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FROM THE LIBRARY
OF
JOHN PUNNETT PETERS
YALE 1873

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BECENT AKCHiEOLOGY

AND

THE BIBLE

Kty Croall ^Lectures for 1898

KECENT ABCHJIOLOGrY

AND

THE BIBLE

BY THE
REV. THOMAS NICOL, D.D.
w \
MINISTER OF TOLBOOTH PARISH, EDINBURGH
AUTHOR OF 'RECENT EXPLORATIONS IN BIBLE LANDS*

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
EDINBUEGH AND LONDON
MDCCCXCIX

PBEFACE.

TeTe Lectures contained in this volume were de
livered in the beginning of 1898, in terms of the
appointment I had the honour to receive from the
Croall Lectureship Trustees.
For that appointment I desire here to express
my cordial thanks. The invitation of the Trustees
has enabled me to extend former studies, and to
present a survey of Biblical Archaeology up to
date ; whilst their confidence has been an ever-
present incentive to fulfil my task in a manner
worthy of the traditions of the Lectureship.
My obligations to the works of scholars labour
ing in different departments of archaeological re
search will be apparent to the readers of this
volume. From those of them to whom I have
had occasion to apply for information I have re
ceived most courteous replies. For however sharp
the controversies of archaeologists on questions in
dispute among themselves, there is no lack of
b

VI PREFACE.
readiness to communicate discoveries that have
been made or results that have been attained.
It is scarcely necessary to add that, while avail
ing myself of the discoveries and results of these
scholars, I have endeavoured always to form an
independent judgment on points at issue between
different schools.
Of friends who have helped me with the litera
ture and with valuable suggestions, I have pleasure
in mentioning Professor Hermann L. Strack of
Berlin, Professor A. B. S. Kennedy of Edinburgh,
and the Bev. H. G. Tomkins, Weston-super-Mare.
This acknowledgment, however, must not be held
as committing them to the views here adopted
on disputed points.
To Miss Annie Pirie of Aberdeen, the daughter
of one of my earliest and kindest friends, the
late Principal of Aberdeen University, I have been
greatly indebted for reading my proofs and fur
nishing me with valuable particulars relating to
earliest Egypt, in regard to which her experience
of exploration in connection with Professor Flinders
Petrie's work has made her an authority. For
reading the proofs of the Lectures devoted to
Assyria, and for not a little valuable information,
I have to thank Mr W. F. Millar, an honoured
citizen who gives to Assyrian studies the leisure
he can snatch from the avocations of a business
life. And last, but not least, I have to acknow-

PREFACE. Vll
ledge much scholarly help from the Bev. W. B.
Henderson, B.D., who has read all the proofs and
also compiled the minute and accurate Index.
An Appendix has been added containing a few
notes, mostly referring to discoveries or discussions
since the delivery of the Lectures. It may help
to explain allusions in footnotes if I mention that
after the delivery of the Lectures I had the
opportunity of making a tour of the Levant,
visiting the fine collection of antiquities in the
Louvre en route, and spending some time in
the Egyptian National Museum at Ghizeh, and
in the Imperial Ottoman Museum in Stamboul.
9 Chalmers Street, Edinburgh,
April 10, 1899.

CONTENTS.

LECTURE I.
A SKETCH OF RECENT DISCOVERY IN PALESTINE, EGYPT,
AND BABYLONIA. PAGE
Value of recent archaeological research in Bible lands — High
antiquity of earliest Babylonian records — Earliest Egyptian
history — Position of Israel among the nations of antiquity —
Elucidations of its history by recent discovery — History of
exploration outlined ..... 1
I. Palestine Exploration. — Early researches — Palestine
Exploration Fund — Labours of individual workers — American
Society — German Society ..... 8
II. Egyptian Exploration. — Rosetta Stone — Decipher
ment of hieroglyphic characters — Progress of Egyptology —
Latest discoveries : (1) Tombs of the Kings ; (2) Tel el-Amarna
tablets ; (3) Egyptian stele bearing the name of Israel ; (4) The
tomb o^Menes ....... 13
III. Babylonian Exploration. — Assyria and Babylonia
distinguished — Interest in cuneiform inscriptions — First ex
cavations by Botta, Layard, Loftus, and others — Decipherment
of cuneiform — Niebuhr, Grotefend, Rawlinson, George Smith,
Rassam — Recent expeditions — French under De Sarzec —
American from University of Pennsylvania — Turkish efforts
— Ottoman Museum Collection — Antiquity of the art of writing 26
LECTURE II.
BABYLONIAN LITERATURE AND THE EARLY NARRATIVES
OP GENESIS.
The library of Asshurbanipal — Early Babylonian texts — The
Babylonian Creation Epos — Babylonian Creation records
compared with Scripture narrative — The Sabbath, Paradise,
the Fall, in Babylonian literature — The Babylonian account

X CONTENTS.
of the Flood— Its relation to the Nimrod Epos— Babylonian
Flood-Story and Scripture account of the Deluge compared
— How far is the Scripture account historical 1 — What is the
relationship between the Biblical narrative and these Baby
lonian legends ? (1) View of Berosus ; (2) Views of the advanced
critics ; (3) Views of Dillmann, Schrader, Lenormant, Maspero 47
LECTURE III.
BABYLONIA TO THE TIME OP ABRAHAM.
The patriarchal history and the advanced critics — The times of
the patriarchs and early Babylonian civilisation — The ethno
logical table in Genesis in the light of recent discovery — Cush
and recent research — Shinar and its kingdoms : Accad, Kish,
Shirpurla, Nippur, Erech, Larsa, Babel, Ur — Abraham's early
surroundings — Abraham at Harran — Abraham in Canaan —
Chedorlaomer's campaign — Identification of his allies — Evi
dential value of the record . . . . .85
LECTURE IV.
EGYPT AND THE PATRIARCHS, INCLUDING THE EXODUS.
Egypt in the ethnographical table — Early history and civilisation
— The rulers of the 12th dynasty — Semitic strangers — Hyksos
rule in Egypt — Abraham's visit to Egypt — Story of Joseph in
the light of Egyptian lore — The land of Goshen — The descend
ants of Jacob in Egypt — Their increase and hard bondage —
Rameses II. and his long reign — His work as conqueror and
builder — Birth and upbringing of Moses — Merenptah and his
reign — Stele bearing the name of Israel — Views of Hommel,
Sayce, Maspdro, and others — The field of Zoan — The route of
the Exodus — The passage of the Red Sea — The character and
issues of the movement — Its bearing upon the patriarchal
history . . . . . . . .126
LECTURE V.
CANAAN AND ITS NEIGHBOURS IN THE TEL EL-AMARNA
TABLETS.
The land of Canaan the goal of the military ambition of Baby
lonian rulers — Coveted by Egypt as lying on the highroad to

CONTENTS. xi
Mesopotamia — From Abraham to Joshua little to be learned
from Scripture of the inhabitants — Canaan in Egyptian records
— The Tel el-Amarna correspondence — The prevalence of the
Babylonian language among the rulers of Canaan and neigh
bouring lands— Natural features of the tablets— Their classifi
cation : (1) Those of the age of undoubted Egyptian supremacy ;
(2) Those exhibiting its decline ; (3) Those referring to Southern
Palestine — The testimony of the tablets summed up : (1) The
correspondence is in accord with Joshua and Judges, and even
Numbers and Deuteronomy ; (2) It shows the prevalence of
Babylonian influence and culture from the Euphrates to the
Nile ; (3) It shows writing established and widespread in
Canaan ; (4) The Babylonian employed not the mother-tongue
of the writers ; (5) The correspondence furnishes valuable
notices of civilisation and religion — The Hittites in the
tablets — Hittite inscriptions — Notices of the Hittites in
Scripture, in Egyptian annals, in Babylonian and Assyrian
records — The revelations of Sinjirli — Influence of Hittite art
upon Greece ....... 16V

LECTURE VI.
THE CONQUEST OF CANAAN AND THE EARLIER TIMES OP
THE HEBREW MONARCHY.
Stade's theory of the entrance into Canaan — The time and circum
stances favourable for the conquest — Decline of Hittite power
— Canaanitish tribes weakened by foreign invasion — With
drawal of Egyptian garrisons — ¦ Disunion among Canaanite
kings — Lachish in the Bible narrative and in recent explora
tion — Gilgal and Jericho — Jerusalem, its situation as a moun
tain city — Its hills and valleys — Excavations by Dr Bliss —
Sir Charles Warren's discoveries — Subterranean quarries on
the Temple Hill — The Temple area — Shishak's invasion in the
Scripture history and on Egyptian monuments — The Moabite
Stone — The Siloam inscription — Their testimony to the art of
writing ........ 207
LECTURE VII.
THE CLOSE OF THE HEBREW MONARCHY IN THE LIGHT
OF ASSYRIAN ANNALS.
Assyrian records — Babylonia and Assyria distinguished — The
early Assyrian kings — Campaigns of Shalmaneser IL, Ramman

XI 1 CONTENTS.
Nirari III., Tiglath-Pileser III.— Reign of Sargon of Assyria
— His expedition to Palestine — Sennacherib's accession, in
vasion of Palestine, siege of Jerusalem, disastrous return to
Nineveh, war with Elam and Babylon, and death— Asshur-
banipal on the throne of Assyria— His patronage of learning
and wars— Egypt and Assyria trying conclusions — The Chal
daean empire — Reign of Nebuchadnezzar — His invasion of
Egypt— Tahpanhes— Nebuchadnezzar's adornment of Babylon
— Nabonidus— Belshazzar— Cyrus— The Cylinder of Cyrus-
Latest discoveries — Murashu Sons of Nippur — Impetus given
to archteological inquiry by the Scripture history . . 239

LECTURE VIII.
THE TIMES OF CHRIST AND HIS APOSTLES IN THE
LIGHT OF RECENT DISCOVERY.
The birth of Christ — The census of Quirinius — Professor Ramsay's
conclusion — Illustrations of the life and ministry of Jesus
from the Holy Land — Jacob's Well — Bethabara and Lake of
Galilee — Jerusalem — Pool of Bethesda — Golgotha — Elucida
tion of Acts of the Apostles from Asia Minor — Thessalonica —
The Politarchs — Ephesus — Temple of Diana — Demetrius the
silversmith — The Asiarchs — Accuracy of St Luke as a
historian ....... 279

Appendix . . . 318
Index . . . 327

EECENT ARCHEOLOGY AND THE BIBLE.

LECTUEE I.
A SKETCH OF EECENT DISCOVERY IN PALESTINE, EGYPT,
AND BABYLONIA.
Abch^ological discovery in the lands of the Bible
has within the last two or three decades vastly en
larged the scope of ancient history, and added at
many points a new context to the history of Israel.
The explorations of recent years have recovered for
us forgotten empires and vanished peoples, and have
brought to light civilisations, literatures, and poli
tical institutions several millenniums old. They
have made us familiar with details of domestic
life in those neighbours of Israel whom they in
troduce to us, and they have revealed a culture
and an art exhibiting a degree of advancement
which is wonderful. It is not surprising, there
fore, that they have contributed materials which
have an important bearing upon the literature
and the history of the Bible. It is well known
that the labours of Schliemann and his coadjutors
A

2 SKETCH OF EECENT DISCOVERY.
on the plain -of Troy have brought about a strong
reaction against the sceptical conclusions of Wolf
and his followers, and have done much to restore
the credit of Homer as the author of the famous
poems. Thanks to the discoveries that have added
to the earliest Christian literature such treatises as
the Diatessaron of Tatian, the Didache, and the so-
called Gospel of Peter, and to the labours of New
Testament scholars both in Britain and in Ger
many, the critical movement runs at the present
time strongly in the direction of the traditional
dates of almost all the New Testament books.
And it is not too much to affirm that recent ex
plorations in Bible lands have told similarly in
favour of the Old Testament books and their his
torical character. The late knowledge of the art
of writing, which has been alleged against the
genuineness and veracity of the narratives of the
early history of Israel, can no longer be maintained
in the face of recent discoveries. Materials for
accurate history are now shown to exist from a
period much earlier than the call of Abraham.
Episodes which seemed to the critics unhistorical
have had their historical character placed beyond
doubt. Apparent inconsistencies have been fully
explained, and valuable confirmations have been
given of the Scripture narrative by inscriptions
supplementing it.
Archaeology (it has been well said) more often supplements
than confirms history. It either speaks when history is
silent, or, if it speaks of the same person or event, it speaks
in so different a relation and with so novel a voice that the
historical imagination, tempered by severe criticism, must

EARLY BABYLONIAN ANTIQUITY. 3
be called into play before the real connection and harmony
between the written history and the archaeological evidence
can be apprehended. But when this adjustment has taken
place, when the whole of the evidence, monumental and
literary, has been focussed, so to speak, upon the event or
personage under discussion, the result is a vividness of reali
sation, a certainty of conviction, which no other means can
attain.1 Of this we shall have illustrations again and again
in the course of these Lectures, and we cannot be
sufficiently thankful for the commentary supplied
by the monuments to so much of the sacred
writings. It was a great achievement when from the
mounds of Khorsabad, near the river Tigris, there
was dug up rather more than fifty years ago the
palace of Sargon, a great Assyrian monarch, the
father of the better known Sennacherib, whose
annals we now possess in unusual copiousness, but
of whom the only trace left in the world's history
for over two thousand years was Isaiah's allusion
to him in a parenthesis, when referring to the
siege of Ashdod (Isa. xx. 1). From Sargon of
Assyria in the eighth century B.C. it is a long step
backwards to Sargon of Accad, who flourished about
3800 B.C., and ruled an empire extending from the
Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean. Only cau
tiously and with hesitation has that step been
taken by the historian of antiquity ; but now the
existence and the exploits of Sargon of Accad are
authenticated by scores of indubitable inscriptions,
and a mace-head bearing his name is to be seen in
1 See Percy Gardner, New Chapters in Greek History, chap. i.

4 SKETCH OE RECENT DISCOVERY.
the British Museum. The year 3800 B.C. brings us
very near to 4004 B.C., the limit assigned to human
history by the chronology of Archbishop Ussher.
But within the present decade there have been
dug up from the pestilential marshes of Babylonia
inscribed remains carrying us some centuries farther
into antiquity. These inscriptions record the annals
of one of the greatest monarchs of the ancient East,
whose very name— Lugal-zaggisi — is new to the
modern world. This monarch lived centuries before
Sargon of Accad, and acknowledges in a long in
scription of more than a hundred lines, carved a
hundred times on as many large vases, that Inlil,
his god, " straightened his path from the Lower
Sea of the Tigris and Euphrates to the Upper Sea
(the Mediterranean), and granted him the dominion
of everything, from the rising of the sun to the
setting of the same." Even these inscriptions,
dating from the fifth millennium before Christ, are
not regarded as by any means the earliest written
records of the ancient Babylonian civilisation, which
can be traced back, it may be by uncertain steps,
into " the palpable obscure " millenniums still. " I
do not hesitate," says Professor Hilprecht,1 "to date
the founding of the temple of Bel and the first
settlements in Nippur somewhere between 6000
and 7000 B.C., possibly even earlier. I cannot do
better," he adds, " than repeat Haynes's own words,
written out of the depths of this most ancient
sanctuary of the world so far as known : ' We must
cease to apply the adjective " earliest " to the time
1 The Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania,
vol. i. part ii. p. 24.

EARLY EGYPTIAN ANTIQUITY. 5
of Sargon, or to any age or epoch within a thousand
years of his advanced civilisation.' " These recent
discoveries " have shown us," says Professor Peters,1
the Director of the University of Pennsylvania
Expedition, " that man in a high state of civilisa
tion — building cities, organising states, conducting
distant expeditions for conquest, ruling widely ex
tended countries, trafficking with remote lands —
existed in Babylonia two thousand years before the
period assigned by Archbishop Ussher's Chronology
for the Creation of the World." One has only to
read Mr George Smith's ' Assyrian Discoveries,'
published in 1875, especially the chapter on "Early
Babylonian Texts," with its tentative identifica
tions of old Babylonian kings, along with Professor
Hilprecht's dissertations on the Cuneiform Texts
found at Nippur, to see what a flood of light has
been thrown upon earliest Babylonia in the last
twenty years.
As those Babylonian records reveal a full-grown
civilisation with writing already in wonderful per
fection, — with art well advanced, with politics
and religion highly developed, so it is in Egypt.
Egyptian civilisation, to judge from the testimony
ofthe monuments, has, according to Professor Sayce,
neither childhood nor youth. Egyptian history
runs back into an antiquity scarcely less venerable
than that of Babylonia. We have been accustomed
to think we are upon solid ground with the com
mencement of the 4th dynasty, about 4000 B.C.,
which is the age of the Pyramid builders. But
now there has come the remarkable announcement,
1 Nippur, voL i. p. vii.

6 SKETCH OP RECENT DISCOVERY.
positively startling when first made, that the royal
tomb found in the spring of 1897 at Negada, near
Thebes, by M. de Morgan, is the tomb of King
Menes, the founder of the 1st dynasty of Egyptian
kings. As if to confound the incredulity of those
who accounted Menes and his successors of the 1st,
2nd, and 3rd dynasties mythical and unhistorical,
the calcined remains of Menes were discovered in
the tomb with many objects artistically finished,
including the broken pieces of an ivory plaque,
which, when joined, showed the Horus name of the
Pharaoh, and alongside of it the name of Menes,
borne by him during his lifetime. To witness for
his historical character we have now, from the
middle of the fifth millennium before Christ, the
tomb, the bones, and the seal of Menes, who even
at that early date styles himself the King of
Upper and Lower Egypt, and does so in hiero
glyphic writing already fully developed.1
It is true that over this vastly enlarged domain
of ancient history there still hang shadows dark and
deep, and at many points impenetrable. But in so
far as archaeological research has drawn back the
veil from the civilisation of most ancient Babylonia
and Egypt, it has made known to us, through hiero
glyphic and cuneiform, the cities and temples, the
rulers and peoples of lands intimately associated
with Israel. God's chosen people having their
roots in Babylonia, and receiving the impress of
Egypt at the birth of their national life, exhibit
in their history ineffaceable traces of Babylonian
and Egyptian influence.
1 See Appendix, Note I., p. 318.

. ISRAEL AMONG THE NATIONS. 7
Bible lands [it has been well said] x are the arena upon
which the God of history, of providence, and of redemption
specially displayed His power and grace. The great primary
revelation of His dealings with men is embodied in the
Hebrew literature. These Bible lands have yielded to us
a secondary revelation. It is subordinate, indeed, to the
first, but it is richly supplementary and illustrative. It is
the province of Oriental archaeology to deal with the
peoples and countries and languages of the Bible, so as
to bring out their true relation to Bible teaching. They
were formerly regarded as the mere framework of the
picture. Now we are learning that they make up its ground
work, its colouring, and its perspective.
We can see this the moment we grasp the posi
tion of Israel among the nations. The little land
of Canaan, between the Mediterranean and the
Desert, was on the highway between Egypt and the
empires of the Tigris and Euphrates. Lugal-zaggisi
and Sargon of Accad may have reached it when
they led their conquering hosts to the shores of
the Great Sea. Thothmes I. and Thothmes III.,
who are among the greatest of Egyptian monarchs,
swept across it when they in turn carried their
arms to the banks of the Euphrates. Babylonian,
Assyrian, and Egyptian history, recovered and re
constructed from original and authentic sources by
the labours of explorers and philologists and his
torians, is, accordingly, found to elucidate in a
variety of ways the incidents and personages made
known to us in Holy Writ.
It is only of a small part of these elucidations
that we can take notice in a course like this.
Naturally we shall select for exposition and dis-
1 Professor M'Curdy in ' Recent Research in Bible Lands,' pp. 4, 5.

« SKETCH OP RECENT DISCOVERY.
cussion the passages of the history that appear the
most important — the early narratives of the Book
of Genesis ; the times of Abraham ; the residence
of Israel in Egypt, and the Exodus ; the condition
of Canaan when the Israelites took possession of
it ; the earlier times of the Hebrew monarchy ; and
the Assyrian and Chaldean invasions, ending in the
exile. But as no account of recent archaeology in
Bible lands would be complete without some notice
of Palestine exploration, and fruitful discovery in
Asia Minor and other parts of the Turkish empire,
we shall devote a concluding Lecture to them.
It is necessary, however, to indicate the sources
of our materials, and to show by what labour and
learning and courageous and patient research the
science of Sacred Archaeology has been built up
to the position which it occupies to-day.
In sketching the history of exploration, there are,
speaking generally, three great fields — Palestine,
Egypt, and Babylonia and Assyria, which two we
count as one.

I. PALESTINE EXPLORATION.
It will be convenient to give Palestine explora
tion the first place in such a sketch. It received
its initial impulse from the researches of the
well-known American Bible scholar, Dr Edward
Bobinson. He began his work in 1838, and soon
startled Bible students by his remarkable dis
coveries. The Narrative of a Mission of Inquiry
to the Jews, of which the Bev. B. M. M'Cheyne
and Dr Andrew A. Bonar were members, excited

PALESTINE EXPLORATION. 9
no little curiosity in Palestine among Scottish
Christians. Dean Stanley, by his fascinating book
' Sinai and Palestine,' awakened the interest of the
English public in the science of Sacred Archae
ology ; and the accomplished American mission
ary, Dr W. M. Thomson, who died only a few
years ago, by his great work, ' The Land and the
Book,' deepened the interest already created. In
1865 the Palestine Exploration Fund was insti
tuted. Its prospectus bore that it was founded
for the accurate and systematic investigation of
the archaeology, topography, geology, physical
geography, natural history, and manners and
customs of the Holy Land for Biblical illustra
tion. The Society thus formed has been admir
ably served by a succession of Engineer officers,
who have been as highly distinguished in the
service of the Queen as in the cause of Bible
Archaeology. One has only to name Sir Charles
Wilson, Sir Charles Warren, Colonel Conder,
and the present Sirdar of the Egyptian army,
Lord Kitchener, the first steps of whose singu
larly brilliant career were taken in the Survey of
Galilee and Western Palestine for the Palestine
Exploration Fund.1 The Fund has been equally
fortunate in its other officials, and the Honorary
Secretary, Sir Walter Besant, so well known in
literature, has done the cause signal service. In
1866 the first expedition was sent out under Captain
Wilson, B.E., now Sir Charles Wilson, and Lieuten
ant Anderson, B.E., who recommended the com
mencement of excavations at Jerusalem. In 1867,
1 See 'The City and the Land,' pp. 104, 105.

10 SKETCH OF RECENT DISCOVERY.
Lieutenant Warren, B.E., began work, the diffi
culties of which he has so well described in his
' Underground Jerusalem ' and ' The Becovery of
Jerusalem.' In 1868-69 the survey of Sinai was
conducted by Major H. S. Palmer, B.E., and Captain
Wilson. They were accompanied by the brilliant
Arabic scholar, the late Professor E. H. Palmer, whose
' Desert of the Exodus ' is the best known monu
ment of the expedition. The survey of Western
Palestine was begun in 1872, and occupied some
seven years, being carried through with remarkable
ability and thoroughness by Lieutenant Conder and
Lieutenant Kitchener. It is no disparagement of
the other departments of the work to say that the
survey of Western Palestine is the chief achievement
of the Fund. It has given us a map of Western
Palestine, on the scale of one inch to the mile,
beautifully and accurately executed, with every road
and ruin marked, and every conspicuous object filled
in ; with hills and mountain - ranges correctly de
lineated and shaded ; with the rivers and brooks
all running in the right direction ; with vineyards,
springs, and clumps of trees in their proper places ;
and thousands of names that never appeared on a
Palestine map before.1 As far as Western Pales
tine is concerned, we are assured that the limit of
identification by measurement and examination of
the surface has now been virtually reached. The
survey of Eastern Palestine was attempted in 1881
by Colonel Conder, who was stopped, however, by
1 Cf. ' Our Work in Palestine ' (Bentley and Son), 1873 ; ' Twenty-
one Years' Work in Palestine,' both by Sir Walter Besant. Also
Guilder's 'Tent Work in Palestine' and 'The Bible and Modern Dis
coveries,' by H. A. Harper (Alexander P. Watt), 1891.

PALESTINE EXPLORATION. 11
the Turkish Government, though not before he
had by coolness and tact got over a considerable
amount of ground. Since then, the outstanding
events in the operations of the Fund have been
the exploration and recovery of the ancient Lachish
at Tel el-Hesy, eighteen miles north-east of Gaza,
by Professor Flinders Petrie (1890) and Dr F. J.
Bliss (1891), and the prosecution of excavations
at Jerusalem under the superintendence of Dr
Bliss and Mr A. C. Dickie (1894-97).
While these organised and systematic efforts
have been made under the auspices of the Palestine
Exploration Fund, the labours of individual workers
are not to be overlooked. Canon Tristram has done
great service by investigating the natural history,
and by his admirable book, ' The Land of Israel.'
Professor Hull, with a geological expedition, in 1 8 83
surveyed the Wady Arabah and the neighbourhood
of the Dead Sea, setting forth his results in a valu
able report. Scotland has been represented in the
work of Palestine research by Professor George
Adam Smith, of Glasgow, who studied and travelled
in the Holy Land in 1880, and again in 1892, and
whose masterly work on the ' Historical Geography
of the Holy Land ' is the highest authority on the
subject.1 Nor must the work of other Societies be forgotten.
The American Society for Palestine Exploration,
instituted in 1870, obtained valuable results under
the superintendence of Dr Selah Merrill, for several
years American Consul at Jerusalem, in the danger-
1 For an excellent vidimus of what has been accomplished by recent
workers, see Dr G. A. Smith's Preface.

12 SKETCH OF RECENT DISCOVERY.
ous field east of the Jordan. The Society withdrew
from that field in 1881, but Dr Merrill's book, 'East
of the Jordan,' remains an authority on that region.
The same author's ' Galilee in the Time of Christ '
deserves equal praise. The German Palestine
Society, containing Professors Socin and Guthe in
its membership, has laboured with no little per
severance and success for many years, the results
being published in its Quarterly Journal, and more
recently in its Communications.1 Its interest has
mainly been around Jerusalem, where the architect
Schick has done good service ; and east of the
Jordan, where Wetzstein and Schumacher have
examined extensive tracts of country.
It has to be admitted, however, that neither in
Jerusalem, nor in Palestine generally, have in
scribed remains of any great antiquity been as
yet discovered. Its monuments thus far have
vastly more to tell of Boman, Early Christian, and
Saracenic and Crusading times than of the times of
Patriarch and Prophet. Of these the most inter
esting, perhaps, is the inscribed stone from Herod's
temple, in Greek letters, forbidding strangers to
enter the temple enclosure under pain of death.
It contains word for word the warning quoted by
Josephus, and it is the only stone of which we can
be sure that it stood in its position when our Lord
visited the temple. It was discovered by M. Cler
mont Ganneau, and is now to be seen in the Im
perial Ottoman Museum at Constantinople. When
we add the Moabite Stone of the time of Ahab,
1 Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palaestina - Vereins herausgegeben von
Prof. D. Hermann Guthe, Leipzig, und Mittheilungen des D.P. V.

EGYPTIAN EXPLORATION. 13
the Siloam Inscription of the time of Hezekiah,
and the solitary cuneiform tablet found at Lachish,
supplementing the famous Tel el-Amarna correspon
dence, we have mentioned the chief inscriptions
casting light upon the history of Israel in Canaan.
And yet who can tell but that by happy chance, or,
more likely, by further systematic digging into the
soil, the Tels with which the land abounds may
some day yield up records of the past further to
illustrate and supplement the Bible history ? What
discoveries, for example, might not be made at
Kiriath-Sepher — the Book-town of the Old Testa
ment — if only its site were identified ? Its revela
tions might cast Lachish or even Tel el-Amarna
into the shade.

II. EGYPTIAN EXPLORATION.
Ever since the brief French occupation of Egypt
in the days of Napoleon, its mummies and monu
ments, its obelisks and temples, its papyri and clay-
tablets have been objects of learned research and
popular interest in France, Germany, and Britain.
It was the discovery of the famous Bosetta Stone
in 1799 which gave the first definite impulse to
Egyptology. The stone, which bears the threefold
inscription fraught with the birth of a new science,
is a slab of black basalt, and though discovered by
a French artillery officer near the Bosetta mouth of
the Nile, has found its resting-place in the British
Museum. It stands 45 inches high, is 28^ inches
broad, and 11 inches thick. It is inscribed with
fourteen lines of hieroglyphics occupying the upper

14 SKETCH OF RECENT DISCOVERY.
part, thirty -two lines of demotic writing in the
middle, and fifty-four lines of Greek covering the
lower portion of the stone. These different texts
give two different versions of a decree of the Egyp
tian priesthood, promulgated in honour of Ptolemy
V. (Epiphanes), king of Egypt about 198 B.C. The
Greek is believed to be the original, and the hiero
glyphic and demotic a rendering of it. These differ
ent texts have been edited, translated, and anno
tated, till now a large literature has grown up round
the famous stone. And little wonder, seeing that it
has furnished the key to the decipherment of those
hieroglyphics which had been for generations the
puzzle of the learned world. For thousands of
years, from the earliest dawn of Egyptian his
tory down to the third century of our era, when
it was still employed for religious purposes, the
hieroglyphic character had been the medium
for the transmission of thought among the Egyp
tians. At last it fell into disuse, and its secret
perished. With reviving knowledge and interest the hier
oglyphic inscriptions excited the curiosity of the
learned, and the theories propounded as to their
contents were legion. The learned Englishman,
Dr Thomas Young, and the brilliant Frenchman,
Champollion, divide between them, in proportions
not quite settled by their respective nationalities,
the honour of having recovered the lost key. It
is, however, Champollion's ' Grammaire Egyptienne '
that has been the real foundation of successful
study of the hieroglyphic characters. Now the
Egyptian alphabet is fully agreed upon by Egypt-

EGYPTIAN EXPLORATION. 15
ologists, and Egyptian texts, though they cannot
be read with the same certainty as a play of
Sophocles or a page of Livy, are year by year
being mastered more fully by scholars. Cham
pollion has had among his own countrymen
eminent followers not only in Egyptian philology
but also in exploration and historical research.
Vicomte de Bouge, Chabas, Mariette, Maspero,
and De Morgan may be named without invidi-
ousness ; while Edouard Naville, though Swiss by
nationality, has made valuable contributions to
Egyptology by his discoveries at Pithom and else
where in the Delta. Germany is worthily repre
sented in this field by Bunsen, Lepsius, Brugsch,
Erman, Ebers, Wiedemann, and others. Nor have
the countrymen of Thomas Young been behind.
Wilkinson, Birch, B. S. Poole, Page Le Benouf,
Miss A. B. Edwards, and Professor Flinders Petrie
have done a large amount of original work of the
highest order. Mention should be made of the
French Archaeological Mission and the Egypt
Exploration Fund. The latter was instituted in
1883, and in each of the past fifteen winters has
sent out skilled explorers like Naville and Flinders
Petrie to conduct systematic excavations, the
season's results being recorded in an Annual
Volume. The most notable discoveries of the
Fund are the identification of Pithom, one of the
"store cities" of Exodus i., and of Naucratis, the
earliest centre of Greek influence in the Delta.
Among the most interesting of recent finds are the
Aoyia 'Irjcrov, or " Sayings of Jesus," from an early
Greek papyrus discovered on the edge of the

16 SKETCH OF RECENT DISCOVERY.
Libyan Desert at Oxyrhynchus.1 To recount and
appraise the various contributions of the workers
and scholars named is beyond our present scope,
and we must be content to refer to two or three
of the outstanding discoveries made in the soil of
Egypt within the last twenty years.
1. In order of time, if not of importance, is the
discovery of the Mummies of the Kings. It is this
discovery which has made us familiar with the very
face and features of the mightiest of the Egyptian
kings. The story belongs to the romance of archae
ology. For a number of years the officials of the
National Museum at Cairo had seen funeral offer
ings and other antiquities brought from Thebes by
returning tourists, which they knew to have be
longed to the dynasty of Barneses II. , of his father
Seti, and of his grandfather Barneses I. Even
scarabs bearing the cartouche of Barneses II. had
been displayed by innocent purchasers. It became
obvious to the experienced officials of the Museum
that the mummies of those royal personages, which
had long been missing from their original burying-
place, had at last been found. M. Maspero, the
Director-General of the Museum, at once set agen
cies to work to discover the possessor of the secret.
Partly by the bastinado, and partly by bakhshish,
he succeeded. An Arab, one of four brothers who
had made the lucky find and enriched themselves
by the plunder of the burying-place, at last gave
up the secret. The task of taking possession of
the precious relics was committed to Emil Bruo-sch
1 See ' /\6yta 'IjjitoB, Sayings of our Lord,' by B. P. Grenfell, M.A., and
Arthur S. Hunt.

EGYPTIAN EXPLORATION. 17
Bey, a brother of the famous Egyptologist ; and in
an almost inaccessible tomb, completely hidden away
among the rocks of Deir-el-Bahri, there were found
some forty mummies of kings, queens, princesses,
and priests belonging to the 18th, 19th, and 21st
dynasties. It is a gruesome story how they came
to be found as they were and where they were.
They had been treated with little more ceremony
than the disinterred and dishonoured bodies of
the martyrs of the Covenanting killing-time before
they were allowed to occupy their " resting graves."
Their original resting - place had been rifled by
thieves, and as far back as the 21st dynasty the
sacrilege had been discovered and efforts made to
put things right. In this process corpses were put
into the wrong coffins, damaged corpses were care
lessly restored, and some that were wanting were
personated by made-up mummies. The supposi
titious corpse of a daughter of King Aahmes was
made up of linen swathings, a broken coffin -lid
doing duty for the body, the whole wrapped round
with mummy -cloths to give the appearance of a
corpse, and then laid to rest in the coffin originally
destined for the princess.1
Among the mummies discovered in 1881 were
Aahmes I., the founder of the 18th dynasty, who,
about 1582 B.C., expelled the Hyksos or Shepherd
Kings, and gave back to Egypt the rule of her
native princes; Thothmes I., Thothmes II. , and
Thothmes III. of the same dynasty, the last-named
perhaps the mightiest of all the rulers of Egypt,
who reigned fifty - four years, and in thirteen
1 Wiedemann, Geschichte von Alt-Aegypten, pp. 112, 113.
B

18 SKETCH OF RECENT DISCOVERY.
campaigns subdued the leading peoples of Western
Asia as far as the Euphrates, imposing tribute
upon Cyprus and even upon distant Ethiopia.
Never was the vanity of human greatness more
impressively proclaimed than when this great
monarch and conqueror, the Alexander of Egyp
tian history, who lived two hundred years before
the time of Moses, was being set free from his
swathings. His mummy was the first to be un
rolled, and no sooner had his features been photo
graphed than the entire form of the mighty
Pharaoh crumbled into dust.1 That was in 1881,
shortly after the mummies had been placed in the
National Museum; but it was not till 1886 that
the remainder were unrolled. Further discoveries
were made in 1891, the mummies in this instance
being those of priestly and official personages, num
bering 163, and belonging to the 19th, 20th, and
21st dynasties. The whole discovery has proved
most instructive ; for now they have become
familiar to us through photographs and engrav
ings — Seti I., in all probability the king who knew
not Joseph ; his son Barneses II. , the Sesostris of
the Greeks and the oppressor of Israel, who had
the longest reign of any monarch of antiquity ; and
1 This statement may seem inconsistent with the fact that Thothmes
III. is still to be seen in the Ghizeh Museum. My notes, taken March
22, 1898, are : " 1179, Thothmes III. not collapsed as is said ; upper
lip projecting ; front teeth still whole ; mouth slightly open ; chest
looks as if it had given way." From inquiries I have made I gather
that comparatively recently the mummy of Thothmes III. was re
examined, and the upper portion of the figure being fairly sound, the
countenance having been protected by a mask of bitumen, that portion
has been preserved. The mask has been removed, and what is now
to be seen is the countenance of Thothmes III., although the trunk
tumbled to pieces as recorded.

r

EGYPTIAN EXPLORATION. 19
other exalted personages whose forms, touched
though they be by decay, give a wonderful air of
¦eality to the times of Moses three-and-thirty cen
turies ago.1
Egypt [as Maspero says] is truly a land of marvels.
It has not only like Assyria and Chaldaea, Greece and Italy,
preserved for us monuments by which its historic past may
be reconstructed, but it has handed on to us the men them
selves who set up the monuments and made the history.
Her great monarchs are not any longer mere names, de
prived of appropriate forms, and floating colourless and
shapeless in the imagination of posterity: they may be
weighed, touched, and measured; the capacity of their
brains may be gauged ; the curve of their noses and the cut
of their mouths may be determined. We know if they were
bald, or if they suffered from some secret infirmity ; and as
we are able to do in the case of our contemporaries, we may
publish their portraits taken first hand in the photographic
camera.2To the events of the Bible history in which they
figured we shall direct attention again.3
2. Less striking to the popular imagination, but
more fruitful and far-reaching in its results for the
Bible history, was the discovery of Clay Tablets at
Tel el-Amarna. Tel el-Amarna is a place of ruins
1 We can still discern through the crumbling frames of those old
Pharaohs the general character of their physique. Aahmes I., whose
arm looks dislocated, must have had a figure tall but slim. The long
taper fingers of Seti L, whose hands are crossed over the breast, at
once attract attention. Rameses III. is marked by a shorter face and
broader jaws. Even more remarkable is the resemblance still trace
able in several instances. Between Seti I. and Rameses II. there is a
marked resemblance — the nose, the mouth, the chin, in fact all the
features, are the same, only in the father more refined and more intel
lectual than in the son.
2 Straggle of the Nations, pp. 771, 772.
3 See Appendix, Note II. , p. 320.

20 SKETCH OF RECENT DISCOVERY.
about 180 miles south of Cairo, on the eastern bank
of the Nile. In the winter of 1887 a peasant
woman, searching among the ruins for antiquities
to sell to tourists, turned over a clay tablet in
scribed, not with Egyptian hieroglyphics, but with
the cuneiform characters of Babylonia. In course
of time three hundred and twenty such tablets were
discovered, others having been destroyed before
their value was realised, and those that were saved
being in many cases seriously injured. As the ruins
of Tel el-Amarna were known to cover the site of
the ancient capital of Amenophis IV. of the 18th
dynasty, in the century before the Exodus, a dis
covery of inscribed tablets there was hailed as an
event of peculiar significance. This king, Amen
ophis IV., or Khu-en-Aten, the so-called heretic
king of Egypt, was the son of Amenophis III. by
a Syrian princess, Teie, the daughter of the King
of Mitanni, the Aram-Naharaim of the Bible, of
which, we are told, Chushan-Bishathaim was king a
century or two later. Amenophis III. is known to
us through the two majestic sitting statues which
he set up before the temple built by him at Thebes
— statues still standing, and renowned in antiquity
as the Memnon Colossi, one of which gave forth
musical sounds as the first rays of the rising sun
struck upon it. On his accession to the throne
Amenophis IV. professed himself a convert to the
Asiatic form of sun-worship, the Aten worship. His
rejection of the Amen worship and his iconoclasm
brought about a rupture between him and the
powerful priesthood of Thebes, and Khu-en-Aten
eventually left his ancestral capital and built for

EGYPTIAN EXPLORATION. 21
himself a new capital, the site of which is now
covered by the mounds of Tel el-Amarna. To his
new capital he carried the archives of the king
dom', and the famous tablets were a portion of
those documents of state. The ruins have been
thoroughly explored by Professor Flinders Petrie.
A tombstone found in them has preserved the
names of some of the principal officials who took
part in the building of the city. The royal palace,
the Sun Temple, the temple of Aten, and roads
wide enough for two or three chariots to run abreast,
have been laid bare. Besides the cuneiform writing
many traces of foreign influence have been dis
covered — ^Egean pottery, Asiatic sculptures, and,
most remarkable of all, the features of officials on
bas-reliefs, whose difference of race is not hidden
by their Egyptian costume. Everything betokened
the actual state of the case — a foreign court and
half- foreign king, under the control of a foreign
queen-dowager. Among the objects discovered in
the ruins was what is believed to be the death-
mask of the royal founder of the city, which was
found in the house of the embalmer, and had no
doubt been taken immediately after death. It is
now to be seen in the Flinders Petrie collection
of Egyptian antiquities in University College,
London. The interest of the discovery, however, centres
in the tablets themselves, which have been secured
in part by the British Museum, and in part by
the museums of Cairo and Berlin. They have now
been carefully deciphered and edited, and Winck-
ler's edition of them complete is accompanied by

22 SKETCH OF RECENT DISCOVERY.
a translation. They are a remarkable series of
documents of state, the royal and official corre
spondence between the Court of Egypt and northern
kings in alliance with Egypt, and governors of
Asiatic provinces which had been conquered by
Thothmes III. more than two hundred years before.
The series of letters from Ebed-tob, the Egyptian
governor of Jerusalem, forms perhaps the most
remarkable part of the collection. For Egyptian
history they are of the highest value, and as they
have shed light upon a period over which the
shadows hung peculiarly dark and deep, they have
simply revolutionised our ideas of the politics and
the civilisation of Western Asia, including Pales
tine, in the second millennium before Christ. To
the contents of the letters we shall return.
There are two significant facts to be noted. The
one is the vast extent of the empire of Egypt in
the reign of Amenophis III.1 The other is the
prevalence at that period of Babylonian influence,
and especially of Babylonian culture, from the Per
sian Gulf to Upper Egypt, and over all the interval
between. The kings and governors who write to
1 Professor Flinders Petrie says (' Syria and Egypt from the Tell
el Amarna Letters,' p. 21, f.) that '' Amenhotep III., either by conquest
or by treaty, had extended even the empire which had been acquired
by Tahutmes I. and III. The whole Euphrates appears to be subject
to him, down to 31° N., the Tigris up to Assyria and Arrapakhitis,
and the Palmyra desert between Syria and Mesopotamia. This shows
apparently the greatest extent of the Egyptian power ever known.
In classical terms it comprised the whole of Syria, Mesopotamia,
Chaldasa, and Assyria, stopping only at the frontiers of Susiana, Media,
and Armenia. At no period, therefore, can we place the power of
Egypt higher than it was under Amenhotep III., lord of the two great
cradles of civilisation, the narrow valley of the Nile and the plains
and highlands of Mesopotamia.

EGYPTIAN EXPLORATION. 23
Amenophis III. and his son, Amenophis IV, write
not in their own vernacular — Hebrew, or Canaanite,
or Syrian — nor yet in Egyptian hieroglyphics, the
language of their suzerain, but in the language
and in the written character of Babylonia, a
thousand miles at least from the nearest point of
contact of the writers. One thinks of the pre
valence of French as the language of diplomacy,
and of Latin as the language of the Church, better
still perhaps of the Bomanised character in which
the Scriptures are now being printed for the natives
of India and Japan, as modern parallels to that far-
spreading Babylonian script. There are at least
three of the Tel el-Amarna letters written in cunei
form, the language of which is as yet unknown,
although in one case it is believed to be Hittite.
The explanation of it all has been well stated as
follows : —
That the Babylonians had once and up to a comparatively
recent period occupied the whole of the habitable territory
as far as the Mediterranean and the River of Egypt ; that
the period of their occupation was very long and scarcely
intermittent ; that their influence extended to the minutest
details of business and social life ; and that their language
and literature formed a liberal education for all the cul
tivated classes in Western Asia. For the foreign lan
guage could only have been used by so many persons,
widely removed from one another, when the teaching and
learning of the language came as a matter of course from the
constant associations of daily life and the indelible impres
sions of permanent institutions. . . . The revelation given
in Babylonian language from the very soil of Egypt itself
by the Tel el-Amarna tablets shows that the same relative
position was held, back to the earliest recorded time. The
western expeditions and conquests of Sargon of Accad and

24 SKETCH OF RECENT DISCOVERY.
Naram-Sin, nearly 4000 B.C., are no mere legend; the com
mercial activity of their successors of Southern Babylonia
from the forests of Northern Syria to the Sinaitic Peninsula
are now seen in the light of their enduring results; the
story of Genesis xiv. is no narrative of isolated events,
but the fragmentary commemoration of enterprises which
were for many centuries the order of the day. We are
learning more clearly as each year of discovery goes by that
what the Greeks and Eomans were as civilisers and con
querors to the world we still call ancient, the Babylonians
were to countries and peoples of an antiquity immeasurably
more remote.1
3. A very remarkable discovery was made by
Professor Flinders Petrie, in the season 1895-96, of
an Egyptian stele bearing an inscription containing
the name of Israel. Though much has been done
by explorers and travellers to settle the route of
the Exodus and the chief sites connected with the
residence of the children of Israel in Egypt, there
had been up to the spring of 1896 absolutely no
direct mention of Israel found on any Egyptian
monument. The stele now discovered has a history
of its own. It is a splendid slab of black syenite,
penetrated with quartz veins, which had been
selected by Amenophis III. to be set up in his
funereal temple with a copious account of his
religious benefactions inscribed upon it. It stood
10£ feet high, was 5 feet 4 inches wide, and had a
thickness of 13 inches.
It is [says Professor Petrie] the largest stele of igneous
rock known, and was polished like glass on its exquisitely
flat faces. The religious change of Amenhotep IV. led to

1 History, Prophecy, and the Monuments, by J. F. M'Curdy, vol. i.
pp. 185, 186.

EGYPTIAN EXPLORATION. 25
his erasing the figure of the god Amen and nearly all the
inscription. But Seti I. piously re-engraved both the scene
and the inscription, and added that " the restoration of
the monument was made by Maat-men-ra (Seti) for his
father Amen." This noble block Merenptah stole and re
used: the face of it was set into a wall, and the back of it
thus shown was engraved with a scene and a long historical
inscription of Merenptah. It was afterwards overthrown
on the destruction of the temple, and lay flat on the ground
without any damage but one small chip. The amount of
inscription on it is almost without precedent. . . . The con
dition of it is perfect : not a single sign defaced or injured ;
the scenes are complete, the faces of the 'figures as fresh as
when cut, and the painting on the scene of Merenptah is
as bright as if laid on yesterday.1
The interest, and, we may say, the puzzle of the
inscription will be understood when it is remem
bered that Merenptah is generally believed to be
the Pharaoh of the Exodus. The inscription is
dated the fifth year of his reign, and is a hymn
of victory finishing up with a glorification of his
might : —
"The princes are stretched on the ground and present their
homage :
No one among the nine peoples using the bow lifts up the head.
Wasted is Thnw [Libya] ;
Cheta is laid to rest ;
Canaan is captured with all his tribes.
Led forth is Askelon ;
Gezer taken ;
Jenoam is brought to nought.
Israel is laid waste and his states annihilated.
Chor is made as the widows of Egypt.
All lands together are in peace."

1 'Contemporary Review,' May 1896. See also the 'Century
Magazine,' August 1896, "Pharaoh of the Hard Heart," by Prof.
Flinders Petrie.

26 SKETCH OF RECENT DISCOVERY.
Such is one of the most authoritative translations
of this remarkable inscription ; the bearing of it
upon Israel in Egypt must be reserved for further
discussion. 4. The most recent discovery in Egypt, the
finding of the tomb and the remains and the seal
of Menes, in November 1897, has been already
referred to. The discovery has been confirmed by
the most recent research, and as the names of
several kings belonging to the three first dynasties,
preserved to us by the old historian Manetho, have
been already found by De Morgan and Amelineau,
there is no reason to doubt that now the world has
come into possession of distinct and definite traces
ofthe first Egyptian king.1
III. BABYLONIAN EXPLORATION.
Babylonia came early into prominence as a centre
of modern archaeological discovery, and its soil is
still yielding treasures of inestimable value. With
Babylonia we are accustomed to associate Assyria,
and it may be well here in a word or two to define
the position both geographically and chronologically
of these two ancient empires. Babylonia proper is
the territory enclosed by the lower Euphrates and
Tigris, extending from the neighbourhood of modern
Baghdad, where the two rivers approach to within
twenty-two miles of each other and run for a time
an almost parallel course, to the confluence of the
two about sixty-five miles before they fall into the
Persian Gulf. Lying as it did between the
1 See Appendix, Note I., p. 318.

BABYLONIAN EXPLORATION. 27
Euphrates and the Tigris, and intersected by a
magnificent system of canals, Babylonia in natural
fruitfulness was as fertile as Egypt, " the gift of the
Nile." Assyria proper, taking its name from Assur,
the old capital of the kingdom, was a compact
little territory on the upper part of the middle
Tigris, resting upon the lower Zab as its southern
boundary, and extending northwards to the moun
tains of Kurdistan. Favoured by a delightful
climate and irrigated by the numerous tributaries
of the Tigris, Assyria enjoyed a fertility and a pro
ductiveness which well entitled Sennacherib's am
bassador to describe it to the inhabitants of Jeru
salem as " a land of corn and wine, a land of bread
and vineyards, a land of oil olive and of honey "
(2 Kings xviii. 32).
The Babylonian Empire, at a very early period,
and again as late as the time of Nebuchadnezzar,
extended far beyond the boundaries of Babylonia
proper. Assyria, too, in the palmiest days of the
empire, included Babylonia, and extended west
ward as far as the Mediterranean. The Semitic
regime in Babylonia is estimated to have lasted
at least four thousand years. The first great
period of that regime shows us different cities
successively in the south and in the north dom
inating the rest and taking the lead. The second
period shows Babylon supreme. This supremacy,
to adopt Professor M'Curdy's statement,1 may be
presented in four periods or stages : (1) A period
when Babylonia was separate and independent ;
(2) a series of subjugations by foreign non-Semitic
1 History, Prophecy, and the Monuments, p. 86 ff.

28 SKETCH OF RECENT DISCOVERY.
tribes ; (3) next a long term of rivalry with Assyria,
ending in the subjection of Babylon ; (4) finally, a
brief term of unparalleled power and splendour
under the new empire of the Chaldaeans, giving
place to the conquest of Cyrus, an event which at
the same time abolished the rule and rdle of the
Northern Semites, the Assyrians. In the course of
the history Assur and Nineveh, Accad and Babylon,
Erech and Ur, Larsa and Eridu, Lagash and Nippur,
and other mighty cities, flourished and were centres
of political power, advanced civilisation, and highly
developed religious worship. In them Lugal-zaggisi,
Sargon of Accad, Khammurabi, Tiglath-Pileser, Sar
gon of Assyria, Sennacherib, Asshurbanipal, Nebu
chadnezzar, and other powerful kings, had set up
their thrones, going forth to the conquest of distant
lands, and bringing back again in triumph the spoils
of conquered peoples. But what had become of
those mighty cities that were once the terror or the
refuge of half the world ? Where indeed were their
ancient sites ? They had so completely disappeared
from the face of th6 earth that their ruins were un
known, and their very sites were in dispute. Take
Nineveh for a typical example. Xenophon, as he
crossed the ruins of Nineveh with his Ten Thousand,
tells us only that there stood there a great and
uninhabited city, Larissa, formerly tenanted by the
Medes. Lucian speaks of Nineveh as a city so
completely destroyed that its very ruins had dis
appeared. And little more than fifty years ago,
had any historian or geographer been asked what
he knew for certain of Nineveh, or Babylon, or any
of the cities between the Tigris and the Euphrates,

BABYLONIAN EXPLORATION. 29
his answer, if derived from sources outside the Bible,
would have been vague and short indeed. Up to
1842 it could still be said that "a case three feet
square enclosed all that remained, not only of the
great city Nineveh, but of Babylon itself." The
resurrection of those mighty cities, with their
checkered history, their ancient and advanced civil
isation, and their highly developed political and
religious systems, from the dust of five or six
millenniums, is unquestionably one of the grandest
triumphs of modern science. We have only a few
pages in which to tell the story.
Such as it was, that easeful of remains in the
British Museum awakened the keenest interest
among European scholars. Cuneiform inscriptions
had been found up to this time only in the palace
of Persepolis and in the tombs of the ancient Persian
kings ; but they were too few to afford much hope
of the solution of the riddle they presented to
scholars. In 1842 Emil Botta was appointed to
Mosul, on the Tigris, by the French Government
as their consular agent. He had heard of the in
scriptions that had been found on the banks of the
Tigris, and he set out for the East fired by the
ambition to discover the remains of ancient Nineveh.
His first attempts at excavation were without any
result to speak of. He had already begun to de
spair of success when a peasant from Khorsabad,.
twelve miles to the north of Mosul, informed him
of rubbish mounds where sculptured slabs could be
found in any quantity. Thither he went in the
early months of 1843 to make, as he thought, a
last attempt. The very first trench dug by his

30 SKETCH OF RECENT DISCOVERY.
labourers brought to light a wall lined with sculp
tured slabs, and ere long the hill on which Khorsa-
bad stands was found to be an artificially raised
platform sustaining a building of magnificent pro
portions. The name of the builder, found on the
bricks, declared the building to be the palace
of Sargon, who planted the capital of his empire
and fixed his royal residence at Dur-Sargina, on the
ruins of which Khorsabad had been built. The de
lighted explorer found himself carried back, as by
the waving of a conjurer's wand, two and a half
millenniums to the palace from which this forgotten
monarch in his day ruled half the world. There,
in the sculptures recovered from the dust of over
two thousand years, was the awe-inspiring form of
the Assyrian conqueror on his throne or in his war-
chariot ; there were his vassals paying him homage ;
there were his victims in war or in the chase ; there
were his guests at the royal banquet ; there were
the gods of Assyria and their priests — all so life
like as to be a perfect revelation of the life and
activity of the ancient world. After endless diffi
culties and hindrances Botta was able to have the
sculptures transported to Europe, and they are now
among the treasures of the Louvre in Paris. The
further exploration of the palace of Sargon was
carried out by Botta's successor at Mosul, Victor
Place, an architect by profession. The professional
skill of Place was of the greatest moment in ascer
taining the general plan of the great building and
in securing drawings of its details. One carefully
protected apartment, in which were found a number
of jars, partly broken, partly complete, turned out

BABYLONIAN EXPLORATION. 31
to be Sargon's wine-cellar, which more than five-
and-twenty centuries ago had been filled with purple
wine for the king and his royal guests.
Meanwhile a greater explorer had entered
the field. When travelling in Asia Minor and
Syria in 1839-40, Mr Austin Henry Layard (the
late Bight Honourable Sir Austin Henry Layard)
was seized with the ambition to visit the ruins of
the capitals of the old Assyrian and Babylonian
empires. Beaching Mosul in 1840, he inspected
the mounds on the east bank of the Tigris supposed
to be the ruins of ancient Nineveh, which included
the now historic mound of Kouyunjik. Two or
three years later, being again in those parts, he
found that Botta had commenced excavations at
Khorsabad and was making great discoveries. He
resolved to throw himself into the work of explora
tion, and he brought to it gifts of no ordinary
character — robust health, boundless determination,
a rare mastery of the languages of the East, and not
a little of the imagination which goes along with a
sanguine temperament. It was in the autumn of
1845, as he tells us in 'Nineveh and its Bemains,'
just when Botta was returning to Europe, that
Layard descended the Tigris to Nimroud and set to
work on the mounds on the east bank of the Tigris,
a little below Mosul. At Nimroud, the site of the
ancient Kalah, from 1845 to the middle of 1847,
and at Kouyunjik, the very site of Nineveh itself,
from 1849 to 1851, the intrepid explorer brought to
light no fewer than five great palaces and a multi
tude of inscriptions and sculptures. The magnifi
cent figures discovered in the course of his excava-

32 SKETCH OF RECENT DISCOVERY.
tions, and transported to this country, where they
now occupy the Assyrian galleries of the British
Museum, at once struck the wonder of Europe, and
the excitement and romance of the story as first told
in Mr Layard's fascinating volumes, ' Nineveh and its
Bemains ' and ' Discoveries in the Buins of Nineveh
and Babylon,' created a new interest in the history
of Assyria in its relation to the Bible. In his later
explorations he found an enthusiastic and capable
helper in Mr Hormuzd Bassam, an Oriental by race,
then British Consul at Mosul, later one of King
Theodore's captives in Abyssinia, and now, after a
singularly checkered career, the sole survivor, since
the death of Sir A. H. Layard and Sir Henry
Bawlinson, of the original band of Assyrian pioneers.
The labours of Mr W. K. Loftus and Mr J. E.
Taylor in succession to Layard have also been
fruitful of valuable results. While Loftus was
busy on the ruins of Warka (Erech), Taylor with
great patience was excavating at Mugayyar (Ur of
the Chaldees). To Taylor we owe materials con
firming the historical character of Belshazzar men
tioned in the Book of Daniel, and other valuable
inscriptions. Along with Bassam, Loftus continued
the excavations of Mr Layard, and the two explor
ers were fortunate enough to add largely to the
clay tablets belonging to the library discovered in
the so-called south-west palace at Kouyunjik. For
of all these discoveries none was more fruitful than
the discovery of the royal library, founded by
Shalmaneser II. , enriched by Sargon and his son
Sennacherib, and brought to its highest glory by
Asshurbanipal, " the great and noble Asnapper " of

BABYLONIAN EXPLORATION. 33
Scripture. This famous old - world library con
tained chronological tables, astronomical calcula
tions, calendars, dictionaries, and even newspapers,
all in clay tablets, of which we shall hear more
hereafter. Many of those clay tablets were copies
obtained in the course of Assyrian conquest from
the captured cities of Babylonia ; and though
Babylon was razed to the ground by the vindictive
cruelty of Sennacherib and its literary treasures
destroyed, as happened in the overthrow of Con
stantinople by the Turks nearly two thousand years
later, it is some consolation to know that works
dating from the far distant times of Sargon of Accad
have been found preserved either in the originals or
in copies in the library of Asshurbanipal.
For nearly twenty years there was a lull in the
work of Assyrian exploration. Before resuming the
thread of the history, it will be well here to give
some idea of the character of the clay tablets and
of the method of their decipherment. It is not
on papyrus as in Egypt, nor on parchment as in
the Greek and Boman times, but upon clay or
alabaster, that the inscriptions of ancient Baby
lonia and Assyria have come down to us. Not
but that the Babylonians made use of the papy
rus which grew so plentifully on the margin of
their great rivers. But only the tablets of clay
and the inscriptions cut in stone have been able
to defy the forces of destruction and decay. Clay
was the chief material used for writing, — clay in
the form of bricks and tablets, cylinders, prisms,
and globes.1 After the soft clay had received from
1 See Vigouroux, La Bible et les decouvertes modernes, vol. i. p. 184 ff.
C

34 SKETCH OF RECENT DISCOVERY.
the stylus employed in writing the impression of
the scribe,1 it was put to the fire or hardened in
the sun, and then it was proof against time and
fire and water and almost every foe. Even when
broken in pieces, unless actually reduced to powder,
the tablet could be pieced together again and its
text deciphered. If it was a history that was being
written, it was inscribed upon tablets all of one
size and thickness, the writing being on both sides
and continued from the one to the other, the first
line of the succeeding tablet being written at the
close of the preceding to give the proper clue to
the reader. Such books of baked earth were found
in numbers in Asshurbanipal's library, where they
were classified and catalogued for reference just as
in a modern library, the first words of the treatise,
whether historical, or astronomical, or generally
scientific, forming (as in the case of the books of
the Pentateuch) the title of the treatise.
But just as the key to the hierogtyphics of Egypt
had become lost, so the key to the wedge-shaped
writing of Babylonia and Assyria had perished.
To us it seems a singular circumstance that the
key to each of these highly developed and copious
literatures should have been allowed to perish ; that
these parallel streams of ancient culture and civil
isation should have disappeared in the Greek and
Boman periods, like one of those Australian rivers
which lose themselves in the sands. It speaks
volumes for the mighty originality of the Greek
and Boman literature and civilisation that they
not only created that world of thought and culture
1 Kaulen, Assyrien und Babylonien, p. 112 ff.

BABYLONIAN EXPLORATION. 35
and statecraft and art which we associate with
the very names of Greece and Borne, but inter
posed it as a barrier to dam back the flood of
Babylonian and Assyrian and Egyptian culture and
ideas.1 It was mainly through Israel that Eastern
thought and life entered the Greek and Boman
world, just as it was through Phoenicia that it
received its notions of commerce and the alphabet,
which became the vehicle to express its thought.2
Who can tell but that it was a most important
step in the Prceparatio Evangelica, or at least in
the spread of early Christianity, when the treasure-
houses of Babylonian and Egyptian culture were
locked and their respective keys thrown away ?
The decipherment of the cuneiform characters in
our day has given us the science of Assyriology,
as the decipherment of the hieroglyphics has given
us Egyptology.
As far back as the beginning of the seventeenth
century travellers had brought to Europe reports
and drawings of strange inscriptions which had been
found in the ruins of Persepolis. Oriental scholars
and travellers, among them the famous Niebuhr,3
1 "Egypt is like her own Sphinx, a broken and decaying riddle,
half-buried in a wilderness of sand. The stately pride and power
of Assyria lie buried under the mounds that mark where her cities
once stood. Greece is living Greece no more, and Rome a strange
scene of religious imbecility and confusion, political anarchy and in
completeness. But Israel, transformed indeed and renamed, but in all
that constituted its essence and right to existence, Israel still lives in
and guides the conscience of Christendom." — Principal Fairbairn,
' Studies in the Philosophy of Religion and History,' p. 309.
2 Mr Gladstone is of opinion that an important portion of the
Olympian scheme of Homer is derived from Hebrew sources. — See
'Contemporary Review,' April 1878, p. 150.
3 Kaulen, Assyrien und Babylonien, p. 112 ff.

36 SKETCH OF RECENT DISCOVERY.
had made some progress in the work of decipher
ment, when in 1802 the well-known grammarian,
Grotefend, by a stroke of genius, struck out the
path which led to the interpretation of the Per
sian cuneiform. It was not for some years that
this commencement was followed up. In 1835-37
Colonel Bawlinson discovered and copied the great
trilingual inscription cut upon the steep and well
nigh inaccessible rock of Behistun between Ecbatana
and Babylon. The three languages of the famous
inscription were Persian, Babylonian, and Median
or Scythic as it is sometimes called. Bawlinson
having these new and fuller materials to work
upon, and having a considerable knowledge of
Sanscrit, Zend, and Modern Persian, occupied him
self first with the Persian cuneiform from 1839
to 1844. 1 The result was given to the world in
the years 1844-46 by the publication in the Boyal
Asiatic Society's Journal of his epoch-making paper,
" The Persian Cuneiform Inscription at Behistun,
deciphered and translated, with a Memoir on Per
sian Cuneiform Inscriptions in general and on that
of Behistun in particular." Having mastered the
Persian cuneiform, he next addressed himself to the
Babylonian cuneiform, and in the course of 1847 he
copied accurately and at some risk the entire series
of Babylonian inscriptions at Behistun. In 1848
he gave himself wholly to the decipherment of
the Babylonian, which was all the easier that in the
Behistun inscription the second column was a trans
lation, or at any rate an equivalent, of the first. The
Babylonian Memoir furnished the basis upon which
1 Memoir of Sir Henry Rawlinson, pp. 307-333.

BABYLONIAN EXPLORATION. 37
Assyrian cuneiform study has rested ever since ;
and by Bawlinson's labours, with the co-operation
of scholars like Edward Hincks, Fox Talbot, George
Smith, Professor Sayce, and T. G. Pinches of the
British Museum, in Britain, and Jules Oppert, F.
Lenormant, J. Halevy, and others on the Continent,
the cuneiform inscriptions have been made to yield
up their secret. And now Assyrian and Babylonian
inscriptions can be read with the same ease as the
Egyptian hieroglyphics, and the renderings of their
texts by Assyrian scholars may be accepted with
a large measure of certainty and without serious
misgiving. To resume the thread of the history, in 1873-74
excavations in Nineveh were resumed by Mr
George Smith. Having secured a place as an
assistant in the British Museum, he had been en
gaged in 1867 to assist Sir Henry Bawlinson in
preparing a new volume of the Cuneiform Inscrip
tions of Western Asia. It was when engaged in
arranging and reading the tablets of Layard's
collection that he alighted upon a fragment of
an old Babylonian account of the Flood, remark
ably like the account given in the Book of Genesis.
His paper on the subject, read before the Society
for Biblical Archaeology in December 1872, created
such an interest that the proprietors of the ' Daily
Telegraph ' sent him out at their expense to under
take fresh excavations, the results of his labours
being the discovery of a number of tablets similar
to the Flood tablets in the British Museum. Twice
he undertook the journey to the East to search for
the remains of the library of Asshur banipal, but

38 SKETCH OF RECENT DISCOVERY.
being seized by the plague at Baghdad on his third
journey, he endeavoured to retrace his steps and
died in August 1876 at Aleppo, where he now rests
by the side of the famous Eastern traveller Burck
hardt, his death being an irreparable loss to
Assyriology. One of his last services to the cause
was the purchase of a remarkable collection of
documents for the British Museum, which only
reached their destination in the month of Novem
ber after his death. This collection was discovered
in the most accidental way. During the rainy
season, early in 1876, one of the great ruin-mounds
of Hillah, the site of ancient Babylon, had been cut
up by the floods, and this accident had laid bare
several large earthen jars which had been pre
viously buried in the debris. These jars had the
form of the ancient crocks of the country ; their
mouth was covered with a lid and cemented with
bitumen. When opened they were found to be
full of Babylonian documents in clay, comprising
contracts of every kind, to the number of three or
four thousand. They represent private transac
tions in which figure successively different members
of the family of Egibi through a period of about
two centuries. The most ancient are of the time
of Sennacherib, and the most recent are dated from
the reign of Darius Hystaspes. A great number of
them are of the period of Ezekiel and Daniel,
having been written when the Jews were in cap
tivity in Babylon. Apart from the valuable in
formation they furnish on the social condition and
commercial life of the Chaldean empire, they light
up wonderfully the chronology of the period. They

BABYLONIAN EXPLORATION. 39
are elated by the reigns of the kings ; and from the
commencement of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar to
the end of the reign of Darius Hystaspes there are
only four years for which we have not got tablets,
and it is a remarkable circumstance that two of
these years had been a time of great revolutions.
The canon of Ptolemy, a Greek astronomer of the
second century of our era, had been for long almost
our only means of fixing the chronology of the
Chaldean period. These Egibi tablets go to con
firm the general accuracy of the Greek canon.
They show royal names which do not figure in the
canon ; princes who reigned less than a year
have no place in it ; and for some reason or other
two kings, Lakkabbasidukur and Marduk-sar-usur,
are not mentioned in it. Marduk-sar-usur is no
other than the famous Belshazzar of the Book of
Daniel, whose name did not appear in the canon of
Ptolemy, and whose very existence had up to the
discovery of the Egibi tablets been doubted.
After George Smith's lamented death, the British
Museum intrusted the continuation of the exca
vations to Bassam, and between 1877 and 1882 his
labours were rewarded with conspicuous success.
The temple of Asshurnazirpal in Nimroud in 1878,
and the bronze gates of Shalmaneser II. rescued from
the rubbish mounds of Balawat, were among his
discoveries. Among the tablets discovered by him
are two historical texts, which have been of immense
service to the historian, known as the Babylonian
list of kings and the Babylonian Chronicle. The
most important of all his discoveries were,, however,
the unearthing of Sippar from the ruins of Abu

40 SKETCH OF RECENT DISCOVERY.
Habba in 1881, the finding of the renowned temple
of the Sun-god, and the discovery of the temple
archives, containing a stone tablet of Nabu-bal-
iddina, several clay cylinders of Nabonidus, and
about 50,000 clay tablets giving exact and detailed
information as to gifts and presents offered to the
Sun-god and to his priesthood from high and low
through a long period of time. The twin mounds
of Babylon, Babil and Kasr, as well as Borsippa
and Kutha, were also explored by Bassam, and
yielded new results of great importance.
The honours of the most recent exploration in
ancient Babylonian sites belong mainly to France
and America. In the fifties, as we have seen,
archaeological research was carried on in Babylonia
by Loftus, Taylor, and Layard, who discovered the
ruined sites of Nippur (Niffer), Erech (Warka),
Larsa (Senkereh), Ur (Mugayyar), and Eridu (Abu
Shahrein) ; to which should be added the labours of
the Frenchmen, Fresnel and Oppert, who explored
Babil and Borsippa at Hillah. But the honour of
bringing to light the earliest civilisation of Baby
lonia fell first of all to Ernst de Sarzec, French
vice-consul at Bussorah, on the Persian Gulf. From
1877 onwards he has spent a vast amount of time
and strength on the ruins of Telloh, a mound on
the canal leading between the Tigris and the
Euphrates called Shatt-el-Hai. The excavations
of Telloh have been eminently fruitful of results.
It is found to be the site of the ancient city of
Lagash, and from its ruins have come inscriptions
of high antiquity, recording the annals of king
Ur-nina and others, and in particular of the priest-

BABYLONIAN EXPLORATION. 41
king Gudea, who dates from the middle of the
fourth millennium before Christ. In 1894 De
Sarzec made one of his richest finds — a collection
of records of ancient kings of Lagash, consisting
of cuneiform tablets, making known to us an ad
vanced civilisation, with writing and the arts in a
flourishing condition, four thousand years before
the Christian era.1
To America belongs the honour of having reached
the Ultima Thule of ancient history. In 1888 the
University of Pennsylvania sent forth one of the
best organised and most completely equipped expe
ditions that fall to be recorded in the history of
exploration. Nippur — Niffer or Nuffar as it is read
— the goal of the expedition, had been examined
without result by Layard and also by Loftus, who
expressed the hope that excavations might some
day be successfully carried out in its extensive
ruins. It was to these ruins that the expedition
devoted its energies. The hardships and difficulties
encountered were many and great — not the least
being the malarial fever bred in the Affej swamps,
which drove first one and then another member
of the expedition from the field, till Mr J. H.
Haynes, the business manager, was left alone of
the original party to superintend the excavations.
The first campaign took place in 1888-89; the
second 1889-90; and the third from April 1893,
with an interruption of only two months, to Feb
ruary 1896. The expedition has met with a success
which has compensated for all hardships. In the
1 Vigouroux, Decouvertes, vol. i. p. 195 ff. ; Recent Research in
Bible Lands, pp. 63-80 ; Maspero, The Dawn of Civilisation, p. 603 ff.

42 SKETCH OF RECENT DISCOVERY.
first campaign over two thousand precious cuneiform
documents were secured. The second campaign saw
still greater success. Hundreds of graves, clay
coffins, and urns were opened ; and thousands of
inscribed bricks and vases and votive tablets were
collected. The great temple of Ekur was cleared
out, terrace by terrace, from the rubbish millenniums
old. The platform of the first king of Ur, who built
on the spot 2800 B.C., was reached, and numerous
bricks bearing the name of Sargon of Accad, 3800
B.C., and vase inscriptions of Lugal - zaggisi, con
siderably earlier than 4000 B.C., were discovered.
The materials accumulated are simply astonishing
in number and antiquity. Over 32,000 cuneiform
tablets have been recovered — syllabaries, letters,
chronological lists, historical fragments, astronomi
cal and religious texts, inventories, contracts, votive
tablets, and even plans of estates. Sargon of Accad
and Naram-Sin, whose historical character was until
recently quite dubious, now stand out clear in the
light of history, and our ideas as to the power and
extent of the Semitic race six thousand years ago
have to undergo a radical change. Such homely
articles as door-sockets, water-cocks, drain-tiles, and
domestic utensils in stone and metal, have been
found side by side with jewellery in gold, silver,
copper, bronze, and various precious stones. Already
Professor Peters, who was Director of the expedition
in the first two campaigns, has described its opera
tions and chief results in two handsome and in
teresting volumes.1 The classification and editing
1 Nippur : or Explorations and Adventures on the Euphrates.
Philadelphia, 1897.

IMPERIAL OTTOMAN MUSEUM. 43
of the numerous and important results have been
intrusted to Professor Hilprecht of Philadelphia,
the Assyriologist ofthe expedition. The execution
of this part of the enterprise has been delayed to
some extent by Professor Hilprecht's breakdown
from malarial fever and overwork. Thus far two
parts of vol. i., each containing fifty plates, and
chronological and archaeological essays, have been
published.1 The full account of the results of the
expedition is estimated to fill about sixty volumes.
Of the bearing of the results so far as published
upon the early and patriarchal history in the Book
of Genesis, something will be said in another
Lecture. It would not be just to close this rapid sketch
without mentioning the interest taken by the
Turkish Government in these recent excavations
in its own soil. The Imperial Ottoman Museum
at Constantinople, which is the destination of all
these finds, has now been placed on a scientific
basis by its Director - General, Hamdy Bey. By
funds granted from his private purse the Sultan
has aided in the fresh excavation of the ruins of
Sippara (Abu Habba), and Father Scheil the
eminent Assyriologist and Bedry Bey have carried
out the work. The excavations have already pro
duced valuable results — bricks of Bur - Sin II. ,
Kurigalzu, and Shamash-Shumakin, and about 500
clay tablets more or less complete. Many of them
1 In the summer of 1898 vol. ix. has also been published, containing
the business documents of Murashu, son of Nippur, dated in the reign
of Artaxerxes I. (464-424 B.C.), in which are found a large number of
Jewish names known to us from the Old Testament, especially from
the books of Ezra and Nehemiah.

44 SKETCH OF RECENT DISCOVERY.
contain nothing more than household and other
accounts, but among them is what might be called
a Babylonian love-letter of the time of Abraham.1
It is addressed to a lady called Bibeya, and reads
as follows : " To Bibeya from Gimil-Marduk. May
Shamash and Marduk allow thee, for my sake, to
live for ever. I write this in order to inquire
after thy health. Let me know how it goes with
thee. I am now settled in Babylon, and because
I have not seen thee, I am in great anxiety. Send
me news when thou wilt come, that I may rejoice
at it. At the month of Arakh-Samna (November-
December) come. Mayest thou for my sake live for
ever ! " Among the antiquities which have now
found a place in the Imperial Ottoman Museum
is a stele of Nabonidus, the antiquarian king of
Babylon, who saw the end of the Chaldean regime,
recently discovered near Hillah. In this stele,
which is very incomplete, Nabonidus, contrary to
his custom, gives interesting chronological and his
torical data. Among other things he describes
the destruction of Babylon by Sennacherib in 689
B.C., the murder of the king by his own sons (2
Kings xix. 37), and the destructive invasion of
the hordes of the Manda under their king whose
name is not mentioned.
Of other discoveries notice will be taken as they
arise in connection with the Bible history in suc
ceeding Lectures, the recovery of the lost empire
of the Hittites, the Sinjirli inscriptions, the in
scriptions from Arabia, all of them shedding light
on some part of the Scripture narrative.
1 Recent Research in Bible Lands, p. 81 ff.

ANTIQUITY OF THE ART OF WRITING. 45
From this brief and summarised sketch it will
be evident how far back into antiquity goes the
art of writing. The inscriptions recently brought
to light from the fifth millennium before Christ
open up to us possibilities for the transmission of
authentic history from the earliest recorded time.
To deny the knowledge of the art of writing to
Moses or to Abraham, to speak of the patriarchal
period as "a time prior to all knowledge of writing,
... a time when in civilised countries writing was
only beginning to be used for the most important
matters of State," l is impossible in the face of
the Babylonian love-letter, not to speak of thou
sands of documents from a far earlier antiquity
occupied with the commonest topics. We have
heard of a version of the Deluge story in poetic
form as early as 2140 B.C. There is nothing more
surely established by our sketch than the existence
of abundant material for accurate history from a
period long before the call of Abraham. The an
tiquity of the great empires in the midst of which
the chosen people had their origin and played their
part, as now definitely ascertained from the monu
ments, amply confirms this estimate. The clouds
that rested so long upon those great Eastern em
pires have lifted, and we can see the great move
ments of commerce and war, conquest and civilisa
tion, in constant progress in the light of these
ancient monuments. Light is shed upon the
Scripture narrative from all sides. Babylonian
and Egyptian annals, statues and seals, winged
bulls and household pottery, jewellery and toys,
1 Schultz, Old Testament Theology, p. 25.

46 SKETCH OF RECENT DISCOVERY.
not to speak of temples and priesthoods and the
varied ceremonial of religious worship, — in fact,
all the tokens of a high civilisation, — are utterly
inconsistent with the mythical and legendary char
acter attributed to the early history of Israel. The
monuments have arisen from the dust of millen
niums to confirm the truth of Scripture at a time
when it is being seriously questioned, and they
have been recovered just when, in the providence
of God, scholarship and science are sufficiently
advanced to enable us to read their testimony.
And we cannot traverse, however cursorily, the
ground which has occupied our thoughts in this
Lecture without realising more forcibly than ever
the truth of the divine word : " All flesh is as grass,
and all the glory of man as the flower of grass.
The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth
away : but the word of the Lord endureth for
ever" (1 Peter i. 24, 25).

47

LECTUBE II.
BABYLONIAN LITERATURE AND THE EARLY
NARRATIVES OF GENESIS.
The magnificent figures discovered in the ruins of
Nineveh by Layard, and now adorning the Assyrian
Galleries of the British Museum, at once excited
the admiration of Europe. Though less striking to
the popular imagination, far more precious to the
philologist and the historian were the clay tablets
recovered by Layard and George Smith and other
explorers from the mounds of Nineveh, and especi
ally from the ruins of the library of Asshurbanipal.
Asshurbanipal, the son of Esarhaddon and grandson
of Sennacherib, the Sardanapalus of the Greeks,
and "the great and noble Asnapper" of the Bible
(Ezra iv. 10), was not only a successful warrior and
a powerful monarch, but an eminent patron of
letters, whose age is a kind of Augustan age in
Assyrian literature. He had been educated from
early youth in the arts and sciences of Babylonia,
and it is to his strong literary tastes that we owe
so many remains of old Babylonian literature. He
devoted himself to the enrichment of the Boyal
Library, which had been founded by Shalmaneser

48 BABYLONIAN LITERATURE.
II. in 860 B.C., which had benefited greatly by
the patronage of Sargon, and to which Sennacherib
— as some compensation for a deed of ruthless bar
barity — had contributed from the literary treasures
of captured Babylon. For this purpose he had
numerous scribes constantly engaged in copying for
its shelves in the Assyrian character famous works
of old Babylonian authors. " When rebellion had
been quelled in Babylonia and the Babylonian
cities had been taken by storm," says Professor
Sayce,1 " the spoils that were most acceptable to
the Assyrian king were the written volumes that
their libraries contained. No present could be sent
to him which would be valued more than some old
text from Erech, or Ur, or Babylon." With the
exception, in fact, of the Assyrian historical inscrip
tions, contracts, letters, and reports of only inferior
importance, all, or nearly all, the texts found in
Asshurbanipal's library are of Babylonian origin,
having been composed and produced in Babylonia.
We need to keep this distinction between what is
Assyrian and what is Babylonian clearly before our
minds. " Babylonia," as Professor Hommel points
out,2 " is the cradle of the earliest civilisation, and
could look back to a history covering several thou
sands of years at a time (about 1900 B.C.) when the
history of Assyria was in its infancy : it is for this
reason that the Assyrian civilisation (its language,
script, and religion) is, in the main, merely an off
shoot of the Babylonian. It is absurd, therefore, to
speak of an independent Assyrian literature, unless
1 Hibbert Lectures, p. 10 ff.
2 Ancient Hebrew Tradition, p. 31.

THE OLD ACCADIAN LANGUAGE. 49
of course 'we are prepared to regard the inscrip
tions of the Assyrian kings as a separate school of
literature by itself." The material which Asshur
banipal placed in his library consisted, however,
with unimportant exceptions which we have just
named, of mere copies of earlier Babylonian
texts. Under the description of Babylonian literature
we include the texts that have been transmitted
to us in the old Accadian language, because they
also arose on Babylonian soil, and are memorials of
the intellectual life of the earliest Babylonians.
The older Turanian or Accadian population of
Shinar, the people now rather called by the name
of Sumerians, Sumer being the old name for Shinar,
had offered their native speech to the later immi
grant Semitic people who adopted their written
characters ; and since then the written language has
remained the same on Assyrian and Babylonian
soil. One of the immediate results of the recent
discoveries at Telloh and Nippur, as Friedrich
Delitzsch admits in his essay on ' The Origin of
the Earliest System of Writing,' l is to confirm the
view that there was a Sumerian race, and a
Sumerian civilisation, and a Sumerian language,
as against the view maintained with great ability
by Halevy, Professor M'Curdy, and even for a
time by Delitzsch himself, that there had never
been a Sumerian language, that what was so repre
sented was only a sort of cipher writing or secret
script — an artificial language, in fact, of a priestly
or esoteric character — which got the name of Acca-
1 Entstehung des Aeltesten Schriftsystems. Leipzig, 1897.
D

50 BABYLONIAN LITERATURE.
dian or Sumerian. The oldest written documents
known have come down to us in this Babylonian
cuneiform, which for three thousand years — we can
not well tell how much longer — was the domin
ant system of writing within Babylonia proper.
Whether the earliest works in this literature, like
the Law among the Hebrews, or the Koran among
the Arabs, stereotyped the written representation,
while the oral speech changed, we cannot say.
But true it is, the Semitic people on the banks of
the Euphrates and the Tigris all along composed
the monuments of their intellectual activity in the
speech of their remote ancestors ; and as most of
the productions of Babylonian literature have come
to us from the great libraries of Assyria, we are
wont to speak of the language as Assyrian. This
literature, if literature we may call it, is exceedingly
varied.1 It comprises legends like those of the
Creation and the Flood ; hymns and penitential
psalms ; incantations and proverbs ; phrase tablets
in Accadian and Assyrian ; syllabaries in three and
even four columns ; grammatical books and glos
saries explaining words of foreign origin ; omen
tablets, astrological reports, and astronomical ob
servations of no mean order ; contracts, lawsuits,
and documents connected with business and trade ;
and, specialty valuable for the chronology and the
history, lists of kings, with their annals and the
length of their reigns. If these are not what we
would call literature, they are the raw materials
of literature, materials out of which a Herodotus,
or a Livy, or a Gibbon could have given the world
1 See Kaulen, Assyrien und Babylonien, pp. 140, 141.

EPIC POEMS. 51
an entrancing history. It has, indeed, been ob
jected that history cannot be written from inscrip
tions and epigraphic sources alone, and this, as a
rule, is true. But, as Professor Tiele has well
pointed out in his Babylonian -Assyrian History,1
the epigraphic or inscriptional character of these
old Babylonian texts is more apparent than real.
There is much that is purely epigraphic ; but the
historical inscriptions of great cylinders and prisms,
the annals and state-records which the Assyrian
kings had engraven on the walls of their palaces,
are in fact so many pieces of history, multiplied
by the chisel. That Babylonian literature was
rich in legendary lore and in imaginative works is
shown by the list which Hommel gives of such
works.2 Besides the Creation Epos, and the Nim
rod Epos containing the Deluge story, he enumer
ates the legend of Istar's descent into Hades, the
legend of Namtar, a sort of Babylonian Persephone
story, the Adapa legend, the Etana legend, the
legends of the god Zu, and the legend of the god
Girra, or Nergal in his martial capacity. He men
tions, besides, historical narratives supposed to be
thrown into romance forms, like the stories of
Sargon of Accad and Kudur - Dugmal, the king
of Elam. When Nineveh was overthrown in 606
B.C., all these productions, with the other contents
of Asshurbanipal's library, were buried in the ruins
of the city, and the clay tablets, not being de
structible like the papyrus rolls, which have all
1 Babylonisch-Assyrische Geschichte, p. 18.
2 See article " Babylonia " in ' Dictionary of the Bible.' Edinburgh,
T. & T. Clark.

52 BABYLONIAN LITERATURE.
perished, were stored up in the soil of Assyria till
Layard and his coadjutors brought them to the
light of day.
Among the clay tablets thus recovered from
oblivion and deciphered with such patience and
skill, the most interesting to us are those epic
poems which, as we have indicated, afford parallels
to the Bible record of the Creation and the Flood,
and others which seem to present parallels to the
Sabbath, to Paradise, to the Fall, and to the
beginnings of civilisation as recorded in Scripture.
Of these several whole series have been recovered.
The task of decipherment has not been easy. As
an illustration of the labour and ingenuity re
quired, Professor Hilprecht 1 says of the decipher
ment of one of the Nippur inscriptions : " Certain
cuneiform characters could not be recognised dis
tinctly on the original except in the light immedi
ately preceding sunrise, the best time for copying
difficult cuneiform inscriptions." Even the task of
collecting and piecing together the tablets and
fragments of tablets into a connected series must
obviously have required enormous patience and
toil. We know how difficult it is to piece together
the fragments of a letter we have inadvertently
torn up and thrown into the wastepaper-basket. If
the contents of the wastepaper - basket have been
thrown into the dust -heap, the labour is greater
still. But patiently to gather out of broken heaps
of thousands of clay tablets the fragments belong
ing to one tablet or to a series of tablets, not only
to make search for them in the Assyrian Chambers
1 Babylonian Expedition, vol. i. part i. p. 35.

PARALLELS TO THE BIBLE RECORD. 53
of the British Museum, but even to make journeys
to the ruined site of Nineveh in quest of missing
links, — this was the herculean task demanded of
the Assyrian scholars engaged in these researches.
It was only a few days after he had begun his
search in the mound of Kouyunjik in 1873 that
Mr George Smith, commissioned, as we have seen,
by the ( Daily Telegraph ' for the purpose, found
the fragment which enabled him to fill up the only
serious blank there was in the Babylonian account
of the Deluge. By means of a tablet brought from
Babylonia in 1887 by Mr Hormuzd Bassam, one of
the largest gaps in the Creation epic was supplied,
and a new impetus given to its study. And it has
not been left to Nineveh alone to furnish materials
for this series of texts. Tel el-Amarna has given
us two legends which fit into the series, one of
them of special interest, inasmuch as it supplies
the nearest Chaldean parallel which we possess to
the Scripture narrative of the Fall, both of them
showing how documents from the temples of Baby
lonia were being studied and copied in Egypt
before the days of Moses. Nor are we confined to
one edition of these texts. " We have now," says Mr
W. S. Boscawen,1 " both duplicates and additional
fragments from the libraries of both Borsippa and
Sippara (Sepharvaim), as well as portions of a still
older legend from the ancient priest-city of Cutha.
These Babylonian copies are of great importance,
as they cannot have been taken from the Assyrian
tablets, which were probably buried at the time of
the fall of Nineveh, but are from older copies in
1 The Bible and the Monuments, p. 38.

54 BABYLONIAN LITERATURE.
their own libraries. They are most valuable also
because of certain variants they afford, which
explain obscure passages."
Let us direct our attention first to ihe Chaldean
account of the Creation. Before proceeding to
Mesopotamia in the endeavour to obtain more
fragments of the Babylonian narrative on the
journey from which he never returned, Mr George
Smith prepared this text, so far as recovered, for
publication in a popular form, and gave copies to
the leading Assyrian scholars of the day, that it
might be studied in the meantime. In a note
accompanying the publication he says : " The
present copies of the Chaldaean account of the
Creation were written during the reign of Asshur
banipal, B.C. 673-626, but they appear to be copies
of a much older Chaldaean work, the date of the
composition of which was probably near B.C. 2000.
The legends existed, however, earlier than this, and
were in the form of oral traditions, handed down
from time to time, until during the great literary
age in Babylonia they were committed to writing."
Of this " great literary age in Babylonia," embrac
ing, as we shall see, the times of Abraham, we
shall hear more as we proceed. The Babylonian
Creation Epos thus introduced to the modern
world is a work manifestlv of the greatest in
terest. It is contained in a series of tablets or
books, apparently seven in number, and since the
creation is described as consisting of a similar
series of successive acts, it presents a marked
similarity to the Biblical narrative in the first
and second chapters of Genesis. According to

CHALDAEAN ACCOUNT OF CREATION. 55
the most recent research,1 it is an epic poem in
seven books. That it is a poem has now been
placed beyond doubt, and the laws regulating the
metre have been worked out and definitely laid
down. There is some doubt as to the second book,
portions assigned to it being by some authorities
attached rather to the first and the third. The
sixth book is still almost wholly wanting, and the
seventh exists only in fragments which barely
suffice to yield a connected meaning.
The opening words of the first tablet are in
striking accord with the first verses of Genesis, and
after their own fashion tell of " the beginning" in
which God created the heavens and the earth.
They run as follows : —
" When on high the heavens were named not
And earth beneath had received no name,
Then the abyss of waters was in the beginning their generator,
The chaos of the deep was one who bore them all.
Their waters were embosomed together, and
The field was uncultivated, the maish [-plant] ungrown.
When the gods had not appeared, any one of them,
jSTo name had they received, no destiny [had they fixed],
Then were the [great] gods created,
Lakhmu and Lakhamu issued forth [the first] ;
Until they grew up [and waxed old],
When Ansar and Kisar (the upper and the lower firmament) were
created.
Long were the days [until]
Anu [Bel] and Ea were created :
Ansar [and Kisar created them]."
The poem proceeds to tell, almost in the style of
Milton, of a struggle between Tiamat, the female
personification of the primeval waters, and the rest
1 Das Babylonische Welt-Schopfungs-Epos. Von Friedrich Delitzsch,
Leipzig, 1896.

56 BABYLONIAN LITERATURE.
of the gods ; Tiamat being the feminine form of a
word almost identical with the Hebrew tehdm, the
deep — "darkness was upon the face of the deep"
(Gen. i. 2). Anu claims the right to decide be
tween them, but Tiamat declares war, having with
her the eleven monsters she has brought into being,
and binding the tablets of destiny to the breast ofher
consort Kingu in token of his exaltation to universal
supremacy. Ansar, after fruitless attempts through
the medium of Anu, Ea, and Marduk to conciliate
Tiamat, sends to inform Lakhmu and Lakhamu that
Marduk is prepared to undertake the conflict with
Tiamat. The fourth tablet, which we possess
complete, describes in powerful imagery the final
struggle between Marduk, the god of light, and
Tiamat, the dragon of the dark primeval waters.
Marduk is victorious, taking captive the gods who
are Tiamat's allies, cleaving Tiamat herself in twain,
and out of the one-half of her skin fashioning the
firmament of heaven, and out of the other forming
the earth. The eleven monsters allied with the
dragon he places in the sky to be the signs of the
zodiac, himself being the twelfth. Whatever sig
nificance one may attach to its details, one cannot
read the story of this legendary conflict without
thinking of the age-long conflict shadowed forth in
the primeval Gospel (Gen. iii. 15) between the seed
of the woman and the seed of the serpent ; and who
can tell but that it is a distant echo of that prim
eval strife which is heard in the Book of the Bevela-
tion (Bev. xii. 7, 8) : " There was war in heaven :
Michael and his angels fought against the dragon ;
and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed

ERIDU LEGEND OF CREATION. 57
not ; neither was their place found any more in
heaven " ?
As has been already indicated, other versions of
the Babylonian Creation story have been found.
The legend of Eridu contained in a small tablet in
the British Museum, written in Accadian and
Semitic Babylonian, and believed to have come
from the temple of Nebo at Borsippa, runs as
follows : —
" The holy house, the house of the gods, in a holy site had not
been made.
A reed had not sprung up, a tree was not made.
A brick was not laid, a beam was not made.
A house was not constructed, a city was not built.
A city was not made, an abode was not made strong.
Nippur had not been built, Ekurra was not constructed,
Erech had not been built, Eanna was not constructed,
The Absu was not made. Eridu was not built.
The holy house, the house of the gods, its site was not made.
The whole world, the sea also.
In the midst of the sea was a flowing tide.
At that time Eridu was built, Esagiia was constructed.
Merodach a wide space on the face of the deep bound round.
He made dust and poured it on the space.
The gods in the abode of joy of heart he seated.
He made mankind."
It is noticeable here that only Babylonian cities
.and none of Assyria are named, the circumstance
being a testimony to the great antiquity of the
legend. It seems from fragments supposed to
belong to the sixth tablet of the Babylonian
Creation Epos that this tablet dealt with the
same subject, but it makes mention of Assur as
well as of Nippur. If the Babylonian Creation
Epos is more in accord with the first chapter of

58 BABYLONIAN LITERATURE.
Genesis, this Eridu legend is more in accord with
the second chapter. " The antiquity of the Sumer
ian legend," says Professor Sayce,1 " and its close
dependence upon the foundation of the great
temple of Eridu, show that it must be the older;
and we must therefore see in it the earliest
starting-point yet known to us of that form of
the story of Creation which we find in the second
chapter of Genesis."
Incomplete as these old Creation records are,
there are some points that stand out clear enough
from them. For one thing, we notice that the
gods are themselves created beings, or of secondary
origin. Then, again, we are struck by this Baby
lonian Trinity, Anu, Bel, and Ea, and also by
Marduk, who fulfils the part of demiurge or
mediator, who makes the worlds, who ministers
to the need of men, who does battle victoriously
against the powers of evil. Thirdly, as Professor
M'Curdy has pointed out,2 there is no indication
of the independent existence of a pre -mundane
deity, standing apart from the material of the
world and acting upon it either creatively or
formatively : the creative deities are themselves
developed out of already existing material, ulti
mately from the chaos of waters itself. Finally,
when we set the Babylonian records of creation
over against the Biblical we observe amid natural
resemblances a tremendous contrast. We turn
again from those Babylonian traditions, so pictur
esque and so interesting for their very antiquity,
1 Higher Criticism and the Monuments, p. 93.
2 Homiletic Review, July 1897.

BIBLE RECORD OF CREATION. 59
to the story of Genesis, and we are struck as never
before by the beauty, simplicity, and purity, by the
high moral and spiritual purpose, and by the lofty
conception of God as the living and true God run
ning through the Biblical account, in direct contrast
to the gross polytheism disfiguring even the loftiest
of those Chaldean traditions. In the Babylonian
cosmogony Ave find a materialistic philosophy at
work in combination with an extremely free poetical
- imagination throwing off mythological elements
without restraint. That some of the cosmological
fancies of the early Babylonians, sifted and purified
as we have described, entered into the Scripture
record is very likely from allusions in the prophets,
and especially in the Book of Job. The Hebrew mind,
whether receiving its conception of creation as part
of what Keble has called so beautifully "the wreck
of Paradise," or working upon those early Baby
lonian traditions, and purifying and recasting them
under the influence of the Spirit of Bevelation,
exhibits the one living and true God as the Creator
of all, fashioning the whole and giving to every part
its function according to His sovereign will ; and
exhibits man as the goal of creation, for whose well-
being and destiny all things have been prepared.
But between the polytheism of the Babylonian
Creation record and the monotheism of the Biblical
narrative, between the motives ascribed to the gods
of the Chaldean pantheon and the purpose of God
in creating man in His own image, there is an im
passable gulf. We see, as it appears to me, in the
purifying and sifting of those early and legendary
narratives by the Spirit of Bevelation in the

60 BABYLONIAN LITERATURE.
Scripture writers, the working of that Spirit who
dwelt and wrought in the whole marvellous and
providential history of the chosen people, whose
potency was felt in the national and typical in
stitutions of Israel, and who, when the fulness of
the time had come, dwelt without measure in Him
who is the Word Incarnate, and who brought the
revelation of the Father to its glorious perfection.
We pass on to those other subjects which are so
closely related to the Creation in the Book of
Genesis. The first of these is the Sabbath, which is
shown to be not a comparatively late and restricted
Jewish institution, but as old as creation itself. It
was known and observed among the ancient Baby
lonians. It is presented, in fact, in connection with
a very rigid Sabbatarianism. The seventh, four
teenth, twenty-first, twenty-eighth, and also, curi
ously enough, the nineteenth days of the month are
called unlawful days — dies nefasti, or, as we should
call them, dies non — when business was not to be
transacted. But in a lexicographical tablet in the
British Museum the word Sabattu, the Sabbath,
is found, and is explained by words which mean " a
day of rest for the heart." In another list it is
rendered by Solum, which means ' ' rest or com
pletion," and surely recalls how " on the seventh
day God finished His work which He had made ;
and He rested on the seventh day from all His
work which He had made. And God blessed the
seventh day and hallowed it " (Gen. ii. 2, 3, B.V.)
In these old Babylonian calendars we have the
Sabbath rest and abstinence from work expressly
prescribed : " The seventh day is a resting day to

SABBATH AND PARADISE. 61
Merodach and Zarpanit, a holy day, a Sabbath.
The Shepherd of mighty nations must not eat flesh
cooked at the fire or in the smoke. His clothes he
changes not. A washing he must not make. He
must not offer sacrifice. The king must not drive
in his chariot. He must not issue royal decrees.
In a secret place the augur a muttering makes
not. Medicine for the sickness of his body one
must not apply. For making a curse it is not fit." a
Were it not for indubitable evidence of the high
antiquity of the texts containing these calendars,
this uncompromising Sabbatarianism, admitting no
works of necessity or mercy, might have pointed to
a late origin, under the regime of the narrowest
Judaism. That the seventh day should have this
sacred character is in accord with the sacredness
attributed to the number seven in the Babylonian
economy. Among the Accadians seven was the
number of completeness. In the syllabaries the
names of the seven planetary deities are found.
There are seven evil spirits having their origin in
the depths ; the serpent of the Hymns has seven
heads ; and the sacred tree has seven branches.
It has been doubted whether any direct reference
to Paradise is to be found in the ancient Babylonian
legends. The tree of life, identified with the palm,
figures largely in Babylonian art, and there are traces
too of a tree of knowledge. The Eden of the Biblical
narrative is supposed to be found in the Assyrian
word idinu, a field or plain, which was used also
with a restricted application to the great alluvial
1 See Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, pp. 73, 74 ; Boscawen, The Bible
and the Monuments, p. 67.

62 BABYLONIAN LITERATURE.
plain or field of Chaldea. The attempt of Friedrich
Delitzsch, in his singularly interesting and exhaus
tive essay on the ' Site of Paradise,' x to locate Eden
among the canals between the Euphrates and the
Tigris, in a region of rare fertility and beauty, has
a value quite independent of any opinion we may
hold as to the success of his main contention. The
antiqui£y of some of those canals is demonstrated
by the mighty cities like Nippur and Lagash and
Larsa which have grown up upon their banks.
"We may at least," says Professor M'Curdy, "say
with confidence that in this portion of the river
country where the streams lie nearest together, it
was most easy and natural to utilise the conditions
that were so favourable for the successive de
velopment of agriculture, inland navigation, trade,
and manufactures ; and may also point to the fact
that the earliest recorded civilisation had its home
in that very region, where it comes to view as in
many respects a finished product, with a past behind
it of indefinite duration and an unknown number of
stages of development." 2 An old Sumerian hymn
does connect the garden with " the good city "
of Eridu, the city of the god Ea, the Neptune of
the Babylonian Pantheon, itself a seaport of renown
in the ancient world, the original seaport of
Chaldea : —
"At Eridu a palmstalk grew overshadowing; in a holy place did
it become green ;
Its root was of bright lapis which stretched towards the deep,
Before the god Ea was its growth at Eridu, teeming with fertility;

1 Wo lag das Paradies 1
2 History, Prophecy, and the Monuments, vol. i. p. 125.

THE SERPENT AND THE FALL. 63
Its seat was the central place of the earth ;
Its foliage was the couch of Bau, the primeval mother.
Into the heart of its holy house which spread its shade like a
forest hath no man entered."
The connection of the Serpent with Paradise is
quite a Babylonian conception. In a picture on
an old cylinder seal, which has been often repro
duced, a serpent is seen twining itself behind a
seated female figure. In front of the figure stands
a palm, and on the other side of the palm sits a
personage whose ox - horns mark him out as a
divinity. Both figures, however, are represented
as stretching out their hands to the fruit of the
tree which stands between them. The Babylonian
dragon of the primeval world is a monster with
the head of a lion and the feet of an eagle ; but
after his defeat by Marduk he is transported to
heaven in the form of a serpent. In the third
Creation tablet, describing how Ansar secured from
" the great gods " the right to represent them in
the struggle against Tiamat, a reference to the
Fall has been found by some scholars. The pas
sage reads as follows : —
" The great gods, all of them determiners of fate,
They entered, and, death-like, the god Sar filled.
In sin one with the other in compact joins.
The command was established in the garden of God.
The Asnan (fruit) they ate, they broke in two,
Its stalk they destroyed ;
The sweet juice which injures the body.
Great is their sin. Themselves they exalted.
To Merodach, their Eedeemer, he appointed their fate."
The legend of Adapa may also contain a parallel
to the Fall. This legend has a romantic literary

64 BABYLONIAN LITERATURE.
history. The beginning of it was brought to the
British Museum from the ruins of Nineveh, part
of the spoils of the library of Asshurbanipal, and
the middle portion was found at Tel el-Amarna,
where it had been read and studied 800 years
before the Assyrian copy had been made for that
royal patron of letters. Adapa, who is called the
Seed of Mankind, and who, having accidentally
broken the wings of the South Wind, is accused
before Anu, forfeits for ever the immortality offered
him by Anu by his refusal to take from the god,
now reconciled, the bread and the water of life.
"If in addition to this," says Professor Hommel,1
" we note the prominent place occupied by the
knowledge of sin and the yearning after forgive
ness amongst the Babylonian Semites, the exist
ence of a narrative of the Fall standing in intimate
relation to Paradise can scarcely any longer be
doubted." Quite a number of penitential psalms
have come down to us addressed to the Accadian
and Sumerian divinities, revealing a sense of sin
and a sorrow for it wonderfully deep and sincere.
The following lines of a Sumerian psalm from Eridu
give an illustration of this penitence : —
" The transgression that I committed I knew not,
The sin that I sinned I knew not,
The forbidden thing did I eat,
The forbidden thing did I trample upon.
My lord in the anger of his heart has punished me ;
God in the violence of his heart has revealed himself to me."
More remarkable than any that we have yet men
tioned is the parallelism between the Biblical and
1 Dictionary of the Bible, art. " Babylonia."

NARRATIVES OF THE FLOOD. 65
the Babylonian narratives of the Flood. Of the
Babylonian account of the Flood we have now two
versions, — one that has come down to us through
Berosus, an old Chaldean priest, who translated
the records of Babylonia into Greek, and flour
ished in the third century before Christ ; and
another in the cuneiform writing of Babylonia,
the discovery of which, among the literary treas
ures of ancient Nineveh, we owe again to the
genius of Mr George Smith.
The account given by Berosus is now seen to be
independent of the Biblical account, and is closely
related to the Babylonian. He tells us that it was
in the reign of Xisuthrus, the tenth of the kings
of Babylon who ruled before the Flood, that the
Deluge took place. Oannes appeared to him in
a dream and warned him of the approaching de
struction of the human race. The god further com
manded him to commit to writing the history of
everything connected with the catastrophe, and to
bury it in the city of the Sun at Sippara ; to build
a vessel for the safety of himself, his family, and
his nearest friends, to store it with sufficient pro
vision of food and drink, and to bring into it
winged and four - footed creatures. Xisuthrus
obeyed, and built a vessel, five stadia in length
and two in breadth, and having gathered all to
gether, entered with his wife and children and
nearest friends. When the flood had come and
had begun to subside, Xisuthrus let birds fly forth
from the vessel, but they found neither food nor
resting-place, and returned. After a few days he
let them go again, and they came back with mud
E

66 BABYLONIAN LITERATURE.
on their feet. A third time he let them go, and
they returned no more. From which Xisuthrus
perceived that the dry land again appeared. He
made an opening accordingly in the roof of the
ship, and saw that it had now settled on a moun
tain. He then disembarked with his wife, his
daughter, and the steersman of the vessel; he
worshipped the earth, reared an altar, and offered
sacrifices to the gods ; and having done this he
vanished, along with those who accompanied him.
Those who had been left behind now came out of
the ship and sought for him, calling him by name.
To them he appeared no more ; but a voice sounded
forth, bidding them fear the gods, with whom he
was going to dwell along with his wife and
daughter and the steersman. He reminded them
of the buried books which they were to dig up
on their return to Babylon, telling them they
were now in the land of Armenia. A part of
the vessel, Berosus concludes, remains to this day
on the Gordian Mountains in Armenia, and pil
grims bring back pieces of the wreck to use as
amulets. Such is the Deluge story which has
come down to us from the old Chaldean priest,
and which has acquired greatly increased signifi
cance by Mr George Smith's discovery of an
original Babylonian record of the same catastrophe.
To that remarkable record let us now turn for a
little. The Babylonian Flood-story is not, be it
observed, an independent epic like the Creation
epic. It has really been found to occupy a canto
of the greatest of all the ancient Babylonian poems,
the so-called Nimrod Epos. This epic poem, con-

THE BABYLONIAN FLOOD-STORY. 67
sisting of three thousand lines, is in twelve cantos,
named by the twelve signs of the zodiac ; and it is
fitting that the eleventh canto, named from Aqua
rius the Water-carrier, should describe the flood
sent by Bamman, the storm-god of the Babylonian
Pantheon, to destroy the family of man. The old
Accadian name of the eleventh month signifies
" month of the curse of rain " — that is, says
Schrader,1 " month of the judgment of the flood."
The poem, of which there were three copies in
Asshurbanipal's library, made from a very ancient
specimen in the sacerdotal library of Erech, is
virtually complete. The hero of the epic, the
Hercules of Babylonian literature, variously named
Izdhubar and Gisdubar, is now provisionally called
Gilgames. As the Semitic reading of the Sumerian
Gilgames was Namrasit, the nearest prototype to the
Hebrew Nimrod, and as his story presents analogies
to the story of Nimrod, the whole poem is known
as the Nimrod Epos.2 If it be the case that every
epic has a thread of history on which it is strung, we
may look in the old history of Babylonia for such a
thread. But whatever the immediate occasion of
this epic, one thing is clear, that it incorporates
legends of a still older and even prehistoric time.
Just as Tennyson has taken up the old Arthurian
1 Cuneiform Inscriptions and the Old Testament, vol. i. p. 47.
2 We have said the hero is " provisionally named Gilgames." One
of the chief difficulties in the old Babylonian writing lies in the
uncertain readings of proper names. Native place and personal
names are for the most part written wholly or partly in ideograms,
and written with such whimsical variations that many a time in one
name the same ideogram appears with quite a different meaning.
And so, when the right pronunciation is not known from parallel pas
sages in classical or Hebrew sources, there is more or less uncertainty.

68 BABYLONIAN LITERATURE.
legend and fitted it into the "Morte d'Arthur"
breathing the spirit of our modern life, so that old
Babylonian poet worked into his epic this Flood
legend of earlier times.
The motive of the epic is drawn, we are told,
from the Elamite occupation of Erech, where the
tyrant Khumbaba. a successor of Kudur Nan-
khundi, is described as a ruthless oppressor, who
has brought desolation and distress upon the
people as well as disgrace upon the exiled goddess
Ishtar, the original of the Canaanite Ashteroth.
In the poem the deliverance effected by the hero
has as its basis the historical fact of the gradual
overthrow and expulsion of the hated foreigners.
Gilgames, the hero, belonged to the city of Surip-
pak on the Euphrates, a city of which no trace has
yet been found. He became king of Erech, where
he reigned as tyrant till the gods created Ea-bani
to destroy him. The two, however, struck up a
friendship after Gilgames had overcome a mighty
lion, and together they deliver the city of Erech from
the oppressor Khumbaba. Ishtar now offers herself
in marriage to the hero but is refused, and in
revenge the goddess compasses the death of Ea-
bani, and smites Gilgames with an incurable disease.
In quest of relief he sets out for the dwelling-
place of his great-grandfather, Sit-napisti (rescue
of life), the Babylonian Noah, also called Khasis-
adra, far away on the ocean in the Isles of the
Blessed. To reach this happy abode he first trav
erses the land of Mashu (in Central Arabia,
according to Hommel), and then crosses the waters
of death to Sit - napisti, who tells him that his

THE BABYLONIAN FLOOD-STORY. 69
translation without dying was due to his piety,
and then, having given him a full account of his
own deliverance from the flood, heals him of his
disease, and bestows upon him the plant of life.
The plant of life is snatched from him on his way
home by an earth lion — that is, a serpent. On his
arrival at Erech he bewails, in the temple of the
goddess Ninsunna, the death of his friend Ea-bani,
and prays the god Nergal to restore Ea-bani to
him. With the granting of this request, and a
graphic description of the under-world by Ea-bani,
the epic comes to a close. That description of the
under-world is interesting, as showing the belief of
the Babylonians in an after-life and two separate
states, one of sorrow and wretchedness, the other
of happiness and bliss. They are powerfully
delineated in the poem. " Be turn me," says the
ghost of Ea-bani,
" Erom Hades, the land of my knowledge ;
From the house of the departed, the seat of the god Irkalla ;
Erom the house within which is no exit ;
From the road the course of which never returns ;
From the place within which they long for light ;
The place where dust is their nourishment and their food mud.
Its chiefs are like birds clothed with wings ;
Light is never seen, in darkness they dwell.
To the place of seers which I will enter
To whom the gods, Anu and Bel, have given renowned names.
A place where water is abundant, drawn from perennial springs.
To the place of seers which I will enter,
The place of chiefs and unconquered ones,
The place of bards and great men,
The place of interpreters of the wisdom of the great gods,
The place of the mighty, the dwelling of the god Ner." x

1 George Smith, Assyrian Discoveries, pp. 202, 203.

70 BABYLONIAN LITERATURE.
The Flood story itself, as told by Sit-napisti to
the hero of the poem, commences with the decision
of the gods Anu, Bel, Adar, and Ea to send a flood
as a judgment on the sins of the men of Surippak.
The decision is announced to Sit-napisti — or Pir-
napisti, as he is now more commonly called — by
Ea, the lord of the under -world, who says to
him : —
" Resign thy goods and cause thy soul to live,
And bring all the seed of life into the midst of the ship."
Sit-napisti built the ship of prescribed dimensions,
pouring " pitch over the outside " and " bitumen
over the inside," bringing into it when completed
and provisioned, and after due warning had been
given to all concerned, all his family, his servants,
and his goods, and finally himself entering within
the ship and closing the door. Then " arose from
the horizon of heaven a black cloud, the storm-god
Bamman thundered in its midst ; " " over the face
of the mountains the waters rose ; " " six days and
six nights rages the wind ; the flood and the storm
devastate." When "the tempest ofthe Deluge was
ended," Sit-napisti looked upon its deadly work : —
" I beheld the deep and uttered a cry,
For the whole of mankind was turned to clay ;
Like trunks of trees did the bodies float.
I opened the window and the light fell upon my face ;
I stooped and sat down weeping,
Over my face ran my tears.
I beheld a shore beyond the sea ;
Toward the twelfth degree rose a land.
On the mountain of Nizir the ship grounded."
Then come incidents which are at once recognised

THE BABYLONIAN FLOOD-STORY. 71
as closely parallel to the Scripture narrative of the
Flood :—
" On the mountain of Nizir the ship grounded.
One day and a second day did the mountain of Nizir hold it.
When the seventh day came I sent forth a dove and let it go.
The dove went and returned ; a resting-place it found not and it
turned back.
I sent forth a swallow and let it go ; the swallow went and
returned ;
A resting-place it found not and it turned back.
I sent forth a raven and let it go :
The raven went and saw the going down of the waters, and
It approached, it waded, it croaked, and did not turn back."
Then follow the coming forth from the ark, the
sacrifice, and even the rainbow : —
" Already at the moment of her coming the great goddess
Lifted up the mighty bow which Anu had made according to
his wish."
As explaining the motives of the gods in sending
the flood upon men, we have the remonstrance
of Ea, the god of wisdom, addressed to the warrior
Bel, who in his quality of storm-god had presided
over it : —
" Why, 0 why, didst thou not take counsel, but didst cause a
deluge 1
Let the sinner bear his own sin, let the evil-doer bear his own
evil-doing."
Ea goes on to plead that there should be no more
deluge, — rather let lions devour, and jackals make
havoc, and famine waste, and pestilence devastate,
reminding us of the words of the Scripture story :
" Neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by
the waters of a flood ; neither shall there any
more be a flood to destroy the earth" (Gen. ix. 11).

72 BABYLONIAN LITERATURE.
And as God said unto Noah and to his sons with
him, "Behold, I establish my covenant with you
and with your seed after you," so Sit-napisti closes
his narrative with the announcement of a similar
engagement on the part of Bel, " He turned him
self to us and established himself to us in a cove
nant." In the end Sit-napisti and his wife were
" made like unto gods," and borne away to dwell
in a remote place at the mouth of the rivers.1
No one can study the Babylonian and the Biblical
narratives of the Flood without being struck with
the points of resemblance, and, in the midst of
prevailing resemblance, with points of difference.
The resemblance is sufficient to connect the Biblical
narrative organically with the Babylonian tradition,
and to prove community of origin between them,
such as does not appear to obtain between them
and the Greek or Indian or any other tradition
of the Flood. Whilst the resemblances thus prove
community of origin and intimate relationship, the
differences disprove direct dependence. For one
thing, the Babylonian tradition implies a people
largely maritime ; the Biblical an inland people.
Again, the Babylonian narrative represents Sit-
napisti as surrounded by a whole company of
servants and companions ; in the Bible, Noah and
his family alone are saved, and from them the
devastated world is repeopled. As in the case
of the Creation narratives, the decisive difference
is the moral and spiritual. The Babylonian ac
count is disfigured by elements of gross poly
theism ; the Biblical account exhibits the same
i See Appendix, Note III., p. 321.

SUPERIORITY OF BIBLICAL NARRATIVE. 73
pure monotheism and the same lofty spiritual
purpose which we remarked in the story of the
Creation. When we study the Babylonian legend
we find a multitude of gods in the likeness of men,
subject to human passions, liable to human frailties,
even quarrelling among themselves, terrified by a
storm, skulking before the tempest — it is the very
image of the poem — like dogs to their kennel.
When we study the Biblical narrative we see the
mercy of Jehovah manifesting itself even amid
the rigours of vengeance, His tenderness encircling
the faithful remnant, His preserving care for the
creatures He has made, His kindness in remember
ing Noah and every living thing in the ark, His
undivided and inapproachable sovereignty over all
nature, — all these features, so touching and so truly
divine, yet so pronounced and so natural in the
Bible story of the Flood, separate it as light is
separated from darkness from the Babylonian re
cord. " Whoever will study," says the Abbe
Vigouroux, " the two narratives of the Flood, so
similar on what we may call the material side, as
remote from one another as heaven from earth on
the spiritual and theological side, will not be able
to refrain from crying out in admiration before the
pages of Holy Scripture, ' The finger of God is
here.' " 1
Whilst we are prepared to stake the character
of these early narratives in Genesis as revelation
upon the high spiritual purpose and the majestic
simplicity born of belief in the one living and true
God, which differentiate them so markedly from
1 La Bible et les decouvertes modernes, vol. i. p. 333.

74 BABYLONIAN LITERATURE.
the Babylonian legends with which they have so
much in common, there are still one or two ques
tions which demand discussion.
1. How far, for example, are we to regard these
early Genesis narratives as absolutely historical?
Here they are intertwined with these relics of
early human tradition ; in what character are we
to regard them ? Undoubtedly their kinship with
these old Babylonian traditions does suggest that
the early Genesis narratives partake of the same
external literary character. No doubt the tradition
of the Flood is so widespread as evidently to rest
upon an actual historical event,1 and the order of
the Creation in the first chapter of Genesis is
wonderfully in accord with the findings of modern
science.2 We cannot treat the Biblical record now
in isolation. We must take into account, in any
estimate of the Scripture record, those old tradi
tions with which, in external and literary form at all
events, the Bible narrative has such close affinity.
It seems quite a correct inference, from a comparison
of these ancient Babylonian legends with the Bible
1 Bartlett, The Veracity of the Hexateuch, p. 151 ff.
2 In ' The Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture,' Mr Gladstone says :
" The question finally to be decided is not whether according to the
present state of knowledge the recital in the Book of Genesis is at each
several point either precise or complete. It may here be general,
there particular ; it may here describe a continuous process, and it may
there make large omissions, if the things omitted are either abso
lutely or comparatively immaterial to its progress ; it may be careful
of the actual succession of time, or may deviate from it according as
the one or the other best subserved the general and principal aim ;
so that the true question is this, Do the doctrines of the Creation
story in Genesis appear to stand in such a relation to the facts of
natural science, so far as they are ascertained, as to warrant or require
our concluding that the first proceeded, in a manner above the ordinary
manner, from the Author of the visible Creation 1 "

SPIRIT OF REVELATION IN THE BIBLE. 75
narrative, to hold that the Spirit of Bevelation has
taken those old and far-descended traditions of the
human family and remoulded them and purified
them and consecrated them to be the vehicle of
those great spiritual truths which distinguish from
all other religions the religion of Bevelation. These
narratives, Avhatever we think of their literary
form, are profoundly true to human nature and
human life, and they lead us straight to the foun-
tainhead of human history. The distinguished
French historian of antiquity, the brilliant and
learned M. Lenormant, has well said of these early
narratives of Genesis : " This sacred story, even
without the assured and solemn authority which it
derives from the inspired character of the book in
which it is found, would always form in sound
criticism the base of all history ; for, merely con
sidered from a human point of view, it contains the
most ancient tradition as to the first days of the
human race, the only one which has not been dis
figured by the introduction of fantastic myths of
disordered imagination run wild. " x Whatever the
view we take of the narrative of the Creation, of
the institution of the Sabbath, of Paradise, of the
Fall, of the Flood, and of the Confusion of Tongues,
as we find them in the first eleven chapters of
Genesis, the element towering high in importance
above everything else is the ethical and spiritual
teaching presented to us there by the revealing
Spirit of God. God's glory as the Creator and
Upholder of all, the high destiny of man, His
masterpiece of creative skill, the alien character
1 Manual of Ancient History of the East, vol. i. p. 1.

76

BABYLONIAN LITERATURE.

of sin with its woe, but also with its divinely
planned remedy of redemption, God's righteous
ness, faithfulness, wisdom, and love, — are all set
in the very forefront of the volume of Bevelation,
and shine resplendent in those earliest records of
the human race.
2. Of course it might be argued, and it is main
tained by the adherents of the newer criticism, that
in spite of all that has been said the Jews simply
borrowed these Babylonian traditions at a late
period of their history ; and this leads us to con
sider the question, What is the exact relationship
between the Biblical narrative and those Baby
lonian legends ?
(l) So long as Berosus, the Chaldean priest of
the third century before Christ, was virtually
our only extra - Biblical authority for the ac
count of the Flood, it was quite possible to
assert that, living as he did when the Jewish
Scriptures were widely circulated, he had bor
rowed the story from the Bible, and given it the
polytheistic character which suited his own reli
gious conceptions. Now, however, that we have
the very Babylonian records out of which Berosus
manifestly drew his story — records going back to
the times of Abraham, if not earlier— that explana
tion is no longer admissible. Berosus, it is now plain
beyond dispute, took his story from the sacred books
of Babylon.
(2) If, then, these Babylonian traditions are not
derived in any of their forms from the Jewish
Scriptures, may not the Avriters of the Jewish
Scriptures have borrowed from them ? Granting

BIBLICAL AND BABYLONIAN ACCOUNTS. 77
this to be a possible view, at what time would
a Hebrew writer have the most likely opportuni
ties of putting into those high spiritual and mono
theistic moulds the legends and traditions of Baby
lonia ? The answer given by the more advanced
of the newer critics is, the time of the Exile.
It is to that period that they in fact assign the
whole of what we call the early literature of Israel.
It is a corner-stone ofthe newer criticism that "the
Prophets are earlier than the Law." And because
in the writings of the Prophets, beginning with
Amos about the middle of the eighth century,
there is scarcely any reference to the Creation, or
the Flood, or the Patriarchs, they maintain that
these early traditions of Israel, as they now appear
in the Book of Genesis, had either not come into
existence, or at least had not been placed in a
written setting. It was in Babylon, according to
this theory, that the Jewish people obtained the
materials for the earliest records of their religion.
The Hebrews of pre - Mosaic times, and even of
later times, were little better, according to this
view, than fetish worshippers. Now Asshurbani
pal, as we have seen, not so long before the
Exile had made a great collection of texts, the
chief subject of which was those very cosmo
gonies to which we have referred. Mr George
Smith believed the Creation Epos, for example, to
have been composed by Asshurbanipal's scribes, al
though its constituent materials went back to a
far higher antiquity. What more likely than that
the Hebrew writers derived their materials from
some of those versions of the Creation and the

78 BABYLONIAN LITERATURE.
Flood story which may have been current in the
time of the Exile, and, if so, accessible to the
Hebrew captives as they wept by the rivers of
Babylon ? At what other time was the Hebrew
mind better prepared by the profession of a strict
monotheism to sift the Babylonian cosmogonies of
their materialistic and polytheistic elements ?
This theory, plausible as it is, has, as it seems to
me, insuperable difficulties to encounter. It is in the
highest degree improbable that the Jews, animated
by that patriotism which we are accustomed to
attribute to the Jewish character, and which char
acterised them in a marked degree in the land of
their exile, should have adopted in the way which
this theory suggests the cosmological speculations
of their oppressors and placed them in the very
forefront of their law. It is equally improbable
that the Jewish people should have remained to
the very close of their national history unprovided
with traditions and conceptions of their own as
to the beginnings of things.1 Such traditions, we
may be sure, the Israelites possessed long before,
unless we are to take all the character and colour
out of their history up to that time. And indeed
in the earliest Avriting prophets, like Amos and
Hosea, nearly two centuries before the Exile, we
have allusions to these traditions, — there is a back-
1 Speaking of the composition of the Psalms, Professor Robertson
says : " If we are to assume that so simple a cosmogony as that of
Psalm viii., and so obvious a parallel word to heaven as firmament, . . .
were unknown to the Hebrews till the period of the Exile, we run the
risk of not only attenuating the ideas of the time, but even of depriv
ing the people of a working vocabulary." — Poetry and Religion of the
Psalms, p. C3.

BIBLICAL AND BABYLONIAN ACCOUNTS. 79
ground constituted by them which we cannot get
rid of as we read these prophets, while in Ezekiel
(xiv. 14, 20) Noah is referred to as a well-known
personage, and in the second Isaiah (liv. 9) the
Flood is mentioned as a familiar episode in their
history requiring no explanation. That the Israel
ites had long before the Exile not only such tradi
tions, but national institutions founded upon them,
and entering into the very core of their life as
the people of God, is obvious to every unprejudiced
student of their history. " It would require," says
Professor M'Curdy,1 " an inversion of the whole
history of the civil and religious life of the Hebrews,
to assume that such institutions were acquired by
them at the very close of their career as a nation.
But it requires no expert knowledge to perceive
that the whole Creation narrative includes these
things not incidentally, but as part of an organised
and well-established system, fundamental to the
whole structure of the Old Testament Bevelation."
We may confidently dismiss the view that the
sacred writers obtained the materials for the early
narratives of Genesis from the cuneiform records of
Assyria and Babylonia in the time of the Exile.
(3) With the rejection of the period of the Exile
we are thrown back upon an earlier time. That
the Israelites should have borrowed from the
sacred books of Nineveh and Babylon in the time
of Tiglath-Pileser, when it is true Ahaz borrowed
the pattern of an altar from his Assyrian suzerain
and introduced it into the worship of Jehovah at
Jerusalem, is a supposition improbable in itself and
1 Honiiletic Review, August 1897.

80 BABYLONIAN LITERATURE.
entirely destitute of support from history. That
the Israelites may have obtained a knowledge of
these old Babylonian traditions through the people
of Canaan, upon whom, as the Tel el-Amarna cor
respondence has revealed, Babylonia exercised a
civilising influence of a very marked description, is
by no means impossible. Dillmann, in his Com
mentary on Genesis,1 admits this, while rejecting
the time of the Exile. "It is really inconceivable,"
he says, " that the Jews should have appropriated
from their enemies, the Babylonians, a local
legend " — he is speaking of the Flood — " originally
quite strange to them, and steeped in the silliest
polytheism. One can more readily suppose that
somewhere about 800 B.C., or in the eighth century,
or in the second half of the seventh century, the
narrative came to the Israelites from Babylon,
whether through direct intercourse with the As
syrians or Babylonians, or transmitted to them by
traders like the Phoenicians. Besides," he signifi
cantly adds, "we now know that already in the
second millennium B.C. Canaan was open to the
influences of Babylonian culture," an admission
sufficient to satisfy even the strictest upholder of
the Mosaic authorship of Genesis. Another higher
critic, whose point of view is modified by his
studies as one of our greatest Assyriologists,
Eberhard Schrader of Berlin, pronounces for a
still earlier time:2 "It is far from impossible that
the Hebrews acquired a knowledge of these and
the other primitive myths as far back as the time
1 Genesis, English translation, vol. i. p. 262. Cf. above, pp. 44, 45.
2 Cuneiform Inscriptions and the Old Testament, vol. i. p. 54 n.

BIBLICAL AND BABYLONIAN ACCOUNTS. 81
of their early settlements in Babylonia, and that
they carried their stories with them from Ur of
the Chaldees. The time when these legends were
remoulded in the spirit of Hebrew antiquity must
of course be placed subsequent to the migration of
the Hebrews from their Babylonian home."
It is now well known that " Canaan," as Dillmann
puts it, was " open to the influences of Babylonian
culture " during the whole period from Abraham's
settlement in Canaan to its conquest by his de
scendants under Joshua. We have seen that a
cuneiform tablet found at Tel el-Amarna, on the
banks of the Nile, contained an interesting Baby
lonian legend. This very tablet, we are told, had
been employed by the scribes of the Egyptian king
as an exercise in learning the Babylonian language,
the words of the text having been separated from
one another by means of points, to facilitate the
task of the pupil. Babylonian myths and legends
might easily have become known to the Israelites
in the early days of their history, either directly
through the cuneiform records, or indirectly through
the Canaanites among whom the patriarchs lived.
This, however, is not so probable. It presupposes
that they had, as we have already said, no tradi
tions of their own worth retaining, no tribal or
national antecedents, which is scarcely what we
are wont to believe of the descendants of Abraham.
It is a far more likely supposition that Abraham
and his people brought with them from their Meso
potamian home those traditions which bear such
decided marks of kinship with the Babylonian
records, and which embody a conception of God and
F

82 BABYLONIAN LITERATURE.
of man, of the world and of human life, of right
eousness and of sin, worthy to have been held fast
by the Father of the Faithful and to have been
transmitted through his descendants to us, upon
whom the ends of the world have come.1 If we are
right with Mr George Smith in assigning the older
Babylonian works, of which the Assyrian texts are
copies, to the great literary period of Babylonia,
we give them an antiquity reaching at least to
before 2000 B.C. But what if the Biblical account
of the Flood is from the same source or actually
earlier ? Lenormant 2 thinks that in the narratives
there are divergences which prove the bifurcation
of the two from one source to have taken place at
a very remote era. Others are of opinion that
internal evidence shows the Biblical tradition to
be the purer and simpler and older of the two.
This carries these early narratives up to an antiq
uity which is almost astounding.
1 " The drama of Creation, as it is unfolded before us at the beginning
of the Book of Genesis, finds its counterpart in the picturesque — though
much less refined — legends inscribed on the Creation tablets of ancient
Babylonia. . . . The barren dignity of isolation has, indeed, for
ever departed from the ancient page of Hebrew tradition, but the
gain is undoubtedly greater than the loss. Instead of listening to the
solitary voice of a purely tribal oracle, we find ourselves reciting a
canto out of the great epic of antique humanity. Instead of glorying
in the possession of a part that was mistaken for the whole, we are
realising that our inheritance is much greater and much more varied
than our forefathers had imagined. And just as many of the pecu
liarities of the Hebrew language can only be explained by a compari
son with its various sister dialects, so does the ancient Hebrew tradition
find its only adequate explanation in the records and myths of the differ
ent races of whom the primitive Hebrews formed an integral part." —
Rev. G. Margoliouth, M.A., in ' Contemporary Review,' October 1898,
pp. 581, 582, where he expounds a new theory of the religion of the
ancient Hebrews.
2 Contemporary Review, November 1879.

BIBLICAL AND BABYLONIAN ACCOUNTS. 83
For remember how the Flood legend of ancient
Babylonia has come down to us. It has come to
us in the framework of a great national epic, into
which several legends can be shown to have been
woven when it received its literary form. That
national epic in its constituent materials is of great
antiquity. Maspero points out 1 that the scenes of
Gilgames', the Babylonian Nimrod's, encounter with
lions, leopards, and other wild beasts, as given in
the epos, are represented on the seals of princes
who reigned prior to the year 3000 B.C., and the
work of the ancient engraver harmonises so perfectly
with the description of the comparatively modern
scribe that it seems like an anticipated illustration
of it. The engravings represent so persistently and
with so little variation the images of the monsters
and those of Gilgames and his faithful Ea-bani that
the corresponding episodes of the poem must have
already existed as we know them, if not in form, at
least in their general drift. That the Biblical
account of the Flood existed in some form or an
other at a very remote age, as Lenormant puts it,
separate from the Babylonian and remaining paral
lel to it, is highly probable ; and that this tradition,
with the tradition of the Creation and others, in
the days of Abraham, purified from the polytheism
practised by Terah and his house, entered into the
history of the people of God ; that they were
treasured by them and even committed to writing
before the time of Moses, — is a history of the
Creation and Flood narratives and other early
narratives of Genesis which the discoveries of
1 Dawn of Civilisation, p. 589 ff.

84 BABYLONIAN LITERATURE.
recent years and the labours of Assyrian scholars
have shown to be possible, and even likely. Beyond
those limits we cannot go with any clue that has
been furnished to us down to the present time.
And yet through those millenniums of which we
spoke in our last lecture, four thousand, five thou
sand, six thousand before our era, — when men were
building cities and temples, and observing the stars,
and perfecting the system of writing, engaging in
war and conquest as well as cultivating the arts of
peace, — there may have existed these and other
survivals of a primeval history, traditions going
back to Paradise itself, —
" At which high spirits of old would start
E'en from their Pagan sleep,
Just guessing, through their murky blind,
Few, faint, and baffling sight,
Streaks of a brighter heaven behind,
A cloudless depth of light.
Such thoughts, the wreck of Paradise,
Through many a dreary age,
Upbore whate'er of good and wise
Yet lived in bard or sage." x

Keble, ' The Christian Year,' Fourth Sunday after Trinity.

85

LECTUBE III
BABYLONIA TO THE TIME OF ABRAHAM.
It is a prominent feature of the history of Israel,
as reconstructed by the newer criticism, that it
relegates the patriarchs entirely to the region of
myth and legend. Wellhausen, for example, in his
'Encyclopaedia Britannica' article "Israel," ignores
the patriarchs altogether, and represents the history
of the people as commencing when they broke up
their temporary settlements in Goshen and directed
their steps under Moses back to the land they had
left for a while. Elsewhere he says : 1 " We attain
to no historical knowledge of the patriarchs, but
only of the time when the stories about them arose
in the Israelite people ; this later age is here un
consciously projected, in its inner and outward
features, into hoar antiquity, and is reflected there
like a glorified mirage." Abraham, he admits, is
" somewhat difficult to interpret " on this theory :
"he is perhaps the youngest figure in the com
pany" of these patriarchal creations, "and it was
probably at a comparatively late period that he
was put before his son Isaac." Stade tells us, in
1 Prolegomena, pp, 319, 320.

86 BABYLONIA TO THE TIME OF ABRAHAM.
his ' History of the People of Israel,' that no his
torical recollection goes back to the time of the
entrance of the Israelites into Western Canaan;
and Noldeke thinks the name Abraham not his
torical in any sense, but simply symbolical. Others
have even gone the length of resolving the patri
archs into powers of nature and their history into
nature myths. Mr Addis, in ' The Documents of
the Hexateuch,' says : " It is not indeed the history
of Abraham and Jacob, of Moses and Joshua. It
is the history — a history which cannot deceive any
more than the history deciphered by geologists on
the rocks can deceive — of religious ideas." Pro
fessor Meinhold of Bonn, in a recent lecture at the
Summer School of that university, declares that " for
a residence of the Hebrews in Canaan before Moses,
and therefore for the figures of the patriarchs, there
is absolutely no ground. The patriarchs," he says,
" are nothing more than the ideal Israel, their
relation to Jehovah being a reflection of the com
munion subsisting between Jehovah and His people
in the best time of their history, about 800 B.C."1
So long as he deals in subjective and speculative
analysis to build up this conception of the early
history of the people, it is not so easy to meet his
contentions. But when he condescends to particu
lars, and appeals to the facts discovered by recent
archaeology, he exposes himself to easy refutation.
Canaan, the bridge between Egypt and Babylonia,
was, like these two centres of early civilisation in
the times assigned to this mythical Abraham, itself
highly advanced in civilisation and culture, with a
1 Wider den Kleinglauben, pp. 18, 23.

HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF THE PATRIARCHS. 87
crowded population and flourishing cities, and kings
leagued together in offensive and defensive alliance.
Where, asks the critic, was there room for herds
men like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in a land so
highly cultivated ? Must they not have been
obliged to devote themselves to agriculture ? And
yet it was not as agriculturists, but as nomads and
flockmasters, that they went down into the land of
Egypt. But surely in the days of Jeroboam II. ,
Avhen Amos prophesied, when the two kingdoms of
Israel and Judah were at the height of their pro
sperity, the land was as densely peopled, and cities
and towns were flourishing, and agriculture was
diligently pursued. And even then in the wilder
ness of Tekoah, in the Negeb of the south, and
on the hillsides of Bashan, there were herdsmen
and flockmasters of wealth and influence. Earlier
than this we read of Mesha, the king of Moab,
of whom we have a remarkable monument in
the Moabite Stone, who was a flockmaster, and
paid as tribute to the king of Israel a hundred
thousand lambs and a hundred thousand rams,
with the wool. And of Hezekiah we read that
" he provided him cities [or forts], and possessions
of flocks and herds in abundance ; for God had
given him substance very much" (2 Chron. xxxii.
29). It is not surprising that when considerations
of this character were brought forward to meet his
objections, Meinhold should now declare he lays no
particular stress upon the point. But he never
theless persists in regarding Abraham, the father
of the faithful, the obedient, the intercessor for the
sinful, and Israel, the champion of God, as the

88 BABYLONIA TO THE TIME OF ABRAHAM.
creation of the fancy of prophets, as they span their
legends and provided from the depths of their imag
inations an ancient and God -beloved ancestry for
the nation.
It is not too much to say that the representation
of the patriarchs given in the Book of Genesis is of
itself sufficient to shatter those legendary and
mythical theories ; and a criticism whose methods
result in the resolving of individualities so human
and natural, so distinctly marked, and so firmly
planted in the solid ground of reality and common
life, into insubstantial phantoms, may well be re
garded with suspicion. Of the personality of
Abraham this is peculiarly true. " We want to
know more of that man than we do," says Max
Miiller ; " but even with the little we know of him,
he stands before us as a figure second only to One
in the whole history of the world." x But there is
another difficulty besides the powerful and well-
marked personality of the patriarch Abraham, which
stands in the way of all attempts to resolve him
into a myth, or to treat him as a hero of national
legend. That difficulty lies in the fact that the
Bible history of Abraham carries us back to those
times and lands upon which archaeological discovery
has thrown the greatest amount of light. In Baby
lonia the patriarch was born and lived to man's
estate ; in Egypt he took refuge for a time from
famine ; in Canaan, the Land of Promise, he spent
the closing years of his life, as well as many years
of his vigorous manhood. The history of the
patriarch, recorded in Genesis in a transparently
1 Chips from a German Workshop, vol. i. p. 373.

HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF ABRAHAM. 89
natural and circumstantial narrative, no longer
stands as it once did out of all relation to the
domestic life, and stirring activity, and flourishing
civilisation of the valleys of the Euphrates and the
Nile. It is part and parcel of them as they are
now seen portrayed on the gigantic and many-
coloured canvas of oriental antiquity. " The devious
path of his pilgrimage here on earth," says Mr
Tomkins, who has mastered thoroughly the history
of Abraham's times from the original sources, " led
him ' from one kingdom to another people ' : from
his cradle-land in Mesopotamia, the mother country
of all civilisation, to the future home of God's
people, hallowed even then by the presence of a
Melchizedek and his fellow- worshippers, and into the
marvellous land of Egypt, where the light shines on
monuments which were old when Abram came thither.
In truth his tent-pegs were everywhere struck into
ground already rich with the harvest of the
past, and broadcast with the seed of all the world's
future destiny." 1 Place the narrative of the patri
arch's career in Genesis, so detailed and circum
stantial, face to face with the records of ancient
life and civilisation, especially of Babylonian life
and civilisation, so recently recovered, and the hand
of a late romancer, bent only on glorifying a fictitious
national hero — in fact, bent on creating a founder
of the national history — could not fail to manifest
itself in blunders which would be easily detected
and promptly avenged. That the Scripture history
fits so naturally into the framework of that larger
ancient history which the monuments have enabled
1 Abraham and his Age, p. 5.

90 BABYLONIA TO THE TIME OF ABRAHAM.
our generation to reconstruct, goes far to vindicate
it from the condemnation of being legendary or
mythical. It is not in the light of civilisation,
when contemporary events are being recorded on
tablets of clay or engraven on pages of stone,
when great movements of commerce or of war
are in progress, and when the highways connect
ing known lands are traversed by caravans, and
armies, and thousands of busy feet, that we con
ceive myths to grow up and legends to be spun.
With Abraham and his father's house at Ur of
the Chaldees we stand now in the broad light
of day, or at least in light sufficient to enable
us to discern the personalities of those figures,
and to distinguish them clearly from the crowd
around. Our aim will be, then, in the present lecture,
to indicate the character of the times in which
Abraham lived, and for this purpose to give some
idea, as we can now do with considerable certainty,
of the great Babylonian civilisation down to and
during his age. We shall thus be better able to
judge of the value of the Biblical narrative as
veracious history, and of the Father of the Faithful
himself as a real actor in those stirring scenes.
There can be no doubt of our concern with the
patriarch and his fortunes. "We are by faith,"
says the Abbe Vigouroux, " the children of Abra
ham ; we form part of the posterity, more than the
stars of heaven for multitude, which God promised
him in the city of Harran and in the land of Canaan.
His history is for us, therefore, a sort of family
history, and everything that helps to throw light

THE TABLE OF THE NATIONS. 91
upon it and to make it complete aAvakens our proper
curiosity." 1
Following the Biblical record of the Flood is
that remarkable and up to recent years most per
plexing ethnographical table in the tenth chapter
of Genesis. It brings before us, though by no
means in an exhaustive or inclusive manner, the
races and nationalities settled in those regions
Avhich we associate with the very beginnings of
human history — regions which heard the first
promises of human redemption, which saw the
earliest civilisation, and which still contain, or are
slowly yielding up from the sites of buried cities,
the oldest records and memorials of the human
family. Upon this chapter archaeological research
has shed a flood of light, and the cuneiform in
scriptions have enabled us at last to set most of
the races and nationalities and families named in
their proper place.2 We can only take notice
here of such identifications as lie in the course
which we have marked out in this lecture.
As the family of Japheth occupy the northern
zone into which the world after the Flood is rep
resented as being divided, so the family of Ham
occupy the southern. And the first of the sons
of Ham that meets us is Cush. We have long
been accustomed in a vague sort of way to speak
of the people of Africa as the children of Ham,
without necessarily connecting the descendants of
that shameless son of Noah with the regions of
1 La Bible et les decouvertes modernes, vol. i. p. 111.
2 For a collection of learned opinions on the value of " The Table of
the Nations," see Bartlett's 'The Veracity of the Hexateuch,' pp.
137-150.

92 BABYLONIA TO THE TIME OF ABRAHAM.
the Tigris and Euphrates, whence Noah's family
went forth to repeople the devastated earth.
Upon this connection recent discovery has thrown
a welcome light. Cush, or Kash, as the Egyptians
called it, represented to them the region south
of the first cataract, and was the Ethiopia of the
classical geographers. Ethiopia was, however, a
somewhat comprehensive expression, and embraced
in antiquity both the African and the Arabian
shores of the Bed Sea. Dr Edward Glaser, a
traveller and scholar to whom the recent history
of these regions is immensely indebted, in his book
on the 'Abyssinians in Arabia and Africa,' shows
that the original home of the Ethiopians, Hab-
ashat, was not Africa but the part of Arabia now
called Mahra, which extends eastward from Hadhra-
maut along the coast in the direction of Oman.1
This helps to explain how it comes that a race
belonging to the Dark Continent should be sprung
from Noah, who took possession of the earth from
the regions of the Tigris and Euphrates. The
explanation is complete if we adopt the view, which
is gaining ground with every new discovery, that
Egypt received the beginnings of its civilisation,
like the rest of the world, from the A^alley of the
Euphrates — that the race who at a very early
period took possession of the Nile valley found
their way thither from the south and east.2
Dr Glaser calls attention to the fact that what
is called Elam in Scripture bears in the Babylonian
1 See Recent Research in Bible Lands, p. 131 ff. ; Hommel, The
Ancient Hebrew Tradition, p. 314 ff.
2 See Appendix, Note I., p. 318.

BABYLONIAN ORIGIN OF DYNASTIC EGYPTIANS. 93
the name of Kashu ; and Friedrich Delitzsch shoAvs
that it is this region, and not Ethiopia (as it is wrong
ly interpreted in the Authorised Version), that was
compassed by the second river of Paradise, Gihon.1
Both Glaser and Delitzsch have demonstrated the
identity of the two — at least the original relation
ship of the Egyptian Kash and the Babylonian
Kashu. The north-east corner of Africa must have
been colonised in very early times by Elamites,
who had to cross Arabia on their way thither.
This view, which is adopted by Hommel, is sup
ported by linguistic considerations as well, so that
the much-discussed Kashites, of whom there was
a dynasty of Babylonian kings, the Ethiopians of
Homer and Herodotus, must originally have been
Elamite Kashites who, under what pressure we
know not, found their way to Africa. "It is in
teresting to note," says Hommel, " that the Bible
calls Nimrod the son of Cush, and that the cunei
form alternative for Nimrod (Gilgames of the Flood
legend) has an Elamite termination. What the
Nimrod epic tells us of Nimrod's wanderings across
Arabia must therefore be regarded as a legendary
version of the historical migration of the Kassites
from Elam into East Africa: Nimrod is merely a
personification of that Elamite race - element of
which traces are still to be found in Arabia and
in Nubia." 2 Without committing ourselves to all
this, it is clear that we have in these identifica
tions a strong confirmation of the truth of the
Biblical record, and a very interesting elucidation
1 Wo lag das Paradies ? p. 51 ff. ; Recent Research, p. 153 ff.
2 Hommel, ut supra, p. 39 ff.

94 BABYLONIA TO THE TIME OF ABRAHAM.
of a point Avhich has been up till now obscure.
Next to Cush in this list of the children of Ham
is Mizraim, Egypt, a dual form of expression, em
bracing Upper and Lower Egypt, called in the
cuneiform inscriptions Musur, Musuru, and Musri,
and appearing in them for the first time about
1100 B.C. under this last form.
The central zone into which the civilised world
of early days is here divided is occupied by the
descendants of Shem ; and now we are brought
into the mid -stream of the Biblical history with
the ancestors of Abraham, the Father of the Faith
ful. It was from the wilderness-land of Northern
Arabia that the different families of the Semitic
race, according to the most recent indications, pro
ceeded to the scenes in which they enacted their
various histories. The river land between the
Tigris and the Euphrates was the home of the
great Semitic communities during by far the great
est part of the history of the ciAulised world. The
Babylonians and Assyrians divide the history be
tween them.
The Babylonians [says Professor M'Curdy], occupying
the region which the Bible makes known to us as the
scene of man's creation, and which historical research in
dicates to have been the seat of the earliest civilisation,
made their home on the lands of the Lower Euphrates
and Tigris, converting them through canalisation and irri
gation into rich and powerful kingdoms, finally united under
the rule of Babylon. Before the union was effected, emi
grants from among those Babylonians settled along the
Middle Tigris, founded the city of Asshur, and later still
the group of cities known to history as Nineveh. The
Assyrians, then, after long struggles, rose to pre-eminence

ORIGIN OF BABYLONIAN CIVILISATION. 95
in Western Asia, till after centuries of stern dominion they
yielded to the new Babylonian rdgime founded by the
Chaldasans from the Persian Gulf.1
Before the Father of the Faithful left his home
in Ur of the Chaldees and went forth not know
ing whither he went, civilisation, as Ave have already
indicated, had flourished nearly as long in Babylonia
as from Abraham's time to our own. As factors in
that ancient civilisation the two great rivers of
Mesopotamia occupy a A*ery important place. The
Tigris, though the shorter of the two, and possessing
a smaller volume of water, was the better adapted
to navigation ; and the Euphrates, with inundations
not unlike those of the Nile, contributed more to
the fertility of the great Mesopotamian plain.
Indeed, in fruitfulness the region watered by the
Euphrates, and by the gigantic system of canals
intersecting the country between it and the Tigris,
rivalled the valley of the Nile, and was reckoned
by Herodotus to equal in productiveness half the
rest of Asia. As Egypt was called " the gift of
the Nile," so the Tigris and the Euphrates were
designated " the life of the land " and " the bringer
of plenty."
Now the Scripture account of the origin of the
Babylonian civilisation is none the less interesting
that it is for most people hidden away in a chapter
full of hard and unpronounceable names. In the
tenth chapter of Genesis we read : " Cush begat
Nimrod. . . . And the beginning of his kingdom
was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in
1 M'Curdy, History, Prophecy, and the Monuments, vol. i. p. 23.

96 BABYLONIA TO THE TIME OF ABRAHAM.
the land of Shinar. Out of that land he went
forth," as the Bevised Version reads, " into Assyria
and builded Nineveh, and Behoboth-Ir, and Calah,
and Besen between Nineveh and Calah (the same is
the great city)" (Gen. x. 8-12).
This statement, thanks to recent discovery, is no
longer the puzzle that it was to the reader. We
have long been accustomed to look upon Assyria
as older than Babylonia, — the Assyrian period
which coincides with the period of the kings of
Israel and Judah being earlier than the Chaldean
period, or period of the New Babylonian empire
under Nebuchadnezzar, which succeeds. And so
long as this false perspective prevailed, the state
ment that Asshur and Nineveh were colonised
from Babylonia was puzzling in the extreme.
Now it is made plain beyond the possibility of
misconception by the cuneiform inscriptions that
Assyria, which in the zenith of its poAver and
glory included Babylonia, was originally colonised
from it. Assyria Avas an offshoot of the southern
community. Its language, writing, and religion
all go to confirm the statement of the Biblical
writer that it derived its existence from Baby
lonia. " Its history, viewed as a part of the
great drama enacted in the cradle-land of humanity,
must be looked upon as an episode in a much larger
and more e\Tentful story, which began at least two
thousand years before the founding of Nineveh, and
reached its catastrophe after Assyria was blotted
out from among the nations." x Assyria, as we
would reckon, looking only to classical antiquity,
1 M'Curdy, vol. i. p. 85.

CITIES OF SHINAR. 97
Avas modern compared Avith Babylonia. The history
of the Semitic regime in Babylonia lasted at least
four thousand years, from the earliest beginnings
Avhich we can distinctly trace to the time when
Cyrus captured the city of Babylon and set up
the empire of the Medes and Persians : the history
of Assyria from the founding of Nineveh to its
final overthrow in 606 B.C. extends only over fifteen
hundred years.
But what now of those cities in the land of
Shinar — Babel, Erech, Accad, and Calneh ? Babel
we know, because the Tower of Babel and the con
fusion of tongues have a prominent place in the
early Scripture history, and it is immortalised in
the Babylon which has perpetuated its renown.
Accad is known to the few, who have heard of it
as the seat of the empire of Sargon, who ruled
about 3800 B.C. from the Persian Gulf to the
Mediterranean, and to the still more select number
who are interested in the old Accadian civilisation,
or it may be only in that fiercely debated question,
whether there eATer was an Accadian civilisation,
or an Accadian language, or an Accadian people
at all. But who would have believed that Erech,
in the fifth millennium before Christ, was the capital
city of monarchs who boasted an empire from the
rising of the sun to the setting of the same, and
one of the most sacred spots of the ancient world,
the very necropolis of ancient Chaldea, whose
ruins, six and a half miles in extent,1 are full of the
bones and the sepulchres of the dead ? And who
would have believed that Calneh, which, following
1 Loftus, Chaldsea and Susiana, p. 199.
G

98 BABYLONIA TO THE TIME OF ABRAHAM.
the Talmud, the best authorities x now identify
with ancient Nippur, was the site of the most
renowned sanctuary of the ancient world, " the
oldest temple in the world, the religious centre of
the dominant people of the world as much prior
to the time of Abraham as the time of Abraham
is prior to our day " ? 2 Not only upon these
cities, but upon Ur of the Chaldees, where dwelt
Terah, Abram, and Lot, and Harran, to which
they migrated on the way to the land of Canaan,
and other mighty centres of commercial, political,
literary, and religious life in the ancient world,
there has been shed from recent discoveries most
helpful light.
The land of Shinar itself first claims attention.
We read that " as men journeyed eastwards they
found a plain in the land of Shinar ; and they dwelt
there " (Gen. xi. 2). Shinar is now identified with
Sumer, the land of the Sumerians or Accadians,
the founders of Babylonian civilisation. They are
called " blackheads," or it may be " blackfaces,"
again and again in the Creation Epos, and their
language with its cuneiform characters is believed
to be related to that of the Turks and Mongols.
From the earliest times of which we have any
record, down to the latest, Babylonia appears in
the inscriptions under the twofold description of
1 Sir Henry Rawlinson regarded the site of Nippur, or Nippar as
he called it, as the primitive Calneh — the capital of the whole region.
It was dedicated to Bel, and was called the city of Bel. Hence Sir
Henry concluded that here was the site of the Tower of Babel ; and
that from it originated the Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar, on the banks
of the Euphrates at Hillah. Loftus, Chaldoea and Susiana, p. 100.
Cf. Professor Peters, Nippur, vol. ii. p. 104 ff.
2 Peters, Nippur, vol. i. p. vi.

THE KINGS OF ACCAD. 99
Sumer and Accad. As for Accad, which is asso
ciated with Sumer in the inscriptions, and which
in Genesis is classed with the cities of Erech, Cal
neh, and Babel, it is believed by George Smith,
Friedrich Delitzsch, Hommel, Hilprecht, and others
to be the Semi tic- Assyrian form of the city Agade,
or Agane, mentioned in the earliest times, and
to be looked for in close proximity to Sippara, its
twin city, of which we have a reminiscence later in
the double city of Sepharvaim.1
Accad or Agade is specially interesting as the
capital of Sargon, who flourished 3800 B.C., and
of Naram-Sin, his son, a great conqueror, a kind
of Babylonian Alexander, who styled himself " king
of the four quarters of the world." The question
naturally arises, What authority have we for as
signing to these monarchs such a high antiquity ?
Besides the indications afforded by the style of
the writing and the character of the art exhibited
on Sargon's monuments, not to speak of the long
succession of dynasties of kings, there is an in
scription of Nabonidus, the famous antiquarian
king of Babylon, who made careful investigations
into antiquity, and was the pious restorer of many
dilapidated temples, which fixes a definite date.
On a well-known inscription he states that 3200
years before his time Naram-Sin founded the temple
of the Sun at Sippar, the twin city of Accad, which
gives the date of 3750 B.C., and, as his father Sargon
had a reign of forty-five years, fixes him about
3800 B.C. These are huge distances into the past
1 George Smith, Assyrian Discoveries, p. 225 ; Delitzsch, Paradies,
p. 198 ; Hilprecht, The Babylonian Expedition, vol. i. part ii. p. 58 n.

100 BABYLONIA TO THE TIME OF ABRAHAM.
that we are asked to travel ; but every discovery
of late years, and the recent discoveries at Nippur
in particular, go to confirm the accuracy of that
far - back date. Sargon, from being a nebulous
figure on the misty horizon of time, now stands
out with marvellous distinctness among the relics
of that distant past. A fragment of his personal
history which was long held to be legendary is
now generally adopted as substantially veracious,
and it may be quoted because of the similarity
between it and the story of Moses. It is a frag
ment of autobiography : —
I am Sargon the mighty king, the king of Accad. My
mother was of noble birth ; my father I knew not of, but
my father's brother used to dwell in the highlands, and my
native city was Azupiranu, which lies on the bank of the
Euphrates. My mother of noble race conceived me and bore
me in secret. She put me in a basket of Sur, and closed up
the opening with bitumen. She cast me into the river,
which did not flow over me. The river carried me along to
Akki, the irrigator. Akki, the irrigator, took me up. Akki,
the irrigator, reared me up to boyhood. Akki, the irrigator,
made me a gardener. While I acted as gardener Ishtar
showed me favour. Forty-five years I ruled over the dark-
haired race [the Sumerians or Accadians].1
Professor Hilprecht has now discovered a door-
socket of Sargon with an inscription containing
his father's name, in a form that indicates his
inferior birth, and so goes to confirm the legend.2
Of the early kingdoms in the land of Shinar that
1 Delitzsch, Wo lag das Paradies 1 p. 208 ff. ; Maspero, The Dawn of
Civilisation, p. 597 ff. ; M'Curdy, History, Prophecy, and the Monu
ments, vol. i. p. 99.
2 Hilprecht, The Babylonian Expedition, vol. i. part i. p. 15.

KISH AND LA GASH. 101
have been revealed to us by the explorations at
Telloh and Nippur, one of the earliest and most
powerful was Kish. Whether this name is related
to Cush and Kash, of which we have already spoken,
we are not yet in a position to speak with cer
tainty. Of its king, Alusharshid, we have im
portant inscriptions, and Professor Hilprecht1 has
ascertained that Kish along with Babylon was
subdued by Sargon, and the dynasty brought to
an end. That the kings of Kish were real person
alities is clear from the offerings they made to the
temple of Ningirsu at Lagash, of which a number
have been recovered at Telloh. One of these
offerings is a sceptre knob in stone, the side of
which is adorned with six lions. The lions are
so connected that each one with his fore - paws
clutches the hind-paws of the lion ahead of him,
at the same time burying his teeth in his shoulder.
The top of the knob contains the well-known lion-
headed eagle, the coat of arms of the god Ningirsu
and his city of Lagash.2
Another of those ancient principalities was this
Lagash, or Girsu, or Shirpurla, — Hommel calls it
Sirgulla,3- — now represented by the ruins of Telloh.
The earliest rulers of Shirpurla belong to a period
before Sargon of Accad ; its first known king, Uru-
Kagina, dating as far back as 4000 B.C. That he is
not the shadowy creation of romance will be under
stood when we mention that Professor Hilprecht has
been able out of eighty-seven fragments, belonging
1 The Babylonian Expedition, vol. i. part i. p. 26.
2 Recent Research, p. 77.
3 Dictionary of the Bible, art. " Babylonia," p. 224.

102 BABYLONIA TO THE TIME OF ABRAHAM.
to about sixty different vases, to restore a large royal
inscription of one hundred and thirty -two lines,
and out of thirty-four other fragments, belonging
to twenty odd vases, an inscription of twenty -eight
lines of his successor Edingirinagin. We have not
only copious inscriptions, purely Sumerian, but one
of the most interesting monuments of antiquity,
the so-called Vulture Stele, to witness both by
word and picture to the warlike prowess of this
mighty Babylonian ruler. The stele, which is now
in the Louvre in Paris, receives its name from the
vultures figured on the close-grained white lime
stone, which are represented as carrying off the
arms, legs, and decapitated heads of enemies van
quished by Edingirinagin ; while the redoubtable
warrior himself is pictured in four principal scenes,
now with his infantry in the fight, now mounted in
his chariot in hot pursuit of the flying foe, again
celebrating his victory by a sacrifice, and lastly
superintending the execution of his captives, and
killing with his own hand one of the conquered
chiefs. The powerful political influence achieved
by Shirpurla under Edingirinagin cannot have been
long maintained. Semitic peoples were already
pushing southwards, and Kish was a growing
seat of Semitic power. A still greater Semitic
power had established itself at Harran before the
beginning of the fourth millennium, and Shirpurla
seems to have fallen before these united enemies.
Edingirinagin was the last of its rulers to bear the
title of king, and henceforward its princes bear
the title of patesi or priest-king.
Of the priest-kings of Shirpurla the best known

EARLY PRIEST-KINGS. 103
is Gudea, of whom a decapitated statue in diorite
has been preserved, bearing an inscription dating
from 2900 B.C., and numerous and long inscriptions
besides, all in Sumerian.1 To show the constant
communication with the countries of the West
even in those remote times, it may be noted that
Gudea boasts of having brought the stones and
the timber for his palaces and temples from the
mountains of Martu and Arabia, obtaining cedar-
wood from the forests of Mount Amanus, cedar,
plane-trees, and other precious woods from Ursu,
a mountain of Ibla, which may be Lebanon, iron
from Melukha, and diorite from Magan in Arabia.
But what interests us most in Gudea and the other
rulers of Shirpurla is this title of patesi which they
bore, and which really makes them prototypes of
Melchizedek, the priest - king of Jerusalem in
Abraham's day. The title designated the highest
official of the god of the State, in the care of his
temple, and in the administration of the territory
over which he ruled. From an inscription found
at Telloh we learn that a foreign conqueror, who is
already a king, in addition styles himself patesi of
Shirpurla, expressly declaring that Ningirsu him
self, the highest god of the city, called him to fill
this office. We cannot help putting alongside of
this what we read of Melchizedek, who was king of
Salem and priest of the Most High God ; " king
of Salem, which is king of peace, without father,
without mother, without descent, having neither
1 There are several statues of Gudea among the treasures of the
Louvre brought from Telloh by De Sarzec, all of them decapitated.
See Recent Researches, p. 66 ; Masp6ro, The Dawn of Civilisation,
p. 610 ff.

104 BABYLONIA TO THE TIME OF ABRAHAM.
beginning of days nor end of life, but made like
unto the Son of God, abideth a priest continually "
(Heb. vii. 23). Melchizedek, of whom we read
that to him Abraham gave the tenth of the spoils
of successful war, strange figure as he appears and
strange double office as he fills, occupies no new
and unheard-of position as priest-king or king-priest
of Jerusalem, but a position occupied by dynasties
of rulers in succession in Babylonia, the native land
of Abraham, nearly two thousand years before his
day. Assuming Calneh to represent Nippur, we are
there carried further into antiquity than on any
other ancient site. In the Sumerian legend of
Creation, Nippur is spoken of in terms which
imply that it was regarded as the oldest city of
the earth : —
" Nippur had not been built, Ekurra was not constructed.
Erech had not been built, Eanna was not constructed.
The Absu was not made, Eridu was not built," —
where it is manifestly associated with the very
beginning of the created universe. About 4000
B.C. it seems to have been under the suzerainty
of Shirpurla, although some centuries later we find
it in the hands of Semitic kings. Tbe city was
divided in two by the Shatt-en-Nil, an old and
famous canalised river - channel which still exists,
and which leaves the Euphrates close to the
ruins of Babylon, and, running eastward, rejoins
it a considerable distance doAvn. Because of
the antiquity which the erection of Nippur and
Erech and Larsa upon its banks implies, Fr.

NIPPUR. 105
Delitzsch counts the Shatt-en-Nil one of the four
rivers of Paradise.1 The temple of Bel, or Inlil,
which is the Sumerian designation of the god, in
Nippur, was the largest and most renoAvned in that
remote antiquity. The sanctuary and its precincts
Avere called Ekur, or mountain-house, the ziggurat,
or great tower, of Avhich, reminding us of " the
Tower of Babel," AATas made to reach unto heaven.
Unlike the temples of Egypt and elsewhere, its
angles and not its sides were set to the cardinal
points. An ancient Babylonian hymn once chanted
under the shadow of its walls proclaims its glory : —
" Oh great mountain of Bel, Inikharsag,
Whose summit rivals the heaven,
Whose foundations are laid in the bright abysmal sea,
Resting in the lands as a mighty steer
Whose horns are gleaming like the radiant sun,
As the stars of heaven are filled with lustre." 2
A number of Babylonian kings applied them
selves to the care of this ancient sanctuary, building
new shrines and restoring old walls ; but the three
monarchs whose handiwork in this direction is
best remembered are Asshurbanipal (668-626 B.C.),
Kadashman-Turgu (1250 B.C.), and Ur-Gur (2800
B.C.) Beneath the platforms built by the last-
named king the excavators dug, bringing to the
light of day treasure of inestimable value. From
the rubbish-mounds of ancient Nippur over thirty-
two thousand cuneiform tablets have been re
covered, some of them, as we have seen, of
great antiquity, and others of the period of the

1 Wo lag das Paradies, p. 70.
2 Hilprecht, The Babylonian Expedition, vol. i. part ii. p.

14.

106 BABYLONIA TO THE TIME OF ABRAHAM.
kings of the Kashite dynasty, from 1745-1140
B.C., casting welcome light upon an obscure
stretch of the later history. Most of the early
rulers of Babylonia already known by name are
mentioned in these inscriptions, and fourteen
kings whose very names have been lost for thou
sands of years have been restored to history from
the ruins of Nippur. Scarcely a feature of an
advanced civilisation is wanting in the relics thus
discovered. It is true they were without the
electric-light, and the telegraph, and the locomo
tive, without gunpowder and the art of printing,
although they came very near to the invention of
this last with their engraved cylinders, which they
rolled across the soft clay of the tablets. But so
were Athens in the days of Pericles and Borne
under the rule of Augustus Caesar without these ;
and after all, these things are but the refinements
and the luxuries, not the essentials, of advanced
civilisation. They had domestic comfort highly
developed, — the cabinetmakers of Babylonia used
costly woods from Lebanon for the furnishings of
houses. Babylonian tradesmen knew how to work
in metals, gold being used for ornaments, and silver
as current money with the merchant, and iron
being so rare as to be really a precious metal.
They had a scientific drainage system and sanitary
appliances ; and they carried out great architectural
and engineering Avorks. They had law courts and
processes by which justice was administered with
wonderful fairness. In art they became actually
the teachers of the Greeks, Avho have touched,
apparently for all time, in some departments at

NIPPUR. 107
least, the summit of artistic excellence ; in writine
they had already in Sargon's time perfected the
cuneiform system ; and in astronomy they were
pioneers who had discovered the signs of the
zodiac, and, with a sky in which the stars shine
like lamps hung down from the azure, they had
made observations of high scientific value. In
political life there was much to commend among
them. Their rulers were despots, no doubt, but
limited in many directions by established custom,
and they often manifested sincere zeal for the
public good ; even the slave, though the property of
his owner, was under the protection of the State.
In religion the}'' had built numerous and magnificent
temples, had produced a large devotional literature
of prayers and hymns, and had organised a system
of ritual and worship quite remarkable. "The
great Babylonian temples," Professor Peters tells
us,1 "were often enormously wealthy. They owned
and cultivated great tracts of land ; they possessed
legions of slaves, and hosts of sheep and cattle ;
and were engaged in industries and commerce.
From the position," he adds, " in which we found
documents concerning the temple income in Nippur,
I am inclined to think that a very considerable
portion of the city was the property of the
temple."2 As Nippur was the religious metropolis of the
land of Shinar about 4000 B.C., Erech seems to
have been its secular capital. It was discovered by
Layard and Loftus in the ruins of Warka, which
1 Nippur, vol. ii. p. 115.
2 See Appendix, Note IV., p. 322.

108 BABYLONIA TO THE TIME OF ABRAHAM.
also lie along the dry bed of the Shatt-en-Nil canal.
In the Sumerian Creation legend it is associated
with Nippur in antiquity. It was in Erech that
the scene of the Nimrod Epos was laid ; in Erech
Gilgames reigned and saved it from its Elamite op
pressor. And now from the tablets of Nippur : we
learn of a king of Erech, Lugal-zaggisi, calling him
self by many titles — " king of Erech, king of the
world, . . . patesi of Gish Ban" — who was one of
the greatest monarchs of the ancient East, and who
is of so remote an antiquity that his very name has
not been able to carry to the times of which history
has preserved to us the record. He declares himself
to have been invested with the kingdom of the
world by Inlil of Nippur, lord of the lands, and
he retained Erech as the capital of this first great
oriental State, showing that it was the kings of
Erech who in the most ancient times had possession
of the temple of Bel at Nippur. His dominion, as
he tells us, in inscriptions numerous and long dating
from 4500 B.C., was from sea to sea, from the
Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean, and from the
river to the ends of the earth. It is of course
possible to see those figures looming through the
haze of such an incalculable antiquity bigger than
they really were, and if it were tradition only that
had preserved their memory and handed down their
names we might Avell suspect our poAvers of vision.
But when it is from inscriptions vouched for by
scientific inquirers as bearing the marks of con
temporary origin, and from monuments whose style
and finish and general characteristics proclaim their
1 The Babylonian Expedition, vol. i. part ii. p. 52 ff.

ERECH AND LARSA. 109
high antiquity, that we learn of those kings and
warriors of the early Babylonian world, Ave need
have no such suspicion. When Ave actually handle
the fragments of vases deposited by them as offer
ings in the temples of the gods, and look upon their
faces as they stand out from ancient statue or
battle-scene, Lugal-zaggisi and Sargon of Accad
cease to be mythical and become very real person
ages. Of the absolute chronology we may have
doubts, and there must be uncertainties, when we
are dealing not in centuries but millenniums ; but of
the relative positions of those dynasties and rulers on
the chart of history and of their immense antiquity
there can be no doubt Avhatever.
Not more than fifteen miles south-east of Erech,
and also on the Shatt-en-Nil, lay the Babylonian
city of Larsa, represented by the modern Senkereh,
also explored by Loftus.1 Its temple to the Sun
was built by Ur-Gur (2800 B.C.), who built temples
at Ur, Erech, and Nippur as well. It was re
newed by Khammurabi and others, and restored in
later times by Nebuchadnezzar and Nabonidus, of
whom numerous bricks were found by Loftus. It
was Dungi, the son of this Ur-Gur, who dethroned
the last patesi of Shirpurla and called himself the
king of the four quarters of the world — a circum
stance which Hommel2 thinks points to the pos
session of Syria and Elam, and thus, as a matter
of course, of Mesopotamia. Larsa, as we shall see
later, is not unknown to Scripture, for it has now
been identified with the Ellasar of Chedorlaomer's
1 Chaldaea and Susiana, p. 244 ff.
2 Dictionary of the Bible, art. " Babylonia,'' p. 225.

110 BABYLONIA TO THE TIME OF ABRAHAM.
western campaign, of which Arioch, known in the
cuneiform inscriptions as Eriaku, was the king.
We have left till now Babel, the first -named
of the four Biblical cities in the land of Shinar.
It has in the cuneiform literature a double name
— " Grove of Life," which is the oldest of all, and
appears in Accadian and Sumerian texts as the
name in common use ; and " Gate of God," which
represents the Semitic designation of the city as
Babilu. The great deity of Babylon was Mero
dach, called also by pre-eminence Bel, the Lord.
Merodach's chief temple was called Esagila — " high-
towering house " — and was of great antiquity. The
Sumerian version of the Creation story, which
we have quoted for Nippur and Erech, speaks of
Babylon also : —
" As for the glorious house, the house of the gods, its seat had
not been made,
The whole of the lands, the sea also.
In that day Eridu was made, Esagila was constructed —
Esagila which the god Lugal-du-azaga had founded -within the
abyss.
Babylon was built, Esagila was completed.
He made the gods and the Anunakhi together.
The glorious city, the seat of the joy of their hearts he had pro
claimed." *
Babylon, as it is more frequently called, is be
lieved to have been in existence in the days of
Sargon of Accad, and with Kish to have been
destroyed by him for the safety of his kingdom.
With Babylon was associated, almost as a twin
city, Borsippa, famous for its magnificent temples
and the special seat ofthe Avorship of Nebo. Among
1 See Boscawen, The Bible and the Monuments, p. 77 ff.

THE TOWER OF BABEL. Ill
the celebrated temples of Borsippa was one desig
nated "House of the Seven Spheres of Heaven
and Earth," a structure often rebuilt but never
completed, whose vast ruins are held by most
authorities to represent the tower of Babel. What
ever the historical facts associating Babel with the
confusion of tongues, it is certain from the inscrip
tions that the land of Shinar even in primitive times
was a country with a great intermixture of peoples
and a decided diversity of language. "Its earlier
history thus resembled its later, for it was always
a gathering-place of the nations. It was thus quite
natural that it should be fixed upon as the point
from which post-diluvian mankind spread." x Thus
far, however, no tradition of the confusion of
tongues has been found among the Assyrians and
Babylonians. In default of this we have a perfect
illustration of the tower of Babel in the ziggurats,
or terraced towers, which were such a feature of
Babylonian temples. They remind us by their
materials and their configuration of the scene
described in the eleventh chapter of Genesis,
when the survivors of the Flood " said one to
another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn
them throughly. And they had brick for stone,
and slime [or pitch] had they for mortar. And
they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower,
whose top may reach unto heaven " (Gen. xi. 3, 4).
The upper storey of these seven-terraced towers —
Herodotus tells us the temple of Babylon, destroyed
only a little before his day, had eight terraces —
was specially set apart as the dwelling-place of the
1 Dillmann, Genesis, vol. i. p. 387.

112 BABYLONIA TO THE TIME OF ABRAHAM.
god, and we wonder whether it can be any remin
iscence of " the mountain-house," as it was called,
of Bel in Babylon when we read in the Book of
Ezekiel (xliii. 12) : " This is the law of the house :
Upon the top of the mountain the whole limit there
of round about shall be most holy." The vicissi
tudes of Babylon from that first destruction in the
grey dawn of history by Sargon of Accad to. the
days of its splendour as the residence of Kham
murabi and the capital of Babylonia, and thence
through dynasties of Kashite, Pashite, and Elamite
kings to its cruel overthrow by Sennacherib three
thousand years and more from Sargon's day — and
again from its restoration to more than its former
splendour under Nebuchadnezzar to the time when
Cyrus got possession of it without drawing the
sword, and thence to what we call modern times,
when all that remains of it are those ruins which
lie in such profusion around the modern Hillah on
the Euphrates, — form one of the most crowded and
wonderful chapters in the annals of the world, and
can now be traced with a clearness and to an
antiquity undreamt of before.
Great as is the place which Babylon has occupied
in the world's history beyond all the cities in the
land of Shinar, its glory in those far -back times
Avas eclipsed by the famous city of Ur. Its very
name, signifying city, marks its pre-eminence. It
was a great emporium of trade : the ships of Ur
brought the products of southern Arabia to Baby
lonia, and, it may be, even traded Avith the land
of Egypt. Long before it could be called Ur of
the Chaldees, tAvo thousand years at least before

UR OF THE CHALDEES. 113
Abraham heard the call of God to go forth from
home and kindred there, the city of Ur was the
most important commercial city of Lower Babylonia,
the chief seat of the worship of the Moon-god, Sin,
and the capital of a dynasty Avhich ruled with un
disputed sway over the whole of Babylonia, and to
regions far beyond. It was, like Erech, a great
burial-city — a sacred resting-place — where the dead
were gathered in multitudes, and interred with great
care and devotion. As a centre of commerce, of
political power, of advanced art and culture, and of
ancient religion, Ur Avas early distinguished. It is
now represented by the ruins of Mugheir — having
been identified by Sir Henry Bawlinson and Mr
W. K. Loftus by means of bricks and clay cylinders
bearing the name of Uru, and the legend, " To Sin,
his king Urbau, king of Ur, his house built and the
wall of Ur built." It lay on the south side of the
Euphrates, near the junction of the Shaft- el -Hai
canal Avith the main stream, and had the famous
canal PaHakopas flowing past it, and connecting it
directly both with Babylon and the Persian Gulf.
The principal ruin, a terraced conical hill, covers
the temple of the Moon-god built by Ur-Gur, for
long the earliest known of its kings, and restored
two thousand years later by Nabonidus, whose
famous cylinders, conveying such a wealth of in
formation regarding that far-back antiquity, were
found in its four corners.
But we must now carry the ascertained antiquity
of Ur backwards a thousand years. From Nippur
there has come a fragment of a large vase of
serpentine bearing the inscription of a king believed
H

114 BABYLONIA TO THE TIME OF ABRAHAM.
to belong to that still earlier time. The inscription
runs as follows : " When Inlil, the lord of the lands,
announced life unto Lugal-kigub-nidudu, when he
added lordship to kingdom, establishing Erech as
[the seat of] the lordship [the empire] and Ur as
[the seat of] the kingdom, Lugal-kigub-nidudu pre
sented this for the great and joyful lot [which he
received] unto Inlil, his beloved lord, for his life."
In this king and his son, Lugal-kisil-si, Hilprecht1
sees the representatives of the first dynasty of Ur
reaching back to an early period of the fourth
millennium before Christ. Ur had thus a history
behind it that we know of longer than the Christian
era when Abraham was born in it, somewhere about
two thousand years before the birth of Christ. It
was, like most of those early Babylonian cities, a
great centre of religious worship. In Ur itself at
least three great sacred buildings were the work of
the great and renowned Ur-bau, hundreds of years
before Abraham's birth — the temple of Sin, the
Moon-god, another called Bit-timgal, and another
called Bit - Sareser. Polytheism was everywhere
rampant. " Polytheism," says Mr Tomkins,2 " was
stamped on the earth in temples and towers, and
the warlike or beneficent works of kings. Bimmon
was the patron of the all-important irrigation ; Sin
of brickmaking and building ; Nergal of war. Poly
theism glittered in scrolls of light in the constel
lations of the firmament ; it measured days and
months and years and cycles, and by its auguries
of good or ill decided the least ways of human life
1 The Babylonian Expedition, p. 57 ff.
2 Abraham and his Age, p. 25.

UR AND HARRAN. 115
and the greatest collisions of the nations." Two
thousand years before the Christian era, we are
told, the deities of Babylonia were definitely con
nected into a system which continued with little
change down to the close of the kingdom. This
was the system of which Abraham's immediate
ancestors were adherents, as Joshua declared to
the Israelites after the conquest of the land : " Thus
saith the Lord God of Israel, Your fathers dwelt on
the other side of the flood [Euphrates] in old time,
even Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father
of Nahor, and they served other gods " (Josh. xxiv.
2). It was the worship of the Moon, as we have
seen, to which Ur of the Chaldees was devoted ;
and it is a singular coincidence that Harran, where
Terah, and Abram, and Lot, and Sarai, Abram's
wife, halted for a time on the way to Canaan, was
the other great centre in early Babylonia of the
worship of the Moon.1 There were six hundred
miles to be traversed between Ur and Harran ;
but "the common worship of the Moon- god," as
Professor Sayce remarks,2 " must have formed a
special bond of union, and the citizen of Ur would
have found in Harran a welcome and all that he
was accustomed to at home. That Terah should
have settled in Harran, therefore, was very natural."
The welcome to Harran and the detention there
may mean that Terah continued a worshipper of
the Moon-god, in whose city he died, and under the
shadow of whose temple he was likely buried, al-
1 Compare Rev. G. Margoliouth in ' Contemporary Review,' October
1898. 2 Expository Times, May 1897, p. 357.

116 BABYLONIA TO THE TIME OF ABRAHAM.
though we hear Laban in a later generation appeal
ing to the God of Abraham, and the God of Nahor,
the God of their father, to judge between himself
and Jacob. That Abram's brother, Nahor, and his
family followed him to Harran we know, because
Harran is called the city of Nahor ; and that Nahor
became a worshipper of Jehovah is clear from the
later history.
And now, as God had called Abraham from Ur
of the Chaldees at the first, He called him again
when that strong earthly tie was severed, and
sent him forth " into the land of the stranger and
the unknown regions of Martu, toward the sea
of the setting sun." Not that those western lands
were by any means to the Babylonians of Abraham's
days the terra incognita we often imagine, or that
Abraham was a Columbus called forth to discover
a neAV world. There appear to have been Amorite
or Canaanite settlements in Babylonia, where for
eigners were under the protection of the State, and
allowed to acquire land and carry on trade. Names
like Ishmael and Abdiel, even Jacob-el and Joseph-el,
are found on contract tablets of that age.1 There
were great highways of international communication
which stood open between east and west, between
the valley of the Euphrates and the valley of the
Nile, from the first dawn of history — highways now,
we may say, deserted, but in that age traversed by
caravans and by armies, by ambassadors and mer
chants and herdsmen. The traffic along them must
have been considerable. A goodly Babylonish gar
ment among the spoils of Jericho is now seen to
1 Hommel, Ancient Hebrew Tradition, p. 96.

THE HOME OF ABRAHAM. 117
be the most natural thing in the world. Moreover,
when the Patriarch Avould come to the land of
Canaan — whether by Damascus, where later Jewish
tradition made him a king, or by Aleppo and
Hamath, more to the north — he would not find
it entirely given over to flocks and herds, to
shepherds and Bedawin. He would find settled
communities in the fertile plains and valleys,
and in the plain of Jordan he would find flourish
ing and powerful cities. In Egypt, as we shall
see, he would find a civilisation and a culture
and a religious life rivalling in every respect
the civilisation and religious life he had left
behind. We have seen, then, that it was in the heart
of an ancient civilisation, in the midst of historic
cities with long dynasties of powerful kings, that
Abraham was born and cradled ; and that it was
to countries scarcely less rich in historic traditions
and in glorious annals, and in the products of intel
lectual and religious life, that he came when he
left the shores of the Eastern Sea. Such condi
tions were surely the most unfavourable that could
be imagined for the growth of the legendary or
mythical figure which the critical hypothesis pre
supposes. So far from the name of Abraham hav
ing been invented by an Israelite of the later days
of the nation to give symbolic dignity to this ficti
tious Father of the Faithful, it is now clearly estab
lished that the very name Abram was as old in
Babylonia as the time of the Patriarch. In the
reign of the great Babylonian King Khammurabi,
one of the witnesses to a deed is designated the

118 BABYLONIA TO THE TIME OF ABRAHAM.
Amorite, the son of Abiramu.1 In the days of
Esarhaddon there was at the Court of Nineveh
an officer, mentioned in the Eponym Canon, who
bore the identical name of Abram.
But we have left to the last the portion of the
story of the Patriarch which witnesses so strikingly
to his historic character — viz., the episode of Ched-
orlaomer's campaign, and the part which Abraham
took in the overthrow of that Eastern invader. So
far from that campaign having been invented for
the glorification of Abraham by the romancer or
the prophetic enthusiast of a later day, it becomes
itself a powerful witness, now that the light of
the monuments and of independent testimony has
been thrown upon it, in favour of the veracious
character of the whole narrative of the Patriarch's
life. The story of Chedorlaomer's campaign has
all along been a puzzle to the advanced critics.
Schultz says with every appearance of candour :
"We must leave it undetermined in the present
state of tradition how far the name of Abraham
and the general sketch of his life are to be re
garded as historical. If Genesis xiv. were a really
primitive account, the political importance of Abra
ham would be very clearly established." 2 But how
are we to determine whether it is a really primi
tive account ? Surely, by the consistency of its
descriptions and details Avith all that we know
of the contemporary history of the period, and
by any marks that it may possess of being itself
a contemporary record. So long as Chedorlaomer
1 Hommel, Geschichte des Morgenlandes, p. 62 n.
2 Schultz, Old Testament Theology, vol. i. p. 95.

CHEDORLAOMER S CAMPAIGN. 119
Avas merely a mouth - filling name like " the
blessed word" Mesopotamia, and so long as the
other names of kings and peoples were unknown
to classical or any other independent records,
it was possible to describe the whole story as a
fiction. It is different now. The discoveries of
Assyriologists and the patient research of scholars
have identified nearly the whole of the personages
and peoples here concerned. Professor Maspdro
says of the passage as a whole : " From the
outset Assyriologists have never doubted the his
torical accuracy of this chapter, and they have
connected the facts which it contains with those
which seem to be revealed by the Assyrian docu
ments." 1 The Scripture narrative runs as follows :
" It came to pass in the days of Amraphel, king
of Shinar, Arioch, king of Ellasar, Chedorlaomer,
king of Elam, and Tidal, king of Nations " (Goyim
it should be rendered, and Goyim may well repre
sent the Guti of the inscriptions), " that these kings
made war against the kings of the Jordan valley,
and reduced them to subjection. Twelve years"
these beaten kings " served Chedorlaomer, and
in the thirteenth they rebelled. And in the four
teenth year " Chedorlaomer and his feudatories
marched westward to quell the rebellion — travers
ing with rapid marches the great highway along
which Abraham had lately come, along the eastern
bank of the Euphrates to Harran, crossing the
fords, and passing Kadesh of the Hittites on to
Damascus, thence down the east of Jordan, smiting
" the Bephaims in Ashteroth-Karnaim and the Zuz-
1 The Struggle of the Nations, p. 47 n.

120 BABYLONIA TO THE TIME OF ABRAHAM.
ims in Ham, and the Emims in Kiriathaim, and
the Horites in their Mount Seir, unto El -paran,
which is by the wilderness." El-paran would be the
farthest point of the Eastern allies, now identified
with Nakhl in the desert, for from the wilderness
" they returned and came to En-mishpat, which is
Kadesh, and smote all the country of the Amale
kites and also the Amorites that dwelt in Hazezen-
Tamar." It was from the south-west, therefore, that
they came upon the kings of the Jordan plain, lying
at the northern end of the Dead Sea, as is manifest
from the Biblical account of the campaign. They
were four kings against five, but, as was to be
expected, Chedorlaomer and his allies were victor
ious, and Lot was carried off with the spoils of
Sodom. The courage and promptitude of Abraham,
who was settled in the plain of Mamre beyond
Hebron, brought to Lot welcome deliverance ; for
having joined hands with the Amorite chieftain
near, and marched four days and four nights in
pursuit, he made a night attack upon the Eastern
host with his handful of men, and filled them with
panic fear, so that the allied forces fell upon each
other in the darkness of night, and their rout was
speedily complete. It was on his return from the
slaughter of the kings of the East that Abraham
met Melchizedek, king of Salem, and priest of the
Most High God, and received his blessing. Such
is the narrative, detailed, straightforward, and cir
cumstantial. With such an array of particulars
the blundering of a mere romancer should be easily
detected Avhen confronted with independent and
indubitable facts.

CHEDORLAOMER S CAMPAIGN. 121
Noav it is true that we have not yet discovered
the actual record of his campaign on tablet or in
mural inscription by any of Chedorlaomer's scribes.
It is not likely Ave ever shall, for kings and war
riors were wont to record their triumphs, and not
their reverses. But we have discovered, we may
say, every one of these Babylonian kings them
selves. Take them in succession, beginning with
the suzerain and leader of the host.
Chedorlaomer comes before us as king of Elam,
and his prowess is the only hint known to the
modern world of a powerful people whose empire,
almost as much as the empire of the Hittites,
has been restored to history by recent exploration.
Step by step, with keen linguistic insight and with
indomitable perseverance, the first clues obtained
by Sir Henry Bawlinson and George Smith have
been followed up ; and a Kudur - Lugamar, as
king of Elam, answering to the Biblical Chedor
laomer, has eATery warrant of historical credibility.
The story of Elam and its kings is now one
of the fullest and most interesting chapters of
Mr Tomkins's delightful book, ' Abraham and
his Age.' Asshurbanipal, the famous king of
Assyria of a much later day, records that when he
conquered Elam and took the city of Susa in
645 B.C. he brought back an image of Nana,
which Kudur - Nankhundi had taken away when
he overran Babylon 1635 years before, bringing
the date of this Elamite monarch up to 2280 B.C.
Here, then, was the first instalment of the name
desired, Kudur being the Elamite Avord for "ser
vant " ; and as it appeared there was an Elamite

122 BABYLONIA TO THE TIME OF ABRAHAM.
goddess Lugamar, it was plain that a name was
possible, Kudur - Lugamar meaning " servant of
Lugamar." A later Elamite prince, bearing the
name of Kudur - Mabug, was conjectured by Mr
George Smith to be the Chedorlaomer of Genesis.
Though the matter is not yet beyond dispute, a
Kudur -Lugamar as king of Elam in Abraham's
day is an extremely probable figure.1 Abraham,
Mr Tomkins ingeniously suggests, had probably
set eyes on Chedorlaomer at Harran, returning
to Elam from his first expedition to the west with
his spoils and captives, fourteen years before the
patriarch found himself in arms against him.
Arioch, the king of Ellasar, is certainly a his
torical character. He is identified with Eriaku —
signifying in Accadian " servant of the Moon-god "
— king of Larsa, well known to history as a great
restorer of cities, temples, and fortifications. Kudur-
Mabug had a son of this name, who was associated
with him on the throne, though he had as his
special capital Larsa ; and on the assumption
that Kudur-Mabug is the same as Kudur-Lugamar,
or even his brother, as Professor Sayce surmises,
it is easy to understand how he came to be in
the train of the Elamite monarch.
Tidal, king of Goyim, Is the least satisfactorily
identified of the four. But Sir Henry Bawlinson
1 See Hommel, Ancient Hebrew Tradition, chap. v. Compare Zim-
mern, Der Theologische Rundschau, Mai 1898, who says : "In opposition
to earlier views on the subject, it must be admitted that the situation
presupposed in Genesis xiv. — a campaign of an Elamite king and other
princes in his train to Palestine, as well as the prominent part taken in
the story by Jerusalem and its king — is, according to the knowledge
we now possess regarding the earliest Palestine, thoroughly historical
and intelligible."

AMRAPHEL OF SHINAR. 123
suggested long ago that we ought to read Gutium,
the Semitic form of the Sumerian Guti or Kur
distan. An inscription of a king of Gutium much
older than this period has also been found, and
has recently been anew translated by Professor
Hilprecht. As for Tidal, Mr Pinches, of the
British Museum, has discovered tablets, consider
ably injured, bearing names Eriaku, Tudghula, and
Kudur-Lughghamar, as he reads them, in which
Tudghula appears to stand for Tidal, — the alliance
almost suggesting, if not the campaign against the
kings of the west, some other Avhich they had
undertaken together.
Lastly, Amraphel, king of Shinar, is believed
to be no other than Khammurapaltu or Khammu
rabi, the greatest ruler ever known in Babylon.
Although he was allied with Chedorlaomer in this
campaign, and was even for a time subject to
the Elamite king, he succeeded in shaking off the
Elamite yoke, and in driving not only Eriaku out
of Larsa but Kudur-Mabug out of Babylonia.1 It
is even supposed that Chedorlaomer's defeat in
Palestine at the hands of "the Amorites," as the
Babylonians called them, under the leadership of
Abram, the HebreAv, may have offered to Kham
murabi the occasion he needed to raise the standard
of revolt. At any rate, Khammurabi attained the
1 On a tablet discovered in the Imperial Ottoman Museum at Con
stantinople, and brought originally from Senkereh, the site of Larsa or
Ellasar, Dr Scheil has read how Khammurabi acknowledges to a
certain Sin-Idinnam his "valour in the day of Kudur-Lughghamar's
defeat." This reading, however, is now shown to be based upon a
misapprehension. — See ' The Letters and Inscriptions of Khammurabi,'
by Mr L. W. King of the British Museum. See Appendix, Note V.,
p. 322.

124 BABYLONIA TO THE TIME OF ABRAHAM.
supremacy of Babylonia, and from his day the city
of Babylon continued to be the residence of the
Babylonian monarchs. His age was a Victorian
age in Babylon, Avhen the empire was unified and
consolidated, when literature flourished, and when
prosperity unexampled filled the land. It is
true there are difficulties as to the chronology,
and difficulties as to the general political situation,
Avhich forbid us being absolutely certain as to this
identification. But they are not insuperable. The
narrative opens up vistas into a region of antiquity
formerly very obscure ; and so this chapter stands
forth pre-eminent as a witness to the credibility
of the Biblical narrative when recounting the
events of Abraham's life.
We have already indicated the. bearing of the
office of king and priest filled by Melchizedek,
which we take as an interesting corroboration of
the accuracy of the Biblical narrator, and we shall
have more to say of him in connection with the
Tel el-Amarna tablets. This narrative, we repeat,
bears the marks of a contemporary record — is, in
fact, itself an ancient and veracious literary monu
ment. But if this is a primitive and even really
contemporary record, Abraham's historical char
acter is surely established. Take an illustration
from English histoiy, which I oavc to Dr Percy
Gardner. Speaking of " the verification of ancient
history " in his instructive ' New Chapters in Greek
History,' he says, " Every one Avho has seen repre
sentations of that marvellous tapestry at Bayeux,
on which is portrayed, by contemporary hands,
the Norman Conquest of England, Avill understand

ABRAHAM HISTORICAL. 125
that it is naturally appealed to, alike when there
is a question as to some of the actual facts of the
adventures of Harold and the Battle of Hastings,
and when we wish more fully to realise the out
ward life of the times, the forms of toAvers and
churches, of ships and camps, or the arms and
equipment of Norman and Saxon." We may ap
peal with almost equal satisfaction to this literary
monument as bearing all the marks of a primitive
record, and carrying with it accordingly the politi
cal importance of Abraham and his historical char
acter as the Father of the Faithful, the ancestor of
the Jewish race, and save One the greatest figure
in the world's history.

126

LECTUBE IV
EGYPT AND THE PATRIARCHS, INCLUDING THE
EXODUS.
Egypt was already old when Abraham went down
into it in a time of famine (Gen. xii.) and sojourned
there. In the ethnographical table referred to in
our last lecture (Gen. x. 6) Cush, Mizraim, and
Phut are mentioned as sons of Ham. Cush, or
Kash, as we saw, corresponded to Ethiopia, while
it betrayed the Mesopotamian origin of the early
Egyptian people. Mizraim is the name by which
Egypt was known to the Semites. Phut is likely
the same as Punt, which is identified with the
Somali coast. In the same table (Gen. x. 13, 14),
and in the same family connection, we find the
Lehabim, the Libyans ; the Naphtuhim, the people
of Napata, near Jebel Barkal, close by Merawi;
the Pathrusim, the people of Pa-ta-res, of Southern
or Upper Egypt ; and the Caphtorim, who prob
ably occupied the coast-lands of the delta.
The race who founded the dynastic history of
Egypt did not enter by the north, for their first
settlement was at This, in Middle Egypt, from
Avhich they advanced to Memphis, where Menes

MENES OF EGYPT. 127
in the fifth millennium before Christ, according to
the reckoning of Manetho, established his capital
and built a temple to Ptah. They are more likely
to have entered Egypt by way of the Bed Sea,
and, as we indicated in last lecture, were in all
probability originally immigrants from the valley
of the Euphrates and the Tigris. The race whom
they displaced are described by Professor Flinders
Petrie 1 as being of the Libyan or Algerian type,
originally inhabiting the north of Africa, and
having features akin to those of the people of
Europe to - day. Implements, weapons, pottery,
and ornaments have been found belonging to this
race ; and their work in flint, alabaster, and carved
ivory shows them to have been possessed of high
mechanical skill. Up till recently there was be
lieved to be no proof of the existence or historical
character of any king of the first three dynasties,
and Menes, the founder of the 1st dynasty, was
regarded as a mythical creation. Maspero de
clares " he owes his existence to a popular attempt
at etymology." 2 His name has now been found
on remains of that far distant time ; whilst the
recent discovery of his tomb and calcined bones
rehabilitates the tradition discredited by over
cautious Egyptologists, and restores to history
one of the oldest and most remarkable figures
of the world.
It is with the 4th dynasty, however, that the
civilisation of ancient Egypt comes fairly into
view. It is the age of the Pyramid - builders,
1 See Appendix, Note VI., p. 323.
2 Dawn of Civilisation, p. 234.

128 EGYPT AND THE PATRIARCHS.
and may be dated from 4000 B.C. downwards.
Sneferu, the first king of the dynasty, built the
Pyramid of Medum. The names of Khufu and
Khafra, the builders respectively of the first and
second Pyramids of Ghizeh, have been found
at Bubastis by M. Naville, and a diorite statue
of Menkaura, the builder of the third Pyramid,
has been discovered at Sakkhara. The style of
the engraving on these monuments is beautiful;
and, considering the archaic appearance of the
sculpture and its similarity to several inscriptions
of the old empire, we have no reason to doubt
that these names have been inscribed under the
reigns of the kings. What strikes the inquirer
here, as in the earliest known Babylonian civilisa
tion, is the perfection which art and culture have
already attained. The great Pyramid of Ghizeh in
mass and height and proportions is still unrivalled
among the buildings that man has reared. The
Sphinx hewn out of the living rock is one of the
oldest and most wonderful of the creations of human
genius. Nearly six millenniums have come and gone
since the Pyramids were built, and their builders,
so far from being the rude and uncultivated chil
dren of nature, were versed in letters and culture,
and could teach even this age of high mechanical
achievement arts that have been completely lost.
"They appear, then," says Chabas,1 "as advanced
in civilisation as at any other epoch of their his
tory ; their writing is formed of the very elements
it was to preserve to the end. The system of
writing represents a people advanced in the sciences
1 Etudes sur l'Antiquite historique, pp. 71-73.

EARLY CIVILISATION OF EGYPT. 129
and the arts, — a people of great observation, study,
and reflection, whose minds were capable of adapt
ing themselves to combinations the most compli
cated. We ought, therefore, to feel no surprise
to find in full operation at the time of the building
of the Pyramids the religious, military, and civil
organisation of Egypt." From the times immedi
ately succeeding the age of the Pyramids we have
literary relics of distinct value, for the hieroglyphic
system of writing was already perfected and in use.
From the period of the 5 th dynasty we have the
oldest collection of moral sayings in the world,
the Proverbs of Ptah-hotep. They are now in
the National Library at Paris, and though the copy
ofthe papyrus containing them is only of the 12th
dynasty there is no reason to doubt that their com
position goes back to the reign of Assa, 3536 B.c.
From the 5th and 6th dynasties come the inscrip
tions that adorn the passages of the Pyramids close
to Sakkhara, near to which Mariette discovered the
marvels of the Serapeum and the sarcophagi of
the sacred bulls, known to every tourist. From
this period, considerably before 3000 B.C., comes
also a historical inscription in the shape of an auto
biography of Una, who lived under three kings
and was successively judge, prophet, president of
districts, commander, sandal - bearer, governor of
Southern Egypt, and leader of a band of labourers
who were employed to fetch the sarcophagus rof
King Mer-en-ra and materials for his pyramid to
Memphis. The history of Egypt does, however, flow from
time to time through dark tunnels where contem-

130 EGYPT AND THE PATRIARCHS.
poraneous records cast scarcely a ray of light, and
from the close of the 6th dynasty to the 12th we
pass into one of these tunnels. The 12th dynasty
sees the Old empire closed, and the Middle empire,
as it is called, begun, the seat of government being
now shifted from Memphis to the new city of
Thebes in the south. This dynasty lasted for two
hundred years, and its rulers, while by no means
despicable in war, have achieved immortal renown
as promoters of the arts of peace. Among numer
ous temples founded by the kings of this dynasty
and adorned with the highest products of art was
the great temple of Amen at Thebes, the work of
Amenemhat, of which fallen pillars and statues
still bear witness to its former magnificence and
grandeur ; and the great temple of the Sun at
Heliopolis by Amenemhat's successor, Usertesen
I., of which nothing now remains but the one
celebrated obelisk, which is perhaps the oldest
standing monument of ancient Egypt. Heliopolis,
the city of the Sun, also called On, or, more cor
rectly, An, was the home of this sort of monu
ment, which expresses so significantly in stone the
form and shape of the solar ray. Besides the
obelisk of Heliopolis fifty - five others are known
to history. Of these, two were carried off long
before the Christian era to Nineveh by Asshur
banipal. The Ptolemies carried off obelisks to
adorn their new capital at Alexandria, — an example
followed by Boman emperors, who fetched Egyp
tian obelisks to Borne. Two dedicated by Thoth
mes III. in Heliopolis, and brought to Alexandria
in the century before Christ, have had farther to

ARTISTIC SKILL. 131
travel. One of them stands noAv on the Hudson
Biver, New York ; and the other, known as Cleo
patra's Needle, stands on the Thames Embank
ment, witnessing in the very centre of the world's
metropolis to a civilisation which has long passed
away, and to a religion which thousands of years
before our era kept men mindful of the life beyond
the grave. From the neighbourhood of the brick
Pyramid of Dahshur have been recovered, so re
cently as 1894, two marvellous treasures of early
Egyptian jewellery which had belonged to prin
cesses of the royal house of Amenemhat and User
tesen — jewels of exquisite workmanship, and other
relics exhibiting an artistic skill which is marvellous
in an age still centuries before Abraham. When
we see this jewellery, and when we observe the pre
ponderance of gold over silver or any other metal
in the list of these treasures, we have less reason
to be surprised at the precious stones and the
gold so abundantly used in connection with the
tabernacle and its services in the wilderness. There
is no need to assign the narrative of the structure
of the tabernacle to a Avriter in the age of the
Exile, seeing that the materials so copiously em
ployed in its furnishing were abundant in an age
long anterior to that of Moses.1
1 "The East has always been famous for colossal masonry, but
recent exploration in Egypt has revealed that there was equal skill in
the most intricate work of goldsmith and jeweller. The inventiveness
in design, delicacy of handling, and mastery over hard surfaces are
unsurpassed by anything in the art of the present day. Their suc
cessors in the East of the present day retain much of the delicate
touch of the cunning workers of ancient times, but their taste for
design is usually satisfied with the repetition of the traditional
patterns. The metal-worker of to-day uses the same tools in the same

132 EGYPT AND THE PATRIARCHS.
But if the Egyptians of the 12th dynasty were
strong in those finer productions of art, they were
not behind in engineering skill, and in works for
which it was indispensable. To Amenemhat III.,
who reigned 2622-2578 B.C., is attributed the Pyra
mid of Hawara at the entrance to the Fayoum, the
original of the famous Labyrinth of antiquity so
extolled by Herodotus, — a pyramid with passages
laboriously planned and rendered peculiarly com
plex with dumb chambers and gigantic sliding trap
doors to prevent plunderers from ever reaching the
room where the royal mummy lay. But his water
works for the regulation of the Nile-flow at the
FayoUm are a still grander monument. By means
of a vast embankment, some twenty miles in length,
a level area of over twenty thousand acres was
reclaimed from the Crocodile Lake, and turned into
one of the most fertile provinces of Egypt. It was
in connection with this great water - system that
the celebrated Lake Moeris was formed and became
the natural basin of the Fayoum oasis. So far as
Egypt is concerned, it is evident that the period
of Abraham and the patriarchs was not a dim and
obscure period in the dawn of civilisation, but was
lighted up, as it was in Babylonia, by a culture
and a civilisation of which we have abundant
records. Before leaving the 12th dynasty we may notice
way and for the same objects that his forefathers used them. The
graving tool, tongs, hammer, anvil, and bellows are found in all, only
differing in size and strength as they are applied to iron and copper, or
gold and silver." — 'Bible Manners and Customs,' by Rev. G. M.
Mackie, M.A., p. 68 ; see pp. 69, 70 for the commonest forms of gold
and silver ornaments.

VISIT OF SEMITIC STRANGERS. 133
an incident, shown in the sepulchral chambers at
Beni- Hassan, which may be in itself unimportant,
but is of interest to us as a forerunner of incidents
with which the Scripture narrative makes us familiar.
On the tomb of Khnumhotep, a local governor under
Usertesen II. , there are represented thirty-seven
Semitic strangers, called in the inscription Aamu,
wearing garments of great richness, the chief in
particular distinguished by a magnificent coat,
wrought in red and blue and white — the colours as
bright as the day they were laid on — elaborately
bordered and fringed, and covered with ornamental
stripes in designs of zigzags, reversed chevrons, and
circular spots, in striking contrast to the light and
simple white linen of the Egyptian courtiers.1 They
bring with them a present of mestem, the black
antimonial paint which the Egyptians use for the
eyelids. The chief, called in the inscription Absha,
leads an ibex muzzled and collared : behind him
follow his people — men, women, and children, —
the men bringing a gazelle, and having bows and
spears and a lyre ; the women, clad in garments
of similar style, having long and abundant hair,
and wearing red boots ; and the children being
mounted upon the loaded panniers borne by an
ass. Although when the inscription Avas first dis
covered it was believed to represent the sons of
Jacob, the scene has nothing to do with Palestine.
But the importance of the scene, as showing the
reception accorded to representatives of Eastern
tribes even in the period of the powerful 12th
dynasty, can scarcely be over-estimated. Excep-
1 Tomkins, Abraham and his Age, p. 136.

134 EGYPT AND THE PATRIARCHS.
tion has been taken by Meinhold and others to
the representation of Abraham and the other
patriarchs traversing the land of Canaan, and
going down to Egypt in nomad fashion, without
let or hindrance. And this representation is held
up to ridicule, and regarded as a proof of the
legendary character of the narrative in Genesis.
Yet here are visitors probably from Arabia, of
nomad character, receiving a cordial welcome from
the representatives of the reigning Pharaoh. It
was in some such fashion as this that Abraham and
the sons of Jacob entered Egypt ; and it is note
worthy that the wives here are admitted with their
husbands, unveiled, and seen, as Sarai was, by the
" princes of Egypt."
Although it is contended by some that it was
under the kings of the 12th dynasty, in the
highly cultivated and indeed brilliant age of the
Usertesens and Amenemhats, that Abraham en
tered Egypt, it was rather in the period of the
famous and yet mysterious shepherd - kings, or
Hyksos rulers as they are called, that Abraham
paid his visit to the valley of the Nile in a time
of famine. After the 12th dynasty, of which we
have abundant records, the history runs again into
one of those dark tunnels, extending from the
13th to the 17th dynasty, where the records are
scanty. The 13th and 14th dynasties show a long
list of ephemeral rulers, whose correct order in a
chronological series is very difficult to determine.
From the fragments that have survived we gather
that it was a time of declining power and deterior
ating art, and this condition of things was taken

HYKSOS RULERS. 135
advantage of by that strange people from the East
to invade the valley of the Nile. Manetho, followed
by Josephus, identified them with the descendants
of Abraham, but his own narrative suffices to dis
prove that theory. The belief now gaining ground
is that they were a people from the far east,
perhaps from the mountains of Elam, who, being
displaced by movements of conquest or of immigra
tion, directed their steps westward, and poured into
Egypt when its power was weakened by misgovern
ment and internal dissensions. They have the dis
tinction of having introduced the horse into Egypt ;
although it was used in chariots by Babylonian kings
long before the time of Abraham, and it may have
been the possession of horses and chariots that con
tributed to the success of their advance. It is not
till the 18th dynasty, however, that the monuments
introduce the horse and show it in chariots of war ;
for it was almost never used for draught purposes,
or even for riding, down to later times. It is an
admirable touch of truth when we read of the
waggons sent by Pharaoh to fetch Jacob and his
belongings down to Egypt that no mention is made
of horses — the waggons would be drawn by asses
or oxen ; but when Joseph went up to meet his
father he put horses in his chariot ; and again, when
Jacob was buried it was a very great company that
went up, both chariots and horsemen, as for a great
State occasion. It is remarkable that the inscrip
tions make no mention of the camel, although it is
named as a portion of Abraham's wealth in Egypt,
and of the wealth of which his servant boasted
when he went to Mesopotamia to find a wife for

136 EGYPT AND THE PATRIARCHS.
Isaac. This absence of the camel in the Egyptian
texts continues into the Greek and Boman times,
when the existence of the animal in the Nile
valley and in Arabia is vouched for by classical
authors, and is most likely due to some religious
feeling. What happened when Greece took captive her
Boman captors took place in those earlier times.
The Hyksos yielded to the influences of the superior
civilisation into which they had forced themselves,
and insensibly became assimilated to the native
Egyptians in manners and modes of life. Their
rulers, as the monuments show, bore the same titles
as the native Pharaohs. They adopted the gods
of Egypt as the objects of their worship, and called
themselves the sons of Ba, the Sun -god. They
attributed the characteristics of their own god Sut
or Sutekh to the god Set of the Egyptians, and
built temples to him after the Egyptian model
in their principal towns. It was at San or Tanis,
the Biblical Zoan, that they held sway ; and recent
excavations by Naville at Bubastis, in the Delta,
have shown that it was also an important Hyksos
settlement. When we are told that Hebron was
built seven years before Zoan in Egypt, it may
be that the Anakim, by whom it is said to have
been built, were a branch of that Hyksos people,
and the building of Zoan referred to may be that
which made it the centre of the Hyksos power
when the main body of them had come to Egypt
to stay. Of these Hyksos rulers there were two
dynasties, the 15th and 16th in the annals of
Egypt, and when the 17th was ruling at Tanis

ABRAHAM IN EGYPT. 137
a 17 th Egyptian dynasty was reigning at Thebes,
acknowledging as it would seem the supremacy of
the alien race.
But our interest in the Hyksos lies chiefly in the
fact, upon which historians ancient and modern are
agreed, that it was during their rule that Abraham
paid his visit to the valley of the Nile, and that
later, when their domination was approaching a
close, Joseph was sold into Egypt and rose to almost
sovereign power. In view of the relations between
the Pharaohs and Abraham and his immediate de
scendants, which were so cordial and creditable to
the reigning monarch, it is well to bear in mind
the separation which then existed between the
king and the dominant race on the one hand and
the home-born population of Egypt and its ancient
nobles on the other. To these last, as Joseph
instructed his brethren, every shepherd was an
abomination (Gen. xl\d. 34) ; and this is proved
by the monuments as regards the shepherd-race,
who are described in abusive epithets, and alluded
to as the plague or the pestilence. To the Hyksos,
the descendants of Abraham, being themselves
engaged in pastoral pursuits, and being of kindred
origin, were not objectionable but welcome. It was
probably under King Apepi II. , in the middle of the
18th century before Christ and in the 2nd dynasty
of shepherd-kings, that Joseph came down into
Egypt. Of this king who raised Joseph to such
honour, and sent such a cordial invitation to Jacob
and his sons to come down to Egypt and eat of
the fat of the land, we can now perhaps study
the face and features, for, according to M. Naville

138 EGYPT AND THE PATRIARCHS.
and others, the most interesting and perhaps the
most beautifully executed Egyptian royal head in
the British Museum belonged to him — " a fine face,"
we are told, " with something of Egyptian serenity
but without the attractive cheer of that well-
favoured nation." 1
It is with the story of Joseph that the close
relations between Israel and Egypt begin, although
the Egyptian inscriptions, so far as discoA-ered,
make no mention of Joseph's sojourn in the land,
and, for that matter, with the one exception of
the stele found by Professor Flinders Petrie in
1896, no mention whatever of the settlement of
Jacob's descendants in Egypt or their exodus as
a nation under the leadership of Moses. Even if
no inscription or papyrus should ever be found in
Egypt making mention of Abraham's descendants
there, we need not be surprised. It is contrary
to the usage of all peoples in ancient, or even
modern, times to take notice of incidents or in
dividuals that have been the cause of national
humiliation or disaster ; and it is the commonest
event in history for a people soon to forget their
benefactors, especially if they have been of another
race from themselves. To argue from the silence
of the monuments, as the more extreme adherents
of the advanced criticism have done, that there
was no settlement of Israelites in Egypt, no op
pression, and no exodus, is a line the dangers of
which have been conspicuously shown by the dis
coveries that have recently been made and that
are still being made. It should go far towards
1 Tomkins, Life and Times of Joseph, p. 79.

JOSEPH IN EGYPT. 139
establishing the historical character of Joseph's
career if we can show that the details of the
Biblical narrative are thoroughly consistent with
all that the inscriptions have revealed to us of
the manners and customs and life of Egypt in
the times assigned to him. Moreover, this should
help to establish contemporary authorship as well.
An Israelite writer centuries after these times
could never have attained the exactitude and
accuracy which we find throughout in the descrip
tions of Egyptian life. We know what blunders
Herodotus committed when recording events of
strange countries and bygone times. Even the
advanced critics are not exempt from blunders.
One of the deniers of Joseph's existence certainly
enters the realm of fiction when he eloquently
describes the robe left in the hands of Potiphar's
Avife as the coat of many colours which had ex
cited the jealousy of his brothers in the house
of Jacob ! Dillmann admits that " the narrators
showed themselves well acquainted with Egyptian
affairs, customs, and ideas. There are no real
lapses," he says, " due to ignorance, and there
are notes and descriptions surprisingly faithful
and happy. The legend," as he terms it, " may
have had a certain Egyptian impress from the
beginning, but individual traits may also have
been avoided as the Israelites became increasingly
acquainted with Egypt, which they did in the
times of the Hebrew monarchy." 1 A remarkably
lame conclusion from the premises ! As if the
Egypt of the Hebrew monarchy had undergone
1 Genesis, English translation, vol. ii. p. 353.

140 EGYPT AND THE PATRIARCHS.
no change for nearly a thousand years, as if it
had not changed as much from the Egypt of
Apepi as the Egypt of to - day has from the
Egypt of the Saracens. How could the occasional
visits which Dillmann assumes have given the
exact knowledge required for this narrative ? And
where was the man versed in Egyptian lore in
the days of the Hebrew monarchy that could
have invented it ? The Egypticity of the whole
narrative, to employ the felicitous expression of
the Egyptologist Ebers, is very marked, and is
exhibited in the most incidental details. "If
we have no reference either to Joseph or to the
dearth up to the present," says Wiedemann, one
of the most learned of the historians of Egypt,
" in the Egyptian inscriptions, all the details in
the Biblical narrative — the description of land and
people, of manners and customs — are thoroughly
accurate, and correspond in all particulars to what
is otherwise known of the Egyptians." The ways
of peasant life and the ceremonial of the Egyptian
court are described with equal exactness and from
the life.1
The whole career of Joseph can be illustrated
by the scenes and incidents, the manners and
customs, of Egyptian life and history. To supply
the necessaries required for the embalming of
the dead, and to furnish the numberless temple
chemists and compounders with materials for the
proper worship of the gods, Midianitish caravans
carrying the spicery and balm and myrrh of
Arabia through the land of Canaan into Egypt
1 See Appendix, Note VII., p. 324.

ILLUSTRATIONS OF JOSEPHS CAREER. 141
were one of the commonest sights. Syrian slaves
were greatly valued in Egypt, as they were later
in Greece and Borne, especially the well-born and
highly cultivated, who often rose to positions of
influence and trust. The name of Potiphar is a
purely Egyptian name, meaning the gift of Ba
— something like John or Nathanael ; and we are
told that in a papyrus of the Louvre a similar,
almost identical, name has been found. That
Potiphar should in the narrative be twice styled
" the Egyptian " was not superfluous, when we
consider that the dominant race were the Hyksos
and not the native Egyptians. The circumstances
of Joseph's temptation are reproduced with marvel
lous similarity of detail in the Egyptian romance of
' The Two Brothers.' The two dreams of Pharaoh
which Joseph interpreted are Egyptian to the life,
and can be paralleled from the experience of Egyp
tian kings recorded on the monuments. Perhaps
no people were more given to the observation and
study of dreams, or held in higher esteem those
who could interpret them. The use of wine is
abundantly shown on the monuments. On the
tomb of Ti at Sakkhara the pressing of the juice
of the grape is seen, and grape-treading is a very
common tomb-scene indeed. In a tomb at El-Kab
(early 18th dynasty) the relatives banqueting in
the next world are represented as talking in a
most convivial fashion. Women drank as well as
men ; and tipsy men and women are not uncommon
on the monuments. So close does the narrative
of Genesis come to the Egyptian custom, that
representations have been found of the king hold-

142 EGYPT AND THE PATRIARCHS.
ing the cup in his hand, with the explanation
added : " The juice has been pressed out of the
raisins ; the king drinks it."
Of the administration of Joseph in connection
with the famine which he had foretold there are
abundant illustrations. At Beni Hassan is an
inscription of an official of the days of Usertesen
I. of the 12th dynasty, centuries before Joseph's
time, which illustrates the work of Joseph, and,
curiously enough, Job's well-known representation
of himself (Job xxxi.) : —
Not a daughter of a poor man did I wrong, not a widow
did I oppress, not a farmer did I oppose, not a herdsman did I
hinder. There was not a foreman of five from whom I took
his men for the works. There was not a pauper around me,
there was not a hungry man in my time. When there came
years of famine I arose. I ploughed all the fields of the Oryx
nome to its southern and northern boundaries. I made its
inhabitants live, making provision for them ; there was not a
hungry man in it, and I gave to the widow as to her that had
a husband, nor did I favour the elder above the younger in
all that I gave. Afterward the great rises of the Mle came
producing wheat and barley and producing all things, and I
did not exact the arrears of the famine.
To the same effect is the account which M. Naville
gives of a scene pictured on the monuments.
The other day [he says] I came across a picture which re
minded me strongly of Joseph and his employment. It had
been taken from a tomb. There you see the king, Amenophis
III., sitting on his throne, and before him one of his min
isters, Cheemha, who seems to have had a very high position.
He is called the chief of the granaries of the whole kingdom.
. . . Besides he has this strange title, the eyes of the king in
the towns of the south and his ears in the provinces of ihe

SETTLEMENT OF JACOB IN EGYPT. 143
north ; which implies that he knew the land perfectly ; and
that, like Joseph, " he had gone throughout all the land of
Egypt." i
The gold chain put about the neck of Joseph
by the Pharaoh corresponds to the golden collar
with which warriors were decorated for distinguished
bravery. An old admiral, Aahmes, who fought with
distinguished gallantry in the war expelling the
Hyksos, received repeatedly the golden collar at
the hands of the king. Well may Kittel say of
the story of Joseph : "It must also be admitted
that the Egyptian element in the narrative cannot
be mere literary colouring. It must belong to the
core of the narrative. This points to a compara
tively high antiquity, and testifies to the existence
of an ancient tradition, dating as far back as the
Egyptian period itself." 2
No point has been more thoroughly elucidated
by the excavations and discoveries of recent years
than the situation and limits of the land of Goshen.
We read in one of the most natural and touching1
passages of Holy Writ (Gen. xlvi. 28, 29) that
Jacob, when about to go down to Egypt in com
pliance with the invitation of the Pharaoh, " sent
Judah before him unto Joseph, to show the way
before him unto Goshen ; and they came into the
land of Goshen. And Joseph made ready his
chariot, and went up to meet Israel his father, to
1 Miss Pirie informs me that there is a small tomb at El-Kab with
an inscription recording a seven years' famine somewhere about the
end of the Hyksos period. If the accepted chronology is correct, it is
possible that it may have been Joseph's famine.
2 History of the Hebrews, vol. i. p. 188.

144 EGYPT AND THE PATRIARCHS.
Goshen, and he presented himself unto him ; and
fell on his neck, and wept a good while." Although
Goshen thus became the cradle of Jewish nation
ality, Scripture gives no direct indication of its
situation. But there are indirect hints of it which
are valuable.1 " Thou shalt be near unto me," was
Joseph's message to his father, when urging him
to come down to Egypt. " I will give you the
good of the land of Egypt," was Pharaoh's invita
tion, " and ye shall eat the fat of the land." Not
far from the court of Pharaoh, and in one of the
most fertile parts of Egypt, was to be their settle
ment. In the narrative of Jacob's entrance into
the land there is no mention made of the crossing
of the Nile. As little is it mentioned in the fairly
full itinerary of the departure of the Israelites
under Moses, which shows them to have been but
a few marches from the Sea of Beeds. In the Sep
tuagint, which was produced in Egypt before the
time of Christ, and when an accurate tradition may
still have been floating about, the place of Joseph's
meeting with his father is inserted by the Sep
tuagint translator as Heroonpolis in the land of
Bamses ; while the Coptic version, also produced
in Egypt early in the Christian era, gives it as
Pithom, which is believed to be the Egyptian name
for the same place. The Septuagint, moreover,
calls Goshen Gesem, and in one place (Gen. xiv. 10)
Gesem of Arabia (recre//, 'Apa^Sias). These indica
tions have led to its being sought in the Delta,
east of the Pelusiac branch of the Nile, in the
district known in Pliny's and Ptolemy's time as
1 Vigouroux, vol ii. p. 217.

THE LAND OF GOSHEN. 145
the nome of Arabia. Brugsch had been able to
identify the nome of Arabia with Sopt or Soptak-
hem. Naville, excavating at the village of Saft el
Henneh in 1885, discovered that the ancient name
of it was Kesem, or, in the Hebrew, Goshen. At
Saft there was found a colossal statue of Barneses
II. , the oppressor of Israel, in black granite, and
other remains of that king, showing that he had
built a temple there. " The traveller," says Naville,1
"who leaves the station of Zagazig and journeys
towards Tel el-Kebir, crosses in all its width what
was the old land of Goshen. This part of the
country is still particularly fruitful ; it abounds in
fine villages, the sheikhs and even the common
inhabitants of which are generally very well off."
One remarkable circumstance furnishing strong con
firmation of the details of the settlement in Goshen
is this, that in the list of nomes of Seti I. the great
founder ofthe 19th dynasty, and father of Barneses
the Great, the nome of Arabia does not appear,
while the nomes of Bubastis and Athribis are
equally awanting. " Instead of nomes," says
Naville, " we find names of branches of the Nile
or marsh lands. We may, therefore, conclude that
at the time when the Israelites settled in Egypt
under the last Hyksos kings the land of Goshen
was an uncultivated district, not divided among
Egyptian inhabitants regularly settled and gov
erned, but probably a kind of waste land suffici
ently watered to produce good pasturage. Thus it
was a district which might be assigned to foreigners
without despoiling the inhabitants of the country."
1 Goshen, p. 16.
K

146 EGYPT AND THE PATRIARCHS.
Now this is surely one of those lifelike details
which are absolutely incapable of being invented,
which give a character of unchallengeable reality
to a narrative, and which in this case seem again
to compel belief in the contemporary or nearly
contemporary authorship of the history.
In Goshen, in the best of the land, as the sacred
writer puts it, the descendants of Jacob prospered
and multiplied greatly : " They gat them posses
sions therein, and were fruitful, and multiplied ex
ceedingly." As Genesis closes over their prosperity
so Exodus opens with it : " And Joseph died, and
all his brethren, and all that generation. And
the children of Israel were fruitful, and increased
abundantly, and waxed exceeding mighty ; and the
land was filled with them. Now there arose up a
new king over Egypt which knew not Joseph"
(Exod. i. 7). From the death of Joseph, at the
age of 1 1 0, — it was the age also of Ptah-hotep the
famous moralist of the 5th dynasty, and the age
that rounded in the perfectly happy Egyptian life,
— to the birth of Moses, there stretches the long
and brilliant period of the 18 th dynasty. Of this
period and of the fortunes of Jacob's descendants
in Goshen we obtain no tidings from Scripture,
none in fact from any quarter save what we can
gather inferentially from the Egyptian history of
that great and powerful dynasty. Things were
ripe for a revolution when Joseph died. After
some hundreds of years of rule the Hyksos dynasty
of kings was ready to wax old and to vanish away.
In an attempt to fasten the yoke more firmly upon
Sekenen-Ba the reigning prince of Thebes, Apepi

EXPULSION OF THE HYKSOS. 147
was worsted. From Avaris, the Egyptian fortress
of the shepherd -kings, Apepi sent a message to
Thebes, evidently requiring that no other god should
be worshipped throughout the whole land than
Sutekh, the Hyksos divinity, to whom Apepi had
built a magnificent temple. It was this demand
that seems to have roused the native Egyptian
party to try conclusions with the aliens. It is true
Sekenen-Ba, whose mummy has been found in the
tomb of the kings at Deir-el-Bahri and witnesses
to the desperate conflict in which he had been
engaged, was killed in the first encounter, but the
movement he represented was not frustrated by his
death. For five generations the struggle went on.
Southern Egypt first won its independence, then
Memphis fell, and at length the Hyksos were
driven out of Zoan their capital, and confined to
the fortress of Avaris on the Asiatic frontier.
Singularly enough, it is to the story, recovered from
a grave at El Kab to the south of Thebes, of an
Egyptian admiral who served under Sekenen-Ba
that we are indebted for our knowledge of the final
expulsion of the Hyksos from Egypt. The old man,
who lived to a long age, tells how he fought from
his ship in a canal at the capture of Avaris ; how for
distinguished valour his name was brought before
the king ; and how he was decorated once and again
with the golden collar. Aahmes was the prince
who achieved these victories and re-established the
line of purely Egyptian kings, and became the
founder of the 18th dynasty — himself a potentate
of the foremost rank, who, like so many of the
rulers of his dynasty, was found among the royal

148 EGYPT AND THE PATRIARCHS.
dead at Deir-el-Bahri. Of this 18th dynasty which
led Egypt to conquests she had never dreamed
of before, Thothmes III., the donor of Cleopatra's
Needle, was the most renowned. He reigned fifty-
four years, from 1503 to 1449 B.c. He made a
complete end of the Hyksos settlements in the
Delta, and led an Egyptian army victoriously
across Western Asia. Canaan became an Egyptian
province. Egyptian garrisons were established in
the far north on the frontier of the Hittite tribes ;
and the boundaries of the empire of the Pharaohs
were pushed to the banks of the Euphrates: We
have already told how his mummy was found in the
tomb of the kings, and how, when his mummy-
swathings were unrolled, and his face and features
exposed after thousands of years to the light of day,
the whole bodily framework of the mighty Pharaoh
crumbled into dust. Of his conquests he has
engraven a record on the northern wall at the
western end of the great temple of Karnak, and
among places named as conquered by him in
Palestine are Sharon, Joppa, Gibeah, Beyrout,
Damascus, and the strange and unexpected names,
Jacob-el and Joseph-el.
We have made special mention of Thothmes III.
because his conquests included Syria, and extended
even to the Euphrates, and a true understanding of
his relations with the west of Asia is necessary for
a proper estimate of the condition of Canaan, re
vealed in the Tel el-Amarna tablets. It was the
Pharaohs of these tablets, Amenophis III. and
Amenophis IV., who saw the end of the 18th
dynasty.

THE OPPRESSION OF THE ISRAELITES. 149
A period of over three hundred years had
elapsed since Joseph rendered such eminent service
to the land of Egypt, and there is no wonder that
the beneficent viceroy was forgotten. Between the
death of Joseph and the situation revealed in the
first chapter of Exodus lie the expulsion of the
Hyksos, the conquests of Thothmes III., the growth
of the Hittite power in Syria, the Semitising
tendencies of Amenophis III. and his son, and the
struggles of Egyptian viceroys and vassal kings
to hold their own against powerful enemies made
known to us in the Tel el-Amarna tablets. The
times on which the history of Egypt had fallen,
partly through the Semitic predilections of Ameno
phis III. and his son the heretic king, and partly
through hostile movements on the northern and
eastern frontier of the empire, were critical. A new
dynasty arose which not only knew not Joseph, but,
disgusted with the Semitic courtiers of the two last
kings, hated everything Semitic. In the Israelites
within his borders Seti I., the king who knew not
Joseph, the founder of the new dynasty, saw a
source of real danger. " Come on," was his advice,
"let us deal wisely with them ; lest they multiply, and
it come to pass, that, when there falleth out any war,
they join also unto our enemies, and fight against
us, and so get them up out of the land. Therefore
they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them
with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh
treasure cities, Pithom and Baamses. But the
more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied
and grew" (Exod. i. 10-12). The early chapters of
Exodus tell the tale of hard bondage and bitter toil

150 EGYPT AND THE PATRIARCHS.
to which the Israelites were then subjected. It
was in this condition of things that Seti I. died
after a long and brilliant reign, in the latter part
of which he had associated with him his son
Barneses II. , and Barneses became sole ruler. Under
Barneses II. the glory of Egypt's greatest days
revived, and hardly any other king has left such
an impression of grandeur and magnificence. His
reign of sixty-six years is surpassed in the history
of the world by the reign of Louis XIV. of France
alone. It is true the research of the nineteenth
century has discovered his renown to be somewhat
hollow. Not only of his warlike achievements, but
of his work as a builder, is this true. Wiedemann
says : x —
There is scarcely a building in Egypt on which his name
is not found inscribed ; the number of edifices which in the
course of his reign of sixty-six years he built or enlarged or
renewed seems at the first glance to be immense. But when
we go into the matter thoroughly it is sensibly diminished.
Eameses never scrupled to erase the names of his prede
cessors from the monuments, and to insert his own instead,
so that many inscriptions bearing his name belonged origin
ally to other monarchs, and were usurped by him. And
where he did not go the length of obliterating the name of
another he had his own placed beside it on the pretext that
he renewed the ancient building. The work he actually did
was done in a scamped fashion ; temples had their founda
tions laid without due care, hieroglyphics were carelessly
engraven, the inscriptions teem with errors — all in striking
contrast to the conscientious and carefully executed work of
his father Seti.
It is a king with such a lengthened reign, a king
1 Geschichte von Alt-Aegypten, p. 125.

THE REIGN OF RAMESES II. 151
engaged in building enterprises so numerous and
varied, that best answers to the requirements of
the Biblical narrative. When his wars were over
and labourers for his building operations were no
longer to be had among the prisoners captured in
his campaigns, he resorted to the capture of black
ivory in the Soudan, fetching thence year by year
bands of negroes, male and female of all ages, and
setting them to work upon his splendid buildings.
"In the monuments of the reign of Barneses II.,"
says Lenormant,1 "there is not a stone but has cost
a human life." " Is it possible," asks the Abbe"
Vigouroux,2 " to discover anything more closely
resembling the Pharaoh which Exodus makes known
to us as the oppressor of the Hebrews ? It only
needs the name above the portrait painted for us
by Moses. And Egyptology has written it."
It is in connection with the treasure-cities, the
store - cities > built for Pharaoh by the children of
Israel at Pithom and Baamses, that Barneses II. is
found so conclusively to have been the great op
pressor. From the sandy hillocks of Tel el-Maskhuta,
memorable in connection with the operations that
led to the decisive battle of Tel el-Kebir, the city of
Pithom has been dug up. There a great space, in
the form of a parallelogram, enclosed by a broad
wall of bricks, was discovered, comprising a temple
and numerous other buildings. Most notable of all
was a long building, also in the form of a parallelo
gram, consisting of numerous cellars of various
sizes, only accessible from above, and having no
1 Manuel d'Histoire Ancienne, vol. i. p. 423.
2 Vol. ii. p. 244.

152 EGYPT AND THE PATRIARCHS.
connection with one another. These cellars were
built of bricks made of Nile mud and without
straw, and upon the bricks was found the stamp
of Barneses II. The whole building corresponded
to the treasure-houses, or places of stores described ;
and the fortified arsenal or store-city there dis
covered, situated close to the eastern border of
Egypt, was admirably adapted for the provisioning
of an army setting out for an Asiatic campaign.
The builder was Barneses, and Tel el-Maskhuta is
equivalent to P(r)-Tum, which is Pithom. " There
is not the slightest doubt," says Naville, the inde
fatigable explorer of the Delta, " that the founder
of the city is the king of the oppression, Barneses
II. There is no name more ancient than his on
the monuments, and there are no traces of any
sovereign of earlier date. There may have been
before his time a sanctuary of the god Turn (the
Setting Sun), but certainly it was he who built
the enclosure and the store -chambers." The de
scription given by the eminent Egyptologist, Miss
A. B. Edwards, of the evidences of the presence
and work of the Hebrews is well worth quoting : —
The mounds of Maskhutah may be described as a series
of undulating sand -hillocks. In the distance is seen the
little railway -station now disused; and here and there a
dark pit excavated in the middle distance marks one of the
store-chambers or cellars opened by M. Naville. Not only
these cellars but also the great wall of circuit, twenty-four
feet in thickness, were probably the work of the oppressed
Hebrews. They are well and solidly built. The bricks are
large, and made of Nile mud pressed in a wooden mould and
dried in the sun. Also they are bedded in mortar, which is
not common, the ordinary method being to bed them with

THE BRICKS OF PITHOM. 153
mud, which dries immediately and holds almost as tena
ciously as mortar. And this reminds us that Pharaoh's
overseers "made the children of Israel to serve with rigour,
and made their lives bitter with hard bondage in mortar and
in brick." We remember all the details of that pitiful story
— how the straw became exhausted, how the poor souls were
driven forth to gather in stubble for mixing with their clay ;
and yet how they were required to give in as large a tale of
bricks at the end of each day's work as if their straw had
been duly provided. Now it is a very curious and interesting
fact that the Pithom bricks are of three qualities. In the
lower courses of these massive cellar-walls they are mixed
with chopped straw ; higher up, when the straw may be
supposed to have run short, the clay is found to be mixed
with reeds — the same kind of reeds which grow to this day
in the bed of the old Pharaonic canal, and which are trans
lated stubble in the Bible. Finally, when the last reeds
were used up the bricks of the uppermost courses consist of
mere Nile mud, with no binding substance whatever. So
here we have the whole pathetic Bible narrative surviving
in solid evidence to the present time. "We go down to the
bottom of one of these cellars. We see the good bricks for
which the straw was provided. Some few feet higher we
see those for which the wretched Hebrews had to seek reeds
or stubble. We hear them cry aloud, " Can we make bricks
without straw ? " Lastly, we see the bricks which they had
to make and did make without straw, while their hands were
bleeding and their hearts were breaking.1
Numerous illustrations of the method of brick-
making, and of the menial character of the labour
as an occupation for slaves, are to be found on the
monuments. A great part of the buildings of
Barneses II. were executed in brick, just as the
Biblical story tells us, and the ruins of Pithom are
sufficient evidence of the fact. On this subject,
1 Pharaohs, Fellahs, and Explorers, p. 50 ff.

154 EGYPT AND THE PATRIARCHS.
again, the Scripture history goes into particular
details, and the details are of such a character that
they could not have been the creation of a later
historian : only a contemporary writer could have
described them with such accuracy and precision.
The verification of the accuracy of the details of
the Scripture record by the excavators of Tel el-
Maskhuta is one of the most undesigned and also
most striking proofs of the historical character of
the narrative of the Exodus.
When the oppressor found that the tasks to
which the descendants of Jacob had been put had
no effect in diminishing their numbers, but that
they actually multiplied the more and increased so
as to fill the land, he devised a still more heartless
and cruel expedient. This was that the midwives
should kill the male children of the Israelites in
the moment of their birth ; but as this expedient
also failed, Pharaoh charged all his people, saying,
" Every son that is born ye shall cast into the
river, and every daughter ye shall save alive"
(Exod. i. 22). It was under this law that the
infant Moses came when he was born in the home
of Amram and Jochebed. It could scarcely have
been Memphis that Avas the scene of the exposure
and deliverance of the infant Moses — the Nile is
there too large and swift for the little cradle ; and
besides, Memphis is some distance from the land of
Goshen. It was more likely at San that Pharaoh
was residing Avhen Moses was laid in his ark of
bulrushes on the river's brink. If Pharaoh was
residing at San and his family with him, according
to the ways of the court, the daughter of the king

THE REIGN OF MERENPTAH. 155
might readily go with her attendants to the Tanitic
branch of the Nile to bathe. The waters there
flow lazily along, and would be in no danger of
carrying the little ark away, and among the reeds
on the river-bank there would be some retired and
shady nook known to the people near to which the
princess and her attendants would resort.
We cannot follow his history from the day when
he was rescued from the Nile to the day when he
appeared before Pharaoh with a demand in the
name of God to let his people go. He was brought
up at home in the faith of his fathers till the time
when, as the adopted child of the daughter of the
king, he was admitted to the halls of learning and
became learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians.
By-and-by, being challenged for slaying an Egyptian
who had maltreated an Israelite, he took refuge
from the wrath of Pharaoh in the land of Midian,
where he remained till Barneses was gathered to
his fathers.
When Barneses died and his embalmed remains
had been laid in the resting - place where they
have been so miraculously discovered, his son
Merenptah succeeded him on the throne. The
decadence of Egypt, which had begun under
Barneses II. , proceeded rapidly under Merenptah,
as may be seen, among other things, by the
increasing carelessness in the execution of in
scriptions. Merenptah himself reared very few
monuments ; but he had his father's proclivity
for engraving his name on the works of earlier
kings, and it has been found abundantly on the
monumental remains of- the Hyksos. His name

156 EGYPT AND THE PATRIARCHS.
appears with special frequency on monuments dis
covered at Memphis, at Heliopolis, at Baamses, and
at San, showing that he had residences in all
those cities. So far as the foreign relations of
Egypt are concerned, the most important event
of his reign was a war which he waged against
the Libyans and a confederacy of tribes from the
Mediterranean coasts — a war of defence to protect
the valley of the Nile from these western and
northern invaders. Merenptah repulsed them with
heavy loss, and his victory was everywhere hailed
with the utmost enthusiasm, his return from
Memphis to Thebes after the conclusion of the
war being a grand triumphal march. And it is
in the triumphal inscription discovered by Pro
fessor Flinders Petrie in 1896 commemorating the
victory, and closing with a general glorification
of the might of Merenptah, that mention is made
of Israel — the first ever found on an Egyptian
monument — as one of the peoples subject to
his all-embracing dominion. Here are the closing
lines : —
" The princes are stretched on the ground and present their
homage.
Not one among the nine peoples using the bow lifts up the head.
Wasted is Libya.
Hittiteland is brought to rest.
Canaan is captured with all his tribes.
Led forth is Ashkelon.
Gezer taken.
Jenoam is brought to nought.
Israel is laid waste and his seed destroyed.
Chor is made as the widows of Egypt.
All lands together are in peace.
Every one that prowled around has been chastised by King
Merenptah, who is gifted with life like the sun every day."

THE ISRAEL STELE. 157
Such is the context in which the name of Israel
appears in the inscription. Ashkelon and Gezer
are towns of Canaan that we already knoAv.
Chor is well known in Egyptian records as the
designation of Southern Palestine. That Israel is
represented as a people or a tribe is admitted by
the best Egyptologists. But what is the value
of the discovery for the Bible student ? Professor
Strack of Berlin1 sees in it neither a confirmation
nor a correction of the Biblical account, but only
a new riddle. Professor Orr of Edinburgh, in a
very able discussion in ' The Expositor,' April
1897, finds in the inscription reason for holding
that in the days of Merenptah Israel was already
settled in Canaan, and argues for the period of
the 18th dynasty and the reign of the great
Thothmes and his successor as the period of the
oppression and the exodus. Against Professor Orr's
very tempting theory there stand two difficulties :
(1) that Pithom and Baamses were built by the
oppressed Hebrews in the time of Barneses II. , long
after the time of Thothmes III. ; and (2) that the
Khabiri, whom he would fain believe to be the
invading Hebrews, are mentioned in the Tel el-
Amarna tables as being not merely in Jerusalem
and the Philistine plains, but also in the north as
far as Tyre and Sidon. Professor Hommel sees
in Israel here, associated as it is with Hittite
land and Jenoam to the east of Tyre and in the
territory of Asher, support for an ingenious theory
that the tribe of Asher and other tribes of Israel
had settled in Canaan long before the exodus of
1 Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirchenzeitung, 16th April 1897.

158

EGYPT AND THE PATRIARCHS.

the main body of the people from Egypt. " The
early stages of this migration of the tribe of Asher
from the land of Ashur," as he designates the
wilderness of Shur, " were indicated by the advance
of the Khabiri [of whom we shall hear more when
we speak of the revelations of the Tel el-Amarna
tablets] about 1400 B.C. ; while by the middle of
the fourteenth century B.C., in the time of Seti I.
and Barneses II. , we find them safely installed in
their subsequent home to the north of Carmel."1
That detachments of the Israelitish people found
their way back again to Canaan before the main
body, who came forth from Egypt under the
leadership of Moses, is a view not by any means
improbable. It is maintained by such a sound
and conservative theologian as Professor Strack,
and it would, if we could adopt it for certain,
clear up some questions at present involved in
obscurity. Undoubtedly the simplest explanation
is that of Professor Sayce, whose remark upon the
inscription is: "Here the 'Israelites' are spoken
of as having been brought low, ' so that no seed
should be left to them ' ; and since their name
alone is without the determinative of locality
which is added to the names of all the other
conquered populations associated with them, we
may conclude that they had already been lost
in the desert, and, so far at any rate as was
known to the Egyptian scribe, had no fixed local
habitation." Maspero 2 takes very much the same view.
1 Ancient Hebrew Tradition, pp. 265, 266.
2 Struggle of the Nations, p. 443 ff.

THE ISRAEL STELE. 159
The context of the inscription [he says] indicates pretty
clearly that these ill-treated Israilu were then somewhere
south of Syria, possibly in the neighbourhood of Ashkelon
and Gezer. If it is the Biblical Israelites who are here
mentioned for the first time on an Egyptian monument,
one might suppose that they had just quitted the land
of slavery to begin their wanderings through the desert.
Although the peoples of the sea and the Libyans did not
succeed in reaching their settlements in the land of Goshen,
the Israelites must have profited by the disorder into which
the Egyptians were thrown, and by the consequent with
drawal to Memphis of the troops previously stationed on the
east of the Delta, to break away from their servitude and
cross the frontier. If, on the other hand, the Israilu of
Merenptah are regarded as a tribe still dwelling in the
mountains of Canaan, while the greater part had emigrated
to the valley of the Nile [a view favoured by Professor
Flinders Petrie], there is no need to seek long after
Merenptah for a date suiting the circumstances of the
Exodus. The years following the reign of Seti II. offer
favourable conditions for such a dangerous enterprise: the
break-up of the monarchy, the discords of the barons, the
revolts among the captives, and the supremacy of a Semite
over the other chiefs, must have minimised the risk.
Without professing to have reached any perfectly
satisfactory conclusion regarding the bearing of the
inscription, one may express the hope, and cherish
it with a measure of confidence, that new discoveries
will clear away the ambiguities and perplexities
thus introduced into the history, and meanwhile
we are not required to discard the Biblical narra
tive, or to treat it as other than a genuine record.1
1 Maspero, ' Histoire Ancienne,' p. 286, says : " It is certain that
Moses took the Israelites out of Egypt, gave them laws, and led them
to the frontiers of Canaan, about the reign of Rameses III."
Professor Flinders Petrie says : " Rameses III. of the 20th dynasty
repeatedly raided all Palestine even to Moab. But there is no trace

160 EGYPT AND THE PATRIARCHS.
San was the favourite residence of Merenptah, as
it had been of his father Barneses before him. It
was at San, the field of Zoan, that Moses had his
memorable interviews with the Pharaoh, and an
nounced the plagues which inflicted such varied
woes upon king and people. Of the last and
most terrible, the destruction of the first-born,
" from the first-born of Pharaoh that sitteth upon
his throne, even unto the first-born of the maid
servant that is behind the mill," a trace is believed
to have been found on the monuments. On a
colossal statue of Merenptah in the Museum at
Berlin, there is represented his " eldest son, the
prince royal, associated with him on the throne,"
as the urseus upon his head declares, " the singer
whom he loves, the son whom he loves, who inclines
the heart of his lord who begat him, the royal scribe,
the chief of the archers, the prince Merenptah."
He bore, apparently, the same name as his father.
It is not mere credulity to see in this young prince,
who died before his father, whose younger brother
Seti II. succeeded to the throne, the first-born of
the Pharaoh to whom God said, " Let my son go,
that he may serve me : and if thou refuse to let
him go, behold, I will slay thy son, even thy first-
of his conquests during the Israelite occupation of Palestine. Just
about forty years, however, elapsed between the death of Merenptah
of the 19th dynasty, usually supposed to be the Pharaoh of the Exodus,
and the last raid of Rameses III. Hence, on this view, the Israelites
would have been in the desert till the last Egyptian campaign. Their
entry into Palestine immediately after the destructive wars of Rameses .
III. explains the weakness of the Amorites at the time. No earlier
date for the Exodus can. avoid the fact that the Egyptian conquests
are never hinted at in the Book of Judges." — 'The Times,' September
3, 1892.

ROUTE OF THE EXODUS. 161
born " (Exod. iv. 23). This threat was executed, as
we know from the sequel, where, in describing the
destruction of the first-born, the particular is added,
"the first-born of the Pharaoh which sat on his
throne" (Exod. xii. 29), — a detail Avhich may be
taken to indicate his participation in the royal
dignity along with his father, as we have seen.1
With that last and most terrible of all the
plagues, the hour of Israel's deliverance had come.
Although, as we have seen, the Exodus is without
any certain record in the Egyptian monuments,
the natural features and the geographical details of
the route of the Israelites out of Egypt, as ascer
tained by scientific surveys and careful exploration,
bear valuable testimony to the historical character
of the Scripture record. The discovery, by M.
Naville, ofthe true site of Pithom at Tel el-Mask-
huta in the Wady Tumilat, and the careful examina
tion of the ground by Sir J. W. Dawson in 1884,
have certainly gone far to determine for us the
route of the Exodus. It was from Baamses that
the Israelitish host set out — men, women, and
children, and a mixed multitude of Egyptian slaves
1 See references in Vigouroux, ' La Bible et les decouvertes modernes,'
vol. ii. p. 348 ff. The original Hebrew does not admit of certainty
on this matter of the first-born. The participial expression used is
evidently regarded both in the Authorised Version and in the Revised
as referring to the "first-born" and not to "the Pharaoh," and is
capable of the interpretation given above. Dillmann, in his Commen
tary on Exodus, following Onkelos the Aramaic exegete, also takes
the expression as referring to the first-born, but as meaning " which
was destined to sit upon his throne " — this future sense of the Hebrew
participle being held admissible by Ewald and others. Others, follow
ing the parallelism, regard the participle as referring to the Pharaoh,
and merely bringing out that the judgment fell upon the highest and
the lowest alike.

162 EGYPT AND THE PATRIARCHS.
along with them — following in reverse order in its
earlier stages the course taken by the expedition
under Lord Wolseley in his famous march in 1882
from Ismailia towards Tel el-Kebir. The road they
traversed was in fact one of the great historic high
ways of the land. Whether for the conquest of its
warlike tribes or for the possession of its mines and
quarries, the kings of Egypt often marched their
troops into the Peninsula of Sinai. It was through
the Wady Tumilat, now traversed by the railway
line from Cairo to Ismailia, that Sneferu, Khufu, and
other ancient kings of Egypt, whose names are
inscribed upon the rocks in Wady Magharah, led
their warlike expeditions. Pepi of the 6th dynasty
made war with the tribes of Sinai, and the record
of his campaigns is engraven beside that of Khufu.
Thothmes III., Barneses II. , and other Pharaohs
whose names are also there, must have led their
hosts to and fro by the route the Israelites took,
— the very route by which our gallant countrymen
were led to Tel el-Kebir by a star.
An important point in this connection is the
exact locality where the Hebrews were overtaken
and the passage took place. Sir J. William Dawson,
in his ' Egypt and Syria,' gives up the Bed Sea
passage as such, his view being that the sea crossed
by the Israelites was what is now knoAArn as the
Bitter Lakes, which at that time, however, not im
probably constituted an extension of the Bed 'Sea.
No Hebraist needs to be told that the narrative in
Exodus does not settle the question ; for Bed Sea
is no equivalent of ^d-q^ which means " Sea of
Beeds." Near Suez Sir J. William Dawson passed

THE PASSAGE OF THE RED SEA. 163
over large surfaces of desert, which he was told
Avere covered Avith water at high tides and under
easterly winds ; and at levels Avhich the sea now
fails to reach he found sands holding recent marine
shells in such a state of preservation that not many
centuries may have elapsed since they were at the
bottom of the sea. He calls attention also to the
fact, which incidentally corroborates his view, that
after the passage the Israelites journeyed three
days and found no water. From the place favoured
by this view three days' journey would bring the
Israelites to the Wells of Moses, opposite Suez,
which thus come properly into place as the Marah
of the narrative, whereas the common theory of a
crossing at Suez would bring the host of Israel at
once to those wells. They are also said to have
journeyed for three days in the wilderness of Etham,
and then to have come to the wilderness of Shur,
or the Wall, whereas the wilderness of Shur is
directly opposite Suez, and not three days' journey
to the south. The three days' journey from the
place of crossing favoured by Sir J. William Dawson
would be made up of long enough marches, the
whole distance being about thirty miles — certainly
not too short a distance to require three days in
the circumstances. In his conclusion as to the
locality of the crossing, Sir J. William Dawson has
the support of Sir Colin Scott Moncrieff and other
eminent engineers who have surveyed the ground,
and it is highly probable that he is right. We
do not eliminate the miraculous from the narrative
when we maintain that the passage was probably
made on dry land, swept clear of the waters which

164 EGYPT AND THE PATRIARCHS.
usually covered it by the powerful east wind, helped
by a strong and long -continued ebb-tide. That
there should be such a concurrence of natural pheno
mena to meet the desperate situation of the de
parting Israelites was not less an interposition of
Jehovah's hand than if the waters had stood up on
heaps at the call of Moses. For the whole tenor
of Scripture bears that if ever there was a miracle
wrought for the children of Israel in all their long
and checkered history, the crossing of the Bed Sea
was such a miracle. It formed a deliverance by the
hand of God, so great and striking that it became
in a sense a guarantee of deliverance in every sub
sequent calamity or danger.
But what, it may be asked, of the Pharaoh ?
It is singular that among the royal mummies dis
covered at Deir-el-Bahri, that of Merenptah has
not been found alongside of those of his renoAvned
father and grandfather.1 We are not, however, at
liberty to infer from this, what is really left un
determined by the Scripture narrative, that Mer
enptah perished with the pursuing host. We are
debarred from any such conclusion, if it be true that
there is a decree extant issued by him at a time
later than this great catastrophe ; and further, that
he was called upon to quell a revolt in the south
of his dominions which followed up the disasters
brought upon him by the Israelites.
Here we take leave of one of the most remark
able movements in the history of the world, whose
1 Since this Lecture was delivered the mummy of Merenptah has
been discovered in the newly-opened tomb at Thebes. See Appendix,
Note IL, p. 320.

THE FACT OF THE EXODUS. 165
issues have not ceased to influence mankind. That
the Egyptians failed to recognise the character and
issues of this episode in their national history is
nothing strange. No more did the statesmen and
the philosophers of Borne understand the character
and issues of that greatest movement of all history
of which their literature takes so little notice.
" That the greatest religious change in the history
of mankind," writes Mr Lecky,1 " should have taken
place under the eyes of a brilliant galaxy of philo
sophers and historians who were profoundly con
scious of decomposition around them ; that all these
writers should have utterly failed to predict the
issue of the movement they were observing ; and
that during the space of three centuries they should
have treated as simply contemptible an agency
which all men must now admit to have been, for
good or evil, the most powerful moral lever that
has ever been applied to the affairs of men, — are
facts well worthy of meditation in every period of
religious transition." Meanwhile the Israelites set
forth upon their wanderings in the desert, where
for forty years they were led by Moses and in
structed and disciplined by God for the great part
they were to play as a nation, and as the people
of revelation and redemption.
There are several questions of importance which
we have not been able to discuss — the chronology,
which, no doubt, Professor Flinders Petrie will deal
with in the third and forthcoming A-olume of his his
tory of Egypt ; and the testimony to the historical
character of the residence in Egypt, and the Exodus,
1 European Morals, vol. i. p. 359.

166 EGYPT AND THE PATRIARCHS.
offered by the earliest writing prophets, Amos
and Hosea — a subject admirably handled by Pro
fessor Bobertson in his ' Early Beligion of Israel,'
and by Professor A. B. Davidson in valuable articles
in the 'Expositor.' There is one objection which
has been taken, which really helps, when fairly
considered, to bring out a great fact in the his
tory of the people, and so to vindicate a side of
it which has been most systematically attacked.
It has been contended that Israel could not have
survived the oppression to which they were sub
jected in Egypt, and that the whole story is thus
rendered incredible. The answer to this conten
tion reminds us that the Israelites had in their
religion, with the social organisation of which it
was the inspiration, a powerful principle of cohesion.
Wherever and howsoever placed, they must have
cherished those lofty religious truths revealed to
their great progenitor, the Father of the Faithful,
and given to him as a precious heritage for his
descendants. That these truths had already been
wrought into the texture of their thought and life,
and had become the groundAvork of their social
economy and religious worship, thus knitting them
into a compact and indestructible unity, is the
natural and sufficient explanation of their tenacity
and endurance. From the beginning until now,
" Nee tamen consumebatur " is seen to be the fittest
motto for the national life of Israel.

167

LECTUBE V.
CANAAN AND ITS NEIGHBOURS IN THE
TEL EL-AMARNA TABLETS.
Up to this point our attention has been confined to
the two great river-lands of the ancient world, —
Babylonia between the Tigris and the Euphrates,
and Egypt " the gift of the Nile " ; the one the
mother-country of all civilisation and the cradle-
land of the Father of the Faithful, the other the
home of his descendants for some hundreds of years,
where they passed through the fire of affliction and
oppression and were moulded into a nation. It was
neither among the mighty cities of Babylonia nor
among the ancient monuments of Egypt that Israel
was to play its predestined part in the history
of mankind. It was in the little mountain-land of
Canaan, lying between the Mediterranean and the
Desert and stretching from Mount Hermon to the
Biver of Egypt, that the history of Israel, through
which God has been pleased to reveal His will and
grace to mankind, was enacted. The land of
Canaan had been the goal, as we have seen,
of the military and commercial ambitions of the
rulers of Babylonia from Lugal-zaggisi in the fifth

168 CANAAN AND ITS NEIGHBOURS.
millennium before Christ to Nebuchadnezzar. It
was coveted by Egypt partly because its possession
would rid it of the incursions of troublesome
neighbours, and partly, too, because it lay on the
highroad to the fertile plains and wealthy cities
of the Eastern Biver -land. But Canaan is not
exhibited either in the Scripture history or on
the monuments as the sole barrier to Egyptian
ambition and Babylonian aggression. The history
of the Phoenicians, the Hittites, the Syrians, is
closely interwoven with that of Israel ; and the
cities of Tyre and Sidon, Carchemish and Damascus,
as well as Jerusalem, play each its own part in the
political, commercial, and religious history of its
respective people.
From the time of the going doAvn into Egypt
to the conquest of Canaan by the returning
descendants of Abraham under Joshua, we learn
nothing, or next to nothing, from Scripture of the
nations who inhabited the land. The Hittite and
the Amorite and the Jebusite had been in pos
session as in the days of Abraham, but how it fared
with them and the neighbouring peoples in the
interval between, and what development they had
attained in social, political, and religious life, there
is nothing in Scripture to show. Egyptian records
have something to say of them, and especially of
the Hittites and the part they played in the wars
of Thothmes III., and Barneses II. and his suc
cessors. The Egyptian occupation of Canaan and
the neighbouring countries as far as the Euphrates
is written in the copious annals of the 18th
dynasty. It began with Aahmes, -the founder of

TEL EL-AMARNA TABLETS. 169
the dynasty, Avhose conquests reached as far as
Zahi, or the middle of the Syrian coast. It was
continued by Thothmes I., who carried Egyptian
arms to the Euphrates, and reached its zenith under
Thothmes III. and Amenophis III., when Egyptian
power covered Syria, Mesopotamia, Chaldaea, and
Assyria, stopping only at the frontiers of Susiana,
Media, and Armenia.1 It entered upon its decline
and fall in the latter part of the reign of Amen
ophis III., and continued to decay under Amenophis
IV. The lists of places in Northern Syria and
Palestine conquered by Thothmes III., and engraved
on the walls of the temple at Karnak, are valuable
for the light they throw upon the early geography
of Syria and Palestine, and also upon the history
and language of the Hittites and Canaanites. At
a time not so far off from the conquest of Canaan
by Joshua, we have the "Travels of a Mohar" in
Syria, Phoenicia, and Palestine, which we can read
in 'Becords of the Past.'2 The story contains
many geographical references, and professes to
tell of " nations and cities after their customs."
But these records shed only few and feeble rays
compared with the light which the Tel el-Amarna
tablets have thrown upon the political condition of
Canaan before the conquest. They are immedi
ately concerned with the decline of Egyptian power
where it had once been supreme and unquestioned
in Western Asia. But indirectly they bear a testi-
1 Flinders Petrie, Syria and Egypt, p. 21 ff. " At no period can we
place the power of Egypt higher than it was under Amenhotep III.,
lord of the two great cradles of civilisation, the narrow valley of the
Nile, and the plains and highlands of Mesopotamia."
2 Vol. ii. p. 107 ff.

170 CANAAN AND ITS NEIGHBOURS.
mony which revolutionises all our previous con
ceptions of the history of those times. That
Babylonia exercised sovereignty over those regions,
more or less continuous and complete, is shown
not only by the story of Chedorlaomer in the
fourteenth chapter of Genesis, but by the records
which we noAv possess of many successful expedi
tions to " the lands of the west," conducted by
Lugal-zaggisi, Sargon of Accad, and other great
Babylonian rulers. It was under the shelter of
such a suzerainty that the Babylonian language and
writing took such firm root and spread so widely
in Western Asia. For the Babylonian language
was employed in those regions not merely as a
diplomatic convenience, but for the ordinary purposes
of civilised life.1 Of Babylonian supremacy, long
continued, over those regions of Western Asia, in
cluding Canaan and Syria, we have now abundant
evidence. Even the strange and powerful Hittite
people came under the intellectual influence of
Babylonia, and used the Babylonian character for
their still mysterious and untranslatable language.
When the higher critics assert, in order to back
up their theories of the legendary character of the
pre-Mosaic narratiA-es, that they arose at a time
prior to all knowledge of writing, — a time when in
civilised countries writing was only beginning to
be used for the most important matters of State,2
we can now confront them Avith this correspond
ence. Here is writing perfectly developed, the
1 Professor M'Curdy, History, Prophecy, and the Monuments, vol. i.
p. 185. Compare above, pp. 23, 24.
2 Schultz, Old Testament History, vol. i. pp. 25, 26.

INTERCOURSE BETWEEN EGYPT AND THE AVEST. 171
writers not mere professional scribes but people
in varied ranks of life, and the subjects not
simply important matters of State, but the in
trigues and the gossip of courts and the quarrels
and divisions of officials among themselves. But,
indeed, it has been shown not to admit of question
that Moses and the men long before his day had
the means of committing to writing those family
histories and national traditions which we find in
Genesis and the other Books of the Pentateuch.
By the time with which we are noAv concerned, the
fifteenth century before Christ, Babylonian suprem
acy over Canaan and Syria and the neighbouring
lands had given place to Egyptian ; but the remark
able thing is that the Babylonian language held its
ground, and was even adopted by the reigning
Pharaohs as the medium of communication between
themselves and their allies and vassals and gover
nors in those lands. The intercourse between Egypt
and Western Asia in the period of the 18th dynasty
was remarkably close and intimate. Among the
spoils which Thothmes III. brought with him from
Syria was the daughter of the king of Butenu, who
became one of his queens. This was the first of
those Asiatic alliances which had such an important
influence on the religious and social life of Egypt,
and especially on its court in the closing reigns of
the dynasty. At this time, Professor Flinders
Petrie assures us, the civilisation of Syria was
equal, if not superior, to that of Egypt. This Syrian
culture entered Egypt from the time Avhen Thoth
mes established his supremacy over Canaan and
Syria to the Euphrates. It Avas imported with the

172 CANAAN AND ITS NEIGHBOURS.
artists and skilled labourers who were brought into
Egypt as captives of war and made slaves. It came,
too, through the women taken into the harems of
the king and his nobles, and through intermarriages
with the families of subject kings and princes. " The
striking change," says Professor Flinders Petrie,1
"in the physiognomy and ideal type of the upper
classes in the latter part ofthe 18th dynasty points
to a strong foreign infusion. In place of the bold
active faces of earlier times, there is a peculiar
sweetness and delicacy ; a gentle smile and a small
gracefully curved nose are characteristic of the
upper classes in the time of Amenophis III. . . .
Being of such a winning type, it is no wonder these
Syrian captives were taken into Egyptian families."
Whilst Syria exercised influence upon Egypt, the
rulers of Syria in turn became assimilated to the
sovereign power. As the Egyptian kings married
Syrian princesses — Amenophis III. had several of
them besides his famous Syrian queen Teie — so also
it is probable the sons of Syrian chiefs, taken as host
ages and educated in Egypt, married the daughters
of Egyptian nobles on the completion of their educa
tion. Many of them might live till nearly middle
life in Egypt, and in the meantime receive an educa
tion which practically made them Egyptians.2 As
soon as a A^acancy occurred in the succession in any
of those Syrian principalities, the Pharaoh would
choose from among the members of the family
whom he held in reserve that prince on whose
loyalty he could best count and place him upon

1 History of Egypt, vol. ii. p. 148.
2 Maspero, Struggle, p. 271.

THE CORRESPONDENCE OF THE PHARAOHS. 173
the throne. In this way diplomatic and family
relationships of the most intimate character were
formed between the court of Egypt and the rulers
of those northern kingdoms, not to speak of the
administration of subject-States, which required con
stant official communication ; and in the Foreign
Office of the Pharaoh there was a department
specially instituted to conduct the correspondence.
Officials were trained and set apart to the work
of writing and reading the Babylonian character.
Dictionaries and easy mythological texts were pro
cured, by means of which they mastered the ATocab-
ulary and the construction of sentences. Some
of these exercises have actually been discovered ;
and the legend of Adapa was referred to in a
former Lecture as having been found among the
Tel el-Amarna tablets.1 It was the business of these
scribes to translate the cuneiform despatches that
came from Syria and Canaan into the hieroglyphics
of Egypt ; to note on the tablet the date and the
place from which it came ; and to make and pre
serve a copy of replies, all after the fashion of
that business - like Egyptian people, who, it has
been said, were literally the inventors of red tape.
The letters of the Pharaoh to his distant corre
spondents were intrusted to runners, who were not
as a rule persons of any consideration, but had often
a difficult and dangerous part to play ; but some
times " king's messengers " were employed, who
were skilled in the languages and customs of the
people to whom they were commissioned, and who
sometimes took upon them the duties of plenipo-
1 See above, p. 64.

174 CANAAN AND ITS NEIGHBOURS.
tentiaries in representing their sovereign to foreign
States. It is easy to see what an amount of in
formation would be obtained regarding a period,
and regarding widely separated regions, by the
discovery of an Egyptian Becord Office where so
many documents of State and so many diplomatic
communications were pigeon-holed. It is precisely
such a discovery that was made in 1887 at Tel
el-Amarna, when " the place of the records of the
palace of the king " was laid bare, and its contents,
dating from a hundred years before the Exodus,
revealed to the modern world.
We have already detailed the circumstances of
the discoA*ery, and before discussing the contents
of the tablets we may pause for a moment to
mention some of the more interesting of their out
ward features. Though found on the banks of the
Nile they were written in cuneiform characters, and
were for the most part letters from allied and
vassal kings and governors in Syria and Palestine
to Amenophis III. and Amenophis IV. , one of them
being a draft or copy of a letter sent by the
Pharaoh, Amenophis III., to a king of Northern
Babylonia. They number in all about three hun
dred and twenty, some of them in a state of perfect
preservation, but many grievously mutilated and in
fragments. Of the whole find, eighty-two are in
the British Museum ; a hundred and sixty in the
Berlin Museum ; sixty in the National Museum at
Cairo ; and a few in the hands of private indi
viduals. The tablets in the British Museum are of
various sizes, — the largest being nearly nine inches
by about four and a-half, the smallest being a little

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE TABLETS. 175
more than tAvo inches by one and three-quarters.
The longest text contains ninety-eight lines, the
shortest ten. One very interesting feature is the
variety of the clays of which the tablets are com
posed, forming a kind of solid watermark to authen
ticate the locality of their origin. A letter, the
only one in the series, from Amenophis III. to a
king of Northern Babylonia, which, from the nature
of the case, must be a draft or a copy of the letter
actually sent, being written from Thebes, is made
of finely-kneaded Nile mud, just like the Egyptian
pottery which is often brought home by tourists.
Three of the largest and finest of the collection,
written by a king of Northern Syria, are made of
the dark - red clay found in that region. Five
letters Avritten by the governor of Byblos, or Gebal,
near Beyrout, are composed of the yellow clay
which is common near the Syrian coast ; while
tablets from elsewhere contain fragments of flint
characteristic of the clay of the place where they
were written. Precisely the same differences of
colouring are to be noted in the tablets in the
Ghizeh Museum, due to the same variety of
origin. It has even been noticed -that between
the letters written from the smaller places and
those written from the larger there is just the
difference of culture that might be expected. The
short letters of the smaller princes read as if they
had been written according to the form set in the
polite letter- writer of the day ; while the letters
from Tyre are not only at greater length, but
even exhibit more spirit and a greater range of
thought and facility of expression. '

176 CANAAN AND ITS NEIGHBOURS.
The bulk of the letters are addressed — several of
them by kings in alliance with Egypt — to Amen
ophis III. or Amenophis IV, the former styled in
the cuneiform Nimmuria, the latter Naphuria. Some
of them, however, are addressed to Egyptian officials,
and others are communications between governors
of Palestine and Syria, which have found their way
to the royal archive chamber by the banks of the
Nile. One is addressed by Dushratta, king of
Mitanni, the land of Aram-Naharaim, over which
Chushan - Bishathaim ruled at a later time, —
who had given one daughter if not more to the
Pharaoh, — to Teie, the principal wife and now the
widow of Amenophis III., and herself most likely
a , princess of Mitanni, requesting a continuance of
her friendship and that of her son the heretic king.
One seems to have been penned by an Egyptian
princess, probably the wife of a Babylonian king,
and is written to her father from Babylonia. Two
tablets in fragments seem to be letters addressed
by women to their " mistress," one of them appar
ently being from Tadukhipa or Gilukhipa to Teie,
her mother-in-law, the two women who had so
much to do with the conversion of Amenophis IV.
and all its momentous consequences. Three tablets
are simply catalogues of presents. Still another
tablet is a passport addressed to the kings of
Kinakhkhi — that is, Canaan — for Akia, whom one
of the Asiatic kings sent to the Pharaoh to express
condolence, possibly to Amenophis IV. , on the occa
sion of his father's death. And one tablet, as we
have already indicated, is in a language still un
known, but believed to be written by a Hittite

TABLETS FROM ASIATIC KINGS. 177
king to Amenophis III. on the subject of a mar
riage betAveen the royal families and the doAvry
in connection therewith.
As regards their contents, the letters as a whole,
taking Flinders Petrie's classification, fall into three
main classes : (l) Those of the age of undoubted
Egyptian supremacy, forming the correspondence
of the kings of Western Asia in alliance with
Egypt. (2) Those exhibiting the decline of Egyp
tian supremacy and the loss of city after city
to enemies pressing in from various sides, the
correspondents being vassal princes and gover
nors of Phoenicia and Canaan, of whom Bib -
Addi of Byblos or Gebal is the chief. (3) Those
referring to Southern Palestine, the most in
teresting of which for us are the letters from
Jerusalem. 1. It is these last, with their peculiarly interest
ing revelations regarding Jerusalem in the fifteenth
century before Christ, at least a century before the
Exodus, to which we shall mainly deA*ote our atten
tion. But the others are so full of colour and char
acter of their own that they tempt us to give them
a passing glance. The correspondence of the kings
of Western Asia, of Babylonia, Assyria, Mitanni,
and Alashia in Cyprus occupies thirty- six tablets.
The single letter of Amenophis III. in the series
is addressed to Kallima-Sin, king of Karduniash
in North Babylonia, and is in reply to a letter
which Kallima-Sin has written to him. Amenophis
III., having previously obtained Kallima- Sin's sister
in marriage, has requested his daughter for his
harem, but the Babylonian has replied that he
M

178 CANAAN AND ITS NEIGHBOURS.
would like first to hear whether his sister, whom
his father had given the king of Egypt years before,
is alive or dead. Amenophis, in the letter extant
in this series, pleads that Kallima-Sin is himself
to blame for this, since he had never sent a hamiru,
a wise man, personally acquainted with his sister,
who could have recognised her and made a satis
factory report, but had, instead, suggested that
evidence of her existence, in the shape of a present
from her, would have been acceptable, which Ameno
phis thinks unreasonable. Thus the letter proceeds
at great length and with all the tortuousness of
Eastern diplomacy, the result being that in another
letter of the series we find Kallima-Sin requesting
Amenophis to send a messenger and fetch the prin
cess without delay. Kallima-Sin naturally thinks
that he should receive an exchange of such cour
tesies, and he has written to Amenophis with a
request for an Egyptian princess to be a Babylonian
queen. Amenophis has refused, his answer, quoted
by Kallima-Sin, being, " The daughter of the king
of the land of Egypt hath never been given to a
nobody " ; but Kallima-Sin, nothing daunted, has
asked him to send any good - looking Egyptian
woman, whom he might pass off as a daughter
of the Pharaoh, for who at that distance could
say that she wasn't a princess ? And the letter
closes Avith the threat that if Amenophis persists
in his refusal to alloAv an Egyptian lady to come
to Mesopotamia, he would see to it that no Meso
potamian lady should again go down to Egypt.
The suit of the Babylonian king would appear to
have been successful, for in another letter there

TABLETS FROM NORTHERN SYRIA. 179
is a reference to a messenger Avho brought the
daughter of Amenophis to the Babylonian Court.
As letters passed between Amenophis III. and
Kallima-Sin, there is correspondence also between
Burnaburiash and Amenophis IV., the burden of
which is the gifts and presents which should be
given and received by Avay of cementing alliance
between the Courts. There is one letter of the
series which is of peculiar interest as being a
communication from Asshuruballit, the king of
Assyria, to Amenophis IV., requesting gold for
the building of his new palace, and basing his
request upon the precedents of his father Asshur -
Nadinahi and Dushratta, king of Mitanni, receiv
ing twenty talents. The letters between Mitanni
and Egypt, written by this Dushratta, and mostly
addressed to Amenophis III. and IV., set before
us the relations subsisting between the monarchs,
and cast no little light upon the trade and politics
of Mesopotamia in that otherwise obscure epoch.
In these letters of Dushratta, whose gifted country
woman, Teie, and whose sister and daughter, were
all wives of Amenophis III., and whose daughter,
Tadukhipa, was the wife of Amenophis IV., we
meet with the Khita people, who had made an
inroad upon his land, and to whom he had ad
ministered a defeat.
2. It is when we come to the letters recording
the intrigues and dissensions of vassal princes and
governors among themselves, and their unavailing
struggle to keep possession of their cities, — cir
cumstances which mark the rapid decadence of
Egyptian power in Northern Syria, — that we are

180 CANAAN AND ITS NEIGHBOURS.
once again upon familiar ground. We meet now
in those letters, a century before the Exodus, with
places whose names are familiar to us from the
literature of a later time, and which we do not
expect to find at a period so remote as the fifteenth
century. Tyre, Sidon, Beyrout, Byblos, or Gebal,
all figure largely in this section of the correspon
dence. The most copious writer is Bib-Addi, the
governor of Gebal, who now makes appeal to the
Pharaoh his liege lord for help, again protests his
loyalty, which has been impeached, and finally
intimates the loss of city after city till Gebal
was all he possessed. From the numerous refer
ences to the Khita, it is clear that the Hittites
were pressing into Canaan and rapidly gathering
strength. Charges are made by one Egyptian
governor against another which serve to show the
collapse of military organisation and the growing
weakness of the sovereign power, which no longer
lays a strong hand upon its vassal states. To the
appeals and protests and supplications of his vassals
Amenophis IV. turns a deaf ear, being too keenly
engrossed with the differences between himself
and the Theban priesthood at home, and perhaps
absorbed in the laying out of his new capital to
the north. " Who formerly could have plundered
Dunip without being plundered by Manakhbiria,"
the cuneiform designation of Thothmes III. ? Such
is the pathetic lament of the inhabitants of Dunip
as they entreat help against Aziru, the prince of
Amurri, who on his part writes to the king pro
testing his loyalty and giving assurances of sub
mission. This Aziru has an intercessor at the

TABLETS FROM NORTHERN SYRIA. 181
Court of Egypt bearing the name of Dudu, which
is no other than the well known name David,
— not the only man of Semitic race at that
time holding a position of authority at court,
who, as we haA'e already noted, surrounded him
self with Semitic courtiers and yielded himself
up under the influence of his mother to Semitic
influence. Of the enemies from Avithout who, as we gather
from this section of the correspondence, were tak
ing advantage of the decadence of Egyptian power,
the two most formidable were the Khita and the
Khabiri. The Khita have the help of Abdashrat
and his sons, and the Khabiri have the aid of
Milki-el. And just as Bib-Addi of Gebal defends
the interests of the king against Abdashrat, so
Ebed-tob of Jerusalem defends them against the
Khabiri. It is the same melancholy wail that
ascends from both these champions of Egyptian
sovereignty. Bib - Addi complains that all the
cities on the northern seaboard are captured except
Gebal; Ebed-Tob complains that " Turbasha has
been slain at the gate of Zilu, Japti-Addi has been
slain at the gate of Zilu," and the king is inactive.
As for Zimrida of Lachish, his servants are seek
ing to seize him in order to kill him.1 " As long as
ships were upon the sea," is Ebed-tob's lament,
harking back to the glorious days of Thothmes III.,
" the strong arm of the king occupied Nahrima
and Kash, but now the Khabiri are occupying the
king's cities."
Of all the enemies then pressing upon the vassals
1 Winckler, The Tel el-Amarna Tablets, p. 311.

182 CANAAN AND ITS NEIGHBOURS.
of Pharaoh in Syria, the Khabiri are the most inter
esting and mysterious. They are found not only in
the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, but as far north
as Sidon, where Zimrida complains that his cities
have all fallen into their hands, and even in the
neighbourhood of Damascus. Bib-Addi of Gebal
has complaints to make against them as well
as against the Khita. Who then can they be?
Some, like Conder1 and Zimmern,2 have identi
fied them with the invading Israelites ; and, so
far as etymology is concerned, the identification is
admissible. Professor Orr,3 placing the Exodus
in the time of Thothmes IV., also thinks they are
the Israelites expelling the inhabitants of the land
and taking possession. Others, like Sayce i and
Flinders Petrie,5 proceeding upon a common view of
the derivation of the word, regard the name as a
comprehensive designation of confederate tribes,
or allies, who have banded themselves together to
throw off the Egyptian yoke. Still others, like
Professor M' Curdy, following the same derivation,
make them out to be the inhabitants of Hebron,
one of the old Amorite cities, which was now
seeking to become the centre of a new monarchy
independent of the alien Egyptians.6 This view,
however, is scarcely tenable in face of the fact
disclosed in the letters that the Khabiri were not
in the south only but also in the north, as far as
1 Tel el-Amarna Tablets.
2 Zeitschrift des Palaestina- Vereins, p. 133 ff.
3 Expositor, fifth series, vol. v. p. 161 ff.
4 Higher Criticism and the Monuments, p. 175.
s History of Egypt, vol. ii. p. 315 ; Egypt and Syria, p. 65.
8 History, Prophecy, and the Monuments, vol. i. p. 184.

TABLETS FROM SOUTHERN PALESTINE. 183
Sidon and Beyrout and Damascus. We need more
light before Ave can come to a decided opinion.
One is reluctant to give up the view that they
represent in some way or other the Hebrew people.
There are serious difficulties in the chronology,
and in the widespread diffusion of this mysterious
people, which confront us on the assumption that
they are the Israelites. 'But it seems not impos
sible, taking other indications into account, that
they are some body or bodies of Israelites who have
found their way into Palestine and addicted them
selves to a wandering and warlike life before the
nation conquered the land and settled in it under
Joshua. 3. It is, however, the letters from Southern
Palestine that have the greatest interest for the
Bible student. They are mostly Avritten by native
governors, who stand in the relation of vassals to
the Pharaoh. As we read through them Ave come
upon the names of cities and localities which
play a large part in the later history of Israel, as
Gaza, Aijalon, Megiddo, Lachish, Ashkelon, Keilah,
Carmel, Gezer, Zorah, and, most remarkable of all,
Jerusalem itself.
The mention of Lachish is of peculiar interest.
Zimrida, the prince of Lachish, writes to Ameno
phis IV. calling himself " your servant, the dust of
your feet," and acknowledging receipt of the king's
message : " I have heard very well indeed the words
of the messenger of my lord the king, whom he sent
to me. And, verily, I will do according to his
command." In another letter, written by Ebed-
Tob of Jerusalem to Amenophis, the intelligence

184 CANAAN AND ITS NEIGHBOURS.
is conveyed that Zimrida's servants are seeking to
seize him in order to kill him. While Zimrida was
corresponding with his liege lord, the king of Egypt,
it would be the most natural thing in the world
that he, or some one for him, should also be in
correspondence with other local governors and
officers of the king. What has become of such
correspondence ? Professor Sayce has long been of
opinion that in the Tels, or mounds of buried cities
in Palestine, there were archive chambers deep
below the soil where tablets like those of Tel el-
Amarna would one day be found, throwing light
upon the patriarchal history, upon the conquest, or
upon stirring events of later days. The correctness
of his surmise has been verified in the most marvel
lous way at Lachish. In May 1892 one of the
workmen employed by Dr F. J. Bliss, who was
following up the excavations of Professor Flinders
Petrie at Tel el-Hesy, the site of the ancient Lachish,
discovered a tablet upon which cuneiform characters
were apparent. By this time the Tel el-Amarna
collection had been carefully investigated, and when
a comparison was instituted between the Tel el-Hesy
tablet and the tablets from Southern Canaan in the
Tel el-Amarna collection, it was found that it had
all their characteristic features. It was, like them,
of baked clay, dark brown, and nearly flat on both
sides. Its cuneiform characters Avere those in use
in Southern Canaan in the fifteenth century B.C.,
and the grammatical forms Avere found to be identical
with those employed by the scribes who wrote the
letters to the Egyptian kings. The identification
was complete when, on the Tel el-Hesy tablet, there

TABLETS FROM LACHISH. 185
was found the name of Zimrida, the prince of
Lachish, already knoAvn by the Tel el-Amarna cor
respondence. It is addressed to the commander-in-
chief, whose name is possibly Abishiarami, and in
timates that Shipti-Addi and Zimrida had agreed
to call the city to seiwice ; and Shipti-Addi spoke
to Zimrida saying, Abishiarami Avrote to me to
such and such an effect. But for the previous
discovery of the Tel el-Amarna tablets this Avould
have been an arcliEeological puzzle. As things are,
it receives elucidation from the tablets and adds
confirmation to them. There is no reason to doubt
that it is the same Zimrida who is mentioned in
this Tel el-Hesy tablet and in the tablets from
Lachish to the heretic king in the Tel el-Amarna
collection. So that here we have virtually two
different specimens of Zimrida's correspondence —
the letters which found their Avay to his suzerain
hundreds of miles away on the banks of the Nile,
and have been preserved over three thousand years
among his buried archives, and this one letter
addressed to an Egyptian military commander in
the locality, which had been thrown into the debris
of Lachish when it Avas sacked, and now has been
found among the remains of one of the many cities
which had been built in succession on the spot,
and have lately been dug up out of the mound
of Tel el-Hesy. The tablet helped to date the
debris among which it was discovered, and as the
objects found along with it show nothing later than
the 18th dynasty, there was left no reasonable
doubt that it was the city of Lachish over which
Zimrida ruled on behalf of his suzerain, in the

186 CANAAN AND ITS NEIGHBOURS.
century before the Exodus, which the fortunate
explorers had dug up.1
The discovery [as Professor Sayce says] of this document
is one of the most remarkable ever made in archaeological
research. Cuneiform tablets are found in the mounds of an
ancient city in Egypt which prove to be letters from the
governors of Palestine in the fifteenth century before our
era, and among them is a letter of the Governor of Lachish.
Hardly have the letters been published and examined before
the excavations of a distant mound in Palestine, which the
archaeological insight of Dr Petrie had identified with the
site of Lachish, bring to light a cuneiform tablet of the same
age and nature on which the name of the same governor is
mentioned more than once. It is a veritable archaeological
romance.2 Of the Palestine letters, however, the most
interesting and important are those Avritten from
Jerusalem. Until the discovery of the Tel el-
Amarna tablets, Jerusalem had been found men
tioned in the cuneiform inscriptions only in the
records of Sennacherib, many centuries later. From
the tablets we learn that Jerusalem, long before
the days of David or of Joshua, perhaps as far
back as Abraham, their great ancestor, had estab
lished itself among the hills of Canaan as a city
of strength and importance and a spot of sanctity
and renown. Seven of the tablet-letters are from
the goArernor of Jerusalem. In these letters the
Khabiri figure prominently, and Ebed - Tob, the
governor, complains to his liege lord that they
are pressing hard upon him. The tone of Ebed-
Tob is the same as that of the other governors
1 See F. J. Bliss, ' A Mound of Many Cities,' p. 52 ff.
2 Higher Criticism and the Monuments, p. 291 ff.

TABLETS FROM JERUSALEM. 187
who write to the heretic king. Side by side in
some of the cities there existed an Egyptian com
missioner and a native prince, the former standing
in the same relation to the latter that a Besident
occupies to tbe king of a protected native State in
India, whose power would in the circumstances be
merely nominal. Ebed-Tob seems to have occupied
some such position. The commissioner or resident
at Jerusalem has turned a deaf ear to his appeals
and representations; and as, moreover, Ebed-Tob
has been slandered to the Pharaoh as a rebel
against his authority, he seeks directly in this
letter the ear of his suzerain by the banks of
the Nile.
Ebed-Tob's description of his dignity and position
is remarkable. In one letter he says, " I am no
prince, I am a deputy of my lord the king, behold
I am an officer of the king, I am one who brings
tribute to the king. Neither my father nor my
mother, but the strong arm of the king, established
me over my father's territory." This is asserted
in at least three of the Jerusalem letters, and it
appears by this translation, which is Winckler's,1
to mean no more than an acknowledgment of
his indebtedness to the Pharaoh for his dignity.
Professor Sayce reads it differently. He takes it
as implying that, unlike other princes, he obtained
his office not by ordinary inheritance but from the
oracle of the god, who is referred to under the
designation of " The Mighty King." Ebed-Tob of
Jerusalem is thus made to be both a priest and
a king, reminding us of the patesis of the old
1 The Tel el-Amarna Letters, p. 303 ff.

188 CANAAN AND ITS NEIGHBOURS.
Babylonian cities, Avhose office and likeness to that
of Melchizedek we have already described.1 But
this idea of " The Mighty King," however attrac
tive and interesting, has not been upheld by fuller
examination of the tablets, and cannot be main
tained. The letters of Ebed-Tob nevertheless prove
that, before the conquest, Jerusalem had a king of
its own, as it had in Joshua's days : the very name
Uru-Salim in the tablets speaks of " the city of
peace," and thus recalls Melchizedek, king of Salem,
and priest of the Most High God, in Abraham's day.
This very clear and explicit reference to Jerusalem
and its king in the tablets makes us loath to hold
that Melchizedek, king of Salem and priest of the
Most High God, whom we are taught to regard as
a type of Christ in His united kingly and priestly
offices, is the mere fictitious creation of the sacred
chronicler.2 He represents, as we have seen, a
dignity that obtained in the cities of Babylonia back
to the days of early Accadian power and splendour.
We are now in a position briefly to sum up the
testimony of the Tel el-Amarna correspondence.
(1) The situation presented in the Tel el-Amarna
correspondence is in remarkable accord Avith Avhat
we find in Joshua and Judges, and even in Numbers
and Deuteronomy. The tablets tell us, as the Scrip
ture history does, of fenced cities with walls and
fortifications. Among these cities Jerusalem stands
out pre-eminent, bearing already the name given to
it in Joshua (Josh. ix. 1 ; xat. 63 ; xviii. 28), and
1 Records of the Past, second series, vol. v. p. 54 ff.
2 Compare Professor Robertson, ' Poetry and Religion of the Psalms,'
p. 193 ff.

TESTIMONY OF THE CORRESPONDENCE. 189
having a ruler of its oavii. The more important
towns mentioned in the Scripture history appear in
the tablets, — such as Gaza, Gath, Jaffa, Ashke
lon, Lachish, Keilah, Gezer, Shiloh, Tyre, Sidon,
Kadesh. Out of about 150 names of places in
these letters, nearly 100 can be fixed with more
or less certainty under Biblical equivalents. We
find the Amorites, Canaanites, and Hittites in the
tablets as the Amurri, Kinakhkhi, and Khatti.
The war- chariots of the tablets, which are the
chief implement of war possessed by the kings of
the plains, are the same which the Scripture
history describes as the terror of the Israelites
in the times of Joshua and the Judges. Not
only are place-names, which we find again and
again in the Bible, mentioned in the tablets, but
personal names also. Abimilki, king of Tyre,
reminds us of the Scripture Abimelech ; Ben-ana
of Benoni ; Bin-inima of Benjamin ; Natan-Addu of
Nathanael. We cannot read these authentic docu
ments of the times of the conquest of Canaan
without having our sense of the historic truth of
the Books of Moses and Joshua and Judges greatly
strengthened. (2) The Tel el-Amarna correspondence shows,
as we have already indicated, the prevalence of
Babylonian influence and culture from the Eu
phrates to the Nile, and over all the vast region
between. We have seen that mythological texts
from Babylonia were used as exercises in the study
of the cuneiform character by the scribes in the
Foreign Office of Amenophis III. and his son. And
this leads to another remark. Not merely is the

190 CANAAN AND ITS NEIGHBOURS.
vast range covered by this Babylonian tongue re
markable, like the diplomatic French or the ecclesi
astical Latin covering Europe at different periods,
but the facility with which the extremely difficult
cuneiform was written, and the fact that the letters
found in the archives of the Pharaoh were written
not by professional scribes alone, but by officials
and military commanders and others, seem to in
dicate that there must have been numerous schools
and teachers of it. Professor Sayce does not
exaggerate when he says : —
Canaan was the country in which the two streams of
Babylonian and Egyptian culture met together, and we now
know that Canaan was the centre of that literary activity
which the Tel el-Amarna tablets have revealed to us.
Canaan in the age of the 18th dynasty was emphatically
the land of scribes and letter-writers. If libraries existed
anywhere in Western Asia, they would surely have done
so in the cities of Canaan. One of those cities, Kirjath-
Sepher, or Book-Town, is mentioned in the Old Testament.
It was also called Kirjath Sannah, or City of Instruction,
doubtless from the school which was attached to its library.
The site of it is unfortunately lost. Should it ever be
recovered, we may expect to find beneath it literary treasures
similar to those which the mounds of Assyria and Babylonia
have yielded. Perhaps some day the papyri of Egypt will
tell us where to look for it.
(3) The tablets furnish proof that writing was
at that time established in Canaan. The Syrian
kings who wished to enter into matrimonial alliance
with the kings of Egypt send inventories of the
presents that accompany their daughters, entering
even into minute detail. No wonder, then, if we
meet with similar inventories and lists in the Books

TESTIMONY OF THE CORRESPONDENCE. 191
of Moses and Joshua. Coming from a country
where writing was copiously practised, and settling
in a country where it Avas scarcely less knoAvn, Avere
Moses and Joshua utterly ignorant of the art ?
It is far easier of belief that the Children of Israel
brought with them into Canaan their written law
as they received it in the wilderness from the hands
of their Almighty King himself.
(4) It is interesting in this connection to notice,.
Avhat Zimmern has pointed out,1 that the Baby
lonian employed by these Palestine governors,
though written so extensively, is not their mother-
tongue. That is clear from the letters themselves.
The writers repeatedly employ native Canaanitish
glosses to explain Babylonian forms of expression,
and these glosses are found to be identical with
the Hebrew. The letters thus prove, Avhat had long
been matter of surmise, that the language of the
Canaanites before the occupation by the Israelites
was essentially identical with the Hebrew. One
character, one system of writing, was in use, how
ever, for the Babylonian and the native language
as well ; and it is significant, and opens up a field
of inquiry upon which we cannot here enter, that
there is as yet no appearance of the so-called
Phoenician alphabet in the fifteenth century before
Christ. (5) Further, we obtain from the letters valuable
indications of the religion of Canaan and its neigh
bouring peoples, and of the civilisations prevailing
in the countries from which they were written.
In the correspondence of Bib-Addi there are fre-
1 Zeitschrift des Palaestina- Vereins, 1891, p. 133 ff.

192 CANAAN AND ITS NEIGHBOURS.
quent references to ships. We read even then of
Lycian pirates, showing that in these early days
Sidon and Beyrout were commercial centres and
seaports. There are orders given that the Customs
officers shall not interfere Avith the king's friends.
Tyre is spoken of as a place of strength. Abi-Milki
of Tyre speaks of five talents of copper as given to
" my lord the king." The king of Alashia in Cyprus
sends a messenger to the king of Egypt with a
hundred talents of copper. There is said to be
abundance of gold and silver in the temple of the
gods. Dushratta sends to his sister, the queen of
Amenophis III., a pair of breast ornaments of gold,
a pair of earrings of gold, a mash-hu of gold, and a
jar of oil. On another occasion he sent a gold
goblet set with lazuli, a necklace of twenty lazuli
beads and nineteen of gold, and besides other
articles of jewellery, ten pairs of horses, ten chariots
of wood, and thirty women. When we hear of such
ornaments, and consider the facilities for trade and
commerce between Canaan and the river-lands on
either side, we see how natural it is that among
the spoils of Jericho there should have been that
wedge of gold fifty shekels' weight, and the hundred
shekels of silver, and the goodly Babylonish gar
ment which attracted the covetous eyes of Achan,
and through his sin brought trouble upon the whole
camp of Israel.
We have seen Babylonian influence paramount in
those regions ; then that influence giving way before
Egyptian influence and the rule of Thothmes III. ;
and lastly, Egyptian influence in its turn on the
wane. Into the weakness thus manifested, recent

THE HITTITES. 193
discovery enables us to see a neAv poAver pressing
and asserting itself, and that power we must now
consider for a little. This Avas no other than
the wonderful Hittite people, — a people known
to us from the Bible by that name, known from
Egyptian records as Khita, from the Tel el-Amarna
tablets as Khatti, and from later Assyrian annals
as Khattukhi, who were found in the second mil
lennium in scattered settlements in Palestine, but
whose empire covered the whole of that ancient
cradle of humanity, Asia Minor, and brought them
into the closest contact with the Greek races in
the early Mycenean and Trojan period, when the
Greek civilisation was coming to its birth. It is
now clear that the famous lions of Mycenae were
borrowed from the Hittites. The pottery of Cyprus
and the Trojan plain has upon it a Hittite impress.
The two-headed eagle of the Hittites, which had
been the emblem of the very early Babylonian
kings of Lagash, two thousand years before the
period of which we speak, survives, by a descent
which can be clearly traced, as the symbol of
imperial power in Austria and Bussia to-day, for
it is to be seen figured on the coins and postage-
stamps of the Emperor and the Czar. Surely a
wonderful survival of two empires which had dis
appeared not only from the kingdoms of the earth,
but from the records of history, to be recovered and
set fairly in their place among the nations by the
research of the last quarter of a century !
The Tel el-Amarna tablets give us instructive
notices of the Hittite people, who were then ap
parently approaching the zenith of their power.
N

194 CANAAN AND ITS NEIGHBOURS.
We have just seen how largely they bulk in that
correspondence, and what a leading place they held
in the combination of peoples who joined together
in the days of Amenophis IV. to drive out the
Egyptian garrisons and to overthrow Egyptian
sovereignty and rule. One of the most interesting
references to them in this correspondence is when
Akizzi of Katna, believed by Winckler to be Emesa
or Hamath, writes to Amenophis III., pleading for
assistance in the form of troops to protect Nahassi
from Aziru and the Hittites. He tells how the
king of Khatti had burned and plundered in his
land, and how Aziru had captured Katna and made
slaves of its inhabitants. The king of Khatti,
among his other exploits, had carried off a statue
of Shamash, the Sun -god, adorned with the in
scription of the king of Egypt. It is clear that
at this juncture the king of the Khatti divided
the allegiance of those princes and governors with
the king of Egypt, and there are distinct indi
cations of the power and influence of this people
in those regions at that period.
But these indications give no adequate idea of
the widespread extent of this remarkable people.
Even yet the story of the Hittite empire cannot be
fully told, for the language of the Hittites has, up
till now, baffled the ingenuity of scholars. It is
only by such mute signs as artistic figures and
pictorial representations accompanying inscriptions
that this dumb giant of antiquity can tell anything
of his past. A considerable number of inscriptions
have been found and copied, Hittite seals have been
discovered, and there are in existence facsimiles

THE HITTITES. 195
of a silver boss containing an inscription both in
Hittite and Assyrian. As Ave have already noted,
a letter from the king of the Khatti to Amenophis
IV. comprised in the Tel el-Amarna correspondence
is written in the cuneiform character, though the
language has not been made out, but may be pre
sumed to be Hittite. The Hittite chiefs generally
were accustomed to employ the cuneiform character
for their foreign correspondence, and they had by
them for this purpose a host of scribes, interpreters,
and official registrars of events, such as we find fol
lowing the kings of Babylonia and Assyria on their
campaigns. When more inscriptions are found there
will be more material for scholars to work upon. At
least some progress has been made with the decipher
ment and interpretation of the inscriptions ; and
whether the hypothesis of Jensen of Marburg that
the Hittites are the ancestors of the modern Armen
ians find acceptance or not, the same genius which
triumphed over the difficulties of Egyptian hiero
glyphics and Babylonian cuneiform may be expected
before long to read to us also the strange characters
in which the Hittites have recorded their annals.1
It is only within the last quarter of a century
that the resurrection of this vanished but wide
spread and highly developed people has been
brought about. One of the first things Avhich led
to the restoration of the old Hittite empire to its
place in history was the interest aroused by the
1 In Colonel Conder's ' The Hittites and their Language ' (W. Black
wood & Sons, Edinburgh, 1898) there are sixteen plates containing
facsimiles of the Hittite inscriptions yet known, and a helpful Appen
dix on "The Hittite Texts."

196 CANAAN AND ITS NEIGHBOURS.
inscribed stones of Hamath in Syria. They had
been observed by the traveller Burckhardt in 1812,
but from that date to 1870 no notice of them had
been published. In that year the American Consul-
General at Beyrout, in company with Dr Jessup,
lighted upon them, and published a copy of one
of them. Squeezes and photographs had been
obtained by other explorers, when in 1872 the
Turkish Governor of Syria, at the suggestion of
Mr W. Kirby Green, British Consul at Damascus,
and the Bev. Dr Wm. Wright, then a missionary
at Damascus, now editorial secretary to the British
and Foreign Bible Society, took possession of the
stones, and had them transferred to the Imperial
Ottoman Museum at Constantinople, where they
are now to be seen. When carefully examined,
the inscriptions were found to be different from
any that were yet known ; and Dr Wright, whose
' Empire of the Hittites ' was the earliest authority
on the subject, declared they were Hittite. Pro
fessor Sayce independently threw out the same
conjecture, and when similar inscriptions were
found in the ruins of the old Hittite city of
Carchemish, it was greatly strengthened. Other
monuments discovered in various parts of Asia
Minor were found to be covered with similar in
scriptions, and the presumption of their Hittite
origin was further heightened. On visiting the
sculptured figures in the pass of Karabel, not
far from Smyrna, in which Herodotus had seen
an image of Sesostris — that is, Barneses II. — the
great antagonist of the Hittites, Professor Sayce
found that the characters were all Hittite forms.

THE HITTITES. 197
Hittite inscriptions have since been discovered [says
Professor Sayce] attached to another archaic monument
of Lydia, the sitting figure of the great goddess of Car
chemish, carved out of the rocks of Mount Sipylos, which
the Greeks fancied was the Niobe of their mythology as
far back as the age of Homer ; and similar inscriptions
also exist at Boghaz Keui, and Eyak in Cappadocia, as well
as near Ivris in Lycaonia. Others have been discovered
in various parts of Cappadocia, and in the Taurus range of
mountains ; while a silver boss which bears a precious in
scription both in Hittite hieroglyphics and in cuneiform
characters, seems to belong to Cilicia. In fact, there is now
abundant evidence that the Hittites once held dominion
throughout the greater portion of Asia Minor, so that we
need no longer feel surprise at their being able to call Trojans
and Lydians to their aid in their war against Egypt.1
At Aintab and Marash Hittite remains have
been discovered, and scattered Hittite sculptures
have been found in a great number of other places.
Although the inscriptions cannot yet be read, the
sculptured figures accompanying them on the
Hittite monuments exhibit the same peculiarities
of physiognomy and dress as the pictorial repre
sentations of Hittites by Egyptian artists, and this
removes all doubt as to the identification of these
remains with the historic Hittite people.
As to their religion, we gather from Egyptian
and Assyrian records that they reverenced a
number of secondary divinities who had their abode
in the tempest, in the clouds, the sea, the rivers,
the springs, the mountains, and the forests. Above
these were sovereign divinities, but these divinities,
whether sovereign or secondary, were all of a savage
1 Fresh Light, pp. 90, 91.

198 CANAAN AND ITS NEIGHBOURS.
character. The name of one god, called Khepa,
seems to appear in the names of the Syrian prin
cesses Tadu-khlpa, Gilukhipa, and Puakhipa, — Khepa
being supposed to be a designation of the Baby
lonian storm-god Bamman. They had a religion
of cruel rites, a compact political organisation,
an effective military system, and chariots of a
style and make all their own. As we see them
on their sculptured stones they were thick-set and
short of limb ; and the Egyptian artists have painted
them without beards, with dark hair, with a yellow
complexion, and with turned-up boots. They had
not a little in common with the Huns of Northern
Europe in their appearance ; their hair arranged in
three plaited tails, and their yellow skins have sug
gested a Mongolian origin, but this is one of the
points which is still in dispute. Professor Campbell
of Montreal, who has made an exhaustive study of
this marvellous people, has traced them through the
East to Japan, and across the American continent,
where they appear as the mound - builders, the
Huron -Iroquois, and the Aztecs, while he thinks
they crop out also in the Basques of Spain and
the Etruscans of Italy. These ramifications are
undoubtedly hypothetical ; but in their palmy days,
when they occupied as an independent people the
cities of Kadesh, Hamath, Aleppo, Marash, and
Carchemish, they were a powerful race. And
we have good ground for believing1 that from the
Nile to the Euphrates, from the hills of Southern
Canaan to the mountains of the Taurus range, they
fulfilled the part of a great military people, and had
1 Sayce, The Hittites : The Story of a forgotten Empire.

THE HITTITES. 199
made considerable attainments in civilisation and
the arts.
Till their own inscriptions are made to tell
directly the story of the Hittites we have to rely
for information upon what we may call, with re
ference to them, foreign sources. The Hebrew
Scriptures, Egyptian records, and Assyrian annals,
all have something to add to what we can gather
from their own monuments of this people with
whom Hebrews, Egyptians, Assyrians, and Greeks
were brought into relation.
When we turn to the Hebrew Scriptures to as
certain what they have to tell of the Hittites, the
references to their scattered settlements in Canaan
and Northern Syria, though giving but a very
inadequate idea of the strength of the Hittite
people at the zenith of their power, are in perfect
accordance with the fuller knowledge of them we
now possess, and fit in perfectly into the larger
framework of their history as reconstructed by
recent research. In Genesis, in the famous ethno
graphical table (Gen. x. 15), we read that Canaan
begat Heth. The Hittites, with the Amorites, the
Canaanites, and the Jebusites, and other peoples,
are given in covenant to Abraham and his seed
(Gen. xv. 20). It was from Ephron the Hittite,
as we are told in one of the most touching chapters
of Holy Writ (Gen. xxiii.), that Abraham purchased
Machpelah with its cave to bury his dead out of
sight. It is eminently characteristic of what we
learn concerning the Hittites of a later day, when
the merchants of Carchemish were famous, and the
mina or shekel of Carchemish was as well known

200 CANAAN AND ITS NEIGHBOURS.
in the regions of the Euphrates as the English
sovereign or the French napoleon is in Europe
now, that we should have detailed to us the
business aspect of that purchase, when Abraham
"weighed to Ephron the silver, which he had
named in the audience of the sons of Heth, four
hundred shekels of silver, current money with the
merchant." Those Hittites of Hebron were an
offshoot of the main body, who likely had their
home by the Euphrates, but moved westwards and
southwards, and settled along the Syrian Orontes.
This branch had taken up their abode among the
hills of Southern Canaan, where Kirjath - Sepher,
known also as Debir, was one of their cities. Be-
bekah feared that Jacob would take a wife of the
daughters of Heth (Gen. xxvii. 46), and Esau
actually took to wife two daughters of the Hittites,
Judith and Bashemath, " which were a grief of mind
unto Isaac and to Bebekah " (Gen. xxvi. 35). The
Hittites are specially associated with the Amorites
as inhabitants of the mountain country of Judah,
the Amorites being tall and handsome, the Hittites
thick-set and ugly. It would seem as if it were
this old relationship which Ezekiel recalls (Ezek.
xvi. 3, 45) when he upbraids Jerusalem with her
abominations, and says, " The Amorite was thy
father, and thy mother was a Hittite." When the
spies who searched out the land returned to Moses
at Kadesh-Barnea, they reported that " the Hittites,
and the Jebusites, and the Amorites, dwell in the
mountains " ; and when Joshua conquered the land,
the Hittites were among the peoples defeated and
reduced to subjection. Those not destroyed either

THE HITTITES. 201
retired or mingled with the conquerors, their for
tunes being by this time largely independent of
the parent stock in Northern Syria and Asia Minor.
That they were not wholly exterminated is clear
from the fact that David had among his mighty
men Hittite warriors ; while Bathsheba, the mother
of Solomon, was the wife of Uriah the Hittite.
Solomon had business dealings with them (1 Kings
x. 29), and took from among them women for his
harem. At a later time, when God had sent a
panic upon the camp of the Syrians before Samaria,
their thought was that " the king of Israel had
hired against them the kings of the Hittites, and
the kings of the Egyptians " (2 Kings vii. 6). This
reference seems to imply that the Hittites were a
strong people, having a confederacy of cities, and
dwelling outside the border of Canaan. We have a
suggestion of the northern Hittites when we read
that the man who betrayed the city of Luz to the
Ephraimites (Judges i. 26) went " into the land
of the Hittites." A reasonable amendment of
the Hebrew text of Judges (iii. 3) from Hivites
to Hittites as inhabitants of Mount Lebanon gives
us another glimpse of Hittite settlements in the
north ; and another amendment (2 Sam. xxiv. 6)
brings the northern Hittites into view ; for the
meaningless expression Tahtim Hodshi ought almost
certainly to read Khittim Hodshi, tbe perfectly
intelligible Hittites of Kadesh, — Kadesh on the
Orontes being one of their chief settlements. It
is significant that the Hittites named as resid
ing in Mount Lebanon are mentioned after the
Sidonians, which is a collective name for the

202 CANAAN AND ITS NEIGHBOURS.
Phoenicians, and that the Hittites, from whom
Solomon took strange wives, are mentioned in the
same way. Besides Kadesh three other Hittite
cities are now known to be mentioned in Scripture
— Carchemish on the Euphrates, smitten by Nebu
chadnezzar (2 Chron. xxxv. 20 ; Jer. xlvi. 2) in the
struggle between him and Pharaoh-Necho for the
supremacy of Western Asia ; Hamath, mentioned
repeatedly as one of the northern gateways of
Palestine ; and Pethor, the city of Balaam, not
far from Carchemish.
It is from the Egyptian annals, however, that
we learn most surely the greatness of the Hittite
people. Long before the Exodus we find Thothmes
I. and Thothmes III. in conflict with the Hittites,
the Khita of the Egyptian monuments. Egyptian
records carry the student often to the Orontes
valley, where the powerful race of Khita had their
principal settlement. They occupied the regions
north-east of Syria, and, later, Syria itself during
the 18th and 19th dynasties. In the great battle of
Megiddo, Thothmes III. encountered the assembled
chiefs of Syria with their forces under the leader
ship of the prince of Kadesh, called in his annals
"the vile enemy Kadeshu"; but it is not till ten
years later that we read of the Khita paying tribute
to the Pharaoh. That Thothmes reached " the land
of Carchemish," and that he captured and plundered
Kadesh, we know from his copious annals and from
the inscription of his general Amen-em-heb. Amen
ophis III., as we have seen, entered into matri
monial relations with the king of Mitanni, whom
there is reason to believe to have been a Hit-

THE HITTITES. 203
tite, and in that case the heretic king Khu-en-
Aten was the offspring of a Hittite mother. The
Hittites are shown to have had constant com
mercial relations with Egypt, and supplied the
Egyptians with cattle, chariots, and the splendid
Cappadocian horses, whose breed was celebrated
down to the Greek period. Seti I., the founder
of the 19th dynasty, met the Khita in a battle,
which must have been inconclusive, seeing that
hostilities ended in a treaty between him and the
Hittite king. The renowned "Poem of Pentaur"
recounts the prowess of Barneses II. in battle
against the Hittites at Kadesh ; and pictorial rep
resentations on the temples of Karnak and Abu
Simbel show the Hittites driven into the Orontes
and drowned. But the campaign of Barneses II.
against them left the Hittites in possession of their
territory, and before many years Barneses and the
Khita king entered into a treaty and alliance.
One of the most famous documents of antiquity,
which the English reader can peruse in the : Becords
of the Past' (vol. iv.), is the treaty which we have
mentioned between Barneses II. and the Khita
king, with terms of alliance and extradition clauses
like any treaty negotiated between civilised nations
of to-day. The alliance was ratified by the marriage
of Barneses II. to the eldest daughter of the Khita
king, who visited his illustrious son-in-law in Egypt
soon after, the treaty having been recorded in the
two languages, on the temple wall of Karnak,
in Egyptian hieroglyphic, and on a silver plate in
the Hittite character. This might well have shown
the world the greatness of the Hittite people, who,

204 CANAAN AND ITS NEIGHBOURS.
though only dimly reA-ealed by the fragments of
their history recovered up to very recent times,
were able to hold their own with the Pharaohs, and
treat with them on such equal terms in the days of
their greatest power. The peace thus negotiated
and ratified lasted into the 20th dynasty, when a
confederacy of northern nations, whom the Khita
had joined, tried conclusions unsuccessfully with
Barneses III., and the Khita king was taken alive.
But it was not the Egyptians who gave the finish
ing stroke to the Hittite people : that was left for
the Assyrians some centuries later.
Singularly enough, it is in the cuneiform records
of Babylonia that we find the earliest mention of
the Hittites. In an astrological tablet of Sargon of
Accad we find the words : " On the twentieth day
an eclipse occurs. The king of the land Khatti
attacks and seizes the throne." Considering that
Sargon is now known from contemporary inscriptions
to have penetrated into Syria and subjugated, as he
puts it, "the four quarters ofthe world," it will not
do to discard this reference off-hand as an inter
polation. True, the reference carries us back as
far as 3800 B.C., but even at that remote period
the Khatti may have begun their career as a people.
It is only towards the end of the twelfth century
before Christ, in the reign of Tiglath-pileser I.
(1120-1100 B.C.), that we learn anything definite
about the Hittites from the records of their Eastern
neighbours. Tiglath-pileser knows them as formid
able enemies. He found them in Commagene and
Cappadocia, and fought Avith them again and again,
though he refrained from attacking them in their

THE HITTITES. 205
southern capital at Carchemish. For some hun
dreds of years they held their OAvn against the
kings of Assyria, who had taken the place of the
old Babylonian rulers, and though their territory
was diminished they seem to have retained not a
little of their former greatness. When they were
of less account as a military power they attained
considerable repute in art and in commerce. In
717 B.C. Carchemish fell before Sargon of Assyria,
and Hittite power was broken for ever. After the
time of Esarhaddon, his grandson, the very name of
Khatti vanishes from the records of Assyria and
from the history of nations.
There is still a good deal to be learned regarding
this interesting and highly deA^eloped people, when
their inscriptions are made to yield up their secret
as the Egyptian and the Assyrian have done.
What is needed for this is texts of some length,
and especially a bilingual text of sufficient length
to afford scope for comparison, as in the Bosetta
stone and the Behistun inscription. These may be
•found in ancient mounds not yet excavated and
examined. Only one Hittite mound, thus far, has
been examined with any care, that at Sinjirli,
which occupies the site of the ancient Hittite
city of Shama'l. The inscriptions found there are
Aramaean of the eighth century before Christ,
and are in raised letters after the style of the
Hittite writing. Older representations, we are
told, — apparently five hundred years older, — are
found with the physiognomy wonderfully resem
bling the Egyptian figures of Hittites in the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Sinjirli has

206 CANAAN AND ITS NEIGHBOURS.
furnished us with inscriptions in the old Hittite
and the later Assyrian and Aramaean, and it
may, when more fully explored, yield up further
materials to enable scholars like Sayce and Jensen
and Conder to attain the sure interpretation of the
Hittite characters.
We have mentioned the influence of Hittite art
upon Greece. It is not improbable that further
research into the history of the Hittites may throw
light upon the beginnings of Grecian culture and
art ; for great as was the originality of Greek art
and poetry and political life, we now know that
some of its elements were derived from the original
and vigorous Hittite people.1 The Hittites were a
mediating influence between Babylonia and Assyria,
Egypt, Greece, and Europe. We have seen that
they can claim an antiquity far beyond the family
of Abraham. We have seen that they had an im
portant influence upon the nascent art and culture
of Greece, and that products of Hittite art survive
in the national emblems of some of the greatest
European Powers. Moreover, when we remember
that Hittites were the friends of Abraham and the
loyal soldiers of David, and that a Hittite woman
was possibly the mother of Solomon, and, if so,
the ancestress of our blessed Lord, we must feel a
deep interest in their resurrection and restoration
to a place in ancient history.
1 Dr Percy Gardner, New Chapters in Greek History, p. 40.

207

LECTUBE VI.
THE CONQUEST OF CANAAN AND THE EARLIER
TIMES OF THE HEBREW MONARCHY.
When the Children of Israel crossed the Jordan
under Joshua opposite the city of Jericho, and
undertook the conquest of Canaan, they had before
them a task Avhich was calculated to test to the
uttermost their military capacity as well as their
solidarity as a nation. There is no warrant what
ever either in the circumstances or in the Scripture
history for Stade's theory of Israel's invasion of
Western Palestine.1 Upon this theory we are
asked to believe that the Israelites abode for a
considerable time in the country east of the Jordan
till, having increased in numbers and requiring
additional territory to accommodate them, they
crossed the Jordan peacefully in detachments, clan
by clan, and acquired land not by war but by
purchase or treaty. It was not opposite Jericho,
according to Stade, that the crossing was made,
but at the fords of Jabbok ; and Joshua was not
a real person, but merely the personification of
the tribe of Ephraim, which took the lead. Pro-
1 Geschichte des Volkes Israel, vol. i. p. 133 ff.

208 CONQUEST OF CANAAN.
fessor G. A. Smith has carefully examined this
theory and refuted it at every point.1,
A point upon Avhich Stade lays stress is that
the Canaanites were too strong for Israel to have
conquered the land by force of arms, as they are
represented to have done. But whatever the nat
ural strength of the peoples inhabiting Palestine,
we gather from extra-Biblical sources that the time
and the circumstances of the Israelitish invasion
were distinctly favourable. The Hittites had been
exhausted by the wars they had carried on against
Egypt, and were already on the decline. Early
in the reign of Merenptah, whom we haATe assumed
to be the Pharaoh of the Exodus, Egypt was in
vaded by strangers from the coasts and islands
of the Mediterranean. While Egypt was the goal
of their enterprise they first attacked Syria and
Palestine, where they still further reduced the
Hittite power, and devastated the flourishing com
munities of the Canaanites, helping to bring about
that condition of anarchy in which the Israelites
found the Canaanitish tribes. In the reign of
Barneses III., when the Israelites were presumably
already in the wilderness, there was a repetition
on a large scale of this invasion by confederated
Mediterranean peoples.2 We see in these circum
stances how the Canaanitish tribes had been
weakened to a point at which combined resistance
of the invading Israelites could not be successfully
attempted.
1 Historical Geography of the Holy Land, pp. 659-662.
2 M'Curdy, History, Prophecy, and the Monuments, vol. i. p. 204.
Cf. Sayce, Higher Criticism and the Monuments, p. 299 ff.

POLITICAL CONDITIONS. 209
We see also that by the time of the conquest
Egyptian suzerainty had ceased, and the garri
son of Egyptian troops, which from the time of
Thothmes III. had held important positions in the
country, had been withdrawn. It was accordingly
with the tribes of Canaan, without any foreign
allies, that the Israelites had to reckon when they
crossed the Jordan and entered upon the conquest
of the land. And nothing is more marked, whether
in the Biblical or extra-Biblical accounts, than the
disunited condition of these peoples. The annals
of Thothmes III., two centuries before the Exodus
as we reckon, give some hundreds of place-names
in Northern Syria and Palestine which that great
conqueror had engraved on the walls of the temple
of Amen at Karnak. From these place-names 1 we
gather that every town and almost every village
had its petty king, just as we see in Numbers,
Joshua, and Judges. In the Tel el-Amarna tablets
we have already noted,2 apart from Egyptian
suzerainty and its symbols, very much the same
social conditions. We find a number of petty
princes, called in the Scripture story kings, and
taking their royal titles from the cities over which
they rule, entering into confederacies or waging
war with one another. We have found in the
newly entered country a multitude of such cities
and towns fortified to resist and to hold out as
long as possible against the invader. The more
important cities mentioned in the Scripture nar-
1 See " The Lists of the Places in Northern Syria and Palestine
conquered by Thothmes III.," by the Rev. H. G. Tomkins, in 'Records
of the Past,' second series, vol. v. p. 25 ff.
2 See above, p. 188 ff.

210 CONQUEST OF CANAAN.
rative are also mentioned in the tablets — Gaza,
Gath, Jaffa, Ashkelon, Lachish, Keilah, Makkedah,
Aijalon, Gezer, Shiloh, Tyre, Sidon, Kadesh, Ash-
taroth, Jabesh - Gilead.1 In fact, it is almost a
repetition of the tablets when we read in the Book
of Joshua (x. 1-5) —
Now it came to pass, when Adonizedek king of Jerusalem
had heard how Joshua had taken Ai, and had utterly de
stroyed it ; as he had done to Jericho and her king, so he
had done to Ai and her king; and how the inhabitants
of Gibeon had made peace with Israel, and were among
them. . . . Wherefore Adonizedek king of Jerusalem sent
unto Hoham king of Hebron, and unto Piram king of
Jarmuth, and unto Japhia king of Lachish, and unto Debir
king of Eglon, saying, Come up unto me, and help me, that
we may smite Gibeon. . . . Therefore the five kings of the
Amorites, the king of Jerusalem, the king of Hebron, the
king of Jarmuth, the, king of Lachish, the king of Eglon,
gathered themselves together, and went up, they and all
their hosts, and encamped before Gibeon, and made war
against it.
We know how Joshua went to the aid of the
Gibeonites, and in the battle of Bethhoron, on
that long day when the sun stood still upon
Gibeon, and the moon in the valley of Aijalon,
discomfited the Amorite allies, becoming master
thereby of " all the country of the hills, and of
the south, and of the vale, and of the springs."
The Biblical narrative of the conquest of the land
by the Israelites is strongly supported and con
firmed by the revelations of Tel el-Amarna, and
the fuller history we now possess of the people
of Canaan.
1 Vogel, Der Fund von Tell-Amarna und die Bibel, pp. 38, 39.

ANCIENT LACHISH. 211
Of the ancient Amorite fortresses Lachish has
the most interesting literary history. Situated in
Avhat is now the Wady el-Hesy, the first of the
valleys of the Shephelah which the road from
Egypt strikes, Lachish was now an outpost of
Egypt and now a frontier fortress of Syria.1 In
the Tel el-Amarna letters we have seen it in Egyp
tian hands with a governor, Zimrida. At a later
time Lachish was one of the cities which Behoboam
fortified to protect Judah from Egyptian invasion.
In the campaign of Sennacherib against Egypt
and the west, Lachish was a point of great im
portance, as we shall see again. At a much later
time, during the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem,
Um Lakhis was a position of great strategical
importance. War and commerce [says Professor G. A. Smith] both
swept past her. But this enables us to understand her
neighbour Micah's word about her. In his day Judah's sin
was to lean on Egypt, and to accept Egyptian subsidies of
horses and chariots. So Micah mocks Lachish, playing on
the assonance of her name to that for a horse : " Yoke the
waggon to the steed, 0 inhabitress of Lachish ; beginning of
sin is she to the daughter of Zion, for in thee are found the
transgressions of Israel " (Micah i. 13).
The ancient Lachish, as we have seen, has been
discovered buried in that " mound of many cities "
which has been explored by Professor Flinders
Petrie and Dr Bliss.2 By their excavations eight
mutually exclusive occupations of the site were
1 Prof. G. A. Smith, Historical Geography, p. 234.
2 A Mound of Many Cities, or Tel el-Hesy Excavated. By Frederick
Jones Bliss, M.A., 1894.

212 CONQUEST OF CANAAN.
definitely ascertained, each determined by its own
objects and special contents, and by the study of
the dateable objects approximate dates have been
assigned with strong probability to the different
occupations. Professor Flinders Petrie and Dr
Bliss agree in thinking that Lachish was occupied
between the seventeenth and the fifth centuries
before Christ. In the various cities, disentangled
from an apparently formless mass of rubbish, were
found storehouses, ovens, wine - presses, a public
hall, private dwellings, a smelting- furnace, and,
most precious of all, that tablet in cuneiform
belonging to the time of the Tel el-Amarna cor
respondence, and now included in it. As only
one-third of the Tel was excavated, who can say
what treasure-trove of ancient archives may be
awaiting the excavator in the remaining two-
thirds ? It is a remarkable fact that the earliest
of the eight successive towns, built the one over
the other in the course of centuries — viz., that
resting upon the clay of the original plateau —
was found to be of great strength, with mighty
fortifications and lofty walls, reminding us of the
report brought back to Moses by the twelve men
sent to spy out the land : " The people be strong
that dwell in the land, and the cities are walled
and very great" (Num. xiii. 28).
The facts obtained by the excavation of Tel el-
Hesy are very remarkable.
The place [says Dr Bliss J] was a stronghold of the Canaan
ites long before the Hebrews had left Egypt. Lying as it did

1 A Mound of Many Cities, p. 143.

GILGAL. 213
almost directly in the line of march northward, it was in the
path of the 18th-dynasty conquerors, and perhaps the destruc
tion of the tower of the earliest City was due to an attack of
Thothmes I. One of its cities undoubtedly fell a prey to
Joshua ; the reader may choose the Third City, if he holds
to the old chronology which places the Israelitish Conquest
in 1451 B.C.; or, if he follows the later fashion of placing
the Exodus under Merenptah, he may ascribe the razing
of the large building in the Fourth City to the fierce attack
of the Hebrews. We may further assume that either the
Fourth or the Fifth City saw the glory of the kingdom of
Judah, while Cities Sixth and Eighth were contemporary
with the decay of power, the overthrow, the Captivity, and
the Return.
It surely gives a profound impression of the reality
of the conquest under Joshua when we can, with
even this measure of certainty, point to the
blackened ruins of a city which he sacked (Josh.
x. 31, 32).
While such testimony has come through exca
vation in the south-west of the land to the his
torical character of the Book of Joshua, testimony
not less valuable is to hand from the Jordan
Plain. Gilgal remained for long an undiscovered
site, but in the course of the Palestine Survey it
was found at the modern Jiljulieh, marked by a
number of small mounds. In the summer of 1894
Dr Bliss spent some time in excavating the Tel
es-Sultan, well known to visitors to the Jordan
valley from its proximity to the clear and limpid,
but almost lukewarm, fountain of Elisha, Ain es-
Sultan. The Tel has long been recognised as
covering the site of Jericho, and Dr Bliss re
covered from it some of the oldest or Amorite

214 EARLIER TIMES OF HEBREW MONARCHY.
pottery representing a time earlier than the Israel
itish invasion.
In the cuttings [he says] I was able to recognise mud-brick
walls at various levels, which proved to me that here were
superimposed cities as at my own Tell. Near the base, close
by the bubbling fountain, a hole has been recently scooped
out, for I know not what purpose, revealing a mud-brick
wall. When it is remembered that in all probability Tell
es-Sultan is on the site of the ancient Jericho, that this wall
had a hundred feet of debris on top of it, that this d&jris may
be proved by analogy to represent perhaps a dozen later
occupations, shall I be accused of rashness when I confess
to the belief that this may be the wall which fell before the
eyes of Joshua, the son of Nun ? x
We cannot tarry over the early struggles of the
Israelites to retain possession of the land, as these
are described in the Book of Judges. Beligious
declension and social disintegration are the most
prominent characteristics of the period, although
the unity of the nation as the people of Jehovah,
and the worship of Jehovah as the God of Israel,
were never wholly lost sight of. The period is
obscure, and although exploration has cast light
upon some passages, there are questions of history
and chronology which cannot yet be said to be
settled. We hasten omvards to the times of the
Hebrew monarchy, when Jerusalem becomes the
theatre of events which stand out more clearly in
the light of Palestine exploration, and of the re
cently discovered annals of Assyria.
Jerusalem might well be the scene of thorough
1 Recent Research in Bible Lands, p. 41. See also ' Quarterly
Statement of Palestine Exploration Fund,' July 1894 ; and Sir J. W.
Dawson's 'Egypt and Syria,' pp. 132-136.

THE CITY OF JERUSALEM. 215
and enthusiastic exploration. It is the sacred
city of the world. To Christian, Jew, and
Mohammedan it is a place of yearly pilgrimage ;
and it is one of the most venerable cities upon
earth. We have noticed the references to it in
the Tel el-Amarna tablets, showing that it was a
city with a king before the conquest of Canaan, and
justifying the belief that it flourished in the days
of Abraham and Melchizedek, as we are taught in
Scripture history. No city of the world has had
such checkered annals. From that first recorded
siege, when it was taken by the men of Judah
after the death of Joshua (Judges i. 8), to the last,
when it Avas sacked by the wild Charezmians
from the Caspian in the days succeeding the
Crusades, it stood seven-and-twenty sieges. Mel
chizedek, Solomon, Nehemiah, Herod, Hadrian,
Constantine, Omar, Godfrey, Saladin, Suleiman,
are names which, each in turn, represent a new
city. Jerusalem is a mountain city. From the
Mediterranean the traveller climbs steadily up
wards, crossing ridge after ridge like so many
lines of circumvallation, until, when he reaches
Jerusalem, some thirty - six miles from Jaffa, he
has gained a height of 2500 feet. It is these
lines of circumjacent hills, formidable barriers to
an invading host, that explain the words of the
Psalmist : "As the mountains are round about
Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about His people
from henceforth, even for ever" (Ps. cxxv. 2).
From Jerusalem on the other side the fall is
greater than was the rise. The descent to Jericho
and the Dead Sea is steeper, for not only is the

216 EARLIER TIMES OF HEBREW MONARCHY.
distance shorter, but the Dead Sea level is 1300
feet below the Mediterranean, the difference be
tween the level of Jerusalem and the level of the
Dead Sea being almost 4000 feet. The main
ridge, which forms the backbone of the land, runs
somewhat to the west of Jerusalem, and the city
occupies the southern termination of a plateau
cut off from the main ridge by ravines on the
west and south and east. The modern city is
seen to most advantage from the spot on the
Mount of Olives where we can believe that Jesus
saw Jerusalem and wept over it (Luke xix. 41).
It is still a striking view. The city is seen lying
almost four - square, with a hang towards the
beholder, girt with its walls on all its sides, its
houses and mosques and towers compactly built
together. The Mosque of Omar occupies a site
upon the area of the ancient temple, and if the
city is visited in Holy Week there are seen
within the sacred enclosure crowds of Moham
medan pilgrims keeping the feast of Neby Mousa,
the Prophet Moses, which is observed at that
season. The valley of the Kidron on the east
and the valley of Hinnom on the south and west,
with their overhanging cliffs, enable us still to
judge of the ancient strength of the city which
they surround.1
The city itself [says Sir Charles Warren] stands upon four
hills, surrounded east, west, and south by deep ravines, those
to the west and south running into that to the east called
the Kidron valley or Wady en-Nar. These hills lie two to

1 Underground Jerusalem, p. 51.

EXCAVATIONS AT JERUSALEM. 217
the east and two to the west, and are divided by a shallower
valley running south from the Damascus Gate : thus, look
ing south, Jerusalem may be seen divided into two portions
— Zion and the Upper City to the Avest, and Moriah and
Bezetha to the east. The former are rather more southerly
than the two latter, and the Tyropoeon valley, which divides
Zion on the north from the Upper City on the south, runs
due east till it meets the centre of Moriah, and then turns
south into the central valley. Bezetha is cut off from Moriah
partly by an artificial ditch or valley, and partly by a natural
depression. Jerusalem of the present day differs from the
past in a great measure in the configuration of the ground ;
valleys have been filled up, hills levelled, the city itself has
been abandoned in its southern portions, and the portions
Avithin the third or northern wall are more built over than
formerly. The labours of the Palestine Exploration Fund
from its establishment in 1865 down to 1897 have
been largely devoted to Jerusalem, and the ex
cavations of successive bands of workers have put
us in possession of a great amount of reliable in
formation regarding the configuration and history
of the Holy City. Not a little of the labour thus
expended has been directed to the discovery of
the ancient walls of the city. As far back as
1874, Mr Henry Maudslay, working in the neigh
bourhood of the Bishop's School, obtained valu
able results. These were followed up to some
extent by Captain Warren, and now the recent
excavations of Dr F. J. Bliss, also following up
Mr Maudslay's, have laid bare the southern wall
of the city from the scarp at the south-western
corner in the Protestant Cemetery, along the
southern brow of Zion as far as the Pool of
Siloam.

218 EARLIER TIMES OF HEBREW MONARCHY.
From the top of the fosse near the Protestant Cemetery
[says Dr Bliss x] to the rock-bed of the Tyropoeon the distance
measured along the line of wall is about 2375 feet, or some
what under half a mile. . . . The wall was found at very
different depths. The accumulation above the rock-founda
tion varied from 6 to 46 feet. Sometimes but one course
remained in situ, while in one place the wall was found
standing to a height of 44 feet. The east wall as far as
the north-east angle of the Temple area, and the west wall
as far north as the Jaffa Gate, are usually regarded as
occupying the course of the ancient city walls. But the
walls to the north, of which there were three erected at
different periods, are still subject to discussion, especially
the second, the determination of which is involved with
the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
Captain Warren was one of the first to engage
in excavation at Jerusalem, and his labours haATe
yielded important results, especially with reference
to the Temple area. Along its eastern wall lies
the great Mohammedan burying - ground, and it
was necessary for the exploring party to sink a
shaft at a spot clear of the burying-ground to the
east, and then at a depth of many feet to carry
underground galleries towards the foundations of
the wall. In this way the explorer discovered
from the character of the masonry that sections
of the wall were of high antiquity, and might
belong to the days of the Jewish kings. At the
south-east angle a massive foundation-stone was
discovered resting on the living rock. It measured
3 feet 8 inches in height, and 14 feet in length.
Another corner-stone has been found of still greater
proportions, the corner-stone of what is called the
Great Course at the south-east angle, forming the
1 Excavations at Jerusalem, 1894-97, p. 131.

EXCAVATIONS AT JERUSALEM. 219
seventh course from the ground. It is a sriprantic
block, 26 feet long, over 6 feet high, and 7 feet
Avide. It is of hard limestone, and weighs over a
hundred tons. Although this is the heaviest stone
yet found in these excavations, a longer stone,
measuring 38 feet 9 inches, has been discovered
on the west Avail close to what is called, from the
well-known American explorer, Bobinson's Arch.
On one of the stones in the masonry at the south
east angle were found three letters painted red,
Avhile lower down another character in red paint
was to be seen. At another spot a mark in red
paint Avas found, and as the paint had run to the
other side of the stone, it was clear that the mark
had been made before the stone had been laid in
its place. These marks, when discovered by Captain
Warren's workmen, attracted much attention ; and
the well-known oriental scholar, Emanuel Deutsch,
who examined the marks on the stones as they
were found, had no hesitation in pronouncing them
partly letters, partly numerals, and partly special
marks of Phoenician masons. They were not the
first Phoenician inscription with which Mr Deutsch
had been called to deal. On the tomb of Ash-
munazar, king of Sidon, Phoenician marks of the
very same character had been recognised by Mr
Deutsch, and the presumption was that these were
of still greater age, and might be of the time of
Solomon. It is not an unwarrantable supposition
that the marks in question reach back to the days
of Hiram, king of Tyre, who sent artificers and
hewers to Solomon for the building of the Temple.
These excavations of Captain Warren are believed

220 EARLIER TIMES OF HEBREW MONARCHY.
to have laid bare the foundations of Solomon's
Temple, as we read : " And the king commanded,
and they brought great stones, costly stones, and
hewed stones, to lay the foundation of the house.
And Solomon's builders and Hiram's builders did
hew them, and the stone-squarers : so they prepared
timber and stones to build the house" (1 Kings v.
17, 18).
We know where they obtained the timber. It
came from the cedar - forests of Lebanon, which
furnished timber for the kings of Egypt and Assyria,
and even for the palaces of the mighty cities of
Babylonia as far back as the days of Sargon of
Accad.1 But whence did they obtain the stones ?
This is a matter which has been put beyond doubt
by the discovery of the Boyal Quarries at Jeru
salem in 1852. In that year an entrance was dis
covered near the Damascus Gate, on the north side
of the city, opening like the entrance to the Sera-
peum, which Mariette discovered in the sands of
Sakkhara, by a very low aperture, and leading
gradually to vast and spacious subterranean quar
ries. At first there is presented to the visitor
nothing more than the appearance of a natural
cave, but ere long the steep descent leads to long
corridors which must have been excavated by the
hand of man.
By igniting a magnesium light the effect gained is truly
wonderful. The ramifications of the subterranean quarries

1 Layard tells how one cold day his labourers had lit a fire to warm
themselves, and though he was at a considerable distance off, he caught
the scent of burning cedar-wood which, after the lapse of three thousand
years, still retained its fragrance (Nineveh and Babylon, p. 357).

SOLOMONS TEMPLE. 221
are seen to run in all directions ; the rocky pillars left to
prop up the roof resemble the massive columns of a Norman
cathedral, while nave and rude aisles end in darkness. The
stone walls, rocky roof, and rugged archways, prostrate
blocks, earthen mounds, sharp precipices, rock -cut steps
leading to dark amphitheatres, and, above all, the weird
appearance of fantastic shadows cast by the bright light,
form a spectacle never to be forgotten.1
Chisel-marks and masons' marks are found on
the stones which strew the floor. On the rocks
we see where lamps were placed to give light to
the workers. The quarries are of the same quality
of limestone as the corner-stone and the courses
of ancient masonry on the Temple wall of which
we have already spoken. It was in these quarries
that the stones for the Temple were hewn and
prepared, each ready to be fitted into its place,
so that " N"o hammer fell, no ponderous axes rung,
Like some tall palm the mystic fabric sprung.
Majestic silence ! "
It is corroborative of this that in the mould close
up to the wall, and lying on the living rock, through
which Captain Warren and his engineers drove
their galleries and shafts, no stone-chips were found,
but only broken pottery and fragments of ancient
lamps for burning fat. If the stones had been
chipped and chiselled as they were laid on the wall,
there were bound to be fragments of the stones
lying about. But none have been found, and their
absence seems to furnish a remarkable confirmation
of the truth of the Scripture story.
1 King, Recent Discoveries on the Temple Hill, pp. 14, 15.

222 EARLIER TIMES OF HEBREW MONARCHY.
The Temple area itself is by far the most in
teresting locality in or about Jerusalem, and in
many respects the most impressive of all Bible sites.
To that spot on Mount Moriah the Father of the
Faithful came at the command of God to offer up
his son Isaac. On that spot the Temple was built
and dedicated with unparalleled festivities by Solo
mon. Solomon's Temple stood there for more than
four hundred years, till it was burned and over
thrown by the Chaldean invaders. Bebuilt by
Zerubbabel, with the help of the prophets Haggai
and Zechariah, it was, after the lapse of four
troubled centuries, renewed by Herod the Great
in a style of wonderful magnificence. It was this
latter temple whose glory was greater than the
glory of the former, because its courts were trodden
by the feet of Him who was the Desire of all nations,
who also foretold that in days of coming trial it
would be overthrown, so that not one stone should
be left upon another in all the majestic pile.
" And now, for eighteen centuries it has lain deso
late, and will so continue until that day and hour
shall arrive of whose coming knoweth no man, no,
not the angels of heaven, but the Father only." 1
It was not long till the " house exceeding magni-
fical," built by Solomon for the worship of Jehovah,
suffered at the hands of the spoiler. For " it came
to pass in the fifth year of king Behoboam that
Shishak, king of Egypt, came up against Jerusalem,
and he took away the treasures of the house of the
Lord, and the treasures of the king's house ; he
1 Dr W. M. Thomson, The Land and the Book : Southern Palestine
and Jerusalem, pp. 501, 502.

EGYPTIAN INVASION OF JERUSALEM. 223
even took away all : and he took away the shields
of gold which Solomon had made " (2 Chron.
xii. 9). Of this campaign Ave have the record
engraven on the southern wall of the Temple of
Amen at Karnak. Shishak, or Sheshonq, as he
is called in the inscriptions, the founder of the
22nd dynasty, was in all probability of Libyan
origin. He was a warlike prince, and had a bril
liant career. At the death of Pasebkhanu II.
(whose daughter Solomon married), the last of the
kings of the 21st dynasty, he found himself, by
marriages he had contracted, as well as by natural
ability and resource, master of Egypt, with an
effective army and a well - filled treasury at his
disposal. Shortly after he ascended the throne,
Jeroboam fled to the court of Egypt to escape the
wrath of Solomon, as Hadad of Edom had done
not very long before. At the court of Sheshonq
Jeroboam remained till the death of Solomon, when
he went back to Canaan, and, on Behoboam return
ing an unsatisfactory answer to his demands, headed
the revolt of the ten tribes, over whom he was
chosen king, with his capital at Shechem. Whether
there was not in the 21st dynasty some kind of
suzerainty of Egypt over Palestine when Solomon
married Pharaoh's daughter and received with her
Gezer as a dowry, seems to be somewhat uncertain.
It is, however, only natural that Jeroboam's patron
in the day of adversity should take sides with him
against Behoboam in the disruption of the kingdoms.
At any rate, as we have seen, in the fifth year of
Behoboam, Shishak came up against Jerusalem,
with twelve hundred chariots, and sixty thousand

224 EARLIER TIMES OF HEBREW MONARCHY.
horsemen, and people without number, the Lubims,
the Sukkiims, and the Ethiopians, and he took
the fenced cities which belonged to Judah, and
came to Jerusalem. At the preaching of the
prophet Shemaiah, Behoboam and his people re
pented, and Jerusalem was saved from destruc
tion, though not from plunder nor from servitude
(2 Chron. xii. 2-7). There was, however, no oc
cupation of Palestine by the Egyptian forces, and
there is no reason to believe that Sheshonq ex
tended his conquest even into the territories of the
ten tribes. On the south wall of the Temple of
Amon at Karnak the expedition is recorded, and
a list of one hundred and fifty -six districts and
places of Palestine granted to his victorious arms
by Amon-Ba, and the goddess of Thebes is engraven
there. Maspero has identified sixteen places men
tioned in Joshua, and among the names are Babbath,
Taanach, Mahanaim, Gibeon, Bethhoron, Migdol,
Aijalon, Shocho, and others both of Israel and Judah.
It was quite the custom for a Pharaoh to include in
his lists of conquered cities any place that paid
tribute, whether it was captured in war or not,
and it was good reason enough for Sheshonq to
include these Israelitish places in his list that Jero
boam had, as seems more than probable, invited
him to come to his aid.1 Among' the names in
the list was Jud -ham -melek, which was at first
believed to represent the king of Judah, and at the
same time passed for a portrait of Behoboam ; but
this is one of those almost too interesting and re
markable identifications Avhich have had to be given
1 Maspero, Struggle of the Nations, pp. 773, 774.

THE MOABITE STONE. 225
up. It is simply the name of some place no longer
recognisable. It was not long after this invasion
of Canaan that Sheshonq died, and Osorkon, his
successor, was content, as Maspdro puts it, " to
assume at a distance authority over the Kharu.
It does not appear, however, that either the
Philistines, or Judah, or Israel, or any of the
petty tribes which had momentarily gravitated
around David and Solomon, were disposed to
dispute Osorkon's claim, theoretic rather than real
as it Avas." 1 It is a little difficult to understand,
but not altogether incredible, that the account of
Zerah the Ethiopian, who invaded Judah in the
days of Asa with a host of a thousand thousand
and three hundred chariots, is to be referred to
this Osorkon, whom Asa in the strength of God
was able to overthrow and completely destroy.
Before attempting to show, as we hope to do
in next Lecture, what an amount of new light
has come to us from the cuneiform records of
Assyria to confirm and clear up the history of
the relations between Assyria and Israel, we
may briefly refer to native monuments left to
us from the period of the Hebrew monarchy, and
so outstanding that they are worthy of special
notice — the Moabite Stone and the Siloam in
scription. The Moabite Stone is the great monument pre
served to us from the region east of the Jordan.
It was discovered in 1868 by the Bev. F. A. Klein,
then labouring in Jerusalem as a missionary of
the Church Missionary Society. He found it on
1 Maspero, Struggle of the Nations, p. 774.
P

226 EARLIER TIMES OF HEBREW MONARCHY.
the site of ancient Dibon, now Dhiban, his atten
tion having been drawn to it by a friendly sheikh.
The stone was of black basalt, 3 feet 10 inches
high, 2 feet in breadth, and 14£ inches in thick
ness, rounded both at the top and the bottom,
with an inscription on one side consisting of
thirty -four lines. In form and appearance it re
sembles nothing so much as an ordinary grave
stone. The language of the inscription differs
very little from Hebrew. Noldeke says it is
the oldest monument of syllabic writing, far older
than any Greek inscription extant. The letters
have in general more similarity to the old Hebrew
written characters than to the letters of the
Phoenician inscriptions. That in Moab the art
of writing was practised and even employed in
basalt is not so striking ; the remarkable thing
is the almost complete identity of the language
with Hebrew, and the division of the words. The
stone had a very narrow escape from being com
pletely destroyed after it was found. Mr Klein
entered into treaty with the natives to secure it,
if possible, for the Berlin Museum ; but whilst
negotiations were proceeding, M. Clermont - Gan-
neau, of the French Consulate at Jerusalem,
offered to purchase it at a large price. Mean
while the Turkish authorities interfered, and rather
than give up the monument to the Pasha and
the Mudir, the Bedouins smashed the stone, first
making a fire under it, and then pouring cold
water upon it, and after Avards dividing the pieces
among themselves as amulets and charms. For
tunately, M. Clermont-Ganneau had taken a sue-

THE MOABITE STONE. 227
cessful squeeze of the inscription Avhile the stone
was entire ; and about two - thirds of the stone
was afterwards recovered, leaving rather more than
half the inscription intact. The restored monument
is now to be seen in the Louvre, of which the Abbe"
Vigouroux declares it to be the most precious
treasure ; and there is a plaster cast in the British
Museum. It has become the subject of a large
literature, and the translations are very numer
ous. Its genuineness has been attacked, but un
successfully, and it remains to us an authentic
monument, a contemporary text, of the days of
the Kings nearly nine hundred years before the
time of Christ.
It gives an account of the war of Mesha, king
of Moab, about 860 B.C., against Omri and Ahab,
kings of Israel. We read (2 Kings iii. 4, 5) :
" And Mesha king of Moab was a sheepmaster,
and rendered unto the king of Israel an hundred
thousand lambs, and an hundred thousand rams,
with the wool. But it came to pass, when Ahab
was dead, the king of Moab rebelled against the
king of Israel." Ahaziah, the successor" of Ahab,
was a feeble ruler, and Mesha saw an opportunity
of throwing off the yoke of Israel. And not only
did he decline to pay tribute, but broke out into
open revolt, and, allying himself with the Ammon
ites and Edomites, attacked the kingdom of Judah.
Jehoshaphat, however, got the better of the rebels,
more through dissensions among the allies than
by the prowess of his army. On the death of
Ahaziah, Joram came to the throne of Israel, and
resolved to recover the lost possessions of the

228 EARLIER TIMES OF HEBREW MONARCHY.
crown. In company with Jehoshaphat, and secur
ing through him the alliance of Edom, Joram and
his allies attacked Moab from the south, fetching
a compass of seven days' journey. They defeated
Mesha so thoroughly that the wrath of his god
Chemosh could be appeased only by the sacrifice
of his son. On account of this wrath of Chemosh
the Israelites withdrew and returned to their own
land, not having succeeded in imposing the yoke
of tribute again upon the Moabite king. Such is
the narrative of the Second Book of Kings.
Mesha's inscription runs : x —
I, Mesha, son of Chemosh - melech, king of Moab, the
Dibonite. My father reigned over Moab thirty years, and
I reigned after my father. I made this monument to
Chemosh at Khorkah [which may be the Biblical Kir-
haraseth], a monument of salvation, for he saved me from
all invaders, and let me see my desire upon all mine enemies.
Omri was king of Israel, and he oppressed Moab many days,
for Chemosh was angry with his land. His son [Ahab]
followed him, and he also said, I shall oppress Moab. In
my days Chemosh said, I will see my desire on him and
his house. And Israel surely perished for ever. Omri
took the land of Medeba, and Israel dwelt in it during his
days and half the days of his son, altogether forty years.
The inscription goes on to tell how the Moabites
not only recaptured the towns they had lost, but
added others to them which they took from Israel,
accompanying the capture of the cities with the
slaughter of the inhabitants. Mesha captured the
priests of the god or goddess Dodo, and Jehovah,
and hewed them in pieces before Chemosh. There
1 Records of the Past, second series, vol. ii. p. 194 ff.

THE MOABITE STONE. 229
is a general agreement in the Biblical and the
Moabite narrative, but there are also discrepancies.
These may be partly due to the confessedly imperfect
character of the inscription as it has come into our
hands. And they may in part be explained by the
fact that, like all those ancient kings, Mesha recounts
his victories, and is silent as to his defeats. We do
not need to go the length of Professor Sayce in
imputing to the Biblical writer the same readiness
to suppress what is derogatory to the national
pride, for the Biblical writers do again and again
chronicle defeats sustained by Israel or Judah.
This is only what we should expect when we
consider the moral purpose running through the
divinely guided history of Israel. It is enough
to hold that the sacred writer is only giving a
fragmentary account of those transactions, and
the general agreement of which we have spoken
is sufficient to establish the historical character of
the narrative in the Books of Kings. The Biblical
writer supplements Mesha's narrative, telling of the
destruction of his towns which he had to repair,
and of the filling up of the Avells which he boasts
to have reopened. Both for its confirmation of the
sacred history in reference to Mesha, who is men
tioned nowhere except in this chapter of Second
Kings and in the Moabite Stone, and for the
example which it furnishes of a Hebrew text —
the oldest yet known, for it scarcely differs from
Hebrew in vocabulary, grammar, or expression —
the Moabite Stone is one of the most precious
monuments of Hebrew antiquity. It is likewise
remarkable for what it tells us of the religion of

230 EARLIER TIMES OF HEBREW MONARCHY.
Moab. The religious conceptions of the Moabites
are strikingly similar to those of the Israelites.
Mesha [as Professor Sayce points out x] ascribes his vic
tories to Chemosh, just as the victories of Israel were
ascribed by the Jewish kings and prophets to Yahweh.
When Moab was oppressed by the enemy, it was because
Chemosh Avas " angry " with his people, reminding us how
" the anger of Yahweh was kindled against Israel, and He
delivered them into the hands of spoilers that spoiled them."
It was Chemosh who "drove" the king of Israel "out be
fore" Mesha, and who said to the Moabite princes, "Go,
seize Nebo upon Israel," even as Yahweh declared that
He would " drive " the Canaanites " out from before " Israel,
and said unto David " Go and smite the Philistines." Che
mosh had allowed Mesha to " see " his " desire upon all " his
" enemies," the very phrase which is used by Yahweh in the
Psalms ; and as Samuel set up a " Stone of Help," saying,
" Hitherto hath Yahweh helped us," so Mesha erected his
monument to Chemosh as "a monument of salvation, for
he had saved " him " from all invaders." In fact, as Dr
Ginsburg has remarked, " If the name of Jehovah were
substituted for that of Chemosh, this inscription would read
like a chapter in the Book of Kings."
When we have such a narrative and such con
ceptions of Deity coming from such an independent
source, inscribed on a slab and exhibiting all the
naturalness of a conqueror proud of his achieve
ments, and, moreover, presenting not the slightest
suspicion of redactors and the like, and Avhen we
find it on all-fours with the Biblical narrative, from
which it is distinguishable only by national Moabite
names, — what justification is there for suspecting
the naturalness and genuineness of the records of
1 Higher Criticism and the Monuments, p. 374.

THE SILOAM INSCRIPTION. 231
the Hebrew monarchy contained in the Books of
Kings ?
The Siloam inscription is the oldest in pure
Hebrew that we possess. It has a story of un
common interest. The Pool of Siloam, which
Avas within the ancient walls of Jerusalem, to be
available for its inhabitants in case of siege, bor
rowed, as it still borrows, its waters from a spring
some hundreds of yards away, and without the
city's bounds, called the Virgin's Fountain. The
intermittent waters of the Virgin's Fountain, itself
capable of being sealed up so as to be of no service
to an invading army, have been carried for full
twenty-six hundred years to the Pool of Siloam by
a tunnel hewn through the living rock, through the
projecting spur of Ophel. Dr Bobinson had the
hardihood to creep, with a companion, through the
Avhole length of the tunnel ; and Captain Warren,
when excavating at Jerusalem, accomplished the
same feat, so that the connection is absolutely
certain. In the year 1880 a boy, playing with his com
panions at the Pool of Siloam, fell into the water as
he was wading up the tunnel, and on rising to the
surface caught sight of letters cut out in the rocky
wall. The circumstance was reported to Dr Schick,
the well-known German architect in Jerusalem, who
at once saw that an ancient inscription had been
found. In a very short time learned men had
gathered to the spot, taking squeezes of the letters,
making casts of the whole inscription, and decipher
ing the writing. The first intelligible copy was
made by Professor Sayce, sitting three afternoons in

232 EARLIER TIMES OF HEBREW MONARCHY.
the water and mud of the tunnel, painfully copying
the inscription by the dim light of a candle. The
inscription, he tells us, was engraved on the lower
part of an artificial tablet cut in the wall of rock,
about 19 feet from the place where the subterranean
conduit opens out upon the Pool of Siloam, and on
the right-hand side as one enters it. The conduit
is at first 16 feet high, but the height gradually
lessens, until in one place it is not quite 2 feet
above the bottom of the channel. The measure
ment of the tunnel, according to Colonel Conder, is
1708 feet from the Spring of the Virgin to the Pool
of Siloam. It does not run, however, in a straight
line, and towards the centre there are two culs de
sac, the origin of which is explained by the inscrip
tion. The workmen, we learn, began the conduit
simultaneously at both ends, like the engineers of
the Mont Cenis Tunnel, intending to meet in the
middle. They did not quite succeed, though the
two excavations had approached one another suffi
ciently near for the workmen of the one to hear the
sound of the pickaxes used by the workmen in the
other. The inscription itself consists of six lines,
and is given by Professor Sayce, as follows : x —
1. " [Behold] the excavation. Now this is the history of
the excavation : while the excavators were still lift
ing up
2. the pick, each toward his neighbour, and while there
were yet three cubits to [excavate, there was heard]
the voice of one man
3. calling to his neighbour, for there was an excess in the

1 Records of the Past, second series, vol. i. p. 168 ff. ; Higher Criti
cism and the Monuments, p. 379.

THE SILOAM INSCRIPTION. 233
rock on the right-hand [and on the left]. And after
that on the day
4. of excaA'ating, the excavators had struck pick against
pick, one against another,
5. the waters flowed from the spring to the pool for a dis
tance of 1200 cubits. And
6. a hundred cubits was the height of the rock over the
head of the excavators."
Such is the famous inscription, discovered literally
by the accident of an accident. Of itself it is com
monplace enough, and there is no date, no maker's
name, no name of any kind. But the form of the
lettering leads experts to a pretty definite con
clusion. The form and shape and general character
of the letters prove to scholars that the Siloam
inscription is the most ancient bit of Hebrew — next
to the Moabite Stone, if we count it Hebrew — that
has come down to us ; and the belief is generally
entertained that the rock-hewn tunnel which has
so long conveyed the waters of the Virgin's Foun
tain to the Pool of Siloam was constructed by King
Hezekiah.1 That Hezekiah was a great builder, and that
great engineering works were accomplished under
his direction, is attested by the words of the son of
1 It is melancholy to have to record that the Siloam Inscription has
suffered the same fate as the Moabite Stone. In July 1890 the por
tion of the wall of the tunnel containing the inscription was hewn out
of its place and broken into several pieces. Suspicion fell upon the
fellahin from the village of Siloam, who had the effrontery even to
offer a forged inscription in exchange. The broken pieces have, in this
case also, been recovered, and are now deposited in the Imperial
Ottoman Museum in Constantinople. Fortunately there are several
casts of the inscription in existence, and the inscription itself has been
deciphered, so that the harm done to the monument, though much to
be regretted, is not of serious consequence to archaeology.

234 EARLIER TIMES OF HEBREW MONARCHY.
Sirach five hundred years after his day : " Hezekiah
fortified his city and brought in water into the
midst of them : he digged the sheer rock with iron,
and builded up wells for water" (Ecclus. xlviii. 17,
B.V.) And what we may surely call contemporary
witness as to Hezekiah's engineering works is also
to hand. In 2 Kings xx. 20 we read that Heze
kiah " made a pool and a conduit, and brought
water into the city." In 2 Chron. xxxii. 4 these
works are connected expressly with the fear of
the Assyrians, for he takes counsel with his princes
and his mighty men to stop the waters of the
fountains without the city, " and they did help
him. So there was much people gathered together,
who stopped all the fountains, and the water course
that overflowed through the middle of the land,
saying, Why should the kings of Assyria come
and find much Avater ? " In 2 Chron. xxxii. 30 we
read that he " stopped the upper water course of
Gihon," or, as it should perhaps rather be rendered,
"stopped the exit of the waters of the Upper
Gihon," and directed them " down to the west
side of the city of David," or, as the Queen's
Printers' Variorum Bible gives it, "by an under
ground way on the west side of the city of
David." A difficulty arises, however, in connection with
Isaiah's Avell-knoAvn prophecy in the days of Ahaz,
when the prophet speaks of " the Avaters of Shiloah
which go softly." If the aqueduct carrying the
waters of the Virgin's Fountain to the Pool of
Siloam was not constructed till the days of
Hezekiah, how could Isaiah, prophesying in the

THE SILOAM INSCRIPTION. 235
days of Ahaz, Hezekiah's father, speak of " the
waters of Shiloah which go softly " ? The ques
tion has been answered by the explorers around
Jerusalem, and answered in a remarkably practical
manner. Belying upon the topographical and
historical accuracy of the Bible, they came to
the conclusion that by sinking shafts at calculated
spots they would discover a tunnel more ancient
still. And sure enough their labours were re
warded by the discovery of a tunnel of smaller
dimensions, but folloAving a straighter course down
the valley, which was probably built in the days
of Solomon, and which carried the intermittent
waters of the Virgin's Spring to the Upper Pool
when Isaiah prophesied in the days of Ahaz.1 This
smaller aqueduct, disused for twenty - six hundred
years, and now laid bare some twenty feet below
the ground, would thus be the original of " Shiloah's
waters which go softly," immortalised by Milton as
" Siloa's brook, which flowed
Fast by the oracle of God."
But the quotation from Milton recalls another ex
planation which completely obviates the difficulty.
From Jerome's time onward " the waters of Siloa "
have been explained by the existence of a little
brook having its source in a well in the south of
the Tyropoeon valley, which thence flowed past
Moriah, on which the Temple stood, and what
has till lately been believed to be Zion. " If the
scholars are right, then Shiloah is on the south
1 Palestine Exploration Fund, Quarterly Statement, January 1889,
p. 35 ff. ; Sir Charles Wilson in Smith's Bible Dictionary, vol. i. p. 1590.

236 EARLIER TIMES OF HEBREW MONARCHY.
side of Jerusalem, while Gihon is on the west,
and the present objection would fall to the ground.
Indeed we should have thought that in Isaiah's
parallel of the Euphrates and the Shiloah, a brook
would be more congruous than a conduit." l
Upon the whole, the balance of testimony is
decidedly in favour of the view that the existing
tunnel represents Hezekiah's underground conduit,
led with such skill and accuracy through the
solid rock, and that the inscription recently dis
covered marks the completion of a great engineer
ing enterprise by Hezekiah's workmen.
There are several points of great interest estab
lished by this discovery and the connection of
Hezekiah with the tunnel.
One fact [says Professor Sayce] is made very clear : whether
it were the Siloam tunnel itself, or the second tunnel leading
from it to a lower reservoir, that was constructed by Heze
kiah, in either case the Pool of Siloam would lie on the west
side of the city of David (2 Chron. xxxii. 30). "The city
of David " must accordingly have stood on the southern hill,
the so-called Ophel ; and since the city of David was identical
with Zion, according to 2 Sam. v. 7, this hill must represent
the original Mount of Zion. Consequently the valley of the
sons of Hinnom must be the valley which was known in the
time of Josephus as the Tyropoeon or " cheesemakers." It
once divided both the Temple hill and the southern hill from
the mountains on the west, though it is now choked with
the rubbish which the numerous destroyers of Jerusalem
have thrown into it. In some places the rubbish is more
than seventy feet deep, and under it, if anywhere, we must
look for the tombs of the kings that Avere cut in the rocky
cliff of the city of David. Here, too, if anywhere, will be

Sinker, Hezekiah and his Age, p. <5l

LITERARY CHARACTER OF HEZEKIAH'S AGE. 237
found the relics of the temple and palace that Nebuchad
nezzar destroyed, overlaid with the accumulations of more
than two thousand years.
Another fact emerges very clearly from what
has been said, that the age of Hezekiah was by
no means destitute of the arts of civilisation or
of literary culture. We have seen that no small
skill in engineering was required for the execu
tion of the tunnel. Moreover, an inscription on
stone, of the character of the Siloam inscription,
is no product of a newly acquired command of
letters. Experts assure us that the letters in
the inscription shoAv by their rounded shape that
the scribes of Judah had long been accustomed
to the art of writing on papyrus or parchment.
When we remember how common a thing writing
was, albeit in the cuneiform of the Tel el-Amarna
tablets, seven centuries before Hezekiah's time,
we need not hesitate to believe, with the Siloam
inscription before us, that manuscripts, as well as
inscribed stones, were plentiful in the Jewish
kingdom in his day. And we are not left to
mere inference in the matter. In the twenty-
fifth chapter of the Book of Proverbs we read,
"These also are the Proverbs of Solomon, which
the men of Hezekiah, king of Judah, copied out."
We have seen already how the kings of Assyria
and Babylonia employed large bodies of scribes
in copying and writing the older literature of the
country, and we shall hear more when we speak
of Asshurbanipal's great library in the century
following that of Hezekiah. The more advanced
critics would have us believe that before the Baby-

238 EARLIER TIMES OF HEBREW MONARCHY.
Ionian captivity the art of writing was rarely, or
never, practised in Israel. The literary character
of Hezekiah's age and the encouragement given
to literature at his court are in direct opposition
to such speculations. " The art of writing books,"
says Professor Sayce,1 " was no new thing in Israel,
and there is no reason why a manuscript of the
age of Solomon should not have been preserved
to the age of Hezekiah. We have no reason to
doubt that ' the men of Hezekiah ' did copy out
' the Proverbs of Solomon,' and they were more
likely to know whose proverbs they were than the
most accomplished critic of to-day."
1 Higher Criticism and the Monuments, p. 387.

239

LECTUBE VII.
THE CLOSE OF THE HEBREW MONARCHY IN THE
LIGHT OF ASSYRIAN ANNALS.
It is when Ave come to the period of the Hebrew
monarchy and to the later years of the kingdoms
of Israel and Judah that we receive substantial
assistance in treating the Biblical history from
Assyrian records. When we speak of the assist
ance furnished by Assyrian records to the elucida
tion of the Scripture history, it is only just to
remember that they introduce difficulties which
create fresh perplexity. These difficulties arise
for the most part in connection with the chron
ology — the two systems, the Hebrew and the
Assyrian, agreeing absolutely only on a single
date, the date of the capture of Samaria, 722 B.C.,
and being more or less at A'ariance everywhere
else. This sounds of serious omen as we enter
upon an important period of the Bible history,
and it is not reassuring to learn that the Biblical
system of chronology is the less thorough and
reliable of the two. That there are discrep
ancies between the Hebrew and the Assyrian

240 CLOSE OF THE HEBREW MONARCHY.
chronologies, and even in the Hebrew system
itself, needs not unduly distress us. What is of
real importance is that the historical record of
Scripture, apart from these chronological details, is
strongly confirmed by the Assyrian annals. Such
is the finding of Schrader, whose great work, ' The
Cuneiform Inscriptions and the Old Testament,' is
invaluable to the student of this period. " We
have had," he says, " to note few inaccuracies,
comparatively speaking, and, at all events, the
contemporaneous relation of persons and events
required by the circumstances involved has been,
as a rule, fully demonstrated.' 1
Assyria had, like Egypt, a long and checkered
history before the time when its annals take notice
of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Only we
must be careful not to confuse Babylonia and
Assyria, which in their essential characteristics
and in their history are just as diverse as Greece
and Borne. Compared with the Babylonian mon
archies, which reach back to a very remote an
tiquity, and cover at least three thousand years,
the Assyrian empire as an independent power
was modern, and measured less than a thousand
years. In its earlier period it was a dependency of
Babylon, and it is not till about 1500 B.C. that
we see it fairly taking its place as an indepen
dent kingdom. The rise of Assyria as a separate
state was contemporaneous with the elevation of
an alien dynasty, the Kashite, after a long and
bitter struggle, to the throne of Babylon. This
Kashite or Elamite subjugation of Babylonia in-
1 Cuneiform Inscriptions and the Old Testament, vol. ii. p. 173.

THE ASSYRIAN MONARCHY. 241
troduced elements of discord between the mother
country of Babylonia and the daughter colony of
Assyria, with the result that Assyria set up as
an independent power, and ere long became the
leading power in Western Asia. This supremacy
Assyria maintained till 606 B.C., when Nineveh
was overthrown by the combined forces of the
Medes and Babylonians, and the second Baby
lonian empire under Nebuchadnezzar, like a meteor,
rose and flashed and disappeared.
At the head of the list of Assyrian kings we
have Ismidagan, who ruled about 1850 B.C., and
was succeeded by his son, Shamsi-Bamman, who
built the temple of Asshur in the old capital of
Assyria. After Assyria had successfully asserted
her independence, we find Asshur - bei - nisheshu
ruling about 1480 B.C., and arranging a delimita
tion of territory with Karaindash the Kashite
king of Babylonia. In the Tel el-Amarna tablets
we read how Asshuruballit, " king of Asshur, the
great king," as he styles himself, sent presents of
a royal chariot, two white horses, and other things
to Amenophis IV., and begged presents in return,
on the plea that his father Asshur-nadin-ahi had
received twenty talents of gold from the king of
Egypt. He connected himself with Babylon by
the marriage of his daughter ; and Kurigalzu, who
had a long and prosperous reign, was his grand
son. Of the great-grandson of Asshuruballit in
the Assyrian line, Bamman Nirari L, whose date is
1325 B.C., we have an inscription of considerable
length, found by George Smith at Kalah-Shergat,
the ancient Asshur, which is the first dated in-
Q

242 CLOSE OF THE HEBREW MONARCHY.
scription known, and exists in two copies.1 He
speaks of Asshuruballit, his great - grandfather,
as " the mighty king whose priesthood in the
temples was glorious, and whose royal control was
established unto distant lands firmly as the moun
tains." His son and successor, Shalmaneser I.,
about 1300 B.C., was the real founder of Nineveh.
He built what was later the southern suburb of
that centre of Assyrian life and power the city of
Kalah, now to be found in the ruins of Nimroud,
where the Upper Zab joins the Tigris. He was
the first Assyrian king who called himself king
of the world. Among his successors were monarchs
who, like Seti I. and Barneses II. of Egypt, were
great builders, notably his son Tiglath-Nindar I.,
1289 B.C. ; Tiglath-Pileser I., one of the most re
markable of Assyrian rulers, who could boast that
he had subdued forty - two countries and their
princes, 1120 B.C. ; and Asshurnazirpal, 885 B.C.,
who rebuilt Kalah, which had fallen into ruins,
and made it his royal residence.2
1 Hebraica, vol. xii. p. 143 ff.
2 The evidence of this fact is to be found in the Antiquarian Museum
in Queen Street, Edinburgh, where Asshurnazrrpal's well-known
" standard inscription " is to be seen in the cuneiform lettering cut out
on the sculptured slab by his scribes more than twenty-seven centuries
ago, and where there is, alongside of the complete inscription, a little
fragment, neatly framed, which must have belonged to one of the
sixty or more copies of the same inscription which Asshurnazirpal had
got made and set up in different parts of his kingdom. The standard
inscription and the fragment were both presented to the Society of
Antiquaries of Scotland by the late Sir James Y. Simpson ; and a trans
lation of the former by Fox Talbot is to be found in their Proceed
ings for the year 1866, which also appears revised and corrected in vol.
vii. of 'Records of the Past'; more recent and more correct transla
tions still being given by Schrader of Berlin, and Peiser the well-known
Assyriologist. The portion of the inscription bearing upon the re-

SHALMANESER II. 243
Although Asshurnazirpal records how he led his
army past Lebanon and cleansed bis weapons of
war in the Great Sea, it is Avhen we come to Shal
maneser II. , the son of this vainglorious king and
remorseless conqueror, that we find the power of
Assyria taking hold of the western lands as far
as the coasts of the Mediterranean. He crossed
the Euphrates twenty-four times on expeditions to
the Avest, and his empire stretched from the sources
of the Tigris to Lebanon and the Great Sea, Baby
lonia even having become for a time subject to
Assyria. It is in an inscription of Shalmaneser II.
that we find the only mention of the name Israel,
Ahab being spoken of as Ahabbu Sir'lai, Ahab of
Israel. The name usually employed for the land
of Israel on the Assyrian monuments is Mat Bit
Khumri, the Land of the House of Omri. Judah,
on the other hand, is repeatedly mentioned in the
building of Kalah, including the fragment of three lines, already men
tioned, runs as follows : " The city of Kalah, the ancient, which
Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, the mighty, my ancestor, had founded ;
this city was waste and in ruins, this city I built anew. People which
I had led into captivity, belonging to lands which I had subjugated,
from Bit-Adini and Khatti-land, them I settled there. The old mound
I altered and brought it down to the level of the water, 120 tikpi of
surface I levelled. ... A palace of cedar-wood I raised for my royal
residence." The inscription is of interest because it shows that in the
reign of Asshurnazirpal the practice was already in use by the Assyrian
kings of deporting conquered peoples, and settling them in other por
tions of the empire, of which we have one instance in 2 Kings xvii.,
where we are told the king of Assyria, no doubt Sargon, brought men
from Babylon and from Hamath and elsewhere, and placed them in
the cities of Samaria instead of the children of Israel, out of whom
grew the hybrid race who feared Jehovah and served their own
gods ; and another in Ezra iv. 10, where Asnapper, Asshurbanipal, did
the like. Another point of correspondence with the Bible narrative
is found in Bit-Adini, which is the same as " the children of Eden "
in Sennacherib's blasphemous letter (2 Kings xix. 12).

244 CLOSE OF THE HEBREW MONARCHY.
inscriptions of Sargon and his immediate descend
ants, Sennacherib and Esarhaddon. Samaria, the
capital of the Northern kingdom, is frequently men
tioned in the inscriptions of the Assyrian kings.
Shalmaneser II. during his long reign (860-825
B.C.) was contemporary with Jehoshaphat, Jehoram,
Ahaziah, and Joash, kings of Judah ; with Ahab,
Ahaziah, Jehoram, and Jehu, kings of Israel ; with
Hazael and Benhadad II. , kings of Damascus;
and Mesha, king of Moab. The Assyrian author
ities for his reign are an inscription engraved by
himself on the rocks of Armenia ; the Black Obelisk
brought by Layard from Nimroud, now in the Brit
ish Museum ; and the texts engraven on the bronze
gates of Balawat, discovered by Bassam in 1878, and
recognised as the swinging gates of Shalmaneser's
palace. From these sources we learn that in the
sixth year of his energetic reign he encountered
the combined forces of Damascus, Hamath, Israel,
and other States which had united to oppose his
progress westwards, and completely routed them at
Karkar. It is singular that Ahab of Israel and
Hadadezer of Damascus, better known to the Bible
student as Benhadad (Benhadad II. ), should be found
making common cause and fighting on the same
side. Still, the alliance formed in the face of the
common danger which threatened Syria and Israel,
and indeed the whole of the Western States, is
completely in accord Avith the Scripture narrative,
which tells of a covenant denounced by God's pro
phet between Ahab and Benhadad (1 Kings xx.
34), and mentions a period of three years when
there was no war between Syria and Israel

RAMMAN NIRARI III. 245
(l Kings xxii. l). It Avas Benhadad that bore
the brunt of the Assyrian assault at the battle of
Karkar (854 B.C.), and the disaster to the allies
seems to have broken up the confederacy ; for soon
after Ahab is found with the aid of Jehoshaphat
of Judah attempting, unsuccessfully and with fatal
results to himself, to recover from the weakened
Damascus the city of Bamoth-Gilead.
Another campaign of Shalmaneser, as we learn
from the inscription on the Black Obelisk, was
directed against Hazael of Damascus, who had mur
dered Benhadad and usurped the throne of Syria
(2 Kings viii. 15). The Assyrian was victorious
in the field, but the city of Damascus was too
powerful for him, and he passed on, ravaging the
Hauran, and burning the unwalled towns, to the
number of two hundred and fifty, beyond the Jor
dan. Crossing the Jordan westwards, he marched
to the sea - coast, and near Beyrout received the
tribute of Tyre and Sidon, and also of Yahua, son
of Khumri. Yahua, despite a description which
refers not to parentage but dynasty, is no other
than Jehu, king of Israel. Among the reliefs on
the upper portion of the Black Obelisk is one in
which the ambassadors of Jehu are represented, and
the Jewish cast of features is unmistakable. Of
this campaign of Shalmaneser, and of Jehu's sub
mission, there is no record in the Bible narrative.
The next Assyrian monarch to turn his arms
against Syria was Bamman Nirari III., the grand
son of Shalmaneser II. He reigned from 810 to
781 B.C. He succeeded where his grandfather failed,
having taken Damascus and reduced it to subjec-

246 CLOSE OF THE HEBREW MONARCHY.
tion. "West of the Euphrates," runs one of his
inscriptions, " I subdued the land Khatti, the whole
of the land Akharri (Phoenicia), Tyre, Sidon, Bit
Khumri, Edom, and Philistia, unto the shore of
the Sea of the Setting Sun, and imposed on them
tributes and contributions." Although Bamman
Nirari is not mentioned by name in the Scripture
narrative, his presence and activity in Syria had
their influence upon contemporary events recorded
in the Second Book of Kings. We read (2 Kings
xiii. 4, 5) that Jehoahaz the son of Jehu " besought
the Lord, and the Lord hearkened unto him ; for he
saw the oppression of Israel, because the king of
Syria oppressed them. And the Lord gave Israel a
saviour, so that they went out from under the
hand of the Syrians." On this Professor M'Curdy
remarks : " The relief was due to the crippling
of the resources of Damascus by the aggressive
warfare waged by the forces of Asshur during the
closing years of the ninth century, and the ' de
liverer ' (2 Kings xiii. 5, cf. verse 23) was none other
than the redoubtable Bamman Nirari himself." x
With the death of Bamman Nirari III. in 781
B.C. the glory of Asshur suffered a temporary
eclipse. Syria was also on the decline. On the
other hand, the kingdom of Israel under Joash
and Jeroboam II. , and the kingdom of Judah under
Uzziah, reached the zenith of political prosperity.
In 745 B.C., however, a usurper, Pul or Pulu,
ascended the throne, and taking the name of one
of the most illustrious of the early Assyrian kings,
revived the glory of Assyria, reigning as Tiglath-
1 History, Prophecy, and the Monuments, vol. i. p. 300.

TIGLATH-PILESER III. 247
Pileser III. He reigned from 745 B.C. to 727 B.C.
Both in the Bible history and in the inscriptions he
appears as a poAverful warrior, Avho subjugated the
whole of Western Asia from the Median frontier
mountains in the east to the Mediterranean in the
west, including even a part of distant Cappadocia.
The mention of two kings of Assyria in the fifteenth
chapter of Second Kings, Pul and Tiglath-Pileser,
was at first a source of perplexity to Assyriologists.
No such name as Pul has been found on the monu
ments. The puzzle was rather increased than
diminished by the tradition of Berosus regarding
a Pul who Avas king of the Chaldaeans about this
time. When it became clear from the inscriptions
that Tiglath Pileser exercised sovereignty over
Babylon as well as Assyria, and Avhen it was re
membered that double names are common both
in ancient and modern history, the solution of
the difficulty by the identification of Pul and Tig
lath-Pileser seemed highly probable, and it is now
regarded as certain.1 Tiglath-Pileser was one of
the greatest monarchs of antiquity. He was, in
fact, the first who attempted to consolidate an
empire in the manner to which we have become
accustomed since Boman times. He did not re
main content to receive tribute from the kings and
rulers of the states whom he conquered. The coun
tries which he captured became subject-provinces of
his empire, governed by Assyrian satraps, and
each province had to pay its annual contribution
to the imperial treasury. From the fact that no
1 Schrader, Cuneiform Inscriptions and the Old Testament, vol. i.
pp. 230, 231.

248 CLOSE OF THE HEBREW MONARCHY.
fewer than five Hebrew kings are mentioned in
his Annals, the greatest interest attaches to the
fragments of his history which have come down
to us. These kings are Azariah or Uzziah, and
Jehoahaz — that is, Ahaz of Judah ; and Menahem,
Pekah, and Hoshea of Israel. Along with them
are mentioned their contemporaries, Bezin of Dam
ascus, and Hiram of Tyre, and two queens of
Arabia, unknown to history, Zabibi and Samsi.
The name of that ancient patriot and warrior, Mero
dach - Baladan, the Hereward of his age, as he
has been called, figures in his inscriptions ; and
the title of Babshakeh, which appears in Isa.
xxxvi. and xxxvii., is also found.
Not long after his accession, Tiglath-Pileser, like
his predecessors, turned his attention to the west.
After the siege of Arpad, about fifteen miles north
east of Aleppo, the Assyrian forces made their way
into Syria, and putting into operation the Assyrian
practice of deportation and repopulation, the con
queror annexed Hamath, which had sought the
alliance and assistance of Azariah, — that is, Uzziah,
— king of Judah. The Annals of Tiglath-Pileser
under the year 738 B.C. record the results of this
campaign as follows : " Nineteen districts belong
ing to Hamath, with their circumjacent towns
lying along the shore of the Western Sea, which
in sinfulness and vileness had allied themselves
to Azariah, I restored to the territory of the
land of Asshur ; my governors and administrators
I set over them." There is some obscurity as to
the effect of this campaign upon Azariah and the
kingdom of Judah. It has been ingeniously con-

TIGLATH-PILESER III. 249
tended by Winckler, who is followed by Hommel
and Strack, that it is not Azariah of Judah, but an
Azariah, the king of a region, Yaudu, in Northern
Syria, who is mentioned. But no Azariah is found
in the Sinjirli inscriptions, and although Yaudu
is found, it was too insignificant a State for nine
teen districts of Hamath to look to for protection
and leadership against the invading Assyrian.
Nor are historians agreed as to the immediate
effect of Tiglath - Pileser' s victory over the Hama-
thites. Whether Tiglath - Pileser then refrained
from molesting Judah, or whether her prestige was
broken by this campaign of the Assyrian king,
the time was near when Judah was to be put
under the heel of the Assyrian oppressor. Tig
lath-Pileser had again crossed the Euphrates and
invaded Syria, with the result recorded in his
inscriptions, that Bezin of Damascus, Minihimmi of
Samarina — that is, Menahem of Samaria — Hiram,
king of Tyre, and other kings (though not the
king of Judah) presented tribute. What is stated
in a word or two in the Annals of Tiglath-Pileser
is recorded at greater length in the Bible history
(2 Kings xv. 19): "And Pul the king of Assyria
came against the land : and Menahem gave Pul a
thousand talents of silver, that his hand might
be with him to confirm the kingdom in his hand.
And Menahem exacted the money of Israel, even
of all the mighty men of wealth, of each man
fifty shekels of silver, to giA-e to the king of
Assyria : so the king of Assyria turned back, and
stayed not there in the land." After the death
of Menahem and the murder of Pekahiah, his son,

250 CLOSE OF THE HEBREW MONARCHY.
Pekah, who had usurped the throne, in alliance
with Bezin, king of Damascus, attacked Judah,
and besieged Jerusalem with the object of over
throwing the house of David, and setting a Syrian,
Ben-Tabeel, on the throne of Judah. Ahaz had
just ascended the throne, and conscious of weak
ness, and even of disaffection, within Jerusalem
itself, he appealed to Tiglath-Pileser for help. It
was a miserable transaction for the grandson of
the great and powerful Uzziah to be engaged in,
and it bears a sacrilegious character when we read
that " Ahaz took the silver and gold that was
found in the house of the Lord, and in the treasures
of the king's house, and sent it for a present to
the king of Assyria" (2 Kings xvi. 7). He de
liberately sacrificed the independence of his country
in the terms of his offer of submission : " I am thy
servant and thy son." It is a significant comment
that is made by the Chronicler (2 Chron. xxviii.
21) upon the treatment of the abject king of Judah
by the proud Assyrian : " He helped him not."
It was at this juncture, Avhen Isaiah was endeav
ouring to put spirit into Ahaz to refuse submission
to Assyria, and bidding him have no fear of " these
two tails of smoking firebrands," Bezin of Syria and
Pekah, the son of Bemaliah, that the prophet gave
the famous sign : " Behold, a virgin shall conceive
and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel"
(Isa. vii. 14). To escape a momentary trouble
which the anointed of the Lord had no right to
fear, Ahaz entered upon the path of national
humiliation and apostasy. When Ahaz sent his
disgraceful message to Tiglath-Pileser, that ener-

TIGLATH-PILESER III. 251
getic ruler was already on his way on a new ex
pedition to the west. From his inscription, entitled
" The war in Palestine," 1 we can gather the course
of the campaign. He scattered the forces of Bezin,
and devastated his territory with fire and sword.
We read of him at Gilead, at Abel-beth-Maacah,
both in his OAvn Annals and in the narrative of
Second Kings (2 Kings xv. 29), and even as faf as
Gaza, which was captured and laid under tribute,
the inhabitants of Gilead and Galilee and the north
being carried away captive to Assyria. On his
return he captured Samaria, without, however,
razing it to the ground ; and Pekah having been
slain by his own people, Tiglath-Pileser left Hoshea,
the leader of the conspiracy, on the throne as
the vassal of Assyria. Ten talents of gold and a
thousand of silver, we learn from the cuneiform
inscriptions, was the tribute exacted. Among
those who are named as having paid tribute is
Jehoahaz — that is, Ahaz — of Judah, along with
the kings of Ashkelon, Moab, and Edom. At
Damascus, which fell to Tiglath - Pileser after a
two years' siege, and was cruelly punished for its
prolonged resistance, Ahaz appeared before the
conquerer at a great assemblage of tributary kings
gathered to do him homage, and professed such
admiration of the altars at which the Assyrian
monarch sacrificed, that he sent to the high priest
at Jerusalem "the fashion of the altar, and the
pattern of it, according to all the workmanship
thereof," desiring him to set it up in the house
of the Lord against his return from Damascus
1 Records of the Past, vol. v. pp. 51, 52.

252 CLOSE OF THE HEBREW MONARCHY.
(2 Kings xvi. 10-18). The Assyrian monarch
having made provision for the administration of
the conquered provinces, returned no more to the
west, but occupied himself with the subjugation
of hostile chieftains nearer home. Although not
without chronological difficulties, the inscriptions
of Tiglath-Pileser III., mutilated though they have
been by the pride and jealousy of Esarhaddon some
generations later, throw welcome light upon the
narrative of Second Kings (chaps, xv., xvi.), and
upon the prophecies of Isaiah (chaps, vii., viii.),
prompted by the events of the time.
In 727 B.C. Tiglath - Pileser died, and was suc
ceeded by Shalmaneser IV. His reign was short ;
and, as no annals of his have come to light, we
have to content ourselves with the tolerably full
accounts of Second Kings. In the seventeenth
and eighteenth chapters we learn that Hoshea of
Israel, relying upon help from the king of Egypt,
thought the death of Tiglath-Pileser a good op
portunity for striking a blow for independence.
It was a fatal throw of the dice. No help came
from Egypt. With the unaided and enfeebled
resources of his kingdom Hoshea had to face the
chastising forces of his Assyrian suzerain, the
result being that he was taken prisoner outside
of Samaria and most likely carried away to
Nineveh. Meanwhile, as the siege of Samaria
was proceeding, Shalmaneser IV. seems to have
retired to Nineveh and died.
Sargon, no blood-relation of the deceased monarch,
— some think nominated by him to the succession,
others think by a successful stroke of usurpation, —

SARGON II. 253
immediately ascended the throne. From his numer
ous inscriptions — which it is worth remembering
were the first - fruits of Assyrian excavation, and
brought to light a name which had been buried
in utter oblivion for more than two thousand years
— we learn that he was the king of Assyria who
captured Samaria in 722 B.C. and deported the
Israelites. In the beginning [of my reign] [he says in his annals] the
city Samaria [I took] with the help of Shamash, who secures
victory to me. [ . . . 27,290 people inhabiters of it] I took
away captive ; 50 chariots, the property of my royalty, which
were in it I appropriated. [ . . . The city] I restored, and
more than before I caused it to be inhabited ; people of the
lands conquered by my hand in it [I caused to dwell. My
governor over them I appointed, and tribute] and imposts
just as upon the Assyrians I laid upon them.
This furnishes striking confirmation of the narra
tive of Second Kings, in which we are told that
" the King of Assyria brought men from Babylon,
Cuthah, Ava, Hamath, and SepharA^aim" (2 Kings
xvii. 24), "and placed them in the cities of Samaria
instead of the children of Israel " ; and it is well
known that it was the hybrid stock produced by
their intermarriage with the Israelites that were
left who are known to us in the Gospel history
as the Samaritans. Israel now became an Assyrian
province, Samaria being the seat of the governor.
Sargon, the conqueror of Samaria, whose Annals
are engraved on the halls of Khorsabad, during
his reign of sixteen years — from 722-705 B.C. —
raised the empire of Assyria to the zenith of its
power. We have seen how disastrous to himself

254 CLOSE OF THE HEBREW MONARCHY.
and to his people were the overtures of Hoshea
of Israel to the king of Egypt. The neighbour
ing kings were not deterred by that example.
They thought the accession of a new king a good
occasion for combining with Egypt and throwing
off the yoke of Assyria. The kings of Syria,
Palestine, and Arabia joined in this revolt, with
the king of Lower Egypt behind them. The re
sult was calamitous. The king of Syria was easily
beaten, and the king of Hamath was flayed alive.
The turn of the Arabians came a few years later.
The Assyrian monarch marched to the border of
Egypt and gave battle to the Egyptian king, with
the kings of Baphia and Gaza, and completely
routed them at Baphia — a city on the coast to
the south of Gaza. This was in 720 B.C., and it
does not appear that Sargon interfered in the
affairs of the kingdom of Judah ; for though he
speaks of himself as the conqueror of the remote
land of Judah, that may mean nothing more than
that Ahaz, who, according to the most likely cal
culations, was still on the throne, continued the
tribute he had agreed to pay to his predecessor.
In 715 B.C. Sargon undertook a campaign into
North Arabia, with the result that Queen Samsi
of Aribi and Ithamar of Sheba, together with
Pir'a of Musur, — sometimes read as Pharaoh of
Egypt, — brought him rich presents, among which
were sweet-smelling spices of the mountains, gold,
precious stones, horses, and camels. Of these tribes
Sargon settled some in Samaria in the accustomed
Assyrian fashion ; and it is of their descendants
that we have " Geshem the Arabian" and others

SARGON II. 255
mentioned in Nehemiah (ii. 19, iv. 7) in the days
after the return from the exile.
It was in 711 B.C. that the expedition of Sargon
to punish the king of Ashdod, who had refused to
pay his tribute, took place, — the expedition which
Isaiah notices in a parenthesis, thus preserving the
one Bible allusion to this great monarch — the one
reference to him, in fact, known to history before
the disinterment of Nineveh from its ruins. Isaiah
refers to " the year that the Tartan " (the general
issimo of the Assyrian forces) " came unto Ashdod
(when Sargon the king of Assyria sent him), and
warred against Ashdod, and took it" (Isa. xx. l).
This expedition is fully described in Sargon's in
scriptions ; in fact, besides the mention of it in
his Annals and in the synoptic inscription giving
an account of his reign, the Ashdod expedition
has an inscription to itself. We do not require
to hold that there is any discrepancy between the
statement of the prophet that the Tartan fought
against Ashdod and took it, and the statement
of Sargon claiming that he took Ashdod himself.
There is no usage better established by the monu
ments than that by which the military achieve
ments of their generals are claimed by the kings
of Assyria as their own. It has been a question
how far Sargon interfered with Jerusalem in this
campaign. It has been held by Professor Sayce
and Professor Cheyne .that, while the Tartan in
vested Ashdod, Sargon himself overran the wide-
spreading land of Judah and seized its capital,
Jerusalem. And it has been assumed on this
view that Isa. x. and xi., where the march of an

256 CLOSE OF THE HEBREW MONARCHY.
invading army from the north is graphically de
scribed, refers to that event. This view has not
found favour. Professor G. A. Smith1 assigns the
prophecy of Isa. x. to Sargon's later campaign of
720, and holds that, having come to the very
heights around Jerusalem, he turned away by the
coast-land of Philistia to meet the Egyptian army
at Baphia. The absence of any direct mention,
either in the Bible narrative or in the copious
inscriptions of Sargon, of an event so notable as
the capture of Jerusalem by his arms, is fatal to
the supposition of such an event. In 705 B.C.
Sargon perished by the hand of an assassin — the
suspicion not being aAvanting that in this atrocity
Sennacherib, his son and successor, had a share.
Sargon was not merely a great conqueror but a
great statesman, who employed the peace for which
he fought so strenuously in building up the insti
tutions of his empire. In his palace at Dur-Sargina,
now historic under its name of Khorsabad, which
he made his royal residence, and which contains
such evidences of his greatness, he has recorded
the annals of his brilliant and epoch - making
reign. In 705 B.C. Sennacherib succeeded his father
Sargon, and began that career as a builder and
patron of letters, as well as remorseless conqueror,
which has carried his name down to modern times.
In 701 B.C. we find him, like all his famous pre
decessors, on his way to the shores of the Medi
terranean. The revolt of Judah from the Assyrian
allegiance was the occasion of the expedition. The
1 Isaiah, vol. i. p. 169 ff.

SENNACHERIB. 257
revolt itself was due to intrigues on the part of
Egypt on the one hand, and of Merodach - Bala-
dan of Babylon on the other. Merodach -Baladan
thought he saw in the accession of a new king an
opportunity of throwing off the yoke which Sargon
had riveted upon him, and having heard of Heze
kiah's sickness and recovery, he sent letters and
a present by way of congratulating him, but in
reality to sound him on the subject of a simul
taneous attempt to recover their lost independence.
How Hezekiah received his messengers, and what
were to be the ultimate results of his vainglorious
display of the national treasures to the ambassadors
of the king of Babylon, are well known to the
reader of Holy Writ. Egypt was keenly on the
watch for an opportunity of striking a blow at
her great Eastern rival, and Tirhaka's accession
to power gave him admission to this widespread
anti- Assyrian confederacy.
Having in the interval disposed of Merodach-
Baladan, — of whom his inscriptions tell, " In the
beginning of my kingdom, of Merodach-Baladan,
king of Kardunias, with the army of Elam, , in
the vicinity of Kisu, I accomplished the over
throw," — Sennacherib was free to proceed to the
chastisement of his rebellious vassal Hezekiah, and
to the overthrow of his Egyptian rival Tirhaka.
Misgivings as to the result of that western cam
paign could not have entered the minds of Sen
nacherib and his captains. Yet as we think of
his departure from Nineveh with a many-peopled
host, numbering, as Assyrian armies did when
they set out on great campaigns, perhaps two
R

258 CLOSE OF THE HEBREW MONARCHY.
hundred thousand men, and as Ave contemplate
his disastrous return, we are forcibly reminded
of the Grand Army with which Napoleon invaded
Bussia, or of the Spanish Armada which sailed
forth from Spain with such pomp and pride for
what seemed the easy task of invading Protestant
England and making it a province of Catholic
Spain. Sennacherib's inscriptions tell us how it
fared with the expedition when once it came into
touch with the western allies. He replaced the
rebellious king of Ashkelon by a vassal of his
own ; he encountered the king of Egypt, Tirhaka,
the Assyrian Tarku, and overthrew him at Eltekeh ;
he set free the king of Ekron from the hands of
Hezekiah of Judah, and restored him to his
throne ; a,nd he attacked Jerusalem, where Heze
kiah, against the counsels of Isaiah, had been
drifting into an Egyptian alliance. "Hezekiah
himself," he says, " I shut up like a bird in a
cage in Jerusalem, his royal city. I built a line
of forts against him, and I kept back his heel
from going forth out of the great gate of his
city. . . . The fear of the greatness of my
majesty overwhelmed them, even Hezekiah." One
point even the boasting of the Assyrian monarch
cannot conceal, and that is his failure to capture
Jerusalem, for from the beginning of this inscrip
tion to the end there is not a syllable to show
that it was taken by his arms.1
The precise course of Sennacherib's invasion of
Palestine, and especially of Judah, is, despite the
1 Schrader, Cuneiform Inscriptions and the Old Testament, vol. i.
p. 297 ; George Smith, Assyrian Discoveries, p. 303 ff.

SENNACHERIB. 259
amount of materials to hand, not very easily fol
lowed. It seems highly probable that, after hav
ing settled with Phoenicia, and having arranged
for the prosecution of the siege of Tyre, which
resisted Sennacherib, as at a later time it held
out against Alexander the Great, he broke up
his army into two main divisions, one marching
along the coast route to capture the cities of the
Philistines and to be within striking distance of
Egypt, the other traversing Galilee and Samaria
to crush Judah.1 The Scripture narrative runs
that " Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against
all the cities of Judah and took them." This Sen
nacherib, in the inscription upon the winged bull
at the gate of his palace, describes more particu
larly as " forty-six of [Hezekiah's] cities, fortresses,
strong and small cities." " Two hundred thousand
one hundred and fifty people," — so runs the parallel
inscription on the Taylor cylinder, — " small and
great, male and female, horses, mules, asses, camels,
oxen, and sheep, ... I brought out and as spoil
I counted " ; which would mean the complete de
vastation of the territory north of Jerusalem and
around it. If the famous description of an in
vader's march in Isaiah belongs to the expedition
of Sennacherib, we can trace the movements of
the remorseless foe to the very gates of the Holy
City. Seeing resistance to be hopeless, Hezekiah
offered submission to Sennacherib, who was en
camped before Lachish, saying, " Whatsoever thou
wilt impose upon me, I will bear." He imposed
a fine, says the narrative of the Book of Kings,
1 Sinker, Hezekiah and his Age, p. 107.

260 CLOSE OF THE HEBREW MONARCHY.
of three hundred talents of silver and thirty
talents of gold; eight hundred talents of silver
and thirty talents of gold, say the Assyrian
annals, where there is an apparent discrepancy,
due, we might say, to Assyrian exaggeration, but
no discrepancy at all if it be tbe case, as has
been suggested, that the Hebrew silver talent stood
to the Babylonian in the ratio of three to eight.
Meanwhile Sennacherib was in the country of the
Philistines crushing the revolted cities, which he
was able to do before Tirhaka of Egypt came on
the ground.
Naturally we are concerned as to Lachish, around
which so much of interest, e\~en of romance, had al
ready gathered. Singularly enough, while all three
Scripture accounts — in Second Kings, in Second
Chronicles, and in Isaiah — make mention of the siege
of Lachish by Sennacherib, it is not so much as men
tioned in his Annals. To make up for the omission,
however, we have a splendid sculpture, now in the
British Museum, occupying several slabs, from one
of the halls of Sennacherib's palace, representing
the captives of Lachish passing before the Assyrian
monarch seated on a throne, and over the sculpture
the inscription : " Sennacherib, king of nations, king
of Assyria, seated on an exalted throne, recei\~es the
spoils of the city of Lachish." ]
Whether it was that Sennacherib repented of
his leniency toAvards Jerusalem, thus leaving a
] It is interesting to note that among facsimiles of Assyrian his
torical slabs in the British Museum recently added to the Edin
burgh Museum of Science and Art, carefully reproduced in oriental
alabaster, the facsimile of the slab bearing this inscription is to be
found.

SENNACHERIB. 261
strong fortress in his rear in the hands of a
doubtful vassal, or whether he discovered Hezekiah,
notwithstanding the punishment inflicted upon him,
in some disloyal intrigue, " the king of Assyria,"
so runs the narrative in Second Kings, " sent the
Tartan," the commander-in-chief; "Babsaris," the
chief courtier ; and " Babshakeh," the chief of the
staff, " from Lachish to king Hezekiah with a great
host against Jerusalem." With a host sufficient to
crush Jerusalem, these three plenipotentiaries sum
moned Hezekiah to an audience, and, when his
three chief Ministers of State went forth to them
and begged them not to speak in the Hebrew but
in the Syrian tongue, made light of the author
ity of the king, and by blasphemous persuasions
uttered in Hebrew sought to create division among
the listening people, and to obtain their submis
sion. " But the people held their peace, and
answered" the blaspheming Babshakeh "not a
word." Jerusalem was within a hair's -breadth of
the horrors of an Assyrian capture, and Hezekiah
might well tremble as he thought of the king of
Hamath flayed alive, or the king of Bet Silun
impaled before the gate of his capital. So he
turned to Jehovah, and Isaiah the prophet was
commissioned to speak to him the divine answer :
" Thus saith the Lord, Be not afraid of the words
which thou hast heard, with which the servants
of the king of Assyria have reproached me. Be
hold, I will send a blast upon him, and he shall
hear a rumour, and shall return to his own land ;
and I will cause him to fall by the sword in his
own land. So Babshakeh returned, and found

262 CLOSE OF THE HEBREW MONARCHY.
the king of Assyria warring against Libnah : for
he had heard that he was departed from Lachish "
(2 Kings xix. 6-8).
But now the Assyrian forces were to encounter
Tirhaka, the king of Ethiopia, and Sennacherib
was concerned that Jerusalem had not surrendered.
Perhaps but for Tirhaka's forward movement at
this juncture, Sennacherib might have led his main
army against Jerusalem. In that case its fall would
have been inevitable. But as he has Tirhaka to
face, he is content to send a letter demanding from
Hezekiah the surrender of Jerusalem, bidding him
give up all hope of deliverance from his God.
Again, Hezekiah had recourse to Jehovah, and to
his prayer an answer was granted by the prophet
Isaiah, partly addressed to Hezekiah and partly
addressed to Sennacherib, but closing with the
divine assurance concerning the king of Assyria :
" He shall not come into this city, nor shoot an
arrow there, nor come before it with shield, nor
cast a bank against it. By the way that he came,
by the same shall he return, and shall not come
into this city, saith the Lord. For I will defend
this city, to save it, for mine own sake, and for
my servant David's sake." And then came the
great disaster which brought relief to Judah and
to the west all the days of Sennacherib. The
Assyrian had met Tirhaka in a decisive battle and
completely routed his forces. It Avas when follow
ing up this victory as far as Pelusium that the
catastrophe befell of which we have the record
both in the Second Book of Kings and in the pages
of Herodotus. The old Greek historian heard from

SENNACHERIB. 263
the priests of Memphis how the Egyptian and
Assyrian armies were encamped at Pelusium, and
there came " in the night a multitude of field-mice,
which devoured all the quivers and bowstrings of
the enemy, and ate the thongs by which they
grasped their shields. Next morning they com
menced their flight, and great multitudes fell, as
they had no arms with which to defend them
selves." * The Bible account reads : " And it came
to pass that night, that the angel of the Lord went
out, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians an
hundred fourscore and five thousand ; and when
they arose early in the morning, behold, they were
all dead corpses. So Sennacherib, king of Assyria,
departed, and went and returned, and dwelt at
Nineveh" (2 Kings xix. 35, 36). When we re
member that the mouse is the Egyptian symbol
for pestilence, we can understand that the Hebrew
and the Egyptian narratives are just different ways
of describing the extraordinary blow that fell upon
Sennacherib's host. And when we consider that the
Assyrian inscriptions are silent as to the results of
this Egyptian campaign and Sennacherib's return
to his own land, we have in that silence the
strongest confirmation of the catastrophe that over
took his almost irresistible array.
After his invasion of the west, Sennacherib lived
twenty years ; but there is no record of any visit
to the western lands again. He waged war with
Elam and Babylon, and overcame them in a battle
which is recorded on what is called the Taylor
cylinder, one of the finest battle-pieces, we are
1 Herodotus, ii. 141.

264 CLOSE OF THE HEBREW MONARCHY.
told, in any literature. The capture and destruc
tion of Babylon by Sennacherib in 689 B.C., like
the capture and destruction of Constantinople by
the Turks at a much later time, is one of the
calamities of human history ; for who can tell
what ancient records, what monuments of remote
antiquity, were destroyed in its overthrow ? Cruel
and remorseless as he was in war, Sennacherib
nevertheless did much to strengthen and beautify
Nineveh, and his palace, recovered by Layard's
explorations, has yielded up treasures of the great
est value for the reconstruction of the history of
the times.
His end was tragic enough. " It came to pass,
as he was worshipping in the house of Nisroch his
god, that Adrammelech and Sharezer his sons smote
him with the sword : and they escaped into the
land of Armenia. And Esarhaddon his son reigned
in his stead" (2 Kings xix. 37). It seems that
these two parricides were jealous of the favour
shown by Sennacherib to Esarhaddon. This does
not rest upon mere conjecture. Among the clay
tablets in the British Museum there is one which
contains the will of Sennacherib, executed sometime
before his death, by which he bequeaths his valu
ables to Esarhaddon, his favourite son. An in
scription has also been found which is supposed
to record the indignation of Esarhaddon on hearing
of his father's tragic death.
Esarhaddon was a great king and a worthy suc
cessor of Sennacherib, ruling from the Euphrates
to the Nile. The Assyrian texts have much to tell
of his expeditions — now into distant Media, again

ASSHURBANIPAL. 265
to Meroe the stronghold of Tirhaka of Ethiopia,
and yet again into Arabia. The kings of the
Khatti and of the nations beyond the sea, kings
from Cyprus and Syria, including Manasseh of
Judah, obeyed his summons and paid him homage
at Nineveh in 676 B.C. He had reigned little more
than ten years when he associated with him on the
throne his son, the famous Asshurbanipal, the Sar-
danapalus of the Greeks.
By the death of his father in 668 B.C. Asshur
banipal became sole ruler of Assyria. He is now
generally recognised as " the great and noble
Asnapper," whom Ezra mentions (iv. 10) in con
nection with another record of the deportation of
conquered peoples of the east to the city of Samaria.
Though nowhere else referred to by name in Scrip
ture, he was known to the Greeks and Bomans as
Sardanapalus ; but the character and history of that
licentious and effeminate monarch are a mere cari
cature of the great Assyrian. He was great as a
ruler and a warrior ; but his distinction among
Assyrian kings lay in his munificent patronage of
literature and his conspicuous zeal in accumulating
literary treasures of the past. If Nineveh was the
Florence of that age, Asshurbanipal was its Lorenzo
de' Medici, the Magnificent. It is largely to his
patronage of learning, and to the inscriptions col
lected and copied by him for the great library at
Nineveh which bore his name, that we owe our
acquaintance not only with his age and exploits
but with Babylonian antiquity two thousand years
and more before his time, — its kings, its history, its
art, its poetry, its religion.

266 CLOSE OF THE HEBREW MONARCHY.
The mere mention of his wars — his two cam
paigns against Egypt, his siege of Tyre, his ex
pedition to Arabia, his subjugation of Elam — shows
him to have been a conqueror of restless activity
and irresistible might. There are interesting points
of contact between his Annals and the Scripture
narrative. Perhaps the most instructive of these
is the illustration Avhich the prophecy of Nahum
against Nineveh receives from the account of the
destruction of Thebes in Upper Egypt by Asshur
banipal. " In my second expedition," he says, " to
Egypt and Ethiopia, I directed my march. Budam-
mon heard of the progress of my expedition, and
that I had crossed over the borders of Egypt.
Memphis he abandoned, and to save his life he
fled into Thebes. After Budammon I took the
road ; I went to Thebes, the strong city. A jour
ney of a month and ten days on a difficult road
after him they went to the midst of Thebes : the
whole of it they [the troops] took and swept like
a storm. To Nineveh my royal city they carried
away the spoil and kissed my feet." It is this over
throw of Thebes (called in Scripture No-amon),
still recent, that the prophet Nahum has in view
when he apostrophises Nineveh, predicting for her
a similar fate : " Art thou better than No-amon,
that was situate among the rivers, that had the
waters round about her, whose rampart was the sea
[that is, the Nile], and her wall was of the sea?
Ethiopia and Egypt were her strength, and it was
infinite ; Put and Lubim were thy helpers, Yet
was she carried away, she Avent into captivity . . .
They cast lots for her honourable men, and all her

ASSHURBANIPAL. 267
great men were bound in chains " (Nahum iii. 8-10,
B.V.) The Avord of the prophet was fulfilled to
the letter. It was in 663 B.C. that the hundred-
gated Thebes was overthrown, and in less than
sixty years (606 B.C.) Nineveh, Avhich had been the
capital city of great conquerors and had " multi
plied her merchants above the stars of heaven"
(Nahum iii. 16), fell before the combined forces of
the Medes and Babylonians, — fell suddenly and
finally, to rise no more. There is good reason to
believe that the king of Assyria, whose captains
" took Manasseh in chains, and bound him with
fetters, and carried him to Babylon" (2 Chron.
xxxiii. 11), was Asshurbanipal, who seems, like
Esarhaddon before him, upon occasion to have
held his court at Babylon, and there to have
receiATed Manasseh under such humiliating con
ditions. There is a list of tributary kings in
which Manasseh, king of the land of Judah, is
named ; and the cylinder inscription, which is the
chief source of Asshurbanipal's history, contains the
following : " I gathered twenty -two princes of the
Hittite land, who dwelt by the sea and in the
midst of it, all of them I summoned." After a
time he sent Manasseh back to his own land, so
that his humiliation became his salvation (2 Chron.
xxxiii. 13). In 626 B.C. Asshurbanipal is believed to
have died ; and it is a grim summary of his career
which Maspero gives us when he says that he sur
passed all his predecessors in activity, in courage, in
energy, .and in cruelty, — as if Assyria, feeling itself
on the brink of collapse, had been anxious to gather
up in one man all the qualities which had made its

268 CLOSE OF THE HEBREW MONARCHY.
grandeur, and all the defects which had tarnished
its glory.
The fall of Nineveh and the dissolution of the
Assyrian empire left Babylon the leading power in
the East. Egypt had meanwhile been recovering
strength, and had begun to feel the prompting of
her old ambitions. Under the reign of Asshur
banipal's son and successor, Egypt seems to have
thrown off the Assyrian yoke, and conceived the
idea of becoming invaders in turn. Pharaoh-
Necho had set his heart upon Asiatic conquests,
but the king of Judah, Josiah, who by the advice
of Jeremiah declined an Egyptian alliance and felt
bound by loyalty to his Assyrian suzerain, threw
himself across the path of the Egyptian invader
and lost his life in the battle of Megiddo, 609 b..c.
His sons, Jehoahaz, who had reigned only three
months when he was carried away captive to
Egypt, and Jehoiakim, who reigned eleven years,
were poor successors to such a king as Josiah ; and
when Jehoiachin had reigned but three months
Jerusalem was taken by the Chaldseans from Baby
lon. Pharaoh-Necho, having disposed of the oppo
sition of Josiah, pushed forward on his eastward
march till he reached the Euphrates, and there was
completely routed by the Babylonian army under
Nebuchadnezzar in the decisive battle of Carchem
ish, 605 B.C. This victory left the Chaldseans un
disputed masters of Western Asia. Judah and
other countries simply exchanged the yoke of
Assyria for that of Chaldaea, and in 604 B.C.
Nebuchadnezzar, whose father Nabopolassar had
recovered the independence of Babylon, and had

NEBUCHA DNEZZAR. 269
associated his son with him on the throne,1 became
sole king.
The new Babylonian empire into which the
Chaldseans entered is really an example of arrested
development. The Chaldaeans, who are first men
tioned in one of the many inscriptions of Asshurnazir
pal, adopted the Avriting of the old Babylonians,
followed their customs in commerce and trade,
received their culture and science, even to the
astrology for which they were famous ; and the
gods of ancient Babylon, Merodach and Nebo,
became the gods of the Neo-Babylonian empire.
Of this new empire Nebuchadnezzar was the power
ful ruler. We do not need to dwell upon his his
tory. The narratives in Second Kings and Second
Chronicles, and the prophecies of Jeremiah, who
gives his name as Nebuchadrezzar (after the cunei
form Nabu-kudarri-uzur, Nebo protect the boundary),
record his treatment of his shifty vassals, the kings
of Judah. A young and warlike Pharaoh, Hophra
(Apries), had mounted the throne, and Zedekiah
of Judah, thinking the occasion favourable for
achieving his independence, and rejecting the ad
vice of Jeremiah to the contrary, entered into an
intrigue with the Egyptian king. Nebuchadnezzar
would brook no such disloyalty from his vassals.
He marched at once to the west and committed
to Nebuzaradan the task of besieging Jerusalem.
Meanwhile Pharaoh-Hophra with his army crossed
the Egyptian frontier to the help of his allies,
and compelled the Chaldseans to raise the siege
of Jerusalem and meet him in the field. But here
1 The Book of Daniel, by John Kennedy, D.D., p. 172 ff.

270 CLOSE OF THE HEBREW MONARCHY.
his courage failed him, and he retired in haste
without offering battle. Anew the Babylonian
army sat down before Jerusalem, and, after a siege
of a year and a half, Jerusalem surrendered to
hunger and the Chaldseans in 586 B.C. The cap
tured Jewish king was brought to Nebuchadnezzar
at Biblah, and, after having seen his children put
to death, and having his eyes put out, Zedekiah
was sent to languish and die in a Babylonian
prison. Jerusalem Avas burnt with fire, its wall
thrown down, and the people carried into captivity.
Over the remnant left behind Gedaliah was ap
pointed gOA'ernor, with his residence at Mizpah,
where also a Babylonian contingent remained be
hind. With the murder of Gedaliah even this
last trace of the former kingdom of Judah was
wiped out.
Of Nebuchadnezzar's annals little has survived
to us, but that little is of importance as containing
an allusion to his campaign in Egypt in the thirty-
seventh year of his reign. In this connection,
Jeremiah's prophecy (chap, xliii.) of Nebuchad
nezzar's invasion of Egypt, which was to be as
powerless in his hands as the cloak which the
shepherd wraps round him, has recently received
a striking illustration. Jeremiah and other eminent
members of the remnant of Judah had been carried
off to Egypt against their will and in opposition to
the word of the Lord. They had made Tahpanhes
their place of refuge, thinking themselves safe
in the territory and fortress of a king who had been
an ally of Zedekiah, king of Judah. "Then came
the word of the Lord unto Jeremiah in Tahpanhes,

NEBUCHADNEZZAR. 271
saying, Take great stones in thine hand, and hide
them in the clay in the pavement of brick, which is
at the entry of Pharaoh's house in Tahpanhes, in
the sight of the men of Judah ; and say unto them,
Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel : I
will send and take Nebuchadrezzar, the king of
Babylon, my servant, and will set his throne upon
these stones that I have hid ; and he shall spread
his royal pavilion over them." One of the most
interesting discoveries in Lower Egypt is the find
ing, as is believed, of this very pavement of brick.
It was discovered by Professor Flinders Petrie in
June 1886. Describing a great open-air platform
in a mound known as "the Palace of the Jew's
daughter" at Defenneh, the modern name for
Tahpanhes, such as is found now outside all great
houses in Egypt, where the owner receives his
friends and transacts business or drinks coffee with
them, he says : " This platform is unmistakably
the brickwork of the pavement which is at the
entry of Pharaoh's house at Tahpanhes. Here
the ceremony described by Jeremiah took place
before the chiefs of the fugitives assembled on
the platform, and here Nebuchadnezzar spread
his royal pavilion. The very nature of the site
is precisely applicable to all the events." x Taken
along with other indications of his presence in
Egypt, and especially in connection with an in
scription which tells that Nebuchadnezzar pene
trated as far south as Assouan, the presumption
in favour of the correctness of Dr Flinders Petrie's
identification is raised to a high degree of certainty.
1 Nebesheh and Defenneh, p. 51.

272 CLOSE OF THE HEBREW MONARCHY.
It is not his campaigns, however, so much as
his public buildings, that Nebuchadnezzar himself
has made known to posterity. There is a paucity
of inscriptions containing details of his warlike en
terprises, but no such scarcity of inscriptions re
cording his work as a builder. This is, according
to Tiele,1 a distinguishing feature of the Babylonian
as contrasted with the Assyrian inscriptions, due, as
he thinks, to the greater independence and influence
of the priesthood. An inscription of six hundred
and twenty lines on a huge block of black basalt
tells of the Hanging Gardens, one of the wonders
of the ancient world, which Bassam believes he
has discovered ; the magnificent palace, of which
remains have been found by the same explorer ; the
massive walls of the capital ; the eanal system, re
minding us of the engineering works of Amenemhat
of Egypt ; and the restoration of the ancient tem
ples of Sippar, Kuthah, Larsa, and other cities,
in whose ruins bricks have been turned up bearing
the name of Nebuchadnezzar. Especially did he
favour the two great temples of Babylon — Borsippa
and Bel-Merodach, and the temples of Nebo, Esagila,
and E-zida. The superscription of a magnificent
bronze threshold obtained by Bassam not far from
the ruins of Birs-Nimroud bears that Nebuchad
nezzar had restored the temple E-zida at Borsippa
" to the honour of the god Nebo, who has length
ened his days.',' Considering what Nebuchadnezzar
had done to give Babylon a glory which it had
never attained among the cities of the old Baby
lonian empire, Ave are not surprised at the words
1 Bab.-Ass. Geschichte, p. 417.

NABONIDUS. 273
which the prophet Daniel puts into his mouth : "Is
not this great Babylon, that I have built for the
house of the kingdom by the might of my poAver,
and for the honour of my majesty ? " Of the mad
ness inflicted upon him for his pride nothing is told
in the cuneiform records. But there is a tradition,
handed down by Berosus, which, though divergent
from that of the Scripture narrative, yet in a sense
forms a parallel to it, and shows that something of
the kind was known to antiquity.1
The greatness of the new Babylonian empire be
gun with Nebuchadnezzar, blazed forth in meteoric
splendour during his long reign of forty-three years,
and came to an end with him. "The head of gold"
(Dan. ii. 36) soon gave place to " the breast and
arms of silver." Evil-Merodach, who lifted up the
head of Jehoiachin out of prison (2 Kings xxv.
27-30), Nergal -Sharezer, who has been identified
with the chief magician of that name mentioned by
Jeremiah (Jer. xxxix. 3, 13), and of whom a clay
cylinder is preserved at Cambridge, and a son of
this latter, in succession occupied the throne for a
few years, when it was usurped by Nabunahid, or
Nabonidus, the name by which he is better known.
He was no connection of the family of Nebuchad
nezzar, but after ascending the throne he seems to
have married a daughter of that king, thinking to
unite in his own person all the claims to royalty,
and to secure the support of all parties. This may
be inferred from Dan. v. 2, 11, 13, 18, 22, and it
was quite in accordance with the ways of usurpers.
1 Miirdter - Delitzsch, Geschichte von Babylonien und Assyrien,
p. 250. S

274 CLOSE OF THE HEBREW MONARCHY.
He was more a lover of the antiquities of his
country than a powerful and successful ruler. It is
to his antiquarian tastes and investigations that
we owe the most valuable information we possess
regarding the gods and temples and rulers of
the old Babylonian regime. From his inscriptions,
as we have already noted,1 we obtain some of the
most important data we possess for the chronology
of ancient Babylonia. Nabonidus himself does not
come into view in the Book of Daniel. It is his
son Belshazzar who is mentioned, and who was
likely associated with his father on the throne
towards the close of his seventeen years' reign.
In this dual sovereignty we are to find the ex
planation of the honour which was bestowed on
Daniel, after his interpretation of the writing on
the wall, in being made " third ruler of the king
dom" (Dan. v. 7, 16, 29). For long there was no
trace of Belshazzar in the inscriptions, and the ex
istence of any such person was confidently denied.
But now inscriptions have been found which leave
the historical character of Belshazzar in no manner
of doubt. That he was the eldest son of Nabonidus
— the " offspring of my heart," he calls him, — that
he was intrusted with the supreme command of the
army, and that his residence and special sphere of
rule were in Babylon itself, are facts which appear
to be made out. Contract tablets have been found
which give interesting details about him.2 One of
these is dated the fifth year of Nabonidus, and tells
the price at which " the secretary of Belshazzar, the
1 See also article " Babylonia " in the Bible Dictionary.
2 Records of the Past, second series, vol. iii. p. 124 ff.

CYRUS. 275
son of the king," rents a house for three years.
Another, mentioning a money transaction in Avhich
Belshazzar's steward was engaged for his master,
is dated the twelfth year of Nabonidus, and in six
years more Cyrus had entered Babylon.
Cyrus occupies a large place both in the Scripture
history and the literature of Greece. Up to 1879
there were only two inscriptions of Cyrus known to
exist, — the one consisting of four and the other of
not more than ten words, just enough to authen
ticate his historical existence. But in 1879 Mr
Hormuzd Bassam discovered in the ruins of Baby
lon a cylinder of unbaked clay, shaped like a
barrel, though unfortunately mutilated. It was
completely covered with writing, amounting to over
a thousand words. This inscription, known as the
Cylinder of Cyrus, together with the annalistic
tablet of Nabonidus, shows Cyrus in a new light
altogether. He is exhibited as no Zoroastrian
monotheist, but rather as the young servant of
Merodach, as presenting peace - offerings to the
gods, and as restoring Nebo to his old shrine.
Like the Bomans in later times, and the Assyrians
before his day, he thought it politic to venerate
the gods of the people he had conquered. It
appears, moreover, that Cyrus was no Persian,
though he is thus described. Both he and his
ancestors were kings of Anzan, a small territory
in Elam. The empire which he founded was not
Persian ; Darius, the son of Hystaspes, was the
founder of the Persian empire.
The new inscription of Cyrus discovered at Babylon
fsays the Abbe" Vigouroux] shows us in this monarch not

276 CLOSE OF THE HEBREW MONARCHY.
the rigid monotheist, the strict adherent of Zoroastrianism,
whom historians love to paint, but an accommodating states
man who adapts himself without scruple to the religious
ideas of the peoples in the midst of whom he lives: it
confirms, moreover, all that Scripture tells us of the relations
between this monarch and the Jewish people, when it re
presents him speaking and acting as the sacred historians
make him speak and act, recognising the protection and the
authority of the gods of other peoples, and aiding them in
conducting their worship and in the building of their
temples. The new cylinder confirms, accordingly, the sacred
narrator. It is chronologically the last testimony which
Assyrian epigraphy renders to the Bible.1
These recently discovered inscriptions give a
different complexion to some facts in connection
with the conquests of Cyrus. It was not the
Medes, as Herodotus records, but the Manda whom
Cyrus overthrew under Istuvegu, the Astyages of
the Greeks and of the Apocrypha. It further ap
pears that Cyrus himself was engaged some distance
from Babylon when Gobryas, his commander-in-
chief, took the city, which fell not by the strategy
which Cyrus is said to have employed of directing
the river into a new channel, but rather from treach
ery and divided counsels within.2 It has been
thought that the exiled Jews in Babylon had been
in communication with Cyrus, looking to him as
the great liberator he proved himself to be. At
any rate, the restoration of the Jews to their own
land is seen to have been part of the policy which
Cyrus adopted towards the nations under his sway,
— a policy by which at the same time God's promises
to Israel were fulfilled.
1 Vigouroux, La Bible et les decouvertes modernes, vol. iv. p. 419.
2 See ' Recent Explorations in Bible Lands,' pp. 59, 60.

JEWISH EXILES IN NIPPUR. 277
But the Cylinder of Cyrus is no longer, as the
Abbe Vigouroux puts it, the last word of Assyrian
epigraphy on the Bible history. As it is Nippur
that has furnished the cuneiform inscriptions Avhich
carry us back to the remotest known antiquity, it
is Nippur that is even at this moment furnishing us
with the latest information that we possess outside
the Bible record regarding the Jewish people in
their exile. Professor Hilprecht, while working in
the Imperial Ottoman Museum in Constantinople,
examined some 730 clay tablets, which turned out
to be the contents of the business archive of the
wealthy and influential firm of Murashu Sons of
Nippur, who lived in the time of Artaxerxes I. and
Darius II. (464-405), in whose reigns the docu
ments are dated.1 The tablets, while furnishing
valuable information concerning the cultivation of
the ground around Nippur, the lease of canals, works
for irrigating the fields and date-groves, and the
payment of taxes by different classes of the popula
tion, are specially interesting to us because of the
faithful picture they give of the life of Babylonia at
the time when Ezra led forth the second party of
Jewish exiles from Babylon to Palestine. Most
remarkable of all in these tablets is the number
of Jewish names known from the genealogical and
other lists of Ezra and Nehemiah, and Kings and
Chronicles, and other parts of the Bible. Professor
Hilprecht infers from this that a considerable num
ber of the Jewish exiles, carried away by Nebu
chadnezzar after the capture of Jerusalem, were
settled in Nippur and its neighbourhood. Of this
1 The Babylonian Expedition, vol. ix.

278 CLOSE OF THE HEBREW MONARCHY.
fact there are various proofs. The Talmudic tradi
tion which identifies Nippur with Calneh (Gen. x.
10) gains new force in the light of these facts. It
is also interesting to know from two inscriptions
deciphered by Professor Hilprecht that " the river
Khebar in the land of the Chaldeans " by which
Ezekiel saw his visions of the Cherubim, and for
which up till now the cuneiform literature has been
searched in vain, is identical with the Khabari, a
large navigable canal not far from Nippur.1
In closing this lecture, and concluding the con
sideration of these ancient monuments, as far as
the Old Testament is concerned, we cannot but be
struck with the relation of the Word of God to
those powerful empires and rulers of antiquity. It
is the Word of God which has preserved to modern
times the story of Babylonian rulers, Egyptian
Pharaohs, and Assyrian kings, when their own rec
ords were swallowed up in the sands of the desert,
or were buried deep in the marshes which had en
gulfed city and temple and palace. It is the Word
of God which has furnished the surest clue to their
recovery as well as supplied the impulse to explore
and excavate in search of their remains ; for,
great as is the value of these relics for the re
construction of the history of antiquity, their value
for the elucidation and confirmation of the Bible
history is the greatest of all.
1 The Babylonian Expedition, vol. ix. pp. 27, 28.

279

LECTUBE VIII.
THE TIMES OF CHRIST AND HIS APOSTLES IN THE
LIGHT OF RECENT DISCOVERY.
When Christ Avas born at Bethlehem Herod the
Great Avas approaching the close of his long and
splendid reign as king of the Jews. Detested by
the mass of his subjects because of his cruelties,
he won for himself a high place in the favour of
Augustus, his Boman suzerain, by his efficiency
as a ruler and by the splendour of his public
administration. In the end, however, he fell into
disgrace ; and Josephus records how Augustus
gave him to understand that, whereas he had up
till then treated him as a friend, he would hence
forth treat him as a subject. Accordingly, when
" there went out a decree from Csesar Augustus
that all the Avorld should be taxed" (Luke ii. 1),
or brought under a census, no exemption was
made in the case of the kingdom of Herod,
however distasteful and unpopular the require
ment might be to him and his subjects ; and
" all went to be enrolled, every one into his own
city" (Luke ii. 3).
Upon this point recent discovery has in a remark
able way confirmed the testimony of St Luke. The

280 THE TIMES OF CHRIST AND HIS APOSTLES.
enrolment itself and the note of time added by the
evangelist — " This was the first enrolment, made
when Quirinius was governing Syria" (Luke ii. 2,
B.V.) — have been a source of no little perplexity to
the student of the Gospels. Indeed so little has
been hitherto known of the real character of this
enrolment, and so entirely had all evidence of a
periodic census disappeared, that this reference to it
had been made the ground of serious attacks upon
the trustworthiness and accuracy of St Luke as
a historian. In vindication of St Luke's credit as
an accurate narrator of facts, we can now assert,
upon evidence which grows stronger every year,
that there was such a periodic census or enrol
ment in the Syrian province of the empire, and
that Christ was born during the time when the
first enrolment of the series was being made in
Palestine.1 Some years ago the discovery was made
by different workers, almost simultaneously, that
a periodic census was made in Egypt under the
Empire, and that the period intervening between
the enrolments was fourteen years. It was shown
that enrolments were made for the years 89-90,
103-104, 117-118, 131-132, and so on till 229-230
of our era. More recently evidence has come to
light of enrolments for 75-76 and 61-62.2 It is
1 Expositor, April and June 1897 ; Was Christ born at Bethlehem?
p. 131 ff. We follow Professor Ramsay of Aberdeen in the brief state
ment, which is all we can afford space to make regarding a most inter
esting subject.
2 Professor Ramsay mentions, in a postscript to the preface of ' Was
Christ born at Bethlehem ? ' the discovery of a papyrus which is a
household enrolment paper belonging to the census of a.d. 20, proving
conclusively his theory as to the origin of the periodic enrolments from
the time of Augustus.

THE CENSUS OF QUIRINIUS. 281
of special interest to notice that the technical
terms, diroypa^i] and aTroypd<f>ei.v, used of the
Egyptian census, are the very terms which St
Luke employs. Though the Egyptian year was
employed, the census was carried out by Boman
officials, and formed part of the imperial system
of administration. But the evidence is not con
fined to Egypt. We have evidence of periodic
enrolments in Syria as well. In the Acts of the
Apostles (v. 37) St Luke mentions " the days of
the enrolment," " the great enrolment," which is
reckoned to have taken place in a.d. 7, when
Quirinius was governor of Syria a second time,
and there was a numbering of the people and a
valuation of their property. But independently
of St Luke there is evidence of enrolment in the
province of Syria ; 1 and the reasons which re
quired periodic enrolments by households in Egypt
held good in Syria also. It is shown by the en
rolment papers found in Egypt that the census
had a household or tribal character, which re
quired the families to go up to the tribal centre,
which in the case of Joseph and Mary was Beth
lehem, and that the enforcement of it in this form
was a concession to Jewish feeling rather than
otherwise. The conclusion is that there was a
system of periodic enrolment in the province Syria
1 Professor Ramsay says : "The most important fact is that we have
clear evidence, quite independent of Luke, that the first, second, and
fourth periodic enrolments were observed in the province Syria." The
first is on the authority of the early Christian father Tertullian ; the
second is from an inscription accidentally discovered at Venice ; and
the fourth is due to Tacitus. See ' Was Christ born at Bethlehem ? '
p. 167 ff.

282 THE TIMES OF CHRIST AND HIS APOSTLES.
according to a fourteen - year cycle, and the first
enrolment was made in the year 8 B.C., — strictly
the Syrian year beginning in the spring of 8 B.C.
From a consideration of the attitude of Herod to
the enrolment, it is reasonable to believe that
some time elapsed before he proceeded to give
effect to the orders received by him from Borne ;
but taking everything into account, Professor
Bamsay concludes that 6 B.C. was the year of
the birth of Christ.
Many of the scenes associated with the life and
ministry of Jesus have received illustration from
travel and exploration in the Holy Land. A place
which has been rendered for ever sacred by the
feet of Christ is Jacob's Well, about two miles
east of Nablous, the ancient Shechem. The site
is acknowledged by Jews, Moslems, and Christians
alike. What a multitude of Christian pilgrims of
all lands have upon its brink breathed forth a
prayer to Him who there taught us that God
is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must wor
ship Him in spirit and in truth ! When examined
by Captain Anderson, B.E., in 1866, it was found
to be 75 feet deep, but there can be no doubt that
the original depth was greater, as quantities of
rubbish have fallen into it, and passers - by for
centuries have thrown stones into it. In 1881,
the depth was diminished to 67 feet. In that year
a visitor,1 disappointed at finding merely a dark
irregular hole amid a mass of ruins instead of
the remains of a well, made an interesting dis-
' Rev. Chas. Wright Barclay in 'Palestine Exploration Quarterly
Statement,' 1881, p. 212.

JACOBS WELL. 283
covery. He had clambered down into the vault
over the well, and noticed a dark crack betAveen
the stones. Bemoving some stones and earth,
he was able to trace part of a curved aperture
in a large slab of stone. He cleared away
more earth and stones, and distinguished the cir
cular mouth of the Avell, though it Avas blocked
by an immense mass of stones. Calling in help
to remove this mass, he succeeded in the attempt,
and the opening of the well was clear. "It is
impossible," says this traveller, "to describe our
feelings as we gazed down the open well, and
sat on the ledge on which doubtless the Saviour
rested, and felt with our fingers the grooves in
the stone caused by the ropes by which the water-
pots were drawn up." It is true the identification
has been challenged, and it has been said there
was no such place as Sychar in the time of our
Lord. Professor George Adam Smith has well met
the objections, and shown that the charge of ignor
ance on the part of the author of the Fourth Gospel
is unfounded (John iv. 5 ff. ) 1
It is impossible [says Professor Smith] to say whether the
well is now dry, for many feet of it are choked with stones.
Eobinson says there is a spring in it ; Conder says it fills
by infiltration. If either of these be correct, then we can
understand the double titles given to it in the narrative, both
of which our version renders by well. It is Jacob's fountain,
Trrjyn (v. 5) ; but the pit, rb fypeap, is deep (v. 11) ; and Jacob
gave us the pit (v. 12). It is by little touches like these, and
by the agreement of the rest of the topography, — Mount
Gerizim, and the road from Judaea to Galilee (as well as by

1 Historical Geography of the Holy Land, pp. 367-375.

284 THE TIMES OF CHRIST AND HIS APOSTLES.
the unbroken traditions of three religions), — that we feel sure
that this is the Jacob's Well intended by the writer, and that
he had seen the place.
The exact site of Bethabara (John i. 28) has long
been a subject of doubt and difficulty, and as it
bears upon the accuracy of the writer of the Fourth
Gospel, it is specially worthy of notice. It has
been assumed that because Jerusalem and all
Judsea and all the region around about Jordan
(Matt. iii. 5) went out to John the Baptist, and
went to him apparently in the neighbourhood of
what is now known as the "Pilgrims' Bathing-
place," opposite Jericho, Bethabara must be located
there. The question then arose, How could Jesus
have spent two days there (John i. 29-35), and
on the third day have been present at Cana of
Galilee, traversing a distance of eighty miles ? As
far as Bethabara is concerned, the difficulty has
been solved by a discovery of Colonel Conder 's. He
found Abarah given as the name of one of the main
Jordan fords, just above Avhere the river Jalud,
flowing down the valley of Jezreel, falls into the
Jordan. It would thus coincide with Beth-barah
in Judges vii. 24. As the distance of a Bethabara
located at this spot would be only twenty-two miles
from the most probable site of Cana, the identifi
cation of Colonel Conder seems certain ; only it is
not necessary to assume that this was the place
Avhere Jesus Himself was baptised. John did not
always baptise at the same place. He baptised at
iEnon, near to Salim, because there were many
fountains there (John iii. 23) ; and the synoptists
clearly imply that He baptised at the Jordan fords

BETHABARA AND LAKE OF GALILEE. 285
near Jericho. That Jesus Avas baptised by John
the Baptist at the traditional site of the baptism
near Jericho ; that immediately after He was
tempted of the devil ; that aftenvards, on His
way to Galilee, He found the Baptist engaged
at Bethabara ; that there He Avon the allegiance
of several of the Baptist's disciples ; and that He
went with them from thence to Cana to the mar
riage, — is a sequence of events which meets all the
requirements alike of the topography and the his
tory. It is true the difficulty has been got rid
of in another way. The manuscript authorities
against reading Bethabara are overwhelming, and
" Bethany beyond Jordan" is now read in all edi
tions of the Greek text. Origen says that most
MSS. read Bethania, but he himself adopts Beth
abara. Chrysostom likewise accepts it, mention
ing, however, the older reading. Jerome mentions
Bethabara only. Colonel Conder x suggests an ex
planation of the double reading as follows : " We
can scarcely suppose the present reading to be a
late invention ; but it is not difficult to reconcile
the two, if the site of the Abara ford be accepted,
for Bethania beyond Jordan is evidently the pro
vince of Batanea, already described as extending
from Pella to the Sea of Galilee, and as the ford
now discovered is north of Pella, it leads into
Batanea where the village of Bethabara would
have stood."
There are no places more intimately associated
with the public ministry of Jesus than the cities
by the Galilean lake, where so many of His dis-
1 Handbook to the Bible, p. 320.

286 THE TIMES OP CHRIST AND HIS APOSTLES.
courses were spoken, and so many of His mighty
works were done. Of the nine cities on the Lake
of Galilee which were flourishing in the time of
Christ, the sites of several have been identified.
Tiberias, then new and half Greek, stands upon its
ancient site, — although it is not mentioned in the
Gospels, and the feet of Christ seem never to have
trodden its streets, — and it has a population of
about 6000, of whom 5000 are Jews. Some ten
boats go out from it to fish in the lake. Magdala
is represented by the modern Mejdel, a miserable
village a little to the north. These two are the
only places now inhabited about the lake. Beth-
saida no longer remains, but various sites have
been proposed for it — one on the east bank of
the Jordan near the river's mouth, another on the
west coast of the Sea of Galilee at Ain Tabighah,
where a dilapidated mill and a copious fountain
are now the chief objects that meet, the eye.
About a mile and a-half northward, upon a low
promontory running out into the lake and at its
north - eastern corner, is Tell Hum. Amid tall
weeds and huge boulders are fallen columns, large
and exquisitely carved, which have been claimed
as remains of Capernaum. The ruins close to the
Avater's edge have been called the White Syna
gogue ; and if the identification of Tell Hum with
Capernaum is correct, as Sir Charles Wilson has
long contended, then we have here the site of
the synagogue which was built by the Boman
centurion (Luke vii. 4, 5), and in Avhich our Lord
pronounced His great discourse on the Bread of
Life (John vi.) The identification is opposed, how-

JERUSALEM. 287
ever, by Colonel Conder and others, who claim Khan
Minyeh, about two and a-half miles from Tell Hum,
as the site, and formed upon Minai, a nickname
given to the followers of Christ in the Talmud, as
determining the Galilean home of Christ. There
is no certainty, for there are difficulties as to both.
The area within which it must have lain is, how
ever, greatly narrowed by exploration and research,
and over the ground between the rival sites the
feet of Christ have often trod as He went to and
from " His own city." Chorazin is to be found
perhaps at Keraseh, northwards from Tell Hum ;
and Khersa, on the eastern side of the lake, may
stand for Gergesa, where Jesus was met by the
two demoniacs coming out of the tombs (Matt.
viii. 28). "Wherever these three — Capernaum,
Bethsaida, and Chorazin — may have been, the
wellnigh complete obliteration of all of them is
remarkable in this, that they were the very three
towns which our Saviour condemned to humili
ation." 1
It is round Jerusalem that the associations con
nected with the ministry of Jesus are gathered into
a focus. Jerusalem was the capital of the land, as
Herod the Great had restored and adorned it. The
palaces which Herod had built were unrivalled for
magnificence and wealth. His own residence, built,
it has been supposed, upon the site of the ancient
palace of David, was extensive and splendid, with
cloisters, and gardens, and fountains, and a lofty
enclosing wall. He added towers wherewith to
strengthen the fortifications of the city — Hippicus,
1 Smith, Historical Geography of the Holy Land, p. 458.

288 THE TIMES OF CHRIST AND HIS APOSTLES.
Phasaelus, Mariamne. Of these, Hippicus, which
still forms part of the fortifications, and greets the
traveller as he enters by the Jaffa Gate, is the
only building which has survived the destruction
of Jerusalem by Titus. The citadel of Antonia
rose over against the Temple, and communicated
with it by a flight of steps. It was the praetorium
of Pilate, mentioned by the evangelist John (xviii.
28-33 ; xix. 9). It was garrisoned by Boman
soldiers, who were sometimes required to step in
and quell disturbances that arose at the Jewish
feasts (Acts xxi. 26 ff.) ; and it is a singular coin
cidence that the Turkish soldiers, who now have
similar duties to perform at Easter in the Church
of the Holy Sepulchre, and keep the Latin and
Greek and other Christians from flying at each
others' throats, have their barracks on its ancient
site. Herod had also replaced the old Temple of
Zerubbabel by another, outrivalling Solomon's —
" Far off appearing like a mount
Of alabaster, topt with golden spires."
He had so enlarged it as to include all, or nearly
all, the present noble sanctuary, and there were
approaches leading to it from the western side of
the city. Josephus mentions four gates in the
western quarter of the enclosures of the Temple,
the first leading to the king's palace by a passage
over the intermediate ATalley. The arch known
as " Bobinson's arch was probably the same as
Zion Bridge, mentioned in connection with Agrippa
and Titus by Josephus. It Avould therefore be a
conspicuous feature of Jerusalem in the days of

POOL OF BETHESDA. 289
Christ ; and our Saviour and His disciples probably
gazed often upon this lofty arch crossing the
ravine." x Bunning along the east wall of the
Temple area was Solomon's Porch (John x. 23),
a double cloister, originally built and ornamented
by Solomon, and commanding a magnificent view
of the Kidron valley and the Mount of Olives
opposite. Warren tells us that the wall still ex
ists, but all trace of the porch has disappeared.
Of the actual Temple which Jesus saw and in
which Jesus taught, nothing but the walls of the
great platform now remain, and that inscription
forbidding Gentiles to venture beyond the parti
tion wall, now preserved in the Imperial Ottoman
Museum in Constantinople.2
Of sacred sites which have received elucidation,
if not decisive settlement, of recent years, we
may mention further the Pool of Bethesda. The
Virgin's Fountain, which supplies the Pool of
Siloam by means of the tunnel of which we have
had occasion to speak, has often been supposed to
be the Pool of Bethesda, and Sir J. W. Dawson
among others has lent the authority of his name
to this identification. It is an intermittent spring,
and its waters are often resorted to by men and
women suffering from rheumatic complaints. But
it is too far from the Sheep Gate to be the pool
mentioned by St John. As far back as 1872 M.
Clermont - Ganneau suggested that the Pool of
Bethesda might be found near the Church of St
Anne, where tradition has located the house of the
1 Recent Discoveries on the Temple Hill, p. 97.
2 Dean Farrar, The Herods, p. 140.
T

290 THE TIMES OF CHRIST AND HIS APOSTLES.
mother of Mary, calling it Beth Anna, " house of
Anne." The expression has the same meaning as
Bethesda, for both of them signify " House of
Mercy." This suggestion has borne fruit, and in
1888 what is thought to be the ancient Pool of
Bethesda was found a short distance north-west
of the Church of St Anne. It is 5 5 feet long from
east to west, and measures 12-Jr feet in breadth. A
flight of twenty -four steps leads down into the
pool from the eastern scarp of rock. Dr Schick,
the German architect, who took a lively interest
in the discovery, soon came upon a sister -pool,
lying end to end with the other, 60 feet long and
of the same breadth as the first. The first pool
was arched in by five arches, while five correspond
ing arches ran along the side of the other pool. At
a later period a church was built over the pool by
the Crusaders, and they seem to have been so far
impressed by the fact of five arches below that they
shaped their crypt into five arches in imitation.
They left an opening for getting down to the water ;
and further, as a crowning proof that they regarded
the pool as Bethesda, they painted on the wall of
the crypt a fresco representing the angel troubling
the water. Eusebius, writing in the fourth century,
refers to these twin pools ; and the Bordeaux
Pilgrim, a.d. 333, speaking of two great pools at
the side of the Temple, — one on either hand as he
entered Jerusalem from the east, — refers to the
twin pools as being now within the city. " They
have five porches," he says, " and are called Beth
esda. Here the sick of many years were wont to
be healed." This testimony agrees well Avith the

GOLGOTHA. 291
results of recent discovery, and it would seem as if
a long-sought-for and long-disputed site had at last
been found.1
The site upon Avhich the Christian traveller
above all wishes to have certainty is Golgotha,
the place of the Crucifixion. The tradition of
more than fifteen centuries has located it within
the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Within
this venerable Christian sanctuary are shown to
pilgrims from every country under heaven the
Pillar of the Scourging, and the Chapels of the
Parting of the Baiment, of the Crowning with
Thorns, and of the Cross itself. The Chapel of
the Sepulchre, a white marble structure 26 feet
long and 18 feet wide, has taken the place of
the new tomb hewn out of the limestone rock,
"wherein never man before was laid." The tradi
tion of centuries has, however, been called in
question since the days of Dr Bobinson. Its
truth would require the site to have been with
out the wall of the city, for is it not said that
" Jesus, bearing the Cross, went forth into a place
called the place of a skull" (John xix. 17, 18), and
that " He suffered without the gate " (Heb. xiii.
12) ? The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is not only
near the very heart of the modern city, but must
always have been within the line of the second
wall, and therefore does not conform to the require
ments of the Gospel narrative. In 1886 a portion
of the old wall was found in a position which
renders it all but certain that the traditional sites
of the crucifixion and the burial must have been
1 G. St Clair, Buried Cities and Bible Countries, pp. 326-329.

292 THE TIMES OF CHRIST AND HIS APOSTLES.
within the course of the walls as they existed at the
time of Christ's death. Although the traditional
site has able defenders, it cannot be upheld in
the face of the facts brought to light by recent
exploration. The question still remains, Where is the true
site ? It has been located on the west bank of the
Kidron north of St Stephen's Gate ; it has been
placed on Mount Moriah, and by a great authority,
Mr Fergusson, under the Mosque of Omar itself.
The site which has of late received the most support
is a knoll of rock of rounded form and covered with
shallow soil and grass, just outside the northern
wall of the city, and a little distance from the
Damascus Gate. Under it is the cave called
Jeremiah's Grotto, and there are two holes in the
face of the steep and rocky bank terminating the
knoll, which look like the sockets of eyes in a skull.
The resemblance of the hillock to a skull is remark
able. This site took hold of the late General
Gordon, who worked it out in his ' Beflections on
Palestine ' ; and it is, moreover, strongly upheld by
Sir J. W. Dawson, in his ' Egypt and Syria.' It
was supported before them by Colonel Conder, who
points out — the suggestion was made to him by Dr
Chaplin, so long medical missionary in Jerusalem —
that the place of public execution in Boman times
was situated north ofthe city.1 It satisfies the
requirements of the Gospel narrative — in being
without the gate yet near the city, in being near
to a road leading out into the country, and in
having gardens or tombs close by, for in that
1 Handbook to Bible, p. 355.

ASIA MINOR. 293
neighbourhood Avas the chief cemetery of Jerusalem.
It has against it, to be sure, the want of any
ancient tradition marking out the scene of a trans
action so stupendous. But this is, perhaps, as near
to a certain identification as we are likely to attain.
The words of the venerable author of ' The Land
and the Book ' are worthy to be quoted as regards
the essence of the matter. He had himself at
tained to no certainty as to the precise site, and he
says : " Far better rest contented with the un
doubted fact that someAvhere without the walls of
this very limited platform of the Holy City the Son
of man was lifted up, ' that Avhosoever believeth on
Him should not perish, but have eternal life.' It
is Himself that men must believe in, not His
sepulchre. It is not on Golgotha we must look for
salvation, but to the precious blood of the Lamb of
God there shed, which taketh away the sin of the
world." 1
Within the last quarter of a century notable re
sults have been achieved by archseological research
in elucidation of the Acts of the Apostles, and
especially of the missionary journeys of St Paul.
Scholars and historians like Bishop Lightfoot, Pro
fessor Mommsen, Professor E. Curtius, and M. Wad-
dington have laid NeAv Testament students under
great obligations by their valuable contributions to
the history of the early Church, based upon the
numerous and important discoveries of recent years.
Professor Sterrett of America, Sir Charles Wilson,
who was formerly Consul-General of Anatolia, and
most of all, Professor W. M. Bamsay of Aberdeen,
1 Southern Palestine and Jerusalem, p. 487.

294 THE TIMES OF CHRIST AND HIS APOSTLES.
to whom the valleys of the Maeander and the Lykos,
and the sites of ancient cities and bishoprics of
Phrygia, are as familiar as Deeside and the Gram
pians, have done inestimable service to scholarship,
especially New Testament scholarship, by the col
lection of inscriptions, by the folio wing up of routes
and roads, and by the accumulation and sifting of
materials with results which no critic or commen
tator can henceforth overlook. Professor Bamsay,
in particular, has made this whole field his own,
and his ' Historical Geography of Asia Minor ' and
' Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia,' both packed
full of facts, his 'Church in the Boman Empire,'
his ' St Paul the Traveller and the Boman Citizen,"
his ' Impressions of Turkey during Twelve Years'
Wanderings,' are storehouses of valuable informa
tion, of original and independent critical and his
torical results, and striking and brilliant descrip
tions. His crowning achievement, to which his
travels, and collections and study of inscriptions,
and wide and accurate classical learning, have all con
tributed, is his vindication of St Luke, the author
of the Acts, as a historian of the first rank, and
of the Acts of the Apostles itself as a model of
unity and individuality in style. Against the
various critical reconstructions of this New Testa
ment book, especially against the theory which
divides up the Acts as the Pentateuch has been
divided, and which finds in the Acts a Hellen
istic document, a Petrine document, and a Pauline
document, Avorked into one volume by a Judaising
editor, and then again worked over by an anti-Judaist
editor, and finally given its present form by a third

ASIA MINOR. 295
editor who incorporated an additional document and
laid on a number of small touches, Professor Bam-
say enters an uncompromising protest. Nor is he
content to do this only. He shows how, by the
adoption of the South -Galatian theory, of which he
is the most resolute exponent, St Luke's narrative
can dispense with forced explanations of discrepan
cies, because it is then free from discrepancies and
is seen to be admirable in balance and proportion,
thoroughly consistent, and harmonious and accurate
in its details. No finer example of the value of
historical and archaeological learning in correcting
the critical refinements and subjective analysis of
the mere book-student has been given to the world
than is to be found in Professor Bamsay's ' St
Paul the Traveller ' and his ' Church in the Boman
Empire.' We have mentioned Professor Bamsay because
his work is the freshest and most recent in this
important field. But there are others to whom we
are under obligation. Conybeare and Howson's ' Life
and Epistles of St Paul ' turned to excellent account
the results of travel and exploration available in their
day, and showed what could be done by attention to
geographical detail, and historical association, and
archaeological discovery to impart life and colour
to the narrative of the Acts, with a result all the
more remarkable because Dean Howson, who wrote
the descriptive accounts, had not up to the time
of writing visited the scenes he has so graphically
described. Dean Farrar in his ' Life of St Paul '
has in his own graphic and vigorous way made use
of the materials available, and used them with such

296 THE TIMES OF CHRIST AND HIS APOSTLES.
effect that in the judgment of many his ' Life of
St Paul ' is the best of his works. And no scholar
was more quick to perceive the value or more
prompt to make use of the archaeological discoveries
of recent years than the late Bishop Lightfoot.
Beaders of the introductions to his editions of
' Philippians,' ' Galatians,' and ' Colossians,' and of
his noble work on ' Ignatius,' are aware how well
he turns to account the discoveries made on the
sites of the seven churches of Asia, and other
places associated with the early years of Chris
tianity. The story of the life and work of St Paul, as
set before us in the Acts and in his Epistles, is open
to be tested at many points by contemporary his
tory, and politics, and topography. There is, for
example, no fact more obvious from the Acts of
the Apostles than the presence and influence of the
JeAvish population in the towns and cities of Asia
Minor in St Paul's day. At Antioch of Pisidia
and Iconium St Paul found them numerous and
hostile. Now this Jewish population is vouched
for by Cicero, who, as governor of Cilicia, had ample
means of knoAving about the people of that and
neighbouring provinces. Professor Bamsay has
discovered inscriptions Avhich bear witness to the
same fact a century later than Cicero's day, and
in one of his chapters on the ' Cities and Bishoprics
of Phrygia' he dwells upon the subject in detail.
Then, again, the sites of some of the cities visited
by St Paul on his missionary journeys have with
in the last few years been either approximately
or absolutely discovered. Antioch of Pisidia has

ASIA MINOR. 297
since Arundell's time, more than sixty years ago,
been identified Avith Yalobatch, and was situated
on one of the great lines of communication running
east and west through Asia Minor. Iconium has
been found at the modern Konia, a place of 30,000
inhabitants ; Lystra, guessed at by Colonel Leake,
and narrowly missed by Sir Charles Wilson and
Professor Bamsay, Avas discovered by Professor
Sterrett a dozen years ago at Khatyn Serai — " The
Lady's Mansion " ; and Derbe is believed to be
found at Gudelissin, where a large mound like an
Assyrian tel shows traces of an ancient town. The
narrative of St Paul's first missionary journey in
Acts xiii. and xiv., through Pamphylia and the
Taurus Mountains from Perga to Antioch of Pisidia,
is wholly consistent with what we have learned of
that country from modern travellers. Beferring
to the "perils of rivers, perils of robbers" (2 Cor.
xii. 26, 27), to which St Paul and his companions
were exposed in this part of the journey, Professor
Bamsay gives inscriptions which have recently been
found in the Pisidian highlands bringing out pre
cisely those features. The first is a thank-offering
to Jupiter, Neptune, and other gods, and also to
the river Eurus, for preservation from drowning ;
the second is an epitaph over the grave of a police
man who had been killed by robbers; the third
makes reference to gens d'armes of various classes
required to keep order in an unruly country ; and
the fourth tells of a stationarius, one of the road
guards, part of whose duty it was to capture
runaway slaves, always the most dangerous of
brigands. " Probably the part of his life which

298 THE TIMES OF CHRIST AND HIS APOSTLES.
St Paul had most in mind when he wrote about
the perils of rivers and of robbers which he had
faced in his journeys was the journey from Perga
across Taurus to Antioch and back again." x
We might follow the author of the Acts through
all his rich and graphic narrative of St Paul's
missionary journeys, and find proof from exca
vations in Cyprus, at Borne, Thessalonica, and
Ephesus, of the accuracy in' detail, which is a
sure token of the trustworthiness of the writer.
Valuable and important are the discoveries which
have been made in Borne, from which numerous
inscriptions have been obtained, throwing light
upon the society of the capital of the Csesars at
the time when St Paul was a prisoner there, and
elucidating passages in his Epistles to the Bomans,
and especially to Philippians, Ephesians, Colos
sians, and Philemon, written during his captivity.
Bishop Lightfoot has shoAvn, for example, that
" the household of Caesar " Avas a term embracing
a vast number of persons, not only in Borne but
in the provinces, all of whom were either actual
or former slaves of the emperor, filling every
possible description of office, more or less domestic.
The burial inscriptions of members of the imperial
household found near Borne afford a strikingly
large number of coincidences Avith the list of per
sons saluted in the last chapter of Bomans —
Amplias, Urbanus, Apelles, Tryphgena, Tryphosa,
Patrobas, Philologus, and Julia. Bishop Lightfoot
infers from this evidence the great probability that
1 Professor Ramsay, Expositor, January 1892. See also 'Church in
the Roman Empire,' p. 23 ff.

THESSALONICA. 299
the saints greeted in the last chapter of Bomans a
are the same who send greetings from Borne to
the Philippian Church.
Thessalonica, which St Paul visited on his first
missionary journey to Europe, and to the church
of AAdiich he addressed his first Epistles, — possibly
the first books of the New Testament canon, — has
lately yielded important confirmation of the ac
curacy of St Luke in detail. St Paul reached
Thessalonica by the Egnatian Way, passing Am-
phipolis and Apollonia en route. Thessalonica had
a long and famous history. Xerxes, as Herodotus
tells us, halted his army there, his camp occupying
the whole seaboard from Therma, as it was then
called, to the Haliacmon, the modern Vistrizza.
Thucydides tells us how the Athenians took it
at the commencement of the Peloponnesian war,
and restored it to Perdiccas as the price of his
alliance. Philip of Macedon extended it, and gave
it the name of Thessalonica in remembrance of a
victory over the Thessalians, and made it one of
his chief posts. And to come down nearer the
Christian era, Cicero in his exile resided in Thes
salonica ; and we have letters of the great orator
from Thessalonica a hundred years before St Paul
wrote his letters to the Thessalonians. In the
time of St Paul it was the most famous and the
most populous town of the province of Macedonia.
It was a free city like Tarsus, and it owed its
privileges to the services it had rendered to
Octavius, who became the Emperor Augustus,
before the battle of Philippi. When St Paul was
1 Lightfoot, Philippians, p. 171 ff.

300 THE TIMES OF CHRIST AND HIS APOSTLES.
in Thessalonica, the remembrance of the privileges
bestowed by Augustus was still fresh in the minds
of the people, and the city professed great devotion
to the emperor. Hence the greatest crime the
slanderers of the apostle could impute to him was
that " he did contrary to the decrees of Caesar,
saying that there is another king, one Jesus"
(Acts xvii. 7). It has been pointed out1 that there
is a striking contrast between the language of
Thessalonians and that of Philippians, all the
more remarkable because of their nearness to one
another. At Thessalonica there is no mention of
the rights and privileges of a Boman citizen, but,
as at Jerusalem, the populace, a mixture of Greeks
and Jews, are zealous to show themselves friends
of Caesar. No word of lictors as in a colony, but
an assembly of the people (Brj/xos) as in a free city.
There is no question of offence to Boman religion,
but solely of fidelity to the emperor. And lastly,
the magistrates at Thessalonica are not a-TpaTTjyoi
as at Philippi, but 7roXtTap^ai (Acts xvii. 6), a title
peculiar to Thessalonica.
Here, then, was a test of St Luke's accuracy as
a historian. In the whole compass of Greek liter
ature no such word as TroXtrap^s was to be found.
It was gravely affirmed by commentators of note
that it was a blunder for 7ro\tap^ijs, which was a
word known to the dictionary. But the inscrip
tions of the time have preserved it. An inscription
was found and published at Milan before the middle
of last century, and recopied at Salonica by Pococke
1 Abbe Vigouroux, La Bible et les decouvertes modernes, vol. v.
p. 236.

THE POLITARCHS. 301
the Eastern traveller, mentioning a list of seven
Politarchs, three of whom significantly enough bore
the names of three of St Paul's friends men
tioned in the Acts, or the Epistles, — Sopater (of
Berea, Acts xx. 4), Secundus (of Thessalonica,
Acts xx. 4), and Gaius (of Macedonia, Acts xix.
29).1 A few years later another inscription was
brought from Thessalonica to Paris on a fragment
of marble, which read, " Mark being Politarch."
In an inscription dated the year 143 a.d., first
published by the Frenchman Le Bas, we find
not only the 7roXtrap^at but the St^ios and the
fiovXy] referred to (Acts xvii. 5). Within the last
twenty or twenty -five years other three inscrip
tions have been discovered at Salonica, giving the
names of six, two, and five Politarchs respectively.
One of them is dated the year 46 a.d., just six
years before St Paul visited Thessalonica — surely
an ample justification of St Luke in using such
an expression for the magistrates of the place, and
a marvellous evidence of the perfect accuracy of
his narrative.
We can now subject the historian of the Acts to a
test of the same character by means of the Ephesian
1 This statement, which is that of Conybeare and Howson, 'The
Life and Epistles of St Paul,' p. 259, is in error as to the number of
Politarchs mentioned in this inscription, which is not seven but six,
and indeed may be only five. The inscriptions now known for certain
as attesting the existence of the office of Politarch, mostly in Mace
donian cities, are seventeen in number, to which may fall to be added
two more if probable restorations are accepted. .An account of these
inscriptions is given by Professor Burton of Chicago in the ' American
Journal of Theology,' July 1898, to whose courtesy I am obliged,
through the kindness of the Rev. Peter Crosbie, missionary of the
Church of Scotland at Salonica, for a separate copy of his scholarly
paper. See Appendix, Note VIII., p. 325.

302 THE TIMES OF CHRIST AND HIS APOSTLES.
inscriptions which have been discovered within the
last thirty years, and recently published for the
Trustees of the British Museum. These inscrip
tions have been issued under the editorship of Canon
E. L. Hicks of Manchester, as part of a great series
of ancient Greek inscriptions,1 in a form likely to be
exceedingly serviceable to scholars. The inscrip
tions from Ephesus range in point of time from the
fifth century before Christ to the fourth century of
our era, although by far the greater number belong
to the Christian period. They consist of public
decrees, of honours to emperors and public men,
of dedications to religious worship, and the like,
furnishing a vast amount of neAv information about
the city, and, as Professor Bamsay puts it, " they
add greatly to our power of criticising the nine
teenth chapter of Acts." It is something to have
the authority of a scholar who has made this
field so entirely his own for saying that the Scrip
ture narrative comes well through the test, inas
much as no error has yet been found in it, and a
number of accurate touches vouching for the exact
knowledge and the veracity of the historian have
been discovered.
There are few sites of ancient cities so utterly
desolate as is now the site of ancient Ephesus.
The very name of Ephesus has ceased from the
plain and the hillsides where the glory of the
ancient metropolis of Asia lies entombed. It is
now known as Ayasaluk, a corruption of aytos
1 Ancient Greek Inscriptions in the British Museum. Edited by
Sir C. T. Newton, K.C'.B. Part III., Priene, Iasos, and Ephesos,
by Rev. E. L. Hicks, M.A.

EPHESUS. 303
0edXoyos, a squalid Turkish village, the nearest in
habited spot to the site of ancient Ephesus, and
itself the miserable relic of a town which gathered
round the great Church of St John the Divine as
Ephesus began to decline and disappear. Of all
the great temples of antiquity, the Artemisium, or
Temple of Diana, Avas the only one whose site had
disappeared without a trace. As Gibbon wrote
of it more than a century ago, " The desolation is
complete, and the Temple of Diana or the Church
of Mary will equally elude the search of the curi
ous traveller." 1 As the traveller leaves the Aya-
saluk station of the Smyrna and Aidin railway,
now extended up the Mseander valley as far as
Laodicea and Colossae, he passes - a row of piers
representing the remains of a Boman aqueduct, on
the top of Avhich the storks have their nests, and
then strikes across a strip of poorly cultivated land
towards the two ranges of hills on the slopes of
which Ephesus was built. It is not yet quite
settled which is which, but we shall call the lower
and nearer Pion (it is sometimes spelt Prion), and
the higher and more distant Coressus. In the
bosom of the hillside is the caATe of the Seven
Sleepers, and crossing the eastern shoulder we
come down upon the Magnesian Gate, so called
because the road through it from the city led to
Magnesia in the Meeander valley. By the same
gate another road led for a distance of more than
a mile to the famous Temple of Diana. When
this road was opened up in the recent excavations,
it was found to be thirty-five feet broad, paved
1 Decline and Fall, vol. xi. p. 417.

304 THE TIMES OF CHRIST AND HIS APOSTLES.
with solid marble, deeply scored with the tracks of
wheels in four distinct ruts, showing the constant
passing and repassing of chariots and other vehicles.
It was along this Via Sacra from the Temple that
the images of the goddess were borne in procession,
and thence by the Magnesian Gate through the
principal streets of the city. In the hollow be
tween the lower and higher range of hills is the
so-called tomb of St Luke, and a little farther on
the Odeum, or Music Hall, the orchestra of which,
when cleared of rubbish, was found quite perfect,
and has yielded some notable inscriptions. On the
western side of Pion are the remains of the Great
Theatre. The vast amphitheatre is quite dis
tinguishable in its general outline, the stage is in
a state of tolerable preservation, and even the
rows of seats rising tier upon tier are fairly dis
cernible. It must have held in the days of its
glory an immense audience. The most moderate
computation says 24,000 spectators, and others
speak of 56,000, and even more.1 It was to the
Great Theatre that the infuriated Ephesians, as we
are told in the nineteenth chapter of Acts, rushed
with shouts of " Great is Diana of the Ephesians."
In the newly published inscriptions there is abun
dant evidence of the intimate relations subsisting
between the Theatre, which was the great place of
popular assembly, and the Temple of Diana. Upon
the stage inscriptions of the greatest interest and
value were found, to one of which, telling of an
1 In a visit paid to Ephesus on April 7, 1898, I found a new series
of excavations in progress under the Austrian Government. The sites
to be excavated were the Theatre, the Forum, and the Agora, but so
far as I have heard no results have yet been published.

EPHESUS. 305
endowment for the worship of Diana, and describ
ing the route of the processions from the Temple
to the city, Ave shall presently refer. From the
amphitheatre looking westward the traveller has an
entrancing view of the blue iEgean with the isles
of Greece beyond. Down at his feet is the Asian
Meadow, mentioned in a famous passage of Homer,
and giving its name to the great continent of
Asia (Homer, Iliad ii. 461). Through the low-
lying and fever-haunted marshes the lazy Ca^ster,
celebrated in the same passage, now wanders in
a sluggish stream to the sea. Where the bul
rushes are tallest was Panormus, the famous har
bour of Ephesus. The central position of the
city, terminating one of the great commercial
highways of Asia and receiving the ships of the
lands of the West, made Ephesus, like Alexandria
and Tyre, one of the great marts of the ancient
world. The commerce of Ephesus was in its day
world-wide. From Syria to the Pillars of Her
cules, from Abyssinia to the Crimea, and on the
great eastern trade-routes to the Euphrates and
Mesopotamia, its merchants were to be found. On
its wharves and quays might have been seen the
oil and the barley and the wheat of its own fertile
plains, together with the wheat and other produce
of Mesopotamia ; horses and mules from the moun
tains of Armenia, and slaves from the borders of the
Caspian, all ready to be shipped to Tyre and Alex
andria and the lands of the West. On the same
wharves might have been seen the purples of Tyre
and the fine linen of Egypt, with purples and
jewellery of home manufacture, ready to be loaded
u

306 THE TIMES OF CHRIST AND HIS APOSTLES.
on camels and conveyed to the inland regions of
the north and east in return. To the port of
Ephesus came also shiploads of pilgrims, who found
their way by one of the canals formed from the
Cayster to a landing quay close to the western
entrance of Diana's temple, and these pilgrims
would carry home with them as memorials of their
visit, as Bussian pilgrims now carry Avater from the
Jordan and mother-of-pearl images of the Virgin
from Bethlehem, silver statuettes of the goddess
" whom all Asia and the world worshipped." a
For great as Ephesus was in commerce, she was
still more renowned as a sanctuary of ancient
worship. For centuries the worship of Artemis
was established there, — an Asiatic religion in a
setting of Greek mythology and culture, — and the
earthly dwelling-place of the goddess was a temple
reckoned among the seven wonders of the world.
It is difficult to credit the descriptions that have
come down to us of its glories.2 It stood upon
a basement of ten steps ; it was 425 feet long and
220 wide. It was borne up by 127 pillars 60 feet
high, each the gift of a king, thirty-six of them
ornamented with colour, gilding, and metal. Like
the temples of ancient Greece, it was open to the
sky without a roof. It Avas adorned with sculptures
and paintings of the greatest masters. Fhidias,
Praxiteles, Parrhasius, and Apelles, the most re
nowned artists of the ancient Avorld, were repre
sented by the choicest Avorks, dedicated to the
1 For a graphic description of ancient Ephesus, see Ernst Curtius,
Ephesos : Ein Vortrag.
2 Gibbon, Decline and Fall, vol. i. p. 432.

EPHESUS. 307
service of Artemis in her temple at Ephesus. No
wonder that it drew upon itself the veneration
of the whole world. The sun, it was said, in his
course saw nothing more impressive than the temple
of Ephesian Artemis. Its fame Avas enhanced by
the fact that a large portion of the Avealth of Asia
was lodged within its inviolable walls ; and it was to
the cities of Asia what the Bank of England is to
the modern world. The temple, whose remains are
now to be seen Avithin a few minutes' walk of the
railway station of Ayasaluk, was the last of eight
which stood on the same site, the previous building
having been set on fire by the fanatic Herostratus
the night that Alexander the Great was born. The
architect of this — the latest and most magnifi
cent — was Dinocrates, the favourite architect of
Alexander the Great, the same who laid out the
city of Alexandria, and who proposed to carve
Mount Athos into a statue of his royal patron.
St John must often have gazed upon the stately
proportions of the temple of Artemis during his
closing years at Ephesus, and may have taken his
figure of the "pillar in the temple of my God"
from its splendid columns. St Paul may have
thought of it when he wrote to the Ephesians, and
spoke of the Church as " built upon the foundation
of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself
being the chief corner-stone, in whom all the build
ing, fitly framed together, groweth unto an holy
temple in the Lord " ; and when he wrote to Timothy
and spoke of the Church of the living God as " the
pillar and ground of the truth " ; and when he
wrote to him again that "in a great house there

308 THE TIMES OF CHRIST AND HIS APOSTLES.
are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also
of wood and of earth ; and some to honour and
some to dishonour."
The temple stood till the city of Ephesus was
sacked by the Goths in 262 a.d., when it was
plundered and set fire to. Before another hun
dred years had passed the Emperor Constantine
had decreed that heathen temples should be shut
and all sacrifices discontinued. And now for
fifteen or sixteen centuries the ruins of Diana's
Temple have been held by the marshes which
have swallowed up the low -lying parts of the
ancient city. So late as 1862 an accomplished
English architect, who had spent some years in
obtaining measurements and drawings, was con
strained to write : " It is wonderful that buildings
which, from their magnitude and grandeur, were
once considered as marvels, should not only have
passed away but have left even their very site
unknown." In the following year, 1863, Mr J. T.
Wood, Fellow of the Boyal Institute of British
Architects, obtained a firman from the Turkish
Government, through the influence of the British
Museum authorities, and commenced extensive ex
cavations in search of the long -lost temple. For
years this indefatigable explorer toiled with a per
severance and a skill rare even in the annals of
exploration, and on New Year's Day 1870 the site
of the Temple of Diana was discovered beyond the
possibility of doubt. For four years more the un
wearied explorer searched the spot for treasure-
trove, which he found in friezes, columns, capitals,
and coins in abundance. It was a great feat the

EPHESUS. 309
recovery of the remains of the lost Temple of Diana.
There was in the process recovered the Ephesus
of the Apostolic age ; for in the numerous inscrip
tions, now so happily rescued and so worthily given
to the world, are to be found materials for a picture
of the social and religious life of Ephesus which
could not be presented before.
It is by this picture that Ave are able to test
the accuracy of the narrative of St Luke in the
nineteenth chapter of Acts. As has been indicated,
in the earlier years of the Christian era the wor
ship of Diana seemed immovably established in
Ephesus, and her honour secure among the mul
titudes of Western Asia. The town -clerk of the
city (ypap.jj.aTeus), as he is called, — better, perhaps,
the chief magistrate, — expressed the proper pride
of every Ephesian citizen when he said, " What
man is there that knoweth not how that the city
of the Ephesians is a worshipper," literally rendered
temple - sweeper (veaKopos), " of the great goddess
Diana, and of the image which fell down from
Jupiter ? " And yet, as he spoke, the influences
were already at work which were slowly to under
mine, and by-and-by to bring to nought, a worship
so deeply rooted and so extensively spread abroad.
St Paul had come to Ephesus and was preaching to
its idolatrous and corrupt inhabitants that " they
be no gods which are made with hands." St Paul
could proclaim this doctrine with perfect impunity.
Under the impartial rule of Borne religious equality
flourished everywhere ; the introduction of a new
god or the proclamation of a new religion was to
Borne a matter of supreme indifference. It was not

310 THE TIMES OF CHRIST AND HIS APOSTLES.
on its purely religious side that Christianity came
into conflict with the power of Borne. When the
emperors became deified, and their worship was
set up throughout the empire, as it was in the
Augusteum at Ephesus, and temples and religious
rites were established in their honour, then the
followers of Jesus were liable to persecution and to
death, because their refusal to worship the emperor
was regarded as treason against the State. The
choice offered to Polycarp a century later than St
Paul's day was between the worship of the emperor
and the worship of. Christ ; there could have been,
under the laws of the empire as administered in St
Paul's day, no choice between Diana and Christ, to
bring the faithful follower of Jesus to the judgment-
seat or to the stake. St Paul incurred no danger
so long as he appeared before the authorities as the
rhetorician or the philosopher. But there was a
power in his teaching which belonged to no master
of ancient philosophies. As he spoke of Jesus and
the resurrection, and opened up to the weary
votaries of pleasure the true nobility of life in
Christ, the worshippers of Diana found something
for the deeper craving of their spirits wdiich their
goddess could never offer. And so not only in
Ephesus, but in the country round, the allegiance
of the adherents of Diana Avas shaken, and followers
Avere won to Christ.
The mere transference of a few adherents from
the one to the other Avould probably have passed
without profoundly disturbing the philosophic calm
which the bulk of the citizens maintained, but the
demand for silver shrines fell off. These were little

EPHESUS. 3H
models in silver of the great Temple of Diana, of
which specimens in terra cotta have survived, and
are to be seen in museums : they may have been,
for the point is not absolutely beyond dispute, small
statuettes reproducing in silver the figure of the
goddess preserved in the sanctuary of the temple.
At any rate they had been much in demand, partly
as remembrancers of their visit to the pilgrims who
flocked to the temple, and partly as objects to be
dedicated to her on the occasion. The sale of these
objects Avas a source of gain to the silversmiths, who
formed an influential and wealthy guild in Ephesus,
and the decline of their profits from the falling off
in the demand roused their indignation against St
Paul as the author of the revolution that had been
sloAvly going on. Their first thought was their"
pockets, and their second thought the dishonour
done to the goddess : " So that not only this our
craft is in danger to be set at nought ; but also that
the temple of the great goddess Diana should be
despised" (Acts xix. 27). The outcome of their
indignation was the riot so graphically described in
the latter half of the nineteenth chapter of the
Acts. The leader of this movement, so entirely in
keeping with the selfishness of human nature, was
" a certain man named Demetrius, a silversmith,
Avho made silver shrines for Diana."
Now it is a very remarkable circumstance —
whether we call it only a coincidence, or whether
we go the length of regarding it as a-n identification
• — that on one of the marbles found by Mr J. T.
Wood at Ephesus, there is an inscription bearing
this very name, Demetrius. Canon Hicks has

312 THE TIMES OF CHRIST AND HIS APOSTLES.
given reasons to make the identification probable,
if not certain. Demetrius was a name as common
in Ephesus in the first century as John Smith
is among us to-day, and the mere coincidence of
names goes for little. But by evidence which is
weighty, if not conclusive, it is shown that the
inscription belongs to the first century, and of the
years of the first century to the year 57 A.D., when
the riot took place in Ephesus. The inscription
itself, according to a very likely completion of what
is lacking, is to the honour of the temple-wardens
of a particular year. There were two temple-
wardens appointed from each of the six tribes, by
annual election in the popular assembly, and their
office was to take care of the fabric of the temple,
to supervise the inscriptions that might be set up,
and also take charge of the revenues.1 Of this
body in this particular year Demetrius was the
president. So we infer from the fact that it is called
the board of Demetrius's year, and that he is
mentioned first on the list as representing " the
Ephesine tribe." There is, in fact, complete accord
between the position of Demetrius in the inscription
and the account of Demetrius in the Acts. In the
inscription he is a temple - Avarden (yeo7roios) ; in
the Acts he is a silversmith who made silver shrines
of Diana (itoicov vaovs). In the inscription he occu
pies a position of high responsibility in connection
with the temple ; in the Acts he is evidently ¦ a
citizen of influence — the leading man in his craft,
and jealous for the honour of the goddess. Nothing
could be more natural than that he should head a
1 Hicks, Ancient Greek Inscriptions, p. 80.

EPHESUS. 313
movement inspired at once by regard for the vested
interests of the silversmiths' trade, and by concern
for the honour of the goddess whose temple Avas
for the time in the keeping of himself and his
colleagues. In St Luke's account of the riot we read of the
intervention of certain individuals called in King
James's Version " the chief of Asia," and in the Be-
vised Version, with a vagueness evidently begotten
of perplexity, " the chief officers of Asia." " The
Asiarchs," to keep close to their Greek designa
tion, have been one of the puzzles, and almost the
despair, of commentators. But it is now certain
that these officials were the high priests of the
worship offered to the Boman emperors within the
province of Asia. The cities of the province joined
together in an association for the worship of the em
perors, and the head of the association was styled
high priest and Asiarch. In this capacity he had
to furnish every year funds for the celebration of
the provincial games in honour of the Caesars. In
one of the inscriptions under review the Asiarch is
described as high priest of the associated Temple of
Asia at Ephesus ; and the Temple to the Caesars at
Ephesus, called the Augusteum, was discovered by Mr
Wood within the precincts of the Temple of Diana.
This proves the absence of any hostility between
the cults, and it is a strong confirmation of this to
learn, on the authority of Professor Bamsay, that
the priesthood of Diana was not unfrequently a
stepping-stone to the high -priesthood of the im
perial worship. It is significant of the position
St Paul had won for himself in Ephesus to find

314 THE TIMES OF CHRIST AND HIS APOSTLES.
these officers interposing for the safety of the
apostle. An official who appears at the critical moment of
the riot, and who has passed into a proverb for
cautious advice, is " the town-clerk." He is men
tioned again and again in these inscriptions, and
occupies, as we have said, the dignity rather of
"chief magistrate." In one case mentioned, the
person described as " town- clerk " filled also the
office of Asiarch, showing that he was a man
of consideration and wealth. Another class of
officials referred to by the "town -clerk" in his
appeal to the mob are "the deputies," the direct
representatives of Boman power, who were wont to
lay a strong hand upon communities given to tumult
and riot. It is a proof of St Luke's scrupulous
exactitude that he uses here the word descriptive
of the precise office held by the deputy at Ephesus
(avdviraTos). Some provinces had for their adminis
trators or deputies " proconsuls," others propraetors
or legates. These latter were appointed by the
emperor, while the former were appointed by the
Boman Senate. As a matter of fact, however, there
were constant changes in the patronage of these
appointments, according as the provinces Avere sena
torial or imperial ; and it required contemporary
knowledge to say whether at a given time a par
ticular province Avas governed by a proconsul or a
propraetor.1 Asia and Africa Avere at this time ad
ministered by proconsuls, and were the prizes among
the senatorial provinces. In the neAvly discovered
inscriptions there are frequent references to the
1 See Mommsen's ' Provinces of the Roman Empire.'

EPHESUS. 315
proconsul as the governor of the province of Asia
and the supreme administrator of the law.
Yet another term employed by the " town-clerk"
receives illustration in the inscriptions — the expres
sion " temple-sweeper," already mentioned. It is
here that a direct example of the term as ap
plied to Diana is for the first time found. It had
evidently been the usual expression to describe the
city and people of Ephesus in relation to Diana, but
when the Avorship of the Boman emperors was set
up in Ephesus and other cities of Asia, it was em
ployed to express in the same way their devotion to
the Caesars. In one of the inscriptions the city of
the Ephesians is described as "tAvice temple-sweeper
of the Caesars, according to the decrees of the
Senate, and temple-sweeper of Diana."
These illustrations, Avhich might be multiplied,
bear witness to the marvellous accuracy of St Luke
as a historian. We shall mention in conclusion a
remarkable indication of the decline of paganism
which is furnished by the site of ancient Ephesus.
It is contained in an inscription which covered the
Avhole of the eastern wall of the southern entrance
to the Great Theatre.1 It consists of a series of
documents, chiefly relating to a number of gold
and silver images, weighing from three to seven
pounds each, Avhich were voted to Artemis, and
ordered to be placed in her temple by a wealthy
Boman and naturalised citizen of Ephesus named
Caius Vibius Salutaris. He gave also a sum of
money, amounting apparently to £835, bearing 9 per
cent, to be an endowment for keeping the images
1 Ancient Greek Inscriptions from Ephesus, p. 135.

316 THE TIMES OF CHRIST AND HIS APOSTLES.
clean and in good order. On a certain day of
assembly in the theatre — viz., 25th May, which
was the birthday of the goddess — these images
were to be carried in procession from the temple
to the theatre by the priests, accompanied by a
staff-bearer and guards, and to be met at the Mag-
nesian Gate by the young men of the city, who from
that point would take part and help to carry the
images to the theatre. The inscription belongs to
104 a.d., and seems to have been a last effort of
expiring paganism to prop up the falling honour
of Artemis. An inscription of date 160 a.d. con
tains a decree stating that the Ephesian goddess
was now being set at naught in her own native
city ; so that similar neglect might be expected to
be shown in other places.1 It proves that paganism
had received a deadly wound, and it is an involun
tary confession by the votaries of Artemis that her
worship was going down before the Gospel.
Thus have we the stones crying out to vindicate
and illustrate such an important book of Holy
Scripture as the Acts of the Apostles ; and when
we remember that the author of it is one of the
evangelists, recording the teaching and the works
of Jesus Christ, we are grateful for the testimony
to his character for accuracy which is furnished by
newly-discovered inscriptions.
In closing these Lectures, I may be allowed to
express the conviction that, important as have been
the results gained by Sacred Archaeology in the
present century, and indeed within the last forty
1 Professor Ramsay, ' Dictionary of the Bible,' art. " Ephesus," dis
putes this, and believes there is an error in this part of the inscription.

CONCLUSION. 317
or fifty years, there is a richer harvest still await
ing the cultivator of this fascinating domain. There
may be, in consequence of fresh light, new readings
of incidents and episodes of the sacred history ; the
Bible may have to be studied in a new context ;
but there is no need to tremble for the Ark of God.
" The Word of God liveth and abideth for ever,"
and " we can do nothing against the truth but for
the truth," even that truth which is able to make
wise unto salvation, through faith which is in Christ
Jesus.

318

APPENDIX.

NOTE I. (pp. 6, 26, 92).
It is to the excavations of Professor Flinders Petrie at
Ballas and Negada, on the west bank of the Nile,, a little
below ancient Thebes, that we owe the first hints which
have led to what seems a conclusive settlement of this im
portant point. The explorer examined in the vast Necropolis
here three thousand tombs, in which he discovered objects so
unusual — greenish plates of slate, many of them in curious
animal forms — that he was disposed to attribute them to a
foreign people, probably the Libyans, who had temporarily
resided in Egypt between the Old and the Middle Kingdoms.
He called them the New Eace. His theory did not meet
with acceptance, and the opinion was expressed that this
unusual art belonged to a time before the ascertained begin
nings of Egyptian culture.
Meanwhile the French scholar, E. Anielineau, excavating at
Abydos, 1895-96 and 1896-97, had also discovered objects
which could not be arranged in the known development of
Egyptian art, and which he ascribes to the dynasties of the
demigods who, according to Egyptian traditions, reigned
before the kings. This view met also with opposition, but
happily among the materials exca\rated were inscriptions,
rude enough, yet showing that the people buried in the
tombs had known the hieroglyphic system of writing. More
over the occurrence of Horus-names or Banner-names — every
old Egyptian king had among his other names a name sur-

NOTE I. 310,
mounted by the picture of a hawk and written on a sort of
standard — show that the Abydos objects were to be placed
in the earliest period of Egyptian history. Eenewed excava
tions at Negada brought to light pottery and tablets like
those found by Professor Petrie, and also in the same tomb
objects existing like those discovered by Amelineau. It was
shown by the excavations of M. de Morgan that the tombs
at Negada and at Abydos belonged to the oldest period of
Egyptian history before the 3rd dynasty. When the Horus-
name of the king, which had been overlooked at first, was
found on one of the principal objects of the royal tomb
at Negada, the possibility of a solution of a great riddle was
opened up. The sign with the syllabic value Mn gave the
name of Menes, and the conclusion is that in Negada Ave
have the tomb of the oldest king of Egypt known to history,
and the king regarded by the Egyptians as the founder of the
Egyptian monarchy.
De Morgan produces evidence to show that Menes and the
dynastic Egyptians were of Babylonian origin (Eecherches
sur les Origines de l'Egypte — Ethnographie preliistorique et
Tombeau royal de Negadah, pp. 19-21). According to him,
Menes and the dynastic Egyptians brought with them part
of the language, the art of writing, metals, brick-making,
measures, cylinders, seals, certain animals, cereals, and burial
customs. Miss Pirie tells me that at Hieracoupolis, which was exca-
A'ated in 1897-98 by Mr J. E. Quibell, and where she had the
good fortune to be working, the diggers found a wonderful
store of objects belonging to the first three dynasties, includ
ing some monuments and a large inscription in stone of one
of the kings recently found at Abydos, and several kings
previously unknown. Specially noticeable was a large slate
palette covered with sculpture, representing a new king —
Nar-Mer — going out in triumph after subduing some part
of North Egypt. The features show a very marked differ
ence between conqueror and conquered. Thus the blanks
of the first three dynasties are getting filled up, but as yet
no sequence has been established. A few kings can be
assigned their exact place, but as regards most, all we can

320 APPENDIX.
say is that they belong to one or other of the three
dynasties. See Flinders Petrie, ' Negada and Ballas ' ; Am&ineau, ' Les
Nouvelles Fouilles d' Abydos ' ; De Morgan, ' Eecherches sur
les Origines de l'Egypte ' ; Dr Ludwig Borchardt, ' New York
Independent,' March 31, 1898.

NOTE II. (pp. 19, 164).
The ' Times ' of April 14, 1898, contained a notice of an
important discovery in Western Thebes. It had long been
known, from the fact of relics of Amenophis II. being offered
for sale, that the tomb of this monarch had been found by
the Arabs. M. Loret (the Director of the Department of
Antiquities at Cairo), acting upon information he had ob
tained, visited Thebes, and found the royal tomb. His dis
covery is of special interest, because the mummy of the
king was found in the sarcophagus just as it had been
originally deposited, — a fact unique in exploration. The
sarcophagus of sandstone is artificially coloured a bright
rose red, and is placed upon a massive block of alabaster ;
within, decorated with wreaths and garlands of flowers, lay
the body of Amenophis II. of the 18th dynasty, who lived,
according to Flinders Petrie (' Hist, of Egypt,' vol. ii. p. 152
ff.), 1449-1423 B.C., and was the son of the great conqueror
Thothmes III. In a small chamber to the right of the
sepulchral hall were found the mummies of seven other
Egyptian kings — viz., Thothmes IV. and Amenophis III., the
immediate successors of the owner of the tomb ; Seti II. , or
Merenptah, the reputed Pharaoh of the Exodus, and Set-
Necht, both of the 19th dynasty ; and Eameses IV., VI., and
VIII., of the 20th dynasty. The royal mummies were most
probably placed here for preservation about the time when
the royal mummies discovered in 1881 were concealed near
Deir-el-Bahari. (Pollard's ' Land of the Monuments,' second
edition, pp. ix, x.)

NOTE III. 321

NOTE III. (p. 72).
At the Eleventh International Congress of Orientalists
held in Paris in September 1897, Father Scheil exhib
ited a fragment of a terra - cotta tablet of great interest,
nothing less than a new version of the Babylonian account
of the Deluge. It came from Abu Habba, the ancient city
of Sippara : the colophon, or subscription, tells that it was
the tenth chapter in a story which had for its title " When
the man rested." The name of the scribe is Ellit-Aya, and
it is known that Aya was the goddess consort of Shamash,
and that this divine couple had their principal seat in
Sippara. He dates the text "the 28th day of the month
Sebat, in the year when King Ammizaduga built the for
tress of Ammizadugaki at the mouth of the Euphrates,"
which gives us approximately 2140 B.C. The tablet is in
a very fragmentary condition ; but there is enough preserved
to tell about a deluge, and about Eamman, the God of
Storms, punishing the human race. Safety, moreover, is to
be secured by means of a ship, the oar being particularly
mentioned, put into the hands of Pir-napisti, the Seed of
Life, the Babylonian Noah. Here too Adramkhasis appears,
as in other versions of the Deluge story. Father Scheil
concludes from his decipherment and study of the fragment
that it contains a portion of the Sippara version of the Deluge
story, and that this account, poetic in its construction, is
only a copy from an original, resting upon a historic fact
centuries previous. So far, however, from the story being
preserved from generation to generation without change
even in the form of a single word, this version differs in
detail both from Berosus and from the other Babylonian
account discovered by George Smith. It is, at any rate, a
poetical story of the Flood seven centuries before Moses,
and given in such a way as to show that different cities had
different poetical editions of the same event. Professor
Morris Jastrow of the University of Pennsylvania, on a
careful examination of Scheil's fragment, points out con
siderations that greatly add to the probability that the
X

322 APPENDIX.
Hebrews carried the story with them when they first left
Mesopotamia for the West. See ' New York Independent,'
February 10 and 17, 1898.

NOTE IV. (p. 107).
Professor Peters calls attention to the similarity existing
in certain particulars between the temple of Bel at Nippur
and the temple of Jehovah at Jerusalem. "It seems to
me the Jewish, Phoenician, and Syrian temples, as we find
them described in the Bible and other ancient sources, are
in origin similar to the ziggurat temple such as we have
it at Nippur. The Holy of Holies corresponds to the mys
terious shrine on the summit of the ziggurat; the Holy
Place corresponds to the ziggurat proper; outside of this
is the altar of burnt offerings; the face of the temple is
towards the east or south-east ; and the temple is so arranged
that one ascends constantly, the most holy portion being
the highest. I do not mean that the Jewish temple at
all resembles in its outward appearance the temple of Bel
at Nippur. It had been developed far beyond that stage.
It had its origin, however, in similar ideas regarding the
nature of the divinity and the place and manner in which
he should be worshipped ; and to understand thoroughly the
meaning of the Jewish temple and the method of its wor
ship, we must study precisely such a temple as E-Kur, the
house of En-Lil, the Storm-god at Nippur — the oldest temple
of which we have any record, and one which exercised a
profound influence on the religious development of Assyria
and Babylonia, and, through them, of the whole Semitic
world." — 'Nippur,' vol. ii. p. 169.

NOTE V. (p. 123).
Mr L. W. King in his newly published volume says:
" Although Chedorlaomer's name has not yet been identified
in any Babylonian inscription, there is no reason at all why
it should not be found in one. ... So far as the composi-

NOTE VI. 323
tion of the name is concerned, there is no reason why the
inscriptions should not contain a reference to Chedorlaomer,
King of Elam. Moreover, Elam at the period of the 1st
dynasty was the chief foe of Babylonia, and, until finally
defeated by Khammurabi, had for many years been the
predominant power in Western Asia. The state of affairs
at this period, therefore, may without difficulty be harmonised
with the events described in Gen. xiv., and it would not be
surprising if the name of Kudur-Lugamar, or Chedorlaomer,
should be found as that of a king of Elam in an inscription
of the Old Babylonian period. Up to the present time,
however, no such discovery has been made." — Letters and
Inscriptions of Khammurabi, pp. Iv, lvi of Preface.

NOTE VI. (p. 127).
At the meeting of the British Association in 1898, Pro
fessor Flinders Petrie gave a popular lecture on "Egypt
under the First Three Dynasties in the Light of Eecent
Discoveries." We quote from the summary which appeared
in the ' Times,' September 14 : —
" His object," he said, " was to give a summary of the
principal discoveries during the last five years that had
revealed the rise of Egyptian civilisation. It had been
said that the beginning of the fourth Egyptian dynasty —
the age of the Pyramids, about 4000 B.C. — was the farthest
back we could go. The puzzle was that there had been
no trace of this high civilisation. But now entirely new
discoveries during the last three years at Koptos, Negada,
Abydos, and Hieracoupolis, and various excavations, had
discovered remains belonging to the ages before 4000 B.C.,
which had hitherto been the starting-point of known history.
Beginning with the Libyan stock, with some negro mixture,
which occupied Egypt in its earliest civilisation, he showed
some of the objects he had found at Negada — statuettes,
games, slate palettes for grinding paint, beautifully ribbed
flint knives of extreme delicacy, forked lances and arrows,
carved spoons of ivory and bone, harpoons, bracelets, and

324 APPENDIX.
combs. These were at first temporarily assigned to a new
race, as we knew nothing more about them ; but now they
could be safely assigned to the pre-dynastic stock about
5000 B.C., and even earlier. In the graves of this aboriginal
race were found bowls of black clay with patterns im
printed upon them. They were of great importance in
considering the relation of this civilisation to that of others
in the Mediterranean. In each of the countries where this
had been found — Spain, Bosnia, Egypt, and Hissarlik — it
was contemporary with the introduction of metals. Metals
had just been introduced, and therefore in all cases this
pottery was associated with the same state of civilisation."

NOTE VII. (p. 140).
One note of Egypticity conspicuously lacking from the
history and legislation of the Pentateuch is any direct
reference to the immortality of the soul or the future Ufe.
When we observe to what an extent the idea of a life
beyond death, of the resurrection of the body, and of judg
ment pervaded the thought and the conduct of the ancient
Egyptians, it is remarkable that no direct reference to that
circle of subjects should be found in the Books of Moses. It
was along a higher plane that the teaching of Bevelation on
this subject was to be unfolded, from the conception of God
as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob — " not the God of
the dead but of the living, for all live unto Him," as our
Lord argued against the Sadducees of His day. At any rate,
it is impossible to found an argument on the silence of the
Pentateuch for a later date. Whatever the explanation of
the silence of the Books of Moses on the subject, such silence
would have been, so far as we can judge, impossible in the
times of the Exile to which so much of the Pentateuch is
relegated by the Higher Critics. By that time the doctrine
of immortality had taken a much firmer hold and was much
more distinctly affirmed. In the Psalms and Prophecies of
the Exilic and post-Exilic time, the faith in personal im
mortality becomes much more clear and impressive, and had

NOTE VIII, 325
the legislation called by the name of Moses originated then,
it would surely have been coloured to some extent by that
belief.— See Bishop Welldon, 'The Hope of Immortality,'
p. 79 ; and Ancessi, ' Job et l'Egypte : Le Eedempteur et la
Vie future,' p. 79 ff.

NOTE VIII. (p. 301).
The following particulars are added from Professor Bur
ton's valuable monograph. The earliest observed and best
known of all the Politarch inscriptions (No. I. of Professor
Burton), the only one known or generally acknowledged,
down almost to the present time, was obtained from the
inside of the arch which, till 1876, spanned the Via Egnatia
at its western entrance into Thessalonica. In the year men
tioned the arch was taken down. Through the efforts of the
Eev. Peter Crosbie, — who has been for forty years resident
in Salonica, and whose long and intimate knowledge of the
antiquities of the city is always at the service of travellers
and scholars, — seconded by Mr Blunt, the late consul (father
of Mr J. E. Blunt, the present consul), the stone which
contained the inscription, with the exception of five letters,
was rescued, and being removed first to the British Consulate
was afterwards conveyed to the British Museum, where it
now is. It has been again and again copied and reproduced,
but being undated there is no certainty as to its age. It
has been held to commemorate the battle of Philippi, 44 B.C.,
but this is pure conjecture. It is most likely later than
30 B.C., and may be as late as 143 a.d. The next inscription
(No. II. of Professor Burton) is definitely assigned by its
own text to the reign of Augustus, and mentions five poli
tarchs. Another inscription (No. VI. of Professor Burton)
is of special interest because of its date, 46 A.D., less than a
decade before St Paul came first to Macedonia. It knows of
only two politarchs, and the explanation of this no doubt is
that it is not a Thessalonica inscription, but was brought
from the site of ancient Pella. The marble slab containing
it is still in Thessalonica, but a photograph of the inscription,

326 APPENDIX.
sent by Mr Crosbie to Dean Stanley, is now in the British
Museum. The oldest of these inscriptions containing a date
within itself (No. VII. of Professor Burton) belongs, as is cal
culated, to 117 B.C. It was found at a village four hours'
north of Thessalonica.
" It thus appears," says Professor Burton, " that we have
definite monumental evidence that Thessalonica had polit
archs from the reign of Augustus to that of Antoninus
Pius and Marcus Aurelius, or in round numbers from the
beginning of the first century to the middle of the second.
... As respects the number of politarchs in any city,
Thessalonica had five in the reign of Augustus and six in
that of Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius. It is prob
ably safe to assume that it had either five or six in the
New Testament period."

INDEX.

Aahmes, Admiral, 143.
Aahmes I., 17, 19 n., 147, 16S.
Abraham, 45, 81, 83, So, S7 ; his
personality and history, 88 ff. ;
his times, 90 ff. ; 94, 95, 98, 113-
125; in Egypt, 134, 137; 166,
199, 206, 222.
Abram, age of the name, 118.
Accad (Agade), 28, 97, 99.
Accadians or Sumerians, 49, 50.
Acts of the Apostles, 293-296, 298,
300, 301, 304, 309-316.
Adapa legend, 51, 63 ff., 173.
Addis, W. F., 86.
Ahab, 227, 243-245.
Ahaz, 79, 234, 235, 248, 250, 251,
254.
Aijalon, 183, 210.
Alusharshid, 101.
Amelineau, 26, 318, 319.
Amenemhat, 130, 132.
Amenophis (Amenhotep) II. , 320.
Amenophis (Amenhotep) III., 20,
22, 24, 148, 149, 169, 176 ff.,
202.
Amenophis (Amenhotep) IV. (Khu-
en-Aten), 20, 148, 149, 169, 176
ff., 203, 241.
Amraphel ( = Khammurabi, q.v.),
119, 123.
Amurri ( = Amorites), 180, 189.
Anderson, Lieut., 9, 282.
Antioch of Pisidia, 296.
Antonia, citadel of, 288.
Apepi IL, 137, 140, 146 ff
Arioch (Eriaku), 110, 119, 122.
Armenia, 66, 169, 244.
Artemisium at Ephesus, 303, 306-
309, 313.

Arundell, 297.
Ashdod expedition of Sargon, 255.
Asiarchs, 313.
Asshurbanipal, 28, 47, 105, 265-
267; his library, 32 ff, 37, 47,
67, 77, 265.
Asshur-bel-nisheshu, 241.
Asshurnazirpal, 242, and 243 n.
Asshuruballit, 179, 241, 242.
Assur (Asshur) = Kalah-Shergat, 28,
241.
Assyria, 27, 48, 96, 240 et passim.
Assyrian chronology, 239.
Assyrian empire, 240 ff.
Augusteum at Ephesus, 310, 313.
Augustus, 279, 299, 300.
Avaris, the Hyksos fortress, 147.
Azariah or Uzziah (q.v.), 248, 249.
Babel, 97, 110. Vide Babylon.
Babel, Tower of, 105, 111 ff.
Babylon (Babel), now Hillah, 28,
38-40, 66, 110 ff, 268, 272, 276.
Babylonia, 3 - 5, 26, 48 ; called
Sumer and Accad, 98, 99 ; 243,
247.
Babylonian and Assyrian explora
tion, 26-46.
Babylonian cosmology, 52 ff; and
the Bible, 59, 76 ff.
Babylonian culture widespread, 22-
24, 81, 169 ff., 189 ff.
Babylonian love-letter, 44, 45.
Balawat, 39, 244.
Barclay, C. W., 282.
Bartlett, 74 n., 91 n.
Behistun inscriptions, 36, 205.
Belshazzar (Marduk-sar-usur), 32,
39, 274.

328

INDEX.

Benhadad II., 244.
Berosus, 65, 66, 76, 247, 273, 321.
Besant, Sir W., 9.
Bethabara, 284, 285,
Bethany beyond Jordan, 285.
Bethesda, Pool of, 289-291.
Bethhoron, 210.
Bethlehem, 279.
Bethsaida, 286.
Beyrout, 180, 192.
Birch, 15.
Bit- Khumri ( = Israel), 243, 246.
Bliss, F. J., 11, 184, 211 ff, 213 ff,
217, 218.
Bordeaux pilgrim, 290.
Borsippa (twin-mound of Babylon),
40, 53, 111, 272.
Boscawen, W. S., 53, 61 n., 110 n.
Botta, Emil, 29 ff.
Brugsch, 15, 145.
Brugsch, Emil, 16.
Bubastis, 128, 136.
Burckhardt, 196.
Bunsen, 15.
Burnaburiash, 179.
Burton, Prof., 301 n., 325, 326.
Byblos (Gebal), 177, 180. Vide Rib-
Addi.
Calneh, 97, 98 n. Vide Nippur.
Campbell, Prof., 198.
Camel absent from Egyptian monu
ments, 135, 136.
Cana of Galilee, 284 ff.
Canaan, 86, 87, 116, 117, 148, 167
ff., 170 ff.
Capernaum, 286, 287.
Carchemish, 168, 196, 198, 199,
202, 205, 268.
Carter, 305, 306.
Chabas, 15, 128.
Champollion, 14, 15.
Chaplin, Dr, 292.
Chedorlaomer, 118-124, 170, 322,
323.
Chemosh, the god of Moab, 228, 230.
Cheyne, T. K., 255.
Chorazin, 287.
Christ, birth of, 279 ff.
Cicero, 296, 299.
Clermont - Ganneau, M., 12, 226,
289.
Cleopatra's Needle, 131.
Condor, C. R., 9, 10, 182, 195 n.,
206, 232, 283-285, 287, 292.

Confusion of tongues, 111.
Conybeare and Howson, 295, 301 n.
Creation Epos of Babylonia, 51, 52,
54 ff, 63, 110.
Crosbie, Rev. P., 301 n., 325, 326.
Cuneiform explained, 33, 34.
Curtius, Ernst, 293, 306.
Cush, 91-93. Vide Kashites.
Cyrus, 112, 275, 276.
Cyrus, Cylinder of, 275, 277.
Damascus, 168, 244, 245, 251.
Daniel, Book of, 32, 39, 273, 274.
Davidson, A. B., 166.
Dawson, Sir J. W., 161 ff, 289, 292.
Deir-el-Bahri, 17, 147, 148, 164,
320.
Delitzsch, Friedrich, 49, 55 n., 62,
93, 99, 100 n., 105.
Deluge. Vide Flood.
Demetrius the silversmith, 311, 312.
Deportation of peoples an Assyrian
practice, 243 n., 253, 265.
Derbe, 297.
Deutsch, Emanuel, 219.
Diana, Temple of. Vide Artemisium.
Dibon, 226.
Dickie, A. C, 11.
Dillmann, 80, 81, 111, 139, 161.
Dungi, 109.
Dushratta of Mitanni, 176, 179, 192.
Ea-bani, 68, 69, 83.
Ebed-tob, 22, 103, 104, 181 ff, 186
ff.
Eden, 61.
Edingirinagin, 102.
Edwards, Miss A. B., 15, 152, 153.
Egibi tablets, 38, 39.
Egypt, 5-7, 13-26, 126 ff, 168 ft,
270, 271.
Egyptian census, 280.
Ekur, the mountain-house, 105, 322.
Elam ( = Kashu), 93, 121, 275, 323.
Ellasar ( = Larsa, q.v.), 110, 122.
El-Paran (Nakhl), 120.
Ephesian inscriptions, 301 ff, 309,
311-316.
Ephesus, 302-316; topography,
303-305.
Ephesus, proconsuls at, 314.
Ephron the Hittite, 199, 200.
Erech (Warka), 28, 32, 40, 67, 68,
97, 108.
Eriaku (Arioch), 110, 122.

INDEX.

329

Eridu (Abu Shahrein), 28, 40, 57,
58, 62.
Erman, 15.
Esagila, temple of Merodach, 110,
272.
Esar-haddon, 205, 252, 264.
Esau, 200.
Ethnographical table in Genesis, 91,
95, 96, 126.
Evil-Merodach, 273.
Exodus, route of the, 161 ff.
Ezida, 272.
Fairbairn, Principal, 35 n.
Fall, the, in Babylonian literature,
52, 53, 63, 64.
Farrar, F. W., 2S9 n., 295.
Fayoum, the, 132.
Fergusson, Mr, 292.
First-born, death of the, 160, 161.
Flood, Babylonian story of the, 37,
65 ff, 70 ff, 83, 321.
Fresnel, 40.
Gardner, Percy, 2, 3, 124, 125, 206.
Gebal (vide Byblos).
Gergesa, 287.
Gibbon, 303, 306.
Gibeonites, 210.
Gilgal identified, 213.
Gilgames, hero of the Nimrod Epos,
67, 68, 83, 93.
Gladstone, W. E., 35 n., 74 n.
Glaser, E., 92.
Golgotha, site of, 291-293.
Gordon, General, 292.
Goshen, 143 ff.
Green, W. K., 196.
Grotefend, 36.
Gudea, patesi of Shirpurla, 41, 103.
Guthe, Prof., 12.
Halevy, J., 37, 49.
Ham, children of, 91 ff, 126.
Hamath, 198, 249 ; its king flayed
alive, 254.
Hamathite inscriptions, 196.
Harran, 98, 102, 115, 116.
Haynes, J. H., 4, 41.
Hazael of Damascus, 244, 245.
Heliopolis (On or An), 130.
Herod the Great, 279, 282, 287,
288 ; his temple, 222, 288, 289.
Herodotus, 95, 112, 139, 196, 263,
276, 299.

Heroonpolis, 144. Vide Pithom.
Hezekiah, 87, 233 ff, 257 ff., 262;
his scribes, 237, 238.
Hicks, Canon, 302, 311, 312.
Hieroglyphic explained, 13, 14.
Hillah, site of Babylon, 44, 112.
Hilprecht, Prof., 4, 5, 43, 52, 99,
100, 101, 105 n., 114, 277, 278.
Hincks, Ed., 37.
Hippicus, tower at Jerusalem, 287,
288.
Hiram of Tyre, 248, 249.
Hittites, 44, 168, 170, 193 ff. ; lan
guage, 194-197 ; religion, 197,
198 ; 199-206, 208.
Hommel, 48, 51, 64, 68, 92 n., 93,
99, 101, 110, 116, 122 n., 157 ff,
249.
Hoshea, 248, 251, 252.
Hull, Prof., 11.
Hyksos, 134 ff.; expelled, 147.
Iconium, 296, 297.
Inlil (Bel), 105, 108, 114.
Isaiah, 234, 250 ff, 255, 261 ff.
Ishtar (Ashtaroth), 68.
Israel, stele with name of, 24, 25,
138, 156 ff; in Egypt, 138-161 ;
in Canaan, 207 ff ; on Assyrian
monument, 243.
Jacob, 87, 135, 143 ff, 200 ; Jacob's
well, 282-284.
Jacob-el, 116, 148.
Jastrow, M. , 321.
Jehoahaz of Israel, 246 ; of Judah
= Ahaz, q.v.
Jehoram, 244 [bis).
Jehoshaphat, 244, 245.
Jehu, 244, 245.
Jensen, 195, 206.
Jeremiah, 270, 271, 273.
Jericho, 192, 207, 213-215.
Jeroboam I., 223, 224.
Jeroboam II. , 87, 246.
Jerusalem, 10-12, 103, 104, 177,
186 ff, 214 ff, 223, 224, 261 ff,
269 ff, 287-293 ; quarries at,
220.
Jessup, Dr, 196.
Joash, 244, 246.
John the Baptist, 284.
Joseph, 135, 137 ff, 140 ff, 144,
146.
Joseph-el, 116, 148.

530

INDEX.

Josephus, 135, 279, 288.
Joshua, 191, 207, 210, 213, 215.
Joshua and Judges illustrated, 188
ff, 210-214.
Josiah, 268.
Judah on Assyrian monuments, 243,
244.
Jud-ham-melek, 224.
Kadesh on the Orontes, 198, 201.
Kalah (vide Nimroud), 31, 242.
Kallima-sin, 177 ff.
Karabel, Pass of, 196.
Karaindash, 241.
Karkar, battle of, 244, 245.
Karnak, 148, 169, 203, 223, 224.
Kashite dynasty in Babylonia, 106,
112.
Kashites (Ethiopians), 93.
Kaulen, 34 n. , 35 n., 50 n.
Khabiri (Hebrews?), 157, 181 ff.
Khammurabi, 28, 109, 112, 123 ff.,
323. Vide Amraphel.
Khan-Minyeh (Capernaum ?), 287.
Khasis-adra = Sit-napisti, q.v.
Khatti (Hittites), 189, 193,204,246.
Khebar (Chebar) identified, 278.
Khepa (Hittite god), 198.
Khita (Hittites), 179-181, 193, 202.
Khorsabad (Dur-Sargina), 3, 29, 30,
253, 256.
Khu-en-Aten. Vide Amenophis IV.
Khufu and Khafra, 128, 162.
Khumbaba, 68.
King, L. W., 123 n., 322, 323.
Kings, Book of, illustrated, 227 ff,
and Lecture VII.
Kish, kingdom of, 101, 111.
Kitchener, 9, 10.
Kittel, 143.
Klein, F. A., 225, 226.
Kouyunjik (Nineveh, q.v.), 31, 53.
Kudur-Lugamar, 121 ff., 323. Vide
Chedorlaomer.
Kudur-Mabug, 122.
Kurigalzu, 241.
Kutha (Cutha), 40, 53, 272.
Lachish (Tel-el-Hesy), 11, 13, 183
ff, 211 ff, 259 ff. ; tablet from,
13, 184-186, 212.
Lagash (Telloh), 28, 40, 41, 101,
193. Vide Shirpurla.
Larsa (Senkereh), 28, 40, 109, 110,
272. Vide Ellasar.

Layard, A. H, 31 ff, 40, 41, 108,
220 n., 244.
Le Bas, 301.
Leake, Colonel, 297.
Lebanon, 106, 220.
Lecky, W. E. H, 165.
Lenormant, F., 37, 75, 82, 83, 151.
Lepsius, 15.
Lightfoot, Bishop, 293, 296, 298,
299.
Loftus, W. K., 32, 40, 41, 97 n.,
98 n., 108, 113.
Logia Jesu, from Oxyrhynchus, 15.
Loret, M., 320.
Lot, 115, 120.
Lugal-zaggisi, 4, 7, 28, 42, 108, 109,
170.
Luke, 279-282, 294, 295, 299, 309,
313-316.
Lystra, 297.
Mackie, G. M., 131, 132 n.
Magdala (Mejdel), 286.
Manasseh, 265, 267.
Manetho, 26, 127, 135.
Marash, 197, 198.
Margoliouth, G., 82 n., 115 n.
Mariette, 15,. 129, 220.
Maspero, 15, 16, 19, 41 n., 83, 100
n., 103 n., 119, 127, 158, 159,
172, 224, 225, 267.
Maudslay, H., 217.
M'Curdy, Prof., 7, 23, 24, 27, 49,
58, 62, 79, 94, 96, 100, 170, 182,
208, 246.
Megiddo, 202, 268.
Meinhold, 86, 87, 134.
Melchizedek, 103, 104, 120, 124, 188.
Memphis, 126, 129, 130, 154.
Menahem, 24S, 249.
Menes, first Egyptian king, 6, 26,
127, 319.
Merenptah, Pharaoh of the Exodus,
25, 155 ff, 160, 164 n., 208, 320.
Merenptah, son of Pharaoh of the
Exodus, 160.
Merodach, 110, 272.
Merodach-Baladan, 248, 257.
Merrill, Selah, 11.
Mesha, king of Moab, 87, 227-230.
Micah, 211.
Mizraim (Egypt), 94, 126.
Moabite Stone, 12, 87, 225 ff.
Mommsen, 293, 314 n.
Moncrieff, Sir Colin Scott, 163.

INDEX.

331

Morgan, M. de, 6, 15, 26, 319.
Moses, 154 ff., 160, 164, 165, 171,
191, 200.
Moses, Wells of (Marah), 163.
Mugayyar, or Mugheir (TJr of the
Chaldees), 32, 113.
Miiller, F. Max, SS.
Murashu Sons of Nippur, documents
of, 43 n., 277.
Mycenae, lions of, 193.
Nabonidus (Nabunahid), 44, 99, 109,
114, 273-275.
Nahum, 266, 267.
Namrasit ( = Gilgames, q. v.), 67.
Naram-sin, 42, 99.
Naville, Edouard, 15, 128, 136, 137,
142, 145, 152, 161.
Nebo, 111, 272, 275.
Nebuchadnezzar (Nebuchadrezzar),
28, 109, 112, 26S-273.
Negada, 6, 318-320, 323.
Nergal, 69, 115.
Nergal-Sharezer, 273.
Niebuhr, 35.
Nimrod, 67, 93, 95.
Nimrod Epos, 51, 66 ff, 93.
Nimroud (Kalah), 31, 39, 242, 244.
Nineveh, 28, 29, 31, 32, 37, 47, 241,
242, 257, 265, 267. Vide Kouy
unjik.
Ningirsu, the god of Lagash, 101, 103.
Nippur (Niffer, vide Calneh), 28, 40-
43, 49, 97, 98, 104-108, 114, 277,
278, 322.
Noah, 72, 73, 79.
No-Amon (Thebes, q.v.), 266.
Noldeke, 86, 226.
Oannes, 65.
Obelisk of Heliopolis, 130; on the
Hudson river, 131.
Obelisk, the black, of Shalmaneser
H., 244.
Oppert, Jules, 37, 40.
Orr, Professor, 157, 182.
Osorkon, 225.
Palestine Exploration, 8-13, 211 ff.,
282-293.
PaHakopas canal at Ur, 113.
Palmer, E. H., 10.
Palmer, H. S., 10.
Panormus, the harbour of Ephesus,
305.

Paradise, 52, 61, 62.
Patesi or priest-king, 102 ff., 108,
110, 1S7.
Paul, St, 296 ff.,307, 309-311, 313.
Peiser, 242 n.
Pekah, 248, 250, 251.
Pekahiah, 249.
Pennsylvania University Expedi
tion, 41 ff.
Pentateuch and immortality, 324,
325.
Pentaur, poem of, 203.
Persepolis, 29, 35.
Peters, Professor, 5, 42, 98 n., 107,
322.
Pethor, 202.
Petrie, W. Flinders, 11, 15, 21,
22 n., 24, 25, 127, 138, 156, 159,
160, 169 n., 171, 172, 177, 182,
211, 212, 271, 318-320, 323, 324.
Pharaoh of the Exodus. Vide
Merenptah.
Pharaoh-Hophra, 269.
Pharaoh-Necho, 268.
Philippi, 299, 300.
Phoenicians, 168 ; Phoenician alpha
bet, 191.
Pinches, T. G., 37, 123.
Pirie, Miss Annie, 143 n., 319.
Pir-napisti, 70, 321. Vide Sit-
napisti.
Pithom (Tel - el - Maskhutah), 1 5,
144, 149, 151 ff, 161 ; identified
with Heroonpolis, 144.
Place, Victor, 30.
Pococke, 300.
Politarchs at Thessalonica, 300, 301,
325, 326.
Pollard, 320.
Polycarp, 310.
Polytheism in Babylonia, 114 ff.
Poole, R. S., 15.
Potiphar, 141.
Ptah-hotep, 129, 146.
Pul ( = Tiglath-Pileser III.), 246,
247.
Pyramids, the, 127-129.
Quibell, J. E., 319.
Quirinius, census of, 280, 281.
Raamses, 149, 151, 161.
Rabsaris, 261.
Rabshakeh, 248, 261.
Rameses I., 16.

332

INDEX.

Rameses II. (the Great), 16, 18,
19 n., 145, 150-155, 196 (Sesos
tris), 203.
Eameses HI., 19 n., 204, 208.
Eamman the Storm - god, 67, 70,
321.
Ramman-Nirari I., 241.
Ramman-Nirari III. , 245, 246.
Ramsay, W. M., 280 n., 281, 282,
293 ff, 295-298, 302, 313, 316.
Raphia, battle of, 254, 256.
Rassam, Hormuzd, 32, 39, 40, 53,
244, 272, 275.
Rawlinson, Sir Henry, 36, 37, 98 n.,
113, 121, 123.
Rehoboam, 211, 222, 223.
Renouf, Page Le, 15.
Rezin, 248-250.
Rib-Addi of Gebal (Byblos), 177,
180 ff, 191.
Robertson, Prof. (Glasgow), 78 n.,
166, 188 n.
Robinson, Edward, 8, 231, 283,
291.
Robinson's Arch at Jerusalem, 219,
288.
Rome, St Paul in, 298, 299.
Rome and Christianity, 310.
Rosetta Stone, 13, 14.
Rouged Vicomte de, 15.
Sabbath in Babylonian literature,
52, 60, 61.
St Clair, G., 291.
Sakkhara, 128, 129, 141, 220.
Samaria, 239, 244, 251-253.
San or Tanis. Vide Zoan.
Sargon of Accad, 3, 7, 28, 42, 99,
100, 109, 111, 112, 170, 204,
220.
Sargon of Asshur, 3, 28, 30, 32,
205, 244, 252-256.
Sarzec, E. de, 40, 103 n.
Sayce, A. H, 5, 37, 48, 58, 61 n.,
115, 158, 182, 184, 186, 187,
190, 196, 197, 229, 230, 231 ft,
236, 238, 255.
Scheil, Father, 43, 123 n., 321.
Schick, Dr, 231, 290.
Schliemann, 1.
Schrader, Eberhard, 67, 80, 240,
242 n., 247, 258.
Schultz, 118, 170.
Schumacher, 12.
Sekenen-Ra of Thebes, 146, 147.

Semitic strangers in Egypt, 133.
Sennacherib, 3, 28, 32, 112, 211,
244, 256-264.
Serapeum at Sakkhara, 129, 220.
Serpent of Paradise, 63.
Seti I., 16, 18, 19 n., 25, 145, 149,
150, 203.
Seti II. , 160, 320.
Shalmaneser I., 242.
Shalmaneser II. , 32, 48, 243-245.
Shalmaneser IV., 252.
Shamsi-Ramman, 241.
Shatt-el-Hai Canal, 113.
Shatt-en-Nil Canal, 105, 108, 109.
Shechem, 282.
Shemaiah, 224.
Shiloah, waters of, 234 ff. Vide
Siloam.
Shinar (Sumer), 49, 96, 97, 98.
Shirpurla, or Sirgulla (= Lagash,
q.v.), 101 ff.
Shishak (Sheshonq), 222-225.
Sidon, 168, 180, 192, 245, 246.
Siloam inscription, 13, 231-233, 237.
Siloam, Pool of, 231, 236, 289.
Simpson, Sir J. Y., 242 n.
Sin, the Moon-god, 113-116.
Sinai, 10.
Sinjirli inscriptions, 44, 205, 206,
249.
Sinker, 236, 259.
Sippara (Sepharvaim, Abu-Habba),
39, 43, 53, 65, 99, 272, 321.
Sirach, son of (Ecclesiasticus), 234.
Sit-napisti, the Babylonian Noah,
also called Pir-napisti, Khasis-
adra, and Adramkhasis, 68, 69,
70-72, 321.
Smith, George, 5, 37 ff, 53, 54, 65,
69, 77, 82, 99, 121, 122, 241,
258 321.
Smith', George Adam, 11, 208, 211,
256, 283, 287.
Sneferu, 128, 162.
Socin, 12.
Solomon's mother, 201 ; Temple,
222 ; Porch, 289.
Sphinx, 128.
Stade, 85, 86, 207, 208.
Stanley, A. P., 9, 326.
Sterrett, Prof., 293, 297.
Strack, Prof., 157, 158, 249.
Sumer. Vide Shinar.
Sumerian (Accadian), 49.
Surippak (city of Gilgames), 68, 70.

INDEX.

333

Sutekh, god of the Hyksos, 136, 147.
Sychar, 283.
Syria, 168-177, 199-202, 244-250,
280, 281.
Tadukhipha, 176, 179, 198.
Tahpanhes (Defenneh), 270 ff.
Talbot, Fox, 37, 242 n.
Tartan, the, 255, 261.
Taylor, J. E., 32, 40.
Taylor Cylinder, 259, 263.
Teie, Syrian queen of Amenophis
III., 20, 172, 176.
Tel el-Amarna Tablets, 13, 19-23,
53, 80, 81, 103, 157, 169, 174-
194, 209, 215.
Tel-el-Kebir, 151, 162.
Tel-es-Sultan (Jericho), 213, 214.
Tell Hum (Capernaum ?), 286.
Telloh (Lagash, q.v.), 101, 103.
Temple area at Jerusalem excavated,
218 ff.
Temple of Herod, 12, 288, 289.
Terah, 115, 116.
Thebes, 130, 156, 266. Vide No-
Amon.
Thessalonica 299-301, 325, 326.
Thomson, W. M., 9, 293.
Thothmes I., 7, 17, 169, 202.
Thothmes EL, 17.
Thothmes EX, 7, 17, 18 n., 148,
169, 171, 180, 181, 202, 209.
Thucydides, 299.
Tiberias, 286.
Tidal, king of Goyim, 119, 123.
Tiele, 51, 272.
Tiglath-Pileser I., 28, 204, 242.
Tiglath-Pileser HI. (Pul), 79, 246 ff.
Tirhaka, 257, 258, 260, 262.
Tomkins, H. G., 89, 114 ff, 121,
122, 133, 138, 209.
Tower of Babel, 105, 111.
Town-clerk of Ephesus, 309, 314.
Trinity, Babylonian, 55, 58.
Tristram, Canon, 11.
Tumilat, Wady, 161, 162.
Tyre, 168, 175, 180, 192, 245, 246,
259.

Una, 129.
Under world in Babylonian legend,
69.
Ur of the Chaldees (Mugayyar or
Mugheir), 28, 32, 40, 81, 95, 98,
113 ff.
Ur-Gur, 106, 109.
Uriah the Hittite, 201.
Uru-Kagina, king of Shirpurla, 101.
Usertesen I., 130.
Ussher's, Archb., Chronology, 4, 5.
Uzziah (Azariah), 246, 248.
Vigouroux, 33 n., 41 n., 73, 90,
144, 151, 227, 275, 276, 300.
Virgin's Fountain, 231, 289.
Vogel, 210.
Vulture stele, 102.
Waddington, M., 293.
Warren, Sir Charles, 9, 10, 216 ff,
231, 289.
Wellhausen, Julius, 85.
Wetzstein, 12.
Wiedemann, 15, 140, 150.
Wilkinson, 15.
Wilson, Sir Charles, 9,-10, 235 n.,
286, 293, 297.
Winckler, 181 n., 187, 194, 249.
Wood, J. T., 308, 311.
Wright, Dr William, 196.
Xerxes, 299.
Xisuthrus, 65.
Yahua ( = Jehu, q.v.), 245.
Yaudu, 249.
Young, Thomas, 14.
Zedekiah, 269, 270.
Zerah, the Ethiopian, 225.
Zerubbabel's temple, 222.
Ziggurats, 105, 111, 322.
Zimmern, 122 n., 182, 191.
Zimrida of Lachish, 181-183, 185,
211.
Zoan ( = San or Tanis), 136, 154,
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