OraENTAL DISCOVERIES ON OLD TESTAMENT HISTOEY. 27 



could not have been used in the Book of Daniel, unless it liad 

 been written after the dissemination of Greek influence in Asia, 

 tlirough the conquests of Alexander the Greed."* 



The importance of a point like that must not be judged by 

 its seeming insignificance. It is just the kind of slip which 

 a late writer is almost certain to make at some point in a 

 narrative professedly written in an earlier period ; and, if it 

 were certain that no Greek instrument had entered Babylonia 

 till the days of Alexander the Great (332 B.C.), the presence of 

 these words in the Book would be fatal to its claims. Ihit in 

 that contention criticism has been more than usually unfor- 

 tunate. 'J'he Book of Daniel was written about 536 B.C.. 

 Professor Flinders Petrie has excavated the remains of the- 

 Egyptian cities of Naucratis and Daplnuie, or Tahpanhes, which 

 were inhabited by 30,000 Greek troops about 665 B.C. — 

 130 years before Daniel was written. And seeing that there- 

 was constant commercial intercourse between Babylonia and 

 tlje west, here was a channel by which Greek instruments 

 could have reached Babylon long before 536 B.C. This conclu- 

 sion is thus forcibly stated by Dr. Petrie. He says : " We 

 cannot doubt that Tahpanhes — the first place on the road to 

 Egypt — was a constant refuge for the Jews during the series of 

 Assyrian invasions: especially as they met here, not the 

 exclusive Egyptians, but a mixed foreign population, mostly 

 Greeks. Here, then, was a ready source for the introduction 

 of Greek words and names into Hebrew long before the 

 Alexandrian age ; and even before the fall of Jerusalem the 

 Greek names of musical instruments and other words may have 

 been heard in the courts of Solomon's temple."t 



A difficulty, which bulked more largely than the above, was 

 the place assigned to " Ijelshazzar." That monarch is represented 

 as the last of the Babylonian kings, and as meeting his death on 

 the night when the palace of Bal wlon was captured by the troops 

 or Cyrus. Apparently, however, no king of the name was known 

 to the ancient wrir.ers who allude to this portion of Babylonian 

 history. They name the last king Nabonadius or Nabonidus. 

 The monuments confirmed their account by showing that this 

 monarch was named N'abonaliid. The case against Daniel thus 

 assumed a graver aspect ; for it was plainly impossible to 

 assume that Belshazzar was only another name by which 

 Nabonahid was known to his contemporaries. The events 



* Dr. Driver, Introduction^ etc., p. 471. The italics are Dr. Driver's, 

 t T en Years Digging in Egypt. 



