264 THE BIBLICAL RECORD OF THE DELUGE
Make thee an ark of gopher-wood, and pitch it within and without with pitch. And this is how thou shalt make it: The length of the ark three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits; to a cubit shalt thou finish it..1 A roof shalt thou make to the ark above, and a door shalt thou set in the side thereof In stories2 shalt thou build the ark, with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou build it.
The new Hilprecht fragment from Nippur, referred to p. 252, should be considered in connection with the command to build the ark; the relationship to the Biblical story, Gen. vi. 13-20,
vii. 5-11, is striking.
In the Babylonian story Ut-napishtim is mocked by the people for building the ark. This feature is also found in the Koran, Sura 11, and in the story of the rescue of Lot from the deluge of fire, Gen. xix. 14. Also the extra-Biblical Jewish traditions tell how Noah was mocked, as is shown by the Talmud Tractate Sanhedrim 323, fol. 1086. In this the people ask Noah whether a deluge of water or of fire is to come.
5. In the Bible (Gen. vi. 18) the number rescued from amongst mankind is limited to Noah’s family—most likely in the interests of the unity of the human race, which should descend from one, as antediluvian mankind did from Adam. In the Babylonian record Ut-napishtim is translated, and mankind is descended from the others who were rescued, amongst whom were a steward and a skilled artisan.3 The Yahvist gives preference to the clean beasts, Gen. vii. 2 f. The division between clean and unclean beasts is common to the whole East, especially in the case of sacrifice (comp. Gen. viii. 20). The Babylonian Noah took all his possessions in with him, especially gold and silver; the provisions in P have been contracted to eatables.
7. Ut-napishtim closes the door. The Bible (Yahvist)
1 Similarly in the Assyrian measurements, for example, AWX ina ishten ammat, thirty to one cubit (measured by a cubit) (Winchler).
2 |p, “dwelling-place.” The ark corresponds to the terrestrial and celestial universe divided into three; see p. S.
3 They were counted after the animals ; they are part of property, as it is with the presents given by Pharaoh to Abraham, Gen. xii. 16 : sheep and oxen, and he-asses, and men-servants and maid-servants.
THE DELUGE
265
emphasises, Gen. vii. 16, the care of God: Yahveh shut
the door.1
8. This description of the breaking out of the Deluge differs essentially from the otherwise poetic and wonderful Babylonian record, which presents the natural phenomena mythologically as gods: together with Adad, god of storm and tempest, the four planet-gods work, Nebo, Marduk, Nergal, and Ninib: and the Anunnaki, who belong to the Underworld, light the scene with their torches. The source utilised in the Priestly Document also described the breaking out of the Deluge poetically in its way. V. 116 is one verse (Gunkel, 131 f.), and names the great Tehom (the ocean is meant, but the poetic expression recalls Primeval Chaos) as one of the sources of the Deluge.
9. The Babylonian Deluge includes the whole created universe, even to the heaven of Anu. In the form in which we have it, the Biblical record only refers to the earth. But there are traces to be found that its transcriber had in mind the flooding of the whole cosmos. The slow sinking of the waters, Gen. viii. 3-5, is brought about by the ruak, who in Gen. i. broods over Tehom of the deep. The resting-place (manoah) from whence the dove takes the olive leaf is, in point of fact, the summit of the Mountain of the World; see p. 271, and comp. p. 256.
10. For the sun number 365 in P, see p. 239, n. 8.
The numbers with the Yahvist are 40 and 3x7. 40 is the
number of the Pleiades, and indicates rain and winter-time; see p. 68. Winckler, F., iii. 96, counts besides, instead of the 3x7 of the “ancient sources,11 2 x 7; that would be 2x7 + 40 = 54 days, the time of a sidereal double month, that is, as long as the sun is in one of the six divisions of the heavens. The 2x7 would then correspond to the Babylonian duration of the Deluge ; the flood lasts seven days, and seven days it recedes.
12. The moving lament over the destruction by the Deluge (Babylonian record, line 133 ff.) is omitted in the Bible.
13. The waters sink. The length of time points to the
1 Or is Yahveh to be taken as a gloss, as Klostermann thinks, Pentateuch, p. 40, so that here also Noah shuts the door?
266 THE BIBLICAL RECORD OF THE DELUGE
original meaning being the Mountain of the World ; see p. 271. The cause of the shakak, the stilling (not sinking) of the waters, is the mail, that is, the same Spirit which in Gen. i. 3 “was brooding upon111 the face of the waters. In the Bible P says, “ upon one of the summits of Ararat.'’'' The scene of the story of Noah (the neighbourhood of Urartu in Armenia) is therefore approximately the same as that given by the Babylonian chronicler. The Yahvist also means the same neighbourhood ; comp. Gen. xi. 2. The Babylonian record gives the name of the highest peak of the mountains—Nisir. In the present day the peak Gudi, in the neighbourhood of Ararat, is held to be the mountain of the Deluge. The ark rested there seven days, as in the Babylonian record.
14. According to Gen. viii. 6, it almost seems as though there had been a source which only tells of the raven. The sending out of the raven disturbs the coherence.2 “ Flew to and fro11 possibly means: it went repeatedly out and came repeatedly back until the waters were dried up, then the raven stayed out. This would coincide with the role of the raven in the cuneiform record, line 154 f. There remain, then, three despatches of birds.
The chronicler of the Babylonian record gives the order: dove, swallow, raven. The Biblical chronicler has the more significant: raven, swallow (the first dove has taken the place of this), dove. The climax is reached with the bringing of the olive leaf. The renewed sending out of the dove, which does not return, Gen. viii. 12. disturbs the sense. As a domesticated bird, the dove would come back in any case. Neither the Biblical nor the Babylonian chronicler has any longer understood the cosmic motif in the recension before us. The dove3 brings the olive leaf from the Tree of Life which stands upon the summit of the Mountain of the World, near the Tree of Death, the Tree of Knowledge; see p. 271, comp. p. 208 ff.
1 Winckler, F., iii. 399. In a mythologised story there came a messenger from God.
2 Wellhausen, /composition, p. 15 ; comp. Winckler, F., iii. 93 f.
0 Gunkel therefore is right when, in his Genesis, 60, he looks for traces of mythology in the dove. According to Plutarch, de sol. anim., 13, the dove is also to be found in the myth of Deucalion.
THE END OF THE DELUGE
267
If the last sending out of the dove is done away with, it also does away with the second seven days in the time reckoning. The Deluge lasts forty days (Pleiades number, time of want and during which no claim can be made to a relief fund ; see p. 6S). According to the Oriental calendar symbolism, we should now expect a term of three or ten days 1 to bring deliverance. Winckler, F., iii. 401, reckons the ten days thus : the raven is sent out on the forty-first day (viii. 7). It does not come back. Then follows the sending out of the swallow (dove), since the raven brings no message. It would certainly be done very soon—in the evening or the next morning, in any case on the following, therefore on the forty-second day. Now Noah waits seven days (Gen. viii. 10, “yet other” seven days; according to what we have said above, “yet other” is done away with). On the forty-ninth day he sends out the dove ; on the fiftieth day she brings the olive leaf.2
16. Berossus: Xisu threw kissed the earth, built an altar, and offered to the gods.3 More in detail in the cuneiform record: “ The gods smelled the savour, the gods smelled the fragrance, they gathered themselves together like flies round the sacrifice.'” The Yahvist says (Gen. viii. 21): “Yahveh smelled the sweet savour.” That this is here simply a figure of speech, meaning “ God was well pleased,” is shown by Amos
v. 21 ; Lev. xxvi. 31. In more drastic form, 1 Sam. xxvi. 19 f. (David speaks to Saul): “ If it be Yahveh that hath stirred thee up against me, let him accept an offering of fragrance to smell.” Ezek. viii. 17 says of the heathen cult in Jerusalem : “ Surely they let the stink [of their offering] rise to my nose.” Equally bv this presentment of the sacrifice the “sweet savour of Christ” is explained, 2 Cor. ii. 15: comp. Phil. iv. 18.
1 The ten days is the motif in fixing the yom kippor as the day of liberation on the tenth day after New Year, which is held as judgment time ; see B.N. T., 70 f. Further, Rev. ii. 10.
2 The fifty here has the same calendar signification as the fifty between Passover and Whitsuntide, and which, on the ground of events in the life of Jesus, also divide the Christian festival of Easter and Whitsuntide. The division into 40 (Ascension) + 10 is perhaps brought into the right position on account of the calendar motif. The Ascension in reality did not fall upon the 40th, but upon the 42nd day, therefore upon a Sabbath, which is perhaps what the “ sabbath day’s journey,” Acts i. 12, indicates. Jesus appeared for the first time to his disciples at Easter evening, therefore at the beginning of the day following the resurrection, Luke xxiv. 29, 36; then “he let himself be seen for forty days,” Acts i. 3; the farewell would therefore fall upon the 42nd day, therefore upon one Saturday before Exaudi (see Lichtenstein in Saat auf Hofftmng, 1906, pp. 11S ff.).
! Compare also the Indian fable, pp. 256 f.
268 THE BIBLICAL RECORD OF THE DELUGE
Rabbinical theology speaks of three odours pleasing to God (the odour of sacrifice, of prayer, and of virtuous acts, the last being the most acceptable), Yalkut Rubeni, 806. Another poetic figure of speech of the “savour’1 is given by the presentment of the plant of life, which is smelled; see p. 215. And even if it were to be understood in an anthropomorphic sense (in the same sense as the repentance and grief of God in Gen. vi. 6), how far removed even that would be from the satirical description in the Babylonian story !
17. With the decision of God in the Yahvist compare the
Babylonian record, line 180 ff. The words of Gen. viii. 22, pNrr Ti?, have been translated, reading it as iod: “ hence
forth, all the days of the earth .... shall not cease.” The grammatical sequence requires the reading icicl, “till” (Septua- gint): 7retort? ra? tj/mepas yi/v- u Till all1 the days of the earth [are finished], seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease.” That corresponds to the System of the Ages of the World. When the days of the earth are finished, the fire-flood will come; comp. 2 Pet. iii. 7, “ the former world was destroyed by a water flood .... but the present heaven and earth are set apart for fire.”
18. With this blessing of the rescued compare the Babylonian record, line 200 ff. In Gen. ix. 2 animals are permitted for food, as, till then, were vegetables. Slaying and killing is allowed. The animals were included in the fall and in the judgment of the Deluge ; see p. 261, n. 2. Now begins what St Paul, in Rom. viii. 19 ff., calls the “ groaning of all creation,” which in like manner awaits redemption. Only the eating of flesh with blood in it is forbidden, Gen. ix. 4 (P). For such blood of the beast God will bring man into judgment. The meaning of Gen. ix. 5 is: God will avenge the blood of man upon every living thing (the beast also which kills man, pays the death penalty). If a man kills a man, God requires yet more; he requires of the murderer the life (the soul, nephesh) of his brother.2 Gen. ix. 6 adds to this a command, and
1 Winckler corrects to ivta i>\
2 The disentanglement of the text which proves this meaning is given by Winckler, F., iii. 402 f.
THE BOW AS SYMBOL
269
a theological foundation for it: man, made in the image of God, stands higher than the beast.
19. The bow, which was naturally also already obvious to the mind of the Biblical chronicler, is to be the sign of remembrance for mankind. Gen. ix. 16: “ And the bow shall be in the cloud, and thou shalt see it to remember1 the covenant.” We find a sign given at Babylonian investitures. Compare, for example, the giving of symbols in the investiture documents of Merodaeh-Baladan; see fig. 189, p. 281, ii. (fruit? In German law an ear of corn is given).
What is the meaning of the bow ? Wellhausen, Prolegomena, 3rd ed., 327, concludes from the word qeshet (otherwise, bow to shoot with) that the weapon of war is symbolised by it, which the arrow-shooting god lays aside as sign of his wrath put away. The Arabs also take the rainbow to be the weapon of God : Gnzah shoots arrows from his bow and then hangs it in the clouds. In India the rainbow is called lndraijudha, the weapon of Indra,” as being the bow from which he hurls lightning arrows against the rebellious Asurs.
The following may be added as Babylonian material :—
1. In the Babylonian record of the Deluge, Ifid ff'., Ishtar raises an object called Nim, which Anu had made by her wish, and swears she will remember this day to the furthest future.
2. The Babylonian epic of creation (Table V. ?) speaks of the placing in the heavens of the weapon with which Marduk has conquered Tiamat:2
The net that he had made, the gods [his fathers] saw, they saw the bow, that it [was made] ingeniously, and the work that he had ended, they praised ....
Anu arose in the assembly of the gods .... he praised (?) the bow : “it is . . . .”
[The names] of the bow he called as follows :
“ Longwood ” is the one, the other . . . ., its third name “ Bowstar in the heavens . . . .” he made firm its place (?) ....
According to that, the “bow,” qeshet, has nothing to do with the rainbow. Qeshet is a weapon ; and the bow to shoot with, which is thin at the ends, does not really answer to the rainbow. Since the bow is in the heavens, we must look for an astral motif. And the crescent of the new moon does, in fact, coincide admirably. Boeklen,
1 To be read thus .HJVXI, in agreement with Winckler. Josephus seems to have already read it thus. Ant., i. 3, S : “The bow shall serve thee as a token of my mercy.” God does not require the reminder.
2 K.T., xii. 3.
270 THE BIBLICAL RECORD OF THE DELUGE
l.c., 123 ft'., has made the explanation very probable. Besides this, in Isa. xxvii. 1 (p. 195) the new moon, which proclaims the victory over the power of darkness, appears as the sickle-sword in the hand of Yahveh.1 The bow of the new moon, which was hailed with joy (Hilal!), is the sign of remembrance of the covenant of God with Noah.
But the tradition which makes the bow' the rainbow may also be proved correct. The original meaning may refer to a divine weapon, but certainly already the editor of the text in question was thinking of the rainbow. Also the late Jewish interpretation sees in the rainbo\v the divine comforter. Curiously, it appears thus in the Slav legends of the Deluge (Hanusch, SI a wise he Marchen, p. 23-1):—The Lord of the Universe saw from the window of heaven war and murder upon earth. So he let the earth be destroyed for twenty days and nights by water and wind. Only one old pair remained alive. To them he sent the rainbow as comforter (Liuxmine), which advised them to spring over the earth’s bones (stones). Thus arose new pairs of mankind, the primeval ancestors of the Lithuanian tribes.
Did the rainbow pass besides for the celestial bridge ? We found this celestial bridge in the Japanese cosmology, p. 167- In the Ed da, Heimdal guards the mythical bridge by which the Asa ascend to heaven, and which will be broken at the Twilight of the gods. And in the German fables souls are conducted to heaven over the rainbow.
That these bridges are of Oriental origin is showm by the conception of them as stairs (naturally with the seven-coloured steps). The rainbow with its seven colours “ corresponds to ” (comp. pp. 8 f.) the zodiac with the same seven planet colours, by the steps of w-hich the astral gods ascend to the heaven of Ann ; see pp. 15 f.
THE COSMIC AND ASTRAL MOTIFS OF THE STORY OF THE DELUGE
The Biblical chronicler clearly accepts the Deluge as corresponding to some historical event of primeval ages — an “ event, the most ancient and the most tremendous which has ever happened to man.'" 2 Also the Babylonian tradition, with its distinction between kings before or after the Flood (pp. 71, 238), seems to have an historical event in view. The Babylonian
1 Rev. xiv. 14 ft*., it becomes the sickle of the harvest of judgment.
2 Riem, Die Siiiflut: Eine ethnographisch-naturwissenschaflliche Untersuchung, Stuttgart, Kielmann, 1906. The fact cannot be established by means of historical criticism. In the critical examination of the Biblical story other issues will determine the decision for or against ; see pp. 80 f.
COSMIC AND ASTRAL MOTIFS
271
Deluge storv borrows its imagery from natural events which may be observed from time to time in the stormy floods in the plains of the Euphrates.1
But the presentment gives an echo of cosmic and astral motifs. The Teaching of the Ages of the Universe reckons with a deluge and with a fire-flood in the course of the moms, which will include the whole cosmos. When the precession of the spring point passes through the water region of the zodiac the deluge happens ; when the precession passes through the fire region of the zodiac the fire-flood happens; see pp. 70 f.2
The Babylonian record refers to the cosmic flood. The gods flee to the heaven of Anu, line 115, and cower under the kamati of that heaven. Therefore the tubnrjath the heavens of the seven planets, are overflowed. LR-napishtim is called hasisatra like Adapa ( = Marduk as hero ; see p. 107); he is the “ new Adapa,” the Bringer of the New Age.
But the Biblical chronicler also is aware of the cosmic flood. He lets echoes from the nature-mvth and the Teaching of the Ages of the Universe sound in his storv; together they form the 44 scientific ” background to his record of the Deluge (see pp. 80, 175). We may indicate the following points:—
1. The inclusion in the Ages ; see pp. 26J f. and 267 f. Noah is one of the Bearers of revelation who inaugurate the Ages.3
2. The 44 chest,” Hebrew tebah. The same word designates the basket in which Moses was exposed. This chest is inevitable in the myth of the New Age. The Bringer of the New Age is always rescued in a chest; see Exod. ii.4
3. The resting-place of the dove, Gen. viii. 9, Manoah, upon which the olive tree grows, is the summit of the Mountain
1 The mode of expression used by the historical documents, which announce an annihilating destruction “ like a flood ” {abubn) falling upon the enemy, no doubt also refers to such cyclones.
2 The Biblical conception protests against the iron fate of the teaching of the seons. There shall be no return of the Deluge, Gen. ix. 15 ; comp. Isa. liv. 9 : “ I have sworn that the waters of Noah should go no more over the earth.” But comp. 2 Pet. iii. 6 f., p. 26S, above, and B.N. T, 116.
3 See Gunkel, Genesis, p. 130. Further, see point 4, p. 272.
4 Compare also B.N.T., p. 9 f., 30 ff. Egyptian: the ship of Isis and Osiris.
272 THE BIBLICAL RECORD OF THE DELUGE
of the World.1 The slow sinking of the waters, viii. 3b-5, shows it was talking of a gigantic height.
4. Noah is endowed with the motifs of the Bringer of the New Age. This is shown in the name and in the motive in giving the name, Gen. v. 29, which correspond to the motifs2 of the Expectation of the Redeemer; see p. ISO. For this reason the discovery of wine by Noah is emphasised, the vine being the symbol of the New Age.3 4
5. The Deluge corresponds to the great deep, to Tehom, in the earlier aeon (comp. Gen. vii. 11 : the fountains of the great deep were broken up ; see p. 265, and compare the ruah who causes the sinking, p. 265). After the Deluge a new world is built. Perhaps a faint hint of the new creation lies in the words of Gen. viii. 22 and ix. 1 IF.
6. The late Jewish conception places the Deluge together with the fire-flood. The passage before referred to in the Sanhedrin says that the people asked Noah whether the water or fire-flood would come. According to 4 Ezra vii., the “ path of the present aeon” lies “ between fire and water.1’1 The Christian Sibvll, vii. 9 (Hennecke, Xeut. Apukr., p. 323) says : “The earth shall be flooded, the mountains shall be flooded, the air also shall be flooded. All shall be water, by water shall all come to destruction. Then the winds shall be calmed and there shall arise a new age.” Line 25 ft‘.: “ God, who will work by many stars, .... will measure (?) a column
1 Comp. p. 265, and see Winckler, F., iii. 6S. Play of words on the redeemer motif mj ; see n. 2.
2 Play of words on the motif nu and cm. Compare p. 132, the consolation in the Attis cult; compare also p. 130 with Gen. iii. 17.
3 “Vine and fig tree” = rulership of the world, Overworld and Underworld ; see p. 209 and B.N.T., 33. Myth of Dionysus, Bacchus. The New Year motif of drunkenness belongs to this. The drunken Lot after the fire-flood corresponds to the drunken Noah. A fuither motif is generation. The motif is travestied. The behaviour of Ham corresponds to the behaviour of the daughters of Lot.
4 Kautzsch, Pseudepigr., 36S. Not water and fire ! and that is correct. The precession (Gemini-Taurus-Aries-Pisces) moves towards the water region and comes from the fire region. The incongruity in the Babylonian reckoning agrees with the reversal Marduk = Nebo. The passages in the Sanhedrin speak of “hot water” like the Deluge in the Koran, mixing therefore water and fire-flood. The Kabbalists (Yalkut Rubeni, 32b) know the fire-flood which is to follow the water- flood ; see p. 303.
COSMIC AND ASTRAL MOTIFS
273
of mighty fire, the sparks from which shall destroy the generations of man, which have done evil." And in the Vita Adam et Eva (Kautzsch, Pseudepigr., 506 ft“.) it is said that God will twice bring wrathful judgment upon man, fust with water, then with fire.
7. Noah’s cultivation of the vine, and drunkenness, are motifs of the new age. In the fire-flood story of Sodom and Gomorrha, Lot’s drunkenness corresponds. The sexual stories, which indicate the new life (Ham, Lot’s daughters), belong to this class of motif.
The modern interpretations of the story of the Deluge as a solar mvth (Usener), or a lunar myth (Boeklen),1 are to be corrected according to this. To find a solution in myths is, in my opinion, going too far; so are also the interpretations by Stricken and by AVinckler, who see in the Deluge only a “ celestial occurrence.” Since it is dealing with cosmic motifs, solar as well as lunar motifs are to be expected. The cycles of the sun and of the moon correspond to the cycle of the aeons. In the duration of the Deluge, 365 days in P, and in the numbers 40 and 10 (see p. 267) in the Yahvist, lie solar motifs (p. 265).2
Concluding Words on the Deluge
The story in both the Biblical recensions shows a relationship to the Babylonian tradition, and certainly by far a closer relationship than does the story of creation. In the same way, here also one must be careful of the acceptance of the idea of a borrowed literature. The material has travelled. Inspection of the Babylonian cuneiform tables would not then be needed by a Biblical chronicler; besides which, he would have rejected a literary dependence upon religious grounds.3
In any case, here also the religious value does not lie in
1 Usener, Sintflutsagen ; Boeklen in the Archiv jiir Relig. IViss., vi. i and 2.
2 Boeklen has shown numerous lunar motifs.
;t Gunkel judges likewise in Genesis, 67 f., only that he credits ancient Israel with too little civilisation of its own. He holds that they adopted the primeval myths “ when they became incorporated in the Canaanite civilisation.” But sue know of no uncivilised time of Israel. See p. 314.
VOL. I.
18
274 THE BIBLICAL RECORD OF THE DELUGE
what is common to the Bible and to Babylon, but in that wherein they differ.
In place of the mythological world of gods, who deceive and outwit each other, and capriciously abuse mankind; who appear in childish fright of the flood, and then again reappear in greedy curiosity at the sacrifice of Noah, we find in the Bible the wrathful God who judges the world, and who has mercy upon the righteous. The Biblical story of the Deluge possesses an intrinsic power, even to the present day, to awaken the conscience of the world, and the Biblical chronicler wrote it with this educational and moral end in view. Of this end there is no trace in the extra-Biblical records of the Deluge.
CHAPTER XI
THE NATIONS
GENESIS, 10th chapter, mirrors in its fundamental basis the geographical and ethnological picture of the world as it presented itself to the Israelites in the eighth century B.C. It has been considered an “ impossible task to reconstruct a map of the world according to the statements of the tables of the nations (Socin, in Guthe’s Bibelw'orterbiich). We hope to be able to set aside this prejudice, and to show that the Biblical writers were well informed in the political geography of their time. The tables of nations from P sources, 10. la, 2-7, 20, 22-23, 31-32, correspond, like the relation of the districts of the country, drawn from other sources, 10. 15-18% to the state of political geography in the eighth century B.C.
Dillmann, Genesis (see p. 165), thinks that the Israelites had close relations with only a very few of the nations placed together in Gen. x. This is due to the point of view that Canaan was a land relatively much cut off from tribal intercourse. The monuments of the Near East have disclosed to us that the states of the Mediterranean stood in active communication with each other and with the surrounding world.1
A map (No. I.), most kindly drawn, from the following reading of Gen. x., by Oberst. a D. Billerbeck, will make the review easier.
Gen. x. 2 : u The soils of Japhetli were: Gomer, and Magog, and Madal, and Javan, and Tubal, and Mesech, and Tiras."
GOMER.—That is, the Cimmerians, as in Ezek. xxxviii. 6, where
1 Wellhausen says in Israelitische und jiidische Geschichte, 1901 {thirteen years after the discovery of the Amarna Letters) : “Till then ^about 750] there existed in Palestine and Syria a number of small tribes and kingdoms bickering and quarrelling amongst themselves, with no wider outlook than their nearest neighbours, and unconcerned with the outer world, each revolving on its own axis ”
275
276
THE NATIONS
thev are also named tog-ether with the house of Tog-arm ah—the Gamir or Gimirrai of the Assyrian inscriptions. They belong to the Indo-Germanic tribes (Medes, Ashkuza, Cimmerians), who in the Assyrian inscriptions are often named by the collective noun Man da, and whom Herodotus calls Scythians. Homer, in the Odyssey, xi. 14, looks for the Cimmerians in Northern Europe. In Assyrian territories they appeared first in the time of Sargon. They then overthrew the kingdom of Uradhu1 and settled themselves there.2 The letters to his father written by the young Sennacherib during the time of his supreme command of the northern provinces on the borders of Uradhu. and the letters from one of his generals, tell of these wars; further, the questions addressed to the Oracle of the Sun-god in the time of Esarhaddon. Upon pressure by Esarhaddon, they were driven away from the Assyrian border by the Ashkuza, who were in alliance with Assyria, and pressed towards the west. The Asianic tradition which records this is confirmed by statements of Assurbanipal. In Asia Minor they overthrew the kingdom of the Phrygians under Midas, likewise of Lydia, under Gyges. Gradually they were overpowered by the newly reinforced civilised people of Asia Minor.
Poets of Asia Minor have sung of the horrors of this time. For a while the Cimmerian ascendancy was so strong that the greater part of Asia Minor was called Gomel- Also the wars in Uradhu have left their traces. The Crims (of the Cimmerian Bosphorus) owe their name to the Gimirrai, and the Armenians call Cappadocia, the scene of the above-mentioned battles between the Ashkuza and the Gimirrai, Gamir.3 Compare now, Hommel, G.G.G., 210 ff.
1 Armenia of to-clay ; the name is preserved in that of the mountain Ararat.
2 They did not therefore first break in from Europe in the beginning of the seventh century, as Ed. Meyer supposes. Holzinger, in his Genesis, p. 95, holds firmly to that supposition, although the material of the inscriptions has in the meantime been brought forward. For the history of the Cimmerians, as for that of the Ashkuza, comp. H. Winckler, F., i. 484 ff., and Helmolt’s IVeltgeschichte, iii. 1, p. 132.
3 This Armenian designation must surely be a supplement taken from the Bible, from the passages in Genesis and Ezekiel. The Armenians are proud of the mention of their country in the Bible. Thus they have given a Christian colour, to the story of the sons of Sennacherib, who murdered their father and “ escaped to the land of Ararat” (2 Kings xix. 37), and honour them as a sort of national heroes; see Chalatianz, “Die armenische Heldensage,” in the Zeitschrift des Vereins fiir Volkskunde in Berlin, 1902, vol. ii. ff
MAGOG—MADAI
277
MAGOG.—In Ezek. xxxviii. f. King Gog of the land of Magog appears as the uncanny- foe of popular expectation. That Gog is an old name for the barbarian of the farthest North, like the Cimmerians, in Homer’s Odyssey, as mentioned above, is shown by the letter from Nimmuria to Ivadashman-Bel in the fifteenth century B.C., found in Tel Amarna (K.B., v. 5). The writer of the letter is suspicious as to whether the wife being sent to him from afar will be a real princess. He says:—
Who is to know, then, whether she is not the daughter of a slave, or of an (inhabitant) of the land of Ga-ga (Ga-ga-ai, a Gagaean), or a daughter of the land of Hanigalbat, or who knows that she does not come from Ugarit, she whom my messengers succeed in seeing?
He falls back therefore in his suspicions from Gaga, which is certainly Gog, upon Hanigalbat, and from thence upon the probably still nearer Ugarit. Gog means here also a fabulous land, like the land of the Scythians in the classics.
MADAI (Assyrian, likewise Greek, Mi/oot or M«<Sot) is the name of a race which from the middle of the ninth century appears in Western Asia in the territory of Anzan. The Assyrians call them “the far Medes of the East” (Madai rmjuti sha ?sit shamshi), “ the never vanquished Medes ” (la Arinsuti).1 They are first reckoned amongst the Umman-Manda, that is, the collective noun for the people of the north-east, who somewhat correspond to the (eastern) “Scythians” of the classics, and who throng against Assyria and Babylonia “like locusts.” What Assur- banipal says of the related Cimmerians applies equally to the Manda: “ No interpreter understands their language.” Their tribes are under the leadership of hazandti, they dwell “like robbers in the desert.” They are the first of the advancing Indo-Germanic people.2 In Genesis the Madai belonging to the Manda are counted to Japheth. They come, like the Hittites, from Europe and move back again behind the Hittite migrations.
The foundation of the kingdom of the Medes took place in the latest Assyrian period. Herodotus places it in an earlier age.
1 K.B., ii. 39, 41, 43, 55 ; comp. p. 67.
2 Herodotus, vii. 62 : “from days of old they were named Apioi.
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But in the founder of the State., Deioces, and in the chief city, Ecbatana in Herodotus, we have traces of historical treasure. Ecbatana was probably a centre of unification ; the name of the city, Bit-Daiakku, answers for a popular hero Daiakku. We cannot yet judge of his successor Phraortes. We must look upon Cyaxares as the true founder. He was the Uvakshatara of the Inscription of Darius at Behistun, who appears as legitimate representative of the kingdom, whilst a pretender to the throne sets aside his name. Cyaxares was followed by Astyages, then came Cyrus, founder of the kingdom of Persia. In 2 Kings xvii. 6, xviii. 11, Israelites were deported to the mountains (Septuagint iv opois) of the Medes. In Isa. xiii. 17 ff. ; Jer. xxv. 25, li. 11, 28, it appears as a kingdom. In the Books of Daniel, of Esther, and of Judith men were aware of Jews descended from these banished people. The First Book of Maccabees shows Media first under Syrian (vi. 56), then under Parthian (xiv. 2 ; comp. Josephus, Ant., xx. 3, 3), rule. The Whitsun legends name it amongst the Diaspora lands ; Acts ii. 9- Further detail of the legends in the article on Nineveh in Hauck, R.Pr.Th,, 3rd ed.
JAVAN.—These are the Greeks (Greek, Jaon, Jaones, with Digamma) who are here called by the Israelites, as they were by the Assyrians and later by the Persians, by the name they bore on the coasts of Asia Minor. Here and at Cyprus they learnt to know them; to Western Asia, Greece proper was a dim hinterland of very secondary consideration.1 Whether Gen. x. 2 also includes European Greece cannot be proved owing to the misty nature of the geographical ideas, nor from “ the sons of Javan,” v. 4. In the Assyrian inscriptions we meet with Ionians (Jamania, Jamnai) first under Sargon. We learn that they made inroads upon the Cilician coasts. Sargon says:2 “ The brave warrior, who in the midst of the sea caught the Ionian with the net (?) like a fish and to Que and Tyrus brought peace.” He defeated them, therefore, in a sea fight, in any case with the help of ships of Tyre, since Tyre itself, or much more probably Tyrian colonies in Cyprus, were threatened by the Ionians. Here it is a case of Ionian kings in Cyprus.3 From thenceforward Cyprus became tributary to Assyria. Later,4 Sargon
1 In just the same way the Greeks call Canaan and its hinterland after the nearest coast region : Palaestina, that is, Philistineland.
2 K.B., ii. 43-
3 ButKittim, Gen. x. 4, is not Chition, contrary toSchrader, K.A.T., 2nd ed.,Sl.
4 K.B., ii. 75-
EXCURSUS ON LIST OF NATIONS OF DARIUS 279
mentions in this sense seven kings of “ Ja,‘” a district of the land of Jatnana (which is a name for Cyprus); Assurbanipal names ten such kings by name.1 The Greeks proper, even with the special differentiation of those of Asia Minor and the European Greek—both under the name of Jamania—were named in the Inscriptions of Darius.
EXCURSUS ON THE LISTS OF NATIONS OF DARIUS 2
The tomb of Darius at Naqsh-i-Rustem represents the thirty nations conquered by him and counts them in the Inscription. The
figures on the tomb have suffered very much from the disintegration of the rock, and have become partially unrecognisable. Happily, the other Achaemenid tombs found in the same place are an exact copy of the tomb of Darius. Fig. 77 shows the tomb of Xerxes, which is the best preserved. The nations counted in the Inscription can be verified by the figures, so that the interpretation of the list may be held as fully assured, and at the same time the great
1 ii. 173.
According to the debates at the International Congress of Orientalists, 1902, in Hamburg, lecture by Professor Dr F. C. Andreas; compare also Hommel, G.G.G., 199, n. 3. (See Appendix.)
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THE NATIONS
reliability of the descriptions of the nations by Herodotus is proved.
In the Inscription on the tomb thirty nations are counted, in the following groups:
1. The people between the mountain range bordering the plain of Mesopotamia on the one side, and the chain of the Pamir and the Indus on the other side : (l) Medes, (2) Chuzians, (3) Parthians, (4) Areiens, (5; Bactrians, (6) Sogdianians, (7) Chorasmians, (
Zar- angians, (9) Arachosians, (10) Sattagydens, (11) Gandaritae, (12) Indians, (13) Sacians, (14) Haumavarken (’ApYpyioi of Herodotus, up to now wrongly taken to be an epithet for Sacians), (15) pointed-hatted Sacians.
2. The natives of South-Western Asia: (16) Babj'lonians, (17) Assyrians. (IS) Arabians, (19) Egyptians.
3. The nations of the north of Western Asia: (20) Armenians, (21) Cappadocians, (22) Lydians, (23) Greeks of Asia Minor.
4. The nations of Europe : (24) Scythians or Scolotans of Pontus, (25) Thracians, (26) the Greeks who bear the Petasos (Persian, Yauna Takabara), that is to say, Macedonians (possibly this designation includes the European Greeks).
5. The tribes of Africa; (A) in the south: (27; Putans, that is, the Biblical Put, Punt of the Egyptians, the Ethiopians of Herodotus; (28) Cush, that is, the Negro races; (B) in the west: (29) Maxyer, and (30) Carthagenians (these two figures stand outside the panoply of the throne on the right hand and on the left).
The dominating race of the Persians is naturally not to be found amongst the figures representing the conquered nations supporting the throne of Darius, it is represented by the figure of the king himself, as also by the six side figures, which show us the heads of the six races of Parsa, standing alongside the kingls family, the Achsemenids. There must originally have been an inscription over each of these figures, noting the name and rank of the person ; only two of these are known up to the present, the remainder have been perhaps destroyed. By these we know that the top figure on the left is Gobryas, lance-bearer of Darius, and the under figure bearing shield and battle-axe is Aspathines, his shield-bearer (Persian Vursawara). From the record of a Byzantine historian (Petrus Patricius, fragment 14) we learn that amongst the Persians the king’s shield-bearer was also Captain of the Bodyguard.
TUBAL.—This means the Tabal of the cuneiform Inscriptions. They belong to the last batch of the “ Hi Hites,” of whom we find first the Kummukh (from whom later Commagene is named), then the Muski, Tabaheans and Ivaski, making an inroad into Northern Mesopotamia under Tiglath-Pileser I. We first meet with Tabal as a country under Shalmaneser II. Sargon (Annals,
TUBAL—MESECH
281
170 ff.) gives his daughter as wife to the king Ambaridi, of Tabal, with Hilakki as her dower.1 Later the Tabalaeans were forced into Lesser Armenia. The Tibarenes of Herodotus (iii. 94, vii. 78), named here together with the Mosher, that is, the Muski-Mesech, who dwelt in the hill country to the southeast of the Black Sea, were remnants of the Tabalaeans. Since these hill tribes were celebrated in ancient times (compare for example Ezek. xxvii. 13), as they are still celebrated, for their brass and copper work, we may conjecture that the monstrous un-Hebraic form of name of the patriarch Tubal - Cain is connected with it. To the name of Cain, which signifies “smith,11 “instructor of eveiy artificer in copper and iron11 (Gen. iv. 22), they added, as a pendant to Jubal, the name of the celebrated copper-worker Tubal.
MESECH.—These are the Muski of the Assyrian royal Inscriptions. They belong, like Tabal, to the batches of Hittites who appeared under Tiglath-Pileser I. After the Kummukh, who had settled themselves in Northern Mesopotamia in the territory of the sometime kingdom of Mitanni, had been subjugated by Tiglath-Pileser I., the laud was threatened by the Muski, about 1100, and behind them pressed the Tabalaeans, just spoken of above, and the Kaski. Later the Muski established themselves in Phrygia; they aspired to enter into possession of the ancient kingdom of Hatti. We find appearing as an opponent of Sargon, Mita of Muski in the list of former kings of the Hatti. This Mita is Midas of Phrygia.2
In the later prophets the same groups of nations repeatedly appear as in Gen. x. 2. In Ezek. xxvii. 13, Javan, Tubal, and Mesech are named as traders in slaves and copper ware. In Ezek. xxxii. 26 and elsewhere Mesech and Tubal are named as warlike people. In Isa. lxvi. 19, according to the Septuagint, Mesech, Tubal, and Javan are likewise named together.
Ezek. xxxviii. 2 ft’., comp, xxxix. I ff., “Son of man, set thy face
1 This is, however, not Cilicia, but a part of Cappadocia, southward, on the Halys.
2 See H. Winckler, K.A.T., 3rd ed., lxviii. 74. Therefore also the last king of Karkemish, which province was the last remnant still left of the ancient Hittite glory, sought help from this conqueror of the ancient lands of the Hatti. The Indo-Germanic Cimmerians were overthrown by Midas. In place of Phrygia, Lydia became the chief power in Asia Minor.
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THE NATIONS
towards Gog, in the land of Magog, the prince of [gloss : RoshJ Mesech and Tubal, prophecy against him and say: Thus saith the Lord Yahveh: Verily, against thee will I, Prince of (Rosh) Mesech and Tubal . . . .1 Gomer and all his hordes, the house of Togarmah, the uttermost parts of the north, and all his hordes—many people [are] with thee.”
This march of Gog described by Ezekiel is usually looked upon as a prophetic vision of the Scythian invasion which broke over Asia in the time of Josiah; Herodotus, i. 103.
The historic geographical picture at the root of this eschatological description is the same which in Gen. x. 2 and 3 floats before the mind of the compiler of the tables of the nations. As may be seen from the previous and the following notes on Gen. x. 2 and 3, only the eighth century fits to this description. This gives a fixed point for the literary-historical criticism of the tables of the nations.
Till AS lies between the Muski-Phrygians and the west coast of Asia Minor. There, somewhere about the territory of Lydia and Troas, remnants of a seafaring people, the Tyrseni, settled, who were reported in ancient times to be pirates, and of whose connection with the Italian Tyrseni there is no reasonable ground for doubt. Egyptian inscriptions of the time of Mernephta name them as Turusha.2 The name in the table of nations is therefore a later witness to the movement of the seafaring people, which in ante-Greek times played a like role as did the Greeks later. Though we as yet have no fuller details of the course of this movement, it is worth noting.3
Gen. x. 3: “ And the softs of Gomer, Ashkenaz, Riphath, and Togarmah.^
1 The ethnological supplement, “ Paras, Cush, and Put are with them,’’ and so on, is obviously inserted later, probably also taken from the table of nations, Gen. x. 6.
2 In his Atifs. u. Abh., pp. 317 {., Hommel draws the conclusion that the mention of the seafaring people points to the main root of Gen. x. being in the Mosaic epoch. In this conclusion he overshoots the mark ; it can only be vindicated by the (loc. cit.) following observations of Hommel himself, according to which parts of the main root show the Abraham and ante-Abraham epochs. When Elam appears amongst the sons of Shem (v. 22), that does not point to the time “when Elam still possessed a preponderating Semitic population” (third millennium), but only reflects the fact that Elam belonged politically and intellectually to the mighty Babylonian empire This connection, however, lasted through all ages, and perhaps still is shown in the division of the spoil after the fall of Nineveh ; see pp. 293 and 301. According to texts made accessible by P. Scheil, Susa seems to have fallen to Babylon.
:1 An Etruscan inscription found at Lemnos (!) is an important witness.
ASHKENAZ—TOG ARMAH
283
ASHKENAZ is the Indo-Germanic population of the Ashkuza,1 which in the time of Esarhaddon was situated to the south-east of the lake Urumiya, to the east of the Cimmerians. The Hebrew name is mutilated bv an error.2 Bartatua, king of the Ashkuza, who appears in Herodotus as the Scythian king Protothyes, became son-in-law to the Assyrian royal house through Esarhaddon. One of the inquiries made by Esarhaddon of the Sun-god3 is whether Protothyes will remain a loyal friend to Assyria if he is given the daughter. The king of Assyria made use of the Ashkuza in the war against the remaining hordes of the Manda—first against the Cimmerians (see above), then against the Medes. Madyes, son of Bartatua, tried to come to the help of Nineveh at the last moment; and together with the Assyrians, the Ashkuza were subdued by the Medes. The oracle in Jer. li. 27 names the kingdom of Ashkuza together with the kingdoms of Ararat (Urardhu), Minni (Assyrian Mannai), and the Medes, and calls upon them all against the hated land. Here all the Indo-Germanic hordes are taken together, who since the time of Sargon stormed against the Assyrian kingdom. The oracle must therefore have its source in Assyrian times; after the fall of Nineveh the summons would be groundless.
TOGARMAH4 are the inhabitants of Tilgarimmu, which by Sargon is named together with Kammanu, in northerly Taurus,5 6 and by Sennacherib together with the people of fiilakkiin both passages Tilgarimmu is conquered by the Assyrian king. The country of the Taurus, in the neighbourhood of which Kammanu and Togarmah are to be looked for, is called Muzri7 by Shalmaneser I. and by Tiglath-Pileser I.
1 Assyrian Ash-gu-za-ai in Esarhaddon’s inscriptions and Ish-ku-za-ai in the Inquiries to the Sun-god oracle of the same time.
2 Knudtzon, Gebete an dem Sonnengott, p. 131.
3 No. 29 in Knudtzon’s publication. Comp. Winclcler, F., i. 484 ff.
4 Septuagint, Thergama, Thorgama, Thorgoma. The placing of the small Togarmah together with the mighty Cimmerians and Ashkuza remains remarkable.
3 K.B., ii. 63.
6 Not Cilicia, but a district on the Halys ; comp. pp. 2S1 f.
7 Named by Shalmaneser II. together with Que, lying to the south of it, our Cilicia.
284
THE NATIONS
From hence Solomon imported his horses. It is said in 1 Kings x. 28 = 2 Chron. i. l6 f.: “The horses which Solomon had [were brought] out of Muzri and Que, the king’s merchants bought them out of Que at a price.” 1 Ezek. xxvii. 14 agrees with this. Here we find Togarmah named as the special market for horses : “they of the house of Togarmah brought spans and war-horses and mules from thy mart.” In the Persian time Cilieia was still the neighbourhood for horse trade.
Gen. x. 4: “ A nd the sons of Javan ; Elishah, Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanini”
ELISHAH.—According to the Septuagint, the neighbourhood of Carthage is meant. This agrees with the historical- geographical situation of the passage. In any case, we know Carthage bore a more ancient name, and we may call to mind the legends of its founding by Dido-Elissa.2 Elissa is, then, here meant as representative of the Phoenician colonies on the coast and in the islands of North Africa.3
When Ezek. xxvii. 7 says that Tyre brought its people stuffs from the isles of Elishah, it is very remarkable, since Tyre is the primeval home of purple, and with Tyre also the fables of the discovery of the Tyrian purple dye are connected. It must have been referring to some particular stuff’, such as is found in the island Meninx, south-east from Carthage. The Elishah in the passage in Ezekiel may be explained as meaning another district which is also celebrated for purple, and tvhich equally fits the situation— Southern Italy. In fact, the Targum does understand by Elishah in Ezek. xxvii. 7 a city of Italy. But this idea may also rest upon later interpretation, as in 1 Macc. i. 1 and viii. 5, where it speaks of Chittim-Macedonia as the starting-point of Alexander, that is to say, as the kingdom of Perseus.4
TARSHISH is the name of the mountainous district in the south of Spain. It denotes the extremest west,5 as Gog denotes the extremest north. The “Ancient East” has at present nothing to bring to the elucidation of the question of Tarshish.
1 The passage was later referred to Egypt, which was quite unsuitable for horsetrading (see Winckier, Altt. Untersuchungen, pp. 172 ff., the starting-point of his search for Muzri; p. 172, ibid., it would surely be better to put the position of Muzri to the north instead of to the south of the Taurus).
2 See Ed. Meyer, Geschichte, i. 2S2 n.
3 According to H. Grimnte, in Lit. Rundschau, 1904, p. 346 = Alashia of the Amarna Letters = Cyprus. Against this see under Kittim, p. 285.
4 See for this and for the following, “ Kittim,” H. Winckier, F., ii. 422, 564 ff.
5 Comp. Jonah i. 3, iv. 2, according to which it is arrived at in a ship.
TARSHISH—KITTIM—DODANIM
285
P. Haupt, in a lecture at the Hamburg Oriental Congress, 1902, has asserted that the stones of Tarshish mentioned in the Old Testament are cinnabar crystals from Almada, in Spain, from which colours for tattooing are manufactured, and that the passage, Song of Songs, v. 14, says the brown, bronze-coloured arms were tattooed with vermilion, and the ivory body, which was protected from the sun, with azure colour. Tattooing had already been conjectured by Winckler, F., i. 293. In Isa. lx. 9, and Ps. lxxii. 10 Tarshish appears as it does here grouped with the “ Isles.”
KITTLM.—That the name points to Cyprus1 must be given up. The Greek name of the chief city, Chition, is no strong argument. The city is called Qarthadasht (Carthage) on the Assyrian inscriptions ; it is only in the Phoenician inscriptions originating in the Persian age that it is called Chiti. The Amarna Letters name the island itself Alashia, Egyptian Alas or Asi; under Sargon it is called Ja and Jatnana. In Isa. xxiii. 1 and 12 Kittim is the goal of the ships of Tarshish. In Dan. xi. 30 Kittim specially means Rome. Therefore Southern Italy is meant by Kittim, especially Sicily, which then passed as chief representative of the western islands, and with Elishah-Africa represents the principal territories of the Phoenician colonies.
DODANIM.—In 1 Chron. i. 7 (transcript from Gen. x. 4) it is Rodanim. Since it at the same time belongs to the children of Javan, therefore to the western lands and islands, we may think of Rhodes, which in ancient times was of great importance. Another conjecture left unnoticed in 1 Chron. is: Doranim = Doria. Greece proper would then be named as a son of Javan, which would correspond to the naive geographical idea, to which the Ionians, the Greeks of Asia Minor, were closer at hand.
Gen. x. 5 : “ Of these (of Elishah-Carthage, Tarshish-Spain, Kittim-Southern Italy, Rodanim-Rhodes [?]) were the isles of the heathen divided,” that is, the islands and colonies of the Mediterranean. That gives a clear geographical picture.
Gen. x. 6 : “ And the sons of Ham were: Cush, and Mizraim, and Put, and Canaan.”
CUSH corresponds to the old idea of Ethiopia, the Nubia of
Thus still, according to Kautzsch in Isa. xxiii. i, and l Macc. i. i.
286
THE NATIONS
to-day, and a portion of the Soudan, about including Khartoum.1 First in the time of Sennacherib this territory comes into clear view on the Israelite horizon with the appearance of Tirhakah (Isa. xxxvii. 9), king of Cush. The people of Western Asia, however, named thus that tract of Arabia which had to be passed on the way through to the dark hinterland of Africa, just as they named the northern region of Arabia, where it goes “ through ” to Egypt, Muzri, because they thought of Arabia in connection with those parts of Africa opposite it.2 The nomenclature corresponds to the misty geographical ideas of antiquity, when, it is to be kept in mind, Egypt at least was reckoned as belonging to Western Asia; the dark parts of the earth began first on the far side of the desert. That Cush is here thought of as part of Arabia, as Glaser first announced, is shown by the sons descended from Cush, of whom some of the names can be identified as Arabian local names. Also, the wife of Moses, spoken of in Numb. xii. 1, is in this Arabian sense a woman of Cush ; the Cushite Zerah, 2 Chron. xiv. 9, is an Arabian captain. Particularly significant is the meaning of the name Cush in Isa. xlv. 14, where, along with the merchandise of Cush, the “ Sabeans, men of stature/’ are named. Possibly in Hab. iii. 7 also Cushan may be taken as a slip of the pen for Cush;3 it stands here as parallel to the tent-curtains of the Midianites.4
MIZRAIM is Egypt. It is the same here as with Cush- Nubia. Mizraim is a geographical collective noun, which, as H. Winckler has recognised, also includes a part of Arabia, and even just that region where it leads “through” to Egypt. Since by Cush, as shown by the Arabian sons, Arabian country is certainly thought of, and since the kingdom Punt (Pudh ; see below) is included, it might have seemed to go without saying
1 See Spiegelberg, Agyptologische Randglossen, p. io.
In like manner the distinction is still made in connection with the nomenclature of the classic age, between the right bank of the Nile as “ Arabian Desert ” in opposition to the ‘‘ Libyan Desert.”
3 Or South Arabian formation — ancient article ? Comp. Midian ; further, Muzran from Muzur.
4 See upon this, H. Winckler, K.A.T., 3rded., 144, who presents material from the inscriptions on the subject; and comp. Hommel, Au/s. u. Abk., 208 ff.
MIZRAIM—PUT
287
that here also Arabia is meant. But the author of verse 13 was thinking, as the “ sons11 show, of Egypt proper. The geographical-political situation answers for the correctness of Muzri- Arabia. The Arabian country concerned is called in the cuneiform inscriptions Muzri (Hebrew, therefore perhaps Mozar), in the Minaean inscriptions Muzran (always with article). Here there was a trading colony of the kingdom Ma4in (Minaeans), whose chief articles of merchandise were incense and myrrh. It is the Biblical Midian.1 The “Midianite” merchants of the history of Joseph are Minaeans, and the Midianite father-in-law of Moses, Jethro, is a Minaean. At the time of the fall of the Minaean kingdom the colonies in Muzri became independent.2 When in the eighth century—therefore at the time in which the author of our passage was writing —the Assyrian kings came to North Arabia, Muzri was still independent. To this period (according to Hommel, about 1000 B.C.) belongs, according to Winckler and others, the celebrated Glaser inscription 1155 = Halevy 535,3 4 which speaks of the governor of Muzran and of the Minaeans of Muzran, who undertook a commercial journey to Egypt, A’shur (Edom, according to Hommel) and Ibr naharan, and which shows us the Sabaeans (see p. 289) on the march towards the south.
PUT.—The Septuagint gives Put in Ezekiel and Jeremiah together with “Libya.” It means the kingdom of Punt (Egyptian, Pwnt), which included the country on both sides of the Red SeaJ It had already had intimate commercial dealings with Egypt, and in the eighth and seventh centuries stood, like Cush, in close relation to Egypt. This Punt stretched far into Arabia, and on the African side far northwards across the straits of Bab-el-Mandeb; here again it is to be kept in mind that this part of Africa, inclusive of Egypt, was accounted as Asia by the ancients. Ed. Glaser, M.V.A.G., 1899, 3, 51 ff.,
1 According to Grimme in Lit. Rundschau, 1904, 346, Midian is much more likely the M-d-j of the Glaser inscription 1155 mentioned. Latest upon the question of Muzri, see M.V.A.G., 1906, 102 ff.
2 It was dissolved in the seventh century by the Sabaeans out of the north ; see under Saba, p. 2S9.
3 M. F.A.G., 1898, table on p. 56, comp. p. 20; A.O., iii. 1.
4 See W. M. Muller, Asien itnd Europa, 106 ff.
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THE NATIONS
thinks that, from the Egyptian standpoint, the nations of South Arabia and of the east coast of Africa are to be understood as included under Punt, and on account of this he thinks that in the Bible Cush, rather than Put, reproduces this collective idea. In any case there lies a dim geographical, not ethnological, idea as foundation of the Put of the Tables of the Nations; which also explains why the Tables omit any subdivision.
CANAAN.—Canaan stands here, as also elsewhere, for Ham. The Ham population is the world of slaves which is to serve the Shem population (Gen. ix. 26 f.). The author of our passage puts Canaan for this, that is, the population that in its own country, as a primitive subjugated people, plays the part of slaves. From this political point of view it is here perhaps spitefully interpolated amongst the “ southern lands.11
Gen. x. 7: '?'Seba, and Havilah, and Sabtah, and Raamah, and Sabteca: and the sons of Ram ah; Sheba and Dedan.”
The names Seba, Havilah, and Dedan suffice to show that we find ourselves here in Arabia, not on Egyptian ground, as Hol- zinger in Genesis thinks in regard to Seba. That districts of Arabia appear as “sons of Cush” is explained by what has been said on Mizraim, Cush, and Put (see also under x. 8 f.). HAVILAH represents the region of Central and North-East Arabia; see Glaser, Skizze, ii. 323 ff‘. In SABTAH (Sabteha as variant ?) we think of Sabota, chief town of Hadramaut, the South Arabian region eastward of Yemen, where the country and ruins are latterly being much travelled over and examined (writings by Guthe, Bibekobrterbuch, p. 244). Glaser, Skizze, ii. 252, thinks Sabtah is the district mentioned by Ptolemaeus, on the Persian Gulf.1 HADRAMAUT (Hazarmaveth) is, it is true, specially mentioned in verse 26, but it does not belong there, for there it is no longer counting people and races, but (with exception of the twelve sons of Joktan; see pp. 301 f.) heroes ; it has possibly gone astray from its place here to verse 26. RAAMAH (1 Chron. i. 9, Raama, Septuagint Regina) is named as here, together with Saba. On the Minaean inscription mentioned above (Glaser, 1155) it is recorded at line 2 that the gods showed themselves grateful to the 1 Otherwise in Hommel, Aufs. u. Abh., 315.
SABA—DEDAN
289
governors of Muzr and of Main (Minsean colony in Muzr; see p. 287) for building a terraced tower, and they “ protected it from the assaults with which they assaulted Saba and Haulan upon the way (?) between Ma‘in and Ragmat (chief town of Nedjran), and from the war which took place between the .... of the south and those of the north." Consistency of sound apparently forbids a connection with the Biblical Ramah.
SABA.—-The Sabmans are meant, who later inherited the Minsean kingdom (see the convincing deductions by Glaser, Skizze, i.). The a kingdom of Saba” did not yet exist when Gen. x. was written. In the Assyrian Inscriptions of Tiglath- Pileser III. and Sargon the Sabseans appear as allies of the Aribi,1 and are not yet in possession of Yemen, but are in the North Arabian Jowf. The Minsean Inscription mentioned above speaks of the Sabaeans as a threatening enemy. Since at the time of writing of our passage the Sabaeans were not yet in possession of any settled domain, SHEBA perhaps may be explained as variant: the writer vaguely meant some part of the Sabaeans.
DF.DAX must equally be looked for in North Arabia. In the time of Ezekiel (Ezek. xxv. 13; comp. Jer. xxv. 23, xlix.
their territory bordered upon Edom. Glaser, ii. 329 IF., probably rightly, looks for them in the districts stretching northwards from Medina to the borders of Edom. Possibly they are also mentioned in the 31st line of the Mesa Inscription.
Gen. x. 8 f. : “ And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth. He Teas a mighty hunter before Yahveh, wherefore it is said, Like Nimroda mighty hunter before Yahveh."
Since, according to the foregoing conclusions, we are in Arabia in verse 7, so, at any rate in the mind of the editor of our passage, which is drawn from another source, the nationality of NIMROD is decided: he is the eponymous hero of the Semitic
1 There is no connection with Jareb, Hosea v. 13 ; Hommel, Aufs. u. Abh., 230 ft'. The later chief city of the Sabteans was called Marjab, but see upon Jareb, p. 302. See upon the Sabseans also "VVinckler, M. V.A.G., 1898, xS. 22 f,, and Weber, A. 0., iii. 1.
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people rising up from amongst the nations of Arabia. It would agree with this that, according to verse 8, he is proverbially upon Canaanite ground.1
On Babylonian ground we meet with the mighty hunter in the person of Gilgamesh (Izdubar). Gilgamesh is hero of Light.2 Baby- lonianised, the name may be called Namir-uddu, that is, “glittering light.'”3 The figure frequent upon seal cylinders (with seven ringlets!), who playfully strangles a lion (figs. 78-80), most probably represents Gilgamesh-Nimrod.
Gunkel, 146, translates it: “a mighty hunter in spite of Yahveh,” and sees in it a myth of Orion, who, “in spite of Yahveh ” that is, dares to hunt in the heavens, and in consequence is bound to the heavens, Job xxxviii. 31b. In fact, Nimrod is identified with Orion amongst the Persians according to Chron. pasch., n. ' 11\ . 64, and according to Cedremus, xxvii. 28,
<£rr^' : ~Ey,,'' T~~J amongst the Assyrians; see Stucken,
F,c, 7S.-Gilgamesh, the ^ralmylhen, p 27 f. It may equally be lion-slayer. Relief from said : °rlon 1S the hunter Osins (amongst Sargows palace. the Egyptians Osiris is often thought of
as the ruler of Orion; see Gen. xxxii. 11) or the hunter Tammuz. The rising and setting of Orion falls together with the critical Tammuz points, the solstitial points (compare with this pp. 96 ff., 125 ff.). The double meaning may well be intentional in our passage ; but the proverb which glorifies a hero does not fit the exclusive rendering, “in spite of Yahveh.”
1 We may venture to conjecture besides that the still extant Arabian tradition of Nimrod is not connected only with Gen. x., but is, at least partially, of extra- Biblical origin, just as is the tradition of Nimrod of the Talmud.
2 Sun or moon or Tammuz according to the form of the myth, comp. pp. S6 f. ; in any case Zajjad, “hunter,” that is to say, “hunting tyrant” (gibbor = gabbdr). See upon this Winckler, Gesch. Isr., ii. p. 2S6, n. 3; F., iii. 403 f. ; and also previously Izdubar-Nimrod, Leipzig, B. G. Teubner, 1S91, pp. 1 fif.
3 See Izdubar-Nimrod, p. 5. We must also support the conjecture that the same name reversed is to be found in Uddushu-namir, that is, “his light shines,” name of the messenger of the gods in the descent of Ishtar into Hades. Compare with this Hommel, Gesch. Bab. u. Assyr., 394, n. 4, who now points to the flmu- namri Gudama of the first Kassite king Gaddash,
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Gen. x. 10: “ And the beginning of his (Nimrod's) kingdom teas Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.'"’
The name SHINAR is possibly identical with Sumer, the
Fio. 79.—Gilgamesh fighting the lion. Babylonian seal cylinder, British Museum.
cuneiform designation of the most ancient Babylonian civilisa- tion in the southern Euphrates territory. It is certainly not Shanhar of the Amarna letter (letter from Alashia-Cvprus),
FIG. 80.—Gilgamesh fighting the lion. Assyrian seal cylinder, British Museum. Wax impression in the author’s possession.
the Sanqara of the Egyptians, by which they mean much more the territory between Taurus and Antitaurus — what the Assyrians name Muzri.1 In any case Shinar designates the
1 See Winckler, F., ii. 107, and K.A.T., 3rd ed., 238 ; and comp. pp. 285 f., above.
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whole Babylonian territory, therefore Sumer (South Babylonia) and Akkad (North Babylonia). Josephus, Ant., i. 4, says (but very likely speaking according to Gen. xi. 2) “ Plains of Shinar.” L
BABEL.—The North Babylonian city of Babylon (upon the name, see p. 205) was from the time of Hammurabi metropolis of the Babylonian kingdom, and later, after the fall of Nineveh, it was metropolis of the Babylonian-Chaldean empire extended over the greater part of the world (“ Mother of the Chaldseans,” Jer. 1. 12 ; “ Chaldaicarum gentium caput,” in Pliny, Hist. Nat.,
vi. 30). But also during the intervening period of Assyrian ascendancy, Babylon was recognised as a political and intellectual centre. The Assyrian kings grasp “the hands of Bel” (Marcluk) in Babylon, and proclaim themselves by this solemn ceremony as lords of the empire of the world. “ King of Babylon ” was, from the time of the Hammurabi dynasty onwards, the most important title of the kings of Western Asia. Its most ancient history is still A ery dim. The founder of the city was possibly that Sargon of Agade whose seal (fig. 86) shows by the goats the Gemini motif which pr
