The Hebrews borrowed their metallurgy, like all their early science, from Egypt. M. de Goguet remarked that they were not destitute of technological skill if they could calcine the golden calf and reduce the metal (probably by using natron) to a powder which could be drunk in water—aurum potabile.
The Hebrews called the Sword ‘Chereb’ (חרב, pl. Chereboth), a word that occurs some two hundred and fifty times in the ‘Old Testament.’ Its root, like the Arabic ‘khrb,’ means to waste, to be wasted; and the noun denotes any wasting matter.[589] Mostly it means a Sword (Gen. xvii. 40; xxxiv. 25, &c. &c.); in other places it is a knife (Josh. v. 2, 3). So we find in Ezekiel (v. 1), ‘Take thee a sharp knife [Chereb]; take thee a barber’s razor’: elsewhere it becomes a chisel (Exod. xx. 25); an axe or pick (Jer. xxxiv. 4; Ez. v. 1, and xxvi. 9), and, finally, violent heat (Job xxx. 30). The Arabic ‘Harbah’ signifies a dart.
We gather from the Hebrew writings that the Sword was originally of copper: hence the allusion to its brightness and its glittering: this would be followed by bronze, and lastly by iron, ground upon the whetstone (Deut. xxxii. 41). It was not of flint; the ‘sharp knives’ alluded to in Joshua (v. 2), were mere silex-flakes like the Egyptian. The Sword was used by foot-soldiers and horsemen, the latter adding to the ‘light Sword’ a ‘glittering spear’ (Nahum iii. 3). The ‘Chereb’ was not a large or heavy weapon, and we may safely assume that its forms were those of the Egyptian hieroglyphs. The weight of Goliath’s Sword is unfortunately not given (1 Sam. xvii. 45), like that of his spear and his armour; nor are we told anything about the blade which David refused because he had not proved it (ibid. 39). But the ease with which the son of Jesse drew out of the sheath thereof and used the Philistine’s ‘Chereb,’ suggests a normal size and weight (ibid. 51 and xxi. 9). It was much admired, for the victor said, ‘There is none like that’ (1 Sam. xxi. 9). From the same chapter and verse we learn that the blade was ‘wrapped up in a cloth,’ still an Eastern practice, ‘behind the ephod’ or priest’s robe.[590] And the fact of a man falling upon his Sword (1 Sam. xxxi. 4, 5) shows that the blade was stiff, short, and straight, like the Egyptian leaf-blade. Ehud the Benjamite, when about to murder Eglon, King of Moab (Jud. iii. 16), ‘made a two-edged Sword-dagger of a cubit length’ (or eighteen inches), apparently without a sheath. The frequent mention of the double-edged Sword (or straight cut-and-thrust?) suggests that there were also single-edged blades, back-Swords or, perhaps, falchions. It is hard to understand why Meyrick tells us that the Jews wore the Sword ‘suspended in front, in the Asiatic style.’ Ehud (ibid. 16, 21) girt his weapon under his raiment upon his right thigh, and drew it with his left hand. Again, we read, ‘Gird thy sword upon thy thigh’ (Ps. xlv. 3); and as Joab proceeded to assassinate Amasa (2 Sam. xx. 8), the ‘garment that he had put on was girded unto him, and upon it a girdle with a sword fastened upon his loins in the sheath thereof; and as he went forth it fell out.’ The allusions to the oppressing Sword (Jer. xlvi. 16; l. 25) recall the Assyrian emblem of the Sword and the Dove, which are both figured in one image. Perhaps we must so understand the Egyptian Ritual of the Dead: ‘I came forth as his child from his Sword.’ Apparently the Chereb was worn, as by the civilised Greeks and Romans, only on emergencies and not, like the chivalry of Europe, habitually in peaceful towns. The Cultellarii or Sicarii, whom Josephus and Tacitus[591] mention, were mere assassins, like the French Coustilliers and the English Coustrils or Custrils.
That the Hebrews were not first-rate Sword-cutlers, we may infer from the history of Judas the Maccabee.[592] A vision of Jeremiah the Prophet, preceding the victory over Nicanor, had promised him ‘a Sword of God, a holy Sword,’ not the short Machæra but the large Rhomphæa (2 Mac. xv. 15). After his war with the Samaritans and the Gentiles of Palestine, ‘Judas took the Sword of Apollonius (the Syrian general) and fought with it all his life’ (2 Mac. iii. 12).
And yet how general was the use of the Sword in Jewry we gather from the fact that it assisted in taking the Census: so David, by one account (2 Sam. xxiv. 9) mustered one million three hundred thousand ‘valiant men that drew the Sword.’[593] The expression ‘girding on the Sword’ (1 Sam. xxv. 13) denoted adults able to serve as soldiers, and also noted the beginning of a campaign (Deut. i. 41). It has been stated that Saul, son of Kish, used the Sword with his left hand, by virtue of being of the tribe of Benjamin. Of the latter, however, we learn (Judg. xx. 16) that many were ambidexters, fighting and slinging with the left as well as with the right. Finally, to be ‘slain by the Sword’ was evidently as great a misfortune as the ‘straw-death’ among those muscular Christians, the Scandinavians. The curse of David upon Joab was that there might never be wanting in his house ‘one that hath an issue, or is a leper, or that leaneth on a staff, or that falleth on the Sword’ (a suicide). All this makes the fact the more singular that no Jewish Sword-blade has ever been found.
Of the weapons used by the tribes neighbouring the ancient Hebrews we know little. In the famous muster of Xerxes’ army,[594] the Assyrians, according to Herodotus (vii. 65), used hand-daggers (ἐγχειρίδια) resembling the Egyptian. The Arabs (vii. 69, 86), like the Indians, were mere savages armed with bows and arrows; and we may note that the former mounted only camels, the horse not having been naturalised amongst all the tribes in the days of the ‘Great King’ (b.c. 485–465). The Philistine[595] weapons are known to us only by the famous duello between David and Goliath of Gath (1 Sam. xvii.). The account is full of difficulties for the ‘reconciler’ of contradictory texts; for instance, David is Saul’s armour-bearer, and yet unknown at Court.[596] Nor is it easy to discover where Gath is. It is popularly identified with Kharbat (ruins of) Gat: this heap of ruins lies west of castled Bayt Jibrín, the ‘House of Giants’ (tyrants), the Arabic name corresponding with the Hebrew Bethogabra. The field of fight has been found in the Wady El-Samt (Elah of St. Jerome), west of Jerusalem. The people of this part of Palestine, probably descended from the Hyksos or Canaanites, are a fine tall race, bred to fray and foray by the neighbourhood of predatory Bedawin:[597] armed to the teeth, they are adepts in the use of the huge ‘nebút’ or quarterstaff.
The plain of Philistia, which once supported five princely cities, appears very barren viewed from the sea; but the interior shows well-watered valleys, and the succession of ruins proves that the country belonged to an energetic and industrious race. Gaza (‘Azzah), at the southern extremity, was a place of considerable importance, on account of its fine port and its trade with the adjacent Bedawin. It must not be confused with modern Ghazzah.[598]
Goliath, the ‘champion of the uncircumcised’ (Philistines), and possibly a type of the race, wore armour[599] of ‘brass’ (copper); unfortunately the materials of his Sword and sheath are not specified.
THE CYPRUS SWORD.
Leaving Syria, we proceed to Cyprus, which may be considered an outlying part of Palestine. Its size, its position between the east and the west, and its wealth in gold, silver, copper, and iron, made it an important station for the early Pelasgo-Hellenic or Græco-Italic race which passed westwards, using the Hellespont and the Bosphorus for ferry-places, and the Ægean Islands for stepping-stones. Thus Cyprus became the ‘cradle of Greek culture, the cauldron in which Asiatic, Egyptian, and Greek ingredients were brewed together.’ General Palma (di Cesnola)[600] has proved, by his invaluable finds, which have ‘added a new and very important chapter to the history of art and archæology,’ that early Cypriote art was essentially Egyptian, modified by Phœnician and Assyrian influences, and eventually becoming Greek. Hence, too, with the dawn of Hellenic civilisation, migrated westwards some of the fairest classical myths. Cyprus was the very birthplace of Venus,[601] an anthropomorphism which rendered infinite service to poetry, painting, and sculpture. Idalium (Dali) was the capital of Cinyras, Kinnári the harper,[602] the Crœsus of his day; it was the site of Myrrha’s sin and the death-place of her son Adonis. The latter, who corresponds with the Tammuz of Palestine and the Assyrian Du-zi (Son of Life), is made by Ammianus Marcellinus (xxii. 14) an ‘emblem of the fruits of the earth cut down in their prime.’ Here was the atelier of Pygmalion, Fa’am Aliyun (Malleus Deorum), the hammer of the gods;[603] and here upon his breathing statue of ivory he begat Paphos, the king. Finally, here flourished the poets who preceded the Homerid chief; and here was born Zeno, the Stoic, the ‘Phœnician.’