th riginal of the Spanish taxon, Ital. tasso, Fr. tais-
sm, Germ, docks, is the same word as taehash; and these designate the badger. This, however, appears to I"- the only support for the rendering "badger" (pieles taxus) besides that of the Chaldee paraphrast (NJISDD, "taxus, sic dictus quia gaudet et superbit in coloribus multis," Buxtorf, Lex. Rab. s. v.). See Zo- OLOGY.
The ancienl interpreters understand by it a color Sept. vaKivSiva: so Aquila Bymmachns, and the Syriac, which are followed by Bocharl (Iheroz. ii, 387), I;.. enmuller (Schol ad V T Exod. xxk.-,; Ezek. xvi. 10), Bynaus , ,/. Cdcek Utbrwomm, hb. i, ch. :;;. Scheuchzer (I'hys. Sacr in
4 BADGER
Exod. xxv, 5), and others. Parkhurst (Heb. Lex. s. v.), ohsarves that "an outermost covering for the tabernacle of azure or sky-blue was very proper to represent the sky or azure boundary of the system." But this is mere conjecture. The Talmudists say that it is an animal like a weasel. Others, as Gesner and Harenberg (in Mus;eo Brem. ii, 312), have thought that some kind of wolf, known by the Greek name &.jc, and the Arabic Shaghul is intended. Hasaeus (in Dissert. Philolog. Sylloge. diss, ix, § 17) and Bus- ching, in his preface to the Epitome of Scheuchzer's Physica Sacra, are of opinion that taehash denotes a cetacean animal, the Trickechus manatus of Linnoeus, which, however, is only found in America arid the West Indies. Others, with Sebald Rau {Comment, de iis quae, ex Arab, in usum Tabernac. fucrunt repetila, Traj; ad Rhen. 1753, ch. ii), are in favor of taehash rep- resenting some kind of seal (Phoca vitulina, Lin.). Dr. Geddes (Crit. Hem. Exod. xxv, 5) is of the same opin- ion. Gesenius understands (Heb. Lex. s. v.) some '• kind of seal or badger, or other similar (!) creature." Of modern writers Dr. Kitto (Pict. Bibl. on Exod. xxv, 5) thinks that taehash denotes some clean animal, as in all probability the skin of an unclean animal would not have been used for the sacred coverings. The corresponding Arabic word is not only a dolphin, but also a seal, and seals (?) were numerous on the shores of the peninsula of Sinai (Strab. xvi, 776). The ety- mology of the word in Heb. is favorable to this view, from the root Hun, chashah', to rest; and seals no less than badgers are somnolent animals. (See Simonis Exercitatio de CJnin, Hal. 1735.) Maurer, however (Comment, in Exod.), derives it from the root 'i'ljp, taehash', to penetrate, a notion which suits the burrow- ing of the badger as well as the plunging of the seal. Pliny (ii, 56) mentions the use of the skins of seals as a covering for tents, and as a protection from light- ning. (Comp. Pint. Symp. v, 9; Sueton. Oct.iv. 90; Faber, Archaol. Hebr. i, 115.) The taehash has also been identified with the Trickechus marlnus of Lin- na?us, and with the sea-cow called lamantin or dugnng. Others find it in an animal of the hyena kind, which is called by the Arabs tahesh (Botta's Voyage in Yemen, 1841). Robinson (Researches, i, 171) mentions sandals made of the thick skin of a fish which is caught in the Red Sea. It is a species of halicore, named by Ehren- berg (Symb. f:hys. ii) Halicora Ilempriehii. The skin is clumsy and coarse, and might answer very well for the external covering of the Tabernacle. According to Ehrenberg, the Arab's on the coast call this animal NaJsa and Lottnm. Arabian naturalists applied the term ensan alma, "man of the sea," to this creature. Thevenot speaks of a kind of sea-man, which is taken near the port of Tor. " It is a great strong fish, and hath two hands, which are like the hands of a man, saving that the fingers are joined together with a skin, like the foot of a goose ; but the skin of the fish is like the skin of a wild goat or chamois. "When they spy that fish, they strike him on the back with harping irons, as they do whales, and so kill him. They use the skin of it for making bucklers, which arc musket- proof." Niebuhr adds the information that "a mer- chant of Abushahr called dakash that fish which the captains of English ships call porpoise." The same traveler reports that he saw prodigious schools of these animals swimming. Professor Etippell (Mns. Send-. i. 113, t. 6), who saw the creature on the coral banks of the Abyssinian coast, ascertained by personal ex- amination that the creature in question was a sort of dugong, a genus of marine Pachydermata, to which he gave the name of Halicore tabemaculi, from a convic- tion that it was the taehash of Moses. It grows to eighteen feet in length. See WhAUB.
" In the present state of zoological knowledge, how- ever, it is not necessary to refute the notions that taehash was the naino of a mermaid or homo-marinus,
BADGEU
615
BAG
Halicore Tabernaculi, with enlarged drawiug of the head.
or of ths walrus, a Polar animal, or of the dugong or seal, for neither of these is known in the Indian, Red, or Persian Seas, and there is little probability that in remote ages they frequented the south-east extremity of the Mediterranean, where the current sweeps all things northward ; still less that they nestled in the lakes of the Delta, where crocodiles then abounded. But Niebuhr's hint respecting the name tackash, given, with some reference to colors, to a species of delphinus or porpoise, by the Arabs near Cape Mussendum, may deserve consideration, since the same people still make small rounded bucklers and soles of sandals of the koufs skin, which is a cetaceous animal, perhaps iden- tical with Niebuhr's. This material might have been obtained from the caravan-traders of Yemen, or from the Ismaelites of Edom, but does not appear to have been litted for other purposes than pack-saddles and sandal-soles. Considering tackash, therefore, not to in- dicate a color, but the skin of an animal, which may have derived its name from its color, probablj- deep gray, ash, or slaty (hysr/huis), we must look for the ob- ject in question to the zoology of the region around, or to places accessible by means of the traders and trib- ute importations of raw materials in Egypt, where we actually observe leopard or panther skins, and others of a smaller animal with a long fox-tail, represented in the triumphal procession ofThothmes III at Thebes (Wilkinson's A nc. Egyptians, i, pi. 4). These may have been of a canine genus, such as the agriodus, or mega- lotis Lalandii, which is actually iron-gray ; or of a viverrous species, of which there are many in Africa both gray and spotted. Still these are unclean ani- mals, and for this reason we turn to another view of the case, which may prove the most satisfactory that can now be obtained. Negroland and Central and