SEMITIC
710
SEMITIC
and important, since on the one hand this great nation
of navigators has not left us any other monuments of
its language, and on the other hand the alphabet of
these inscriptions is the prototype of all the Semitic,
Greek, and Latin alphabets.
A. — The Phoenician inscriptions properly so-called, i. e. those found in Phoenicia, are neither the most numerous nor the most ancient. The longest, such as that of the sarcophagus of King Eshmunazar (at the Louvre) and those of the foundations of the tem- ple of Eshmiln at Sidon, date only from the Ptolemaic period. The stela of Jchumelek, King of Gebal (Bib- los), now at Paris, dates from the fourth or fifth cen- tury of our era. Anotlier, found at Hassanbeyli, dates from the seventh or eighth century. Several seals and carved stones are also of great antiquity; but the oldest of all inscriptions is a mutilated bronze tab- let (now in the Louvre), discovered in 1877 in the Is- land of Cj'prus and which bears a dedication to the god Baal of Lebanon ; it belongs to at least the ninth century b. c.
The" different colonies founded by the Phoenicians have furnished several hundreds of inscriptions, dis- covered in Cyprus, Sicily, Sardinia, Malta, etc. Most of them are older than those of Phoenicia; that of Nola (Sardinia) dates from the eighth century. They are generally funeral or religious texts, except those of Cyprus, which furnish historical documents.
B. Punic Inscriptions. — This name is given to numerous Phoenician inscriptions found in North Africa and especially in the ruins of Carthage. They are more than 3000 in number. If we except several hundred consisting of religious texts (temple dedica- tions, tariffs for sacrifices, etc.) or epitaphs of great persons (suffetes, priests, etc.) all the others are votive offerings to the goddess Tanit or god Baal-Hammon, and give no information save the name of tlie one offering the little stone stela on which the dedication is inscribed.
C. Neo-punic Inscriptions. — These are distin- guished by the more cursive form of the writing and also by the language: they are of greater philological interest, some of the letters performing the office of vowels. Their contents are the same as those of the other document: historical inscriptions (such as that of Micipsa), dedications of monuments, epitaphs, vo- tive offerings, and religious consecrations. They are derived for the most part from the vicinity of Con- stantine and from Tunis, some are from Sardinia and Sicily. About 200 are known, belonging to the period between the fall of Carthage and the end of the first century of the Christian era.
II. Aramaic Inscriptions. — A. Ancient Aramaic. — The most ancient monuments of western Aramaic which have reached us are a small number of lapidary inscriptions. The most important come from North- em Syria; these are: the inscription of Iladad (eighth century, thirty-four lines), those of Panamu (twenty- three fines) and of Barekub (twenty fines), kings of Sam'al, contemporaries of Thfglathj)halasar III; they were discovered at Zingerli and are in the Berlin Mu- Roum. Two stc'lif! found at Nerab in ISOl are now in the Ijouvre; in 1908 a mutilated stela (thirty-five fines) erfctcd by Zakir, King of Hamath, a contemporary of .loas, King of Israel (r-ighth century), was discovered. Inscriptions of the fourtli and fifth centuries B. c. have been disfiovered in Cilicia and Syria. Those of Ara- bi.ssfjH in Cappadocia belong only to the second cen- inry. The great stela of the Louvre found at Teima in Arabia has twenty-three fines of writing; it belongs to the fifth century. Other inscriptions, most of them in the British Museum, are of Egyptian origin; that found at Sakkara dates from 482, another found at As.souan, from 458. Besides these large monuments there is a series of smaller ones, surh as cylinders, weights, soals, several of which arc contemporary with the oldest inscriptionB.
B. Papyrus and Ostraka. — Directly connected with
inscriptions through language and period are the Ara-
maic texts written on papj^rus and discovered in
Egypt. Nearly all of them proceed from the Jewish
military colony estabfished in the Island of Elephan-
tine (Philoe). Four large sheets in the Museum of
Cairo, found in 1904, contain about 240 lines of writ-
ing, well preserved. The documents (sale, gift, re-
lease, marriage contract, etc.) proceed from the same
Jewish family and are dated (471-411 b. c). Other
leaves, in greater number but less complete, belong to
the Museum of Berlin and have just been published
(1911) by M. Sachau. The first three concerning the
worship and the sanctuary of Jahweh at Elephantine
are of great interest to Biblical study. There are be-
sides letters, accounts, lists of colonists, and what
would not be looked for, fragments of the history of
the sage Ahikar and a partial translation of the cele-
brated inscription of Darius, graven in cuneiform
characters on the rocks of Behistoum in Persia. Ele-
phantine has furnished also a large number of frag-
ments of pottery, commonly called ostraka, bearing in-
scriptions in ink, of the same date as the papyri.
Several hundred are preserved in the collection of the
"Corpus I. S." at Paris. Thanks to afi these docu-
ments we are at present able to form a more or less
exact idea of the Aramaic language in the period prior
to the Scriptural Books of Esdras and Daniel.
C. Nabatean Inscriptions. — Those hitherto discov- ered are about 400 in number, apart from the Sinaitic inscriptions. Most of them have been found at Bos- tra and in the neighbouring regions, at Petra, the capi- tal of the Nabatean kingdom, even in Arabia, at Teima and especially at Hegra and its neighbourhood. But the Nabateans, like all merchant peoples, left traces outside their own country, and inscriptions have been found in Egypt, Phoenicia, and in Italy at Pozzuoli and Rome, where their colony had a temple. The rocks of Sinai bear numerous and celebrated in- scriptions, which the tradition of the Alexandrine Jews, as reported by Cosmas Indicoplcustes, regarded as Hebrew and as dating from the tune of Moses. Forster in his famous books published at London (1851, 1856) endeavoured to exi)lain tliem in this sense and his ridiculously audacious attempt was repeated by Sharpe ("Hebrew Inscriptions from Mount Si- nai", London, 1875). As early as 1840 F. Beer had established that they were Nabatean inscriptions, which is undoubtedly true. Some of them are dated, the oldest from the year 150 of our era, the most re- cent from 252; all the others date from about these two years. As a general rule they consist only of projjcr names accompanied by a religious formula. Aliout 2000 of tliem have been published in the "Corpus". With the aid of inscriptions and coins it has been pos- sible to reconstruct an almost uninterrupted series of the kings of Nabatene, from Obodas I (90 B. c.) to Maliku III (a. d. 106, the date of the Roman con- quest).
D. Palmyran Inscriptions. — The oldest is dated from the year 9 b. c, the most recent from a. d. 271, the others range themselves in the intervening space of time. Al)out 500 are known to us. Many are bilingual, Greek and Palmyran. The longest and most curious (at the Hermitage! Museum, St. Peters- burgh) is a customs tariff drawn up in Greek and Palmyran and promulgated by the local Senate in l.'}7. The others arc: honorary inscri])lions carved on tlie base of statues erected in honour of princes and tlic leaders of caravans who had successfully conducted great commercial expeditions; religious inscriptions: dedications of temples, columns, votive altars, etc.; very numerous funeral inscriptions carved on the doors of tombs or beside the bust of the dead carved in relief. Many of these monuments, discov- ered at Palmyra itself, are now scattcrerl throughoutthe mustiums of Europe and America. As a whole they
