Issues Regarding The Book of Daniel

ISSUES REGARDING
THE BOOK OF DANIEL
A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS BROUGHT TO
YOU
BY THE APOLOGETIC COLLECTIVE
Edited by jeffperado
BNOresearch Press
Big Picture Enterprises

2016
Contents
The Aramaic of Daniel

by K.A. Kitchen
The Hebrew of Daniel
By W. J. Martin
Some Historical Problems in the Book of Daniel
By D. J. Wiseman
The Musical Instruments in Nebuchadnezzar’s Orchestra
By T. c. Mitchell and R. Joyce
The Aramaic of Daniel
By K. A. Kitchen*
K.A. Kitchen, “The Aramaic of Daniel,” D. J.
Wiseman, ed., Notes on Some Problems in the
Book of Daniel. London: The Tyndale Press, 1965.
pp. 31-79.
* My thanks go to Mr. David Clines, Department

of Biblical History, University of Sheffield, for
kindly reading the manuscript of this paper in the
light of his own investigations, and for comments
and corrections; also to Mr. Alan Millard, Librarian
at Tyndale House, Cambridge, for some
additional references.
INTRODUCTORY
This subject has been closely studied by

two or three generations of modern
scholarsl—S. R.
Driver,2 R. D. Wilson;3 G. R. Driver,4 W.
Baumgartner,5 H. H. Rowley;6 J. A.
Montgomery,7
H. H. Schaeder,8 F. Rosenthal,9 and
various others. Nevertheless, there is
today ample scope
for reassessment. The inscriptional
material for Old and Imperial10 Aramaic
and later phases
of the language is constantly growing.
One need only mention the Brooklyn and
* My thanks go to Mr. David Clines,
Department of Biblical History,
University of Sheffield, for kindly
reading
the manuscript of this paper in the light
of his own investigations, and for
comments and corrections; also to Mr.
Alan Millard, Librarian at Tyndale House,
Cambridge, for some additional
references.
[p.32]
Borchardt-Driver documents published in

1953 and 1954 or the Aramaic documents
from
Qumran and other cave-sites of Graeco-
Roman Palestine. Furthermore, some
earlier views
require revision in the light of facts
hitherto unknown or neglected.
In dealing with the book of Daniel,

theological presuppositions are apt to
colour even the
treatment and dating of its Aramaic.11
The only fair way to proceed is to leave
open the whole
period c. 540-160 BC until the end of any
inquest on the Aramaic, as far as date is
concerned.
1 See F. Rosenthal, The Aramaistische F

orschung seit Th. Noldeke ’s
Veroflentlichungen (1939, repr. 1964), pp.
60-71. Throughout this paper no attempt
is made to give the luxuriant
bibliography of Aramaic either inside or
outside of Daniel. Besides Rosenthal down
to 1938-1939, cf (e.g.) J. J. Koopmans,
Aramiiische Chrestomathie,
I-II (1962).
2 LOT), pp. 502-504, 508, and XXXiv-

XXXViii; S. R. Driver, Daniel (Cambridge
Bible, 1900), pp. liX-lX.
3 In Biblical and Theological Studies by

the Members of the Faculty of Princeton
Theological Seminary...
(1912), pp. 261-306.
4JBL, XLV, 1926, pp. 110-119, 323-325.
5 ZAW, XLV, 1927, pp. 81-133.
6 AOT and indirectly HSD. In English, at

least, Rowley’s book of 1929 is a classic
statement from the point of
view of a second century date for the
Aramaic of Daniel, with a wealth of data,
and was the last substantial work
on the subject to appear in English.
Therefore his book has been taken as a
convenient starting-point at certain
junctures in this study. While Rowley’s
failure adequately to recognize the
distinction between orthography and
phonetics (and to take any note of
relevant ancient literary methods) raises
grave doubts of his results, it is a
pleasure to acknowledge his convenient
and careful marshalling of so much of the
basic material at issue.
7 J. A. Montgomery, The Book ofDaniel

(International Critical Commentary,
1927), pp. 15-20.
8 Iranische Beitra'ge I, 1930, being Heft

5, 6. Jahr of the Schriften der
Konigsberger Gelehrten Gesellschaft
(Geisteswissenschaftliche Klasse). Pages
are quoted both by Heft and as book.
9 See work cited n.1, above.
10 I use ‘Imperial Aramaic’ merely as one

possible English equivalent among Several
others for the usual
German term Reichsarama'ische.
11 Thus, on ‘inhaltlichen Kriterien’,

‘content’ (Rosenthal, Aramaistishe
Forschung, p. 71 apud J. Lindner,
Zeitschriftffir Katholische T heologie,
LIX, 1935, pp. 503-545; H. L. Ginsberg,
JAOS, LXII, 1942, p. 231 end,
apud Schaeder), i.e. prejudging the book
a priori as pseudepigraphic. Wilson (n.
3, above) and Rowley (n. 6,
above) represent opposite viewpoints.
K.A. Kitchen, “The Aramaic of Daniel,” D.

J. Wiseman, ed., Notes on Some Problems
in the Book of Daniel.
London: The Tyndale Press, 1965. pp. 31-
79.
In this study, the Aramaic of Daniel is

examined compactly in relation to (a)
vocabulary, (b)
orthography and phonetics, and (0)
general morphology and syntax. This
enquiry is
necessarily limited to the main points at
issue, without digressing into secondary
literature or
investigating the details of all the
older discussions. It is not a total
presentation of work done
or of material available; the entire
analysed word-list of Biblical Aramaic is
omitted, and also
detailed references to the Nabataean and
Palmyrene data (sparse in any case) and
Targums.12
A. VOCABULARY
1. Basic West Semitic. For the purpose of

this study, the entire word-stock of
Biblical
Aramaic, in particular of that in Daniel,
has been listed and analysed against the
comparative
background of objectively-dated
inscriptions and papyri in Old and
Imperial Aramaic, and
cognate West Semitic and Akkadian
(Babylonian and Assyrian).13 The result
is that nine-
tenths of the vocabulary is attested in
texts of the fifth century BC14 or
earlier. The slender
one-tenth remaining consists of words so
far found only in sources
[1033]
later than the fifth Century BC (e. g.

Nabataean, Palmyrene or later Aramaic
dialects), or so far
not attested externally at all.
The meaning of these facts in either case

is clear. Among the nine-tenths, words
found in Old
and Imperial Aramaic documents in the
ninth to fifth centuries BC would in
themselves allow
of any date for the Aramaic of Daniel
from the sixth century BC onwards. Words
found in
other early West Semitic texts15 as well
as in the Aramaic of Daniel are to be
taken as being
not merely early Aramaic but as common,
early West Semitic, not even peculiar to
Aramaic.
Words found in Akkadian may be relevant
in one of three or four main ways: they
may be
taken as Common Semitic; they may
indicate old West Semitic terms borrowed
by Akkadian
(e. g., as in the Mari texts of the
eighteenth century BC);16 they may
represent Aramaic words
so far only attested as loan-words in
later Akkadian (Neo-Assyrian and Neo-
Babylonian,
eighth-fifth centuries BC), or else may
be Akkadian vocables borrowed as loan-
words by Old
or Imperial Aramaic and so turn up in our
text. Whichever the individual case, the
result
ultimately is the same—all such words
could obviously occur at any time from
the sixth
century BC onwards.
12 A sufficiency of this later material is

included inAOT, passim.
13 Apart from the Aramaic papyri (which
also contain Persian words), what follows
principally concerns the
main Semitic word-stock of the Aramaic of
Daniel. It is regretted that the detailed
analysis of the vocabulary of
Biblical Aramaic cannot be included with
this paperieven set out compactly, it
would require up to forty pages
in small quarto.
14 The accidents of preservation and

discovery have so far produced very many
more Aramaic papyri for the fifth
century BC than for the sixth, the upper
time-limit for Daniel. However,
attestation of a Semitic word in a fifth-
century document is ordinarily a
sufficient presumption for its existence
and use in the late sixth century BC.
The onus of proof would lie on anyone who
might prefer to believe the contrary. The
sixth-century P. Meissner
differs in no essentials from fifth-
century documents.
15 Including: Ugaritic (fourteenth-

thirteenth centuries BC), Canaanite
glosses in the Amama tablets (fourteenth
century BC), Phoenician, Hebrew and
Moabite inscriptions (tenth century
onwards).
16 Good examples, cf E. A. Speiser, JBL,

LXXIX, 1960, pp. 157-163; M. Noth, Die
Ursprfinge des alten Israel
im Lichte neuer Quellen (1961), pp. 14-
22, 34-40 (on which see D. O. Edzard, ZA,
LVI, NF XXII, 1964, pp.
142-149); A. Malamat, JAOS, LXXXII, 1962,
pp. 143-150.
79.
Turning to the one-tenth of unattested

and so far late-attested words, two
interpretations are
theoretically possible for the latter
class. One may assume that they are
genuinely ‘late’
words, and therefore bring down the date
of the Aramaic of Daniel—or of their
introduction
into that Aramaic—to a suitably late
date. One may with equal justification
assume that in
fact this is the familiar vicious fallacy
of negative evidence17—that these words
may yet turn
up in ‘early’ sources, so disproving
their apparently late date.18 Otherwise-
unattested words,
of course, cannot serve as
[p.34]
dating evidence at all. Where nine-tenths

of the vocabulary is clearly old-
established (fifth
century BC and earlier), it is a fair
assumption that the lack of attestation
of the odd tenth
represents nothing more than the gaps in
our present knowledge—gaps liable to be
filled by
new material in the course of time.19
Hence, as far as the main (i.e. Semitic)
vocabulary is concerned, we have no
warrant whatever
to draw any conclusion about the date of
Daniel from its Aramaic except to say
that any date
from the sixth century BC onward is
possible.20
2. Hebrew and Akkadian Loan-words.

However, separate consideration must be
given to
foreign loan-words in Biblical Aramaic.
These are attributable to Hebrew,
Akkadian, Persian
and Greek sources. Hebraisms in Biblical
Aramaic require no consideration—its
writers were
Hebrews, one expects them to betray this,
and such Hebraisms have no bearing on
date.
Akkadian words in Aramaic are also of

very limited value in this connection,
for Aramaean
penetration of Mesopotamia from the
Middle Euphrates down to southern
Babylonia persisted
from the twelfth century BC (Tiglath-
pileser I)21 for six or seven hundred
years before the
period of the late sixth-mid-second
centuries BC that is our concern here.
During that long
period there was ample time for Aramaic
words to enter Akkadian, and for Akkadian
words to
penetrate Aramaic. From the eighth
century BC, Aramaic enjoyed official
recognition in
’7 See my Ancient Orient and Old
Testament, section I.B.5 (iib). It is no
unusual occurrence in Egyptian, for
example, for words once known only from
texts of the Graeco-Roman age suddenly to
turn up a millennium or
two earlier in Old, Middle or Late
Egyptian texts. For Semitic, cf (e.g.)
the next notes.
18 A random example or two from Semitic

must suffice here. Sixty years ago, hmr
‘wine’, in Biblical Aramaic
and Hebrew could be dismissed as ‘late’
in the latter (cf BDB, p. 1093a, s.v.).
But the word is now attested in
Ugaritic (fourteenth-thirteenth century
BC; UM 111, no. 713) and also in Mari
Akkadian (M. L. Burke, Archives
Royales de Mari, XI (1963), p. 133, §11).
Or take s'pr, ‘be fair, acceptable’, in
the Aramaic of Daniel, also in
Hebrew, labelled as ‘rare and mostly
late’ (BDB, p. 1117, s.v.). This word
occurs at least twice in the Ahiqar
papyrus of the fifth century BC (lines
92, 108 and perhaps 159), once in the mid
eighth century BC (Sfrre stela
111, line 29), and as a proper name (like
Shiprah of Ex. 1:15) back in the
eighteenth century BC in the slave-list
of Papyrus Brooklyn 35.1446 (W. C. Hayes,
A Papyrus of the Late Middle Kingdom
(1955), p. 96; W. F.
Albright, JAOS, LXXIV, 1954, p. 229).
Rare it may be; late, it is not.
’9 Cf previous note; a good example is

the supposedly late yt of Biblical
Aramaic turning up in an Aramaic
papyrus published in 1953, cf below, p.
69.
20 When such vocabulary is common to both

‘early’ sources (Old Aramaic; papyri) and
to ‘late’ ones (e.g.
Targums), this does not a priori date
Daniel any closer to (say) the Targums
than to the Old Aramaic texts or the
papyri; it could be at either end, or
anywhere in between, or even slightly
before or after (seen strictly from this
vocabulary point-of-view).
2’ See E. Forrer in E. Ebeling and B.

Meissner (eds.), Reallexikon den
Assyriologie, I, 1928, pp. 131-139:
Aramu.

79.
Assyria.22 Thus, if one combines the

words of possible Akkadian origin given
by Rowley in
AOT, pp. 134-135, with those given by
Rosenthal, GBA, §§188, 190 (pp. 57-58,
59), one
obtains a total of some 37 words and
phrases,
[p.35]
including bel-t’m (but not I’m) and ebr-

nhr as phrases. One of these 37 is
probably not
Akkadian (’ussarna, in Ezra only) but Old
Persian (with Rosenthal, GBA, §189) Of
the
remaining 36 words, 15 occur only in
Ezra, leaving 21 in Daniel, 16 of them in
Daniel alone.
The vocabulary analysis already mentioned
would indicate that practically all of
these 21
words are either attested in Imperial
Aramaic well beyond Daniel, or have a
long history
prejudicial to their entering Aramaic
only in the sixth century BC (or later)
or occur already in
Old Aramaic or West Semitic, or in Hebrew
outside Daniel (ruling out special usage
there). In
other words, the Akkadian loan-words are
probably simply part of the multicoloured
fabric of
Aramaic, and have no real bearing on the
date of the language of Daniel within the
sixth to the
second centuries BC. Only ’a'sjua,
‘enchanter’ (Akkadian asipu), is
restricted so far to the
Hebrew (1:20; 2:2) and Aramaic (2:10, 27;
4:4; 5:7, 11, 15) of Daniel, outside of
Akkadian
itself, and is not attested (so Rowley)
in the later Aramaic of, for example, the
Targums. This
might speak for a direct loan from
Akkadian into the Hebrew and Aramaic
usage of a Hebrew
in Babylon in the mid-sixth century BC
but it is so isolated that as a single
word it cannot
constitute proof. A single occurrence of
biz: in some future discovery of a West
Semitic text or
Aramaic document would soon dispel any
such assumption. Hence, for dating
purposes, the
Akkadian words in the Aramaic of Daniel
must be accorded the same status of non
liquet as
the rest of the Semitic vocabulary.
3. Persian Loan-words. The Persian words

in the Aramaic of Daniel are some 19 in
number.
Rowley gave 20 such words.23 From his
list, zmn and srbl should probably be
omitted,24 and
to it piys (a garment) be added.25 With
these changes, 13 out of the 20 words are
attested in
later literature, particularly the
Targums,26 while
[p.36]
22 See R. A. Bowman, JNES, V11, 1948, pp.

75-76; in 729 BC, tribute for Tiglath-
pileser III is shown as recorded
by an Aramaean scribe with pen and
parchment alongside his cuneiform
colleague; note also for 701 BC, 2 Ki.
18:13-37, Is. 36:1-22.
23AOT, p. 138.
24 Zmn, ‘time’, is probably derived from

Akkadian simanu (refs. in KB, p. 1972a),
rather than from Old Persian
zurvan (m : rv seems far-fetched). Srbl,
‘trousers’ (?), is of obscure origin, but
known to the fifth-century papyri
(AP, no. 42:9). It can hardly be native
to Old Persian, as the latter does not
use I except in foreign words that
already contain l, and only in those not
assimilated (OP, p. 8, §6, and especially
p. 33, §107; cf W. Brandenstein
and M. Mayrhofer, Handbuch
desAltpersischen (1964), pp. 32-33, 35,
§§28, 32).
25 With E. Rosenthal, GBA, p. 59, §189;

KB, p. 1112b, after Nyberg.
26 Rowley’s twelve words are reduced to

ten by omission of zmn and srbl; but
these losses are more than made
up by (i) plys which also occurs in
Talmudic literature (BDB, p. 1108), (ii)
gdbr which is merely a variant of gzbr
and should not count separately (see
below, pp. 61-62), and (iii) dt, ‘law’,
which is now attested in the Qumran
Targum to Job (see J. van den Ploeg, Le T
argum de Job de la Grotte II de Qumran
(1962), p. 7iwhere ptgm
also occurs).

79.
6 of them so far are not.27 (In the

Aramak of Ezra, Rowley listed 9 words,
which would
become 8 with the omission of zmn as in
Daniel. But to this 8 may be added a
further 5 words
(with Rosenthal, §§189-190 et al.):
’sprn’, ’prs(t)k, ’srn’, ’stdr, srsw. Of
these 13 words, 5
occur in later (e.g. Targumic) literature
as survivals, that is, Rowley’s five,
minus zmn, but
plus dt instead.)
In the Aramaic papyri collected together

by Cowley,28 Rowley with him would find
(p. 139)
some 26 Persian words of which only 2
occur in the Targums. He further noted
that only 2 of
these words (t(y)pt, zn) recurred in
Daniel; and 3 (’zd’, gnz, nsMn) in Ezra,
probably 4
(adding ’svrn’),29 as preferred here. All
this led him to observe that (p. 139) ‘a
very large
proportion of the Persian words found in
Daniel is known to have persisted in
Aramaic until
Targurnic times’ [i.e. until the first
century BC and later], ‘while a very
small proportion of
those found in Egyptian Aramaic so
persisted’. So far so good, on the facts
so far adduced.
Rowley then interpreted these facts as
follows (p. 139): ‘In this matter
[survival of words in
Daniel], therefore, Biblical Aramaic...
stands very much nearer to the Targums
than do the
Papyri.’ And later in the same paragraph,
‘It thus appears that in the matter of
Persian loan-
words Biblical Aramaic is also very much
nearer to the Targums than it is to the
Papyri.’
These inferences are open to question on
various grounds.
(1) As generally admitted, the Persian

vocabulary in the Aramaic of Daniel
amounts to barely
a score of words. When the material at
hand consists of words by the thousand or
even in
hundreds, there is some hope of sound
results, but a mere score or so of words
is altogether
too fragile a basis for statistical
argument.30 This will become more evident
from what
follows.
(2) If one compares the Persian

vocabulary of Biblical Aramaic with what
the Targums
contain—as Rowley does in the interests
of a second-century date for Daniel—one
should
also compare that vocabulary equally with
what is found in Imperial Aramaic docu-
[p.37]
ments of the sixth-fifth centuries BC.31

This omission must now be rectified.
Of the 19 words here accepted as Persian

in the Aramaic of Daniel, 8 or g occur in
Imperial
Aramaic and contemporary sources. In
Imperial Aramaic, we find ptgm, ’zd’, zn,
t(y)pt,
gzbr,32 and [rz]33 (all in the
Elephantine papyri from Egypt); and via
Elamite,34 ’hsdrpn, dt,
27 The proportion is thus now 12:7
instead of 12:8 as in Rowley’s time. More
Qumran material could easily
increase the body of such survivals; the
new Job Targum contains some other
Persian words, e.g. dhst, ‘desert’,
ksnown neither to Biblical Aramaic nor to
the papyri as yet (van der Ploeg, loc.
cit.).
AP.
29 See for this word C. G. Tuland, JNES,
XVII, 1958, pp. 275-274, and as Old
Persian, H. S. Nyberg, Le Monde
Oriental, XXIV, 1930, pp. 538-139. But cf
also E. G. Kraeling, BAMP, p. 101, n.6.
30 A fact realized at least in part by
Rowley (p. 136: ‘While in literature so
scanty as our texts, all arguments on
Vocabulary are liable to be
precarious...’), but not sufficiently. It
is clearly stated by F. Rosenthal,
Aramaistische
Forschung, p. 63, in another connection.
31 In practice, mainly of the fifth
century BC, due simply to the accidents
of preservation and discovery.
32 Of which gdbr is merely a variant; see
below, pp. 61-62.
33 Ahiqar, 141, restoredibut what else of
two letters would fit? If this word be
omitted, then we have eight, not
nine words here.

79.
Dt, ‘law, decree’, also occurs in

Akkadian cuneiform as early as the
second, sixteenth and
thirty-fifth years of Darius I, and
databara in a later group of documents.35
In other words,
nearly half of the Persian words in the
Aramaic of Daniel are attested (mainly in
Aramaic
itself) in the sixth-fifth centuries BC.
Or, nearly half of the Persian words
would speak just as
much for a sixth-fifth century date as
would the 13 words found in the Targums
for a second-
century date. Now, of the 8 or 9 words
here listed as occurring early, 4 or 5
(ptgm, gzbr, dt,
zn, [rz]) recur in the Targums and 4
(’zd’, t(y)pt, ’hsdrpn, dtbr) do not. In
other words, on
Rowley’s kind of reasoning, half of these
8 or 9 words would stand nearer to the
Targums and
half to the sixth-fifth centuries BC—but
as those recurring in the Targums also
occur in
documents of the sixth-fifth centuries
BC, could these documents, too, stand
‘nearer’ to the
Targums than to other documents of their
own date? Clearly they could not; the
plain fact is
that all of these 8 or 9 words came into
Aramaic (and Akkadian and Elamite) in the
sixth-fifth
centuries BC, and some of them happen to
be retained four centuries later (cf. (4)
below). The
occurrence of 4 or 5 of them in both
Persian imperial documents and Targums
merely leaves
the date of Daniel’s Aramaic where it was
before: in the sixth to second centuries
BC.
(Similarly with Ezra’s Aramaic. Of the 13

words here, 9 occur in Imperial Aramaic
or
contemporary sources (’ptm, perhaps in
Akkadian), only 4 so far do not
(’prs(t)k,36 prsgn,
’drzd’, ’stdr). That
[1038]
is, three-quarters of the Persian words

in the Aramaic of Ezra are attested in
the sixth-fifth
century BC documents available, and speak
for an early date. Of these 9 words, 4
recur in the
Targums (ptgm, gnz, gnzbr, alt) but 5 do
not (’sprn’, ’srn’, nstwn, srsw, ’ptm)37
In other
words, again, half of the words are
‘early’ only, and half both early and
late, with the same
result as in Daniel, i.e. sixth-frfth to
second centuries BC for scope in dating.)
(3) As for the Aramaic of Daniel having

only 2 Persian words (and that of Ezra,
4)38 in
common with the Aramaic of the fifth-
century papyri from Egypt, much new
material has
become available since 1929, and permits
of some interesting comparisons.
In the eighty-seven documents collected
by Cowley,39 some twenty-seven words were
isolated
as probably Persian. Since then, two
further (but much smaller) collections of
Ararnajc
documents have been 4published, by
Kraeling in 195340 and Driver in 1954-
1957,41 besides a
trickle of lesser items.
34 Both under Darius I; for the view that

treasury-orders at Persepolis were turned
into Aramaic and then Elamite
(hence Old Persian words in these texts

would come via Aramaic), see PTT, chapter
2, especially pp. 27 ff.,
nuanced by G. G. Cameron, JNES, XVII,

1958, p. 163.
35 CAD, 3/D, pp. 122-123. These, too, are

likely to be indirect evidence for dt,
dtbr in Aramaic in so far as the
latter language was used as intermediary

between Persian officials and cuneiform
scribes in Babylonia. Data is,
of course, directly attested from Darius

I onwards in actual Old Persian texts
(OP, p. 189).
36 This word is probably also attested

within the Persian period in Akkadian as
iprasakku (CAD, 7/I-J, pp. 165-
166). This would give Ezra fourteen words
attested early and only three not (so
far).
37 One word (prsgn) so far only in Ezra

and Targums (apart from biblical Hebrew,
left out of account in this
study, except where cited).
3" AOT, p. 139, but including ’srn’; in

fact, the proportions are quite
different: Daniel, five or six words in
the
papyri and three more in parallel

material; and Ezra, eight in the papyri
and one probably in the parallel
materialicf. above, pp. 37f.
:: I.e. AP, nos. 1-83, plus Ahiqar,

Behistun—text, and two documents (A; B +
C) in Appendix, pp. 317-319.
BJWAP.

79.
The Kraeling series comprises seventeen

documents (four very fragmentary),
practically all
legal texts. As might be expected, they
contain numerically fewer Persian words
than the
Cowley corpus—1 1, of which (’bygdn,
hnbg’, hngyt, ’srn’) occur in Cowley, 1
in Driver and
Cowley (the ubiquitous krs) 1 in the
Talmud,43 and 5 (hpthpt, hnpn’, ’drng,
alrmy,44 ’zt)45
nowhere else. In even so few documents,
half the Persian words are otherwise
unattested in
contemporary records!
The Driver series consists of thirteen

letters and various lesser fragments. The
bulk of these
letters came from Babylon (and perhaps
Susa) to Egypt, sent by the Persian
Arsames, satrap
of Egypt (while absent from Egypt) and
three of his adjutants. This small
[p.39]
group of documents contains no less than

26 Persian words46—three-quarters as many
as the
entire Cowley collection of eighty-seven
documents! Nor is this all. Of those 26
words, 19 are
entirely flew to Imperial Aramaic, 2 are
shared with Cowley and Kraeling (krs,
pt), and only
another 3 words with the Cowley series
(gnz, hmrkry’, hndyz), and 2 more in
other sources
(’sprn, ptgm) One of the new words
(srwsyt’, ‘punishment’) recurs in a
slightly different
spelling (srsw, probably to be taken as
srsw originally, initial s’in assimilated
to shin?) in Ezra
(7:26, ‘banishment’)47 Five others of the
new words recur in the Talmud (bg,
‘domain’; dsn’,
‘gift’; ptkr, ‘image’; gnz, ‘treasury’;
ptgm, ‘decree’48) In other words, the
Driver documents
show as many affinities in their Persian
vocabulary with the Talmud (3 words; plus
gnz and
ptgm attested early and late) as with
other records of the fifth century BC
(five items in
Cowley and Kraeling)—but no-one would use
such statistics to prove that the Driver
documents should be placed half-way
chronologically between the fifth and
second centuries
BC (c. 250?) on such a basis!49 Ezra is
in a far more convincing position with
his 9 Persian
words in sixth-fifth century sources out
of only 13 (and 1 word unattested so far
except in
Biblical Hebrew and the Targums), than
are the Driver documents with only 5 or 7
contemporaneously attested Persian words
out of 26 (and 3 words unattested
elsewhere until
the Talmud) Likewise, Daniel with 8 or 9
Persian words in sixth-fifth century
sources (5 or 6
actually in the papyri) out of 21 words
(and 7 words unattested until the
Targums) compares
perfectly well with the 5 or 7 words in
the sixth-fifth centuries out of 26 (3,
only in Talmud)
of the Driver documents—these latter have
less in the late sources only, but less
in the early
documents also!
The whole of this section (3) simply
throws into relief the following facts.
(i) With only a
score or so Persian words in each writing
or group of documents, statistics are
virtually
worthless. (ii) The supposedly few
Persian words common to the Aramaic of
Daniel and Ezra
and that of the eighty-seven papyri in
Cowley prove only that our knowledge of
the total
4’ G. R. Driver, Aramaic Documents of the

Fifth Century BC (1954) and abridged and
revised version 1957).
42 And others yet to be published, e. g.

the fifth-century Aramaic papyri from Tuna
el-Gebel (Hermopolis West)
in Middle Egypt (cf M. Kamil, Revue de l
’Histoire Juive en Egypte, I, 1947, pp.
1-3).
43 Mgws, ‘magian’, in AP, p. 254:

‘Behistun text’, line 60, cf M. Jastrow,
Dictionary of the T argumim, Talmud...
II 1926, p. 727a/b.
44 Unless this word is Greek? Cf below,

pp. 46, 47.
45 This word, J. De Menasce, BO, XI,

1954, p. 161; LAP, p. 38.
46 Excluding, as throughout this

discussion, personal and place names.
47 NB. srosi in Qreifrom s'rw§y(t)?
4" M. Jastrow, Dictionary ofthe Targumim,

Talmud... I, pp. 134b, 326b, II, p.
1254b.
49 And it is as striking that the

Kraeling legal documents have barely half
their Persian vocabulary in common
with the other Elephantine documents
collected in Cowley.

79.
impact of Old Persian upon Imperial

Aramaic (and its continuations) is
grossly inadequate,
when one small group of closely similar
documents yields 50 per cent new
[p.40]
Persian loan-words, and another and

separate group (from the East) 19 out of
26 words new
(c. 80 per cent). (iii) It should be
noted that in fact several more words in
the Aramaic of both
Daniel and Ezra are common to them and
the Aramaic papyri (besides other
documents) than
was allowed by Rowley in 1929. (iv) When
words are attested outside of Daniel (or
Ezra)
both in the sixth-fifth century texts and
in the late (Targumic/Talniudic) sources,
this proves
only that these words had along life in
Aramaic, and in themselves leave open the
whole
period of the sixth-second centuries BC
for Daniel. Words attested only in Daniel
(or Ezra)
and, say, the Targums can be balanced by
other words occurring , only in Daniel
(or Ezra) and
the sixth-fifth century documents—each
represents merely negative evidence for
the periods
unattested, and hence is useless for
specific dating purposes; they cancel
each other out. This
matter of survivals must now be further
considered.
(4a) From the preceding, it should be

plainly evident that Persian words in
Daniel that
survive in Targums or Talmud prove only
that the words in question could have
been used as
easily by a writer of Aramaic in the
second century BC as by one in the sixth
or fifth century
BC. It is unjustifiable to infer
therefrom (with Rowley, p. 139) that
Biblical Aramaic is
‘nearer’, i.e. chronologically, to the
Targums than to the papyri. The numerical
‘prepon—
derance’ of 13 such words in Daniel as
opposed to 5 in Ezra or 7 in Cowley,
Kraeling and
Driver has thus no necessary bearing on
the date of Daniel at all. Words must be
weighed, not
merely counted.50
As already stated, the impact of Old

Persian upon Imperial Aramaic was
considerable. The
Persian kings appointed Persian and
Median officials to govern their empire,
and Aramaic
was the means of communication between
these and the polyglot nations so ruled.
In the
administrative sphere, the impact was
intense—note the list of about 100 Old
Persian words
in the eighty-four Elamite ‘money-order’
tablets from the Persepolis Treasury
published by
Cameron,51 to which still more may be
added,52 not least when 2000 more
Persepolis tablets
(fortifications archive) are eventually
published.53 The effect on Aramaic must
have been the
greater, as its use was infinitely wider
than Elamite. In the two centuries
between c. 540 BC
and c. 330 BC many such words had
[p.41]
ample time not merely to enter Aramaic

but to become a regular part of it,
assimilated in fact.
Thus, when Alexander and his Macedonians
supplanted the Persian rulers, Aramaic-
speaking
peoples would continue to use those
Persian words that had lodged securely in
Aramaic
usage. A fair number of words would drop
away—those for institutions and practices
that
ceased with Persian rule, or received
new, Greek names under the Macedonian
kings, for
example.
50 Cf F. Rosenthal, Aramaistische
Forschung, p. 63.
5’ PTT, Texts 1-84 (no. 85 is an Akkadian

‘stray’), and list of Old Persian words
on pp. 42-43.
52 E.g. nidani, pitgam, karnuvaka,

rasakara, garda (i pati), fratama,
pansukas (G. G. Cameron, JNES, XVII,
1958, pp. 161-162, 165, n.8, 9).
53 By R. T. Hallock; cf JNES, XVII, 1958,

pp. 256-257.

79.
The scope of Persian words borrowed

during the Persian Empire must also have
been very
broad—from specialized technical terms
and titles from administration, law and
military,
through names of specific ‘cultural
elements’ (clothes, materials, etc.) down
to apparently
ordinary sorts of words like zn, ‘kind’,
ptgm, ‘message’, etc.54 Furthermore, the
almost
unconscious assumption55 that Persian
words would take some time to penetrate
into Aramaic
(i.e. well after 539 BC) is erroneous.56
The Persepolis Treasury tablets run from
the 30th year
of Darius I to the 7th of Artaxerxes I,
while those yet to be published from the
fortifications
archive go back to the 11th to 28th years
of Darius 1.57 (Akkadian was much less
receptive to
Old Persian loan-words (so far as is
known), but as already seen, data, ‘law,
decree’, occurs in
years 2, 16 and 35 of Darius 1’") Had we
similar Aramaic and Elamite documents for
Cyrus
and Carnbyses, the same result might be
anticipated. In other words, if a
putative Daniel in
Babylon under the Persians (and who had
briefly served them) were to write a book
some
time after the third year of Cyrus (Dn.
10: 1), then a series of Persian words is
no surprise.
Such a person in the position of close
[p.42]
contact with Persian administration that

is accorded to him in the book would have
to
acquire—and use in his Aramaic—many terms
and words from his new Persian colleagues
(just like the Elamite scribes of
Persepolis), from the conquest by Cyrus
onwards.
(4b). It is necessary, also, to note what
words are involved in practice, and not
merely how
many. Given the two centuries of
unhindered Persian penetration of the
Aramaic language (c.
540-330 BC), one cannot be surprised that

such ‘ordinary’ words as zn, ‘kind’; rz,
‘secret’;
nbrst, ‘lamp’; ndn, ‘sheath, body’; nbzb
’, ‘gift’, should be assimilated and
survive later. The
same applies to items of apparel (hnmk,
‘necklace’; ptys“, ‘shirt’(?)), and words
of such wide
application as ptgm, ‘word’; alt, ‘law,
decree’. Hdm, ‘limb’, came from legal
usage59 (and gnz,
‘treasure’, in Ezra, from
administration), as in Daniel, but is an
ordinary word in the Targums.
The survival of these 10 words (plus one
in Ezra) can of itself prove nothing
about Daniel’s
date. Three words remain over (the first
in early sources as well as the Targums):
gzbr/gdbr,
kr(w)z, srk: ‘treasurer’, ‘herald’,
‘chief minister’. These are
administrative titles—but for
obvious and basic functions. Any Ancient
Near Eastern state had treasurers and
chief
ministers, and courts their heralds
also.60 The non-occurrence so far of srk
and krz‘m in early
54 Elamite in the Persepolis Treasury

texts similarly borrowed quite ‘ordinary’
words as well as technical and
other terms (PT T, p. 19, n.125). It
should be noted that these so-called
‘ordinary’ words in most cases probably
came in at first as technical or cultural
words, but became everyday terms in
Aramaic. Thus, non, ‘sheath’, may
come initially from military parlance;
rz, ‘secret’, from magicians’ usage, and
so on. I owe comment on this
point to Mr. David Clines of Sheffield
University.
55 Cf. LOT), p. 508: ‘The Persian words

presuppose a period after the Persian
Empire had been well established.’
56 Note also G. G. Cameron’s remarks

(PTT, p. 19) on the penetration of
Elamite by so many Old Persian words
from as early as Darius I.
57 PTT, pp. 32-33, and R. T. Hallock,

JNES, xrx, 1960, p. 91 (year seven for
five).
58 CAD, 3/D, p. 123a. Other Old Persian

words in Akkadian include also ddtabara
(ibid, p. 122a),
ahsadrapannu (ibid, vol. 1:1/A:1, p.
195a), hamarakara (ibid, vol. 6/H, pp.
59-60), gardu, gardupatu (ibid,
Vol. 5/G, p. 50), etc. See W. Eilers,
Iranische Beamtennamen in der
keilschifiilichen Uberlieferung, I (1940).
Also the lists of loan-words in reviews
of successive volumes of the CAD by D. O.
Edzard in ZA, LIII, NF XIX,
1959, LIV, NF XX, 1961, and LVI, NF XXII,
1964.
59 E.g. GBA, §189.
60 E.g. the whm-nsw, ‘Royal Herald’, in

Egypt (A. H. Gardiner, Ancient Egyptian
Onomastica, I, 1947, p. 22*,
no. 80).

79.
sources, beyond Daniel and the Targums

(likewise prsgn in Ezra), is merely
negative
evidence (cf. also (5), below). It should
also be remembered that survival of words
from
Daniel or Ezra in the Targums is to be
expected a prioriiafter all, they belong
to one literary
tradition, Jewish, biblical and
commentary/interpretation therefor!
On the other hand, 2 words are so far

unique to the Aramaic of Daniel: ’drgzr
and hdbr, both
high titles (‘counsellor’, ‘companion’);
and 4 words occur so far only in the
Aramaic of
Daniel and early (i.e. sixth-fifth
century) documents: ’hsdrpn (‘satrap’),
dtbr (‘judge’), t(y)pt
(‘magistrate’); ’zd’ (‘certified’, etc.)
Here also, 3 are titles and 1 part of
official style (cf.
Rosenthal, GBA, §189) There is as yet no
evidence that any of these 6 terms
survived the
Persian period (i.e. after 0. 330 BC).
This in itself is negative evidence, and
therefore is
inadequate. But there is limited positive
evidence in its support, from the LXX
(Old Greek
and Theodotion).61 Among the official
titles in the Aramaic of Daniel (Dn. 3:2-
3, etc),
Persian
[p.43]
’hsdrpn and Semitic sgn and phh, and the

general phrase ‘all the rulers of the
provinces’ are
reasonably well rendered. But for ’drgzr,
‘counsellor’; gdbr, ‘treasurer’;62 dtbr,
‘law-officer’;
t(y)pt, ‘magistrate, police chief’, the
Old Greek (and later) renderings are
hopelessly inexact—
mere guesswork. If the first important
Greek translation of Daniel was made some
time within
c. 100 BC-AD 100, roughly speaking, and
the translator could not (or took no
trouble to“)
reproduce the proper meanings of these
terms, then one conclusion imposes
itself: their
meaning was already lost and forgotten
(or, at the least, drastically changed)
long before he
set to work.64 Now if Daniel (in
particular, the Aramaic chapters 2-7) was
wholly a product of
c. 165 BC, then just a century or so in a
continuous tradition is surely
embarrassingly
inadequate as a sufficient interval for
that loss (or change) of meaning to
occur, by Near
Eastern standards. Therefore, it is
desirable on this ground to seek the
original of such verses
(and hence of the narratives of which
they are an integral part) much earlier
than this date,
preferably within memory of the Persian
rule—i.e. c. 539 (max) to c. 280 BC
(allowing about
fifty years’ lapse from the fall of
Persia to Macedon). At maximum, this
could affect the
whole book of Daniel as we have it; at
minimum, it could indicate that a second-
century
writer used in his work some pre-existing
Daniel-narrations, but adapted them so
little that he
did not even eliminate words meaningless
to him and his readers, such was his
archaeological
conscience. On the use of Persian words
in reference to the Babylonian kingdom,
and their
preponderance over Greek terms, see
section 4(5) below.
(5) One further 5point should be made

here: the Persian words in Daniel are
specifically Old
Persian words.6 The recognized divisions
of Persian language-history within
Iranian are: Old
down to c. 300 BC, Middle observable
during c. 300 BC to c. AD 900, and New
from c. AD
60" But see now A. Schaffer, Or., XXXIV
(1965), pp. 32-34, for evidence of krz
about 1500 BC.
61 See J. A. Montgomery, The Book

ofDaniel, pp. 199-200, on LXX of Daniel.
62 Presumably not recognized by the LXX

translator as identical with gzbr.
63 The LXX of Daniel is known to have

been a relatively ‘free’ renderingibut if
the translator gave reasonable
renderings for some terms (e.g. sgn, phh,
’hsdrpn), one would expect him to do this
for the rest, had he known
them equally well.
64 This point has also been made by W.

St. Clair Tisdall, JTVI, L111, 1921, p.
206.
65 Even when words in the Aramaic of

Daniel cannot be compared with attested
Old Persian words, they
correspond with reconstructible forms in
Old Persian, not later forms. Old Median
is here kept with Old Persian.

79.
900 to the present.66 Now, the fact that

the Iranian element in Daniel is from Old
Persian and
not Middle indicates that the Aramaic of
Daniel is in this respect pre-
Hellenistic, drew on no
Persian from after the fall of that
empire—and not on any Middle Persian
words and forms
that might have penetrated Aramaic in
[p.44]
Arsacid times (c. 250 BC, ff.) This fact

again illustrates that the occurrence of
Persian words
in Daniel also in late sources such as
the Targums has no bearing whatever on
Daniel’s date
except to keep open the whole period of
the sixth-econd centuries BC, as already
observed.
4. Greek Loan-words. (1) In the Aramaic

of Daniel, three words in particular67
are commonly
considered to be of Greek origin. The
three are all terms for musical
instruments: qytrs,
psntrn, smpny’. For detailed
consideration of these three words
(possible origins, history,
meanings), see the study by T. C.
Mitchell and R. Joyce, pp. 39-7 above. In
this section, it is
not so much the words themselves as the
principle and significance of Greek words
occurring
in Imperial Aramaic that will be
considered.
(2) The common assumption about the

significance of these three words in
Daniel is pithily
enshrined in S. R. Driver’s oft-quoted
dictum:68 ‘the Greek words demand... a
date after the
conquest of Palestine by Alexander the
Great (BC 332).’ It is widely assumed,
even today,
that—before Alexander’s conquest of the
Orient—Greek words could have no place in
Ancient Near Eastern languages, and least
of all in a city so far removed from the
East
Mediterranean seaboard as is Babylon.
However, these easy assumptions of Greek
influence
in the East only after c. 332 BC are in
large measure misleading and erroneous,
as the
following evidence makes clear.
(3) Effective Greek intercourse and

influence in the Near East long antedate
the end of the
fourth century BC. Leaving aside the
Assyrian king Sargon Il’s boast69 of
drawing the
larnanian (‘lonian’ of Cyprus) from the
Mediterranean like a fish, good
archaeological
evidence betrays Greek traders active in
the Orient in the eighth century BC:70 at
the Syrian
seaport of Al Mina (ancient Posideion ?),
levels X-VH, Euboean Greeks shared the
trade with
Cypriots. Greek pottery of the period has
been found at various Syrian sites
(including
Hamath and in the Amq plain), and
penetrated even to Nineveh in Assyria
itself :71
In Palestine itself, eighth-century Greek
pottery is attested, e. g.
[p.45]
an Argive crater from the Samaria of

Jeroboam II, c. 750 BC,72 and other
material from
Megiddo and Tell Abu Hawam.73 The process
continues in the seventh century: the
Greeks
66 OPZ, pp. 6-7, especially §§3-5.
67 From time to time, other words have

been claimed to be of Greek origin, or
even phrases (as loan-
translations), but none are at all
convincing, and they require no
refutation here.
68 LOT), p. 508; the italics are those of

Driver.
69ARAB II, §80; A. L. Oppenheim in ANETZ,

p. 285a, ‘11.11-15’. Iamani of Ashdod was
probably Semitic, not
Greek, cf H. Tadmor, JCS, XII, 7958, p.
80 and n.217, and H. W. F. Saggs, Iraq,
XXV, 1963, pp. 77-78.
70 For what follows, cf conveniently GO,

pp. 67-70, with bibliography, p. 725.
71 Unpublished, cf ibid, p. 69.
72 M. Avi-Yonah, IE], XI, 1961, p. 158b,

apud K. M. Kenyon et al., Samaria-Sebaste
III (1957), pp. 210-212.

79.
supreme at Al Mina74 (levels VI-V), and

their pottery still reaching into Syria
(e.g. catal
Huyuk, Zincirli), elsewhere in Phoenicia
(Byblos, Tell Sukas), and Palestine (Tell
Abu
Hawam; Mezad Hashavyahu)—and even to
Babylon of all places.75 From the late
seventh
century BC onward, the Greeks had their
famous centre Naukratis in the Egyptian
Delta. In
the early sixth century, Tell Sukas
replaced Al Mina as chief Syrian port of
the Greeks, but
the latter revived under Persian rule in
the fifth century.76 In the fifth
century, Greek
(Athenian) pottery is well attested in
Syria and Palestine at a series of
sites,77 right down to
Elath (Tell e1 Kheleifeh) on the Gulf of
Aqaba leading into the Red Sea.78 During
the sixth-
fifth centuries BC, a new Greek port-
settlement flourished at Minet el Beida
(old Leucos
Limen) near the long-ruined mound of
Ugarit (Ras Shamra),79 and lasted perhaps
until the
third century BC. In other words, Greek
traders were active in the Levant from
the days of
Amos onwards, and their wares penetrated
to Nineveh and Babylon.
Greek mercenaries are attested in the

Orient from the late seventh century BC
onwards. Apart
from those Greek and Carian mercenaries
recruited c. 660 BC by Psarnmetichus I of
Egypt in
the pages of Herodotus, excavations at
Carchemish yielded a splendid Greek
bronze shield,
once doubtless the property of a Greek
mercenary who served under the next
pharaoh, Necho
II, at the Battle of Carchemish in 605
BC.80 The Greek and Carian mercenaries of
Psarnmetichus 11 left their names at Abu
Simbel in Nubia. Greek
[p.46]
mercenaries also served in the Babylonian

forces about the period 605-585 BC, as
witnessed
by the poet Alcaeus whose brother fought
alongside the Babylonians in Phoenicia.81
Fourth-
century Greek papyri were found at
Elephantine in Upper Egypt long ago.82
Going a step further, it may be noted

that Greek artisans were apparently
employed in the
Babylon of Nebuchadrezzar. The ration-
tablets from the tenth to thirty-fifth
years of
Nebuchadrezzar II (i.e. c. 595-570 BC)
published by Weidner83 include
‘Ionians’,84 besides
such people as Jehoiachin of Judah, his
entourage, and many other assorted
foreigners
(especially craftsmen). It is clear from
one or two of the personal names that
these ‘Ionians’
came from Asia Minor in particular
(Cilicia, Lycia, etc); the name
Kunzumpiya is good
73 GO, p. 69; T. J. Dunbabin, The Greeks

and their Eastern Neighbours (1957), pp.
72-74 (Tell Abu Hawam and
Syrian sites to c. 700 BC).
74 GO, pp. 70-74.
75 Ibid, p. 75; Dunbabin, op. cit., p.

76; on Greek pottery at Mezad Hashavyahu,
cf J. Naveh, IE], XII, 1962, pp.
97-99.
76 GO, pp. 76-77. For Tell Sukas, see

preliminary reports by P. J. Riis,
AnnalesArche'ologiques de Syrie VIII-IX,
1958-1959, pp. 128-130; ibid, X, 1960,
pp. 223-128; ibid, XI-XII, 1961-1962, pp.
137-140. A spindle-whorl of
c. 600 BC from this site has a woman’s
name of lonian type in Greek script on
it, see Archaeology, XVII, 1964,
pp. 206-207 with fig.
77 GO, p. 79.
78 See N. Glueck, BASOR, LXXX, 1940, p.

3, and into Arabia then, W. F. Albright,
ibid, p. 3, n.2a.
79 See C. F. A. Schaeffer and C.

Clairrnont in Ugaritica IV (1962), pp.
xxxv, 631-636; coin-hoard, Schaeffer,
UgariticaI (1939), p. 50 and fig. 39 idem,
inMe'langes... R. Dussaud, I (1939), pp.
461-487.
80 Cf. latterly, GO, pp. 75, 132, and

plate 6b.
81Ibid, p. 76; J. D. Quinn, BASOR, CLXIV,

1961, pp. 19-20.
82 Cf BJWAP, p. 57, and n5 and refs.
83 In Melanges... R. Dussaud II (1939),

pp. 923-935.
84 Ibid, pp. 932-935.

79.
Luvian,85 and others may be. In other

words, the Babylonians lumped together
under ‘lonians’
the mixed inhabitants—Greek, Cilician,
Lycian—of Southern Asia Minor. Greek
artisans in
the Persian Empire are well known.
Finally, there is the question of Greek
words and expressions in Imperial Aramaic
a century
before Alexander ever went East. Already,
fifty years ago, the Greek money-term
‘stater’ was
identified in the Aramaic papyri from
Egypt in documents of c. 400 BC.86 The
reserve
formerly felt87 about this identification
because of a possible connection with
Babylonian
istatir(anu) can be discounted. The
Babylonian word is now considered itself
to be a Greek
loan-word (mainly in documents of the
Alexander and Seleucid periods) in that
language,88
while in Imperial Aramaic the word
‘stater’ recurs in Papyrus Brooklyn 12:5
and 14, there
explicitly called ‘Greek money’ (ksp Ywn,
‘silver of Yavan’).89 While some earlier
attempts to
identify certain words as Greek in the
Aramaic papyri have failed,90 this
possibility has now
come under renewed examination. Yaron
with some plausibility would identify
drmy in P.
Brooklyn 9:3 as Greek dore'ma.91 The case
of
[p.47]
prypt or pdypt is doubtful (P. Brooklyn

12:11). Yaron read pdypt and took this as
Greek
paideutos, ‘brought up’, i.e. ‘ward’ or
‘nursling’, quoting the Talmudic pdypty
as parallel.92
Possibly with less likelihood, Rabinowitz
read prypt93 and interpreted this as
Greek threpte.
They cannot both be right, and may both
be wrong.94 Rabinowitz would find three
more
Greek words: prtrk as from protarkhe's;95
hpth as from ‘ippeute's;96 and ’bygrn as
from
epigramrna.97 But these, too, are rather
dubious; the meaning gained for ’bygrn is
attractive,
though the transliteration or
transcription (b/p; n/m) is unconvincing
but not quite impossible.
Perhaps still more difficult to be sure
of are various suggested ‘loan—
translations’ from Greek
into Aramaic. Again, most of these are
dubious,98 while one or two are
admittedly striking”—
unless future discoveries prove them to
be less distinctive than they appear at
present.
Moreover, as Yaron remarked, attestation
of a ‘Greek’ usage in Aramaic documents
of a date
earlier than its occurrence in actual
Greek documents so far known to us can be
purely
85 Ibid, p. 933 (after Sundwall); cf A.

Goetze, JCS, VIII, 1954, p. 77, and
eapecially Ph. H. J. Houwink ten
Cate, The Luwian Population Groups of
Lycia and Cilicia Aspera during the
Hellenistic Period(1961), pp. 139,
(177).
86 In AP, nos. 35:4, 7; 37:12; [61:8?];

67:9. Cf ibid, p. 131, in agreement with
Sachau and Ungnad; AOT, pp.
143-144.
87 Cf AOT, loc. cit, on Johns and

Olmstead.
8" Cf. CAD, 7/I-J, p. 204: istatirru.
89 BMAP, pp. 277, 276, cf pp. 40, 269.
90 Reviewed and rightly rejected by

Rowley, AOT, pp. 142-145 passirn
91HUCA, XXVIII, 1957, p. 49.
92 Ibid, pp. 49-50.
93 Biblica, XXXIX, 1958, p. 78, and his

Jewish Law (1956).
94 A Greek origin appears to have been

tacitly abandoned by Yaron in his LAP, p.
40 (and n3).
95 See the references in notes 93, 96,

above, and below.
96 Biblica, XLI, 1960, pp. 72-74.
97 Biblica, XXXIX, p. 78-79; his passing

suggestion (ibid, 82, n2) that ptgm is
from Greek is certainly
mistaken, on Eastern data.
98 Cf on gw’, qry ‘1 J. J. Rabinowitz,

Biblica, xxxrx, 7958, pp. 77-78, 80-81.
99 Cf LAP, pp. 703-704, 126-127, andHUCA,
XXVIII, 1957, pp. 50-51.

79.
accidental,100 simply because the earlier

Greek documents and occurrences have not
yet been
recovered. (This point should be borne in

mind by those who insist upon the smpny’
of Daniel
being a musical instrument in Greek
‘only’ late in the Hellenistic period—
this is, identically,
the elementary fallacy of negative
evidence and proves nothing except the
inadequacy of our
Greek source-material, musical as well as
legal.)
In other words, the idea that Greek words

and influence could not affect the Near
East or
appear in Aramaic before Alexander the
Great must be given up—the massive
general
background apart, both are sufficiently
attested by the certain occurrence of
state'r, clearly
labelled ‘Greek money’, the probable
occurrence of dore'ma, ‘gift’, and just
possibly by other
words or phraseology that need
confirmation before they could be taken
as definite evidence.
It is a gain to have this linguistic
demonstration of Greek influence at c. 400
BC; in view of
the penetration of the Orient by Greek
mer-
[p.48]
chants and mercenaries for 350 years

before even that date, still earlier
evidence must be
expected some day.101 One may mention the
long-known lion-weight from Abydos
(Mysia) in
N. W. Asia Minor, inscribed ‘sprn 1qu
stry’ zy ksp, ‘Exactly corresponding to
the silver
s(t)ater’,102 which probably dates to
roughly 500 BC.103
(4) It is in the light of the foregoing

background that the three Greek musical
terms in Daniel
should be approached. Of the three terms,
qytrs (kitharos) is already known from
Homer (i.e.
eighth century BC at latest), and so has
no bearing on date whatever. This leaves
only the two
words psntrn and smpny’, commonly stated
to be attested only from the second
century BC or
so with the required meanings. On these
words, cf. Mitchell and Joyce’s paper in
this volume;
here, suffice it to reiterate that this
is only negative evidence, i.e. lack of
evidence, and there is
nothing to prevent earlier occurrences
from turning up some day in future Greek
epigraphic
finds. There are plenty of parallels in
the Near East for the accidental
preservation of words of
one language as loan-words in another
tongue at an earlier date than extant
known
’00 Cf ibid, and LAP, p. 704 top;

contrast the naive and unjustified
scepticism of Rowley, AOT, p. 148; where
may one find a corpus of Greek papyri
(legal, or music!) to compare with Near
Eastern sources? Cf also n.105,
below.
101 There is thus no justification for the

a priori view that 400 BC is the earliest
likely date (cf J. J. Rabinowitz,
Biblica, XXXIX, 1958, p. 79, n5). The
speculations of C. H. W. Johns, Assyrian
Deeds andDocuments, II, pp.
278 ff, have little bearing on stater in
Aramaic, now that it is there called
‘Greek money’. Double t in the word
has nothing to do with Ashtoreth, unless
metathesis be involvedibut no such form
as *Ashtater is attested for
Ashtoreth.
Note also the possible occurrence of the

Greek term karpobogos, ‘tax-gatherer’, in
an Aramaic ostracon of
the fifth century BC from Elath on the
Gulf of Aqaba (N. Glueck and W. F.
Albright, BASOR, LXXX, 1940, pp.
8-9 and n.12); but note that C. C.
Torrey, ibid, LXXXII, 1941, pp. 15-16,
would read (h)mr blgn, ‘bottled wine’.
’02 Most recently, H. Donner and W.
Rollig, Kanaaniiische undAramiiische
lnschriften, I (1962), p. 50:263, and
II (1964), p. 370:263; ef also Kraeing,
BAMP, p. 276, with Schaeder, Iranische
Beitriige, I (1930), p. 267 [69]. It
has been suggested that the lion weight
itself corresponds to a gold, not silver,
stater in weight. But as Dormer
and Rollig remark, we still know far too
little about weights and measures in
Persian-period Anatolia to judge of
this.
103 S. A. Cooke, T ext-Book of North-

Semitic Inscriptions (1903), p. 193:
sixth-fifth centuries BC; Schaeder, loc.
cit., and Rosenthal, Aramaistische
Forschung, p. 24: c. 500 BC; Dormer and
Rollig, loc. cit., fifth-fourth century
BC.

79.
occurrences in the original tongue.104 In

Mesopotamia we have clay tablets, and in
Egypt
papyri, ostraca and monumental texts, on
a far grander scale of survival than any
contemporary records of West Semitic
(even with Ugaritic) or classical Greek
No-one raises
objections when a West Semitic word (or a
particular meaning of a word)
[p.49]
turns up as a loan-word in Egyptian New

Kingdom texts or in the Mari tablets,
perhaps
centuries before it is attested in any
West Semitic inscriptions or papyri,105
and exactly the
same principle should apply to Greek.
Thus, these two words psntrn and
smpny’iand only
two words from an entire book!—are
necessarily indecisive, when the only
appeal is to
ignorance.
There seems to be little or nothing

original about the broad types of musical
instrument
indicated by the three words (lyre,
double pipe, etc); similar instruments in
these categories
were already long known in the Ancient
Near East, Mesopotamia included.106 At
most, they
could be new sub-varieties, introduced
alongside other possible novelties in
Neo-Babylonian
(or later ?) state worship;107 even when
a civilization already has its own wealth
of musical
instruments, new models with their
foreign names are still acceptable.108
(5) Lastly, it is noteworthy how few are

these words: three in an entire book as
contrasted with
even 19 or 20 Persian words in the
Aramaic and a few more in the Hebrew. The
obvious
inference, when one remembers the Greek
relations with the Near East from the
eighth
century BC onwards, is that the Aramaic
of Daniel could have been written at any
time from
c. 539 BC onwards until just after the
fall of the Persian Empire. In Ancient
Near Eastern
literature, a later writer tends to deck
his description of an earlier period with
trappings of his
own time, while retaining archaic
features that have survived. On this
basis, if we supposed a
Daniel high up in the administration at
Babylon during the first few years of the
Persian
supremacy (as the book itself suggests),
then writing of his—under
[p.50]
Persian rule—would naturally depict both

his Babylonian and Persian settings
within the
now-current (i.e. Persian) terms, plus
some Babylonian survival; hence the
Persian words
’04 Despite Rowley’s unconsciousness of

all this, AOT, pp. 149, 152 middle; there
is nothing ‘peculiarly
difficult’ about this. Preservation of W.
Semitic terms in Egyptian, etc., long
before they appear in dated Semitic
material, is a coimnonplace phenomenon
(see next note); why not Greek in
Aramaic?
’05 From the possible range of examples,

let two here suffice. In the Syrian war-
reliefs of Ramesses II (c. 1290-
1224 BC) at Luxor occurs the place-name
D[l]t-Dinur, for *Deleth-Silul (or
-Silul, by dissimilation), ‘Door of
Locusts’. Silul is a form of well-known
collective type (zebub, gedud), and
related to the seldsal of Deuteronomy
28:42; its meaning is certified by the
locust-hieroglyph determinative.
Similarly, p’ ss (or, sn) Dir‘um (P.
Anastasi I, 27:3), ‘Crossing of the
Hornets’ (*Sir‘um). Where in any W.
Semitic inscriptions are these words
attested as early as the thirteenth
century BC? Or even elsewhere at all in
just these forms? No-one finds this
‘peculiarly difficult’. (For these names,
see Kitchen, JEA, L, 1964, pp. 53-54.)
106 See the paper by T. C. Mitchell and

R. Joyce in this volume, pp. 19-27.
’07 E.g., the changes at Ur, reminiscent

of the ceremony at Dura in Daniel (cf C.
L. Woolley, Excavations at Ur
(1954), pp. 224-228 (esp. 227-228), or
his Ur ofthe Chaldees (1950, etc.), pp.
146-152, esp. pp. 157-152), and
the official publication, UrExcavations,
IX (1962), pp. 23-24.
108 As in Nineteenth Dynasty Egypt,

Egypt’s own heritage of instruments did
not inhibit her from borrowing a
series of foreign terms and models. At
random, cf the w’r, knnrt, nth, etc., of
P. Anastasi IV, 12:2-3 (R. A.
Caminos, Late-Egyptian Miscellanies
(1954), pp. 182, 186-187).
79.
even in his account of government

hierarchy under Babylon (Dn. 3). By the
same token, a
writer of the second century BC should
have used Greek terms in such a passage
where
Hebrew or Aramaic terms did not suffice
for technicalities—strate'gos,
epistolographos,
archon and the rest; for in 165 BC,
Palestine had already had 150 years of
Ptolemaic and
Seleucid rule. Therefore, one would—on
the Greek and Persian evidence above—
prefer to
put the Aramaic of Daniel in the late
sixth, the fifth, or the fourth centuries
BC, not the third
or second. The latter is not ruled out,
but is much less realistic and not so
favoured by the
facts as was once imagined.
B. ORTHOGRAPHY AND PHONETICS
1. The Phenomena Summarized. (1).

Returning from foreign loan-words to the
actualAramaic
Aramaic of Daniel, one of the most
contested points has been the spelling of
certain classes of
words. Thus, in the Old Aramaic texts
(tenth to seventh centuries BC) and
Imperial Aramaic
papyri (sixth to fourth centuries BC),
one finds written:
2 where Daniel and Ezra have d; Hebrew z,

and Arabic d (‘dh’),
77 77 77 77 77 . 77 v 77 77 C 7
S f, S I ( th ),
77 77 77 77 77 C. 77 77 77
q , .s d
77 77 77 77 77 . 77 77 77
.s I, .s 2,
C 7 I 77 77 77 77 77 I 77 v 77 77 v
s (s?) s or s s ,
Also, variations in final h and ’.
Because of the spellings with d, t, ‘,

,t, as in the later Aramaic of the
Targums (and Syriac) and
in Nabataean and Palmyrene, Rowley would
consider that the Aramaic of Daniel must
fall
between that of the papyri (say, fifth
century BC) and that of these later
dialects, i.e. in the
second century BC, the s’/s and h/’
having less significance. At first sight,
and superficially,
this group of facts appears to justify
Rowley’s conclusions on dating; but in
point of fact,
these conclusions depend upon two major
assumptions:
(i) That the consonantal text of the

Aramaic of Daniel has undergone no change
of
orthography since the time of its
original composition.
(ii) That the normal orthographies of

Old, Imperial and Biblical Aramaic all
give throughout a
strictly accurate phonetic spelling of
the consonant-sounds of these forms of
Aramaic—in
short, that sounds and spellings always
and closely agree.
[10.51]
In reality, neither assumption is

justified—the first is most probably
wrong, and the second
one is demonstrably wrong. If the first
assumption is lost, then the existing
orthography may
date only itself to the second or third
centuries BC, and not the first
composition of the
Aramaic part of the book—the date will be
open, on this particular point. If the
second
assumption is proved wrong (see below),
then the Aramaic of Daniel could have
been written
in the sixth—fifth centuries BC
phonetically, or else in the then-
conventional orthography
subsequently replaced (gradually or
otherwise) by the later and surviving
orthography. The

79.
result either way is the same: to place
the Aramaic of Daniel anywhere in the
sixth to second
centuries BC. These points require an
examination of the phenomena in question.
(2) The Canaanite—Phoenician alphabet now

has a respectable pedigree reaching back
from
the tenth century BC109 via various
Palestinian epigraphs of the thirteenth—
twelfth centuries
BC to the so-called Proto-Sinaitic
inscriptions and related material of the
fifteenth century
BC,110 if not earlier.111 While their
‘prehistory’ probably goes back much
further,112 the first
major settlement of Aramaeans in Syria
and Upper Mesopotamia dates to the
twelfth-tenth
centuries BC, and it was from the late
Canaanites or Phoenicians that they
borrowed the
alphabet.113 The early primacy of
Phoenician over Aramaic as a written
language found
curious later echoes in northern Syria
and Cilicia. Thus, in the little northern
Syrian kingdom
of Sam’al-Ya’diya (now Zincirli and
region), king Kilarnuwa—though an
Aramaean—had his
inscriptions set out in Phoenician,
language as well as script,114 about 830
BC. Later, kings
Panarnmu I (c. 760 BC) and Bar-rakib (c.
730 BC)115 set up inscriptions in their
own peculiar
Aramaic dialect (‘Yaudic’), and Barrakib
also an inscription in regular Old
Aramaic,
practically Imperial Aramaic. In Cilicia,
as late as c. 730 BC,116 Asitiwada of Que
set up
bilingual inscriptions at Asitiwaddiya
(modern Kara-
[p.52]
tepe) in Hittite hieroglyphs and

Phoenician;117 from the sixth century BC
onwards Aramaic
was used in Asia Minor.118
Now the point of all this is that Aramaic

had in the early first millennium BC
maintained
separate more of the Old Semitic
consonants than had Phoenician. In
Phoenician and Hebrew,
a had fallen together with z, _t with s,
a and z with s, h with h, g with ‘. and
so on.“ However,
in Old Aramaic, d, t, d, ,2, were still
pronounced as distinct sounds—but no
separate symbols
existed for them in the Phoenician
alphabet in which Aramaic now came to be
written. Instead
of creating additional letters, the
Aramaeans—perhaps under Phoenician
scribal influence—
simply made certain letters serve to
write two consonants, often following
Phoenician
orthography in the words concerned (d
written as z; _t as s, ,2, as s), but not
in all (d written as
a, not s)120 This tension between
pronunciation and spelling—phonetic fact
and orthographic
’09 E.g. the Byblos inscriptions of kings

Ahiram, Yehimilk, Abibaal, Elibaal;
references in F. M. Cross and D. N.
Freedman, Early Hebrew Orthography
(1952), p. 11 and n. 1.
110 References, ibid, pp. 8-9, notes 31-

38.
111 Possibly the Gezer potsherd (c. 1700

BC?), ibid, p. 8, n.30, and even a Sinai
text (cf A. H. Gardiner, JEA,
XLVIII, 1962, pp. 45-48).
112 See Kitchen, Hittite Hieroglyphs,

Aramaeans and Hebrew Traditions, chapter
11:2; A. R. Millard,
Archaeology and the Life of Jacob; both
forthcoming.
”3 A generally recognized fact, e.g.

Cross and Freedman, op. cit, p. 37.
114 References in Cross and Freedman, op.

cit, pp. 11-12, n.2; Rosenthal in ANETZ,
pp. 500, 501.
115 For dates, cf Kitchen, Hittite

Hieroglyphs, Aramaeans andHebrew
Traditions, Table XII and commentary.
”6 On date and kingdom, cf ibid, Table XI
and commentary.
1’7 For latter version, cf Rosenthal in

ANETZ, pp. 499-500 with refs.; Donner and
Rollig, Kanaaniiische und
Aramiiische Inschijften, I-II, no. 26.
“8 Ibid, nos. 258-265 (fifth century BC,

ff.)
1’9 Most of these sounds were separate in

Ugaritic; cf UM (and Ugaritic Textbook
(1965)).
120 This probably reflects a phonetic

change that had already occurred in Old
Aramaic. For this section, cf G.
Garbini, L ’Aramaico antico (1956), pp.
247-248.

79.
convention—has long been recognized in

Semitic scholarship and is generally
accepted
today.121
This was the state of things by the

eighth century BC, by the end of which we
have Imperial
Aramaic, used within Assyria as well as
in Syria itself. From now on, Aramaic
came
increasingly to be written (and
eventually spoken) by many other people
besides the
Aramaeans themselves—by Assyrian scribes
in commerce and royal service, even
between
high officials of Assyria (e. g. the Assur
ostracon),122 and by correspondingly more
different
peoples in the
[10.53]
Neo-Babylonian and Persian Empires. By

and large, Aramaic continued to be
written in its
phonetically-inadequate, pseudo-
Phoenician orthography. But by the fifth
century BC (as is
illustrated by the Aramaic documents from
Egypt) and beginning rather earlier,
certain
phonetic changes occurred in the spoken
language, and occasionally appeared in
the written
documents. In speech, d was now
pronounced as d, _t as t, ‘q’ as ‘. etc.,
and occasionally a
scribe lapsed into actually writing these
consonants instead of ‘historical’ z, s,
(1, etc., thus
betraying the true state of affairs.123
(3) The full evidence for these facts

need not be repeated here; a few points
must suffice,
especially more recently demonstrable or
neglected ones.
(i) ‘z’/d/d. In Old Aramaic the name of

certain kings appears as Hadad-‘eezer in
Hebrew
(same orthography as Phoenician) but as
(H)adad-(‘)idri in Assyrian cuneiform. D
is not the
Assyrian transscript for Hebrew z—witness
Azriyau for Azariah of Judah; nor is z
the
Hebrew-Phoenician transcript for Aramaic
d—witness Hadad in both. Z in Hebrew-
Phoenician and d in Assyrian have only
one common denominator, and that is d
(‘dh’), as
often shown by Ugaritic d (cf. here,
‘dr)124 To Hebrew names in —‘ezer (e.g.
Eli‘ezer),
121 By: D. H. Muller, Wiener Zeitschrift

fiir die Kunde des Morgeniandes, VII,
1893, pp. 113 ff; C.
Brockelmann, Grundriss der Vergleichenden
Grammatik der Semitischen Sprachen, I
(1908), p. 134, and
clearer, idem, Precis de Linguistique
Se'mitique (1920), p. 73, §58; idem,
Handbuch der Orientalistik, III. 2-3
(1954), p. 135; H. Bauer and P. Leander,
Grammatik des Biblisch-Aramiiischen
(1927), §6, pp. 25-27;
Baumgartner, ZAW, XLV, 1927, p. 98;
Schaeder, Iranische BeitriigeI (1930),
pp. 242, 244 [44, 46]; Rosenthal,
Aramaistische Forschung (1939), pp. 56-
57; J. Friedrich, Phonizisch-Punische
Grammatik (1951), p. 155, §8*;
Cross and Freedman, op. cit, pp. 23-24;
Garbini, loc. cit.,' cf S. Moscati, A.
Spitaler, E. Ullendorff, W. von
Soden, An Introduction to the Comparative
Grammar of the Semitic Languages (1964),
pp. 29-30, §8.18 (adding
an alternative suggestion that also
presupposes non-equivalence of Aramaic
phonetics and orthography); the
reserves of S. Segert, Archiv Orientdlni,
XXVI, 1958, pp. 570-572, result from a
too superficial treatment of the
questron.
’22 Cf R. A. Bowman, JNES, VII, 1948, pp.

73-76, for examples and references, plus
H. Tadmor in B. Mazar,
BA, XXV, 1962, p. 111, n.24.
’23 Long ago recognized by M. Lidzbarski,

Ephemerisfur Semitische Epigraphik, III,
1915, pp. 79, 106. In a
criticism of Boutflower, Rowley, AOT, p.
25, committed the astonishing faux pas of
confusing phonetics with
orthography, when he na'1'vely assumed
that in Aramaic d (‘dh’) first became z
and then changed to d to be seen
in the papyri. Phonetically, the facts
are wholly otherwise (cf refs in n.121,
above): d was first written as z (and
still pronounced d, or just possibly
already as d on the alternative mentioned
by Moscati et al., Introduction, p.
29), then it became d in speech, and so
came to be written as d instead of z. In
HSD, p. 118, Rowley still talks of
‘the language of the scroll’ (and of the
Aramaic of Daniel) [my italics] when it
should be orthography. As
alternative, the most that could be
postulated would be two parallel
dialectal forms, one in d and one in 2;
cf
latterly in Hebrew and Ugaritic, M.
Dahood, Biblica, XLV, 1964, pp. 407-408
and references there given.
’24 UM no. 1384; note that in Ugaritic,

many words have passed from dto d (e.g.
d: Aram. di, Heb. ze).
79.
cuneiform sources offer many Aramaean

names ending (in cuneiform) in -idri
(e.g. Ilu-idri),
besides names from other roots containing
91,125 e.g. Hadvan which in Hebrew
appears as
Hezion and in Akkadian cuneiform as
Hadianu.126 A less obvious but telling
example is
afforded by the Old Aramaic stela of
Zakir, king of
[p.54]
Hamath (c. 760 BC).127 Among the Seven

kings that attacked him was the king of
M12. No
kingdom of M12 is attested in N. Syria or
Anatolia—but Milid (Malatya) is well
known.128 It is
evident that this name was treated as if
it were ‘Milidh’ (with @—and the supposed
d
automatically written as 2. For a late
Anatolian personal name Kindisarma
treated in the same
way, cf. p. 62 below.
The real phonetic change in pronunciation

from d to d that already clearly appears
in the fifth
century BC as indicated by occasional di
for 2?, dahab for zahab, etc., can be
illustrated from
two phenomena: false archaism (2 written
wrongly for real d, as if it had been d),
and truly
phonetic transcription of Aramaic into an
alien script.
(a) False archaism. In P. Brooklyn 3:17,

we find instead of normal dyn w-dbb,
‘lawsuit and
process’, the solecism zyn w-zbb.129 For
the scribe, d and d had long been
indistinguishable in
pronunciation, and so he wrote dyn and
dbb with a 2 that was totally irrelevant
as the d here is
original and not derived from old d. This
process is further attested in Mandean
much later;130
it may also be the explanation for Mlz
for Milid in the Zakir stela (eighth
century BC) noticed
just above and of Kind/zisarma on p. 62
below.
(b) Aramaic phonetically written in an

alien script. As is well known, a clay
tablet from Uruk
(S. Babylonia) of perhaps c. 300 BC bears
an Aramaic-language text written in
cuneiform
script; despite the difficulties of
interpretation,131 it is crystal clear
that d and not 2 was being
written for *d.132 But much earlier and
more important than this is a unique
Egyptian papyrus
of the fifth century BC (i.e. contemporary
with the Elephantine papyri) written in
the Demotic
script, and in the Aramaic language! Re
grettably, if understandably, only a
preliminary
sample has been published,133 and no
definitive edition in the twenty years
since then, but
there is, even so, amply enough to serve
our purpose. In Egyptian at this period,
the sound d
had mainly become tin pronunciation, and
[10.55]
’25 Some are quoted by Baumgartner, ZAW,

XLV, 1927, pp. 95-96 with references.
’26 Cf W. F. Aibright, BASOR, LXXXVII,

1942, p. 26, n.7, and AS, VI, 1956, p.
84, n.53; on the kings Hezion
and Hadianu, cf Kitchen, Hittite
Hieroglyphs, Aramaeans andHebrew
Traditions, Tables IV and X respectively.
’27 Kitchen, ibid, Table V, commentary,
for date; Donner and Rollig,
Kanaaniiische und Aramiiische
Inschrzften, I-II, no. 202 for text, etc.
’28 Kitchen, op. cit., Table XIV, for

kings and chronology.
’29 BIWAP, p. 162, and more clearly, E.

Y. Kutscher, JAOS, LXXIV, 1954, p. 235.
130 Cf M. Lidzbarski, Ephemeris fu'r

Semitische Epigraphik, III, 1915, p. 106,
quoting Th. Noldeke’s
Grammatik,‘ plus Schaeder, Iranische
Beitriige I, p. 245 [47].
131 On this text, cf C. H. Gordon, Af0.,
x11, 1937-1939, pp. 105-117 (with earlier
literature, p. 105, n.1); B.
Landsberger, ibid, pp. 247-57; Gordon,
Orientalia, NS IX, 1940, pp. 29-38.
132 The relative pronoun is di; Gordon,

AfO., XII, 1937-1939, pp. 112:42, 116.
133 See R. A. Bowman, JNES, 111, 1944,

pp. 219-231.

79.
foreign d was written with the old signs

for t, d, or even nt.134 Now whenever in
this
document a word occurs which is written

with z in Old Aramaic and the papyri and
with d in
Biblical and later Aramaic, in this
papyrus it is written with t (for d).
Thus, tn, tn’, k-tnh stand
for pronominal dn, dn ’, k-dnh, usually
written ‘historically’ as zn, zn’, k—znh
in the
Elephantine papyri. In other words, by
the fifth century BC (and doubtless
earlier) 2 for d was
a purely ‘historical’ spelling, and the
real pronunciation was d as in Biblical
and later
Aramaic; the evidence of this document
(combined with the zyn-zbb/dyn-dbb of P.
Brooklyn
3: 17) is final.
(ii) ‘s’/_t/t. Here, the shift from _t

written S to t both spoken and written
was under way long
before the fifth century BC, when it
occurs almost throughout in the papyri.
Thus, West
Semitic tbr, ‘to break’, in Ugaritic (UM,
111, no. 2000) is written sbr in Old
Aramaic (e.g.
Sfire texts), but tbr in the fifth-
century papyri (AP, four references) as
in Daniel and later
Aramaic. Iwb, ‘return’, in Ugaritic (UM,
111, no. 2013) is written swb in Old
Aramaic (Sfiré),
but twb in the papyri—and as twb already
in the Assur Ostracon of the seventh
century BC135
(c. 650 BC), line 11, which takes this
change back well over a century before
there could be a
book of Daniel on any view. Many more
examples from the fifth century BC papyri
could be
cited for_t written as well as spoken
t.136 For the late sixth century BC (in
515 BC)—earliest
possible date for Daniel—one may cite the
Meissner papyrus,137 e.g. in line 8 hrt
‘to till
(ground)’138 = Hebrew hrs, cf. Ugaritic
hr_t ‘to plough’ (UM, 111, no. 668a); and
just possibly
t(wb) in line 15.139 The sole apparent
exception is the common word ‘shekel’,140
written
almost always in the papyri in the old
orthography sq]. But it does occur
[1056]
once each way, as tql alongside sq], in

the Cowley corpus, no. io, line 5, and in
the Kraeling
series (Brooklyn), no. 2, line 8 (cf.
BA/LAP, p. 148). More important still,
the ‘real’. form tql
occurs in the sixth-century Meissner
papyrus (line 13 alongside s(ql), line 12
end141 (formal
abbreviation of the historical Spelling),
so that the sql of the fifth century
papyri is purely a
historical spelling throughout. It should
be obvious that in the late sixth and the
fifth centuries
BC, t was already identical in speech—and
commonly in writing—with t, and this
process
was under way in the seventh century BC
(Assur).
’34 As in the case of ‘Darius’ which in

Egyptian hieroglyphic texts occurs once
each as trws and ndrit, usually
(i)ntryws, M. Burchardt, Die
Altkanaaniiischen Fremdworte im
Agyptischen, II (Leipzig 1910), no. 85,
pp. 5-6.
D having become th in modern Greek, it
too has trouble with foreign words
containing the sound d, nt- being one
solutionia light-hearted example, M.
Chubb, City in the Sand (1957), p. 8.
135 A. Dupont-Sommer, Syria, XXIV, 1944-

1945, p. 57; noted already by Rowley,
AOT, p. 28. Note that ‘there
is’, known in the papyri, Daniel, etc. as
’yty (Ugaritic it cf UM no. 292), may
also occur in this form in the Assur
Ostracon, line 6 (Dupont—Sommer, op.
cit., pp. 37:6, 57), but contrast Donner
and Rollig, Kanaaniiische und
Aramiiische Inschriften, II (1964), p.
284. On date of this ostracon cf Donner
and Rollig, ibid, pp. 288-290.
136 A good selection in AOT, pp. 26-28.
137 Last edition, A. Dupont-Sommer, Un

Contrat de Metayage Egypto-Arame'en en
l’an 7 de Darius Ier
(Me'moires.. . Academie des Inscriptions
et Belles Lettres, XIV. 2), 1944).
138Ibid, p. 16.
1391bid, pp. 25-26, adding (26, n.1)AP,

no. 1:7, of495 BC.
140 As opposed to the verb ‘to weigh’,

usually written tql.
’41 Dupont—Sommer, op. cit., p. 21.

79.
(iii) ‘q’/d-g/‘ In this case, the

phonetic change is a little more
complicated.142 The Old-Semitic
sound d seems to have passed over to g
(ghain), and this in Old Aramaic—in these
cases—
was written as q in the Phoenician-
derived alphabet.143 But eventually, as
already in Hebrew
and Phoenician, g was assimilated to ‘
(‘ayin), reducing q to a mere historical
orthography,
and so at length was written instead of
q.144
How early g became in pronunciation (in

Aramaic) is uncertain, as both could be
expressed as
h in cuneiform, which contains the
earliest evidence. For the name of the
last independent
king of Ararn—Damascus which in Hebrew
appears as Resin (a contracted form of
Rasyan), the
Assyrian texts of Tiglath-pileser III
offer a form Rahianu;145 h cannot be for
real s—only for a
g“ or ‘ here, hence for a >!‘Rag'yan or
of course a >“Ra‘yan. This is in 732
B0146 During the fifth
century BC, the Aranaaic papyri from
Egypt sometimes write real instead of
historical q (for *
g)—so in the case of ‘l‘, ‘rib’; ‘mr
‘wool’ (Cowley; Kraeling/Erookiyn,
2:4);147 and ’r‘,
‘earth’.148 Then, it is possible that
‘wood’, and r“ ‘to break’, occur in the
cuneiform
Aramaic text from Uruk (lines 2, 15,
respectively).149 In other words, this
shift is in an exactly
similar position to the two already
considered.
[p.57]
(iv) ‘s’/z/t. A similar phenomenon to the

foregoing three. Z in Aramaic was first
written as s
in the Phoenician-derived alphabet of Old
Aramaic; 2 then passed over to ,t in
pronunciation;
and so eventually, written s—now a
historical spelling—was supplanted by
written and
spokent. As usual, the fifth-century
Aramaic papyri already show the effect of
the sound-shift
by including several spellings with in I
place of the ‘historical’ s. Thus
attested are y‘t, ‘to
counsel’; ‘,th, ‘counsel’ (noun); ,twr,
‘mountain’; and ntr, ‘to guard’.150 A
specially interesting
word is ,tll, ‘shade’—so written in both
Daniel and the papyri—for which the
original 211 is
preserved in Ugaritic (UM, 111, no. 778),
and which may already occur as t]! the
mid-eighth
century BC in the Old Aramaic Sfire
stelae. Broken context prevents absolute
certainty over
the latter and so over any postulated
change being started by the eighth
century BC.151
(v) ‘S“’/S/S-S. The passage from an

apparent, written shin to samekh visible
in late Aramaic
(e. g. Palmyrene) may suggest that S“ as
distinct from S“ was also long retained
in Aramaic, but
indistinguishable from S“ in written
documents. That S (Sin) and S (samekh)
were—or
became—closely similar in pronunciation
seems clear from the fact that in Hebrew
words
’42 See C. Brockelmann, Grundriss der

Vergleichenden Grammatik der Semitischen
Sprachen, I (1908), p. 134,
5; S. Moscati et al., An Introduction to
the Comparative Grammar of the Semitic
Languages (1964), p. 30.
143 So, in the Zincirli texts (ninth-

eighth centuries BC), for example.
144 A different view, Schaeder, Iranische

Beitriige, I, p. 246 [48].
145 Not Rasunnu, as often mis-

transliterated; see B. Landsberger,
Sam’al, I (1948), p. 69 and n.169 end; A.
L.
Oppenheim in ANETZ, p. 283, n.4a; D. J.
Wiseman, Iraq, XVIII, 1956, p. 121.
146 Date of fall of Resin to the

Assyrians; Kitchen, Hittite Hieroglyphs,
Aramaeans andHebrew Traditions, Table
IV.
147 Also attested in the unpublished

Hermopolis papyri; cf M. Kamil, Revue de
l’Histoire Juive en Egypte, I,
1947, p. 3.
’48 Listed in AOT, pp. 30-31, plus other,

non-biblical words.
149 C. H. Gordon,A.fO., x11, 1937-1939,
pp. 116, 117.
’50 Others, especially non-biblical, in

AOT, p. 29.
151 A. Dupont-Sommer, Les Inscriptions

Arameennes tie Sfire' (1958), p. 85 on
IB:42; cf S. Segert, Archiv
Orientdlni, XXXII, 1964, p. 119.

79.
from certain roots are written on

occasion with either sibilant.152A
priori, therefore, the same
phenomenon might be expected in Aramaic.
In fact, it is hardly attested at all
either in
Biblical Aramaic or outside it in
Imperial Aramaic. In Daniel, there is
only one ‘native
Semitic’ example: Sbr (for Sbr), ‘to
think’. The same is true in Ezra (str) In
the Aramaic
papyri, Rowley reviewed four possible
roots showing S for S; of these, sbrt (‘I
thought’, AP,
no. 37:7)153 and tstkl from Skl,
‘consider’, or the like (AP, in Ahiqar,
147),154 seem beyond
reasonable doubt, despite Rowley’s
reserves.155 Now, one isolated example in
each major
piece of Biblical Aramaic proves nothing
at all—they are far too slender a basis
by which to
identify the ‘first beginnings’ (AOT, p.
38) of a general change in orthography
from S to S. We
know for a fact that, in the pre-
Christian centuries (and even down to the
Massoretic epoch,
on to the eighth century AD), there was
some MS-variation between S and S in the
spelling of
a few words:
[1058]
e.g. Sbk’, Sgy’n, Str.156 Therefore, we

have no guarantee that Sbr and Str had
not once upon a
time fluctuated and eventually become
settled with S-orthography perhaps long
before the
Massoretes,157 whereas Sbk’, Sgy’n, and
Str continued to fluctuate in MS-tradition
till much
later. Loan-words and foreign proper
names, of course, are not so directly
applicable to
Semitic phonetic developments. In the
Dead Sea Scrolls manuscript-fragment from
Qumran
Cave 1, fluctuation here is attested for
the loan-word srbl in Daniel, which in
the scroll
appears as Srbl.158 (Note for Ezra 7:26,
that the loan-word S“rSw, better SrSw,
appears as
srwSyt—with initial samelein the Arsames
documents of the fifth century B0159) As
Kde’,
‘Chaldaeans’, in Ezra is a foreign name,
it too is worthless as evidence on this
point—
especially if taken from (or contaminated
by) Akkadian, where the Assyrian and
Babylonian
dialectal position on S/S and S“ is very
intricate.160 In brief, we have no
guarantee that S is
original (cf. Quniran and later MSS-
variations)—and one Semitic common noun
in each of
Daniel and Ezra is much too little
evidence on which to base anything.
(vi) Finally, the variation between h and

’ at the end of words. Enough has been
said already
by Rowley,161 Baumgartner,162 and
Schaeder,163 to obviate need of long
discussion here. The
net result is that such variations are
chronologically worthless. Of Rowley’s
conveniently
tabulated 15 points,164 nos. 2, 3, 4, 7,
8, 10, show such affinity in usage
between the Aramaic
of Daniel and Old and Imperial Aramaic,
that they prove nothing. Likewise, points
9 and 11,
where in each case an isolated writing
with h is neither ‘early’ nor ‘late’, but
merely
”2 E.g. BDB, pp. 690-69, (swg), p. 962

(St; ka), etc.
153 Cowley, AP, p. 134, shows little real

doubt about reading sbr.
’54 See C. F. Jean and J. Hoftijzer,

Dictionnaire des Inscriptions Semitiques
de l’Quest, III (1962), p. 192 end,
and references.
’55 Schaeder, Iranische Beitriige, I, p.

247 [49] and n.5, would add skyn,
‘knife’.
’56 Quoted by Rowley, AOT, p. 34 and n.1.
’57 It is, therefore, nonsense to allege

that this has any bearing upon ‘phonetic
revision’, e.g. as ‘particularly
damaging’ or otherwise, pace Rowley,AOT,
p. 38, n.1.
’58 Noted by Rowley in HSD, p. 118 and

n.3.
’59 Cf p. 39 above; G. R. Driver, Aramaic

Documents (1957), Letter 3:6, 7.
160 Cf briefly W. Von Soden, Grundriss

tierAkkadischen Grammatik (1952), §30,
especially 6g, p. 31.
161AOT, pp. 39-50-,HSD, pp. 118-120.
162 ZAW, XLV (1927), pp. 90-94, 112-115.
’63 Iranische Beitriige, I, pp. 233-235

[35-37], 239-242 [41-44].
’64 AOT, pp. 39-50. In HSD, pp. 118-120

(Sect. II), points 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 :AOT,
points 6, 5, 4, 1, 2; HSD, point 6
coversAOT, nos. 12-25, and 7, the latter,
p. 67:4. Cf also Baumgartner, loc. cit.
(n. 162, above).
79.
anomalous. This leaves point no. 1 on

‘we’—indecisive, see below under grammar
(p. 68);
and nos. 12-15 on the ending of various
parts of verbs having final weak radicals
’ or h (for
y/w) While the Aramaic of Daniel shows
variation in the use of h and ’, the
Aramaic papyri
generally discriminate in
[p.59]
writing between verbs in final’ and in

final h (w/y); but this is not always so:
the papyri do
show some variations, and these can
occasionally appear even in Old Aramaic
inscriptions.
As Schaeder’s study shows clearly,165
this is the same phenomenon: h and
‘serving by the
fifth century BC simply as vowel-letters
in the roles concerned, without
consonantal value—
and the supposed ‘distinction’ in the
papyri is nothing more than historical
orthography, while
the incidental ‘errors’ (h for ’, or
vice-versa) betiay once more the
underlying phonetic facts.
In 1927, Montgomery had already supposed
what he rather unsuitably called ‘scribal
confusion’ (Daniel, p. 18) in
transmission. Despite Rowley’s opposition
to this idea,166 one
may affirm that in the course of
transmission scribal variations have come
in—they can be
seen at work in the Qumran MSS of Daniel,
as Rowley himself is forced to note.167
(4) By contrast with these observed

changes in the spelling of meaningful
parts of speech
(common nouns, pronouns, verbs, etc), a
small point of a different kind may here
be briefly
offered. A foreign personal name is
essentially a mere labeliit may be either
fossilized or
deformed in later transmission, but it
will not so easily be modernized by those
to whom its
form is not meaningful. Hence, such a
name may be preserved in an older
orthography when
the native matter around it has long been
changed or changing. This seems to be
precisely the
case with the name Darius in Daniel and
Ezra (both Aramaic and Hebrew, the former
being
our main concern). In these books, it
appears in the form Dryws“. Now, in the
two oldest-
known Aramaic papyri from Egypt, we find
Drws“ in the Meissner contract of 515 BC
(year 7
of Darius I),168 and Dryws“ (as in Daniel
and Ezra) in the agreement of 49~ BC
(Darius 1, year
27)169—but in all the documents of Darius
II, the spelling with h:Dry(w)th“.170
This h-
spelling was retained down to Darius III
(Samaria papyrus, accession-year, 335
BC).171
There is, therefore, an obvious cleavage

in spelling between documents under
Darius I
(Dr(y)hws) and those under Darius II and
III (Dry(w)th)—and Daniel and Ezra
preserve the
early spelling in their Aramaic.172 If
their Aramaic portions had been composed
in the late
sixth to mid-fifth centuries BC (or
before Darius 11), then this is
understandable. But if their
matter was first composed in the third
century BC or later, then their failure
to
[1060]
use the form with h—in constant use for a

century by then (c. 420-330 BC)—is quite
incomprehensible. At a minimum, something
must thus go back to before c. 420 BC. An
’65 See n.163, above.
166AOT, p. 49;HSD, p. 120.
167HSD, p. 120, n.5.
’68 A. Dupont-Sommer, Contrat tie

Metayage (1944), p. 8.
169AP, no. 1, p. 1.
’70 E.g. AP, nos. 20 ff.; BIWAP, nos. 6,
7, 8.
171C]? F. M. Cross, BA, xxvr, 1963, p.

113.
’72 Likewise their Hebrew, which

influenced that in Nehemiah 12:22.

79.
attempt has also been made173 to date the

form Drws“ to before year 27, and Dryws“
to years 27
and following, of Darius I, in parallel

with the Egyptian hieroglyphic spellings
of the name
(trws“, tryws“, and variants). Actually,
the use of Dryws“ in Egypt probably began
earlier in the
reign.174 It is attested throughout in
Demotic documents from Egypt;175 and in
the East
(Babylon), Darimus“ (: Dariwus“, Aramaic
Drws) was merely a variant for Dariyamus“
(:
Danzyawus“, Aramaic Dryws) in
cuneiform.176 Thus a Daniel might have
begun with a Drws“
for his Darius, and this be made later to
conform to Dryws“, the form current down
to Ezra’s
day (458 BC); but as these documents—
Daniel and Ezra originated in the East
(Babylon,
etc.) on their own statements, they
probably would write Dryws“ from the
start. A single name
is only very limited evidence, but has to
be taken into account.177
2. Significance of the Phenomena. (1) One

may state on the evidence surveyed that
neither of
Rowley’s underlying assumptions is
justified.
(a) In relation to the second assumption

(p. 50, above), it is plain to see that,
down to the fifth
century BC, the normal orthography of Old
and Imperial Aramaic did not offer a
strictly
phonetic spelling for all consonants: d
had to be written with a z; t as s“; d>g'
as q; .2, as ,S, etc.
It should also be perfectly clear that,
by the fifth century BC,178 a series of
sound-shifts had
occurred in Aramaic (d had become d; t as
t; d/g' as ‘; _2 as _t, etc), thereby
reducing the old,
traditional written spellings of words
from (Phoenician-influenced) phonetic
approximations
to phonetically false historical
orthographies. This fact is betrayed by
the tell-tale examples of
d where z ‘normally’ stood, tfor S“,
etc.; of lapses into phonetic spell-
[p.61]
ing; and even by false archaisms. With h

and’, again, we have in the fifth century
BC mere
vowel-letters, and historical spelling
similarly betrayed by occasional scribal
lapses. Some of
the changes can already be seen to be
operative in the eighth century BC (h/’
Zincirli) or in
the seventh (t/t; just possibly _z/_t).
In other words, phonetically there is no
reason to doubt that
the Aramaic of Daniel (or Ezra) was the
kind spoken and could have been written
in the flfth
or late sixth centuries BC—or some
centuries later (leaving Dryws“
inexplicable) if so desired.
It becomes a question of orthography, not
of phonetics. And here we come back to
the first
assumption, that of constancy in the
orthographic transmission of the Aramaic
of Daniel. In
detail, for h, ’, y, the evidence of the
Dead Sea Scrolls on the text of Daniel
shows that
orthographic variation did in fact occur
in MS transmission and tradition.179
While it is
theoretically possible that a Daniel in
Babylon in the early Persian period (c.
530 BC) might
have written his Aramaic as spoken, and
not in the customary historical
orthography, it would
’73 See M. Burchardt, Zeitschrift fu'r

Aegyptische Sprache, XLIX, 1911, pp. 78-
80; Rosenthal, Aramaistische
Forschung, p. 37; cf Dupont-Sommer, loc.
cit. (n. 168 above).
174 Note the criticisms by G. Posener,

Premiere Domination Perse en Egypte
(1936), pp. 162-163 (and with
reference to the Suez stelae, pp. 176,
188-189).
’75 Posener, op. cit., pp. 162-163; used

throughout in hieroglyphs at Temple of
Kharga for Darius I and II, and
for III in the Bucheum (p. 762, n.2).
’76 Cf F. W. Konig, in Reallexikon

tierAssyriologie, II (1938), p. 121a.
’77 Note also the title mdre" male‘kin,

‘Lord of Kings’ (and not ‘of Kingdoms’ as
in Ptolemaic for third-second
century BC), given to God in Daniel 2:47,
which occurs about 600 BC in the letter
of Adon to the pharaoh of
Egypt (Donner and Rollig, Kanaaniiische
undAramiiische Inschr'iften, II (1964),
p. 313).
178 Equivalent bodies of papyri, etc.,

for the seventh and sixth century BC are
not at present available; such a find
might serve to show how much further back
the fifth-century phenomena really go.
179 Cf HSD, p. 118, n.3; p. 120, n.5; p.

123, n.10; p. 126, n.5. Also M. Baillet,
J. T. Milik, R. de Vaux,
Discoveries in the Judaean Desert, III
(1962), p. 115.
79.
be a far simpler and a more realistic

assumption that he would have written his
Aramaic in the
then current historical orthography which
eventually was conformed to the more
phonetic
spelling of a later day. Rowley has
pilloried Wilson for making of Daniel a
‘spelling
reformer180 and refused Tisdall’s view of
a modernization of spelling later than
Daniel (and
likewise Batten’s of Ezra) as being
merely ‘to brush the evidence [of the
existing text]
aside’,181 these scholars being held by
him to have assumed that ‘the present
Biblical text is
phonetically unreliable’.182 The last
phrase betrays Rowley’s own confusion of
orthography
with phonetics, of conventional written
spelling with pronounced sounds. For
Wilson and
Tisdall maintained the phonetic constancy
of Daniel, and invoked orthographic (not
phonetic)
change (Rowley’s ‘unreliability’) in its
text. The transitions so carefully noted
by Rowley (pp.
37-38) are purely orthographic ones,
following in the wake of prior phonetic
change, as
pointed out above, pp. 52-59.
It should be noted that Rowley’s

rejection of later orthographic
modernization of the text
suggested by Tisdall and mooted above has
itself found no acceptance with some of
the more
eminent later investigators. Thus,
already in 1930, Schaeder considered it
necessary to
postulate ‘modernization’ of the Aramaic
of Daniel and Ezra, and cited what looks
like a case
of hyper-modernization;183
[1062]
this was accepted by Brockelmann184 and

tacitly by Rosenthal.185 Hence,
orthographic
modernization of the text cannot be

excluded a priori. For evidence in the
text itself; Schaeder
pointed to gdbry’, ‘the treasurers’, in
Daniel 3:2, 3 as compared with gzbry’ in
Ezra 7:21 (and
in Hebrew, Ezra 1:8). szr is a loan-word
from Old Persian (or, with Schaeder, the
closely-
related Median) ganzabara. When the
orthography of Daniel was changing (or,
with
Schaeder, was actively revised), with
change of written 2 to spoken d, written
S“ to spoken t,
etc., a scribe ‘corrected’ gzbr to gdbr
as if it had once been >“gc_lbr.1"6 That
this is a case of
hyper-correction (intentional or
otherwise) may safely be conceded. But an
apparent parallel
for such over-reduction of ‘z’ to d in a
Persian word in the fifth century BC,
from the Arsames
correspondence,187 may here be dismissed.
In letters 8, 9 and 10, Arsames writes to
‘Nahtihur,
Knrsyrm and his colleagues’, while in
Letter 11, one Warohi writes very
similarly to
‘Nahtihur, Kndsyrm [variant in the
address: Hn[d]syrm] and his colleagues’.
Opinion has
wavered over the significance of ansrm
and its variants—a Persian title, or a
personal name
of some kind?188 It would, in fact,
appear to be a proper name of Ciician
originlsg—like others
in these same texts.190 At first glance,
ansrm could well be a Kunzu-sarma;191 but
the variant
180 Cf AOT, pp. 23, 24, 39, etc.
181 Ibid, p. 24.
182 Ibid, p. 39.
183 Iranische Beitriige I, p. 242 [44],

and especially pp. 245-246 [47-48].
’84 Handbuch tier Orientalistik, III

(Semitistik), 2-3 (1954), p. 140, quoting
Schaeder’s example of hyper-
modernization.
185 Aramaistische Forschung, pp. 69 and
71 (linguistics cannot put Daniel in the
third-second centuries BC, only
its content).
186 References in notes 183, 184, above,

plus Rosenthal, op. cit, p. 69 and n. 1;
GBA, p. 15.
’87 Texts in G. R. Driver, Aramaic

Documents (1954-1957).
188 Cf already, Driver, op. cit. (1954),

pp. 26, 32; op. cit. (1957), pp. 67, 78;
Eilers, AfO., XVII (1954-1956), p.
326 and n. 14.
189 Cf Eilers, loc. cit.
’90 Eilers, loc. cit ,' A. Goetze, JCS,

VIII, 1954, pp. 75-79 passim; Ph. J.
Houwink ten Cate, The Luwian
Population Groups of Lycia and Cilicia
Aspera during the Hellenistic Period
(1961), pp. 125, 128, 133, 176.

79.
H/Kndsyrm speaks rather for a Kindi-sarma

("‘Kinda-Sirma?)192
cf. older Luvian Ijanta-sar-

ruma.193 We have here, then, exactly the
same phenomenon as with the Mlz/Milid
(also an
Anatolian name!) from the Zakir stela of
the eighth century BC (cf p. 54 above): a
d treated
as if it were, or had been, d (‘dh’) and
written with z by one scribe, but in this
case treated
simply for what it was (phonetic d) by
another (Letter 11). Hence, this is not
the same as
Schaeder’s phenomenon (reduction
[10.63]
of true 2 to d) that would for its part

more likely occur at a date after the
Persian Empire and
common use of ga(n) zibara had passed
away.
(b) Therefore, in the abstract (so to

speak), there is no reason to deny
possible orthographic
change during the textual transmission of
Daniel—and at least one piece of positive
textual
evidence points in that direction. But
there are two further points to be borne
in mind here
which, so far as I know, have hitherto
been entirely (and regrettably) ignored
in considering
this question of textual change, whether
it be gradual, sudden, or the one leading
to the other.
The first is that one must make a

distinction between inscriptions or ad
hoc documents written
once, with no long history of
transmission (such as the Elephantine
papyri—letters, lists, legal
documents, etc), and essentially literary
works (like Daniel, Ezra or Ahiqar)
transmitted by
successive copyists for centuries.194 In
the case of ‘single-occasion’ documents
available to us
in their originals, there can be no
question of important scribal variants or
orthographic
modernization resulting from linguistic
changes in addition to repeated recopying
over a
period of time. But, conversely, in the
case of long-transmitted literary works
in use for
centuries, whose originals are lost,
there can be no guarantee that
substantially later ‘first—
available’ copies have preserved the
original details of orthography (or even
of grammar and
syntax).
The second point is that not merely are

such changes (i) possible and (ii)
probable, but (iii)
they actually and often took place in the
transmission of Ancient Near Eastern
literature, and
occurrence of ‘modernization’ is a fact
that can be illustrated from that range
of literature. We
have no warrant to exempt Biblical
literature from sharing in the same
fundamental processes
that affected all other literature in the
Biblical world. As the available corpus
of long-
transmitted West Semitic literature is
very small (outside of the Old
Testament), it will be
more instructive in the first instance to
turn to a parallel Near Eastern
literature which can
show a more abundant transmitted
literature, with clearly datable works
and MSS—Egypt.195
Let us view some of the principles

already found valid for Imperial Aramaic,
or (as in the case
of orthographic change) suggested for the
Aramaic of Daniel.
[p.64]
19’ Cf ten Cate, op. cit., pp. 138-139,

134-136, for the elements Kunzu and
Sarina respectively.
’92 Perhaps the vowel-letter y after the

s instead of before it may indicate a
vocalic metathesis.
’93 For the elementHant(a)/Knt, see ten

Cate, op. cit., pp. 149-150.
194 A distinction apparently entirely

overlooked by Rowley, e.g. in AOT, p. 49,
when comparing the orthography
of Nabataean and Palmyrene inscriptions
(written just the once) with that of
Daniel, long transmitted as
literature.
’95 Mesopotamia and other regions would

also offer illustration of these
principles if time and space permitted.
79.
(1) Historical Orthography. In Egypt,

this is abundantly attested. The word
djed (dd), ‘to say’,
is so spelt from the beginning right down
to the latest epochs; but by the early
first
millennium BC and probably xooo years
earlier, the final d (first becoming t)
was lost from
speech in nearly all uses, as shown by
occasional spellings as d for ddlg" Or
take the word for
‘star’, Siba’ (Sb’), so spelt at all
periods to the end—but already pronounced
Siw (b to w) not
only in the early first millennium BC as
shown by two occurrences in the Twenty-
second
Dynasty197 but even in the late second
millennium BC (Nineteenth Dynasty).198 In
the
Demotic script, the two opposing
tendencies—use of inherited historical
orthography versus
phonetic spellings—have long complicated
the task of modern transcribers.199
(ii) False Archaism. This, too, is well

known. In Egyptian, various sound-shifts
occurred over
the centuries, such as d (dj) to d and d
to t, r to i, and so on. Sometimes a word
containing an
original d, t, 1’, etc., was misspelt in
later texts with a d, d or r, etc., that
it never originally
possessed (exactly like the zyn w-zbb for
dyn w-dbb in Imperial Aramaic, p. 54
above). Thus
the Egyptian word wdhw for ‘offering-
table’ was frequently written later as
wc_lhw,200 and
even w(’)dhw,201 to cite but one example.
(iii) Orthographic Changes in long

manuscript-transmission. One may mention
the
characteristically Late Period (c. 800-
200 BC) orthographies found in the MS
Papyrus
Chassinat I (c. 650 BC?) of the story of
General Sisenet and King Neferkare"—a
story which,
in fact, goes back to the Middle Kingdom
age, about iooo years earlie1202—and the
similar
case of a new Ghost Story.203 The same
kind of thing could be instanced of New
Kingdom
writings in other
[p.65]
Middle Kingdom literary works. An even

more vivid example is afforded by the
transmission
of religious literature, especially
ritual texts—the orthography of these (in
both historical and
phonetic features) in the great Ptolemaic
temples (c. 300 BC-AD 200) is wholly
different
from that of the versions known from New
Kingdom temples and papyri of 1000 to
1500
years earlier—the versions that prove by
their very existence that a late
orthography does not
necessarily imply a late date of
origin.204
’96 From M(iddle Kingdom), according to

A. Erman and E. Grapow, Worterbuch der
Aegyptischen Sprache, V
(1931), p. 618 lower right. Examples will
be found in names like Dj e(d)-
Khons-’ef-‘eonkh, Dj e(d)-M1'1t-’es-
‘onkh, etc., of the early first millennium
BC in texts such as those published by G.
Legrain, Statues et Statuettes
ties Rois et des Particuliers, III (1914)
(Catalogue General du Caire).
’97 R. A. Caminos, The Chronicle of

Prince Osorkon (1958), p. 81, §119j and
reference.
198 Compare in Ostracon Cairo 25,521,

recto, line 24, in a proper name: I;I‘-m-
swi for I;I‘-m-sb’ (published in J.
Cemy, Ostraca Hieratiques (1930-1935), p.
23*).
199 See briefly H. Brunner in H. Kees

(ed.), Handbuch tier Orientalistik, I
(Agyptologie), I (1959), pp. 49-51 and
references.
200 E. g. R. O. Faulkner, Concise

Dictionary of Middle Egyptian (1962), p.
73, the first four variant writings under
wdhw.
20’ Ibid, fifth variant writing].
202 Cf G. Posener, Revue d’Egyptologie,

XI, 1957, pp. 121, 233 and n. 1.
203 P. Chassinat II; Posener, ibid, XII,

1960, pp. 77, 81-82 (late period spelling
of I;Inty-k’ and ink; but a Middle-
Egyptian text).
204 Cf for example, the ‘book’ Subduing

of the Nobility, and even more the Ritual
of the Royal Ancestors (refs.,
cf H. W. Fairrnan in S. H. Hooke (ed.),
Myth, Ritual andKingship (1958), pp. 89-
90, 100-104).

79.
(2) Orthographic changes can come about

piecemeal, following on even long after
phonetic
changes, and can leave obvious
inconsistencies.205 After a suitable
interval of time, scribes
accustomed to write in the orthography of
their own day will be found also to use
their own
customary spelling conventions in copying
out a long-transmitted text, completely
or
otherwise. All this is simply ‘natural’
(even unconscious) revision, not dogmatic
policy. The
Ptolemaic texts, however, present an
example of deliberate revision of
spelling in texts, but in
their case to keep the contents from the
knowledge of outsiders, instead of (as
with most other
examples of change) to make the written
and spoken word agree more closely for
easier
comprehension.
Needless to say, similar orthographical

phenomena can be found in other parallel
Near
Eastern literatures, e.g. the cuneiform
texts of Mesopotaniia, and even in those
of the
Hittites.206 Of early Aramaic transmitted
literature outside the Old Testament, we
have little
besides Ahiqar. So far, our only early
Aramaic MS of Ahiqar (as opposed to all
the very late
post-Christian versions) is that from
among the fifth century papyri found at
Elephantine.207
Its orthography is that of those fifth-
century documents—but no-one today would
suppose
that Ahiqar and story and wisdom were
invented only in the fifth Century BC.
Apart from the
references to Assyria and the kings
Sennacherib and Esarhaddon in the text,
Ahiqar himself is
now attested within later cuneiform
tradition as an ummanu, ‘scholarly
adviser’, serving
Esarhaddon in the seventh
[p.66]
century BC.208 This, with the general
considerations already put forward by the
Assyriologist
Meissner, and Olmstead,209 indicates a

seventh-century date for the origins of
the Ahiqar
narrative and wisdom.210 Hence, the
orthography of the fifth century BC is
unlikely to be
wholly the original orthography of a
seventh-century original—and if some day
we ever come
into the possession of a copy of the
third to first centuries BC
(contemporary, say, of the
earlier Dead Sea Scrolls), it will be
interesting to see whether such a copy
has anomalously
preserved a fifth-century orthography
(mainly z, q, etc., rarely d, ‘, etc.) or
—as one would
expect on the analogy of the rest of Near
Eastern usage—has taken on an orthography
like
that of Daniel or the Genesis Apocryphon.
In the light of the comparative evidence

briefly sampled above, it should be
obvious that
orthographic change (sometimes
‘revision’, sometimes more gradual) is
normal—and the
onus of proof lies on those who would
maintain that the Aramaic text of Daniel
or Ezra could
205 Exactly like ‘rq and ’r‘ in Je. 10:11

(a fact unknown to Rowley, AOT, p. 24,
citing Jeremiah).
206 In Hittite, it is commonplace to have
documents composed in the eighteenth-
fifteenth centuries BC preserved
in tablets showing ‘late’ (i.e.
fourteenth-thirteenth century BC) script
and spelling; e.g. ‘old’ and late ductus
in
the Hittite Laws (H. G. Guterbock, JCS,
XV, 1961, pp. 64-65), or the Anittas text
(H. Otten, Mitteilungen der
Deutschen Oriene-Gesellschaft, LXXXIII,
1951, pp. 43-44).
207 Recent translation, H. L. Ginsberg,

in ANETZ, pp. 427-430; literature, cf
Koopmans, Aramiiische
Chrestomathie I (1962), pp. 136-145.
208 See J. J. Van Dijk in H. Lenzen,

XVIII. Uruk Vorbliiufiger Bericht (1962),
pp. 45, 51-52. The reasons for a
fifth-century date given by F. Altheim and
R. Stiehl, Die Aramiiische Sprache unter
den Achaimenitien, I (1963),
p. 185, are superficial and erroneous, and
ruled out by the new Uruk reference, the
use of Aramaic by Assyrian
officials, and the vagueness of hyl.
209 B. Meissner, Das Miirchen vorn weisen

Achiqar (Der Alte Orient, XVI.2, 1917),
pp. 26-32. A. T. Olmstead,
JAOS, LVI, 1936, p. 243 and references;
W. von Soden’s suggestions in ZA, XLIII,
NF IX, 1936, pp. 9-13, are
now rendered somewhat obsolete by the
Uruk text.
210 Note also J. C. Greenfield, JAOS,

LXXXII, 1962, pp. 292-293, 297-299.
79.
not or did not fare similarly in similar

circumstances.211 In the case of Ezra, we
are dealing
with documents related to Persian
officialdom preserved in a literary work
(hence their trans-
mission). Despite the imaginings of a
Torrey, there is no factual warrant
whatever for denying
the authenticity of the Ezra material and
its origin in the fifth Century BC;212
the assumption
of orthographic change during literary
transmission is here obligatory.
As for the date of orthographic change in

Daniel (on any sixth/fifth century
dating, but not on
second-century basis) and Ezra, nothing
compels us to put it quite as late as the
second
century BC. It is very probable that
Imperial Aramaic retained its historical
orthography in the
main well beyond c. 399 BC, the latest
date among the Elephantine papyri.213 The
recently
discovered Samaria papyri should throw
light on the period c. 375-335 BC; one
fragment
shows the historical orthography with z
in znh, ‘this’, for phonetic dnh,
[p.67]
c. 370 BC.214 One may thus assume that

the historical orthography persisted in
official use
while the Persian Empire existed,215 with
a gradual infiltration of phonetic
spellings like those
of the fifth-century papyri. But when
Alexander and his successors took over
the Orient by
330 BC and following, the role of Aramaic
as the language of government must have
declined
visibly; the official tongue of the new
rulers was Greek. Nothing now would bind
all users of
Aramaic in different regions to an
official habit, and for greater
intelligibility a reduction of
orthography to match spoken usage would
set in.216 In the third century BC and
certainly after
it, when the documents of daily life must
have been written in an ever more
phonetic
orthography, only inherited literature
such as Ezra or Daniel (if older) would
still have existed
in an outdated orthography whose
continuance would be an increasing bar to
ready
intelligibility. The impulse to use
newer, more familiar spelling would
eventually be
irresistible and would need no special
sanction.
What, then, is the significance of all

this? Simply that we have no inherent
right to assume
that the present orthography of the
Aramaic of Daniel requires a second-
century date for the
original composition of that Aramaic
text. Certainly, if the book was composed
at that time,
then only restricted variations would
have been possible (e. g. in vowel-
letters; S and S). But in
reality there is no factual reason for
preferring this view to the possibility
that this Aramaic
text was composed in the third, fourth,
fifth or late sixth century BC and
underwent
orthographic changes that are not the
invention of theological conservatives217
but are the
common fate of all such transmitted
literature in times of linguistic change.
Hence—precisely
2’1 I.e. apart from the lesser variation

ofh/’ still visible in the Dead Sea
Scrolls; Rowley’s position in AOT, p. 24,
is thus belied by the comparative
evidence.
212 There is no space here for a

digression upon this topic.
2” P. Brooklyn 13, cf, BMAP, pp. 113,283.
214 Cf F. M. Cross, BA, XXVI, 1963, p.

115 and pp. 110-121 generally, and p. 111
with pp. 120-121.
215 A modicum of uniformity across the

Empire was necessary for mutual
intelligibility when Aramaic was being
used by officials and others from so many
different linguistic backgrounds.
216 Wherever Aramaic really was a living

language of everyday speech. But the
opposite, of course, will apply
wherever Imperial Aramaic was merely a
written medium, not spokenihere it tended
to be mainly fossilized in
its Imperial orthography without a body
of customary Aramaic speakers to bend it
to current speech. This is well
illustrated by the survival of z—forms in
Iran, India (e.g. Taxila) and elsewhere.
Although Nabataean is so late
(second-century BC ff, cf J. Starcky, BA,
XVIII, 1955, p. 89), itibeing principally
a written language in the
hands of Arab speakers (cf J. Cantineau,
Le Nabateen II (1932), pp. 179-
180)7sometimes retains a z in the old
tatters of Imperial orthography.
2’7 E.g. gdbr hypercorrected from gzbr.

79.
as with the main Semitic vocabulary-stock

and with the loan-words—a time-range of
the late
sixth to second centuries BC remains
open, and any choice of date within this
period must be
made on other grounds.
[p.68]
C. GRAMMAR AND SYNTAX
1. Morphology. Here also, a condensed

treatment must suffice. Rowley’s
‘evidence’ on
morphology (and syntax) is far less
significant than he thought, and most of
it is not a matter
of morphology at all, but again of
orthography and phonetics, as considered
above. His
mechanical listing and treatment of
‘differences’ (e.g. between Biblical
Aramaic and that of
the papyri) is thus misleading. Again,
grossly inadequate statistics have been
pressed into
service (based upon mere units or tens of
words instead of upon thousands), and the
fallacy of
negative evidence—a fallacy capable of
illustration from discoveries since 1929.
Most of the
‘evidence’ adduced is invalid, as far as
a ‘late’ date for the Aramaic of Daniel
is concerned,
inasmuch as it falls into the following
categories,218 with reasons stated.
(1a) Purely orthographic variation in use

of vowel-letters. Rowley, V:4 (HSD,
111:3):
variation in use of h/’ at end of ‘we’
(’nhna), without significance—see on
vowel-letters, pp.
58-59 above.
(ib) ‘Defective’ Spelling in papyri,
‘full ’ (ple'ne') Spelling in Daniel (and
Ezra). R., V:I (HSD,
111:2:); V:4 (HSD, 111:3); V:8; V1:1;
X:2; X:18. In every case, an ending (or
form, X:18) in
Daniel is written with a vowel-letter (h,
’, y) where the papyri generally write
none.
This, too, has no chronological value

except for the history of orthography.219
The forms in
the Aramaic of the papyri and of Daniel
were phonetically identical, as shown by
tell-tale
variants in the papyri: they sometimes
use a ple'ne' spelling of exactly the
same type as is
found in the Aramaic of Daniel (e.g. -yn
for - in, V1: 1). Schaeder appropriately
pointed220 to
an exact parallelismihhwynflhhwyn’iinAP,
nos. 30:16 and 31:15, these being the
draft of a
document and its contemporary duplicate.
If -n’ is to be counted later in Daniel,
it should also
be counted as centuries later inAP, no.
31! This, of course, is impossible. And
in fact, there is
no difference in any of these points
between the Aramaic of Daniel (and Ezra)
and that of the
sixth/fifth centuries BC except in
orthography—which (as already plainly
shown) reflects the
textual transmission of a literary work
(not necessarily its date of
composition), in contrast to
the once-for-all point in time occupied
by a nonliterary everyday or official
document.
[p.69]
(2) Forms common to the papyri (and

sometimes Old Aramaic), Daniel (and
Ezra), and the
‘late’ sources (Nabataean, Palmyrene,
Targums, etc.) R., V:7; V:11; V:12; V:15
(HSD, 111:4);
V11:1-8; V111:1 (HSD, V:4); 1X:1 (HSD,
V:7); 1X:3; 1X:4 X:3, 5, 6; X:7 (hith-,
’ith-); X:9
2’8 For brevity’s sake, Rowley’s works

will be cited by Section (Roman numerals)
and points (Arabic numbers)
from pp. 50-106 of AOT; parallel sections
and points from his paper in HSD will be
prefixed in brackets by the
abbreviation HSD.
2’9 As Rowley will admit in a case where

chronology is not involved (cf his VII:2,
where ‘defective’
orthography is recognized as such).
220 Cf his discussion in Iranische

Beitriige I, pp. 240-242 [42-44].

79.
(HSD, 1V:4); X:10 (HSD, 1V:5); X:11 (HSD,
1V:6); X:12 (if valid at all); X:13 X:18
(HSD,
1V: 9); X:19, 20. Here, time and again,
we have examples of a form attested at
once in
Daniel/Ezra Aramaic, and both in the
papyri (and even Old Aramaic) and in the
‘late’ sources.
In cases of this kind, their evidential
value is absolutely nil: they show merely
that certain
forms were known in the sixth/fifth
centuries BC (or before) and persisted
for many centuries.
On such a basis, the Aramaic of Daniel
could be of any date from the sixth
century BC
onwards.
In the case of V: 15 and 1X:4, new

evidence has come to light since 1929. At
that time, ’In for
‘these’ (V:15) was attested only in
Daniel and the late Palmyrene.221 But
since then, the Old
Aramaic treaty-texts from Sfire in N.
Syria, of the eighth century BC, have
yielded some
fourteen examples of ’lnm—it is,
therefore, an old form, which has
survived (i) in Corpus
Inscriptionum Semiticarum II, 111:5 and
Daniel, and (ii) in Palmyrene.
In 1X:4, the accusative particle yt223 is

a classic example of the fallacy of
‘negative evidence’,
i.e. the apparent non-attestation of a
form in ‘early’ documents. In 1929, the
form yt—outside
Daniel—was known only from the late
Nabataean and Palmyrene texts; Old
Aramaic had a
different form, and the Imperial Aramaic
of the papyri apparently none. But in
Papyrus
Brooklyn 3:22a, the particle yt is now
attested from the fifth century BC,224
and is unlikely to
have been invented for that particular
document. As for V11:3 (’dyn, ‘then’),
its form in Daniel
agrees with that of the papyri—but in the
Targums this word shows the quite
different
orthography hydyn. Yet this kind of
difference, upon which Rowley laid such
stress in other
cases when it helped to show
‘differences’ between Daniel and the
papyri, is suddenly
discounted by him as a mere question of
orthography when it comes to Daniel being
different
from the Targums! This smacks of
plaidoyer. (Again, the Targumic h’-k and
especially hyk d
(also in Palmyrene) were held by Rowley
(p. 72) to ‘differ but little’—i.e.
insignificantly—
from the h’-kdy of
[1070]
Daniel (V111:5). But this is a greater

difference than many of the other
distinctions that
Rowley made between items in Daniel and
the papyri and listed as real differences
when it
was solely a matter of orthography. For
‘late’ btr as compared with b’tr
(V111:3), note the
occurrence of btr as an ideogram in
Pahievi—taken over from the Imperial
Aramaic of the
sixth-fourth centuries BC via its
fossilized use in the chancelleries of
Seleucid and Arsacid
Iran, before becoming an ideogram.225 The
omission of a quiescent’ is far less than
the
differences between Daniel and the
Targums (V111:5) just quoted.)
In X:7, 9, alternation of h and ’ in

preforrnatives for reflexive and causative
verb-forms claims
attention; Rowley gave too little weight
to the agreement of Biblical Aramaic with
Old and
Imperial Aramaic in commonly having h in
the causative (as opposed to Pahnyrene,
Targums
22’ With one solitary exception from

Persia, Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarwn,
II (1889), 111:5 (AOT, p. 56).
222 Full references in A. Dupont-Sommer,

Les InscriptionsArame'ennes de Sfir
(1958), p. 140, s.v.
223 Apodictically termed ‘late’ by H. L.

Ginsberg, JAOS, LXII, 1942, p.
231b7‘negative evidence’ again!
224BM4P, p. 163.
225 Cf R. N. Frye, The Heritage ofPersia

(1962), pp. 146-149; date of ideographic
use of Aramaic in Pahlevi, cf
F. Altheim and R. Stiehl, Die Aramiiische
Sprache unter den Achaimeniden, I (1963),
pp. 4-74, for a later date of
change from Aramaic ‘properly’ written to
ideographic use than has commonly been
supposed. On Pahlevi, see
H. S. Nyberg, A Manual of Pahlevi, I
(1964). References for btr, C. F. Jean
and J. Hoftijzer, Dictionnaire des
Inscriptions Semitiques tie l ’Ouest, I-
II (1960), pp. 45-46.

79.
and in part Nabataean, with ’), while

duly noting (pp. 94/95, i) the usage with
the reflexive
(both h and ’) in Daniel as different
from the papyri (using ’). But the plain
fact is that both h
and ’ forms are old; Rowley himself
quotes the forms from Zincirli and Neirab
respectively
(p. 80). Where only a handful of each
form is available both in Biblical
Aramaic and in the
papyri, etc., statistical treatment is
useless, especially if any orthographic
change has
occurred.
Items like X: 13 are wholly indecisive;

if assimilation and non-assimilation of
initial radical n
are both attested both ‘early’ and
‘late’, they prove nothing because they
could as easily be
considered a residual archaism (cf Zakir,
no n; Neirab with n, etc.) as a ‘late’
mark (e.g.
Palmyrene, no n; Nabataean with n, etc.)
(3) Historical orthography, in particular

2 for d, from d: R., V: 1 1, 13, 14, 16.
This point needs
no further treatment; see above, pp. 53-
55. On V:11, cf also paragraph (4) below.
As for
V:14, d’, ‘this’, precisely this form
occurs in the phonetically-written
Demotic—Aramaic
papyrus of the fifth century BC; appeal
to Nabataean and the Targums, therefore,
proves
nothing whatever—except long use.
(4) ‘Anomalous’ forms, so far unique to

Daniel. R., V:11 (HSD, 111:7) on dkn;
VIII:4; VIII:5
(HSD, V:5; ‘Heb.’ ngd); X, 21, 22. Forms
otherwise unattested, early or late, have
no
evidential dating-
[1071]
value whatever, because their external

occurrence cannot (yet) be controlled. In
VIII: 4, the
form in Daniel (meaningless z/d apart)
differs only in having t (dbrt) from the
‘l-dbr-zy of the
papyri; ngd in VIII:5, being a Hebraism,
has no significance, as everyone admits
that the
author was a Hebrew, whatever his place
and date. Hn, ‘if’, goes back to Old
Aramaic as well
as the papyri;227 lhn, ‘except’, is in
the papyri;228 bgyn is merely ‘negative
evidence’.
Irrelevant in practice, as Rowley
admitted, are VI:2, 3—Palmyrene rarities
not attested in
Daniel; similarly, X:4, 8.
All the foregoing material is irrelevant

to the date of the Aramaic of Daniel, as
it could be
‘early’ or ‘late’. Now we turn to
material that is more apparently ‘early’
or ‘late’.
(5) Material found only in Biblical

Aramaic and older sources (Old Aramaic,
papyri, etc.) is
listed by R., VII: 1-8. As he noted,
several of these terms and forms survive
into the Targums
but are not found in Nabataean and
Palmyrene. This affects VII:2, 4, 6; 1
(if ken (p. 69) be
compared with k‘nt), 8 (indirectly), and
3 if Rowley be allowed to discount
orthography, for
once, in his own interest.
This leaves VII:5 (different to Targumic

tmn, whose occurrence in an Egyptian
ostracon is
strictly irrelevant to Daniel), and VII:7
(HSD, V:10) as so far early only. As for
V11:9 (HSD,
V:11), tnynwt in Daniel should be
compared with tnyn of the papyri (AP,
nos. 70:7; 63:73).
One may add IX:2, ‘lw, ‘lo’; the
alternation of h and need be worth no
more here than
elsewhere.
226 See on this matter Schaeder,

Iranische Beitriige, I, pp. 249-250 (51-
2].
227 Cf Jean and Hoftijzer, op. cit., p.
66 meaning (2).
228 Cf ibid, 111, p. 235.

79.
This leaves us with—at last—several items

of apparently rather sounder evidential
value for a
relatively late dating of the Aramaic of
Daniel than the mass of irrelevant matter
so far
eliminated.
(6) Apparently Late Criteria. (a)

Illusory lexical and phonetic examples.
Under VIII: 2, the
form thwt, ‘under’, is contrasted with
tht of the papyri, and noted as occurring
in the Targums
(p. 72)—but this form thwt is now (since
1953) known from the papyri too (P.
Brooklyn
6:70). It therefore belongs in section 2,
above (common forms)
Under X:16, the verb Slq in Daniel is
observed to assimilate the l as in
Palmyrene, once
having a ‘compensatory’ n. This
assimilation already occurs in Old
Aramaic in the eighth
century BC,229 while for n, probably
compare P. Brooklyn 6:10.230
(b) Pronominal Forms that add n, or

substitute it for the m of the papyri,
cf. R., V:5, 6, 9, 10;
X:1.
The origins of such forms as hmwn for

‘older’ hmw; -kwn, -hwn, etc.,
[1072]
have already been perfectly adequately

explained by Schaeder,231 whose treatment
it is
needless to repeat here. He notes the

occasional occurrence of-n forms of
suffixes in the fifth-
century papyri,232 which show that, by
then, these had already become part of
spoken
Aramaic, and so occasionally pierced the
older and customary orthography of the
papyri. In
other words, where before we had
historical and phonetic orthographies,
here we have older
and later grammatical forms. And, as
Schaeder also notes, in the transmission
of Ezra and
Daniel the later forms of current speech
and of everyday writing (i.e. of the
third century BC
and later) have begun to make an impact
on Ezra, and have replaced wholly the
older form in
Daniel, giving Old Testament scholars the
superficial impression that the Aramaic of
Daniel
is ‘younger’ than that of Ezra.233 The
change in pronominal forrns has gone
further in Daniel
than in Ezra, but this does not
automatically prove that such was already
the case when the
Aramaic parts of these books were
actually composed. For, in fact,
grammatical and
morphological change (and not only
orthographical) not only can but did take
place in
Ancient Near Eastern textual
transmission. Thus, a third-second
century date for the Aramaic
of Daniel could be retained, under the
onus of having to prove that no
morphological changes
have occurred in the transmission of the
Aramaic of Daniel (and Ezra). An earlier
date (sixth-
fourth centuries BC), assuming such
change to a limited degree, is at any
rate in harmony
with observed facts of Ancient Near
Eastern textual transmission.
229 Sfire texts: A. Dupont-Sommer, Les

InscriptionsArame'enes de Sfire, p. 247,
s.v.
230 Cf BIWAP, p. 196 top; contrast no.

9:15.
231Iranische Beitriige, 1. pp. 250-252
[52-54].
232 Ibid, p. 250 [52], and n3 adding an

example to those of Baumgartner, ZAW,
XLV, 1927, p. 105(b).
233 Cf (e.g.) Baumgartner, op. cit, pp.

120-222, more cautious than Renan; and
Rowley, AOT, pp. 55, 254 (also
cautious).

79.
As with orthographic changes, one may

turn to a better-documented area of
literature in the
Biblical world for some examples of this

phenomenon; again, Egypt is convenient
(but not
- 234
umque).
The Instruction of Ptahhotep in Egypt is

one of the older wisdom-books in a long
series. It is
now generally accepted that it indeed
originated in the late Old Kingdom
(Fifth-Sixth
Dynasties, c. 2400 BC),235 showing clear
traces of its Old Kingdom origin.236
However,
[p.73]
this book, which must then have been

composed in Old Egyptian, underwent not
one but two
revisions of grammatical structure: (i)
Papyrus Prisse of c. 2000 BC is Middle
Egyptian rather
than Old, while (11) the other MSS show a
fuller Middle Egyptian form and text-
tradition.237
Again, the Instruction ofAniy is a good

Eighteenth Dynasty work, in formal Middle
Egyptian,
but the Berlin Museum tablet no. 8934
accompanies its Middle Egyptian text with
a Late
Egyptian version (broken off after the
title).238 Cf the same phenomenon in the
Ritual for
Repulsing Evil, a text provided with a
version in later Egyptian.239
In the foregoing cases, we probably have

examples of fairly consistent
modernization, rather
as Schaeder considered likely for the
Aramaic of Daniel. Less deliberate change
also took
place, of course. If we possessed only
the Ashmolean Ostracon MS of Sinuhe in
Egyptian,
written out in the Ramesside period (c.
1300-1100 BC), and applied the methods
and
viewpoints of a Rowley or a Baumgartner,
then a fifteenth to early thirteenth
century date
(BC) for Sinuhe (and a pseudepigraphic
origin, 600 years after the date
suggested by
statements in the text) would seem every
bit as certain as the second-century date
appears for
Daniel on the linguistic grounds offered
by these scholars. However, we have for
Sinuhe what
we lack for Daniel (and for all Old
Testament writings): really early MSS, in
the case of
Sinuhe reaching back to c. 1800/1700 BC,
within 150 years of the composition of
the original
text near the end of the twentieth
century BC. These MSS show (i) that
Sinuhe is so much
earlier, and (ii) that the ‘late’
features of the Ashmolean Ostracon text
are simply the result of
long manuscript transmission and some
modernization; they date that MS, not
Sinuhe.240 A
text composed later than Sinuhe is The
Sporting King, not earlier than Amenemmes
11 (c.
1900 BC) whom it concerns; but our sole
and late MS (end of Eighteenth Dynasty,
late
234 Leaving aside the vast province of

Mesopotamian cuneiform, one should note
the widely admitted and
attested practice of grammatical
modernization in even the much smaller
province of Hittite cuneiform. Some
random examples: A. Goetze, JCS, XVI,
1962, p. 24b, in §1 (Deeds of Hattusil
I); H. Otten, Mitteilungen der
Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft, LXXXIII,
1951, pp. 43-44 (Deeds of Anittas),
besides orthography.
235 Cf (e.g.) the six scholars named by

Fecht (see next note), p. 50, n.1.
236 G. Fecht, Der Habgierige und die Maat

in der Lehre des Ptoizhotep (1958), pp.
49-50.
237 Cf the convenient layout of parallel

texts in Z. Zétba, Les Maximes tie
Ptahhotep (1956).
238 Cf (e.g.) E. Suys, La Sagesse d’Anii

(1935), pp. vii, 1;G. Posener, Revue
d’Egyptologie, VI, 1949, p. 42 and
n2.
239 S. Schott, Die Deutung tier

Geheimnisse ties Rituals fu'r die Abwehr
des Bosen (1954); note also the Demotic
version of parts of older, Middle
Egyptian texts in P. Carlsberg I (e.g.
Parker, Revue d’ Egyptologie, X, 1955,
pp.
49-59).
240 For Sinuhe MSS see G. Posener,

Litterature etPolitique dane l ’ Egypte
de la XII‘ Dynastie (1956), pp. 87-88
and references. On a couple of ‘late’
elements (among others) in the Ashmolean
Ostracon, cf my Ancient Orient
and Old Testament, part I:B, Section 5,
(ii), b:i, apud principle III.

79.
fourteenth century BC) in this case

preserves the Middle Kingdom forms
throughout.241 Thus,
an earlier
[p.74]
work (Sinuhe) can easily appear with

linguistic forms that are ‘younger’ than
those preserved
for a later composed work (The Sporting
King)i just as may be the case with
Daniel and Ezra.
Why is this? Simply, in the case of
Sinuhe and The Sporting King, because the
one work was
more widely used and copied, and had more
circulation, than the other. We have
several
major MSS of Sinuhe and a crowd of
ostraca,242 but, so far, only the one MS
of The Sporting
King.243 So, it is just as possible that
Daniel’s graphic narratives and
intriguing visions were
more often read and recopied than the
drier and more prosaic doings of Ezra and
his
predecessors. In other words, forms like
hmwn date themselves rather than the text
in which
they occur, and so leave the date of
Daniel open for consideration on other
grounds.
(c) Other Forms. In the Pe‘al

Imperfective, yd‘, ‘to know’, shows an n
before d (R, X:15),
which is also a less well attested use
elsewhere. It is practically absent from
‘early’ and ‘late’
sources alike, apart from limited
occurrence in (e. g.) the Targum of
pseudo-Jonathan.244 But a
possible example of the form mnd‘ in the
Ahiqar papyrus245 should warn us that, in
fact, this
item really belongs in section (2) above—
i.e. is both ‘early’ and ‘late’, and so
useless.
2. Syntax. Syntax offers, as Rowley

rightly remarked, ‘few differences’ of
any importance. Of
his various points (section X1 in his
AOT, pp. 98-108), X1:1(i), (iii)a, 2,
3(b), 6 and 7, all fall
under the same judgment as §1, section
(2), above, attested in early sources
(Old Aramaic and
papyri) as well as late (Targums, etc),
this robbing them of all evidential
value.
The points left over (X1: 1 (ii), (iii)b,

c, d; 4, 5) are no better, for the
following reasons.
In XI: 1, item (ii) is restricted to a

couple of occurrences in the papyri (AP,
41:3 twice) and is
thus irrelevant; (iii)b is irrelevant,
because limited to Pahnyrene; (iii)c, d,
are so rare in
Biblical Aramaic (c: 3 in Ezra, 1 in
Daniel; d:1 in Ezra, 2 in Daniel) as
opposed to Palmyrene
that they prove nothing at all.
In XI:4 and 5, the trend of the facts is
clearly against Rowley’s position,
largely as a result of
discoveries since 1929. As for XI:4, the
preposition 1 before a king’s name in
dates is a mark
of early date. In all the Cowley papyri,
it occurs once: in the oldest document,
dated to year
27 of Darius 1, c. 495 BC.246 This is no
fluke; cf now the Meissner papyrus (line
1) from year
7 of Darius 1 (c. 575 BC, within 22 years
of the earliest possible date for the
book of Daniel:
[1075]
3rd year of Cyrus, 536 BC).247 As late as

457 BC (14th year of Artaxerxes I) the
earliest
papyrus in the Brooklyn series uses 1.248
In all later documents, no 1 is so far
attested before a
24’ R. A. Caminos, Literary Fragments in

the Hieratic Script (1956), p. 23.
242 See note 240, above, for reference
covering most of these.
243 See n.241.
244 Cf AOT, pp. 93-95, item (iv).
245 Ibid, p. 96, on (viii).
246AP, no. 1, line 1.

247 Dupont—Sommer, Contrat tie Me'tayage
(1944).

79.
royal name in datelines249—this item in

the Aramaic of Daniel, therefore, is as
likely to be an
archaic survival as anything else, and to
have found subsequent extension of use in
a later
day, in Nabataean and Targums. In XI:5,
again, the use of ‘king’ before a royal
name (Darius)
is attested by our oldest-available
papyrus, P. Meissner of 575 BC. The use
in Daniel is
parallel to such as this as much as to
the Targums, which latter (being Jewish
literature, after
all!) are more likely to have been
influenced by Biblical precursors such as
Daniel, and thus to
be without any independent value.
In fine, under Grammar and Syntax, there

is nothing decisive in favour of an early
or late date
for the Aramaic of Daniel. The ‘late’
phenomena (restricted, in fact, to a mere
n in certain
pronominal forms) are as likely to
represent textual history as date of
composition; most of
the supposed criteria are in fact
invalid. One or two points would suit an
early date, but are
indecisive; for word-order, see in the
next section.
D. GENERAL AFFILIATIONS OF THE ARAMAIC OF

DANIEL
The Aramaic of Daniel (and of Ezra) is

simply a part of Imperial Aramaic—in
itself
practically undatable with any conviction
within c. 600 to 330 BC—a part which
differs from
nearly250 all the rest solely in being
scribally transmitted literature and
hence subject to
orthographic and allied changes. The old
battles over ‘Eastern’ or ‘Western’
Aramnaic were a
waste of effort, for Imperial Aramaic
antedates both, and offers no good
evidence for such a
distinction.251
Within Imperial Aramaic, it is tempting

to classify this or that
[p.76]
minor peculiarity as hinting that this or

that document shows E. or W. connections;
but by and
large, this is still unconvincing. In
Biblical Aramaic, word-order in sentences
having finite
verbs is quite different from normal N.W.
Semitic usage (verb — subject — etc.)
Instead we
find the subject commonly first with the
verb at the end of the sentence having
the object
more often before than after it (i.e.
subject — object — verb; or, subject —
verb — object).
This stands in striking contrast to the
Dead Sea Scrolls Genesis Apocryphon of
about the first
century BC252 and Targum of Job of the
late(?) second century BC,253 both of
them
24" BIWAP, no. 1, line 1.
249 E.g. a dateline from the Samaria

papyri (fourth century BC) has no I; cf
F. M. Cross, BA, XXVI, 1963, p.
1 13.
250 Except, of course, Ahiqar.
25’ Cf already Baumgartner, ZAW, XLV,

1927, pp. 123-124; Schaeder, Iranische
Beitriige, I. p. 253 [55], cf p.
228 [30]; summing up, Rosenthal,
Aramaistiche Forschung, pp. 67, 70-71. Cf
also Dupont-Sommer on the
Assur Ostracon, Syria, XXIV, 1944-1945,
pp. Rowley, AOT, pp. 15, 154 top, was
conscious of this fact, but still
too bound to the old ideas. On p. 15, one
sees again his confusion of orthography
and phonetics, in line 13 from
top of pageifor ‘phonetic’, one should
read ‘orthographic’; the idea that
phonetic changes of this class in
Aramaic occurred in the West in the fifth
century BC but in the East only in the
second century BC is grotesque
and rests wholly on this confusion of
orthography and phonetics (see his p. 13,
n.1). The phonetic change had
come by the fifth century BC, while
orthography long lagged behind.
252 Cf E. Y. Kutscher, Scripta

Hierosolymitana, IV (1958), pp. 33-34; F.
Altheim and R. Stiehl, Die Aramiiische
Sprache unter den Achaimeniden I (1963)
pp. 224-222.
253 On which date see J. van der Ploeg,

Le Targum de Job de Ia Grotte II de
Qumran (1962), p. 7. For the word-
order in this document, cf the extract
illustrated and printed on the plate, pp.
8-9.

79.
embarrassingly close in time to a

supposedly second-century Daniel.254 But
it agrees well with
the word-order of the Assur ostracon of
the seventh century BC,255 and with the
freedom of
order in the fifth-century Aramaic papyri
from Egypt.256
The origin of the phenomenon lies in the

East—in Mesopotamia, following the model
of
Akkadian in which the verb normally falls
at or near the end of the sentence.257
However, this
merely proves that the Aramaic of Daniel
(and Ezra) belongs to the early tradition
of Imperial
Aramaic (seventh-sixth to fourth
centuries BC) as opposed to later and
local, Palestinian
derivatives of Imperial Aramaic (like the
Scrolls cited), and not automatically
that a Daniel
himself was under Babylonian influence in
his writing. During the whole period c.
1200-630
BC, with Aramaean penetration into
Mesopotamia, the Assyrian conquest of the
Aramaean
states, and deportation of Aramaeans into
Mesopotamia, there was plenty of time for
this
Mesopotamian imposition on Aramaic syntax
to take place in Mesopotamnia. When the
Mesopotamian-naturalized Aramaic became a
Chancellery-language for Assyrian, Neo-
Babylonian, and above all Persian
government officials, it carried this
mark everywhere. But
as a spoken language in Palestine, among
Hebrews and perhaps other West-Semitic
language-
stock, Aramaic reverted to the old
syntactic pattern, visible in the Old
Aramaic inscriptions of
N. Syria itself; outside of Mesopotamia
and not populated by Akkadian-speakers.
In view of
this and other considerations, several
scholars today would consider an Eastern
[p.77]
(Mesopotamian) origin for the Aramaic

part of Daniel (and Ezra) as probable,258
in agreement
with the subject-matter, though absolute
proof cannot be given within the relative
unity of
Imperial Aramaic.
E. GENERAL RESULTS
1. Vocabulary: Semitic. As noted above

(pp. 34, 35), nothing decisive on date is
obtainable
here.
2. Vocabulary: Persian. Statistical

appreciations of Persian loan-words
(especially in relation
to survivals into the Targums, etc.) are
worthless (pp. 36, 39, 40); the impact of
Old Persian
upon Imperial Aramaic is very
considerable. In the LXX versions, some
four Persian words
are so poorly ‘translated’ that their
meanings must have been lost long
beforehand; this would
argue for a date before the second
century BC (pp. 42-43) The Persian words
are Old Persian,
not Middle; this indicates no independent
borrowing of Persian words into Daniel
after c. 300
BC (pp. 43 f.) These facts suggest an
origin for the Persian words in the
Aranrnaic of Daniel
before c. 300 BC.
254 Note also the reactions of van der

Ploeg, op. cit., p. 24
255 Note A. Dupont-Sommer, Syria, xxrv,
1944-1945, pp. 57-58.
256 See Baumgartner, ZAW, XLV, 1927, pp.

129-230, on these.
257 Cf W. von Soden, Grundriss

tierA/dcadischen Grammatik (1952), §130
(pp. 183-185).
258 Cf E. Y. Kutscher, Scripta

Hierosolymitana, IV (2958), p. 2, opting
for an E. origin of Biblical Aramaic
(within Imperial); his detailed reasons
were to be given in a review-article in
JAOS, on ‘Aramaic Dialects and
the Problem of Biblical Aramaic’, but
this had not appeared at the time of
writing. Cf also van der Ploeg, loc.
cit. (n.254 above); Kutscher, Scripta
Hierosolymitana, IV, p. 20, contrasting
the usage of l in Imperial with
Biblical Aramaic, and the Genesis
Apocryphon, with ‘Western Aramaic’; and
F. Altheim and R. Stiehl, Die
Aramiiische Sprache unter den
Achaimeniden, I (1963), pp. 58, 207.

79.
3. Vocabulary: Greek. Only three words

(of one class: music) are involved. Greek
wares
reached all over the Ancient Near East
from the eighth century BC onwards; Greek
mercenaries and artisans served the
Babylon of Nebuchadrezzar. Greek words
occur in
Imperial Aramaic at the end of the fifth
century BC (state'r, probably dore'ma?,
just possibly
others), and there is nothing to stop
them appearing earlier. It is
unjustifiable to hold that
Greek words in Aramaic imply a date after
330 BC. Many Old Persian words alongside
hardly any Greek words in our text
suggest a date in the Persian age; a
document of
Hellenistic date with a penchant for
loan-words should have taken them from
Greek (or
Middle Persian). Hence, a second-century
date cannot be based on three Greek
words; a very
late sixth-century date is early enough
for the body of Persian words—between
these dates no
greater precision is possible
linguistically.
[p.78]
4. Orthography and Phonetics. Old and

Imperial Aramaic texts started off with a
Phoenician
orthography that, in some respects, only
approximated to the phonetics of Aramaic
as spoken;
sound-shifts in Aramaic within the
eighth-fifth centuries BC turned these
approximate
spellings into purely historical
spellings. These phenomena are betrayed
by sporadic phonetic
writings and false archaisms in Imperial
Aramaic documents of everyday business.
By
contrast, in Daniel and Ezra, which are
scribally transmitted literary texts, the
phonetic
changes have shown themselves in
modernization (most probably unofficial,
at least initially)
of spelling, probably in or after the
third century BC. A second-century date
could be held by
proving that no modernization had
occurred, if that is possible (what of
gzbr/gdbr?). In favour
of modernization is a case of hyper-
modernization of a Persian word (gdbr),
and by contrast
one case of a proper name surviving in an
old form (because, being foreign, it had
no meaning
beyond being a personal ‘label’)
Orthographic modernization is quite
commonplace in
Ancient Near Eastern literary
transmission.
5. Grammar. Much of the supposed

‘evidence’ on word-forms had to be
dismissed because it
was merely a repetition of points raised
under Orthography and Phonetics, and was
sufficiently dealt with under this head.
One or two ‘late’ forms are actually
early. Only in the
pronominal forms is there any evidence
for ‘late’ forms—and some of these are
already
attested in the fifth century BC—but in
the Aramaic of Daniel (and Ezra) they
represent the
effect of (gradual?) modernization, the
pressure of spoken, living language upon
a scribally
transmitted literary text, exactly as
elsewhere in the Ancient Near East. As
with orthography,
so here, non-revision would have to be
factually eliminated to certify so late a
date as the
second century BC for composition.
6. Syntax. Most points here are

irrelevant for dating-purposes, and two
points that once
seemed peculiar are in all probability a
mark of, or survival from, an early date
(1 before a
royal name in dates; use of ‘king’ before
a royal name). The word-order of the
Aramaic of
Daniel (and Ezra) places it squarely in
full-blooded Imperial Aramaic—and in
striking
contrast with real Palestinian post-
Imperial Aramaic of the second and first
centuries BC as
illustrated by the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Beyond this, the Aramaic of Daniel (and
Ezra) is neither
Eastern nor Western, simply Imperial that
cannot be divided in this way; some hints
would
point East, but do not constitute proof
in themselves.

79.
[1079]
Summary. What, then, shall we say of the

Aramaic of Daniel? It is, in itself; as
long and
generally agreed, integrally a part of
that Imperial Aramaic which gathered
impetus from at
least the seventh century BC and was in
full use until c. 300 BC, thereafter
falling away or
fossilizing where it was not native and
developing new forms and usages where it
was the
spoken tongue. If proper allowance be
made for attested scribal usage in the
Biblical Near
East (including orthographical and
morphological change, both official and
unofficial), then
there is nothing to decide the date of
composition of the Aramnaic of Daniel on
the grounds
of Aramaic anywhere between the late
sixth and the second century BC. Some
points hint at
an early (especially pre-300), not late,
date—but in large part could be argued to
be survivals
till the second century BC, just as third
—second century spellings or grammatical
forms must
be proved to be original to the
composition of the work before a sixth—
fifth century date
could be excluded. The date of the book
of Daniel, in short, cannot be decided
upon linguistic
grounds alone.259 It is equally
obscurantist to exclude dogmatically a
sixth-fifth (or fourth)
century date on the one hand, or to hold
such a date as mechanically proven on the
other, as
far as the Aramaic iS concerned.
ABBREVIATIONS
For standard reference works and

journals, the abbreviations adopted by
The New Bible Dictionary
(1962) are employed. Other abbreviations
are:
AK Die Ausgrabungen aufdem Karatepe

(Erster Vorbericht) (H. T. Bossert), 1950
AOT The Aramaic ofthe Old Testament (H.

H. Rowley), 1929
AOTBI2 Altorientalische Texts und Bilder

zum Alten Testament Vol. 2 (ed. H.
Gressmann), 1927
AP Aramaic Papyri ofthe Fifth Century
B.C. (A. E. Cowley), 1923
ASc Assyrian Sculptures in the British

Museum, Reign of Ashur—nasir—pal, 885-860
BC. (E.
A. Walls Budge), 1914

ASD III, IV Ausgrabungen in Sendschirli
III, IV (F. von Luschan), 1902, 1911
BA/IAP The Brooklyn Museum Aramaic Papyri

(E. G. Kraelirlg), 1953
C II Carchemish II (C. L. Woolley), 1921

CAD The Assyrian Dictionary (ed. 1. J.
Geib et al.), 1956.
DAB The Development ofAttic Black-Figure

(J. D. Beazley), 1951.
DM Darius the Mede (J. C. Whitcomb), 1959
DTM Darius the Mede and the Four World

Empires in the Book ofDaniel (H. H.
Rowley),
1935
GBA A Grammar of Biblical Aramaic (F.

Rosenthal), 1961
G0 The Greeks Overseas (J. Boardman),

1964
HCC Handbook ofthe Cesnola Collection

ofAntiquitiesfrom Cyprus (J. L. Myres),
1914
HGB A Handbook of Greek Black-F igured

Vases (J. C. Hoppirl), 1924
HSD ‘Notes on the Aramaic of the Genesis

Apocryphon ’ (H. H. Rowley), pp. 116-129
of
Hebrew and Semitic Studies Presented to

C. R. Driver (ed. D. W. Thomas and W. D.
McHardy ), 1963
259 Some recent tendencies towards

allowing a date for Biblical Aramaic
earlier than the second century BC may
be mentioned in passing. Note, e.g., E.
G. Kraeling, BIWAP, p. 7; J. J. Koopmans,
Aramiiische Chrestomathie, I
(1962), p. 154, by his classification
includes Biblical Aramaic with fifth-
century material; on a Mesopotamian
origin cf J. van der Ploeg, Le Targum de
Job de la Grotte II de Qumran (1962), p.
24. This new flexibility and
open-mindedness is welcome.

79.
LAP Introduction to the Law of the

Aramaic Papyri (R. Yaron), 1961
A/IAO Die Musikinstrumente des Alien

Orients (M. Wegner), 1950
MS The Music of the Swnerians. ..

Babylonians and Assyrians (F. W.Galph1),
1937
NB Nineveh and Babylon (A. Parrot), 1961
NI A Catalogue ofthe Nimrud Ivories (R.

D. Barnett), 1957
OP Old Persian Grammar, Texts, Lexicon2

(R. G. Kent), 1953
PTT Persepolis Treasury Tablets (G. G.

Cameron), 1948
SA The Stones ofAssyria (C. J. Gadd),
1936
UE II Ur Excavations II, The Royal

Cemetery (C. L. Woolley), 1934
UM Ugaritic Manual (C. H. Gordon), 1955
© 1965 Kenneth A. Kitchen. Reproduced by

kind permission of the author.
Prepared for the web in September 2005 by
RobertI Bradshaw
http://www.biblicalstudies. org .uk/

The Hebrew of Daniel
By W. J. Martin
W. J. Martin, “The Hebrew of Daniel,” D. J.
pp. 28-30
‘The verdict of the language of Daniel is

thus clear... the Hebrew supports... a
date after the
conquest of Palestine by Alexander th
Great (332 BC)’, thus S. R. Driver.1
In support of this verdict, Driver gives

a list of some thirty expressions, said
to occur never or
very rarely in the earlier literature.
1. malkfij and Similar Words. The word

that heads the list is mill/gilt. In the
light of Hebrew
usage it is difficult to see why this
word was included. In Daniel it is not
restricted to a
particular formula (bisenaj...
lemalkiij), in fact it is thus used only
three times, where it occurs,
in all, some fourteen times in the book.
It was, moreove no neologism, for it is
found already
in Numbers 24:7, and in 1 Samuel 20:31,
as well as three times in Jeremiah (10:7;
49:34;
52:31) and twice in Nehemiah (9:35;
12:22) and six times in Ezr (1:1; 4:5 and
6 (twice); 7:1;
8:1). It is not only well attested but
it, is a pattern of noun widely used in
all periods of
Hebrew, and found in Akkadian as early as
Hammurabi. Nouns of this formation are:
k’siit covering (Gn. 20:16; Ex. 21:10)
‘Edu‘t decree (Ex. passim)
miskéniit poverty (Dt. 8:9)
zenu‘t fornication, and (Nu. 14:33 etc.)

(metaphorically) idolatry
géu‘t exaltation (Is. 9:17; 26:10)
‘algdu‘t bondage (Ne. 9:17; Ezr. 9:8)
gfilu‘t deportation, exile (Is. 20:4 etc.)
This last word occurs some thirteen times

in the prophetical book, It must have
been one of
the most frequently used words in the
spoken language from the time of Isaiah
onwards. The
form of word accepted to denote the
subject of their chief concern would
inevitably tend to
give an impetus to this particular
pattern.
2.T he Expression 'fimar 1... Again it is

stated that 'fimar I. . . in
[p29]
the sense ‘to command to’ is used where
‘older Hebrew would refer the direct
narration’. If
this is meant to imply that this is
peculiar to Daniel and late Hebrew, then
it would involve
postulating a nuance in meaning which
would be (virtually) indemonstrable, for
the phrase is
found in classical Hebrew and, moreover,
it occurs in certain passages that must
have been
familiar to every pious and literate Jew.
It is found, for example, in Deuteronomy
9:25 (‘for
the Lord said to destroy you’) where the
dividing line between ‘said’ and
‘command’ is
1 LOT’ (1913), p. 508. Cf. J. A.

Montgomery, Daniel (1927), p. 15.
W. J. Martin, “The Hebrew of Daniel,” D.

in the Book of
Daniel. London: The Tyndale Press, 1965.
pp. 28-30
virtually non-existent. Similarly in

Joshua 22:33 (‘and they did not say to go
up against them
to war’).
In 1 Samuel 30:6 (‘for the people said to

stone him’) it stands where in English we
could use
some word in the sense of ‘demand’, but
the notion expressed is little different
from
‘command’.
While the passage in 2 Samuel 1:18, taken

as a whole, is difficult, the phrase
(‘and he said to
teach the sons of Judah’) presents no
problem and, even in English, it makes
little or no
difference whether we translate ‘He said
to teach (it) to the sons of Judah’ or
‘He commanded
to teach (it)’. In Exodus 2:14 the force
of ‘say’ is doubtless only to express
intent, but it
shows that the syntactical pattern
already existed. The pattern, though not
perhaps of the
semantic equivalent, occurs in 1 Kings
5:19 (5:5 in English). The consttuction
is found, too,
in Nehemiah 9:15 and 9:23, in a sense not
distinguishable from that of the Daniel
passages.
In the nature of the case a verb with the
vague semantic field of ‘say’ would
inevitably be
exposed to wide fluctuations of meaning in
various contexts. Just as in English
‘say’ in the
mouth of a person of authority would have
the same force as ‘command’. Doubtless,
too,
Daniel’s primary language, Aramaic, often
influenced his Hebrew.
3. hattdmi‘d. Included in the list is

hattfimid, ‘the continual burnt offering’.
There would
seem to be even less justification for
including this than some of the other
terms. There is
ample evidence to show that Hebrew, like
many other languages, made wide use of
elliptical
expressions. In fact, one philologist (W.
Havers) has even gone so far as to speak
of ellipsis
as ‘a universal human tendency’. An
ellipsis can be defined as ‘a partial or
total omission of a
common member in corresponding groups’.
The effect that it has on the meaning of
the
residual member is that the semantic
content of the full phrase is now vested
in a single
member of the group. Ellipsis may take
two forms:
(1) The omission of what may be called

the specifying complement. For instance
hints,
literally ‘craftsman’, ‘artisan’, used to
describe a ‘smith’ may well be the result
of the ellipsis
of barzel,
[p.30]
‘iron’. Again qetoret originally meant

simply ‘smoke’, but, later denoted
‘incense’, possibly
through the omission of the word sammim,
‘spices’.
(2) The omission of the nucleus of a

specifying group. Of the many examples of
this, two
may suffice: qfidim, ‘east’, through the
suppression of m‘qh, ‘wind’, has the
meaning of east
wind. Again safiar, ‘horn’ or ‘trumpet’,
must have had a similar development. Both
Sumerian
and Akkadian know a breed of sheep called
sappam. They are often depicted on
Babylonian
cylinder seals, where they appear with
enormous horns. safiar was in all
probability the
qeren, ‘horn’, of such a sheep. In the
case of timid coming to mean ‘continual
burnt
offering’, the development would be a
familiar one. As an illustration of this,
we might take a
town in which there was a Church of St.
John and a Church of St. Paul. People
would
normally speak only of St. John’s or St.
Paul’s. In the case of hattfimid there
were a number
of familiar combinations, such as ’6lat
timid ‘continual burnt offering’; ’olat
habboqer,
W. J. Martin, “The Hebrew of Daniel,” D.

in the Book of
Daniel. London: The Tyndale Press, 1965.
pp. 28-30
‘morning offering’; ’6lat sabbat,

‘sabbath offering’; ’olat bodes,
‘offering at the New
Moon’. The nucleus here would be eta,
‘offering’, and through its omission, the
specifying
complement would take on the meaning of
the whole phrase. There is abundant
evidence to
show that such a process was operative in
Hebrew. It would indeed have been
surprising if
such a group as ” ’6lat hattfimid,
‘continual burnt offering’, had remained
unaffected.
The other words in Daniel’s list hardly

require special treatment. Some of them
have already
been dealt with by R. D. Wilson.2 One
item, at least, is dearly the effect of
Aramaic usage,
"lser lamma in the sense of ‘lest’.
To make out a plausible case for the

lateness of Daniel on lexical grounds,
one would have to
show not only that the words or idioms
did not occur earlier, but that there was
prima facie
evidence against the possibility of their
appearing. There is no intrinsic
probability that any
of the terms listed could not have been
used much earlier. In fact, one must
proceed with the
utmost caution in making pro nouncements
on the extent of a given vocabulary. It
is well
known that words that are not recorded in
the literary language are to be found in
the dialects.
All that one is justified in saying is
that a certain word occurs in the extant
documents for the
first time. There is nothing about the
Hebrew of Daniel that could be con
sidered
extraordinary for a bilingual or, perhaps
in this case, a trilingual speaker of the
language in
the sixth century BC.
All reasonable efforts have been made to
contact the current copyright holder of
this article without
success. If you are the copyright holder,
please contact me.
Prepared for the Web in July 2005 by

Robert I Bradshaw.
http://www.biblicalstudies
.org.uk/daniel.html
2 PTR, xxv, 1927, pp. 353—388.

Some Historical Problems in
the Book of Daniel
By D. J. Wiseman
D. J. Wiseman, “Some Historical Problems in the
Book of Daniel,” D. J. Wiseman, ed., Notes on
Some
Problems in the Book of Daniel. London: The
Tyndale Press, 1965. pp. 9-18.
A. DARIUS THE MEDE

1. The Problem. ‘The references to Darius
the Mede in the Book of Daniel have long
been
recognised as providing the most serious
historical problem in the book.’1 Yet the
Bible
clearly declares that after the death of
the Chaldean king Belshazzar ‘Darius the
Mede
received the kingdom, being about sixty-
two years old’ (Dn. 5:30-31). This Darius
was ‘son
of Ahasuerus, of the seed of the Medes,
who became king over the realm of the
Chaldeans’
(9:1). He ‘set over the kingdom a hundred
and twenty satraps, to be throughout the
while
kingdom; and over them three presidents,
of whom Daniel was one, to whom these
satraps
should give account, so that the king
might suffer no loss’ (6:1-2). Daniel
held a position of
authority at least during the first
regnal year in Babylon of this king (6:1;
9:1) and, according
to the traditional translation of 6:28,
‘Daniel prospered during the reign of
Darius and the
reign of Cyrus the Persian.’ Thus Darius
the Mede appears to have been succeeded
by Cyrus2
and this verse is considered ‘the
clearest evidence of the book’s belief in
a Median empire
between the Babylonian and the Persian’ .
3
On the other hand, contemporary extra-

biblical sources relate that Belshazzar,
co-regent with
his father Nabonidus, the last Chaldean
king of Babylon, died some time after the
entry of
Ugbaru, the governor of Gutium, with the
army of Cyrus into Babylon without a
battle on the
sixteenth of Tashritu.4 Nabonidus, who
had fled the day before, was probably
captured and
died in exile.5 Cyrus, who had remained
with his troops at Opis, entered
[p.10]
the city eighteen days later (third of

Arahshamnu = 29 October 539 BC) when the
temple
ritual had been restored and agreement
for surrender reached. He was received as
a victor and
deliverer with popular rejoicing and at
once sent greetings to all Babylonia.
Gubaru, his
governor, installed sub-governors in
Babylonia. The deities which had been
brought in by
Nabonidus to Babylon were restored to the
shrines in their own cities. On the
eleventh of
Arahshamnu Ugbaru died and later that
month some person, whose description is
lost
(possibly the wife or mother of the
king), died amid national mourning at the
end of which
Cambyses, son of Cyrus, entered the
temple.6 There is thus no room for the
reign of a king
Darius or for a ‘Median empire’ between
the fall of the Chaldean Dynasty and the
inauguration of the Achaemenid suzerainty
at Babylon.
1DTM,p.9.
21bid
3 J. Barr in Peake’s Commentary on the

Bible (ed. M. Black and H. H. Rowley,
1960), p. 597.
4 The Nabonidus Chronicle, text in Sidney

Smith, Babylonian Historical Texts
relating to the Fall of Babonn
(1924), pp. 98—123. Translation in AXET,
pp. 305—307; DOTT, Pp. 81—83.
5 In Carmania (Josephus, Contra Apionem,

I, 20—21, quoted by Sidney Smith, op.
cit., pp. 35, 105, n. 2 Isaiah
XL—LV(1944), pp. 48, 157, n.154).
6 The Nabonidus Chronicle, ii. 15—23.
D. J. Wiseman, “Some Historical Problems

in the Book of Daniel,” D. J. Wiseman,
ed., Notes on Some
Problems in the Book of Daniel. London:
The Tyndale Press, 1965. pp. 9-18.
2. The Gubaru Theory. Since the time of

Jerome there have been many attempts to
identify
Darius, but most of these have failed
with the discovery of cuneiform texts
which give an
exact and often contemporary description
of the main events of the period. H. H.
Rowley has
very ably discussed many of these
theories and shown that Darius the Mede
could not be
identified with Cambyses, Gobryas,
Astyages or Cyaxares.7 However, the view
that Darius
was a title of Gubaru, the prefect or
governor of Babylon and of the district
west of the
Euphrates, proposed by a number of
scholars8 has recently been revived, with
some
modification and additional arguments and
evidence, by J. C. Whitcomb.9 He sets out
to
answer the objections previously raised
by Rowley against this identification.
Although
Gubaru is nowhere in the cuneiform texts
connected with the name Darius, Whitcomb
follows
Albright10 in claiming that it is ‘highly
probable’ that Gubaru (whom he
distinguishes from
the Gobryas of the Behistun inscription)
did actually assume the royal dignity,
along with the
name ‘Darius’, which was perhaps an old
Iranian title, while Cyrus was absent on
an eastern
campaign.11 In support of such use of
double titles he instances that of
Tiglath-pileser, King
of Assyria, equated with his native or
Babylonian name of Pul(u) in 2 Kings
15:19-29, cf. 1
Chronicles 5:26. However, this argument
from silence, as the analogy of double
royal names
or titles, could with equal validity
apply to other identifications, and
perhaps with greater
probability where Darius is equated with
a person, such as Cyrus, otherwise
[p.11]
known to have held royal office. There is

no known instance of a governor of
Babylon, other
than a usurper, in the first millennium
bearing a royal title and claiming a
throne, as would be
required by this theory.
Gubaru is nowhere described as ‘son of

Ahasuerus’, and the defence that there
are similar
omissions (in the Nabonidus Chronicle) of
the name of Cyrus’s father, Nabonidus’s
mother,
or the ancestry of Belshazzar, is much
weakened by the fact that these
relationships are
ascertainable from other texts. Similarly
no evidence can be adduced that Gubaru
was a
Mede, even if it is agreed that ‘the
Medes, closely related to the Persians
both racially and
linguistically, were united under Cyrus’,
or that Gubaru, if identified with
Darius, ‘is
definitely in agreement with what we know
of the early Medo Persian history and is
not
contradicted by any Greek or cuneiform
records’.12 The identification of Darius
with Gubaru
also neces sitates the acceptance of
Whitcomb’s proposition that the Ugbaru of
the Nabonidus
inscription is not the Gobryas of
Xenophon, Herodotus and the Behistun
inscription, where he
is represented as a Persian, and Whitcomb
distinguishes this Ugbaru from Gubaru
(named
with Ugbaru in the same text) who became
Cyrus’s governor in Babylon.
Rowley’s strongest argument against the

identification of Darius the Mede with
Gobryas is
that there is no evidence that Gubaru
ever bore the title of king. Even the
royal prince,
Cambyses, who undertook the New Year
ceremony and ruled in Babylon for a while
on
7 DTM, pp. 12—43.
8 E.g. C. H. H. Wright, Daniel and his

Prophecies (1906), pp. 135—137. R. D.
Wilson, Studies in the Book of
Daniel (1957), pp. 128—220.
9 DM.
‘0 JBL, XL, 1921, p. 112 n.
11 DM. pp. 26—42.
‘2 Ibid., p. 29.

ed., Notes on Some
The Tyndale Press, 1965. pp. 9-18.
behalf of his father Cyrus, was never

himself then called ‘king’. The cuneiform
contracts
dated from the fourth year of Cyrus to
the fifth year of Cambyses (535-524 BC)
refer to
Gubaru only as governor (pihatu). It is
uncertain whether this is the equivalent
of the Persian
‘Satrap’ (khshatrapava).13 Even if it is
there is no evidence that it is the
equivalent of the
Aramaic title of malka used by Cyrus and
his successors.14 Whitcomb’s argument
that the
later Darius (Hystaspes) refers to
district governors as kings is open to
question. The reference
in the Behistun inscription (4:2—3) is to
clients or vassals, native Chieftains
left in command of
local and tribal territories.15 He
interprets ‘received the kingdom’ (5:30-
31)
[p.12]
as denoting subordination to a higher

power, Cyrus the Persian, by whose name
events were
dated (1:21; 7:28; 10:1) and whose reign
he considers to be contemporary.16 Thus
the
strongest point in favour of the
identification of Darius the Mede with
Gubaru is that he was a
provincial governor with subordinate
officials under him. There is no extra-
biblical evidence
to show that he was about sixty-two years
of age, son of Xerxes, a Median, or
called king of
Babylonia as required by the book of
Daniel.
Rowley concluded that the Darius of

Daniel was fictitious,17 the result of
confusion between
the fall of Babylon in 539 BC and that of
520 BC in the reign of Darius
Hystaspes.18
However, even if the Gubaru theory is not
accepted there is another which should at
least
keep the question of the historicity and
identification of Darius the Mede in the
book of
Daniel open.
3. The ‘Cyrus’ Theory. In 1957 I put

forward as a working hy o thesis the
possibility that
Darius the Mede is to be identified with
Cyrus the Persian king.1 It may be
helpful to review
this theory in the light of criticism
made of it by Dr. Whitcomb.20 The basis
of the hypothesis
is that Daniel 6:28 can be translated
‘Daniel pros pered in the reign of
Darius, even (namely,
or i.e.) the reign of Cyrus the Persian.’
Such a use of the appositional or
explicative Hebrew
waw construction has long been recognized
in Chronicles 5:26 (‘So the God of Israel
stirred
up the spirit of Pul king of Assyria even
the spirit of Tiglath-pileser king of
Assyria’) and else
where.21 Granted such an interpretation
it remains to examine how
’3 Ibid., p. 32. The exact neo—Babylonian

equivalent is ahiadrapannu, CAD A.l, p.
195
14 The title ‘King of Kings’ (Dn. 2:37)

is not a Persian title as often argued
(e.g. J. Barr, op. cit., p. 594), but was
used in royal inscriptions by both
Assyrian and Babylonian kings from
Tiglath—pileser I (c. 1100 BC) onwards
(E. A. W. Budge and L. W. King, Annals of
the Kings of Assyria (1902), p. 32, l. 30
cf. p. 265, l. 21,
Ashurnasirpal).
’5 Thus the comparison with the ‘King of

Sagartia’ of this inscription, if
interpreted as an aspiration for
independence (E. J. Young, The Prophecy
of Daniel (1949), p. 300, n.ll), could be
an argument against the
ascription of the title ‘King’ Gubaru as
governor of Babylon. The title ‘King’ was
used of a vassal who, though
subordinate to the central state,
continued to exercise local autonomy.
‘6 DM, p. 35.
’7 DTM, pp. 44—53, followed by many

writers, e.g. J. Barr, op. cit., p. 592,
‘a figure constructed purely on the
basis of a theory of the Median empire’.
‘8 DTM, pp. 54—60.
19 In a BBC broadcast subsequently

published in Christianity Today, II,
1957, pp. 7—10.
20 DM, pp. 46—49.
2’ Cf. Gesenius—Kautsch, Hebrew Grammar,

§154a, n.lb. Akkadian -ma is similarly
used. The same
interpretation would follow if the use
were explained as waw concomitantiae or
as pleonastic wa‘w (M. Pope,
JAOS, LXXIII, 1953, pp. 95—98; P.
Wernberg—Moller, JSS, III, 1958, pp. 321—
326). I cannot agree with

ed., Notes on Some
The Tyndale Press, 1965 . pp. 9-18.
[p.13]
far Darius might be a bi-name of Cyrus in
the light of the scriptural statements.
Cyrus as much as Gubaru could have been

called ‘a Mede’ by the Babylonians. By
550 BC
Cyrus had taken over Media and joined it
to the ‘Persian’ federation. When
Nabonidus in 546
BC declared that the ‘King of the Medes’
welcomed his proposed return from exile22
he could
at this time refer to no other than to
Cyrus, and presumably this title was
known as far as
Tema’ even though it has not been found
yet in other inscriptions. Although Cyrus
only uses
‘King of Anshan’,23 ‘King of Persia’,24
‘King of Babylonia’25 or ‘King of the
lands’26 in his
inscriptions, it cannot be denied that he
might also have incorporated the title
‘King of Media’
but that, if of Median stock, he did not
stress it in view of the unity of the
Aryan Medo-
Persian coalition under his rule.27 It is
noteworthy that nowhere does the writer
of Daniel
claim that Darius was ‘King of Media’.
It has been argued that ‘the phrase “seed

of the Medes” in Daniel 9:1 means that
the paternal
(as opposed to the maternal) ancestry of
Darius was Median’28 While descent from
Achaemenes and Persian lineage is
normally emphasized it need not be
surprising that the
grandson of Cyrus I (vassal of the Medes)
through the marriage of Cambyses I to
Mandane,
daughter of Astyages, should not despise
or renounce a claim to be ‘of Median
descent’,
which is all that need be implied by the
phrase.29 Herodotus
[p.14]
represents Cyrus correctly as son of a

Median princess30 and Xenophon as heir to
the Median
throne.31 While the unusual nature of
‘Darius (the Mede)’ as an appellation of
Cyrus the
Whitcomb (p. 48) that this is a waw of

contrast (‘Darius the Mede is set over
against Cyrus the Persian’) rather
than comparison. The verse 6:28 comes at
the end of a section of Daniel (5:35—
6:28) introduced by ‘Darius the
Mede’. The whole of 6:28 could be taken
as the explanation of the introduction of
a ruler’s name otherwise
unknown to the reader. Rowley’s View (p.
47 = Cambyses, with which Whitcomb
agrees, p. 48, n.23) that the
contrast between Cyrus the Persian and
Darius the Mede is so definite that no—
one could possibly suppose the
author to have known that they were
father and son begs the question. No
statement of the relation of Darius the
Mede to Cyrus is given except in the
verse in question.
22 C]. Gadd, AS, VIII, 1958, p. 77.

23 Cyrus Cylinder, 1. 12;ANET, p. 315;
DOTI", p. 92.
24 Dn. 10:1; 2 Ch. 36:23; Ezr. 1:2. A

title revived by Cyrus (Cylinder 2:15).
25 So on all contracts dated to his reign

in Babylonian cities. R. Parker and W.
Dubberstein, Babylonian
Chronology (626 BC—AD 75) (1956), p. 14;
J. N. Strassmaier, Inschriften von Cyrus,
Ko'nig von Babylon
(Babylonische Texte V, 8—9, 1890).
26 This title is added after ‘King of

Babylonia’ in most contemporary
contracts. For references see n.25 above.
27 Note that the references to the ‘law

of the Medes and Persians’ (Dn. 6:8, 15;
cf. 5:28; 8:20) emphasize the
unity of the realm. The writer of Esther
l:l9; cf. verses 3, 14, 18, cites Persia
before Media, perhaps as an
indication of his ‘Persian’ (Susian)
standpoint as opposed to Daniel’s Median
View. The influence of Media on
Persia is seen both in language (0P, pp.
8—9) and culture (R. N. Frye, The
Heritage ofPersia (1962), p. 77.
28 DM, p. 48.
29 The Achaemenid pride in Aryan descent,

as found in the Old Persian inscriptions,
does not preclude an actual
mixture of blood, R. N. Frye, op. cit.,
p. 97.
30 Though W. W. How and J. Wells,

Herodotus (1912), p. 389, consider that
‘Herodotus had no conception of
the birth and royal claims either of
Cyrus or Darius’. On the legends of
Cyrus’s birth see now R. N. Frye, Iranica
Antiqua, IV, 2964, pp. 40—42.
3‘ Cyropaedia, VIII. v. 19.

ed., Notes on Some
Persian could be a reason for the

explanatory note in Daniel 6:28, it
should be also noted that
the description of the later Darius (II)
as ‘the Persian’ (Ne. 12:22) could imply
the need to
distinguish the king of that name from
one who was already known in Babylonia as
‘Darius
the Mede’.
The identification of Cyrus the Persian

king with Darius the Mede accords well
with the
prophecies of Isaiah (13:17) and Jeremiah
(51:11, 28), who saw in the Medes the
conquerors
of Babylon.32 My argument here, however,
is directed to show that the traditional
close
connection of Medes and Persians under
Cyrus by marriage, conquest or
inheritance, and
language makes him a stronger candidate
for the appellation ‘the Mede’ than
Gubaru, for
whom the argument for such a description
is one of total silence.
4. Cyrus received the kingdom at sixty-

two years of age. From the Babylonian
Chronicle it is
clear that Cyrus was welcomed in Babylon,
received the citizens’ submission and
took over
the kingship.33 No-one questions the
often recurring statements of
contemporary texts, that
Cyrus was ‘king’ or that he appointed
subordinate governors. He appears to have
appointed
high officials or generals as governors
(e. g. Tabale at Sardis, Gubaru at
Babylon) only in such
places as he did not wish to have client-
kings. It is probable that the satrapy
system already
existed in the time of Cyrus, since the
title khshathrapanva is Median, and the
organization
was a development of the provincial
governorships initiated by the
Assyrians.34
That Cyrus was about sixty-two years of

age in 539-538 BC has
[p.15]
already been noted by Bengel35 and Sidney

Smith.36 Rowley thinks that at this point
the
author has ‘transferred the age of Cyrus,
which some tradition had preserved, to
Darius’. He is
thus forced to conclude that ‘his reason
for recording a detail of so little
significance to his
narrative is not apparent’ .37
Cyrus died in 529 BC after a reign of

nine years over Babylon dating from 539
BC, by which
time he had already ruled Persia for
thirty years.38 His reign over Anshan
could have begun in
558 BC,39 and a date of c. 600 BC for his
birth is not impossible, his grandfather
being
already King of Parsumas in 640 BC.40
32 It is possible that these prophecies

led to the employment of this title for
Cyrus in Dn. 5:30. It should be noted
that the identity of Cyrus with Media
accords well with Ezr. 6:2 which states
that the records of his decrees were
kept in Ecbatana, Media. Also the
tradition of Josephus (Antiq. XI 4.4)
that Daniel was removed by Darius to
Media.
33 H. H. Rowley (DTM, p. 52) rightly

shows that the phrase qabbe‘l malku‘lha
means ‘succeeded to the
kingdom’ without specifying the means and
does not denote a delegated authority (as
required by Whitcomb’s
View). A text from Sippar within the week
of its capture on October 10, 539 BC, is
dated to the ‘accession year
of Cyrus’ (BM. 56454, unpublished).
34 R. N. Frye, op. cit., p. 74; cf. DTM,

p. 40.
35 J. A. Bengel, 0rdo temporum
aprincipio... diviniae historicas (1770),
p. 181, referring to Josephus,
Antiquities, X248.
36 Sidney Smith, Isaiah XL-LV (1944), pp.

29—32.
37 DTM, p. 56.
38 Ibid., p. 55, n6 for references.
39 F. H. Weissbach, art. Kyros, in Pauly—

Wissowa, Realencyclopa'die, Supp. 4.
40 Sidney Smith, Isaiah XL-LV, p. 32, for

the argument that Cyrus was over forty
years of age in 556 BC.

ed., Notes on Some
It has been argued that since Cyrus was

the son of Cambyses he could never be
designated
‘son of Ahasuerus’ (Dn. 9:1). The
argument, again e silentio, that Gubaru
could have been so
designated is therefore said to be
stronger. It is, however, now recognized
that Xerxes
(Ahasuerus) may be an ancient Achaemenid
royal ‘title’41 and thus would be more
applicable
to the royal Cyrus than to the governor
Gubaru. Whitcomb implies that since
‘Ahasuerus’
occurs outside Daniel only in Ezra 4:6
and in Esther (also identified with Xerxes
I, 485-465
BC) it cannot be a ‘Dynastic’ title.42
This argument indicates that he would
seem to fall in
with Rowley, who believes that the writer
of Daniel, by mentioning Ahasuerus, is
conflating
two traditions. Whitcomb elsewhere
considers ‘Darius’ as a ‘dynastic’ or
royal title.43
It is submitted that, while it must

remain only a theory and be further
tested, the view that the
‘Darius the Mede’ could be another name
used of ‘Cyrus the Persian’ and as such
specifically
noted in Daniel 6:28 has support from the
text itself in that Cyrus was about
sixty-two years
old, received the kingdom and appointed
[p.16]
governors. Since he was probably known to

Nabonidus, his second cousin, as ‘king of
the
Medes’ a claim to Median descent as
echoed. by some classical writers is not
impossible. As
in the case of the Gubaru theory, there
is as yet no clear evidence for or
against the daim that
Cyrus was a ‘son of Xerxes’, or that he
bore another name.44 That kings in the
ancient near
east bore more than one name is
abundantly attested.45
If it is argued that a contemporary
writer would not refer to one and the
same person by such
distinct names as Cyrus the Persian and
Darius the Mede,46 then it must be
pointed out that
the use of the different names applies to
clearly defined sections of the book
(5:30-6:28; 9 and
11-12) which are given a single date
(‘the first year of Darius’). Further
investigation might
disclose some reason for this peculiarity
or literary preference.
If the interpretation of 6:28 given above

is accepted it disposes of the view that
the writer of
Daniel was depending on a popular
tradition and sought to distinguish a
separate ‘Median
empire’ on the basis of scattered
biblical references. Here was no author
granting the Medes a
place to accord with biblical prophecy
which led to the creation of fictitious
‘Darius’. This
new theory should lead to the re-
examination of any interpretation of the
four world empires
4’ R. N. Frye, The Heritage ofPersia

(1962), p. 97, cf. p. 95. This raises
further questions. If Xerxes was the bi—
name of a predecessor of Cyrus (not
necessarily of Cambyses since the phrase
‘son of’ could merely imply
descendance) then the frequently used
throne—names Darius (Median?) and Cyrus
(Old Persian Kurush, Greek
Kyros; perhaps originally Elamite Kurash)
could also have occurred in earlier
history. For Darius as a title and
Programmname see Reallexicon der Assyrio
logie, II, 1938, p. 121 (sub.
Da‘rejawo‘i). Did Isaiah (44:28; 45:1)
know of a surname Cyrus earlier than
Cyrus I (the contemporary of Ashurbanipal
of Assyria) who reigned c. 640
BC? Was ‘Cyrus’ one of the throne—names
of Achaemenes (c. 700— 675 BC)?
42 See p. 10 and n.10 above (DM, p. 48).
43 DM, pp. 27 f.
44 Josephus, Antiq. Jud. X. 11.4 says

that ‘Darius... had another name among
the Greeks’. However, with this
may be compared Strabo (XV.3.6), who says
that the original name of Cyrus was
Agradates.
45 As in the case of Assyrian kings on

the throne of Babylon.
46 As DM, p. 49.

ed., Notes on Some
which required a separate Median and

Persian empire,47 since the writer could
now be shown
to maintain the view of a single Medo-
Persian realm throughout.
B. DANIEL 1:1
‘In the third year of the reign of

Jehoiakim king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar
king of Babylon
came to Jerusalem and besieged it.’ The
problem raised by this statement is
twofold. First the
defeat of Pharaoh Necho II at Carcheniish
in 605 BC is stated to be in the fourth
year of
Jehoiakim (Je. 46:2). Secondly, the
Babylonian Chronicle seems to preclude
any action by
Nebuchadrezzar in Judah in 606 BC and
moreover makes no reference to any siege
of
Jerusalem in that or any year before 597
BC—Nebuchadnezzar’s seventh and
Jehoiakim’s
eleventh year.
Many solutions have been proposed. Some

assert that this statement is an
erroneous
interpretation by the writer of Daniel of
[p.17]
2 Kings 24:4 combined with 2 Chronicles

36:6-7.48 Others emend the text from
‘three’ (salas)
to ‘eight’ (semoneh) on the basis of
Josephus’s account of this period.49 In
various concordist
views the attempt is made to translate be
(‘came to’) by ‘leave for’, but this
again is countered
by the Babylonian Chronicle which,
although not giving the date of the
departure of the
Babylonian army in 605 BC for Carchemish,
shows that it did not return from a prior
campaign until Shebat (J anuary-February)
605 BC.50 The battle of Carchemish, which
opened
up the road across the Euphrates, is
dated between Nisan (April) and Ab
(August) 605 BC by
the same Chronicle and is most likely to
have taken place in May-June of that
year.
With the precise information available

from the Babylonian Chronicle it is clear
that the
Babylonians defeated the Egyptians at
Carchemish and, overtaking a part of the
army which
had retreated to Hamath, continued to
pursue stragglers ‘so that not a single
man escaped to
his own country’. The Babylonians overran
the country from the Euphrates to the
brook of
Egypt (2 Ki. 24:7), though Josephus
expressly adds ‘excepting Judea’.52 The
Babylonian
Chronicle claims that ‘at that time
Nebuchadnezzar conquered the whole of the
Hatti-land’
(i.e. Syria-Palestine).53
If, as has been suggested, Daniel is here

using the Babylonian system of dating
(postdating,
allowing for separate ‘accession’ year)
while Jeremiah (25:49; 46:2) follows the
usual
47 E.g. H. H. Rowley, DTM, pp. 138—160.
48 E.g. J. Barr in Peake’s Commentary

(1962), p. 592; cf. B. Alfrink, Biblica,
VIII, 1928, p. 408.
49 Antiq. Jud. X.6. I. This has no

support from the Versions. For a summary
of views on this verse see J. T. Nelis,
RB, LXI, 1954, pp. 387 f. (‘Note sur la
date de la sujétion de Joiaqim par
Nabuchodonosor’).
50 D. J. Wiseman, Chronicles ofChaldean

Kings (1956), p. 23.
5‘ Ibid., p. 25.
52 Antiq. Jud. X686.
53 D. J. Wiseman, op. cit., p. 25 (BM.

21946, 1. 8); the restoration Ha—[ma—a]-
lu‘ (Hamath) rather than Lia—[at]-
lu‘ is possible.

ed., Notes on Some
Palestinian-Jewish antedating (which

ignores ‘accession-years’),54 there is no
discrepancy. On
the other hand, it has been argued that
in Jeremiah 25:1 ‘the first year’
(hassdnd hdrosij) may
be interpreted as ‘the beginning year’
(i.e. accession) of Nebuchadrezzar and
therefore in
agreement with Jeremiah 46:2.55 Whichever
solution is accepted there remains the
question of
the siege of Jerusalem in this year, an
event unattested in the Chronicle. It
could be argued
that since
[p.18]
the Babylonian Chronicle recording the

events of 605 BC is primarily concerned
with the
major defeat of the Egyptians, a
successful incursion into Judah by the
Babylonian army
group which returned from the Egyptian
border could be included in the claim
that at that
time Nebuchadrezzar conquered ‘all
Hatti’. If so, Daniel 1:1 would imply
that the Babylonian
king was himself present. This is not
improbable since the energy of the young
king in
leading his troops is attested frequently
in the Chronicle.56
The argument against a specific

Babylonian siege rests on silence just as
must, at present, any
defence of it. It is not impossible that
the phrase ‘and besieged it’ (wayydsor
’dlehd) could
here have the meaning ‘and cut it off’ or
even ‘showed hostility towards it’.57 The
extant
historical data does not allow any
dogmatic assertion against the historical
accuracy of this
VCI’SC.
It would seem that Jehoiakim took part of

the temple treasure as a quire-offering
or as biltu
(‘tribute’) to buy off the Babylonians,
much as had Hezekiah in keeping the
Assyrians at bay
(2 Ki. 18: 13-16). Jehoiakim may have
been personally required to go to Babylon
to take part
in the victory celebrations as a
conquered and vassal king (2 Ch. 36:6).58
as had Manasseh in
the days of Esarhaddon (2 Ch. 33:11). The
Old Testament is our only record of both
these
events.
ABBREVIATIONS

are:

AOT The Aramaic of the Old Testament (H.

H. Rowley), 1929

Gressmann), 1927
54 So E. R. Thiele, The Mysterious
Numbers of the Hebrew Kings (1951), p.
151. He is, however, in error on
some of his datings (e.g. the Carchemish
battle) which were calculated before the
publication of the relevant
Babylonian Chronicles. See also H.
Tadmor, ‘Chronology of the last kings of
Judah’ in JNES, XV, 1956, pp.
226—230.
55 J. Finegan, Handbook ofBl‘bll‘cal

Chronology (1964), p. 202.
56 E.g. He rode from Riblah to Babylon

(c. 500+ miles) in about two weeks (D. J.
Wiseman, op. cit., p. 26).
57 This requires no emendation of the

text since stir occurs as a bi—form of
sara'r (Akkadian sara'ru). Possibly
revocalize wayya'sor. This latter
suggestion is doubtful however since the
verb (except in Nu. 5: 18 where I is
used, as sometimes is b, for ‘al with
stir and sara'r) normally takes the
direct accusative of the person or
object.
58 Dn. 1:2 might mean that the vessels

and not the king were taken to Babylon at
this time. However, Jewish
captives had been taken by Nebuchadnezzar
in 605 BC (Josephus, Contra Apionem,
1.19. 137).

ed., Notes on Some
ASc
ASD III, IV
BMAP
C II
CAD
DAB
DM
DTM
GBA
GO
H CC
HGB
HSD
MAO
MS
NB
NI
OP
PTT
SA
UE II
UM
Assyrian Sculptures in the British
Museum, Reign of Ashur-nasir-pal, 885-860
B. C. (E.
Ausgrabungen in Sendschirli III, IV (F.

von Luschan), 1902, 1911
The Brooklyn Museum Aramaic Papyri (E. G.

Kraeling), 1953
Carchemish II (C. L. Woolley), 1921
The Assyrian Dictionary (ed. I. J. Geib

et al.), 1956.
The Development of Attic Black-Figure (J.

D. Beazley), 1951.
Darius the Mede (J. C. Whitcomb), 1959
Darius the Mede and the Four World

Rowley),
1935
A Grammar of Biblical Aramaic (F.

Rosenthal), 1961
The Greeks Overseas (J. Boardman), 1964
Handbook of the Cesnola Collection of

Antiquities from Cyprus (J. L. Myres),
1914
A Handbook of Greek Black-Figured Vases
(J. C. Hoppin), 1924
‘Notes on the Aramaic of the Genesis
Apocryphon’ (H. H. Rowley), pp. 116-129
of
McHardy), 1963
Introduction to the Law of the Aramaic

Papyri (R. Yaron), 1961
Die Musikinstrumente des Alien Orients

(M. Wegner), 1950
The Music of the Swnerians. ..

Babylonians and Assyrians (F. W.Galpln),
1937
Nineveh and Babylon (A. Parrot), 1961
A Catalogue ofthe Nimrud Ivories (R. D.

Barnett), 1957
Old Persian Grammar, Texts, Lexicon2 (R.

G. Kent), 1953
Persepolis Treasury Tablets (G. G.

Cameron), 1948
The Stones ofAssyria (C. J. Gadd), 1936
Ur Excavations II, The Royal Cemetery (C.

L. Woolley), 1934
Ugaritic Manual (C. H. Gordon), 1955
Reproduced by kind permission of the

author. Prepared for the Web in July 2005
by Robert I
Bradshaw.
http://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/daniel.
html
The Musical Instruments in
Nebuchadnezzar’s Orchestra
By T. C. Mitchell and R. Joyce*
T. C. Mitchell and R. Joyce, “The Musical
Instruments in Nebuchadnezzar’s Orchestra,” D. J.
pp. 19-27.
The aim of this paper is to investigate

the possibilities of identifying the
musical instruments named in
‘Nebuchadnezzar’s orchestra’ in the third
chapter of the book of Daniel, and at the
same time to show that a date in the
sixth century BC for the use of these
instruments cannot
be ruled out on the present evidence. To
do this the method will be to assume a
sixth-century
date as a working hypothesis, and to
examine the extra-biblical sources for
any light they may
have to throw on the musical instruments
of the Ancient Near East.
The passage in question, which is four

times repeated, in Daniel 3:5, 7, 10 and
15, runs as
follows: qal qarna’ masroqita’ qayteros
s’abbeka’1 pesante'rin sumponeya welgol
Zené Zemara’. It
may be of interest to append a table
giving some of the translations of these
terms which are
given by various versions:
MT qeren mosréqi qayfro—s sabk pesantérin
sumpo—neya”
LXX salpinx syrinx kithara sambuke
psaltérion symphénia
Vulg. tuba fistula cithara sambuca
psaltérium symphénia
Knox horn flute harp zither dulcimer pipe
AV cornet flute harp sackbut psaltery
dulcimer
RV cornet flute harp sackbut psaltery
dulcimer
(bagpipe, mg.)
RSV horn pipe lyre trigon harp bagpipe
Luther po saune drommete harfe geige
psalter laute
Pléiade trompette flute cithare sambuque
psaltérion cornemuse
GBA §46 horn pipe zither sambuke psaltery
symphony
(harp) (bagpipe?)
Unfortunately for most of these words the

evidence of context provides nothing
since, except
for qeren, they occur in the Bible only
in this one phrase. All that the context
indicates is that
they have to do with music.
A. INSTRUMENTS KNOWN FROM ANTIQUITY
The monuments and actual examples from

excavations provide illustrations of many
different
ancient musical instruments. The only
drawback is that in many cases it is
impossible to be
certain what particular instruments are
represented. The following list of types
of instrument
known is drawn from a study of the
material from Mesopotamia, Syro-Palestine
(particularly
’6 The bulk of this paper is the work of

T. C. Mitchell; R. Joyce has supplied the
section on psalte'rion and
sympho'nia, pp. 25-27.
1 Spelt sabbe_a’ in verse 5; see below.
2 Knox : R. A. Knox, The Holy Bible, A

Translation from the Latin Vulgate...
(1955); Pléiade : F. Michaeli,
Daniel in La Bible, L ’Ancien Testament,
II (1959).
the so-called Neo Hittite states),3

Anatolia, Cyprus, and the Aegean. Egypt
is less extensively
drawn on since it is not so directly
relevant in the present enquiry, and
since it duplicates to a
large extent the evidence of the other
areas. Taking the instruments in the
general order,
percussion, wind, strings, those found
are: clapper,4 cymbals,5 sistrum,6
tambourine,7 drum,8
horn,9 trumpet,10 flute,11 double
pipe,12 lute,13 harp,14 lyre.15 It would

seem reasonable to choose
3 On this term see H. Frankfort, The Art

and Architecture of the Ancient Orient
(1954), pp. 164-167, 253-254,
n.4.
4 Infrequently shown, in third millennium
Sumer (UE, II, pp. 126-128; S. Langdon,
Excavations at Kish, I
(1924), pls. VI, XXXVIII; E. Mackay, A
Sumerian Palace and the A’ Cemetery at
Kish, Mesopotamia, II
(1929), pl. LXI, p. 160), and in sixth-
century Greece (HGB, pp. 300-301).
5 The principal example is in a relief of

Sennacherib from Nineveh, H. R. Hall, La
sculpture babylonienne et
assyrienne au British Museum (1928), pl.
XXXVIII.2 (:JWAO, no. 98 :ANEP, no. 202).
6 Best known from Egypt from the early

second millennium on (AJAO, nos. 19, 20,
41); fairly certainly
represented on Mesopotamian cylinder
seals of the third millennium (UE, II,
pl. 105, p. 260; L. Delaporte,
Catalogue des Cylindres... Muse'e
duLouvre (1920), no. A.172, pl. 74, p.
113; MS, pl. 113); on a carved steatite
vessel from Crete (H. Bossert, Altkreta
(1923), no. 95 (: AJAO, no. 42)) and in a
bronze example from
Horoztepe in Anatolia, c. 2000 BC (no. 81
in the catalogue of an exhibition held in
London, Hittite Art and the
Antiquities ofAnatolia, 1964).
7 This occurs both with and without disc

jingles in its rim, but when without it
could be interpreted as a small
hand-drum. In default of clear evidence
however all representations are treated
here as tambourines. There are
third millennium representations in
Mesopotamia (A. Parrot, T ello (1948),
figs. 37, 49; NB, fig. 383); examples
in the Assyrian reliefs (ASc, pl. XVI; NI
pls. XVI, XVII; H. R. Hall, La sculpture
babylonienne et assyrienne au
British Museum, pl. XXXVIII.2); and the
Neo-Hittite reliefs (AK, pl. XV.75; ASD,
III, fig. 259b; pl. LXII; cf
AJAO, no. 80); and on bronze dishes from
Cyprus and Olympia of the seventh century
(HCC, no. 1006; AJAO,
no. 84;AOTB, 112, no. 457).
8 UE, II, pl. 105, p. 259; MS, pl. 11.3;

NB, fig. 367; MS, pl. 111.2; NB, fig. 392,
show examples of all periods in
Mesopotamia; C, II, pl. B.18.b; AK, pl.
XI.55, show Neo-Hittite examples, and
there are specimens in pottery
from Ras Shamra and from Beycesultan in
western Anatolia of the early second
millennium (S. Lloyd and J.
Mellaart, AS, VI, 1956, pp. 128, 131, fig.
3, no. 18), but they do not appear in
Greek art of the early first
millennium.
9 Distinguished on the monuments by being

curved. It is attested in the second
millennium at Mari (A. Parrot,
Mission Arche'ologique a'e Mari, II, Le
Palais, II, Peintures Murales (1958), pl.
XXIII. I, pl. D (colour), p. 100;
other examples E. F. Schmidt, Excavations
at T epe Hissar, Damghan (1937), pp. 209-
210; NB, p. 309, fig. 390),
and at Carchemish in the eighth century
BC, but does not seem to figure in the
Assyrian reliefs (C, II, pl. B.18.b
: ANEP, no. 201). A horn also appears on
an early Greek Black Figure vase of the
seventh century BC (HGB,
pp. 82-83).
10 Found once possibly on a relief of
Sennacherib’s (A. H. Layard, Monuments
ofNineveh, II (1853), p. 15 A.
Paterson, Palace of Sinachenrib (1915),
ph. 32-33, MS, pl. LV.7; this is either a
trumpet or a megaphone, see A.
H. Layard, Discoveries in the Ruins of
Nineveh and Babylon (1853), p. 107 G.
Rawlinson, Five Great Mon
archies, I2 (1871), pp. 538-539), and in
a silver figurine of about 1000 BC from
Ephesus; G. M. A. Hanfmann,
‘A “Hittite” Priest from Ephesus’, A. J.
Arch., LXVI, 1962, p. 3, pl. 3.
11 Examples are known from the fourth and

third millennia in Mesopotamia (A. J.
Tobler, Excavations at T epe
Gawra, II (1950), pls. XCIX.b, c2, d (:
ANEP, no. 194), CLXXXII.11-15 and p.215;
UE, II, pp. 258-259 :
ANEP, no. 198; cf pl. 192.12) but do not
appear in later art. An example of the
sixth century is depicted on a
Corinthian vase (H. Payne,
Necrocorinthia... A Stuay of Corinthian
Art in the Archaic Period (1931), pl.
38.1,
5).
12 It represented on the Nimrud ivories

of the eighth century BC (NI, pls. XVI-
XVII, CXIX) and on the reliefs of
Ashurbanipal in the seventh century BC
(SA, pls. 40, 42; NB, fig. 392). A
twelfth-century carved ivory from
Palestine (W. M. Finders Petrie, Beth
Pelet, I (1930), pl. LVa), the eighth-
century Neo-Hittite reliefs (C, II, pl.
B.17.b : MO, no. 66 : ANEP, no. 200; AK,
pls. XI.55; XIII.68; XV.74), and an
eighth-century bronze dish
from Cyprus (AJAO, no. 83; cf HCC, nos.
1027, 1264) all depict double pipes. In
the Aegean it is found in the
Cyciadic figurines of the third millennium
BC (AJAO, no. 23), on a late second
millennium painted sarcophagus
from Crete (H. T. Bossert, Altkreta, nos.
71, 72), and in numerous representations,
mostly on pottery, from the
from these in any attempt to identify the

components of the orchestra described in
Daniel 3.
The great gaps in time when types are
unattested serves to highlight the
paucity of the
evidence for most periods, particularly
that of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, for
which
recourse has to be had to the Assyrian
monuments. One significant fact is the
apparent wide
distribution, especially in the first
millennium BC, of particular types of
instrument, for in
many cases the instruments on those
isolated islands of evidence we have—the
Assyrian
reliefs, the Neo-Hittite monuments, and
the Greek vase paintings—are surprisingly
similar. It
seems from this that the transfer of
musical instruments, perhaps through the
agency of
musicians’ guilds, may have been taking
place over long distances.16 That there
was
intercourse between the civilizations of
the Aegean and of the Tigris-Euphrates
plains has
eighth to sixth centuries BC in the Greek
world (DAB, pl. 23.2, pp. 59-60; pl.
43.2, pp. 86-87; HGB, pp. 82-83,
144-145, 216, 262-263, 280-281, 300-301,
343, 362-363; M. Wegner, Das Musikleben
der Griechen (1949), pl.
4a, p. 56; AOTB, 112, no. 457).
13 In the second millennium it was known

in Babylonia (A. Parrot, T ello, fig. NB,
fig. 380; AJAO, no. 63) and in
the seventh century in Assyria (SA, pl.
40), while it is found a little earlier
in an Imperial Hittite relief from Alaca
Huyuk (AJAO, no. 43, pl. 10a) and several
times in the Neo-Hittite sculptures (C,
II, ph. B.17.b :ANEP, no. 200
B.30.b; ASD, III, fig. 119, pl XXXVIII.a;
AK, pl. XV.76) and in a Mycenean context
in Cyprus (HCC, no. 1574).
14 The harp is very frequently depicted
in Sumer in the third millennium (UE, II,
pp. 249-258; L. Delaporte,
Catalogue des Cylindres... Muse'e du
Louvre, no. A.172, pl. 74, p. 113; NB,
figs. 372.B, 373.B, 374) and in the
second millennium in Mesopotamia (NB,
figs. 378, 379; H. Frankfort, The Art and
Architecture of the Ancient
Orient, pl. 59.B). It appears in the
Assyrian reliefs from the ninth to the
seventh centuries BC, often played with
sticks, making it perhaps more correctly
a dulcimer (ASc, pls. XVI.2, XIX.I, 2;
SA, pl. 22 : R. D. Barnett,
Assyrian Palace Reliefs (1960), pl. 90
NB, fig. 392). See also in general, W.
Stauder, Die Harfen undLeiern der
Sumerer (1957) and Die Harfen undLeiern
Vorderasiens in Babylonischer
undAssyrischen Zeit (1961 ). A sixth-
century occurrence may be noted from
Cyprus (HCC, no. 1265), but it is only
found in Greece in third
millennium marble statuettes from the
Cyclades (AJAO, no. 22).
15 This is very well attested in third

millenium Sumer (UE, II, pp. 249-258; NB,
figs. 366, 372; A. Parrot, Tello,
pl. XX.a, pp. 174-176 :JWAO, no. 26, pl.
6b) and later (NB, fig. 376), and in
different forms in the Assyrian
monuments (NI, pl. CXIX; SA, pls. 20 (:
ANEP, no. 202), 25, 42; NB, fig. 391; see
also the works of W. Stauder,
n. 14); also in Asia Minor in the second
millennium (H. Frankfort, Cylinder Seals
(1939), fig. 81, p. 250, n.2; H.
Goldman, Excavations at Gozlu Kule, T
arsus, II (1956), pls. 394.35; 400.35; cf
an unpublished cylinder seal
from Mardin in the British Museum, BM.
134306), in Cyprus (E. Gjerstad, The
Swedish Cyprus Expedition, I
(1934), pl. 76.67, p. 474) and at Megiddo
on an ivory (G. Loud, The Megiddo Ivories
(1939), pl. 4.2 :JWAO, no.
61, thirteenth century, with nine
strings) and on a Philistine pot (G.
Loud, Megiddo, II (1948), pl. 76.1, same
date, four strings). Examples also occur
from the tenth to the seventh century in
Cilicia (H. Goldman,
Excavations at Go'zlu Kule, Tarsus, III
(1963), pls. 162.10; 165.10, pp. 351,
357, and see E. Porada in S. S.
Weinberg (ed.), The Aegean and the Near
East (1956), pp. 185-211), Cyprus (HCC,
no. 2166; AJAO, no. 81),
and the Neo-Hittite carvings (A.
Moortgat, TellHalaf III, Die Bildwerke
(1955), pls. 100, 101 :JWAO, no. 70;
ASD, III, pl. LXII; AK, pls. XI.55,
XV.74). The Aegean, Crete and mainland
Greece have produced second
millennium examples (H. R. Hall, Aegean
Archaeology (1915), pl XXVIII : R. W.
Hutchinson, Prehistoric
Crete (1962), pl. 20; H. L. Lorimer,
Homer and the Monuments (1950), p. 456)
and then there are various forms
from the ninth to sixth centuries, mainly
on painted pots (DAB, pl. 36.1, pp. 77-
78, pl. 43.2, pp. 86-87); B. V.
Head, A Guide to the Principal Coins of
the Greeks (1959), pl. II, no. I.A.35, p.
35 (Calymna); H. Payne,
Necrocorinthia, fig. 44A, p. 119; pl.
34.3; HGB, pp. 55-56, 300-301, 406-407;
M. Wegner, Das Musikleben den
Griechen (1949), pl. la, b, p. 29;]WAO,
no. 82; AOTB, 112, no. 554, pl. CCXXI,
pp. 159-160; H. Lorimer, Homer
and the Monuments, p. 456. Another
instrument which appears once on an
eighth-century Nimrud ivory (NI, pl.
XVI-XVII) is a rectangle with strings of
equal length stretched across its shorter
dimension. This is sometimes
identified as a ‘psaltery’ (NI, p. 191).
16 Some of the common elements in the

early first millennium representations
from Nimrud (ivories), Cyprus,
Crete and sometimes Greece are perhaps
due to the distribution of artistic
motifs by the Phoenicians, but it seems
reasonable in general to assume the
presence of musical instruments in the
areas where representations of them
are found.
been made clear by the remarks of K. A.

Kitchen (below, pp. 44-48). Though in the
earlier
inscriptions the ia-man-a-a may have come
from Cicilia, they pro-
bably came ultimately from the west, and

in Achaemenid times Y auna fairly clearly
refers to
the Ionia of the Greeks.17
B. THE TERMS IN DANIEL 3
Turning now to the biblical terms,

etymology is a doubtful aid to meaning,
but it is possible
that some hints may be found there. Since
there are no discernible Semitic
etymologies for
most of these words, the hopeful
enquirer, having in mind the presence of
musical instruments
in the Neo-Hittite, the Hittite, and the
Aegean monuments, will turn to the word-
stores of the
Hieroglyphic Hittite, the Hittite, and
the Mycenaean Greek texts. An examination
of these,
however, yields no clear connections. The
remaining source is the Classical Greek
literature,
and it is here that connections have been
found, which will be considered. It must
be borne in
mind that these texts, like the
monuments, only provide islands of
evidence in the sea of
languages which must have been spoken in
the area in antiquity, and most of which
are now
lost.
1. qeren. As to the individual words,

qeren presents little difficulty since it
seems clear that its
primary meaning was ‘horn’ (of an
animal), and, by extension, the wind
instrument formed
from a horn.18 The Akkadian word qarnu
does not appear to be used of a musical
instrument
in the texts drawn upon by the available
lexicons,19 although this is one area of
evidence only.
Most of the versions and recent
translations take the sense to be ‘horn’,
‘cornet’, ‘trumpet’, or
something of the kind (see p. 19), and
this is the most reasonable type of
instrument, so far as
can be judged. In view of the rarity of
trumpets in the monuments the translation
‘horn’ is
probably to be favoured.
2. masroqt. In the absence of contextual

evidence, the only clue to the meaning of
the term
masroqt is through the possibly cognate
Hebrew verb saraq, ‘to hiss’, suggesting
some kind
of whistling instrument. If this straw of
evidence is accepted, the choice would be
between the
‘flute’ or the ‘double pipe’ with the
‘flute’ perhaps being the more likely, in
spite of its rare
representation in the later monuments,
since its note might perhaps be nearer to
a hiss than
the full-bodied note of the reed pipe.

There is not sufficient evidence to go
further than this.
3. qayfros. The word qayteros is

translated kithara by the Septuagint,
and, though it also
employs this term to translate kinnor,
‘lyre’, ne'bel, ‘harp’, negtna, ‘song
with string
17 R. G. Kent, OP, p. 204 and refs., and

see maps in A. T. Olmstead, History of
the Persian Empire (1948), pp.
xx-xxi; R. N. Frye, The Heritage ofPersia
(1962), p. 256.
183133, p. 901.
19 F. Delitzsch, Assyrisches
Handworterbuch (1896), p. 597 W. Muss-
Amoldt, A Concise Dictionary of the
Assynian Language (1905), pp. 932-933.
accompariiment’, and ‘ugab, ‘flute’,20 it

seems reasonable either to follow most
commentators
in taking qayteros as a loan-word from
kithara itself;21 or to take them both as
borrowings
from an unknown common ancestor, since
kithara is considered by some to be a
foreign word
in Greek.22 The word occurs in the form
kitharis in Homer,23 though here it
cannot be closely
defined from the contexts, and in
numerous examples in later Greek
literature where it is
clearly a type of lyre,24 in later times,
at any rate, an elaborated form of the
simpler lyra.25 The
variety of lyre types attested in the
Aegean, not only in the second
millennium, shows the
possibility of such elaboration by then.
It might, of course, be asked why the
Babylonians
should borrow a lyre from the Aegean, if
lyres were already well-attested in
Mesopotamia.
The answer could be that the kithara was
a special variety, not known to the
Mesopotamian
cultures.26 This opens the possibility
that one of the other terms used in this
passage in Daniel
might refer to another type of lyre, and
indeed, one of the reliefs of
Ashurbanipal from
Nineveh shows two musicians together, one
with an eight-stringed and one with a
five-
stringed lyre.27
4. s’abk. The term s’abk, occurring only

in this one context, is spelt with sin in
verses 7, 10 and
15 but with same]; in verse 5, a
variation which may point to a foreign
origin. It is commonly
connected with Hebrew flared, ‘lattice
work, network’, and the supposed verb
sabalg, ‘to
interweave’, suggesting a stringed
instrument,28 but this seems
unsatisfactory since no musical
instrument can be strung in a network
manner. The Septuagint translates it by
sambuke", and a
connection is suggested with this term in
classical Greek,29 where it is considered
to be a
foreign word, and indeed to have been
possibly a loan from Aramaic.30 Since it
has no
acceptable etymology in either language,
however, it may be that both s’abk and
sambuke"
came from a third, unknown source,
perhaps like qayt‘ros
and kithara.“ Even if this is so, the

meaning of the Greek sambuke", a four
stringed triangular
harp, or something similar, may give a
clue to the meaning of s’abk, though it
need not
necessarily be expected to have precisely
the connotation of the later classical
term. There are
a number of triangular harps in the
monuments, and in the Assyrian reliefs
these seem usually
to be horizontal,32 so in the absence of
other evidence the meaning ‘horizontal
harp’ can be
reckoned a plausible guess for this word.
Just as more than one type of lyre is
depicted on the
monuments, so is this true of harps,33 so
such an identification as this need not
rule out the
possibility of a different sort of harp
among the other instruments.
20 E. Hatch and H. A. Redpath, A

Concordance to the Septuagint (1897), p.
765.
21 BDB, p. 1111; H. H. Rowley, The

Aramaic of the Old Testamant (1929), p.
146; M. Ellenbogen, Foreign
Words in the Old Testament (1962), p.
148.
22 M. Ellenbogen, loc. cit.
23 Iliad 13. 731, Odyssey 1.153.

24Ls1, p. 950.
25 0CD, p. 588.
26 Such modern parallels as the

Stradivarius violin come to mind.
27 NB, fig. 391, p. 310.
28BDB, p. 1113.
29]bid
30 LS], p. 1582; E. Boisacq, Dictionnaire

Etymologique de la Langue Grecque3(1938),
s.v. ‘asiatique’.
31 As is suggested by H. H. Rowley,AOT,
p. 146.
32 E.g.ASc, pls. XVI.2; x1x.1, 2, SA, pl.

22.
33 Cf those cited in n.36 with SA, pl.

22. On harps from Babylonia and Assyria
in general, see W. Stauder’s
works, n.14.
5. pesante'rin, sumponeya. The last two

items of the list show slight variants in
the several
passages. sumponeya is omitted in 3:7 in
3:10 the Qeri has wesumponeya and the
copula is
actually found in the Kethib of 3:15.
These variants may be due to scribal
carelessness, but
alternatively it may be that the last
word was considered to be less important
than the others
and that its syntactical relationship to
the rest of the sentence was uncertain.
These two words are generally regarded as

borrowings from Greek, in which they do
not
appear until some time later than the
sixth century BC.34 The fact that the
words do not occur
earlier does not mean they did not exist,
however,35 and could have been made known
in
Babylon by traders, mercenaries or
deported artisans (see below, pp. 44-46)
at the time in
which Daniel’s life is placed.
There is general agreement as to the

identification of the psalte'rion
(pesante'rin), ‘a stringed
instrument of triangular shape’.36 The
word is not found before Aristotle,
although the verb
psallo is used earlier in musical
contexts.37 The absence of the noun may
be due to the fact
that it was not used in serious music.38
The identification of symphonia

(sumponeya) poses several problems.
According to S. R.
Driver39 it denotes in later Greek ‘a
bagpipe, an instrument consisting
essentially of a
combination of pipes...’. The noun is
first recorded by Plato, and in more than
one sense, e. g.
‘harmony of several notes’ Cratylus 405D

‘harmony of two notes’ Rep. 531A
‘agreement’ Legg. 689D
Later Polybius used the word describing

the activities of Antiochus Epiphanes
(26.10:31:4),
but here it could mean ‘orchestra’.40 It
is not an instrument in Luke 15:25.41
Consequently it appears that, if

sumpon‘ya is a borrowing of symphonia in
the sense of an
instrument, then its use in Daniel is
consonant with a late date for the
composition of the
book. Perhaps, however, an alternative
explanation may be found by considering,
sumpon‘ya
to be a transliteration of a dialect form
of tympanon, which occurs in the later
sixth century
BC if not before (Aeschylus, frag. 57).
This is supported by the following:
(1) The exchange of t for s before 1 and

y is a feature of East Greek dialects, e.
g. the Doric
pronoun ty is sy in East Greek,42 and the
syllables -si and -ti sometimes
interchange in
Mycenean texts.43
3“ E.g. s. R. Driver, Daniel (1900), p.

lviii.
35 Cf The New Bible Dictionary, p. 292.
36 S. R. Driver, Daniel, p. 38.

37 Heroclotus 1.155.
38 Cf 0CD, p. 588.
39 S. R. Driver, op. cit., p. 39.
“ml, p. 1689.
41 Cf A. Plummer, S. Luke4 (International

Critical Commentary, 1905), p. 377.
42 C. D. Buck, The GreekDialects (1955),

p. 57; E. Schwyzer, Griechische Grammatik
(1953), pp. 270-272.
43 M. Ventris and J. Chadwick, Documents
in Mycenean Greek (1956), p. 73; cf
possibly Philistine seren, Greek
tyrannos.
(2) tympanon sometimes appears as

typanon. Confusion over this may be
reflected in the
Kethib siponeyd (3: 10).
(3) The changed vowel in the second

syllable is paralleled by Ionic glassa
for glossa.
(4) The presence of at least one

percussion instrument would have been
appropriate in the
orchestra.
(5) If sumponeya represents symphonia in

the sense of ‘bagpipe’, its separation
from the other
wind instruments in the list must be
explained.
Another alternative is hinted at by the
textual confusion at the end of the list,
pointed out
above. The adjective symphonous occurs in
Hymm' Homerici, ad Mercuriurn 51
(probably
early sixth century BC) in a musical
context, and it is not impossible that it
is so used in
Daniel to qualify the whole clause,
signifying ‘in unison’.44
If these suggestions are accepted—and it

must be stressed that, in the state of
the evidence,
some of them are extremely uncertain—some
such tentative rendering as this might be
proposed:
‘At what time you hear the sound of the

horn, flute (?), lyre,
triangular harp(?), harp(?), drum(?), and

all kinds of music, you shall fall down
and worship.’
With such scanty material for any

identification of these instruments, it
may equally be argued
that a sixth-century date for the
orchestra cannot be categorically denied.
ABBREVIATIONS

are:
AOT The Aramaic ofthe Old Testament (H.

H. Rowley), 1929

Gressmann), 1927
ASc Assyrian Sculptures in the British

Museum, Reign of Ashur—nasir—pal, 885-860
BC. (E.

ASD III, IV Ausgrabungen in Sendschirli
III, IV (F. von Luschan), 1902, 1911
Bil/LAP The Brooklyn Museum Aramaic

Papyri (E. G. Kraeling), 1953
C II Carchemish II (C. L. Woolley), 1921
CAD The Assyrian Dictionary (ed. 1. J.

Geib et al.), 1956.
DAB The Development ofAttic Black-Figure

(J. D. Beazley), 1951.
44 The identification of sumpo'neyd as a

noun in apposition to pesante'rin (cf
ne'bel ‘as'or, Ps. 33:2), suggested in
The New OJgPordHistoy ofMusic, I, 1957,
pp. 245-246, does not preclude an early
date.
DM
DTM
GBA
GO
H C C
H GB
HSD
LAP
A/LAO
MS
NB
NI
OP
P T T
SA
UE II
UM
Darius the Mede (J. C. Whitcomb), 1959
Darius the Mede and the Four World

Rowley),
1935
A Grammar ofBiblical Aramaic (F.

Rosenthal), 1961
The Greeks Overseas (J. Boardman), 1964
Handbook ofthe Cesnola Collection

ofAntiquitiesfrom Cyprus (J. L. Myres),
1914
A Handbook of Greek Black-F igured Vases
(J. C. Hoppin), 1924
‘Notes on the Aramaic of the Genesis

Apocryphon ’ (H. H. Rowley), pp. 116-129
of
McHardy ), 1963
Introduction to the Law of the Aramaic

Papyri (R. Yaron), 1961
Die Musikinstrumente des Alien Orients

(M. Wegner), 1950
The Music of the Swnerians. ..

Babylonians and Assyrians (F. W.Galpln),
1937
Nineveh and Babylon (A. Parrot), 1961
A Catalogue ofthe Nimrud Ivories (R. D.

Barnett), 1957
Old Persian Grammar, Texts, Lexicon2 (R.

G. Kent), 1953
Persepolis Treasury Tablets (G. G.

Cameron), 1948
The Stones ofAssyria (C. J. Gadd), 1936
Ur Excavations II, The Royal Cemetery (C.

L. Woolley), 1934
Ugaritic Manual (C. H. Gordon), 1955
© 1965 T. C. Mitchell and R. Joyce.

Reproduced by kind permission of Dr. T.
C. Mitchell.
Prepared for the web in September 2005 by

RobertI Bradshaw
http://www.biblicalstudies. org .uk/

Issues Regarding The Book of Daniel

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ISSUES REGARDING

THE BOOK OF DANIEL

A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS BROUGHT TO

Big Picture Enterprises

The Aramaic of Daniel

* My thanks go to Mr. David Clines, Department

This subject has been closely studied by

Borchardt-Driver documents published in

In dealing with the book of Daniel,

1 See F. Rosenthal, The Aramaistische F

2 LOT), pp. 502-504, 508, and XXXiv-

3 In Biblical and Theological Studies by

4JBL, XLV, 1926, pp. 110-119, 323-325.

5 ZAW, XLV, 1927, pp. 81-133.

6 AOT and indirectly HSD. In English, at

7 J. A. Montgomery, The Book ofDaniel

8 Iranische Beitra'ge I, 1930, being Heft

9 See work cited n.1, above.

10 I use ‘Imperial Aramaic’ merely as one

11 Thus, on ‘inhaltlichen Kriterien’,

K.A. Kitchen, “The Aramaic of Daniel,” D.

In this study, the Aramaic of Daniel is

1. Basic West Semitic. For the purpose of

later than the fifth Century BC (e. g.

The meaning of these facts in either case

12 A sufﬁciency of this later material is

14 The accidents of preservation and

15 Including: Ugaritic (fourteenth-

16 Good examples, cf E. A. Speiser, JBL,

Turning to the one-tenth of unattested

dating evidence at all. Where nine-tenths

2. Hebrew and Akkadian Loan-words.

Akkadian words in Aramaic are also of

18 A random example or two from Semitic

’9 Cf previous note; a good example is

20 When such vocabulary is common to both

2’ See E. Forrer in E. Ebeling and B.

K.A. Kitchen, “The Aramaic of Daniel,” D.

Assyria.22 Thus, if one combines the

including bel-t’m (but not I’m) and ebr-

3. Persian Loan-words. The Persian words

22 See R. A. Bowman, JNES, V11, 1948, pp.

24 Zmn, ‘time’, is probably derived from

25 With E. Rosenthal, GBA, p. 59, §189;

26 Rowley’s twelve words are reduced to

K.A. Kitchen, “The Aramaic of Daniel,” D.

6 of them so far are not.27 (In the

In the Aramaic papyri collected together

(1) As generally admitted, the Persian

(2) If one compares the Persian

ments of the sixth-fifth centuries BC.31

Of the 19 words here accepted as Persian

K.A. Kitchen, “The Aramaic of Daniel,” D.

Dt, ‘law, decree’, also occurs in

(Similarly with Ezra’s Aramaic. Of the 13

is, three-quarters of the Persian words

(3) As for the Aramaic of Daniel having

34 Both under Darius I; for the view that

(hence Old Persian words in these texts

nuanced by G. G. Cameron, JNES, XVII,

35 CAD, 3/D, pp. 122-123. These, too, are

latter language was used as intermediary

of course, directly attested from Darius