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The Libraries of David and Solomon
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011
Extract
A Little to the north of Latakia on the Phœnician coast important discoveries have been made by French excavators. Bronze Age necropolises, now known as Minet el-Baida, and dating from about 1700 to 1200 B.C., have been found, and on an adjoining site, Has Shamra, the remains of a palace have been uncovered, the most flourishing age of which would seem to have been the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries B.C. In the ruins of the palace an armoury, or, rather, workshop, filled with bronze weapons and implementshas been brought to light, as well as a library. The latter was not only once filled with inscribed papyri, but fortunately also with clay tablets which have survived to our time. At least five different languages are represented by the cuneiform texts of which the clay tablets were a necessary accompaniment. One of these was the official Babylonian of the Tel el-Amarna period. Another was Sumerian, a third probably Mitannian, while a fourth provesto be Canaanite, that is to say, Early Phoenician or Hebrew, written in avery simplified form of cuneiform script which has been reduced into an alphabet of twenty-eight letters. The words, moreover, are divided one from the other.
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References
page 783 note 1 This inscription belongs to Yakhi-melek, king of Gebal (Dunand, , Rev. Biblique, xxxix, 3, 07, 1930Google Scholar).
page 785 note 1 Gen. xi, 29: “The father of Milcah, and the father of Iscah”; alternative readings, the same cuneiform character having the values of mil and is. Gen. xiv, 5: “The Zuzim in Ham” as compared with the “Zamzummim” and “Ammonites” of Deut. ii, 20, the cuneiform w(u) and m being expressed by the same character like h (a) and 'a. The list of Israelitish encampments in Num. xxxiii, 2–49, implies a Hebrew rather than a cuneiform (or Egyptian) original. And “the book of the Wars of Yahveh” (Num. xxi, 14) like the Song of the Well (Num. xxi, 17—18) must certainly have been written in the Phoenician alphabet and the Hebrew language.
page 785 note 2 In the fragments of the Mitannian version of the story of the Deluge found at Boghaz Keui the hero's name isNakhma-ul-el, where (e)l is the nominative suffix and -ul anadjectival formative.
page 786 note 1 Erman, , Sitzungsberichte d. Preussischen Akademie, 1924, pp. 86–92Google Scholar. Erman shows that the enigmatical shalshîm of the Hebrew text (xxii, 20) is a reference to the “30 chapters” into which the corresponding “Wisdom of Amen-em-ap(t)” was divided. The latter work may have been compiled out of earlier materials about the same time as when the library of Solomon was established.
page 786 note 2 “Zadok son of Ahitub and Ahimelech son of Abiyathar (were) priests, Seraiah being a scribe”; “Eli-horeph and Ahijah sons of Shisha being scribes, Jehoshaphat son of Ahilud being the chronicler”. So in 2 Sam. xx, 24, 25: “Jehoshaphatson of Ahilud being the chronicler, Shiya (? Shisha) a scribe and Zadok andAbiyathar priests.” In 2 Sam. viii, 16, and 1 Chron. xviii, 16, the definite article is omitted also before mazkîr “chronicler”.
page 788 note 1 Baedeker's, Handbook to Lower Egypt (p. 164)Google Scholar, published in 1894, describes Zoser, in whose reign the treatise was written by his Minister and medical adviser, Imhotep, as “the mythical kingZoser”.