LILY
432
LILY
work" spoken of in 1 Kings vii, 19, 22, was an ornament in tlic form of the Egyptian lotus. There were formerly three descriptions of \vater-lily in Egypt, but one (the ved-tiowered lotus) has disappeared. '• The flower," says IJurckhardt, speaking of the white variety, or Ni/mji/iua lotus, "generaily stands on the stalk from
Tht \\ uei-lil> (\ / q Una Lotus).
one to two feet above the surface of the water. When tlie flowers open completely, the leaves form a horizon- tal disk, with the isolated seed-vessel in the midst, which bends down the stalk by its weight, and swims npon the surface of the water for several days until it is ingulfed. This plant grows at Cairo, in a tank called Birket el-Eotoli, near one of the northern suburbs where I happen to reside. It is not found in Upper Egypt, I believe, but abounds in the Delta, and attains maturity at the time when the Nile reaches its full height. I saw it in great abundance and in fidl flower, covering the whole inundated plain, on October 12, 1815, near the ruins of Tiney, about twelve miles south-east from jMan- soiu-a, on the Damietta branch. It dies when the water retires." Among the ancient Egyptians the lotus was introduced into all subjects as an ornament, and as the favorite flower of the country, but not with the holy character usually attributed to it, though adopted as an emblem of the god Nophre-Atmii (Wilkinson's A ncient Ef/iiptians, i, 57, 256). As the Hebrew architecture was of the Phoenico-Egyptian style, nothing was more natu- ral than the introduction of this ornament by Solomon into the Temple. It was in like manner borrowed by the Assyrians in their later structures (Layard's Nine- rch, ii, 356). ]\lr. Bardwell, the architect, in his work entitled Temples, Ancient and Modern (IS'il), says, "The two great columns of the pronaos in Solomon's Temple were of the usual proportions of Egyptian columns, being live and a half diameters high ; and as these gave the great characteristic feature to the building, Solomon sent an embassy to fetch the architect from Tyre to su- perintend the moidding and casting of these columns, which were intended to be of brass. Observe how con- spicuous is tlie idea of the vase (the 'bowl' of our trans- lation), rising from a cylinder ornamented with lotus- flowers ; the bottom of the vase was partly hidden by the flowers, the belly of it was overlaid with net-work, ornamented In- seven wreatlis, the Hebrew number of hapi)iness, and l)eneath the lip of the vase were two rows of pomegranates, one hundred in each row. These superb pillars were eight feet in diameter and forty-four feet high, supporting a noble entablature fourteen feet high." See .Jachin and Boaz. "In confirmation of the above identification of the lily of the O. T. with the lotus-flower, we may adduce also the remarks of Dr. W. C. Taylor in his Bible lllnstrated hy F.rpjptinn Monu- ments, where he says that the lilies of the 45th and 59th Psalms have jiuzzled all Bil)ljeal critics. The title, 'To the chief musician upon Slinslidmnni,' has been supposed to be the name of some unknown tune to which the psalm was to be sung. But Dr. Taylor says ' the word shoshannim is universally acknowledged to signify lil-
ies, and lilies have nothing to do with the subject of the ode. But this hymeneal ode was intended to be sung by the female attendants of the Egyptian princess, and they are called " the lilies," not only by a poetic reference to the lotus lilies of the Nile, but by a direct allusion to their custom of making the lotus lily a conspicuous or- nament of their head-dress.' Thus, therefore, all the passages of O.-T. Scripture in which shushan occurs. ap- pear to be explained by considering it to refer to the lotus lily of the Nile" (Kitto). '• Lynch enumerates the ' lily' as among the plants seen by him on the shores of the Dead Sea, but gives no details which coidd lead to its identification {Exped. to the Joixlan, p. 286). He had l)reviously observed the water-lily on the Jordan (p. 173), but omits to mention whether it was the yellow (Xup/iar lutecC) or the white {Xympihaa alba). 'The only " lilies" which I saw in Palestine,' says Prof. Stan- ley, ' in the months of INIarch and April, were large yel- low water-lilies, in the clear spring of 'Ain Mellahah, near the lake of Merom' (»S'. and Pal. p. 429). He sug- gests that the name 'lily' 'may include the numerous flowers of the tulip or amaryllis kind which appear in the early summer or the autumn of Palestine.' The following description of the HCdeh-lily Ijy Dr. Thomson (The Land and the Bool; i, 39-i), were it more precise, woidd perhaps have enabled botanists to identify it: 'This Huleh-lily is very large, and the three inner pe- tals meet above and form a gorgeous canopy, such as art never approached, and king never sat under, even in his utmost glory. . . . We call it Huleh-lily because it was here that it was first discovered. Its botanical name, if it have one, I am unacquainted with. . . . Our flower delights most in the valleys, but is also found on the mountains. It grows among thorns, and I ha\e sadly lacerated mj' hands in extricating it from them. Nothing can be in higher contrast than the luxuriant velvety softness of this lily, and the crabbed, tangled hedge of thorns about it. Gazelles still delight to feed among them ; and you can scarcely ride through the woods north of Tabor, where these lilies abound, without frightening them from their flowerj' pasture'" (Smith). On the other hand, some of the passages in which shoshan occurs evidently refer to afield variety, as Cant, ii, 1, 2, and the tubular shape of the trumpet is sufficient to explain the transfer of the word to that musical in- strument. See Shoshannim. " The Hebrew word is rendered 'rose' in the Chaldee Targum, and by jMaimon- ides and other Eabbinical writers, with the exception of Kimclu and Ben-Melech, who in 1 Kings vii, 19 trans- lated it by ' violet.' In the Judajo-Spanish version of the Canticles shushan and shushanndh are always trans- lated by rosa. but in Hos. xiv, 5 the latter is rendered lirio. But Kpivov, or 'lily,' is the imiform rendering of the Sept., and is, in all proljability, the true one, as it is supported by the analogy of the Arabic and Persian sti- san, which has the same meaning to this day, and by the existence of the same word in Sj'riac and Coptic. The Spanish azufena, 'a white lily,' is merely a modifi- cation of the Arabic, but, although there is little doubt that the word denotes some plant of the lily species, it is by no means certain what individual of this class it especially designates. Father Soucict (Rectieil de diss, Crit. 1715) labored to prove that the lily of Scripture is th(j 'crown imperial,' the Persian tusa'i, the Kpivov (5a- atXiKov of the Greeks, and the Fritillaria imperialis of Linnreus. So common was this plant in Persia that it is supposed to have given its name to Susa, the capital (Athen. xii, 1 ; Bochart, /'/(«/c'7, ii, 14); but there is no l)roof that it was at any time common in Palestine, and ' the lily' par excellence of Persia would not of necessity be ' the lily' of the Holy Land. Dioscorides (i, 62) bears witness to the beauty of the lilies of Syria and I'isidia, from which the "best perfume was made. He says (iii, 106 [116]) of the Kpu'ov liaaiKiKov that the Syrians call it (Tana (^ — shushan). and the Africans «/j(/3Ao/3oj', which Bochart renders in Hebrew characters "p? 3'^3N, ' white shoot.' Ktihn, in his note on the passage, iden-