I907.J 



HAUPT— JONAH'S WHALE. 155 



gullet of the whale is not large enough to admit a man. Now there 



can be no doubt of the existence of whales in the Mediterranean, 



although the Swedish naturalist and traveler Fredrik Hassel- 



quist states in his Voyages and Travels, published in 1766/ with 



reference to Job xli, i, where the Authorized Version has zvhale 



in the margin for leviathan:^ — Hoii' could he speak of an animal 



zvhich never zvas seen in the place where he zvrote, and at a time 



when he could have no history of Greenland and Spitsbergen. Dr. 



Post states that large parts of the skeletons of two specimens 



of the right whale are preserved in the museum of the Syrian 



Protestant College at Beyrout. One of these animals was cast 



up on the shore near Tyre, not far from the traditional site of the 



ejection of Jonah, which is at Nabi Yunus (Arab. Khan an-Nabi 



Yunus)^ near Zidon. The other was drifted ashore at Beyrout 



itself. The gullet of the right zchale would not admit a man ; but 



the sperm-zi'hale* or cachalot^ has a gullet quite large enough to 



enable him to swallow a man. Sperm-whales are found in the 



Mediterranean, although they are not frequent. 



^ Ha S'Sielqu is t's Iter Palccstinum, ellcr Rcsa till Hcliga Landct was 

 edited by Linne (Stockhohn, 1757). Hasselqiiist died at Byn Bagda 

 near Smyrna in 1752. 



* Leviathan = crocodile, behemoth = hippopotamus. 



^The tomb of the prophet Jonah is shown at Al-Mdshhad (i. e., Tomb of 

 a Saint) representing the Biblical Gath-hcphcr (2 Kings xiv, 25) north of 

 Nazareth; also in the south near the ancient fortress of Bethsura (north of 

 Hebron) whose unsuccessful siege (163 b. c.) is alluded to in Eccl. iv, 14; 

 see Haupt, Ecclcsiastes (Baltimore, 1905) p. 42, n. 6. Nabi Yunus is also 

 the name of the smaller mound southeast of the Acropolis of Nineveh ; see 

 my address on the Book of Nahum in Vol. XXVI of the Journal of Biblical 

 Literature (p. 2) and cf. Baedeker's Paldstina tind Syrien (Leipzig, 1904) 

 pp. 102, 216, 241, 361. 



* The name sperm-whale or spermaceti whale is derived from the sperm- 

 oil or spermaceti found in the cavity of the head of the cachalot. This oily 

 white liquid, which solidifies on cooling, was called sperma ceti, because it was 

 regarded as the male spawn (or milt) of the animal. Dutch and English 

 whalers formerly called spermaceti zvhale-shot. It is also known as ivhite 

 amber; see below. 



^ Cachalot is a French loanword. In the new Oxford dictionary cachalot 

 is derived from a Romanic word for tooth, Gascon cachau, Carcassonne 

 caichal. The cachalot is not a mysticete, i. e., a baleen or zvhalebone whale, 

 commonly known as rig,ht whale, but an odonticete or dcnticete, i. e... a 

 toothed cetacean. 



^ See Ha sting's Dictionary of the Bible, Vol. IV., p. 914". 



