The Libraries of David and Solomon

Abstract

A Little to the north of Latakia on the Phœnician coast important discoveries have been made by French excavators. Bronze Age necropolises, now known as Minet el-Baida, and dating from about 1700 to 1200 B.C., have been found, and on an adjoining site, Has Shamra, the remains of a palace have been uncovered, the most flourishing age of which would seem to have been the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries B.C. In the ruins of the palace an armoury, or, rather, workshop, filled with bronze weapons and implementshas been brought to light, as well as a library. The latter was not only once filled with inscribed papyri, but fortunately also with clay tablets which have survived to our time. At least five different languages are represented by the cuneiform texts of which the clay tablets were a necessary accompaniment. One of these was the official Babylonian of the Tel el-Amarna period. Another was Sumerian, a third probably Mitannian, while a fourth provesto be Canaanite, that is to say, Early Phoenician or Hebrew, written in avery simplified form of cuneiform script which has been reduced into an alphabet of twenty-eight letters. The words, moreover, are divided one from the other.