the obvious influence of Lamartine, preaching the gospel of
liberalism and Christianity in verses which, though deficient in
force, leave the impression of a sincere devotion and a charming
personality. He became director of the national archaeological
museum at Madrid, where he died on the 1st of July 1881.
AGUILLON (AGUILONIUS), FRANCOIS D, (1566-1617), Flemish
mathematician. Having entered the Society of Jesus in
1586, he was successively professor of philosophy at Douai
and rector of the Jesuit College at Antwerp. He wrote a
treatise on optics in six books (Antwerp, 1613), notable
for containing the principles of stereographic projection.
AHAB (in Heb. ``father's brother''), king of Israel, the son
and successor of Omri, ascended the throne about 875 B.C.
(1 Kings xvi. 29-34). He married Jezebel, the daughter of
the king of Sidon, and the alliance was doubtless the means
of procuring him great riches, which brought pomp and luxury
in their train. We read of his building an ivory palace and
founding new cities, the effect perhaps of a share in the
flourishing commerce of Phoenicia.1 The material prosperity
of his reign, which is comparable with that of Solomon a
century before, was overshadowed by the religious changes
which his marriage involved. Although he was a worshipper of
Yahweh, as the names of his children prove (cp. also xxii. 5
seq.), his wife was firmly attached to the worship of the
Tyrian Baal, Melkart, and led by her he gave a great impulse
to this cult by building a temple in honour of Baal in
Samaria. This roused the indignation of those prophets
whose aim it was to purify the worship of Yahweh (see
ELIJAH.) During Ahab's reign Moab, which had been conquered
by his father, remained tributary; Judah, with whose king,
Jehoshaphat, he was allied by marriage, was probably his
vassal; only with Damascus is he said to have had strained
relations. The one event mentioned by external sources is the
battle at Karkar (perhaps Apamea), where Shalmaneser II. of
Assyria fought a great confederation of princes from Cilicia,
N. Syria, Israel, Ammon and the tribes of the Syrian desert
(854 B.C..) Here Ahabbu Sir'lai (Ahab the Israelite) with
Baasha, son of Ruhub (Rehob) of Ammon and nine others are
allied with Bir-'idri (Ben-hadad), Ahab's contribution being
reckoned at 2000 chariots and 10,000 men. The numbers are
comparatively large and possibly include forces from Tyre,
Judah, Edom and Moab. The Assyrian king claimed a victory,
but his immediate return and subsequent expeditions in 849
and 846 against a similar but unspecified coalition seem to
show that he met with no lasting success. According to the
Old Testament narratives, however, Ahab with 7000 troops had
previously overthrown Ben-hadad and his thirty-two kings, who
had come to lay siege to Samaria, and in the following year
obtained a remarkable victory over him at Aphek, probably in
the plain of Sharon (1 Kings xx.) . A treaty was made whereby
Ben-hadad restored the cities which his father had taken from
Ahab's father (i.e. Omri, but see xv. 20, 2 Kings xiii.
25), and trading facilities between Damascus and Samaria were
granted. A late popular story (xx. 35-42, akin in tone to xii.
33-xiii. 34) condemned Ahab for his leniency and foretold the
destruction of the king and his land. Three years later, war
broke out on the east of Jordan, and Ahab with Jehoshaphat of
Judah went to recover Ramoth-Gilead and was mortally wounded
(xxii.). He was succeeded by his sons (Ahaziah and Jehoram).
It is very difficult to obtain any clear idea of the order
of these events (LXX. places 1 Kings xxi. immediately after
xix.). How the hostile kings of Israel and Syria came to
fight a common enemy, and how to correlate the Assyrian and
Biblical records, are questions which have perplexed all recent
writers. The reality of the difficulties will be apparent from
the fact that it has been suggested that the Assyrian scribe
wrote ``Ahab'' for his son ``Jehoram'' (Kamphausen, Chronol. d.
hebr. Kon., Kittel), and that the very identification of
the name with Ahab of Israel has been questioned (Horner,
Proc. Soc. Bibl. Arch., 1898, p. 244).2 Whilst the above
passages in 1 Kings view Ahab not unfavourably, there are
others which give a less friendly picture. The tragic murder
of Naboth (see JEZEBEL), an act of royal encroachment,
stirred up popular resentment just as the new cult aroused
the opposition of certain of the prophets. The latter found
their champion in Elijah, whose history reflects the prophetic
teaching of more than one age. (See KINGS.) His denunciation
of the royal dynasty, and his emphatic insistence on the
worship of Yahweh and Yahweh alone, form the keynote to a
period which culminated in the accession of Jehu, an event in
which Elijah's chosen disciple Elisha was the leading figure.
The allusions to the statutes and works of Omri and Ahab
in Mic. vi. 16 may point to legislative measures of these
kings, and the reference to the incidents at the building
of Jericho (1 Kings xvi. 34) may be taken to show that
foundation sacrifices, familiar in nearly all parts of the
world, were not unknown in Israel at this period.3 This
has in fact been confirmed by excavation in Palestine.
Another Ahab is known only as an impious prophet in the
time of the Babylonian exile (Jer. xxix. 21). (S. A. C.)
1 Ahab's ivory palace found its imitators (1 Kings xxii. 39;
Am. iii. 15). The ivory was probably brought by the Phoenicians
from Cyprus or from one of the works on the coast of Asia Minor.
2 See the discussions by Cheyne, Ency. Bib.
col. 91 seq., and by Whitehouse, Dict Bib. i. 53.
3 See Trumbull, Threshold Covenant, pp. 46 sqq.;
Haddon, Study of Man, pp. 347 sqq.; P. Sartori,
Zeitschr. fur Ethnologie, 1898, pp. 1 seq.
'AHAI, of Sabha, an 8th-century Talmudist of high renown.
He was author of Quaestiones (Sheiltoth), a collection
of homilies (at once learned and popular) on Jewish law and
ethics. This is recorded to have been the first work written
by a Jewish scholar after the completion of the Talmud.
AHASUERUS (the Latinized form of the Hebrew shin vav resh
tsareh vav shvah shin patach heth patach aleph; in LXX.
`Assoueros, once in Tobit `Asueros)), a royal Persian or
Median name occurring in three of the books of the Old Testament
and in one of the books of the Apocrypha. In every case the
identification of the person named is a matter of controversy.
In Dan. ix. 1 Ahasuerus is the father of Darius the Mede,
who ``was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans'' after
the conquest of Babylon and death of Belshazzar. Who this
Darius was is one of the most difficult questions in ancient
history. Nabonidos (Nabunaid, Nabu-nahid) was immediately
succeeded by Cyrus, who ruled the whole Persian empire.
Darius may possibly have acted under Cyrus as governor of
Babylon, but this view is not favoured by Dan. vi. 1, vi.
25, for Darius (v. 31) is said to have been sixty-two
years old at the time (638 B.C.) . This would make him
contemporary with Nebuchadrezzar, which agrees with Tob. xiv.
15, where we read ``of the destruction of Nineveh, which
Nebuchadnezzar and Ahasuerus took captive.'' As a matter of
fact, however, Cyaxares and Nabopolassar were the conquerors
of Nineveh, and the latter was the father of Nebuchadrezzar.
Cyrus did, on ascending the throne of Babylon, appoint a
governor of the province, but his name was Gobryas, the son of
Mardonius. The truth is, no doubt, as Prof. Sayce points
out, that the book of Daniel was not meant to be strictly
historical. As Prof. Driver says, ``tradition, it can
hardly be doubted, has here confused persons and events in
reality distinct'' (Literature of the Old Test. (6) p. 500).
In Ezra iv. 6 Ahasuerus is mentioned as a king of Persia, to
whom the enemies of the Jews sent representations opposing
the rebuilding of the temple at Jerusalem. Here the sequence
of the reigns in the Biblical writer and in the profane
historians-- in the one, Cyrus, Ahasuerus, Artaxerxes, Darius;
in the other, Cyrus, Cambyses, Smerdis, Darius--led in the past
(Ewald, &c.) to the identification of Ahasuerus with Cambyses
(529--522 B.C.), son of Cyrus. The name Khshayarsha,
however, has been found in Persian inscriptions, and has been
thought to be equivalent to the Xerxes (485-465 B.C.) of the
Greeks. On Babylonian tablets both the forms Khishiarshu
and Akkashiarshi occur amongst others. Modern scholars,
therefore, identify the Ahasuerus of Ezra with Xerxes.
In the book of Esther the king of Persia is called Ahasuerus
(rendered in LXX. ``Artaxerxes'' throughout). The identification
of Ahasuerus with Artaxerxes I. Longimanus, the son and successor
of Xerxes, though countenanced by Josephus, deserves little
consideration. Most students are agreed that he must be a
monarch of the Achaemenian dynasty, earlier than Artaxerxes
I.; and opinion is divided between Darius Hystaspes and
Xerxes. In support of the former view it is alleged, among
other things, that Darius was the first Persian king of whom
it could be said, as in Esther i. 1, that he ``reigned from
India even unto Ethiopia, over an hundred and seven and twenty
provinces''; and that it was also the distinction of Darius
that (Esther x. 1) he laid ``a tribute upon the land and upon
the isles of the sea'' (cf. Herod. iii. 89). In support of
the identification with Xerxes it is alleged (1) that the
Hebrew Ahashverosh is the natural equivalent of the old
Persian Khshayarsha, the true name of Xerxes; (2) that
there is a striking similarity of character between the Xerxes
of Herodotus and the Ahasuerus of Esther; (3) that certain
coincidences in dates and events corroborate this identity,
as, e.g., the feast in the king's third year (cf. Esther
i. 3 with Herod. vii. 8), the return of Xerxes to Susa in
the seventh year of his reign and the marriage of Ahasuerus
at Shushan in the same year of his. To this it may be added
that the interval of four years between the divorce of Vashti
and the marriage of Esther is well accounted for by the
intervention of an important series of events fully occupying
the monarch's thoughts, such as the invasion of Greece.
See articles ``Ahasuerus'' in the Encyclopaedia Biblica,
Hastings' Dictionary, the Jewish Encyclopaedis; S.
R. Driver, Introd. to the Lit. of the Old Test.;
Friedrich Delitzsch in the Calwer Bibellexikon (1893).
AHAZ (Heb. for ``[Yahweh] holds''), son of Jotham, grandson
of Uzziah or Azariah and king of Judah. After the death of
Menahem, Pekah, king of Israel, and Rezin (rather Rasun), king of
Syria, allied against Assyria, invaded Judah, and laid siege to
Jerusalem in the hope of setting up one of their puppets upon the
throne. At the same time the Edomites recovered Elath on the
Gulf of Akabah (so read in 2 Kings xvi. 6; cp. also 2 Chron.
xxviii. 16 sqq.) and Judah was isolated. Notwithstanding
the counsel of Isaiah (Is. vii. 1-17), Ahaz lost heart and
used the temple funds to call in the aid of Tiglath-pileser
IV., who after attacking the Philistines destroyed the power
of Syria, taking care to exact heavy tribute from Judah,
which led to further despoliation of the temple. It was as
a vassal that Ahaz presented himself to the Assyrian king at
Damascus, and he brought back religious innovations (2 Kings
xvi. 10 sqq.; for the priest Urijah see Is. viii. 2) and new
ideas to which he proceeded to give effect. His buildings
are referred to in 2 Kings xx. 11, xxiii. 12; cf. perhaps
Jer. xxii. 15: ``art thou a true king because thou viest with
