A writer in the Saturday Review[1], in alluding to the passage in which I have sought to establish the identity of the ancient Tarshish with the modern Point de Galle[2], admits the force of the coincidence adduced, that the Hebrew terms for "ivory, apes, and peacocks"[3] (the articles imported in the ships of Solomon) are identical with the Tamil names, by which these objects are known in Ceylon to the present day; and, to strengthen my argument on this point, he adds that, "these terms were so entirely foreign and alien from the common Hebrew language as to have driven the Ptolemaist authors of the Septuagint version into a blunder, by which the ivory, apes, and peacocks come out as 'hewn and carven stones.'" The circumstance adverted to had not escaped my notice; but I forebore to avail myself of it; for, although the fact is accurately stated by the reviewer, so far as regards the Vatican MS., in which the translators have slurred over the passage and converted "ibha, kapi, and tukeyim" into [Greek: "lithôn toreutôn kai pelekêtôn">[ (literally, "stones hammered and carved in relief"); still, in the other great MS. of the Septuagint, the Codex Alexandrinus, which is of equal antiquity, the passage is correctly rendered by "[Greek: odontôn elephantinôn kai pithêkôn kai taônôn]." The editor of the Aldine edition[4] compromised the matter by inserting "the ivory and apes," and excluding the "peacocks," in order to introduce the Vatican reading of "stones."[5] I have not compared the Complutensian and other later versions.
1: Novemb. 19, 1859, p. 612.
2: See Vol. II. Pt. VII., c. i. p. 102.
3: 1 Kings, x. 22.
4: Venice, 1518.
5: [Greek: Kai odontôn elephantinôn kai pithêkôn kai lithôn]. [Greek: BASIA TRITÊ]. x. 22. It is to be observed, that Josephus appears to have been equally embarrassed by the unfamiliar term tukeyim for peacocks. He alludes to the voyages of Solomon's merchantmen to Tarshish, and says that they brought hack from thence gold and silver, much ivory, apes, and Æthiopians—thus substituting "slaves" for pea-fowl—"[Greek: kai polus elephas, Aithiopes te kai pithêkoi]." Josephus also renders the word Tarshish by "[Greek: en tê Tarsikê legomenê thalattê]," an expression which shows that he thought not of the Indian but the western Tarshish, situated in what Avienus calls the Fretum Tartessium, whence African slaves might have been expected to come.—Antiquit. Judaicæ, l. viii. c. vii sec. 2.
The Rev. Mr. CURETON, of the British Museum, who, at my request, collated the passage in the Chaldee and Syriac versions, assures me that in both, the terms in question bear the closest resemblance to the Tamil words found in the Hebrew; and that in each and all of them these are of foreign importation.
J. EMERSON TENNENT.
LONDON: November 28th, 1859.