Shim-ron-meron (Josh. xii. 20), and the Assyrian inscriptions tell us of
a town called Samsi-muruna. Tamnah was not an uncommon name. We hear of
a Tamnah or Timnah in Judah (Josh. xv. 57), and of another in Mount
Ephraim (Josh. xix. 50). Dapul may be the Tubuliya of the letters of
Rib-Hadad, Azai, "the outlet," seems to have been near a pass, while
Har-nammata, "the mountain of Nammata," is called Har-nam by Ramses
III., who associates it with Lebanoth and Hebron. The two next names,
Kirjath-Anab and Beth-Sopher, are of peculiar interest, since they
contain the first mention that was come down to us of Kitjath-Sepher,
the literary centre of the Canaanites in the south of Palestine, which
was captured and destroyed by Othniel the Kenizzite. In the Old
Testament (Josh. xv. 49, 50) Kirjath-Sannah or Kirjath-Sepher and Anab
are coupled together just as Kirjath-Anab and Beth-Sopher are by the
Egyptian scribe, and it is therefore evident that he has interchanged
the place of the equivalent terms Kirjath, "city," and Beth, "house."
But his spelling of the second name shows us how it ought to be
punctuated and read in the Old Testament. It was not Kirjath-Sepher,
"the city of book(s)," but Kirjath-Sopher, "the city of scribe(s)," and
Dr. W. Max Müller has pointed out that the determinative of "writing"
has been attached to the word _Sopher_, showing that the writer was
fully acquainted with its meaning. Kirjath-Sannah, "the city of
instruction," as it was also called, was but another way of emphasizing
the fact that here was the site of a library and school such as existed
in the towns of Babylonia and Assyria. Both names, however,
Kirjath-Sopher and Kirjath-Sannah, were descriptive rather than
original; its proper designation seems to have been Debir, "the
sanctuary," the temple wherein its library was established, and which
has caused the Egyptian author to call it a "Beth," or "temple," instead
of a "Kirjath," or "city."