Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume II.djvu/40

 24 JERUSALEJI. land of Amor, or the Amorite; and that the con- queror ' had made bare liis right arm to overcome the chiefs of many walled cities.' This implies that the fort in question, the name of which is inscribed upon it, was the chief stronghold of the nation. That name, when translated from the hieroglyphics into Coptic, and thence into Hebrew, is Chadash. The next notice of Chadash belongs to the reign of Sesostris, and connects it with the Jebusite nation. The Ammonites had laid siege to the city, and a joint embassy of the Jebusites and Hittites, who were then tributary to Sesostris, entreat him to come to their aid. The Egyptians having accordingly .<;ailed over the Dead Sea, met with another embassy, from the Zuzims, which gave further particulars of the siege. The enemy had seized on the fortified camps erected by the Egyptians to secure their hold over the country, and spread terror to the very walls of Chadash. A great battle is fought on a moun- tain to the south of the city of Chadash. The in- .scription further describes Chadash as being in the land of Heth. Wliat, then, do we gather from these combined notices? Plainly this, that Chadash was a city of the first importance, both in amiUtary and civil point of view ; the centre of interest to three or four of the most powerful of the Canaanitish na- tions ; in a word, their metropolis. We find it moreover placed, by one inscription, in the territory of the Amorites, by another in that of the Hittites, while it is obviously inhabited, at the same time, by the Jebusites. Now, omitting for the present the consideration of the Hittites, this is the exact cha- racter and condition in which Jerusalem appears in Scripture at the time of Joshua's invasion. Its me- tropolitan character is evinced by the lead which Adoni-zedek, its king, takes in the confederacy of the Five Kings ; its strength as a fortress, by the fact that it was not then even attempted by Joshua, nor ever taken for 400 years after. And while, as the royal city of Adoni-zedek, it is reckoned among the Amorite possessions, it is no less distinctly called Jehus (Josh. xv. 8, xviii. 28; Judg. i. 21, xix. 10) down to the days of David; the truth being, ap- parently, that the Amorite power having been extin- guished in the person of Adoni-zedek, the Jebusite thenceforth obtained the ascendency in the city which the two nations inhabited in common. Nor is there any difBculty in accounting, from Scripture, for the share assigned by the monuments to the Hittites in the possession of the city; for, as Mr. Osburn has observed, the tribes of the Amorites and Hittites appear, from Scripture, to have bordered upon each other. The city was probably, therefore, situated at a point where the possessions of the three tribes met. Can we, then, hesitate to identify the Chadash of the hieroglyphics with the KaSuris of Herodotus, the El-Kuds of the Arabs, the Kadatha of the Syrians, the ' Holy ' City? The only shadow of an objection that appears to lie against it is, that, strictly speaking, the name should be not Chadash, but Kadash. But when it is considered that the name is a translation out of Canaanitish into hieroglyphics, thence into Coptic, and thence again into Hebrew, and that the difference between p; and p is, after all, but small, it is not too much to .suppose that Kadesh is what is really intended to be represented. That Jerusalem should be known to the Canaanites by such a name as this, denoting it ' the Holy,' will not seem unreasonable, if we bear in mind what has been noticed above with reference to the title Adoni- aedek; and the fact forms an interesting link, con- JERUSALEM. necting the Arabian and Syrian name for the city with its earlier nomenclature, and confirming the identity of Herodotus's Cadytis with Jerusalem. Jlr. Osburn has only very doubtingly propounded (p. 66, note) the view we have undertaken to defend. He inclines to identify Chadash with the IIada.shali, or Addasa, enumerated among the southernmost cities towards the border of E'dom, given to Judah (Josh. XV. 21) from among the Amorites' posses- sions. But it seems incredible that we should never hear again, in the history of Joshua's conquest, of so important a city as Chadash evidently was : besides, Hadashah seems to lie too far south. We presume Jlr. Osburn will not be otherwise than pleased to find the more interesting view supported by any arguments which had not occurred to him. And we have reserved one which we think Aristotle him- self would allow to be of the natui-e of a re/cju^pioj' or ' clinching argument.' It is a geographical one. The paintings represent Chadash a.s surrounded by a river or brook on three sides ; and this river or brook runs into the Dead Sea, toward the northern part of it. Surely, nothing could more accurately describe the very remarkable conformation of Jeru- salem; its environment on the east, south, and west, by the waters of the valleys of Jehoshaphat and Hinnom, and their united couree, after their junc- tion, through the Wady En-Nar into the north-west part of the Dead Sea. And there are some difh- culties or pecuUarities in the Scripture narratie respecting Jerusalem, which the monuments, thus interpreted, will be found to explain or illustrate. We have already alluded to its being in one place spoken of as an Amorite city, in another as the chief seat of the Jebusites. The LXX. were so pressed with this difficulty, that they adopted the rendering ' Jebusite ' for ' Amorite ' in the passage which makes Adoni-zedek an Amorite king. (Josh. x. 5.) The hieroglyphics clear up the difliculty, and render the change of reading unnecessary. Again, there is a well-known ambiguity as to whether Jerusalem was situated in the tribe of Judah or Benjamin; an<l the view commonly .icquiesced in is, that, being in the borders of the two tribe,s, it was considered common to both. Pernaps the right of possession, or the .apportionment, was never fully settled; thouglj the Iiabbies draw you the exact line through the very court of the Temple. But how, it may be asked, came such an element of confusion to be in- troduced into the original distribution of the Holy Land among the tribes? The answer sceins to be, that territory was, for convenience' sake, assigned, in some measure, according to existing divisions: thus, the Amorite and Hittite possessions, as a whole, fell to Jndah; the Jebusite to Benjamin; and then all the uncertainty resulting from that joint occu- pancy of the city by the three nations, which is testified to by the monuments, was necessarily in- troduced into the rival claims of the two tribes." (Christian Rememhrancer, vol. xviii. pp. 457^-4.59.) The importance of the powerful Jebusite tribe, who are represented as having " more than one city or stronghold near the Dead Sea, and are engaged in a succession of wars with the kings of Egypt in the neighbourhood of its shores;" whose rich gar- ments of Babylonish texture, — depicted in the hiero- glyphics, — and musical instruments, and warlike accoutrements, testify to a higher degree of culture and civihsation than was found among the neigh- bouring tribes, with many of whom they were on terms of offensive and defensive alliance: — all this