The cuneiform inscriptions and the Old Testament - The Search For ...

108 TEE CUNEIFOBM INSCRIPTIONS AND THE 0. T.
must place South-West of Media, South of Turnat-Torna-
dotus in North-East Babylonia, somewhere in the present
region of Jereztir; see Keilinsch. u. Gesch. p. 169 footnote
I 70 footn. But, as I have already pointed out, ibid. p. 1 70,
the sign standing for nam or §im has never yet been shown
to possess the phonetic syllabic power zim; nor have we
met with an orthography consisting in a resolved first
syllable Zi-im-ri. Moreover the name is often written Namar
in the inscr. of Nebukadnezzar I (about 1 130 B. C).
26. "?|?^??^ '^^pi and the king of Sheshach. From the
context as well as from the parallel passage chap. LI, 41
it can scarcely be a matter for doubt that we must under-
stand by this title the king of Babylon. According to the
principle of the Athbash* alphabet, ""Oi^'^? in Jerem. LI, 1
is equivalent n''W'2. In the same way it was thought
that ']L5'I2^ was to be taken as equivalent to ^32. On the
other hand it has recently been pointed out by Lauth in
the Proceedings of the Soc. of Biblical Archaeol. 1881,
Jan. 11. pp. 47— 8 and also by Delitzsch, Parad. pp.
214 foil., that in an ancient Babylonian regal register 11
(10) kings of Si§-kti-KI are enumerated on the reverse
of the tablet opposite to, or in other words, subsequent to
I I other kings of D i n - 1 i r - KI , i. e. of Babylon (see
Pinches ibid. 1880, Dec. 7. p. 21). Delitzsch is of
opinion that the reproduction of the name D''*12^D by ^Op~37
is simply due to an imitation of the misunderstood and
wrongly interpreted 1^^^. The passage Jer. LI, 41, where
[* The secret alphabet called Athbash (tJ^^'pN) '"'^.s so named
because the first eleven characters of the Hebrew alphabet ({< to 3)
were taken as respectively equivalent to the last eleven characters in
reverse order (i. e. j^ to ^)—Translator.]