228 HAUPT— MANNA, NECTAR, AND AMBROSIA. 



volcano in northwestern Arabia (PAPS 48, 355).* The name Sinai 

 is derived from the Assyrian name of the moon-god, Sin. About 

 four days' journey S.E. of Tebijk in northwestern Arabia there is an 

 isolated table-mountain of sandstone with a high, pitch-black extinct 

 volcano on its flattened summit, which is called al-Badr, i.e. the 

 Arabic word for full moon. At the foot of the northern side of this 

 sacred mountain (which was visited, on July 2, 1910, by Professor 

 Musil, of Vienna, who will lecture in this country next fall) there 

 are twelve large blocks of sandstone, known as al-maddbih^Heh. 

 niizbehoi, sacrificial altars. Similar blocks are found at the western 

 end. On the southern side there are The Caves of the Servants of 

 Moses, Arab. Maga'ir 'abid Miisd. The ancestors of the Jews seem 

 to have proceeded from Elath, at the northeastern end of the Red Sea, 

 in a southeastern direction (JAOS 34, 526; 35, 387.390). 



Forty years ago the distinguished mythologist W. H. Roscher 

 published a monograph^ advancing the theory that nectar and am- 

 brosia were kinds of honey like the Biblical manna. We call the 

 saccharine fluid excreted by flowers, which attracts insects or birds, 

 nectar, and we apply the name ambrosia to the food of certain wood- 

 boring beetles, which consists of certain minute hyphomycetous fungi 

 coating the walls of their galleries. In the Homeric poems (in which 

 eighth-century lonians describe twelfth-century events ; cf. EB^^ 8, 

 426^) nectar is the drink, and ambrosia the food of the gods; but in 

 the Doric fragments of Alcman (the greatest lyric poet of Sparta, 



* Note the following abbreviations: — A'^Sl^^ A }ncrican Journal of Semitic 

 Languages ; — AV=:Authorized Version ; — BA=Delitzsch and Haupt, Bei- 

 trdge cur Assyriologie ; — BL=Haupt, Biblisehe Liebeslieder (Leipsic, 1907) ; 

 — CD=Century Dictionary; — EB=Cheyne-Black, Encyclopcsdia Biblica; — 

 'E'E'^'^^Encyclopadia Britanniea, ii^^^ edition; — £.yf.^Haupt, The Book of 

 Esther (Chicago, 1908) ; — GB=Gesenius-Buhl, Hebrdisches Handworterbuch; 

 — GK^Gesenius-Kautzsch, Hebrdische Grammatik ; — ICC=International Crit- 

 ical Commentary; — JAOS^Journal of the American Oriental Society; — ^JBL 

 =iJournal of Biblical Literature ; — JHUC=/o/!>!.y Hopkins University Circu- 

 lar; — M.UN=iModern Language Notes; — OD^^Ncw English Dictionary, Ox- 

 ford ; — 0T=01d Testament; — 'PAVS^Proceedings of the American Philo- 

 sophical Society; — RV:=Revised Version ; — S^Samuel ; SKF=Saturday 

 Evening Post; — VS^Brockelmann, Vcrgleichcnde Grammatik der semitischen 

 Sprachcn, vol'. 2 (Berlin, 1913) ; — ZDMG^Zeitschrift der Dcutschen Mor- 

 genldndischen Gesellschaft. 



5 W. H. Roscher, Nektar und Ambrosia, Leipsic, 1883. 



