_The alphabet of Egyptian origin.—Discovery of the Moabite
Stone.—Translation of the inscription.—Points of interest raised
by the inscription.—Discovery of the Siloam inscription.—The
translation.—The date.—Its bearing upon the topography of
Jerusalem._
Modern discovery has as yet thrown little contemporary light on the period
of Israelitish history which extends from the conquest of Canaan to the
time when the kingdom of David was rent into the two monarchies of Israel
and Judah. The buried ruins of Phœnicia have not yet been explored, and we
have still to depend on the statements of classical writers for what we
know, outside the Bible records, of Hiram the Tyrian king, the friend of
David and Solomon. It is certain, however, that state archives already
existed in the chief cities of Phœnicia, and a library was probably
attached to the ancient temple of Baal, the Sun-god, at Tyre, which was
restored by Hiram. It was from the Phœnicians that the Israelites, and the
nations round about them, received their alphabet. This alphabet was of
Egyptian origin. As far back as the monuments of Egypt carry us, we find
the Egyptians using their hieroglyphics to express not only ideas and
syllables, but also the letters of an alphabet. Even in the remote epoch
of the second dynasty they already possessed an alphabet in which the
twenty-one simple sounds of the language were represented by special
hieroglyphic pictures. Such hieroglyphic pictures, however, were employed
only on the public monuments; for books and letters and business
transactions the Egyptians made use of a running hand, in which the
original pictures had undergone great transformations. This running hand
is termed “hieratic,” and it was from the hieratic forms of the Egyptian
letters that the Phœnician letters were derived.
We have already seen that the coast of the Delta was so thickly peopled
with Phœnician settlers as to have acquired the name of Keft-ur, or
Caphtor, “greater Phœnicia;” and these settlers it must have been who
first borrowed the alphabet of their Egyptian neighbours. For purposes of
trade they must have needed some kind of writing, by means of which they
could communicate with the natives of the country, and their business-like
instincts led them to adopt only the alphabet used by the latter, and to
discard all the cumbrous machinery of ideographs and syllabic characters
by which it was accompanied. It was doubtless in the time of the Hyksos
that the Egyptian alphabet became Phœnician. From the Delta it was handed
on to the mother country of Phœnicia, and there the letters received new
names, derived from objects to which they bore a resemblance and which
began with the sounds they represented. These names, as well as the
characters to which they belonged, have descended to ourselves, for the
Phœnician alphabet passed first from the Phœnicians to the Greeks, then
from the Greeks to the Romans, and finally from the Romans to the nations
of modern Europe. The very word _alphabet_ is a living memorial of the
fact, since it is composed of _alpha_ and _beta_, the Greek names of the
two first letters, and these names are simply the Phœnician _aleph_, “an
ox,” and _beth_, “a house.” Just as in our own nursery days it was
imagined that we should remember our lessons better if we were taught that
“A was an Archer who shot at a frog,” so the forms of the letters were
impressed on the memory of the Phœnician boys by being likened to the head
of an ox or the outline of a house.
But before the alphabet was communicated to Greece by the Phœnician
traders, it had already been adopted by their Semitic kinsmen in Western
Asia. Excavations in Palestine and the country east of the Jordan would
doubtless bring to light inscriptions compiled in it much older than the
oldest which we at present know. Only a few years ago the gap between the
time when the Phœnicians first borrowed their new alphabet and the time to
which the earliest texts written in it belonged was very great indeed. But
during the last fifteen years two discoveries have been made which help to
fill it up, and prove to us at the same time what may be found if we will
only seek.
[Illustration.]
The Moabite Stone, erected by King Mesha, at Dibon.
One of these discoveries is that of the famous Moabite Stone. In the
summer of 1869, Dr. Klein, a German missionary, while travelling in what
was once the land of Moab, discovered a most curious relic of antiquity
among the ruins of Dhibân, the ancient Dibon. This relic was a stone of
black basalt, rounded at the top, two feet broad and nearly four feet
high. Across it ran an inscription of thirty-four lines in the letters of
the Phœnician alphabet. Dr. Klein unfortunately did not realise the
importance of the discovery he had made; he contented himself with copying
a few words, and endeavouring to secure the monument for the Berlin
Museum. Things always move slowly in the East, and it was not until a year
later that the negociations for the purchase of the stone were completed
between the Prussian Government on the one side and the Arabs and Turkish
pashas on the other. At length, however, all was arranged, and it was
agreed that the stone should be handed over to the Germans for the sum of
£80. At this moment M. Clermont-Ganneau, a member of the French Consulate
at Jerusalem, with lamentable indiscretion, sent men to take squeezes of
the inscription, and offered no less than £375 for the stone itself. At
once the cupidity of both Arabs and pashas was aroused; the Governor of
Nablûs demanded the treasure for himself, while the Arabs, fearing it
might be taken from them, put a fire under it, poured cold water over it,
broke it in pieces, and distributed the fragments as charms among the
different families of the tribe. Thanks to M. Clermont-Ganneau, most of
these fragments have now been recovered, and the stone, once more put
together, may be seen in the Museum of the Louvre at Paris. The fragments
have been fitted into their proper places by the help of the imperfect
squeezes taken before the monument was broken.
When the inscription came to be read, it turned out to be a record of
Mesha, king of Moab, of whom we are told in 2 Kings iii. that after Ahab’s
death he “rebelled against the king of Israel,” and was vainly besieged in
his capital Kirharaseth by the combined armies of Israel, Judah and Edom.
Mesha describes the successful issue of his revolt, and the revenge he
took upon the Israelites for their former oppression of his country. The
translation of the inscription is as follows:—
“I, Mesha, am the son of Chemosh-Gad, king of Moab, the Dibonite. My
father reigned over Moab thirty years, and I reigned after my father. And
I erected this stone to Chemosh at Kirkha, a (stone of) salvation, for he
saved me from all despoilers, and made me see my desire upon all my
enemies, even upon Omri, king of Israel. Now they afflicted Moab many
days, for Chemosh was angry with his land. His son succeeded him; and he
also said, I will afflict Moab. In my days (Chemosh) said, (Let us go) and
I will see my desire on him and his house, and I will destroy Israel with
an everlasting destruction. Now Omri took the land of Medeba, and (the
enemy) occupied it in (his days and in) the days of his son, forty years.
And Chemosh (had mercy) on it in my days; and I fortified Baal-Meon, and
made therein the tank, and I fortified Kiriathaim. For the men of Gad
dwelt in the land of (Atar)oth from of old, and the king (of) Israel
fortified for himself Ataroth, and I assaulted the wall and captured it,
and killed all the warriors of the wall for the well-pleasing of Chemosh
and Moab; and I removed from it all the spoil, and (offered) it before
Chemosh in Kirjath; and I placed therein the men of Siran and the men of
Mochrath. And Chemosh said to me, Go take Nebo against Israel. (And I)
went in the night, and I fought against it from the break of dawn till
noon, and I took it and slew in all seven thousand (men, but I did not
kill) the women (and) maidens, for (I) devoted them to Ashtar-Chemosh; and
I took from it the vessels of Yahveh, and offered them before Chemosh. And
the king of Israel fortified Jahaz and occupied it, when he made war
against me; and Chemosh drove him out before (me, and) I took from Moab
two hundred men, all its poor, and placed them in Jahaz, and took it to
annex it to Dibon. I built Kirkha, the wall of the forest, and the wall of
the city, and I built the gates thereof, and I built the towers thereof,
and I built the palace, and I made the prisons for the criminals within
the walls. And there was no cistern in the wall at Kirkha, and I said to
all the people, Make for yourselves, every man, a cistern in his house.
And I dug the ditch for Kirkha by means of the (captive) men of Israel. I
built Aroer, and I made the road across the Arnon. I built Beth-Bamoth,
for it was destroyed; I built Bezer, for it was cut (down) by the armed
men of Dibon, for all Dibon was now loyal; and I reigned from Bikran,
which I added to my land, and I built (Beth-Gamul) and Beth-Diblathaim and
Beth-Baal-Meon, and I placed there the poor (people) of the land. And as
to Horonaim, (the men of Edom) dwelt therein (from of old). And Chemosh
said to me, Go down, make war against Horonaim and take (it. And I
assaulted it, and I took it, and) Chemosh (restored it) in my days.
Wherefore I made ... year ... and I....”
The last line or two, describing the war against the Edomites, is
unfortunately lost beyond recovery. The rest of the text, however, it will
be seen, is pretty perfect, and is full of interest to Biblical students.
The whole inscription reads like a chapter from one of the historical
books of the Old Testament. Not only are the phrases the same, but the
words and grammatical forms are, with one or two exceptions, all found in
Scriptural Hebrew. We learn that the language of Moab differed less from
that of the Israelites than does one English dialect from another. Perhaps
the most interesting fact disclosed by the inscription is that Chemosh,
the national god of the Moabites, had come to be regarded not only as the
supreme deity, but even as almost the only object of their worship. Except
in the passage which alludes to the dedication of women and maidens to
Ashtar-Chemosh, Mesha speaks as a monotheist, and even here the female
Ashtar or Ashtoreth is identified with the supreme male deity Chemosh.
Like the Assyrian kings, moreover, who ascribed their victories and
campaigns to the inspiration of the god Assur, Mesha ascribes his
successes to the orders of Chemosh. He uses, in fact, the language of
Scripture; as the Lord said to David, “Go and smite the Philistines” (1
Sam. xxiii. 2), so Chemosh is made to say to Mesha, “Go, take Nebo;” and
as God promised to “drive out” the Canaanites before Israel, so Mesha
declares that Chemosh drove out Israel before him from Jahaz. Mesha even
sets up a stone of salvation to Chemosh, like Eben-ezer, “the stone of
help,” set up by Samuel (1 Sam. vii. 12); and the statement that Chemosh
had been “angry with his land,” but had made Mesha “see his desire upon
all his enemies,” reminds us of the well-known passages in which the
Psalmist declares that “God shall let me see my desire upon mine
oppressors,” and the author of the Book of Judges recounts how that “the
anger of the Lord was hot against Israel.”
The covenant name of the God of Israel itself occurs in the inscription,
spelt in exactly the same way as in the Old Testament. Its occurrence is a
proof, if any were needed, that the superstition which afterwards
prevented the Jews from pronouncing it did not as yet exist. The name
under which God was worshipped in Israel was familiar to the nations round
about. Nay, more; we gather that even after the attempt of Jezebel to
introduce the Baalim of Sidon into the northern kingdom, Yahveh was still
regarded as the national god, and that the worship carried on at the high
places, idolatrous and contrary as it was to the law, was nevertheless
performed in His name. The high-place of Nebo, like so many of the other
localities mentioned in the inscription, is also mentioned in the prophecy
against Moab contained in Isa. xv. xvi. It is even possible that the words
of the verse in the Book of Isaiah in which it is named have undergone
transposition, and that the true reading is, “He is gone up to Dibon and
to Beth-Bamoth to weep; Moab shall howl over Nebo and over Medeba.” The
inscription informs us that Beth-Bamoth, “the house of the high-places,”
was the name of a place near Dibon, the name of which appears in the last
verse of Isaiah xv. under the form of Dimon, the letter _b_ being changed
by the prophet into _m_, in order to connect it with the word _dâm_,
“blood.” Kirkha, “the wall of the forest,” the modern Kerak, is called Kir
of Moab and Kir-haresh or Kir-hareseth by Isaiah, and Kir-heres by
Jeremiah, which by a slight change of vocalisation would signify “the wall
of the forest.” The form Kir-haraseth is also used in the Book of Kings.
The story told by the Stone, and the account of the war against Moab given
in the Bible, supplement one another. Dr. Ginsburg has suggested that the
deliverance of Moab from Israel was brought about during the reign of
Ahaziah, the successor of Ahab, and that Joram, the successor of Ahaziah,
was subsequently driven out of Jahaz, which lay on the southern side of
the Arnon; but that after this the tide of fortune turned, Joram summoned
his allies from Judah and Edom, ravaged Moab, and blockaded Mesha in his
capital of Kirkha. Then came the sacrifice by Mesha of his eldest son on
the wall of Kirkha—so that “there was great indignation against Israel,”
and the allied forces retreated back “to their own land.”
The Moabite Stone shows us what were the forms of the Phœnician letters
used on the eastern side of the Jordan in the time of Ahab. The forms
employed in Israel and Judah on the western side could not have differed
much; and we may therefore see in these venerable characters the precise
mode of writing employed by the earlier prophets of the Old Testament.
This knowledge is of great importance for the correction and restoration
of corrupt passages, and more especially of proper names, the spelling of
which has been deformed by copyists.
Just, however, as the writing of two persons at the present day must
differ, so also the writing of two nations like the Moabites and Jews must
have differed to some extent. Moreover, there must have been some
distinction between the more cursive writing of a papyrus-roll and the
carefully cut letters of a public monument like that of Mesha. Indeed,
that such a distinction did exist we have proof in a passage (Isa. viii.
1) which has been mistranslated in the Authorised Version, but which ought
to be rendered: “Take thee a great slab, and write upon it with the
graving-tool of the people: Hasten spoil, hurry booty.” Here words which
were afterwards to be made more emphatic by becoming the name of one of
Isaiah’s children, were written in a way that all could read, not in the
running hand of a scroll, but in the large clear characters of a public
document. What these characters exactly were, a recent discovery has
enabled us to learn.
Hebrew inscriptions of an early date have long been sought for in vain. We
knew of one or two inscribed fragments from the neighbourhood of the Pool
of Siloam at Jerusalem, and of a few seals which might be referred to the
period before the Babylonish Captivity; but, unfortunately, none of these
could be assigned to a definite date, and even the conclusion that some of
them were pre-exilic was after all little more than a guess. The seals are
usually distinguished by the absence of any symbols or other devices, as
well as by a horizontal line drawn across the middle, which divides the
inscription into two halves. The proper names also which occur on them
are, in the majority of cases, compounded with the sacred name Yahveh.
Several of these seals have been found in Babylonia and Mesopotamia, and
may therefore be regarded as memorials of the Jewish exile. But the
legends they bear are always short, and consist of little else than proper
names; and as their date was uncertain, it was impossible to draw any
solid inferences from them as to the character of the writing employed in
Judah or Israel before the age of Nebuchadnezzar.
It is quite otherwise now. An inscription of some length has been
discovered in Jerusalem itself, which is certainly as old as the time of
Isaiah, and may be older still. In the summer of 1880, one of the native
pupils of Mr. Schick, a German architect long settled in Jerusalem, was
playing with some other lads in the so-called Pool of Siloam, and while
wading up a channel cut in the rock which leads into the Pool, slipped and
fell into the water. On rising to the surface, he noticed what looked like
letters on the rock which formed the southern wall of the channel. He told
Mr. Schick of what he had seen; and the latter, on visiting the spot,
found that an ancient inscription, concealed for the most part by the
water, actually existed there.
The Pool is of comparatively modern construction, but it encloses the
remains of a much older reservoir, which, like the modern one, was
supplied with water through a tunnel excavated in the rock. This tunnel
communicates with the so-called Spring of the Virgin, the only natural
spring of water in or near Jerusalem. It rises below the walls of the
city, on the western bank of the valley of the Kidron; and the tunnel
through which its waters are conveyed is consequently cut through the
ridge, that forms the southern part of the Temple Hill. The Pool of Siloam
lies on the opposite side of this ridge, at the mouth of the valley called
that of the Cheesemakers (Tyropϙn) in the time of Josephus, but which is
now filled up with rubbish, and in large part built over. According to
Lieutenant Conder’s measurements, the length of the tunnel is 1,708 yards;
it does not, however, run in a straight line, and towards the centre there
are two _culs de sac_, of which the inscription now offers an explanation.
At the entrance on the western or Siloam side its height is about sixteen
feet; but the roof grows gradually lower, until in one place it is not
quite two feet above the floor of the passage.
[Illustration.]
The Siloam Inscription (tracing from a squeeze, taken 15th July, 1881, by
Lieuts. Conder and Mantell, R. E.).
The inscription occupies the under part of an artificial tablet in the
wall of rock, about nineteen feet from where the conduit opens out upon
the Pool of Siloam, and on the right-hand side of one who enters it. After
lowering the level of the water, Mr. Schick endeavoured to take a copy of
it; but as not only the letters of the text, but every flaw in the rock
were filled with a deposit of lime left by the water, all he could send to
Europe was a collection of unmeaning scrawls. Besides the difficulty of
distinguishing the letters, it was also necessary to sit in the mud and
water, and to work by the dim light of a candle, as the place where the
inscription is engraved is perfectly dark. All this rendered it impossible
for anyone not acquainted with Phœnician palæography to make an accurate
transcript. The first intelligible copy accordingly was made by Professor
Sayce after several hours of careful study; but this too contained several
doubtful characters, the real forms of which could only be determined by
the removal of the calcareous matter with which they were coated. In
March, 1881, six weeks after Sayce’s visit, Dr. Guthe arrived in
Jerusalem, and after making a more complete facsimile of the inscription
than had previously been possible, removed the deposit of lime by means of
an acid, and so revealed the original appearance of the tablet. Letters
which had previously been concealed now became visible, and the exact
shapes of them all could be observed. First a cast, and then squeezes of
the text were taken; and the scholars of Europe had at last in their hands
an exact copy of the old text.
The inscription consists of six lines, but several of the letters
composing it have unfortunately been destroyed by the wearing away of the
rock. The translation of it is as follows:—
1. “(Behold) the excavation! Now this is the history of the excavation.
While the excavators were still lifting up the pick, each towards his
neighbour, and while there were yet three cubits to (excavate, there was
heard) the voice of one man calling to his neighbour, for there was an
excess in the rock on the right hand (and on the left). And after that on
the day of excavating the excavators had struck pick against pick, one
against the other, the waters flowed from the spring to the Pool for a
distance of 1,200 cubits. And (part) of a cubit was the height of the rock
over the head of the excavators.”
The language of the inscription is the purest Biblical Hebrew. There is
only one word in it—that rendered “excess”—which is new, and consequently
of doubtful signification. We learn from it that the engineering skill of
the day was by no means despicable. The conduit was excavated in the same
fashion as the Mont Cénis tunnel of our own time, by beginning the work
simultaneously at the two ends; and, in spite of its windings, the workmen
almost succeeded in meeting in the middle. They approached, indeed, so
nearly to one another, that the noise made by the one party in hewing the
rock was heard by the other, and the small piece of rock which intervened
between them was accordingly pierced. This accounts for the two _culs de
sac_ now found in the centre of the channel; they represent the extreme
points reached by the two bands of excavators before they had discovered
that, instead of meeting, they were passing by one another.
It is most unfortunate that the inscription contains no indication of
date; but the forms of the letters used in it show that it cannot be very
much later in age than the Moabite Stone. Indeed, some of the letters
exhibit older forms than those of the Moabite Stone; but this may be
explained by the supposition that the scribes of Jerusalem were more
conservative, more disposed to retain old forms, than the scribes of king
Mesha. The prevalent opinion of scholars is that the tunnel and
consequently the inscription in it were executed in the reign of Hezekiah.
According to the Chronicler (2 Chr. xxxii. 30), Hezekiah “stopped the
upper watercourse of Gihon, and brought it straight down to the west side
of the city of David,” and we read in 2 Kings xx. 20, that “he made a pool
and a conduit, and brought water into the city.” The object of the
laborious undertaking is very plain. The Virgin’s Spring, the only natural
source near Jerusalem, lay outside the walls, and in time of war might
easily pass into the hands of the enemy. The Jewish kings, therefore, did
their best to seal up this spring, which must be the Chronicler’s “upper
water-course of Gihon,” and to bring its waters by subterranean passages
inside the city walls. Besides the tunnel which contains the inscription
another tunnel has been discovered, which also communicates with the
Virgin’s Spring. But it is tempting to suppose that the most important of
these—the tunnel which contains the inscription—must be the one which
Hezekiah made.
The supposition, however, is rendered uncertain by a statement of Isaiah
(viii. 6). While Ahaz, the father of Hezekiah, was still reigning, Isaiah
uttered a prophecy in which he made allusion to “the waters of Shiloah
that go softly.” Now this can hardly refer to anything else than the
gently flowing stream which still runs through the tunnel of Siloam. In
this case the conduit would have been in existence before the time of
Hezekiah; and, since we know of no earlier period when a great engineering
work of the kind could have been executed until we go back to the reign of
Solomon, it is possible that the inscription may actually be of this
ancient date. The inference is supported by the name Shiloah, which
probably means “the tunnel,” and would have been given to the locality in
consequence of the conduit which here pierced the rock. It was not likely
that when David and Solomon were fortifying Jerusalem, and employing
Phœnician architects upon great public buildings there, they would have
allowed the city to depend wholly upon rain cisterns for its water supply.
Since the inscription calls the Pool of Siloam simply “the Pool,” we may
perhaps infer that no other reservoir of the kind was in existence at the
time; and yet in the age of Isaiah, as we learn from Isa. xxii. 9, 11,
there was not only “a lower pool,” in contradistinction to “an upper one,”
but also “an old pool,” in contradistinction to a new one. As Dr. Guthe’s
excavations have laid bare the remains of four such pools in the
neighbourhood of that of Siloam, there is no difficulty in finding places
for all these reservoirs. But they could hardly have existed when the Pool
of Siloam was still known as simply “the Pool,” nor could the name of
Shiloah have well been given to the locality if another tunnel, observed
by Sir Charles Warren on the eastern side of the Temple Hill, had been
already excavated. This second tunnel starts, like the Siloam one, from
the Virgin’s Spring, and was designed to bring the water of the spring
within the walls of the city. A shaft is cut for seventy feet into the
hill, where it meets another perpendicular shaft, which rises for a height
of fifty feet, and then meets a flight of steps, which lead into a broad
passage, ending in another flight of steps and a vaulted chamber. Niches
for lamps were found here at intervals, intended to light the persons who
went to draw the water by means of a bucket. As lamps of the Roman period
were discovered in the chamber, the tunnel must have been known and used
up to the time of the capture of Jerusalem by Titus, and it is probably
not older than the reign of Herod. In any case, the comparative excellence
of its workmanship goes to show that it was made at a later date than the
tunnel of Siloam.
Whatever doubts, however, may still hang over the date of the inscription,
there can be no question that it has thrown most important light on the
topography of Jerusalem in the period of the kings. It is now clear that
the modern city occupies very little of the same ground as the ancient
one; the latter stood entirely on the rising ground to the east of the
Tyropϙn valley, the northern portion of which is at present occupied by
the mosque of Omar, while the southern portion is uninhabited. The
Tyropϙn valley itself must be the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, where the
idolaters of Jerusalem burnt their children in the fire to Moloch. It must
be in the southern cliff of this valley that the tombs of the kings are
situated; the reason why they have never yet been found being that they
are buried under the rubbish with which the valley is filled. Among the
rubbish must be the remains of the city which was destroyed by
Nebuchadnezzar, and whose ruins were flung into the gorge below. Between
the higher part of the hill, now occupied by the mosque of Omar, and its
lower uninhabited portion, Dr. Guthe has discovered traces of a valley
which once ran into the valley of the Kidron at right angles to it, not
far from the Virgin’s Spring, and divided in old days the City of David
from the rest of the town. Here, as well as in the now obliterated Valley
of the Cheesemakers, there probably still lie the relics of the dynasty of
David; but we shall only know the story they have to tell us when the
spade of the excavator has come to continue the discoveries which the
inscription of Siloam has begun.