2 66 PALESTINIAN ARCHAEOLOGY 



The find consists of 62 leaves of papyrus, more or less complete, besides a number of 

 fragments, ostraka and jar-inscriptions. The last are mostly Phoenician names, prob- 

 ably of persons trading with Egypt, not settlers. The papyri, which are mostly dated, 

 cover nearly the whole of the 5th century B.C. Three of the most remarkable were 

 published by Sachau in a preliminary edition in 1907. They contain a detailed descrip- 

 tion of the Jewish temple at Elephantine, from which it appears that animal sacrifices 

 were offered there. Another document gives directions for the celebration of the Pass- 

 over in 41 9 B.C. The relation of these facts to the law of Deuteronomy and their bearing 

 on the question of the date of the book, are still matters of discussion. One of the most 

 startling texts, however, is a list (also dated 419 B.C.) of contributors to the temple funds, 

 in which the sum collected is divided between Yahu (Jehovah) and two other deities 

 Asham-Bethel and 'Anath-Bethel. 



' Other important documents are fragments .of an Aramaic version of the Behistun 

 inscription and of the story of Ahikar, to which reference is made in the book of Tobit 

 (i, 21, 22, and xiv, 10). As this papyrus, though not dated, is clearly of the same age as 

 the rest, it shows the story to be very much older than had been supposed. It is evident- 

 ly of Babylonian origin, so that the Greek tradition that Democritus derived some of his 

 " wisdom "from the 'AjtiKapov ar^Xrj in Babylon is not in itself improbable. 



Under Aramaic must perhaps be classed another inscription from Zinjirli, discovered 

 by F. v. Luschan and published by him in the Mittheilungen aus d. Or. Samml. XIV 

 Ausgrabungen in Sendschirli,iv,'p. 374. See also Lidzbarski, Ephem. iii, p. 218. It was 

 erected by Kalammu, king of Ya'di, in the reign of Shalmaneser II (859-829 B.C.), and 

 gives the names of previous kings, with some historical facts about them. The text is, 

 however, extremely difficult and cannot be said to have been fully elucidated yet. 

 Kalammu himself is mentioned in the house-inscription of Bar-rekub, son of Panammu, 

 king of Sam'al (line 17), found in 1891 at Zinjirli, but the passage was misunderstood. 

 His father Hayya is no doubt the same as Haian son of Gabbar, king of Sam'al in an 

 inscription of Shalmaneser II. 



In this connection must also be mentioned a curious inscription from Ordek-Burnu 

 about eight miles south of Zinjirli, and therefore belonging to the same cycle as the 

 above. Though written in the Aramaic character, and containing some Semitic words, 

 it is clearly not in a Semitic language. This fact, coupled with the bad condition of the 

 stone, makes the reading very difficult. For the present, all that can be said with 

 certainty as to its contents is that we find the Semitic names Shamash and Rekub-el 

 followed by the Semitic title vb* (god) as in the other inscriptions of Zinjirli, and that 

 some points seem to indicate, as we should expect, that the language is Cappadocian or 

 Hittite. From the absence of Assyrian influence in the ornamentation, Lidzbarski 

 thinks that it may perhaps belong to the roth century B.C., though the forms of the 

 characters hardly seem to be so early. The stone is in the Museum at Constantinople. 

 Its text was first published by Peiser (0. L. Z., 1898), and again (1911) by Luschan 

 (op. cit. p. 329) and by Lidzbarski (Ephem. iii, p. 192) after a careful re-examination. 



In 1903 Pognon found an inscription of Zakir, king of Hamath and La'ash (the Lasha 

 of Gen. x, 19), which he published in his Inscriptions Semitiques, Paris, 1907, p. 156. 

 Cf. also Noldeke in Z.A. 1908, p. 376. The stones were found built into a wall, but their 

 precise situation is (doubtless for good reasons) not yet disclosed. Though the language 

 may be classed as Aramaic, it might perhaps be better described more generally as a 

 Canaanite dialect, since, besides purely Aramaic forms, it uses e.g. the peculiarly Hebrew 

 construction of the " Vau consecutive," and its style in other respects strikingly recalls 

 that of the Old Testament. It relates a war with Bar-hadad son of Hazael (cf. ii. Kings 

 xiii, 3. 24) king of Aram, and his allies (who include the king of Sham'al), in which Zakir 

 was successful. Its date must be early in the 8th century, i.e. less than 100 years after 

 the inscription of Mesha. It is not complete, but Pognon hopes to find the rest of it. 

 The same volume also contains a large number of Syriac inscriptions of minor interest. 



(A. E. COWLEY.) 



