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The Word:
MASON
by Bro.
Watson
Kirconnell
Published in
THE
FREEMASON,
May-June,
1969
The history
of the name
for a Mason
carries one
back through
strange and
unfamiliar
territory.
Six and one half centuries before speculative
Masonry
began in the
reign of
George I,
the word
mason was
brought to
England by
those great
builders,
the Normans.
The English
term is
derived from
the Old
French
masons
(Modern
French
Maçons) and
this goes
back to the
medieval
Latin
machiones,
of which
Isodore of
Seville (who
died in A.D.
640)
explained
that the
masons were
so called
from the
machinae
(scaffolding)
on which
they had to
stand
because of
the height
of their
walls.
With classical Latin we encounter an entirely new
set of
words:
structor ("a
builder"
later
lengthened
to
constructor);
caementarius
("Maker of a
rough
ashlar," or
caementum,
from caedo,
I cut); and
latomus
("stone-cutter",
a word
borrowed
from the
Greek).
Classical
Greek had at
least four
words for
'mason,'
based on two
words for
stone, las
and lithos.
They were
latomos and
lithomos
(both
meaning
"stone-cutter");
latypos
("stone-striker")
and
Lithourgos
("Stone-worker").
Remembering that in II Samuel, Ch.5, v. 11, King
Hiram "sends
masons" to
King David
(This is
earlier than
his more
familiar
help to King
Solomon), I
looked up
the Hebrew
text to find
what the
original
term was. It
turned out
to be a
triple
compound,
haraash-ebhen-qir
("Cutter of
stone for a
wall").
Unlike the
scaffolding
of the
mediaeval
machiones,
the term in
Latin, Greek
and Hebrew
are aptly
related to
Speculative
Freemasonry.
But stone-masonry did not originate in either
Tyre or
Jerusalem,
not as late
as 1000 B.C.
Its
beginnings
were rather
in Egypt,
around 3,000
BC, when it
was created
by the
genius
Imhotep. I
therefore
turned to
Dr. Wallis
Budge's
Egyptian
Language
(London,
1922) to
find the
hieroglyphic
sign for a
stone-mason.
It is
pronounced
"hus", and
shows a
worker with
bared arms
and lower
legs,
standing
beside a
three-foot
wall and
testing it
with a
plumb-line!
He even
seems to be
wearing an
apron. He is
a striking
anticipation
of Amos,
7:7, in a
hieroglyphic
that goes
back to
3,000 BC.,
or 2,000
years before
that
prophet. In
the
Jerusalem
Bible, more
accurately
translated
than the
King James
Version,
verse 7 of
Chapter 7
reads: "This
is what the
Lord Yahweh
showed me: a
man standing
by a wall,
plumb-line
in hand." In
other words,
what the
Lord showed
to the
prophet Amos
of Tekoa in
this third
vision was a
fellowcraft
mason at
work, as
carved by
the
Egyptians on
obelisks and
pyramids
almost 5,000
years before
our time.
The Junior
Warden may
well take
pride in his
symbolic
jewel! |
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