Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 10.djvu/27

 9ts.x.jtLY5,i902.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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stimulated Mr. Nimmo projected his " Semitic Series," to which we have already bidden a hearty welcome. Two more issues of this valuable series have now appeared simultaneously, if not of equal merit, yet ooth of importance to the student of Biblical history and antiquities.

Dr. Paton in his volume undertakes to tell the story of the West Semitic peoples from their earliest appearance on the scene of history down to the establishment of the Persian empire. With considerable literary skill he has succeeded in weaving the fragmentary and often disconnected hints of the monuments into a narrative of living interest. It was no easy task to bring up flesh and sinew over the extremely dry bones of the mere annalist, but Dr. Paton has succeeded in doing so. This is eminently the case in his ingenious inter- pretation of the Amarna correspondence between the vassal -kings Rib-Addi and Aziru and their sovereign Amenhotep IV. We congratulate him on the ability with which he has brought such scattered leaves of the historic Sibyl into order and made them reveal their oracle. He holds that the Kha- biri of these Amarna letters designate the Hebrews only in the general sense of being one of the group of confederated tribes who claimed descent from Eber as their common ancestor. t

On the whole, Dr. Paton is a conservative critic, but some of his theorizings will require further proof his theory, e.g., that Abram, a local hero From Hebron, was a distinct person from Abraham, the father of the faithful, and that their iden- tification is an old mistake due to the resem- blance of their names. " Abram the Hebrew " in Genesis xiv. 13 must, then, disappear as a gloss and afterthought. This chorizontist suggestion is the newest thing in Biblical speculation. His account of the rise and development of the God-idea (Yahweh) among the Israelites, on the whole, is the same as that of Budde and Kuenen, and may be regarded as fairly established by a consensus of opinion. A good bibliography is prefixed though we question the right of Campbell's wild book, ' The Hittites,' to be included as in any sense an authority and a very full index is appended.

Dr. Duffs work is of a more technical character, and consequently less interesting. It is devoted chiefly to a discussion of the problem presented by the book of Deuteronomy, in which the author attempts to reconstruct the documents out of which it was formed, holding them to have been the normal outcome of the teaching of the great prophets of the eighth century B.C. His analysis of the prophetic doctrine and the evolution of the monotheistic and ethical idea appears to us the most valuable part of his book. On the other hand, his explanations of some of the psychological phenomena of Scripture strike us as strained and improbable. We can hardly think it likely that the shepherd lad Moses was actuated and set on to his high mission of delivering his people by the sight of the rising sunbeams gleaming redly one morning upon a thorn-bush in the wilderness. In tracing the origin of the Cherubim, Dr. Duff would have been saved from error by a little more know- ledge of Babylonian research. He revives the long- exploded notion that the kherftb was a griffin, the gryps of the Greeks ; but he is quite original in his suggestion that its shape was originally that of some fossil or crystalline form resembling a winded creature which the Israelites may have fancied that they saw in " the seeming hieroglyphic figures "

that they may have read in the markings discernible on the two slabs of stone brought down by Moses from the mount. This is no caricature of Dr. Duffs theory, with which he is so pleased that he repeats it. Another peculiar idea of the author's is that the Semitic Sabbath may have been at first a female deity of Fate whose name meant " cutting- off," and that to this Hebrew Atropos the seventh day was sacred. He interprets the first Command- ment as ordaining that " no other Elohim is to stand before Him (Yahweh) to obscure His face" a decidedly private interpretation. The " mixed multitude that followed Moses he describes as " the 'riff-raff' camp-followers." Some wild etymo- logists have seen in the Hebrew word (erebh) the origin of our "riff-raff." Dr. Duff, we are sure, knows better.

Transactions of the Glasgow Archaeological Society.

New Series, Vol. IV. Part II. (Glasgow, Mac-

Lehose & Sons.)

THESE Transactions have always held a high rank in antiquarian literature, and as time goes on they become more and more important as a storehouse of facts and of the generalizations of the leading archaeologists of Scotland. By far the longest con tribution to the present issue is Mr. George Neil- son's ' Huchown.' As, however, it has appeared in a separate form, and been, in consequence, noticed bi\t very recently in our pages, we only make a passing reference. Major Ruck furnishes a valuable paper on ' The Antonine Lines as a Defensive Design : a Comparison in Ancient and Modern Principles of Fortification.' The author has, we believe, entered on a new field of investigation. There is nothing approaching to it in, our language. His paper, if somewhat amplified hd accompanied by ground- plans and sections,, would form the standard work on castrametation, as Jonathan Oldbuck and his contemporaries were wont to call it. Walls pro- tecting the vast territories of the Roman empire are found on its Asiatic as well as its European outskirts. The two structures of this kind to be seen in Britain have long been known ; indeed, it is a question whether they have ever passed into forgetfulness among those who livea near them. Often, however, the theories to which they have given birth have shown a great want of the simplest knowledge of military science. Major Ruck has the advantage of being a Royal Engineer, and has therefore been able to bring to bear the practical knowledge gained in his profession. He thus throws light on several points which have hitherto been ill understood. The Antonine wall was mainly an earthen rampart, not a stone building like that which crosses England from the Solway to the Tyne. Though not so striking to the imagination as its English companion, it is quite as important from the message which it hands down to us. The Antonine wall, when correctly interpreted, throws great light on the art of fortification as it had become developed during the great time of the Roman power. To compare the fortifications of a people who did not know of gunpowder with those of the present day is a hard task, but it has been executed admirably by Major Ruck. The con- clusion we arrive at is that the Romans had in their armies skilled engineers, who carried out the principles of defence almost as scientifically and with as much elaboration as the great powers do at the present time, when allowance ia made for the difference in the arms of those from whom an attack