CHAPITER, not the same word, though syno nymous, with the architectural term capital, the head or uppermost part of a column or pilaster. In the O. T. there occur three different Hebrew words to express the English noun chapiter.' 1. The first and most frequent is iinnb, which occurs (i Kings vii., 2 Kings xxv., 2 Chron. iv., and Jer. lii.) no less than twenty-three times (sing. and plur.), but always in connection with the building or the destruction of Solomon's temple. The word is derived from InD, to inclose round' (Judges xx. 23), Piel; and compass about' (Ps. cxlii. 8), Hiphil; and signifies crown' (i.q. 11:g), then the ornament which surrounds the top of a pilas ter.' [Sept. braep.ara, ; Vulg. capitella.] The prevalent idea of the Hebrew term is the roundness of the forms which characterised the capitals of the Egyptian and Assyrian columns (Furst, Hebr. Wort. 643). The ninz consisted of two portions, the crown or ledge (in which sense it is applied to the laver, r Kings vii. 3r), and the pommel' or turban-shaped bowl beneath (r i). According to R. Levi Ben Gershom, this chapiter rather resembled a pair of crowns or caps, so joined as to form an oval figure of five cubits high, bulging out all around beyond the breadth of the column which it surmounted, not unlike, as we may suppose, the truncated lotus-bud capitals of the grand pillars of the Memnonium, Thebes (See Frith's Egypt and Palestine Photographed, vol. i. p1. 35). Dr. Lightfoot, who adopts Gershom's view (Descriptio Templi, xiii. 2, 3), goes on to re concile the discrepancy between i Kings vii. 16, which gives the height of the chapiters as five cubits each, and 2 Kings xxv. 17, which states it to be only three cubits. These three cubits con tained (says Lightfoot, after the Jewish commenta tors) the sculpture or wreathen-work ' which is mentioned in the same verse ; whereas the other passage included two belts or necks of plain space of two more cubits below the ornamental portion. The chapiters were festooned with 'nets of checker work and wreaths of chain work,' with sculptured pomegranates,' forming an ornate group similar to that which still adorns the columns of the beautiful temple ruins of Wady Kardassy in Nubia (Frith, vol. ii. p1. 4). i Kings vii. 19 is very
obscure. What is the meaning of the 'lily-work in the porch?' Lightfoot (ut antea) translates the verse thus : The chapiters upon the top of the pillars possessed lily-work of four cubits over the porch,' and supposes that the lily-work surrounded the column under and not around the chapiter ; the lily-leaf not enveloping the chapiter, which had its ornaments already, but curving laterally over the space of the porch, and occupying four cubits of the column below the chapiter. 2. The second Hebrew word translated chapiter' in A. V. is lin, which occurs only in 2 Chron. iii. is. (The Sept. and the Vulgate combine and in this passage, and render the united words by TaS KecbaXds and capita). It is derived from ritY, to contract, draw together ; Piel, to overlay (with metal), as in t Kings vi. 21, and many other places ; from this notion comes (according to Meier, Hebr. Wiirzwortbuch., i6o) the sense of arrangement and ornamental decoration ; very suitable, therefore, is the derivative nnv to express the decorated part of a pillar. 3. The other He brew noun for chapiter' is t;;;N;i, the head' or top,' as it is so often rendered. (See e. Numb. xxiii. 14). This word, which the Sept. renders Keq5aXiSes, and the Vulg. capita, occurs in Exodus xxxvi. 38 ; xxxviii. 17, 19, 28, in the description of the Tabernacle, and very suitably there, inas much as it does not (like the other nouns) imply ornament, but simply the highest part or apex of a shaft ; in this sense, it is directly contrasted with n-Inz, in r Kings vii. 16. He made two chapiters, min:, of molten brass to set upon the tops, NtjNn, of the pillars. A vast amount of learned information, from ancient and modern sources, is accumulated on the subject of this art. in Meinhard Plesken's Dissertatio Philologica de Columnis 2Eneilr, sec. viii.—P. H.