THE BIBLE PEDIGREE OF THE NATIONS OF THE WORLD. 145 



and we remember that the " queen," or queen-mother, of 

 Belshazzar, w^hen addressing him, spoke of Nebuchadnezzar as his 

 father, wliereas he was certainly not a paternal ancestor, though 

 the founder of Babylon's greatness and probably the father of 

 Belshazzar's mother (as recent discovery tends to show). 



I w^ould add that two records are found of the paying of 

 tribute by Jehu to Shalmanezer 11. In the first, after telling 

 how lie shut Hazael up in 1 )amascus and then ravaged his 

 country, the Assyrian King says, " In those days I received the 

 tribute of the Tyrians, the Sidonians, and of Yaua, son of Khumri." 

 In the second, on the famous Black Obelisk which stands in 

 the ^^imrood Central Saloon, at the British Museum, is seen 

 the Assyrian king with attendants behind him receiving the 

 ambassador of Jehu, followed by other Assyrian officials, who is 

 prostrating himself before the king, and underneath are the 

 words, " The tribute of Yaua, son of Khumri : silver, gold, a 

 golden cup, golden vases, golden vessels, golden buckets, lead, a 

 staff for the hand of the king (and) sceptres I received."* And 

 the face of the northern Israelite ambassador is the face of a 

 modern Jew,, with the same strongly marked aquiline nose : 

 which shows how silly is the contention that these features are 

 peculiar to the true Jews only; while, as for the further absurd 

 supposition that they came upon them as a mark of disgrace 

 after they had sinned more grievously than the northern 

 Israelites, the same features are conspicuous upon all the 

 figures of Jews that are so abundant in the Assyrian bas-reliefs 

 of the siege of Lachish, when the mass of the northern tribes 

 had already gone into exile tor then- sins, and the revivals of 

 true religion among the Jews proper under Hezekiah and 

 Josiah were yet to come. 



The tribute that Jehu paid to Shalmanezer 11. was indeed a 

 heavy one, although perhaps w^e are to understand that ifc was 

 a danegeld once levied rather than a tax annually paid, and 

 that Shalmanezer took away these treasures from Jehu, just as 

 Shishak had taken away Solomon's golden shields from 

 Eehoboam ; but it incidentally shows how rich in gold the 

 land of Israel had once been in Solomon's days (as the 

 Scripture tells us), and for a good while after. 



And the Assyrian word for silver here used — namely, casin — 

 suggests the origin of a well-known geographical name which 

 the Greek and Latin writers were not able to trace. The 



See Pinches, pp. 336, 337 ; and British Museum monument and 

 printed Assyrian guide-book (p. 25, and Plate II). 



