As an Arabist as well as an Assyriologist, and as a bright thinker and
learned scholar, in various departments of knowledge, Dr. Fritz Hommel,
Professor of Semitic Languages in the University of Munich, has a
deservedly high standing. His great illustrated “History of Babylonia
and Assyria” is a marvelous treasure-house of information concerning the
history of the earlier civilizations of the East; and his later studies
in connection with the researches of Dr. Edward Glaser in South Arabia
have poured a flood of light on the influence of ancient Arabia in the
Oriental world. In the realm of Semitic philology Dr. Hommel is acute
minded, and peculiarly alert and suggestive.
Having read the earlier pages of “The Threshold Covenant,” Professor
Hommel wrote briefly of his interest in the main thought of the work,
and promised further comments when he has completed its examination. The
necessity of putting these pages to press forbids the waiting for his
valued conclusions. His first comments are:
“I am now reading with great interest the proof-sheets of your new book,
which you were kind enough to send me. Although at this moment
overburdened with other work, I have already got as far as page 70, and
hope in the course of a fortnight to be able to send you my judgment.
“To page 60 I wish now to note that already in the time of Hammurabi
disputes were settled at the _gate_, and, indeed, of the gate of the
temple. See Strassmaier’s Warka Tablets, 30 (B. 57) in Meissner’s
_Beiträze zum Altbabylonischen Privatrecht_, p. 42 f.
“An interesting discovery, of which perhaps you still may make use, I
made yesterday. It is that the Babylonian _suppû_ (‘to pray,’ ‘to
entreat’) is originally merely the verb formed from the noun _sippu_, ‘a
threshold.’ The first sense, indeed, of _suppû_ is ‘to sacrifice,’
because that was done at the threshold. To find a parallel for this
transference from the meaning ‘to offer’ to the meaning ‘to pray,’
compare the Arabic _‘ătără_, to sacrifice,’ with the Hebrew _‘ātăr_, to
pray.’[713] To this discovery I, of course, came through your deductions
with regard to the importance of the threshold.”