kings (see Enoch). It is doubtful whether Lamech is to be identified with the name of any one of these kings; he may have been introduced into the genealogy from another tradition.
In the older narrative in Gen. iv. Lamech’s family are the originators of various advances in civilization; he himself is the first to marry more than one wife, ‘Adah (“ornament,” perhaps specially “dawn”) and Zillah (“shadow”). He has three sons Jabal, Jubal, and Tubal, the last-named qualified by the addition of Cain ( = “smith”[1]). The assonance of these names is probably intentional, cf. the brothers Hasan and Hosein of early Mahommedan history. Jabal institutes the life of nomadic shepherds, Jubal is the inventor of music, Tubal-Cain the first smith. Jabal and Jubal may be forms of a root used in Hebrew and Phoenician for ram and ram’s horn (i.e. trumpet), and underlying our “jubilee.” Tubal may be the eponymous ancestor of the people of that name mentioned in Ezekiel in connexion with “vessels of bronze.”[2] All three names are sometimes derived from יבל in the sense of offspring, so that they would be three different words for “son,” and there are numerous other theories as to their etymology. Lamech has also a daughter Naamah (“gracious,” “pleasant,” “comely”; cf. No’mân, a name of the deity Adonis). This narrative clearly intends to account for the origin of these various arts as they existed in the narrator’s time; it is not likely that he thought of these discoveries as separated from his own age by a universal flood; nor does the tone of the narrative suggest that the primitive tradition thought of these pioneers of civilization as members of an accursed family. Probably the passage was originally independent of the document which told of Cain and Abel and of the Flood; Jabal may be a variant of Abel. An ancient poem is connected with this genealogy:
| “ | Adah and Zillah, hear my voice; |
| Ye wives of Lamech, give ear unto my speech. | |
| I slay a man for a wound, | |
| A young man for a stroke; | |
| For Cain’s vengeance is sevenfold, | |
| But Lamech’s seventy-fold and seven.” |
In view of the connexion, the poem is interpreted as expressing Lamech’s exultation at the advantage he expects to derive from Tubal-Cain’s new inventions; the worker in bronze will forge for him new and formidable weapons, so that he will be able to take signal vengeance for the least injury. But the poem probably had originally nothing to do with the genealogy. It may have been a piece of folk-song celebrating the prowess of the tribe of Lamech; or it may have had some relation to a story of Cain and Abel in which Cain was a hero and not a villain.
The genealogy in Gen. v. belongs to the Priestly Code, c. 450 B.C., and may be due to a revision of ancient tradition in the light of Babylonian archaeology. It is noteworthy that according to the numbers in the Samaritan MSS. Lamech dies in the year of the Flood.
The origin of the name Lamech and its original meaning are doubtful. It was probably the name of a tribe or deity, or both. According to C. J. Ball,[3] Lamech is an adaptation of the Babylonian Lamga, a title of Sin the moon god, and synonymous with Ubara in the name Ubara-Tutu, the Otiartes of Berossus, who is the ninth of the ten primitive Babylonian kings, and the father of the hero of the Babylonian flood story, just as Lamech is the ninth patriarch, and the father of Noah. Spurrell[4] states that Lamech cannot be explained from the Hebrew, but may possibly be connected with the Arabic yalmakun, “a strong young man.”
Outside of Genesis, Lamech is only mentioned in the Bible in 1 Chron. i. 3, Luke iii. 36. Later Jewish tradition expanded and interpreted the story in its usual fashion. (W. H. Be.)
LAMEGO, a city of northern Portugal, in the district of Vizeu
and formerly included in the province of Beira; 6 m. by road
S. of the river Douro and 42 m. E. of Oporto. Pop. (1900)
9471. The nearest railway station is Peso da Regoa, on the
opposite side of the Douro and on the Barca d’Alva-Oporto
railway. Lamego is an ancient and picturesque city, in the
midst of a beautiful mountain region. Its principal buildings
are the 14th-century Gothic cathedral, Moorish citadel, Roman
baths and a church which occupies the site of a mosque, and,
though intrinsically commonplace, is celebrated in Portugal
as the seat of the legendary cortes of 1143 or 1144 (see Portugal,
History). The principal industries are viticulture and the
rearing of swine, which furnish the so-called “Lisbon hams.”
Lamego was a Moorish frontier fortress of some importance
in the 9th and 10th centuries. It was captured in 1057 by
Ferdinand I. of Castile and Leon.
LAMELLIBRANCHIA (Lat. lamella, a small or thin plate, and Gr. βράγχια, gills), the fourth of the five classes of animals constituting the phylum Mollusca (q.v.). The Lamellibranchia are mainly characterized by the rudimentary condition of the head, and the retention of the primitive bilateral symmetry, the latter feature being accentuated by the lateral compression of the body and the development of the shell as two bilaterally symmetrical plates or valves covering each one side of the animal. The foot is commonly a simple cylindrical or ploughshare-shaped organ, used for boring in sand and mud, and more rarely presents a crawling disk similar to that of Gastropoda; in some forms it is aborted. The paired ctenidia are very greatly developed right and left of the elongated body, and form the most prominent organ of the group. Their function is chiefly not respiratory but nutritive, since it is by the currents produced by their ciliated surface that food-particles are brought to the feebly-developed mouth and buccal cavity.
The Lamellibranchia present as a whole a somewhat uniform structure. The chief points in which they vary are—(1) in the structure of the ctenidia or branchial plates; (2) in the presence of one or of two chief muscles, the fibres of which run across the animal’s body from one valve of the shell to the other (adductors); (3) in the greater or less elaboration of the posterior portion of the mantle-skirt so as to form a pair of tubes, by one of which water is introduced into the sub-pallial chamber, whilst by the other it is expelled; (4) in the perfect or deficient symmetry of the two valves of the shell and the connected soft parts, as compared with one another; (5) in the development of the foot as a disk-like crawling organ (Arca, Nucula, Pectunculus, Trigonia, Lepton, Galeomma), as a simple plough-like or tongue-shaped organ (Unionidae, &c.), as a re-curved saltatory organ (Cardium, &c.), as a long burrowing cylinder (Solenidae, &c.), or its partial (Mytilacea) or even complete abortion (Ostraeacea).
The essential Molluscan organs are, with these exceptions, uniformly well developed. The mantle-skirt is always long, and hides the rest of the animal from view, its dependent margins meeting in the middle line below the ventral surface when the animal is retracted; it is, as it were, slit in the median line before and behind so as to form two flaps, a right and a left; on these the right and the left calcareous valves of the shell are borne respectively, connected by an uncalcified part of the shell called the ligament. In many embryo Lamellibranchs a centro-dorsal primitive shell-gland or follicle has been detected. The mouth lies in the median line anteriorly, the anus in the median line posteriorly.
Both ctenidia, right and left, are invariably present, the axis of each taking origin from the side of the body as in the schematic archi-Mollusc (see fig. 15). A pair of renal tubes opening right and left, rather far forward on the sides of the body, are always present. Each opens by its internal extremity into the pericardium. A pair of genital apertures, connected by genital ducts with the paired gonads, are found right and left near the nephridial pores, except in a few cases where the genital duct joins that of the renal organ (Spondylus). The sexes are often, but not always, distinct. No accessory glands or copulatory organs are ever present in Lamellibranchs. The ctenidia often act as brood-pouches.
A dorsal contractile heart, with symmetrical right and left auricles receiving aerated blood from the ctenidia and mantle-skirt,
- ↑ The text of Gen. iv. 22 is partly corrupt; and it is possible that the text used by the Septuagint did not contain Cain.
- ↑ Gen. x. 2, Ezek. xxvii. 13.
- ↑ Genesis, in Haupt’s Sacred Books of the Old Testament on iv. 19, cf. also the notes on 20-22, for Lamech’s family. The identification of Lamech with Lamga is also suggested by Sayce, Expository Times, vii. 367. Cf. also Cheyne, “Cainites” in Encyc. Biblica.
- ↑ Notes on the Hebrew Text of Genesis, in loco.
