Legends of Babylon and Egypt in relation to Hebrew tradition | Page 8

do not suggest that we should regard the one process as in any
way proving the existence of the other. We should rather treat the
comparison as illustrating in another medium the effect of forces which,
it is clear, were operative at various periods upon races of the same
stock from which the Hebrews themselves were descended. In such
material products the eye at once detects the Semite's readiness to avail
himself of foreign models. In some cases direct borrowing is obvious;
in others, to adapt a metaphor from music, it is possible to trace
extraneous motifs in the design.(2)
(1) "New Archaeological Lights on the Origins of Civilization in
Europe," British Association, Newcastle-on- Tyne, 1916.

(2) The necessary omission of plates, representing the slides shown in
the lectures, has involved a recasting of most passages in which points
of archaeological detail were discussed; see Preface. But the following
paragraphs have been retained as the majority of the monuments
referred to are well known.
Some of the most famous monuments of Semitic art date from the
Persian and Hellenistic periods, and if we glance at them in this
connexion it is in order to illustrate during its most obvious phase a
tendency of which the earlier effects are less pronounced. In the
sarcophagus of the Sidonian king Eshmu-'azar II, which is preserved in
the Louvre,(1) we have indeed a monument to which no Semitic
sculptor can lay claim. Workmanship and material are Egyptian, and
there is no doubt that it was sculptured in Egypt and transported to
Sidon by sea. But the king's own engravers added the long Phoenician
inscription, in which he adjures princes and men not to open his
resting-place since there are no jewels therein, concluding with some
potent curses against any violation of his tomb. One of the latter
implores the holy gods to deliver such violators up "to a mighty prince
who shall rule over them", and was probably suggested by Alexander's
recent occupation of Sidon in 332 B.C. after his reduction and drastic
punishment of Tyre. King Eshmun-'zar was not unique in his choice of
burial in an Egyptian coffin, for he merely followed the example of his
royal father, Tabnîth, "priest of 'Ashtart and king of the Sidonians",
whose sarcophagus, preserved at Constantinople, still bears in addition
to his own epitaph that of its former occupant, a certain Egyptian
general Penptah. But more instructive than these borrowed memorials
is a genuine example of Phoenician work, the stele set up by
Yehaw-milk, king of Byblos, and dating from the fourth or fifth
century B.C.(2) In the sculptured panel at the head of the stele the king
is represented in the Persian dress of the period standing in the presence
of 'Ashtart or Astarte, his "Lady, Mistress of Byblos". There is no doubt
that the stele is of native workmanship, but the influence of Egypt may
be seen in the technique of the carving, in the winged disk above the
figures, and still more in the representation of the goddess in her
character as the Egyptian Hathor, with disk and horns, vulture
head-dress and papyrus-sceptre. The inscription records the dedication

of an altar and shrine to the goddess, and these too we may conjecture
were fashioned on Egyptian lines.
(1) Corp. Inscr. Semit., I. i, tab. II.
(2) C.I.S., I. i, tab. I.
The representation of Semitic deities under Egyptian forms and with
Egyptian attributes was encouraged by the introduction of their cults
into Egypt itself. In addition to Astarte of Byblos, Ba'al, Anath, and
Reshef were all borrowed from Syria in comparatively early times and
given Egyptian characters. The conical Syrian helmet of Reshef, a god
of war and thunder, gradually gave place to the white Egyptian crown,
so that as Reshpu he was represented as a royal warrior; and Qadesh,
another form of Astarte, becoming popular with Egyptian women as a
patroness of love and fecundity, was also sometimes modelled on
Hathor.(1)
(1) See W. Max Müller, Egyptological Researches, I, p. 32 f., pl. 41,
and S. A. Cook, Religion of Ancient Palestine, pp. 83 ff.
Semitic colonists on the Egyptian border were ever ready to adopt
Egyptian symbolism in delineating the native gods to whom they owed
allegiance, and a particularly striking example of this may be seen on a
stele of the Persian period preserved in the Cairo Museum.(1) It was
found at Tell Defenneh, on the right bank of the Pelusiac branch of the
Nile, close to the old Egyptian highway into Syria, a site which may be
identified with that of the biblical Tahpanhes and the Daphnae of the
Greeks. Here it was that the Jewish fugitives, fleeing with Jeremiah
after the fall of Jerusalem, founded a Jewish colony beside a flourishing
Phoenician and Aramaean settlement. One of the local gods