mocked, faint. Raise up therefore her that is defiled, O Jehovah. There is much here that is doubtful. Though on the same piece of rock with the former, it is not by the same hand. I render the second word as if it were jy^, supposing the y to be softened, as in the case of the Chaldee jjV, to mock, I take ]hr\ as the Chaldee, therefore, like the \nb with the same meaning in No. 55b. It seems to refer to the foregoing inscription, as of course it is the later of the two. The word b\]f we had in No. 74, though more correctly spelt with a second b. In Job xvi. 15, it is rendered defiled. The city at the time of the Maccabee rebellion may well be said to have been defiled. No. 91^;. : yp:i3 pj« y b □'^e; Prosper the ruined heap that groans, having been broken up. No. 91A. : in> n t y'jD Nsin ch\cf : iii'J m : p mp A peace-offering for the outside of the rock, the plundered city, O Jehovah. The bald one rejoices. Refresh her that has been set in order. For the word T, see iy in No. 91a. In each case the T has' been drawn down behind the letter instead of being in front of it. The word n 1 can only understand by supposing that the first letter has been reversed, as is sometimes the case. I read it as TRANSLATED AND EXPLAINED. 75 9 i2, plundered, a word which we have in No. 100. Remark that » is a long stroke, and 1 a short stroke, in in*. We have seen that the upper inscriptions on this piece of rock may be supposed to be of the hopeful time of the Maccabee struggle ; and we may conjecture that this belongs to the time when for twenty years the castle of Jerusalem, here called Sela, the rock, was able to resist the attacks of the city. The city is here called " the outside of Sela," and it seems to have been " set in order," or reduced to regular government, first by Judas, and then by Simon. This explanation of our inscription is supported by Psalms Ix. and cviii., written when the Maccabees were not masters of the castle of Jerusalem, which was held against them by the nobles of Judah, whom they reproachfully called Edomites. Psalm Ix. asks, — Who will bring me into the besieged city ? who will lead me into Edom P meaning, as I suppose, into the castle. Psalm cviii. says, — Who win bring me into the city of AlibzarP Mibzar is another name for Sela, or Petra, the rock, and it supports our conjecture that "the outside of the rock" may be Jerusalem, when the city was not master of the castle. No. 04. Npi T obvf i pi Dnp : brrp A peace-ofdring for the crushed city of the congregation. Raise up the rejected one. After the return from Captivity the congregation of Israel, meaning the true Jews as opposed to the strangers living among them, was named bnp- (See Ezra and Nehemiah, and the Lexicon to the Talmud.) Before the Captivity it was named HTy. {See Exod., Lev., and Numb.) 76 8INAITIC INSCRIPTIONS, No. 95a. : in' m "73 nx ay pa? ./I memorial for the ruined heap of the lion [citij], which is wholly blood, O Jehovah. The first word would be quite illegible without the help of the other inscriptions ; the rest is pretty clear. In the second and third words one K is joined to the other. Jerusalem is called in Isaiah xxix. 1, Vk >*IK, the lion of God; and here it bears the same name. No. 954. Dip : m -ip n -)W w i^ r\v -\p abvf Ti -\^ aw : pi py : in' A humble peace-offering fur the ruin that has been cursed, the ruin of the wall of the city that is cast away. Raise up her that is afflicted, broken. Preserve the beloved city, Jehovah. The three letters grouped in one character, here read as ^w, wall, are seen in No. Il7, but there they are better formed. This inscription, which is on the same stone as the last, plays upon the words there used, and calls the city, not the " ruins of the lion," but the "i-uins cursi-d." No. y5c. : •• n inN : □'71:' Lenytheii the * *. A ptuce-uffcrinr/. TRANSLATED AND EXPLAINED. No. 96fl. 77 For a memorial for Jerusalem, * * a heap of ruins, the people * *. Here we have the same two letters for Jerusalem as in No. 91e. No. 964. p ma t p3T : nt yn N A memorial for ?, driven away, vomited forth, and his foreign companion. We have the word ma in No. 44, and Np in No. 64. The writer puts an unknown character for his own name. In No, 1 we have the same letters, it Vl, {oihh foreign companion, or wife. No. 97. «sp n abvf \ IT Yip A peace-offering for the end cut off, Jehovah. We have the same group of letters, which I read as yip, in No. 27c, and in No. 55. No. 98. : «pm ■? 11131 •■ i"i> n i?pv:'y A memorial for her that is rejected. Favour the oppressed, the vile heap of ruins, that is trampled on, Jehovah. The b in the first line is doubtful ; but we have that letter belter 78 SINAITIC INSCRIPTIONS, TRANSLATED ANO EXPLAINED. 79 formed in the same position in No. 91d. In K>y we have a final letter more than usual. The 1 in 11 is badly formed. The word |^p ia Chaldee for the Hebrew bp. No. 99a. : yip n pur n pat : IT TTie piece torn off. A memorial for those that are humbled, faUmg, pwrified, O Jehovah. Here the letters p0 are joined as if they were one character, y, whereas the v is more often broken into the two. The word p\Vf, humbled, is Chaldee. That and the next word have the Chaldee plural form. The t in ^IX has the form of y. This seems to be a prayer, not for Jerusalem or Judea, but for those at a distance. No. 99A. : IT pan n A peace-offering for the city. Accept her that is made to wander, Jehovah. In T wc have 1 of the form used in No. 27. It is of a late date. The word pon we have had in No. 91a, and elsewhere. No. 100. : pn ta -ynn : o^iy A peace-offering. Lengthen her that is appointed as a prey. The letters are pretty clear, except that the T is like a p. The meaning of the last two words is rather doubtful. 1 No. 102. : Nsp n vhv : iTm nv A peace-offering for her that is cut short; give rest, Jehovah. This is the same as No. 10, except in the chaMcters for the word Jehovah. No. 103. : IN b KHD nbv A peace-offering for her that is trodden to the ground. This is the same as No. 63, and with the last word spelt in the same defective way. No. 104. : pt -vy A peace-offering for the righteous people of the city that has been purified [like «7per]. Purified by its sufferings, not purified after the defilement of the Gentiles. No. 105. UpT T 11« : m\ NDN Lengthen the broken city, the cast-off nation. The letters are badly formed, but the reading of each word is scarcely doubtful. It may be of an early date. The use of the word ^^N, to lengthen, in these inscriptions, may be explained by Eccl. vii. 15, and viii. 12, where it is used 80 SINAITIC INSCRIPTIONS, absolutely, and means Lengthen the life. Thus our inscription means Lengthen the life of the broken dty. As the Book of Ecclesiastes was written about B.C. 220, we naturally find it in agreement with these inscriptious. No. 106(1. : pT ny n : ibi?j : "jdw pan A feeble memorial; they are defiled; make the rejected people to rejoice. The words i^yi and p may be doubtful. The other letters are perfectly plain, though in a loose running hand. The little sloping stroke after the b is i. The word i!?yj may be the Niphal of ^^y, to defile. The letters arc of an early form. This might belong to the time of the Maccabee success. No. I06b. : in^ n33 np pi at arh abv A peace-offering for a people that melts away, is broken, bowed down, made alien, O Jehovah. In aib the b is small, the □ hangs down below the i. The > in nDl joins the » in in'. But I think no word is doubtful. We have the word naj in No. 152. No. 107. 33t inat : vp 1N!J Memorial for the tail of a sheep cut off. Every letter is distinct in this interesting inscription, except the letters jM, which are joined together. The first word has its full number of letters, whereas it usually has only four letters. TRANSLATES AND EXPLAINED. 81 The writer probably had in his mind the words of Amos iii. 12, in which the prophet compares thenorthem Israelites in their ruined state to the two legs and piece of an ear of a sheep, which had been left when a lion had devoured the rest. As it is Hebrew, not Chaldee, we may suppose that our writer was an educated man. No. 109. abv A peace-offering. Give rest, favour the city that is a ruin, bowed down. Some of these letters are very doubtful. No. 110. py T> obvt : n> pi Qm A peace-offering for the oppressed city, pity her that is rejected, O Jehovah. No. 111. : ay \njn This is followed by a Christian cross like that in No. 86. A memorial for the people. As there is no word of enmity to the cross, we may suppose that this was by a Jewish Christian, and if so, before the separation between Jews and Christians in the third century. No. 112. : T bi)^i n arh ssp n abv; A peace-offering for her that is cut short, the injured people, O Jehovah. The final letter probably represents the word Jehovah. Our o 82 SINAITIC INSCBIFTIONS, word bj/M may be from the verb ^iy, which we have in Isaiah zzvi. 10, and Psalm Ixxi. 4. No. 113. T^'vy D^n : n:{1 in : pat d A part of a memorial. de»troy the rich men. Show favour, be gracious. Utterly This inscription has several pecaliarities. It begins with the ' preposition n, as does No. 1 78, instead of the more usual b. This word I understand to mean a part of. The t in p^j is Hebrew, while Kin is Chaldee, as is the plural termination of the last word. 1 conjecture that the name of the enemies who are devoted to destruction has been purposely spelt wrong; beginning with y instead of K, thus concealing the writer's meaning. The enemies meant are probably the Greco-Syrians under Antiochus Epiphanes, who are called 'iWH in Numbers xiiv. 23 and 24. In Isaiah liii. 9, we seem to have TIfy, rich man, in the same cautious way, written, as I conjecture, for •ynVH, Assyrian. Speaking of Zerubbabel, who had looked forward to dying in Babylon, the writer says, " By the transgression of my people violence came upon him ; and he prepared his grave with the wicked men, and with the rich man among bis dead men." The wicked men are the Babylonians ; the rich man is the Assyrian tyrant whose monarchy had been before overthrown, and who is described in Isaiah xiv. 4—20, as lying in hell among his dead men, and waiting to receive the Babylonian king. The two passages support one another, and lead us to think that in each TB'y is written for "iWK, not carelessly, but for reasons of prudence. Our inscription may have been written between 175 and 142 B.C., about the same time as No. 81, in which the enemy is called mx, or Syria. As the Jews living in Egypt had no opportunity of placing a real offering on the altar to Jehovah until Onias IV. built that at TRANSLATED AND eZPLAINED. 83 Onion, b.c. 149, our inscription, which is called the "part of a memorial offering," could not have been written earlier. No. 114a. : n^ pT -\p jnp ttT abv/ A lean peace-offering for the torn portion of the rejected city, Jehovah. The word ttl is not known ; but it may be taken to be from nn, to grow lean. 1 suppose lp to be written for mp or ri'lp, city, as in No. 40. This might have been written in the time of the Maccabees, when for twenty-three years a part of the city was held by the enemy. No. 116. : vp rtabv A peace-offering for her that is cut short. No. 116. : pp-i 'TT p-i bi n a'?v A peace-offering for her that is poor, cast out, beloved, spit upon. The first line of No. 117. : in^ pnn nn n y *iw 7^e wall of the famished beloved heap of ruins is the bosom of Jehovah. The only doubtful letter in this interesting inscription is the ) in the first word. It is made doubtful by being lengthened upwards so as to give to it the form of a cross, and thus indirectly to show the writer's Christianity. 84 SINAITIC INSCRIPTIONS, No. 119. s m D^i^ pT ay abv : YP A peace-offering for the people rejected and passed away, the people driven away, cut short. The letter y at the end of the first line seems not wanted. Possibly the first letter in the word was omitted, and then the omission supplied in the second line. No. 120. : pa i"? Di iV n di^ D^t£^ A peace- offeriry for a people that is not, a nation passed away, despised. The words i^ and ai are doubtful. The first we have in No. 48a and No. 149a; the second maybe for nOK, a nation, which we hare in No. 123b. The letter 1 is here often used for K. No. 121. Tiy p^p n 1 • • n3' n *? : 2n ri : nvy mK ppt For the memorial. * * her that is cut short, made bare, purified, gathered, awakened. Favour, accept. After the word " inemorial " we have a space. The word pTtp is for fxp, with the harshness of the last letter softened. The word ppt, to purify, is used in a moral sense in Malachi iii. 1. The word nvy is doubtful. No. 122. p in : «pT DV ch\t> Ti : mt na m Beloved, a peace-offering for the cast-out people ; show favour,' accept the cast away, wandering, scattered. In No. 80a, also, God is so addressed as Beloved. The first letter in the last word is doubtful. I TRANSLATED AND EXPLAINED, 85 No. 123a. : xra Vidi A memorial of one who has fled away. The writer so styles himself. He had fled from the oppression of his country's conquerors. No. 123A. : nt;> : b\ now obzf A peace-offering for the despised nation. Give help. In Lam. i. 8, we have the word hVi to despise; but the first letter in the word is doubtful. We have the word ndn in No. 105, and Ci for DK 'with the same meaning in No. 120. No. 124. : pi T" p3t VP "? al? n p : ^»^1D it A memorial for the city that hath been purified [by sufferings'] . Make the people to rejoice at last, O Jehovah, who art to be feared. The first word in the second line is doubtful, but our reading , of it is made probable by No. 91A. In Isaiah viii. 12, 13, we have HniD as an object of reverence. This interesting inscription, like No. 91 A, probably belongs to the time of the Maccabee successes. No. 125. : KJ3 NpT tn ab\it A peace-offering for one that is cut down, crushed, sore wounded. See No. 172 for our worJ tji. I venture to take »tu as the 86 8INAITIC IN8CKIFTION8, same as yjj, wounded. The last letter is softened, as is not un- common in Chaldee. No, 126. : piQn nbvj : IT rhbn p A peace-offering for her that is wandering; ettablish her that is mad [with oppression}, Jehovah. We had the word pon in No. 91a, and elsewhere. For our word n5>^T8eeEccI. vii. 7, "Oppression maketh the wise man mad." But perhaps the second ^ is a mistake, and we should read rfyn, cast off, as in No. 13. This inscription may have been written in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, fifty years after the Book of Ecclesiastes. No. 127. Do Thou change. A worthless peace-offering for her that is wholly guiltless. ' We have the prayer for a change in No, 40 and No. 51. The last two words are only slightly different froip those used towards Edom, in Jerem, xlii. 12, that it shall not be "wholly unpunished." The writer shows his love for alliteration. No. 128. -\v n !■< m : Nnt y : IT p-i A memorial for her that is driven forth, Jerusalem, which is rgected, scattered; refresh the city that remaineth rejected, O Jehovah. These expressions might belong to the time of the Captivity, but the writing has no appearance of antiquity. TBAN8LATID AND EXPLAINED. 87 No. 129. :. YP n A peace-offering for the poor nation, Jehovah. Prosper the city of Jerusalem, that has been cut short. For the two horizontal strokes meaning Jehovah, see No. 25 and No. 28. The \t! in the word bv! is badly formed. I take that word as the imperative of n^tC', The letter v in the last line is separated into two parts by the i in the second line. This inscription proves that in other inscriptions, it was not from a fault in Mr. Grey's copy that the letter was so divided. No. 130. rtyh nan T in : \)^>'^ Tiy ps ^nj n *it3 : p7 : VT vp A memorial for the society which is spit upon. Favour her that is crushed, made bare, broken. Separate [as a Nazarite'] her who laments, being cut short, O Jehovah. In 1 Sam. xix. 20, we have npnV, a company. The word may perhaps be used for the society of Christians, as iu No. 86b, or it may be a mistake for bnp, the usual word for the congregation of Israel. I suppose pm to be fol fsn, with the last letter softened, as in No. 22 and No, 121. The fourth line ends with a doubtful letter. No. 133. : pt -\y Nsip n qVk; A peace-offering for her that is distressed, the purified city. These letters are badly formed, and the middle letter of the first word is badly placed. 88 6INAITIC INSCRIPTIONS, No. 134. : w"? n DE^ : ab^t; A peace-offering. Give the kneaded ^doughi]. The writer may mean that he has given the kneaded dough to the priest at Onion, and does not mean his iuscriptiou to be the whole of his peace-offering. No. 135. vn chv : abv : bpy > A peace-offering. Prosper the poor of the city that hath been wronged. See No. 69a for another example of ahv being repeated ; but there a difference is made in the spelling between the noun and the verb. No. 136. : pT n : Npl 1' Cf7}tf : itfN yn np A peace-offering for the crushed city ; contend for the broken one ; take ajiery dart. In the second line the first and the second n are unlike ; but they are both met with in these inscriptions. No. 137. : rw in : m qk; : o'jiy A peace-offering. Give rest, favour her that is bowed down. I read this by the help of No. 109, which tells us that the character looking like b is ), that we have n and n joined, and that the final two strokes may again be n. TBANSLATED AND EXPLAINED. 89 No. 138. '■ awp "IN nub rtppo A peace-offering for the perverse city, cast off, despised, weary, cursed, stubborn. In this interesting inscription it will be seen that the second line makes use of the letter D, which had already been used in the first line. In No. 65 this letter in the same way is to be read in both lines. Again we find another help in No. 65, where the letter n, which ends the word iiK^ in the second line, is also used for the end of nn^n in the first line. The circular flourish at the end of the first line is the letter n, as we see in No. 1896. We have here also the same fanciful writing. The ") in nN hangs down below the first letter in the word. The u; is of a different form from that usual in these inscriptions, and more like our printed letter. We have the same in No. 62 ; but here it is in a place which allows of no doubt. The writer seems to be very much dissatisfied with what was going on in Jerusalem, which city was often torn to pieces by the angry passions of the parties who were struggling for power. This belongs to Christian times, as we judge from the ornamental writing, but to a time before the city was destroyed by the Romans. No. 139a. pb n ^n «■?;« n m"? obt:; : pD b'pa Tp srrp ns-i p : n^ i A peace-offering fur the people which is failing, sick, which hath been gleaned, O Jehovah. Favour, accept the blindness of the city which is brought to an end, despised. We had the word biH in No. 99a, with the same doubt about the second letter. I take '\pb to stand for Op^, to glean; in No. 152 the t3 is a double T • This word is used figuratively for thoroughly plundered in Isaiah xvii. 5. 90 SINAITIC INSCRIPTION'S, In No. 1 14a we had ip, for city. Our word ^^i may be from n^l, to bring to an end. KDp, blindness, is Chaldee. Tttn No. 1396. pT qy NX in : pan b For a memorial. Favour her that is driven forth, the rejected people. The bone-ashes of her that has been unwell, I consider NIT as the same as H'xn of No. 128. In the last word the circular flourish is the letter n of the form met with in No. 27. The last two words are used proverbially. By Leviticus xv., when a woman had been HHi ^ic^, &nd had recovered, she was ordered to bring to the priest two young pigeons, one for a sin offering, and one for a burnt-offering. By Leviticus v. 11, 12, a person who was not rich enough to bring such a gift might bring a tenth part of an ephah of fine flour, of which the priest was to burn upon the altar a handful as a memorial. By Leviticus vi. 11, the priest was ordered, when the offering was ended, to put off his holy garments, and to carry forth the bone-ashes beyond the camp, as impure, but not as wholly so, for they were to be cast forth into a clean place. Thus of all that is offered to Jehovah these ashes are the least valuable ; and yet in this humble way the writer describes his memorial inscription as the bone-ashes of a woman who has been sick. (See No. 91a, where, with an equally violent figure of speech, the inscription is called a memorial to be tied about the neck.) No. 139c. : IT pn 2b n o n n^jt : bn pat An unholy [or unworthy] memorial. Accept the lamentation of a broken heart, O Jehovah. TBANSIATED AND EXPLAINED. 91 No. 140. : w IK lU' '71 nyi The weak lowing of the city reduced to nought, to a heap of rums. The word jm is doubtful. I understand it as jm, vanity, or nothing. We may suppose tliat 'yy is a strengthened form of >)f , The lowing of cattle is here used for a cry of grief. No, 141. py ni3J Tn tnat : d"?!:; : pj -\> mj p-\ ov p A memorial for one that is trampled on, made strange, pressed down, of the people cast out, destroyed, of the guiltless city. A peace-o£ering. The first letter in the second line may be part of the last word in the first line. We here meet with the word T, a city, for the twentieth time ; and if it needs any support it may receive it, not only from the word Jerusalem, as before remarked, but also from Jericho. The name of this town is usually written im*, and we may conjecture that it began to be written inn*, they scatter scent, only when the plantation of palm-trees and balsam-trees was formed there. The fertility of Jericho, which allowed of this plantation, is, in 2 Kings ii., given to the reign of Jehoshaphat, as caused by Elisha's miracle ; but it more probably was due to works of irri- gation introduced by the Persians. The original name of Jericho, in 1',' may be translated the hamlet city. The names also of the towns Jarmuth, Irpeel, and Jorkcam, all begin with this word *)'. 92 BINAITIC INSCRIFTI0N8, No. 142a. A peace-offering for what is cut short, for what remains, for the crushed poor. I do not understand the letter under the first line. This inscription begins with a Christian cross, and may be by a Jewish Christian in the second century. The thought for the poor of the city is what we read of in the Apostle Paul's Epistles. In No. 91^ we had in the same way the preposition h after the word a'fltf. Here two forms of the b are usedj both remark- ably clearly written. No. 1426. : pi i^;r y For the crushed city. I consider the )j as representing the preposition by, as i No. 916, and No. 156. No. 143. : rr> p"? np xy A memorial for the crushed city, the ruins of the ioivn licked up, O Jehovah. In Ezek. xxi. 27, we have niy, a ruin; our word Ny may be a Chaldee form of it, or for the Hebrew % which we have in No. 74. We have np, a town, in No. 114a. In No. 866 we read pi as a company ; here we take it as the Chaldee npV, destroyed. TRANSLATED AND EXPLAINED. 93 No. 144. ioi D pan : \ay A memorial from the strong camel. The word ^oj, camel, is doubtful ; the two strokes against the o may represent the j ; but there was the figure of a beast of burden loaded before the last word. The word j'ay is Chaldee for the Hebrew asty. No. 1456. : Npj ly O ri3t A memorial from the guiltless city, to be tied about the neck. The word TJ is badly spelt, but this may be safely read by the help of No. 91a, where we have the same thought and words, of the memorial being "tied about the neck." We have here the preposition O in an unusual place, as in No. 144. No. 146c. pni "u; pat : Nnp n Memorial for the enchained city, which is renouned. The word pm is well known, but perhaps of doubtful meaning. No. 146a. : = ^«pD ay dw A peace-offering for the people pining away, Jehovah. The two strokes which, when vertical, I have always read as a symbol for Jerusalem, are by modern writers used for Jehovah, 94 BINAITIC INSCRIFTI0N8, and they may be so understood here as in No. 25 and No. 28. The strokes for Jerusalem are vertical, these are horizontal. No. 147. : p'p^ on : p3 QJ D P3T in A vow, a memorial from her that is asleep, depopulated. Eaise her that hath been licked up. See the preposition o in No. 1 15A, and the word pb in No, 46. This may mean it " has been slain," and had its blood licked up by dogs. The two letters with which this inscription begins may mean that it is a Nazaritic vow, being a word formed from the Chaldee *n3, to vow. No. 160 is a second copy of the same inscription. No. 148a. : pr\t Hip bm obvf t'pia *? Db 2t A lean peace-offeriny for her that is bowed down, broken. The people melts away unto emptiness. No. 1486. Tw ai : D^b ny abnt : pT ay A peace- offering for the ruin of the nation; raise her that is laid waste, the rejected people. These characters are of very fanciful forms. The y is on the top of the n. The i rises out of the b, and has the little D on its top. (See the little D in No. 134.) TRANSLATED AND EXPLAINED. 95 No. 149a. p mi ly ^b n jw abvt : yiy A humble peace-offering for her that is not, the city famished, crushed, oppressed. The 1 in the last word is doubtful. (See No. 48o for the word ■h.) No. 1496. m DK> : nj n Nj; n ch^ : \y< A peace-offering for the heap of ruins which has been plowed up. Give rest, O Jehovah. The two letters here taken as *)] are joined into a group very like that in No. 70, which I read as n. These two inscriptions belong to a time after the destruction of the Temple by Titus. No. 160. Kpm djr pan b : IT pna n 'NV For a memorial for the vexed people, the ruined heap which is rejected, O Jehovah. The word p')0 bears the meaning of rejected, despised, in Chaldee. The word >Ny is for ']/. No. 162. pi ay p : I'y ban : pji : in' naj ip laao n A memorial. Pity the city ; make the people to rejoice, who are rejected, hoping, bowed down, made to be aliens, Jehovah. This, though written in a flowing running hand, is perfectly 96 SINAITIC INBCBIFTI0N8, legible. The unknown letter following the 30 in the second line we may take for O. It is like a double 7. No. 168. : iNp Yi'? py : YV Dy o FVom the oppressed people. A memorial of one mocked, vomited out. The first letter is not wholly formed. The b is of the Greek form, but it slopes the wrong way. The word iNp is perhaps a mistake for Kip. In Chaldee UTty is to oppress. No. 154a. : YP3 ch n abTi> A peace-offering for the people that is awakened. This last word might be read as the Niphal of yip, and mean cut short ; but as all unnecessary letters are usually omitted, the above is to be preferred. This inscription is an example of how the reading is obscured by the line upon which the letters stand. No. 156. : n' p nbv : la j;?d ^bv y For the peace-offering of a lonely feast; a peace-offering * *, O Jehovah. In Psalm xxxv. 16, i\])n is a feast. The y at the buginniiig may be for by, as in No. 916, and elsewhere. The single letter p represents some unfinished word. A peace-offering was a gift to the altar, which the worshipper shared as a feast with the priest, and with his friends, after burning TRANSLATED AND EXPLAINED. 07 a memorial portion as inicense to Jehovah. Hence, as the traveller is alone, without friends, he calls his inscription " the peace-offering of a lonely feast." No. 157. A peace-offering. Favour one spit on, wandering, trampled on, poor. For a girding of sackcloth. The word "ym in Clialdcc is to surround; in Hebrew it is « chamber. See No. 40, wlierc we have a " girding of sackcloth." No. 158. : pT ay " pn^ psi A memorial of the braying of Jerusalem,, the rejected people. This is very badly written, and very doubtful. The word pni means the braying of an ass. The Jews in Egypt suffered very severely for the rashness of Jerusalem in rebelling against the Romans. The writer may have belonged to northern Isi'ael, and have been no friend to Jerusalem. No. 159. : DID Nn3 D ubm A peace-offering from a fat horse. See No. 22 for the same word horse. This inscription seems ironical, or rather scoffing, among the pious prayers with which it is surrounded. IfO SINAITIC INSCRIPTIONS, No. \6-2a. aay a ah\D : mo ay A peace-offering from the peoples ; for the crushed people. The 13 as a prepositiou is doubtful. The second line is added by another band. We have the word nno, broken, in Leviticus xxi. 20, which will justify our rendering of the last word. No. 164. : yip A peace-offering for the end cut off. We have these words in No. 97, but without the preposition. Such is the melancholy way in which the nation is described. No. 16.5. NpT ny : pT The ruined heap cast off, that which has been injured, rejected. The second line is doubtful. The word hyxi is regularly formed from hy>, to benefit ; but it more probably means injured, from ^iy, to injure, as we have read it in No. 112. No. 167. : Njnj The space in the first line held the figure of a camel, and may have also held the letter j. TRANSLATED AND EXPLAINED. 99 A peace-offering for the camel's foal, to be gathered up upon the neck, beloved of Jehovah. The word Jehovah is doubtful ; but the complex character towards the end of the second line seems to begin with an b and to end with an >, each a down-stroke ; the up-stroke in the middle seems merely to unite them. In No. 3 we have wb united into one character in the same manner. The word tp^ often means to gather up the rear of the army; hence the feeble foal, having been born in the desert, if laid upon its mother's neck, is said to be gathered up. But I rather consider the words as proverbial, meaning " to be taken care of," and borrowed from a custom, which is shown on Egyptian figures older than Christianity, of the good shepherd carrying the lamb on his shoulders, with its feet held around his neck. The last word might be rendered hidden; but may also be from 33rr, to love. No. 168. : piy " N3t Ojjpressed Jerusalem pines away. The Hebrew 21t may give us our first word. Wc have py, or ppy, in No. 141. No. 109. : pa ay a'jiy : ^bv " nt A peace-offering for the despised people ; the olive of Jerusalem fails. In Jurcm. xi. 10, Jerusalem is culled a green olive-tree. 100 8INAITIC INSCRIPTION'S, No. 171. : in» m niyp nj"? ^ peace-offering for her that is cast out, that is cut short ; lead, gather together, refresh, O Jehovah. In No. 164, 83 in Deut. vii. 10, abw is followed by the pre- position b ; here we have the double letter. In Exod. xxxiii. 14, Jehovah saya, "My presence shall lead and give thee rest," using the word which wc have here rendered to lead, or to go with my one. No. 172. : IT" in : jd A peace-offering for her that is pressed down, cut down, faint. Show favour, O Jehovah. Tho word trin, cut dovm, is found in Isaiah xviii. 5, as the Iliphil of this verb. Our word establishes its root. I take the D of the first line to be also the first letter in the second line, as in No. 138 and others. The second letter in \n is doubtful. No. 173. : iptt? am False compassion. The first word may be doubtful. The □ is not wholly formed. The writer might be a good Israelite, and yet no friend to Jeru- salem. This is from a valley near to Sarabet el Kadcm. No. 174. A peace-offering for the people, God Almighty, Jehovah. The second and third b have somewhat of the Greek form. TRANSLATED AND EXPLAINED. 101 For the Hebrew m, me, objective, 70. pm, to groan, 91. 1DK, to gather up, 167. IN, the earth, 63, 103. -IN, cursed, 22, 25, 27, 95, 138. mK, gathered, 121. nN, a lion, 95. pN, lengthen, 24, 25, 26, 95, 105. piN, lengthen, 100. DHN, Syria, 81. ifN, fire, 19, 136. NntVN, a wall, 48. T2, lying, false, 86. 13, solitary, 1 56. na, despised, 17. 13, plundered, a prey, 91, 100. ^a, lest, 13. pa, depopulated, 147. pia, emptiness, 148. N13, fat, 159. ma, made to flee, 96. Nma, made to flee, 44. pnna, a proper name, 178. pia, cast forth, 148. NJJ, sore wounded, 125. ^nj, a camel, 144, 167. nyj, lowing, 140. ■U, the neck, 91, 145, 167. DNI, a decree, 80. an, sacrificed, 38. •n, beloved, 80, 95, 122. m, beloved, 116. in, beloved, 1 17. m, thus, 82, 85. Dm, to tread down, 85. im, sick, 71. Nm, sick, 18, 71, 91. nnx sick, 139. n; weak, 88. trm, cast out, 61. m, east away, 95, 119, 122. ym, is rearing, 69. Npm, vexed, 150. -\1, crushed, 142. pan, a memorial, often. jnan, a memorial, 98, 1 1 1, 141 . bl, poor, weak, 116, 140, 142. ^m, lean, 148. pbl, persecution, 28. CI, blood, 95. 104 INDEX OF IIEDREW AND CIIALUEB WOlinS. nai, cut off, 1 42. p, contend for, 136. nvii knowledge, Gnosticism, 25. pi, scanty, broken, 3, 6, 16, 24, 43, 47, 49, 55, 59, 62,81, 106, 130, 142, 143. Npn, broken, 1, 16, 83, 94, 105, 136. ypt, crushed, 59. pp1i broken to pieces, 13. ipn, to keep alive, 1. ■n, avow, C. 78, 147, 160. "n, a generation, 27, pi, generations, 87. pni, to shoot, 36. W1, trodden down, 38, 62. ]V!1, bone-ashes, 139. n, the article, often, nnnn, a Gnostic word, 25, 75. njn, sighing, 2, 54. mn, this, C 91. •Tin, to beautify, 9 1 . -p, smitten, 1 . n^n, cast ofiF, 13, 55. vhrt, cast off, 55. rmhn, cast off, 65, 138. Ifa^n, to clothe, 9 1 . •pi}, gone away, 91, 91. nbbn, mad, 126. )^n, therefore, C, 91. HVn, driven forth, 128. niWl, been left, 4. ttnn, made poor, 6. 1, and, 67. ), his, a suffix, 34, 36. □1, a nation, 12''. Kt, this, 56. K3f, pines away, 168. 3t, nielts away, 106, 148. nat, to slaughter, 81. nt, this, 23. 13t, remembered, 25. )")3t, a memorial, often. tnDt, a memorial, 107. bl, despised, I ?3. 3]t, a tail, 107. rar, cast off, 105. p]H, calls aloud, 17. pr, purified, 19, 70, 99, 104, 124, 133. npi, purified, 76. ptpr, purified, 82. ppt, purified, 121. nr, a vow, 87. It, foreign, 1 , 96. -\\, scattered, 61. Nil, scattered, 128. mt, scattered, 122. ni, olive-tree, 169. ^nn, rejected, 62. -\in, a girding, 40, 49, 157. pnn, bosom, 1 1 7. y\n, outside, 25. NVin, outside, 91. rnin, white, 27. bn, profane, unworthy, 87, 139. ^^n, profaned, 7 1 . ^n, sick, 139. bn, slay, 54. ']bn, a wound, 83. ty^n, to cut off, 84. nnn, d(!sired, 25. ban, pity, 152. pan, wandering, 11,87, 99. pinn, wandering, 1 26. Npart, wandering, 74, 91. in, favour, often. p3n, to strangle, 2. INDEX OP HEBREW AND CHALDEE WORDS. 105 pmn, bondage, 179. pn, allotment, appointed, 43, 100. mn, to destroy, 113. ("in, determined, 80. yn, a dart, 136. j/U', he shall die, 13. VT, wisdom, 25. ", Jerusalem, 17, 23, 30, 40, 45.71,81,89,168,169,179. irr, Jehovah, often, IT, Jehovah, often. T, a city, often, irr, a city, 16. HT, put in fear, 76. NpT, payment, 78. IB', righteous, 104. »N3, the poor, 80. "133, confederation, 29, 30. b, wholly, 89, 95. p, establish, 22, 31, 126. 1D3, His throne, 36. b, unto, preposition, often. ^^, vnto, preposition, 171. nt*^, weary, 66, 138. n^, weary, 27. Vib, are weary, 22. aV, heart, 86, 139. i]/, a ruin, 17, 18, 22, 27, 71, 74,75,91,91, 109, 117. ny, ruined, 22, 65, 56, 86, 95, 96, 148, 165. Hny, ruined, 27c. N'y, ruins, 98. >yy, ruins, 140. 'y'y> ruins, 37. yy, Jerusalem, 91, 96, 128. jay, a proper name, 1. ny, congregation, 78. niy, congregation, 25, 27. -\iy, thy congregation, 53. ny, ornament, 84. , piy, oppressed, 22, 168. pmy, oppressed, 75. ty, strengthen, 14. -i(y, give help, 18, 27, 91, 123. nvy, awakened, 121. Ty, city, often. m-y, city, 80. ly, city, 32, 91, 109,133,145. ny, my city, 29. Ty, a foal, 167. by, for, 27. by, unjustly treated, 22 , 37. ■^ly, defiled, 91. bbiy, gleaned, 74. yby, a rib, 27. ay, people, often. aoy, people, 162. yoy, strong, C, 141. y.y, make happy, 2. Ty, tied, 91. miy, tied, 145. niy, answer, 25. njy, afflicted, 61, 81. Hr\:y, afflicted, 2. 13y, afflicted, 1 1 . yy, counsel, 3 1 . INDEX or iiebhew and ciialdee words. 107 nvy, counsel, 48. fy, oppressed, C, 153. py, afflicted, 46, 46, 47, 51, 58, 59,65,70,71,95,110,172. ypy, crushed, 59. Kpy, crushed, 60, 64. bpy, wronged, 135. ppy, pressed down, 141. Ipy, bound, 14. •ny, made bare, 6, 13, 49, 121, 130. tfpy, perverse, 188. D^y, a bed, 43. ^'^y, oppressed, 149. JTiyy, rich men, 113. p~iD, broken free, 21, 41. puis, broken free, 24. ny, driven forth, 139. JNX, a sheep, 107. IV, laid waste, 4. mv, laid waste, 148. pTX, righteous, 54. nv, lamentation, 4. pyx, crieth out, 16. p», oppressed, 3, 49, 98. KpS, distressed, 91. IV, afflicted, 89. up, vomited out, 64, 96. ixp, vomited out, 153. lp, vomited out, 176, ypHp, a print mark, 91. 3p. blasphemed, 72. yap, gather in, 82. •\p, bowed down, 95, 106, 152. Kip, bowed down, 148. np, mourning, 62. unp, blindness, 139. bnp, congregation, 94. ynp, awakened, 16, 91. yip, put away, 86, 153. np, take, 136. Tp, a city, 37, 139. np, a city, 40, 56, 95, 114, 143. iVp, vile, C, 98. Dp, raise up, 13, 14. anp, to raise up, 94. Dip, raise up, 95. yp, alienated, 67. Yp, end, piece cut off, 56, 124, 164. yp, cut short, 15, 17, 18, 27, 49, 87, 90, 91, 101, 112, 115, 119, 171, 178. N!fp, cut short, 10, 91, 97, 102, 112, 164. uynp, cut short, 17, 28, 44, 67, 177. {•Dp, cut short, 11, 16, 25, 91. pp, cut short, 27, 55, 97, 164. NVip, cut short, 133. yxp, destroyed, 72, 74. pKp, cut short, 121. Nnp, renouned, 145. NNip, renouned, 84. mp, bald, 91. y-\p, portion, 1 14. y-'p, torn to pieces, 15, 99. Dltlp, broken pieces, 2. mp, stubble, 23, 86. niVp, gather, 171. ntfp, enslaved, 38. awp, stubborn, 138. am, buffalo, or Syria, 51. 3n, to increase, 87. II, trampled on, 16, 48, 98. nm, trampled, 157. III, trampled on, 29, 71, 141. rm, trampled on, 75. ail, asleep, 58, 75. 108 INDEX OF HEBREW AND CHALDEB WORDS. Mnpm, anointing oil, 27. on, raise up, 147. cy\, raise up, 25, 91, 148. ni, cast out, 16. m, refresh, 4, 91, 128, 171. rrn, refresh, 1, 70. n, famine, 75, 1 1 7. Min, famished, 149. ]n, lean, 32. tn, lean, 114. pm, removed, 47. p, make rejoice, 17, 18, 37, 69, 82,91, 106, 124, 162. Kn, rejoicing, 91. pj">, make to rejoice, 88, 91. yn, wicked, 4 1 . jn, hurt, 1, 4, 25. jn, companion, 1, 96. p, desired, 72. p, accept, 29, 48, 67. 80, 83, 81, 121, 122. nm, accept, 26, 99, 113, 139. NXm, accept, 28. ym, accept, 25. yn, crushed, 38, 65, 148, 149. wn, crushed, 2. pr), crushed, 22, 130. pi, rejected, often. Npl, cast out, 23, 65, 61, 69, 80, 122, 152. pn, rejected, 40, 47, 74. pm, emptied, broken, 3, 13, 148. upm, rejected, 98, 171. p>-], broken,' 136, 139. Xpl, cast off, thrown off [the horse], 69, 80, 125, 152, 165. ypi, crushed, 55. ppn, spit upon, 116, 130, 157. W-\, poor, 3, 129, 135. THE -SI ISA I Tie ilLPHAB:&T. P'7 ])iV), wicked, 36. pni, enchained, 146. miy. Almighty, 174. inniy, blighted, 38. mi:', humbled, 91. nsy, bowed down, 109, 137- aw, preserve, 95. 'tW, a wall, 95, 117. „ ^bw, fails, 169. I Nl^tP, failing, 90. ' nblV, prosper, 63. nbsf, prosper, 37. abw, a peace-offering, often. abiL'. heal, 1, 28, 135. anbw, to make prosper, 16,69. a-J;, give, 10, 102, 109, 134, 137, 149. ]iy, change, 40, 61, 127. mw, change, 86. j/Jif, help, 41. ]fW, to cry out, 51. niV, a support, 9 1 . p-i>, sackcloth, 40, 157. ppw, put in a sack, 49. pIV, humbled, cast out, 46, 141, 149. jpty, humbled, C, 99. -ipu;, false, 173. " niy, remaining, 86, 128, 142. I tn, cut down, 125. Nfin, cut down, 172. SYMBOLS. *, the enemy, 2, 71. ?, the writer's name, 80, 96. t, a Christian cross, 11, 19, 85, 86, 111, 117, 142. W)-i, wretched, 26, 167, 178. =, Jehovah, 26, 28, 129, 146. Woodfoll 4 Kinder, Frinton, MUford Lan«, Btrand, LondoD, W C. ■>■ «• J. 4' f. 6. H U}JV\K >^ 19. m. It. gt) sa. if. 1 2. 3. ^. a J? p 6 ^ jt. r;. 10^. at. 1- %. 8 1. I. i;i. /. «. ^ -7 "I h if n ^ i f 5 1 '79 *?» L in. iAO J * r J 4. 1/1/1 ia. tf. J^. yt. It 3. S. 4. f. 6 #/, fi. 166. //4 j(. /o^. -t » J. 4. r ,«> ;« >f«. If. 9«. . J- ^. y y -c y Y ', '//. 411. 6. (, J«. 41. *?. J 2 Ih {/' •I'l V 4y. ?9- *■ k, 3. ^ ; > 3 1 i •• 49- *4. »*■• »;. t. i. J. '<9, <»r. /4ii-, /06 SINAITIC INSCRIPTIONS. Pl.9. 1. c ■ 3. P. 4 P. 6. P. iCirilhJ' VV^^d]}^ 10. P. II. P. SINAITJO INSCHIPTIONS. Pi.3 c 13. P. »5/SJliL/i£9Vi7^ T. 14. >6i 16. C. 1. -I p. C96|J ^yjJ6iU'^ ^ '\X^^V^ 19 p. SlP9ai( a;. SlN\lTJC. JNSClMi'llONS. n.4. 6 y ^^^hSxrb}' oyo A => S 5 ^ II 9 M^ ?t\i^ I Mi^s\r\7u j//yii67)Y 24. p. 23. ?4. 1P. 26. 27. SINAI TIC IIVrSCKTPTlONS. p/.j; •2tf. P. 161 ns i3y 29< P. J»'SpltUK 30. T. J7. P. J2. p D 34 36. "/ 36. P. SlSMTiQ liNJSCRlPTJONS. Pj.6. sirur io, V. 1 LP^J'^cJ^ i6i S fY/- • 41. p. 4?. ^"IfU^ltf 1^ 44. -p. 45. p. l6i*lJ(iH^^AvStli> 46. ^'05?KS1V&^ 47 P. YY ■I if 5 SINAITIC INSCRIPTIONS n?- 1!1 <:) iiU^ 49 P. 51. 53. 54 5r. SINAFTIC TNSCJIIPTI0IV5,-. pi.8. \^\t< y"v^^^i^^ip^^^ <^f}^ AJjltUliLb S-6. V. fa: T r y^y ,y <=n V gj^ 6. fp. >/V 2}^ ^• 6«?. 61. 61. Jic#ln-iriA- 64. UJ yi/ T .ZH^ 6ir. ^7' ^ % >SIN AITIC 1 NSCRIFTIOATS . T1.9. 6p. -p. i6i l^Ufiv 10. li- 7i. \6i yS uiJ 74-. f6l 75. 5lNAJriC INSCRIPTIONS. nv')l]ny^ ^Y^Yl51Jci,i3- p/.to. 7«y. p. 7« 92. F. »J. U5 iriAnj^L-inn *• »^ I SINAITIG INSCaiPTI0N5. PMl 1-n>a619- ^^zr vvufr^ ^, 84. T. 064 a;. «'9. 90. ^^■^■i^^"nr"»f" ^IKAITIC INSCKTFTIOHS, Tl.n. '<^, a. 91 {. 9^. 9ir, 96. % SINAI TIC INSCRIPTIONS . PI. 75. J;/:/v yyii6i5u\)H)'S6iiii^ J12. ■p. irvyih\)Wiriu3^6 JIS. j^^^vavs^^ms^H^ '^ . 114. VT6 1}^ 11;^. %yn^iyn6t}ji: 116.. J6ii6jiinrj)y^ JI7. Sl/NTAITIC IN5CR1PTAOWS . Pi. I if. up. i^]A5)r^^fl>Iijj^ IX a J2J. P. i2«. \;yx}6^[\'d}V6)m^ J23 T lU SjVXJ\jSS1-4-^i> lis. jnjjcrd-L6l) 12 5. T. lSl(JiV^)&>|^ 147. P. P. SINAITIC INSCRIPTIONS. Pl.W. 3 viEj^ 133. T. d j(^)i>'^ • 73*. ISS. T. 136. r. ;,;:| Kt J^J^B''^ J 3d'. P, t 5INAITIC INSCRIPTION*. Pj. 19. i5isjxj= n^^^fii/j' U6. P. 'I'- '\sny))<\6:t^s-i^ -p. cY'xruPiibit i6y. ;6i.. nv*^y J6S-. rf/j5HJ/Ptru J6;. 5 '-^;A^ J66>. SlNiMJlC IJSf 5*C RTPTI 0N5. Tl. iO. I S'j Vi tpi 3 i^f^V-H/ ;SJc/i^?lj;l]Vyi2H> I E,Nf \AOO/ i79[/''*t^ H.J 169. 771. 172. p. i73. ■p. ^77- ^jW1)^1dM))3l SiNAlTJe IN-SCKIPTIONS. Pl.17 139 140. T.: HI. T. 343. F. C. o. ns. SINAITIC INSCRIPTIOjVS. PI . IA\ =\;<^-^flj^ i^6. <\\Vii\s'iJ>ii^air'^'^ ^1 ^ LP J ^S' (TCP ij-iry • 't. ■p. 149. V. JiO. T. JF Yifl rii/u^i nytyu •p. ^UZlIuAiLLf •154:, ■"'S f) HEBREW INSCRIPTIONS. HEBREW INSCEIPTIONS, FBOM THE VALLEYS BETWEEN EGYPT AND MOUNT SINAI, IN THBia ORiaiNAIi OHAEACTKBS, WITH TRANSLiTIONS AND AN t . ALPHABET. I*ART THE second: By SAMUEL SHAEPE, ADTHOH OF **THB HISTORT OF JtOYPT." -thi WITH P^^TjriTEEN PLATES. Sephar [or written] the mountaui which waa of old. QEMESia X. 30. And they encamped at mount Shephar. Ndhbers iixiii. 23. Oh that my words were now written I Oh that they were imprinted on [mount] Sephar, That witli an iron pen and a leaden hammer They were chiselled into the ivck for ever ! Job xix. 2.3, 24. LONDON: JOHN RUSSELL SMITH, 30, SOHO SQUARE. 1870. LONDON: WOOOFALL AND KINDBR, PHIMTBRS, HILFOnO LANR, STRAND, W.C. PREFACE. Part the First of _ this work contains such Inscriptions only as were copied by Mr. Grey. Since printing those pages a friendly hand has supplied me with tracings of the Inscriptions published by Dr. Lepsius in his " Denkmaeler aus Mgyptea und ^thiopen." Accordingly I now add them to those of Mr. Grey, witK tran- scripts and translations, taking those only which can be most safely read, and leaving those which through faults in the writing or in the copy, I am less able to make use of. Since from the sameness of the thoughts in these Inscriptions very little is gained by increasing their number, I omit those in which I can read little more than the oft recurring words of "Memorial" and " Peace-offering." I have also carefully examined those Sinaitic Inscriptions which M. Lottin de Laval published for the French Government. But I can make no use of them. They seem to have been copied less carefully than those of Mr. Grey and Dr. Lepsius. M. de Laval is of opinion that the characters are akin to the Demotic alphabet of Egypt, that the writing is the work of the Shepherd inhabi- tants of the Peninsula, and that the language may be a mixture of the poor dialect of the natives enriched by words borrowed from the Egyptians. In the case of Dr. Lepsius's Inscriptions, I have kept his numbers, and thus show how many I have omitted. To the numbers I have prefixed the letter L.; and in the same way, when I quote Mr. Grey's Inscriptions, I prefix to the number the letter G. The characters in Grey's Inscriptions and those in Lepsius's are somewhat differently formed, as is natural when rude lines are copied by different hands; but in no case do we'find any difficulty *' PREFACE. in reading the latter by means of the Alphabet gathered from the former. Four of Lepsias's InBcriptions speak of the nation as having broken free. These I venture to give to the time of the Mnccabee revolt. One long Inscription, or rather series of Inscriptions, L. 164, from Wady Loche&n, near to Sarabit el Kadem, not from the barren Wady Mocatteb, seems to have been written not by pilgrims from Egypt, but by those who had settled there, and were cultivating the soil as husbandmen. The other Inscriptions are of the same character as Grey's, and are laments for the ruined state of Jerusalem and their country. In Plate I., I repeat the Alphabet gained from Mr. Orey's copies, with the numbers under each character which refer to his Inscriptions. All Mr. Grey's Inscriptions in Part the First, except twelve, are from Wady Mocatteb. Of Dr. Lepsius's Inscriptions in Part the Second — No. 3 and 4 arc from Nagb el Hani, 9- -16 Wady Aleyat, 19- -140 Wady Mocatteb, 159 Wady Qeneh, 160 „ Wady Maghara, 161- -165 Wady Lochcaii, 16G Wady Schcllal. COllRECTIONS TO BE MADE IN PART THE FIRST. 0. 1. For "jn nn rt/rah the imittm, read ■]nn JT make her that lialh waited rejoice. The writer may perhaps allude to Daniel xii. 12, " Blessed is he IJiat liath waited. " 0. 18. For n read Dp, with no change of translation. 8. 23. For Cp Hpl read irp D pH, with no change of translation. a. 48o, anda. U9a, For Ty 1^ n whirh it not, for tke city, read Ity l^il Oh tliat thtre mere help. G. fiSa. For " of Jenaaltm, read = Jehovah. Q. 78. For NpT the payment, read Np "I* the city vomited forth. Q. 80a, and Q. 122. For Tl beloved, read "IT a vow. 0. 113. For P'lfy, read l^I£'y, with no change of tranalation. 0. 146c. For K"lp renowned, read ^")p broken to pieces. G. 170 and a. 179, read Jjp n ]n favour the trattc [or the matth] of tlic rejected people. I HEBREW INSCIUPTIONS, VALLEYS BETWEEN EGYPT AND MOUNT SINAI, TRANSLATED AND EXPLAINED. L. 3. : "Up n iip^2 d'7i:> An empty peace-offering for those vomited forth. The 3 in the second word, and tlic K in the last word, are badly formed. The last word is very doubtful j but the want of a final S in the plural noun need not trouble us. Its absence may be seen in G. 80a. It was after the Iteturn from the Captivity, perhaps in the time of Nehemiah, that the expression of " vomiting forth " was used in Leviticus xviii. for driving the Israelites out of their country. L. 4. : ynj 3Jt A peace-offering for her that is strangled, the toil that is crushed. The last two letters in the first line are doubtful ; but otherwise this is very satisfactory. In Nahum ii. 12, the King of Assyria is said, as a lion, to have strangled the nations around. In B 2 8INAITIC INSCRIPTIONS, G. 107, the ruined nation is compared to the tail of a sheep cut off; aa in Amos iii. 13, Northern Israel is compared to the two legs and an ear of a mangled sheep. L. 9. by -hr^ nv ahuf A peace-offering for the people. Oh that there were a lifting vp for her that hath broken free. I take by for n'?y. I take l^n for l^, with n, the interjection of exclamation. In the last word, the p faces the wrong way ; it is strictly a 3. This, I suppose, is a mistake of the writer. Wc have the same wordpns in L. lOG, and pxiD in L. 70. In Grey's Inscriptions we have pID twice, and pNns once. In all the s is of the same form as the 3. This may he of the time of the Maccabee revolt. L. 10a. : vp n NpT ya ahtv A peace-offering for the people cast away like stubble. The yo is clearly a mistake for ay. This correction is supplied by G. 23, where we have nearly the same words. In L. 1224, z^bw has in the same careless way the letters set in the reversed order. In Psalm xviii. 42 (43) the verb pr\ is used for casting out people as dirt. As the next inscription, written on tlie same rock close under- neath this, seems to be of the time of the Maccabee independence, this is probably somewhat earlier, perhaps of the time of Antio- chus Epiphanes. TRANSLATED AND EXPLAINED. 3 L. 10«. : pns py -vy ab\i> A peace-offering for the oppressed city, which has broken free. The word Ty look^ more like mt; but the context supports our reading. This, like L. 9, may be of the time of the Maccabee revolt. Latter part of L. 12. : T\ pD ay dw A peace-offering for the people pining away, ruled over. Hear, O Israel, J[ehovah, ^c.]. The two lines are probably by different writers. The second is worse written than the first ; if rightly read, it is a quotation from Dcut. vi. 4, the grand words in which the Jews proclaim that Jehovah alone is their God. L. 13. • • ab\o NDn py • A peace-offering ... a lofty people, a people cast off. The end of the first line is defaced. In Isaiah this word an is used in a bad sense for haughty j perhaps it bears that meaning here. The last two lines in L. 16. :pT ay : urhy n abitf The rejected people. A peace-offering fur her that hath been taken off [or destroyed] . 8INAITIC INSCRIPTIONS, These lettei-8 are badly formed, but not doubtful. In L. 9 and elsewhere, I have taken ^y as for nby, a lifting up. Here I follow I'salm cii. 24 (25), where rhy is rendered as above. L. 19. : nbv y :pi in For a peace-offering ; favour her that is cast off. I take the letter y for the preposition hy, as seven times in Grey and six times here. This may be one of the more modern of the inscriptions, if we may judge of the shape of the "i. The three words (treating the y as a prefix) have the characters in each joined into a group. This custom of dropping the feeble h in hy, may be seen in the word np^, to take, which drops its h when it receives an inflection at the beginning. It also supports the conjecture that the article n was originally written hn, like the Arabic article ^N. L. 21a. For a peace-offering. Support her that is cast off, cut short. Tlie last letter in \y in irr. These I think mistakes. The n in 3np is j loop between the two letters. This may be of the Maccabee time. 14 8INAITIC INSCRIFTIONSy L. 105a and b. : 3^ yi pi Hbn chv : ynp pn : a"? in □'?ttr A peace- offering for her that is cast off, crushed in heart. A peace-offering for her that is cursed tn heart. Show favour to her that is cut short. These are two inscriptions, but the letters in one touch those in the other. The word *1K is doubtful. L. 105c. bn : Di"? abv} A peace-offering for the people. Oh that there were help for her that is purified. The word Knty is badly written ; but we have it in L. 163o, following the word tbn- L. 106a. pjT) Dp : \np nbv : psT a*? n 'i^ • • • A shortened peace-offering. Raise up the rejected . . . the ruined heap of the crushed people. L. 1064. :p-) ay A peace-offering. Oh that He would raise up the [fast or affliction ?] of the rejected people. The last letter in the upper line is incomplete. The word may be mv, a fast. TRANSLATED AND EXPLAINED. 15 This inscription and the foregoing seem to he by the same hand. L. 109. : Np: n p^p m ab^ : ay nyw A peace-offering of rejoicing cut short for her that is guiltless. A cry for help fur the people. Or the last line might be read oy n lyi^, save ye the people. We have usually had the verb In, in the imperative mood It, do thou make to rejoice. The n in the second line closely re- sembles the Syriac letter. L. 110. " pT ror n ]-id» : in' yin njn A memorial of the rejected sacrifice for Jerusalem, here on the outside, O Jehovah. This explains the word " memorial " as meaning a portion of a sacrifice, and also the word " outside " as meaning away from home. (See L. 114, L. 115, and L. 166, for " meaning Jerusa- lem. In Grey's Inscriptions it has that force eleven times.) L. 112. ttpi -fy abvf : -\xy ^b^ ; D^y A peace-offering for the guiltless city, trodden down. Oh that there were help. The 3 in the upper line is conjectural. The word Diy must be taken as meant for the participle of 0V]f. IG SINAITIC INSCRIPTIONS, li. 113. pT n in abv> : in' Dp "ny h A peace-offering. Favour her that is rejected, the ruined heap. Raise up, Jehovah. L. 114. : p3 1 pD ch " vnp a'7'^ A shortened peace-offering for Jerusalem, a people pining away and guiltless. h. 115. " p3 uy nbv : in' YTi A peace-offering for the guiltless people of Jerusalem. Accept, Jehovah. The T is of the modern form. The badly written word irr may be noticed as supporting our reading of that word elsewhere, as in L. 163c, and L. 161rf, where it is yet worse written. L. 116. nj;; n abw y : noD xvi ay n For a peace-offering for her that is afflicted. Make to rejoice the rejected despised people. I;. 119. ps ch n abv! :?•) ay H : in' p-\ yv A peace-offering for the oppressed nation, the rejected people. Have her that is rejected, O Jehovah. . Here and elsewhere a'? n might be read as abn, beaten down. TKANStATUD AND KXFLAINED. J7 L. 130a. i^^rip nor : VI NnSn i A memorial foK her that is cut short, and cast off, rejected. The first word is badly written. The 3f confirms that in L. 1 19. l'orthel,Me L. 114. L. 1206. : vnp Np3 r\m abv A peace-offering for her that is plundered, guiltless, cut short. The strict meaning of ni£': is plundered by usurers. L. 120c. n abv NSp : in' A peace-offeritig for her that is cut s/iort, O Jehovah. The word Jehovah is written three times, in the writer's doubt which was the proper way to spell it. L. ]20d. : tyn in np-\ ay n pot A memorial for the people cast out. Favour the poor. This reminds us of the Apostle Paul's care for the poor of Jerusalem. t' 18 SINAITIC INSCKIFTIONS, L. 121a. r\p : yn^ n n^t : in' puj Db n A memorial for her that is afflicted. The horn of the people is empty, Jehovah. The first word can only be read by the help of other inscrip- tions. The lower part of the letter D turns back towards the foregoing letter. The horn is generally an emblem of pride in the Bible, like that of a stag. Here it is the Alexandrian cornu- copia. L. 1216. VI p n : n^bn pat : pt ita A memorial of fat. Make to rejoice, favour, accept her that' has cleansed herself, is purified. The mention of fat justifies our considering the memorial as a memorial offering. The word. "itD may be taken as active par- ticiple in Hipbil of n^r, to be clean. L. 122a. Npj 'pnn abw : PT -\y A peace-ofj'erirtg fur her that is failing, guiltless, the city which is purified. L. 1226. «pT ab^ •■ nana ynp A peace-offering for her that is cast off, cut short, threshed out. The first character, a group of the usual three letters, is written TRANSLATED AND EXPLAINED. 19 backwards. The last character in the inscription is niW joined together. L. 122c. For a peace-offmng of no honour and poor, for her that is rejected, O Jehovah. The m faces the wrong way. L. 122rf. : mi am n abv A peace-offering for her that is destroyed. Do thou support. We may take □!£>: as the Niphal of od::'. L. 123. : in: nm i« ly y)33 -\2V n : -\i nnt nnsi ■ • ■ . . . made' strange, cast away, plowed up. Make to rejoice her that is troubled, bowed down, the city that is cursed, flooded, abhorred. This is written most carefully and neatly, but unfortunately with more attention to elegance than to distinctness. It seems necessary to take the simple upright stroke as ] ; we have it six times. The second word, which I read as ~nt, is very peculiar. Each 1 is an horizontal stroke, as is the t. That the ruined city should be said to be plowed up is not unnatural ; that it should be said to be flooded, may be explained by Isaiah xviii. 2, where the Assyrians and Babylonians are spoken of as rivers. "20 SINAITIC INSCRIPTIONS, li. 127a. : in' pi ns in : ti)tp n riD! o Part of a memorial for her thai is cut short. Favour the troubles of her that is rejected, O Jehovah. This is G. 178 (Plate 13, No. 1) in Part I. It differs in several letters from Mr Grey's copy ; and we are thus reminded of the want of other careful copies. L. 127c. : pT n 'y Nsin abv ■ A peace-offering for the ovtsidc of the mined heap which is rejected. This, like L. 110, is for the Jews scattered in the Dispersion. L. 136. : p3 ny yp3 bui Remove [literally, cut off] the breach of the guiltless people. The first word, three Ittters grouped into one character, is doubtful. L. 139. : in» ~\\y i^n : p-iy A peace-offering for the ruined heap which is failing. Oh that there were help for her that is rooted up, fleeing away. Oh that there were help, O Jehovah. TRANSLATED AND EXPLAINED. 21 L. 140. : in' 3T p'jT pT "ji «sp n abvj A peace-offering for her that is cut short, needy, broken, per- secuted, pining away, O Jehovah. The letter 3 is badly formed. The writer was fond of allitera- tion. L. 159. ' : IT piD Dp nt nv : yi K't n yw ab^ ' • A peace-offering, a cry for help of her that is poor, is hurt. Establish her that is removed ; raise up the sackcloth, Jehovah. The word pt:" is doubtful ; but sackcloth is a figure for grief in the Bible. L. 160. s n in abv ; in' vp D A peace-offering ; favour the cruel fast, Jehovah. I take □!{ for DIX. L. 161. P3» p» p:ip 'y nn : IT Np3 ip 1 N A memorial. Refresh the ruined heap, cut short, purified, and bowed down ; guiltless, O Jehovah. Such I have no doubt is the writer's meaning. It may be safely gleaned by a comparison with other inscriptions. But, taken by itself, this is in many letters illegible. For the 1 in nn, see the 1 in pn, L. 162a. 22 SINAITIC INSCKIFTIONS, L. 162a. : IT pn ny Y\p t\V\> pat A grievous memorial for the horn of the rejected people, O Jehovah. Here the word horn is perhaps used in its Biblical sense ; though certainly we might read. The horn of the people is empty, using the word as in L. 121a. But the above is to be preferred. L. 1626. '■ IT p^3 K A peace-offering for the city. Oh that there were help for her that is licked up, O Jehovah. In 6. 46, 143, &c., we have the verb p^, meaning to destroy. Our word p^: may be its Niphal. Or we might remove the K from trV3>, and read pb \H, will it not be licked up ? {See the following, where we have the same difficulty.) L. 162c. py TV Nx^ p : inat : pj p-)y pisT IN A memorial. Make to rejoice her that is despised, the oppressed city ; otherwise it is crushed, fleeing away, guiltless. The word piKT is very doubtful, and hence we are left in doubt about the word \H, as in the foregoing. But we have pjn for j'KT often. THANSLATED ANO EXPLAINED. 23 L. 163a. : ^T\p Kity i"? : ny ';> n ik; Change the ruined heap of ruins. Oh that there were help for her that is cut short. G. 40 and G. 127 both begin with this word, Change m.eaning Restore. The same word was also used when proposing a political revolution in the state, as is explained by Proverbs xxiv. 21 : — My son, fear thou God and the king ; And meddle not with them that are given to change. L. 1636. Vn^p PDt : = jnj yu n A memorial for her that is buried, that has fled away, led away, O Jehovah. The two strokes at the end are for Jehovah, as five times in Grey's Inscriptions. The j is reversed in position, but clearly writlcu. We have the thought of the nation having been buried in L. 101, and L. 164. L. 163c. : ^n> pbi njo = p : ynp par A memorial of her that is cut short. Make to rejoice, O Jehovah, the portion licked up, O Jehovah. The two strokes in the middle of this sentence I read as Jehovah, notwithstanding the closing word. This latter is very badly formed. The p in phi is also badly formed. 24 SINAITIC 1N6CKIPT10N6, . L. I63d. : in' ynp N^p ^bn : jnvf abvf A peace-offering, a cry for help. Oh that there were help for her that is cut short, O Jehovah. The word Kir' is a mistake for Nliy. The flourishing form of the word in* explains the same in the foregoing. L. 163e. : nn oy mst n op lyi p : nj d'jk; A peace-offering of the plowmen. Favour the poor ; raise up the crushed, the people who are subdued [or restless"] . The meaning of the Hebrew word in is open to doubt. The word n:, plowmen, which is perfectly clear, we shall meet with again in L. 164. This was written by men cultivating the soil in Wady Loche&n. L. 163/ : pn spT po ay abv A peace-offering for the people who are pining away, quite cast out. The six inscriptions of L. 163 are vei-y satisfactory. L. 164a. : typ my ns pnt nop \>y\ ■ jn abw y For a peace-offering for the feast. There is a cry, " The standing com hath scattered [its seed], alas, the stubble is made naked." Here Jerusalem is forgotten ; the husbandman is thinking about his croi), at the time of the Passover. Every letter is perfect; but TRANSLATED AND EXPLAINED. 25 the one n is of a different form from the other. An approach is made towards dividing the sentence into its words ; as four of the words have their letters joined, and a fifth partially so. {See the same division of the words in L. 1 9.) L. 1644. : in' nty I'^n no pyt : pj i"? nm2 ab^o y For a peace-offering of /ood. Oh that it were guiltless. There it a bitter cry, Oh that there were help, O Jehovah. I translate nm3 as if it were r\n2,/ood. The lettei;g ]yr I read as pjn, thinking the last is incomplete. This may be a prayer for the harvest, wishing the corn pi, per- haps clean, free from blight, rather than guiltless, as rendered above. L. 164c. : in' pbn ppm n abv A peace-offering for her that is subdued, rejected, licked up, O Jehovah. The word pbn may be the Hiphil of pp^. L. 164e. : ynp Ty "? ]n ahv A peace- offering, for favour unto the city which is cut short. The b is in the form of ^. L. 164/-. V"i Iri abur : pa •^y p A peace-offering. Show favour, atcept, make to rejoice the city which is pining away. 2(> SINAITIC INSCRITTIONg, L. 164^. : my piD ay p nby i^n : a^b n"?iy A peace-offering for the people. Oh that He would arise and make to rejoice the people pining away, afflicted. The ]ast word may perhaps be njy. L. I64A. : in' nt n o iv Dp : jn ch^ i • • • p niup n"? : ii •r}^[> Also a peace-offering for the feast. Raise up her who is afflicted from the foreigner, O Jehovah. Bury the foreigner. The people are buried. Make to rejoice . . . I take \y for njy. The n in innp is doubtful. The word in* is badly written. The b is like our printed b. The t in "» is like \l>. L. 164i. : n-\w ]n ipt -\i abv A peace-offering for the old plowman. Favour the furrows. This is written clearly. The first 1 hangs down from the top of the 3 ; the second bangs from the l. I take 13 as from T3, to plow, and r\-\W as the plural of miir, the furrow in which the com is sown, of Isaiah xxviii. 25. The subject-matter of our inscription is not foreign from that of L. 164a, but for a later season in the year. That was of the time of the harvest ia April, this of the time of plowing. TKANSL.ATED ANJ) EXPLAINKD. 27 L. 164/. : n' p pmo o'^iy A peace-offering of drink. Make to rejoice, Jehovah, ^ The word Jehovah is incomplete. From npIP, to drink, we have piyia, a participle. As L. 1644 was an offering of food, this is of drink. L. 164*. : \-t py p3 y\ ab n abv) A peace-offering for the great nation which is guiltless, oppressed, crushed. L. 164/. : y-» a a^bv i Also a peace-offerirtg from the seed. This series of inscriptions in L. 164, all perfectly legible with the exception of L. 164(/, is by Jews living in the valley, and cul- tivating the soil. They are of a late date. E])iphanius, writing about A.D. 350, says (Ilieres. xx. Opera i. p. 46) that some of the Nazarenes, or Jewish Christians, had fled from Lower Egypt to Arabia, meaning, no doubt, the neighbourhood of Sinai. But we have no sign of Christianity in L. 1 64. L. 165fl. Np m py chv : IT par : panp A peace-offering fur her that is oppressed ; raise up her that is vomited forth, cut short ; a memorial to Jehovah. We have p)ip in L. IGl. 28 BINAITIO INSCRIPTIONS, TRANSLATED AND £XFLAINED. L. 1656. : pT ay i;? b yn l^^» An unworthy memorial for the city of the rejected people. ■ L. 165c. n* ptj \)-n vp n : o'jiy pT b^v "hn : = ^-^ l?^ '?3 .4 memorial to Jehovah for her that is cut short, rejected, purified, O Jehovah ; lest she be wholly rejected, O Jehovah. Oh that there were for the injured and rejected a salvation. The 1 is a Roman L reversed. Here ahv must be rendered salvation, not as elsewhere, a pcace-ojfering. L. 166. : XV ^bbT^ \)y\ A peace-offering for the ruined heap, this Jerusalem, the city which is smitten. There is a cry, " Praise ye Jehovah." The pronoun nt before the " is a strong proof that we are right in rendering these two strokes as Jerusalem. The word " city " is taken as a noun of multitude, and has a plural verb. The middle letter in the word Jehovah is badly written ; but the words " Hallelu Jaho" cannot be mistaken. INDEX OF HEBREW AND CHALDEE WORDS. rtK, alas, 164. nt3K, nation, 102. \n, otherwise, 162. IK, cursed, 102, 105, 123. Kp13, empty, 8. h:i, lest, 165. '^3, lest, 69. )ip3, a breach, 136. nma, food, 164. bl, needy, 140. p^l, persecuted, 140. pi, broken, 140. n, the article, often. vhn, cast off, 21, 105. nrhn, cast off, 120. •hn. Oh that, 9, 25, 100, 105, 106,112,139,162,163,164, 165. l^bn, Hallelu, praise ye, 166. p^n, licked up, 164. nin, here, 110. 1, and, also, 39, 114, 120, 122, 139, 161, 164. 3r, failing, 139, HO. ra\, sacrifice, 110. ' nt, this, 166. nt, removed, 76, 159. ' pDt, a memorial, often. )n3t, a memorial, 162. 3:t, a tail, 4. pyt, a cry, 164, 166, pf, purified, 70, 87, 102,- 121, 122. npt, purified, 89, 67, 161. ipt, old, 164. "If, a foreigner, 164, 164. nt, a vow, 21. ynt, seed, 1 64. pit, to scatter, 164. Til, cast away, 123. jn, the feast, 164, 164. hm, failing, 122. yin, outside, 110. NXin, outside, 93, 127. na^n, fat, 121. pltifT, wandering, 45. in, to favour, 19, 34, 113, 120, 121, 127, 160, 163, 164. pn, to favour, 105. pnr\, strangled, 4. 3!fn, hewn down, 87. [)n, ordinance, 79. 80 INDEX or BCBREW AND CIIALOKE WOllDS. INDEX OF HEBBEW AND CUALDEE WOBDS. 81 Din, destroy, 67. in*, Jehovah, twenty-two imes. n', Jehovah, twelve times. T, city, 67, 87. bH-tttf, Israel, 12. ", Jerusalem, 110, 114, 116, 166. 3, as, like, 28. ba, wholly, 165. b, for, 101, 164, 165. 3^, heart, 105, 105. ^b, Oh that, 139, 163, 164. oS people, 68, 105, 164. ah, people, 100, 106, 1 14, 1 19, 125, 164. Vn^, afflicted, 121. t, support, 21, 122. pw, sackcloth, 159. = Jehovah, 63, 163, 165. THE 5INAITIC ALPHABET TLl 1 1 WuodliJl Si Kinder, rrintera, Uilfuid Lune, Etraud, Loiidoo, W.C. 1 t J 4 Si 7 X 3 ^s-i y 8 9 ' X. J 4. /. 1. 3. *. 4-. :i p p b I iDiJ27[^di -1 7»- IT. lOJ. tar Jl. y. a.. '4. f6- 1. X J 1. X. 3. 4- ^ ;i -- -^ xi* 3J1 J) J y/. .#y. A /Jy. yy. It ^ • 7 -T 1 D O (T '. ^f- *« . '^f • 1- A. r «»■ 1 n 6 & s I7f. XJ. . L ;« lAO J ;. A. . J. 5 IJi ijf, /i"i. »• ^y, «<(. jr. ji^. K t. A «. J. .(r. *» 1 ^ > ^ \ li; A fl. */ 9*' P- 139. /. *. J. «■. t. A. J. J ^ J 3 "L n f ^ X '• '7f- -^y- '«<*'• 'if. Its-, /<■>• SINAITIC INSCRIPTIONS n j. fif\^^S^\ "{ tf' L. 3 !-.■( 1., 9 L. to /a// A^' li'tx't ffi—- fx. 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I^vmy'^^'^'^ 'L.Ibi B L-lbif A. ;^)>^/l.'iT)^i>: L./iV SINiMTic: INSCRIPTIONS ?l. 13. ovv^'^/) W Lj64 j. j-«. ^^^ viy^'^^^'} 1, lbs I L.lbS t. '3iSiy])((45Vi)l> Z.ibb