Excluding cuneiform (q.v.), the inscriptions known as Semitic are
usually classed under two main heads as North and South Semitic. The
former class includes Hebrew (with Moabite), Phoenician (with Punic and
neo-Punic), and Aramaic (with Nabataean and Palmyrene). The South
Semitic class includes the Minaean and Sabaean inscriptions of South
Arabia. In most of these departments there has been a very large
increase of material during recent years, some of which is of the
highest historical and palaeographical importance. The North Semitic
monuments have received the greater share of attention because of their
more general interest in connexion with the history of surrounding
countries.
1. _North Semitic._--The earliest authority for any North Semitic
_language_ is that of the Tel-el-Amarna tablets (15th century B.C.)
which contain certain "Canaanite glosses,"[1] i.e. North Semitic words
written in cuneiform characters. From these to the first inscription
found in the North Semitic _alphabet_, there is an interval of about six
centuries. The stele of Mesha, commonly called the Moabite Stone, was
set up in the 9th century B.C. to commemorate the success of Moab in
shaking off the Israelitish rule. It is of great value, both
historically as relating to events indicated in 2 Kings i. 1, iii. 5,
&c., and linguistically as exhibiting a language almost identical with
Hebrew--that is to say, another form of the same Canaanitish language.
It was discovered in 1868 by the German missionary, Klein, on the site
of Dibon, intact, but was afterwards broken up by the Arabs. The
fragments,[2] collected with great difficulty by Clermont-Ganneau and
others, are now in the Louvre. Its genuineness was contested by A. Lowy
(_Scottish Review_, 1887; republished, Berlin, 1903) and recently again
by G. Jahn (appendix to _Das Buch Daniel_, Leipzig, 1904), but, although
there are many difficulties connected with the text, its authenticity is
generally admitted.
Early Hebrew inscriptions are at present few and meagre, although it
cannot be doubted that others would be found by excavating suitable
sites. The most important is that discovered in 1880 in the tunnel of
the pool of Siloam, commemorating the piercing of the rock. It is
generally believed to refer to Hezekiah's scheme for supplying Jerusalem
with water (2 Kings xx. 20), and therefore to date from about 700 B.C.
It consists of six lines in good Hebrew, and is the only early Hebrew
inscription of any length. The character does not differ from that of
the Moabite Stone, except in the slightly cursive tendency of its curved
strokes, due no doubt to their having been traced for the stone-cutter
by a scribe who was used to writing on parchment. There are also a few
inscribed seals dating from before the Exile, some factory marks and an
engraved capital at al-Amwas, which last may, however, be Samaritan.
Otherwise this character is only found (as the result of an archaizing
tendency) on coins of the Hasmoneans, and, still later, on those of the
first and second (Bar Kokhba's) revolts.
The new Hebrew character, which developed into the modern square
character, is first found in a name of five letters at 'Araq-al-amir, of
the 2nd century B.C. Somewhat later, but probably of the 1st century
B.C., is the tombstone of the B'ne Hezir ("Tomb of St James") at
Jerusalem. An inscription on a ruined synagogue at Kafr Bir'im, near
Safed, perhaps of about A.D. 300, or earlier, shows the fully developed
square character.
Since the publication of the _Corpus Inscr. Sem._ it has been customary
to treat papyri along with inscriptions, and for palaeographical reasons
it is convenient to do so. Hebrew papyri are few, all in square
character and not of great interest. The longest, and probably the
earliest (6th century A.D.), is one now in the Bodleian Library at
Oxford, containing a private letter[3] written in a character closely
resembling that of the Kair Bir'im inscription. Other fragments were
published by Steinschneider[4] (perhaps 8th century), and by D. H.
Muller and Kaufmann.[5]
Hebrew inscriptions outside Palestine are the cursive graffiti in the
catacombs at Venosa (2nd-5th century), the magical texts on Babylonian
bowls (7th-8th century), and the numerous tombstones[6] in various parts
of Europe, of all periods from the 6th century to the present time.
The few Samaritan inscriptions in existence are neither early nor
interesting.
Closely related to the Hebrews, both politically and in language, were
the Phoenicians in North Syria. Their monuments in Phoenicia itself are
few and not earlier than the Persian period. The oldest yet found,
dating probably from the 5th or 4th century B.C., is that of Yehaw-milk,
king of Gebal (modern Jebel) or Byblus, where it was found. It records
at some length the dedication of buildings, &c., to the goddess of
Gebal. Of the 3rd century B.C. are the inscriptions on the sarcophagi of
Tabnith and his son Eshmun'azar, kings of Sidon, and some records of
other members of the same family, Bod-'ashtart and his son Yathan-milk,
found in 1902 a short distance north of Sidon.
Outside Phoenicia the inscriptions are numerous and widely scattered
round the Mediterranean coasts, following the course of Phoenician
trade. The earliest is that on some fragments of three bronze bowls,
dedicated to Baal of Lebanon, found in Cyprus. The character is like
that of the Moabite Stone, and the date is probably the 8th century
B.C., though some scholars would put it nearer to 1000 B.C. In the
latter case, the Hiram, king of Sidon, mentioned in the inscriptions
would be the same as Hiram, king of Tyre, in Solomon's time. Similar
bowls (of about 700 B.C.) found at Nimrud sometimes bear the maker's
name in Phoenician characters.
Many monumental inscriptions have also been found in Cyprus, at Kition,
Idalion, Tamassos, &c. They are chiefly votive, some dated in the 4th
century, and some being perhaps as late as the 2nd century B.C., so that
they afford valuable evidence as to the succession of the local kings.
Several also are bilingual, and it was one of these which supplied
George Smith with the clue to the Cypriote syllabic system of writing
Greek. Similar memorials of Phoenician settlements were found at Athens
(Piraeus), in Egypt, Sardinia, Malta and Gozo. Most interesting of all
is the celebrated sacrificial tablet of Marseilles, giving an elaborate
tariff of payments at or for the various offerings, and showing some
striking analogies with the directions in the book of Leviticus. For the
information it gives as to civil and priestly organization, it is the
most important Phoenician text in existence. It was probably brought
from Carthage, where similar tariffs have been found. On the site of
that important colony, and indeed throughout the parts of North Africa
once subject to its rule, Punic inscriptions are, as might be expected,
very numerous. By far the majority are votive tablets, probably
belonging to the period between the 4th and the 2nd centuries B.C., many
of them in a wonderfully perfect state of preservation. One of the most
interesting, recently discovered, mentions a high-priestess who was head
of the college of priests, and whose husband's family had been
_suffetes_ for four generations. Later inscriptions, called neo-Punic,
dating from the fall of Carthage to about the 1st century A.D., are
written in a debased character and language differing in several
respects from the earlier Punic, and presenting many difficulties.
In Aramaic the earliest inscriptions are three found in 1890-1891 at and
near Zinjirli in North-west Syria, dating from the 8th century B.C. Of
these, one was set up by Panammu, king of Ya'di, in honour of the god
Hadad, and is inscribed on a statue of him, the other two were set up
by Bar-rekub, son of Panammu, one in honour of his father and on his
statue, the second commemorating the erection of his new house. They are
remarkable as being engraved in relief, a peculiarity which has been
thought to be due to "Hittite" influence. Otherwise the character
resembles that of the Moabite Stone. The texts consist of 77 lines (not
all legible), giving a good deal of information about an obscure place
and period hitherto known only from cuneiform sources. The ornamentation
is Assyrian in style, as also is that of the inscriptions of Nerab (near
Aleppo), commemorative texts engraved on statues of priests, of about
the 7th century.
Of shorter inscriptions there is a long series from about the 8th
century B.C., on bronze weights found at Nineveh (generally accompanied
by an Assyrian version), and as "dockets"[7] to cuneiform
contract-tablets, giving a brief indication of the contents. Aramaic,
being the commercial language of the East, was naturally used for this
purpose in business documents. For the same reason it is found in the
6th-4th centuries B.C. sporadically in various regions, as in Cilicia,
in Lycia[8] (with a Greek version), at Abydos (on a weight). At Taima
also, in North Arabia, an important trading centre, besides shorter
texts, a very interesting inscription of twenty-three lines was found,
recording the foundation and endowment of a new temple, probably in the
5th century B.C. But by far the most extensive collection of early
Aramaic texts comes from Egypt, where the language was used not only for
trade purposes, as elsewhere, but also officially under the Persian
rule. From Memphis there is a funeral inscription dated in the fourth
year of Xerxes (482 B.C.), and a dedication on a bowl of about the same
date. A stele recently published by de Vogue[9] is dated 458 B.C.
Another which is now at Carpentras in France (place of origin unknown)
is probably not much later. At Elephantine and Assuan in Upper Egypt, a
number of ostraka have been dug up, dating from the 5th century B.C. and
onward, all difficult to read and explain, but interesting for the
popular character of their contents, style and writing. There was a
Jewish (or Israelitish[10]) settlement there in the 5th century from
which emanated most, if not all, of the papyrus documents edited in the
_C.I.S._ Since the appearance of this part of the _Corpus_, more papyri
have come to light. One published by Euting[11] is dated 411 B.C. and is
of historical interest, eleven others,[12] containing legal documents,
mostly dated, were written between 471 and 411 B.C.; another (408 B.C.)
is a petition to the governor of Jerusalem.[13] The fragments in the
_C.I.S._ are in the same character and clearly belong to the same
period. The language continued to be used in Egypt even in Ptolemaic
times, as shown by a papyrus[14] (accounts) and ostrakon[15] containing
Greek names, and belonging, to judge from the style of the writing, to
the 3rd century B.C. The latest fragments[16] are of the 6th-8th century
A.D., written in a fully developed square character. They are Jewish
private letters, and do not prove anything as to the use of Aramaic in
Egypt at that time.
Nabataean inscriptions are very numerous. They are written in a
peculiar, somewhat cursive character, derived from the square, and date
from the 2nd century B.C. The earliest _dated_ is of the year 40 B.C.,
the latest dated is of A.D. 95. The Nabataean kingdom proper had its
centre at Petra (= Sela in 2 Kings xiv. 7), which attained great
importance as the emporium on the trade route between Arabia and the
Persian Gulf on the one side and Syria and Egypt on the other. The
commercial activity of the people, however, was widely extended, and
their monuments are found not only round Petra and in N. Arabia, but as
far north as Damascus, and even in Italy, where there was a trading
settlement at Puteoli. The inscriptions are mostly votive or sepulchral,
and are often dated, but give little historical information except in so
far as they fix the dates of Nabataean kings.
A distinct subdivision of Nabataean is found in the Sinaitic peninsula,
chiefly in the Wadi Firan and Wadi Mukattib, which lay on the caravan
route. The inscriptions are rudely scratched or punched on the rough
rock, without any sort of order, and some of them are accompanied by
rude drawings. A few only are dated, but, as shown by de Vogue in the
_C.I.S._ (ii. 1, p. 353), they must all belong to the 2nd and 3rd
centuries A.D. This accounts for the fact that already in the 6th
century Cosmas Indicopleustes[17] has no correct account of their
origin, and ascribes them to the Israelites during their wanderings in
the wilderness.[18] They were first correctly deciphered as Nabataean by
Beer in 1848, when they proved to consist chiefly of proper names (many
of them of Arabic formation), accompanied by ejaculations or blessings.
It is clear that they are not the work of pilgrims either Jewish or
Christian,[19] nor are they of a religious character. The frequent
recurrence of certain names shows that only a few generations of a few
families are represented, and these must have belonged to a small body
of Nabataeans temporarily settled in the particular Wadis, no doubt for
purposes connected with the caravan-traffic. The form of the Nabataean
character in which they are written is interesting as being the probable
progenitor of the Kufic Arabic alphabet.
Another important trading centre was Tadmor or Palmyra in northern
Syria. Numerous inscriptions found there, and hence called Palmyrene,
were copied by Waddington in 1861 and published by de Vogue in his great
work _Syrie Centrale_ (1868, &c.), which is still the most extensive
collection of them. The difficulties of exploration have hitherto
prevented any further increase of the material, but much more would
undoubtedly be found if excavation were possible. The texts are mostly
sepulchral and dedicatory, some of them being accompanied by a Greek
version. The language is a form of western Aramaic, and the character,
which is derived from the Hebrew and Aramaic square, is closely related
to the Syriac estrangelo alphabet. The inscriptions are mostly dated,
and belong to the period between 9 B.C. and A.D. 271. The most important
is the tariff of taxes on imports, dated A.D. 137. Nearly all were found
on the surface at or round Palmyra and remain _in situ_. Of the very few
in other places, one (with a Latin version) was found at South Shields,
the tombstone of _Regina liberta et conjux_ of a native of Palmyra.
Syriac inscriptions are few. The earliest is that on the sarcophagus of
Queen Saddan (in the Hebrew version, Sadda), perhaps of about A.D. 40,
found at Jerusalem. Others were found by Sachau[20] at Edessa, of the
2nd and 3rd centuries, and by Pognon.[21]
2. _South Semitic._--The South Semitic class of inscriptions comprises
the Minaean, Sabaean, Himyaritic and Lihyanitic in South Arabia, the
Thamudic and Safaitic in the north and the Abyssinian. A great deal of
material has been collected by Halevy, Glaser and Euting, and much
valuable work has been done by them and by D. H. Muller, Hommel and
Littmann. Many of the texts, however, are still unpublished and the rest
is not very accessible (except so far as it has appeared in the
_C.I.S._), so that South Semitic has been less widely studied than North
Semitic.
The successive kingdoms of South Arabia (Yemen) were essentially
commercial. Their country was the natural intermediary between Asia
(India), Africa and Syria, and this position, combined with its natural
fertility, made the south far more prosperous than the north. In
language, the two most important peoples, the Minaeans and Sabaeans,
differ only dialectically, both writing forms of southern Arabic. The
Minaean capital was at Ma'in, about 300 m. N. of Aden and 200 m. from
the west coast. Here and in the neighbourhood numerous inscriptions were
found, as well as in the north at al-'Ola.[22] Their chronology is much
disputed. D. H. Muller makes the Minaean power contemporary with the
Sabaean, but Glaser (with whom Hommel and D. S. Margoliouth agree)
contends that the Sabaeans followed the Minaeans, whom they conquered in
820 B.C. Mention is made in a cuneiform text (Annals of Sargon, 715
B.C.) of Ithamar the Sabaean, who must be identical with one (it is not
certain which) of the kings of that name mentioned in the Sabaean
inscriptions. Their capital was Marib, a little south of Ma'in, and here
they appear to have flourished for about a thousand years. In the 1st
century A.D., with the establishment of the Roman power in the north,
their trade, and consequently their prosperity, began to decline. The
rival kingdom of the Himyarites, with its capital at Zafar, then rose to
importance, and this in turn was conquered by the Abyssinians in the 6th
century A.D. With the spread of Islam the old Arabic language was
supplanted by the northern dialects from which classical Arabic was
developed. A peculiarity of the South Arabian inscriptions is that many
of them are engraved on bronze tablets. Besides being historically
important, they are of great value for the study of early Semitic
religion. The gods most often named in Sabaean are 'Athtar Wadd and
Nakrah, the first being the male counterpart of the Syrian Ashtoreth.
The term denoting the priests and priestesses who are devoted to the
temple-service is identified by Hommel and others with the Hebrew
"Levite."
Closely connected with South Arabia is Abyssinia. Indeed a considerable
number of Sabaean inscriptions have been found at Yeha and Aksum,
showing that merchants from Arabia must at some time have formed
settlements there. D. H. Muller[23] thinks that some of these belong to
the earliest and others to the latest period of Sabaean power. The
inscriptions hitherto found in Ethiopic (the alphabet of which is
derived from the Sabaean) date from the 4th century A.D. onward. They
are few in number, but long and of great historical importance. There
can be no doubt that exploration, if it were possible, would bring many
more to light.
From time to time emigrants from the southern tribes settled in the
north of Arabia. Mention has already been made of Minaean inscriptions
found at al-'Ola, which is on the great pilgrim road, about 70 m. south
of Taima. In recent years a number of others has been collected
belonging to the people of Lihyan and dating from about A.D. 250. Nearly
related to the Lihyanitic are the Thamudic (so called from the tribe of
the Thamud mentioned in them), and the Safaitic, both of which, though
found in the north, belong in character to south Arabia and no doubt owe
their origin to emigrants from the south. The Thamudic inscriptions,
collected by Euting (called Proto-Arabian by Halevy),[24] are carelessly
scrawled graffiti very like those of the Sinai peninsula. Their date is
uncertain, but they cannot be much earlier than the Safaitic, which
resemble them in most respects. These last are called after the
mountainous district about 20 m. S.E. of Damascus. The inscriptions are,
however, found not in Mount Safa itself but in the desert of al-Harrah
to the west and south and in the fertile plain of ar-Ruhbah to the east.
They were first deciphered by Halevy,[25] whose work has been carried on
and completed by Littmann.[26] Their date is again uncertain, since
graffiti of this kind give very few facts from which dates can be
deduced. Littmann thinks that one of his inscriptions refers to Trajan's
campaign of A.D. 106, and that they all belong to the first three
centuries. They are found together with the earlier Greek and Latin
graffiti of Roman soldiers and with later Moslem remarks in Kufic. Many
of them are not yet published.
Bibliography--The best introductions are, for North Semitic,
Lidzbarski's _Handbuch d. nordsemitischen Epigraphik_ (Weimar, 1898);
and G. A. Cooke's _Text-book of North-Semitic Inscriptions_ (Oxford,
1903); for South Semitic, Hommel's _Sud-arabische Chrestomathie_
(Munich, 1893); Alphabets and facsimiles in Berger, _Histoire de
l'ecriture_, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1892). The parts of the _Corpus Inscr.
Sem._ published up to 1910 are: pars i., tom. i., and tom. ii., fascc.
1-3, 1881-1908 (Phoenician); pars ii., tom. i., 1889-1902 (Aramaic
with Nabataean), tom. ii., fasc. i., 1907 (Sinaitic); pars iv., tom.
i., fascc. 1-4, 1889-1908 (Himyaritic, including Minaean and Sabaean).
In all these parts a full bibliography is given. For Palmyrene see de
Vogue's _Syrie Centrale_ (Paris, 1868-1877). Works on special
departments of the subject have already been mentioned in the notes.
(A. Cy.)