A New Inscription from Sidon. Against Which Other Blocks Were Laid

THE EXPOSITORY TIMES. 123 Now and then in our own day something like the angel ancestors were I To which the artist replied, 'I assure you face is se~n on man. It is sometimes visible. during life. .It honestly that I have never yet succeeded in committing may be seen in those few of God's people who have 'the to canvas one-half the beauty which I have seen in any face mind of the Spirit' in every chamber and corner of their that I have ever painted.'-1-IARVEY GOODWIN. hearts. 'The beauty of the Lord our God' is upon them. The lion -like and yet loving face of the great Dr. THE human face alone of all faces is capable of increasing Chalmers seemed often to be surrounded with ·a nimbus, or in dignity, and even in beauty, with age. The great luminous cloud, when he was engaged in preaching, and number of years which belong to human life is in itself a even sometimes when he was on his \vay to the pqlpit. The fact to be taken into account in comparing man with countenance of Dr. John Ker, when he rose from his knees beast; but this. is not the point upon which I am now after praying at a sickbed, was not seldom seen to shine dwelling; I am referring to the fact that old men, and old as with a heavenly radiance. I have read also of a young women'too, have sometimes a beauty which is quite distinct missionary in China who was called ' Mr. Glory-face,' from that of youth, and which, so far as I know, has no because he had so much of the light of God shining on his parallel in the lower levels cif lif~.-1-IARVEY GoODWIN. countenance.-C. JERDAN. FoR REFERENCE. THE portrait of a man is generally the portrait of his Jerdan (C.), For the Lambs of the Flock, 2GO. face; you may have a full- length portrait sometimes, Ker (J.), Sermons, rst series, I70. especially if a lord n'layor wishes to exhibit his robes, or a Knox-Little (W. J.), Manchester Sermons, 2I5. master of foxhounds\ to sh~w his boots ; but these ac Pusey (E. B.), Sermons, 75· cessori~s can be put in by inferior hands, the great artist Thomas (J.), Sermons, iii. 67. concentrates his efforts upon the face. I may throw in a Raleigh (A.), The Little Sanctuary, 295. remark which was made to me by one of the chief portrait Vaughan (C. J.), The Church of the First Days, i. 225. painters of our own day. I told him that I had heard a ·woodford (J. R.), Sermons on Subjects from the New person remark that when his pictures came to be looked Testament, 92. at in future centuries, men would say, How handsome our Wright (D.), The Power of an Endless Life, 226. ·------·~·------- Bv PROFESSOR A. H. SAYeE, M.A., D.D., OxFORD. inscribed on the inner faces of blocks of stone, A New Inscription from Sidon. against which other blocks were laid. We are M. BERGER has lately presented at?- interesting reminded of the Siloam inscription, which too was and important memoir to the French Academy. similarly concealed from view. It deals with some remarkable Phrenician inscrip The text has been put together by M. Berger tions which have been found on the foundation from the various copies of it which have been stones of the temple of Eshmun at Sidon. The brought to light. His reading of it is as follows : ruins are a little to the north-east of the northern 'King Bodastart, king of the Sidonians, grand gate of the town, and not far from the cemeteries son of king Eshmunazar, king of the Sidonians. in which the tombs of the Sidonian kings, Esh in Sidon of the Sea, [and] of the High Heavens munazar and Tabnit, have been discovered. The [0~1 o~co], the land of the Reshephs, [even J Sidon discovery was made accidentally in r 900; since which governs its children, Sidon the sovereign : then the site has been systematically worked under he has built what belongs to this temple for his the direction of the Turkish Government, and god Eshmun, the holy sovereign.' I should my ·another inscription has been found. self prefer to divide the words a little differently M. Berger shows convincingly that the inscrip in one place, and translate 'the land of Resheph tions-of which two are now in Paris-are genuine, of Sidon.' 'The High Heavens' is the name of even though forged copies of them may be in the a locality, and corresponds with a similar expres market. They all repeat the same text, with a sion .on the sarcophagus of Eshmunazar. From few unimportant variations, and, what is most the inscription of Eshmunazar we learn that Sidon curious, were never intended to be seen, being was divided into two quarters : Sidon of the Sea 124 THE EXPOSITORY TIMES. and Sidon of the Mountain. With the phrase process of generation. The Babylonian derivation 'Sidon the sovereign' (i~), M. Berger compares of the biblical narrative is indubitable; so also is Is 238, where the merchants of Tyre are called the elimination from the latter of the polytheistic s!trzm, while in Ezek 2814 Tyre is said to be 'the elements in the Babylonian story, while there is anointed cherub.' just as little doubt that the Babylonian story itself The temple of EshmO.n, which Bodastart claims goes back to a Sumerian origin. What Dr. Radau to have built, was really founded by Eshmunazar, specially claims to have done is to have disen as we learn from the inscription on his sarco tangled the elements that have gone to the making phagus. Bodastart consequently can only have .of each, and to have assigned to each version the restored or added to it. As he does not give the characteristics peculiar to it. name of his father, it i"ould seem that the latter Whether such a minute analysis is possible with could never have been king, and M. Berger is our present materials may be questioned. Dr. doubtless right in believing that Bodastart was Radau, for instance, believes that the division of the successor of Eshmunazar II., the son of the work of Creation into a period of six or seven Tabnit and Ummastoret, and the grandson of days is due to the biblical writers; a recent dis Eshmunazar I. This finally disposes of the theory covery of Mr. King, however, seems to indicate of M. Clermont-Ganneau, according to. which the that it already characterized the Babylonian ac dynasty of Eshmunazar reigned over Tyre in the count. There was, moreover, no uniform Su interval between Abdalonymos, 330 B.c., and merian system of cosmology; the Sumerian Philokles, z8o B.c., the period being too short conception of Creation differed in different parts for four kings and three generations, more especi of the country. As Dr. Radau very rightly ob ally as we know that Eshmunazar II. reigned serves, the story of it which we possess must have fourteen years. We must, therefore, fall back originated at Eridu. There only could the idea upon the older view, which refers the dynasty to have grown up of the watery chaos out of which the Persian epoch. Indeed, as M. Berger re all things have come, and of a creation of the marks, the Egyptianizing influence displayed in earth by planting reeds in the .water and so form the anthropoid form of the sarcophagus of Esh ing a bed or island of silt. The cosmological munazar would nc:>t be very intelligible in the system of an inland city like Nippur would neces Greek period, when Greek fashions had been sarily have been different from that which was adopted in Phcenicia. The same conclusion is taught at Eridu. also indicated by the discovery of the handle of a In the story current at Eridu Dr. Radau finds sistrum with the cartouches of Amasis among the the immediate ancestor of that of the .first chapter ruins of the temple of Eshmun.l of Genesis. According to his view, the Hebrew writer was not only acquainted with it, but must The Sumerian Origin of the First Account have deliberately rejected the later Babylonian version in favour of it. 'Hence the omission in of the Creation in Genesis. his account of the struggle between the powers Dr. Radau has published an interesting little of light and darkness. As in the Sumerian story, book on The Creation-Story of Genesis I. (Chicago, so too in Genesis, the Creation is a process of 1902 ), in which he claims to have shown that it evolution rather than the result of the victory of was derived, in the first instance, from the Baby order over anarchy. lonian Epic of the Creation, with its account of Such a view seems to me to presuppose the the conflict between Merodach and th.e dragon acquaintance of the biblical author, not only with of chaos, and ultimately from a Sumerian source, the cuneiform tablets of Babylonia, but also with in which the Creation was represented as a natural the Sumerian language. Personally, I am quite I An article upon the inscriptions has also been published ready to admit the presupposition, but it must be by Professor Torrey in the .Journal of the American Oriental remembered that there are no proofs of it and Society, xxiii. I. pp. 156 sqq. (1902), but the materials at that the Phcenician cosmologies, of which Dr.

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