An imaginary portrait of Nimrod, the Assyrian hero, killing the lion. From the walls of the Palace at Khorsabad, the Resen of Gen. x. 12; in Bonomi's Nineveh.

The sculptor has represented him, not as a man who would fight with sword or spear, but as a giant, or demigod, who has no need of such weapons. The ancient city of Nineveh is now called by its yet more ancient name of Nimroud. The hero was probably named after the city.

Lion-hunting was one of the favourite amusements of the Assyrian kings. It is represented in a variety of ways on the sculptures in the British Museum. On one the lion is brought in a cage to the hunting-ground, and the door of the cage is opened for him to furnish sport to his pursuers, as our own huntsmen start a stag out of a cart, or a fox out of a bag.

GENESIS, X. 11, 12.

"Out of that land went forth Asshur [or the Assyrians], and builded Nineveh, and the city Rehoboth, and Calah, and Resen between Nineveh and Calah: the same is a great city."

36

Nineveh, from the survey by Felix Jones, including

Nimroud, or Nineveh proper,

Rehoboth,

Mosul

which four cities are together often spoken of under the

one name of Nineveh; as in the Book of Jonah, where it is described as a city of three days' journey. Nimroud was probably the oldest city. By its position we see that it is the Larissa of Xenophon; though that name more closely resembles Resen. Calah, or Halah, was a hill-fortress. Koiyunjik was the residence of the great Kings of Assyria. There was the palace of Sennacherib, and from thence was brought the large body of sculptures now in the British Museum. Mosul, called Mespila by Xenophon, was an open, unfortified town, or suburb.

GENESIS, X. 30.

"And their dwelling [of the sons of Joktan, the Arabs] was from Mesha [on the Persian Gulf], as thou goest unto Sephar, a mount of the east."

Writing from the rocks in Wady Mokatteb, the written valley, a valley at the foot of Mount Serbal; from whence, to the summit, the path of the pilgrims is marked by a continual series of inscriptions, which point out Serbal as the Holy Mountain, here called Sephar, the Written Mountain. See the Note on Num. xxxiii. 23. All the inscriptions that now remain are probably more modern than the Christian Era. The rude characters are, many

of

them, so far unlike the Hebrew letters that they cannot be read, but part of the above may be thus written in Hebrew, and translated :—

Some few of the inscriptions are in Greek, and begin with the same thought-that they are written "in memory of" the person therein named. Whether each was written by the man himself, as a passing pilgrim, or by his companions on his death, is doubtful.

Our text would be better translated, "as thou goest unto Sephar, the mountain which was of old."

GENESIS, XII. 15.

"The princes also of Pharaoh saw her [Abraham's wife], and commended her before Pharaoh."

ས།

The word "Pharaoh," the Egyptian for "the King," written in hieroglyphics. The figure of the sky is Pa,

the; the bird, the vowel A or Ou; the sun, Ra; making Pa-ouro, the king. It was a title common to all the sovereigns of Egypt; and also to many of the rulers of small portions of the country, when in the beginning of its history the country was divided into several monarchies. The name of Poti-pherah, ch. xli. 45, may be translated "servant of Pharaoh."

But

Which of the Pharaohs is here meant is quite unknown. The Pharaoh also, who was living in the time of Joseph, is equally unknown; and that in the time of Moses, can be pointed to in Egyptian history only by conjecture. the Pharaoh who fought against Rehoboam, and those mentioned in the Prophets, are all kings whose lives are well known. Again, the name is doubtful of the last Pharaoh mentioned in the Bible, whose daughter was married to a son of the high priest Ezra.

GENESIS, XXXIII. 19.

"And he bought a parcel of a field, where he had spread his tent, at the hand of the children of Hamor, Shechem's father, for an hundred [Kesitahs or] pieces of money."

The old interpreters, says Gesenius, all explain the word Kesitah to mean a Lamb. And when we remember that the ancient Roman weight, the As, was stamped with a bull, and the Assyrian weight the Maneh (See Note on Ezekiel, xlv. 12), was in the form of a Lion, it seems by no means improbable that there should also have been a weight