BABYLON AND PERSIA

246 MEDIA, BABYLON, AND PERSIA.the founder, Egibi, " was probably at the head ofthe house in the reign of Sennacherib, about 685B.C."Professor Friedrich Delitzsch has quite latelycome to the conclusion that the name Egibi is theequivalent to the Hebrew Yakub (Jacob),* fromwhich fact he infers that the great banker musthave been a Jew, probably of those carried into cap¬tivity by Sargon out of Samaria.fHe remarks,that many of the tablets bear unmistakably Jewishnames, and thinks they will yet .shed many a lighton the life and doings of the Hebrew exiles in Baby¬lon and other Chaldean cities.If this philologicalpoint is established, it would be curious to note athow early a date the blessing uttered on the race inDeuteronomy (xxviii., 12):"Thou shalt lend untomany nations and thou shalt not borrow," began totake effect.16. However that may be, the firm of " Egibi andSons" had reached its climax of wealth and powerunder Nebuchadrezzar, a century after its founda¬tion, having weathered the storms of the two sieges,under Sennacherib and Asshurbanipal, as they wereto pass unscathed through several more similar po¬litical crises, protected by their exceptional position,which made them too useful, indeed too necessary, tobe injured. " All the financial business of the court,"Professor Fr. Delitzsch tells us, " was entrusted to thisfirm through several centuries.They collected thetaxes with which land, and the crops of corn, dates,*See article " Gefangenschaft," in the Calwer Bibel-Lexikon ;also, Zeitsckriftfiir Keilschri/tforschung lor 18S5, pp. 168, 169.f See " Story of Assyria," p. 247,