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compelled to speak extempore began with a Gr. exordium but when objections were made by some in the audience, he gave a new beginning which has been preserved. Both fragments are genuine and to be accepted as belonging to the speech.

XXXVI, pp. 605-609. M. Maas. Zur heronischen Frage. M. places Heron of Alexandreia in the time of Ptolemaeus IX Euergetes II.

XXXVII, pp. 610-614. A. Dyroff. Abaris. Supplemental to Bethe's article in the Pauly-Wissowa Realencycl. The idealizing of Abaris took place in the pre-stoic times.

Miscellen.-19. pp. 615-618. Fr. Susemihl. Epikritisches zu Heliodoros dem Periegeten. Caecilius is the medium through which the decrees in the Ps. Plut. lives of the ten orators were directly obtained.

20. pp. 618-620. P. Egenolff. Zu Anakreon. In fr. 49 B' read ὡρικήν for Θρηικίην.

21. pp. 620-621. J. Koehm. Soph. Elekt. 47 reads oyko for ὅρκῳ.

22. pp. 621-622. G. Helmreich. Zu Oreibasios emendations to II 28, II 32, III 1, p. 187, 4.

23. pp. 622-625. L. Gurlitt. Cic. ep. ad fam. IX 10, 2, read: oblitusne es igitur fungorum illorum, quos apud Niciam et ingentium cum σοφίας epitome (or ἐπιτομῇ)?

24. pp. 625-627. R. Ehwald. Tacitus ab excessu d. Aug. I 10, reads: nec domesticis abstinebatur: abducta Neroni uxor et consulti pontifices, an... nuberet; Q. Ventidii et Vedii Pollionis luxus; postremo Livia ... noverca.

...

25. pp. 627-630. R. Ehwald. Eutropius. The Gotha MS (saec. IX), cod. membr. I 101 contains the first half of a Murbach codex which passed into the possession of Maugérard.

26. pp. 630-633. W. Heraeus. Zur Kritik und Erklärung von Porfyrios Horazscholien.

Indices.

YALE UNIVERSITY.

GEORGE DWIGHT KELLOGG.

BEITRÄGE ZUR ASSYRIOLOGIE UND SEMITISCHEN SPRACHWISSENSCHAFT, herausgegeben von FRIEDRICH DELITZSCH und PAUL HAUPT. Vierter Band. Heft 4, pp. 423-587. Leipzig, J. C. Hinrichs'sche Buchhandlung, 1902.1

The fourth and last Heft of the fourth volume of the Beiträge contains nine articles.

1 For review of BA. IV. Heft 3, see A. J. P. XXII 461 foll.

J. Kohler, who collaborated with Peiser in "Aus dem babylonischen Rechtsleben," Teile i-iv, comments on a number of interesting points connected with the later Babylonian law (pp. 423 430). For example, he shows that the brother of the founder of the well known business house of Egibi in Babylon was still living in Cyrus's sixth reign-year. Kohler shows also that the last trace of the ancient custom of wife purchase appears in the days of Nebuchadnezzar. After that king's time the practice died out entirely. On the other hand, the father had absolute control over the marriages of such of his daughters as were living in the paternal home. Kohler's allusions to Babylonian mortgages are highly interesting (p. 427). It seems that the interest on a mortgage might be guaranteed by presenting to the money-lender a slave or slaves whose work should be regarded as equivalent to the payment of interest. Thus, in one case a mother and daughter were given, both as security for the entire loan, in this instance 1 mina, 10 shekels, and as interest payers on the loan. We have, moreover, a record which proves the legality of a purchase on trial. A rich man bought in this way a valuable jug and bowl for four minas and nine shekels, but he stipulated that before payment he should have the opportunity to judge whether the ornament harmonized with his apartments! He accordingly contracted either to pay for or to return the piece by a certain date. These legal records are very valuable as an evidence of the extensive compass of the later Babylonian transactions. As Kohler remarks, they shed a flood of light on the management of affairs, which, although they are twenty-five hundred years old, bear the closest resemblance to modern banking operations. The Babylonians were really the founders of the world's business methods which have been transmitted to us through Greece and Rome. The history of human commerce can certainly not be written without extensive mention of ancient Babylonia.

Ferdinand Bork contributes a linguistic note on the Elamitic (pp. 431-433). He contends that in this language the divine determinative sign had not the value an, as Weissbach believes, but nap. There can be little doubt that the Elamitic system of writing developed on quite different lines to the Assyro-Babylonian cuneiform. As Bork points out, the Elamites had no ancient characters behind them, as was the case with the Babylonians, and were therefore freer to develop their system independently.

Gottfried Nagel in "Hammurabi's Letters to Sin-Idinnam," pp. 434-483, supplements L. W. King's work "The Letters and Inscriptions of Hammurâbi," vol. i. 1898. King has not yet published his second volume, no doubt owing to the many difficulties presented by these texts, whose vocabulary, dating as it does from 2250 B. C., is often very obscure and whose signs are frequently excessively difficult to differentiate. Thus, the pairs ga and bi, ša and ta, ki and di, etc. show an extraordinary and

confusing resemblance. Nagel accordingly makes here an independent attempt to edit forty-six of these letters which King had already treated. I will merely call attention to the fact that in nr. 45, Scheil and Hommel read the name Ku-dur-nu-ux-ga-mar and believed that they had found the name of the biblical ChedorLaomer. It is evident now, however, as Nagel shows (p. 473), that the correct reading is I-nu-ux-sa-mar, a rendering which detracts considerably from the historic interest of the passage. It would seem then that this was a premature "discovery," not so unusual among our eager Assyriologists! About half of these letters deal with legal conditions and show how astonishingly far advanced the Babylonians of Hammurâbi's time were in matters connected with litigation. Six letters have to do with building operations of various sorts which were carried out by Sin-Idinnam at the command of his king. A few of the letters are concerned with the trade conditions which then obtained between northern and southern Babylonia. It is highly interesting to notice how even at this early date the use of the precious metals as a standard of exchange had begun to take the place of the more primitive barter. A few of the letters inform us concerning some of Hammurabi's war-like operations, unfortunately not the same as those undertaken by that ancient king in conjunction with the Elamite Chedorlaomer, Arioch of Larsa (Bible: Ellasar) and Tidal of Goi (Bible: "Nations") against the rulers of Sodom and Gomorrah, mentioned Gen. xiv. Amraphel of Shinar in that chapter has long been recognized as Hammurâbi. Nagel calls attention to two very characteristic letters, one containing commands regarding the transportation of the goddesses of Emutbal to Babylon and the other a decree directing a leap-month to be inserted in the calendar of the current year, in order to equalize the difference between the official and the actual year. These letters contain much that is valuable for the history of ancient Babylonian culture as it existed four thousand years ago and are therefore a highly important addition to our knowledge.

Nagel adds a brief grammatical and lexicographical commentary (pp. 474-483) which is most instructively supplemented by Friedrich Delitzsch's "Remarks" (pp. 483-500.) Delitzsch adds (pp. 490-500) a short sketch of the culture conditions obtaining during Hammurâbi's reign. He was the first ancient Babylonian king to establish a definite system of military service from which were exempt, on the one hand, only certain ancient families dedicated to the temple service or acting as prominent government officials and, on the other hand, shepherd lads. In this way the king guarded the interests both of the nobility and of the agricultural classes.

Cornelis Van Gelderen (pp. 501-545) transliterates and translates with commentary twenty-one Assyro-Babylonian letters selected from various sources and dealing with a number of different subjects. The word as "physician" (p. 507, line 12 f),

regarding whose origin Van Gelderen expresses uncertainty is probably a Sumerian loanword in Semitic. The original form is azu, i. e. "father of knowledge" (a=abu, V R. 21, 63 c). That "father" is used here in the sense" possessor," very much as it is employed in modern Arabic, is evident, although this usage is not common in Assyrian. It is certainly found, however, in the expression aban abi abni, K. 240, rev. 2-4 "the father of stones" applied to a necklace of strung jewels. Sumerian azu is equivalent also to barû "seer," AL. 313 and to dupšarru "scribe," Str. 5427. The evidence then is all in favour of a Sumerian origin for this combination and we must regard Assyrian asu as a mere loanword which later passed over into the Aramaic (see BA. i., p. 219). The Semitic form isa which Nagel considers in a possible connection with asû must be a derivative of. It probably has no relation to a supposed stem asů. Nagel's work is purely that of a philological editor. He makes no comments on the contents of the letters themselves.

Friedrich Hrozny (pp. 546-550) calls attention to a few curious facts regarding the later Babylonian and Persian system of currency. The Babylonian money really never lost its original character as a marketable ware. Thus, it was not sufficient to give in a contract the name of a piece of money, but the quality of its metal had to be described as well. We find in this way a shekel described as a shekel of refined metal, piçû and qalû; as a shekel of full weight sa ginni; of current value ša nadânu u maxári, etc. It is perfectly clear that the Babylonian coins were frequently clipped or rubbed down, just as is the case in the modern East, which necessitated these legal specifications. The business world of Babylonia, therefore, took cognizance only of the weight and not of the number of coins in a payment. Indeed, in the reign of Darius, full weight coins were the exception rather than the rule.

=

Edward Kotalla (pp. 551-574) gives transliterations and translations of fifty Babylonian legal and government records taken from H. V. Hilprecht's IX volume of the Babylonian Expedition of the University of Penn., Series A. In these, we find interesting examples of Babylonian forms of proper names which occur in the O. T., especially in Ezra, Neh. and Esther. Thus Abda= N; Yaxu-natanu inn; Ili-zabadu=7, etc. (see pp. 5523). From these names we learn, 1) that Heb. y is frequently equivalent to Bab. x and 2) that in the Hebrew names compounded with (the short form of n ), the full form of the divine name; viz., Yahveh, Yahvah, must have been pronounced. Such Babylonian forms as Piliava, Padava, Igdaliava would otherwise have been impossible. This is the most important point brought forward in this volume of the Beiträge, as it establishes the pronunciation Yahve/a for the Tetragrammaton. Budgett Meakin (pp. 575-582) has supplemented Talcott Williams's article in BA. iii. pp. 561-587, on the spoken Arabic

of Morocco. Meakin is the author of a text-book now in use for the English missionary examinations in the Arabic of Morocco: "Introduction to the Arabic of Morocco," London. In this article in the Beiträge, he corrects Williams in a number of important points. For example, the form Muḥ for Muhammed is never used in speech except by Rîfi Berbers, but is occasionally employed in writing in much the same manner as the unpleasant Xt. for Christ. Darri does not mean dog," but ordinarily "a lad." I should add that this is a derivative from dry and appears in Egyptian Arabic only in the form zurriye and durriye "posterity." Kanûn, the word given by Meakin for "small oven," is Egyptian Arabic for "stove, hearth, fire-place" (pl. kawanyn). Akḥal "black" does not appear in Egyptian Arabic; only kuḥl" collyrium, black dye for the eyes," and the denominative adjective kuḥly "light black" are in common use.

Paul Haupt closes the volume (pp. 583-7) with a most learned and instructive treatise on the Hebrew term why. This is an abstract of a paper read before the Society for Biblical Literature in 1899 (JBL. xix. p. iii.). He shows conclusively that in every passage where the reading is certain, save 1 S. 18, 6, this word denotes originally "the third man in the chariot," i. e. "the armour bearer" or "shield bearer." The derivation of the Assyrian equivalent kizû "Schildknappe" is not known. I have shown in Cheyne's Encyclopedia Biblica, iii. col. 3228, nr. 3., the unlikelihood that in i S. 18, 6 means "a triangular harp," as the context in that passage leads us to suppose that the were instruments of percussion. The only objection to this view is that there is no direct proof of the existence in the ancient East of triangular instruments of percussion. On the other hand, according to Athenaeus (Deipn. 4, 175), instruments for shaking like the sistra came to Greece from Syria. It is very probable that the word why in 1 S. 18, 6 denotes an instrument of this character.

The contents of vols. i-iv. are given pp. 588-9.

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.

J. DYNELEY PRINCE.

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