THE BABYLONIANS IN CANAAN AND THE EGYPTIAN CONQUEST

It is in the cuneiform records of Babylonia that we catch the first glimpse of the early history of Canaan. Babylonia was not yet united under a single head. From time to time some prince arose whose conquests allowed him to claim the imperial title of “king of Sumer and Akkad,” of Southern and Northern Babylonia, but the claim was never of long duration, and often it signified no more than a supremacy over the other rulers of the country.

It was while Babylonia was thus divided into more than one kingdom, that the first Chaldaean empire of which we know was formed by the military skill of Sargon of Akkad. Sargon was of Semitic origin, but his birth seems to have been obscure. His father, Itti-Bel, is not given the title of king, and the later legends which gathered around his name declared that his mother was of low degree, that his father he knew not, and that his father’s brother lived in the mountain-land. Born in secrecy in the city of Azu-pirani, “whence the elephants issue forth,” he was launched by his mother on the waters of the Euphrates in an ark of bulrushes daubed 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 Sargon became an agriculturist and gardener like his adopted father, till the goddess Istar beheld and loved him, and eventually gave him his kingdom and 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 a capital, which perhaps was Akkad near Sippara, and there founded a library stocked with books on clay and well provided with scribes. The standard works on astronomy and terrestrial omens were compiled for it, the first of which was translated into Greek by Berossos in days long subsequent. But it was as a conqueror and the founder of the first Semitic empire in Western Asia that posterity chiefly remembered him. He overthrew his rivals at home, and made himself master of Northern Babylonia. Then he marched into Elam on the east, and devastated its fields. Next he turned his attention to the west. Four times did he make his way to “the land of the Amorites,” until at last it was thoroughly subdued. His final campaign occupied three years. The countries “of the sea of the setting sun” acknowledged his dominion, and he united them with his former conquests into “a single” empire. On the shores of the Mediterranean he erected images of himself in token of his victories, and caused the spoil of Cyprus “to pass over into the countries of the sea.” Towards the end of his reign a revolt broke out against him in Babylonia, and he was besieged in the city of Akkad, but he “issued forth and smote” his enemies and utterly destroyed them. Then came his last campaign against Northern Mesopotamia, from which he returned with abundant 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 was against the land of Magan, the name under which Midian and the Sinaitic peninsula were known to the Babylonians. The result of it was the addition of Magan to his empire and the captivity of its king.

The copper mines of Magan, which are noticed in an early Babylonian geographical list, made its acquisition coveted alike by Babylonians and Egyptians. We find the Pharaohs of the third dynasty already establishing their garrisons and colonies of miners in the province of Mafkat, as they called it, and slaughtering the Beduin who interfered with them. The history of Naram-Sin shows that its conquest was equally an object of the Babylonian monarchs at the very outset of their history. But whereas the road from Egypt to Sinai was short and easy, that from Babylonia was long and difficult. Before a Babylonian army could march into the peninsula it was needful that Syria should be secure in the rear. The conquest of Palestine, in fact, was necessary before the copper mines of Sinai could fall into Babylonian hands.

The consolidation of Sargon’s empire in the west, therefore, was needful before the invasion of the country of Magan could take place, and the invasion accordingly was reserved for Naram-Sin to make. The father had prepared the way; the son obtained the great prize the source of the copper 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 the ruling population in the country, but also that they must have extended far to the south. The “land of the Amorites” formed the basis and starting-point for the expedition of Naram-Sin into Magan; it must, therefore, have reached to the southern border of Palestine, if not even farther. The road trodden by his forces would have been the same as that which was afterwards traversed by Chedor-laomer, and would have led him through Kadesh-barnea. Is it possible that the Amorites were already in possession of the mountain-block within which Kadesh stood, and that this was their extreme limit to the south?

There were other names by which Palestine and Syria were known to the early Babylonians, besides the general title of “the land of the Amorites.” One of these was Tidanum or Tidnum; another was Sanir or Shenir. There was yet another, the reading of which is uncertain, though it may be Khidhi or Titi.

Mr. Boscawen has pointed out a coincidence that is at least worthy of attention. The first Babylonian monarch who penetrated into the peninsula of Sinai bore a name compounded with that of the Moon-god, which thus bears witness to a special veneration for that deity. Now the name of Mount Sinai is similarly derived from that of the Babylonian Moon-god Sin. It was the high place where the god must have been adored from early times under his Babylonian name. It thus points to Babylonian influence, if not to the presence of Babylonians on the spot. Can it have been that the mountain whereon the God of Israel afterwards revealed Himself to Moses was dedicated to the Moon-god of Babylon by Naram-Sin the Chaldaen conqueror?

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

How long Syria remained a part of the empire of Sargon of Akkad we do not know. But it must have been long enough for the elements of Babylonian culture to be introduced into it. The small stone cylinders used by the Babylonians for sealing their clay documents thus became known to the peoples of the West. More than one has been found in Syria and Cyprus which go back to the age of Sargon and Naram-Sin, while there are numerous others which are more or less barbarous attempts on the part of the natives to imitate the Babylonian originals. But the imitations prove that with the fall of Sargon’s empire the use of seal-cylinders in Syria, and consequently of documents for sealing, did not disappear. That knowledge of writing, which was a characteristic of Babylonian civilization, must have been carried with it to the shores of the Mediterranean.

The seal-cylinders were engraved, sometimes with figures of men and gods, sometimes with symbols only. Very frequently lines of cuneiform writing were added, and a common formula gave the name of the owner of the seal, along with those of his father and of the deity whom he worshipped. One of the seal-cylinders found in Cyprus describes the owner as an adorer of “the god Naram-Sin.” It is true that its workmanship shows it to belong to a much later date than the age of Naram-Sin himself, but the legend equally shows that the name of the conqueror of Magan was still remembered in the West. Another cylinder discovered in the Lebanon mentions “the gods of the Amorite,” while a third from the same locality bears the inscription: “Multal-ili, the son of Ili-isme-anni, the worshipper of the god Nin-si-zida.” The name of the god signified in the old pre-Semitic language of Chaldaea “the lord of the upright horn,” while it is worth notice that the names of the owner 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 again throw light on the history of Canaan. Somewhere about B.C. 2700, a high-priest was ruling in a city of Southern Babylonia, under the suzerainty 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. The excavations made here by M. de Sarzec have brought to light temples and palaces, collections of clay books and carved stone statues, which go back to the early days of Babylonian history. The larger and better part of the monuments belong to Gudea, who seems to have spent most of his life in building and restoring the sanctuaries of the gods. Diorite statues of the prince are now in the Louvre, and inscriptions upon them state that the stone out of which they were made was brought from the land 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 of drawing-board. Prof. Petrie has shown that the unit of measurement represented in it is the cubit of the pyramid-builders of Egypt.

The diorite of Sinai was not the only material which was imported into Babylonia for the buildings of Gudea. Beams of cedar and box were brought from Mount Amanus at the head of the Gulf of Antioch, blocks of stone were floated down the Euphrates from Barsip near Carchemish, gold-dust came from Melukhkha, the “salt” desert to the east of Egypt which the Old Testament calls Havilah; copper was conveyed from the north of Arabia, limestone from the Lebanon ("the mountains of Tidanum"), and another kind of stone from Subsalla in the mountains of the Amorite land. Before beams of wood and blocks of stone could thus be brought from the distant West, it was necessary that trade between Babylonia and the countries of the Mediterranean should have long been organized, that the roads throughout Western Asia should have been good and numerous, and that Babylonian influence should have been extended far and wide. The conquests of Sargon and Naram-Sin had borne fruit in the commerce that had followed upon them.

Once more the curtain falls, and Canaan is hidden for a while out of our sight. Babylonia has become a united kingdom with its capital and centre at Babylon. Khammurabi (B.C. 2356-2301) has succeeded in shaking off the suzerainty of Elam, in overthrowing his rival Eri-Aku, king of Larsa, with his Elamite allies, and in constituting himself sole monarch of Babylonia. His family seems to have been in part, if not wholly, of South Arabian extraction. Their names are Arabian rather than Babylonian, and the Babylonian scribes found a difficulty in transcribing them correctly. But once in the possession of the Babylonian throne, they became thoroughly national, and under Khammurabi the 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 be paramount in Palestine. Even the name of the king is an indication of his connection with the West. Neither of the elements of which it is composed belonged to the Babylonian language. The first of them, Ammi, was explained by the Babylonian philologists as meaning “a family,” but it is more probable that it represents the name of a god. We find it in the proper names both of Southern and of Northwestern Arabia. The early Minsaean inscriptions of Southern Arabia contain names like Ammi-karib, Ammi-zadiqa, and Ammi-zaduq, the last of which is identical with that of Ammi-zaduq, the son and successor of Ammi-satana. The Egyptian Sinuhit, who in the time of the twelfth dynasty fled, like Moses, for his life from the court of the Pharaoh to the Kadmonites east of the Jordan, found protection among them at the hands of their chieftain Ammu-anshi. The Ammonites themselves were the “sons of Ammi,” and in numerous Hebrew names we find that of the god. Ammi-el, Ammi-nadab, and Ammi-shaddai are mentioned in the Old Testament, the Assyrian inscriptions tell us of Ammi-nadab the king of Ammon, and it is possible that even the name of Balaam, the Aramaean seer, may be compounded with that of the god. At all 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 the literal rendering of the Hebrew words.

Ammi-satana was not the first of his line whose authority had been acknowledged in Palestine. The inscription in which he records the fact is but a confirmation of what had been long known to us from the Book of Genesis. There we read how Chedor-laomer, the king of Elam, with the three vassal princes, Arioch of Ellasar, Amraphel of Shinar, and Tidal of Goyyim invaded Canaan, and how the kings of the vale of Siddim with its pits of asphalt became their tributaries. For thirteen years they remained submissive and then rebelled. Thereupon the Babylonian army again marched to the west. Bashan and the eastern bank of the Jordan were subjugated, the Horites in Mount Seir were smitten, and the invaders then turned back through Kadesh-barnea, overthrowing the Amalekites and the Amorites on their way. Then came the battle in the vale of Siddim, which ended in the defeat of the Canaanites, the death of 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 effect his rescue that the patriarch armed his followers and started in pursuit of the conquerors. Near Damascus he overtook them, and falling upon them by 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 of Chaldea the name signified “servant of the Moon-god.” The king is well known to us from contemporaneous inscriptions. Besides the inscribed bricks which have come from the temple of the Moon-god which he enlarged in the city of Ur, there are numerous contract tablets that are dated in his 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 the borders of Elam and Babylonia. But this is not all. He further gives Kudur-Mabug the title of “father of the Amorite land.” What this title exactly means it is difficult to say; one thing, however, is certain, Kudur-Mabug must have exercised some kind of power and authority in the distant West.

His name, too, is remarkable. Names compounded with Kudur, “a servant,” were common in the Elamite language, the second element of the name being 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 an Elamite divinity. It was, on the contrary, a Mesopotamian deity from whom the town of Mabug near Carchemish, called Bambyke by the Greeks, and assimilated by the Arabs to their Membij, “a source,” derived its name. Can it be from this Syrian deity that the father of Arioch received his name?

The capital of Arioch or Eri-Aku was Larsa, the city of the Sun-god, now called Senkereh. With the help of his Elamite kindred, he extended his power from thence over the greater part of Southern Babylonia. The old city of Ur, once the seat of the dominant dynasty of Chaldaean kings, formed part of his dominions; Nipur, now Niffer, fell into his hands like the seaport Eridu on the shores of the Persian Gulf, and in one of his inscriptions he celebrates his conquest of “the ancient city of Erech.” On the day of its capture he erected in gratitude a temple to his 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 drove the Elamite forces out of the land. Eri-Aku was attacked and defeated, and his cities fell into the hands of the conqueror. Khammurabi became sole king of Babylonia, which from henceforth obeyed but a single sceptre.

Are we to see in the Amraphel of Genesis the Khammurabi of the cuneiform inscriptions? The difference in the names seems to make it impossible. Moreover, Amraphel, we are told, was king of Shinar, and it is not certain that the Shinar of the fourteenth chapter of Genesis was that part of Babylonia of which Babylon was the capital. This, in fact, was the northern division of the country, and if we are to identify the Shinar of scripture with the Sumer of the monuments, as Assyriologists have agreed to do, Shinar would have been its southern half. It is true that in the later days of Hebrew history Shinar denoted the whole plain of Chaldaea, including the city of Babylon, but this may have been an extension of the meaning of the name similar to that of which Canaan is an instance.

Unless Sumer and Shinar are the same words, outside the Old Testament there is only one Shinar known to ancient geography. That was in Mesopotamia. The Greek geographers called it Singara (now Sinjar), an oasis in the midst of deserts, and formed by an isolated mountain tract abounding in springs. It is already mentioned in the annals of the Egyptian conqueror Thothmes iii. In his thirty-third year (B.C. 1470), the king of Sangar sent him tribute consisting of lapis-lazuli “of Babylon,” and of various objects carved out of it. From Sangar also horses were exported into Egypt, and in one of the Tel el-Amarna letters, the king of Alasiya in Northern Syria writes to the Pharaoh, “Do not set me with the king of the Hittites and the king of Sankhar; whatever gifts they have sent to me I will restore to thee twofold.” In hieroglyphic and cuneiform spelling, Sangar and Sankhar are the exact equivalents of the Hebrew Shinar.

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

Whatever the explanation may be, it is clear that the position of the kingdom of Amraphel is by no means so easily determined as has hitherto been supposed. It may be Sumer or Southern Babylonia; it may be Northern Babylonia with its capital Babylon; or again, it may be the Mesopotamian oasis of Sinjar. Until we find the name of Amraphel in the cuneiform texts it is impossible to attain certainty.

There is one fact, however, which seems to indicate that it really is either Sumer or Northern Babylonia that is meant. The narrative of Chedor-laomer’s campaign begins with the words that it took place “in the time of Amraphel, king of Shinar.” Chedor-laomer the Elamite was the leader 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 of one of the subject kings. That the narrative has been taken from the Babylonian annals there is little room for doubt, and consequently it would follow from the dating that Amraphel was a Babylonian prince, perhaps that he was the ruler of the city which, from the days of Khammurabi onward, became the capital of the country. In that case we should have to find some way of explaining the difference between the Hebrew and the Babylonian forms of the royal name.

Lagamar or Lagamer, written Laomer in Hebrew, was one of the principal deities of Elam, and the Babylonians made him a son of their own water-god Ea. The Elamite king Chedor-laomer, or Kudur-Lagamar, as his name was written in his own language, must have been related to the Elamite prince Kudur-Mabug, whose son Arioch was a subject-ally of the Elamite monarch. Possibly they were brothers, the younger brother receiving as his share of power the title of “father” not “king” of Yamutbal and the land of the Amorites. At any rate it is a son of Kudur-Mabug and not of the Elamite sovereign who receives a principality in Babylonia.

In the Book of Genesis Arioch is called “king of Ellasar.” But Ellasar is clearly the Larsa of the cuneiform inscriptions, perhaps with the word al, “city,” prefixed. Larsa, the modern Senkereh, was in Southern Babylonia, on the eastern bank of the Euphrates, not far from Erech, and to the north of Ur. Its king was virtually lord of Sumer, but he claimed to be lord also of the north. In his inscriptions Eri-Aku assumes the imperial title of “king of Sumer and Akkad,” of both divisions of Babylonia, and it may be that at one time the rival king of Babylon acknowledged his supremacy.

Who “Tidal king of Goyyim” may have been we cannot tell. Sir Henry Rawlinson has proposed to see in Goyyim a transformation of Gutium, the name by which Kurdistan was called in early Babylonia. Mr. Pinches has recently discovered a cuneiform tablet in which mention is made, not only of Eri-Aku and Kudur-Lagamar, but also of Tudkhul, and Tudkhul would be an exact transcription in Babylonian of the Hebrew Tidal. But the tablet is mutilated, and its relation to the narrative of Genesis is not yet clear. For the present, therefore, we must leave Tidal unexplained.

The name even of one of the Canaanite kings who were subdued by the Babylonian army has found its confirmation in a cuneiform inscription. This is the name of “Shinab, king of Admah.” We hear from Tiglath-pileser iii. of Sanibu, king of Ammon, and Sanibu and Shinab are one and the same. The old name of the king of Admah was thus perpetuated on the eastern side of the Jordan.

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

When Abram returned with the captives and spoil of Sodom, the new king came forth to meet him “at the valley of Shaveh, which is the king’s dale.” This was in the near neighbourhood of Jerusalem, as we gather from the history of Absalom (2 Sam. xvii. Accordingly we further read that at the same time “Melchizedek, king of Salem,” and “priest of the most High God,” “brought forth bread and wine,” and blessed the Hebrew conqueror, who thereupon gave him tithes of all the spoil.

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

Several of the most interesting of the Tel el-Amarna letters were written to the Pharaoh Amenophis iv. Khu-n-Aten by Ebed-Tob the king of Jerusalem. Not only is the name of Uru-salim or Jerusalem the only one in use, the city itself is already one of the most important fortresses of Canaan. It was the capital of a large district which extended southwards as far as Keilah and Karmel of Judah. It commanded the approach to the vale of Siddim, and in one of his letters Ebed-Tob speaks of having repaired the royal roads not only in the mountains, but also in the kikar or “plain” of Jordan (Gen. xii. The possession of Jerusalem was eagerly coveted by the enemies of Ebed-Tob, whom he calls also the enemies of the Egyptian king.

Now Ebed-Tob declares time after time that he is not an Egyptian governor, but a tributary ally and vassal of the Pharaoh, and that he had received his royal power, not by inheritance from his father or mother, but through the arm (or oracle) of “the Mighty King.” As “the Mighty King” is distinguished from the “great King” of Egypt, we must see in him the god worshipped by Ebed-Tob, the “Most High God” of Melchizedek, and the prototype of “the Mighty God” of Isaiah. It is this same mighty king, Ebed-Tob assures the Pharaoh in another letter, who will overthrow the navies of Babylonia and Aram-Naharaim.

Here, then, as late as the fifteenth century before our era we have a king 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 by inheritance; so far as his kingly office is concerned, he is like Melchizedek, without father and without mother. Between Ebed-Tob and Melchizedek there is more than analogy; there is a striking and unexpected resemblance. The description given of him by Ebed-Tob explains 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 no invention of the age of David; on the contrary, it goes back to the period of Babylonian intercourse with Canaan. It is written in the cuneiform documents Uru-Salim, “the city of Salim,” the god of peace. One of the lexical tablets from the library of Nineveh has long ago informed us that in one of the languages known to the Babylonians uru was the equivalent of the Babylonian alu, “a city,” and we now know that this language was that of Canaan. It would even seem that the word had originally been brought from Babylonia itself in the days when Babylonian writing and culture first penetrated to the West. In the Sumerian or pre-Semitic language of Chaldaea eri signified a “city,” and eri in the pronunciation of the Sémites became uru. Hence it was that Uru or Ur, the birthplace of Abraham, received its name at a time when it was the ruling city of Babylonia, and though the Semitic Babylonians themselves never adopted the word in common life it made its way to Canaan. The rise of the “city” in the west was part of that Babylonian civilization which was carried to the shores of the Mediterranean, and so the word which denoted it was borrowed from the old language of Chaldaea, like the word for “palace,” hekal, the Sumerian e-gal, or “Great House.” It is noteworthy that Harran, the resting-place of Abraham on his way from Ur to Palestine, the half-way house, as it were, between East and West, also derived its name from a Sumerian word which signified “the high-road.” Harran and Ur were two of the gifts which passed to Canaan from the speakers of the primaeval language of Chaldaea.

We can now understand why Melchizedek should have been called the “king of Salem.” His capital could be described either as Jeru-salem or as the city of Salem. And that it was often referred to as Salem simply is shown by the Egyptian monuments. One of the cities of Southern Palestine, the capture of which is represented by Ramses II. on the walls of the Ramesseum at Thebes, is Shalam or Salem, and “the district of Salem” is mentioned between “the country of Hadashah” (Josh. x and “the district of the Dead Sea” and “the Jordan,” in the list of the places which Ramses III. at Medinet Habu describes himself as having conquered in the same part of the world.

It may be that Isaiah is playing upon the old name of Jerusalem when he gives the Messiah the title of “Prince of Peace.” But in any case the fact that Salim, the god of peace, was the patron deity of Jerusalem, lends a special significance to Melchizedek’s treatment of Abram. The patriarch had returned in peace from an expedition in which he had overthrown the invaders of Canaan; he had restored peace to the country of the priest-king, and had driven away its enemies. The offering of bread and wine on the part of Melchizedek was a sign of freedom from the enemy and of gratitude to the deliverer, while the tithes paid by Abram were equally a token that the land was again at peace. The name of Salim, the god of peace, was under one form or another widely spread in the Semitic world. Salamanu, or Solomon, was the king of Moab in the time of Tiglath-pileser III.; the name of Shalmaneser of Assyria is written Sulman-asarid, “the god Sulman is chief,” in the cuneiform inscriptions; and one of the Tel el-Amarna letters was sent by Ebed-Sullim, “the servant of Sullim,” who was governor of Hazor. In one of 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. i.

In the time of the Israelitish conquest the king of Jerusalem was Adoni-zedek (Josh. . 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 it is therefore interesting to find the word actually employed in one of the letters of Ebed-Tob. He there says of the Pharaoh: “Behold, the king is righteous (zaduq) towards me.” What makes the occurrence of the word the more striking is that it was utterly unknown to the Babylonians. The root zadaq, “to be righteous,” did not exist in the Assyrian language.

There is yet another point in the history of the meeting between Abram and Melchizedek which must not be passed over. When the patriarch returned after smiting the invading army he was met outside Jerusalem not 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 the Most High God that the newly-appointed prince was to be found, rather than in the vale of Siddim. Does not this show that the king of Jerusalem already exercised that sovereignty over the surrounding district that Ebed-Tob did in the century before the Exodus? As we have seen, Ebed-Tob describes himself as repairing the roads in that very “Kikar,” or “plain,” in which Sodom and Gomorrha stood. It would seem then that the priest-king of the great fortress in the mountains was already acknowledged as the dominant Canaanitish ruler, and that the neighbouring princes had to pay him homage when they first received the crown. This would be an additional reason for the tithes given to him by Abram.

Long after the defeat of Chedor-laomer and his allies, if we are to accept the traditional belief, Abraham was again destined to visit Jerusalem. But he had ceased to be “Abram the Hebrew,” the confederate of the Amorite chieftains in the plain of Mamre, and had become Abraham the father of the promised seed. Isaac had been born to him, and he was called upon to sacrifice his first-born son.

The place of sacrifice was upon one of the mountains in the land of Moriah. There at the last moment the hand of the father was stayed, and a ram was substituted for the human victim. “And Abraham called the name of that place Yahveh-yireh; as it is said to this day, In the mount of the Lord it shall be seen.” According to the Hebrew text of the Chronicles (2 Chron. ii, this mount of the Lord where Abraham’s sacrifice was offered was the temple-mount at Jerusalem. The proverb quoted in Genesis seems to indicate the same fact. Moreover, the distance of the mountain from Beer-sheba three days’ journey would be also the distance of Jerusalem from Abraham’s starting-place.

It is even possible that in the name of Yahveh-yireh we have a play upon the 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 (xlii the altar that stood upon it is called Har-el, “the mountain of God.” The term reminds us of Babylonia, where the mercy-seat of the great temple of Bel-Merodach at Babylon was termed Du-azagga, “the holy hill.” It was on this “seat of the oracles,” as it was termed, that the god enthroned himself at the beginning of each year, and announced his will to mankind. But the mercy-seat was entitled “the holy hill” only because it was a miniature copy of “the holy hill” upon which the whole temple was erected. So, too, at Jerusalem, the altar is called “the mount of God” by Ezekiel only because it represents that greater “mount of God” upon which it was built. The temple-hill itself was the primitive 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 Rabbah of Judah is immediately preceded in it by that of Har-el, “the mount of God.” The position of this Har-el leads us to the very mountain tract in the midst of which Jerusalem stood. We now know that Jerusalem was already an important city in the age of the eighteenth Egyptian dynasty, and that it formed one of the Egyptian conquests; it would be strange therefore 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 sacred mountain of Israelitish history?

There is a passage in one of the letters of Ebed-Tob which may throw further light on the history of the temple-hill. Unfortunately one of the cuneiform characters in it is badly formed, so that its reading is not certain, and still more unfortunately this character is one of the most important in the whole paragraph. If Dr. Winckler and myself are right in our copies, Ebed-Tob speaks of “the city of the mountain of Jerusalem, 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 the passage must be translated: “the city of the mountain of Jerusalem, the city 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 of Jerusalem, whom he identifies with the Babylonian Nin-ip, is Salim or Sulman, the god of peace, and that his temple stood on “the mountain of Jerusalem”; in the other case there will be no mention of Salim, and it will be left doubtful whether or not the city of Beth-Nin-ip was included within the walls of the capital. It would seem rather that it was separate from Jerusalem, though standing on the same “mountain” as the great fortress. If so, we might identify Jerusalem with the city on Mount Zion, the Jebusite stronghold of a later date, while “the city of Beth-Nin-ip” would be that which centred round the temple on Moriah.

However this may be, the fortress and the temple-hill were distinct from one another in the days of the Jebusites, and we may therefore assume that they were also distinct in the age of Abraham. This might explain why it was that the mountain of Moriah on the summit of which the patriarch offered his sacrifice was not enclosed within the walls of Jerusalem, and was not covered with buildings. It was a spot, on the contrary, where sheep could feed, and a ram be caught by its horns in the thick brushwood.

In entering Canaan, Abraham would have found himself still surrounded by all the signs of a familiar civilization. The long-continued influence and government of Babylonia had carried to “the land of the Amorites” all the elements of Chaldaean culture. Migration from Ur of the Chaldees to the distant West meant a change only in climate and population, not in 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 the Tel el-Amarna tablets. The cuneiform system of writing and the Babylonian language had spread all over Western Asia, and nowhere had they taken deeper root than in Canaan. Here there were schools and teachers for instruction in the foreign language and script, and record-chambers and libraries in which the letters and books of clay could be copied and preserved.

Long before the discovery of the Tel el-Amarna tablets we might have gathered from the Old Testament itself that such libraries once existed in Canaan. One of the Canaanitish cities taken and destroyed by the Israelites was Debir in the mountainous part of Judah. But Debir, “the sanctuary,” was also known by two other names. It was called Kirjath-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. The Massoretic punctuation has to be emended, and we must read Kirjath-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 the exact name. In the time of Ramses II. an Egyptian scribe composed a sarcastic account of the misadventures met with by a tourist in Palestine commonly known as The Travels of a Mohar and in this mention is made of two adjoining towns in Southern Palestine called Kirjath-Anab and Beth-Sopher. In the Book of Joshua the towns of Anab and Kirjath-Sepher are similarly associated together, and it is plain, therefore, as Dr. W. Max Mueller has remarked, that the Egyptian writer has interchanged the equivalent terms Kirjath, “city,” and Beth, “house.” He ought to have written Beth-Anab and Kirjath-Sopher. But he has given us the true form of the latter name, and as he has added to the word Sopher the determinative of “writing,” he has further put beyond question the real meaning of the name. The city must have been one of those centres of Canaanitish learning, where, as in the libraries of Babylonia and Assyria, a large body of scribes was kept constantly at work.

The language employed in the cuneiform documents was almost always that of Babylonia, which had become the common speech of diplomacy and educated society. But at times the native language of the country was also employed, and one or two examples of it have been preserved. The legends and traditions of Babylonia served as text-books for the student, and doubtless Babylonian history was carried to the West as well. The account of Chedor-laomer’s campaign might have been derived in this way from the clay-books of ancient Babylonia.

Babylonian theology, too, made its way to the West, and has left records of itself in the map of Canaan. In the names of Canaanitish towns and villages the names of Babylonian deities frequently recur. Rimmon or Hadad, 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 the names sometimes of places, sometimes of persons. Mr. Tomkins is probably right in seeing even in Beth-lehem the name of the primeval Chaldaean deity Lakhmu. The Canaanitish Moloch is the Babylonian Malik, and Dagon was one of the oldest of Chaldaean divinities and the associate of Anu. We have seen how ready Ebed-Tob was to identify the god he worshipped with the Babylonian Nin-ip, and among the Canaanites mentioned in the letters of Tel el-Amarna there is more than one whose name is compounded with that of a Babylonian god.

Writing and literature, religion and mythology, history and science, all these were brought to the peoples of Canaan in the train of Babylonian conquest and trade. Art naturally went hand in hand with this imported culture. The seal-cylinders of the Chaldaeans were imitated, and Babylonian figures and ornamental designs were borrowed and modified by the Canaanitish artists. It was in this way that the rosette, the cherub, the sacred tree, and the palmette passed to the West, and there served to adorn the metal-work and pottery. New designs, unknown in Babylonia, began to develop; among others, the heads of animals in gold and silver as covers for metal vases. Some of these “vases of Kaft,” as they were called, are pictured on the Egyptian monuments, and Thothmes III. in his annals describes “the paterae with goats’ heads upon them and 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 Canaanitish princes gives us some idea of the art which they patronized. We hear of chariots and tent-poles covered with plates of gold, of iron armour and helmets, of gold and silver rings which were used in the place of money, of staves of ivory, ebony, and cedar inlaid with gold, of golden sceptres, of tables, chairs, and footstools of cedar wood, inlaid some of them with ivory, others with gold and precious stones, of vases and bowls of all kinds in gold, silver, and bronze, and of the two-handled cups which were a special manufacture of Phoenicia. Iron seems to have been worked in Canaan from an early date. The Israelites were unable to drive out the inhabitants of “the valley” because of their chariots of iron, and when the chariot of the Egyptian Mohar is disabled by the rough roads of the Canaanite mountains the writer of the papyrus already referred to makes him turn aside at once to a worker in iron. There was no difficulty in finding an ironsmith in Canaan.

The purple dye of Phoenicia had been famous from a remote antiquity. It was one of the chief objects of the trade which was carried on by the Canaanites with Egypt on the one side and Babylonia on the other. It was doubtless in exchange for the purple that the “goodly Babylonish garment” of which we are told in the Book of Joshua (vi made its way to the city of Jericho, for Babylonia was as celebrated for its embroidered robes as Canaan was for its purple dye.

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

Babylonia and the civilized lands of the East were not the only countries with which Canaanitish trade was carried on. Negro slaves were imported from the Soudan, copper and lead from Cyprus, and horses from Asia Minor, while the excavations of Mr. Bliss at Lachish have brought to light beads of Baltic amber mixed with the scarabs of the eighteenth Egyptian dynasty.

A large part of the trade of Phoenicia was carried on in ships. It was in this way that the logs of cedar were brought from the forests at the head of the Gulf of Antioch, and the purple murex from the coasts of the AEgean. Tyre, whose wealth is already celebrated in one of the Tel el-Amarna tablets, was built upon an island, and, as an Egyptian papyrus tells us, water had to be conveyed to it in boats. So, too, was Arvad, whose navy occupies an important place in the Tel el-Amarna correspondence. The ships of Canaan were, in fact, famous from an early date. Two classes of vessel known to the Egyptians were called “ships of Gebal” and “ships of Kaft,” or Phoenicia, and Ebed-Tob asserts that “as long as a ship sails upon the sea, the arm (or oracle) of the Mighty King shall conquer the forces of Aram-Naharaim (Nahrima) and Babylonia.” Balaam’s prophecy “Ships shall come from Chittim and shall afflict Asshur 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 stood on the eastern bank of the Euphrates, at no great distance from Carchemish, but the Naharaim, or “Two Rivers,” more probably mean the Euphrates and Orontes, than the Euphrates and Tigris. In one of the Tel el-Amarna tablets the country is called Nahrima, but its usual name is Mitanni or Mitanna. It was the first independent kingdom of any size or power on the frontiers of the Egyptian empire in the age of the eighteenth dynasty, and the Pharaohs Thothmes IV., Amenophis III., and Amenophis IV. successively married into its royal family.

The language of Mitanni has been revealed to us by the cuneiform correspondence from Tel el-Amarna. It was highly agglutinative, and unlike any other form of speech, ancient or modern, with which we are acquainted. Perhaps the speakers of it, like the Hittites, had descended from the north, and occupied territory which had originally belonged to Aramaic tribes. Perhaps, on the other hand, they represented the older population of the country which was overpowered and displaced by Semitic invaders. Which of these views is the more correct we shall probably never know.

Along with their own language the people of Mitanni had also their own theology. Tessupas was god of the atmosphere, the Hadad of the Sémites, Sausbe was identified with the Phoenician Ashteroth, and Sekhrus, Zizanu, and Zannukhu are mentioned among the other deities. But many of the divinities of Assyria were also borrowed Sin the Moon-god, whose temple stood in the city of Harran, Ea the god of the waters, Bel, the Baal of the Canaanites, and Istar, “the lady of Nineveh.” Even Amon the god of Thebes was adopted into the pantheon in the days of Egyptian influence.

How far back the interference of Aram-Naharaim in the affairs of Canaan may have reached it is impossible to say. But the kingdom lay on the high-road from Babylonia and Assyria to the West, and its rise may possibly have had something to do with the decline of Babylonian supremacy in Palestine. The district in which it grew up was called Suru or Suri by the Sumerian inhabitants of Chaldaea a name which may be the origin of the modern “Syria,” rather than Assyria, as is usually supposed, and the Semitic Babylonians gave it the title of Subari or Subartu. The conquest of Suri was the work of the last campaign of Sargon of Accad, and laid all northern Mesopotamia at his feet.

We gather from the letters of Tel el-Amarna that the Babylonians were still intriguing in Canaan in the century before the Exodus, though they acknowledged that it was an Egyptian province and subject to Egyptian laws. But the memory of the power they had once exercised there still survived, and the influence of their culture continued undiminished. When their rule actually ceased we do not yet know. It cannot have been very long, however, before the era of Egyptian conquest. In the Tel el-Amarna tablets they are always called Kassites, a name which could have been given to them only after the conquest of Babylonia by the Kassite mountaineers of Elam, and the rise of a Kassite dynasty of kings. 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, upon which the critics, in their wisdom or their ignorance, have poured unmeasured contempt. He tells us that when the Hyksos were driven out of Egypt by Ahmes I., the founder of the eighteenth dynasty, they occupied Jerusalem and fortified it not, as would naturally be imagined, against the Egyptian Pharaoh, but against “the Assyrians,” as the Babylonians were called by Manetho’s contemporaries. As long as there were no monuments to confront them the critics had little difficulty in proving that the statement was preposterous and unhistorical, that Jerusalem did not as yet exist, and that no Assyrians or Babylonians entered Palestine until centuries later. But we now know that Manetho was right and his critics wrong. Jerusalem did exist, and Babylonian armies threatened the independence of the Canaanite states. In one of his letters, Ebed-Tob, king of Jerusalem, tells the Pharaoh that he need not be alarmed about the Babylonians, for the temple at Jerusalem is strong enough to resist their 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 of Ebed-Asherah (the Amorite) attached themselves to the country of the Babylonians, 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 a similar strain: “The king of the Babylonians and the king of Mitanna are strong, and have taken the country of the Pharaoh for themselves already, and have seized the cities of thy governor.” When George the Synkellos notes that the Chaldaeans made war against the Phoenicians in B.C. 1556, he is doubtless quoting from some old and trustworthy source.

We must not imagine, however, that there was any permanent occupation of Canaan on the part of the Babylonians at this period of its history. It would seem rather that Babylonian authority was directly exercised only from time to time, and had to be enforced by repeated invasions and campaigns. It was the influence of Babylonian civilization and culture that was permanent, not the Babylonian government itself. Sometimes, indeed, Canaan became a Babylonian province, at other times there were only certain portions of the country which submitted to the foreign control, while again at other times the Babylonian rule was merely nominal. But it is clear that it was not until Canaan had been thoroughly reduced by Egyptian arms that the old claim of Babylonia to be its mistress was finally renounced, and even then we see that intrigues were carried on with the Babylonians against the Egyptian authority.

It was during this period of Babylonian influence and tutelage that the traditions and myths of Chaldaea became known to the people of Canaan. It is again the tablets of Tel el-Amarna which have shown us how this came to pass. Among them are fragments of Babylonian legends, one of which endeavoured to account for the creation of man and the introduction of sin into the world, and these legends were used as exercise-books in the foreign language by the scribes of Canaan and Egypt who were learning the Babylonian language and script. If ever we discover the library of Kirjath-sepher we shall doubtless find among its clay records similar examples of Chaldaean literature. The resemblances between the cosmogonies of Phoenicia and Babylonia have often been pointed out, and since the discovery of the Chaldaean account of the Deluge by George Smith we have learned that between that account and the one which is preserved in Genesis there is the closest possible likeness, extending even to words and phrases. The long-continued literary influence of Babylonia in Palestine in the Patriarchal Age explains all this, and shows us how the traditions of Chaldaea made their way to the West. When Abraham entered Canaan, he entered a country whose educated inhabitants were already familiar with the books, the history, and the traditions of that in which he had been born. There were doubtless many to whom the name and history of “Ur of the Chaldees” were already known. It may even be that copies of the books in its library already existed in the libraries of Canaan.

There was one Babylonian hero at all events whose name had become so well known in the West that it had there passed into a proverb. This was the name of Nimrod, “the mighty hunter before the Lord.” As yet the cuneiform documents are silent about him, but it is probable that he was one of the early Kassite kings who established their dominion over the cities of Babylonia. He is called the son of Cush or Kas, and “the beginning of his kingdom” was Babylon, which had now for six centuries been the capital of the country. His name, however, was as familiar to the Canaanite as it was to the inhabitant of Chaldaea, and the god before whom 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 the Nile, and held it in subjection for several centuries. At first they had carried desolation with them wherever they went. The temples of the Egyptian gods were destroyed and their priests massacred. But before long Egyptian culture proved too strong for the invaders. The rude chief of a savage horde became transformed into an Egyptian Pharaoh, whose court resembled that of the ancient line of monarchs, and who surrounded himself with learned men. The cities and temples were restored and beautified, and art began to flourish once more. Except in one respect it became difficult to distinguish the Hyksos prince from his predecessors on the throne of Egypt. That one respect was religion. The supreme object of Hyksos worship continued to be Sutekh, the Baal of Western Asia, whose cult the foreigners had brought with them from their old homes. But even Sutekh was assimilated to Ra, the Sun-god of On, and the Hyksos Pharaohs felt no scruple in imitating the native kings and combining their own names with that of Ra. It was only the Egyptians who refused to admit the assimilation, and insisted on identifying Sutekh with Set the enemy of Horus.

At the outset all Egypt was compelled to submit to the Hyksos domination. Hyksos monuments have been found as far south as Gebelen and El-Kab, and the first Hyksos dynasty established its seat in Memphis, the old capital of the country. Gradually, however, the centre of Hyksos power retreated into the delta. Zoan or Tanis, the modern San, became the residence of the court: here the Hyksos kings were in close proximity to their kindred in Asia, and were, moreover, removed from the unmixed Egyptian population further south. From Zoan, “built” or rather rebuilt “seven years” after Hebron (Num. xii, they governed the valley of the Nile. Their rule was assisted by the mutual jealousies and quarrels of the native feudal princes who shared between them the land of Egypt. The foreigner kept his hold upon the country by means of the old feudal aristocracy.

Thebes, however, had never forgotten that it had been the birthplace and capital of the powerful Pharaohs of the twelfth and thirteenth dynasties, of the mighty princes who had conquered the Soudan, and ruled with an iron hand over the feudal lords. The heirs of the Theban Pharaohs still survived as princes of Thebes, and behind the strong walls of El-Kab they began to think of independence. Apophis II. in his court at Zoan perceived the rising storm, and endeavoured to check it at its beginning. According to the story of a later day, he sent insulting messages to the prince of Thebes, and ordered him to worship Sutekh the Hyksos god. The prince defied his suzerain, and the war of independence began. It lasted for several generations, during which the Theban princes made themselves masters of Upper Egypt, and established a native dynasty of Pharaohs which reigned simultaneously with the Hyksos dynasty in the North.

Step by step the Hyksos stranger was pushed back to the north-eastern corner of the delta. At length Zoan itself fell into the hands of the Egyptians, and the Hyksos took refuge in the great fortress of Avaris on the extreme border of the kingdom. Here they were besieged by the Theban prince Ahmes, and eventually driven back to the Asia from which they had come. The eighteenth dynasty was founded, and Ahmes entered on that career of Asiatic conquest which converted Canaan into an Egyptian province. At first the war was one of revenge; but it soon became one of conquest, and the war of independence was followed by the rise of the Egyptian empire. Thothmes II., the grandson of Ahmes, led his forces as far as the Euphrates and the land of Aram-Naharaim. The territories thus overrun in a sort of military reconnaissance were conquered and annexed by 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 of the Jordan was made into a province, and governed much as India is to-day. Some of the cities were allowed still to retain their old line of princes, who were called upon to furnish tribute to the Egyptian treasury and recruits to the Egyptian army. From time to time they were visited by an Egyptian “Commissioner,” and an Egyptian garrison kept watch upon their conduct. Sometimes an Egyptian Resident was appointed by the side of the native king; this was the case, for example, at Sidon and Hazor. Where, however, the city was of strategical or political importance it was incorporated into the Egyptian empire, and placed under the immediate control of an Egyptian governor, as at Megiddo, Gaza, Gebal, Gezer, and Tyre. Similarly Ziri-Basana, “the field of Bashan,” was under the government of a single khazan or “prefect.” The troops, 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 tsabi matsarti or “Egyptian soldiers of the garrison,” as well as the tsabi bitati or “house-guards,” who were summoned in cases of emergency. Among the auxiliaries were included the Serdani or Sardinians, while the Sute the Sati or Sitti of the hieroglyphic texts formed the larger portion of the Beduin ("Bashi-bazouks"), and the Egyptian forces were divided into the cavalry or rather charioteers, and the Misi (called Mas’u in the hieroglyphics) or infantry.

Fragments of the annals of Thothmes III. have been preserved on the shattered walls of his temple at Karnak. Here too we may read the lists of places he conquered in Palestine the land of the Upper Lotan as it is termed as well as in Northern Syria. Like the annals, the geographical lists have been compiled from memoranda made on the spot by the scribes who followed the army, and in some instances, at all events, it can be shown that they have been translated into Egyptian hieroglyphs from Babylonian cuneiform. The fact is an indication of the conquest that Asia was already beginning to make over her Egyptian conquerors. But the annals themselves are a further and still more convincing proof of Asiatic influence. To cover the walls of a temple with the history of campaigns in a foreign land, and an account of the tribute brought to the Pharaoh, was wholly contrary to Egyptian ideas. From the Egyptian point of view the decoration of the sacred edifice should have been theological only. The only subjects represented on it, so custom and belief had ruled, ought to be the gods, and the stereotyped phrases describing their attributes, their deeds, and their festivals. To substitute for this the records of secular history was Assyrian and not Egyptian. Indeed the very conception of annalistic chronicling, in which the history of a reign was given briefly year by year and campaign by campaign, belonged to the kingdoms of the Tigris and Euphrates, not to that of the Nile. It was a new thing in Egypt, and flourished there only during the short period of Asiatic influence. The Egyptian cared comparatively little for history, and made use of papyrus when he wished to record it. Unfortunately for us the annals of Thothmes III. remain the solitary monument of Egyptian chronicling on stone.

The twenty-second year of his reign (B.C. 1481) was that in which the Egyptian Pharaoh made his first determined effort to subdue Canaan. Gaza was occupied without much difficulty, and in the following year, on the fifth day of the month Pakhons, he set out from it, and eleven days later encamped at Ihem. There he learned that the confederated Canaanitish army, under the command of the king of Kadesh on the Orontes, was awaiting his attack at Megiddo. Not only were the various nations of Palestine represented in it, but contingents had come from Naharaim on the banks of the Euphrates, as well as from the Gulf of Antioch. For a while Thothmes hesitated whether to march against them by the road which led through ’Aluna to Taanach or by way of Zaft (perhaps Safed), whence he would have descended southward upon Megiddo. The arrival of his spies, however, determined him to take the first, and accordingly, after the officers had sworn that they would not leave their 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 his tent at ’Aluna. The way had been rough and impassable for chariots, so that the king had been forced to march on foot.

’Aluna must have been close to Megiddo, since the rear of the Egyptian forces was stationed there during the battle that followed, while the southern wing extended to Taanach and the northern wing to Megiddo. The advanced guard pushed into the plain below, and the royal tent was set up on the bank of the brook of Qana, an affluent of the Kishon. The decisive struggle took place on the twenty-first of the month. Thothmes rode in a chariot of polished bronze, and posted himself among the troops on the north-west side of Megiddo. The Canaanites were unable to resist the Egyptian charge. They fled into the city, leaving behind them their horses and their chariots plated with gold and silver, those who arrived after the gates of the town had been shut being drawn up over the walls by means of ropes. Had the Egyptians not stayed behind in order to plunder the enemy’s camp they would have entered Megiddo along with the fugitives. As it was, they were compelled to blockade the city, building a rampart round it of “fresh green trees,” and the besieged were 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 gold from Así or Cyprus. Two suits of iron armour were also obtained, one belonging to the king of Kadesh, the other to the king of Megiddo. The seven tent-poles of the royal tent, plated with gold, also fell into the hands of the Egyptians. The catalogue of the spoil was written down on a leather roll which was deposited in the temple of Amon at Thebes, and in it were enumerated: 3401 prisoners and 83 hands belonging to the slain, 32 chariots plated with gold, 892 ordinary chariots, 2041 mares, 191 foals, 602 bows, and 200 suits of armour.

Before the campaign was ended the Egyptian army had penetrated far to the north and captured Inuam, south of Damascus, as well as Anugas or Nukhasse, and Harankal, to the north of the land of the Amorites. All these places seem to have belonged to the king of Kadesh, as his property was carried away out of them. When Thothmes returned to Thebes the quantity of spoil be brought back with him was immense. “Besides precious stones,” golden bowls, Phoenician cups with double handles and the like, there were 97 swords, 1784 pounds of gold rings and 966 pounds of silver rings, which served as money, a statue with a head of gold, tables, chairs, and staves of cedar and ebony inlaid with gold, ivory and precious stones, a golden plough, the golden sceptre of the conquered prince, and richly embroidered stuffs. The fields of the vanquished province were further measured by the Egyptian surveyors, and the amount of taxation annually due from them was fixed. More than 208,000 measures of wheat were moreover carried off to Egypt from the plain of Megiddo. The Canaanitish power was completely broken, and Thothmes was now free to extend his empire further to the north.

Accordingly in the following year (B.C. 1479) we find him receiving tribute from the Assyrian king. This consisted of leather bracelets, various kinds of wood, and chariots. It was probably at this time that Carchemish on the Euphrates was taken, the city being stormed from the riverside. Five years later the first part of the annals was engraved on the wall of the new temple of Amon at Karnak, and it concluded with an account of the campaign of the year. This had been undertaken in Northern Syria, and had resulted in the capture of Uarrt and Tunip, now Tennib, to the north-west of Aleppo. No less than one hundred pounds of silver and as many of gold were taken from Tunip, as well as lapis-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 the Greek seas. On the march home the Egyptian army took possession of Arvad, and seized its rich stores of wheat and wine. “Then the soldiers caroused and anointed themselves with oil as they used to do on feast days in the land of Egypt.”

The next year Kadesh on the Orontes, near the Lake of Horns, was attacked and destroyed, its trees were cut down and its corn carried away. From Kadesh Thothmes proceeded to the land of Phoenicia, and took the cities of Zemar (now Sumra) and Arvad. The heirs of four of the conquered princes were carried as hostages to Egypt, “so that when one of these kings should die, then the Pharaoh should take his son and put him in his stead.”

In B.C. 1472 the land of the Amorites was reduced, or rather that part of it which was known as Takhis, the Thahash of Genesis xxi, on the shores of the Lake of Merna, in which we should probably see the Lake of Homs. Nearly 500 prisoners were led to Egypt. The Syrian princes now came to offer their gifts to the conqueror, bringing with them, among other things, more than 760 pounds of silver, 19 chariots covered with silver ornaments, and 41 leathern collars covered with bronze scales. At the same time the whole country was thoroughly organized under the new Egyptian administration. Military roads were constructed and provided with posting-houses, at each of which relays of horses were kept in readiness, as well as “the necessary provision of bread of various sorts, oil, balsam, wine, honey, and fruits.” The quarries of the Lebanon were further required to furnish the Pharaoh with limestone for his buildings in Egypt and elsewhere.

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

The Pharaoh now took ship and descended the Euphrates, “conquering the towns and ploughing up the fields of the king of Naharaim.” He then re-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 do four and a half centuries later in the time of the Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser I. Thothmes amused himself by hunting them, and no less than 120 were slain.

On his way home the tribute and “yearly tax” of the inhabitants of the Lebanon was brought to him, and the corvée-work annually required from them was also fixed. Thothmes indulged his taste for natural history by receiving as part of the tribute various birds which were peculiar to Syria, or at all events were unknown in Egypt, and which, we are told, “were dearer to the king than anything else.” He had already established zoological and botanical gardens in Thebes, and the strange animals and plants which his campaigns furnished for them were depicted on the walls of one of the chambers in the temple he built at Karnak.

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

The following year Thothmes marched through “the land of Zahi,” the “dry land” of the Phoenician coast, to Northern Syria, where he punished the king of Anugas or Nukhasse, who had shown symptoms of rebellion. Large quantities of gold and bronze were carried off, as well as 15 chariots, plated with gold and silver, 6 iron tent-poles studded with precious stones, and 70 asses. Lead and various kinds of wood and stone, together with 608 jars of Lebanon wine, 2080 jars of oil, and 690 jars of balsam, were also received from Southern Syria, and posting-houses were established along the roads of the land of Zahi. A fleet of Phoenician merchant vessels was next sent to Egypt laden with logs of wood from the forests of Palestine and the Lebanon for the buildings of the king. At the same time, “the king of Cyprus,” which now was an Egyptian possession, forwarded his tribute to the Pharaoh, consisting of 108 bricks of copper 2040 pounds in weight, 5 bricks of lead nearly 29,000 pounds in weight, 110 pounds of lapis-lazuli, an elephant’s tusk, and other objects of value.

The next year (B.C. 1468) there was a campaign against the king of Naharaim, who had collected his soldiers and horses “from the extreme ends of the world.” But the Mesopotamian army was utterly defeated. Its booty fell into the hands of the Egyptians, who, however, took only ten prisoners, which looks as if, after all, the battle was not on a very large scale.

In B.C. 1464 Thothmes was again in Northern Syria. Among the booty acquired 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, asses and oxen, 522 slaves, 156 jars of wine, 1752 jars of butter, 5 elephants’ tusks, 2822 pounds of gold besides copper and lead, were among the spoils of the campaign. The annual tribute was only received from Cyprus, consisting this time of copper and mares, as well as from Aripakh, a district in the Taurus.

The next year the Pharaoh led his troops against some country, the name of which is lost, in “the land of the hostile Shasu” or Beduin. The plunder which was carried off from it shows that it was somewhere in Syria, probably in the region of the Lebanon. Gold and silver, a silver double-handled cup with a bull’s head, iron, wine, balsam, oil, butter and honey, were among the spoils of the war. Tribute arrived also from “the king of the greater Hittite land,” which included a number of negro slaves.

Revolt, however, now broke out in the north. Tunip rebelled, as did also the king of Kadesh, who built a “new” fortress to protect his city from attack. Thothmes at once marched against them by the road along “the coast,” which led him through the country of the Fenkhu or Phoenicians. First he fell upon the towns of Alkana and utterly destroyed them, and then poured his troops into the neighbouring land of Tunip. The city of Tunip was taken and burnt, its crops were trodden under-foot, its trees cut down, and its inhabitants carried into slavery. Then came the turn of Kadesh. The “new” fortress fell at the first assault, and the whole country was compelled to submit.

The king of Assyria again sent presents to the Pharaoh which the Egyptian court regarded in the light of tribute. They consisted chiefly of large blocks of “real lapis-lazuli” as well as “lapis-lazuli of Babylon.” More valuable gifts came from the subject princes of Syria. Foremost among these was “a king’s daughter all glorious with [a vesture of] gold.” Then there were four chariots plated with gold and six chariots of gold, iron armour inlaid with gold, a jug of silver, a golden helmet inlaid with lapis-lazuli, wine, honey and balsam, ivory and various kinds of wood, wheat in such quantities that it could not be measured, and the sixty-five slaves who had to be furnished each year as part of the annual tax.

The annals of the next two years are in too mutilated a condition to yield much information. Moreover, the campaigns carried on in them were mainly in the Soudan. In B.C. 1461 the record closes. It was in that year that the account of the Pharaoh’s victories “which he had gained from the 23rd until the (4)2nd year” were engraved upon the wall of the temple. (The inscription has “32nd year,” but as the wars extended beyond the 40th year of the king’s reign this must be a sculptor’s error.) 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 completion of his temple fourteen years. His death was followed by the revolt of Northern Syria, and the first achievement of his son and successor, Amenophis II., was its suppression. Ni and Ugarit, the centres of disaffection, were captured and punished, and among the prisoners from Ugarit were 640 “Canaanite” merchants with their slaves. The name of Canaanite had thus already acquired that secondary meaning of “merchant” which we find in the Old Testament (Is. xxii; Ezek. xvi. It is a significant proof of the commercial activity and trading establishments of the Canaanite race throughout the civilized world. Even a cuneiform tablet from Kappadokia, which is probably of the same age as the tablets of Tel el-Amarna, gives us the name of Kinanim “the Canaanite” as that of a witness to a deed. It was not always, however, that the Canaanites were so honourably distinguished. At times the name was equivalent to that of “slave” rather than of “merchant,” as in a papyrus [Anas, 16, 2.] where mention is made of Kan’amu or “Canaanite slaves from Khal.” So too in another papyrus we hear of a slave called Saruraz the son of Naqati, whose mother was Kadi from the land of Arvad. The Egyptian wars in Palestine must necessarily have resulted in the enslavement of many of its inhabitants, and, as we have seen, a certain number of young slaves formed part of the annual tax levied upon Syria.

The successors of Thothmes III. extended the Egyptian empire far to the south in the Soudan. But its Asiatic limits had already been reached. Palestine, along with Phoenicia, the land of the Amorites and the country east of the Jordan, was constituted into an Egyptian province and kept strictly under Egyptian control. Further north the connection with the imperial government was looser. There were Egyptian fortresses and garrisons here and there, and certain important towns like Tunip near Aleppo and Qatna on the Khabur were placed under Egyptian prefects. But elsewhere the conquered populations were allowed to remain under their native kings. In some instances, as, for example, in Anugas or Nukhasse, the kings were little more than satraps of the Pharaoh, but in other instances, like Alasiya, north of Hamath, they resembled the rulers of the protected states in modern India. In fact, the king of Alasiya calls the Pharaoh his “brother,” and except for the obligation of 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 of the Taurus. Their territory was still confined to Kataonia and Armenia Minor between Melitene and the Saros, and they courted the favour of the Egyptian monarch by sending him gifts. Thothmes would have refused to believe that before many years were over they would wrest Northern Syria from his successors, and contend on equal terms with the Egyptian Pharaoh.

The Egyptian possessions on the east bank of Euphrates lay along the course of the Khabur, towards the oasis of Singar or Shinar. North of the Belikh came the powerful kingdom of Mitanni, Aram-Naharaim as it is called in the Old Testament, which was never subdued by the Egyptian arms, and whose royal family intermarried with the successors of Thothmes. Mitanni, the capital, stood nearly opposite Carchemish, which thus 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. But there it came to an end. Mount Seir was never conquered by the Egyptians. The “city” of Edom appears in one of the Tel el-Amarna tablets as a foreign state whose inhabitants wage war against the Egyptian territory. The conquest of the Edomites in their mountain fastnesses would have been a matter of difficulty, nor would anything have been gained by it. Edom was rich neither agriculturally nor commercially; it was, in fact, a land of barren mountains, and the trade which afterwards passed through the Arabah to Elath and Ezion-geber in the Gulf of Aqabah was already secured to the Egyptians through their possession of the Gulf of Suez. The first and last of the Pharaohs, so far as we know, who ventured on a campaign against the wild tribes of Mount Seir, was Ramses III. of the twentieth dynasty, and his campaign was merely a punitive one. No attempt to incorporate the “Red Land” into his dominions was ever made by an Egyptian king.

The Sinaitic peninsula, the province of Mafkat or “Malachite,” as it was called, had been in the possession of the Egyptians since the time of Zosir of the third dynasty, and it continued to be regarded as part of the Egyptian kingdom up to the age of the Ptolemies. The earliest of Egyptian rock-sculptures is engraved in the peninsula, and represents Snefru, the founder of the fourth dynasty, slaughtering the Beduin who inhabited it. Its possession was valued on account of its mines of copper and malachite. These were worked by the Egyptian kings with the help of convict labour. Garrisons were established to protect them and the roads which led to them, colonies of officials grew up at their side, and temples were built dedicated to the deities of Egypt. Even as late as the reign of Ramses III. the amount of minerals produced by the mines was enormous. They existed for the most part on the western side of the peninsula, opposite the Egyptian coast; but Ramses III. also opened copper mines in the land of ’Ataka further east, and the name of the goddess Hathor in hieroglyphics has been found by Dr. Friedmann on the shores of Midian.

Vanquished Syria was made to contribute to the endowments of the Egyptian temples. Thus the temple of Amon at Thebes was endowed by Thothmes III. with the revenues of the three cities Anugas, Inu’am, and Harankal; while Seti I., the father of Ramses II., bestowed upon it “all the silver, gold, lapis-lazuli, malachite, and precious stones which he carried off from the humbled land of Syria.” Temples of the Egyptian gods, as well as towns, were built in Syria itself; Meneptah founded a city in the land of the Amorites; Ramses III. erected a temple to Amon in “the land of Canaan, great as the horizon of heaven above, to which the people of Syria come with their gifts”; and hieroglyphic inscriptions lately discovered at Gaza show that another temple had been built there by Amenophis II. to the goddess Mut.

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

Amenophis II. was succeeded by Thothmes IV., who was called upon to face a new enemy, the Hittites. It was at the commencement of his reign that they first began to descend from their mountain homes, and the frontier city of Tunip had to bear the brunt of the attack. It was probably in order to strengthen himself against these formidable foes that the Pharaoh married the daughter of the king of Mitanni, who changed her name to Mut-em-ua. It was the beginning of those inter-marriages with the princes of Asia which led to the Asiatized court and religion of Amenophis IV., and finally to the overthrow of the eighteenth dynasty.

The son of Mut-em-ua was Amenophis III., whose long reign of thirty-seven years was as brilliant and successful as that of Thothmes III. At Soleb between the second and third cataracts he built a temple to his own deified self, and engraved upon its columns the names of his vassal states. Among them are Tunip and Kadesh, Carchemish and Apphadana on the Khabur. Sangar, Assyria, Naharaim, and the Hittites also appear among them, but this must be on the strength of the tribute or presents which had been received from them. The Pharaoh filled his harim with Asiatic princesses. His queen Teie, who exercised an important influence upon both religion and politics, came from Asia, and among his wives were the sisters and daughters of the kings of Babylonia and Mitanni, while one of his own daughters was married to Burna-buryas the Babylonian sovereign. His marriage with Gilu-khipa, the daughter of Sutarna, king of Aram-Naharaim, was celebrated on a scarab, where it is further related that she was accompanied to Egypt by three hundred and seventeen “maids of honour.” Besides allying himself in marriage to the royal houses of Asia, Amenophis III. passed a good deal of his time in Syria and Mesopotamia, amusing himself with hunting lions. During the first ten years of his reign he boasts of having killed no less than one hundred and two of them. It was in the last of these years that he married 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 curious that no royal titles are given to her parents; moreover, the author of the 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 the daughter of the Babylonian king. One of the daughters of Tusratta, Tadu-khipa, was indeed married to Amenophis, but she did not rank as chief queen. In the reign of Meneptah of the nineteenth dynasty the vizier was a native of Bashan, Ben-Mazana by name, whose father was called Yu the elder. Yua may therefore be a word of Amorite origin; and a 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 still a minor. At all events the queen-mother Teie became all-powerful in the government of the state. Her son, the new Pharaoh, had been brought up in the religious beliefs of his mother, and had inherited the ideas and tendencies of his Asiatic forefathers. A plaster-cast of his face, taken immediately after death, was discovered by Prof. Petrie at Tel el-Amarna, and it is the face of a refined and thoughtful theorist, of a philosopher rather than of a king, earnest in his convictions almost to fanaticism.

Amenophis IV. undertook no less a task than that of reforming the State religion of Egypt. For many centuries the religion of the priests and scribes had been inclining to pantheism. Inside the temples there had been an esoteric teaching, that the various deities of Egypt were but manifestations of the one supreme God. But it had hardly passed outside them. With the accession of Amenophis IV. to the throne came a change. The young king boldly rejected the religion of which he was officially the head, and professed himself a worshipper of the one God whose visible semblance was the solar disk. Alone of the deities of Egypt Ra, the ancient Sun-god of Heliopolis, was acknowledged to be the representative 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 he stood 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 were proscribed, and the name and head of Amon, the patron god of Thebes, to whom his ancestors had ascribed their power and victories, were erased from the monuments wherever they occurred. Even his own father’s name was not spared, and the emissaries of the king, from one end of the country to the other, defaced that portion of it which contained the name of the god. His own name was next changed, and Amenophis IV. became Khu-n-Aten, “the splendour of the solar disk.”

Khu-n-Aten’s attempt to overthrow the ancient faith of Egypt was naturally resisted by the powerful priesthood of Thebes. A religious war was declared for the first time, so far as we know, in the history of mankind. On the one side a fierce persecution was directed against the adherents of the old creed; on the other side every effort was made to impede and defeat the Pharaoh. His position grew daily more insecure, and at last he turned his back on the capital of his fathers, and built himself a new city far away to the north. The priests of Amon had thus far triumphed; the old idolatrous worship was carried on once more in the great temple of Karnak, though its official head was absent, and Khu-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 king established himself nearer his Canaanite possessions.

Here on the eastern bank of the Nile, about midway between Minyeh and Siut, the new capital was founded on a strip of land protected from attack by a semi-amphitheatre of cliffs. The city, with its palaces and gardens, extended nearly two miles in length along the river bank. In its midst rose the temple of the new god of Egypt, and hard by the palace of the king. Both were brilliant with painting and sculpture, and inlaid work in precious stones and gold. Even the floors were frescoed, while the walls and columns were enamelled or adorned with the most costly materials that the Egyptian world could produce. Here and there were statues of alabaster, of bronze or of gold, some of them almost Greek in form and design. Along with the reform in religion there had gone a reform in art. The old conventionalized art of Egypt was abandoned, and a new art had been introduced which aimed at imitating nature with realistic fidelity.

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

But among these relics none have proved more precious than the clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform characters, which have revolutionized our conceptions of the ancient East. They were preserved in the Foreign Office of the day. This formed part of the public buildings connected with the palace, and the bricks of which it was built were stamped with an inscription describing its character. Many of the tablets had been brought from the archive chamber of Thebes, but the greater part of the collection belongs to the reign of Khu-n-Aten himself. It consists almost entirely of official correspondence; of letters from the kings of Babylonia and Assyria, of Mesopotamia and Kappadokia, and of despatches from the Egyptian governors and vassal-princes in Syria and Palestine. They furnish us with a living and unexpected picture of Canaan about 1400 B.C.

Fragments of dictionaries for the use of the scribes have also been recovered from the debris of the building, as well as the seal of a servant of Samas-akh-iddin who looked after the cuneiform correspondence. Like several of the Canaanitish governors, he bore a Babylonian name. Even the brother of Amenophis III., who had been made king of Nukhasse, had received the Babylonian name of Rimmon-nirari. No stronger proof could be found of the extent and strength of Babylonian influence in the West.

At Khut-Aten, as the “heretic” Pharaoh called his new capital, he was surrounded by the adherents of the new faith. Many of them were doubtless Egyptians, but many, perhaps the majority, were of Asiatic extraction. Already under his father and grandfather the court had been filled with Canaanites and other natives of Asia, and the great offices of state had been occupied by them. Now under Khu-n-Aten the Asiatic character of the government was increased tenfold. The native Egyptian had to make way for the foreigner, and the rule of the Syrian stranger which seemed to have been expelled with the Hyksos was restored under another form. Canaan was nominally a subject province of Egypt, but in reality it had led its conqueror captive. A semi-Asiatic Pharaoh was endeavouring to force an Asiatic form of faith upon his subjects, and entrusting his government to Asiatic officials; even art had ceased to be Egyptian and had put on an Asiatic dress.

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

It is clear that the death of Khu-n-Aten must have been quickly followed by the triumph of his enemies. His capital was overthrown, the stones of its temple carried away to Thebes, there to adorn the sanctuary of the victorious Amon, and the adherents of his reform either slain or driven into exile. The vengeance executed upon them was national as well as religious. It meant not only a restoration of the national faith, but also the restoration of the native Egyptian to the government of his country. The feelings which inspired it were similar to those which underlay the movement of Arabi in our own time, and there was no English army to stand in the way of its success. The rise of the nineteenth dynasty represents the triumph of the national cause.

The cuneiform letters of Tel el-Amarna show that already before Khu-n-Aten’s death his empire and power were breaking up. Letter after letter is sent to him from the governors in Canaan with urgent requests for troops. The Hittites were attacking the empire in the north, and rebels were overthrowing it within. “If auxiliaries come this year,” writes Ebed-Tob of Jerusalem, “the provinces of the king my lord will be preserved; but if no auxiliaries come the provinces of the king my lord will be destroyed.” To these entreaties no answer could be returned. There was civil and religious war in Egypt itself, and the army was needed to defend the Pharaoh at home.

The picture of Canaan presented to us by the Tel el-Amarna correspondence has been supplemented by the discovery of Lachish. Five years ago Prof. Flinders Petrie undertook to excavate for the Palestine Exploration Fund in the lofty mound of Tel el-Hesi in Southern Palestine. Tel el-Hesi stands midway between Gaza and Hebron on the edge of the Judaean mountains, and overlooking a torrent stream. His excavations resulted in the discovery of successive cities built one upon the ruins of the other, and in the probability that the site was that of Lachish. The excavations were resumed by Mr. Bliss in the following year, and the probability was raised to practical certainty. The lowest of the cities was the Lachish of the Amorite period, whose crude brick walls, nearly twenty-nine feet in thickness, have been brought to light, while its pottery has revealed to us for the first time the characteristics of Amorite manufacture. The huge walls bear out the testimony of the Israelitish spies, that the cities of the Amorites were “great and walled up to heaven” (Deut. . They give indications, however, that in spite of their strength the fortresses they enclosed must have been captured more than once. Doubtless this was during the age of the Egyptian wars in Canaan.

As at Troy, it is probable that it was only the citadel which was thus strongly fortified. Below it was the main part of the town, the inhabitants of which took refuge in the citadel when an enemy threatened to attack them. The fortified part, indeed, was not of very large extent. Its ruins measured only about two hundred feet each way, while the enclosure within which it stands is a quarter of a mile in diameter. Here a regular series of pottery has been found, dating from the post-exilic age through successive strata back to the primitive Amoritish fortress. To Prof. Petrie belongs the credit of determining the characteristics of these various strata, and fixing their approximate age.

The work begun by Prof. Petrie was continued by Mr. Bliss. Deep down among the ruins of the Amoritish town he found objects which take us back to the time of Khu-n-Aten and his predecessors. They consist of Egyptian beads and scarabs of the eighteenth dynasty, and on one of the beads are the name and title of “the royal wife Teie.” Along with them were discovered beads of amber which came from the Baltic as well as seal-cylinders, some of them imported from Babylonia, others western imitations of Babylonian work. The Babylonian cylinders belong to the period which extends from 3000 to 1500 B.C., while the imitations are similar in style to those which have been found in the pre-historic tombs of Cyprus and Phoenicia.

But there was one discovery made by Mr. Bliss which far surpasses in interest all the rest. It is that of a cuneiform tablet, similar in character, in contents, and in age to those which have come from Tel el-Amarna. Even the Egyptian governor mentioned in it was already known to 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 people of 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-Hadad and Zimrida have inspected the whole of the city, and Dan-Hadad says to Zimrida: Send Yisyara to me [and] give me 3 shields (?) and 3 slings and 3 falchions, since I am prefect (?) over the country of the king and it has acted against me; and now I will restore thy possession which the enemy took from thee; and I have sent my ..., and ... rabí-ilu ... has despatched his brother [with] these words.”

(This translation differs in some respects from that previously given by me, as it is based on the copy of the text made from the original at Constantinople by Dr. Scheil (Recueil de Trailaux relatifs a la Philologie et a l’Archeologie egyptiennes et assyriennes, x, 4, 137). As I stated at the time, my copy was made from a cast and was therefore uncertain in several places. I am doubtful whether even now the published text is correct throughout.)

Yisyara was the name of an Amorite, as we learn from one of the Tel el-Amarna tablets, where he is mentioned along with other rebels as being sent in fetters of bronze to the king. Of Dan-Hadad we know nothing further, but Zimridas letter is as follows:

“To the king my lord, my god, my Sun-god, the Sun-god who is from heaven, thus (writes) Zimridi, the governor of the city of Lachish. Thy servant, the dust of thy feet, at the feet of the king my lord, the Sun-god from heaven, bows himself seven times seven. I have very diligently listened to the words of the messenger whom the king my lord has sent to me, and now I have despatched (a mission) according to his message.”

It was towards the end of Khu-n-Aten’s reign, when the Egyptian empire was falling to pieces, that the murder of Zimrida took place. Ebed-Tob thus describes it in a letter to the secretary of the Pharaoh: “The Khabiri (or Confederates) are capturing the fortresses of the king. Not a single governor remains among them to the king my lord; all are destroyed. Behold, Turbazu thy officer [has fallen] in the great gate of the city of Zelah. Behold, the servants who acted against the king have slain Zimrida of Lachish. They have murdered Jephthah-Hadad thy officer in the gate of the city of Zelah.”

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

“To the king my lord, my god, my Sun-god, the Sun-god who is from heaven, thus (writes) Yabni-el, the governor of the city of Lachish, thy servant, the dust of thy feet, the groom of thy horses; at the feet of the 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 the groom of [the horses] of the king my lord, listen to the [words] of the king my lord. Now have I heard all the words which Baya the prefect has spoken to me. Now have I done everything.”

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

Rib-Hadad had been appointed to his post by Amenophis III., and in one of his letters he looks back regretfully on “the good old times.” When his letters were written he was old and sick. Abimelech, the governor of Tyre, was almost the only friend who remained to him. Not content with fomenting rebellion in his district, and taking his cities from him, his enemies accused him to the Pharaoh of disloyalty and misdoing. Those accusations were in some cases founded on truth. He confesses to having fled from his city, but he urges that it was to save his life. The troops he had begged for had not been sent to him, and he could no longer defend either his city or himself. He also alleges that the excesses committed by some of his servants had been without his knowledge. This seems to have been in answer to a despatch of Ammunira, the prefect of Beyrout, in which he informed the king that he was keeping the brother of the governor of Gebal as a hostage, and that the latter had been intriguing against the government in the land of the Amorites.

Chief among the adversaries of Rib-Hadad was Ebed-Asherah, a native of the land of Barbarti, and the governor of the Amoritish territory. Several of his sons are mentioned, but the ablest and most influential of them was Aziru or Ezer, who possessed a considerable amount of power. The whole family, while professing to be the obedient servants of the Pharaoh, nevertheless acted with a good deal of independence, and sought to aggrandise themselves at the expense of the neighbouring governors. They had at their disposal a large body of “plunderers,” or Beduin from the eastern desert, and Rib-Hadad accuses them of forming secret alliances 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 oppose the Hittite invasion, and writing to the king as well as to the prime minister Dudu to explain why they had not succeeded in doing so. Tunip had been invested by the enemy, and Aziru fears that it may fall into their hands. The Hittites had already made their way into the land of Nukhasse, and were from thence marching up into the land of the Amorites.

On the heels of these despatches came a long letter from the people of Tunip, complaining of the conduct of Aziru, and protesting against his doing to them what he had done to the city of Ni. He was at the time in the land of the Hittites, doubtless carrying on the war against the general 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: I am thy servant for ever.” He had been charged with want of respect to the Pharaoh, on the ground that he had not received the royal commissioner Khani on his arrival at Tunip. But, he replies, he did not know that the commissioner was coming, and as soon as he heard that he was on the road he “followed him, but failed to overtake him.” In his absence Khani was duly received by the brethren of Aziru, and Belti-el (or Bethuel) furnished him with meat and bread and wine. Moreover, on his way home he was met by Aziru himself, who provided the commissioner with horses and mules. A more serious charge was that of seizing the city 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 robbed him of his cities at the instigation of Khatip, who had also carried away 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 to himself by means of gifts. Lastly, he denied the accusation that he had received the envoy of the king of the Hittites and refused to receive the Egyptian messenger, although the country he governed belonged to the king, and the king had appointed him over it. Let the Egyptian envoy make inquiries, he urges, and he will find that Aziru has acted uprightly.

The capture of Zemar forms the burden of many of the letters of Rib-Hadad. It had been besieged for two months by Ebed-Asherah, who had vainly attempted to corrupt the loyalty of the governor of Gebal. For the time Rib-Hadad managed to save the city, but Aziru allied himself with Arvad and the neighbouring towns of Northern Phoenicia, captured twelve of Rib-Hadad’s men, demanded a ransom of fifty pieces of silver for each of them, and seized the ships of Zemar, Beyrout, and Sidon. The forces sent from Gebal to Zemar were made prisoners by the Amorite chief at Abiliya, and the position of Rib-Hadad daily became more desperate. Pa-Hor, the Egyptian governor of Kumidi, joined his opponents, and induced the Sute or Beduin to attack his Sardinian guards. Yapa-Hadad, another governor, followed the example of Pa-Hor, and Zimridi the governor of Sidon had from the first been his enemy. Tyre alone remained faithful to his cause, though an “Ionian” who had been sent there on a mission from Egypt had handed over horses, chariots, and men to Ebed-Asherah, and it was accordingly to Tyre that Rib-Hadad sent his family for safety. Tyre, however, now began to suffer like Gebal in consequence of the alliance between Zimridi and Ebed-Asherah.

Zemar eventually fell into the hands of Ebed-Asherah and his sons, its prefect Khayapa or Khaip being slain during the assault. Abimelech, the governor of Tyre, accuses Zimridi of having been the cause. Whether this were so or not, it placed the whole of Northern Phoenicia under the government or the influence of the Amorite chiefs. If Rib-Hadad spoke the truth, Ebed-Asherah had “sent to the soldiers in Bit-Ninip, saying, ’Gather yourselves together, and let us march up against Gebal, if therein are any who have saved themselves from our hands, and we will appoint governors throughout all the provinces;’ so all the provinces went over to the Beduin.” Provisions began to be scarce in Gebal, and the governor writes to Egypt for corn.

Rib-Hadad now threatened the Pharaoh with deserting to his enemies if succour was not forth-coming immediately, and at the same time he appealed to Amon-apt and Khayapa, the Egyptian commissioners who had been sent to inquire into the condition of affairs in Canaan. The appeal was so far successful that troops were despatched to Zemar. But it was too late: along with Arka it had already been occupied by Ebed-Asherah, who thereupon writes to the Pharaoh, protesting his loyalty to Khu-n-Aten, declaring that he is “the house-dog” of the king, and that he guards the land of the Amorites for “the king” his lord. He further calls on the Egyptian commissioner Pakhanate, who had been ordered to visit him, to bear witness that he was “defending” Zemar and its fields for the king. That Pakhanate was friendly to Ebed-Asherah may be gathered from a despatch of Rib-Hadad, in which he accuses that officer of refusing to send any troops to the relief of Gebal, and of looking on while 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 the unfortunate Pharaoh might well be excused if he was as much puzzled as we are to know on which side the truth lay, or whether indeed it lay on either. Abimelech had a grievance of his own. As soon as Zimridi of Sidon learned that he had been appointed governor of Tyre, he seized the neighbouring city of Usu, which seems to have occupied the site of Palaetyros on the mainland, thereby depriving the Tyrians of their supplies of wood, food, and fresh water. The city of Tyre was at the time confined to a rocky island, to which provisions and water had to be conveyed in boats. Hence the hostile occupation of the town on the mainland caused many of its inhabitants to die of want. To add to their difficulties, the city was blockaded by the combined fleet of Sidon, Arvad, and Aziru. Ilgi, “king of Sidon,” seems to have fled to Tyre for protection, while Abimelech reports that the king of Hazor had joined the Beduin under Ebed-Asherah and his sons. It may be noted that a letter of this very king of Hazor has been preserved, as well as another from Ebed-Sullim, the Egyptian governor of the city, whose powers were co-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 his messenger Elimelech to Khu-n-Aten with various presents, and gave the king an account of what had been happening in “Canaan.” The Hittite troops had departed, but Etagama elsewhere called Aidhu-gama the pa-ur or “prince” of Kadesh, in the land of Kinza, had joined Aziru in attacking Namya-yitsa, the governor of Kumidi. Abimelech adds that his rival Zimridi of Sidon had collected ships and men from the cities of Aziru against him, and had consequently defeated him, but if the Pharaoh would send only four companies of troops to his rescue all would be well.

Zimridi, however, was not behindhand in forwarding his version of events to 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 of Sidon is the handmaid of the king my lord, who has given her into my hand, and that I have hearkened to the words of the king my lord that he would send to his servant, and my heart rejoiced and my head was exalted, and my eyes were enlightened, and my ears heard the words of the king my lord.... And the king my lord knows that hostility is very strong against me; all the [fortresses] which the king gave into [my hand] had revolted” to the Beduin, but had been retaken by the commander of the Egyptian forces. The letter throws a wholly different light on the relations of the two rival parties in Phoenicia.

The assertions of Rib-Hadad, however, are supported by those of his successor in the government of Gebal, El-rabí-Hor. Rib-Hadad himself disappears from the scene. He may have died, for he complains that he is old and sick; he may have been driven out of Gebal, for in one of his despatches he states that the city was inclined to revolt, while in another he tells us that even his own brother had turned against him and gone over to the Amorite faction. Or he may have been displaced from his post; at all events, we hear that the Pharaoh had written to him, saying that Gebal was rebellious, and that there was a large amount of royal property in it. We hear also that Rib-Hadad had sent his son to the Egyptian court to plead his cause there, alleging age and infirmities as a reason for not going himself. However it may have been, we find a new governor in Gebal, who bears the hybrid name of El-rabí-Hor, “a great god 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 assert roundly that “Aziru is in rebellion against the king my lord.” Aziru had made a league (?) with the kings of Ni, Arvad, and Ammiya (the Beni-Ammo of Num. xxi (See above, .), and with the help of the Amorite Palasa was destroying the cities of the Pharaoh. So El-rabí-Hor asks the king not to heed anything the rebel may write about his seizure of Zemar or his massacre of the royal governors, but to send some troops to himself for the defence of Gebal. In a second letter he reiterates his charges against Aziru, who had now “smitten” Adon, the king of Arka, and possessed himself of Zemar and the other towns of Phoenicia, so that Gebal “alone” is on the side of the king, who “looks on” without doing anything. Moreover a fresh enemy had arisen in the person of Eta-gama of Kadesh, who had joined himself with the king of the Hittites and the king of Naharaim.

Letters to Khu-n-Aten from Akizzi the governor of Qatna, which, as we learn from the inscriptions of Assur-natsir-pal, was situated on the Khabur, represent Aziru in the same light. First of all, the Egyptian government is informed that the king of the Hittites, together with Aidhu-gama (or Eta-gama) of Kadesh has been invading the Egyptian territory, burning its cities, and carrying away from Qatna the image of the Sun-god. Khu-n-aten, it is urged, could not allow the latter crime to go unpunished. The Sun-god had created him and his father, and had caused them to be called after his own name. He was the supreme object of the Pharaoh’s worship, the deity for whose sake Khu-n-Aten had deserted Thebes.

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

Another letter brings Aziru upon the scene. He is accused of having invaded 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 and soldiers to the help of his Mesopotamian subjects. If they come all the lands round about will acknowledge him as lord, and he will be lord also of Nukhasse; if they do not come, the men of Qatna will be forced to obey Aziru.

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

A despatch, however, from Namya-yitsa, the governor of Kumidi, sets the conduct of Aziru in a more favourable light. It was written at a somewhat later time, when rebellion against the Egyptian authority was spreading throughout Syria. A certain Biridasyi had stirred up the city of Inu’am, and after shutting its gate upon Namya-yitsa had entered the city of Ashtaroth-Karnaim in Bashan, and there seized the chariots belonging to the Pharaoh, handing them over to the Beduin. He then joined the kings of Buzruna (now Bosra) and Khalunni (near the Wadi ’Allan), in a plot to murder Namya-yitsa, who escaped, however, to Damascus, though his own brothers turned against him. The rebels next attacked Aziru, captured some of his soldiers, and in league with Etu-gama wasted the district of Abitu. Etakkama, however, as Etu-gama spells his own name, professed to be a loyal servant of the Egyptian king, 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 refuge with Suta, or Seti, the Egyptian commissioner. Seti had already been in Jerusalem, and had been inquiring there into the behaviour of Ebed-Tob.

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

The governor of Khazi bore the name of Su-yarzana, Megiddo was under the authority of Biridi, while the governor of Gaza was Yapakhi. There are several letters in the Tel el-Amarna collection from the latter official, chiefly occupied with demands for help against his enemies. The district under his control was attacked by the Sute or Beduin, led by a certain Labai or Labaya and his sons. Labai, though of Beduin origin, was himself professedly an Egyptian official, the Egyptian policy having been to give the title of governor to the powerful Beduin sheikhs, and to attach them to the Egyptian government by the combined influence of bribery and fear. Labai accordingly writes to the Pharaoh to 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 my tribute or neglect the command to turn back my officers.” Labai, it would seem, had been appointed by Amenophis III. governor of Shunem and Bene-berak (Joshua xi, and had captured the city of Gath-Rimmon when it revolted against the Pharaoh; but after the death of Amenophis he and his two sons had attacked the Egyptian officials in true Beduin style, and had taken every opportunity of pillaging central and Southern Palestine. As we shall see, Labai and his ally, Malchiel, were among the chief adversaries of Ebed-Tob of Jerusalem.

On one occasion, however, Labai was actually made prisoner by one of the Egyptian officers. There is a letter from Biridi stating that Megiddo was threatened by Labai, and that although the garrison had been strengthened by the arrival of some Egyptian troops, it was impossible to venture outside the gates of the town for fear of the enemy, and that unless 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, who was the governor of some city near Megiddo, as we learn from a letter of his in which he speaks of being with Biridi. Of Yasdata we hear nothing further, but Labai was captured in Megiddo by Zurata, the prefect of Acre, who, under the pretext that he was going to send his prisoner in a ship to Egypt, took him first to the town of Khinatuna (’En’athon), and then to his own house, where he was induced by a bribe to set him free along with his companion, Hadad-mekhir (who, by the way, has bequeathed to us two letters).

It was probably after this that Labai wrote to the Pharaoh to exculpate himself, though his language, in spite of its conventional submissiveness, could not have been very acceptable at the Egyptian court. In one of his letters he excuses himself partly on the ground that even “the food of his stomach” had been taken from him, partly that he had attacked and entered Gezer only in order to recover the property of himself and his friend Malchiel, partly because a certain Bin-sumya whom the Pharaoh had sent against him had really “given a city and property in it to my father, saying that if the king sends for my wife I shall withhold her, and if the king sends for myself I shall give him instead a bar of copper in a large bowl and take the oath of allegiance.” A second letter is still more uncompromising. In this he complains that the Egyptian troops have ill-treated his people, and that the officer who is with him has slandered him before the king; he further declares that two of his towns have been taken from him, but that he will defend to the last whatever still remains of his patrimony.

Malchiel, the colleague of Labai in his attack upon Gezer, as afterwards upon Ebed-Tob of Jerusalem, does not appear to have been of Beduin origin. But as long as the Beduin chief could be of use to him he was very willing to avail himself of his assistance, and it was always easy to drop the alliance as soon as it became embarrassing. Malchiel was the son-in-law of Tagi of Gath, and the colleague of Su-yardata, one of the few Canaanite governors whom the Egyptian government seems to have been able to trust. Both Su-yardata and Malchiel held commands in Southern Palestine, and we hear a good deal about them from Ebed-Tob. “The two sons of Malchiel” are also mentioned in a letter from a lady who bears a Babylonian name, and who refers to them in connection with an attempt to detach the cities of Ajalon and Zorah (Joshua x from their allegiance to Egypt. The female correspondents of the Pharaoh are among the most curious and interesting features of the state of society depicted in the Tel el-Amarna tablets; they entered keenly into the politics of the day, and kept the Egyptian king fully informed of all that was going on.

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

(I.) “To the king my lord [my] Sun-god, thus [speaks] Ebed-Tob thy servant: at the feet of the king my lord seven times seven I prostrate myself. Behold, the king has established his name at the rising of the sun 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 am an ally of the king, and I have paid the tribute due to the king, even I. Neither my father nor my mother, but the oracle (or arm) of the Mighty King established [me] in the house of [my] fathers.... There have come to me as a present 13 [women] and 10 slaves. Suta (Seti) the Commissioner of the king has come to me: 21 female slaves and 20 male slaves captured in war have been given into the hands of Suta as a gift for the king my lord, as the king has ordained for his country. The country of the king is being destroyed, all of it. Hostilities are carried on against me as far as the mountains of Seir (Joshua x and the city of Gath-Karmel (Joshua x. All the other governors are at peace, but there is war against myself, since I see the foe, but I do not see the tears of the king my lord because war has been raised against me. While there is a ship in the midst of the sea, the arm (or oracle) of the Mighty King shall conquer the countries of Naharaim (Nakhrima) and Babylonia. But now the Confederates (Khabiri) are capturing the fortresses of the king. Not a single governor remains among them to the king my lord; all have perished. Behold, Turbazu, thy military officer, [has fallen] in the great gate of the city of Zelah (Josh, xvii. Behold, Zimrida of Lachish has been murdered by the servants who have revolted against the king. Jephthah-Hadad, thy military officer, has been slain in the great gate of Zelah.... May the king [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 no troops come this year, all the countries of the king my lord will be utterly destroyed. They do not say before the face of the king my lord that the country of the king my lord is destroyed, and that all the governors are destroyed, if no troops come this year. Let the king send a commissioner, and let him come to me, even to me, with auxiliary troops, and we will die with the king [our] lord. [To] the secretary of the king my lord [speaks] Ebed-Tob [thy] servant. At [thy] feet [I prostrate 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 feet of the king my lord seven times seven I prostrate myself. What have I done against the king my lord? They have slandered me, laying wait for me in the presence of the king, the lord, saying: Ebed-Tob has revolted from the king his lord. Behold, neither my father nor my mother has exalted me in this place; the prophecy of the Mighty King has caused me to enter the house of my father. Why should I have committed a sin against the king the lord? With the king my lord is life. I say to the officer of the king [my] lord: Why dost thou love the Confederates and hate the governors? And constantly I am sending to the presence of the king my lord to say that the countries of the king my lord are being destroyed. Constantly I am sending to the king my lord, and let the king my lord consider, since the king my lord has appointed the men of the guard who have taken the fortresses. Let Yikhbil-Khamu [be sent].... Let the king send help to his country. [Let him send troops] to his country which protects the fortresses of the king my lord, all of them, since Elimelech is destroying all the country of the king; and let the king send help to his country. Behold, I have gone down along with the king my lord, and I have not seen the tears of the king my lord; but hostility is strong against me, yet I have not taken anything whatever from the king my lord; and let the king incline towards my face; let him despatch a guard [for me], and let him appoint a commissioner, and I shall not see the tears of the king my lord, since the king [my] lord shall live when the commissioner has departed. Behold, the countries of the king [my lord] are being destroyed, yet thou dost not listen to me. All the governors are destroyed; no governor remains to the king the lord. Let the king turn his face to his subjects, and let him send auxiliaries, even the troops of the king my lord. No provinces remain unto the king; the confederates have wasted all the provinces of the king. If auxiliaries come this year, the provinces of the king the lord will be preserved; but if no auxiliaries come the provinces of the king my 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 of the king my lord are being destroyed by the enemy.”

(III.) “[To] the king my lord [speaks] Ebed-Tob [thy] servant: [at the feet 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 the city of Gezer, the country of the city of Ashkelon and the city of La[chish] have given as their peace offerings food and oil and whatsoever the fortress needs. And let the king send help to his troops; let him despatch troops against the men who have rebelled against the king my lord. If troops come this year, there will remain both provinces [and] governors to the king my lord; [but] if no troops arrive, there will remain no provinces or governors to the king [my lord]. Behold, neither my father nor my mother has given this country of the city of Jerusalem unto me: it was an oracle [of the Mighty King] that gave it to me, even to me. Behold, Malchiel and the sons of Labai have given the country of the king to the Confederates. Behold, the king my lord is righteous towards me. As to the Babylonians, let the king ask the commissioner how very strong is the temple-[fortress of Jerusalem.].... Thou hast delivered (?) the provinces into the hands of the city of Ash[kelon]. Let the king demand of them abundance of food, abundance of oil, 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 along with the garrison and the [rest of the people]. Let the king consider the [instructions] of the king; [let him] speak to me; let Adai deliver me Thou wilt not desert it, even this city, sending to me a garrison [and] sending a royal commissioner. Thy grace [is] to send [them]. To the king [my lord] I have despatched [a number of] prisoners [and a number of] slaves. [I have looked after] the roads of the king in the plain (kikkar, Gen. xii and in the mountains. Let the king my lord consider the city of Ajalon. I am not able to direct my way to the king my lord according to his instructions. Behold, the king has established his name in the country of Jerusalem for ever, and he cannot forsake the territories of the city of Jerusalem. To the secretary of the king my lord thus speaks Ebed-Tob thy servant. At thy feet I prostrate myself. Thy servant am I. Lay a report of my words before the king my lord. The vassal of the king am I. Mayest thou live long! And thou hast performed deeds which I cannot enumerate against the men of the 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 that Ebed-Tob was the writer of it.) “And now as to the city of Jerusalem, if this country is still the king’s, why is Gaza made the seat of the king’s government? Behold, the district of the city of Gath-Carmel has fallen 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 the country 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 granted all their requests to the men of Keilah, and we have delivered (or departed from) the city of Jerusalem. The garrison thou hast left in it is under the command of Apis the son of Miya-riya (Meri-Ra). Hadad-el has remained in his house in Gaza....”

(V.) “To the king my lord thus [speaks] Ebed-Tob thy servant: at the feet of my lord [the king] seven times seven [I prostrate myself]. Behold, Malchiel does not separate himself from the sons of Labai and the sons of Arzai to demand the country of the king for themselves. As for the governor who acts thus, why does not the king question him? Behold, Malchiel and Tagi are they who have acted so, since they have taken the city of Rubute (Rabbah, Josh. x.... (Many lines are lost here.) There is no royal garrison [in Jerusalem]. May the king live eternally! Let Pa-ur go down to him. He has departed in front of me and is in the city of Gaza; and let the king send to him a guard to defend the country. All the country of the king has revolted! Direct Yikhbil-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 the feet of the king my lord seven times seven I prostrate myself. [The king knows the deed] which they have done, even Malchiel and Su-ardatum, against the country of the king my lord, commanding the forces of the city of Gezer, the forces of the city of Gath, and the forces of the city of Keilah. They have seized the district of the city of Rabbah. The country of the king has gone over to the Confederates. And now at this moment the city of the mountain of Jerusalem, the city of the temple of the god Nin-ip, whose name is Salim (?),” (Or, adopting the reading of Dr. Zimmern, “The city whose name is Bit-Nin-ip.”) “the city of the king, is gone over to the side of the men of Keilah. Let the king listen to Ebed-Tob thy servant, and let him despatch troops and restore the country of the king to the king. But if no troops arrive, the country of the king is gone over to the men even to the Confederates. This is the deed [of Su-ar]datun and Malchiel....”

The loyalty of Ebed-Tob, however, seems to have been doubted at the Egyptian court, where more confidence was placed in his rival and enemy Su-ardata (or Su-yardata, as the owner of the name himself writes it). Possibly the claim of the vassal-king of Jerusalem to have been appointed 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 and not an ordinary governor, may have had something to do with the suspicions that were entertained of him. At all events we learn from a letter of Su-yardata that the occupation of Keilah by Ebed-Tob’s enemies, of which the latter complains so bitterly, was due to the orders of the Egyptian government itself. Su-yardata there says “The king [my lord] directed me to make war in the city of Keilah: war was made; (and now) a complaint is brought against me. My city against myself has risen upon me. Ebed-Tob sends to the men of the city of Keilah; he sends silver, and they have marched against my rear. And the king knows that Ebed-Tob has taken my city from my hand.” The writer adds that “now Labai has taken Ebed-Tob and they have taken our cities.” In his subsequent despatches to the home government Su-yardata complains that he is “alone,” and asks that troops should be sent to him, saying that he is forwarding some almehs or maidens as a present along with his “dragoman.” At this point the correspondence breaks off.

Malchiel and Tagi also write to the Pharaoh. According to Tagi the roads between Southern Palestine and Egypt were under the supervision and protection of his brother; while Malchiel begs for cavalry to pursue and capture the enemy who had made war upon Su-yardata and himself, had seized “the country of the king,” and threatened to slay his servants. He also complains of the conduct of Yankhamu, the High Commissioner, who had been ordered to inquire into the conduct of the governors in Palestine. Yankhamu, it seems, had seized Malchiel’s property and carried off his wives and children. It was doubtless to this act of injustice that Labai alludes in his letter of exculpation.

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

The name of Hebron has the same origin as that of the Khabiri, who appear in Ebed-Tob’s letters by the side of Labai, Babylonia, and Naharaim as the assailants of Jerusalem and its territory. The word means “Confederates,” and occurs in the Assyrian texts; among other passages in a hymn published by Dr. Bruennow, where we read, istu pan khabiri-ya iptarsanni, “from the face of my associates he has cut me off.” The word, however, is not Assyrian, as in that case it would have had a different form, but must have been borrowed from the Canaanitish language of the West.

Who the Khabiri or “Confederates” were has been disputed. Some scholars see in them Elamite marauders who followed the march of the Babylonian armies to Syria. This opinion is founded on the fact that the Khabiri are once mentioned as an Elamite tribe, and that in a Babylonian document a “Khabirite” (Khabira) is referred to along with a “Kassite” or Babylonian. Another view is that they are to be identified with Heber, the grandson of Asher (Gen. xlv, since Malchiel is said to be the brother of Heber, just as in the letters of Ebed-Tob Malchiel is associated with the Khabiri. But all such identifications are based upon the supposition that “Khabiri” is a proper name rather than a descriptive title. Any band of “Confederates” could be called Khabiri whether in Elam or in Palestine, and it does not follow that the two bands were the same. In the “Confederates” of Southern Canaan we have to look for a body of confederated tribes who made themselves formidable to the governor of Jerusalem in the closing days of the Egyptian empire.

It would seem that Elimelech, who of course was a different person from Malchiel, was their leader, and as Elimelech is a Canaanitish name, we may conclude that the majority of his followers were also of Canaanitish descent. The scene of their hostilities was to the south of Jerusalem. Gath-Carmel, Zelah, and Lachish are the towns mentioned in connection with their attempts to capture and destroy “the fortresses of the king.” “The country of the king” which had “gone over to the Confederates” was the territory over which Ebed-Tob claimed rule, while the district occupied by Labai and his Beduin followers was handed over “to the men of the district of the Confederates.” The successes of the latter were gained through the intrigues of Malchiel and the sons of Labai.

All this leads us to the neighbourhood of Hebron, and suggests the question whether “the district of the Confederates” was not that of which Hebron, “the Confederacy,” was the central meeting-place and sanctuary. Hebron has preserved its sacred character down to the present day; it long disputed with Jerusalem the claim of being the oldest and most hallowed shrine in Southern Palestine, and it was for many years the capital of Judah, Moreover, we know that “Hebron” was not the only name the city possessed. When Abram was “confederate” with the three Amorite chieftains it was known as Mamre (Gen. xii, and at a later day 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 and races who would have met together at a common sanctuary. When Ezekiel says that Jerusalem was both Hittite and Amorite in its parentage, he may have been referring to its conquest and settlement by such a confederacy as that of Hebron. At all events we learn from Su-yardata’s letter that Ebed-Tob eventually fell into the hands of his enemies; he was captured by Labai, and it is possible that his city became at the same 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 their seat in the southern part of Palestine, and that we need not go outside Canaan to discover who they were. Ebed-Tob, at all events, carefully distinguishes them from either the Babylonians or the people of Naharaim.

In his letters, as everywhere else in the Tel el-Amarna correspondence, the Babylonians are called Kassi or Kassites. The name is written differently in the cuneiform texts from that of the Ethiopians, the Kash of the hieroglyphic inscriptions. Both, however, are alike represented in Hebrew by Cush, and hence we have not only a Cush who is the brother of Mizrairn, but also another Cush who is the father of Nimrod. The name of 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 was known to its Canaanite and Egyptian neighbours. Mitanni, in fact, was its capital, and it may be that Lutennu (or Lotan), as the Egyptians called Syria and Palestine, was but a mispronunciation of it. Along with the Babylonians the people of Naharaim had made themselves formidable to the inhabitants of Canaan, and their name was feared as far south as Jerusalem. Even the governor of the Canaanite town of Musikhuna, not far from the Sea of Galilee, bore the Mitannian name of Sutarna. It was not, indeed, until after the Israelitish conquest that the last invasion of Canaan by a king of Aram-Naharaim took place.

Gaza and Joppa were at one time under the same governor, Yabitiri, who in a letter which has come down to us asks to be relieved of the burden of his office. Ashkelon, however, which lay between the two sea-ports, was in the hands of another prefect, Yidya by name, from whom we have several letters, in one of which mention is made of the Egyptian commissioner Rianap, or Ra-nofer. The jurisdiction of Rianap extended as far north as the plain of Megiddo, since he is also referred to by Pu-Hadad, the governor of Yurza, now Yerzeh, south-eastward of Taanach. But it was more particularly in the extreme south of Palestine that the duties of this officer lay. Hadad-dan, who was entrusted with the government 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 a certain Beya, the son of “the woman Gulat.” Hadad-dan begins by saying that he had protected the commissioner and cities of the king, and then adds that “the city of Tumur is hostile to me, and I have built a house in the city of Mankhate, so that the household troops of the king my lord may be sent to me; and lo, Baya has taken it from my hand, and has placed his commissioner in it, and I have appealed to Rianap, my commissioner, and he has restored the city unto me, and has sent the household troops of the king my lord to me.” After this the writer goes on to state that Beya had also intrigued against the city of Gezer, “the handmaid of the king my lord who created me.” The rebel then carried off a quantity of plunder, and it became necessary to ransom his prisoners for a hundred pieces of silver, while those of his confederate were ransomed for thirty pieces of silver.

The misdeeds of Beya or Baya did not end here. We hear of him again as attacking and capturing a body of soldiers who had been sent to defend the 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 the Pharaoh, to whom he despatched a letter to say that Yankhamu, the High Commissioner, was not in his district. Probably this was in answer to a charge 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 him exercising 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 the superintendence of Phoenicia was more particularly entrusted, was supplied by him with corn, and frequent references are made to him in the letters of Rib-Hadad. Malchiel complained of his high-handed proceedings, and the complaint seems to have led to some confidential inquiries on the part of the home government, since we find a certain Sibti-Hadad writing in answer to the Pharaoh’s questions that Yankhamu was a faithful servant of the king.

The country east of the Jordan also appears to have been within his jurisdiction. At all events the following letter was addressed to him by the governor Mut-Hadad, “the man of Hadad.” “To Yankhamu my lord thus speaks 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 it is certified (?) that the king of Bethel has fled from before the officers of the king his lord, may the king my lord live, may the king my lord live! I pray thee ask Ben-enima, ask ... tadua, ask Isuya, if Ayab has been in this city of Bethel for [the last] two months. Ever since the arrival of [the image of] the god Merodach, the city of Astarti (Ashtaroth-Karnaim) has been assisted, because all the fortresses of the foreign land are hostile, namely, the cities of Udumu (Edom), Aduri (Addar), Araru, Mestu (Mosheh), Magdalim (Migdol), Khinianabi (’En han-nabí), Zarki-tsabtat, Khaini (’En), and Ibi-limma (Abel). Again after thou hadst sent a letter to me I sent to him (i.e. Ayab), [to wait] until thy arrival from thy journey; and he reached the city of Bethel and [there] they heard the news.”

We learn from this letter that Edom was a “foreign country” unsubdued by the Egyptian arms. The “city of Edom,” from which the country took its name, is again mentioned in the inscriptions of the Assyrian king Esar-haddon, and it was there that the Assyrian tax-gatherers collected the tribute of the Edomite nation. It would seem that the land of Edom stretched further to the north in the age of Khu-n-Aten than it did at a subsequent period of history, and that it encroached upon what was afterwards the territory of Moab. The name of the latter country is met with for the first time among the Asiatic conquests of Ramses II. engraved on the base of one of the colossal figures which stand in front of the northern pylon of the temple of Luxor; when the Tel el-Amarna letters were written Moab was included in the Canaanite province of Egypt.

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 in Canaan. Between the predecessors of the two monarchs there had been alliance and friendly intercourse, and nevertheless the Canaanitish subjects of the Pharaoh had committed an outrageous crime against some Babylonian merchants, which if left unpunished would have led to a rupture between the two countries. The merchants in question had entered Palestine under the escort of the Canaanite Ahitub, intending afterwards to visit Egypt. At En-athon, near Acre, however, “in the country of Canaan,” Sum-Adda, or Shem-Hadad, the son of Balumme (Balaam), and Sutatna, or Zid-athon, the son of Saratum, [His name is written Zurata in the letter of Biridi, the governor of Megiddo; see above, .] who was governor of Acre, set upon them, killing some of them, maltreating others, and carrying away their goods. Burna-buryas therefore sent a special envoy, who was instructed to lay the following complaint before the Pharaoh: “Canaan is thy country and the king [of Acre is thy servant]. In thy country I have been injured; do thou punish [the offenders]. The silver which they carried off was a present [for thee], and the men who are my servants they have slain. Slay them and requite the blood [of my servants]. But if thou dost not put these men to death, [the inhabitants] of the high-road that belongs to me will turn and verily will slay thy ambassadors, and a breach will be made in the agreement to respect the persons of ambassadors, and I shall be estranged from thee. Shem-Hadad, having cut off the feet of one of my men, has detained him with him; and as for another man, Sutatna of Acre made him stand upon his head and then stood upon his face.”

There are three letters in the Tel el-Amarna collection from Sutatna, or Zid-atna ("the god Zid has given”) as he writes his name, in one of which he compares Akku or Acre with “the city of Migdol in Egypt.” Doubtless satisfaction was given to the Babylonian king for the wrong that had been done to his subjects, though whether the actual culprits were punished may be questioned. There is another letter from Burna-buryas, in which reference is again made to the Canaanites. He there asserts that in the time of his father, Kurigalzu, they had sent to the Babylonian sovereign, saying: “Go down against Qannisat and let us rebel.” Kuri-galzu, however, had refused to listen to them, telling them that if they wanted to break away from the Egyptian king and ally themselves “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 Pharaoh that he would carry on no intrigues with disaffected Canaanites. As the first part of his letter is filled with requests for gold for the adornment of a temple he was building at Babylon, such an assurance was very necessary. The despatches of Rib-Hadad and Ebed-Tob, however, go to show that in spite of his professions of friendship, the Babylonian monarch was ready to afford secret help to the insurgents in Palestine. The Babylonians were not likely to forget that they had once been masters of the country, or to regard the Egyptian empire in Asia with other than jealous eyes.

The Tel el-Amarna correspondence breaks off suddenly in the midst of a falling empire, with its governors in Canaan fighting and intriguing one against the other, and appealing to the Pharaoh for help that never came. The Egyptian commissioners are vainly endeavouring to restore peace and order, like General Gordon in the Soudan, while Babylonians and Mitannians, Hittites and Beduin are assailing the distracted province. The Asiatic empire of the eighteenth dynasty, however, did not wholly perish with the death of Khu-n-Aten. A picture in the tomb of prince Hui at Thebes shows that under the reign of his successor, Tut-ankh-Amon, the Egyptian supremacy was still acknowledged in some parts of Syria. The chiefs of the Lotan or Syrians are represented in their robes of many colours, some with white and others with brown skins, and coming before the Egyptian monarch with the rich tribute of their country. Golden trays full of precious stones, vases of gold and silver, the covers of which are in the form of the heads of gazelles and other animals, golden rings richly enamelled, horses, lions, and a leopard’s skin such are the gifts which they offer to the Pharaoh. It was the last embassy of the kind which was destined to come from Syria for many a day.

With the rise of the nineteenth dynasty and the restoration of a strong government at home, the Egyptians once more began to turn their eyes towards Palestine. Seti I. drove the Beduin before him from the frontiers of Egypt to those of “Canaan,” and established a line of fortresses and wells along “the way of the Philistines,” which ran by the shore of the Mediterranean to Gaza. The road was now open for him to the north along the sea-coast. We hear accordingly of his capture of Acre, Tyre, and Usu or Palaetyros, from whence he marched into the Lebanon and took Kumidi and Inu’am. One of his campaigns must have led him into the interior of Palestine, since in his list of conquered cities we find the names of Carmel and Beth-anoth, of Beth-el and Pahil or Pella, as well as of Qamham or Chimham (see Jer. xl. Kadesh, “in the land of the Amorites,” was captured by a sudden assault, and Seti claims to have defeated or received the submission of Alasiya and Naharaim, the Hittites and the Assyrians, Cyprus and Sangar. It would seem, however, that north of Kadesh he really made his way only along the coast as far as the Gulf of Antioch and Cilicia, overrunning towns and 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-seven years lasted from 1348 B.C. to 1281 B.C. The first twenty-one years of it were occupied in the re-conquest of Palestine, and sanguinary wars with the Hittites. But these mountaineers of the north had established themselves too firmly in the old Egyptian province of Northern Syria to be dislodged. All the Pharaoh could effect was to stop their further progress towards the south, and to save Canaan from their grasp. The war between the two great powers of Western Asia ended at last through the sheer 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 of the Pharaoh to the daughter of the Hittite prince. Syria was divided between the Hittites and Egyptians, and it was agreed that neither should under any pretext invade the territories of the other. It was also agreed that if either country was attacked by foreign foes or rebellious subjects, the other should come to its help. Political refugees, moreover, were to be delivered up to the sovereign from whom they had escaped, but it was stipulated that in this case they should receive a full pardon for the offences they had committed. The Hittite copy of the treaty was engraved on a silver plate, and the gods of Egypt and the Hittites were called upon to witness the execution of it.

The legendary exploits of Sesostris, that creation of Greek fancy and ignorance, were fastened upon Ramses II., whose long reign, inordinate vanity, and ceaseless activity as a builder made him one of the most prominent of the old Pharaohs. It was natural, therefore, at the beginning of hieroglyphic decipherment that the Greek accounts should be accepted in full, and that Ramses II. should have been regarded as the greatest of Egyptian conquerors. But further study soon showed that, in this respect at least, his reputation had little to support it. Like his monuments, too many of which are really stolen from his predecessors, or else sacrifice honesty of work to haste and pretentiousness, a large part of the conquests and victories that have been claimed for him was due to the imagination of the scribes. In the reaction which followed on this discovery, the modern historians of ancient Egypt were disposed to dispute his claim to be a conqueror at all. But we now know that such a scepticism was exaggerated, and though Ramses II. was not a conqueror like Thothmes III., he nevertheless maintained and extended the Asiatic empire which his father had recovered, and the lists of vanquished cities which he engraved on the walls of his temples were not mere repetitions of older catalogues, or the empty fictions of flattering chroniclers. Egyptian armies really marched once more into Northern Syria and the confines of Cilicia, and probably made their way to the banks of the Euphrates. We have no reason for denying that Assyrian troops may have been defeated by his arms, or that the king of Mitanni may have sent an embassy to his court. And we now have a good deal more than the indirect evidence of the treaty with the Hittites to show that Canaan was again a province of the Egyptian empire. The names of some of its cities which were captured in the early part of the Pharaoh’s reign may still be read on the walls of the Ramesseum at Thebes. Among them are Ashkelon, Shalam or Jerusalem, Merom, and Beth-Anath, which were taken by storm in his eighth year. Dapul, “in the land of the Amorites,” was captured at the same time, proving that the Egyptian forces penetrated as far as the Hittite frontiers. At Luxor other Canaanite names figure in the catalogue of vanquished states. Thus we have Carmel of Judah, Ir-shemesh and Hadashah (Josh. x, Gaza, Sela and Jacob-el, Socho, Yurza, and Korkha in Moab. The name of Moab itself appears for the first time among the subject nations, while we gather from a list of mining settlements, that Cyprus as well as the Sinaitic peninsula was under Egyptian authority.

A sarcastic account of the misadventures of a military officer in Palestine, which was written in the time of Ramses, is an evidence of the complete occupation of that country by the Egyptians. All parts of Canaan are alluded to in it, and as Dr. Max Mueller has lately pointed out, we find in it for the first time the names of Shechem and Kirjath-Sepher. Similar testimony is borne by a hieroglyphic inscription recently discovered by Dr. Schumacher on the so-called “Stone of Job” in the Hauran. The stone (Sakhrat ’Ayyub) is a monolith westward of the Sea of Galilee, and not far from Tel ’Ashtereh, the ancient Ashtaroth-Karnaim, which was a seat of Egyptian government in the time of Khu-n-Aten. The monolith is adorned with Egyptian sculptures and hieroglyphs. One of the sculptures represents a Pharaoh above whose likeness is the cartouche of Ramses II., while opposite the king, to the left, is the figure of a god who wears the crown of Osiris, but has a full face. Over the god is his name in hieroglyphics. The name, however, is not Egyptian, but seems to be intended for the Canaanite Yakin-Zephon or “Yakin of the North.” It is plain, therefore, that we have here a monument testifying to the rule of Ramses II., but a monument which was erected by natives of the country to a native divinity. For a while the hieroglyphic writing of Egypt had taken the place formerly occupied by the cuneiform syllabary of Babylonia, and Egyptian culture had succeeded in 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 tribes which attacked Egypt by sea and land in the reign of Meneptah, the son and successor of Ramses II., was successfully repulsed, but the energy of the Egyptian power seemed to exhaust itself in the effort. The throne fell into the hands of usurpers, and the house of Ramses was swept away by civil war and anarchy. The government was seized by a Syrian, Arisu by name, and for a time Egypt was compelled to submit to a foreign yoke. The overthrow of the foreigner and the restoration of the native monarchy was due to the valour of Set-nekht, the founder of the twentieth dynasty and the father of Ramses III.

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

Palestine still formed part of the kingdom of Meneptah, at all events in the earlier years of his reign. A scribe has left us a record of the officials who passed to and from Canaan through the frontier fortress of Zaru during the middle of the month Pakhons in the third year of the king. One of these was Baal- ... the son of Zippor of Gaza, who carried a letter for the Egyptian overseer of the Syrian peasantry (or Perizzites), as well as another for Baal-[sa]lil-gau, the vassal-prince of Tyre. Another messenger was Sutekh-mes, the son of ’Aper-dagar, who also carried a despatch to the overseer of the peasantry, while a third envoy came in the reverse direction, from the city of Meneptah, “in the land of the Amorites.”

In the troubles which preceded the accession of the twentieth dynasty the Asiatic possessions of Egypt were naturally lost, and were never again recovered. Ramses III., however, the last of the conquering Pharaohs, made at least one campaign in Palestine and Syria. Like Meneptah, he had to bear the brunt of an attack upon Egypt by the confederated hordes of the north which threatened to extinguish its civilization altogether. The nations of Asia Minor and the AEgean Sea had poured into Syria as the northern barbarians in later days poured into the provinces of the Roman Empire. Partly by land, partly by sea, they made their way through Phoenicia and the land of the Hittites, destroying everything as they went, and carrying in their train the subjugated princes of Naharaim and Kadesh. For a time they encamped in the “land of the Amorites,” and then pursued their southward march. Ramses III. met them on the north-eastern frontier of his kingdom, and in a fiercely-contested battle utterly overthrew them. The ships of the invaders were captured or sunk, and their forces on land were decimated. Immense quantities of booty and prisoners were taken, and the shattered forces of the enemy retreated into Syria. There the Philistines and Zakkal possessed themselves of the sea-coast, and garrisoned the cities of the extreme south. Gaza ceased to be an Egyptian fortress, and became instead an effectual barrier to the Egyptian occupation of Canaan.

When Ramses III. followed the retreating invaders of his country into Syria, it is doubtful whether the Philistines had as yet settled themselves in their future home. At all events Gaza fell into his hands, and he found no difficulty in marching along the Mediterranean coast like the conquering Pharaohs who had preceded him. In his temple palace at Medinet Habu he has left a record of the conquests that he made in Syria. The great cities of the coast were untouched. No attempt was made to besiege or capture Tyre and Sidon, Beyrout and Gebal, and the Egyptian army marched past them, encamping on the way only at such places as “the headland of Carmel,” “the source of the Magoras,” or river of Beyrout, and the Bor or “Cistern.” Otherwise its resting-places were at unknown villages like Inzath and Lui-el. North of Beyrout it struck eastward through the gorge of the Nahr el-Kelb, and took the city of Kumidi. Then it made its way by Shenir or Hermon to Hamath, which surrendered, and from thence still northward to “the plain” of Aleppo.

In the south of Palestine, in what was afterwards the territory of Judah, Ramses made yet another campaign. Here he claims to have taken Lebanoth and Beth-Anath, Carmel of Judah and Shebtin, Jacob-el and Hebron, Libnah and Aphek, Migdal-gad and Ir-Shemesh, Hadashah and the district of Salem or Jerusalem. From thence the Egyptian forces proceeded to the Lake of Reshpon or the Dead Sea, and then crossing the Jordan seized Korkha in Moab. But the campaign was little more than a raid; it left no permanent results behind it, and all traces of Egyptian authority disappeared with the departure of the Pharaoh’s army. Canaan remained the prey of the first resolute invader who had strength and courage at his back.