85 Preface قالَ فَإِنّا قَد فَتَنّا قَومَكَ مِن بَعدِكَ وَأَضَلَّهُمُ السّامِرِيُّYusuf Ali(God) said: “We have tested thy people in thy absence: the Samiri has led them1 astray.”Who was this Samin ? If it was his personal name, it was sufficiently near the meaning of the original root word to have the definite article attached to it: Cf. the name of the caliph Mu’tasim (Al-Mu’tasim). What was the root for “Samiri"? If we look to old Egyptian, we have Shemer = A stranger, foreigner (Sir E. A. Wallis Budge’s Egyptian Hieroglyphic Dictionary. 1920, p. 815 b). As the Israelites had just left Egypt, they might quite well have among them an Egyptianised Hebrew bearing that nickname. That the name Shemer was subsequently not unknown among the Hebrews is clear from the Old Testament. In I Kings, 16:24 we read that Omri, king of Israel, the northern portion of the divided kingdom, who reigned about 903-896 B.C., built a new city, Samaria, on a hill which he bought from Shemer, the owner of the hill, for two talents of silver. See also Renan: History of Israel, 2:210. For a further discussion of the word, see n. 2608 below.