Page:Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization.djvu/224

214 it has been superseded within our knowledge, it is natural that we should expect to find words marking the same change, in the speech of men who made the same transition in times not clearly known to history. What has been done in this way as yet comes to very little, but Jacob Grimm has set an example by citing two words, hammer, Old Norse hamarr, meaning both "hammer" and "rock," and Latin saxum, a name possibly belonging to a time when instruments to cut with, secare, were still of stone, and which still keeps close to Old German sahs, Anglo-Saxon seax, a knife. There may possibly be some connexion between sagitta, arrow, and saxum, stone, and in like manner between Sanskrit çilî, arrow, çilâ, stone, while in the Semitic family of languages, Hebrew, chetz, arrow, , chātzātz, gravel-stone, are both related to the verb , chātzatz, to cut. But against the inference from these words, that their connexion belongs to a time when stone was the usual material for sharp instruments, there lies this strong objection, that knife and stone might get from the same root names expressing sharpness, or any other quality they have in common, without having anything directly to do with one another, while the same word, hamar, may have been found an equally suitable name for "hammer" and "rock," without the hammer being so called because all hammers were originally stones.

Among the Semitic race, however, it seems possible to bring forward better evidence than this of an early Stone Age. If we follow one way of translating, we find in two passages of the Old Testament an account of the use of sharp stones or stone knives for circumcision; Exodus iv. 25, "And Zipporah took a stone", tzor), and Joshua v. 2, "At that time Jehovah said to Joshua, Make thee knives of stone" (, charvoth tzurim). As they stand, however, these passages are not sufficient to prove the case, for there is much the same ambiguity as to the original meaning of tzor, tzūr, as in the etymologies of some of the words just mentioned. Gesenius refers them to tzūr, to cut, and the readings