of six lines (probably of the eighth century B.C.[1]) discovered in June, 1880, in the tunnel between the Virgin’s Spring and the Pool of Siloam at Jerusalem; (3) about forty engraved seal-stones, some of them pre-exilic but bearing little except proper names[2]; (4) coins of the Maccabaean prince Simon (from ‘the 2nd year of deliverance’, 140 and 139 B.C.) and his successors,[3] and the coinage of the revolts in the times of Vespasian and Hadrian.
[e] 3. In the whole series of the ancient Hebrew writings, as found in the Old Testament and also in non-biblical monuments (see above, d), the language (to judge from its consonantal formation) remains, as regards its general character, and apart from slight changes in form and differences of style (see k to w), at about the same stage of development. In this form, it may at an early time have been fixed as a literary language, and the fact that the books contained in the Old Testament were handed down as sacred writings, must have contributed to this constant uniformity.
[f] To this old Hebrew, the language of the Canaanitish or Phoenician[4] stocks came the nearest of all the Semitic languages, as is evident partly from the many Canaanitish names of persons and places with a Hebrew form and meaning which occur in the Old Testament (e.g. מַלְכִּי־צֶדֶק, קִרְיַת סֵפֶר, &c.;
- ↑ Of this inscription—unfortunately not dated, but linguistically and palaeographically very important—referring to the boring of the tunnel, a facsimile is given at the beginning of this grammar. See also Lidzbarski, Nordsemitische Epigraphik, i. 105, 163, 439 (bibliography, p. 56 ff.; facsimile, vol. ii, plate xxi, 1); on the new drawing of it by Socin (ZDPV. xxii. p. 61 ff. and separately published at Freiburg i. B. 1899), see Lidzbarski, Ephemeris, i. 53 ff. and 310 f. (text in Altsemit. Texte, p. 9 f.). Against the view of A. Fischer (ZDMG. 1902, p. 800 f.) that the six lines are the continuation of an inscription which was never executed, see Lidzbarski, Ephemeris, ii. 71. The inscription was removed in 1890, and broken into six or seven pieces in the process. It has since been well restored, and is now in the Imperial Museum at Constantinople. If, as can hardly be doubted, the name שִׁלֹּחַ (i.e. emissio) Is 86 refers to the discharge of water from the Virgin’s Spring, through the tunnel (so Stade, Gesch. Isr. i. 594), then the latter, and consequently the inscription, was already in existence about 736 B.C. [Cf. Cooke, op. cit., p. 15 ff.]
- ↑ M. A. Levy, Siegel u. Gemmen, &c., Bresl. 1869, p. 33 ff.; Stade, ZAW. 1897, p. 501 ff. (four old-Semitic seals published in 1896); Lidzbarski, Handbuch, i. 169 f.; Ephemeris, i. 10 ff.; W. Nowack, Lehrb. d. hebr. Archäol. (Freib. 1894), i. 262 f.; I. Benzinger, Hebr. Archäol.2 (Tübingen, 1907), pp. 80, 225 ff., which includes the beautiful seal inscribed לשמע עבד ירבעם from the castle-hill of Megiddo, found in 1904; [Cooke, p. 362].
- ↑ De Saulcy, Numismatique de la Terre Sainte, Par. 1874; M. A. Levy, Gesch. der jüd. Münzen, Breslau, 1862; Madden, The Coins of the Jews, Lond. 1881; Reinach, Les monnaies juives, Paris, 1888.—Cf. the literature in Schörer’s Gesch. des jüd.Volkes im Zeitalter J. C.3, Lpz. 1901, i. p. 20 ff.; [Cooke, p. 352 ff.].
- ↑ כְּנַעַן, כְּנַֽעֲנִי is the native name, common both to the Canaanitish tribes in Palestine and to those which dwelt at the foot of the Lebanon and on the Syrian coast, whom we call Phoenicians, while they called themselves כנען on their coins. The people of Carthage also called themselves so.
