much earlier than the date (332 B.C.) assigned by Dr. Driver as the very earliest possible for the composition of Daniel, on the ground of its containing two Greek words. Moreover, these words in the papyri are not the names of two musical instruments among a group of the same kind, as in Daniel. One is the name of a Greek coin, a second that of a colour, the third denoting an article of Greek dress. Nor are the words found all together in a group: they are scattered in different manuscripts. If we apply Dr. Driver's argument to them, it breaks down utterly. Is not the same conclusion inevitable when applied to the Book of Daniel? If the occurrence of three, or even four, Greek words in these papyri does not (and cannot, because of the dates of the documents) prove their date to be that of Alexander the Great, or perhaps much later, how can two Greek words in Daniel 'demand" the assignment of the book to a late date? It can hardly surprise us if a few Greek words found their way in return into, not the cultivated Babylonian vernacular, but the colloquial Aramaic, the lingua franca of the mercantile community of the Jews resident in Babylonia in the latter part of the sixth century before our era. At any rate, even if the date of Daniel be held to be more recent than this, the existence of Greek words in the book cannot demand" its relegation to the period after the Macedonian conquest of Palestine. The Book of Daniel may well belong, even on the grounds chosen by Dr. Driver for argument, to somewhat the same time as the writing of the Assouan-Elephantine papyri.

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What period was this? and what certainty of the date can there be? It is not a matter of conjecture but of certainty. Many of the Assouan-Elephantine papyri have the date of writing given in them even more precisely than our modern letters and other documents. They mention not only the year but the month (often in two calendars, the Egyptian as well as the HebrewAramaic) and the day of composition. In some cases, the papyri being somewhat torn or worm-eaten, the date can no longer be read; but the number of documents in which these particulars are preserved is sufficient to shew that they all belong to the period between 500 and 400 B.C. Thus, taking Arthur Ungnad's little collection entitled Aramäische Aramäische Papyrus Papyrus aus Elephantine, the first document a letter from the Jewish community of Yeb (Elephantine) to Bagoas (in the original Bagohi), Persian Governor of Judæa (mentioned by Josephus in Ant. of Jews, XI, vii, 1), complaining in forcible language of the destruction of

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the Jewish Temple at Elephantine three years previously-is dated: "20th of Marcheswan, year 17th of Darius the King. Darius II reigned from 424 to 405 B.C., it is not difficult to discover that the appeal was written in 407 B.C. In the same way, omitting the days and months (the latter, as I have said, often given in two notations), other papyri are dated as follows :—

Ungnad, Doc. 2a, Strassburg Papyrus, 14th year of Darius II,

410 B.C.

Ungnad, Doc. 5, Cairo Mus., P. 13480, 37th year of Artaxerxes I, 428 B.C.

Ungnad, Doc. 6, Cairo Mus., P. 13464, 5th year of Darius II, 419 B.C.

Ungnad, Doc. 8, Cairo Mus., P. 13492, 12th year of Darius II, 412 B.C.

*Ungnad, Doc. 15, Cairo Mus., P. 13470, 15th year of Darius II, 409 B.C. (?)

Ungnad, Doc. 27, Cairo Mus., P. 13493, 2 ? year of Xerxes (?)

482 B.C.

Ungnad, Doc. 29, Cairo Mus., P. 13475, 2 ? year of Xerxes (?) 483-2 B.C.

Ungnad, Doc. 28, Cairo Mus., P. 13467, 4th year of Artaxerxes I., 461 B.C.

Ungnad, Doc. 30, Cairo Mus., P. 13491, 9th year of Artaxerxes I, 456 B.C.

Ungnad, Doc. 31, Cairo Mus., P. 13489, 27th year of Darius I, 494 B.C. (?)

Ungnad, Doc. 37, Cairo Mus., P. 13476, 5th year of Amyrtaeus, circa 400 B.C.

* Papyrus No. 13470 had a number, now illegible, after the 15. It is not absolutely certain, though very probable, that the name erased in P. 13475 is that of Xerxes. In P. 13489 there is some slight doubt whether Darius I or Darius II is the king referred to. Ungnad's note runs thus: "The No. 20 is not quite clear: it has not the usual shape. That a 10 is meant is not completely excluded. In the latter case we are dealing with the seventeenth year of Darius II (424–405); in the former case only Darius I (521-486) would come into consideration, for Darius II reigned only nineteen years. Then our document would be (from the year 494) the most ancient Papyrus from Elephantine. The writing, however, speaks rather in favour of Darius II." If the latter king is meant, the document dates from 407 B.C., and P. 13493, of B.C. 482, is the earliest.

As the last date which Daniel the Prophet mentions in the tenth chapter of his Book is the third year of Cyrus, 535 B.C., the interval between the composition of the Book, if ended then (and it may not have been composed for some years later, if we for the moment presume it to be genuine) and the writing of the earliest of the Assouan-Elephantine Aramaic documents would be very short, not more than forty-one years, if P. 13489 be the oldest in the collection, and only fiftythree years if P. 13493 occupy that position. We must now enquire whether the language of the Book shows any reason to suppose that, instead of being by that short period of years earlier than the recently discovered documents, the Book is really more recent. Dr. Driver's attempt to prove this by the evidence of two Greek words in Daniel seems to me to have failed, since these Egyptian-Aramaic papyri contain at least three, and are certainly not compositions of the post-Alexander period. As these documents extend over the greater part of a century, deal with a considerable variety of subjects, from the destruction of a Jewish temple and the request for permission to rebuild it, to legal documents, agreements and correspondence, we ought to be able in some degree to estimate the amount of change in the Aramaic language which took place during the fifth century B.C. We may also learn to what extent the language was being affected by Persian influences, whether the grammar agrees at all closely with that of the Aramaic of Daniel, and whether the amount of Persian in Daniel is or is not in excess of that found in these Aramaic papyri, which, if the Higher Critics are right, must have been written a long time, possibly several centuries, before the Book of Daniel. If, on the other hand, the traditional view of the date of the Book is correct, it was composed such a short period before these documents in Egyptian Aramaic that the resemblance between them should be great. The Aramaic of Ezra should also be taken into consideration, since, if genuine, some chapters belong to the period during which the AssouanElephantine papyri were drawn up. It is evident that we have a mass of information at our disposal which should yield important results when carefully studied.

Dr. Driver calls attention to the number of Persian words used in Daniel especially in the Aramaic part of the Book. These he estimates at fifteen, though he is of opinion that there are two more (“Daniel,” pp. lvi and lvii). There is not the slightest doubt that all these seventeen words are Old Persian, as I now proceed to show.

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1. Partěmīm, Dan. i, 3, 6 (cf. Esther i, 3; vi, 9) is the Hebrew plural of the Avestic Persian word Fratema, "foremost," and hence "Chief, Leader." In Achæmenian Persian the word is Fratama, "first," so we have in that dialect "fratamā martiyā,” leading men : Dahvyunam fratemā-dhātō" in Yasht x, 18 = prae-positus (prae-fectus) provinciarum." In the word we are considering we have the superlative of the root Fra, of which the comparative occurs in the Strassburg Papyrus (Ungnad 2a, line 4), in the word Fratara-k(a), with the termination -ka. The word denotes an officer of a certain rank.

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2. Pathbag (Dan. i, 5, 8, etc.): rightly explained in the B.D.B. Hebrew Lexicon as Avestic pati-baga, " special portion," i.e., food assigned to the king; in Ass. it appears as pati-pa-baga* (Hilprecht, Series A, Vol. IX): Sans. prati-bhāga, share, division, present of fruit, flowers, to a king.

3. Azdā from the Gathic azda, Vedic Sanskrit addhā, from a, this: = thus, certainly, = certain. In the Strassburg Pap., line 3, azda occurs, = enquiry, information: Armenian azd notice, information; azd linel, to be informed; azdem, I inform. In papyrus 13480, lines 5 and 7, the Persian azdakara occurs, meaning "an intelligence officer," perhaps.

=

4. Haddām: the Avestic han-dāma, limb; in Syr. and later Aramaic the word occurs only as verb in Pa'el," to dismember." 5. Dath law. Avestic Dathem, n., law, justice, from root dā, Sans. dha. The word seems undoubtedly Persian [though its Babylonian origin might be asserted, for in Ass.-Bab. inscriptions (Knudtzon," Assyr. Gebete an den Sonnengott," Nos. 293, and 1, 23, 116, b, 21, etc.) we find Dītu, dīti, dati, meaning "decision, rule, law," perhaps from the Semitic root dun, din, to judge. For example: "Dati sha imni wa shumēli ishten-ta-an ḥalqa, "The laws of the right hand and of the left hand have perished every one" (Muss-Arnold, p. 270)]. If Dati, etc., are really from the Persian, their occurrence in Assyrian inscriptions of this class shows that a certain number of Persian words had been introduced into the written classical Assyrian even before the Persian conquest. A few such words, as we shall see later, had thus been borrowed from the Persian before Cambyses' time. In both the AssouanElephantine papyri and in Assyrio-Babylonian tablets, principally of the time of Artaxerxes I (466-425 B.C.), the compound

* Vide p. 228, No. 27, below. The extra -pa is probably a mistake of the scribe.

Databär, Persian tax-gatherer, occurs not infrequently. Such officials become numerous in Babylonia (Hilprecht, Bab. Exp. of Univ. of Pennsylvania, Series A, Vol. IX, p. 8).

6. Aḥashdarpān: Satrap. Achæmenian Persian Khshatrapavan, from Khshatra, realm, and root pā, to protect. Hence Greek ἐξατράπης, σατράπης. The for khsh recalls the English habit (in Bombay) of representing the Sansk. Ksh by x.

7. Rāz: a secret, = Avestic razah, loneliness; Sansk. rahasya, secret. (It is retained in Pahlavi and modern Persian rāz, a secret.)

8. Adargāzar: an official title, perhaps "counsellor." Avestic Adhara, within, and perhaps root ghzhar, to flow.* Whether the mediæval Persian andar-zhaghar is connected with our word may be doubted.

:

9. Zan P. 13480, "Kind, sort"; Achæmenian and Avestic zana, race (of men); Armenian zan, sort. Root jan. Av. zan. 10. Pithgām: message, decree; word, thing. Achæmenian Pati-gāma, from Pati-gām, to come to; Armenian patgam; mod. Persian paighām, a message.

11. Haddabar: cf. Eg.-Aramaic hamda-kar (P. 13492, line 4); the doubled d representing md or nd, the words probably formed similarly, only kar (doer) for bar (bearer). [Or possibly Haddabar for Haudabar, from Achæmenian Khauda-bar, Avestic Khaoda-bar, “helmet-bearer."] But perhaps Driver is right in suggesting gadābar, as in the Eg.-Aram. papyri the h (71) closely resembles the g (^).

12. Gadabar: Avestic gadhavara (which, if it occurred, would be gadāvara in Achæmenian, club-bearer; from gadhā, a mace, club (perhaps, as Ungnad says, a club for throwing). In the Avesta the term gadhavara is applied to Keresāspa, just as the equivalent gadha-bhrit in Sanskrit is to Krishna and the Latin claviger to Hercules. In modern Persia the mace-bearer (chub-dār) " carries a long staff with a large head covered with embossed silver." In India at native courts the mace-bearer is in Urdu styled sonṭe-bar-dār. Xenophon (VII, iii, 10, and VIII, i, 38; iii, 15, Cyropædia) mentions the high position of the σкηπтоÛxos at the Persian court; as does Tacitus (Ann. VI, 33) at other Eastern courts. It is likely that the same office existed in Babylon,

* Cf. our word influence.