Note 334 — Chapter V · THE MOST PROMINENT FIGURES IN HEBREW MYTHOLOGY.

This interpretation, here erroneously employed, is occasioned by the fact that in the Semitic languages the notion of ‘part’ is conveyed by words which properly denote ‘side:’ the two sides of a thing are two parts of it. Thus, even in literary Arabic the word ṭaraf, and in vulgar Arabic the word jânib (which is etymologically connected with the Hebrew kânâph ‘wing’) are used quite in the sense of baʿḍ ‘a part.’ An interesting modern example of this lies before me in the Arabic text of the terms of the latest 5,000,000l. loan by the Egyptian Minister of Finance, in which the third article says: 'The shares fall under the ordinary laws regulating buying and selling and bequest—sawâʾan kâna fî jânib minhu au fîhi bil-kâmil—equally whether it concerns a portion of them or the whole' (al-Jawâʾïb, a weekly paper, XIV. No. 695, p. 2, c. 2, of the year 1291).