George A. Barton

(Appearing first in Second Edition.)

I

Addition to Part I, Chapter III, §2, (3), p. 70.

The discoveries at Carchemish included Hittite inscriptions, one of which is said to be longer than any Hittite writing yet discovered. A number of stone deities were also found, one of which is a bearded god of the eighth century B. C. seated on a heavy base supported by two lions. Three large gateways were found. On the inside of the court of one of these were dadoes from five to six feet high, “with sculptured slabs of alternating black diorite and white limestone adorned with carved figures of bulls, horses, and chariots.” The acropolis was surmounted by the ruins of a palace of King Sargon of Assyria, who conquered Carchemish, and by the ruins of a Roman palace. An avenue of broad steps, more than a hundred feet long, led up to these.

II

Addition to Part I, Chapter III, §3, to be read after (7) on p. 74.

(8) Hrozny, a Hungarian scholar, published in the Mitteilungen der deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft zu Berlin, No. 56 (December, 1915), a new study of the problem of Hittite decipherment. Owing to the war the publication has not reached the writer. An excellent rÉsumÉ of it has, however, been published by Professor J. H. Moulton in the Expository Times, xxviii, 106 ff. (December, 1916).

It appears that in April, 1914, Professor Hrozny and Doctor Figulla went to Constantinople and copied cuneiform inscriptions from Boghaz Koi until the war recalled them. Hrozny’s study is based on this cuneiform material. He reaches the conclusion that Hittite is not only an Indo-European language, but that it also belongs to the western half of the Indo-European family. In other words, he finds it more closely related to Greek, Latin, Keltic, and the Teutonic tongues than to the Slavonic, Lithuanian, Armenian, and Persian languages, or to Sanscrit and its daughters. According to Hrozny, then, the Hittites came from western Europe, or the center from which the western European peoples radiated. He thinks they crossed into Asia by way of the Bosphorus. He supports his contention by some most interesting philological analogies. The Mitanni, on the other hand, belonged, he thinks, to the eastern half of the Indo-European family. They were closely related to the Slavs, Lithuanians, Armenians, Persians, etc. The indications seem to be that they entered Asia by way of the Caucasus. We await further evidence with great interest.

III

Addition to Part I, Chapter III, §9, p. 102.

Professor George L. Robinson, who was in Jerusalem in the spring of 1914 as Director of the American School, has published in the American Journal of ArchÆology, Vol. XXI, p. 84 (January-March, 1917), a brief statement of the discoveries on Ophel and at Balata. He mentions the finding on Ophel of a tower with rock-cut foundations, certain cave-tombs with oval roofs, a cistern with Roman baths, an inn, a Greek inscription (which tells of a synagogue), and an underground, rock-cut aqueduct, running parallel to and probably older than that of Hezekiah, which conducts the water of Gihon to the Pool of Siloam.

At Balata the foundations of old Hebrew houses were discovered, together with a portion of the Amorite city-wall, which was thick and oblique. The ruins of a palace were also found and a great triple gateway, the longest yet excavated in Palestine. This gate was on the west of the city. Near the tell an Egyptian sarcophagus was found, which some have thought might be the coffin of Joseph.

IV

A NEW BABYLONIAN ACCOUNT OF THE CREATION OF MAN

To supplement Part II, Chapter II, p. 257.

Since the first edition of this book went to press, the writer has had the good fortune to discover among the tablets from Nippur in the University Museum in Philadelphia a new Babylonian account of the creation of man. The text is written in the Sumerian language, and the script is of the mixed cursive variety that was employed during the time of the first dynasty of Babylon and the Kassite dynasty. The text is accordingly older than 1200 B. C., and may have been written before 2000 B. C. It reads as follows:

1. The mountain of heaven and earth

2. The assembly of heaven, the great gods, entered. Afterwards,

3. Because Ashnan had not come forth, they conversed together.

4. The land Tikku had not created;

5. For Tikku a temple-platform had not been filled in;

6. A lofty dwelling had not been built;

7. The arable land was without any seed;

8. A well and a canal (?) had not been dug;

9. Horses and cattle had not been brought forth,

10. So that Ashnan could shepherd herd and corral.

11. The Anunna, the great gods, had made no plan;

12. There was no Šes-grain of thirty-fold;

13. There was no Šes-grain of fifty-fold;

14. Small grain, mountain-grain, and great sal-grain there were not;

15. A possession and houses there were not;

16. Tikku had neither entered a gate nor gone out;

17. Together with the lady Nintu the lord had not brought forth men.

18. The god Ug came; as leader he came to plan;

19. Mankind he planned; many men were brought forth.

20. Food and sleep he planned for them;

21. Clothing and dwellings he did not plan for them.

22. The people with rushes and rope came,

23. By making a dwelling a kindred was formed.

24. To the gardens ...... they gave drink.

25. On that day their [gardens] sprouted (?) ....

26. Their lands covered (?) ............

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Reverse

A colophon states that the tablet contained sixty lines. Only five lines are entirely broken away.

Ashnan was a god of vegetation. Tikku, who had not created the land, was a personified river-bank. The story begins, therefore, before the beginning of vegetation and before the creation of dykes in Babylonia. As in the text translated in Chapter VIII, Part II, considerable space is occupied with the things that were non-existent when the process of creation began. The last sentence of this section asserts that the lord and Nintu had not brought forth men. Nintu is the goddess who in the creation story translated in Chapter VII, Part II, appears as the mother of mankind (see p. 279). The new tablet then states that Ug, the lion god, identified by a later text with Shamash, the sun god, first came forth to plan. “Mankind he planned; many men were brought forth.” The word rendered “planned” has also the meaning “know,” as in Gen. 4:1, where Adam is said to have known Eve. It seems probable, therefore, that the text indicates that men were born from a natural union of Ug and Nintu, just as it is said on p. 284, in another text from Nippur, that irrigation resulted from a similar union of the sun-god and Nintu. This shows that among the Sumerians there were different conceptions of the way mankind was made. A Babylonian story of the making of a man which is much more like the narrative of Gen. 2 than that contained in this new tablet is given on p. 256.

After telling how men were brought forth, and how they were left to provide houses and clothing for themselves, the new tablet tells how reed huts, similar to those still seen in the Babylonian marshes, were made. Clans were formed and irrigation begun. Here the obverse becomes too broken for connected translation.

At the beginning of the reverse several lines are fragmentary. From what can be made out, some god seems to be addressing Enlil. Reference is made to Duazagga, the heavenly abyss, which is described as “the way of the gods,” probably an allusion to the Milky Way. It is implied that the gods live along this way. It seems that all was not going well with men on the earth, so this deity proposed to make a dwelling for Ashnan, the god of agriculture, outside of Duazagga, presumably on the earth. Two-thirds of the fold perished; Ashnan accordingly created plants as food for men. This reminds us of how plants and fruits were given to man as food in Gen. 1:29. Ashnan also caused it to rain in order to promote the growth of vegetation. This, however, created a new evil. The reed huts were washed away, together with a third of the fold. Some god, probably Enlil, accordingly came down from heaven, and built a city. This gave to human society the required stability. In this stable society the god gave the scepter of command into man’s hand just as in Gen. 1:28 man is given dominion over all the lower orders of life. In this connection we find the statement:

“The lord caused them to be and they came into existence,” the form of which reminds one of the statement in Gen. 1:3, “God said, Let there be light: and there was light.”

The next line: “Companions calling them, a man with his wife he made them dwell,” recalls Gen. 2:18 and 24. The last line of the text is the Babylonian equivalent of the last clause of Gen. 2:24.

This text as a whole describes the creation of man, sketches the vicissitudes of pastoral life, and ends with a statement of the greater security and prosperity of urban life. It attributes the origin of everything to the gods.

Addition to Part II, Chapter XI, p. 309.

The entrance of Abraham and later of Jacob and his sons into Egypt in time of famine (Gen. 12:10 and 47:5-12) is strikingly illuminated by the following reports of officials stationed at fortresses on the Egyptian border.

The first of these texts was inscribed in the tomb of Harmhab, the founder of the nineteenth dynasty, though there is reason to believe that it was written during the reign of Amenophis IV of the eighteenth dynasty (1375-1357 B. C.). Some of the lines are broken. It reads as follows:

The second text comes from the reign of Merneptah (1225-1215 B. C.). It reads as follows:

These texts make it evident that at different periods of Egyptian history Asiatic tribes in time of famine and stress sought and found refuge in Egypt as the Israelites are said to have done.

VI

ALLEGED TRACES OF THE “TEN TRIBES” IN EXILE

To supplement Part II, Chapter XVII, at the end of § 10, p. 372.

In 2 Kings 15:29 it is said that Tiglath-pileser [IV] captured certain cities in Galilee, and carried their inhabitants captive to Assyria. In 2 Kings 17:6 it is said that when Samaria was destroyed by the Assyrian king [Sargon, in 722 B. C.], Israelites were carried captive to Halah and Gozan, which were situated on the Khabur River in Mesopotamia.

Two groups of cuneiform tablets, one in the museum at Berlin, the other in the British Museum, are thought to confirm these statements by the evidence they give that Hebrews who reverenced Jehovah were living in that region.[632] The evidence consists chiefly of a divine name A-u, employed as a component part of proper names just as Jo- and Jeho-, abbreviations of the name of Jehovah, are employed in Hebrew proper names in the Old Testament. Indeed, A-u is the form that Jo- or Jeho- would take, if expressed in Assyrian characters.

The names in question occur in a series of documents which record the transfer of slaves. If the men in question were Hebrews they would seem to have been interested in the business of buying and selling slaves. The documents are much alike. It will suffice to translate one of them:

The significant name here is Aushezib, meaning, “Au saves.” If Au is a translation of Jeho-, the name, in its entirety, would be a translation of one of the Hebrew forms of the name Joshua. Other names, into which the name of the god Au enters, appear sometimes in the body of a contract and sometimes among the witnesses. They are ^ilA-u-salim, “the god Au gives peace”; A-u-iddina, “Au gives,” equivalent to the Hebrew Jonathan; A-u-akhiddin, “Au has increased the brothers”; A-u-daninani, “Au is our mighty-one”; A-u-e-ballitani, “O Au, make us live”; ^ilA-u-dÂn(?)-ilani, “Au is judge of the gods”; A-u-sabi, “Au satisfies.”[633]

The tablets were written at Kannu, the Canneh of Ezek. 27:23, which was near Haran in Mesopotamia. One text states that if the seller of the slave ever brings legal action, he shall pay ten silver manas and one gold mana “at the sanctuary of the god A-u, who dwells in Kannu.” If the god A-u be really the Hebrew Jehovah, the captives from Samaria and Galilee had built for him a temple in Kannu, as the Jews at Elephantine afterward did on the island in the Nile. (See p. 387, f.)

The documents in which these names occur appear to be dated between 666 and 606 B. C. They are dated according to the Assyrian method of dating, which shows that they were written under the Assyrian monarchy, but the eponyms in which they are dated are not found in the extant portions of the Assyrian Eponymlist. They were therefore written after the year 666.[634] This fixes the dates of these documents in the seventh century—the century after Tiglath-pileser IV and Sargon transported to this region parts of the ten “lost tribes,” and, if A-u really is a form of the name Jehovah, these tablets afford us a little glimpse of some of these Hebrews in exile.