LIBRARY OF THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY
PRINCETON, N.J.
'^
Purchased by the
Mary Cheves Dulles Fund
BSI555
.8.B77
DADDA-'IDRI
OR
THE ARAMAIC OF THE
BOOK OF DANIEL
y BY
CHARLES BOUTFLOWER, M.A.
LATE VICAR OF TERLING, ESSEX
AUTHOR OF " IN ^ND AROUND THE BOOK OF DANIEL," AND OF " THE BOOK OF
ISAIAH (CHAPTERS X-XXXIX) IN THE LIGHT OF THE ASSYRIAN MONUMENTS"
" Let not the Aramaic be lightly esteemed by thee, seeing
that the Holy One {blessed be He !) has given honour to it
in the Pentateuch {Gen. xxxi. 47), in the Prophets {Jer.
X. 11), and in the Hagiographa {Dan. it. ^)." Jerusalem
Talmud {Sotah vii. 2).
5 1S32
LONDON
SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING
CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE
NORTHUMBERLAND AVENUE, W.C.2
PREFACE
The Author hopes that this treatise may be of use to
many persons who possess only an elementary knowledge
of Hebrew, as well as to more advanced students ; hence the
frequent references to Francis Browne's Hebrew Lexicon.
He also wishes to call especial attention to the important
epigraphic feature discussed in Note II., which has a very
distinct bearing on the age of the Book of Daniel.
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN.
DADDA-IDRI
OR
THE ARAMAIC OF THE BOOK OF DANIEL
The problem of Biblical Aramaic has of late years awakened
great interest. The dialect which meets us in the Book of
Daniel in all its purity, and in a less pure form in the Book
of Ezra, has justly been deemed worthy of close investiga-
tion, seeing that it has a bearing on the age of those Sacred
Books, and on the light in which we must regard them.
Accordingly, scholars have taken great pains to show that
the rendering of the original dh sound by d rather than
by z, which forms so striking a characteristic of the Aramaic
of Daniel and is so consistently maintained throughout that
Book, can only be looked upon as a proof of its late author-
ship.* The evidence brought forward in support of this
conclusion is at first sight very strong. It runs thus : —
In the more ancient Aramaic inscriptions, viz. those from
ZinjirH, Hamath, and Nerab, ranging from the second
decade of the eighth down into the sixth century b.c, and
also in the Aramaic dockets on business tablets from Assyria
and Babylonia, ranging from the end of the eighth down
into the fifth century B.C., as well as on the Teima Stone,
which on epigraphic grounds may be assigned to the end
of the sixth or the first half of the fifth century B.C., we
meet with z only. But when we come to the dated papyri
from Elephantine, which practically extend over the fifth
century B.C., and to other undated papyri found with them
* G. B. Driver, The Aramaic of the Book of Daniel : Journal of Biblical
Literature, vol. xlv (1926), pp. 110-119 ; and H. H. Rowley, Tfie Aramaic
of the Old Testament, Oxford University Press (1928).
3
4 Dadda-idri, or
and judged to belong to the latter half of the same period,
the d makes its appearance, and — so it is said — with
increasing frequency, and hence that period, we are told,
must be looked upon as a " period of transition." *
My object in this essay is to show that a dental dialect
most certainly existed in the Old Aramaic, and that the
papyri from Elephantine, so far from exhibiting the sibilant
dialect as giving place to the dental, rather exhibit the dental
dialect as affected by the sibilant in a mixed community,
drawn from various quarters, such as the Jewish garrison
at Elephantine. I shall also endeavour to show, that the
difference in dialect is due to locality and contact, rather
than to the age of the inscriptions and documents ; and in
doing this I shall call attention to evidence deducible
from the cognate languages of South Arabia and
Abyssinia.
Let me, then, observe at the outset, that there is one
argument which those who take an opposite view have
failed to meet, viz. the fact that in the Assyrian records of
the ninth century B.C., dealing with the campaigns of
Shalmaneser III (858-824 B.C.), the name of the Syrian
king, Hadadezer II, the Benhadad of i Kings xx., is spelt
in the cuneiform Dadda-id-ri and Dadda-'-id-ri, in either
case with a ^ in the latter component instead of a z. As
a possible explanation of this seemingly strange phenomenon
G. B. Driver suggests that the Hebrew root itj;, not being
found in Assyrian, and izri sounding very like izru, the
Assyrian for " a curse," the scribes of Shalmaneser pre-
ferred to change izri into ilri on the analogy of their own etir
" saved." Now it is quite true that the cuneiform
characters, read as id-ri, can also be read it-ri, the same
character standing for id and it ; but that the Assyrian
scribes should deliberately change the sibilant z into the
dental t is most unlikely. However, proof can be brought
to show that the Assyrians were not troubled with any such
qualms as Driver suggests, for when they had to deal with
* Rowley, pp. 19. 25.
The Aramaic of the Book of Da?iiel 5
the name of Azariah, king of Judah, which contains the
same root, i?J?, the}^ wrote it Az-ri-ia-u, or Iz-ri-ia-u, with
a z and not with a d, following the Hebrew pronunciation
of the name. In just the same way, I imagine, Dadda-
id-ri, or Dadda-'-id-ri, was written down just as it was
heard spoken at Damascus.*
It is still urged, however, that this single name, Dadda-
'idri, is but slender evidence on which to build up a theory
as to early Aramaic orthography in the ninth century
B.c.t But when we search further, the evidence is found
to be by no means so slender as was at first supposed. In
An Assyrian Doomsday Book, written by that great autho-
rity on the contract tablets, the late Dr. Johns, we are
furnished with cuneiform documents, describing different
farms in the neighbourhood of Haran and giving the names
of their owners or occupiers. On these tablets, written as
their contents show while the Assyrian empire was still
standing, we meet with several Syrian names having idri
for their second component, such as Ata-idri, Au-idri,
Atar-idri, Bel-Harran-idri, Iln-idri, Milki-idri ; also
Nashkhu-idri, and Si' -idri, where Nashkhu and Si' are the
local pronunciation of the names Nusku and Sin ; these
last two names thus forming a voucher that on the Haran
tablets names were written down just as they were spoken.
It appears, then, that in Haran in the seventh century b.c,
as well as at Damascus in the ninth century B.C., idri, and
not izri, was the form which corresponded to the Hebrew
^'V. But if this were so, we should expect to find the same
feature in other Syrian proper names containing roots
which in Hebrew have i for one of their letters. And this
is just what we do find when we run through the proper
names in Johns' book. Thus the name Si'-dikir, " Sin
remembers," finds its parallel in the Hebrew Jo-zakar,J
" Jah remembers " ; whilst Si'-ahadi may be compared
* With regard to the name Dadda-idri, see Note i at the end of this
treatise.
t Rowley, p. 25.
X 2 Kings xii. 21.
6 Dadda-idrty or
with Jehoahaz, and N ashklm-dimri with Zimri, the abbre-
viated name of one of the kings of Israel.
The existence of a dental dialect in the ancient Aramaic
may, then, be said to be proved. But it will still be asked :
If such a dialect existed, how is it that we never meet with
it in the older Aramaic inscriptions ? The answer to this
question lies in the fact that the Arameans were diffused
over a very wide area, and that the older inscriptions
come to us from a very limited portion of that area. To
reahze this it will be well for us to glance at the early
history of this people and to endeavour to trace their
wanderings.
The first bit of history that we know concerning the
Arameans is told us in Amos ix. 7, where Jehovah declares
emphatically that Israel is not the only nation whose steps
he has guided. His words are as follows : " Have not I
brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt, and the Phili-
stines from Caphtor (Crete), and the Sjnrians (Heb.
Arameans) from Kir? " The Arameans, then, have come
from Kir, and to Kir Amos predicts that they will be carried
back (chap. i. 5), a prediction fulfilled by Tiglathpileser
(2 Kings xvi. 9). But where is Kir ? Evidently we must
look for it away from Damascus, it being the practice of
that king to transport conquered peoples across the empire.
This, however, does not help us much. But Hommel
points out that an answer to the question can be obtained
from Isa. xxii. 6, where the prophet, speaking apparently
of forced contingents in the Assyrian army, couples the bow-
bearers of Elam with the shield-bearers of Kir.* Kir, then,
is to be sought for on the border of Elam. Now it is not
a little remarkable that Tiglathpileser, after giving us a
Hst of no less than thirty-five Aramean tribes whom he has
subjugated, concludes it with the words, " the Arameans,
all of them, on the banks of the Tigris, Euphrates, Surappi,
and Uknu." t The Uknu is the river which flows past
* Ancient Hebrew Tradition, 207 ff.
t Nimrud Tablet.
U\P INTENDKIJ TO ILLUSTRATE THK WIDE DLSPERSION OL THE
ARAMEANS.
/•'acini; />. 6
The Aramaic of the Book of Daniel 7
Shushan, the Capital of Elam, so that Arameans were still
dwelling in Kir in the days of Tiglathpileser. But would
that king be likely to take the Arameans of Damascus and
plant them down among the stock from which they originally
sprang ? Yes ! for this very good reason : that the two had
been so long parted, and had now so little in common, that
their Aramean origin would only be the more likely to beget
a certain antagonism, each party claiming to be the true,
genuine Arameans.
Only a fraction of the Arameans can have remained in
Kir. The more enterprising part of the nation spread them-
selves far and wide. We can trace their wanderings up the
river Euphrates and on into the vast Syrian desert, where
Tiglathpileser I, ca. iioo B.C., directed a campaign against
them. " For the twenty-eighth time," writes that monarch,
" in pursuit of the Ahlame Arameans I crossed the
Euphrates : the second time in one year. From Tadmar
of Amurru (the Amorite Land), Anat of Suhi (the Shuhites
of the Book of Job), even as far as Rapiku of Karduniash
(Babylonia Proper) I defeated them." Tadmar is the
Biblical " Tadmor in the wilderness" (2 Chron. viii. 4),
known to the Greeks and Romans as Palmyra ; in the
district from which come the Palmyrene inscriptions. Anat
is the modern Anah on the Euphrates, and Rapiku lies
further down the same stream, only three days' march from
the Babylonian Sippar.* The Arameans can be traced up
the Middle Euphrates by the names of the different city-
states or of their rulers. Bit " house," i.e. kingdom,
followed by the name of the founder, is a frequent mark
of an Aramean settlement. Thus, a little above Anat we
have Bit-Shabaia,t and higher up the state Khindani, whose
ruler, Ammialaba, has a Semitic name. J Above Khindani
is the state Laqe, whose king, Ila, as well as his chief men,
Azi-ilu and Khinti-ilu, all bear names in which it is impos-
* See the inscription of Tukulti-Urta II in Luckenbill's Ancient Records
of Assyria and Babylonia, vol. i, p. 129.
t Annals of Ashumatsirpal, col. iii.
X Annals of Tukulti-Urta II, Ancient Records, i. 130.
8 Dadda-idri, or
sible not to see the name of El, the chief god of the Syrians,
and indeed in Hebrew the word for " God." * Going still
further up the Euphrates to the bend where it approaches
nearest to the Mediterranean, we come to Bit-Adini,*
" The House of Eden," mentioned in Amos i. 5, apparently
as a vassal-state of Damascus. To the west of Bit-Adini,
and near the head of the Gulf of Iskanderun, is the state of
Sam'al,! whose rulers bear Semitic names, such as Gabbar
and Bamah. J Here have been found three Aramaic inscrip-
tions WTitten in the sibilant dialect, one dating probably
from the first quarter of the eighth century B.C., the other
two about seventy years later. North of Sam'al is the
state of Gurgum, the capital of which was Markasi, the
modern Marash. In the days of Sargon the ruler of Gurgum
bore the Hittite name Tarkhulara. He was assassinated
by his " son," i.e. successor, Mutallu : a Semitic name, or
rather title, equivalent to our " Highness," and found also
in the neighbouring state of Qummukh.§ Gurgum and
Qummukh mark the furthest advance of the Arameans in
the north-west. But it is worthy of notice that two Aramaic
inscriptions, both probably belonging to the fifth century
B.C., have been found rather further to the west ; one in
the valley of the 'river Lamas, i| the other on the banks of
the Cydnus, fifteen miles north-east of Tarsus : ]j so that
Aramaic must to some extent have been spoken in Cilicia.
From Gurgum we must travel direct south down the
eastern border of the maritime states to Hamath, occupying
the valley of the Orontes and lying immediately to the
north of Palestine. Hamath in the days of David was an
Hittite state, but two centuries later we find it in the hands
of the Arameans. Zakir, king of Hamath, who was a
* Annals of Ashumatsirpal, col. iii.
t Nimrud Tablet of Tiglathpileser III.
X Inscription of Kilammu, king of Sam'al.
§ Annals of Sargon, tenth and eleventh years.
II G. A. Cooke, North Semiiic Inscriptions, p. 194.
if Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 35 (1915-17), pp. 370-74
The epigraphic value of this inscription cannot be overestimated : see
Note 2 at the end of this treatise.
The Aramaic of the Book of Daniel 9
contemporary of Benhadad III, the son of Hazael, mentioned
in 2 Kings xiii. 3, 25, has left us an early inscription in
Aramaic, which Kraeling, interpreting its contents by the
events noted in the Assyrian Eponym Lists, assigns to ca.
772 B.C.*
Halfway between Gurgum and Hamath, but rather more
to the east, hes Aleppo, the ancient Halman, in the vicinity
of which have been found two Aramaic inscriptions, dating
probably from the first half of the sixth century B.C., and
written in the sibilant dialect.
We are now approaching Damascus and a group of
Aramean states, mentioned in the Old Testament, which
stretched from the north-east border of Israel to the further
side of the Euphrates, viz. Aram-Zobah (Ps. Ix, title), Aram-
Damascus (2 Sam. viii. 6), Aram-Beth-Rehob (2 Sam. x. 6),
Aram-Maacah (i Chron. xix. 6), and Aram-Naharaim
(i Chron. xix. 6). Of these the chief was Damascus.
Damascus, because of the fertihty of its well-watered oasis,
must needs have been a very ancient settlement, of which
probably it could have been said as of Jerusalem, " the
Amorite was thy father, and thy mother was an Hittite." f
But just as it was ordered by God that Jerusalem should
become the capital of Israel, so it was His intention that
Damascus should become the head of Aram. The earliest
mention of Damascus in the Old Testament is in connection
with Abraham's defeat of the Elamite host (Gen. xiv. 15).
Then, in the next chapter, as Sayce points out, J we read
that the patriarch had a trusty steward w^ho hailed from
Damascus and bore the distinctively Aramean name
Eleazar. To the Arameans El is Dadda (Hadad) : to the
Israelites El is Jehovah. Hadad-ezer, or Dadda-idri, meant
somewhat the same to them as Azariah to the Jews. If
Abraham met with Eleazar at Damascus, then the Arameans
must have been in that vicinity about 2000 B.C. Of the
* Aram and Israel, chap. xi.
t Ezek. xvi. 3.
X Patriarchal Palestwe, pp. 175-76.
10 Dadda-idri, or
other Aramean states mentioned above we know little or
nothing with the exception of Aram-Naharaim. Aram-
Naharaim, " Aram of the Two rivers," the Nahrima of the
Amama tablets, probably got its name from the Balikh and
the Khabur (Habor), two affluents from the north which
join the Euphrates where it flows to the east. This region
formed the ancient kingdom of Haran, from whence came
the tablets which have already engaged our attention.
Haran has indeed a very close connection with our subject.
It is there that we have come into contact with the dental
dialect, and it is from the lips of an inhabitant of Haran
that we first hear the Aramaic spoken. The heap of stones
which Jacob and Laban the Syrian (Heb. Aramean) have
thrown up for a boundary between them, is called by Laban
Jegar Sahadutha, by Jacob Galeed. Both names have the
same meaning " the heap of witness " ; but the former is
Aramaic, the latter Hebrew.
The Arameans must have been in Haran about the same
time that we have traced them in Damascus. Some six
or seven centuries later, as soon as the Assyrian inscrip-
tions develop into historical records, we hear of Haran and
of those Ahlame Arameans who were chased across the
desert by Tiglathpileser I some two centuries later. Adad-
nirari I, ca. 1300 B.C., tells us that he has extended his sway
as far as " the fortress of Haran." He also speaks of his
father, Arik-den-ilu, as having subdued the hordes of the
Ahlame.*
To the east of Haran, and in the extensive basin of the
Khabur, lies the region known to the Assyrians as Khani-
galbat. In this district, which is bounded on the north by
Mount Kashiari, the modern Tur Abdin, the chief cities,
Gozan and Nisibis, were in the hands of the Arameans,
who disputed their possession so obstinately that Adad-
nirari II (911-891 B.C.) was compelled to undertake no fewer
than six expeditions against them. But this is not the limit
of the northward advance of the Arameans. Crossing
* Ancient Records, i. 28.
The Aramaic of the Book of Daniel ii
Mount Kashiari we come to the state of Zamua, whose king,
Ammi-Ba'li, and his two sons, Bur-Raman and Hani, all
bear Aramaic names. The capital of Zamua is Amedi,
the modern Diarbekir, situated on the right bank of the
Tigris in N. lat. 37° 55', and which still bears the name
Kara Amid, the Black Amid. What were the Arameans
doing in this remote region ? Ashurnatsirpal tells us that
certain fortresses, which the Assyrians had seized as out-
posts against the land of Nairi, had now been seized by
them, and that they were trampling the Assyrians under
foot, in retaliation for which he carried off 15,000 Ahlame
Arameans to Assyria.*
Turning from the north to the north-east border of the
Assyrian empire, we find on the Nimrud Tablet of Tiglath-
pileser III a list of seventeen states conquered by him in
the direction of Media, beginning with Namri, and ending
with " the city Zakruti of the mighty Medes," and it is
noticeable that no fewer than twelve of these states have
the prefix " Bit." To obtain some more definite idea of
locality, let us take one of these twelve, Bit-Kabsi. Sargon
in his famous letter to the god Ashur, when describing his
line of march through the district to the south of Lake
Urumiah, writes thus : " thirty double-hours between the
land of the Manneans,t the land of Bit-Kabsi, and the land
of the mighty Medes, impetuously I marched." Bit-Kabsi,
then, lay between Man and Media, and as Sargon reached
it soon after leaving a station named Missi, identified by
Thureau-Dangin with Tachtepe immediately to the south
of Lake Urumiah, we can hardly be wrong in placing it a
little to the south-east of that lake. J
From Bit-Kabsi we travel southward down the eastern
border of the Assyrian empire to the land of the Kassites,
penetrated by Sennacherib in his second campaign, where
* Inscription on the Kurkh monolith.
t The Minni of Jer. li. 27.
I See the map attached to La Huitierne Canipagne de Sargon, by
Thureau-Dangin. Paris, 1912.
12 Dadda-idriy or
the names of cities, such as Bit-Kubatti and Bit-Kilamzah,
bear witness to the existence of Aramean colonies.* Still
further south, and rather more to the east, is Bit-Imbi on
the north-west border of Elam.f From Bit-Imbi, traveUing
down the Uknu past Shushan we find on the lower reaches
of that river the Gambulu, an Aramean tribe, one of whose
chieftains in the days of Sargon bore the distinctively
Aramaic name Hazael. The Gambulu must have formed
the south-east extremity of what we may venture to call
Aramaica, and in reaching their district we find ourselves
back in Kir, in the vicinity of Elam, and near the head of
the Persian Gulf. It may be well to close this geographical
survey with Sennacherib's statement as to the preponder-
ance of the Arameans in this region. At the close of the
account of his first campaign he writes thus : " On my
return, the Tu'muna, Kihihu, ladakku, Ubudu, Kibre,
Malahu, Gurumu, Ubulu, Damunu, Gambulu, Hindaru,
Ru'ua, Pukudu,J Hamranu, Hagaranu,§ Nabatu, Li'tau,
Arameans who were not submissive, all of them I conquered.
208,000 people, great and small, male and female, ... I
carried off to Assyria."
With reference to the above survey I certainly do not
mean to say that 'Aramaic was spoken universally through-
out the vast region whose western, northern, and eastern
boundaries we have been endeavouring to trace. The
Assyro-Babylonian (Akkadian) would be the language of
Assyria Proper and of the ancient Babylonian cities. But
these latter appear to have been insulated, and, with the
exception of Babylon, half submerged in the great ocean of
Aramaica as time went on.|| How far south did that ocean
extend ? At least as far as Teima : witness the Aramaic
inscription on the Teima Stone. It must then have encom-
passed Dumah, which lies some distance to the north of
* Taylor Cylinder, col. i.
t Ancient Records, ii. 305-306.
J Jer. 1. 21.
§ Ps. Ixxxiii. 6.
II Taylor Cylinder, col. i. 37-39.
The Aramaic of the Book of Daniel 13
Teima. Now Dumah— the chief town of the Jowf oasis,
known to the Assyrians as Adumu — was the capital of the
kingdom of " Arabia," mentioned in the inscriptions of
Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, and Ashurbanipal. Its ruler is
styled " king of Arabia," and his consort " queen of the
Arabs."* Ergo, the "Arabs" of the Assyrian records
spoke Aramaic, the language of Dumah. So too, doubtless,
did the Kaldi (Chaldeans) of S. Babylonia, who used the
prefix " Bit " in the names of their city-states in just
the same way as the Arameans.f When, then, Senna-
cherib in his first campaign, directed against that district,
encountered a vast host of Chaldeans, Arameans, and Arabs,
he was encountering an Aramean confederacy. Hence, too,
Kraeling cannot be far wrong when he speaks of Abraham
as " ethnically " an Aramean, and almost in the same
breath assures us that " the O.T. narrator would perhaps
reckon Terah's family to the Chaldeans." t
The Arameans, then, being thus spread abroad, their
language must consequently have been spoken far and wide.
Now it is noticeable in the first place, as our geographical
excursus will have served to show, that the few ancient
Aramaic inscriptions which we possess all come from the
north-west border of Aramaica. Zinjerh, where the Sam'al
inscriptions were found, lies on the eastern slope of the
Amanus range, about half-way between Antioch and Marash ;
Umm-esh-shershukh, in all probability the spot where the
Zakir inscription was found, is " situated on a high long
Tell above the Orontes," a little to the north of Homs ; §
and Nerab, which still retains its ancient name, is only a
few miles to the south-east of Aleppo. Secondly, it is
observed to be a characteristic of the dialect of the Aramaic
employed on these monuments that the original dh sound
is expressed by z as in the Hebrew and Phoenician. E.g.
* Cf. Esarhaddon, prism A, col. iii, with the close of the Alabaster
Slab Inscription of Sennacherib.
t E.g. Bit-Jakin, Bit-Dakkuri, etc.
X Aram and Israel, p. 15.
§ Ibid., p. 99, and see map attached.
14 Dadda-idri, or
on the Zakir Inscription Melid is spelt Meliz, Hadrach
(Zech. ix. i) — known to the Assyrians as Khatarika — is
spelt Hazrak,* while the name Zakir represents the Aramaic
dikir, which occurs in the name Si'-dikir found on the Haran
tablets. This Hkeness of the dialect to the Hebrew has
been noticed by several authorities. Thus, the late Prof.
Driver, writing on the Zakir inscription, says, " The Aramaic
of this district was known before from the inscriptions found
at Zinjirli and Nerab to be curiously coloured with words
and forms otherwise characteristic of Hebrew." | Similarly
G. A. Cooke, while acknowledging the Zinjirli inscriptions
as belonging to the Aramaic rather than to any other branch
of the Semitic family, adds, " on the other hand there are
features which exhibit an affinity to the Canaanite group,
Hebrew, Moabite, and Phoenician : and even more signi-
ficant is the way in which the dialect allies itself with
Hebrew (and Assyrian) rather than with the usual
Aramaic." % Finally, Prof. Sayce, writing on the Zinjirli
inscriptions, observes," The strange and unexpected fact which
they disclose is that the Aramaic language of Samahla (Sam'al)
approached the Hebrew in many respects." § I venture, .
then, to assert that the use of z for the original dh, which \
forms so characteristic a feature of these ancient inscrip-
tions, is no mark of age, but is explained by their geo-
graphical position. Their writers were in close contact
with the Hebrews and Phoenicians, and hence their use of
the sibilant dialect.
But what are we to say of the ancient Aramaic which
meets us in the dockets on contract tablets from Assyria
and Babylonia, and in the Aramaic letter from Ashur of
the time of Ashurbanipal ? How are we to explain the use
of z for dh in these documents ? The explanation I think
is this : that the Assyrians themselves in their own language
* The three forms of the name bear witness to the co-existence of the
dental and sibilant dialects.
t £;f/>osj7o)' for June, 1908.
X North Semitic Inscriptions, pp. 184-85.
9 The Higher Criticism and the Monuments, p. 195.
The Aramaic of the Book of Daniel 15
expressed the dh sound by z, and that they would naturally
do the same when writing Aramaic dockets on contract
tablets written in Assyrian. In this respect, i.e. in their
treatment of the dh sound, Assyrian, as was long since
observed by Noldeke, is nearer to Hebrew than to Biblical
Aramaic* The student may easily convince himself of
the truth of this observation by looking out the following
roots in the Hebrew lexicon and noting their Assyrian
equivalents : |TN, 3XT, 13:, hdt, id;, hb\^ 2:1, |p?, and yi*. This
close affinity of Assyrian with Hebrew, i.e. with the ancient
tongue of Palestine and the West, is accounted for by the
remarkable fact of the early, long continued, and close
connection between Babylon and the West, first fully
revealed by the discovery of the Tel-el- Amarna tablets, f
There remains yet one more locality to be dealt with.
At Teima, in the far south of the realm of Aramaica, we
meet with an ancient inscription, which on the ground of
epigraphy has been assigned to the fifth century B.C. ; and
here, too, the z reigns triumphant throughout, just as in
Assyria and Babylonia. How is this to be accounted for ?
By the fact that for several years, eight or possibly thirteen,
Nabonidus, the last king of Babylon, made Teima his place
of residence, leaving his son Belshazzar to rule in Babylon.
The Teima Stone is, therefore, a relic of Babylonian culture
— as indeed is evident from the style of the bas-reliefs
carved upon it — and the inscription on the Stone is there-
fore written in that dialect of the Aramaic which prevailed
in Assyria and at Babylon.
But it will still be asked. What about Damascus and the
regions of Northern Arabia ? Are there no ancient inscrip-
tions from these districts ? Arabia Proper, i.e. Northern
Arabia, according to Palgrave, is " singularly destitute of
antiquities." This he attributes to the iconoclastic zeal
of the conquering Mahometan tribes of the north, " who
* Enc. Brit., gth edn., article " The Semitic Languages."
t Hogarth, The Ancient East, p. 26. Cf. also Sayce, Archcpology of
the Cuneiform Inscriptions, pp. 142-43.
1 6 Dadda-idri, or
within their own territory, even more than in the acquired
lands of Egypt, North Africa, and elsewhere, carried out
the plan of establishing their own religion and system, not
merely on the ruins, but, as far as possible, on the efface-
ment of whatever had preceded it." * Damascus, therefore,
offers no ancient Aramaic inscriptions such as we may very
well believe once existed there, owing to the fact that it
was the headquarters of the Caliphate from 634 to 650 a.d.
And the same must be said concerning that lovely oasis
in N. Arabia, known as the Jowf, and whose chief town,
till lately called Daumat-el-Jandal, is the modern repre-
sentative of the Isaianic Dumah.f Dumah was the royal
city of the ancient kingdom of Arabia in the seventh century
B.C. But we find no ancient inscriptions there as at Teima.
It was evidently too near the centre of the destructive
Mahomedan power.
Returning now to the question of the dh sound, I have
so far shown that in the ancient Aramaic there existed a
dialect in which it was rendered by d rather than by z, and
have endeavoured to show how it is that we have no ancient
inscriptions in that dialect. I have confined myself to this
particular dental for the simple reason that it admits of an
easier proof than- the other dentals, seeing that the Hebrew
"ij.y. " help " formed such a favourite component in Semitic
names. There were many such names, both in Hebrew
and Phoenician as well as in Aramaic. J Many a man,
when naming his son, delighted to proclaim his god to be
a " help." But dh, in Biblical Aramaic "i instead of the
* Enc. Brit., 9th edn., vol. ii, p. 262.
f See my Isaiah (Chapters i.-xxxix.) in the Light of the Assyrian Monu-
ments, pp. 165-182. (S.P.C.K., 1930.)
X Compare the Hebrew names, Abi-ezer, Ahi-ezer, Eli-ezer : also,
Azar-iah, Azar-el, and Azri-el, which last in i Sam. xviii. 19, is spelt with
a dental, Adviel, thus forming another corroboration of the antiquity of
the dialect which we are investigating. To the same categor^-^ belongs
the name Ezra. This name is spelt 'EoSpas in the Septuagint. It is
possibly an abbreviation of the name Azar-el, spelt "El^pnjX in the Septua-
gint of Ezra x. 41, and 'EaSptrjX in Neh. xi. 13. The appearance of a
followed by 8 in these Greek renderings of the name is suggestive of an
attempt to combine the two Aramaic dialects. In Phoenician we meet
with the names Eshmun-azar, Baal-azar, and Ezra-Baal.
The Aramaic of the Book of Daniel 17
Hebrew ', was, as the Book of Daniel shows, not the only
dental answering to a Hebrew sibilant in that dialect of the
Aramaic whose antiquity we are investigating. There are
two other dental letters in the Aramaic of that Book which
take the place of Hebrew sibilants. Not that every Hebrew
sibilant becomes a dental in the Aramaic of Daniel ; but
there are three definite cases in which this change takes
place, and they are distinguished as follows : —
(i) When the Hebrew ? answers to the Arabic i it appears
in Daniel as "i.
(ii) When the Hebrew t* answers to the Arabic o it
appears in Daniel as n.
(iii) When the Hebrew V answers to the Arabic U it appears
in Daniel as u.
The existence of (i) in a dialect of the ancient Aramaic has
already been established. But what of (ii) and (iii) ? If
(i) holds good in that ancient dialect, it may be presumed
that (ii) and (iii) will hold good likewise ; and this we shall
find to be the case when we go forward to examine the
Aramaic Papyri from Elephantine.
The Elephantine Papyri, found in the island of that
name below the first cataract of the Nile, are in a wonderful
state of preservation. They cover practically the fifth
century B.C., and many of them, happily, are dated. The
earliest, dated the twenty-seventh year of Darius — i.e.
Darius I, for Darius H reigned only twenty years — is of
great interest, for it exhibits the name " Darius " spelt as
in the Book of Daniel t^im ; whilst in such of the later
documents as refer to the years of Darius H it is spelt ti'inm
and tfimm. This earliest document belongs to the year
495 B.C. ; only forty years after " the third year of Cyrus,"
mentioned in Dan. x. i. The next in age, belonging to the
second year of Xerxes, 484 B.C., is for the purpose of this
essay of even greater interest, for among the names of the
witnesses we meet with the names mj;2ii'2, i.e. Nushku-idri,
and "'"I'^ynN, i.e. Ata-idri ; and these names, be it noted,
are written, not in the syllabic polyphones of the Assyrian
B
i8 Dadda-idri, or
cuneiform used at Haran, but in the alphabetic characters
employed in the Aramaic, which characters are derived
from the same source as those of the ancient Hebrew
alphabet. Should there, then, remain any the least shadow
of doubt as to the correct rendering of the name Dadda-
'idri, and the many names similarly compounded found on
the tablets at Haran, this, the second of the Elephantine
documents, should dispel it at once and for ever ; for here
is proof positive that id-ri, not it-ri, is the correct reading
of the cuneiform characters.
On looking over the dated papyri, some thirty in number,
we are struck with two very marked features, deserving of
separate consideration. The first feature is this : that in
the case of the verbal roots the three dentals, "J, ri, and J-,
each hold their own as against the sibilants, *, ^, and v,
respectively, throughout these papyri down to No. 35
[ca. 400 B.C.) with only three exceptions. The three excep-
tions all savour of business and book-keeping. The first
occurs in No. 30.12, 28 * (408 B.C.), where " gold " is spelt
3nT in the famous petition from the Jews of Elephantine for
permission to rebuild their temple ; whilst in the answer
returned to that petition. No. 32.1, 2, " memorandum " is
written ]"i2?. Lastly, the word " shekel," save in one
instance, is spelt with a ^. This is explained by Rowley
on the ground that '^'pty was probably a loan-word from the
Babylonian : t a very likely explanation, since the Elephan-
tine documents are mostly of a business character, and in
some of them the word " shekel " is expressed by the
abbreviation ty, just as we write £ s. d. The one exception
is 10.5, where the word is spelt hpr\ as in the Book of Daniel.
Such, then, is the almost invariably marked feature of
these papyri. To descend now to particulars : "i takes the
place of ^ in such roots as iHN 2.17, 3n3 8.17, 3m 10.9, i:;!
* The numerals refer to the number and line of the document as given
in Cowley's Aramaic Papyri of the Fifth Century B.C., Oxford University
Press, 1923.
t Rowley, p. 28. In the Ahikar Papyri (see next note) we meet with
~l3"l " remember " in line 53.
The Aramaic of the Book of Daniel 19
15.17, n^T 21.6, and n^n 30.26. n takes the place of ii' in
2^^\ 1.7, ynn 5.3, 2n^ 6.2, ^nx 6.2, mn 8.16, ^^n 10.7, n:x 14.4,
iT^^ 15.21, ^pn 15.24, ncn 25.6, n'^n 26.10, pn 26.10, pr
26.12, inn 26.13, and tin 33.10. l2 takes the place of v in
\V^ 6.6, I2^2{y 15.9, -".a: 27.1, and hhn 30.11. To the above
twenty-five verbal roots may be added eight more from the
story of Ahikar,* viz. jiN hne 97, '?m line 45, iij^ hne 99,
iinx hne 55, mn line 90, nnt2 line 120, xnvu: line 62, and ^V
line 12. These thirty- three roots form so many examples
of the rules given above, and stamp the language of the
Elephantine papyri as essentially a dental dialect : not in
process of development during the fifth century B.C., but
already well developed, and undergoing little if any change
during that century.
But along with this very marked feature we are bound
to notice a second almost equally well marked, viz. that
Relative and Demonstrative words, such as '*, "'tn, "•12, "•'??, X?,
T]T_ CI*, n::, i:t, for the most part are written with a *, the
1, as Cowley observes, occurring only " sporadically " :
e.g. ^nSn 13.7,11,16 : xm, 14.6 : ^m, 14.9 : and n:i, 16.9.
In these three documents, Nos. 13, 14, and 16, the dental
forms of the pronouns make a brief intrusion into the realm
of the sibilant forms, and then — so far as Elephantine is
concerned — disappear from the scene. To make the signi-
ficance of this fact more clear, let us take the twenty dated
papyri and the thirteen that admit of approximate dating,
and, throwing aside two duplicates, divide the remaining
thirty-one into three sections as follows : —
(i) Nine documents, of which eight are dated, ranging
from 495 to 455 B.C.
(ii) Four documents, ranging from 447 to 435 B.C., of
which Nos. 13 and 14, just referred to, are dated
* A lengthy document, written on eleven sheets of papyrus, not dated,
but assigned by Cowley to ca. 430 B.C. It consists of the famous old-
world story, the hero of which, viz. Ahikar, is mentioned in the Book of
Tobit, i. 21, 22, and xiv. 10. Included in the same papyri is a fairly large
collection of proverbs, being, as Cowley remarks, " the earliest specimen
of wisdom literature outside the Old Testament and cuneiform texts."
20 Dadda-idri, or
respectively 447 and 441 B.C., while Nos. 15 and 16
may be assigned approximately to 441 and 435
B.C. respectively,
(iii) Eighteen documents, half of them dated, while the
other half admit of being approximately dated,
ranging from 428 to 400 B.C.
In the above division the first section covers exactly forty
years. Its documents are only half the number in the
third section, but they have this advantage, that all
save one are dated. In this section the pronominal
words are written with sibilants throughout. The second
section ranges over twelve years : a comparatively brief
period. In three of its four documents we meet with pro-
nominal words written sometimes with dentals, sometimes
with sibilants, and so strange is the intermingling of dialects
that in No. 14.6 we find " that which " rendered "'* ^<2'^,
the antecedent being written in the dental dialect and the
relative in the sibilant. The third section covers a period
of twenty-eight years, possibly only twenty-one years if
the usurper mentioned in No. 35 be the first Amyrtaeus.
The documents of this section are the most numerous, even
if we omit two which for the present purpose are little
more than lists of names. Throughout this section the pro-
nominal words are written with sibilants as in the first
section. The same holds good with respect to the other
documents found at Elephantine belonging to the fifth
century B.C., but to which no date, or even approximate
date, can be assigned. It holds good also of the Story of
Ahikar and of the Aramaic version of the Behistun Inscrip-
tion. In all these the pronominal words are written with
sibilants throughout, while the root- words with scarcely
an exception are written with dentals.*
The above review should make it plain that it is no longer
possible on the strength of the evidence afforded by the
Elephantine Papyri to look on the fifth century B.C. as a
* The only exceptions are ^riT 39-4< and Ahikar, line 193 ; and 13?
Ahikar, line 53.
The Aramaic of the Book of Daniel 21
period of transition in the Aramaic, during which a dental
dialect gradually superseded a sibilant one. What Elephan-
tine shows us is a dialect in which the roots are expressed
in dentals and the pronouns with very few exceptions in
sibilants, and the question at once arises. How are we to
account for this ? Have the roots been changed from
sibilants to dentals, or have the dentals of the pronouns
been softened down into sibilants ? Clearly the latter is
the more likely for two reasons : first, because the pro-
nouns, being little words and in very common use, would
be more liable to be affected by foreign influence than the
root forms ; secondly, because the principle of least effort
favours the change of dentals into sibilants, but is adverse
to the change of sibilants into dentals.*
In the next place, the very occasional appearance of
dental pronouns at Elephantine bears witness to the exist-
ence of two dialects in the Aramaic, and furnishes a few
good instances of the clash of dialects. It is not, as some
have supposed, that in these documents we see sibilant
forms gradually giving place to dental ; but rather dental
forms making their occasional appearance among and along-
side of sibilant forms : e.g. in No. 13, "'^'^''i is found along
with ^\ n::, and 1* ; and in No. 14, «2i and ^31 are found
along with "'•, and n:;. This phenomenon is best explained
on the supposition that the writers of these letters have at
some time in their lives spoken the pure dental dialect, or
have been brought into close contact with people speaking
it. In all probability the system of wholesale transporta-
tion of conquered peoples, initiated by Tiglathpileser III,
of whom a contemporary writes, " the daughters of the
east he brought to the west, and the daughters of the west
he brought to the east," f must have resulted in a great
mixture of dialects. It must also be borne in mind that
at Elephantine we are reading the compositions, not of
* This was pointed out to me by the late Ernest Sibree, lecturer in
Comparative Philology at the University of Bristol.
t Bar-rekub, king of Ya'di in N. Syria. See North-Semitic Inscrip-
tions, p. 174.
22 Dadda-idri, or
literary people, but of mercenary soldiers, for the most
part Jews, living not in Aramaica but in a foreign land, and
drawn together probably from very different parts. Unless
the community had been to some extent a settled com-
munity, owning lands and houses, the mixture of dialects
would probably have shown itself in a larger number of the
documents and not merely in three. As another instance
of this mixture of dialects, in which the time-factor may
well have played some part, we may point to the much
later Mandean, where xanNT " gold " appears side by side
with x^nNT^ and s^T " blood " is found along with sc*.*
Again, the appearance of dental pronouns among sibilant
pronouns in documents in which the root-words are all
written in dentals, is strongly suggestive that if the dialect
were written in its purity we should find the pronouns as
well as the root-words written in dentals throughout as in
the Book of Daniel. Lastly, let it be noted that in Egypt
the pronouns continued to be written in sibilants long after
the era of Elephantine. Thus, in papyri Nos. 81-83, which
offer no dates and are not part of the find at Elephantine,
but v/hich from the many Greek names mentioned and the
style of the writing are assigned by Cowley to the Ptolemaic
period, ca. 300 B.C.-, we still meet with ■••, ''h'^', and N*. Now,
just as these late sibilant forms of the pronouns, which meet
us in Egypt, can be traced back to the early Aramaic inscrip-
tions on the north-west border of Aramaica, so that we
meet with ''i and n:? at Hamath, Nerab, and ZinjirH, so it
may be presumed that if we had ancient inscriptions from
Damascus and the neighbourhood, we should find that the
dental forms, """i, and n:i, which we meet with in the late
Palmyrene and Nabatean, are no creatures of yesterday,
but have an equally long descent. f That the dental dialect
should continue to be spoken at Palmyra can create no sur-
prise, for that city lay on the great road passing westward
* Noldeke, Manddische Grammatik, p. 43.
t The Nabatean inscriptions cover the first two centuries of the Christian
era : the Palmyrene range from 9 b.c. to a.d. 271.
The Aramaic of the Book of Daniel 23
through Haran and Damascus, and must have been in
constant communication with both. Nor is it any surprise
to find the same dialect in the Nabatean inscriptions, where,
if any outside influence prevailed, it must have come from
the Arabs of the south, who also spoke a dental dialect.
The Palmyrene, therefore, should be looked upon as a
survival, and probably the Nabatean also, in spite of the
three early Nabatean inscriptions quoted by Rowley, in
two of which sibilant pronouns appear along with dentals
as in the three documents from Elephantine already referred
to, while the third has sibilants only.
Beside the three rules given above, according to which
in Biblical Aramaic Hebrew sibilants are exchanged for
Aramaic dentals, there is a fourth rule according to which
a Hebrew sibilant is exchanged for a palatal or for a weak
letter. It runs thus : — When the Hebrew V answers to
the Arabic ^j, it appears in Daniel and Ezra as V ', but in
Jer. X. II it appears first as p then as V. P is also found
on the ancient Aramaic inscriptions at Hamath and Zin-
jirli, as well as in Assyria, Babylonia, and Asia Minor. On
the Elephantine Papyri V is the first to make its appearance,
viz. in No. 5.5 (471 B.C.) : the very first instance in which
the above rule can be exemplified. The p appears a few
years later in the next dated papyrus. No. 6 (465 B.C.),
where Np"ix " earth " comes into the document no fewer
than seven times, and once in close connection with its
variant ^V"^. Thus, in line 15 we find ^<P"lK, in line 16
x:?^,N. Exactly the same phenomenon appears in Jer. x. 11.
It has been supposed that the p, being found on the ancient
Aramaic monuments and on the Nineveh weights, is the
earlier usage. But, whether this be so or not, since the v
is found along with the p in Jer. x. 11, a prophecy uttered
during the reign of Jehoiakim (607-597 B.C.), and is also
employed by Cyrus in the decree issued during his first
year for the rebuilding of the temple — see Ezra vi. 4, where
yx answers to the Hebrew vy — we need not be staggered by
its appearance in the Book of Daniel. That Book, if we
24 Dadda-idri^ or
may venture a guess, belongs to the early years of Cyrus :
indeed, its writer almost tells us as much. Compare Dan. i.
21 with X. I. Let me here add that in the four rules
alluded to above Assyrian agrees with Hebrew as against
Aramaic*
In No. 26 of the Elephantine Papyri, Arsames, the Per-
sian governor at Elephantine, issues an order for the repair
of a boat. He uses the same dialect as the Jews and
Syrians around him, viz. a dental dialect in which the
pronouns are expressed in sibilants ; but contrary to the
usual practice writes the numerals in words, which offer
several illustrations of the dental character of the dialect.
Thus we meet with T\rbr\ " three," |'':cr, " eighty," l^^n
" two," and ]^T^ " sixty " : all written with n in the
place of ^ ; while the pronouns ^t, njr, -;, still hold their own.
Before we leave this part of our subject, let me point out
a very marked difference noticeable between the Elephan-
tine Papyri and the ancient Aramaic inscriptions. In the
papyri the roots are written with dentals, and the pronouns
for the most part with sibilants : but in the inscriptions
from Hamath, Zinjirh, and Nerab, the roots are written
with sibilants as well as the pronouns. Hence in the
latter we meet with r:?, n:, and ^t ; and also with the
following : —
(i) *nN, :i7\\ hr\\^ n^;, in which • takes the place of i.
(ii) nti*K, 2^\ in which t takes the place of n.
(iii) vo ivp, Ti-:, in which v takes the place of C
Our attention has so far been confined to branches of the
Aramaic, but it is possible to test the antiquity of the dental
dialect by examining the cognate languages. This treatise
began with a reference to the proper name of a king of Syria
as written in the syllabic characters of the Assyrian inscrip-
tions, and it was seen that the Hebrew root ezer, being
written id-ri by the Assyrian scribes, must have been pro-
nounced with a dental in the Aramaic of Damascus. The
* See O'Leary's Comparative Grammar of the Semitic Laneuaees, d. '^x
columns (3). (4). (6), and (7). & s . f o:>,
The Aramaic of the Book of Daniel 25
same appears to have been the case in S. Arabia. Prof.
Hommel, in his valuable work entitled Ancient Hebrew
Tradition, pp. 84-85, presents us with several S. Arabian
proper names, and amongst them is one which contains
this very root ezer, viz. Adhara-ihi, corresponding to the
Hebrew Azar-el, " God helped." The aspirated dental,
transcribed by Hommel dh, has in the Sabean alphabet of
S. Arabia a special character to distinguish it from the
simple d. This character resembles our capital H with the
cross-bar doubled and slightly sloped. In the Sabean roots,
corresponding to Hebrew roots, given in Francis Brown's
Hebrew Lexicon, it is represented by "i with a horizontal
line above it : n, when it stands for th, and t2, when it stands
for t, i.e. t emphatic, being treated in a similar manner.
Now this dental dh, which comes under the first of the three
rules given above, appears in the following S. Arabian
proper names furnished by Hommel : Abi-dhamara " My
Father is protector," Dhimri-ali " My Protector is sub-
lime," Ammi-dhara " My Uncle sowed " — the reference
being in each case to God. These names, it will be seen at
a glance, contain the Hebrew roots iu< and V~', and being
admittedly of great antiquity, are vouchers for the dental
dialect having been long in use among the Mineans and
Sabeans of S. Arabia. When, therefore, we turn to the very
numerous inscriptions found in those parts, written in an
alphabet which has gone through so many changes that
we can hardly attribute to it a remoter antiquity than the
third-fourth century b.c.,| we need not trouble ourselves
as to their exact age, but it is a matter of interest to trace
in them the dental dialect as indicated by the characters
which stand for the dh and the th, and to note the changes
in the pronouns and verbal roots as compared with the
Hebrew. Thus, instead of n? " this," fern. nXT, we have
on the Minean and Sabean monuments p and nn ; while
* See F. Hommel, Sud-Arabische Chrestoniathie ; and W. Prideaux,
Sabean Grammar, in the Transactions of the Society of Biblical A rchcBology,
vol. V.
t O'Leary, Comparative Grammar, p. 22.
26 Dadda-idri^ or
^■, used at Elephantine for the Relative Pronoun and also
as a sign of the Genitive, is exchanged for n. Similarly,
though the vocabulary of the monuments is a limited one,
yet Sabean roots in which i takes the place of t can be found,
and are given in Francis Browne's lexicon under *nK " grasp,"
^2* " sacrifice," ini "gold," i^t " mention," and yi> " arm."
For the second rule, according to which the Hebrew ^' is
changed into n, Sabean roots in h are given in the lexicon
under Sinn " new," ch"' " inherit," nv:; " turn," ^y^" " break,"
^^ " three," n:c'ut' " eight," and tb> " become raised." To
express the th sound as distinguished from the simple t the
Sabeans have invented a special character, which may be
described as two small squares joined corner- wise by a
vertical line. Sometimes the squares are brought rather
close together and rounded : the letter then resembles
an 8. For the third rule, according to which under certain
circumstances V becomes b, I have only been able to find
one example in the lexicon under hh'i " grow dark " : in
Sabean hhu-
As illustrations of the above rules from the monuments
of Arabia note the following : pnii laSvN ]n:n^ri " thirty
statues of gold " : icnani.':! " their seat " : nis " for that " :
u'?'?Sni3 " canopy." -*
There now remains only one other cognate language to
engage our attention, viz. the Ethiopic, or, as it should
perhaps more correctly be termed, the Abyssinian, as being
the language of Aksum, the ancient capital of Abyssinia.
The Semitic kingdom of Aksum is believed to have arisen
out of an Arabian emigration into Africa, caused by the
conquests of the Parthians in S. Arabia in the latter half
of the first century B.C. The newcomers were able at that
time to make headway in Africa because the power of the
Ptolemies was falling to pieces and the Romans had not
yet taken their place. | But long before the founding of
* Glaser, Die Abessinier in Arabien mid Afrika, p. 43, inscription,
lines 2, 3, 8, and p. 48, note on line 5.
t Glaser, p. 138.
The Aramaic of the Book of Daniel 27
the Aksumite kingdom Semitic colonists must have found
their way into Africa across the Red Sea. This is indicated
in a remarkable way in the tenth chapter of Genesis, a very
ancient record, and apparently of a geographical-ethno-
logical character. In verse 7 of that chapter Sheba and
Dedan are mentioned among the children of Ham through
Gush, i.e. Ethiopia, and are therefore to be looked for in
Africa. Yet in Gen. xxv. 1-3, which may be supposed to give
their natural descent, they are said to be sprung from Abra-
ham and Keturah through Jokshan, and we should expect,
therefore, to find them in Asia. And, as a fact, Sheba — the
country of the famous queen who came from far to hear
the wisdom of Solomon — is often mentioned in the S. Arabian
inscriptions as well as its capital Maryab, the modern
Marib ; * whilst Dedan, which according to Ezek. xxv. 3
either forms the southern province of Edom or borders on
Edom's southern frontier, is mentioned along with Egypt,
Gaza, Moab, Ammon, and Kedar in the north-west Arabian
inscriptions found at el-Oela to the south of Teima.j How,
then, are we to reconcile these results with a Sheba and
Dedan in Africa ? Simply by supposing that portions of
these tribes crossed the Red Sea, one at the southern and
the other at the northern end, to find new territories in
Africa.
In the case of Sheba the above is certainly no mere sup-
position. As O'Leary observes, " The Semitic-speaking
people of Abyssinia are obviously very closely allied with
the Mineans, Sabeans, and Himyarites of S. Arabia." %
Very striking evidence of this close connection with Arabia
confronts us when, in the days of king 'Ezana, about the
middle of the fourth century a.d., the Abyssinian kingdom
first emerges out of the darkness. 'Ezana styles himself
" king of Aksum, and of Hemer, and Raidan, and Habashat,
and Saba', and Salhe, and Tseyamo, and Kasu, and Bega,
* This is the Sheba of Gen. x. 28.
t Cf. Hommel's Anciejit Hebrew Tradition, pp. 239, 273, also the inscrip-
tion in his Sud-Arabiscke Chrestomathie , p. 117, line 10.
% Arabia before Muhammad, p. 115.
28 Dadda-idri, or
king of kings," etc.* The first and the last three of these
titles are taken from conquests in Africa : the others are
derived from possessions in S. Arabia. The only doubt is
with regard to Habashat — whence comes the name
" Abyssinia." In a Greek inscription of 'Ezana this name
is replaced by AWlottcov; nevertheless, its place on the list
of titles, coupled with the fact that the name is first found
on the monuments of S. Arabia, seems to show that the
Habashat must have had their first home in Arabia. In
Hemer we see the Himyarites, and in Saba' the Biblical
Sheba of i Kings x. Raidan is the royal castle at Zafar,
the capital of the Himyarites, and Salhe the famous castle
of the Sabean kings at Marib. According to Hommel
"kings of Saba' and Raidan " was the title borne by the
latest Sabean monarchs.f On the whole the impression
given is, that some ancestor of king 'Ezana has transferred
the seat of his power from S. Arabia to the Abyssinian
Aksum. If this be so, the claim put forward by the Abys-
sinians that their present line of monarchs, who still bear
the title " king of kings," is sprung from a son of Solomon
and the Queen of Sheba, is seen to be no impossibility.
Leaving, however, these fascinating historical studies,
our interest in this tractate is not so much with the racial
and political connection between Abyssinia and S. Arabia,
as with the linguistic and epigraphic. Ethiopic, the
language of ancient Abyssinia down to the beginning of
the seventeenth century, of which the present Amharic
is a sister dialect, is a member of the Semitic family of
languages. " All its roots," according to Dillmann, " may
be pointed out as occurring in other Semitic languages." J
At the same time it is full of foreign words, and the Pre-
* For this and many of the following details I am indebted to Enno
Littmann's fascinating and comprehensive work, Deutsche Aksum Expedi-
tion, published by George Reimer, Berlin, 1913. This work was issued in
four parts. The inscriptions of Ezana are dealt with in part iv, where
the first Plate is a photograph of the stone bearing inscriptions Nos. 6
and 7.
t Ancient Hebrew Tradition, p. 78 : published by S.P.C.K.
% Ethiopic Grammar, p. 3, 2nd edn., translated by Crichton. London,
1907.
The Aramaic of the Book of Daniel 29
positions and Conjunctions are different for the most part
from those found in other branches of the Semitic family.
Even when we first meet with it in the days of king 'Ezana
this feature strikes us, and furnishes a proof that the people
who spoke it had been resident in Africa long before the
seat of government was transferred from S. Arabia to
Aksum.
But though we notice this difference between the Sabean
of S. Arabia and the Ethiopic of Abyssinia, we also notice
that from the alphabetic point of view there is a very close
connection. The Sabean alphabet has twenty-nine letters,
the Ethiopic only twenty-six. Of the whole number of
letters twenty-two are common to both alphabets, and when
we turn to examine their shapes, the Ethiopic characters
are seen to be the Sabean characters with their corners
rounded off ; some of them turned through a right angle,
and one turned upside down. Hence, while the latter,
being square and angular, are well suited for lapidary inscrip-
tions, the former with their rounded shapes and thick down
strokes suit better the pen than the chisel.
The two earliest inscriptions of king 'Ezana, known as
Nos. 6 and 8,* present us with the strange phenomenon of
Ethiopic written in Sabean characters. The older of these,
No. 6, has a duplicate in Ethiopic characters written lower
down on the same stone. It is not an exact duplicate :
the order of titles is varied, and certain S. Arabian words
are exchanged for their Ethiopic equivalents. It was written
doubtless at a later period, when the knowledge of the
Sabean characters and of Sabean terms was fast fading
away. This duplicate, known as No. 7, is strictly speaking
the earliest Ethiopic inscription, both language and script
being Ethiopic. Nos. 6 and 7 are graved again on the
other side of the stone. No. 8, like No. 6, is Ethiopic,
written in Sabean characters. It is an entirely different
inscription, written somewhat later in the reign of 'Ezana,
and we notice that in the list of titles the order is the same
* The Nos. are taken from Littmann's book.
30 Dadda-idri, or
as in No. 6, but " Habashat " is wanting. No. ii, written
later still, is of deep interest. Christianity, or it may be
only Jewish monotheism, has found its way to Abyssinia,
and the king attributes his successes, not to Astarte, and
the Earth, and Mahrem — known from No. 4, the corre-
sponding Greek inscription to No. 6, to be identical with
Mars — but to " the might of the Lord of heaven." It
is, however, with Nos. 6 and 8 that we are chiefly
concerned.
In No. 6, 'Ezana styles himself maleka malekan " king of
kings," and uses the word hen for " son." Both of these
belong to the Semitic of S. Arabia. In Nos. 7 and 8 they
are exchanged : the former for the Ethiopic negus nagasht,
the latter for the Ethiopic waled. Further, since Ethiopic,
unHke Sabean, uses a sibilant dialect, therefore the two
characters described above, which are used in Sabean for
the dh and th sounds, have no place in the Ethiopic alphabet.
It is, therefore, with some surprise that we find these
characters re-appearing : the dh in Nos. 6 and 8, where we
should expect the Ethiopic z ; and the th in No. 6 only,
where we should expect the Ethiopic s. In No. 6 the dh
is used as the sign of the Genitive in line i, " and o/Hemer " ;
and as the Relative in lines 2 and 11. Also the Ethiopic
word 'ahzah " peoples " is spelt with a dh instead of with
a z. Stranger still, the Ethiopic conjunction 'enza " whilst,"
written correctly in lines 9 and 11, appears in line 6 as
'endha. No. 8 presents similar features. With regard to
the Sabean character for th, we meet with it only in No. 6,
where it appears six times : thus, in line 12, Aksum is
written 'Akthum. The first impression given by these
anomalies is that we have here another clash of dialects
such as we have already met with at Elephantine. But
this does not appear to be the true explanation. As Litt-
mann points out, when No. 8 was written " the knowledge
of the Sabean script was already disappearing, for otherwise
the scribe would not have attached to every word a purely
graphic m, even to words to which it Vv'ould never be affixed
The Aramaic of the Book of Daniel 31
in Sabean." * This, therefore, must be due to the ignorance
of the scribe. For another proof of this ignorance Littmann
shows how no fewer than three Sabean letters are used by
him to represent the Ethiopic s, viz. the th just referred to
and two others. This ignorance I am desirous to emphasize,
for otherwise it might be supposed that the double-barred
H sometimes bore the value of z. For z the Ethiopic uses
H with a single bar, identical in form with our capital letter :
a character which, placed horizontally, bore the same value
in the primitive Semitic alphabet.
The fact that in Ethiopic the dental letters of the Sabean
at which we have been looking were replaced by sibilants,
may be easily verified by the student with the help of the
Hebrev/ lexicon. He will there find
(i) that when the Hebrew ; is represented in Arabic by i,
the Sabean n is replaced in Ethiopic by z : examples
Hebrew Aramaic Sabean Ethiopic
'"^ "^n** "^nN 'ahaza, " take hold of."
n^J n^2 "-^- ^^^^h> " sacrifice."
""^^ "^-~ ''2"' zakara, "remember."
(ii) that when the Hebrew i:* is represented in Arabic
by o, the Sabean n is replaced in Ethiopic by s .• examples
^^^ '^^^ "53" Sahara, "hresk."
"W ^"^^p ^)n so^"bunock."
^"7^ «nST n'^n shalastu," three."
njQty K^jcn ':pn samdnitu," e\ghtr
t^Jx xnnx nn:N '««s^^, "woman."
^'"''' ^'''^^ '">"" warasa, "mheni."
(iii) when the Hebrew V is represented in Arabic by k, the
Sabean t5 is replaced in Ethiopic by s {ts emphatic) . Example
^^"^ ^^'^ "^^^ Srt/a/a, "bedark."
For a further comparison of Ethiopic with Sabean, attention
should be paid to the pronouns. For the nearer demon-
strative we have in Sabean masc. p, fem. nn : in Ethiopic
masc. ze, fem.^rt. For the relative pronoun we have in
Sabean masc. l, fem. nn : in Ethiopic we have, za, which
* The graphic m, known as the Mimation and answering to the Tenwin
m Arabic, is attached in Sabean, not to all nouns, but onlv to triptotes ;
and then, only under certain conditions.
32 Dadda-idri, or
may be used for the fern, singular, and for the masc. and
fern, plural ; and also as a mark of the genitive.
What was the cause of the above changes ? Clearly,
outside influences. The S. Arabian Semitic, coming across
the Red Sea into Abyssinia, must have come into contact
with certain African tongues, and this would account for
many of the foreign words found in it. But in this matter
of sibilants and dentals I am reminded by Dr. O'Leary
that the Ethiopic rather resembles the Akkadian (Assyrian) .
He observes that " there was a steady flow of Akkadian
culture round E. and S. Arabia across to Ethiopia," and that
" in the pronominal forms there are many analogies between
Akkadian and Ethiopic." That the Assyrian deals in sibi-
lants was noticed when we were looking at the Aramaic
dockets on Assyrian contract tablets. The sibilant character
of Ethiopic may, then, very well have come from this quarter.
But we may go yet further afield, from the Ethiopic
proper, at which we have been looking and which is no
longer a spoken language, to the Amharic, the Ethiopic
dialect now spoken throughout the greater part of Abyssinia.
" With the exception, of course, of Arabic," writes Noldeke,
" no Semitic tongue is spoken by so large a number of human
beings as Amharic." * The same authority assures us that
Amharic has diverged from the ancient Semitic type to a
far greater extent than other Abyssinian dialects, and that
" not more than half the vocabulary can, without impro-
bability, be made to correspond with that of the other
Semitic languages." Yet even in this strange speech, so
full of foreign words and with a syntax strikingly un-
Semitic, we meet with many traces of the sibilant dialect :
first, in the Demonstrative pronouns, where the syllable
zih (Ethiopic ze, zd) occurs in all the cases except, strangely
enough, the Nominative and Accusative singular, e.g.
Masc. Nom. yeh " this," Gen. yazih, Dat. lazth, etc. : then,
in the Numerals, sosth " three," siddisth " six," and sim-
minth " eight " : and lastly, in the verbal roots, addis
* Enc. Brit., 9th edn., article " The Semitic Languages."
The Aramaic of the Book of Daniel 33
" new," sabbara " break," warasa " inherit," zimb " a fly,"
etc.* All these assure us that in Amharic we have a living
witness to the perpetuity of the sibilant dialect in the
Semitic realm, while Arabic offers a similar witness as to
the perpetuity of the dental dialect. Further, Amharic
is a masterful language. " It always tends to displace those
foreign tongues which surround it " ; f and Arabic, we may
feel quite sure, will always hold its own. Thus, the two
dialects, which in the case of the Aramaic can be traced
back, the dental to the ninth century B.C., and the sibilant
to the eighth century B.C., are still alive in the Semitic
world, and in all probabiUty will continue to Uve on to the
end of time.
Before I bring this essay to a close it may be well for me
to mention another consonantal variation, which has been
regarded as an evidence of the late date of the Book of
Daniel. I refer to the forms assumed by masculine Pro-
nouns of the second and third persons Plural when suffixed
to Nouns, Verbs, and Prepositions, as they appear in the
different branches of the Aramaic and in the cognate
languages. These pronominal suffixes are of two types,
the one formed with m, the other with n, as shown in the
following lists.
m type
2nd and 3rd persons Plural
Hebrew .
Phoenician
Aramaic in
scriptions
Nabatean
Arabic
Minean
Sabean
Ethiopic .
kem
km
hem
hm t
&c.
hum
hm
hm
hum
sm
hm
kemmu homn
&c.
n type
2nd and 3rd persons Plural
Assyro- \ kumi &c. sunu
Babylonian*
Aramaic of
Daniel .
Palmyrene
Syriac
Aramaic of
Targums . kon
Mandean ko [u ?)n § &c. ho{n ?)
n § &c.
kon
kun
hon
hn
hun
hon
* Alone, J. P., Short Manual of the Amharic Language.
t Enc. Brit., gth edn., article "The Semitic Languages."
J: The vowels are not expressed in the inscriptions except in the case
of the Assyrian. The " &c." signifies that there are other forms of the
suffix, but all with an m or « according to the list in which they stand.
§ The vowel, a long one, is either o or u.
C
34 Dadda-idri, or
The Elephantine papyri and the Book of Ezra are not
entered on the above hsts because they call for a particular
notice. The papyri with very few exceptions have m ;
but in No. 34.6, 7 {ca. 407 B.C.), and in 37.14 (probably
ca. 410 B.C.), and also in 16.4 (435 B.C.), if, as seems pro-
bable, the pronoun be masculine, we meet with n. This
sporadic use of n in the papyri is nevertheless sufficient to
show the existence of an n dialect, just as the sporadic use
of pronouns written with dentals bears witness to the exist-
ence of a dental dialect. Similarly in the Book of Ezra,
in the Aramaic portions, we find both 7n and n, used in a
somewhat indiscriminate manner ; an indication of the
mixture of dialects. Especially is this the case with the
narrator, probably Ezra himself, who must have spent
most of his life in Babylon at the time when he compiled
his book.* Thus in chap. v. 3, he uses m and n in the same
verse. Exactly the same phenomenon meets us at Elephan-
tine in papyrus No. 34.6, where \r\2 is followed by cnni2 in
the same line. Tattenai, governor of the Persian province
west of the Euphrates, uses the m consistently throughout
his letter : chap. v. 7-17. Darius, in his reply to Tattenai,
chap. vi. 6-12, uses m once in verse 9, and n once in verse 6,
This is of importance as showing the existence of the n
dialect in the second year of Darius, 520 B.C., the time when
the letter containing his decree was written : see chap. iv.
24. Artaxerxes in his commission to Ezra, 458 B.C., uses
m four times and n thrice : chap. vii. 12-26. In his reply
to the Samaritans he uses n once : chap. iv. 18-22. To
sum up : m appears fifteen times, and n sixteen times in
the Book of Ezra : a book in which the scene moves to and
fro between east and west.
Returning now to the above lists and directing our atten-
tion to the cognate languages, the n would appear to be
quite as old as the w, since it is found in the Assyrian. That
these languages are more or less closely related in this
matter is shown by the sibilant which appears in the Minean
* Rawlinson, Speaker's Commentary, 'Ezra, pp. 386-87.
The Aramaic of the Book of Daniel 35
sm and the Assyrian sunn, whilst at the same time the one
employs m and the other n. Similarly, as regards the
Aramaic of Daniel, in the use of the n it is in agreement
with Assyrian ; in the use of d for the original dli it differs.
Then, coming down to the latter Aramaic, we are struck
with the fact that though Nabatean and Palmyrene are
contemporary dialects, the former uses m and the latter
n. In the case of the Nabatean this is easily explained,
for it is admitted on all hands that the Nabateans were
Arabs and would therefore make use of the dialect which
was presently to develop into Arabic. But what are we to
say about the Palmyrene ? Palmyra, the ancient Tadmor,
and so called in the inscriptions, was " built," i.e. fortified,
by Solomon, no doubt as forming an important centre of
desert commerce. This commerce must have brought it
into very close touch with Damascus, which lies 150 miles
to the south-west. Is it not, then, possible that this close
contact with Damascus, the political capital of Aramaica
and doubtless the centre of Aramaic culture, accounts for
the n in the Palmyrene, and that we may look upon it as
a survival of the purer Aramaic, of which the Book of Daniel
exhibits so noble a specimen ?
In its use of the dental dialect the Palmyrene, as might
be expected, agrees with the Book of Daniel. The same
feature appears in the Nabatean. And this, too, creates
no surprise when we notice that the Arabs recognized the
dh as a modified dental, and were careful to denote it in
their alphabet by d with a mark of differentiation over it.
But it will be said, What about the Targums ? Are there
not in the Aramaic of the Targums many points of contact
with the Aramaic of Daniel ? Undoubtedly there are ; and
why should there not be ? The Book of Daniel, we may
feel very sure, was held in high respect by the writers of the
Targums, and they must have been very familiar with it.
It is true that in their days it had most probably been taken
out of the division of the Old Testament known as The
Prophets, and placed in the Hagiographa, where it stands
36 Dadda-idri, or
very suitably with the later historical Books, Chronicles,
Ezra-Nehemiah, and Esther ; but this must not be looked
upon as any sign of depreciation. Surely, they who wrote
those Aramaic paraphrases of the Hebrew Scriptures would
be the very persons to have at their finger ends those parts
of the Old Testament which were written in Aramaic. The
agreement, therefore, between the Targums and the Book
of Daniel, despite the long interval of time which separates
them, is only what we might expect from men who were
probably far more familiar with their Sacred Scriptures
than we are with our Bibles.
There now remains only the Mandean. The Mandeans,
whose name signifies " Gnostics," and whose religion is
compounded of Judaism, Heathenism, and Christianity, are
a race dwelling in the marshlands near the mouth of the
Euphrates. They speak the language of those around
them, but their sacred books are written in a dialect of the
Aramaic known as Mandean. O'Leary speaks of Mandean
as "of great value, not only because of a fairly abundant
Hterary material, but also because its isolation protected it
from Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic influences, and so it dis-
plays an independent development of Eastern Aramaic." *
The Mandean Aramaic has four Hnks with the Aramaic of
the Book of Daniel.
(i) The Infinitive of the Peal, and of the Peal only, has
the prefix m.
(ii) The third person masculine of the Imperfect, which
in Mandean generally has the prefix n, frequently has the
prefix /, which is found in Dan. ii. 20. Compare also
Dan. ii. 43 and v. 17.
(iii) As stated in the above list, the suffixed masculine
pronouns of the second and third persons plural end in n.
(iv) Mandean belongs to the dental dialect of the Aramaic,
as witnessed by the forms of the Relative and Demon-
strative pronouns, and by the verbal roots. Thus we have
for the Relative ""l or n, according as we read the abbrevia-
* Comparative Grammar of the Semitic Languages, p. 16.
The Aramaic of the Book of Daniel 37
tion ; and for the Demonstrative jn, fem. XL* Of these
four hnks the most remarkable is (i), which is found in no
other dialect of the Aramaic. In Syriac the m prefix of
the Infinitive is found in all the conjugations. Only in the
Biblical Aramaic and the Mandean is it confined to the
Peal. With respect to (iv) Noldeke points out that the same
word is often found spelt in two ways, viz. with a dental or
a sibilant ; and that, too, in the closest connection. Thus,
almost close together we meet with KDt and KDI " blood,"
and x'?pn " palm-tree " is found alongside of x'^p"'*. He
also points out that in these cases the sibilant is the form
most often used.f This perhaps is not to be wondered at
when we consider the nearness of the Assyro-Babylonian.
Nevertheless, the appearance of dentals in the pronouns,
the numerals, and the verbal roots, justifies us in classing
Mandean with the dental dialect of the Aramaic.
Lastly, the above lists, taken in conjunction with the
fact already dwelt upon, viz. that the dental dialect was
spoken at Damascus and Haran, are very suggestive as
to the Eastern origin of the Book of Daniel. Let my
readers place before them a map of what used to be called
Turkey in Asia, and mark well the situation of the follow-
ing places and regions : first, the district between Marash
and the Gulf of Iskanderun, in which lies Zinjirli ; then,
Aleppo, near to which is Nerab ; also, Hamath, imme-
diately to the north of Palestine, where was found the
oldest Aramaic inscription. Then let them lay down the
map and travel in thought to Petra, south of Palestine,
the wonderful rock city. In this district were found the
Nabatean inscriptions. From Petra a long flight half-
way down the far-extending Hijaz or " barrier," which
forms the eastern border of the Red Sea, will bring them
to the district of Medina and Mecca, the home of the classical
Arabic. Thence, an equally long flight, still further south,
will carry them to Sheba and Ethiopia, the utmost parts
* Manddische Grammatik, pp. 92, 89.
t Ibid., p. 43.
38 Dadda-idriy or
of the Semitic world, lying on either side of the entrance
to that long inland sea. We need to go no further : a
hasty flight northward must carry us back into the map
and set us down at Damascus, the cultural, though not
the geographical, centre of Aramaica, and one of the places
where 'izri was pronounced 'idri. From Damascus our
course lies E.N.E. to Palmyra in the Syrian Desert, and
thence almost due north to Haran on a left-hand tributary
of the Euphrates, another centre of the dental dialect.
From Haran we pass northward to Urfa, on the same
tributary stream and once a centre of the literary Syriac ;
and thence eastward to Nisibis, another centre of the
Syriac. From Nisibis we shall do well to push on still
further east to the valley of the Tigris, so that we may
mark the site of Nineveh, and going down stream from
thence may cross over at Baghdad to the Euphrates, mark
the ruin-mounds of Great Babylon, and end our wander-
ings in the marshes at the mouth of that river, the haunts
of a miserable remnant of the ancient Mandeans. With
the positions of all these different localities now well fixed
in our minds, let us look again at the above lists. What
is the thought that at once strikes us ? Is it not this :
that the m list belongs to the Western Aramaic, and the
n list to the Eastern ? If, then, we also bear in mind that
the Western dialect, as displayed in the ancient Aramaic
inscriptions, is seen to be a sibilant dialect, whilst the
Aramaic of Damascus and Haran, as shown by the Syrian
proper names, is no less evidently a dental dialect, it becomes
clear that the Book of Daniel, which preserves the n through-
out and at the same time is consistently written in dentals,
may on these two accounts rightly lay claim to an Eastern
origin. Such a claim would certainly agree well with the
face value of the book as appearing to have been written
by Daniel himself, and also with the tradition which places
the tomb of the prophet at Shushan on the eastern verge
of Aramaica : * a tradition which may very well be founded
* See the frontispiece to this treatise.
The Aramaic of the Book of Daniel 39
on fact, seeing that Daniel, having become an object of
envy and hatred to the Babylonian presidents and satraps,
would, so one thinks, be glad enough to live away from
Babylon. Hence the latest glimpse we get of him is on
the banks of the Tigris (Dan. x. 4), and it is quite con-
ceivable that in his old age he may have gone to live at
Shushan, a place with which he was already acquainted
(Dan. viii. 2), and where he would be more immediately
under the aegis of the friendly Persian power.
But it will be said, " Surely the question is hardly a
geographical one. Should it not rather be treated from
the chronological standpoint ? If the Aramaic of the
Book of Daniel agrees in so many respects with the
Palmyrene, Nabatean, and Syriac, and even with the late
Mandean, how can we look upon that Book as a work of
the latter half of the sixth century B.C. ? " What is the
answer to such a line of argument ? Just this : the con-
tinuance of dialect. For instance, the sibilant dialect found
at Hamath early in the eighth century B.C. is also found
in the late papyri of the second century B.C., and even in
the much later Mandean, where it appears to be getting
the better of its dental rival. What have been accounted
marks of late origin are in many cases probably only sur-
vivals, as is shown by their very persistence. Thus, the
n of the suffixed personal pronouns, found in the decree of
Darius, 520 b.c, and which forms such a characteristic
feature of the Book of Daniel, is of high antiquity and long
descent by the time when it makes its appearance in the
Mandean.* When, then, we note it as a linguistic feature
of that Book, we must not regard it as an upstart. Its
very persistence so far down into the Christian era bids
us think otherwise. There is no reason why it should not
be quite as old as its rival, the m.
Let me now sum up the chief points reached in this
essay.
* See G. R. Driver's pedigree of the Semitic languages, given in Enc.
Brit., 14th edn., vol. xx, p. 316.
40 Dadda-idri, or
(i) The name Dadda-'idri, and other like names, are found
to furnish undoubted evidence of a dental dialect in the
ancient Aramaic.
(ii) A very possible explanation has been offered of the
absence of any very ancient inscriptions in that dialect,
(iii) The dialect has been exhibited in the Elephantine
Papyri, of the fifth century B.C., as found in the verbal
roots throughout, and occasionally in the pronouns.
(iv) It has also been traced in the cognate language of
S. Arabia, but not in the Early Ethiopic, where its seeming
appearance is due to the ignorance of the scribe.
(v) Lastly, in another case of consonantal variation,
exhibited by certain of the suffixed personal pronouns,
attention has been called to a second instance of the co-
existence of dialects, and from the dialect employed in
the Book of Daniel in both these cases an argument has
been drawn for the Eastern origin of that Book.
What, then, is the ultimate result at which we have
arrived ? The ultimate result appears to me to be two-
fold. Firstly, the Aramaic of the Book of Daniel is the
Aramaic of a district lying well to the north and east of
Palestine. The philological evidence, taken along with
tradition, would 1-ead us to call it the Eastern Aramaic.
But since it was spoken at Damascus and Haran, it may
be safer to call it the Pure Aramaic. Secondly — and this
is a point of infinitely greater importance — the dialect of
the Book of Daniel, though it tells us nothing as to the
age of that Book, is seen to be no longer a bar to its having
been written by the prophet himself. This is the great
obstacle that I have sought to remove. For how can a
Christian believe that a Book, treated with such special
reverence by our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, is nothing
better than a Jewish Apocalypse !
If, then, any help has been given me by Almighty God
in this endeavour, I render to Him my most humble and
hearty thanks. For — to strike a personal note — I seem
to myself like a traveller, who late in the season, aye, and
The Aramaic of the Book of Daniel 41
late in life, has struggled over some Alpine pass. With
slow and toilsome steps I have clambered up the steeps
of Difficulty, and have come through places well-nigh
blocked by the fast-drifting snows of Adverse Criticism.
Now, if I have got safely over the pass — of which indeed
others must be left to judge — then I wish to say that it is
not my doing. Again and again, the way has been opened
for me by an Unseen Hand ; so that, henceforth my motto
must be the words of the old Roman poet,
" Quo via per montes ducit aperta pedem."
ADDENDA
On p. 103 (3), writing on the frequent use of h in the
Book of Daniel to express the direct object, Rowley remarks,
" It is again to be observed that while h is used to express
the direct object occasionally in early inscriptions and the
earlier Papyri, it appears more frequently in the later
Papyri, and very much more frequently in Daniel, where
the occurrences are some two score in number." It is
perfectly true that h is only once so used in the three Zin-
jirU inscriptions, and not at all in the Hamath inscription
and the two short inscriptions from Nerab. At Elephan-
tine it is used very sparsely, viz. in Nos. 7.5,9 (461 B.C.) :
13.2,5 (447 B.C.) : 15.23 (441 B.C.) : 16.2 (435 B.C.) : 27.23
{ca. 410 B.C.) : and also in 5.9 (471 B.C.), apparently over-
looked by Rowley. The increasing frequency of which he
speaks, I have been unable to detect. In the Ahikar
Papyri, found at. Elephantine, undated, and extending
over some 200 lines — in part indeed illegible — Rowley cites
only one instance. The very frequent occurrence of this
construction in the Book of Daniel must be looked upon
as a feature of the author's literary style ; and we see no
reason why Daniel should not have a style of his own.
On p. 103 (4) Rowley observes, " The Preposition '?
precedes the name of the king (or reign) in dates in Biblical
Aramaic, Nabatean, and Sinaitic, but not in Babylonian,
Lydian, or Egyptian Aramaic, save once in the last named."
Quite so : but the one exception is No. i.i (495 b.c), the
earhest of the Elephantine Papyri, and the only one in
which the name " Darius " is spelt tl'ViT as in the Book
of Daniel. If this usage occurs once in a papyrus of 495
B.C., may it not occur once, viz. in Dan. vii. i, in the Aramaic
42
The Aramaic of the Book of Daniel 43
portion of a prophetic Book, seemingly written near the
end of the reign of Cyrus ? *
On p. 107 occurs the following very perplexing remark,
" Nevertheless, it is extremely difficult to feel that Daniel's
very common use of S to mark the direct object, for instance,
could be more than a century older than the oldest of the
Papyri," etc. I confess I do not understand this remark.
The oldest of the Papyri, according to the date given, was
written in 495 b.c. The Book of Daniel, as just suggested,
was probably written some forty years earlier, whereas
Rowley speaks of " more than a century." In the next
paragraph he observes, " Much more embarrassing to the
theory of the early origin of the Book of Daniel, however,
are the differences between Daniel and the Papyri in points
(4) and (7)." To this I would answer that if we once
admit that in the more frequent adoption of a grammatical
construction, known to be in use in his day, Daniel may be
allowed to have a style of his own, all the imaginary embar-
rassment at once disappears.
On p. 104 (5) we meet with the observation, " In the
Aramaic of Lydia, Babylon, the Papyri, and the Nabatean
inscriptions, the word X2^c, when in opposition with the
name of the sovereign, uniformly follows the Proper name.
In Ezra, too, the same order is regularly followed. In
Daniel, however, while in many cases this order is observed,
in several cases the order is reversed." In commenting on
the above I would say that the order of the words is not, I
think, due to prevailing usage or to individual taste. " Nebu-
chadnezzar the king " is the more stately and formal style.
It emphasizes the royal power and majesty of the sovereign.
For this reason we find it used throughout Dan. iii. It is
used also in the humble address of the presidents and satraps
who were plotting the death of Daniel : " Darius the king,
live for ever," chap. vi. 6 : so runs the order of the words
in the original, compare chap. iii. 9. It is the official title,
* Cf. Dan. i. 21, vi. 28, and x. i. Cyrus was king of Babylon only for
the last seven years ol his reign.
44 Dadda-idri
and therefore we meet with it in royal proclamations. See
chap. iv. I (Heb. iii. 31), and vi. 25 (Heb. 26), and compare
the legal documents found at Elephantine. In Dan. iv. 31
(Heb. 28) it emphasizes the humbling of the great king of
Babylon ; but in the same chapter the troubled monarch,
anxious as to the meaning of his alarming vision, adopts
the less emphatic order, as indeed he would naturally do
when speaking about himself : "This dream I king Nebu-
chadnezzar have seen," etc. This order is also suited to
intimate conversation : see chaps, ii. 28, and v. 11. It is
no less suited to simple narrative : see chaps, ii. 46, v. 9,
and vi. 9 (Heb. 10). On p. 106 Rowley says, " the use in
Daniel of i<2h^ before the name," i.e. of the king, " is un-
paralleled in the Papyri." Yes ! for the very good reason
that there are no passages in the Papyri answering to the
description of the six just given. In the Book of Ezra we
find the first order used throughout, because the references
to the king are of an historical or official character, and point
to the monarch named as seated at that time on the throne
of Persia.
On pp. 104-5 (6) the writer remarks on the position of
the Demonstratives nji(;), Nl(-), rht^ or \'h\<. I think the
Demonstrative when put first is emphatic. Compare
Dan. iv. 18 (Heb. 15), " this dream," this startling dream ;
and ii. 44, " consume all these kingdoms," i.e. all these
■great kingdoms ; also vii. 17, " these great beasts," so
terrible, so powerful ! The order in Ezra v. 4, I cannot
explain, but in verse 15 following " take these vessels "
means " take these sacred vessels, which were removed
from the temple at Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar," etc.
Similarly in the Papyri, No. 13.7, " This house I give to
you," the pronoun is emphatic, and therefore stands first.
Compare line 12 following : " this document," i.e. as the
context shows, " this document, and none other, shall be
valid." In line 17, where there is no emphasis, the Demon-
strative stands second.
NOTE I
Dadda-'idri, i.e. Hadad-ezer, has been identified by
Schrader with Benhadad II, the contemporary of Ahab.*
No doubt Schrader was helped to this identification by the
fact that in the annals of Shalmaneser III Hazael succeeds
Dadda-'idri as king at Damascus, while in the O.T. he
succeeds Benhadad. It follows, therefore, that the full
name of this king must have been Ben-Hadad-ezer " the son
of Hadad is a helper." Compare the abbreviated name of
an Arab sheikh found in the annals of Ashurbanipal, Bir-
Dadda, i.e. Ben-Hadad. Apparently, then, the son of
Hadad was a god as well as Hadad himself. It is possible,
however, to find another explanation, as follows. Hadad,
the Air-god, had a second name, Ramman or Rimmon. In
the story of Naaman the chief god of the Syrians is called
Rimmon (2 Kings v. 18). In the valley of Megiddo there
was a place which bore the name Hadad-Rimmon " Hadad
is Rimmon " (Zech. xii. 11), and in the palace of Ashur-
banipal we meet with an official called Rimani-Adad
" Rimmon is Hadad." Both these names describe the god
of the Syrians as the Thunderer. In the Babylonian
account of the Deluge we read,
" There went up from the horizon a dark cloud ;
Adad in the midst of it thundered,"
where the word " thundered " is the Ifte 'al conjugation of
the verb ramamu, from which the name Ramman is a deri-
vative. Hadad has a similar derivation. It comes from a
root which in Arabic signifies " to crash," and which has
a derivative noun signifying " thunder." But Hadad was
not only Ramman the Thunderer : he was also Barqu the
Lightener.f Now there was a town near Joppa called Bene-
berak I — the modern Ibn Abrak — a name which means
* Schrader. The Cuneifonn Inscriptions and the O. T., pp. 190-91.
t Ibid., pp. 196-97.
j Josh. xix. 45.
45
46 Dadda-idri, or
" the sons of lightning," i.e. " the hghteners." In the same
way Ben-Hadad " the son of thunder " is equivalent to
" the thunderer." Compare the name given by our Saviour
to His apostles James and John, " Boanerges," i.e. t*y\ '•jd
" the sons of thunder," where the Genitive is one of
characteristic. According to this explanation Hadad and
Ben-Hadad have much the same meaning.
NOTE II
In my work on the Book of Daniel I have given some
reasons for thinking that Darius the Mede was Cambyses,
the son of Cyrus, who, as shown by the contract tablets,
was styled " king of Babylon " for about nine months in
the first year of Cyrus after the capture of that city. A
crucial point in the argument is the age of Darius. If, as
seems not unlikely, numbers were expressed by letters of
the alphabet as early as the fifth century B.C., then 62
would be written 2D ; and this, as I have striven to show,
might very easily be a corruption of 2"' =12 — a very hkely
age for Cambyses at that time, if, as Ctesias tells us, Amytis,
the daughter of Astyages, was his mother.
How easily a carelessly made '' might be mistaken for a
2, is exhibited in the photograph and facsimile of an inscrip-
tion by Prof. Torrey, given in the Journal of the American
Oriental Society for December, 19 17, and here by kind per-
mission re-produced. This inscription, brought to America
by an Armenian merchant, is on a block of stone said to
have been cut out of the rock above the river Cydnus about
fifteen miles north-east of Tarsus. The letters measure
from t\ to 2 inches in height. They have been incised and
then filled in with red paint. Describing his copy of the
inscription, Torrey says, " In the accompanying facsimile
drawing, made from the stone itself, I have attempted to
indicate the relative distinctness of the remaining letters
' %.;^^ <«
,^§^'m^i#su..„..
■^/'rp-.^'
^^: ^/^ ',.... i.i:
^>r4^:' ^-m^^M
■^' if-z^l^Tj-j*
;« ...'l^^'
1
ARAMAIC INSCRIPTION FROM THK liANKS Ol' rill-; CNDNAS WITH
A FACSIMILE BY PROF. TORRKV.
Facing p. 47
The Aramaic of the Book of Daniel 47
or portions of letters. Solid black means that both incision
and paint are plainly to be seen. The partly shaded por-
tions are those in which either the painting or the incised
hne is unmistakably clear, but not both. Where the draw-
ing is in outline, only ambiguous traces, or no traces at all,
can be seen. It is perhaps needless to remark that some of
the lines and furrows, which in the photograph look like
plain marks of the engraver's tool, are not such in reahty."
If the reader, thus fully instructed, will compare the care-
lessly made Yod near the end of the third line with the
Samech in the name jiD^is, he will see how closely the
two letters resemble each other, and how a Yod carelessly
written might very easily be mistaken for a Samech. He
will also not fail to notice the indication of another care-
lessly made Yod in the same line. The remaining three
Yods are correctly formed. The inscription, as transcribed
by Prof. Torrey in modern Hebrew characters, and trans-
lated, reads thus : —
n3:j pomx onp
ir-'a pi n'7^1 ••tj^c:
This image NNST erected
before ADRSWN, because he protected
my spirit, which is his. Whoever evil
does to this image,
Sahar and Shamash will require it of him.
With regard to the epigraphy of the inscription Torrey
makes the following remark : "Of the inscriptions hitherto
published, those most nearly resembling ours in the forms
of the characters used are the Memphis inscription,
C I S * II, 122, dated 482 B.C., the Teima stele CIS II, 113,
belonging to the fifth century, and the Cilician hunting
inscription,! Lidzbarski, Handbuch, Plate XXVI, 3, probably
also dating from the fifth century."
* Corpus I nscriptionum Semiticarum.
■ . t G. A. Cooke, p. 194.
48
Dadda-idri
AUTHORS CITED
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1903-
Cowley, A. Aramaic Papj-ri of the Fifth Centurj' B.C. Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1923.
DiLLMANN, A. Ethiopic Grammar, trans, by Crichton. London, 1907.
Dri\tr, G. B. The Aramaic of the Book of Daniel. Journal of Biblical
Literature, vol. xlv, 1926.
The Semitic Languages. Enc. Brit., 14th edn., 1929.
Driver, S. R. The Aramaic Inscription from Syria. Expositor, June,
1908.
Glaser, Edouard. Die Abessinier in Arabien und Afrika. Miinich,
1895.
Hogarth, D. G. The Ancient East. London and New York, 1914.
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Johns, C. H. W. An Assyrian Doomsday Book. Leipzig, 1901.
Kraeling, E. G. H. Aram and Israel. Columbia University Press,
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LiTTMANN, Enno. Deutsche Aksum Expedition. Berlin, 1913.
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versity of Chicago Press, 1926.
Noldeke, Theodor. Mandaische Grammatik. Halle, 1875.
The Semitic Languages. Enc. Brit., 9th edn., 1875.
O'Leary, De Lacy. Comparative Grammar of the Semitic Languages.
London, 1923.
Arabia before Muhammad. London, 1927.
Prideaux, W. Sabean Grammar. Transactions of the Society of Biblical
ArchcEology, vol. v (1877).
Rawlinson, G. Speaker's Commentary, Ezra. London, 1878.
Rowley, H. H. The Aramaic of the Old Testament. Oxford University
Press, 1928.
Sayce, a. H. Archaeology of the Cuneiform Inscriptions. London, 1907.
• Patriarchal Palestine. London, S.P.C.K., 1895.
The Higher Criticism and the Monuments. London, 1894.
ScHRADER, Eberhard. The Cuneiform Inscriptions and the Old Testa-
ment, trans, by Whitehouse. London, 1885.
Thureau-Dangin, Francois. Une Relation de la Huitieme Campagne
de Sargon. Paris, 1912.
Torrey, C. C. Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. xxx\-
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PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BV WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
LONDON AND BECCLES.
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