Elishah (Hastings' Dictionary)

The eldest son of Javan according to Gn lU'. In Ezk 27' the Tyrians are said to have procured their piirple dye from the 'isles' or 'coastlands' of E., which shows that we must look for the locality in the Greek seas. Josephus (Ant. I. vi. 1) identified E. with the iEolians ; phonetically, however, this is impossible ; moreover. Greek ethnolo^ made iii;olus the brother, and not the son, of Ton, the Hcb. Javan. Many modern writers have seen Elis in E.

; but the name of Elis properly began with digamma, and is probably the same as the Lat. vril/i.s. Dillmann proposed to identify E. with Southern Italy, and Movers with Carthage; both identifications, however, are inconsistent with the ELISHAMA ELKUSHITE 697 statement tliat it was the source of the purple dye, and it is difficult to tind any name on either the Italian or the African coast which can be com- pared with that of misluih.

The Tel el-Amarna tablets have thrown a new light on the question. Several of them are letters to the Pharaoh from ' the kinj; of Alasia,' a country which a hieratic docket attached to one of them identilies with the Ejiyptian Alsa. Alsa, sometimes read Arosa, was overrun byTliotbmeslll., and is mentioned in the list of his Syrian conquests enijTaved on the walls of Karnak (Nos. 213 and 23li) .Mospero {Kecueil de Travaux, x. p. 21U) makes Alsa or Alasia the northern part of Coele- Syria.

An unpublished hieratic papyrus, however, now in the Ilermilage of St. Petersbur;^, which de- scribes an embassy sent by sea to the king of Gebal in the time of the high priest Hir-Hor, states that the Egyptian envoys were wrecked on the coast of Alsa, where they were afterwards hospitably entertained by the queen of the country. Alsa or Alasia therefore must have adjoined the Mediterranean, and Winckler and W. ftlax Miiller aecordingly propose to see in it the island of Cyprus.

Conder had already suggested that AJusia and E. are one and the same. The two chief objections to the identihcation with Cyprus are that the ordinary Egyptian nanic of that island was Asi, and that Thothmes UI. includes the country among his Syrian conquests. It \B tempting to identify E., on the phonetic Bide, with the Greek Helhus. We might assume that the Egyptian form of the name, Alsa, was taken from the cuneiform Alasia, in which the initial aspirate of the Greek would not be expres-sed.

But the Homeric poems seem to show that the name of Hellas could not have migrated from its original home in northern Greece to the eastern basin of the Mediterranean so early as the age of the Tel el-Amarna tablets. Moreover, as late as the reign of the Assyrian Sargon, Cyprus was still known to the inhabitants of Asia as ' the country of the lonians,' not of the Hellenes, while a Yivana or ' Ionian ' is mentioned in two of the Tel el- Amarna letters.

The termination of Alasia im- plies a Greek adjective in -<rios, and it is possible that Crete, rather than Cyprus, is intended by the name. LiTBUTCKi.— Skyoe, BCM 130 ; Oonder, BMe and the Eatt. A. H. Sayce. ELISHAMA {V!;v!K 'God ha« heard').— 1. A prince of the tribe of Ephraim at the census in the wilderness, son of Ammihud, and grandfather of Joshua (Nu l'» 2'«, 1 Ch T). 2. One of David's sons, born in Jerusalem (2 S 5", 1 Ch 3' 14'). 3.

In 1 Ch 3" by mistake for Elishua (which see) of 2 S 6", 1 Ch 14'. 4. A descendant of Judah, son of Jekamiah (1 Ch 2'). 5. The father of Nethaniah, eind grandfather of Ishmael, ' of the seed royal,' who killed Gedaliah at the time of the Exile (2 Iv 25', Jer 41'). Jerome, following Jewish tradition, identities him with No. 4. See Sayce HUM 3SU f. 6. A scribe or secretary to Jehoiakim (Jer 36'^ '■"■ "'). 7. A priest sent by Jehoslmphat to teach the law in the cities of Judah (2 Ch 17"). li. M.

BOVD.