GENERAL SIR H. RAWLINSON, K.C.B., Director R.A.S.

187

ART. IX.—Bilingual Readings—Cuneiform and Phoenician.Notes on some Tablets in the British Museum, containinqBilingual Legends {Assyrian and Phoenician). B Y MAJOR-

GENERAL SIR H. RAWLINSON, K.C.B., Director R.A.S.

AT the last Anniversary Meeting of the Society I announced thediscovery among the Assyrian collections in the British Museumof a certain number of clay tablets, bearing legends, both in Assyrianand Phoenician; and I promised at an early period to publish theseBilingual readings in the Society's journal, in order to afford thosecritics of the late Sir G. Lewis's school, who still disbelieve, oraffect to disbelieve, in Cuneiform decipherment, an opportunity oftesting the general accuracy of the phonetic system, now acceptedamongst Assyrian scholars, by comparing the signs which theysuppose to be unknown with those of a known alphabet and lan-guage.1 That promise I now propose to redeem. I have no wish,

1 The weak point in Cuneiform decipherment, and that which, from itsprominence, has especially tended to discredit the science, is the difficulty ofreading proper names. Now, I hare never attempted to conceal this defect;on the contrary, I have repeatedly explained that as Assyrian proper namesare usually composed of the name of a god, represented by an arbitrary mono-gram, and of one or two other elements, expressed by the primitive Turanianroots, it requires a very large induction, and if possible, collateral illustration,to ascertain how such compounds were pronounced in vernacular Assyrian.I should have been quite content, for my own part, in all such doubtful cases,to have indicated the names by mere signs (x, y, z, and so forth), but this wasgenerally declared inadmissable, and I was obliged, therefore, to propose somereading, guarding myself, however, against the charge of empiricism by aquery (?) Of course, as my studies advanced, other readings occurred to meas preferable, and were accordingly substituted, and it thus happens that inmy published papers the same name will be sometimes found to exhibit succes-sively three or four diiferent forms ; but this is rather an evidence of goodfaith than of imposture. I candidly confess that I am still in doubt as to theordinary and vernacular pronunciation of the names of many of the chief

divinities of Assyria (such as Cronos or " Be lus , " * -*- [ * ~ J J ^ ~ | H >

" the Water God," lU-f &]]]] ]}> "the God of the Air," >->-] ^>^ i

the Assyrian Hercules, >-<-| * | - , or *-*~\ t ?"M I T " ' a n d " t n e

Great Goddess," >-»-y T^-^f ^TTP ; a n d t h a t m y ProPose<l readings ofthe names of tings in which these elements occur, are therefore in no way tobe depended on; but this uncertainty does not in the least affect the authen-ticity of the translation of historical inscriptions, which are written for themost part phonetically, and the grammar of which can be analyzed with asmuch confidence as any portion of the Hebrew Scriptures. It can hardly,indeed, be necessary for me to vindicate at any length the preliminary stages

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University Library Frankfurt, on 03 Dec 2017 at 09:00:14,

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885

https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms

https://www.cambridge.org/core

188 BILINCUTAL READINGS,

at the same time, to exaggerate the importance of this discovery.In reality, the so-called Phoenician key has added but very little toour knowledge either of the Assyrian alphabet or language, and Icannot, therefore, regard it as of any essential value. Nevertheless,its practical utility in meeting a specious argument of the scepticsis obvious, and I recommend it, accordingly, to their serious con-sideration.

Among the multitudinous clay tablets in the British Museum,brought from the ruins of Nineveh, where, as it is well known, theywere found among the "debris" of what was formerly the RecordOffice of the Assyrian kings, there are a considerable number whichrepresent legal documents. These documents relate to all the variedtransactions of the social life of the Assyrians, and are precisely ofthe same character as the deeds of which copies would be found inthe Registry Office of any Mahomedan Mehhemeh. It seems, indeed,to have been anciently the practice, as at present, for parties whowere engaged in the every-day dealings of life, whether of sale, orbarter, or exchange, or lease, or loan, or gift, or dedication, orsimilar matters of business, to repair to the law-officer of the locality,before whom they recited their terms of bargain, and authenticatedthe same by their seal or mark, and from whom they received awritten and legal recognition of the contract. The inscribed tabletsthus executed in the Assyrian Office of Registry, and referring tolaw business, are of a very peculiar shape, and altogether differentfrom the larger tablets,—found, however, in the same collection,—which refer to general matters, such as history, mythology, geogra-phy, astrology, revenue, and statistics, and more particularly togrammar and philology. They are for the most part oblong andflat, but bulging in the middle, rarely exceeding a few inches inlength, and very much resembling in shape a modern pincushion.The material of which they are composed is of every variety, fromthe finest hard-baked clay, resembling Roman " terra-cotta," andas durable as marble, to a soft friable earth, which seems to havehardly undergone any burning process whatever, and which crumblesunder the touch. A few of these softer specimens, also, from Assyriaare found to exhibit a peculiarity of formation which is common in

of Cuneiform inquiry, now that " the Institute of Prance " (as I stated in myletter to the "Athenaeum," of August 22, 1863), "the first critical body in" the world, has conferred its biennial prize, of 20,000 francs, on Monsieur" Oppert, for his Assyrian decipherments, thereby guaranteeing in the face of" Europe the authenticity and value of our labours, and putting to shame the" continued scepticism of England."


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885



CUNEIFORM AND PHOENICIAN. 189

Chalda?a. They are, in fact, double, or inclosed one within theother, the inner solid tablet, and the outer casing, being bothinscribed with the same, or nearly the same, legend.

I shall examine later the legal formula under which the con-veyance of property was executed in Assyria, as evidenced in thesetablets, and shall also notice the curious substitution in someinstances of nail-marks for seal-impressions, to authenticate thetransfer ; but I must first exhaust the subject of the bilingualreadings.2

A certain number, then, of these "Registry" tablets, in additionto the Cuneiform text, which covers both their sides, bear also uponthe margin a " docket" in Phoenician characters, which in mostcases was evidently inscribed while the clay was yet soft, and thusformed part of the original document, but which occasionally seemsto have been scratched on the hard pottery by the Eecord Keeperat a later period, for the mere convenience of reference. Thedocket, as might be supposed, usually describes the nature of thedeed, but sometimes it merely gives the name of the party disposingof his property. Unfortunately, iu hardly a single instance are thetwo legends—the Phoenician docket, that is, and the correspondingexpression in the Cuneiform text, clear and complete throughout.Sometimes the Phoenician letters, having been merely scratched onthe hard surface of the baked tablet, are so faint that it is impos-sible to trace them with any certainty. Sometimes the Cuneiformletters are partially obliterated by time or friction. Again, it isoften a matter of great difficulty to identify the Cuneiform wordswhich answer to the Phoenician dockets ; and lastly, where theidentification is established, we are not unfrequently disappointedof a full comparison owing to the mutilated condition of the tablets.Still, with all these drawbacks, there are a few well determinedbilingual readings, and these I now propose to consider in dueorder, referring the reader to the annexed plates, ] , 2, 3, & 4, forfac-similes of the Phoenician legends, and making use of the corre-sponding Hebrew letters in explaining the meaning of the dockets.3

2 The contents of the legal tablets of Assyria and Babylonia will form thesubject of a second paper, which I propose to publish in the next volume ofthe Society's Journal. I have succeeded in copying and deciphering about100 of these documents, and have thus obtained materials for a very extensivecomparison and analysis.

3 After completing my examination of these bilingual legends, I obtainedaccess to Dr. Levy's " Phonizisehe Studien," and found that a certain numberof the Museum tablets upon which I had been engaged had already passedthrough his hands. As my readings, however, of the Phoenician legends, in


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885



190 BILINGUAL READINGS,

I.

This tablet ia a favourable specimen of the class ; it is quiteperfect, and the Cuneiform writing is legible throughout. It regis-ters, with the usual formalities of transfer, the sale of a slave girlnamed -£>~ J;J^ *"*~| -*^ *~T|~» -Arba-il-Khirat, the seller beinga certain Bil-akhisu, son of Merodach-abua, and the buyer being anofficer of the prince's court, named Kizir-Asshur. The price paidfor this female slave was one " mina" and two-thirds (?) of silver,which is somewhat above the average valuation.

On the margin of the tablet is the Phoenician legend JIJTi, danat Arbil-hira, written evidently with the point of a

" stylus," while the clay was yet moist; and legible with certainty,excepting in regard to a single letter. The " giving up " or " sur-render" of property, which constitutes the first condition of a sale,is always represented in these legal documents by some derivativefrom the Assyrian root nadan, " to give," answering 10 the Hebrewroot ]Pi2, which is sometimes used in the same sense (compareProv. xxxi. 24), and the term danat, " gift," or " sale," whichoccurs in the marginal legend, is the Phoenician equivalent.4

every instance but one, differed from his, TEhd as he had left almost untouchedthe comparative branch of the inquiry, I did not find it necessary to disturbthe text of my paper. I shall, however, append a few notes, where lus pro-posed readings seem to require them.

4 The particular word used is Taddni, which is usually written S^t l Hff->

or ^->-| * | >-»-]] Tl Sw- i an<l of which I consider the grammaticalcondition to be exceedingly obscure. Primd facie, I should take Taddni tobo the 3rd pers. sing, fern, of the aoristof Kal (like ^ » ~ | IT *, K ] > p *"] | vtasatthiri, " she writes;" f ^ | T | t ^ c \~-i ^ f i i tagabU, " she says," &c.;but in the phrases where the word occurs there is no possible feminine nomi-native. I t is not less difficult to explain Taddni as the 2nd pers. sing, of averb, and I am led, therefore,—notwithstanding its strange appearance, andthe somewhat forced construction that such an explanation involves,—to suggestthat it may be a verbal noun, thus corresponding with danat, both in der-ivation and in condition. The regular formula, as observed in this contract(and in all others of the same class), commences as follows, " The seal of"Bel-alchisu, son of Merodach-abua, ownership of a woman surrenders" (or" thou dost surrender" taddni).

(Impression of his seal, three times repeated):—" (Namely) the woman Arba-il-Khirat, the female slave of Bel-akhisu,

" and becomes (the owner) Kizir-Asshur, chamberlain of the king's son. For" If mans of silver from Bel-akhisu he takes her, &c., &c, &c."

The peculiarities both of orthography and construction in these declara-tions of contract will be fully analyzed in the second part of this paper, and Ihope, also, to be able to publish the original inscriptions, or at any rateselected specimens of each cla38, in a future volume of the British MuseumCuneiform texts.


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885



AND PHCENICIAN. j g i

With regard to the exact reading of the name of the slave girl,whose sale is here registered, there is some difficulty, owing to thedoubtful form of the fifth Phoenician letter, and the polyphone valueof its Cuneiform correspondent. The term .A *~TT~ ^s w e l 'known from many examples to signify " a woman," or " wife"(Comp. Black Obelisk Ins. face A, line 12 j Michaux's Stone,col. 4, 1. 5, &c, &c.) j but the pronunciation of the word might bekhiiat, or zirat, or thirat, according as we gave to the letterj& its normal power of khi, or adopted one of its secondaryvalues, zi or thi, the former occurring in the names of Rezin andTiglath-Pileser5 (and in derivatives from N*?2{, H32J, &c), and thelatter in the oblique case of Ararat,6 in derivatives from the rootNEOrij and in the common form >-Y>3 -<^ >~\\\i akthirib, " Iapproached." It adds also considerably to our difficulty that bothzirat and thirat might be etymol^gically explained as applying to" a woman,"7 and that the Phoenician letter, again, which answers

to ^ ^ in the word in question, might be compared both withthe ^Numismatic Tsade )£ (see Gesenius Mon. Phoen. vol. ii. pi. 3),and with the Palmyrene or Parthian Daleth, "T.8 On a fair review,

5 In the Cuneiform Y £;£:TT - ^ Tr *J "> &r inj"), the ^ ^ answersto JJ, but in the last element of the name of Tiglath Pileser, wherefc:H |T -<^ fc^TT is the name of the famous Temple of Hercules atNimrud, the Hebrew correspondent is D.

6 The name of Ararat is given in the inscriptions as Vrarthu in the nomi-native, Urartha in the accusative, and Urarthi in the oblique case; theCuneiform dentals being *~~*\ or TltT (which are used almost indifferently),

for the first; S-» YY (which represents tha as well as da), for the second, and

/Yjjr; or j& for the third, thus conclusively proving that 4^1 ^s some-

times used for 13, thi, the Hebrew orthography being JOTIX

' That is, supposing the - ^ to answer to J{, as in the name of Bezin,

zirat might be included among that large class of Assyrian terms, written

indifferently with the S^TT and >-YT <?, which are connected with the

root |"T")!{ o r ?• f&> "to be high," and which have throughout an honorary

signification; though perhaps that sense is hardly in unison with the Easternestimate of woman. Thirat, also, as a name for a young woman, might becompared with the Hebrew n"*1Z3> " fresh, new."

T • :8 I observe that Dr. Levy, who seems to have inspected the tablet I am

now considering, reads the doubtful Phcraician letter answering to ^ ^ , as \

(See Phonizische Studien, part ii. p. 23) ; but he has certainly not at all


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885




however, of all the evidence, I prefer reading ^ ^ *~~W~ a s

Mirat, and its Phoenician correspondent as "irj, Hira ;9 comparing

the noun either with the Hebrew m i l , which signifies "a pregnant

woman," or, as is more probable, with the common word i"i.,r,

which, although now unknown to the Arabic in that sense, must

certainly be of Semitic origin, and which is still used as the ordi-

nary term for "a woman" in Turkey, in Persia, and in India. The

chief reason which I have for this reading is, that I find in the

vocabularies relating to " women " -<^ 5fff >—if: hhiriu con-

nected with {}< ]!{]} , £ f y j , khairu, aa ^ *^\ >-&t\

asshatu, in the same sense (n$&)> is with £^TT tY isshu. Ifthe Hebrew m i l , " to conceive," be the root from which this nounis derived, the Phoenician orthography which uses the soft insteadof the hard guttural will be more correct than the Cuneiform, andthe lapse of the feminine ending also in the nominative case is quitein consonance with the popular pronunciation. I think it moreprobable, however, that hhirat is the same as C5 .«B, from what-ever root that term may be derived,10 and that the Phoenician hiramay thus mark the passage of the hard guttural to the y.

The other element of the name in question, ££z *~*~]i m

Assyrian, and TQ"1N> or ^ ."lltf, in Phoenician, is the famous city ofArbela. This name is always represented in Assyrian by twosigns, the first, >:£:, being composed of four elements, and thushaving the power of arba, which signifies "four" in all the Semitic

reproduced the form of the character as seen upon the tablet. I also remarkthat he gives the first word of the legend as /13H, raJcat, instead of /1J"7,danat; the latter reading, however, is undoubted. I know not from whatsource he obtained his reading of rah arrabil Assar for the corresponding

A s s y r i a n ^ - fct *"*~T -^^ (>-|T—), but no Cuneiform scholar will, Iventure to say, support that reading—although the letters certainly have thepowers assigned to them—against my explanation of \>-, determinative of

woman, and unpronounced, £ ^ *"*"]> name of the town of Arbil, and - ^ S 'part of " Khirat," " a wife or woman."

9 Compare the two last variants given for the ["I, m Gesenius's Mon.Phcen. vol. ii. pi. 1, which resemble, at any rate, if they are not identical with,the form upon the tablet.

10 ' " i i«r. may bo supposed to come from the root f\y, "to be naked,"whence the Hebrew has ")ij?Q, "pudenda," but it is not used in the sense of

T

" a woman " either in Hebrew, or Aramaic, or Arabic.


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885



CUNEIFORM AND PBKENICIAN. 193

tongues, and the second being the well known sign *~*~-\, whichrepresents a god, and is thus pronounced 11, or Ilu (comp. J?|V7N><fcc, &c.);13 but in the famous Behistun Inscription, 1. 63, we havethe full phonetic reading of ^f-^ff \ ^ -^k^*^- ^ ^ T T 'Arba-hil. The derivation is doubtful. The name Arba-il wouldseem primd facie to mean " the four gods," in allusion to thesupreme triad and " the Great Mother," who are usually associatedin the Assyrian Pantheon ; but this is not altogether satisfactory,as in the first place the noun >-*-]•, IK ' s not in the pluralnumber, and in the second place there is no evidence that" the fourgods" were ever worshipped at Arbela, or were in any wayconnected with the place."

More probably, then, iirba-il means " the ambush (or ' shrine')of the God," from the root 3"1N, "to lie in wait," which may have

T

been also represented by the Cuneiform ££:, from its identityof sound with the numeral " four." Another doubtful point is,which of the two goddesses, " the great mother, Beltis," or " Ishtar,"the Assyrian Venus, may be indicated by this title of "the womanof Arbela," here used as a proper name ; for although the formergoddess, who is usually designated by the figure 15 (j(Jv<^)-> (or

by its synonym >-|yj, "), and who is often called " the Motherof the Gods," is clearly distinguished in every other position fromthe latter goddess, Ishtar, 0>~*-\ ^~^TT »^- or >~>-T

11 Compare Heb. y3."lN ; Arabic «_j ,\. When the word is written

phonetically the Cuneiform usually employs an aspirate, ^ ^ * - * - | ; to represent

the final y .12 II or Ilu is the Semitic value of >-*-!> " a god" (compare "I\o9 of

Sanchoniathon), for which, however, Tahu is sometimes substituted, as inHebrew. In the other dialects which prevailed in Babylonia, and which thusgave secondary powers to the Assyrian characters, a god was named anap

(whence the ordinary power of an for the letter *"*-]) ; or Thingir,

^ T j t Jr^Jjppt >-^-| TT, identical with the Turkish tengri, and the

primitive Accadian term, though subsequently corrupted to tMmir, \ | J f c

T — ^jrvv.; also hliil'vp, the affinities of which I cannot trace, and perhapsnin, and some others.

13 Mons. Oppert gives the meaning of " the four gods" as if it were certain,but does not attempt to explain such an etymology (See " Expedition on Meso-potamic," p. 228), and his authority, therefore, cannot have much weight.


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885




still, in reference to this particular deity, who had special shrinesat Nineveh and at Arbela, under the kings Esar-Haddon andAsshur-bani-pal, the names seem to be all used indiscriminately ;unless, indeed, it be allowable to suppose that each of the goddesses,Beltis and Venus, had special shrines both at Nineveh and Arbela,and in that case it is manifestly impossible to say which of the twomay be " the Lady of Arbela," *W

14 Dr. Hineks has stated (Journal of Sacred Literature, No. xxviii. p. 406)that the mother of the gods, or Ehea, was especially " known as the goddess" of Arbela, being thus distinguished from Istar, who was emphatically ' the" goddess,' ' the lady,' who presided over Nineveh;" but he has broughtforward no authority to confirm his statement, and my own reading leads to avery different conclusion. I n fact, if Dr. Hincks will refer to the invocationpassage at the commencement of the long inscription of Esar-Haddon (Kawlin-

son Insc. pi. 45, col. 1, Is. 5 and 6), he will find the goddess *-*-\ \yynamed in connexion both with Nineveh and Arbil, while in the last divisionof the same inscription, the king's tutelary deity, associated with Asshur, is

named both •->-! \VJ and *"*"~Y >. | | **^r- The inscription, too,pi. 8, No. 2, which especially commemorates the repairing of the building atArbela, refers to the presiding goddess under her two names of *~>~\

^ "YY » < e and *-*~] > - y | , while the Nineveh goddess, in Layard's

Inscriptions, pi. 82, is named *-*~Y "jV^Y ^YYY a n ^ *~*\ *"T| I

(and in other copies of the same inscription *"*"( \ vv )J m exact oppositionto Dr. Hincks'e theory.

Again, in the annals of Asshwr-tani-pal, and especially in the legal tabletswhich I am now considering, the four names of *~*~\ \ yy > **~| * | 1 1 '>-»-T ^Z^YT *>^5 and • * - ' > - y I , appear to be used indiscriminately,and to apply to a goddess who was the presiding deity equally of Ninevehand of Arbela. At the same time, in a list which I possess of the gods andgoddesses as worshipped in the different cities of Babylonia and Assyria, I

find Beltis, or Ehea, under her ordinary form of *-»~| ^ • B J ^ f | ['alone given to Nineveh and Arbela, and I am rather inclined, therefore, tothink, that where the name Ishtar, under whatever form, is used in referenceto the presiding Assyrian goddess, it does not indicate Venus or Nanaia, as inother passages, but simply means " the goddess " par excellence, Ishtar, likejnj")!£'y in Scripture, having sometimes a generic, as well as a special appli-cation. The difficulty of identifying the goddesses worshipped at Ninevehand Arbela—or rather of distinguishing between the names of Beltis andIshtar, in reference to this deity—was stated by me at some length in my" Essay on the Assyrian and Babylonian Mythology," written in 1857 (seeRawlinson's Herodotus, vol. i. pp. 605 and 636) ; and in the same paper Ialso drew attention to the similarity of the Assyrian Hi to the 'Pea of theGreeks, an identification which Dr. Hincks has nevertheless attributed toMr. Fox Talbot, though that gentleman's first notice of it must have appeared

several years later. I may here add that the Babylonian Hi, >- | I I , whetherit be or be not connected with Rhea, is shown by the bilingual vocabularies

< TYT»» ( and to signify the number 15, belonging


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885




With regard to the city of A rbela, from which the name was

derived, we have more precise information. This city was probably

one of the earliest founded in Assyria, for XaXoos and 'Apajirfkos

are placed by Abydenus among the progenitors of Ninus, in defe-

rence, as it would seem, to some early tradition that Calah and

Arbil were older cities than Nineveh.15 The Talmudists, indeed,

had a fable that the Patriarch Seth was buried at Arbela,16 and the

place seems to have preserved its sepulchral, or funereal, character,

tbrough-the whole period of its history; for we find it constantly

selected by the Assyrian kings as the scene of execution of distin-

guished captives,1' and in a later age the Parthian monarchs are

probably to the same system of notation which employed He for 20, Mag for30, Eaz for 100, &c. (see Zend Avesta, torn. ii. p. 523); though why " thegreat goddess," who had no apparent connexion with the full moon, shouldhave been thus typefied, I cannot venture to conjecture.

14 Arbelus is twice mentioned in the mythic genealogy of Ninus, preservedby Abydenus, as if there was both an older and a later city of Arbil. Theother names occurring in this list, which probably conies originally fromBerosus, are also suggestive. Anebus must be, I think, the Median Anab, " agod," and the name of Babius, who was the immediate descendant of Belus,would seem to allude to the same myth of " the gate (of life)," which originatedthe name of Derceto, or Atargatis (/1JHJ"I, from yir\, "a gate"), and which

was perpetuated in the name of that goddess's dwelling place, ^*l~^ l ? f u » r,

Din-tir ("Life's gate ?"), or Sab-il, " the gate of god," or Babylon. For theextract from Abydenus, see Auclier's Eusebius, vol. i. p. 78, and Mos. Chor.lib. i. cap. 4.

16 I gather this from Schindler's Pentaglot, col. 144 ; but I have not foundthe passage in any Talmudic tract. At present the tomb of Seth is to be seenin the town of Mosul, and the veneration with which the spot is regarded isdue, no doubt, to the influence of the Sabeean school of northern Messopotamia,which adopted from the early Christians so many of the Hebrew -patriarchs,and paid a special respect to Seth, as the inventor of astrology and letters (seeRenan's Nabatheean Agriculture, Eng. edit. p. 53); but it is possible that thename, or one nearly similar, may have been known in the country from thevery remotest antiquity, for the earliest form under which the god Asshur is

named in the inscriptions (see Rawlinson's Ins. pi. 6, No. 1) is *"*"[ If

Ty>- ^J:|*~Y, which we are authorized by the Syllabary, No. 145, to read

as Ashit (]f~ f t r l being equal to 2^" J^;-4^T)) a very close approxi-mation to the Ishithd, IJU^UJI, of the Sabgeans; and as the same ortho-graphy is also given in the vocabularies as a variant for the country of Assyria,we may thus perhaps arrive at the origin of pEOD^i Astun, which is substi-tuted for ~)H£JX in the Samaritan version of the Pentateuch (see Rawlinson'sHerodotus, vol. i. p. 588).

17 The first mention of an execution at Arbela occurs in the annals ofAsshur-izzir-pal (Rawlinson's Ins. pi. 18, 1. 68), where, however, in thetranslation furnished to Layard by Dr. Hincks, the name of Babel is strangelyenough substituted (Nineveh and Babylon, p. 353). In the annals of Asshur-baiii-pai there are several similar notices, and finally, in the fourteenth para-


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885



196 BILINGUAL HEADINGS,

said to have been still interred there.18 I am further inclined tothink that Arbela must have been the scene of some great slaughterin the wars of succession which devastated Assyria between theclose of the reign of Tiglath Pileser II. and the accession of Sargon,for I cannot admit any other explanation of the famous passage inHosea x. 14.19

In later history Arbela was celebrated as the chief city in theneighbourhood of the great battle field where Darius lost the empireof Asia to Alexander f° and we may infer from a notice in Strabothat the Macedonian conqueror gave the name of Nicatorium to the

graph of the second column of the great inscription of Bihestun, Darius relateshow he crucified the rebel Sitratachmes at Arbela, after defeating him in thedistant province of Sagartia. *

18 Dion Cassius, at the commencement of his 78th Book, describes howCaracallus, in his Eastern war, destroyed the tombs of the Parthian kings atArbela, and scattered their bones abroad. Several royal tombs of the sameperiod were opened by me in the centre of the Koyunjik mound, but theoccupants—from the necklaces, ear-rings, bracelets, and other gold ornaments,which were found with the remains, and which are now in the British Museum—appeared to have been exclusively female. Could it have been possible thatthe Parthian kings were buried in one place and their queens in another ?

19 " And all thy fortresses shall be spoiled, as Shalman spoiled Beth Arbelin the day of battle ; the mother was dashed in pieces upon her children."The prophet here evidently alludes to some well known contemporaneousexploit; and the reign of Shalmaneser, which is determined by the canon tohave lasted from B.C. 726 to 721, will thus exactly suit. It has been customaryto compare 731&4 / V 3 with the "ApfirjXa of Galilee, mentioned in 1 Mace.ix. 2 ; but if there, had been any great slaughter in the north of Palestineduring either of the expeditions of Shalmaneser against Hoshea, this wouldhardly have been the only allusion in Scripture to such an event.

I may here add that a powerful corroboration of the truth of the historicalscheme which assigns to the Biblical Shalmaneser the five years interveningin the cano"n between the reigns of Tiglath Pileser and Sargon, is to be foundon the lion weights from Nineveh (now in the British Museum), which are

marked respectively with the names of Tiglath Pileser, Shalmaneser (T *"*"[

^ [ J l Z ^ y > T - ) , Sargon, and Sennacherib, evidently in a continuouschronological series ; and that a similar inference is to be drawn from a claytablet in the British Museum, which is dated from some year of the king,

T ^^"T \ | S — i^\ *jf > T" ' an(^ which to all appearance is of thesame age as the tablets dated from the Eponyma under Tiglath Pileser andSargon.

20 In actual distance Arbela was hardly nearer to the scene of battle thanwas Nineveh itself, or Caleh; but it was probably the only one of the greatAssyrian cities which was inhabited in the time of Alexander, its sacredcharacter having preserred it amid the revolutions which had desolated itssister capitals. The nearest city to the field of battle must have been that ofwhich the site is now marked by the ruins of Karamlis ; the Assyrian name

of this city being >-£l | | *"*"[ »Jf , and the Mahommedan title j l j ^ b ,

Beldiddh, as if the group *"*~| »Jf— (of very rare occurrence) representedthe god Bel.


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885




old Assyrian mound, to commemorate his victory,21 a circumstancewhich probably caused the city to be called Alexandriana, underthe Sassanian dynasty of Persia.32 The great mound of Arbelamust have been a kindred work to those other artificial construc-tions at Koyunjik and Nimrud, though perhaps of larger dimensions.It exhibits at the present day,—as far, at any rate, as concerns theheight of the mound, the steep slope, and the well preserved con-tinuous crest,—very much the appearance which the platform of thegreat palace of Nineveh must have presented in the age of Senna-cherib ; and it is hardly to be doubted that whenever the Turkishfort which now crowns the acclivity shall be removed, and facilitiesshall be thus afforded for running trenches and galleries into themound, a harvest of antiquities will reward the excavator, fullyequal to the treasures of Koyunjik and Nimrud.23

The name of Arbela seems to have been a very favourite elementin Assyrian names, for besides the present name of Arba-il-khirat,we have upon other tablets :—

yj %y

MannuH-Arba-il.

>-^f, Paqa-ana-Arba-il.

t t . >-»-y, Vapaqa-ana-Arla-il,Scc.

It need only further be stated, that the Phoenician legend onthis tablet is evidently of the same age as the Cuneiform writing,and that it may be positively assigned, therefore, to the middle ofthe seventh century B.C., the document being dated from theEponymy of y ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ J^-, Sin-shar-uzur, towards the close ofthe reign of Asshur-bani-pal.

21 The Mount Nicatorium is joined with Arbela by Strabo (p. 738), as ifthey were the same place; and indeed, there is nothing in the vicinity deservingof the name of a hill, except the old Assyrian mound. Strabo further callsArbelus, who founded the city, TOU 'AOftovews, in which name we mayperhaps recognize Esmun or iEscalapius, who was also adopted, lite Setli,into the religious system of the Sabeeans, and therein plays a most conspicuouspart (see Eenan's Nabathsean Agriculture, p. 41).

22 Theophyl. Sim. lib. v. cap. 7, adfinem.23 Rich estimated the height of the mound at 150 feet, and its diameter at

300 or 400 yards (Eich's Kurdistan, vol. ii. p. 17). He also learnt that anancient sepulchre had been opened in the mound shortly before his visit,which contained a body evidently from the description similar to those sincediscovered at Koyunjik. On several occasions I have searched for bricks andobjects of antiquity, on the slope of the mound, but have been unsuccessful infinding anything, as the place is densely inhabited, and anything, therefore,which is exposed to view is instantly carried off.


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885




No. 2.

The Phoenician legend in No. 2 tablet has been already partially-

published by Mr. Layard (Babylon and Nineveh, edit, of 1853,

p. 346), but the Cuneiform text is not there given with sufficient

distinctness to admit of a comparison between the two writings.

The tablet, however, is quite perfect, and succinctly records the

sale of a batch of slaves by their owner, j M ^ | *"*~f \ yV'

for the amount of three minse of silver. The slaves are thus

enumerated:—"Husi'a, and his two women, Mihzd and Badid;

"together with two men, Sigabd and Anu-taggil, and two young

" daughters, making in all seven persona." With regard to the

Phoenician docket, I have been long in doubt as to its application.

The first line, which is alone given in Layard's plate, and which

covers the margin of one side of the tablet, may be read quite

certainly as JWin J13~T>24 corresponding with fc^» tff- T £:TTT=

**~T I "*^*">T~ ' Tadani Husi'a of the Cuneiform text, " the sur-

render " (or sale) of Husia " (Hoshea) ;25 but I have long been in

doubt whether the remainder of the Phoenician legend, which is

continued along another side of the tablet, embodies the names of

24 The initial character is not given in any of the alphabets of Gesenius asan equivalent of the letter He, |"J, but the form is nevertheless well known toPhoenician scholars, and no doubt exists of its power. Another example of itwill be given in the sequel in the name of 7 j m ! T Hur-Tagil. I have recentlymet with another Phoenician legend on a scarabeeus in the British Museum, inwhich we also find the name of Husi'a, or Hoshea. The entire legend seemsto read J?l£nri-"lDn/> Li Khahad-Husi' a, or perhaps Li Khud-Husi'a, forthe second letter of the first element of the name is of a very doubtful form.

25 It will be found, as we proceed, that the Cuneiform letters of the £}

class ( » ffY 3 * ^ | I ' an<^ ^ " | | ) a r e constantly represented in Phoenicianby the If], and the same confusion has been long since remarked between theHebrew and Assyrian sibilants, as evidenced by the Cuneiform orthography ofsuch foreign names as Samaria, Jerusalem, &c, whilst, however, in regard tonative names, such as Sennacherib, Sippara, Borsippa, &c, the CuneiformSamech is correctly reproduced in the Hebrew and Arabic orthography. Now,it is quite certain, I think—whatever may have been the primitive sound ofthe Phoenician Samech—that its Cuneiform correspondent was a sharp dentalsibilant—in fact ts, since it constantly includes a dental etymologically, andwherever, therefore, we find a Hebrew or Phoenician [y, answering to thisSamech, we must suppose it to be a Sin rather than a Shin. In regard,indeed, to this very word J?t£nj"l> s'gmfying " deliverance" or " safety," weread it with a Sin in the name of Hosea, the prophet, as well as with a Shinin the name of Hoshea, the king. In order to distinguish between the Cunei-form sibilants, I now represent the Shin series by sh, and the Samech seriesby simple s; but I still think that ts would more nearly give the true pro-nunciation of the latter class.


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885




the other male slaves who were sold with Hoshea, or whether itdoes not rather correspond with the resume in the Cuneiform text,

^ w r«< z t ^=y r«< *@rr r ^ = T HT < w." In all j seven persons' slaves, belonging to Arad-Asha." Aftermuch hesitation, I have decided in favour of the latter appli-cation, though it involves many difficulties, and obliges me to leavethe beginning of the second Phoenician line entirely unexplained.The initial character, indeed, of this line cannot be identified withany certainty ; and the fifth character, also, is of very unusual form.Perhaps the illegible letters at the beginning of line 2 may form aword meaning " &c," or " and the others ;" then J J}, a », may bea contraction for abadan or ardan " slaves ;" the fifth character,which is not, I think, alphabetic, may be an arbitrary sign for " inall," answering to the Cuneiform J^-, and the two followingcharacters may be numerals for 7 ; the first of them being verylike the Palmyrene 5,M and the double stroke being the regularPhoenician sign for 2. All this, however, is exceedingly doubtful.The only points which can be considered to be even approxi-mately determined are the division of the words by a sort of pointor dot, and the identification of the numerals for VII, The twolast words of the line are less uncertain ; they can hardly be readotherwise than KTHN V, the zi being the ordinary Phoenician rela-tive cognate with the Hebrew JIT, Chaldee "*!, and Arabic ^ j J l , 2 'and I0T1N being, as I conjecture, the Phoenician equivalent ofT >^iilT *~*~T \ YY • This latter reading, however, involvessome very obscure matters, and must be examined more in detail.The Assyrian sign >*"£], which forms the first element of thename, and which signifies " a slave," is proved by numerous exam-

36 See G-esen. Mon. Phoen. vol. i. p. 88. Another instance will be foundin No. 16 of this series, of the employment, apparently, of a Phoenician 3for the numeral 5, though no doubt the ordinary method of expressing thatnumber was by fire perpendicular strokes.

27 >f, although not recognized by Gresenius, is of very common occurrencein early Phoenician legends, such as those on the lion weights, upon cylindersand seals of the Assyrian period, and upon these clay tablets; and there isevery reason to believe, from its employment, that the pronoun, which wasoriginally demonstratiTe, must have been identical with the noun of attribu-

tion. In the Proto-Babylonian the sign £;»jp^ is thus used both as a deter-

minative of quality, and for the relative pronoun; and in Arabic (and

especially in the old Himyaric) there is the same connection between «<J,

" a lord;" I j , " th is ;" and the relative t__cjo'.


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885




pies to have had the phonetic value of ardu.w Its Semitic rela-tionship is not apparent, unless, indeed, it be derived from the rootm i , " to tread upon," but it must have been very extensivelyemployed in Assyrian nomenclature, and it is exactly representedby the Phoenician TIN.

The phonetic reading of the second element, >->-Y / W, whichwas one of the names of "the Great Goddess" who presided overNineveh, is a more difficult matter, and has long been, in fact, oneof the most important, as well as the most hopeless, of the desiderataof Cuneiform decipherment. I cannot say, indeed, even now, thatthe problem is definitively solved, for although we have threenames in which this element occurs, represented in Phoenician aswell as in Cuneiform, there is unfortunately some weak point ineach of the three examples. Here the Phoenician character—thelast in the line—which should answer to the name of the goddess,is imperfect, and although I do not think it can be anything but ashin, ttf, still I cannot be quite certain of the fact. If I am right,however, in reading EHIM as the equivalent of Y >> ~~T >->-Y{VJ, then it follows that we must consider " the Great Goddess"to have had in Assyria the vernacular title of illflU, Asha or Ashat," the woman," par excellence f3 and in this view we may go on,perhaps, to explain the title of 'A<5a, which Hesychius gives to the

28 T h a t >*)f~"| signified " a slave," a n d was p ronounced ardn (or incomposition arad), there is no doubt whatever ; but the employment of themonogram in the compound epithet K^*~ >^i^I|> which was a titlefrequently assumed by the Assyrian tings, and especially in reference toBabylonia, is not quite so easily explained. I believe, however, that it means" reducing to slavery," or " putting on the yoke of slavery," though I cannotgive with any certainty its phonetic equivalent. (Compare the Khursabadpassages, pi. 152, 3, 12, with 95, 6, and also 145, 3, 12; 151, 10, 9, and123, 16).

I would also suggest that the biblical name of "pD~nN> applied to a sonof Sennacherib's, which has positively no meaning in Assyrian, is an error ofthe copyist for "f^DTIN; Ardu-malik (equivalent to the Hebrew JEbed-Melek," servant of the ting") ; but it is singular that we have not more examplesfrom the Greek and Hebrew of the employment of the word ardn in Assyriannames.

29 The Assyrian phonetic term for " a woman," >- fc;| | *~^^T)is not, however, as far as I have observed, ever applied as a name to thegoddess in question, nor is its Proto-Chaldsean equivalent, ^»->*~[ (pro-nounced dam; compare dame, &e.) ever used in connection with the greatgoddess, except to express her relationship to *-*~] >—<•


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885



CUNEIFORM AND PHCENICIAN. 201

Babylonian Juno,30 by NJIft, the Chaldee equivalent ofhave no confirmation, it is true, of this phonetic reading of Ashaor Ashat, for the Assyrian " Mother of the Gods," from any Greekor Biblical name, nor does such a reading explain in any way thegoddess's titles of / yJ and >-TYT > but, on the other hand, thereare, as will presently be seen, two more independent bilingualreadings which give the same result, and it is further evident thata name signifying " the woman " would be sufficiently appropriate,more especially when the standard title by which she is known,

>->-Y ^^"^1 ^TTT' m a y ^e a^S0 sn0WI1 *° mean " the lady."31 I twould have been more regular, of course, had the Phoenician namebeen written with an aleph, j$, so as to distinguish between thetwo elements composing it, arad, " a slave," and Asha, " Beltis ;"but many similar contractions and omissions will be observed aswe proceed with our analysis, and in the present case there waspositively no room on the tablet for an extra letter.

I will now consider the alternative reading which wouldrecognise the names of the other two male slaves in these obscurePhoenician characters. The blank space at the end of the firstline contained probably the mere point of division, and the twosigns which commence the second line may, thus, perhaps have beenintended for the name of Siya, or Sigu, contracted from theCuneiform * > ^ ff^ |y Sigald, or Sigvd, and derived either from3JiV, "to be high," or NJltf, " t o be great." This assimilation,though not wholly satisfactory, might perhaps be accepted, but thedifficulty in regard to the second word is, I fear, insurmountable.The Cuneiform name which follows that of Sigabd is composed of

30 'ASa . . . . inrb Tiafivkoviwv y "Hpa, Hesych. in Vore.31 Dr. Hincks, in one of his recent papers (Journal of Sac. Lit. No. xxviii.

p. 405), has hazarded the bold hypothesis that *~*~Y t ^ " ^ l *~\\ Iis to be pronounced Binhlit-ghiti, and that it signifies " the lady of blood (orslaughter)." Now, a very slight acquaintance with the Proto-Chaldeeanlanguage, to which all these divine names belong, is sufficient to show that

>-\ 11 (pronounced ge, »-J |-<S^ ^"|T' s e e Syllabary, Mo. 366) is a meregrammatical suffix, used apparently like the terminal guttural of the Basque,

and that >->-| »-JJ f^f f a n d *"Hf t^~^T ^Iff ' therefore, how-ever they may hare been pronounced in Assyrian, signify probably " the Lord,"and " the Lady." Dr. Hincks has also suggested in the same place that the

god Bil-zirbu is identical with *~I I fc| TT> but there is not the leastauthority for this. On the contrary, Bil-zirhu is a God very little known, andonly worshipped, as far as I have seen, in the Arabian district of Buz.

vol. i,—[NEW SERIES]. 14


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885




two elements, namely, the God >-JJ ^ ^ , and the verbal adjunct*ff*^T f-JH* Now it is very possible, and even probable,that the signs >-TT ^ ^ do really represent the name of the GodAnu; for although such an epithet is not found in any list ofsynonyms for this deity, still I think we may read the signs asHuras,32 and this is actually the pronunciation given repeatedly inthe bilingual vocabularies to the sign ]*~U, which seems to havebeen one of the epithets by which Anu was distinguished. Itremains then to consider the second element JSI>» Mil, andhere I am bound to admit the comparison altogether fails us.These two signs, when considered as ideographs, mean probably" the stone which appoints," and are thus used for " a seal," whichin the language of Assyria was named kanuh ;33 but the same signs

32 That is, the sign >-\ I , in its signification of "a lord," interchanges

frequently with \ , which again appears to be the same title as £ : T | | ~ T»,a term that is often used to indicate royalty in the Proto-Chaldsean inscriptions(compare Rawlinson's Ins. pi. 3, No. 9, 1. 7; No. 10,1.12 ; pi. 5, No. 16,1.5;

and No. 20,1. 3, &c). One of the possible values of *~I I might thus be

hu; and ^ ^ is well known to be either ras or Teas, the former power beingthe Turanian equivalent of TcJuwan, " a road," and thus standing sometimesfor the city of Harran. Ras itself would seem to be connected with the

Persian x\\\i rail, " a road;" ras-idan, " to arrive," &c, &c.

I t is doubtful, however, if the title of *~*~1 1*11; which is generally

accompanied in the bilingual lists with the gloss of £n |T— ^fcTT H E '

apply properly to the god Anu, or to Hercules (*"*"] * T / ' ^ occurs inthe lists of epithets applying to each of these gods, and even in reference to thecity of *- >~~< \ I*"T>—which was the special seat of the god *~*~\ T*~U(see Eawlinson's Ins. pi. 65, col. 2,1. 46), and which would appear to be theDubana of Behistun (col. 3, 1. 78), as its temple is named * *T ^ T*-*-] y l H in the geographical patalogues—although Hercules, or *~*~|

Y^-^T T*~||, is given as the tutelar divinity of the place, the temple whichit contained, and which was repaired by Nebuchadnezzar (in loc. cit.), has thetitle of f:^ ^ 4 ^ J l T *~*~| |T \ T) where we recognize the name

of Anu. (This is a mistake. Hercules was the god of Mffer, or » " | | £-]][

\T^T j but *"*"! T*"*! is alone mentioned as the god of *~ >—< A I P * ) *33 ^TlT is used with a great variety both of powers and meanings. One

of its most common employments, however, is to represent the root HJO," to count or appoint" (see Syllabary, No. 371, for the noun J — *f~ >-£:£; ] ,


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885



CTTNEIFOKM AND PHCENICIAN. 203

are also constantly found in proper names with phonetic powers,

representing the root tagal, " to serve," or " be attached to," the

three forms of Sff^y ^TTT, £ » ^ "TTT, and fcj^ Y J> being usedindifferently,34 and by no possible manipulation can I torture the

three Phoenician signs which in the legend follow JN into any word

at all resembling in sound taggal or taggil. If these signs are

really alphabetic rather than numerals, they must, it would seem,

represent a Shin, a Caph, and a Kheth, and the name would thus

read 1"O$ 3N, Anu-shekah, instead of Anu-taggil.™ It is, then, the

" counting"), and this appears to me to be the meaning which it conveys, in

connection with »Jpf_/», " a stone," as applied to a signet seal. Mr. Fox

Talbot explains Eff^f tj7T_ as " the talking stone," but I know not onwhat authority.

34 One of the most perplexing features in Cuneiform writing is the admix-ture of ideographic and phonetic expression, of which we see an example in

this word. The group »jf^_^| fc"T» as applied to a seal, is purely

ideographic, S s l 5 f being " a stone;" in Assyrian, ahnn, for ] 3 & and

as I have already explained, representing perhaps the root IDD, " tocount;" but both of these characters have, of course, phonetic powers in Turanian,the former being tak or tag (allied, as I think, to the Turkish tosh and tagh),and the latter sometimes—but very rarely—standing for gil. It is thereforepossible that a signet seal in Turanian may have been named tag-gil (with whichI would compare " sigillum," the t and * interchanging, as is usual in Chaldeeand Hebrew), and may thus very properly have been used for the Assyrian

root taqal or tagal, " to serve," although there was another ideograph, ]*~hespecially assigned to that root, because in some primitive dialect ku had thesame signification. At any rate, from the variant readings in different copies

* ^ 5y YYVof the Assyrian canon, there can be no doubt that »jf^_^| *"»1L m P r 0 P e r

names does not indicate " a seal," as Mons. Oppert supposes, giving it thepower of " kounottk," but that it is used phonetically for the root taqal ortagal.

I may give another instance of the manner in which the old Turanianpowers were sometimes utilized in Assyrian, in the compound ideograph

^TTTT ^T—) f°r "a palace." In ordinary Assyrian this would be read

Hit rabu, "the great house," but in Turanian, ^ [ | f | > " a house," was he

{^\\ See Syllabary, No. 364), and ^f—, "great," was "gal," or "leal;"and from these two foreign powers the Assyrians formed the compound 7DTT>which was adopted as the name for " a palace " by all the Semitic nations, andwhich was the "actual pronunciation, as can be shown by a multitude ofexamples, given to the compound ideograph JzTTTT ^T—.

35 If these' names of Sigaba and Ami-taggil could be made out, then, ofcourse, it would be necessary to read the concluding Phoenician words as

t, zi-aradan, "whowere slaves," answering to y ^y >-> * | \ \ V


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885




impossibility of reconciling these two readings which has decidedme in favour of the other explanation, weak and insufficient asit is.

No. 3.

This is a mere fragment registering the sale of a batch of slaves,one male and two of his female relatives, by a man of the name ofKhudai to another called Ninuai. The name of the male slave,which is alone specified, is unfortunately defective both in theCuneiform and the Phoenician text, the beginning of the name beinglost in the one, and the end in the other. Our list of proper namesis now so large, numbering above a thousand, that in most caseswe can restore a defective word from other examples with muchprobability ; blit I doubt if there is a second mention of thisname on any of the tablets. The commencement of the name, itis true, in the Phoenician text, resembles much the month of t ^ N ,Elul, and there are actually two months of the Assyrian Calendar,TfcTT and ££lY, which seem to have been extensively used inthe nomenclature of Nineveh, the former, moreover, being the sixthmonth of the Assyrian Calendar, and thus corresponding in placewith the Hebrew Elul;36 but I have never found the second ele-ment, khazzi, in composition, with either the month IfcJ J or ££lT>nor indeed with any other ordinary Assyrian noun, and I cannotventure therefore to give the Cuneiform equivalent of ^tf . Withregard also to this second element, it is not quite certain thatkhazzi is the true form. In the Phoenician text a Kheth, ft, appearsafter Alal, and in the Cuneiform we have the two concludingletters, J ^£V " " f l " ^ ami ; but there is no direct proof that thethree letters form one word. If Alal-khazzi be, however, the truereading of the slave's name, we must suppose it to be a kindredcompound with Yahu-khazi, which was the Assyrian orthography

and the whole argument in favour of the name of Asha, for *~>~\ \ Vy >would fall to the ground. I do not, however, think it possible that the lastPhoenician letter can be a Nim, \

36 I shall consider in another place whether the Assyrian year commencedwith the vernal or autumnal equinox. Mons. Oppert adopts the former calcu-lation, in opposition to the later Syrian calender, and he thus without hesita-tion reads the name of | »^ !^ Iy 1^:11 |T IT a s m<>ulai- This maybe correct, but requires confirmation. At any rate, the Ilulseus of Tyre canhardly be connected with the month of Elul, since the name is written as

* TpH * " t ^ J ^ - t IT' ™ t ' l e Sennacherib annals; and it is very doubt-ful if the 'lXoiXawe of the canon of Ptolemy be a genuine orthography.


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885




for the Hebrew <1*W, the signification being "might of Alal;'and we must further regard Alal (or perhaps EluV) as one of thegods of the Assyrian Pantheon, whose title was used genericallyby the Hebrews for " an idol," and who also, perhaps, gave hisname to the sixth month of the Assyrian Calendar.37

No. 4.

The interest of this legend mainly depends on the aid it affordsus in identifying the name of the great goddess of Nineveh. TheCuneiform inscription relates to an exchange of property in slaves.Three joint owners of a male slave named Y ^»~\ ^ \ V £ S ^ < T~*-\ Y| * " t l i j ' barter him against a female slave named Tulikhd,the property of a certain Zikkullanu, an officer of the Court, whosedealings are very extensively registered on these tablets. ThePhoenician docket is simply 7p"nit'^ DTI, Danat Asha-dur-qali,"The giving up of Asha-dur-gdli." Now if this reading could bedepended on, the name of the Goddess *~*-\ ^ J» ' w u o ; a s n a s

been already explained, is the same with *•*-[ *—|YT and *•*-]•^-^T i~1Y T, would be no longer subject to any doubt; but un-fortunately the Phoenician legend—in this case scratched and notincised—is faint throughout, and the characters which are the leastclearly traced are precisely those which are of the most importance,namely, the two composing the first element of the name. Ihave examined the legend in every possible light, and with the aidof powerful glasses, and I certainly think the two letters—andthere cannot be more—are an Ain, }?, and a Shin, fQ; but stillI cannot be sure ; and while the shade of an uncertainty exists, thisinteresting point of mythological nomenclature must remain open.

If the reading of l£ty were fairly made out, I should not think

3' The Hebrew word /v}$, which is used for "idols (Lev. xix. 4, and

xxvi. 1), may very well be cognate with 'pJpN ; and for neither one nor the

other has any satisfactory etymology been yet found. Among the many namesfor the Assyrian god Ann, however, I find one in the mythological listswhich seems to belong to the same stock as EUl and Ulul. It is written

Ty *~iz\ *~J^|' AM®; and the female divinity associated withAnn, under

this form (for the gods are usually arranged in pairs) is named >—< *~HI^_f

>->;T<_K Tillili. I also observe in Rawlinson's Ins. pi. xxix. 1. 8, thatHercules is named Allalli IMn, which, from the analogy of the Syriac, 1 con-ceive to mean " the leader of the gods." The term Alulah, in Samaritan,signifies "first-born," or "eldest," and this epithet is particularly applicableto Aim.


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885




much of the variation in orthography from the form of itfH, whichis used in No. 14, and V) in No. 2 ; for the name, it must be re-membered, was foreign to the Phoenicians, and the Assyrians intheir pronunciation seem to have hardly distinguished between theAin and the Aleph;** and there is, moreover, an exactly analogousinstance of corruption in the Hebrew JTnJ'Kfiy for the Assyrian£^yy *> -, Ishtar.

The second and third elements of the slave's name are clearand certain as to their pronunciation, though some doubt mayattach to their meaning. The Cuneiform J : f T •""•<, is everywhere

in the vocabularies explained by £ ^ | ^ *^T1T' -Dun, andthere can be no doubt therefore as to its meaning or pronunciation.It is used in geographical names precisely as the Arabic ,, j , andis applied to any fortress or place of defence, signifying originally, asit would seem, " a circular enclosure," whether for a camp or town.39

The third element is not so easy of explanation. The Cuneiform£ | YI >-£;£<J is very correctly represented by the Phoenician7p, pronounced probably as qali, but the meaning is doubtful.As I observe, however, in a nominal roll where the most ordinaryAssyrian titles are classified according to their composition andetymology, that the^ name of Nabu-dur-qala is bracketed withNabu-dur-irisu, I conceive they must be of kindred signification,and would propose therefore to compare qala with «_li> " a fort,"as >-£lYY certainly answers to "l^j the meaning of the respectivenames in the nominal roll being' ' Nabu is the defence of the for-tress," and " Nabu is the defence of his city." It must be observed,at the same time, that this lapse of the final Ain is hardly per-missible, and that there are no other examples that I am aware of

38 Dr. Levy, I observe, in Ms vocabulary (Phonizisches Wb'rterbuch, p. 8),under the head of Jlt^N, " a woman," gives an example from Gesenius ofthe variant Phoenician reading of rS0V' which is exactly applicable to thepresent passage.

39 Mons. Oppert, I believe, to the present day, reads t f c l ^ l as Sisir,and Mr. Fox Talbot adheres to the old reading of Kara, which Dr. Ilincksfirst suggested when he fancied that the sign answered to the phonetic word

^ - ^ l * " ! TI *~| f Ij in the great Nebuchadnezzar Ins. col. 5, Is. 2, 5, &c.I have, however, at least twenty examples of the reading of Dur for the signin question, and have thus phonetically rendered the character in all my

translations for the last ten years. The only doubt I have is whether ^J^N^Tis not sometimes used as a verb as well as a noun, answering, in fact, to theroot i n , as well as to the term "ll Ti in which case it might be optionallysounded as iddur, vadur, &c.


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885




in the inscriptions of the employment of the Arabic «_!• for " afortress," so that the meaning of " Asha defends the fort," for Asha-dur-qdli, can only be received provisionally.

The tablet iD question dates from the Eponymy of Sin-shar-uzur, about B.C. 650.

No. 5.

The broken tablet on which this legend is found registers the saleof a field for a sinab (or two-thirds of a mina) and four shekels ofsilver,39* the Cuneiform name of the seller being Y >-*-[< *->- T < S^>and of the buyer, T -*^»W- f:>E, neither of which names, however,can be rendered phonetically with any certainty. The first line ofthe Phoenician docket is simply 'jpn D21, " the sale of the field,"

answering to the Cuneiform t £ r Jff- Tl TTTJ &nd the secondline ought therefore, as it would seem, to give the name of the ownerof the property; but I have quite failed to make out an equivalentreading. The beginning, indeed, of the second Phoenician line isaltogether illegible, and the continuation "HOT, zardd, bears noresemblance that I can discover to the Cuneiform T *-*-[<

^pft, in the first line, for the Cuneiform T» TIT, is a readingof some interest. I have long been acquainted with the meaningof the term, from having observed that it was used as a substitute

for >y t 4 ^ ' zig9arJ " land '," but both Monsieur Oppert andMr. Talbot have misunderstood it, and have sadly disfigured someimportant passages in consequence.40 The term Jy ^ f If itself is

[39* The identification of the sinab, equivalent to two-thirds of the manah,is a new discovery. The Assyrian signs indicating this weight are JTl and >+—,both of which are given on the Lion in the Museum Collection, No. 9, wherewe have also the Phoenician reading of ^JP. The Assyrian equivalent ofTTI is given in the Syllabary as \1— Jxf; >—< T *S»-, sinahu\.

40 There are three very innocent lines in the great Khursabad inscriptionof Sargon, relating to the means by which the king obtained the lands requiredfur the building of the city, which lines the lively imaginations of Mons. Oppertand Mr. Pox Talbot have converted into the most important historical data,the French savant drawing from them an explanation of the name of Sargina(Sargon), while Mr. Talbot thinks they prove the antiquity of coined money.

The translations of these gentlemen are as follows :—" Car les grands dieux m'ont nomme ainsi (Sarkin), parce que j'ai observe

" les traites et la foi juree, parce que j 'ai gouverne sans injustice et sans opprimer" les faibles. J'ai presente aux chefs de la ville les constitutions ecrites de la" cite, d'aprtis les tables de la verite, gravees sur argent et sur airain. Je leur" ai donne ensuite les explications indispensables sur la loi, sans arbitraire, la" loi de la justice, la loi qui les dirige dans leurs actions." (Les InscriptionsAssyriennes des Sargonides, p. 38).


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885




Turanian, and it is doubtful how it was pronounced; its Assyrian

equivalent, however, is everywhere given as t^y ^I^zT t^"JH-'

eqil, which exactly corresponds with the Chaldee N pCT, and Syrian

The English rendering is :—" As the great gods have given renown to my name, which is triumphant

" and victorious, so also have they given to me the government of affairs" unconnected with battle and victory. The money of the inhabitants of this" city (as with unanimous voice they desired) I renewed, both in silver and" copper, in accordance with their prayers. I made coins, but not of gold" (which money the people did not wish for), and gave them to the inha-" bitants, both present and future, to be their own property." (Trans, of RoyalSoc. of Lit. vol. vii. part i. page 171.)

Now, there are several words of which I still consider the meaning to bedoubtful, but the general sense, commencing from the thirty-ninth line, I taketo be as follows :—

• (39) A.na susub alu sdsu, zakkur parakki makhi (or ziri) acbnwnIn founding this city, a building glorious and exalted, temples

Hi rabi va hekali subat bilutiya, varzi va musakbud,of the great gods, and palaces for my royalty, graciously and honourably,

azkir-va episu ikbi (40) kima zigar sumiya,I constructed and I made it to be called like the saying of my own name,sha ana nazvr gitti va misharisu, sntesur la

which to the dominion of the world (?) and its government (ruling withoutlihi la khabal, innimbu-inni Hi rabi. (41) Kaship

violence or oppression), the great gods have blazoned forth for me. The priceeqili alu sasu, Tci pi duppate sha aimanusu,

of the lands of this city, according to the tablets which secured it (or its titleTcaspa va zipar, ana bilisun vatir-va; (42) assu riggati

deeds), (in) silver and copper, to the proprietors of them I returned, andla rusi sha kaship eqil la zibu, eqil

in solid bullion (?) whoever the price of their lands did not wish for, landsmikhar, eqil akhir panusun addin sunuti.in front or lands in rear, in exchange to them I gave them.

A few notes may perhaps be required. In the first line susub is Shaphelof 3 $ ' ; zakkur is evidently connected with the verb azkir, which follows,and probably comes from the same root as vazakkir in the Birs Nimrudinscription. These terms are also, I think, allied to ziggur, the special nameof the towers attached to the Assyrian temples, but there is no cognate rootwith the signification of "building" in any other Semitic language. The

honorary epithets f:T**f * ~ » ^ I 1 " * ^ formed perhaps the proper nameof the tower of Dur- Sargina, of which the remains are now to be seen onthe mound at Khursabad. The allusion in the first and second line is to thecity of Dur-Sargina being named after the king; not to any explanation ofthe king's own name, as Mons. Oppert supposes. The idiom of the gods" blazoning forth" the name of the king to supreme power is common.The parenthetical phrase sutesur la lihi, la khabal, seems to have par-ticular allusion to the justice of the king in purchasing the lands, insteadof taking violent possession of them. In the third line (line 41) I am notsure whether the words " silver and copper" refer to the weight of metal givento the proprietors for their lands, or to the material of the tablets on whichthe title deeds were written, these title deeds being of the same class as theclay tablets and inscribed stones, which we are now discussing. Probably,however, the latter is the true application, as I have never in one single


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885




P *"***, being, in fact, the same noun which occurs in the famousname 'AKe\Ba/ua, or " the field of blood."11

instance found copper given, as a representative of value, although gold, silver,and iron are mentioned in almost every transaction of sale or barter.

It is from line 42 that Mr. Talbot draws his inference of the use ofcoined money, translating raggaU la rusi as " coins, not of gold," whereas I

compare > - | | < | ^<]^ ^TTT^" *~"T<' not with •W"1' but with the

Chaldee } W 1 , which was probably in its origin an ingot of metal usedT : •

instead of money, but which we translate in Prov. xvi. 11 by " a just weight;"and with regard* to rnsi (which in the Nebuchadnezzar inscription is alwayswritten with a double s), I do not at all admit its signification of gold, butthink, on the contrary, that it is a mere epithet of gold, " beaten out," so as tobe laid on the walls and pillars of temples and palaces, in laminae or plates.I compare, therefore, the Syriac %MM-i1, which the dictionaries give as" contusus, percussus malleo," and suppose, in this instance, la rusi means .merely " solid bullion ;" however, I admit that the phrase is a difficultone, and have only noticed the passage to show on what slender foundationsscholars like Oppert and Eox Talbot are sometimes tempted to build upimportant theories.

41 On one of the bilingual tablets, for instance, we have the followingequivalent phrases, which are interesting in many ways:— .

TTTKANIAH". ASSYEIAN.

Tsrane, mungafhuh * kalih * urra;;

JYira, ungat'hualib-zu * kterra.

The powers of the letters, how-ever, in Turanian, vary so greatlyfrom their ordinary values in Assyrian,that no great dependence can beplaced on this reading. The first

i indeed, is probably nenor men, rather than iz. ^^^T, whererepresenting the root ^J7I"T " to go,"

is sounded ra ( f : ^ ] [)> perhaps

allied to • • n. The powers of lib,

also, for I | [ j and Teur, for A^-,are doubtful, though sufficiently pro-bable. The root t/aPhu, for f$l£0,is well known.

K Ud V TL

-HI.< yT i

Tallik, tassdGo thou (and) spoil

JSqil nafcri;the land of the enemy;

Illik issa(for) he went and spoilt

lEqil-ka nakru.thy land (i. e.) the enemy.

The first line is a good specimen

of variant readings, ^ | — havingthe power of tal, as well as pi, &c,and Tr~l standing for lik and tas,as well as wr, &c. The root fromwhich, come tassd and issd is pro-bably Siyjj in the sense of " takingup " or " lifting " (the produce of).


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885




No. 6.

This tablet is also imperfect. A fracture of the upper cornerhas destroyed the names of the parties who executed the deed, andhas thus very much curtailed our materials for comparison, whilethe Phoenician writing also, which extends horizontally along threeof the side margins of the tablet, is so faint,—having been merelyscratched with the nail apparently while the clay was yet soft,—thatthe forms of many of the letters cannot be traced with any cer-tainty. A small portion of the legend, however, at the commence-ment is distinctly legible, and this is not without value. Thedeed relates to the sale of a slave girl, named Khambusu, and hermother, whose name is mutilated, for the sum of one mina andeight shekels of silver. The names of the sellers are lost; thatof the purchaser is Luqu (meaning probably " a doctor," andthe same name as that of Luke the Evangelist—Compare Tlp7," learned," and remark that the final guttural of this root alwayslapses in Assyrian). The Phoenician legend commences withVJ2n RTIDN rQ"T, Banal Amtd Khabusu, " the sale of the femaleslave Khabusu," &c. Danat has been already explained. Anitais, of course, the Aramaic form of !"IQN, of which the Cuneiformcorrespondent is -fV .»j\ Shallat (?).42 The only example that Ihave met with of the employment of the noun HOX in the inscrip-tions is in the geographical name of Amti-khadasti, for the city olAmmo-chosta, or J"lt£Hn J")QN, in reference, no doubt, to the famousCyprian goddess ;43 but we have there merely the Cuneiform ren-dering of a Phoenician title. In the reading of Khabusu for theCuneiform Khambusu, -jV- *M fc-*^ ^ » ~ £-T|> w e observe,

42 The reading of this word X%- +, , as applied to " a female slave," is

very doubtful. I t is always used as the feminine to ^ J U T , ardu, but I

doubt if it ends in t, as the suffix attached to it is J[> instead of f^|T.The word Shallat is used, I believe, both for " plunder " and for " women,"and there is some difficulty in distinguishing between the two meanings in

some passages, but ~£f- A. > for " a female slave," is quite a different noun,and is in all probability a Turanian compound.

43 See Rawlinson's Ins., pi. 48,1. 11. I t is impossible to say whether the

epithet khadasat, which is joined with amat in this name ^ - ^ a *—*](

JI< £*^|T £3?**. >—-<[<, is to be compared with V)~in> "new, young,"

or V}1p, " holy," or with HDTIi the name originally borne by QueenEsther, and supposed to be the same as D^~t, for " the myrtle ;" probably,however, the latter explanation is to be preferred, as the myrtle was especiallysacred to the Cyprian Venus.


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885



CUNEIFORM AND PHOENICIAN. 2 H

firstly, the lapse of the nasal before the b, which is quite in con-formity with the genius of the Phoenician language, and secondly,the substitution of the Shin, It}, for the Samech, V, of which wehave had a previous example in the reading of ^tthn for | f: ]f\—

**-!! -t^*-*^-- The derivation is probably from ttflin, " to bind,"

which is i ** *- in Arabic with the same change of sibilant as inthe Assyrian, and the name is therefore peculiarly appropriate to aslave. It is not safe to attempt any further analysis of thePhoenician text. The names represented should be those of themother of Khambum, and probably of the parties from whom thetwo women were purchased ; but the letters can be only doubtfullytraced, and as we have not the Assyrian originals of any of thesenames in a complete form, the Phoenician readings, even if theywere certain, would possess no great interest. Perhaps in theletters . . . J?n, near the end of the legend, we may recognise thecommencement of the name of the father of one of the sellers,which is represented in Cuneiform by | jr < >-Yy~^ • • • Khazi. .but in no other case can I offer even a conjectural comparison.

No. 7.

The Phoenician legend on this tablet does not appear to be adocket of the contents, but is rather, as I think, the attestation ofone of the witnesses to the document. The only difficult characterin the whole legend is the first letter; but I can hardly doubtfrom other examples that it is intended for a Shin, IV, though theform is not usual on these tablets. I read the entire inscription assimply 13213J? r\TW, " the attestation of Abed-Nebo," and pro-pose the following explanation :—DlTtf is everywhere used in thesePhoenician endorsements before the attesting signatures (compareNo. 15, where there are two similar examples, and also the Phoe-nician dockets given by Grotefend, in the " Zeitschrift fur dieKunde des Morgenlandes," vol. ii. p. 177 ; and by Gesenius, Mon.Phoen. vol. ii. tab. 32, pi. lxxvii. b.); and is thus certainly asubstitute for the character ^Y— on the Assyrian tablets ; butthe etymology is not equally clear. Shakhat would seem to be afeminine noun like danat and biyat, and I am thus tempted tocompare the Arabic , » _ , « , " truth," notwithstanding that theinitial letter of that word, which is equal to the Hebrew 2J, veryrarely answers to the Phoanician Shin. In support of this expla-nation, I further observe that in Syriac, derivatives from this root,


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885




, j j ' , have a special reference to the signing of a name, and

I also recall the fact that in the East at the present day everyMohammedan who attests a document places before his autograph

the word ,-^s*5 " It is true," a custom which has led to the

Anglo-Indian vulgarism of Shy as equivalent to a signature. Onthe other hand, there are some grounds for preferring the alternaT

tive derivation of Shakhat, from "Trfiy, or j ^ i , " to witness." Themeaning of a " witness," in the first place, is more appropriate, asit would seem, than " truth ;" again, in the famous copper Sassanamfrom Malabar, the names of all the Mohammedan witnesses areactually preceded by this word A#ib, and thirdly, the orthographyis more in harmony, as the initial sibilants are of the same class,and the hard and soft aspirates, which constitute the only difference,are frequently confounded. The termination, however, offers, as Ithink, an insurmountable obstacle to this explanation, for thePhoenician terminal J"l cannot under any circumstances represent aradical "1, nor is it allowable to regard PiTTW as a contraction ofthe true Aramaic term N/inrtfy, which occurs in Gen. xxxi. 47.

The word which follows DHV may be certainly read as!)3 J"QJ/, Abed-Nebo, " the slave of Nebo," a name which would berepresented in Cuneiform by Y * * JiT >->-[ a t , and which isactually borne by one of the witnesses to this particular document,though it may fairly be doubted if the two names, written inAssyrian and Phoenician characters, refer to the same individual.

The deed itself relates to the sale of a slave girl named Gula-dallat, by her joint owners, to the same Zihkullanu whose dealingshave before come under our notice. The price was two-thirds of amina of silver, and the sale is registered with the usual formalities.

The tablet is dated from Nabu-shar-uzur, who was Eponymeduring the last year of the reign of Sennacherib, answering toB.C. 683.14

44 See Journal of Boyal Asiat. Soc, vol. Tii. p. 344, pi. 6. Mr. Shakespearefurnished a reading of the Arabic signatures to tliia document, but no onehas, I believe, attempted to decipher the Pehlevi and Hebrew names, whichare nevertheless exceedingly curious. The Parsee witnesses must have beenthe near, if not the immediate, descendants of the first exiles from Persia, asthe Pehlevi character which they employ is nearly that of the early Moham-medan coins. The names are preceded by two words, which seem to be

p

Medium li," sealed by," or "the seal of." (Compare Pers. ,*-*> muhr.) The

corresponding expression before the Hebrew names is doubtfully read as

]Q p a n


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885




No. 8.

The Phoenician name, clearly incised on this tablet, is to beread with tolerable certainty as ]3(nDJ>"T, Dainu-kurban, the lastletter, which is alone defective, being restored from the Cuneiformoriginal. This original is written | ^ f S t **v ~<A >^T ^""T?and applies to a certain householder who sells three tenements inNineveh for the sum of thirty shekels of silver. The meaning ofthe name is probably "he who adjudges the offerings," dainu beinga participle from the root 1*1, " to judge," and hurban being iden-

tical with the Hebrew 1^~}\^, Arab, j j b J> and Greek Kopfiav

(Mark vii. 11). That the group forming the first element of this

name had the phonetic value of dainu had long ago been surmised,

from the orthography of *-*-YY Y»YI ^>^|> employed in the

East India House Inscription of Nebuchadnezzar, col. iv. line

29, as an epithet of " the Sun," and in place of the ordinary

reading of ^ Y > t *>^r I a n d t ° e Phoenician transcript of the term

is, therefore, nothing more than a verification ; but I do not

even yet clearly understand the reason of this mode of writing.

The letter ^Tjfc alone represents the root V"^ " to judge,"

being explained in the bilingual syllabary by ^ | ^ b fc:YI *jf-

(No. 184), and is thus independent of any adjunct. Should such

an adjunct be employed, however, it ought to represent, according

to ordinary usage, the phonetic complement of the verbal form to

which it is attached, and this can hardly be the function performed

by » v , which, amongst its various powers (sil, tar, hut, khas, &c.),

has no nasal value whatever. I suspect, therefore, that the sign

>->v, which, as a root, and especially in the epithets of the gods,

is very extensively employed, and in many different senses, is here

joined to ^Y,>^ merely to qualify, or perhaps intensify, the

power of that verb, and without any influence on the pronuncia-

tion.46

The sign \T~> which precedes the names of the witnesses on theAssyrian tablets, seems to be simply the preposition pan, " from," or " of."On the Babylonian tablets the list of witnesses is usually headed by the

expression S ^ 3 " ""^P *~11 4~i w n i ° n probably means, " the personsputting their names."

45 The most ordinary use of » ^ - is to represent the root nakas, " tocut off;" but it also answers to s/idmu, sitqu, and half-a-dozen other roots,


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885




We further see from the example of this legend that when thedocket represents a mere name, without any descriptive expression,that name belongs to the owner of the property which is sold, andnot to the buyer.

No. 9.

The inscription on this tablet refers to the disposal of a con-siderable property, consisting of lands, houses, gardens, orchards,&c, &c, on a six years' lease, and at a rent of one mina of silverper annum, the lessee being the same Zikhullanu whose name occurson tablet No. 4.

The Phoenician docket is mutilated, the commencement of thelegend, which reads N'Ppn J"U"7, danat Ithaqila, " the sale of land,"being alone legible. N7pn here answers to the Cuneiform

IT "*TIT'tlie Turanian term for f T ^ I t l t^"IH.>e^>46 as in

No. 5, and the only uncertainty is whether the X, which is the lastletter visible on the broken tablet, may belong to the precedingword (as in the Aramaic form of RT1ON for HDN), or whether itmay be the initial letter of another word. As the CuneiformJ:YYYY, bit, " a house," however, immediately follows YJ TTT; m

the list of properties on the tablet, for which it would be difficultto find a correspondent beginning with H, I propose to comparethe Phoenician word directly with its Chaldee correspondent iibpn,regarding the orthography as more correct than the imperfect read-ing of bpTl, in No. 5. The Hebrew grammarians Gesenius,Schinler, &c, are all agreed that the word ^>pn, signifying " afield" in Chaldee, Syriac, iEthiopic, and Arabic, is formed by

besides being immediately cognate with l T s m B0 much so, that in one listand > ^ are bracketed together, the former being explained by

fi>z *f--, dimi, and the latter by ^*~| | \\ *j(~i damn; and

in the epithets of the gods, the two signs seem to be used indifferently.46 I n continuation of note 41, on the reading and signification of TI TTT>

I may also draw attention to the errors which Mons. Oppert and Mr. FoxTalbot have committed in their translation of the inscription on Michaux'sstone, owing to their ignorance of this term. Mons. Oppert translates theword uniformly by " table," and supposes it to refer to the engraved stonewhich he is discussing. Mr. Talbot writes Tiatzib and atsib, and compares theroots ^Si? and HUT translating sometimes by "figure" and sometimes by" sculpture." (In the Sargon Inscription he read asib " inhabiting.") The

word I* | | | » however, throughout the inscription in question refers tothe " land" settled upon the devisor's daughter, according to the terms ofthe deed; and it must be read eqil (for 7prD, as already explained.


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885




metathesis from the root p7H, " to divide," or "portion out," butthe Assyrian eqil or ekil seems rather to suggest a connection with72X, " food or grain," from b^ii, " to eat," given in Cuneiform

as f:Yjf f : | ^ , 4 ' and it is doubtful, moreover, if pbtl, in the sense

of " portioning out land," was known to the Assyrian.

No. 10.

I include this legend, which has been often published and com-mented on, because it occurs on a clay tablet, evidently of the sameclass as those from which I have copied the other bilingual readings.The original tablet was brought to Europe, as it would seem, byKer Porter, and, according to Gesenius, should be now in the ParisMuseum (See Ges. Mon. Phoen. vol. i. p. 462), though, if it bethere, it is strange that the bilingual reading it exhibits should nothave been already turned to account by the Assyrian scholars ofthat city.

The legend may be read with certainty as '•j'PTH'K / V i BeiatEl-idil-ani, and I should expect to find in the correspondingCuneiform text the registry of a debt due by a man namedY >->-[ tTTi [Jr 5j ~> which is a common Assyrian name, inthe same way as in No. 12, which will be presently examined, wehave an allusion to the beiat or debt of Manuki Arba-il. At anyrate, whatever may be the meaning of /V3, it is pretty certain thatthe next word is a bond fide Assyrian name, formed according to theusual construction, and probably signifying " God is just to him."It would be very interesting to examine the Cuneiform text, both inorder to verify the application of the word beiat, and which is moreimportant, to ascertain if the Phoenician 7X, at the commencementof the name, answers to the Cuneiform >->-|> which is " a God,"in general, or whether, as I think more probable, it does not ratherindicate some particular divinity, the HA, or "IXos, of the Greeks,

and the >-*~\ *~\\ J-fTT' o r *~*~\ *~<> of the inscriptions.48 The

47 The root ?3K> however, is represented by an independent Accadiansign, >~^r^Y|; and the connexion of this term with T | | ([> >n theconditions of lease, on the clay tablets, seems to be merely accidental, alludingto the enjoyment or possession of the land for a term of years.

48 Cuneiform scholars hare been usually content to name this god Bel, orBelus, not only because the sign *~II has that phonetic power, but fromhis position as " the father of the gods," at the head of the Pantheon; but I


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885




second element of the Phoenician name almost certainly representsthe Cuneiform fcTYi, which, as a verbal noun, is often rendered

have myself always expressed doubt on the subject, and indeed, in my originalMythological Essay (Kawlinson's Herodotus, vol. i. p. 594) I adduced strongarguments to show that the god in question could not, at any rate, representthe Belus of later Babylonian history, as that deity was proved to correspondwith the Merodach of the inscriptions. I had not, however, at that time,

w

access to the evidence which now inclines me to identify *"*~| >—* with

Saturn, and to read his name as II or Ilin. This evidence is briefly as follows,

lstly, the sign >—« simply means " old," being explained in the vocabularies

by *~fi\ J^i ^5T*~' labir> a n | i *~*~T *—* 19 therefore " the old god."

Now, " the old god" is exactly the i l i j l is^"*" (J-^> of the Sabseans ofHarran, as individualized by the famous Em-Nedim, in the Fihrist (see Chwol-sohn's Ssabier und der Ssabismus, vol. ii. p. 39) ; and this deity is directlyidentified with (Ja-j> or " Saturn," in Ain Sihan's chapter on the Sabseans—

a document, by-the-bye, of great value, and which ought certainly to havebeen incorporated in Chwolsohn's exhaustive work. 2ndly. The name whichDamascius (see Cory's Fragments, p. 318) gives to the second member of theBabylonian triad, is'IMivoc ; and as his other names, 'Avoc and 'Aoj, exactly

answer to *"*~\ |J *^~ and *-»~y ^-flf T I f s0 tnis title of IUin

should represent the god *"*~T *~I I *-\\\ OT *"*"! *—*' 3 r<%- *n a

trilingual list of mythological synonyms, the phonetic reading of fl T» Vf:J:)

Elim, is actually given for *"*~T >—<? so that it seems highly probable thevernacular name of the god was III or II, with an optional plural terminationin im or in, " honoris causa," as in Elohim.

However, it is also possible that Sel may have been used equally withII, as the name of the god. It is certain, at any rate, that the group

*~*~\ *~\\ MM*' which simply means "tte lord," as »->-| t ^"M M T Tmeans " the lady," stands constantly for the generic noun Hihi, " a lord," inthe great inscription of Nebuchadnezzar; and we further see that Sil, notII, is the name in the Fihrist, to which the epithet " the grave old man,"

Aijll i^**' applies. Indeed, we have the authority of Damascius for

using the two names indifferently—(on <boivuceg tcai Sipot rbv Kpovor H \Koi Brj\ icai BoXaQijv iirovojiai,ovtnv, Phot. Bib. Edit. Hceschel. col. 1050,

where BoXrfOjjv is perhaps ^/V 7 ^ 3 for lit'1* /V^> with the usual change of

the Hebrew Shin to the Aramaic Tau); and if the generality of authorsidentify Belus and Saturn (see Selden de Diis Syris., p. 155), Sanchoniathon,on the other hand, says distinctly 6 "l\og TOVT' IGTIV 6 Kpovoc (Cory's Frag-ments, p. 13).

The identification which I formerly proposed of II and Ra originated in a

mistake. It is true that the Proto-Chaldeean (or Accadian) *"*"] ^^-1Tis constantly replaced in the vocabularies and bilingual exercises by II or Ilu,(written either simply as *->-[; or phonetically as £:£; TtTT ; amongstother examples compare the different orthographies of the name of iiabylon) ;


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885




phonetically by £>^-<^| TS^T; idlu, and probably, therefore,

answers to a root corresponding with the Arabic JiXc, while

the termination ani can hardly be other than the Cuneiform

|y Jff-? or >->-[ »yy , which is, I believe, a pronominal suffix,

No. 12.

The tablet to which this legend belongs is of the class which

I hare called double ; that is, it is formed of two distinct tablets,

very indifferently baked, and inclosed one within the other, the

Cuneiform wriling, with some very slight variations, being the

same on both, and the Phoenician docket being on the outer casing

only. The double tablets seem to relate uniformly to loans, instead

of sales. In the present instance the Cuneiform writing, as far as

but in that case *~*~\ S^~II *s t o ^ e sounded T'hingira or T'himira, thes i§ n ^ ^ 1 * being the mere phonetic complement; and it represents not anyparticular deity, but the generic Turanian name for " god," connected on theone side with the Turkish Tengri, and on the other, perhaps, with the Aripiapovs

of Sanchoniathon, and the I j u j ' of Mesopotamian tradition (see Chwolsohn's

Ssabier, vol. ii. p. 291). The title of lord— >-jf jf in Assyrian, i.e., hilu—

was represented in some of the Proto-Chaldaean dialects by Mul (*^o \*~\ <)»and in this form we see the origin of the Md\i£ of Nicolaus (see Miiller'sFragments, Hist. Graec., vol. iii. p. 361). Another name for Saturn, in what

I suspect to have been a Scytho-Arian dialect of Chaldsea, was C-11 | — JZ^

^ ^ ^ T T J ^ , Hubishega, but I do not recognize the etymology. For nume-rous examples of the application to Saturn of the epithet "old," see Chwol-sohn's Ssabier, vol. ii. p. 276.

49 I t is impossible to say whether the termination in ani, which is so verycommon in Assyrian names, be the Turanian suffix of the 3rd person singular,or the Semitic suffix of the 1st person. Either explanation is sufficientlyapplicable, though perhaps the evidence is rather in favour of the latter ; forwhilst I have never in one single instance found ani to interchange with su, Ihave, on the other hand, observed substitutions of the suffix which seem topoint to the first person, as, for instance, in the common name of Nebo, which,

as is well known, is usually written >~p~] *"~^I > < ^ ~ f f | ' Ndbi-um,

but for which I have also met with the reading of *~*~\ *~^] * < [T *ff~'as if the signification were "my prophet" or "instructor," the termination int ^ TTT being the Turanian suffix of the 1st person (cognate with T—

and >V, as in {W ]f- J ^ f f and <]£[ >^ J^ff , for"with u s" and "with me"). Observe, also, with regard to idlu, that themeaning seems to be " great" rather than "just," and that we may suppose,therefore, the Assyrian root edal to have corresponded with 7"7J) rather than

VOT.. T.—[NEW -SRBIKS]. 15


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885




I understand it, states that " Mannuki-Arba-il had borrowed ten" silver shekels of the holy standard from Billu-lalat (for a year)," on condition that the sum increased double (that is, at cent, per" cent.);" and the corresponding Phoenician docket seems to beNO ( • •) JTa Dtp OpV XX) 'jn-lN-Jja'?, " From Manugi-Arbil 20holy shekels, a debt to be recovered" (?) In this rendering, how-ever, there are many questionable points, both of orthography andgrammar. It is quite certain that the Phoenician name at thecommencement answers to the Cuneiform t / / *4~ /T^T £:£;

XX- '~"~\i anc'- *he use of Girael 3 for the Cuneiform ^T^T £z^would seem to show that MannuM must be a derivative from H33or ilpl, instead of signifying "Who is like?" as Mr. Oppert hasconjectured, comparing it with the Hebrew names Michael, Micah,Micaiah, &c.60

The two doubtful letters which commence the second line are,I suspect, numerals. They are something like the Palmyrene signfor 10, which is supposed to be a degraded form of Yod, the 10thletter of the alphabet; and may thus possibly represent 20, thoughin Palmyrene and in Numismatic Phoenician there was a specialcharacter for that number.61 If this be so I would, then, suggestthat the character which follows, and of which the top only can betraced, may be an arbitrary sign for a shekel of silver. At anyrate, the second line of this legend ought, it would seem, to definethe amount of MannuM-Arbil's debt, subject, however, to the doubtas to whether the original loan of ten shekels might be noted, orwhether the figures might refer to the sum, doubled in amount,that was to be recovered. After the number of shekels we have

50 Les Inscriptions des Sargonides, p. 20. It is possible, however, thatthe use of the Phoenician J may be a mere vulgarism, owing to the doublepower of the Cuneiform \T^-T, which was qi as well as ki, and that theetymology of mannuM, or manmigi, may be thus, after all, what Mons. Opperthas suggested. At any rate, neither the sense of " illuminating," from n33>nor of " sacrificing," from Hp3> will at all suit the many compound namesof which the first element is \ ( *T~ \ t i * ^h*8 term is prefixed,Istly, to the names of the gods ; 2ndly, to the names of cities ; and 3rdly, tothe names of relatives, and perhaps classes of men. There are, indeed, sometwenty Assyrian names thus formed, and I can find no meaning more gene-rally applicable than "who as?" or "what as?" (in the sense of "who, orwhat, is equal to ?"), though such an explanation is not altogether satisfactory.

51 See G-esenius Mon. Phcen., vol. i. p. 88. A further argument againstreading these two letters as XX, is, that we see on the Lion Weights in theBritish Museum (No. 1) the ordinary horizontal line employed for thenumeral 10. Altogether it must be admitted that my proposed reading ofthis Phoenician line is most questionable.


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885



CUNEIFOKM AND PHOENICIAN. ' 219

clearly the word D"Tp> which may very well be the Assyrian formof V)1p, adopted by the Phoenician scribe, with the same confusionof sibilants that we have before observed in many instances. Thesacred standard, or " standard of the sanctuary," as we usually call itin referring to the Jewish weights, is indicated on these tablets bythe name of the great goddess of Nineveh or Arbela ; and it is thatdesignation which here answers in the Cuneiform text to the Kadasof the Phoenician legend.62 In continuation, we have a wordns2, which is very difficult of explanation. Wkere the same wordoccurs on an Assyrian tablet, now in the Paris museum, Geseniustakes it for the ordinary Hebrew noun signifying " a house" (seeGes. Mon. Phoen. vol. i. p. 462) ; and the same explanation mightpossibly suit the present passage, the allusion being to the templeof the goddess in which the holy standard was used fs but I donot myself think that this is the true explanation of the term. Irather suspect that JTH, Beyat, is a corrupted form of the Arabici," . . n , the root «_JO, which originally applied, perhaps, to any" bargain," or " money dealing," having its exact equivalent in theAssyrian Bukh, which in this, and similar passages, appears in thephrase ina bukhi ittisi, " he borrowed on contract," or " on abargain."54 The last word of the Phoenician legend, of which the

62 The phrase on this tablet relating to the standard ia yf *~*\ \ YT

^ y ^ l "of the goddess XV of Nineveh." I shall reserve afull examination of the different standards of weight which were current inAssyria for the continuation of this paper on the legal tablets; but I mayhere note that there seem to have been three distinct mince in common use—the manah of the king, or " royal maund ;" the manah of the great goddessof Nineveh and Arbela, or " the maund of the sanctuary;" both of these beingnative Assyrian weights ; and the manah of Carchemish, which is the mostconstantly quoted of all. I believe that each of these maunds contained sixtyshekels, but that there was a slight difference in their relation to each other.As for " the country maund," which has been assumed from the Phoenicianlegends on the Museum weights, I cannot think myself that there is anyfoundation for such a distinction. The expression NpTN '? J> which isadded to the declaration of the number of maunds, does not refer, as I believe,to a standard at all (in fact, the phrase is found in Nos. 2, 3, and 4, in additionto the definition of the royal standard), but is merely a geographical indica-tion, intended to distinguish the weights of Syria and of Assyria. See further,under Note 63.

53 I have sometimes thought that the whole legend might be read

*O ~ " VCp. D tp V tO"W~:00 "?, Li-Manugi-Arbel zi kadas bit... led," of Manugi-Arbel, priest of the temple of. . . ka;" but there is nothing inthe Cuneiform text to indicate that the borrower of the ten shekels, Mannuki-Arbil, had any connexion either with the great goddess or her temple.

54 Bukha (JJS'*- \ fY.0 may very well stand for •«—*-> j the change ofvowels being perfectly regular, and the guttural, Jci, being a common substi-tute for the Ain, ty; but I am not so sure that it is allowable to suppose the


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885




final JO is alone legible, may then, perhaps, be some verbal form(either from Rph, or some kindred root), and the entire docketmay be translated, as I have already suggested, "from Manugi-Arbil 20 holy shekels his debt (or contract) to be taken."

No. 13.This legend is a mere fragment, giving the name, probably, of

the party executing the deed. The Cuneiform original of thename, however, is not preserved, nor, indeed, is the tablet sufficientlyperfect to enable us to ascertain the purport of the inscription.We can only infer, from the shape of the broken tablet and thefew lines of writing which remain, that the document does notbelong to the ordinary class of legal transfers of property; it israther, as I think, of a sacred character.

The Phoenician name may be read with tolerable certainty asD/^HJ , which exactly answers to the Cuneiform Y *-*-[ jfc-jV Y—, Nabu-shallim, signifying " Nebo (is my) preserver "and an imperfect word follows which commences with X-55

No. 14.This is an important legend, as the Phoenician writing is very

clearly marked on the tablet, and the Cuneiform names, both ofthe sellers and buyer of the property, are given with perfect dis-tinctness. The Cuneiform writing recites the particulars of thepurchase of a house in Nineveh for half a mina of silver, by Kuhullai,from its owners, Y Jxr :Y YI *~ "Y ^1 *~*~~]i Paqa-ana-Arba-il,and 4^*^- ^ Yy ; and as the Phoenician legend is without anyprefix, it must be held (as in No. 8) to represent the names of thesesellers. The first Phoenician name, also, l7O"INp3, Paqa-Arba-il,does thus represent, as nearly as possible, the firs: Cuneiform name,the only variety being that the particle ana is left out, and that bythe introduction of a penultimate yod, the full orthography is perhapsgiven of Arba-il^ for the town of Arbela, instead of the contracted

lapse of this radical letter in order to obtain the Phoenician form of JV^.In favour of the assimilation I can only refer to No. 10, and point out that inthat legend, at any rate, the word beiat, preceding a proper name, is appa-rently of the same class as danat and shakhat; and that Beth or Beit, " ahouse," offers, therefore, a very insufficient explanation.

55 Dr. Levy, I find, has already recognized this reading in his PhonizischeStudien, part ii. p. 24.

66 The penultimate letter in this name would Beem, however, to be a Vnm, \


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885




form of Arbil, as in Nos. 1 and 12. The only real difficulty in thisbilingual legend relates to the second word, which is given inPhoenician as Ji'JOD, and if it be a proper name, must answer tothe Cuneiform T -< k *H- ^ <n • Now, the first question to beasked is, do these two forms really correspond 1 and to this I amunable to give a positive answer. On the one hand, it may seemstrange that the junior partner in a property should be named inthe docket, since, all hough entered as a matter of form in the actualconveyance at the head of the deed, he is passed over in the sub-sequent penalty clause as unimportant; but, on the other hand,there is no possible explanation that I can suggest for tt'NID, placedas it is on the margin of the tablet, immediately under the name ofthe principal owner, except that it represents the name of thesecond or joint owner. If this assimilation, then, be admitted, thes ' g n -<^*f|' mus^ n a v e> amongst its many values, the power of"ID, sar, and the vernacular name of the "great goddess," repre-sented by the sign XV, must be positively IL'H, Asha. There isno other evidence, that I am aware of, connecting -4i*rf withthe sound of sar or sir, nor am I at all sure what may be themeaning of such a word prefixed to the name of a god. That thesign / LI!, however, equivalent in numbers to 15, does hererepresent the name of the great goddess, is rendered certain by theorthography employed on other tablets, where the same name iswritten with the determinative of a god, *~*Ai between -<*^H-|-and (™.

With regard to the etymology of these names, I can only suggestfor Paqa-ana Arba-il the meaning of "go forth to Arbil." or per-haps " proclaim to Arliil" (Paqa being imperative of p3J ; com-pare W1D, Dan. iii. 26); and for Sir-Asha, the possible meaningof " Slave of Asha," Sir being a contraction for "VDN, from ")DN,

" to bind ;" but I admit that I have no other authority for the

rather than a yod, according to the numismatic Hebrew alphabet given byGesenius (Mon. Phosn. vol. ii. pi. 3), and in that case we must suppose thename to hare been pronounced Arba-ul, the same change of vowels takingplace as in Ursalima for Jerusalem, and Shemrun for Samirin (Samaria).Another instance of the substitution of the 1 for the 1 may be observed inthe orthography of the Phoenician dual form |"|JO for T'3J3 (" twomaunds"),in the legend on the Lion Weight, No. 4, where, moreover, in the reading onthe base, the exact form is used for the Van, which we have in this transcript _of the name of Arba-il.


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885




employment of -<^*p|- as a Turanian root, either with this sense

or sound."

No. 15.

The tablet from which these names are copied is a mere frag-

ment, of Babylonian origin, and probably dating from the time of

Nebuchadnezzar. It seems to record a money contract very much

in the same terms as were current in Assyria, but it furnishes no

means of bilingual comparison. The names, indeed, preceded by

the word J"int£'> as in No. 7, are those of independent witnesses,

who were probably of Phoenician origin, and who thus preferred to

67 Since writing this, I have lighted on a fragment of vocabulary amid thedebris in the British Museum, which has suggested an explanation for the

employment of ^^i*fy- as equivalent to HD. The Turanian root f

eeems to have signified originally " to swell," and to have been thus equivalent

to the Semitic roots 1HJ (Cun. >~^~ J ^ > - > - 1 ,_>_ | ) and ~)tiV)

(Cun. fc:|T |T > ~ | | | ) ' I have long been aware of the employment

of the root in the first-named capacity, in representing the name of

T *~*~T *~T9f -<^*ff~ U i which I always maintained to be identicalwith Nabu-nahid, or Nabonidus, in opposition to Dr. Hincks and Mons. Oppert(see my paper on the Orthography of some of the later Royal Names ofAssyrian and Babylonian History, in the Royal Asiatic Society's Journal for

1855); but this reading of | -<^*ff ^ yV f ° r ^ ' ^ D is the first example

that I have observed of the use of - * ^ * r r ™ a proper name for the alternativeroot IKti^- The Hebrew 1}$$, it must be remembered, is cognate both with""IKtt' and "VD. so that the employment of the Phoenician D need not

surprise us. With regard to the pronunciation of the Accadian root -^i>ft-5

it would seem to have its normal power of im in the name T *~*~] *~t*?

^ m - U__' which is given by Abydenus astiafiovviSoxos, for Nabu-imduk;

but in the vocabulary, where it is explained by t^TT | y »—| TT, the

Accadian column seems to have the reading of T— *fW> Mw (and so the

God of the air, *~*~] -*^*fy> *•e-. " the glorious god," is named in

Accadian [— »JpPf- T~ *Jfff> Mir-mir). I should propose now to read

the name of | -<^»ff \ yy a s Saru-Asha, and to translate it " glory ofAsha," as ]Yabu-nahid, or Ifabu-imduk, is " Nebo the glorious." Cuneiformscholars are familiar with this employment of one Arcadian sign to representtwo or more Semitic roots, corresponding in sense, but entirely different in

sound, as, for instance, »J[_ for ebas and bani, " to do or make ;" ^*—'

for elad and bani, " to beget;" ^ for sakan and saraJc, &c, &c.


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885



CUNEIFORM AND PHOENICIAN. ' 223

be recorded in their vernacular characters. They occur at the endof the list of Babylonian witnesses, and being merely scratched onthe hard clay, are altogether of too uncertain a character to beworth the trouble of analyis. After each of the names is the word/If, which I suppose to be the feminine demonstrative pronounanswering to the Hebrew 3~\ti\, so that each line reads, "this is theattestation of . . . ."

Nos. 11 and 16.

It will be convenient to examine these two legends together, asthe tablets to which they belong are of the same class, and theinscriptions help to explain and illustrate each other. It wouldseem that grain assignments58 were issued in Assyria on a particularshield-shaped piece of baked clay, quite different from the ordinaryflat or bulging tablet, on which were registered deeds of sale, loans,and contracts. At any rate, most of the documents of this classthat I have found are recorded upon such triangular bits of clay,which were, moreover, evidently intended to be suspended, as ahole is passed through them at the upper corners, for the insertionof a string. There are only two of these triangular tablets in theMuseum which bear Phoenician characters, and of these, the onethat is perfect has no corresponding Cuneiform, while of the second,which had a Phoenician text on one side, and a Cuneiform text onthe other, but. one small corner remains. The longer inscription,

.No. 16, is divided into two portions; the first portion, consistingof two lines, is, as I think, a simple date, recorded in the usualAssyrian fashion, " The 5th of Khaziran, in the Eponymy of SaruNerig;" but this rendering is not, it must be owned, perfectlyclear. In the first place, the number 5 would seem to be giventwice over ; that is, before the name of the month, under thetechnical form of the letter 0, as in No. 2 ; and after the name ofthe month, under the ruder figure of five separate strokes; andagain, the name of Khazirau is spelt with a Tsadi, J{, instead of theZain, f, which is now used both in Syriac and Arabic.59 The

58 It is perfectly in accordance with Eastern usage to issue assignments ofgrain in lieu of assessment upon the farmers and limded proprietors, theseassignments being made payable to princes of the blood, or officers of thecourt, or other claimants on the government. The Tablets 11 and 16 areprobably assignments of this nature, though it is possible they may be mereacknowledgments of a private liability.

s9 The derivation of Khaziran has never been at all satisfactorily explained ;bu( (he Phoenician orthography which is liorc employed suggests at once a


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885



224 • BILINGUAL READINGS,

identification, however, of this name, fixn> with the ninth monthof the present Syrian calendar, is not, I think, to be questioned,and it is, thus, a source of great disappointment that we have notthe Cuneiform correspondent; since we could with that aid decidepositively whether the Assyrian year commenced at the vernal orautumnal equinox, and we should be thus able to attach a name toeach of the twelve signs which represent the Assyrian months. Ibelieve, myself, that Khaziran, which answers to Sivan in theJewish calender, was the third month of the Assyrian year, andwas thus represented by the sign ^Vf:^—, because, firstly, I findthat the assignments and sales of grain recorded on the tablets, areusually dated from the first three monthsi of the calendar, namely,0 T ^ , £:Y5, and -<Vj:^z:, that is, during April, May, and June,which constitute the harvest season in Mesopotamia ; and secondly,because the sign of the second month, £:T >, is also the sign for aBull, answering to the Taurus of the zodiac, and the ^Awravahir ofthe Persian calendar (where Thuram is probably the same word asTavp and "IIJ")); but there is, on the other hand—that is, in favourof the year commencing with the autumnal equinox—the argumentthat Tishrin, which is the first month of the present Syriancalendar, is apparently derived from the verb N"1I£', "to begin;"while the sign ^T^f, which represents the first Assyrian month,is used, perhaps, as a monogram for this same root, the equivalents

of yf ^S=y| and ^ ^ * TTT hemg given in the B i l i n g u a l

Syllabary, No. 256.61 In continuation, it is of much interest to

connexion with the root "IS!! or j*asi- > " to be green," precisely as thepreceding month was named Ziv and -Ayor, from the " brightness" and" beauty " of the spring flowers. See Gesenius, in Tore, It.

60 Compare line 56 of the Babylonian text of the Behistun Ins. with col.2, Is. 61 and 62, of the Persian text. Mons. Oppert, however, translatesThuravahar simply "le printemps" (Exped. en Mesopot. p. 225), and takes

no notice of its connexion witli the Assyrian CT/-

61 I t is quite possible, however, that t z [ | ] Y *ST|T, given as an

equivalent of g:]ffi; may not answer to HIV), " to begin," but may rathercorrespond with ~)N$, " to swell or exult," which I have elsewhere shown tobe also represented by -<^»ff- > f° r the general use of fc: ]•*? ' s a s a titl«of honour (" the noble," or " the glorious"), and it is thus equally applicableto a " noble " building or " tower," as in the name of Borsippa (" the towerof the ruler"), or to a "noble" king (Parakku, the Semitic equivalent of

^ E J being synonymous with fctlM j£TTT, satru), or to a class of


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885




find the Phoenician word D j answering to the Cuneiform \]—or >-^]2f *~3£\ and applied to the offics of naming the year,or, as it is now generally called by Assyrian scholars, " the officeof Bponym." With regard to the meaning of the word, I adhereto my proposed derivation from TMJ7, " to be near," considering

the title to be equivalent to the modern term <_>JL<, Mnkarrib,in preference to Dr. Hincks's explanation of "seer," which heconjectures to have been given from the officer in question beingrequired to see the new moon, and thus regulate the calendar.

With regard to the name of the Eponym, I confess to someuncertainty. Saru-Nerig would be a perfectly legitimate compound,formed like Saru-Ashu (No. 14), and signifying "the glory ofNergal ;" but no such title as Y -< >W- *"*~T ^>^TT ^s foundin the Canon, or in the supplementary list of Eponyms that I havecollected from the dated tablets ; nor am I at all sure as to thecorrect reading of the first element of the name, the initial letter,which I have given as Q, being scarcely legible, and the secondletter being perhaps a "7, instead of a "l, for the two characters arehardly distinguishable in the ancient Phoenician. That h'erig,however, is the second element, I think almost certain, and I amthus led to suppose the corruption of the genuine form Ner-gal,which we perceive in the 'A/Seui'r/pi^os of Josephus, and in theNerig of the Mendaaan books, to be of very ancient date.62

We now come to the essential part of the inscription, where weare much assisted by the bilingual fragment No. 11. I readNDVD "D V T~tt > Seoran zi bar Malkd, " the barley of the son ofthe king;" and I compare No. 11, where the Phoenician text seemsto have been identical, and where the Cuneiform has ^

i ^ l | f :^ ^ ( ^ The sign " ^ can be shown, from a multitudeof examples, to be a determinative of cereals, but 1 have neverfound any direct proof as to the distinction of the different sorts ofgrain, nor, indeed, am I able to give with any certainty the

phonetic reading of V f:^, " ^ ^ S f f f *sf-> »"d ^ (W,though. I believe the two first groups to be equivalent to the

Hebrew words Q'£3n and D^jfly, signifying "wheat "and "barley;"

divine beings (fc:T>*J being also a special name for the " spirits " of theearth).

62 For a full discussion of the name and character of the Assyrian god,Xer-gal, or Mars, see my Essay on the Babylonian Mythology, Sect. xi.(Rawliuson's Herodotus, vol. i. p. 631).


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885




and the third group, which occurs very frequently on the tablets, I

suspect to represent " rice."

In fragment No. 11, the prince's barley is to be furnished by

two people—three homers by one, and two homers and a fraction

by another; in all, five homers and a fraction. In No. 15 the levy

is on a single person, Nabu-irib-ani, as I am inclined to read his

name, and the amount to be furnished is stated at five City Mans

and seven Ephahs (?). The Phoenician letters 13."T>^U 7V< indeed,

are perfectly clear, and would seem to represent the Assyrian name

Y >->-| jjfz ^Ty fy 5pjp> which signifies " Nebo magnifiesme," though the omission of the final Yod is hardly regular ; at any

rate, whatever the exact Cuneiform orthography may be, the name

is certainly that of the person upon whom the prince's barley is

levied, and the amount to be delivered is given in the two last lines

of the legend. These lines seem to me to read (VII) 2(V) T^V 112,

which I suppose to be " five Mans of the cities and seven Ephahs ;'

the City Man (or viana Iran) being perhaps the same as the

Carchemish Maund, so often quoted on the Museum tablets.63

63 Dr. Levy has transcribed these words as ]~)?}7 ]Q (Phcen. Stud, part ii.p. 22) ; but the second letter of the last word seems to me, on a furtherexamination of the tablet, to be unmistakably a yod, and I adhere, therefore,to the reading of mana irati, though unable to explain the expression withany certainty. If I could be satisfied with Dr. Levy's explanation of thephrase Np"lN 'f 3 , Be zi arqd, which occurs on so many of the Lion weightsin the British Museum, after the specification of the number of minse, asrelating to a standard " of the country," comparing arqd with the ChaldeeN p i N (for XU1N), then the expression here employed of mana iran forthe city weight, as opposed to the country weight, would be quite intelligible ;but there is no trace upon the tablets, where we have some hundred examplesof a specification of weight, of any distinction between a city and a countrystandard; nor do I think that the corrupted form ^p" lN was ever substitutedfor N2JTN until long after the age of these inscriptions. I suspect myself thatthe Phoenician Arqd means Assyria—indeed, on one Lion weight, No. 9,

is actually rendered in Cuneiform by A. *-5 the usual contraction for Asshur,but whether the term in question was a recognized Aramaic title, the original ofthe modern /yj£- (™ which case the received Arab etymology must be

rejected: see Journ. Asiatique for April, 1839, p. 298), or whether it was amere local designation preserved in the 'ApraKtivrj (for 'ApKarrivfi) of Strabo(lib. xvi. ineunte), I will not hazard a conjecture.

There seem to have been three standards of weight commonly employed inAssyria—two domestic, and one of foreign origin. The domestic standardswere based on the "royal" Maund and the "sacred" Maund. The foreignstandard is indicated in the Cuneiform text by " the manah of Carchemish ;"and this I conjecture to be the |TJ? ]C of the present Phoenician legend,which may possibly have been in general use throughout the cities of Syria,and have thus been known to the Phoenicians by the collective term " thecities," and to the Assyrians by the name of that particular Syrian city with


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885



CCNEIF0K1T AND PHOENICIAN. 227

The chief argument which occurs to me against this reading is,that in the Cuneiform the term of Mana, £jj *~^~\i ' 8 neverapplied to grain. Wheat and barley are measured by the *—<Tfcr(which I suppose to be the homer, as it applies equally to land),and by fractional parts of the »~»T^, which are given as >^-,*Jr, and Jt.84 At any rate, whatever may be the standardemployed, the five strokes in the last line but one indicate thenumber of the greater weight, and the seven strokes at the end thenumber of the lesser weight, which was represented by the initialletter 2, perhaps for j"O, Bath, the equivalent of the Ephah,though applied by the Jews exclusively to tbe m asure of liquids.

I now give the translation of Nos. 11 and 16. The Cuneiformtext of the first tablet is as follows :—"3 homers upon ," 2 homers and a fraction upon ; in all, 5 homtrs and a" fraction of barley, to be delivered to the king's son, &c, &c."Of the corresponding Phoenician text the only words that remainare " Barley son of the king 5 . . . . " The fullPhoenician inscription on the second tablet reads as follows :—"The 5th of the month Khaziran, Saru-Nerig being Eponym." 5 Mans and 7 Ephahs (city weight) of barley to be delivered by'' Nebo-irlb-an to the son of the king," (lit. " of the son of the king" upon Nebo-irib-an").

which they were more immediately connected. I observe, moreover, thatthere was a specific weight known to the Tahnudists as the HJ'"7Q i"TJD(which was the eighth part of the 'T1JJ plJJD, Bava kama, fol. 90, col. 2 \ sothat we have sufficient authority for the idiom of the " city maund," thoughit is not likely that the older and later weight were the same.

64 Upon the legal tablets land and grain are equally measured by the

^__Tf^5 and this measure appears to have been of 3 standards, which

contained respectively 10, 9, and 8 subdivisions, denominated > _ I . There

are no means of ascertaining the exact relation of these measures to our own,

but it seems highly probable that the > Tfcl was identical with the Homer

or Cor of the Hebrews, and the >_T with the lEphah or Hath. I t would

also seem that with the Phoenicians the J. bore the same relation to the ]O,

as with the Assyrians, the >—T bore to the > i^E' ^ have no clue to the

phonetic reading of the former, but ^ - * | £ r and r " " ; which in SyllabaryNo. 158, are identical, are both sometimes explained by Lagit, which I supposeto mean " a measure of capacity," being a cognate term with j?, as a deriva-tive from a root j i ? or JJ7 , " to measure."

I will only add that "j"!^? |O niay be here used as a compound word inthe plural, the construction being literally " city maunds," instead of " maundof the cities ;" for on the weights, wherever the noun is used singly, it iswritten r?JD> manah.


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885



228 BILINGUAL KEADINGS,

No. 17.

This inscription, the last, as well as the longest of the series, is,I think, too imperfect to be read. I have merely added it to theseries of bilingual legends in order to complete the collection, andas an exercise for the ingenuity of bolder decipherers.

In continuation of these bilingual readings, I now propose togive a few Phoenician legends from bricks, gems, and pottery, whichappear to represent Assyrian or Babylonian names and words, andare thus of some importance to the present inquiry.

No. I.

On many of the Nebuchadnezzar bricks found at Babylon Ihave observed the word "[33T, written in bold and clearly-markedPhoenician characters. The forms of the letters so nearly corre-spond in all the specimens which I have examined, that the legendmust, I think, have been impressed with a stamp ; and in this casethe word, or words, ought, it would seem, to have some meaning ofgeneral application. If, then, we read "PUT, zebinak, in one word,we might translate " for sale," deriving the term from the root]21, " to buy;"1 or, if we took the initial f for the possessivepronoun if, we might understand, " of the builders," supposingbanak to be the Babylonian form of \jj, and remembering that itis often the custom in the East to assign a certain proportion of thematerial employed in building to the workmen. Several otherexplanations might be suggested, such as the name of an evil spirit(compare Arabic <Uuuj)» to be deprecated by this address, or

1 The great difficulty in this word is to explain the final guttural. IfSemitic, it may be the suffix of the 2nd person singular; or possibly it maybe an Aocadian post-position, of which other examples occur. In illustrationof the meaning " for sale," we may also remember that the word erne, "buy,"has been found on many objects dug up at Pompeii.

2 So at the present day, in most parts of the East builders keep up a lowmonotonous chaunt, interspersed with prayers, whilst at their work, -0-111011 issupposed to have the effect of scaring away the evil spirits, who would other-wise render the edifice unlucky. There is indeed a very large admixture ofsuperstition and " diablerie" in the daily observances of life in Persia andTurkey, which is quite unconnected with Mohamedanism, and must havedescended, I think, as a heritage from the old Magian and Chaldsoan creeds.


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885



Ihce,niti/m> Isg&nds on, bncks, ryluui'ct

past in, tjui, jBritish

seals k ° /or themost

"VIE.

•\/ni.

<n>

ii.

XI.

Ill

xin

nnnl

£^ I. % iiii

zra.

••/ i

W 1 £51

) ^ £ f

i


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885



Q'-ransoTzpi zn ^

i.

| II.

m.

IV.

V.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

•pat

? m Sana:

niaa • • • •

Sanin

piaxSmaai3

XD1D

31pn »J

•nnS

KD1D

pnnSsS

SxsanS

NSNI3VS

ny3^ pp nna -my

iehreuj

X.

XI.

XII.

XIII.

XIV.

XV.

XVI.

XVII.

XVIII.

XIX.

XX.

OTzccTcucters.

onn

n-n&sns13

fnmiK

—1

ntonxS

13 y^pnnS

p rpaanS

n^3Sn3i3

IDNIDS

• • -paS ma- • •

. . . . ,pn«-B. . .


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885




the mere name of the brick-moulder ; but nothing can be ascer-tained with certainty.

No. II.

On a brick of Neriglisser's, found at Babylon, the legend uponwhich I published in the British Museum Collection, PI. 8, No. 5,there is another Phoenician inscription, not less difficult of explana-tion than the last. If the first five characters represent a name,they may possibly be read as t'JJ'UJ, Nabu-tagil, a kiudred namewith Anu-taggil, Hur-tagil, & c and signifying " attached toNebo ;" but the third and fourth characters are exceedinglydoubtful, and perhaps resemble "0 rather than JD. At any rate,they are too uncertain to furnish ground for etymological specula-tion ; and to add to our difficulty, the two concluding letters of thelegend seem to be reversed. I have given for them the conjecturalreading of/if, as in No. 15 of the bilingual series ; but neither dothe forms of the letters suit particularly well, nor is the sense of" this " required, as it would seem, after a proper name.

No. III.

On a minute fragment of a tablet in the British Museum I findthe letters jnJO ~ " ~ ~ given as the end of a name, and I canhardly doubt, therefore, that the letters belong to the name ofT\lp "PQ, Melik Qart, the Melkarth, or Hercules of the Phoenicians,which was preceded probably by a noun, like Abed or Ardu. Theuse of the Phoenician J, instead of p, in the word fOp, "a city/may be compared with the orthography of }3Q for / / *J— ^T -Y,in No. 12. The Cuneiform equivalent for the Phoenician Melkarthhas not yet been discovered, unless it be >-*-T >r-, who wasthe Hercules of Assyria.

No. IV.

On a cylinder seal of Babylonian workmanship which Iexamined at Baghdad, I found the Phoenician legend /3,n"V7,Hur-lagal. Now, this is certainly a Babylonian or Assyrianproper name, and the second element is easily identified as theword ij^jr Sr T or >:j5^ Jjf> "serving," or "attached to,"which is so often found in composition with the name of a god ;but I am in some doubt as to the deity who bore the title of Hur


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885




or Horus. In the Proto-Chaldoean legends the Moon God, whowas entitled " Sin" in Assyrian, is usually represented by thegroup >-»-Y S^^.-^ ^T^y; and in this group we may bepretty sure that the sign ^£2^^", which was probably the onlyphonetic character, had the sound of Hur, because in the Syllabary,No. 270, the Accadian equivalent of £:HY~ >S]TT is givenfor f v ^ - v • and because the name of the city over which theMoon God presided, and which was accordingly expressed by thegroup ^JS^-^ ^^<<<y ^*~y> is a^so repeatedly rendered bythe Phonetic characters fzYYj— *"|T^|> *^e original of theScriptural -y^ ::nd the Greek Ovpl-q.3 It seems very probable,therefore, that the form b j /Tn may be the Babylonian reading ofthe name Y >—-} ((( H ^ T t^TT, which was borne by theEponym for the seventh year of Tiglath-Pileser II.

It is, however, possible that "111, or Horns, may represent the

Cuneiform Y*~TT or ^TH— fc^f !?:> w n ' ° h w a s a title borne

both by Anu,and by Hercules, (or *-*-\ *r~)> a s already explained;

and Hur-tagal may thus stand for the name Y >-TI S ^

f l l f , which I have discussed at length under No. 2.4

3 For a full account of the " Moon God," the Hurki of the primitiveBabylonians, and the Sin of the Assyrians, see Sect. 8 of my MythologicalEssay, in Rawlinson's Herodotus, vol. i. p. 614. As this essay was writtenseven years ago, it may be understood to require emendation in some par-ticulars, both of nomenclature and description, the result of a continuedinvestigation of the old mythology ; but in reference to " the Moon God,"there is really very little to add to my former explanations.

4 The name of Suras, -n-hich, as I have already explained, is in many ofthe mythological lists, attached to the god Anu, when represented under the

form of *"*•"! t ! I > m a y Possibly be a corruption of the primitive title

which the god also bears in another list, of ^ Y >Jpf ] *^ [ | f ' an(* t m s

latter form of Susru would seem to be identical with the Vedic Susravas,

ffm, and the Zend Husrava (" the good hearer"), a curious parallelism

being thus afforded to the connexion which has often been remarked between

the name of Cyrus or Kipoc, and the t_ui&-, Khusru, of Persian romance

(see Bournouf's Mem. sur les Ins. Cun. de Hamadan, p. 173).The proofs of a Yedic, or at any rate an Arian, influence on the early

mythology of Babylonia, which these comparative lists of the names of thegods supply, appear to me to be of the very highest interest, and in manycases to be of undoubted authenticity, ifor instance, in a list of thenames of " the Sun," we have a Turanian group which is thus represented,

>-»-| J f c t^T \S^T/j and which is explained by the gloss of


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885




The peculiar form of He, n, which is used for the initial characterof Hur-taqal, is precisely the same as that employed in the ortho-graphy of j w n for y *^]]]= *pyy A ^ T ' i n N o - 2 -

^ | | > Mitra, tor 1 ^ ^ or MWpa. Another compound

monogram in the same list, which it is difficult to represent typographically,

is explained by ^_^ i?1 >fcT> Bishela; and this name I would compare

with the Sanscrit f^pf^jjrf; w h ° ™ Vedic mythology was actually " the

Sun," though in Persian romance his solar character was transferred, as itis well known, to his son Yama, under the name of Yimo-khshaeto (orJemshid), son of Vivenglian. That this latter title, also, was well knownto the Semites, is shown by Ibn Wahshiya's famous book on Nabathaeanagriculture, where Yamu-shaed, or Jemshid, appears under the form of

Yanbu-shddh ( j L i «AJU) as the name of one of the chief founders of the

Babylonian religion, in allusion, no doubt, to the ante-Zoroastrian Monotheismof the Arians, which must have penetrated to the Tigris and Euphrates at avery early date, and was perhaps blended with the native Polytheism.

A further Tery curious illustration of the extent to which Arian etymologiesgOTerned the phonetic system of the A ssyrians, is afforded by an examinationof the name of the god Hercules. The name of this deity is usually expressed by

the signs *~*~~\ *]"' w n ' c n signify, as I now think, " the great or noble God,"

>T— haTing the double power of bar-and mas, the former of which in this case

must represent the Sans. ^ ^ , Kurdish farra, Hind, barra, and the latter

the Sans. +|T§I, Zend maz, Pers. IM~* • It is probable that both of these

phonetic names were applied to the god by different tribes or nations in

Baby Ionia. He was certainly called Mas, as we have *"*"[ X?"^[ L ^ '

in one list given as an equivalent for >f— or >-| T» I (whence perhaps

$ 0 ) the son of Aram, Gen. x. 23), and therefore his title, *"*~| *T~J was used

for one of the metals (iron ?), in the same way perhaps as IM~I is used in

modern Persian for "copper;" and so the sign »|J| j , which was probably at firstthe picture of " a fish,'' must also, I think, have had originally the phonetic powerof mas, as it is only by that value that we can explain its representing, lstly,

yK or V~ ^]}}' Heb. 11J, " a fish;" in old Pers. ( ^ L , from

(as in the Gd-rnds-db river, so called from the figure of " a bull" and

" fish," sculptured on the rock at its source) ; 2ndly, £ r^ [ | ^^*~ v

H b. 3 T ; in old Pers \j*^*t from * |T |T; and 3rdly, "copper;" Proto-

Chaldsean * | >- IT* T >T—J tamkabar (perhaps the original of rfT^T) »

Assyr. *»^T| I *^T [ [' siparru; Accad. jy *Y~> za^ar: Arab. _Ls ;

(but in Persian, as before observed, IJM~*> now pronounced mis).Whether the oMier Proto-Chaldrean name? of the gods, such as " Gingir"


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885



232 BILINGUAL READINGS.

No. V.

The cylinder seal having this legend is of very fair workman-

ship, and was purchased for the British Museum from Captain

Felix Jones, who obtained it at Babylon. I propose to read the

legend, Li Akadi bin Bereg-berud, sarsd zi haqarib li Hadad, " Of

" Akadi, the son of Bereg-berud, the eunuch, who was the devotee

of Hadad."5 The name of Akadi often occurs in the inscriptions

under the form (written phonetically) of | " ^ *~T~¥ * " ^ ^ f

^*""lT 1 TIT' * ^ w a s a n e ^ n * c ^ ^ e originally, " the Accadian," andcame to be used as a proper name, forming one of a very extensiveclass, such as " the Assyrian," " the Ninevite,"" the Arbelite,""theBabylonian," " the Harranian," &c. The affiliation is here renderedby the word bin, instead of the more usual bar.6 The father's name

for Ishtar, or V^nus ; Mir-mir, for the God of the Air (**""|

Guthibir, for Merodach; Hubishaga, for Cronos (*"*"] *" I I ^"TI ])'&c, &c, are to be traced to Arian sources, I have not been able to discoverwith any certainty. The names for the Moon, however, Dumu.-gu and Lam-gu,seem to admit of such comparison; the former, Dwmu, being cognate with

the Zend Homa, for ^JT^T (A passing into d, as in dost, " a hand," for

Tjl^f; hada, " with," for 0 | t | , &c, &c.); and the latter, Lam, or Lwm (for

the terminal gutturals are probably mere articles), being allied to " Lunus " and" Luna," so that the whole series may be connected together. The Armenian

name for " the Moon," I may add, *~*""T *~*~ \ I »fc> Khaldi, belongsevidently to another family, and must be compared with the Hungarian Hold.

6 I have since found that Dr. Levy divides the -words of this legend some-what differently (Phb'n. Stud. ii. 24). He reads "Of Akedban, the son ofOebrud, the eunuch who was priest of Herod " but I have never met withany names at all resembling AJcedban or Gebrud, nor do 1 think that suchforms would be in accordanc with Assyrian construction. With regard tothe latter part of the legend, if the letter which is third in line four, andsecond in line five, could be proved to be a Q, I would gratefully accept theamended reading of muqrib li 3Ierod for haqarib li Hadad; but I have neverseen the Mem so represented in any other legend, and I hesitate, therefore, tofollow Dr. Levy's reading.

5* The monogram signifying " Accad," which is usually employed in thisname, is so difficult to represent typographically, that I am obliged to substi-tute the phonetic rendering.

6 The same use of 7^ instead of - Q will be observed in Nos. viii., ix., andxvi., to be subsequently examined. The form of Sin was not entirely unknownto the Assyrian, as we have in one of the Bilingual lists of terms of relation-ship J ^ t^^jppf. J * ^yy j bin-bini, given as the equivalent of

C^[~ *-\— > <• " a grandson." The ordinary Assyrian terms for "son,"

however, were ^ t [ Tt-TT» ablu (or bal, in composition), and f;T >^T|T.maru, from which may have come the Aramtean bar.


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885



CUNEIFOKM AND PHOENICIAN. 233

I read doubtfully as Bereg-berud, and suppose it to mean " Blessedof Berud," or " Berud blesses," comparing Berud either with theScriptural ~J"JN"D, for Merodach (2 Kings xx. 12),7 or with theBar Nimre of Harran, mentioned by St. James of Seruj (Asseman.Bib. Orient, -vol. i. p. 327), T O and "IQJ both signifying "spottedas a pard." Bereg for Berek will be the same corruption that wehave already seen in 330 for / / W~ \\*-\ t^.- The Cunei-form sign, I may add, which represents the idea of " blessing," is. ^ , the Semitic equivalent roots being 310 and "713, and itis thus impossible, when the letter ^ ^ is used alone, to distin-guish its phonetic reading. In general, however, fzYYY- or>-YY^, ga or gi, is added to ^ ^ to indicate the root 3112 ; andÂ JuL or >-s^, im or mu, is added to indicate T Q - 8 Thenext word, XD1D, is, of course, the Hebrew C ID, from the rootDID, "to castrate." The Assyrian phonetic equivalent seems to beKl^t ^ f f l H ' îzir' from 12ip, " to cut off;" but I am stillin doubt as to the Turanian monogram for " a eunuch." The fourthline seems to read zi haqarib. The relative 'f is certain, but I amnot sure of haqarib, as the first letter, though resembling the He nin yv?)n and ^ D i n , is not quite identical. If haqarib be the truereading, we may suppose the word to be the Hiphel form of Slip, orthe first letter may possibly be the Hebrew article. The last wordof the inscription is apparently the name of a God, and I conjec-

' It is quite possible that the last element of this name may be 2Uinstead of ~J"O ; the second character, indeed, resembles a 0 fully as muchas a "1, and the Daleth and Mesh are undistinguishable. The name Burug-be/ciir C"OU-3"12) might then mean " the splendour of the morning"(conip. Chaldee 3"1N3> and Heb. ""O3)> out this is a mere conjecture.

8 -<^ is a l s 0 u s e ( l f°r Sireh, " a knee," as well as for the rootto bless." Compare the Bilingual phrases :—

Where the Assyrian reads attaka birJcai; la anilcha shepai; " I have made

my knees to move;" " I have not rested my feet;" 4 ^ •""So' answering to

birkni, " knees," and yt^*~ *ô to shepai, " feet."

VOL. I.—[NEW SEB1ES.] 16


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885




ture the deity to be the "IT"! of Scripture and Adad of Macrobius,though I know not his Assyrian representative.9 The style of thelegend is very similar to the formula which is generally found onBabylonian cylinder seals, and which merely records the name ofthe owner, the name of his father, and the name of his guardiandeity. The only difference is that here we have the additionaltitle of ND~)D, and that the periphrasis zi haqarib li is substitutedfor the ordinary single sign ^ ^ z l , ardu, " the slave of."10

No. VI.

This is a legend in Himyaritic characters, upon a Babyloniancylinder seal obtained by Captain F. Jones at Annah on theEuphrates, and now in the British Museum. It is included in therecent collection of Himyaritic inscriptions published by the BritishMuseum, pi. xviii. No. 39, and has been read by Mr. Franks asNjny ]2 l~12~t, Dabrah bin 'Ar'd. I should, however, propose,myself, to read ND~ID t a T H m 1, Di Barkat-Bil Sarsd, " ofBarkat-bil the Eunuch," comparing the legend with the Phoenicianinscription No. V that has been just examined. At any rate itis quite clear that the initial "T, answering to the Chaldee H, isused either as a preposition or a pronoun, to denote the ownershipof the seal, this mode of expression being universal in all thecylinder and seal legends ; and that the following word is a deriva-tive of "f"Q, " to bless." With regard to the name itself, Barak,or Barkat, may possibly be used alone, and the following wordmay be the affiliative term Bin as regarded by Mr. Franks ; but Ishould prefer to join the two words together in one name, which

9 See Selden de Diis Syria, p. 102 sqq., for a full dissertation upon Adad,which, according to Macrobius, signified " one," and was a title of the sun's.Dr. Levy, as I have before observed, reads T1Q instead of "Tin, comparingthe Hebrew "fTID (Jer. 1. 2), but the first letter of the name seems to meto be a PI rather than a Q, and the other two characters are to all appearancethe same letter, whether that letter be a Daleth or Hesli.

10 Dr. Levy can hardly be right, I think, in supposing that a eunuch was" Priest" of Merodach. Except in connexion with the rites of the " Motherof the Q-ods," I doubt, indeed, if eunuchs were ever admitted into the templesof Assyria and Babylonia. Whether the title derived from 2l~)J) be muqribor haqarib, it merely indicates " proximity," I think, in the sense of devotion ;but there is no immediate correspondent in Assyrian with which the wordcan be compared. The Cuneiform sign for a priest (of Proto-Chaldsean origin)was g:J*| , which was pronounced Patesi in Babylonian, and had probablyanother phonetic equivalent in Assyria.


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885




would then be a compound signifying, perhaps, "the blessing ofBel." At any rate the last letter of the first line can hardly be aNun. It resembles a Phoenician Zain more than anything else,but may perhaps be a Lamed.11 Whether the two dots after " P 3are merely a sign of division, or represent the Himyaritic Tau, isof no great consequence.

The reading of ND1D, " the Eunuch," for the last word maybe thought very bold, but the first and third letters resemble nocharacter of the known Himyaritic alphabet, and the only Semiticcharacter in which that alphabet is deficient is the Samech ; so thatI venture to compare the word with the title of Sarsd used in thepreceding legend, instead of adopting, with Mr. Franks, the whollyunintelligible patronymic of N}Hy. Mr. Franks's hypothesis thatthe legend on this cylinder is of a much later date than the figures,seems to me to be altogether gratuitous. The figures, no doubt,are of good Babylonian workmanship, and can hardly be later thanthe sixth or seventh century, B.C. ; but I know of no conclusiveevidence against a similar antiquity for the Himyaritic character.On the contrary, this cylinder may be held, I think, to establish,that antiquity; for not only is there every appearance from thearrangement of the figures and letters that the two engravings musthave been executed at the same time, but the style of the legendis also of the Ante-Achsemenian period, and unsuited, as I think,to any later age.

No. VII.

The legend on this cylinder, which is in the British Museum,and comes from Babylon, has been often published (Mem. de l'lnst.torn. xvii. 1, pi. iii. No. 4, p. 353 ; and Layard, Nineveh andBabylon, p. 606), but has never been satisfactorily read. It appearsto me, however, to be a regularly formed Assyrian name, Tin/PD,Pilat-akh-idin, "Pilat-gives-a-brother," of the same class as Asshur-akh-idin (or Esar Haddon), Shamas-akh-idin, and many others.The only difficulty regards the name of Pilat, which is not foundunder that form in the Assyrian Pantheon. Remembering, how-ever, the constant confusion of the labials, I would suggest that

11 The name of Birhet-Baal, ^|J^~/1D*O> ifl quoted by Dr. Levy froma Numidian inscription (Phon. Stud. iii. 64). I should prefer, however, toread this name as BirTcet-Baz, if I could find any trace of the worship of agod named Baz by the Aramaeans or Arabs.


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885



236 BILINGUAL KEADINGS,

Pilot is for Bilat, >-~< (*~, the feminine of Bil, " a Lord," andequivalent to the Greek B»/A,T«S or B»/X0?/9, the same word occurringas the first element in the name of "1XNtyiOLQ, though the Te'h isthere substituted for the Tau.li

The other elements, akh-idin, require no comment.

No. VIII.

The seal on which this legend is found is of the Phoenician, orperhaps Arabian, rather than the Assyrian type. The name iadistinctly read as DD iD nil bfcOQD, Tamik-il bar Milkum.Tamik-il means probably " God blesses," or " blest of God ;" theroot damah or tamah (for the two forms are hardly distinguishablein the inscriptions), giving rise to a vast number of derivatives inAssyrian, though it is unknown, I believe, in any of the kindredlanguages. The Turanian sign which represents this root is\\—^i, and among the derivatives (besides the immediate verbalforms) are the words signifying " good fortune " (J^lTfez ^*~T>lumhi, or £^T ^TTT '*-II» dunqi), the common epithet ofdaniqdt (" the blessed places"), applied to the holy shrines ofBabylonia, and various others terms of kindred meaning.

The name of DD722, Malcam or Mi/com, though familiar to usfrom its frequent employment in Scriptures, is hardly Assyrian,

12 Dr. Levy reads this name 1*inn~73> a n d translates it " son of theVY

morning," supposing Pal to be the Assyrian ] | , and comparing l i n n

with the Hebrew "1!"!$ (Phon. Stud. ii. 33). I know of no Assyriannames, however, formed like the Hebrew T ! $ ~ p , T D ^ 3 , ^ ^ " P ,&c.; nor, I think, would the word for " a son" be pronounced Pal at thecommencement of a name, but rather ablu (Cun. £:£: | !> : " ) ; whilst thesubstitution of 1!"!$ for ^TlTl seems exceedingly far-fetched. Pilat is, Ihave little doubt, the name of some deity, but whether it may really stand forIlilat, as suggested in the text, or whether it may refer to the " Goddess of

Hfp " >—< / v—<T< *~tT» Silat-Tila, where Tila answers to the' \ ^ — • I I i i

Assyrian term Balath or Palafh (comp. Hebrew root tO7S or J"P3, " toescape," or "survive"), or whether there may not be some other divine titlepronounced Pilat or Point, the Cuneiform correspondent of which has not yetbeen recognized, I cannot undertake to say.

13 Dr. Levy (Phon. Stud. ii. 31) reads this name as ThemeJc-el, " Godsupports," from the Hebrew root "^Q.n> and perhaps this is a better deriva-tion than from damak, " to bless," which, if it existed in Hebrew, would beexpressed by p Q ^ I am not sure, however, that any such root as tamah," to hold," or " support," is in use in Assyrian.


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885




the termination in D, being apparently the suffix of the third per-son plural, which was peculiar to the Hebrew and Arabic.

No. IX.

The seal impressed with this legend, and which is now in theBritish Museum, is said to have been found in Ireland, a relic, itis supposed, of the old Phoenician colonists. It may be readNptX P n n n 72V nV2V ]2 ^ " " O N b.Li Obed-eM bin Sheb'atoied Mitit bin Zidqd, " belonging to Abdallah the son of Sheb'at,tnfe slave of Mitinta, the son of Zadek." The names which arethus preserved are of some interest, and may be partially illustratedfrom the Assyrian. N'l'N, or Ela, would seem to be a particulardivinity, different from the ordinary bit, El (Assyrian >->-|, Ilu),which applies as a generic name to any God. It may, perhaps, beCronos, the FIX, or 'Wo?, of the Phoenicians, and the *~*-\ >—<; or*-*-[ *~\\ >-TIT) °f the Assyrians, to which, as before observed,I would propose to give the phonetic value of Ilin, after the"IWivo*of Damascius.

jSheb'af, again, is not Otherwise known. I believe, as a propername, but may be explained as applying to the " seven Planets."DUO, is evidently the same as the Cuneiform Y ^ C ^ *—<Kfz^Jipff >—<T< ( m the genitive), which occurs among the Syrianproper names in the wars both of Tiglath Pileser, and Sennacherib.It signifies merely "the gift (of the Gods)", and may be comparedwith the "IHTiniO of Scripture (Ezra. x. 4 3 ; Nehera. viii. 4,&c, &c). And Zidqd, " the just," cognate with the Scriptural pH2{and irVpiS, is also met with in the inscriptions under the doubleform of fgfl £ E ^ £\ ]} and ^ | f f | f

14 In the Sennacherib Aimals (col. 2,1. 58), | ZZ£L]] ^*--<^T >^-f YJ,Zidqd, ia mentioned as G-overnor of Ascalon; and the name again

occurs under the form of | * ~ | ] ^ ' t ^ - * ^ | >—I [T» among thewitnesses (for the most part Syrians and Egyptians, as we may judge from

the names jf ^ j f '**TTT *"*"! » ^ ^ < ' o r Scsono l l i3i | -<^,SE >^] yf>or Hormasis, &c.) to a deed of sale which was executed in Nineveh, in the *fourteenth year of the reign of Sennacherib, by Sharu-tib-dairi (afterwardsG-overnor of Zoan), Afar-siiru and his wife jLmat-Sukala, conveying theirproperty in a certain house and its appurtenances to Zil- Asshur, the Egyptianlaw officer or judge. I t is quite possible, and oven probable, that those twoZidqds were the same person, for we find in the Annals that Zidqd, therefractory Governor of Ascalon, was removed early in the reign of Sennacherib


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885




Although the owner of this seal was " a slave," he probably filleda position of trust, for there is abundant evidence in the legaltablets that " slaves," under the Assyrian Empire, were allowed topossess property, and were raised to high situations, much in thesame way as has always been practised in Mahomedan countries.

No. X.

The cylinder which bears this legend, and which is in theBritish Museum, is apparently of the Achsemenian period, and theetymology of the names leads to the same conclusion. The inscrip-tion may be read, I think, as ^JYimN "13 JTTJltnB DDH, KhotamParshandat bar Artadatan, " the seal of Parshandat, the son ofArtadatan." Parshandat I should compare with the NDTJttHSof Esther ix. 7, " given to Parshan," supposing that name to referto the Bar-sam or Hercules, of Armenian tradition, if that be reallya genuine title and not a corruption, as has been recently suggested,of the Syrian Bal-shamin, "Lord of Heaven/' or "the Sun.15 Theother name, " Artadatan," would seem to be of pure Persian ety-mology, being compiled of Aria the intensitive prefix, and a verbalnoun from the root da, " to give ;"16 so that the meaning would be

to Nineveh, and was replaced in his government by the very man, STiwru-tib-dairi, who sold his town house to the Egyptian judge, as he no longer pro-bably required such a residence after his appointment to Syria. It is not, ofcourse, in our power to determine if the Zidqd of the Sennacherib Annals canbe identified with the man whose name occurs on this seal; but there is somecolour lent to the hypothesis by the association of the names of Mitinta andZidqd in the account of Sennacherib's Phoenician campaign, the former beingGovernor of Ashdod, while the latter ruled in Ascalon, and the two verypossibly, therefore, standing in the relation of father and son, though the factis nowhere stated.

15 The subject of Bar-Sain, or Baptr^juiof, is fully discussed in Sect. 9 ofmy Mythological Essay. See Rawlinson's Herodotus, vol. i. p. 623. Chwol-son (Die Ssabier, vol. i. p. 373, &c.), connects Bar-shwmin with Badl-shamin,but perhaps the Bar-shamin of Mos. Chor. ii. 14, may be different from thedeified hero, Par-sham, or Bar-sham, mentioned by the same author in lib. i.c. 14.

16 The use of the participle < | f) | , data, in these names, is proof positive

that the seal cannot be of an earlier date than the Persian conquest of Babylon ;and I may here note that the name of "117^, Bildad, in Job, a kindredcompound, and signifying " Given to Bel," is equally decisive as to the age ofthat book. All the geographical and etymological evidence, indeed, whichcan be drawn from the book of Job, tends to assign it to the Achaemenian

period, the land of y.1)^ being the *^ | j ^ | y ^y\ of the inscriptions


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885




almost the same as the ZeDd, Mazda, " the great giver." There ismuch difficulty, however, in distinguishing between the "7 and the ~)in this legend, and the letters which I have read as D and J are notquite satisfactorily determined.17

The legends numbered XI, XII, and XIV are found upon sealsin the British Museum, and No. XIII is a name engraved on aScarabseus in the same collection.

No. XI I Read as "QTO1?, Li Mudabir, and I compare the

name with the Arabic JA-*, Mudabbir, " a Governor" or " Direc-

tor " (from ,JO or ~)21, " to lead" or "guide"), which is often

used as an honorary title.

No. XII may be read "DID'?, Li Sar-gad, the name beingapparently of the same class as tWID or Y -<^»|]- *-*-| ^ \Y •>which I have examined under No. 14. Sar-gad probably signifies" of glorious fortune," or " (his) fortune exults;" Sar being aderivative either from ")>}$ or TD as before explained, and Gad,being the Scriptural "TJ (Is. lxv. 11), which, however, althoughcertainly used in Hebrew for " fortune,1' is not, as far as my know-ledge goes, to be found in the inscriptions.18

The name of v}?D, which belonged to the owner of the Scara-bseus, No, XIII , is probably cognate with the Hebrew t'lXttf, Saul,

(as t O is < ,iE| IT j^TT)' between the Jebel-Shamar and the valleyof the Euphrates, and thus extending from the Sabseans of Idumsea on the oneside, to the Chaldseans of Southern Babylonia on the other; and the Shuhitesand Temanites being the Babylonian tribes of fc|T ~^A' Snhhi, and

>->-1 T *^^ ^y 5 Ztamunu, who at the close of the Assyrian Empire weresettled along the outskirts of the desert.

17 Dr. Levy (Phb'n. Stud. ii. 40) gives these names as V T m i N andJ W i y U i Artadati and G-adshirt, but thei-e is nothing in his remarks whichseems to me to lend much weight to his proposed readings. I prefer, at anyrate, regarding the first letter of the first name as a Phe rather than a Oimel,and the letter which is fourth in that name, and last in the second name,certainly resembles a Nun more than a Jod.

1S I t must be evident to any one who is familiar with the Assyrian inscrip-tions, and especially with the bilingual tablets, which treat to a great extentof demonology, that the celebrated verse in Isaiah (lxv. 11) where the autho-rized version renders "7J7, " for that troop," and ^JQ?, " unto that number,"refers in reality to the " good and evil spirits" who were propitiated and


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885




and with the Cuneiform Y ^.^yyy >~Y<Y »"£:I<7 *"~ "T> which wasthe name of the King of Hamath, contemporary with Shalmaneser II.,of Assyria, and with the Biblical Jehu and Ben-IIadad. *?}>$ andsW£}, indeed, in Hebrew are kindred roots, and in Assyrian theAin and Alif are hardly distinguishable.

In No. XIV the name noriN, Akhumah, is probably forAkhi-umah, " mother's brother," or " uncle," formed in the sameway as the Hebrew 2N71N, Ahab, which is literally " father'sbrother." I have not mot, however, with any direct Assyriancorrespondent.

No. XV.

The impossibility of distinguishing between the Besh and theDaleth renders very uncertain the explanation of this legend whichis found on a seal probably of Syrian origin. The analogous legend,No. IV, which I have read as Hur-tagil, would suggest, indeed,the reading of Li Hur-daqi'a bar Hur-tfad, the name of Hur or

deprecated by the Babylonians. Spirits or genii in general are indicated by

the ideographic signs *-»-[ ^TTT) o r *"*"! ^ I r M' o r IF*~~ '*"£]>

or by the phonetic terms "^" ^ | T *-*—!' sh'edu (comp. Jut-j), or

^ | | | — II"^- I*~T> vadukku, or *~£z\ * T ~ * | 1 ' lo-massi, or perhaps

*j~ •^»->}pff J ^ , Nukhsu (comp. ^ n l ^*>J, y^jsJ, &c.);. but the

distinguishing marts for " good" and " eyil," or for " blessing" and " cursing,"

are \T~" T f°r the former, to be read as damiq or damqu, and \ T ~H*~i

for the latter, to be read as Uvnu or limnu i.\]— *T~ o r ^ ^ l ^ J

- ^ J f f ^ " ) - C o m P - E J - H - I n s - co1- 9> L 3 8 • Bellino Ins. of Meb.col. 2,1. 2, &c, &c, &c. It follows, then, that the Hebrew "1JP will answer

to the Bab. ^ | — ^ ^ , and the Hebrew ^jo'1? to the Bab. ^|—JTHf \

and it is thus not a little curious that the latter Hebrew word, for which it isvery difficult to find a suitable etymology, gives us the exact phonetic reading

^T— >Jpf- or >-^T<T -<^*ff- Jiff-J Limni (in oblique case). Iof

hardly think this can be a mere coincidence, and yet, if the Assyrian wordwere used in Isaiah for the "evil" spirits, it is difficult to understand whyit should not be used for the "good" spirits as well; and there is certainlyno word that I am aware of, connected with the Assyrian demonology, whichat all resembles Gad or Ligad.


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885




Horus forming the initial element in both the names ; but in thiscase no fitting etymology can be found, as it seems to me, for daqi'a,the root J?p"T being unknown to any Semitic language. I prefer,therefore, reading the first name as Hud raqi'a, " the glory of thefirmament;" "Til, for the Hebrew "Tin, being equivalent to theProto-Chaldsean £:fc, which represents any derivative from the root*1i"U, " to swell," or " to be proud ;" and the second element beingthe ordinary word ypi, " the expanse of Heaven," or " the firma-ment." I would still, however, propose to read the second nameas Hur-Vad, " the slave of Horus," "in standing for the god of thatname, and "TJ?H being by metathesis for ""OJ7, " a slave," and in sub-stitution of the usual Phoenician contraction into *"Q, .Bod.1'

No. XVI.

This legend occurs on a seal in the British Museum, which isbelieved to have been found in Babylonia. It seems to readnD^"n ]2. !T30n b, Li Khananiah bin UdisalJt. Khananiah, theGreek ''kvavlm ("whom God has graciously given"), is a wellknown Semitic name, though I believe it has never yet been re-cognized in a Phoenician inscription. T Jy^ +4- *j/~, Khanunu,for j}jn, is used also in the Cuneiform inscriptions as the name of a

19 Dr. Levy, I see, gives this same reading of Hod-raJcia (Phb'n. Stud. ii. 30),but doubtfully; while he reads Hod-bad instead of Bur-bad, deriving the lastelement from the Heb. "TiO, and translating the name by "Pracht ringsum,"whatever that may mean.

Dr. Levy, also (Phb'n. Stud. ii. 38), gives another Phoenician legend froma plate of Lajard's (Culto de Mithra 36, No. 3), which furnishes us with aname, analogous to that of Kod-rdkia. I have been unable to find in theBritish Museum collection the Scarabeeus figured by Lajard, but the legendwould seem to read "1DDD "Tin > Li Hud-kaspar, and I should conjecturethe name to mean " the glory of Caspar." I t is true that we have no evidencein the inscriptions of such a phonetic name attaching to any of the gods,

but in the Nedim's list there is a certain J L * J ) which seems to be

*"*"| M i l l |T' a s he is called (J^lSJl .Xs' , " the omniscient," or" of complete intelligence," and this may possibly be the origin of the name ofCaspar or Gaspur, which has been prevalent in the East from the earliesttimes. Dr. Levy reads the name " Sudu, the Scribe," supposing the strokeafter the fifth letter to mark a division between the words, and regarding~lDD as a title. The root "I3D, " to write," however, was certainly unknownin Assyrian, and I should prefer, therefore, if Dr. Levy's division of the wordswere correct, to translate " the glory of Sippara," comparing "1BD with theCuneiform *>-TT ^T«


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885




King of Gaza, contemporary with Sargon, though the root is rarelyor ever employed in Assyrian phrases. Of the etymology of PCII ,U'disakh, I cannot speak with any certainty, since it does notresemble either a Hebrew, or an Assyrian, compound. The firstelement, however, probably comes from TW, " to praise," and thesecond may be allied with the Arabic \s*> and Assyrian *>^\|,the whole name signifying " the praise of the liberal."

No. XVII .

This legend is found on a seal in the British Museum, which isto all appearance of Babylonian manufacture. It may be read, Ithink, as J1312 iTttO^ It' 11 *?, Li Nana-sha-labshahu-birkat, andthe name may be, perhaps, translated " whom Nana has clothedwith blessings." The name, at any rate, of the goddess Nana,>->-Y >~" "T *~^] T T m Cuneiform, Naraut in Greek, and • • " ,Hani, in Syriac, is not to be mistaken, and the last word, of whichthe final letter is alone doubtful, is certainly a derivative from ~]~)2," to bless." What the other words may be is more uncertain.The $ which follows Nana, and completes the first line, may verywell be the relative, which was extensively used in the Phceuicianand Hebrew, as well as in the Assyrian (see Ges. Lex. in voce),20* andthe next word is assuredly a verb ; but I know not whether thefinal n be a mere feminine termination of the participle, or thesuffix of the third person masculine singular (in Assyrian JrT or T),or the article which belongs to the following noun. This point,then, I leave to the consideration of more competent scholars.I have not met with any exact correspondent of the name in theinscriptions, but it is formed in near accordance with the principlesof Assyrian construction.

No. XVIII .

Gesenius gives the legend of HDNIDj Sar-asur, from anAssyrian gem in the Museum of the Hague, and translates " Frin-

20 It would seem, however, that >_^ »^ i i»Y, sakh, and £:T|T,sukh, are not Semitic, but Turanian roots, answering to the Assyrian damifc," to be fortunate," and allied, therefore, in all probability, with the old Persian

word .*£, sukh, " auspicious," rather than with the Arabic \£?" safcha.

20# Or the $ may be the characteristic of the Shaphel conjugation,shalbash being constantly used in the inscriptions for " clothing."


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885




ceps Osiridis." I do not, however, exactly understand this phrase,

nor do I think it at all probable that the worship of Osiris should

be commemorated on an Assyrian seal. I should rather translate

" the glory of Asshur," or " Asshur is glorious," supposing ~IDN"1D

to be the Phoenician rendering of Y 4^>H- *~*"| >->-^S^; and com-

paring the name with the compounds ttfiOD (Cun. Y -<^»]-|- ^ W )

and TTIDJ which have been before examined. "ID, indeed, will

stand for "lNt£» (that is, ^ YI J^TYY, phonetic equivalent of

-A»++-) as well as for ~)]tf ; and we have an undoubted example

of the substitution of "^H f°r the God Asshur (»-*~Y >->-W or

-W$N) in the ordinary Scriptural orthography of V^'TIDN for

the name of Esar-Haddon, which in Assyrian is Asshur-akh-iddina,

" Asshur has given a brother."

The legends XIX and XX are found on pieces of coarsepottery, fragments of a jar, which were excavated from the ruinsof Nimrud, and are now in the British Museum. One fragmentseems to read ]22^7 JT13, Biret Libnan, " within the Lebanon,"

the first word being the Cuneiform * * £: In or - < ^ £ ; ^ ^ > <Y<,21

which has no immediate correspondent n the otherSemitic languages,

but is used like the Hebrew ]"<2. and Arabic t ( j j , and the other

being the well known geographical name which in the Inscriptions

is usually writ ten as £YY| *~^~>\ >~^"T' Libnana, answering to

the Hebrew V O ^ A The other fragment reads as jpni i 'D — -,

but I cannot venture on an explanation, as the words are probablyimperfect, both at the commencement and the end.

Before concluding my notes on these tablet and seal legends, Iwould observe that they are among the most ancient specimensthat we possess of Phoenician writing. I should select as the

21 This is the same word which occurs in the Babylonian transcript atBehistun, line 8, as equivalent to the Persian antara, " within." Mons.CJppert is wrong (Exp. en Mesopotamie, liv. ii. p. 203) in identifying the

letter f:T 11 [, which occurs in the word in question, with either the Assyrian

f : ^ ^ t : T or t ^4^^Z^[ • The true equivalent in the Assyrian alphabet is

^ -YY| ' which, again, as has been often shown, interchanges with >: III ,and that letter, amongst its various powers, has the value of rit.


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885



244 BILINGTOAL READINGS,

earliest specimens of all, the legends on the larger Lion Weights inthe British Museum, one of which is clearly dated from the rei^nof Tiglath Pileser II . (B.C. 744-726).1" The other weights bearthe royal names of Shalmaneser,23 Sargou, and Sennacherib. Theclay tablets, as far as we can judge from the names of the Eponyms,belong, for the most part, to the reigns of Esar Haddon and Asslmr-bani-pal. The cylinder seals and scarabaei may extend over acouple of centuries, ranging probably from B.C. 700 to B.C. 500.One, at any rate, No. X, can be positively assigned, through theevidence of the workmanship, the form of writing, and the etymo-logy of the names, to ag late a period as the Persian Empire.

It is not probable, I think, that the Phoenician character wasemployed, or was generally known, in Assyria and Babylonia,synchronously with the Cuneiform. Syrian artificers may havebeen established at Nineveh. We know that officers from Carche-mish, from Samhala, from Arpad, and even from Damascus, servedthe office of Eponym. There is evidence, indeed, among the legaltablets, of the settlement both of Syrians and Egyptians, as house-holders and farmers, in Assyria ;24 and with these immigrant visitors,probably, arose the practice of using Phoenician legends on theirseals; while the dockets on the clay tablets must also, as it seems

22 The bilingual inscriptions on the Lion Weights, which were originallydeciphered by Mr. Norris, and which have been more recently brought beforethe notice of the public in Mr. Madden's work on the History of the JewishCoinage, have lately undergone a very strict scrutiny at my hands, the resultsof which, especially in reference to the system of weights in use amongst theAssyrians, will be given in the continuation of this paper on the legal tabletsof Nineveh.

23 It is very important to note the fact of so many of these weights beingdated from the reign of Shalmaneser, because this is the only direct evidencethat we possess in the whole range of the Cuneiform inscriptions, of theexistence of the king of that name, who is so celebrated in the Biblical record.I say direct evidence, because, although there were other kings of the nameof Shalmaneser, mentioned in documents of a much earlier date, it is quitecertain that the Lion Weights are connected in a continuous chronologicalseries, and that the Shalmaneser, therefore, whose name they bear, must bethe king who intervened between Tiglath Pileser I I . and Sargon.

24 I have already noticed the purchase of a house at Nineveh by anEgyptian law officer, and I may here add, that in a certain Assyrian "tableof precedence," which contains a list of all the offices and dignities of theempire from the Tartan downwards, two legal functionaries are entered, one

Assyrian and the other Aramsean ( j r ,£iT •*. >->~yf |T|T all<^[I ,£;[ -v ^ ! j i *t"T | T i l ) ' thereby, as it would seem, proving thatthere must have been a considerable Aramtcan population residing in theAssyrian capital.


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885



CUNEIFORM AND PHCESTCIAlSr. 245

to me, have been scratched or incised by some foreign subordinatein the Registry Office.

At the same time, the Phoenician letters were certainly notaltogether unknown to the learned Assyrians, for there are a con-siderable number of fragments of clay tablets among the Museumcollection, which, when complete, must have borne tabulated listsof the Phoenician alphabet, and which, as far as can be ascertainedfrom the mutilated remains now alone available for examination,gave some mystical explanation of the powers and properties ofthe different characters.

Through what means, or at what particular time, the Cuneiformcharacter fell into disuse, and was superseded by a cursive squarecharacter of the Phoenician type, we are unable at present to definewith any certainty. The latest dated tablets, however, belong tothe reigns of Antiochus and Demetrius ; and as a great politicalrevolution occurred shortly afterwards, the Greek rule in Assyriaand Babylonia being supplanted by the Parthian, we may probablyassign to that epoch the extinction of Cuneiform writing.

A square character, it is true, must have been long previouslyknown in Babylonia, through the coins of the Achsemenian Satraps,and it was from this character, probably, that the numismaticBactrian took its rise in the third century B.C., but it may bedoubted whether that form of writing ever fairly struck root in thecountry along the Tigris and Euphrates. The only specimens, atany rate, which now exist, are in a cave at Amadia, and upon therock at Holwan ; and at both places the inscriptions are found inconnection with very early Parthian sculptures. It would be in-teresting, on many accounts, to trace the successive establishmentof the various later forms of Semitic writing which took the place ofthe Cuneiform. The Palmyrene,the Parthian of the Bilingual tablets,the Chaldsean of the Babylonian Pateres, the Pehlevi, the earlyEstranghelo, and the Sabsean of the lead«n rolls from Abu bhadhr,are all more or less connected, and several of these alphabets werein use, no doubt, at the same time, in various parts of Assyria andBabylonia. A full comparative table of all such alphabets wouldbe very important to the palseographer, while it would also assistthe historical student in showing how the civilization of the Cunei-form period became modified and affected by the successive intro-duction of foreign influences, as evidenced by the modes of writingwhich severally accompanied them, until the heterogeneous mixture


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885



246 BILINGUAL READINGS.

of ignorance and knowledge, of philosophy and superstition, of

empyricism and science, which prevailed in Babylonia during the

early ages of Christianity, was eventually swallowed up in the

overwhelming energy of the Arab element, and the impetuosity of

a new-born and proselytizing faith.

ADDITIONAL NOTES.

Note 4, page 190.—On a further comparison of the texts it seems almostcertain that tadan or tadani—for both orthographies are employed—must bethe 2nd person sing, of the Aorist of Kal, the root being probably danah,immediately cognate with nadart (as PI3/1 in Hebrew is with 1J"I3)> aid

being thus represented by the same Turanian ideograph, fc^Y- Thesetablets, however, which contain " decrees," as it would seem, rather than merecontracts, addressed by the Aba, or " Judge," to the parties who come beforehim to legalize their conveyance of property, are very difficult to render inintelligible English, not only from the frequent employment of technicalterms, but from the strange grammatical construction in which the conditionsof sale and barter are expressed. The two words tagaihi and tasatthiri, whichI have quoted from the decree of a certain princess, the daughter of the lastking of Assyria, are probably the 2nd person sing. fern, of the Aorist of Piel,and hardly admit, therefore, of direct comparison with tadani.

Page 20*7, No. 5.—In reference to the possible comparison of the secondline of the Phoenician legend on this tablet with the Cuneiform name

T >->-T< >->-T< ^fclj it may be of importance to note that if the first

element of that name be composed of a double ti (>-<]<)—as appears to be

the case—the phonetic reading will probably be Igardt-naMd, >-< |K *~<T<>

being explained in the bilingual vocabularies by t f ; f:T T T ^ f c | T ]T *^ |»as some part of " a ship." The Phoenician letters, then, which I have doubt-fully read as zardd, may perhaps belong to this word igarad or igardt; andthe second element of the name, nahid, may have been broken off from thetablet, which is here imperfect.


https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00160885



GENERAL SIR H. RAWLINSON, K.C.B., Director R.A.S.

Documents

Transcript of GENERAL SIR H. RAWLINSON, K.C.B., Director R.A.S.