ARTICLE III.

REMARKS

ON THE

PHOENICIAN INSCRIPTION OF SIDON.

BY PROF. WILLIAM W. TURNER.

Presented to the Society October 26, 1859.

SOON after the news reached this country that the sarcophagus of Ashmunezer, King of Sidon, had been brought to Paris and deposited in the Louvre through the munificence of a distinguished cultivator and patron of Oriental learning, a request was made to Prof. Henry, the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, by some members of this Society, to procure, if possible, for the use of American scholars, a rubbing of the inscription on the lid, and also of that around the head of the sarcophagus. Prof. Henry addressed the Duc de Luynes on the subject, and the latter promptly and generously complied, sending to the Institution a carefully made rubbing of both inscriptions, and also a copy of his own memoir on the subject. The copies of these inscriptions which you see before you are tracings carefully made from these rubbings; and consequently they exhibit, in their exact proportions, each line as made by the ancient sculptor of this most venerable document. Upon its great philological and historical interest it is unnecessary here to enlarge; it is sufficient to say that it consists of twenty-two perfect lines of from forty to fifty-five letters each, and that the whole number of its characters exceeds one thousand. If viewed merely as an addition to the pure ancient language of the Old Testament, its importance will be evident from the fact that it is almost exactly equivalent in extent to the tenth chapter of Genesis, or to the one hundred

and fourth Psalm.

My object in the remarks to which your attention is invited will be to show what is the present state of our knowledge of the contents of the inscription, and to whose learning and labors we are indebted for this knowledge.

By way of introduction to these remarks, I will here give, in a tabular form, the names of all the writers who have published a reading and interpretation of the inscription, arranged chronologically, as near as may be, according to the dates of their respective publications, placing opposite the name of each writer the names of those of his predecessors whose interpretations he had an opportunity to consult.

p. 27.

From the copies furnished by the American missionaries.

Luynes. In his supplementary remarks. (p. 59 etc.) he makes use of Munk's memoir.

His memoir appears to have been published after that of Munk, See Munk,

The first complete translation given to the world was a preli minary one, the concluding portion by myself, in a paper drawn up by Messrs. Salisbury and Gibbs, and printed in the New Haven Daily Palladium of May 31, 1855. This agrees in all essentials with the versions we afterwards published.

As regards the order of arrangement of the several versions, it should be remarked that, although that of Prof. Rödiger was printed some weeks before those of Prof. Salisbury and myself, yet I have placed the two American versions first, as containing traits in common which separate them from the efforts of European scholars, in consequence of our having exchanged views freely on the subject, with the intention of making a joint affair of the interpretation, before it was generously proposed by Prof. Salisbury that my paper should be given separately.

There is one feature which disadvantageously distinguishes our productions from all the rest; it is the erroneous value given almost throughout to the character. We were led astray by Gesenius's alphabet in the Monumenta, Tab. 1, in which he has given it only the value of * although he had correctly read the character as in the third Athenian inscription (Tab. 10), being guided by the accompanying Greek.

A close examination of the legends which he cites in support of this value shows that it is nowhere certain. This error runs entirely through my reading, and ought to have been avoided by an inspection of the alphabet of Judas in his Étude Démonstrative, and of pp. 33-37 of that work, where he discusses the forms of the letter.

We also labored under a difficulty which was shared in by Messrs. Rödiger, Dietrich, Hitzig, and Schlottmann-that of having to work upon the copies of the inscription made in haste by the American missionaries; so that those who had before them the carefully reduced fac-simile furnished by the liberality of the Duc de Luynes after the monument reached Europe, enjoyed a great advantage over us.

THE INSCRIPTION AND THE COPIES OF IT.

The copies of the Inscription to which we have access for ascertaining its readings are the following:

Copies of the American Missionaries.-On the 3rd of April, 1855, the Secretary of the Albany Institute laid before a meeting of that body a copy of the inscription received from Dr. C. V. A. Van Dyck, a corresponding member of the Institute, and of this Society, then in Syria. This was promptly lithographed, and

Be

*Gesenius has given (from a Cilician coin) Z as the earliest form of Zain. tween this and the somewhat oblique form 2 (in Cilic. H) he thinks there is a decided difference, and so regards the latter as a Yod (p. 284), although he had seen Zain in a still more oblique position in Athen. 3.

published in Vol. iv, Part 1, of the Institute's Transactions. A faithful copy accompanies Prof. Rödiger's paper in the Ztschr. der D. M. G. The U. States Magazine of the 15th of April also published a copy made from Dr. Van Dyck's manuscript.

Another MS. copy was sent by Dr. H. A. De Forest, another member of the Syrian Mission, to Prof. Salisbury. This differs somewhat from the preceding (see Prof. Salisbury, p. 229), and generally on the side of correctness.

A third copy in MS. was sent by Dr. W. M. Thomson, also of the Syrian Mission, to Chev. Bunsen in London, who communicated it to Prof. Dietrich of Marburg. This, as published by Prof. D., is decidedly the worst copy of the whole. The fault would seem to be that of the engraver or other persons who reduced it since it emanated from the same source as the rest. Dr. Thomson, in a letter to Prof. Salisbury, dated Oct. 5, 1855, says: "The copy from which all those sent to America, and most of those to Europe, so far as I know, were obtained, was taken by me."

The copies taken by the American missionaries were evidently made with a great deal of care, and compare favorably with many in the great work of Gesenius; yet, like all copies of unintelligible inscriptions, in which the eye and hand of the copyist are depended upon, they leave much to be desired in the way of perfect accuracy. Hence they are now entirely superseded by the

Copies from the Duc de Lunes.-The Duc de Luynes has published, in his memoir on the subject of the inscription, a beautifully engraved copy of it, made doubtless from a photograph, and from a careful examination of the stone itself. The same plate accompanies the memoir of Munk in the Journal Asiatique; and a lithographed fac-simile that of the Abbé Bargès. The copy appended to the memoir of Ewald was, as he informs us, prepared from a photograph received from the Duc de Luynes; the same, evidently (i. e. from the same negative), that was used by the Duke himself, it being of the same dimensions.

In addition to and above all these materials for our study of this interesting monument is the rubbing, furnished by the Duc de Luynes to the Smithsonian Institution, of the inscription on the breast, and also of that around the head of the sarcophagus, of which latter no fac-simile or engraving has yet appeared.

EXTERNAL CHARACTERS OF THE INSCRIPTION.

An examination and comparison of the two forms of the inscription, that on the breast and that around the head, show us that the former consists of twenty-two lines, and the latter of six perfect lines and the commencement of a seventh. Both are

written continuously, without separation of words, and without marks of interpunction or other sign of pause, except a space of over an inch in line 13, which divides the great inscription into two nearly equal parts, which, for convenience, I shall call Parts I and II. The lines are not perfectly straight, being more or less curved, especially towards the end of Part I. Those of Part II are straighter. The spaces between them are irregular, and the letters are by no means of uniform size, those in Part II being generally smaller than in Part I: thus the first of in line 1 is 2 inches in length, while that of at the end of

line 18 is less than of an inch. The difference in size begins immediately with Part II. The letters are also placed at variable distances apart, from half an inch to almost nothing, those in Part II being closer together than those in Part I.

In the size of its characters, and their distance apart, the head inscription agrees with the latter part of the breast inscription. The letters towards the close of the 6th line are pressed very closely together, as if for the purpose of bringing in the whole of the sentence which ends Part I. The 7th line contains only nine whole characters, which form the beginning of Part II; and it breaks off with an unfinished letter in the middle of a proper

.( אשמנעזר ) name

All these facts lead us to conclude, with the Duc de Luynes, that the inscription was first written out with a free hand on the stone (without any drawing of lines or measuring of letters as in modern times), and that these traces were then followed by the artisan. As the first letters of the three first lines of the breast inscription (1. 1. 1-11; 2. 1-12; 3. 1-7), are cut thicker and rougher than the rest, it is evident that the sculptor began to cut three lines at once; but, his work being unsatisfactory, he was either made to continue his task more neatly or was exchanged for a more skillful workman.

From the differences in execution which have been pointed out between the two portions of the breast inscription, it would appear as if it had at first terminated with Part I, Part II being added subsequently. As for the inscription around the head, the general resemblance in the size and style of its characters to those of Part II of the breast inscription leads one to conclude that it was made after this latter; wherefore, it is difficult to say, but perhaps because it was thought desirable to mark indelibly both parts of the sarcophagus as the property of its tenant. It would appear that the original intention was to copy the whole of the breast inscription; but after a few letters of the second part had been engraved, it was concluded for some reason not to add it, perhaps because the ornamental line which runs round the outside of the sarcophagus, about midway of its height, would have made an ugly division of the inscription.