The Book of the Cave of Treasures

by Sir Ernest Alfred Thompson Wallis Budge

1927 · Library of Alexandria

IN the centuries immediately preceding the Christian Era certain professional Jewish scribes composed a number of works which may well be described as "historical romances," and which were based on the histories of the patriarchs and others as found in the four main divisions of the text of the Hebrew Bible. There is little doubt that most of these works were written either in Hebrew or in the Palestinian vernacular of the period. One of the oldest of such works appears to be the "Book of Jubilees" (see page 3), (also called the "Lesser Genesis" and the "Apocalypse of Moses"), which derives its name from the fact that the periods of time described in it are Jubilees,i.e. each period contains forty-nine years. It is more or less a Commentary on the Book of Genesis. That a version of this book existed in Greek is proved by the quotations given by Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis in Cyprus (born about A.D. 320, and died in 403 or 404), in his work on "Heresies" (chapter xxxix). The author claimed boldly that his work contains the revelations which were made to Moses by the command of God by the Archangel Michael, who is frequently described as the "Angel of the Face," The book is not wholly original, for it contains narratives and traditions derived from the works of earlier writers; and some of the legends appear to have been taken from early Babylonian sources. The Hebrew, or Aramean, original is lost, and the complete work is only found in Ethiopic, in which language it is known as "Kûfâlê," or "Sections." The Ethiopic translation was made from Greek. Another pre-Christian work, also written by a Jew, is the "Book of Enoch," which exists now in a more or less complete form, only in an Ethiopic translation, which was made from the Greek. This work is quoted by St. Jude (vv. 14, 15), and there is little doubt that for some three or four centuries its authority, both among the Jews and the Christians of the first and second centuries of our Era, was very great. Whether the "Book of Enoch," as made known to us by the Ethiopic version, truly represents the original Hebrew work is fairly open to doubt; in fact, it seems certain that it does not. It contains a series of fragments or parts of works, of somewhat similar character, which has been strung together, and then added to by writers of different schools of religious thought at different periods. In some parts of it traces have been found of beliefs which are neither Jewish nor Christian. The present volume contains a complete translation of the Syriac text of the compendious history of the world from the Creation to the Crucifixion of our Lord, which is commonly known as "Me`ârath Gazzê," or the "Cave of Treasures." In the Syriac title the composition of the work is attributed to Ap[h]rêm Suryâyâ, i.e. Ephrem Syrus, or Ephraim the Syrian, who was born at Nisibis (?) soon after A.D. 306 and died in 373, but it is now generally believed that the form in which we now have it is not older than the VIth century. An edition of the Syriac text, and an Arabic version of it, together with a German translation, were published by Bezold (Die Schatzhöhle, Munich, 1883-86), but this work is scarce and is little known in England. The German translation was made from an eclectic text constructed from at least three manuscripts, which varied in age and accuracy and general literary value. The translation given in the following pages has been made from the best, in my opinion, of all the known manuscripts, namely British Museum MS. Add. 25875. (See Wright, Catalogue, vol. iii, page 1064.) This MS. contains twelve complete works, all of which were written, in a fine Nestorian hand, by the priest Homô, the son of the priest Daniel, a native of Al-Kôsh, a very ancient town which lies about 20 miles north of Môsul (Nineveh), in the year of the Greeks 2020, i.e. A.D. 1709. It was written at the expense of the priest Joseph, the son of Hormizd, a native of Hordaphne, in the district of ´Amediâ, for the church of the Blessed Virgin Mary in that place. When I read through the manuscrin 1885, whilst preparing my edition of the "Book of the Bee," I was convinced that Homô, the scribe, was a very learned man, and the marginal notes which he added to his copy showed that he was at once a capable and an understanding editor of Syriac texts. When the printed edition of the Syriac text of the "Cave of Treasures" appeared in 1886, I was surprised to find that Homô's text had not been made the foundation of the work. Whilst I was in Al-Kôsh in 1890-91 collecting manuscripts for the British Museum, I found there some of Homô's descendants, and of these one or two were professional scribes. They possessed a few ancient Syriac manuscripts, and from one of them I had copies made of the "Cave of Treasures" and the "Book of the Bee." On my return to England I collated the copy of the former work with the British Museum Codex, and found that the text only varied in a few minor points. There are a few mistakes in the British Museum MS., and in one or two places a few words are omitted, but as a whole it contains the text of the "Cave of Treasures" in as perfect form as ever we are likely to get it; and therefore I have made the translation printed herein from it. A text of this kind might be annotated to almost any extent, but I have limited my notes to pointing out parallels in the "Book of Jubilees," the "Book of Adam and Eve," the "Book of the Bee," and other cognate works. These are printed within square brackets [ ] immediately following the passages in the "Cave of Treasures" which they illustrate. In the short Bibliography which follows the translation will be found the names of a number of books and of editions of texts which those who are interested in the literary history of the "Cave of Treasures" will find necessary for useful work. I have also added a translation of the "Testament of Adam," a popular apocryphal work which is based upon the Syriac "Cave of Treasures," and upon legends derived from books of a similar, and perhaps allied, character. The ancient tradition which asserts that the "Cave of Treasures" was written in the IVth century of our Era, is supported by the general contents of the work. These reproduce Ephraim's quaint and sometimes fanciful methods of exegesis and his hatred of the Jews, and supply many examples of his methods in religious argument with which we are familiar from his other writings. We may notice, too, his pride in the antiquity of the Syriac language. That it was written in Mesopotamia by a Syrian, there is no doubt, and if we reject Ephraim as its author, we are bound to admit that the author, or perhaater editor, belonged to the school of Ephraim. Whichever view be taken is immaterial. For the book certainly contains a mass of historical information which can only have been derived from pre-Christian Hebrew works, or from post-Christian chronologies and histories written in Greek. The writers of such Greek works derived some of their information at first or second hand, from documents originally written in cuneiform. Of the general historical character of the "Cave of Treasures" there is no doubt, and it is this fact which gives it such importance for the history of the Hebrew Patriarchs, and for early Christian History, and the Christian Faith. This view was maintained by the eminent scholars Dillmann, Nöldeke, Sachau, Wright, Bezold and others during the last century, and it was firmly held by Christians in Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Nubia and Abyssinia for the fourteen centuries preceding. On the historical facts which form the framework of the "Cave of Treasures," the pious author, or editor, grafted a whole series of legends, many of which deserve the descriptions of "idle stories" and "vain fables" which have been applied to them by Assemânî and the older European theologians. The reader having perused them will readily understand that such legends, containing as they do garbled history facts and anachronisms, are neither accepted nor endorsed by any member of the Committee of the Religious Tract Society or by myself. These legends were inserted with the view of making the "Cave of Treasures" a sort of religious "wonder-book" which would appeal to the vivid and credulous imaginations of Christian natives in almost every country of the Near East; and religious "wonder-books" were intended by their authors and editors to amuse as well as to instruct. The "Cave of Treasures" possesses an apocryphal character it is true, but the support which its contents give to the Christian Faith, and the light which the historical portions of it throw on early Christian History, entitle it to a very high place among the apocryphal Books of the Old and the New Testament. These facts have induced the Committee of the Religious Tract Society to order the publication of this the first English translation of the "Cave of Treasures."

The Egyptian Heaven and Hell

by Sir Ernest Alfred Wallis Budge

1906

Budge, a prestigious Egyptologist, includes a translation of secret religious papyri, a history of Egyptian religion, and a helpful English translation of Egyptian hieroglyphics. This is a reprint of the classic work first published in 1906.

The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians, An Account of Egypt, The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia, Scarabs: The History, Manufacture and Symbolism of the Scarabæus in Ancient Egypt, Phoenicia, Sardinia, Etruria

by Sir Ernest Alfred Thompson Wallis Budge, Herodotus, Archibald Henry Sayce, Isaac Myer

2020 · Library of Alexandria

The Literature of ancient Egypt is the product of a period of about four thousand years, and it was written in three kinds of writing, which are called hieroglyphic, hieratic, and demotic. In the first of these the characters were pictures of objects, in the second the forms of the characters were made as simple as possible so that they might be written quickly, and in the third many of them lost their picture form altogether and became mere symbols. Egyptian writing was believed to have been invented by the god Tehuti, or Thoth, and as this god was thought to be a form of the mind and intellect and wisdom of the God who created the heavens and the earth, the picture characters, or hieroglyphs as they are called, were held to be holy, or divine, or sacred. Certain religious texts were thought to possess special virtue when written in hieroglyphs, and the chapters and sections of books that were considered to have been composed by Thoth himself were believed to possess very great power, and to be of the utmost benefit to the dead when they were written out for them in hieroglyphs, and buried with them in their coffins. Thoth also invented the science of numbers, and as he fixed the courses of the sun, moon, and stars, and ordered the seasons, he was thought to be the first astronomer. He was the lord of wisdom, and the possessor of all knowledge, both heavenly and earthly, divine and human; and he was the author of every attempt made by man to draw, paint, and carve. As the lord and maker of books, and as the skilled scribe, he was the clerk of the gods, and kept the registers wherein the deeds of men were written down. The deep knowledge of Thoth enabled him to find out the truth at all times, and this ability caused the Egyptians to assign to him the position of Chief Judge of the dead. A very ancient legend states that Thoth acted in this capacity in the great trial that took place in heaven when Osiris was accused of certain crimes by his twin-brother Set, the god of evil. Thoth examined the evidence, and proved to the gods that the charges made by Set were untrue, and that Osiris had spoken the truth and that Set was a liar. For this reason every Egyptian prayed that Thoth might act for him as he did for Osiris, and that on the day of the Great Judgment Thoth might preside over the weighing of his heart in the Balance. All the important religious works in all periods were believed to have been composed either by himself, or by holy scribes who were inspired by him. They were believed to be sources of the deepest wisdom, the like of which existed in no other books in the world. And it is probably to these books that Egypt owed her fame for learning and wisdom, which spread throughout all the civilised world. The “Books of Thoth,” which late popular tradition in Egypt declared to be as many as 36,525 in number, were revered by both natives and foreigners in a way which it is difficult for us in these days to realise. The scribes who studied and copied these books were also specially honoured, for it was believed that the spirit of Thoth, the twice-great and thrice-great god, dwelt in them. The profession of the scribe was considered to be most honourable, and its rewards were great, for no rank and no dignity were too high for the educated scribe. Thoth appears in the papyri and on the monuments as an ibis-headed man, and his companion is usually a dog-headed ape called “Asten.” In the Hall of the Great Judgment he is seen holding in one hand a reed with which he is writing on a palette the result of the weighing of the heart of the dead man in the Balance. The gods accepted the report of Thoth without question, and rewarded the good soul and punished the bad according to his statement.