The Land of Midian (Revisited) Volume I Part 19

[EN#40] "aegypten," etc., p. 269, et seq.

[EN#41] "Les Inscriptions des Mines d'Or," etc. Paris, 1862.

[EN#42] In Tafel viii. (p. 387), he has added some cursory notes on the Sepulcral-Monumente in dem Thale Beden.

[EN#43] Wellsted, vol. ii., appendix.

[EN#44] All the useful matter has already been borrowed from Abulfeda. Dr. Badger tells me that he looked through his Jaridat el-'Ajaib, wa Faridat el-Gharaib, by Siraj el-Din Umar ibn el-Wardi, A.H. 940 (= A.D. 1533--1534), where he expected to find, but did not find, notices of Madyan.

[EN#45] Geschichte aegyptens unter den Pharaonen. Nach den Denkmahlern bearbeitet, von Dr. Heinrich Brugsch-Bey. Erste deutsche Ausgabe. Leipzig: Hinrichs'sche Buchhandlung, 1877.

Already the Premiere Partie had appeared in French, "Histoire d'egypte, Introduction--Histoire des Dynasties i.--xvii.;"

published by the same house with a second edition in 1875. An English translation of this most valuable compendium, whose German is of the hardest, is now being printed in London.

[EN#46] Pun, or Punt, the region on both sides of the Red Seamouth, including El-Yemen and Cape Guardafui, was made holy by the birth of Osiris, Isis, and Horus. Dr. Brugsch-Bey shows that one of the t.i.tles of the he-G.o.d was Ba.s.s, the cat or the leopard (whence our "Puss"); whilst his wife, Bast (the bissat or tabby-cat of modern Arabic), gave her name to Bubastis (Pi-Bast, the city of Bast). From the Osiric term (Ba.s.s) the learned Egyptologist would derive Bacchus and his priests, the Bacchoi and the Bacchantes, whose dress was the leopard's skin. Could Osiris have belonged to the race whose degenerate descendants are the murderous Somal of modern days?

[EN#47] Vulg. Snefrou, "he who makes it good;" the ninth of the third Dynasty; the twenty-fourth successor of Mena (Menes) in the papyri, and the twenty-sixth according to Manetho the priest. He conquered the "Mafka-land," as the Sinaitic Peninsula was then called; and Wady Magharah still shows his statue, habited in warrior garb, with the proud inscription, "Vanquisher of Stranger Races." This campaign lends some colour to my suspicion that Sinafir Island, at the mouth of the Gulf el-'Akabah, may preserve his name.

[EN#48] The German Turkis, and the English and French Turquoise, are both evidently derived from Gemma Turcica, Western Turkistan being considered tile source of the finest stones.

[EN#49] The accompanying lithograph gives a list of the letters and the syllabic signs which occur in the inscription. {not included in this e-text}

[EN#50] The article "Na" is emphatic, the with the sense of that or those.

[EN#51] "Khomet" signifies, 1. Copper, 2. Metal generally, as argent, etc.

[EN#52] "Mensh" is always applied to sea-going s.h.i.+ps, as opposed to Bari, Uau, Kerer, etc., riverine craft.

[EN#53] "Kemi" signifies, 1. Found, 2. Found out, discovered.

[EN#54] That is, the royal pavilion at Thebes.

[EN#55] The word "Deb" (brick) still survives in the Arabic Tob, and, perverted to the Iberian Adobe (Et-tob) it has travelled to Mexico.

[EN#56] "Hefennu," as is shown by the ideograph to the right over the three perpendiculars denoting plurality, may be either a frog or a lakh (one hundred thousand).

[EN#57] The Egyptians divided gold into four qualities--1, 2, 3, and two-thirds. But it is not known whether No. 1 was the best, and we can only guess that two-thirds alluded to some alloy.

[EN#58] The same as the Shu'ayb of my pages.

[EN#59] For a notice of "Moses' Well," now quite forgotten by the Arabs, see Chapter VI.

[EN#60] For an account of these diggings, see "The Gold-Mines of Midian," Chap. IX.

[EN#61] This strange legend will be found copied into many subsequent authors.

[EN#62] El-Abjad, the oldest existing form of the Arabic alphabet; to judge from its being identical with the Hebrew. It is supposed to date from after the beginning of the Christian era, when the Himyaritic form fell into disuse, and it is now used in chronograms only.

[EN#63] L'auteur est doublement inexact en avanc, ant que l'Aboudjed se compose de vingt-quatre lettres seulement, d'abord parce que les six mots qu'il enumere ne renferment que vingt-deux lettres, et en second lieu, parce qu'il oublie de citer les deux derniers mots techniques,

[EN#64] The "Gate of Lamentation," vulgarly and most erroneously written, "Babelmandel."

[EN#65] That is, "spoiled," dry; instead of "honoured,"

respected. The difference of the words is in the "pointing" of the third letter, and the change of m and l.

[EN#66] Not to be confounded with a cosmography of the same name by Ahmed ibn Yahya el-Sha'ir. Cf. Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, vol. xx. of 1850, p. 343.

[EN#67] This route, from Suez to El-'Akabah, probably one of the oldest in this world, has been traversed perfunctorily by Burckhardt and by Beke. It still wants a detailed survey, and even hieroglyphic inscriptions may be expected. Beke's map marks Hawawit ("ruins") near one of his nighting-places, but apparently the remains were not visited.

[EN#68] The Syrian Hajj no longer pa.s.s through El-'Akabah to Makna, but inland or eastward of it. The reason is made evident in Chap. VII.

[EN#69] Thus the Khalu or Kharu of the old Egyptians, meaning a "mixed mult.i.tude," were originally Phoenicians and domiciled from earliest ages about Lake Menzalah. So the "mixed mult.i.tude," or mingled people, which followed Israel from Egypt would be a riff-raff of strangers. D'Herbelot says (sub voce Midian): "Quoyque les Madianites soient reputez pour Arabes, neanmoins ils ne sont pas du nombre des Tribus qui partageoient l'Arabie, et dont les Auteurs nous ont rendu un compte exact dans leur Histoire et dans leurs Genealogies; de sorte qu'il pa.s.se pour un peuple etranger qui s'est etabli parmi eux." Yet, as we have seen by the foregoing extracts, Madyan was reckoned within the territory of El-Medi'nah, i.e. the Hejaz.

Caussin de Perceval ("Essai sur l'Histoire des Arabs avant l'Islamisme") regards the old Midianites as one of the "Races eteintes;" and he makes them (vol. i. p. 23) descendants of Cethura, Abraham's second wife. In vol. ii. p. 232, he brings the Banu-Djodha'm (Juzam) from El-Yemen, and settles them in the country of the ancient Midianites. He adds: "La region sur laquelle ils etaient repandus avec leurs freres les Benou-Lakhm, et, je crois aussi, avec les families Codhaites, de Bali (Baliyy) et de Cayn, touchait par l'ouest a la Mer Rouge, par le nord au pays que les Romains appelaient troisieme Palestine, par le sud aux deserts . . . par l'est, enfin, au territoire de Daumat-Djandal sur laquelle campaient les Benou-Kelb, tribu Codhate, alors Chretienne, et alliee ou sujette des Romains." In vol. iii. p. 159, he recounts from the Tarikh el-Khamisi, and the Sirat el-Rasul, how Zayd made an expedition against the "Djodham (Juzam) established at Madyan on the coast of the Red Sea." The warrior captured a number of women and children who were exposed for sale, but the "Prophet," hearing the wails of the mothers, ordered that the young ones should not be sold apart from the parents.

[EN#70] The "Burd," or "Burdah," was worn by Mohammed, as we know from a celebrated poem, for which see D'Herbelot, sub voce "Bordah."

[EN#71] Michaud ("Hist. des Croisades," ii. 27) says: "Une fois qu'il (Saladin) fut maitre de la capitale (Damascus); son armee victorieuse et l'or pur appele Obreysum (Ubraysun ou Hubraysum) qu'il tirait de l'E'gypte, lui soumirent les autres cites de la Syrie." The question is whether this gold was not from Midian: my friend Yacoub Artin Bey, who supplied me with the quotation, thinks that it was.

[EN#72] The most curious form, perhaps, which the ancient Midianitic tradition has a.s.sumed, was in the thirteenth century, when the Russians believed that the Tartars, "with their four-cornered faces," were the ancient Midianites coming in the latter days to conquer the world. Lieutenant C. R. Conder, R.E.

("Tentwork in Palestine," Bentley, 1878), has done his best to rival this style of ethnology by declaring that "the hosts of Midian" were, no doubt, the ancestors of the modern Bedawin.

[EN#73] Alluding to the legend that the shepherds, after watering their flocks, rolled a great stone over the mouth of the well, so that the contents might not be used by Jethro's daughters. Musa waxed wroth, and, weak as he was with travel, gave the stone such a kick that it went flying full forty cubits from the spot. See "Desert of the Exodus," Appendix, p. 539.

[EN#74] A name now unknown to the Bedawin of Madyan. The culminating peak is now supposed to be either the Sharr, the Jebel el-Lauz, or the Jebel Zanah.

[EN#75] The Badais of Ptolemy, which we shall presently visit.

[EN#76] A large ruin east of Ziba, also visited.

[EN#77] For a notice of El-Khalasah, also called El-Khulusah, El-Khulsah, or Zu'l-Khalasah, consult the art. "Midian," Smith's "Dict. of the Bible," by E. S. Poole, vol. ii. p. 356. For the Khalasah of the Negeb, "where Venus was wors.h.i.+pped with all the licentious pomp of the Pagan ritual," see Professor Palmer's "Desert of the Exodus," p. 385. The text, however, alludes to a ruin called El-Khulasah, one march from El-Muwaylah to the east (Chap. VIII.).

[EN#78] El-Mederah is possibly Hasiyat el-Madra, which, like El-A'waj, El-Birayn, and Ma'in, is now included in Syria.

El-Mu'allak may be Jebel Yalak,--at least, so say the Bedawin.

[EN#79] In the last remark, also found in El-Kazwini, the Madyan of El-Shu'ayb is referred to the district of Tiberias. Thus it would belong to Syria, whilst the majority of geographers refer it to the Hejaz, and a minority to El-Yemen.

[EN#80] Alluded to in a note to p. 331 of "The Gold Mines of Midian," etc.

[EN#81] This means only according to Hebrew and Arabic tradition, neither of them being, in this case, of much value. As I remarked before ("The Gold-Mines of Midian," p. 177), the hieroglyphic name of the land is Madi, in the plural Madi-an or Madi-na; on the other hand, we have no information concerning the origin and derivation of Madi, except that it is not Egyptian.

[EN#82] None of the tribes or families now inhabiting Midian represent the ancient Midianites; and all speak the vulgar half-Fellah Arabic, without any difference of accent or vocabulary from their neighbours.

[EN#83] See the preceding notes on El-Makrizi.

[EN#84] The Ma'azah spoke of Kanatir (arches, i.e. aqueducts) and Biban (doors or catacombs).

[EN#85] I inquired in vain concerning the ruins near Sharm Burayttah, south of Yambu' in the Harb country. Wellsted, who visited the site (11. xi.), conjectures them to be Niebuhr's "El-Jar." He makes that near the point "as large as Yembo, extending about a mile in length, and half that s.p.a.ce in breadth, with a square fort in the vicinity, the remains of which have towers at the corners and gates." Near the middle on either side, the tall walls are six feet thick, strong enough where artillery is unknown. At the landing-place are a quay paved with large hewn stones, and a jetty of solid masonry in ruins. The sailors dug and found only shapeless fragments of corroded copper and bra.s.s; coloured gla.s.s, as usual more opaque than the modern, and earthenware of the kind scattered about Egyptian ruins. About one mile from the fort were other remains, built of coral, now much blackened by exposure; and similar constructions on the further side of the Sharm could not be examined, as the Harb Bedawin were jealous and hostile.