"King of Kings" and "Lord of Kingdoms"

Author(s): H. L. Ginsberg
Source: The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures, Vol. 57, No. 1 (Jan.,
1940), pp. 71-74
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/528890
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 "KING OF KINGS" AND "LORD OF KINGDOMS"

H. L. GINSBERG

It is well known that Assyrian kings occasionally and

regularly styled themselves "king of kings" and that th
eigns of Egypt regularly described themselves as "lord
Early Northwest Semitic forms of the first of these titles a
(Ezek. 26:7)2 in Hebrew, and mlk zy m[lkyD] (CIS, I
mlkyD (Dan. 2:37;2 Ezra 6:12). As regards the official
the Ptolemies, it has always been recognized that the P
mlkm represents it in CIS, I, 93, 95, and elsewhere, an
years ago I was able to prove that it is in fact the exa
equivalent of kyrios basilei6n.3 Since this observation
stranger than ever that in CIS, I, 3 (the Eshmunazar in
same title should, as had been generally assumed, desig
menian ruler, I re-examined the evidence for such an e
this document and found it inconclusive; and, on the other
covered that not only this monument but even that of
father, Tabnit, contained an unmistakable Hellenism.4
to date the entire family of Eshmunazarid inscriptions
mont-Ganneau and Cooke, in the late fourth and/or ea
tury B.C.
A year and a half later, however, Galling,6 while admitting that
Ddn mlkm means 'lord of kingdoms"'7 literally as well as-with the
sole alleged exception of this case-by usage, took up the cudgels again
1 Kjrios basilei6n may also be rendered "lord of kingships," but in any case the last
word is plural. Galling (see below, n. 5) writes inaccurately "Herr des K6nigtums."
2 The reference is here to the Chaldean Nebuchadnezzar. Both Aramaic.

3 JBL, LVI (1937), 142 f. I there demonstrated that the Phoenician word for "kingdom"
or "kingship" is not mamlakt, which means "prince," but mulk, Ahiram inscr.; cf. Ugaritic
and Arabic. In CIS, I, 7, "dn mlkm designates Alexander, as the supposed starting-point
of the Seleucid Era (Clermont-Ganneau, Reinach).
4 "Under the sun." The only other non-Greek occurrences of this phrase are either in
the Ptolemaic Book of Qoheleth or due to its influence.
5 So named for Eshmunazar I, the father of Tabnit.
6 PJB, XXXIV (1938), 71 ff.
7 See above, n. 1.

71

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72 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SEMITIC LANGUAGES

on behalf of the fifth-century dating of the Eshmunazarid inscription

and in this he was seconded by Alt.s I shall endeavor, on the one hand
to show that their reasoning is unsound and, on the other, to strengt
en my own case by a further proof.
The first thing that strikes one in reading Galling's argument is th
the only difficulty in the way of the Persian dating which he tackles
the title Ddn mlkm. He does not even mention the Greek expressio
have just referred to, let alone try to account for it. Furthermore
was all right for Alt a year earlier,9 when the pre-Hellenistic date was
taken for granted, to dismiss the silence of Pseudo-Scylax about Joppa
(and for that matter even regarding the political, as distinct fr
ethnic, affinities of Dor) as lightly as he did; when, however, it comes
to proving the Persian date of the text which records the acquisition o
Joppa and Dor by a king of Sidon, this fact too cannot simply be
nored. Nor should it be overlooked that the people who used to br
up fish and other goods to Judah from the coast in the second half of
the fifth century were known to Nehemiah1? not as Sidonians but
Tyrians (Neh. 13:16).11
Let us now see how Galling explains away the awkward title. H
does so by assuming that it was borrowed by the Phoenicians, n
around 300 B.C. from the Greek, but well over a thousand years earlie
from the Egyptian. But whereas in Ptolemaic times it was certainly
regular, official use both in Greek and in Phoenician, Galling at a
rate has produced only rather feeble evidence for its use even by
Egyptians during the period of effective Egyptian suzerainty ov
Phoenicia. As against several instances in Ptolemaic times, he is
to cite only a single occurrence of nb nswyt, "lord of kingship," in th
reign of Rameses III, who with difficulty kept the sea-peoples even ou
of Egypt and certainly retained nothing but a nominal control ov
any part of Asia; and even the less exact wr nswyt, "great in kingship
8 PJB, XXXIV (1938), 83 (n. 2).

9 PJB, XXXIII (1937), 72 f.; similarly, Galling, ZDP V, LXI (1938), 83.
10 How closely Nehemiah adhered to the territorial terminology of the Persian empire
was shown by Alt, PJB, XXVII (1931), 66-74.
11 Carrying further the suggestion of Batten, The Books of Ezra and Nehemiah ("I.C.C."
[1913]), pp. 294 f., 298, one might even transfer the unintelligible y'bw bh in the form
hibt to the end of vs. 15 to make up the restored sentence w'cyd(h bhm cl) mkrm cyd
bywm hsbt; but the end of vs. 16 requires that its initial word be left as it stands; cf.
10: 32a.

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 "KING OF KINGS" AND "LORD OF KINGDOMS" 73

only emerges, according to Galling, in the Amarna age-whe

tian power in Phoenicia was already tumbling headlong to ex
Still less, of course, than in the Amarna age or in the reign of R
III was any ghost of that power that may have returned to haun
Cyprus or Byblos at the beginning of the first millennium likel
press one rare title of the Pharaohs so deeply in the memorie
entire Phoenician nation as to cause them to keep reviving it spo
ously for new overlords, despite intervals of independence
sometimes for centuries. This last consideration will remain relevant
and weighty even if abundant examples of nb nswyt should become
available for periods when Egyptian power was at its height. And so,
needless to say, will the absence on the Phoenician side of all trace of
anything resembling Ddn mlkm prior to the Eshmunazar inscription.
.... As for the Rosetta Stone, upon which the hieroglyphic and
demotic versions render kyrios basilei6n not by nb nswyt but by "lord
of the two crowns" and "lord of the uraeus-diadem," respectively-
few will agree with the Halle savant that that goes to show that the
Phoenicians borrowed the expression "lord of kingdoms" from the
Egyptian rather than from the Greek!
Since, therefore, my original arguments stand neither refuted nor
offset by countervailing ones, I am already justified in repeating my
original contention that a Ptolemaic dating of the Eshmunazarid in-
scriptions is ineluctable. Here, however, is added confirmation.
Dan. 2:47a, as is well known, contains an Aramaic paraphrase of
Deut. 10:17. But, curiously enough, the symmetry of the deutero-
nomic "God of gods and Lord of lords" is, for no apparent reason, de-
stroyed: instead of "Lord of lords" our author has "Lord of mlkyn."
That mlk means not "king" but "kingdom" in 2:44; 7:17; 8:20, 21a
(in 21b it means "king" again!) is notorious.12 There can now be no
doubt but that it also means "kingdom" in our verse, and of course
that it is in all these cases to be vocalized as derived from the ground
form mulk, not malk. Of course, the Jewish Targums to Deut. 10:17,
which adopt the inexact rendering of our author, were hardly aware of
all this: being compelled by their familiar translation-technique-con-
12 The Hebrew of Daniel, chaps. 8-12, betrays the fact that it is translated from the
Aramaic by some gross errors in translation (see JAOS, LVIII [1938], 540; Zimmermann,
JBL, LVII [1938], 255 if.). I hope to publish some further telling instances.

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74 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SEMITIC LANGUAGES

trast the Targum to Ps. 136:2-3--to substitute for "God of gods

theologically less misleading expression, they were glad to be abl
render the parallel phrase also freely with the help, and on the autho
ity, of the Book of Daniel. But our Ptolemaic author"1 for his p
was merely doing something all of us do frequently; namely, translat
ing a phrase from another language by an expression current in
time instead of literally.14
Thus, just as pre-Hellenistic rulers of world-empires are designa
"king of kings" in both Canaanite and Aramaic, so Ptolemaic ru
are "lord of kingdoms" in both language groups. In the case of A
maic it can even be shown that the author to whom we are indebted for
our example of "lord of kingdoms," Dan. 2:47, knew very well that
the Great Kings of former ages were styled "king of kings" (2:37)
and, moreover, no Arameans were ever under Egyptian rule in early
antiquity. It is therefore certain that Aramaic "lord of mlkyn" arose
in Ptolemaic times under Ptolemaic rule. There is every good reason
for asserting, none for denying, the same with regard to Canaanite
"lord of mlkm."
JEWISH THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY OF AMERICA
NEW YORK CITY

1s For the third-century authorship of the core of Daniel, chap 2, cf. most recently Bent-
zen, Daniel (-Handbuch zum A. T., I, 19 [1937]), pp. 11 and 15. That mr mlkyn is the equiv-
alent of Phoenician 'dn mlkm (but not that both signify "lord of kingdoms") was seen by
Montgomery, The Book of Daniel ("I.C.C." [1927]), pp. 171 f.
14 Probably the form of the Ptolemaic title, without the article, is also responsible for the
absence of determination in the Aramaic paraphrase; contrast the Hebrew of Deut. 10:17
and Ps. 136:2-3.

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