[160]. For Dr. Neubauer’s suggestion that the name of Aaron, otherwise so inexplicable, is the Arabic Âron or Âran written in the Minæan fashion, see above, p. [34], note 1. If the suggestion is right, it was specially appropriate that Aaron should have met Moses in ‘the Mount of God,’ on the frontiers of Midian (Exod. iv. 27).
[161]. A translation of the papyrus has been given by Professor Maspero in The Records of the Past, new series, ii. pp. 11-36.
[162]. See Preface to Maspero’s Dawn of Civilisation, p. v.
[163]. Reuel, ‘Shepherd of God,’ was a son of Esau, according to Gen. xxxvi. 4. It may have been a title of the high-priest, since rêu, ‘shepherd,’ is one of the titles given to the kings and high-priests of early Babylonia. The high-priest Gudea, for instance, calls himself ‘the shepherd of the god Nin-girsu.’ On the other hand, Hommel (The Ancient Hebrew Tradition, p. 278) compares the name Reuel-Jethro with the Minæan Ridsvu-il Vitrân.
[164]. In the word seneh a popular etymology seems to have been found for the name of Mount Sinai. Hence it is that in Deut. xxxiii. 16, Yahveh is described as ‘him that dwelt in the seneh.’ The seneh was probably the small prickly acacia nilotica.
[165]. No satisfactory etymology of the name Yahveh has yet been found. This, however, is not strange, considering that the etymology was unknown to the Hebrews themselves, as is shown by the explanation of the name in Exod. iii. 14, where it is derived from the Aramaic hewâ, the Hebrew equivalent being hâyâh, with y instead of w (or v). The Babylonians were also ignorant of the original meaning of the word, since one of the lexical cuneiform tablets gives Yahu or Yahveh as meaning ‘god’ (in Israelitish), and identifies it with the Assyrian word yahu, ‘myself’ (83, 1-18, 1332 Obv.; Col. ii. 1). No certain traces of the name have been found except among the Israelites. It is a verbal formation like Jacob, Joseph, etc.
[166]. Maspero, Dawn of Civilisation, pp. 132-134.
[167]. For ‘strikes’ among the Egyptian artisans, see Spiegelberg, Arbeiter und Arbeiterbewegung im Pharaonreich unter den Ramessiden (1895).
[168]. At Tel el-Maskhuta, or Pithom, however, the bricks were not mixed with straw.
[169]. See Wiedemann, Religion der alten Aegypter, pp. 142 sq.