DAPHNE (Acl
2. A town or village (xthinov) near to the foun tains of the little Jordan (Josephus, Bell. Yud. iv. 1, sec. 1). Reland (Palcestina, p. 263) and others have considered this as identical with Dan, propos ing to read Acivns for AciOvns, and referring in sup port to Josephus, Antiq. viii. 8, sec. 4. Recent explorers have shewn this to be an error, and have discovered the site of the Daphne of Josephus in the present Dufneh, two miles to the south of Tell el-Kady, the site of Dan. (Van de Velde, Memoir, p. ; Syria and Palestine, ii. 419 ; Robinson, Later Researches, 393 ; Thomson, i. 38S).
3. In Num. xxxiv. u, the clause rendered in the A. V. on the east side of AM' [AIN], and by the LXX. 'on the east to (of) the fountain,' is given in the Vulgate contra fontem The word Daphnim is most probably a marginal gloss, and may perhaps refer to No. 2. Jerome in
his commentary on Ezekiel (c. 47), refers to the passage in Numbers, and gives reasons for con cluding that the fountain' is Daphne No. 1. The targums of Jonathan and of Jerusalem give Daphne or Dophne as the equivalent of Riblah in Num. xxxiv. FR...]. The error into which Jerome and the Targums have fallen, appears to have arisen either from a confusion between Daphne on the Jordan with Daphne on the Oron tes, or from mistaking the fountains near to the mouth of the Orontes for those at its source.
4. A fortified town on the Pelusiac branch of the Nile (ilciOval, Herod. ii. 30, 507), the Tah penes of Scripture (TAHPENEs) ; distant from Pelusium 16 Roman miles (RM. Ant. Iter a Peln sio Memphim).—S. N.
DAR (01). This word occurs in Esth. i. 6, as the name of one of the stones in the pavement of the magnificent hall in which Ahasuerus feasted the princes of his empire. This would suggest that it must have denoted a kind of marble. Some take it to signify Parian marble, others white marble, but nothing certain is known about it. In Arabic the word dar signifies a large pearl. Now pearls were certainly employed by the ancients in decorat ing the walls of apartments in royal palaces, but that pearls were also used in the pavements of even regal dining-rooms is improbable in itself, and un supported by any known example. The Septua gint refers the Hebrew word to a stone resembling pearls (runavou MOov) ; by which, as J. D. Michaelis conjectures, it intends to denote the A labastrites of Pliny (Hilt. Nat. xxxv;. 7, 8), which is a kind of alabaster with the 'gloss of mother-of pearl. [ALABASTER.]