160 HAUPT— JONAH'S WHALE. [April 20, 



The sea-monster which swallowed Jonah corresponds to the 

 wonderful creattires in the Arabian Nights, which transport men 

 to the remotest regions. We must assume that the whale swallowed 

 Jonah near Joppa and cast him ashore at Alexandretta. It was 

 easier for Jonah to proceed thence to Nineveh, especially if he 

 went down the Tigris, than to return to Jerusalem.^ A sperm- 

 whale could easily swim from Joppa to Alexandretta in three 

 days and three nights; the distance is only about 300 miles. The 

 cachalot swims, as a rule, at a rate of from 3 to 7 miles an hour, and 

 just under the surface of the water. If a sperm-whale swam seven 

 miles an hour, it might rest more than nine hours a day and still 

 cover the distance from Joppa to Alexandretta in three days and 

 three nights, i. c, y2 hours. If Jonah had traveled overland on 

 horseback, it would have taken more than two weeks. The trip 

 from Joppa to Haifa, which represents but one sixth of the entire 

 distance from Joppa to Alexandretta requires from two to three 

 davs. A day's journey on horseback is about 25 to 30 miles. The 

 gait of the horses in Palestine is a brisk walk ; they hardly ever trot. 



The sea-monster was suggested to the author of the Book of 

 Jonah by the local legends connected with Joppe.- According to 

 tradition, Andromeda was chained to the rock on the southern 

 side of the narrow opening in the low ledge of rock forming the 

 harbor of Joppa. Andromeda was there exposed to a sea-monster, 

 but was rescued by Perseus, just as the Trojan princess Hesione 

 was delivered by Hercules from a marine monster. The myth of 



^ The overland journey from Alexandretta to Diarbekr (through 

 Aleppo and Urfa) may be made in about 10 days, and the rafting on the 

 Tigris from Diabekr to Nineveh requires but four days, when there is plenty 

 of water (/. e., from April to June). Ancient Assyrian rafts, supported by 

 inflated skins, and modern kelcks on the Tigris are figured on pp. 124 and 

 125 of the translation of Ezekicl in the Polychrome Bible. 



^Cheyne remarks in his Encyclopccdia Bihlica (col. 2574, below) that 

 the sea seemed more alive near Joppa than elsewhere, and the living power 

 in certain waters was frequently held to be derived from serpents or dragons. 

 In Babylonian mythology the dragon Ti'dmat is the personification of the 

 primeval ocean. The ocean was imagined as a broad circular stream encircling 

 the disk of the earth ; see my paper The Rivers of Paradise in -the Journal 

 of the American Oriental Society, Vol. XVI., p. ciii, and my remarks on the 

 Babylonian map of the world in the translation of Ecekiel (in the Poly- 

 chrome Bible) p. 100, 1. 35. 



