“465. WRITTEN ROCKS—JOB 19:24”

Written Rocks—Job_19:24

Let us, today return to the passage in which Job desires for his words some enduring monument. He says, “O that my words were now written! Oh, that they were printed in a book! That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock forever!”

In an antiquarian point of view, this is a deeply interesting passage, being the earliest existing reference to the most ancient modes of writing—not to one of them, but to several, to all, in fact, that appear to have been known at the time this book was written.

The strange blunder of the translators about printing in a book, is calculated to provoke a smile, and is on that ground alone censurable. We knew a man by no means ill informed or unintelligent, who contended from this that printing was but the revival of an ancient invention known in the time of Job, with the only alternative that else Job predicted the invention, and declared his conviction that his words would hereafter be printed in a book—“and this has really come to pass,” he triumphantly added, deeming that his acumen had added one more to the long list of fulfilled prophecies. This carelessness is the less excusable, as the earlier versions are free from this fault. In them we have, “O that they were put in a boke;” Note: Roger’s Bible, and Bishops’ Bible. or, “O that they were written in a booke.” Note: Geneva Bible.

Still there might be something to mislead in the words “written” and “book,” not that they are absolutely incorrect, but that they have acquired more restricted signification than they anciently possessed. Not, however, to enter into questions as to the meaning of words, we shall give the translation which seems to us preferable—

“O that my words were now recorded!

O that they were engraven on a tablet!

With an iron graver upon lead;

That they were graven in a rock forever.”

The careful reader will here find four ideas, rising to a climax in the grandest and most durable form of writing.

Job first expresses a wish that his words were simply written down or recorded in the ordinary mode, without specifying any—neither shall we now, as there will be a future occasion to do so. But we cannot help pointing out the error of those who contend, from the text before us, that graving on metal or stone were the only modes of writing known in the time of Job, and, consequently, that there were no such things as books, or rather rolls (which was the ancient form of books), in existence. But why not? The world was already 2,200 years old at the very earliest date ascribed to the history of Job, and men inherited, through Noah’s family, the knowledge and accumulated improvements of the antediluvians. And as this is urged by those who insist upon the most ancient date of the history and the Book of Job, it may well be asked, How in the alleged absence of the means of copious writing, in the shape of books of leaves or bark, or rolls of skins (not parchment, which was later), linen, or papyrus, the Book of Job itself came to be written and preserved? No one will surely contend that a volume so large was engraven on stone, or even on metal. Further, in the time of Moses, materials for large rolls of writing existed, or how else were the books of the Pentateuch written, for only the ten commandments were engraven upon stone? Lastly, we have actual possession of Egyptian papyrus rolls of the most remote Pharaonic age; and through the sculptures, we are enabled to ascertain that this mode of writing was common in the age of Suphis, or Cheops, the builder of the great pyramid, more than 2,000 years before Christ, and therefore anterior to the age of Job.

The patriarch then goes on to engraving or writing on tablets. These tablets may have been of wood, earthenware, or bone. Waxen tablets we take to be of a later age, not well suited to a warm climate, and never used but for temporary memoranda, like our slates. We mention bone, in the recollection that the shoulder-blades of sheep were, in ancient times, and especially among pastoral tribes, the representatives of our ivory tablets.

Then Job comes to the process of writing on tablets of soft metal, with a pen or stylus of harder metal—with a pen of iron on tablets of lead. Metal tablets for the purpose of writing were composed of plates of lead, copper, brass, and other metals. These, as also tablets of wood, mentioned before, were either single, or frequently from two to five leaves were done up into a sort of book, something like our slate books. Lead, from its comparative cheapness and softness, and from the facility of beating out or melting down writing no longer useful, was much used, and was probably first employed for this purpose, though the prominent mention of it by Job does not imply that no other metals were used. It is stated by Pliny that sheets of lead were still in his time used for important public documents. A zealous antiquary of the seventeenth century, Montfaucon, states that he purchased in 1699, at Rome, an ancient book entirely composed of lead. It was about four inches long and three inches wide; and not only were the two pieces that formed the cover and the leaves, six in number, of lead, but also the pin inserted through the rings to hold the leaves together, as well as the hinges and the nails.

Leaden Book from Montfaucon

Leaden Book from Bonanni

Each of the twelve pages was charged with a gnostic symbolical figure, and underneath the four first are inscriptions, in Greek and Etruscan characters, unintelligible to him, but which might probably now be deciphered. The characters inscribed on every leaf are copied in Montfaucon’s work. He also gives from Father Bonanni’s Museum Kircherianum, the presentation and description of another leaden book, which had been taken from an ancient tomb, containing seven leaves inscribed with Greek, Hebrew, Etruscan, and Latin characters; all of which are declared (perhaps too summarily) to have been unintelligible. Both these books date probably not older than the early ages of the Christian era; but they adequately represent a custom of more ancient date.

Brass, as a more durable metal, was used for inscriptions designed to last the longest; such as laws, treaties, and alliances. These were, however, usually written in large tablets of the metal. The ornamental brasses on our own churches, many of which are still in good preservation, though many centuries old, illustrate this still more ancient use of tablets of brass. The stylus, or pen for writing on metal tablets, was sometimes tipped with a diamond; a circumstance to which there is an allusion in Jer_17:1.

It was certainly a grand idea for man to think of committing to the living rock, and of thus giving a magnificent permanency to the record of his history and his thoughts. There are rocks presenting cliffs so smooth, with stone of texture so soft, as absolutely to tempt the idle saunterer to write or to scrawl unmeaning figures on them. In time this would suggest the desirableness of inscribing harder rocks with memorials designed to last; and where a smooth surface was not naturally presented, the face of the rock would be leveled for the purpose.

Many such monuments of the most ancient date have been found in various countries, but none more extensive or remarkable than those in the Written Mountains of Sinai, which also derive especial interest from the locality in which they are found, so memorable in Jewish history, and not so remote from the place of Job’s abode—some, indeed, making it much nearer than we do—but that he might have known of them had they then been thus sculptured. It is not, however, likely that they were, though this passage shows that his view was directed to such monuments.

These inscriptions are found in the neighborhood of Mount Sinai; or, to speak more accurately, in the hills and valleys which, branching out from its roots, run toward the northwest to the vicinity of the eastern shore of the Gulf of Suez; insomuch that travellers now-a-days, from the monastery of Mount Sinai to the town of Suez, whatever route they take (for there are many) will see these inscriptions upon the rocks of most of the valleys through which they pass, to within half a day’s journey, or a little more, of the coast. Besides these localities, similar inscriptions are met with, and these in great numbers, on Mount Serbal, lying to the south of the above-mentioned routes; as also, but more rarely, in some valleys to the south of Mount Serbal itself.

Inscriptions on Rocks in the Wady Mokatteb

But the valley which, beyond all the rest, claims especial notice, is that which stretches from the neighborhood of the eastern shore of the Gulf of Suez for the space of three hours’ journey in a southern direction. Here, to the left of the road, the traveller finds a chain of steep sandstone rocks, perpendicular as walls, which afford shelter at mid-day, and in the afternoon, from the burning rays of the sun. These beyond all besides, contain a vast multitude of tolerably well-preserved inscriptions, whence this valley has obtained the name of Wady Mokatteb, or the Written Valley. Adjoining to it is a hill, where stones in like manner are covered with writing, and which bears the name of Djebel Mokatteb, or the Written Mountain. Intermingled with the inscriptions, images and figures of men and animals are of frequent occurrence, all executed in so rude a style, as may be well supposed to have belonged to the time, when men first began to inscribe upon the rocks their abiding memorials, and evidently with the same instruments and by the same hands as those which formed the inscriptions. Indeed, those who have taken the pains to copy portions of these, declare that it was often difficult to distinguish these figures from the letters. This suggests that the writers sometimes employed images as parts of letters, and, vice versâ, images for groups of letters. The letters are in an alphabetic character, not otherwise known to paleaographists, and many attempts have been made to decipher them, but not until lately with any degree of success. The inscriptions were first noticed by the traveller Cosmas in the year 535, and the character was even then unknown. He supposed they were the work of the ancient Hebrews; and says, that certain Jews who had read them, explained them to him as the journey of such one, of such a tribe, in such a year and month. This explanation might be understood to intimate that the inscriptions were made by members of the successive generations of ancient Israelites, in visits which they paid to a place so memorable in their history, and does not coincide with the more prevalent and lately revived notion, that this work employed the leisure hours of the Israelites during their sojourn in this quarter.

Passing by abortive speculations, we may mention the result of the investigations of Professor Beer of Leipsic, who made these inscriptions the object of special study. It is his opinion that they afford the only remains of the language and character once peculiar to the Nabathaeans of Arabia Petraea; and he supposed that if, at any future time, stones with the writing of the country should be found among the ruins of Petra, the character would prove to be the same with those of the inscriptions of Sinai. He did not know that the fact of this resemblance has been substantiated. But we can point out that in the (then unpublished though printed) travels of Irby and Mangles, mention is made of a tomb in Petra, with an oblong tablet, containing an inscription in five long lines, and immediately underneath a single figure on a large scale, probably the date. “The characters were such as none of the party had seen before, excepting Mr. Banks, who stated them to be precisely similar to those he had seen scratched on the rocks in the Wady Mokatteb and about the foot of Sinai.” This, from so accurate an antiquarian observer as Mr. Banks, is of more conclusive value than even that of the two gallant travellers themselves could have been; as the inexperienced eye fancies resemblance, where the experienced one finds large difference.

According to this view, the inscriptions will probably be found to have been made by the native inhabitants of these mountains. They are, as Mr. Banks well defines, rather “scratched” than engraven, and certainly present a very rude appearance. The contents of the inscriptions, as made out by Professor Beer, and so far as he has proceeded, consist only of proper names, preceded by a word signifying “peace;” but sometimes memoriatus sit, and sometimes “blessed.” Before the names the word bar or ben, that is “son,” sometimes occurs; and they are sometimes followed by one or two words at the end—thus the word “priest” appears twice as a title. In one or two instances, the name is followed by a phrase or sentence, which has not yet been deciphered. Among the names some Jewish or Christian ones have been found; and the words which are not proper names seem to belong to the Aramaean dialect. A language of this kind the Professor conceives to have been spoken by the Nabathaeans before the Arabic language prevailed over those parts, and of that language and writing he regards these as the only monuments now known to exist.

This somewhat disappointing theory seemed at one time likely to receive general acceptance; but it has now been given up, even in Germany, where the very learned Professor Tuch has argued for a date some centuries earlier than Beer’s explanation will allow; and the Rev. Charles Forster has just set forth a claim to the discovery of a new key to the reading and interpretation, by which he finds that they were the work of the Israelites during their sojourn in this wilderness. Note: The One Primeval Language traced fundamentally through Ancient Inscriptions: including the Voice of Israel from the Rocks of Sinai. By the Rev. Charles Forster, B.D. London, 1851. According to him, the nation, during their various wanderings after the passage of the Red Sea, and before the publication of the Pentateuch, Note: This is inferred from the absence of any quotations therefrom which would have been certain to appear in any inscriptions of posterior date. not in accordance with any public decree, but in its private capacity as represented by individuals, recorded upon the rocks among which it temporarily sojourned, the various miracles it witnessed, the sufferings and adventures it underwent. This is in itself not improbable. They came from a country possessed in all its members, high and low, with a rage for turning mountains into books—from a country which is covered with inscriptions of every degree of magnitude, wherever there is a rock to receive the chisel; and this familiarity with the practice might easily suggest to many of them, the fitness of employing their abundant leisure, in the giving the like enduring record to the signal events which had marked their pilgrimage. As rendered by Mr. Forster, these records comprise, besides the healing of the waters of Marah, the passage of the Red Sea, with the introduction of Pharaoh twice by name, and two notices of a vain attempt of the Egyptian tyrant to save himself by flight on horseback from the returning waters; together with hieroglyphical representations of himself and his horse. They comprise, further, the miraculous supplies of manna and of flesh, the battle of Rephidim, with the mention of Moses by his office, and of Aaron and others by their names; the same inscription repeated, describing the holding up of Moses’ hands by Aaron and Hur, and their supporting him with a stone, illustrated by a drawing apparently of the stone, containing within it the inscription, and over it the figure of Moses with uplifted hands; and lastly, the plague of fiery serpents, with the representation of a serpent in the act of coming down as if from heaven, upon a prostrate Israelite.

These references to the recorded events of the Exodus, compose, however, but a small part of the Sinaite inscriptions as yet in our possession; the great mass of which, Mr. Forster informs us, consist of descriptions of rebellious Israel, under the figures of kicking asses, restive camels, rampant goats, sluggish tortoises, and lizards of the desert.

Among other objections that may be urged against the interpretation thus furnished, is, that a people not enjoined to this work, but (as this author supposes) doing it spontaneously as a sort of labor of love, would be little likely thus to work to perpetuate the memory of their misdeeds and unbelief under such degrading images. The theory is open to other objections of even more weight than this, but in the face of all these, the evidence produced is very strong, if not, as yet, altogether so conclusive as to be implicitly received, that, as we were formerly taught to believe, we have in these inscriptions the autographic memorials of Israel’s sojourn in the wilderness.

The following are a few specimens of Mr. Forster’s translations of these inscriptions—

“The red geese rise from the sea;

Lusting, the people eat of them.”

“The hard stone the people satiates with water thirsting.”

“Prayeth unto God the prophet [upon] a hard great stone, [his] hands sustaining Aaron, Hur.”

“The people Moses provoketh to anger, kicking like an ass.”

“[At] the water springs muster the people, raileth against Jehovah crying out.”

“The people at Marah drinketh like a wild ass.”

“The people of the Hebrews biddeth begone Jehovah.”

Autor: JOHN KITTO