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Library of the
IPate Divinirg Scbool

The Books of
Ifranfe Cbamberlatn porter
Winkley Professor of
Biblical Theology

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JtanforAs Gsyi1 JUstcd)1; Zvndjn.

THE ANCIENT
HEBREW TRADITION
as Wlustrateo bg tbe /iDonuments

A Protest Against the Modern School of Old
Testament Criticism

BY
DR. FRITZ HOMMEL
PROFESSOR OF SEMITIC LANGUAGES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MUNICH
Translated from the German bv
EDMUND MCCLURE, M.A., and LEONARD CROSSLE

mew forft
E. & J. B. YOUNG & CO.
Cooper Union, Fourth Avenue

LONDON
Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge
1897

Copyright, 1897,
By E. & J- B. YOUNG & CO.

ELECTROTYPEO AND PRINTED BV THE
TROW DIRECTOHY
PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY
NEW YORK

PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION
In view of the fact that my Preface to the Ger
man edition of the present work contains nothing
which does not equally appeal to the English-speak
ing public, it seems superfluous for me to prefix any
special introduction for the benefit of readers on
the other side of the Channel or of the Atlantic —
more particularly since my Assyriological Notes in
the Proceedings of the Society for Biblical Archse-
ology and my contributions to the Sunday School
Times have perhaps already made my name familiar
to them. I shall merely content myself by referring
here to a volume recently published by G.Buchanan
Gray, which has only just come into my hands, and
which, though in many respects an excellent pro
duction, indicates in its main conclusion (see the
" late artificial creation of some of the most striking
characteristics in the Proper Names1 of the Priestly
Code," cf. the summaries on pp. 194 and 207 et seq.)
a distinctly retrograde movement when compared
with Nestle's work. The investigations recorded in
the present volume, based as they are on material
obtained from the inscriptions, furnish a sufficient
reply to Gray's contention. " External Evidence "
must be the banner under which all students of Old
Testament Literature are to range themselves in the
future.
Fritz Hommel.
Mademo, Lago di Garda,
April 14, 1897.

1 Studies in Hebrew Proper Names : London, 18

TRANSLATORS' NOTE

The Proper names — other than Biblical — cited in the text are
given, as a rule, in the form adopted by Prof. Hommel, but
it has been deemed advisable to substitute for his representa
tive ofthe letter Tsade, the more familiar ts, and for the Kheth,
" Kh'' instead of " Ch." Biblical Proper names are given for
the most part in the form they assume in the Revised Version of
the Old Testament, but the Hebrew yod is rendered by y and not
/, (as in " Yahveh"), except in a few instances where common
usage has secured the permanence of the latter letter.

PREFACE
For years past, I have been convinced that the
question of the authenticity of the Ancient Hebrew
tradition could not be finally decided, until the
Hebrew personal names found in the Old Testament
had first been exhaustively compared with other
contemporary names of similar formation, and care
fully checked by them ; and that all that was needed
was the hand of an expert to disclose the treasures
hitherto concealed in them, and to set forth the
evidence they contain in such clear and convincing
fashion as to render all further discussion impossible.
Twenty-one years ago, Eberhard Nestle,1 in a valu
able work which still retains its place in the estima
tion of scholars, endeavoured to use the personal
names of the Old Testament as a touch-stone by
which to test the authority of Hebrew tradition.
Nestle correctly divided Hebrew personal names
into three main groups, corresponding to the three
stages of evolution observable in the religion of the
Old Testament. In the first, he placed names com
pounded with El (God) ; in the second those belong
ing to the period between Joshua and Solomon (or
1 Die israelitisch.cn Eigennamen nach ihrer rehgionsgeschichtlichen
Bedeutung, Haarlem 1876.

VI PREFACE
Elijah), in which the divine name Yahveh comes to
occupy a favoured place beside El, the name of the
Canaanite deity Baal (Lord) being subsequently
added, and lastly, the names of the monarchical
period, containing almost without exception the
element Yahveh (Yo, Yahu or Yah), and thus bear
ing witness to the permanent victory of Yahveh
over Baal. Moreover, in his explanation of the an
cient Hebrew equivalents of the divine name El,
viz. Abi = my father, Ammi = my uncle, Nestle was
not far wide of the mark.1 Indeed, this attempt of
Nestle's might have found acceptance, as a solution
of the Pentateuch problem, had not Wellhausen
roundly asserted that the personal names of the
Mosaic period to be found in the Priestly Code, had
been deliberately manufactured in later times after
an earlier pattern, and that their testimony was con
sequently worthless. The question was thus left in
very much the same position as before.
One of the main objects, therefore, which I have
kept before me in writing the present book, has been
to adduce external evidence (i.e. from contemporary
inscriptions) to show that even from the time of Abra
ham onwards personal names of the characteristic
ally Mosaic type were in actual use among a section
of the Semites of Western Asia, and that it is conse
quently useless to talk any longer of a later post-
exilic invention. On the contrary, the theory of their
evolution put forward by Nestle is confirmed and
corroborated in every direction. The great im-
1 Cf. more especially pp. 182 et seq. (particularly p. 187, note 3, con
trasted with p. 50) of Nestle's book.

PREFACE vii
portance of its subject-matter must be my excuse
for entering, in Chapter III., into what may at first
sight seem excessive detail. This chapter supplies
the basis of my whole argument, and it was there
fore necessary to examine the material contained in
it from as many different points of view as possible.
Just as in Chapter II. (the History of Palestine be
fore the time of Abraham) I had to prepare the way
for the later historical chapters (the 4th and subse
quent chapters), in order to help the reader to a
proper understanding of that part of the history of
Israel which begins with Abraham, so too, in Chap
ter III., it was necessary to explain as fully as pos
sible the peculiar system of name-formation in vogue
among the earliest Arabs — to which race the He
brews of that time belonged — and to emphasize the
important lessons which it has to teach the student
of religious history. On the other hand, this chap
ter afforded me an opportunity, which I could not
allow to pass, of completing the evidence in support
of a fact of the utmost historical importance, namely,
the Arabian origin of the dynasty which occupied
the throne of Babylon in the time of Abraham. Be
fore going any farther, therefore, I must ask my
readers not to allow themselves to be deterred by
the array of personal names — to each of which I
have been careful to add a translation — which they
will find in Chapter III., but rather to peruse it with
particular attention before proceeding farther.
Even those who are not acquainted with Hebrew
will be able to understand it, notwithstanding the
fact that the present volume is primarily addressed

Viii PREFACE
to the theologian and the archaeologist ; these latter
will find themselves on what has long been familiar
ground to them, in the company of old acquaint
ances, such as Khammurabi and other similar per
sonages. I look forward to the time when every
enlightened reader of the Bible will also be some
thing of an archaeologist : in England and America
this is much more generally the case than in Ger
many, a fact which is proved by the large circula
tion attained by popular scientific works on Assyriol-
ogy and the literature of the Old Testament, such
as those of Sayce and Maspero, etc.
For the rest, the Table of Contents appended be
low (p. xiii.) will convey the best idea of the subjects
dealt with in this volume. In addition to those por
tions which bear on the criticism of the Pentateuch,
this work contains such a mass of evidence from the
inscriptions — throwing new light on the history of
religion and on sacred archaeology — that even those
who may consider that I have failed in my main
purpose, will still find plenty of material which they
cannot afford to treat with indifference, or explain
away. But truth must in the end prevail. The
monuments speak with no faltering tongue, and
already I seem to see signs of the approach of a new
era in which men will be able to brush aside the
cobweb theories of the so-called " higher critics " of
the Pentateuch, and, leaving such old-fashioned
errors behind them, attain to a clearer perception
of the real facts. The gales of spring are already
beginning to sweep across the fields that have so
long lain ice-bound. I seem to trace their influence

PREFACE ix
in the effect produced on every unprejudiced mind
by that marvellous book of James Robertson's on
the pre-prophetic religion of Israel,1 of which no less
a personage than the late August Dillmann declared
that it hit the nail right on the head. In the same
category I would place a paper from the pen of the
Swedish scholar S. A. Fries, which has only just
come under my notice, entitled, " Were the Israel
ites ever in Egypt? "8 in which he puts forward the
view set forth in the present volume. He holds that
certain of the tribes of Israel had already settled in
Palestine before the time of Moses ; that the land of
Goshen included also the southern portion of Judah ;
that Moses (" influenced, as he is inclined to think,
by the speculative ideas of the Egyptian priests ")
transformed the ancient divine name Yo or Yahu
into Yahveh ; that Hebron, which had from time
immemorial been connected with Tanis by com
munity of interests (cf. the well-known passage in
Num. xiii. 22), owed its new name to the Khabiri
(prior to this it was known as Kirjath Arba) ; and
finally, that the 49th chapter of Genesis, even if it
were not composed by Jacob himself, must at any
rate be of pre -Mosaic origin.3 Neither has Fries
failed to note W. Max Miiller's contention that the
1 The Early Religion of Israel, Edinburgh and London, 1890.
2 In the Egyptological journal the Sphinx, vol. I pt. 4 (Upsala 1897),
pp. 207 — 221 ; this did not appear until the index of the present volume
was ready for press.
3 Fries draws attention to a very important point which I had over
looked, viz. that in 1 Chron. vii. 20, we have an ancient pre-Mosaic tra
dition dealing with a predatory raid made by the Ephraimites into Pal
estine (and therefore from the Land of Goshen).

X PREFACE
tribe of Asser (Asher) must have been installed in
the territory ascribed to it in later times as far back
as the time of Seti I. ; he will be, therefore, all the
more likely to agree with what I have said of Heber
and Malki-el (end of Chap. VII.), and of the Land of
Ashur in southern Palestine (Chap. VIII.).
Many of the conclusions at which I have arrived
are of even wider importance than I had supposed
when I first put them on paper ; e.g. the fact on
which I have so frequently laid stress, that the Is
raelites in the time of Abraham to Joshua spoke a
dialect of Arabic, and that it was not till after the
conquest of the region west of Jordan that they
adopted the Canaanite tongue. In connection with
it stands my other conclusion that the earliest Israel
ite traditions, and undoubtedly the Mosaic law as
well, must originally have been set down in the
Minaean script (or at any rate in characters more
nearly related to the latter than to the Canaanite
alphabet). This assumption (in regard to the Arabic
character of the earliest Hebrew), which is a neces
sary corollary to my researches in regard to the
early personal names, clears up more than one
doubtful point in the history of the Hebrew lan
guage ; it throws a fresh light on the much-dis
cussed alternative forms of the word " anoki" and
" ani" [ = I ], the first of these being the Canaanite
form, while the second (which belongs for the most
part to the Priestly Code) is the ancient Hebrew
equivalent of the pronoun (cf. Arab-Aram, ana = I).1
' And here the word must have been borrowed from Babylonian, cf.
Babyl. anaku = I ; all the Western Semitic races must originally have

PREFACE xi
I take this opportunity of urging the younger
school of Old Testament theologians to abandon
their barren speculations in regard to the source of
this or that fraction of a verse, and rather to devote
their youthful energies to the far more profitable
study of the Assyro-Babylonian and South Arabian
inscriptions, in order that they may be able, at first
hand, to place the output of these absolutely inex
haustible mines of knowledge at the service of Bib
lical students ; nothing can be more deplorable than
to find a scholar persistently devoting his most im
portant labours to second-hand sources of informa
tion. There are hundreds of contract tablets of the
time of Abraham, any one of which may contain
some interesting find — such as the name Ai-kalabu
(v. infra pp. 1 10 et seq.) or Jacob-el (Ya'kubu-ilu, v.
p. 294), — which lie still unedited in the museums of
Europe ; and the importance of the Minaeo-Sabaean
inscriptions to the study of the Old Testament is
shown — apart from the numerous examples adduced
in this volume — by the fact that expressions in the
Priestly Code, such as bard" = to create (Gen. i. 1),
or religious terms such as berith * = covenant, agree
ment, find their closest parallels — not in the later
Aramaic, but in South Arabian. I earnestly hope
that Eduard Glaser, the indefatigable explorer of
the "Arabian Empire," will not oblige us to wait
used the word ana for " I " (an abbreviation from the primitive Semitic
anaku-ya, cf. the plural anakh-nd).
1 Cf . the Sabaean iara'a = to build, lay the foundations of, and berit,
Ethiopian (i.e. originally Hadramautic, Z.D.M.G. xlvi. pp. 536 et seq.),
ebret — alternating service or function.

Xll PREFACE
much longer before he consents to open his treas
ure-chambers. He was the first to assign to the
Minaeans their true place in history, and thus rein
forced Sayce in his epoch-making identification of
the name of the Babylonian king Ammi-zaduga with
the Minaean Ammi-tsaduka ; he is, however, very
chary of his inscriptions (apart from the originals
which he brought back with him to Europe), and
only allows us to examine them piece-meal.1 And
yet no further addition of any real value can be
made to our knowledge of South Arabian antiquity
until the material so far available has been made
better known. Glaser's inscriptions consist of hun
dreds of casts and numerous copies, but they are
unfortunately inaccessible to all so long as they re
main buried in his cases. A great benefit would be
conferred on science, and on the study of the Old
Testament in particular, if these documents, which
no one but a Glaser could have ferreted out and
procured, were to be placed in some museum where
they would be available for general use.
1 Cf. certain later Sabaean insciiplions, edited and annotated in a
most masterly manner by Glaser in his recent work, Die Abessinier in
Arabien und Afrika, Munich, 1895.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
Introduction  Page i
The view of the Evolution of the History of Israel presented
(i) by tradition, (2) by the "higher critics" — The "sources" of
the Old Testament — Deuteronomy quoted by Hosea — The late
date assigned by Wellhausen to Deuteronomy and the " Priestly
Code" — Amos v. 25 — Obsolete expressions found in the
" Priestly Code " — Green and Sayce — Application of the Critical
methods formulated by Meyer to the " Priestly Code."
CHAPTER II
The Early History of Palestine  Page 28
Assyriology and Egyptology — Tel el-Amarna — Gudea's 1 re
lations with the "Countries of the West" — The Nimrod Epos
and Arabia — The later kings of Ur and the Nilr Bel — Elam and
Arabia — The kings of Larsa — The Arabian dynasty of Khammu-
rabi, its conquest of Larsa and Elam and its supremacy over
Palestine — The Pharaohs of the Pyramid Period and the
Sinaitic Peninsula — Campaign against the Heru-sha — The
" Middle Empire " — Adventures of Sinuhit — The 37 Asiatics on
the Tomb of Khnumhotpil — Babylonians and Western Semites.
CHAPTER III
The Arabs in Babylonia before and in the Time
of Abraham  Page 56
The Nilr Bel and Martu — Arab personal names under the
Khammurabi Dynasty — Babylonian Nomenclature — The Baby-
1 Evidence has now been obtained from contemporary inscriptions to prove that
even the early kings of Agadi (Akkad), Sargon and Naram-Sin (c. 3500 B.C.) made
expeditions not only to Arabia (Magan), but to Martu as well.

xiv CONTENTS
Ionian Pantheon — The South Arabian Inscriptions— The Arabian
Pantheon — South Arabian Nomenclature — Religious signifi
cance of both Babylonian and South Arabian personal names —
Arabian origin of the Khammurabi Dynasty, Pognon, Sayce,
etc. — Conclusive evidence of the Arabian form of all the names
of the kings — Arabian names of private individuals under the
Khammurabi Dynasty — Shem and Yahveh — Shaddi — Ai or Ya —
Yah. CHAPTER IV
Chronology of the Time of Abraham  Page 118
Previous attempts to fix the date of the Khammurabi Dynasty
— The small tablet containing lists of the two first Dynasties —
The List of Kings — Dynasties A and B contemporaneous — The
Biblical Chronology — Apocryphal Character of Dynasty B — Its
founder Ilu-ma alone historical — Gulkishar — The Biblical Chro
nology again — Pieser's Theory — Arabian Origin of the Assyrian
Nation. CHAPTER V
Abraham and Khammurabi  Page 146
The narrative in Gen. xiv. — The Melchizedek Episode —
Quoted in the Epistle to the Hebrews — 'Abd-khiba of Jerusalem
— Proposed emendation of Gen. xiv. 17 — 24 — The political back
ground in Gen. xiv. — View taken of it by the "higher critics"
— Inscriptions of Kudur-Mabug and Eri-aku — Conquest of Erech
and Nisin — Yamutbal (Elam) and Martu— Khammurabi's letter
to Sin-idinam in reference to Kudur-luggamar — Khammurabi's
victory over Eri-Aku and conquest of Yamutbal — The Babylonian
Epos in regard to Kudur-lugmal's devastation of Babylon and
Borsippa — Conclusions which we may draw from it — The Ancient
Babylonian cuneiform original of Gen. xiv. — The City of Malgi
and Assur-bel-kala's Ebir-nari Inscription (K. 3500).

CHAPTER VI
Jacob the Aramaean  Page 201
Dillman's view — Aramaic and Arabic — The Achlami — Padan
— The land of Kir and the Aramaean tribes of Babylonia — Ur-
Kasdim and the Chaldaeans.

CONTENTS XV
CHAPTER VII
Palestine in the Tel el-Amarna Period  Page 213
The Canaanite language in 1400 B.C. — Canaanite and Phoeni
cian personal names — Arabic names in South Palestine — The
Canaanite religion in 1400 B.C. — Hebrew personal names — The
Land of Goshen — The Israelites did not lead a mere nomadic
existence there — The Khabiri — Heber and Malki-el — Hebron.
CHAPTER VIII
The Land of Shur and the Minaeans  Page 235
The tribe of Asser (Asher) and its territory in Goshen in
Southern Palestine — Ashurim and Dedan — Shur an abbreviation
of Ashur — The Southern Geshur an abbreviation of Ge-Ashur
— Ashur and 'Eber in Balaam's " Parables " — The invasion of the
" Peoples of the Sea" foretold — The Minaean Inscription Hal.
535 (= Gl. 1115) and the date at which it was composed — The
term 'Ibr naharan — Ebir-nari — Eber ha-nahar (cf. Appendix) — ¦
The Epri of the Egyptian Inscriptions — The land of Eshru — The
land of Gari in the Tel el-Amarna Inscriptions — Char or Chor —
Ashur in Hosea ix. 3 (quotation from Deut.) a part of Goshen —
The Minephtah Inscription in which Israel is referred to — Levi
and Simeon.

CHAPTER IX
The Time of Moses  Page 268
Commerce ofthe Minaeans and Midianites— Midian and Ma'an
Mutsran synonymous terms — South Arabian place-names in the
region east of Jordan — The spelling of the Mesa Inscription and
of Hebrew based on Minaean influence — Conclusion to be drawn
therefrom in regard to the earliest Hebrew script— Jethro, Priest
of Midian — Ancient Arabic expressions in the " Priestly Code "
— Egyptian original of the High Priest's Breast-plate or khoshen
— The Levites in the " Priestly Code," in Deuteronomy and in
Ezekiel— The "Priestly Code," in the time of the Judges and of
the Kings— Egyptian loan-words in the Old Testament — Arpake-
shad and Ur-Kasdim— Personal names in the Book of Numbers.

xvi CONTENTS

CHAPTER X
From Joshua to David — Retrospect and Conclu
sion  Page 302
Distinction between the Names of the time of the Judges and
those of the Mosaic Period — The Primitive History in the Bible
not of Canaanite origin — The Hebrew Metrical system a legacy
from Ancient Babylonia — The story of the Fall.

Appendices  Pages 317-326
(a) The land of Yadfa-ab.
(b) The Divine Name Tsitr in the South Arabian Inscriptions
— Purification and sin-offerings prescribed in them.
(c) The land of Eber and the geographical term Ebir Nari,
(Eber ha-nahar, 'Ibr naharan) originally Ur-Kasdim.
Index  Page 327
List of Authors referred to  Page 347
List of Biblical Passages referred to  Page 349

THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
No nation of early times has had two such widely
different versions of its history presented to modern
readers as that of Israel. If we may accept the
almost unanimous verdict of late, not to say the
latest, criticism, certain Hebrew tribes, who were
soon joined by others, started out, it is alleged,
from the Sinaitic peninsula about the year 1200 B.C.,
and after long wanderings in the desert, at length
arrived in the region east of Jordan, under the leader
ship of their prophet Moses. After his death they
crossed the Jordan under Joshua, and succeeded after
a series of protracted conflicts in subduing or ex
terminating the Amorite and Canaanite settlers on
its western banks. As the Canaanites were, so the
critics tell us, in possession of a higher culture, the
Israelites, who are represented as having been at
that time a race of semi-barbarous nomads, were real
ly conquered by the more advanced civilization of
their foes, a nemesis which frequently dogs the foot
steps of the victorious barbarian, if we may credit
the lessons of history. The new-comers, as we are

2 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
informed by the critics, appropriated the holy places
of the Canaanitish heroes, such as that of Abraham
at Hebron, or that of Jacob at Bethel, and came in
the course of centuries to regard them as so entirely
their own, that later on it became a firmly estab
lished article of popular belief that Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob were the earliest ancestors of the Hebrew
race. The laws traditionally ascribed to Moses, it
is contended, first came into existence either during
or after the monarchical period, while of the prophets
only a certain number, such as Amos, Hosea, Isaiah,
Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, are allowed by the critics
to retain the place so long accorded to them.
This is a brief account of the evolution of the his
tory of the Israelites during the past two decades,
according to the results of investigations associated
with the name of Wellhausen and others, and put
forward in Stade's ' well-known work on the subject.
The representatives of the orthodox opponents of
this school are being gradually reduced to a minority,
and the new views, especially among the younger
disciples, are so triumphantly pressed home, that an
attempt to return to the old line seems, especially to
the lay mind, as only worthy of a pitying smile in the
face of the assured position of the critics. To real
ize the present position we have but to listen to the
words of one of the most strenuous defenders of the
so-called " modern " critics of the Pentateuch, Pro
fessor C. H. Cornill of Konigsberg, in the prospectus
of his Der Israelitische Prophetismus (a little volume
intended for the general Reader) — words which I
1 Geschichte des VolJies Israel, 2nd ed. . Berlin, Grote.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 3
purposely transcribe in full : " Scarcely any branch
of scientific study has, during the last few genera
tions, undergone such a revolution as that dealing
with the Old Testament. A rigidly critical attitude
has taken the place of the traditional view of the
history of the Hebrew religion. Its various stages
are now regarded as steps in a process of organic
evolution. Individual facts are assigned their true
place in the general scheme, and receive their proper
meaning and explanation in connection therewith.
This organic view of the Old Testament was at first
received with distrust and aversion, even by experts,
for it is no easy matter to make up one's mind to
abandon beliefs which have been accepted without
question for two thousand years: gradually, how
ever, owing to the persuasive power of its inherent
truth, it has succeeded in gaining headway; and,
especially since the appearance, in 1878, of Well-
hausen's brilliant and convincing exposition of his
views,1 has entered upon a course of uninterrupted
triumph." So far Professor Cornill, and many other
utterances to the same effect might be adduced in
support of his position.
It would seem to follow, then, that we must no
longer date the commencement of the history of
Israel from the migration into Canaan of the pious
and God-fearing patriarch Abraham from Ur of the
Chaldees, nor give credence to the story of the so
journ of the children of Israel in Egypt, and of their
wonderful exodus from that land of bondage — for all
this, according to the critics, is pure myth, the poetic
1 Geschichte Israels, vol. i., Prolegomena.

4 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
invention of a later period. The true beginning, it
is alleged, was the time of the " Heroic Legend,"
which includes not only the period of the Judges,
but a part of the time of Samuel, and the early life
of David. According to the critics, it is only when
we come to Solomon and his successors that we find
ourselves on firm historical ground, and even then
they would have us believe that the narrative in the
Books of the Kings has been subjected to a biassed
revision. The Bible narrative tells us, for example,
that in the reign of Josiah, one of the last kings of
Judah, the so-called " Second giving of the Law "
(Deuteronomy), which has come down to us as the
Fifth Book of Moses, was discovered during the re
building of the Temple. In no other part of the
Biblical code do we find so marked an insistance on
the necessity for a single centre of worship (mean
ing, of course, Jerusalem), and on the observance of
moral obligations, as in this "recapitulation " of the
Law of God given by Moses in the land of Moab.
Now, as far back as 1878, Wellhausen declared in the
most emphatic terms, " that in all centres Avhere
scientific results may hope for recognition, it is ad
mitted that it (Deuteronomy) was written at the time
in which it was discovered, and was employed as a
basis for the reforms introduced by King Josiah."
In other words, however pious the intention may
have been, a downright forgery on a grand scale
had been carried out. When, therefore, we come
upon traces of the influence of this Deuteronomic
code in the Books of the Kings prior to the time of
Jqsia^ we have merely to assume that the passages

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 5
in question have been subjected to a so-called Deu-
teronomistic revision. According to Wellhausen,
the whole of these passages have been re-edited to
bring them into harmony with Deuteronomy.
This view of the origin of Deuteronomy has been
very variously received. It is significant to note, that
the primary effect of these conclusions was to pro
duce wide dissension among theologians themselves,
the official guardians and expounders of the sacred
records of the Bible, dissensions all the more serious,
since the post-dating of Deuteronomy necessarily
involved, as we shall learn further on, the ascription
of a still later date to other parts of the Pentateuch.
The orthodox or conservative party naturally re
garded an acceptance of the new theories as equiva
lent to admitting that the Old Testament is nothing
more, from beginning to end, than a tissue of pious
deceptions, an admission which, of course, was en
tirely opposed to their conception of its inspired
character. Others, while reverently adhering to
their belief in the divine administration, even un
der the Old Covenant, felt, at the same time, that
they could not entirely ignore the main points of
Wellhausen's arguments, and took refuge in the
assumption that, in so far as the words which
were put into the mouths of the earlier authorities
are concerned, the idea of a code of literary ethics
was as foreign to Old Testament writers as it was
to the rest of antiquity; and that, provided they
had warrant for believing that the matter they
set down was in harmony with the meaning and
spirit of those earlier authorities, and that it was to

6 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
the advantage of the people that it should be handed
down to them, they were justified in speaking in
their names (or, as in the present instance, in the
name of Moses). Lastly, there were those who pos
sessed no sort of respect for tradition, or who felt
nothing but scorn and contempt for anything super-
., natural, and took a cynical delight in pressing Well-
hausen's conclusions to their ultimate consequences.
It is interesting to note, in this respect, the opinion
expressed by a scholar who stands entirely outside
the clique of higher critics, an Orientalist whose
work lies in a totally different province, Ferdinand
Justi of Marburg. In his popular History of the
Oriental Peoples of Antiquity, published in 1884 by
Grote of Berlin, we find on page 352 the following
remarks on the period immediately subsequent to
the Babylonian Captivity (586—538 B.C.):
" Sacred and profane tradition had already under
gone more than one transformation to meet changes
in religious views or in the political situation, but
now, in order to confer some show of authority on
the poor remnant of an executive that had survived
the Captivity, the falsification of ancient tradition
was undertaken on a more extensive scale than ever
before. A fiction was set on foot to the effect that
the Priestly Code had long ago been delivered to
the people by Moses, either as a law to be immedi
ately followed by them, or as a rule for their future
guidance under new conditions which Moses, in his
capacity as prophet, must have been able to foresee.
A wholesale perversion of history was the result ;
the whole body of tradition was revised on theo-

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS "J
cratic lines with a view to prove that the Levitical
priesthood and priestly office had existed prior to
the time of the kings, and even during the wander
ings in the desert ; even the history of primitive
times, which teems with mythical (polytheistic) asso
ciations, was distorted in the interests of the new
code, and employed to strengthen the arguments in
favour of its pre-existence. The forgers carried out
their work without the slightest regard for historical
accuracy, and did not hesitate to asperse the, mem
ory of men who had raised the nation to greatness,1
while they glorified tyrants and weaklings who had
allowed themselves to be ruled by the priests. The
forgery was too clumsy to escape detection under the
searching eye of the modern critic, yet sufficiently
well done to have misled mankind for centuries, and
to have induced them to accept, as divine ordinances,
inventions devised by Jewish Rabbis of the sixth
and following centuries before Christ in order to
strengthen their own influence. It was not until mod
ern times that certain Protestant theologians, such as
Ewald, Hupfeld, Vatke, de Wette, Bleek, Kuenen,
Graf, Reuss, Noldeke, Wellhausen,2 and many others,
discovered the true condition of affairs, to which only
the narrow-minded or those who are misled by class
interests can shut their eyes."
1 Evidently Justi here refers to Israelitish kings such as Ahab and
Joram, the " tyrants and weaklings" being the so called righteous kings
of Judah.
2 The order in which the names are given is misleading. They should
properly ran as follows : de Wette, Vatke, Georges, Reuss, Graf, Kuenen,
Noldeke, Wellhausen, Stade, etc.

8 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
Professor Justi does not mince matters, but his at
titude is a far more honest one than that of the tem
porizing theologian who strives to throw dust either
in the eyes of the public or in his own. For, after
all, black is black, however much we may desire, on
opportunist grounds, to prove it to be white.
And now, many of my readers may ask with
astonishment, how, in the absence of any distinct
new documents, it was possible, within the space of
a few decades, for so radical a change to take place
in the attitude of critics towards the Old Testament
and the evolution of the Hebrew religion ? Assur
edly, it was not brought about by the discovery of
any new monuments, either inscriptions or MSS.,
and yet a certain class of documents, arranged under
a new system and considered in a new light, was
largely responsible for the development of the
theories which have now become fashionable. I
refer to what are known as the "sources" of the
Hexateuch (or five Books of Moses and Book of
Joshua), which have been submitted of late to in
creasingly strict scientific scrutiny. Attention was
first called to them in the last century by a French
physician named Astruc; and at the present time
students of the Old Testament writings are almost
unanimous in recognizing the existence of four
different main " sources." There is, first of all, the
so-called Priestly Code, which includes the greater
part of the law in Leviticus and Numbers, and the
detailed description of the Tabernacle in Exodus ; it
is also traceable here and there in the Book of
Genesis— the account of the creation in Gen. i., the

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 9
genealogies in Gen. v., and several passages in the
history of the patriarchs, etc., etc. being generally
assigned to it. The name employed in this source
to designate the Supreme Being up to Exodus vi. is
not " Yahveh," but " Elohim," i.e. simply " God."
Two other sources of a more popular nature are also
readily distinguishable : One of these is the so-called
" Jehovistic," in which God is always calledYahveh
(Jehovah is a later and corrupt form) ; to this belongs
the account of the creation in Gen. ii., the story of
Paradise and the Fall, that of the Tower of Babel,
etc. etc., in short, everything in the nature of popu
lar narrative. It is characterized by a certain
primitive freshness and vivacity which distinguish
it from the didactic and often almost jejune formal
ism of the narrative passages in the Priestly Code.
The other source of a popular character runs par
allel with the Jehovistic, from the time of the Patri
archs up to the history of the Exodus and the Con
quest of Canaan, and is in many respects similar
to it, at any rate in its treatment of the more im
portant incidents. This is the Elohistic, which seems
to have owed its existence to members of the
Ephraimite priesthood,1 and follows the Priestly
- It is no mere coincidence that the two sources which bear traces of
priestly origin should both employ, by preference, the older form
"Elohim" for the divine Name. Moreover (thanks mainly to the
researches of Klosl ermann), the theory becomes daily more probable,
that the narrative portions of the so-called Priestly Code did not origi
nally form part of an independent record, but are the works of a compiler,
who took various portions, un'il lately regarded as peculiar to himself,
from the Elohist (and this from Gen. i. onwards), but only in a revised
and partly amplified form.

IO THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
Code in its avoidance of the name Jahveh throughout
the pre-Mosaic period. As this source was amalga
mated with the Jehovistic before the introduction of
both into the Friestly Code, it is in many cases no
longer possible to distinguish the one from the other.
Finally, the fourth source is Deuteronomy (or fifth
Book of Moses), of which mention has already been
made. In addition to these there is a special legal
division within the Priestly Code itself known as
" the Law of Holiness " (Levit. xvii. — xxii.), and
in JE (a convenient symbol used to indicate the
united Jehovistic and Elohistic narratives) there is
a further division called " The Book of the Cove
nant" (Ex. xxi. — xxiii.).
It has yet to be proved, however, that we have any
right to assume that Deuteronomy first came into
existence at the time in which it was discovered, i.e.,
in the latter half of the seventh century B.C., or, in
other words, some 650 years after the death of Moses.
And yet it is on this very assumption that Well
hausen bases one of the main pillars of his system ;
" in all centres where scientific results may hope for
recognition " this is admitted, says Wellhausen in the
Introduction to his Prolegomena. Yet Professor
Klostermann has recently shown most conclusively
that the narrative of the discovery of a legal code
in the time of Josiah, which is rightly taken to re
fer to Deuteronomy, bears the impress of absolute?
credibility, and consequently excludes the possibility
of any such subtle deception as that predicated by
critics of the modern school.1 From a single in-
1 Der Pentateuch (Leipzig, 1893), pp. 92 — 100.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS II
stance, viz. the passage in Deut. xxviii. 68, I am able
to prove that Deuteronomy must have been known
to the prophets at least as early as the time of Jotham
and Menahem, about 740 B.C., and was not lost un
til later on during the long reign of the idolatrous
king Manasseh. In this verse there is a threat that
" the Lord shall bring thee into Egypt again with
ships." This passage is twice quoted by Hosea, viz.
Ephraim "shall return to Egypt" (viii. 13), im
mediately followed by (ix. 3), " and they shall eat un
clean food in Assyria," a threat more in harmony
with the apprehensions of the time when the cloud
on the horizon was no longer Egypt but Assyria.
The only possible deduction from this is that Deu
teronomy must have been in existence at least long
before Hosea. For, in the first place, it is evidently
Hosea who has Deut. xxviii. 68 in his mind, and not
Wellhausen's supposed compiler of Deuteronomy —
writing in the time of Josiah — who is thinking of
Hosea viii. 13; and secondly, we note that the
prophet, writing under Tiglathpileser, finds the quo
tation inadequate, and not sufficiently appropriate
to the circumstances of the time : he therefore sup
plements it in Hosea ix. 3 (and, indeed, according to
the LXX., in Hosea viii. 13 also) by a reference to
Assyria. Another assertion of the Wellhausen school which
also remains to be proved, is the statement that,
prior to the conquest of the territory west of the
Jordan, the Israelites were a semi-barbarous nomadic
race. The same remark applies to the collateral
hypothesis that the Israelites' in the course of time

12 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
derived the cult of the patriarchs and the heroic
legends connected therewith from the Canaanites.
In the present volume I propose to show, by a care
ful examination of the personal names which occur
in the inscriptions, the high degree of development
which religious ideas had attained among the Arabs,
Midianites, Kenites, and kindred peoples by the
middle of the second millennium before Christ.
Moreover, as will be demonstrated later on, the in
scriptions throw a totally new light on the relatively
high degree of civilization possessed by these " no
madic " Semitic peoples.
As a general rule, the " sources" mentioned above
can be readily distinguished one from another by
the name which is applied in each to the Supreme
Being, and by their style and language, so that it
is often possible to assign with certainty a whole
chapter, or at any rate large portions of a chapter,
to one or other of them. Often, however (as, for
instance, in the story of the Flood), the task of
analysis is more difficult, owing to the intimate
fusion which has taken place. In many cases,
indeed, it is a pure fantasy to imagine that science
possesses any solvent capable of reducing the com
pound to its primary elements. We too readily
lose sight of the fact, sufficiently proved by the
evidence of the early translations, that even after
the amalgamation of the various sources, the Old
Testament text underwent many modifications at
the hands of officiating priests and copyists before
it assumed the form in which we now possess it.
The oldest known MSS. of the Hebrew Bible do

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 1 3
not, we must remember, go further back than the
eighth century A.D.1
So long as men were content to regard these
sources as nearly contemporaneous documents, and
— though originating from different quarters, and not
having perhaps received their final redaction before
the time of the Kings — as based on a trustworthy
Mosaic tradition, it was impossible for a theory of
the events of Hebrew history and of the evolution
of the Hebrew religion, such as that indicated above
in the passages quoted from Cornill and Justi, to
gain currency.
Julius Wellhausen, following in the steps of Reuss,
Vatke, and Graf, and on the strength of ingenious
but misleading arguments, was the first to allot the
different sources, according to their fancied origin,
to various dates, far apart from one another, and
all distant from the time of Moses. He not only
assigned Deuteronomy to the time of Josiah (vide
supra), but, following up his misleading theory,
placed the source which contains the greater part
of the Law (i.e. the Priestly Code) last of all — in
the late post-exilic period. It is only since Well
hausen that a theory in regard to the events of sa
cred history, has assumed a shape which is diamet
rically opposed to Biblical tradition, and especially
to the narrative part of the Priestly Code.
1 Great credit is due to Aug. Klostermann for drawing special attention
to this weak side of the methods employed in distinguishing between
the various sources, as he has done in his book Der Pentateuch, Bei-
trage zu seinem Verstdndniss und seiner Entstehungsgeschichte . Leip
zig, 1893.

14 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
The main reasons which led Wellhausen and his
predecessors to refer the Books of Moses to such
late dates are to be found in certain contradictions
— the existence of which cannot be altogether de
nied — between the demands of what had previously
been regarded as the priestly law of Moses, and the
actual conditions of life in the time of the Judges,
Samuel, and the Kings. The law given in the
desert, with its one central Holy of Holies in the
Tabernacle, its complicated system of sacrificial
rules and other ceremonial observances, its hosts of
religious officials (Priests and Levites), seems in
after-times to have remained, in many respects, little
better than a dead letter, until, about one hundred
years after the return from exile, when the prophet
Ezra, who was born and had grown up at Babylon,
insisted on its proper observance, and by so doing
founded the Jewish Church.
If we add to this that in 760 B.C. the prophet
Amos, speaking in the name of God, asks the Israel
ites, " Did ye bring unto Me sacrifices and offerings
in the wilderness forty years?" (Amos v. 25), and
that Jeremiah in 608 B.C. (some years after the dis
covery of Deuteronomy in 621 B.C.), in speaking of
God, declares that He gave the Israelites, when
He brought them out of Egypt, no commands in
regard to burnt- offerings and meat-offerings, but
only enjoined that they should hearken to His
commandments and walk in His way ; then in
deed it would almost seem as though the latter
prophet either did not know of the Priestly Code,
or at any rate did not regard the numerous sac-

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS Ig
rificial and ritual laws inserted in it as emanating
from Moses.
The different interpretations, however, which k ave
been given of the passage just quoted (Amos v. 25
et seq.), prove that it is not safe to base deductions
on sentences thus torn from their context. Kautzsch 1
thus translates it : " Did ye bring unto Me for forty
years in the desert sacrifices and offerings, O ye Is
raelites? Therefore shall ye now take [upon your
necks] Sikkut your king, and the star your god, the
Kevan, your images, which ye have made for your
selves, and I will lead you out into captivity beyond
Damascus, saith the Lord." Dillmann, on the other
hand,2 renders the passage more freely, and, it seems
to me, far more correctly, as follows : " Have ye then
offered Me sacrifice for forty years, and at the same
time borne your star-gods about with you (both of
which things ye now do)?" Finally, the Greek
translation (which is followed by S. Stephen, Acts
vii. 42 et seq), runs thus : Did ye offer unto Me slain
beasts and sacrifices forty years in the wilderness,
O house of Israel? And (=No, but) ye took up the
tabernacle of Moloch, and the star of the god Rai-
phan (A. V. Remphan), the figures which ye made,
to worship them. And I (= but I) will carry you
away beyond Damascus (A. V. Babylon)." In re
gard to the second passage (Jeremiah vii. 22 et seq.),
Baxter3 has recently drawn attention to its analogy
» Or rather Hermann Guthe, who is responsible for the translation of
Amos in Kautzsch's work on the Bible.
3 Handbuch der Alttest. Theologie (Leipzig, 1895), p. 56.
8 Sanctuary and Sacrifice (London, 1895), p. 194.

l6 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
with the declaration of the Apostle St. Paul in i Cor.
i. 17 : " Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach
the gospel" ; just as the words of the Apostle can
not be taken to imply that he was ignorant of the
institution of the Christian rite of Baptism, so the
rhetorical expression employed by Jeremiah ought
not to be construed as a denial of the existence of
sacrificial laws in the time of Moses: he merely in
tended to show that they are of secondary conse
quence to the people as compared with the far more
important moral laws.
Moreover, it is precisely the legal portion of the
Priestly Code, to the pre-prophetic written existence
of which Hosea (viii. 12 et seq.) refers in such un
mistakable terms,1 which gives one, in places, an
impression of extreme antiquity. The language is
excessively formal and characteristic, and there is
absolutely nothing to suggest that it belongs to the
exilic or post-exilic period. In this latter event we
should expect it to contain a large number of Baby
lonian and Aramaic loan-words, and it is, in fact,
the absence of these which, in my opinion, consti
tutes the chief argument in favour of referring the
Priestly Code to a far earlier date. There are, it is
true, a whole host of words in the ritual language of
the Old Testament which can be satisfactorily ex
plained only by a reference to Babylonian. But
1 " Though I write for him my law in ten thousand precepts (i.e.
countless times oftener than I have already done), they (these myri
ads of laws) are counted as a strange thing. As for the sacrifices of
mine offerings, they sacrifice flesh and eat it ; but the Lord accepteth
them not ; now will He remember their iniquity and visit their sins."

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 17
these terms ' date back to the early Babylonian
period, and belong therefore to a totally different
category from the Neo-Babylonian words which
occur in Ezekiel, and which can be recognized at a
glance as more recent appropriations. On the other
hand, there are many ritual termini technici such as
tamid, " perpetual burnt-offering," or rather " ever
lasting sacrifice," which can only be explained
through the Arabic (Arab, ta'mid, " fixed appoint
ment," amad, " End, Eternity "), the obvious source
of them being traceable, as will be more fully ex
plained hereafter, to the ancient relations between
Israel and Midian (Moses and Jethro).
To assume that the inconsistencies — which are
often enough merely superficial — between the Priest
ly Code and the state of affairs in the time of the
Judges afford sufficient reason for proclaiming the
whole Priestly Code a post-exilic fabrication, and as
having no existence in the time of the Prophets, and
for regarding every indication to the contrary as due
to a recension made with a special purpose, is indeed
a drastic remedy. True, it explains everything, but
at the same time it compels us to assume, in defiance
of all psychological probability, such a monstrous
falsification of tradition during the relatively short
period between Ezekiel (i.e. the commencement of
the Captivity) and Ezra, as is absolutely incompati-
1 There are, no doubt, a number of direct loan-words among these,
e.g. Hebr. kohen, " Priest," Babyl. mushkinu (from mwhkahinu),
" votive," " offering homage to the Deity"; or tertimah, "heave-offer
ing," Babyl. tartmtu, "offering-cup"; or Hebr. torah, "law, command
ment," Babyl. urtu and ttrtu.

1 8 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
ble with everything we know of the national char
acter of the Israelites from their previous history.
We must seek, therefore, for other solutions of the
enigma more in harmony with tradition.
The simplest course to meet the difficulty would,
no doubt, be to endeavour to make good the con
tentions of the learned Professor of Old Testament
Literature at the American University of Princeton,
W. H. Green, who has recently written a compre
hensive volume,1 with the aim of entirely disproving
the alleged existence of different sources in the Pen
tateuch ; a course which is in some measure com
mended by the attitude of the English Assyriologist,
A. H. Sayce, who not long ago opened a bold and
destructive fire, from an archaeological standpoint,
upon the whole method of the so-called " Higher
Critics" of the Bible.2 It is unquestionable that
the higher critics have gone virtually bankrupt
in their attempt to unravel, not only chapter by
chapter, but verse by verse, and clause by clause,
the web in which the different sources are entan
gled, arguing frequently from premises which are
entirely false.
The numerous weak points to which Professor
Green calls attention with pitiless logic, are merely
fresh proof of what Klostermann has described by
such terms as "hair-splitting" and "atom-dividing"
on the part of the modern critics of the Pentateuch.
On the other hand, the denial of the existence of
1 The Unity of the Book of Genesis, New York, 1895.
2 The Higher Criticism and the Verdict of the Monuments, 5th ed. :
London, 1895 (1st ed., 1894).

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS ig
different sources is another equally drastic remedy.
It would give us back, it is true, the Mosaic writings
of former times in their indissoluble unity — a pro
cedure, however, which, in the face of all that the
study of the Old Testament has revealed during the
last hundred years, would carry us distinctly too
far, and would be equivalent to cutting the Gordian
knot in place of untying it. While Klostermann is
not disposed to dispute the existence of the main
sources of the Pentateuch, yet he protests against
the narrative portions of the Priestly Code being
regarded as a separate source, and would attribute
them rather to the compiler himself.
That several sources really did exist is shown by
the mere fact of the double narrative, quite apart
from the various forms of the Divine name and
certain differences in style, upon which it is hardly
safe to put very much dependence. The existence of
this double narrative has been questioned, it is true,
by many learned apologists, Professor Green being
among the number, but without sufficient reason.
Such an attitude was due to a natural reaction from
the unfair use made of these duplicated passages by
modern critics of the Pentateuch, in their efforts to
discredit the historical credibility of the whole.
For my part, I consider that we have a right to draw
from them an exactly opposite inference. The more
numerous the discrepancies in unimportant details
between two independent accounts of an event, so
much the higher is the probability that the event
itself is historically true. The justice of this conten
tion receives daily confirmation from the chronicles

20 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
of events in our newspapers, and we need not, there
fore, because of a few trifling discrepancies, dismiss
the narratives in question as mere legends with only
a certain nucleus of historical truth at their base. As
a matter of fact, the theory of double recensions may
be easily carried too far ; for instance, the so-called
" Jehovistic Decalogue " in Exodus xxxiv. is a mere
creation of the modern critic's imagination. In
reality we have here only the beginning of the
Decalogue (xxxiv. 14—17) amplified by a duplicate
passage at the end of the Book of the Covenant
(xxxiv. 18 — 26= xxiii. 14 — 19).
Unfortunately, in spite of the amply rewarded
attempts by Klostermann and others to drive the
hair-splitting philology of the source-investigators
to a reductio ad absurdum, many people still accept
the conclusions of the latter as gospel. The late
August Dillmann 1 was the only scholar of modern
times who attacked the subject from the actual
position of these critics, and yet came to regard the
Priestly Code as a pre-exilic document. Realizing
that God had revealed Himself even in the days of
the Patriarchs, he arrived at the conclusion that
the groundwork, at any rate, of the tradition con
tained in the sources of the Pentateuch is of Mosaic
origin. But Dillmann stands almost alone, and, in spite of
our high appreciation of his profound learning and
carefully discriminating judgment, it has come to be
1 Cf., in addition to his Commentaries, the Handbuch der alttest.
Theologie, Leipzig, 1895, compiled by Kittel from his literary re
mains.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 21
the fashion in Germany to regard his protests against
the hypothesis of Graf and Wellhausen as misdi
rected, or at any rate unconvincing.1
Even such a moderate and earnest theologian as
Professor Kautzsch of Halle, at the end of the ap
pendices to his translation of the Old Testament,
includes Wellhausen's theory among the " verdicts
which no exegetical skill can now hope to reverse."
This is equivalent to an open confession, that, if our
study of the Old Testament is to be confined to
methods of purely literary criticism, we must accept
the conclusions of modern criticism of the Penta
teuch as decisive, however revolutionar}' it may be
in its character.
The question, however, arises, whether by attack
ing the matter from an entirely different side, and with
totally new weapons, it may not be possible to discov
er some proof that the Hebrew tradition, especially
that part of it which deals with the period of the
Patriarchs and the time of Moses, is not so untrust
worthy as the present prevailing theory would make
it out to be. Tradition associates the history of
Abraham with Babylonia, that of Jacob and Joseph
with Egypt, and that of Moses with Egypt and
Arabia. Now, if it were possible to adduce evi
dence from the inscriptions which would prove even
a part of the Hebrew tradition, at present rejected
as spurious, to be of the highest antiquity and thus
far trustworthy, the ground would be effectively cut
1 Cf. the section in H. Holzinger's Einleitung in den Hexateuch
(Freiburg, 1893), pp. 466-73, on "Dillmann's position in regard to
Graf's hypothesis."

22 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
away from beneath the feet of modern critics of the
Pentateuch. It is from external evidence, therefore, that the
final decision must come.

Before I endeavour, in the following chapters, to
bring forward this evidence in detail, I should like
to cite some pertinent observations on the subject
of critical methods — to which I attach all the more
importance because they have been formulated, not
by myself, but by Eduard Meyer of Halle, a historian
who is well known to be one of the most radical in
vestigators in the field of Old Testament criticism.
His History of Antiquity,1 a work distinguished
by its breadth of view as well as by its execution,
gained him on the one hand a high reputation, while
on the other it brought him into disrepute because
of the almost fanatical antipathy he displayed against
the recognition of any positive religious movements
among the ancient Semitic races, and especially
among the Israelites.2 Within the last few months
he published a work on The Origin of Judaism
1 Vol. i., Geschichte des Orients bis zur Begriindung des Perserreiches
(Stuttgart, 1884); vol. ii., Geschichte des Abendlanies bis auf die
Perserkriege (Stuttgart, 1893).
2 On pp. 262-4 °f my History of Babylonia and Assyria, I have drawn
attention to some of the more striking instances of this kind, and
have quoted them at length. Compare c. g. the statement of Meyer's
book, p. 208, note 1, " The same remarkable poverty [of religious con
ceptions] which pervades the Koran lies also at the root of the human
sacrifices of the Canaanites, of the religious phrases of the Assyrians,
and of the worship of Jahveh also : the Aryan finds it intolerable to
give them even a passing attention." This last admission is especially
significant.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 23
(Halle, 1896, issued in October, 1896), in which he
shows that the various letters and lists which occur
in the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah (e.g. the cor
respondence with the Persian court in Ezra iv. — vi.,
which is by many considered to be spurious) must
be regarded as absolutely genuine documents, and
supports his contention mainly by external evidence,
adducing for his purpose other genuine documents
of the time of the Achaemenides.
In the introduction to this book Meyer refers to
the furious assault made some years ago by the
Dutch critic Kosters against the whole Biblical
tradition of the time of Ezra and Nehemiah. These
and similar researches are based (I purposely quote
Meyer word for word) " on the extraneous informa
tion which we possess regarding Jewish history :
from this they endeavour to formulate a theory of
what actually took place : if the documents fail to
support this theory, the documents must be spuri
ous." This Meyer rightly characterizes as "a very
hazardous proceeding on the part of an historian."
" For a document," he goes onto say, "is, if genuine,
a witness which defies contradiction ; should there arise
within the field covered by a document a contradic
tion between the document itself and other historical
narrative, the latter must give way " (op. cit. p. 3).
And on p. 4 he writes : " It matters not how inge
nious an historical theory may be, it must collapse irre
trievably if it is found to be in contradiction with a
genuine document.1 A document can only be rejected
1 The italics are mine ; in Meyer's book the words are printed in ordi
nary type.

24 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
as spurious after a most searching and unbiassed ex
amination, and this is just what the documents in
Ezra iv. — vii. have, so far, failed to obtain. The
authenticity of a document once proved, the ground
would be cleared for fresh structures for which there
would be otherwise no foundation. For the historian
must not attempt to dominate facts by hypotheses
and theories, but, on the contrary, seek first of all
for trustworthy facts, entirely uninfluenced by any
theory which he may in any way have deduced from
events} It is only after he has obtained his facts
that he is able to clear up uncertainties, to fill up
the gaps in tradition, and to arrive at a consistent
theory of development." I trust I may be par
doned if I make one more quotation from the close
of the Introduction (pp. 6 et seq.): "If we succeed
... in showing that a document ... is perfectly
intelligible in relation to the circumstances of its
time ; if it be possible, by a careful analysis, to pen
etrate more deeply into its meaning, . . . and to
demonstrate that it cannot have been tampered with
by the compiler of the chronicle ; . . . and further,
if it be possible to adduce in evidence documents of un
doubted authenticity obtained perhaps from distant
countries with which the author of the tradition zvas
unacquainted1 (such, for instance, as the Gadatas In
scription, an edict of the Persian monarch Darius I.
to his satrap Gadatas, which is the instance that
Meyer has here in view), then the defence is as
complete as it can well be made."
In immediate connection with this, Meyer contrasts
1 The italics are mine.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 2$
the traditions of Jewish history in the Persian epoch
with those of the earlier history of the Israelites.
With regard to the tradition of post-exilic history,
while maintaining that there is " firm historical
ground " to go upon, and that the historical inaccu
racy of many portions of this tradition (not, be it
remarked, the historical accuracy of the remainder)
still remains to be proved, yet when we come to a
period, he says, " for which no authentic historical
tradition exists, and have to deal with oral tradition
which has been worked up into a coherent narrative
by a number of later writers acting in combination
with one another,1 . . . then, we must first prove that
the narrative is historically true, or at any rate con
tains a modicum of historical truth ; " until such proof
be forthcoming the tradition must be taken for what
it is, that is to say, as legend and not history.
In the following chapters it will be shown that
those very traditions concerning the early history of
Israel, especially those preserved in the so-called
Priestly Code (which is notoriously regarded by the
Wellhausen school as a post-exilic forgery), contain
a whole host of records, the antiquity and genuine
ness of which are vouched for by external evidence.
These include, in the first place, the lists of names in
the Book of Numbers, and personal names generally
from the time of Moses down to Solomon. They
also include the Song of Deborah (which even mod
ern critics of the Pentateuch admit to be a fairly un-
; It is evident from the antithesis, that Meyer here refers to the early
history of Israel, and probably to a large part of the monarchical period,
though he does not say so in so many words.

26 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
modified document of the time of the Judges), as well
as various lyrical passages, such as the prophesyings
of Balaam,1 the blessings pronounced by Jacob, etc.
Then we have the mention of various nations (includ
ing for example, those very portions of the ethno
logical table which Wellhausen attributes to the
Priestly Code), and legal enactments, the various
versions of which only differ from one another in
minor details (e.g. the decalogue), or which contain
historical allusions applicable only to a definite pe
riod. And lastly, there are all those passages which
afford internal evidence of antiquity, from the occur
rence of expressions which in later times had become
either unintelligible or obsolete.
Now everything that Meyer has so emphatically
affirmed in the passages quoted above, with regard
to the documents and lists of names in the Books of
Ezra and Nehemiah, applies with immediate and
startling force to a great many of the most important
and characteristic sections of the Priestly Code.
According to the principles put forward by Meyer
in his historical capacity, the theory of the history of
Israel which Reuss, Graf, and Wellhausen have built
up with such wonderful ingenuity " must collapse "
inevitably and " irretrievably " : a deduction which,
though altogether contrary to Meyer's intention, is
none the less amply warranted if we apply the his
torical methods which he advocates. For the Graf-
' Later on I hope to prove, from the political setting in which it occurs,
that one of these could only have originated shortly before the conquest
of the Holy Land. The same remark applies to a part of Jacob's bless
ing, as will also be shown later on.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 2^
Wellhausen theory is contradicted in various partic
ulars by evidence of the most direct kind, which, to
use Meyer's own expression, " defies contradiction."
This evidence does not rest on any later forgery, but
on documents whose authenticity is confirmed by
contemporary inscriptions which are found in distant
regions. The higher critics, therefore, here play the part of
Balaam, however little they may have foreseen or
desired the issue. Called in to curse, they have been
constrained to bless the Israelites.

28 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION

CHAPTER II
THE EARLY HISTORY OF PALESTINE
It is a cardinal article of belief among modern
critics of the Pentateuch, that the Hebrews of pre-
Mosaic times were uncivilized nomads, whose re
ligion consisted in the worship of ancestral heroes
and the adoration of stones, trees, springs and ani
mals, in other words, of a mixture of Fetishism and
Totemism. This view of the early beginnings of
the Hebrew faith is one of the most vital factors in
Wellhausen's system;- it is at once the necessary
conclusion to which his theories lead, and the actual
basis and assumption on which they rest. Viewed,
however, from the stand-point of profane history
alone, its extreme improbability is sufficiently proved
by a single glance at the nations who lived in and
around Palestine during the earliest ages, and at the
facts recorded concerning them.
It is perfectly true that traces of such ancestor-
worship and fetishism have in all ages been found
among the Israelites, especially among those of the
northern kingdom ; this is abundantly proved by
various passages in the Old Testament literature,
but it is no more an argument against the concur
rent existence of a higher conception of the Deity,
than the numerous superstitious customs and ideas

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 29
still prevalent among the lower orders of almost
every civilized country of the present day are argu
ments against the existence and practical results of
Christianity. The Semites, partly settled, partly
nomadic, who inhabited the vast territory lying be
tween the two great centres of primitive civilization,
Egypt and Babylonia, were exposed from at least
about 3000 B.C., as the evidence of the inscriptions
proves more and more clearly every day, to influ
ences of the most varied kind both from the Nile and
the Euphrates. Even the nomads among them had
by that time emerged from that state of uncivilized
barbarism, which modern critics of the Old Testa
ment would have us believe to have been the con
dition of the Hebrews shortly before the time of
David. It has been the ill fortune of the higher critics to
elaborate and perfect their historical theories with
out paying any serious attention to the results
brought to light by Assyriologists and Egyptolo
gists. Let us in the first place review for a moment
the discoveries made by Assyriologists in the highly
interesting branches of historical and philological
research, with a special eye to the information that
can be gleaned from them in regard to Palestine and
the other surrounding countries prior to the time of
Abraham. It is necessary here to remark, that the
application of the term " Assyriology," as it is now
generally used, to the study of the cuneiform inscrip
tions, is not quite correct ; indeed it is actually mis
leading. It is true that the' study of these inscrip
tions first began in connection with the Assyrian

30 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
royal inscriptions, which for some ten years monop
olized the public interest, and proper names, most
of which were already familiar to readers of the
Bible, such as Tiglathpileser, Shalmaneser, Sargon,
Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, and Sardanapalus, be
came, thanks to the decipherment of the cuneiform
inscriptions, as much household words as those of
Alexander or Caesar. But when the celebrated Clay
Tablets of Assurbanipal's (or Sardanapalus') library
were discovered and closely examined, it became
more and more clear that the literary treasures it
contained belonged to an epoch far earlier than that
of the Assyrian monarchy, namely, to that which is
now known as the early Babylonian period. Original
monuments of that remote era having been discov
ered in increasing numbers, it now grows daily more
apparent that in it are to be found the sources, not
only of early Asiatic civilization (including that of
primitive Egypt), but also of western culture, i.e. of
classical antiquity, with which our own is bound up.
While to the lay mind Babylonia and Assyria are
nearly synonymous terms, they are, in fact, quite
distinct geographically. Babylonia is the shallow
depression between the lower reaches of the Tigris
and Euphrates, and owes its distinctive features and
characteristics to the latter river. Assyria, on the
other hand, is the region to the east of the middle
Tigris, quite one-half its area being mountainous.
There is, furthermore, an even greater difference
between them from an historical point of view,
especially in so far as the evolution of their civiliza
tion is concerned. Babylonia is the cradle of the

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 3 1
earliest civilization, and could look back to a history
covering several thousands of years at a time (about
1900 B.C.) when the history of Assyria was in its in
fancy ; it is for this reason that the Assyrian civiliza
tion (its language, script, and religion) is, in the main,
merely an .offshoot of the Babylonian. It is absurd,
therefore, to speak of an independent Assyrian liter
ature ; unless, of course, we are prepared to regard
the inscriptions of the Assyrian kings as a separate
school of literature by itself. The material which
Sardanapalus placed in his library consisted, how
ever, with unimportant exceptions, of mere copies
of earlier Babylonian texts.
As I have already pointed out, the study of the
cuneiform inscriptions first began with the investi
gation of Assyrian monuments, and for this reason
received the not altogether appropriate name of
Assyriology. If, however, we go back to the first
beginnings of the deciphering, we find ourselves
again face to face with Babylonia, though, it is true,
at a very late stage of its development ; for it was
a Babylonian translation of the early Persian Achae-
menid texts — the inscriptions of Cyrus, Darius, and
Xerxes — which first led to the unravelling of the
tangled web of Semitic cuneiform writing.
I mention this merely to clear away any misap
prehension which may exist in regard to the name
of a science which is of such supreme importance to
biblical students.
As a rule, the early history of a state moves within
narrow limits ; the more important political com
plications do not arise till much later. The great

32 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
victories of the Egyptian Pharaohs did not occur
until the time of the so-called Later Empire; the
preceding epoch was, by comparison, peaceful and
patriarchal, yet even then (in the time of the Later
Empire, about 1500 B.C.) the might of Egyptian
arms did not extend beyond Syria and Mesopo
tamia, for Babylon and the growing power of
Assyria were conciliated by gifts. We find a pre
cisely similar state of things in Assyria ; for nearly
a thousand years the Assyrian kings thought them
selves lucky if they were able to secure and retain
a firm foothold even in Mesopotamia, and steal a
march now and then on the Babylonians ; and it
was only gradually that they were fired with the
ambition to found a universal Empire. In this they
succeeded to some extent; but their successors, the
late Babylonian kings and the Persians, came still
nearer to the goal, which was only eventually attained
by Alexander the Great and the Romans.
It would be a mistake, however, to argue from
these analogies that the early history of Babylonia
was a period of tranquil and peaceful development,
disturbed only now and then by little differences
with their next-door neighbours (especially with the
Elamites, and later on also with the Assyrians and
others). The remarkable discovery made a few years ago
at Tel-el-Amarna, which has given us on cuneiform
tablets the correspondence between the kings and
princes of Babylonia, Assyria, Mesopotamia, and
Palestine with the Pharaohs, Amenothes III. and IV.
(about 1400 B.c), has led to a considerable, modifica-

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 33
tion of our former views on this point. The fact that
Babylonian, and not Assyrian, was the official lan
guage of diplomatic intercourse throughout the
whole of Western Asia towards the end of the fif
teenth century B.C., can only be explained or made
intelligible by assuming that for a prolonged period —
of several centuries at least — Babylon must have exer
cised a civilizing influence of the most marked descrip
tion on Syria and Palestine, an influence which can
only be satisfactorily accounted for on the assump
tion that the " countries of the West " were at one
time politically dependent on Babylon, and that
consequently there had been a previous Babylonian
invasion. It will be necessary to examine the early Babylo
nian cuneiform monuments somewhat more closely
for evidence on this point, and, to carry our investi
gations back to a very early (perhaps even to the
very earliest) period of Babylonian history — to a time
when the metropolitan kingdom of Babylon was not
yet in existence, and when there were still independ
ent Sumerian (non-Semitic) as well as Semitic kings
in Southern Babylonia, who had their successive
seats of government at Sirgulla, Ur, and Nisin, then
again at Ur and at Larsa — in round numbers, to a
period between 3000 and 2000 B.C. There were in
the north, at the same period, kings of Akkad
(Agade) and of Kish or Kishar who were more or
less dependent on the South.
We come in the beginning of our investigation
upon the mighty " Priest-king " Gudea of Sirgulla,
who reigned at the beginning of the third millennium
3

34 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
before Christ. We learn from certain inscriptions of
his, written in pure Sumerian, and discovered by the
French Consul, M. de Sarzec, that he had procured
for his building operations cedar and boxwood from
the forests of Mount Amanus, building stone from
Subsalla, a mountain in the " countries of the West " ; ]
alabaster from Tidanum (Dedan), another mountain
in the "countries of the West" close to Moab; and
cedars, plane-trees, and other precious woods from
Ursu, a mountain of Ibla (Lebanon ?). In addition to
the West there was another region which owned the
sway of Gudea, or at any rate belonged to the con
federacy of which he was the head ; this was the
great Arabian peninsula which served as a buffer
between Babylonia and Africa. From this land also
he levied materials for his undertakings. From the
" Gate of Ancestors," a mountain of Ki-Mashu (after
wards abbreviated to Mashu), he obtained copper ;
from Melukhkha, or North-western Arabia, " ushu "
wood and iron ; from Khakhum, a mountainous
district near Medina, and from the same Melukhkha,
gold-dust; and from Magan (in Eastern Arabia)
diorite. Apparently the date palm was imported
into Babylonia from this latter region long before the
time of Gude"a.
A reference to the map will show us the wide
extent of country which was either subject to GudSa,
or made accessible, by his alliances, to his ships and
caravans. It reached northwards as far as the
boundaries of Armenia and Cilicia ; on the west it
1 I.e. Martu, properly, the country of the Amorites, whence we get
Amurri = "Amorites" and "western."

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 35
included the whole of Mesopotamia (Borsippa near
Carchemish being mentioned as one of his ports of
call) as far as Lebanon and the Dead Sea ; and lastly
Arabia, at any rate as far as the two mountains
Aga and Salma (the " Gate of his Ancestor " Nimrod),
and Medina. Indeed, if Amiaud, the French Assyri-
ologist, be right in his conjecture with regard to
Gubin, the place from which GudSa obtained the
timber (chalup-wood) for his ships, his sphere of in
fluence must have extended as far as Koptos, near
Thebes, in Upper Egypt, in which case we may be
right in identifying the chalup-tree with the Persea
or Lebbakh, which is found growing in Egypt, and
is now called by the Syrians " khalfipa."
From what has been said, we can now understand
the part played by Arabia in the ancient Babylo
nian epic of Nimrod or Gisdubar, which we possess
in a form dating from about 2000 B.C. In the ninth
canto we are told how Gisdubar set out for the land
of Mashu (i.e. Central Arabia), the gate of which (i.e.
the rocky pass formed by the cliffs of Aga and Sal
ma) was guarded by legendary scorpion-men. For
twelve miles the hero had to make his way through
dense darkness;1 at length he came to an enclosed
space by the sea-shore where dwelt the virgin god
dess Sabitu2 ; from thence he had to travel by sea for
forty-five days — though the return voyage only oc-
1 Hence we may probably see why Arabia was called " the land of
darkness " (an expression found as early as the time of Abraham, in the
signature of a deed of sale).
2 I.e. "she of Mount Sabu," a. mountain evidently situated some
where in Arabia.

36 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
cupied three da)rs — till he arrived at the Waters of
Death (Bab-el-Mandeb ?) and at the Isle of the Blest
(Sokotra?), where his great-grandfather Shamash-
Napishtim dwelt.
The " Priest-kings " of Sirgulla were succeeded in
the hegemony over Babylonia by the " kings of Ur,"
who styled themselves by the supplementary title of
" kings of Ingi and of Akkad." Ingi (otherwise
Imgi, originally Imi-gur), or Sumer, was the name of
the southernmost portion of Babylonia, afterwards
more distinctively known as Chaldaea. It included
Ur and the strip of Babylonia bordering on Arabia,
while Akkad, on the other hand, comprised North
ern Babylonia. After these came, somewhere about
2500 B.C., the Semitic kings of Nisin, a town of Cen
tral Babylonia, who appear to have ruled for several
centuries, and to have also styled themselves kings
of Ingi and Akkad. They were succeeded by an
other Semitic dynasty, the " kings of Ur," so called
from the fact that Ur was their capital, but it is evi
dent that they only held sway over a smaller part of
Babylonia ; they no longer possessed Ingi, and had
lost Akkad as well, another dynasty having mean
while established itself there. They made up for
this loss, however, by extending their rule over
Elam, Arabia, and the countries of the West, and for
this reason described themselves by the proud title
of " kings of the four cardinal points." This exten
sion of empire took place somewhere about the
middle of the twenty-third century B.C., or at any
rate not later than the year 2000 B.C. We possess
an extremely interesting historical document dealing

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 37
with this period, in the shape of an astrological
work, of which extracts and important fragments
were preserved to us in the library of Sardanapalus.
It is called the Nilr Bel (or " Light of the god Bel ").
According to this work, the historical importance
of which I was one of the first to recognize, the list
of constellations appearing on the political horizon
at that time embraced the following. In Northern
Babylonia there were the kings of Akkad or (as they
also styled themselves) of Kishar; in Ur, the kings
already mentioned (Ini-Sin, Bur-Sin, Gimil-Sin, and
probably a number of others as well), who exercised
an intermittent rule over part of Elam in addition to
all the " countries of the West " ; then there were
their neighbours the still independent kings of Ingi
(the so-called " country of the Sea " on the Persian
Gulf and confines of Arabia), those of Anshan (in
Elam), the rulers of Khatu (part of the Hittite coun
try in Northern Syria), and many others. Moreover,
a large number of Babylonian Sacrifice-lists recently
discovered are dated from events which had taken
place under the rule of these kings of Ur. They
supplement in a most remarkable manner the data
obtained from the astrological work referred to
above. Thus, we learn from them that daughters
of king Ini-Sin were given in marriage to the
Priest-kings (patesi) of Anshan (in Elam), of Zapshali
(= Zapsha of the Van inscriptions, and therefore
probably situated in Cilicia or Armenia), and of Mark-
hashi (Mar'ash in Northern Syria). We are further
informed that this same king Ini-Sin (who, by the
way, is also mentioned by name in the Nur Bel pre-

38 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
viously referred to) subdued Kimash (in Central
Arabia) and Simurru (Simyra in Phoenicia, between
Arvad and Tripoli ?) ; Sabu (in Central Arabia) is
also mentioned as a place which paid tribute to him.1
If we could only obtain more precise information in
regard to this remote period, it would undoubtedly
prove to be one of the most interesting epochs of
Babylonian history. We have good reason to be
grateful, however, even for the meagre data supplied
by the Nur Bel and the Sacrifice-lists, since they en
able us to establish the one important fact, that even
then — i. e. before the time of Abraham — the whole
of Syria, Phoenicia, and a great part of Arabia were
under the direct influence of Babylonian civilization,
an influence the permanent effect of which can
hardly be over-estimated, and from which the no
madic and semi-nomadic elements therein were cer
tainly not exempt.
There is no mention made of Egypt in the docu
ments referred to above. On the other hand, the
Egyptian records furnish us with an important piece
of ethnological evidence which has a direct bearing
on the question before us. From the time of the
twelfth dynasty (circa 2200 B.C. ?) onwards a new race
makes its appearance on the Egyptian horizon, viz.
the Kashi in Nubia. Dr. E. Glaser, the Arabian
explorer, in his learned and epoch-making work, A
Sketch of the History and Geography of Arabia"1 (vol.;
ii.), draws attention to the fact that this name was
1 For the publication of these most interesting texts we are indebted
to Pere Scheil (Recueil, vol. xvii.) and Professor Hilprecht.
2 Skizze der Geschichte und Geographie Arabiens.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 39
originally applied to Elam (Babyl. " Kashu"; cf. the
Kia-crioi of Herodotus), and, according to the He
brew tradition, was afterwards given to various
parts of Central and Southern Arabia : from this he
argues that in very early times — prior to the second
millennium before Christ— North-East Africa must
have been colonized by the Elamites, who had, nat
urally, to pass across Arabia on their way thither.
This theory is supported by the fact that in the so-
called Kushite languages of North-East Africa, such
as the Galla, Somali, Bedsha, and other allied dia
lects, we find grammatical principles analogous to
those of the Early Egyptian and Semitic tongues
combined with a totally dissimilar syntax present
ing no analogy with that of the Semites or with any
Negro tongue in Africa, but resembling closely the
syntax of the Ural-altaic languages of Asia, to which,
at any rate in so far as syntax is concerned, the Elam-
ite language belongs. According to this view, the
much-discussed Kushites (the ^Ethiopians of Homer
and Herodotus) must originally have been Elamitic
Kassites, who were scattered over Arabia, and found
their way to Africa. It is interesting to note that
the Bible calls Nimrod a son of Kush, and that the
cuneiform alternative for Nimrod [Gisdubar], viz.
Gibilgamis (originally Gibil-gab), shows an Elam
itic termination. What the Nimrod epic tells us
of Nimrod's wanderings across Arabia must there
fore be regarded as a legendary version of the
historical migration of the Kassites from Elam into
East Africa : Nimrod is merely a personification of
that Elamitic race-element of which traces are still

40 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
to be found both in Arabia and in Nubia. The fact
that the poet claims Gisdubar as a national hero of
Babylonia, and as conqueror of the Elamite king
Khumbaba, is in no way opposed to this view;
the Elamitic origin of Gisdubar came in course of
time to be forgotten even in Babylon itself ; more
over, the Gisdubar-Nimrod of the epic possessed
originally an affinity with Nabu-Nusku, the fire-
demon and planet-god, into which it is outside our
present purpose to enter.
After this digression we may now continue to
trace the course of early Babylonian history in so
far as Arabia and the "countries of the West" are
concerned. The Semitic kings of Ur were followed
by those of Larsa (Nur-Ramman, Sin-idinna, etc.).
While Niir-Ramman, the former of these, merely
describes himself as " Shepherd of Ur, king of
Larsa," his son Sin-idinnam having succeeded in
winning back the supremacy over Ingi (Sumer) and
over Akkad, made himself thus master of the greater
part of Babylonia. After an interval of somewhat
doubtful duration, an Elamite named Eri-Aku [Ari-
och] succeeded to the throne of Larsa, Sumer, and
Akkad about 1900 B.C. ; he is also mentioned by the
Semitic name Arad-Sin, and by the half-Semitic,
half-Sumerian name of Rim-Sin. We shall hear
more fully about him later on. His father bore the
purely Elamite name of Kudur-Mabug, and is de
scribed, in one place, as king of Martu (i.e. of the
countries of the West), in another as prince of Ya
mutbal ; Elam itself was ruled by king Kudur-Laga-
mar (Chedor-Laomer), whose vassal Eri-Aku was.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 4 1
Meanwhile, however, an Arabian dynasty1 had man
aged to establish itself in Northern Babylonia, fully
one hundred years before the reign of Eri-Aku ;
these aliens soon learnt to assimilate themselves
completely with the Babylonians, and from their
ranks sprang a king who was destined to go down
to posterity as the greatest ruler ever known in
Babylon, Khammurabi, or, to give him his Babylo
nian name, Khammu-rapaltu. He overcame Kudur-
Lagamar — who had devastated Northern Baby
lonia — • as well as Eri-Aku of Larsa, and the father
of the latter Kudur-Mabug, who shared the throne
with him, and succeeded in bringing about such
complete union between North and South Baby
lonia, that from his time onwards, with scarcely an
interruption worth mentioning, the city of Baby
lon remained for fifteen hundred years the political
centre of Babylonia.
These are assuredly most singular and remarkable
facts, which have so far never been clearly explained
by any historian or Assyriologist, simply because the
Arabian origin of what is known as the first dynasty
of the metropolitan rulers of Babylon had not been
hitherto recognized. Babylonia was then at the
close of a long period of development; from hence
forward we are confronted, in so far as Babylonian
1 The Arabian origin of a part of this dynasty was first recognized a
few years ago by Professor Sayce of Oxford ; but I have recently been
able to prove conclusively that the whole dynasty is Arabian (cf. Hil-
precht's Recent Research in Bible Lands (Philadelphia, 1896), pp. 131 —
144, and the Zeitschrift der Deutsch. Morgenl. Gesellsch., vol, xlix., pp.
524—28 : Leipzig, 1895).

42 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
civilization is concerned, by a spirit of conservatism
which, in some respects, tended towards fossilization ;
a precisely similar state of things is observable in the
history of Egypt. With the Arabs, however, came a
current of new life-giving elements to the rescue of
the already effete civilization of Babylonia. It was not
long before they succeeded in bringing about the first
real unification of the empire. No doubt this had
also been the aim of the other alien races in the south,
such as the Elamites, Eri-Aku, and Kudur-Mabug ;
unfortunately the Elamite civilization belonged to
the same stock as the Babylonian, and therefore
suffered from the same defects ; consequently, in the
long run, they were unable to make head against the
youthful vigour of the Arabs. We must not run
away with the idea, however, that these latter were
nothing more than mere nomads, absolutely innocent
of any trace of culture. East Arabia — and it was
from thence Khammurabi's dynasty took its origin
— had been, as we have seen above, for nearly one
thousand years in intimate contact both with Su-
merians and Elamites. The beginnings of Arab
civilization which confront us on all sides in South
Arabia, from the middle of the second millennium
B.C. onwards, represented by traces of mighty build
ings and by numerous inscriptions, must, in Kham
murabi's time, have already begun to develop.
Throughout Northern Arabia, too, both in the East
(Magan) and in the West (Melukhkha), civilization
must have made great progress just then. For at
this very time occurs the memorable period of the
Shepherd Kings or Hyksos in Egypt, whose Arabian

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 43
origin, in the face of the unanimous testimony of
both native and Greek tradition, can hardly be dis
puted. Thus we see the two most ancient civilized
states of the world simultaneously fall a prey to the
Arabs, while these latter were as yet a semi-nomadic
people. In both cases the strangers were not long
in becoming assimilated to the ancient countries
they had conquered : the Hyksos to the Egyptians,
the Arabs who had forced their way into Northern
Babylonia to the Babylonians.
As to the Elamite princes, Eri-Aku of Larsa and
his father Kudur-Mabug, besides the fact that the
former was dethroned by Khammurabi, we gather
from a number of original inscriptions, two further
items of information, of a totally unlooked-for and yet
mutually confirmatory character. In the first place,
we learn from what is manifestly an extremely ancient
Hebrew tradition, in Gen. xiv., that the kings of
Sodom and Gomorrha (who were, of course, Amor
ites) had for twelve years been vassals of a certain
king Chedor-Laomer of Elam ; in the thirteenth year
they rebelled, and in the fourteenth, Chedor-Laomer
took the field against them with his allies, king
Amraphel of Shinar (Northern Babylonia), king
Arioch of Ellasar, and king Tidal of Goi [Goiim,
R. V.]. Further, a tablet discovered in London, by
Mr. Pinches, only a part of which has, unfortunately,
been preserved, tells of a victory obtained over Elam
by the Babylonian king Khammurabi ; on the back
of the tablet his adversaries are mentioned by name,
viz. Kudur-dugmal, Eri-Aku, and Tudghul (or Tud-
khul). Although, therefore, the event referred to

44 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
is totally distinct from that mentioned in Gen. xiv.,
the names of the parties concerned are the same, viz.
Khammurabi == Amraphel, Eri-Aku = Arioch, Tudg-
hul = Tidal, and Kudur-dugmal = Chedor-Laomer.
In connection herewith it should be noted that
Lagamar (or Lagamal) is the name of an Elamite
goddess mentioned in the cuneiform inscriptions, and
that Larsa and Ellasar are the same name (a fact
which had been recognized before). In conclusion,
Scheil has recently discovered among the early
Babylonian documents a letter from Khammurabi to
a certain Sin-iddinam of Yamutbal, in which mention
is made of the overthrow of Kudur-lagamar. The
only point which remains to be settled is the pre
cise relationship between Kudur-Mabug, prince of
Yamutbal (a part of Elam), and Kudur-Lagamar (or
-Lagmal, or -Dugmal) ; probably they were brothers,
or, at any rate, nearly related, for the title " Prince of
Martu " (i.e. of Palestine) occasionally assumed by
Kudur-Mabug, and the fact that Martu was sub
jugated by Kudur-Lagamar (which we gather from
Gen. xiv.), must, naturally, have some connection
with one another. The theory of modern critics of
the Bible, that Gen. xiv. was not written till the
time of the Babylonian Captivity, and is merely a
free reproduction of a cuneiform record by some
learned Rabbi, must be absolutely rejected.
It may now be asked, what historical deductions
are to be drawn from all these records of the time of
Khammurabi and Eri-Aku — records which, owing to
their fundamental importance to students of the Pen
tateuch, it is intended to deal with more fully later

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 45
on ? They are briefly as follows : the Elamites and
their kinsfolk, the kings of Larsa, had succeeded in
subjugating the " countries of the West," as the
kings of Ur had done before them. It is at this
juncture that the Hebrew tradition fixes the migra
tion of Abraham from Ur of the Chaldees, through
Haran, into Palestine. When, however, the Arab
dynasty of Northern Babylonia under Khammurabi
drove the Elamites out of the land, the supremacy
over the " countries of the West" naturally fell into
the hands of the Babylonians, and, as a matter of
fact, inscriptions have now been discovered in which
Khammurabi and one of his successors expressly
add after the title " king of Babylon," the further
title " king of Martu." It was not till long after
wards that this Babylonian sovereignty of the West
was gradually surrendered to the Egyptian Pha
raohs. When, therefore, we find, as we do in the
Tel-el-Amarna tablets, i.e. about 1400 B.C., the Baby
lonian script and language in general use as the
medium of official communications throughout Pal
estine and Syria, and that they were also employed
in diplomatic correspondence between Babylonia (i.e.
Palestine) and Egypt, we know that this is merely an
after effect of the political hegemony so long en
joyed by Babylon in the countries of the West.
Apart from such knowledge, the fact would be sim
ply unintelligible. But, as we shall see later on, this
knowledge throws a new light on a whole host of
other facts, and especially on the religious history
of the Old Testament. For the present, we must
be content to insist on the fact, that, even at the

46 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
commencement of the second millennium before
Christ, Palestine and Phoenicia had fallen completely
under the influence of Babylonian civilization, an
influence from which neither the Phoenicians nor the
Canaanites, nor any other lesser nation settled be
tween the Mediterranean and the Euphrates, can
have possibly escaped.
How these forces of civilization, which originally
emanated from Babylon, came to make their way
into Egypt after the close of the Hyksos period
(during the so-called Later Empire) is a matter of
history : the old Egyptian civilization, which had by
this time sunk into a mummified condition, derived
new impulses and a totally fresh colouring from it.
Thanks to her growing political influence under
this later empire, Egypt, in her turn, reacted on
Phoenicia and Syria. We must not forget, however,
that a large part of this territory had previously
been for a considerable period an Egyptian province
under the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties. It
will be necessary, therefore, to extend our inquiries
to a still earlier epoch. In the first place, we must en
deavour to ascertain whether, since the Babylonian
records have yielded so rich a harvest, the Egyptian
inscriptions cannot be made to afford us some infor
mation in regard to the state of Palestine during the
period prior to Abraham. And though the total
amount of information concerning this remote epoch,
which we can gather on the banks of the Nile, may
not be very large, it nevertheless includes some facts
of considerable importance.1
1 Cf. W. Max Moller's epoch-making work, Asien und Europa

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 47
Even during the Old Empire, or what is known as
the Pyramid Period, it had been the ambition of the
Egyptians to secure a firm foothold both in the Si
naitic peninsula and in Palestine as well. They suc
ceeded in the first of these objects under an early
Pharaoh Snofrui and his successors ; the inhabitants
of the Sinaitic region, which had become important
in the eyes of the Egyptians on account of its cop
per mines and malachite quarries, were designated
either by the general title of inti (Troglodytes, or
Cave-dwellers), or by the special name of Mentu
(Menzu). This name came later on to be pronounced
Menti or Meti, and even at an early date the cognate
form Metthi (pronounced Mizzi) seems to have come
into use.
Of still greater importance for our purpose is the
earliest mention of a campaign against the Asiatic
('Amu) " Lords of the Sands " (heru shd) in the time
of the sixth Dynasty. The objective of this expedi
tion was nothing short of the Philistine coast. As
the inhabitants of this region are described as " reb
els," it would seem as though, even at that date, a
part of Southern Palestine was regarded as an Egyp
tian possession. That the population was not wholly
a nomadic one is evident from a reference to the fig-
trees and vines which the Egyptians boast of having
laid waste there. The term 'Amu, which was applied
in the earliest times to the whole of the Bedtiin and
semi-Bedtiin races of the adjacent Semitic countries,
is probably, as W. Max Miiller suggests, derivable
nach altdg. Denkmdlern, Leipzig. 1893, for the evidence of the inscrip
tions in support of the following statements.

48 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
from the javelin or boomerang, which was their fa
vourite weapon : the Egyptians afterwards extended
the term to all Asiatics (including the Hittites). Dr.
Glaser1 puts forward the plausible conjecture, that
the biblical name " Ham " in the ethnological list of
Genesis x. was originally the same word. Be this
as it may, the name 'Amu has nothing to do with the
Hebrew word 'am = " people," nor with the divine
appellation 'Amm, which we find frequently intro
duced into Arab, and also ancient Hebrew, personal
names. We shall have occasion to deal with this
word at greater length hereafter. Thus, according
to Glaser, the Katabani, a nation of Southern Ara
bia, call themselves " Children of 'Amm " (walad
'Amm), a name which has undoubtedly some connec
tion with the title " Bent 'Ammon " (sons of Ammon),
as frequently applied to the Ammonites of the coun
try east of Jordan.
It is a pity that there are no personal names to be
found among these early Egyptian references to Ara
bia and Southern Palestine ; they would have been
a most valuable index to the character and language
of the inhabitants of these countries. Luckily, how
ever, there have been handed down to us from the
twelfth dynasty (i.e. the beginning of what is known
as the " Middle Empire"), and therefore, most fortu
nately, a period prior to the time of Abraham, two
detailed narratives — one of an Arabian embassy, and
the other of a journey to Edom (Southern Palestine)
— from which we can obtain most valuable details
in regard to the formation of personal names.
1 Ausland, 189T, p. 49.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 49
I shall first take the narrative of the adventures of
an Egyptian worthy named Sinuhit among the Syrian
Beduins.1 Sinuhit was obliged to fly from Egypt,
and was lucky enough to make his way under cover
of night past the line of forts near the Bitter
Lakes in the vicinity of the Suez Canal, which pro
tected the frontier against the Beduin. A nomadic
chieftain took pity on the half-famished wanderer,
and bringing him to his tribe invited him to remain
with them. Sinuhit, however, for greater safety,
preferred to retreat to some place farther away
from Egypt ; he was, therefore, passed on " from one
tribe to another " till he at length arrived in Qedem
[Kaduma], the country of the Bni Qedem [Kadmo-
nites] or " Sons of the East" (Gen. xv. 19; Job i. 3,
etc.), i.e. among the Beduin of the country east of
the Jordan. Here he remained for a year and a half
under the protection of a king named A mmlanslii,
who is described as Prince of Upper Tenu (after
wards simply Prince of Tenu); he here fell in
with other Egyptian refugees, and finally Ammian-
shi gave him his own daughter in marriage, and
bestowed on him the government of Ia'a [Aia]
(Jericho ?), a district on the frontier. " There are
figs there and vines ; it yields wine in plenty and is
rich in honey; its olives are many and fruit of all
kinds is found on its trees ; corn and barley are there
and flocks without number." We are told that Sinuhit
spent many years there, that his children " became
1 Cf. Ad. ERMAN, Aegypten und agyptisches Leben im Altherthum,
Tubingen, 1885, pp- 494—7, and quite recently G. MAsrERO, The Dawn
of Civilization, 2nd edition, London, 1896, pp. 471 — 3.
4

50 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
as heroes, each a defender of his tribe," 1 and that he
himself " subdued every nation that he came near,
and drove them from their pastures and their wells,
laid hands on their flocks, carried off their children,
despoiled them of their sustenance and slew their
people with his sword and with his bow." He also
came off victor in a duel with a valiant man of Tenu
who had grown envious of the multitude of his flocks.
At last this nomadic existence began to pall upon
Sinuhit, and, having presented a petition to Pharaoh,
he obtained permission to return to the Egyptian
court and spend the rest of his days there. There
upon he left to the Beduin " the lice of the desert,
and coarse garments, the sand to those who dwelt
thereon, and the oil of the trees to those who anoint
ed themselves therewith," and was able once again
to enjoy in their stead all those delights which the
more refined Egyptian civilization had to offer him.
The Asiatic Beduin who, in addition to their
pastoral pursuits, also occasionally dealt in corn
and wine, are here for the first time called Sett (or,
according to the popular Egyptian etymology,
" archers "), which is identical with the Babylonian
term Suti, the name given in the Tel-el-Amarna tab
lets to the nomadic tribes who roved to and fro be
tween Mesopotamia and Palestine. The land of
Tenu, which closely resembles in sound the Biblical
" Dedan " 2 and the Babylonian name for the " coun-
¦This statement throws an important light on the history of the
constitution of Semitic tribes and tribal allies in primitive times (cf.,
for instance, the sons of Jacob, and the Twelve Tribes of Israel).
aTana is mentioned in the Tel-el-Amarna tablets as being hostile to

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 5 1
tries of the West," " Tidanu," is manifestly the land
of Tana.
Of even greater importance than these are the two
following identifications. First, the name of the king
of Tana Amianshi, or, to be more exact, Am-mui-en-
shi, i.e. Ammi-anisha. This name, which means " my
uncle (i.e. God as my paternal friend) is propitious,"
is found in South Arabian inscriptions under the
form Ammi-anisa : the Arabs in the time of Moham
med made a deity whom they called 'Amm-anas, out
of a certain famous 'Ammi-anisa of the land of
Khaulan. From this it is clear that these names
compounded with 'Ammi, in which God is described
as " my uncle " (in the sense of " my paternal friend "),
are to be found among the Semites of Western Asia
as early as the time of the twelfth Egyptian dy
nasty. The second important feature in the story of
Sinuhit is the homely and simple, but none the less
life-like picture which it gives us of the lives and
pursuits of these Semitic nomads. We have here a
near approach to the state of things described in the
traditions of the Hebrew Patriarchal period, and
this too in an epoch prior to that of Abraham.
But the Egyptian monuments are still more help
ful. The narrative of events in the time of the
Pharaohs Amenemhait I. and Usirtasen I., referred
to on a previous page, is concluded by a most inter-
Gebal ; we come upon the following passage in a letter from Rib-Adda
of Gebal to Pharaoh (Winckler, No. 69. 11. 51—55):—
" Moreover the king of the land of Tana had gone out against Zumur
(Simyra), and desired to d'aw near to Gebal, but had no water to diink,
and returned to his own land."

52 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
esting pictorial illustration dating from the time of
tJsirtasen II. We have' here the picture of a long
procession of Asiatic ('Amu) merchants, executed
in colours. These are the well-known thirty-seven
Asiatics on the tomb of Khntimhotpu, who are rep
resented in the act of offering to the said Khniim-
hoptti (a viceroy under the Middle Empire) a quan
tity of eye-paint (mesdemet x), one of the staple arti
cles of commerce produced by distant Arabia. The
history of this word is an interesting one. But even
more interesting are the figures themselves, men,
women, and children, in their splendid garments of
many colours. One man leads with him a goat as a
present, another a gazelle, while a third bears an
eight-stringed lyre, a fourth a javelin with bow and
arrows, and a fifth and sixth each bear a lance.
Beasts of burden are represented by two donkeys,
on one of which two children are seated. Most of
the figures wear sandals, the women apparently be
ing shod with regular buskins. The features of
these already more than half-civilized nomads are of
a strongly marked Jewish type. One of the most
interesting points about them, however, is, unques
tionably, the name of their chief who, as the ac
companying inscription informs us, was a certain
Ebshda. This is a name which, like many others,
can only be rightly explained by means of the South
1 Mesdemet really means " a box for the preservation of Stibium," i.e.
of antimony powder, a substance in general use among the women of the
East for painting the border of the eyelids with ; the word has come
down to us with but slight modification in the Arabic ithmid (pronounced
ismid).

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 53
Arabian inscriptions. There it is given in the com
plete form Abi-yathu'a (pronounced approximately
Abi-yasu'a or Abi-yashu'a). Among the Hebrews,
and this too in pre-Mosaic times, it appears as Abi-
shu'a (i Chron. viii. 4 ; v. 30). Like 'Ammi-anisa, this
name also possesses a religious significance, being
equivalent to " My Father ( i.e. God) helps." From
its formation it evidently belongs to an important
group of personal names which, unlike the Baby
lonian, is only met with among the Western Semites,
i.e. the Hebrews, Arabs and Aramaeans, but chiefly
among the two former, and for the most part in the
earliest periods, that is, at a time when the Hebrews
were still more than half Arabs. The deep signifi-
cance-which this name possesses for the student of
religious history will be treated more fully in a spe
cial chapter. For the present it is sufficient to have
established the fact that two such names occur even
at this very early period, and have come down to us
from a source of such unimpeachable trustworthi
ness as the Early Egyptian monuments. Moreover,
we shall presently come upon the name A M-yashu' a
in the cuneiform inscriptions, a few decades after
Abraham, where it appears as " Abishua " and " Ibi-
shu," and is likewise borne by a Western Semite.
Before proceeding to deal with monuments be
longing to a period nearer to the time of Abraham,
it will be well in connection with the term " West
ern Semites " employed above, to correct an error
which, though of old standing, is nevertheless to be
found in most modern works. I refer to the divis
ion of the Semitic race into Northern and Southern

54 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
Semites, a division which, though still common
enough, is altogether incorrect, and likely to lead to
theories which are both linguistically and histori
cally erroneous. According to this view, the other
Semites would stand in relation to the Arabs ( for
that is what the Southern Semites really were ) as a
distinct philological grouping, with much the same
bearings as the other Indo-European speaking
peoples have to the Aryan, restricting the latter term
to the Indian and Iranian branches. In confutation
of this assertion I pointed out as far back as 1881
and 1884, that in designating the date-palm, olive,
fig-tree, vine, and other cultivated trees, Babylonian-
Assyrian either employs terms totally different from
those used in the other Semitic tongues, or shows
that some of these trees (such as the fig-tree, and
apparently the olive and vine as well) were origi
nally unknown, and only in course of time came to
be indicated by Western-Semitic loan-words.1 It is
evident, therefore, that in many of their more im
portant and specially characteristic features, the
Canaanitish (i.e. Hebrew), Arabic and Aramaic
tongues form a group by themselves, and are quite
distinct from Babylonian-Assyrian. This is sup
ported by the fact that in addition to the botanical
terms mentioned above, there are a large number of
other words both concrete and abstract in which
a similar relation is to be observed ; the different
1 Semitische Volker und Spraehen, p. 63 (and 442) ; Die Sprachges-
chichtliche Stellung des Babylonischen in the Etudes arch/ol., etc., dcdices
& C. Leemans, Leide, 1885, pp. 127 — 9 ; all the views here expressed are
reiterated and amplified in my Aufsdtze und Abhandlungen (1892), pp.
92—123.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 55
characters of the perfect tense, and other important
grammatical considerations affording further con
firmation of this. Finally (and it is on this point
that I here desire to lay the greatest stress) the
peculiar method of name-giving adopted by the
Western-Semites constitutes a marked distinction
between them and the Babylonians and Assyrians.
From this it will be seen that my authority for the
introduction of this new term, " Western Semites,"
is based on grounds of a most varied character, both
linguistic and material. It should, moreover, be
noted that within the Western Semitic group, there
is, at any rate from a linguistic standpoint, a closer
bond of union between the Arabs and Aramaeans
than exists either between the Arabs and Hebrews
or between the Aramaeans and Hebrews,1 a fact
which the history of the Aramaeans amply confirms.
I shall enter more fully into this last point when I
come to the chapter on Isaac and Jacob. On the
other hand, the theory recently put forward by
some scholars who maintain that Aramaic is more
closely connected with the Assyro-Babylonian than
with its Western-Semitic sister tongues, is entirely
erroneous. In this case, it is clear, the influence
exercised for so many centuries by Assyro-Baby
lonian on Aramaic, notably on the East-Aramaic
dialects (both in vocabulary and in various points of
grammar ) — an influence which can be readily ex
plained by geographical propinquity — has been
mistaken for an intimate organic relationship be
tween the two languages.
'Cf. my Auf satze und A bhandlungen, pp. no — 114.

56 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION

CHAPTER III
THE ARABS IN BABYLONIA BEFORE AND IN
THE TIME OF ABRAHAM
We have already seen that about one hundred
years prior to the events related in Gen. xiv., a
dynasty of Arabian origin had made itself master of
Northern Babylonia. The establishment of these
Western-Semitic nomads in Babylon was probably
the result of an invasion on their part, or perhaps
the consequence of a peaceful and gradual infusion
into the country of Arab elements, an infusion which
may have taken place during the rule of the so-
called " later " kings of Ur. Even at that early
period, the countries of the West, including a part
of Arabia, were very closely connected with Ur, a
fact which is attested by numerous passages in the
N&r Bel referred to above. As far back as 1881,
Professor Delitzsch in his book, Wo-lag das Paradies ?
p. 133, drew attention to the fact that these astro
logical notes " dwell with marked insistence on the
countries of the West (i.e. Phoenicia or Palestine)
and frequently contain phrases such as: ' when such
and such a thing comes to pass (in the heavens),
then shall a mighty king arise in the West, then
shall righteousness and justice, peace and joy reign
in all lands, and all nations shall be happy,' with

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 57
many other similar predictions." He further points
out that the New Testament story of the Magi, who
no doubt had access to these early Babylonian astro
logical tablets is closely connected herewith ; for
they must have read in those records about the
new-born King of the West whose star they fol
lowed as far as Bethlehem.
In regard to the close relation which existed be
tween Martu (the land of the Amorites, the West) and
Ur, we find the following passage in the Nur Bel:
" (when such and such a thing occurs in the heavens)
then shall he (the god in question) give to the King
of Kishar (i.e. of Akkad or Northern Babylonia)
Ur and Martu for a possession " ; and again : " then
shall an oracle be given to the King of Kishar : ' Ur
is to be destroyed and its walls are to be cast
down ' " ; and yet again : " Disaster for Akkad, good
fortune for Elam and Martu " (cf. Kudur-Lagamar,
at one time Lord of the West (Gen. xiv.) and Kudur-
Mabug, whose son Eri-Aku was master of Ur and
King of Martu as well) ; and yet again : " then a
west wind gets up, the King of the West (lives)
long days, his reign grows old (i.e. lasts until he is
a very old man)." There is undoubtedly some con
nection between these predictions and the fact that
12 stars of the land of Akkad and 12 stars of the
land of Martu are mentioned immediately after in
the same astrological work. Further light is thrown
on them if we note that in the time of Abraham a
district near Sippara bore the name " Field of
Martu " (var. Amurri, spelt A-mur-ur-ri-i), appar
ently because a colony of Amorites had settled

58 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
there. The Babylonians derived their ordinary
word for the West-wind moreover, from the terri
torial name of Martu, and at this very period the
name " God (of) Martu " is frequently used for the
Babylonian god of the air (Bel-Ramman), (cf. He
brew Rimmon), at first on seals, and afterwards in
sale-contracts of the time of Abraham. Later on
it seems to have disappeared altogether from every
day use.
The fact that with what is known as the First
Dynasty of Northern Babylonia, the Arabs came into
power there, is conclusively proved from the personal
names which have come down to us, including not
only the names of the eleven kings of that dynasty,
but those of a large number of their subjects. A
host of such names, belonging to persons of all sorts
of callings, have been preserved in the numerous
contract-tablets of this period, and especially in the
lists of witnesses which occur in nearly all of them.
There are two methods by which we may distin
guish these Arabic, or, to use once for all the more
general term, Western Semitic, names from those of
genuine Babylonian origin. In the first place, the
inscriptions have already familiarized us with such an
enormous number of Babylonian personal names of
almost every historical epoch, that we can generally
tell on a priori grounds, whether a name has the true
Babylonian ring or not, and this the more readily
from the fact that the names, as far as their com
position and formation are concerned, are fairly
uniform in character from the earliest period to the
time of Cyrus. To this class belong especially all

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 59
personal names containing either the title of a dis
tinctively Babylonian deity, or some verb or noun
which is specially peculiar to the Assyro-Baby-
lonian language. All words, therefore, which pre
sent any obvious variation from this standard may,
prima facie, be suspected to be of foreign origin.
The easiest names to distinguish are the non-Semitic,
and especially the Elamitic, such as Kudur-Nak-
hunti, Simtishilkhak, Kudur-Lagamar, or the Kas-
site, such as Burna-buriash, Kadashman-Khardas,
etc. To the Semitic scholar the foreign origin of
such vocables is apparent at a glance. To single out
Western-Semitic, and especially Arabic names, is a
good deal more difficult, for the Western-Semitic
tongues have many roots and stems in common with
Assyro-Babylonian, and when a personal name con
tains some noun or verb which has, so far, never been
represented in the portion of Babylonian literature
with which we are acquainted, but is occasionally
met with in some other Semitic language, it by no
means follows that this verb or noun must neces
sarily have been absent from Assyro-Babylonian.
This difficulty is increased by the fact that we. often
find in personal names words which are either obso
lete or very rarely used in ordinary speech.
The case is somewhat different, however, when a
personal name contains verb-inflections or other
grammatical elements which are not to be found in
the literary Semitic language of Babylon as known
to us from about 3000 B.C. onwards. Thus in Baby
lonian the imperfect of malak is imlik, of shakan, isli-
kun, etc. etc., while in Hebrew it is, respectively,

60 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
yimloch, yishkon, in Arabic yamlik, yaskun, i.e. in both
Hebrew and Arabic an initial Jod [y] is prefixed,
while Babylonian-Assyrian has merely " i." If, there
fore, we come upon names like Yamlik-ilu, Ydkub-ilu,
Yarbi-ilu, in the time of the First Dynasty of North
ern Babylonia, the verb-inflections show that there
is every chance in favour of the owner having been
a Western-Semite (or, to be more precise, an Arab)
rather than a Babylonian. Or, again, let us take, for
an instance, a royal name like Samsu-iluua, in which
the form Samsu (in true Babylonian we should expect
Shamshu) at once strikes us as foreign, while it is
scarcely possible to translate this name otherwise
than "the sun is our god." Now the Babylonian
word for "our" is ni (thus, iluni — "our god"), in
Hebrew it is -nu, and in Arabic (and, indeed, in Ara
maic also, though this fact is of no importance in
connection with the period in question) it is -na.
Finally — and now we come to the most conclusive
evidence of all — we find in the South-Arabian in
scriptions, and to some extent also in Hebrew tradi
tion (and that too in the tradition of the earliest
times) an entirely original method of name-forma
tion, which must be placed in a class by itself, owing
to its peculiarly religious character. To this class
belong a great many names which, though of un
doubted Semitic origin, yet cannot for some one of
the reasons mentioned above be regarded as pure
Babylonian, or at any rate as necessarily Babylo
nian, proper names.
The obvious course to follow in our investigations
will be first of all tc consider carefully the composi-

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 6l
tion and religious import of the genuine Babylonian
personal names, and then endeavour to obtain by a
stricter scrutiny of the South-Arabian personal
names, some definite criterion by which to test the
remaining names of supposed Western-Semitic
origin. The Hebrew names I purposely leave en
tirely on one side for the present.

Now, first of all, in regard to personal names of
undoubted Babylonian origin, we are already ac
quainted with a fairly large number of Semitic
names belonging to a period prior to the first North
ern Babylonian dynasty.1 I use the word " Semitic "
merely for the sake of clearness, though it cannot
be denied that there were, especially in these earlier
epochs, many Sumerian names as well, even if we
have to admit that many apparently Sumerian names
are merely ideographic forms of genuine Semitic
words. The great majority of the Semitic-Babylo
nian names contain the name of some god as an ele
ment, nearly all the personages in the Babylonian
PanLheon, known to us from the religious texts,
being found among them.
Thus we find at a very early date such names as
Nardm-Sin (" Beloved of Sin or of the moon-god "),
Amil-Bel^ Man of Bel "), Ini-Ma-lik ("Apple of the
Eye of the god Malik " ; Malik meaning, however,
originally " king "), Ishbi-Nirgal (" The god of war is
satiated "), Ishmi-Dagan (" Dagon hearkened," —
> For the sake of brevity, I intend henceforward to describe this dynas
ty by the name of its most famous and prominent member, Hammurabi
(or rather Khammurabi), the sixth of the eleven kings belonging to it.

62 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
Dagon being another name for Bel), Nur-Rammdn
(" Light of the Storm-god "), Sin-bani (" Sin creates"),
Gimil-Ea (" Gift of Ea "), Gimil-Samas (" Gift of
Sam as, or of the sun-god "). Names compounded
with the general word ilu = " god," such as Ilu-bani
(" God creates "), are rare at this period, though it is
true that we find a name like Ibni-ilu (" god created
it ") in one of the very earliest inscriptions extant.1
For the benefit of those who are not familiar with
the names of the Babylonian gods, I may mention
that the god of the sky (really of the Celestial
Ocean) Nun or Anum (shortened into Nu or Anu)
stood at the head of the Babylonian Pantheon ; he
had a son, In-lilla, the god of the air (the Semitic
Bel or " Lord ") and In-lilla had a son Ea (Sumerian
En-ki, "Lord of the Earth"), the god of earth and
sea. These three, Anu, Bel, and Ea form the earliest
triad of divinities ; yet they do not occupy a prom
inent place in personal names. In order to bring
such names into a form more easily apprehended it
became the practice at an early date to replace Bel,
the god of the air, by Ramman (ideogram Im), god
of the storm and wind ; Ea, god of the earth and sea,
by Sin the moon-god (in South Babylonia Sin re
ceiving the special name of Uru-ki or Siski =" Pro
tector of the Earth"). For the atmosphere in mo
tion is to the atmosphere at rest, as the concrete is
to the abstract, and the moon which transmits the
1 This is a Sacrifice-list written in semi-hieroglyphic characters ; it
should, however, be noted that even in this case there is a possible alter
native reading, viz. Anu-bani. or Ibni-Anu ("The god of the sky creates
or created"), the symbol in question being used for both Anu (sky, or
god of the sky), and ilu (god = Hebr. el).

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 63
reflected light of the sun by night was recognized
even by the Babylonians as the satellite of the earth.
We therefore find that Ramman and Sin occur with
relatively great frequency in personal names, as
does Samas (properly Shamash or Shamshu), the
sun-god ; this latter, in the genealogical system of
Babylonian deities, corresponds to Mirri-Dugga or
Amar-uduk (Marduk, the Biblical Merodach) the
morning sun rising out of the ocean. The sister
and consort of the sun-god is Ishtar, his hostile
brother is Nirgal (Sumerian Girrd), who again is
mated with Ghanna1 or Gula; another name for
Nirgal was Nin-Girsu (Lord of Girsu). Nirgal is
also a solar deity, but like his " double " Nin-dar (or
Ninip) he represents the evening sun after it has
sunk beneath the horizon, or the winter sun which
appears at no great height above it. Nindar is,
therefore, more particularly the war-god, and Nirgal
the god of the plague and of husbandry ; regarded
as planets, Nindar is Mars, Nirgal Saturn, Marduk
Jupiter, Ishtar Venus, and a god not mentioned
above, Nabu or Nusku (the biblical Nebo, in Sume
rian, Nin-gish-zidda, Dun-pa-uddu, Pa-sagga, Pa-bil-sag,
or simply, Pa ; in Semitic, Ishu = Fire) is Mercury.
Whereas Nindar (spelt Ninip) has no place in the
genealogical system, but is replaced by Nirgal — a
deity who appears comparatively seldom in per
sonal names — Nebo, on the other hand, is joined
1 Symbol ab (=house) with inserted symbol kha (=fish). The reading
NinA, which is frequently given in modern Assyriological works, is un
doubtedly wrong ; the reading Ghanna, suggested by me in 1885, is
practically certain ; Gula (properly Gulla) is only a later form of
Oluinna.

64 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
either with Marduk or with his brother Nirgal as
their son, his wife being the harvest-goddess, Nisa-
ba, who, however, also bears the special Semitic
name of Tashmit (i.e. hearkening).
These are the more important among the deities
of Ancient Babylonia, especially those of whom a
knowledge is essential to a right understanding of
personal names. There is nothing furthermore so
conducive to the correct apprehension of the latter
as a proper appreciation of the relationship between
the various gods. The Babylonians themselves were
not very clear on this point, though now and then
we get a more definite glimpse of these relations.
When, for instance, in the journey of Ishtar to
Hades we read —
Then went forth Samas, before Sin his father wept he,
Before Ea, the king, came his tears,
the so-called parallelismus membrorum, which is the
guiding principle of all early Semitic poetry at once
suggests that Sin, the moon-god, and Ea, the earth-
god, are interchangeable terms; just as "wept" is
equivalent to " came his tears," so Sin is equivalent
to Ea. According to the genealogical system, Me
rodach (Marduk), the Morning Sun, was the son of
Ea; here Samas, the Sun, is the Son of Sin. Ishtar,
as sister and wife of Merodach, is thus daughter of
Ea, while in the Epos, on the contrary, she is repre
sented as daughter of Sin, who is thus assumed as
the equivalent of Ea. Ea's wife is called Dam-gal-
nunna (Great Wife of the Celestial Ocean), while Sin's
consort receives the designation Nin-gal (" Great
Mistress "), to which I may add that ths signs for

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 65
" Nin " and " Dam " are almost identical in meaning.
Ea is called Gushgin-banda, that is " Small Gold," by
which silver is meant, and Sin is also distinguished
by the appellation Lugal-banda, " The Little King,"
Silver being the symbol of the Moon, as Gold is of
the Sun. As Ea, according to the genealogical sys
tem is the son of Bel, Sin, on the other hand, as well
as his equivalent, Lugal-banda, is represented in the
religious texts as the first-born of Bel, who further
more appears in the genealogical system as Son of
Anu, and in the religious texts — through his repre
sentative Ramman— also as Son of Anu, the Celes
tial Deity. Wherever the Fire-God (Gibil) — who is
on other occasions identified with Nabu or Nusku
— is also called Son of Anu, Bel or Ramman, the
God of Lightning, is meant. As for the female
divinities, the wife of Bel is designated Ninlilla,
" Mistress of the Air," or Ba'u ; wife of the Ea, as
has been already said, is called Dam-gal-Nunna ;
while the wife of Merodach (or Samas), is named
Ishtar (sometimes Ninni, or even At), and the con
sort of Nergal (or Nin-ib), Gula. They are collective
ly feminine personifications of the Celestial Ocean,
and it is only as a Planet-God that Ishtar has the
distinctive designation of the Morning and Evening
Star. The readiness with which these female deities
are made to represent each other tends to produce
the impression that there was but one Babylonian
goddess, that is to say Ishtar, the Astarte of the
Phoenicians. But here again, the various positions
assigned to her in the genealogical tree enable us to
give her her proper place. Ishtar, the daughter of
Anu, is the wife of Bel; "Ishtar, the first-born
5

66 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
daughter of Bel " is the wife of Ea ; " Ishtar, the
daughter of Sin " (which means the same thing as
" the daughter of Ea ") is the real Ishtar (who, as
wife of the sun-god, also bears the distinctive title
Anunit or Ai), or the name may also refer to Ea's
other daughter, Gula.
An exceptionally large number of personal names
belonging to the closing centuries of Khammurabi's
dynasty have come down to us from the epoch of
the so-called "later" kings of Ur (vide supra, pp. 36
et seq.)} Thousands of contract-tablets and trading-
accounts of this period have been acquired during
the last few years by the museums in Constantinople,
Philadelphia, Paris, Berlin, and apparently in Lon
don also : unfortunately very few of these have as yet
been published. Quite recently, however, an Amer
ican scholar has printed a number of these tablets
in extenso, so that we are now in a position to pro
nounce judgment on the personal names which
occur in them. The twenty records2 edited by Dr.
Arnold contain nearly a hundred personal names,
and of these hundred names, about a dozen contain
the word Gimil = gift, and about twenty the word
Amil = man, both of them in conjunction with the
name of a god. Here gimil is represented by the
symbol shu = hand, and amil, in some cases, by
the symbol gullu — human being, in others by the
1 The majority of the names quoted above, on pp. 61 — 62, are taken
from inscriptions of a still earlier period.
''Ancient Babylonian Temple Records in the Columbia University Li
brary, edited with transcriptions into Neo-Assyrian characters by W. R.
Arnold, New York, 1836.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 6?
symbol ur = man. As to the names of deities,
Samas, Sin (both in the form En-zu and in the usual
South-Babylonian form Uru-ki), Nirgal and Ai are
the most frequent : though we also find the names
of Ramman, Ishtar, Ba'u, Gula, Nin-girshu, Ea, Mar
duk (in the form Gal-alimmd), Anu, Tammuz (a man
ifestation-form of Marduk), and a god called Shalim
(in the name Amil-Shalim), as well as another god,
Damku (" the gracious one," apparently a sobriquet
of Sin). Similarly, there are also a number of names
compounded with ilu = God e.g. Amur-ila = " I
beheld God," Ilu-bani (vide supra, p. 62), Ilu-ni= "our
god," Gimil-ili =" gift of God." It is an open ques
tion whether all these names, every one of whicli
has the true Babylonian ring, are also of genuine
Semitic origin, or whether a good many of them
ought not to be ascribed to Sumerian, the language
of the aboriginal inhabitants of Babylon. For while
it is clear that names which are represented by
phonetic elements, such as those contained in bant
= creating, a mur = I saw, ni = our, akhu = brother,
cannot be anything but Semitic ; in the case of those
written ideographically, we can only say that it is
possible but not absolutely certain that they were
pronounced in the Semitic manner. For instance, it
is conceivable that all names beginning with Ur —
the Sumerian word for" man" — may have been thus
pronounced, and not perhaps as the Semitic sound
Amil. Possibly the numerous texts which have yet
to be published may enable us to clear up this point;
for the purposes of our present investigation the
question is of merely minor importance. So long as

68 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
we are in a position to recognize the essential Baby
lonian character of all these names, and to ascertain
the true Babylonian mental attitude which underlies
their formation, it is immaterial whether an element
in them is pronounced in one way or the other.
The personal names which occur in deeds of sale
of the Khammurabi Dynasty, to which we shall now
turn our attention, present far less difficulty in this
respect. Here, names of undoubted Semitic origin
are in a decided majority, even among the docu
ments obtained from Southern Babylonia (Tel Sifr,
near Larsa).1 In order to make the matter more
generally intelligible, I here append a list of the
eleven kings belonging to this Dynasty with the
length of the reign of each.
Shumu-abi  15 years.
Sumu-la-ilu  35 "
Za^um*1" \ son of the Preceding kin&> H "
Apil Sin " " " 18 "
Sin-muballit " " " 30 "
Khammurabi " " "55 "
Samsu-iluna " " " 35 "
Abi-eshu'a " " " 25
Ammi-satana " " " 25 "
Ammi-zaduga " " " 22 "
Samsu-satana " " " 31 "
1 It should be borne in mind that, so far as I know, all of the above-
mentioned documents belonging to the time of the later kings of Ur
come from Tclloh in Southern Babylonia, whereas the deeds of sale of
the subsequent epochs belong for the larger part to Northern Babylonia,
a region which had been subject to Semitic influences from the earliest
times : this fact must not be lost sight of in weighing the evidence.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 69
As nearly all the contract tablets of this epoch are
dated in the reign of one or other of the above-
named kings, we are justified in asserting, on a
priori grounds, the pre-Abrahamic origin of a cer
tain number of them, about twenty-five in all (exclu
sive of those not yet published), containing about
four hundred personal names ; for, as briefly indicat
ed above (p. 44), Khammurabi was a contemporary
of Abraham, therefore Khammurabi's five predeces
sors and individuals who lived in their time may be
rightly described as pre-Abrahamic. If we include
the time of Khammurabi also, then the total number
of personal names at our disposal becomes substan
tially larger. For, as far back as 1882, twenty-
three sale-contracts of the time of Khammurabi, and
twenty-three more of the time of his rival Eri-Aku,
or Rim-Sin of Larsa, were published by Strassmaier
alone in the Proceedings of the Berlin Congress of Ori
entalists. To these Bruno Meissner added a dozen
more (all of North Babylonian origin) in his Beitrdge
zum altbabylonischen Privatrecht, published in 1893,
a work containing no less than one hundred and
eleven contracts of the Khammurabi Dynasty. The
names occurring in the period before, and down to,
the time of Khammurabi, however, supply enough
material to enable us to determine the usual system
of name -formation which obtained in Babylon at
that time. But lest this limitation of the field of
investigation should make it seem as though the
names prior to Khammurabi differ from those found
during and after his time, I may as well mention
here that the personal names of the whole epoch,

70 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
from Shamu-abi down to Samsu-satana are all of the
same type, viz. pure Babylonian-Semitic, with the
exception of a few names of private individuals,
which I shall deal with later on ; these exceptions
amount to about 5 per cent, (or perhaps more) of the

whole.1

Let us now examine the names themselves, and
the religious ideas of the Babylonians of that time to
which they are an index. The first peculiarity we
notice is that by far the greater number of these
names contain two elements, and some of them as
many as three. These latter, which had hitherto
only been found among the names of Babylonian
and Assyrian kings of a later period (i.e. about
1 500 B.C. Cf. Assur-nadin-akhi = Assur giver of a
brother), are met with here also, each of them form
ing a whole sentence. As instances of such names
belonging to the first half of the Khammu-rabi Dy
nasty, I may here mention Samas-nur-mdte = Samas
is the light of the country, Martu-bani-amili = The
Storm-god is the creator of mankind, Sin-kalama-idi
= Sin knows everything, Mannu -shanin- Samas =
who can contend against Samas? Shumma-ilu-la-
ilia = If god be not my god (then will such and
such a thing befall me) ; to these may be added the
following names which occur under the latter half
of the dynasty: Samas - natsir - apli = Samas is the
¦ It is true that the proportion is totally different in the case of the
eleven names of the kings : here there are nine names which, though of
Semitic origin, are not Babylonian, but rather Arabic. It must be re
membered, however, that while the reigning dynasty was of foreign ori
gin, the great bulk of their subjects remained Babylonian as before.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 7 1
guardian of the son, Sin-nadin-shumi = Sin is the
donor of the name (i.e. the giver of a son), Samas-
shar-kitti = Samas is king of justice, Sin-akham-idin-
am = Sin give a brother, Mannu-balu-ili — who (can
exist) without God, Ilu-ishme-khani = God listens to
the wretched, Zanik-pi-shu-Samas = His mouth is
closed, O Samas,1 and finally, Abum-kima-ili = A
Father like God.
Personal names composed of two elements nearly
all contain the name of a god, sometimes at the
beginning, sometimes at the end of the compound.
Let us first examine those in which the final element
consists of a divine name. Whereas, under the later
kings of Ur, names beginning with Gimil- = gift,
and Amil- (or Ur)- = man, appear, as we have seen,
to be in a majority;2 under the Khammurabi Dy
nasty another set of words come to the front, e.g.
those commencing with Ipik- or Ipku = Might (?),
Nur- = Light, Arad = servant, Tsili = my protection,
sha = he of (i.e. a retainer or servant of such and
such a god), etc., etc. Of the names of deities found
in conjunction with these elements, by far the most
frequent is that of Sin, the moon-god, who had his
most ancient fane at Haran ; in his later holy temple
at Ur he was worshipped under the name of Nannar
(written Uruki). At the time, however, in which
these personal names originated the cult of the
1 I.e. he is silent in thy presence. Cf. Habakkuk ii. 20; Ps. xxxvii.
7, or perhaps interrogatively, "Does Samas, then, close his mouth?"
for which parallels may be found in Ps. I. 3 or xxviii. I.
2 Unless, of course, the evidence of the many texts still unpublished
should reverse this verdict, a result which for various reasons I do not
regard as probable. Cf. p. 104, note 1.

"J2 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
moon-god had spread over the whole of Babylonia,
and was undoubtedly more popular than that of any
other deity. It should also be noted that Ur and
Haran, the chief centres of this worship of the moon-
god are, at the same time, the two places which play
an early and important part in the migrations of the
Patriarch Abraham ; for it was from Ur that he set
out for Haran, and from thence he afterwards went
on to Palestine. Next to Sin the most frequent ele
ments in names are Hi = " of God," or ili-shu = " of
his God,"1 Samas and Ramman, and the lesser gods
and goddesses, such as Ishtar, A'i, etc., occurring
much less frequently. After what has been just
said, it is, perhaps, hardly necessary to adduce spe
cific examples: in addition to ordinary compounds,
such as Nur-ili-shu, Nur-Samas, Nur-Sin (= Light of
his god, Light of Samas, Light of Sin respectively),
Arad-Rdmman = servant of Rimmon, Arad Nirgal
= servant of Nirgal, we may also notice such names
as Irishti-Ai = My desire is A'i (Goddess of the sky),
Imgur-Sin = Sin was gracious, Ana-pani-ili = before
the face of God (cf. Num. vi. 25), Na-bi-Sin = Har
binger or Prophet of Sin (or Harbinger is Sin (?), cf.
Bani-Sin = The creator is Sin), Sha-Martu = He of
the storm-god,2 Apil-Sin = Son of Sin, Bur-Rammdn
1 I.e. of the special patron-deity of the person in question, who seems,
in most cases, to have been Sin, though we meet with such names as
Uu-ka-Samas and Samas-ilu-ka-ni ¦= Thy god is Samas.
2 This name is borne by a witness to a contract concluded under Apil-
Sin, who is further described as "son of Abi-ramu" (which proves that
even at that time there were names similar to the Hebrew " Abraham ").
Meissner, Beitrdge zum altbabylonischen Privat-recht No. m. Cf.
infra p. 94, Note 1.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 73
= scion of Ramman, Pir-i-Ai = scion of Ai, Mar-Istar
= Son of Ishtar, Apil-ili-shu = Son of his God (cf. a
similar expression in the bi-linear religious texts
" The sick man, the son of his god "), Kish-ili —
Gift of God, and Ishmi-Sin = Sin gave ear.
Even more numerous are those names compound
ed of two elements in which the first element con
sists of the name of a deity. From an examination
of instances it is clear that a much greater freedom
was allowed in the choice of verbal forms which
might be tacked on after the name of a god. While
verbs and participles are of comparatively rare oc
currence as first elements, they are quite common
as second elements. This may be best shown by a
series of examples. Sin-rimine, Rammdn-rimini = S.
or R. have shown mercy on me, Sin-rimenishi = S.
have thou mercy on us, Beli-ishmeanni = my Lord
hearkened unto me, Sin-shimt = S. hearkens, Samas-
tdiru = S. turns again, i.e. is gracious, Si?i-iragam =
S. makes protest (i.e. in favour of sinners), Sin-putram
= S. releases or frees (viz. from guilt), Samas-natsir
= S. protects, Sin-magir = S. is compliant, Sin-liki
= S. accepts (sc. my complaint), Aku-dainu = the
moon-god is judge (viz. of the dead as Samas was of
the living), Ilu-damik = God is gracious, Sin-gamil =
S. gives (cf. Sin-ikisham and Sin-iddinam), Samas-bani
= S. creates, Sin-muballit = S. awakens the dead,
Sin-pilakh = Fear Sin !, Sin-imuki = S. is my wis
dom, Sin-illatsu = S. is his strength, Samas-mudi = S.
is omniscient, Sin-abushu = S. is his father, Ilushu-
abushu = His god is his father, Samas-abuni = S. is
our father — all these are not merely evidence of

74 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
what I have said above, but also of the prevailing
religious tendency in Babylon — in spite of its poly
theism — shortly before Abraham and during his
time. It is, moreover, worthy of note that Ishtar
scarcely ever appears in such personal names as
commence with the name of a god : I have been
able so far to find among feminine names only Istar-
ummasha — Ishtar is her mother, and a few names be
ginning with Ai, such as Ai-rishat = Ai is the high
est. Speaking generally, the only gods represented
in names of this type are Sin, Samas, ilu (God), and
Ramman (= Bel). Notwithstanding, therefore, the
countless greater and lesser deities in which Baby
lonian Polytheism abounded, the names in general
use seem to prove that it was only the moon, the
sun, and the sky which conveyed an impression of
deity to the Babylonian mind ; and if we substitute
the simple word " God " (ilu) for the moon, the sun,
or the sky, these names express no sentiment which
is inconsistent with the highest and purest monothe
ism. The exalted conception of the deity possessed
by the Semites of Northern Babylon will be dealt
with later on, when we come to speak of the primi
tive history of Babylon and Israel.
Our present object, however, in introducing all
these names, is not so much to show the relatively
high religious feeling which the)r evince, as to put
before our readers some of the general principles
which underlie the formation of Babylonian appella
tions, and to point out a few of their most character
istic elements. Compared with them, other names
which occur, it is true, in the same documents, but

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 75
which I have provisionally described as Arabian,
seem obscure and unintelligible — I refer to such
names as Ammi-zaduga, Abi-eshua (or Ablshu'a),
Sumu-abi, Mudadi, Zimri-rabi, Yashup-ilu, Natunu,
Yadikhu, etc. For the individual constituents or
general meaning of such appellations we may search
the Babylonian-Assyrian vocabulary in vain. The
key of the enigma can only be supplied by a study
of the system of name-formation which obtained in
Southern Arabia. This system we must now briefly
examine before concluding the present chapter.

In Southern Arabia we come upon traces of a
high state of civilization at a very early period.
Evidence of this is supplied by the ruins of an
cient temples, towns, and aqueducts, and, above all,
by the numerous inscriptions which still survive.
These latter are written in an alphabet which be
longs, at the very lowest estimate, to the same
period as the so-called Phoenician alphabet, and
must therefore be referred, together with the Phoe
nician, and the Greek alphabet, which is derived
from it, to one and the same source, viz., the West
ern Semitic alphabet, the structural source of
which has not yet been made out. This circum
stance alone is an argument in favour of ascribing
these inscriptions to the middle or perhaps even the
beginning of the second millennium before Christ.
The question as to whether they take their origin
from the Egyptian hieratic script or, as seems far
more probable, from the ancient Babylonian is quite
a separate one.

y6 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
The South Arabian inscriptions are to be respec
tively distributed among the kings of Ma'an,1 those of
the Hadramaut and those of Kataban— whose mon
uments have lately been discovered by Dr. Glaser
—and to the kings of Saba (Sheba). They are
written in two dialects— the Hadramautic, Kata-
banian,2 and Minaean 3 inscriptions being in Minaean,
while the Sabaean inscriptions are in the Sabaean
dialect. The earliest Sabaean inscriptions, those in
which the rulers are referred to— not as kings— but
as priest-kings (mukarrib or makrilb), belong to the
commencement of the first millennium before Christ,
being certainly not later than 800 B.C., and probably
as early as 900 B.C. or 1000 B.C. ; in the Hebrew tra
dition we find a queen of Saba mentioned as early
as the time of Solomon. Next in order come those
Sabaean inscriptions in which the rulers are named
simply " Kings of Saba " (700 — 200 B.C.), and lastly
the neo-Sabaean inscriptions (in which the title ap
pears as " King of Saba and Dhu-Raidan "), the last
of these being as late as 600 a.d. (from about 300
1 Usually pronounced Ma'tn ; the history of the pronunciation of
similar names in Southern Palestine and ihe region east of Jordan
seems to indicate that the original pronunciation must have been Ma'dn,
the Hebrew word in both these cases being Ma'bn (from Ma'dn). At
the present day, however, we have Tel Ma'tn (south of Hebron), and
Ma'in (from whenc we get the river Zerka Ma'tn). The Babylonians
probably transcribed it by Magan.
2 Cf En. Glaser, Die Abessinier in Arabien und in Afrika, Mu
nich, 1895, p. 72.
3 The Greeks (in the Septuagint and the writings of Strabo) translit
erate the Hebr. Ma'dn and Arab. Ma'dn into Mmaiot. Hence the
terms Minjeans and Minreic have passed into common use, and, for the
sake of convenience, I adopt them in the present work.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 77
A.D. onwards it is " King of S. and Dh.R. and Had
ramaut and Yemnat"). Of the Hadramautic in
scriptions, unfortunately only two or three have as
yet been discovered, and of these only one has any
claim to high antiquity, though it is quite certain
that there were kings of the Hadramaut in the time
of the priest-kings of Saba, and probably long be
fore it : of the Katabanian inscriptions, none of
which, I regret to say, have yet been published, a
part at any rate are, according to Glaser, contempo
rary with the earliest Sabaean records. Finally, the
Minaean inscriptions, several of which have also been
found at el-Oela in N.W. Arabia, ought, in the opin
ion of several scholars who have made a special
study of the subject, to be assigned to the period
between 900 and 200 B.C. One of them, which is
specially important, owing to the fact that it con
tains a reference to Egypt and to Minaean colonies
in Edom has been attributed to the time of Camby-
ses (525 B.C.), although an ingenious theory put for
ward by Dr. Glaser and supported by him with ex
traordinary ability, assigns the kingdom of Ma'an
to a pre-Sabsean era, a conjecture that seems to be
come every day more probable. While Glaser (and
at one time I was prepared to agree with him) refers
the earliest of these inscriptions to the end of the
Hyksos period, I now confidently believe that the
South Arabian kingdom of the Minaean dynasty,
must, at the very latest, have flourished in the pe
riod between Solomon and Moses: at any rate, it
seems to me that the inscription mentioned above
(which other authorities wish to assign to the reign

78 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
of Cambyses) belongs to this epoch, and Glaser has
already adduced evidence from monuments lately
discovered by him, to prove that the kingdom of
Ma'an was totally 2 destroyed by Kariba-ilu Watar,
one of the priest-kings of Saba.
The personal names which occur in all these in
scriptions — and especially in the earliest of them,
such as the Minaean and early Sabaean, are of a fairly
uniform type, their main characteristics being briefly
as follows.
We are struck first of all by the fact that though
the South Arabian religion was of a polytheistic
character — as the ex voto offerings to the various
gods conclusively show 2 — yet the names of the va
rious gods are, in almost every instance, excluded
from personal names in favour of the generic term
ilu = " God."
The usual sequence in which the gods are men
tioned in the Minaean inscriptions is as follows :
Athtar (pronounced Astar) of Kabddh, Wadd, an-
Karih (another rendering is Nakrah), Athtar of Yah-
rak, and the Lady of Nashk. To these some inscrip
tions add an " Athtar the Ascendant " (i.e. appar
ently, the Morning Star), and an Athtar of Yahir.
Athtar and Wadd occupy the highest place. The
first of these, though originally borrowed from
Babylon, and identical with the goddess Ishtar (the
1 Those who hold that the kingdoms of Ma'an and Saba were contem
porary, must necessarily assume in this case that the Minaean kingdom
came into existence again after its overthrow by Saba, a view which is,
for various reasons, exceedingly improbable.
2 The majority of the inscriptions are ex voto offerings to the gods ;
even the few purely historical monuments partake of this character.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 79
Phoenician Astarte) is nevertheless always repre
sented as a male deity. He was also worshipped in
the Hadramaut, though there his son Sin (also a
Babylonian importation, but in Babylon the rela
tionship was reversed, Sin being regarded as the
father of Ishtar) took a more prominent place. As
to Wadd, he is the personification of Love, just as
an-Karih s is the personification of Hate : we have
here an Arabian counterpart of the hostile brothers
Marduk and Nirgal (cf . Osiris and Set). Yet in spite
of all this we scarcely ever find anything but ilu =
God, in Minaean personal names. Wadd occurs but
seldom (as in Sa'ada-Wadd = Wadd hath blessed it,
or — a better reading — Sa'du-Wadd = The prosperity
of Wadd), an-Karih is not found at all ; the word
" goddess " only once, viz. in Sddu-ilat = Prosperity
of the Goddess, = Sabaean, Sdd-Ldt ; and Athtar
but rarely, and generally in an abbreviated form
Atht, e.g. Hama-Atht = Athtar protected it, Haupi-
Atht = give health, O Athtar, Bi-Athtar = By Ath
tar, and in a few other instances : far more frequent
are names like Yahmi-ilu — may God protect, and
Haupi-ilu = God give health.
We find a very similar state of things in early
Sabaean inscriptions. In the Sabaean Pantheon
Athtar was also worshipped in various places and
temples, but Wadd no longer accompanies him, but
1 This reading (in which the " n " is assumed to be equivalent to the
old North-Arabian article) is based on the fact that in certain South-
Arabian inscriptions the North-Arabian-Phoenician god Ba'al appears as
an-Ba'al (according to another rendering Nab'al); it is, therefore, prob
able that an-Karih is originally of North-Arabian origin.

80 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
Almdku-hu = his (i.e. the Heaven's) Lights ; and in
place of the generic " goddess " we have the Sun
(Shamsum) represented as female, accompanied by
a whole host of other lesser gods, who must origi
nally have been nothing more than local deities, such
as Tdlab, Aum, etc., etc. Now, it is interesting to
observe that it is not till we come to neo-Sabaean
inscriptions that Shamsum, Aum, Athtar, and other
names of deities (never, it is significant to note, that
of Almaku-hu) appear as the second element in per
sonal names, and even then they do not occur nearly
so often as ilu = God, which moreover appears fre
quently as a first element.
The first deduction — and a very important deduc
tion it is, even when taken by itself — we can draw
from the above facts is, that South Arabian personal
nomenclature of the earliest times contains prac
tically no appellations save those compounded with
ilu = God, in spite of the fact that the religion of
those who bore these names was admittedly poly
theistic. If we consider how frequently primitive
ideas continue to persist in the personal names of
any race, this would seem to indicate that there
must have been a time in the history of Arabia when
these gods — a number of whom, such as Athtar,
Sin, and the Hadramautic deity Anbay ( = Nebo),
recently discovered by Glaser, were certainly im
ported from outside — did not receive worship, and
when some higher form of devotion of a type, which
involuntarily reminds one of what we are told about
Melchisedek in the Old Testament, must have pre
vailed.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS

Nor is this by any means the sole deduction to be
drawn from the facts. It is of special interest for us
to learn all that is said of God in South Arabian
personal names, and particularly the special peri
phrases for the simple word ilu which were adopted
in these names.
In the. first place it is characteristic that when
ever the word " God " appears as the first element
of a name, it is nearly always accompanied by a
suffix denoting the first person singular of the pos
sessive pronoun, thus Hi = my God. In the follow
ing examples I have purposely chosen appellations
containing such predicates as occur most frequently
in the second elements. For instance :
Ili-awivas my God has presented '

"¦-wahaba "

" " given

"-dhara'a "

' " created

(or "

' " sown the seed)

"-dharaha "

" is resplendent

"-za'ada "

" commands awe (?)

"-yada'a "

' is (all) knowing

"-yapta "

" shines (or is resplendent)

"-kariba. "

" has (or is) blessed

"-ma-nabata

" stepped into the light, shone

"-'azza "

' is mighty

"-'amida "

' came forth (to help)

"-padaya "

' has set free

"-rabbi " '

' increase ! (probably imperative)

"-rapa'a "

' has healed

"-radsawa "

' is well pleased

1 As the vowel points are not given in the South Arabian script, it is
possible that in many of these names we ought to read an imperative
instead of a third person of the perfect (e.g. Ili-awwis = Give, O my
God). 6

82 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
Ili-sharraha my God causes to thrive
"¦shard a ' ' " has ordained, ordered
"-samfa " " " hearkened
"-sa'ada " " " blessed
A large number of these predicates also occur in
reverse order, and in these cases the verb preceding
the word ilu (God) is generally in the so-called im
perfect tense (with a present or probably even an
optative significance), e.g. Yasmd-ilu = May God
listen to it ! Yu'awwis-ilu = May God grant it !
and many others of a similar kind, including names
in which occur verbs not mentioned in the above
list, such as, — Yadlt-kur-ilu = May God remember
it ! Yahmi-ilu = God protect it! Yahram-ilu = God
averts it ! etc., etc. Names consisting of a verb in
the imperfect by itself, such as, Yashupu = he re
gards, are abbreviated forms of a longer name as,
in this case, YashApu-ilu. Moreover, the perfect
tense also appears as a first element, e.g. Kariba-ilu
= God blessed it, Warawa-ilu = God cast it (sc.
the lot), ' Adhara-ilu = God defended it, though in
the case of words like these, it is sometimes diffi
cult, in the absence of vowel points, to be quite cer
tain whether the first element is a noun or a verb ;
WaJibu-ili, Zaidu-ili, Widddu-ili ( = Present from
God, Gift of God, Love of God) are, for instance,
more probable readings than Wahaba-ilu ( = God
gave it) Zayyada-ilu and Waddada-ilu. We also
find semi-verbal adjectives (often from the same
verbs that are elsewhere combined with the name
of a deity) used as personal names, e.g. Natanum
( = Giver meaning originally God and not the

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 83
bearer of the name), Tsaduku, Yathu'u and Yathi'tim,
Yapi'u, Akibu (with a strong £-sound) and other
names of one element, to which we shall again refer
later on.
We find moreover — and here we come to the
most characteristic feature of this method of name-
formation — instead of the names originally begin
ning with the word Hi = my God, a number of
synonymous terms, (to some extent periphrases of
the divine name), taking its place. The more fre
quent and important of these terms are Abi = my
Father, ammi = my Uncle,1 (in the sense of " guar
dian " or " protector ") or, in place of it, khdli — my
Uncle ; we also occasionally find dddi = my Cousin
and akhi = my Brother, and lastly sum-hu = His
Name. But even more general expressions such as,
dhimri = my Protection,2 yith'i = my Help (or Sal
vation), nabti =. my Splendour, tsidki = my Justice,
wir*i =z my Fear, with a few others of still vaguer
significance, such as, ma'di, tubbdi (perhaps = malki
= my king?) and nash'i are used quite indifferently
with Hi = my God. We thus obtain at one and the
same time a confirmation of the phrases contained
in the above list and a whole series of additional
predicates of the deity, as the following names — se-
1 Probably = Paternal Uncle as opposed to Khali = brother of my
mother. In these personal names ammi never occurs in the sense of
' ' my people."
8 The vocalization has been arrived at through names that occur in
the cuneiform inscriptions such as Zimri-rabi and Zimrida (from
Dhimri-yada'a), and also by comparison with Hebrew names such as
Zimri, Yish'i [Ishi] Tsidki-ydhu [Zidhyah] and Yir'i-yah,

84 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
lected either for their frequent occurrence, or special
significance — will readily prove :
Abi-amara, Sumhu-amara, Khdli-amara, Ammi-amara,
Yith'i-amara, Wir'i-amara = My father etc. has commanded.
'Ammi-anisa = My uncle is well affected (cf. supra, p. 51).
Sumhu-apika = His name is powerful (or excellent) — with a
strong £-sound.
Abi-wakula, Khdli-wakula = My father etc. rules.
Sumhu-watara = His name is above all others.
Abi-dhamara = My father was protecting.
*'Ammi-dhara,a = My uncle created (or sowed seed).
*Abi-za'ada = My father inspires fear (or awe).
*Abi-yada'a, Amtni-yada'a, Khdli-yada'a, Dhimri-yada'a =
My father etc. is omniscient ; cf. also the inverted forms
Yada'a-abu, Yada'a-ilu, Yada' a-sumhu . This last name taken
in connection with that of Sumaida which occurs in the later
South Arabian tradition, seems to point to Sumhu-yada'a as a
name which must have originally existed somewhere among the
inscriptions. Cf. p. no.
Sumhu-yapi'a, Ammi-yapia, Yith'i-yapia, Nabti-yapia = His
name etc. shines.
Abi-yathu'a (cf. supra, p. 53), Ammi-yathua = My father etc.
helps. *Abi-kariba, Amtni-kariba, Kh&li-kariba, Dddi-kariba, Akhi-
kariba, Sumhit-kariba, Dhimri-kariba, Yith'i-kariba, Nabti-
kariba, Ma' di- kariba,1 Tubbai-kariba, Nash'i-kariba, Dhar'i-
kariba = My father etc. has (or is) blest.
Rabbi-nadiba = My Lord is generous.
Abi-'ali, Sumhu-ali, Dhimri-ali, Nabti-ali = My father etc.
is sublime.
Ammi-tsaduka = My uncle is just — with strong £-sound.
Sumhu-riydmu = His name is sublimity.
Abi-shafiaka, Ammi-shapaka =: My father etc. gives rich gifts
— with strong £-sound.
*Abi-samia, Ammi-samia = My father etc. hearkened.
1 This is one of the most common names, and continued to be in
actual use up to late times, that is, to the time of Mahomed.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 85
An asterisk is prefixed to those names of which the
second element has already appeared in the earlier
list on pp. 81 — 82, in conjunction with Hi = my God.
By far the greater number of all these names, in
cluding both those on p. 81, and those just enumer
ated, belong to the Minaean and early Sabaean
inscriptions. Careful calculations — some results of
which are given elsewhere — tend to show that many
of these names, and especially those beginning with
Ammi-, Khali-, and Sumhu- appear less and less fre
quently as time goes on, and that the vogue of this
whole system of name-formation practically began
and ended in the earliest epochs of South Arabian
history. In regard to the religious significance of this name-
system, it may, I think, be confidently asserted that
no parallel can be found for it in the nomenclature
of any ancient people. It is true, that in so far as
the attributes ascribed to the Deity are concerned,
genuine Babylonian names, which we have already
considered at some length, offer points of resem
blance with those of South Arabia. In the Babylo
nian, no less than in the South Arabian, we find
evidence of a belief that the Deity gives men all
things that are good, that He blesses, protects, res
cues, assists, and delivers, that He is mighty, and
shines with a pure radiance ; that He creates and
preserves all things, is omniscient, just, sublime,
and kingly, increases, and commands ; that He is
nevertheless gracious and merciful to all who ap
proach Him as suppliants, even as a father is to his
children, and hearkens to the prayers of them that

86 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
call upon Him and serve Him in holy fear. If we
add to this the fact that in Babylonian names, refer
ences to " judgment," " raising from the dead," and
" forgiveness " occur with comparative frequency, it
would almost seem as though the Babylonians had
possessed a deeper sense of religion than the Arabs.
Apart, however, from the fact that with few excep
tions — as, for instance, in the case of expressions
like " hearken," " know," and one or two others —
Babylonian and Arabic rarely employ -the same or
even etymologically identical verbs, but generally
use totally distinct words even when they wish to
express the same or a similar meaning, there is an
other radical distinction between them, which places
the Arabic nomenclature on a far higher and purer
level than the Babylonian. I refer to its almost in
variable use of the word " God " (ilu) as contrasted
with the polytheism observable in Babylonian names
(Sin, Samas, Ramman, Nirgal, etc.). Even the sy
nonymous alternatives for the word "God" which
are found in South Arabian inscriptions, such as
" Father," " Uncle," " Protection," " Help " (cf. the
analogous use of Tsur = " rock " in the O. T.), and
especially the substitute " His name " which occurs
so frequently, are merely so many witnesses to
the lofty conception of the Deity entertained by
the earliest Arabs. Compared with that held by
the Babylonians, it can only be described as a
very advanced type of monotheism not unworthy
to rank with the religion of the patriarch Abra
ham as presented in the Biblical narrative. If we
look at the part played by the sublime and holy

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 87
" name of Yahveh " in the Old Testament scriptures
dealing with Mosaic times, we find that a growing
reluctance to pronounce this sacred name led to its
being replaced by the designation Shem = " Name
(tear iijoxrfv)." The fact, moreover, that the worship
of a number of deities is prominently mentioned,
even in the earliest South Arabian inscriptions,
merely serves to throw into still stronger relief the
persistent monotheism of the personal names, which
even the lapse of a thousand years or so had been
powerless to efface. How deeply this monotheistic
principle must have rooted itself in the hearts of this
people from the earliest ages is proved by its having
been able, in face of the growing encroachments of
polytheism, to retain for so long an undisputed posi
tion in their appellations.
Having now sufficiently described the system of
name-formation peculiar to South Arabia, both as
regards its form (viz. the verbs and nouns which are
employed in it) and as regards its meaning, it will
be a comparatively easy task to separate the Ara
bic names referred to above (pp. 59 — 62) as occur
ring under the Khammurabi Dynasty, and especially
the names of the kings themselves (see list p. 68)
from those of purely Babylonian origin. And first
of all it is only fair to credit with their due meed of
praise, and in their proper order, the various scholars
who have directly or indirectly helped to elucidate
this most important point, and to show how modern
investigators were gradually led to determine the
Western Semitic (or, to be more precise, Arabic),
origin of the Dynasty in question.

88 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
As far back as December 1880, the English Assyr-
iologist, Mr. T. G. Pinches, in dealing with the list
of eleven kings and the periods for which they
reigned, then first published, called attention to the
fact that another list showed a long series of names
of Babylonian rulers, the greater part of them of
Sumerian and also Kassite origin with their expla
nation in Semitic. Among these translations into the
Semitic dialect of Babylonia were found also the
two names Kha-am-mu-ra-bi (pronounced Khammu
rabi) and Am-mi-di-ka-ga (for which read Ammi-sa-
dugga or Ammi-didugga, since the symbol ka when
it appears in conjunction with ga is equivalent to
dug) ; the Babylonian scribe explains them by Kim-
ta-rapashtu (i.e. " a widely extended family ") and
Kimtu-kittu (" just family "). According to the view
of the Babylonian interpreter, in these names (which
he evidently regards as foreign or, at any rate, as
not of genuine Babylonian origin) the first element
Khammu, or Ammi = Family, the second element
rabi (ostensibly good Babylonian for " great," from
rabu = to be great) = " widely diffused " or " ex
tended," while the other second element sadugga =
"just." That the pronunciation intended was really
sadugga and not didugga is proved by certain ancient
Babylonian contract tablets of Tel Ibraham (Kutha),
the dates of which were given in a translation by
Mr. Pinches in 1886 ;x in these contracts the name of
the king in question is spelt Ammi-zaduga by his con
temporaries. In December 1887, tnat able Assyriologist, M. H.
1 Guide to the Nimroud Central Saloon, (London 1886) p. 82.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 89
Pognon, French Consul at Bagdad, carried the mat
ter a step further. In a note contributed to the
Journal A siatique (Series VIII., vol. xi., 1888, pp. 543
— 547) — which seems unfortunately to have been
buried in that publication, and has, in any case, re
ceived no further attention from Assyriologists — he
identified zaduga with the Hebrew and Arabic verb
Tsadak = " to be just " : explained Khammu and Am
mi as equivalent to the Hebrew 'am = " people,"
basing this latter conclusion on the Babylonian par
aphrase kimtu = family, and correctly translated
Samsu-iluna as " Samas is our god." From these data
he argued that the dynasty in question must have
been of " Arabic or Aramaic origin." The last sen
tence of his paper (in which, by the way, he does not
even touch on the most important point of all, viz.
the existence of South Arabian and Hebrew names
beginning with Ammi) runs as follows : " I am, how
ever, quite prepared to admit that my opinion (sc.
as to the foreign, but incontestably Semitic origin
of the dynasty) is purely hypothetical, and I have
no intention of presenting it to my readers as a cer
tainty." It was not till the year 1890 that this hypothesis,
which Pognon had done little more than suggest, at
length took tangible shape. In that year the gifted
English Assyriologist, A. H. Sayce, pointed out that
a name almost identical with Ammi-zaduga occurs
in a well-known South Arabian inscription (Hal. 535)
in the form Ammi-tsaduka, thus furnishing obvious
confirmation of the existence of the Western Semitic
verb, meaning "to be just," postulated by Pognon's

90 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
theory. Meanwhile Eduard Glaser had (in 1889)
drawn fresh attention to this document, hitherto in
variably misinterpreted, in which the writer, 'Ammi-
tsaduka, returns thanks to the gods for his safe
escape out of Egypt, Glaser making reference to it
in connexion with his hypothesis as to the higher
antiquity of the Minaeans.1 This, together with cer
tain contributions towards the elucidation of this
important inscription which I gave in my Aufsdtze
und Abhandlungen? and a further discussion of the
same text by Glaser in the second volume of his
book3 (which appeared in Ma)' 1890) led Sayce to
suggest the Minaean name Ammi-tsaduk} This iden
tification of Ammi-zaduga, the name of a Babylonian
king with the South Arabian name 'Ammi-tsaduka
(for this was, of course, the complete pronuncia
tion) — an identification of the utmost importance to
all who seek to elucidate the earliest history of the
Western Semites — occurs in Sayce's Preface to the
third volume of the New Series oi Records of the Past
edited by him, and dated September 1890. Sayce
here supports his case by a reference to the Hebrew
names Ammiel, Amminadab (I had already adduced
these in Aufsdtzen und Abhandlungen, p. 6, note 1),
1 Skizye der Geschichte Arabiens, Pt. I. (which is unfortunately not
yet obtainable through the booksellers), Munich, 1889, pp. 57 et seq.
2 Pt. I., Munich, 1892 ; pp. 1 — 66 were, however, sent to various
scholars and libraries as early as March 1890.
3 Skizze der Geschichte und Geographic Arabiens, vol. II. (Geographic),
Berlin, 1890.
1 This had already been correctly transcribed by me in my Aufsdtzen
und Abhandlungen, p. 26, note 1, though on p. 6 I gave it as 'Ammi-
tsadik.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 91
Balaam and Jeroboam, to the Arabian names Am-
mu-ladin (under Assurbanipal in the seventh century
B.C.) and to the name borne by the Shuhite god Emu
(for 'Ammu), and in conclusion expresses his convic
tion that certain kings of the first North Babylonian
dynasty, not all of them, but from Khammurabi, the
sixth member of the dynasty, onwards, belonged to
" tribes of Arabian origin from the western and
eastern frontiers of Babylon." On this last point he
is, however, mistaken, since Samsu-iluna, the son of
Khammurabi, calls Sumu-la-ilu " his mighty ances
tor, his fifth predecessor" (cf. the third (1887) Part
of my History of Babylonia and Assyria, pp. 353 and
415); Sayce ought, therefore, to have described the
whole dynasty as Arabian, but appears to have
been misled by the seemingly pure Babylonian
names of the first five kings. In addition he drew
attention to the fact that the name of the eighth of
these kings is Ibishu according to the list, and Abi-
ezukh in the contracts (the correct and more ac
curate form is, however, Abishu'a), and that it con
tains the element Abi = "father"; he also regards
as a later interpolation the assertion in the list to
the effect that Samu-la-ilu, the second king, who was
probably brother to the first, was the progenitor of
the whole dynasty.
But now a fresh difficulty arises which did not
occur to Professor Sayce when he claimed an
Arabian origin for the second half of the Khammu
rabi Dynasty. Since names beginning with Ammi
are found among the Hebrews, the absence of such
a name as Ammi-zadok from the Old Testament may

92 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
be purely accidental. There is, moreover, the pos
sibility that the names of the second half of the
Khammurabi Dynasty may have been Canaanitish
instead of Arabian. In that case Samsu-iluna instead
of being equivalent to " Samsu is our God " (Hebr.
Skemesh-ele"nu, or in Babylonian script Shamash-ilenu)
would have to be explained as " Samsu is God "
(Shemesh-elon), as indeed I myself had at one time
proposed to do.1
Meanwhile, we learn from texts recently discov
ered that both Khammurabi and his great-grandson,
Ammi-satana, were not only kings of Babylonia
proper, but also kings of the land of Martu, (which
included Palestine);2 the obvious explanation seemed,
therefore, in my opinion, to be that both Khammu
rabi and his successors must have assumed Canaan
itish names either for political reasons with a view
to conciliating their Canaanite subjects, or possibly
because they had married Canaanite wives and thus
condescended to show their love for them.3 I was
encouraged in this view by the following remark of
H. Winckler's (Altorient. Forschungen, Leipzig, 1894,
p. 183): "The name Ammi-saduga is generally ad
mitted to be merely another form of Ammi-tsaduk ;
1 Geschichte Babyloniens und Assyriens, p. 415, note I.
2 Cf. H. Winckler, Altorientalische Forschungen, Leipzig, 1894,
pp. 144 — 146 and 198, also p. 45 of the present volume.
3 Cf . my Geschichte des alien Morgenlandes (p. 59) which was written
early in 1894 and published in the spring of 1895. in the Sammlung
Goeschen. There also I characterized Abishu'a as " a Minseo-Canaanit-
ish name" (Hebr. AMshu'a, Min. Abtyathu'a ; cf. also supra pp. 57
and 59, and also infra p. 94, note 1).

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 93
according to Sayce and Hommel;1 Khammurabi,
Ammi-sadugga, and Ammi-satana are West-country
names, cf. supra p. 146 (Khammurabi, King of the
countries of the West)." Indeed, in 1895, Winckler
went still further, for in his Geschichte Israels (pp.
130 et seq.) he declared the names Sumu-abi and
Sumu-ilu to be Canaanitish (giving as a reason their
analogy with Shemu-el and with a hypothetical
Sam-'al-el) and that hence the whole Dynasty must
have been Western Semitic or rather Canaanitish
conquerors ; "as a matter of fact," he writes, " of the
whole eleven names of the Dynasty, eight bear the
true Canaanite stamp, two-Apil-Sin and Sin-muballit
— are Babylonian, for the victors could not entirely
escape the influence of Babylonian culture — and
one (Zabu) is uncertain, but can hardly be Babylo
nian." But even should this theory prove to be really
correct, Sayce's identification of Ammi-zaduga with
Ammi-zadok (or Ammi-tzaduka), on which the whole
superstructure depends, would still be of immense
importance to the student of ancient oriental history,
and more especially of the early history of the He
brews. For Abraham's migration from Chaldaea
would thus assume a totally different complexion if
it were true that the Dynasty to which Amraphel,2
(i.e. Khammurabi), belonged were of the same na
tionality and spoke the same language as Abraham
' Here Winckler evidently has in his mind a passage in my Siidara-
bischen Chrestomatie, p. 12, " The names Ammi-zaduga and Ammi-
satana, as Sayce has already pointed out, are pure Western Semitic
formations." * Gen. xiv. 1.

94 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
and his followers ; in other words, if they were of
Canaanite origin. This result would be inevitable
if we were to accept Winckler's tacit assumption
that Hebrew and Canaanite, in the time of Abraham,
were practically convertible terms — an assumption,
however, which, as recent investigations convince
me, is untenable.
Towards the close of 1895 appeared two further
contributions towards the solution of this question,
one from the pen of Professor Sayce and one pub
lished by myself. In the latter, I succeeded, I be
lieve, in proving conclusively by a comprehensive
review of the whole bod)7 of available material, (in
cluding not merely the names of the kings, but more
particularly the other personal names of the period)
that Sayce was perfectly right in his first conten
tion as to the Arabian (not Canaanitish) origin of
Khammurabi's dynasty, but that it was the whole
dynasty that was Arabian, and not, as he supposed,
the half only. But before I deal with this, and re
capitulate here the reasons which led me to this con
clusion, it will be well to consider the preface to
Sayce's Patriarchal Palestine, a small volume which
appeared in November 1895, in which he again re
turns to the subject.
Sayce first points out that not only is the personal
name Ab-ramu (more properly Abi-ramu) to be found
in Babylonian contract-tablets of the Khammurabi
epoch,1 but that Mr. Pinches has also discovered the
1 Cf. my Assyriological Notes, § 5 (Proceedings of the Bibl. Archaeol.
Soc, May 1S94), where I drew attention to the first evidence of this
that was forthcoming, viz. : the mention of a certain Sha- Martu, son of

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 95
names Ya'qub-ilu (Jacob-el) and Yasup-ilu (or rather
Yashup-ilu or Yashub-ilu) in these tablets, and " other
distinctively Hebrew names, like Abdiel." From
this he proceeds to make the following deductions
to which I attach so much importance that I quote
the passage in full :
" There were therefore Hebrews — or at least a
Hebrew-speaking population — living in Babylonia
at the period to which the Old Testament assigns
the life-time of Abraham. But this is not all. As I
pointed out five years ago, the name of Khammu
rabi himself, like those of the rest of the dynasty of
which he was a member, is not Babylonian but
South Arabian. The words, with which they are
compounded and the divine names which they con
tain, do not belong to the Assyrian and Babylonian
language, and there is a cuneiform tablet in which
they are given with their Assyrian translations. The
dy nasty must have had close relations with South
Arabia. This, however, is not the most interesting
part of the matter. The names (Khammurabi, Ammi-
zaduga, etc.) are not South Arabian only, they are
Hebrew as well.1 . . . When Abraham therefore
was born in Ur of the Chaldees, a dynasty was rul
ing there which was not of Babylonian origin, but
Abl-ramu in a contract-tablet of Ihe time of King Apil Sin (grandfather
of Khammurabi). I there went on to say that this was not surprising
since both Khammurabi and the third king in succession after him,
Ammi-satana, style themselves " Kings of the countries of the West."
Also cf. supra, p. 72, note 1.
1 Sayce here refers to Hebrew names such as Amminadab, and verbs
like tsadak [Zaduqa or Zadoq] = to be just, which though foreign to
Assyro-Babylonian, are common enough in Hebrew and Arabic.

96 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
belonged to a race which was at once Hebrew and
South Arabian. The contract tablets prove that a
population with similar characteristics was living
under them in the country. Could there be a more
remarkable confirmation of the statements which we
find in the tenth chapter of Genesis ? There we read
that ' unto Eber were born two sons ; the name of
the one was Peleg,' the ancestor of the Hebrews,
while the name of the other was Joktan, the ancestor
of the tribes of South Arabia. The parallelism be
tween the Biblical account and the latest discovery
of archaeology is thus complete, and makes it im
possible to believe that the Biblical narrative could
have been compiled in Palestine at the late date to
which our modern ' critics ' would assign it. All
recollection of the facts embodied in it would then
have long passed away."
This modification of Sayce's former view is
clearly due to observations made by Winckler and
myself, but Sayce rightly avoids the expression
" Canaanite," and uses the term " Hebrew " in its
place. And now I come to the real object of this whole
chapter, which is to prove the Arabian origin of the
kings of the Khammurabi Dynasty collectively.
The reader is now sufficiently familiar with the
general characteristics of genuine Babylonian no
menclature, and has, on the other hand, obtained
such an insight into the principles of South Arabian
name-formation as to be able to form an opinion for
himself, even without a knowledge of Arabic He
brew, or the cuneiform texts ; much more will the

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 97
majority of theologians, or at any rate all those who
understand Hebrew — and it is to this class that I spe
cially address the present volume — be in a position
to follow my arguments unaided.
In November 1895, and therefore simultaneously
with the appearance of Sayce's Patriarchal Palestine,
and also — a fact to which I attach importance — with
the publication of H. Winckler's Geschichte Israels?
my review of Meissner's Babylonian Common Law —
comprising a collection of over a hundred contract
tablets of the Khammurabi Dynasty, most of which
had never been previously published — appeared in a
German periodical.2 Shortly before this an article
of mine, entitled " Discoveries and Researches in
Arabia," was published in the Philadelphia Sunday
School Times of October 12, 1895, and was after
wards reprinted in Professor Hilprechts' Recent Re
search in Bible Lands (pp. 131 — 158). This article (the
MS. of which is dated April 30, 1895) also dealt with
the Arabian origin of the Khammurabi Dynasty.
In the following pages I will give a brief general
summary of these two articles, adding at the same
time a number of additional facts which have since
come to hand.
We must notice in the first place that the names
of the first two kings of the Dynasty, Shumu-abi and
Sumu-la-ilu contain an element which plays an im
portant part in South Arabian names, viz. sum-ltu =
1 Winckler's book did not appear until after my MS. had been sent to
the printer, in the summer of 1895.
3 The Zeitschr. der Deutschen Morgenl. Gesellsch. vol. xlix., pp. 522 —
528, (on Meissner's Beitrdge zum altbabylonischen Privatrechte).

98 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
his name (i.e. God's name ; cf. supra, p. 85) ; these
two appellations mean respectively " Sum-hu is my
Father," and " Is not Sum-hu God?" The Baby
lonians also occasionally employed in personal
names the word shumu (which originally meaning
" a name," came afterwards to indicate " a son "),
e.g. Shum-irtsiti = son of the earth ; (cf. the alterna
tive name Mar-irtsiti which means the same thing).1
It is evident from the meaning attached to the latter
that it was not used in the same way as the term
Sumu in the two names mentioned above. It is
much more probable that the first element in Sumu-
la-ilu2 is simply a divine appellation — just as Sumu-
abi is a parallel of Samas-abi, Ilu-abi, etc. ( = Samas
is my Father, God is my father, etc.). This name
cannot therefore mean " The Son is my father," but
simply and solely " Sumu is my father." Now we
nowhere find sumu-hu (abbreviated to sumhu and con
tracted to Sumu, cf. Hebr. Shemu-el, Samuel), still
extant as a periphrasis for " God," except in South
Arabian personal names, to which, therefore, we
must look in the first instance for information. The
Hebrew name Shemu-el (the pure Hebraic form of
which would be Shemo-el), which occurs first in
Num. xxxiv. 20 (the Simeonite " Shemuel, the son
of 'Ammi-hud) and then in 1 Chron. vii. 2 (the name
1 In the contract tablets the expression Mdrat-irtsiti — Earth-daugh
ter (or according to Meissner = a daughter of one's own blood) is used
for "adopted daughter" (Meissner, Beitr., p. 154).
1 Cf. the analogous name Pa-la-Samas = Is it not then Samas?
(where the particle pa — " then," " thus," is Arabic) and Ea-ma-la-ilu
= Is not Ea God ?

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 99
of a grandson of Issachar) and elsewhere only in
Samuel the name of the great judge and prophet,
and in Shemida (a son of Gilead mentioned in Num.
xxvi. 32) also contains the element Sum-hu, and this
appellation also can only be explained by a refer
ence to ancient Arabic ; the name Sum-hu-yada'a ap
pears, so Glaser informs me, in the Katabanian In
scriptions, as Sumida'a, a contraction very similar
to the Hebrew Shemida, while a name of analogous
formation such as Sumu-hu-yapi'a is generally given
in full in the South Arabian inscriptions.
In regard to the two names of witnesses Shumu-
litsi and Shumu-libshi (otherwise Shumu-ma-libshi
and Shumi-libshi),1 it cannot be denied that both
litsi (= may he come out or proceed !) and libshi( =
may he be !) are perfectly regular Babylonian forms,
and that a possible translation of these two person
al names would be " May a son come forth ! " and
" A son may it be ! " Considering, however, that a
similar name, Shuma-lib-shi, occurs in the bilingual
list (mentioned on p. 89, supra), in which Khammu
rabi and Ammi-sadugga are explained, and is there
paraphrased into Sumerian as Mu-na-tilla = His
Name lives, I prefer to regard the names in question
as being Babylonian in form but Arabian in mean
ing. We come upon names like Ikun-ka-ilu — God
existed for thee (stood thee in good stead ?) and Ibshi-
na-ilu = God came into existence for us (shewed
himself as existing for us),2 which not only offer a
1 We also find Shumi-abia and Shumiabu in the Ancient Babylonian
contract tablets as names of private individuals.
2 Meissner, Beitrdge zum altbabylonischen Privatrechte, No. 78

IOO THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
close analogy with the name Shuma-libshi (which I
take to mean " His (viz. God's) Name comes into exist
ence "), but also furnish a remarkable parallel to the
Hebrew divine appellation Yahveh (= the Existing
One). I ought, moreover to point out that when
we find expressions like " may his name be, or
exist," and " his name lives," as variants of the same
Babylonian name, the chances are that they are
translations of a Western Semitic original Sum-hu-
yahvi ; for the only distinction between yahvi = " he
is " and yahvi = " he lives," is that the latter is pro
nounced with a somewhat stronger guttural aspi
rate, a sound which in the Hebrew script is repre
sented by a kh (Hebr. yikhyeh = " he lives" as
opposed to yihyeh = " he is ") though it is really
more of an h than a kh, as any one who is familiar
with colloquial Arabic will readily admit. I may
here mention that Yahveh : does not mean " He who
strikes down " (i.e. the God of battle or of light
ning) — as the higher critics fondly imagine — but is
an Arabic rather than a Hebrew (Canaanitish) form
of the ancient verb hawaya = Hebr. hayah = " to
be, to come into existence," and belongs to the very
earliest language of the Hebrews, as spoken in the
time of Abraham and Moses, prior to the epoch of
Canaanitish influence. In the later Hebrew idiom,
which was employed from the time of the Judges
(Khammurabi Period). The variant Ib-shi-na-ilu, side by side with
lb shi-i-na-ilu and especially the analogy of Ikun-ka-ilu prove that
Meissner's reading, Ibshi-ina-ili = he was with or near God, is errone
ous. Note the Arabic -na = us (genuine Babylonian -ni).
1 Jehovah is a wrongly formed word and never really existed.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS IOI
onwards, the name Yahveh came to be pronounced
more like Yihyeh, and is actually written as Ehyeh
= I will be, cf. Ex. iii. 14.1 In so far as form is con
cerned Yahveh stands in precisely the same relation
to yihyeh, as Yamlech (1 Chron. iv. 34) does to the
ordinary Hebrew verb-form yimloch, (vide supra, p.
60). The names of the witnesses in the Ancient
Babylonian contract tablets of the time of Abraham
bear witness, therefore, to the correctness of the
traditional Biblical explanation of the All - holy
name of Yahveh.
There is another name, compounded with sum-hu
which seems to afford a clue to the origin of the
Babylonian personal name Samsu-riami (found in a
contract tablet of the time of king Zabium). As the
Babylonians generally omit the h, they would nat
urally write the Arabic sumu-hu = "his Name"
either sumu or shumu, as in the name discussed
above, or perhaps transliterate it sumsu (properly —
shumu-shu), which in genuine Babylonian means
" his Name." In this latter case, the probabilities
are that they would have intentionally altered
sumsu = his name = God, into Samsu, the name of
the Babylonian sun-god, which closely resembles
Sumsu in sound, and would at the same time be
more in harmony with the Babylonian polytheistic
system. In the South Arabian inscriptions we find
the name Sumhu-riyam, riydm (allied to rdmu =
" high " in Abi-rdmu) being a word peculiar to South
Arabia ; we are not likely to be far wrong, there-
1 Cf. Hosea i. 9, ehyeh lachem = " I will be for you," an expression in
many respects analogous to the Babylonian names mentioned above.

102 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
fore, in identifying the name Samsu -riami with
Sumhu-riyam. Nor ought we to lose sight of the
fact that in the Minaean dialect, sumu-su = " his
name " was used in place of sumu-hu, a fact which
was obviously due to Babylonian influence, while
only in personal names the old Western Semitic
sumu-hu maintained its existence with few excep-*
tions (e.g. Sumu-su-amina = " His Name is true ").
If this explanation of Samsu-riam be correct, then
there is every reason for believing that a similar
transformation may have occurred in the names
Samsu-iluna and Samsu-satana, especially as here
the final element in each case is Arabian.1 The
original form of these two names would, therefore,
be Sumu-hu-ilu-na = " His Name is our God " and
Sumu-Iiu-Sata-na = " His Name is our Mountain."
Taking the names of the kings in their order (vide
supra, pp. 68 et seq.) we pass from Sumu-la-ilu to Za-
bum, or (as it is entered in a whole series of contract
tablets) Zabium. This name means " a warrior,"
and, since nearly all of these names possess a relig
ious significance, it is probably an abbreviation of
Ilu-zabi = "God fights (for me)."2 This name is
also found in the South Arabian inscriptions, but
does not appear in any of the Assyro-Babylonian
records, although it is clear that there was also a
Babylonian word tsabu = " warrior " ; moreover,
the uncontracted form Zabium (instead of tsab'u or
¦Cf. what is said in regard to iluna on p. 60, supra, and as to satana
a few pages later on.
3 The name Damku = " gracious " otherwise Ilu damik = " God is
gracious " offers a close analogy.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 103
tsabu) points rather to an Arabian origin, just as
Nabium = herald, is probably a Western Semitic
loan-word imported into Babylonian. Indeed the
Semitic root which lies at the base of Zabium must
be familiar to every student of the Bible ; it con
tains the same root as tsaba'a which is involved in
the Biblical attribute of God, Yahveh Tsebaoth —
" Lord of Hosts."
Apil-Sin and Sin-muballit, who come next in order
in the list of kings, are the only members of the
whole dynasty who bear genuine Babylonian names.
This circumstance has quite recently induced an
Assyriologist, who has so far shown himself to be a
mere amateur in questions of historical and archaeo
logical research, to throw ridicule on the theory of
the Arabian origin of Khammurabi's Dynasty. Be
cause, forsooth, Khammurabi's father " bore the
stately Babylonian name of Sin-muballit, and his
grandfather the no less irreproachably Babylonian
name, Apil-Sin " and because other persons who
possess names which I have claimed as Arabic have
either sons or fathers with pure Babylonian names,
it follows, so we are told, that the assumed Arabian
origin of the Khammurabi dynasty, supported as it is
by so much indisputable and irrefragable evidence,
is none the less a baseless and untenable conjecture.
We have, however, in the succeeding Kassite Period
a case which presents the closest analogy with that
of the Khammurabi Dynasty. There we find that
the son of King Ramman-shuma-utsur bore the
Kassite name, Mili-Shipak, while his son, who was
every bit as good a Kassite as his forefathers, re-

104 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
verts to the pure Babylonian name Marduk-apli-
idinna. And, moreover, among the names of
witnesses occurring in contracts of the Kassite
period, as my friend Professor Hilprecht of Phila
delphia informs me, there are numberless instances
in which a son is called by a Semitic name and the
father by a Kassite name and vice versa ; and as the
Kassites — or, in the present instance, the Arabs —
fell more and more under the influence of Babylo
nian culture, so much the oftener do we come
across this practice of adopting Babylonian per
sonal names. We need not therefore allow objec
tions of this nature, which are founded on nothing
but crass ignorance of the Minaeo-Sabaean language
and antiquities, to detain us further, but will merely
lay stress on the fact that both of the appellations
referred to above, Apil-Sin and Sin-muballit, involve
the name of a Babylonian deity who had, even in
the earliest ages, been honoured as far as South
Arabia, viz. : the name of the moon-god Sin (vide
supra, p. 79).
As we have already discussed the elements Kham-
mu and ammi (pp. 89 et seq.) not much more remains
to be said about the next name on the list, that of
Khammurabi. One point only is worthy of note.
In a series of contracts and letters of very early date
published by Mr. Pinches1, we find the variants
1 Cuneiform texts from Babylonian Tablets in the British Museum,
Pt. II. (50 plates), London, 1896. I take this opportunity of mention
ing that Pt. I. (also with 50 plates) merely contains lists of the time of
the later kings of Ur written in the manner described above on pp. 67
et seq. ; these new texts amply confirm all that I have said in regard to
the personal names of that period on p. 67 (also on 70, Note I).

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS I05
Ammu-rabi and Khammi-rabi. This serves to remind
us of the fact that in a contract of the time of King
Zabiu (Zabum) the Western Semitic name 'Abdel
(Abdallah), which also begins with the guttural let
ter ' Ayin, appears in one place as Abd-ili, in another
as Khabdi-ili. The original form of the king's name
must therefore have been 'Ammi-rabi. The variants
Ammu-rabi, Khammurabi and Khammum-rabi are
merely the result of attempts to give a Babylonian
aspect to the name of a man who was, as far as his
deeds were concerned, the most truly national of
all the Babylonian kings. Indeed these attempts
went a step farther. There is in existence a seal
which bears the name E-ki-rapal-tu,1 king of Gish-
galla (i.e. Babylon) ; this is none other than our old
friend Khammurabi, who is mentioned in the bilin
gual list as Kimtu-rapaltu and in the Bible (Gen.
xiv. 1) as Amraphel (LXX: Amarpal). In the text
moreover edited by Mr. Pinches, which is a tri
umphal ode celebrating the overthrow of Kudurla-
gamar by Khammurabi, the former is referred to as
Girra ( = Nergal-) la-gamil (according to Pinches a
play on the name Kudur-lagamal) and the latter — a
fact which has hitherto passed unnoticed — as En-
nun-dagal-la = E-nun (or Kummu) rapaltu. Both
E-ki and E-nun are mythological terms which indi
cate the southern region of the zodiac, in which the
Babylonians placed the constellations of Ea (Fish-
Goat, etc.) and the entrance to the under-world.
Now, seeing that there is a Babylonian word Khum-
1 Cf. my note in the Proceedings of the Soc. of Bibl. Arch., January
1893, p. no.

106 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
mu (synonymous with lummu) for Aries (the sign of
the God Ea), and that on the other hand we find kum-
mu (syn. lummu), a word closely resembling kimtu in
sound, used to indicate that Watery-region in the
heavens in the same manner as kimmatu is used for
the ideogram for Fish-Goat, we can readily under
stand how it was the Babylonians came to paraphrase
the, to them, outlandish name Ammi-rabi (Khammi-
rabi etc.) in this manner. Moreover, the element -rabi
which is found in a number of seemingly genuine
Babylonian names of the same period, such as Sa-
mas-rabi, Ramman-rabi, Ilu-rabi, must have sounded
strange in Babylonian ears, for they replaced it by
rapashtu or rapaltu (feminine of rapshu = broad) ;
probably the name Yarbi-ilu (p. 60), which from its
formation is manifestly Arabic, is closely related to
this word rabi. Among the South Arabian inscrip
tions we find a parallel in the name Ili-rabbi (My
God, increase, cf. supra p. 81), which might, it is
true, be also read Ilu-rabbi = " God is my Lord."
Although I have headed this chapter, " The Arabs
in Babylonia before and in the time of Abraham," it is
manifest that here, where we have to deal with the
evidence in favour of the Arabian origin of the
Khammurabi Dynasty as a whole, it is impossible
to disregard the names of Khammurabi's successors,
and we must consequently include the generations
immediately subsequent to Abraham within the
scope of our inquiry. In addition, I propose to dis
cuss (pp. 1 10 et seq.) one or two other personal names
that occur in the contract tablets of this dynasty,
which, in the light of the knowledge gained in the

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 107
preceding pages, the reader will readily recognize
as Arabian.
In regard to the name of the next king on the list,
Samsu-iluna, enough has already been said. Other
names containing the suffix -na (= our) in place of
-ni, are Ipik-ili-na and Ilu-na (in contract-tablets of
the time of Ammi-zaduga). We have already dealt
with all the more important facts in connection with
the name of Abishua (pp. 53, 84, and 93 et seq.) and
of his grandson Ammi-zaduga (pp. 84 and 88 et seq.) J
the latter being further noteworthy from the fact
that it furnished Sayce with the clue to his theory
in regard to the Arabian origin of the Khammurabi
Dynasty — a theory which has been so strikingly
confirmed by the results of further investigations.
There now only remain the names of the kings
Ammi-satana and Samsu-satana to deal with. As
there is no verb Satana or Sadana to be found in
the Western Semitic nomenclature, the most likely
hypothesis as to its origin seems to involve the as
sumption that the last syllable -na is the same Arabic
pronominal suffix which we had already found in
Samsu-iluna. What sort of noun, we may ask, is
the remaining word Sata ? In the inscriptions of
Khammurabi we come for the first time on a very
1 When we find in the list of kings the form Ibishu in place of A-bi i-
shu-'ua or A-bi-ishu-'a (cf. the name of a private individual A-bi ia-
shu-kha in Meissner No. 97), it is evidently with the aim of giving the
name a Babylonian form. It is possible, however, that even in Abis-
hua's time the name, was pronounced Ebishu (which may easily have
changed into Ibishu) ; cf. Hebrew Ebiasaph (or Ahfasaph) and Ebyatar,
as well as the variants Emi-zaduga for Ammi-zaduga and the divine
name Emu cited on p. 91.

108 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
peculiar-looking word for " mountain," viz. satu,
which is treated as a Sumerian ideogram, and for
this reason its genitive is written SA-TU-im instead
of sa-ti-im; in a bilingual text, apparently of the
same period, this word appears as sati and finally,
under Nebuchadnezzar, when the tendency was to
imitate the language of Khammurabi's time, the
word appears in an indeclinable form, sa-tu-um (pro
nounced satu). From all this it follows that the
word was really Semitic but not Babylonian in
form : had it been Babylonian it would have been
written shadu. Now in Arabic saddu or suddu means
" barrier," " dam," " mountain," nearly related to
which are the words tsaddu and tsuddu = mountain.
It is, therefore, clear that the Babylonians en
deavoured to reproduce the Arabic double d (or ac
centuation of the syllable) by means of their t.
But this Arabic word for " mountain " must have
had a religious significance as well. This is manifest
from its employment in the name Ammi-satana =
" my uncle (i.e. as we have already learned, " God ")
is our mountain." And here Babylonian comes in to
enlighten us. Just as the Babylonians called the
goddess of the air or clouds " the Mistress of the
Mountain," so, too, their distinctive name for Bel
was "the great mountain" (Shadu rabu), a term proba
bly due to Western Semitic influences. Among the
Assyrian personal names of the eighth century B.C.
we find Marduk-shadua = " Marduk (i.e. Bel-Mero-
dach) is my mountain," and Bel-shadua, and in the
next century Bel-Harran-shadua = " the Lord of
Harran (i.e. Sin) is my mountain," with which may

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 109
be coupled the names Sin-shaduni = " Sin is our
mountain " and Shadunu or Shaduni = " our moun
tain (sc. is God) " obtained from other texts (cf. De
litzsch, Prolegomena, pp. 205 and 208). For this
reason the word shadu in Assyro-Babylonian has
come now and then to mean "Lord" or "com
mander." It is, therefore, something more than a
mere coincidence that in Ancient Hebrew, and that
too as early as the time of Moses, if we may accept
the testimony of tradition, a name ' Ammi-Shaddai
occurs, which not only contains the subsequently
obsolete divine name Shaddai, but also exhibits
almost exactly the same elements as Ammi-sata-na.
Now it matters not whether we adopt the later or
earlier system of vocalization of the Hebrew word
Shaddai (LXX. SdBSai) — -it is, for instance, quite
within the range of possibility that the original
reading was El Shaddi = " God my Mountain " —
the fact remains that this divine name by which
Yahveh revealed himself to Abraham and Jacob
(Gen. xvii. 1 and xxxv. 1 1) must, as has been abun
dantly proved by the facts stated above, be of the
very highest antiquity.1 At the time at which
Abraham migrated from Ur, both the Arabic saddu
(spelt satu by the Babylonians) and the Babylonian
rendering shadu possessed the same religious mean-
1 Moreover, the fact that in Babylonian the word is written Ammi-
sata-na. (and not Ammi-sa/u-na), probably points to the existence of a
previous form Ammi-saddai-na. Such a word as Saddai = "He who
dwells on the mountain," when followed by a pronominal suffix, may quite
possibly have been abbreviated to Sad J a (Babylonian transcription sata).
In this case the O. T. vocalization Shaddai would possess an antiquity
no less high than that of the root letters Sh-d-y.

110 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
ing in Babylonian, viz. mountain = God ; the Hebrew
root Sh-d-y in El Shaddai (as it was pronounced in
post-exilic times) is identical with one or other of
these. In regard to the name of the last of the kings,
Samsu-satana, this must (as indicated above on p.
102), have originally been Sumu-hu-sata-na = " his
name is our mountain," and it was only later that it
was transformed into the Babylonian Samsu-satana
= "the sun-god is our mountain."
This completes the chain of evidence which goes
to prove that every one of the eleven kings of the
Khammurabi Dynasty was from first to last of
Arabian origin, and, as might have been expected —
and it is a fact which affords ample confirmation of
the above theory — a large number of names of pri
vate individuals are mentioned in the contract tab
lets of this epoch, of which many bear the unmis
takable impress of an Arabian origin. We have
already cited (p. 60) several names beginning with
the Arabic sign of the imperfect (ya . . .) e.g. Ya'qub-
ilu (cf. also p. 95 and the South Arabian 'Akibu on
p. 83), Yarbi-ilu (cf. p. 106) Yamlik-ilu, and on pp.
75 and 95 Yashup-ilu, with which latter name we
may compare the South Arabian Yashupu on p. 83.1
1 Were it possible, however, to read Yashub-ilu, we should have a par
allel to our hand in the Hebrew Yashub (Num. xxvi. 24). The abbre
viated form stands in the same relation to the complete one as the He
brew Ya'kob [Jacob] to the name Ya'kub- ilu mentioned above. The
reading Yashup-ilu is supported by the fact that in the fifteenth century
B.C. in the lists of Thfltmosis III., two places named Ya'kob-el and
Yashap-el are mentioned with a number of other towns and villages of
northern Palestine, though it is, of course, quite possible that here, as

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS III
To these may be added Yakbar-ilu = " God is great"
(Meissner, No. 77 ; cf. Kubburu, Meissner, No. 74
and Akbar, Strassmaier, No. 57), Ya'zar-ilu (Peek,
No. 13), Yarkhamu (Strassmaier) and Yakhziru (cf.
Samas-khazir, Nabium-Khazir and Marduk-khazir,
Meissner, No. 101), which last name undoubtedly
finds a parallel in the Arabic 'Adhara-ilu on p. 82
(Hebr. Eli-'ezer, El-'azar, etc.). To the names ter
minating with the Arabic suffix -na = " us," which
are also mentioned above on p. 60 (Samsu-iluna,
Samsu-satana) are to be added names of private in
dividuals, such as Ipik-ili-na, Ilu-na (p. 107). Other
pure Arabic forms are the names Makhnubi-ilu
(Meissner, No. 36) and MakJinuzu (Ibid., No. 92),
Abatia (cf. Arab, ya-abati = " O, ni)' Father" ; ibid.,
No. 97), Pa-la-Samas (properly Pa-ld-sumhu ; supra,
p. 98), and Samas-riami (Sumuhu-riami; supra, p.
102), Zimri-rabi (supra, pp. 75 and 83, note 2 ; Scheil,
Recueil, xvi., p. 189, where the erroneous reading
Zimri-ram is given), and Abdili (supra, p. 105).
Among names containing but a single element Na-
tunum, Mudadi (cf. the South Arabian race El-mo-
dad, Gen. x. 26, LXX) and Yadikhum (for Yadi'um,
an abbreviated form of Ili-yada'a) have been in
stanced on p. 75 supra ; other examples are Mazan-
um, Gadanum, Azanum, Gamunu (cf. Arab. Gumana-
tu), Zakunum and many names of similar form.
A very interesting name found in a document of
occasionally elsewhere, the Egyptians have replaced the foreign b by ap
(e.g. hurp, loan-word from Canaanite khereb = sword). In any case
the Hebrew name Joseph (Ps. Ixxxi 6, Yehoseph, cf. Egyptian Osir-sip)
has no connection here.

112 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
the time of Sinmuballit, and to which I wish to draw
special attention before concluding this chapter, is
Ai-kalabu, W. A. I.,1 750 (Peiser, K-B.,2 IV. p. 14). In
so far as its first element is concerned this name is
apparently pure Babylonian, the " A'i " being written
in precisely the same manner as the name of the
Babylonian goddess of the sky mentioned on pp. 65
and 66. But Mr. Pinches has drawn attention to the
fact that we also find in various Assyrian names, a
male deity, A'i or Ya [J a] (the latter reading being a
perfectly possible one) ; now, this deity is in no way
identical with the Babylonian god Ea, whose name
is written with different signs. There can be no
doubt, therefore, that in the name Ai'-kalabu or Ya-
kalabu, the first element represents a male god, who
is not of Assyro-Babylonian, but of Arabian origin.
Ai-rammu, the name of an Edomite king in the time
of Sennacherib (Taylor Cylinder, 2, 54) — an appella
tion, as Mr. Pinches rightly assumes, to be inter
preted only as equivalent to Joram* — and more
especially the Arabian name Ai'-kamaru borne by a
Masaean in the time of Assurbanipal (700 B.C.), help
us to this conclusion. It need not surprise us to
find a name like Ai-rammu or Ya-rammu among a
people so nearly related to the Hebrews as the
Edomites were. On the other hand, it is very sin
gular that Ai-kalabu or Ya-kalabu should occur as
' West. Asiat. Ins. a Keilinschr. Bibliothek.
3 The reading " Malik-rammu " proposed by Schrader is incorrect.
There is no more ground for transcribing the divine name Ai' by Malik,
than for the transcription Nin-ib or Nin-dar by Adar. Both of these
readings must now be finally abandoned.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS II 3
the name of an Arabian subject of the Babylonian
king Sin-muballit, in the time of Abraham, i.e. at
least one thousand years before the time of Senna
cherib and Assurbanipal. For this name has the same
meaning as Ai-kamaru, viz : " Ya is Priest." Evi
dently in these early times the words kalabu and
kamaru had not yet acquired the disreputable sense
afterwards associated with them. In the Old Testa
ment the maidens consecrated to the service of the
heathen temples are called "Kedeshah" (Babyl. ka-
dishtu ; A. V., harlot), the men who occupied analo
gous positions " Kadesh " (literally " sanctified ") ;
in Deut. xxiii. 17, the Israelites of both sexes are for
bidden to devote themselves to such offices, a pas
sage paralleled in the next verse : " Thou shalt not
bring the hire (ethnan) of a whore or the wages
(properly purchase-price, mekhir) of a keleb (or" dog,"
Babyl. and Arab, kalbu) into the house of the Lord
Thy God for any vow." The other word, komer, is
never used in the Old Testament except of idol
atrous priests. But in a Phoenician inscription in
Cyprus it seems to cover the builders, the sacrificers,
the servants of the temple, the barbers (i.e. sur
geons), the proselytes, the door-keepers, and lastly
the priestesses and kelabim. This last word, the
singular of which was originally kalibu or kalabu,
cannot, of course, be identical with kalbu (dog), for
though the Israelites may later on have applied the
term dog to the slaves of heathen temples, it is in
conceivable that the Phoenicians should have thus
designated their own Hierodules. Kalibu is rather
allied to the verb kariba (cf. South Arabian makrubu
8

114 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
= " Priest-king " ; and mikrdbu — " Temple "). More
over, the fact that Keleb-elim occurs as a Phoenician
personal name is opposed to any original identity
with kalbu, " dog." The most important point, how
ever, is that the name of a Western Semitic god A'i
or Ya is found in two Arabian names — A'i- (or Ya-)
kalabu (in the time of Abraham) and A'i- (or Ya-)
kamaru. Now seeing that the Hebrew word Yah
veh appears in personal names only as Yd, Yah, or
Yahu} and that Moses expressly states that Yahveh
was a new name (Exod. vi. 3), (the ancient Hebrew
name for God being El Shaddai), we are evidently
warranted in making the following deductions :
firstly, that Yahu or Yah was the earlier form, and
not a later abbreviation from Yahveh; and secondly,
that there were then thrown into a concrete shape
ideas that had been current from the time of Abra
ham onwards, and a new significance imparted to
this ancient name, by compounding it with the
Ancient Hebrew verb hawaya = " to exist " (im
perfect, or rather present, yahvi), thus transforming
it into Yahveh = " He exists, comes into existence,
reveals Himself."
As to the original etymology of the primitive
Western Semitic name for God, Ya or Ai, this is a
point which is never likely to be cleared up.2 One
thing, however, is worthy of note, and that is, that
1 E.g. in the names Joseph (vide supra, p. 1 10, note l) and Jochebed
(the mother of Moses).
2 Its resemblance to A'i, the name of the Babylonian Queen of
Heaven (from the Sumerian anna, softened into anya, any'i, ai =
" Heaven ")ij perhaps merely accidental.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS I 1 5
both in Hebrew and Phoenician personal names we
find a variant, I, (written with a long i, indicated by
the letters Aleph and Jod, and probably pronounced
originally " Ai "). A parallel to the well-known
Phoenician woman's name I-zebel (Isabella) has re
cently been discovered in Shemzebel (Academy, Jan.
25, 1896), which shows that the first element of I-ze
bel is a divine name x ; from this it follows that the
Hebrew I-chabod (1 Sam iv. 21) must be from the
same source as Jochebed, and that in the names
I-tamar (Ex. vi. 23, R. V. Ithamar) and I'ezer (Num.
xxvi. 30), and probably also in I-shai or Yi-shai (cf.
Abi-shai), we are also confronted by this ancient col
lateral form of Yah, the true meaning of which had
ceased to be intelligible to later generations.
Passing mention should be made of two other
deities, Khusha and Ilali (written E-la-li), who are
also possibly of Arabian origin. The latter, at any
rate (in the personal names Elali, Arad-Elali and
Elali-bani), at once reminds us of the Arabic hildl =
" new moon " ; the Hebrew Helal, " Son of the
morning " (Is. xiv. 12), is also probably connected
with it. It is possible that this word " Ilali " is
merely the result of an attempt on the part of the
Arabs of the Khammurabi Dynasty to translate the
name of a Babylonian god (Sin or Uru-ki). As to
Khusha (Meissner, No. 43), it is quite possible that
1 The Phoenician Astarte possessed a sobiiquet (Shem Ba'al name of
Baal), just as the Carthaginian Tanit boie the sobriquet Pene Ba'al
(countenance of Baal). Probably, however, the Shem in Shem zebel
stands for I or Ai ( = Yahve> ), just as, later on, the Jews were in the
habit of using Shem ( = name) for Yahveh.

Il6 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
this may be an incorrect rendering of the name of
the Arabian goddess 'Uzza. ; for as in these contract
tablets we find the Babylonian verb bashu = " to
be," sometimes written " bazu," so on the other hand
Khusha may be an erroneous transcription of ' Uzza.
In that case ' Uzza (properly " the mighty") would
be an Arabian translation of the Babylonian name
Ningal ( = great mistress), the wife of the moon-
god ; the passage runs as follows : " in the gate of
Marduk, of Shussha (lit. "her name," meaning Ish
tar or Zarpanit, wife of Marduk), of Uruki, of Khu
sha and of Nin-Mar (mistress of Mar), the daughter
of Marduk (did they pronounce judgment)." These
are the only Arabic names of deities that occur.
We are therefore fully warranted in assuming that
what has been said of South Arabian names applies
with equal force to the Arabian personal names of
the Khammurabi epoch : these names indicate that
their owners possessed a far purer religion than that
of the Babylonians, a religion, in short, of an essen
tially monotheistic character.
It was from out of such surroundings as these that
Abraham, the friend of God, had gone forth. By
his migration from Chaldaea Abraham's higher and
purer creed was preserved from absorption into the
Babylonian polytheism, a fate which must otherwise
have inevitably befallen it. For from that time on
ward we find Babylonian manners and Babjdonian
idol-worship steadily penetrating into the Arabian
religion as they had previously done into that of the
Canaanites. This is proved by the presence of the
names Athtar (Astar) and Sin, Anbay (Nebo) and

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 117
Almaku-hu1 among the South Arabians, by the
Babylonianisms found in the grammatical forms of
the Minaean dialect (e.g. the suffix -sil instead of -hi,
the causative form sakbala instead of hakbala), by
Babylonian loan-words, such as satara = " to write "
(instead of kataba), and by many other indications
of a like nature. It can be readily imagined that
this influence must have operated with still greater
force on those Arabs who lived in Babylonia itself.
Even the Arab kings of Babylonia, from Sumu-abi
onwards became almost entirely Babylonian — at
first, no doubt, from policy, but ere long from habit
as well, and finally from innate conviction.
1 Lamga is a Babylonian sobriquet of Sin ; from this the Sabseans,
deceived by its apparent identity with their verb lamaka ( = glitter ?)
constructed a plural Almaku.

Il8 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION

CHAPTER IV
CHRONOLOGY OF THE TIME OF ABRAHAM
There are three circumstances which make the
Arabian personal names of the Khammurabi Dynasty
of incalculable importance to the student of relig
ious history. First, the fact that Biblical tradition
connects the history of the patriarch Abraham with
Khammurabi (Gen. xiv.); a point which will be fully
dealt with later on in a chapter by itself. Second,
the proof, from an examination of Hebrew personal
names — especially those of the time of Moses and
the Judges,1 — that even the very earliest Hebrew
nomenclature is absolutely similar to that of the
Arabs of the Khammurabi Dynasty and to that of
the South Arabian inscriptions — nay, mofe, that the
Hebrews, before they took possession of the terri
tory west of the Jordan under Joshua (i.e. the He
brews of the patriarchal period), were still half
i Attention has already been drawn in the preceding chapters to many
of these points of similarity. The period between Moses and David nat
urally yields the largest amount of material ; but allowing for their rel
atively much smaller number the names of the patriarchal period lead
to the same results, as is sufficiently proved by such names as Abram
(vide supra, p. 94, note 1), Eli'ezer, Ishmael, Ya'kob (from Ya'kob-el,
vide supra, p. no), and Abida'.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 119
Arabs, and that it was not until they had perma
nently settled down in the Promised Land that they
adopted the Canaanitish tongue in place of their
original language. Third, and last of all, the fact
that we have arrived at results in the preceding
chapters which place us in a position of advantage in
regard to our adversaries, a position from which no
future attack of sceptical criticism can hope to dis
lodge us. We have been able, for instance, to prove
that the system of name -formation which we find
in the South Arabian inscriptions was already in
existence at the beginning of the second millennium
before Christ, and that the numerous personal names
ascribed to patriarchal and Mosaic times were in
general use at this very period, and. could not have
been invented in or after the time of the kings —
when a totally different system of nomenclature ob
tained — and thrown back into antiquity retrospec
tively. It now only remains to discover the date to which
in the balance of probability we ought to assign
King Khammurabi, and to account also for the fact
that while some Assyriologists are inclined to place
him in the nineteenth or eighteenth century, B.C.,
others prefer to go back as far as the twenty-third
or twenty-second century, B.C. For when the gen
eral reader finds that the following dates are as
signed for the fifty -five years of Khammurabi's
reign, it is only natural that, in the absence of any
further explanation, grave doubts should arise as to
the trustworthiness of the Ancient Babylonian chro
nology ;

2314"

2258

2304 "

2249

2292 "

2237

2287 "

2232

2277 "

2222

2139 "

2084

2081 "

2026

1947 "

1892

1923 "

1868

120 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
according to Oppert from 2394 to 2339 B.C.
Winckler (1894)
" Maspero (1896)
Winckler (1889)
Delitzsch (1891)
Hilprecht (1893)
" Peiser (1891)
" Carl Niebuhr
(1896)
" Hommel (1895)
and " " (1886)
Once, however, that the general reader has learned
the true state of affairs, he will fully comprehend
why up to the present it has been impossible to ar
rive at any sort of unanimity in regard to the date of
the Khammurabi Dynasty. In the following pages
I will endeavour to show as briefly as possible how
the matter really stands.
Since the year 1880 scholars have been in posses
sion of a small tablet which bears on its obverse
a list of the eleven kings of the Khammurabi dy
nasty, together with the number of regnal years of
each (vide supra, pp. 68). The subscription reads :
" 305 years (being the total of the eleven separate
1 The figures given on p. 35 of Winckler's Untersuchungen are based
on a miscalculation on his part ; he makes the ist Dynasty begin in 2403
and end in 2098, which gives 2292 — 2237 as the date of Khammurabi
(these figures being practically the same as those placed in brackets after
the date 1923 — 1868 on p. 169 of my History of Babylonia).
2 My earlier conjecture 2168 — 2113 Scmitische Vblker u?id Sprachen,
vol. i. p. 422, 1883, was based (prior to the discovery of the list of Baby
lonian kings) on Berosus and the dates assigned to his first two dynasies
by the data of the tablet containing lists of dynasties A and B.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 121
items 15 + 35 -r 14 + 18 + 30 + 55 + 35 + 25 + 25 + 22
+ 31 years), eleven kings of the dynasty of Baby
lon." On the reverse of the same tablet is a list of
eleven other kings, but unaccompanied by any state
ment as to the length of their reigns, the superscrip
tion merely containing the name of a town or coun
try thus: " Uru-ku-ki." s The names are as follows :
Ilii-ma-ilu, Itti-nibi, Damki-ili-shu, Sapin-mat-nukurti
(written Ish-ki-bal), Shusshi, Mu'abbit-kissati (writ
ten Gul-ki-shar), Mamlu-Ea,2 Apil-Ea-shar-mati (writ
ten A-ea-kalamma), Apil-Bel-usum-shame (written
A-kur-ul-anna), Milam-matati (written Me-lam-kur-
kurra), and Ea-gamil, after which comes the sub
scription : " Ten (a clerical error for " eleven ")
kings of the dynasty of Uru-ku-ki." This superscrip
tion, which obviously means that: "[on the other
hand the kings of] Uruku [are as follows] " clearly
points — as the French Assyriologist Hal6vy rightly
surmised some years ago — to the assumption that
the two dynasties were contemporaneous.
When, however, the great list of Babylonian kings
was. discovered and published by Mr. Pinches in
' Written with the symbol Uru (or Sis) and hi (or azag), and a local
suffix (symbol ki), so that it is quite possible to read Uru-azag, Sis-ku or
Sis-azag in place of Uru-ku. The name of the well-known town Uruk
(Erech) is written quite differently but is none the less probably the
place here referred to.
J Followed by the note, " son of the foregoing "; a similar note is at
tached to the name of his successor. It would, therefore, appear that
of these eleven kings, Mu'abbit-kissati, Mamlu-Ea and Apil-Ea form a
genealogical sequence (Father, Son, and Grandson). For further de
tails as to the names of the second dynasty, cf. my review of Hilprecht's
Assyriaca in the Berl Phil. Wochenschrift, xv. 1895, c0's- 15^6 — 1590.

122 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
1884, it seemed as though this theory of the co-exist
ence of the two first dynasties would have to be
abandoned — for the list in question placed the
Khammurabi dynasty first and the Uru-ku dynasty
second. The close of the third or Kassite dynasty,
however, being once fixed — a matter of no great
difficulty (according to the subscription : 576 years,
nine months, thirty-six kings), it would now seem to
be possible to arrange the two first dynasties in cor
rect chronological order. For, (and this seemed at
first to be a most important point,) the list gives
figures for the kings of the second dynasty also
(viz.: 60+55 + 36+15 + 27+55 + 50+28 + 26 + 7+9, the
subscription making out the total to be : " 368 years,
eleven kings of the dynasty of Uru-ku "). From
this it would seem as though one had only to de
termine approximately the end of dynasty C and
then calculate backwards, in order to ascertain the
desired date for every king of the Khammurabi dy
nasty. In regard to the close of dynasty C, which,
provided there were no gaps in the list, appears at
first sight to be easily ascertainable within a year or
so, the authorities are fairly unanimous :
Hommel (1886) 1154B.C.
Winckler (1889) 1155 "
Delitzsch (1891) 11 50 "
Hilprecht (1893) 1140 "
Winckler (1894) 1177 "
Hommel1 (1895) 1178 "
Carl Niebuhr (1896) 1169 "
1 In my short History of the Ancient East (Stuttgart, Goeschen) the
MS. of which had been sent to the publishers before the second volume

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 123
By this it will be seen that Hilprecht's date for
Khammurabi is 2277 — 2222 B.C., whereas the dates
suggested by Winckler and myself in 1894 — 95, are
2315 — 2259 (or 2314—2258), the difference between
these two last dates being in the case of so remote a
period practically immaterial. Moreover, the state
ment in later Babylonian records (of the sixth cen
tury B.C.) to the effect that the interval between
Khammurabi and Burnaburiash (either Burnaburi-
ash I., ca. 1450, or Burnaburiash II., ca. 1400 B.C.)
was, in round numbers, 700 years (800 would be
more nearly what we should expect) seems to be far
more in favour of the successive rather than of the
simultaneous existence of the two first dynasties.
In any case the Babylonian chronographers of the
time of King Nabonidus (sixth century B.C.) add
the two dynasties together, although this does not,
of course, preclude us from eliminating the period
covered by the second dynasty from our calcula
tions. Their principal source of information must
have been the list of the Babylonian kings, and in
all probability a version of this list, which either
fixed the duration of the second dynasty at 248 years
(in place of 368) or made out the third dynasty to
be 120 years (i.e. 2 x 60) shorter than in the existing
text.
of Winckler's Altorientalische Forschungen appeared : we had both
therefore arrived quite independently at our conclusions (1 177 and
1 1 78), and mainly in consequence of our mutual objections to Hil
precht's absurdly late date 1140. So far as our knowledge extends at
present the dates suggested by Winckler and myself are the most proba
ble.

124 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
How comes it then, one might ask, that in spite of
this, the estimate for Khammurabi given by me (on
p. 120) is not 2315 — 2259, but only 1947 — 1892 (or in
round numbers 1900 B.C.) ? And, again, why does
Peiser adopt the period 2139 — 2084 half-way be
tween these two extremes?
The lower of my two estimates is simply due to
the fact that I still persist in placing the third (or
Kassite) dynasty immediately after that of Kham
murabi. This had been my view even when I was
engaged on my History of Babylonia and Assyria,
only that at that time I believed the first two dy
nasties should have been made to change places,
whereas I have now come round to Hal6vy's view
and regard them as contemporary with one another.
Taking the year 11 78 B.C. as the likeliest date for
the close of Dynasty C, I thus obtain 1753 — 1178 as
the period covered by it ; and consequently for the
Khammurabi dynasty the 304 years which immedi
ately preceded it, i.e. 2058 — 1754 B.C., the reign of
Khammurabi himself (the Amraphel of Gen. xiv. 1)
occupying 1947 — 1892 B.C.
This theory (of the co-existence of Dynasties A
and B) which receives strong confirmation from the
small tablet previously mentioned (and especially
from the absence of figures in the case of the second
dynasty), is further supported by two considerations
or facts which no one has, so far, been able to inval
idate. First, we have the circumstance — and it is
one which now, in the light of recent research, pos
sesses even greater weight than formerly — that Bib
lical tradition also refers the time of Abraham to

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 1 25
the twentieth century B.C. ; and second, the fact
that, from a purely Assyriological standpoint, there
is good reason for doubting whether the so-called
" second dynasty " ever really existed in that capac
ity. It is becoming clear to the historian that the
" Dynasty of Uru-ku " is entirely apocryphal and
the less that one has to do with its chronology the
better. In regard to the chronology of the Bible, it can
not be denied that from the time of David and the
Judges backward it is deficient in that high degree
of definiteness which the scientific historical inves
tigator is inclined to demand. There are, however,
certain important events the dates of which can be
determined with approximate accuracy. Such, for
instance, is the Exodus of the Israelites from the
land of Egypt, which must have taken place either
in the closing years of Ramses the Great (1348 — 1281)
or, which is more likely, in the fifth year of his suc
cessor Minephtah1 (1277 B.C.). If we add to this
last figure the traditional sojourn of 430 }rears in
the land of Goshen we get a total of 1707. The pa
triarch Jacob is said to have migrated into Egypt
with his people at the age of 130; this gives the
year of his birth as 1707 + 130= 1837 B.C. At that
time his grandfather Abraham was, according to the
tradition, 160 years old, therefore, 1837 + 160=1997
= birth of Abraham. This patriarch migrated from
Haran to Canaan in his seventy-fifth year, i.e. about
1 In any case the Israelites were not settled in Palestine at the date
of the Tel-el-Amarna tablets (ca. 1400 B.C.). The Biblical tradition
alio clearly indicates Ramses II. as the Pharaoh cf the Oppression.

126 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
1922, and the battle in the valley of Siddim de
scribed in Gen. xiv. must have taken place very
soon after, that is at a time when Khammurabi had
been at least fourteen years on the throne. This, as
nearly as possible, coincides with the period postu
lated above for the reign of Khammurabi, viz. 1947
— 1892 B.C.
But now let us return to Dynasty B (i.e. the
eleven kings of Uru-ku mentioned on p. 121) which
seems to stand in open contradiction with this later
date. In the first place, the figures added to the list
of kings are open to grave suspicion. Compared
with those given in the case of Dynasty A, these
figures, and indeed the whole constitution of this
Uru-ku dynasty, give the impression of an artificial
scheme. As in the case of Dynasty A (the exist
ence of which is amply attested by the evidence of
contracts and royal inscriptions), we here find ex
actly eleven kings. Again as in Dynasty A, in which
the sixth king, Khammurabi, reigned fifty-five years,
so here too, the sixth king Gul-ki-shar or Mu'abbit-
kissati ( = destroyer of the world) also reigned
exactly fifty-five years. Such a long reign in a dy
nasty of eleven kings is for once in a way conceiv
able enough ; it is singular, however, that this high
figure recurs at precisely the same place in Dynasty
B as it occupies in its twin-brother, Dynasty A, and
— more remarkable still — in Dynasty B the figures
60 and 55 also appear in the first and second place,
and 50 in the seventh place, just as in Dynasty A.1
1 It is true that the sacred number 60 at the beginning of the list is
written as the figure 1 ; that this, however, was read as 60 (viz. 1 Sos)

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 1 27
Add to this that the sixth, seventh, and eighth
kings (with reigns of 55 + 50 + 28 = 133 years) form
a genealogical series of three (vide supra, p. 121,
Note 2). Reigns of 55 + 35 + 25 years (Dynasty A,
Nos. 6 — 8) are intelligible enough in the case of a
father, son and grandson, but successive reigns of
fifty-five, fifty, and twenty-eight years can only be
explained on the assumption that the first king of
the three ascended the throne at a very tender age,
a thing which is extremely improbable in the case
of Gul-ki-shar, since he is not described as the son
of his predecessor. Moreover, the fact that the
period from the central date (the death of Gul-ki-
shar) to the end of the dynasty is exactly 120 years,
or two Sos, (viz. 50 + 28 + 26 + 7+9) is highly sus
picious. All this goes to prove that the figures, at
any rate, are apocryphal, since the numbers appear
in the List of Kings only and are not to be found
on the Tablet in connection with Dynasty B (see p.
120 et seq.), a fact which I again desire to empha
size. A similar remark may be applied to the individ
uals of the dynasty. There are only two of the
whole eleven kings of Uru-ku in regard to whom
we possess any information, although if they suc
ceeded to those of the Khammurabi dynasty, they
must presumably like them, and like the dynasties
who followed them (e.g. Dynasty C, etc.), have
ruled in Babylon. These two kings are the first,
Ilu - ma - ilu (abbreviated to Ilu - ma in the List of
at any rate by the copyist of the list of kings is evident from the total of
368 years. Otherwise the total would be only 309.

128 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
Kings), and the sixth, Gulkishar (Mu'abbit-kissati).
But what title do they bear in those inscriptions
that mention them ? That of Kings of Babylon ?
By no means! One of them (in a short contempo
rary inscription) is described as " King of the hosts
of Erech," and the other (in an inscription of the
time of Dynasty D) as " King of the country of the
sea," i.e. of the southernmost part of Babylon on the
Persian Gulf. The first of these inscriptions (which
is of interest in other respects as well) runs as fol
lows :l
Ilu-ma (written in the Sumerian form DINGIR-
A-AN)
Sheikh (written ab-ba, i.e. shibu) of the hosts of
Uruk (Erech)
Son of Bel-shimia,
has the walls of Erech
the ancient building
of Gibil-gamis (i.e. of Gishdubar or Nimrod)
again repaired.
With this inscription, as Hilprecht afterward
pointed out, must be classed another of the time of
the kings of Erech (and therefore probably contem
porary with the predecessors of King Eriaku of
Larsa who conquered Erech), published by Peiser
and Winckler (Keilinschr. Bibl. III. p. 84:) "To
Nirgal, the king of the lower world, his king, has
Iluma-Gishdubba, son of Bel-Shimea, built his tem
ple for the preservation of the life of Sin-gamil, king
of Erech." From this we learn the full name of this
1 Hjlfrecht, Old Babylonian Inscriptions, No. 26, first translated
by me in the Proceedings of the Bibl. Arch. Soc, N.iv. 1893.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 1 29
king Ilii-ma-ilu ( = God is God), viz. Ilu-ma-Gish-
dubba (i.e. " God is Gishdubba," the deified Gish-
dubar, whose ancient wall Ilu-ma had restored and
whose name he had taken). Ilu-ma was, therefore,
the vassal of one of the contemporaneous and still
independent kings of Erech, and, as it would seem,
the chief of some tribe of Semitic nomads ; Gish-
dubar, his patron deity, was also, as we have seen
above (p. 39), intimately associated with Arabia.
This is in no way incompatible with my assump
tion that he was a contemporary of the Arab mon
arch Shumu-abi, the founder of the Khammurabi
Dynasty, and very possibly one of his allies. For,
that there were several Arab princes ruling in Baby
lon at that time is proved by the date-formula of a
contract discovered by Mr. Pinches, in which the
" kings " Shumu - abi and Pungunu - ilu s are men
tioned. Gulkishar is described as king of " the country of
the sea " 2 on a boundary stone published and trans
lated by Hilprecht and dated in the fourth year of
king Bel-nadin-apli (ca. 1122 — 11 18 B.C.) the immedi
ate successor of king Nebuchadnezzar I. (ca. 1145 —
1 122). From this monument we learn that from the
time of Gulkishar, king of the countries of the sea
(i.e. from his death), to Nebuchadnezzar a period of
one Ner ( = 600 years) one Sos ( = sixty years) and
thirty-six years, or 696 in all had elapsed ; that is to
1 As to this latter, cf. the personal names Piknanum, Paknu and
Pikinnu, which are also probably Arabic.
2 Probably a part of Arabia, viz. the region bordering on the Babylo
nian frontier ; cf. the expression •' Ass of the Sea," used of the camel.
9

130 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
say, that we have only to add to this the four years
of Bel-nadin-apli's reign in order to obtain a total of
700 years. It is needless to remark, that these are
merely round numbers similar to the period of 700
years fixed by the chronographers of Nabonidus as
the interval between Khammurabi and Burnaburiash
(vide supra, p. 123 and note).1 Let us now go back
to the year 1820 B.C., a date which, according to
my calculations given above would fall somewhere
in the reign of the Babylonian king Ammi-sata
na. At the first glance it will be evident that
Gulkishar (" Destroyer of the World ") is not the
sort of name which a Babylonian prince would be
likely to receive from his father at his birth, but
rather a sobriquet like Ish-ki-bal (Sapin-mat-nakurti
= Overthrower of hostile countries) bestowed by
posterity on a mighty conqueror, and there is noth
ing more probable than that, after the fall of the
Arabian dynasty of Khammurabi, one of its kings
should have been handed down in the Babylonian
tradition, under the awe - inspiring name of " de
stroyer of the world." That the records of the gen
uine Babylonian dynasty D to which Nebuchadnez
zar I. and Bel-nadin-apli belonged, should describe
him as king of the country of the sea (N.E. Arabia),
and not as king of Babylonia is perfectly intelligible.
1 In the List of Kings the duration of Dynasty C is given as 9 Sos
(9 x 60 = 540 years) and 36 years ; probably the figures of the boun
dary stone would agree with these but for the fact that a period of sixty
years has been added at the beginning and at the end, in order to ar
rive at the full total of 696 + 4 = 70Q years in round numbers. Ex-
. treme accuracy was evidently not the object in view.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 131
Moreover the name of the region referred to in Bel-
nadin-apli's boundary mark, viz. Bit-Sin-magir, is a
reminiscence of the Khammurabi dynasty. Indeed
the personal name Sin-magir frequently occurs in
the contract tablets, especially in those of the time
of kings Sin-muballit, Eri-aku, Khammu-rabi and
Samsu-iluna. Revillout in his well-known work
Les obligations en droit Egyptien compare' anx autres
droits de Vantiquite" makes special mention of a cer
tain Sin-magir as the head of a widely-distributed
family ; in a contract tablet of the time of Khammu
rabi express reference is made to the house (bitu)
and garden of this Sin-magir.
All this goes to show that until the matter is defi
nitely decided by some future discovery, our safest
course will be to regard the Uru - ku dynasty as
apocryphal. The ultimate decision may be in
favour of my theory, or on the other hand it may
confirm the later Babylonian view, according to
which the 304 years of the Khammu-rabi dynasty,
and the (as we have seen, extremely uncertain
period of) 368 years of dynasty B ought to be added
together in our chronological calculations. I look
forward to future discoveries of this kind with an
untroubled mind, for I am firmly convinced before
hand, that they will merely tend to confirm the evi
dence of the ancient records and monuments so far
known to us. Among ancient monuments, how
ever, I can only include those parts of the List of
Kings which can be checked by contemporary rec
ords and thus proved to have come down to us in
tact. This verification has actually been made in

132 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
the case of all the other dynasties, that of Uru-ku
being the sole exception.
The whole question is one of decisive importance
for the Biblical chronology of the earliest period,
and, therefore, has been specially dealt with in the
present chapter (p. 1 18 et seq). For if we admit that
Khammurabi reigned, not from 194710 1892, but from
2314 to 2258, then the period between Abraham
and Moses would be not 650 but 1,000 years, and
between Abraham and Joseph not 200 but 550 years :
we should in that case be obliged to assume one of
three things. Either that a later generation, look
ing back on the vistas of the past, was deceived by
some optical illusion similar to that which makes
two hilltops that are really separated by spacious
valleys seem to stand quite close to one another; or
else that there may possibly have been two patri
archs named Jacob who lived at periods centuries
apart from one another, one of them the grandson
of Abraham, the other the father of Joseph, and that
a later tradition merged these two individuals into
one ; or lastly, that Abraham did indeed flourish
about the year 1900 B.C., but that his association
with Khammu-rabi, Kudur-laghamar and Eri-aku is
apocryphal. I need hardly say that the acceptance
of any one of these hypotheses would be merely
bringing grist to the mill of the modern critics of
the Pentateuch.
A very acute and ingenious attempt to solve this
difficulty was made by Felix Peiser in the year 1891
(Zeitschrift filr Assyriologie, VI. pp. 264 — 271 ; Zur
Babylonischen Chronologie), and as I have already

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 1 33
promised my readers an explanation of the differ
ences between Peiser's results and my own in re
gard to the date of Khammu-rabi 2139 — 2084 (vide
supra, p. 120), I cannot do better than give a brief
summary of the solution proposed by him. He
starts from the hypothesis that the much-debated
dynasty lists of the Babylonian priest Berosus, ends,
not as has hitherto been assumed, with Nabonassar
(in 747 B.C.), but rather with the accession of Alex
ander the Great (in 331 B.C.) Now the total duration
of the historical dynasties of Berosus as carefully es
timated by A. von Gutschmidt is 36000 — -34080 = 1920
years. If we add 331 to this total we get 2251 B.C. as
the beginning of the Khammu-rabi dynasty. Peiser
thus obtained for Dynasty A (lasting 304 years) the
period 2251 — 1947 (i.e. 2139 — 2084 as the reign of
Khammu-rabi), for Dynasty B (368 years) 1947 —
1579, and for the (Kassite) Dynasty C (the final
close of which Peiser agrees with Winckler and
myself in fixing at 1180 B.C.) 1579 — 1180, that is a
duration of 399 years instead of the 576 years given
in the List of Kings. He explains this result by as
suming that some later copyist instead of repro
ducing the 6 Sos and 39 years (i.e. 360 + 39 = 399)
of his original, wrote 9 Sos and 36 years (i.e. 540 +
36 = 576) in error. Peiser was the more firmly con
vinced of this, because it agrees with the estimate
which fixes the interval between Khammurabi (f
according to Peiser 2084 B.C.) and Burnaburiash (ca.
1400 B.C.) at 700 years : for 2084 — 1400 = 684 years,
which is as near the round number of 700 as we
can ever hope to get in matters of this kind. Now

134 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
Peiser might very well have asked himself whether
the mistake in the List of Babylonian Kings, in
stead of occurring in the total of Dynasty C, ought
not rather to be looked for in Dynasty B, the indi
vidual figures of which lie open to such grave sus
picion. It is true enough that the total of 576
years, as Peiser rightly points out, is somewhat
questionable. Dynasty C includes 36 kings ; and if
it had lasted for 576 years this would give each
king an average reign of 16 years, (16 x 36 = 576).
Now the names of the last 15 kings of this dy
nasty and the periods for which they reigned are
known to us: the total comes out at 186 years, and
the average reign at 12^ years. Assuming, there
fore, that 576 is the correct total, the first 21 kings
must have reigned for a period of 390 years, or an
average of 18^ years each, a result which Peiser
regards as improbable. Or, since we can fix the
date of the reign of Burnaburiash II. (the 18th
king of the dynasty), approximately at ca. 1410
— 1380 B.C. the total reign of Nos. 18 — 36 (19 kings
in all) would then be 222 years, or an aver
age of barely 12 years each: the first 17 on the
other hand would, according to the list, have
reigned 343 years, or an average of over 20 years
each. But even allowing, for the sake of argument, the
improbability of the average of the second half
having been only 12 years as against 20 years for
the first half, Peiser's reduction of the total from
576 to 399 years (i.e. from 9 to 6 Sos omitting odd
years) goes too far. Even assuming that the aver-

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 135
age length of reign was the same in both halves (viz.
12 years) this would give us a total of about 420
years [432] : or if we assume that the average reigns
in the first half was 14 years and in the second only
12 years, this would give a total of about 460 [456]
years (i.e. 7 Sos, 36 years, instead of the 9 Sos, 36
years recorded in the list). Peiser has, moreover,
entirely overlooked the fact that an average of 12,
far from being a normal one, is exceptionally low
and that therefore the balance of probability would
be in favour of a higher average for the first half,
and, consequently, for the dynasty as a whole. I
will try to make this clearer by one or two parallel
instances. Eighteen kings ruled over Assyria dur
ing a period of 322 years (i.e. from ca. 930 to 608
B.C.) ; in other words for an average of nearly 18
years each ; the first nine of these reigned for a
total period of 176 years (an average of over 19
years each) ; the remaining 9 reigned for a total
period of 146 years (an average of 163^ years). The
first Babylonian dynasty (in which from the time of
the second king onwards the throne descended
from father to son) included 1 1 kings with a total
duration of 304 years ; an average of over 27 )^ears
each. The Neo-Babylonian Empire consisted of 6
kings who ruled for 88 years, an average of nearly
15 years, while for the 16 kings who preceded them,
the average was barely 7 years each : this how
ever is sufficiently explained by the dependent
state of Assyria during this time, and the frequent
change of rulers necessitated by this: such an
epoch cannot be fairly used as a basis of compari-

136 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
son. The first half of the Kassite dynasty was, in
the main, a time of peaceful development, while in
the second half the rise of Assyrian power and its
intervention in Babylonian affairs, together with
the growing national Babylonian reaction against
the Kassites, rendered the political situation much
less stable. We know that the first three monarchs
of this dynasty reigned for 60 years altogether
(16 + 22 + 22), while the reign of the seventh Agu-
kakrimi was very probably a rather long one (30 —
40 years) ; and, besides, the Babylonian kings
who exercised a supremacy co - equal with that
of the Pharaohs of the XVIIIth dynasty (notably
Kurigalzu I. and Burnaburiash II.) also belong
to the first half of the Kassite dynasty. All
the evidence, therefore, goes to prove that the
average reign of the kings in the first half of
the Kassite Dynasty was much longer than in the
second half.
And yet Peiser's attempt deserves most careful
attention ; only we must seek to effect the principal
reduction somewhere else and not in the Kassite
dynasty. For example, we should arrive at precisely
the same result if we assumed the duration of the
Kassite dynasty to have been 516 years in the docu
ment from which Berosus obtained his information
(i.e. only 60 years less than in the List of Kings), but
that the second dynasty which he and the later
Babylonian chronographers add on to it, lasted for
2 Sos (or 120 years) less than the 368 years given in
the list, i.e. 248 years. We thus obtain the following
result :

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 137
End of the Dynasties of Berosus 331 B.C.
Beginning: 331 + 1920 =2251
Khammu-rabi Dynasty 2251 — 1947
Khammu-rabi 2139 — 2084
Uru-ku Dynasty 1946— 1699
Kassite Dynasty 1698 — 1183
The close of Dynasty C would in this case fall in
the year 1183 instead of 1180 as assumed by Peiser,
or instead of 1 178 as I estimate it, an absolutely triv
ial disparity.
That Berosus was probably in error when he esti
mated the duration of the Kassite Dynasty at 8 Sos
and 36 years (instead of 9 Sos and 36 years), and thus
reduced the period for the Babylonian dynasties, up
to the time of Alexander, from 1980 to 1920 years, is
evident if we add this one Sos to all the dates men
tioned above, thus :
Dynasty A 23 11 — 2007 B.C.
Khammu-rabi 2199 — 2144 "
Dynasty B 2006 — 1759 "
Dynasty C 1758— 1 183 "
This estimate harmonizes much more closely with
the period of 700 years between Burnaburiash (ca.
1440 B.C.) and Khammu-rabi (i.e. the death of this
latter in ca. 2140 B.C.) than does Peiser's (Khammu
rabi 2139 — 2084). For, since in the estimate in
question there is nothing to show which Burna
buriash is intended, it is best to assume that it was
Burnaburiash I. (ca. 1440 B.C.) rather than Burna
buriash II. (ca. 1410 — 1380). As I have already
pointed out, however, the whole estimate depends
on the mistaken addition of Dynasty A to Dynasty

138 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
B. The key to the whole problem lies in the fact
that this addition is inadmissible. In so far as the
proposed emendation of Berosus is concerned, it
matters not whether we decide in favour of 2251 as
proposed by Peiser, or 231 1 as suggested by me, for
our point of departure ; it will be necessary, in
either case — if we wish to get at the original record,
and consequently, the real date of the first dynasty
— to subtract the number 248 (which I have shown
above to be the most probable estimate of the total
duration of Dynasty B). We shall thus finally ob
tain the following dates :
Dynasty A either 2003 — 1699 or 2063 — 1759
Khammu-rabi " 1891 — 1836 " 195 1 — 1896
Dynasty C " 1698— 1 183 " 1758— 1 183
The second alternative approaches very nearly the
estimate given by me quite independently of Peiser
on p. 120, viz: Dynasty A, 2058 — 1754 (Khammu
rabi 1947 — 1892) and Dynasty C, 1753 — 1178. The
first alternative is based on the assumption that the
576 years assigned to Dynasty C in the List of
Kings, ought to be reduced by at least 1 Sos ( = 60
years), and harmonizes pretty closely with the Bible
figures in so far as Khammu-rabi and the date of
Abraham are concerned. Even were Peiser right
in reducing the duration of Dynasty C by 180 years
and accepting the 368 years of Dynasty B unaltered
(though I repeat that this latter total must at all
costs be excluded from our calculations !) which in
the face of what I have said above is extremely
improbable, we should have the following minimum
dates :

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 1 39
Dynasty A 1893 — 1579 B.C.
Khammu-rabi 1771 — 1716 "
Dynasty C 1578— 11 80 "
These minimum dates, however, could only be
made to harmonize with the Biblical chronology if
we were to assume that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob
(the last-named, it will be remembered, migrated
with his people into Egypt at a very advanced age)
never attained the extreme longevity ascribed to
them in the Bible, and that the episode narrated in
Genesis xiv. did not take place until thirty years
after the birth of Isaac.
We have, therefore, every reason to believe that
the year 1900 B.C. was, in round numbers, the ap
proximately correct date of Abraham's migration
from Haran and of his participation in the campaign
conducted against the king of Sodom £>y Chedorla'-
omer, Arioch and Amraphel, a subject which I pro
pose to examine more closely in my next chapter.
In addition to the identity of its founder Iluma
with a vassal of the kings of Erech (vide supra, pp.
128 et seq.) we possess further direct evidence of the
simultaneous existence of the problematic Uru-ku
Dynasty and that of Khammu-rabi. It comes to us
from a quarter in which no one had hitherto dreamt
of looking for it.
It is a well-known fact that the beginnings of the
Assyrian empire can be traced back to somewhere
about the year 1850 B.C. We are told by Tiglath-
pileser I. (ca. 11 20) that some sixty years before his
time, his great-grandfather Assur-dan, a contempo
rary of the last king but one of the Kassite Dynasty

140 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
wished to restore a temple, which had been built
641 years earlier by the priest-king (patesi) of As
syria, Samsi-Ramman, son of the priest-king Ishmi-
Dagan of Assyria ; Assur-dan pulled the old temple
down, but was prevented by some cause or other,
most probably by his death, from rebuilding it, and
thus it remained until Tiglathpileser took the task
in hand. This brings us to the year 1820, or so, for
the date of the Samsi-Ramman ( £= rriy Sun is Ram
man,) in question. He had, however, been preceded
on the throne by another patesi, also named Samsi-
Ramman, son of Bel-kap-kapu (written Igur-kap-
kapu), who is mentioned in the original monuments,
and probably in several others as well. It has always
been rightly assumed that, as the Assyrian civiliza
tion was merely a copy of the Babylonian,1 this
priest-king of the 19th century B.C. must have been
intimately connected with Babylon either as a vassal
or as a voluntary ally.
Now, if the Khammu-rabi dynasty was in power
from 2050 to 1750 B.C. it must have been with this
dynasty that the earliest Assyrian princes were con
nected either as dependents or as allies. That it
really was this dynasty and no other can be proved
beyond dispute by evidence of a two-fold nature as
I shall now proceed to briefly explain.
In the first place, the early Assyrian contract
1 Cf. Gen. x. ii. : " out of that land [Babylonia] he [Nimrod] went
forth into Assyria and builded Nineveh, and Rehoboth-Tr, and Calah
and Resen " ( = Nisin ? This must, therefore, have been a colony of the
Babylonian Nisin, cf. Ishmi-Dagan, which occurs both as the name of
a king of Nisin and of a patesi of Assyria).

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 141
tablets discovered in Cappadocia (not. far from the
modern Caesarea) shew both by the various char
acteristic personal names that occur in them and
also by their script and style such striking resem
blance to the contract-tablets of the Khammu-rabi
dynasty that it is impossible to assign them to any
other epoch.1
It is true that Delitzsch had already noticed one
or two of these coincidences, but had not drawn
from them the only possible conclusion in regard to
the date of the tablets in which they occur ; here
and there indeed he seems to have some inkling of
the true state of the case (cf. for example pp. 66
and 270, note 1 of his treatise), but he nevertheless
ends by declaring that for the present the period to
which they belong seems to be an enigma to which
no answer is, as yet, forthcoming.
1 We have only to compare such names as Amur-Ashir, Amur-Samas,
Ashir-Emdki, Ashur-ishtakal, Ashur-rabi, Ashir-tayar, Ashur-bani, Uu-
bani, Ishtar -lamazi, Ashur - imlti, Ennam-Ashir, Ennam-A'i, Pilakh-
Ashur, Zili-Ishtar, Manum-bali-Ashir (= who would be without Ashir?),
Manum-ki- Ashur ( = who is like unto Ashur ?) taken from the 22 tab
lets recently annotated by Delitzsch, and which had previously been
edited by Golenischeff,* with names of precisely similar formation found
in the tablets of the Khammu-rabi Dynasty, such as Iltma-amur, 315-
en.uki, Ili-ishtikal, Samas-rabi etc., Marduk-taiar, Samas-bani, Lamazi,
Sin-imiti, Ennam-Sin, Sin-pilakh, Tsili- Ishtar, Manum-balu-ili, Manum-
balu-Ishlar, Manu-shanin-Samas (see p. 70 and earlier, the last-men
tioned name = " who can withstand Samas?").

* W. Golfnisctteff. Vingt quatre tablettes Cappodociennes de la col
lection IV. Golenischeff, St. Petersburg, 1891 : F. Delitzsch, Beitrdge
zur Entzifferung und Erklarung der Kappadokischen Keilschrifttafeln,
Leipzig, 1893 (Abh. der Sachs. Gesellschaft, d. Wiss., Vol. xiv. No. 4).

142 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
Peiser l goes back as far as the time of the Assyr
ian king Shalmaneser I. (ca. 1300 B.C.), but he too is
misled into identifying such unimpeachable Babj'-
lonian names as Sugalia, Garia and the like (where
the termination ia denotes a hypocoristic contrac
tion of a longer name), with the divine appellation
Yahu, and therefore concludes that the contracts
must have been indited at the time of a Phoenicio-
Canaanite colonization of Cappadocia. All this,
however, in the face of the coincidences mentioned
above, is to no purpose ; the time of the Khammu
rabi dynasty is, here, the only one worth considera
tion. In the second place, we also find in these Cappa-
docian contract tablets unmistakeable traces of that
Arabian element which had previously impressed us
as the characteristic feature of the contracts of the
Khammu-rabi dynasty — itself an Arabian regime,
viz.: names like Ikib-ilu (cf. supra Ya'kub -ilu),
Ashupi-ilu (cf. supra Yashup-ilu, p. 95), Elali (written
E-la-ni, cf. p. 115), Mashkhuru (for Mash'uru? cf.
Makhnuzu on p. iii), Nabati (with an emphatic
dental sound, cf. the Arabic names beginning with
Nabti on pp. 83 et seq.), Gamaru etc. And, what is
of still greater importance, these names continue
to be a feature of Assyrian nomenclature up to
the close of the Assyrian Empire, a fact which is
proved by the occurrence of such names as Ilu-
milki (Eponym 886, B.C.), Tsidki-ilu (Ep. 764 B.C.),
Abu-rama (Ep. 677), Milki-ramu (Ep. 654 B.C.), Atar-
1 Keilinschrift Bibliothek, Vol. IV. Introduction, p. viii.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 143
ilu (Ep. 673, cf. the South Arabian Watar-il), Makhdi
(for Ma'di cf. p. 83 — Ep. 725 B.C.), Ilu-amar (in the
time of Sennacherib, cf. Arab. Abi-amara, p. 84), and
particularly of the numerous names compounded
with A'i in the sense of a male deity (pp. 112 et seq.).
Mr. Pinches has recently proved that the element
A'i (which is always represented by the symbol of
deity) must not be read as " Malik " in personal
names, but as equivalent to the Hebraic Yah 1 (orig
inally a word in general use among the Western
Semites, but especially among the Arabs) ; thus we
find Abu-A'i (Ep. 887 B.C.), Nindar -AT (Ep. 864),
Ashur- Ai (Ep. 862 and 651), Nirgal- A'i (Ep. 831),
Samas- Ai (Ep. 819), Marduk- Ai (Ep. 818), Bel- A'i
(Ep. 769), in addition to the names Sharru-Al (Ai is
king) and Shadu-Ai (vide supra pp. 108 et seq.), with
which latter may be compared the peculiarly Assyr
ian names ending in Shadua ( = "my mountain")
mentioned on p. 108. In a word, the Assyrians,
(like the numerous Arabs of the Khammu-rabi dy
nasty who in time developed into Babylonians) were
similarly of Arab blood, and like their kinsmen they
quickly assimilated the Babylonian traditions, and
finally developed into the warlike Assyrian race with
which history has made us familiar, though they
maintained their blood much freer from admixt
ure than the Babylonian Arabs. For it is a well-
1 fournal of the Transactions of the Victoria Institute, vol. xxviii.
(1896), pp. 11 et seq. in bis essay on The Religious ideas of the Babylo
nians (pp. l — 21 cf. 34 — 46) (cf. also my " remarks " on pp. 34 — 36) :
Pinches also draws attention to the highly interesting variants Ya and
Yau for Ai".

144 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
known ethnological fact, which, though occasionally
noticed before,1 has till now never been satisfactorily
explained, that the Assyrian type which we find on
the royal monuments presents far purer Semitic
features than are to be discovered on Babylonian
monuments of any epoch whatsoever, with the sole
exception of that of the Khammu-rabi dynasty.2
The names cited on the previous page, meaning
respectively " Father is Ai (or Ya)," " Nindar is Ai,"
etc., belong to the eponymous rulers, that is, the
highest dignitaries of the Assyrian Empire, and ex
amples of these extend from the beginning of the
9th century B.C. (a time when there had been as yet
no contact with the kingdom of Israel) down to
Assurbanipal. They reflect, without doubt, the
earlier Arabian monotheism of the Assyrians, for
nearly all of the deities borrowed from the Babylo
nian Pantheon, first of all Ashur, then Bel, Samas,
Marduk, Nindar, and Nirgal, are here identified with
the ancient A'i or Ya. From this it is at once ap
parent that Jonah's mission to preach Jehovah to
the Ninevites, is by no means so absurd as the
modern " critics " would have us think : he would
here have found ready to his hand a text for his
sermon not a whit less apposite than that Athenian
altar to " the unknown God," which later on supplied
a theme to S. Paul.
It is to the Assyrians, therefore, whose existence
as a nation began in the time of the Khammu-rabi
1 See my History of Babylonia and Assyria, pp. 483 et seq.
Cf. the representation of Khammu-rabi himself in Winckler's Altor-
ient. Forschungen, p. 197.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 145
Dynasty, that we must look for the sole possible date
of this last piece of evidence. The sole and only
period, therefore, in which we can place the memor
able association of the history of Abraham with that
of Khammurabi is not the 23rd century B.C., but the
close of the 20th or beginning of the 19th, in other
words about 1900 B.C. That this association is a
real one, I hope to prove more fully in the following
pages.

10

146 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION

CHAPTER V
ABRAHAM TAND KHAMMURABI
The fourteenth chapter of Genesis is, in many
respects, one of the most remarkable in the whole of
the Old Testament, containing as it does the account
of that Elamite campaign against Sodom and conse
quent liberation of Lot, which form an episode in
the history of Abraham. It is true that we can draw
no particular doctrinal lesson from this chapter ; it
conveys no special message from Moses, and even
the magnificent figure of Melchizedek as he comes
forth bearing bread and wine to Abraham, is but a
faint symbol of future spiritual gifts, the true sig
nificance of which it is impossible to understand
save in the light of New Testament teaching (cf.
Heb. v. 10). There are of course episodes in the
history of the children of Israel of far higher im
portance than that here narrated ; for even had Lot,
Abraham's nephew, been left a prisoner in the hands
of the enemy, the sacred story, grouped as it is
round the person of Abraham and not round that of
Lot, would have proceeded without a break, and no
one could have blamed Abraham had he hesitated
to set off with his three hundred and eighteen slaves
to rescue Lot and his possessions out of the hands

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 147
of a superior hostile force. Nor can we pretend that
this chapter bears any special message of consolation
to afflicted souls, or that it is more edifying than
other passages in the writings of the Old Covenant.
No ; its real interest lies in the fact that in this chap
ter we obtain a glimpse of the general history of the
world in the 20th century B.C., such as is nowhere
else vouchsafed us in the Bible. In it we catch sight
of a political background instinct with life and move
ment, and full of the deepest human interest, the
more important details of which are now being con
firmed and amplified in a most surprising manner by
modern research and excavations in the territory of
Ancient Babylonia.
A mighty despot, Chedor-la-'omer,1 king of Elam,
a country lying to the south of Babylon, on the
shores of the Persian Gulf, afterwards known as Per
sia, appears on the scene. His allies are Tid'al,2king
of the Goi [Goiim], Amraphel, king of Shin'ar,3 and.
Arioch, king of Ellasar (verse 9). In the first verse,
which enables us to fix the date of the episode, we
learn that Amraphel was king over the region in
which Haran, Abraham's second adopted home, was
situated ; next comes Arioch, who at that time was
still in possession of Ur, Abraham's native place,
holding in addition the supremacy over Sumer and
1 LXX Chodollogomor, the Hebrews must have pronounced it Chedor-
laghomer. » LXX Thargal ; originally, however, as has only been recently dis
covered, it was Tudkhul.
3 i e., according to Gen. x. 10 and xi. 2 et seq., the country of which
Babylon was the capital.

148 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
Akkad (i.e. the whole of Babylonia), and lastly
Chedor-la-'omer and Tid'al, whose names stand out
prominently in the narrative of the campaign itself
(verses 5 — 9). That Chedor-la-'omer was the prime
mover in the matter, and the others merely his allies,
is clearly stated in verse 5 (cf. also verse 4). For
twelve years had the kings of the Five Cities of the
Dead Sea paid tribute to Chedor-la-'omer, in the
thirteenth they rebelled, and in the fourteenth there
followed the expedition against the " Countries of the
West," undertaken in order to bring the rebellious
vassal kings to their senses. Chedor-la-'omer invaded
Bashan (the Rephaim in Ashteroth-Karnaim), Am
mon (Zuzim), Moab "(Emim), and Edom (the Horites
in mount Se'ir), one after the other as far as the ^Ela-
nitic gulf (El-Paran) ; he then retraced his steps to
En-Mishpat (" The Spring of Judgment," known as
Kadesh Barne'a in the exodus of the Israelites from
Egypt to Moab), and smote the Amalekites and the
Amorites who dwelt in Hazezon-Tamar (Engedi on
the western shore of the Dead Sea). At last the
kings of the Five Cities, whose domain evidently in
cluded Edom and the whole region east of Jordan,
seem to have rallied, and to have determined to give
battle to Chedor-la-'omer in the open field. The
fight took place in the valley of Siddim (a region rich
in asphalt, and afterwards, owing to a convulsion of
nature, invaded by the waters of the Dead Sea), and
resulted in the defeat of the allied princes of the Five
Cities. Moreover, Lot, Abraham's nephew, who was
living in Sodom, fell into the hands of the victors.
As soon as Abraham was informed of this, he set

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS

149

out, with 318 of his men, in pursuit of the enemy,
now on their homeward march towards Babylonia,
and came up with them near Dan on the northern
frontier of Palestine. Falling on them by night as
they lay intoxicated with victory and manifestly
never dreaming of pursuit, he drove them in disor
derly flight as far as the neighbourhood of Damas
cus. The booty left behind by the enemy, together
with the prisoners — among whom, of course, was Lot
— fell into the hands of the pursuers ; these latter in
cluded not only Abraham's own followers, but also
the people of Mamre' (Hebron), 'Aner, and Eshcol,
his allies, whose suzerain was apparently Melchiz-
edek, King of Salem, who is mentioned a little
lower down.
If we carefully examine the concluding verse of
the chapter, we shall find what would seem to be
traces of two different recensions ; according to one
of these, it would appear that it was the King of
Sodom who came out to meet Abraham as he re
turned home victorious and laden with the spoil ;
according to the other, it was Melchizedek of Salem,
as the following parallel passages shew :
16. And he [Abram] brought back all the goods
and also brought again his brother Lot, and his
goods, and the women also and the people [the other
prisoners].

17. And the King of Sodom
went out to meet him after his
return from the slaughter of
Chcdorla'omer and the kings

18. And [there came out]
Melchizedek, King of Salem
[to meet him] 

ISO

THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION

that were with him at the Emek
sharre: (gloss) i.e. the King's
vale.1

21. And the King of Sodom
said unto Abram ; give me the
persons and take the goods to
thyself.22a. And Abram said to the
King of Sodom :

[and] brought forth bread
and wine ; and he was priest
of El 'Elyon ( = God most
High). 19. and he blessed
him and said, Blessed be
Abram of El 'Elyon, possessor
of heaven and earth : 20. and
blessed be El 'Elyon which
hath delivered thine enemies
into thy hand. And he gave
him ( = offered him) a tenth of
all (i.e. of the spoil).
[Then said Melchizedek to
Abram : 

but Abram said to him]
22b. I have lifted up my hand
unto El 'Elyon,2 possessor of
heaven and earth.

23. I will not take (i.e. keep)
a thread nor a shoe - latchet
nor aught that is thine, lest
thou shouldest say, I have
made Abram rich : 24. save
only that which the young men
have eaten and the portion of
tbe men which went with me ;
Aner, Eshcol and Mamre, let
them take their portion.
1 Emek Shaveh in the Hebr. text, cf. shaveh Kiryathaim in verse 5
(the LXX reading is Sotoj in verse 5, 2a£u in verse 17 ; the emendation
of shaveh into sharre is an obvious one (r and v being represented by
somewhat similar characters in the Ancient Hebrew script)— cf. Babyl.
sharru = king.
3 Here a later editor has inserted " Yahveh " for El 'Elyon.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 1 5 1
In verse 10 we are told that " the vale of Siddim
was full of slime pits [i.e. the ground was honey
combed with asphalt quarries], and the kings of
Sodom and Gomorrah fled, and they fell there,
and they that remained flew to the mountain ; "
now since the King of Sodom had fallen in the rout,
it was impossible that he should have come out
to meet Abraham. Moreover, the opening words of
Abraham's reply (verse 22) possessed a special sig
nificance for Melchizedek, since he alone employs
the title Elyon ( = Highest), the word used by
Abraham being rather Shaddai (cf. p. 109). In all
probability therefore the recension which represents
Melchizedek as coming out to meet Abraham is the
earlier of the two. As matters stand with the two
recensions intermingled as they are, the Melchiz
edek episode rather destroys the coherence of the
other ; we have no right, however, to conclude from
this that verses 18 — 20 are a later interpolation, since
verse 22b. unmistakably shows that here the person
originally referred to was Melchizedek and not the
King of Sodom. On the other hand, if we were to
omit verses 18 — 20, verse 21 would follow on some
what abruptly after verse 17; in order to make it
read properly we should have to supply some such
clause as : " then in order to express his good will to
him, Abram offered him a share in the booty." For
the rest, the very fact^ that the text has fallen into
confusion1 from verse 17 onwards— taken in con-
1 In view of the facts disclosed above, the question naturally arises
whether in the original it was really a tenth (and not rather the whole of

152 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
junction with the presence of so many obscure and
archaic expressions, which it was necessary to ex
plain to later generations by means of glosses — is
the best possible proof of the very high antiquity of
this whole chapter. Probably the original, which
seems to have been written in Babylonian, was
rescued from the archives of the pre-Israelitish
kings of Salem, and preserved in the archives of the
temple at Jerusalem.
It is also important to note that the author of the
Epistle to the Hebrews must have been familiar
with a version in which verse 18 contained a sup
plementary clause, somewhat to this effect : " who
had not received the kingdom from his father and
mother," a clause intended to give prominence to
the fact that the office of Priest-King was elective
and not hereditary. The kings of Edom mentioned
in Gen. xxxvi. 31 et seq. — no one of whom was the
son of his predecessor — furnish a somewhat parallel
instance, especially the second on the list, Bela' son
of Beor, who is doubtless identical with the well-
known prophet Balaam son of Beor, in Num. xxii. 5
et seq., and xxxi. 8. It is evident, therefore, from the
apostle's metaphorical comment on Melchizedek
(Hebr. vii. 1), that the phrase " without father, with
out mother," in Hebr. vii. 3, was not suggested by
Ps. ex. 4, " thou art a priest for ever after the order
of Melchizedek " (Heb. vi. 20), nor by the phrase
" Priest of God Most High " (Heb. vii. 1), but must
the booty) that was offered, also whether the original wording has been
preserved in verse 21* and in verse 24. But see my explanation offered
below on p. 157.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS

153

have appeared in the version from which he was
quoting. We need only compare —

Quotation from Gen. xiv.
a) Melchizedek
b) King of Salem
c) without father, without
mother, (cf. v. I " Priest of
God most High." )

Metaphor :
= King of righteousness (Hebr.
vii. 2)
= King of Peace (Hebr. vii. 2)
= without genealogy, having
neither beginning of days nor
end of life, but made like unto
the Son of God, abideth a priest
continually (Heb. vii. 3).
— especially as the words are preceded by the fol
lowing introduction (Heb. vii. 1) : " This Melchize
dek, king of Salem, priest of God most High, who
met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the
kings and blessed him, to whom also Abraham di
vided a tenth part of all " (cf. v. 4, where it is still
more clearly stated that it was " a tenth out of the
chief spoils "). We are forced to conclude, therefore,
either that there existed in the time of S. Paul a
version of the Bible which contained in Gen. xiv. 18
the supplementary clause, " without father and
mother," or that independent of the Biblical text
there was an ancient oral tradition current among
the priesthood at Jerusalem in which the epithet,
" without father and without mother," was applied
to the ancient office of the Priest-King.
Indeed we find confirmatory evidence of this even
in inscriptions of pre-Mosaic date, which throw an
historical light of the most striking character on the
expression in question, as well as on the history of
the kingdom of Salem generally in primitive times.

154

THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION

In the letters from King 'Abd-khiba of Uru-Salim
to the Pharaoh Amenothis (ca. 1400 B.C.) preserved
to us in the Tel el Amarna tablets, we find an as
severation which occurs in nearly every one of these
writings and which I give below in parallel col

umns :
Berlin No. 102, lines 9 et
seq.
Lo, in so far as I am con
cerned.It was not my father who in
stalled me in this place nor my
mother,
but the arm of the mighty king
has allowed me to enter into
my ancestral house.1

B., No. 103, lines 25 et
seq.
Lo in regard to the region of
this city of Jerusalem
It was not my father, not my
mother who gave it me
but the arm of the mighty king
gave it to me.

and again in a third letter B., No. 104, lines 9 et seq. :
" Lo, I am no prefect (i.e. no Egyptian viceroy),
but a " Friend (rukhi — Hebr. re' eh, cf. 2. Sam. xv.
37) of the king's, and one who brings [voluntary]
offerings to the king (ubil bilti, Canaanite obel belet),
am I ; it was not my father, it was not my mother,
but the arm of the mighty king, that placed me in
my ancestral house."
The expression " mighty king " (sharru dannu) — a
title which, though borne by Babylonian and As
syrian monarchs in the context given above, re
minds us very strongly of the El 'Elyon of Melchiz
edek — finds a parallel in another passage in Letter

1 bit abi-ya, cf. the Hebrew expression bH-ab which has the same gen
eral meaning.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 155
No. 104 in the Berlin edition of the Tel-el-Amarna
texts :
" So long as there is a single ship on the sea,
So long does the arm of the mighty king hold
in possession
The land of Naharim, xand the land of Kapasi,
Now, however, shall the Khabiri 2 possess them
selves of the Cities of the King ? 3
It is evident from this that the " mighty king "
mentioned in the letters of 'Abd-khiba must be an
earthly potentate. But in the numerous letters ad
dressed by Canaanite princes to the Egyptian Court
that have come down to us, although they abound
in servile protestations of subjection, we never find
Pharaoh described by this title. On the contrary,
Rib-Addi, governor of Gebal, complains to Pharaoh
that his enemies, the sons of 'Abd-Ashirti [Ashera]
in Coele Syria, have taken his territory away from
him and given it to the "mighty king," i.e. in this
case to the king of the Hittites (Berl. No. 76); for
in another passage Rib-Addi describes the sons of
'Abd-Ashera as " creatures of the king of Mitanni,
of the king of Kassi (Babylonia), and the king of
Khati," and as a matter of fact the Hittite influence
was at that time daily gaining ground in Syria.
1 Western Mesopotamia and Northern Syria, the hegemony over which
was at that time an object of rivalry between the Hittite kings and the
kings of Mitanni (a region between the Euphrates and Belikh). Kapa-s
is probably the country on the gulf of Issos, called the Land of Kef-t in
the Egyptian inscriptions.
a Beduin, from whom Kirjath Arba' first received the name of He
bron ; see, as to this, a future chapter.
' i.e. of Pharoah. The environs of Jerusalem are here referred to.

156 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
Nevertheless, the asseveration of 'Abd-khiba of
Jerusalem, which he thrice repeats in his letters to
Pharaoh quoted above, sounds for all the world like
the echo of some ancient sacred formula, or of a
phrase that originally possessed a religious signifi
cance, and receives just as much light from the facts
narrated of Melchizedek in Gen. xiv. 18 et seq., and
Heb. vii. i et seq., as it, in its turn, throws on them.
To Pharaoh, of course, the " mighty king " meant
nothing more than his rival the king of the Hittites ;
but in Jerusalem the original significance of the words
" not my father and not my mother, but the arm of
the mighty king " (i.e. of El 'Elyon) must still have
been perfectly familiar. In Babylonian (the lan
guage employed by the kings of Jerusalem when
addressing Pharaoh) El 'Elyon (the Most High God)
would appear as bilu asharidu ; the ideogram for
sharru king, however, in the bilingual texts, also
stands for bttu = Lord, or ilu = God, and the ideo
gram for dannu = mighty is also used to represent
asharidu. And, if further proof were needed, it is
furnished by the fact that in the Shuhite country,
the home of Bildad [i.e. the Shuhite] the friend of
Job, the war-god, Nergal, was called not only Emu,
but also "mighty king" (W. A. Inser., ii. 54, No. 5, 1.
65 et seq.) ; from this it is evident that there must
have been a Western Semitic deity who was known
by this name.
And now to return to our investigation in regard
to the original text of the closing episode narrated
in Gen. xiv. The fact that the King of Sodom had,
as stated in verse 10, already perished, supplies a

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 1 57
clue to the correct emendation of the text. I be
lieve that there are ample grounds for assuming that
the passage originally ran as follows : —
1 7. " And Melchizedek, the king of Salem, went out
to meet him, after his return from the slaughter of
Chedorla'omer and the kings that were with him at
the 'emek sharre,1 (gloss) the same is the King's vale.
18. And Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth
bread and wine ; and he was Priest of God Most
High [and had not inherited the kingdom from his
father or his mother2].
19. And he blessed him and said, Blessed be
Abram of El 'Elyon possessor of heaven and earth :
(20) and blessed be El 'Elydn which hath delivered
thine "enemies into thy hands. And he (Abraham)
gave him [ = offered him] a tenth of all (i.e. of the
whole booty).
21. But Melchizedek said unto Abram : give me
the persons and take the goods to thyself. . . .
I have lift up my hand to El 'Elydn possessor of
heaven and earth, (23) that I will not take a thread
nor a shoe-latchet, nor aught that is thine, lest thou
shouldest say thou hast enriched me : (24) save only
that which the young men have eaten and the por
tion of the men which went with thee : 'Aner, Esh-
col, and Mamre', let them take their portion."
Only the words in italics have been changed. The
chief mistake, to which all the others may be traced,
lies in the insertion of the words " king of Sodom "
1 Vide supra, pp. 90 and 107, note 1, and cf. the Katabanian divine
name 'Amm mentioned on p. 48.
¦As to this restoration see what I have said on pp. 152 et seq.

158 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
instead of "Melchizedek" in verse 17. The only
omission necessary is at the beginning of verse 22,
where the words, " And Abram said to the king of
Sodom," are inconsistent with the general sense. For
the invocation of ErElyon is only rightly intelligible
when placed in the mouth of Melchizedek. That
Melchizedek should have desired possession of the
prisoners is no more than we should expect: for after
the death of the king of Sodom and Gomorrah he
must naturally have regarded himself as master of
the Jordan. Moreover, it is quite possible that some
of his own people may have been included among
the prisoners rescued by Abraham. And, finally, in
regard to those who had lent Abraham a helping
hand, viz. the men of 'Aner, Eshcol, and Mamr"e', we
can readily understand Melchizedek's anxiety that
they should receive their share, since they were his
own subjects; Hebron is, indeed, a natural annex of
Jerusalem. My emendation, which leaves the exist
ing text practically untouched, may therefore be
allowed to speak for itself. The Melchizedek inci
dent has now, for the first time, been shown to form
an integral part of the whole chapter in which it
occurs; nay, more, it supplies the raison d'etre for
the introduction of the narrative of the military ex
pedition which precedes it, and which we are now
about to examine more closely ; the suggestion that
we owe the narrative to a desire to invest Abraham
with a halo of military glory is absolutely ground
less. But are the events narrated in Gen. xiv. actual
historical facts ? Is it conceivable that at this early

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 1 59
date, an Elamite king not only exercised supremacy
over the whole of Babylon but even penetrated as far
as the Sinaitic peninsular in his lust for conquest ?
Or ought we, as some would have us believe, to re
gard the whole matter as originally nothing more
than the narrative of some predatory raid against
Canaan by a party of Beduin Arabs, to which legend
had tacked on the names of Lot and Abraham, the
whole story being afterwards elaborated by some
later writer into the shape it now presents in Gen.
xiv.? As a matter of fact, a distinguished Orientalist
long ago declared this chapter to be a fantastic
grouping together of names, which either belonged
to some remote period, or were expressly invented
for the occasion, and since that time it has become
the fashion among the " higher critics " of the Old
Testament to echo this view. Ever since 1869,
when Theodor Noldeke attempted to prove the
xivth chapter of Genesis to be the biased invention
of a later — though possibly pre-exilic — date,1 mod
ern " critics " have unhesitatingly endorsed his ver
dict. Scholars began afterwards to study the cune
iform texts and shewed that king Arioch of Ellasar
was identical with king Eri-Aku (G. Smith, 1871) of
Larsa (H. Rawlinson) ; they next pointed out that
there was an Elamite goddess called Lagamar or
Lagamal (G. Smith), and that there were two ancient
Elamite kings, one named Kudur-Mabug, father of
the aforesaid Eri - Aku, and the other Kudur-nan-
1 Untersuckungen zur Kritik des alten Testamentes (1869).

160 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
khundi (G. Smith). What did the modern critics do
in the face of this evidence — since to admit the pres
ence of such an ancient tradition in the Old Testa
ment would be virtually equivalent to cutting the
ground away from beneath their own feet? They
could not, of course, deny that Kudur - Lagamar
(Chedorla'omer in Gen. xiv.) is a genuine Elamite
name, or that the supremacy of the Elamites in
Syria (including Palestine) is proved by one of
Kudur- Mabug's inscriptions — though the reading
Eri-Aku, as the name of a son of Kudur-Mabug, was
at one time, though wrongly, disputed.1 They were
therefore obliged — since there seemed no other way
out of the difficulty — to fall back again on the theory
of a post-exilic forgery, and to suggest that, like a
nineteenth century novelist in search of "local
colour," the Jewish writer must have gone to the
Babylonian priests for his antiquarian details. " It
would seem, therefore " — I quote Meyer's own
words from the first volume of his History of Antiq
uity (Stuttgart, 1884) — "that the Jew who inserted
the account (Gen. xiv.), one of the latest portions of
1 By many it was regarded as nothing more than an ingenious conject
ure, and was occisionally quoted as such, but its accuracy was ques
tioned by Assyriologists (such as Fr. Delitzsch in his little book on the
Cossaeans, which appeared in 1883), the result being that the identifica
tion came to be discredited by theologians and historians alike: the
present writer stood alone in his disregard of the doubts cast on this
theory, and thanks to a mass of fresh evidence which now no longer
admits of question, he has been able to establish both the correctness
of the reading Iri-Aku and the identity of the bearer of this name with
Arioch. (Cf. Semiten vol. I, and more fully, History of Bab. and Ass.
PP- 3S7— 74-)

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS l6l
the xvhole Pentateuch,^ in its present position, must
have obtained in Babylon exact information in re
gard to the early history of the country, and, for
some reason which we are unable to fathom, mixes
up Abraham with the history of Kudur-Lagamar ; in
other respects his version of the story accords per
fectly with the absolutely unhistorical 1 views held by
the Jews in regard to primitive ages."
By adopting this attitude, it was no longer neces
sary for modern critics to deny that the events re
lated in Gen. xiv. rest on an actual basis of historic
fact; they had now to admit, whether they liked it
or not, that the names of the hostile kings especially
were not pure inventions. But that the history of
Abraham, whom they regard as not merely a legen
dary but rather a purely mythical being, should con
tain in its midst an ancient historical tradition, was
something which they could not accept ; for in that
case the whole theory, according to which every
thing before the time of David is wrapped in the
mist of legend, would begin to totter on its base,
and the account drawn up by Moses would begin to
appear in another and far more authentic light ; in
a word, the whole doctrine of the untrustworthiness
of the earlier history of Israel — so dear to the hearts
of modern critics of the Pentateuch — would sudden
ly find itself attacked in a vital part. In order,
therefore, to save this master principle from ruin,
there was nothing for it but to adopt the above op
portunist expedient, the inherent absurdity of which
1 The words printed in italics occur at the beginning, and the other
part at the end, of paragraph 136 in Meyer's book.

l62 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
must, one would think, be patent to every unpreju
diced observer. This merely serves to show us
once again how true it is that once the critic refuses
to be convinced by the sheer force of facts because
to do so would involve the sacrifice of a carefully
elaborated theory, he is apt, like a drowning man,
to catch at the various straws, provided they seem
to promise him a way out of his difficulties. For it
is absolutely inconceivable that a Jew of the post-
exilic period should have been the first to derive
from the sacred Babylonian records such exact in
formation in regard to an incident in the history of
the earliest kings of Babylon1 — an incident, more
over, in which the king of Babylon played a passive
and comparatively subordinate part. Besides, even
assuming Gen. xiv. to be nothing more than a " very
late narrative of a Midrash character " belonging to
post-exilic times, how came its author (who, by the
way, may be congratulated on the production of
such a masterpiece as this chapter) to introduce into
it a whole host of ancient phrases and names, to
which he himself is obliged to add explanatory
glosses in order that they may be better understood ?
It is merely necessary to glance at verses 2 and 8,
"king of Bela [the same is Zoar];" verse 3, "the
vale of Siddim, [the same is the (later) Salt Sea] ; "
verse 7, " En-Mishpat [the same is Kadesh] ; " verse
14, " his trained men, i.e. born in his house ; " and verse
17, "in the vale of Sharre (vide supra, p. 150, note)
1 It must be remembered that the only continu >us tradition we have
refers to the kings of Babylon and not to those of Ur, Nisin and Larsa.
Cf. for instance the List of Kings.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 1 63
[that is the King's Vale]." Are we to assume that
he did this intentionally in order to invest his story
with an air of higher antiquity ? In that case, all
we can say is, that no similar example of literary
finesse can be found throughout the whole of the
Old Testament, and that if he was capable of such
subtlety in this one instance, it is strange that he
should have limited himself to dressing up this one
scene from the life of Abraham in Canaan, in finery
borrowed from the Ancient Babylonian archives,
when there were so many other episodes, both in
the story of Abraham and elsewhere in the primitive
history of the Israelites, which would have readily
lent themselves to similar adornment and elabora
tion. To take only a few instances, we have the mi
gration of Abraham from his original home in Ur
(Gen. xi. 28 and 31), the building of the tower of
Babel (Gen. xi. 1 — 9), the account of Nimrod (Gen.
x. 8 — 12), of which there is not a single one that
would not have amply repaid him for the expendi
ture of a few explanatory additions and interpola
tions taken from Babylonian history and mythology.
Besides, if Meyer's view be the correct one, we may
rest assured that the editor of Gen. xiv. would not
have refrained from pointing a moral, by showing
that the insolence of the kings of Elam and Larsa
drew down upon them a divine Judgment, in that
they were soon afterwards overthrown by the hand
of Amraphel. Yet he does none of these things.
Such an enrichment of the stock of Ancient He
brew history and tradition, direct from cuneiform
sources, in exilic or post-exilic times, as is here pred-

164 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
icated by Meyer, Kuenen and Wellhausen, etc., is
open to the gravest suspicion from the fact of its
being an isolated instance, not to speak of its being
otherwise unprecedented and inconceivable. More
over, if we accepted their theory, we should expect
to find the names of the kings given in the Hebrew
texts in a different form, and one more in harmony
with the text of the later Babylonian tradition : the
chronographers of Nabonidus' time certainly wrote
nothing but " Khammu-rabi " and the form of the
name " Chedor-la'omer," even in the Epos current
in the time of the Achaemenides (of which we shall
hear more anon), was Kudur-dugmal or Kudur-laga-
mal, while the contemporary texts give Ammurabi
as well as Khammu-rabi, and the name of the Elam
ite king as Kudur-luggamar instead of Kudur-lug-
gamal, i.e. with the earlier r in place of the later /.
The reader will now understand why it is that
this fourteenth chapter of Genesis has come to be
a sort of shibboleth for the two leading schools of
Old Testament critics. The purely literary ques
tion as to whether the so-called " Priestly Code " is
the oldest or latest of the sources of the Pentateuch,
is, by comparison, of merely minor importance. It
is the question of the nature of history itself which
divides the students of the Old Testament into two
irreconcilable factions. The authenticity of a nar
rative such as that under consideration is, however,
in itself, an unanswerable criticism upon the views
which are now in fashion with regard to the credi
bility of the ancient Hebrew tradition. The subject
matter of the present chapter will, therefore, for

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 165
ever remain a stumbling-block in the path of those
who refuse to recognize a single line of the Penta
teuch — not even the Decalogue and the Blessing
(Deut. xxx.) — to be genuine, and, try how they may
to remove it, it will continue to defy their persistent
efforts. Having now sufficiently explained the true state
of this question, I propose in the following pages —
as a kind of supplement to what I have already said
at the beginning of this chapter, and to the outlines
sketched on pp. 43 et seq. — to institute a closer com
parison between the historical scene which we find
depicted in Gen. xiv. and the evidence of the monu
ments. The monuments in question may be divided
into two classes. First, the contemporary records
dating from the time of Abraham ; and secondly,
the later Babylonian tradition, which is not alto
gether free from a tinge of poetic fancy : the monu
ments of the first class consist of the Ancient Baby
lonian inscriptions of Kings discovered at Ur and
Larsa, of letters, and lastly of the date-formulae of
the contract tablets — documents which yield a fruit
ful harvest of knowledge in regard to the personal
names and legal relations of the people.
I shall begin with examples of ex voto offerings of
the kings of Larsa, and shall, first of all, allow one
or two of them to speak for themselves, as I feel
convinced that the reader will be interested to learn
something of the actual wording of these important
monuments, now fortunately rescued from the accu
mulated de'bris of four thousand years which had
covered them in Southern Babylonia. They are

l66 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
written in the primitive Sumerian language, an
idiom somewhat akin to modern Turkish, which was
used in royal inscriptions right down to the Kassite
period and even later, but had long before ceased
to be employed colloquially.
An ex voto now preserved in the Louvre runs as
follows: — "To the goddess Ishtar, the lady of the
mountain  the daughter of Sin to their mis
tress, have Kudur-Mabug, the prince (adda — malik)
of Yamutbal, the son of Simtishilkhak, and Ri-Aku,
his son, the exalted shepherd of Nippur,1 the guar
dian of Uf, king of Larsa, king of Ki-Ingi (Sumer)
and of Akkad, built the temple of Mi-ur-urra, her
favourite holy place, for the prolongation of their
lives, and have made high its summit and raised it
up like a mountain."
A second inscription discovered at Ur (W. A. I., i.
2, No. 3) runs as follows: — "To the God Uru-ki (the
Moon-god of Ur) his king, has Kudur-Mabug, the
prince of Martu (i.e. of the "countries of the West,"
Palestine) the son of Simtishilkhak, on the day in
which the god Uru-ki hearkened unto his prayer,
built the temple of Nunmagh for the preservation
of his life and the life of Iri-Aku, his son, the king of
Larsa." In another similar inscription Iri Aku comes for
ward to speak for himself, but mentions his father
Kudur-Mabug as well. On the other hand the
following inscription (W. A. I., i. 3, No. 10) must
evidently have been indicted after the death of
1 Lately identified with Nuffar [Niffer] by Peters, Hilprecht and
Haynes.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 167
Kudur-Mabug, since, contrary to the usual practice
elsewhere, he is not named:
" To the god Nin-Shagh  his king, does Iri-
Aku, the shepherd of the possession (or income) of
Nippur, who fulfils the oracle of the sacred tree of
Eridu, the guardian of Ur (and) of the temple of
Uddaim-tigga,"king of Larsa, king of Sumer and
Akkad, consecrate this; on the day in which Anu,
Bel, and Ea, the great gods, gave the ancient Uruk
(Erech) into my hand, have I built to the god Nin-
shagh, my king, with good and loyal intent, the
Temple of A-agga-summu, the abode of his pleas
ure, for the preservation of my life."
This presupposes the conquest of Erech, which not
long before had been the capital of an independent
dynasty, just as the references to Nippur in this in
scription, and in the one first translated on the pre
ceding page, presupposes the occupation of Nisin,
a city whose fortunes were closely bound up with
those of Nippur. The taking of Nisin plays an im
portant part in contract tablets of the time of Ri-
Aku, found at Tel Sifr (near Larsa), many of which
are dated from this event. . One of these date-formu
lae is worded thus, "in the year in which he with
the exalted help of Anu, Bel and Ea, conquered
Nisin, the city of the kingdom," and other tablets of
the time of Ri-Aku are dated from the 5th, 6th, 7th,
8th, 13th, 1 8th, and 28th year after the taking of
Nisin. Now in the time of Sinmuballit, the prede
cessor of Khammu-rabi, we find the following dated
example (Meissner No. 32) : " in the year in which
he (i.e. Sinmuballit) conquered Nisin." From this it

l68 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
would seem that the struggle for the ancient royal
city of Nisin (cf. p. 36) had gone on between Sinmu
ballit and the kings of Larsa, until Ri-Aku succeeded
in obtaining undisputed possession of it, and held it
for at least twenty-eight years — in fact, until he was
himself dethroned by Khammu-rabi. It is also obvi
ous that Ri-Aku must have enjoyed a very long reign
— probably, over thirty years. This same capture of
Nisin is, moreover, mentioned in yet another dated
example, which reads : " in the year in which Ri-
Agum, the king, and the prince of Yamutbalu [with]
the tribes (nin - ki - sulub - gar , Semitic, ummandti) of
Ishnunna (i.e. Ashnunnak, on the Elamite frontier)
overthrew Nisin and he  " The rest of the
inscription is unfortunately illegible.
In this last example the name of the king is writ
ten quite phonetically Ri-im-A-gam-um which can
only be read as Ri-Agu 1 (Agum or Agu is a sobri
quet of the Moon-god, as is also the more strongly
articulated form Aku). On the other hand, in the
inscriptions previously translated, the name is writ
ten either as Irim-Aku (pronounced Iri-Aku) or Ri-
1 The symbol gam also possesses, it is true, the phonetic value gu,
as for instance in the word Shangumakhu, which must not be read as
Shangammakhu. A certain hypercritical scholar, one of whose pet
thenries is that " the Biblical Arioch has not yet been identified," re
cently proposed that we should read Ri-im-A-gam-um as Ri-im-A-gam-
mis (Zeitschrift der Deutsch. Morg. Gesellsch., vol. 1. p. 251, note 2),
which though in itself possible enough, must, to say the very least of it,
be described as absolutely unnecessary ; for even supposing him to be
right on this point, the proposed rendering would be nothing more than
an Elamite amplification of the divine name agu into agavis, a parallel
to which is found in the name Ur-Ziguruvas (for Ur-Zigur).

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 169
im-Aku (pronounced Ri-Aku). That we have in
these two latter cases a parallel to the Semitic
rendering Arad-Sin (or Rim-Sin) is proved both
by the form Ri-Agu and also by the Hebraic
transliteration Arioch ; moreover, this is abso
lutely confirmed by certain Epic fragments which
we shall have occasion to discuss hereafter, in
which the name is written Iri-E-a-ku and Iri-E-ku-a.
The name means "Servant of the Moon -god."
Some writers have suggested that Kudur-Mabug
had two sons, one named Arad - Sin, the other
Rim-Sin. But seeing that ardu = servant, is merely
a Semitic translation of the Sumerian word trim,
rim, (or tri, ri) = servant, we need not take this con
jecture seriously.
Now, what are the conclusions to be drawn from
the texts quoted above ? Firstly, that the king who
is named in each one of them, Iri-aku or Ri-Aku,
resided at Larsa, a city of Southern Babylonia, sacred
to the Sun-god ; secondly, that he also possessed the
cities of Ur, Eridu, Nisin, Nippur and last of all
Uruk also, while Akkad and Babylon (in Northern
Babylonia) seem to have merely paid tribute to him.
And thirdly — the most important fact of all in so far
as Gen. xiv. is concerned — that his father and grand
father, as a single glance at their names will show,
were Elamites; the fact that Kudur-Mabug1 is de
scribed as " prince of Yamutbal " affords additional

¦ The name means " Servant (Elamitic Kudur) of the god Mabug"
(or Mavuk, cf. the Elamite personal name Mauk-titi ; see my Assyria-
logical Notes, § 20).

170 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
proof of his Elamite origin. For Yamutbal is de
rived from the Kassite word ia = " land " and Muta
bil, the name of a Semitic viceroy of Dur-ili on the
Elamite frontier who flourished long before the time
of Eri-Aku ; this Mutabil had, as he informs us in
an inscription, subdued and conquered Anshan (i.e.
Northern Elam), with the result that for a long time
afterwards the Babylonian name for a part of Elam
was simply " the land of Mutabil," abbreviated to
" Mutbal." Moreover, in the Babylonian geographi
cal lists Yamutbalu is explained as the " fore-part
of Elam " (W. A. I., v., 16, 20), so that even should
my proposed explanation of the name of Yamutbal
prove to be incorrect, we should still have evidence
to show that this region formed part of the Elamite
territory. But whereas in the first inscription Kudur-Mabug
is described as " prince of Yamutbal," in the second
he bears the title " prince of Martu," which, as later
usage proves, was equivalent to " prince of the
West," and which, for this reason, many Assyriolo
gists take to be synonymous with Yamutbal (i.e.
in the present instance Western Elam). But Martu,
in all the Ancient Babylonian historical records, is
simply another name for Palestine (including Coele-
Syria), being an abbreviation of Amartu = the land
of the Amorites; since the Babylonian term Mar
tu was the same as " countries of the West," this
word martu gradually came to be used occasion
ally in the general sense of " West," and finally be
came a fixed ideogram for amurru, the ordinary
Semitic-Babylonian expression for " West," a word

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 171
which originally meant " Amoritish." 1 The title
" prince of Martu," therefore, necessarily implies
that Kudur-Mabug had extended his military opera
tions as far as Palestine and had reduced it to sub
mission, or rather that he regarded the supremacy
previously exercised by the later kings of Ur as his
inheritance, and duly annexed it. If we couple this
fact with the obvious identity of Arioch of Ellasar
with Eri-Aku of Larsa, we obtain another striking
instance of the way in which the Bible narrative is
corroborated by facts revealed in the inscriptions.
In both one and other we find an Elamite hegemony
over Canaan in the time of Arioch, in both one and
other there is the closest possible connection be
tween this South Babylonian potentate and Elam,
and lastly we find in both the same initial element
(Kudur-) of the name of an Elamite prince. The
only link still wanting to complete the chain of evi
dence — the connection between Eri-Aku (Arioch)
and Khammu-rabi (Amraphel) will be dealt with
later on — is the discovery of some reference to
Chedor-la'omer in the cuneiform inscriptions. Up
to the present, we have only succeeded in proving
the individual elements of his name to be of Elamite
origin — Kudur occurring in the name Kudur-Mabug
1 Cf. Hebr. Emori, patronymic for the obsolete Amoreth = Martu. I
have proved conclusively (Assyriological Notes § 13 ; cf. also Zeit
schrift D. M. G. vol. xlix. p. 524) that the correct reading is not akharru,
but invariably amurrA. Sayce's conjecture that the Canaanite word
Emortth (= Martu postulated by me) may be traced in such expressions
as elSn Moreh (Gen. xii. 6), elone Moreh (Deut. xi. 30) and gib'at ha-
Moreh (Judges vii. 1), appears to me well worth considering.

172 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
of the inscriptions, and Lagamar as the title of an
Elamite goddess.
Even this missing link has been recently supplied
by the sensational discovery made by the Dominican
Father, Fr.-V. Scheil, in the shape of an autograph
letter from Khammu-rabi addressed to a certain
Sin-idinam (probably a grandson of the celebrated
king Sin-idinam of Larsa). Of scarcely less impor
tance than this document are the lyrical fragments
of a later epoch which refer to the devastation of
North Babylonia by Chedor-la'omer, the discovery
of which, as of so many other important documents,
we owe to the industry of Mr. Pinches; it is only
within the last few years that we have been made
aware of their existence, Mr. Pinches having first
communicated them to the Geneva Congress of
Orientalists in September 1894.
Father Scheil made the first announcement of his
discovery in October 1896, in the fifth volume of
the Revue Biblique (pp. 600 et seq.), a periodical com
piled in Jerusalem by the Dominican Father M.-J.
Lagrange, and published in Paris, in a paper entitled
Chodorlahomor dans les inscriptions Chalde'ennes. At
almost the same date (the middle of September
1896) Father Scheil wrote from Constantinople to
my friend Hilprecht, who was staying at the time
not far from Munich, and shortly afterward to me
also, enclosing a revised transcription of the clay
tablet which had appeared in the Revue Biblique.
In view of its great importance I here append,
not only a literal translation (which differs in some
respects from that supplied by Father Scheil),

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 173
but a transliteration of the Babylonian original as
well: A-na Sin-i-din-nam
ki-bi-ma
um-ma Kha-am-mu-ra-bi-ma
i-la-a-tim sha E-mu-ut-ba-lim
(5) it-li-ti-ka (in Scheil two words, id li-ti-ka)
um (-um) sha Ku-dur x)-nu-ukh 3-ga-mar
u-sha-al-la-ma-ak-ku 3
i-nu-ma iz-za ila ba-ni-ik-ku
i-na tsab-im sha ga-ti-ka
(10) tsab-am lu-pu-ut-ma
i-la-a-tim
a-na shu-ub-ti-shi-na
li-sha-al-li-mu
Before giving the translation of the above I should
like to point out that the name of the Elamite king
may be read either as Kudur-nuggamar or as Kudur-
luggamar. At the time in question the symbol ni,
for instance, was also equivalent to //. I need
scarcely point out that the symbol ukh when fol
lowed, as in this case, by ga, must be pronounced
ug; lakh = to glitter (Sumerian lag), for instance, is
followed not by kha but by ga and must therefore
be pronounced lagga instead of lagha. The Baby
lonians of Khammu-rabi's time would seem to have
pronounced the divine appellation Lagamar (thus in
the ancient in Elamite inscriptions, e.g. Lagamarivi
' Symbol tur (Ideogram for " small " or " son ").
2 Symbol ukh = imtu or r&tu (Ideogr. for Upi, Opis).
* Symbol ku, with emphatic k sound (cf.passim in the suffix of the 2nd
person singular, in the Ancient Babylonian correspondence).

174 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
mishirmana sarrakh) with a surd / naturally fol
lowed by a modified a, a sound which they repro
duced in writing by Luggamar (cf. LXX, Aoyofiop).
Father Scheil gives the following translation of
this clay tablet, which, according to his account,
came originally from Larsa : " To Sin-idinnam from
Khammu-rabi : the goddesses of the land of Emutbal,
I have given them to thee as a reward for thy val
our on the day of the defeat of Kodor-lahomor. Be
cause the god, thy creator, is angered thereat, there
fore destroy with the troops which are in thy hand
their people, and may the goddesses remain unin
jured in their holy places." He also adds the fol
lowing explanation of the historical incident to which
it refers: " There can be no doubt that Sin-iddinam
(whom Scheil identifies with the well-known king
of Larsa) had been restored to power by Khammu
rabi, after he (Khammu-rabi) had vanquished and
dethroned the prince of Emutbal ( — Yamutbal) and
Rim-Sin ( = Eri-Aku)." Moreover, Scheil considers
the prince of Emutbal mentioned in the contract
tablets of Tel Sifr to be identical with Chedor
la'omer, and cites Gen. xiv. (Arioch of Larsa and
Chedor-la'omer of Elam) in support of his view.
Before I proceed to contrast my own translation
of this tablet with that just quoted from Scheil, it
will perhaps help the reader to form a more correct
judgment as to this important identification if I
furnish the date to which Scheil alludes, and which
associates Eri-Aku and the "prince of Yamutbal"
with Khammu-rabi, just as Scheil's new tablet links
Chedor-la'omer and Khammu-rabi together. One

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 1 75
of the Tel Sifr contract tablets, dated in the reign
of Khammu-rabi (Strassmaier, No. 37), bears the fol
lowing subscription, which throws an important
light on the history of Ancient Babylonia.
" In the year in which Khammu-rabi the king, with
the help of Anu and Bel, in whose grace he lives,
overthrew1 the prince (adda vide supra, p. 166) of
Yamutbalu and Ri-Aku (written Ri-im-Sin)."
With Eri-Aku's original inscriptions before us,
our first impulse would be to identify the " prince
of Yamutbal " mentioned above with Eri - Aku's
father Kudur-Mabug, who nearly always bears this
title, but Scheil prefers to take it as applying to
Chedor-la'omer. It cannot be denied that if my
explanation of the Erech inscription on p. 167 is the
correct one (i.e. if Kudur-Mabug was no longer liv
ing at the time of Eri-Aku's conquest of Erech), it
follows as a natural consequence that it is not Ku
dur Mabug who is referred to in the inscription in
question, but his successor in the principality of Ya
mutbal. Whether or not, however, this latter was
Kudur-Lagamar, who it will be remembered is ex
plicitly described both in the Epic texts (vide infra)
and also in Gen. xiv. as " king of Elam," is still to a
great extent an open question. There is, neverthe
less, a good deal to be said in favour of answering
it in the affirmative. It is quite possible — indeed it
is highly probable — that a Kudur-Lagamar of Ya
mutbal should have been known in distant Palestine
1 Shu-ni ki nin(n)-dug, literally " stretched his hand to the earth ; "
elsewhere shu-dug-ga is used in the sense of " to destroy, annihilate" (so
used of the soil, W. A. I., ii. 26, 11).

176 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
by the more general title of "king of Elam," of
which latter region Yamutbal actually formed a
part ; even in the native Babylonian tradition of
later times Kudur-Lagamar is called " king of Elam-
mat," nor, so far as we can tell from the fragments
that have come down to us, does any distinction
seem to have been drawn between Elammat and
Yamutbal. And now to return to the letter from Khammu
rabi to Sinidinam, discovered by Father Scheil, the
text of which is given above on p. 173. To my
mind the only satisfactory way of translating it is
as follows : — -
To Sin-idinam
give the following order
from Khammu-rabi :
the goddesses of Emutbal,
(5) thy mistresses,
on the day in which Kudur-luggamar
shall allow thee to return scatheless,
when they (the goddesses) are angry
with the god, thy creator,
destroy thou with the warriors
which are in thy hand
(10) the warriors (of the enemy),
and they (thy warriors) shall then
the goddesses
bring back to their abode
again scatheless.
This rendering seems to me to be, at any rate
more grammatically correct than Scheil's, viz. : " the
goddesses of Emutbal have I on the day of Kudur-
luggamar (i.e. on the day of his defeat) given over

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 177
to thee unharmed ; " for ushallam, though it may, no
doubt, also be taken as ist person singular, is cer
tainly in the present tense, and lines 6 and 7 are
clearly parenthetical. The situation was manifestly
as follows : —
Sin-idinam, probably a grandson of the famous
king Sin-idinam (son of Ntir Ramman) of Larsa,1 had
evidently been originally master of Larsa and
Yamutbal, but had been deposed by Kudur-Mabug
and Eri-Aku. This deposition would seem to have
taken place during the reign of Sin-muballit over
Northern Babylonia. Many years afterwards Kudur-
Mabug was succeeded on the throne by his kinsman
Kudur-Lagamar, who, as the poetic fragments tell
us, laid waste North Babylonia, but was at length
defeated by Khammu-rabi. As a result of this,
Kudur-Lagamar was forced to release Sin-idinam,
who had been a prisoner in Elam for about thirty
years, and it must have been on this occasion that
Khammu-rabi dispatched the letter in question, in
order that it might be handed to Sin-idinam on his
return to Larsa. The goddesses of Yamutbal — now
once more a Babylonian possession — were probably
statues which had been carried off on a previous oc
casion by the Elamite king from Dur-ilu to some
town in the interior ; this was why they " were
1 We also find the name of another Sin-idinam son of Gaish- 
W. A. I., i. 3, No. IX., who is styled "guardian of Ur, king of Larsa,
king of Sumer and Akkad." As the title "king of Sumer and Akkad "
was not borne by Nilr- Ramman, but is first given to his son Sin-idinam,
this second Sin-idinam must have come to the throne after the son of
Nur-Ramman, and it is evidently to him that reference is made above.
13

178 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
angry " (the regular Babylonian expression in such
cases) with Sin-idinam's patron deity, the Samas of
Larsa, who had been so unreasonable as to allow this
to happen. Now, however, that Dur-ilu had once
more passed into Babylonian hands, the first con
cern of the new Babylonian sovereign would natu
rally be to see that these divine images were brought
back again. This is why Khammu-rabi impresses
on Sin-idinam that the moment he is at liberty again
he must, if necessary,1 secure their return, by force ;
a threat to use force in the event of refusal would
have been no empty one, now that Chedor-la'omer
had been overthrown and that Sin-idinam was backed
by his present suzerain, the mighty Khammu-rabi ;
we may safely conclude, therefore, that the images
were speedily brought back to Dur-ilu, and re-in
stated in their former abode. For the power of
Chedor-la'omer had now been broken once and for
all. In a great many of Khammu-rabi's inscriptions,
the conqueror of Eri-Aku and of Kudur-Lagamar
appears as Lord over the whole of Babylonia, for
not only does he boast in them of the great canals
he has dug and the extensive cornfields he has laid
out for the benefit of the people of Sumer and
Akkad, but he also describes himself, almost in the
same breath, as " Destroyer of adversaries, whirl
wind of the battle, vanquisher of the people of the
enemy, making strife to cease, conqueror of rebels,
1 i.e. should they not be given up voluntarily on Sin-idinam's re
lease. This possibility is provided against in line 8 of Khammu
rabi's letter, by the words, " when they (are still) angry with the god
thy creator."

AS ILLUSTRATED BV THE MONUMENTS 179
who shattereth warriors like images of clay, and
opens up difficult paths " (?).
To complete the picture, we need go no further
than the poems in which the memory of the heroes
of that period was perpetuated among the Babylo
nians. Fragments of these poems, discovered by
Mr. Pinches, as already mentioned, are preserved
in the Spartoli Collection in the British Museum,
and formed part of a Babylonian library in the time
of the Achaemenides. They are probably copies of
earlier originals, belonging, it may be, to a time not
far removed from that of Khammu-rabi himself.
The longest and most perfectly preserved of these
fragments — all three of which take for their theme
the inroads of Kudur -dugmal (or Kudur- lugmal,
for this is the form which the name here assumes)
into North Babylonia — may be freely translated as
follows : —
(6) (Obverse:) 
. . . . and pressed on against the august
portals
the Istar-door, he unlocked, tore it from its
hinges, threw it down in the holy dwelling
like the pitiless war-god 1 went he into Dul-
makh,2
(10) he installed himself in Dul-makh, as he
looked on the temple,
and opened his mouth, thus speaking to his
men,
1 Urra (or Girra) la gamil, a play on the name Kudur-lagamal (vide
supra, p. 105). Cf. the personal name Uira-gamil in the contract tab
lets (Meissner, No. 52). "Name of the desecrated temple.

l80 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
unto all his warriors cried he hastily the in
justice
" Take away the spoils of the temple, seize
its possessions
tear away its bas - reliefs, unfasten its
chambers."
(15) Then .... and pressed on ... .
(20) and there came in the overseer of the princes,
he tore the doors from their hinges,
against En-nun-dagal-la1 pressed on the
enemy with evil intent,
before him was the god clothed in light,
like a thunder-bolt flashed he, the conquered
ones trembled,
and the enemy became afraid, hid (?) him self,
and he descended to his priest, as he spoke
the command to him
 the god is clothed in light
 and the conquered ones tremble
. . the En-nun-dagal, take away his diadem
 his house, seize his hand
(30) But [En-nun-dagalla] was not afraid, nor
cared he for his life,
 En-nun-dagalla, did
not remove his diadem
 the Elamite proclaimed to the
lands

1 i.e. against Khammu-rabi ; vide supra, p. 105 [the Semitic form was
something like Kummu-rapaltu],

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS l8l
. . . the Elamite, the evil one, proclaimed
to the fields (?)
(Reverse :)  a dish of 
When the lurking dasmon (his) greeting. .
then descended his (evil) spirit who the
temple ....
the hostile Elamite, when he hastily sent
misfortune,
(5) and Bel against Babel evil plotted.
When right no longer existed, and mischief
took its place,
from the temple, the house of the whole
body of the gods, came down his (evil) spirit
the hostile Elamite took away his goods
(9) Bel, who (at other times) dwelt therein, him
had anger taken hold of
 ordered destruction
 him had anger taken hold of,
 Bel the Manda-tribes the road
to Sumer
Who is Kudu r-luggamal, the author of evil?
and he summoned the Manda-tribes . . of Bel
and laid in ruins  on their side
When from E-zidda (in Borsippa) . his .
(25) and Nebo the guardian of the world caused
his dasmon to descend,
down to the country of the sea did they turn
their face
I-ne-Tutu 1 who in the country of the sea .
1 Or I-bil-Tutu ? Tutu is another name for Bel-Merodach. Hence
probably (cf. ibil = Sem. aplu) Apil-Bel of dynasty B. (supra, p. 121) ?

182 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
and he passed through the country of the
sea and set up an evil dwelling-place
E-zidda, the everlasting house, its chambers
came into distress.
(30) The hostile Elamite, made ready his team
down towards Borsippa turned he his face
and he descended the high-road of darkness
the high-road to Mish(-ki)
the evil-doer, the Elamite, destroyed his
wall (?)
the princes .... destroyed he with the
sword
(35) All the spoil of the temple plundered he
he took their gods and carried them away to
Elam
 annihilated their kings,
(they) . . . and filled the land (therewith).
In regard to the form of these fragments there is
one point which escaped Mr. Pinches' notice, but
which is none the less of immense importance when
we come to criticise them as a whole. I mean the
fact, discovered by Gunkel and Zimmern, that the}'
are cast in an epic metre, every line being divided
into two half-verses, each containing two accented
syllables ; I have tried to imitate this here and there
in the translation (e.g. reverse 1. 5 " and Bel against
Babel — evil phitted "). The metre alone is enough
to show that the fragment in question must have
formed part of an epic poem, and the same remark
applies to the two smaller fragments in which a
similar metrical arrangement is also discernible.
The large fragment (Sp. 158 + Sp. II. 962) shows

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 1 83
us the victorious enemy just as he is on the point of
looting the Temple of Bel at Babylon. Ennun-da-
galla, (Kimtu-rapaltii), i.e. Khammu-rabi himself, had
taken refuge in the Holy of Holies. But when his
pursuers burst open the door, the statue of the god
blazed out in dazzling radiance in order to protect
him, and Kudur-luggamal, blinded by the glare, was
forced to ask the priest to seize the king and tear
the royal diadem from his head. Khammu-rabi
seems, however, to have been preserved from falling
into the hands of the victor by another miracle.
Kudur-Luggamal made up for this by plundering
the temple (Reverse 1. 1 — 9), and then proceeded to
play similar havoc with the temple of the god Nebo
at Borsippa (Reverse 1. 24 — 38). In this last passage
the fate of Borsippa is manifestly associated with
the country of the Sea (i.e. Arabia), a name which
at that time was evidently applied to the whole re
gion in the direction of Arabia lying to the west of
the Euphrates, from Borsippa to the Persian Gulf,
and even as far as Bahrein, where began the road
leading to the Land of Darkness1 (reverse 1. 32),
known also as the road to Mish-ki.2 The association
of Borsippa with the country of the sea is eminently
suggestive of the Arabian origin of the Khammu
rabi dynasty.
The only absolutely novel point about the other
two fragments lies in the fact that they both contain
•Cf. the date of the contract tablet quoted on p. 35 supra, Meissner,
77- 2 From Mash-ki, i.e. Ki-mash, elsewhere simply Mash, in Central
Arabia, cf. pp. 34, 35, and 38, supra.

1 84 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
a reference to a fresh personage, viz., Dur-mach-
ilani, son of Eri-Aku of Larsa, with whose name the
reader must by this time be familiar ; one of the
fragments also mentions — in a context which is un
fortunately obscure — a certain Tudkhula (written
Tu-ud-khul-a) son of Gaz-za  who can
of course be no other than Tid'al (properly Tid-
ghal), king of the Goiim,1 whose name occurs in
Gen. xiv.
And now let us examine one of these two smaller
fragments, Sp. III. 2, a little more closely. It is only
from line 9 on the obverse side, onwards, that we
can make any sense out of it.
it did Dur-mach-ilani, son of Iri-Aku overthrow
(10). . . plundered, waters (came) over Babylon
and Bit-Saggil
his son (?) with the sword of his hand, slew
him a lamb.
... in order to .... old and young
with the sword
. . . tur-gu-di-is (vide supra) Tudkhula, Son
of Gazza 
 plundered he, waters (came) over
Babylon and Bit-Saggil
(15) his son with the sword of his hand struck
down his skull
the . . . of his guardian office (?) before the
goddess Anunit (brought he?)
On the reverse side the inscription is still more
fragmentary, as may be seen from the following lines—
1 Cf. the word Tur-gudis (?) which immediately precedes the name
Tudkhula.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 1 85
(1) [the king] of Elam the city  on
the high-road (?) of the land Rabbatu
plundered he
. . . . like a whirlwind made he his zuhdti,
the land of Akkad, all their holy places
 held back Kudur-dugmal his son,
with the iron dagger his middle
his heart transfixed (?) he,
 his enemy, Nabu-kima-ab'i-shar-
rani Q),pinutu (scion ?) of the
Sinners (?)...
(5) . . the majesty (?) of the king of the gods,
Merodach, was wrathful over them . .
 me (?), their breast
anathema (?)
 in order to destroy . .
they all to the king, our (?) Lord,
. . . . of the heart of the gods were firm
Merodach, in memory of his name
 and Bit-Saggil . . to his
place may it . . .
(10)  this the king my
Lord . . .
The metre seems to be the same as in the large
fragment, except that in this text each line evidently
contains more than two half-verses : probably, there
fore, there is more matter missing on the left than is
indicated in the above tentative translation. As to
the subject matter, the scene of the Elamite depre
dations is here again laid in North Babylonia, Baby
lon and its chief temple Bit-Saggil being specially
mentioned. One very peculiar thing about it is the

1 86 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
name of the son of Eri-Aku,1 viz., Dur-mach-ilani,
i.e. " great wall (construct form of a word durma-
chu) of the gods." As no son of Eri-Aku is any
where mentioned in contemporary texts, and as the
name looks very like that of a place, there being ab
solutely no parallel to it among Babylonian per
sonal names,2 we are almost tempted to believe that
it must be due to the creative imagination of the
poet ; or can it be possible that the fact of Eri-Aku
being son of Kudur-Mabug of Dur-ilu (Yamutbal)
may have led the writer to invent for him a son
named Dur-mach-ila.ni? One thing, however, is
clear, in spite of the mutilated condition of the
text, and this is, that both this son of Eri-Aku's and
the Tudkhul whose name occurs immediately after
the second reference to plundering, must have been
auxiliaries and allies of Chedor-la'omer's. On the
obverse, line 15, it is not quite clear whether the
words " his skull " refer to a sacrificial victim or to
a Babylonian, and line 3 on the reverse is no less
obscure : it might also be rendered thus: " Kudur-
dugmal, his (i.e. some Babylonian's) son, stabbed he
through the heart " : it is not, therefore, necessary
to argue, as Pinches does, that Chedor-la'omer was
guilty of murdering his son. It is much to be re
gretted that the name of the town in the first line of
¦Phonetically: Eri-E-a-ku, or Eri-I-a-ku, (vide supra, p. 169).
2 The nearest approach to it is in names such as Nabu-durpania (Neo-
Babyl.), Dun-Assur, Istar-duri, Duri-ma-itti-Ramman. But their mean
ing proves these names to belong to a different category from Dilr-mach-
ilani ; the discrepancy would not be so great if the name were even
Durmachi-ilu.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 1 87
the reverse is missing ; by " the land Rabbatu," pos
sibly either Rabbat- Ammon in the region east of the
Jordan (cf. Gen. xiv.), or Khani-rabbat to the north
of Mesopotamia, may be intended. If the trans
lation " on the high-road to Rabbat " be correct, it
is possible that the town whose name is missing
must have been situated somewhere in Babylonia.
We now come to the last fragment, Sp. II. 987.
Here again little more than an attempt at trans
lation is possible.
.  band (bolt?) of heaven
which toward the four winds . .
(5) he appointed for them as a shirtu which in
Dintir ( = Babylon), the city of renown
(is to be found)
he appointed for them the possession of Eki .
(i.e. of Babylon) small and large.
In their everlasting decree for Kudur-
Dugmal, King of Elam
preserved (?) they ..." Well then, what
to them seems good [will I do ?]
in Eki the city of Karduniash, will I exercise
sovereignty "
in Dintir, the city of Marduk, king ofthe gods
laid they 
(10) shukullu and dogs of Bit-Khabbatu,1 to whom
he is favourable
they carved ...... of a flying raven
which he loves (?)
1 i.e. House of the Robber ; as the Bedflin are elsewhere described as
robbers (Khabbatu), it is probable that the desert is here intended.

1 88 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
while a croaking raven who spits out gall,
he cannot endure,
a dog, who gnaws bones, him doth Nin(-ib ?)
love
but the snake of the Beduin which spits out
the poison, he cannot endure
(15) Who is then the king of Elam, who maintains
Bit Saggil ?
 the inhabitants of Eki made it
and their embassy [sent they]
the  which thou writest thus, — "I
am a king and the son of a king "
is not [true]
[who] then is the son of the king's daughter
who seats himself on the throne
of the king
Durmach-ilani, the son of Eri-Ekua (and)
of Amat-(Istar)
(20) has seated himself on the throne of sovereignty
but before the [judges]
may [the sentence] of the king be published,
which from time immemorial . .
is proclaimed, the Lord of E-ki, they do not
confirm (?)...
[in] the month of Sivan, in the month of
Tammuz were made in Babylon . .
In spite of the obscurity of many of the expressions
employed in this fragment, it seems to clearly estab
lish one fact, viz., that the Elamites had succeeded —
at any rate in the opinion of the writer of the Epos —
in securing a temporary foothold in Babylon. And,

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 189
evidently, Chedor-la'omer had proclaimed the son
of Eri-Aku king in place of Khammu-rabi. The
question as to who was the son of a king's daughter,
is apparently ironical, for an inscription of Eri-Aku's,
published by Winckler, states that his wife Amat-
Istar was the daughter of a certain Arad -Uru-ki,
who, since no title is inserted after his name, was
manifestly not a king.
It is thus that the mighty conqueror Chedor-la
'omer is represented in the later Babylonian tradition.
Now, if we assume — an assumption which has already
been shown to be for other reasons inadmissible (cf.
pp. 162 et seq.) — that some post-exilic Jew obtained
the facts set down in Gen. xiv. from Babylonian
sources, we must further assume that he also had
before him an ancient Israelite tradition in which
Abraham was connected either with Khammu-rabi
or, it may be, with Chedor-la'omer. For, manifestly
the Babylonian priests could not possibly have known
anything about Abraham ; how then did they come
to pitch on Chedor-la'omer, Eri-aku and Khammu
rabi, when questioned by this hypothetical Jew as to
the political surroundings of the patriarchal epoch
of his race ? There were plenty of other Babylonian
kings who had made expeditions into the "countries
of the West." The kings of the Tel el-Amarna
period, for example, distinguished by their diplo
matic embassies to Palestine and Egypt, would have
been far more likely to occur to the mind of a Baby
lonian. Or, must we go so far as to assume that the
Jew asked point-blank for information concerning
the events of the period about 1950 B.C. (i.e. of an

I90 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
epoch nearly 1550 years before his time)? Even had
he done so, there was little likelihood of his hearing
anything about Khammu-rabi, since, as we have seen,
the Babylonians of a later time, owing to their mis
take in adding Dynasties A and B together, ante
dated this monarch by at least two hundred years
(viz. 2150 B.C.). Or, as a last hypothesis — if the real
object of the whole narrative in this chapter was to
furnish a peg on which to hang Melchizedek's salu
tation and blessing, our Jew's most natural course
would have been to ask about Melchizedek and any
relations which may have subsisted between him and
the Babylonian kings. And even assuming that the
Babylonian priests knew anything at all about
Melchizedek or about any of the kings of the Jordan
basin contemporary with him — which is by no means
probable — would not this very fact prove the ex
istence of an historical tradition connecting a known
contemporary of Abraham with Khammu-rabi.
Fortunately, however, it is not necessary to resort
to indirect reasoning of this kind. The narrative in
Gen. xiv. differs in some of its details not only from
the account which we glean from contemporary in
scriptions, but also — and to a far greater extent —
from the later Babylonian tradition ; it introduces
into the history of Khammurabi as presented in the
ancient monuments an entirely new episode, which
fits into the political circumstances of the period
like a missing fragment, and thus completes, and
throws a most valuable light on, the knowledge of
this remote epoch which we gather from the cunei
form records. The theory that the names of the

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS I9I
kings, together with the fact that Chedor-la'omer
had once led an expedition into " the countries of
the West," were transferred from Babylonian rec
ords in post-exilic times, and that a campaign on the
part of the four allied kings as far as Ailat and Ka-
desh-barnea was then invented, is absolutely inadmis
sible. The material handed down to us in Gen. xiv.
is neither more nor less than genuine and ancient
tradition. In' regard to the source from which Gen. xiv. was
derived, the balance of probability inclines — as has
already been indicated above (p. 152) — in favour of
a cuneiform original. An original moreover, dating
not from the post-exilic period but from Jerusalem,
in or soon after the time of Abraham, a Hebrew
translation of which must have been incorporated
into the main stock of the Pentateuch at a very early
date. We now know for a fact that the cuneiform
script was employed in Palestine, and especially in
Jerusalem, as early as 1400 B.C., being a survival of
the supremacy previously exercised for so many
years by Babylon. That this must have been so,
and that Gen. xiv. must therefore have been origi
nally inscribed on a clay tablet, follows directly from
the form of the name Amraphel. Had the narrative
come originally from a Hebrew source, and been
written down in the West-Semitic script (i.e. in the
so-called Phoenician alphabet) this name must in
evitably have appeared as 'Ammi-rab (with initial
'Ayin), as the earliest Hebrews were familiar with
names compounded with '"Ammi"; we must not
forget, moreover, that the Arabs, from whom Kham-

192 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
mu-rabi was descended, were their near relations.
The form Amraphel, on the other hand, can only be
explained on the supposition that the original of
Gen. xiv. contained the reading Ammu -rapa\(tu).
But such a reading as Ammu-rapaltu could not pos
sibly occur except in a cuneiform text dating from
the time of the Khammu-rabi dynasty, for at that
period alone do we find the variants Ammu-rabi and
Ammi-rabi side by side with Khammu-rabi ; that the
second element rabi was actually regarded, in Kham
murabi's time, as an ideogram equivalent to rapaltu,
is evident from the Babylonian form Eki + rapaltu i
[see p. 105], with which the variants of later times,
Kimtu-rapashtu and Kummu-rapaltu, are connected.
But even should it be objected that the remarkable
resemblance in sound between the -raphel in Amra
phel, and rapaltu2 (otherwise rapashtu), is a mere
coincidence, there is a second and eminently note
worthy consideration which also points to a cunei
form original for Amraphel. If we assume that in
the supposed Jerusalem original the name may
have been written Am-mu-ra-be (instead of Am-mu-
ra-bi), then, since the symbol be3 not infrequently
1 Eki = probably Ammu. Cf. Sumerian ki = earth and Semit. am-
matu — earth.
2 For the benefit of those who are not Assyriologists, I may explain
that the feminine of rapshu =: broad, is rapashtu; this the laws of As
syro-Babylonian pronunciation (especially in the common language of
the people) transformed into rapaltu.
3 This is really the neo-Assyrian symbol ne, which possessed the value
be (or bi) only in the second millennium B.C. (i.e. in the time of the
Khammu-rabi Dynasty and Tel el-Amarna period). Although in the
Khammurabi records, the name of Khammural i himself is always writ-

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 1 93
possesses the sound-value pil as well, the scribe who
translated the original document into Hebrew may
— especially if the name did not happen to be fa
miliar to him — very easily have read it as Am-mu-
ra-pil, which is identical, consonant for consonant,
with Amraphel. Be this as it may, the first part of
the name is, in any case, sufficient to prove the nat
ure of the original source of the fourteenth chapter
of Genesis, which we, of course, possess only in its
Hebrew form.
I have already (p. 164) laid stress on the fact that
the name Chedor-la'omer also points to an earlier
period ; for, as we have just seen, the early form in
the contemporary monuments is Kudur-luggamar,
while the later form which survives in the Epos is
Kudur-dugmal or Kudur-luggamal.
Moreover, the ancient name for Zoar in Gen. xiv.
2 and 8, viz. Beld (LXX. BaXdic), which nowhere else
occurs throughout the whole of the Old Testament,
also presupposes a cuneiform original, dating from
the Ancient Babylonian Empire. Somewhere in the
"countries of the West" there was an ancient city
named Malka, also called Margu, Malgu, Malagu,
Malgi or Milgia. It is probably identical with the
Madga of the time of Gudea, which is associated
with a river named Gurruda (the Jordan?) as a
place from which asphalt was obtained. For this
reason the Babylonians came to use the word malgu
as a synonym for brick (because it was customary
ten with the ordinary symbol for bi, it is quite conceivable that a Ca
naanite scribe may, in writing Khammurabi, have employed the other
symbol for bi, which can also be read as pil.
*3

194 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
to lay bricks with asphalt in place of mortar). In
the dating of contract tablets of the Khammu-rabi
dynasty reference is made to the demolition of the
walls of the city of Mair and of the city of Malka
(Meissner, No. 27) ; Ma'ir was a famous port which
gave its name to ships and textile fabrics,1 its patron
goddess being " the Mistress of the Desert," and was
probably identical with Ailat (El Pa'ran, Gen. xiv).
In the British Museum there is a tablet from the
library of Assur-banipal (k. 3500) in which the an
cient Assyrian monarch Assur- bel-kala,2 son of
Tiglath-pileser I. (ca. 1100 B.C.) calls down male
dictions from deities of all degrees on the " coun
tries of the West." I am indebted to the un
selfish kindness of my old friend Pinches for an
accurate copy of this important document. It runs
as follows: —
(2) the goddess Ishtar 
the goddess Gula, the great healer (f.) . . .
with destructive blindness may she their
(eorum) bodies [punish]
(5) the seven (?) mighty gods, may they with
their weapons 
the god (of) Bai'ti-ilani (Bethel, cf . Gen. xxxv. 7)
1 Cf. the analogous expressions, " Tarsis-ships " and "East India-
man." 2 Unfortunately the name of the king is not clearly written, and of his
father's name only the first element, Tuklat, has been preserved. Itis
just possible that Assur-natsir-pal, son of Tukulti-Nindar, who flourished
at the commencement of the ninth century B.C., may be meant, though,
on the evidence, I consider this the less probable hypothesis ; Assur-
bel-kala mentions the gods of the "countries of the West" (vide my
history of Babylonia and Assyria, p. 536).

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 1 95
may he with the hands of a ravening
lion 
the great gods of heaven and of the earth,
the gods of Ebir-ndri1 may they with an
irrevocable curse curse [them].
(10) Ba'al samimi (the Baal of Heaven), Ba'al (of)
Malagi, Ba'al-za-bu (-bi or -na})
May this wind with ships from ....
chariots their (earum) names des- . . .
their (earum)  a
mighty flood with 
may them (eas) des-  a great
inundation over you
[come]
the god of Milgia and he (of) Yasumunu2
may they your land to 
(15) Your people (may they) to spoliation hand
over, from your land ....
the water in your mouth, the fire on your
hearth
the oil when you anoint yourselves, may
they destroy
the Astartu may she in the mighty combat
the bow 

1 Literally, " the (far) bank of the river," meaning, probably, the Jor
dan. I shall have something more to say hereafter in regard to this im
portant word, which, in the Persian era, was used of Palestine itself.
2 Hebr. Yeshimbn (i.e. desert), in the region east of the Jordan ; cf.
also the personal names Isimanai (Meissner, No. 35) and Isimmanum
(Meissner, No. 87), in the time of Abraham and the Arab tribe, Mar-
Stmani (from Mar-Isimanai ?) in the time of the Assyrian monarch Sar-
gon.

196 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
make herself to place . . . The enemy
may he divide (your) booty
the city of Pi-a-ki (?)-li (?), the kunnu of
Kalu J king of 
This interesting tablet clearly shows that the city
of Malgu must have been situated in Palestine, and
very probably in the region east of the Jordan. If
we add to this the fact that in the clay tablets of the
time of the Khammurabi dynasty the distinction be
tween the symbols ma and &zis often very slight, we
can readily understand how the Hebrew who tran
scribed the Babylonian original of Gen. xiv. may have
come to render the place-name Malgu or Malagi by
Bela' (pronounced Belag, cf. Chedor-la'omer and
Kudur-lagamar). Moreover, the earliest form of the
name of the city was certainly Melakhi (from melakh
= salt) ; the expressions " Salt Sea," " Valley of Salt,"
" City of Salt " (at the southern extremity of the Dead
Sea), " Pillars of Salt," etc., are applied throughout
the Old Testament to this locality. It was from
this form that the Babylonians obtained their name
Malagi or Malgu, etc., which afterwards found its
way back into the pages of the Old Testament, in
its faulty transcription Bela'.
The name El Pa'ran (otherwise Elat), Gen. xiv. 6,
also probably owes its existence to a similar errone
ous reading. For if Mair — as I have shown to be
probably the case — is to be identified with Elat,
"With strong ,£-sound ; on the reverse, where only one or two frag
mentary lines are still decipherable, in addition to the Assyrian king, a
certain king of Tsur-ri (i.e. Tyre) is also mentioned, though, unfortu
nately, his name has been broken off.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 197
there seems good reason for assuming that the sym
bols ma = ship (Semit. elippu) and ir = city (Semitic
alu, but eru also, cf. Hebr. Hr), in the cuneiform orig
inal, may have been wrongly taken for Elip'-ir — a
word which contains all the radical consonants of
El-pa'r (an) ; 1 and as the adjoining desert bore the
name of Pa'ran, popular etymology would soon am
plify this into El-pa'ran, especially as the added an
is merely a suffix, and does not form part of the
actual root.
I frankly admit that what I have just said in re
gard to Bela' and El Pa'ran is mere conjecture,
though, none the less, probable conjecture. It is,
therefore, all the more necessary to lay emphasis
on the fact that the name-form Amraphel for Kham
murabi is in itself amply sufficient to permit — nay
more, compel — us to assume that Gen. xiv. is based
on a cuneiform original of the Khammurabi period,
produced in Palestine. And this fact, like the other
historical statements on which light has been thrown
in the present chapter, goes to prove, as conclu
sively as possible, that Abraham was a contempo
rary of Khammurabi.
We now see, for the first time clearly, the obvious
relation between Abraham and the conclusions in
regard to the religious history of the Hebrews
which we were able to deduce, in Chapter III.,
from the Arabian personal names of the Khammu
rabi dynasty. They form, as it were, an effective
1 It is important to remember that the Hebrew script consisted from
the outset of consonants only, so that in pronouncing a word like 'Ip'r
(from Babylonian Elip'-ir) any vcwels might be used.

198 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
back-ground to his history, and confirm in a manner,
which is little short of marvellous, the accuracy of
the details supplied by the Biblical tradition in re
gard to the Friend of God, and his escape from the
contagion of Babylonian polytheism.
When we find that the modern critics of the Pen
tateuch, even in the face of such facts as these, still
continue to write in the tone adopted by Well
hausen in 1 889/^ the passage quoted below, and
when we see that the ultimate outcome of the in
vestigations of these critics is nothing more than a
series of fresh variations of the old theme, that
" literary criticism proves Gen. xiv. to be of very
recent date" (Wellhausen, Op. cit.p. 312), we can
only regard it as additional proof of the hopeless
bankruptcy of their theories. The passage in ques
tion reads as follows —
Noldeke's criticism (of Gen. xiv.) remains unshaken and
unanswerable : that four kings from the Persian Gulf
should, "in the time of Abraham " have made an incur
sion into the Sinaitic Peninsula, (he forgets the history of
Gudea and of the ancient Sargon,) that they should on
this occasion have attacked five kinglets on the Dead Sea
littoral and have carried them off prisoners, and finally
that Abraham should have set out in pursuit of the retreat
ing victors, accompanied by 318 men-servants, and have
forced them to disgorge their prey — all these incidents are
sheer impossibilities which gain nothing in credibility
from the fact that they are placed in a world which had
passed away.2
iDie Composition des Hexateuch's, 2nd ed. (with Appendices) rp.
310 — 312 : Gen. xiv.
2 Wellhausen, Op.cit., p. 311.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 199
At first, we were assured that the names of the
four kings had been invented hap-hazard, and that
Jerusalem could not possibly have been called Salem
before the time of David, since prior to that date its
name had been simply Jebus ; the critics instead of
thankfully accepting the testimony of tradition
which declares that such kings did exist in Abra
ham's time, and that the name Jerusalem was even
then current, had ignominiously to withdraw their
false conclusions in presence of the monuments
proving the kings' names to be correct, and the Tel
el-Amarna tablets shewing that even in the year 1400
B.C., i.e. prior to the time of the Judges, Jerusalem
was known as Urusalim. This last name was prob
ably written Uru-sa-lim in the cuneiform original of
Gen. xiv. (the element Uru being indicated by the
Sumerian ideogram uru = city). It is possible,
therefore, that the scribe who translated the docu
ment into the Canaanite idiom of Jerusalem may —
as he mechanically transliterated the name — have
taken the uru for a meaningless determinative. Or
— and this is equally possible — it may have been the
practice in those days to use the abbreviated form
Shalem in place of Jeru-Shalem. And here I may
remark that the very latest date at which this trans
lation of Gen. xiv. can have been made, must have
been just before the occupation of Canaan by the
Israelites, or, in other words, some time during the
life of Moses, for after that date there were no
writers to be found in Canaan who were familiar
with the Babylonian script and language. And now
that the objections raised in regard to these points

200 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
by the critics of the Pentateuch have been demol
ished, they will doubtless bring forward their old
argument that Abraham is not an historical person
age : they will assure us that monotheism of such an
advanced type was unknown in pre-Mosaic times,
and that Abraham must necessarily be the creation
of a much later period. But even this false as
sumption must utterly collapse in view of the
evidence afforded by the Western Semitic nomen
clature of the very period in which Abraham lived.
These names are absolutely free from the slightest
taint of Fetishism or Totemism. On the contrary,
as I shall prove in detail hereafter, they are trust
worthy land-marks, which enable us to follow the
evolution of the religious history of the Israelites
from Abraham to Moses, and again from Moses to
David. They serve to bring the truth of the An
cient Israelite tradition into an even stronger light
than that shed by other external historical evidence,
scant enough it is true, in so far as the Mosaic
period is concerned, though even this latter demon
strates clearly and emphatically enough the absurd
ity of supposing the compilation of the Priestly
Code to be the work of post-exilic times. I intend
to bring forward conclusive proof of this absurdity
in the eighth and ninth chapters.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 201

CHAPTER VI
JACOB THE ARAMAEAN
Midway between Abraham and Moses stands the
figure of the Patriarch Jacob,1 (described in Deuter
onomy xxvi. 5 simply as the Aramaean), though it is
true that the interval between Abraham and his
grandson Jacob is a good deal shorter than that
which separates Jacob from Moses. As the reader
is aware, those of Abraham's kinsmen who remained
behind in Haran are coupled in Genesis with the
Aramaeans, and later on, we find Isaac, and more
particularly his son Jacob, again associated with
these Aramaean kinsfolk. Whereas the Ammonites
and Moabites (i.e. the later stratum of the races who
inhabited the region east of the Jordan) traced their
descent from Lot, the companion of Abraham, and
a great part of the Arabs (Ishmaelites and Keturites)
from Abraham himself, the genealogical tradition
refers the semi-Arabian Edomites back to Isaac, and
thus makes them out to be, as it were, the brothers
of the Israelites (Esau = Edom, Esau's brother Jacob
= Israel). Jacob, however, as Dillmann well ex
presses it,2 is allied with " a fresh strain from Ara-
1 As to the name Jacob vide supra pp. 95 and 1 10. In the Babylo
nian contract tablets we find in addition to Ya'kubi-ilu, the abbreviated
form Yakubu also.
2 Handbuch der alt testament I. Theologie (1895), p. 80.

202 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
maic Mesopotamia, who with the remnant of the
original Hebrew settlement in Canaan went to make
up the twelve tribes of the people of Israel." Ac
cording to Dillmann, it was Jacob who " made his
home at Padan-Aram (as Haran is called in the nar
rative of the Priestly Code), right in the heart of
his kinsmen, so that, practically, he may be said to
have drawn round him the last remnant of the He
brews who had not yet been merged in the Aramaic
stock, and to have led them into Canaan," and from
thence on to Bethel ; " it is only at the end of all
these wanderings that Genesis places his reunion
with Isaac and his people in the south at Hebron
(Gen. xxxv. 27 — 29)". It is for this reason that Ja
cob, as stated above, is specially described as an
Aramaean, a term which we never find applied to
Abraham. In view of this circumstance, it will not be amiss
to give here a few details concerning the early his
tory ofthe Aramaeans. In regard to their language,
it was undoubtedly, in Jacob's time, merely a dialect
of Arabic. What we now call Aramaic did not
come into existence till a much later date. The
Biblical Aramaic (sometimes wrongly named Chal-
daean) and Syrian (or to be more precise, the lan
guage of the Christians of Mesopotamia) really
belong to the Persian and Christian eras, and even
these idioms are much more nearly related to the
Arabic, in their grammar and vocabulary, than they
are to the Canaanitish (Phoenician and Hebrew).
The earliest Aramaeans mentioned in. the inscrip
tions were a purely nomadic race whose personal

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 2O3
names present characteristics exactly similar to
those found in Arabian nomenclature. It is, there
fore, fairly safe to conclude that at that time (i.e. in
the second millennium B.C., and — to a certain extent
— even down to the palmy days of the Assyrian
Empire) they formed an integral part of the great
Arabian people.
We possess three important sources of informa
tion in regard to the history of the Aramaeans.
First of all, the cuneiform monuments; secondly,
the Biblical tradition ; and thirdly, the earliest Ara
maic inscriptions. These last, however, do not
date back further than the end of the 8th century
B.C., and we are, for the present, concerned with an
earlier period.
From the ancient Assyrian monuments we learn
that as far back as the 14th century B.C., in the time
of the Assyrian king Budi-ilu (Bodi-el), an Aramaic
tribe called the Achlami gave the Assyrians a good
deal of trouble. Salmanasar I. (ca. 1300) made
more than one campaign against the Aramaeans in
Northern Mesopotamia, while Tiglathpileser I. (ca.
1 120 B.C.) makes pointed reference to " the Aramaic
Achlami " as a race who dwelt in the desert along
the banks of the Euphrates from the Shuhite coun
try to a point northwards of Carchemish. These
Achlami would seem, therefore, to have been one
of the principal Aramaean tribes in the time of the
ancient Assyrians. Even under Eri-Aku of Larsa,
a certain Achlami (i.e. the Achlamite), son of Ilu-
ashir, appears in the contract tablets as a witness ;
at that time they had evidently settled farther to

204 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
the south. The name is a pure Arabic one (A'lam) ;
in the Old Testament it is probably preserved in
Achlamah, the name of one of the precious stones
in the High Priest's breast-plate, and apparently also
in the name of the Aramaean city Helam (2 Sam.
x. 16), where the Aramaeans, who were brought out
of Mesopotamia by Hadarezer from the other side
of the Euphrates, were quartered. The question
now arises, from which part of the Mesopotamian
desert or pasture-lands were these early Aramaean
collected together, and at what time did this event
take place?
In answering this latter question, it is of the ut
most importance to remember that in Abraham's
time Mesopotamia was known simply as the region
of Haran, or Aram Naharaim (Aram of the rivers,
cf. Na'arim supra, p. 155), whereas in the time of
Jacob (ca. 1750) it was called Padan Aram. It would
seem, therefore, that according to Biblical tradition,
the immigration of the Aramaeans into Mesopotamia
must have taken place soon after the death of Abra
ham, or at any rate during the period between
Abraham and Jacob. An important clue is afforded
us by the fact that Agu-kak-rimi, one of the Kassite
kings of Babylonia (p. 136), who reigned somewhere
about 1650 B.C., in one of his long inscriptions styles
himself " king of the Kassites and Akkadians (i.e. of
the Babylonian Semites), king of the vast land of
Babylonia, of Ashnunnak (vide supra, p. 168) with its
countless inhabitants, king of Padan and of Alman,
king of the Guti (Goiim in Gen. xiv)." Elsewhere,
we find Arman (between the cities of Tsab-ban i.e.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 205
Opis and Me-Turnat, i.e. the region between the
lower Zab and the river Diyala) and Padin closely
connected with one another,1 just as the cities Tsab-
ban (written Ud-ban) and Gish-ban2 exist from the
earliest antiquity ; there cannot, therefore, be the
slightest doubt that even in the time of Agu-kak-
rimi Padan was another name for Mesopotamia, and
that the name Padan-Aram (i.e. Padan of the Ara
maeans) in the " Priestly Code," which is first em
ployed in connection with Isaac and Jacob, rests on
a genuine ancient tradition handed down from the
time of the Patriarchs.
In regard to the original home of the Aramaeans,
the answer to this question is furnished by a passage
in the Biblical narrative, which, though hitherto
misunderstood, becomes perfectly clear when viewed
in the light of the cuneiform inscriptions of the As
syrian kings.
The prophet Amos, ix. 7, in speaking of Yahveh,
says, " Have not I brought up Israel out of the land
of Egypt and the Philistines from Caphtor (probably
Crete) and the Syrians (i.e. Aramaeans) from Kir ? "
Now, in Isaiah xxii. 6, we are clearly shewn the
direction in which we must look for the unknown
land of Kir.s
We find there, as a parallel to the sentence, " And
Elam bare the quiver, with chariots of men and
1 Cf. W. A. I. v. 12, No. 6, Shaggan (?) of the goddess Bulala, Syn
onym W. A. I. ii. 60, No. 1, line 26, Pan-ki, i.e. Gishbanand "Shaggan
(?), which lies before mount Arman (and therefore in the plain ") = Padin.
2 The "City of the Bow," which Hilprecht identifies with Haran.
3 With a strong £-sound (i.e. like the Hebrew kir = wall).

206 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
horsemen," the supplementary clause, " and Kir un
covered the shield." From this it follows that the
birthplace of the Aramaeans must have been in close
proximity to Elam. And, as a matter of fact, the
Assyrian inscriptions of the 8th and 7th centuries
B.C. mention a whole host of nomadic Aramaean
tribes who inhabited the narrow strip of desert be
tween the Tigris and the Elamite Highlands, and
who extended from the Persian Gulf in the south
east to Bagdad in the north-west — and even beyond
as far as Mesopotamia. These Aramaeans would
seem to have offered the same resistance to Baby
lonian civilization as was always displayed by the
Beduin Arab tribes in Palestine.
The more important of these Aramaean tribes
seem to have been the Itu'a, Rubu'u, Charilu, Lab-
dudu and Chamranu, on the north-west, and Ru'ua,1
Li'itau, Damunu, Chindaru, Ubulu, Pukudu2 and
Gambulu3 on the east. Other Aramaean tribes
were the Luchu'atu, Rabi-ilu, Nabatu,4 Rummulutu
(cf. Arab, ramal = sand), Malichu, Kibri, Rapiku
(pronounced with a strong £-sound), etc.; one of their
districts is also named Birtu (Veste) sha saragiti,
which Glaser rightly connects with the Biblical
1 According to Glaser, the Re'u mentioned in Genesis xi. 19.
2 The Pek6d referred to in Ezekiel xxiii. 23.
3 The Arabian Junbula in the morasses of the deltas of the Tigris and
Euphrates — cf. Fr. Delitzsch's exhaustive comparison in Wo lag das
Parodies ? pp. 238 — 241.
* The forefathers of the Nabataean tribes who afterward migrated into
North West Arabia ; the Biblical Nebayoth, on the other hand, are
identical with the Nabayati of the cuneiform inscriptions, cf. GLASER,
Skizze, II. pp. 12 et. seq., 248 and 274.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 207
Serug (Gen. xi. 21). These names are manifestly of
the same type as the personal names of the Kham
murabi period, modified, to a certain extent, by
later changes in pronunciation. Thus Yatu'a is
practically identical with the Arabic Yathu'u ; 1 Kibri
is allied with Yakbar-ilu (p. m), Nabatu with Nabti
(p. 142), Rabi-ilu with Ilu-Rabbi (p. 81), Luchu'atu
with the South Arabian Luhai-'Atht2 and Charilu is
probably another form of Khali-ilu (p. 84). It seems
quite possible, therefore, that these Babylonian
Aramaeans of the Elamite frontier, were descendants
of the Arabs who founded the Khammurabi dynasty,
or at any rate of that section of them who did not
become naturalized Babylonians. Even if there be a
difficulty about adopting this conclusion, it is nec
essary to admit that they must have been descend
ants of near relatives of theirs. It would seem, then,
that from the very earliest times onwards the desert
region to the east of the lower Tigris, and also, more
particularly, that part of South Babylonia which
lay between Shatt-el-Hai and the Tigris, was the
resort of a race of Semitic nomads, who must have
originally come from Arabia. The name Su-gir or
Gir-su which appears even in the earliest Sumerian
inscriptions as the title of the region east of Shatt-
el-Hai is shewn by these alternative forms — Gir-su
1 Mentioned on p. 83. Cf. -yathu'a in Abf-yathu'a, pronounced
Abishu'a in Ancient Babylonian and Ancient Hebrew, while on the other
hand we find Abi-yati'u as the name of the chief of the Arabian tribe of
Kedar in the time of Assurbanipal (700 B.C.).
* Afterwards Luhai'at, just as RabM-Atht later on became Rabi'at,
cf. also p. 79 supra, and [Beer] lahairoi in Gen. xvi. 14.

208 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
and Su-gir — to be clearly a compound of two — at
one time independent — words, one of which (Su)
has long been known as the name of the nomads who
dwelt on the lower Tigris and in Mesopotamia.1
Extended forms of this name Su are found in Suti 2
and Su-bar.3 The first of these words Suti had, as
we learn from the Tel el-Amarna texts, come to be
used as a general term for the Beduin by the mid
dle of the second millennium B.C. In the letters
written from Palestine, for instance, the Syrian
Beduin are sometimes called Sagas, sometimes Suti.
Both words were borrowed from the Ancient Egyp
tians, the original form of the first being Sha'asu, of
the second Sute (written Sutet). The other word,
Subar, therefore, was used more particularly of
Aramaean Mesopotamia,4 the name of the country
of Syria being probably derived from a later form
Suri. In view of the facts recorded above, we need
scarcely hesitate to assert that the other element of
the word Sugir or Girsu, viz. Gir, must be the orig
inal form of the Biblical Kir.
The most important point established by an exam
ination of these facts is, that the migration of the
Aramaean nomads into Mesopotamia from their
original home in Kir (or Gir), between Elam and
Babylonia, must have taken place6 in the first half
'The Assyro-Eabylonian lists translate Sugir both by "Subartu"
and by " Elamtu ; " cf. Delitzsch, Paradies, p. 234.
2 Cf. Guti from Gu, and Goiim in Gen. xiv. a bar = desert.
* Cf. Subartu, the name of a country, ShubarA, the adjective formed
from it.
6 It is at this time, too, (viz. at the beginning of the so-called " La'er

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 209
of the second millennium B.C., about 100 years before
Agukakrimi, or, in other words, at the very period
when, according to the Biblical tradition, the Ara
maeans (Jacob and Laban) entered Mesopotamia.
In conclusion, I must not forget to point out that
the journey of Abraham and his family from Ur
Kashdim (i.e. Ur of the Chaldees), in South Baby
lonia, to Haran in Mesopotamia, must be regarded
as a kind of prototype of that greater migration of
the Aramaic nomads which afterwards ensued from
the land of Kir into Mesopotamia. Though preced
ing this latter in point of time, it followed a parallel
route; for the road from Ur to Haran lies along the
banks of the Euphrates, while that from the land of
Kir to Mesopotamia, on the other hand, rather fol
lows the course of the Tigris. Ur was the only
Babylonian city of any importance on the western
bank of the Euphrates. The narrow strip of country
between the Euphrates and the Arabian desert,
from Borsippa in the north to the Persian Gulf in
the south, arid the region between the mouths of the
Empire,") that we find the name Sute applied by the Egyptians to the
Asiatic Beduin (and then to Asiatics generally), a use of the name which
presupposes an advance on the part of the Sute from the lower Tigris
into Mesopotamia. Under the Ancient Empire the word Sute (or Sethet)
possessed quite a different meaning (cf. Max Miiller, Asien und Europa) ¦
the Egyptian Sute = Bedflin, Asiatics, is, as Jensen points out, a Babylo
nian loan-word. In the time of the Middle Empire (vide supra, p. 50)
sett, in spite of its application to the BedtHn of Palestine, would seem
nevertheless to have been a common Egyptian word for " archers " (cf.
Max Miiller) ; or is it possible that the Egyptians may have first heard
of tbe Suti at that date (possibly through the Babylontans who had
dealings with Palestine in the time of the later king* of Ur, cf. supra,
pp. 37 ct scq.)1 14

2IO THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
Tigris and Euphrates at the lower extremity of
Southern Babylonia, was known to the Babylonians
as the land of Kaldu. This name, Kaldu, was origi
nally Kashdu, then (as early as the second millenni
um B.c)Kardu, from which the kings of the Kassite
dynasty obtained the designation Karduniash, and
finally (certainly from the ninth century B.C. on
wards) Kaldu (whence the Greek XaXSaioo = Chal-
daeans). To this original form Kashdu we owe the
Hebrew Kashdim, which is preserved in three dis
tinct traditions, viz. in Urkasdim,1 then in the syn
onymous Ar-pa-keshad (Arphaxad),2 and finally in
the name Chesed, one of the tribes descended from
Nahor, the brother of Abraham, and mentioned in
the genealogical table in Gen. xxii. 22. This at once
furnishes us with fresh proof of the fact, that the
Hebrew tradition which designates Ur-Kasdim as
the original home of Abraham, dates from the begin
ning of the second millennium B.C., i.e. from the time
of the Khammurabi dynasty and of Abraham him
self ; for a few centuries later, we find the name
Kashdu replaced by Kardu, and at the time of the
Captivity, Kaldu had long been the only term in
general use. The boundaries of the land of Kashdu
have already been given; on the south-east they
were conterminous with those of the Aramaean
tribes who dwelt in the land of Kir. For, in the As-
1 Spelt with the letter "Sin," which was, however, originally pro
nounced " sh."
2 See my note on The Ethnological Table of Genesis x. in the Academy
of Oct. 17, 1896. Ar- (originally Or-?) corresponds to Ur-; as to
the fa between Ar and Kcshad, see what is said in Chapter ix. infra.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 211
Syrian inscriptions of the eighth century B.C., the
city of Amlilatu is given as the place of Bit Sha'alli,
a minor Chaldaean state, while the same place (writ
ten as Amlatu) is described as the capital of the Ara
maean tribe of the Damunu ; similarly Sapiya or
Shapia the capital of the Chaldaean state Bit-Amuk-
kan, and Shapi-Bel, the capital of the Gambulu, one of
the southernmost Aramaean tribes, are probably des
ignations of the same place. And this must proba
bly have been the case even as far back as the time of
Khammurabi ; to the east of Ur the pastoral districts
of Kashdu must have been directly conterminous
with the south-western pastoral area of the so-called
Aramaean nomads of Kir. And here again, it is nec
essary to lay special emphasis on the fact that these
latter did not develop in Mesopotamia into what are
historically known as Aramaeans, until later on, and
at this time were, so far as language went, still pure
Arabs, just as Abraham's people in the neighbour
hood of Ur must have been at first. Moreover, the
direct geographical connection is clearly established
between Arabia and the ancient Kashdu territory —
which latter, in its turn, was closely related with the
ancient Aramaean home-land, Kir — through the so-
called " country of the sea," ' which was regarded by
the Assyrians as part of Kaldu. This " country of
the sea " lay to the south-east of Ur, somewhat to
the westward of the modern Basra, and extended
apparently as far south as Bahrein.
The subsequent history of the Aramaeans, viz.
their advance across the Euphrates into Syria
' Afterwards Bit-Yakin, the home of the famous Merodach-baladan.

212 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
(Damascus), belongs to the time of David, and is
therefore outside the scope of our present inquiry.
It was only from this later period onwards that their
language began to diverge more and more from the
Arabic mother-tongue. In the time of Tiglathpile-
ser III. (eighth century B.C.), we find them advanc
ing northwards as far as Mar'ash on the Syro-
Cilician frontier ; there, as the Zinjerli inscriptions
discovered by F. de Luschan prove, Aramaic
contended for the upper-hand with the Canaanitish
language. And about 600 B.C., at Teima in North
Arabia, where Euting discovered Aramaic inscrip
tions on monuments of a pure Assyrian type, we find
the Aramaic idiom in possession of nearly all the
characteristics by which the later Aramaic is dis
tinguished.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 213

CHAPTER VII
PALESTINE IN THE TEL EL-AMARNA PERIOD
The Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were
merely nomadic aliens in the land of Canaan, their
stay there being but a passing visit. Their descend
ants migrated into the land of Goshen in the eastern
portion of the Nile delta, where they dwelt four
hundred years, until they were led thence by Moses,
to wander for forty years through the Sinaitic penin
sula and Moab ; at length, in the time of Joshua, they
reached and settled in Palestine, especially in the
portion of it west of the Jordan, which was hence
forward to be their permanent home. In regard to
the long period during which the Israelites so
journed in Egypt, tradition seems to be entirely si
lent ; only at the beginning and the end of this period
does the book of Exodus vouchsafe us any infor
mation. We have been amply compensated for the
absence of tradition, however, by the discovery of
cuneiform records of the correspondence between a
number of Egyptian viceroys of Palestine and Syria
and the Pharaohs Amenothes III. and IV. (ca. 1400
B.C.). For the purposes of our investigations, it is of
the utmost importance that we should learn some
thing of the history of the land promised to the
people of Israel, during the time covered by their

214 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
stay in Goshen ; and from these contemporary docu
ments, which are of the highest authenticity, we are
able to get a glimpse at the condition of Palestine
before Joshua led his people across the Jordan.
In the present chapter we must carry our investi
gations into the early history of Palestine, which has
been already dealt with in Chapter II., a step farther.
In that chapter we explained how the Babylonian
script and language came to be used as late as 1400
B.C. in correspondence with the Pharaohs, by the
people of a country which, though nominally Egyp
tian, really belonged to the Canaanite branch of the
Western Semites (cf. supra p. 45). Frequent refer
ence has already been made in the present volume
to the Tel el-Amarna texts and the Tel el-Amarna
period (as the epoch in question is now generally
termed), the last occasion being in Chapter V., when
we discussed Melchizedek and the office of Priest-
king (vide supra pp. 154 et seq). In this seventh
chapter no attempt will be made to give an exhaus
tive description either of the geography of Palestine
at that time or of the social condition of its people
as presented in the texts in question.* Those who
take a special interest in these matters can obtain
full information from various books and treatises on
the subject, and especially from Winckler's ' excellent
1 Schrader, Keilinschr. Bibl. vol. v. (Eng. Ed. London, 1897) ; cf.
also the instructive papers by H. Zimmern, Palastina um das Jahr
1400 nach neuen Quellen, Zeitschrift des Deutschen Pal.-Vereins, vol.
xiii. (1891) pp. 133—147, and A. J. Delattre, Le pays de Chanaan,
province de I ancien empire Egyptien, Paris, 1896 (extracted from the
Revue des questions historiques, July), 93 pp. 8vo.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 21 5
translation (accompanied by a reproduction of the
transcribed text), which is now obtainable in both
German and English. For our present purpose, our
concern will be with answers to the following ques
tions: (i) Was the language spoken in Palestine at
that period, the idiom most nearly allied to the
Hebrew of the Old Testament, viz. the Phoenicio-
Canaanite ? (2) What kind of personal names were
borne by the native viceroys and princes who were
tributary to the Egyptians? and (3) What was the
nature of their religious belief?
In regard to the first of these questions, the Ca-
naanisms which occur with comparative frequency
in the Tel el-Amarna letters written from Syria and
Palestine prove 1 conclusively that in 1400 B.C. Ca
naanite was a language almost identical with He
brew. Owing to the fact that the vowels are given
in the cuneiform script, we learn, among other
things, that even at that time the pronoun " I " was
pronounced anoki, with the characteristic Hebrew
softening of the long a into 6 (cf. Babyl. anaku, Hebr.
anSki), for it was written a-nu-ki, which, since the
cuneiform script only possesses a single symbol for
both nu and no, can, of course, be read only as anoki.
Other interesting Canaanisms, which frequently ap
pear in the form of glosses inserted side by side
with the Babylonian words, are abitu = I hearken
(Hebr. abiti, cf. ushirti = I send), obelbelet (vide supra,
p. 155) = Tribute-bearer, shati = Field (Hebr. sadeh,
- Proof of this fact is also afforded by the Phoenician inscriptions (for
the most part of later date), and by the Canaanite loan-words found in
Egyptian texts of the so-called Later Empire.

2l6 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
written with the letter " Sin "), khapara and aparu
= Dust (Hebr. 'aphar), yidi = he knows, and a num
ber of other forms beginning with the imperfect
prefix yi (cf. p. 60 supra), Shamima =Heaven (Hebr.
shamayim), rushunu = our head (Hebr. roshenu), tsa-
duk = he is righteous, and many others. These
forms appearing, as they do, at the end of the fif
teenth century B.C., have a most important bearing
on the history of the Hebrew language — indeed, it
would be more correct to say on the history of the
Phoenicio- Canaanite language. For it becomes
clearer every day that the Hebrews of the patri
archal period, and even down to the time of Moses
and Joshua, did not use the Canaanite speech — a
fact which may be readily proved by a careful ex
amination of their personal names ; x it was not until
after the conquest of the region west of the Jordan
that they adopted the language of the subjugated
Canaanites. This fact is brought out still more
clearly by certain characteristic divergences from
the ancient Arabic and Hebrew personal names,
observable in the early Canaanite nomenclature of
the Tel el-Amarna texts, which we will now pro
ceed to briefly examine.
Prior to the discovery of the Tel el-Amarna tab
lets, we already possessed valuable information on
this point, obtained from cuneiform texts of the
ninth to the seventh centuries B.C., viz. from the in
scriptions of the Assyrian kings. These inscriptions
are of special importance owing to the fact that
they give the vowels, whereas the Phoenician in-
1 Cf. also what has been said above on pp. 119 et seq.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 217
scriptions, which belong, for the most part, to a
later period, give the consonants only. We had
already obtained from the Assyrian inscriptions a
knowledge of such names as Matan-Ba'al, Abi-Ba'al,
Adoni-Ba'al ( = my Lord is Baal), Azi-Ba'al, Budi-
Ba'al (otherwise Budi-el) Ba'al-khanunu (cf. Cartha
ginian Hanni-Ba'al, Hannibal) — these all come from
Arvad in North Phoenicia — also Abi-milki and
Akhi-milki (Arvad, Tyre and southward as far as
Ashdod), 'Abdi-milkut (Sidon), Akhi-ram (Yakhir,
in Northern Mesopotamia, cf. Hiram of Tyre, in the
time of Solomon), Uru-milki (Gebal), Milkiuri (Mel-
chior), Milki-ashapa (Hebr. -asaph), 'Ammi -Ba'al,
Sapati-Ba'al (cf. Hebr. shaphat = to judge), etc., etc.
Apart from the prevalence of the divine name Ba'al,
these names contain elements which are either en
tirely foreign to the earliest Hebrew and Arabic
nomenclature, such as matan (originally mattan =
gift?) adoni (= my lord), khanun (= beloved), or
which, as in the case of milk — king (Hebr. melek,
Arab, malik), occur but rarely.
An almost exactly similar view of Canaanite names
is furnished us by the Tel el-Amarna letters, the
only difference being that in these latter we have
the great advantage of being carried back to a
period as early as 1400 B.C., that is, to a time when
the Hebrews were still settled in Egypt. In these
letters we come upon such names as Adon (written
Aduna, cf. Adoni-Ba'al supra), Milkuru (cf. Milki
uri), Ammu-nira,1 Abd-milki (or-milkuti ?), Abi-milki,
1 Variant, Khamu-niri, cf. Hebr. Abt-ner and Abner = my father is
light, in the time of David.

218 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
Rib-Addi (variants, Rib-Khaddi and Rabi-Addi), in
which the divine name, usually transcribed as Addi,
is represented by the ideogram of the Babylonian
storm-god (Ramman or Bel), as also in the names
Addu-mikhir, Pu-Addi, Mut-Addi, Shipti-Addu,
Yapakhi-Addu and Yapa-Addu, Natan-Addu (or
Matan-Addi ?), Shamu-Addu and Shum-Addi, etc.
The name 'Abd-Ashirti (variants, 'Abd-Ashrati and
'Abd-Ashtarti), is also of special interest to the stu
dent of religious history, since it suggests that the
deity Asherah, mentioned in the Old Testament,
must even at that time have been worshipped in
Coele-Syria (cf. p. 156); similarly we find a name, I-
takkama1 (variants, Ai-daggama and I-tagama),
which presents some analogy with those 3 mentioned
on pp. 115 et seq.; in addition, we have Dagan-
takala = Dagon helps, and finally Anati (cf. Hebr.
'Anath, Judges iii. 31), which contains the name of
the Canaanite goddess 'Anat. The only thing which
surprises us is that the name of Ba'al, the chief of
the Canaanite gods, does not enter into a single one
of these names. Fortunately, however, we learn
from the Egyptian records of the Later Empire,3
that the principal Canaanite gods of that period

1 Cf. also the place-name, Ya-nuamma (Egypt. I-nu'am), with Abi-
no'am, Judges v. 12, and the personal name, Ya-bi'iri (= Yah is my por
tion ?).
2 The Phoenician form was probably Ai-da'ama = Ai supports or sus
tains, cf. the name Da'am-melek, which appears in a Phoenician inscrip
tion. 3 i.e. in the ]8lh or 19th dynasty, and therefore to a certain extent
contemporary.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 219
were Ba'al,1 Resheph,2 'An at and Astarte.3 Now,
when we come to reflect that of the above-men
tioned names, compounded with the ideographic
element Addu (which may also be read either as
Ramman or Bel), there is only one, viz. Rib-Addi,
in which it is certain that Addu is the correct
reading,4 and that the names Addu-mikhir and
Ba'al -maher, Shamu-Addu and Sham -Ba'al, are
doubtless identical, there seems ample ground for
assuming that in many of the Canaanitish names,
Addu is simply an ideogram for Ba'al, this latter
name being etymologically equivalent to the Baby
lonian Bel. In that case we obtain the following
additional equations : Shipti-Addu = Sapati-Baal,
Addu-dayan = Baal-shaphat, Mut-Addi = Ish-Ba'al
and Natan-Addu = Mattan-Ba'al. Hadad5 was a
special name applied to the god Ba'al, the use of
which was, in primitive times, evidently confined to
North Phoenicia, e.g. at Gebal, the birth-place of
Rib-Addi ; in the time of Assur-natsirpal (9th cent.
B.C.), we find this appellation on the Upper Tigris, in
the name Giri-Dadi (cf. Phoenic. Ger-Ashtoreth,
Ger-melek, etc.), and about the same time, or even
earlier, among the Aramaeans of Damascus ; in the
reign of Tiglathpileser, too, (8th cent. B.C.) Hadad
was the principal god of Sam'al in the extreme north,
1 Also in personal names, e.g. Ba'al-Ram, Sham- Ba'al, Ba'al-maher.
2 The Lightning and Storm god, a manifestation form of Ba'al.
3Cf. W. Max Muller, Asien und Europa, pp. 315 — 319.
'That in this name it really is equivalent to Addi is shown by the
variants, Ri-ib-Kha-ad-di, Ri-ib-Ad-da, Ri-ib-Ad-di, Ri-ib-Id-di.
s In the cuneiform texts it appears as Khaddi, Addu and Dadda.

220 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
where the population was a mixed Canaanite and
Aramaean one. On the whole, therefore, the name
would seem to have been first introduced by the
Aramaeans ; it is never found among genuine Phoe
nician names, and does not occur even in Egyptian
inscriptions of the later Empire. In structure, it is
undoubtedly akin to the South Arabian Wadd (p.
79), so that Hadad is probably a later form of H6-
dad. An examination of the Canaanite personal names,
preserved in the Tel el-Amarna texts, leads us,
therefore, to the conclusion that even as far back as
1500 B.C. the personal names of the inhabitants of
Palestine presented essentially the same character
istics of form and meaning as are to be found in
Phoenician names of a later period. It was only in
Southern Palestine that Arabian names still pre
vailed, such as Yapakhi (of Gezer) = Yapa'i (cf.
Yapi'u. p. 83), Zimrida (of Lachish) = Zimri-yada'
(p. 83, note 2), Yabni-ilu (also of Lachish), Yapti'-
Addu, with the, here, somewhat curious variant,
Yapti-Khada,1 and a few others. An almost precise
ly similar state of things is to be found among the
names of the kings of Southern Canaan in the book
1 Cf. the names Hadad and Be-Dad (a formation similar to Bi-'Ash-
tar), among the ancient Edomites (Gen. xxxvi. 35) ; that such names are
due to Aramaean influence is rendered probable by the Aramaean origin
of many of these ancient Edomite princes mentioned in Genesis xxxvi.,
e.g. Bela' ( = Bil'am of Pethor on the Euphrates, cf. p. 152) and Sha'ul
of Rehoboth of the River (i.e. ofthe Euphrates). Dinhabah, too, (LXX.
AeiWjSa) the name of Bela's city, reminds us of Syria (Dunib in the land
of Naharaim, which was the capital of an extensive region); in that case
Dinhabah and Pethor would be early variants like Bela' and Bil'am.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 221
of Joshua, where (Josh. x. 3) we also meet with
a number of pure Arabic names.1 Another very in
teresting fact is that the Egyptian plenipotentiary
in Palestine and Syria, who must have been a kind
of governor, bears the pure Arabian name of Yan-
khamu ( = Yan'am). Later on, in the time of the
kings of Israel, a totally different state of things ob
tained in South-West Palestine. By that time the
Canaanite element had entirely displaced the Ara
bian, a fact which is proved by the names of the
princes of Ashdod, Gaza and Ashkelon.2 From this
we can see how accurate and trustworthy the tradi
tion of the book of Joshua really is, and how little
foundation there is for the distrust with which
modern critics are pleased to regard it.
As to the third question propounded on p. 215, in
reference to the religious belief which obtained in
Palestine at this period, our survey of the personal
names has already supplied an answer. Astarte
and Ba'al3 hold the first place, the latter frequently
appearing under his characteristic names, Adon =
Lord, and Milk or Melek (cf. later Melk-kart) = King,
the former under the name Asherah, so familiar to
1 E.g. Hoham of Hebron, Pir'am of J irmuth, Japhi' a of Lachish, and
Debir of Eglon ; cf. also Horam of Gezer, LXX. AiAh/x. The final m in
this name being an instance of Arabic mimation ; Hoham is identical with
the Minaean name Hauhum (beginning with the guttural aspirate), and
Pir'am with Pir'u, which was the name of an Arabian king under Sargon.
A more correct vocalization is that in Milkom, the name of the god of
'Ammon. 2 Mitinti, Akhi-milki, Khanunu, Tsil-Bel = Tsel-Pa'nl.
3 In the majority of these personal names, as already indicated, the
ideogram Ramman-Bel, or Addu, can only be intended for Ba'al.

222 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
readers of the Old Testament. The goddess 'Anat
also occurs, and there are occasional traces of a
god named Ai' or Ya, who was apparently an Ara
bian importation, and lastly of a god Yara or Ari,1
who is probably identical with Ari, in the O. T.
Ariel. When we compare this early Canaanite religion
with that of the other Western Semites, as present
ed to us in the personal names of the Arabs of the
Khammurabi dynasty and in South Arabian nomen
clature, we are at once struck by the wide and essen
tial difference between them. For though the com
position of their personal names is evidently governed
by the Western Semitic principles of formation2 the
religion of the Canaanites appears to be thoroughly
impregnated by Babylonian ideas, and indeed to a
far greater extent than we find to be the case with
the religion of the South Arabian peoples. There,
as we have seen, the element 'Astar enters into com
paratively few personal names, whereas here names
compounded with Ba'al (= Babyl. Belu) and Astarte
are the rule. In Phoenician names (including those
of later times), even El is almost entirely displaced
by Ba'al and Adon, two divine appellations which
never occur in the names of the other Western
Semitic races. An explanation of this, as also of the
parallel fact, viz. the persistent use of the Babylonian
script and language in Palestine until shortly before
the time of Joshua, has already been supplied on p.
45 (and, indeed, in the whole of the second chapter),
1 In Sitriyara and Yishiara, written Zi-it-ri-ya-ra and Yi-ish-ia-ri.
2Cf. ' A mmu-mxa. Ammi-Ha'aX AH-n\\\V\, Abi-~Bv.'a\, etc.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 223
where the fact that the land of Martu was for cen
turies politically dependent on Babylon is duly
emphasized. If, however, we compare the Hebrew personal
names with the Canaanite, the result is exceedingly
interesting. Down to the time of Joshua, these
appellations present the same features as the Ara
bian nomenclature of the Khammurabi dynasty and
of the South Arabian inscriptions. Then frorn
Moses and Joshua onwards (i.e. down to the time of
the Judges), names compounded with Yah came
into vogue, though others containing elements, such
as Ba'al and Adonl, made their way in along with
them. Lastly, from the beginning cf the monarch
ical period onwards, names formed with Yah and
Yeho (the latter a direct abbreviation from Yahveh),
began to displace almost all other forms, and the
elements Yeho or Yahu took the place of Ba'al,
even in cases where the predicate still remained
Canaanitish, e.g. Adoni-jah, in place of Adoni-Ba'al,
Jeho-shaphat in place of Ba'al-shaphat, etc. In short,
these names faithfully reproduce every stage of that
traditional religious development of Israel which
has received such severe handling from Wellhausen
and his school. First, in regard to the religion of
the Patriarchal Period, the divine name is El, em
ployed even at that date to the exclusion of other
gods, which only very gradually made their way in
from Babylon ; it appears also in another name for
God at the time, El-shaddai, in South Palestine El-
'Elyon : then we have the reform introduced by
Moses in connection with the ancient divine appel-

224 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
lation Ai or Yah 1 ; the original meaning of this
name had long been lost sight of, but by transform
ing it into Yahveh ( = He Who exists, vide supra,
pp. ioo et seq. and 114), it is invested, in the account
given by Moses, with a new significance ; next came
the stormy era of the struggle between the cult of
Yahveh and the Canaanite cult of Ba'al, a struggle
which would probably have terminated with a com
promise had it not been for the intervention of
Samuel and the other prophets, who were not only
enabled to preserve the worship of Yahveh from
contamination, but re-instated it also on such a per
manent basis, that it successfully withstood fre
quently renewed efforts of the kings of Israel to
effect a compromise.
Before proceeding to a more detailed examination
of the time of Moses and the personal names that
occur in it, I should like to point out that there is
also another aspect in which the fundamental bear
ing of the Tel el-Amarna tablets on Old Testa
ment Tradition may be profitably considered. This
correspondence between Pharaoh and the governors
of the cities of Palestine, Phoenicia, and Syria, affords
indirect confirmation of a fact already established
by other evidence (cf. p. 125), viz., that at that epoch
(ca. 1430 — 1400 B.C.) the Israelites were still living
in Egypt, in the land of Goshen.
Before going farther, moreover, I wish to correct,
as briefly as possible, a misconception which exists

1 Probably = Babylonian ai = " Heaven," but used in the masculine,
as a protest against the Babylonian feminine form, Ai.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 225
not only in regard to the area included by the geo
graphical term " the land of Goshen," but also in
regard to the kind of life which the Israelites led
there, and the degree of civilization to which they
had attained. In the first place, the word " Gosh
en," 1 in the Hebrew tradition, includes not merely
— as is generally supposed — the Egyptian Goshen
proper, but also, as is clearly indicated in Joshua x.
and xi., a part of the contiguous country of Edom
as far as Southern Judah; cf. Joshua x. 41, "And
Joshua smote them from Kadesh-Barne'a even unto
Gaza, all the country of Goshen (thus the LXX. the
Hebrew reading is, " and all the country of Gosh
en"), even unto Gibeon;" and xi. 16, "so Joshua
took all that land, the hill country, and all the south,
and all the land of the Goshen,2 the lowland, and the
Arabah (desert) and the hill country of Israel and
the lowland of the same." In a third passage (Jos.
xv. 51), Goshen occurs as the name of a city, with
eleven others, situate in the extreme south of the
hill country of Judea, somewhere to the west of
Maon (Tel Ma'in), and therefore probably at a
point in the extreme north of that part of Palestine
known as Goshen. In every one of the three pas
sages quoted from Joshua, the LXX. reading is
Gosom (in place of " Gesem in Arabia," the reading
in Exodus). Now, at the time of the sojourn of the
Israelites in Egypt, the southernmost part of Pales
tine was still in the undisputed possession of Pha-
1 LXX. " Gesem in Arabia," i.e. the Egyptian province of Phakus, in
the east of the Nile delta, properly Pa-kesem, abbreviated to Kesem.
2 Cf. Egyptian Pa-Kesem, also with the article.

226 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
raoh, whereas throughout the rest of Palestine,
from Hebron and Gaza as far as Syria, the Egyp
tian supremacy had, at any rate by the year 1400
B.C., fallen entirely into abeyance. It is instructive
to note, therefore, that as the Israelite population
gradually expanded and split up into separate tribes,
the area allotted to it was none other than the Edom-
ite region conterminous with the Egyptian Goshen,
a district which still formed part of the Egyptian
territory. Here, as we shall see later on, settled
the tribe of Asser (Heb. Asher), which was the first
to separate from its brethren, viz. in 1350 B.C., in the
time of Seti, father of Ramses II., and migrated1 to
its subsequent home northward of Mt. Carmel in
the South Phoenician hinterland, an example which
was probably followed by some of the other tribes
as well. It is extremely probable, therefore, in view
of the intimate relations between Egypt and Pales
tine, that the Israelites in the land of Goshen main
tained continual intercourse and uninterrupted con
tact with the latter country, throughout the whole
430 )'ears of their stay in Egypt ; the remembrance
of the fact that their forefathers had once dwelt in
the land of Canaan must have been carefully treas
ured up in the hearts of the people, and the rapid
ity with which, after the time of Joshua, they
exchanged their Arabic idiom for the kindred lan
guage of Canaan, proves that their dealings with
1 It was W. Max Muller, in his Asien und Europa, p. 236, who
established the interesting fact that the tribe of Asser settled in West
ern Galilee as early as the time of Seti and of his son Ramses II., thus
setting an example to the other tribes.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 227
Palestine had prepared the way for such a transi
tion. In the second place, it is quite incorrect to assume
that the Israelites were exclusively occupied in pas
toral pursuits during their stay in Egypt. Nowhere
could they have enjoyed greater facilities for ac
quiring the arts of husbandry and gardening than
in the land of Goshen. And that they actually did
combine farming with the keeping of sheep (Gen.
xlvi. 34), is perfectly clear from the testimony of the
Israelite tradition itself, for in Deut. xi. 10, Moses
says to the people, " The land whither thou goest in
to possess it, is not as the land of Egypt, from whence
ye came out, where thou sowedst thy seed and
wateredst it with thy foot1 as a garden of herbs"
(sc. but one which enjoys an adequate rainfall). This
is corroborated by a passage in Exodus, i. 13, where
we read, " And the Egyptians made the children of
Israel to serve with rigour : and they made their
lives bitter with hard service, in mortar and in brick
and in all manner of service in the field." One of
the pet theories of the modern critics of the Pen
tateuch — one of their accepted dogmas, in fact — is
that the Israelites led a rude, uncivilized, nomadic
existence in the land of Goshen, shut off from all in
tercourse with the outer world ; some of these critics
are willing, it is true, to admit that we have only the
evidence of the Jehovistic narrative to prove that
they lived thus, and that the Elohistic account rep-
1 By means of water-wheels worked by the foot, such as are still used
in modern Egypt.

228 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
resents them as intermingling with the Egyptians,
and not as a mere pastoral people. The small resid
uum of fact underlying this theory would seem to
be that in the time of the severest Oppression under
Ramses II.,1 a certain amount of segregation may
have accompanied the forced labour exacted from
the people of Israel : it is scarcely possible, however,
that in the preceding centuries this can have been
even temporarily the case.
And now to return to the Tel el-Amarna texts.
Among all the numerous references to places in
Palestine which occur in the letters of Rib-Addi of
Gebal (Byblos), Ammu-nira of Be'erdt or Biruna
(Beirut), Zimrida2of Sidon, Abi-milki of Tyre, Pidia
of Ashkelon, 'Abd-khiba of Jerusalem, Zimrida of
Lachish, etc. etc., we naturally expect to come upon
some allusion to the Hebrews or to names which are
afterwards associated with their history in the time
of the Judges. The correspondence abounds in
complaints of rebellion and sedition, and especially
of the frequently recurring inroads of the Beduin
tribes, who in Syria and Northern Palestine were
known as Suti (p. 211, note) and Sagas (p. 210),
while in the letters from Jerusalem, on the other
hand, they are described as Khabiri. Nowhere do
we find a single reference to the people of Israel, or
to any of the individual tribes of which it consisted.
1 It is this monarch who is referred to in Gen. xlvii. ii, where Goshen
is called "the land of Ramses."
2 A name identical with that of Zimrida of Lachish, and one denoting
the bearer to be a native of South Palestine. The two persons are, how
ever, quite distinct.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 229
It is true that some scholars contend that one of
the races just mentioned, the Khabiri, who had at
that time overrun nearly the whole of Southern
Palestine, were really and actually identical with
the Hebrews, even in name. I have already quoted
a passage from one of the letters from Jerusalem (p.
155), in which reference is made to the Khabiri:
from other passages it would appear that a certain
Milki-el and the sons of Labaya had allied them
selves with the Khabiri, who were at that time the
foes most dreaded by the kings of Jerusalem. They
had attacked one town after another in the land of
Shiri,1 and the towns of Gimti-Kirmil2 and Rub'uti,3
had occupied the country as far as Kilti,4 Gimti,3
Ayaluna (Ajalon) and Gazri,6and had even — it would
seem from letter, Berl. 199 — laid siege to the city of
Jerusalem itself. Abd-Khiba of Jerusalem alone re
mained loyal to Pharaoh to the. last; again and
again he makes urgent application to the Egyptian
government for reinforcements. " If troops can be
sent before the end of the year then the territory
of my lord the king may yet be retained ; but if no
troops arrive it will assuredly be lost ; " it is thus
that he concludes one of his letters, and similar de
spairing appeals occur elsewhere.
According to Winckler, Zimmern and others,
1 i.e. according to Zimmern, Mount Sei'r, i.e. Edom.
2Gath-Carmel, now Kurmul, south of Hebron.
3 i.e. Kirjath-Arba, or Hebron.
' Ke'ila, now Kila, to the north-west of Hebron.
6 The Philistine Gath.
• Gezer, now Tell Jezer, south of Ramleh.

230 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
these Khabiri are identical with the Hebrews ("I-bri),
since the Canaanite 'Ayin, with which guttural the
word 'Ibri commences, is elsewhere in the texts rep
resented by the cuneiform kh, and there are analo
gous instances of the abbreviation of an earlier form,
like 'Abiri, into a later form, such as 'Ibri (cf. maliku,
milku — king, namiru, nimru = panther, etc. etc.).
Moreover, Winckler contends that the term Sagas
(= Beduin, Babyl. Khabbatu = robber), which oc
curs so frequently in the letters from North Pales
tine and Syria, is merely an ideogram for Khabiri,
and that, therefore, the inroads in question must
have been made by the Hebrews. In my opinion,
this is an entirely gratuitous and untenable assump
tion, even should Winckler's identification of the
Kha-bi-ri of the Jerusalem letters with the 'Ibri of the
Old Testament prove to be correct, an event which
I regard as being in the highest degree improbable.
A much more likely conjecture is that the Khabiri
were the predecessors of the Israelites, but that
their name, instead of being identical with the He
braic 'Ibri (Hebrews), is connected rather with a
hypothetical Khaber ; in any case, their inroads into
Palestine have nothing whatever to do with the Is
raelitish invasion of Canaan.1 Had the two been
> Even though Labaya, in a letter to Pharaoh (ii2,l. 34), employs
the general term Sagas (Sha'as = Beduin) in a passage which, from the
context, evidently refers to the Khabiri, this does not warrant us in as
suming, as Winckler invariably does, the general term Sagas, in the
letters from North Palestine and Syria, to be equivalent to the far more
specific name Khabiri (cf. letter 199. II, Khabiri-ki, i.e. the city of the
Khabiri). As a matter of fact, the word Khabiri occurs only in the let
ters from South Palestine, written from Jerusalem.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 23 1
identical, the sensational fact would lie before us
that 'Abd-khiba of Jerusalem had given us really the
record of such an event as the conquest of the re
gion west of Jordan, but the existence of any such
record would be a severe blow to the credibility of
the Old Testament tradition. For in this latter it
is not Milki-el who plays the leading part, but Joshua ;
the first incursion took place, not from Hebron, but
from a point to the north of Jerusalem, near Jericho ;
the name of the king of Jerusalem attacked by the
Israelites was not 'Abd-khiba, but Adoni-zedek ; of
the king of Gezer, not Yapakhi (Governor of Gezer,
Lond. 49— 51), but Horam (p. 220); of the king of
Hasor, not "Abd-tirshi (= 'Abd-kheres ?), but Yabin ;
of the king of Lachish, not Zimrida, but Yaphi'a.
And then, again, there would be an amazing dis
crepancy between 1400 B.C., the approximate date
of the Tel el-Amarna inscriptions, and ca. 1230, the
time of Ramses, whom we have good reason for re
garding (cf. p. 125) as identical with the Pharaoh of
the Oppression. The theory that a section of the
Israelites may have made an attempt to conquer
Southern Palestine, direct from the land of Goshen,
somewhere about the year 1400 B.C., which was sub
sequently followed by the actual effective conquest
of the region west of Jordan, under Ramses III., is
a somewhat different matter.
Indeed, this latter possibility is, as we shall see,
the only one that will even bear examination. But,
for various reasons, we may take it for granted that
the name Khabiri, which has attained such promi
nence of late years, is not identical with that of. the

232 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
Hebrews, and that the resemblance between the two
names is purely accidental. On the contrary, it was
from the Khabiri that Hebron (formerly known as
the Four-town, or Kirjath Arba, Judges i. 10) re
ceived its later name of Khebron (originally Kha-
biran, i.e. the city of the Khabiri). In the Tel el-
Amarna tablets, we find it mentioned by its old
name, i.e. Rubuti (= Roba'ot), meaning " the four
quarters [of the city]." It is expressly stated in one
of the letters from Jerusalem, that Milki-el and a
certain Shuardat1 had hired the people of Gezer,
Gath, and Ke'ila as mercenaries, and with their help
had captured Rubuti, and that, as a consequence, the
territory of Pharaoh passed into the hands of the
Khabiri, Milki-el being elsewhere described as one
of their partisans ; 'Abd-khiba declares in one pas
sage that Milki-el and the sons of Labaya had de
livered the land of Pharaoh into the hands of the
Khabiri (L. 103. 29) and in another letter (L. 105. 5)
that Milki-el, who had originally been an Egyptian
official, had gone over to the sons of Labaya, the
ringleader of the rebels. Milki-el and Labaya,2
therefore, are the personages most prominently
connected with the Khabiri, and it was these latter
who captured Rubuti (Roba '6t = Kirjath-Arba). Is

1 In another letter, the names given are those of Milki-el and his
father-in-law Tagi. Shuardat, from its formation, seems to be a name
similar to the Hebrew Shu-thelah (Num. xxvi. 36), or to the name Shu-
tatna (elsewhere Za-tatna and Zi-tatna ; cf. Dothan?) which occurs in
the Tel el Amdrna tablets ; cf. also the name Zi-shamimi (literally = He
of Heaven). The name Tagi reminds us of To'i in 2 Sam. viii. 9.
2 Variant, Lab'a, cf. the place-name, Leba'ot in S. Palestine.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 233
it a mere accident that, from the time of the Judges
onwards, Kirjath-Arba bears the name of Khebron,
and that in the Israelitish pedigrees ' (which so
frequently preserve the memory of past events under
a genealogical garb), the names of Heber and Mal-
kiel are coupled together as grandsons of Asher ?
In another pedigree (Exodus vi. 18), Hebron is men
tioned as a grandson of Levi, whose name bears a
remarkable resemblance to that of Labaya (pro
nounced Lavayd). In my opinion, these facts tend
to prove beyond a doubt that the Israelites possessed
some inkling of the events in question — and that we
have here another instance of the great historical
importance of personal names occurring in those
seemingly arid wastes, the Old Testament pedi
grees. But if, as is clear from the evidence just
adduced, the Khabiri were thus intimately connected
with Hebron, and have actually survived in the Old
Testament lists under the name of Heber [KheberJ,
it follows, as a matter of course, that there can have
been no identity between their name and that of the
'Ibri (Hebrews).
For our present purpose, it matters little what the
original meaning of the word Khabiri may have been.
Some scholars regard it as a generic term for an ally,
or confederate (cf. Hebrew khabcr = companion),
and possibly they are right. If so, this merely fur
nishes us with a fresh argument against identifying it
with 'Ibri. Others suggest that it may be another
form of Khabirai (written Kha-bir-ai), i.e. the Kha-
biraeans, a term used to indicate the inhabitants of
1 Num. xxvi. 45 and Gen. xlvi. 17, and cf. 1 Chron. vii. 31.

234 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
Elam, i.e. the Kassites ; thus we find reference to a
Kassite named Kudurra, son of Tushur,1 in a sale-
contract of the time of King Marduk-akhi-irba (ca.
1065 B.C.), and also to a certain Kharbi-Shipak in
another document of about the same date. In view
of the fact that in this latter inscription the town of
Zakkalii (i.e. the Philistine Dor, the city of Zakkal
mentioned in the Egyptian inscriptions), and the
Phoenician town of Irikatta (Arka) are mentioned,2
I was at one time prepared to accept the identifica
tion of Khabiri with Khabirai, but I have since come
to the conclusion that the similarity between the two
names is purely fortuitous. Khabirai really means
an inhabitant of the land of Khapir,3 or Apir,4 and
Khapirai would, therefore, be a more correct tran
scription of it ; Khabiri, however, is identical with
Kheber, in Gen. xlvi. 17.
On the other hand, this latter passage, in which
Kheber and Milki-el are made out to be descendants
of the Israelite tribe of Asher (Asser), affords us a
clue to the real origin of the Khabiri of the Tel el-
Amarna tablets. This clue opens out such a vista
of interesting discoveries in other directions, that it
deserves the honour of a chapter to itself.
1 Written Ud (?) -ush-shu-ru, therefore the reading cannot be Batsish
(Scheil) ; cf. Hilprecht's Fdition, B. E., No. 149.
2 Cf. my Assyriological Notes, § 9, in the Proceedings of the Bibl.
Arch. Soc, May 1895.
2 Cf. Jensen, Zeitschr. der D. M. Ges., vol. 50 (1896), p. 246.
* Ophir, i.e. originally, that part of Elam which lay over against East
Arabia, afterwards used of East Arabia itself.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 235

CHAPTER VIII
THE LAND OF SHUR AND THE MINAEANS
We have just seen (p. 226) that the tribe of Asher
had, after various migrations, settled down in West
Galilee, as far back as the time of Seti I. and
Ramses II., i.e. about 1350 B.C., or only fifty years
later than the period to which the Tel el-Amarna
tablets belong. It has been shown further, by the
evidence of the Biblical tradition, taken in conjunc
tion with the Tel el-Amarna letters from South Pal
estine, that the Khabiri, who had forced their way
in from the south, belonged to this tribe of Asher.
They came in the first place from Edom, and the
Biblical narrative tells us that the strip of country
between Egypt and Judah, that is, the western por
tion of Edom, somewhere in the vicinity of the re
gion generally assigned to the Wilderness of Shur
and the territory of the Amalekites, was looked
upon as an integral part of the land of Goshen. It
may, therefore, be assumed that even before the
time of Moses a part of the tribes of Israel had
either settled down, or possessed pasturage, in the
country between Egypt and Judah. Now, if we put
all the above facts together, we are led — indeed, I
might almost say, forced — to the conclusion that
Asher was one of these tribes who had encamped in

236 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
the north of Goshen, and that the Khabiri invasion
of South Palestine marks the initial stage of its sub
sequent advance northwards.
But, quite apart from the above considerations,
there is a good deal of other evidence of various
kinds to prove that, even prior to the Tel el-Amarna
period, the extreme southern portion of Palestine
between el-'Arish and Gaza (or Beersheba) had been
inhabited by the tribe of Asher. This evidence
comes to us from three different sources, which are
all the more worthy of credit because they happen
to be entirely independent of one another ; these
are (1) various passages in the Old Testament which
have hitherto never been rightly understood, (2) the
Egyptian monuments, and (3) the Minaean inscrip
tions, which last have already been noticed on pp.
76-80, though only in general terms.
Let us first of all examine the passages in the Old
Testament somewhat more closely.
In Gen. xxv. 3, there is a genealogical table in
which a number of Arab tribes are said to be de
scended from Abraham, viz. Zimran, Jokshan, Medan,
Midian, Ishbak and Shuah. While 'Ephah1 and
Abida' 2 are given as descendants of Midian — a race
frequently mentioned in Biblical history — the sons
of Jokshan, on the other hand, appear as Dedan and
Sheba' (Saba), and the three sons of Dedan figure
under the tribal appellations, Ashurim, Letushim
1 Properly 'Ayappa, the Khayappa Arabs of the time of Tiglathpile-
ser III. and Pargon.
2 i.e. the Minaean king, Abi-yada'," who will receive fuller mention
later on.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 237
and Le'ummim. As the two latter do not appear
again, we may dismiss them from our minds and
concentrate our attention on Ashur, the direct de
scendant of Dedan — indeed his first-born son. The
fact that he is affiliated to Dedan is in itself suffi
cient to prove that Ashur cannot be identical with
the celebrated Assur, or Assyria, a name which is,
moreover, introduced elsewhere (in Gen. x. 22). For,
according to the Old Testament account, Dedan's
dwelling-place was in the immediate vicinity of
Edom ; the boundaries of this latter region are al
ways described in the stereotyped phrase " from
Teman (in the South) unto Dedan," indeed, in early
times, Dedan seems to have included the northern
extremity of Edom, and it was not until a later
period that the caravans of the Dedanite merchants
withdrew farther into the Arabian interior. Even
in the time of Gudea, alabaster was obtained from
the mountains of Tidanu (p. 34), and king Gimil-Sin
of Ur (p. 37) built a " wall of the countries of the
West" (or Martu) which he calls murik-Tidnim —
" the wall that wards off the Tidnu." 1 Glaser tells
us 2 that in one of the longer Minaean Temple Rec
ords discovered by him, there is a reference to the
female slaves from Egypt (Mitsr), Gaza, Moab, Am
mon, Kedar and Dedan, who were consecrated to
the service of the deity ; three of these Dedanite
slaves bear the remarkable names, Bi-mahali-'Uzza =
1 F. Thureau Dangin in Halevy's Revue Semitique, 1897, p. 73,
note 3.
2 Cf. my treatise : Aegypten in den sudarabischcn Inschriften in the
Festschrift zu G. Ebers' 60 Geburtstag, Leipzig, 1897.

238 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
by the patience [or favour] of the goddess 'Uzza,1
Kharshu-ha-na'imat = her sun is lovely, and 'Al-khe-
resh = over the Sun (?)and a Medanite2 slave named
Maphlitat.3 It is evident from this that the Ashurim (plural of
Ashiir) of Gen. xxv. 3, must have lived somewhere
near Dedan — i.e. in Northern Edom. There are,
moreover, other passages which indicate still more
definitely the locality of this land of Ashur — a name,
it should be noted, representing a so-called " bro
ken " or internal plural form of the singular Asher
(cf. Arab. A'shur, infra).
In Gen. xxv. 18, we are told of the Israelites that
" they dwelt from Havilah (according to Glaser,
Central and North East Arabia) unto Shur that is
before Egypt," to which an explanatory gloss in the
margin adds, "(i.e.) as thou goest towards Assyria
[Ashur]." A later copyist, who evidently knew
nothing of an Ashiir lying between Egypt and Pal
estine, endeavoured to explain the words " unto
Ashur," which he evidently took to mean Assyria,
by the further gloss, " that is before Kelakh ; " from
this arose (owing to association with Gen. xvi. 12,
koll ekhdv) the meaningless clause, " he abode [fell]
in the presence of all his brethren " — a clause which
1 Cf. the man's name Bi-mehal in i. Chron. vii. 33, a grandson of
Kheber [Heber], and consequently a great-great-grandson of Asher.
2 Unless, indeed, the correct leading here also is Dedan, for the first
symbol is not very clear.
3 Cf. the equally Asherite name Japhlet, in 1. Chron. vii. 32, and the
place-name Japhleti, in Joshua xvi. 3, both of them Arabic in form, for
in the Canaanite language the word would be Jiphlat.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 239
has occupied its present place in the text since the
time of Ezra. From this, it is clear that Shur is
merely a popular abbreviation of the longer form
Ashiir. The ordinary meaning of the word shur in
Hebrew being " wall," the name was explained by
identifying it with the " Wall of Egypt " ; from the
position of this " wall " (originally near Tel el-Kebir,
afterwards in the vicinity of the modern Isma'ilia),
which consisted of a line of strongholds shutting out
the Wady Tumilat, it is evident that this applica
tion of Shur is mistaken. In regard to the other
fortresses situated more to the north-east (to which
Zar or Sela belonged), the Egyptians never applied
to them the official title, " Wall of the Princes." J
In 1 Sam. xv. 7, we find an expression almost
identical with this gloss in Gen. xxv. 18, applied to
the territory of the Amalekites, viz., " from Havilah
as thou goest to Shur, that is before Egypt," the
only difference being that in Genesis the gloss has
"Ashiir," instead of, as here, "Shur." We may,
therefore, regard it as certain — especially as the fact
is further supported by other passages as well — that
the " land of Shur," to which such frequent refer
ences occur, has nothing whatever to do with the
Hebrew word shur = wall, for the simple reason
that it is an abbreviation of Ashur. Whereas in
'Cf. W. Max Mtlller's exhaustive dissertation on the Egyptian
" Wall," in Asien und Europa, pp. 43 — 46. Miiller suggests that Zar,
the name of the frontier fort, may be an Egyptian transliteration of
Shiir : from the way in which it is wriiten, however, it seems more
likely that Zar (or Sar) is rather identical with a Canaanite word sal =
wall (cf. Babyl. sillu, Hebr. solalah).

240 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
2 Sam. ii. 9 (where we find the reading ha-Ashuri,
instead of the more usual ha-Asheri), it is evidently
the later territories of the tribe of Asher which are
intended. In two other passages (viz. 1 Sam. xxvii.
8 and Jos. xiii. 2), however, where the present He
brew text has ha-Geshuri, the earlier and original
reading would seem to have been ha-Ashuri ( = the
Asherites), used as a synonym for the Amalekites.
No one now disputes that the Geshur here referred
to is not the kingdom of Geshur in Bashan, but
another place of the same name in South Palestine ;
Eduard Glaser was the first to divine this (Skizze,
ii. p. 458), when he proposed to read ha-Ashuri in
place of ha-Geshuri, in both passages.1 In Joshua
xiii. 2 we read, " all the regions (gelildth) of the Phil
istines and all the land of the Geshurites, from the
Shikhor [Shihor] which is (flows) before Egypt, even
unto the border of Ekron northward," where the
phrase, "from the [river] Shichor2 which is (flows)
before Egypt," exactly corresponds with the expres
sion " Shur which is before Egypt," employed else
where. The translators of the Septuagint seem to
have read Shur, or midbar Shur ( = wilderness of
Shur3), instead of Shichor, since they render the
passage, " from the uninhabited region which lies
before Egypt." The name Shichor, which is here
applied to the Wady el-'Arish is also of considerable
1 Cf. also my Aufsdtze und Abhandlungen, p. 9, note I.
2 Viz. "the brook of Egypt," or Wady el-'Arish, the actual boundary
between Egypt and Palestine.
3 This is the name given in the Old Testament to the desert wliich lies
between el-'Arlsh and the Suez Canal.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 241
interest, since the Asherites, after their arrival in
their new home to the north of Carmel, gave the
stream which marked the southern boundary, of
their territory, the name of Shichor Libnat (Joshua
xix. 26), just as they probably called Mount Carmel
after the place designated Gath- Carmel, in their
former home in South Palestine. The history of
every age furnishes similar instances of emigrants
bringing their old place-names with them, and
applying them to their new surroundings.1
In the other passage mentioned, 1 Sam. xxvii. 8
(as also in 1 Sam. xv. 7, which has already been dis
cussed above), it is the Amalekites who are referred
to. We there read that " David and his men went
up and made a raid upon the Geshurites and the
Gizrites2 [al. Girzites] and the Amalekites: for those
nations were the inhabitants of the land, from Telam
[Marg. Reading R. V., cf. Josh. xv. 24] as thou goest
to Shur, even unto the land of Egypt." The parallel
passage in the LXX. is thus to be restored, the only
change required being that of TeXap. 2ovp into TeXap,
2ovp, i.e. " Telam (which is) in Shur ; " TrfXwp, (Hebr.
Gillo, Josh. xv. 51) having probably suggested TeXap, ;
as both these places, i.e. Telam and Gelom (or Gillo),
are situated in the southernmost extremity of Judah.
In both passages, therefore, these southern Geshu
rites are closely associated with the land of Shur,
and even if we cannot see our way to adopt Glaser's
hypothesis that the name is a clerical error for
1 Cf. EruARD GLASER, Abessinier, pp. 17 et seq.
2 This word ( = the men of Gezer) does not appear in Ihe LXX. and
might very well be omitted.
16

242 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
Ashurites, we are not likely to be far wrong in rec
ognizing in the initial guttural the word g£=" low
land " ; in that case Geshur would be simply a con
traction of Ge- Ashur or Ge*-Shur. Moreover, we
must not overlook the fact that David's raids
against the Geshurites and Amalekites are again
referred to, in I Sam. xxvii. 10, as raids against " the
South " of Judah, Jerahmeel and Kain (cf. also I
Sam. xxx. 29, and in regard to Kain, Josh. xv. 27).
Any doubt which might still remain as to the fact
that the land of Ashur or Shur extended from the
" Brook of Egypt " (Wady el-'Arish) to the region
between Beersheba and Hebron, is completely re
moved by an examination of two further texts, viz.
Gen. xvi. 7, taken in conjunction with xvi. 14, and
Gen. xx. 1, taken in conjunction with Gen. xxiv. 62
and xxv. 11. In the first of these passages, we find
Hagar "in the wilderness by the fountain in the
way to Shur," and a few lines later on we are told
that the well in question, Lahai Roi, was situated
between Kadesh (i.e. Kadesh Barne'a) and Bared.
Now though, it is true, we do not know the exact
position of Bared,1 yet we learn from the history of
Abraham (Gen. xx. 1), that he journeyed into the
Negeb, or " land of the South," and " dwelt between
Kadesh and Shur," in Gerar, three hours' journey
south of Gaza ; here, too, dwelt Isaac (xxiv. 62), hard
by this same well of Lahai Roi (xxiv. 62 and xxv.
11), near his father Abraham, who died there (xxv.

1 It is probably identical with Berdan in the territory of Gerar, Lao
arde, Onom., 145. 3.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 243
8). It is evident, therefore, that " between Kadesh
and Bared," and " between Kadesh and Shur," are
parallel expressions, and that Shur, from which
Gaza cannot have been far distant (cf. infra A'shur
and Gaza), must, therefore, have been situated to
the north of Kadesh, somewhere in the neighbour
hood of Be'er-sheba.
Unquestionably, the most noteworthy of all the
passages in the Old Testament which contain a ref
erence — hitherto unsuspected, but none the less in
disputable — to the ancient Ashur in South Palestine,
is the " parable" of Balaam against the Kenites (i.e.
the people of Kain mentioned above), and against
Og, king of Bashan; Num. xxiv. 21 — 24. It runs as
follows: "(21) And he [Balaam] looked on the Ke-
nite and took up his parable, and said —
Strong is thy dwelling place,
And thy nest is set in the rock.
(22) Nevertheless Kain shall belong to the 'Eber1
[" be wasted," R. V.]
And however long it may last, Ashur shall
carry thee away captive ;
[and when he saw Og of Bashan (LXX.)], he took
up his parable, and said —
Jackals (iyyim) shall come from the North2 and
wild-cats (tsiyyim) from the coast of Kittim,
1 I am indebted to Klostermann for this ingenious conjecture (le-'Eber,
in place of leba'er) ; it completes the parallelism with verse 24, in which
the names Ashur and 'Eber already occur.
" missem'ol, an ingenious emendation suggested by D. II. MuLLER, in
Die Propheten, p. 215, though he adopts the translation "from Sam
'al," and evidently has ihe Zinjerh inscriptions in view.

244 IHE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
and they shall afflict (the land of) Ashur and
(the land of) 'Eber,
and he also (viz. Og) shall come to destruction.
It is clear that Assur, as an equivalent of Assyria,1
cannot be here intended, and the context makes it
equally evident that the relation between the terms
Ashiir and 'Eber was of the very closest nature, and
that Ashur here represents that earlier form of the
name of the land of Shur in South Palestine already
indicated in other passages — a fact which has been
made sufficiently obvious in the course of the last
few pages. Under the term Kenites we must include
a part of the Amalekites, who are mentioned a few
lines earlier. The threatened invasion of the tribes
of the North — to which, by the way, allusion is also
made in Deut. xxviii. 49 and 50 — refers to the so-
called " Peoples of the Sea," who, at the very mo
ment of Balaam's prophecy, were setting out from
Asia Minor, to invade Syria and Palestine, in the
eighth year of the reign of Ramses III. (about 1232
B.C.), a proceeding which threatened dangerous con
sequences to Egypt. They had made a previous in
road in the time of Minephtah, but now they came
accompanied by a number of new tribes, among
others by the Pulasati (Philistines) and the Zakkal

1 In the clause " Ashur shall carry thee away captive," Ashur evidently
refers to the next-door neighbours of the Kenites, and probably also to
the subsequent masters of Ashur, or Southern Judah, the Israelites of
the time of the Judges and of David, (cf. supra, the passage in i Sam.
xxvii. 10). By the time of the Kings, the obsolete term Ashur, as a
name for Shur, was no longer intelligible, and it was naturally taken as
appl) ing to Assyria.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 245
(see p. 234), and not merely in ships,1 but in caravans
as well, bringing their wives and children with them
on ox-waggons — in short, constituting the migration
of an entire people. " No country was able to resist
their arms, from Kheta-land, Kode2 and Carchemish,
unto Arvad and Alasia (Cyprus) ; they annihilated
them, and pitched their tents in the heart of the
country of the Amorites, whose inhabitants were
plundered and whose land was as though it had
never been ; they came armed and threatened
Egypt" — (they must, therefore, have made their
way through Palestine as far as the frontier prov
ince of Shur) — so runs the Egyptian account of the
affair. Egypt itself was in imminent danger of in
vasion, and Pharaoh promptly made up his mind to
join battle with the invaders on the frontier. With
the help of his Sardinian mercenaries, he succeeded
in repelling the enemy both by sea and land, and
seizing the opportunity, he made a predatory incur
sion into the country of the Amorites, which had al
ready been harried by the " Peoples of the Sea," and
was therefore unable to offer any serious resistance.
This was the last time for many a long day that a
Pharaoh set foot in Syria.
These, then, were the foes whose coming was fore
seen by the inspired Balaam, and who were eventu-
1 In Balaam's prophecy there is a play upon this ambiguous word tsiy-
ytm, which is used for " beasts of the desert," or "wild cats," as well as
for a kind of ship. Ki'tim is the familiar term for the Hittites (var. Chit-
tim), and was afterwards specially applied to Cilicia and Cyprus.
* District, i.e. the teriitory round the gulf of Issos, cf. Letter Berlin 79
rev. 13 ; Kuti in a letter of Rib-Addi of Gebal.

246 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
ally to penetrate as far as the territories of Ashur
and 'Eber, bringing ruin and devastation in their
train. Indeed, this whole prophecy owes all its sig
nificance to the fact that it was delivered in the Mo
saic period. If we try to apply its predictions even
to the time of the kings of Israel, and their political
surroundings, they at once lose all meaning ; the
"parables" of Balaam in general, and this prophecy
in particular, are no less deeply impressed with the
stamp of authenticity than is the Song of Deborah
in Judges v., and the)' are fully entitled to rank as
contemporary records, which — apart from certain
obscurities on minor points, due mainly to copyists'
errors — have been proved by external evidence to be
unquestionably both ancient and trustworthy, thus
fulfilling the conditions laid down on p. 25. As a
further piece of external evidence, the following
may be adduced.
In one of the inscriptions of the Minaean kings,
the same indeed which has already been briefly dealt
with on pp. 76 et seq. and p. 89, viz. Hal. 535 and 578
— or rather Gl. 1 1 55, since the text now accepted is
based on a cast brought home by Glaser — we find a
similar parallel drawn between Ashur and 'Eber.
The beginning of this very interesting monument
reads as follows : '
" 'Ammi-tsaduka, son of Hama- (or Himi-) 'Atht
of Yapi'an and Sa 'd, son of the Walig of Dzapgan,
the two great ones (kabris or governors) of Mutsran
1 Cf. Glaser, Abessinier, p. 74, and my notes in the Proceedings of
the 10th Congress of Orientalists, Section II. p. no; also in the Zeit
schrift der Deutschen Morgenl. Gesell.ch. 49, p. 527, note 2.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 247
and (of ?) Ma 'an of Mutsran1 under the protection
(?) of Egypt — and there were engaged with them
both in trading operations Egypt, and A'shur (so-
called internal plural of Asher) and 'Ibr-naharan,
while of the Kabirate (governorship) of  of
Rida.' whose Kabirate precedes (i.e. precedes that of
the two authors of the inscription in rank) — conse
crated and built to the god 'Athtar the platform of
Tan 'am, etc."
The raison d'etre of the inscription is given in the
following sentences :
" on the day in which 'Athtar, etc., delivered them
and their goods and their emir (leader) from the
hosts of [the tribes of] Saba' and Khavilan,2 by whom
they and their goods and their camels were attacked,
on the Caravan route between Ma'an and Ragmat,
and during the war which took place between the
Lord of Yamnat and of Sha'mat.3
" and on the day in which 'Athtar, etc., delivered
them and their goods, as they were half-way on their
road home from Egypt during the hostilities which
took place between Madhai4 and Egypt, while
'Athtar delivered them and their goods safe and
sound as far as the boundary of their city Karnavu
1 Or, "and the Minaeans of Mutsran (i.e. probably of Midian).
2 Cf. Job i. 15 and 17 ; in the LXX. the reading is, Sabaeans and
Khavtlah ; in the Hebiew, Sabaeans and Kashdtm ; the latter are the
Arabs of Bahrein, (cf. p. 211).
" i.e. of the South and North countries, which Glaser takes to mean
the kings of Upper and Lower Egypt, who were then at war with one
another. * According to Glaser, these must be the Mazoy or Egyptian patrols
on whom the king of Upper Egypt mainly relied.

248 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
(which must have been in their native South Arabia,
unless some North-west Arabian town of the same
name is meant).
The inscription terminates thus (cf. Glaser, Abes
sinier, pp. 74 et seq.) :
" By 'Athtar, etc., and by Abi-yada'a Yathi'u (cf.
supra, p. 236), the (reigning) king of Ma'an, and by
the two sons of the Ma'dii-kariba, son of Ili-yapi'a,
and Ma'an their tribe and the Lord of Yathil,1 and
the two great ones of Mutsran, Ammi-tsaduka and
S'ad (the aforesaid authors of the inscriptions) ; and
Ma'an of Mutsran (the Minaeans of Mutsran) have
placed their possessions and their inscriptions under
the protection of the (above-mentioned) deities of
Ma'an and Yathil (viz. of 'Athtar, etc.), and of the
king of Ma'an before (or against) every one who
shall cause their inscriptions to be taken away, re
moved and carried off from their place. By the
(Lord) of Rida 2 and by 'Ammi-sami'a of Balah, the
great one (or viceroy) of Yathil."
If Glaser is right in his very plausible explanation
of the term " king of Yamnat and Sha'mat," and of
the race-name Madhai,3 then this inscription, which
by its association of Ashur and 'Ibr-nahardn throws
1 The second capital of the kingdom of Ma'an, now Barakish.
2 Bi-dhi-Ridd ; this word seems to have been accidentally omitted by
the inscriber.
3 That Madhai cannot possibly be intended for Media is evident from
the fact that the country of Cambyses — who must, in that case, have been
the monarch referred to — would necessarily have been described as Parsu
(Persia) ; just as the Bible calls his father Cyrus "king of Persia," so
too, the Egyptian inscriptions always refer to Cambyses as ' ' the Per
sian."

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 249
a remarkable light on the words Ashiir and 'Eber
in Balaam's "parable," most probably dates from
about 1250 B.C., at which time the sway of the right
ful Pharaoh Set-nekht, the predecessor of Ramses
III., was confined to Upper Egypt — a Semitic
usurper, named Irsu, or Ilsu (i.e. probably Ili-yasu'a *
or Ilishua), having made himself master of Lower
Egypt. At any rate, it cannot be much later than
the twelfth or eleventh century B.C. — a remark
which applies to a considerable number of the
Minaean inscriptions. This is sufficiently proved
by the history of the word Ashur, a term which was
certainly not used later than the Israelite monarchy,
except in the abbreviated form Shur.1 Further
proofs are supplied by the arguments advanced some
years ago by Glaser, in support of his theory, as to
the high antiquity of the Minaean kingdom, by the
evidence of such passages2 as Judges x. 12, where
reference is made to the people of Ma'an,3 by Job
ii. u,4 and finally — last but not least — by the testi
mony of the personal names of the Khammurabi
dynasty, which has been fully dealt with in Chap
ter III. Taking all these things together, we have,
in my opinion, an overwhelming body of evidence

1 It is assuredly something more than mere accident, that the word
never occurs again either in the Books of the Kings or in any of the
prophetic writings.
2 Cf. my Aufsdtze und Abhandlungen, p. 3 and note.
3 LXX. " Midian," evidently an explanatory gloss on Ma'an.
4 Tsophar [Zophar], "king of the Minaeans," according to the orig
inal and sole possible reading; cf. as Mordtmann suggests, Gen. xxxvi.
II and 1 Chron. i. 36, iuxpap.

250 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
in favour of Glaser's theory in regard to the
Minaeans. In another Minaean inscription, Gl. 1083 ( = Hal.
187+ 188+ 191), of the time of king Ili-yapi'a Ri-
yam (probably the father of Abi-yada'a), we read
that " on the day in which he (the author of the in
scription) had business dealings (i.e. in incense ; ir-
takala, cf. Hebr. rokel = trader) with Egypt and
Ghazzat [Gaza] and A'shur,"1 an association of
names which at once reminds us of the phrase,
" Egypt and A'shur and 'Ibr naharan," quoted
above. The question now arises as to what was the geo
graphical or political significance attached, in the
thirteenth century B.C., to this term 'Ibr nahardn,
which is so closely connected with A'shur, both in
Balaam's prophecy (in the abbreviated form 'Eber),
and also in the inscription of the reign of Abi-ya
da'a, just translated, an enquiry which naturally
leads to the further question, as to what was its
original meaning. In endeavouring to answer this
latter question, our first concern will be to ascertain
the sense which Babylonian and Hebrew usage at
tributes to such a word as ndru, or nahar (or with
the article, ha-nahar, South Arabian ha-naharan =
stream). Leaving parallel expressions in Hebrew and Baby
lonian on one side, for the moment, and work
ing on purely mechanical lines, we will, first of all,
simply place the two assertions in the South Ara-
1 Ed. Glaser, Abessinier, p. 75.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 251
bian inscriptions in parallel lines, side by side,
thus : They carried on a trade in incense with
Egypt, Gaza and A'shfir
" A'shur and 'Ibr naharan
From this we may conclude that to the Minaeans
Gaza and 'Ibr naharan were interchangeable terms,
or, at any rate — assuming that 'Ibr naharan included
a much larger territory than that of Gaza — that they
undoubtedly regarded Gaza as forming part of it.
A certain amount of light is thrown on the question
by a passage in 1 Kings iv. 24 (LXX. 3 Kings, iv. 24,)
where we are told, " For Solomon had dominion
over the whole of 'Eber ha-nahar [gloss : 'from Raphi,1
unto Gaza'], and he had peace on all sides round
about him." The gloss " from Tiphsah (Thapsa-
cus) even to Gaza," in the present Hebrew text,
is probably post-exilic;2 in most MSS. of the Sep
tuagint, no explanatory gloss appears here, and
there is only one variant on the Septuagint, cited
by Klostermann, which gives the interpolation,
" from Raphi unto Gaza," already mentioned. A
few lines earlier we read (1 Kings iv. 21), that
" Solomon ruled over all the kingdoms from the
River (i.e. as usual, the Euphrates) unto the land of
the Philistines, and unto the border of Egypt,"
' i.e. Raphia between 'el-'Arlsh and Gaza.
2 The Syrian version has "Takhpis (a transliteration elsewhere em
ployed for the Egyptian frontier for Tahpankes, Jer. xliii. 7, etc.) unto
Gaza, which, if it be the original reading of the gloss of which Tiphsah is
a later corruption, furnishes a most striking parallel to " from Raphia unto
Gaza." In that case both glosses would mean " from Egypt unto Gaza."

252 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
which shows that 'Eber ha-nahar (literally =
" Beyond the River ") in iv. 24 cannot refer to Meso
potamia, a country which lay outside Solomon's
dominions. Nor must it be forgotten, that iv. 24 is
introduced as an explanation of the statements in
iv. 23, in reference to the daily supply of game for
Solomon's table, viz. wild goats, or harts, gazelles,
yachmur — antelopes, and fatted fowl ; Mesopotamia
was too far off to be able to provide such things ;
they were probably brought from Negeb (the coun
try of the South), which lay close at hand, and per
haps, too, from Tahpanhes (Daphne), near Pelusium,
where birds were plentiful. A correct interpreta
tion of 1 Kings iv. 24 would seem to indicate, that
in Solomon's time the term 'Eber ha-nahar was ap
plied to the littoral from Pelusium, or the " Brook
of Egypt," or even from Raphia, as far as Gaza, i.e.
the westernmost portion of the land of Ashur, or
Shur, on the sea - board. Whereas the Minaeans
draw a clear distinction between A'shur and Gaza,
and also between A'shur and 'Ibr naharan,1 in
1 Kings iv. 24 — if we are to place any reliance on
the glosses dealt with above — Gaza is mentioned as
one of the boundaries of 'Eber ha-nahar. It would
seem, therefore, that in the Minaean inscriptions, 'Ibr
naharan is the littoral, and A'shur the hinterland,
while, under Solomon, 'Eber ha-nahar includes the
same area as the Minaean 'Ibr naharan, and probably
the territory of Ashur, which lay beyond it, as well.
Be this as it may, an examination of the inscrip-
1 So too, in Balaam's prophecy, we have "Ashiir and 'Ebtr."

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 253
tion translated on pp. 194 et seq., which belongs to
the time of Assur-bel-kala, king of Assyria (ca. 1100
B.C.), will help us to arrive at a better understanding
of the geographical term in question. For there
the word Ebir-nari (= Hebr. 'Eber ha-nahar, and
Minaean 'Ibr naharan) includes Malgi and Yeshi
mon, i.e. the region east of the Jordan as well, and
either Ekron (south of the modern Ramleh) or else
the country east of Pelusium, accordingly as we
adopt the reading, Ba'al-zabubi, or Ba'al-Tsapuna,
at the end of line 10. Seeing that Ba'al-zephon means
literally, " Ba'al of the north wind," and that in line
11, immediately after Ba'al-Zabu- [  ], or —
another possible reading — Ba'al-Tsapu- [  ]
we have a reference to " this wind," and to ships and
waggons, I consider Ba'al-Tsa-pu [na] to be much
the more probable restoration of the two. And as
this Ba'al-Tsapuna lay between the Ba'al of Ma
lagi (vide p. 196) and the Ba'al of Yeshimon, it can
scarcely be identical with the mountain Ba'al-tsa-
puna, mentioned by Tiglathpileser III. as part of
the territory of Hamath, in spite of the fact that the
king of Tyre is named at the very end of the in
scription. Or, is it possible that this Ba'al-Tsapuna
was the god of Zaphon in Gad, mentioned in Josh.
xiii. 27, which, like Yeshimon, was also situated in
the country east of the Jordan, though, as is gener
ally assumed, much farther north?1 But as, in this
case, we should naturally expect the sequence to be
Malagi, Yasimun, Tsapuna, I prefer to adhere to my
1 The enumeration in Josh. xiii. 24 is evidently from South to North.

2 54 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
original interpretation, given above. Still taking
this Assyrian inscription as our guide, it would
seem that 'Eber ha-nahar must have extended as far
as the Egyptian frontier — not merely to Raphia or
to the Brook of Egypt (Wady el-'Arish)— but right
up to the chain of forts on the Egyptian frontier in
the North-East of the Delta ; for even in the time of
Moses, it is there that we find the " Ba'al of the
North " localised in the name Ba'al-Zephon (near
Migdol and Pi-ha-hiroth), a place mentioned in the
history of the Exodus.1
And now to enquire further into the original
meaning of Ebir nari, or 'Eber ha-nahar (literally,
" the far bank of the stream or river "), we find in
the first place — quite apart from the passage in i
Kings iv. 21 — that in the Old Testament ha-nahar
( = simply the Stream, the River) is used to indicate
the Euphrates, and 'Eber ha-nahar for Mesopota
mia.2 The Jordan is never called ha-nahar, but al
ways ha-Yarden, e.g. 'eber ha-Yarden, which was
used by the Moabites as a name for Judah, and by
the Judeans as a name for Moab. Similarly, the
Wady el-'Arish is never referred to as a nahar or as
ha-nahar ( = simply, the River) ; it is scarcely pos
sible, therefore, that the term 'ibr naharan (the Bab
ylonian ebir ndri, the Eber of Bala'am and 'Eber ha-
1 Cf. also a certain Ba'ilat Tsar una among the deities worshipped at
Memphis in the time of the later Empire (W. Max Muller, Asien und
Europa. p. 315).
2 Cf. Josh. xxiv. 2 et seq. and 14 et seq., 2 Sam. x. 16, and I Kings
xiv. 15. In all thes.: cases, down to the time of the Captivity, the point
of view is assumed to be that of a resident in Palestine.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 255
nahar of Solomon) can have been derived from this
stream, which formed the boundary between Egypt
and Palestine, even apart from the fact that, had
this been so, the form of the name must have origi
nated in Egypt, for the territory to which it was ap
plied lay to the north of the Wady el-'Arish. On
the other hand, the name invariably given in the
Old Testament to this stream, is nakhal Mitsrayim,
"the Brook of Egypt." The Assyrian monarch,
Esarhaddon, also employs this form (Assyr. nakhal
Mutsur), and to guard against any possibility of mis
take, he adds ashar ndru Id ishu, " where no river is"
(i.e. no continuous flow of water). Moreover, in
Assyro-Babylonian, as in Hebrew, nakhlu = ravine
or Wady ; and finally, the Egyptians of the later
Empire also mention a Nakhalu to the south of Ra
phia and Gaza1 which, since it is accompanied by
the determinative used to indicate " water," obvi
ously refers to " the Brook of Egypt." This Wady,
therefore, cannot help us to explain the source of
the term 'Ibr nahardn.
The origin of the term 'Eber ha-nahar in the sense
of Palestine, used more particularly of South Pales
tine, is of considerable importance historically, for
the designation must have come into use in Pales
tine at a time when this country was a province of
Babylon, or, in other words, in the time of the Kham
murabi dynasty, when Abraham, the Hebrew (ha-
'Ibri), migrated " from the other side of the River "
(^eber ha-nahar, ebir ndri), i.e. from Mesopotamia, into
1 W. Max MfJLLER, Asien und Europa, p. 134.

256 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
Canaan. This accounts for the fact that the earliest
mention of the name "Hebrew," in the narrative
portions of the Old Testament, is to be found in a
chapter based on a cuneiform original, viz. Gen.
xiv., and is there applied as a cognomen to Abra
ham, an emigrant from Mesopotamia.1 That the
term Ibri (Hebrew) presupposes the existence of
the name Eber, is evident from the genealogical
table (Gen. x. 24), where Kainan (LXX.), Shelah
and Eber are named as descendants of Arphaxad
(Ur-kasdim, vide supra, p. 210), and from the state
ment in Gen. xi., where Abraham is described as
a descendant of Arphaxad and Eber; and that this
name Eber must be an abbreviated form of Eber
ha-nahar has already been made clear, by the iden
tification of Balaam's " Ashur and Eber " with the
Minaean A'shur and 'Ibr naharan. Moreover, it is
a well-established fact, that elsewhere in the Old
Testament the expression 'Ibri is never used of the
Israelites, except where it is put in the mouth of
non-Israelite, or where an Israelite is speaking to
the Egyptians about his fellow - countrymen, or,
finally, where the writer wishes to draw a distinction
between the Israelites and some other race. In the
majority of these latter cases, it is by the Egyptians
of the time of Joseph or Moses, or in contrast with
the Egyptians, or occasionally with the Philistines,
that the Israelites are called Hebrews. It is, there
fore, a matter for serious consideration whether,
even thus late in the day, we ought not to adopt the
1 Cf. supra, pp. 191 et seq., for full details.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 257
almost exploded theory, according to which the
name 'Apri, or 'Epri1 — which occurs so frequently
in Egyptian monuments of the later Empire — is
made out to be merely an Egyptian transliteration
of 'Ibri. The principal objection to this identifica
tion, first proposed by F. Chabas and afterwards
supported by G. Ebers, lies in the difference be
tween the labials employed ; yet attention has
already been drawn (on p. 109, note 1) to an obvious
instance in which the Canaanite b has been repre
sented by the Egyptian/. A further objection lies
in the circumstances that, even under Ramses IV.,
i.e. some considerable time after the Exodus, we
find it recorded that 800 'Epriu (Egypt, plural of
'Epri), drawn from the foreign residents of 'An,2
were employed in compulsory labour at the quarries
of Wady Hammamat. But just as the Israelites
were accompanied in their Exodus by a number of
aliens (Ex. xii. 38), it may equally well have hap
pened that many Israelites remained behind and
mingled with the foreign population of Egypt. In
this case, the Egyptians would naturally apply to
them the generic name of 'Epri, which, according to
the Old Testament view, rightfully belonged to all
the descendants of Abraham [e.g. even to the inhab
itants of South Arabia] ; the inscription recently
discovered by Flinders Petrie (vide p. 264) has now
1 Applied to a Semitic race who dwelt in the East of the Delta, and
who were occasionally called upon by the Egyptians to supply compul
sory labour.
2 The eastern portion of Goshen, in the Heroopolitan Nome at the
eastern extremity of the present Wady Tumilat.
17

258 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
made it certain that, in the time of Minephtah, the
Pharaoh of the Exodus, the Egyptians knew the
Israelites by their special name Isir'il (i.e. Israel).
One thing I am firmly convinced of, and that is
the uselessness of trying to make out that there is
no sort of connection between ebir ndri, the Ancient
Assyrian name for Palestine (which must, of course,
have come originally from Babylonia), the Eber of
Balaam, the Eber ha-nahar of Solomon, the Ibr na
haran of the Minaean inscriptions — for all these ex
pressions originally served to indicate the same thing
— and the race-name Ibri, which, by the way, also
occurs (Gen. x.) under the form Eber.1 Moreover,
the retention of the term Ebir nari — suggested in
the first instance by the migration of Abraham— as
an official name for Palestine, by the Babylonians
who ruled there under the Khammurabi Dynasty,
was rendered all the easier by the fact that this
name, once it had been introduced and accepted,
could be construed in any of the various ways which
the necessities of the moment might require. Thus,
from the Babylonian point of view, the term " Be-
1 Some years ago, Glaser (Ausland, 1891, p. 47, note 1) made a ten
tative suggestion to this effect, "Or must we, in the end, translate 'Ibr
nahaian as the Hebrews of the (boundary) liver ; " and later on Nathan
iel Schmidt expressed himself still more definitely on the subject, in a
paper entitled " The external evidence of the Exodus," which appeared
in Hebraica X. (1894), pp. 159 et seq., and is well worth reading. In
this paper I notice that Morris Jastrow, jun., has anticipated me by
drawing attention to the connexion between Gen. xlvi. 17 (Heber and
Malchiel), and the Khabiri and Malki-el of the Tel el-Amarna tablets ;
he failed, however, to ap|irei.iate the significance of the fact that they
may both be traced to Asher.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 259
yond the River " must, at first, have meant the
whole of Syria (including Palestine) ; it was the offi
cial name used for the province of Syria under the
kings of Persia, and perhaps even in the time of the
Neo-Babylonian Empire as well,1 when it was prob
ably unearthed from the Ancient Babylonian rec
ords, and re -introduced by Nebuchadnezzar, who
had a mania for imitating the institutions and ex
pressions of Khammurabi.2 The elastic character
of the term " Beyond," naturally led to its being as
signed different meanings, fitting in with various
political changes. If, for instance — and the thing
is quite conceivable — the Babylonians, before they
finally surrendered Palestine to the Egyptians, re
tained for a time their hold on the eastern bank
of the Jordan, while the Egyptian aggression was
mainly confined to the western bank, it is perfectly
possible that ebir ndri may, at a pinch, have come
to be equivalent to eber ha- Yarden ( = the country
on the other side of the Jordan), and thus have been
applied to the region either east or west of the Jor
dan according to circumstances, and finally to both
together. Nay more, when Jacob and his people
crossed " the Brook of Egypt," on their way to settle
1 Cf. Keilinschr. Bibl. IV. p. 269. Ebir nari in a contract tablet
dating from the third year of Cyrus, and p. 305 Ushtanni, viceroy of
Babylon and Ebir nari, in a tablet dating from the third year of Darius.
2 After what has been said on pp. 210. et seq., in regard to the original
nationality of the Chaldaeans(or rather Kasdaeans), to which race Nebu
chadnezzar belonged, the reader will easily understand that this was
something more than a mere accident. It was not necessary that Nebu-
chalnezzar should have been an Arab himself — the fact that his earliest
ancestors were these Chaldaean Arabs, is sufficient in itself.

260 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
in the land of Goshen, the term Eber must have
followed them, and must occasionally have been
used of Goshen in its wider sense, viz. the whole
area between the isthmus of Suez and Gaza.
And now, after this exhaustive analysis of the
terms " Eber of the River," and " Hebrew," I may
perhaps be allowed, before concluding the present
chapter, to return for a moment to the land of
Ashur. The Egyptians of the Ptolemaic period,
who had a weakness for introducing into their in
scriptions archaic and obscure terms borrowed from
earlier epochs, have, in one instance, inserted the
gloss Eshru in connection with the well-known land
of Menti, the name applied to the Sinaitic peninsula
from the time of the later Empire. It need scarcely
be said, that the term Eshru cannot here refer to the
sacred lake of that name, which plays a part in
Egyptian mythology and is localized at Karnak and
also at Bubastis. On the contrary, the allusion here
must be to the land of Ashur, or, in other words, to
the wilderness of Shur. Moreover, in view of all
that we have learnt in regard to Ashur and Shur,
the question arises whether the land of Sheri or
Shiri, which we find mentioned in the Tel el-Amarna
letters from Jerusalem, and which must evidently
have been situated somewhere in the far South (vide
p. 230), may be — not Seir, but rather a Babylonian
transliteration of Shur. It is true, that such a trans
literation would be inaccurate, since we should ex
pect to find the word written Shuri ; on the other
hand, the identification with Seir [Se'ir] also lies open
to objection, even though the form Kilti = Ke'ilah

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 26l
(an equation, by the way, which is not absolutely
certain) seems to afford a precedent for the omis
sion of the Ayin. The description in the text, viz.
"The countries of Shiri [-ki] unto Gimti-Kirmil"
(el-Kurmul, to the north of Tel-Ma 'in), is, geograph
ically, much more applicable to tne land of Ashur
than to Mount Seir, since this latter lies too far
south. As, in talking of Mount Seir, we have come as far
as the land of Edom, the former home of the Hor-
ites, I may be allowed to quote in this connexion
one of the Tel el-Amarna tablets (L. 64 = Winckler,
No. 237), which is of considerable interest both from
a geographical as well as an historical point of view.
It should be noted beforehand that, according to
Deut. ii. 12 and Gen. xxxvi., the Horites had either
been driven out, or absorbed by the sons of Esau,
or, in other words, by the Edomites. The letter
reads as follows —
" To Yan'am, my lord (the viceroy of Yerimot and
nominal governor of Egyptian Palestine), Mut-Addi,
thy servant: I prostrate myself at the feet of my
lord. As I told thee by word of mouth, Ayab (cf.
the name Job) has secretly fled, even as the king of
Bikhishi (Pe'ish ?), fled before the officers of the king,
as my lord the king liveth. As my lord the king
liveth, if Ayab is in Bikhishi, then is it two months
(that he is there). Lo, there is Bin-inima,1 inquire of
him; lo, there is Tadua (=Dadu'a?), inquire of
1 A name similar to Benjamin, only in a semi-Egyptian form, the
Egyptian equivalent of the Hebrew yamin = on the right hand, is
wanim, which in the cuneiform script appears as inim.

262 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
him ; lo, there is Yashuya (Washuya or Pishuya ?),
inquire of him. While he from  the
city of Astarti is expelled, at such time as all the
cities of the land of Gari J arose in revolt : Udumu
(Edom), Aduri (Addar, Josh. xv. 3?), Araru (Ar'ar
or Aroer) Mishtu, Magdal, Khini-anabi ( = En-anab,
'The Spring of Grapes'), and Zarki (cf. Zereth,
Josh. xiii. 19?), then were the cities of Khapini (or
Khawani, Khayani) and Yabishi (Jabesh) taken.
Moreover, after thou hadst written a letter to
me, did I write unto him (viz. Ayab) to tell him
that thou hadst returned from thy journey. And,
lo, he has reached Bikhishi and has received the
order." In view of the names of these Edomite cities, it is
a question whether we ought not to restore Gen.
xxxvi. 39 as follows : " and his (Hadar's) cities were
Pa'ish (in the Massoretic text, Pa'ii, var. Pa'i, LXX.
Phogor), Me'eshet (cf. supra Mishtu), Mehetab-el,
Bath Matred 2 and Me-zahab." It is quite possible
that the land of Khar, or Gari, included, in addition
to Edom proper, a part of the territory of Ashur as
well; especially if we remember the wide meaning
occasionally attached to the term " land of Khar," in
the Egyptian texts of the later Empire, where it is
1 Winckler takes this to mean Edom. I feel no hesitation in identi
fying this name with the Egyptian Khar, Hebr. Khor ; Khori = Hor-
ites, which means, of course, not cave-dwellers, but the people of the
land of Khar.
2 Probably the correct reading is Bet-Matred. The next word, Me-
tsahab (cf. Me-deba, and on the other hand Di-zahab), is, in any case,
much more lik- the name of a place than of a person.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 263
frequently used to describe the whole of Southern
Palestine, from the Egyptian frontier onwards.
Both the letter quoted above, however, and Hebrew
tradition in regard to the Horites, show that origi
nally it was used of Edom alone.
In dealing with Deut. xxviii. 68 (on p. 11), I have
already had occasion to point out that Hosea ix. 3 is
merely a quotation from this passage. When, how
ever, Hosea, after giving the words of Deuteronomy,
viz. " But Ephraim shall return to Egypt," adds,
"and they shall eat unclean food in Ashur [Assyria],"
it seems extremely probable — in view of the facts
brought forward in the present chapter — that this
supplementary clause formed part of the original
text of Deuteronomy, and was only omitted later
owing to its having been confounded with Assyria.
The principles of parallelism require that the Ashur
in question — even though Hosea ma)' have under
stood it as equivalent to Assyria — should be some
region in the immediate vicinity of Egypt, and there
is, of course, no other locality which complies with
this condition except the land of Shur, which even
the compiler of the Book of Joshua regarded as
equivalent to that part of Goshen which lay in South
Palestine ; 1 it was there that the tribe of Asher, and
probably certain other tribes of Israel, had settled
long before the exodus of the remaining tribes from
Egypt ; indeed, they had already set out on their
1 Another passage in which Ashur originally indicated the region to
the north of the "Brook of Egypt," though later the reference was taken
as applying to Assyria, viz. Gen. ii. 14, will be briefly dealt with at the
end of the 10th chapter of the present volume.

264 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
journey further north before that time. The early
stages of this migration of the tribe Asher from the
land of Ashur were indicated by the advance of the
Khabiri (about 1400 B.C.), while by the middle of the
fourteenth century B.C., in the time of Seti I. and
Ramses II., we find them safely installed in their
subsequent home to the north of Carmel.
When we find Minephtah, the Pharaoh of the
Exodus, concluding the recently-discovered inscrip
tion — which forms a pendant to another inscription
dealing with the defeat of the Libyans and Peoples
of the Sea — in the following boastful strain, it is
quite possible that by Israel he means the territory
of Asher, of whose dependence on Israel the Egyp
tians cannot have been ignorant —
" Libya is laid waste, Kheta (the Hittite region
from whence came the "Peoples of the Sea")
has been pacified, Canaan with all its ill-disposed
ones has been captured, Ashkelon has been led
away captive, Gezer taken, I-no'am (to the east
of Tyre, and therefore in the territory of Ashur)
has been annihilated, Isir'il x has been laid waste
and its seed destroyed, Khar has become even
as the widows (khar) of Egypt, all lands are,
together, at peace. Every man that roameth
about hath been chastened by the king Mineph
tah."
This inscription is dated in the fifth year of Mineph
tah (1277 B.C.) ; on comparing it with its companion
'Written with the determinative "people," so that it is evidently a
nation and not a place that is meant. Cf. later (in the inscriptions of
Salmanaser II.) Ahab of Sii'il = Israel.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 265
text, the so-called Karnak Inscription, we find that
Minephtah was not in Palestine or Syria at the time,
but he must have considered himself fortunate in
having been able to drive back his enemies from the
Egyptian frontier ; moreover, these enemies prove
to have been merely the Libyans and the Peoples of
the Sea (Lycians, Achivi, Tyrrhenians, Saklus and
Sardinians), who were, however, supplied with mu
nitions of war by the Phoenicians. The Israelites
under Moses could hardly have chosen a more op
portune juncture than this for their departure out of
Egypt, and, as their exodus was indirectly connected
with the barbaric invasion, Minephtah mentions
them by name in the highly poetic account which
he gives of the affair.1 The territory he assigns to
them, however — inferentially at any rate — is that of
Asher (to the east of Acre and Tyre), since it occu
pies a place on the list between I-no'am and Khar.
As has already been pointed out on a previous
page, it is probable that other tribes of Israel be
sides that of Asher had settled in South Palestine
before the time of Moses. Prominent among these
apparently were the tribes of Simeon and Levi, both
of whom began to emigrate at an early date, and
seem soon to have almost passed out of memory.
A comparison of the blessing pronounced by Jacob,
1 The statement in Exodus xii. 38, " And a mixed multitude went up
also with them," may perhaps be taken as an indication of a certain co
operation with the enemies by whom Egypt was then assailed. If this
be so, we can all the more easily understand the mobilization of the
Egyptian forces who were sent in pursuit of the fugitives (Exodus xiv.
6 et seq.).

266 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
in Gen. xlix., with that of Moses, in Deut. xxxiii.,
clearly proves that besides the priestly tribe of Levi,
there was another tribe of the same name, which had
ceased to exist long before the time of Moses ; in
the first of these two passages, Levi, and Simeon as
well, are cursed as murderers and violent men, and
are threatened with division and scattering ; while
in the second, on the other hand, Simeon is not men
tioned at all, and the tribe of Levi — evidently a later
and fundamentally different body from the first-
named tribe of that name — are blessed as the guar
dians of doctrine and prophecy. It is evident that
a stirring page of history must have intervened be
tween the dates of these two documents, and the
events recorded in the Tel el-Amarna Letters seem to
offer the only satisfactory explanation of the discrep
ancy observable between them. It is by no means
impossible that this earlier tribe of Levi, which had
already disappeared in the time of Moses, may have
been connected in some way or other with Labaya
and his sons, of whom we hear so frequently in the
letters from Jerusalem (vide supra, p. 232). In that
case, it is needless to point out Jacob's blessing must
have been composed before the time of Moses ; in
the period after Moses, such an execration of Levi
would have been not only meaningless, but absolutely
inconceivable. In conclusion, let us consider, for a moment, the
practical effect of all the evidence which we have
gleaned from the Tel el-Amarna tablets — dating from
the period between 1430 and 1400 B.C. — and from
the Minaean and Egyptian inscriptions. Far from

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 267
obliging us to modify in any way the traditional view
of Old Testament history, or from placing a weapon
in the hands of its opponents, it tends, on the con
trary, to confirm — indirectly it is true — the accuracy
of the Old Testament narrative, and at the same
time to fill up a gap in it, by enabling us to recon
struct the history of the period which preceded the
conquest of Palestine by Joshua, about the year
1230 B.C. The ancient Hebrew tradition — and more
especially that part of it which deals with the earli
est times — has, in many instances, come down to us
in a merely fragmentary and mutilated condition.
But even isolated references and allusions, such as
those which occur in regard to the land of Ashur,
Heber and Malki-el, Hebron, etc., etc., when sup
plemented by the external evidence that lies to our
hand, are shewn to be ancient and authentic tradi
tion, and thus supply further testimony to the
existence of pre-Mosaic records. In the next chap
ter, I propose to bring forward a number of fresh
arguments in favour of this view, which is so dia
metrically opposed to the theories at present up
held by Wellhausen and his school. The most
important and decisive of these arguments is based
on personal names occurring in the book of Exodus,
although the remainder are scarcely less cogent.

268 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION

CHAPTER IX
THE TIME OF MOSES
From a very early date, a regular trade in incense
together with other drugs and spices of the Hadra
maut, was carried on by the Minaeans — a nation of
South Arabia to whom we have more than once had
occasion to refer — with North-west Arabia, South
ern Palestine and Egypt. In order to place this
trade with the countries which lay outside their own
territory upon a stable basis, they must naturally
have done their best to secure the ancient caravan
route which led from South Arabia to Gaza, by the
establishment of fortified stations along its course.
As there would seem to have been a second caravan
route, extending from the Hadramaut across East
Arabia as far as Babylon — in addition to a number
of branch routes similar to that which led throusfh
the country east of the Jordan to Damascus — it is
manifest that for countless ages there must have
been a brisk intercourse between Arabia and the
nations on its frontiers, such as is clearly reflected
in the Egyptian and Babylonian legends regarding
the interior of Arabia and the Elysian incense-bear
ing shore. The first authentic historical evidence
of this intercourse is furnished by the representa
tion of an embassy on a monument of the twelfth

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS

269

Egyptian Dynasty, bearing a gift of antimony
(vide supra, pp. 52 et seq) ; and the next occurs in the
narrative (Gen. xxxvii.) of the sale of Joseph to a
band of Arabian incense-merchants. In one passage,
these traders appear as Ishmaelites, in another, as
Midianites, as the following parallel extracts clearly
show —

(28) And there passed by
Midianites, merchantmen

(25) And they sat down to
eat bread : and they lifted up
their eyes and looked, and be
hold, a travelling company
of Ishmaelites came from
Gilead (i.e. from the country
east of the Jordan) with their
camels bearing nek'flt (traga-
canth gum) Styrax1 and lada-
num (or Myrrh) going to carry
it down into Egypt.
(28 b) and they (his brethren)
drew and lifted up Joseph out
of the pit and sold Joseph to
the Ishmaelites for twenty
pieces of silver.
So, too, in the account of Gideon's victory over
the Midianites, we find the names Midianite and
Ishmaelite used interchangeably (cf. Judges viii. 24,
" because they were Ishmaelites," with the rest of the
narrative). Again, in Genesis xxv., the genealogies
of Keturah2 and Hagar run parallel with one an
other; by the former Abraham became the father of
1 In regard to this article, cf. my Aufsdtze und Abhandlungen, where
it is discussed at length.
2 i.e. incense, cf. Basmat, Kets'iah, and other feminine names of simi
lar import.

they brought Joseph into
Egypt. (36) And the Midian
ites sold him into Egypt unto
Potiphar.

270 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
Jokshan and Midian (vide supra, p. 236), by the lat
ter of Ishmael, from whom Nebayoth, Kedar, etc.,
were descended, just as Dedan was descended from
Jokshan and Abida' from Midian.
The fact that under the Minaean king Abiya-
da'a x the Minaeans had a governor stationed in the
territory of Mutsran, is explained by their anxiety to
guard the north-western portion of the caravan route
to Gaza and Egypt, which at that point skirted the
borders of South Palestine and Egypt. Glaser tells
me, by way of supplementing the information con
tained in the inscription Gl. 1 1 55, of which he was
the first to publish a correct version, that in another
as yet unpublished inscription of this same king
Abi-yada'a (Gl. 1302), it is explicitly stated that " on
the day, on which Sa'd (probably identical with the
author of Gl. 1 1 55) appointed (kabbard) two men
over the Minaeans of Mutsran (Ma'an Mutsran) as
princes (or governors), and they remain safe and un
injured, because (?) Sa 'd and his tribe wished well
(showed favour) to these two men." Now this land
of Mutsran is probably identical with the region sit
uate on the Aelanitic Gulf in North - west Arabia,
which is generally known as the land of Midian.
The gloss " Midian," for Ma 'on (i.e. Ma an) which ap
pears in the Greek translation of the Hebrew text
of Judges x. 12, the part played by the Midianites
in the history of Joseph and the Hebrew Tradition,
which makes out king Abi-yada'a to be the son of
Midian, all combine to prove this. Its capital was
1 Vide supra, pp. 246 et seq., the inscription Gl. 1 155.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 27 1
the Arabian Ma'an, which retains its ancient name
down to the present day, and has been from time
immemorial an important halting-place for caravans
and pilgrims. It was at the same time the northern
most point of this region, which, in the inscriptions,
is invariably referred to as Ma'an Mutsran (the Mi
naeans of Mutsran), while Waga' (on the Red Sea),
el-Oela (where Euting discovered a number of Mi
naean inscriptions), and Yathrib (Medina) formed,
respectively, the western, eastern and southern
boundaries. It is by no means an insignificant fact
that the Minaeans procured their female slaves from
Waga' and Yathrib, as well as from the countries
adjoining Mutsran, i.e. from Mitsr (Egypt), Gaza,
Moab, Ammon, Dedan and Kedar (vide supra, pp.
237 et seq). Moreover, as their inscriptions clearly
show, the Minaeans not only carried on a trade in
incense with Egypt, Gaza, Ashur and Tbr naharan
(vide Chap, viii.), but must also have exercised for
centuries an influence on the country east of the Jor
dan — whence the Midianites in the Story of Joseph
came — a fact which is demonstrated by the large
number of South Arabian place-names, dating from
the time of the Judges, at latest, which recur in that
region. To begin with, the name of Ma'an itself is repeated
in the Ma'an to the south of Petra mentioned above,
then in Ma'dn near Hebron, and finally in another
Ma'on in the region east of the Jordan (vide supra,
p. 76, note 1). The name (which appears as Magan
in the cuneiform texts) was originally applied to the
north-eastern part of Arabia (Yemama and Bahrein),

272 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
the Babylonian 1 " country of the Sea," the cradle of
South Arabian civilization ; 2 Hadramaut (including
Kataban) and the South Arabian Ma'an marked the
further stages of its growth, while Ma'an near Petra,
and the two Ma'ons in Palestine, were the latest
tendrils thrown out towards the North-west. The
name of the Hadramautic and South-west Arabian
city Shibam is found in Sebam (originally pro
nounced Shebam) and Sibma near Hesbon, while
the name of the Minaean capital Kamavu is recog
nized in Ashteroth-Karnaim in Bashan ; with Ash-
toreth we may compare the interesting variant, Be-
Eshterah, in Josh. xxi. 27, a form which cannot be
rightly explained except by a reference to the South
Arabian personal name Bi - Athtar ( = by or with
Astar).3 Yathimat, a district belonging to the tribe
of 'Akib re-appears in Yeshimoth (Num. xxi. 20), the
Hadramautic Mepha'at, in Mephaat in Moab,4 the
Katabanian capital Tamna' in the name of the Edom-
ite tribe Timna' (Gen. xxxvi. 40), the Katabanian
district of Tsinnat (which Glaser declares to have
1 The Arabic designation Bahran, which later on was mistaken for a
dual form (hence the modern name Bahrein), was originally nothing
more than an Arabic translation of the Babylonian term mdt tdmti =
"country of the Sea;" cf. also the name Tihama = Sea, applied to the
west coast of Arabia.
2Cf. Eduard Glaser, Skizze, ii. p. 250, where a similar view is
clearly expressed, though, at the time Glaser was writing, attention had
not yet been drawn to the intimate relations which existed between the
Arabs and Babylonians in the time of Khammurabi.
3 Cf. also the names Ba 'Anah (= by Anat), Be-Dad (=by Hadad),
and Ba-'Asa (= by Asit ?).
4 Cf . from the same, the root Yapa', which occupies a very large place in
the South Arabian language, Yap'an(orYapi'an), and the Hebrew place-
name Yapi 'a.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 273
been the site of a celebrated temple), in the name of
the Wilderness of Tsinnah. Moreover, the names
of Mount Nebo and Mount Sinai, as also of the
wilderness of Sin, are probably of South Arabian
rather than Babylonian origin, for the inhabitants
of the Hadramaut and Katabania had borrowed the
gods Sin and Nebo from the Babylonians : x besides
the Arabic tribal name Nebayoth comes from Nebo,
for it was a favourite practice to throw the names
of deities into the feminine plural as a sign of maj
esty.2 And lastly, it is to be noted in this connec
tion, that in Ashtar-Kamosh, the deity who occupies
the chief place in the Moabite Pantheon, we have
the same form of this divine name as that found in
South Arabia, the feminine termination being absent
from both (cf. on the other hand, the Canaanite Ash-
toreth or Astarte).
In the Mesa inscription (ninth century B.C.) the
Moabites seem to have fallen completely under the
influence of Canaan ; the language used by them i-s
almost identical with Hebrew, and their script is —
not the Minaeo-Sabaean — but the Canaanite. Their
spelling, however, has, in places, a strong affinity
with that of the Minaean inscriptions. These latter
differ from the Sabaean, among other things, in the
frequent use of the letter h to denote a long a and
short i, just as in German h is used to indicate the
1 The former under the name Sin, the latter as Anbai — the original
Babylonian name being Nabiu.
2 Cf. Baaloth, Ashtar6th, Anatot ; in Babylonia the forms Sinatu,
Shamas-halu, also occur, the two last as masculine personal names in the
contract tablets of the Khammurabi Dynasty.
18

274 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
lengthening of a vowel ;x so too, in Hebrew, in cer
tain cases, the letter h is used for a long a (e.g. Milkah
for Milka, originally Milkat), Deborah for Debora,
banah = he was building, for band, a contraction
from banayd) and for a long e (e.g.yibneh = he builds,
for yibni, a contraction from yibnai). The Moabite
language shares this peculiarity in spelling, of which
there are no instances in Phoenician, but it sometimes
employs it in cases where Hebrew does not, e.g. in
the place-names Mehdeba' (Hebr. Medeba') and Ne-
boh (Hebr. Nebo) ; Moabite therefore, as far as
spelling is concerned, is more akin to Minaean than
to Hebrew. The only possible inference which can
be drawn from this is that both the Moabites and
Hebrews, during the period prior to their adoption
of the Canaanite language, that is, while they still
spoke a pure Arabic dialect,2 must have originally
employed the Minaean script in place of the so-
called Phoenician or Canaanitish ; for in no other
way can this remarkable fact be satisfactorily ex-
1 It may serve to reassure critics of the present volume who have read
the strictures in Mordtmann's Beitrdge zur mindischen Epigraphik,
pp. 78 et seq. (published at Weimar in January 1897), and are inclined
to doubt this fact and to regard the deductions I make from it as un
convincing, if I state that I have gone into the whole matter de novo,
and find that there is not the slightest doubt about the purely graphic
character of the form in question ; cf . my paper, entitled Das graphische
h des mindischen, in the Mitth. der vorderasiat. Gesellsck. of Berlin.
2 That this must have been so in the case of the Hebrews is evident,
not only from t he form of the earliest Hebrew personal names, but from
many other peculiarities of their language. Cf. in Ex. xvi. 15, the ques
tion man hit = " What (really ' who') is that? " for which in Canaanite
(and therefore in post-Mosaic Hebrew also) would be said mi h& (e.g.
Gen. xxvii. 33).

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 275
plained. The period in question was, in the case of
the Hebrew, and probably in that of the Moabites
as well, the interval which elapsed between Abra
ham and Joshua. This serves to account for the
alternative forms of the name of Abraham, which
was originally Abram, though the spelling Abrahm
(pronounced Abram) also occurs. Afterwards, when
this spelling (which when applied to the internal ele
ments of words has no parallel outside the Minaean
inscriptions) came to be no longer understood, the
name was changed into its present form, Ab-raham,
a word which it is absolutely impossible to explain
by any ascertained principle of Semitic name-for
mation, and the passage in Gen. xvii. 5 seems an in
terpolation intended to account for the alteration.
This fact is of the utmost importance to the study
of the origin of the earlier Hebrew literature, since
it permits us to assume confidently that a certain,
and not inconsiderable, portion of the tradition on
which Genesis is based had already been reduced
to writing in the time of Moses. When, therefore,
the Israelites, after taking permanent possession of
the region west of the Jordan, came to adopt the
Canaanite language and script,1 these sacred docu
ments, which had increased in number during the
time of Moses, owing to the addition of the law and
of the account of its origin, were naturally subjected
to the processes of paraphrasing, translation, and —
1 There is nothing to prevent us from assuming that the Canaanite
(or so-called Phoenician) script was in use in Palestine during the Tel
el-Amarna period ; at that time, however, it had not yet been officially
employed as the medium of diplomatic correspondence with Egypt.

276 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
it is needless to deny — of recension as well. These
facts naturally place the whole question of the dis
tinction of the sources in a new light.
And now let us leave Moab and return to Midian.
This region, which is mentioned in the Minaean in
scriptions under the name of Mutsran, plays an im
portant part in the history of Moses and of the
Mosaic Priestly Law. As we have seen, the geo
graphical position of Midian coincided with that of
the Minaean Mutsran (Ma'an, Mutsran), and the
Midianites who appear on the scene in the story
of Joseph were identical with the Minaean incense-"
merchants. But this is not all. Here, too, dwelt
Regu-el Jethro,1 the " Priest of Midian,"2 with whom
Moses took refuge, whose son-in-law he became,
with whom, later on, Moses solemnly " ate bread be
fore God " (Ex. xviii. 12), and to whom Moses was
indebted for detailed advice as to legislation for the
Israelites (Ex. xviii. 19 et seq). If we add to this the
fact, that it is in the Minaean inscriptions found in
Mutsran — viz. in the fragments discovered by Eu-
ting at el-Oela — that we find references to priests
and priestesses of the god Wadd (cf. p. 79), in which
the word laviu (fem. lavi'at) s — a term identical with
1 In Minaean the name appears as Ridsvu-il Vitran.
2 Kohen Midyan. Cf. in reference to kohen my remarks on p. 17
supra. 3 See my Aufsdtze und Abhandlungen, pp. 30 et seq. In the revised
edition of the Euting Inscriptions recently published by J. H. Mordt
mann, which, by the way, is really the first edition worthy of the name,
since it is the first which complies with the requirements set forth on p.
13 of my Aufsdtze und Abhandlungen, even Mordtmann admits (p. 43)
that I am right in identifying lavi'u with Levi.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 277
the Hebrew Levi or Levite — is employed, it will be
readily admitted that quite anew light is thus thrown
on the intimate relationship which subsisted between
Moses and " the Priest of Midian" — a relationship
which has hitherto received far less attention than
it really deserves. The probability is, therefore,
that if we were to submit the ideas and language
(and particularly the ritual terms) of the " Priestly
Code" to a more systematic examination, we should
find many other traces of early Arabian influences,
all of them naturally attributable to Moses' residence
in the land of Midian. The altar of incense, for in
stance, seems from the description we get of it, in
Ex. xxx. 1 et seq., to have been little more than a
replica of the Minaean altars, but on a somewhat
larger scale ; x the use of incense, which plays such
an important part in the " Priestly Code," is another
point of contact, which is further evidenced by such
direct Arabic words as tamid (cf. p. 17), 'olah —
Burnt-offering,2 azkarah, etc. This last expression,
which is usually translated as the " sweet savour "
(of the meat-offering, or Minchah), really means, as
a reference to Levit. ii. 9 and 16 will shew, the com
bustible part of the meat-offering (consisting of the
finest meal and incense), which gave forth a partic-
1 Cf. for instance, the illustration given in Glaser's Mittheilungen
(Prague, 1886), p. 75. The "crown of gold round about" (Ex. xxx. 3)
is here represented by the projection otf the top of the altar, and even
the "horns" are suggested by the bullock's head (with a sun between
the horns) which can be distinguished on one side of the projection.
"Arab, gh&liyat, a kind of incense, a cognate form is ghalwd ; cf. also
the verb ghald, used of the bubbling of a pot of meat, and ghdli, a par
ticiple from it which means " fat " of meat.

278 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
ularly agreeable odour; it cannot be rightly ex
plained except through the Arabic. The word is
not even Hebrew in form ; it is a broken plural form
(azkdr) from zakar (Arab, dhakar), and means the
" male " (or best) kinds of incense, full particulars of
which may be found in the dictionaries compiled
by native Arab scholars. Even the ceremonies ob
served on the great Day of Atonement (Lev. xvi.)
serve to remind us of early Arabian sacrificial
usages and early Arabian ideas ; the demon of the
Wilderness Az-azel [Lev. xvi. 10] translated in the
A.V. " scapegoat," finds a counterpart in Uzza, a
divinity who, the Minaean inscriptions inform us,
was known to the ancient Dedanites (cf. supra, p.
238), and, on the other side, in the Arabic root
azala, which embodies the ideas of barrenness and
infinity associated with the desert.
But, undoubtedly, the most striking feature in the
history of the Mosaic Code — especially at the pres
ent time, when emphasis is laid on the fact that it
originated " in the wilderness," and was thus only
meant for a nomadic race — is to be found in the
magnificent appointments of the tabernacle and of
the high-priest, and in the elaborate ritual prescribed
by it. And it is remarkable in this connection, that
it is from the so-called " Priestly Code," which is
held by Wellhausen and his school to have been
first composed in post-exilic times; that we receive
the fullest details on both these points. When we
come to reflect, however, that Moses (whose name
even is of Egyptian origin) grew up and was edu
cated in a country where he had every opportunity

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 279
for observing the gorgeous ceremonial daily prac
tised at the court of Pharaoh's daughter, and that
afterwards he had spent years among the Minaean
priesthood, in the house of the high priest Jethro
in the land of Midian, it surely need not surprise us
to find him endeavouring to introduce the observ
ance of a similar elaborate ritual among his fellow-
countrymen. The time of Moses was, of all others,
the most opportune for the inauguration of such a
ritual, whereas it would have been scarcely possible
to select a less favourable period than that of the
Babylonian Captivity or the years immediately suc
ceeding it. The chief characteristic of the Judaistic
movement which took place under Ezekiel and
Ezra, was not that it created a new Law and put
it forward as the sole and sufficient dogma to whicli
members of the Jewish faith were henceforth to
conform, but that it harked back beyond the teach
ing of the Prophets, by a single step, to primitive
ages, and strove, in a one-sided fashion, to artificial
ly galvanize into life long-forgotten ordinances. As
might have been expected — since no man can hope
to set back the hands of time with impunity — the
result was a sort of fossil-form of religion.
The following remarkable and surprising fact fur
nishes direct evidence that Moses was not only in
fluenced by Jethro, but that he also adopted many
of the forms of Egyptian worship.
Every one will remember the instructions given
by Moses in regard to the ouches of gold, and two
chains of pure gold in the form of twisted cords,
which were to form the shoulder-pieces of the high-

2bO THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
priest's dress, and the so-called khoshen (literally
" ornament," " beauty "), or breastplate of judgment,
which was to be set with precious stones, in four
rows of three stones each, symbolical of the twelve
tribes of Israel (Ex. xxviii. 13 et seq). Now, Adolf
Erman, in his magnificent and scholarly work,
Aegypten und dgyptisches Leben im Alter turn (Tubin
gen, 1885), on pp. 402 et seq., assures us that: "In
the time of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties
(i.e. shortly before the time of Moses) the chief-priest
of Memphis still wore as his distinctive sign of office
the same wondrous neck-ornament which had been
borne by his predecessor under the fourth dynasty." 1
On the next page he gives, without further com
ment, a cliche of this neck-ornament; from the
shoulders or neck two parallel rows of cords de
scend obliquely to the breast ; the cords cross one
another, and at every point of intersection there is
a little ball, or a small ornament in the shape of a
cross (in reality intended to represent the Egyptian
ankh, or symbol for life). If we examine the picture
carefully, we can make out that from top to bottom
there are four rows of these ornaments, each of
which is composed of precious stones, and that
(again reckoning from top to bottom) there are
1 Cf. also Erman's short paper, entitled " Aus dem Grab eines Hohen-
priesters von Memphis," in the Zeitschr, fiir dgypt. Sprache und Al-
terthumskunde, vol. xxxiii. (1895) pp. 18 — 24, where an illustration is
given (p. 22) of this interesting breast-ornament, which was called by
the Egyptians se'eh (pronounced se'ekh); but neither in this paper, nor in
the larger work quoted above, does Erman notice its obvious similarity
to the breast-plate of the Israelite priests.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 28 1
three crosses and three balls, then three more
crosses and three more balls, an arrangement which
very nearly resembles that prescribed in Ex. xxviii.
17 — 20. Moreover, on both right and left of this or
nament, which was worn by the Egyptian priests in
the centre of the breast, there are two symbolical
figures, also attached to the ouch, which was invari
ably made of the same precious metal as the cords
which were attached to them, but more massive ; on
the right is a sparrow-hawk, on the left a jackal.
The two latter were sacred to Horus and Anubis,
who play an important part in the Egyptian cult of
the dead ; as figures on the priestly badge, however,
they were apparently symbolical of prophecy, and
were probably worn during the giving of oracles.
In Ex. xxviii. 30 we read, " And thou shalt put in
the breast-plate of judgment (khoshen) the Urim and
the Thummim (R. V. margin, " the Lights and the
Perfections"); and they shall be upon Aaron's heart
when he goeth in before the Lord ; and Aaron shall
bear the judgment (oracle) of the children of Israel
upon his heart before the Lord continually." In
regard to the names of the twelve gems, one of
them at any rate is an Egyptian loan-word, viz.
leshem = hyacinth or opal, Egypt, neshem, and prob
ably achlamah, also ( = jasper or amethyst, Egypt.
ekhndme)} 1 In this case, the hypothesis put forward on p. 204, viz. that achlamah
was connected with the name of the race Achlamu must be abandoned,
unless we are prepared to assume that ekhnbme was also originally named
after the Achlamites, and that the Israelites borrowed the word from the
Egyptians.

282 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
The almost absolute similarity between the breast-
ornament of the Egyptian priests of the later Empire,
and that of the Israelites described in the so-called
Priestly Code, affords food for reflection, and can
scarcely be explained except by assuming that it was
borrowed from the Egyptians in the time of Moses.
And where a high-priest stands at the head of affairs,
we naturally infer from this the existence of an in
ferior clergy ; similarly, an elaborate ritual — such as
Moses evidently had in view, and in a great meas
ure actually brought into use, in so far as the con
ditions of life in the desert permitted — naturally
pre-supposes a sanctuary and a numerous staff of
attendants. The relations between the priestly class
and the ordinary Levites or servants of the Temple,
furnish the modern critics of the Pentateuch with
their main argument in favour of arranging the
chronological sequence of the different sources in
the following order : (i) the Jehovist narrative, (2)
Deuteronomy (seventh century B.C.), and (3) Priestly
Code (post-exilic), the Ideal Law, propounded by the
priest Ezekiel (Ez. xliv. — xlvi.) in the time of the Cap
tivity being adduced as the obvious connecting link
between Deuteronom)' and the Priestly Code. The
critics tell us that in Deuteronomy no distinction is
drawn between the Levitical priests and the ordi
nary Levites who belonged to the lower grade of
temple ministrants; and that even a provincial Le-
vite when he came up to Jerusalem was permitted
to " minister in the name of the Lord his God even
as all his brethren the Levites do which stand there
before the Lord " (Deut. xviii. 6 et seq). Then, we

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 283
are assured that in 572 B.C. (or about twenty-five
years after the Israelites had been led away captive
to Babylon), Ezekiel came forward with a totally
new pretension, viz. that as a punishment for their
transgressions, the Levites were not to be (any
longer) allowed to approach the temple for the pur
pose of performing their priestly duties there, this
privilege being specially reserved for those Leviti
cal priests who, at the time when the Israelites went
astray after idols, protested against it and ministered
unto Yahveh in the sanctuary, namely the sons of
Zadok (Ezekiel xliv. 9 et seq) ; in fact, the Levites
were reduced to the status of mere underlings and
servants of the temple. In the Priestly Code, how
ever, this distinction between Priests and Levites,
which— so the critics inform us — was first intro
duced by Ezekiel, is thrown back into Mosaic times;
the sons of Aaron, moreover, (who, like Moses him
self, were descended from the tribe of Levi,) are
represented as set apart for the priesthood from the
beginning, while the (other) Levites were made to
be mere bearers and underlings. According to this
view, there is, so they say, a clear historical progres
sion from Deuteronomy to Ezekiel, and from Eze-
kiel's programme on to the Priestly Code, in which
Ezekiel's aims find their ultimate realization. In
order to make the position quite clear, I should like to
point out that Zadok and Abiathar were high-priests
in the time of David, and that after the rejection of
Abiathar in the reign of Solomon, the office was
vested in Zadok alone ; Zadok is described as the
son of Ahitub, who is probably identical with the

284 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
Ahitub, son of Phinehas, son of Eli, mentioned in 1
Sam. xiv. 3, whereas the later, official genealogies of
the high-priests trace the descent of Zadok, son of
Ahitub, direct from Amariah, the eighth in descent
from Aaron. Probably, therefore, the real fact was
that Zadok, though a descendant of Aaron, did not
spring from the direct line. If this was so, it is prob
able that Ezekiel designedly describes those who
were to be henceforward alone eligible for the office
of priest — not as sons of Aaron — but sons of Zadok,
especially as there must at that time have been other
descendants of Aaron in existence besides the sons
of Zadok.
Though the above line of argument may, at the
first glance, seem quite unanswerable, yet an unprej
udiced consideration of Deuteronomy will speedily
reveal the fact that even there a distinction is
clearly made between the Levitic Priests of the cen
tral Holy Place — with "the Priest '' (Deut. xvii. 12,
xx. 2) at their head — and their lesser brethren, the so-
called provincial priests, who were distributed over
the whole country. Indeed, the 18th chapter of
Deuteronomy (1 — 8), which specially deals with the
status of priests, gives one, by its very meagreness
and brevity, the impression of being merely a re
capitulation of directions which had been set forth
in greater detail on some previous occasion. If this
be so, and if Deuteronomy really refers to an origi
nal distinction between the " Levite Priests " (= " the
Sons of Aaron " of the Priestly Code) and " the Le
vites," then Wellhausen's line of argument not only
loses a great deal of its force, but the main pillar of

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 285
the theory he has erected comes tumbling about his
ears. For, in that case, Ezekiel's pretensions appear
in a totally new light ; a closer examination reveals
the fact that Ezekiel merely follows Deuteronomy
when he seeks to enforce the original distinction be
tween the Levites and Levite Priests, the latter being
attached to the Central Holy Place at Jerusalem.
Seeing that the Levites had usurped priestly func
tions in the high - places, it was inevitable that
an enforcement of the provisions of the Priestly
Code — with which Ezekiel, in his capacity as priest,
must have been perfectly familiar, and which he
now wished to set in operation — should bring upon
them signal punishment and degradation. More
over, in Ezekiel's prophetic vision of the new temple
and its arrangement, we can trace from the be
ginning (Ezek. xl. 3) an almost unmistakable allu
sion to Moses himself ; in his dream Ezekiel finds
himself on the top of a high mountain, from whence
he has a view of the ruins of Jerusalem, and there
a man, whose " appearance was like the appear
ance of brass, with a line of flax in his hand and
a measuring reed," gives him the dimensions of the
new temple; does not this at once remind us of
Moses, who from the summit of Mount Nebo was
allowed to take one look at that holy land which he
himself was never to enter? The man of brass is
none other than Moses, whose " eye was not dim,
nor his natural force abated," when Yahveh shewed
him from the hill-top the whole country that had
been promised to the Israelites. No modern critic
will ever succeed in permanently dislodging this

286 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
venerable brazen figure from his lofty watch-tower,
in spite of all triumphant assertions to the contrary.
For if we refuse to credit him and his generation
with the Priestly Code, with Deuteronomy and its
touching valedictory oration, with the Jehovistic
Book of the Covenant, or even with the Decalogue,
what is there left of Moses beyond a mere empty
unsubstantial shadow ?
The fact that the Mosaic Law in its most com
plete form, as set forth in the Priestly Code, was
not fully enforced until after the Babylonian Cap
tivity, cannot possibly be regarded as a proof that
it did not come into existence until this later period.
After Moses and Joshua came the turbulent tran
sitional period of the Judges, a time, however, which
possesses a special importance for the question be
fore us, owing to the fact that it was then that the
Israelites adopted a new language — the Canaanite —
a tongue which was, it is true, nearly allied to their
old idiom, but still a new tongue to them. It was at
this time, too, that the foreign element Ba'al first made
its appearance in Israelitish personal names, and that
the ancient traditions of the race were translated into
Hebrew, and subjected to what would seem to have
been a more or less thorough recension.1 It was not
1 Cf. p. 274, where this point is briefly dealt with. By " Hebrew," I
mean here the language which we find presented to us in the pages of
the Old Testament, and which was essentially identical with Phoenician,
its points of difference from Phoenician representing survivals from the
earlier idiom of Israel. Did we but possess a fuller knowledge of Phoe
nician, we should be able to determine with greater exactitude how
much of Hebrew is genuine Canaanite and how much is Arabic. I must

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 287
until the time of Samuel and David that things began
to grow more settled. The first king to find himself
in a position to insist on the observance of the Mo
saic Code was Solomon, but the temple which he
had built was scarcely finished, when, led away by
the influence of his wives, he allowed sacrifices to be
offered unto strange gods, and immediately after his
death came the deplorable political schism which re
sulted in the permanent separation of the little prov
ince of Judah, the seat of the new central Holy
Place, from the rest of Israel. And, be it noted, it
was in the northern kingdom that the final recen
sion of both the Book of Judges and the Jehovistic
narrative was carried out. These two books, ac
cording to the .modern critics, contain little or no
evidence to show that the Priestly Code was then in
operation, and this fact is regarded as one of the
main arguments in favour of their theory as to the
post-exilic origin of the Code. It must not be for
gotten, however, that the priests of the northern
kingdom had only too often good reasons for either
modifying or entirely suppressing portions of the
traditions which would otherwise have become a
standing reproach to themselves. For instance, the
oft-quoted passage in Ex. xx. 24, " An altar of earth
thou shalt make unto me, and shalt sacrifice there
on thy burnt offerings and thy peace offerings, thy
sheep and thine oxen : in every place where I record
insist, however, on the fact that the only persons whom I can recognize
as competent to decide questions of this kind are those who are equally
familiar with Arabic (including the Minaeo-Sabaean and Aethiopic dia
lects), Babylonian, and Phoenician.

288 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
my name I will come unto thee and bless thee,"1 — is
evidently a recension attributable to the laxer prac
tice which obtained among these northern priests,
who though they condemned the calf-worship in
troduced by Jeroboam, yet were not prepared to
deprive the people of the blessings of the national
God who sat enthroned on Sion. Did we but pos
sess a more complete and detailed tradition in re
gard to the time of the Judges and the period of the
Kings,2 I am firmly convinced that Wellhausen's
whole theory — even apart from the fact that it is
contradicted by the testimony of the monuments —
would at once collapse like a house of cards. Un
fortunately, however, the historical tradition of the
Old Testament has come down to us only in frag
ments. And the "popular" character of the Jeho
vistic narrative, out of which Wellhausen tries to
make so much capital, is in a great measure due to
a circumstance which for a long time past has not
received all the attention it merits, viz. the fact that
this source owes its distinctive character to the
northern kingdom (i.e. to Israel rather than to
Judah). Although this primitive popular element
1 As opposed to the phrase, " the place which the Lord your God
shall choose," which is so often and so emphatically repeated in Deu
teronomy. But such a petty alteration as that involved in the substitu
tion of " the place" for "every place," is of little importance compared
with the many biassed interpolations with which Wellhausen delights to
bolster up his theory.
2 Such as that which probably furnished part of the material for " the
Midrash of the Book of Kings," quoted in the Books of the Chronicles,
though there the facts may have been presented in a more imaginative
guise.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 289
may appeal more strongly than any other to our
imaginations, it is scarcely an adequate vehicle for
the transmission of a lofty and abstract conception
of the Godhead such as that which Moses— whose
aim was misunderstood by his contemporaries — was
commissioned to, and actually did, impart, though
in doing so he was obliged to employ as an acces
sory an elaborate system of sacrificial and ritual ob
servances. As we have already had ample oppor
tunity for observing,.these two opposing principles
(popular and priestly religion) have existed side by
side in Western Asia from time immemorial. Char
acters such as Melchizedek of Salem in the time
of Abraham, or Jethro of Midian, and Balaam in
the time of Moses, suggest no taint of anachro
nism to any one who remembers the religious import
of the earliest Western Semitic personal names, and
of the earliest literary monuments of Egypt and
Babylonia. Of course the free-thinker who looks at
all such matters from an " enlightened standpoint,"
may, if he chooses, describe them as mere " religious
humbug," or " priestly trickery," even though the
evidence of the inscriptions constrains him to ac
knowledge that they date back to the time of Abra
ham or of the Pyramids ; this, after all, is a question
of taste, and with such persons it would be useless
to argue further. When, however, we find that a
whole school of evangelical theologians do not hesi
tate to declare that a passage was at a later date
composed or interpolated, simply because they are
unwilling to recognize the existence of any high
moral teaching or lofty conception of the Godhead
•9

29O THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
prior to the time of the prophets of the eighth or
seventh centuries B.C., then, in view of the facts ad
duced in the present volume, we cannot but regard
their attitude as a deplorably mistaken one, and
hope that it may soon become a thing of the past.
It was once the fashion to declare that all passages
in Arabian poetry of the period prior to Muham-
med, in which the word Allah ( = God, properly
al-ilahu = the God, i.e. the one God) occurred, must
ipso facto be classed as later interpolations. At pres
ent, however, when — thanks to the evidence of the
later Sabaean inscriptions — it becomes every day
more certain that hundreds of years before the time
of Muhammed, both Judaism and Christianity had
taken root and found acceptance in various places
in Arabia, scholars are beginning to abandon the
hasty conclusions of ten years ago in favour of the
accepted opinion of the day. The same thing will
happen in connection with the criticism of the Penta
teuch. Had the beginnings of the Israelite religion
really been a mixture of Fetichism and ancestor-
worship, these beginnings would have left their im
press upon the language and could have been de
tected by the method of comparative philology. It
becomes, however, clearer every day that the Sem
ites — and more particularly the Western Semites —
had from the beginning a much purer conception
of the Deity than was possessed by any of the
other races of antiquity, such as the Sumerians or
Aryans, for instance, and critics of the Old Tes
tament can no longer afford to shut their eyes to
this fact.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 29 1
In regard to the influence of Egypt in Mosaic
times — an influence of which the priestly breast
plate affords such a striking illustration — it should
further be pointed out that there are quite a number
of Egyptian loan-words to be found in the laws of the
Priestly Code. Under this head may be mentioned
such words as sheti = warp, from the Egyptian seta'
= to spin, or heckle (Bondi, Zeitschr.fiir agypt. Spr.,
vol. xxxiii. p. i) ; zereth — span, from Egyptian tsert
= hand (Bondi, ibid., vol. xxxii. p. 132); sol' am =
locust, from Egyptian senhem ; names of gems such
as achlamah and leshem (see p. 2&i),peshet and pishtah
= flax, linen (Egyptian pesht), ephah and hin} and
probably a number of other names for units of meas
urement, together with various personal names of
the Mosaic epoch, e.g. in the first place, the name of
Moses himself (cf. mose in Thutmosis [originally
Tehut-mose] and similar names) ; then the names
Phinehas, Puti-el (half Egyptian, half Semitic, cf.
Poti-ph-re) [Potiphar] and many other words, in
cluding probably the much-debated Pesakh (Passah).
In the case of no other religious festival do we find
so much stress laid upon its memorial character as
in this, (cf. Ex. xii. 14), and there must be something
more than mere coincidence in the fact that the
Egyptian word sacha'2 means "to call to mind."
This shews that the initial pe must be a form of the
article which was in general use in the time of the
' Egyptian, ipt and h in ; the former borrowed in primitive times from
Babylonian pitu, and the latter from Babyl. gin.
2 Radically related to the Babylonian sakhdru = " to seek, to reflect
upon," and the common Semitic element zakdru.

292 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
later Empire, and that, therefore, the word was
originally pe-sakh}
This brings me back once more to the identifica
tion of Arpakeshad [Arphaxad] with Ur Kasdim,
which has already been touched upon on p. 210.
These two words are essentially and absolutely
equivalent ; both are used to denote the original
home of the Hebrews. Now it is clear, on d priori
grounds, that just as Keshad is equivalent to Kas
dim, so too Ar- is equivalent to Ur-, especially when
we remember that in the Western Semitic script
the consonants only are given ; the sole distinction
between the two expressions in their earliest written
form lies in the element pa introduced between Ar-
and Keshad in the former name, and in the plural
termination im affixed to the second element of the
latter. Since tradition, both in Gen. x. 22 and 24,
as well as in Gen. xi. 10 et seq., and 1 Chron. i. 17
and 24, points to the vocalization Arpakeshad (LXX.
Arphaxad), we need not hesitate to accept this as
correct. Now the fact that Elam and Assur appear
1 My friend Glaser, after reading my note on Arpakeshad, in the
Academy, and before he was aware that the Egyptian word sakha meant
" to remember," drew my attention to the fact that pesakh might be di
vided into pe- (the Egyptian article) and sakh, an analysis which seems
to me to be unassailable. Glaser, whose opinion in regard to my ex
planation of Arpakeshad is all the more deserving of respect, because he
has never adopted a partizan attitude on questions of Old Testament
criticism, after carefully weighing the alternative interpretation proposed
by Cheyne (which will be discussed later on), boldly supports my analysis
Ar-pa keshad. His example is likely to be followed by all those who re
fuse to be blinded by the prejudices which obscure the vision of modern
critics of the Pentateuch.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 293
in place of Babel and Assur 1 (which are the names
we should have expected to find), points to a time
when Babylonia was under Elamite rule; that is to
say, to the epoch of the Kassite dynasty (ca. 1700 —
1 183), or, in other words, the period of the children
of Israel's sojourn in Egypt, and the time of Moses
and Joshua. In that case, however, the pa inserted
between Ar (originally Ur) and Keshad, can be noth
ing else but the Egyptian article,3 since it cannot be
explained in any other way, and our only alternative
would be to strike it out as meaningless. One tradi
tion, therefore, which is probably to be attributed
to the Jehovist writer, calls Abraham's native place
Ur Kasdim (Ur of the Chaldees, apparently in order
to distinguish it from Uru-shalem = Jerusalem) while
the other tradition — strange to say, that of the
Priestly Code — employs a semi-Egyptian expression,
Ur-pa-Keshad (Ur of the Keshad, i.e. of the Chal
dees). That Egyptian forms of this kind were com
mon enough, especially in the case of geographical
terms and of expressions applied to the Egyptians
themselves, among a race who had spent over 400
years in Egypt, is evident from the presence of such
names as Puti-el (Ex. vi. 25), " Eleazar, Aaron's son,
took him one of the daughters of Puti-el to wife "
1 The Elam mentioned here as one of the sons of Shem cannot possi
bly be identical with Elam proper ; the ethnological and linguistic differ
ences between the Elamites and the Semitic Babylonians (the Sumerians
had already been merged with the Semites long before the time of Abra
ham) must have been familiar to Semitic peoples from the very earliest
antiquity. ''i.e. " Ur of the Keshad ;" cf. Keshed, Gen. xxii. 22.

294 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
(cf. Potiphar, Potosiris). It is interesting to note
that the son of this marriage also received the
Egyptian name of Phinehas.
This variant, Arpakeshad for Ur-kasdim, affords
us a striking proof of the fact that the Israelites,
during their stay in Egypt, had not forgotten the
original ancestor of their race, or the name of the
place from whence they had first sprung. Nay,
more, I confidently assert, that all the traditions
concerning the period before Joseph (i.e. of the
Patriarchs, including the primitive records which
Abraham brought with him from Chaldaea), which
have been handed down to us in Genesis, in various
recensions, were even at that time current among
the Israelites, and that, too, in a written form. That
it was impossible for them to have borrowed these
traditions from the Canaanites at a later date is
conclusively proved by the evidence of their names.
For the names of the Patriarchs, as well as those
of the Israelite contemporaries of Moses, from the
stage of religious development which they reveal,
present so strong a contrast with those of the Canaan
ites that, on this ground alone, it is impossible to
believe that Abraham can have been a Canaanite
Weli or Saint, whose worship the Israelites ap
propriated after their conquest of Hebron. In
regard to the place-names, Ya'kob-el and Yashap-el,
referred to on p. no, note I, these have all the ap
pearance of having been originally formed from
personal names, and were either survivals from some
epoch long gone by before the Western Semites of
Northern Palestine had as yet become generally

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 295
subject to the influence of the Babylonian religion,
or else Ya'kob-el was a direct reminiscence of the
patriarch Jacob, dating from the time when he
dwelt in the vicinity of Bethel ; in the latter event,
Ya-shap-el must either have been founded by or
received its name from a relative of one of the
patriarchs. Compared with my explanation of Arpakeshad,
the theory recently put forward by Professor
Cheyne of Oxford 1 can only be described as dis
tinctly infelicitous — based, as it is, on assumptions
of far too sweeping a character. He suggests that
Shem must have had six sons instead of only five,
viz. Elam, Assur, Arpak = Arrapach on the lower
Zab, Keshad, Lud and Aram, and, in spite of the
fact that the conjunction " and " appears between
each of the five names both in the original Hebrew
text and in the Greek translation, and that, there
fore, at the very least, we should expect " and
Arpak and Keshad," he proposes to read " Arpak,
Keshad," instead of " Arpakeshad." Unfortunately,
the circumstance that we should in that case be
obliged to strike out the element " Arpa " from
Arpakeshad, in Gen. x. 24 and Gen. xi. 10, where
the name occurs as that of an ancestor of Eber's,
renders this conjecture of Cheyne's — in itself in
genious enough — quite inadmissible, even apart
from the fact that, both in the Tribute-lists of Thut-
mosis III. and in the cuneiform texts, Arrapach is
always written with the strong aspirate kh, and
1 Cf. Cheyne's paper, Professor Hommel on Arphaxad, in the Ex
positor, Feb. 1897, pp. 145—148.

296 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
never with a k. The reluctance of Wellhausen's
supporters to adopt my obvious analysis of Arpa
keshad into Arpa-keshad (or, since the vowel points
are merely a later addition, Ur-pa-keshad) can be
readily understood, since were they to do so they
would naturally be obliged to accept the conclusions
which result from it — conclusions which demon
strate the absurdity of their theories. Professor
Cheyne is unable to conceal the fact that if it were
really possible to assign the Priestly Code to a very
early pre-exilic date, such as the Mosaic period, for
instance, there would be nothing astonishing about
a hybrid formation such as Ur-pa-Chesed, since it is
well-known that the Egyptians of the later Empire
borrowed largely from the Semites,1 and the Semites
doubtless returned the compliment ; he adds, more
over, that the matter would stand on quite a different
footing if I were really in a position to prove " that
the personal names in the Priestly Code are to any
large extent primitive (i.e. ancient and genuine), as
is generally assumed " — an assumption which he is
strongly inclined to question.
Before concluding the present chapter, however,
I propose, in fulfilment of the promise made on p.
26, to briefly show that the personal names assigned
to the time of Moses by the Priestly Code, and more
particularly the lists of names in the Book of Num
bers, possess precisely the same features as the
Arabian personal names of the second millennium
1 Cf. more particularly pa ba'al (W. Max Muller, Asien und
Europa, p. 309), instead of ha-ba-'al, an absolutely analogous hybrid
used by the Egyptians.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 297
B.C., referred to in Chapter III. Fortunately, the
Arabian personal names of the Khammurabi dynasty,
and the Canaanite names of the Tel el-Amarna
period dealt with in Chapter VII., furnish two def
inite bases of comparison by which we may test the
earlier Hebrew personal names. They enable us to
divide these latter into two main groups ; one con
taining the still almost purely Arabic names of the
Mosaic period ; the other, the nomenclature of the
time of the Judges with its strong admixture of
Canaanite elements.
In the first place, let us see whether Wellhausen is
in the right when he says, " The long lists of names
in Num. i., vii., and xiii.1 are nearly all cast in the
same mould, and are in no way similar to genuine
ancient personal names ; " 2 or whether this assertion
is of the same hasty and dictatorial character as that
other assertion of his, in regard to the Greek origin
1 With these, of course, the names in Num. xxxiv. should also be
classed. This list Wellhausen assigns to the Persian epoch, because it
contains the name Parnak.
''Prolegomena, 2nd ed. p. 371, from which I copied the above sen
tence. Similarly in the 1st edition, a copy of which is in my own pos
session, we read on p. 334, " that these names have no parallel in an
cient times, and look very much as though they had been manufactured."
Such names, we are told, " can scarcely have been taken from Mosaic
records, especially those in which the verb is in the perfect tense." And
again, " the unquestionably ancient and genuine compounds Ishmael,
Israel, Jerahmeel, Eliezer, Othniel, Bethuel, Kemuel, are all of them
names of peoples or nations," whereas, so Wellhausen argues, personal
names compounded with El do not occur in the Jehovistic tradition
dealing with the time of Moses, nor indeed up to the time of Samuel —
all of which statements have already been shewn by the evidence ad
duced in Chapter III. to be inaccurate.

298 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
of most of the Arabian names of the constellations,
which appear in his Reste arabischen Heidenthums}
In the lists in question we find a large number of
names with which Chapter III. has already familiar
ized us ; e.g. Abi-dan = my Father judges, and Eli-ab
= my God is a Father, Eli-dad = my God is a Rela
tion, Akhi-'ezer = my Brother is Help, Akhi-ra' (orig
inally Akhi-ru'a = my Brother is a Friend, or
Akhi-Re — my Brother is Ra ?) and Akhi-hud (from
Akhi-yehud), Shemii-el (vide p. 98), Ammi-el = my
Uncle is God, Ammi-hud (from Ammi yehiid, cf.
Yehuda), Ammi-nadab = my Uncle has given, and
Ammi-shaddai = my Uncle is Shaddai (vide supra,
pp. 108 et seq), to which may be added the allied
forms Gaddi-el = my Grandfather is God, Tsuri-
Shaddai = Shaddai is my Rock, Tsuri-el = my Rock
is God, Pedah-Tsur = He (the Rock) has redeemed ;
cf. Pedah - el and Eli - Tsur = my God is a Rock.2
The following names, compounded with El, may
also be mentioned: Eli-tsaphan = my God hath
borrowed (cf. also Num. iii. 30), Eli-shama' = my
God hath harkened, El-yasaph = my God hath in
creased (from Eli-yasaph), Mi-ka-el = Who is as God
(cf. Mi-sha-el, Ex. vi. 22, and supra, pp. 71 and 141),
Gamli-el = my recompense is God, Hanni-el = my
Grace is God, Nethan-el = God gave it, Palti-el =
my redemption is God (cf. supra, p. 238), Shelumi-el
1 Cf. my exhaustive contradiction of this statement based on ancient
Arabian poetry, in a paper entitled, Ursprung und Alter der arabischen
Sternnamen, in the Zeitschr. der D. M. Gesellsch. vol. xiv. (1891) pp.
592 — 619. Cf. also the Appendix, pp. 319 — 320.
2 For S. Arabian names with Tsuri, cf. Appendix, pp. 319, 320.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 299
= my peace is God, etc. To these may be added
the abbreviated names, which are especially numer
ous in the list of the spies given in Num. xiii., such
as Bukki, Gaddi, Gemalli Palti, (cf. Palti-el and
Yaphlet), Shelomi (cf. Shelumi-el), etc. ; to this class
also belong Zimri, Num. xxv. 14 (vide supra, p. 83,
note 2), and other similar names occurring in the
Priestly Code. To complete our list, we may note
names of one element like 'Akran, 'Azzan, Shiphtan,
'Enan (from 'Ainan), Kislon, Nakhshon,1 Tsu'ar (an
other pure Arabic formation, cf. S. Arabian Tsai'ar),
Kaleb (cf. supra, p. 113), Nun (cf. the name Nunia
in a contract tablet of the time of king Zabium),
Raphti'a (cf. p. 81, Ili-rapa'a), Shaphat (cf. Shiphtan
and the name Yeho-shaphat = Yahveh judgeth, as
also En-Mishpat, p. 148), and a few more. The
verb shaphat = to judge, seems, it is true, to be
peculiar to the Canaanite language, the genuine
Arabic name-formation preferring to substitute din
(cf. supra, Abi-dan),2 but in view of the constant in
tercourse between Canaan and Egypt in the time of
the later Empire, it is by no means surprising that
words of this kind — to which may be added others,
such as tsaphan = to save (cf. supra, Eli-tsaphan and
the Phoenician Tsaphon-Ba'al) — should have gained
1 The termination 6n shows that the true Arabian termination dn (e.g.
in 'Akran) was already being assimilated to Canaanite.
2 It is indeed an open question whether the word shaphat was not orig
inally spelt with a " Sin," and whether there may not have been two
nearly allied verbs shaphat, one spelt with a Shin (modified s), the other
with a Sin (originally = sh), in which case the S. Arabian shaphata — to
determine, promise, grant (spelt, it is true, with a different t), would
apply here.

300 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
currency among the Israelites. And lastly, in re
gard to the name Parnak, which Wellhausen de
clares to be of Persian origin, Friedr. Delitzsch
( Wo lag das Paradies ? p. 265) has already found a
parallel to it in Barnaki, a territory near Tel Assur
on the Middle Euphrates, mentioned in one of Esar-
haddon's inscriptions — a name which might also be
transcribed as Parnak.1
Now, if all these names had been made to pattern,
either during or after the Captivity,2 we should
naturally expect to find them prominently repre
sented among the numerous personal names which
occur in Ezra and Nehemiah. This, however, is by
no means the case. Even such characteristic names
as those compounded with 'Amm, Tstir, and Shad
dai, are never found in post -exilic times; names
compounded with El, on the other hand, appear in
a curious medley with those compounded with Yah,
these latter being, however, by far the more numer
ous of the two. And though, it is true, that names
like Be-zal-el = under the protection of God, Ex.
xxxi. 2,3 recur under Ezra, this was of course due to
the mania for imitating Mosaic institutions, which,
after reaching the last stage of decay, had just then
been revived in an unparalleled manner.
1 As a matter of fact, this word, like many other so-called Quadrilit-
erals, may possibly have been formed from a pure Arabic Pannaku (cf.
Arab, fanaka), by the insertion of an r (dissimilation) ; many analogous
instances are to be found both in Arabic and Aramaic.
2 It would be interesting to know something more of this "pattern,"
which was available in post-exilic times.
3 Cf. Zal-munna' and Zal-pachad, LXX. Sal-paad, and the Ancient
Babylonian Tsili-Istar and similar names, p. 71.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 3OI
It is quite certain, therefore, that the names con
tained in these lists in the Book of Numbers cannot
be rightly assigned to any other period than that of
Moses. In spite, therefore, of the presence of some
names (especially in Numbers xiii.) which seem to
indicate that the text is corrupt in places, these lists
have been shown, by the external evidence of the
tradition preserved in inscriptions of the second mil
lennium B.C. (vide supra, Chapter III.), to be genuine
and trustworthy documents,1 before which historical
theories built up by modern critics of the Penta
teuch must " collapse irretrievably."
1 The names in ist Chronicles (to say nothing of those in Joshua) con
tain much ancient material, a fact sufficiently proved by such names as
Yaphlet, Yamlek, Yish'i and many others. On some future occasion I
hope to deal more fully with this point.

302 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION

CHAPTER X
FROM JOSHUA TO DAVID
RETROSPECT AND CONCLUSION
Even if we possessed no other details in regard to
the history of Israel from the conquest of the region
west of the Jordan (i.e. from the time of Joshua)
down to the reign of David or Solomon, beyond the
personal names of the period in question, and a sort
of skeleton outline of the various wars and victories,
written something after this fashion, " Gideon (Ye-
rub- Ba'al) defeated the Midianites," we should still
be able by their aid alone to secure the recognition
of one fact which has a most important bearing on
the religious history of the people. I refer to the
infiltration of Canaanite elements into the nomen
clature of Mosaic and pre-Mosaic times, which up
to the time of Joshua had been almost entirely free
from such admixture, being still essentially Arabian
in character. Names like Jerub-Ba'al (son of Saul),
Merib-Ba'al (son of Jonathan), and Be'el-yada' (son
of David, afterwards changed into Eli-yada'), speak
for themselves, and prove that by that date the
Israelites had proved unfaithful to their ancient
traditions, and had allowed themselves to be deeply
influenced by the religion of the conquered Canaan-

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 303
ites.1 Even names compounded with Adoni = my
Lord (cf. supra, p. 217), such as Adoni-ram, betray
this influence. The frequent recurrence in the Book
of Judges of passages in which we are told that the
Israelites forsook Yahveh, and followed after Ba'al
and Astarte (e.g. ii. 11 et seq), or that they inter
mingled with the Canaanites and served the gods of
their wives or of their sons-in-law (iii. 6), harmonise
in every way with the conclusions to be drawn from
a study of the personal names. These names com
pounded with Ba'al clearly shew that these laments
over the apostasy of Israel, during the time of the
Judges, are in no way due to the pen of a later
" Deuteronomistic " editor.
That this apostasy was, however, merely partial
and transitory, and that Mosaic principles always
managed to get the upper hand in the end, is evi
dent from the steady increase in the number of
names compounded with Jo, Jeho (from Yahveh)
and Jah, such as Joash, Jotham, Jeho-natan (Jona
than), Abi-jah, Joab, Zeruiah, Shephat-iah, Adoni
jah, Uri-jah, Jeho-shaphat, Bena-iah, Jehoiada. Al
though a son of David bore a name containing the
element Ba'al, viz. Be'el-iada' — which was, however,
afterwards, and probably during David's life-time,
altered to Eli-iada' — we find from this period forward
no other instance of a Hebrew personal name con-
1 To this list may be added the name 'Ebed-Ba'al = servant of Ba'al,
Judges ix. 26. In the Hebrew text the name appears simply as 'Ebed ;
the LXX. variant, Io-Ba'al = Yahveh is Ba'al, proves, however, Ihot
this name must originally have been compounded with Ba'al, and in that
case must naturally have been 'Ebed-Ba'al.

304 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
taining Ba'al — not even a single example during the
time of the Kings of Israel — a circumstance we may
well be allowed to attribute to the permanent influ
ence of such men as Samuel. Not even a king like
Ahab dared in later times to give to his son an ap
pellation involving Ba'al. On the contrary, it is
manifestly apparent from the names of the Israelite
kings, from Solomon onwards, that Yahveh was
the prevailing element in all personal designations.
How, we may well ask, could the Mosaic Priestly
Law come into general usage at a period when,
owing to intercourse with the Canaanites, and the
appropriation of their language, there was such an
assumption of heathen ideas as to almost swamp the
pure worship of Yahveh ? The Priests and Prophets
who remained true to their faith, must have felt no
little satisfaction at having been able to transfer
faithfully, by paraphrase or translation, the Holy
traditions into the lately -cultivated speech1 and
newly-adopted characters of Canaan. In their act
ual surroundings, and amid the prevailing confu
sion this must have been their first desirable object.
They must have endeavoured, moreover, to secure
a wider recognition of the claims of Yahveh, as op
posed to the cults of Baal and Astarte, in order to
prepare for the introduction of His worship, which
1 This was the Old Testament Hebrew, which although really essen
tially identical with the ancient Canaanite speech, must have taken over
much from the earlier language (Arabic) of the Israelites ; see pp. 274
and 286. I have not hesitated to express my belief, that the linguistic
peculiarities of the Priestly Code especially preserve evidence of ancient
Arabic survivals.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 305
was already bound up with the Mosaic Code. In
this they were successful, and Solomon was the man
who was called upon to complete the task which
they had begun. The temple was there ready for
the purpose, but the worship of Strange Gods, in
troduced by foreign Princesses, threatened to ruin
everything. Solomon died, and it was left to his
successors to fulfil the neglected duty ; but the un
fortunate political schism took place, and with it a
further departure from the faith. There still re
mained, however, at Jerusalem a sacerdotal body to
hand on the legacy bequeathed by Moses, and to
continue their work throughout the time of the
Kings, as we may readily gather from what is re
lated of Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah, and Josiah.
If we were in possession of the Book of the Wars
of the Lord, or of the Book of the Upright (Sepher
ha-jashar, in which we may see an allusion to Je-
shurun-Israel), we should doubtless see many things
in a clearer light. Still, there is enough material in
the personal names involving the name of God, and
in the continuous external testimony to the true tra
dition, furnished by inscriptions to make manifest
for all time the falsity of the reconstruction of history
associated with the Wellhausen School. Think for
a moment of the new horizon opened to us by the
Arabic names of the Khammu-rabi dynasty ! Who
would have dared but a short time ago to have
presumed that, as far back as 1700 B.C., Ai or Ya,
Shaddai and Shemu (Sum-hu), were in currency as
expressions of the religious life of the early progen
itors of the Hebrews, and that such names as " Ya is

306 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
Priest " (Ya-Kaleb, shortened into Kaleb), " my Un
cle (or Father) is Shaddai" ('Ammi-Shaddai), "his
name is God " (Samuel), reach back into that defi
nite early period reckoned by the disciples of Well
hausen as mythical ! We have seen, from the evi
dence of personal names, and of inscriptions also,
that personalities such as those of Abraham and
Melchizedek have nothing of the nature of anachro
nisms about them, but rest upon traditions which had
been put into writing long before the time of Moses.
We have learned from the Tel el-Amarna tablets
the history of the period prior to the Exodus, and
have been able to follow the raiding expeditions
into the then semi-Egyptian Canaan, undertaken by
the tribe of Asher and the Khabiri, at a time con
siderably before Moses. Lastly, we gather from the
South Arabian inscriptions materials for completing
our knowledge of the Sacerdotal system of the Mid-
ianites — a system which plays such an important
part in the Mosaic history. And how much further
material lies still buried in the soil of Babylon, Ara
bia, and Egypt, with promise of new surprises and
further confirmation! Let us in the meantime, in
thankful acknowledgment of the Providence of God,
rejoice in the treasures already brought to the sur
face. The contemporaneous monuments, illustrating
the religious and secular history of Abraham's time,
are indeed worth their weight in gold, and deserve,
in an aspect not yet touched upon in the previous
chapters, to be still more fully appreciated.
If Abraham were in reality, as both the Bible and
the monotheistic names of his people and contempo-

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 307
raries found in the inscriptions prove, the upholder
of a concept of Deity which, though simple and
childlike, was at the same time a profound recogni
tion of the Divine Unity, then we are put in posses
sion of a new light on Primitive Biblical History
(Gen. i., ii.).
As the Israelites did not borrow their " Patriarch
Legends " at first hand from the Baal-worshippers
of Canaan, they did not in manner become possessed
of the primitive history of mankind. A people with
such a past religious history as the children of Israel,
would certainly have no need to rely upon the sub
jugated peoples of Palestine for accounts of the
Creation of the world, the Fall, the Deluge, and of
their early progenitors ; seemingly mythological
traces — the so-called anthropomorphisms — in the Je
hovist source, which from a linguistic point of view
shews much fewer evidences of an Arabic original
than the Priestly Code, may at most have been ow
ing to Canaanite influences.1 In other respects, the
first eleven chapters of Genesis show, as is well
known, the closest relationship with the correspond
ing traditions of Babylonia — with this important ex
ception, that while the latter is inter-penetrated with
Sumerian Polytheism, the Bible exhibits nothing but
the purest Monotheism — the anthropomorphism as
cribed to the Jehovist reflecting only in a superficial
1 It is not at all impossible that the clearly distinguishable Jehovist
portions of Genesis represent generally a recension of the ancient tradi
tional material made in the time of the Judges. In this case we should
not be obliged to look (as on p. 287, where we hazarded the hypothesis)
to the period of the Kings for this recension.

308 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
manner, if at all, anything of a polytheistic concep
tion. We have, it is true, the usual explanations of
fered us, either that the Babylonian traditions were
introduced from Assyria in the time of King Ahaz
— an utterly untenable hypothesis — or, what has
more plausibility about it, the theory that these tra
ditions were brought into Canaan in the Tel el-
Amarna epoch, and became known to the Israelites
in later times. On either hypothesis, the Israelites
must then for the first time, under the influence of
the Prophets of the time of the Kings, have rejected
the polytheistic element.1
The whole affair appears naturally in quite another
light once we recognize the monotheism of Abra
ham — the " Friend of God," who emigrated from the
confines of Babylonia into Palestine. While in
1890, in treating of the account of Creation given in
Genesis i., I brought myself under the displeasure
of Wellhausen by speaking " of the ingenuity of the
last recension as being equivalent to a Revela
tion,"2 I now no longer hesitate to say that the
Monotheistic concept of the Biblical text, and espe
cially of the " Priestly Code,"3 must, compared with
the Babylonian polytheistic version, be regarded as
' Cf. H. Gunkel's Schopfung und Chaos in Urzeit und Endzeit, mit
Beitragen von H. Zimmern, Goltingen, 1 895, in which important book
the second hypothesis is put forward.
2 Inschriftliche Glossen und Exkurse zur Genesis und den Propheten,
II. (Neue Kirchliche Zeitschrift, vol. I. pp. 393 — 412) p. 407.
3 Or, perhaps better, the Elohist portions. For the narrative portion,
and especially in Genesis, which modern critics ascribe to the " Priestly
Codex," belongs to material of the original Elohist, the Source E of
Wellhausen, and the B of Dillmann.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 309
the original. Gunkel's remark, on p. 149 of the book
referred to in note 1 of the preceding page, that it
was the "dilettanti" who "gave themselves up to
visions in regard to the religious conditions of that
primitive period when Abraham dwelt in Ur-Kas-
dim" is in this respect characteristic. Twenty
pages further on he himself even dares to face the
ticklish question whether we should not " go back
to a still more ancient period, and connect with
Abraham the introduction of the Babylonian Crea
tion myth among the Hebrews " (p. 167). He comes
to the conclusion, that " even if there were no reason
to regard the tradition itself as unhistorical (that is,
that Abraham was an emigrant from Babylonia), it
would not apparently be advisable to leave the sure
footing of history and transfer ourselves into a dis
tant period of which Hebrew tradition had at most
given only a few scattered details." We have seen,
however, in the present volume, how near that " dis
tant period " has been brought to us by the Ancient
Babylonian contract tablets, what an important in
fluence the section of the West Semites to which
Abraham belonged had already at this time managed
to assert in Babylonia, and how trustworthy and
true Hebrew tradition, dealing with pre -Mosaic
times, had shown itself to be. Gunkel's book, there
fore, is in many parts — notwithstanding the author's
contrary intention — only a further confirmation of
the position which I have taken up in regard to the
Wellhausen hypothesis.
Among important things which the Hebrews
brought from Babylonia, may also be reckoned a

310 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
copious borrowing of the poetic art in its formal
aspect. Zimmern in 1893, following a hint of Gun
kel's, had already made the important discovery'
that the Babylonian metres consisted of a regular
arrangement of accented syllables, which by means
of the cassura placed at the end of every half-verse,1
were made up frequently into distichs, tristichs, or
tetrastichs. Gunkel makes, in the work referred to,
an application of this law, with the happiest results,
to ancient Hebrew Poetry, of which he gives many
translated examples. I append an example, which
illustrates at one and the same time this metrical
form, and the well-known parallelism of members
(Parallelismus Membrorum).
Righteousness and judgment are | the foundation of Thy Throne,
Mercy and truth | go before Thy face.
(Ps. Ixxxix. 14.)
The following is another instance, which Franz
Delitzsch, at least in his German version, either
accidentally or intentionally, cast into its proper
rhythm. He that dwells in the ward of the Highest
And abides in the shide of the Mightiest. (Ps. xci. 1.)
With which we may compare the lines from the
Babylonian Creation Epos :
1 H. Zimmern Bin vorlaufiges Wort tiber babylonische Metrik, Zeit-
schr. f. Assyriologie, vol. viii. pp. 121— 124. Cf. the later treatise,
Weiteres zur babylonischen Metrik, ibid. vol. x. 1895, pp. 1  24. Cf.
also p. 183, where the metre of the Kudurlugmal fragment is dealt with.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 311
Naught shall be reformed | what ever I furnish,
Ne'er be taken back | the word of my mouth !
or (from the same) :
After he thus his opposer | subdued and thus vanquished,
The haughty contradictor, | to shame thus had brought him.1
This metrical arrangement in strophes had, it is
true, been imported from Babylon into Canaan dur
ing the long period when the latter country was
under Babylonian rule and influenced by Baby-
onian culture. We find traces of this even in the
Tel el-Amarna tablets. That the Israelites did not
borrow it in the first instance from the Canaanites,
but from Abraham's time forward (when they were
still Arabs) obtained it like many other things di
rect from Babylonia, is clear from the following
circumstance. We find in the earliest forms of
Arab poetry, namely the so-called Ragaz (Rejez)
Poems, a marked instance of imitation of the Baby
lonian strophe.2 The Ragaz forms the connecting
link between the latter and the various Arab metres,
such as Ka.mil, Wafir, etc., which are distinguished
by a regular alternation of long and short syllables.
That the connection here mentioned goes back to
Abrahamic times is manifest from the expressions
hagawa, saga' a (Arabic, sag'u [sej'] = rhymed prose ;
Babylonian, shegil = song of mourning), which were
1 Cf. also the citation on p. 63 from Ishtar's Descent into Hell.
2 I have called attention in my Assyriological Notes, § 16, Proceed
ings Bibl. Arch. Soc. Jan. 1896 (where I have given an example), to
the fact that rhyme is here occasionally employed. It is always used in
the Arabic Ragaz verse.

312 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
employed both in Hebrew and Arabic when it was
necessary to infuse a stirring element into poetical
and prophetical pieces.1
To return to early Hebrew history after this di
gression into the domain of metre, it would be well
worth the trouble to deal — from the new standpoint
furnished by the researches and results of the pres
ent work — more fully with the entire material of the
first eleven chapters of Genesis, and to illustrate it
from Babylonian parallels. There would in such a
case be much to say about the lofty concepts of
Deity held by the Northern Babylonian Semites (cf.
p. 74, twelfth line from the foot), a concept which
makes itself clearly apparent in many examples of
the religious literature of the Babylonians, all inter
penetrated as it was by Sumerian polytheism.2
But I must defer for a future occasion the consid-
1 A more artistic reproduction of the strophe, such as that pointed out
by D. H. Miiller in several portions of the Prophets, Father Zenner in
various Psalms, and F. Perles in certain other songs (eg. Deut. xxxii.),
depends upon the introduction of a certain rhetorical element into poe
try, of which, in spite of D. H. Miiller's assertion to the contrary (Die
Propheten in ihrer urspr. Form, Vienna, 1896), no instance has yet
been discovered in Babylonian poetry. It is impossible to admit that the
observations of D. H. Miiller and Zenner (who are dependent on each
other), in regard to the form of the strophe and to the antiphonal ar
rangement, can be referred back to early Semitic times, as D. H. Miil
ler most earnestly insists on p. 212 of the work referred to. Perhaps I
may be allowed, in face of the ostentatious manner in which Miiller's
book was introduced to the world, to point out that many kindred points
are hinted at, or expressly dealt with, in Franz Delitzsch's Commentary
on the Psalms, especially his translations of the same.
2 Cf. what is said on p. 86 of the system of name-giving which ob
tained among the Babylonian Semites ; also the deep piety of the Baby
lonian Psalms of penitence, etc.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 313
eration of this, as of many other points, on account
of the limits of space, and will content myself in con
clusion with drawing attention briefly to a section
of the primitive history which clearly indicates the
Old - Chaldaean (i.e. according to pp. 210 et seq.,
the Arabo- Babylonian) origin of the Hebrews. I
refer to the description given in Genesis ii. 10 — 14 of
the geographical position of Paradise — (v. 8) " And
the Lord God planted a garden eastward, in Eden,
(i.e. in the desert, Babylonian Edin, and thus over
against Babylonia, i.e. in Arabia). . . . (v. 10) And
a river went out . . . thence it was parted, and be
came four heads, (v. 11) The name of the first is
Pishon; that is it which compasseth the whole land
of Khawilah (Havilah), where there is gold. (v. 12)
And the gold of that land is good ; there is the Be-
dolakh [Bdellium, R. V.] and the Shohamstone
[Onyx or Beryl stone, R. V.]. (v. 13) And the name
of the second river is Gikhon [Gihon] ; the same is
it that encompasseth the whole land of Kush. (v. 14)
And the name of the third river is Khid-dekel [Hid-
dekel] ; that is it which goeth in front of Ashur
[R. V. Assyria] ; and the fourth river is the Phrat
[Euphrates]." Now E. Glaser has already shown, in several pas
sages of his Skizze, that by Pishon and Gikhon the
two great central Arabian Wadys, er-Rumma and
Dawasir, were possibly meant ; furthermore, that by
Khavila (Havilah) the hinterland of Bahrein, in an
cient times productive of gold and precious stones,
was intended (see pp. 211 and 272 of the present
work, for the relation of the latter to the " Country

314 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
of the Sea " of the cuneiform inscriptions), and that
Kush is a known Biblical designation of Central
Arabia x ; — for the corroboration of which I refer
my readers to my fuller treatment of the subject in
the second volume of the Neue Kirchlichen Zeit
schrift? As for the Khiddekel [Hiddekel], which
had, on account of a similarity of sound, been identi
fied later with the Tigris (Idignat, Diglat, cf. Dan. x.
4), it also has a manifest Arabian application. It is
only by the Arabic word Khadd, an expression for
Wady, that the first element in this river- name,
which has hitherto been uniformly misunderstood,
can be explained : it is the " Wady of Diklah "
(Gen. x. 27), or the Wady of Palms. By the latter,
however, the Wady el-'Arish is not perhaps intend
ed, but rather, according to the hydrographical
deductions of Glaser (Skizze II. 343),3 the Wady Sir-
han, or the Northern Arabian Jof, which flows into
the Euphrates, and to the river-system of which a
complete network of Wadys, tb the eastward of the
S. Palestinian land of Ashur, belong, thus corre
sponding with the Biblical description [" Khadd-
1 Cf. for instance 2 Chron. xiv., and my commentary on it [Zerach of
Kush, a. Sabaean prince] in the Acts of the 10th Oriental Congress
(Geneva), 3rd part, Leiden 1896, pp. 112 et seq.
2 Tnschrift. Glossen und Exkurse, 4th vol. of the Neue Kirchliche Zeit
schrift, pp. 881 — 902.
3 Glaser thus writes : " It is also to be noted that the Northern Jauf
does not carry its waters towards Jebel Shammar, but in the direction of
the Euphrates, or probably, like the Wady er-Rumma, straight to the
northern part of the Persian Gulf .... These Wadys hardly ever
reach the sea, but their course is recognisable by fruitful spots here and
there, spots which engendered the belief at all times that these were
stages in the course of the Wadi er-Rumma."

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 3 1 5
dekel] that is it which goeth in front of (that is, to
the eastward of) Ashur [i.e. E. of Edom, and not
Assyria, as in R. V.].
Thus the Paradise of the Hebrews, according to
their early, if not earliest conception, lay between
the Euphrates on the east and the land of Ashur on
the west (cf. p. 238, where the boundaries of Gen.
xxv. 18 are dealt with) ; it was watered by the
Pishon (the Faishan or Saihan of the Arabs) and the
Gikhon (Gei'han) and its most glorious portion, to
judge by the emphasis laid upon its products, was
Khavila [Havilah] or North-eastern Arabia. This
conception could have been formed only at a time
not very far removed from that in which the He
brews had left their ancient father-land — probably
soon after Abraham's journey from Ur to Haran —
and in no case so late as a post-Mosaic period. Con
sequently, we have clear evidence that Abraham
must have brought the primitive traditions with him,
and that they were not borrowed for the first time
from the Canaanites after the conquest of the region
to the west of the Jordan.
With this reference to the Paradise, I bring my
investigations to a conclusion. These investigations
will result in recovering, I trust, for Biblical Science
a territory which has been regarded by many of late
as a long-lost Eden, upon which they had nothing
but regretful sighs to bestow. I have not much
hope of converting quickly to my views the advanced
critics, to whom the slightest attempt to invest
Abraham and his time with reality must appear as

316 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
the child-like efforts of dilettanti, only worthy of a
pitying smile. My highest reward shall be attained,
however, if I can restore to many younger theolo
gians, and many of the cultured laity too — who have
tllowed themselves, with some impatience, it is true,
md half-hearted opposition, to be bewitched and
:onfused by the daring of Wellhausen's scientific
lemonstrations — the ancient Biblical Paradise of
their faith, which they had already begun to mourn
as irrevocably lost.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 317

APPENDIX
(d) THE LAND OF YADl'A-AB
On p. 82, the appellations Yada'a-abu, Yada'a-ilu,
Yada'a-sumhu and Sumaida' (as to which latter cf. p.
98) are mentioned, together with a number of other
South Arabian personal names. With Yada'a-ilu
may be compared Yedi'a-el, a name which occurs in
the genealogical tables in the Books of the Chroni
cles. In regard to Yada'a-ab, however — a name
which we find in the South Arabian inscriptions ap
plied to several kings of the Hadramaut 1 — Father
Scheil has just published (Recueil, xix. p. 21) a very
interesting contract-tablet date, ofthe time of Samsu-
iluna, one of the kings of the Khammurabi dynasty
(vide supra, p. 68), which runs as follows —
" In the year in which Samsu-iluna, the king, (in)
Ya-di-kha-bu and Guti, the mountain-forests (khur-
shdnd) caused stems (Ideogr. ul, Semitic elbu) of date-
palms (mis-uk-a-na) and of gam-trees to be cut (or
felled)." The gam-tree, or kiddatu? is the laurus Cassia, so
that evidently both Yadikhabu and Guti must have
been situated in Arabia. This latter name is else-
1 Cf. Mordtmann, Z.D.G.M. xxxi. p. 80, and more recently,
Glaser, Abessinier, p. 34 etc.
a Pronounced with a strong ^-sound cf. Hebrew kiddah.

31 8 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
where applied to a region which lay to the east of
Assyria, but it is evident from the context that it is
here used of some place either between or on the
wooded plateaux of Arabia ; the name appears to be
identical with the Arabic Gawwat, for the Arabian
geographers mention the fact that Yemama was
formerly known as Gaww.1
It is quite clear, therefore, both from the Hebrew
Yedi'a-el and from this word Yadikhabu, that the
Arabian names in question ought to be pronounced
Yadi'a-ilu and Yadi'a-abu respectively (instead of
Yada'a-ilu etc.). (b) THE DIVINE NAME TStJR
In regard to the ancient Hebrew name Tsiir (rock),
which came to be employed as a Divine appellation
(vide p. 297), special prominence being given to it in
the Song of Moses (Deut. xxxii. 4, " The Rock, his
work is perfect ; " v. 37, " the Rock in which they
trusted "), as well as in other passages in the Old
Testament (e.g. 1 Sam. ii. 2, in the Song of Hannah ;
in Ps. xviii. and 2 Sam. xxii. etc.), and which occurs as
a place-name in Beth-Tsur (cf. Beth-el), near Hebron,
I have just come upon this in a South Arabian votive
inscription from Harim, where it occurs in the name
1 Even in the South Arabian inscriptions we find the Gaww as the
name of a district near Saba (vide my Sudarab. Chrestomathie, p. ill),
in which Dhfl-Alam, k sanctuary of Sin in the Hadramaut, would seem
to have been situated. Probably, too, the king Tudkhul (of Goi, Gen.
xiv. 1), mentioned above on p. 184, ought to be referred to this terri
tory, rather than to Guti, which lay to the east of Assyria.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 319
of a female slave, or temple hand-maiden, apparently
of Midianite origin.1
As I had occasion to point out some time ago
(Aufsdtze and Abhandl. p. 29, note 1), the names in the
inscriptions Hal. 144 — 146, 148, 150, 151, 153 — 159,3
which occur after the Divine name Motab-Natiyan,3
are not attributes applied to this deity, but personal
names. Moreover, when we come to compare
them with similar names — often very much alike
in sound — in the Minaean temple records, referred
to on p. 237, we find that they are feminine per
sonal names. Side by side with such names as
Abi-hamaya = my Father protests, Abi-radsawa=
my Father is well pleased, Abi-shapaka=my Father
gives freely, Abi-shawwara=my Father consents (?),
Ili-hail (cf. the Hebrew female name Abi-hail), we
also come across the female name Tsuri-'addana,4
which in Hebrew must have been written Tsiiri-
'addan. In the Zinjerli inscriptions, again, (N. Syria, 8th
century B.C.,) we find Tsur in the name of king
Bir-tsur (= the god Bir is a Rock) of Sam'al, who is
the adversary of a certain king Azri-Ya'u (a name
compounded with Yahveh) of Ya'udi, a district of
N. Syria. As I have elsewhere s pointed out, these
1 Cf. Num. xxv. 15, where a prince of the Midianites bears the name
Tsur — an abbreviation from Tsur{-el.
2 These inscriptions date from the time of the Sabaean priest-kings,
i.e. from the 8th century B.C. at latest, or perhaps a good deal earlier.
3 Cf. the name of the Nabataean deity, Mautebah.
4 Cf. Hebrew Yeh6-'addan, 2 Kings xiv. 2, the mother of king Amaziah
(= my rock, i.e. God, is pleased).
6 Das graphische h im mindischen (vide supra, p. 273, note 1).

320 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
inscriptions come down to us from races who were
originally natives of Edom or Midian.
Now, since this name Tsur crops up in the 8th
century B.C., as a divine appellation employed both
in South Arabia and in Sam'al, and in both cases as
an importation from N.W. Arabia (thus indicating
a common source), it is evident that its first intro
duction into the land of Midian must have taken
place at least some centuries earlier, a fact which is
of decisive importance in determining the antiquity
of Hebrew names compounded with Tsur (vide
supra, p. 298).
The female names Abi-radsawa, Ili-hail and Tstiri-
'addana, in the votive inscriptions dating from the
time of king Yadhmur-malik of Harim (according to
Glaser, a contemporary of Kariba-ili Watar, priest-
king of Saba), correspond to the female names in
the Minaean temple records; viz.: Abi-radsawa (of
Bausan), Abi-hail (of Gaza), and Abi-'addana (of
Gaza), the meaning of this last name being " my
Father is pleased," instead of " my Rock is pleased."1
The fact that both the Hebrew Yeho-'addan, and the
S. Arab. Abi-'addana and Tsuri- addana, are female
names, is very interesting, and shows once again the
very close relationship which existed between the
ancient Hebrew and South Arabian (more especially
the Minaean or Midianite) nomenclature ; nor can
Of course, it is only the names that are identical, their owners being
different in each case. These female slaves consecrated to the deity,
most of whom came from Midian — some of them, however, from Kataban
and Hadramaut as well — seem to have performed the same functions as
the lavi'&t, or female Levites, mentioned on pp. 276 et seq.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 321
it be a mere accident that the same element hamaya
= to protect, appears both in the Hebrew female
name Hami-tal (written Khami-tal, cf. Abi-tal) and
in the Minaean female name Abi-hamaya, or that the
element hail is employed in both the female names
Ili-hail (Minaean) and Abi-hail (Hebrew).
In this connexion — and as a further illustration of
my remarks on pp. 277 et seq. — I may be allowed to
draw attention to another interesting votive inscrip
tion (Hal. 681), the author of which is a woman, and
which runs as follows — " Muraggila (or Margula),
daughter of Thauban, the Hanakitess, has offered
up a thank-offering and vow (tanakhkhayat wa- tan-
adhdhharan, cf . Hebrew minkhah l and neder) to the
lord (ba'al) of the house of her god, Su'aid, because
she had prayed to him for forgiveness,2 that he
might again be pacified ; then laid he a penance on
her, she, however, offered a sin-offering (khatta'at,
Heb. pie I, e.g. Lev. vi. 19) and paid forfeit (?) and
humbled herself ; may he (the god) in mercy reward
her for it." These and similar inscriptions (cf. also
Hal. 147, 149, and 152 from Harim), though they
cannot be classed with the Ancient Sabaean, un
doubtedly belong to the era before Christ, at a
period when the Jewish influences which afterwards
(from about 300 a.d. onwards) came into operation
1 In this case minhah = bloodless sacrifice, and minhah = gift, must
be etymologically distinct.
2 Similar bronze tablets from Harim contain, in place of this expression,
the words "because she, on the third day of the festival (cf. Ex. xix. 15)
and moreover during the time of her impurity, had come near unto a
man " (Gl. 1054, Vienna Museum), or " because she had transgressed
(ha-ihata'at) in the sanctuary " (Hal. 682).

322 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
in South Arabic cannot have yet been in operation ;
this is sufficiently proved by the references found in
them to heathen deities, such as Dhu-Samway, Hal-
fan (god of oaths), and Athtar. The ritual term
khat'at = sin-offering, must, therefore, have been in
digenous to South Arabia from the time of the an
cient Minaeans.

(c) THE LAND OF EBER
An article by Eduard Glaser (dated March 13,
1897), dealing with the antiquity of the Minaean in
scriptions, which has just appeared in Berlin, in the
Mittheilungen der vorderasiatischen Gesellschaft, may
be usefully compared with what I have said on pp.
251 — 259. Glaser, who looked through the proof-
sheets of the present volume, and whom I have to
thank for his kindness in allowing me to see the ar
ticle in question before it was printed, suggests an
extremely probable explanation of the parallel refer
ences (dealt with on p. 251) in regard to
Egypt, Gaza and A'shur,
Egypt, A'shur and Ibr naharan,
which, in my opinion, throws for the first time a full
light on the original position of the Land of Eber.
Glaser's conclusions are briefly as follows —
(a) The sequence in question is a purely geo
graphical one, viz. first Egypt, then Gaza, then the
territory of A'shur lying further to the south-east of
Gaza, and lastly Ibr naharan. Gaza is not specially
mentioned in the second enumeration, and ought
probably to be taken as forming part of Ashur, but

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 323
in any case it is certainly not identical with Ibr na
haran, which must rather be looked for somewhere
beyond Gaza and Ashur; to the Minaeans it meant
either the region east of the Jordan,1 or the terri
tory situated to the northward of Ashur (i.e. Pales
tine proper and Syria), or even both of these to
gether. (b) A close examination will show that the expres
sion Eber ha-nahar, in the Old Testament, is nowhere
used of Mesopotamia, but always of the western
bank of the Euphrates.2 Even in 2 Sam. x. 16, it
is much more probable that the region referred to
is that of Aleppo and Mambidji, rather than, as
has hitherto been assumed, Haran.
(c) The name originated in Babylonia, not in Pales
tine, but (as I also assumed) at an early period of
Babylonian history. The Canaanites named the in
habitants of the land of Eber (which latter region
must have included Ur, Borsippa, the Shuhite coun
try — in short, the whole of the territory on the west
ern bank of the Lower and Middle Euphrates), Ibri
(or Hebrews), because they came from this region.
The geographical term Ebir nari (Eber ha-nahar,
Ibr naharan) must have travelled westward with the
Hebrews (Abraham) and the races allied to them
(mentioned in the Bible as descendants of Abraham).
A parallel case is that of the term Meshriki (= na
tive of the east), which was originally applied to the
1 In this connexion, I may point out that the Minaeans undoubtedly
had relations with Ammon, Moab, and Dedan (cf. supra, p. 271 et seq.).
2 On p. 254, note I, I have advanced a contrary proposition ; following
in this all who had previously attempted to explain the name.

324 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
inhabitants of Eastern Yemen, by the Western Ye
menites, but which came in time to be used of the
former even by the Arabs inhabiting the regions
still further eastward. The fact that the Biblical
genealogy personifies the land of Eber as one of the
forefathers of Abraham, can only be explained on
the assumption that Ibri (= inhabitant of the land
of Eber) was a designation applied to Abraham by
his contemporaries ; in any case, however, the term
Ebir nari must have been applied to the western bank
of the Euphrates long before the time of Abraham.
In view of these conclusions of Glaser's, it will
first of all be necessary to modify what is said on pp.
251 et seq., in reference to the passage in 1 Kings iv.
24. No importance need now be attached to the
glosses "from Raphi to Gaza" and "from Takhpis
to Gaza," while in the Massoretic text the gloss
" from Tiphsah to Gaza," even though it may be a
later interpolation, seems to represent the view en
tertained as far back as the time of Solomon. Simi
larly the Ba'al-Tsapiina (pp. 253 et seq) of the inscrip
tion of Assur-bel-kala refers rather to the Ba'al of
Lebanon. Moreover, on p. 255, Mesopotamia, as the second,
if merely temporary, home of Abraham, must be en
tirely abandoned. Ebir nari was rather originally
the region between Borsippa and Ur, including the
adjoining " Country of the Sea " to the southward,
and was therefore at once the original home of
Abraham and of all the Western Semitic tribes
whose descent is traced from him in Genesis. This
is very clearly indicated in Josh. xxiv. 2, where we

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE MONUMENTS 325
read : " Your fathers dwelt of old in Eber ha-nahar,
even Terah, the father of Abraham and the father
of Nahor, and they served other gods. (3) And I
.took your father Abraham from Eber ha-nahar and
led him throughout all the land of Canaan." This
passage furnishes an exact parallel to Gen. xi. 31 (gen
erally assigned to the Priestly Code) : " And Terah
took Abraham his son, etc., and they went forth with
them from Ur Kasdim to go into the land of Canaan ;
and they came into Haran and dwelt there." In the
first of these two passages, Haran in Mesopotamia
is not mentioned at all, even as a temporary halting-
place on the journey from Ur to Canaan, while in the
second it is only added at the end of the sentence.
The parallel expressions are, " from Eber ha-nahar to
Canaan," and " from Ur to Canaan." In Josh. xxiv.
2, therefore, the term Eber ha-nahar cannot be in
tended for Haran in Mesopotamia, since even accord
ing to Gen. xv. 7 (Jehovist), Ur Kasdim was the
earliest home of Abraham ; cf. moreover, the further
evidence in favour of Ur afforded by Arpakeshad (Ur-
pakeshad = Ur Kasdim), and the collateral fact that
in the Hebrew genealogy (Gen. xi. 14, and cf. x. 24
et seq) the name of Eber occurs between Arpakeshad
and Terah. There can no longer be the slightest
doubt, therefore, that Eber ha-nahar (shortened in
to Eber) was originally merely a synonym for Ur
Kasdim; in the time of Assur-bel-kala (ca. 1100 B.C.)
Ebir nari was already used as a name for Palestine,
1 In regard to the text K. 3500, published for the first time in its en
tirety on pp. 194 et seq. supra, I may say that my attention was first
drawn to it by a brief reference in Winckler's Geschichte IsracPs, p. 223,

326 THE ANCIENT HEBREW TRADITION
and finally, in the time of the Captivity, for the
whole region between the Euphrates and the Medi
terranean, then more particularly of Palestine. The
changes undergone by this term, which first origi
nated in Babylonia (not in Palestine as is wrongly as
sumed on p. 255) at a very early period of Babylo
nian history, is intimately bound up with the migra
tion of the Hebrews from Ur into Canaan.
These researches of Glaser's, outlined above, leave
the arguments I have advanced on pp. 235 — 250, in
regard to the position of the land of Ashur in South
ern Palestine, and the close connexion between the
parallel expressions, " Ashur and Eber," in Balaam's
prophecy, and " A'shur and Ibr naharan " in the
Minaean inscription, Gl. 1 1 55, entirely unaffected.
note 1, where Baal-za-bu [. . .] alone is in question as one of the gods of
ebir ndri, a name which Winckler had already restored as Baal-tsa-pu-
[na]. Prior to this, Bezold in his Catalogue K. 3500, had published in
the cuneiform script, but without any transcription or translation, the
passages, " the gods of Ebir naii, may they curse you with an irrevocable
curse, Baal-sa-me-me, Baal-ma-la-gi-i, Baal-za-bu-bi-i," and " Astarlu in
the mighty battle the Bow." . . . Neither Bezold nor Winckler, how
ever, made any attempt to identify the name of the king or the dale at
which the inscription was composed ; Bezold simply calls it "Prayer (?)
of Assyrian king (?) for the destruction of his enemies ; mention is made
of various gods of foreign countries," the two passages cited above then
follow as an indication of the tenour of the inscription.
In conclusion, I must again lay emphasis on the fact that in my Auf
sdtze und Abhandlungen, p. 7, note 8 (cf. also p. 123, Ibru naharan in
the translate n of the Hebrew Inscription), I had already, owing to an
erroneous geographical conception, identified eber ha-nahar with ibr
nahardn, but that Winckler (in the note quoted above from his book)
was the first to identify ebir nari with eber ha-nahar, though on the
other hand he has, as I think quite wrongly, up to the present, denied
that either of them are identical with the Minaean ibr naharan.

INDEX

Aaron, 281, 283, 293
-ab, 84,. 298, 303
Abatia, in
Abd-ashirti, 155, 218
Abd-ashrati, 218
Abd-ashtarti, 218
Abd-el, 105
Abdi-milkut, 217
Abd-kheres, 231
Abd-khiba, 154 ff, 228, 229, 231
Abd-milki, 217
Abd-tirshi, 231
Abi- (in S. Arab, names), 84
-abi, 97
Abi-'addana, 320
Abi-ali, 84
Abi-amara, 84
Abiathar, 283
Abi-baal, 217, 222
Abida', 118 «., 236, 270
Abi-dan, 298
Abi-dhamara, 84
Abi-dhara'a, 84
Abi-hail, 319
Abi-hamaya, 319
Abijah, 303
Abi-kariba, 84
Abi-milki, 217, 222, 228
Abi-ner, 217 n.
Abi-noam, 218 ».
Abi-radsawa, 319, 320
Abi-ramu, 72 n., 94 andn., IOI
Abi-sami'a, 84
Abi-shapaka, 84, 319
Abi-shawwara, 319
Abishu'a, 53, 68 (King), 75, gl,
92, «., 107, «., 207, «.
Abi-tal, 321
Abi-wakula, 84

Abi-yada", 84, 236 «., 248, 250,
270 f.
Abi-yashukha, 107 n.
Abi-yathu'a, 53, 84, 207
Abi-yati'u, 207
Abi-za'ada, 84
Abner, 217, «.
Abraham (Abram), 45, 69, 72 «. ,
94, 95. i°9, "6, 125. »32, '39.
146 ff., 189, 197, 199, 209, 236,
242, 269, 275, 293, 306 f., 308,
3°9, 3r5
Abu-Ai, 143
Abum-kima-ili, 71
Abu-rama, 142
Achaemenides, 23, 31, 179
Achivi, 261
achlamah, 204, 281 «.
Achlami, 203 f .
adda, 166, 175
-'addana, 320
Addi, Addu, 218, 219
Addu-dayan, 219
Addu-mikhir, 218, 219
'Adhara-ilu, 82, ill
Adon, 222, 223
Adoni, 217, 223, 302
Adoni-baal, 217
Adonijah, 223, 302
Adoni-ram, 302
Adoni-tsedek, 231
Aduna, 217
A-Ea-kalamma, 121
jElanitic Gulf, 148, 270
Agamis, Agavis, 168 n.
Agu, 168 n.
Agu-kak-rimi, 136, 204, 209
Ahab, 264 n. , 304
Aharon, v. Aaron

328

INDEX

Ahaz, 308
Ahi-lub, 284
Ai (goddess), 66, 74, 114, 224
Ai (god) 112, 114, 143, 218 n.
222, 224
Ai-da'ama, 218 n.
Ai-daggama, 218
Ai-kalabu, 112 ff.
Ai-kamaru, 113
Ailat, 191, (v. also Elat) 194
Ai-rammu, 112
Ai-rishat, 74
Ajalon, 229
Akbar, m
Akharru, v. Amurru
Akhi- (Names with), 83
Akhi-ezer, 298
Akhi-hud, 298
Akhi-kariba, 84
Akhi-milki, 217, 221 «.
Akhi-ra', 298
Akhi-ram, 217
Akibu, 83, 110, 274
Akkad, 36 ff., 148, 185
Akran, 299 and n.
Aku, 73
Aku-dainu, 73
Akur-ul-anna, 121
A'lam, 204
Alasia (Cyprus), 245
Alexander (the Great), 1 33
-'ali, 84
Al-kheresh, 238
Allah, 290
Almaku-hu, 80, 117 and n.
Alman, 204
Amalek, 148, 235, 240, 241, 244
-amara, 84
Amariah, 286
Amarna, v. Tel-el-Amarna
Amartu, 171
Amat-Istar, 188
Amaziah, 319 n.
Amen-em-hait, 51
Amenothes, 32, 154, 213
'ami-da, 8r
Amil-Bel, 61
Amlatu, 211
Amlilatu, 211

'Amm, 48, 300
ammatu, 192 n.
'Ammi- (Arab.), 83 (Hebr.), 91
Ammi-amara, 84
,, -anisa, 84
Ammi-Baal, 217, 222 n.
-dhara'a, 84
-el, 90, 298
-hud, 98, 298
-kariba, 84
-nadab, 90, 95 «., 298
-sadugga, 88
-sami'a, £4, 248
-satana, 78, 93 and «., 95 «.,
107 ff., 130
-shaddai, 109, 298.
-shapaka, 84
-tsaduka, 84, 90, 246, 248
-yada'a, 84
-yapi'a, 84
-yathu'a, 84
-zaduga, 68, 75, 89, 92 »., 93
and n.
Ammon, 48, 148, 201, 221 «., 237,
271
Ammu-ladin, 91
Ammu-nira, 217, 222 ». 228
Ammu-rabi, 105, 192
Ammu-rapaltu, 192
Amorites, 34 n. , 57, 148, 171, 245
(v. also Martu).
Amos, 14 f.
Amraphel, 43, 93, 124, 147, 192 f.
Ammi-anshi, 49, 51
Amu. 47, S2
Amukkan, 211
-amur, 141 n.
Amur-Ashir, 141 n.
Amur-ila, 67
Amurri, 34 »., 57
Amur-Samas, 141 n.
'An, 257
Anab, 262
Ana-pani-ili, 72
Anat, 218, 219, 222
An-Baal, 7i«.
Anbay (Nebo), 80, 116, 273 ft.
'Aner, 149, 150, 158
-anisa, 84

INDEX

329

An-Karih, 78, 79 and n.
Anshan, 37, 170
Anu, 66, 167, 175
Anu-bani, 62 «.
Anubis, 281
Anunit, 66, 184
-apika, 84
Apil-Bel, 121, 181 ».
Apil-Ea, 121
Apil-ili-shu, 73
Apil-Sin, 68, 72 «., 93, 103
Apir, 234
Apiru, v. Epri
Arabia, 34 f., 40
Arabia, East, 234 n., 268
Arabic, 202, 226, 304 n.
Arad-Elali, 115
Arad-Nirgal, 72
Arad-Ramman, 72
Arad-Sin, 169
Aram-Nabaraim, 204
Aramaeans, 201 ff„ 220
Aramaic, 54 f., 201, 202
Araru, 262
Arba, v. Kirjath Arba
-Ardat, 232 n.
Ari, 222
Ari-el, 222
Arioch, v. Eri-Aku
Artsh (Wady el-), 236, 242, 251 n ,
255 f-
Arka, 234
Arman, 205
Aroer, 262
Arpakeshad, 2\oandn.,2$6, 292 ff.
Arrapach, 295 f.
Arvad, 217, 245
-asaph, 107 n., 217
Ashdod, 217, 221
Asher, 226 (v. also Asser)
Asherah, 218, 221
-ashir, 142
Ashir (god). 141 n.
Ashir-emuki, 141 n.
Ashir-tayar, 141 n.
Ashkelon, 221, 228, 264
Ashnunnak, 168
Ashtar-Kamosh, 273
Ashtaroth, v. Astaroth

Ashteroth-Karnaim, 148, 272, 273
Ashupi-ilu, 142 n.
Ashur (Assyra), 141 «., 144. 237
A'shflr, 247, 249, 250, 322 f.
Ashur (in S. Palestine), 237, 238,
243, 244, 252, 260, 263, and 11.,
3r3. 3J5
Ashur-Ai, 143
Ashur-bani, 141 n.
Ashurim, 236, 238
Ashur-imiti, 141 n.
Ashur- ishtakal, 141 n.
Ashur-rabi, 141 n.
Asser, 226 andn., 233, 234, 235 f.,
238 n. , 264, 265
Assur, v. Ashur
Assur-bani-pal, 194
Assur-bel-kala, 194 and n. , 253
Assur-dan, 139
Assur-natsir-pal, 19477., 219
Assyria, 30
Assyrians, 139 ff.
Assyriology, 29 f.
Astar, 222 (v. Athtar)
Astarte, 115 »., 195, 2T9, 222 f.,
303
Astar! i (City of), 262
Asurbanipal, v. Assurb.
Atar-ilu, 142
Athtar, 79 ff., 116, 247, 322
Atonement, Day of, 280
Aum, 80
-awwas, 81
Ayab, 261
Ayin, 230
azala, 278
Azanum, in
-'azar, in, 293
Az-azel, 278
Azi-baal, 217
azkarah, 277 f.
Azri-Yau, 319
-'azza, 81
Azzan, 299
Baal, 115 «., 217, 218, 222 f.,
223 f., 2S6, 302 f.
an-Baal, 79 n.
ha-Baal, 296 72.

33Q

INDEX

pa- Baal, 296 «.
Baal-khaniinu, 217
Baal-maher, 219 72.
Baaloth, 273 77.
Baal-ram, 219 72.
Baal-samemi, 195
Baal-shaphat, 219
Baal-tsapuna, 253, 254
Baal-zabubi, 253
Baal-zephon, 253 f.
Ba-Anah, 272 n.
Ba-Asa, 272 77
Babylon (Babel), 162, 181, 184 f.,
187 ff.
Babylonia, 30 f., 268
Babylonian Pantheon, 62 ff.
Bahrein, 211, 247 72., 272 f.. 313
(v. also "Country of the Sea")
Ba'ilat Tsapuna, 254 72.
Baiti-ilani, 194
Balaam, v. Bileam
1 Balah, 248
Balak, 193
-bali, -balu, 71, 141 «.
Bamoth, 285
-bani, v. Anu-bani, Ashurbani, etc.
Bani-Sin, 72
bar, 208 72.
Barakish, 248 72.
Bared, 242
Barnaki, 300
Barnea (Kadesh), 148
Barsip, 35
Bashan, 148, 240, 243, 272
Basmat, 269 n.
Batsish, 234 72.
Ba'u, 65
Bausan, 320
Be-dad, 220 72., 272 72.
Beel-yada', 302, 303
Reerot, 228
Beersheba, 226. 242, 243
Be-eshterah, 272
Beirut, 228
Bel, 58, 62 f., 65 (== Ramman)
108, 144, i67i !75» '81, 181 72.,
218, 219
Bela, 162, 193, 196 (P. N.), 152,
220 72.

Bel-Ai, 143
Bel-Harran-shadfia, 108
Beli-ishmeanni, 73
-bel-kala, 194
Bel-kapkapu, 140
Bel-nadin-apli, 130
Bel-shadua, 108
Bel-shimia, 128 f.
Benaiah, 303
Benjamin, 261 «.
Be'or, 152
Berdan, 242 72.
Berosus, 133, 136
Beth-Tsur, 318
Bethel, 194, 202, 295, 318
Bethuel, 297 n.
Be-zal-el, 301
Bi-Athtar, 79, 220 «., 273
Bikhishi, 261 f.
Bildad, 156
Bileam (Balaam), 26, 91, 152, 220
72., 243 ff., 289
Bi-mabali-Uzza, 237
Bi-mehal, 238 «.
Bin-inima, 261
Bir-tsur, 319
Birtu, 206
Bit-Amukkan, 211
Bit-Khabbatu, 187
Bit-Saggil, 184 f.
Bit-Sha'alli, 211
Bit-Yakin, 211 72.
Bit-Zidda, v. Ezidda
Bodi-el, 203
Borsippa, 182, 183, 209, 323 f.
*' Brook of Egypt," v. Arish
Bubastis, 260
Budi-Baal, 217
Budi-ilu, 203
Bukki, 299
Bulala, 205 72.
Burnaburiash, 59, 123, 133, 136,
'37
Bur-Ramman, 73
Bur-Sin, 37
Byblos, v. Gebal
Caesarea, 140
Cambyses, 78, 248 ».

INDEX

331

Canaan, 264
Canaanite, 92 f., 119, 155, 215 f.,
221, 273 f., 286, 302 if.
Caphtor, 205
Cappadocian Tablets, 141 ff.
Carchemish, 203, 245
Cassia (Laurus), 317
-chadd, 314
Chaldaeans, 210 f., 259 n.
Chalup-tree, 35
Chamranu, 206
Charflu, 206, 207
Cheber, 232, 238 n., 258 n.
Chedor-la omer, v. Kudur-lagamar
Chindaru, 206
Chodollogomor, 147 n.
Covenant, Book of the, 10, 20
Cyprus, 245 and 72.
Cyrus, 248 72., 259 72.

-da'ama, 218 n.
Da'am-melek, 218 n.
-dad, 298
Dadi- (Names with), 84
Dadi-kariba, 84
Dagan-takala, 218
-dainu, 73
Damascus, 212, 219, 268
Damgal-nunna, 65
-damik, 73 f., 102 «.
Damki-ili-shu, 121
Damku (god), 67 (P. N.), 102 72.
Damunu, 206, 211
-dan, 139, 298
Daphne, 252
Darius, 259 72.
Darkness (Land of), 35 »., 182,
183
Date-palm, 34, 317
David, 287, 303
Dawasir, 313
-dayan, 219
Debir, 221 n.
Decalogue, 20, 26
Dedan (Tidanu), 34, 236 ff., 270,
271
Dennaba, 220 n.
Descent of Ishtar into Hell, 64

Deuteronomy, 4, 10, 11, 282 ff.,
288 n.
dhakar, 278
¦dhamara, 84
-dhara'a, 81, 84
-dharaha, 81
Dhar'i-kariba, 84
Dhimri- (Names with), 81
Dhimri-ali, 84
,, -kariba, 84
,, -yada'a, 84
Dhu-Alam, 318 72.
Dhu-r-Rumma for er-Rumma (v.
Rum ma)
Dhu-Samway, 322
Dinhabah, 220 72.
Dintir (Babylon), 187 f.
Dor, 234
Dothan, 232 n.
Dul-mach, 179
Dunib, 220 n.
Dun-pa-uddu, 63
Duplicate passages in the O. T.,
19 f.
Dur-ili, 170, 177, 186
Dur-mach-ilani, 184 ff.
duru (in personal names), 186 n.
Dzapgan, 246
Ea, 62, 64 f. ( = Sin), 106, 167
Ea-gamil, 124
Ea-ma-la-ilu, 98 n.
Ebed, 303 72.
Ebed-Baal, 303 72.
Eber, 96, 244 ff., 256 f., 322 ff.
Eber ha-nahar, 251 f., 254 ff., 323^
Ebiasaph, 107 n.
Ebir-nari, 195, 254 ff., 323 ff.
Ebsha'a, 52
Ebyatar, 107 72.
Eden, 313
Edom, 112, 148, 152, 201 f., 225,
235. 237, 261 f-, 32°
Eglon, 221 72.
Egypt, 227, 237, 243, 247, 250
Egyptian, Loanwords, 291 f., 295
ekhnome, 281
Eki, 105, 192 (Babylon), 187 ff.
Eki-rapaltu, 105, 192

332

INDEX

Ekron, 240, 253
EI, 223, 297 77., 302
Elali, 115, 142
Elali-bani, 115
Elam, 37 f. , 40, 159, 169, 175,
181 f., 185, 207, 234, 292
Elamite, P. N., 59
Elani, 142
Elat, 196 (v. also Ailat)
El-eazar, in, 293
El-Elyon, v. Elyun
Eli-ab, 298
Eli-dad, 298
Eli-ezer, in, 118 «., 297 72.
Eli-Shama, 298
Eli-tsaphan, 299
Eli-tsur, 298
Eliyada, 302, 303
Eliyasaph, 298
el-Oela, 77, 271, 276
Ellasar (Larsa), 147
Elmodad, in
Elohist, 9, 308 77.
El-Pa'ran, 194, 197
Fl-Shaddai, v. Shaddai
Elyon, 150 ff., 154 ff., 223
Emim, 148
Emi-zaduga, 107 72.
Emu ( = Ammu), 91, 107 72., 156
-emuki, 73, 141 72.
Emutbal, v. Yamutbal
En-anab, 262
Enan, 299
Engedi, 148
En-mishpat, 148, 255
Ennam-Ai, 141 72.
Ennam-Ashir, 141 72.
Ennam-Sin, 141 77.
En-nun-dagalla, 105, 180 f., 183
Enun, 105
Ephah, 236
ephah (measure), 293
Eponymous Rulers, 143, 144
Epri, 257 f.
Erecti, 121 77., 128, 167, 175
Eri-Aku, v. Iri-Aku
Eri-Aku (Arioch, Ri-Aku), 40 f.,
69, 147, 159, 166, 167 ff., 184s.,
189, 203

Eridu, 167
er-Rumma (Wady), 313, 314 n.
E-saggil, v. Bit-Saggil
Esarhaddon, 255, 300
Esau, 201, 261
Eshcol, 149, 150, 158
Eshru, 260
Ethnological Table, 95
Ezekiel, 279, 282 ff.
-ezer, 115, 298
E-zidda, 182
Ezra, 14, 23, 279, 300
Faishan, 315
fanaka, 300 n.
Feminine names, 319, 320
Fetishism, 28, 290
Gadanum, in
Gadatas, 24
Gaddi, 299
Gaddi-el, 298
Gamaru, 142
Gambulu, 206, 211
-gamil, 73, 121
Gamli-el, 298
gam-tree, 317
Gamunu, in
Gari, 262 f.
Garia, 142
Gath, 229 72., 232, 241
Gaww, 318 and n.
Gawwat, 318
Gaza, 221, 225, 236, 237, 243 f.
250 ff., 268, 271, 320
Gazri, 229, v. also Gezer
Gebal, 155, 217, 219, 228, 245 72.
Geihan, 315
Gelam, 241
Gemalli, 299
Gerar, 242 n.
Ger-Ashtoreth, 219
Ger-melek, 219
Gesem, 225 n.
Geshur, 240 ff.
Gezer, 220, 221, 229, 231, 241 72.,
264
ghaliyat, ghalwa, 277
Ghanna, 63 and n.

INDEX

333

Gibeon, 225
Gibil, 65
Gibil-gamis, 39, I28
Gideon, 269
Gikhon [Gihon], 313, 315
Gilead, 269
Gillo, 241
Gimil-Ea, 62
Gimil-ili, 67
Gimil-Samas, 62
Gimil-Sin, 37, 237
Gimti, 229
Gimti (Ginti)-Kirmil, 229, 261
gin (Measure), 291 72.
Gir, 208
Giri-dadi, 219
Girrala-gamil, 105, 1 79 72. (v. also
Urra-Ia-g)
Girsu, 208 f.
Gishban, 205 and n.
Gishdubar (Nimrod), 35, 39, 128
Gishgalla, 105
Goi, 147, 184, 204, 208 72., 318 72.
Goshen, 125, 214, 225 ff., 235, 257,
260
Gosom, 225
Gu, 208 72.
Gubin, 35
Gudea, 34ff.,ig8, 237
Gula, 63 and n., 65, 194
Gul-ki-shar, 121, 126, 129 f.
Gumanatu, in
Gurruda, 193
Gushgin-banda, 65
Guti, 204, 208 72., 317, 318 72.
ha-Baal, 296 72.
Hadad, 219, 220 and n.
Hadar, 262
Hadramaut, 76, 77, 79, 268, 272,
3I7, 3I8 72., 32O 72.
Hagar, 242, 269
¦hail, 319
Halfan, 322
Ham, 48
Hama-Atht, 79, 246
-hamaya, 319
Hami-tal, 321
Hammamat, 257

Hanakitess, 321
Hanni-baal, 217
Hanni-el, 298
Haran (Harran), 72, 108, 147,
202, 204, 209
Haiim, 318, 320, 321
Hasor, 231
Hauhum, 221 72.
Haupi-Atht, 79
Haupi-ilu, 79
hawaya, hawah, 100, 1 14
hayah, 100
Hazezon-Tamar, 148
Hebrew, 95, 96, ioo, n8, 215 f.,
228, 274 f., 286 72., 304 72.
Hebrews, 95, 229 ff. , 256 ff .
Hebron, 149, 158, 202, 221 72.,
229 77., 231 f., 242
Helal, 115
Helam, 204
Heroopolis, 257 72.
Heru-sha, 47
Hiddekel, v. Khiddekel
hilal, 115
Hin {measure), 291
Hiram, 217
Hittites, 155, 245 72., 264 (v. also
Khattu and Kheta)
Hoham, 221 72.
Holiness, Law of, 10
Horam, 221 n., 231
Horites, 148, 261 f.
Horus, 281
Hosea, n, 16
-hud (from yehiid), 298
Hyksos, 43
Ibishu, 91, 107 72.
Ibla, 34
Ibni-ilu, 62
Ibr naharan, 247, 248 ff., 322 ff.
Ibri, 230 f., 256 f., 323
Ibshi-na-ilu, 99, 100 72.
-idinam, 73
Ichabod, 115
I-ezer, 115
Igur-kapkapu, 140
Ikib-ilu, 142
-ikisham, 73

334

INDEX

Ikun-ka-ilu, 99
Ilali, 115
-ilat, 79
Ili-'amida, 81
,,-awwas, 81
,,-'azza, 81
,,-dhara'a, 81
,,-dharaha, 81
,,-emuki, 141 72.
,,-hail, 319, 320
,,-ishtikal, 141 72.
,, -kariba, 81 72.
,,-ma-amur, 141 72.
, ,-ma-nabata, 81
,,-padaya, 81
,, -rabbi, 81
,,-radsawa, 81
,,-rapa'a, 81
,,-sa'ada, 81
,,-sami'a, 81
,,- hara'a, 82
,,-sharraha, 82
,,-wahaba, 81
,,-yada'a, 81
,,-yapi'a, 81, 248, 250
,,-yasu'a, 249
,,-za'ada, 81
-illat-su, 73
Ilsu, 249
Ilu-abi, 98
Ilu-amar, 143
Ilu-ashir, 203
Ilu-bani, 62, 67, 141
Ilu-damtk, 74, 102 72.
Ilu-ishme-khani, 71
Ilu-ma, 127
Ilu-ma-Gishdubba, 128
Ilu-ma-ilu, 121, 127
Ilu-milki, 142
Ilu-na, 107
Ilu-ni, 67
Ilu-ral bi, 106, 207
Ili'-shu-ahu-shu, 73
Imgur-Sin, 72
-imiti, 141 72.
Imperfect Forms, 59 f.
-imuki, v -emuki
Incense, 270, 271
Incense, Altar of, 277
* For other

Ine-Tutu, 1S1
Ingi, 36
Ingi (Ki-Ingi), 36
Ini- Malik, 61
Ini-Sin, 37
I-noam, I-nuam, 218 n , 264
Ipik-ili-na, 107
-irigam, 73
Irikatta, 234
Irishti-Ai, 72
Irsu, 249
-irtsiti, 98 and rt.
Isaac, 201, 242
Ishai, 115
Ishbaal, 219
Ishbak, 236
Ishbi-Nirgal, 61
Ish-ki-bal, 121, 130
-ishmeanni, 73
-ishmi, 73
Ishmael, 118 ft., 270, 297 n.
Ishmaelnes, 2or, 269
Ishmi-d.igan. 61, 140 72.
Ishmi-Siii, 73
Ishnunna, 168
-ishtakal, 141
Ishtar, 63 64, 65, 74, 166, 194
Ishtar-lamazi, 141 n.
Isimanai, 195 «.
Isir'il, 258, 264
ismid, 52 72.
Israel, 228, 257, 297 n.
Istar-umma-sha, 74
I-tagama, 218
I-takkama, 218
Ithamar, 115
ithmid. 52 7«.
Itti-nibi, 121
Izebel, 115
*Jacob, 109, 118 >2., 125, 132,
201 ff.
Jacob-el, no 72., 294
Jebus, 199
Jehoiada, 303
Jehonathan [Jonathan], 303
Jehoshaphat, 223, 299, 303
Jehovah, ico 72.
Jehovist, 9, 2 8, 307 and n.
words usually spelt with J see under Y.

INDEX

335

Jeremiah, 16
Jericho, 49, 231
Jeroboam, 91
Jerub-baal, 302
Jerusalem, 149, 153, 199 f., 229,
230 ; v. also Salem
Jeshurun, 305
Jethro, 276, 279 f., 289
Joab, 303
Joash, 303
Job, 261
Jobaal, 303 72.
Jof, 3H
Jokhebed, 115
Jokshan, 236, 270
Joktan, 96
Jonah, 144
Joram, 112
Jordan, 193, 254
Jordan, Region East of, 271 f., 323
Joseph, III « , 114 72., 132, 269
Joshua, 221, 223, 225, 231, 302
Jotham, 303
Judah, 242 (v. also Yehuda)
Judge of the dead, 73
Junbula, 206 72.
-ka-, 298
Kabadh, 78
-kabod, 115
Kabri, 206 (for Kibri)
kadesh, 113
Kadesh (Barnea), 148, 162, 191,
225, 243.
Kain, 242, 243
Kainan, 256
-kalabu, 112
kalabu, 113
Kaldu, 210 f.
Kaleb, 299, 306
Kalu, 196
kamaru, 112
Kambyses, v. Cambyses
Kamosh, 273
Kapasi, 155 72.
Kardu, 210 f.
Karduniash (Babylonia), 187, 210
-kariba, 81, 84
Kariba-ilu, 82

Kariba-ilu Watar, 78, 320
Karmel, 226, 229, 241
Karnaim, 148, 272
Karnak, 260, 265
Karnavu, 247, 272
Kashdim, 210, 247 72.
Kashdu, 210 f.
Kashi, 38 f .
Kassite, P. N., 59, 104
Kassites, 38, 136 f ., 234, 293
Katabamans, 48, 76 f ., 272, 229 72.
-kebed, 115
Kedar, 207, 237, 270, 271
kedeshah, 113
Kedor-laomer, v. Kudurlagamar
Keft, 155 72.
Keilah, 229, 232, 260
Kelakh, 238
keleb, 113
Keleb-elim, 114
Kemuel, 297 72.
Kenites, 243 f.
Keshad, 210, 292 ff. , 295
Ketsiah, 269
Keturah, 269
Keturies, 201
Khabbatu, 187 «., 230
Khabirai, 234
Khabiri, 155, 230 ff., 235, 236, 264
Khakhum, 34
Khali- (Names with), 83
Khali-amara, 84
" -ilu, 207
" -kariba, 84
" -wakula, 84
" -yada'a, 84
Khami-tal, 321
Khammu-rabi, 41, 44, 69, 88, 92,
95, 103 f., 118 ff., 14472., 164,
172 ff., 179, 183, 192 f., 259
Khammu-rabi dynasty, 68 f. (v.
also Khammu-rabi)
Khamu-niri, 217 72.
Khana, v. Ghanna
-khani, 71
Khani-rabbat, 1 87
knanun, 217
Khanunu, 221 72.
Khapini, 262

3&

INDEX

Khapir, 234
Khar, 262 72., 265
Kharbi-shipak, 234
Kharshu-ba-naimat, 238
khatta'at (Sin-offering), 321
Khatu, 37
Khavila [Havilah], 238, 239, 247
»-.a3aI3, 3'5
Khavilan, 247
Khayani, 262
Khayappa, 236 n.
Khebron, v. Hebron
Kheta, 245, 264
Khid-Dekel, 314 f.
Khini-Anabi, 262
Khnum-hotpu, 52
khoshen, 280 ff.
Khumbaba, 40
Khusha, 115
-ki-, 141
Kibri, 207 f.
lcicl Jah, 317 72.
Ki-Ingi, v. Ingi
Kilti, 229
-kima-, 71, 185
Kimashu, 34, 38, 183
kimmatu, 106
Kimta-rapashtu, 88
Kimtu-kittu, 88
Kimtu-rapaltu, 105, 183
Kingi, v. Ingi
Kir, 205 ff., 208, 211
Kirjath Arba, 229 ?»., 232 f.
Kirmil, 229
Kishar, 33, 37, 57
Kish-ili, 73
Kittim, 245 72.
kittu, 71, 88
Kode, 245
kohen, 17
komer, 113
Kubburu, in
Kudur - dugmal, v. Kudur - laga -
mar
Kudur-lagamar, 40 f., 147 f., 164,
171 ff., 178 ff., 193
Kudur-mabug, 40 f., 57, 159, 166
«•, 175 f-> 177
Kudur-nankhundi, 159

Kudur-nuggamar, v. Kudur-laga
mar
Kudurra, 234
kummu, 106
Kurigalzu, 136
Kush, 39, 314 and n.
Kushites, 39 f.
Kuti, 245
Labaya, 229, 232 72., 232, 266
Labdudu, 206
Lachish, 220, 221, 228, 231
Ladanum, 269
-ladin, 91
Lagamal, 44, 159
Lagamar, 44, 159, 173
Lahai Roi, 207, 242
-lamazi, 141
Lamga, 117 72.
Larsa, 40, 159, 162 72., 165 f.,
168, 177 f. ; v. also Ellasar
Lat, 79
lavi'u, lavi'at, 276, 320 72.
Leba'oth, 232 (not Leba'oth)
Lebbakh-tree, 35
leshem, 281, 291
Letushim, 236
Le'ummim, 236
Levi, 233, 266 f., 277
Levite priestesses, 320 72.
Levites, 277, 282 ff.
Libnat, 241
-libshi, 99
Libyans, 264 f.
Li'itau, 206
-liki, 73
-litsi, 99
Lot, 146 f., 148
Luchuatu, 206 f.
Lugal-banda, 65
Luhai-Atht, 207
lummu, 106
Lycians, 265
-ma- (in Arab. P. N.), 82
Ma-'an, 76 f. (v. also Minaeans),
247, 270, 271
Madal, 262
Madga, 193

INDEX

337

Madhai, 247 and n.
Ma'di-, 83 If., 143
Ma'di-kariba, 84, 248
Magan, 34, 7672., 271
-magir, 73
¦mahali-, 238
-maher, 219
Ma'in, 76 and n.
Mair, 194, 196
Makhdi, 143
Makhnubi-ilu, m
Makhnuzu, in
Makrub, 76, 113
Malagi, 193, 195, 196, 253
Malgi, Malgu, 193, 196, 253
malgii, 193
Malik (God), 61
„ erroneous reading for Ai,
112 72.
-Malik, 61, 320
Malikhu, 206
maliku, 230
Malka, 193
Malkiel, 233, 258 72.
Mamlu-Ea, 121
Mamre, 149, 150, 157
Manda-tribes, 181
Mannu-balu-ili, 71
Mannu-shanin-Samas, 70, 141 n.
Manum-bali-Ashir, 141 72.
,, -balu-ili, 141 n.
,, ,, -Tshtar, 141 72.
„ ki-Ashur, 151 72.
Ma'on, 76 «., 225, 271
Maphlitat, 238
Mar'ash, 37, 212
marat irtsiti, 98 72.
Marduk, 63, 144, 185
Marduk-Ai, 143
Mirduk-akhi-irba, 234
M.irduk-shadua, 108
Marckik-taiar, 141 n.
margu, 193 (for murgu)
Margula, 321
Mar-irlsiti, 98
Mar-Istar, 73
Markhashi, 37
Mar-Simani, 195 72.
Martu (god), 57, 72

Martu (West, Countries of the,
Amorite-land), 34, 57 f.,
166, 170 f., 194 >2., 223, 237
,, -bani-ameli, 70
Mash, 34, 35, 183
Mashkhuru, 142
Massaean, 112
Matan-Addi, 218
Matred, 262
Maltan, 217
Matlan-Baal, 217, 219
Mauk, 169 72.
Mautebah, 319 72.
Mavuk, 169 72.
Mazanum, in
Mazoy, 250 72.
Medan, 236, 238
Media, 248 72.
Medina, 271
Mehdeba, 262 72., 274
Mehetab-el, 262
Melakh, 196
Melam-kurkurra, 121
Melam-matali, 121
Melchior, 217
Melchi-zedek, 146, 149 ff., 190,
289
-melek, 218 n., 221
Melk-kart, 221
Melukhkha, 34
Memphis, 254 72., 280
Mentu, Menti, 47, 260
Mephaat, 272
Merib-Baal, 302
Merodach, v. Marduk
— baladan, 2 II 72.
Mesa, 273 f.
mesdemet, 52 f.
Meshriki, 323
Mesopotamia, 252, 255 f., 323 ff.
Metre, 182, 310 f.
Me-Turnat, 205
Me-zahab, 262 and n.
Midian, 236, 247 72., 249 n., 270,
276 f., 279, 319, 32022.
Midianites, 269, 319 72.
Mi-ka-el, 398
-mikhir, 219
Milam-, v. Melam

338

INDEX

Milgia, 193, 195
milk (King), 217, 221, 230
-milki, 217
Milki-ashapa, 217
Milki-el, 229, 231 f.
Milki-ramu, 142
Milki-uri, 217
Milkom, 221 72.
Milkura, 217
-milkut, 217
Minaean, 76 72., 90, 100 f., 115,
246 ff., 268 ff., 319
Minephtah, 122, 244, 258, 264 f.
Minkhah, 321 72.
Mi-sha-el, 298
Mish-ki, 182
Mishpat, 148, 299
Mishtu, 261 f.
Mitanni, 155 and n.
Mitinti, 221
Mitsr, 237 (v. also Egypt)
Mi-ur-urra, 166
Moab, 148, 201, 237, 271, 272 f.
-modad, m
Monotheism, 74
Moreh, 171 72.
Moses, 114, 161, 199, 223, 224,
275 ff., 291, 305
Motab, 319
Muabbit-kissati, 121, 126
-muballit, 73
Mudadi, 75, III
-mudi, 73
mukarrib, 76
-munna', 300 72.
Muraggila, 321
murgu, 193
Mutabil, 170
Mut-Addi, 218, 219, 261
Mutsran, 246, 248, 270, 276
-na (suffix), 60, 107 f., in
Nab'al, 79 72.
-nabata, 81
NabataeanF, 206 72., 319 72.
Nabati, 142, 207
Nabatu, 206 f.
Nabi-Sin, 72
Nabium, v. Nabu

Nabonassar, 133
Nabonidus, 123, 164
Nabti- (names with), 83, 207
Nabti-ali, 84
,, -kariba, 84
„ -yapi'a, 84
Nabu (Nabium, Nebo), 40, 63, 80
103, 181
Nabu-kima-abi-shanani, 185
-nadab, 90
-nadiba, 84
-nadin, 129
nahar, 251, 254
Naharim, Naharin, 155, 204, 22072.
Nahor, 210
-na'imat, 238
nakhal Mitsrayim, 255
Nakhshon, 299
Nakrah, 78 ana n.
Name of Yahveh, 87
Names of three elements, 70 f.
Naram-Sin, xiii., 72. 61
naru, 250
Nash'i- (names with), 83
Nash'i-kariba, 84
Nashk, 78
-natan, 303
Natan-Addu, 218, 219
Natanum, 82
Natiyan, 319
-natsir, 73
Natunu, 75, m
Nebayoth, 206 72., 270, 273
Nebo, v. Nabu
Nebo (Mt.), 273, 274, 285
Nebuchadnezzar I., 129
,, II., 259 and 11.
neder, 321
Negeb, 242, 252
Nehemiah, 23, 300
-ner, 217 72.
Nergal, v. Nirgal ..
neshem, 281
Nethan-el, 298
-ni (suffix), 60
Nimrod, v. Gishdubar and Gibil-
gamis
Nina (goddess), v. Ghanna, Gula
Nindar, 66, 144

INDEX

339

Nindar- Ai, 143
Ningal, 64, 116
Ningirshu, 67
Nin-gish-zidda, 66
Nin-lilla, 66
Nin-mar, 116
Ninni, 65
Nin-shagh, 167
Nippur, 166, 167
-nira, v. Ammu-nira
Nirgal, 63, 144, 156
Nirgal-Ai, 143
Nisaba, 64
Nisin, 36, 140 72., 162 72., 167 f.
-no'am, 218 72.
-nu (suffix), 60
Nuffar [Niffer], 166 72.
Nun (Hebr.), 299
Nun, 62
Nunia, 299
Nun-magh, 166
-nur, 70
Nur Bel, The, 37 f., 57
Nur-ili-shu, 72
Nur-Ramman, 62, 177 72.
Nur-Samas, 72
Nur-Sin, 72
Nusku, 40, 63, 65
Oedem, 49
el-Oela, 77, 271, 276
Og, 243
olah, 277
Ophir, 234 72.
Opis, 173 »•• 20S
-or, -uri, 217
Orthography, 274 f.
Othniel, 297 72.
pa (Arabic), 98 72.
„ (Eg. ariicle), 293
pa-Baal, 296 72.
pa-bil-sag, 63
Padan, 205
Padan- Aram, 202, 204 f.
-padaya, 81
Pa'ish, 262
Pakes, Pakesem, 225 72.
pakhnd (cf. Gen. xxxi. 42), 300 72.

Paknu, 129 72.
Pa-la-Samas, 98 n.
Palti, 298
Palti-el, 298
Pan-ki, 205 n.
Pannaku, 300 72.
Paradise, 313 ff.
Pa'ran, El, 148
Parnak, 300
Parsu, 248 n.
Pasagga, 63
Pedah-tsur, 298
Pe'ish, 261
Pekod, 206 72.
Peleg, 96
Pelusium, 252, 253
Pene, Baal, 115 72.
Persia, 248 72.
Pesakh, 291 f.
peshet, pesht, 291
Pethor, 220 72.
Phakus, 225 72.
Philistines, 205, 240, 244, 256
Phinehas, 284, 291, 294
Phoenician, 215, 220, 274; v. also
Canaanite
Phoen. alphabet, 75, 274, 275 72.
Phoenicians, 265
Pidia, 228
Pikinnu, 129 n.
Piknanum, 129 72.
-pilakh, 73
Pilakh Ashur, 141 72.
Pir'am, 221 72.
Pir'i-Ai, 73
Pir'u, 221 72.
Pishon, 313, 315
pishtah, 291
-pi-shu, 71
pttu, 291 72.
Planet-gods, 62 f.
Potiphar, 291
Priestly Code, 9 f., 14, 16 f., 26,
277 ff., 30472., 307, 30872.
Psalms of Penitence, 312 f. and n.
Pu-Addi, 218
Pukudu, 206
Pulasati, 244
Pungunu-ilu, 129

340

INDEX

Puti-el, 291, 293
-putram, 73

Rabbat-Ammon, 187
Rabbatu, 185, 187
-rabbi, 81
Rabbi-Atht, 207 ?2.
Rabbi-nadiba, 84
-rabi, 140
Rabi-Addi, 218
Rabi'af, 207 72.
Rabi-ilu, 207 f.
-radsawa, 81, 319, 320
Ragaz (metre), 311
Ragmat, 247
-ram, 217
Ramman, 57, 62, 65 (= Bel), 73,
218
Ramman-rimeni, 73
Ramses (Land of), 228 72.
Ramses II., 125 and n., 228, 231,
23S
III., 231, 244 f., 249
„ IV., 257
-rapa'a, 81
Raphi, Raphia, 251 «., 254, 324
Raphua, 299
Rapiku, 206
Reguel, 276
Rehoboth, 220 72.
Rephaim, 148
Resen, 140 72.
Resheph, 219
Re'u, 206 72.
Rhyme, 311 72.
Ri-Aku, v. Eri-Aku
Rib-Addi, 49, 155, 218, 2igandn.,
228, 245 72.
Rida', 247, 248 and n.
-rimeni, 73
Rim-Sin, 169
-rishat, 74
Riyam, 250
-riyam, 84, 101
Rubuti, 229, 232 f .
Rubu'u, 206
Rummulutu, 206
Ru'ua, 206

-sa'ada, 81
Sa'ada-Wadd, 79
Saba, 76, 236, 247, 318 72.
Sabaean Deities, 79
,, Inscriptions, 76 f.
Sabaeans, 247 n.
Sabitu, 35
Sabu, 35 72., 38
Sa'd, 246, 248, 270
Sa'd-Lat, 79
Sa'du-ilat, 79
Sa'du-Wadd, 79
Sagas, 208, 228
Saihan, 315
Saklus, 265
Salem, 149, 152, 199
Salmanasar I., 203
,, II., 264 72.
Sam'al, 219, 243 72., 319
Samas, 64, 74, 144
Samas-abi, 98
Samas-abuni, 73
Samas-Ai, 143
Samas-bani, 73, 141 72.
Samas-ilu-ka-i,i, 72 72.
Samas-mudi, 73
Samas-natsir, 73
Samas-natsir-apli, 70
Samas-nur-mate, 70
Samas-rabi, 141 72.
Samas-shar-kitti, 71
Samas-tairu, 73
Samas-ushur, v. Ud-ushur
-sami'a, 82, 84
Samsi-Ramman, 140 f.
Samsu-iluna, 60, 68, 89, 91, 102,
i°7. 3'7
Samsu-riami, 102
Samsu-satana, 68, 102, nof.
Samuel, 99, 304, 306 (v. also
Shemu-el)
Sapati-baal, 217, 219
Sapin-mat-nukurti, 121, 1 30
Sapiya, 211
Sar, 23g 72.
Saragiti, 206
Sardinians, 265 (v. also Shirdana)
Sargon, xiii., 72. 198
Sargon (of Assyria), 195 77., 23677.

INDEX

341

sata, satu, 107
-sata-na, 107 ff.
Script, Hebrew, 273 f.
Sea, Country of the, 128, 129, 181,
183, 211, 27272., 313
Sea, Peoples of the, 244 f. , 264
Sebam, 272
se'eh, 280 »2.
Seir, 148, 229 72., 260
Sela, 239
Semites (Divisions of the), 51 f.
senhem, 291
Serug, 207
Seti (Sethet, Suti), 50, 208 f.,
209 72.
,, (Pharaoh), 226 72., 235
Setnekht, 249
-sha-, 298
Sha'asu, 208, 230 72.
Shaddai, 109, 114, 223, 300, 305
shadu, 108
-shadfla, 108, 142
Shadu-Ai, 143
Shadunu, 109
Shaggan, 205 72.
Shalim (god), 67
¦shama', 298
Sha-Martu, 72, 94 72.
Shamasbatu, 273 72.
Sha'mat, 247
Sham-Baal, 219
Shamsum, 80
Sh'amu-Addu, 218
-shanin, 70, 141 72.
-shapaka, 84, 319
shaphat, 299 72.
-shaphat, 219, 223
Shaphat, 299
Shapia, 211
Shapi-Bel, 211
-shara'a, 82
-sharraha, 82
sharru, 150 72.
Sharru-Ai, 143
sharru dannu, 154 ff.
Shasu, 208
Shattrel-Hai, 207 f.
Sha'ul, 220 72.
Shaveh, 150 72.

-shawwara, 319
Sheba'„(Saba), 236
Shegu,*3ii Shelah, 256
Shelomi, 299
Shelumi-el, 298
Shem, 295
Shem ( = Yahveh), 87, 1 15 72.
Shem-baal, 115 n.
Shemida, 94
Shemu-el, g3, 98, 298
Shem-zebel, 115 and 72.
Shephat-iah, 303
sheti (Hebr.), 291
Shibam, 272
Shikhor, 240 f.
-shimi, 73
-shimia, 128
Shinar, 147
Shiphtan, 299
Shipti-Addu, 218, 219
Shirdana (Sardinians), 265
Shfri, 229, 261
Shuah (Sukhi), 236
Shu Ardat, 232 and n.
Shubaru, 208 72.
Shuhite, country, 156, 203, 323
(v. also Shuah)
Shum-Addi, 218
Shumi-abia, 99 72.
Shum-irtsiti, 98
Shumma-ilu-la-ilia, 70
shumu (son), 98 f.
Shumu-abi, 68, 97 f., 129 (v. also
Sumu-abi)
Shumu-libshi, 99
Shumu-litsi, 99
shur, 239
Shur (Land of = Ashur), 238, 239,
241
Shfir (Wilderness of), 235, 240
Shussha, 116
Shusshi, 121
Shu-Tatna, 232 72.
Shu-Thelah, 232 72.
Sichor, v. Shikhor
Siddim, 148, 151, 162
Sidon, 217, 228
Simeon, 266

342

INDEX

Simti-shilkhak, 166
Simurru, 38
Sin (moon-god), 62, 64 f . ( = Ea),
7i» 73. »6> 273. 3»8 »•
Sin (Wilderness of), 273
Sin-abushu, 73
Sinai, 273
Sin-akham-idinam, 71
Sinatu, 273 72.
Sin-bani, 62
Sin-gamil, 73
Sin-idinam, 73, 172 ff., 176, 177 72.
Sin-ikisham, 73
Sin-illat-su, 73
Sin-imiti, 141 72.
Sin-imuki, 73
Sin-iragam, 73
Sin-kalama-idi, 70
Sin-liki, 73
Sin-magir, 73, 131
Sin-muballit, 68, 73, 93, 103, 112,
167, 177
Sin-nadin-shumi, 71
Sin-offering, 321
Sin-pilakh, 73, 141 n.
Sin-putram, 73
Sin-rimene, 73
Sin-rimenishi, 73
Sin-shadilni, log
Sin-shimi, 73
Sinuhit, 49 ff.
Sirgulla, 33 ff.
Sirham, 314
Sir'il, 264 ?2.
Sisku, 121 72.
Sitriyara, 222 n.
Snofrui, 47
Sodom, 146, 148, 149, 156, 157
sol'am, 291
Solomon, 251 f., 287, 304
Stars, names of, 297 72., 298
Stibium, 52, 269
Styrax, 269
Su, 208
Su'aid, 321
Subar, 208
Subartu, 208 72.
Subsalla, 34
Sugalia, 142

Sugir, 208 f.
Sumaida, 84, 317 (v. also Sumida')
Sumer, 36 ff., 147, 181
Sumerian, 166, 307, 312
Sumerian Personal names, 61, 67 f.
Sumerians, 291, 293 72.
Sumhu- (names with), 84 ff., g8f.,
ioi
Sumhu-ali, 84
„ -amara, 84
,, -apika, 84
,, -kariba, 84
„ -riam, 84, 101
,, -watara, 84
,, -yada'a, 84, 98
„ -yapi'a, 84, 9g
Sumida'a, 99
Sumu-abi, 75, 93 (v. also Shumuabi)
Sumu-hu, v. Sumhu
Sumu-la-ilu, 68, 91, 93, 98 f.
Sumu-su-amina, 102
Suri, 208
Sutet, 208
Suti, 50, 208 f. , 228
Syria, 208, 259
Tadua, 261
Tagi, 232 and n.
Tahpanhes, 251 72., 252
-takala, 218
-takkama, 218
-tal, 321
Ta'lab, 80
Tamar, 148
-tamar, 115
tamid, 17, 277
Tammuz, 67
Tamna', 272
Tana, 49 f.
Tanit (goddess = She of Tana ?),
115 72.
Tashmit, 64
-tayar, 73, 141 72.
Teima, 212
Telam, 241
Tel el-Amarna, 32 f. , 45, 15^, igg1
208, 213 ff., 260, 308
Tel el-Kebir, 239
Tel Sifr, 167, 175

INDEX

343

Teman, 237
Tenu, v. Tana
terflmah, 17
Thapsacus, 251
Thauban, 321
-thelah, 232 ».
Thummim, 281
Thutmosis, 2g5
Tid'al, 147, 184 ; v. also Tudkhul
Tidanum, 34, 237
Tidnu, 237
Tiglathpileser I., I3g, 203
,, III., 212, 2ig, 236
»•. 253
Tigris, 314
Tihama, 272 72.
Timna', 272
Tiphsah, 251 and n., 324
-tirshi, 231
To'i, 232 71.
torah, 17 72.
Totemism, 28
Tsab-ban, 205
tsadak, g5 72.
tsaduk, tsaduka, 84, 216
Tsaduku, 83
tsal, 300
tsaphan, 2g8, 299
Tsaphon-Baal, 299
Tsebaoth, 103
Tsel-Baal, 221 n.
Tsidki- (names with), 83
Tsidki-ilu, 142
Tsidki- Yahu, 83 72.
Tsil-Bel, 221 72.
Tsili-Istar, 141 72., 30022.
Tsinnah, Tsinnat, 273
Tsophar [Zophar], 249 72.
Tsur (Name for God), 86, 300,
318 f.
Tsuri-addan, 319, 321
Tsuri-addana, 319
Tsuri-el, 2g8, 3ig 72.
Tsuri-shaddai, 298
Tubba'i-, 83
Tubba'i-kariba, 84
Tudkhul (Tid'al), 43, 147, 1 84 f.,
3l8 72.
Tukulti-Nindar, 194 n.

Tumilat, 239, 257 n.
turgudis, 184 and n.
Turnat, 205
Tushur, 234
Tutu, 181 72.
Tyre, Ig6 72., 217, 228, 253
Tyrrhenians, 265
Ubulu, 206
Ud-ban, 205
Udda-im-tigga, 167
Udumu, 262 f.
Ud-ushshuru, 234 72.
Ur, 36, 56, 71, 147, 162 72., 166 {.,
2og ff. , 237, 292 ff.
„ later kings of, 66 f., 104 n.,
209 72.
Ur- (names with), 66 f . , 70
-uri, v. -or
Uriah, 303
Urim, 281
Urra-gamil, 179 72.
Urra-la-gamil, I7g ?2.
Ursu, 34
Uru-azag, 121 72.
Uruk (Erech), 121 72., 128, 167
Uru-ki (moon-god), 62, 166
Uru-ku, 121, 126 ff.
Uru-milki, 217
Uru-salim, 154, 199 f.
Ur-ziguruvas, 168 72.
Ushtanni, 259 72.
-ushur, 234 72.
Usir-tasen, 51
Uzza, 116, 238, 278
Wadd, 79 f., 220, 276
Waddada-ilu, 82
Waga' (Wagg), 271
-wahaba, 81 '
Wahbu-ili, 82
-wakula, 84
Walig, 246
Wall of Egypt, 239 and n.
Warawa-ilu, 82
-watara, 84
Watar-il, 143
Water wheels, 227 «.
West, Countries of the, v. Martu

344

INDEX

Western Semites, 53 f.
Western Semitic Alphabet, 75
Widadu-il, 82
Wir'i- (names with), 84
Wir'i-amara, 84
Ya, 112, 144
Ya'a, 49
Yabishi, 262
Ya-bitiri, 218 77.
Yabni-ilu, 220
-yada, 99, 236 72., 302, 303
-yada'a, 81, 84
Yada'a-, v. Yadi'a-
Yadhkur-ilu, 82
Yadhmur-malik, 320
Yadi'a-abu, 84, 317 f.
Yadi'a-ilu, 84, 317 f.
Yadi'a-sumhu, 84, 317
Yadikhabu, 318
Yadikhu, 75
Yah, 114, 143, 223 f., 303
Yahir, 78
Yahmi-ilu, 79, 82
Yahrak, 78
Yahram-ilu, 82
Yahu, 223
Yahveh, g, ico, 114, 223 f., 303 f.
,, Tsebaoth, 103
Ya-kalabu, 112
Ya-kamaru, 114
Yakbar-ilu, in, 207
Yakhir, 217
Yakhziru, in
Yakin, 211 72.
Yakubu, 201 72.
Yamlik, 60, 301 72.
Yam n at, 247
Yamutbal, 166, 168, 170, 174 ff.
Yan'am, 221, 261
Yankhamu, 221
Yanuam, Yanoam, 218 72.
Yapa-Addu, 218
Yapa'i, 220
Yapakhi, 220, 231
Yapakhi-Addu, 218
Yaphia, 231
Yaphlet, 238 »., 299, 301 72.
-yapi'a, 81, 84

Yapi'an, 246, 272 72.
Yapi'u, 83, 220
Yapti-Addu, 220
,, -Khada, 220
Ya'qub-ilu, 95, 201 ft.
Yara, 222
Yarbi-ilu, 60, 106, no
Yarkhamu, m
Yarmuth, 221 72.
Yashap-el, no 72., 294
Yashub, no n.
Yashup-ilu, 75, 82, 95
Yashflpu, 82, no
Yashuya, 262
Yasma'-ilu, 82
Yasumunu, 195 and n., 253
-yathar, 283
Yathil, 248
Yathimat, 272
Yathi'u, Yathu'u, 83, 248
Yathrib, 271
-yathu'a, 84
Yatu'a, 207
Ya'zar-ilu, m
Yedia-el, 317
Yeho, 223, 303
Yeho-addan, 319 72., 320
Yehuda, 298
Yemama, 271, 318
Yerahmeel, 242, 297 72.
Yerimot, 261
Yeshimon, 195 72., 253
Yeshimoth, 272
Yir'i-ah, 83 72.
Yishai, 115
Yish'i, 92 72., 301 «.
Yishiari, 222
Yith'i- (names with), 83
Yith'i-amara, 83
,, -kariba, 84
,, -yapi'a, 84
Y°, 3°3
Yuawwis-ilu, 82
-za'ada, 8r, 84
Zabium, Zabu, 68, 93, 101, 102
Zadok, 284 f.
-zahab, 262
Zaidu-ili, 82

INDEX

34S

Zakkalu, 234, 244
Zakunum, 11 1
Zal-munna, 301 72.
Zal-pak-had, 301 ?2.
Zanik-pi-shu-Shamas, 71
Zaphon, 253
Zapsha, Zapshali, 37
Zar, 239 and n.
Zar-ki, 262
Zayyada-ilu, 82
-zebel, 115
zereth, 291
Zereth, 262

Zeruiah, 303
Zili-Ishtar, 141 72.
Zimran, 236
Zimri, 83 72. , 299
Zimrida, 83 72., 220, 228 and n.,
231
Zimri-rabi, 75, 83 72., m
Zinjerli, 212, 243 n., 319
Zi-shamimi, 232 72.
Zi-tatna, 232 //.
Zitri-yara, 222 72.
Zoar, 162, 193
Zuzim, 148

LIST OF AUTHORS REFERRED TO

Amiaud, 35
Arnold, Will. R., 66 andtt.
Astruc, 8
Baxter, 15
Bezold, 326 72.
Bleek, 7
Bondi, 291
Chabas, 257
Cheyne, 292 «., 295 f.
Cornill, 3
Dangin, v. Thureau
Delattre, 214 n.
Delitzsch, Franz, 310, 312 n.
Delitzsch, Friedr., 56, 120, 122,
141, 16072 , 206, 208 72., 300
Dillmann, 15, 20 f., 202, 308 72.
Ebers, 237 72. , 257
Erman, 49 72. , 280 72.
Euting, 212, 271, 276
Ewald, 7
Fries, ix.
Georges, 8 n.
Glaser, 38, 48, 76, 77, 78. 8o- 9°.
99, 206 and 72., 237, 240, 241
and 72., 246, 247 72., 248, 249,
250 72., 260 72., 27O, 272 72.,
277 72., 292 «., 3I3 f., 317 72.,
322 ff.
Golenischeff, 141 n.
Graf, 7, 13, 26
Green, 18, 19
Gunkel, 1S2, 308 n., 309, 310

Guthe, 15 72.
Gutschmid, 133
Halevy, 121
Haynes, 166 n.
Hilprecht, 38 n., 97, 104, 120,
121 72., 122, 123, 128 72., I2g,
166 n., 172, 234 72.
Holzinger, 21 72.
Hupfeld, 7
Jastrow, 258 72.
Jensen, 209 «., 234 72.
Justi, 6 f .
Kautzsch, 15 «., 21
Kittel, 20 72.
Klostermann, 9 72., 10, 13 72., ig,
243 72., 251
Kosters, 23
Kuenen, 7, 164
Lagarde, 242 72.
Lagrange, 172
Luschan, 212
Maspero, 4g 72., 120
Meissner, 6g, g7, g8 72., g9 72.
Meyer, Ed., 22 ff. , 160. 164
Mordtmann, 274 72., 276 n., 317 72.
Miiller, D. H., 243 «., 312 72.
Miiller, W. Max, 46 72., 47, 209 72.,
219 72., 226 72., 24O 72., 254 72.,
255 n.
Nestle, v.
Niebuhr, Carl, 120, 122
Noldeke, 7 72., I5g, ig8

348

AUTHORS REFERRED TO

Oppert, 120
Peiser, 112, 120, 124, 128, 132 ff.,
142
Perles, 312 72.
Peters, 166 72.
Petrie, 257
Pinches, 43, 88 f. , g4, 104, 105,
112, 121, 143, 172, I7g, 182, ig4
Pognon, 8g
Rawlinson, H., 159
Revillout, 131
Reuss, 7, 13, 26
Sarzec, 34
Sayce, 18, 41 72., 89 ff., 171 72.
Scheil, 38 72., 44, 111, 172 ff.,
234 »•, 3"7
Schmidt, Nath., 258 «.
Schrader, 112 72.

Smith, G., 160
Spartoli, 179
Stade, 2, 7 n.
Strassmaier, 69
Thureau-Dangin, 237 72.
Vatke, 7, 13
Wellhausen, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 13,
26, 27, 164. 198 f., 223, 284,
288 72. , 296 f. , 300, 308, 316
Wette, 7
Winckler, 92 72. , 97, 120, 122, 123,
128, 133, 144 72., 189, 214, 230
72., 26l, 262 72., 325 72.
Zenner, 312 72.
Zimmern, 182, 214 72., 22g 72., 308
72., 310 and 72.

LIST OF BIBLICAL PASSAGES
REFERRED TO

Genesis ii. 10-14, 263 72., 313 ff,
x. 22-24, 256, 292, 295
x. 26, III
x. 27,314
xi. 10, 292, 295
xi. ff., 256
xi. 19, 206 «.
xi. 21, 207
«. 31, 325
xiv. 43 f., 158 ff., ig3, 196
xiv. 16-24, 146 ff., 156 f.
xvi. 7, 242
xvi. 12, 238
xvi. 14, 207 72. , 242
xvii. 1, log
xvii. 5, 275
xx. 1, 242
xxii. 22, 210, 293 n.
xxiv. 62, 242
xxv. 269
xxv. 3, 238
xxv. 8, 243
xxv. 11, 242
xxv. 18, 238, 315
xxxv. 7, 194
xxxv. 11, 109
xxxv. 27-29, 202
XXXvi. 220 72., 26l f., 272
XXXvi. II, 249 72.
xxxvii. 269
Xlvi. 17, 233 72., 258 ft.
xlvii. II, 228 72.
xlix. 266
Exodus i. 13, 227
iii. 14, 101
vi. 18, 233
vi. 22, 298

Exodus vi. 25, 293
xii. 14, 291
xii. 38, 257, 267 72.
xiv. 6, 265 72.
Xvi. 15, 274 72.
xviii. 12, 276
xviii. 19 ff., 276
xix. 15, 321 72.
xx. 24, 287
xxviii. 17-20, 281
xxviii. 30, 281
xxx. 1 ff., 277
xxxi. 2, 300
Leviticus ii. 9, 277
ii. 16, 277
vi. ig, 321
xvi. 278
Numbers i. 2g7 ff.
iii. 30, 298
vi. 25, 72
vn. 297 ff.
xiii. 297 ff., 301
xxi. 20, 272
xxiv. 20, 246
xxiv. 21-24, 243
xxv. 14, 299
xxv. 15, 319 72.
XXvi. 24, I IO 72.
xxvi. 32, 99
xxvi. 36, 232 n.
xxvi. 45, 233 72.
xxxiv. 2g7 72.
xxxiv. 20, 98
Deuteronomy ii. 12, 261
xi. io, 227
xvii. 12, 284
xviii. 1-8, 284

3 SO

BIBLICAL PASSAGES REFERRED TO

Deuteronomy xviii. 6 ff., 282
xx. 2, 287
xxiii. 17, 113
xxvi. 5, 201
xxviii. 4g f . , 244
xxviii. 68, 11, 263 f.
xxxii. 4, 318
xxxiii. 266
xxxiv. 5-7, 285
Joshua x. 3, 221
x. 33, 221
x. 41, 225
xi. 16, 225
xiii. 2, 240
xiii. 19, 262
xiii. 24, 253 72.
xiii. 27, 253
xv. 3, 262
xv. 24, 241
xv. 27, 242
xv. 51, 225, 241
xvi. 3, 238 72.
xix. 26, 241
Xxiv. 2 f., 254 72., 325
Xxiv. 14 {., 256 72.
Judges ii. n, 303
iii. 6, 303
viii. 24, 269
ix. 26, 303 72.
x. 12, 249, 270
I Samuel ii. 2, 318
xiv. 3, 284
xv. 7. 239
xxvii. 8, 240 f.
xxvii. 10, 242, 244 ft.
xxx. 29, 244
2 Samuel ii. g, 240
viii. 9, 232 72.
a. 16, 204, 254 72., 322
xv. 37, 154
xxii. 318

1 Kings iv. 21, 251, 254
iv. 23, 252
iv. 24, 252, 325
xiv. 15, 254 ».
2 Kings xiv. 2, 319 72.
I Chronicles i. ff., 301 ft.
i. 17-24, 292
i. 36, 249 72.
iv. 34, 101
vii. 2, 98
vii. 31, 233 ft.
vii. 32 f . , 238 72.
2 Chronicles xiv. 314 ft.
Job i. 15, 17, 247 72.
ii. n, 249
Psalms xviii. 318
xxviii. 1, 71 «.
xxxvii. 7, 71 72.
1. 31, 71 72.
Ixxxi. 6, in 72.
Ixxxix. 14, 310
xci. I, 310
ex. 4, 152
Isaiah xiv. 12, 115
xxii. 6, 205
Jeremiah vii. 22 ff., 15, 16
xliii. 7, 251 «.
Ezekiel xxiii. 23, 206 n.
xl. 3, 285
xliv. 9 ff. , 283
Daniel x. 4, 314
Hosea i. 9, 101 n.
viii. 12, 16
viii. 13, 11
ix. 3, 11, 263 f.
Amos v. 25, 15
ix. 7, 205
Habakkuk ii. 20, 71 ».
Acts vii. 42, 15
Hebrews v. 10, 146
vii. 1-3, 152

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