Patriarchal PalestineSayce, A. H. (Archibald Henry)
History
Patriarchal Palestine
Sayce, A. H. (Archibald Henry)
Jews -- History -- To 953 B.C.; Palestine -- History
The borrowing, however, was not altogether one-sided. Palestine enriched
the literary language of Babylonia with certain words, though these do
not seem to have made their way into the language of the people. Thus we
find words like _bin-bini_, "grandson," and _înu_, "wine," recorded in
the lexical tablets of Babylonia and Assyria. Doubtless there were
writers on the banks of the Euphrates who were as anxious to exhibit
their knowledge of the language of Canaan as were the Egyptian scribes
of the nineteenth dynasty, though their literary works have not yet been
discovered.
The adoption of the Babylonian system of writing must have worked
powerfully on the side of tincturing the Canaanitish language with
Babylonian words. In the age of the Tel el-Amarna tablets there is no
sign that any other system was known in the West. It is true that the
letters sent to the Pharaoh from Palestine were written in the
Babylonian language as well as in the Babylonian script, but we have
evidence that the cuneiform characters were also used for the native
language of the country. M. de Clercq possesses two seal-cylinders of
the same date as the Tel el-Amarna correspondence, on one of which is
the cuneiform inscription--"Hadad-sum, the citizen of Sidon, the crown
of the gods," while on the other is "Anniy, the son of Hadad-sum, the
citizen of Sidon." On the first, Hadad-sum is represented standing with
his hands uplifted before the Egyptian god Set, while behind him is the
god Resheph with a helmet on his head, a shield in one hand and a
battle-axe in the other. On the seal of Anniy, Set and Resheph again
make their appearance, but instead of the owner of the cylinder it is
the god Horus who stands between them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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