Fig. 54.—Maneh Weight
4. The Siloam Inscription.—The tunnel in which this was found was doubtless constructed to secure the water supply of Jerusalem in the event of a siege, the Virgin's Pool being outside the city walls, while the Pool of Siloam is inside the boundaries of the old rampart. Encrustations of carbonate of lime made the decipherment of the letters very difficult on their first discovery in 1880, but enough was seen to prove their high importance for the study of the development of the Hebrew alphabet in its passage from the Phœnician to the Aramean type, whence the modern characters are derived. "It was recognised at once that a Hebrew inscription of a date prior to the Captivity had at last been discovered, and that the uncertainties as to the nature of the alphabet of Israel would now be set at rest." The letters were carefully cleared of their accretion; squeezes, tracings, and casts were obtained, and the Hebrew record, engraved in Phœnician characters nearly resembling those on the Moabite Stone, thus Englished, of course more or less conjecturally in detail, by Professor Sayce:—
(1) (Behold the) excavation! Now this is the history of the tunnel. While the excavators (were lifting up)
(2) the pick each to his neighbour, and while there were yet three cubits (to be broken through) ... the voice of one call-
(3) -ed to his neighbour, for there was (an excess?) in the rock on the right. They rose up ... they struck on the west of the
(4) excavation, the excavators struck each to meet his neighbour pick to pick, and there flowed
(5) the waters from their outlet to the Pool for the distance of 1000 cubits and (three-fourths?)
(6) of a cubit was the height of the rock at the head of the excavation here.
The inscription is interesting if only as showing how modern methods of tunnelling were anticipated by these ancient engineers. One gang of men began boring at one end and another gang at the other end, thus advancing till both met, and the failure to make the connection which is spoken of in "the (excess) in the rock on the right" has confirmation in the existence of two "blind alleys" in the tunnel, showing how the borings overlapped. The accuracy with which, aided by the most recent appliances worked by compressed air, the passages through miles of rock have been bored until the men at either end meet face to face in the middle, is among the romantic achievements of modern science. The Samaritan alphabet is the sole surviving lineal descendant of the Phœnician, which in whatever degree the parent of all extant alphabets, became extinct with the decline of Phœnicia herself, and the characters are now recoverable only through the inscriptions of which examples have been given.
M. de Rougé's theory of the source of that alphabet, and of the variants to which it has given rise, has not passed unchallenged. It belongs to the class of hypotheses which lend themselves to the straining of facts in their support, and therefore demand evidence amounting to demonstration. The superficial resemblances between the written characters are cited as proof of relation, no play being given to that independence of origin of which numerous examples occur in other branches of human development. In his article on Hieroglyphics in the Encyclopædia Britannica, Mr. Reginald Poole remarks that "the hieratic forms vary, like all cursive forms of writing, with the hand of each scribe. Consequently, the writers who desire to establish their identity with Phœnician can scarcely avoid straining the evidence." Moreover, the long lapse of time between the materials for comparison invites caution. The Papyrus Prisse is, at least, two thousand years older than the Eshmunazar inscription, and on these two hang the validity of M. de Rougé's theory. Another contention is that certain Semitic letters represent sounds which are peculiar to that language, and for which no equivalent signs could be adopted from the Egyptian, to which, however, the reply is that in the borrowing of characters it suffices to select those representing similar, although not the same, sounds. The objection that the names of the Semitic letters are not those of the hieroglyphs is met by the principle of acrology (see pp. [86], [104]). The question is also asked, Why did not the Phœnicians borrow the hieroglyphic instead of the hieratic characters? Mr. Arthur Evans thinks that in some cases this was done, a few of the letters of the Phœnician alphabet coming direct from the pictorial symbols, as Alpha (Alef = an ox), from the hieroglyph of an ox's head; Zeta (zayin = weapons), from the two-edged axe; Sigma (samech = a post), from the sign of a tree; Omikron (Ain = an eye), from the circle used to represent the eye; Eta and E-psilon (cheth = a fence and He = a window), from signs for a wall or door or window. Canon Taylor, however, argues that the derivation must have been on the lines laid down by M. de Rougé, the Semitic alphabet originating among a colony of aliens of that race settled in Lower Egypt, either as slaves, traders, frontier guards, or conquerors. In any case these intruders would be strangers to the religion and the language of the Egyptians. It would, therefore, be more likely that they should make use of the cursive and easy hieratic, which was ordinarily employed in Egypt for secular and commercial purposes, than that they should adopt the difficult sacred script which was reserved by the Egyptian priesthood for monumental and religious uses. This supposition is confirmed by the singular absence of any hieroglyphic monument which can be assigned to the three dynasties of Semitic rulers known as the Hyksos or Shepherd Kings, who were expelled from Lower Egypt by the Theban Ramesides.