JONAH'S WHALE. 



By PAUL HAUPT. 

 (Read April 20, 1907.) 



In my paper on " Archseolog-y and Mineralogy," which I read 

 at the general meeting four years ago/ I remarked that a competent 

 archaeologist must have more than a bowing acquaintance with all 

 branches of science. His philological equipment enables him merely 

 to read the records of the past; but even the translation of an 

 ordinary historical text presupposes a large amount of knowledge, 

 not only of philology, history, chronology, geography, ethnology, 

 but also zoology, botany, mineralogy, &c. I pointed out some con- 

 clusions which I had reached, on the basis of mineralogical con- 

 siderations, with regard to two importantant problems in archaeol- 

 ogy, t'/^. King Solomon's Mines and Alexander the Great's Ex- 

 pedition to the East. I showed that the lilies of the Bible were 

 dark purple sword-lilies {Gladioli atroviolacci, Boiss.)- which the 

 ancients called hyacinths, a name which they used also for the 

 purple variety of quartz, which we term amethyst, while the ame- 

 thyst of the ancients denoted the rare purple variety of corundum, 

 known as purple ruby or amethystine sapphire. I also showed that 

 the stones of Tarshish, mentioned in the Bible, were ruby-like 

 crystals of cinnabar from the quicksilver mines of Almaden in 

 southern Spain, and that Tarshish was a Phoenician word meaning 

 dressing of ores, especially spalling.^ Tarshish was the mining 

 region in southern Spain, and the ships of Tarshish went to Spain, 



^ See the abstract in the Johns Hopkins University Circulars, No. 163, 

 P- 51- 



"See Haupt, Biblische Lichcslieder (Leipzig, 1907) p. 34, n. 20; cf. n. 34 

 to my paper Difficult Passages in the Song of Songs in the Journal of 

 Biblical Literature, Vol. XXL, p. 68, and my notes on the Book of Canticles 

 in The American Journal of Semitic I^anguages, Vol. XVIII., p. 241. 



^ See Haupt, Bibl. Liebcslieder, p. 59, n. ^,7 ', cf. the American Journal 

 of Semitic Languages, Vol. XVIII., p. 230, and the Verhandlungen des 

 xiii. Orientalisten-Kongresses (Leyden, 1904) p. 232. 



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