chapter xi

. I cannot wholly agree with Colonel Lane-Fox (_Anthrop. Coll._ p. 99) when he speaks of a ‘leaf-shaped Sword-blade attached to the end of the spear, like the Thracian _romphea_ and the European _partisan_ of mediæval times.’

[587] May not this older form of Jupiter have derived from the ‘Semitic’ root יה, Jah (_Yah_), carried westward by the Phœnicians? But this is ‘stirring the fire with a Sword,’ against which Pythagoras warns us.

[588] ‘Les Figures de l’Histoire d’après la Bible,’ &c. (the _Athenæum_, Feb. 31, 1880). ‘Lahat’ (the Germ. _lohe_, our ‘low’ or ‘lowe’) is in the singular a ‘flame’; in the plural ‘spells, enchantments by drugs,’ &c.

[589] Mr. Gerald Massey would identify the Jewish Chereb, like the Phœnician Hereba and the Greek Harpé, with the Egyptian Kherp, [Hieroglyphs], the sign of majesty typified by an oar or rather paddle—[Hieroglyphs]. Thus the Kherp first cut the water like a propeller, then the grain as a sickle, and at last it became a Sword—the reaper of men. This is ingenious, but nothing more: the white arm in Egypt shows no sign of derivation from the oar.

[590] So Jeanne d’Arc’s Sword was taken from a church, as will appear in Part II.

[591] Tacitus (_Hist._ v. 13) calls them a ‘band of murderers.’ The ominous word ‘Sicarius’ first occurs in Jewish history during Josephus’ time (_Bell. Jud._ iv. 7; vii. 11). St. Paul was charged by Lysias with heading four thousand Sicarii, who at great feasts murdered their victims with concealed daggers. Also forty Sicarii bound themselves by the Cherem-oath (the original ‘Boycotting’) to slay Paul. The Sica or Sicca will be noticed in another chapter.

[592] The Machabæan epoch is interesting, because during it the idea of a ‘resurrection’ was established. The word should be written ‘Makabi’ if derived from Mi Kamo Ka Baalim Yahveh (Ex. xv. 11).

[593] The number is given in Chronicles (1, xxi. 5) at one million five hundred and seventy thousand without including Levi and Benjamin. Many attempts have been made to reconcile the little difference of two hundred and seventy thousand souls.

[594] I shall notice Assyrian Arms in chap. x.

[595] By a curious feat of etymology, this word, or rather the German ‘Philister’ (confounded with _Balestarius_ or _Balestæus_, a crossbow-man, the militia of small artisans?) has come to signify in modern parlance one indifferent to ‘intellectual interest’ and the ‘higher culture.’ As applied to the enemy it is simply Prig writ large.

[596] _The Old Testament in the Jewish Church_, p. 126, by the Rev. W. Robertson Smith (Blacks, Edinburgh, 1881).

[597] Napoleon Buonaparte was right in attributing the instability of the great empires (Egypt, Babylon, Assyria) bordered by the Bedawin, to the destructive action of the Arab race: ‘That most mischievous nation whom it is never desirable to have either for friends or enemies’ (Ammian. Marcell. xiv. 4). I have enlarged upon this subject in _Unexplored Syria_ (i. 210). The first noted outswarming was of the Hyksos or Shepherd-Kings (B.C. 1480 to 1530?). Another, under the influence of Mohammed the Apostle of Allah, changed the condition of the Old World; and in the present day, Turkish dominion in the regions frontiered by Arabia is being seriously threatened. Hence Ibn Khaldún of Tunis, who in A.D. 1332 began to write philosophical history, assigns to empire in the East three generations (= 120 years) and three several steps. The first, youth, is of growth (campaigning and annexing); the religion being fanaticism and the form of government a limited monarchy of a semi-republican type. The second, manhood, is a period of ‘rest and be thankful,’ of not ‘stirring up things quiet’; of enjoyment, of easy scepticism, of luxury, of despotism, The third, age, is decline and fall, the triumph of financiers and capitalists; of aversion from war and from ‘territorial aggrandisement’; it is distinguished by employing mercenaries, by religious disbelief, by tyrannic rule. (_Ibn Chaldun und seine Culturgeschichte_, Baron A. von Kremer. Wien.)

[598] This has apparently been done by the Rev. Mr. Porter, the author of that unpraiseworthy _Murray’s Handbook_. His Strabo had told him that Gaza lay seven stadia or furlongs from the sea; and St. Jerome that a new town had been built. Yet we are led three miles from the shore to modern Ghazzah, and are gravely told of Moslem absurdities concerning the Makám or tomb of Samson. The old port of which the Ancients speak has evidently been buried by the sands which are attacking Bayrút, and the only survivor of the past may be the site of Shaykh Ijlin on the coast, south of the Mínat or present roads. In noticing Askelon, Mr. Porter tells us all about the old story of Ascalonia, Scallion, Shalot: nothing about the Egyptian Ac-qa-li-na. For a third edition the learned author should take the trouble to consult Brugsch Pasha’s Egypto-Syrian studies.

[599] See chap. iv.

[600] _Cyprus_, before quoted.

[601] Aphrodite or Venus (Urania and Pandemos, Porné and Hetæra), at once the feminine principle in nature, the original mother and the idea of womanly beauty, was a universal personage. In Egypt she was Athor the Goddess of Pleasure, and Ashtar in Nilotic Mendes. Amongst the Arabs she became Beltis, Baaltis the feminine of Bel or Ba’al, and Alitta (Al-ilat the goddess); among the Sidonians Ashtoreth (1 Kings xi. 33); in Phœnicia, Ishtar and Astarte, which Gesenius takes to be a Semitisation of the Persian Sitáreh, a star (_i.e._ Venus); in Byblos, Dionæa and Dione; in other parts of Syria, Derceto, Atergatis (Ta-ur-t, Thoueris), and Nani, the latter still surviving in the Bibi Nani (Lady Venus) of Afghanistan. In Cyprus she was Anat, Tanat, or Tanith (Ta-neith = Athene?); in Persia and Armenia Mítra (Herod. i. 131), Tanata, and Anaitis = Anahid, the planet Venus; and in Carthage, Tarnt Pen Baal.

[602] In Heb. Kinnúr, a lyre of six to nine strings resembling the Nubian article. Hence, probably, κιθάρα, Cithara, Chitarra, Guitar, Zither; but there is a modification by the Persian Sih-tárah or ‘the three-stringed.’

[603] Thus in Jeremiah (xxiii. 29), ‘Is not my word like as a fire? saith the Lord; and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?’

[604] I see with pleasure that Mr. W. P. Palmer proposes to continue his exploration of Phrygia; his lecture before the Hellenic Society (Dec. 14, 1882) promises much. The western half of the great western plateau of Asia Minor, this land of monotonous grandeur, is directly connected with the Ægean Sea by a single line of cleavage which extends from Miletus to Celænæ. Egyptian art and influence found its way to Greece _viâ_ Phrygia as well as through Phœnicia, especially in the early days of the Argonauts and the _Iliads_, when Greece began to be connected with nearer Asia. Hence the wide diffusion of the Midas-myth (B.C. 670): the long-eared king’s tomb was discovered in 1800. I have elsewhere noticed how far Phrygia extended to the West, leaving indelible marks in Spain and Portugal.

[605] The Lycian tongue, as far as we know, resembles Zend; and the coin with a triquetra (Rawlinson’s _Herod._ i. 212) has three characters apparently Hittite. The Lycian confederacy of twenty-three towns (six cities being chief) was strong enough to resist Crœsus (Herodotus). Their relationship was by the ‘distaff-side’ (_Mutterrecht_), as opposed to the ‘Sword-side’; and we find traces of the same antique and logical practice among the Greeks: ἀδελφὸς is evidently derived from δελφύς.

[606] Major di Cesnola _On Phœnician Art in Cyprus_: the proofs are ‘gold and silver ornaments of remarkable beauty and grace,’ which are said to resemble the produce of Hissarlik.

[607] The Cyprian Venus was worshipped in the form of an Umbilicus or Meta, according to Servius (ad _Æn._ i. 724). Others compare it with a pyramid.

[608] _Numismatique et Inscriptions Cypriotes_, Paris, 1832. The Dali inscription is compared with the Lycian at the end of vol. i. pt. 1, _Soc. of Bibl. Archæol._ 1872. Discussing the eighty characters, the Duc de Luynes found twenty-seven Egyptian, twelve Lycian, and seven Phœnician. This would suggest that the syllabary is a branch of the picture-writing which grew to be an alphabet proper in the Nile Valley, and which, modified by the Phœnicians, passed into Greece. Others hold it to be an imperfect modification of the Assyrian cuneiforms, introduced about B.C. 700 and lasting till Alexander’s day. I have already noticed that the cuneiforms were originally pictures of natural objects; and that the same is evidently the case with the Chinese syllabary. Some of the Cypriot signs show a faint resemblance to the Devanagari alphabet, which we know to be a modern offshoot from South Arabian or Himyaritic. A gold incision from the Curium treasury (Plate xxxiv. No. 7) consists of two crescents adossed, which may be either Hittite or a simple ornament. Mr. Sayce, indeed, derives the syllabary from Khita-land. Of the crescent and the star I have already spoken; no date can be assigned to it in decorative art.

[609] I have figured a similar but broader blade as the Novacula in _Etruscan Bologna_, p. 66. The Prague Museum has about a dozen of these sickles found near Tepl: one (_b_) with a rivet-hole and a kind of beading. In the collection of Carinthian Klagenfurth I found a sickle (_c_, No. 1711) fifteen and a half cent. long by four broad, with an Etruscan inscription [Etruscan]. See Chap. X.

[610] The winged Sphinxes upon this patera with hawks’ heads are peculiarly Egyptian. _The_ Sphinx, which may be older than the Pyramids, is a man-headed lion—the ‘union of force and intellect.’ Later types change the human head to that of an asp, a ram, and a hawk; and supply the latter with wings. The same is the case with the Sphinx of Troy and Assyria: it is mostly alate. The Grecian Sphinx changed the bearded human head to that of a woman; the Gyno-Sphinx in Egypt being later than the Andro-Sphinx. We find the female in the doorway of the Xanthus frieze and over the sarcophagus at Amathus (_Cyprus_, pp. 264–267). Those who would understand the peculiar beauty, not only of line but of expression, which the Egyptians threw into the face of the Sphinx have only to study the statue standing to the proper left of the main entrance to Shepheard’s Hotel, Cairo. It came, I believe, from the great Dromos of the Serapeum, the Apis-tombs of the marvellous Memphis cemetery.

[611] Meaning Holy Lady or Great Goddess, the Syria Dea. Preceded by the digamma, the word became Famagosta, and was corrupted to Fama Augusti and to Ammochosti, a sand-heap.

[612] See his diagram, p. 10, _Troy and its Remains_.

[613] See