Here we evidently have an account of the payments disbursed by the priests of a temple on particular days. Resheph was a title of the Sun-god, and M. Clermont-Ganneau has pointed out that his name still survives in that of Arsûf, a ruined town to the north of Jaffa. The cakes baked for Ashtoreth, “the Holy Queen,” are the same as those which the Jewish men and women who had fled to Egypt after the destruction of Jerusalem and the murder of Gedaliah declared to Jeremiah that they would still continue to offer to “the queen of heaven” (Jer. xliv. 19). What is meant by the “dogs” is best explained by Deuteronomy xxiii. 18, while the barbers mentioned in the text were required to shave the priests. Mention is also made of them in the Assyrian inscriptions (see Lev. xix. 27, xxi. 5). The _’almâth_, or “maiden”—a word which has acquired a special significance in the Christian Church in consequence of its having been used in Isaiah’s prophecy of “the Virgin” (Isa. vii. 14)—here seems to mean the chief singer attached to the temple of Ashtoreth. The _’alâmôth_ are described in the sixty-eighth Psalm (ver. 25) as similarly employed in the worship of Israel. As for the “Masters of the Days,” they are the gods who, as among the Assyrians, were believed to preside over the months of the year. The month Ethanim, to which the first account refers, is mentioned, it will be remembered, in 1 Kings viii. 2, as being the month in which the feast of the dedication of Solomon’s temple was held. That temple had been built with the help of Phœnician workmen, and it was therefore natural that the names of the Phœnician months should have become known to the Israelites in connection with it. The Israelites themselves were still contented to speak of the months of the year according to the order in which they came. It was not until after the return from the Babylonish exile that special names for the months were definitely adopted, and that the Jews henceforth called them by the Assyrian names they had heard in Babylonia. CHAPTER IV. THE MOABITE STONE AND THE INSCRIPTION OF SILOAM. _The alphabet of Egyptian origin.—Discovery of the Moabite Stone.—Translation of the inscription.—Points of interest raised by the inscription.—Discovery of the Siloam inscription.—The translation.—The date.—Its bearing upon the topography of Jerusalem._