PATRIARCHAL PALESTINE

BY

THE REV. A. H. SAYCE

PROFESSOR OF ASSYRIOLOGY, OXFORD

WITH A MAP

PUBLISHED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE TRACT COMMITTEE

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PREFACE

A few years ago the subject-matter of the present volume might have beencondensed into a few pages. Beyond what we would gather from the OldTestament, we knew but little about the history and geography of Canaanbefore the age of its conquest by the Israelites. Thanks, however, tothe discovery and decipherment of the ancient monuments of Babylonia andAssyria, of Egypt and of Palestine, all this is now changed. A flood oflight has been poured upon the earlier history of the country and itsinhabitants, and though we are still only at the beginning of ourdiscoveries we can already sketch the outlines of Canaanitish history, and even fill them in here and there. 

Throughout I have assumed that in the narrative of the Pentateuch wehave history and not fiction. Indeed the archaeologist cannot dootherwise. Monumental research is making it clearer every day that thescepticism of the so-called "higher criticism" is not justified in fact. Those who would examine the proofs of this must turn to my book on _TheHigher Criticism and the Verdict of the Monuments_. There I have writtenpurely as an archaeologist, who belongs to no theological school, andconsequently readers of the work must see in it merely the irreducibleminimum of confidence in the historical trustworthiness of the OldTestament, with which oriental archaeology can be satisfied. But it isobvious that this irreducible minimum is a good deal less than what afair-minded historian will admit. The archaeological facts support thetraditional rather than the so-called "critical" view of the age andauthority of the Pentateuch, and tend to show that we have in it notonly a historical monument whose statements can be trusted, but alsowhat is substantially a work of the great Hebrew legislator himself. 

For those who "profess and call themselves Christians, " however, thereis another side to the question besides the archaeological. The modern"critical" views in regard to the Pentateuch are in violentcontradiction to the teaching and belief of the Jewish Church in thetime of our Lord, and this teaching and belief has been accepted byChrist and His Apostles, and inherited by the Christian Church. It is ateaching and belief which lies at the root of many of the dogmas of theChurch, and if we are to reject or revise it, we must at the same timereject and revise historical Christianity. It is difficult to see how wecan call ourselves Christians in the sense which the term has borne forthe last eighteen hundred years, and at the same time repudiate ormodify, in accordance with our individual fancies, the articles of faithwhich historical Christianity has maintained everywhere and at allperiods. For those who look beyond the covers of grammars and lexicons, the great practical fact of historical Christianity must outweigh allthe speculations of individual scholars, however ingenious and elaboratethey may be. It is for the individual to harmonize his conclusions withthe immemorial doctrine of the Church, not for the Church to reconcileits teaching with the theories of the individual. Christ promised thatthe Spirit of God should guide His Apostles and their followers into"all truth, " and those who believe the promise cannot also believe thatthe "Spirit of Truth" has been at any time a Spirit of illusion. 

Oriental archaeology, at all events, is on the side of those who see inthe Hebrew patriarchs real men of flesh and blood, and who hold that inthe narratives of the Pentateuch we have historical records many ofwhich go back to the age of the events they describe. Each freshdiscovery made by the archaeologist yields fresh testimony to the truthof the Old Testament stories. Since the manuscript of the present workwas ready for the press, two such discoveries have been made by Mr. Pinches, to whom oriental archaeology and Biblical research are alreadyunder such deep obligations, and it has been possible only to glance atthem in the text. 

He has found a broken cuneiform tablet which once gave an account of thereign of Khammurabi, the contemporary of Chedor-laomer and Arioch, ofthe wars that he carried on, and of the steps by which he rose to thesupreme power in Babylonia, driving the Elamites out of it, overthrowinghis rival Arioch, and making Babylon for the first time the capital of aunited kingdom. Unfortunately the tablet is much broken, but what isleft alludes to his campaigns against Elam and Rabbatu--perhaps a cityof Palestine, of his reduction of Babylon, and of his successes againstEri-Aku or Arioch of Larsa, Tudghulla or Tidal, the son of Gazza ... AndKudur-Lagamar or Chedor-laomer himself. The Hebrew text of Genesis hasthus been verified even to the spelling of the proper names. The otherdiscovery of Mr. Pinches is still more interesting. The name of Ab-ramuor Abram had already been found in Babylonian contracts of the age ofKhammurabi; Mr. Pinches has now found in them the specifically Hebrewnames of Ya'qub-ilu or Jacob-el and Yasup-ilu or Joseph-el. It will beremembered that the names of Jacob-el and Joseph-el had already beendetected among the places in Palestine conquered by the Egyptian monarchThothmes III. , and it had been accordingly inferred that the full namesof the Hebrew patriarchs must have been Jacob-el and Joseph-el. Jacoband Joseph are abbreviations analogous to Jephthah by the side ofJiphthah-el (Josh. Xix. 14), of Jeshurun by the side of Isra-el, or ofthe Egyptian Yurahma by the side of the Biblical Jerahme-el. As ismentioned in a later page, a discovery recently made by Prof. FlindersPetrie has shown that the name of Jacob-el was actually borne not onlyin Babylonia, but also in the West. Scarabs exist, which he assigns tothe period when Egypt was ruled by invaders from Asia, and on which iswritten the name of a Pharaoh Ya'aqub-hal or Jacob-el. 

Besides the names of Jacob-el and Joseph-el, Mr. Pinches has met withother distinctively Hebrew names, like Abdiel, in deeds drawn up in thetime of the dynasty to which Khammurabi belonged. There were thereforeHebrews--or at least a Hebrew-speaking population--living in Babyloniaat the period to which the Old Testament assigns the lifetime ofAbraham. But this is not all. As I pointed out five years ago, the nameof Khammurabi himself, like those of the rest of the dynasty of which hewas a member, are not Babylonian but South Arabian. The words with whichthey are compounded, and the divine names which they contain, do notbelong to the Assyrian and Babylonian language, and there is a cuneiformtablet in which they are given with their Assyrian translations. Thedynasty must have had close relations with South Arabia. This, however, is not the most interesting part of the matter. The names are not SouthArabian only, they are Hebrew as well. That of Khammu-rabi, forinstance, is compounded with the name of the god 'Am, which is written'Ammi in the name of his descendant Ammi-zaduqa, and 'Am or 'Ammicharacterizes not only South Arabia, but the Hebrew-speaking lands aswell. We need only mention names like Ammi-nadab or Ben-Ammi inillustration of the fact. Equally Hebrew and South Arabian is _zaduqa_or _zadoq_; but it was a word unknown to the Assyrian language ofBabylonia. 

When Abraham therefore was born in Ur of the Chaldees, a dynasty wasruling there which was not of Babylonian origin, but belonged to a racewhich was at once Hebrew and South Arabian. The contract tablets provethat a population with similar characteristics was living under them inthe country. Could there be a more remarkable confirmation of thestatements which we find in the tenth chapter of Genesis? There we readthat "unto Eber were born two sons: the name of the one was Peleg, " theancestor of the Hebrews, while the name of the other was Joktan, theancestor of the tribes of South Arabia. The parallelism between theBiblical account and the latest discovery of archaeological science isthus complete, and makes it impossible to believe that the Biblicalnarrative would have been compiled in Palestine at the late date towhich our modern "critics" would assign it. All recollection of thefacts embodied in it would then have long passed away. 

Even while I write Prof. Hommel is announcing fresh discoveries whichbear on the early history of the Book of Genesis. Cuneiform tablets haveturned up from which we gather that centuries before the age of Abraham, a king of Ur, Ine-Sin by name, had not only overrun Elam, but had alsoconquered Simurru, the Zemar of Gen. X. 18, in the land of Phoenicia. Adaughter of the same king or of one of his immediate successors, washigh-priestess both of Elam and of Markhas or Mer'ash in Northern Syria, while Kimas or Northern Arabia was overrun by the Babylonian arms. Proofs consequently are multiplying of the intimate relations thatexisted between Babylonia and Western Asia long before the era of thePatriarchs, and we need no longer feel any surprise that Abraham shouldhave experienced so little difficulty in migrating into Canaan, or thathe should have found there the same culture as that which he had leftbehind in Ur. The language and script of Babylonia must have been almostas well known to the educated Canaanite as to himself, and the recordsof the Patriarchal Age would have been preserved in the libraries ofCanaan down to the time of its conquest by the Israelites. 

Perhaps a word or two is needed in explanation of the repetitions whichwill be found here and there in the following pages. They have beennecessitated by the form into which I have been obliged to cast thebook. A consecutive history of Patriarchal Palestine cannot be writtenat present, if indeed it ever can be, and the subject therefore has tobe treated under a series of separate heads. This has sometimes maderepetitions unavoidable without a sacrifice of clearness. 

In conclusion it will be noted, that the name of the people who wereassociated with the Philistines in their wars against Egypt andoccupation of Palestine has been changed from Zakkur to Zakkal. This hasbeen in consequence of a keen-sighted observation of Prof. Hommel. Hehas pointed out that in a Babylonian text of the Kassite period, thepeople in question are mentioned under the name of Zaqqalu, whichsettles the reading of the hieroglyphic word. (See the _Proceedings_ ofthe Society of Biblical Archaeology for May 1895. )

A. H. SAYCE. 

_September_ 30, 1895. 

THE KINGS OF EGYPT AND BABYLONIA DURING THE PATRIARCHAL AGE. 

EGYPT. 

Dynasties XV. , XVI. , and XVII. --Hyksos or Shepherd-kings (from Manetho). 

Dynasty XV. --

 yrs. Mths. 1. Salatis reigned 13 02. Beon, or Bnon reigned 44 03. Apakhnas, or Pakhnan reigned 36 74. Apôphis I reigned 61 05. Yanias or Annas reigned 50 16. Assis reigned 49 2

Of the Sixteenth Dynasty nothing is known. Of the Seventeenth themonuments have given us the names of Apôphis II. (Aa-user-Ra) andApôphis III. (Aa-ab-tani-Ra), in whose reign the war of independencebegan under the native prince of Thebes, and lasted for fourgenerations. 

Dynasty XVIII. -- Manetho. 

1. Neb-pehuti-Ra, Ahmes (more than 20 Amosis. Years). 

2. Ser-ka-Ra, Amon-hotep I. , his son (20 years Amenophis I. 7 months. )

3. Aa-kheper-ka-Ra, Thothmes I. , his son, and Chebron. Queen Amen-sit. 

4. Aa-kheper-n-Ra, Thothmes II. , his son, and Amensis. Wife Hatshepsu I. (more than 9 years). 

5. Khnum-Amon, Hatshepsu II. , Mâ-ka-Ra ... His sister (more than 16 years). 

6. Ra-men-Kheper, Thothmes III. , her brother Misaphris. (57 years, 11 months, 1 day, from March 20, B. C. 1503 to Feb. 14, B. C. 1449). 

7. Aa-khepru-Ra, Amon-hotep II. , his son Misphragmuthosis. (more than 5 years). 

8. Men-khepru-Ra, Thothmes IV. , his son Touthmosis. (more than 7 years). 

9. Neb-mâ-Ra, Amon-hotep III. , his son (more Amenophis II. Than 35 years), and queen Teie. 

10. Nefer-khepru-Ra, Amon-hotep IV. , Khu-n-Aten Horos. (also called Khuriya), his son (more than 17 years). 

11. Ankh-khepru-Ra and queen Meri-Aten. Akherres. 

12. Tut-ânkh-Amon Khepru-neb-Ra, and queen Rathotis. Ankh-nes-Amon. 

13. Aten-Ra-nefer-nefru-mer-Aten. ... 

14. Ai kheper-khepru-ar-mâ-Ra, and queen ... Thi (more than 4 years). 

15. Hor-m-hib Mi-Amon Ser-khepru-ka (more Armais. Than 3 years). 

Dynasty XIX. --

1. Men-pehuti-Ra, Ramessu I. (more than 2 years). Ramesses. 

2. Men-mâ-Ra, Seti I. , Mer-n-Ptah I. (more than Sethos. 27 years), his son. 

3. User-mâ-Ra, Sotep-n-Ra, Ramessu II. , Mi-Amon ... (B. C. 1348-1281), his son. 

4. Mer-n-Ptah II. , Hotep-hi-ma Ba-n-Ra, Mi-Amon, Ammenephthes. His son. 

5. User-khepru-Ra, Seti II. , Mer-n-Ptah III. , his Sethos Ramesses. Brother. 

6. Amon-mesu Hik-An Mer-Khâ-Ra Sotep-n-Ra, usurper. Amenemes. 

7. Khu-n-Ra Sotep-n-Ra, Mer-n-Ptah IV. , Si-Ptah Thuoris. (more than 6 years), and queen Ta-user. 

Dynasty XX. --

1. Set-nekht, Merer-Mi-Amon (recovered the kingdom from thePhoenician Arisu). 

2. Ramessu III. , Hik-An, his son (more than 32 years). 

3. Ramessu IV. , Hik-Mâ Mi-Amon (more than 11 years). 

4. Ramessu V. , User-Mâ-s-Kheper-n-Ra Mi-Amon (more than 4 years). 

5. Ramessu VI. , Neb-mâ-Ra Mi-Amon Amon-hir-khopesh-f (RamessuMeri-Tum, a rival king in Northern Egypt). 

6. Ramessu VII. , At-Amon User-mâ-Ra Mi-Amon. 

7. Ramessu VIII. , Set-hir-khopesh-f Mi-Amon User-mâ-Ra Khu-n-Amon. 

8. Ramessu IX. , Si-Ptah S-khâ-n-Ra Mi-Amon (19 years). 

9. Ramessu X. , Nefer-ka-Ra Mi-Amon Sotep-n-Ra (more than 10 years). 

10. Ramessu XI, Amon-hir-khopesh-f Kheper-mâ-Ra Sotep-n-Ra. 

11. Ramessu XII. , Men-mâ-Ra Mi-Amon Sotep-n-Ptah Khâ-m-Uas(more than 27 years). 

 * * * * *

Dynasty I. Of Babylon--

1. Sumu-abi, 15 years, B. C. 2458. 

2. Sumu-la-ilu, his son, 35 years. 

3. Zabű, his son, 14 years. 

4. Abil-Sin, his son, 18 years. 

5. Sin-muballidh, his son, 30 years. 

6. Khammu-rabi, his son, 55 years (at first under the sovereignty ofChedor-laomer, the Elamite; by the conquest of Eri-Aku and the Elamiteshe unites Babylonia, B. C. 2320). 

7. Samsu-iluna, his son, 35 years. 

8. Ebisum, or Abi-esukh, his son, 25 years. 

9. Ammi-satana, his son, 25 years. 

10. Ammi-zaduga, his son, 21 years. 

11. Samsu-satana, his son, 31 years. 

Dynasty II. Of Uru-azagga, B. C. 2154--

1. Anman, 51 (or 60) years. 

2. Ki-nigas, 55 years. 

3. Damki-ili-su, 46 years. 

4. Iskipal, 15 years. 

5. Sussi, his brother, 27 years. 

6. Gul-kisar, 55 years. 

7. Kirgal-daramas, his son, 50 years. 

8. A-dara-kalama, his son, 28 years. 

9. A-kur-du-ana, 26 years. 

10. Melamma-kurkura, 6 years. 

11. Bel-ga[mil?], 9 years. 

Dynasty III. , of the Kassites, B. C. 1786--

1. Gandis, or Gaddas, 16 years. 

2. Agum-Sipak, his son, 22 years. 

3. Guya-Sipak, his son, 22 years. 

4. Ussi, his son, 8 years. 

5. Adu-medas, ... Years. 

6. Tazzi-gurumas, ... Years. 

7. Agum-kak-rimi, his son, ... Years. 

 * * * * *

(The following order of succession is taken from Dr. Hilprecht. )

14. Kallimma-Sin. 

15. Kudur-Bel. 

16. Sagarakti-buryas, his son. 

17. Kuri-galzu I. 

18. Kara-indas, 19. Burna-buryas, his nephew, B. C. 1400. 

20. Kara-Khardas, son of Kara-indas. 

21. Nazi-bugas, or Su-zigas, an usurper. 

22. Kuri-galzu II. , son of Burna-buryas, 2. Years. 

23. Nazi-Maruttas, his son, 26 years. 

24. Kadasman-Turgu, his son, 17 years. 

25. Kadasman-Burias, his son, 2 years. 

26. Gis-amme ti, 6 years. 

27. Saga-rakti-suryas 13 years. 

28. Kasbat, or Bibe-yasu, his son, 8 years. 

29. Bel-nadin-sumi, 1 year 6 months. 

30. Kadasman-Kharbe, 1 year 6 months. 

31. Rimmon-nadin-sumi, 6 years. 

32. Rimmon-sum-utsur, 30 years (including 7 years of occupation ofBabylon by the Assyrian king, Tiglath-Ninip). 

33. Mile-Sipak, 15 years. 

34. Merodach-baladan I. , his son, 13 years. 

35. Zamania-nadin-sunii I. , 1 year. 

36. Bel-sum-iddin, 3 years. 

CHAPTER I

THE LAND

Patriarchal Palestine! There are some who would tell us that the veryname is a misnomer. Have we not been assured by the German critics andtheir English disciples that there were no patriarchs and no PatriarchalAge? And yet, the critics notwithstanding, the Patriarchal Age hasactually existed. While criticism, so-called, has been busy indemolishing the records of the Pentateuch, archaeology, by the spade ofthe excavator and the patient skill of the decipherer, has been equallybusy in restoring their credit. And the monuments of the past are a moresolid argument than the guesses and prepossessions of the moderntheorist. The clay tablet and inscribed stone are better witnesses tothe truth than literary tact or critical scepticism. That Moses and hiscontemporaries could neither read nor write may have been proved todemonstration by the critic; yet nevertheless we now know, thanks toarchaeological discovery, that it would have been a miracle if thecritic were right. The Pentateuch is, after all, what it professes tobe, and the records it contains are history and not romance. 

The question of its authenticity involves issues more serious andimportant than those which have to do merely with history orarchaeology. We are sometimes told indeed, in all honesty of purpose, that it is a question of purely literary interest, without influence onour theological faith. But the whole fabric of the Jewish Church in thetime of our Lord was based upon the belief that the Law of Moses camefrom God, and that this God "is not a man that He should lie. " And thebelief of the Jewish Church was handed on to the Christian Church alongwith all its consequences. To revise that belief is to revise the dogmasof the Christian Church as they have been held for the last eighteencenturies; to reject it utterly is to reject the primary document of thefaith into which we have been baptized. 

It is not, however, with theological matters that we are now concerned. Patriarchal Palestine is for us the Palestine of the Patriarchal Age, asit has been disclosed by archaeological research, not the Palestine inwhich the revelation of God's will to man was to be made. It issufficient for us that the Patriarchal Age has been shown by moderndiscovery to be a fact, and that in the narratives of the Book ofGenesis we have authentic records of the past. There was indeed aPatriarchal Palestine, and the glimpses of it that we get in the OldTestament have been illustrated and supplemented by the ancientmonuments of the Oriental world. 

Whether the name of Palestine can be applied to the country with strictaccuracy at this early period is a different question. Palestine isPhilistia, the land of the Philistines, and the introduction of the namewas subsequent to the settlement of the Philistines in Canaan and theera of their victories over Israel. As we shall see later on, it isprobable that they did not reach the Canaanitish coast until thePatriarchal Age was almost, if not entirely, past Their name does notoccur in the cuneiform correspondence which was carried on betweenCanaan and Egypt in the century before the Exodus, and they are firstheard of as forming part of that great confederacy of northern tribeswhich attacked Egypt and Canaan in the days of Moses. But, though theterm Canaan would doubtless be more correct than Palestine, the latterhas become so purely geographical in meaning that we can employ itwithout reference to history or date. Its signification is too familiarto cause mistakes, and it can therefore be used proleptically, just asthe name of the Philistines themselves is used proleptically in thetwenty-first chapter of Genesis. Abimelech was king of a people whoinhabited the same part of the country as the Philistines in latertimes, and were thus their earlier representatives. 

The term "Palestine" then is used geographically without any referenceto its historical origin. It denotes the country which is known asCanaan in the Old Testament, which was promised to Abraham and conqueredby his descendants. It is the land in which David ruled and in whichChrist was born, where the prophets prepared the way for the Gospel andthe Christian Church was founded. 

Shut in between the Desert of Arabia and the Mediterranean Sea on theeast and west, it is a narrow strip of territory, for the most partmountainous, rugged, and barren. Northward the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanoncome to meet it from Syria, the Anti-Lebanon culminating in the loftypeaks and precipitous ravines of Mount Hermon (9383 feet above the levelof the sea), while Lebanon runs southward till it juts out into the seain its sacred headland of Carmel. The fertile plain of Esdraelon orMegiddo separates the mountains of the north from those of the south. These last form a broken plateau between the Jordan and the Dead Sea onthe one side and the Plain of Sharon and the sea-coast of thePhilistines on the other, until they finally slope away into the ariddesert of the south. Here, on the borders of the wilderness, wasBeersheba the southern limit of the land in the days of the monarchy, Dan, its northern limit, lying far away to the north at the foot ofHermon, and not far from the sources of the Jordan. 

Granite and gneiss, overlaid with hard dark sandstone and masses ofsecondary limestone, form as it were the skeleton of the country. Hereand there, at Carmel and Gerizim, patches of the tertiary nummulite ofEgypt make their appearance, and in the plains of Megiddo and the coast, as well as in the "Ghor" or valley of the Jordan, there is rich alluvialsoil. But elsewhere all is barren or nearly so, cultivation beingpossible only by terracing the cliffs, and bringing the soil up to themfrom the plains below with slow and painful labour. It has often beensaid that Palestine was more widely cultivated in ancient times than itis to-day. But if so, this was only because a larger area of thecultivable ground was tilled. The plains of the coast, which are nowgiven over to malaria and Beduin thieves, were doubtless thicklypopulated and well sown. But of ground actually fit for cultivationthere could not have been a larger amount than there is at present. 

It was not in any way a well-wooded land. On the slopes of the Lebanonand of Carmel, it is true, there were forests of cedar-trees, a few ofwhich still survive, and the Assyrian kings more than once speak ofcutting them down or using them in their buildings at Nineveh. But southof the Lebanon forest trees were scarce; the terebinth was so unfamiliara sight in the landscape as to become an object of worship or aroad-side mark. Even the palm grew only on the sea-coast or in thevalley of the Jordan, and the tamarisk and sycamore were hardly morethan shrubs. 

Nevertheless when the Israelites first entered Canaan, it was in truth aland "flowing with milk and honey. " Goats abounded on the hills, and thebee of Palestine, though fierce, is still famous for its honey-producingpowers. The Perizzites or "fellahin" industriously tilled the fields, and high-walled cities stood on the mountain as well as on the plain. 

The highlands, however, were deficient in water. A few streams fall intothe sea south of Carmel, but except in the spring, when they have beenswollen by the rains, there is but little water in them. The Kishon, which irrigates the plain of Megiddo, is a more important river, but ittoo is little more than a mountain stream. In fact, the Jordan is theonly river in the true sense of the word which Palestine possesses. Rising to the north of the waters of Merom, now called Lake Hűleh, itflows first into the Lake of Tiberias, and then through a long deepvalley into the Dead Sea. Here at a depth of 1293 feet below the levelof the sea it is swallowed up and lost; the sea has no outlet, and partswith its stagnant waters through evaporation alone. The evaporation hasmade it intensely salt, and its shores are consequently for the mostpart the picture of death. 

In the valley of the Jordan, on the other hand, vegetation is asluxuriant and tropical as in the forests of Brazil. Through a denseundergrowth of canes and shrubs the river forces its way, rushingforward towards its final gulf of extinction with a fall of 670 feetsince it left the Lake of Tiberias. But the distance thus travelled byit is long in comparison with its earlier fall of 625 feet between LakeHűleh and the Sea of Galilee. Here it has cut its way through a deepgorge, the cliffs of which rise up almost sheer on either side. 

The Jordan has taken its name from its rapid fall. The word comes from aroot which signifies "to descend, " and the name itself means "thedown-flowing. " We can trace it back to the Egyptian monuments of thenineteenth and twentieth dynasties. Ramses II. , the Pharaoh of theOppression, has inscribed it on the walls of Karnak, and Ramses III. , who must have reigned while the Israelites were still in the wilderness, enumerates the "Yordan" at Medînet Habu among his conquests inPalestine. In both cases it is associated with "the Lake of Rethpana, "which must accordingly be the Egyptian name of the Dead Sea. Rethpanamight correspond with a Hebrew Reshphôn, a derivative from Resheph, thegod of fire. Canaanite mythology makes the sparks his "children" (Job v. 7) and it may be, therefore, that in this old name of the Dead Sea wehave a reference to the overthrow of the cities of the plain. 

Eastward of the Dead Sea and the Jordan the country is again mountainousand bare. Here were the territories of Reuben and Gad, and thehalf-tribe of Manasseh; here also were the kingdoms of Moab and Ammon, of Bashan and the Amorites. Here too was the land of Gilead, south ofthe Lake of Tiberias and north of the Dead Sea. 

We can read the name of Muab or Moab on the base of the second of thesix colossal statues which Ramses II. Erected in front of the northernpylon of the temple of Luxor. It is there included among his conquests. The statue is the only Egyptian monument on which the name has hithertobeen found. But this single mention is sufficient to guarantee itsantiquity, and to prove that in the days before the Exodus it wasalready well known in Egypt. 

To the north of Moab came the kingdom of Ammon, or the children of Ammi. The name of Ammon was a derivative from that of the god Ammi or Ammo, who seems to have been regarded as the ancestor of the nation, and "thefather of the children of Ammon" was accordingly called Ben-Ammi, "theson of Ammi" (Gen. Xix. 38). Far away in the north, close to thejunction of the rivers Euphrates and Sajur, and but a few miles to thesouth of the Hittite stronghold of Carchemish, the worship of the samegod seems to have been known to the Aramaean tribes. It was here thatPethor stood, according to the Assyrian inscriptions, and it was fromPethor that the seer Balaam came to Moab to curse the children ofIsrael. Pethor, we are told, was "by the river (Euphrates) of the landof the children of Ammo, " where the word represents a proper name (Num. Xxii. 5). To translate it "his people, " as is done by the AuthorizedVersion, makes no sense. On the Assyrian monuments Ammon is sometimesspoken of as Beth-Ammon, "the house of Ammon, " as if Ammon had been aliving man. 

Like Moab, Ammon was a region of limestone mountains and barren cliffs. But there were fertile fields on the banks of the Jabbok, the sources ofwhich rose not far from the capital Rabbath. 

North of Gilead and the Yarmuk was the volcanic plateau of Bashan, Ziri-Basana, or "the Plain of Bashan, " as it is termed in the cuneiformtablets of Tel el-Amarna. Its western slope towards the Lakes of Meromand Tiberias was known as Golan (now Jolân); its eastern plateau ofmetallic lava was Argob, "the stony" (now El Lejja). Bashan was includedin the Haurân, the name of which we first meet with on the monuments ofthe Assyrian king Assur-bani-pal. To the north it was bounded byIturaea, so named from Jetur, the son of Ishmael (Gen. Xxv. 15), theroad through Ituraea (the modern Jedur) leading to Damascus and itswell-watered plain. 

The gardens of Damascus lie 2260 feet above the sea. In the summer theair is cooled by the mountain breezes; in the winter the snow sometimeslies upon the surface of the land. Westward the view is closed by thewhite peaks of Anti-Lebanon and Hermon; eastward the eye wanders over agreen plain covered with the mounds of old towns and villages, andintersected by the clear and rapid streams of the Abana and Pharphar. But the Abana has now become the Barada, or "cold one, " while thePharphar is the Nahr el-Awaj. 

The Damascus of to-day stands on the site of the city from which St. Paul escaped, and "the street which is called Straight" can still betraced by its line of Roman columns. But it is doubtful whether theDamascus of the New Testament and of to-day is the same as the Damascusof the Old Testament. Where the walls of the city have been exposed toview, we see that their Greek foundations rest on the virgin soil; noremains of an earlier period lie beneath them. It may be, therefore, that the Damascus of Ben-Hadad and Hazael is marked rather by one of themounds in the plain than by the modern town. In one of these the stonestatue of a man, in the Assyrian style, was discovered a few years ago. 

An ancient road leads from the peach-orchards of Damascus, along thebanks of the Abana and over Anti-Lebanon, to the ruins of the temple ofthe Sun-god at Baalbek. The temple as we see it is of the age of theAntonines, but it occupies the place of one which stood in Heliopolis, the city of the Sun-god, from immemorial antiquity. Relics of an olderepoch still exist in the blocks of stone of colossal size which serve asthe foundation of the western wall. Their bevelling reminds us ofPhoenician work. 

Baalbek was the sacred city of the Bek'a, or "cleft" formed betweenLebanon and Anti-Lebanon by the gorge through which the river Litânyrushes down to the sea. Once and once only is it referred to in the OldTestament. Amos (i. 5) declares that the Lord "will break the bar ofDamascus and cut off the inhabitant from Bikath-On"--the Bek'a of On. The name of On reminds us that the Heliopolis of Egypt, the city of theEgyptian Sun-god, was also called On, and the question arises whetherthe name and worship of the On of Syria were not derived from the On ofEgypt. For nearly two centuries Syria was an Egyptian province, and thepriests of On in Egypt may well have established themselves in the"cleft" valley of Coele-Syria. 

From Baalbek, the city of "Baal of the Bek'a, " the traveller makes hisway across Lebanon, and under the snows of Jebel Sannîn--nearly 9000feet in height--to the old Phoenician city of Beyrout. Beyrout isalready mentioned in the cuneiform tablets of Tel el-Amarna under thename of Beruta or Beruna, "the cisterns. " It was already a seaport ofPhoenicia, and a halting-place on the high road that ran along thecoast. 

The coastland was known to the Greeks and Romans as Phoenicia, "the landof the palm. " But its own inhabitants called it Canaan, "the lowlands. "It included not only the fringe of cultivated land by the sea-shore, butthe western slopes of the Lebanon as well. Phoenician colonies andoutposts had been planted inland, far away from the coast, as at Laish, the future Dan, where "the people dwelt careless, " though "they were faraway from the Sidonians, " or at Zemar (the modern Sumra) and Arka (stillcalled by the same name). The territory of the Phoenicians stretchedsouthward as far as Dor (now Tanturah), where it met the advance guardof the Philistines. 

Such was Palestine, the promised home of Israel. It was a land of ruggedand picturesque mountains, interspersed with a few tracts of fertilecountry, shut in between the sea and the ravine of the Jordan, andfalling away into the waterless desert of the south. It was, too, a landof small extent, hardly more than one hundred and sixty miles in lengthand sixty miles in width. And even this amount of territory waspossessed by the Israelites only during the reigns of David and Solomon. The sea-coast with its harbours was in the hands of the Phoenicians andthe Philistines, and though the Philistines at one time owned anunwilling allegiance to the Jewish king, the Phoenicians preserved theirindependence, and even Solomon had to find harbours for his merchantmen, not on the coast of his own native kingdom, but in the distant Edomiteports of Eloth and Ezion-geber, in the Gulf of Aqabah. With the loss ofEdom Judah ceased to have a foreign trade. 

The Negeb, or desert of the south, was then, what it still is, the hauntof robbers and marauders. The Beduin of to-day are the Amalekites of OldTestament history; and then, as now, they infested the southern frontierof Judah, wasting and robbing the fields of the husbandman, and allyingthemselves with every invader who came from the south, Saul, indeed, punished them, as Romans and Turks have punished them since; but thelesson is remembered only for a short while: when the strong hand isremoved, the "sons of the desert" return again like the locusts to theirprey. 

It is true that the Beduin now range over the loamy plains and encampamong the marshes of Lake Hűleh, where in happier times their presencewas unknown. But this is the result of a weak and corrupt government, added to the depopulation of the lowlands. There are traces even in theOld Testament that in periods of anarchy and confusion the Amalekitespenetrated far into the country in a similar fashion. In the Song ofDeborah and Barak Ephraim is said to have contended against them, andaccordingly "Pirathon in the land of Ephraim" is described as being "inthe mount of the Amalekites" (Judges xii. 15). In the cuneiform tabletsof Tel el-Amarna, too, there is frequent mention of the "Plunderers" bywhom the Beduin, the Shasu of the Egyptian texts, must be meant, and whoseem to have been generally ready at hand to assist a rebellious vassalor take part in a civil feud. 

Lebanon, the "white" mountain, took its name from its cliffs ofglistening limestone. In the early days of Canaan it was believed to bethe habitation of the gods, and Phoenician inscriptions exist dedicatedto Baal-Lebanon, "the Baal of Lebanon. " He was the special form of theSun-god whose seat was in the mountain-ranges that shut in Phoenicia onthe east, and whose spirit was supposed to dwell in some mysterious wayin the mountains themselves. But there were certain peaks which liftedthemselves up prominently to heaven, and in which consequently thesanctity of the whole range was as it were concentrated. It was upontheir summits that the worshipper felt himself peculiarly near the Godof heaven, and where therefore the altar was built and the sacrificeperformed. One of these peaks was Hermon, "the consecrated, " whose namethe Greeks changed into Harmonia, the wife of Agenor the Phoenician. From its top we can see Palestine spread as it were before us, andstretching southwards to the mountains of Judah. The walls of thetemple, which in Greek times took the place of the primitive altar, canstill be traced there, and on its slopes, or perched above its ravines, are the ruins of other temples of Baal--at Dęr el-'Ashair, at Rakleh, atAin Hersha, at Rashęyat el-Fukhâr--all pointing towards the centralsanctuary on the summit of the mountain. 

The name of Hermon, "the consecrated, " was but an epithet, and themountain had other and more special names of its own. The Sidonians, weare told (Deut. Iii. 9), called it Sirion, and another of its titles wasSion (Deut. Iv. 48), unless indeed this is a corrupt reading for Sirion. Its Amorite name was Shenir (Deut. Iii. 9), which appears as Saniru inan Assyrian inscription, and goes back to the earliest dawn of history. When the Babylonians first began to make expeditions against the West, long before the birth of Abraham, the name of Sanir was already known. It was then used to denote the whole of Syria, so that its restrictionto Mount Hermon alone must have been of later date. 

Another holy peak was Carmel, "the fruitful field, " or perhapsoriginally "the domain of the god. " It was in Mount Carmel that themountain ranges of the north ended finally, and the altar on its summitcould be seen from afar by the Phoenician sailors. Here the priests ofBaal called in vain upon their god that he might send them rain, andhere was "the altar of the Lord" which Elijah repaired. 

The mountains of the south present no striking peak or headland likeHermon and Carmel. Even Tabor belongs to the north. Ebal and Gerizimalone, above Shechem, stand out among their fellows, and were veneratedas the abodes of deity from the earliest times. The temple-hill atJerusalem owed its sanctity rather to the city within the boundaries ofwhich it stood than to its own character. In fact, the neighbouringheight of Zion towered above it. The mountains of the south were ratherhighlands than lofty chains and isolated peaks. 

But on this very account they played an important part in the history ofthe world. They were not too high to be habitable; they were high enoughto protect their inhabitants against invasion and war. "Mount Ephraim, "the block of mountainous land of which Shechem and Samaria formed thecentre, and at the southern extremity of which the sacred city of Shilohstood, was the natural nucleus of a kingdom, like the southern block ofwhich Hebron and Jerusalem were similarly the capitals. Here there werevalleys and uplands in which sufficient food could be grown for theneeds of the population, while the cities with their thick and loftywalls were strongholds difficult to approach and still more difficult tocapture. The climate was bracing, though the winters were cold, and itreared a race of hardy warriors and industrious agriculturists. The wantof water was the only difficulty; in most cases the people weredependent on rain-water, which they preserved in cisterns cut out of therock. 

This block of southern mountains was the first and latest stronghold ofIsrael. It constituted, in fact, the kingdoms of Samaria and Judah. Outof it, at Shechem, came the first attempt to found a monarchy in Israel, and thus unite the Israelitish tribes; out of it also came the secondand more successful attempt under Saul the Benjamite and David the Jew. The Israelites never succeeded in establishing themselves on thesea-coast, and their possession of the plain of Megiddo and the southernslopes of the Lebanon was a source of weakness and not of strength. Itled eventually to the overthrow of the kingdom of Samaria. The northerntribes in Galilee were absorbed by the older population, and theircountry became "Galilee of the Gentiles, " rather than an integral partof Israel. The plain of Megiddo was long held by the Canaanites, and upto the last was exposed to invasion from the sea-coast. It was, in fact, the battle-field of Palestine. The army of the invader or the conquerormarched along the edge of the sea, not through the rugged paths anddangerous defiles of the mountainous interior, and the plain of Megiddowas the pass which led them into its midst. The possession of the plaincut off the mountaineers of the north from their brethren in the south, and opened the way into the heart of the mountains themselves. 

But to possess the plain was also to possess chariots and horsemen, anda large and disciplined force. The guerilla warfare of the mountaineerwas here of no avail. Success lay on the side of the more numerouslegions and the wealthier state, on the side of the assailant and not ofthe assailed. 

Herein lay the advantage of the kingdom of Judah. It was a compactstate, with no level plain to defend, no outlying territories toprotect. Its capital stood high upon the mountains, strongly fortifiedby nature and difficult of access. While Samaria fell hopelessly andeasily before the armies of Assyria, Jerusalem witnessed the fall ofNineveh itself. 

What was true of the later days of Israelitish history was equally trueof the age of the patriarchs. The strength of Palestine lay in itssouthern highlands; whoever gained possession of these was master of thewhole country, and the road lay open before him to Sinai and Egypt. Butto gain possession of them was the difficulty, and campaign aftercampaign was needed before they could be reduced to quiet submission. Inthe time of the eighteenth Egyptian dynasty Jerusalem was already thekey to Southern Palestine. 

Geographically, Palestine was thus a country of twofold character, andits population was necessarily twofold as well. It was a land ofmountain and plain, of broken highlands and rocky sea-coast. Its peoplewere partly mountaineers, active, patriotic, and poor, with a tendencyto asceticism; partly a nation of sailors and merchants, industrious, wealthy, and luxurious, with no sense of country or unity, andaccounting riches the supreme end of life. On the one hand, it gave theworld its first lessons in maritime exploration and trade; on the otherit has been the religious teacher of mankind. 

In both respects its geographical position has aided the work of itspeople. Situated midway between the two great empires of the ancientOriental world, it was at once the high road and the meeting-place ofthe civilizations of Egypt and Babylonia. Long before Abraham migratedto Canaan it had been deeply interpenetrated by Babylonian culture andreligious ideas, and long before the Exodus it had become an Egyptianprovince. It barred the way to Egypt for the invader from Asia; itprotected Asia from Egyptian assault. The trade of the world passedthrough it and met in it; the merchants of Egypt and Ethiopia couldtraffic in Palestine with the traders of Babylonia and the far East. Itwas destined by nature to be a land of commerce and trade. 

And yet while thus forming a highway from the civilization of theEuphrates to that of the Nile, Palestine was too narrow a strip ofcountry to become itself a formidable kingdom. The empire of Davidscarcely lasted for more than a single generation, and was due to theweakness at the same time of both Egypt and Assyria. With the Arabiandesert on the one side and the Mediterranean on the other, it wasimpossible for Canaan to develop into a great state. Its rocks andmountains might produce a race of hardy warriors and energetic thinkers, but they could not create a rich and populous community. The Phoenicianson the coast were driven towards the sea, and had to seek in maritimeenterprise the food and wealth which their own land refused to grant. Palestine was essentially formed to be the appropriator and carrier ofthe ideas and culture of others, not to be itself their origin andcreator. 

But when the ideas had once been brought to it they were modified andcombined, improved and generalized in a way that made them capable ofuniversal acceptance. Phoenician art is in no way original; its elementshave been drawn partly from Babylonia, partly from Egypt; but theircombination was the work of the Phoenicians, and it was just thiscombination which became the heritage of civilized man. The religion ofIsrael came from the wilderness, from the heights of Sinai, and thepalm-grove of Kadesh, but it was in Palestine that it took shape anddeveloped, until in the fullness of time the Messiah was born. Out ofCanaan have come the Prophets and the Gospel, but the Law which laybehind them was brought from elsewhere. 

CHAPTER II

THE PEOPLE

In the days of Abraham, Chedor-laomer, king of Elam and lord over thekings of Babylonia, marched westward with his Babylonian allies, inorder to punish his rebellious subjects in Canaan. The invading armyentered Palestine from the eastern side of the Jordan. Instead ofmarching along the sea-coast, it took the line of the valley of theJordan. It first attacked the plateau of Bashan, and then smote "theRephaim in Ashteroth Karnaim, and the Zuzim in Ham, and the Emim in theplain of Kiriathaim. " Then it passed into Mount Seir, and subjugated theHorites as far as El-Paran "by the wilderness. " Thence it turnednorthward again through the oasis of En-mishpat or Kadesh-barnea, andafter smiting the Amalekite Beduin, as well as the Amorites inHazezon-tamar, made its way into the vale of Siddim. There the battletook place which ended in the defeat of the king of Sodom and hisallies, who were carried away captive to the north. But at Hobah, "onthe left hand of Damascus, " the invaders were overtaken by "Abram theHebrew, " who dwelt with his Amorite confederates in the plain of Mamre, and the spoil they had seized was recovered from them. 

The narrative gives us a picture of the geography and ethnology ofPalestine as it was at the beginning of the Patriarchal Age. Before thatage was over it had altered very materially; the old cities for the mostpart still remained, but new races had taken the place of the olderones, new kingdoms had arisen, and the earlier landmarks had beendisplaced. The Amalekite alone continued what he had always been, theuntamable nomad of the southern desert. 

Rephaim or "Giants" was a general epithet applied to the prehistoricpopulation of the country. Og, king of Bashan in the time of the Exodus, was "of the remnant of the Rephaim" (Deut. Iii. 11); but so also werethe Anakim in Hebron, the Emim in Moab, and the Zamzummim in Ammon(Deut. Ii. 11, 20). Doubtless they represented a tall race in comparisonwith the Hebrews and Arabs of the desert; and the Israelitish spiesdescribed themselves as grasshoppers by the side of them (Numb. Xiii. 33). It is possible, however, that the name was really an ethnic one, which had only an accidental similarity in sound to the Hebrew word for"giants. " At all events, in the list of conquered Canaanitish townswhich the Pharaoh Thothmes III. Of Egypt caused to be engraved on thewalls of Karnak, the name of Astartu or Ashteroth Karnaim is followed bythat of Anaurepâ, in which Mr. Tomkins proposes to see On-Repha, "On ofthe Giant(s). " In the close neighbourhood in classical days stood Raphônor Raphana, Arpha of the Dekapolis, now called Er-Râfeh, and in Raphônit is difficult not to discern a reminiscence of the Rephaim of Genesis. 

Did these Rephaim belong to the same race as the Emim and the Anakim, orwere the latter called Rephaim or "Giants" merely because theyrepresented the tall prehistoric population of Canaan? The question canbe more easily asked than answered. We know from the Book of Genesisthat Amorites as well as Hittites lived at Hebron, or in its immediatevicinity. Abram dwelt in the plain of Mamre along with three Amoritechieftains, and Hoham, king of Hebron, who fought against Joshua, isaccounted among the Amorites (Josh. X. 1). The Anakim may therefore havebeen an Amorite tribe. They held themselves to be the descendants ofAnak, an ancient Canaanite god, whose female counterpart was thePhoenician goddess Onka. But, on the other hand, the Amorites at Hebronmay have been intruders; we know that Hebron was peculiarly a Hittitecity, and it is at Mamre rather than at Hebron that the Amoriteconfederates of Abram had their home. It is equally possible that theAnakim themselves may have been the stranger element; we hear nothingabout them in the days of the patriarchs, and it is only when theIsraelites prepare to enter Canaan that they first make their appearanceupon the stage. 

Og, king of Bashan, however, was an Amorite; of this we are assured inthe Book of Deuteronomy (iii. 8), and it is further said of him that heonly "remained of the remnant of the Rephaim. " The expression is anoticeable one, as it implies that the older population had been for themost part driven out. And such, in fact, was the case. At Rabbath, thecapital of Ammon, the basalt sarcophagus of the last king of Bashan waspreserved; but the king and his people had alike perished. Ammonites andIsraelites had taken their place. 

The children of Ammon had taken possession of the land once owned by theZamzummim (Deut. Ii. 20). The latter are called Zuzim in the narrativeof Genesis, and they are said to have dwelt in Ham. But Zuzim and Hamare merely faulty transcriptions from a cuneiform text of the HebrewZamzummim and Ammon, and the same people are meant both in Genesis andin Deuteronomy. In Deuteronomy also the Emim are mentioned, and theirgeographical position defined. They were the predecessors of theMoabites, and like the Zamzummim, "a people great and many and tall, "whom the Moabites expelled doubtless at the same time as that at whichthe Ammonites conquered the Zamzummim. The "plain of Kiriathaim, " or"the two cities, " must have lain south of the Arnon, where Ar and KirHaraseth were built. 

South of the Emim, in the rose-red mountains of Seir, afterwardsoccupied by the Edomites, came the Horites, whose name is generallysupposed to be derived from a Hebrew word signifying "a cave. " They havetherefore been regarded as Troglodytes, or cave-dwellers, a savage raceof men who possessed neither houses nor settled home. But it is quitepossible to connect the name with another word which means "white, " andto see in them the representatives of a white race. The name of Hor isassociated with Beth-lehem, and Caleb, of the Edomite tribe of Kenaz, iscalled "the son of Hur" (1 Chron. Ii. 50, iv. 4). There is no reason forbelieving that cave-dwellers ever existed in that part of Palestine. 

The discovery of the site of Kadesh-barnea is due in the first instanceto Dr. Rowlands, secondly to the archaeological skill of Dr. ClayTrumbull. It is still known as 'Ain Qadîs, "the spring of Qadis, " andlies hidden within the block of mountains which rise in the southerndesert about midway between Mount Seir and the Mediterranean Sea. Thewater still gushes out of the rock, fresh and clear, and nourishes theoasis that surrounds it. It has been marked out by nature to be ameeting-place and "sanctuary" of the desert tribes. Its centralposition, its security from sudden attack, and its abundant supply ofwater all combined to make it the En-Mishpat or "Spring of Judgment, "where cases were tried and laws enacted. It was here that the Israeliteslingered year after year during their wanderings in the wilderness, andit was from hence that the spies were sent out to explore the PromisedLand. In those days the mountains which encircled it were known as "themountains of the Amorites" (Deut. I. 19, 20). In the age of theBabylonian invasion, however, the Amorites had not advanced so far tothe south. They were as yet only at Hazezon-tamar, the "palm-grove" onthe western shore of the Dead Sea, which a later generation calledEn-gedi (2 Chron. Xx. 2). En-Mishpat was still in the hands of theAmalekites, the lords of "all the country" round about. 

The Amalekites had not as yet intermingled with the Ishmaelites, andtheir Beduin blood was still pure. They were the Shasu or "Plunderers"of the Egyptian inscriptions, sometimes also termed the Sitti, the Suteof the cuneiform texts. Like their modern descendants, they lived by theplunder of their more peaceful neighbours. As was prophesied of Ishmael, so could it have been prophesied of the Amalekites, that their "handshould be against every man, and every man's hand against" them. Theywere the wild offspring of the wilderness, and accounted the first-bornof mankind (Numb. Xxiv. 20). 

From En-Mishpat the Babylonian forces marched northward along thewestern edge of the Dead Sea. Leaving Jerusalem on their left, theydescended into the vale of Siddim, where they found themselves in thevalley of the Jordan, and consequently in the land of the Canaanites. Aswe are told in the Book of Numbers (xiii. 29), while "the Amalekitesdwell in the land of the south, and the Hittites and the Jebusites andAmorites dwell in the mountains, the Canaanites dwell by the sea and bythe coast of Jordan. "

The word Canaan, as we have seen, meant "the lowlands, " and appearssometimes in a longer, sometimes in a shorter form. The shorter form iswritten Khna by the Greeks: in the Tel el-Amarna tablets it isKinakhkhi, while Canaan, the longer form, is Kinakhna. It is this longerform which alone appears in the hieroglyphic texts. Here we read howSeti I. Destroyed the Shasu or Amalekites from the eastern frontier ofEgypt to "the land of Kana'an, " and captured their fortress of the samename which Major Conder has identified with Khurbet Kan'an near Hebron. It was also the longer form which was preserved among the Israelites aswell as among the Phoenicians, the original inhabitants of thesea-coast. Coins of Laodicea, on the Orontes, bear the inscription, "Laodicea a metropolis in Canaan, " and St. Augustine states that in histime the Carthaginian peasantry of Northern Africa, if questioned as totheir descent, still answered that they were "Canaanites. " (_Exp. Epist. Ad Rom. _ 13. )

In course of time the geographical signification of the name came to bewidely extended beyond its original limits. Just as Philistia, thedistrict of the Philistines, became the comprehensive Palestine, soCanaan, the land of the Canaanites of the coast and the valley, came todenote the whole of the country between the Jordan and the sea. It isalready used in this sense in the cuneiform correspondence of Telel-Amarna. Already in the century before the Exodus Kinakhna or Canaanrepresented pretty nearly all that we now mean by "Palestine. " It was infact the country to the south of "the land of the Amorites, " and "theland of the Amorites" lay immediately to the north of the Waters ofMerom. 

In the geographical table in the tenth chapter of Genesis Canaan isstated to be the son of Ham and the brother of Mizraim or Egypt. Thestatement indicates the age to which the account must go back. There wasonly one period of history in which Canaan could be geographicallydescribed as a brother of Egypt, and that was the period of theeighteenth and nineteenth dynasties, when for a while it was a provinceof the Pharaohs. At no other time was it closely connected with the sonsof Ham. At an earlier epoch its relations had been with Babylonia ratherthan with the valley of the Nile, and with the fall of the nineteenthdynasty the Asiatic empire of Egypt came finally to an end. 

The city of Sidon, we are further told, was the first-born of Canaan. Itclaimed to be the oldest of the Phoenician cities in the "lowlands" ofthe coast. It had grown out of an assemblage of "fishermen's" huts, andSaid the god of the fishermen continued to preside over it to the last. The fishermen became in time sailors and merchant-princes, and the fishfor which they sought was the murex with its precious purple dye. Tyre, the city of the "rock, " which in later days disputed the supremacy overPhoenicia with Sidon, was of younger foundation. Herodotus was told thatthe great temple of Baal Melkarth, "the city's king, " which he sawthere, had been built twenty-three centuries before his visit. But Sidonwas still older, older even than Gebal, the sacred city of the goddessBaaltis. 

The wider extension of the name of Canaan brought with it othergeographical relationships besides those of the sea-coast. Hittites andAmorites, Jebusites and Girgashites, Hivites and the peoples of thesouthern Lebanon, were all settled within the limits of the largerCanaan, and were therefore accounted his sons. Even Hamath claimed theright to be included in the brotherhood. It is said with truth that"afterwards were the families of the Canaanites spread abroad. "

Hittites and Amorites were interlocked both in the north and in thesouth. Kadesh, on the Orontes, the southern stronghold of the Hittitekingdom of the north, was, as the Egyptian records tell us, in the landof the Amorites; while in the south Hittites and Amorites were mingledtogether at Hebron, and Ezekiel (xvi. 3) declares that Jerusalem had adouble parentage: its birth was in the land of Canaan, but its fatherwas an Amorite and its mother a Hittite. Modern research, however, hasshown that Hittites and Amorites were races widely separated incharacter and origin. About the Hittites we hear a good deal both in thehieroglyphic and in the cuneiform inscriptions. The Khata of theEgyptian texts were the most formidable power of Western Asia with whomthe Egyptians of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties had to deal. They were tribes of mountaineers from the ranges of the Taurus who haddescended on the plains of Syria and established themselves there in themidst of an Aramaic population. Carchemish on the Euphrates became oneof their Syrian capitals, commanding the high-road of commerce and warfrom east to west. Thothmes III. , the conqueror of Western Asia, boastsof the gifts he received from "the land of Khata the greater, " socalled, it would seem, to distinguish it from another and lesser land ofKhata--that of the Hittites of the south. 

The cuneiform tablets of Tel el-Amarna, in the closing days of theeighteenth dynasty, represent the Hittites as advancing steadilysouthward and menacing the Syrian possessions of the Pharaoh. Disaffected Amorites and Canaanites looked to them for help, andeventually "the land of the Amorites" to the north of Palestine fellinto their possession. When the first Pharaohs of the nineteenth dynastyattempted to recover the Egyptian empire in Asia, they found themselvesconfronted by the most formidable of antagonists. Against Kadesh and"the great king of the Hittites" the Egyptian forces were driven invain, and after twenty years of warfare Ramses II. , the Pharaoh of theOppression, was fain to consent to peace. A treaty of alliance, offensive and defensive, was drawn up between the two rivals, and Egyptwas henceforth compelled to treat with the Hittites on equal terms. TheKhattâ or Khatâ of the Assyrian inscriptions are already a decayingpower. They are broken into a number of separate states or kingdoms, ofwhich Carchemish is the richest and most important. They are in fact inretreat towards those mountains of Asia Minor from which they hadoriginally issued forth. But they still hold their ground in Syria for along while. There were Hittites at Kadesh in the reign of David. Hittitekings could lend their services to Israel in the age of Elisha (2 Kingsvii. 6), and it was not till B. C. 717 that Carchemish was captured bySargon of Assyria, and the trade which passed through it diverted toNineveh. But when the Assyrians first became acquainted with thecoastland of the Mediterranean, the Hittites were to such an extent theruling race there that they gave their name to the whole district. Like"Palestine, " or "Canaan, " the term "land of the Hittites" came to denoteamong the Assyrians, not only Northern Syria and the Lebanon, butSouthern Syria as well. Even Ahab of Israel and Baasha the Ammonite areincluded by Shalmaneser II. Among its kings. 

This extended use of the name among the Assyrians is illustrated by theexistence of a Hittite tribe at Hebron in the extreme south ofPalestine. Various attempts have been made to get rid of the latter byunbelieving critics, but the statements of Genesis are corroborated byEzekiel's account of the foundation of Jerusalem. They are, moreover, infull harmony with the monumental records. As we have seen, Thothmes III. Implies that already in his day there was a second and smaller land ofthe Hittites, and the great Babylonian work on astronomy containsreferences to the Hittites which appear to go back to early days. 

Assyrian and Babylonian texts are not the only cuneiform records whichmake mention of the "Khata" or Hittites. Their name is found also on themonuments of the kings of Ararat or Armenia who reigned in the ninth andeighth centuries before our era, and who had borrowed from Nineveh thecuneiform system of writing. But the Khata of these Vannic or Armeniantexts lived considerably to the north of the Hittites of the Bible andof the Egyptian and Assyrian monuments. The country they inhabited layin eastern Asia Minor in the neighbourhood of the modern Malatiyeh. Here, in fact, was their original home. 

Thanks to the Egyptian artists, we are well acquainted with the Hittitephysical type. It was not handsome. The nose was unduly protrusive, while the chin and the forehead retreated. The cheeks were square withprominent bones, and the face was beardless. In colour the Hittites wereyellow-skinned with black hair and eyes. They seem to have worn theirhair in three long plaits which fell over the back like the pigtail of aChinaman, and they were distinguished by the use of boots with upturnedtoes. 

We might perhaps imagine that the Egyptian artists have caricaturedtheir adversaries. But this is not the case. Precisely the same profileof face, sometimes even exaggerated in its ugliness, is represented onthe Hittite monuments by the native sculptors themselves. It is one ofthe surest proofs we possess that these monuments, with their stillundeciphered inscriptions, are of Hittite origin. They belong to thepeople whom Israelites, Egyptians, Assyrians, and Armenians united incalling Hittites. 

In marked contrast to the Hittites stood the Amorites. They too aredepicted on the walls of the Egyptian temples and tombs. While theHittite type of features is Mongoloid, that of the Amorite is European. His nose is straight and somewhat pointed, his lips and nostrils thin, his cheek-bones high, his mouth firm and regular, his foreheadexpressive of intelligence. He has a fair amount of whisker, ending in apointed beard. At Abu-Simbel the skin is painted a pale yellow--theEgyptian equivalent for white--his eyes blue, and his beard and eyebrowsred. At Medînet Habu, his skin, as Prof. Petrie expresses it, is "ratherpinker than flesh-colour, " while in a tomb of the eighteenth dynasty atThebes it is painted white, the eyes and hair being a light red-brown. 

The Amorite, it is clear, must be classed with the fair-skinned, blue-eyed Libyans of the Egyptian monuments, whose modern descendantsare the Kabyles and other Berber tribes of Northern Africa. The latterare not only European in type, they claim special affinities to theblond, "golden-haired" Kelt. And their tall stature agrees well withwhat the Old Testament has to tell us about the Amorites. They too wereclassed among the Rephaim or "giants, " by the side of whom the Israeliteinvaders were but as "grasshoppers. "

While the Canaanites inhabited the lowlands, the highlands were the seatof the Amorites (Num. Xiii. 29). This, again, is in accordance withtheir European affinities. They flourished best in the colder and morebracing climate of the mountains, as do the Berber tribes of NorthernAfrica to-day. The blond, blue-eyed race is better adapted to endure thecold than the heat. 

Amorite tribes and kingdoms were to be found in all parts of Palestine. Southward, as we have seen, Kadesh-barnea was in "the mountain of theAmorites, " while Chedor-laomer found them on the western shores of theDead Sea. When Abraham pitched his tent in the plain above Hebron, itwas in the possession of three Amorite chieftains, and at the time ofthe Israelitish conquest, Hebron and Jerusalem, Jarmuth, Lachish andEglon were all Amorite (Josh. X. 5). Jacob assured Joseph theinheritance of his tribe should be in that district of Shechem which thepatriarch had taken "out of the hand of the Amorite" (Gen. Xlviii. 22), and on the eastern side of the Jordan were the Amorite kingdoms of Ogand Sihon. But we learn from the Egyptian inscriptions, and moreespecially from the Tel el-Amarna tablets, that the chief seat ofAmorite power lay immediately to the north of Palestine. Here was "theland of the Amorites, " to which frequent reference is made by themonuments, among the ranges of Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon, from Hamathsouthward to Hermon. On the east it was bounded by the desert, on thewest by the cities of Phoenicia. 

In early days, long before the age of Abraham, the Amorites must alreadyhave been the predominant population in this part of Syria. When theBabylonian king, Sargon of Akkad, carried his victorious arms to theshores of the Mediterranean, it was against "the land of the Amorites"that his campaigns were directed. From that time forward this was thename under which Syria, and more particularly Canaan, was known to theBabylonians. The geographical extension of the term was parallel to thatof "Hittites" among the Assyrians, of "Canaan" among the Israelites, andof "Palestine" among ourselves. But it bears witness to the importantpart which was played by the Amorites in what we must still call theprehistoric age of Syria, as well as to the extent of the area whichthey must have occupied. 

Of course it does not follow that the whole of this area was occupied atone and the same time. Indeed we know that the conquest of the northernportion of Moab by the Amorite king Sihon took place only a short timebefore the Israelitish invasion, and part of the Amorite song of triumphon the occasion has been preserved in the Book of Numbers. "There is afire gone out of Heshbon, " it said, "a flame from the city of Sihon: ithath consumed Ar of Moab, and the lords of the high places of Arnon. Woeto thee, Moab! thou art undone, O people of Chemosh: he hath given hissons that escaped, and his daughters, into captivity unto Sihon king ofthe Amorites. " (Num. Xxi. 28, 29. ) In the south, again, the Amorites donot seem to have made their way beyond Hazezon-Tamar, while the Telel-Amarna tablets make it probable that neither Bashan nor Jerusalemwere as yet Amorite at the time they were written. It may be that theAmorite conquests in the south were one of the results of the fall ofthe Egyptian empire and the Hittite irruption. 

Between the Hittite and the Amorite the geographical table of Genesisinterposes the Jebusite, and the Book of Numbers similarly states that"the Hittites and the Jebusites and the Amorites dwell in themountains. " The Jebusites, however, were merely the local tribe which inthe early days of the Israelitish occupation of Canaan were inpossession of Jerusalem, and they were probably either Hittite orAmorite in race. At any rate there is no trace of them in the cuneiformletters of Tel el-Amarna. On the contrary, in these Jerusalem is stillknown only by its old name of Uru-salim; of the name Jebus there is nota hint. But the letters show us that Ebed-Tob, the native king ofJerusalem and humble vassal of the Pharaoh, was being hard pressed byhis enemies, and that, in spite of his urgent appeals for help, theEgyptians were unable to send any. His enemy were the Khabiri or"Confederates, " about whose identification there has been muchdiscussion, but who were assisted by the Beduin chief Labai and hissons. One by one the towns belonging to the territory of Jerusalem fellinto the hands of his adversaries, and at last, as we learn from anotherletter, Ebed-Tob himself along with his capital was captured by the foe. It was this event, perhaps, which made Jerusalem a Jebusite city. If so, we must see in the enemies of Ebed-Tob the Jebusites of the OldTestament. 

The Girgashite is named after the Amorite, but who he may have been itis hard to say. In the Egyptian epic composed by the court-poet Pentaur, to commemorate the heroic deeds of Ramses II. In his struggle with theHittites, mention is twice made of "the country of Qarqish. " It was oneof those which had sent contingents to the Hittite army. But it seems tohave been situated in Northern Syria, if not in Asia Minor, so thatunless we can suppose that some of its inhabitants had followed in thewake of the Hittites and settled in Palestine, it is not easy to see howthey could be included among the sons of Canaan. The Hivites, whose namefollows that of the Girgashites, are simply the "villagers" or fellahinas opposed to the townsfolk. They are thus synonymous with thePerizzites, who take their place in Gen. Xv. 20, and whose name has thesame signification. But whereas the Perizzites were especially thecountry population of Southern Palestine, the Hivites were those of thenorth. In two passages, indeed, the name appears to be used in an ethnicsense, once in Gen. Xxxvi. 2, where we read that Esau married thegranddaughter of "Zibeon the Hivite, " and once in Josh. Xi. 3, wherereference is made to "the Hivite under Hermon in the land of Mizpeh. "But a comparison of the first passage with a later part of the chapter(vv. 20, 24, 25) proves that "Hivite" is a corrupt reading for "Horite, "while it is probable that in the second passage "Hittite" ought to beread for "Hivite. "

The four last sons of Canaan represent cities, and not tribes. Arka, called Irqat in the Tel el-Amarna tablets, and now known as Tel 'Arqa, was one of the inland cities of Phoenicia, in the mountains between theOrontes and the sea. Sin, which is mentioned by Tiglath-pileser III. , was in the same neighbourhood, as well as Zemar (now Sumra), which, likeArvad (the modern Ruâd), is named repeatedly in the Tel el-Amarnacorrespondence. It was at the time an important Phoenicianfortress, --"perched like a bird upon the rock, "--and was under thecontrol of the governor of Gebal. Arvad was equally important as asea-port, and its ships were used for war as well as for commerce. Asfor Hamath (now Hamah), the Khamat and Amat of the Assyrian texts, itwas already a leading city in the days of the eighteenth Egyptiandynasty. Thothmes III. Includes it among his Syrian conquests under thename of Amatu, as also does Ramses III. The Hittite inscriptionsdiscovered there go to show that, like Kadesh on the Orontes, it fell atone time into Hittite hands. 

Such then was the ethnographical map of Palestine in the PatriarchalAge. Canaanites in the lowlands, Amorites and Hittites in the highlandscontended for the mastery. In the desert of the south were the AmalekiteBeduin, ever ready to raid and murder their settled neighbours. Themountains of Seir were occupied by the Horites, while prehistorictribes, who probably belonged to the Amorite race, inhabited the plateaueast of the Jordan. 

This was the Palestine to which Abraham migrated, but it was a Palestinewhich his migration was destined eventually to change. Before manygenerations had passed Moab and Ammon, the children of his nephew, tookthe place of the older population of the eastern table-land, while Edomsettled in Mount Seir. A few generations more, and Israel too enteredinto its inheritance in Canaan itself. The Amorites were extirpated orbecame tributary, and the valleys of the Jordan and Kishon were seizedby the invading tribes. The cities of the extreme south had alreadybecome Philistine, and the strangers from Caphtor had supplanted in themthe Avim of an earlier epoch. 

Meanwhile the waves of foreign conquest had spread more than once acrossthe country. Canaan had been made subject to Babylonia, and had receivedin exchange for its independence the gift of Babylonian culture. Next itwas Egypt which entered upon its career of Asiatic conquest, and Canaanfor a while was an Egyptian province. But the Egyptian dominion in itsturn passed away, and Palestine was left the prey of other assailants, of the Hittites and the Beduin, of the people of Aram Naharaim and thenorthern hordes. Egyptians and Babylonians, Hittites and Mesopotamiansmingled with the earlier races of the country and obliterated the olderlandmarks. Before the Patriarchal Age came to an end, the ethnographicalmap of Canaan had undergone a profound change. 

CHAPTER III

THE BABYLONIANS IN CANAAN AND THE EGYPTIAN CONQUEST

It is in the cuneiform records of Babylonia that we catch the firstglimpse of the early history of Canaan. Babylonia was not yet unitedunder a single head. From time to time some prince arose whose conquestsallowed him to claim the imperial title of "king of Sumer and Akkad, " ofSouthern and Northern Babylonia, but the claim was never of longduration, and often it signified no more than a supremacy over the otherrulers of the country. 

It was while Babylonia was thus divided into more than one kingdom, thatthe first Chaldćan empire of which we know was formed by the militaryskill of Sargon of Akkad. Sargon was of Semitic origin, but his birthseems to have been obscure. His father, Itti-Bel, is not given the titleof king, and the later legends which gathered around his name declaredthat his mother was of low degree, that his father he knew not, and thathis father's brother lived in the mountain-land. Born in secrecy in thecity of Azu-pirani, "whence the elephants issue forth, " he was launchedby his mother on the waters of the Euphrates in an ark of bulrushesdaubed with pitch. The river carried the child to Akki the irrigator, who had compassion upon it, and brought it up as his own son. So Sargonbecame an agriculturist and gardener like his adopted father, till thegoddess Istar beheld and loved him, and eventually gave him his kingdomand crown. 

Whatever may have been the real history of Sargon's rise to power, certain it is that he showed himself worthy of it. He built himself acapital, which perhaps was Akkad near Sippara, and there founded alibrary stocked with books on clay and well provided with scribes. Thestandard works on astronomy and terrestrial omens were compiled for it, the first of which was translated into Greek by Berossos in days longsubsequent. But it was as a conqueror and the founder of the firstSemitic empire in Western Asia that posterity chiefly remembered him. Heoverthrew his rivals at home, and made himself master of NorthernBabylonia. Then he marched into Elam on the east, and devastated itsfields. Next he turned his attention to the west. Four times did he makehis way to "the land of the Amorites, " until at last it was thoroughlysubdued. His final campaign occupied three years. The countries "of thesea of the setting sun" acknowledged his dominion, and he united themwith his former conquests into "a single" empire. On the shores of theMediterranean he erected images of himself in token of his victories, and caused the spoil of Cyprus "to pass over into the countries of thesea. " Towards the end of his reign a revolt broke out against him inBabylonia, and he was besieged in the city of Akkad, but he "issuedforth and smote" his enemies and utterly destroyed them. Then came hislast campaign against Northern Mesopotamia, from which he returned withabundant prisoners and spoil. 

Sargon's son and successor was Naram-Sin, "the beloved of the Moon-god, "who continued the conquests of his father. His second campaign wasagainst the land of Magan, the name under which Midian and the Sinaiticpeninsula were known to the Babylonians. The result of it was theaddition of Magan to his empire and the captivity of its king. 

The copper mines of Magan, which are noticed in an early Babyloniangeographical list, made its acquisition coveted alike by Babylonians andEgyptians. We find the Pharaohs of the third dynasty alreadyestablishing their garrisons and colonies of miners in the province ofMafkat, as they called it, and slaughtering the Beduin who interferedwith them. The history of Naram-Sin shows that its conquest was equallyan object of the Babylonian monarchs at the very outset of theirhistory. But whereas the road from Egypt to Sinai was short and easy, that from Babylonia was long and difficult. Before a Babylonian armycould march into the peninsula it was needful that Syria should besecure in the rear. The conquest of Palestine, in fact, was necessarybefore the copper mines of Sinai could fall into Babylonian hands. 

The consolidation of Sargon's empire in the west, therefore, was needfulbefore the invasion of the country of Magan could take place, and theinvasion accordingly was reserved for Naram-Sin to make. The father hadprepared the way; the son obtained the great prize--the source of thecopper that was used in the ancient world. 

The fact that the whole of Syria is described in the annals of Sargon as"the land of the Amorites, " implies, not only that the Amorites were theruling population in the country, but also that they must have extendedfar to the south. The "land of the Amorites" formed the basis andstarting-point for the expedition of Naram-Sin into Magan; it must, therefore, have reached to the southern border of Palestine, if not evenfarther. The road trodden by his forces would have been the same as thatwhich was afterwards traversed by Chedor-laomer, and would have led himthrough Kadesh-barnea. Is it possible that the Amorites were already inpossession of the mountain-block within which Kadesh stood, and thatthis was their extreme limit to the south?

There were other names by which Palestine and Syria were known to theearly Babylonians, besides the general title of "the land of theAmorites. " One of these was Tidanum or Tidnum; another was Sanir orShenir. There was yet another, the reading of which is uncertain, thoughit may be Khidhi or Titi. 

Mr. Boscawen has pointed out a coincidence that is at least worthy ofattention. The first Babylonian monarch who penetrated into thepeninsula of Sinai bore a name compounded with that of the Moon-god, which thus bears witness to a special veneration for that deity. Now thename of Mount Sinai is similarly derived from that of the BabylonianMoon-god Sin. It was the high place where the god must have been adoredfrom early times under his Babylonian name. It thus points to Babylonianinfluence, if not to the presence of Babylonians on the spot. Can ithave been that the mountain whereon the God of Israel afterwardsrevealed Himself to Moses was dedicated to the Moon-god of Babylon byNaram-Sin the Chaldćn conqueror?

If such indeed were the case, it would have been more than two thousandyears before the Israelitish exodus. Nabonidos, the last king of thelater Babylonian empire, who had a fancy for antiquarian exploration, tells us that Naram-Sin reigned 3200 years before his own time, andtherefore about 3750 B. C. The date, startlingly early as it seems to be, is indirectly confirmed by other evidence, and Assyriologistsconsequently have come to accept it as approximately correct. 

How long Syria remained a part of the empire of Sargon of Akkad we donot know. But it must have been long enough for the elements ofBabylonian culture to be introduced into it. The small stone cylindersused by the Babylonians for sealing their clay documents thus becameknown to the peoples of the West. More than one has been found in Syriaand Cyprus which go back to the age of Sargon and Naram-Sin, while thereare numerous others which are more or less barbarous attempts on thepart of the natives to imitate the Babylonian originals. But theimitations prove that with the fall of Sargon's empire the use ofseal-cylinders in Syria, and consequently of documents for sealing, didnot disappear. That knowledge of writing, which was a characteristic ofBabylonian civilization, must have been carried with it to the shores ofthe Mediterranean. 

The seal-cylinders were engraved, sometimes with figures of men andgods, sometimes with symbols only. Very frequently lines of cuneiformwriting were added, and a common formula gave the name of the owner ofthe seal, along with those of his father and of the deity whom heworshipped. One of the seal-cylinders found in Cyprus describes theowner as an adorer of "the god Naram-Sin. " It is true that itsworkmanship shows it to belong to a much later date than the age ofNaram-Sin himself, but the legend equally shows that the name of theconqueror of Magan was still remembered in the West. Another cylinderdiscovered in the Lebanon mentions "the gods of the Amorite, " while athird from the same locality bears the inscription: "Multal-ili, the sonof Ili-isme-anni, the worshipper of the god Nin-si-zida. " The name ofthe god signified in the old pre-Semitic language of Chaldća "the lordof the upright horn, " while it is worth notice that the names of theowner and his father are compounded simply with the word _ili_ or _el_, "god, " not with the name of any special divinity. Multal-ili means"Provident is God, " Ili-isme-anni, "O my God, hear me!"

Many centuries have to elapse before the monuments of Babylonia againthrow light on the history of Canaan. Somewhere about B. C. 2700, ahigh-priest was ruling in a city of Southern Babylonia, under thesuzerainty of Dungi, the king of Ur. The high-priest's name was Gudea, and his city (now called Tel-loh by the Arabs) was known as Lagas. Theexcavations made here by M. De Sarzec have brought to light temples andpalaces, collections of clay books and carved stone statues, which goback to the early days of Babylonian history. The larger and better partof the monuments belong to Gudea, who seems to have spent most of hislife in building and restoring the sanctuaries of the gods. Dioritestatues of the prince are now in the Louvre, and inscriptions upon themstate that the stone out of which they were made was brought from theland of Magan. On the lap of one of them is a plan of the royal palace, with the scale of measurement marked on the edge of a sort ofdrawing-board. Prof. Petrie has shown that the unit of measurementrepresented in it is the cubit of the pyramid-builders of Egypt. 

The diorite of Sinai was not the only material which was imported intoBabylonia for the buildings of Gudea. Beams of cedar and box werebrought from Mount Amanus at the head of the Gulf of Antioch, blocks ofstone were floated down the Euphrates from Barsip near Carchemish, gold-dust came from Melukhkha, the "salt" desert to the east of Egyptwhich the Old Testament calls Havilah; copper was conveyed from thenorth of Arabia, limestone from the Lebanon ("the mountains ofTidanum"), and another kind of stone from Subsalla in the mountains ofthe Amorite land. Before beams of wood and blocks of stone could thus bebrought from the distant West, it was necessary that trade betweenBabylonia and the countries of the Mediterranean should have long beenorganized, that the roads throughout Western Asia should have been goodand numerous, and that Babylonian influence should have been extendedfar and wide. The conquests of Sargon and Naram-Sin had borne fruit inthe commerce that had followed upon them. 

Once more the curtain falls, and Canaan is hidden for a while out of oursight. Babylonia has become a united kingdom with its capital and centreat Babylon. Khammurabi (B. C. 2356-2301) has succeeded in shaking off thesuzerainty of Elam, in overthrowing his rival Eri-Aku, king of Larsa, with his Elamite allies, and in constituting himself sole monarch ofBabylonia. His family seems to have been in part, if not wholly, ofSouth Arabian extraction. Their names are Arabian rather thanBabylonian, and the Babylonian scribes found a difficulty intranscribing them correctly. But once in the possession of theBabylonian throne, they became thoroughly national, and under Khammurabithe literary glories of the court of Sargon of Akkad revived once more. 

Ammi-satana, the great-grandson of Khammurabi, calls himself king of"the land of the Amorites. " Babylonia, therefore, still claimed to beparamount in Palestine. Even the name of the king is an indication ofhis connection with the West. Neither of the elements of which it iscomposed belonged to the Babylonian language. The first of them, Ammi, was explained by the Babylonian philologists as meaning "a family, " butit is more probable that it represents the name of a god. We find it inthe proper names both of Southern and of Northwestern Arabia. The earlyMinsaean inscriptions of Southern Arabia contain names like Ammi-karib, Ammi-zadiqa, and Ammi-zaduq, the last of which is identical with that ofAmmi-zaduq, the son and successor of Ammi-satana. The Egyptian Sinuhit, who in the time of the twelfth dynasty fled, like Moses, for his lifefrom the court of the Pharaoh to the Kadmonites east of the Jordan, found protection among them at the hands of their chieftain Ammu-ânshi. The Ammonites themselves were the "sons of Ammi, " and in numerous Hebrewnames we find that of the god. Ammi-el, Ammi-nadab, and Ammi-shaddai arementioned in the Old Testament, the Assyrian inscriptions tell us ofAmmi-nadab the king of Ammon, and it is possible that even the name ofBalaam, the Aramaean seer, may be compounded with that of the god. Atall events, the city of Pethor from which he came was "by the river(Euphrates) of the land of the children of Ammo, " for such is theliteral rendering of the Hebrew words. 

Ammi-satana was not the first of his line whose authority had beenacknowledged in Palestine. The inscription in which he records the factis but a confirmation of what had been long known to us from the Book ofGenesis. There we read how Chedor-laomer, the king of Elam, with thethree vassal princes, Arioch of Ellasar, Amraphel of Shinar, and Tidalof Goyyim invaded Canaan, and how the kings of the vale of Siddim withits pits of asphalt became their tributaries. For thirteen years theyremained submissive and then rebelled. Thereupon the Babylonian armyagain marched to the west. Bashan and the eastern bank of the Jordanwere subjugated, the Horites in Mount Seir were smitten, and theinvaders then turned back through Kadesh-barnea, overthrowing theAmalekites and the Amorites on their way. Then came the battle in thevale of Siddim, which ended in the defeat of the Canaanites, the deathof the kings of Sodom and Gomorrha, and the capture of abundant booty. Among the prisoners was Lot, the nephew of Abram, and it was to effecthis rescue that the patriarch armed his followers and started in pursuitof the conquerors. Near Damascus he overtook them, and falling upon themby night, recovered the spoil of Sodom as well as his "brother's son. "

Arioch is the Eri-Aku of the cuneiform texts. In the old language ofChaldea the name signified "servant of the Moon-god. " The king is wellknown to us from contemporaneous inscriptions. Besides the inscribedbricks which have come from the temple of the Moon-god which he enlargedin the city of Ur, there are numerous contract tablets that are dated inhis reign. He tells us that he was the son of an Elamite, Kudur-Mabug, son of Simti-silkhak, and prince (or "father") of Yamut-bal on theborders of Elam and Babylonia. But this is not all. He further givesKudur-Mabug the title of "father of the Amorite land. " What this titleexactly means it is difficult to say; one thing, however, is certain, Kudur-Mabug must have exercised some kind of power and authority in thedistant West. 

His name, too, is remarkable. Names compounded with Kudur, "a servant, "were common in the Elamite language, the second element of the namebeing that of a deity, to whose worship the owner of it was dedicated. Thus we have Kudur-Lagamar, "the servant of the god Lagamar, "Kudur-Nakhkhunte, "the servant of Nakhkhunte. " But Mabug was not anElamite divinity. It was, on the contrary, a Mesopotamian deity fromwhom the town of Mabug near Carchemish, called Bambykę by the Greeks, and assimilated by the Arabs to their Membij, "a source, " derived itsname. Can it be from this Syrian deity that the father of Ariochreceived his name?

The capital of Arioch or Eri-Aku was Larsa, the city of the Sun-god, nowcalled Senkereh. With the help of his Elamite kindred, he extended hispower from thence over the greater part of Southern Babylonia. The oldcity of Ur, once the seat of the dominant dynasty of Chaldćan kings, formed part of his dominions; Nipur, now Niffer, fell into his handslike the seaport Eridu on the shores of the Persian Gulf, and in one ofhis inscriptions he celebrates his conquest of "the ancient city ofErech. " On the day of its capture he erected in gratitude a temple tohis god Ingirisa, "for the preservation of his life. "

But the god did not protect him for ever. A time came when Khammurabi, king of Babylon, rose in revolt against the Elamite supremacy, and drovethe Elamite forces out of the land. Eri-Aku was attacked and defeated, and his cities fell into the hands of the conqueror. Khammurabi becamesole king of Babylonia, which from henceforth obeyed but a singlesceptre. 

Are we to see in the Amraphel of Genesis the Khammurabi of the cuneiforminscriptions? The difference in the names seems to make it impossible. Moreover, Amraphel, we are told, was king of Shinar, and it is notcertain that the Shinar of the fourteenth chapter of Genesis was thatpart of Babylonia of which Babylon was the capital. This, in fact, wasthe northern division of the country, and if we are to identify theShinar of scripture with the Sumer of the monuments, as Assyriologistshave agreed to do, Shinar would have been its southern half. It is truethat in the later days of Hebrew history Shinar denoted the whole plainof Chaldća, including the city of Babylon, but this may have been anextension of the meaning of the name similar to that of which Canaan isan instance. 

Unless Sumer and Shinar are the same words, outside the Old Testamentthere is only one Shinar known to ancient geography. That was inMesopotamia. The Greek geographers called it Singara (now Sinjar), anoasis in the midst of deserts, and formed by an isolated mountain tractabounding in springs. It is already mentioned in the annals of theEgyptian conqueror Thothmes III. In his thirty-third year (B. C. 1470), the king of Sangar sent him tribute consisting of lapis-lazuli "ofBabylon, " and of various objects carved out of it. From Sangar alsohorses were exported into Egypt, and in one of the Tel el-Amarnaletters, the king of Alasiya in Northern Syria writes to thePharaoh, --"Do not set me with the king of the Hittites and the king ofSankhar; whatever gifts they have sent to me I will restore to theetwofold. " In hieroglyphic and cuneiform spelling, Sangar and Sankhar arethe exact equivalents of the Hebrew Shinar. 

How the name of Shinar came to be transferred from Mesopotamia toBabylonia is a puzzle. The Mesopotamian Shinar is nowhere near theBabylonian frontier. It lies in a straight line westward of Mosul andthe ancient Nineveh, and not far from the banks of the Khabur. Can itsapplication to Babylonia be due to a confusion between Sumer and Sangar?

Whatever the explanation may be, it is clear that the position of thekingdom of Amraphel is by no means so easily determined as has hithertobeen supposed. It may be Sumer or Southern Babylonia; it may be NorthernBabylonia with its capital Babylon; or again, it may be the Mesopotamianoasis of Sinjar. Until we find the name of Amraphel in the cuneiformtexts it is impossible to attain certainty. 

There is one fact, however, which seems to indicate that it really iseither Sumer or Northern Babylonia that is meant. The narrative ofChedor-laomer's campaign begins with the words that it took place "inthe time of Amraphel, king of Shinar. " Chedor-laomer the Elamite was theleader of the expedition; he too was the suzerain lord of his allies;and nevertheless the campaign is dated, not in his reign, but in that ofone of the subject kings. That the narrative has been taken from theBabylonian annals there is little room for doubt, and consequently itwould follow from the dating that Amraphel was a Babylonian prince, perhaps that he was the ruler of the city which, from the days ofKhammurabi onward, became the capital of the country. In that case weshould have to find some way of explaining the difference between theHebrew and the Babylonian forms of the royal name. 

Lagamar or Lagamer, written Laomer in Hebrew, was one of the principaldeities of Elam, and the Babylonians made him a son of their ownwater-god Ea. The Elamite king Chedor-laomer, or Kudur-Lagamar, as hisname was written in his own language, must have been related to theElamite prince Kudur-Mabug, whose son Arioch was a subject-ally of theElamite monarch. Possibly they were brothers, the younger brotherreceiving as his share of power the title of "father"--not "king"--ofYamutbal and the land of the Amorites. At any rate it is a son ofKudur-Mabug and not of the Elamite sovereign who receives a principalityin Babylonia. 

In the Book of Genesis Arioch is called "king of Ellasar. " But Ellasaris clearly the Larsa of the cuneiform inscriptions, perhaps with theword _al_, "city, " prefixed. Larsa, the modern Senkereh, was in SouthernBabylonia, on the eastern bank of the Euphrates, not far from Erech, andto the north of Ur. Its king was virtually lord of Sumer, but he claimedto be lord also of the north. In his inscriptions Eri-Aku assumes theimperial title of "king of Sumer and Akkad, " of both divisions ofBabylonia, and it may be that at one time the rival king of Babylonacknowledged his supremacy. 

Who "Tidal king of Goyyim" may have been we cannot tell. Sir HenryRawlinson has proposed to see in Goyyim a transformation of Gutium, thename by which Kurdistan was called in early Babylonia. Mr. Pinches hasrecently discovered a cuneiform tablet in which mention is made, notonly of Eri-Aku and Kudur-Lagamar, but also of Tudkhul, and Tudkhulwould be an exact transcription in Babylonian of the Hebrew Tidal. Butthe tablet is mutilated, and its relation to the narrative of Genesis isnot yet clear. For the present, therefore, we must leave Tidalunexplained. 

The name even of one of the Canaanite kings who were subdued by theBabylonian army has found its confirmation in a cuneiform inscription. This is the name of "Shinab, king of Admah. " We hear fromTiglath-pileser III. Of Sanibu, king of Ammon, and Sanibu and Shinab areone and the same. The old name of the king of Admah was thus perpetuatedon the eastern side of the Jordan. 

It may be that the asphalt of Siddim was coveted by the Babyloniankings. Bitumen, it is true, was found in Babylonia itself near Hit, butif Amiaud is right, one of the objects imported from abroad for Gudea ofLagas was asphalt. It came from Madga, which is described as being "inthe mountains of the river Gur(?)ruda. " But no reference to the place isto be met with anywhere else in cuneiform literature. 

When Abram returned with the captives and spoil of Sodom, the new kingcame forth to meet him "at the valley of Shaveh, which is the king'sdale. " This was in the near neighbourhood of Jerusalem, as we gatherfrom the history of Absalom (2 Sam. Xviii. 18). Accordingly we furtherread that at the same time "Melchizedek, king of Salem, " and "priest ofthe most High God, " "brought forth bread and wine, " and blessed theHebrew conqueror, who thereupon gave him tithes of all the spoil. 

It is only since the discovery and decipherment of the cuneiform tabletsof Tel el-Amarna that the story of Melchizedek has been illustrated andexplained. Hitherto it had seemed to stand alone. The critics, in thesuperiority of their knowledge, had refused credit to it, and had deniedthat the name even of Jerusalem or Salem was known before the age ofDavid. But the monuments have come to our help, and have shown that itis the critics and not the Biblical writer who have been in error. 

Several of the most interesting of the Tel el-Amarna letters werewritten to the Pharaoh Amenôphis IV. Khu-n-Aten by Ebed-Tob the king ofJerusalem. Not only is the name of Uru-salim or Jerusalem the only onein use, the city itself is already one of the most important fortressesof Canaan. It was the capital of a large district which extendedsouthwards as far as Keilah and Karmel of Judah. It commanded theapproach to the vale of Siddim, and in one of his letters Ebed-Tobspeaks of having repaired the royal roads not only in the mountains, butalso in the _kikar_ or "plain" of Jordan (Gen. Xiii. 10). The possessionof Jerusalem was eagerly coveted by the enemies of Ebed-Tob, whom hecalls also the enemies of the Egyptian king. 

Now Ebed-Tob declares time after time that he is not an Egyptiangovernor, but a tributary ally and vassal of the Pharaoh, and that hehad received his royal power, not by inheritance from his father ormother, but through the arm (or oracle) of "the Mighty King. " As "theMighty King" is distinguished from the "great King" of Egypt, we mustsee in him the god worshipped by Ebed-Tob, the "Most High God" ofMelchizedek, and the prototype of "the Mighty God" of Isaiah. It is thissame mighty king, Ebed-Tob assures the Pharaoh in another letter, whowill overthrow the navies of Babylonia and Aram-Naharaim. 

Here, then, as late as the fifteenth century before our era we have aking of Jerusalem who owes his royal dignity to his god. He is, in fact, a priest as well as a king. His throne has not descended to him byinheritance; so far as his kingly office is concerned, he is likeMelchizedek, without father and without mother. Between Ebed-Tob andMelchizedek there is more than analogy; there is a striking andunexpected resemblance. The description given of him by Ebed-Tobexplains what has puzzled us so long in the person of Melchizedek. 

The origin of the name of Jerusalem also is now cleared up. It was noinvention of the age of David; on the contrary, it goes back to theperiod of Babylonian intercourse with Canaan. It is written in thecuneiform documents Uru-Salim, "the city of Salim, " the god of peace. One of the lexical tablets from the library of Nineveh has long agoinformed us that in one of the languages known to the Babylonians _uru_was the equivalent of the Babylonian _alu_, "a city, " and we now knowthat this language was that of Canaan. It would even seem that the wordhad originally been brought from Babylonia itself in the days whenBabylonian writing and culture first penetrated to the West. In theSumerian or pre-Semitic language of Chaldća _eri_ signified a "city, "and _eri_ in the pronunciation of the Semites became _uru_. Hence it wasthat Uru or Ur, the birthplace of Abraham, received its name at a timewhen it was the ruling city of Babylonia, and though the SemiticBabylonians themselves never adopted the word in common life it made itsway to Canaan. The rise of the "city" in the west was part of thatBabylonian civilization which was carried to the shores of theMediterranean, and so the word which denoted it was borrowed from theold language of Chaldća, like the word for "palace, " _hękâl_, theSumerian _ę-gal_, or "Great House. " It is noteworthy that Harran, theresting-place of Abraham on his way from Ur to Palestine, the half-wayhouse, as it were, between East and West, also derived its name from aSumerian word which signified "the high-road. " _Harran_ and _Ur_ weretwo of the gifts which passed to Canaan from the speakers of theprimaeval language of Chaldća. 

We can now understand why Melchizedek should have been called the "kingof Salem. " His capital could be described either as Jeru-salem or as thecity of Salem. And that it was often referred to as Salem simply isshown by the Egyptian monuments. One of the cities of SouthernPalestine, the capture of which is represented by Ramses II. On thewalls of the Ramesseum at Thebes, is Shalam or Salem, and "the districtof Salem" is mentioned between "the country of Hadashah" (Josh. Xv. 37)and "the district of the Dead Sea" and "the Jordan, " in the list of theplaces which Ramses III. At Medînet Habu describes himself as havingconquered in the same part of the world. 

It may be that Isaiah is playing upon the old name of Jerusalem when hegives the Messiah the title of "Prince of Peace. " But in any case thefact that Salim, the god of peace, was the patron deity of Jerusalem, lends a special significance to Melchizedek's treatment of Abram. Thepatriarch had returned in peace from an expedition in which he hadoverthrown the invaders of Canaan; he had restored peace to the countryof the priest-king, and had driven away its enemies. The offering ofbread and wine on the part of Melchizedek was a sign of freedom from theenemy and of gratitude to the deliverer, while the tithes paid by Abramwere equally a token that the land was again at peace. The name ofSalim, the god of peace, was under one form or another widely spread inthe Semitic world. Salamanu, or Solomon, was the king of Moab in thetime of Tiglath-pileser III. ; the name of Shalmaneser of Assyria iswritten Sulman-asarid, "the god Sulman is chief, " in the cuneiforminscriptions; and one of the Tel el-Amarna letters was sent byEbed-Sullim, "the servant of Sullim, " who was governor of Hazor. In oneof the Assyrian cities (Dimmen-Silim, "the foundation-stone of peace")worship was paid to the god "Sulman the fish. " Nor must we forget that"Salma was the father of Beth-lehem" (1 Chron. Ii. 51). 

In the time of the Israelitish conquest the king of Jerusalem wasAdoni-zedek (Josh. X. 1). The name is similar to that of Melchi-zedek, though the exact interpretation of it is a matter of doubt. It points, however, to a special use of the word _zedek_, "righteousness, " and itis therefore interesting to find the word actually employed in one ofthe letters of Ebed-Tob. He there says of the Pharaoh: "Behold, the kingis righteous (_zaduq_) towards me. " What makes the occurrence of theword the more striking is that it was utterly unknown to theBabylonians. The root _zadaq_, "to be righteous, " did not exist in theAssyrian language. 

There is yet another point in the history of the meeting between Abramand Melchizedek which must not be passed over. When the patriarchreturned after smiting the invading army he was met outside Jerusalemnot only by Melchizedek, but also by the new king of Sodom. It was, therefore, in the mountains and in the shadow of the sanctuary of theMost High God that the newly-appointed prince was to be found, ratherthan in the vale of Siddim. Does not this show that the king ofJerusalem already exercised that sovereignty over the surroundingdistrict that Ebed-Tob did in the century before the Exodus? As we haveseen, Ebed-Tob describes himself as repairing the roads in that very"Kikar, " or "plain, " in which Sodom and Gomorrha stood. It would seemthen that the priest-king of the great fortress in the mountains wasalready acknowledged as the dominant Canaanitish ruler, and that theneighbouring princes had to pay him homage when they first received thecrown. This would be an additional reason for the tithes given to him byAbram. 

Long after the defeat of Chedor-laomer and his allies, if we are toaccept the traditional belief, Abraham was again destined to visitJerusalem. But he had ceased to be "Abram the Hebrew, " the confederateof the Amorite chieftains in the plain of Mamre, and had become Abrahamthe father of the promised seed. Isaac had been born to him, and he wascalled upon to sacrifice his first-born son. 

The place of sacrifice was upon one of the mountains in the land ofMoriah. There at the last moment the hand of the father was stayed, anda ram was substituted for the human victim. "And Abraham called the nameof that place Yahveh-yireh; as it is said to this day, In the mount ofthe Lord it shall be seen. " According to the Hebrew text of theChronicles (2 Chron. Iii. 1), this mount of the Lord where Abraham'ssacrifice was offered was the temple-mount at Jerusalem. The proverbquoted in Genesis seems to indicate the same fact. Moreover, thedistance of the mountain from Beer-sheba--three days' journey--would bealso the distance of Jerusalem from Abraham's starting-place. 

It is even possible that in the name of Yahveh-yireh we have a play uponthe first element in the name of Jeru-salem. The word _uru_, "city, "became _yeru_ or _yiru_ in Hebrew pronunciation, and between this and_yireh_ the difference is not great. Yahveh-yireh, "the Lord sees, "might also be interpreted "the Lord of Yeru. "

The temple-hill was emphatically "the mount of the Lord. " In Ezekiel(xliii. 15) the altar that stood upon it is called Har-el, "the mountainof God. " The term reminds us of Babylonia, where the mercy-seat of thegreat temple of Bel-Merodach at Babylon was termed Du-azagga, "the holyhill. " It was on this "seat of the oracles, " as it was termed, that thegod enthroned himself at the beginning of each year, and announced hiswill to mankind. But the mercy-seat was entitled "the holy hill" onlybecause it was a miniature copy of "the holy hill" upon which the wholetemple was erected. So, too, at Jerusalem, the altar is called "themount of God" by Ezekiel only because it represents that greater "mountof God" upon which it was built. The temple-hill itself was theprimitive Har-el. 

The list of conquered localities in Palestine recorded by Thothmes III. At Karnak gives indirect testimony to the same fact. The name of Rabbahof Judah is immediately preceded in it by that of Har-el, "the mount ofGod. " The position of this Har-el leads us to the very mountain tract inthe midst of which Jerusalem stood. We now know that Jerusalem wasalready an important city in the age of the eighteenth Egyptian dynasty, and that it formed one of the Egyptian conquests; it would be strangetherefore if no notice had been taken of it by the compiler of the list. May we not see, then, in the Har-el of the Egyptian scribe the sacredmountain of Israelitish history?

There is a passage in one of the letters of Ebed-Tob which may throwfurther light on the history of the temple-hill. Unfortunately one ofthe cuneiform characters in it is badly formed, so that its reading isnot certain, and still more unfortunately this character is one of themost important in the whole paragraph. If Dr. Winckler and myself areright in our copies, Ebed-Tob speaks of "the city of the mountain ofJerusalem, the city of the temple of the god Nin-ip, (whose) name(there) is Salim, the city of the king. " What we read "Salim, " however, is read differently by Dr. Zimmern, so that according to his copy thepassage must be translated: "the city of the mountain of Jerusalem, thecity of the temple of the god Nin-ip is its name, the city of the king. "In the one case Ebed-Tob will state explicitly that the god ofJerusalem, whom he identifies with the Babylonian Nin-ip, is Salim orSulman, the god of peace, and that his temple stood on "the mountain ofJerusalem"; in the other case there will be no mention of Salim, and itwill be left doubtful whether or not the city of Beth-Nin-ip wasincluded within the walls of the capital. It would seem rather that itwas separate from Jerusalem, though standing on the same "mountain" asthe great fortress. If so, we might identify Jerusalem with the city onMount Zion, the Jebusite stronghold of a later date, while "the city ofBeth-Nin-ip" would be that which centred round the temple on Moriah. 

However this may be, the fortress and the temple-hill were distinct fromone another in the days of the Jebusites, and we may therefore assumethat they were also distinct in the age of Abraham. This might explainwhy it was that the mountain of Moriah on the summit of which thepatriarch offered his sacrifice was not enclosed within the walls ofJerusalem, and was not covered with buildings. It was a spot, on thecontrary, where sheep could feed, and a ram be caught by its horns inthe thick brushwood. 

In entering Canaan, Abraham would have found himself still surrounded byall the signs of a familiar civilization. The long-continued influenceand government of Babylonia had carried to "the land of the Amorites"all the elements of Chaldćan culture. Migration from Ur of the Chaldeesto the distant West meant a change only in climate and population, notin the civilization to which the patriarch had been accustomed. 

Even the Babylonian language was known and used in the cities of Canaan, and the literature of Babylonia was studied by the Canaanitish people. This is one of the facts which we have learnt from the discovery of theTel el-Amarna tablets. The cuneiform system of writing and theBabylonian language had spread all over Western Asia, and nowhere hadthey taken deeper root than in Canaan. Here there were schools andteachers for instruction in the foreign language and script, andrecord-chambers and libraries in which the letters and books of claycould be copied and preserved. 

Long before the discovery of the Tel el-Amarna tablets we might havegathered from the Old Testament itself that such libraries once existedin Canaan. One of the Canaanitish cities taken and destroyed by theIsraelites was Debir in the mountainous part of Judah. But Debir, "thesanctuary, " was also known by two other names. It was calledKirjath-Sannah, "the city of Instruction, " as well as Kirjath-Sepher, "the city of Books. "

We now know, however, that the latter name is not quite correct. TheMassoretic punctuation has to be emended, and we must readKirjath-Sopher, "the city of the Scribe(s), " instead of Kirjath-Sepher, "the city of Book(s). " It is an Egyptian papyrus which has given us theexact name. In the time of Ramses II. An Egyptian scribe composed asarcastic account of the misadventures met with by a tourist inPalestine--commonly known as _The Travels of a Mohar_--and in thismention is made of two adjoining towns in Southern Palestine calledKirjath-Anab and Beth-Sopher. In the Book of Joshua the towns of Anaband Kirjath-Sepher are similarly associated together, and it is plain, therefore, as Dr. W. Max Müller has remarked, that the Egyptian writerhas interchanged the equivalent terms Kirjath, "city, " and Beth, "house. " He ought to have written Beth-Anab and Kirjath-Sopher. But hehas given us the true form of the latter name, and as he has added tothe word _Sopher_ the determinative of "writing, " he has further putbeyond question the real meaning of the name. The city must have beenone of those centres of Canaanitish learning, where, as in the librariesof Babylonia and Assyria, a large body of scribes was kept constantly atwork. 

The language employed in the cuneiform documents was almost always thatof Babylonia, which had become the common speech of diplomacy andeducated society. But at times the native language of the country wasalso employed, and one or two examples of it have been preserved. Thelegends and traditions of Babylonia served as text-books for thestudent, and doubtless Babylonian history was carried to the West aswell. The account of Chedor-laomer's campaign might have been derived inthis way from the clay-books of ancient Babylonia. 

Babylonian theology, too, made its way to the West, and has left recordsof itself in the map of Canaan. In the names of Canaanitish towns andvillages the names of Babylonian deities frequently recur. Rimmon orHadad, the god of the air, whom the Syrians identified with the Sun-god, Nebo, the god of prophecy, the interpreter of the will of Bel-Merodach, Anu, the god of the sky, and Anat, his consort, all alike meet us in thenames sometimes of places, sometimes of persons. Mr. Tomkins is probablyright in seeing even in Beth-lehem the name of the primeval Chaldćandeity Lakhmu. The Canaanitish Moloch is the Babylonian Malik, and Dagonwas one of the oldest of Chaldćan divinities and the associate of Anu. We have seen how ready Ebed-Tob was to identify the god he worshippedwith the Babylonian Nin-ip, and among the Canaanites mentioned in theletters of Tel el-Amarna there is more than one whose name is compoundedwith that of a Babylonian god. 

Writing and literature, religion and mythology, history and science, allthese were brought to the peoples of Canaan in the train of Babylonianconquest and trade. Art naturally went hand in hand with this importedculture. The seal-cylinders of the Chaldćans were imitated, andBabylonian figures and ornamental designs were borrowed and modified bythe Canaanitish artists. It was in this way that the rosette, thecherub, the sacred tree, and the palmette passed to the West, and thereserved to adorn the metal-work and pottery. New designs, unknown inBabylonia, began to develop; among others, the heads of animals in goldand silver as covers for metal vases. Some of these "vases of Kaft, " asthey were called, are pictured on the Egyptian monuments, and ThothmesIII. In his annals describes "the paterae with goats' heads upon themand one with a lion's head, the productions of Zahi, " or Palestine, which were brought to him as tribute. 

The spoil which the same Pharaoh carried away from the Canaanitishprinces gives us some idea of the art which they patronized. We hear ofchariots and tent-poles covered with plates of gold, of iron armour andhelmets, of gold and silver rings which were used in the place of money, of staves of ivory, ebony, and cedar inlaid with gold, of goldensceptres, of tables, chairs, and footstools of cedar wood, inlaid someof them with ivory, others with gold and precious stones, of vases andbowls of all kinds in gold, silver, and bronze, and of the two-handledcups which were a special manufacture of Phoenicia. Iron seems to havebeen worked in Canaan from an early date. The Israelites were unable todrive out the inhabitants of "the valley" because of their chariots ofiron, and when the chariot of the Egyptian Mohar is disabled by therough roads of the Canaanite mountains the writer of the papyrus alreadyreferred to makes him turn aside at once to a worker in iron. There wasno difficulty in finding an ironsmith in Canaan. 

The purple dye of Phoenicia had been famous from a remote antiquity. Itwas one of the chief objects of the trade which was carried on by theCanaanites with Egypt on the one side and Babylonia on the other. It wasdoubtless in exchange for the purple that the "goodly Babylonishgarment" of which we are told in the Book of Joshua (vii. 21) made itsway to the city of Jericho, for Babylonia was as celebrated for itsembroidered robes as Canaan was for its purple dye. 

We hear something about the trade of Canaan in one of the cuneiformtablets of Tel el-Amarna. This is a letter from Kallimma-Sin, king ofBabylonia, to the Egyptian Pharaoh urging him to conclude a treaty inaccordance with which the merchants of Babylonia might trade with Egypton condition of their paying the customs at the frontier. Gold, silver, oil, and clothing are among the objects upon which the duty was to belevied. The frontier was probably fixed at the borders of the Egyptianprovince of Canaan rather than at those of Egypt itself. 

Babylonia and the civilized lands of the East were not the onlycountries with which Canaanitish trade was carried on. Negro slaves wereimported from the Soudan, copper and lead from Cyprus, and horses fromAsia Minor, while the excavations of Mr. Bliss at Lachish have broughtto light beads of Baltic amber mixed with the scarabs of the eighteenthEgyptian dynasty. 

A large part of the trade of Phoenicia was carried on in ships. It wasin this way that the logs of cedar were brought from the forests at thehead of the Gulf of Antioch, and the purple murex from the coasts of the_Ćgean_. Tyre, whose wealth is already celebrated in one of the Telel-Amarna tablets, was built upon an island, and, as an Egyptian papyrustells us, water had to be conveyed to it in boats. So, too, was Arvad, whose navy occupies an important place in the Tel el-Amarnacorrespondence. The ships of Canaan were, in fact, famous from an earlydate. Two classes of vessel known to the Egyptians were called "ships ofGebal" and "ships of Kaft, " or Phoenicia, and Ebed-Tob asserts that "aslong as a ship sails upon the sea, the arm (or oracle) of the MightyKing shall conquer the forces of Aram-Naharaim (Nahrima) and Babylonia. "Balaam's prophecy--"Ships shall come from Chittim and shall afflictAsshur and shall afflict Eber, " takes us back to the same age. 

The Aram-Naharaim of Scripture is the Nahrina of the hieroglyphic texts, the Mitanni of the native inscriptions. The capital city Mitanni stoodon the eastern bank of the Euphrates, at no great distance fromCarchemish, but the Naharaim, or "Two Rivers, " more probably mean theEuphrates and Orontes, than the Euphrates and Tigris. In one of the Telel-Amarna tablets the country is called Nahrima, but its usual name isMitanni or Mitanna. It was the first independent kingdom of any size orpower on the frontiers of the Egyptian empire in the age of theeighteenth dynasty, and the Pharaohs Thothmes IV. , Amenophis III. , andAmenophis IV. Successively married into its royal family. 

The language of Mitanni has been revealed to us by the cuneiformcorrespondence from Tel el-Amarna. It was highly agglutinative, andunlike any other form of speech, ancient or modern, with which we areacquainted. Perhaps the speakers of it, like the Hittites, had descendedfrom the north, and occupied territory which had originally belonged toAramaic tribes. Perhaps, on the other hand, they represented the olderpopulation of the country which was overpowered and displaced by Semiticinvaders. Which of these views is the more correct we shall probablynever know. 

Along with their own language the people of Mitanni had also their owntheology. Tessupas was god of the atmosphere, the Hadad of the Semites, Sausbe was identified with the Phoenician Ashteroth, and Sekhrus, Zizanu, and Zannukhu are mentioned among the other deities. But many ofthe divinities of Assyria were also borrowed--Sin the Moon-god, whosetemple stood in the city of Harran, Ea the god of the waters, Bel, theBaal of the Canaanites, and Istar, "the lady of Nineveh. " Even Amon thegod of Thebes was adopted into the pantheon in the days of Egyptianinfluence. 

How far back the interference of Aram-Naharaim in the affairs of Canaanmay have reached it is impossible to say. But the kingdom lay on thehigh-road from Babylonia and Assyria to the West, and its rise maypossibly have had something to do with the decline of Babyloniansupremacy in Palestine. The district in which it grew up was called Suruor Suri by the Sumerian inhabitants of Chaldća--a name which may be theorigin of the modern "Syria, " rather than Assyria, as is usuallysupposed, and the Semitic Babylonians gave it the title of Subari orSubartu. The conquest of Suri was the work of the last campaign ofSargon of Accad, and laid all northern Mesopotamia at his feet. 

We gather from the letters of Tel el-Amarna that the Babylonians werestill intriguing in Canaan in the century before the Exodus, though theyacknowledged that it was an Egyptian province and subject to Egyptianlaws. But the memory of the power they had once exercised there stillsurvived, and the influence of their culture continued undiminished. When their rule actually ceased we do not yet know. It cannot have beenvery long, however, before the era of Egyptian conquest. In the Telel-Amarna tablets they are always called Kassites, a name which couldhave been given to them only after the conquest of Babylonia by theKassite mountaineers of Elam, and the rise of a Kassite dynasty ofkings. This was about 1730 B. C. For some time subsequently, therefore, the government of Babylonia must still have been acknowledged in Canaan. With this agrees a statement of the Egyptian historian Manetho, uponwhich the critics, in their wisdom or their ignorance, have pouredunmeasured contempt. He tells us that when the Hyksos were driven out ofEgypt by Ahmes I. , the founder of the eighteenth dynasty, they occupiedJerusalem and fortified it--not, as would naturally be imagined, againstthe Egyptian Pharaoh, but against "the Assyrians, " as the Babylonianswere called by Manetho's contemporaries. As long as there were nomonuments to confront them the critics had little difficulty in provingthat the statement was preposterous and unhistorical, that Jerusalem didnot as yet exist, and that no Assyrians or Babylonians entered Palestineuntil centuries later. But we now know that Manetho was right and hiscritics wrong. Jerusalem did exist, and Babylonian armies threatened theindependence of the Canaanite states. In one of his letters, Ebed-Tob, king of Jerusalem, tells the Pharaoh that he need not be alarmed aboutthe Babylonians, for the temple at Jerusalem is strong enough to resisttheir attack. Rib-Hadad the governor of Gebal bears the same testimony. "When thou didst sit on the throne of thy father, " he says, "the sons ofEbed-Asherah (the Amorite) attached themselves to the country of theBabylonians, and took the country of the Pharaoh for themselves; they(intrigued with) the king of Mitanna, and the king of the Babylonians, and the king of the Hittites. " In another despatch he speaks in asimilar strain: "The king of the Babylonians and the king of Mitanna arestrong, and have taken the country of the Pharaoh for themselvesalready, and have seized the cities of thy governor. " When George theSynkellos notes that the Chaldćans made war against the Phoenicians inB. C. 1556, he is doubtless quoting from some old and trustworthy source. 

We must not imagine, however, that there was any permanent occupation ofCanaan on the part of the Babylonians at this period of its history. Itwould seem rather that Babylonian authority was directly exercised onlyfrom time to time, and had to be enforced by repeated invasions andcampaigns. It was the influence of Babylonian civilization and culturethat was permanent, not the Babylonian government itself. Sometimes, indeed, Canaan became a Babylonian province, at other times there wereonly certain portions of the country which submitted to the foreigncontrol, while again at other times the Babylonian rule was merelynominal. But it is clear that it was not until Canaan had beenthoroughly reduced by Egyptian arms that the old claim of Babylonia tobe its mistress was finally renounced, and even then we see thatintrigues were carried on with the Babylonians against the Egyptianauthority. 

It was during this period of Babylonian influence and tutelage that thetraditions and myths of Chaldća became known to the people of Canaan. Itis again the tablets of Tel el-Amarna which have shown us how this cameto pass. Among them are fragments of Babylonian legends, one of whichendeavoured to account for the creation of man and the introduction ofsin into the world, and these legends were used as exercise-books in theforeign language by the scribes of Canaan and Egypt who were learningthe Babylonian language and script. If ever we discover the library ofKirjath-sepher we shall doubtless find among its clay records similarexamples of Chaldćan literature. The resemblances between thecosmogonies of Phoenicia and Babylonia have often been pointed out, andsince the discovery of the Chaldćan account of the Deluge by GeorgeSmith we have learned that between that account and the one which ispreserved in Genesis there is the closest possible likeness, extendingeven to words and phrases. The long-continued literary influence ofBabylonia in Palestine in the Patriarchal Age explains all this, andshows us how the traditions of Chaldća made their way to the West. WhenAbraham entered Canaan, he entered a country whose educated inhabitantswere already familiar with the books, the history, and the traditions ofthat in which he had been born. There were doubtless many to whom thename and history of "Ur of the Chaldees" were already known. It may evenbe that copies of the books in its library already existed in thelibraries of Canaan. 

There was one Babylonian hero at all events whose name had become sowell known in the West that it had there passed into a proverb. This wasthe name of Nimrod, "the mighty hunter before the Lord. " As yet thecuneiform documents are silent about him, but it is probable that he wasone of the early Kassite kings who established their dominion over thecities of Babylonia. He is called the son of Cush or Kas, and "thebeginning of his kingdom" was Babylon, which had now for six centuriesbeen the capital of the country. His name, however, was as familiar tothe Canaanite as it was to the inhabitant of Chaldća, and the god beforewhom his exploits were displayed was Yahveh and not Bel. 

It was about 1600 B. C. That the Hyksos were finally expelled from Egypt. They were originally Asiatic hordes who had overrun the valley of theNile, and held it in subjection for several centuries. At first they hadcarried desolation with them wherever they went. The temples of theEgyptian gods were destroyed and their priests massacred. But beforelong Egyptian culture proved too strong for the invaders. The rude chiefof a savage horde became transformed into an Egyptian Pharaoh, whosecourt resembled that of the ancient line of monarchs, and who surroundedhimself with learned men. The cities and temples were restored andbeautified, and art began to flourish once more. Except in one respectit became difficult to distinguish the Hyksos prince from hispredecessors on the throne of Egypt. That one respect was religion. Thesupreme object of Hyksos worship continued to be Sutekh, the Baal ofWestern Asia, whose cult the foreigners had brought with them from theirold homes. But even Sutekh was assimilated to Ra, the Sun-god of On, andthe Hyksos Pharaohs felt no scruple in imitating the native kings andcombining their own names with that of Ra. It was only the Egyptians whorefused to admit the assimilation, and insisted on identifying Sutekhwith Set the enemy of Horus. 

At the outset all Egypt was compelled to submit to the Hyksosdomination. Hyksos monuments have been found as far south as Gebelęn andEl-Kab, and the first Hyksos dynasty established its seat in Memphis, the old capital of the country. Gradually, however, the centre of Hyksospower retreated into the delta. Zoan or Tanis, the modern San, becamethe residence of the court: here the Hyksos kings were in closeproximity to their kindred in Asia, and were, moreover, removed from theunmixed Egyptian population further south. From Zoan, "built"--or ratherrebuilt--"seven years" after Hebron (Num. Xiii. 22), they governed thevalley of the Nile. Their rule was assisted by the mutual jealousies andquarrels of the native feudal princes who shared between them the landof Egypt. The foreigner kept his hold upon the country by means of theold feudal aristocracy. 

Thebes, however, had never forgotten that it had been the birthplace andcapital of the powerful Pharaohs of the twelfth and thirteenthdynasties, of the mighty princes who had conquered the Soudan, and ruledwith an iron hand over the feudal lords. The heirs of the ThebanPharaohs still survived as princes of Thebes, and behind the strongwalls of El-Kab they began to think of independence. Apophis II. In hiscourt at Zoan perceived the rising storm, and endeavoured to check it atits beginning. According to the story of a later day, he sent insultingmessages to the prince of Thebes, and ordered him to worship Sutekh theHyksos god. The prince defied his suzerain, and the war of independencebegan. It lasted for several generations, during which the Thebanprinces made themselves masters of Upper Egypt, and established a nativedynasty of Pharaohs which reigned simultaneously with the Hyksos dynastyin the North. 

Step by step the Hyksos stranger was pushed back to the north-easterncorner of the delta. At length Zoan itself fell into the hands of theEgyptians, and the Hyksos took refuge in the great fortress of Avaris onthe extreme border of the kingdom. Here they were besieged by the Thebanprince Ahmes, and eventually driven back to the Asia from which they hadcome. The eighteenth dynasty was founded, and Ahmes entered on thatcareer of Asiatic conquest which converted Canaan into an Egyptianprovince. At first the war was one of revenge; but it soon became one ofconquest, and the war of independence was followed by the rise of theEgyptian empire. Thothmes II. , the grandson of Ahmes, led his forces asfar as the Euphrates and the land of Aram-Naharaim. The territories thusoverrun in a sort of military reconnaissance were conquered and annexedby his son Thothmes III. , during his long reign of fifty-four years(March 20, B. C. 1503 to February 14, B. C. 1449). Canaan on both sides ofthe Jordan was made into a province, and governed much as India isto-day. Some of the cities were allowed still to retain their old lineof princes, who were called upon to furnish tribute to the Egyptiantreasury and recruits to the Egyptian army. From time to time they werevisited by an Egyptian "Commissioner, " and an Egyptian garrison keptwatch upon their conduct. Sometimes an Egyptian Resident was appointedby the side of the native king; this was the case, for example, at Sidonand Hazor. Where, however, the city was of strategical or politicalimportance it was incorporated into the Egyptian empire, and placedunder the immediate control of an Egyptian governor, as at Megiddo, Gaza, Gebal, Gezer, and Tyre. Similarly Ziri-Basana, "the field ofBashan, " was under the government of a single _khazan_ or "prefect. " Thetroops, who also acted as police, were divided into various classes. There were the _tsabi yidati_ or "auxiliaries, " the _tsabi saruti_ or"militia, " the _Khabbati_ or "Beduin plunderers, " and the _tsabimatsarti_ or "Egyptian soldiers of the garrison, " as well as the _tsabibitati_ or "house-guards, " who were summoned in cases of emergency. Among the auxiliaries were included the Serdani or Sardinians, while theSute--the Sati or Sitti of the hieroglyphic texts--formed the largerportion of the Beduin ("Bashi-bazouks"), and the Egyptian forces weredivided into the cavalry or rather charioteers, and the Misi (calledMas'u in the hieroglyphics) or infantry. 

Fragments of the annals of Thothmes III. Have been preserved on theshattered walls of his temple at Karnak. Here too we may read the listsof places he conquered in Palestine--the land of the Upper Lotan as itis termed--as well as in Northern Syria. Like the annals, thegeographical lists have been compiled from memoranda made on the spot bythe scribes who followed the army, and in some instances, at all events, it can be shown that they have been translated into Egyptian hieroglyphsfrom Babylonian cuneiform. The fact is an indication of the conquestthat Asia was already beginning to make over her Egyptian conquerors. But the annals themselves are a further and still more convincing proofof Asiatic influence. To cover the walls of a temple with the history ofcampaigns in a foreign land, and an account of the tribute brought tothe Pharaoh, was wholly contrary to Egyptian ideas. From the Egyptianpoint of view the decoration of the sacred edifice should have beentheological only. The only subjects represented on it, so custom andbelief had ruled, ought to be the gods, and the stereotyped phrasesdescribing their attributes, their deeds, and their festivals. Tosubstitute for this the records of secular history was Assyrian and notEgyptian. Indeed the very conception of annalistic chronicling, in whichthe history of a reign was given briefly year by year and campaign bycampaign, belonged to the kingdoms of the Tigris and Euphrates, not tothat of the Nile. It was a new thing in Egypt, and flourished there onlyduring the short period of Asiatic influence. The Egyptian caredcomparatively little for history, and made use of papyrus when he wishedto record it. Unfortunately for us the annals of Thothmes III. Remainthe solitary monument of Egyptian chronicling on stone. 

The twenty-second year of his reign (B. C. 1481) was that in which theEgyptian Pharaoh made his first determined effort to subdue Canaan. Gazawas occupied without much difficulty, and in the following year, on thefifth day of the month Pakhons, he set out from it, and eleven dayslater encamped at Ihem. There he learned that the confederatedCanaanitish army, under the command of the king of Kadesh on theOrontes, was awaiting his attack at Megiddo. Not only were the variousnations of Palestine represented in it, but contingents had come fromNaharaim on the banks of the Euphrates, as well as from the Gulf ofAntioch. For a while Thothmes hesitated whether to march against them bythe road which led through 'Aluna to Taanach or by way of Zaft (perhapsSafed), whence he would have descended southward upon Megiddo. Thearrival of his spies, however, determined him to take the first, andaccordingly, after the officers had sworn that they would not leavetheir appointed posts in battle even to defend the person of the king, he started on his march, and on the nineteenth of the month pitched histent at 'Aluna. The way had been rough and impassable for chariots, sothat the king had been forced to march on foot. 

'Aluna must have been close to Megiddo, since the rear of the Egyptianforces was stationed there during the battle that followed, while thesouthern wing extended to Taanach and the northern wing to Megiddo. Theadvanced guard pushed into the plain below, and the royal tent was setup on the bank of the brook of Qana, an affluent of the Kishon. Thedecisive struggle took place on the twenty-first of the month. Thothmesrode in a chariot of polished bronze, and posted himself among thetroops on the north-west side of Megiddo. The Canaanites were unable toresist the Egyptian charge. They fled into the city, leaving behind themtheir horses and their chariots plated with gold and silver, those whoarrived after the gates of the town had been shut being drawn up overthe walls by means of ropes. Had the Egyptians not stayed behind inorder to plunder the enemy's camp they would have entered Megiddo alongwith the fugitives. As it was, they were compelled to blockade the city, building a rampart round it of "fresh green trees, " and the besiegedwere finally starved into a surrender. 

In the captured camp had been found the son of the king of Megiddo, besides a large amount of booty, including chariots of silver and goldfrom Asi or Cyprus. Two suits of iron armour were also obtained, onebelonging to the king of Kadesh, the other to the king of Megiddo. Theseven tent-poles of the royal tent, plated with gold, also fell into thehands of the Egyptians. The catalogue of the spoil was written down on aleather roll which was deposited in the temple of Amon at Thebes, and init were enumerated: 3401 prisoners and 83 hands belonging to the slain, 32 chariots plated with gold, 892 ordinary chariots, 2041 mares, 191foals, 602 bows, and 200 suits of armour. 

Before the campaign was ended the Egyptian army had penetrated far tothe north and captured Inuam, south of Damascus, as well as Anugas orNukhasse, and Harankal, to the north of the land of the Amorites. Allthese places seem to have belonged to the king of Kadesh, as hisproperty was carried away out of them. When Thothmes returned to Thebesthe quantity of spoil be brought back with him was immense. "Besidesprecious stones, " golden bowls, Phoenician cups with double handles andthe like, there were 97 swords, 1784 pounds of gold rings and 966 poundsof silver rings, which served as money, a statue with a head of gold, tables, chairs, and staves of cedar and ebony inlaid with gold, ivoryand precious stones, a golden plough, the golden sceptre of theconquered prince, and richly embroidered stuffs. The fields of thevanquished province were further measured by the Egyptian surveyors, andthe amount of taxation annually due from them was fixed. More than208, 000 measures of wheat were moreover carried off to Egypt from theplain of Megiddo. The Canaanitish power was completely broken, andThothmes was now free to extend his empire further to the north. 

Accordingly in the following year (B. C. 1479) we find him receivingtribute from the Assyrian king. This consisted of leather bracelets, various kinds of wood, and chariots. It was probably at this time thatCarchemish on the Euphrates was taken, the city being stormed from theriverside. Five years later the first part of the annals was engraved onthe wall of the new temple of Amon at Karnak, and it concluded with anaccount of the campaign of the year. This had been undertaken inNorthern Syria, and had resulted in the capture of Uarrt and Tunip, nowTennib, to the north-west of Aleppo. No less than one hundred pounds ofsilver and as many of gold were taken from Tunip, as well aslapis-lazuli from Babylonia, and malachite from the Sinaitic peninsula, together with vessels of iron and bronze. Some ships also were captured, laden with slaves, bronze, lead, white gold, and other products of theGreek seas. On the march home the Egyptian army took possession ofArvad, and seized its rich stores of wheat and wine. "Then the soldierscaroused and anointed themselves with oil as they used to do on feastdays in the land of Egypt. "

The next year Kadesh on the Orontes, near the Lake of Horns, wasattacked and destroyed, its trees were cut down and its corn carriedaway. From Kadesh Thothmes proceeded to the land of Phoenicia, and tookthe cities of Zemar (now Sumra) and Arvad. The heirs of four of theconquered princes were carried as hostages to Egypt, "so that when oneof these kings should die, then the Pharaoh should take his son and puthim in his stead. "

In B. C. 1472 the land of the Amorites was reduced, or rather that partof it which was known as Takhis, the Thahash of Genesis xxii. 24, on theshores of the Lake of Merna, in which we should probably see the Lake ofHoms. Nearly 500 prisoners were led to Egypt. The Syrian princes nowcame to offer their gifts to the conqueror, bringing with them, amongother things, more than 760 pounds of silver, 19 chariots covered withsilver ornaments, and 41 leathern collars covered with bronze scales. Atthe same time the whole country was thoroughly organized under the newEgyptian administration. Military roads were constructed and providedwith posting-houses, at each of which relays of horses were kept inreadiness, as well as "the necessary provision of bread of varioussorts, oil, balsam, wine, honey, and fruits. " The quarries of theLebanon were further required to furnish the Pharaoh with limestone forhis buildings in Egypt and elsewhere. 

Two years later Thothmes was again in Syria. He made his way as far asthe Euphrates, and there on the eastern bank erected a stele by the sideof one which his father Thothmes II. Had already set up. The stele wasan imperial boundary-stone marking the frontier of the Egyptian empire. It was just such another stele that Hadad-ezer of Zobah was intending torestore in the same place when he was met and defeated by David (2 Sam. Viii. 3). 

The Pharaoh now took ship and descended the Euphrates, "conquering thetowns and ploughing up the fields of the king of Naharaim. " He thenre-ascended the stream to the city of Ni, where he placed another stele, in proof that the boundary of Egypt had been extended thus far. Elephants still existed in the neighbourhood, as they continued to dofour and a half centuries later in the time of the Assyrian kingTiglath-pileser I. Thothmes amused himself by hunting them, and no lessthan 120 were slain. 

On his way home the tribute and "yearly tax" of the inhabitants of theLebanon was brought to him, and the corvée-work annually required fromthem was also fixed. Thothmes indulged his taste for natural history byreceiving as part of the tribute various birds which were peculiar toSyria, or at all events were unknown in Egypt, and which, we are told, "were dearer to the king than anything else. " He had already establishedzoological and botanical gardens in Thebes, and the strange animals andplants which his campaigns furnished for them were depicted on the wallsof one of the chambers in the temple he built at Karnak. 

Before his return to Egypt he received the tribute of "the king ofSangar, " or Shinar, in Mesopotamia, and "of the land of Khata thegreater. " The first consisted for the most part of lapis-lazuli, realand artificial, of which the most prized was "the lapis-lazuli ofBabylon. " Among the gifts was "a ram's head of real lapis-lazuli, 15pounds in weight. " The land of the Hittites, "the greater, " so called todistinguish it from the lesser Hittite land in the south of Palestine, sent 8 rings of silver, 400 pounds in weight, besides "a great piece ofcrystal. "

The following year Thothmes marched through "the land of Zahi, " the "dryland" of the Phoenician coast, to Northern Syria, where he punished theking of Anugas or Nukhasse, who had shown symptoms of rebellion. Largequantities of gold and bronze were carried off, as well as 15 chariots, plated with gold and silver, 6 iron tent-poles studded with preciousstones, and 70 asses. Lead and various kinds of wood and stone, togetherwith 608 jars of Lebanon wine, 2080 jars of oil, and 690 jars of balsam, were also received from Southern Syria, and posting-houses wereestablished along the roads of the land of Zahi. A fleet of Phoenicianmerchant vessels was next sent to Egypt laden with logs of wood from theforests of Palestine and the Lebanon for the buildings of the king. Atthe same time, "the king of Cyprus, " which now was an Egyptianpossession, forwarded his tribute to the Pharaoh, consisting of 108bricks of copper 2040 pounds in weight, 5 bricks of lead nearly 29, 000pounds in weight, 110 pounds of lapis-lazuli, an elephant's tusk, andother objects of value. 

The next year (B. C. 1468) there was a campaign against the king ofNaharaim, who had collected his soldiers and horses "from the extremeends of the world. " But the Mesopotamian army was utterly defeated. Itsbooty fell into the hands of the Egyptians, who, however, took only tenprisoners, which looks as if, after all, the battle was not on a verylarge scale. 

In B. C. 1464 Thothmes was again in Northern Syria. Among the bootyacquired during the expedition were "bowls with goats' heads on them, and one with a lion's head, the work of the land of Zahi. " Horses, assesand oxen, 522 slaves, 156 jars of wine, 1752 jars of butter, 5elephants' tusks, 2822 pounds of gold besides copper and lead, wereamong the spoils of the campaign. The annual tribute was only receivedfrom Cyprus, consisting this time of copper and mares, as well as fromAripakh, a district in the Taurus. 

The next year the Pharaoh led his troops against some country, the nameof which is lost, in "the land of the hostile Shasu" or Beduin. Theplunder which was carried off from it shows that it was somewhere inSyria, probably in the region of the Lebanon. Gold and silver, a silverdouble-handled cup with a bull's head, iron, wine, balsam, oil, butterand honey, were among the spoils of the war. Tribute arrived also from"the king of the greater Hittite land, " which included a number of negroslaves. 

Revolt, however, now broke out in the north. Tunip rebelled, as did alsothe king of Kadesh, who built a "new" fortress to protect his city fromattack. Thothmes at once marched against them by the road along "thecoast, " which led him through the country of the Fenkhu or Phoenicians. First he fell upon the towns of Alkana and utterly destroyed them, andthen poured his troops into the neighbouring land of Tunip. The city ofTunip was taken and burnt, its crops were trodden under-foot, its treescut down, and its inhabitants carried into slavery. Then came the turnof Kadesh. The "new" fortress fell at the first assault, and the wholecountry was compelled to submit. 

The king of Assyria again sent presents to the Pharaoh which theEgyptian court regarded in the light of tribute. They consisted chieflyof large blocks of "real lapis-lazuli" as well as "lapis-lazuli ofBabylon. " More valuable gifts came from the subject princes of Syria. Foremost among these was "a king's daughter all glorious with [a vestureof] gold. " Then there were four chariots plated with gold and sixchariots of gold, iron armour inlaid with gold, a jug of silver, agolden helmet inlaid with lapis-lazuli, wine, honey and balsam, ivoryand various kinds of wood, wheat in such quantities that it could not bemeasured, and the sixty-five slaves who had to be furnished each year aspart of the annual tax. 

The annals of the next two years are in too mutilated a condition toyield much information. Moreover, the campaigns carried on in them weremainly in the Soudan. In B. C. 1461 the record closes. It was in thatyear that the account of the Pharaoh's victories "which he had gainedfrom the 23rd until the (4)2nd year" were engraved upon the wall of thetemple. (The inscription has "32nd year, " but as the wars extendedbeyond the 40th year of the king's reign this must be a sculptor'serror. ) And the chronicle concludes with the brief but expressive words, "Thus hath he done: may he live for ever!"

Thothmes, indeed, did not live for ever, but he survived the completionof his temple fourteen years. His death was followed by the revolt ofNorthern Syria, and the first achievement of his son and successor, Amenôphis II. , was its suppression. Ni and Ugarit, the centres ofdisaffection, were captured and punished, and among the prisoners fromUgarit were 640 "Canaanite" merchants with their slaves. The name ofCanaanite had thus already acquired that secondary meaning of "merchant"which we find in the Old Testament (Is. Xxiii. 8; Ezek. Xvii. 4). It isa significant proof of the commercial activity and tradingestablishments of the Canaanite race throughout the civilized world. Even a cuneiform tablet from Kappadokia, which is probably of the sameage as the tablets of Tel el-Amarna, gives us the name of Kinanim "theCanaanite" as that of a witness to a deed. It was not always, however, that the Canaanites were so honourably distinguished. At times the namewas equivalent to that of "slave" rather than of "merchant, " as in apapyrus [Anast. 4, 16, 2. ] where mention is made of Kan'amu or"Canaanite slaves from Khal. " So too in another papyrus we hear of aslave called Saruraz the son of Naqati, whose mother was Kadi from theland of Arvad. The Egyptian wars in Palestine must necessarily haveresulted in the enslavement of many of its inhabitants, and, as we haveseen, a certain number of young slaves formed part of the annual taxlevied upon Syria. 

The successors of Thothmes III. Extended the Egyptian empire far to thesouth in the Soudan. But its Asiatic limits had already been reached. Palestine, along with Phoenicia, the land of the Amorites and thecountry east of the Jordan, was constituted into an Egyptian provinceand kept strictly under Egyptian control. Further north the connectionwith the imperial government was looser. There were Egyptian fortressesand garrisons here and there, and certain important towns like Tunipnear Aleppo and Qatna on the Khabűr were placed under Egyptian prefects. But elsewhere the conquered populations were allowed to remain undertheir native kings. In some instances, as, for example, in Anugas orNukhasse, the kings were little more than satraps of the Pharaoh, but inother instances, like Alasiya, north of Hamath, they resembled therulers of the protected states in modern India. In fact, the king ofAlasiya calls the Pharaoh his "brother, " and except for the obligationof paying tribute was practically an independent sovereign. 

The Egyptian dominion was acknowledged as far north as Mount Amanus. Carchemish, soon to become a Hittite stronghold, was in Egyptian hands, and the Hittites themselves had not yet emerged from the fortresses ofthe Taurus. Their territory was still confined to Kataonia and ArmeniaMinor between Melitęnę and the Saros, and they courted the favour of theEgyptian monarch by sending him gifts. Thothmes would have refused tobelieve that before many years were over they would wrest Northern Syriafrom his successors, and contend on equal terms with the EgyptianPharaoh. 

The Egyptian possessions on the east bank of Euphrates lay along thecourse of the Khabűr, towards the oasis of Singar or Shinar. North ofthe Belikh came the powerful kingdom of Mitanni, Aram-Naharaim as it iscalled in the Old Testament, which was never subdued by the Egyptianarms, and whose royal family intermarried with the successors ofThothmes. Mitanni, the capital, stood nearly opposite Carchemish, whichthus protected the Egyptian frontier on the east. 

Southward of the Belikh the frontier was formed by the desert. Syria, Bashan, Ammon, and Moab were all included in the Pharaoh's empire. Butthere it came to an end. Mount Seir was never conquered by theEgyptians. The "city" of Edom appears in one of the Tel el-Amarnatablets as a foreign state whose inhabitants wage war against theEgyptian territory. The conquest of the Edomites in their mountainfastnesses would have been a matter of difficulty, nor would anythinghave been gained by it. Edom was rich neither agriculturally norcommercially; it was, in fact, a land of barren mountains, and the tradewhich afterwards passed through the Arabah to Elath and Ezion-geber inthe Gulf of Aqabah was already secured to the Egyptians through theirpossession of the Gulf of Suez. The first and last of the Pharaohs, sofar as we know, who ventured on a campaign against the wild tribes ofMount Seir, was Ramses III. Of the twentieth dynasty, and his campaignwas merely a punitive one. No attempt to incorporate the "Red Land" intohis dominions was ever made by an Egyptian king. 

The Sinaitic peninsula, the province of Mafkat or "Malachite, " as it wascalled, had been in the possession of the Egyptians since the time ofZosir of the third dynasty, and it continued to be regarded as part ofthe Egyptian kingdom up to the age of the Ptolemies. The earliest ofEgyptian rock-sculptures is engraved in the peninsula, and representsSnefru, the founder of the fourth dynasty, slaughtering the Beduin whoinhabited it. Its possession was valued on account of its mines ofcopper and malachite. These were worked by the Egyptian kings with thehelp of convict labour. Garrisons were established to protect them andthe roads which led to them, colonies of officials grew up at theirside, and temples were built dedicated to the deities of Egypt. Even aslate as the reign of Ramses III. The amount of minerals produced by themines was enormous. They existed for the most part on the western sideof the peninsula, opposite the Egyptian coast; but Ramses III. Alsoopened copper mines in the land of 'Ataka further east, and the name ofthe goddess Hathor in hieroglyphics has been found by Dr. Friedmann onthe shores of Midian. 

Vanquished Syria was made to contribute to the endowments of theEgyptian temples. Thus the temple of Amon at Thebes was endowed byThothmes III. With the revenues of the three cities Anugas, Inu'am, andHarankal; while Seti I. , the father of Ramses II. , bestowed upon it "allthe silver, gold, lapis-lazuli, malachite, and precious stones which hecarried off from the humbled land of Syria. " Temples of the Egyptiangods, as well as towns, were built in Syria itself; Meneptah founded acity in the land of the Amorites; Ramses III. Erected a temple to Amonin "the land of Canaan, great as the horizon of heaven above, to whichthe people of Syria come with their gifts"; and hieroglyphicinscriptions lately discovered at Gaza show that another temple had beenbuilt there by Amenophis II. To the goddess Mut. 

Amenophis had suppressed the rebellion in Northern Syria with littletrouble. Seven Amorite kings were carried prisoners to Egypt from theland of Takhis, and taken up the river as far as Thebes. There six ofthem were hung outside the walls of the city, as the body of Saul washung by the Philistines outside the walls of Beth-shan, while theseventh was conveyed to Napata in Ethiopia, and there punished in thesame way in order to impress a lesson of obedience upon the negroes ofthe Soudan. 

Amenophis II. Was succeeded by Thothmes IV. , who was called upon to facea new enemy, the Hittites. It was at the commencement of his reign thatthey first began to descend from their mountain homes, and the frontiercity of Tunip had to bear the brunt of the attack. It was probably inorder to strengthen himself against these formidable foes that thePharaoh married the daughter of the king of Mitanni, who changed hername to Mut-em-ua. It was the beginning of those inter-marriages withthe princes of Asia which led to the Asiatized court and religion ofAmenophis IV. , and finally to the overthrow of the eighteenth dynasty. 

The son of Mut-em-ua was Amenophis III. , whose long reign ofthirty-seven years was as brilliant and successful as that ofThothmes III. At Soleb between the second and third cataracts he built atemple to his own deified self, and engraved upon its columns the namesof his vassal states. Among them are Tunip and Kadesh, Carchemish andApphadana on the Khabűr. Sangar, Assyria, Naharaim, and the Hittitesalso appear among them, but this must be on the strength of the tributeor presents which had been received from them. The Pharaoh filled hisharîm with Asiatic princesses. His queen Teie, who exercised animportant influence upon both religion and politics, came from Asia, andamong his wives were the sisters and daughters of the kings of Babyloniaand Mitanni, while one of his own daughters was married to Burna-buryasthe Babylonian sovereign. His marriage with Gilu-khipa, the daughter ofSutarna, king of Aram-Naharaim, was celebrated on a scarab, where it isfurther related that she was accompanied to Egypt by three hundred andseventeen "maids of honour. " Besides allying himself in marriage to theroyal houses of Asia, Amenophis III. Passed a good deal of his time inSyria and Mesopotamia, amusing himself with hunting lions. During thefirst ten years of his reign he boasts of having killed no less than onehundred and two of them. It was in the last of these years that hemarried queen Teie, who is said on scarabs to have been the daughter of"Yua and Tua. " Possibly these are contracted forms of Tusratta and Yuni, who were at the time king and queen of Mitanni. But if so, it is curiousthat no royal titles are given to her parents; moreover, the author ofthe scarabs has made Yua the father of the queen and Tua her mother. Tuya is the name of an Amorite in one of the Tel el-Amarna letters, while from another of them it would seem as if Teie had been thedaughter of the Babylonian king. One of the daughters of Tusratta, Tadu-khipa, was indeed married to Amenophis, but she did not rank aschief queen. In the reign of Meneptah of the nineteenth dynasty thevizier was a native of Bashan, Ben-Mazana by name, whose father wascalled Yu the elder. Yua may therefore be a word of Amorite origin; anda connection has been suggested between it and the Hebrew Yahveh. This, however, though possible, cannot be proved. 

When Amenophis III. Died his son Amenophis IV. Seems to have been stilla minor. At all events the queen-mother Teie became all-powerful in thegovernment of the state. Her son, the new Pharaoh, had been brought upin the religious beliefs of his mother, and had inherited the ideas andtendencies of his Asiatic forefathers. A plaster-cast of his face, takenimmediately after death, was discovered by Prof. Petrie at Telel-Amarna, and it is the face of a refined and thoughtful theorist, of aphilosopher rather than of a king, earnest in his convictions almost tofanaticism. 

Amenophis IV. Undertook no less a task than that of reforming the Statereligion of Egypt. For many centuries the religion of the priests andscribes had been inclining to pantheism. Inside the temples there hadbeen an esoteric teaching, that the various deities of Egypt were butmanifestations of the one supreme God. But it had hardly passed outsidethem. With the accession of Amenophis IV. To the throne came a change. The young king boldly rejected the religion of which he was officiallythe head, and professed himself a worshipper of the one God whosevisible semblance was the solar disk. Alone of the deities of Egypt Ra, the ancient Sun-god of Heliopolis, was acknowledged to be therepresentative of the true God. It was the Baal-worship of Syria, modified by the philosophic conceptions of Egypt. The Aten-Ra of the"heretic" Pharaoh was an Asiatic Baal, but unlike the Baal of Canaan hestood alone; there were no other Baals, no Baalim, by the side of him. 

Amenophis was not content with preaching and encouraging the new faith;he sought to force it upon his subjects. The other gods of Egypt wereproscribed, and the name and head of Amon, the patron god of Thebes, towhom his ancestors had ascribed their power and victories, were erasedfrom the monuments wherever they occurred. Even his own father's namewas not spared, and the emissaries of the king, from one end of thecountry to the other, defaced that portion of it which contained thename of the god. His own name was next changed, and Amenophis IV. BecameKhu-n-Aten, "the splendour of the solar disk. "

Khu-n-Aten's attempt to overthrow the ancient faith of Egypt wasnaturally resisted by the powerful priesthood of Thebes. A religious warwas declared for the first time, so far as we know, in the history ofmankind. On the one side a fierce persecution was directed against theadherents of the old creed; on the other side every effort was made toimpede and defeat the Pharaoh. His position grew daily more insecure, and at last he turned his back on the capital of his fathers, and builthimself a new city far away to the north. The priests of Amon had thusfar triumphed; the old idolatrous worship was carried on once more inthe great temple of Karnak, though its official head was absent, andKhu-n-Aten with his archives and his court had fled to a safer home. Upper Egypt was left to its worship of Amon and Min, while the kingestablished himself nearer his Canaanite possessions. 

Here on the eastern bank of the Nile, about midway between Minyeh andSiűt, the new capital was founded on a strip of land protected fromattack by a semi-amphitheatre of cliffs. The city, with its palaces andgardens, extended nearly two miles in length along the river bank. Inits midst rose the temple of the new god of Egypt, and hard by thepalace of the king. Both were brilliant with painting and sculpture, andinlaid work in precious stones and gold. Even the floors were frescoed, while the walls and columns were enamelled or adorned with the mostcostly materials that the Egyptian world could produce. Here and therewere statues of alabaster, of bronze or of gold, some of them almostGreek in form and design. Along with the reform in religion there hadgone a reform in art. The old conventionalized art of Egypt wasabandoned, and a new art had been introduced which aimed at imitatingnature with realistic fidelity. 

The mounds which mark the site of Khu-n-Aten's city are now known as Telel-Amarna. It had a brief but brilliant existence of about thirty years. Then the enemies of the Pharaoh and his work of reform finallyprevailed, and his city with its temple and palaces was levelled to theground. It is from among its ruins that the wondering fellah andexplorer of to-day exhume the gorgeous relics of its past. 

But among these relics none have proved more precious than the claytablets inscribed with cuneiform characters, which have revolutionizedour conceptions of the ancient East. They were preserved in the ForeignOffice of the day. This formed part of the public buildings connectedwith the palace, and the bricks of which it was built were stamped withan inscription describing its character. Many of the tablets had beenbrought from the archive chamber of Thebes, but the greater part of thecollection belongs to the reign of Khu-n-Aten himself. It consistsalmost entirely of official correspondence; of letters from the kings ofBabylonia and Assyria, of Mesopotamia and Kappadokia, and of despatchesfrom the Egyptian governors and vassal-princes in Syria and Palestine. They furnish us with a living and unexpected picture of Canaan about1400 B. C. 

Fragments of dictionaries for the use of the scribes have also beenrecovered from the _débris_ of the building, as well as the seal of aservant of Samas-akh-iddin who looked after the cuneiformcorrespondence. Like several of the Canaanitish governors, he bore aBabylonian name. Even the brother of Amenophis III. , who had been madeking of Nukhasse, had received the Babylonian name of Rimmon-nirari. Nostronger proof could be found of the extent and strength of Babylonianinfluence in the West. 

At Khut-Aten, as the "heretic" Pharaoh called his new capital, he wassurrounded by the adherents of the new faith. Many of them weredoubtless Egyptians, but many, perhaps the majority, were of Asiaticextraction. Already under his father and grandfather the court had beenfilled with Canaanites and other natives of Asia, and the great officesof state had been occupied by them. Now under Khu-n-Aten the Asiaticcharacter of the government was increased tenfold. The native Egyptianhad to make way for the foreigner, and the rule of the Syrian strangerwhich seemed to have been expelled with the Hyksos was restored underanother form. Canaan was nominally a subject province of Egypt, but inreality it had led its conqueror captive. A semi-Asiatic Pharaoh wasendeavouring to force an Asiatic form of faith upon his subjects, andentrusting his government to Asiatic officials; even art had ceased tobe Egyptian and had put on an Asiatic dress. 

The tombs of Khu-n-Aten's followers are cut in the cliffs at the back ofthe city, while his own sepulchre is towards the end of a long ravinewhich runs out into the eastern desert between two lofty lines ofprecipitous rock. But few of them are finished, and the sepulchre of theking himself, magnificent in its design, is incomplete and mutilated. The sculptures on the walls have been broken, and the granitesarcophagus in which the body of the great king rested has beenshattered into fragments before it could be lifted into the niche whereit was intended to stand. The royal mummy was torn into shreds, and theporcelain figures buried with it dashed to the ground. 

It is clear that the death of Khu-n-Aten must have been quickly followedby the triumph of his enemies. His capital was overthrown, the stones ofits temple carried away to Thebes, there to adorn the sanctuary of thevictorious Amon, and the adherents of his reform either slain or driveninto exile. The vengeance executed upon them was national as well asreligious. It meant not only a restoration of the national faith, butalso the restoration of the native Egyptian to the government of hiscountry. The feelings which inspired it were similar to those whichunderlay the movement of Arabi in our own time, and there was no Englisharmy to stand in the way of its success. The rise of the nineteenthdynasty represents the triumph of the national cause. 

The cuneiform letters of Tel el-Amarna show that already beforeKhu-n-Aten's death his empire and power were breaking up. Letter afterletter is sent to him from the governors in Canaan with urgent requestsfor troops. The Hittites were attacking the empire in the north, andrebels were overthrowing it within. "If auxiliaries come this year, "writes Ebed-Tob of Jerusalem, "the provinces of the king my lord will bepreserved; but if no auxiliaries come the provinces of the king my lordwill be destroyed. " To these entreaties no answer could be returned. There was civil and religious war in Egypt itself, and the army wasneeded to defend the Pharaoh at home. 

The picture of Canaan presented to us by the Tel el-Amarnacorrespondence has been supplemented by the discovery of Lachish. Fiveyears ago Prof. Flinders Petrie undertook to excavate for the PalestineExploration Fund in the lofty mound of Tel el-Hesi in SouthernPalestine. Tel el-Hesi stands midway between Gaza and Hebron on the edgeof the Judaean mountains, and overlooking a torrent stream. Hisexcavations resulted in the discovery of successive cities built oneupon the ruins of the other, and in the probability that the site wasthat of Lachish. The excavations were resumed by Mr. Bliss in thefollowing year, and the probability was raised to practical certainty. The lowest of the cities was the Lachish of the Amorite period, whosecrude brick walls, nearly twenty-nine feet in thickness, have beenbrought to light, while its pottery has revealed to us for the firsttime the characteristics of Amorite manufacture. The huge walls bear outthe testimony of the Israelitish spies, that the cities of the Amoriteswere "great and walled up to heaven" (Deut. I. 28). They giveindications, however, that in spite of their strength the fortressesthey enclosed must have been captured more than once. Doubtless this wasduring the age of the Egyptian wars in Canaan. 

As at Troy, it is probable that it was only the citadel which was thusstrongly fortified. Below it was the main part of the town, theinhabitants of which took refuge in the citadel when an enemy threatenedto attack them. The fortified part, indeed, was not of very largeextent. Its ruins measured only about two hundred feet each way, whilethe enclosure within which it stands is a quarter of a mile in diameter. Here a regular series of pottery has been found, dating from thepost-exilic age through successive strata back to the primitiveAmoritish fortress. To Prof. Petrie belongs the credit of determiningthe characteristics of these various strata, and fixing theirapproximate age. 

The work begun by Prof. Petrie was continued by Mr. Bliss. Deep downamong the ruins of the Amoritish town he found objects which take usback to the time of Khu-n-Aten and his predecessors. They consist ofEgyptian beads and scarabs of the eighteenth dynasty, and on one of thebeads are the name and title of "the royal wife Teie. " Along with themwere discovered beads of amber which came from the Baltic as well asseal-cylinders, some of them imported from Babylonia, others westernimitations of Babylonian work. The Babylonian cylinders belong to theperiod which extends from 3000 to 1500 B. C. , while the imitations aresimilar in style to those which have been found in the pre-historictombs of Cyprus and Phoenicia. 

But there was one discovery made by Mr. Bliss which far surpasses ininterest all the rest. It is that of a cuneiform tablet, similar incharacter, in contents, and in age to those which have come from Telel-Amarna. Even the Egyptian governor mentioned in it was already knownto us from the Tel el-Amarna correspondence as the governor of Lachish. One of the cuneiform letters now preserved at Berlin was written by him, and Ebed-Tob informs us that he was subsequently murdered by the peopleof his own city. 

Here is a translation of the letter discovered at Tel el-Hesi:--

"To ... Rabbat (?) [or perhaps: To the officer Baya] (thus speaks) ... Abi. At thy feet I prostrate myself. Verily thou knowest that Dan-Hadadand Zimrida have inspected the whole of the city, and Dan-Hadad says toZimrida: Send Yisyara to me [and] give me 3 shields (?) and 3 slings and3 falchions, since I am prefect (?) over the country of the king and ithas acted against me; and now I will restore thy possession which theenemy took from thee; and I have sent my ... , and ... Rabi-ilu ... Hasdespatched his brother [with] these words. "

(This translation differs in some respects from that previously given byme, as it is based on the copy of the text made from the original atConstantinople by Dr. Scheil (_Recueil de Trailaux relatifs ŕ laPhilologie et ŕ l'Archéologie égyptiennes et assyriennes_, xv. 3, 4, 137). As I stated at the time, my copy was made from a cast and wastherefore uncertain in several places. I am doubtful whether even nowthe published text is correct throughout. )

Yisyara was the name of an Amorite, as we learn from one of the Telel-Amarna tablets, where he is mentioned along with other rebels asbeing sent in fetters of bronze to the king. Of Dan-Hadad we knownothing further, but Zimrida's letter is as follows:--

"To the king my lord, my god, my Sun-god, the Sun-god who is fromheaven, thus (writes) Zimridi, the governor of the city of Lachish. Thyservant, the dust of thy feet, at the feet of the king my lord, theSun-god from heaven, bows himself seven times seven. I have verydiligently listened to the words of the messenger whom the king my lordhas sent to me, and now I have despatched (a mission) according to hismessage. "

It was towards the end of Khu-n-Aten's reign, when the Egyptian empirewas falling to pieces, that the murder of Zimrida took place. Ebed-Tobthus describes it in a letter to the secretary of the Pharaoh: "TheKhabiri (or Confederates) are capturing the fortresses of the king. Nota single governor remains among them to the king my lord; all aredestroyed. Behold, Turbazu thy officer [has fallen] in the great gate ofthe city of Zelah. Behold, the servants who acted against the king haveslain Zimrida of Lachish. They have murdered Jephthah-Hadad thy officerin the gate of the city of Zelah. "

We hear of another governor of Lachish, Yabni-el by name, but heprobably held office before Zimrida. At all events the followingdespatch of his has been preserved:--

"To the king my lord, my god, my Sun-god, the Sun-god who is fromheaven, thus (writes) Yabni-el, the governor of the city of Lachish, thyservant, the dust of thy feet, the groom of thy horses; at the feet ofthe king my lord, my god, my Sun-god, the Sun-god who is from heaven, seven times seven I bow myself. Glorious and supreme [art thou]. I thegroom of [the horses] of the king my lord, listen to the [words] of theking my lord. Now have I heard all the words which Baya the prefect hasspoken to me. Now have I done everything. "

Zimrida of Lachish must be distinguished from another Canaanite of thesame name who was governor of Sidon. This latter was a personal enemy ofRib-Hadad the governor of Gebal, whose letters to Khu-n-Aten form aconsiderable portion of the Tel el-Amarna collection. The authority ofRib-Hadad originally extended over the greater part of Phoenicia, andincluded the strong fortress of Zemar or Simyra in the mountains. One byone, however, his cities were taken from him by his adversaries whom heaccuses of rebellion against the Pharaoh. His letters to Egypt areaccordingly filled with imploring appeals for help. But none was sent, and as his enemies equally professed their loyalty to the Egyptiangovernment, it is doubtful whether this was because the Pharaohsuspected Rib-Hadad himself of disaffection or because no troops couldbe spared. 

Rib-Hadad had been appointed to his post by Amenophis III. , and in oneof his letters he looks back regretfully on "the good old times. " Whenhis letters were written he was old and sick. Abimelech, the governor ofTyre, was almost the only friend who remained to him. Not content withfomenting rebellion in his district, and taking his cities from him, hisenemies accused him to the Pharaoh of disloyalty and misdoing. Thoseaccusations were in some cases founded on truth. He confesses to havingfled from his city, but he urges that it was to save his life. Thetroops he had begged for had not been sent to him, and he could nolonger defend either his city or himself. He also alleges that theexcesses committed by some of his servants had been without hisknowledge. This seems to have been in answer to a despatch of Ammunira, the prefect of Beyrout, in which he informed the king that he waskeeping the brother of the governor of Gebal as a hostage, and that thelatter had been intriguing against the government in the land of theAmorites. 

Chief among the adversaries of Rib-Hadad was Ebed-Asherah, a native ofthe land of Barbarti, and the governor of the Amoritish territory. Several of his sons are mentioned, but the ablest and most influentialof them was Aziru or Ezer, who possessed a considerable amount of power. The whole family, while professing to be the obedient servants of thePharaoh, nevertheless acted with a good deal of independence, and soughtto aggrandise themselves at the expense of the neighbouring governors. They had at their disposal a large body of "plunderers, " or Beduin fromthe eastern desert, and Rib-Hadad accuses them of forming secretalliances with the kings of Babylonia, of Mitanni and of the Hittites. The authority of Aziru extended to the northern frontier of the empire;we find him sent with the Egyptian general Khatip, or Hotep, to opposethe Hittite invasion, and writing to the king as well as to the primeminister Dudu to explain why they had not succeeded in doing so. Tuniphad been invested by the enemy, and Aziru fears that it may fall intotheir hands. The Hittites had already made their way into the land ofNukhasse, and were from thence marching up into the land of theAmorites. 

On the heels of these despatches came a long letter from the people ofTunip, complaining of the conduct of Aziru, and protesting against hisdoing to them what he had done to the city of Ni. He was at the time inthe land of the Hittites, doubtless carrying on the war against thegeneral enemy. 

To these accusations Aziru made a full reply. "O my lord, " he begins, "hearken not to the wicked men who slander me before the king my lord: Iam thy servant for ever. " He had been charged with want of respect tothe Pharaoh, on the ground that he had not received the royalcommissioner Khani on his arrival at Tunip. But, he replies, he did notknow that the commissioner was coming, and as soon as he heard that hewas on the road he "followed him, but failed to overtake him. " In hisabsence Khani was duly received by the brethren of Aziru, and Belti-el(or Bethuel) furnished him with meat and bread and wine. Moreover, onhis way home he was met by Aziru himself, who provided the commissionerwith horses and mules. A more serious charge was that of seizing thecity of Zemar. To this Aziru answers that it was done in self-defence, as the kings of Nukhasse had always been hostile to him, and had robbedhim of his cities at the instigation of Khatip, who had also carriedaway all the silver and gold which the king had placed under his care. Moreover he had not really seized Zemar, but had won the people over tohimself by means of gifts. Lastly, he denied the accusation that he hadreceived the envoy of the king of the Hittites and refused to receivethe Egyptian messenger, although the country he governed belonged to theking, and the king had appointed him over it. Let the Egyptian envoymake inquiries, he urges, and he will find that Aziru has acteduprightly. 

The capture of Zemar forms the burden of many of the letters ofRib-Hadad. It had been besieged for two months by Ebed-Asherah, who hadvainly attempted to corrupt the loyalty of the governor of Gebal. Forthe time Rib-Hadad managed to save the city, but Aziru allied himselfwith Arvad and the neighbouring towns of Northern Phoenicia, capturedtwelve of Rib-Hadad's men, demanded a ransom of fifty pieces of silverfor each of them, and seized the ships of Zemar, Beyrout, and Sidon. Theforces sent from Gebal to Zemar were made prisoners by the Amorite chiefat Abiliya, and the position of Rib-Hadad daily became more desperate. Pa-Hor, the Egyptian governor of Kumidi, joined his opponents, andinduced the Sute or Beduin to attack his Sardinian guards. Yapa-Hadad, another governor, followed the example of Pa-Hor, and Zimridi thegovernor of Sidon had from the first been his enemy. Tyre alone remainedfaithful to his cause, though an "Ionian" who had been sent there on amission from Egypt had handed over horses, chariots, and men toEbed-Asherah, and it was accordingly to Tyre that Rib-Hadad sent hisfamily for safety. Tyre, however, now began to suffer like Gebal inconsequence of the alliance between Zimridi and Ebed-Asherah. 

Zemar eventually fell into the hands of Ebed-Asherah and his sons, itsprefect Khayapa or Khaip being slain during the assault. Abimelech, thegovernor of Tyre, accuses Zimridi of having been the cause. Whether thiswere so or not, it placed the whole of Northern Phoenicia under thegovernment or the influence of the Amorite chiefs. If Rib-Hadad spokethe truth, Ebed-Asherah had "sent to the soldiers in Bit-Ninip, saying, 'Gather yourselves together, and let us march up against Gebal, iftherein are any who have saved themselves from our hands, and we willappoint governors throughout all the provinces;' so all the provinceswent over to the Beduin. " Provisions began to be scarce in Gebal, andthe governor writes to Egypt for corn. 

Rib-Hadad now threatened the Pharaoh with deserting to his enemies ifsuccour was not forth-coming immediately, and at the same time heappealed to Amon-apt and Khayapa, the Egyptian commissioners who hadbeen sent to inquire into the condition of affairs in Canaan. The appealwas so far successful that troops were despatched to Zemar. But it wastoo late: along with Arka it had already been occupied by Ebed-Asherah, who thereupon writes to the Pharaoh, protesting his loyalty toKhu-n-Aten, declaring that he is "the house-dog" of the king, and thathe guards the land of the Amorites for "the king" his lord. He furthercalls on the Egyptian commissioner Pakhanate, who had been ordered tovisit him, to bear witness that he was "defending" Zemar and its fieldsfor the king. That Pakhanate was friendly to Ebed-Asherah may begathered from a despatch of Rib-Hadad, in which he accuses that officerof refusing to send any troops to the relief of Gebal, and of looking onwhile Zemar fell. Ebed-Asherah goes on to beg the king to come himself, and see with his own eyes how faithful a governor he really was. 

The letters of Abimelech of Tyre told a different tale, and theunfortunate Pharaoh might well be excused if he was as much puzzled aswe are to know on which side the truth lay, or whether indeed it lay oneither. Abimelech had a grievance of his own. As soon as Zimridi ofSidon learned that he had been appointed governor of Tyre, he seized theneighbouring city of Usu, which seems to have occupied the site ofPalćtyros on the mainland, thereby depriving the Tyrians of theirsupplies of wood, food, and fresh water. The city of Tyre was at thetime confined to a rocky island, to which provisions and water had to beconveyed in boats. Hence the hostile occupation of the town on themainland caused many of its inhabitants to die of want. To add to theirdifficulties, the city was blockaded by the combined fleet of Sidon, Arvad, and Aziru. Ilgi, "king of Sidon, " seems to have fled to Tyre forprotection, while Abimelech reports that the king of Hazor had joinedthe Beduin under Ebed-Asherah and his sons. It may be noted that aletter of this very king of Hazor has been preserved, as well as anotherfrom Ebed-Sullim, the Egyptian governor of the city, whose powers wereco-extensive with those of the king. 

Soon afterwards, however, the Sidonian ships were compelled to retreat, and the Tyrian governor made ready to pursue them. Meanwhile he sent hismessenger Elimelech to Khu-n-Aten with various presents, and gave theking an account of what had been happening in "Canaan. " The Hittitetroops had departed, but Etagama--elsewhere called Aidhu-gama--the_pa-ur_ or "prince" of Kadesh, in the land of Kinza, had joined Aziru inattacking Namya-yitsa, the governor of Kumidi. Abimelech adds that hisrival Zimridi of Sidon had collected ships and men from the cities ofAziru against him, and had consequently defeated him, but if the Pharaohwould send only four companies of troops to his rescue all would bewell. 

Zimridi, however, was not behindhand in forwarding his version of eventsto the Egyptian court, and assuring the king of his unswerving fidelity. "Verily the king my lord knows, " he says, "that the queen of the city ofSidon is the handmaid of the king my lord, who has given her into myhand, and that I have hearkened to the words of the king my lord that hewould send to his servant, and my heart rejoiced and my head wasexalted, and my eyes were enlightened, and my ears heard the words ofthe king my lord.... And the king my lord knows that hostility is verystrong against me; all the [fortresses] which the king gave into [myhand] had revolted" to the Beduin, but had been retaken by the commanderof the Egyptian forces. The letter throws a wholly different light onthe relations of the two rival parties in Phoenicia. 

The assertions of Rib-Hadad, however, are supported by those of hissuccessor in the government of Gebal, El-rabi-Hor. Rib-Hadad himselfdisappears from the scene. He may have died, for he complains that he isold and sick; he may have been driven out of Gebal, for in one of hisdespatches he states that the city was inclined to revolt, while inanother he tells us that even his own brother had turned against him andgone over to the Amorite faction. Or he may have been displaced from hispost; at all events, we hear that the Pharaoh had written to him, sayingthat Gebal was rebellious, and that there was a large amount of royalproperty in it. We hear also that Rib-Hadad had sent his son to theEgyptian court to plead his cause there, alleging age and infirmities asa reason for not going himself. However it may have been, we find a newgovernor in Gebal, who bears the hybrid name of El-rabi-Hor, "a greatgod is Horus. "

His first letter is to protest against Khu-n-Aten's mistrust of Gebal, which he calls "thy city and the city of [thy] fathers, " and to assertroundly that "Aziru is in rebellion against the king my lord. " Aziru hadmade a league (?) with the kings of Ni, Arvad, and Ammiya (the Beni-Ammoof Num. Xxii. 5) (See above, p. 64. ), and with the help of the AmoritePalasa was destroying the cities of the Pharaoh. So El-rabi-Hor asks theking not to heed anything the rebel may write about his seizure of Zemaror his massacre of the royal governors, but to send some troops tohimself for the defence of Gebal. In a second letter he reiterates hischarges against Aziru, who had now "smitten" Adon, the king of Arka, andpossessed himself of Zemar and the other towns of Phoenicia, so thatGebal "alone" is on the side of the king, who "looks on" without doinganything. Moreover a fresh enemy had arisen in the person of Eta-gama ofKadesh, who had joined himself with the king of the Hittites and theking of Naharaim. 

Letters to Khu-n-Aten from Akizzi the governor of Qatna, which, as welearn from the inscriptions of Assur-natsir-pal, was situated on theKhabűr, represent Aziru in the same light. First of all, the Egyptiangovernment is informed that the king of the Hittites, together withAidhu-gama (or Eta-gama) of Kadesh has been invading the Egyptianterritory, burning its cities, and carrying away from Qatna the image ofthe Sun-god. Khu-n-aten, it is urged, could not allow the latter crimeto go unpunished. The Sun-god had created him and his father, and hadcaused them to be called after his own name. He was the supreme objectof the Pharaoh's worship, the deity for whose sake Khu-n-Aten haddeserted Thebes. 

The Hittite king had been joined in his invasion of Syria by thegovernors of some otherwise unknown northern cities, but the kings ofNukhasse, Ni, Zinzar (the Sonzar of the Egyptian texts), and Kinanat(the Kanneh of Ezek. Xxvii. 23) remained faithful to the Egyptianmonarch. The rebel governors, however, were in the land of Ube, --the Aupof the hieroglyphics, --which they were urging Aidhu-gama to invade. 

Another letter brings Aziru upon the scene. He is accused of havinginvaded the land of Nukhasse, and made prisoners of the people of Qatna. The Pharaoh is prayed to rescue or ransom them, and to send chariots andsoldiers to the help of his Mesopotamian subjects. If they come all thelands round about will acknowledge him as lord, and he will be lord alsoof Nukhasse; if they do not come, the men of Qatna will be forced toobey Aziru. 

It is probable that the misdeeds of Aziru which are here referred towere committed at the time he was in Tunip, professedly protecting itagainst Hittite attack. It would seem from what Akizzi says, thatinstead of faithfully performing his mission, he had aimed atestablishing his own power in Northern Syria. While nominally an officerof the Pharaoh, he was really seeking to found an Amorite kingdom in thenorth. In this he would have been a predecessor of Og and Sihon, whosekingdoms were built up on the ruins of the Egyptian empire. 

A despatch, however, from Namya-yitsa, the governor of Kumidi, sets theconduct of Aziru in a more favourable light. It was written at asomewhat later time, when rebellion against the Egyptian authority wasspreading throughout Syria. A certain Biridasyi had stirred up the cityof Inu'am, and after shutting its gate upon Namya-yitsa had entered thecity of Ashtaroth-Karnaim in Bashan, and there seized the chariotsbelonging to the Pharaoh, handing them over to the Beduin. He thenjoined the kings of Buzruna (now Bosra) and Khalunni (near the Wadi'Allân), in a plot to murder Namya-yitsa, who escaped, however, toDamascus, though his own brothers turned against him. The rebels nextattacked Aziru, captured some of his soldiers, and in league withEtu-gama wasted the district of Abitu. Etakkama, however, as Etu-gamaspells his own name, professed to be a loyal servant of the Egyptianking, and one of the Tel el-Amarna letters is from him. 

We next hear of Namya-yitsa in Accho or Acre, where he had taken refugewith Suta, or Seti, the Egyptian commissioner. Seti had already been inJerusalem, and had been inquiring there into the behaviour of Ebed-Tob. 

The picture of incipient anarchy and rebellion which is set before us bythe correspondence from Phoenicia and Syria is repeated in that from thecentre and south of Palestine. In the centre the chief seats of theEgyptian government were at Megiddo, at Khazi (the Gaza of 1 Chron. Vii. 28), near Shechem, and at Gezer. Each of these towns was under anEgyptian governor, specially appointed by the Pharaoh. 

The governor of Khazi bore the name of Su-yarzana, Megiddo was under theauthority of Biridî, while the governor of Gaza was Yapakhi. There areseveral letters in the Tel el-Amarna collection from the latterofficial, chiefly occupied with demands for help against his enemies. The district under his control was attacked by the Sute or Beduin, ledby a certain Labai or Labaya and his sons. Labai, though of Beduinorigin, was himself professedly an Egyptian official, the Egyptianpolicy having been to give the title of governor to the powerful Beduinsheikhs, and to attach them to the Egyptian government by the combinedinfluence of bribery and fear. Labai accordingly writes to the Pharaohto defend himself against the charges that had been brought against him, and to assure Khu-n-Aten that he was "a faithful servant of the king";"I have not sinned, and I have not offended, and I do not withhold mytribute or neglect the command to turn back my officers. " Labai, itwould seem, had been appointed by Amenophis III. Governor of Shunem andBene-berak (Joshua xix. 45), and had captured the city of Gath-Rimmonwhen it revolted against the Pharaoh; but after the death of Amenophishe and his two sons had attacked the Egyptian officials in true Beduinstyle, and had taken every opportunity of pillaging central and SouthernPalestine. As we shall see, Labai and his ally, Malchiel, were among thechief adversaries of Ebed-Tob of Jerusalem. 

On one occasion, however, Labai was actually made prisoner by one of theEgyptian officers. There is a letter from Biridî stating that Megiddowas threatened by Labai, and that although the garrison had beenstrengthened by the arrival of some Egyptian troops, it was impossibleto venture outside the gates of the town for fear of the enemy, and thatunless two more regiments were sent the city itself was likely to fall. Whether the additional forces were sent or not we do not know. Labai, however, had to fly for his life along with his confederate Yasdata, whowas the governor of some city near Megiddo, as we learn from a letter ofhis in which he speaks of being with Biridî. Of Yasdata we hear nothingfurther, but Labai was captured in Megiddo by Zurata, the prefect ofAcre, who, under the pretext that he was going to send his prisoner in aship to Egypt, took him first to the town of Khinatuna ('En'athôn), andthen to his own house, where he was induced by a bribe to set him freealong with his companion, Hadad-mekhir (who, by the way, has bequeathedto us two letters). 

It was probably after this that Labai wrote to the Pharaoh to exculpatehimself, though his language, in spite of its conventionalsubmissiveness, could not have been very acceptable at the Egyptiancourt. In one of his letters he excuses himself partly on the groundthat even "the food of his stomach" had been taken from him, partly thathe had attacked and entered Gezer only in order to recover the propertyof himself and his friend Malchiel, partly because a certain Bin-sumyawhom the Pharaoh had sent against him had really "given a city andproperty in it to my father, saying that if the king sends for my wife Ishall withhold her, and if the king sends for myself I shall give himinstead a bar of copper in a large bowl and take the oath ofallegiance. " A second letter is still more uncompromising. In this hecomplains that the Egyptian troops have ill-treated his people, and thatthe officer who is with him has slandered him before the king; hefurther declares that two of his towns have been taken from him, butthat he will defend to the last whatever still remains of his patrimony. 

Malchiel, the colleague of Labai in his attack upon Gezer, as afterwardsupon Ebed-Tob of Jerusalem, does not appear to have been of Beduinorigin. But as long as the Beduin chief could be of use to him he wasvery willing to avail himself of his assistance, and it was always easyto drop the alliance as soon as it became embarrassing. Malchiel was theson-in-law of Tagi of Gath, and the colleague of Su-yardata, one of thefew Canaanite governors whom the Egyptian government seems to have beenable to trust. Both Su-yardata and Malchiel held commands in SouthernPalestine, and we hear a good deal about them from Ebed-Tob. "The twosons of Malchiel" are also mentioned in a letter from a lady who bears aBabylonian name, and who refers to them in connection with an attempt todetach the cities of Ajalon and Zorah (Joshua xv. 33) from theirallegiance to Egypt. The female correspondents of the Pharaoh are amongthe most curious and interesting features of the state of societydepicted in the Tel el-Amarna tablets; they entered keenly into thepolitics of the day, and kept the Egyptian king fully informed of allthat was going on. 

The letters of Ebed-Tob are so important that it is as well to give themin full. They all seem to have been written within a few months, orperhaps even weeks, of one another, when the enemies of the governor ofJerusalem were gathering around him, and no response came from Egypt tohis requests for help. The dotted lines mark the words and passageswhich have been lost through the fracture of the clay tablets. 

(I. ) "To the king my lord [my] Sun-god, thus [speaks] Ebed-Tob thyservant: at the feet of the king my lord seven times seven I prostratemyself. Behold, the king has established his name at the rising of thesun and the setting of the sun. Slanders have been uttered against me. Behold, I am not a governor, a vassal of the king my lord. Behold, I aman ally of the king, and I have paid the tribute due to the king, evenI. Neither my father nor my mother, but the oracle (or arm) of theMighty King established [me] in the house of [my] fathers.... There havecome to me as a present 13 [women] and 10 slaves. Suta (Seti) theCommissioner of the king has come to me: 21 female slaves and 20 maleslaves captured in war have been given into the hands of Suta as a giftfor the king my lord, as the king has ordained for his country. Thecountry of the king is being destroyed, all of it. Hostilities arecarried on against me as far as the mountains of Seir (Joshua xv. 10)and the city of Gath-Karmel (Joshua xv. 55). All the other governors areat peace, but there is war against myself, since I see the foe, but I donot see the tears of the king my lord because war has been raisedagainst me. While there is a ship in the midst of the sea, the arm (ororacle) of the Mighty King shall conquer the countries of Naharaim(Nakhrima) and Babylonia. But now the Confederates (Khabiri) arecapturing the fortresses of the king. Not a single governor remainsamong them to the king my lord; all have perished. Behold, Turbazu, thymilitary officer, [has fallen] in the great gate of the city of Zelah(Josh, xviii. 28). Behold, Zimrida of Lachish has been murdered by theservants who have revolted against the king. Jephthah-Hadad, thymilitary officer, has been slain in the great gate of Zelah.... May theking [my lord] send help [to his country]! May the king turn his face to[his subjects]! May he despatch troops to [his] country! [Behold, ] if notroops come this year, all the countries of the king my lord will beutterly destroyed. They do not say before the face of the king my lordthat the country of the king my lord is destroyed, and that all thegovernors are destroyed, if no troops come this year. Let the king senda commissioner, and let him come to me, even to me, with auxiliarytroops, and we will die with the king [our] lord. --[To] the secretary ofthe king my lord [speaks] Ebed-Tob [thy] servant. At [thy] feet [Iprostrate myself]. Let a report of [my] words be laid before the king[my] lord. Thy [loyal] servant am I. "

(II. ) "To the king my lord thus speaks Ebed-Tob thy servant: at the feetof the king my lord seven times seven I prostrate myself. What have Idone against the king my lord? They have slandered me, laying wait forme in the presence of the king, the lord, saying: Ebed-Tob has revoltedfrom the king his lord. Behold, neither my father nor my mother hasexalted me in this place; the prophecy of the Mighty King has caused meto enter the house of my father. Why should I have committed a sinagainst the king the lord? With the king my lord is life. I say to theofficer of the king [my] lord: Why dost thou love the Confederates andhate the governors? And constantly I am sending to the presence of theking my lord to say that the countries of the king my lord are beingdestroyed. Constantly I am sending to the king my lord, and let the kingmy lord consider, since the king my lord has appointed the men of theguard who have taken the fortresses. Let Yikhbil-Khamu [be sent].... Letthe king send help to his country. [Let him send troops] to his countrywhich protects the fortresses of the king my lord, all of them, sinceElimelech is destroying all the country of the king; and let the kingsend help to his country. Behold, I have gone down along with the kingmy lord, and I have not seen the tears of the king my lord; buthostility is strong against me, yet I have not taken anything whateverfrom the king my lord; and let the king incline towards my face; let himdespatch a guard [for me], and let him appoint a commissioner, and Ishall not see the tears of the king my lord, since the king [my] lordshall live when the commissioner has departed. Behold, the countries ofthe king [my lord] are being destroyed, yet thou dost not listen to me. All the governors are destroyed; no governor remains to the king thelord. Let the king turn his face to his subjects, and let him sendauxiliaries, even the troops of the king my lord. No provinces remainunto the king; the confederates have wasted all the provinces of theking. If auxiliaries come this year, the provinces of the king the lordwill be preserved; but if no auxiliaries come the provinces of the kingmy lord are destroyed. --[To] the secretary of the king my lord Ebed-Tob[says:] Give a report of my words to the king my lord: the provinces ofthe king my lord are being destroyed by the enemy. "

(III. ) "[To] the king my lord [speaks] Ebed-Tob [thy] servant: [at thefeet of the king] my lord seven [times seven I prostrate myself. Behold, let] the king [listen to] the words [of his servant].... Let [the king]consider all the districts which are leagued in hostility against me, and let the king send help to his country. Behold, the country of thecity of Gezer, the country of the city of Ashkelon and the city ofLa[chish] have given as their peace offerings food and oil andwhatsoever the fortress needs. And let the king send help to his troops;let him despatch troops against the men who have rebelled against theking my lord. If troops come this year, there will remain both provinces[and] governors to the king my lord; [but] if no troops arrive, therewill remain no provinces or governors to the king [my lord]. Behold, neither my father nor my mother has given this country of the city ofJerusalem unto me: it was an oracle [of the Mighty King] that gave it tome, even to me. Behold, Malchiel and the sons of Labai have given thecountry of the king to the Confederates. Behold, the king my lord isrighteous towards me. As to the Babylonians, let the king ask thecommissioner how very strong is the temple-[fortress of Jerusalem. ].... Thou hast delivered (?) the provinces into the hands of the city ofAsh[kelon]. Let the king demand of them abundance of food, abundance ofoil, and abundance of wine until Pa-ur, the commissioner of the king, comes up to the country of the city of Jerusalem to deliver Adai alongwith the garrison and the [rest of the people]. Let the king considerthe [instructions] of the king; [let him] speak to me; let Adai deliverme--Thou wilt not desert it, even this city, sending to me a garrison[and] sending a royal commissioner. Thy grace [is] to send [them]. Tothe king [my lord] I have despatched [a number of] prisoners [and anumber of] slaves. [I have looked after] the roads of the king in theplain (_kikkar_, Gen. Xiii. 10) and in the mountains. Let the king mylord consider the city of Ajalon. I am not able to direct my way to theking my lord according to his instructions. Behold, the king hasestablished his name in the country of Jerusalem for ever, and he cannotforsake the territories of the city of Jerusalem. --To the secretary ofthe king my lord thus speaks Ebed-Tob thy servant. At thy feet Iprostrate myself. Thy servant am I. Lay a report of my words before theking my lord. The vassal of the king am I. Mayest thou live long!--Andthou hast performed deeds which I cannot enumerate against the men ofthe land of Ethiopia.... The men of the country of the Babylonians[shall never enter] into my house.... "

(IV. ) (The beginning of the letter is lost, and it is not certain thatEbed-Tob was the writer of it. ) "And now as to the city of Jerusalem, ifthis country is still the king's, why is Gaza made the seat of theking's government? Behold, the district of the city of Gath-Carmel hasfallen away to Tagi and the men of Gath. He is in Bit-Sani(Beth-Sannah), and we have effected that they should give Labai and thecountry of the Sute to the men of the district of the Confederates. Malchiel has sent to Tagi and has seized some boy-slaves. He has grantedall their requests to the men of Keilah, and we have delivered (ordeparted from) the city of Jerusalem. The garrison thou hast left in itis under the command of Apis the son of Miya-riya (Meri-Ra). Hadad-elhas remained in his house in Gaza.... "

(V. ) "To the king my lord thus [speaks] Ebed-Tob thy servant: at thefeet of my lord [the king] seven times seven [I prostrate myself]. Behold, Malchiel does not separate himself from the sons of Labai andthe sons of Arzai to demand the country of the king for themselves. Asfor the governor who acts thus, why does not the king question him?Behold, Malchiel and Tagi are they who have acted so, since they havetaken the city of Rubute (Rabbah, Josh. Xv. 60).... (Many lines are losthere. ) There is no royal garrison [in Jerusalem]. May the king liveeternally! Let Pa-ur go down to him. He has departed in front of me andis in the city of Gaza; and let the king send to him a guard to defendthe country. All the country of the king has revolted! DirectYikhbil-Khamu [to come], and let him consider the country of the king[my lord]. --To the secretary of the king [my lord] thus [speaks]Ebed-Tob thy servant: [at thy feet I prostrate myself]. Lay [a report]of my words [before] the king. Mayest thou live long! Thy servant am I. "

(VI. ) "[To] the king my lord thus speaks Ebed-Tob thy servant: at thefeet of the king my lord seven times seven I prostrate myself. [The kingknows the deed] which they have done, even Malchiel and Su-ardatum, against the country of the king my lord, commanding the forces of thecity of Gezer, the forces of the city of Gath, and the forces of thecity of Keilah. They have seized the district of the city of Rabbah. Thecountry of the king has gone over to the Confederates. And now at thismoment the city of the mountain of Jerusalem, the city of the temple ofthe god Nin-ip, whose name is Salim (?), " (Or, adopting the reading ofDr. Zimmern, "The city whose name is Bit-Nin-ip. ") "the city of theking, is gone over to the side of the men of Keilah. Let the king listento Ebed-Tob thy servant, and let him despatch troops and restore thecountry of the king to the king. But if no troops arrive, the country ofthe king is gone over to the men even to the Confederates. This is thedeed [of Su-ar]datun and Malchiel.... "

The loyalty of Ebed-Tob, however, seems to have been doubted at theEgyptian court, where more confidence was placed in his rival and enemySu-ardata (or Su-yardata, as the owner of the name himself writes it). Possibly the claim of the vassal-king of Jerusalem to have beenappointed to his royal office by the "Mighty King" rather than by the"great king" of Egypt, and consequently to be an ally of the Pharaoh andnot an ordinary governor, may have had something to do with thesuspicions that were entertained of him. At all events we learn from aletter of Su-yardata that the occupation of Keilah by Ebed-Tob'senemies, of which the latter complains so bitterly, was due to theorders of the Egyptian government itself. Su-yardata there says--"Theking [my lord] directed me to make war in the city of Keilah: war wasmade; (and now) a complaint is brought against me. My city againstmyself has risen upon me. Ebed-Tob sends to the men of the city ofKeilah; he sends silver, and they have marched against my rear. And theking knows that Ebed-Tob has taken my city from my hand. " The writeradds that "now Labai has taken Ebed-Tob and they have taken our cities. "In his subsequent despatches to the home government Su-yardata complainsthat he is "alone, " and asks that troops should be sent to him, sayingthat he is forwarding some _almehs_ or maidens as a present along withhis "dragoman. " At this point the correspondence breaks off. 

Malchiel and Tagi also write to the Pharaoh. According to Tagi the roadsbetween Southern Palestine and Egypt were under the supervision andprotection of his brother; while Malchiel begs for cavalry to pursue andcapture the enemy who had made war upon Su-yardata and himself, hadseized "the country of the king, " and threatened to slay his servants. He also complains of the conduct of Yankhamu, the High Commissioner, whohad been ordered to inquire into the conduct of the governors inPalestine. Yankhamu, it seems, had seized Malchiel's property andcarried off his wives and children. It was doubtless to this act ofinjustice that Labai alludes in his letter of exculpation. 

The territory of which Jerusalem was the capital extended southward asfar as Carmel of Judah, Gath-Carmel as it is called by Ebed-Tob, as wellas in the geographical lists of Thothmes III. , while on the west itreached to Keilah, Kabbah, and Mount Seir. No mention is made of Hebroneither in the Tel el-Amarna letters or in the Egyptian geographicallists, which are earlier than the rise of the nineteenth dynasty. Thetown must therefore have existed under some other name, or have been inthe hands of a power hostile to Egypt. 

The name of Hebron has the same origin as that of the Khabiri, whoappear in Ebed-Tob's letters by the side of Labai, Babylonia, andNaharaim as the assailants of Jerusalem and its territory. The wordmeans "Confederates, " and occurs in the Assyrian texts; among otherpassages in a hymn published by Dr. Brünnow, where we read, _istu pankhabiri-ya iptarsanni_, "from the face of my associates he has cut meoff. " The word, however, is not Assyrian, as in that case it would havehad a different form, but must have been borrowed from the Canaanitishlanguage of the West. 

Who the Khabiri or "Confederates" were has been disputed. Some scholarssee in them Elamite marauders who followed the march of the Babylonianarmies to Syria. This opinion is founded on the fact that the Khabiriare once mentioned as an Elamite tribe, and that in a Babyloniandocument a "Khabirite" (_Khabirâ_) is referred to along with a "Kassite"or Babylonian. Another view is that they are to be identified withHeber, the grandson of Asher (Gen. Xlvi. 17), since Malchiel is said tobe the brother of Heber, just as in the letters of Ebed-Tob Malchiel isassociated with the Khabiri. But all such identifications are based uponthe supposition that "Khabiri" is a proper name rather than adescriptive title. Any band of "Confederates" could be called Khabiriwhether in Elam or in Palestine, and it does not follow that the twobands were the same. In the "Confederates" of Southern Canaan we have tolook for a body of confederated tribes who made themselves formidable tothe governor of Jerusalem in the closing days of the Egyptian empire. 

It would seem that Elimelech, who of course was a different person fromMalchiel, was their leader, and as Elimelech is a Canaanitish name, wemay conclude that the majority of his followers were also of Canaanitishdescent. The scene of their hostilities was to the south of Jerusalem. Gath-Carmel, Zelah, and Lachish are the towns mentioned in connectionwith their attempts to capture and destroy "the fortresses of the king. ""The country of the king" which had "gone over to the Confederates" wasthe territory over which Ebed-Tob claimed rule, while the districtoccupied by Labai and his Beduin followers was handed over "to the menof the district of the Confederates. " The successes of the latter weregained through the intrigues of Malchiel and the sons of Labai. 

All this leads us to the neighbourhood of Hebron, and suggests thequestion whether "the district of the Confederates" was not that ofwhich Hebron, "the Confederacy, " was the central meeting-place andsanctuary. Hebron has preserved its sacred character down to the presentday; it long disputed with Jerusalem the claim of being the oldest andmost hallowed shrine in Southern Palestine, and it was for many yearsthe capital of Judah, Moreover, we know that "Hebron" was not the onlyname the city possessed. When Abram was "confederate" with the threeAmorite chieftains it was known as Mamre (Gen. Xiii. 18), and at a laterday under the rule of the three sons of Anak it was called Kirjath-Arba. 

According to the Biblical narrative Hebron was at once Amorite, Hittite, and Canaanite. Here, therefore, there was a confederation of tribes andraces who would have met together at a common sanctuary. When Ezekielsays that Jerusalem was both Hittite and Amorite in its parentage, hemay have been referring to its conquest and settlement by such aconfederacy as that of Hebron. At all events we learn from Su-yardata'sletter that Ebed-Tob eventually fell into the hands of his enemies; hewas captured by Labai, and it is possible that his city became at thesame time the prey of the Khabiri. 

But all this is speculation, which may or may not prove to be correct. All we can be sure of is that the Khabiri or "Confederates" had theirseat in the southern part of Palestine, and that we need not go outsideCanaan to discover who they were. Ebed-Tob, at all events, carefullydistinguishes them from either the Babylonians or the people ofNaharaim. 

In his letters, as everywhere else in the Tel el-Amarna correspondence, the Babylonians are called Kassi or Kassites. The name is writtendifferently in the cuneiform texts from that of the Ethiopians, the Kashof the hieroglyphic inscriptions. Both, however, are alike representedin Hebrew by Cush, and hence we have not only a Cush who is the brotherof Mizrairn, but also another Cush who is the father of Nimrod. The nameof the latter takes us back to the age of the Tel el-Amarna tablets. 

Nahrima, or Naharaim, was the name by which the kingdom of Mitanni wasknown to its Canaanite and Egyptian neighbours. Mitanni, in fact, wasits capital, and it may be that Lutennu (or Lotan), as the Egyptianscalled Syria and Palestine, was but a mispronunciation of it. Along withthe Babylonians the people of Naharaim had made themselves formidable tothe inhabitants of Canaan, and their name was feared as far south asJerusalem. Even the governor of the Canaanite town of Musikhuna, not farfrom the Sea of Galilee, bore the Mitannian name of Sutarna. It was not, indeed, until after the Israelitish conquest that the last invasion ofCanaan by a king of Aram-Naharaim took place. 

Gaza and Joppa were at one time under the same governor, Yabitiri, whoin a letter which has come down to us asks to be relieved of the burdenof his office. Ashkelon, however, which lay between the two sea-ports, was in the hands of another prefect, Yidya by name, from whom we haveseveral letters, in one of which mention is made of the Egyptiancommissioner Rianap, or Ra-nofer. The jurisdiction of Rianap extended asfar north as the plain of Megiddo, since he is also referred to byPu-Hadad, the governor of Yurza, now Yerzeh, south-eastward of Taanach. But it was more particularly in the extreme south of Palestine that theduties of this officer lay. Hadad-dan, who was entrusted with thegovernment of Manahath and Tamar, to the west of the Dead Sea, calls him"my Commissioner" in a letter in which he complains of the conduct of acertain Beya, the son of "the woman Gulat. " Hadad-dan begins by sayingthat he had protected the commissioner and cities of the king, and thenadds that "the city of Tumur is hostile to me, and I have built a housein the city of Mankhate, so that the household troops of the king mylord may be sent to me; and lo, Bâya has taken it from my hand, and hasplaced his commissioner in it, and I have appealed to Rianap, mycommissioner, and he has restored the city unto me, and has sent thehousehold troops of the king my lord to me. " After this the writer goeson to state that Beya had also intrigued against the city of Gezer, "thehandmaid of the king my lord who created me. " The rebel then carried offa quantity of plunder, and it became necessary to ransom his prisonersfor a hundred pieces of silver, while those of his confederate wereransomed for thirty pieces of silver. 

The misdeeds of Beya or Bâya did not end here. We hear of him again asattacking and capturing a body of soldiers who had been sent to defendthe royal palace at Joppa, and as occupying that city itself. He was, however, subsequently expelled from it by the king's orders. Beya, too, professed to be an Egyptian governor and a faithful servant of thePharaoh, to whom he despatched a letter to say that Yankhamu, the HighCommissioner, was not in his district. Probably this was in answer to acharge brought against him by the Egyptian officer. 

The official duties of Yankhamu extended over the whole of Palestine, and all the governors of its cities were accountable to him. We find himexercising his authority not only in the south, but also in the north, at Zemar and Gebal, and even among the Amorites. Amon-apt, to whom thesuperintendence of Phoenicia was more particularly entrusted, wassupplied by him with corn, and frequent references are made to him inthe letters of Rib-Hadad. Malchiel complained of his high-handedproceedings, and the complaint seems to have led to some confidentialinquiries on the part of the home government, since we find a certainSibti-Hadad writing in answer to the Pharaoh's questions that Yankhamuwas a faithful servant of the king. 

The country east of the Jordan also appears to have been within hisjurisdiction. At all events the following letter was addressed to him bythe governor Mut-Hadad, "the man of Hadad. " "To Yankhamu my lord thusspeaks Mut-Hadad thy servant: at the feet of my lord I prostrate myself. Since Mut-Hadad has declared in thy presence that Ayab has fled, and itis certified (?) that the king of Bethel has fled from before theofficers of the king his lord, may the king my lord live, may the kingmy lord live! I pray thee ask Ben-enima, ask ... Tadua, ask Isuya, ifAyâb has been in this city of Bethel for [the last] two months. Eversince the arrival of [the image of] the god Merodach, the city ofAstarti (Ashtaroth-Karnaim) has been assisted, because all thefortresses of the foreign land are hostile, namely, the cities of Udumu(Edom), Aduri (Addar), Araru, Mestu (Mosheh), Magdalim (Migdol), Khinianabi ('En han-nabi), Zarki-tsabtat, Khaini ('En), and Ibi-limma(Abel). Again after thou hadst sent a letter to me I sent to him (i. E. Ayâb), [to wait] until thy arrival from thy journey; and he reached thecity of Bethel and [there] they heard the news. "

We learn from this letter that Edom was a "foreign country" unsubdued bythe Egyptian arms. The "city of Edom, " from which the country took itsname, is again mentioned in the inscriptions of the Assyrian kingEsar-haddon, and it was there that the Assyrian tax-gatherers collectedthe tribute of the Edomite nation. It would seem that the land of Edomstretched further to the north in the age of Khu-n-Aten than it did at asubsequent period of history, and that it encroached upon what wasafterwards the territory of Moab. The name of the latter country is metwith for the first time among the Asiatic conquests of Ramses II. Engraved on the base of one of the colossal figures which stand in frontof the northern pylon of the temple of Luxor; when the Tel el-Amarnaletters were written Moab was included in the Canaanite province ofEgypt. 

A curious letter to Khu-n-Aten from Burnaburyas, the Babylonian king, throws a good deal of light on the nature of the Egyptian government inCanaan. Between the predecessors of the two monarchs there had beenalliance and friendly intercourse, and nevertheless the Canaanitishsubjects of the Pharaoh had committed an outrageous crime against someBabylonian merchants, which if left unpunished would have led to arupture between the two countries. The merchants in question had enteredPalestine under the escort of the Canaanite Ahitub, intending afterwardsto visit Egypt. At Ęn-athôn, near Acre, however, "in the country ofCanaan, " Sum-Adda, or Shem-Hadad, the son of Balumme (Balaam), andSutatna, or Zid-athon, the son of Saratum, [His name is written Zuratain the letter of Biridî, the governor of Megiddo; see above, p. 135. ]who was governor of Acre, set upon them, killing some of them, maltreating others, and carrying away their goods. Burna-buryastherefore sent a special envoy, who was instructed to lay the followingcomplaint before the Pharaoh: "Canaan is thy country and the king [ofAcre is thy servant]. In thy country I have been injured; do thou punish[the offenders]. The silver which they carried off was a present [forthee], and the men who are my servants they have slain. Slay them andrequite the blood [of my servants]. But if thou dost not put these mento death, [the inhabitants] of the high-road that belongs to me willturn and verily will slay thy ambassadors, and a breach will be made inthe agreement to respect the persons of ambassadors, and I shall beestranged from thee. Shem-Hadad, having cut off the feet of one of mymen, has detained him with him; and as for another man, Sutatna of Acremade him stand upon his head and then stood upon his face. "

There are three letters in the Tel el-Amarna collection from Sutatna, orZid-atna ("the god Zid has given") as he writes his name, in one ofwhich he compares Akku or Acre with "the city of Migdol in Egypt. "Doubtless satisfaction was given to the Babylonian king for the wrongthat had been done to his subjects, though whether the actual culpritswere punished may be questioned. There is another letter fromBurna-buryas, in which reference is again made to the Canaanites. Hethere asserts that in the time of his father, Kurigalzu, they had sentto the Babylonian sovereign, saying: "Go down against Qannisat and letus rebel. " Kuri-galzu, however, had refused to listen to them, tellingthem that if they wanted to break away from the Egyptian king and allythemselves "with another, " they must find some one else to assist them. Burna-buryas goes on to declare that he was like-minded with his father, and had accordingly despatched an Assyrian vassal to assure the Pharaohthat he would carry on no intrigues with disaffected Canaanites. As thefirst part of his letter is filled with requests for gold for theadornment of a temple he was building at Babylon, such an assurance wasvery necessary. The despatches of Rib-Hadad and Ebed-Tob, however, go toshow that in spite of his professions of friendship, the Babylonianmonarch was ready to afford secret help to the insurgents in Palestine. The Babylonians were not likely to forget that they had once beenmasters of the country, or to regard the Egyptian empire in Asia withother than jealous eyes. 

The Tel el-Amarna correspondence breaks off suddenly in the midst of afalling empire, with its governors in Canaan fighting and intriguing oneagainst the other, and appealing to the Pharaoh for help that nevercame. The Egyptian commissioners are vainly endeavouring to restorepeace and order, like General Gordon in the Soudan, while Babyloniansand Mitannians, Hittites and Beduin are assailing the distractedprovince. The Asiatic empire of the eighteenth dynasty, however, did notwholly perish with the death of Khu-n-Aten. A picture in the tomb ofprince Hui at Thebes shows that under the reign of his successor, Tut-ankh-Amon, the Egyptian supremacy was still acknowledged in someparts of Syria. The chiefs of the Lotan or Syrians are represented intheir robes of many colours, some with white and others with brownskins, and coming before the Egyptian monarch with the rich tribute oftheir country. Golden trays full of precious stones, vases of gold andsilver, the covers of which are in the form of the heads of gazelles andother animals, golden rings richly enamelled, horses, lions, and aleopard's skin--such are the gifts which they offer to the Pharaoh. Itwas the last embassy of the kind which was destined to come from Syriafor many a day. 

With the rise of the nineteenth dynasty and the restoration of a stronggovernment at home, the Egyptians once more began to turn their eyestowards Palestine. Seti I. Drove the Beduin before him from thefrontiers of Egypt to those of "Canaan, " and established a line offortresses and wells along "the way of the Philistines, " which ran bythe shore of the Mediterranean to Gaza. The road was now open for him tothe north along the sea-coast. We hear accordingly of his capture ofAcre, Tyre, and Usu or Palćtyros, from whence he marched into theLebanon and took Kumidi and Inu'am. One of his campaigns must have ledhim into the interior of Palestine, since in his list of conqueredcities we find the names of Carmel and Beth-anoth, of Beth-el and Pahilor Pella, as well as of Qamham or Chimham (see Jer. Xli. 17). Kadesh, "in the land of the Amorites, " was captured by a sudden assault, andSeti claims to have defeated or received the submission of Alasiya andNaharaim, the Hittites and the Assyrians, Cyprus and Sangar. It wouldseem, however, that north of Kadesh he really made his way only alongthe coast as far as the Gulf of Antioch and Cilicia, overrunning townsand districts of which we know little more than the names. 

Seti was succeeded by his son Ramses II. , the Pharaoh of the Oppression, and the builder of Pithom and Ramses. His long reign of sixty-sevenyears lasted from 1348 B. C. To 1281 B. C. The first twenty-one years ofit were occupied in the re-conquest of Palestine, and sanguinary warswith the Hittites. But these mountaineers of the north had establishedthemselves too firmly in the old Egyptian province of Northern Syria tobe dislodged. All the Pharaoh could effect was to stop their furtherprogress towards the south, and to save Canaan from their grasp. The warbetween the two great powers of Western Asia ended at last through thesheer exhaustion of the rival combatants. A treaty of alliance, offensive and defensive, was drawn up between Ramses II. And Khata-sil, "the great king of the Hittites, " and it was cemented by the marriage ofthe Pharaoh to the daughter of the Hittite prince. Syria was dividedbetween the Hittites and Egyptians, and it was agreed that neithershould under any pretext invade the territories of the other. It wasalso agreed that if either country was attacked by foreign foes orrebellious subjects, the other should come to its help. Politicalrefugees, moreover, were to be delivered up to the sovereign from whomthey had escaped, but it was stipulated that in this case they shouldreceive a full pardon for the offences they had committed. The Hittitecopy of the treaty was engraved on a silver plate, and the gods of Egyptand the Hittites were called upon to witness the execution of it. 

The legendary exploits of Sesostris, that creation of Greek fancy andignorance, were fastened upon Ramses II. , whose long reign, inordinatevanity, and ceaseless activity as a builder made him one of the mostprominent of the old Pharaohs. It was natural, therefore, at thebeginning of hieroglyphic decipherment that the Greek accounts should beaccepted in full, and that Ramses II. Should have been regarded as thegreatest of Egyptian conquerors. But further study soon showed that, inthis respect at least, his reputation had little to support it. Like hismonuments, too many of which are really stolen from his predecessors, orelse sacrifice honesty of work to haste and pretentiousness, a largepart of the conquests and victories that have been claimed for him wasdue to the imagination of the scribes. In the reaction which followed onthis discovery, the modern historians of ancient Egypt were disposed todispute his claim to be a conqueror at all. But we now know that such ascepticism was exaggerated, and though Ramses II. Was not a conquerorlike Thothmes III. , he nevertheless maintained and extended the Asiaticempire which his father had recovered, and the lists of vanquishedcities which he engraved on the walls of his temples were not mererepetitions of older catalogues, or the empty fictions of flatteringchroniclers. Egyptian armies really marched once more into NorthernSyria and the confines of Cilicia, and probably made their way to thebanks of the Euphrates. We have no reason for denying that Assyriantroops may have been defeated by his arms, or that the king of Mitannimay have sent an embassy to his court. And we now have a good deal morethan the indirect evidence of the treaty with the Hittites to show thatCanaan was again a province of the Egyptian empire. The names of some ofits cities which were captured in the early part of the Pharaoh's reignmay still be read on the walls of the Ramesseum at Thebes. Among themare Ashkelon, Shalam or Jerusalem, Merom, and Beth-Anath, which weretaken by storm in his eighth year. Dapul, "in the land of the Amorites, "was captured at the same time, proving that the Egyptian forcespenetrated as far as the Hittite frontiers. At Luxor other Canaanitenames figure in the catalogue of vanquished states. Thus we have Carmelof Judah, Ir-shemesh and Hadashah (Josh. Xv. 37), Gaza, Sela andJacob-el, Socho, Yurza, and Korkha in Moab. The name of Moab itselfappears for the first time among the subject nations, while we gatherfrom a list of mining settlements, that Cyprus as well as the Sinaiticpeninsula was under Egyptian authority. 

A sarcastic account of the misadventures of a military officer inPalestine, which was written in the time of Ramses, is an evidence ofthe complete occupation of that country by the Egyptians. All parts ofCanaan are alluded to in it, and as Dr. Max Müller has lately pointedout, we find in it for the first time the names of Shechem andKirjath-Sepher. Similar testimony is borne by a hieroglyphic inscriptionrecently discovered by Dr. Schumacher on the so-called "Stone of Job" inthe Haurân. The stone (_Sakhrat 'Ayyub_) is a monolith westward of theSea of Galilee, and not far from Tel 'Ashtereh, the ancientAshtaroth-Karnaim, which was a seat of Egyptian government in the timeof Khu-n-Aten. The monolith is adorned with Egyptian sculptures andhieroglyphs. One of the sculptures represents a Pharaoh above whoselikeness is the cartouche of Ramses II. , while opposite the king, to theleft, is the figure of a god who wears the crown of Osiris, but has afull face. Over the god is his name in hieroglyphics. The name, however, is not Egyptian, but seems to be intended for the Canaanite Yakin-Zephonor "Yakin of the North. " It is plain, therefore, that we have here amonument testifying to the rule of Ramses II. , but a monument which waserected by natives of the country to a native divinity. For a while thehieroglyphic writing of Egypt had taken the place formerly occupied bythe cuneiform syllabary of Babylonia, and Egyptian culture had succeededin supplanting that which had come from the East. 

The nineteenth dynasty ended even more disastrously than the eighteenth. It is true that the great confederacy of northern and Libyan tribeswhich attacked Egypt by sea and land in the reign of Meneptah, the sonand successor of Ramses II. , was successfully repulsed, but the energyof the Egyptian power seemed to exhaust itself in the effort. The thronefell into the hands of usurpers, and the house of Ramses was swept awayby civil war and anarchy. The government was seized by a Syrian, Arisuby name, and for a time Egypt was compelled to submit to a foreign yoke. The overthrow of the foreigner and the restoration of the nativemonarchy was due to the valour of Set-nekht, the founder of thetwentieth dynasty and the father of Ramses III. 

It was under one of the immediate successors of Ramses II. That theexodus of the Israelites out of Egypt must have taken place. Egyptiantradition pointed to Meneptah; modern scholars incline rather to hissuccessors Seti II. And Si-Ptah. With this event the patriarchal historyof Canaan ought properly to come to an end. But the Egyptian monumentsstill cast light upon it, and enable us to carry it on almost to themoment when Joshua and his followers entered the Promised Land. 

Palestine still formed part of the kingdom of Meneptah, at all events inthe earlier years of his reign. A scribe has left us a record of theofficials who passed to and from Canaan through the frontier fortress ofZaru during the middle of the month Pakhons in the third year of theking. One of these was Baal- ... The son of Zippor of Gaza, who carrieda letter for the Egyptian overseer of the Syrian peasantry (orPerizzites), as well as another for Baal-[sa]lil-ga[b]u, thevassal-prince of Tyre. Another messenger was Sutekh-mes, the son of'Aper-dagar, who also carried a despatch to the overseer of thepeasantry, while a third envoy came in the reverse direction, from thecity of Meneptah, "in the land of the Amorites. "

In the troubles which preceded the accession of the twentieth dynastythe Asiatic possessions of Egypt were naturally lost, and were neveragain recovered. Ramses III. , however, the last of the conqueringPharaohs, made at least one campaign in Palestine and Syria. LikeMeneptah, he had to bear the brunt of an attack upon Egypt by theconfederated hordes of the north which threatened to extinguish itscivilization altogether. The nations of Asia Minor and the Ćgean Sea hadpoured into Syria as the northern barbarians in later days poured intothe provinces of the Roman Empire. Partly by land, partly by sea, theymade their way through Phoenicia and the land of the Hittites, destroying everything as they went, and carrying in their train thesubjugated princes of Naharaim and Kadesh. For a time they encamped inthe "land of the Amorites, " and then pursued their southward march. Ramses III. Met them on the north-eastern frontier of his kingdom, andin a fiercely-contested battle utterly overthrew them. The ships of theinvaders were captured or sunk, and their forces on land were decimated. Immense quantities of booty and prisoners were taken, and the shatteredforces of the enemy retreated into Syria. There the Philistines andZakkal possessed themselves of the sea-coast, and garrisoned the citiesof the extreme south. Gaza ceased to be an Egyptian fortress, and becameinstead an effectual barrier to the Egyptian occupation of Canaan. 

When Ramses III. Followed the retreating invaders of his country intoSyria, it is doubtful whether the Philistines had as yet settledthemselves in their future home. At all events Gaza fell into his hands, and he found no difficulty in marching along the Mediterranean coastlike the conquering Pharaohs who had preceded him. In his temple palaceat Medînet Habu he has left a record of the conquests that he made inSyria. The great cities of the coast were untouched. No attempt was madeto besiege or capture Tyre and Sidon, Beyrout and Gebal, and theEgyptian army marched past them, encamping on the way only at suchplaces as "the headland of Carmel, " "the source of the Magoras, " orriver of Beyrout, and the Bor or "Cistern. " Otherwise its resting-placeswere at unknown villages like Inzath and Lui-el. North of Beyrout itstruck eastward through the gorge of the Nahr el-Kelb, and took the cityof Kumidi. Then it made its way by Shenir or Hermon to Hamath, whichsurrendered, and from thence still northward to "the plain" of Aleppo. 

In the south of Palestine, in what was afterwards the territory ofJudah, Ramses made yet another campaign. Here he claims to have takenLebanoth and Beth-Anath, Carmel of Judah and Shebtin, Jacob-el andHebron, Libnah and Aphek, Migdal-gad and Ir-Shemesh, Hadashah and thedistrict of Salem or Jerusalem. From thence the Egyptian forcesproceeded to the Lake of Reshpon or the Dead Sea, and then crossing theJordan seized Korkha in Moab. But the campaign was little more than araid; it left no permanent results behind it, and all traces of Egyptianauthority disappeared with the departure of the Pharaoh's army. Canaanremained the prey of the first resolute invader who had strength andcourage at his back. 

CHAPTER IV

THE PATRIARCHS

Abraham had been born in "Ur of the Chaldees. " Ur lay on the westernside of the Euphrates in Southern Babylonia, where the mounds ofMuqayyar or Mugheir mark the site of the great temple that had beenreared to the worship of the Moon-god long before the days of the Hebrewpatriarch. Here Abraham had married, and from hence he had gone forthwith his father to seek a new home in the west. Their firstresting-place had been Harran in Mesopotamia, on the high-road to Syriaand the Mediterranean. The name of Harran, in fact, signified "road" inthe old language of Chaldća, and for many ages the armies and merchantsof Babylonia had halted there when making their way towards theMediterranean. Like Ur, it was dedicated to the worship of Sin, theMoon-god, and its temple rivalled in fame and antiquity that of theBabylonian city, and had probably been founded by a Babylonian king. 

At Harran, therefore, Abraham would still have been within the limits ofBabylonian influence and culture, if not of Babylonian government aswell. He would have found there the same religion as that which he hadleft behind him in his native city; the same deity was adored there, under the same name and with the same rites. He was indeed on the roadto Canaan, and among an Aramaean rather than a Babylonian population, but Babylonia with its beliefs and civilization had not as yet beenforsaken. Even the language of Babylonia was known in his new home, asis indicated by the name of the city itself. 

Harran and Mesopotamia were not the goal of the future father of theIsraelitish people. He was bidden to seek elsewhere another country andanother kindred. Canaan was the land which God promised to "show" tohim, and it was in Canaan that his descendants were to become "a greatnation. " He went forth, accordingly, "to go into the land of Canaan, andinto the land of Canaan he came. "

But even in Canaan Abraham was not beyond the reach of Babylonianinfluence. As we have seen in the last chapter, Babylonian armies hadalready penetrated to the shores of the Mediterranean, Palestine hadbeen included within the bounds of a Babylonian empire, and Babylonianculture and religion had spread widely among the Canaanitish tribes. Thecuneiform system of writing had made its way to Syria, and Babylonianliterature had followed in its wake. Centuries had already passed sinceSargon of Akkad had made himself master of the Mediterranean coast andhis son Naram-Sin had led his forces to the Peninsula of Sinai. Istar ofBabylonia had become Ashtoreth of the Canaanites, and Babylonian tradehad long moved briskly along the very road that Abraham traversed. Inthe days of the patriarch himself the rulers of Babylonia claimed to bealso rulers of Canaan; for thirteen years did the Canaanite princes"serve" Chedor-laomer and his allies, the father of Arioch is also "thefather of the land of the Amorites" in his son's inscriptions, and at alittle later date the King of Babylon still claimed sovereignty over theWest. 

It was not, therefore, to a strange and unexplored country that Abrahamhad migrated. The laws and manners to which he had been accustomed, thewriting and literature which he had learned in the schools of Ur, thereligious beliefs among which he had lived in Chaldća and Harran, hefound again in Canaan. The land of his adoption was full of Babyloniantraders, soldiers, and probably officials as well, and from time to timehe must have heard around him the language of his birthplace. Theintroduction into the West of the Babylonian literature and scriptbrought with it a knowledge of the Babylonian language, and theknowledge is reflected in some of the local names of Palestine. Thepatriarch had not escaped beyond the control even of the Babyloniangovernment. At times, at all events, the princes of Canaan werecompelled to acknowledge the suzerainty of Chaldća and obey the laws, asthe Babylonians would have said, of "Anu and Dagon. "

The fact needs dwelling upon, partly because of its importance, partlybecause it is but recently that we have begun to realize it. It mightindeed have been gathered from the narratives of Genesis, moreespecially from the account of Chedor-laomer's campaign, but it rancounter to the preconceived ideas of the modern historian, and nevertherefore took definite shape in his mind. It is one of the many gainsthat the decipherment of the cuneiform inscriptions has brought to thestudent of the Old Testament, and it makes us understand the story ofAbraham's migration in a way that was never possible before. He was nowild nomad wandering in unknown regions, among a people of alien habitsand foreign civilization. We know now why he took the road which we aretold he followed; why he was able to make allies among the inhabitantsof Canaan; why he understood their language and could take part in theirsocial life. Like the Englishman who migrates to a British colony, Abraham was in contact with the same culture in Canaan and Chaldćaalike. 

But when he reached Canaan he was not yet Abraham. He was still "Abramthe Hebrew, " and it was as "Abram the Hebrew" that he made alliance withthe Amorites of Mamre and overthrew the retreating forces of theBabylonian kings. Abram--Abu-ramu, "the exalted father, "--is aBabylonian name, and is found in contracts of the age of Chedor-laomer. When the name was changed to Abraham, it was a sign that the Babylonianemigrant had become a native of the West. 

It was under the terebinth of Moreh before Shechem that Abraham firstpitched his tent and erected his first altar to the Lord. Above himtowered Ebal and Gerizim, where the curses and blessings of the Law wereafterwards to be pronounced. From thence he moved southward to one ofthe hills westward of Beth-el, the modern Beitin, and there his secondaltar was built. While the first had been reared in the plain, thesecond was raised on the mountain-slope. 

But here too he did not remain long. Again he "journeyed, going on stilltowards the south. " Then came a famine which obliged him to cross thefrontier of Egypt, and visit the court of the Pharaoh. The Hyksoskinsmen of the race to which he belonged were ruling in the Delta, and aready welcome was given to the Asiatic stranger. He was "very rich incattle, in silver and in gold, " and like a wealthy Arab sheikh to-daywas received with due honour in the Egyptian capital. The court of thePharaoh was doubtless at Zoan. 

Among the possessions of the patriarch we are told were camels. Thecamel is not included among the Egyptian hieroglyphs, nor has it beenfound depicted on the walls of the Egyptian temples and tombs. The nameis first met with in a papyrus of the time of the nineteenth dynasty, and is one of the many words which the Egyptians of that age borrowedfrom their Canaanitish neighbours. The animal, in fact, was not used bythe Egyptians, and its domestication in the valley of the Nile seems tobe as recent as the Arab conquest. But though it was not used by theEgyptians, it had been a beast of burden among the Semites of Arabiafrom an early period. In the primitive Sumerian language of Chaldća itwas called "the animal from the Persian Gulf, " and its Semitic name, from which our own word _camel_ is derived, goes back to the verybeginnings of Semitic history. We cannot, therefore, imagine a Semiticnomad arriving in Egypt without the camel; travellers, indeed, from thecities of Canaan might do so, but not those who led a purely nomadiclife. And, in fact, though we look in vain for a picture of the camelamong the sculptures and paintings of Egypt, the bones of the animalhave been discovered deep in the alluvial soil of the valley of theNile. 

Abraham had to quit Egypt, and once more he traversed the desert of the"South" and pitched his tent near Beth-el. Here his nephew Lot left him, and, dissatisfied with the life of a wandering Bedawi, took up his abodein the city of Sodom at the northern end of the Dead Sea. While Abrahamkept himself separate from the natives of Canaan, Lot thus became one ofthem, and narrowly escaped the doom which afterwards fell upon thecities of the plain. In forsaking the tent, he forsook not only the freelife of the immigrant from Chaldća, but the God of Abraham as well. Theinhabitant of a Canaanitish city passed under the influence of its faithand worship, its morals and manners, as well as its laws and government. He ceased to be an alien and stranger, of a different race andfatherland, and with a religion and customs of his own. He couldintermarry with the natives of his adopted country and participate intheir sacred rites. Little by little his family became merged in thepopulation that surrounded him; its gods became their gods, itsmorality--or, it may be, its immorality--became theirs also. Lot, indeed, had eventually to fly from Sodom, leaving behind him all hiswealth; but the mischief had already been done, and his children hadbecome Canaanites in thought and deed. The nations which sprang fromhim, though separate in race from the older people of Canaan, were yetlike them in other respects. They formed no "peculiar people, " to whomthe Lord might reveal Himself through the law and the prophets. 

It was not until Lot had separated himself from Abraham that the land ofCanaan was promised to the descendants of the patriarch. "Lift up nowthine eyes, " God said to him, "and look from the place where thou art, northward and southward, and eastward and westward: for all the landwhich thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever. "Once more, therefore, Abraham departed southward from Shechem; not thistime to go into the land of Egypt, but to dwell beside the terebinth-oakof Mamre hard by Hebron, where the founder of the Davidic monarchy washereafter to be crowned king. It is probable that the sanctuary which indays to come was to make Hebron famous had not as yet been establishedthere; at all events the name of Hebron, "the confederacy, " was not asyet known, and the city was called Kirjath-Arba. Whether it was alsocalled Mamre is doubtful; Mamre would rather seem to have been the nameof the plateau which stretched beyond the valley of Hebron and wasoccupied by the Amorite confederates of the Hebrew patriarch. 

It was while he "dwelt under the terebinth of Mamre the Amorite" thatthe campaign of Chedor-laomer and his Babylonian allies took place, andthat Lot was carried away among the Canaanitish captives. But thetriumph of the conquerors was short-lived. "Abram the Hebrew" pursuedthem with his armed followers, three hundred and eighteen in number, aswell as with his Amorite allies, and suddenly falling upon theirrear-guard near Damascus by night, rescued the captives and the spoil. There was rejoicing in the Canaanitish cities when the patriarchreturned with his booty. The new king of Sodom met him in the valley ofShaveh, "the king's dale" of later times, just outside the walls ofJerusalem, and the king of Jerusalem himself, Melchizedek, "the priestof the most High God, " welcomed the return of the victor with bread andwine. Then it was that Abram gave tithes of the spoil to the God ofSalem, while Melchizedek blessed him in the name of "the most High God. "

Outside the pages of the Old Testament the special form assumed by theblessing has been found only in the Aramaic inscriptions of Egypt. Heretoo we find travellers from Palestine writing of themselves "Blessed beAugah of Isis, " or "Blessed be Abed-Nebo of Khnum"! It would seem, therefore, to have been a formula peculiar to Canaan; at all events, ithas not been traced to other parts of the Semitic world. The temple ofthe Most High God--El Elyôn--probably stood on Mount Moriah where thetemple of the God of Israel was afterwards to be erected. It will beremembered that among the letters sent by Ebed-Tob, the king ofJerusalem, to the Egyptian Pharaoh is one in which he speaks of "thecity of the Mountain of Jerusalem, whose name is the city of the templeof the god Nin-ip. " In this "Mountain of Jerusalem" it is difficult notto see the "temple-Mount" of later days. 

In the cuneiform texts of Ebed-Tob and the later Assyrian kings the nameof Jerusalem is written Uru-Salim, "the city of Salim. " Salim or "Peace"is almost certainly the native name of the god who was identified withthe Babylonian Nin-ip, and perhaps Isaiah--that student of the olderhistory of his country--is alluding to the fact when he declares thatone of the titles of the Messiah shall be "the Prince of Peace. " At anyrate, if the Most High God of Jerusalem were really Salim, the God ofPeace, we should have an explanation of the blessing pronounced byMelchizedek upon the patriarch. Abram's victory had restored peace toCanaan; he had brought back the captives, and had himself returned inpeace. It was fitting, therefore, that he should be welcomed by thepriest of the God of Peace, and that he should offer tithes of the bootyhe had recovered to the god of "the City of Peace. "

This offering of tithes was no new thing. In his Babylonian home Abrahammust have been familiar with the practice. The cuneiform inscriptions ofBabylonia contain frequent references to it. It went back to thepre-Semitic age of Chaldća, and the great temples of Babylonia werelargely supported by the _esra_ or tithe which was levied upon princeand peasant alike. That the god should receive a tenth of the goodthings which, it was believed, he had bestowed upon mankind, was notconsidered to be asking too much. There are many tablets in the BritishMuseum which are receipts for the payment of the tithe to the greattemple of the Sun-god at Sippara in the time of Nebuchadrezzar and hissuccessors. From one of them we learn that Belshazzar, even at the verymoment when the Babylonian empire was falling from his father's hands, nevertheless found an opportunity for paying the tithe due from hissister; while others show us that Cyrus and Cambyses did not regardtheir foreign origin as affording any pretext for refusing to pay titheto the gods of the kingdom they had overthrown. 

The Babylonian army had been defeated near Damascus, and immediatelyafter this we are told that the steward of Abraham's house was "Eli-ezerof Damascus. " Whether there is any connection between the two facts wecannot say; but it may be that Eli-ezer had attached himself to theHebrew conqueror when he was returning "from the slaughter ofChedor-laomer. " The name of Eli-ezer, "God is a help, " is characteristicof Damascus. More often in place of El, "God, " we have Hadad, thesupreme deity of Syria; but just as among the Israelites Eli-akim andJeho-iakim are equivalent, so among the Aramaeans of Syria were Eli-ezerand Hadad-ezer. Hadad-ezer, it will be remembered, was the king of Zobahwho was overthrown by David. 

Sarai, the wife of Abraham, was still childless, but the patriarch had ason by his Egyptian handmaid, the ancestor of the Ishmaelite tribes whospread from the frontier of Egypt to Mecca in Central Arabia. It waswhen Ishmael was thirteen years of age that the covenant was madebetween God and Abraham which was sealed with the institution ofcircumcision. Circumcision had been practised in Egypt from the earliestdays of its history; henceforth it also distinguished all those whoclaimed Abraham as their forefather. With circumcision Abraham receivedthe name by which he was henceforth to be known; he ceased to be Abram, the Hebrew from Babylonia, and became Abraham the father of Ishmael andIsrael. The new rite and the new name were alike the seal and token ofthe covenant established between the patriarch and his God: God promisedthat his seed should multiply, and that the land of Canaan should begiven as an everlasting possession, while Abraham and his offspring werecalled upon to keep God's covenant for ever. 

It could not have been long after this that the cities of the plain weredestroyed "with brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven. " Theexpression is found in the cuneiform tablets of Babylonia. Old Sumerianhymns spoke of a "rain of stones and fire, " though the stones may havebeen hail-stones and thunderbolts, and the fire the flash of thelightning. But whatever may have been the nature of the sheet of flamewhich enveloped the guilty cities of the plain and set on fire thenaphtha-springs that oozed out of it, the remembrance of the catastrophesurvived to distant ages. The prophets of Israel and Judah still referto the overthrow of Sodom and its sister cities, and St. Jude points tothem as "suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. " Some scholars haveseen an allusion to their overthrow in the tradition of the Phoenicianswhich brought their ancestors into the coastlands of Canaan inconsequence of an earth-quake on the shores of "the Assyrian Lake. " Butthe lake is more probably to be looked for in the neighbourhood of thePersian Gulf than in the valley of the Jordan. 

The vale of Siddim, and "the cities of the plain, " stood at the northernend of the Dead Sea. Here were the "slime-pits" from which the naphthawas extracted, and which caused the defeat of the Canaanitish princes bythe Babylonian army. The legend which placed the pillar of salt intowhich Lot's wife was changed at the southern extremity of the Dead Seawas of late origin, probably not earlier than the days when Herod builthis fortress of Machaerus on the impregnable cliffs of Moab, and thename of Gebel Usdum, given by the modern Arabs to one of themountain-summits to the south of the sea proves nothing as to the siteof the city of Sodom. Names in the east are readily transferred from onelocality to another, and a mountain is not the same as a city in aplain. 

There are two sufficient reasons why it is to the north rather than tothe south that we must look for the remains of the doomed cities, amongthe numerous tumuli which rise above the rich and fertile plain in theneighbourhood of Jericho, where the ancient "slime-pits" can still betraced. Geology has taught us that throughout the historical period theDead Sea and the country immediately to the south of it have undergoneno change. What the lake is to-day, it must have been in the days ofAbraham. It has neither grown nor shrunk in size, and the barren saltwith which it poisons the ground must have equally poisoned it then. Nofertile valley, like the vale of Siddim, could have existed in thesouth; no prosperous Canaanitish cities could have grown up among thedesolate tracts of the southern wilderness. As we are expressly told inthe Book of Numbers (xiii. 29), the Canaanites dwelt only "by the coastof Jordan, " not in the desert far beyond the reach of the fertilizingstream. 

But there is another reason which excludes the southern site. "WhenAbraham got up early in the morning, " we are told, "he looked towardsSodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the plain, and beheld, and, lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace. "Such a sight was possible from the hills of Hebron; if the country layat the northern end of the Dead Sea, it would have been impossible hadit been south of it. 

Moreover, the northern situation of the cities alone agrees with thegeography of Genesis. When the Babylonian invaders had turned northwardsafter smiting the Amalekites of the desert south of the Dead Sea, theydid not fall in with the forces of the king of Sodom and his alliesuntil they had first passed "the Amorites that dwelt in Hazezon-tamar. "Hazezon-tamar, as we learn from the Second Book of Chronicles (xx. 2), was the later En-gedi, "the Spring of the Kid, " and En-gedi lay on thewestern shore of the Dead Sea midway between its northern and southernextremities. 

In the warm, soft valley of the Jordan, accordingly, where asub-tropical vegetation springs luxuriantly out of the fertile groundand the river plunges into the Dead Sea as into a tomb, the nations ofAmmon and Moab were born. It was a fitting spot, in close proximity asit was to the countries which thereafter bore their names. From themountain above Zoar, Lot could look across to the blue hills of Moab andthe distant plateau of Ammon. 

Meanwhile Abraham had quitted Mamre and again turned his steps towardsthe south. This time it was at Gerar, between the sanctuary ofKadesh-barnea and Shur the "wall" of Egypt that he sojourned. Kadesh hasbeen found again in our own days by the united efforts of Dr. JohnRowlands and Dr. Clay Trumbull in the shelter of a block of mountainswhich rise to the south of the desert of Beer-sheba. The spring of clearand abundant water which gushes forth in their midst was theEn-Mishpat--"the spring where judgments were pronounced"--of earlytimes, and is still called 'Ain-Qadîs, "the spring of Kadesh. " Gerar isthe modern Umm el-Jerâr, now desolate and barren, all that remains ofits past being a lofty mound of rubbish and a mass of potsherds. It liesa few hours only to the south of Gaza. 

Here Isaac was born and circumcised, and here Ishmael and Hagar werecast forth into the wilderness and went to dwell in the desert of Paran. The territory of Gerar extended to Beer-sheba, "the well of the oath, "where Abraham's servants digged a well, and Abimelech, king of Gerar, confirmed his possession of it by an oath. It may be that one of the twowells which still exist at Wadi es-Seba', with the stones that linetheir mouths deeply indented by the ropes of the water-drawers, is thevery one around which the herdsmen of Abraham and Abimelech wrangledwith each other. The wells of the desert go back to a great antiquity:where water is scarce its discovery is not easily forgotten, and theBeduin come with their flocks year after year to drink of it. The oldwells are constantly renewed, or new ones dug by their side. 

Gerar was in that south-western corner of Palestine which in the age ofthe Exodus was inhabited by the Philistines. But they had beennew-comers. All through the period of the eighteenth and nineteenthEgyptian dynasties the country had been in the hands of the Egyptians. Gaza had been their frontier fortress, and as late as the reign ofMeneptah, the son of the Pharaoh of the Oppression, it was stillgarrisoned by Egyptian troops and governed by Egyptian officers. ThePulsata or Philistines did not arrive till the troublous days of RamsesIII. , of the twentieth dynasty. They formed part of the barbarian hordesfrom the shores of Asia Minor and the islands of the Ćgean, who swarmedover Syria and flung themselves on the valley of the Nile, and the landof Caphtor from which they came was possibly the island of Krete. ThePhilistine occupation of the coastland of Canaan, therefore, did notlong precede the Israelitish invasion of the Promised Land; indeed wemay perhaps gather from the words of Exod. Xiii. 17 that the Philistineswere already winning for themselves their new territory when theIsraelites marched out of Egypt. In saying, consequently, that thekingdom of Abimelech was in the land of the Philistines the Book ofGenesis speaks proleptically: when the story of Abraham and Abimelechwas written in its present form Gerar was a Philistine town: in the daysof the patriarchs this was not yet the case. 

At Beer-sheba Abraham planted a tamarisk, and "called on the name of theLord, the everlasting God. " Beer-sheba long remained one of the sacredplaces of Palestine. The tree planted by its well was a sign both of thewater that flowed beneath its soil and of its sacred character. It wasonly where fresh water was found that the nomads of the desert couldcome together, and the tree was a token of the life and refreshment theywould meet with. The well was sacred; so also was the solitary treewhich stood beside it, and under whose branches man and beast could findshade and protection from the mid-day heat. Even Mohammedanism, thatPuritanism of the East, has not been able to eradicate the belief in thedivine nature of such trees from the mind of the nomad; we may still seethem decorated with offerings of rags torn from the garments of thepasser-by or shading the tomb of some reputed saint. They are still morethan waymarks or resting-places for the heated and weary; when standingbeneath them the herdsman feels that he is walking upon consecratedground. 

It was at Beer-sheba that the temptation came to Abraham to sacrificehis first-born, his only son Isaac. The temptation was in accordancewith the fierce ritual of Syria, and traces of the belief which hadcalled it into existence are to be found in the early literature ofBabylonia. Thus in an ancient Babylonian ritual-text we read: "Theoffspring who raises his head among mankind, the offspring for his lifehe gave; the head of the offspring for the head of the man he gave; theneck of the offspring for the neck of the man he gave. " Phoenicianlegend told how the god El had robed himself in royal purple andsacrificed his only son Yeud in a time of pestilence, and the writers ofGreece and Rome describe with horror the sacrifices of the first-bornwith which the history of Carthage was stained. The father was calledupon in time of trouble to yield up to the god his nearest and dearest;the fruit of his body could alone wipe away the sin of his soul, andBaal required him to sacrifice without a murmur or a tear his first-bornand his only one. The more precious the offering, the more acceptablewas it to the god; the harder the struggle to resign it, the greater wasthe merit of doing so. The child died for the sins of his people; andthe belief was but the blind and ignorant expression of a true instinct. 

But Abraham was to be taught a better way. For three days he journeyednorthward with his son, and then lifting up his eyes saw afar off thatmountain "in the land of Moriah, " on the summit of which the sacrificewas to be consummated. Alone with Isaac he ascended to the high-place, and there building his altar and binding to it his son he prepared toperform the terrible rite. But at the last moment his hand was stayed, anew and better revelation was made to him, and a ram was substituted forhis son. It cannot be accidental that, as M. Clermont-Ganneau haspointed out, we learn from the temple-tariffs of Carthage and Marseillesthat in the later ritual of Phoenicia a ram took the place of theearlier human sacrifice. 

Where was this mountain in the land of Moriah whereon the altar ofAbraham was built? It would seem from a passage in the Second Book ofChronicles (iii. 1) that it was the future temple-mount at Jerusalem. The words of Genesis also point in the same direction. Abraham, we read, "called the name of that place Jehovah-jireh: as it is said to this day, In the mount of the Lord it shall be seen. " It is hard to believe that"the mount of the Lord" can mean anything else than that _har-el_ or"mountain of God" whereon Ezekiel places the temple, or that the proverbcan refer to a less holy spot than that where the Lord appearedenthroned upon the cherubim above the mercy-seat. It is doubtful, however, whether the reading of the Hebrew text in either passage iscorrect. According to the Septuagint the proverb quoted in Genesisshould run: "In the mountain is the Lord seen, " and the same authoritychanges the "Moriah" of the Book of Chronicles into _Amôr-eia_, "of theAmorites. "

It is true that the distance of Jerusalem from Beer-sheba would agreewell with the three days' journey of Abraham. But it is difficult toreconcile the description of the scene of Abraham's sacrifice with thefuture temple-mount. Where Isaac was bound to the altar was a solitaryspot, the patriarch and his son were alone there, and it was overgrownwith brushwood so thickly that a ram had been caught in it by his horns. The temple-mount, on the contrary, was either within the walls of a cityor just outside them, and the city was already a capital famous for itsworship of "the most High God. " Had the Moriah of Jerusalem really beenthe site of Abraham's altar it is strange that no allusion is made tothe fact by the writers of the Old Testament, or that tradition shouldhave been silent on the matter. We must be content with the knowledgethat it was to one of the mountains "in the land of Moriah" that Abrahamwas led, and that "Moriah" was a "land, " not a single mountain-peak. (Weshould not forget that the Septuagint reads "the highlands, " that is, _Moreh_ instead of _Moriah_, while the Syriac version boldly changes theword into the name of the "Amorites. " For arguments on the other side, see p. 79. )

Abraham returned to Beer-sheba, and from thence went to Hebron, whereSarah died. Hebron--or Kirjath-Arba as it was then called--was occupiedby a Hittite tribe, in contradistinction to the country round about it, which was in the possession of the Amorites. As at Jerusalem, or atKadesh on the Orontes, the Hittites had intruded into Amoritishterritory and established themselves in the fortress-town. But while theHittite city was known as Kirjath-Arba, "the city of Arba, " theAmoritish district was named Mamre: the union of Kirjath-Arba and Mamrecreated the Hebron of a later day. 

Kirjath-Arba seems to have been built in the valley, close to the poolswhich still provide water for its modern inhabitants. On the easternside the slope of the hill is honeycombed with tombs cut in the rock, and, if ancient tradition is to be believed, it was in one of these thatAbraham desired to lay the body of his wife. The "double cave" ofMachpelah--for so the Septuagint renders the phrase--was in the field ofEphron the Hittite, and from Ephron, accordingly, the Hebrew patriarchpurchased the land for 400 shekels of silver, or about Ł47. The cave, weare told, lay opposite Mamre, which goes to show that the oak underwhich Abraham once pitched his tent may not have been very far distantfrom that still pointed out as the oak of Mamre in the grounds of theRussian hospice. The traditional tomb of Machpelah has been veneratedalike by Jew, Christian, and Mohammedan. The church built over it inByzantine days and restored by the Crusaders to Christian worship hasbeen transformed into a mosque, but its sanctity has remained unchanged. It stands in the middle of a court, enclosed by a solid wall of massivestones, the lower courses of which were cut and laid in their places inthe age of Herod. The fanatical Moslem is unwilling that any but himselfshould enter the sacred precincts, but by climbing the cliff behind thetown it is possible to look down upon the mosque and its sacredenclosure, and see the whole building spread out like a map below thefeet. 

More than one English traveller has been permitted to enter the mosque, and we are now well acquainted with the details of its architecture. Butthe rock-cut tomb in which the bodies of the patriarchs are supposed tohave lain has never been examined by the explorer. It is probable, however, that were he to penetrate into it he would find nothing toreward his pains. During the long period that Hebron was in Christianhands the cave was more than once visited by the pilgrim. But we look invain in the records which have come down to us for an account of therelics it has been supposed to contain. Had the mummified corpses of thepatriarchs been preserved in it, the fact would have been known to thetravellers of the Crusading age. (See the _Zeitschrift des deutschenPalästina-Vereins_, 1895. )

Like the other tombs in its neighbourhood, the cave of Machpelah hasdoubtless been opened and despoiled at an early epoch. We know thattombs were violated in Egypt long before the days of Abraham, in spiteof the penalties with which such acts of sacrilege were visited, and thecupidity of the Canaanite was no less great than that of the Egyptian. The treasures buried with the dead were too potent an attraction, andthe robber of the tomb braved for their sake the terrors of both thisworld and the next. 

Abraham now sent his servant to Mesopotamia, to seek there for a wifefor his son Isaac from among his kinsfolk at Harran. Rebekah, the sisterof Laban, accordingly, was brought to Canaan and wedded to her cousin. Isaac was at the time in the southern desert, encamped at the well ofLahai-roi, near Kadesh. So "Isaac was comforted after his mother'sdeath. "

"Then again, " we are told, "Abraham took a wife, " whose name wasKeturah, and by whom he was the forefather of a number of Arabiantribes. They occupied the northern and central parts of the Arabianpeninsula, by the side of the Ishmaelites, and colonized the land ofMidian. It is the last we hear of the great patriarch. He died soonafterwards "in a good old age, " and was buried at Machpelah along withhis wife. 

Isaac still dwell at Lahai-roi, and there the twins, Esau and Jacob, were born to him. There, too, he still was when a famine fell upon theland, like "the first famine that was in the days of Abraham. " The storyof Abraham's dealings with Abimelech of Gerar is repeated in the case ofIsaac. Again we hear of Phichol, the captain of Abimelech's army; againthe wife of the patriarch is described as his sister; and again hisherdsmen strive with those of the king of Gerar over the wells they havedug, and the well of Beer-sheba is made to derive its name from theoaths sworn mutually by Isaac and the king. It is hardly conceivablethat history could have so closely repeated itself, that the lives ofthe king and commander-in-chief of Gerar could have extended over somany years, or that the origin of the name of Beer-sheba would have beenso quickly forgotten. Rather we must believe that two narratives havebeen mingled together, and that the earlier visit of Abraham to Gerarhas coloured the story of Isaac's sojourn in the territory of Abimelech. We need not refuse to believe that the servants of Isaac dug wells andwrangled over them with the native herdsmen; that Beer-sheba shouldtwice have received its name from a repetition of the same event is adifferent matter. One of the wells--that of Rehoboth--made by Isaac'sservants is probably referred to in the Egyptian _Travels of a Mohar_, where it is called Rehoburta. 

Isaac was not a wanderer like his father. Lahai-roi in the desert, "thevalley of Gerar, " Beer-sheba and Hebron, were the places round which hislife revolved, and they were all close to one another. There is no traceof his presence in the north of Palestine, and when the prophet Amos(vii. 16) makes Isaac synonymous with the northern kingdom of Israel, there can be no geographical reference in his words. Isaac diedeventually at Hebron, and was buried in the family tomb of Machpelah. 

But long before this happened Jacob had fled from the well-deservedwrath of his brother to his uncle Laban at Harran. On his way he hadslept on the rocky ridge of Bethel, and had beheld in vision the angelsof God ascending and descending the steps of a staircase that led toheaven. The nature of the ground itself must have suggested the dream. The limestone rock is fissured into steplike terraces, which seem formedof blocks of stone piled one upon the other, and rising upwards like agigantic staircase towards the sky. On the hill that towers above theruins of Beth-el, we may still fancy that we see before us the "ladder"of Jacob. 

But the vision was more than a mere dream. God appeared in it to thepatriarch, and repeated to him the promise that had been made to hisfathers. Through Jacob, the younger of the twins, the true line ofAbraham was to be carried on. When he awoke in the morning the fugitiverecognized the real character of his dream. He took, accordingly, thestone that had served him for a pillow, and setting it up as an altar, poured oil upon it, and so made it a Beth-el, or "House of God, "Henceforward it was a consecrated altar, a holy memorial of the Godwhose divinity had been mysteriously imparted to it. 

The Semitic world was full of such Beth-els, or consecrated stones. Theyare referred to in the literature of ancient Babylonia, and an Englishtraveller, Mr. Doughty, has found them still existing near the Tema ofthe Old Testament in Northern Arabia. In Phoenicia we are told that theyabounded. The solitary rock in the desert or on the mountain-side seemedto the primitive Semite the dwelling-place of Deity; it rose upawe-striking and impressive in its solitary grandeur and venerableantiquity; it was a shelter to him from the heat of the sun, and aprotection from the perils of the night. When his worship and adorationcame in time to be transferred from the stone itself to the divinity ithad begun to symbolize, it became an altar on which the libation of oilor wine might be poured out to the gods, and on the seals of Syria andthe sculptured slabs of Assyria we accordingly find it transformed intoa portable altar, and merged in the cone-like symbol of the goddessAshęrah. The stone which had itself been a Beth-el wherein the Deity hadhis home, passed by degrees into the altar of the god whose actualdwelling-place was in heaven. 

The Canaanitish city near which Jacob had raised the monument of hisdream bore the name of Luz. In Israelitish days, however, the name ofthe monument was transferred to that of the city, and Luz itself wascalled the Beth-el, or "House of God. " The god worshipped there when theIsraelites first entered Canaan appears to have been entitled On, --aname derived, perhaps, from that of the city of the Sun-god in Egypt. Bethel was also Beth-On, "the temple of On, " from whence the tribe ofBenjamin afterwards took the name of Ben-Oni, "the Onite. " Beth-On hassurvived into our own times, and the site of the old city is still knownas Beitîn. 

It is not needful to follow the adventures of Jacob in Mesopotamia. Hisnew home lay far away from the boundaries of Palestine, and though thekings of Aram-Naharaim made raids at times into the land of Canaan andcaused their arms to be feared within the walls of Jerusalem, they nevermade any permanent conquests on the coasts of the Mediterranean. In theland of the Aramaeans Jacob is lost for awhile from the history ofpatriarchal Palestine. 

When he again emerges, it is as a middle-aged man, rich in flocks andherds, who has won two wives as the reward of his labours, and isalready the father of a family. He is on his way back to the countrywhich had been promised to his seed and wherein he himself had beenborn. Laban, his father-in-law, robbed at once of his daughters and hishousehold gods, is pursuing him, and has overtaken him on the spurs ofMount Gilead, almost within sight of his goal. There a covenant is madebetween the Aramaean and the Hebrew, and a cairn of stones is piled upto commemorate the fact. The cairn continued to bear a double name, theAramaean name given to it by Laban, and the Canaanitish name of Galeed, "the heap of witnesses, " by which it was called by Jacob. The doublename was a sign of the two populations and languages which the cairnseparated from one another. Northward were the Aramaeans and an Aramaicspeech; southward the land of Canaan and the language which we termHebrew. 

The spot where the cairn was erected bore yet another title. It was alsocalled Mizpah, the "watch-tower, " the outpost from which the dweller inCanaan could discern the approaching bands of an enemy from the north oreast. It protected the road to the Jordan, and kept watch over theeastern plateau. Here in after times Jephthah gathered around him thepatriots of Israel, and delivered his people from the yoke of theAmmonites. 

Once more "Jacob went on his way, " and from the "two-fold camp" ofMahanaim sent messengers to his brother Esau, who had alreadyestablished himself among the mountains of Seir. Then came themysterious struggle in the silent darkness of night with one whom thepatriarch believed to have been his God Himself. When day dawned, thevision departed from him, but not until his name had been changed. "Thyname, " it was declared to him, "shall be called no more Jacob, butIsrael; for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hastprevailed. " And his thigh was shrunken, so that the children of Israelin days to come abstained from eating "of the sinew which shrank, whichis upon the hollow of the thigh. " The spot where the struggle tookplace, beside the waters of the Jabbok, was named Penu-el, "the face ofGod. " There was more than one other Penu-el in the Semitic world, and atCarthage the goddess Tanith was entitled Peni-Baal, "the face of Baal. "

The name of Israel, as we may learn from its equivalent, Jeshurun, wasreally derived from a root which signified "to be straight, " or"upright. " The Israelites were in truth "the people of uprightness. " Itis only by one of those plays upon words, of which the Oriental is stillso fond, that the name can be brought into connection with the word_sar_, "a prince. " But the name of Jacob was well known among thenorthern Semites. We gather from the inscriptions of Egypt that its fullform was Jacob-el. Like Jeshurun by the side of Israel, or Jephthah bythe side of Jiphthah-el (Josh. Xix. 27), Jacob is but an abbreviatedJacob-el. One of the places in Palestine conquered by the PharaohThothmes III. , the names of which are recorded on the walls of histemple at Karnak, was Jacob-el--a reminiscence, doubtless, of the Hebrewpatriarch. Professor Flinders Petrie has made us acquainted withEgyptian scarabs on which is inscribed in hieroglyphic characters thename of a king, Jacob-bar or Jacob-hal, who reigned in the valley of theNile before Abraham entered it, and Mr. Pinches has lately discoveredthe name of Jacob-el among the persons mentioned in contracts of thetime of the Babylonian sovereign Sin-mu-ballidh, who was a contemporaryof Chedor-laomer. We thus have monumental evidence that the name ofJacob was well known in the Semitic world in the age of the Hebrewpatriarchs. 

Jacob and Esau met and were reconciled, and Jacob then journeyed onwardsto Succoth, "the booths. " The site of this village of "booths" isunknown, but it could not have been far from the banks of the Jordan andthe road to Nablűs. The neighbourhood of Shechem, called in Greek timesNeapolis, the Nablűs of to-day, was the next resting-place of thepatriarch. If we are to follow the translation of the AuthorisedVersion, it would have been at "Shalem, a city of Shechem, " that histents were pitched. But many eminent scholars believe that the Hebrewwords should rather be rendered: "And Jacob came in peace to the city ofShechem, " the reference being to his peaceable parting from his brother. There is, however, a hamlet still called Salîm, nearly three miles tothe east of Nablűs, and it may be therefore that it was really at aplace termed Shalem that Jacob rested on his way. In this case the fieldbought from Hamor, "before the city of Shechem, " cannot have been where, since the days of our Lord, "Jacob's well" has been pointed out (S. Johniv. 5, 6). The well is situated considerably westward of Salîm, midway, in fact, between that village and Nablűs, and close to the village of'Askâr, with which the "Sychar" of S. John's Gospel has sometimes beenidentified. It has been cut through the solid rock to a depth of morethan a hundred feet, and the groovings made by the ropes of thewaterpots in far-off centuries are still visible at its mouth. But nowater can be drawn from it now. The well is choked with the rubbish of aruined church, built above it in the early days of Christianity, and ofwhich all that remains is a broken arch. It has been dug at a spot wherethe road from Shechem to the Jordan branches off from that which runstowards the north, though Shechem itself is more than a mile distant. Weshould notice that S. John does not say that the well was actually in"the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph, " only that itwas "near to" the patriarch's field. 

If Jacob came to Shechem in peace, the peace was of no long continuance. Simeon and Levi, the sons of the patriarch, avenged the insult offeredby the Shechemite prince to their sister Dinah, by treacherously fallingupon the city and slaying "all the males. " Jacob was forced to fly, leaving behind him the altar he had erected. He made for the Canaanitishcity of Luz, the Beth-el of later days, where he had seen the greataltar-stairs sloping upward to heaven. The idols that had been carriedfrom Mesopotamia were buried "under the oak which was by Shechem, " alongwith the ear-rings of the women. The oak was one of those sacred treeswhich abounded in the Semitic world, like another oak at Beth-el, beneath which the nurse of Rebekah was soon afterwards to be buried. 

At Beth-el Jacob built another altar. But he could not rest there, andonce more took his way to the south. On the road his wife Rachel diedwhile giving birth to his youngest son, and her tomb beside the path toBeth-lehem was marked by a "pillar" which the writer of the Book ofGenesis tells us remained to his own day. It indicated the boundarybetween the territories of Benjamin and Judah at Zelzah (1 Sam. X. 2). 

At Beth-lehem Jacob lingered a long while. His flocks and herds werespread over the country, under the charge of his sons, browsing on thehills and watered at the springs, for which the "hill-country of Judah"was famous. In their search for pasturage they wandered northward, weare told, "beyond the tower of the Flock, " which guarded the Jebusitestronghold of Zion (Mic. Iv. 8). Beth-lehem itself was more commonlyknown in that age by the name of Ephrath. Beth-lehem, "the temple ofLehem, " must, in fact, have been the sacred name of the city derivedfrom the worship of its chief deity, and Mr. Tomkins is doubtless rightin seeing in this deity the Babylonian Lakhmu, who with his consortLakhama, was regarded as a primaeval god of the nascent world. 

At Beth-lehem Jacob was but a few miles distant from Hebron, where Isaacstill lived, and where at his death he was buried by his sons Jacob andEsau in the family tomb of Machpelah. It was the last time, seemingly, that the two brothers found themselves together. Esau, partly bymarriage, partly by conquest, dispossessed the Horites of Mount Seir, and founded the kingdom of Edom, while the sons and flocks of Jacobscattered themselves from Hebron in the south of Canaan to Shechem inits centre. The two hallowed sanctuaries of the future kingdoms of Judahand Israel, where the first throne was set up in Israel and the monarchyof David was first established, thus became the boundaries of theherdsmen's domain. In both the Hebrew patriarch held ground that wasrightfully his own. It was a sign that the house of Israel shouldhereafter occupy the land which the family of Israel thus roamed overwith their flocks. The nomad was already passing into the settler, withfields and burial-places of his own. 

But before the transformation could be fully accomplished, a long seasonof growth and preparation was needful. Egypt, and not Canaan, was to bethe land in which the Chosen People should be trained for their futurework. Canaan itself was to pass under Egyptian domination, and toreplace the influence of Babylonian culture by that of Egypt. It was anew world and a new civilization into which the descendants of Jacobwere destined to emerge when finally they escaped from the fiery furnaceof Egyptian bondage. The Egypt known to Jacob was an Egypt over whichAsiatic princes ruled, and whose vizier was himself a Hebrew. It was theEgypt of the Hyksos conquerors, whose capital was Zoan, on the frontiersof Asia, and whose people were the slaves of an Asiatic stranger. TheEgypt quitted by his descendants was one which had subjected Asia toitself, and had carried the spoils of Syria to its splendid capital inthe far south. The Asiatic wave had been rolled back from the banks ofthe Nile, and Egyptian conquest and culture had overflooded Asia as faras the Euphrates. 

But it was not Egypt alone which had undergone a change. The Canaan ofAbraham and Jacob looked to Babylonia for its civilization, itsliterature, and its laws. Its princes recognized at times the supremacyof the Babylonian sovereigns, and the deities of Babylonia wereworshipped in its midst. The Canaan of Moses had long been a province ofthe Egyptian Empire; Egyptian rule had been substituted for that ofBabylon, and the manners and customs of Egypt had penetrated deeply intothe minds of its inhabitants. The Hittite invasion from the north hadblocked the high-road to Babylonia, and diverted the trade of Palestinetowards the west and the south. While Abraham, the native of Ur, and theemigrant from Harran, had found himself in Canaan, and even at Zoan, still within the sphere of the influences among which he had grown up, the fugitives from Egypt entered on the invasion of a country which hadbut just been delivered from the yoke of the Pharaohs. It was anEgyptian Canaan that the Israelites were called upon to subdue, and itwas fitting therefore that they should have been made ready for the taskby their long sojourn in the land of Goshen. 

How that sojourn came about, it is not for us to recount. The story ofJoseph is too familiar to be repeated, though we are but just beginningto learn how true it is, in all its details, to the facts which Egyptianresearch is bringing more and more fully to light. We see the Midianiteand Ishmaelite caravan passing Dothan--still known by its ancientname--with their bales of spicery from Gilead for the dwellers in theDelta, and carrying away with them the young Hebrew slave. We watch hisrise in the house of his Egyptian master, his wrongful imprisonment andsudden exaltation when he sits by the side of Pharaoh and governs Egyptin the name of the king. We read the pathetic story of the old fathersending his sons to buy corn from the royal granaries or _larits_ ofEgypt, and withholding to the last his youngest and dearest one; of theBeduin shepherds bowing all unconsciously before the brother whom theyhad sold into slavery, and who now holds in his hands the power of lifeand death; of Joseph's disclosure of himself to the conscious-strickensuppliants; of Jacob's cry when convinced at last that "the governorover all the land of Egypt" was his long-mourned son. "It is enough;Joseph my son is yet alive: I will go and see him before I die. "

Jacob and his family travelled in wagons along the high-road whichconnected the south of Palestine with the Delta. It led past Beer-shebaand El-Arîsh to the Shur, or line of fortifications which protected theeastern frontier of Egypt. The modern caravan road follows its coursemost of the way. It was thus distinct from "the way of the Philistines, "which led along the coast of the Mediterranean, on the northern edge ofthe Sirbonian Lake. In Egypt the Israelitish emigrants settled not farfrom the Hyksos capital in the land of Goshen, which the excavations ofDr. Naville have shown to be the Wâdi Tumilât of to-day. Here theymultiplied and grew wealthy, until the evil days came when the Egyptiansrose up against Semitic influence and control, and Ramses II. Transformed the free-born Beduin into public serfs. 

But the age of Ramses II. Was still far distant when Jacob died full ofyears, and his mummy was carried to the burial-place of his fathers "inthe land of Canaan. " Local tradition connected the name of Abel-mizraim, "the meadow of Egypt, " on the eastern side of the Jordan, with the longfuneral procession which wended its way from Zoan to Hebron. We cannotbelieve, however, that the mourners would have so far gone out of theirroad, even if the etymology assigned by tradition to the name could besupported. The tradition bears witness to the fact of the procession, but to nothing more. 

With the funeral of Jacob a veil falls upon the Biblical history ofCanaan, until the days when the spies were sent out to search the land. Joseph was buried in Egypt, not at Hebron, though he had made theIsraelites swear before his death that his mummy should be eventuallytaken to Palestine. The road to Hebron, it is clear, was no longer open, and the power of the Hyksos princes must have been fast waning. The warof independence had broken out, and the native kings of Upper Egypt weredriving the foreigner back into Asia. The rulers of Zoan had no longertroops to spare for a funeral procession through the eastern desert. 

The Chronicler, however, has preserved a notice which seems to show thata connection was still kept up between Southern Canaan and the Hebrewsettlers in Goshen, even after Jacob's death, perhaps while he was yetliving. We are told that certain of the sons of Ephraim were slain bythe men of Gath, whose cattle they had attempted to steal, and thattheir father, after mourning many days, comforted himself with the birthof other sons (1 Chron. Vii. 21-26). The notice, moreover, does notstand alone. Thothmes III. , the great conqueror of the eighteenthEgyptian dynasty, states that two of the places captured by him inPalestine were Jacob-el and Joseph-el. It is tempting to see in the twonames reminiscences of the Hebrew patriarch and his son. If so, the nameof Joseph would have been impressed upon a locality in Canaan more thantwo centuries before the Exodus. The geographical lists of Thothmes III. And the fragments of early history preserved by the Chronicler wouldthus support and complete one another. The Egyptian cavalry whoaccompanied the mummy of Jacob to its resting-place at Machpelah, wouldnot be the only evidence of the authority claimed by Joseph and hismaster in the land of Canaan; Joseph himself would have left his namethere, and his grand-children would have fought against "the men ofGath. "

But these are speculations which may, or may not, be confirmed byarchaeological discovery. For the Book of Genesis Canaan disappears fromsight with the death of Jacob. Henceforward it is upon Egypt and thenomad settlers in Goshen that the attention of the Pentateuch is fixed, until the time comes when the age of the patriarchs is superseded bythat of the legislator, and Moses, the adopted son of the Egyptianprincess, leads his people back to Canaan. Joseph had been carried byMidianitish hands out of Palestine into Egypt, there to become therepresentative of the Pharaoh, and son-in-law of the high-priest ofHeliopolis; for Moses, the adopted grandson of the Pharaoh, "learned inall the wisdom of the Egyptians, " it was reserved, after years of trialand preparation in Midian, to bring the descendants of Jacob out oftheir Egyptian prison-house to the borders of the Promised Land. 

CHAPTER V

EGYPTIAN TRAVELLERS IN CANAAN

Palestine has been a land of pilgrims and tourists from the verybeginning of its history. It was the goal of the migration of Abrahamand his family, and it was equally the object of the oldest book oftravels with which we are acquainted. Allusion has already been mademore than once to the Egyptian papyrus, usually known as _The Travels ofa Mohar_, and in which a satirical account is given of a tour inPalestine and Syria. The writer was a professor, apparently ofliterature, in the court of Ramses II. , and he published a series ofletters to his friend, Nekht-sotep, which were long admired as models ofstyle. Nekht-sotep was one of the secretaries attached to the militarystaff, and among the letters is a sort of parody of an account given byNekht-sotep of his adventures in Canaan, which was intended partly toshow how an account of the kind ought to have been written by anaccomplished penman, partly to prove the superiority of the scribe'slife to that of the soldier, partly also, it may be, for the sake ofteasing the writer's correspondent. Nekht-sotep had evidently assumedairs of superiority on the strength of his foreign travels, and hisstay-at-home friend undertook to demonstrate that he had himself enjoyedthe more comfortable life of the two. Nekht-sotep is playfully dubbedwith the foreign title of Mohar--or more correctly Muhir--a wordborrowed from Assyrian, where it primarily signified a militarycommander and then the governor of a province. 

Long before the days of the nineteenth dynasty, however, there had beenEgyptian travellers in Palestine, or at least in the adjoiningcountries. One of the Egyptian books which have come down to us containsthe story of a certain Sinuhit who had to fly from Egypt in consequenceof some political troubles in which he was involved after the death ofAmon-m-hat I. Of the twelfth dynasty. Crossing the Nile near Kher-ahu, the Old Cairo of to-day, he gained the eastern bank of the river andmade his way to the line of forts which protected Egypt from its Asiaticenemies. Here he crouched among the desert bushes till night-fall, lest"the watchmen of the tower" should see him, and then pursued his journeyunder the cover of darkness. At daybreak he reached the land of Petenand the wadi of Qem-uer on the line of the modern Suez Canal. Therethirst seized upon him; his throat rattled, and he said tohimself--"This is the taste of death. " A Bedawi, however, perceived himand had compassion on the fugitive: he gave him water and boiled milk, and Sinuhit for a while joined the nomad tribe. Then he passed on to thecountry of Qedem, the Kadmonites of the Old Testament (Gen. Xv. 19;Judges vi. 3), whence came the wise men of the East (1 Kings iv. 30). After spending a year and a half there, 'Ammu-anshi, the prince of theUpper land of Tenu, asked the Egyptian stranger to come to him, tellinghim that he would hear the language of Egypt. He added that he hadalready heard about Sinuhit from "the Egyptians who were in thecountry. " It is clear from this that there had been intercourse for sometime between Egypt and "the Upper Tenu. "

It is probable that Dr. W. Max Müller is right in seeing in Tenu anabbreviated form of Lutennu (or Rutenu), the name by which Syria wasknown to the Egyptians. There was an Upper Lutennu and a Lower Lutennu, the Upper Lutennu corresponding with Palestine and the adjoiningcountry, and thus including the Edomite district of which 'Ammu-anshi orAmmi-anshi was king. In the name of 'Ammu-anshi, it may be observed, wehave the name of the deity who appears as Ammi or Ammon in the kingdomof the Ammonites, and perhaps forms the second element in the name ofBalaam. The same divine name enters into the composition of those ofearly kings of Ma'in in Southern Arabia, as well as of Babylonia in thefar East. (See above, p. 64. )

'Ammu-anshi married Sinuhit to his eldest daughter, and bestowed uponhim the government of a district called Aia which lay on the frontier ofa neighbouring country. Aia is described as rich in vines, figs, andolives, in wheat and barley, in milk and cattle. "Its wine was moreplentiful than water, " and Sinuhit had "daily rations of bread and wine, cooked meat and roast fowl, " as well as abundance of game. He livedthere for many years. The children born to him by his Asiatic wife grewup and became heads of tribes. "I gave water to the thirsty, " he says;"I set on his journey the traveller who had been hindered from passingby; I chastised the brigand. I commanded the Beduin who departed afar tostrike and repel the princes of foreign lands, and they marched (underme), for the prince of Tenu allowed that I should be during long yearsthe general of his soldiers. "

Sinuhit, in fact, had given proof of his personal prowess at an earlyperiod in his career. The champion of Tenu had come to him in his tentand challenged him to single combat. The Egyptian was armed with bow, arrows, and dagger; his adversary with battle-axe, javelins, andbuckler. The contest was short, and ended in the decisive victory ofSinuhit, who wounded his rival and despoiled him of his goods. 

A time came, however, when Sinuhit grew old, and began to long to seeonce more the land of his fathers before he died. Accordingly he sent apetition to the Pharaoh praying him to forgive the offences of his youthand allow him to return again to Egypt. The petition was granted, and aletter was despatched to the refugee, permitting him to return. Sinuhitaccordingly quitted the land where he had lived so long. First of all heheld a festival, and handed over his property to his children, makinghis eldest son the chief of the tribe. Then he travelled southward toEgypt, and was graciously received at court. The coarse garments of theBeduin were exchanged for fine linen; his body was bathed with water andscented essences; he lay once more on a couch and enjoyed the luxuriouscookery of the Egyptians. A house and pyramid were built for him; agarden was laid out for him with a lake and a kiosk, and a golden statuewith a robe of electrum was set up in it. Sinuhit ceased to be anAsiatic "barbarian, " and became once more a civilized Egyptian. 

The travels of Sinuhit were involuntary, but a time came when a tour inPalestine was almost as much the fashion as it is to-day. The conquestsof Thothmes III. Had made Syria an Egyptian province, and had introducedSyrians into the Egyptian bureaucracy. Good roads were made throughoutthe newly-acquired territory, furnished with post-houses where food andlodging could be procured, and communication between Egypt and Canaanthus became easy and frequent. The fall of the eighteenth dynasty causedonly a momentary break in the intercourse between the two countries;with the establishment of the nineteenth dynasty it was again resumed. Messengers passed backward and forward between Syria and the court ofthe Pharaoh; Asiatics once more thronged into the valley of the Nile, and the Egyptian civil servant and traveller followed in the wake of thevictorious armies of Seti and Ramses. _The Travels of a Mohar_ is theresult of this renewed acquaintance with the cities and roads ofPalestine. 

The writer is anxious to display his knowledge of Syrian geography. Though he had not himself ventured to brave the discomforts of foreigntravel, he wished to show that he knew as much about Canaan as those whohad actually been there. A tour there was after all not much to boastof; it had become so common that the geography of Canaan was as wellknown as that of Egypt itself, and the stay-at-home scribe hadconsequently no difficulty in compiling a guide-book to it. 

The following is the translation given by Dr. Brugsch of the papyrus, with such alterations as have been necessitated by further study andresearch. "I will portray for thee the likeness of a Mohar, I will letthee know what he does. Hast thou not gone to the land of the Hittites, and hast thou not seen the land of Aupa? Dost thou not know what Khadumais like; the land of Igad'i also how it is formed? The Zar (or Plain) ofking Sesetsu (Sesostris)--on which side of it lies the town of Aleppo, and how is its ford? Hast thou not taken thy road to Kadesh (on theOrontes) and Tubikhi? Hast thou not gone to the Shasu (Beduin) withnumerous mercenaries, and hast thou not trodden the way to theMaghar[at] (the caves of the Magoras near Beyrout) where the heaven isdark in the daytime? The place is planted with maple-trees, oaks, andacacias, which reach up to heaven, full of beasts, bears (?), and lions, and surrounded by Shasu in all directions. Hast thou not ascended themountain of Shaua, and hast thou not trodden it? There thy hands holdfast to the [rein] of thy chariot; a jerk has shaken thy horses indrawing it. I pray thee, let us go to the city of Beeroth (Beyrout). Hast thou not hastened to its ascent after passing over the ford infront of it?

"Do thou explain this relish for [the life of] a Mohar! Thy chariot liesthere [before] thee; thy [feet] have fallen lame; thou treadest thebackward path at eventide. All thy limbs are ground small. Thy [bones]are broken to pieces, and thou dost fall asleep. Thou awakest: it is thetime of gloomy night, and thou art alone. Has not a thief come to robthee? Some grooms have entered the stable; the horse kicks out; thethief has made off in the night, thy clothes are stolen. Thy groom wakesup in the night; he sees what has happened to him; he takes what isleft, he goes off to bad company, he joins the Beduin. He transformshimself into an Asiatic. The police (?) come, they [feel about] for therobber; he is discovered, and is immovable from terror. Thou wakest, thou findest no trace of them, for they have carried off thy property. 

"Become [again] a Mohar who is fully accoutred. Let thy ear be filledwith that which I relate to thee besides. 

"The town 'Hidden'--such is the meaning of its name Gebal--what is itscondition? Its goddess [we will speak of] at another time. Hast thou notvisited it? Be good enough to look out for Beyrout, Sidon, and Sarepta. Where are the fords of the land of Nazana? The country of Authu (Usu), what is its condition? They are situated above another city in the sea, Tyre the port is its name. Drinking-water is brought to it in boats. Itis richer in fishes than in sand. I will tell thee of something else. Itis dangerous to enter Zair'aun. Thou wilt say it is burning with a verypainful sting (?). Come, Mohar. Go forward on the way to the land ofPa-'Aina. Where is the road to Achshaph (Ekdippa)? Towards which town?Pray look at the mountain of User. How is its crest? Where is themountain of Sakama (Shechem)? Who can surmount it? Mohar, whither mustyou take a journey to the land of Hazor? How is its ford? Show me howone goes to Hamath, Dagara, [and] Dagar-el, to the place where allMohars meet? Be good enough to spy out its road; cast a look on Yâ.... When one goes to the land of Adamim, to what is one opposite? Do notdraw back, but instruct us. Guide us, that we may know, O leader!

"I will name to thee other cities besides these. Hast thou not gone tothe land of Takhis, to Kafir-Marona, Tamnah, Kadesh, Dapul, Azai, Harnammata, and hast thou not seen Kirjath-Anab, near Beth-Sopher? anddost thou not know Adullam [and] Zidiputa? Or dost thou not know anybetter the name of Khalza in the land of Aupa, [like] a bull upon itsfrontiers? Here is the place where all the mighty warriors are seen. Begood enough to look and see the chapel of the land of Qina, and tell meabout Rehob. Describe Beth-sha-el (Beth-el) along with Tarqa-el. Theford of the land of Jordan, how is it crossed? Teach me to know thepassage that leads to the land of Megiddo, which lies in front of it. Verily thou art a Mohar, well skilled in the work of the strong hand. Pray, is there found a Mohar like thee, to place at the head of thearmy, or a _seigneur_ who can beat thee in shooting?

"Beware of the gorge of the precipice, 2000 cubits deep, which is fullof rocks and boulders. Thou turnest back in a zigzag, thou bearest thybow, thou takest the iron in thy left hand. Thou lettest the old mensee, if their eyes are good, how, worn out with fatigue, thou supportestthyself with thy hand. _Ebed gamal Mohar n'amu_ ('A camel's slave is theMohar! they say'); so they say, and thou gainest a name among the Moharsand the knights of the land of Egypt. Thy name becomes like that ofQazairnai, the lord of Asel, when the lions found him in the thicket, inthe defile which is rendered dangerous by the Shasu who lie in ambushamong the trees. They measured four cubits from the nose to the heel, they had a grim look, without softness; they cared not for caresses. 

"Thou art alone, no strong one is with thee, no _armée_ is behind thee, no _Ariel_ who prepares the way for thee, and gives thee information ofthe road before thee. Thou knowest not the road. The hair on thy headstands on end; it bristles up. Thy soul is given into thy hands. Thypath is full of rocks and boulders, there is no outlet near, it isovergrown with creepers and wolf's-bane. The precipice is on one side ofthee, the mountain and the wall of rock on the other. Thou drivest inagainst it. The chariot jumps on which thou art. Thou art troubled tohold up thy horses. If it falls down the precipice, the pole drags theedown too. Thy _ceintures_ are pulled away. They fall down. Thoushacklest the horse, because the pole is broken on the path of thedefile. Not knowing how to tie it up, thou understandest not how it isto be repaired. The _essieu_ is left on the spot, as the load is tooheavy for the horses. Thy courage has evaporated. Thou beginnest to run. The heaven is cloudless. Thou art thirsty; the enemy is behind thee; atrembling seizes thee; a twig of thorny acacia worries thee; thouthrustest it aside; the horse is scratched till at length thou findestrest. 

"Explain to me thy liking for [the life of] a Mohar!

"Thou comest into Joppa; thou findest the date-palm in full bloom in itstime. Thou openest wide thy mouth in order to eat. Thou findest that themaid who keeps the garden is fair. She does whatever thou wantest ofher.... Thou art recognized, thou art brought to trial, and owest thypreservation to being a Mohar. Thy girdle of the finest stuff thoupayest as the price of a worthless rag. Thou sleepest every evening witha rug of fur over thee. Thou sleepest a deep sleep, for thou art weary. A thief steals thy bow and thy sword from thy side; thy quiver and thyarmour are cut to pieces in the darkness; thy pair of horses run away. The groom takes his course over a slippery path which rises before him. He breaks thy chariot in pieces; he follows thy foot-steps. [He finds]thy equipments which had fallen on the ground and had sunk into thesand, leaving only an empty space. 

"Prayer does not avail thee, even when thy mouth says, 'Give food inaddition to water, that I may reach my goal in safety, ' they are deafand will not hear. They say not yes to thy words. The iron-workers enterinto the smithy; they rummage in the workshops of the carpenters; thehandicraftsmen and saddlers are at hand; they do whatever thourequirest. They put together thy chariot; they put aside the parts of itthat are made useless; thy spokes are _façonné_ quite new; thy wheelsare put on; they put the _courroies_ on the axles and on the hinderpart; they splice thy yoke, they put on the box of thy chariot; the[workmen] in iron forge the ... ; they put the ring that is wanting onthy whip, they replace the _laničres_ upon it. 

"Thou goest quickly onward to fight on the battle-field, to do the deedsof a strong hand and of firm courage. 

"Before I wrote I sought me out a Mohar who knows his power and leadsthe _jeunesse_, a chief in the _armée_, [who travels] even to the end ofthe world. 

"Answer me not 'This is good; this is bad;' repeat not to me youropinion. Come, I will tell thee all that lies before thee at the end ofthy journey. 

"I begin for thee with the palace of Sesetsu (Sesostris). Hast thou notset foot in it by force? Hast thou not eaten the fish in the brook ... ?Hast thou not washed thyself in it? With thy permission I will remindthee of Huzana; where is its fortress? Come, I pray thee, to the palaceof the land of Uazit, even of Osymandyas (Ramses II. ) in his victories, [to] Saez-el, together with Absaqbu. I will inform thee of the land of'Ainin (the two Springs), the customs of which thou knowest not. Theland of the lake of Nakhai, and the land of Rehoburta thou hast not seensince thou wast born, O Mohar. Rapih is widely extended. What is itswall like? It extends for a mile in the direction of Gaza. "

The French words introduced from time to time by Dr. Brugsch into thetranslation represent the Semitic words which the Egyptian writer hasemployed. They illustrate the fashionable tendency of his day to fillthe Egyptian vocabulary with the words and phrases of Canaan. It was therevenge taken by Palestine for its invasion and conquest by the armiesof Seti and Ramses. Thus _armée_ corresponds to the Semitic _tsaba_, "army, " _jeunesse_ to _na'aruna_, "young men. " The Egyptian scribe, however, sometimes made mistakes similar to those which modern novelistsare apt to commit in their French quotations. Instead of writing, as heintended, _'ebed gamal Mohar na'amu_ ("a camel's slave is the Mohar!they say"), he has assigned the Canaanite vowel _ayin_ to the wrongword, and mis-spelt the name of the "camel, " so that the phrase istransformed into _abad kamal Mohar n'amu_ ("the camel of the Mohar hasperished, they are pleasant"). (It is curious that a similar mistake inregard to the spelling of _'ebed_, "_slave_" or "_servant_" has beenmade in an Aramaic inscription which I have discovered on the rocks nearSilsileh in Upper Egypt, where the name of Ebed-Nebo is writtenAbed-Nebo. )

Most of the geographical names mentioned in the papyrus can beidentified. Aupa, the Ubi of the Tel el-Amarna tablets, was on theborders of the land of the Hittites, and not far from Aleppo. The Zar or"Plain" of Sesostris makes its appearance in the lists of conqueredtowns and countries which were drawn up by Thothmes III. , Seti I. , Ramses II. , and Ramses III. , in order to commemorate their victories inSyria. The word probably migrated from Babylonia, where the _zeru_denoted the alluvial plain which lay between the Tigris and theEuphrates. Kadesh, the southern capital of the Hittites, "in the land ofthe Amorites, " lay on the Orontes, close to the lake of Horns, and hasbeen identified by Major Conder with the modern Tel em-Mindeh. Tubikhi, of which we have already heard in the Tel el-Amarna letters, is alsomentioned in the geographical lists inscribed by Thothmes III. On thewalls of his temple at Karnak (No. 6); it there precedes the name ofKamta or Qamdu, the Kumidi of Tel el-Amarna. It is the Tibhath of theOld Testament, out of which David took "very much brass" (1 Chron. Xviii. 8). The Maghar(at) or "Caves" gave their name to the Magoras, theriver of Beyrout, as well as to the Mearah of the Book of Joshua (xiii. 4). As for the mountain of Shaua, it is described by the Assyrian kingTiglath-pileser III. As in the neighbourhood of the northern Lebanon, while the city of the Beeroth or "Cisterns" is probably Beyrout. 

The Mohar is now carried to Phoenicia. Gebal, Beyrout, Sidon, andSarepta, are named one after the other, as the traveller is supposed tobe journeying from north to south. The "goddess" of Gebal was Baaltis, so often referred to in the letters of Rib-Hadad, who calls her "themistress of Gebal. " In saying, however, that the name of the city meant"Hidden, " the writer has been misled by the Egyptian mispronunciation ofit. It became Kapuna in the mouths of his countrymen, and since _kapu_in Egyptian signified "hidden mystery, " he jumped to the conclusion thatsuch was also the etymology of the Phoenician word. In the "fords of theland of Nazana" we must recognize the river Litâny, which flows into thesea between Sarepta and Tyre. At all events, Authu or Usu, the next citymentioned, is associated with Tyre both in the tablets of Tel el-Amarnaand in the inscriptions of the Assyrian kings. It seems to have been thePalćtyros or "Older Tyre" of classical tradition, which stood on themainland opposite the more famous insular Tyre. Phoenician traditionascribes its foundation to Usôos, the offspring of the mountains ofKasios and Lebanon, and brother of Memrumus, "the exalted, " andHypsouranios, "the lord of heaven, " who was the first to invent aclothing of skins, and to sail upon the water in boats, and who hadtaught mankind to adore the fire and the winds, and to set up twopillars of stone in honour of the deity. From Usu the Mohar is naturallytaken to the island rock of Tyre. 

Next comes a name which it is difficult to identify. All that is clearis that between Zar or Tyre and Zair'aun there is some connection bothof name and of locality. Perhaps Dr. Brugsch is right in thinking thatin the next sentence there is a play upon the Hebrew word _zir'âh_, "hornet, " which seems to have the same root as Zair'aun. It may be thatZair'aun is the ancient city south of Tyre whose ruins are now calledUmm el-'Aműd, and whose older name is said to have been Turân. Unfortunately the name of the next place referred to in the Mohar'stravels is doubtful; if it is Pa-'A(y)ina, "the Spring, " we couldidentify it with the modern Râs el-'Ain, "the Head of the Spring. " Thisis on the road to Zib, the ancient Achshaph or Ekdippa. 

"The mountain of User" reminds us curiously of the tribe of Asher, whoseterritory included the mountain-range which rose up behind thePhoenician coast. But it may denote Mount Carmel, whose "crest" facesthe traveller as he makes his way southward from Tyre and Zib. In anycase the allusion to it brings to the writer's mind another mountain inthe same neighbourhood, the summit of which similarly towers into thesky. This is "the mountain of Shechem, " either Ebal or Gerizim, each ofwhich is nearly 3000 feet above the level of the sea. It is the firstmention that we have of Shechem outside the pages of the Old Testament. 

Shechem, however, did not lie in the path of the Mohar, and thereference to its mountain is made parenthetically only. We are thereforecarried on to Hazor, which afterwards became a city of Naphtali, and ofwhich we hear in the letters of Tel el-Amarna. From Hazor the road rannorthwards to Hamath, the Hamah of to-day. Hazor lay not far to thewestward of Adamim, which the geographical lists of Thothmes III. Placebetween the Sea of Galilee and the Kishon, and which is doubtless theAdami of Naphtali (Josh. Xix. 33). Here the tour of the Mohar comes toan abrupt close. After this the writer contents himself with naming anumber of Syrian cities without regard to their geographical position. He is anxious merely to show off his knowledge of Canaanitish geography;perhaps also to insinuate doubts as to the extent of his correspondent'stravels. 

Takhis, the Thahash of Gen. Xxii. 24, was, as we have seen, in the landof the Amorites, not very far distant from Kadesh on the Orontes. Kafir-Marona, "the village of Marona, " may have been in the samedirection. The second element in the name is met with elsewhere inPalestine. Thus one of Joshua's antagonists was the king ofShim-ron-meron (Josh. Xii. 20), and the Assyrian inscriptions tell us ofa town called Samsi-muruna. Tamnah was not an uncommon name. We hear ofa Tamnah or Timnah in Judah (Josh. Xv. 57), and of another in MountEphraim (Josh. Xix. 50). Dapul may be the Tubuliya of the letters ofRib-Hadad, Azai, "the outlet, " seems to have been near a pass, whileHar-nammata, "the mountain of Nammata, " is called Har-nam by RamsesIII. , who associates it with Lebanoth and Hebron. The two next names, Kirjath-Anab and Beth-Sopher, are of peculiar interest, since theycontain the first mention that was come down to us of Kitjath-Sepher, the literary centre of the Canaanites in the south of Palestine, whichwas captured and destroyed by Othniel the Kenizzite. In the OldTestament (Josh. Xv. 49, 50) Kirjath-Sannah or Kirjath-Sepher and Anabare coupled together just as Kirjath-Anab and Beth-Sopher are by theEgyptian scribe, and it is therefore evident that he has interchangedthe place of the equivalent terms Kirjath, "city, " and Beth, "house. "But his spelling of the second name shows us how it ought to bepunctuated and read in the Old Testament. It was not Kirjath-Sepher, "the city of book(s), " but Kirjath-Sopher, "the city of scribe(s), " andDr. W. Max Müller has pointed out that the determinative of "writing"has been attached to the word _Sopher_, showing that the writer wasfully acquainted with its meaning. Kirjath-Sannah, "the city ofinstruction, " as it was also called, was but another way of emphasizingthe fact that here was the site of a library and school such as existedin the towns of Babylonia and Assyria. Both names, however, Kirjath-Sopher and Kirjath-Sannah, were descriptive rather thanoriginal; its proper designation seems to have been Debir, "thesanctuary, " the temple wherein its library was established, and whichhas caused the Egyptian author to call it a "Beth, " or "temple, " insteadof a "Kirjath, " or "city. "

Like Anab and Kirjath-Sopher, Adullam and Zidiputa were also in southernCanaan. It was in the cave of Adullam that David took refuge from thepursuit of Saul, and we learn from Shishak that Zidiputa--orZadiputh-el, as he calls it--was in the south of Judah. From hence weare suddenly transported to the northern part of Syria, and the Mohar isasked if he knows anything about Khalza in the land of Aupa. Khalza isan Assyrian word signifying "Fortress, " and Aupa, the Ubi of the Telel-Amarna tablets, was not far from Aleppo. The allusion to the "bull"is obscure. 

Then once more we are summoned back to Palestine. In the annals ofThothmes III. We are told that "the brook of Qina" was to the south ofMegiddo, so that the name of the district has probably survived in thatof "Cana of Galilee. " Rehob may be Rehob in Asher (Josh. Xix. 28), whichwas near Kanah, though the name is so common in Syria as to make anyidentification uncertain. Beth-sha-el, on the contrary, is Beth-el. Wefirst meet with the name in the geographical lists of Thothmes III. , andthe fact that it is Babylonian in form, Bit-sa-ili being the Babylonianequivalent of the Hebrew Beth-el, is one of many proofs that the listswere compiled from a cuneiform original. The name of Beth-sha-el orBeth-el calls up that of Tarqa-el, which contains the name of theHittite god Tarqu. But where Tarqa-el was situated it is impossible tosay. 

Towards the end of the book reference is made to certain places whichlay on the road between Egypt and Canaan. Rapih is the Raphia ofclassical geography, the Rapikh of the Assyrian inscriptions, where twobroken columns now mark the boundary between Egypt and Turkey. Rehoburtais probably the Rehoboth where the herdsmen of Isaac dug a well beforethe patriarch moved to Beer-sheba (Gen. Xxvi. 22), while in the lake ofNakhai we may have the Sirbonian lake of classical celebrity. 

There still remain two allusions in the papyrus which must not be passedover in silence. One is the allusion to "Qazairnai, the lord of Asel, "the famous slayer of lions. We know nothing further about this Nimrod ofSyria, but Professor Maspero is doubtless right in believing that Aselought to be written Alsa, and that the country meant was the kingdom ofAlasiya, which lay in the northern portion of Coele-Syria. Severalletters from the king of Alasiya are preserved in the Tel el-Amarnacollection, and we gather from them that his possessions extended acrossthe Orontes from the desert to the Mediterranean Sea. Egyptian papyritell us that mares were imported into Egypt from Alasiya as well as twodifferent kinds of liquor. In the age of Samuel and Saul Alasiya wasgoverned by a queen. 

The second allusion is to the ironsmith in Canaan. It is clear thatthere were many of them, and that it was to the worker in iron and notto the worker in bronze that the traveller naturally turned when hischariot needed mending. Even the word that is employed to denote themetal is the Canaanitish _barzel_, which has been adopted under the formof _parzal_. Nothing could show more plainly how characteristic ofCanaan the trade of the ironsmith must have been, and how largely theuse of iron must have there superseded the use of bronze. The fact is inaccordance with the references in the annals of Thothmes III. To theiron that was received by him from Syria; it is also in accordance withthe statements of the Bible, where we read of the "chariots of iron" inwhich the Canaanites rode to war. Indeed there seems to have been aspecial class of wandering ironsmiths in Palestine, like the wanderingironsmiths of medićval Europe, who jealously guarded the secrets oftheir trade, and formed not only a peculiar caste, but even a peculiarrace. The word Kain means "a smith, " and the nomad Kenites of whom weread in the Old Testament were simply the nomad race of "smiths, " whosehome was the tent or cavern. Hence it was that while they were notIsraelites, they were just as little Canaanites, and hence it was toothat the Philistines were able to deprive the Israelites of the servicesof a smith (1 Sam. Xiii. 19). All that was necessary was to prevent theKenites from settling within Israelitish territory. There was noIsraelite who knew the secrets of the profession and could take theirplace, and the Canaanites who lived under Israelitish protection wereequally ignorant of the ironsmith's art. Though the ironsmith had madehimself a home in Canaan he never identified himself with itsinhabitants. The Kenites remained a separate people, and couldconsequently be classed as such by the side of the Hivites, or"villagers, " and the Perizzites, or "fellahin. "

If the _Travels of a Mohar_ are a guide-book to the geography ofPalestine in the age of the nineteenth Egyptian dynasty, the lists ofplaces conquered by Thothmes III. , and engraved by his orders on thewalls of his temple at Karnak, are a sort of atlas of Canaanitegeography in the age of the eighteenth dynasty. The name of eachlocality is enclosed in a cartouche and surmounted by the head andshoulders of a Canaanitish captive. The hair and eyes of the figures arepainted black or rather dark purple, while the skin is alternately redand yellow. The yellow represents the olive tint of the Mediterraneanpopulation, the red denotes the effects of sunburn. An examination ofthe names contained in the cartouches makes it clear that they have beenderived from the memoranda made by the scribes who accompanied the armyof the Pharaoh in its campaigns. Sometimes the same name is repeatedtwice, and not always in the same form. We may conclude, therefore, thatthe memoranda had not always been made by the same reporter, and thatthe compiler of the lists drew his materials from different sources. Itis further clear that the memoranda had been noted down in the cuneiformcharacters of Babylonia and not in the hieroglyphs of Egypt. Thus, as wehave seen, the name of Beth-el is transcribed from its Babylonian formof Bit-sa-ili, the Assyrian equivalent of the Hebrew Beth-el. 

The names have been copied from the memoranda of the scribes in theorder in which they occurred, and without any regard to their relativeimportance. While, therefore, insignificant villages are often noted, the names of important cities are sometimes passed over. Descriptiveepithets, moreover, like _abel_ "meadow, " _arets_ "land, " _har_"mountains, " _'emeq_ "valley, " _'ęn_ "spring, " are frequently treated asif they were local names, and occupy separate cartouches. We must not, consequently, expect to find in the lists any exhaustive catalogue ofPalestinian towns or even of the leading cities. They mark only thelines of march taken by the army of Thothmes or by his scouts andmessengers. 

Besides the Canaanitish lists there are also long lists of localitiesconquered by the Pharaoh in Northern Syria. With these, however, we havenothing to do. It is to the places in Canaan that our attention must atpresent be confined. They are said to be situated in the country of theUpper Lotan, or, as another list gives it, in the country of the Fenkhu. In the time of Thothmes III. Accordingly the land of the Upper Lotan andthe land of the Fenkhu were synonymous terms, and alike denoted what wenow call Palestine. In the word Fenkhu it is difficult not to see theorigin of the Greek Phoenix or "Phoenician. "

The lists begin with Kadesh on the Orontes, the head of the confederacy, the defeat of which laid Canaan at the feet of the Pharaoh. Then comesMegiddo, where the decisive battle took place, and the forces of theking of Kadesh were overthrown. Next we have Khazi, mentioned also inthe Tel el-Amarna tablets, from which we learn that it was in thehill-country south of Megiddo. It may be the Gaza of 1 Chron. Vii. 28which was supplanted by Shechem in Israelitish days. Kitsuna, theKuddasuna of the Tel el-Amarna tablets, follows: where it stood we donot know. The next name, "the Spring of Shiu, " is equally impossible toidentify. The sixth name, however, is Tubikhu, about which the cuneiformtablets of Tel el-Amarna have told us a good deal, and which seems to bethe Tibhath of 1 Chron. Xviii. 8. It was in Coele-Syria like Kamta, theKumidi of the tablets, which follows in one list, though its place istaken by the unknown Bami in another. After this we have the names ofTuthina (perhaps Dothan), Lebana, and Kirjath-niznau, followed by Marumor Merom the modern Meirôm, by Tamasqu or Damascus, by the Abel of Atar, and by Hamath. Aqidu, the seventeenth name, is unknown, but Mr. Tomkinsis probably right in thinking that the next name, that of Shemnau, mustbe identified with the Shimron of Josh. Xix. 15, where the Septuagintreads Symeon. That this reading is correct is shown by the fact that inthe days of Josephus and the Talmud the place was called Simonias, whilethe modern name is Seműnieh. The tablets of Tel el-Amarna make itSamkhuna. 

Six unknown names come next, the first of which is a Beeroth, or"Wells. " Then we have Mesekh, "the place of unction, " called Musikhunain the Tel el-Amarna correspondence, Qana and 'Arna. Both Qana and 'Arnaappear in the account of the battle before Megiddo, and must have beenin the immediate neighbourhood of that city. One of the affluents of theKishon flowed past Qana, while 'Arna was hidden in a defile. It wasthere that the tent of Thothmes was pitched two days before the greatbattle. The brook of Qana seems to have been the river Qanah of to-day, and 'Arna may be read 'Aluna. 

We are now transported to the eastern bank of the Jordan, to 'Astartu inthe land of Bashan, the Ashtaroth-Karnaim of Genesis, the Tel 'Ashtarahof modern geography. With 'Astartu is coupled Anau-repa, explained byMr. Tomkins to be "On of the Rephaim" (Gen. Xiv. 5). At any rate it isclearly the Raphon or Raphana of classical writers, the Er-Rafeh ofto-day. Next we have Maqata, called Makhed in the First Book ofMaccabees, and now known as Mukatta; Lus or Lius, the Biblical Laish, which under its later name of Dan became the northern limit of theIsraelitish kingdom; and Hazor, the stronghold of Jabin, whose king wehear of in the Tel el-Amarna tablets. Then come Pahil or Pella, east ofthe Jordan, famous in the annals of early Christianity; Kennartu, theChinneroth of the Old Testament (Josh. Xi. 2, 1 Kings xv. 20), fromwhich the Sea of Galilee took one of its names; Shemna, the site ofwhich is uncertain; and Atmam, the Adami of Josh. Xix. 33. These arefollowed by Qasuna, in which we find the Kishion of Issachar (Josh. Xix. 20); Shanam or Shunem, now Sôlam, north of Jezreel; Mash-al, the Mishealof Scripture; and Aksap or Ekdippa on the Phoenician coast. Then after aname which cannot be identified we read those of Ta'anak, the Ta'anachof the Bible, the Ta'anuk of to-day; Ible'am, near which Ahaziah ofJadah was slain by the servants of Jehu; Gantu-Asna, "the garden ofAsnah"; Lot-melech, "Lot of the king"; 'Aina, "the Spring"; and 'Aak orAcre. From Acre we are taken along the coast southward to Rosh Kadesh, "the sacred headland" of Carmel, whose name follows immediately underthe form of Karimna. Next we have Beer, "the Well, " Shemesh-Atum, andAnakhertu. Anakhertu is the Anaharath of Josh. Xix. 19, which belongedto the tribe of Issachar. 

Of Shemesh-Atum we hear again in one of the inscriptions of AmenophisIII. A revolt had broken out in the district of the Lebanon, and theking accordingly marched into Canaan to suppress it. Shemesh-Atum wasthe first city to feel the effects of his anger, and he carried awayfrom it eighteen prisoners and thirteen oxen. The name of the town showsthat it was dedicated to the Sun-god. In Hebrew it would appear asShemesh-Edom, and an Egyptian papyrus, now at Leyden, informs us thatAtum or Edom was the wife of Resheph the Canaanitish god of fire andlightning. In Shemesh-Atum or Shemesh-Edom we therefore have a compoundname signifying that the Shemesh or Sun-god denoted by it was not themale divinity of the customary worship, but the Sun-goddess Edom. InIsraelitish times the second element in the compound seems to have beendropped; at all events it is probable that Shemesh-Atum was theBeth-Shemesh of the Old Testament (Josh. Xix. 22), which is mentionedalong with Anaharath as in the borders of Issachar. 

After Anaharath come two unknown Ophrahs; then Khasbu and Tasult, calledKhasabu and Tusulti in the Tel el-Amarna letters; then Negebu, perhapsthe Nekeb of Galilee (Josh. Xix. 33), Ashushkhen, Anam, and Yurza. Yurzais now represented by the ruins of Yerza, south-eastward of Ta'anach, and there are letters from its governor in the Tel el-Amarna collection. Its name is followed by those of Makhsa, Yapu or Joppa, and "the countryof Gantu" or Gath. Next we have Luthen or Ruthen, which is possiblyLydda, Ono, Apuqen, Suka or Socho, and Yahem. Among the cartouches thatfollow we read the names of a Migdol, of Shebtuna, the modern Shebtîn, of Naun which reminds us of the name of Joshua's father, and of Haditha, now Hadîtheh, five miles to the west of Shebtîn. 

The list has thus led us to the foot of Mount Ephraim, and it is notsurprising that the next name should be that of the Har or "Mountain"itself. This is followed by a name which is full of interest, for itreads Joseph-el or "Joseph-god. " How the name of Joseph came to beattached in the time of Thothmes to the mountainous region in which "theHouse of Joseph" afterwards established itself is hard to explain; wemust remember, however, as has been stated in a former chapter, thataccording to the Chronicler (1 Chron. Vii. 21, 22), already in thelifetime of Ephraim his sons were slain by the men of Gath, "becausethey came down to take away their cattle. " (Mr. Pinches tells me that inearly Babylonian contracts of the age of Chedor-laomer he has found thename of Yasupu-ilu or Joseph-el, as well as that of Yakub-ilu orJacob-el. The discovery is of high importance when we remember thatAbraham migrated from Ur of the Chaldees, and adds another to the manydebts of gratitude due to Mr. Pinches from Biblical students. SeePreface for further details. )

Three names further on we find another compound with _el_, Har-el, "themount of God. " In Ezek. Xliii. 15 Har-el is used to denote the "altar"which should stand in the temple on Mount Moriah, and Mount Moriah isitself called "the Mount of the Lord" in the Book of Genesis (xxii. 14). It may be, therefore, that in the Har-el of the Egyptian list we havethe name of the mountain whereon the temple of Solomon was afterwards tobe built. However this may be, the names which follow it show that weare in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem. One after the other come Lebau, Na'mana or Na'amah (Josh. Xv. 41), Meromim "the heights, " 'Ani "the twosprings, " Rehob, Ekron, Hekalim "the palaces, " the Abel or "meadow" ofAutar'a, the Abel, the Gantau or "gardens, " the Maqerput or "tilledground, " and the 'Aina or "Spring" of Carmel, which corresponds with theGath-Carmel of the Tel el-Amarna tablets, the Carmel of Judah of the OldTestament. Then we have Beth-Ya, a name which reminds us of that of"Bithia, the daughter of Pharaoh, " whom Mered, the descendant of Caleb, took to wife, and whose stepson was Yered, "the father of Gedor" (1Chron. Iv. 18). Beth-Ya is followed by Tapun, which was fortified by theGreeks after the death of Judas Maccabaeus (1 Macc. Ix. 50), by the Abelof Yertu or Yered, perhaps the district of the Jordan, by Halkal, and byJacob-el, a name formed in the same way as that of Joseph-el. We may seein it an evidence that the memory of the patriarch was kept alive in thesouth of Palestine. The next two names are unknown, but they arefollowed by Rabatu or Rabbah of Judah, Magharatu, the Ma'arath of Josh, xv. 59, 'Emequ, "the valley" of Hebron, Sirta and Bârtu, the _Barhas-Sirak_, or "Well of Sirah" of 2 Sam. Iii. 26. Then come Beth-sa-elor Beth-el in its Babylonian dress; Beth-Anta or Beth-Anath (Josh. Xv. 59), where the Babylonian goddess Anatu was worshipped; Helkath (2 Sam. Ii. 16); the Spring of Qan'am; Gibeah of Judah (2 Sam. Vi. 3, 4; seeJosh. Xviii. 28); Zelah (Josh. Xviii. 28), called Zilu by Ebed-Tob ofJerusalem; and Zafta, the Biblical Zephath (Judges i. 17). The lastthree names in the catalogue--Barqna, Hum, and Aktomes--have left notraces in Scriptural or classical geography. 

The geographical lists of Thothmes III. Served as a model for thePharaohs who came after him. They also adorned the walls of theirtemples with the names of the places they had captured in Palestine, inNorthern Syria, and in the Soudan, and when a large space had to befilled the sculptor was not careful to insert in it only the names ofsuch foreign towns as had been actually conquered. The older lists weredrawn upon, and the names which had appeared in them were appropriatedby the later king, sometimes in grotesquely misspelt forms. The climaxof such empty claims to conquests which had never been made was reachedat Kom Ombo, where Ptolemy Lathyrus, a prince who, instead of gainingfresh territory, lost what he had inherited, is credited with thesubjugation of numerous nations and races, many of whom, like theHittites, had long before vanished from the page of history. The last ofthe Pharaohs whose geographical list really represents his successes inPalestine was Shishak, the opponent of Rehoboam and the founder of thetwenty-second dynasty. The catalogue of places engraved on the wall ofthe shrine he built at Karnak is a genuine and authentic record. 

So too are the lists given by the kings who immediately followedThothmes III. , Amenophis III. Of the eighteenth dynasty, Seti I. AndRamses II. Of the nineteenth, and Ramses III. Of the twentieth. It istrue that in some cases the list of one Pharaoh has been slavishlycopied by another, but it is also true that these Pharaohs actuallyoverran and subjugated the countries to which the lists belong. Of thiswe have independent testimony. 

At one time it was the fashion to throw doubt on the alleged conquestsof Ramses II. In Western Asia. This was the natural reaction from theolder belief, inherited from the Greek writers of antiquity, that RamsesII. Was a universal conqueror who had carried his arms into Europe, andeven to the confines of the Caucasus. With the overthrow of this beliefcame a disbelief in his having been a conqueror at all. The disbeliefwas encouraged by the boastful vanity of his inscriptions, as well as bythe absence in them of any details as to his later Syrian wars. 

But we now know that such scepticism was over-hasty. It was like thescepticism which refused to admit that Canaan had been made an Egyptianprovince by Thothmes III. , and which needed the testimony of the Telel-Amarna tablets before it could be removed. As a matter of fact, Egyptian authority was re-established throughout Palestine and even onthe eastern bank of the Jordan during the reign of Ramses II. , and theconquests of the Pharaoh in Northern Syria were real and not imaginary. Such has been the result of the discoveries of the last three or fouryears. 

We have no reason to doubt that the campaigns of Ramses III. In Asiawere equally historical. The great confederacy of northern barbariansand Asiatic invaders which had poured down upon Egypt had been utterlyannihilated; the Egyptian army was flushed with victory, and Syria, overrun as it had been by the invaders from the north, was in noposition to resist a fresh attack. Moreover, the safety of Egyptrequired that Ramses should follow up the destruction of his assailantsby carrying the war into Asia. But it is noticeable that the places heclaims to have conquered, whether in Canaan or further north, lay alongthe lines of two high-roads, and that the names of the great towns evenon these high-roads are for the most part conspicuously absent. Thenames, however, are practically those already enumerated by Ramses II. , and they occur in the same order. But the list given by Ramses III. Could not have been copied from the older list of Ramses II. For a verysufficient reason. In some instances the names as given by the earliermonarch are mis-spelt, letters having been omitted in them or wrongletters having been written in place of the right ones, while in thelist of Ramses III. The same names are correctly written. 

Seti I. , the father of Ramses II. , seems to have been too fully engagedin his wars in Northern Syria, and in securing the road along the coastof the Mediterranean, to attempt the re-conquest of Palestine. AtQurnah, however, we find the names of 'Aka or Acre, Zamith, Pella, Beth-el (Beth-sha-il), Inuam, Kimham (Jer. Xli. 17), Kamdu, Tyre, Usu, Beth-Anath, and Carmel among those of the cities he had vanquished, butthere is no trace of any occupation of Southern Canaan. That seems tohave come later with the beginning of his son's reign. 

On the walls of the Ramesseum at Thebes there are pictures of thestorming and capture of the Palestinian cities. Most of them are nowdestroyed, but we can still read the names of Ashkelon, of Salem orJerusalem, of Beth-Anath and Qarbu[tu], of Dapul in the land of theAmorites, of Merom, of Damascus, and of Inuam. Elsewhere we have mentionof Yurza and Socho, while at Karnak there are two geographical listswhich mark two of the lines of march taken by the troops of Ramses II. The first list contains the following names: (1) the district of Salem;(2) the district of Rethpana; (3) the country of the Jordan; (4) Khilz;(5) Karhu; (6) Uru; (7) Abel; (8) Carmel; (9) the upper district ofTabara or Debir; (10) Shimshon; and (n) Erez Hadashta, "the new land. "In the second list we read: (1) Rosh Kadesh, or Mount Carmel; (2) Inzat;(3) Maghar; (4) Rehuza; (5) Saabata; (6) Gaza; (7) the district ofSala'; (8) the district of Zasr; (9) Jacob-el; and (10) the land ofAkrith, the Ugarit of the Tel el-Amarna tablets. 

We have already seen that long before the time of Ramses II. Jerusalemwas an important city and fortress, the capital of a territory of somesize, known by the name of Uru-Salim, "the city of the god of peace. ""The city of Salem" could easily be abbreviated into "Salem" only; andit is accordingly Salem which alone is used in the fourteenth chapter ofGenesis as well as in the inscriptions of Ramses II. And Ramses III. Thename of Rethpana, which follows that of Salem, is faultily written inthe list of Ramses II. , and it is from that of Ramses III. That we haveto recover its true form. Ramses III. , moreover, tells us that Rethpanawas a lake, and since its name comes between those of Jerusalem and theJordan it must represent the Dead Sea. The Canaanite form of Rethpanawould be Reshpon, a derivative from the name of Resheph, the god of fireand lightning, whose name is preserved in that of the town Arsuf, andwhose "children" were the sparks (Job v. 7). The name was appropriate toa region which was believed to have been smitten with a tempest offlames, and of which we are told that "the Lord rained upon Sodom andupon Gomorrah brimstone and fire. "

Khilz, the fourth name in the list, is probably the Babylonian _Khalzu_, or "fortress. " At all events it was the first town on the eastern sideof the Jordan, and it may well therefore have guarded the ford acrossthe river. Karhu is the Korkha of the Moabite Stone, perhaps the modernKerak, which was the capital of Moab in the age of Ahab, and Uru is theBabylonian form of the Moabite Ar, or "city, " of which we read in theBook of Numbers (xxi. 28). The land of "Moab" itself is one of thecountries which Ramses claims to have subdued. The Carmel mentioned inthe list is Carmel of Judah, not the more famous Carmel on the coast. Asfor Tabara or Debir, it will be that ancient seat of Canaanite learningand literature, called Kirjath-Sepher and Debir in the Old Testament, the site of which is unfortunately still unknown. It must have lain, however, between Carmel and Shimshon, "the city of the Sun-god, " withwhich it is probable that the Biblical Ir-Shemesh should be identified(Josh. Xix. 41). Erez Hadashta, "the New Land, " is called Hadashah inthe Book of Joshua (xv. 37), where it is included among the possessionsof Judah. 

The second list, instead of taking us through Judah and Moab, leads ussouthward along the coast from Mount Carmel. Maghar is termed by RamsesIII. "the spring of the Maghar, " and is the Magoras or river of Beyroutof classical geography. The river took its name from the _maghdrat_ or"caves" past which it runs, and of which we have already heard in the_Travels of a Mohar_. The two next names which represent places on thecoast to the north of Gaza are quite unknown, but Sala', which iswritten Selakh by Ramses III. (from a cuneiform original), is possiblythe rock-city Sela (2 Kings xiv. 7), better known to us as Petra. OfJacob-el we have already had occasion to speak. 

It is in the ruined temple of Medinet Habu that Ramses III. Has recordedhis victories and inscribed the names of the peoples and cities he hadovercome. We gather from the latter that his armies had followed theroads already traversed by Ramses II. , had marched through the south ofPalestine into Moab, and had made their way along the sea-coast intoNorthern Syria. One after the other we read the names of Hir-nam orHar-nam, called Har-Nammata in the _Mohar's Travels_, of Lebanoth, ofBeth-Anath and Qarbutu (Josh. Xv. 59), of Carmim, "the vineyards, " andShabuduna or Shebtîn, of Mashabir (?), of Hebron and its 'Čn or"Spring, " of the "district of Libnah, " of 'Aphekah and 'Abakhi (Josh. Xv. 53), of Migdal--doubtless the Migdal-Gad of Josh. Xv. 53--andQarzak, of Carmel of Judah and the Upper District of Debir, of Shimshonand Erez Hadasth, of the district of Salem or Jerusalem and the "Lake ofRethpana, " of the Jordan, of Khilz the fortress, of Korkha and of Uru. Asecond list gives us the line of march along the shores of theMediterranean Sea. First we have 'Akata, perhaps Joktheel in Judah(Josh. Xv. 38), then Karka and [Zidi]puth, Abel and the district ofSela', the district of Zasr and Jacob-el, Rehuza, Saaba and Gaza, Rosh-Kadesh, Inzath and the "Spring, " Lui-el, which we might also readLevi-el, Bur, "the Cistern, " Kamdu, "Qubur the great, " Iha, Tur, andfinally Sannur, the Saniru of the Assyrian texts, the Shenir of the OldTestament (Deut. Iii. 9). This brings us to Mount Hermon and the land ofthe Amorites, so that it is not surprising to find after two more namesthat of Hamath. 

One point about this list is very noticeable. None of the greatPhoenician cities of the coast are mentioned in it. Acre, Ekdippa, Tyre, Sidon, and Beyrout are all conspicuous by their absence. Even Joppa isunnamed. After Gaza we have only descriptive epithets like "the Spring"and "the Cistern, " or the names of otherwise unknown villages. WithKamdu in Coele-Syria the catalogue of cities begins afresh. 

It is plain that the northern campaign of the Pharaoh was little betterthan a raid. No attempt was made to capture the cities of the coast, andre-establish in them the Egyptian power. The Egyptian army passed themby without any effort to reduce them. Possibly the Philistines hadalready settled on the coast, and had shown themselves too strong to bemeddled with; possibly the Egyptian fleet was acting in concert with thetroops on land, and Ramses cared only to lead his forces to some spot onthe north Syrian coast, from whence, if necessary, the ships couldconvey them home. Whatever may have been the reason, the fact remainsthat Gaza alone of the cities of the Canaanitish coast fell into thehands of the Pharaoh. It was only in the extreme south, in what was sosoon afterwards to become the territory of Judah, that he overran thecountry and occupied the large towns. 

With the lists of Ramses III. Our knowledge of the geography ofPatriarchal Palestine is brought to a close. Henceforward we have to dowith the Canaan of Israelitish conquest and settlement. The records ofthe Old Testament contain a far richer store of geographical names thanwe can ever hope to glean from the monuments of Egypt. But the lattershow how little change after all was effected by the Israelitishconquest in the local nomenclature of the country. A few citiesdisappeared like Kirjath-Sepher, but on the whole not only the cities, but even the villages of pre-Israelitish Canaan survived under their oldnames. When we compare the names of the towns and villages of Judahenumerated in the Book of Joshua with the geographical lists of aThothmes or a Ramses, we cannot but be struck by the coincidencesbetween them. The occurrence of a name like Hadashah, "the New (Land), "in both cannot be the result of chance. It adds one more to the manyarguments in favour of the antiquity of the Book of Joshua, or at allevents of the materials of which it consists. Geography, at all events, gives no countenance to the theory which sees in the book a fabricationof later date. Even the leading cities of the Israelitish period are forthe most part already the leading cities of the earlier Palestine. Thefuture capital of David, for example, was already called Jerusalem longbefore the birth of Moses, and already occupied a foremost place amongthe kingdoms of Canaan. 

CHAPTER VI

CANAANITISH CULTURE AND RELIGION

We have already learned from the annals of Thothmes III. How high wasthe state of civilization and culture among the merchant princes ofCanaan in the age of the eighteenth Egyptian dynasty. Artisticallyfinished vases of gold and silver, rich bronzes, furniture carved out ofebony and cedar, and inlaid with ivory and precious stones--such weresome of the manufactures of the land of Palestine. Iron was excavatedfrom its hills and wrought into armour, into chariots, and into weaponsof war; while beautifully shaped vessels of variegated glass weremanufactured on the coast. The amber beads found at Lachish point to atrade with the distant Baltic, and it is possible that there may betruth after all in the old belief, that the Phoenicians obtained theirtin from the isles of Britain. The mines of Cyprus, indeed, yieldedabundance of copper, but, so far as we know, there were only two partsof the world from which the nations of Western Asia and the EasternMediterranean could have procured the vast amount of tin needed in theBronze Age--the Malayan Peninsula and Cornwall. The Malayan Peninsula isout of the question--there are no traces of any commercial intercourseso far to the East; and it would seem, therefore, that we must look toCornwall for the source of the tin. If so the trade would probably havebeen overland, like the amber trade from the Baltic. 

Canaan was marked out by Nature to be a land of merchants. Its long lineof coast fronted the semi-barbarous populations of Asia Minor, of theĆgean, and of the northern shores of Africa, while the sea furnished itwith the purple dye of the murex. The country itself formed thehigh-road and link between the great kingdoms of the Euphrates and theNile. It was here that the two civilizations of Babylonia and Egypt metand coalesced, and it was inevitable that the Canaanites, who possessedall the energy and adaptive quickness of a commercial race, shouldabsorb and combine the elements of both. There was little except thiscombination that was original in Canaanitish art, but when once thematerials were given, the people of Palestine knew how to work them upinto new and graceful forms, and adapt them practically to the needs ofthe foreign world. 

If we would realize the change brought about by this contact of Canaanwith the culture of the stranger, we must turn to the rude figurescarved upon the rocks in some of the valleys of Phoenicia. Near Tyre, for example, in the Wadi el-Qana we may still see some of theseprimitive sculptures, in which it is difficult even to recognize thehuman form. Equally barbarous in style are the early seals and cylindersmade in imitation of those of Babylonia. It seems at first sightimpossible to believe that such grotesque and child-like beginningsshould have ended in the exquisite art of the age of Thothmes III. 

At that period, however, Canaan already had behind it a long civilizedpast. The country was filled with schools and libraries, withrichly-furnished palaces, and the workshops of the artisans. The citieson the coast had their fleets partly of merchantmen, partly of warships, and an active trade was carried on with all parts of the known world. The result was that the wealth of Palestine was enormous; the amountcarried away by Thothmes is alone sufficient to prove it. Apart from thenatural productions of the country--corn, wine, and oil, or the slaveswhich it had to furnish--immense quantities of gold, silver, andprecious stones, sometimes in their native state, sometimes manufacturedinto artistic forms, were transported into Egypt. And in spite of thisdrain upon its resources, the supply seems never to have failed. 

The reciprocal influence of the civilizations of Canaan and Egypt oneupon the other, in the days when Canaan was an Egyptian province, isreflected in the languages of the two countries. On the one hand theCanaanite borrowed from Egypt words like _tebah_ "ark, " _hin_ "ameasure, " and _ebyôn_ "poor, " while Canaan in return copiously enrichedthe vocabulary of its conquerors. As the _Travels of a Mohar_ have shownus, under the nineteenth dynasty there was a mania for using Canaanitishwords and phrases, similar to that which has more than once visitedEnglish society in respect to French. But before the rise of thenineteenth dynasty the Egyptian lexicon was already full of Semiticwords. Frequently they denoted objects which had been imported fromSyria. Thus a "chariot" was called a _merkabut_, a "waggon" being_agolta_; _hurpu_, "a sword, " was the Canaanitish _khereb_, just as_aspata_, "a quiver, " was _ashpâh_. The Canaanitish _kinnor_, "a lyre, "was similarly naturalized in Egypt, like the names of certain varietiesof "Syrian bread. " The Egyptian words for "incense" (_qadaruta_), "oxen"(_abiri_), and "sea" (_yum_) were taken from the same source, though itis possible that the last-mentioned word, like _qamhu_, "wheat, " hadbeen introduced from Syria in the earliest days of Egyptian history. Asmight have been expected, several kinds of sea-going vessels broughtwith them their native names from the Phoenician coast. Already in thetime of the thirteenth dynasty the larger ships were termed _Kabanitu_, or "Gebalite"; we read also of "boats" called _Za_, the Canaanite _Zi_, while a transport was entitled _qauil_, the Phoenician _gol_. The samename was imported into Greek under the form of _gaulos_, and we are toldthat it signified "a Phoenician vessel of rounded shape. "

The language of Canaan was practically that which we call Hebrew. IndeedIsaiah (xix. 18) speaks of the two dialects as identical, and theso-called Phoenician inscriptions that have been preserved to us showthat the differences between them were hardly appreciable. There weredifferences, however; the Hebrew definite article, for instance, is notfound in the Phoenician texts. But the differences are dialectal only, like the differences which the discovery of the Moabite Stone has shownto have existed between the languages of Moab and Israel. 

How the Israelites came to adopt "the language of Canaan" is a questioninto which we cannot here enter. There have been other examples ofconquerors who have abandoned the language of their forefathers andadopted that of the conquered people. And it must be remembered, on theone hand, that the ancestors of Israel had lived in Canaan, where theywould have learnt the language of the country, and, on the other hand, that their original tongue was itself a Semitic form of speech, asclosely related to Hebrew as French or Spanish is to Italian. 

The Tel el-Amarna tablets have told us something about the language ofCanaan as it was spoken before the days when the Israelites entered theland. Some of the letters that were sent from Palestine contain theCanaanite equivalents of certain Babylonian words that occur in them. Like the Babylonian words, they are written in cuneiform characters, andsince these denote syllables and not mere letters we know exactly howthe words were pronounced. It is an advantage which is denied us by thePhoenician alphabet, whether in the inscriptions of Phoenicia or in thepages of the Old Testament, and we can thus obtain a better idea of thepronunciation of the Canaanitish language in the century before theExodus than we can of the Hebrew language in the age of Hezekiah. 

Among the words which have been handed down to us by the correspondentsof the Pharaoh are _maqani_ "cattle, " _anay_ "a ship, " _súsi_ "a horse, "of which the Hebrew equivalents, according to the Masoretic punctuation, are _miqneh_, _oni_, and _sűs_. The king of Jerusalem says _anuki_, "I, "the Hebrew _anochi_, while _badiu_, the Hebrew _b'yado_, and _akharunu_, the Hebrew _akharono_, are stated to signify "in his hand, " and "afterhim. " "Dust" is _ghaparu_, where the guttural _gh_ represents theCanaanitish _ayyin_ ('); "stomach" is _batnu_, the Hebrew _beten_; while_kilubi_, "a cage, " corresponds with the Hebrew _chelűb_, which is usedin the same sense by the prophet Jeremiah. Elsewhere we find _risu_, theHebrew _rosh_, "a head, " _har_ "a mountain, " _samama_ "heaven, " and_mima_ "water, " in Hebrew _shâmayim_ and _mayim_, which we gather fromthe cuneiform spelling have been wrongly punctuated by the Masoretes, aswell as _khaya_ "living, " the Hebrew _khai_, and _makhsű_, "they havesmitten him, " the Hebrew _makhatsu_. 

It was the use of the definite article _ha(n)_ which mainlydistinguished Hebrew and Phoenician or Canaanite one from the other. Andwe have a curious indication in the Tel el-Amarna tablets, that the samedistinction prevailed between the language of the Canaanites and that ofthe Edomites, who, as we learn from the Old Testament, were so closelyrelated to the Israelites. In the letter to the Pharaoh, in whichmention is made of the hostilities carried on by Edom against theEgyptian territory, one of the Edomite towns referred to is calledKhinianabi. Transcribed into Hebrew characters this would be'En-han-nabi, "the Spring of the Prophet. " Here, therefore, the Hebrewarticle makes its appearance, and that too in the very form which it hasin the language of Israel. The fact is an interesting commentary on thebrotherhood of Jacob and Esau. 

If the language of Canaan was influenced by that of Egypt, still morewas it influenced by that of Babylonia. Long before Palestine became anEgyptian province it had been a province of Babylonia. And even when itwas not actually subject to Babylonian government it was under thedominion of Babylonian culture. War and trade alike forced the Chaldćancivilization upon "the land of the Amorites, " and the Canaanites werenot slow to take advantage of it. The cuneiform writing of Babylonia wasadopted, and therewith the language of Babylonia was taught and learnedin the schools and libraries which were established in imitation ofthose of the Babylonians. Babylonian literature was introduced into theWest, and the Canaanite youth became acquainted with the history andlegends, the theology and mythology of the dwellers on the Euphrates andTigris. 

Such literary contact naturally left its impress on the language ofCanaan. Words which the Semites of Babylonia had borrowed from the olderSumerian population of the country were handed on to the peoples ofPalestine. The "city" had been a Sumerian creation; until brought underthe influence of Sumerian culture, the Semite had been contented to livein tents. Indeed in Babylonian or Assyrian--the language of the Semiticinhabitants of Babylonia and Assyria--the word which signified "tent"was adopted to express the idea of "city" when the tent had beenexchanged for city-life. In Canaan, on the other hand, the Sumerian worditself was adopted in a Semitic form, _'Ir_, _'ar_, or _uru_, "city, "was originally the Sumerian _eri_. 

The Canaanitish _hękâl_, "a palace, " again, came from a Sumerian source. This was _ę-gal_, or "great house. " But it had passed to the Westthrough the Semitic Babylonians, who had first borrowed the compoundword under the form of _ękallu_. Like the city, the palace also wasunknown to the primitive Semitic nomads. It belonged to the civilizationof which the Sumerians of Chaldća, with their agglutinative language, were the pioneers. 

The borrowing, however, was not altogether one-sided. Palestine enrichedthe literary language of Babylonia with certain words, though these donot seem to have made their way into the language of the people. Thus wefind words like _bin-bini_, "grandson, " and _înu_, "wine, " recorded inthe lexical tablets of Babylonia and Assyria. Doubtless there werewriters on the banks of the Euphrates who were as anxious to exhibittheir knowledge of the language of Canaan as were the Egyptian scribesof the nineteenth dynasty, though their literary works have not yet beendiscovered. 

The adoption of the Babylonian system of writing must have workedpowerfully on the side of tincturing the Canaanitish language withBabylonian words. In the age of the Tel el-Amarna tablets there is nosign that any other system was known in the West. It is true that theletters sent to the Pharaoh from Palestine were written in theBabylonian language as well as in the Babylonian script, but we haveevidence that the cuneiform characters were also used for the nativelanguage of the country. M. De Clercq possesses two seal-cylinders ofthe same date as the Tel el-Amarna correspondence, on one of which isthe cuneiform inscription--"Hadad-sum, the citizen of Sidon, the crownof the gods, " while on the other is "Anniy, the son of Hadad-sum, thecitizen of Sidon. " On the first, Hadad-sum is represented standing withhis hands uplifted before the Egyptian god Set, while behind him is thegod Resheph with a helmet on his head, a shield in one hand and abattle-axe in the other. On the seal of Anniy, Set and Resheph againmake their appearance, but instead of the owner of the cylinder it isthe god Horus who stands between them. 

When the cuneiform syllabary was superseded in Palestine by theso-called Phoenician alphabet we do not know. The introduction of thenew script was due probably to the Hittite invasion, which separated theSemites of the West from the Semites of the East. The Hittite occupationof Carchemish blocked the high-road of Babylonian trade to theMediterranean, and when the sacred city of Kadesh on the Orontes fellinto Hittite hands it was inevitable that Hittite rather than Babylonianinfluence would henceforth prevail in Canaan. However this may be, itseems natural to suppose that the scribes of Zebulon referred to in theSong of Deborah and Barak (Judges v. 14) wrote in the letters of thePhoenician alphabet and not in the cuneiform characters of Babylonia. Aslong, indeed, as the old libraries remained open and accessible, withtheir stores of cuneiform literature, there must have been some whocould read them, but they would have been rather the older inhabitantsof the country than the alien conquerors from the desert. When theMoabite Stone was engraved, it is clear from the forms of the lettersthat the Phoenician alphabet had long been in use in the kingdom ofMesha. The resemblance of these letters to those found in the earliestof the Greek inscriptions makes it equally clear that the introductionof the alphabet into the islands of the Ćgean must have taken place atno distant period from the age of the Moabite Stone. Such anintroduction, however, implies that the new alphabet had already takendeep root among the merchants of Canaan, and driven out before it thecumbrous syllabary of Chaldća. It was in this alphabet that Hiram andSolomon corresponded together, and it is probable that Moses made use ofit. We may even conjecture that the Israelitish settlement in Palestinebrought with it the gift of the "Phoenician" alphabet. 

As we have already seen, the elements of Babylonian art were quicklyabsorbed by the Canaanites. The seal-cylinder was imitated, at firstwith but indifferent success, and such Babylonian ornamental designs asthe rosette, the sacred tree, and the winged cherub were taken over anddeveloped in a special way. At times the combination with them ofdesigns borrowed from Egypt produced a new kind of artistic ornament. 

But it was in the realm of religion that the influence of Babylonia wasmost powerful. Religion, especially in the ancient world, wasinextricably bound up with its culture; it was impossible to adopt theone without adopting a good deal of the other at the same time. Moreover, the Semites of Babylonia and of Canaan belonged to the samerace, and that meant a community of inherited religious ideas. With boththe supreme object of worship was Baal or Bel, "the lord, " who was butthe Sun-god under a variety of names. Each locality had its own specialBaal: there were, in fact, as many Baals, or Baalim, as there were namesand attributes for the Sun-god, and to the worshippers in each localitythe Baal adored there was the supreme god. But the god resembled hisworshipper who had been made in his image; he was the father and head ofa family with a wife and son. The wife, it is true, was but thecolourless reflection of the god, often indeed but the feminine Baalah, whom the Semitic languages with their feminine gender required to existby the side of the masculine Baal. But this was only in accordance withthe Semitic conception of woman as the lesser man, his servant ratherthan his companion, his shadow rather than his helpmeet. 

The existence of an independent goddess, unmarried and possessing allthe attributes of the god, was contrary to the fundamental conceptionsof the Semitic mind. Nevertheless we find in Canaan an Ashtoreth, whomthe Greeks called Astarte, as well as a Baal. The cuneiform inscriptionshave given us an explanation of the fact. 

Ashtoreth came from Babylonia. There she was known as Istar, the eveningstar. She had been one of those Sumerian goddesses who, in accordancewith the Sumerian system, which placed the mother at the head of thefamily, were on an equal footing with the gods. She lay outside thecircle of Semitic theology with its divine family, over which the maleBaal presided, and the position she occupied in later Babylonianreligion was due to the fusion between the Sumerian and Semitic forms offaith, which took place when the Semites became the chief element inBabylonia. But Sumerian influence and memories were too strong to allowof any transformation either in the name or in the attributes of thegoddess. She remained Istar, without any feminine suffix, and it wasnever forgotten that she was the evening-star. 

It was otherwise in the West. There Istar became Ashtoreth with thefeminine termination, and passed eventually into a Moon-goddess "withcrescent horns. " Ashtoreth-Karnaim, "Ashtoreth with the two horns, " wasalready in existence in the age of Abraham. In Babylonia the Moon-god ofancient Sumerian belief had never been dethroned; but there was noMoon-god in Canaan, and accordingly the transformation of the Babyloniangoddess into "the queen of the night" was a matter of little difficulty. 

Once domesticated in Palestine, with her name so changed as to declareher feminine character, Ashtoreth soon tended to lose her independence. Just as there were Baalim or "Baals" by the side of Baal, so there wereAstaroth or "Ashtoreths" by the side of Ashtoreth. 

The Semites of Babylonia themselves had already begun the work oftransformation. They too spoke of Istarât or "Istars, " and used the wordin the general sense of "goddesses. " In Canaan, however, Ashtarôth hadno such general meaning, but denoted simply the various Ashtoreths whowere worshipped in different localities, and under different titles. Theindividual Ashtoreth of Gebal was separate from the individual Ashtorethof Bashan, although they alike represented the same divine personality. 

It is true that even in the West Istar did not always become thefeminine complement of Baal. Here and there the old form of the name waspreserved, without any feminine suffix. But when this was the case, thenecessary result was that the female character of the deity wasforgotten. Istar was conceived of as a god, and accordingly on theMoabite Stone Ashtar is identified with Chemosh, the patron-god ofMesha, just as in Southern Arabia also Atthar is a male divinity. 

The worship of Ashtoreth absorbed that of the other goddesses of Canaan. Among them there was one who had once occupied a very prominent place. This was Ashęrah, the goddess of fertility, whose name is written Asirtuand Asratu in the tablets of Tel el-Amarna. Ashęrah was symbolized by astem stripped of its branches, or an upright cone of stone, fixed in theground, and the symbol and the goddess were at times confoundedtogether. The symbol is mistranslated "grove" in the Authorized Versionof the Old Testament, and it often stood by the side of the altar ofBaal. We find it thus represented on early seals. In Palestine it wasusually of wood; but in the great temple of Paphos in Cyprus there wasan ancient and revered one of stone. This, however, came to beappropriated to Ashtoreth in the days when the older Ashęrah wassupplanted by the younger Ashtoreth. 

We hear of other Canaanitish divinities from the monuments of Egypt. Thegoddess Edom, the wife of Resheph, has already been referred to. Hername is found in that of the Gittite, Obed-Edom, "the servant of Edom, "in whose house the ark was kept for three months (2 Sam. Vi. 10). Resheph, too, has been mentioned in an earlier page. He was the god offire and lightning, and on the Egyptian monuments he is represented asarmed with spear and helmet, and bears the titles of "great god" and"lord of heaven. " Along with him we find pictures of a goddess calledKedesh and Kesh. She stands on the back of a lion, with flowers in herleft hand and a serpent in her right, while on her head is the lunardisk between the horns of a cow. She may be the goddess Edom, or perhapsthe solar divinity who was entitled  in Babylonian, and whose nameenters into that of an Edomite king A-rammu, who is mentioned bySennacherib. 

But, like Istar, a considerable number of the deities of Palestine wereborrowed from Babylonia. In the Tel el-Amarna tablets the god ofJerusalem is identified with the warlike Sun-god of Babylonia, Nin-ip, and there was a sanctuary of the same divinity further north, inPhoenicia. Foremost among the deities whose first home was on the banksof the Euphrates were Arm and Anat, and Rimmon. Anu, whose name iswritten Anah in Hebrew, was the god of the sky, and he stood at the headof the Babylonian pantheon. His wife Anat was but a colourlessreflection of himself, a grammatical creation of the Semitic languages. But she shared in the honours that were paid to her consort, and thedivinity that resided in him was reflected upon her. Anat, likeAshtoreth, became multiplied under many forms, and the Anathoth or"Anat" signified little more than "goddesses. " Between the Ashtaroth andthe Anathoth the difference was but in name. 

The numerous localities in Palestine which received their names from thegod Rimmon are a proof of his popularity. The Babylonian Rimmon orRamman was, strictly speaking, the god of the air, but in the West hewas identified with the Sun-god Hadad, and a place near Megiddo bore thecompound title of Hadad-Rimmon (Zech. Xii. 11). His naturalization inCanaan seems to belong to a very early period; at all events, inSumerian he was called Martu, "the Amorite, " and seal-cylinders speak of"the Martu gods. " One of these has been found in the Lebanon. TheAssyrian tablets tell us that he was also known as Dadu in the West, andunder this form we find him in names like El-Dad and Be-dad, or Ben-Dad. 

Like Rimmon, Nebo also must have been transported to Palestine at anearly epoch. Nebo "the prophet" was the interpreter of Bel-Merodach ofBabylon, the patron of cuneiform literature, and the god to whom thegreat temple of Borsippa--the modern Birs-i-Nimrud--was dedicated. Doubtless he had migrated to the West along with that literary cultureover which he presided. There his name and worship were attached to manylocalities. It was on the summit of Mount Nebo that Moses died; overNebo, Isaiah prophesies, "Moab shall howl;" and we hear of a city called"the other Nebo" in Judah (Neh. Vii. 33). 

Another god who had been borrowed from Babylonia by the people of Canaanwas Malik "the king, " a title originally of the supreme Baal. Malik isfamiliarly known to us in the Old Testament as Moloch, to whom thefirst-born were burned in the fire. At Tyre the god was termedMelech-kirjath, or "king of the city, " which was contracted intoMelkarth, and in the mouths of the Greeks became Makar. There is apassage in the book of the prophet Amos (v. 25, 26), upon which theAssyrian texts have thrown light. We there read: "Have ye offered untome sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, O house ofIsrael? Yet ye have borne Sikkuth your Malik and Chiun your Zelem, thestar of your god, which ye made to yourselves. "

Sikkuth and Chiun are the Babylonian Sakkut and Kaivan, a name given tothe planet Saturn. Sakkut was a title of the god Nin-ip, and we gatherfrom Amos that it also represented Malik "the king. " Zelem, "the image, "was another Babylonian deity, and originally denoted "the image" or diskof the sun. His name and worship were carried into Northern Arabia, anda monument has been discovered at Teima, the Tema of Isaiah xxi. 14, which is dedicated to him. It would seem, from the language of Amos, that the Babylonian god had been adored in "the wilderness" as far backas the days when the Israelites were encamping in it. Nor, indeed, isthis surprising: Babylonian influence in the West belonged to an agelong anterior to that of the Exodus, and even the mountain whereon theoracles of God were revealed to the Hebrew lawgiver was Sinai, themountain of Sin. The worship of Sin, the Babylonian Moon-god, musttherefore have made its way thus far into the deserts of Arabia. Inscriptions from Southern Arabia have already shown us that there tooSin was known and adored. 

Dagon, again, was another god who had his first home in Babylonia. Thename is of Sumerian origin, and he was associated with Ami, the god ofthe sky. Like Sin, he appears to have been worshipped at Harran; at allevents, Sargon states that he inscribed the laws of that city "accordingto the wish of Anu and Dagon. " Along with Arm he would have been broughtto Canaan, and though we first meet with his name in the Old Testamentin connection with the Philistines, it is certain that he was alreadyone of the deities of the country whom the Philistine invaders adopted. One of the Canaanitish governors in the Tel el-Amarna correspondencebears the Assyrian name of Dagon-takala, "we trust in Dagon. " ThePhoenicians made him the god of corn in consequence of the resemblanceof his name to the word which signifies "corn"; primarily, however, hewould have been a god of the earth. The idea that he was a fish-god isof post-Biblical date, and due to a false etymology, which derived hisname from the Hebrew _dag_, "a fish. " The fish-god of Babylonia, however, whose image is sometimes engraved on seals, was a form of Ea, the god of the deep, and had no connection with Dagon. Doubtless therewere other divinities besides these whom the peoples of Canaan owed tothe Babylonians. Mr. Tomkins is probably right in seeing in the name ofBeth-lehem a reminiscence of the Babylonian god Lakhmu, who took part inthe creation of the world, and whom a later philosophizing generationidentified with Anu. But the theology of early Canaan is still butlittle known, and its pantheon is still in great measure a sealed book. Now and again we meet with a solitary passage in some papyrus orinscription on stone, which reveals to us for the first time the name ofan otherwise unknown deity. Who, for instance, is the goddess'Ashiti-Khaur, who is addressed, along with Kedesh, on an Egyptianmonument now at Vienna, as "the mistress of heaven" and "ruler of allthe gods"? The votive altars of Carthage make repeated mention of thegoddess Tanit, the Peni or "Face" of Baal, whom the Greeks identifiedwith Artemis. She must have been known in the mother-land of Phoenicia, and yet no trace of her worship there has as yet been found. There were"gods many and lords many" in primitive Palestine, and though acomprehensive faith summed them up as its Baalim and Ashtaroth they yethad individual names and titles, as well as altars and priests. 

But though altars were numerous, temples were not plentiful. The chiefseats of religious worship were "the high-places, " level spots on thesummits of hills or mountains, where altars were erected, and theworshipper was believed to be nearer the dwelling-place of the gods thanhe would have been in the plain below. The altar was frequently somenatural boulder of rock, consecrated by holy oil, and regarded as thehabitation of a god. These sacred stones were termed beth-els, _bćtyli_as the Greeks wrote the word, and they form a distinguishingcharacteristic of Semitic faith. In later times many of them wereimagined to have "come down from heaven. " So deeply enrooted was thisworship of stones in the Semitic nature, that even Mohammed, in spite ofhis iconoclastic zeal, was obliged to accommodate his creed to theworship of the Black Stone at Mekka, and the Kaaba is still one of themost venerated objects of the Mohammedan faith. 

But the sacred stone was not only an object of worship or theconsecrated altar of a deity, it might also take the place of a temple, and so be in very truth a beth-el, or "house of God. " Thus at MedainSalih in North-western Arabia Mr. Doughty discovered three uprightstones, which an inscription informed him were the _mesged_ or "mosque"of the god Aera of Bozrah. In the great temple of Melkarth at TyreHerodotus saw two columns, one of gold, the other of emerald, remindingus of the two pillars, Jachin and Boaz, which the Phoenician architectof Solomon erected in the porch of the temple at Jerusalem (1 Kings vii. 21). Similar columns of stone have been found in the Phoenician temple, called that of the Giants, in Gozo, one of which is still standing inits place. 

While certain stones were thus regarded as the abode of deity, the highplaces whereon so many of them stood also received religious worship. The most prominent of the mountains of Syria were deified: Carmel becamea Penu-el or "Face of God, " Hermon was "the Holy One, " and Mount Lebanonwas a Baal. The rivers and springs also were adored as gods, and thefish which swam in them were accounted sacred. On the Phoenician coastwas a river Kadisha, "the holy, " and the Canaanite maiden saw in the redmarl which the river Adonis brought down from the hills the blood of theslaughtered Sun-god Tammuz. 

The temple of Solomon, built as it was by Phoenician architects andworkmen, will give us an idea of what a Canaanitish temple was like. Inits main outlines it resembled a temple in Babylonia or Assyria. There, too, there was an outer court and an inner sanctuary, with its _parakku_or "mercy-seat, " and its ark of stone or wood, in which an inscribedtablet of stone was kept. Like the temple of Jerusalem, the Babyloniantemple looked from the outside much like a rectangular box, with itsfour walls rising up, blank and unadorned, to the sky. Within the opencourt was a "sea, " supported at times on oxen of bronze, where thepriests and servants of the temple performed their ablutions and thesacred vessels were washed. 

The Canaanitish altar was approached by steps, and was large enough forthe sacrifice of an ox. Besides the sacrifices, offerings of corn andwine, of fruit and oil were also made to the gods. The sacrifices andofferings were of two kinds, the _zau'at_ or sin-offering, and the_shelem_ or thank-offering. The sin-offering had to be given wholly tothe god, and was accordingly termed _kalil_ or "complete"; a part of thethank-offering, on the other hand, might be carried away by him who madeit. Birds, moreover, might constitute a thank-offering; they were notallowed when the offering was made for sin. Such at least was the rulein the later days of Phoenician ritual, to which belong the sacrificialtariffs that have been preserved. 

In these sacrificial tariffs no mention is made of human sacrifices, and, as M. Clermont-Ganneau has pointed out, the ram takes in them theplace of the man. But this was the result of the milder manners of anage when the Phoenicians had been brought into close contact with theGreeks. In the older days of Canaanitish history human sacrifice hadheld a foremost place in the ritual of Syria. It was the sacrifice ofthe firstborn son that was demanded in times of danger and trouble, orwhen the family was called upon to make a special atonement for sin. Thevictim was offered as a burnt sacrifice, which in Hebrew idiom waseuphemistically described as passing through the fire. 

Side by side with these human sacrifices were the abominations whichwere performed in the temples in honour of Ashtoreth. Women acted asprostitutes, and men who called themselves "dogs" foreswore theirmanhood. It was these sensualities practised in the name of religionwhich caused the iniquity of the Canaanites to become full. 

It is pleasanter to turn to such fragments of Canaanitish mythology andcosmological speculation as have come down to us. Unfortunately most ofit belongs in its present form to the late days of Greek and Romandomination, when an attempt was made to fuse the disjointed legends ofthe various Phoenician states into a connected whole, and to presentthem to Greek readers under a philosophical guise. How much, therefore, of the strange cosmogony and history of the gods recorded by Philon ofGebal really goes back to the patriarchal epoch of Palestine, and howmuch of it is of later growth, it is now impossible to say. In the main, however, it is of ancient date. 

This is shown by the fact that a good deal of it has been borroweddirectly or indirectly from Babylonia. How this could have happened hasbeen explained by the Tel el-Amarna tablets. It was while Canaan wasunder the influence of Babylonian culture and Babylonian government thatthe myths and traditions of Babylonia made their way to the West. Amongthe tablets are portions of Babylonian legends, one of which has beencarefully annotated by the Egyptian or Canaanite scribe. It is the storyof the queen of Hades, who had been asked by the gods to a feast theyhad made in the heavens. Unable or unwilling to ascend to it, thegoddess sent her servant the plague-demon, but with the result thatNergal was commissioned to descend to Hades and destroy its mistress. The fourteen gates of the infernal world, each with its attendantwarder, were opened before him, and at last he seized the queen by thehair, dragging her to the ground, and threatening to cut off her head. But Eris-kigal, the queen of Hades, made a successful appeal for mercy;she became the wife of Nergal, and he the lord of the tomb. 

Another legend was an endeavour to account for the origin of death. Adapa or Adama, the first man, who had been created by Ea, was fishingone day in the deep sea, when he broke the wings of the south wind. Thesouth wind flew to complain to Anu in heaven, and Anu ordered theculprit to appear before him. But Adapa was instructed by Ea how to act. Clad in a garment of mourning, he won the hearts of the two guardians ofthe gate of heaven, the gods Tammuz and Gis-zida ("the firmly-fixedpost"), so that they pleaded for him before Anu. Food and water wereoffered him, but he refused them for fear that they might be the foodand water of death. Oil only for anointing and clothing did he accept. "Then Anu looked upon him and raised his voice in lamentation: 'O Adapa, wherefore atest thou not, wherefore didst thou not drink? The gift oflife cannot now be thine. '" Though "a sinful man" had been permitted "tobehold the innermost parts of heaven and earth, " he had rejected thefood and water of life, and death henceforth was the lot of mankind. 

It is curious that the commencement of this legend, the latter portionof which has been found at Tel el-Amarna, had been brought to theBritish Museum from the ruins of the library of Nineveh many years ago. But until the discovery of the conclusion, its meaning and characterwere indecipherable. The copy made for the library of Nineveh was a lateedition of the text which had been carried from Babylonia to the banksof the Nile eight hundred years before, and the fact emphasizes oncemore the Babylonian character of the culture and literature possessed byPalestine in the Patriarchal Age. 

We need not wonder, therefore, if it is to Babylonia that thecosmological legends and beliefs of Phoenicia plainly point. The waterychaos out of which the world was created, the divine hierarchies, onepair of deities proceeding from another and an older pair, or thevictory of Kronos over the dragon Ophioneus, are among the indicationsof their Babylonian origin. But far more important than these echoes ofBabylonian mythology in the legendary lore of Phoenicia is the closerelationship that exists between the traditions of Babylonia and theearlier chapters of Genesis. As is now well known, the Babylonianaccount of the Deluge agrees even in details with that which we find inthe Bible, though the polytheism of Chaldća is there replaced by anuncompromising monotheism, and there are little touches, like thesubstitution of an "ark" for the Babylonian "ship, " which show that thenarrative has been transported to Palestine. Equally Babylonian inorigin is the history of the Tower of Babel, while two of the rivers ofEden are the Tigris and Euphrates, and Eden itself is the Edin or"Plain" of Babylonia. 

Not so long ago it was the fashion to declare that such coincidencesbetween Babylonian and Hebrew literature could be due only to the longsojourn of the Jews in Babylonia during the twenty years of the Exile. But we now know that the traditions and legends of Babylonia werealready known in Canaan before the Israelites had entered the PromisedLand. It was not needful for the Hebrew writer to go to Chaldća in orderthat he might learn them; when Moses was born they were already currentboth in Palestine and on the banks of the Nile. The Babylonian colouringof the early chapters of Genesis is just what archaeology would teach usto expect it would have been, had the Pentateuch been of the age towhich it lays claim. 

Here and there indeed there are passages which must be of that age, andof none other. When in the tenth chapter of Genesis Canaan is made thebrother of Cush and Mizraim, of Ethiopia and Egypt, we are carried backat once to the days when Palestine was an Egyptian province. Thestatement is applicable to no other age. Geographically Canaan layoutside the southern zone to which Egypt and Ethiopia belonged, exceptduring the epoch of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties, when allthree were alike portions of a single empire. With the fall of thatempire the statement ceased to be correct or even conceivable. After theera of the Israelitish conquest Canaan and Egypt were separated one fromthe other, not to be again united save for a brief space towards theclose of the Jewish monarchy. Palestine henceforth belonged to Asia, notto Africa, to the middle zone, that is to say, which was given over tothe sons of Shem. 

There is yet another passage in the same chapter of Genesis which takesus back to the Patriarchal Age of Palestine. It is the reference toNimrod, the son of Cush, the beginning of whose kingdom was Babel andErech, and Accad and Calneh in the land of Shinar, and who was sofamiliar a figure in the West that a proverb was current thereconcerning his prowess in the chase. Here again we are carried to a datewhen the Kassite kings of Babylonia held rule in Canaan, or led thithertheir armies, and when the Babylonians were called, as they are in theTel el-Amarna tablets, the Kassi or sons of Cush. Nimrod himself may bethe Kassite monarch Nazi-Murudas. The cuneiform texts of the period showthat the names borne by the Kassite kings were strangely abbreviated bytheir subjects; even in Babylonia, Kasbe and Sagarta-Suria, forinstance, being written for Kasbeias and Sagarakti-Suryas, the latter ofwhich even appears as Sakti-Surias, while Nazi-Murudas itself is foundunder the form of Nazi-Rattas. Similarly Duri-galzu and Kurigalzu takethe place of Dur-Kurigalzi. There is no reason, therefore, whyNazi-Murudas should not have been familiarly known as Na-Muruda, moreespecially in distant Canaan. 

Indeed we can almost fix the date to which the lifetime of Nimrod mustbe assigned. We are told that out of his kingdom "one went forth intoAssyria, " and there "builded" Nineveh and Calah, The cuneiforminscriptions have informed us who this builder of Calah was. He wasShalmaneser I. , who was also the restorer of Nineveh and its temples, and who is stated by Sennacherib to have reigned six hundred yearsbefore himself. Such a date would coincide with the reign of Ramses II. , the Pharaoh of the Oppression, as well as with the birth-time of Moses. It represents a period when the influence of Babylonia had not yetpassed away from Canaan, and when there was still intercourse betweenthe East and the West. Ramses claims to have overcome both Assyria andShinar, and though the Shinar he means was the Shinar of Mesopotamia andnot Chaldća, it lay within the limits of Babylonian control. The reignof Ramses II. Is the latest period down to which, with our presentknowledge, we can regard the old influence of Babylonia in Canaan asstill continuing, and it is equally the period to which, if we are tolisten to the traditional teaching of the Church, the writer of thePentateuch belonged. The voice of archaeology is thus in agreement withthat of authority, and here as elsewhere true science declares herselfthe handmaid of the Catholic Church. 

INDEX

 (deity), 256

Abel (place), 153

Abel-mizraim, 201

Abiliya, 126

Abimelech, 123, 127, 128, 129

Abram (in Babylonian), 169

Achshaph or Ekdippa, 211, 219, 229

Acre (Akku), 134, 154, 155, 157, 229, 235

Adai, 142

Adami, 219, 228

Adapa or Adama, 265

Addar, 153

Adon, 131

Adoni-zedek, 75

Adullam, 212, 221

Ahitub, 154

Ahmes I. , 88, 94

Aia, 207

Ajalon, 137, 142

Akizzi, 131

Akkad, 55

Alasiya, 67, 107, 157, 223

'Aluna or 'Arna, 97, 228

Amalekites, 26, 35, 40, 41, 53

Amanus, 62, 107

Amber, 85, 242

Amenôphis II. , 106, 110

Amenôphis III. , 111, 112, 135

Amenôphis IV. Or Khu-n-Aten, 71, 86, 112 _et seq. _

Ammi, 22, 64, 206

Ammi-anshi, 63, 206

Ammi-satana, 63

Ammiya, 131

Ammon, 22, 36, 38, 64, 179

Ammunira, 124

Amon (god), 87, 99, 110, 114

Amon-apt, 128, 152

Amorites, 28, 35, 36, 38, 40, 41, 42, 43 _et seq. _, 56, 58, 65, 100, 110, 112, 119, 124 _et seq. _, 152, 160, 163, 186, 239

Amorites, god of, 257

Amraphel, 64, 66, 67

Anab, 221

Anaharath, 229

Anakim, 36, 37

Anat, 82, 232, 257

Anu, 82, 169, 257, 259, 260

Anugas or Nukhasse, 98, 102, 107, 110

Aphekah, 239

Apphadana, 111

Aqabah, Gulf of, 26, 108

Aram-Naharaim (Mitanni), 72, 85, 86, 94, 101, 103, 108, 111, 131, 138, 149, 157, 163

Ararat, 46

Argob, 23

_Ariel_, 213

Arioch (_see_ Eri-Aku), 63, 168

Arisu, 162

Arka, 26, 52, 128, 131

Article, definite, 248

Arvad, 52, 85, 100, 106, 129

Arzai, 143

Asher, 219

Ashęrah, 191, 255

Ashiti-Khaur, 260

Ashkelon, 141, 150, 160, 236

Ashtaroth-Karnaim, 35, 36, 133, 153, 161, 228

Ashtoreth, 168, 253 _et seq. _, 264

Asphalt, 70

Assyria, 99, 105, 153, 155, 157

Aten-Ra, 113

Augustine, St. , 41

Aupa (_see_ Ube), 132

Avim, 54

Ayâb, 152, 153

Aziru, 124 _et seq. _, 129, 131, 133

Baal, 253

Baalbek, 24

Babylon, 66, 67, 91, 102, 105

Babylonia, 55, 62, 72, 83, 100, 111, 124, 138, 142, 143

Babylonians, 87, 89

Balaam, 22, 64, 154

Bashan, 23, 35, 36, 38, 64, 95, 112, 133

Bedad, 257

Beduin, 26, 35, 53, 95, 124, 127, 133, 156, 209, 210

Beer-sheba, 180, 182, 183, 189

Bek'a, 25

Belshazzar, 175

Bene-berak, 135

Beth-anath, 157, 160, 164, 232, 235, 236, 239

Beth-el, 152, 153, 157, 190 _et seq. _, 196, 212, 222, 232, 235

Bethels, 261 _et seq. _

Beth-lehem, 39, 75, 82, 197, 260

Beth-On, 192

Beth-Sannah, 143

Bethuel, 125

Beth-Ya, 232

Beya or Bâya, 151

Beyrout, 25, 124, 126, 164, 210, 211, 217

Bin-sumya, 136

Biridasyi, 133

Biridî, 134, 135

Bliss, Mr. , 85, 119

Bosra, 133

Botanical Gardens at Thebes, 102

Burna-buryas, 111, 153 _et seq. _

Buzruna, 133

Calah, 269

Camel, 170

Cana, 222

Canaan, 41 _et seq. _, 154, 157, 267; art of, 243 _et seq. _; merchantsin, 154, 243

Canaanite words, 216, 245-8

Canaanites, 41, 106

Carchemish, 44, 45, 62, 66, 86, 99, 107

Carmel of Judah, 72, 146, 157, 160, 232, 235, 236, 239

Carmel, Mount, 29, 164, 229, 236, 238, 262

Cedars, 19

Chedor-laomer, 35, 64, 168

Chimham, 157, 235

Chinneroth, 228

Chiun, 258

Circumcision, 176

Copper, 57, 62, 85, 109, 242

Creation legends, 267

Cush, 91, 149, 268

Cyprus, 57, 60, 85, 98, 103, 157, 160

Dagon, 82, 169, 259

Damascus, 24, 35, 65, 98, 133, 176, 227, 236

Dapul, 160, 220, 236

Dead Sea, 21, 22, 74, 165, 177

Debir, 80, 221, 236, 237, 239

Deluge story, 267

Dor, 26

Dothan, 227

Doughty, Mr. , 262

Dragoman, 146

Dudu, 125

Ea, 87

Ebed-Asherah, 89, 126 _et seq. _

Ebed-Sullim, 129

Ebed-Tob, 51, 71, 72, 75, 78, 88, 118, 121, 135, _et seq. _, 155, 174

_Ebyôn_, 245

Edom, town of, 153; god, 229, 256

Edomites, 39, 53, 108, 206, 248

Ekron, 231

Elam, 56, 63, 88

Elephants, 101

Eliezer, 176

Elimelech, 140, 148

Elimelech of Tyre, 129

Ellasar (Larsa), 64, 69

El-rabi-Hor, 131

Emim, 36, 37, 38

En-athon, 136, 154

En-gedi, 40

En-han-nabi, 153

Ephraim, Mount, 30; sons of, 202, 231

Eri-Aku (Arioch), 63, 65 _et seq. _

Eta-gama (or Aidhu-gama), 129, 131, 132, 133

Ethiopia, 142, 149

Euphrates, 96, 101

Fenkhu, 104, 226

_Galeed_, 192

Gath, 137, 143, 144, 203, 230, 231

Gath-Carmel, 138, 143, 146, 148, 231

Hadad, 82, 257

Hadad-dan, 151

Hadad-el, 143

Hadad-Rimmon, 257

Hadad-sum, 250

Hadashah, 74, 160, 165, 236, 238, 239, 241

Hamath, 43, 53, 164, 211, 219, 227, 239

Harankal, 98, 110

Har-el, 77, 184, 231

Harran, 73, 166, 259

Havilah, 62

Hazezon-tamar, 40, 50, 179

Hazor, 94, 129, 211, 219, 228

Heber, 147

Hebrew language, 246 _et seq. _; words in tablets, 247

Hebron, 36, 37, 43, 46, 93, 146, 148, 164, 172, 185 _et seq. _, 197, 201, 232, 239

_Hękâl_, etymology of, 73, 249

_Hękalim_, 231

Helkath, 232

Hermon, 18, 29, 52, 164, 239, 262

Herodotus, 43, 262

_Hin_, 245

Gath-Rimmon, 135

_Gaulos_, 245

Gaza, 94, 96, 110, 143, 144, 150, 157, 181, 215, 236, 239

Gaza or Khazi, 134, 226

Gebal, 43, 53, 85, 89, 94, 123 _et seq. _, 152, 211, 217

Gebel Usdum, 178

Gerar, 181, 189

Gezer, 94, 134, 136, 141, 144, 151

Gibeah, 232

Gilu-khipa, 111

Girgashites, 43, 51

Goshen, 201

Gudea, 62, 70

Hittites, 41, 43, 46 _et seq. _, 86, 89, 102, 104, 107, 110, 118, 124, 131, 156, 157, 163, 185, 209, 251

Hivites, 43, 52

Horites, 35, 39, 52, 64

Horus, 92

Hui, 156

Hyksos, 88, 91 _et seq. _, 170, 201

Ibleam, 229

Ihem or Iha (_see_ Yahem), 96, 239

Ilgi, 129

Inuam, 98, 110, 133, 157, 235, 236

Ionian, 127

_'Ir_, 249

Ir-Shemesh, 238

Iron, 84, 224, 242

Isaiah, 74

Israel, meaning of name, 194

Istar (Ashtoreth), 87, 168, 253

Ituraea, 23

Jabbok, 193

Jachin and Boaz, 161, 262

Jacob-el, 160, 164, 194, 202, 232, 236, 239

Jacob's well, 195

Jebusites, 43, 51

Jehovah-jireh, 77

Jephthah-Hadad, 122, 139

Jerusalem (_see_ Salem), 29, 43, 50, 51, 71, 75, 77 _et seq. _, 88, 142, 143, 160, 165, 173, 236, 239; etymology of name, 73

Joktheel, 239

Joppa, 150, 151, 213, 230

Jordan, 21, 74, 212, 237, 239

Joseph, 200 _et seq. _

Joseph-el, 202, 230

Kadesh on the Orontes, 43, 96, 98, 104, 111, 131, 132, 157, 163, 209, 217, 226

Kadesh-barnea, 35, 39, 58, 64, 180

Kadmonites, 63, 206

Kaft, 83, 85

Kana'an, 41, 157

Kanneh, 132

Kassites, 88, 147, 149, 269

Kedesh (goddess), 256

Keilah, 71, 144, 145, 146

Kenites, 224

Khabiri, 51, 122, 138, 141, 143, 144, 146 _et seq. _

Khalunni, 133

Khammurabi, 62, 66

Khani, 125

Khata, 44

Khata-sil, 158

Khatip (Hotep), 125, 126

Khayapa, 127

Khazi (Gaza), 134

Khu-n-Aten (Amenôphis IV. ), 71, 113 _et seq. _, 120

_Kikar_, 72, 76, 142

Kinanat, 132

Kinza, 129

Kiriathaim, 35, 38

Kirjath-Sepher, 81, 161, 220, 221

Kishion, 228

Kudur-Lagamar (Chedor-lao-mer), 65, 69

Kudur-Mabug, 65, 69

Kumidi (or Kamdu), 126, 129, 133, 157, 164, 217, 227, 235, 239

Kuri-galzu, 155

Labai, 51, 134 _et seq. _, 141, 143, 145

Lachish, 85, 119, 122, 139, 141, 148

Lagamar, 69

Laish, 25, 228

Lakhmu, 82, 260

Larsa (Ellasar), 65, 66, 69

Lebanon, 27, 60, 62, 101, 262

Levi-el, 239

Libnah, 164, 239

Lot, 65

Lotan (Lutennu), 95, 150, 156, 206

Ma'arath, 232

Mabug, 65

Machpelah, 187, 188

Mad-ga, 70

Mafkat (Sinai), 57, 109

Magan (Sinai), 57, 60

Magoras, 164, 210, 217, 238

Malachite, 109, 110

Malchiel, 135 _et seq. _, 141, 143, 144, 146, 152

Manahath, 150

Max Müller, Dr. W. , 81, 160, 206, 221

Mearah, 217

Megiddo, 30, 31, 94, 97 _et seq. _, 134, 135, 150, 212, 226, 257

Melchizedek, 71 _et seq. _, 173

Melkarth, 43

Meneptah, 110, 161, 162, 181

Merom, 160, 227, 236

Midian, 57, 109

Migdol, 153, 155, 165, 230, 239

Misheal, 229

Misi, 95

Mitanni (Aram-Naharaim), 86, 89, 108, 111, 124, 150, 160

Miya-Riya (Meri-Ra), 143

Mizraim, 42

Moab, 21, 36, 38, 53, 153, 165, 180, 237

_Mohar, Travels of a_, 84, 189, 204 _et seq. _, 209

Moloch, 82, 258

Moriah, 77, 184 _et seq. _

Moses, 267

Mosheh, 153

Most High God, 173

Musikhuna, 150

Mut-Hadad, 152

Na'amah, 231

Namya-yitsa, 129, 133, 134

Naram-Sin, 57, 59, 60, 168

Nazi-Murudas, 269

Nebo, 82, 257

Negela, 26

Ni, 101, 106, 125, 131, 132

Nimrod, 91, 269

Nin-ip, 79, 144, 174, 256, 258;Bit, 127, 144

Nukhasse (Anugas), 98, 102, 107, 116, 125, 132

On, 25, 92, 191

Pa-Hor, 126

Pakhanate, 128

Palasa, 131

Pa-ur, 142, 144

Pella, 157, 228, 235

Penuel, or Peniel, 193, 262

Perizzites, 20, 52, 162

Pethor, 22, 64

Petrie, Prof. , 48, 62, 113, 120

Philistines, 17, 54, 163, 182

Phoenicia, 25, 85, 99, 152, 191

Phoenician alphabet, 251

Phoenicians, 33, 177

Pinches, Mr. , 70, 231

Pu-Hadad, 150

Purple-dye, 84, 85

Qana or Qina, 97

Qatna, 107, 132

Ra, 92

Rabbah, 78, 143, 144, 146, 232

Ramses II. , 21, 45, 74, 81, 110, 157 _et seq. _, 161, 204, 234, 269

Ramses III. , 21, 53, 74, 109, 110, 162 _et seq. _, 181, 235, 240

Raphia, 222

Raphon, 37, 228

Rehob, 222, 231

Rehoboth, 189, 223

Rephaim, 35, 36, 37, 48, 228

Resheph, 21, 237, 251, 256

Rethpana, Lake of, 21, 165, 237, 239

Rianap, 150

Rib-Hadad, 89, 123 _et seq. _, 152

Rimmon, 82, 257

Rimmon-nirari, 116

Rowlands, Dr. , 39, 180

Sacrifice of the firstborn, 183, 264

Sacrifices, 263

Salem or Shalem (Jerusalem), 71, 74, 160, 165, 173, 239

Salim (god), 73, 75, 79, 144, 174

Samas-akh-iddin, 116

Sangar (_see_ Singara), 68, 102

Saratum or Zurata, 135, 154

Sarepta, 211

Sardinians, 95, 127

Sargon of Akkad, 49, 55, 87, 167

Scheil, Dr. , 121

Schumacher, Dr. , 161

Seal-cylinders, 60, 83, 120, 252

Seir, 39, 53, 108, 138, 146

Sela, 160, 236, 239

Set, 251

Seti I. , 41, 110, 157, 235

Seti or Suta, 134, 138

Shalem or Salem, 195

Shasu (_see_ Beduin), 40, 41, 104

Shaveh, 71

Shechem, 29, 30, 49, 134, 160, 170, 195, 198, 211, 219

Shenir, 28, 59, 164, 239

Shiloh, 30

Shimron, 227

Shimron-meron, 220

Shinab, 70

Shinar, 67, 68, 269

Ships, 85, 247

Shunem, 135, 229

Sibti-Hadad, 152

Siddim, 35, 40, 64, 177, 178

Sidon, 42, 94, 126, 128, 129, 164, 211, 250

Sihon, 50

Sin (city), 52

Sin (god), 59, 87, 259

Sinai, 57, 58, 100, 109, 160, 259

Singara (_see_ Sangar), 67, 108, 157. 

Sinuhit, 63, 205 _et seq. _

Sirah, 232

Sirion, 28

Sitti or Sati, 40

Socho, 160, 230, 236

Sodom, 65, 76, 172, 177, 237

Sonzar, 132

Stone of Job, 161

Subari, 87

Subsalla, 62

Sum-Adda, 154

Sumer, 55, 67

Sumerian, 249

Suri, 87

Sutarna, 111, 150

Sutatna or Zid-athon, 154, 155

Sutekh, 92

Sute, 40, 95, 127, 134, 143

Su-yardata or Su-ardatum, 137, 144, 145

Su-yarzana, 134

Taanach, 97, 150, 229

Tadu-khipa, 112

Tagi, 137, 143, 146

Takhis, 100, 110, 211, 220

Tamar (Tumur), 150

Tammuz, 262

Tanit, 194, 260

Tapun, 232

Tarqu, 222

_Tebah_, 245

Teie, 112, 120

Tel el-Amarna, 120 _et seq. _

Tel-loh, 61

Temple, 262

Terebinth, 19

Thahash, 100, 220

Thothmes II. , 94, 101

Thothmes III. , 36, 44, 53, 67, 78, 83, 94 _et seq. _, 110, 146, 208, 224, 242

Thothmes IV. , 110

Tibhath, 217, 227

Tidal, 64, 70

Tidanum, 59, 62

Timnah, 220

Tithes, 175

Tomkins, Mr. , 37, 82

Tree, sacred, 182

Trumbull, Dr. , 39, 180

Tunip, 99, 104, 107, 111, 125 _et seq. _, 133

Turbazu, 122, 138

Tusratta, 112

Tut-ankh-Amon, 156

Tyre, 43, 85, 94, 123, 127, 129, 157, 162, 211, 218, 235, 244, 262

Ube or Ubi, 132, 216, 222

Ugarit, 106, 236

Ur, 65, 166

_Uru_, 73, 77

Usu, 128, 157, 211, 218, 235

Winckler, Dr. , 78

Yabitiri, 150

Yabni-el, 122

Yahem (_see_ Ihem), 230

Yamutbal, 65, 69

Yankhamu, 146, 151

Yapa-Hadad, 127

Yapakhi, 134

Yasdata, 135

Yerzeh, 150, 160, 230, 236

Yidya, 150

Yikhbil-Khamu, 140, 144

Yisyara, 121

Zahi, 83, 103

Zakkal, 163

Zamzummim, 36, 38

_Zedek_, 75

Zelah, 122, 139, 148, 232

Zelem, 258

Zemar, 26, 52, 100, 123, 126 _et seq. _, 152

Zephath, 232

Zimmern, Dr. , 79

Zimrida or Zimridi, 121, 122, 123, 127, 128, 129, 130, 139

Zinzar, 132

Zion, 197

Zippor, 162

Zoan, 93, 170, 198

Zorah, 137

Zurata or Saratum, 135, 154

Zuzim, 35