prove that it was known in Babylonia, and hence it may be asked how could it have been so known unless it were a worldwide institution coëval with the Creation?

It is worth while, not merely in candour but in prudence, to anticipate such an objection, which the writer believes can be shown to be destitute of any solid foundation.

The former of the above-mentioned documents is, (as has been said already), a Hemerology (or Calendar) for the Month of the Intercalary. Elul. To the 7th, 14th, 19th, 21st, and 28th days of the Month a certain note is appended, which is the same in each case with slight orthographical variations. What is the purport of that note will appear from the following transliteration of it from the fourth volume of Rawlinson, illustrated by an interlinear translation, kindly furnished by the Rev. C. J. Ball. He says he believes it to be accurate, though it may differ in some respects from versions by other scholars. 4 R. 32, col. I. 28, seqq.

ûm vii, kan nu-bat-tum

Day 7th

sa ili Marduk

ilti Zir-pa-ni-tum Merodach (and) goddess Zirpanit,

the dress of his body let him not change, clean (or splendid) things let him

not put on!

• Professor Sayce has published a translation of the 2nd Elul Calendar in Volume VII. of the "Records of the Past," pp. 159, seqq. and Schrader has rendered a few lines of it in his "Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament," p. 19, (2nd edit.). See also the monograph of Wilhelm Lotz, Quæstiones de Historia Sabbati (Leipzig, 1883).—C. J. B.

XX

EXCURSUS ON TWO BABYLONIAN DOCUMENTS.

ni-qu-u ul inak ki

sarru

narkabta ul irakab

a victim let him not sacrifice, let the king not ride in the chariot!

sal-tis

ul i-ta-me

a-sar bu-uz-ri lu-hal pa ul isakk-an

as sovereign let him not speak, in the place of secresy let not the soothsayer open mouth!

ina musi ina

pan ili

Marduk u ilti

Is-tar

in the evening in face of god Merodach and goddess Ishtar

sarru

nidaba-su u-kan ni-ki-e inak ki

the king will prepare his offering, victims he will sacrifice;

(then) the lifting up of his hand with the god findeth favor.

There is a colophon to the Calendar assigning, at least its copying, to the reign of Asurbanipal, king of Assyria, who succeeded Esarhaddon, 12th Iyyar, 668 B.C.

Disembarrassed of the original it reads thus:

Day 7th.

Rest of the god Merodach and the goddess Zirpanit, a day of divine favor (lit., inclining unto, hearing), a holiday (lit., a bad day, i.e., for business).

The shepherd of peoples great, (i.e. the king),

Flesh that is cooked with coals, that is wholesome, let him not eat!

The dress of his body let him not change, clean things let him not put on!

As sovereign let him not speak! in the place of secresy, (in the temple), let not the soothsayer open his mouth!

The wise man, (i.e. the wizard doctor) to the sick his hand let him not apply!

For the making of a curse, (or wish), it, (the day), is not proper.

In the evening, before the god Merodach and the goddess Ishtar, the king will prepare his offering, victims he will sacrifice;

(Then) the lifting up of his hand with the god findeth favor.

This shall be treated of at length presently.

The latter of the two documents has nothing whatever to connect it with the 2nd Elul Calendar. It is a definition in

a lexical tablet of the word sa-pat-tum, whatever that word may mean.

"It does not appear," (observes Mr. Ball), "that a day of rest of heart,' though suggestive of the Sabbath to us, might not serve as a description of any one of the numerous Babylonian Festivals quite as well as of the Hebrew Sabbath. But the term sa-pat which it is intended to define is not identical in form with the term sab-bat. Professor Friedrich Delitzsch, indeed, proposed that the reading should be altered to sa-battum, because the cuneiform symbol for the syllable pat was supposed to be doubtful. If, however, he had examined the original document, he would have seen that sa-pat-tum is right, and that the symbol is perfectly clear and legible.

This

is also the reading of a duplicate tablet not yet published but numbered K. 10035 in the Museum register, which has quite plainly,

u-um nu-uh lib-bi sa-pat-(tum),

only the last syllable being broken away. The conjecture, therefore, of the Professor is groundless. Moreover, the doubling of the second radical b, which is mostly represented in the other Semitic languages,-Chaldee, sabbethā, sabbattā, sabbā, but also se

bāthā, Syriac sabbethā, sabbā, Ethiopic sanbat-is against the identification of sa-pat with Sabbath."

Upon this authority, the writer thinks that the inscription. may be set aside altogether, so far as the bearing of it upon knowledge of the Sabbath by the Babylonians is concerned. And it is worth remarking that it has no traceable connexion with the supposed Sabbaths of the other inscription, and that there is no context which will help to explain its meaning.

But to come to that other inscription.

To the writer's mind, it is improbable in a very high degree that more can be inferred from it than this, that a certain apparent acquaintance with an institution characteristically Hebrew was possessed by the Babylonians. It does not avail in the least to prove that the Sabbath was a world-wide institution. If the institution was world-wide, why should it have been uniquely possessed by them? Why should every other heathen Semitic nation have been ignorant of it?

How then, (it may be asked), could the Babylonians have become acquainted with it?

A reply is ready, From personal intercourse with the Hebrews.

That they had such intercourse may be argued à priori from chronological and geographical and other considerations. Asurbanipal, who is known to have gathered together in his library a vast collection of Babylonian works, astronomical, religious, and historical, flourished, (as has been said above), in the Seventh Century, B.C. The ordinary date given to Moses is about the middle of the Fourteenth Century, B.C. Therefore, there were at least seven centuries during which intercourse of Babylon with the Hebrews may have caused

an engrafting of a sacred character on the seventh day to be brought about. It should be added that though Asurbanipal's copies of Babylonian documents include some of very ancient date, there is nothing by which the particular date of the original drawing up of this Calendar can be certainly referred to a time anterior to the date of Moses.

But did such intercourse as has been hinted at exist? Undoubtedly. Though the contiguity of the two nations. would make this almost a matter of course, what is in itself a presumption is established by actual facts. During the period of the Judges the country of the Hebrews was invaded by the king of Aram-Naharaim or Mesopotamia. There was an Aramaic dynasty over the Edomites, the closely connected kinsmen and at one time the tributaries of the Hebrews. Solomon's power was recognised as far as the Euphrates. And, in the reign of Menahem, king of Israel, Pul, king of Assyria, who has by some been identified with Asurbanipal, overran the territory of the Hebrews. The Orientals were inclined to the adoption of each other's religions, and accessories of worship. It is then quite possible that, as alliance with Sidon brought Baal-worship into Israel, as Ahaz carried home the pattern of the altar at Damascus, some Babylonian monarch may have introduced, at least into arrangements affecting himself and his Court, a faint resemblance of what he found existing amongst his neighbours, the Hebrew Sabbath.

These two phrases, "arrangements affecting himself and his Court," and "faint resemblance" have not been employed unadvisedly.

Although the Calendar seems to mention something like the Hebrew Sabbath, a careful examination of it proves that it