YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY THE LIBRARY OF THE DIVINITY SCHOOL THE "HIGHER CRITICISM" VERDICT OF THE MONUMENTS. THE "HIGHER CRITICISM" AND THE VERDICT OF THE MONUMENTS. BY THE Rev. A. H. SAYCE, queen's college, oxford. I'hirfc ©"bititrn, wbi^eo. PUBLISHED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE TRACT COMMITTEE. LONDON: SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE, NORTHUMUERLAND AVENUE, W.C. J 43, QUEEN VICTORIA STREET, E.C BRIGHTON: 135, north street. New York: E. & J. B. YOUNG & CO. 1894. YaJe Divinity Library How Hawon Cnnn. Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London & Bungay. PREFACE. I AM well aware that the pages which follow will satisfy neither the " higher critics " nor their extreme opponents, and that every effort will be made to dispute or minimise the archaeological evidence which they contain. But the great body of the religious public happily consists neither of " higher critics " nor of uncompromising " apologists," and is honestly de sirous of knowing what is the actual testimony which the marvellous discoveries of oriental archaeology are giving to the antiquity and historical character of the Old Testament. I have therefore endeavoured as it were to take stock of them, and to indicate the con clusions to which they point. I have aimed at writing as an archaeologist rather than as a theologian, treat ing the books of the Hebrew Bible as I should any other oriental literature which laid claim to a similar antiquity, and following the archaeological evidence whithersoever it may lead. Whether I have been successful in thus putting aside all those preposses sions in favour of a peculiarly divine origin which an Anglican priest might be expected to feel for the ^Scriptures of his Church is for my readers to decide. That the evidence is imperfect the archaeologist will be the first to admit. But so too is the evidence VI PREFACE. of Geology and other branches of science, not to speak of history in the ordinary sense of the word. To this imperfection of the record must be ascribed the frequent cases in which we are obliged to use terms like " probable " and " it seems," and to sug gest an inference instead of proving it mathematically. No doubt future research will diminish the number of such cases ; nevertheless there must always remain instances in which the amount of certainty really attainable in historical investigations as in common life can never be arrived at. We must be content with probability only. Still probability is better than the bare possibility which the critic so often extracts from his inner consciousness. A typical example of the " critical " method has just been brought under my observation. Dr. Chap lin has in his possession a small haematite weight found on the site of Samaria and inscribed with letters of the eighth century B.C. (see p. 449). The letters are very clear, though one of the two lines of which they consist is somewhat worn. Dr. Neubauer and myself found that one of the words occurring in them is sh{i)l " of." The " critics," however, had determined that this was a word of late date, and had used it as an argument for denying the early date of the Song of Songs. Consequently it became necessary to get rid of the archaeological evidence which had so incon veniently turned up. First of all the genuineness of the inscription was denied, and when this argument failed it was asserted that the reading given by Dr. Neubauer and myself was false. The assertion was PREFACE. Vll based on an imperfectly-executed cast in which the letters of the word shel — the first of which happens to be a good deal rubbed — are only partially repro duced. It might have been thought that before deny ing the reading of those who had handled the original stone, the " critics " would at least have waited until they could have seen the weight itself. But such a pro cedure is not in accordance with " the critical method," and so shel and the Song of Songs are alike pro nounced to be post-Exilic. Ex hoc disce omnia ! I cannot do better than conclude with a quotation from an interesting and pertinent article by Prof. Hommel, the illustrious orientalist, in the Sunday School Times for March 5, 1893 : " It is the whole perception of history that divides all Old Testament theology into two opposing camps. The genuineness and authenticity of an account like that in Gen. xiv. involves a sweeping and destructive criticism of the now fashionable view as to the trustworthiness of the Old Testament traditions, and therefore this chapter will ever be a stumbling-block to those critics who will not allow a single line to be Mosaic, not even the Decalogue and the so-called Book of the Covenant ; and accordingly these men for a long time to come will bend their utmost energies, though with little success, to remove this stone of offence from their path." A. H. SAYCE. Queen's College, Oxford, Oct. 9, 1893. PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. An author may be expected to feel gratified at finding that his book has passed into a third edition in the course of a few months. But I confess that I should have been better pleased if the sale of it had not been quite so rapid, as owing to my absence from England I have been unable to see the criticisms which have been passed upon it, and so profit by the archaeological knowledge of my reviewers. As it is, all I can do is once more to emphasize the fact that the work is that of an archaeologist, not of a theologian. Whatever bearings, therefore, it may have upon theological controversies must be left to the treatment of professed interpreters and critics of the Bible : they do not fall within my province. All 1 have undertaken to do is to state the archaeological facts as clearly and fully as I can ; that they should not always harmonize with prevalent theories is perhaps inevitable. Theories that have been arrived at upon imperfect knowledge are likely to need revision when the area of knowledge is enlarged. But I cannot refrain from drawing attention to the remarkable way in which archaeological discovery has x PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. confirmed the judgment of the Jewish Church. It is from the Jewish Church that the Christian Church has received the Canon of the Old Testament, and the doctrine of the Jewish Church in regard to the Canon is lucidly stated by Coleridge in his Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit (Letter II.): "Between the Mosaic and the Prophetic inspiration [the Jewish teachers] asserted such a difference as amounts to a diversity ; and between both the one and the other, and the remaining books comprised under the title of Hagiographa, the interval was still wider, and the inferiority in kind, and not only in degree, was un equivocally expressed. If we take into account the habit, universal with the Hebrew doctors, of referring all excellent or extraordinary things to the great First Cause, without mention of the proximate and instrumental causes — a striking illustration of which may be obtained by comparing the narratives of the same events in the Psalms and in the historical books; and if we further reflect that the distinction of the providential and the miraculous did not enter into their forms of thinking — at all events not into their mode of conveying their thoughts — the language of the Jews respecting the Hagiographa will be found to differ little, if at all, from that of religious persons among ourselves, when speaking of an author abounding in gifts, stirred up by the Holy Spirit, writing under the influence of special grace, and the like." The distinction thus drawn by the Jewish Church between the Hagiographa and the earlier books of the PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. XI Old Testament is strikingly reflected in the results of archaeological research. While these tend to sub stantiate the historical trustworthiness of the older records of the Hebrew people and the antiquity of the documents which contain them, they also show that in the Hagiographa we have something of a different character. In the one case we have history, in the other case history transformed into a parable. A. H. Sayce. Cairo, Egypt, May 5, 1894. PREFACE OF TRACT COMMITTEE. The Tract Committee of the S.P.C.K. wish it to be understood that in publishing this work, which throws so valuable a light on much of the Old Testa ment, they do not commit the Society to an agree ment with all the opinions expressed in it. The Author alone is responsible for them. But they do not think it fair to hold back any of the conclusions arrived at by one of the most distinguished Archae ologists of the day, whose views, founded on the evidence of monumental inscriptions, must carry great weight, though possibly they may be hereafter modified, as he himself observes in these words (p. 554): " In some instances the facts are still so imperfectly known as to make the conclusions the oriental archaeologist draws from them probable only. It is also true that in some cases a conclusion which seems certain and evident to one student may not seem equally certain and evident to another." It may pre vent misunderstanding in regard to his remarks upon the Book of Daniel to quote also his own words as to the Historical Records of the Old Testament. He says: "The facts contained in them are trustworthy, xiv PREFACE OF TRACT COMMITTEE. and have been honestly copied from older and in many respects contemporaneous documents. It is only their setting and framework, the order in which they are arranged, and the links of connection by which they are bound together, that belong to the later compiler" (p. 409). And throughout the work it is important to bear in mind (as the Author repeatedly reminds us) that he is " writing as an Archaeologist, not a Theologian, and that therefore all questions of Inspiration or Revelation lie quite outside his province." When, for instance, he tells us that the Sabbath and week of seven days had its first home in Babylon, or that the narrative of the Creation is ultimately of Babylonian origin, there is nothing in these statements incon sistent with a belief in a Primitive Revelation. They merely assert that the earliest mention of them is to be found in Babylonian inscriptions, and that we have no equally early documents among the Mosaic records ; but, as the Author says in another place, they "may go back to an immemorial antiquity, when the ancestors of the Israelites and *the Semitic Baby lonians lived side by side.'' The great similarity and at the same time diversity between the Babylonian and Hebrew stories are evidence of a common kinship and not of conscious borrowing. CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE I. THE HIGHER CRITICISM AND ORIENTAL ARCHE OLOGY ... ... ... ... I II. THE ANTIQUITY OF ORIENTAL LITERATURE ... 3 1 III. THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN THE BOOK OF GENESIS ... ... ... ... 6l IV. THE CANAANITISH AND EGYPTIAN ELEMENTS IN THE BOOK OF GENESIS ... ... 1 74 V. THE EGYPTIAN TUTELAGE OF ISRAEL ... 234 VI. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ISRAELITISH NATION 283 VII. GEOGRAPHY AND LANGUAGE ... ... 329 VIII. THE MOABITE STONE AND THE INSCRIPTION OF SILOAM ... ... ... ... 361 IX. THE ASSYRIAN TESTIMONY TO THE OLD TESTA MENT ... ... ... ••• 389 X. THE LATER HISTORICAL BOOKS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT ... •¦• ••¦ 457 XI. THE BOOKS OF DANIEL AND EZRA... ... 497 XII. CONCLUSION ... ... ... ••• 554 INDEX, ... ... ••• ••• 565 THE "HIGHER CRITICISM" AND THE VERDICT OF THE MONUMENTS. CHAPTER I. THE HIGHER CRITICISM AND ORIENTAL ARCHAEOLOGY. What do we mean by the " higher criticism " of the Old Testament? It is a phrase which has passed from books of a forbiddingly scientific nature, to the popular literature of a railway bookstall and the articles of a monthly review. We hear it over the dinner-table ; it is used not only in the lecture-room, but in the drawing-room as well. Like several other modern importations from Germany, it has been found to supply a want, and has accordingly made its way into the current language of England. But, like many current expressions, it does not always call up a clear and definite idea in the minds of those who hear it, or even in the minds of those B 2 THE HIGHER CRITICISM who employ it. It is used to shelter opinions about the Bible which are at variance with those of tradi tional "orthodoxy," and is too often invoked to defend paradoxes which none but their author is likely to accept. Whoever rejects the popular views about the authority and credibility of Scripture considers he has a right to appeal to the "higher criticism " in support of his assertions. It is easier to invoke the aid of a phrase than to establish one's conclusions by solid arguments. By the " higher criticism " is meant a critical inquiry into the nature, origin, and date of the documents with which we are dealing, as well as into the historical value and credibility of the statements which they contain. The two lines of inquiry depend a good deal one upon the other. The degree of credibility we may assign to a particular narrative will largely depend upon the length of time which has elapsed between the period when it was written and the period when the event it records actually took place, and consequently upon the date of the document in which it is found. A contemporaneous document is more trustworthy than one which be longs to a later age ; the statement of an eye-witness is always more valuable than that of a writer who is dependent on the evidence of others. On the other hand, an examination of the contents of a narrative will often throw light on the age to which the nar rative itself must be assigned. The statement in Gen. xxxvl 31, that "these are the kings that reigned in the land of Edom before there reigned any king over the children of Israel," shows that the list of Edomite kings which follows could not have been AND ORIENTAL ARCH/EOLOGY. 3 incorporated into the Eook of Genesis until after the rise of the Israelitish monarchy. The reference to the destruction of No-Amon or Thebes in Nahum iii. 8 indicates the date to which the prophecy in which it occurs must be referred. The cuneiform monu ments have told us that the old capital of Egypt was destroyed by the Assyrian armies about 663 B.C., and it must therefore have been shortly after this event — when the recollection of it was still fresh in the memory of the Jews — that Nahum pronounced the approaching doom of Nineveh. A critical examination of a narrative will also help us to discover whether the document which embodies it is of a simple or a composite nature. It may often happen that the ancient book we are examin ing may be, in its present form, of comparatively late date, and yet contain older documents, some of them indeed being earlier than itself by several centuries. Modern research has shown that a con siderable part of the most ancient literature of all nations was of composite origin, more especially where it was of a historical or a religious character. Older documents were incorporated into it with only so much change as to allow them to be fitted to* gether into a continuous story, or to reflect the point of view, ethical, political, or religious, of the later compiler. The most ancient books that have come down to us are, with few exceptions, essentially compilations. In this investigation, however, into the nature and origin of the documents with which it deals, the " higher criticism " is largely dependent on the aid of the " lower criticism." By the " lower criticism " 4 THE HIGHER CRITICISM is meant what we have been accustomed to call " textual criticism," a method of criticism which is wholly philological and palaeographical, busied with minute researches into the character and trustworthi ness of the text, and the exact signification of its language. It is by means of philology that the higher critics have endeavoured to separate the Pen tateuch into its original parts, and determine the various fragments which belong to each; and it is again mainly to philology that an appeal is made by [those who would assign the later chapters of the I Book of Isaiah to the age of the Babylonian Exile. iThe occurrence of Greek words in the historical (chapters of the Book of Daniel forms an important argument in determining its date. The "lower criticism," accordingly, can be called "lower" only in so far as it is, as it were, the hand maid of the " higher criticism," without whose help the "higher criticism" could not advance very far. Moreover a large part of the most certain facts upon which the " higher criticism " has to rely are furnished by the " lower criticism." A philological fact, once ascertained, is a fact which cannot be overturned or explained away ; it does not depend on the taste or sentiment or prejudices of an individual critic, but must be admitted by all scholars alike. Of course it may be denied by those who. are not scholars — an easy method of answering unwelcome arguments which has often been adopted— but in the end the opinion of the scholars will always prevail. So far, therefore, from occupying a subordinate place, the "lower criticism" is indispensable to the "higher criticism," and the scholar who would be a " higher " AND ORIENTAL ARCHAEOLOGY. $ critic must begin by being a "lower" critic as well. His philology must be sound before he can be trusted to speak on matters which involve the balancing of evidence and an appeal to questions of taste. Unfortunately, it has sometimes been forgotten that the "higher" and the "lower" criticism are alike branches of the same study, and that in science there is no " higher " or " lower," except in a conventional sense. The critic who has devoted himself to balanc ing the evidence of historical or religious facts has sometimes fancied himself on a higher pedestal than the critic who confines himself to philological facts. It is true that he requires a more delicate appreciation of probabilities — an appreciation, however, which he does not always possess — and a wider and more catholic survey of facts ; but the method pursued by both ought to be one and the same, the difference between them being in degree only and not in kind. The arrogancy of tone adopted at times by the "higher criticism" has been productive of nothing but mischief; it has aroused distrust even of its most certain results, and has betrayed the critic into a dogmatism as unwarranted as it is unscientific. Baseless assumptions have been placed on a level with ascertained facts, hasty conclusions have been put forward as principles of science, and we have been called upon to accept the prepossessions and fancies of the individual critic as the revelation of a new gospel. If the archaeologist ventured to suggest that the facts he had discovered did not support the views of the critic, he was told that he was no philologist. The opinion of a modern German theo logian was worth more, at all events in the eyes of 6 THE HIGHER CRITICISM his "school," than the most positive testimony of the monuments of antiquity. But the fault lay not with the "higher criticism" but with the " higher critic." He had closed his eyes to a most important source of evidence, that of archaeology, and had preferred the conclusions he had arrived at from a narrower circle of facts to those which the wider circle opened out by oriental dis covery would have forced him to adopt. It was the old story ; it is disagreeable to unlearn our knowledge, and to resign or modify the beliefs for which we have fought and laboured, because of the new evidence which has come to light. The evidence must be blinked and discredited ; we refuse to accept it because certain unimportant details in regard to it have not yet been settled, or because we do not know whether it may not be supplemented by future discovery. We adopt the anti-scientific attitude of those who con demned Galileo, because our old beliefs have become convictions, and we do not wish them to be disturbed. There are popes in the " higher criticism " as well as in theology. It is because these popes have of late been pro claiming somewhat loudly the doctrine of their infal libility, that it is desirable to test the conclusions of the " higher criticism,'' so far at least as the Old Testament is concerned, by the discoveries of oriental archaeology. During the last half-century a new world has been opened out before us by the exca vators and decipherers of the ancient monuments of the East, the great civilisations of the past have risen up, as it were, from their grave, and we find ourselves face to face with the contemporaries of Ezekiel and AND ORIENTAL ARCHEOLOGY. 7 Hezekiah, of Moses and of Abraham. Pages of history have been restored to us which had seemed lost for ever, and we are beginning to learn that the old empires of the Orient were in many respects as cultured and literary as is the world of to-day. The Old Testament has hitherto stood alone ; the litera ture which existed by the side of it in the oriental world seemed to have perished, and if we would test and verify, illustrate or explain its statements, we had nothing to fall back upon except a few scattered fragments of doubtful value, which had come to us through Jewish and Christian apologists, or the mis leading myths and fables of Greek writers. The books of the Old Testament Scriptures could be explained and interpreted only through themselves ; they were what the logicians would call "a single instance " ; there was nothing similar with which they could be compared, no contemporaneous record which could throw light on the facts they contained. From a " single instance " no argument can be drawn ; we may analyse and dissect it, but we cannot make it the basis and starting-point for conclusions of an affirmative, and still less of a negative, character. To assume, for example, that writing was unknown for literary purposes in the Palestine of the age of Moses was to commit a logical fallacy, and recent oriental discovery has shown that it was the reverse of fact. The presumptions of the " higher criticism " were too often founded on want of evidence and the imper fection of the historical record. The two lines of research, in fact, with which the " higher critic " is concerned, although they converge to the same point, nevertheless move along different 8 THE HIGHER CRITICISM planes, and are dependent on different kinds of evi dence. On the one side the business of the " higher critic" is to analyse the documents with which he deals, to determine their origin, character, and relative age. The literary analysis implied by this sort of work is to a large extent of a philological nature, and it is not necessarily compelled to go beyond the documents themselves for the materials on which it 'relies. The evidence to which it appeals is mainly internal, and the facts by which it is supported are facts which have little or nothing to do with external testimony. The literary analysis of the Pentateuch, for example, is independent of the facts of history properly so called. But on the other side, the " higher critic " is also required to determine the authenticity or credibility of the historical narratives which the documents contain. For this part of his work his documents will not suffice ; he must compare their statements with those of other ancient records, and ascertain how far they are in accordance with the testimony derived from elsewhere. It is, in short, in his historical analysis that he is called upon to seek for external evidence, and if he neglect to do so he will be in danger of drawing conclusions from a " single instance." It is here that he must seek the aid of archaeology, and test the results at which he may arrive by the testimony of the ancient monuments. As I have already said, the two lines of research cannot be wholly separated from one another. Before we examine into the historical character of a narra tive we ought to know what literary analysis has to tell us about the records in which it is found. We AND ORIENTAL ARCHAEOLOGY. 9 ought to know whether these are composite or simple, what is their age in relation to the events they narrate, and what are the characteristics of their writer or writers. It makes a good deal of difference to our estimation of a historical narrative whether or not the writer was under the influence of a religious, political, or ethical theory. The impartiality of Grote's History \ of Greece has been impaired by the political theory it was written to support, and we have only to turn to ecclesiastical history to see what wholly contrary aspects will be assumed by the same facts in the Works of two writers of opposite theological schools. / On the other hand, the literary analyst cannot afford to neglect the help of historical criticism. Not only will a difference in the contents of the narrative assist him in distinguishing the documents which he finds to have been used or fused together in the ancient writing he is investigating ; the historian will sometimes be able to verify or overthrow the results to which his literary analysis may seem to have led him. Let us take, for instance, the tenth chapter of Genesis. The view that this chapter did not assume its present form until the age of Ezekiel is supported by the evidence of the Assyrian inscriptions. We learn from them that Gomer or the Kimmerians did (/ not emerge from their primitive homes in the far north and come within the geographical horizon of the civilised nations of Western Asia until the seventh century before our era, and that the name of Magog can hardly be separated from that of Gog, who was none other than the Lydian king Gyges, the contem- U porary of Jeremiah. Literary analysis paves the way for historical IO THE HIGHER CRITICISM criticism. It is fitting, therefore, that the "higher criticism" of the Old Testament Scriptures should have done its best, or its worst, before oriental archaeology enters the field. Let us hear all that the "higher critics" have to tell us after nearly a century of incessant labour and discussion, of minute examination of every word, if not of every letter, in the sacred records, and of subjecting the language of Scripture to almost every possible mode of inter pretation. In the literary analysis of the Old Testa ment certain general results have been arrived at, about which critics of the most various schools are agreed, and if in details there is still room for doubt and disputation, this is only what might be expected. Philology has already settled a good many questions which bear on the internal structure of the Biblical books. But the historical analysis of the Old Testament has necessarily lagged far behind its literary analysis. The critic has endeavoured to argue from a "single instance," and the result has necessarily been unsuc cessful. Before we can accept his conclusions we must test them, and this can only be done by the help of the monuments of the ancient oriental world. Here alone can we find contemporaneous records which present us with a living picture of the world of the day, and inform us whether the picture presented by the Biblical records or by their critics is the more correct. It will be found more than once that the critics have been too ingenious, and have arranged past events more cleverly than they actually arranged themselves. The first and necessary result of the application of AND ORIENTAL ARCHAEOLOGY. II the critical method to the, records of ancient history was scepticism. On the one hand, it was demonstrated by the literary analyst that documents hitherto supposed to be coeval with the events recorded in them were really centuries later, and that instead of being the work of eye-witnesses they were merely compilations embodying materials of very different age and value. On the other hand, a new spirit and mode of inquiry were at work in the educated world. It was the spirit of inductive science, cautious, •tentative, and sceptical. It was a spirit which would no longer accept a belief because it was traditional, which demanded reasons, and insisted upon working back from the known to the unknown. Nothing was sacred to it ; everything had to be brought before the bar of human reason. Man became, as he had never become before, the measure of all things ; but it was as educated man, as a member of the scientifically- trained society of Europe. Between this new spirit of inquiry and the spirit which presided over the composition of most of the books and records of antiquity there was a gulf which could not be passed. The frame of mind which saw history in the myths of Greek deities and heroes, or with Livy placed showers of stones and impossible births on a level with Punic wars and Roman legis lation, was a frame of mind which had not only passed away, but seemed impossible even to conceive. The literature in which it was enshrined was a literature which refused to stand the tests demanded from it by the modern canons of criticism. The age of faith had been succeeded by an age of scientific scepticism, and the tests of truth required by the age of scientific 12 THE HIGHER CRITICISM scepticism had not been anticipated, and therefore had not been provided for, by the age of faith. The earlier history of Greece and Rome was filled with legends which we of to-day can see at a glance must have been the product of fancy and superstition, and the historical character of the narratives with which these legends are associated was at first suspected and then denied. We know that gods never fought with men on the plains of Troy ; it was therefore an easy step to take to deny the historical existence of Troy or the occurrence of its famous siege, and to point in proof of the denial to the want of contemporaneous record of the event. Greek prose literature does not begin until the sixth, or at most the seventh, century before our era ; how then can we be called upon to believe that a dynasty of powerful princes had ruled, centuries before, over Mykenae, and had lid a con quering fleet to the shores of Asia Minor ? The legends connected with the names of Agamemndn and Menelaos were interwoven with the actions of deities in whom we no longer believe, and with miraculous occurrences which those deities were asserted to have occasioned. The historical critic, accordingly, rejected them all ; to seek in them for grains of history, it was alleged, would be as useless a task as to seek in the sunshine for grains of gold. The myths and legends of early Greece or of early Rome were bound together in an indissoluble union ; to select a fragment here and there and declare it to be historical would be to ignore the rules of scientific evidence, and to lay claim to a power of divination. We must either accept the legends as a whole, like the historians of previous centuries, or reject them as a whole. And historical AND ORIENTAL ARCHAEOLOGY. 13 criticism had little difficulty in deciding which it was its duty to do. Twenty years ago little was left us of what had been handed down as the earlier history of civilised man. Historical criticism had been ruthless in its iconoclasm. First one portion of ancient history had been relegated to the land of myth and fable, and then another. The destructive method of Niebuhr had been accepted ; the constructive side of his work, in which he had attempted to substitute a new history of his own for the history he had demolished, was rejected. Narratives, the historical truth of which had been admitted by the earlier critics, were even tually condemned ; whatever did not satisfy the most stringent requirements of criticism was expunged from the pages of history. In the hands of Sir George Cornewall Lewis the history of Rome was made to begin with its capture by the Gauls ; the Greek history of Sir George Cox knows of scarcely anything that is historical before the age of Solon and Peisis- tratos. Havet not only threw doubt on the Egyptian and Babylonian histories of Manetho and Ber6ssos ; he denied the literary existence of Manetho and B£r6ssos themselves.1 The scepticism of historical criticism could hardly go any further. It was based on and supported by certain general assumptions. One of these was the unlikeness of the ancient oriental world to the Greek and Roman world of the classical age. The inferiority of the ancient oriental world in culture and education was assumed as a matter of course. It was taken for 1 E. Havet : " Memoire sur la Date des Ecrits qui portent les noms de Be"rose et de Manethon," Paris 1873. 14 THE HIGHER CRITICISM granted that no literature worthy of the name existed before Herodotos and AEskhylos, and that the idea of composing a history of contemporaneous events was a Greek invention. Writing, if known at all, was confined to the few, and was used chiefly for monu mental purposes. That there was a literary age in the East long before there was a literary age in the West never entered the mind of the critic ; or if it did, it was dismissed with contempt. Anything, therefore, which seemed to imply the existence of such a literary age, or which appealed to it for con firmation, was at once ruled out of court. The very fact that the authenticity of a particular narrative pre-supposed a widely-extended circle of readers and writers in the time of Moses was considered sufficient for its condemnation. Whatever ran counter to the dominant assumption had to be explained away, philology notwithstanding ; and so " the pen of the scribe " in the song of Deborah and Barak (Judges v. 14) became " the marshal's baton." There was yet another assumption by which criti cism was largely, if unconsciously, biassed. This was the belief in the limited geographical knowledge of the ancient eastern world. The existence of regular high-roads, and the possibility of transporting large bodies of men to distant localities, were held to be among the dreams and fancies of an uncritical age. That Babylonian armies could have marched into Palestine in the days of Abraham, much less that Babylonian kings could have established their empire there, seemed wholly impossible. The documents in which such statements occurred appeared self- condemned. AND ORIENTAL ARCHaEOLOGY. 1 5 Still more prevalent was the assumption that the language and statements of an ancient oriental writer must be measured by the standard of a modern European. An exactitude was required of them which would not and could not be demanded of many modern writers of history. A single error in detail, a single inconsistency, a single exaggeration, a single anachronism, was considered sufficient to overthrow the credit of a whole narrative. And it sometimes happened that the error or inconsistency was of the critic's own creation, due to a false interpretation or a mistaken combination of the narratives before him. But even where this was not the case, it was expected that an ancient oriental annalist should express him self with the sobriety of a Western European and the precision of a modern man of science. It is true that the critic would have been the first to disavow any such expectation. But it is also true that he has frequently acted on the tacit assumption that such must have been the case. A good deal of the historical criticism which has been passed on the Old Testament is criticism which seems to imagine that the compiler of the Book of Judges or the Books of Kings was a German scholar surrounded by the volumes of his library, and writing in awe of the reviewers. What may be called historical hair-splitting has been the bane of scientific criticism. It has been mainly due to a want of sympathy with the age and writers of the documents which are criticised, and to a difficulty of realizing the conditions under which they lived, and the point of view from which they wrote. Even more frequent and more fatal than historical hair-splitting has been the habit of arguing from the 1 6 THE HIGHER CRITICISM ignorance of the critic himself. Time after time statements have been assumed to be untrue because we cannot bring forward other evidence in support of the facts which they record. The critic has made his own ignorance the measure of the credibility of an ancient document. The earlier history of Jeru salem before the Israelitish conquest of Canaan was unknown ; the story of the priest-king Melchizedek stood alone, unsupported by any fragment of antiquity that had come down to us ; and accordingly it was asserted to be unhistorical. The mention of " the kings of the Hittites " in the account of the siege of Samaria by the Syrians (2 Kings vii. 6) was declared to be an error or an invention ; but it was only the ignorance of the critic himself that was at fault. It was to the histories of Greece and Rome that scientific criticism first applied its scalpel, and it was in the demolition of the legends and narratives with which they commenced that its method was formed, and the rules and principles laid down by which it has since been guided. From the histories of Greece and Rome it passed on to the history of ancient Israel. The method and principles of inquiry which were applicable, to profane history were equally appli cable to sacred history, and from the point of view of the historian no difference could be made between them. The critical standard was necessarily the same in both cases ; we cannot admit that an argument which would be just and conclusive in the case of Herodotos would be unjust and inconclusive in the case of the Pentateuch. In so far as the critical analysis of Greek and Roman history had been a success, it was right to expect that the same AND ORIENTAL ARCHaEOLOGY. 17 critical analysis of Israelitish history would also be a success. Inevitably, therefore, the scientific criticism of the Old Testament followed upon the scientific criticism of the Greek and Roman historians, and if its tendency was destructive in the case of the one, it was only because it had already been destructive in the case of the other. The same canons of criticism that had relegated the story of Mykenaean power or of the Trojan war to mythland, relegated also the earlier narratives of the Bible to the same unhistorical region. Abraham only followed Agamemn6n ; and if the reputed ancestor of the Hebrew race was resolved into a 'myth, it was because " the king of men " had already submitted to the same fate. As it was in the early traditions of Greece that destructive criticism found its first materials and first elaborated its method and principles, so it was these same traditions which formed the starting-point for that reconstruction of the history of the past which has built up anew what criticism had destroyed, and corrected the extravagances of an over-confident scepticism. With the excavations of Dr. Schliemann a new era began for the study of antiquity. Criticism had either demolished the literary tradition or thrown such doubt upon it as to make the scholar hesitate before he referred to it. The ages before the begin ning of the so-called historical period in Greece had become a blank or almost a blank. They were like the maps of Central Africa made some forty years ago, in which the one-eyed monsters or vast lakes which had occupied it in the maps of an earlier epoch were swept away and nothing was put in their place. l8 THE HIGHER CRITICISM It has been reserved for modern exploration to supply the vacant space and to prove that, after all, the Mountains of the Moon and the lakes of the Portu guese map-makers had a foundation in fact. It has similarly been reserved for the excavators and archae ologists of the last twenty years to restore the lost pages of the ancient history of civilisation, and to make it clear that the literary tradition, imperfect though it may have been, and erroneous in its details, was yet substantially correct. The spade of Dr. Schliemann and his followers has again brought to light the buried empire of Aga- memn6n. Our knowledge of the culture and power of the princes of Mykenae and Tiryns in the heroic age of Greece is no longer dependent on the question able memory of tradition. We can examine with our own eyes and hands the palaces in which they lived, the ornaments they used, the weapons with which they were armed. We can trace their intercourse with the distant lands of the East and North, with the Egyptians of the Delta, the Phoenicians of Canaan, the Hittites of Asia Minor, and that northern population which collected the amber of the Baltic. The voyage of a Menelaos to Egypt or of a Paris to Sidon has ceased to be a historical anachronism which the critic can dismiss without further argument. We now know that although the heroic age of Hellas has left us no literary monument, it was nevertheless an age of culture and civilisation, the recollection of which lingered with astonishing accuracy down to the later ages of literary Greece. Excavation has proved that the "higher" critic was not justified in denying the credibility of the general picture pre- AND ORIENTAL ARCHEOLOGY. 19 t sented by the Greek tradition of the heroic age because in certain details it could not bear the test of criticism. The outlines of the picture were true ; it was only the colouring which reflected the ideas and fancies of a later day. The reconstruction of primitive Greek history was followed by the reconstruction of primitive Oriental history. Schliemann was followed by Petrie, as he had been preceded by Layard and Botta and the other great pioneers of excavation in the East. But the excavator in Egypt or Assyria or Babylonia had assistance which was denied to his colleague in the lands of the old Greek world. The culture of the East had been literary from the remotest epoch to which we can trace it back. The monuments it has yielded to us are for the most part written monu ments. Babylonia and Assyria were filled with libraries, and the libraries were filled with thousands of books, while the Egyptian could not even hew a tomb out of the rock without covering its walls with lines of writing. In the East the decipherer of the hieroglyphics of Egypt and the cuneiform characters of Assyria and Babylonia walks hand in hand with the excavator. The one assists and supplements the work of the other. Greek archaeology has benefited in part from the work of the oriental archaeologist. The discoveries of Dr. Petrie in the Fayum and at Tel el-Amarna have settled the date of the remains found at Myk&nae and Tiryns, by showing that the pottery which charac terises them belongs to the age of the eighteenth and nineteenth Egyptian dynasties. They have further made it probable that colonists from the ^Egean, and 20 THE HIGHER CRITICISM even it may be from the southern shores of Italy, were settled in the kingdom of the Pharaohs as far back as the era of the Twelfth dynasty.1 Indeed at a still older epoch, in the days when the Egyptian monarchs of the Sixth dynasty were erecting their pyramids, the Mediterranean was already known as " the great circle of the Uinivu " or Ionians.2 A Yivana or " Ionian," a name which corresponds letter for letter with the Hebrew Javan, is referred to in one of the cuneiform tablets found at Tel el-Amarna, and written in the century before the Exodus, as being on a mission in the country of Tyre. We need not wonder any longer that objects of Egyptian manufacture have been disinterred at Mykenae, or that Greek tradition remembered the intercourse which existed between the Peloponnesos and the Delta in the heroic age of Hellas.3 But if Greek archaeology, and therewith the recon- 1 See W. M. Flinders Petrie : " Kahun, Gurob and Hawara," London 1890, and " Illahun, Kahun and Gurob," London 1891. This careful observer has since found Mykenaean pottery among the ruins of the capital of Khu-n-Aten at Tel el-Amarna. As the city existed for only about thirty years {cir. B.C. 1400 — 1370) and was deserted after the death of its founder, we can fix the date of the pottery with astonishing precision. 2 Erman in the Zeitschrift fiir agyptische Sprache, xxix. i. P-39- 3 The passage in which the Ionian is mentioned is as follows (Winckler and Abel : " Mittheilungen aus den orientalischen Sammlungen," Pt. 2, Berlin 1890, No. 42) : "This year (certain) men have come into the presence of the king who is like the God Assur and the Sun-god in heaven ; they have reported to him : The sons of Ebed-Asherah have taken two horses of the king and chariots, according to their desires, and the men whom he sent have given them up ; and the Ionian is on a mission to the country of Tyre, doing this deed in it eight days," AND ORIENTAL ARCH/EOLOGY. 21 struction of early Greek history, has benefited by the discoveries that have been made in the East, how much more important have those discoveries been to the student of the Old Testament Scriptures ! The criticism which spared so little of early Greek history was inclined to spare still less of early Biblical history. The very fact that this history was popularly placed on a different footing from classical history, and re garded as peculiarly free from errors, gave the critic an unconscious bias against it. It had, too, been written by orientals whose modes of thought were less in harmony with those of the European critic than the modes of thought of a Greek writer. He could less readily understand and sympathise with the one than he could with the other. The pages of the Old Testament were accordingly ransacked for arguments against itself. No point, however minute, which could tell against it was overlooked, no inter pretation was neglected which could assist in the work of destruction. The accuracy of language and ex pression demanded from the sacred historians was mathematical in its exactness ; it was an accuracy which could not with fairness be demanded from any ancient writer, more especially one whose home was in the East. It is true that the " higher critic " was no worse an offender in this respect than the so-called " apologist," who presumed to apologise for the apparent imper fections and inconsistencies of Scripture. The verbal hair-splitting of the one was matched by the verbal hair-splitting of the other. Unimportant details were placed on a level with the main facts of a narrative, words were tortured into senses which they could 22 THE HIGHER CRITICISM never have borne, and meanings were read into pas sages of the Old Testament which belonged to the nineteenth century, and not to the age when the documents were originally composed. The " apolo gist" showed himself only too ready to rival the " higher critic " in demanding from the Biblical writers a mathematical accuracy of expression, and in order to support his views had recourse to arguments which sinned against the first principles of common sense. ' They were, at all events, arguments which would not have been admitted in the case of any other literature, and had they been produced on behalf of the Hindu Rig- Veda or the Qoran of Mohammed, the " apolo* gist" would himself have been the first to deny their validity. The " higher critic " and the " apologist " alike obscured the main point at issue by a micro scopic attention to unimportant particulars, the one maintaining that small errors of detail were sufficient to cast doubt on the credibility of a historical narra^ tive or to determine its age and character, the other that equally small matters of detail could be proved to be in accordance with the latest hypothesis of science. They were both alike the true descendants of the Jewish Massoretes, who considered counting the words and letters of the Old Testament a weightier business than ascertaining what they actually meant. The reaction against the extreme scepticism to which the method and principles of scientific criticism had led began, as I have said, in the field of classical history. It was here that the work of reconstruction was commenced by the excavator and the archae ologist. Biblical history followed in the wake of AND ORIENTAL ARCtLEOLOGY. 23 classical history. Criticism had rejected the larger part of the earlier history of the Old Testament, indeed in the hands of Havet and Vernes — the first of them, be it observed, being an eminent Greek scholar — it had gone further, and declared that before the Babylonian Exile there was little of it which could be believed. But meanwhile discoveries were being made in the Biblical lands of the East, which enable us to test these conclusions of the " higher criticism," and see how far the scepticism embodied in them can be justified. Discovery has been crowding on dis covery, each more marvellous than the last, and bear ing more or less directly on the Old Testament records. So rapidly has the work of the excavator and the decipherer been proceeding, that it has been difficult even for the oriental archaeologist to follow it, and estimate its consequences for the study of ancient history. Still less can it be expected that either the "higher critic" by profession or the public at large has been able to follow it and realise the complete revolution it must make in our conceptions of the ancient oriental world. The assumptions and pre conceptions with which the " higher criticism " started, and upon which so many of its conclusions are built, have been swept away either wholly or in part, and in place of the scepticism it engendered there is now a danger lest the oriental archaeologist should adopt too excessive a credulity. The revelations of the past which have been made to him of late years have inclined him to believe that there is nothing impos sible in history any more than there is in science, and that he is called upon to believe rather than to doubt. 24 THE HIGHER CRITICISM We are but just beginning to learn how ignorant we have been of the civilised past, and how false our ideas have been in regard to it. We are but just ^beginning to realise that the fragments of Hebrew literature contained in the Old Testament are the wrecks of a vast literature which extended over the ancient oriental world from a remote epoch, and that we cannot understand them aright except in the light of the contemporaneous literature of which they formed a portion. We now know that this Hebrew literature was no isolated phenomenon, for the ex planation of which extraordinary causes are required, and that the history embodied in it was based on literary records, and not on the shifting evidence of fantasy and tradition. The veil that has so long concealed the innermost shrine of the past has been lifted at last, and we have been permitted to enter, though it be as yet but a little way. It may seem, perhaps, that we ought still to wait before applying the results of oriental discovery to the historical records of the Old Testament, and testing by means of them the current conclusions of the "higher criticism." But enough has already been achieved in oriental archaeology not only to let us see what must be its general bearings on our conceptions of the Old Testament records, but also what is its direct relation to individual portions of them. Enough has been brought to light and interpreted by the student of oriental antiquity to enable us to test and correct the conclusions of the critic, and to demon strate that his scepticism has been carried to an extreme. The period of scepticism is over, the period of reconstruction has begun. We shall find that the AND ORIENTAL ARCHaEOLOGY. 25 explorer and decipherer have given back to us the old documents and the old history, in a new and changed form it may be, but nevertheless substantially the same. Moreover it is a good thing to take stock from time to time of the knowledge we have acquired. It is only in this way that we can tell how far we have advanced, and build as it were a platform for further research. To know how much has been accomplished is a spur to accomplish more. It is only lately that the results of the "higher criticism" have made their way to the mind of the general public, creating alarm in some quarters, satisfaction in others ; the results of recent oriental discovery, so far as they bear upon this " higher criticism," are either not known at all, or else only in a vague and indefinite way. The arguments of the " higher critic " seem so much more conclusive, so much more in accordance with the scientific require ments of the day, than the counter arguments of the "apologist," that the ordinary educated reader finds it difficult to resist them. It is well for him to learn, therefore, how far they are supported by the facts of archaeology. A single fact has before now upset a dozen arguments which had appeared to be incon trovertible. But let us not forget that in one important respect at least, both the " higher critic " and the archaeologist are agreed. Both alike are seeking for the truth, and this truth is historical and not theological. It is as historians and not as theologians that we must I investigate the records of the Old Testament, if we are to obtain results that will satisfy the great mass of reasoning men. With questions of inspiration and 26 THE HIGHER CRITICISM the like we have nothing to do. As long as our researches are historical and archaeological, the Scriptures of the Old Testament must be for us merely a fragment of that ancient oriental literature, other fragments of which are being exhumed from the mounds of Egypt, of Assyria, or of Babylonia. They are historical documents which must be examined according to the same method and upon the same principles as other documents which claim to be historical. We must not apply to them a different measure from that which we should apply to the Chronicles of Froissart or the Histories of Herodotos. The arguments which are sound in the one case will be sound in the other, those which are unsound in the one case will be equally unsound in the other. We cannot grant the benefit of an argument to the author of the Books of Chronicles which we deny to Holinshed or Geoffrey of Monmouth. Old Testament history has been treated unfairly, alike by friend and foe. They have both sought to defend a thesis, instead of endeavouring to discover what it actually has to tell us. Any argument, how ever trivial, which would throw discredit on it has been acceptable to the one, while the other has too often undertaken to defend the impossible. Had any other history been treated in the same way, the educated world would have protested long ago. But the Biblical records have been put into a category by themselves, to their infinite harm and abuse. Commentators have been more anxious to discover their own ideas in them, than to discover what the statements contained in them really mean. It is indeed strange how seldom we think of even trying AND ORIENTAL ARCHaEOLOGY. 27 to understand what a passage of Scripture must have originally signified to the author and his readers, or to realise its precise meaning. It may be due to a want of historical imagination, or to over-great familiarity with the mere language of the Bible ; whatever be the cause, the fact remains. We read the Old Testament as we should read a fairy-tale, seldom realising that its heroes were men of flesh and blood like ourselves, and that the world in which they lived and moved was the same world as that into which we were born. Nothing is so striking as the way in which an unintelligible passage of the Authorised Version is passed over, not only by the ordinary English reader, but even by the commentator. It is to both " a tale of little meaning, though the words are strong," and the strength of the words seems completely to conceal the want of meaning. It is sufficient if they attach to it some vague sense, though they may be quite sure that the sense they attach is the last which it could originally have borne. It must not be supposed that oriental archaeology and the "higher criticism" are irreconcilable foes. On the contrary we shall see that in many respects the learning and acumen of the long line of critics who have laboured and fought over the words of Scripture have not been altogether in vain. Much has been established by them, which the progress of oriental research tends more and more to confirm. There are narratives and statements in the Old Testament as to which the scepticism of the critic has been shown to be justified. The judgment he has passed on the so-called historical chapters of the Book of Daniel has been abundantly verified by the 28 THE HIGHER CRITICISM recent discoveries of Assyriology. The same evi dence and the same arguments which have demon strated that the scepticism of the "higher criticism" was hasty and unfounded in certain instances have equally demonstrated that it was well founded in others. We cannot accept the evidence in one case and refuse to accept it in the other. If once we appeal to the judgment of oriental archaeology we must abide by its verdict, whatever it may be. The /archaeologist is happily attached to no party ; he has no theories to defend, no preconceived theory to uphold. He is bound to follow the facts brought to light by the progress of discovery and research, wherever they may lead him. Whether they support the views of the " higher critic " or of the upholders of traditional opinions is no concern of his. His duty is to state and explain them regardless of their con sequences for theological controversy. All he is bound to do is to point out clearly where practical certainty ends and mere probability begins, where the facts tell their own tale and where their broken and dislocated character demands the hypothesis of the interpreter. But it is important to observe that at those points at which the " higher criticism " is brought into contact with oriental archaeology, even the theories of the archaeologist differ, or ought to differ, from those of the critic and of his " apologetic " antagonist. They are based on that essentially necessary foundation of all scientific truth, the comparison of at least two sets of facts which have been studied independently one of the other. The vice of all attempts to explain the /Bible through itself is that the student is here dealing AND ORIENTAL ARCHaEOLOGY. 29 with one set of facts only, with what I have already described in logical phraseology as a " single instance." The theories so formed may be very ingenious and very learned, but they are too largely dependent on the " inner consciousness " of their author to com mand universal consent. Indeed it has not unfre- quently happened that consent has been granted to them by their author alone. Controversies have raged, and are still raging, over matters which could be settled at once by the discovery of a single inscription, or even it may be of a single potsherd. They have been raised where the materials at hand were insufficient to allow of more than a barely possible interpretation, and where accordingly the arguments urged on either side were equally inconclusive and unconvincing. All at once the spade of the excavator has disinterred some ancient monument, or the decipherer of lost languages has revealed the true sense of some hitherto unex plained document, and the problem is solved forth with. Light is poured in upon it from outside, and the ineffectual attempts to light it from within have been superseded for ever. It is time that the large section of the public which takes an interest in the history of the past, and more especially in that portion of the past which is recorded in the Old Testament, should know how widely the light has now begun to shine. The defenders of tradi tional beliefs have been appealing with confidence to the testimony ofthe ancient monuments, and maintain ing that the vindication it has already afforded of the truth of the old records is an earnest of what is yet in store. The " higher criticism " has in many quarters 30 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. adopted a more arrogant tone, and refused to listen to archaeological science except where its results are in accordance with its own. The object of the fol lowing chapters will be to determine how far the confidence of the "apologist" is justified, and the arrogance of the critic condemned. CHAPTER II. THE ANTIQUITY OF ORIENTAL LITERATURE. ' ONE of the most assured results of the literary analysis of the Old Testament records has been the existence of documents of different age and authorship in the Pentateuch. Opinions may differ widely as to the authorship of certain passages and the dates to which the several documents are to be assigned, but about the general fact of the composite character of the Pentateuch competent critics of all schools are now agreed. The literary foundation upon which the history and religion of Israel rested is, in its present form, a composite work. The fact is fully in accordance with the teachings of oriental archaeology. The place occupied by the Pentateuch in the sacred literature of Israel was sub stantially occupied by the so-called Book of the Dead in the sacred literature of Egypt, as well as by the religious hymns and the ritual of which they formed part in the sacred literature of Babylonia. The Book of the Dead was a collection of prayers and mystical formulae by means of which the soul of the dead was enabled to secure its final rest and happiness in the next world. Thanks to the labours pf Mr. Nayjlle we can now trace its history, from the 32 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. days of the pyramid-builders down to the age of the Persian conquest of Egypt.1 Its form changed from age to age. New chapters were embedded in it, old chapters were modified ; glosses added in the margin to explain some obsolete word or phrase made their way into the text, and even glosses upon these glosses met with the same fate. The sacred book of the Egyptian, which the pious care of his friends caused to be buried with him and its chapters painted on the walls of his tomb or the sides of his sarcophagus, was an amalgamation of documents and beliefs of various ages and localities. As Professor Maspero has shown, more than one contrary belief is embodied in it, one belief being contained in chapters which emanated from one part of Egypt, and another belief in those which emanated from another part of the country.2 The same diversity of view which criticism has indicated to exist between the two accounts of the Creation given in the two first chapters of Genesis has been shown to exist between different portions of the Egyptian " Book of the Dead." The same fact meets us again when we turn to Babylonia. Here, as Lenormant was the first to point out,3 two great collections of sacred literature existed, one of them consisting of magical charms by which the spirits of heaven and earth could be compelled to obey the will of the priestly sorcerer, the other of 1 E. Naville : "Das iigyptisches Todtenbuch der 18—20 Dynastie," Berlin 1886, and Maspero: " Le Livre des Morts" in the Revue de VHistoire des Religions, 1887. 2 Maspero : " Les Hypogdes royaux de Thebes " and " La Mythologie egyptienne " in the Revue de V Histoire des Religions, 1888, 1889. 3 "La Magie chez les Chaldeens," Paris 1874. THE ANTIQUITY OF ORIENTAL LITERATURE. 33 hymns to the gods. Both collections were embodied in an elaborate ritual, the rubrics of which contain minute directions for the correct recitation of the charms and hymns. Not only were the individual charms and hymns necessarily of different authorship and date, an examination of their language and con tents makes it clear that many of them are of com posite origin. We find passages in them which can be shown to be of later date than the rest of the poem into which they have been incorporated, as well as statements and points of view which are mutually inconsistent.1 Perhaps the clearest example of the growth of a literary work, as yet afforded by the clay tablets of Babylonia, is the great Epic of primitive Chaldaea. It centres round the adventures of the hero Gilgames, the prototype of the Greek Perseus and Herakles, and assumed its present form in the age of the literary revival under King Khammurabi (B.C. 2356 — 2301). The adventures have been woven together into a poem in twelve books, the subject of each book cor responding with the name of the Zodiacal sign which answers to it in numerical order. Thus it is in the r second book that Gilgames slays the winged bull sent by Anu, the god of heaven, to avenge the slight done to the beauty of the goddess Istar, and it is in the eleventh book, corresponding with Aquarius, the eleventh sign of the Zodiac, that the Babylonian story of the Deluge is introduced as an episode. In its present form, in fact, the Epic has been arranged upon an astronomical principle ; and older poems, or frag- 1 Sayce : Hibbert Lectures on "The Religion of the Ancient Babylonians " (1887), pp. 317 sgo. See also p. 447. D 34 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. ments of older poems, have been interwoven into it in accordance with this arrangement. In one place, for example, we find a number of lines which have been taken bodily from another old Chaldaean poem, that which described the Descent of Istar into the world of the Dead. The story of the Deluge in the eleventh book, again, is not only an episode, plainly extracted by the author from elsewhere, but is itself an amalgamation of at least two earlier poems on the same subject. In this way we can explain how it is that the Flood is ascribed in it to two different deities ; in one passage it is Bel, in another Samas the Sun-god who is spoken of as its author. The composite character of the Pentateuch, there fore, is only what a study of similar contempora neous literature brought to light by modern research would lead us to expect. The " higher " criticism of the Old Testament has thus been justified in its literary analysis of the Books of Moses. The ques tions involved were mainly philological, and the critic consequently had sufficient materials before him for guiding and checking his conclusions. It was only when he was compelled to step into the field of the historian and determine the age of the several docu ments he had discovered, that his materials failed him, and his results became a matter of dispute. The critic has usually started with a conviction of the modernness of the application of writing to litera ture in the true sense of the word. Classical scholars had impressed upon him the belief that literature as such had no existence before the age of Solon, or even of the Persian wars. It therefore became impos sible to conceive of a Samuel, or still less of a Moses, THE ANTIQUITY OF ORIENTAL LITERATURE. 35 sitting down to compile a history and a code of laws. Moreover the exploration of Eastern lands had tended to strengthen this conviction. It was known that the Hebrews, Jjke the other nations of Syria, used a form of the Phoenician alphabet. Now no in scription in the letters of the Phoenician alphabet had been found which went back even to so early a date as the time of Solomon. Multitudes of such inscriptions had indeed been discovered, but most of them belonged to the epoch of the Ptolemies. The shapes of the letters, furthermore, indicated that they were employed for purely monumental purposes. They were composed of angles, such as would be necessitated by their incision on stone or metal or wood, not of the curves which would be substituted for the angles in writing on parchment and papyrus. It seemed obvious to conclude that the application of the Phoenician alphabet to other than monumental uses was of comparatively late date. And yet we now know that such a conclusion is not really warranted by the facts. A Jewish inscrip tion has been found, of the period of the kings, the letters of which, though engraved on stone, neverthe less have rounded instead of square angles. The people who employed them must have been accus tomed to write with a pen on papyrus and parch ment rather than with the chisel on wood and stone. The earliest Hebrew text of which we know, a text which is probably contemporary with the reign of Ahaz or Hezekiah, thus points in the clearest possible way to the existence at the time of a true literature. What other conclusions may be drawn 36 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. from the inscription of Siloam must be reserved till we come to the period to which it properly belongs. For the present it is sufficient that the oldest Hebrew inscription yet discovered indicates the employment of alphabetic writing at Jerusalem in the age of the kings for literary, and not monumental, purposes. The comparatively late date to which we must assign the first text yet known to us which is written in the letters of the Phoenician alphabet is a fact which should not be pressed too far. On the one hand it must be remembered that no systematic excavations have as yet been undertaken either in Phoenicia or in Syria or the lands eastward of the Jordan, and within the limits of Palestine itself the excavations begun by Dr. Flinders Petrie in 1890 for the Palestine Exploration Fund, and which resulted in the discovery of Lachish, are the first scientifically- conducted excavations that have been made. We are still quite ignorant of what lies buried beneath the soil. Before Botta and Layard brought to light the palaces of Assyria and the hundreds of written tablets which constituted the library of Nineveh, the cunei form inscriptions known to the world were not only far fewer than the Phoenician inscriptions with which we are at present acquainted, but Assyrian cuneiform inscriptions were not known at all. A small glass case in the British Museum was sufficient to contain the whole collection of Assyrian and Babylonian antiquities, and the greater part of them had come from Babylonia. No one could even dream that a vast literature was lying under the mounds of Assyria, waiting only for the spade of the excavator.1 1 Mr. Bliss's recent excavations at Lachish (Tell el-Hesy) THE ANTIQUITY OF ORIENTAL LITERATURE. 37 Then on the other hand, the origin and history of the Phoenician alphabet — that alphabet from which most of the existing alphabets of the world have been derived — are by no means so easy to settle as appeared to be the case two or three years ago. For a long while past the view has prevailed that the Phoenician alphabet is derived from the alphabet of ancient Egypt. The suggestion was first made by Champollion, the father of Egyptian philology, and was adopted by Drummond in this country and Salvolini in Italy.1 But it was the famous Egypt ologist Emmanuel de Rouge who first brought forward arguments in behalf of it which could be accepted by other scholars.2 He showed that the number of letters in the alphabet of Phoenicia and Palestine agreed substantially with that which had been used by the Egyptians from time immemorial, and formed by them out of the vast body of hiero- have brought to light the fragment of a flat dish on which the word b-l-a "swallow !" is incised in Phcenician letters, the first letter [Mth) being of a peculiarly archaic form. As the fragment was found at a depth of 300 feet, it would seem to be a good deal older than the ninth century B.C. (see my article in the Quarterly Statement of the Palestine Exploration Fund, January ^93. P- 31). 1 See Sir William Drummond's " Origines " (1825), vol. ii. pp. 341 sqq. Drummond, however, had the " Tsabaists " on the brain, and would seem to have thought that these imaginary people had invented the hieroglyphics out of which the Phcenician letters were originated on the one hand and the hieroglyphs of Egypt on the other. 2 In a Paper read before the Acade'mie des Inscriptions in 1859. It was edited by his son Jacques de Rouge in 1874 under the title " Memoire sur l'origine egyptienne de 1'Alphabet phenicien." 38 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. glyphic characters they continued to employ by the side of it. He further showed that many of the Phoenician letters presented a surprising likeness in shape to the "hieratic" or cursive forms of the corresponding Egyptian alphabet as found in a papyrus of the age of the Twelfth dynasty. The argument of De Rouge was clinched by Lenormant and Canon Isaac Taylor, the latter of whom, in his book on " The Alphabet," pointed out that the one Phoenician character which has no representative in the alphabet of Egypt is that which denotes the peculiarly Semitic sound of 'ayin, and that it has manifestly been originally a picture of the eye of which 'ayin is the Semitic name.1 "^ The theory of De Rouge was supported by the fact that the discovery of Phoenician inscriptions of earlier date than those he was acquainted with brought to light forms of the letters which bore a closer re semblance to their supposed hieratic prototypes than the forms which he had been able to compare with them. But it was not universally accepted. Prof. Hommel endeavoured to show that the Phcenician letters were derived from ancient forms of certain Babylonian cuneiform characters,2 while Prof. Eduard Meyer suggested for them a Hittite parentage. One of the chief difficulties in the theory was the long interval of time between the earliest known example of Phcenician writing and the age of the Hyksos kings of Egypt, when the hieratic characters were supposed to have passed into the Phoenician letters. Between the Moabite Stone of Mesha, the contem- 1 "The Alphabet" (1883), vol. i. pp. 115, 116. 2 " Geschichte Babyloniens und Assyriens " (1885), pp. 54, 55. THE ANTIQUITY OF ORIENTAL LITERATURE. 39 porary of Ahab, or the dedication to the Baal of Lebanon which is believed to be about half a century older, and the epoch of the Twelfth Egyptian dynasty is a space of more than 1500 years. We know how rapidly the forms of letters change, especially when they are transported from one people to another, and we may therefore well ask how it happened that the Phcenician letters continued to bear so close a resemblance to their supposed Egyptian prototypes during that long interval of time ? We may also ask how it is that no inscriptions have been discovered in Egypt or elsewhere which serve to bridge over the gulf between the epoch of the Hyksos and that of the dedication to Baal-Lebanon ? But the explorations of Dr. Glaser in Southern Arabia have lately put the question in a new and unexpected light.1 Dr. Glaser has re-copied a large part of the numerous inscriptions found on the rocks and ancient monuments of Yemen and Hadhramaut, and has added more than a thousand fresh ones to their number. The inscriptions were long known as Himy- aritic, but as they are in two different dialects, one of which is more archaic than the other, and belong to the two separate kingdoms of Ma'in and Saba, it is better to distinguish them as Minaean and Sabaean. Saba is the Sheba of the Old Testament whose queen came to visit Solomon, and the people of Ma'in are the Minaeans of the classical writers, and, as Glaser and Hommel believe, the Maonites of Judges x. 12. At 1 " Skizze der Geschichte Arabiens von den altesten Zeiten bis zum Propheten Muhammad" (Munich 1889), besides various Papers contributed by him and Prof. Hommel to different periodicals. 40 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. any rate in the Septuagint Zophar, the friend of Job, is called "king of the Minaeans" (Job ii. II). It has hitherto been imagined that the kingdoms of Ma'in and Saba were contemporaneous one with the other. But against this view Dr. Glaser has brought forward arguments which are difficult to answer. He points out that the Minaean inscriptions are scattered through the territory of the Sabaeans, like the fragments of the county of Cromarty in Scotland, and that conse quently it is as impossible to believe them to be of the same age as it would be to believe that one dynasty of kings could rule in London and Oxford, while another dynasty was ruling in Reading and Banbury. And even supposing the possibility of such an occurrence, we should still have to explain why it was that the subjects of the one dynasty always used a particular dialect, while the subjects of the other, who were dispersed here and there among them, invariably used another. Dr. Glaser accord ingly concludes that the kingdom of Ma'in preceded that of Saba, and that we can thus explain why the Minaean people were known to the geographers of the classical age, though not the Minaean kingdom. Now if the kingdom of Ma'in had already fallen before the rise of that of Saba, historical consequences of great importance will follow. The existence of the kingdom of Saba can be traced back to a con siderable antiquity. In the time of Tiglath-pileser III. (B.C. 733) the power of its princes extended to the extreme north of Arabia and brought them into con tact with Assyria. Ithamar, the Sabaean monarch, paid tribute to Sargon as his predecessor had done to Tiglath-pileser. If the account of the visit of the THE ANTIQUITY OF ORIENTAL LITERATURE. 41 Queen of Sheba to Solomon is historical, — and, as we shall see hereafter, archaeological discovery tends more and more to dissipate the doubts that have been cast upon it, — Saba was already a kingdom three centuries before the time of Tiglath-pileser, and its northern frontier was sufficiently near the borders of Palestine for its ruler to have heard of the fame of Solomon. Yet the researches of Dr. Glaser have shown that the sovereign princes of Saba had been preceded by Makarib or " Priests." Like the High- priests of Assur who preceded the kings of Assyria, as we have learnt from the cuneiform inscriptions, or like Jethro " the Priest of Midian " according to the Old Testament, the first rulers of Saba had been priests rather than kings. It was only in course of time that the Priests had transformed themselves into kings. The fall of Ma'in is thus pushed back far into the centuries. Nevertheless the monuments make it clear that Ma'in had not only been a powerful king dom, it had also been a kingdom which enjoyed a long term of existence. The names of thirty-three of its kings are already known to us from the inscrip tions. And these kings were obeyed throughout the larger part of the Arabian peninsula. Doughty, Huber, and Euting have discovered Minaean records in the north, in the neighbourhood of Teima, the Tema of the Old Testament (Isa. xxi. 14), which mention three of these kings, and show that Minaean rule extended as far north as the territories of Midian and Edom.1 In days which, if Dr. Glaser is right, 1 Prof. D. H. Miiller : " Epigraphische Denkmaler aus Ara- bien" (Vienna 1889), pp. 2, 3. 42 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. were contemporaneous with the Exodus of Israel, Ma'in was a cultured and prosperous realm, the mart and centre of the spice merchants of the East, whose kings founded settlements on the frontiers of Edom, and whose people practised the art of alphabetic writing. Dr. Glaser has drawn attention to two Minaean inscriptions which confirm the other indications we possess of the northward extension of Minaean rule. In one of these Gaza is referred to as tributary to the king of Ma'in ; in another, a war is mentioned between the rulers of Northern and Southern Egypt, which he believes to be the war of independence waged by the Theban princes against the Hyksos, since it led to the flight of the Minaean governor of Zar on the eastern frontier of Egypt. The inscrip tions will thus be far earlier than the earliest known to us that are written in Phcenician characters. The silence of the Old Testament in regard to the kingdom of Ma'in will be difficult to explain if we do not adopt Dr. Glaser's belief in its antiquity. We hear repeatedly of Sheba or Saba, but rarely if at all of Ma'in. The merchants of Sheba are singled out by the prophets and the psalmist, and according to Gen. xxv. 3 Sheba was the brother of Dedan, and thus occupied that very district of Teima in which Minaean inscriptions have been found (comp. Isa. xxi. 13, 14, and Gen. x. 7). It is only in the Book of Judges (x. 12) that we meet with a possible reference to Ma'in ; perhaps, also, in the obscure Me'unim of the Chronicler (2 Chr. xxvi. 7). But in either case the reference is to a people and not to a kingdom. Admitting the antiquity of the kingdom of Ma'in, THE ANTIQUITY OF ORIENTAL LITERATURE. 43 and along with this the antiquity of its written monu ments, a wholly new light is shed on the early history of the Phcenician alphabet. Instead of de riving the Minaean alphabet from the Phcenician, it becomes necessary to derive the Phcenician alphabet from the Minaean. The Phoenician alphabet ceases to be the mother-alphabet, and becomes the daughter of an older one. Now an examination of the two alphabets goes to show that this view of the matter is right. Philology has taught us that all the Semitic languages once possessed certain sounds which were subsequently lost in the dialects of Canaan, and ac cordingly have no symbols to represent them in the Phcenician alphabet. But the sounds were preserved in the languages of Arabia, including those of Ma'in and Saba, and in the alphabet of these two ancient kingdoms they are denoted by special sym bols. Had this alphabet been derived from that of the Phoenicians, analogy teaches us that the addi tional symbols would either have been modified forms of existing letters, or else would have been borrowed from the system of writing used by some neighbouring people. But the additional letters of the South-Arabian alphabet can be traced back neither to other already existing forms, nor to the written characters of Egypt ; they possess as inde pendent an existence as the symbols which express the sounds of a, b, or c. It is evident that they belonged to the primitive Semitic alphabet, and whatever theory is proposed to explain the origin of the latter must take note of the fact. But there is another fact which equally goes to show that the Phoenician alphabet is not that primary source 44 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. of alphabetic writing we have been accustomed to believe it to be. Every Phcenician letter had a name, and our very word alphabet is but a combination of the names of the two first letters in a Greek dress. In most instances the names bear little or no relation to the earliest forms yet discovered of the Phcenician letters. No amount of ingenuity for instance has been able to find any plausible resemblance between the earliest known forms of the letter k or n and the meaning of their names kaph " the palm of the hand," and nun " a fish." But when we turn to the forms as they appear in the alphabet of Ma'in, the riddle is frequently solved. We begin to understand why the populations of Palestine gave the names they did to the letters they had borrowed from the merchants of Arabia. The problem is no longer so hopeless as it seemed to be a short while ago. It is not probable that a change of opinion as to the primitive form of the Semitic alphabet and a shifting of alphabetic primacy from Phoenicia to Yemen will oblige us to look elsewhere than to Egypt for the ultimate source of the alphabet itself. In fact Egypt and the hieroglyphic script of Egypt were nearer to Yemen than they were to the cities of the Phoenician coast. Intercourse between Egypt and the southern shores of Arabia went back to pre historic times, and it is more than possible that the Egyptians themselves were emigrants from Yemen and Hadhramaut. At any rate Egypt stood in a closer relation to the people of Ma'in than Babylonia, the only other country from which the Minaean alphabet could have been derived. "\ But though the substitution of Southern Arabia for THE ANTIQUITY OF ORIENTAL LITERATURE. 45 Phoenicia as the primaeval home of our alphabet need not shake our belief in its derivation from the hieratic script of the Egyptians, it will make a considerable difference in the views which we must hold about its use in the ancient Semitic world. We need no longer be surprised at not finding Phoenician inscrip tions of an earlier age than that of Solomon, or at not discovering in the Delta the intermediate links which, according to the current theory, ought to attach the hieratic alphabet of Egypt to the monumental alphabet of Phoenicia. Above all, we shall no longer be required to regard the Israelites and their Semitic neighbours in the period of the Exodus or of the Judges as necessarily illiterate. On the contrary they were in immediate contact with a people of their own race, whose merchants were constantly passing and repassing through the countries occupied by the Hebrews, and who were at the same time a reading and a writing people. At no great distance from the Edomite frontier private individuals were erecting in scriptions in alphabetic characters, while men who had actually lived in the border-fortress of Egypt were leaving written records behind them. So far, therefore, from its being improbable that the Israelites of the age of the Exodus were acquainted with writing, it is extremely improbable that they were not. They had escaped from Egypt, where the art of reading and writing was as familiar as it is in our own days, and had made their way into a desert, which was traversed by Minaean traders and which touched on one side upon Midian and on the other upon Edom. Midian and Edom were both of them settled countries, long in contact with the subjects of 46 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. Ma'in, and therefore necessarily also with the alphabet which they used. How can we refuse to believe that this alphabet had been handed on to the kinsmen of Jethro and the children of Esau, and that if ever the excavator can upturn the soil in Midian and Edom he will find beneath it inscriptions which rival in age those of the Minaeans ? We no longer have any d priori reason for rejecting the history of Jethro on the ground that tradition alone could have trans mitted it, or for refusing to believe that the list of the " kings that reigned in the land of Edom before there reigned any king over the children of Israel" (Gen. xxxvi. 30) is really an extract from the official annals of Edom. We may indeed have a posteriori reasons for our incredulity, reasons due to contradictions between the accounts given in the Bible and the results of oriental archaeology, but an a priori reason we have none. That Edomite and Midianite inscriptions have not yet been discovered, is no evidence that they do not exist. They have not yet been looked for. The fact that the art of writing was practised in Moab is known only through an accident. Had not the famous steie of King Mesha survived the devasta tions of past centuries to fall at last a prey to the international jealousies of European antiquarians, we should still be ignorant that such was the case. And the survival of the stele to our own days is one of the marvels of archaeological discovery. But the testimony borne by the Minaean inscrip tions — supposing, that is, that the- conclusions of Glaser and Hommel are correct — does not stand alone. A discovery made in Egypt in 18S7 has revolutionised THE ANTIQUITY OF ORIENTAL LITERATURE. 47 all our old conceptions of ancient oriental life and history, and has proved that the populations of Western Asia in the age of Moses were as highly cultured and literary as the populations of Western Europe in the age ofthe Renaissance. This discovery was that of the cuneiform tablets of Tel el-Amarna.1 Tel el-Amarna is the name given by the modern fellahin to a long line of mounds which extend along the eastern bank of the Nile, about midway between the towns of Minieh and Assiout. They mark the site of a city which for a short while played an im portant part in Egyptian history. The Eighteenth Egyptian dynasty, which began by driving the Hyksos foreigner out of Egypt, ended by itself be coming Asiatic. The wars of Thothmes III, had re duced Palestine and Syria to the condition of subject provinces, and had planted the standards of Egypt on the banks of the Euphrates. Here the Egyptian king found himself in contact with another powerful sovereign, the king of a country called Naharanna by the Egyptians, and Aram-Naharaim in the Old Testament, but whose own inhabitants called it Mitanni. The daughter of the Mitannian monarch married the Egyptian Pharaoh and. became the mother of Amendphis III. Amendphis III. allied himself still further by marriage with the royal family of Mitanni, and his son Amendphis IV., who followed him on the throne of Egypt, was not' only half an Asiatic in blood, but half an Asiatic also in religion. At first the old gods of Egypt were respected, but 1 In the pronunciation ofthe natives of the place the final con sonant of Tel is not doubled before the following vowel. To write " Tell," therefore, is to commit an act of incorrect pedantry. 48 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. after awhile Amendphis "declared his adherence to the worship of Aten, the solar disk, the supreme Baal of the Semitic peoples of Asia, and endeavoured to force the new creed upon his unwilling subjects. A fierce persecution ensued ; the name of Amon, the god of Thebes, was erased upon the monuments wherever it was found, and the king changed his own name to Khu-n-Aten, " the glory of the solar disk." But the powerful hierarchy of Thebes proved too strong even for the Pharaoh ; he retired from the capital of his fathers, and built himself a new capital further north, at the spot where Tel el-Amarna now stands. Here he reigned for a few years longer, surrounded by the adherents of the new creed, most of whom seem to have been of Canaanitish extraction. When Khu-n-Aten died, or was murdered, the Egyptian empire was at an end. The troops which had garrisoned the subject provinces were needed at home, and Syria and Palestine passed out of Egyptian hands. Egypt itself was distracted by civil and religious wars, and the capital of Khu-n-Aten was deserted, not to be inhabited again. When peace was once more restored, it was under a Pharaoh who had returned to the national faith. On his departure from Thebes Khu-n-Aten carried with him the official correspondence received by his father and himself. It consisted of letters from the kings of Babylonia and Assyria, of Mesopotamia, Kappadokia, and Northern Syria, as well as from the Egyptian governors and protected princes in Palestine and the adjoining countries. It is this correspondence which has been discovered at Tel el-Amarna, and its contents are of the most unexpected character. THE ANTIQUITY OF ORIENTAL LITERATURE. 49 In the first place the letters are all written upon clay in the cuneiform characters of Babylonia. In the second place the language of almost all of them is the Babylonian. In two or three instances only does the writer use his own language, though it is expressed in the Babylonian cuneiform characters. Not once is the Egyptian language or the Egyptian script employed. The fact is alike novel and startling. It proves that in the century before the Exodus the Babylonian language was the common medium of literary intercourse throughout the civilised East, from the banks of the Nile to those of the Tigris and Euphrates, and that the complicated syllabary of Babylonia was taught and learned along with the Babylonian language throughout the whole extent of Western Asia. The letters are written by persons of the most diversified race and nationality ; many of them are from officers of the Egyptian court, and they are sometimes about the most trivial of matters. They testify to an active and extensive correspond ence, carried on, not by a select caste of scribes, but by every one who pretended to the rank and edu cation of a gentleman. It is clear that the foreign culture of Babylonia must have penetrated deeply into the heart of the populations of the ancient Orient ; there must have been schools and teachers in their cities in which it could be learned, and libraries and archive-chambers in which books and letters could be stored. The fact that in some few instances the Babylonian language is discarded and the cuneiform syllabary adapted to the necessities of a native dialect only brings into stronger relief the widespread and per- 50 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. manent impression that Babylonian culture must have made upon the multifold peoples of Western Asia. Here and there we actually find Egyptian governors of districts in Canaan who have adopted Babylonian names, and when the vassal-king of Jerusalem wishes to mention the god whose worshipper he was, he speaks of him under a Babylonian name. The "most High God" whose sanctuary stood near Jeru salem is identified with Uras or Nin-ip, the Sun-god of Babylonia. So thoroughly had the cuneiform system of writing been adopted throughout Western Asia, and so long had it had its home there, that each district and nationality had had time to form its own peculiar hand. We can tell at a glance, by merely looking at the forms assumed by the characters, whether a particular document came from the south of Palestine, from Phoenicia, from the land ofthe Amorites, or from the natives of Northern Syria. The use of the Baby lonian script by the nations of Western Asia must have been earlier by many centuries than the time of Khu-n-Aten. It was difficult enough for the foreigner to learn the language of the Babylonians sufficiently well to be able to write it. But it was far more difficult to learn the cuneiform system of writing in which it was expressed. The cuneiform syllabary contains nearly five hundred different characters, each of which has at least two different phonetic values. In addition, each character may be used ideographically to denote an object or idea. But this is not all. The cuneiform script was invented by the primitive population of Chaldaea who spoke, not a Semitic, but an agglu- THE ANTIQUITY OF ORIENTAL LITERATURE". 5 1 tinative language, and in passing to the Semitic Babylonians not only did the pre-Semitic words denoted by the single characters become phonetic values, but words denoted by two or more characters became compound ideographs, the characters in com bination representing a Semitic word the syllables of which had no relation whatever to the phonetic values of the separate characters that composed it. It thus became necessary for the learner not only to commit to memory the actual syllabary, but also the hundreds of compound ideographs which existed by the side of it. When we further remember that the cuneiform characters are not pictorial, and that their shape therefore, unlike the Egyptian hieroglyphics, offers nothing to assist the memory, we shall begin to understand what a labour it must have been to learn them, and consequently to what a wide extension of knowledge and literary activity the letters of Tel el- Amarna testify. Schools and libraries, in fact, must have existed everywhere, and the art of writing and reading must have been as widely spread as it was in Europe before the days of the penny post. The cuneiform cha racters, moreover, were usually written upon clay, a material that is practically imperishable. Papyrus and parchment 'are preserved only in the dry and frostless climate of Egypt ; the clay tablet will endure for ever unless it is destroyed by man. The clay books, therefore, that were stored in the cities, the official correspondence which was laid up in the archive-chamber, were not likely to be destroyed. As long as there were readers who could understand the characters and" language in which they were written, 52 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. the annalist and historian had ready to hand a mass of documents which reflected the events of each suc ceeding year as truly as the newspapers reflect the events of to-day. So far from being dependent on tradition or the play of his own fancy, he could consult a vast body of materials which had been written by the actors in the scenes he undertook to depict. A considerable portion of the tablets of Tel el- Amarna were sent from Palestine and Phoenicia. Canaan was, in fact, a centre of the correspondence which was going on with the Egyptian court -in the reign of Khu-n-Aten. Letters are dated from Lachish and from Jerusalem, from Gaza of the Philistines and Gaza near Shechem, from Megiddo and the plateau of Bashan. There are others which have come from the cities of Phoenicia, from Gebal and Zemar, from Tyre and Sidon. The letters imply answers and frequently demand them. There must consequently have been archive-chambers in the cities from which the letters were despatched like the archive-chambers at Thebes and the capital of Khu-n-Aten to which they were brought. Why, then, should the writer of a later day have had any lack of materials for a truthful and detailed history of Palestine before the Israelitish conquest ? Even if the library and archives of Jerusalem or of Lachish perished or were buried among the ruins of the cities upon their conquest by the Israelites, there were other places like Gaza which never underwent a similar fate. Hence there was no reason why the older archives of the city should not have been preserved, together with a knowledge of their contents. THE ANTIQUITY OF ORIENTAL LITERATURE. 53 And even in the case of Jerusalem it is not easy to believe that there was ever such a blank in its exist ence as to obliterate all recollection of the past. On the contrary, the Old Testament tells us plainly that after its capture by David, the Jebusite population was allowed to live as before on the summit of Moriah ; it was only on Mount Zion, where the " stronghold " or outpost of the Jebusites had stood, that the Jewish "city of David" was built. The site of the temple itself was purchased by the Israelitish king from Araunah the Jebusite.1 We learn from the first chapter of Judges that several of the most important of the cities of Canaan held out successfully against the Israelitish invader. Some of them, like Jerusalem, did not pass into the permanent possession of the Israelites until the days of the monarchy ; others, like Gibeon, came to terms with the invaders and escaped the horrors of capture and destruction. The cities of the Philistines re mained untaken and more or less independent down to the time of the Babylonian Exile ; so also did the cities of the Phcenician coast, while such centres of ancient Canaanitish power and culture as Gezer and Megiddo (Judg. i. 27, 29) were left in the hands of their original possessors. When the Israelitish monarchy was at last consolidated, at a period to which it is agreed on all hands that certain portions of the Books of Samuel reach back, it was still possible for the historian to find in the chief cities of Palestine an abundance of materials, which had all the weight of contemporaneous evidence, for writing the history of the past. The letters which had been 1 See also Judg. i. 21 54 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. sent by Khu-n-Aten to Megiddo and Gezer, to Ashkelon and Acre, might still be lying in the archive-chambers where they were first deposited, permanently legible, and accessible to whoever desired to make use of them. There are statements in the Old Testament itself which are in full harmony with the conclusions to which the tablets of Tel el-Amarna have led us. The statements have been neglected or explained away, it is true, but it is no less true that they exist. One of the chief exploits of Othniel, the Kenizzite, and the deliverer of his people from the yoke of Aram-Naharaim, was the capture of Kirjath-sepher, "the city of Books." The name implies the cha racter of the place ; it must have been the seat of a library like those of the great cities of Babylonia and Assyria, — a library which doubtless consisted in large measure of books on clay that may yet be brought to light. In one passage (Josh. xv. 49) the city is called Kirjath-sannah, "the city of instruc tion." We are no longer obliged to see in this name a corruption of the text ; we now know that there must have been many cities " of instruction " in Palestine, where the books stored in them were studied by numerous pupils.1 1 Kirjath-sannah may be referred to under the name of Bit- 'Sani in a fragmentary letter of Ebed-tob, the vassal-king of Jerusalem, contained in the Tel el-Amarna collection (Winckler and Abel : Mittheilungen aus der orientalischen Sammlungen, Pt. III., No. 199). We there read: "Behold, the country of Gath-Carmel has fallen away to Tagi and the men of the city of Gath. He is in Beth-Sani ; and we have effected that they should give Labai and the country of the Sute (Beduin) to the district of the Khabiri (Hebron?)." A re-examination of the THE ANTIQUITY OF ORIENTAL LITERATURE. 55 Kirjath-sannah, we are told, was also known as Debir, a word which is rendered "the oracle" in the Authorised Version of 1 Kings vi. 5. It meant the inner shrine of the temple, the Holy of Holies, where the deity " spoke " to his worshippers. It was essentially " a place of speaking," wherein the oracles of the god were delivered to his priests. It was thus a fitting spot for the site of a great library. The libraries of Assyria and Babylonia were similarly situated in the temples, and were under the patronage of Nebo, whose name signifies "the prophet" or " speaker." It may be that, as at Delphi in Greece, so in Canaan the first impulse towards the formation of a library had been the oracles delivered by the deity and afterwards collected into a book by the priests ; however this may be, it is sufficient to know that in establishing the great library of Southern Canaan in a city famous for its "oracle," the Canaanites were but following the example of the people of Babylonia. Kirjath-sepher was overthrown ; its library buried under its ruins, and its very site forgotten. After ages remembered that it had stood in the neighbour hood of the great sanctuary of Hebron, but beyond this tradition remembered only its name. But the name with all that it indicates has been abundantly justified by the latest discoveries of oriental archae ology. Kirjath-sepher is an evidence that libraries existed original tablet has enabled me to correct Winckler's copy of the passage and consequently of the translation of it which I have given in the new series of the Records of the Past, vol. v., p. 73. 56 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. in Canaan at the epoch of the Israelitish invasion, and that the fact was known and recollected by the invaders. We have another evidence that the invaders themselves were not the illiterate Beduin tribes it has long been the fashion to suppose. The antiquity of the Song of Deborah in the Book of Judges (chap, v.) is admitted by critics of the most sceptical tendency. It is allowed on all sides that the poem is contemporary with the event which it records, and the " higher criticism " regards it as the oldest fragment of Hebrew literature that has been preserved to us. And yet it is precisely in this Song that allusion is made to Israelitish scribes. " Out of Machir," we are told (ver. 14), "came down lawgivers, and out of Zebulun they that handle the pen of the writer." The statement is so definite and yet so contrary to modern dogmas that criticism has con tradicted its own primary rule of interpreting the words of the text in accordance with their natural and ordinary signification, and has endeavoured to transform " the pen of the writer '' into a " marshal's baton." But neither philology nor archaeology will permit the change. The word sopher or "scribe" defines the word shebhet, " rod," with which it is conjoined. What is meant by " the rod of the scribe " is made clear by the Assyrian monuments. It was the stylus of wood or metal with the help of which the clay tablet was engraved or the papyrus inscribed with characters. The scribe who wielded it was the associate and assistant of the " lawgiver." The Hebrew word rendered " lawgiver " is m'khoqeq. It is a participle derived from a root which signifies THE ANTIQUITY OF ORIENTAL LITERATURE. 57 " to engrave." Other derivatives from the same root in the sense of "engraving" are met with in the Old Testament. In Ezekiel xxiii. 14 the words m'khnqqeh and khaquqqim are used of sculptures which were engraved on the stuccoed walls of the Chaldaean palaces and then marked out in red. In Isaiah xlix. 16 the verb khaqah is employed to denote the engraving or tattooing of letters in the flesh, and in Ezekiel iv. 1 the same verb describes the scratching or engraving of the plan of Jerusalem on a clay tablet. In Isaiah x. 1 the khoq'qim khiq'qe- aven, or "engravers of unrighteous decrees," are associated with "the writers of perverseness," and it is said probably of both that " they have written " the unjust laws. In the time of Isaiah, therefore, the m'khoqeq and the scribe performed a similar work ; the one used the pen, the other recorded his decrees in an equally durable form. But the m'khoqeq or " lawgiver " held a higher place than the scribe. He made the law, while the scribe merely recorded it. The one was a ruler of men, the other but a clerk. The decrees made by the " law giver " were of more importance than the writings of the scribe, and consequently needed to be preserved with more care. The scribe might be content with parchment and papyrus, but the statutes of the " law giver " needed to be engraved on durable materials, like stone or wood or metal. Hence it was that the " lawgiver " took his name from a root which signified " to engrave," and the decrees he laid down for the guidance of the state were like the Ten Command ments, " engravings " upon stone. Now the m'khoqeq or " lawgiver " is closely associated 58 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. with the " scribe " not only in the Song of Deborah, but also in another ancient Hebrew poem, the Blessing of Jacob. Here, too (Gen. xlix. 10), the "lawgiver" is coupled with the shebhet or "rod" which is explained in the Song of Deborah to be the rod or pen of the scribe, such as we often see depicted on the monuments of Egypt. That the Song of Deborah and the Blessing of Jacob contain reminiscences either one of the other or of some common source of quotation is shown by the question : "Why abodest thou among the sheepfolds to hear the bleatings of the flocks?" (Judg. v. 16). The question contains exactly the same expression as that which in the Blessing of Jacob (Gen. xlix. 14) is translated by the Authorised Version " crouching down between two burdens." The word rendered " sheepfolds " in the one passage and " two burdens " in the other occurs only in these two verses of Scripture. In each case we should translate " lying down between two sheepfolds." In Genesis the metaphor is fully worked out; in Judges the ass which thus lies down is implied but not named. In the Song of Deborah, therefore, admittedly one of the oldest portions of the Hebrew Scriptures, we find a definite reference to the art of writing. Machir on the eastern side of the Jordan provides the m'khoqeq or " lawgiver," while out of Zebulon on the western bank comes the " scribe." The decrees of the one are " engraved " on metal or stone, the other writes with his stylus on the more perishable materials of parchment and papyrus. What the shape of this stylus was we may learn from certain paintings in the old tombs of Egypt, in which the scribe is repre- THE ANTIQUITY OF ORIENTAL LITERATURE. 59 sented either using it or holding it behind his ear.1 The stylus of the Egyptian scribe was sometimes merely a reed, cut obliquely at one end ; this, how ever, was not the case in Assyria and Babylonia, and the Hebrew word shebhet shows that it was also not the case among the early Israelites. It is needless to invoke other testimony of a more doubtful and disputable nature to the early knowledge of writing in Israel. We do not know when " the Book of the Wars of the Lord " was composed (Numb. xxii. 14), and "the Book of Jasher" cannot have been compiled until after the beginning of David's reign (2 Sam. i. 18). But the name of Kirjath-sepher and the references to the m'khoqeq and sopher are enough to show that the evidence of the Old Testa ment is in strict conformity with that of oriental archaeology. The Old Testament and the discoveries of oriental archaeology alike tell us that the age of the Exodus was throughout the world of Western Asia an age of literature and books, of readers and writers, and that the cities of Palestine were stored with the contemporaneous records of past events inscribed on imperishable clay. They further tell us that the kinsfolk and neighbours of the Israelites were already acquainted with alphabetic writing, that the wanderers in the desert and the tribes of Edom were in contact with the cultured scribes and traders of Ma'in, and that "the house of bondage" from which Israel had escaped was aland where the art of writing was blazoned not only on the temples of the gods but also on the dwellings of the rich and powerful. 1 See Sir Gardner Wilkinson's " Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians," edited by Birch (1878), ii. p. 298. 60 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. If we are to reject the narratives of the earlier books of the Bible it must be for other reasons than the absence of a contemporaneous literature. If we are to throw discredit on the history of the campaign of the Babylonian kings and the payment of tithes to Melchizedek, or to refuse belief to the archaeological statements of the Deuteronomist, we must have re course to other arguments than those which rest upon the supposed ignorance of the art of writing in the early age of Palestine. The " higher " critic may be right in holding that the historical books of the Old Testament in their present form are compilations of comparatively late date, but he is no longer justified in denying that the materials they embody may be contemporaneous with the events recorded in them. Modern oriental research has proved the possibility of their being of the antiquity to which they seem to lay claim : we will now see if it can go further, and show that this antiquity is a fact. CHAPTER III. THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN THE BOOK OF GENESIS. Like the Assyrians and Babylonians, the Phoeni cians and the Egyptians, the Hebrews also had a system of cosmology. Or rather, we ought to say that, like the nations who surrounded them, they had more than one system of cosmology. There was more than one doctrine current as to the precise way in which the world as we see it came into existence and of the exact manner in which man was first formed. When Hebrew history came to be written, notice had to be taken of these current doctrines, and accord ingly, as B£rossos the Chaldaean historian begins his History of Babylonia by amalgamating together more than one Babylonian legend of the Creation, or as the Phcenician Sanchuniathon, in the pages of Philo Byblius, fuses into a whole the divergent cosmological theories of the Phcenician cities, so too the Book of Genesis commences with two different accounts of the creation of man. In the one account man is the last of created things, made male and female in the image of God on the last of the six days of creation ; in the other man is formed of the dust ofthe earth on " the day that the Lord God made 62 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. the earth and the heavens," and woman is not formed out of him until he has been put into the garden of Eden " to dress it and to keep it." Reflections of both accounts are found in the cuneiform tablets of Babylonia and Assyria. Portions of an Assyrian Epic of the Creation, describing it as taking place in a series of successive acts, were first brought to light by Mr. George Smith. He pointed out the remarkable correspondence which existed between the order of the days in Genesis and the order of the tablets or books in the Assyrian poem, the first book of which describes the beginning of all things and the watery abyss of primaeval chaos, while in the fifth tablet comes the appointment of the heavenly bodies to rule the day and the night, and in the sixth an account of the creation of the animals. Since the death of George Smith other fragments of the Epic have been discovered, and we now know more exactly what it was like. It was an attempt to throw together in poetic form the cosmological doctrines of the chief Assyrian or Babylonian schools and combine them into a connected story. But the attempt breathes so thoroughly the air of a later philosophy which has reduced the deities of earlier belief to mere abstractions and forces of nature, that I much doubt whether it can be assigned to an earlier date than the seventh century B.C. The materials incorporated into it are doubtless ancient, but the treatment of them seems to presuppose an age of rationalism rather than an age of faith. A translation of the fragments we possess will be the best commentary on their contents. The first tablet or book reads as follows — THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN GENESIS. 63 When on high the heavens proclaimed not, (and) earth beneath recorded not, a name, then the abyss of waters was in the beginning their gener ator, the chaos of the deep (Tiamat) was she who bore them all. Their waters were embosomed together, and the plant was ungathered, the herb (of the field) ungrown. When the gods had not appeared, any one (of them), by no name were they recorded ; 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) the gods Sar and Kisar (the Upper and Lower firma ments) were created. Long were the days [until] the gods Anu [Bel and Ea were created ;] Sar [and Kisar created them]. Here the tablet is broken, and we have to pass on to what seems to be the seventeenth line of the third book in the series. The gods have surrounded her (i. e. Tiamat), all of them ; Together with those whom ye have created, I (Merodach) marched beside her. When they had armed themselves (?) beside her, they ap proached Tiamat. (Merodach), the strong one, the glorious, who desists not night or day, the exciter to battle, was disturbed in heart. Then they marshalled (their) forces ; they create darkness (?). The mother of Khubur,1 the creatress of them all, multiplied weapons not (known) before ; she produced (?) huge snakes whose teeth were pointed, unsparing was [their] edge. She filled their bodies with poison like blood. She clothed with terror the raging vampires. She uplifted the lightning-flash, on high she launched [it] She fills them with venom (?), so that with . . . 1 Perhaps "Mother ofthe Confederacy." 64 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. their bodies abounded though their breasts bent not. She stationed the dragon, the great serpent and the god Lakha[ma], the great reptile, the deadly beast and the scorpion-man, the devouring reptiles, the fish-man, and the zodiacal ram, lifting up the weapons that spare not, fearless of battle. Strong is her law, not previously repeated. Thereupon the eleven monsters like him (z. e. Kingu) she sent forth. Among the gods her forces she [launched]. She exalted Kingu (her husband) in the midst ; [beside] her (he was) king. They marched in front before the army [of Tiamat]. The lines that follow are so broken as to render a translation impossible. But we gather from what is left that the news of the preparations made by Tiamat was brought to the gods by Sar or An-sar, the primaeval god of the Firmament. Then, it would seem, Sar sends forth one god after another among his family, beginning with Anu, the Sky-god, to oppose the "forces of evil : " 1 sent forth Anu ; he did not go forth. Ea feared and returned. I sent Merodach, the seer of the gods ; he felt the courage to face Tiamat. He opened his mouth and said . . . ' I am [your] avenger ; I will bind Tiamat.' " Once more the mutilated state of the fragments makes further translation impossible, but we learn that event ually the gods made a feast, after having created the vine for the purpose, and retired to the highest heaven, leaving the issue of the conflict in the hands of Merodach.1 1 The beginnings of the last fourteen lines of the tablet have been recovered by Mr. Pinches, who gives the following render ing of them— THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN GENESIS. 65 The fourth tablet or book of the Epic is in an almost perfect condition, and runs as follows — They (the gods) established for him (z. e. Merodach) the mercy- seat of the mighty ; before his fathers he seated himself for sovereignty. " Yea, thou (O Merodach), art glorious among the great gods, thy fortune is unrivalled, thy festival (that) of Anu ! O Merodach, thou art glorious among the great gods ; thy fortune is unrivalled, thy festival (that) of Anu ! Since that day unchanged is thy command. High and low entreat thy hand : may the word that goes forth from thy mouth be established ; unopposed is thy festival. None among the gods has surpassed thy power, the sustainers of the . . . (and) the mercy-seat of the god of the canopy of heaven. May the place of their gathering (?) become thy home ! O Merodach, thou art he who avenges us ! We give thee the sovereignty, (we) the hosts of all the universe ! Thou possessest (it), and in the assembly shall thy word be exalted. Lakhkha and Lakhamu heard, they . . . The Igigi (spirits of heaven) all of them she had nourished (?), the son . . . " What foe, until he was wise, did he . . . We do not know what Tiamat . . . They have become multitudinous, and he goes . . . The great gods, all of them, determiners [of fate]. They have entered, and like a vessel (?) An-sar has filled . . . Violence is done (?). The enemy of my brother (?) in the assembly . . . Thy tongue has made. In the garden the god . . . He has eaten the asnan, he has separated . . . Its sweet fruit (?) he has destroyed (?)... The strong drink, in drinking, injures (?) the body (?)... Greatly the sin . . . For Merodach the avenger he determines the fate." (" Babylonian and Oriental Record, " iv. 2, p. 32,) F 66 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. Never may thy weapons be broken ; may they reach thy foes ! O lord, be gracious to the soul of him who putteth his trust in thee, and pour out the soul ofthe god who has hold of evil." Then they laid upon their friend a robe ; to Merodach, their firstborn, they spake : " May thy destiny, O lord, be before the god of the canopy of heaven ! A word and (the gods) have created ; command that they may fulfil (it). Open thy mouth, let the robe perish ; Say to it : ' Return ! ' and the robe will be there." He spake with his mouth, the robe perished ; he said to it " Return ! " and the robe appeared again. When the gods his fathers saw the word that came forth from his mouth they rejoiced, they reverenced Merodach as king, they bestowed upon him the sceptre, the throne and reign ; they gave him a weapon unsurpassed, consuming the hostile. " Go " (they said), " and cut off the life of Tiamat ; let the winds carry her blood to secret places." The gods his fathers determine the destiny of Bel (Merodach). The path of peace and obedience is the road they cause him to take. He made ready the bow, he prepared his weapon, he made the club swing, he fixed for it the thong (?), and the god lifted up the curved-sword,1 he bade his right hand hold (it) ; the bow and the quiver he hung at his side ; he set the lightning before him ; with the swift-glancing gleam he filled his body. He made also a net to enclose the Dragon of the Deep (Tiamat). He seized the four winds that they might not issue forth, any one of them, the south wind, the north wind, the east wind and the west wind. 1 A weapon of peculiar shape, like a boomerang, and sacred to Merodach. THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN GENESIS. 6y He brought to his side the net, the gift of his father Anu ; he created the evil wind, the hostile wind, the storm, the tempest, the four winds, the seven winds, the whirlwind, a wind un rivalled, and he caused the winds he had created to issue forth, the seven of them, confounding the dragon Tiamat as they swept after him. Then the lord (Bel) raised the deluge, his mighty weapon. He mounted the chariot, a thing not (seen) before, terrible. He stood firm and hung the four reins at its side. [He held the weapon] unsparing, overflowing, rapid. The next few lines are much broken ; then we read — On that day they beheld him, the gods beheld him, the gods his fathers beheld him, the gods beheld him. And the lord (Bel) approached, by the waist he catches Tiamat ; she seeks the help (?) of Kingu her husband, she looks, and seeks his counsel. But his plan was destroyed, his action was ruined, and the gods his allies who marched beside him beheld how [Merodach] the first-born held the yoke upon them. He laid judgment on Tiamat, but she turned not her neck. With her hostile lips she announced opposition. [Then] the gods [come to the help] of Bel, they approach thee, they gathered their [forces] together to where thou wast. And Bel [launched] the deluge, his mighty weapon, [against] Tiamat, whom he requited, sending it with these words : " [War and] trouble on high thou hast excited ; [strengthen] thy heart and stir up the [battle] ! " Then come five more mutilated lines, and after that the poem continues — "... Against my fathers thou hast directed thy hostility. May thy host be fettered, may they bind thy weapons ! 68 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. Stand up and I and thou will fight together." When Tiamat heard this, she uttered her former spells, she repeated her plan. Tiamat also cried out vehemently with a loud voice. From its roots she strengthened her seat completely. She recites an incantation, she casts a spell, and the gods of battle demand for themselves their arms. Then there stood up Tiamat (and) Merodach the seer of the gods; they hurried to the combat, they met in battle. Then Bel spread out his net, he enclosed her. He sent before him the evil wind which seizes from behind, and he opened the mouth of Tiamat that she should swallow it; he made the evil wind enter so that she could not close her lips. With the violence of the winds he fills her stomach, and her heart was prostrated and her mouth was twisted. He swung the club, he shattered her stomach, he cut out her entrails, he dissected the heart ; he took her and ended her life. He threw down her corpse, he stood upon it. When Tiamat who marched in front was conquered, he dispersed her forces, her host was overthrown, and the gods her allies who marched beside her trembled (and) feared (and) turned their backs. He allowed them to fly and spared their lives. They were surrounded by a fence, without power to escape. He shut them in and broke their weapons ; he cast his net and they remain in the meshes. [All] the quarters of the world they filled with mourning ; they bear their sin, they are kept in bondage, and the eleven monsters are filled with fear. As for the rest of the spirits who marched in her rear (?), he laid cords on their hands . . . At the same time he [treads] their opposition under him. And the god Kingu who had marshalled their [forces] he bound, and assigned him [to prison] along with [the other] gods. And he took from him the tablets of destiny [that were] upon him. With the stylus he sealed (it) and held the . . . of the tablet. THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN GENESIS. 69 After he had fettered (and) laid the yoke on his foes, he led the illustrious enemy like an ox, he established fully the victory of An-Sar over the foe. Merodach the hero obtained the reward (?) of Ea. Over the gods in bondage he strengthened his watch, and Tiamat whom he had bound he turned head backwards ; then Bel trampled on the underpart of Tiamat. With his blows unceasing he smote the skull, he broke (it) and caused her blood to flow ; the north wind carried (it) away to secret places. He beheld, and his countenance rejoiced (and) was glad. The presents of a peace-offering he caused them (z. e. the foe) to bring to him. So Bel rested ; his body he feeds. He strengthens his mind (?), he forms a clever plan, and he broke her like a dried fish in two pieces ; he took one half of her and made it the covering of the sky ; he stretched out the skin, and caused a watch to be kept, enjoining that her waters should not issue forth. The sky is bright (?), the lower earth rejoices (?), and he sets the dwelling of Ea (the Sea-god) opposite the deep. Then Bel measured the circumference (?) of the deep ; he established a great building like unto it (called) E-Sarra (the firmament) ; the great building E-Sarra which he built in the heaven he caused Anu, Bel and Ea to inhabit as their stronghold. The fifth tablet describes the creation of the heavenly bodies and their appointment for signs and seasons. But unfortunately only the beginning of it has as yet been discovered — He prepared the mansion of the great gods ; he fixed the stars that corresponded with them, even the Twin-stars.1 1 Professor Hommel has lately shown {Ausland, Nos. 4 — 7, 1892) that the spheres of the three "great gods," Anu, Bel and Ea, into which the Chaldaeans divided the sky, corresponded to thirds of the Ecliptic, the sphere of Anu extending from the 70 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. He ordained the year, appointing the signs of the Zodiac over it : for each of the twelve months he fixed three stars, from the day when the year issues forth to (its) close. He founded the mansion of the Sun-god who passes along the ecliptic, that they might know their bounds, that they might not err, that they might not go astray in any way. He established the mansion of Bel and Ea along with himself.1 Moreover he opened gates on either side, he strengthened the bolts on the left hand and on the right, and in the midst of it he made a staircase. He illuminated the Moon-god that he might be watchman of the night, and ordained for him the ending of the night that the day may be known, (saying) : " Month by month, without break, keep watch in (thy) disk. At the beginning of the month rise brightly at evening, with glittering horns, that the heavens may know. On the seventh day halve (thy) disk." The rest of the tablet is destroyed, anfl of the sixth only the opening lines have been preserved — At that time the gods in their assembly created [the beasts]. They made perfect the mighty [monsters]. They caused the living creatures [of the field] to come forth, the cattle of the field, [the wild beasts] of the field, and the creeping things [of the field]. [They fixed their habitations] for the living creatures of the field. Bull to the Crab, that of Bel from the Lion to the Scorpion, that of Ea from Sagittarius to Aries. The Twin-stars were (i) "the Great Twins," Castor and Pollux in Gemini, (2) "the lesser Twins," /3 and i Scorpionis, and (3) a & /3 Arietis. 1 The poet has forgotten that it is Merodach, and not Anu, who has been described as the creator. THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN GENESIS. 7 1 They distributed [in their dwelling-places] the cattle and the creeping things of the city. [They made strong] the multitude of creeping things, all the offspring [of the ground]. The following lines are too mutilated for continuous translation, but we learn from them that " the seed of Lakhama," the brood of chaos, was destroyed, and its place taken by the living creatures of the present creation. Among these we may expect man to be finally named ; whether or not, however, this was the case we cannot say until the concluding lines of the old Assyrian epic of the creation have been disinterred from the dust-heaps of the past. The resemblances and differences between the Biblical and the Babylonian accounts are alike striking. The polytheism which underlies the one with the thinly-veiled materialism which overlies it, is not more profoundly contrasted with the devout monotheism of the other than is the absolute want of mythological details in Genesis with the cosmological myths embodied in the cuneiform poem. We pass as it were from the Iliad to sober history. Where the Assyrian or Babylonian poet saw the action of deified forces of nature, the Hebrew writer sees only the will of the one supreme God. And yet in spite ofthe contrast between mythology, polytheism, and materialism on the one side and an uncompromising monotheism on the other, the re semblances between the two accounts of creation are too great to be purely accidental. They extend even to words. The word with which the Book of Genesis opens, the first picture with which we are presented, is berishith " in the beginning," while the 72 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. Assyrian poem equally tells us that the watery deep was the ristu or " beginning " of the heavens and the earth. The Hebrew tehom or " deep " is the Assyrian ti{h)am-tu, though the Assyrian word has become a mythological being, Tiamat, the impersonation of chaos and darkness. The fragments of Phcenician cosmogony preserved by Eusebius from the pages of Philo Byblius similarly begin with a watery chaos, over which, as in Genesis, a " spirit " or " wind " brooded and inspired it with a yearning for life.1 Thanks to the discoveries made in Babylonia and at Tel el-Amarna, we have learnt how deep and lasting was the influence of Babylonian culture and literature upon pre-Israelitish Canaan. We need, therefore, no longer hesitate to accept the statements of Philo Byblius, disfigured though they may be by their Greek dress and the philosophical ideas of a late epoch, as representing on the whole the ancient conceptions ofthe Phoenicians in regard to the creation of the world. They were conceptions which had had their first home in Babylonia, and however much they may have been modified in their migration to the West, they retained in all essential points their original features. The belief in a chaos of waters within which the future heavens and earth lay as it were in a womb went back to the early dwellers on 1 "The beginning of all things was a dark and condensed windy air, or a breeze of dark air, and a chaos turbid and black as Erebos ; and these were unbounded and for a long series of ages destitute of form. But when this wind became enamourfed of its own first principles (the chaos) and an intimate union took place, that connexion was called Desire ; and it was the beginning of the creation of all things " (Cory's translation in " Ancient Fragments," edited by Hodges, 1876-, p. 2). THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN GENESIS. 73 the banks of the Euphrates and the shores of the Persian Gulf. The Assyrian Epic gives especial prominence to an episode in the work of the creation, no trace of which appears in the pages of Genesis. It is, however, an episode to which allusion is made elsewhere in the Bible, but in a passage which belongs to the age of the Roman empire. The episode is that which describes the war of the gods and the final victory of the Sun- god Merodach over Tiamat and the powers of darkness. It is an episode which forms the keystone of the Assyrian poem. The poem is on the one hand a paean in honour of the Sun-god of Babylon ; on the other it seeks to show how the world of light and humanity developed out of a pre-existing world of chaos and darkness which was in sharp antagonism with it. The present creation is described as the result of the victory of light over darkness, of law and order over confusion. Such ideas are the very reverse of those which inspire the narrative of Genesis. Here there is no antagonism between the world of chaos and the world of to-day, between the present creation and that which preceded it. Both alike were the creation of the one supreme God whose breath moved upon the waters of the deep and whose word they alike obeyed. It was not until after the Babylonian Exile, it may be not until the wars of Alexander had spread Greek culture over the East, that the story of the conflict in heaven between Merodach and the great dragon made its way into western lands and there became a subject of metaphor and imagery. In the history of the creation in Genesis we look for traces of it in vain. 74 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. On the other hand the narrative of Genesis con cludes with a statement which carries us back to Baby lonia, though it is probable that it is a statement which was not found in the Assyrian Epic. We are told that God "rested on the seventh day from all His work which He made. And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it ; because that in it He had rested from all His work which God created and made." The Sabbath-rest was a Babylonian, as well as a Hebrew, institution. Its origin went back to pre-Semitic days, and the very name, Sabbath, by which it was known in Hebrew, was of Babylonian origin. In the cunei form tablets the Sabattu is described as "a day of rest for the soul," 1 and in spite of the fact that the word was of genuinely Semitic origin, it was derived by the Assyrian scribes from two Sumerian or pre- Semitic words, sa and bat, which meant respect ively " heart " and " ceasing." The Sabbath was also known, at all events in Accadian times, as a "dies nefastus," a day on which certain work was forbidden to be done, and an old list of Babylonian festivals and fast-days tells us that on the seventh, fourteenth, nineteenth, twenty-first, and twenty-eighth days of each month the Sabbath-rest had to be observed. , The king himself, it is stated, " must not eat flesh that has been cooked over the coals or in the smoke, he must not change the garments of his body, white robes he must not wear, sacrifices he may not offer, in ,a chariot he may not ride." Even the prophet or soothsayer on whose reading of the future the move ments of armies were dependent was not allowed to practise his art, " to mutter," as it is termed, " in a 1 W. A. I. ii. 32, 16. THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN GENESIS. 75 secret place." The rest enjoined on the Sabbath was thus as complete as it was among the Jews in the period after the Babylonish Exile.1 Now, as Prof. Schrader has pointed out,2 the sacred- ness of the seventh day among the Babylonians hangs together with their respect for the number seven. Seven in fact was their sacred number, connected originally, it may be, with the seven planets which their astronomers had noted from the earliest times. We first find notice of the week of seven days among them. Each day of the week was consecrated to one of the seven planets or planetary divinities, and it is from the Babylonians through the medium of the Greeks and Romans that our own week, with its days dedicated to Teutonic deities, is ultimately derived. In the exorcisms of the Accado-Sumerian population of primaeval Chaldaea references to the number seven are frequent. There were seven evil spirits who had been born in the watery deep of chaos and who laid siege to the moon at the time of its eclipse, the dragon of darkness was endowed with seven heads, and the magical knots which should free the sick man from his pains were required to be twisted seven times seven.3 1 See my Hibbert Lectures on the " Religion of the Ancient Babylonians," pp. 70 — IJ. 2 "The Cuneiform Inscriptions and the Old Testament," Engl, translation, vol. i. p. 21. 3 " Bind the knot twice seven times ; lay (upon it) the spell of Eridu ; bind the head of the sick man ; bind the neck of the sick man ; 76 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. We must therefore admit that we first find traces of the week of seven days, with the rest-day or Sabbath which fell upon the seventh, in Babylonia, and that it was intimately connected with the astronomical belief in the existence of seven planets. But between the Babylonian and the Hebrew conception there are certain differences which must not be over looked. In the first place the Hebrew Sabbath is entirely divorced from all connection with Baby lonian astronomy and the polytheistic worship with which it was bound up. The week remains with its seventh-day rest, but its days are no longer dis tinguished from one another by their consecration to the planets and the planetary deities. It is a mere space of time and nothing more. The Sabbath, moreover, ceases to be dependent upon the changes of the moon. The festival of the New Moon and the weekly Sabbath are separated from one another ; instead of a Sabbath which occurred on each seventh day of the lunar month, with a still unexplained Sabbath on the nineteenth,1 the Old Testament recognises only a Sabbath which recurs at regular intervals of seven days, irrespec tive of the beginning and end of the month. The bind his life ; bind firmly his limbs .... May the disease of the head, like the eye when it rests itself, ascend to heaven ! " ("Religion of the Ancient Babylonians," p. 460.) Similar expressions are found in other magical texts. 1 Prof. Jensen's explanation, which accounts for it as being the forty-ninth (or seven times seventh) day from the first day of the preceding month, is ingenious but doubtful. THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN GENESIS. TJ institution of the Sabbath is divested of its heathen associations and transformed into a means of bind ing together more closely the chosen people, and keeping them apart from the rest of mankind. In place of the astronomical reasons which preside over the institution of the Babylonian Sabbath, two reasons are given for its observance in Israel, one that on the seventh day God had rested from His work of creation, the other that Israel had been " a servant in the land of Egypt" and had been brought out "thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm." * How far the strictness of the observance may have increased in the course of centuries, or how far the ideas of the Jews in regard to it may have differed before and after the Exile, is not for the archaeologist to say. It is true that there is little or no reference to it in the Books of Samuel and Kings ; but so also in the historical inscriptions of Assyria is there no reference to the Babylonian Sabbath. The relation between the Sabbath of the Baby lonians and the Sabbath of the Old Testament is parallel to the relation between the Assyrian Epic of the creation and the first chapter of Genesis. The Biblical writer, it is plain, is acquainted, either directly or indirectly, with the Assyrian and Babylonian tradi tion. With him it is stripped of all that was distinct ively Babylonian and polytheistic, and is become in his hands a sober narrative, breathing a spirit of the purest and most exalted monotheism. In passing from the Assyrian poem to the Biblical narrative we 1 Exod. xx. n, Deut. v. 15. 78 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. seem to pass from romance to reality. But this ought not to blind us to the fact that the narrative is ultimately of Babylonian origin. If archaeology thus speaks with no uncertain tones on the sources of the first chapter of Genesis, the same cannot be said of the age to which the chapter must be referred. All it can do here is to show that an early date is quite as possible as a late one. The tablets of Tel el-Amarna have proved that Babylonian influence and literature were strongly felt and widely known in Canaan before its conquest by the Israelites. They agree with the evidence of the inscriptions found in Babylonia itself. These too show that as far back as B.C. 3800 the land of the " Amorites " had been overrun by Babylonian arms, and that a Baby lonian monarch was erecting records of victory on the shores of the Mediterranean, while in the age of Abraham another Babylonian king claims to be ruler of Palestine. It is only by a long continuance of Babylonian culture and power in the West that we can explain the universal use there of the Babylonian language and the cuneiform characters. Babylonian traditions and legends must have been almost as well known in Canaan as they were in Babylonia itself. Indeed there has been found among the Tel el-Amarna letters the copy of a Babylonian myth which has been employed by the scribes of the Egyptian king as an exercise in learning the Babylonian language. The words ofthe text have been separated from one another by means of points to facilitate the labour of the pupil. As has already been noticed, the writers of the THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN GENESIS. 79 letters usually give Babylonian names to the deities of Canaan. As the writers of Rome identified the gods of Greece with their own, transforming Poseiddn into Neptune and Aphrodite into Venus, so too the correspondents of the Egyptian court identified their own divinities with those of Chaldaea, and like the scholars of the Renaissance, went on to call them by their Chaldaean names. The god of Jerusalem becomes the Babylonian Uras, and the goddess of Gebal the Babylonian Beltis. How long and largely the custom must have prevailed may be judged from the number of places in Palestine which continued to bear names compounded with those of Babylonian deities. Anah or Anu the Sky-god and Anath his wife, Rimmon the Air-god, and Nebo the god of prophecy, are names which meet us frequently on the map. Moses died on the summit of Mount Nebo, and Anathoth the city of Jeremiah must have taken its name from the images of Anath which once existed there. Even Moloch, "the king," claims connection with the Assyrian Malik, and when Amos (v. 26) declares that Israel in the wilderness had made to itself "Sikkuth your king and Chiun your images, the star of your gods," he is naming the Babylonian Sakkut and Kaivan, the planet Saturn.1 But, as I have pointed out elsewhere,2 and as has now been conclusively confirmed by the tablets of Tel el-Amarna, there is yet more striking evidence of 1 See Schrader in the Theologische Studien und Kritiken, 1874, pp. 324-32. 2 Hibbert Lectures on the " Religion of the Ancient Baby lonians," pp. 252 sqq. 80 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. the intense hold that Babylonian religion must have taken upon the peoples of the West. From the time of the Exodus downward the chief goddess of Canaan, the object of passionate and universal worship, was Ashtoreth, or as the Greeks termed her — "Astarte, with the crescent horns, To whose bright image nightly by the moon Sidonian maidens paid their vows and songs." As Baal absorbed all the other gods of Canaan, so Ashtoreth came to absorb all the other goddesses of Canaan, and they are accordingly summed up under the general names of the Baalim or " Baals," and the Ashtaroth or " Ashtoreths." 1 And yet Ashtoreth was not really of native origin. She was the Istar of Babylonia, the evening-star, whose name and worship had travelled west. In the south she passed to the people of Southern Arabia under the name of Atthar, from whence the Egyptians possibly derived their Hathor, while in the north she was adored in Syria as Atthar and in Canaan as Ashtoreth. Istar, as the evening-star which in the early days of astronomical lore had been confounded with the star of the morn ing, was at once both male and female ; but in the West the male and female sides of her nature were distinguished, and while in Moab the male Atthar was identified with the national god Chemosh, in Canaan the feminine suffix (-t) was attached to the name, and Istar became definitely a goddess. In Canaan, moreover, she underwent still further change. On the one hand she ceased to represent the evening- star and became instead the moon, which in Babylonia 1 See Judges x. 6, etc. The Babylonian element In genesis. 8~i was a god (Sin), and on the other hand she took the place and absorbed the attributes ofthe old Canaanitish goddess called Asherah in the Old Testament and Asirtu and Asratu in the letters of Tel el-Amarna. Asherah was the goddess of fertility, and as such was worshipped under the form of a cone of stone or the branchless trunk of a tree. Both goddess and emblem were called by the same name, a fact which has induced the translators of the Septuagint, and after them of the Authorised Version, to render them both by the false term " grove." But in the pages of the Old Testament Asherah plays a very subordinate part to Ashtoreth ; it is Ashtoreth who is emphatic ally the goddess of Canaan, as in the eyes of the Greeks she was also emphatically the goddess of Phoenicia. Nothing can prove more completely the early influence of Babylonian culture upon the populations of Canaan. It was an influence which extended beyond the literary classes and must have penetrated deeply into the heart of the people. When a national religion is so transformed under foreign influence that the deity of the stranger takes the place of the older divinity of the country, it means that the religion of the stranger and the culture associated with it have been more than half absorbed. In the Canaan which was conquered by the Israelites we must expect to find not only Babylonian gods and forms of faith, but also Babylonian traditions, Babylonian beliefs, and Babylonian legends. There is no longer, therefore, any need of looking to the Babylonian Exile for an explanation of the Babylonian ideas which underlie the account of the 82 The higher criticism. creation in the first chapter of Genesis. On the contrary, these ideas will have been already prevalent in Canaan before the Israelites entered the Promised Land. The similarities presented by the Phcenician doctrine of the origin of things with that of Genesis on the one side and of Babylonia on the other, may equally be due to a far older intercourse between Babylon and Phoenicia than that which existed in Greek times. In fact the doctrine of the early Greek philosophers which found in the watery abyss the origin of the world, or the doctrine of Anaximander, which taught that the present creation was preceded by a creation of chaos and confusion, goes to show that the cosmological conceptions of Babylonia had made their way into Phoenicia, and from thence to the Greek cities of Asia Minor, long before the days of Alexander and Seleucus. The doctrines of Baby lonian cosmology must have been already well known in Palestine in the age of Moses, and if the critic can discover no allusion to them in the writings of the pre-Exilic prophets, neither can he do so in the writings of the prophets after the Exile. The prophets had no occasion to describe how the world had come into existence, and their silence is as com patible with an early date for the first chapter of Genesis as it is with a late one. We can build no argument on the silence, and archaeology has now informed us that the beliefs which underlie the cosmology of Genesis had made their way to Canaan centuries before the time of the Hebrew prophets. There is a further fact which must not be over looked when we are considering the date of the opening chapter of Genesis. It will have been THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN GENESIS. 83 noticed that the Assyrian epic of the creation pre sents marked similarities not only to the "Elohistic" account of the creation in Genesis, but to the " Jehovistic '' account as well. When we come to the narrative of the deluge we shall find that the same is there also the case. Different as the two accounts of the creation may be, they are neverthe less united in the cosmology of Babylonia. If the very words of the Assyrian poem are repeated in the description of the watery chaos contained in the first chapter of Genesis, the introduction to the account of the creation in the second chapter offers an almost equally verbal agreement with one of the introductory lines of the poem. The Bible declares that on the day of creation "every plant of the field" had been made "before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew " ; the cuneiform tablet asserts that before the gods had emanated from the abyss " the plant was ungathered, the herb ungrown." The word siakh used by the Hebrew writer in the sense of " plant " is used by the Assyrian writer in the sense of " grown," but the word I have translated " plant " answers exactly to the Hebrew "plant of the field," since it denotes the produce of the cultivated land. As in the Hebrew text, the young blades of corn are specially signified. The word which I have rendered " herb " was peculiarly "the herb of the field," and the lexical tablets of the library of Nineveh accordingly tell us that it was equivalent to Edinu or "Eden," "the field." Now it may ' be argued that if the " Elohistic '* narrative of the creation were of late date it would, 84 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. like the Assyrian Epic, combine together the diver gent cosmological views which prevailed in Baby lonia, and that the fact of its presenting the views of one school only indicates for it an older origin. However this may be, the use of the word Elohim, " God," which stands as it were on its forefront, takes us back again to the pre-Israelitish age of Canaan. Elohim is a plural noun, and its employment in the Old Testament as a singular has given rise to a large amount of learned discussion, and, it must also be added, of a learned want of common sense. Gram marians have been in the habit of evading the difficulty by describing it as a " pluralis majestatis," "a plural of majesty," or something similar, as if a term in common use which was grammatically a plural could ever have come to be treated as a singular, unless this singular had once been a plural. We can construe the word " means " with a singular verb, but nevertheless there was once a time when "means" was a plural noun. We may take it for granted, therefore, that if the Hebrew word Elohim had not once signified the plural "gods," it would never have been given a plural form, and the best proof of this is the fact that in several passages of the Old Testament the word is still used in a plural sense. Indeed there are one or two passages, as for example Gen. i. 26, where the word, although referring to the God of Israel, is yet employed with a plural verb, much to* the bewilderment of the Jewish rabbis and the Christian commentators who followed them. It is strange how preconceived theories will cause the best scholars to close their eyes to obvious facts. THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN GENESIS. 85 The Israelites were a Semitic people, and their history down to the age of the Exile is the history of a perpetual tendency towards polytheism. Priest and prophet might exhort and denounce, and kings might attempt to reform, but the mass of the people remained wedded to a belief in many gods. Even the most devoted adherents of the supreme God of Israel sometimes admitted that he was but supreme among other gods, and David himself, the friend of seers and prophets, complains that he had been driven out of " the inheritance of Yahveh " and told to go and "serve other gods" (1 Sam. xxvi. 19). What can be plainer than the existence of a per sistent polytheism among the bulk of the people, and the inevitable traces of this polytheism that were left upon the language and possibly the thoughts of the enlightened few ? Now the tablets of Tel el-Amarna have shown us how it was possible that a word which signified " gods " could come to signify the one supreme Deity. Time after time the Canaanite correspond ents of the Egyptian monarch address him as "my Sun-God (and) my gods." The Pharaoh in the eyes of his subjects was not only the " Son of the Sun," but he was himself an incarnation of the deity as truly as the Grand Lama of Tibet is believed to be an incarnation of the Buddha, or as the Russian Czar is regarded by many of the peasants as " a god upon earth." The Canaanite was already accustomed to the idea that the local Baals who were worshipped on the manifold high-places of the country were in some way or other forms or manifestations of a single Baal, and it was not difficult, therefore, for him 86 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. to conceive of the Egyptian Pharaoh as representing all the various forms of divinity that were worshipped in Egypt or Canaan. At any rate, long before the entrance of the Israelites into Palestine, we find the inhabitants of that country already familiar with the application of the plural "gods" to a single in dividual. The usage was part of that " language of Canaan" (Isai. xix. 18) which the Hebrews adopted, and it must consequently have gone back to the earliest days of their history. The deification of the Egyptian Pharaoh on the part of the Canaanite population was probably the result of Babylonian rather than of Egyptian in fluence. Babylonian influence in Canaan, as we have seen, had been long and deep, whereas that of Egypt seems to have been but slight. Babylonian kings had been deified by their subjects from the oldest times. Among those of them who are entitled " gods " was Naram-Sin, the son of Sargon of Accad, the two founders of the first Semitic empire on the banks of the Euphrates, whose campaigns in Pales tine and Midian prepared the way for the later domination of Babylonia in the West. On the other hand, the tendency to regard the local Baalim as so many forms of one and the same deity was not con fined to the Canaanites of the Tel el-Amarna tablets. The Moabite Stone teaches us that the Moabites, like their Hebrew kinsfolk, recognised but one supreme national god, Chemosh, who admitted of no rival by his side. Just as Assur, the national god of Assyria, stands alone of the Assyrian gods without a consort, so Chemosh had no wife with whom to share his divine honours, Though the worship of the THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN GENESIS. 87 Babylonian Istar had made its way into Moab as into the other countries of the West, it was wholly absorbed by that of the national god. Istar was adored as a male divinity, not as the female Ash toreth, and as such was identified with Chemosh. King Mesha in his inscription knows only of Atthar-Chemosh, not of Atthar by the side of Chemosh. The use, accordingly, of the plural Elohim in a singular sense, which meets us on the threshold of Genesis, had its origin, linguistically, among the people of Canaan long before the Israelitish invasion, and, psychologically, in a general tendency which the Israelites shared with their Moabite neighbours. It is consequently a use with which we may well suppose the contemporaries of Moses to have been familiar. The name of Yahveh, which is united with Elohim in the second account of the creation in Genesis, and by which the national God of the Hebrews was dis tinguished from the gods of the heathen, is a name upon which oriental archaeology has as yet shed but little light. Even its meaning and origin are obscure, though we now know that the full form Yahveh, or rather Yahavah, and the shorter form Yeho, Y6, or rather Yahu, existed side by side from an early date. In the cuneiform texts Yeho, Y6, and Yah are written Yahu, as for example in the names of Jehu (Yahu-a), Jehoahaz (Yahu-khazi), and Hezekiah (Khazaqi- yahu). But there are also contract-tablets found in Babylonia on which the names of Jews occur, and these names are compounded, not with Yahu, but with Ya(h)ava(h). Thus as was first pointed out by Mr. 88 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. Pinches, we have Gamar-Ya'ava or Gemariah, and Ya'ava-natanu or Jonathan.1 Such names as these prove that both the longer and the shorter forms of the sacred name could enter into composition, and the fact that in the present text of the Old Testament it is only the shorter name which is so found is due to that philological levelling which the text of the Hebrew Scriptures has undergone. The names also prove that in the time of the Baby lonian Exile there was as yet no superstitious objection to pronounce the name of the national God such as had become prevalent before the Greek translations of the Old Testament books were made. The substitu tion of Adonai or '' Lord " for Yahveh was the work of a more modern age. It was a substitution which had curious consequences when the study of Hebrew revived in Western Europe. The vowel-points of Adonai were read with the letters of Yahveh, thus producing the new and monstrous form of Yehovah. As if this were not enough, the German spelling ofthe new word, with an initial J, was adopted in France and England, and the J pronounced, not Y as in Germany, but in accordance with the sound given to it in the French and English alphabet. Is Yahu (Yeho) merely a contracted form of Yahaveh (Yahveh) ? It is hard not to think so, although philologically Yah(a)vah ought to be the feminine of Yahu. At all events, the two forms were used interchangeably in Israel, though the longer form was preferably employed by itself, as on the Moabite 1 See Pinches in the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, xv. i (Nov. 1892), and the "Records ofthe Past," New Series, iv. p. 187. THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN GENESIS. 89 Stone, where "the Arels of Yahveh" are stated to have been carried away from the tribe of Gad, while the shorter form was used in composition. The employment of either form of the name by any other people than the Israelites is a matter of doubt. It is true that in the time of Sargon there was a king of Hamath who was called Yahu-bihdi, and since the name is also written Ilu-bihdi in one of Sargon's inscriptions, where ilu or el " God " takes the place of Yahu, it is plain that Yahu must here be the Yahu or Yeho of Israel. But Yahu-bihdi was an ally of the Jewish king, and it is therefore quite possible that he may have been of Jewish descent. It is also quite possible that his earlier name was Ilu-bihdi, which was changed to Yahu-bihdi after his alliance with Judah, just as the name of Eliakim was changed to Jehoiakim after his accession to the throne (2 Kings xxiii. 34). It would seem that this had really happened in the case of another Hamathite prince. After David's victory over the Syrian armies, we are told, Toi king of Hamath "sent Joram his son to king David, to salute him, and to bless him " (2 Sam. viii. 10). Now in the corresponding passage of Chronicles (1 Chr. xviii. 10) Joram is called Hadoram, Hadu or Hadad, the supreme god of the Syrians, being substituted for Jo or Jeho, the supreme God of Israel. Apart from the names of Jews and Israelites and that of Yahu-bihdi, the cuneiform inscriptions, in spite of the wealth of proper names which they contain, show us none that are compounded with the name of the God of Israel. Until, therefore, further evidence is forthcoming, we may conclude that it 90 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. was not used beyond the limits of Israelitish in fluence. That it was known, however, is evident from a cuneiform tablet, now in the British Museum, which gives a list of the various equivalents of the word ilu, "god."1 Among them we find Yahu. The Babylonian scribe has attempted an etymology of the name which he has connected with words signify ing "myself" in his own language. Such etymolo gies, however, have no scientific foundation, and consequently are valueless. Before we pass finally from the first to the second chapter of Genesis, it is necessary to take note that the Chaldaean Epic of the creation did but sum up in a half philosophical, half mythical, form certain of the beliefs and legends which prevailed in Babylonia respecting the creation. Besides those which have been incorporated in the Epic we know of others, one of which was first pointed out by Mr. George Smith. He regarded it as that story of the creation which was embodied in the tradition of the city of Cutha, since the tablet on which it is preserved was copied from one which came originally from the library of that city. In this story, mention is made of a sort of first creation, when the earth already existed, but when the elements of order had not as yet been evolved out of chaos. The products of this first creation were, accordingly, the brood of Tiamat, monsters of various shapes, who might be regarded as the first attempts of nature to produce life, and who lived underground. " Warriors with the body of 1 The tablet is numbered 83, 1-18, 1332, and has been published by Dr. Bezold in the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, Dec. 4, 1888, THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN GENESIS. 91 a bird of the valley," it is said, " men with the faces of ravens, did the great gods create. In the ground the gods created their city. Tiamat gave them suck. Their progeny the mistress of the gods created. In the midst of the mountains they grew up and became heroes and increased in number." The description almost reminds us of the Gibborim or " mighty men " of the sixth chapter of Genesis, who were begotten of the union of the sons of God and the daughters of men. A clearer and more definite story of the creation is one which has lately been discovered by Mr. Pinches. While the Epic belongs to the Semitic period of Babylonian history, and in all probability to a late epoch, the legend discovered by Mr. Pinches goes back to Sumerian times. The original Sumerian text of it, in fact, has been preserved, together with an interlinear translation into Semitic Babylonian. The following is the rendering given by Mr. Pinches of the commencement of the text — J 1. "The glorious house,2 the house of the gods, in a glorious place had not been made. 2. A plant had not been brought forth, a tree had not been created. 3. A brick had not been made, a beam had not been formed. 4. A house had not been built, a city had not been constructed. 5. A city had not been made, earthly things had not been made glorious. 6. Nipur had not been built, E-kura3 had not been constructed. 1 Academy, Nov. 29, 1890 (pp. 508, 509) ; "Records of the Past," New Ser., vol. vi. 2 The name of the chief temple of Eridu (now Abu Shahrein), an early Chaldasan city and seat of culture on the shores of the Persian Gulf. 8 The name of the chief temple of Nipur (now Niffer), 92 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. 7. Erech had not been built, E- Ana x had not been constructed. 8. The deep had not been made, Eridu had not been con structed. 9. (As for) the glorious house, the house of the gods, its seat had not been made. 10. The whole of the lands, the sea also (had not been formed). 1 1. When within the sea the current was, 12. in that day Eridu was made, E-sagila was constructed, 13. E-sagila which the god Lugal-du-azaga founded within the deep. 14. Babylon was built, E-sagila2 was completed. 1 5. He made the gods and the spirits of the earth all together. 16. The glorious city, the seat of the joy of their hearts, supremely they proclaimed. 17. Merodach bound together amain before the water. 18. Dust he made, and he poured it out with the flood. 19. The gods were made to dwell in a seat of joy of heart. 20. He made mankind. 21. The god Aruru, the seed of mankind, they made with him. 22. He made the beasts of the field (and) the living creatures of the desert. 23. He made the Tigris and Euphrates and set (them) in (their) place. 24. Well proclaimed he their name. 25. The zAMZ^-plant, the dittu-plant of the marshland, the reed and the forest he made. 26. He made the verdure of the plain ; 27. the lands, the marshes, and the greensward also ; 28. oxen, the young of the horse, the stallion, the mare, the sheep, the locust ; 29. meadows and forests also. 30. The he-goat and the gazelle brought forth (?) to him." Here the resemblance is with the "Jehovistic" account of the creation in the second chapter of 1 " The temple of Anu," the Sky-god, the name of the chief temple of Erech. 2 The name of the chief temple of Babylon, which seems to have been a colony of Eridu. THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN GENESIS. 93 Genesis rather than with the " Elohistic " account in the first chapter. A habitation is already prepared for men and gods, even before mankind and the beasts of the field have been formed, and while the plants and trees still remain uncreated. We shall see later on that the Babylonian garden of Eden, with the tree of life in its midst, was in the neigh bourhood of the sacred city of Eridu, and con sequently the likeness between the old Sumerian story of the formation of the world and that which is described by the " Jehovist " becomes exceedingly striking. In the " Jehovistic" account also the earth had been made "before" the plant of the field was " in the earth " or " the herb of the field " had grown, and a garden was planted " eastward in Eden " before a man had been prepared to till it. It was not until the garden had been made ready for his reception that man appeared upon the scene, and it was not until after his creation that "the beast of the field" and the " fowl of the air " came into being. It was then, too, that the plants and herbs were produced, for "a man" had been found to cultivate the ground. So exact, indeed, is the parallelism of ideas between the two narratives, and so precisely similar is the order of the creative acts described in them — strange as it seems to us to be — that it is impossible not to believe in a connection between the two. The antiquity of the Sumerian legend, 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 kn6wn to us of that form of the story of the creation which we find in the second chapter of Genesis. 94 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. But it must not be supposed that what we may call the story of the creation according to the tradi tion of Eridu exhausted the various accounts of the creation which were current in ancient Babylonia. The fragment of a legend discovered by myself a short while ago introduces us to yet another version of the origin of man. In this the first man — " the seed of mankind" — is named Adapa (or Adama), and he is made the son of Ea, the culture-god of Eridu. Ea, it would seem, had been his creator, and had originally made him like the animals. But Anu, the god of heaven, intervened, raising Adapa into an upright position, and changing the food and raiment with which Ea had provided him.1 The words of the ancient Babylonian poem offer a curious -analogy to the statements of Scripture that after the ex pulsion from Paradise Adam was condemned to "eat the herb of the field" (Gen. iii. 17, 18), while "the Lord God made coats of skins" for him and Eve. A subsequent portion of the myth of Adapa has been discovered among the cuneiform tablets of Tel el-Amarna. We learn from this that the Babylonian hero was summoned to appear before the throne of Anu in heaven on the charge of breaking the wings of the southern wind. There he was offered "the food of life" and "the water of life." But instructed by his father Ea, he touched them not. He put on, however, the garment that was given him, and anointed himself with oil. And when Anu asked him wherefore he had not eaten and drunken, so that " the gift of life " could not now be his, he replied that he had attended to the warnings of his father 1 See my letter to the Academy, July 23, 1892, p. 72. THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN GENESIS. 95 Ea, since the food and water of life would have been to him the food and water of death.1 In these older legends of Babylonia we look in vain for the philosophical theories and conceptions which underlie the cosmology of the Epic. We look equally in vain for points of contact with the first chapter of Genesis. It is only in the Epic that we can hear the voices of which the " Elohist " has caught the echo. But if the " Elohistic " account of the creation contains echoes of Babylonian philosophy, the " Jehovistic '' account carries us directly to Babylonia. In this the creation of the heavens and the earth is but a preparation for that of the Garden which stood eastward in Eden, in the centre, as it would seem, of the world. The garden was watered by a river which after fulfilling its work was parted into " four heads " and flowed in four different streams. Of these two were the great rivers of the Babylonian plain, the Tigris and the Euphrates ; the others bear names which have not as yet been identified with certainty. The scenery, however, is entirely Babylonian. The Eden itself, in which the garden was planted, was the plain of Babylonia. This we now know from the evidence of the cuneiform texts. It was called by its inhabitants the Edinu, a word borrowed by the Semites from the Accado-Sumerian edin "the (fertile) plain." To the east of it lay the land of the " Nomads," termed Nod in Genesis and Manda in the inscriptions. The river which watered the garden 1 See Dr. Zimmern in the Sunday School Times, June i8, 1892, pp. 386, 387. 96 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. was the Persian Gulf, known to the Babylonians as " the river," or more fully " the bitter " or " salt river." It was regarded as the source of the four other rivers, whose " heads " were thus at the spots where they flowed into the source which at once received and fed them. Chief among these rivers was the Euphrates, a name which has come down to us from Accadian times. The Greek " Euphrates '' was borrowed from the Old Persian Ufratu, which was in its turn taken from the Semitic Babylonian Puratu or Purat. Purat was formed like Ashtoreth by the addition of the Semitic feminine suffix (-t) from the genderless Accado-Sumerian Pura, " the water " par excellence, as the Euphrates was called by the primitive dwellers in the Chaldaean plain. At times it was also called Pura-nun "the great water," but the shorter designa tion was the more usual, and was that which survived to a later age. As the modern Egyptian terms the Nile el-bahhr " the sea," so, too, the Chaldaean termed the river which supplied him with the means of life " the water," and a recollection of the fact still lingers in the pages of the Old Testament, where the Euphrates is known as han-n&hdr " the river." The name of the Hiddekel or Tigris was also Accadian. In the old language of Babylonia it was termed Idiqla and Idiqna " the encircling," which the Semitic successors of the Accadians changed into the feminines Idiqlat and Idiqnat. From Idiqlat the Persians formed their Tigra with a play upon a word in their own language which signified an "arrow." The Hiddekel, we are told, flowed "to the east of Asshur." But the Asshur meant is not the land of THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN GENESIS. 97 Assyria, as the Authorised Version supposes, but the city of Assur, the primitive capital of the country, now represented by the mounds of Kalah Sherghat. The land of Assyria lay to the east as well as to the west of the Tigris. Though it is questionable whether the names of the Pison and the Gihon have hitherto been detected on the cuneiform monuments, it is not difficult to determine the rivers with which they must be iden tified. The head of the Persian Gulf is slowly filling up ; large deposits of soil are annually brought down to it by the Euphrates and Tigris, and the land is continually gaining on the sea. In the time of Alexander the Great, Charax, the modern Moham- merah, stood on the coast ; it is now more than seventy miles inland. At a still earlier period, perhaps some 6000 years ago, the great sea-port of Babylonia was the city of Eridu, the site of which is now marked by the rubbish-heaps of Abu Shahrein. The position of Eridu caused it to play a leading part in the primaeval history of Babylonia. Much of the oldest literature of the country was connected with it, as well as the beliefs and ordinances of religion and the traditions of primitive culture. It was, in fact, to Eridu that the Sumerian culture-god, Ea, belonged, together with his son, Merodach the Sun-god, and Babylon itself, the chosen city of Merodach, would seem to have been a colony of the old maritime state. When Eridu still stood on the sea-coast, not only the Tigris and the Euphrates but other rivers also flowed into the Persian Gulf. The great salt " river," as it was termed, received the waters of four in all 98 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. at no ereat distance from the walls of Eridu. To the east of the Tigris came the modern Kerkhah, the Khoaspes of classical antiquity, while to the west of the Euphrates was a stream afterwards represented, it would seem, by the Pallakopas Canal.1 The Kerkhah rose among the mountains of the Kassi, a tribe who were probably the Kossaeans of classical geography, and who gave Babylonia a long and important dynasty of kings. The western river encircled the northern borders of the great sandy desert which stretched westward to the mountain- chains of Midian and Sinai. In the first of these two last rivers it is plain that we must recognise the Gihon of Genesis, which " compasseth the whole land of Cush." Here, as in another passage on which we shall have to comment hereafter, some copyist of the Biblical text has wrongly vocalised the geographical name. Kas, the land of the Kassites, has been confounded with the district south of Egypt, which the Egyptians called Kas and the Hebrews knew as Cush. As elsewhere in the Hebrew text, the vowel was not originally expressed in writing. In the second river we have the Pison, which " com passeth the whole land of Havilah." Havilah, as Prof. Friedrich Delitzsch points out, means "the region of sand," and its situation is indicated in two passages of the Bible (Gen. xxv. 18, i Sam. xv. 7). We learn from these that the Ishmaelites as well as 1 I have discovered the name of the Pallakopas in contracts of the reign of Nabonidos, the last king of Babylonia, where it is called the Pallukat (see Strassmaier : Inschriften von Nabo- nidus, ii., Nos. 333 and 539). THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN GENESIS. 99 the Amalekites "dwelt from Havilah to Shur that is before Egypt." The Amalekites were synonymous with the Bedawin of to-day who range from the Euphrates to the Nile, while the Ishmaelite tribes inhabited the whole of Northern Arabia, from the eastern frontier of Egypt — the Shur, or " Wall," as it is called in Scripture — to the western boundary of Chaldaea. The name of the Nabatheans or Nebaioth, "the first-born of Ishmael," is found alike at, the two extremities of this desert region. Since Shur lay on its western side, Havilah must have been at its eastern end, and consequently in the situation where it would have been " compassed " by the river whose later successor was the Pallakopas Canal. Whether or not the name of the Pison has been found in the cuneiform inscriptions is doubtful. There is indeed a word Pisannu, which Prof. Friedrich Delitzsch supposes to mean a "water-course,— but even this signification is not certain. Equally doubtful is the occurrence of the name of the Gihon on the Babylonian and Assyrian monuments. In a lexical tablet a name which may be read as Gikhan is given as a synonym of the Euphrates, and Prof. Delitzsch has noted that Gukhan-de "the flood of the Gukhan " is stated to have been the pre-Semitic title of the Arakhtu or river of Babylon. But neither the Euphrates nor the small branch of it on which Babylon stood is the Kerkhah, and it is the Kerkhah whose ancient name we want to find. It is possible, however, that both the Gihon and the Pison of Genesis are referred to by Tiglath-pileser III. under their later Semitic Babylonian names. The Assyrian king tells us that at the beginning of his lOO THE HIGHER CRITICISM. reign he overran not only the northern part of Babylonia but also its southern portion, subduing the " Aramean " tribes who lived there " on the banks of the Tigris and the Surappi as far as the river Uknu on the shore of the Persian Gulf." Here the Surappi and the Uknu seem to occupy much the same position as the Biblical Gihon and Pison. The word Uknu, moreover, signifies a precious stone which perhaps was lapis lazuli. Now it is observable that there was another precious stone, called samtu or siamtu in Assyrian, which is stated to have been brought from the land of Melukhkhi.1 Melukhkhi " the salt-land " was the desert which lay to the east of Egypt — the Biblical desert of Shur in fact, — and in the age of the Tel el-Amarna tablets was nominally subject to the Pharaoh. In the samtu of the Assyrian inscriptions Assyriologists have long since agreed to recognise the shohem of Gen. ii. 12, which is translated "onyx stone " in the Authorised Version, and is said to be found in Havilah. Havilah and the desert of Me lukhkhi are thus brought into close connection with one another, more especially when it is remembered that the samtu stone was probably the turquoise of Sinai. It is possible, therefore, that in the name of the river Uknu we must see a name suggested by the fact that just as one of the chief precious stones used in Babylonia was brought from the neighbourhood of the river Surappi, so another precious stone of equal celebrity was found on the banks of a rival stream. The garden with the tree of life in its midst was 1 "Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia," ii. 51, 17, v. 30,68. THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN GENESIS. IOI planted " in Eden, eastward," for such is the correct rendering of the Hebrew text, and not "eastward in Eden " as the Authorised Version has it. Not only the garden, but Eden also lay to the east of the land where the writer lived. The garden and its mystical tree were known to the inhabitants of Chaldaea in pre- Semitic days. A fragment has been preserved of an old Accado-Sumerian hymn with a Semitic Babylonian translation attached to it which tells us something about them. The garden stood hard by Eridu, " the good city" as it was called by its Sumerian founders, and thus in the very region where the salt " river " of the Persian Gulf was divided into its four heads. The hymn begins as follows 1 — In Eridu a palm-stalk grew overshadowing ; in a holy place did it become green ; its root was of bright lapis {uknu) which stretched towards the deep ; [before] the god Ea was its growth in Eridu, teeming with fertility ; ' its seat was the (central) place of the earth ; its foliage (?) was the couch of Zikum the (primaeval) mother. Into the heart of its holy house which spread its shade like a forest hath no man entered. [There is the home] of the mighty Mother who passes across the sky. [In] the midst of it was the god Tammuz. The sacred tree whose branches reached to heaven while its roots were nourished by the primaeval deep was the tree which supported the world. It was emphatically a "tree of life," and is accordingly represented time after time on the monuments of Babylonia and Assyria. Not unfrequently it was 1 See my Hibbert Lectures on the " Religion of the Ancient Babylonians," p. 238. 102 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. watched by two guardian spirits, " kirubi " as they were called in Assyrian, " cherubim " in Hebrew, who stood or knelt on either side, with wings behind their shoulders and the heads sometimes of eagles and sometimes of men. In their hands they usually hold a fruit, which Dr. Tylor has recently shown to repre sent a cluster of dates with which they are fertilising the sacred tree. The tree, consequently, must have been the palm, so characteristic of Babylonia, where its fruit formed the staple food of the people, while the juice was made into wine. In Accado-Sumerian days the wine was called " the draught of life," and after the importation of the vine into Babylonia one of the numerous divinities of primaeval Chaldaea was called " the goddess of the tree of life " in the dialect of the north, and " the goddess of the vine " in the dialect of the south. In the pre-Semitic period of Babylonian history the site of " the holy tree of Eridu " was still remembered, and an oracle existed under its branches. One of the inscriptions left us by Eri-aku of Larsa, who was, as we shall see, the Arioch of the fourteenth chapter of Genesis, makes special mention of it. As the inscription is curious it will not be out of place to give a translation of it in full, according to the version of Prof. Hommel: "To the god Nin-girsu, his king, Eri-Aku, the shepherd of the possessions of Nipur, the executor of the oracle of the holy tree of Eridu, the shepherd of Ur and the temple E-Udda- im-tigga, king of Larsa, king of Sumer and Accad ; on the day when Anu, Bel and Ea, the great gods, gave into my hands the ancient city of Erech, I built to the god Nin-girsu, my king, the temple Dugga-summu THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN GENESIS. 103 the abode of his pleasure, for the preservation of my life." Enough has been said to demonstrate the close dependence of the ''Jehovistic" account of the crea tion and fall of man upon Babylonia. We have not, it is true, as yet discovered a cuneiform text which bears the same relation to the second and third chapters of Genesis that the cuneiform story of the. deluge does to the Biblical narrative, but there are many indications that such a text must once have existed. As we have seen, not only the conception, but even the name of the cherubim who guarded the tree of life, has a Babylonian origin, and besides the tree of life there are references in the cuneiform tab lets to another tree, which might be described as that of knowledge. At all events a magical text into which the fragment about the sacred tree of Eridu has been embedded, in describing the means whereby Merodach is to heal a man possessed by "the seven evil sprits," orders him to go to " the cedar-tree, the tree which shatters the power of the incubus, upon whose core the name of Ea is recorded." The belief, moreover, that woman was created out of man is alluded to in an ancient Sumerian exorcism. Here we read of the storm-demons that " they bring forth the woman from the loins of the man." 1 The flaming sword of the cherubim is matched by that of Merodach, of which we are told in a Sumerian hymn that it was a "weapon of fifty heads," "whose light gleams forth like the day," and " the terror of whose splendour [overwhelms] the world." The "wicked serpent," "the serpent of darkness," was mentioned 1 "Religion of the Ancient Babylonians," p. 451, 104 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. in Sumerian texts, and Mr. Boscawen has lately found a Babylonian fragment forming part of the third tablet in the Creation-series, in which the fall of man seems to be described in plain terms. He gives the following translation of it — In sin one with another in compact joins. The command was established in the garden of the god. The Asnan-tree 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 Redeemer he (the god Sar) appointed their fate.1 But it is not only in the matter of geography and in the general outlines as well as in the details of the narrative, that the Biblical account of the Fall gives evidence of its derivation from Babylonia. The very words that are used in it betray their Babylonian origin. We have already noticed some of these, but they are only a few out of many. When, for ex ample, it is said that " there went up a mist from the land, and watered the whole face of the ground," the word translated " mist " is the Babylonian edu or "flood," while that which is rendered "watered" signified in Babylonian the " irrigation " which served to fertilise the soil instead of rain. " Adam " itself is the common Babylonian word for " man," and I have shown elsewhere that the name " Eve " finds its coun- 1 " The Babylonian and Oriental Record," iv. 1 1 (1890). Asnan signifies " the pine cone " ; see my Lectures on the " Religion ofthe Ancient Babylonians," p. 529, note 1. According to Mr. Pinches ("Babylonian and Oriental Record," iv. 2, 1890) the lines translated by Mr. Boscawen form the conclusion of the third tablet of the Chaldean Epic of the creation. THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN GENESIS. 105 terpart in the Babylonian ivat or " breath." 1 When we read that man was formed out of the dust (dphdr) of the ground we are reminded of the letters of Tel el-Amarna in which the' writers describe themselves as "the dust (epiri) beneath the feet of the king," and the "living soul" or nephesh of Genesis is the Babylonian napsat " life," which was bestowed upon man by the gods. If we pass on to the sequel of the narrative of the Fall which is contained in the fourth chapter of Genesis we shall find that Babylonian analogies are more difficult to discover. Dr. Oppert indeed has suggested that in the name of Abel we have the Babylonian abil "a son," and, as has been already stated, the land of Nod or "the nomads," eastward ofthe edin of Babylonia, is the Manda of the cunei form inscriptions. Methusael, moreover, the father of Lamech, is a purely Babylonian name, Mutu-sa-ili " the man of God." But we look in vain for other traces of Babylonian influence. The name of Cain claims connection with that ofthe Kenites or "Smiths" rather than with Babylonia, and hitherto, at all events, nothing has been found in the cuneiform tablets which resembles any portion of the narrative of Cain and Abel. While the second and third chapters of Genesis are stamped with a Babylonian impress, the continua tion of the narrative in the fourth chapter seems to take us to a wholly different part of the ancient world. The conclusion, then, at which the archaeologist is inclined by his evidence to arrive is that the Biblical writer has drawn his materials from different sources. But those materials, it is important to remember, were 1 " Religion of the Ancient Babylonians," p. 99. 106 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. presumably all literary. We know that the Baby lonian materials were so ; it is therefore reasonable to conclude that the other materials which have been employed along with them, and which do not differ from them in character, were literary also. As to the question of date to which the combina tion of these materials must be assigned, archaeology can return only a doubtful answer. All it can do is to show that an early date is just as possible as a late one. We now know that not only Babylonian beliefs, but the literature itself in which these beliefs were enshrined, had been brought to Palestine before the age of Moses. We also know that the beliefs which have left their traces on the Biblical history of the fall of man had been recorded in writing at a very early period. And furthermore there are pas sages in this history like the statement that Eden was eastward, or that Adam and Eve clothed themselves with the leaves of the fig-tree, which tend to show that the writer of it was a native of a more westerly country than Babylonia. In this case he could hardly have been a contemporary of the Babylonian Exile, much less one of the exiles themselves. On one point, however, we may feel sure. The geo graphical statement that the Tigris flowed eastward of the city of Asshur points either to a fairly early, or to a very late date. As long as Nineveh was the capital of Assyria, it would have been named, rather than Asshur, in describing the direction in which the Tigris ran. Asshur was supplanted by Calah and Nineveh in the ninth century before our era, and did not recover its ancient position until after the destruc tion of the two latter cities and the overthrow of the THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN GENESIS. 107 Assyrian empire. In the time of Cyrus the city of Asshur was again the representative of Assyria. In finding a date, accordingly, for the Jehovistic account of Paradise we must either go back at least to the age of Solomon, or forward to the time of the Cap tivity. And the objections against choosing the latter epoch have already been urged. It is not until we come to the history of the deluge that oriental archaeology again claims the attention of the Biblical student. Mr. George Smith's discovery, more than twenty years ago, of the Babylonian version ofthe story of the flood has now become a common place of books on the Old Testament or ancient history. We have only to compare it with the narra tive in Genesis to see how startlingly alike the two are. This is the way in which the old Chaldaean poet described the great catastrophe — 1. Sisuthros spake unto him, even unto Gilgames : 2. " Let me reveal unto thee, O Gilgames, the tale of my preservation, 3. and the oracle of the gods let me declare unto thee. 4. The city of Surippak, which, as thou knowest, is built [on the bank] of the Euphrates, 5. this city was (already) old when the gods within it 6. set their hearts to cause a flood, even the great gods 7. [as many as] exist : Anu the father of them, 8. the warrior Bel their prince, 9. Uras their throne-bearer, En-nugi (Hades) their chief. 10. Ea the lord of wisdom conferred with them, and 11. repeated their words to the reed-bed:1 'Reed-bed, O reed-bed ! Frame, O frame ! 12. hear O reed-bed, and understand O frame ! 1 The frame of the ship was constructed of reeds. Hence the reeds were called upon to be ready to lend themselves to the work of building the boat. 108 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. 13. O man of Surippak, son of Ubara-Tutu, 14. frame the house, build a ship : leave what thou canst ; seek life ! 1 5. Resign (thy) goods, and cause (thy) soul to live, 16. and bring all the seed of life into the midst of the ship. 17. As for the ship which thou shalt build, 18. . . . cubits (shall be) in measurement its length ; 19. and . . . cubits the extent of its breadth and its height. 20. Into the deep [then] launch it.' 21. I understood and spake to Ea my lord : 22. ' As for the building of the ship, O my lord, which thou hast ordered thus, 23. I will observe (and) accomplish (it) ; 24. [but what] shall I answer the city, the people and the old men ? ' 25. [Ea opened his mouth and] says, he speaks to his servant, even to me : 26. ' [If they question thee] thou shalt say unto them : 27. Since (?) Bel is estranged from me and 28. I will not dwell in (your) city, I will not lay my head [in] the land of Bel ; 29. but I will descend into the deep ; with [Ea] my lord will I dwell. 30. (Bel) will rain fertility upon you, 31. [flocks?] of birds, shoals offish.' 32 — 42. ***** 43. On the fifth day I laid the plan of it (z*. e. the ship) ; 44. in its hull (?) its walls were 10 gar (120 cubits ?) high ; 45. 10 gar were the size of its upper part." Another version of the account of the deluge, of which a fragment has been preserved to us, puts a wholly different speech into the mouth of Ea, and gives the hero of the story the name of Adra-khasis. This fragment is as follows — " I will judge (him) above and below. [But] shut [not thou thy door] [until] the time that I shall tell thee of. [Then] enter the ship, and close the door of the vessel ; THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN GENESIS. 109 [bring into] it thy corn, thy goods, [thy] property, thy [wife], thy slaves, thy handmaids and the sons of [thy] people, the [cattle] of the field, the beasts of the field, as many as I appoint . . . I will tell thee of (the time) and the gate [of thy ship] shall preserve (them)." Adra-khasis (the reverently intelligent) opened his mouth and says, he speaks to Ea [his] lord : " [O my lord] none has ever made a ship [on this wise] that it should sail (?) over the land ..." Here the fragment is broken off. The other version proceeds thus — 46. I fashioned its side, and closed it in ; 47. I built six storeys (?), I divided it into seven parts : 48. its interior I divided into nine parts. 49. I cut worked (?) timber within it. 50. I saw the rudder and added what was lacking. 51. I poured 6 sars of pitch over the outside ; 52. [I poured] 3 sars of bitumen over the inside ; 53. 3 sars of oil did the men carry who brought it . . . 54. I gave a sar of oil for the workmen to eat ; 55. 2 sars of oil the sailors stored away. 56. For the ... I slaughtered oxen ; 57. I killed [sheep ?] daily. 58. Beer, wine, oil and grapes 59. [I distributed among] the people like the waters of a river, and 60. [I kept] a festival like the festival of the new year. 61. ... I dipped my hand [in] oil : 62. [I said to] Samas : The storeys (?) ofthe ship are complete ; 63. . . . is strong, and 64. the oars (?) I introduced above and below. 65. . . . they went two-thirds of it. 66. With all I had I filled it ; with all the silver I possessed I filled it ; 67. with all the gold I possessed I filled it ; 68. with all that I possessed of the seed of life of all kinds I filled it. HO THE HIGHER CRITICISM. 69. I brought into the ship all my slaves and my handmaids, 70. the cattle of the field, the beasts of the field, the sons of my people, all of them did I bring into it. 71. The Sun-god appointed the time and 72. utters the oracle : In the night will I cause the heavens to rain destruction ; 73. enter into the ship and close thy door. 74. That time drew near (whereof) he utters the oracle : 75. In this night I will cause the heavens to rain destruction. 76. I watched with dread the dawning of the day ; 77. I feared to behold the day. 78. I entered within the ship and closed my door. 79. When I had closed the ship to Buzur-sadi-rabi the sailor 80. I entrusted the palace with all its goods. 87. Mu-seri-ina-namari (the waters of the morning at dawn) 88. arose from the horizon of heaven, a black cloud ; 89. the Storm-god Rimmon thundered in its midst, and 90. Nebo and Merodach the king marched in front ; 91. the throne-bearers marched over mountain and plain ; 92. the mighty god of Death lets loose the whirlwind ; 93. Uras marches causing the storm (?) to descend ; 94. the spirits of the underworld lifted up (their) torches, 95. with the lightning of them they set on fire the world ; 96. the violence of the Storm-god reached to heaven ; 97. all that was light was turned to [darkness]. 98. [In] the earth like . . . [men] perished (?). 99-100. ****** 101. Brother beheld not his brother, men knew not one another. In the heaven 102. the gods feared the deluge, and ¦ 103. hastened to ascend to the heaven of Anu. 104. The gods cowered like a dog, lying in a kennel. 105. Istar cried like a woman in travail,1 106. the great goddess spoke with loud voice : 107. ' The former generation is turned to clay. 108. The evil which I prophesied in the presence of the gods, 109. when I prophesied evil in the presence of the gods, 1 10. I prophesied the storm for the destruction of my people. 111. What I have borne, where is it? 1 A variant text has "like one filled with wrath." THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN GENESIS. Ill 112. Like the spawn of fish it fills the deep.' 113. The gods wept with her because of the spirits of the underworld. 114. the gods sat dejected in weeping, 115. their lips were covered . . . 1 16. Six days and nights 117. rages the wind ; the flood and the storm devastate. 118. The seventh day when it arrived the flood ceased, the storm 119. which had fought like an army 120. rested, the sea subsided, and the tempest of the deluge was ended. 121. I beheld the deep and uttered a cry, 122. for the whole of mankind was turned to clay ; 123. like the trunks of trees did the bodies float. 124. I opened the window and the light fell upon my face ; 125. I stooped, and sat down weeping ; 126. over my face ran my tears. 127. I beheld a shore beyond the sea ; 128. twelve times distant rose a land. * 129. On the mountain of Nizir the ship grounded ; 130. the mountain of the country of Nizir held the ship and allowed it not to float. 131. One day and a second day did the mountain of Nizir hold it. 132. A third day and a fourth day did the mountain of Nizir hold it. 133. A fifth day and a sixth day did the mountain of Nizir hold it. 134. When the seventh day came I sent forth a dove and let it go. 135. The dove went and returned ; a resting-place it found not and it turned back. 136. I sent forth a swallow and let it go ; the swallow went and returned ; 137. a resting-place it found not and it turned back. 138. I sent forth a raven and let it go. 139. The raven went and saw the going down of the waters, and 140. it approached, it waded, it croaked and did not turn back. 112 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. 141. Then I sent forth (everything) to the four points of the compass ; I offered sacrifices, 142. I built an altar on the summit of the mountain. 143. I set libation-vases seven by seven ; 144. beneath them I piled up reeds, cedar- wood and herbs. 145. The gods smelt the savour, the gods smelt the sweet savour ; 146. the gods gathered like flies over the sacrificer. 147. Already at the moment of her coming, the great goddess 148. lifted up the mighty bow which Anu had made according to his wish (?). 153. 'These gods, by my necklace, never will I forget ! 154. Those days, I will think of them and never will forget them. 155. May the gods come to my altar ; 1 56. (but) let not Bel come to my altar, 157. since he did not take counsel but caused a flood and counted my men for judgment.' 158. Already at the moment of his coming Bel 159. saw the ship and stood still ; 160. he was filled with wrath at the gods, the spirits of heaven, (saying) : 170. Let no living soul come forth, let no man survive in the judgment ! 171. Uras opened his mouth and says, he speaks to the warrior Bel : 172. Who except Ea can devise a speech? 173. for Ea understands all kinds of wisdom. 174. Ea opened his mouth and says, he says to the warrior Bel: 175. ' Thou art the seer of the gods, O warrior ! 176. Why, O why didst thou not take counsel, but didst cause a deluge ? 177- (Let) the sinner bear his own sin, (let) the evil-doer bear his own evil-doing. 178. Grant (?) that he be not cut off, be merciful that he be not [destroyed]. 179' Instead of causing a deluge let lions come and minish mankind ; 180. instead of causing a deluge let hyaenas come and minish mankind ; THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN GENESIS. 1 13 181. instead of causing a deluge let there be a famine and let it [devour] the land ; 182. instead of causing a deluge let the plague-god come and minish mankind ! 183. I did not reveal (to men) the oracle of the great gods, 184. but sent a dream to Adra-khasis and he heard the oracle of the gods.' 185. Then Bel again took counsel and ascended into the ship. 186. He took my hand and caused me, even me, to ascend, 187. he took up my wife (also and) caused her to bow at my side ; 188. he turned to us and stood between us; he blessed us (saying) : 189. Hitherto Sisuthros has been mortal, but 190. henceforth Sisuthros and his wife shall be like unto the gods, even unto us, and 191. Sisuthros shall dwell afar at the mouth of the rivers. 192. Then he took us afar, at the mouth of the rivers he made us dwell. It has already been stated that this history of the deluge has been introduced as an episode into the eleventh book of the great Chaldaean Epic, and that in its present form it gives evidence of being a com bination of at least two earlier poems on the subject, in one of which, for example, the flood is described as having been caused by the Sun-god, while in the other its author is said to have been Bel. The Epic was probably composed in the age of the literary revival under Khammurabi, who first made Babylon the capital of a united kingdom (B.C. 2350), and it was consequently already ancient in the time of the writers of the Tel el-Amarna tablets. They may easily, therefore, have been acquainted with it and with the story of the great flood which it contains. A comparison of it, accordingly, with the two accounts 114 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. of the deluge which criticism has discovered in the Book of Genesis becomes of importance. At the outset we are struck by the same contrast as that which met us in a comparison of the "Elohistic" account of the creation with the account given by the cuneiform tablets. While the Baby lonian poem is intensely polytheistic, the Biblical narrative of the deluge is as intensely monotheistic. It does not matter whether it is the "Elohist" or the " Jehovist " who is speaking, each alike allows of no rival by the side of the God of Israel. In the second place, the resemblances between the Scriptural and the Babylonian narratives are common to both the " Elohist" and the "Jehovist." It is true that on the whole the "Jehovistic" narrative exhibits a more striking similarity to that of the Babylonian poem, at all events as regards details, but nevertheless it is also true that there are many points of contact between the Babylonian and the " Elohistic " accounts. If the Babylonian poem agrees with the "Jehovist " as regards the sending forth of the birds, the building of an altar, and the use of the number seven, it agrees with the " Elohist " in its reference to the rainbow and attribution of the flood to the wickedness of mankind. The last point is particularly noticeable, as it had been often observed by commentators on the Book of Genesis before the discovery of the Chaldaean story that the Biblical narrative stood alone among stories or traditions of the deluge in making the great catastrophe a punishment for sin. The observation, we now see, was incorrect ; the " Elohist " had already been anticipated by the Babylonians in ascribing the deluge to a moral cause. THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN GENESIS. 1 15 The resemblances between the Babylonian and Scriptural accounts are so obvious that instead of dwelling upon them it will be more instructive to note the points of difference between the two. Apart from the polytheistic framework of the Babylonian story we have, first, a different name for its hero. The Noah of Genesis, who was the son of Lamech,is in the Babylonian version Xisuthros the son of Ubara-Tutu. Then, too, we read of a " ship " instead of an " ark." The difference here is doubtless due, as Mr. George Smith remarked, to a difference of geographical position. The cry of the Chaldaeans was "in their ships " ; the southern portion of Babylonia lay upon the Persian Gulf, and Surippak the city of Xisuthros was situated on the Euphrates. The inhabitants of Palestine, on the other hand, had no great rivers, and the sea-coast was occupied by Philistines and Phoenicians, not by Jews. As regards the size of the ship or ark, again, the two accounts are in disagree ment. Though the exact number of cubits men tioned on the cuneiform tablet is doubtful on account of a fracture, we know at any rate that the height and breadth were said to have been the same. In the Bible, however, the breadth is given as fifty cubits, whereas the height is stated to be thirty. The Bible, moreover, omits all reference to the fear of Xisuthros that he will be mocked at by the people, and it seems to exclude the admission of slaves and handmaids within the ark, as well as of property in gold and silver. The door, furthermore, which was closed by Xisuthros himself according to the Baby lonian version, was closed by God according to the "Jehovist." Genesis, also, knows nothing of a pilot, Il6 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. while the Babylonian poet on his side knows nothing of a breaking up of " the fountains of the great deep." He differs, too, from both the "Elohist" and the " Jehovist " as to the length of time the flood lasted, as well as in the fact that the ship of Xisuthros rested on the summit of the mountain of Nizir, the modern Rowandiz, not upon the mountains of Ararat. Here, however, there is probably no real discrepancy. Nizir might easily be regarded as an easterly pro longation of the Kurdish mountains, the Ararat of Scripture and of the Assyrian inscriptions, which are called Gordyaean in the account of the deluge given by the Chaldaean historian Berossos. But in the description of the sending forth of the birds the variations are considerable. The swallow is not mentioned in Genesis or the olive leaf by the Babylonian writer. In fact instead of sending forth a swallow Noah sends forth the dove a second time, while it is the dove and not the raven which an nounces that the earth is dry. Lastly the covenant of which the rainbow was the token appears only in the Scriptural narrative, where, moreover, it is Enoch and not Noah who " did not see death." x The conclusions we ought to draw from all this seem pretty clear. On the one hand, the " Elohistic " and "Jehovistic" narratives must alike be ascribed to the same Babylonian source ; we cannot say of the one that it is Palestinian in its origin, and of the other that it was copied, or rather paraphrased, from the cuneiform tablets in the age of the Babylonian Exile. On the other hand, both narratives can be 1 We must not forget, however, that it is said of Noah as well as of Enoch that " he walked with God " (Gen. vi. 9, v. 24). THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN GENESIS. 117 called Babylonian in origin only in so far as their setting is concerned ; the mode in which the materials have been treated, the spirit which pervades them, is purely Hebraic. Both, too, are coloured as it were by the geographical position of Palestine. In both alike it is an ark and not a ship that is spoken of, and while the " Elohist " refers to the "gopher wood" of which the ark was made, the " Jehovist " states it was an olive leaf which was brought back by the dove. The vegetation is that of Palestine rather than of Babylonia. Even in the season of the year at which the flood took place according to Genesis we may trace a Palestinian colouring. In Babylonia it was assigned to Sebat, the eleventh month of the " curse of rain " as it was called, which would corre spond to our February. In Palestine, however, the first rains are over before February, and the " latter rains " have not yet begun ; we are not surprised, therefore, at finding that the flood of Noah com menced on the seventeenth day of the second month, that is to say at the beginning of November. It must be granted, then, that the Biblical narrative of the flood, whether told by the " Elohist " or by the "Jehovist," has much which is similar to the Babylonian account. Can we go further and say that it is derived from the Babylonian version of it discovered by Mr. George Smith ? This cannot be maintained. We know that there were several ver sions of the story in Babylonia, and though the one we possess may have been the most popular, it was nevertheless but one out of many. There is nothing either in the similarities or in the contrasts between the " Elohistic " narrative and the Babylonian that Il8 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. can make us suppose there was any direct relation between the two, unless it be the mention of the kopher with which the ark was pitched ; on the con trary the resemblances are of so general a character, the contrasts so much what might have been expected from the different points of view of the authors, that the probabilities are all on the other side. It is different when we turn to the "Jehovistic" narrative. Here there are three passages which even in their divergency from it seem to imply an acquaintance with the Babylonian poem. One of these is the statement that the Lord shut the door of the ark (Gen. vii. 16). This differs from the Babylonian account, according to which Xisuthros closed it himself. The final act in the drama of Noah's pre servation was due, not to his own powers, but to the God of Israel, who was the one and only author of it from first to last. The second passage is that which describes the sending forth of the birds. Now it is clear that the Babylonian version is older than the Hebrew record, and the position of the raven of Genesis seems less logical than in the Babylonian version. It was because the raven did not return that Xisuthros knew that the waters were abated ; it was to discover whether this was the case or not that it had been sent forth. In Genesis the reason for the despatch of the raven is not so clear, since it is not followed by Noah's departure from the ark. It seems like a fragment of some older building which has been incorporated into a more modern edifice, with the architecture of which it does not fully harmonise. And on account of this position of the raven, it is to the dove that the part falls of proving the sufficient THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN GENESIS. II9 fall of the waters. The dove has thus taken the place not only of the swallow but, to some extent, of the raven as well. There was, however, a reason for this. The swallow was intimately connected with the super stitions of Babylonian heathenism. From Accadian days it had been known as " the bird of destiny," and it. was doubtless on this account that it was said to have been selected by the Chaldaean hero. The raven, on the other hand, was an unclean bird, and it was not fitting that one who had been chosen from amongst all mankind to be an example of divine mercy, should be guided by it to leave the ark of his salvation. It must have been the dove, not the swallow or the raven, which had been God's instru ment in leading Noah back to the earth. The third passage is that which tells us how when Noah offered his sacrifice " the Lord smelled a sweet savour." The expression is identical with that of the Babylonian poet, and it is impossible not to believe that the language of the latter was known to the Biblical writer. But if the expression has been borrowed, it has been borrowed only in form. The Babylonian gods have been swept aside like the flies with which they were compared, and in place of them we have the One and only God of Israel, who was at once the author of the deluge and the saviour of the righteous Noah. As in the first passage, so in the third, the silent correction of Babylonian polytheism is an eloquent testimony to the writer's knowledge of the poem in which that polytheism was expressed. Let us now pass on to the tenth chapter of Genesis, " the ethnological table " as it has often been termed. The title, however, is incorrect. The 120 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. chapter is concerned, not with races, but with geography. It is, in fact, a descriptive chart of Hebrew geography, the various cities and countries of the known world being arranged in it genealogi cally in accordance with Semitic idiom. The idiom is not quite extinct even in our own day and in our own language. We still speak of a " mother-country," and our German neighbours write about their " father land." But an idiom which is exceptional with us is the rule in Semitic tongues. The " sons of Canaan " are the Canaanites, the "daughter of Jerusalem" means the inhabitants of Jerusalem. When Ezekiel says of Jerusalem that its " father was an Amorite and its mother an Hittite," he means that Amorites and Hittites had taken part either in its foundation or in its subsequent history. So, too, when we read that Sidon " the fishers' town " was " the firstborn " of Canaan, all we are to understand is that it was the earliest of Phcenician cities. We are not to look, then, to the tenth chapter of Genesis for a scientific division of mankind into their several races. We are not even to demand from it that simple and primitive division of them according to colour which we find on the walls of the tomb of a Theban prince, Rekh-ma-Ra, who lived in the time of the Eighteenth Egyptian dynasty. As a matter of fact, all the tribes and nations mentioned in the chapter belonged to the white race. Even the Negroes are not referred to, though they were well known to the Egyptians, and the black-skinned Nubians are carefully excluded from the descendants of Cush. The white race, however, is distinguished into several varieties which the ethnologist is not at THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN GENESIS. 121 present able to trace^back to a single original type. The Semitic race must be distinguished from the Aryan, and the Aryan probably from the Kelto- Libyan ; both again are separate from the Hittite with his Mongoloid features, or from the Egyptian who claims connection with the population of South ern Arabia. But in Biblical times all these various sub-races were mingled together in that square of the earth's surface which constituted the known world to the civilised peoples of the East. It was a very important square of the earth's surface, comparatively small though it may have been, where the chief acts of the drama of human history have been played, and of whose culture we are the heirs. It was a square, too, which has witnessed the rise and growth of the civilisation which mainly has an interest for us ; it is only the civilisations of India, of China, of Peru and Central America which lie outside it. In the tenth chapter of Genesis this square is divided into three zones, a northern, a central, and a southern.1 The northern zone is represented by Japhet, the central zone by Shem, the southern zone by Ham. In one direction, however, along the coast of Palestine, Egyptian conquest caused the southern zone to be extended into the zone of the centre. In the age of the Tel el-Amarna tablets Kinakhkhi or Canaan was an Egyptian province, and was therefore necessarily grouped along with Mizraimor Egypt. It was like a tongue of land thrust forward into territory that belonged to Aram and Eber. How purely geographical the table is may be seen from the list of peoples who are all alike declared to 1 See my " Races of the Old Testament," pp. 41 sqq. 122 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. be the children of Canaan. The Semitic Zidonian, the Mongoloid Hittite invader from the far north, the Amorite with his fair hair and blue eyes, are all associated together under a common title. But this common title made them sons of Canaan in a geograph ical and not an ethnological sense. It was because the Hittite had established himself at Kadesh on the Orontes, while the Amorite occupied the highlands, that they were classed along with the Semite. The ethnical relation of the latter was really with the sons of Cush on the one side, and the sons of Shem on the other. But among the sons of Shem also there is one name, that of Elam, which is ethnologically out of place. Geographically, however, Elam was situated in the central zone, and needed to be classified accord ingly. The Elamites, therefore, who were Semites neither in blood nor in speech, are grouped with Assyrians and Aramaeans. There was one people whom modern discovery has shown to have belonged to two geographical zones. The Sabaean kingdom, like that of Ma'in which pre ceded it, extended from the extreme south to the extreme north of the Arabian peninsula. There were Sabaeans in Yemen, but there were also Sabaeans whose territory lay not far distant from that of the Philistines. Accordingly we find that Sheba, like the desert land of Havilah, is mentioned twice. Sheba and Havilah are not only sons of Cush and so natives of the southern zone, they are also sons of Shem in the central zone. There is, however, a passage in the chapter which disturbs its orderly arrangement. This is the pas- THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN GENESIS. 1 23 sage which describes the rise of the kingdom of Nimrod. While elsewhere we have to do only with tribes or cities, here it is an individual man who is suddenly brought before us. His history, moreover, violates the whole plan upon which the chapter is based. He is introduced into the middle of the list of nations belonging to the southern zone, although his kingdom formed a portion of the zone of Shem. Asshur, moreover, who is mentioned in his right place in a later verse (22), is here associated with the south ern nations ofthe known world. Like Babylonia, he has been shifted from the central zone to the southern world of Cush. It is plain, therefore, that the passage which relates to Nimrod can have had no place in the original design of the tenth chapter. It is an interpolation, but an interpolation which seemed to be justified, partly by the fact that Nimrod was a son of " Cush," partly by the geographical details which the reference to his kingdom occasioned. Nevertheless the justifi cation of the insertion of the passage makes it none the less an interpolation, and we shall therefore defer considering it until the rest of the chapter has been examined. There are few other parts of the Old Testament on which so much light has been shed by oriental re search. It is more especially the cuneiform records which have enabled us to identify the tribes and places named in the chapter, and to correct the erroneous guesses of past days. Gomer, the first name which confronts us, has ceased to be the occa sion of the wild hypotheses it was to former com mentators. Thanks to the Assyrian monuments, it 124 THE HIGHER -CRITICISM. has fallen into its proper place in geography and history. The Hebrew Gomer appears in Assyrian under the form of Gimirra. The Gimirra were the Kim merians of Herodotos, who, according to the Greek writer, had been driven by the Scyths from their original seats on the Dniester and the Sea of Azof.1 They first settled north of the Araxes, from whence their name had made its way through an atmosphere of myth to the poets of Greece (Od. xi. 14). Their stay here, however, was not long, and they soon descended upon the rich kingdoms and states ofthe south. Sweeping through Ararat they first attempted to enter Assyria, which was governed at the time by Esar-haddon. He met them on the northern frontier of his empire (B.C. 677), and in a decisive battle defeated them so signally that they were forced to turn westward into Asia Minor. Here they com mitted depredations the memory of which lasted for years. The Greek colony of Sin6pe was captured and destroyed, city after city fell before them, and they finally penetrated into the kingdom of Lydia, where Gyges had lately founded a new dynasty. Gyges, called Gugu in the cuneiform texts, Gog by Ezekiel, sent an embassy to Nineveh in the hope that the powerful monarch of Assyria would lend him aid against his adversaries. It was some time before an interpreter could be found who could understand the strange language of the ambassadors, and it would seem that after all Assur-bani-pal, who had succeeded Esar-haddon on the throne, accepted the presents and flattering messages of Gyges but did not send him 1 Hdt. i. 15, 104, iv. 11, 12. THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN GENESIS. 1 25 troops. At all events not long afterwards Gyges fell in battle against the Kimmerians, and his head was carried off in triumph by the victors. In this the Assyrian monarch saw a punishment sent by the gods upon Gyges for the part he had taken in assisting the revolt of Egypt from Assyria, and he tells us that it was only when Ardys, the son and successor of Gyges, had again returned to allegiance, that victory was granted him over the Kimmerian foe. However this may have been, the fact remains that the Kimmerians were extirpated or enslaved in Lydia by Ardys, and Asia Minor was not troubled again by them. The appearance of Gomer on the horizon of civilised Asia was thus of but short continuance. Magog is associated with Gomer in Genesis, with Gog also in the Book of Ezekiel (xxxviii. 2, xxxix. 6). Gog is described by the prophet as belonging to "the land of Magog," the situation of which is defined by its proximity to " the isles " of the JEgean. It is clear that Lydia is meant, and that by Magog we must understand " the land of Gog." The philo logical explanation of the name is more obscure. Magog may be a contraction of the Assyrian Mat Gugi "the land of Gog," or in the first syllable we may have the Lydian word for "country." We are told that this was moys, to which Mai-onia, the old name of Lydia, has been supposed to be akin. Whatever be the explanation, Magog was not the only country we know of, in the name of which the initial Ma appears as a separable prefix. There was another northern region mentioned in the Assyrian inscriptions which is termed indifferently Ma-zamua and Zamua. In Ezekiel Gyges of Lydia has become the repre- 126 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. sentative of the power which had its seat in Asia Minor, and was already threatening the Semitic popu lations of the south. Meshech and Tubal had been for many centuries the two nations of Asia Minor who had been in hostile contact with Assyria ; the Lydian dynasty which had now risen to the west of them was about to include them in its empire and give them a strength they had never possessed before. Eastward the Lydian empire stretched to the Halys, where it met the outposts of the Median monarch ; westward it had incorporated into its army the wretched relics ofthe once formidable Kimmerians. Lydia or Magog thus stood midway between Gomer and the Mede. This is precisely the position in which Magog is placed in the tenth chapter of Genesis. Gomer, the first of Japhet's sons, is followed by Magog, and Magog is followed by Madai. We first hear of the Madai upon the Assyrian monuments about B.C. 840, when they are called Amada and found by the Assyrian army in Media Atropat£ne. The name is written Mada in an inscription of Rimmon-nirari III. (B.C. 810 — 781), and from this time forward is referred to frequently. The Mada, in fact, were the Kurdish tribes who lived eastward of Assyria, and whose terri tory extended as far as the Caspian Sea. They were for the most part Indo-European in language and Aryan in descent, and lived like the Greeks in small states, each of which obeyed a " city-lord " of its own. It was a combination of the Median tribes with the king of the Manda or " nomads " which brought about the rise of the Median empire, and paved the way for the empire of Cyrus. But the Lydian not only stood midway between THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN GENESIS. 1 27 the Kimmerian and the Mede, he also stood midway between the Greek world and the populations of Asia Minor east of the Halys. He was the inter mediary who carried to the West the traditions and culture of Asia Minor. From early days Greeks had been settled in the islands of the iEgean Sea and on the western coasts ofthe adjoining continent. Stories were told of maritime expeditions under the princes of Mykenae which had sailed in old times to Asia, and had beleaguered for ten long years the city of Troy. Alexander, who had wooed the fair Helen, it was said, had brought rich embroideries from Sidon, and Menelaos the Spartan king had sought her at the court of the Egyptian monarch, while in still earlier days Pelops the son of the Lydian Tantalos had fled to Greece with the golden treasure of his father's kingdom. Modern excavation has shown that there was truth at the bottom of all these tales. The peculiar pottery found at Mykenae and Tiryns and other " prehistoric " sites in Greece has been found again in Egypt among the ruined dwellings and in the tombs of northern strangers who had lived there in the time of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth dynasties. At Myk6nae, on the other hand, the products of Egyptian skill have been discovered — fragments of porcelain, engraved ostrich-eggs, and bronze daggers inlaid in gold with scenes of life in the Egyptian Delta. In Egypt and the East the Greek was known as the " Ionian." In the cuneiform inscriptions Cyprus is called the island of Yavna or "the Ionians," and as far back as the age of the Fifth and Sixth Egyptian dynasties, in the texts which cover the walls of 128 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. certain pyramids, the Mediterranean is entitled " the circle which surrounds the Huinivu." Huinivu, as we know from the famous Rosetta Stone, was the Egyptian form ofthe word "Ionian," and the face of a " Huinivu " depicted on the walls of Karnak among the northern prisoners of Hor-m-hib is a typical Greek face of the classical period. In looking at it we find ourselves looking at the type which Pheidias and his disciples impressed upon stone.1 Apart from the old Egyptian name of the Mediter ranean, the earliest mention of Javan the " Ionian " is in one of the tablets of Tel el-Amarna. Here, the writer, the governor of the Phoenician city of Gebal, states that it has been reported to the Egyptian king that " the Ionian " is on a mission to the country of Tyre.2 The name of the " Ionian " is written Yivana, which is the exact counterpart in Assyrian of the Hebrew Yavan (Javan). Already, therefore, before the birth of Moses, not only was the name of the " Ionian " well known in Egypt, but there were Ionians in the service of the Pharaoh who might be despatched to Palestine on the business of the king. It was doubtless through the Greeks of Cyprus that the name of the " Ionians " first became familiar to the people of Western Asia. It is possible that S argon of Accad at the very dawn of history had crossed to Cyprus ; at all events when he erected an image of himself on the shores of the Phcenician coast he would have seen the outline of the island on the horizon, and General di Cesnola obtained 1 See the illustration on p. 156 of my "Races of the Old Testament." 2 See above, p. 20. THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN GENESIS. 1 29 there a Babylonian cylinder the original possessor of which calls himself "a worshipper" of Sargon's son and successor " the deified Naram-Sin." In the days of the Eighteenth Egyptian dynasty the island was known as Asi, and it was one ofthe subject provinces which sent tribute to the Pharaoh. On its eastern coast lived the Zakkur, as we have recently been informed by a papyrus in the possession of M. Golenischeff.1 They were allies of the Shardana or Sardinians, of the Shakalsh or Siculians, of the Aqaiush and of the Libyans in a great invasion of Egypt that occurred in the reign of Meneptah II., the Pharaoh of the Exodus, and a century later they again took part in another invasion in which the populations of "the North" united with the Hittites and Philistines and the king of Aram- Naharaim in attacking the valley of the Nile. In this second invasion the Daanau or Danaans took the place of the Aqaiush, in whom we must recognise the Achaeans of Greek history. The Achaeans of the Egyptian monuments, however, did not occupy the same portion of the Greek world as the Achaeans of Homer. They were near neighbours of the Zakkur, and must consequently have lived in Cyprus. The Zakkur were the Teukrians, the ruling tribe at Salamis, and in the Aqaiush we may therefore see 1 The papyrus gives an account of an embassy sent by Hir- Hor of Egypt to Zakar-Baal king of Gebal. On their way to the latter city the Egyptians stopped for the sake of obtaining certain kinds of wood at Dela (?) on the coast of the Zakkur in "the sea of Khalu." As the sea of Khalu was the north-eastern basin of the Mediterranean, the geographical position of the Zakkur is fixed. See my " Races of the Old Testament," p. 152. K 130 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. the " Achaeans " of the north-eastern coast of the island.1 i The tenth chapter of Genesis says nothing of either Achaeans or Teukrians. On the contrary, the sons of Javan whom it enumerates are " Elishah and Tarshish, Kittim and Rodanim." In Elishah we probably have the name of Hellas, in Rodanim that of the Rhodians. Kittim is Kition in Cyprus, the site of which is now occupied by Larnaka. Kittim was of Phoenician foundation, but it was surrounded by Greek colonists, and eventually passed into their hands. Tarshish was called Tartessos by the Greeks. It formed the western limit of the Mediterranean, and stood not far from the modern Gibraltar. From early times it had been visited by Phcenician merchants, and the ships that traded to it were known as the " ships of Tarshish." So numerous were they that the name became synonymous with trading ships generally, whatever might be their destination. A merchantman could be termed a " ship of Tarshish," even though its voyages were in the Indian seas. Tubal and Meshech, the Tabali and Muska of the Assyrian " monuments, were the representatives of Eastern Asia Minor. Their territory originally ex tended far to the south. In the time of Sargon and Sennacherib that of the Tabali adjoined Cilicia, while the Muska inhabited the highlands to the east of them, where they were in contact with Melit£ne' and the Hittites. In later days, however, both Tubal and Meshech had retreated to the north, and the classical geographers place the Tibareni and the Moschians at no great distance from the Black Sea. 1 See Strabo, p. 682. THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN GENESIS. 131 The name of Tiras mentioned with that of Meshech is still enveloped in obscurity So also are the names of Riphath and Togarmah, since Prof. Friedrich Delitzsch's identification of the latter with the Til- Garimmi of the cuneiform inscriptions in Melitene is not very probable. For Ashkenaz, however, it would seem that we must look to the east. It is true that Ashkenaz is called a son of Gomer, but the Kim merians first entered Asia on the north-eastern frontier of Assyria, and certain texts which relate to the closing days of the Assyrian monarchy speak of them as in alliance with the Medes and the Manna, and thus show that it was only a portion of the nation which made its way into Asia Minor. More over the geographical position of Ashkenaz is settled for us by the Book of Jeremiah. Here (li. 27, 28) " the kingdoms of Ararat, Minni, and Ashkenaz " are summoned to join " the kings of the Medes " in overthrowing the Babylonian power. The Minni, called Manna by the Assyrians, lived on the south eastern frontier of Ararat, and Ashkenaz consequently must have occupied the country which intervened between the Manna and the Mada. It is just here that the inscriptions of Sargon place the people of Asguza. In Asguza, therefore, it would appear that we should recognise the Ashkenaz of Scripture. Such, then, according to the tenth chapter of Genesis, were the chief nations of the northern zone of the known world. It was by them that " the isles of the Gentiles " were peopled in the north and in the west. The nations ofthe southern zone are next enumer ated. The list is headed by Cush in the extreme south. 132 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. The name of Cush was derived from Egypt. To the Egyptians Kash denoted the districts south of the First Cataract, inhabited for the most part by races of a Nubian origin. After their conquest by the kings of the Eighteenth dynasty, the eldest son of the Pharaoh took the title of " Prince of Kash," a title analogous to that of " Prince of Wales " borne by the eldest son ofthe reigning sovereign of England. It was to Kash that the surviving members of the Twentieth dynasty fled after the successful usurpation of the crown by another line of princes, and at Napata, under the shadow of the holy mountain, Gebel Barkal, they founded a kingdom, modelled in every respect upon that of- Egypt. A temple was built similar to that at Karnak, and the kings claimed to be high-priests of Anion as well as rulers of the country. For several centuries the language and customs of Egypt continued to prevail, but gradually the Egyptian emigrants lost the purity of their blood, and the court became more and more barbarised. When Egypt was conquered by the Ethiopian Sabako or So, the royal names had ceased to be Egyptian. The name of Subako, like that of his second successor, Tirhakah, is Nubian rather than Egyptian. Kash was the Ethiopia of the classical geographers, and in the tablets of Tel el-Amarna it is called Ka'si. In the later Assyrian inscriptions the name is written Ku'si, and it is this form of the name which we find in the Old Testament. In the Old Testament, however, the name has a much wider signification than it had either in Egypt or in Assyria. It embraces not only the African Kash of the Egyptian monuments, but also the southern coasts of Arabia. Like the land of THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN GENESIS. 1 33 Pun of the Egyptian inscriptions, it thus includes the regions on either side of the Red Sea. There was a reason for this. From early times emigrants had come from Southern Arabia and founded colonies on the opposite coasts of Africa. The intercourse between the two sides of the Straits of Bab el-Mandeb had always been active. It had produced a mixed population on either side, and the tribal names of Southern Arabia were met with again in Africa. It was often difficult to distinguish between the Arabian and the African Cush. The Cushite tribes, however, mentioned in Genesis belonged to Arabia. Seba and Sheba seem to be but two different forms of the same name, the one denoting the kingdom of Saba in the south of the peninsula, the other the Sabaean colonies in the north. Havilah we have already had to speak of; Dedan was the leading tribe whose head-quarters were in the north in the neighbourhood of Teima, and which carried the spiceries of the southern coast to the populations of Palestine. Next to Cush, as we descend the Nile, comes Miz- raim, "the two Matsors." Matsor was the Hebrew name of the great fortification which ran across the isthmus of Suez and protected Egypt from the attacks of its eastern neighbours. The name served also to denote the country which lay behind the line of forts, and accordingly we find it used of the Delta in more than one passage of the Old Testament. Thus in Isaiah xix. 6 we read that "the Nile-arms of Matsor shall be emptied and dried up," and in xxxvii. 25 Sennacherib declares that he has "dried up all the Nile-arms of Matsor," where the Authorised 134 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. Version has misunderstood the sense in both passages. In the Tel el-Amarna tablets Matsor appears as Mitsir, a form of the name which survived in Baby lonia, though in Assyria it was changed into Mutsur in consequence of its confusion with another Mutsur which was the name of a district to the north-east of Nineveh. In the cuneiform inscriptions Mitsir or Mutsur represents the whole of Egypt. In the Old Testa ment, however, when Egypt is referred to as a whole the dual Mizraim is more correctly used. From the beginning of history, in fact, Egypt had been a dual country. The Pharaohs were kings of " the two lands," and wore the separate crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt. Pathros, or Pa-to-ris " the land of the south" (Isaiah xi. n), called Paturissu in the cuneiform texts, was as distinct from Matsor as England is from Scotland. It was only the united monarchy that held them together.1 The sons of Mizraim were the various nationalities who obeyed the rule of the Egyptian Pharaoh. First among them are mentioned the Ludim or Lydians. It may at first sight seem strange to find Lydians in the southern zone and reckoned among the natives of Egypt. But the inscriptions of the Assyrian king Assur-bani-pal have cleared up the mystery. We learn from them that the successful revolt of Egypt from Assyrian domination in the seventh century B.C. was due to the assistance furnished by Gyges of 1 In one of the Egyptian papyri which have been preserved to us, a scribe writing to his master complains that his orders were as difficult to understand " as the words of a man of Athu (in the Delta) talking to a man of Elephantine " (opposite Assuan). THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN GENESIS. 1 35 Lydia to the Egyptian prince Psammetichus. The soldiers with whose help Psammetichus made Egypt independent were not only Ionians and Karians, as the Greek writers assert; they had been sent from Lydia, and were Lydians by name if not by birth.1 The assistance rendered by these foreign mercenaries was not forgotten by the Egyptian kings ; they became the body-guard of the Pharaohs of the Twenty-sixth dynasty, and played an important part in the politics of the day. High in favour at court they stood next to the monarch, and accordingly it is not surprising to find them named first among the various peoples whom Mizraim "begat." The Lydian mercenaries are alluded to elsewhere in the Old Testament books. Jeremiah (xlvi. 9) describes the Egyptian army as consisting of Ethio pians, of Phutites, and of Lydians, and similarly Ezekiel (xxx. 5) prophesies that Cush and Phut and Lud shall fall by the sword along with the Egyptians. But it was not in Egypt only that Lydian mercenaries were to be found. We see from Ezekiel xxvii. 10 that they also hired their services to Tyre, and formed part of the Tyrian " men of war." The Anamim who are mentioned next after the Lydians have not yet been identified. The Lehabim, however, are the fair-haired, blue-eyed Libyans, who as. far back as the age of the Nineteenth and Twentieth dynasties had been incorporated into the Egyptian army. At one time they occupied much the same place in Egyptian history as was subsequently 1 I have during the past winter (1892-3) discovered a Lydian inscription — the first yet found — of two lines on a rock a little to the north of Silsileh in Upper Egypt. 136 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. occupied by the Lydians, and it is probable that the Twenty-second dynasty, that of Shishak, was of Libyan extraction, and owed its rise to power to the influence of the Libyan troops. In the Naphtuhim it is possible that we should recognise the people of Napata, the capital of Cush ; the Pathrusim are the inhabitants of Pathros or Southern Egypt ; and the Casluhim1 still remain as obscure as the Anamim. Who the Caphtorim were has been explained by Prof. Ebers. Kaft was the Egyptian name of Phoenicia, and in the Caphtorim we must see an Egyptian Kaft-ur or " Greater Phoenicia," a title given to the coast-land of the Delta, which was more thickly peopled by Phcenician colonists than the mother-country itself. The refer ence to the Philistines has been misplaced. Other passages in the Old Testament make it clear that their original home was among the Caphtorim and not among the Casluhim. Jeremiah (xlvii. 4) de scribes them as "the remnant of the country of Caphtor," and in Amos (ix. 7) it is said that they had been brought from Caphtor.1 The geographical position of Phut, who is named next to Mizraim, has not yet been cleared up. All we can say with certainty is that the name stands midway between those of Mizraim and of Canaan, and ought therefore to be looked for on the eastern frontier of Egypt. It is only quite recently that the name has been met with on an ancient monument. A fragment of the annals of Nebuchadrezzar in which his campaign against Egypt is narrated2 1 See Note at end of chapter, p. 173. 2 Published by Dr. Strassmaier in his " Babylonische Texte," Pt. 6, No. 329, and translated by me in the Academy. THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN GENESIS. 1 37 states that in his thirty-seventh year he marched against " Egypt to make war [and battle with Amajsis king of Egypt," and that in the course of his invasion he defeated " the soldiers of the city of Pudhu-yavan " or Phut of the Ionians, "a distant land which is within the sea." We may accordingly conclude that Phut was inhabited by Ionian Greeks ; it may therefore have been Pelusium or some other settlement of the Greek mercenaries in Egypt. That Canaan should be reckoned along with Mizraim is natural enough. It had once been an Egyptian province, and the Tel el-Amarna tablets have shown us how close were the bonds which at that time united it with the monarchy on the Nile. In the tablets the name appears as Kinakhkhi, and is applied to the coast-land of Phoenicia as distinguished from "the land of the Amorites" in the highlands north of Mount Hermon. The name, indeed, as has often been pointed out, signifies " the lowlands," and it must have been long after it was first given that it came to be extended to the interior of Palestine. Like the name of Palestine itself, which originally denoted the territory of the Philistine cities, it grew in meaning and application in the course of centuries. In the tenth chapter of Genesis it is already used in its widest sense. Canaan, we are told, "begat Sidon his first-born " on the sea-coast, and then other tribes and nations whose seats were inland. Heth, the Hittite, is included among the children of Canaan, not so much because of the Hittite tribe which had settled at Hebron as because Kadesh on the Orontes, " in the land of the Amorites," had become the southern capital of the Hittite invader 138 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. before the age of the Exodus. In the time of the Tel cl-Amarna tablets the Hittites were already threatening the Egyptian province of Syria. Urgent ' requests for troops were sent to the Pharaoh by his governors in the north, and as the years passed on the requests became more and more frequent and pressing. At length we hear that the Hittite forces had joined those of Babylonia and Aram-Naharaim, and that Phoenicia itself was in danger of invasion. It would seem that no answer was returned to these appeals for help. The Egyptian Pharaoh was sur rounded by enemies at home, and it was not long before the Egyptian empire fell amid the troubles of civil war. When light falls once more upon the scene with the rise of the Nineteenth dynasty, we find the Hittites in possession of Kadesh, from which all the power of Ramses II. was unable to dislodge them. There is a reason for coupling the Jebusite with the Hittite on the one hand and with the Amorite on the other. Ezekiel (xvi. 3, 45) tells us that the "father" of Jerusalem "was an Amorite," and its " mother an Hittite." At the period of the Israelitish conquest of Canaan, Jerusalem was in the hands of the Jebusites, and it is probable, therefore, that we must look upon them as a mixed tribe, partly Hittite and partly Amorite in descent. The Hittite and Amorite, however, were not only different in nationality, they were also different in race. What the Amorites were like we may see upon the monuments of Egypt. Here they are depicted as members of the blond race, tall of stature, with fair skins, light hair, and blue eyes. THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN GENESIS. 1 39 They have, in fact, all the characteristics of that portion of the white race to which the ancient Libyans belonged, and to which their modern de scendants in Algeria or Morocco belong to-day. The characteristics are specially those which we are ac customed to associate with the so-called " Red Kelt," and it has been proposed to call the race which was distinguished by them " Kelto-Libyan." The foot steps of this race are marked by megalithic monu ments, tombs and cairns formed of large blocks of stone over which earth or other stones have been afterwards piled. Now it is noticeable that these same megalithic structures are met with on either side of the Jordan in the very districts where the Bible and the Egyptian texts place the Amorites, and it is therefore reasonable to suppose that as in Northern Africa they were the burial-places of the Libyan, so too in Syria they were the burial-places of the Amorite. The old white race of Palestine has survived to the present day, and travellers may still see individuals there who have all the charac teristic features of the Amorites of the Egyptian monuments.1 The modern Kabyle of Algeria, the descendant of the ancient Libyan, is dolichocephalic or long-headed, like the skeletons found in the old cairns and cromlechs of the country. We may accordingly con clude that the Amorite, with whom in other respects he claims physiological connection, was also long headed. He was thus a complete contrast to the Hittite, whose portraits show him to have had a 1 See my article on " The White Race of Ancient Palestine " in the Expositor, vol. viii. 140 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. markedly round skull. The Hittite portraits have come to us from two different sources, whose agree ment is the best proof possible of the accuracy of each. They have been drawn, on the one hand, by the hostile hand of the Egyptians on the monuments of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth dynasties ; on the other hand we can now study them in the hieroglyphs and sculptures of the Hittites themselves. The face was distinguished by a retreating forehead and chin, and a large protrusive nose. It was, in fact, excessively ugly. That the ugliness cannot be ascribed to the malice of the Egyptian artists is shown by the native portraits, in which the general repulsiveness of the features is even more pronounced than it is in the pictures of their Egyptian enemies. The eyes were black and lozenge-shaped, the lips full, the beard scanty, the hair dark, and the skin yellow. The physiological type, in short, was that of the Mongolian, in marked contrast to the Aryan type of the blond Amorite. Like the Chinaman, the Hittite gathered the hair behind his head into a " pig-tail." It is sometimes asserted that the Hittites repre sented on the Egyptian monuments belong to two different types, one beardless, the other bearded. But the latter type is not really Hittite at all. The Hittites with whom the Egyptian Pharaohs waged their wars had conquered the territory of Semitic tribes, and they formed among them merely a dominant military caste. The Hittite prisoners, accord ingly, who served as the models of the Egyptian artist, included Semitic Aramaeans as well as Hittites of genuine descent. In Northern Syria Hittite and Aramaean were mingled together, as Hittite and THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN GENESIS. 141 Amorite were mingled in Palestine. Some of the names of the commanders of the Hittite forces are of Semitic origin, and the commanders who bore them were doubtless Semitic in race. The Hittites had originally occupied the eastern ranges of the Taurus. Sir Charles Wilson has found their physiological type still surviving among the peasantry of Kappadokia. On the southern side of the Taurus they came into contact with Babylonian culture in the early days before the rise of the Assy rian kingdom. They adopted the general principles of Babylonian civilisation and art, modifying them in accordance with their own habits and genius. At a later period, after the Egyptian wars, their art was still further modified by contact with Egypt, and at a yet later age by the influence of Assyria. But whatever its origin and the influences to which it submitted, it retained to the last its own peculiar characteristics, and handed them on to the nations of Western Asia Minor. It holds as independent a place in the history of art as does the art of Egypt, of Assyria, or of Phoenicia.1 The tablets of Tel el-Amarna enable us to trace the southern progress of Hittite invasion. As the power of Egypt grew weaker, the Hittites began to threaten the northern frontiers of the empire. Tunip, now Tennib, to the west of Aleppo, was the first to fall of the Egyptian fortresses in Northern Syria, and 1 See W. Wright : " Empire of the Hittites," 2nd edition, 1886; Perrot and- Chiprez : "Histoire de l'Art," vol. iv., trans lated into English under the title of " A History of Ancient Art in. Sardinia, Judaea, Syria, and Asia Minor," and my own " Hittites" (Religious Tract Society, if 142 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. from this time forward the resistance made to the Hittite invader seems to have been but slight.1 We soon hear of the Hittites joining with the Babylo nians, the forces of Aram-Naharaim and the Bedawin, in driving the Egyptian governors out of the land of the Amorites, and before the rise of the Nineteenth Egyptian dynasty they had placed their southern capital in the old sacred Semitic city of Kadesh, on the Lake of Horns. Here, however, their further progress was at length checked. Egyptian armies once more marched into Palestine, and twenty years of conflict exhausted both the Hittites of Kadesh and their Egyptian foes. A treaty was made between Ramses II., the Pharaoh of the Oppression, and "the great king of the Hittites," and from this time forward the name of the Hittite fades out of the annals of Egypt. The Hittite dress was as characteristic as the Hit tite face. It was distinguished by the use of a boot with upturned ends, such as is still worn by the mountaineers of Asia Minor and Greece. The boot is in fact a snow-shoe, and betrays the northern origin of its wearers, just as the use of a similar shoe betrays the northern origin of the modern Turk. As we learn from the sculptures of the Ramesseum at Thebes, the Hittites of Kadesh still clung to the 1 Thus the Egyptian general Aziru or Ezer writes to Dudu, the vizier of the Pharaoh : " O my lord, the king of the land of the Hittites has marched into the country of Nukhasse (in Northern Syria), but has not yet conquered the cities there." In a later letter to his brother, he says : " The king of the Hittites is staying in the country of Nukhasse, and I am afraid of him and have defended myself. He ascends to Phoenicia, and if the city of Tunip falls he will be (close at hand)." This was about 1380 B.C. THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT, IN GENESIS. 143 native boot even in the hot valleys of Syria, where it was eminently unsuitable. An ancestral dress seems even more difficult to discard than an ancestral language. The monuments of Egypt know only of Hittites in Syria, the records of the Assyrian monarchs know of them only in the neighbourhood of Carchemish, the cuneiform inscriptions of the kings of Ararat know of them only in the Taurus. Their own monu ments are scattered over Asia Minor and Syria as far south as Hamath. In the Bible also we have references to these northern Hittites. It was for them that the merchants of Solomon exported horses and chariots from Egypt (1 Kings x. 29), and it was they whom the Syrian besiegers of Samaria believed to have been '"hired" by the Israelitish king (2 Kings vii. 6). From the Vatican manuscript of the Septuagint, again, we gather that the true reading of the mysterious " land of Tahtim-Hodshi," in 2 Samuel xxiv. 6, is "the Hittites of Kadesh," from which we may conclude that Kadesh was still in Hittite hands in the age of David. But besides these northern Hittites, the Bible also knows of another tribe of Hittites, in the extreme south of Palestine, at the ancient sanctuary of Hebron. We hear of them in Genesis, as well as in other parts of the Pentateuch. Hebron is described in one pas sage as Amorite, in another passage as Hittite, though the Amorites and Hittites are carefully distinguished from one another wherever they are mentioned together. The " higher criticism " has thrown doubt on the historical character of the Hittites of Hebron. But 144 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. the existence of Hittites in Southern Palestine is certified by Ezekiel (xvi. 3), who assigns to Jeru salem a Hittite and an Amorite parentage. More over, what Mr. Tomkins has called the "dovetailing" of the Hittites and the Amorites in the south, is exactly analogous to their "dovetailing" in the north. If Hebron and Jerusalem were Amorite as well as Hittite, so too was Kadesh on the Orontes. Furthermore, the Egyptian monuments afford a curious piece of testimony on behalf of the Biblical statements. Among the prisoners of Ramses II. represented on the walls of Karnak are natives of Ashkelon, whose features and mode of wearing the hair are Hittite. The contrast between their type and that of the inhabitants of other Philistine cities is very striking ; they have, in fact, nothing in com mon. Here then we have contemporaneous evidence of a very unmistakable character to the existence of the Hittite race in Southern Palestine. How they came to be there is another question, which we have at present no means of deciding. It is sufficient to know that the accuracy of the Biblical narrative has been fully vindicated by archaeological research.1 We must now return to the list of the descendants of Canaan. The Girgasite whose name follows that 1 See my "Races of the Old Testament," pp. 127, 132, where an illustration is given of the monument in question. The later Assyrian custom of extending the name " Hittite " to the whole of Syria and Palestine has of course no bearing on the question. Shalmaneser II. (B.C. 851) on the Black Obelisk (line 61) even includes the kings of Israel, Arabia and Ammon among " the kings of the country of the Hittites." This incorrect extension of the name may, however, have influenced the use of it in the tenth chapter of Genesis. THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN GENESIS. 145 of the Amorite has not yet been identified with cer tainty. But it is possible that Chabas was right in seeing in the Girgasite of Scripture the Qarqish of the Egyptian monuments. In the famous poem of Pen- taur, a sort of Homeric poem on the valiant deeds of Ramses II., "the country of Qarqish" is twice mentioned, once immediately before the name of Carchemish, and once after that of Iliu'na or Ilion. The initial syllable in the name is written like that in the name of Carchemish, which is spelt " Qar " in Egyptian, " Gar" in Assyrian, and " Car " in Hebrew, and it is worth noting that the Assyrian inscriptions know of another local name in the same part of the world which also commences with the same syllable, the district in which Damascus stood being called by them " Gar-Emerisu." The Hivite was the " villager," the fellah of modern Egypt, who cultivated the soil, and was distinguished from the inhabitant of the town. The name was specially applied to the country population of Northern Palestine ; the " Hivite " of Genesis xxxvi. 2, whose grand-daughter was married by Esau, should be cor rected into "Horite," as we learn from the succeeding verses of the chapter. The generic name " Hivite " is followed by five geographical ones. Arka, Sin, Arvad and Zemar were cities of Northern Phoenicia, all of which except Arvad stood a little inland, while Hamath lay to the north of Kadesh, on the river Orontes. Sin is referred to by Tiglath-pileser III.; Arka, Arvad and Zemar are mentioned repeatedly in the tablets of Tel el- Amarna. Zemar was at that time an important fortress of the Egyptian Pharaoh, and it is said to 146 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. be in a "strong" position like the nest of a bird. Arvad was joining the enemies of Egypt with its ships, and Arka is stated in one despatch to have been already captured by the foe. We hear of all three cities in the later Assyrian inscriptions, and Zemar was still sufficiently important to be laid under tribute as a separate state. In classical times the three cities were known as Arke, Arados and Simyra ; they are now represented by Tell 'Arka, Ruad and Sumra. The catalogue of Phoenician cities is remarkable. Of those of Southern Phoenicia Sidon alone is named. No notice is taken even of Tyre, whose wealth is already celebrated in the Tel el-Amarna tablets, or of the holy city of Gebal. On the other hand, the Northern Phcenician cities are carefully enumerated, including the obscure and unimportant Sin. It is difficult to resist the conviction that the larger part of the list of the sons of Canaan has been derived from a northern source. Shem is the representative of the central zone of the known world. His children were the Elamites, who belonged to a round-headed and prognathous race and spoke an agglutinative language ; the Semitic Assyrians and Aramaeans ; Arphaxad, whose name contains that of Chesed or the Babylonians ; and the enigmatical Lud. What Lud can be it is difficult to say ; all that is certain is that the reading is corrupt. I have elsewhere suggested that it was originally Nod, that land of the " nomads " on the east of Baby lonia, where the Manda of the cuneiform inscriptions had their home. The Aramaean territory was a wide one. It extended northwards to Mesopotamia and Syria, where Aramaean tribes occupied the two banks THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN GENESIS. 1 47 of the Euphrates, and southwards to the shores of the Persian Gulf. Wandering Aramaean tribes like the Pekod (Jer. 1. 21) encamped in the Babylonian plain, the Semites of Syria whose cities were taken by the Hittites were of Aramaean origin, and in the south west the Nabathaeans who established themselves at Petra also belonged to the Aramaean stock. Among the four sons of Aram whose names are given in the tenth chapter of Genesis, the situation of Mash has been fixed by the cuneiform texts. The name recurs under the form of Mesha in the thirtieth verse of the chapter, and denoted the southern part of the desert which lay between Syria and the Euphrates. Another list of the Aramaean tribes is found in Gen. xxii. 21, 22, where it is rather the northern tribes than the southern ones who are enumerated. First among them come Khazo and Buz, the Khazu and Bazu of the Assyrian inscriptions, who lived to the south of the Hauran ; Bazu being described by Esar-haddon as " a distant country," " a desert- land," " a place of thirst," and Khazu as a mountain ous region. Chesed in the second list takes the place of Arphaxad (Arpha-Chesed) ; while Uz, written Huz in the Authorised Version, is called the first-born of Nahor. Aram himself, instead of being the father of Uz, becomes his nephew.1 1 The four tribes who traced their descent to the concubine of Nahor (Gen. xxii. 24) represented the tribes of mixed Aramaic and Canaanite or Amorite origin on the northern frontier of Palestine. The situation of Maachah has long been known, and Thahash is the Takhis of the Egyptian texts, in which the city of Kadesh on the Orontes was situated. It was in this district that the cairn of Gilead stood, the dividing line between the dialects of Aram and Canaan (Gen. xxxi. 47). 148 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. With the descendants of Shem the geographical table of the tenth chapter of Genesis comes to an end. The three zones of the world, so far as it was known, have been marked off one from another, and their leading nations and cities have been described. This threefold division of the world seems to have been due neither to Egyptian nor to Babylonian influence. The Egyptians divided mankind into four races and the world into four regions, while its population was separated into nine chief nations. In Babylonia from the earliest times the world was similarly divided into four regions, the centre of which was occupied by Babylonia itself. In the threefold division of Genesis, therefore, we should probably see a geographical conception of native origin. The harmony of this conception, as has been said, is marred by the introduction of an episode which once more refers us to Babylonia. The mention of the African and South Arabian Cush has served as an occasion for the mention of the Babylonian hero Nimrod. But Nimrod stands on a wholly different footing from the names with which he is associated. They are geographical expressions ; he is a living man.. Nor was the Cush of whom he is called the son the same as the Cush who was the son of Ham. Like the Cush of another passage relating to Babylonia (Gen. ii. 13), the Cush from whom Nimrod sprang were the Kassite conquerors of Chaldaea. It has already been noticed that the Kassites gave a dynasty to Babylonia which lasted for 576 years (B.C. 1806— 1230). The fact that the rulers of the country were Kassites by race, and that their army largely consisted of Kassite troops, caused the neigh- THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN GENESIS. I49 bouring populations to identify the Babylonians with their conquerors and lords. Hence it is that in the tablets of Tel el-Amarna, the Canaanite writers in variably term the Babylonians the "Kasi." The " Kasi " or Cush, we are told, had overrun Palestine in former years and were again threatening the Egyptian province. In calling Nimrod, therefore, a son of Cush the Book of Genesis merely means that he was a Babylonian. But the designation takes us back to the age of the Tel el-Amarna tablets. It was not a designation which could have belonged to that later age when the Babylonians were known to the Israelites as the "Kasdim" only. Indeed there is a passage in the Book of Micah (v. 6) which proves plainly that in that later age " the land of Nimrod " was synonymous not with Babylonia but with Assyria. The Nimrod of Genesis must have come down to us from the time when the Kassite dynasty still reigned over Babylonia. This conclusion is borne out by what is said about him. The proverb quoted in regard to him is Canaanite and not Babylonian. Yahveh was not worshipped in Babylonia, nor was the expression "before Yahveh" to be found in the Babylonian language. It must have been a proverb which origin ated in Canaan when the Kassite was still known there, and when Babylonian influence was still strong in the West. We are referred to the days when Baby lonian books were imported and studied in Palestine, and when the history of Babylonia was as well known as the history of Palestine itself. We are told that "the beginning" of Nimrod's kingdom were Babylon, Erech and Accad in Northern ISO THE HIGHER CRITICISM. Babylonia, and Calneh, the Kulunu of the cuneiform texts, in Shinar. Shinar is the Sumer of the native inscriptions, that is to say Southern Babylonia, which remained in the possession of its original non-Semitic population longer than the cities of the north. We are thus referred to the earlier days of the Kassite dynasty in Babylonia, when their power was already consolidated in the northern half of the country, but was not as yet fully established in the south. Nimrod was not satisfied with his Babylonian dominions. " Out of that land he went forth into Assyria, and builded Nineveh, and Rehoboth Tr (the city boulevards), and Calah and Resen." That such is the correct translation of the Hebrew text, and not the rendering of the Authorised Version, is shown not only by the passage in Micah which identifies " the land of Nimrod " with Assyria, but also by the fact that Asshur was a deity who derived his name from the ancient metropolis of the country. The city of Asshur was of Accado-Sumerian foundation, and if we are to believe the cuneiform tablets, the etymology of its name was to be found in two Sumerian words which meant "water" and "bank." However this may have been, the city and its god came to bear the same name, and the " high-priest " of the god became the ruler of the city. Scribes who were learned in all the wisdom of the Babylonians soon found a Baby lonian origin for the deity who watched over their state. They identified him with the ancient Accadian An Sar, or "god of the hosts" of the Upper Firma ment, who was remembered in Babylonia only as a cosmological divinity, and whose name appears in Greek under the form of Ass6ros. THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN GENESIS. 151 The city of Asshur had been long in existence when Nimrod led his Kassite followers to it, and so made its " high-priests " tributary to Babylon. It stood on the high-road to the west, and it is not surprising, therefore, that the Kassite kings, after making them selves masters ofthe future kingdom of Assyria, should have continued their victorious career as far as the shores of the Mediterranean. We may conjecture that Nimrod was the first of them who planted his power so firmly in Palestine as to be remembered in the proverbial lore of the country, and to have intro duced that Babylonian culture of which the Tel el-Amarna tablets have given us such abundant evidence.1 Ninua or Nineveh, with its Rehoboth or suburbs, is now represented by the mounds of Kouyunjik and Nebi Yunus opposite Mosul. Calah lay a little further south at the junction of the Tigris and the Upper Zab, where the rubbish-heaps of Nimrud conceal the ruins of its palace. Midway between the 1 It is possible that the story of Nimrod is referred to in the fragment of a legend which has been rescued from the old library of Nineveh (K 4541). Here we read: "In the [centre?] of Babylon he regards the construction of this palace. This prince beholds misfortune, his heart is sick. Until the foundation of his kingdom battle and conflict were not hindered. In that age brother devoured his brother ; people sold their children for silver ; all countries were in distress ; the freeman deserted the handmaid and the handmaid deserted the freeman ; the mother bolted the door against the daughter ; the possessions of Babylon entered into Aram Naharaim and Assyria. The King of Babylon, in order to be Prince of Assyria, caused himself, his palace (and) his possessions to [enter] into [Assyrija." The resemblance between these lines and what we are told in Genesis about Nimrod is striking. 1 52 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. two cities stood Resen, the Assyrian Res-eni, or " Head of the spring." Nineveh was made the capital of Assyria in the ninth century before our era, but it already had long been in existence. So probably also had Calah, though Assur-natsir-pal assures us that it was built by Shalmaneser I. (B.C. 1300). But the building meant by Assur-natsir-pal was doubtless the building which allowed it for the first time to take rank as the capital of the country, and dispossess the older capital Asshur. For a time Calah lay waste and deserted, but was restored by Assur-natsir-pal (B.C. 883—858). We are now in a position to consider the results to which our archaeological commentary on the tenth chapter of Genesis would lead us. The episode re lating to Nimrod forms part of what we may call the Babylonian element in the Book of Genesis, and must be left until we have the whole of that element before us. For the present it is enough to notice that the episode is foreign to the original plan of the tenth chapter, and that its insertion can be justified only on the ground of the geographical information which it gives about Babylonia and Assyria. But even so, the geographical information is given in the wrong place, since Babylonia and Assyria belonged to the central and not to the southern zone. As for the subject- matter of the episode, it is in full accordance with the discoveries of archaeological research and may easily have been derived from documents older than the age of Moses. The case is otherwise as regards the main part of the chapter. Here we are referred unmistakably to the period when the Kimmerians first appeared on the THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN GENESIS. 153 geographical horizon of the civilised nations of West ern Asia. It was the period, moreover, when Gyges the Lydian flourished, and when Lydians served as mercenaries in the army of Egypt. It is in short the period to which Ezekiel belonged, in whose prophecies we again meet with the names of the descendants of Japhet which are enumerated in the tenth chapter of Genesis. The geographical chart of the Pentateuch thus presents us with a picture of the Jewish world as it existed in the seventh century B.C. The eleventh chapter takes us back once more to Babylonia.- Except, perhaps, for the Jewish exiles in Babylonia, the account of the building of the city and tower of Babylon can have had a primary interest for none but a Babylonian. But it hangs together with the other references to Babylonian tradition and history of which the earlier chapters of Genesis are full, with the account of the Garden of Eden, of the Flood, of Nimrod, and of the campaign of Chedor- laomer. Like them it is directly dependent on the cuneiform records of the Chaldaean scribes. The Babylonian version of the story of the Tower of Babel has not yet been discovered. But we know that it must have once existed. Mr. George Smith found the fragments of a tablet in which references are made to it. Here we read of " the holy mound," how "small and great mingled" it (yuballu) in " Babylon," and how the god " in anger destroyed the secret design " of the builders, and " made strange their counsel." This " holy mound " gave its name to one of the Sumerian months, the seventh of the Babylonian year, the first of the Jewish civil year, corresponding with our September and October. It 154 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. was the site ofthe great temple of Bel-Merodach, the god of Babylon, which continued to be called by its primitive Sumerian name of E-Saggil " the House of the lofty head" down to the last days of the ex istence of Babylon. It is probable that the mounds now called Babil by the Arabs mark where it stood. A copy in miniature of this "holy mound" was placed in the inner shrine of the temple of E-Saggil, where it formed the "mercy-seat" on which Bel de scended from heaven and sat each year at the festival of the New Year, delivering prophecies of the future to his priests. The " Du-azagga ki-namtartarene " as it was termed in Sumerian was rendered parak simati or " the seat of the oracles " in Semitic Babylonian. Nebuchadrezzar refers to it as the " Du-azagga ki- namtartarene of Ubsuginna, the seat of the oracles, whereon at the festival of Zagmuku, the beginning of the year, on the eighth and eleventh days, the king of the gods of heaven and earth, Bel, the god, seats himself, while the gods of heaven and earth reverently regard him, standing before him with bowed heads." Every Babylonian temple was provided with a zig- gurat or " tower," on the summit of which, as on the "high-places" of Palestine, the worshipper seemed to approach heaven more nearly than he could on the plain below. The name by which the temple of Bel-Merodach was known from the earliest times indicates that its summit was more than usually exalted. The tower to which it belonged was indeed one " whose top " might be said to " reach unto heaven." It rose high above the city, and marked from afar the site of Babylon. The name of Babylon is written in Semitic Baby- THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN GENESIS. 155 Ionian, Bab-ili " the Gate of the god." It was a literal translation of the old Sumerian Ka-Dingirra, and in " the god " whose " gate " it was we must doubt less see Bel-Merodach himself. Here in his temple of E-Saggil was " the Gate of heaven," where he revealed himself to his worshippers. In the words of Nebu chadrezzar it was the place wherein at each new year's feast he enthroned himself and uttered his oracles. When we read in Genesis that the Lord said " Go to, let us go down," we are irresistibly reminded of the primitive meaning of the name of Babylon. The colouring of the narrative in Genesis is Baby lonian throughout. It was in the east, on the mountain of Nizir, that the ship of the Babylonian Noah had rested, and " the mountain of the East," " the mountain of the world," continued to be a central figure of Babylonian mythology. From the east, therefore, the survivors of the deluge must have made their way to the " plain in the land of Shinar." The land was pre-eminently one of bricks and bitumen. Stone there was none, and the buildings of Babylonia, public and private alike, had to be constructed of brick. But the brick was usually baked in the sun, not burnt in the kiln. It was only when the brick wall had been built, that brushwood was sometimes heaped up against it, and its surface consolidated by means of fire. The dream of the builders of Babel was a dream which must have been indulged in more than once by the inhabitants of Babylonia. As Mr. Pinches has pointed out, the tablets of Tel el-Amarna show that in the century before the Exodus it was partially realised in fact. All over the civilised world of 156 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. Western Asia there was but one literary language, and that was the language of Babylon. And at a much earlier period we find Sargon of Accad aiming at universal empire. It is said of him that after his conquest of Syria " he appointed that all places should form a single (kingdom)." But the multiplicity of languages spoken in Baby lonia itself was a standing witness against the practical realisation of the dream. Besides the old agglutinative Sumerian in which so much of the earlier literature of the country was composed, and the Semitic dialects of the later occupants of Chaldaea, there were the un related languages of Kassites and Elamites which con quest or trade had introduced. As Berossos the Chal daean historian remarks, Babylon was a spot where people of " various races " were gathered together. Here, therefore, where the cultured classes had dreamed of a universal language, and where in actual fact almost as many languages were spoken as are spoken in Constantinople to-day, it was natural that belief should be strong in a primaeval confusion of tongues. It must have been at Babylon, the first meeting-place of civilised men who belonged to different races and spoke different languages, that the single tongue used in the ark had divided into the manifold languages of the world. The Hebrew writer found support for this view in an etymology furnished by his own language. He plays upon the name of Bab-ili " the Gate of the god," and connects it with the Hebrew balbel " to confound." But the root is not met with in Babylonian, and we may therefore infer that the etymology is of Palestinian THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN GENESIS. I57 It is important to notice that it was the city and not the tower which was left unfinished by the scattered workmen. The assumption that it was the tower has caused the latter to be identified with the Birs-i-Nimrud, the gigantic mass of ruined brickwork which alone remains of the great temple of Nebo at Borsippa. Borsippa was at the outset an independent city, though its proximity to Babylon caused it to become in time merely the suburb of its more im portant neighbour. But it was never Babylon ; up to the last it continued to bear its own separate name. The tower of its temple, consequently, could never have been termed the tower of Babel. The theory which has identified it with the latter has been due to an erroneous translation of an inscription of Nebu chadrezzar made in the infancy of cuneiform research. All that the inscription states is that "the tower of Borsippa'' had been built by "a former king," who had raised it to a height of forty-two cubits but had never "completed its top." The result was that rain and storm washed away its bricks and destroyed the tiles of its roof. Nebuchadrezzar accordingly under took its restoration and made it a fitting habitation for the priests of the god. In all_ this there is no reference either to Babylon or to a confusion of tongues. The theory which sees in the Birs-i-Nimrud the tower whose summit was to " reach unto heaven " really rests on conjectures made before the decipher ment of the cuneiform characters, when the distinction between Babylon and Borsippa was unknown, and when travellers saw in the vitrified bricks of the ruined tower traces of the lightning which had punished the pride of its builders. 158 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. The genealogy which follows the story of the confusion of tongues contains nothing which carries us to Babylonia. It is not until we come to the end of the chapter that we find ourselves once more on the plain of Shinar. Haran, it is said, " died before his father Terah in the land of his nativity, Ur of the Chaldees." Afterwards " Terah took Abram his son and Lot the son of Haran," and they departed from Ur of the Chaldees to Haran where Terah died. Ur, the Uru or " city " of the cuneiform texts, is now represented by the mounds of Mugheir on the western bank of the Euphrates. The bricks of its ancient temple of the Moon-god have given us the names of kings who claimed rule over Chaldaea long before Babylon became its capital. But in calling it a city of the Kasdim — the " Chaldees'' of the English version — the Biblical writer makes use of a term which was not employed in Babylonia itself. Kasdim is a name of Palestinian origin, and its derivation is obscure. It was the Hebrew name of the Baby lonians ; among the Babylonians themselves it was unknown.1 Its English rendering is misleading : the Chaldees or Chaldaeans of Greek and Latin literature took their name from the Kalda, a tribe of whom we first hear in the twelfth century B.C., when they lived 1 There was a city called Kasda, but the position of it is uncertain. The word Kasidu means " conqueror" in Assyrian, and may be the origin of the Biblical Kasdim. But since we learn from the tablets of Tel el-Amarna that the Babylonians were known as Kassi or Kasi in the Canaan of the fifteenth century B.C., it seems more probable that the Biblical term is in some way or other connected with the latter name. In W. A. I. iii. 66, 31, mention is made of a goddess of the Sutu or Bedawin who is called " the Mother of the city of Kasda." THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN GENESIS. 159 in the marshes to the south of Babylonia. It was to this tribe that Merodach-baladan belonged, and after his seizure of Babylon, his fellow-tribesmen became so important an element in the Babylonian popula tion, as in time to give their name to it. Indeed it seems probable that Nebuchadrezzar was a Kaldu or Chaldaean by descent.1 If so, the use of the word by the writers of Greece and Rome would be fully accounted for. While Ur was a city of the Babylonians, Haran, where Terah died,- lay far away in the north, in Mesopotamia. But it had been connected from a remote epoch with Babylonia, and its temple was dedicated to the Babylonian Moon-god like the temple of Ur. Between Ur and Haran there was thus a natural connection, and a native of Ur would have found himself more at home in Haran than in any other city of the world. Moreover Haran was one of the most important of the stations which lay upon the high-road from Babylonia to the West. The name Haran, in fact, signified " road " in the language of Babylonia, and was a word which had descended to the Semitic settlers from Sumerian times. The name of Abram — Abu-ramu "the exalted father" — is found in early Babylonian contracts. Milcah, again, is the Babylonian Milcat or " Queen." It may be that in the curious addition " and the father of Iscah " we have a marginal gloss which indicates acquaintance on the part of the writer with the cuneiform literature. Iscah is not only not mentioned 1 See Winckler : " Untersuchungen zur altorientalischen Geschichte" (1889), pp. 47 sqq.; Delattre : "Les Chalde"ens jusqu' a la Formation de l'Empire de Nabuchodonoser " (1889). 160 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. again, the name is without an etymology. But in the cuneiform syllabary it so happens that the same character may be read indifferently mil and is, and that only quite recently the first decipherers of the Tel el-Amarna tablets read is-ku instead of mil-ku " king " in a proper name. What has occurred in the nineteenth century may easily have occurred before, and it is therefore quite possible that Iscah owes her existence to an error in reading a cuneiform character. If so, we shall have in her name direct evidence of the use of cuneiform books on the part of a Biblical writer. In the fourteenth chapter of Genesis we meet with further evidence of the same kind. Mention is there made (v. 5) of " the Zuzim in Ham." Now in Deuteronomy (ii. 20) these same people are called Zamzummim, and the country in which they are said to have lived is not Ham but Ammon. Ammon is a lengthened form of the name of the god Am or Ammi, and accordingly in Gen. xix. 38 it is stated that Ben-Ammi " the son of Ammi " was the ancestor of the Ammonites. In Hebrew the word Ham and Am or Ammi would be written with different letters ; but this would not be the case in the cuneiform system of writing, where they would both be ex pressed by the same character. The transcriber consequently could make his choice between repre senting the name either by Ham or by Am. The difference between the forms Zuzim and Zamzum mim admits of the same explanation. In the cuneiform syllabary the sounds which are denoted in the Hebrew alphabet by the letters m and w or u were represented by the same characters. Some THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN GENESIS. l6l Assyriologists accordingly write m in transcribing the text where other Assyriologists would write w, and an ancient Hebrew writer who did not know the. true pronunciation of the word would be similarly puzzled as to whether he should write Z-m-z-m or Z-w-z-w. Here then we have an adequate explanation of the incorrect forms Zuzim and Ham which we find in Genesis. They have been transcribed from a cunei form document, and are therefore different from those which a native of Palestine would have used. In Deuteronomy we find the names as they were actually pronounced, in Genesis the names as they appeared to read on some Babylonian tablet. The conclusion is important, firstly because it shows that we have in this fourteenth chapter of Genesis the copy of a cuneiform text, and secondly because the text in question must have been Babylonian. These inferences receive a striking confirmation when we examine the chapter in the light of archaeological research. On the one hand the campaign of Chedor-laomer and his allies has been proved to be historical. The account of it no longer stands alone, like a single page torn from some ancient book which has long since perished. The "higher critic" can no longer assert that Elamite or Babylonian invasions of the distant West in the age of Abraham are incredible and unsupported by authentic history. It is no longer permissible for him to maintain that the whole story is a reflection of the Syrian campaigns of a Tiglath-Pileser or a Sennacherib, and that the names of the Palestinian kings afford etymological evidence 1 62 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. of the mythical character of the narrative. Oriental archaeology has vindicated its authenticity in a re markable way, and disproved the ingenious scepticism of a hasty criticism. We have learned from the tablets of Tel el-Amarna that Syria and Palestine must have come under the direct influence of Babylonia long before the period to which the Exodus of Israel can be referred. We have further learned from them that Babylonian armies had marched as far as the south of Palestine, and that even in Jerusalem the victories of the Kassite kings were known and dreaded. The state ment of Manetho, the Egyptian historian, that the Hyksos had fortified Jerusalem against the attacks of the Assyrians, has been fully verified, mocked at though it has been by an over-wise criticism. The Babylonians, or the Assyrians as they were termed in the days of Manetho, had already established their power by the shores of the Mediterranean when the Hyksos princes were driven from the valley of the Nile. Allusions to these early conquests of the Baby lonians in the West have been discovered in Babylonia itself. As long ago as B.C. 3800 Sargon of Accad, the founder ofthe fust Semitic empire, as well as of one of the most famous libraries of Chaldaea, had carried his arms to the coast of the Mediterranean. Four times did he march into the " land of the Amorites," and on the fourth occasion he caused an image of himself to be engraved upon the rocky cliff of the sea-shore. Even Cyprus seems to have submitted to his dominion, and it is declared that " over [the countries] of the sea of the setting sun he crossed, THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN GENESIS. 163 and during three years his hand was conquering [all countries] at the setting sun." Naram-Sin, his son. and successor, continued the victorious career of his father. He made his way into Magan, that is to say Midian and the Sinaitic peninsula, from which bronze had been exported into Babylonia from time immemorial, as well as the hard diorite stone, out of which the sitting figures of Tello, now in the Louvre, were carved before the days of Naram-Sin himself. The road pursued by Naram-Sin in his march from Syria to Magan must have been that which was taken by Chedor-laomer, according to Genesis. Chedor-laomer and his allies, indeed, fol lowed it only half-way, having turned westward from it to the sanctuary of Kadesh-Barnea, now 'Ain Qadis. It was a road which was closed to the invader in later times by the increasing power of Edom, but it was a road with which we now know the Babylonians to have been acquainted centuries before Abraham was born. To Mr. Pinches we owe the discovery of a tablet, on which a later king of Babylonia, who reigned when Babylon had become the capital of the realm, claims sovereignty over Syria.1 Ammi-satana (B.C. 2241 — 2216) calls himself "the King of the land of the Amorites," the general name under which Syria and Palestine are included in the cuneiform inscriptions.2 We are reminded of the fact that 1 See " The Records of the Past," New Series, v. 102—105. 2 Written Martu in Sumerian, Amurru in Semitic Babylonian. Amurru was formerly erroneously read Akharru, and explained as "the hinder-land." It is only quite recently that the true reading of the name has been discovered, though it was sus pected long ago by Norris. 1 64 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. among the tribes " smitten " by Chedor-laomer were the Amorites of Hazezon-tamar. But Ammi-satana was not the only Babylonian prince of the age of Abraham who ruled in Canaan as well as in Chaldaea. On the bricks of the Babylonian prince Eri-Aku, "the servant of the Moon-god," we read that his father, Kudur-Mabug, was " the father of the land of the Amorites." Kudur-Mabug was an Elamite, and his name signified in the language of Elam " the minister of the god Mabug." It is a name of precisely the same form as that of Chedor-laomer, which would have been written in Elamite Kudur-Lagamar, " the minister of the god Lagamar." Lagamar, it may be mentioned, was one of the chief deities in the Elamite pantheon. Neither Kudur-Mabug nor his father Simti- silkhak are said by Eri-Aku to have been Babylonian kings. But the fact that Eri-Aku was one himself, and that he bore a Sumerian and not an Elamite name, makes it pretty plain that Elamite domination was firmly established in Baby lonia. Eri-Aku ruled at Larsa, now Senkereh, where there was an ancient and famous temple of the Sun-god. But Babylonia was not as yet a united kingdom. While Larsa was the capital of one part of the country, Babylon was the capital of another, and it is possible that a third prince was reigning in the south, in the land of Sumer. Before the death of Eri-Aku, however, a great change took place. Khammurabi, the King of Babylon, succeeded in ridding himself of his rivals and making of Babylonia a single monarchy. Eri-Aku was overthrown in THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN GENESIS. 165 spite of Elamite assistance, and the supremacy of Elam was shaken off. From this time forward Babylon remained the centre of the kingdom, which was never again divided into separate states. According to the native chronologists Khammurabi would have reigned from B.C. 2356 to B.C. 2301. His third successor was Ammi-satana, who, as we have seen, claimed dominion in Syria, so that the freedom of Babylonia from the yoke of Elam can have made but little difference in the West. If Kudur-Mabug had been " the father of the land of the Amorites " — whatever may be the exact meaning of the phrase — Ammi-satana was its " king." When we compare these revelations ofthe cuneiform monuments with the narrative in the fourteenth chapter of Genesis the parallelism between them is striking. In both we find Babylonia divided into more than one kingdom ; in both it is under the suzerainty of Elam ; in both its princes claim dominion in the distant West. But the parallelism extends even further than this. The King of Elam bears a name so analogous to that of the father of Eri-Aku as to suggest that they belonged to the same family, while Eri-Aku of Larsa irresistibly reminds us of Arioch of Ellasar. In the spelling of Ellasar we may see merely a confusion between the name of Larsa and the Babylonian al-sarri, or "city of the king." If Eri-Aku is really the Arioch of Genesis, the date of the narrative in which he figures would be fixed, and we should have to look upon his father Kudur-Mabug as the brother, or some correspond- l66 ' THE HIGHER CRITICISM. ingly near relation, of Chedor-laomer, the Elamite sovereign. But it is not easy to find a Babylonian equivalent for the name of Amraphel, nor to de termine exactly the position of the Shinar over which he ruled. Shinar ought properly to correspond to the Sumer, or Southern Babylonia, of the native texts. In most of the passages of the Old Testament, how ever, in which it is mentioned, it is used of the whole of Chaldaea, more especially of that part of it in which Babylon was situated. In the account ofthe Tower of Babel we are told, for instance, that Babylon was built in "a plain in the land of Shinar." In the history of Chedor-laomer's campaign it would seem that the name of Shinar is employed in a similar sense. We know that Babylon was the head of an independent state in the days when Larsa was the capital of another principality, and it is not probable that its king would have been omitted in the roll-call of Babylonian princes. If, then, we are to identify Arioch with Eri-Aku, we must identify Amraphel either with Khammurabi or with his predecessor, Sin-muballidh. But it is difficult to find a resemblance between the names, and the attempts of Assyriologists to transmute Amraphel into Khammurabi, or Khammurabi into Amraphel, have not been very happy. The problem is one which it must be left to the future to solve.1 1 It may serve to this end to notice, that according to a cuneiform tablet the first syllable of the name of Khammurabi was also pronounced Am. On the other hand, the final syllable of Amraphel's name appears to be corrupt : it will not suit any known Babylonian name. THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN GENESIS. 167 Tidal " king of Goyim " is given in the Septuagint, doubtless more correctly, as Thorgal. In the mysterious " Goyim " we cannot see the Hebrew word " nations," as the Authorised Version believes, since this would require the article. It must be intended for the name of a country, and Sir Henry Rawlinson is probably right in suggesting that it represents the Gutium of the cuneiform inscriptions. Gutium was the name given in Babylonia in early times to the country east of the Tigris but north of Elam, in a part of which the kingdom of Assyria afterwards arose. The astrological tablets which belonged to a work compiled for the library of Sargon of Accad are full of references to " the king of Gutium," and it is by no means beyond the range of probability that an Elamite monarch who had made Babylonia subject to him should have imposed his authority upon Gutium as well.1 However this may be, the points in which the narrative in Genesis have been verified and illustrated by Assyriological research are more than sufficient to prove its historical character, and to indicate that it has been derived from a Babylonian source. The introduction to it goes further to show that this source was before the very eyes of the Biblical writer, and that his knowledge of it was not at second-hand. Chedor-laomer was the suzerain lord of the princes who followed his standard, and it was he who 1 The British Museum possesses an inscription of Lasirab (?) "king of Guti," or Gutium, which has been published by Dr. Winckler ("Zeitschrift fur Assyriologie," iv. 4), and which Prof. Hilprecht, for palaeographical reasons, would assign to the age of Sargon of Accad, B.C. 3800 ("The Babylonian Expe dition ofthe University of Pennsylvania," i. pp. 12, 13). 168 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. conducted the campaign to the West. It was Chedor-laomer, and not his allies, whom the Canaanite kings " served " for twelve years. Nevertheless, at the outset of the narrative it is not Chedor-laomer, but the King of Shinar, who is first named. It was " in the days of Amraphel," not in the days of Chedor-laomer, that the events recorded took place. The original chronicler of them, therefore, must have been a native of Shinar, and if Shinar here means that portion of Babylonia of which Babylon was the capital, we should expect his work to have been written for the library of Babylon. Perhaps a copy of it may still be buried under the ground, awaiting the day when the excavator shall discover it. We may now accept with confidence the geograph ical details which the narrative of Chedor-laomer's campaign brings before us. We have in them a picture of Southern Canaan older than the oldest which the monuments of Egypt have bequeathed to us. The earlier populations are still in the land. The kinsfolk of the Israelites— the Ammonites, the Moabites, and the Edomites — have not as yet sup planted them. The Zamzummim still occupy the future land of Ammon, the Emim are where the twin capitals of Moab afterwards arose, and the Horites are undisputed masters of Mount Seir. But Kadesh is already a meeting-place ofthe tribes, though its name is not as yet Kadesh, " the Sanctuary," but En-Mish- pat, "the spring of judgment" ; the shrine that was to stand beside the spring is not as yet built. The Amorites, too, have already established themselves on the shores of the Dead Sea, in the midst of the THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN GENESIS. 169 Amalekites, the Bedawin tribes then, as ever, haunting the wilderness. The Canaanite cities in the vale of Siddim have not as yet been destroyed, and the Rephaim on the eastern side of the Jordan are in possession of Ashtoreth Karnaim.1 Traces of them arc to be met with, as Mr. Tomkins has pointed out, in the list of conquered cities which the Egyptian Pharaoh Thothmes III. engraved on the walls of Karnak. Among the cities east of the Jordan we there read side by side the names of Astartu, the present Tell 'Ashtarah, and Anau-repa "On of the Repha."2 The destruction of the Rephaim was reserved to the time of the Israelitish invasion. The fourteenth chapter of Genesis is the last portion of the Pentateuch which contains a dis tinctively Babylonian element. It is the last narra tive of which we can say that it was derived from the cuneiform documents of Babylonia, either wholly or in part. Here, therefore, it will be convenient to pause a little, and see to what conclusions the existence of these narratives would seem to point. The first fact which strikes us in regard to them is, that they are specially to be found in those portions of Genesis which the popular critical theory assigns to the Jehovist. It is true that the Elohist is also acquainted, it would appear, with the Babylonian accounts of the Creation and the Flood, but with him it is only the substance of the narrative that is Baby- 1 This is the correct form of the name. It indicates that the Babylonian Istar had already been transported to the West, and had there become the Moon-god Ashtoreth Karnaim " Ashtoreth of the two horns." 2 "Records ofthe Past," New Series, v. p. 45. 170 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. Ionian, the treatment and colouring of it are Pales tinian. It is otherwise, however, when we turn to the Jehovist. Between his words and those of our cuneiform texts we have found coincidences of thought and expression which it is difficult to account for except on the supposition that the texts were known to him. There are transcriptions, too, of names such as Zuzim and Ham, which imply a cuneiform original. In some instances, moreover, the narrative possesses a more direct interest for the native of Babylonia than for the Israelite. The latter was but little con cerned to know the geography of the garden of Eden, the history of the rise of Nimrod's kingdom, or the dispersion of mankind which followed upon the build ing of Babylon. It was only during the Babylonian exile that we can conceive a Jew to have been specially interested in such matters, and even then it is not likely that a pious Jew would have troubled himself about the legends and traditions of his enemies. The narratives in question, however, contain internal evidence that they have been derived from Babylo nian sources at an earlier date than that of the Exile. The statement that Calah is " a great city '' (Gen. x. 12) must have been written before the overthrow of Assyria, and it is not easy to believe that a Jew who lived in Babylonia, with the native etymology of the name of Babylon staring him in the face in every public inscription he saw, could have thought of deriving it from a Hebrew root. We have further seen that there is no question as to the antiquity of what we may call the Babylonian narratives in Babylonia itself. The cuneiform docu ments embodying them went back to an age earlier THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN GENESIS. 171 than that of Moses. We have also seen that it was perfectly possible for these documents to have been known in Canaan before the Exodus. The tablets of Tel el-Amarna bear witness to a widespread acquaintance with Babylonian literature on the part ofthe cultured classes of Syria and Palestine. It is observable that even where the Biblical writer has followed most closely the words of his Babylonian original he has nevertheless given them a complexion of his own. The polytheism of the Babylonian has become a stern monotheism, the geography is that of a native of Palestine rather than of a. native of the Babylonian plain, and the colouring of the narrative is thoroughly Hebraic. Though the evidence of the Babylonian authority remains, we have before us a paraphrase and not a translation. It would seem, then, that archaeology requires us to come to conclusions which differ in many respects from those which the " higher criticism " would have us believe. Nimrod is no myth, but a historical personage, and the historical character of Chedor- laomer's campaign has been amply vindicated. We can once more turn with confidence to the geographical and other details incorporated in the narratives. The history of the past which criticism had relegated to a limbo of doubt has been reconstructed by the discovery and study of the ancient monuments. The literary analysis which has given us a Jehovist and an Elohist and a Priestly Code must be supple mented or replaced by an analysis of the Book of Genesis into Babylonian, Canaanite, and other similar elements. The author of the fourteenth chapter must be the same as the author of the history of the 172 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. Fall or of the rise of the power of Nimrod. The accounts of the Creation and the Flood, moreover, have shown us that Babylonian documents underlie alike the Elohistic and the Jehovistic narratives. It is only in the treatment of them that the narratives differ from one another. Here then is the nett result of Assyriological re search as regards the criticism of the Pentateuch. While it has justified the belief that the Book of Genesis is a compilation, it has only partially justified the current theory as to the nature of that compilation, and has very decidedly negatived the scepticism which refuses to its narratives the character of history. The existence of myth or legend must not blind us also to the existence of authentic history. The decipherment of the cuneiform inscriptions has enabled us to assign a date to the composition of the tenth chapter of Genesis, apart, that is to say, from the episode of Nimrod. Does it enable us to fix approximately the period at which the Babylonian elements in the Book of Genesis acquired their present shape ? To this question a negative must be returned. All we can say is, that the period must be earlier than the Babylonian exile. The interpolation ofthe history of Nimrod in the middle of the tenth chapter does not prove that it was written subsequently to the rest of the chapter. It only proves that it was inserted where we now find it after the rest of the chapter had been composed. Who can say whether this was the work of the author of the chapter or of the final editor of the Pentateuch ? To the historian the precise date of the narratives of Genesis in their present form matters but little. THE BABYLONIAN ELEMENT IN GENESIS. 1 73 So long as he is assured that they are derived from ancient documents contemporaneous with the events they record he is fully satisfied. What he wants to know is, whether he can deal with a professedly historical statement in the Book of Genesis as he would deal with a statement in Gibbon or Macaulay ? Let him be satisfied on this point and he asks no more. The critic had resolved the narratives of Genesis into a series of myths or idealistic fictions ; the Assyriologist has rescued some at least of them for the historian of the past. With this result let us be content. Note to page 136:— I have this winter (1894) found the names of Caphtor and Casluhim in the Egyptian hieroglyphics. The temple of Kom Ombo has been disinterred by Mr. de Morgan, and a geo graphical list, which belongs to the reign of Ptolemy XIII. (B.C. 81 — 52), has thus been brought to light. Among the names are those of the Kasluhet and Kaptar, which correspond with the Casluhim and Caphtor of Scripture. .The name of the Kasluhet is preceded by those of the Menti of the Sinaitic Peninsula and the Lower Retennu of Northern Syria, and is followed by Zoghar or Zoar. That of Kaptar ends a list which includes the names of the Hittites, Upper Retennu or Palestine, Balbal or Babel (written, it will be observed, in accordance with the etymology given in Genesis), Sash or Susa, and Persia. CHAPTER IV. THE CANAANITISH AND EGYPTIAN ELEMENTS IN THE BOOK OF GENESIS. Two or three years ago it would have seemed a dream of the wildest enthusiasm to suggest that light would be thrown by modern discovery on the history of Melchizedek. Whatever lingering scruples the critic might have felt about rejecting the historical character of the first half of the fourteenth chapter of Genesis, he felt none at all as to the second half of it. Melchizedek, " King of Salem " and " priest of the most high God," appeared to be altogether a creature of mythology. And yet among the surprises which the tablets of Tel el-Amarna had in store for us was the discovery that after all Melchizedek might well have been a historical personage. Among the correspondents of the Egyptian Pharaoh is a certain Ebed-tob, the vassal-king of Jerusalem.1 Jerusalem was already an 1 The second element in the name must be read Dhabba, that is Tob, not Khiba, as is supposed by some scholars, and by one of the Tel el-Amarna scribes himself. The character which has the phonetic value of Khi is used ideographically for the word dhabba " good," and the fact is indicated by the addition to the ideograph ofthe syllable -ba. Moreover Khiba is not the name of a deity. CANAANITISH AND EGYPTIAN ELEMENTS. 175 important city, with a territory which extended to Carmel of Judah in the south and to Gath and Keilah in the west. It was threatened at the time by the Khabiri or " Confederates," confederated tribes, it may be, who had their centre at Hebron, and the letters of Ebed-tob are largely occupied with appeals for help against them. Ebed-tob held a position which, as he tells us, was unlike that of any other Egyptian governor in Canaan. He had been appointed, or confirmed in his post, not by the Pharaoh, but by the oracle and power of " the great King," the god, that is to say, whose sanctuary stood on the summit of Moriah. It was not from his " father pr from his mother " that he had inherited his dignity ; he was king of Jerusalem because he was the priest of its god.1 In all this we have an explanation of the language used of Melchizedek. Melchizedek, too, was "with out father, without mother," and like Ebed-tob he was at once priest and king. It was in virtue of his priesthood that Abram the Hebrew paid tithes to him after the defeat of the foreign invader. Up to the closing days of the Eighteenth Egyptian dynasty, if not later, Jerusalem was governed by a royal priest. 1 Thus in one of the letters to his " lord and king " the Pharaoh of Egypt, he says : " Behold, neither my father nor my mother have exalted me in this place ; the prophecy (or perhaps ' arm ') of the Mighty King has caused me to enter the house of my father ; '' and in another : " Behold, I am not a governor, a vassal (?) of the king of my lord. Behold I am an ally of the king, and I have paid the tribute of the king, even I. Neither my father nor my mother, but the oracle (or arm) of the Mighty King, established [me] in the house of [my] father." The " Mighty King " is distinguished from the King of Egypt. 176 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. There is a reason, too, why Melchizedek should be termed "King of Salem" rather than King of Jerusalem. In the cuneiform inscriptions the name of Jerusalem is written Uru-'salim, and a lexical tablet explains uru as the equivalent of the Assyrian alu, " city." 'Salim was the god of " peace," and we may accordingly see in Jerusalem " the city of the god of peace." The fact is plainly stated in one of the letters of Ebed-tob, now preserved at Berlin, if the reading of a somewhat obliterated cuneiform character by Dr. Winckler and myself is correct. In this case Ebed-tob would declare that the god whom he worshipped and whom he identified with the Baby lonian Sun-god Uras was called at Jerusalem "the god 'Salim." However this may be, the etymology of the name of Jerusalem shows that it was a sacred city from the beginning, and lets us understand why the victorious Abram paid tithes to its priestly ruler out of the spoils of war. He had driven the invader from the soil of Syria, and had restored peace to the land of Canaan. It was fitting, therefore, that he should be blessed by the priest of the god of Peace, and should make the offerings that custom required. It is difficult not to believe that Isaiah, who elsewhere shows himself well acquainted with the older history of his birth-place, is referring to the ancient name and oracle of Jerusalem when he bestows upon the inheritor of the throne of David the title of " the Prince of Peace " (Isa. ix. 6). The " King of Salem " of the age of Abram was to- revive in after times in a truer and more spiritual " Prince of Peace." The words with which Abram was blessed deserve a passing notice. The phrase, " Blessed be Abram of CANAANITtSH AND EGYPTIAN ELEMENTS, t?? the most high God," is one which occurs elsewhere in the Old Testament, but which we look for in vain among the multitudinous Phcenician inscriptions now known to us. It is found, however, in certain Aramaic inscriptions of the fifth century before our era which have been discovered in Egypt. In these we read, for example, " Blessed be Abed-Nebo of Khnum," "Blessed be Augah of Isis."1 The phrase was no Hebrew invention, in spite of its absence from the Phcenician monuments ; there were other Semitic tribes besides the Israelites to whom it was familiar. The vindication of the historical character of Melchizedek has important bearings on the value we must assign to those narratives of Genesis the local colouring of which is Canaanite. The way, more over, in which his historical character has been vindi cated is equally important for Biblical criticism. We have found documents older than the Exodus which prove not only that Jerusalem. was a capital and a sacred city, and that the description of Melchizedek is in strict accordance with facts, but also that there were natives of Jerusalem long before the Israelitish invasion who were able to read and write and to hand down a record of the events they had witnessed upon imperishable clay. We have no reason to suppose that these records perished, or that they became a sealed book to the Jebusite inhabitants of Jerusalem who continued to reside there after its 1 One of these was discovered by Dr. Flinders Petrie, the rest by myself. They are engraved on the sandstone rocks on the western bank ofthe Nile between Silsileh and Heshan, and are in the immediate neighbourhood of a " Beth-el " — a boulder of stone which possessed a sacred character, and to which accord ingly pilgrimages were made. N 178 The higher criticism. conquest by David. Does it not follow that the history of Melchizedek and his reception of Abram the Hebrew may have been derived from a cuneiform record of the age to which it refers, and does not its accordance with what we now know to have been historical fact make it probable that such was the case ? At all events criticism has no longer any serious argument to bring against the supposition ; on the contrary the arguments are all upon the opposite side. It is much more probable that the story of Melchizedek was derived from the old clay records of Jerusalem than that it made its way into the pages of Genesis through the distorting medium of tradition. It is on the one hand too accurate in details, and on the other hand too unlike the picture a writer of the Jewish period would have imagined, to have had its source in popular tradition. Melchizedek blessed " Abram the Hebrew " the con federate of the Amorites at Hebron, and it was to Abram that Ishmael was born. But before the birth of Isaac, the ancestor of Israel, the name of Abram was transformed into Abraham. At the same time Sarai his wife became Sarah. The meaning of the change in the case of Abram will not be known until the etymology of Abraham has been satisfactorily cleared up. The difference between Sarai and Sarah, however, can be now explained. In Hebrew and Phcenician Sarah corresponds with the Assyrian sarrat "queen," the feminine of sar or sarru "a king." But between Assyrian and the language of Canaan there was disagreement in the exact sense attached to these words. While sar in Assyrian means the supreme king and maliku a subordinate CANAANITISH AND EGYPTIAN ELEMENTS. 1 79 kingling, the Canaanite or Hebrew jar and melek have exactly converse senses. What makes the fact the more striking is that the letters of Tel el-Amarna which were written by Canaanites in the land of Canaan, but in the Babylonian language, necessarily use sarru in the Babylonian sense. We can only suppose that the Babylonian domination caused the term melek to be exclusively applied to the vassal princes of Canaan, so that when the dominion ofthe foreigner was at last removed the term still adhered to them, while sar had to take the second place. However this may be, the names Sarah and Milcah have the same signification ; both alike are " queen," the degree of rank indicated by each being depend ent on the employment of the Babylonian or the Canaanite languages. But while the name of Sarah presents no difficulty to the etymologist, that of Sarai is less easy to explain. It has long been assumed that it is a dialectal variation of the other ; the existence of a Semitic dialect, however, in which the feminine suffix was represented by -i has never hitherto been proved. But here again the tablets of Tel el-Amarna have come to our assistance. We find in them several Canaanitish names like Labai " the lion," and Adai, which terminate in the same sound as that of Sarai, and though the latter is feminine and not masculine, we may conclude that the termination was a Canaan itish peculiarity. It was after the change of name, we are told, that Abraham left the neighbourhood of Hebron and " dwelled between Kadesh and Shur, and sojourned in Gerar." Shur we already know ; it was the name l83 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. given by the Semitic tribes to the line of forts which ran from north to south pretty much along the line ofthe modern Suez Canal, and defended Egypt from the Bedawin of Asia. The site of Kadesh was dis covered by Mr. John Rowlands in 1844, and its identity with the Kadcsh-Barnea of Scripture has been proved by Dr. Clay Trumbull in a work which is a model of sound archaeological argument.1 It lies within a circle of mountains about midway between El-Arish and Mount Hor, and consists of a fertile oasis irrigated by a perennial spring of pure and sparkling water. This is the spring which was known as the En-Mishpat or " Spring of Judgment" in the days when Chedor-laomer marched with his Baby- Ionian allies through the land of Edom ; it was here that the chieftains of the desert delivered judgment to their tribesmen, and it was from here, too, at a later day, in "the mountain of the Amorites," that the lawgiver of Israel sent the spies to the city of Hebron. Above the spring Mr. Rowlands noticed a chamber cut in the rock, which may have been a tomb of the Roman period, or. an excavation of prehistoric date.2 The name of Kadesh or " sanctuary " indicates the sacredness of the spot in Semitic eyes. The Nabathaean inscriptions noticed by Dr. Trumbull on the rocks of the pass by which he quitted the valley of the 'Ain Qadis8 tell the same tale, like the multitudinous 1 " Kadesh-Barnea " (New York, ii 2 This information was given to me by Mr. Rowlands in conversation ; Dr. Trumbull when he visited 'Ain Qadis does not appear to have seen the chamber. 3 " Kadesh-Barnea," p. 277. CANAANITISH AND EGYPTIAN ELEMENTS. l8l inscriptions in the same handwriting which the pil grims of the earlier centuries of our era have left on the rocks of the Sinaitic peninsula. It was the one spot in the desert which was a large and fruitful oasis, and its spring of water was defended from hostile attack by the ring of cliffs that surrounded it. We learn from Deuteronomy that it was in the possession of the Amorites. The district in which Kadesh was, as it were, hidden away, was known as the Negeb or "south country.'' The name is also met with in the Egyptian texts. Among the places captured by Shishak in his campaign against Palestine are several which are stated to have been in " the Negbu." One of them is Yurahma,the Jerahmcel ofthe Old Testament (i Chr. ii. 25), the Negeb of which was pillaged by David. The Negeb, it would seem, also included Gerar. The latter city, however, did not lie between Kadesh and Shur, but to the south of Gaza and the Philis tines, in whose territory, indeed, it is placed in a later chapter of Genesis (xxvi.). Either, therefore, we must suppose that the "sojourning" of Abraham in Gerar is to be considered as subsequent to his " dwelling " between Kadesh and Shur, or else the name of Gerar has been substituted in the twentieth chapter for that of some other place. A glance at the map, however, will show that another place would be hard to find in the arid desert which lay between Kadesh and the border of Egypt. Beer-sheba, more over, was within the kingdom of Abimelech, whose guest Abraham was, and Beer-sheba and Gerar were not far apart. The tree planted by Abraham beside the well of 1 82 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. Beer-sheba is a familiar sight to travellers in the East. From time to time they will come across such trees in the desert standing by themselves in a little depression of the soil where there is sufficient moisture in the ground all the year through to keep their roots alive. Such trees are invested with a sacred character, and a small domed edifice within which is the empty tomb of some Mohammedan sheikh is generally to be found beside them. At times we may see upon their branches the rags which Bedawin pilgrims have hung there as offerings, nominally to the " Sheikh " after whom the tomb is named, but really to that spirit of the tree to whom worship was paid before the days of Islam. Tree-worship, like the worship of stones, is of immemorial antiquity in Semitic lands ; but it seems to have been necessary that the tree like the stone should have stood solitary and alone before it could be regarded as holy. The tree which stood in the midst of the Babylonian Garden of Eden, and under whose shadowy branches was the shrine of Tammuz, may have been a reflection of these sacred trees. At Beer-sheba Abraham was in the land of the Philistines (Gen. xxi. 34). The fact, however, would have been denied in the later days of Jewish history. From the time of David onwards, the Philistines were confined to their five cities— Gaza, Ashkclon, Ashdod, Ekron and Gath — and the territory imme diately adjoining them. It has often been maintained, accordingly, that the name of the Philistines is used proleptically in the Book of Genesis to denote a country which had not as yet been occupied by them. The opinion is supported by the evidence CANAANITISH AND EGYPTIAN ELEMENTS. 183 of the Egyptian monuments, on which we meet with the name of the Pulista or Philistines for the first .time in the reign of Ramses III. of the Twentieth dynasty. Under the Eighteenth dynasty the cities which were afterwards those of the Philistines be longed to Egypt and were garrisoned by Egyptian soldiers. Among the letters found at Tel el-Amarna are some from the governor of Ashkelon, while others make mention of Gath and Gaza. Whether these cities recovered their freedom after the death of Khu-n-Aten. we do not know; in the time of Ramses II. at all events they were again under Egyptian rule. . Papyri, moreover, exist which record the de spatch of Egyptian messengers from Gaza in the early part of the reign of his son and successor, the Pharaoh of the Exodus. Fifty years later, however, "whert Ramses III. was on the Egyptian throne, the scene had changed. The south of Palestine had been lost to Egypt, and the Philistines were banded against the Pharaoh along with his bther foes. They were now in intimate alliance with the Zakkur, the old enemies of the Egyptian people; who occupied the eastern coast of Cyprus. In appearance and costume they so closely resemble the latter as to suggest the possibility of their belonging to the same race. The Septuagint, as is well known, invariably terms them the Allophyli or "foreigners" to Canaan, and the Hebrew writers distinguish them from the rest of the population by the title ofthe "uncircumcised." As we have seen, the Caphtor from which the Philistines migrated must, according to Ebers, be identified with the Phcenician colonies on the coast of the Delta. At one time it seemed as if the whole ui 1 84 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. Palestine west of the Jordan was destined to fall into Philistine hands. The reign of Saul was spent in a long struggle against them, and the first king of Israel was slain in a Philistine victory. The conquest of the Philistines by David was almost as arduous an undertaking as the establishment of his empire which was its consequence. We have followed Abraham-from the sanctuary of Hebron to that of Kadesh, and from thence to the sacred well of Beer-sheba. We have now to follow him to another spot which among after generations was to cause the other sanctuaries of the land to become disused and forgotten. Abraham was ordered to go to one of the mountains in the land of Moriah and there offer his son Isaac as a burnt-offering on the high-place. The sacrifice was only too fully in harmony with the fierce ritual of Syria. The belief in the efficacy of the sacrifice of the first-born was deeply inrooted in the minds of the people of Canaan. In times of distress and necessity they offered to the gods their best and dearest, "the fruit of their body for the sin of their soul."1 Phcenician mythology related how when war and pestilence afflicted the land Kronos offered up his son Yeoud as a sacrifice, and human sacrifices were prevalent late into historical times. The Old Testament tells us that Ahaz " made his son to pass through the fire," a euphemistic expression for those offerings of the first-born which made the valley of Tophet an abomination (Jer. vii. 3 0- When the Carthaginians were besieged by the Sicilian general Agathokles,two hundred children were sacrificed to the gods as a national expiation of sin, and 1 Micah vi. 7. CANAANITISH AND EGYPTIAN ELEMENTS. 1 85 a Greek writer, Theophrastos, asserts that Gelon the Syracusan tyrant bound them by treaty to cease from the barbarous practice. It was a practice which had been known to the Babylonians in early times. A Sumerian text has been preserved to us which says — "The offspring who raises the head among mankind, the offspring for his life he gave ; the head of the offspring for the head- of the man he gave, the neck of the offspring for the neck of the man he gave, the breast of the offspring for the breast of trie man he gave." 1 Contact with Europe brought about a softening of the rite among the Carthaginians, and probably also in the mother-country of Phoenicia. In the so-called tariffs of Marseilles and Carthage, — Phoenician inscrip tions enumerating the various sacrifices and offerings that were made in the temple of Baal together with the price of each, — there is no reference to human sacrifice. In place of the human victim we find, as M. Clermont-Ganneau has pointed out,2 an ayil or ram. It is the very animal which was substituted for Isaac 1 Mr. Ball has recently given a new signification to the word nritsu "offspring,'' which he would render "fading" {Proceed ings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, Feb. 1892). "Fat- ling," however, is expressed by a different word (pukhadu) in Assyrian, and the meaning of the term nritsu is fixed by the definition attached to it that the offspring was one who " raises the head among mankind." The Assyrian translation of the original Sumerian text is even more definite, as it turns the last phrase into " the raiser (or begetter) of mankind." M. Menant has shown that on certain early Babylonian cylinders we find a representation of human sacrifice. The victim, however, is a man who is always about to be struck by the sacrificing priest in the presence of a god. 2 " L'imagerie phenicienne," Pt. 1 (1880), pp. 71 sqq. 1 86 ¦ THE HIGHER CRITICISM. according to the narrative in Genesis. The coinci dence can hardly be accidental ; there must be some common reason why the ram took the place of the first-born alike among the Hebrews and the Phoenicians. The spot on which the sacrifice of Abraham was offered is clearly the mountain whereon the temple of Solomon afterwards arose. It was three days' journey from Beer-sheba, and the Chronicler (iii. i) tells us explicitly that "Solomon began to build the house of the Lord at Jerusalem in mount Moriah." Moreover the proverb quoted by the writer in Genesis (xxii. 14) as current in his day unmistakably indicates the temple-hill. Here alone was "the mount of Yahveh" the God of Israel, the " holy hill," like the Du-azagga or " holy mound " of Babylon, whereon the deity had vouchsafed to dwell. But the mountain had been sacred long before Solomon erected upon it the temple of the Lord. We have seen that Jerusalem had been the seat of a kingdom in the old Canaanitish days, and its king was also the priest of the god who was worshipped there. The list of Palestinian cities conquered by Thothmes III. and recorded by the Egyptian monarch on the walls of Karnak further contains a curious indication of the sanctity of the spot. The minute examination to which Mr. Tomkins has subjected the list has shown that Har-el, one of the places mentioned in it, must have had the same geographical position as Jerusalem.1 We know from the tablets of Tel el-Amarna that Jerusalem was already an important city ; we also know from them that it had submitted to the Pharaoh. 1 " Records ofthe Past," New Series, v. p. 49. CANAANITISH AND EGYPTIAN ELEMENTS. 187 We are forced to conclude, therefore, that Jerusalem must be intended under the name of Har-el. But Har-el is the Hebrew or Canaanite " Mount of God," and that the fact was known to the Egyptian scribe is shown by his having added in one copy of the list the determinative of locality to the word Har. Already, therefore, the future temple-hill had been a " Mount of God" before it became specifically the "Mount of Yahveh" the God of Israel ; it had been consecrated to the deity of whom Melchizedek was priest, and it was thus marked out in a peculiar way as the high- place to which Abraham was led. From Jerusalem and Beer-sheba we are again carried to Hebron. But the Hebron with which we are now confronted is no longer the same as the Hebron of an earlier chapter. Abram the Hebrew " dwelt in the plain of Mamre which is Hebron," and his allies were the Amorites who inhabited it ; Abraham the father of Isaac is a "sojourner" at Kirjath-arba, which is Hebron, and there buys a sepulchre for Sarah and himself from the children of Heth. Hittites take the place of Amorites ; Kirjath- arba of Mamre ; and Abram himself has become Abraham. But the change, after all, is not so great as it seems. We cannot as yet, indeed, specify the exact relation that existed between Mamre and Hebron, but it is possible to throw some light on the sudden transformation of blond Amorites into Mongoloid Hittites. As in the north, round about Kadesh on the Orontes and in "the land of the Amorites " of the cuneiform and Egyptian inscrip tions, so too in the extreme south of Palestine we have Hittites and Amorites intermingling together. 1 88 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. As has been already noticed, the ethnographical type of the people of Ashkelon, pokrtrayed in the sculptures of Karnak, proves that a population of Hittite affinities was settled in the south of Canaan before the Israelitish invasion, and thus vindicates the historical credibility of the Biblical statements. Jerusalem, too, according to Ezekiel, had a mixed parentage, Hittite and Amorite, though its "nativity" was in the land of Canaan. The very name of Hebron signifies "confederacy," and indicates that the old sanctuary which stood there was the meeting- place of tribes or races of different origin. The letters of the king of Jerusalem, Ebed-tob, in the Tel el-Amarna collection, are full of references to the Khabiri or " Confederates," who had already occupied a part of the province of the Egyptian Pharaoh, and were menacing Jerusalem itself. As Hebron is never mentioned in the letters, although they show that the territory of Jerusalem extended to the south of it, I believe we must see in these Khabiri a confederacy of Amorites and Hittites, and possibly other tribes also, which gave a name to the common sanctuary at which they assembled. In this way we should account not only for the origin of the name but also for the double .title under which the city was known.1 1 According to I Chr. ii. 42, Mareshah near Gath was "the father" of Hebron. As the name of Mareshah does not occur in the Tel el-Amarna tablets or on the Egyptian monuments, it was probably of later origin than the age of the Eighteenth Egyptian dynasty. The name of Hebron is first met with in the inscriptions of Ramses II. of the Nineteenth dynasty; and the famous " Spring of Hebron " was among the conquests in Southern Palestine made by Ramses III. of the Twentieth dynasty. CANAANITISH AND EGYPTIAN ELEMENTS. 1 89 The Amorites of Hebron were called the Anakim or sons of Anak. Anak, we are further told, was the son of Arba, from whom the city received its title of Kirjath-arba "the stronghold of Arba" (Josh. xiv. 15, xv. 13). Hoham the Amorite king of Hebron was overthrown by Joshua and his city destroyed (Josh. x. 36, 37), and Caleb drove from thence "the three sons of Anak, Sheshai, and Ahiman and Talmai, the children of Anak" (Josh. xv. 14; Numb. xiii. 22). The gentilic Sheshai may perhaps represent the Shasu or Bedawin of Southern Canaan, who are so frequently mentioned on the Egyptian monuments.1 " Hebron was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt " (Numb. xiii. 22). The statement has met with but scant courtesy at the hands of the "higher" criticism. But oriental archaeology has verified so many statements of a similar kind upon which the critic had cast doubt, that it is no longer possible for us to adopt this easy method of dealing with ancient history. We must believe that the writer had documentary evidence for what he says, and that the statement is a statement of fact. Zoan, the Tanis of classical geography, was the capital of the Hyksos during their long domination 1 Talmai is a name which seems to belong in a special manner to the half-Aramaean, half-Arabian population of the north-western portion of the Arabian desert. David married the daughter of Talmai, king of Geshur, a district which must be looked for in the neighbourhood of the Hauran, and the inscriptions found at El-Ola, near Teimi, at no great distance from the Red Sea port of El-Wej, mention two kings of the kingdom of " Lihhyan," who bore the name of Talmi. (See D. H. Miiller : " Epigraphische Denkmaler aus Arabien" (i£~ P- 5-) 190 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. in Northern Egypt. It was from Zoan that Apophis, the Hyksos Pharaoh, sent the insulting message to the vassal prince of Thebes which led to the long war of independence and the final expulsion of the Asiatic stranger from the soil of Egypt. The de parture of the Hyksos was the signal for the decline of Zoan. It sank for awhile to. the rank of a petty village, and it was not until the rise of the Nineteenth dynasty that its temple was again adorned with images and sculptures and the city itself made a residence of the Pharaoh. The excavations which have been carried on there have shown that the foundation of the city went back to the earliest days of the Egyptian monarchy. Monuments of Pepi of the Sixth dynasty have been discovered, and the kings ofthe Twelfth and Thirteenth dynasties were munificent benefactors of its temple. Even the short-lived Fourteenth dynasty seems to be represented among its ruins, and we are thus brought to the age of the Hyksos conquest and the rise of the Fifteenth dynasty of Hyksos kings.1 There are thus only two periods to which the foundation of Zoan can be assigned, either to the remote epoch of the Old Egyptian Empire or to the time when it was refounded by the first kings of the Nineteenth dynasty. It is possible that the first period may be meant in the Book of Numbers ; but it is not probable, and it is to the second period, that of the re-foundation of Zoan, that we are most naturally referred. This was the period when Zoan 1 For the excavations carried on at Zoan by the Egypt Ex ploration Fund, see W. M. Flinders Petrie : "Tanis, Part I " (i 885), and " Tanis, Part 2 " (1888). CANAANITISH AND EGYPTIAN ELEMENTS. I9I became known to the Israelites ; it was at Zoan that Ramses II., the Pharaoh of the Oppression, held his court, and it was " in the field of Zoan " that the hand of Yahveh was lifted up against the oppressors. The Zoan where they had been in " a house of bondage," the Zoan from which they had escaped, was naturally the Zoan which had an interest for the descendants of Abraham. The Zoan of olden times was an object of concern for the Egyptian alone ; to a Hebrew writer it was of small importance. It is doubtful whether the rebuilding of Zoan was due to Seti I. or to his son Ramses II. At all events it was Ramses who made it a capital of Egypt, and who entirely remodelled the plan of its ancient sanctuary. The date of its re-foundation, accordingly, was separated by no long interval of time from that of the Exodus, and if the statement in the Book of Numbers refers to this, the building, or rebuilding, of Hebron will belong to the same period. Can this be made to harmonise with the narratives in Genesis, where we find Hebron already built and inhabited in the age of the Patriarchs ? The answer is obvious : if there is no contradiction between a statement which assigns the foundation of Zoan to the age of Ramses and the discovery of monuments there of far earlier date, there can be equally little contradiction in the case of Hebron. It is Hebron, " the confederacy," and not Mamre or Kirjath-arba, of which it is said that it was built seven years before Zoan. Should the Khabiri of the Tel el-Amarna tablets really be the " Confederates " who met together at the sanctuary of Kirjath-arba, we can readily suppose that they changed the sanctuary into a 192 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. fortified city after the fall of the Egyptian empire in Palestine. It is at any rate noteworthy that while the name of Hebron is unknown to the Egyptian masters of Palestine in the age of the Eighteenth dynasty, it suddenly makes its appearance upon the Egyptian monuments in the time of the Nineteenth dynasty. It is already known to Ramses II., and, as has been already stated, the " Spring of Hebron " was among the Canaanitish conquests of Ramses III. of the Twentieth dynasty. Hebron is in a strange position for an ancient city. It stands not on a hill, but on its slope, on either side of the " pool " above which David hung the hands and feet of the young men who had murdered Ish- bosheth (2 Sam. iv. 12). Its position can be ex plained only from the fact that it was built around the sanctuary whose site is still occupied by one of the most venerated mosques in the Mohammedan world. Tradition, which goes back to the early centuries of our era, avers that the bodies of the patriarchs rest beneath its floor. But Eastern tradition is as little worthy of credit here as it is elsewhere. Hebron was long in the possession of the Crusaders; had the bodies of Abraham and Isaac really lain in the rocky vault of the mosque, the fact would have been known and published. Mediaeval Christendom was too zealously bent on revering the corpses of the saints to have neglected those of the Hebrew patriarchs. The cave beneath the mosque of Hebron is but one of many tombs cut in the cliff which rises above the town. From the time of Justinian onwards it has been regarded as the veritable cave of Machpelah, and the church built by the Byzantine emperor above CANAANITISH AND EGYPTIAN ELEMENTS. 193 it has become the modern mosque. But the sanctity of the cave resulted from its enclosure within the walls of the old sanctuary ; it was not the cave that made the sanctuary holy. Indeed, it is doubtful from the words of Genesis if the cave of Machpelah were not really at some distance from the modern city. The field of Ephron the Hittite, in which the cave was situated, lay " before Mamre," not within Hebron itself. We need not, with the Russian pilgrims, look for Mamre at the oak under which they believe the tent of Abraham to have been pitched ; rather it is to be sought for to the north, at the Hharam Ramet el-Khalil, or " shrine of Abraham," where Prof. Petrie's discoveries have shown that the earliest stone-work goes back to the pre-Exilic period. The remarkable ruin here with its large, well-fitted blocks of stone, though repaired and relined in Roman times, was of much older date. The stones have been dressed with an edge or point without breadth of cut, and are somewhat curved. A similar mode of dressing distinguishes the masonry at Lachish, which Dr. Petrie assigns to the age of Hezekiah, as well as that of an Amorite wall at Tel es-Safi. It stands in marked contrast to the dressing with what Dr. Petrie has termed the comb-pick, a mode of smoothing the stone that was introduced into Syria and Egypt from Greece. While the stones of the Hharam, or sacred enclosure at Hebron, have been dressed in the latter fashion, those of the older building at the Ramet el-Khalil have been worked in the more ancient style.1 Here, therefore, and among the rubbish- 1 See W. M. Flinders Petrie : " Tell el-Hesy (Lachish) " (1891), pp. 36, 37. 194 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. mounds of a city that once stood close 'to it, we must excavate if we would know what Hebron or Mamre was like in the earliest days of its history. From Hebron in Palestine we are transported by the story of Genesis to Syria and Haran, "the city of Nahor." "The wife of Isaac, like the wife of Jacob, is fetched from thence. " An Aramaean wanderer was my father," Israel is made to say in the Book of Deuteronomy (xxvi. 5), and the Aramaean or Syrian element in the Israelitish tribes was never forgotten by tradition. There is a passage in Genesis in which the line of division between the Aramaean and the Canaanitish dialects of the Semitic family of speech is marked with precision. It is where we are told that the memorial cairn called Galeed by Jacob in the language of Canaan was called Jegar-sahadutha by Laban in the language of Aram (Gen. xxxi. 47). The two names have the same meaning, " the cairn of testimony," and indicate that at this spot the Aramaean and Canaanitish populations were in con tact one with the other. The place was in Gilead, on the eastern side of the Jordan, and in later times was known from afar by its Mizpah or " Watch- tower," whose garrison kept watch upon the Aramaean tribes of the Hauran. Recent discoveries have cast an unexpected light on the relations which once existed between the ancestors of the Israelites and the Aramaean popula tion in the north. Early Aramaean inscriptions have been found at Sinjerli, to the north-east of the Gulf of Antioch, certain of which are now in the Berlin Museum, and the disclosures they have made to us CANAANITISH AND EGYPTIAN ELEMENTS. I95 are as curious as they are novel.1 It turns out that Sinjerli represents the Samahla of the Assyrian in scriptions, an Aramaean kingdom which existed in the midst of the Hittite settlements in Northern Syria. One of the monuments was dedicated by the Samahlian king, Bar-Rekeb, to the memory of his father, Panammu. Panammu was the vassal of Tiglath-pileser of Assyria, and the fact is stated by his son as well as by the Assyrian monarch. The date of the inscriptions is thus accurately known. They are written in the letters of the Phcenician alphabet, and the words are divided from one another as they are on the Moabite stone. But the strange and unexpected fact which they disclose is that the Aramaic language of Samahla approached the Hebrew in many respects. While the Hebrew ben "son" is replaced by the Aramaic bar, the gram matical forms and particles are in several cases distinctively Hebrew. So also are many of the words which are used in the text. Even more striking is the fact that the spelling of certain proper names is the same as it is in the present Hebrew text of our Bibles. As in the Old Testament, so in the inscriptions of Samahla the name of Assyria is 1 Sachau : Die altaramdische Inschrift auf der Statue des Konigs Panammu von Sham-al in Von Luschan's Ausgra- bungen in Sendschirli I. {Mittheilicngen aus den orientalischen Sammlungen, xi. 1893). See also D. H. Miiller in the "Vienna Oriental Review" for 1893, and NSldeke in the Zeitschrift d. deutschen morgenldndisclien Gesellschaft, xlvii. I. Some scholars, including Dr. Neubauer, consider the language of the two chief inscriptions— those of Panammu I. and Bar-Rekeb, son of Panammu II.— to be rather Aramaising Hebrew than Hebraising Aramaic. 196 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. written with the vowel u in the second syllable, while that of Tiglath-pileser, which according to the cunei form monuments was pronounced Tukulti-pal-esar, is written in precisely the same incorrect way as in the Old Testament. The fact gives us increased con fidence in the historical accuracy of the Books of Kings, as it indicates that the information contained in them was faithfully copied from written docu ments ; it also proves that a dialect more akin to Hebrew than to the later Aramaic was spoken in Northern Syria in- the eighth century before our era. It is possible that we may be able to carry back still further the antiquity of a Hebrew or Canaanitish form of speech in the northern districts of the ancient Semitic world. Cuneiform tablets have been found near Kaisariyeh in Kappadokia, which appear to belong to the same age as the tablets of Tel el- Amarna. They relate for the most part to com mercial transactions, and are the work of an Assyrian colony established at an early date in the eastern part of Asia Minor. The language employed in them is consequently Assyrian, but it is Assyrian which has been profoundly influenced by the lan guages with which it was in contact. One at least of these languages was non-Semitic ; with this we have at present nothing to do. But besides the non- Semitic influence, there was also a Semitic influence which was not Assyrian. In more than one of the tablets we find the so-called "emphatic aleph'' of the Aramaic dialects, a suffixed d, which has sometimes been supposed to be the last surviving relic of a definite article. In other tablets, however, we come CANAANITISH AND EGYPTIAN ELEMENTS. I97 across words which take us at once to Hebrew. Among these is aparni "a litter," found elsewhere only in the Song of Solomon (iii. 9), where it has been a source of much vexation of spirit to the com mentators. Elsewhere we meet with the name of Abu-salim, the Absalom of the Old Testament.1 The close relations, accordingly, which are described as existing between the Hebrew patriarchs and the Aramaean population of the north can no longer be said to be without external support. We have found a language with Hebraic characteristics at Sinjerli on the western bank of the Euphrates, and excavations may hereafter reveal a language of the same nature at Haran on the eastern bank. Haran was the city of the Moon-god. The found ation of its great temple went back to prehistoric times. Babylonian and Assyrian had contributed to its enlargement or adornment, and its restoration had been the work of the last independent king of Baby lonia, Nabonidos. He tells us that it had been destroyed by the Manda or " nomads " whose capital was at Ekbatana. But the Manda had been over thrown by Cyrus, and Nabonidos was accordingly summoned in a dream by Merodach to restore the ruined shrine. He collected his subjects from Gaza to the Persian Gulf " in order that they might rebuild E-Khulkhul, the temple of the Moon-god, my lord who marches beside me, which is in the city of Harran. . . In the month of peace, on an auspicious day which Samas and Rimmon had made known in a dream, through the wisdom of Ea and Merodach, with oracles, by the art of the god Laban, the lord of 1 See " Records of the Past," New Series, vol. vi. 198 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. foundations and brickwork ... I laid its foundation and made firm its bricks." In a list of the deities whose images stood in the temple of Anu and Rimmon in the city of Assur we find again the name of Laban. It is difficult not to con nect it with Laban of Haran, more especially when we remember that lebdnah " the white one " signified the moon. In Bethuel we have perhaps another reference to the great temple of Haran. Bethuel is the older form of Beth-el " the house of God," a term which was specially applied by the Semitic peoples to the anointed stones in which the spirit of divinity was believed to dwell. Such stones were to be met with all over the Semitic world, in Babylonia, in Syria, in Palestine, in Arabia. So deeply rooted in the Semitic mind was the belief in their sanctity, that even Mohammed could not venture to oppose it, and the Kaaba or old sacreti stone of Mekka still remains an object of reverence to the pilgrims of Islam. The image which represented the Phcenician Ash toreth of Paphos, the sole object of worship in her temple, was an upright block of stone, anointed with oil and covered with an embroidered cloth. We may still see in oriental lands the modern representative of the sacred stone. The domed tombs of the Moham medan saints which form so picturesque an element in an Eastern landscape have within them a rectangular mass of masonry — the cenotaph of the " sheikh " — over which is spread a woven pall. Whoever has visited the Tekkeh near Larnaka in Cyprus, one of the most holy spots in the Mohammedan world, will have no difficulty in realising what the ancient Beth-el was like. There is a cenotaph, it is true, within the build- CANAANITISH AND EGYPTIAN ELEMENTS. I99 ing, but it is built by the side of two huge columns of stone, which must have stood there long before the worshippers had embraced the faith of Islam, and to which the sanctity of the place must have been originally due. Two similar columns of stone stood before every Phcenician temple,1 and one may still be seen standing in its place in the old Phoenician sanctuary — the so-called Temple of the Giants — in the island of Gozo. Even the temple of Solomon was not without them. Here too in its porch were the two "pillars" Jachin and Boaz (1 Kings vii. 21). Both the name and the narrative in Genesis show that Beth-el also, the sanctuary of Northern Israel, was originally the place where the stone which Jacob " set for a pillar " was " God's house " (Gen. xxviii. 22). By the oil which he poured upon it, it was consecrated as a holy place (see Gen. xxxv. 14).2 The Semitic worship of stones spread into Asia Minor. We learn from the Book of Acts that the image of Artemis adored at Ephesus was merely an aerolite. The sacred stone or Beth-el is a sure sign of Semitic influence wherever it is found. Bethuel, we are told, was " a Syrian of Padan-Aram " 1 The two columns of gold and emerald glass in the temple of Melkarth at Tyre are described by Herodotos (ii. 44). For the "pillars ofthe Sun" see 2 Chr. xxxiv. 4, Isai. xvii. 8, etc. 2 Gilgames, the hero of the great Chaldaean Epic, consecrated a Beth-el in a similar way after he had been dismissed by the Babylonian Noah and his sickness had been carried away by the waters of the sea. " He bound together heavy stones," and taking an animal for sacrifice "poured over it a homer" in libation. See my Hibbert Lectures on "The Religion of the Ancient Babylonians," p. 410. 200 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. (Gen. xxv. 20). Padan was a Babylonian word which originally denoted the amount of ground a yoke of oxen could plough in a given time. It thus came to signify a road, and was in this way the equivalent of the name of Haran itself. The city of Haran, the city of the " high-road," was appropriately situated on " the road of Aram." But Padan also signified the plain over which the oxen drew the plough, and it is probably used in this second sense in the phrase Padan-Aram. The name is found in a Babylonian text of the eighteenth century before the Christian era, where a Kassite king of Babylon calls himself " king of the country of Padan," and an old explanatory list of geographical names states that Padin lies " in front of the mountains of Arman," or the Arameans.1 Padan-Aram is one of the terms which the critics assure us are peculiar to the " Elohist." However this may be, it is a term which is geographically distinct from that of Aram-Naharaim, usually trans lated " Syria " in the Authorised Version. Aram- Naharaim " Aram of the two rivers " was the country which extended from the Orontes to the eastern banks of the Euphrates. It is thus equivalent to the Nahrina ofthe Egyptian monuments. In the time of the Eighteenth Egyptian dynasty the ruling state of Nahrina was Mitanni, the Matena of the hieroglyphic texts, which lay opposite Carchemish on the eastern side of the Euphrates. The name Nahrina with its nasal termination must have been derived by the Egyptian scribes from some Aramaic dialect, n in Aramaic taking the place of the Hebrew m in the terminations of the dual and plural. The Tel el- 1 W. A. I. v. 12, 47. CANAANITISH AND EGYPTIAN ELEMENTS. 201 Amarna tablets, however, make it clear that the Hebrew form with m was already current in Palestine, the king of Aram-Naharaim being called by Ebed- tob the king of Nahrima, not the king of Nahrina. The introduction to the twenty-fifth chapter of Genesis comes upon us with something of a shock. We learn from it that Abraham was the forefather not only of Israel, but of the tribes of Northern Arabia as well. Among them we find Sheba and Dedan, Sheba being that northern colony of the Sabaeans of the south, whose remains have been found in the neighbourhood of Teima. Midian, too, we are told, looked back upon Abraham as its ancestor. We know how intimate was the connection between Moses and Jethro, "the priest of Midian," and perhaps, therefore, it is not surprising that they should both have traced their descent from the same parent. There are some scholars, indeed, who have maintained that the name of Abraham, in opposition to Abram, has a Midianitish origin. But the relationship of the Israelites and the tribes of Northern Arabia is attested by the Egyptian monuments. The only people depicted on them whose form and features are distinctively Jewish are the Menti or " shepherds " of the Sinaitic Peninsula. When we remember that the Sinaitic Peninsula and the land of Midian bordered one upon the other, when we remember further the long sojourn of "the Israelitish tribes in the same neighbourhood, the fact acquires a special significance. Physiologically, the nearest kinsfolk of the Israelites were to be found among the mountains of Sinai, and presumably also in the neighbouring districts of Midian ; the 202 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. genealogies of Genesis equally assert that Abraham was the ancestor of both. These North Arabian tribes are distinguished from the Ishmaelites or tribes of Central and North-eastern Arabia, though the latter too claimed Abraham as their father. But the Ishmaelites were Aramaeans in language, while the descendants of Keturah had affinities with the southern population of Himyar. Foremost among these Ishmaelite Aramaeans were Nebayoth "the Nabathaeans.'' In the Assyrian inscriptions we find the latter divided into two groups, the Nabata or Nabathaeans proper, who in later days established a kingdom at Petra, and the Nabatu a tribe of the " Aramaeans " who were settled on the frontier of Babylonia. Like the Nabathaeans, the Kidra or Kedar are described in the cuneiform texts as occupying "the land of Arabia," and the names of some of their kings have a markedly Aramaic stamp. Adbeel, again, is mentioned by Tiglath-pileser under the form of Idibi'ilu, while Massa appears as the Masha, Tema as the Tema, and Mishma as the Isamme. They roamed with their flocks through the northern desert from Havilah on the confines of Babylonia to the eastern fortifi cations of Egypt, and thus at times enclosed the descendants of Keturah on the north as well as on the east. They were Bedawin tribes in the truest sense of the word. The Ishmaelites were distinguished from the Ama lekites, who were regarded as of Edomite origin (Gen. xxxvi. 16). But there were Amalekites in the desert south of Palestine, as we know from the fourteenth chapter of Genesis, before the kingdom CANAANITISH AND EGYPTIAN ELEMENTS. 203 of Edom was in existence. The name of Edom, however, goes back to an early date. An Egyptian historical romance, which describes the adventures of a certain Saneha or Sinuhit in the time of the Twelfth dynasty, makes mention of it. Sinuhit seems to have been mixed up in a conspiracy against one of the Pharaohs ; at all events he had to escape from Egypt in order to save his life, and to take refuge with the Sati or Bedawin tribes of the eastern desert. After passing through "the wall" or line of fortifi cations on the east of Egypt, he made his way to Qimoir, on the eastern side of the Gulf of Suez, and there found himself in the land of the Sati. Eventu ally he arrived in the country of Eduma, " a canton of the Upper Tennu," where he was hospitably received by the Sati king, Ammu-anshi. The king conferred upon him the government of a district called Aia, which Prof. Maspero identifies with the Aian of classical geography on the borders of the Gulf of Akabah.1 The Sati of the Egyptian texts are the Sute or nomad Bedawin of the cuneiform inscriptions, as we now know from the tablets of Tel el-Amarna. The story of Sinuhit goes to show that they were also the Amalekites of the Old Testament. But the Horites, too, were probably included among them. The Horites are called "the children of Seir in the land of Edom." They were the earliest possessors of the country before the arrival of the descendants of Esau. The name has sometimes been supposed to indicate that they were Troglodytes, dwellers in 1 See his translation of the " Adventures of Sinuhit," in the " Records of the Past," New Series, vol. ii. 204 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. " caves," but it is better to connect it with a root which signifies "white," and to see in them the repre sentatives of a white race whom their neighbours contrasted with the "red "-skinned Edomites. In this case they would have been members of the Amorite stock.1 We know that the Amorites once occupied the mountains of Kadesh-barnea, in the immediate vicinity of Mount Seir. The name of Seir was not unknown to the Egyptians. Ramses III., of the Twentieth dynasty, declares that he had "annihilated the Seirites among the tribes of the Shasu." Shasu, or " Plunderers," is the general title of the Bedawin in the Egyptian texts, and applied not only to the nomad Bedawin, but to the settled Bedawin as well. The defenders, for instance, of "the fortress of Canaan," now Khurbet Kan'an, near Hebron, are called Shasu, and remind us that one of the sons of Anak at Hebron itself bore the name of Sheshai. Edom, "the Red Land," has its counterpart in the Egyptian Deser, a name of the same signification which denoted the country eastward of the Delta, inhabited by the Shasu tribes. According to Dr. Brugsch, the name re ferred to the " red " soil of the eastern desert in contradistinction to Kemi, " the black "-soiled land of Egypt.2 It is probable that the conquest of Edom by the descendants of Esau did not long precede the conquest of Canaan by their kinsfolk the Israelites. Necessarily they formed there only the dominant 1 See my article on the " White Race of Ancient Palestine," in the Expositor, July 1888. 2 Brugsch : " Die Egyptologie," i. p. 22, ii. p. 462. CANAANITISH AND EGYPTIAN ELEMENTS. 205 part of the population. The older Horite in habitants could not be exterminated any more than the older Canaanite inhabitants of Palestine, while the Ishmaelite Nabathaeans also formed settlements in the country. Indeed a time came when the ruling power in Edom was Nabathaean, and Petra became the capital of a Nabathaean kingdom. Besides the Nabathaeans, the nationality assigned to one, if not to two, of Esau's wives, would indicate that the Hittites of Southern Canaan had a footing in part of the Edomite territory. But the converse may also have been the fact ; it may have been the Edomites who had occupied a part of the Hittite region. We are told that three sons were born to Esau "in the land of Canaan." Among the descendants of Esau was Kenaz, the brother of Teman, the land of "the south." It was from Kenaz that the Kenizzites were sprung who formed an important element in the tribe of Judah. How numerous they were, and how large a territory they occupied within the tribe, we may gather from the early chapters of the Books of Chronicles. Caleb, the conqueror of Hebron, was a Kenizzite by birth ; so also was his brother Othniel, the deliverer of Israel from the yoke of its first oppressor. It is little wonder, therefore, that it was declared to the Israelites in Deuteronomy (xxiii. 7), " Thou shalt not abhor an Edomite, for he is thy brother." The account of the Edomite tribes is followed by a list ofthe kings that reigned in the land of Edom, before there reigned any king over the children of Israel." The list bears upon its face all the marks of authenticity. There was no reason for its insertion 206 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. in Genesis, unless it had been derived from some ancient document. It has the annalistic form and the simple circumstantiality of detail which would naturally lead the critic to see in it an extract from the official annals of Edom. Against such a conclusion nothing can be urged, except the as sumption that the art of writing was practically unknown in Edom in the age to which the list refers. But recent discovery has shown that such an assumption is wholly without foundation. When an active literary correspondence was being carried on in Canaan and "the field of Bashan," and when the Minaeans of Arabia were engraving inscriptions on the very borders of Edom, we are justified in inferring that the Edomites also were able to read and write. Whether they used the alphabet of Ma'in or the cuneiform characters of Babylonia is immaterial, and can only be settled by future excavation. The main point is that the art of writing must have been known in Edom, and that consequently the list of Edomite kings, which has been preserved to us, may well have been derived from the archives of the Edomite kingdom. This conclusion opens up yet further consequences. If the writer in Genesis has derived his history of the Edomite princes from a written document of Edomite origin, it is more than probable that his minute account of the Edomite tribes and their aluphim or "chieftains" was also drawn from a similar source. In other words, just as we have found clear traces of the use of Babylonian documents in the earlier chapters of Genesis, so here we shall have come upon the traces of the use of an Edomite docu- CANAANITISH AND EGYPTIAN ELEMENTS. 207 ment. Edom must have had its scribes as well as Canaan. The use of Edomite documents in one part of the Old Testament makes it possible to suppose that they may be detected in other parts" of it. It has been pointed out by M. Halevy that the correct rendering of Proverbs xxxi. 1 would be, " The proverbs of Lemuel, king of Massa, which his mother taught him," and that the situation of Massa, the Massa of Genesis xxv. 14, is now well known from the Assyrian inscriptions. Though its population traced their descent from Ishmael rather than rom Esau, it is associated with Dumah, and Dumah, as we learn from a prophecy in the Book of Isaiah (xxi. 11), was a district of Mount Seir. In the proverbs of Lemuel we may accordingly see an extract from the lost literature of Edom. It may be that the Book of Job had the same origin. Its scene is laid in the land of Uz, which cannot have been far from the Edomite border, and the corruption and difficulty of the text would be explained if the book were written in a dialect which differed from Hebrew as we find from the inscriptions of Mesha the language of Moab differed from that of Israel. Copyists and commentators alike would be puzzled by dialectic peculiarities which resembled Hebrew only in form. But whatever doubts may linger in some minds as to the presence of Edomite literature in the Old Testament, there can be none as to the Egyptian character of the narrative of Joseph which follows the thirty-sixth chapter of Genesis. It forms the intro duction to the history of the Exodus and the legisla- 208 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. tion of Moses. We have left the Babylonian element in Genesis behind us ; we can find no longer any traces of Aramaic or Edomite influence ; it is with the king dom of the Pharaohs that the history of the Israelitish people and the documents in which it is embodied have now to do. Egypt and not Babylonia has now to provide us with the archaeological facts by the help of which we may test the age and credibility of the Biblical narratives. ^ The Egyptian colouring given to the history of Joseph is too vivid and clear to admit of question. The only dispute that can arise is as to how far the colouring is accurate in all its details, and what is the particular age of Egyptian history which it best reflects. Is the Egypt which is brought before us in Genesis the Egypt of the age of the Hyksos or the Egypt of a much later date ? Do the allusions ofthe narrative to things Egyptian presuppose a period for its composition centuries later than the age of Joseph, or may the materials from which it is derived go back to the times to which it relates ? Now it cannot be denied that the Egyptians specially delighted in what we should call the historical novel. Many of the papyri which have come down to us contain stories of adventure which are set in a historical framework. In the infancy of Egyptological study several of these stories were believed to represent actual history, and it is only in quite recent years that their real character has come to be known. Indeed in some cases it is still doubt ful whether we are dealing with a historical romance or with a record of events which actually took place. It is still, for instance, a matter of dispute whether CANAANITISH AND EGYPTIAN ELEMENTS. 209 the adventures of Sinuhit, to which allusion has been made above, can be accepted as historical, and whether the" account of the outbreak of the war against the Hyksos, which led to their expulsion from Egypt, is not after all to be considered a romance. It is further a matter of dispute how far we can trust the historical framework in which a confessedly fictitious tale has been set. Has the author adhered religiously to his facts, or modified them in accordance with the exigencies of his story ? Among the tales which Egyptian antiquity has bequeathed to us is the " Story of the Two Brothers," part of which bears a remarkable resemblance to part of the history of Joseph. The story was written for Seti II. the successor of the Pharaoh of Exodus, while he was still crown-prince. It is the story of a fellah, and its similarity to what we read in Genesis may be judged of from the following translation of Brugsch Pasha — 1 " And he sent his younger brother, and said to him, 'Hasten and bring us seed-corn from the village.' And his younger brother found the wife of his elder brother occupied in combing her hair. And he said to her, ' Rise up, give me seed-corn that I may return to the field, for thus has my elder brother enjoined me, to return without delaying.' The woman said to him, ' Go in, open the chest, that thou mayest take what thine heart desires, for otherwise my locks of hair will fall to the ground.' And the youth went within into the stable, and took thereout a large vessel, for it was his wish to carry out much seed-corn. 1 " History of Egypt," English translation, 2nd edition, i. pp. 309 J?y. 2io THE HIGHER CRITICISM. And he loaded himself with wheat and dhurra, and went out with it. Then she said to him, ' How great is the burden in thine arms ? ' He said to her, ' Two measures of dhurra and three measures of wheat make together five measures which rest on my arms.' Thus he spake to her. But she spake to the youth and said, ' How great is thy strength ! Well have I remarked thy power many a time.' And her heart knew him ! . . . and she stood up and laid hold of him, and said to him, ' Come, let us celebrate an hour's repose. The most beautiful things shall be thy portion, for I will prepare for thee festal garments.' Then was the youth like to the panther of the south for rage, on account of the evil word which she had spoken to him. But she was afraid beyond all measure. And he spoke to her and said, ' Thou, O woman, hast been like a mother to me, and thy husband like a father, for he is older than I, so that he might have been my begetter. Why is this great sin that thou hast spoken to me ? Say it not to me another time, then will I this time not tell it, and no word of it shall come out of my mouth to any man at all.' And he loaded himself with his burden and went out into the field. And he went to his elder brother, and they completed their day's work. And when it was evening the elder brother returned home to his habitation. And his younger brother followed behind his oxen, which he had laden with all the good things of the field, to prepare for them their place in the stable ofthe village. And behold the wife of his elder brother feared because of the word which she had spoken, and she took a jar of fat, and she was like one to whom an evil-doer had offered violence, since CANAANITISH AND EGYPTIAN ELEMENTS. 211 she wished to say to her husband, ' Thy younger brother has offered me violence.' And her husband returned home at evening according to his daily custom, and found his wife stretched out and suffering from* injury. She gave him no water for his hands according to her custom. And the candles were not lighted, so that the house was in darkness. But she lay there. And her husband spoke to her thus, ' Who has had to do with thee ? Lift thyself up ! ' She said to him, ' No one has had to do with me except thy younger brother, since when he came to take seed-corn for thee, he found me sitting alone and said to me, " Come, let us make merry an hour and repose ! Let down thy hair !" Thus he spake to me, but I did not listen to him (but said), " See, am I not thy mother, and is not thy elder brother like a father to thee ? " Thus spoke I to him, but he did not hearken to my speech, and used force with me that I might not tell thee. Now, if thou allowest him to live, I will kill myself.' " The husband believed his wife's words, and in the fury of the moment seized a knife and hurried out to the stable to kill his younger brother. But there the cattle befriended their innocent keeper, and told him that his brother stood behind the door ready to slay him. He escaped accordingly, pursued by his elder brother, and was eventually saved by the god Horus, who interposed between himself and his pursuer a lake full of crocodiles. It is impossible not to conclude that there is some connection between the Egyptian story and the Biblical narrative of Potiphar's wife. It is clear on the one hand that the story is at least as old as the 212 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. age of the Exodus, when it was introduced into a tale written for the heir of the Pharaoh ; and on the other hand that it had its origin in Egypt. The first fact is important in considering the period to which the narrative of Joseph must be assigned. Several leading Egyptologists have lately expressed a conviction that the narrative cannot be older than the epoch ofthe Twenty-sixth dynasty (B.C. 664 — 525), or at all events the age of Shishak, some three centuries previously. Their opinions are based on the Egyptian proper names which occur in it. Asenath, the wife of Joseph, is explained as the Egyptian Nes-Nit " belonging to Neith," while Potiphera and its abbreviated form Potiphar have long been recognised as representing the Egyptian Pa-tu-pa-Ra "the gift of the Sun-god." Names compounded with that of the goddess Neith point to the period of the Twenty- sixth dynasty, while it is alleged that names of the form of that of Potiphar first came into fashion in the time of Shishak and his successors. But, as Mr. Tomkins has remarked,1 the " supposed proof of a negative from the limitation of one's own knowledge is not to be called a proof at all," especially in Egyptology. It has been proved again and again that in archaeology we can argue only from observed facts, not from the want of facts. At any moment a discovery may be made which will show that our negative conclusions were the result only of our ignorance of the evidence, and such discoveries have been made time after time. Because we have not as 1 "The Life and Times of Joseph" (1 891)— an excellent little work in which all the archaeological facts bearing upon the history of Joseph are put together in a compact form. CANAANITISH AND EGYPTIAN ELEMENTS. 213 yet met with names of the form of Potiphera on the older monuments of Egypt, we cannot be certain that they did not exist. Indeed, Mr. Tomkins has quoted a stele now in the Louvre ofthe age of Thothmes III., in which mention is made of an ancestor of Semitic origin who lived five generations before it was erected, and who bore the name of Pa-t-Baal. In this it is probable that we have a variant spelling of Pa-tu- Baal. As to the name of Asenath it must be remembered that the etymology, first proposed by Dr. Steindorff, who sees in it the name of the goddess Neith, is merely a guess, like the older etymologies which have been suggested by other scholars. We cannot venture to base upon it any wide-reaching conclusions any more than we can upon the title given to Joseph, Zaphnath-paaneah, until the precise meaning of the latter has been satisfactorily cleared up. At present the origin of the first syllable is still doubtful, and though the latter part of the name is certainly the Egyptian n-ti-pa-dnkh " of the life," it is difficult to say in which of its different senses the expression pa-dnkh "the life" is employed. In one of its uses it designated the Pharaoh as " the living one," and Pi-ankhi was the name of no less than three Ethiopian kings. It was also the name of a son of Hri-Hor the priest of Amon, who assisted in founding the dynasty which preceded that of Shishak. But this, again, throws little light on the age to which the composi tion of the Biblical narrative must be referred. Equally little light is shed by another fact, which is, however, of a somewhat startling character. While the title given to Joseph by the Pharaoh is of Egyptian 214 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. derivation, that which the people shouted before him after his investiture with power is of Babylonian origin. An Egyptian etymology has been sought in vain for the word Abrek, which the Authorised Version renders " bow the knee," and the hieroglyphic dictionary has been tortured to no purpose to find terms into which it could be resolved. The cuneiform tablets of Baby lonia, however, have come to our rescue. We learn from them that there was a word abrik in the Sumerian language which signified " a seer," and was borrowed by the Semitic Babylonians under the varying forms of abrikku and abarakku} It is abrikku which we have in Genesis, and the title applied by the people to the "seer" Joseph proves to be the one we should most naturally* expect. He was a seer of seers, and it was in virtue of his seership that the Pharaoh had raised him to a dignity next to his own. How such a word as abrikku could have made its way to Egypt and Canaan is not difficult to under stand after the discovery of the Tel el-Amarna tablets. Among the tablets is a mythological text, the words of which have been carefully divided from one another by some Egyptian scribe who used it as an exercise in the study of a foreign language, and the foreign words which we learn in our exercises are very apt to creep into the language which we use ourselves. Technical terms like abrikku are peculiarly ready to make their way from one language to another with which it is in literary contact, and Babylonia rather than Egypt was specially the land of seers. The Asiatic prophet and interpreter of dreams needed an 1 The explanation of the Sumerian abrik is given in the bilingual tablet 82, 2, 18, now in the British Museum. CANAANITISH AND EGYPTIAN ELEMENTS. 215 Asiatic title by which he could be addressed. The mention of his divining cup in a later chapter (Gen. xliv. 5) shows that Joseph continued to exercise his functions as a seer after his accession to power.1 There is a curious parallelism between the position of Joseph and that of another native of Canaan, as it would seem, in the reign of "the Heretic king" of Egypt. Khu-n-Aten. Several of the cuneiform letters found at Tel el-Amarna are addressed by a certain Aziru or Ezer, a Phcenician officer in the Egyptian service, to his "lord" and "father" Dudu. Dudu is the Dodo of the Old Testament, a name which has the same etymological origin as the Hebrew David and the Phcenician Dido, and the language in which Dudu is addressed shows that he was second to the Pharaoh alone. Like the king he is called the "lord" at whose feet " his servants " prostrated themselves, and Aziru declares in one passage that he does " not depart from the commands of " his " lord," his " god," his "Sun-god, and from the commands of" his "lord Dudu," thus coupling together the Pharaoh and his 1 The excavations made by Prof. Flinders Petrie at Tel el- Amarna in the spring of 1892 have further helped us to under stand how technical terms like the Sumerian abrik and the Babylonian abrikku could make their way into the language of Egypt. He has found several fragments of lexical tablets which were made use of by the scribes who conducted the cuneiform correspondence. Some of these give Sumerian words, written bothv ideographically and phonetically, with their Semitic Babylonian equivalents ; others are comparative dictionaries, containing lists of foreign words with their Babylonian explana tions set over against them. It is obvious that such lexical tablets would make the learned classes well acquainted with the title by which an interpreter of dreams was known in the Asiatic East. 2l6 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. minister.1 It is probable that the tomb of Dudu at Tel el-Amarna in which Lepsius found a hymn to the Solar Disk was the last resting-place of the Canaanite minister of the Egyptian monarch. The changes which the administration of Joseph is said to have made in the land-tenure of Egypt find support in Egyptian history. In the earlier days of the monarchy the country was in the hands of great feudal lords, over whom the Pharaoh at times held merely nominal sway. They inherited their estates and power ; the land belonged to them absolutely, and it was only their service which they owed to the king. But after the convulsion caused by the Hyksos conquest and war of independence this older system of land-tenure was entirely changed. When the later Egypt emerges under the monarchs of the Eighteenth dynasty the feudal princes have passed away, and the Pharaoh is the fountain-head not only of honour but of property as well. In the hands of the Pharaohs of the Nineteenth dynasty the government became still more centralised and autocratic. The people ceased to have any rights of their own, and Egypt became a nation of slaves, at the head of whom was a single irresponsible individual. His power was tempered by two classes only, the priests whom he was obliged to flatter and caress, and the soldiers, mostly mercenaries, who could make and unmake him. These, accord ingly, were the only two classes whose property did not belong to the state. We know that such was the fact in the case of the priests from the monuments, in the case of the soldiers from the classical authors and 1 See my translations of two letters of Aziru in the " Records ofthe Past," New Series, iii. pp. 67—70. CANAANITISH AND EGYPTIAN ELEMENTS. 217 Greek papyri. It is true that the Pharaoh did at times lay impious hands on the estates belonging to the temples, but the act was regarded as sacrilege, and the perpetrator of it was visited with the vengeance of the gods. Thus a demotic papyrus now in Paris describes how Amasis robbed the temples of Memphis, of On, and of Bubastis of the property which former kings had bestowed on them, and transferred it to the Greek mercenaries, but by so doing he brought down the anger of heaven upon his country, and prepared the way for the Persian conquest.1 The seven years of plenty followed by the seven years of famine have lately received a curious illus tration from a hieroglyphic inscription discovered by Mr. Wilbour in the island of Sehel. Sehel lies almost ' in the centre of the First Cataract, midway between Assuan and Philae, and was for long centuries the sacred island of the locality before it was supplanted by Philae in the age of the Ptolemies. The inscription is of late date, probably not older than the third century B.C., and seems to have been engraved by the 1 Revillout in the Revue e'gyptologique, i., 2, pp. 57 sqq. According to Revillout the papyrus makes the following state ments about the transference of the revenues of the temples to the Greek mercenaries by order of the Council under Amasis : " The vessels, the fuel, the linen, and the dues which were given to the temples of the gods before the reign of Amasis, for the sanctuaries of Memphis, On, and Bubastis, the Council ordered : Do not give them to them ! Let a seat be given to the mer cenaries in the . . . of the district of Sais (?). Let them have the vessels and the fuel. Let them bring their gods ! As for the corn of the three temples mentioned above, the Council ordered : Divide what is given them ! As for what was given to the soldiers in these three temples, it ordered : Give them more ! " 2l8 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. priests of Khnum for the purpose of securing the tithes and imports of the districts which, they asserted, had been granted to them by an anci nt king. The inscription begins in the following way : " In the year 1 8 of the king, the master of diadems, the Divine incarnation, the golden Horus . . . [the reading of the royal name is doubtful], when Madir was prince of the cities of the South Land and director of the Nubians in Elephantine, this message of the king was brought .to him : ' I am sorrowing upon my high throne over those who belong to the palace. In sorrow is my heart for the great misfortune because the Nile-flood in my time has not come for seven years. Light is the grain, there is lack of crops and of all kinds of food.' " l In the end the god Khnum came to the rescue of the Pharaoh and his subjects, and the years of famine were followed by endless plenty. In return for this the god, or rather his priests were endowed with certain gifts which it is the object of the inscription to record. Apart from this doubtful testimony, however, we have historical evidence of a famine which lasted seven years in consequence of too low a Nile. The Arabic historian El-Makrizi paints in terrible colours the results of one which began in A.D. 1064 and ended in 1071, and consequently lasted for seven years. It happens also, as Brugsch Pasha was the first to notice, that there is contemporaneous evidence of the occurrence of a famine in Egypt at the very period to which the lifetime of Joseph would belong. 1 The translation is given by Brugsch: "Die biblischen sieben Jahre der Hungersnoth" (Leipzig, 1891). CANAANITISH AND EGYPTIAN ELEMENTS. 219 At El-Kab, the residence of those native Pharaohs of the Seventeenth dynasty whose revolt against the Hyksos restored Egypt to its independence, is the tomb of a certain Baba, who must have lived when the struggle with the foreigner was still going on. On the wall of the tomb is a hieroglyphic inscription in which the good deeds of its owner are recorded with naive simplicity. Among other acts of charity which Baba performed, he states that "when a famine arose, lasting many years, I issued corn to the city each year of famine." 1 The expression " many years " signalises it as one of no common severity. Like the famine of Joseph's day it was of long duration, and differed from it only in being described as in the south of Egypt instead of in the north. But a famine in Egypt would have been felt equally in the south and in the north of the country. It was the result of an insufficient Nile, and the cause affected the Delta as much as it did the neighbour hood of El-Kab. It was only the administration and prevision of Joseph which did not extend to the latter locality ; the evil against which his measures were taken must have been felt as far as the Cataracts. The age of Baba and of Joseph will have coincided, if any credence is to be placed in the Biblical narra tive. When Joseph entered Northern Egypt it would still have been under Hyksos rule. According to George the Synkellos Aphdphis, the Hyksos prince under whom the war of independence commenced, was the Pharaoh who befriended him. The assertion 1 Brugsch : " History of Egypt," English translation, 2nd edit., i. p. 304. 220 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. is doubtless founded on the chronological calculations of the Byzantine writer, but it nevertheless is pro bably not far from the truth. If Meneptah, the son of Ramses II., is the Pharaoh of the Exodus — and the Egyptian monuments exclude any other reign for that event— the chronology of the Pentateuch (Exod. xii. 40) would place the arrival of Israel in Egypt long before the expulsion of the Hyksos and the rise of the Eighteenth dynasty. Prof. Mahler upon astronomical grounds has determined the year B.C. 128 1 to be the last year of the reign of Ramses II., while the founder of the Eighteenth dynasty began his reign about B.C. 1590. The family of Joseph, therefore, would have settled in Egypt towards the time when the struggle between the Hyksos kings and the princes of the south first broke out. We know from the scanty relics they have left us how thoroughly Egyptianised the Hyksos conquerors had long been. The titles they assumed, the official language and writing they used, the arts and sciences they cultivated, were all Egyptian. The court of the Hyksos kings at Zoan was in all respects modelled on that of the ancient Pharaohs. It was only their names and their worship which continued foreign. The city of On was within their dominions, and Joseph might well have married the daughter of its priest. Whatever excesses they may have com mitted against the Egyptian temples on their first invasion of the country, the monuments have shown must have been momentary only. The worship in the great temple of the Sun-god at On would have suffered no interruption at their hands. In fact, CANAANITISH AND EGYPTIAN ELEMENTS. 221 the papyrus which describes in legendary form the history of the expulsion of the Hyksos not only prefixes the name of Ra, the Sun-god, to that of the Hyksos monarch Apophis, but speaks of his foreign adherents as dwelling in On " the city of Ra." 1 On the other hand, under the Hyksos Pharaohs of Zoan intercourse between Egypt and Canaan would have been easy and constant. No prejudice would have been felt against a Hebrew stranger by those who were themselves strangers in the land, and his rise at court would not have been difficult. The Pharaoh and his "ministers" would have had no hesitation in granting the land of Goshen to a pastoral tribe from Asia. They would have seen in them friends rather than enemies, and possible allies against the conquered Egyptians. They were them selves called Aamu or "Asiatics" by their subjects, and an inscription of Queen Hashepsu above the Speos Artemidos describes them under this name as ruling in Avaris and "ignoring the god Ra." 2 Goshen lay between the cultivated land of Egypt and the Asiatic tribes of the eastern desert ; it was 1 See Professor Maspero's translation in "Records of the Past," New Series, ii. pp. 37 — 44. 2 The inscription was first copied in full, and the reference to the Hyksos in it discovered by Mr. Golemscheff (" Recueil de Travaux relatifs k la Philologie et h. 1'Arche'ologie egyptiennes et assyriennes," iii. 1, 1881, and vi. 1, 1885). The passage in which the Hyksos are mentioned is as follows : " Hear me, all ye men, all ye mortals as many as exist ! I have done this in my modesty without taking advantage of what I have done to add to it what is false. I restored that which was in ruins, and I completed what was left unfinished, for there had been Aamu in the midst of Northern Egypt and in Avaris, and foreign hordes from among them had destroyed the monuments (of old)." 222 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. within the Egyptian frontier and yet was not in habited by Egyptians of pure race, while it was fitted for the pasturage of flocks rather than for the growth of corn. The foreigners could dwell here without fear of assault on the part of the Egyptians or of intermixture with them, while they were suffi ciently near the Hyksos capital for their services to be at the disposal of the foreign Pharaoh in case of need. The Hyksos supremacy in Egypt, accordingly, meets all the -requirements of the history of Joseph and the Israelitish settlement in Goshen. The wel come Joseph and his family met with would be fully explained ; at the same time the Hyksos court would have been a genuinely Egyptian one so far as the continuation of the customs and ceremonial of the ancient Pharaohs was concerned. There is only one other period in ancient Egyptian history to which the settlement could be assigned. This is the period which has recently been revealed to us by the tablets of Tel el-Amarna. Under "the heretic king " Khu-n-Aten Egypt and Canaan were again in close union with one another, and the Canaanite was supreme in the Pharaoh's court and virtually master of the land of Egypt. We have found the vizier Dudu actually occupying the same position as that of Joseph. But it is impossible to harmonise the date of the Exodus with that of the arrival of Joseph in Egypt if the latter did not happen till the closing years of the Eighteenth dynasty. Khu-n-Aten's reign falls only one hundred and fifty years earlier than that of the Pharaoh of the Exodus. It is indeed possible that in the later CANAANITISH AND EGYPTIAN ELEMENTS. 223 perspective of the writer of Genesis the age of the Hyksos and the age of Khu-n-Aten have as it were melted into one ; but this can be only the historical perspective of a lat-er time like that which in the Book of Kings makes the murder of Sennacherib follow immediately upon his retreat from Jerusalem. Egypt had been overrun by the Hyksos or Shep herd kings in the last days of the Fourteenth dynasty. How far south their rule extended it is difficult to say. We know, however, that Memphis fell into their possession, and a monument of one of their kings has been found in the Fayyum. It would seem, moreover, that their suzerainty was acknowledged in Upper Egypt, even if they did not bear personal sway there. Manetho, the Egyptian historian, with all his prejudices against them, is obliged to admit the Fifteenth and Sixteenth dynasties of Hyksos Pharaohs as alone legitimate, and even if his Seventeenth dynasty consists of native Theban princes, he places beside it another Seventeenth dynasty of Hyksos kings. That the latter dynasty was the one which really exercised supreme power we learn from a papyrus which, though written by an Egyptian scribe, gives the Theban prince the title merely of hiq or " chieftain," and describes how his suzerain lord, the Hyksos Apophis, sent messengers to him, ordering him to worship the god of the foreigner alone. The foreign lord who resided at Zoan must have been feared in Southern Egypt as well as obeyed in the North.1 1 The name of a Hyksos king has been found at Gebelln, south of Thebes, and the fragments of a Hyksos sphinx have been discovered still further south at El-Kab. 224 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. Prof. Erman has shown that Manetho ascribed to the Hyksos rule the long duration of 953 years.1 This included the seven years of anarchy which followed immediately upon their invasion, before they had as yet chosen their king, Salatis, in whose name some scholars have seen the Hebrew shallidh or " ruler." It is the word which is used in Genesis xiii. 6, where it is said that "Joseph was the governor over the land." It was during the reign of Apophis II., of the Seventeenth Hyksos dynasty, that the war of inde pendence commenced on the part of the Egyptian people. The princes of Thebes carried on a heroic struggle through at least five generations. Little by little the foreigner was driven from the lands he had so long possessed ; first Memphis and Heliopolis were recovered for Egypt, then Zoan was captured and destroyed, and the Hyksos were forced into their last-remaining fortress of Avaris. But the walls even of Avaris did not hold out long, and a time came when Ahmes, the founder of the Eighteenth dynasty, stormed the city and pursued its defenders as far as Sherohan, midway between Egypt and Palestine. Sherohan, too, was captured, and accord ing to Manetho the fugitives fled northwards, where they built Jerusalem as a protection against the Assyrians. Egypt was at last free from the " impure " foot of the hated Hyksos, and the Pharaohs of the Eighteenth dynasty now waged a war of revenge in Asia itself. Canaan became an Egyptian province, Northern Syria was garrisoned with Egyptian soldiers, and the 1 Zeitschrift fur agyptische Sprache (1880), pp. 125—127. CANAANITISH AND EGYPTIAN ELEMENTS. 225 boundaries of the empire were fixed at the banks of the Euphrates. But in conquering Asia, the Pharaohs themselves were conquered. The victories of Thoth mes III. prepared the way for the marriage of his descendants with the royal family of Mitanni and the return of the Asiatic to power in Egypt in the reign of Khu-n-Aten. Such was the story of the Hyksos domination in the valley of the Nile. It was followed by the most brilliant epoch in the annals of Egypt, and the creation of an Egyptian empire. But the empire lasted barely two centuries. It rose and fell with the Eighteenth dynasty, and the efforts of a Seti or a Ramses to revive it proved unavailing. ,. We are now in a position for judging how far^ the history of Joseph's life is in agreement with the requirements of secular history. Assuming the Pharaoh whom he served to have been a Hyksos prince, can it be said that the narrative in Genesis is in harmony with the teachings of the monuments ? Is the condition of Egypt as described by them compatible with the historical character of the> Biblical story ? To this there can be only one reply. There is nothing in the monumental evidence which throws doubt on the general credibility of the Biblical narrative. On the contrary, the picture presented b'y the latter agrees remarkably in general features as well as in detail with the picture presented by the monuments. The history of Joseph is as Egyptian in its colouring, and as true to the facts of Egyptian archaeology, as the story of the flood and the campaign of Chedor-laomer are Babylonian in origin Q 226 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. and form. If we may speak of a Babylonian and an Edomite element in Genesis, we may also speak of an Egyptian element. At the same time, this Egyptian element has assumed a thoroughly Hebraic character. Not only is the language Hebrew in which the narrative of Joseph is written, the ideas and point of view which underlie it are Hebrew as well. The Egyptian scenery which it sets before us is seen through Hebrew eyes. Egypt and Canaan are as closely united in the narrative as they were in the days of Khu-n-Aten, when Canaan was an Egyptian province. The famine which can be caused in Egypt only by a failure of the waters of the Nile is regarded as spreading also to Canaan, where it would be due to a want of rain. Here we may see a trace of the age of Khu-n-Aten, when Canaan was at times dependent upon Egypt for its corn — as we know to have been the case from one of the Tel el-Amarna letters — and when conse quently a failure of food in the valley of the Nile would have affected also the Asiatic province.1 1 Thus Rib-Hadad, the governor of Gebal, says in one of his despatches (Winckler and Abel, No. 48) to the Egyptian kings that he had complained : " ' I have no corn : corn to eat I have none. What is to be done for the men my allies ? All their sons, their daughters and their households have been handed over to the land of Zarimuta in order to preserve their lives.' Then the king hears the words of his faithful servant, and sends corn in ships and preserves his servant and his property, and de spatches 400 men and 30 convoys of horses as a present to Suta (Seti, the Egyptian Commissioner), and they will defend the city for thee. Again since Yankhamu says : ' Thou hast given corn to Rib-Hadad,' give [corn also] to him [when] thou enterest [the city] of Tyre." CANAANITISH AND EGYPTIAN ELEMENTS. 227 Throughout the narrative it is Palestine rather than the kingdom of the Pharaohs which occupies the first place in the writer's thoughts. But the narrative is not Palestinian in its spirit, and there are statements in it which imply that its composition could not be earlier than the rise of the Nineteenth dynasty. The land of Goshen is said " proleptically " to have been " in the land of Rameses " (Gen. xlvii. 11), though the latter name had no existence until it was given to the district by the Pharaoh Ramses. The rule of Joseph is obeyed throughout " all the land of Egypt," as it would have been in the time which followed the expulsion of the Hyksos, and the fifth part of its produce is accord ingly handed over to the Pharaoh as continued to be the case " unto this day." It was only in Northern Egypt that the minister of a Hyksos ruler could have thus changed the tenure by which the land was held. Equally instructive is the statement that Abel-mizraim " beyond Jordan " derived its name from "the mourning of the Egyptians" (Gen. 1. 11). It is true that dbal in Hebrew signifies " to mourn," but the geographical name Abel or Abila, which is found in so many parts of Palestine, has a wholly different origin, and means simply " meadow-land." The list given by Thothmes III. of the places he had conquered in Canaan shows how many of these Abels already existed in the country. There is an Abil in the north near Atar, identified by Mr. Tomkins with Abila in the Decapolis, an Abil near "Atar the greater" in the south, an Abil in the district of Gath, and an Abil in the neighbourhood of Jericho. The fact that Canaan had been an 228 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. Egyptian province, and that its towns had been garrisoned by Egyptian troops would sufficiently account for the epithet of Mizraim being applied to one of them. Abel-mizraim, in short, is but an "Abel of the Egyptians," a testimony to the Egyptian empire in Palestine in the age of the Eighteenth dynasty. Even the use of the title Pharaoh indicates at once the Hebraic character of the history of Joseph, and the fact that its composition in the form in which we possess it cannot have been coeval with the events it records. Pharaoh is the Egyptian Per-aa, or " great house," the title often applied in the inscriptions to the ruling monarch, as the title of " Sublime Porte " is still often applied to the Sultan of Turkey. But in native and contemporaneous documents the title does not stand alone. Not only the Pharaoh himself, but his subjects also, employed the personal name that belonged to him. An Egyptian might indeed speak of "the Pharaoh,'' but it was because he had already specified by name the Pharaoh to whom he referred. It was naturally otherwise in the case of the foreigner. Just as the Egyptian inscriptions mention "the king of Megiddo," "the king of the Hittites," " the king of Naharaim," without adding their names, so the Hebrew who wrote for Hebrews would know the king of Egypt by his title only. We ourselves seldom mention the ruler of Turkey by his individual name ; we prefer to speak of him as the " Sultan " or " the Porte " ; and among those who are familiar with the title of the " Shah of Persia," it may be questioned whether there are many who know his actual name. CANAANITISH AND EGYPTIAN ELEMENTS. 229 The individual name of a king is of little interest to a stranger, however important it may be to those who draw up legal documents at home. And if it can be so readily neglected by the stranger who is a con temporary of its owner, how much more readily will it be neglected by him if he lives at some later date. Jeremiah knew that the Egyptian monarch of his own day was Pharaoh-Necho ; he would have been content to allude to an earlier one by his title only. The part played by dreams in the history of Joseph seems Egyptian rather than Palestinian, though the prophetic character of dreams was recognised by all the nations of antiquity, and in Babylonia the interpretation of them was a regular branch of science. But among "so pious a people as the Egyptians," to quote the words of Professor Wiedemann, " it was only natural" that dreams should have been regarded as a means of personal intercourse with the deity. Dreams were thus in great measure prophetic, like that in which Ra- Harmakhis appeared to Thothmes IV. when he lay asleep, wearied with a day of hunting, at the feet of the sphinx. "Some thousand years later a dream commanded King Nut-Amon of .^Ethiopia to march to Egypt." By sleeping in a temple which was the scat of an oracle, it was possible to receive " true answers" to the questions asked of the god. "The meaning of the dream was generally made out by the dreamer himself from the connection in which it stood. At times, however, recourse was had to special interpreters of dreams," like Joseph in the narrative of Genesis. A Greek inscription mentions such an 230 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. official in the Serapeum at Memphis. The belief in these prophetic dreams, in which remedies for sick ness were especially looked for, is found in other countries as well as Egypt ; but Egypt was its centre, so that the poet Claudian, in the later days of the Roman empire, is still able to call prophetic dreams by the name of " Egyptian." The gods sent these dreams if they thought fit, and the people usually contented themselves with praying for them. If, however, they were not sent, recourse could be had to magic, and the gods be thus compelled to bestow them on the sleeper.1 A comparison, then, of what the Egyptian records have to tell us with the later chapters of Genesis seems to lead to the following results. On the historical side we have no reason to question the credibility of the narrative, so far, at any rate, as it can be tested by oriental archaeology. It is in accordance with the general facts of Egyptian history ; while in matters of detail, such" as the shaving of the head before an audience with the Pharaoh (Gen. xli. 14), the connection of the " kine " with the river Nile, or the Egyptian words and names which are introduced, it displays a striking accuracy. On the literary side it is in its present form thoroughly Hebraic, though the materials it em bodies are of Egyptian origin. But it cannot be earlier than the age of the Nineteenth dynasty ; how much later it may be, archaeology at present offers no means of deciding. The evidence derived from the 1 Wiedemann : " Die Religion der alten AEgypter," pp. 142, J43- CANAANITISH AND EGYPTIAN ELEMENTS. 23 1 names of Potiphera and Asenath is not sufficiently conclusive to establish the point. With the death of Joseph we reach the end of the Book of Genesis. One fact which our archaeo logical survey of it has brought to light cannot fail to strike the reader. It is that a large part of the book is drawn from literary sources which were not Palestinian ; while in one place — the history of Melchizedek — it is probable that a Palestinian docu ment was also used. Elsewhere, however, the sources which we can detect are Babylonian, Edomite, and Egyptian, and in the case of the first we can state with a considerable degree of assurance that they were employed by Elohist and Jehovist alike. But whereas in the hands of the Elohist they have been recast, like the Egyptian chapters at the end of the book, the Jehovist sometimes repeats the actual words of his literary authorities. The fact raises the question whether the time has not arrived for correcting and supplementing the literary analysis of the Pentateuch by an analysis based on the archaeological evidence. It may yet turn out that below the documents which the higher criticism claims to have discovered there is an earlier stratum of literature which in its origin is partly Babylonian, partly Egyptian, partly Aramaic, partly Edomite, and partly Canaanitish. It is this literature which may after all prove to be the true source of the Book of Genesis, just as the chronicles of Israel and Judah, and the writings of the prophets, were the source ofthe Books of Kings. The questions both of age and of authenticity would then assume a wholly new aspect, and require to be decided upon evidence 232 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. which the archaeologist can alone supply. The period to which the composition of Genesis in its present shape should be assigned would be no longer of any consequence. We might, if we chose, accept the old Jewish tradition, which finds expression in the Second Book of Esdras,1 and regard Ezra as its author; but our views as to the character and authority of the work would be in no way affected. It is not the work as a whole, but the elements of which it is composed, which are of importance in the eyes of the historian. If the archaeologist can show that these elements are ancient and genuine, and that the statements contained in them are historically trustworthy, the historian has secured all that he requires. The Book of Genesis will take rank by the side of the other monuments of the past as a record of events which have actually happened and been handed down by credible men. It will cease to be a mere literary plaything, to be sliced and fitted together again according to the dictates of modern philology, and will become a collection of ancient documents which have all the value of contem poraneous testimony. We have seen that in many instances oriental discovery has shown that such documents actually exist in it, and that the statements they contain are as worthy of belief as the inscriptions of Babylonia or Egypt. It has further shown that the age of these documents can be approximately fixed by a com parison of the statements contained in them with the monuments of the past which modern research has restored to us, and that the results are not always in 1 xiv. 21 sqq. CANAANITISH AND EGYPTIAN ELEMENTS. 233 accordance with the conclusions and assumptions of the "higher criticism." What has been achieved already is an earnest of what will be achieved here after, when the buried cities and tombs of the East have all been made to deliver up their dead. We cannot expect to find everything verified, but the historian will be content if it is permitted him to turn with the same confidence to the Books of Moses as he does to Thukydides or Tacitus. CHAPTER V. THE EGYPTIAN TUTELAGE OF ISRAEL. The Book of Genesis has left us in Egypt ; the Book of Exodus still finds us there. Exodus, in fact, is emphatically the Egyptian portion of the Old Testament. The larger part of the history contained in it has for its stage the valley of the Nile, and even when the wilderness has been reached, and the law is promulgated from the summit of Mount Sinai, it is still Egypt to which the narrative looks back. In the first half of the book Egypt is the foreground of the story, in the second half it is the background. The Israelites have multiplied and filled the land. The context shows that it is the land of Goshen which is referred to, not the land of Egypt as a whole. The determination of the geographical position of this land of Goshen has been the work of the Egypt Exploration Fund. The excavations carried on in the Delta at the expense of the Fund, and the skill of Mr. Naville in reading the evidence of the inscriptions brought to light by them, have at last enabled us to fix with some degree of certainty the limits of the district occupied by the children of Israel. Goshen has ceased to be the property of fanciful theorists and has passed into the possession of the scientific map-maker. THE EGYPTIAN TUTELAGE OF ISRAEL. 235 It was in 1885 that Mr. Naville made the excava tions for the Fund which have chiefly led to this result.1 They were made at a place now called Saft el-Henneh, about six miles to the east of Zagazig. Here hieroglyphic monuments were found from which the explorer learned what was the old name of the place. While its religious title was Pi-Sopd "the house of the god Sopd," from whence the modern Saft is descended, in the language of every-day life it was known as Kosem. Kosem in later times was abbreviated into Kos, and with the prefix Pi or " house " became the Phakusa of classical geography. A century ago a Dutch scholar, Van der Hardt, had already suggested that Phakusa and Goshen embodied the same name. In the hieroglyphic texts Kosem denotes not only Saft el-Henneh, the metropolis of the name, but also the district in which the metropolis stood. This extended from Zagazig on the west to Tel el-Kebir on the east, and from a little north of the railway between Zagazig and Ismailiyeh to Belbeis in the south. Here then must have been the land of Goshen in which the Israelites were settled. In the age of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Egyptian dynasties this district was still comprised in thenome of Heliopolis or On, which thus stretched from the neighbourhood of Cairo almost as far as the Suez Canal. At a later date new nomes were carved out of the older ones, and the land of Kosem or Goshen was separated from the city of On. Bubastis, the 1 " Goshen and the Shrine of Saft el-Henneh," by Edouard Naville. Fourth Memoir of the Egypt Exploration Fund (1887). 236 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. mounds of which lie close to the modern town of Zagazig, became a capital of one nome, while another took its name from the adjacent desert of Arabia. In this Arabian nome the district of Kosem was included. The translators of the Septuagint version of the Old Testament were still acquainted with the position of Goshen, and so too were the writers and travellers of a yet later age. In the Septuagint the name is written as it is in the hieroglyphic inscriptions, Gesem, and it is added that it was in the nome of "Arabia." The same spelling and the same state ment recur in the Coptic translation of the Bible; and the narrative of a pilgrimage made by a Christian lady (Silvia of Aquitaine) in the fourth century, which has recently been discovered at Arezzo in Italy, bears testimony to the same fact. The pilgrims, we are told, wished to go from Clysma near Suez to " the land of Gesse, that is to the city which is called Arabia."1 It was not until the Mohammedan invasion of Egypt that the site of Goshen seems to have been forgotten. There appears to have been a good reason why the land of Goshen remained dependent on the distant city of On up to the time of the Exodus. An Egyptian document which was written at that period, in speak ing of the region about Pi-Bailos, the modern Belbeis, states that " the country around is not cultivated, but left as pasture for cattle, because of the strangers. It was abandoned since the time of the ancestors." As 1 Gamurrini : " I Mysteri e gl' Inni di San Ilario ed una Peregrinazione ai Luoghi Santi nel quarto Secolo ; " and Naville : " Goshen," p. 17. THE EGYPTIAN TUTELAGE OF ISRAEL. 237 Mr. Naville remarks, there seems here to be a reference to its occupation by the Israelites ; at any rate the passage proves that the district was used for pasturage and not for cultivation, and that consequently it had been in the hands of the nomadic Semitic shepherds from Asia. Jacob and his family brought with them into Egypt " their flocks and their herds " ; their "trade had been about cattle from their youth," and accordingly they dwelt " in the land of Goshen." It was only after the Exodus that Egyptian fellahin settled in Goshen, and grew corn in its fertile fields. When the Exodus can have happened has at last been settled by Egyptological research. There is only one period in Egyptian history when it could have taken place, and the history of this period which has been recovered from the native monuments is in striking harmony with the requirements of the Scriptural narrative. Though we cannot find the name of " Hebrew " or " Israelite " in the Egyptian texts, we have found the Pharaoh of the Oppression and the Pharaoh of the Exodus. "There arose up a new king over Egypt which knew not Joseph." The Tel el-Amarna tablets, as we have seen, have at last thrown a flood of light on this statement. It was not the founder of the Eighteenth dynasty, as had been imagined, but the founder of the Nineteenth, who represented a national reaction against the domination ofthe Semitic stranger and his religion. Under the later kings of the Eigh teenth dynasty Egypt had passed more and more into the hands of its subjects from the provinces of Canaan and Syria. The court had become Asiatic, the 238 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. country was governed by foreigners or by Egyptians who had adopted a foreign creed, the old capital had been forsaken by the Pharaoh, and a crusade had been carried on against the national faith. The death of Khu-n-Aten and the destruction of his capital marked the beginning of a new order of things. The movement which led to the rise of the Nineteenth dynasty resembled the movement of Arabi in our own day. But unlike the movement of Arabi it was successful. The supremacy of the stranger was over thrown, and the old religion of Egypt was restored to its former place of honour. A Canaanite like Dudu could no longer stand next to the monarch, and be addressed in language similar to that which was addressed to the Pharaoh himself. Joseph had been forgotten, and for the Asiatics who still lingered in Egypt the day of reckoning had arrived. .Heavy burdens were imposed upon them ; their free nomadic life was past, and they were reduced to the condition of state slavery. The edict- went forth that their male children should be destroyed ; only in this way could they be prevented from again multiplying in the land. As public slaves they were employed in making bricks and building cities for the Pharaoh. Pithom and Raamses were the two cities which were the fruits of Israelitish labour. The name of Raamses indicates the date to which the narrative refers. The first Pharaoh who bore the name was Ramses I., the leader of the Nineteenth dynasty. But his reign was brief and unimportant, and it must have been his grandson Ramses II., the Sesostris of Greek legend, under whom the city was founded. Ramses II. was THE EGYPTIAN TUTELAGE OF ISRAEL. 239 emphatically the building Pharaoh of Egypt. During his long reign of sixty-seven years the country was covered with his buildings from one end of it to the other. It is difficult to find a place, however remote and obscure, where he has not founded, restored or usurped the monuments of his predecessors. The towns of the Delta were specially indebted to him. Zoan rose from its ruins and became a favourite residence of the Egyptian king. Bubastis, on the western edge of Goshen, was adorned with his monu ments, and at Saft el-Henneh itself Mr. Naville has found the fragments of a huge statue of the king. The site of the city of Ramses, which gave its name to "the land of Rameses" (Gen. xlvii. 11), has not yet been discovered. But there are allusions to Pi-Ramses "the house of Ramses" in the hieroglyphic texts, and at least two places of the name existed in the Delta. One of them seems to have been near Zoan, the other is mentioned in the great papyrus of Ramses III., who calls it Pi-Ramses-Meri-Amon, "the house of Ramses II." As it is named in the papyrus between Pi-Bailos and Athribis, the present Benha, it could not have been far distant from Goshen. This agrees with the statement of Exodus (xiii. 37) that when the Israelites fled from Egypt they started from " Raamses." If the discovery of the site of the city of Ramses still awaits the explorer, this is not the case as regards Pithom. One of the first achievements of the Egyp tian Exploration Fund was the disinterment of this monument of Israelitish toil. Mr. Naville was the fortunate discoverer, but he was led to its site by a 24O THE HIGHER CRITICISM. passage on a monument found during the construction of the Suez Canal.1 A few miles to the south-west of Ismailiyeh and on the southern side of the railway line are some ancient mounds called Tel el-Maskhutah "the Mound of the Image." Here Mr. Naville excavated and brought to light a number of inscriptions which have settled the history and geography of the place. It is the site of a town which was built by Ramses II., and dedicated to Turn, the setting sun, in consequence of which it received the sacred name of Pi-Tum or Pithom "the house of Turn." The civil name of the city was Thuku or Thuket, derived from the name of the district in which it was situated and which was called by the same name. Brugsch long ago pointed out that Thuku or Thuket is the Biblical Succoth, which has been assimilated to a Hebrew word mean ing " booths." Succoth, it will be remembered, was the first stage in the exodus of the Israelites, at which they arrived after leaving "Raamses" (Exod. xiii. 37). Among the papyri preserved in the British Museum is a letter to the king from a scribe written in the eighth year of Meneptah II., the son and successor of Ramses II., and consequently the Pharaoh ofthe Exodus. It throws light not only on the geographical situation of Pithom, but also on the relations of the Egyptian government with the Shasu, or Bedawin kinsfolk of the Israelites, whose tribes asked permission from time to time to feed their flocks within the eastern borders of Egypt. The letter is as follows — "Another matter for the satisfaction of my master's 1 " The Store-city of Pithom and the Route of the Exodus," by Edouard Naville. Egypt Exploration Fund (1885), THE EGYPTIAN TUTELAGE OF ISRAEL. 24 1 heart. We have allowed the tribes of the Shasu from the land of Edom to pass the fortress of Meneptah in the land of Thuku (and go) to the lakes of Pithom of Meneptah in the land of Thuku, in order to feed themselves and to feed their herds on the great estate of Pharaoh, the beneficent Sun of all countries. In the year 8." x Another papyrus-letter now in the British Museum,2 which is dated in the twenty-third year of Ramses II., alludes to "the fortress of Ramses Meri-Amon, which is in the country of Zar." Zar " the desert-plain " lay on the eastern frontier of Egypt, and the city of Zar was held by a garrison which defended Egypt from attacks on the side of Asia. If we place Zar at Kantarah, midway between Port Said and Ismailiyeh, the dis trict attached to it would have adjoined Thuku. This, however, is a matter to which we shall have to return presently. The chief fact which concerns us just now is that the two cities built by the Israelites in Egypt have been shown, the one by the name, the other by inscriptions, to have been founded during the reign of Ramses II. He, therefore, must have been the Pharaoh ofthe Oppression. The conclusion is supported by other evidence. The Tel el-Amarna tablets have made it clear that we must find " the new king which knew not Joseph " in the Pharaohs of the Nineteenth dynasty. They have further made it clear that Canaan could not have been invaded by the Israelites until after the fall of the Eighteenth dynasty. When Khu-n-Aten 1 See Brugsch : " Egypt under the Pharaohs," Engl, transl., 2nd edit., ii. p. 133. 2 " Select Papyri," Pt. cxviii. 242 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. died, it was still an Egyptian province, garrisoned by Egyptian troops, and administered by Egyptian gov ernors. Among the tablets are letters from Lachish which, we are told in the Book of Joshua, was one of the first of the Hebrew conquests in Palestine, while the whole of the hill-country of what was afterwards Judah as well as that of which Shechem became the capital was subject to Egyptian authority. The fragmentary annals of Ramses II. make it equally clear that Canaan in his time also was not yet Israelite. Time after time his armies marched through it to oppose the Hittites, and the Pharaoh erected monuments of himself at the mouth of the Dog River near Beyrout in the second and the seventh years of his reign. In the eighth year of his reign the interior of the country was overrun. Not only was Ashkelon taken on the sea-coast, but also Shalam or Jerusalem, Merom and Tabor in the inland parts of Palestine. There is still no sign that the Israelite is as yet in the land. The reign of Ramses II. had the long duration of sixty-seven years. The date of his death has recently been fixed by Dr. Mahler upon astronomical grounds in 1 28 1 B.C. He was succeeded by Meneptah, the four teenth of his sixty sons. The heritage was a stormy one, and Meneptah's reign was troubled by foreign invasion. Egypt was assailed by a great confederacy of Libyan tribes, who had allied themselves with " the peoples of the north." Among the latter Sicilians, Sardinians and Akhaeans appear for the first time on the Egyptian monuments.1 The invaders were de- 1 The "Serdani" or Sardinians, however, are mentioned in two of the Tel el-Amarna letters from Phoenicia, as already employed as mercenaries in the Egyptian service. THE EGYPTIAN TUTELAGE OF ISRAEL. 243 feated in a decisive battle fought in the fifth year of the king's reign, and from this time forward Meneptah seems to have lived in peace. Gaza was still an Egyptian possession, and copies of despatches exist which were despatched from it to Tyre and other cities on the Phcenician coast. With the Hittites also peaceful relations were maintained, and we hear of corn having been sent to them by the Pharaoh in a time of famine. Notice has already been taken of the permission which was granted to some Edomite shepherds to settle in the pasture-lands of the eastern Delta during Meneptah's reign. But beyond this we know little about the events which marked the latter years of the Pharaoh's life. His reign does not seem to have been a very long one, although a hymn to the Nile1 speaks of his dying in a good old age. His tomb is in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings at Thebes, and is one of those which were visited by Greek tourists in the days of Dioddros. Meneptah's successor was his son Seti II. To his reign belongs an official letter, a copy of which has happily been preserved. Dr. Brugsch's translation of it is as follows — " I set out from the hall of the royal palace on the 9th day of the month Epiphi, in the evening, after the two servants. I arrived at the fortress of Thuku on the 10th of Epiphi. I was informed that the men had resolved to take their way towards the south. On the 1 2th I reached the fortress. There I was informed that grooms, who had come from the 1 Translated in the " Records of the Past," First Series, iv. p. 49. 244 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. neighbourhood . . . [had reported] that the fugitives had already passed the wall to the north of the Migdol of King Seti Meneptah." The letter offers a curious commentary on the narrative of the Exodus. We are carried by it into the same historical and geographical atmosphere, as it were, as that of the Pentateuch. The route and its successive stages are precisely what they were when the Israelites fled from their " house of bondage " ; Thuku, or Succoth, Migdol, and the great wall or "Shur," belong to the geography of the Exodus; they belong also to the geography of the Nineteenth Egyptian dynasty. Seti II. was buried by the side of his father in a sumptuous sepulchre in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings. His death was followed by internal and external war. Rival kings arose at Thebes, famine oppressed the people, and Egypt fell once more under foreign dominion. Ramses III. tells us that " the people of Egypt lived in banishment abroad. . . . The land of Egypt belonged to princes from foreign parts. They slew one another, whether noble or mean . . . Arisu, a Phcenician, had- raised himself among them to be a prince, and he compelled all the people to pay him tribute. ... So passed away long years until other times came."1 It was then that Set-nekht, the father of Ramses III., and founder of the Twentieth dynasty, again drove away the foreigner and united the kingdom under his sway. ¦f—If Ramses II. is the Pharaoh of the Oppression, either Meneptah or Seti II. must be the Pharaoh of 1 Brugsch : " Egypt under the Pharaohs," Engl, transl., 2nd edit, ii. p. 143. THE EGYPTIAN TUTELAGE OF ISRAEL. 245 the Exodus. The choice of the Egyptologists has fallen on Meneptah, partly in order to lengthen the period of the judges in Israel, partly because of the magnificence of the tomb of Seti. But it must be remembered that the narrative in Exodus does not assert that the Pharaoh was drowned in the passage of the sea, while the fact that he was regarded as an impious oppressor by the Israelites does not prove that he was regarded in the same light by the Egyptians themselves. In their eyes, at all events, his attempt to bring back the runaway slaves of the state was in no way more reprehensible than the attempt to bring back the two runaway servants described in the letter which has been quoted above. Egyptian tradition, however, clearly pointed to Meneptah as the Pharaoh in whose reign the Exodus took place. Josephus calls him Amenephthes (the son of Ramses II.), a name which has been corrupted into Palmanothes by Artapanos (as quoted by Eusebius).1 Josephus has further preserved the Egyptian version of the event from the pages of Manetho, the Egyptian historian.2 The story ran thus. The Pharaoh, Amendphis, desired to see the gods as his predecessor, Oros, had already done. Thereupon he was advised by the seer, Amen6phis, the son of Paapis, to clear the land of the leprous and impure. He acted upon the advice, and collected 80,000 persons from all parts of Egypt, whom he separ- 1 " Praeparatio Evangelica," ix. 27. 2 Josephus, cont. Ap. i. 26. Amen6phis, son of Paapis, belongs to history. He is Amen6phis, son of Hapi, who erected the colossal statues of "Memnon" at Thebes, as well as a temple at Deir el-Medineh, in the reign of Amendphis III. Chaeremon, however, makes the name Phritiphantes. 246 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. ated from the other inhabitants of the country, and condemned to work in the quarries on the eastern side of the Nile. Among them, unfortunately for the king, were some priests. When the seer came to hear of the sacrilege that had been committed against their persons, he prophesied that the impure people would find allies and with their help govern Egypt for thirteen years. Not daring to tell the king of this, he put it in writing, and then took away his own life. After a time the impure workers in the quarries asked the Pharaoh for Avaris, the old fortress of the Hyksos, which lay desolate and uninhabited. He granted their request, but they had no sooner settled in Avaris than they rose in rebellion, and chose as their leader, Osarsiph, a priest of On. He gave them new laws, forbidding them, among other things, to revere the sacred animals, and set them to rebuild the walls of Avaris. He then sent to the descendants of the Hyksos, who lived at Jerusalem, begging for their assistance. A force of 200,000 men was accord ingly despatched to Avaris, and the invasion of Egypt decided upon. Amendphis retired before the invaders, after ordering the images of the gods to be concealed, and sending to a friend his son Sethos, who was at the time only five years old. This Sethos was also called Ramesses, after the name of his grandfather, Rhampses. Amendphis carried the sacred bull Apis and other holy animals away with him in his flight. They were placed on board the fleet, which sailed up the Nile into Ethiopia. Here Amenophis remained for the destined thirteen years, while Osarsiph. who had taken the name of Moses, together with his allies from THE EGYPTIAN TUTELAGE OF ISRAEL. 247 Jerusalem, committed innumerable atrocities. Towns and villages were reduced to. ashes, the temples plundered, the sacred animals killed, and the priests massacred. At last, however, Amendphis and his son Ramesses returned, each at the head of an army ; the enemy were utterly defeated and pursued to the frontiers of Syria. We know from the dynastic tables of Manetho that Rhampses is the Ramses II. of the monuments, while Sethos-Ramesses, called Ramesses in the tables, is the Seti II. of the native texts, the son and successor of Meneptah. Amendphis therefore must be Meneptah, who appears under the name of Amenephthes in the list of dynasties. As for Osarsiph, the name is a compound of the Egyptian Osar or Osiris, and the second syllable in the name of Joseph. In the Psalms (lxxxi. 6) the latter name is written as though it were a compound of Yahveh and a word seph, and it is this view of its origin which has been adopted in the Egyptian legend where the Hebrew God is identified with Osiris. It may be added that the term " impure '' is merely a Greek translation of a common epithet applied to foreigners in the hieroglyphic inscriptions. The legend has combined a memory of the great invasion which was shattered by Meneptah in the fifth year of his reign with that of the Israelitish Exodus. The Hyksos and the person of Joseph have further been introduced into it from a distant past. But it is of value, as indicating on the one hand that tn'e flight of the Israelites was not altogether forgotten in Egypt, and on the other hand that the event was assigned to the reign of Meneptah. We may therefore acquiesce in the general opinion of 248 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. scholars which sees in the immediate successor of Ramses II. the Pharaoh ofthe Exodus. Surprise has sometimes been expressed that no allusion to the Israelites has been found on the Egyptian monuments. The- fact is, however, by no means strange. In the eyes of their Egyptian con temporaries the Israehtes were but one of many Shasu or Bedawin tribes who had settled in the pasture-lands of the eastern Delta. Their numbers were comparatively insignificant, their social standing obscure. They were doubtless as much despised and avoided by the Egyptians of their day as similar Bedawin tribes are by the Egyptians of the present time. They lived apart from the natives of the country, and the occupation they pursued was re garded as fit only for the outcasts of mankind. Such political influence as they had, they possessed only in so far as they were confounded with the other Semitic foreigners who were settled in Egypt. It was these — the " mixed multitude " of Exod. xii. 38 — who seemed dangerous to the Egyptian politicians ; the Israelites by themselves were as harmless and insignificant as the Bedawin whose tents are seen by the modern traveller among the gardens of Ramleh. Centuries had passed since the age of Joseph ; the new king of Egypt and his people knew nothing of him ; and the family to which Joseph had belonged had become merely one of the numerous Bedawin tribes who were allowed to feed their flocks in the waste-lands of the country. They had suffered from the reaction against Semitic supremacy which had characterised the rise of the Nineteenth dynasty, but they had suffered in common with their other Asiatic THE EGYPTIAN TUTELAGE OF ISRAEL. 249 kinsfolk who still remained in the land ofthe Pharaohs. We are not to suppose that the Israelites only were oppressed ; the oppression was part of a general scheme for breaking down the free spirit of the Bedawin, and reducing them to the condition of public slaves. Those who know modern Egypt and the difficulty experienced by the police in dealing with the Bedawin of to-day will feel some sympathy with the policy of Ramses and his dynasty. The Exodus itself is not an event which need surprise a student of Egyptian history. Indeed a similar migration of Bedawin tribes from the very district occupied by the Israelites has been witnessed in our own days. Yakub Artin Pasha has told me that his father-in-law, the famous Hekekyan Bey, always maintained that he had seen with his own eyes the Israelites departing out of Egypt. Mohammed Ali wished to introduce the manufacture of silk into the country over which he ruled, and accordingly planted the Wadi Tumilat, the Goshen of the Bible, with mulberry-trees, and attracted to it, not only Syrians from Damascus, but also large bodies of Bedawin Arabs from the Nejd and Babylonia, to whom he promised fertile pasture-grounds and immunity from taxation and the liability to serve in the army. For many years the new population inhabited the Wadi, cultivating the mulberry-trees and spinning silk. After the death of Mohammed Ali, however, an attempt was made to subject them to the ordinary burdens of taxation and conscription. A protest was naturally raised by the Bedawin settlers, to which, however, no attention was paid. Thereupon one night the whole population moved away, along 250 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. with their herds and flocks, leaving their houses standing open and deserted. They made their way back to their kinsfolk to the east of Egypt, and the Wadi fell into the state of desolation in which it was found by M. de Lesseps when he excavated the Freshwater Canal. If the date to which the Exodus must be assigned has been the subject of much controversy, the route followed by the Israelites in their departure out of Egypt has been the subject of much more. The abundance of geographical details furnished by the Book of Exodus has itself been the cause of per plexity. The excavations and researches of recent years, however, have at last begun to throw light on the perplexing question. Little by little we have recovered the geography of the Delta in the age of Moses, and are at last beginning to trace the march of the Hebrews in their flight from Egypt. It is true many points still remain doubtful, and upon these discussion is still possible ; but more points have been finally cleared up, and the main outlines of the ancient map of the Delta can now be filled in. The discovery of Pithom has given us a fixed point from which to start. So also has the settlement of the situation of Goshen and the identification of Succoth with the Thuku of the monuments. Up to this point the route of the Israelites is pretty clear. It followed the canal excavated by Ramses II., which united the Red Sea with the Nile, and watered the Wadi Tumilat. The canal is represented by the Freshwater Canal of to-day. When Succoth was left the Israelites still found themselves within the line of fortification which THE EGYPTIAN TUTELAGE OF ISRAEL. 25 1 guarded Egypt on the east, and was known as the Shur or " Wall " to the Semitic peoples. Two main roads led through it to Palestine. One passed by Zar, in the neighbourhood, probably, of the modern Kantarah, and after proceeding northward to Pelusium ran along the coast of the Mediterranean to Gaza and the other cities of the Philistines. It is this road which is called " the way of the land of the Philis tines" (Exod. xiii. 17); but it was not the road by which the Israelites were led. Zar is a Semitic word, identical with the Babylonian zeru to which reference has already been made. It signified " a plain " or " plateau," and was thus ap plied not only to the great alluvial plain of Babylonia, but also to the plain of < the desert. In the Tel el-Amarna tablets the land of Bashan is called Ziri- Basana, " the field of Bashan," and the same name is found in an Egyptian text discovered at Abydos, which tells us that the prime minister of the first year of Meneptah's reign was a native of " Zar-Basana." 1 Similarly in the list of places in Northern Syria, the conquest of which is recorded by Thothmes III. on the walls of Karnak, we meet with Pa-Zaru or "the plain."2 Zar is thus the equivalent of the Hebrew midhbdr or " desert.'' Now an Egyptian report already quoted speaks of " the fortress of Ramses Meri-Amon which is in the district of Zar." The word rendered fortress 1 Mariette : " Abydos," p. 421. The " prime minister's '' native name was Ben-Azna or Ben-Mazna, which he exchanged for the Egyptian Ramses-Pi-Ra. His father's name was Yau "the great." 2 No. 154. 252 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. is Khetem or Khetmu, which seems to have been originally borrowed by the Egyptians from a Semitic language. However this may be, it has sufficient resemblance to the Etham of Exodus (xiii. 20) and Numbers (xxxiii. 6 — 8) to make it probable that Brugsch is right in identifying the two. The Khetem or fortress stood on the edge of the wilderness — on the edge of the district of Zar as the Egyptians would have called it — -and prevented the marauders of the desert from entering the fertile lands of the Delta. But "the fortress of Ramses II." was not the only Khetem which blocked the way from Asia into Egypt. The letter written in the reign of Seti II. describing the pursuit of the slaves refers to two Khetems, one of them being " the fortress of Thuku," while the other may be that of Ramses Meri-Amon. It is possible that " the Khetem of Thuku " is the Etham of the Pentateuch. Whether or not this is the case, the situation of the two places could not have been far apart. The people had made their way from Succoth to " the edge of the wilderness " ; they had reached the spot where the Egyptian forti fication lay across their path, and the fortress of Zar, " the desert-plain," protected the road to the land of the Philistines. But at this point the order was given that they should " turn," lest they should '' repent when they saw war." The next stage in the journey is described with great minuteness of detail. The camp was pitched " before Pi-hahiroth,.between Migdol and the sea, over against Baal-zephon." Here the fugitives were in structed to " encamp by the sea. For Pharaoh will say THE EGYPTIAN TUTELAGE OF ISRAEL. 253 of the children of Israel, They are entangled in the land, the wilderness hath shut them in." The last words are usually supposed to refer to the position in which the Israelites found themselves in their encamp ment by the sea. But in this case it would rather have been "the sea "than "the wilderness" which enclosed them, since their escape from the pursuing army of Egypt was subsequently made through "the midst of the sea." The words of the Pharaoh there fore must be the reason he assigned for the sudden change made by the Israelites in the direction of their flight. They might have passed into the wilderness by the high-road which led through Zar ; the Egyptian officers who guarded the wall had received instructions to allow them to leave the house of their bondage ; but instead of taking advantage of their opportunity they had shifted the line of march and were still on the Egyptian side of the great Wall. The wilderness had " shut them in " ; when they looked out upon the desert region which lay beyond the fertile fields of the country they were leaving, their hearts failed them and they turned back. Such seemed to the Egyptian king the natural explanation of the conduct of his fugitive slaves. Where was this "sea" by the side of which the Israelites pitched their camp ? The answer is hard to give, in spite of the precision of geographical detail with which its position is defined. Mr. Naville would identify Pi-hahiroth (" the mouth of the canal " ?) with Pi-Qerhet " the House of the goddess Qerhet," the name of a sanctuary in or near Pithom. But the identification is philologically impossible. On the 254 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. other hand, the Migdol or "Tower" of Egypt, which was upon the eastern frontier of the kingdom, is said by the classical geographers to have been only twelve miles from Pelusium, and the references to it in Eze kiel (xxix. 10, xxx. 6) agree with the position they assign to it. There must, however, have been a second Migdol or " Tower." This is evident from the letter which relates to the pursuit of the two slaves. Here "the Migdol of King Seti Meneptah" is stated to be on the east side of the great wall, southward of " the Khetem of Thuku." Similar evidence to that of the letter is borne by the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament, made, it must be remembered, by Jews living in Egypt. Instead of Pi-hahiroth the Septuagint has " the farmstead," a reading which is followed by the Coptic version. Now the Edomites who were per mitted to enter Egypt in the eighth year of Menep tah's reign wished to settle in " the great ahu '' or " farmstead " of the Pharaoh, and this was either in the land of Thuku or in its immediate vicinity. The name of Baal-zephon "Baal of the north" is of Phoenician origin. It implies the existence of a Phoenician sanctuary, where the god of the north wind was propitiated by Phcenician sailors. It must therefore have been situated in a locality which was visited by the ships and merchants of Phoenicia, and so probably was on the sea-coast. We learn from the Assyrian inscriptions that there was another Baal- zephon on the shores of Syria, high on the summit of Mount Kasios, and some colour is thus given to the theory of Brugsch, which localises the Baal-zephon of Egypt in the Kasios that jutted out into the THE EGYPTIAN TUTELAGE OF ISRAEL. 255 Mediterranean, midway between Pelusium and El- Arish. But this would have been on that very "way of the Philistines " which the Israelites were forbidden to follow. Moreover, it is expressly stated that in place of this way of the Philistines, " God led the people about by the way of the wilderness of the Yam Suph" (Exod. xiii. 18). If we turn to the list of the stages in the march of the Israelites recorded in the thirty-third chapter of Numbers, we find that after leaving Etham the people " turned again unto Pi-hahiroth, which is before Baal- zephon : and they pitched before Migdol. And they departed from before Pi-hahiroth, and passed through the midst of the sea into the wilderness, and went three days' journey in the wilderness of Etham, and pitched in Marah." From Marah they went to Elim, and there encamped "by the Yam Suph." This statement is in strict accordance with that of Exodus. Instead of marching along the road which led to the land of the Philistines, the Israelites marched along that which led to the wilderness of the Yam Suph. In the one case the Philistine cities of Southern Palestine would have been their destination ; in the other case it was the Yim^Suph. It now becomes necessary to determine what the Hebrew writers meant by the term Yam Suph. It is rendered " the Red Sea " in the Authorised Version ; but the authority for this rendering does not go back beyond the Septuagint translators, with whom the "Red Sea" denoted the whole of the sea which washed the coasts of Arabia. This was the common meaning of the term in the classical age ; the Indian Ocean, the Persian Gulf, the modern Red Sea with 256 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. its two Gulfs of Suez and Aqabah, were all alike included under it. In the Hebrew Scriptures, how ever, the expression Yam Suph has a much narrower and more definite signification, which is clearly ex plained to us in more than one passage. In the First Book of Kings (ix. 26) we are told that Solomon "made a navy of ships in Ezion-geber, which is beside Eloth, on the shore of the Yam Suph, in the land of Edom." We know where Ezion-geber and Elath were, at the northern extremity of the Gulf of Aqabah, and we also know that the kingdom of Edom extended thus far. The Yam Suph, which washed its shores, and upon which Elath and Ezion- geber were built, must consequently have been the modern Gulf of Aqabah. Equally explicit is"me evidence contained in the Pentateuch. After the capture of Arad or Hormah in the extreme south of Canaan, the Israelites marched " from mount Hor by the way of Yam Suph, in order to compass the land of Edom" (Numb. xxi. 4). A passage through Edom had been refused to them, and their only means of reaching the land of Moab and the eastern side of the Dead Sea was to proceed southward from Hor to the head of the Gulf of Aqabah, and from thence to march northward again along the eastern frontier of Edom. There was but one sea " by the way" of which they could have gone, and that was the Gulf of Aqabah. The town of Suph from which the Yam or " Sea " took its name seems to be mentioned in Deuteronomy (i. 1). This, too, was in the land of Edom, on the eastern side of the Jordan, and apparently not far from Kadesh-barnea. There could have been no THE EGYPTIAN TUTELAGE OF ISRAEL. 257 other arm of the sea, except the Gulf of Aqabah, to which it could have been near. It is plain, therefore, that " the sea " crossed by the Israelites at the Egyptian frontier, and the Yam Suph, which they subsequently reached, cannot have been one and the same. It was, in fact, as the Book of Numbers expressly informs us, more than three days' journey distant from " the sea " where the destruction of the Egyptian army took place. The distance agrees with that of the Gulf of Aqabah from the Gulf of Suez. But now we are confronted with another fact. In the middle of the narrative which describes the exodus of the Israelites, an old poem has been in serted, and in this, as well as in the note at the end of it (Exod. xv. 22), the sea crossed by the Israelites is identified with the Yam Suph. The identification is in flat contradiction with the geography of the rest of the narrative, as well as with that of the list of stations given in the Book of Numbers. It can only be explained by the assumption that the Song of triumph over the destruction of the Egyptians has a different origin from the rest of the narrative, and that its geography accordingly is also different. While the geography of the narrative is Egyptian, the geography of the song is Edomite. Dr. Neubauer has pointed out that the Song con tains a curious piece of Edomitish colouring. Refer ence is made in it to the aluphim or " dukes " of Edom. The word, as we learn from the thirty-sixth chapter of Genesis, was used in Edom in this technical sense. The chieftains who governed the wild tribes of Mount Seir before they were united into a mon- 258 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. archy were called aluphim in the language of the Edomites. The use of the term in the Song thus suggests on the one side that the poem had its origin in the land of Edom rather than in the land of Canaan, and that on the other side it went back to a period when the Edomites were not as yet governed by kings. This historical re ference, as well as the identification of the sea crossed by the Israelites with the sea which washed the southern coast of Edom, seems to indicate that Edom was the country in which the poem was composed. We know that Egypt in its flourishing days claimed supremacy as far as the borders of Edom, and that its armies marched at times to the frontiers of Mount Seir. Seti I., the father of Ramses II., began his reign by subduing the Shasu or Bedawin " from the Khetem, which is in the district of Zar, as far as Kana'an." The latter place has been very happily identified by Major Conder with Khurbet el-Kan'an, six miles south of Hebron. The earlier chapters of Chronicles teach us that the district about Hebron was occupied in later days by the Edomite tribe of Kenizzites. The last conquering Pharaoh of the native race, Ramses III., was also the first, it would appear, to penetrate into the fortresses of the Edomite tribes. In one of his inscriptions he says : " I smote the inhabitants of Seir who belong to the tribes of the Shasu, and plundered their tents." This must have been shortly before the settlement of the Israelites in Canaan. Since Mount Seir ran southwards to the head of the Gulf of Aqabah, there is no difficulty in THE EGYPTIAN TUTELAGE OF ISRAEL. 259 believing that Egyptian armies might have made their way as far as the Gulf itself.1 However this may be, the fact remains that " the sea," which was crossed by the Israelites according to the narrative of Exodus (apart from Miriam's Song), was not the Yam Suph, but a sea which adjoined the Egyptian frontier. It formed, in fact, part of the line of defence whereby Egypt was protected from its eastern neighbours. Where exactly we are to place it must continue unsettled until the geographical position of Migdol and Baal-zephon is accurately determined. Mr. Naville believes that in the time of Ramses 1 One of the Tel el-Amarna tablets in the British Museum (No. 64) contains a reference to " the city of Edom," which has however been misunderstood by its editors. The tablet is a letter addressed by a certain Mut-Ammi to his superior officer, Yankhamu. The correct translation of it is as follows : " Since Mut-Ammi has declared before thee (that) the enemy has fled and has disappeared, since the king of the city of Bitilim (Beth-el) has fled from the face of the elders of the king his lord, may the king my lord live ! may the king my lord live ! If there is (still) an enemy the bearer of this letter [will remain] for two months in the city of Bitilim — now ask Ben-enima, now ask Ta(?)dua, now ask Yisua. Until after the arrival of the (image of the) god Merodach the city of Astarti (Ashteroth- Karnaim) was assisted when all the fortresses of the foreign land were hostile, the city of Udumu (Edom), the city of Aduri (Addar), the city of Araru, the city of Mestu, the city of Mag- dalim (Migdol), the city of Khini-a-nabi, the city of Zarki- zabbat, the city of Khayini (and) the city of Yibilimma (Abel). Again after thou hadst sent the bearer of this letter unto me I sent to him until thou shouldest arrive from thy journey, and he has reached the city of Bitilim and they have attended to [his] words." It is clear from this letter that Edom was reckoned a "foreign land" {mat gari) which did not acknowledge the supremacy of the Egyptian king. 260 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. and Meneptah the Gulf of Suez extended much further to the north than it does at present, and that the Bitter Lakes of modern geography were included in it. This theory would remove a good many diffi culties, but there is one argument against it so serious as to prevent its acceptance. A canal already existed in the reign of Meneptah which united the Gulf of Suez with the Nile, not far from the modern Zagazig, and allowed ships to pass from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea. This canal, after being choked with sand, was re-opened by Darius, who caused stelae of granite to be erected at intervals along its banks, recording the construction of the work. One of the stelae stood about five miles only to the north of Suez, where the fragments of it can still be seen. The canal, therefore, must have followed the line of the present Freshwater Canal, not only as far as the Bitter Lakes, but also as far as Suez. Indeed, the mouth of the old canal is even now visible close to the town of Suez, and at the foot of the artificial mound of Kolzum, where pottery and glass of the Roman epoch have been discovered. It is, therefore, evident that the canal of Darius and the Pharaohs did not join the sea until it reached the modern town of Suez; in other words, the distribution of land and water in the time of the Nineteenth dynasty must have been the same as it is to-day. Had the sea extended as far north as the Bitter Lakes, the canal would never have been excavated by the side of it through a waterless desert. This fact seems fatal to Mr. Naville's theory, and unless it is removed, some other solution of the geographical problem must be attempted. We must not forget, however, that we do not know THE EGYPTIAN TUTELAGE OF ISRAEL. 261 whether the Israelites after leaving Etham marched in a northward or a southward direction. Brugsch Pasha has endeavoured to prove that the march was towards the north, and that the sea they crossed was the famous Sirbonian Lake which stretched along the shore of the Mediterranean, to the south of " the way of the Philistines." The chief support of this hypothesis is to be found in the names of Migdol and Baal-zephon. A Migdol, as we have seen, stood not far from Pelusium, while a temple of Baal-zephon might have been erected on the Mount Kasios which rose above the Sirbonian Lake, just as the cuneiform texts inform us one had been erected on the Mount Kasios of Syria. It may be noted that the name of Baal-zephon was found by Mr. Goodwin in a hieratic papyrus, but unfortunately without any clue to its geographical situation. On the other hand, the wilderness of Etham into which the Israelites emerged after crossing the sea appears to have been rather to the south than so far to the north as the shores of the Sirbonian Lake. There is, indeed, no indication that an Egyptian Khetem ever existed in the latter region, and, as we have seen, the Hebrew Etham appears to be the Khetem of the Egyptian texts. No light is thrown on the point by the note attached to the Song of Triumph over the destruction of the Egyptians, since the substitution of the wilderness of Shur for the wilderness of Etham, which we find here, is neces sitated by the transference of the scene of the passage through the waters from " the sea " to the Yam Suph. The wilderness of Shur denoted the whole of the desert from the great " Wall " of Egypt to the 262 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. mountain-land of Edom, and thus included the wilderness of Etham as well as "the wilderness of the Yim Suph." But we need not despair of being yet able to localise the spot where, according to the narrative in Exodus, " the sea " was crossed by the fugitives from Egypt. A single fragment of inscription which told us where Baal-zephon or Pi-hahiroth stood would also tell us where the passage of the sea took place. When we consider how numerous and unexpected have been the discoveries of the last few years, when we further consider how little we still know of the eastern side of the Delta and of what lies buried there under the sand, we have good reason to believe that the discovery will yet be made. More excava tions are needed ; that is all. The shrine of Baal- zephon cannot have passed away without leaving some traces behind it, and when these have been found theory will give way to fact, and the pilgrim will no longer be in doubt as to the spot where the chariots and horsemen of Pharaoh were engulfed by the returning tide. With the overthrow of the Egyptian pursuers we close the specifically Egyptian portion of the Old Testament. The Israelites have escaped from the house of bondage ; the slaves are free. They are again in that region of wild independence where their fathers and kinsfolk fed their flocks and where the Egyptian armies rarely ventured to penetrate. They had left behind them the cultivated lands of Egypt, and were on the road to the " Shasu " tribes of Edom. Since the third or fourth century of the Christian THE EGYPTIAN TUTELAGE OF ISRAEL. 263 era the Sinaitic Peninsula has been assumed to be the scene of the wanderings in the desert. The belief originated in the communities of hermits who took refuge there, partly to escape persecution, partly from a desire to quit the worldly life of the Egyptian cities. The peninsula, or at all events that part of it which bordered on Egypt and Syria, was a Roman province, and the hermits, accordingly, while securing a solitude which was denied them in the more popu lous districts of the empire, were still under the protection of the Roman eagles. Sacred legends soon gathered round their cells and monasteries ; pilgrims came from afar to worship at their shrines, and just as in modern Jerusalem holy places have been found to meet the requirements of the believing multitude, so too among the Christian monasteries of the western coast of the peninsula the belief arose that here the law was given to the Israelites and the miracles were performed of which they read in the Pentateuch. The belief grew stronger with the pro gress of the centuries, and was accepted without questioning by the travellers and scholars of a more modern age. The very name given to the peninsula implies that Sinai is one of its mountains, and that its barren peaks and rugged valleys were the region where the fugitive slaves from Egypt were formed into a nation of warriors. But though few were found to question the received tradition, the discovery of Mount Sinai was not an easy matter. Rival mountains claimed to be the scene of the promulgation of the Mosaic law, and each of these had its ardent advocates. The fact was in itself calculated to excite suspicion. If tradi- 264 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. tion had been sufficiently strong to remember that the western shores of the peninsula were the scene of the wanderings of the chosen people, it would have been equally strong enough to remember the sacred mountain which formed as it were the centre of their desert life. The fact that it had not done so pre supposed either a break in the tradition or else its later origin. If it has been difficult to identify the particular mountain which was the Sinai of the Old Testament, it has been still more difficult to identify the various stations at which the Israelites encamped. Almost every traveller and writer has a different theory on the subject, and the line of march which seems clear to one investigator is denied by a second. In fact, the innumerable attempts that have been made to determine the geographical position of the stations are so hopelessly irreconcilable, and at the same time so hopelessly devoid of any solid support, as to prove conclusively how little satisfactory any of them can be. Only one of the stations, Paran, has a name which can be plausibly identified with a name met with on the western' side of the peninsula, and yet we know from more than one passage of the Penta teuch (Gen. xiv. 6, xxi. 21, Deut. i. 1, xxxiii. 2) that Paran, instead of being near the Wadi Feiran on the Gulf of Suez, was really on the frontiers of Edom.1 There are but three stations the sites of which can be accurately determined, and these are Ezion-geber on the Gulf of Aqabah, Mount Hor in the neighbour hood of Seir, and Kadesh-barnea in the group of 1 The Wadi el-Feiran really derives its name from the Arabic Firan or "rats." THE EGYPTIAN TUTELAGE OF ISRAEL. 265 mountains to the west of it.1 Sinai itself is associated with Seir and Edom in the two ancient Hebrew poems in which reference is made to it (Deut. xxxiii. 2, Judg. v. 4, 5), and nowhere in the Old Testament do we find it transported to the Sinaitic Peninsula of our modern maps. But there is a historical reason which makes it im possible for us to believe that the western side of the Sinaitic Peninsula could have witnessed the giving of the law and the wanderings of the Israelitish people. In the days ofthe Exodus it was an Egyptian province. Since the time of Snefru, the last king of the Third Egyptian dynasty, it had been garrisoned by Egyptian soldiers, who protected the officials and workmen at the mines of copper and malachite. In the reign of Ramses III., of the Twentieth dynasty, it was still a valuable possession of the Egyptian state. The great Harris papyrus tells us how the Pharaoh sent thither rich presents for the temple of the goddess Hathor, the protectress of the peninsula, and how they returned with abundance of the precious green 1 Dr. Clay Trumbull (" Kadesh-barnea," pp. 128 sqq.) seems- successful in showing that " Hor the mountain " cannot have been the traditional Hor near Petra. The Israelites had been forbidden to enter Edom, and they could hardly have buried Aaron in a country of which they were not allowed to possess "a foot-breadth" (Deut. ii. 5). Moreover the king of Arad in Southern Canaan would not have come out against them if they had been in another part of the world at Petra. The tradition connecting the grave of Aaron with the traditional Hor is not older than Josephus (Antiq. iv. 4). Dr. Trumbull argues in favour of Jebel Madurah, a remarkable isolated peak to the north-west of 'Ain Qadis, as being the real Hor of Scripture, and compares the name with that of Mosera, where Aaron is stated to have died (Deut. x. 6 ; see Numb, xxxiii. 31). 266 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. stone. As Ramses IV. is the last Pharaoh whose name is found on the Egyptian monuments of the peninsula, it is possible that in the troublous times which followed the age of the Twentieth dynasty, the authority of Egypt ceased to extend across the Gulf of Suez. If so, however, this eclipse of Egyptian rule could have been temporary only, since the district of Mafka — the name by which the peninsula was known — continued to be comprised in the nome of Arabia down to the Roman epoch. Stone was still brought from it in the time of the Ptolemies. It was at Sarbut el-Khadem and Magharah that the principal mines were situated and the Egyptian garrisons were stationed. Here, too, temples and stelae had been erected by the Egyptian kings, as well as dwelling-houses for the priests and civil functionaries. Both places were in the line of march which the Israelites must have followed had Sinai been in the south of the peninsula, and they could not have passed them without attracting the notice of the Egyptian troops. To have gone into the province of Mafka, indeed, would have been, not only to return to Egypt, but to an Egypt more strictly garrisoned, and more hostile to the wandering tribes of Asia than the Delta itself. The fugitive Israelites would have met there with the same fate as Professor Palmer in our own days. The story of the Egyptian refugee Sinuhit tells us where it was that a refugee from Egypt would naturally betake himself, if he wished to be beyond the power of the Pharaoh. After clearing the great wall, Sinuhit put himself under the protection of the Shasu, and made his way to the land of Edom. Here THE EGYPTIAN TUTELAGE OF ISRAEL. 267 he found other political refugees from Egypt, and here he was given the government of a province which is placed by Professor Maspero in the neigh bourhood of the Gulf of Aqabah.1 What Sinuhit had done, the slaves who escaped from " the house of bondage " might also be expected to do. Their final destination was Palestine ; but they had been forbidden to approach the land of Promise through the country of the Philistines, and we therefore find them first asking permission from the King of Edom to pass through his territories, and then, when this was refused, skirting the frontier of his kingdom. Instead of taking "the way of the land of the Philistines," they went by " the way of the wilderness of the Yam Suph." The Yam Suph accordingly was the first object of their march, and they reached it after removing from Elim, not many days after the passage " through the midst of the sea " (Numb, xxxiii. 8 — 10). We have already learned where the Yam Suph was. It was the modern Gulf of Aqabah, which washed the southern shores of Edom and Mount Seir, and at the head of which were the two cities of Ezion-geber and Elath. The Israelites, therefore, like Sinuhit, pursued the road which the monumental evidence would lead us to expect. Far from march ing into the midst of the garrisons of the Egyptian province of Mafka, where they would have experienced the war they had been instructed to avoid among the Philistines, they made their way to their brethren in the fastnesses of Mount Seir beyond the reach of Egyptian pursuit. 1 "Records ofthe Past," New Series, ii. p. 17. 268 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. Unnecessary difficulty has been introduced into the history of the flight by the supposition that the Mountain of the Law was the place of sacrifice, three days' distant only from the frontier of Egypt, to which Moses in the first instance asked to be allowed to lead his people. But the request was made with the knowledge that it would be refused, and the inconsistency of the supposition with the text of the Pentateuch may be judged from the fact that when the Israelites actually escaped from the country of their bondage they marched three days in the wilder ness without finding water. It was many days later before they reached Mount Sinai. Before Sinai was reached, however, the camp had been pitched at a good many places. Immediately before encamping at the Yam Suph they had halted in the oasis of Elim. It had been pointed out by Mr. Baker Greene x that Elim is but another way of writing Elath or Eloth, the feminine suffix of the latter being replaced by the masculine. Elath, in fact, would have been the last stage in the journey before the shore of the Yam Suph was attained, and just as Ezion-geber was one of the later stations of the wanderers, so its sister city of Elath had been one of the first. When Elim and the sea of Suph were left behind, the Israelites found themselves in "the wilderness of Sin," "which is between Elim and Sinai." Sinai, " (the mountain) which belongs to Sin," took its name, like the desert which it overlooked, from the Baby lonian Moon-god Sin. A Himyaritic inscription 1 " The Hebrew Migration from Egypt," p. 170. The book is an interesting and remarkable one. THE EGYPTIAN TUTELAGE OF ISRAEL. 269 informs us that the name and worship of Sin had made their way to Southern Arabia, and the name of Sinai makes it plain that such had also been the case in the North. We need not be surprised at this ; as far back as the time of Naram-Sin, the son of Sargon of Accad, Babylonian armies had marched into the districts near which Mount Sinai was situ ated, and if it was possible to introduce the deities of Chaldaea into Palestine and Moab, as we know was done, it was equally possible to introduce them into Northern Arabia. Another of the stages on the road to Mount Sinai was Rephidim. Here the Amalekites were defeated, and a memorial altar raised to the God of Israel. The mention of the Amalekites shows us that we are still not far from the Gulf of Aqabah. Amalek was included among the tribes of Edom (Gen. xxxvi. 12), but the territory occupied by this Bedawin people extended a good deal further to the west and north. The block of mountain-land within which Kadesh- barnea lay was reckoned to them (Gen. xiv. 7), and like the Bedawin of to-day, they were the troublesome neighbours ofthe south of Palestine (1 Sam. xxvii. 8). The whole of the desert, from Havilah to Shur, was their home (1 Sam. xv. 7) ; but it was a desert which lay far to the north of the Egyptian province of Mafka, the Sinaitic Peninsula of to-day. To look for Amalekites here would be to look in vain. Rephidim was hard by " the Mount of God." This is made clear bythe list of stations preserved in the Book of Numbers. It was while Moses was encamped at this Mount " in the wilderness of Sinai " that his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian, came to 270 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. visit him. Midian, accordingly, must have been not far from the mountain where the law was promulgated. The narrative is again in strict harmony with geography if Sinai were a mountain of Seir rather than of the so-called Sinaitic Peninsula. The situa tion of Midian is well known. It stretched southward along the eastern shore of the Gulf of Aqabah, its northern boundary touching upon Edom. One of its chief ports was Makna, still called Makna, in the neighbourhood of which ruins and inscriptions are said to exist. The port must be of great antiquity if it gave its name to the old Sumerian name of Midian and the Sinaitic Peninsula. This was Magan, which in the mouths of the Semitic Babylonians became Makannu. If Sinai were in the region of Seir, as the Bible asserts it to have been, Midian would have been in its close neighbourhood, and the visit of Jethro would have been a natural event. If, on the contrary, it were in the barren wastes where the modern traveller would place it, the visit is difficult to explain. The priest of Midian would either have had to make a voyage across the stormy waters of the Gulf, of which no hint is given in the narrative, or else to force his way for days through a waterless and trackless district, the only occupants of which were hostile Bedawin. It is plain, however, that the visit of Jethro to " the Mount of God " was as natural an occurrence as the flight of Moses himself from Egypt to Midian had been. Moses had fled from Egyptian law, and like Sinuhit, therefore, it was necessary for him to escape from Egyptian territory, and to put himself beyond the reach of the Egyptian government. To do this, however, THE' EGYPTIAN TUTELAGE OF ISRAEL. 27 1 required a longer journey than to the Sinaitic Penin sula of our modern maps, the Egyptian province of Mafka of his days. The Gulf of Aqabah, and not the Gulf of Suez, would necessarily have been his destination. It may seem a pity to disturb a traditional faith which has supported so many tourists among the desolate wadis and monotonous scenery of the " Sinaitic Peninsula." But the historian and the archaeologist are necessarily iconoclasts. Truth, and not the welfare of the traveller and his dragoman, is the object at which they aim. The tradition which has fixed Mount Sinai in the old Egyptian province of Mafka is of later origin than the lifetime of St. Paul, and can claim no higher authority than the interested fancies of ignorant Coenobites. It throws into confusion both the geography and the history of the Pentateuch, and contradicts the definite state ments of the Old Testament. The visit of Jethro to his son-in-law, the defeat of the Amalekites at Rephidim, the long residence of the Israelites in what would be the immediate neighbourhood of Egyptian garrisons, become irreconcilable with historical facts. But when we listen to the testimony of the Bible itself, and restore Mount Sinai to its true geographical position, contradictions and diffi culties disappear, and the narrative is found to be in full agreement with the requirements of geography and monumental history. Once more it is not the Bible which fails to satisfy the oriental archaeologist, but the false interpretation which has been put upon its records. The exact site of " the Mount of God " must be 272 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. left for future exploration to discover. When the territories of the ancient Edom and Midian have been examined with the same minute care as Palestine or the so-called Peninsula of Sinai, we shall doubtless know where the sacred peak was -really situated. Though the Hebrews may not have left memorials of their sojourn at its foot, there must surely be traces of the worship of the Babylonian Moon-god after whom it was named. That numerous inscrip tions exist on the rocks of Midian and Northern Arabia we already know, and we may feel certain that among them are records of the pilgrims to the shrine of Sin. When the written monuments of Midian are again brought to light, it may be that the name of Jethro himself may be found among them. Inscriptions have shown that the name is one that belongs to Northern (as well as Southern) Arabia, while the title he bore has received a striking illustration from oriental research. Both in Assyria and in Southern Arabia, among the Semitic kindred ofthe Midianites, the office of " priest " preceded that of king. There were " high-priests of Assur " before there was a king of Assyria ; the Assyrian kings, in fact, developed out of the high-priests, just as the kingdom of Assyria developed out of the deified city of Assur. Dr. Glaser has lately pointed out that what happened in Assyria, happened also in the kingdom of Sheba.1 The Makdrib or "priests" of Saba ruled before the " kings " of Saba ; it was only by degrees that the priest assumed the title of k:ing. It must have been the same in Midian ; here, too, in the age of the 1 " Skizze der Geschichte Arabiens, ' Pt. I (1889), pp. 64, 65. THE EGYPTIAN TUTELAGE OF ISRAEL. 273 Exodus, there was as yet a "priest" only; the priestly office had not as yet passed into a royal one. With the departure of Jethro to " his own land " the light cast by modern discovery upon the historical records of the Pentateuch is at an end. Among their kinsfolk in the fastnesses of Seir and Kadesh the Israelites are hidden from the notice of the great empires of oriental antiquity, from Egypt, from Babylonia, and from Assyria. They have retreated into the wilderness, there to be formed into a nation and prepared for the conquest of Canaan. Some centuries must elapse before the western conquests of Assyria again bring them before the eyes of the archaeologist. But though the monuments of Egypt and Assyria throw no direct light upon the history and fortunes ofthe Israelitish tribes during their sojourn at Kadesh or their gradual conquest of Palestine, nevertheless, from time to time, side-lights as it were are cast upon the Scriptural narrative by the monuments of antiquity. They offer us illustrations of it, even if the events which took place in a little corner of Western Asia and were destined to exercise so im portant an influence upon the history of mankind were concealed at the time from the sight of the great nations round about. The weakness of Egypt and Babylonia was the opportunity of Israel; it was because Palestine had ceased to be an Egyptian province, and because neither Babylonians nor Assyrians were strong enough to mingle in its politics, that the descendants of Jacob were enabled to emerge from the desert and win for themselves a new home in the land of Canaan. 274 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. One of the most curious episodes in the Old Testament is the account of Balaam and the prophecies he uttered when hired by Balak of Moab to curse the armies of Israel. Balaam the son of Beor was summoned by the ambassadors of the Moabite king from " Aram, out of the mountains of the east " (Numb, xxiii. 7). He was a native of Pethor "which is by the river (Euphrates) of the land of the children of Ammo " — for such ought to be the translation of the passage (Numb. xxii. 5). In the Book of Deuteronomy (xxiii. 4) Pethor is still more definitely described as being in Aram- Naharaim. At an early period in Assyrian research Pethor was identified by Dr. Hincks with the Pitru of the cuneiform inscriptions. Pitru stood on the western bank of the Euphrates, close to its junction with the Sajur, and a little to the north of the latter. It was consequently only a few miles to the south of the Hittite capital Carchemish. Indeed Shalmaneser II. tells us explicitly that the city was called Pethor by " the Hittites." It lay on the main road from east to west, and so occupied a position of military and commercial importance. The country in which it was situated belonged to Semitic Aramaeans. Its conquest by the Hittites, however, had introduced into it a Hittite population as well, and the two peoples, Hittites and Aramaeans, as we learn from the cuneiform texts, lived in it side by side. It would seem from the statement in the Book of Numbers that the particular Aramaean tribe in whose territory Pethor was built called themselves "the sons of (the god) Ammo." Like the Ammonites THE EGYPTIAN TUTELAGE OF ISRAEL. 275 accordingly, they were the children of Ammo or Ammi. The worship of the god, as we know from the evidence of proper names, extended beyond the frontiers of Ammon. Among the Israelites we meet with names like Ammi-nadab "Ammi is generous," Ammiel " Ammi is God," Ammi-shaddai " Ammi is the Almighty " ; and Dr. Neubauer is doubtless right in explaining the name of Balaam as a compound of Baal and Ammi. The seer's name would thus of itself declare that he belonged to a tribe whose " Lord " was Ammi. Balak, it is said, was the son of Zippor or " Bird." We have an incidental piece of testimony that the latter name was actually in use in the age of the Exodus. On the back of a papyrus now in the British Museum,1 notices have been written of certain despatches which were sent by the Egyptian govern ment to Palestine in the third year of the Pharaoh Meneptah II. One of these was sent to the king of Tyre, and the bearer of it was " Baal- * * the son of Zippor," who started from Gaza, at that time in Egyptian hands. The authenticity of the name is thus supported by contemporary evidence. The prophecies of Balaam must be handled rather by the Hebraist than by the archaeologist. Even the concluding passages, in which the seer turns his gaze upon the nations that surrounded Moab, must be thoroughly explained by Hebrew philology before the records of the monuments can be called upon to illustrate them. It may be that the text is corrupt ; it may be that the passages in question have been 1 "Papyrus Anastasi III." in "Select Papyri from the British Museum." 276 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. added at various times to the original prophecy of the Aramaean seer ; these are questions which must be settled before the Assyriologist can determine when it was that the Kenite was carried away captive, or when Asshur himself was "afflicted." Of one fact, however, we are now certain. Not only was Palestine once subject to Babylonian conquest and influence, the coast-lands of Western Asia had also been invaded by Assyrian kings long before the age of Ahab and Jehu. Tiglath- pileser I. (B.C. 1 100) traversed the Mediterranean in the ships of Arvad, and killed a dolphin " in the great sea." He received a crocodile and other presents from the king of Egypt, and must therefore have made his presence known and felt in the country adjoining Egypt. His son and successor Assur-bil- kala has left us a curious monument of his power in the West. The British Museum possesses a statue on which he states that it was one of many that were erected in the towns and villages of the empire, and for the protection of which "Anu and the gods of the land of the Amorites " were in voked. The towns and villages were accordingly in the " land of the Amorites," at that time a general term among the Assyrians for Syria and Phoenicia. Whether it also included Palestine future discovery alone can show. For about a century after the death of Assur-bil- kala the power of Assyria suffered eclipse. We know little about its history. It was during this interval however, that a certain Assur-irbi reigned, about whom two facts are recorded. He led his armies as far as the Gulf of Antioch, and on the rocky slopes THE EGYPTIAN TUTELAGE OF ISRAEL. 277 of Amanus caused an image of himself to be carved. But disaster must subsequently have befallen him, since it" was during his reign that a city near Pethor, which had been added to the Assyrian empire by Tiglath-pileser I., was captured by "the king of the A^ramaeans," thus blocking the Assyrian road to the west. Years had to pass before the weakness of the Aramaeans and Hittites allowed an Assyrian army again to cross the Euphrates and make its way to the shores of the sea. It is possible that the " affliction " of Assur, to which allusion is made at the end of Balaam's prophecy, may have been connected with the disaster which drove the Assyrians out of Syria in the reign of Assur-irbi. But so long as documentary evidence is not forthcoming, it is useless to speculate on the possibility, and we must be content with knowing that whereas the son and successor of Tiglath-pileser I. was still able to claim dominion in " the land of the Amorites," all fear of an Assyrian invasion subse quently passed away from Western Asia. The empire of David was able to develop without taking thought of the power whose home was upon the Tigris. The episode of Balaam constitutes a break in a narrative which is mainly occupied with questions of legislation and ritual. The time has not yet come for instituting a comparison between the laws and ritual of Israel on the one side, and those of Baby lonia or Assyria on the other. Our knowledge of Babylonian religion is still too defective to allow such a comparison to be made on anything like an adequate scale. In certain general points, as well as in certain details, we already know that a striking 278 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. likeness does exist ; x but we cannot safely draw any conclusions from the fact until our materials are more complete. Thus the Sabbath, as we have seen, was a Babylonian institution ; even its name is found in the cuneiform texts. There is nothing to show that the pre-Exilic Sabbath differed from the post-Exilic Sabbath, and that the resemblance of the latter to the Sabbath of the Babylonians implied its origin during the Captivity. Equally impossible is it to draw any conclusions as to the antiquity of the Mosaic legis lation from the existence among the Babylonians of a daily sacrifice, of peace-offerings and heave-offerings, or of the minkhah, or meal-offering. Like the institu tion of circumcision, such things might go back to an immemorial antiquity, when the ancestors of the Israelites and the Semitic Babylonians lived side by side. They would rather be ancient institutions adapted by the legislator to the ritual of a later day than novelties first introduced by himself. They are evidences of a common kinship between Israelites and Babylonians, not of a conscious borrowing of the one from the other. It is the same with such points of resemblance between the sacred law of Israel and Babylonia as the ceremonial importance attached to the use of " pure water '' and of oil. Indeed, the ceremonial use of oil can be traced back to the earliest days of Semitic religion. It was through the oil poured upon it that the upright stone was consecrated as a Beth-el or " House of God," and that the belief in its religious efficacy was even older than the first begin- 1 See my Hibbert Lectures on " The Religion of the Ancient Babylonians," pp. 59 sqq. THE EGYPTIAN TUTELAGE OF ISRAEL. 279 nings of Semitic ritual is shown by the Sumerian word for an " altar," ki-zal, or " place of oil." The Sumerians must have preceded the Semitic Baby lonians in thus ascribing to the use of oil a ceremonial significance, and the belief must have been one out of the many which the Semites inherited from their more cultivated predecessors. This religious use of oil among the Israelites and Babylonians stands in marked contrast to its absence in the primitive ritual of Egypt. The olive was not a native of the valley of the Nile, and the place of the oil was taken there by the sacred waters of the great Egyptian river. This contrast is characteristic of the relation between Egyptian and Israelitish religious belief. It was a relation of contrast and not of similarity. Unlike the Hyksos princes who adopted the manners and habits of their Egyptian subjects, the pastoral tribes in the land of Goshen remained unaffected by the customs and beliefs of a population with which they did not mix. The attempts that have been made to discover points of contact between the Mosaic Law and the religion and ritual of Egypt have all failed, and have only brought into fuller relief the absolute difference that existed between the two. The difference extended even to religious doctrines. Since the famous treatise of Bishop Warburton, it has been a commonplace that the Mosaic Law main tains a resolute silence on the doctrine of a future life. The rewards and punishments to which it looks forward are confined to the present world. Of the doctrine of the resurrection there is naturally not a whisper. The Law of Israel did not look beyond the grave. 280 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. The contrast with Egypt is striking. The ancient Egyptian seems to have had the world of the dead constantly before his eyes. His life was passed in making preparations for his buria'l, and the world of the dead was a prominent feature in his faith ; the belief in a resurrection of the body held a foremost place in his creed. It was in consequence of it that the corpse was mummified with elaborate care, and entombed beneath the pyramids or in subterranean chambers of the rock. No trouble or expense was spared to preserve a body which it was believed would live again. The contrast between Egyptian and Israelitish belief in regard to the future world was a type of the contrast which prevailed between Egyptian and Israelitish religious belief and practice in other respects. All that was most characteristic of Egyptian religion was wanting in that of Israel ; all that was most insisted on in the Law of Moses was unknown or ignored in Egypt. Whatever influ ence the settlement of the Hebrew tribes in Egypt might have otherwise had upon them, it had none in the sphere of religion. The sacred law of Israel had many affinities with that of Babylonia ; we look in vain for points of contact between it and the teaching of the Egyptian priests. There is, however, a semi-religious institution which has often been traced to an Egyptian origin. Cir cumcision seems to have been a common African practice, though it is also met with in other parts of the world. At all events, it was practised by the Egyptians from the earliest times, as it still is by their descendants of to-day, whether Mohammedan or Christian ; it was, in fact, a mark of purity, and as THE EGYPTIAN TUTELAGE OF ISRAEL. 28 1 such was obligatory on the priests. But the physio logical examination of the mummies of the ancient Egyptians has shown that it was not confined to the priests, but was customary among all classes of the population. From a picture of the operation on the walls of the temple of Khonsu at Karnak, it would appear that it was usually performed, as at present, when the boy was eight or ten years of age.1 Well- hausen, however, has pointed out that originally it must have been performed at a still later age, since the word for " bridegroom " and " son-in-law " in Hebrew and Arabic is derived from the verb khatana, " to circumcise." Now we learn from the Old Testa ment that the Arabs, Moabites, Ammonites, and Edomites were circumcised as well as the Israelites, and Herodotos asserts that the people of Palestine borrowed the practice from Egypt, like the Phoeni cians, Colchians, and Ethiopians.2 In favour of this is the statement in the Book of Joshua (v. 9) that cir cumcision removed the impurity which was a matter of " reproach " among the Egyptians. On the other hand, it is probable that the institution was one which went back to the prehistoric days when the ancestors of the Egyptians and the Semites lived side by side, since there are indications in the cuneiform inscrip tions of its existence in Babylonia.3 It may have had its first origin in Africa, but that would have been while the languages, which afterwards became Old Egyptian on the one hand, and the Semitic 1 Ebers : "Aegypten und die Biicher Mose's" (Leipzig, iJ p. 280. 2 Herodotos, ii. 104. 3 See my Hibbert Lectures on " The Religion of the Ancient Babylonians," p. 83. 282 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. idioms on the other, were as yet but dialects of a common parent-speech. At all events we cannot ascribe the existence of the practice in Israel to the imitation of an Egyptian custom, as the practice was also found among the other Semitic kinsfolk of the Hebrews, who had never dwelt, like them, in the valley of the Nile. The last support, therefore, fails us for the opinion which finds points of contact and similarity between the sacred law of Israel and the sacred law of ancient Egypt. With the flight out of Egypt the Israelites have thus left everything that was distinctively Egyptian behind them. The Egyptian period of their history is closed ; from henceforth Egypt is for them merely a neighbour separated from their territory by a wide stretch of arid desert. The great nations of the world with which they will be hereafter in contact are again those among which the earliest years of the infancy of Israel had been thrown. Israelitish history henceforward looks eastward rather than westward, to their Semitic kinsfolk in Asia, and not to the decay ing civilisation of the ancient dwellers on the Nile. , CHAPTER VI. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ISRAELITISH NATION. It is to excavations in Palestine that the archae ology of the Book of Judges must look for light and illustration, and these excavations have as yet but scarcely begun. Apart from the shafts sunk in the teeth of Turkish opposition and mechanical difficulties at the foot of the temple walls at Jerusalem, the excavations conducted by Professor Petrie for the Palestine Exploration Fund in 1890, and since con tinued by Mr. Bliss, are the first systematic attempt that has been made to wrest from the soil of Palestine the secrets which it has guarded so long. Their explorations at Tell el-Hesy, in Southern Palestine, have resulted not only in the discovery of the long- lost site of Lachish, but also in the discovery that the remains of the Amorite cities overthrown by the invading Israelites still exist in the Holy Land.1 Prof. Petrie's researches have founded the science of Palestinian archaeology. He has fixed the chrono logical sequence of the various kinds of pottery whose fragments have been found in the successive strata of the Tel, as well as the respective ages of the 1 See W. M. Flinders Petrie : " Tell el-Hesy (Lachish)," Palestine Exploration Fund, 1891 ; and F. J. Bliss, in the Quar terly Statement ofthe Fund for January and April, 1893. 284 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. " toolings " observed upon the hewn stones of the ruined buildings. The broken sherds which cover the site of a city of ancient Canaan now tell us the period to which it belongs as certainly as they do in Egypt or in Greece, and from a glance at the mode in which a stone has been worked, we can learn whether it was brought from the quarry in the time of the kings of Judah, or in the latter epoch of Greek and Roman dominion, The mound of Tell el-Hesy rises sixteen miles to the east of Gaza. It stands on a natural eminence about forty feet in height, on the summit of which the ruins of successive cities are piled sixty feet higher. It thus forms a conspicuous landmark in the landscape. The site was well chosen in ancient times. Close to it rises the only good spring of water in the whole district, which, when swollen by the rains of winter, becomes a raging torrent, known to the natives of the country as the Hesy. The stream flows past the eastern side of the mound, which it has eaten away, and so exposed a large section of it to view. The hill of ruins, Mr. Petrie tells us, " is about two hundred feet each way ; it stands in the north-east corner of an enclosure nearly a quarter of a mile across." The soil which covers the interior of the en closure beyond the limits of the mound is necessarily not very deep, and thus offers a striking contrast to the mound itself. The formation of the latter closely resembles that of Hissarlik, where Dr. Schliemann discovered the remains of ancient Troy. As at Hissarlik, so too at Tell el-Hesy, we can trace the cities which have risen in successive ages one upon DEVELOPMENT OF THE ISRAELITISH NATION. 285 the ruins of the other. The earliest of these cities was the primitive Lachish, and when in after times a lower city extended itself around the foot of the hill, it was still upon the old site that the citadel was planted, and that the inhabitants thronged together in time of danger. To the last the lower city remained little more than a suburb ; the public buildings of the town and the residences of its chief inhabitants were erected on the fortified mound. " The latest objects found in it," says Mr. Petrie,1 "are pieces of regular black and red Greek pottery, which occur in the top foot or two of the mound, on the east side and north-west ; the most dateable of these is a part of a small vase, made about 450 B.C., and none of the other fragments indicate a later age than this. The close of the history of the place is then in the fifth century B.C. And as only a few fragments of this age are found, and those confined to less than half the town, it seems that this last occupation was but partial, and not of much importance. If then the top of the mound is of 450 B.C., how far before that are we to date the bottom of the sixty feet of ruins beneath us ? Un fortunately no Egyptian objects were found which would give us a fixed point ; and the only help we can get in estimating what must have been a long period is in the Phcenician pottery. Not much of this occurs in the mound ; but as many vases were found associated together in burials outside of the town, we know all the contemporary varieties, and can help our dating by each of them. The thin black vases with long necks (called bilbils by the 1 "Tell el-Hesy (Lachish)," pp. 14 sqq. 286 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. Syrians) occur from about 305 feet level up to 325 feet on the east side, about the building (where a pilaster was discovered cut in stone); the black bowls, which we know to be contemporary with the bilbils, occur from 295 feet at the south-east to 315 feet at the pilaster building ; the white juglets and the ladder-pattern bowls, both of which are also contemporary with bilbils, have just the same range. So we may assign the Phoenician pottery to from 295 to 320 feet, at the middle of the east side. Now this pottery is not yet dated in Phoenicia, but in the past two years I have found it in Egypt, the earliest examples being late in the Eighteenth dynasty about 1400 B.C. ; the greatest number about the close of the Nineteenth dynasty, or 1 100 B.C. ; and some as late as about the Twenty-third dynasty, or say 800 B.C. So the date of this Phcenician pottery may be roughly said to range from about 800 to 1400 B.C. . . . " The most prominent stage in the history of the town is pointed out by the widespread beds of ashes and the underlying stratum of stream-bed stones (which lie above the ruins of the first and earliest city). These ashes were certainly spread by the wind. Alternate layers of black charcoal dust and white lime ash streak the face of the mound for a depth of about five feet ; and the lines are always unbroken and continuous, often a streak not over half an inch thick being traceable for ten or twenty feet, and gradually thinning out at the ends. No deposit by hands could effect this; the stuff must have been wind-borne and dropped by the breeze without interference. The source of these ashes was doubtless the burning of plants for alkali, as is now DEVELOPMENT OF THE ISRAELITISH NATION. 287 done by the Bedawin. . . . The town must have been deserted, or almost so, at the time when the alkali burners resorted here, and when their ashes blew about and settled undisturbed over a great part of the hill. "Beneath these ash layers there is a stratum of rounded stones from the stream ; showing a time when no regular brickwork was used, but when huts were roughly piled up out of the nearest material ; a barbaric period followed by a desolation. The level of this time is from about 298 to 308 feet ; which would on our approximate scale correspond to 1300 to 1 100 B.C. Of course we cannot say that these stones and ashes accumulated at the same rate as the town ruins did before and after them, though probably the rate would not be extremely different. Hence we cannot be certain of the duration of this barbarism, but only of its general period, about 1200 B.C. "Now this we see just corresponds to the great break in the history of Palestine, between the destruction of the Amorite civilisation, and the establishment of Jewish civilisation under the kings. The period of the Judges was a terribly barbaric age ; its fragmentary records speak of savage retaliations, and the fierce struggles of disorganised tribes." It was after the conclusion of this age that the excavator has found the remains of a new Lachish with strong fortifications and public buildings of stone. Among the stones are slabs on which pilasters of curious form have been cut in relief. In place of a capital, each pilaster is furnished with a volute which has the form of a ram's horn. As Mr. Petrie femarks, the ornament must have been borrowed 288 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. from a custom of decorating pillars with rams' horns, just as in Greece the architrave of a building was decorated with the skulls of bulls, and it is possible that to this custom we must trace " the horns of the altar" in the temple of Solomon. The fortifications and buildings of the Jewish Lachish were from time to time ruined by an enemy, or fell into decay of their own accord, atnd we find fresh walls raised upon their foundations and fresh buildings constructed out of the old stones. In one place there is a " glacis- slope," some thirty feet in breadth, formed of blocks of stone, bedded in the earth, and faced with white plaster. The slabs on which the pilasters are carved, and which Mr. Petrie would refer to the reign of Solomon, have been smoothed with flint scrapers. Even more interesting than the fortifications of the Jewish town are the huge walls of the ancient Amorite city, which lie under the stratum of " stream- bed stones." Like the walls of the Egyptian cities, they are built of crude brick, and are as much as twenty-eight feet eight inches in thickness. The bricks, which are about twenty-two inches by twelve, are laid in alternate courses of headers and stretchers. There are indications that at one time the wall was partially broken down and had subsequently to be repaired. Here, then, we have at last alighted on one of those fortifications which caused the Israelites to say that the cities of the Amorites were "great and walled up to heaven" (Deut. i. 28). And archaeology has further given us ocular demonstration of the results of the Israelitish invasion of Canaan, when in spite of their walls the cities were captured and DEVELOPMENT OF THE ISRAELITISH NATION. 289 overthrown, and the Bedawin built huts for them selves on the desolate sites. We have in Mr. Petrie's excavations an eloquent picture of the condition of Southern Palestine in the age of the Judges. In the time of Amendphis IV. Khu-n-Aten Lachish had been the seat of an Egyptian governor. More than one letter from him has been found among the cuneiform tablets of Tel el-Amarna, and one of the despatches of the vassal-king of Jerusalem states that Lachish, Ashkelon and Gezer had furnished the garrison of his city with food and oil.1 After the destruction of Lachish by the Israelites it is lost to the sight of contemporaneous history until the campaign of Sennacherib against Hezekiah again brings it into view. One of the bas-reliefs which adorned the walls of his palace represents the Assyrian monarch seated on a throne before a captured city with a long line of suppliant prisoners defiling in front of him. The epigraph attached to the sculpture informs us that the city was Lachish. "Sennacherib the king of multitudes, the king of Assyria, sat in an arm-chair, and the spoil of Lachish passed before him." The site of Lachish, and the spring of water which flowed beside it, made 1 Ebed-tob's words are (Winckler and Abel, No. 103) : " Behold, the country of the city of Gezer, the country of the city of Ashkelon, and the city of Lachish have given as their peace-offerings food and oil, and whatsoever the fortress desires." In a later letter the same writer says (No. 104) : "And now the Khabiri are capturing the fortresses of the king. Not a single governor remains (among them), to the king my lord ; all are destroyed. Behold Turbazu thy soldier [has fallen] in the great gate of the city of Zilu (Zelah). Behold Zimrida of Lachish has been slain by the servants who acted against the king." u 290 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. it next to Jerusalem the most important of the fortresses of Judah. The excavations commenced by Dr. Flinders Petrie on the site of Lachish have been continued for the Palestine Exploration Fund by Mr. F. J. Bliss. They have been crowned with signal success, and have led to the most important archaeological discovery ever made as yet in the Holy Land. After clearing away the superincumbent layers of ancient ruin, Mr. Bliss forced his way to the stratum which marks the age of the Amorite founders of the city. Here, at the close of his work in the spring of 1892, he came upon what must be the ruins of the governor's palace of that early period. He found there Babylonian seal- cylinders as well as western imitations of them. The cylinders of Babylonian manufacture belong to the period which extends from B.C. 3000 to B.C. 1 500 ; their western imitations are identical in style with similar cylinders which have been found in the prehistoric tombs of Cyprus and Phoenicia, and so fix the date of the latter. Among the imitations is one of porcelain which must have been made in Egypt, and thus bears witness to the far-reaching influence of Baby lonian culture. But, besides the seal-cylinders, Mr. Bliss has dis covered Egyptian beads and scarabs of the Eighteenth dynasty. Among them is a bead inscribed with the name and title of " the royal wife Teie." Teie was the wife of Amendphis III., and the mother of Amendphis IV. or Khu-n-Aten, and the bead thus carries us back to the time when the letters found at Tel el-Amarna were written. We are not, however, dependent on the bead alone DEVELOPMENT OF THE ISRAELITISH NATION. 29I for a knowledge that the remains disinterred by Mr. Bliss are coeval with the cuneiform tablets of Tel el-Amarna. At the very moment of closing the excavations for the season, he came upon a cuneiform tablet similar in shape and character to those which have been recovered from the capital of Khu-n-Aten. The handwriting resembles that of the letters which were sent to the Egyptian kings from Southern Palestine, and the text turns out to be a despatch addressed to an Egyptian officer, and mentioning the very person who, as we are informed by the con temporary king of Jerusalem, as well as by a letter from him, was the Egyptian governor of Lachish. Zimrida, or Zimridi, was the representative of the Pharaoh Khu-n-Aten in that city, and the name of Zimrida twice occurs in the despatch. The following is my translation of it — " [To] the officer Bal . . ; I . . abi prostrate myself at thy feet. Verily thou knowest that Baya and Zimrida have brought the spoil (?) of the city, and Dan-Hadad says to Zimrida my father : The city of Yarami (perhaps Jarmuth) has sent to me [and has] given me 3 pieces of . . . wood, and 3 slings, and 3 falchions since I am prefect (?) over the country of the king, and it has acted against me ; but unto my death do I remain. As regards thy . . . which I have brought (?) from the enemy I . . . , and I have sent Bel(?)- banilu, and . . . rabi-ilu-yuma . . . has despatched his brother to this country to [strengthen it]." The discovery 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 Upper Egypt which prove to be letters 292 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. from the governors of Palestine in the fifteenth century before our era, and among them is a letter from the governor of Lachish. Hardly have these letters been published and examined before the excavation of a distant mound in Palestine, which the archaeological insight of Dr. Petrie had identified with the site of Lachish, brings 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. The discovery leads to consequences of the highest interest and importance. Not only does it verify Prof. Petrie's identification of Tell el-Hesy with Lachish as well as his chronological arrangement of the pottery and strata of the mound ; it proves also that both at Lachish and elsewhere, where the ruins of the old Amorite cities still cover the soil, we may expect to find libraries or archive-chambers still stored with inscribed tablets of imperishable clay. The larger part of the tablets will doubtless consist of letters and despatches, but the analogy of the libraries of Assyria and Babylonia would induce us to believe that among these letters and despatches will be historical and mythological texts. Indeed, more than one mythological text has been found at Tel el- Amarna. Who can say what revelations are in store for us in the next few years ? As Tel after Tel is explored, and library after library comes to view, we may expect to recover not only the history of ancient Palestine in the centuries immediately preceding its conquest by the Israelites, but the earlier legends and traditions of the country as well. To dig up the sources of the Book of Genesis is a worthier and DEVELOPMENT OF THE ISRAELITISH NATION. 293 more profitable occupation than to spin theories about its origin and compilation. The letter addressed by Zimrida or Zimridi of Lachish which has been disinterred at Tel el-Amarna (Winckler and Abel, No. 123), runs thus — "To the king my lord, my gods, my Sun-god, the Sun-god who is from heaven, thus (writes) Zimridi, the governor of the city of Lachish. Thy servant, the dust of thy feet, at the feet of the king my lord, the Sun-god from heaven, bows himself seven times seven. I have very diligently listened to the words of the mes senger whom the king my lord has sent to me, and now I have despatched (a mission) according to his message." But Zimrida was not the only governor of Lachish whose letters were preserved among the archives of the Pharaoh. We learn from Ebed-tob, the king of Jerusalem, that Zimrida was murdered by the people of his city, and it is probable that he was succeeded there by another governor. However that may be, the following letter shows that a certain Yabni-el once held that office (Winckler and Abel, No. 124) — "To the king my lord, my god, my Sun-god, the Sun-god who is from heaven, thus (writes) Yabni-el, the governor of the city of Lachish, thy servant, the dust of thy feet, the groom (?) of thy horses ; at the feet of the king my lord, my god, my Sun-god, the Sun-god who is from heaven, seven times seven I bow myself. Glorious and supreme [art thou.] I the groom (?) of [the horses] of the king my lord listen to the [words] of the king my lord. Now have I heard all the words which Baya the prefect has spoken to me. Now have I done everything." 294 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. Yabni-el, it may be noted, is an interesting name. In Joshua xv. n we are told that there was a city called Jabne-el on the coast of Judah, and it is possible that some connection may have existed between the city and the governor of Lachish. The discoveries made at Lachish by Mr. Bliss have not only revealed an intercourse between the cities of Southern Canaan and the Egyptians, the Babylonians, and even the inhabitants of Cyprus, they have further shown that commercial relations were already carried on with the distant populations of Europe. Among the beads he has found are two of amber, which it would seem must have made their way from the shores of the Baltic. Already, therefore, the amber- trade was in existence, and the Amorite princes of Palestine were adorning themselves with beads of the precious material. While Mr. Petrie and Mr. Bliss have thus been working at Lachish, the natives have been working in the neighbourhood of Gaza at a spot the exact situation of which is unknown. But wherever it is, it is a site which goes back to the days of Egyptian supremacy in Canaan. Some of the objects which have been found there have been purchased by Mr. Bliss, and prove to belong to the age of the Eighteenth Egyptian dynasty. Among them are alabaster vases bearing the name of Amendphis III. and his wife Teie. Another object bears an inscription which shows that it belonged to a temple of the goddess Mut, and that this temple had been erected by Amendphis II., the grandfather of Amendphis III. As objects of Egyptian manufacture have thus been lying undisturbed on the site since an earlier period DEVELOPMENT OF THE ISRAELITISH NATION. 295 than that of the reign of Khu-n-Aten, we may anticipate that here also a library of cuneiform tablets will be found. We know that both in Babylonia and in Egypt the interior of a temple was the favourite place in which to store the contents of a library, and it is therefore by no means improbable that the modern fellahin have lighted on the site of the ancient library of Gaza. It is possible that Jerusalem itself may be alluded to on the Egyptian monuments about the time when the Israelitish invaders forced their way into the land of Canaan. The tablets of Tel el-Amarna have shown us that Jerusalem was already a leading city of Palestine, and that in the Salem of Genesis we have a form of its name. We may accordingly conclude that the city of Shalam, which Ramses II. enumerates among his conquests in Canaan, by the side of Merom and Beth-Anath, Gaza and Karmel, must be identified with Jerusalem. At all events, apart from Jerusalem, there is no other town in Palestine with which it can be identified, the Salim of the New Testament (St. John iii. 23) being the Sha'lim of 1 Sam. ix. 4 with a wholly different spelling in Hebrew (and therefore in Egyptian) from Shalam or Salem.1 1 That Palestine, including the country east of the Jordan, was for a time in the peaceable possession of Ramses II., has been proved by a recent discovery of Dr. Schumacher. He has discovered that the so-called " Stone of Job " in the Hauran is a monument of the Egyptian occupation of the country in the age of the Nineteenth dynasty. It is adorned with Egyptian sculptures and hieroglyphs. Above the figure of the Pharaoh is the name of Ramses II., and opposite the king, on the left, is the figure of a god with the crown of Osiris, but a full face, above whom are hieroglyphs which Prof. Erman reads Akna- 296 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. If the Shalam of the Pharaoh of the Oppression can be identified with Jerusalem, it becomes probable that we must also see in Jerusalem "the land of Salim" mentioned by Ramses III. among the cap tured cities of Southern Palestine. Ramses III., the most powerful of the Pharaohs of the Nineteenth dynasty, has inscribed on the great pylon of Medinet Habu at Thebes the names of the places he had taken in his Canaanitish campaign. Unfortunately no details of the campaign itself have been preserved to us ; we have to be content with the bare list of names. " The land of Salem," Hadashath (" the New Country "), Shimshana or Samson " the city of the Sun," Karmel, Migdol, Apheka, "the district of Lebana," " the Spring of Khibur," or Hebron, Shabu- duna, Beth-Anath — such are some of the places the Egyptian king claims to have captured ; and since Shabuduna and Migdol are placed by Thothmes III. in the vicinity of Gath, while Beth-Anath is not far from Hebron, and Hadashath was near Lachish, it would seem that we have to look for all of them in the south of Palestine.1 The date of Ramses III. was about 1210 B.C. zapn. As they are followed by the determinative of a god's name, they must represent the name of some local divinity, possibly Yakin-Tsephon or " Yakin of the North " (cp. 1 Kings vii. 21). The winged solar disk surmounts the whole picture {Zeitschrift des deutschen Palaestina-Vereins, xiv. 3, xv. 5). 1 Beth-Anath is probably the Beth-Anoth of Josh. xv. 59. There was a Beth-Anath in Naphtali (Josh. xix. 38). The Arets Hadasht, or "New Country," is doubtless the Hadashah of Josh. xv. 37, where it is mentioned by the side of Migdol-Gad. It also occurs in the list of places in Southern Palestine conquered by Ramses II. DEVELOPMENT OF THE ISRAELITISH NATION. 297 Much the same interval of time separated him from Meneptah, the son of Ramses II., as seems to have separated the settlement of the Israelites in Canaan from the Exodus. His Canaanitish campaign thus becomes of importance to the Biblical student, and the places he captured must be closely scanned. Among them there is no name which recalls that of an Israelitish tribe.1 But, on the other hand, there is a curious synchronism between the history of Ramses III. and that of the Israelites immediately after their occupation of Southern Palestine. Othniel, of the Edomite tribe of Kenaz, whose brother Caleb had been among the fugitives from Egypt, was the first " deliverer " of Israel from a foreign yoke. Hardly had the Israelitish people entered the Promised Land, when they were "sold into the hand of Chushan-rish-athaim, king of Aram-Naharaim," and "served Chushan-rish-athaim eight years." A conquest of the south of Canaan by a king of Naharaim seemed to the critic but a short while ago amongst the most incredible of events, and he had little hesitation, therefore, in pronouncing the document in which it occurred to be unhistorical. But incredible as it may have appeared, archaeology has now proved that it must have actually happened. We have learnt from the clay records of Tel el- Amarna that already, in the time of the Eighteenth Egyptian dynasty, the armies of Naharaim — or Mitanni, as it was called by its own inhabitants — had marched more than once into Palestine. Naharaim 1 Unless it be that of Lui-ail ( ? Levi-el). Lui-ail, however, is placed between " the Spring ofthe Magoras," or river of Beyrout, and Qamta in Northern Palestine. 298 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. and Babylonia had intrigued together with the Canaanitish princes against the Egyptian authority, and when the curtain falls on the cuneiform corre spondence of Khu-n-Aten, we find the same powers again threatening the Asiatic province of Egypt. The possession of Palestine had been coveted not only by Egypt and Babylonia, but by Aram-Naharaim as well. Ramses III. gained his military renown, not so much by his invasion of Canaan as by his defeat of the formidable enemies who attacked Egypt during his reign. Never had the old kingdom of the Pharaohs been called upon to face a greater danger. From north, east, and west its foes marched against it, or assailed its shores with numerous ships. Libyans, Sicilians and Sardinians, Greeks and Cypriots, Hittites and Philistines, combined against it along with the people of Mitanni. There was a general movement on the part of the populations in the eastern basin of the Mediterranean, and the wealth and civilisation of Egypt were the main object of attack. The first great victory of the Pharaoh was gained in the fifth year of his reign. The Libyans and their western allies were defeated with great slaughter and driven out of the Delta. It was fortunate for the Egyptians that the Libyan princes had not post poned their attack until the northern enemies of Egypt were ready to assist them. As it was, a short breathing-space was allowed the Egyptian king, during which he could make his preparations for resisting the invasion which took place in his eighth year. DEVELOPMENT OF THE ISRAELITISH NATION. 299 The inscriptions at Medinet Habu tell us that " the people of the northern regions " " came up leaping from their coasts and islands, and spread themselves all at once over the lands. No people stood before their arms, beginning with the people of the Hittites, of Kadi and Carchemish, of Arvad and Alasiya. They wasted these countries, and pitched a camp at one place in the land of the Amorites." 1 They bore the names of Pulista or Philistines, of Zakkur, Shakalsh, Daanau and Uashuash. In the Daanau scholars have long seen the name of the Danaans of Homer ; they take the place of the Aqaiush or Achaeans who in the time of Meneptah were the associates of the Zakkur. The Zakkur, whose name corresponds phonetically with that of the Teukrians of Greek history, have recently been shown by a papyrus, acquired by Mr. Golenischeff, to have occupied the eastern coast of Cyprus, — the very locality, in fact, where the city of Salamis had been founded and governed by the clan of Teukrians. The Shakalsh had been the allies of the Libyans in the age of Meneptah, and their identifica tion with the Sikels of Sicily has been strikingly confirmed by the remarkable resemblance of the Shakalsh face as depicted in the sculptures of Medinet Habu to that of the ancient Latins.2 The causes of the movement which carried the populations of the ^Egean first into Syria and then into Egypt, it would now be lost labour to conjecture. 1 The translation is that given by Dr. Brugsch in his " History of Egypt under the Pharaohs," Engl, translation, 2nd edit., ii. pp. 154, 155- 2 See my "Races ofthe Old Testament," pp. 152, 153. 300 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. Those to whom such speculations are attractive might connect it with the movements further west, which found expression in Greek tradition in the story of the Trojan war. We must be content, at all events for the present, with knowing that such a movement actually occurred. The invaders of Egypt led with them the people upon whose countries they had first descended. The Hittites, the Amorites, and the Shasu or Bedawin took part in the attack. The Hittite king was captured by the Egyptians ; the king of the Amorites, like the Shasu chief, seems to have saved his life by flight. On the other hand, the king of Mitanni or Aram-Naharaim is not represented at Medinet Habu among the conquered foe, although Mitanni twice figures, along with Carchemish, among the countries hostile to Egypt ; we must therefore conclude that he did not enter Egypt along with his allies. He would accordingly have remained behind in Syria or Palestine, waiting, perhaps, until the armies of the Pharaoh were annihilated, and the rich valley of the Nile lay at the mercy of the invader. Such an expectation was, however, disappointed. Egypt was attacked simultaneously by sea and by land. While " the northern peoples," with the Tuirsh and the Shairdana or Sardinians, descended upon it in ships, the Hittites, Amorites and other Syrian populations marched along the coast. But Ramses was prepared for the double attack, and though the struggle was long and arduous, was eventually victorious both by sea and land. The fleet of the enemy was utterly destroyed, and the wrecks of their army escaped with difficulty from the frontier of DEVELOPMENT OF THE ISRAELITISH NATION. 301 Egypt. As the Pharaoh expressively says : " Those who had reached the boundary of my country never reaped a harvest again." Two or three years later, in the eleventh year of the Pharaoh's reign, the Maxyes of Libya invaded Egypt once more. But they arrived too late ; their allies had already been overthrown and dispersed, and Ramses gained over them a comparatively easy victory. It was now necessary to carry a war of vengeance into Asia itself. All danger was past on the side of Libya, but there were still enemies in Palestine and Syria whose neighbourhood made Egypt insecure. It was needful to strike them in their own homes, and to prove that the arm of the Egyptian monarch was still powerful. In the tv/elfth year, apparently, of his reign, Syria was invaded. Among the places whose capture or conquest is claimed by him, are Shenir, the Amorite name of Hermon (Deut. iii. 9), Hamath, Mitanni, Carchemish, and various other cities in the vicinity of the Hittite capital. It is doubtful, however, whether Ramses really crossed the Euphrates, on the eastern side of which Mitanni stood ; it is more probable that the defeat of the Mitannian forces in Palestine or Syria was his justification for including Aram-Naharaim in his list of conquests. It is also noticeable that none of the cities of Phoenicia or of the country which afterwards formed the kingdom of Samaria appear in the list. On the contrary, between Gaza and Hamath we find only the names of obscure villages, or names like that of Rosh-Kadesh "the sacred headland" of Carmel, "the Spring of the Magar" or Magoras — the river of Beyrout — , Bur 302 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. " the cistern," and Shenir or Hermon. The Egyptian army must have marched along the road which led a little inland to the east of the Phoenician coast, avoiding the great cities on either side, and thus have made its way into Ccele-Syria. The case was different, however, in the south of Palestine. Here we learn that more than one city of importance fell before the Egyptian arms. Besides Gaza, Ramses, as we have seen, claims the capture of various places which, according to the Old Testament, were situated in the territory of Judah. But it is noticeable that of two of them, Salem and Hebron, it is not said that the cities themselves were occupied by the Egyptian troops. It is " the land of Salem " and " the Spring of Hebron," rather than Salem and Hebron, which are recorded on the walls of Medinet Habu. Can this mean that the Egyptian army simply encamped in the territory of Jerusalem, and at the famous springs of Hebron, but left the cities unassailed ? It must be remembered that the cam paign of Ramses did not aim at the permanent occupation of Palestine ; the days when Egypt was strong enough to make of Canaan a subject province were gone for ever. It was a campaign merely of vengeance and precaution, Northern Syria rather than the south of Palestine being the primary object of attack. The campaign, however, extended beyond the western side of the Dead Sea. As has been stated previously, the Egyptian forces made their way into the heart of Mount Seir, while the geographical names at Medinet Habu show that Moab also was invade!. After Hadast or Hadashat and the Arets DEVELOPMENT OF THE ISRAELITISH NATION. 303 or "land" of "the district of Salem," we have the "district of the lake of Rothpana," 'the country of the Yardana" or Jordan, and then Khilits and Qarkha. The latter is the Korkha of the Moabite Stone, while " the Lake of Rothpana " must be the Dead Sea, since there is no other sheet of water in that part of Canaan. The name of Rothpana is a little difficult to explain. The particular dental, however, with which it is written corresponds with the Hebrew shin in the word thupar, the Hebrew shophar " a trumpet," and the name may consequently represent a Canaanitish Reshpdn. This would be a derivative, signifying locality, from Resheph the Canaanitish Sun-god, who revealed himself to his worshippers in flames of fire. In Job v. 7, the flames are called "the sons of Resheph," and on certain Egyptian monuments dedicated by Semites he is depicted under the name of Reshpu. Mr. Clerniont-Ganneau has suggested that the town of Arsuf near Jaffa is called after his name.1 It will now be clear that between the notice of Chushan-rish-athaim in the Book of Judges and the history ofthe reign of Ramses III., there is a remark able correspondence. The eight years during which the king of Aram-Naharaim oppressed Israel would exactly agree with the interval between the beginning of the Libyan attack upon Egypt, and the campaign of the Pharaoh against Syria. We know from the Egyptian records that Mitanni or Aram-Naharaim 1 The Egyptian name of the Dead Sea was unknown before my discovery of it in the List of Ramses III. I have since been fortunate enough to discover it also in the list of places of Southern Palestine engraved by Ramses II. at Karnak. 304 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. took part in the invasion of Egypt ; we also know from them that the king of Mitanni was not among those who actually marched into the Delta. He participated in the southward movement of the peoples of the north, and nevertheless lingered on the way. What is more probable than that he again sought to secure that dominion in Canaan which had belonged to some of his predecessors ? At all events, archaeology has now taught us that the troops of Mitanni and its Hittite neighbours were really in Palestine at the very period to which the life of Othniel would belong. It has given us a new foothold, as it were, in the early history of Israel, and brought to light a fresh and unexpected coin cidence between the statements of Scripture and the monuments ofthe oriental past. The Book of Judges finds support and confirmation in the sculptured walls ofthe temple-palace of Ramses III. at Thebes. At the same time, the records of the Egyptian Pharaoh suggest a question which is at present difficult to answer. Are the Hebrews included among the Shasu who, we are told, assisted in the invasion of Egypt ? We know that at a subsequent date Ramses chastised "the Shasu of Mount Seir," possibly in consequence of the part they had taken in the attack upon his kingdom. The Shasu must consequently have signified for him the Edomites, and it is worthy of notice that both Caleb the conqueror of Hebron, and Othniel the deliverer of his people from the rule of Chushan-rish-athaim, were of Edomite extraction. In fact, the whole of Southern Judah was occupied by tribes of Edomite descent. The Jerahmeelites traced their origin from a brother DEVELOPMENT OF THE ISRAELITISH NATION. 305 of Caleb (1 Chr. ii. 42), and in the age of David the district of Judah was distinguished from that of Caleb (1 Sam. xxx. 14). Indeed, it would seem from the Song of Deborah and Barak, that the name of Judah did not come to be territorially applied until a comparatively late date. The name is not included among those of the Israelitish tribes in the Song, while the Amalekites, the southern neighbours of what was afterwards the tribe of Judah, are described as bordering upon Ephraim and Benjamin (Judg. v. 14). Judah, it would appear, was an amalgamation of the Kenizzite clan of Caleb and the Hebrew settlers around them. The absorption and disappear ance of Simeon and Dan would thus have brought with it the rise of Judah. This is in accordance with the indirect -testimony ofthe geographical names recorded at Medinet Habu. Though so many of them belonged to the territory of Judah, the name of Judah itself is not found among them. The only locality in which the older literature of Egypt knows of the existence of Yaudu or Jews is a locality in which it is impossible to look for one of the sons of Jacob. One of the tablets of Tel el-Amarna is a letter from Northern Syria, which is unfortunately much broken. What is left of it, however, reads as follows — "Thou hast made me stand in front of the great gate, and thou art my lord, and let my lord listen to the servants of his servant. Send Aziru thy servant into the places for which thou didst not commission (?) him, and let him defend the provinces of the king my lord. A second time (I say) to Dudu my lord : Hear the words of the kings of the country of Nukhasse (which) they have 306 the Higher criticism. spoken unto me : Thy father with gold . . . the king of Egypt, and . . . the end of his levy from Egypt and all the provinces and soldiers of the Yaudu . . . [thus] they have spoken . . . [send therefore] Aziru from Egypt, and now I will remove (?) the Yaudu from the country of Tuni[p]." Tunip was the modern Ten nib, north-west of Aleppo, while Nukhasse, the Anaugas of the Egyptian texts, was a district of Northern Syria. On the other hand, the name of the Jews is written Yauda or Yaudu in the Assyrian inscriptions precisely as that of the Yaudu is in the Tel el-Amarna tablet. The only possible way, how ever, in which to bring together the Yauda of the Assyrian monuments and the Yaudu of the Tel el- Amarna letter would be by the improbable sup position that the tribe of Judah once served as a body of soldiers in the Egyptian army, and were employed at one time in garrisoning Tunip. It is simpler to believe that the resemblance of name is accidental, more especially when we remember that there was a city called Jehud within the borders of Dan (Josh. xix. 45), while Ya'di was the name of the kingdom over which the kings of Samahla ruled according to the inscriptions discovered at Sinjerli. In any case the first settlers in what was afterwards the territory of Judah of whom we have positive evidence were not Jews, but tribes of Edomite descent. It is, then, possible that the Shasu, whose chief is depicted at Medinet Habu, included among them some of the near kinsfolk of the Israelitish invaders of Palestine. This would explain the campaign of Ramses against that part of the country which was DEVELOPMENT OF THE ISRAELITISH NATION. 307 afterwards called Judah. His campaign against the south of Canaan would have stood in close connection with his campaign against Mount Seir ; in both cases it was the same enemy whom he intended to punish and terrify. Hebron, whose name is recorded at Medinet Habu, was a possession of Caleb. The Israelitish conquest of Canaan must have been considerably aided by that sudden invasion by the peoples of the north of which the Egyptian in scriptions inform us. The Canaanitish cities cannot but have suffered from it, and thus have been the less able to resist the new attack from the eastern side of the Jordan. At the same time, the northern invasion introduced a people into Palestine who proved for centuries to come a thorn in the side of the tribes of Israel. These were the Pulista or Philistines. Though Ramses III. captured Gaza, it does not seem to have remained long in the possession of the Egyptians, but to have formed, with the other four Philistine cities, a securely fortified centre of Philistine power. The five cities, which in the days of the Egyptian empire in Asia had been the seats of Egyptian garri sons, and which continued to belong to Egypt as late as the reign of Meneptah, the Pharaoh of the Exodus, had now passed for ever into other hands. From henceforth Gaza and Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron and Gath are Philistine strongholds. No sooner were the Philistines established upon Canaanite soil, than they seem to have set themselves to the task of conquering the interior of the country. Repulsed from Egypt, they turned to their neighbours towards the east. From the earliest period of the 308 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. Israelitish settlement in Palestine-the southern tribes had to contend against Philistine attacks, and a time came when these attacks proved successful. The southern tribes became subject to the " lords " of the Philistines, who prevented them from using weapons of iron, and drove every blacksmith out of the land. When the instinct of self-preservation at length com pelled the Israelitish tribes to unite together under a single leader and king, the Philistine was in pos session of the passes which led to the north, and it became a question whether the whole of Israel would not have to bow its neck in servitude to the " un- circumcised " warriors of Philistia. But though Saul perished in the struggle, his work had not been in vain ; David and Joab beat back the invader, and for a while the Philistine cities acknowledged the supremacy of the Jewish kings. The third "judge" whose name is recorded was already involved in war with the Philistine enemy. Shamgar, the son of Anath, " slew of the Philistines six hundred men with an ox-goad." Shamgar is an interesting name, since it is the Assyrian Sumgir, and the name of his father is that of the Assyrian goddess Anat. The tablets of Tel el-Amarna have explained how Assyrian names came to be imported into Canaan, and Anath, as we see from the existence of a Beth-anoth or " temple of Anat," had been worshipped within the territory of a tribe of Judah. What may be a contemporaneous allusion to Shamgar is to be found in the Song of Deborah and Barak (Judg. v. 6). At any rate, it is clear from the context that if the lifetime of Deborah did not actually fall within the judgeship of Shamgar, she DEVELOPMENT OF THE ISRAELITISH NATION. 309 must have lived immediately after him. In his time, it is declared, " the highways were unoccupied, and the travellers walked through by-ways." Nothing can describe more pointedly the condition into which the country was reduced by the Philistine inroads. The Israelitish fellahin who cultivated the fields and inhabited the villages, were exterminated or else driven within the walls of the cities. Even here they were not safe ; the Philistines, it would appear, had already inaugurated the policy of forbidding the blacksmith's art to be practised among their con quered foe, and a shield or spear was not to be seen "among forty thousand in Israel" (Judg. v. 8). It was while the southern tribes were thus suffering at the hands of the Philistines that the northern tribes were threatened by "the kings of Canaan." According to the historical introduction to the Song of Deborah, Jabin, king of Hazor, was at the head of the hostile confederacy, the leader of his forces being Sisera, " which dwelt in Harosheth of the Gentiles." In the Song Sisera takes the place of Jabin, the kings of Canaan, of whom Jabin was one, fighting under him, not as mercenary allies, but as vassal princes. We have already seen that in the tablets of Tel el-Amarna Hazor was one of the cities which were allowed to keep their old line of kings. The governor of Tyre, in one of his letters to the Pharaoh, complains that the king of Hazor was plotting with the Bedawin against the Egyptian government. It is stated in the Book of Joshua (ch. xi.), that Jabin of Hazor was conquered by Joshua and his city destroyed ; but this is inconsistent with what we 3TO THE HIGHER CRITICISM. are told in the Book of Judges, and it would there fore seem that a conquest is ascribed to the age of Joshua which really happened at a later date. The only alternative is to adopt the usual view of the "higher critics," and regard the statement in the Book of Judges as a mistake. Perhaps the excavator and archaeologist will hereafter furnish us with materials for clearing up the difficulty. Mr. Tomkins has suggested that in Sisera we have a Hittite name. The name is certainly without a Semitic etymology, and we know of several Hittite princes whose names terminated in sera or sir. The Hittite king of Kadesh who was the opponent of Ramses II. was called Khata-sera, his secretary and annalist was Khilip-sera, while the last king of Carchemish, according to the Assyrian inscriptions, was Pi-siri or Pi-siris. If we could see in Sisera the Hittite king of Kadesh we should have a good historical reason for the confederacy which was formed against Israel, and which met its death-blow "in Taanach, by the waters of Megiddo." More than once the Egyptian monu ments present us with the picture of just such another confederacy. In the war of Thothmes III., for instance, against the Hittites of Kadesh, the kings of Canaan were gathered as vassals under the banner of their Hittite lord just as they were under that of Sisera, and the spot where the decisive battle was fought was the plain of Megiddo. The defeat of Sisera would thus have been one of those repetitions in history which are brought about by a continuance of the same political and geographical conditions. It must certainly seem strange to the student of DEVELOPMENT OF THE ISRAELITISH NATION. 3 1 I ancient oriental history that the Book of Judges should contain no reference to the Hittites of Kadesh. The restoration of the text in 2 Sam. xxiv. 6 by the help of the Vatican manuscript of the Septuagint has shown that the kingdom of the " Hittites of Kadesh" still existed at the close of David's reign, and it is difficult to understand why a people which the wars with Ramses II. left on a footing of equality with Egypt, and which subsequently took part in the invasion of Egypt in the reign of Ramses III., should have suddenly ceased to interfere in the affairs of Palestine. If Sisera were indeed the Hittite master of Kadesh on the Orontes, the problem would be solved. The battle of Taanach broke up the con federacy of which Kadesh was the head, and warned the Hittite princes off the land of Israel. The blow it inflicted was like the blow inflicted by Thothmes III. on a similar confederacy some three hundred years before. The Hittites of Kadesh were the last great foreign power the Israelites had reason to fear. Egypt had fallen into its decadence ; so too had Babylonia, where the Kassite dynasty had come to an end ; and Chushan-rish-athaim was the last king of Aram- Naharaim who found his way to Southern Palestine. When the Assyrian monarch Tiglath-pileser I. marched past Mitanni about B.C. 1100, the glory had already departed from it. The old kingdom of Naharaim was rapidly going to decay. The only power, in fact, which was rising on the horizon was that of Assyria. But though there were Assyrian monarchs who led their armies to " the land of the Amorites " and the shores of the Mediterranean in 312 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. the age of the Judges, we have at present no in dication that they made their way further south. Tiglath-pileser I., as we have seen, killed a porpoise in a ship of Arvad, and received a crocodile and other gifts from the Egyptian Pharaoh ; but we do not hear of his having gone near the Egyptian frontier itself. His son and successor Assur-bil-kala erected images in the towns and districts of a country which we may infer to have been that of the Amorites, since "Anu and the gods of the land of the Amorites" are invoked to preserve the inscriptions engraved on them. A later king, Assur-irbi, carved his image on the cliffs of Mount Amanus, overlooking the Gulf of Antioch. He was, however, unfortunate at a subsequent period in his reign. " The king of Aram " — probably the Aram-Naharaim of Scripture — captured the strong hold of Mutkinu on the eastern bank of the Euphrates, which Tiglath-pileser I. had fortified so as to secure the ford of the river and the command of the road to the west. The loss of the city seems to have cut off the Assyrians from the western coast of Asia ; at all events we have to wait till the beginning of the ninth century B.C. before we find their armies again marching against Syria and Phoenicia. It was during this period of freedom from the attacks of powerful neighbours that the kingdom of David and Solomon had time to grow up and decay. The nations of Palestine and Syria had been left to fight out their own battles, undisturbed by the great kingdoms and empires which had once existed at their side. The enemies of Israel were partly the small states and tribes which surrounded it, partly its own internal anarchy and want of a central head. Even DEVELOPMENT- OF THE ISRAELITISH NATION. 313 the Philistines were at first dangerous only to the tribes in the south. It is not until after the fall of the kingdom of Abimelech that we hear of the Philistines attacking Israel as a whole (Judg. x. 7). From this time forward, however, the tribes on the western side of the Jordan were more and more called upon to struggle for bare existence against their persistent foes. But it was just this struggle with the " uncircumcised " Philistines that consolidated the disunited tribes into a single nation. It made them recognise their common origin, their common centre of worship, and their common national God ; and last, but not least, it made them conscious of the necessity of putting themselves under a leader whose commands they should all obey. The monarchy saved Israel from destruction, but the founder of the monarchy himself perished in the long conflict with the national foe. It was left for David to complete the work that had been begun by Saul. Thanks to the military genius of Joab and the body of veteran troops which had been formed by the war with the Philistines, the kingdom of David rapidly developed into an empire. After the Phili stines, Moab, the country of David's ancestress, Ruth, was the first to fall. Then came the turn of Ammon. In both cases the fighting force of the country was decimated, and the population terrorised by cruelties similar to those which the Assyrian king, Assur- natsir-pal, boastfully depicts on the walls of his palace as inflicted on a conquered enemy. Ammon had invoked the aid of the Syrian princes in the north ; but all in vain. Even Hadad-ezer of Zobah, who had established his power on the ruins of that of 314 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. Aram-Naharaim, had sent his forces to no purpose against the captains of Israel. The " kings that were servants to Hadad-ezer" in Rehob, Maacah, Damascus and Tob were overthrown, and Damascus became a dependency of Israel. Hadad-ezer now summoned the Aramaeans on the eastern bank of the Euphrates, in the former territory of Mitanni, and they pitched their camp at Helam, which may possibly be Aleppo, the Khalman of the cuneiform texts. Here they were met by the army of David, and their defeat was so complete that they " feared to help the children of Ammon any more." The conquest of Ammon and Damascus was followed by that of Edom. No details are given of the Edomite war, but the subjugation of the mountain-tribes of Seir cannot have been an easy or rapid matter. What the Pharaohs of Egypt, how ever, had failed to do, was effected by the Israelitish army, and garrisons were established throughout " all Edom." The possession of Edom gave David the command of the Yam Suph or Gulf of Aqabah, and of the trade of which Elath and Ezion-geber were the ports. Zobah appears as Tsubiti in the Assyrian texts. In the tribute-lists it is named between Hadrach or Damascus and Samahla, the modern Sinjerli. Con sequently it must have included that part of Syria which lay eastward of Hamath and the Orontes, and stretched from the neighbourhood of Baalbek to that of Aleppo and Carchemish in the north. It was accordingly a kingdom of which Palmyra was in later times the successor. But it was essentially an Aramaean kingdom, and must have arisen on the DEVELOPMENT OF THE ISRAELITISH NATION. 315 ruins ofthe kingdoms of the Hittites and of Mitanni. It marked the revival of those Aramaean Semites who had so long been held in subjection by the intrusive invaders from the north. It is therefore very noticeable that the overthrow of Hadad-ezer brought David into friendly relations with Hamath, " for Hadad-ezer had wars with Toi " of Hamath. These friendly relations seem to have lasted down to the time when Hamath was absorbed into the Assyrian empire ; at all events the natural interpretation of 2 Kings xiv. 28 is that Hamath was in close alliance with Judah, and the cuneiform in scriptions have shown that such was actually the case. Now the discovery of Hittite monuments on the site of Plamath has made it clear that the city was once in Hittite hands. This must have been after the age of the Eighteenth Egyptian dynasty, but before the age of David, since the notices which we have of it from the epoch of David onwards indicate that it had again become Semitic. It may be, however, that Toi and his son Joram belonged to the race of Hittite conquerors. If so, hostility between Hamath and Zobah would be very simply explained. The name of Toi or Tou, moreover, does not seem to be Semitic ; it is difficult to find for it a Semitic etymology, while Tuya is the name of an Amorite in one of the letters of Tel el-Amarna. On the other hand, the name of Joram is not only genuinely Semitic, but also genuinely Hebrew. It contains, in fact, the name of the national God of the Hebrews. We have only one other certain instance of such a name being borne by one who was not of Israelitish 316 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. descent, and that other instance is also a Hamathite king. The king of Hamath conquered by Sargon bears the double name of Ilu-bihdi and Yahu-bihdi, just as the son of Toi bears the double name of Jo-ram and Hado-ram (i Chr. xviii. 10). In the one case it is el " God " which corresponds with Yahu or Yahveh, in the other case it is Had or Hadad, the supreme deity of the Syrians. Does this mean that the name of the national God of Israel was also known to the people of Hamath ? It would not be safe to draw such a conclusion. The name of Hadoram might have been changed to Joram out of compliment to David after the embassy had been sent to him by Toi, while it is possible that Yahu-bihdi was of Jewish origin. At all events Sargon tells us expressly that he was a usurper who had no right to the throne, and a few years previously Hamath had engaged in war with Assyria through " reliance " on Azariah of Judah. Some light has been cast by the monuments on the name of Hadad-ezer, as well as upon the cities which David took from him. The king of Damascus, called Ben-Hadad in the First Book of Kings, is called Hadad-idri in the Assyrian inscriptions. Idri is the Aramaic form of ezer, and the name signifies "(The Sun-god) Hadad (is) a helper." From the fact that the king of Zobah was Hadad-ezer, and not Hadad-idri, we can infer that one at least of the phonetic changes which distinguish the Aramaic dialects had not yet made its way into the language of Zobah. The language of Zobah stood nearer to Hebrew than did the language of Damascus. The two cities of Hadad-ezer captured by David DEVELOPMENT OF THE ISRAELITISH NATION. 317 must have been not far from the northern frontier of Israel. A comparison of their names, as given in the Books of Samuel and Chronicles, goes to show that they should be read Tibhath and Berothai. Tibhath is a city with which Egyptian history has made us acquainted.1 In the list of cities conquered by Thothmes III. Tubikhu figures between Khazi near Shechem and Damascus, and from the tablets of Tel el-Amarna we learn that it occupied an im portant position near the borderland between Pales- rine and Ccele-Syria. In the " Travels of a Mohar," a work composed by an Egyptian scribe in the time of Ramses II., the tourist who came from the north is described as taking the road to Kadesh and Tubakhi. After this " the Magar," or Magoras, the river of Beyrout, is named, then the mountain of Shaua, which is described by Tiglath-pileser III. as a spur of Lebanon, and finally Birotha. Whether this Birotha, "the cisterns," is the same as the Berothai from which David procured so much bronze, it is im possible to say ;"the latter, however, is alluded to by Ezekiel (xlvii. 16), who places it in the vicinity of Hamath, and may be the Bartu which is mentioned in the list of Thothmes shortly after Damascus, and three names before " the land of Tubi " or Tob. In this Tubi we recognise the Tob over which Hadad- ezer claimed supremacy, and from which he drew a part of his forces. 1 The identification is due to Valdemar Schmidt in his "Assyrien's og ^Egypten's gamle Historie," ii. p. 742. The Septuagint shows that the original reading in 2 Sam. viii. 8 was Tebakh, of which Betakh is a corruption. It is called Tebah in Gen. xxiii. 24. 318 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. Before we leave the Books of Samuel we must not forget to ask whether the records of Egypt and Assyria have rendered us any assistance towards settling the date of the foundation of the Israelitish monarchy. To this question an affirmative answer can be returned. Thanks to the business-like pre cision of the Assyrians in chronological matters, we are at length in the possession of a trustworthy chronology which reaches back to the ninth century before our era, and serves as a basis for determining the dates of a still earlier period. The Assyrian year was marked by the name of an officer who was called a limmu. The limmu or "eponym" entered upon his office each new year's day, and careful registers were kept by the successive eponyms. The institution went back to ancient times. The oldest inscription of any length yet dis covered in Assyria — that of King Rimmon-nirari I., about B.C. 1330 — is dated in a certain eponymy, and cuneiform tablets found near Kaisariyeh in Kap padokia, which probably belong to the same age as the Tel el-Amarna correspondence, show that the Assyrian colony established there dated their docu ments in a similar way. The broken copies we possess of the lists of eponyms begin with the year 909 B.C. We must look to future excava tion to furnish us with earlier and more complete lists. Besides these lists the Assyrians also kept a chronicle of the events of the year during which a particular eponym was in office. Whatever happened during the year was briefly noticed after the name of the eponym who gave his name to it. Fragments of DEVELOPMENT OF THE ISRAELITISH NATION. 319 such a chronicle have been preserved to us, com mencing with B.C. 858. In Babylonia there was a different system of chronological reckoning. Time was there reckoned by the reigns of the kings who were arranged in dynasties, and certain events were chosen to repre sent particular eras. The annals of the united kingdom, which had its capital at Babylon, began with B.C. 2468, when the First dynasty of Babylon was considered to have established itself on the throne. It is questionable, however, whether an exact chronology can be traced back beyond 1806 B.C. But an approximately correct chronology, the Babylonians believed, extended backwards to a much earlier period. Nabonidos, for instance, tells us that Naram-Sin, the son of Sargon of Accad, reigned 3200 years before himself, that is to say, about B.C. 3750. From the time of Ahab and Jehu, as we shall see hereafter, the Israelites and Jews were brought more and more frequently into contact with the Assyrians. In this way it has become possible to establish a series of synchronisms between the history of Assyria and that contained in the Books of Kings, and to restore the chronology of the kings of Judah and Israel, so long the despair of the chronologist. We now know that Ahab was still alive in B.C. 854, that Jehu paid tribute to the Assyrian monarch in B.C. 842, that Menahem and Azariah had intercourse with Tiglath-pileser III. in B.C. 738, that Sargon captured Samaria in B.C. 722, and that the campaign of Senna cherib against Hezekiah took place in B.C. 701. It thus becomes clear that the chronology of the Second Book of Kings is more than forty years in excess. 320 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. If the death of Ahab happened two years after the battle at Qarqara, in which he acted as an ally of the Syrian king against the Assyrians, the accession of his son must be dated B.C. 852, or 45 years later than the date assigned to it by Archbishop Usher. Assuming, therefore, that there is no error in the chronology of the reigns between the revolt of the Ten Tribes and the death of Ahab, we should have B.C. 930 as the date of Solomon's death. This would agree with the Tyrian chronology which makes Hiram, the contemporary of David and Solomon, reign from B.C. 969 to 936.1 Solomon was also the contemporary of Shishak or Sheshonk I., the founder of the Twenty-second Egyptian dynasty. Unfortunately we do not know his precise date ; all we can be certain of is that he reigned twenty-one years. Boeckh, on the authority of Manetho, places the commencement of his reign in B.C. 934 ; Unger, on the same authority, in B.C. 930 ; while Lepsius pushes it back to B.C. 961. The exact length of Solomon's reign is not given in the Old Testament, the forty years assigned to it being, in Hebrew idiom, an indefinite period, the real length of which was unknown to the author. Thus, 1 Menander, the Tyrian historian, made 143 years and 8 months elapse from the date of the building of Solomon's temple to the foundation of Carthage (in B.C. 826), the length of Hiram's reign being 34 years. According to 1 Kings ix. 10, 11, Hiram was still governing Tyre in the twentieth year of Solo mon's reign ; although, according to 2 Sam. v. 1 1, Hiram had sent architects to David shortly after his capture of Jerusalem, and before Solomon was born. Josephus, however, seems to be more correct in stating that the fourth year of Solomon was the twelfth of Hiram. DEVELOPMENT OF THE ISRAELITISH NATION. 32 1 in 2 Sam. xv. 7, Absalom is said to have rebelled against his father " forty years " after his return to Jerusalem, and yet the history of David's reign shows that it could not have actually been more than one or two. Materials exist, however, which enable us to determine approximately how long it was that Solomon sat upon the throne. It would seem from 1 Kings iii. 1 that he began to build his own palace before the foundations of the temple were ready to be laid. This happened in the fourth year of his reign (2 Kings vi. 37). The temple was finished in seven years, whereas the completion of the palace required thirteen years (2 Kings vi. 38, vii. 1). We may therefore assume that the palace was finished in the fifteenth year of the king's reign, and that he then set about erecting the fortification called Millo as a protection for it (2 Kings ix. 24). It was while Millo was in course of construction that Jeroboam fled to Egypt, and was there hospitably received by Shishak (1 Kings xi. 26 — 40). The Twenty-first dynasty, with which Solomon had allied himself by marriage, had come to an end, and it is probable that the founder of the new dynasty, who seems to have been the hereditary leader of the Libyan mercenaries, bore no good-will to the son-in-law of a former Pharaoh. However this may be, Shishak was already on the throne somewhere about the sixteenth year of Solomon, and as he invaded Judah five years after Solomon's death, while his own reign did not last more than twenty-one years, it is evident that the Jewish monarch cannot have lived more than fifteen years longer. It is probable that the invasion of Palestine was one 322 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. of the last events of Shishak's reign. An inscription among the quarries of Silsilis, dated in his twenty-first year, records the order given to his architect to build a gateway and hall at Karnak. The order was carried out, as the so-called " Hall of the Bubastids" still remains to testify. It was in connection with this " Hall " that the southern wall of the great court at Karnak was covered with the escutcheons of the conquered cities of Judah and Israel. The campaign in Palestine must consequently have taken place before the twenty-first year of the king's reign, though probably not very long previously. If it took place in his twentieth year, the death of Solomon would have occurred when the Egyptian monarch had been fifteen years on the throne. Be tween that event accordingly and the flight of Jero boam during the building of Millo not more than at most fourteen or fifteen years could have intervened. If we make it fifteen years and suppose that Jeroboam did not take refuge at the Egyptian court until the building of the fortress of Millo was already some what advanced, we should have about thirty-two years for the full length of Solomon's reign. With this agrees the view of the Biblical writer that the work of building came to an end with the first half of the king's reign (i Kings ix. 10). We may therefore place the commencement of the reign in B.C. 962, always remembering that the date may be a year or more too high. As David reigned seven years in Hebron and thirty-three years in Jeru salem his accession would fall in B.C. 1002, while the foundation of the monarchy under Saul may be as signed to B.C. 1020. This would be some sixty years DEVELOPMENT OF THE ISRAELITISH NATION. 323 later than the time when the Assyrian king Assur- bil-kala was setting up statues in the cities and dis tricts of " the land of the Amorites.'' With the Books of Samuel we enter upon a period when the main outlines of Old Testament history are no longer called in question. The most sceptical of critics admits the historical character of Eli and Samuel, of Saul and David, as well as the general credibility of the narrative. The inconsistencies and contradictions he may have discovered in it are no longer held to prove its entire untrustworthiness. The portions of the story upon which doubt is cast are for the most part portions about which the archae ologist must necessarily be silent. They relate to events which in the nature of things cannot be vouched for by monumental evidence. We cannot expect to find inscriptions which describe the apparition of Samuel to Saul, or the single combat between David and Goliath. At most we can only point to monu mental records which incidentally illustrate some of the statements of the text. It is thus that the cuneiform tablets of Babylon have given us a parallel to the consecration of Samuel by his mother to the service of God. The temple of the Sun-god at Sippara, north of Babylon, had attached to it a sort of college or monastery, consist ing of a number of priests who had been consecrated to the service of the deity and were not allowed to marry. It is probable that similar institutions were attached to other Babylonian temples, or at least to those which were dedicated to the Sun-god. It is also possible that they are alluded to in 2 Kings xxiii. 7 as having existed at Jerusalem until sup pressed by Josiah. However this may be, the mem- 324 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. bers of the institution in Babylonia lived in a building apart by themselves under a president. They were called upon to perform certain religious functions in the daily service of the temple, and were supported by the state. We hear of the consecration of three of them in one of the cuneiform tablets now in the British Museum which have been brought from Babylonia. The translation of the tablet is as follows : " The woman Ummu-dhabat, the daughter of Nebo-bil-utsur, the wife of Samas-yuballidh, the son of Bel-Bit-Uri, the priest of the Sun-god, who has brought a docu ment to him and also her three sons Samas-edhir, Nidittum and Arad-Kin, and who has spoken as follows to Bel-yuballidh, the priest of Sippara: 'They have not yet entered the House of the Males ; with my sons I have lived, with my sons I have grown old since they were little, until they have been counted among the men ' ; on the day when Ummu-dhabat [has said this], let her enter the House of the Males, according to the writing of the document which lies before Bel-yuballidh the priest of Sippara . . . Samas- edhir, Nidittum [and Arad-Kin], her [three] sons she gives to [the service of the Sun-]god. The wit nesses are : Nebo-zira-yukin the son of Bel-[natsir] the son of Mukallim, Bel-natsir the son of Samas- yuballidh, Nebo-[musetiq-udda] the son of Tsilla, Rimut the son of Musezib-Bel the son of Babutu, . . . [the son] of Bel-yukin the son of Rimmon-yume ; dated [Sippara] the twenty-first day of the month Nisan, the fifth year of Kambyses King of Babylon, the king of the world." x 1 See my translation of the tablet in the " Records of the Past," New Series, iv. pp. 109 — 113. DEVELOPMENT OF THE ISRAELITISH NATION. 325 The document is drawn up in due legal form, in accordance with the habits of so business-like a people as the Babylonians, and thus bears evidence that similar gifts of children by their parents to the ser vice of the deity were not of uncommon occurrence. It will be noticed that the three sons of Ummu-dhabat had already reached man's estate when they were dedicated to the Sun-god by their mother, and that she testifies to having lived continuously with them since they were " little," so that consequently they had never taken wives. It is interesting to find so close a parallel to Hannah's gift of Samuel to the Lord. There is yet another point, in which light is inci dentally thrown by the cuneiform inscriptions upon the earlier chapters of the Books of Samuel. This is the mention of the Philistine god Dagon. Dagon is popularly supposed to have had the form of a fish, the origin of the belief being a derivation of the name from the Hebrew word dag "a fish." But there is nothing in the Scriptural narrative which lends coun tenance to such an idea. On the contrary the hands of Dagon are referred to (1 Sam. v. 4) and the loss of his head and hands is stated to have left him a mere useless torso. The decipherment of the cuneiform texts has in formed us who really was the Fish-god sometimes depicted upon Babylonian and Assyrian seals. He was Ea, the god of wisdom and of the deep, with whom Dagon had not the smallest connection. Dagon, in fact, was a divinity of Sumerian origin, who is associated in the inscriptions with Anu, the god of the sky. That his worship was carried westward from 326 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. Babylonia we know from the fact that Sargon " in scribed the laws " of Harran " according to the wish of the gods Anu and Dagon." It would appear, therefore, that Dagon was one of the numerous deities whose names and worship were introduced into Canaan during the long period of Babylonian influence and supremacy. Thus a native etymology was found for the name, as the fragments of Sanchu niathon preserved by Philo Byblius expressly inform us, in the Canaanitish word dagan " corn." x Dagon became a god of corn, an agricultural deity who watched over the growth and ripening of the crops. This will explain the curious trespass-offering that was made by the Philistines to the God of Israel. "Five golden mice . . . that mar the land" were among the offerings sent by them along with the ark. Yahveh of Israel was looked upon as essentially "the Lord of hosts," " a man of war," and as such he was the antagonist ofthe agricultural god ofthe Philistine cities. He had proved his superior power by over throwing the image of their god, just as in external nature the corn which was under that god's protec tion was destroyed by the mice. It was accordingly natural to conclude that the mice were the instruments and symbols of the God of Israel, and that the surest 1 The passage runs (in Cory's translation) : " But Ouranos (Anu) succeeding to the kingdom of his father contracted mar riage with his sister the Earth, and had by her four sons, Ilus (El) who is called Kronus, and Betylus (Beth-el), and Dagon which signifies com, and Atlas. " Later on we are told that the son of Dagon was Demaroon, and that " Dagon after he had found out bread-corn and the plough was called Zeus Arotrios (the ploughman) " (Euseb. " Prasp. Evang." i. 6). DEVELOPMENT OF THE ISRAELITISH NATION. 327 way of appeasing his wrath was to present him with them in a costly form. That Philo Byblius is right in describing Dagon as the god of corn is shown by a Phoenician cylindrical seal of crystal now in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. On this the name of " Baal-Dagon " is written in Phcenician letters, while an ear of corn is engraved near it. There are other symbols on the seal, such as the winged solar disk, a gazelle, and several stars, but there is no figure of a fish. With the Books of Samuel the period is closed when the history of Israel runs as it were along a course of its own, unaffected by the histories of the great empires of the ancient East. The Israelitish monarchy has been founded, and for a time seems destined to weld the tribes of Israel into a single coherent state. But the elements of division existed in it from the first. Even in the time of David the cohesion was not great, and the revolts which char acterised his reign found their support in a feeling of antagonism between Judah and the northern tribes. The choice of Jerusalem as a capital, while it united Benjamin with Judah, did nothing towards concili ating the other tribes. On the contrary, it brought into fuller relief the fact that the ruling dynasty was Jewish, and the taxes required for the maintenance of Solomon's court and for the construction of the buildings he erected, though levied from all parts of the kingdom, benefited Judah alone. Ephraim could but .look with jealous eyes on the fortification and embellishment of a city which belonged to a rival tribe, or on the rise of a temple which deprived the older and more famous sanctuaries of their prestige 328 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. and wealth. The growth of Jerusalem brought with it the decay of Beth-el and Shechem. In the Books of Kings we read the history of the result of this opposition between the interests and the feelings of the northern and the southern tribes. The empire of David falls to pieces in the hands of his unwarlike son, and the kingdom of Israel quickly follows it. The twelve tribes had long existed only in name. Simeon and Dan had been absorbed into Judah, Reuben had been lost in Moab, and Levi had become — if indeed it had ever been otherwise — a priestly caste. The twelve districts into which the kingdom of Solomon was divided for the purposes of government ignored altogether the old divisions of the tribes (i Kings iv. 7 — 19). More and more the country had tended to separate itself into two main sections, those of the north and of the south. The south started with a capital, a central temple, and a dynasty whose name was connected with a glorious past. The north had none of these advantages. From the outset its religious centres were twofold, its capital was shifting, and its kings owed their power rather to successful revolt and the choice of the army than to inherited respect. It is small wonder, therefore, that while Judah survived, the kingdom of the northern tribes perished. The walls of Samaria failed to resist the Assyrian invader as did those of Jerusalem, and the best of the Samaritan kings failed to win the reverence and loyalty which were accorded in Judah even to an Ahaz. Though the name of Israel lingered in the north, it was in the south that the nation of Israel survived. CHAPTER VII. GEOGRAPHY AND LANGUAGE. At the moment when for a brief space the whole of Palestine obeyed a single rule, we may pause a little and consider what the monuments of ancient Egypt have to tell us about the early geography of the country. First and foremost among these monu ments are the cuneiform tablets of Tel el-Amarna. Next in importance is the list of the places captured by Thothmes III. in Palestine, and engraved by his orders on the walls of the temple of Karnak. Then comes the curious fragment of old Egyptian literature, usually known as " The Travels of the Mohar," which was composed by a scribe in the reign of Ramses II. It describes the adventures, or rather misadventures, of a "Mohar" or military "commander"1 who is supposed to make a journey in his chariot through Syria and Canaan. One of the objects of its author 1 The word is generally translated " champion." But it is the Babylonian muharu " commander," and should be so tran scribed. We must see in it one of the many technical words like abrek, abrikku, which were borrowed from Babylonia. In the cuneiform inscriptions of the Seleukid and Arsakid period the usual word for the " governor " of a city is mumahir. Sargon entitles himself " the muharu " " to whom the god Ea has given supreme power." 330 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. seems to have been to exhibit his knowledge of the names of localities in Western Asia. Of subordinate importance are the lists given by Ramses II. at Karnak, and by Ramses III. at Medinet Habu, containing the names of the places which they had conquered during their Palestinian campaigns. Those of Ramses II. are much injured, but can be restored in many cases by a comparison with the corresponding names enumerated by Ramses III. Indeed so exact is the correspondence between the two in several instances, as to raise the question whether the later king of the Twentieth dynasty, Ramses III., has not simply copied the lists of his predecessor of the Nineteenth. All doubt on the subject, however, is set at rest by a closer examina tion of the lists. That of Ramses III. is not only much fuller than that of Ramses II., it also observes a stricter geographical order. If it sometimes gives a wrong character where the old list has the right one, the converse is also the case, and we are able to correct the false spellings of the scribe of Ramses II. by the more correct transcription of the names in the geographical " cartouches " at Medinet Habu. Thus the word which is written qa'u " district " at Medinet Habu appears as qd in the text of Ramses II. at Karnak,1 and the name of the Dead Sea, which was 1 Qau is identical with qai, which is translated " plateau " by Brugsch in his Dictionary, from the Egyptian root qa " to raise." But the word seems to be of foreign origin, since it is written gau{f) in the Poem of Pentaur, where the determinatives both of " road " and of " country " are attached to it. De Rouge identified it with the Hebrew gay "valley," but the sense will not suit. Qai has merely the determinative of " locality." The names of places in Southern Palestine given by Rarnses II. at GEOGRAPHY AND LANGUAGE. 33 1 "the Lake of Rothpana" according to Ramses III., is made "Ropa[na]" by Ramses II. If there has been borrowing, the scribes of Ramses III. and Ramses II. must alike have borrowed from some common source. But of this common source no trace exists. Besides the geographical lists, the historical inscrip tions of the Pharaohs give us from time to time some account of the geography of Canaan. This is more especially the case with the annals of Thothmes III. The historical inscriptions supplement the lists, and often help us in localising the places enumerated in the latter. The campaign of Thothmes III., for instance, defines the position of Aluna, which occurs among the geographical " cartouches " at Karnak, while another name which is found among them — that of Shemesh-Aduma — is called Shemshu-Aduma in a historical text of Amendphis II.1 Thanks to the patient labours of Mariette and other scholars, of whom the Rev. H. G. Tomkins is the latest and most complete, the names given by Thothmes III. have been for the most part identified with certainty.2 These identifications can now be supplemented by Karnak are those which, owing to miscopying, appear in an unintelligible form in Brugsch's " History of Egypt," English translation, 2nd edit., ii. p. 67, where, for instance, the first name, " Qa-sa-na-litha " ought to be Qa'a-n-Salem' "the district of Salem." 1 On a stele' against the northern pylon of Karnak, line 3 ; published by Bouriant, " Recueil de Travaux relatifs k la Phil- ologie et h. l'Arche'ologie egyptiennes et assyriennes," xiii. 3, p. 161. See Mr. Tomkins's article in the " Records of the Past," New Series, vol. v. 332 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. the geographical lists of Ramses II. and Ramses III., which I have recently copied at Karnak and Medinet Habu. We learn from the Tel el-Amarna tablets that the desert which extended from the great " Wall " of Egypt to the southern frontier of Palestine, together with the strip of land along the sea-coast known to Scripture as "the way of the Philistines," was termed Melukhkha "the land of salt." North of it came Kinakhkhi or Canaan, which included both Phoenicia and Palestine. Northward of Palestine, again, but eastward of the northern half of Phoenicia, was the land of the Amorites, one of whose cities was Kadesh, on the Orontes. To the north of the Amorites were the kingdoms of Alasiya, of Nukhasse, called Anaugas by the Egyptians, of the Qadi, whom Prof. Maspero identifies with the Ketis of the Cilician plain, of Khal, and of the Hittites. The northern portion of the Phoenician coast was termed Zahi, the southern part of it being Kaft. Zahi was included in Khal, which probably took its name, as Mr. Tomkins thinks, from the river Khal, on which Aleppo stood. At times the Egyptian would speak of the whole of this country, together with the western part of Meso potamia, as that of the Upper and Lower Rutennu or Lutennu, the Upper Rutennu denoting Palestine and Phoenicia. In the fifteenth century before our era, the territory of which Jerusalem was the head extended south ward as far as Carmel of Judah, and westward to Keilah and the mountains of Seir (Josh. xv. 10). Lachish seems also to have been comprised in it, though it was placed under a special Egyptian GEOGRAPHY AND LANGUAGE. 333 governor. But it is remarkable that the ancient sanctuary of Hebron, though it must have lain within the limits of the vassal kingdom of Jerusalem, is never alluded to in the Tel el-Amarna correspond ence. On the other hand, Ebed-tob, the priest-king of Jerusalem, makes frequent reference to the Kha biri or "Confederates," who had their seat to the south of his capital, and who were attacking the cities under his charge. " Now," he says, " the Con federates are capturing all the fortresses of the king. Not a single governor remains (among them) to the king my lord ; all are destroyed. Behold, Turbazu thy soldier [has fallen] in the great gate of the city of Zelah. Behold, Zimrida of Lachish has been slain by the servants who have acted against the king. They have murdered Jephthah-Hadad thy soldier in the gate of the city of Zelah." Other letters are equally urgent : " All the governors are destroyed ; no governor remains to the king the lord. Let the king turn his face to (his) servants, and let him send help, even the troops of the king my lord. No countries remain unto the king ; the Confederates have wasted all the countries of the king. If help comes this year, the countries of the king the lord will be preserved ; but if no help comes, the countries of the king my lord are destroyed." In one passage the determinative of locality is added to the name of the Khabiri, and since in the Egyptian texts of Ramses II. and Ramses III. Hebron is called Khibur, I believe that we must see in the Khabiri of the Tel el-Amarna letters the " confederated " tribes who met at the central sanc tuary of Hebron. Hebron means "Confederacy," 334 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. and we can well understand how it came to pass that in the age of the decay of the Egyptian empire in Palestine its assailants in the south should have established themselves at Hebron, and made it the starting-place of their attack upon the Egyptian province. It was what David did in after days, and what Absalom did again, and just as Jerusalem was taken by David while he still reigned in Hebron, so it may be that in older times also Jerusalem fell into the hands of the confederated tribes of Hittites and Amorites who gathered together in Hebron. Jerusalem had been left by the Pharaohs under the government of its priest-kings, though they were closely watched by " Commissioners " from Egypt, as well as by the governors of the neighbouring districts. Elsewhere, however, the important fortresses of Pales tine were kept more strictly under Egyptian control. It was only in a city like Sidon, whose importance was commercial rather than military, that a king of the old line was allowed to exist by the side of the Egyptian governor ; in other cases, the governor stood alone. This was the case at Gaza, which commanded. the road from Egypt to Palestine ; at Megiddo, which has been called " the key of central Palestine " ; at Gaza, which, though only once mentioned in the Old Testa ment (i Chr. vii. 28), occupied the same place in the geography of pre-Israelitish Palestine that Shechem and Samaria did in later times, and finally Ziri- Basana " the field of Bashan," on the eastern side of the Jordan. To these we may add Gezer, although Gezer does not seem to have been a city of the first rank. In Phoenicia, the sacred city of Gebal was the seat of the governor, but Zemar, in the north, owing GEOGRAPHY AND LANGUAGE. 335 to its inland situation and strong position, was also his second residence. Tyre was under a separate governor. This was doubtless owing to its wealth, which was already famous. In one of the Tel el- Amarna letters we read : " Behold, the palace of the city of Tyre : there is no palace of any other governor like unto it ; like the palace of the city of Ugarit is it. Exceeding great is the wealth [of the city]." Arvad, too, formed a district by itself, and with its large fleet of ships was placed under the administration of a separate officer. It is clear that the Asiatic conquests of the Eigh teenth dynasty had been very thorough. Canaan and Syria had become Egyptian provinces as com pletely as India is an English province to-day. The list of places in Palestine, which Thothmes III. gives at Karnak, are therefore merely samples selected for reasons unknown to us to fill up a blank space on the temple-wall. We find among them accordingly places of great and little importance ranged side by side ; common terms like " spring " and " cistern," " moun tain " and "meadow-land," occupy separate cartouches, and the same names are occasionally repeated, with slight variations, as if they had been copied from memoranda of different scribes. Megiddo figures at the head of the list, after Kadesh on the Orontes, and next to it comes Khazai or Gaza near Shechem. The utter disappearance of this city in Biblical times seems to show that it was destroyed at the time of the Israelitish conquest, and its place taken by the neighbouring Shechem. Damascus is named after Merom ; but Damascus had not yet become the capital of a Syrian kingdom ; its rise to 336 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. greatness was due to the overthrow of Zobah by David, and the successful revolt of Rezon against Solomon. On the eastern side of the Jordan, as has been pointed out by Mr. Tomkins, we have Astrtu, the Ashtoreth-Karnaim of Genesis, and Anau-repaa, or "On of the Repha(im)." Then we meet with the names of Liusa, the Laish of the Old Testament, and of Huzar, or Hazor, which in the time of the Tel el-Amarna correspondence was allowed still to possess a king of its own. Next we read the names of Chinnereth, of Kishon, of Shunem, of Achshaph, of Taanach, and of Ibleam ; and we are then transported to the sea-coast, to Acre, Rosh-Kadesh, " the head land ofthe sanctuary" of Carmel, and to Kalimna or Carmel itself. Beth-Shemesh and Anaharath follow, afterwards possessed by Issachar (Josh. xix. 22, 19), and then after some more cartouches we find Joppa, Lud, and " the district of Gath." Further on we read the names of Socoh and Gath ; and soon afterwards that of the Har or " mountain " of Ephraim. From this point onwards the list is confined to the places which were comprised in the later kingdom of Judah ; — Har-el, " the Mountain of God," or Jerusalem,1 Ekron, Carmel of Judah, Rabbah, the Emeq or " Vale " of Hebron and Beth-Anath. The name of Hebron does not occur, tho ugh its " Vale " is recorded. Either, therefore, its sanctuary was not yet famous, or else it must be alluded to under some other name. If my belief is right that the name of Hebron originated with the Khabiri or " Confederates " of the Tel el- Amarna tablets, the second supposition must be the one which we should adopt. Now the list actually 1 See above, p. 186. GEOGRAPHY AND LANGUAGE. 337 mentions a sanctuary in the " Vale " of Hebron. This is Bath-shal, an exact reproduction in hieroglyphic characters of the Assyrian Bit-sa-ili, the Hebrew Beth-el or " house of God." The letters of Tel el- Amarna have told us how a Canaanitish name could find its way, under an Assyrian form, into an Egyptian document, and accordingly in the Bath-shal of the " Karnak List," I am inclined to see the great sanctu ary of Southern Palestine, which was as much the Beth-el, or " God's House," of the south as Beth-On was the Beth-el of the mountains of Ephraim in the north. There are many names in the List which we look for in vain in the Old Testament. There are also names which suggest questions difficult to answer for the Biblical student. Foremost among the latter are the names Yaqab-el, or Jacob-el, and Yoshep-el, or Joseph-el. Jacob-el lay between Hebron and Carmel of Judah, while Joseph-el was in the Har, or " moun tain," of Ephraim. The interesting character of the two names was first pointed out by de Rouge,1 and Valdemar Schmidt,2 and has since been the subject of a learned article by M. Groff.3 It seems impossible not to recognize in them reminiscences of the two patriarchs Jacob and Joseph, preserved in the very localities with which the Old Testament brings them so specially into contact. But the precise meaning of the names as they appear in the geographical List of Thothmes is a more difficult matter to determine. 1 " Revue archeologi que," nouvelle serie, iv.pp.355 — 372(i86i). 2 "Assyriens og iEgyptens gamle Historie," ii. pp. 535, 537 (Copenhagen, 1877). 3 "Revue egyptologique," iv. 1 (1885). z $5$ THE HIGHER CRITICISM. Are we to regard the final el, " god," as a honorific epithet, attached to the names like " Saint " in Europe, or " Sheikh " in oriental countries ? For such a view we have strong support in the Assyrian inscriptions. Here we meet with names like Samas-Rimmon, "the Sun-god (is) Rimmon," which assert the ultimate identity of two deities of the popular cult. We find names of the same formation also in the Old Testa ment; for example, in the Hadad-Rimmon of Zechariah xii. n, or the familiar Elijah, "El (is) Yahveh." It is therefore quite possible that where we come across two forms of a proper name, one of which contains as its second element the divine title " el," the additional syllable has pretty much the same signification as the "San" and "Saint" of geographical names like San Remo and Saint Petersburg. This view is confirmed by the fact that the title is added when the name is used as a geographical term. In the "Travels of a Mohar" we find the same country called at once Dagar and Dagar-el ; the Jerahmeel of Chronicles (i Chr. ii. 25, &c.) appears as Yurahma in the geographical list of Shishak ; Jabneel (Joshua xv. 11), the modern Yebna, finds its explana tion in the name of Yabni-il, the governor of Lachish in the age of the Tel el-Amarna tablets; while Jephthah becomes Jiphthah-el when used to denote a locality (Joshua xix. 27). The formation of Jiphthah- el is exactly parallel to that of Jiphthah-Hadad (Yaptikh-Addu), of whom we are told in the letter of Ebed-tob, quoted above, that he had been murdered io, the gate of Zelah.1 1 We may add to these names that of Iqib-il, in certain cuneiform tablets from Kappadokia, which are probably of the Geography and language. 339 It is, however, possible that the class of names of which we are speaking ought to be explained in another way. It is possible that Jacob, Joseph, and Jephthah are all abbreviations of longer names of which el " God," formed part, just as Jasher, of which Jeshurun (Deut. xxxii. 15, xxxiii. 5) is a diminutive, is an abbreviation of the longer Israel. But the explanation is not very probable. Were it correct, we should expect to find the older and fuller forms, Jacob-el and Joseph-el, in some pas sages at least of the Bible. They can hardly have disappeared from its pages without leaving a trace behind. Jacob-el and Joseph-el are not the only names in the List of Thothmes in which the name of a Biblical personage has been combined with the title of divinity. We find among them also the name of Mash-el, the Misheal of Joshua xix. 26, where the title of el is attached to a name which, philologically, is the same as that of Moses.1 Equally noticeable is the name of Shmana which twice occurs in the List. Mr. Tom- kins has shown that it represents the Biblical Simeon, and proves that the Septuagint is right in reading Symodn instead of the Masoretic Shimron in Joshua xi. 1, xix. 15. That the Hebrew text is incorrect had indeed been already indicated by the fact that the place is called Simdnias by Josephus and same age as those of Tel el-Amarna. Iqib-il seems to be identical with Jacob-el. 1 In Hebrew Mosheh, which, as I have pointed out in my Hibbert Lectures on the "Religion of the Ancient Babylo nians," is most easily explained by the Babylonian Masu, " hero." 340 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. Simonia in the Talmud, while its modern name is Semfinieh.1 How the name of Simeon could have planted itself so far to the north of the district subsequently occupied by the tribe of the same name, is a problem similar to that presented by the existence of Yaudu in Northern Syria, or of a place called Lui-ail near Tyre.2 The difficulty here is geographical as well as chronological ; in the case of Joseph-el it is merely chronological. The records of the campaigns of Ramses II. in Palestine are so shockingly mutilated that their contributions to the ancient geography of the country are of a fragmentary character. We learn from the inscriptions on the walls ofthe Ramesseum at Thebes that in his eighth year the Pharaoh sacked Ashkelon, and captured Shalam, or Jerusalem, Merom and Beth- Anath, as well as " Dapur in the land ofthe Amorites." At Karnak we find the cartouches of many well-known names : " the district of Salem " or Jerusalem, the Dead Sea (Rothpana), the country of the Jordan, Korkha in Moab, Carmel of Judah, Shimshon the city ofthe Sun-god on the border of Simeon, Hadasht or Hadashat, " the new country," Gaza, the district of Sela, and finally Yaqab-el or Jacob-el. The latter name has been partly defaced by the sculptor, who has engraved over it two Egyptian hieroglyphs. The same names, with the addition of others, meet us again at Medinet Habu, where Ramses III., some 1 For this and the other names of the List, see Mr. Tomkins's exhaustive article in "Records of the Past," New Series, vol. v. 2 See above, pp. 306, 297. geography and language. 341 seventy years later, has left us the monument of his victories. Here we find, besides the names enumerated by Ramses II., Beth-Anath, "the Springs of Khibur" or Hebron, Aphekah, and Migdol. But it was only the southern part of Palestine, the country which sub sequently formed the territory of Judah, which Ramses III. overran. Central Palestine he left un touched, and though his armies marched northward along the coast of the Mediterranean, the cities of Phoenicia remained independent. Between Gaza and ' Qamdu, in the neighbourhood of Mount Hermon, only two village names are given, Inzat and Lui-ail, both so insignificant as to be otherwise unknown. The other names are those of natural localities, Rosh Kadesh, the sacred headland of Carmel, " the spring of the Magoras" or river of Beyrout, so called from its numerous Magharat or caves, and a Bor or " cistern." It is not until we reach Qamdu 1 that we once more find the names of towns, though among them is Shinnur or Shenir, the Amorite name of Mount Hermon (Deut. iii. 9), called Saniru in the Assyrian inscriptions.2 From Shenir and its Mandara or "Watch-tower," Ramses made his way to Hamath, the capture of which he claims, as well as to the cities of the Hittites of Carchemish. Our review of the pre-Israelitish geography of Canaan, as it comes before us in the monuments of ancient Egypt, would not be complete without the 1 Called Kumidi in the Tel el-Amarna tablets. 2 Shalmaneser II. says (W. A. I. iii. 5, No. 6) that in the eighteenth year of his reign " Hazael of Damascus trusted to the strength of his armies, and assembled his forces to a great number. Saniru, a mountain summit as you come to Lebanqn, he made his stronghold," 342 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. " Travels of the Mohar," that curious essay on the in conveniences of foreign travel to which attention has already been drawn. It was first made known to the modern world by the deciphering skill of Chabas and Goodwin. The following is the translation of the larger part of it as given by Brugsch Pasha, with a few alterations in the proper names — 1 " I will portray for thee the likeness of a Champion ; 2 I will let thee know what he does. Thou hast not gone to the land of the Hittites, neither hast thou beheld the land of Aupa.3 The appearance of Khatuma thou knowest not. Likewise the land of Igadai, what is it like ? The Zar 4 of Sesostris and the city of Aleppo is on none of its sides. How is its ford ? Thou hast not taken thy road to Kadesh (on the Orontes) and Tubikhi,6 neither hast thou gone to the Shasu (Bedawin) with numerous foreign soldiers, neither hast thou trodden the way to the Magharat (the caves of the Magoras near Beyrout), where the heaven is dark in the daytime. The place is planted with maple-trees, oaks and acacias which reach up to heaven, full of beasts, bears and lions, and surrounded by Shasu in all directions. Thou hast not gone up to the mountain of Shaua,6 neither hast thou trodden it ; there thy 1 "History of Egypt," Eng. trans., 2nd edit, ii. pp. 109 sqq. 2 More correctly " Commander," see above, p. 329, note 1. 3 Ubi in the Tel el-Amarna tablets, incorrectly identified with the Hobah of Genesis by the editors of " The Tell el-Amarna Tablets in the British Museum." * Or "plain," see above, p. 251. But the reading is not certain. 6 Tubikhi, which is mentioned in the Tel el-Amarna tablets, is associated with Qamdu in the List of Thothmes III. See above, p. 317. 0 Tiglath-pileser III. describes Mount Saue or Saua as in the neighbourhood of the northern Lebanon, GEOGRAPHY AND LANGUAGE. 343 hands hold fast to the [rein] of thy chariot ; a jerk has shaken thy horses in drawing it. I pray thee, let us go to the city of [the] Beeroth (cisterns).1 Thou must hasten to its ascent, after thou hast passed over its ford in front of it. " Do thou explain the relish for the Champion ! Thy chariot lies there [before] thee ; thy [strength] has fallen lame ; thou treadest the backward path at eventide. All thy limbs are ground small. Thy [bones] are broken to pieces. Sweet is [sleep]. Thou awakest. There has been a time for a thief in this unfortunate night. Thou wast alone, in the belief that the brother would not come to the brother. Some grooms entered into the stable ; the horse kicks out, the thief goes back in the night ; thy clothes are stolen. Thy groom wakes up in the night ; he sees what has happened to him ; he takes what is left, he goes to the evil-doers, he mixes himself up with the tribes of the Shasu. He acts as if he were an Amu (an Asiatic). The enemies come, they [feel about] for the robber. He is discovered, and is immovable from terror. Thou wakest, thou findest no trace of them, for they have carried off thy property. "Become (again) a Champion, who is fully ac coutred. Let thy ear be full of that which 1 relate to thee besides. "The town 'Hidden,' — such is the meaning of its name Gebal — what is its state ? Its goddess (we will speak of) at another time. Thou hast not visited it. Be good enough to look out for Beyrout, Sidon and Sarepta. Where are the fords of the land of Nazana ? 1 The List of Thothmes III. mentions a Beeroth immediately after Simeon or Semunieh (see above, p. 339). 344 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. The land of Authu,1 what is its state ? They speak of another city in the sea, Tyre, the haven is her name. Drinking water is brought to her in boats. She is richer in fishes than in sand. I tell thee of something else. Dangerous is it to enter into Zorah.2 Thou wilt say it is burning with a very painful sting (?). Champion, come ! Go forwards on the way to the land of Pa-Kakina.3 Where is the road to Achshaph ? Towards no city. Pray look at the mountain of User. How is its crest ? Where is the mountain of Ikama ? Who can surmount it ? Champion, whither must you take a journey to the city of Hazor ? How is its ford ? Let me (choose) the road to Hamath, Dagara (and) Dagar-el. Here is the road where all champions meet. Be good enough to spy out its road, cast a look on Ya . . . When one goes to the land of Adamim, to what is one opposite ? Do not draw back, but instruct us ! Guide us, that we may know, thou leader ! " I will name to thee other cities besides these. Thou hast not gone to the land of Takhis, to Kafir- Marlona,4 Tamnah, Kadesh, Dapur,5 Azai, Har- nammata, nor hast thou beheld Kirjath-eneb 6 near 1 This must be the U'su of the Assyrian inscriptions, the Hosah of Josh. xix. 29, called Uzu in a letter found at Tel el- Amarna from Abi-sarru, the governor of Tyre. 2 The name of Zar, Tyre, calls up in the writer's mind that of Zarau, Zorah, called Zarkha in the Tel el-Amarna tablets. Dr. Brugsch supposes that in the next sentence there is a play on the Hebrew word tsifdh " hornet." 3 Perhaps Chabas was right in thinking that the scribe has here made a mistake for Pa-Kanana or Canaan. 4 Or Kafir-Malona. 6 For " Dapur in the land of the Amorites," see above p. 340. " Oarta-anbu " the city of grapes." geography and language. 345 Beth-Thupar ; 1 nor dost thou know Adullam (and) Zidiputa,2 nor dost thou know any better the name of Khalza3 in the land of Aupa, the bull on its frontiers (?). Here is the place where all the mighty warriors are seen. Be good enough to look and see how Sina 4 is situated, and tell me about Rehob.6 Describe Beth-sha-el6 along with Tarqa-el.7 The ford ofthe land of Jordan, how is it crossed ? Teach me to know the passage in order to enter into the city of Megiddo which lies in front of it. Verily thou art a Champion, well skilled in the work of the strong hand. Pray, is there found a Champion like thee, to place at the head of the army, or a seigneur who can beat thee in shooting ? "Drive along the edge of the precipice, on the slippery height, over a depth of 2000 cubits, full of rocks and boulders. Thou takest thy way back in a zigzag, thou bearest thy bow, thou takest the iron in thy left hand. Thou lettest the old men see, if their eyes are good, how, worn out with fatigue, thou supportest thyself with thy hand. 7/ est perdu, le 1 W. Max Miiller has discovered that the papyrus really has the determinative of " scribe " after Thupar (the Hebrew 'sopher), so that Kirjath-Sepher must be meant. 2 Zidiputa was in the south of Judah, as we learn from the List of Shishak, who writes the name Zadiputh-il. 3 The Babylonian khalzu "fortress." Southern Palestine and Aupa were at the two extremities of the Asiatic territory claimed by the Egyptians. 4 The Siannu of the Assyrian inscriptions, the Sinite of Gen. x. 17. But W. Max Miiller reads Qina. 5 In the List of Thothmes Rehob is named immediately before Ekron. But a different Rehob is probably intended here. c Beth-el ; see above, p. 337. 7 The name of this country is noticeable, as it combines the name of the Hittite god Tarqa or Tarqu with the Semitic el. 346 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. chameau, le Champion ! Eh bien ! Make to thyself a name among the Champions and the knights of the land of Egypt. Let thy name be like that of Qazairnai the lord of Asel,1 because he discovered lions in the interior of the balsam-forest of Baka,2 at the narrow passes, which are rendered dangerous by the Shasu, who lie in ambush among the trees. They measured fourteen cubits by five cubits. Their nose reached to the soles of their feet. Of a grim appearance, without softness, they cared not for caresses. Thou art alone, no stronger one is with thee, no armfe is behind thee, no ariel who prepares the way for thee, and gives thee counsel on the road before thee. Thou knowest not the road. The hair on thy head stands on end ; it bristles up. Thy soul is given into thy hands. Thy path is full of rocks and boulders, there is no way out near, it is overgrown with creepers and wolf's foot. Abysses are on one side of thee, the mountain and the wall of rock on the other. Thou drivest in against it. The chariot jumps on which thou art. Thou art troubled to hold up thy horses. If it falls into the abyss, the pole drags thee down too. Thy ceintures are pulled away. They fall down. Thou shacklest 1 Professor Maspero is probably right in thinking that Asel is a mistake for Alasiya, the northern portion of Coele-Syria (" Recueil de Travaux relatifs k la Philologie et a l'Archeologie egyptiennes et assyriennes," x. 3, 4 ; 1888). The name of the hero Qaza-irnai seems to contain the same element as the name of the Hittite country Qazawa-dana, from which came Puu-khipa, the wife of Khata-sir the Hittite antagonist of Ramses II. From the Papyrus Anastasi (iv.) we learn that a liquor called qazawa-ir by the Hittites came from Qazawa-dana. 2 Baka is mentioned by Ramses II. as among the countries of the " Anti of Menti " and the " Fenkhu " conquered by him, immediately after Arama or Aram and Man. geography and language. 347 the horse, because the pole is broken on the path of the narrow pass. Not knowing how to bind it up, thou understandest not how it is to be repaired. The essieu is left on the spot, as the load is too heavy for the horses. Thy courage has evaporated. Thou beginnest to run. The heaven is cloudless. Thou art thirsty; the enemy is behind thee; a trembling seizes thee ; a twig of thorny acacia worries thee ; thou thrustest it aside ; the horse is scratched, till at length thou findest rest. " Explain thou (to me) thy relish for the Champion ! "Thou comest into Joppa. Thou findest the date- palm in full bloom in its time. Thou openest wide the hole of thy mouth, in order to eat. Thou findest that the maid who keeps the garden is fair. She does whatever thou wantest of her. . . . Thou art recognized, thou art brought to trial, and owest thy preservation to being a Champion. Thy girdle of the finest stuff, thou payest it as the price of a bad rag. Thou sleepest every evening with a rug of fur over thee. Thou sleepest a deep sleep, for thou art weary. A thief takes thy bow and thy sword from thy side ; thy quiver and thy armour are cut to pieces in the dark ness ; thy pair of horses run away. The groom takes his course over a slippery path which rises before him. He breaks thy chariot in pieces ; he follows thy foot- tracks. [He finds] thy equipments, which had fallen on the ground, and had sunk into the sand, leaving only an empty space. " Prayer does not avail thee ; even when thy mouth says, ' Give food in addition to water, that I may reach my goal in safety,' they are deaf and will not hear. They say not yes to thy words. The iron- 348 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. workers enter into the smithy ; they rummage in the workshops of the carpenters ; the handicraftsmen and saddlers are at hand ; they do whatever thou re- quirest. They put together thy chariot ; they put aside the parts of it that are made useless ; thy spokes are faconne quite new ; thy wheels are put on, they put the coiirroies on the axles and on the hinder part ; they splice thy yoke, they put on the box of thy chariot ; the [workmen] in iron forge the . . . ; they put the ring that is wanting on thy whip, they replace the lanieres upon it. " Thou goest quickly onward to fight on the battle field, to do the deeds of a strong hand and of firm courage. " Before I wrote I sought me out a Champion, who knows his power, and leads the feunesse, a chief in the arme'e, [who goes forward] even to the end of the world. " Answer me not, ' That is good, this is bad ' ; repeat not to me your opinion. Come, I will tell thee all which lies before thee, at the end of thy journey. " I begin for thee with the Palace of Sesostris.1 Thou hast not set foot in it by force. Thou hast not eaten the fish in the brook . . . Thou hast not washed thyself in it. With thy permission I will re mind thee of Huzana ; 2 where is its Khetem (fortress) ? Come, I pray thee, to the Palace of the land of Uzi, of Sesostris Osymandyas 3 in his victories, (to) S[a]z-el 1 Sestsu [-Ra], the popular name of Ramses II. 2 Perhaps Mount Kasios, midway between Pelusium and El- Arish. For Khetem, see above, p. 252. 3 User-ma- Ra, a title of Ramses II. GEOGRAPHY AND LANGUAGE. 349 together with Absaqbu. I will inform thee of the land of Ainin (the two Springs), the customs of which thou knowest not. The land of the lake of Nakhai and the land of Rehoburta x thou hast not seen since thou wast born, O chamgion. Rapih2 is widely extended. What is its wall like ? It extends for a mile in the direction of Gaza." This curious specimen of ancient Egyptian sarcasm is full of evidence as to the influence which the Semi tic population of Canaan had exercised upon the countrymen of the writer. It abounds with Canaan itish, or, as we should now call them, Hebrew words, which Dr. Brugsch has endeavoured to represent by the introduction of French terms. Ebed " servant," gamal "camel," tsaba " army," naaruna " young men " (feunesse), are among the words which have been borrowed from the language of Canaan, and even the Canaanite barzel " iron " has been adopted under the form of parzal. The most interesting of these borrowed terms is ariel, as it settles the meaning of a Hebrew word, about which there has been much dis pute. When the Authorised Version states (2 Sam. xxiii. 20) that Benaiah slew two " lion-like men " of Moab, the word which is thus translated is ariel, used in a plural sense. It is plain, however, from the con text in which it is found in the " Travels of a Mohar " that the word must signify simply a " hero," and that 1 This seems a mistake for Rehoboth, the place mentioned in Gen. xxvi. 22. 2 Raphia, called Rapikhu in the Assyrian texts, which now forms the boundary between Turkey and Egypt on the road from Gaza to El-Arish. All that is left of its former state are a mound of potsherds and a few broken columns. Its only inhabitant is a telegraph clerk. 350 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. it has nothing to do with "lion-like men." But in Hebrew art is " a lion " and el is " God," and conse quently nothing was easier than to play upon the resemblance between ariel and the two words art and el. This is what Isaiah has done in the famous passage (ch. xxix.) where he addresses Jerusalem as Ariel, and declares that though the enemy shall en camp about the city and sore distress it, it shall never theless be to the Lord an Ariel or " lion of God." Why Isaiah should have chosen this particular word, which seems to belong rather to the Moabite than to the Hebrew dialect of the ancient language of Canaan, is explained by the prophet Ezekiel. In describing the ideal temple of the future, Ezekiel gives the exact measurements of the altar which was to represent in miniature the sacred city itself. The altar is accordingly identified with the city, and we read (xliii. 15): "So from the Har-el shall be four cubits, and from the Ariel 1 and upward shall be four horns." Now it will be remembered that in the List of Thothmes III. Jerusalem is called Har-el, "the Mount of God," of which we have the Jewish equiva lent in Gen. xxii. 14. It is, then, in the resemblance in sound between Ariel " a hero," and Har-el, the old name of " the city where David dwelt," that we have to look for the reason which made Isaiah predict for " Ariel " its siege by the armies of Assyria. I have said that the word seems to have belonged to the dialect of Moab. This may be inferred not so much from the fact that in the only passage of the Old Testament in which it is employed otherwise than as a proper name it is applied to two men of 1 This reading is certified by the Septuagint text. GEOGRAPHY AND LANGUAGE. 35 1 Moab, as from the fact that it twice occurs in the necessarily limited vocabulary of the Moabite Stone.1 Mesha there tells us that he carried captive from Ataroth " the Arel of Dodah and tore him before Chemosh in Kerioth," and that he took from Nebo " the Arels of Yahveh and tore them before Chemosh." The Moabite king accordingly treated the '' Heroes" of the two Israelitish deities as Agag the Amalekite had been treated by Samuel. We shall have some thing more to say about them in another chapter. The Egyptian temples have preserved to us a record of the geography of Palestine as it was in the days after the foundation of the Hebrew monarchy, which it will be instructive to compare with the geography of the country before the Israelitish con quest. Sheshanq, the Shishak of the Bible (i Kings xiv. 25, 26), has imitated his predecessors by covering part of a wall in the temple of Karnak with " car touches," each of them containing the name of a locality which he claims to have captured during his campaign against Rehoboam. These names have recently been subjected to a searching examination by Professor Maspero,2 and are now in a fit condition to be handled by the historian. The greater number of names naturally belongs to the kingdom of Judah, more especially to the desert region of the extreme south. Many of them denote mere settlements of Bedawin squatters, such as are still 1 Smend and Socin : " Die Inschrift des Konigs Mesa von Moab" (1886), lines 12 and 17. The latest and best translation is that by Dr. Neubauer, in the " Records of the Past," New Series, vol. ii. 2 " The List of Sheshonq at Karnak," a paper read before the Victoria Institute, 1891. 352 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. to be met with to the south of Palestine. The number of cartouches has been eked out by such terms as Negeb " the southern region," Emeq " the valley," Hagri and Haqrama, which Professor Maspero is doubtless right in comparing with the Talmudic khagra " an enclosure," Shabbalut the Hebrew shib- boleh " a stream," Abilu and Abilama (abelim) "meadows." Some of the names, as Professor Maspero has noticed, present us with a curious dia lectal peculiarity,^ oxbeth " house " appearing as fit, and Mr {beer) " well " as fir, while berdkoth " blessings " is written warakit. The list is headed by the names of Gaza, Megiddo, Rabbati, Taanach and Shunem, which show that the invasion of the Pharaoh was not confined to the territories of Judah, though it is questionable whether we should not see in Rabbati the Jewish " capital " Jerusalem. After Shunem comes Bitshailla which Professor Maspero thinks may be Shiloh ; then we have Rehob and Hapurama, the Haphraim of Issachar (Josh. xix. 19). Among the cartouches which follow are those of Mahanaim on the eastern side of the Jordan, Gibeon of Benjamin and Beth-Horon. From this point onwards we are for the most part in the southern kingdom. Here we find mention of Ajalon, Makkedah and Yeud-ha(m)-melek "Yehud of the king." At the very outset of hieroglyphic dis covery the last name attracted the notice of Cham- pollion, who read it Yaudah-melek, and saw in it a reference to the " kingdom of Judah." The progress of research, however, has shown that both the tran scription and the explanation of the name must be modified ; the aspirate which appears in its middle is GEOGRAPHY AND LANGUAGE. 353 the Hebrew article — never found, be it observed, in the pre-Israelitish names of Palestine — and the place itself, instead of being the Jewish kingdom, must be the little town of Jehud on the borders of Dan (Josh. xix. 45), from which, it may be, the tribe of Judah took its name.1 Further on in the List come the names of Socho, Aluna, Zadiputh-il, Migdol and Yarza, the modern Khurbet Yerzeh, south of Megiddo, which with several of the names which accompany it, is found also in the List of Thothmes. Next we read of Arad, con quered by the Israelites before they entered Canaan (Numb. xxi. 1 — 3), of Adoraim, and of Yurahma, the Jerahmeel of the Old Testament. The other names of the List are obscure and unknown or else too much mutilated to be identified with certainty. From the time of Thothmes III. it was usual to crown the oval cartouche in which the name of the conquered locality was written with the head and shoulders of a typical representative of its population. The prisoners brought back to Egypt served as models, and the Egyptian artists drew their outlines with almost photographic fidelity. Now it is remark able that the heads which surmount the names of Shishak's conquests in Palestine are the heads of Amorites, and not of Jews. They reproduce the features of that fair-skinned, light-haired, blue-eyed, and long-headed Amorite race with which the earlier 1 The objection made by Max Miiller and Renouf that the h of Jehud is not represented in the hieroglyphics, has been shown to be baseless by Professor Maspero. In fact, in the Assyrian inscriptions, the name of Judah is always written YaudS. without the aspirate. A A 354 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. monuments of Egypt make us familiar. Nothing can be more unlike the Jewish type as we see it in the tribute-bearers of Jehu on the Black Obelisk of Nineveh, or as we are familiar with it to-day. It is evident that in the days of Shishak and Rehoboam the old Amorite race was still strong in the south of Judah. Outside Jerusalem and the more import ant fortresses it must have been the prevailing type. In no other way can we account for its having been selected by the sculptors of Shishak to typify the population of the kingdom of Judah, to the entire exclusion of any other type. On the other hand the Black Obelisk of Nineveh would seem to indicate that in the northern kingdom of Israel, at all events in Samaria and its neighbour hood, the Jewish type was the dominant one. The two facts in combination help to explain the racial characteristics of the present population of Palestine. That population is in type partly Canaanite and partly Amorite ; except in a few recent Jewish colonies we look in vain for traces of the Jew. I have seen Amorites in the south ; Major Conder and M. Clermont-Ganneau have discovered the Canaanite in other parts of the land. Now if the country popu lation of Judah were Amorite, the destruction of Jerusalem and the deportation of the Jews would fully explain the disappearance of the Israelitish element in the Southern Palestine of to-day, while the comparatively early overthrow of the northern king dom, with the exile of its leading inhabitants and the admixture of the rest with the foreigners who were settled among them, would explain its disappearance in the north. The Israelites were an intruding race GEOGRAPHY AND LANGUAGE. 355 in Canaan, and it is a law of nature that when once the dominant position of an intruding race is broken down it becomes absorbed by the older inhabitants of the land. It has been so in Ireland ; it was also the case in Palestine.1 The blond Amorite race was widely spread. The " land of the Amorites " known to the Egyptians, the Babylonians and the Assyrians lay to the north of Palestine proper, and its chief centre was Kadesh on the Orontes, near the present Lake of Horns, which after its capture by the Hittites became their prin cipal stronghold in the south. But the fact that the Babylonians at a very early epoch included the whole of the Mediterranean coast from Gaza in the south to the mountains of Amanus in the north under the general title of "Amorite," shows that the Amorite population was not confined to Coele-Syria. The Old Testament assures us that when the Israelites first attacked Canaan, important Amorite kingdoms ex isted on the eastern side of the Jordan, while we learn from the fourteenth chapter of Genesis that there were Amorites on the shores of the Dead Sea. Kadesh-barnea itself was situated in " the mountain of the Amorites " according to Deut. i. 19, 20, the Amorite race was largely represented in the territory of Judah, and Jacob declares that he had taken Shechem " out of the hand of the Amorite " with his sword and bow (Gen. xlviii. 22). In short, the moun tainous country of Palestine was largely in the hands of Amorite tribes, and we are expressly told in Numb. xiii. 29, that whereas " the Amalekites dwell in the land of the south," " the Hittites and the Jebu- 1 See my " Races ofthe Old Testament," pp. 75 sqq. 356 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. sites and the Amorites dwell in the mountains; and the Canaanites dwell by the sea, and by the coast of Jordan." Whatever may have been the original language of the Amorites, and however long they may have retained it to the north of Palestine, it is certain that in Palestine itself they had adopted " the language of Canaan," Hebrew as we call it, long before the days of Israelitish conquest. The letters found at Tel el- Amarna would alone prove this. Canaanitish (or Hebrew) words occur from time to time, not only in the letters which were written by the governor of Phoenicia, but also in those which were sent from Jerusalem and other places in which the Amorites lived. Thus we find the king of Jerusalem using anuki "I," the Hebrew anochi, instead of the Assyrian anaku, and zuru'u, the Hebrew zero' a "arm," instead of the Assyrian qatu, while other correspondents from Southern Palestine explain the Assyrian sise" horses," qatsira " cattle," elippi " a ship," ina qati-su " in his hand," and arki-su "after him," by their corresponding Canaanitish equivalents susi (Heb. sus), maqani (Heb. miqneh), anay (Heb. oni), badiu (Heb. b'yado) and akhrun-u (Heb. akharond). The Phcenician governors similarly inform us that batnu (Heb. be ten) is the native representative of the Assyrian pante "stomach," khaparu (Heb. 'dphdr) of the Assyrian ipru "dust," and kilubi (Heb. chetiib) of the Assyrian khukharu " a cage." The last-mentioned word, it may be noted, is employed in Jer. v. 27, where it is said that " as a cage (c/ielub) is full of birds, so are their houses full of deceit." These old Canaanitish words, which have been so GEOGRAPHY AND LANGUAGE. 357 strangely preserved under the dust-heap of an Egyp tian city, are important not only in indicating the wide extent to which the Canaanitish language was spoken in Palestine, but also in proving that long before the days of the Israelitish invasion " the lan guage of Canaan " was in all respects the same as that of the Old Testament. This, indeed, is implied by Isaiah (xix. 18), and the discovery and decipher ment of the Phoenician inscriptions have long since convinced scholars that such must have been the fact. But now comes a question of some difficulty and interest: If Hebrew were the language of the Cana anites, how came it to be also the language of their Israelitish foes and supplanters ? But it was not the Israelites alone who had made it their own. The Moabite Stone shows that their Moabite kinsfolk had done the same, and the simi larity of the proper names which we find alike among Moabites, Ammonites and Edomites makes it more than probable that their example had been followed by the children of Ammon and of Esau. In fact the descendants of Abraham, the emigrant from Chaldaea, whether they called themselves Moabites, Ammon ites, Edomites or Israelites, had all adopted the ancient language of Canaan. That it could not have been their original language is shown by the fact that they were all new-comers. Unless we imagine that they were but branches of the Canaanites, which is contrary to history, we cannot account for their speaking precisely the same language as the natives of Canaan except on the supposition that they had borrowed it. Moreover, the nearest kinsfolk of the Israelites were to be found 358 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. in the deserts to the east of Egypt, where the popu lation as represented on the monuments of Egypt have typically Jewish features. But these kinsfolk did not speak Hebrew ; their dialects were partly Aramaic, partly Arabic. How, then, we may repeat, came the Israelites, like the Moabites beyond the Jordan, to adopt the lan guage of the people they endeavoured to subdue and to exterminate ? There can be but one answer to the question ; at all events there is but one answer which linguistic science can admit. The reason must have been the same as that which caused the Nor mans in France and Sicily to adopt the languages of their conquered subjects, and the Manchu conquerors of China to forget that they are not Chinese. The conquered population must have been superior to its masters both in numbers and in culture. The Israel ites in Canaan must have formed merely a dominant class, which held its own by force of arms in the midst of a more civilised people. Civilisation and numerical superiority alike fought on the side ofthe ancient language of the country, and compelled the invader to learn and adopt it. This conclusion is in accordance with the facts of archaeology. As late as the time of Rehoboam, as we have seen, we may infer from the sculptured monuments of Shishak that the main bulk of the Jewish population was descended from the older inhabitants ofthe land. But it is also in accordance with the clear testimony of the Old Testament itself. We have only to read the first chapter of Judges to see how imperfect and superficial the Israelitish conquest must have been. We have only to study GEOGRAPHY AND LANGUAGE. 359 the Book of Joshua to discover that the Israelites, like the Saxons in Britain, destroyed the cities and not the population of the country, and that the number of cities actually overthrown was not very large. We have only to turn to the list of the " mighty men " of David to learn how many of them were foreigners, Hittites, Ammonites, Zobahites, and even Philistines of Gath (2 Sam. xv. 18, 19 ; cp. vi. 10). Nor must it be forgotten that David himself was partly a Moabite by descent. The common belief, in fact, that the Canaanites were exterminated before the children of Israel is a belief which is not only contrary to the evidence of archaeology and philology, it is not supported by the statements of the Old Testament writers. It is like the similar belief that the Anglo-Saxons massacred the pre-existing population of Britain, against which anthropology as well as common sense has long since raised its voice. Such exterminations of a whole people are fortunately difficult to carry out, especially in days of primitive warfare. A few towns may be captured, a few massacres may take place ; but the invading horde soon finds that it is more profitable to make slaves of the conquered than to slay them. And when the first tide of victory and lust of booty are past, the conquerors are content to settle among the subject population, learning from them their ways and arts of life, and intermarrying with them. Under such circumstances it is inevitable that the one borrows the language of the other ; on which side the borrowing shall lie depends on the amount of culture possessed respectively by the conquered and their lords. 360 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. Whatever, then, may have been the original language of Israel, we can sufficiently account for the fact that it adopted the language of Canaan. Before the Song of Deborah and Barak was composed, the language of Canaan had become the language of the chosen people. From henceforth we shall have to term it Hebrew. As the growing nation of Israel incor porated into its midst the older elements of the population, so, too, did it adopt the language and inherit the literature and the history of the people in whose midst it dwelt. The break in the history of Canaan caused by the Israelitish invasion was temporary only, nor did it extend to all parts of the country at one and the same time ; it cannot be compared with the break in the history of our own island produced by the Saxon invasion. The con tinuity of Canaanitish history, in short, was no more interrupted than was the continuity of Canaanitish descent ; and the fact is an important one for the historian of the past. Note.— Dr. W. Max Muller {Asien und Europa, 1893) has discovered that " the mountain of Ikama " mentioned on page 344, line 11, should be corrected into "the mountain of Shakama," the Biblical Shechem, i. e. Mount Ebal or Gerizim. It may be added that the name of " Muab " or Moab is found in the list ofthe countries conquered by Ramses II. on the base of the eastern colossus in front of the great pylon of the temple of Luxor. CHAPTER VIII. THE MOABITE STONE AND THE INSCRIPTION OF SILOAM. WITH the dismemberment of the empire of David, and the revolt of the Ten Tribes from the Davidic dynasty, the dream of Hebrew empire and Israelitish unity was at an end. The Israelites ceased to be a danger to the surrounding peoples, and for a time the two kingdoms in the north and south were allowed to develop peacefully, undisturbed except by petty wars with neighbours as little powerful as themselves. The condition of the great monarchies on the banks of the Euphrates, the Tigris and the Nile accounted for this. Assyria was under eclipse, with its road to the west barred by the loss of its Mesopotamian fortresses ; Babylonia was in decay ; and Egypt had become decrepid. The campaign of Shishak was a last sparkle of expiring life, The dynasty of Shishak was of Libyan origin, and the rise of its founder was due to the power which the Libyan mercenaries had gained in the state. But though it lasted for about one hundred and twenty years, the successors of the first Shishak — or Sheshonq as the Egyptologists write his name — have few, if any, victories to record. If we may trust the silence 362 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. of the Books of Kings they made no attempt to follow his example by another invasion of Palestine. But though the Books of Kings are silent about any further invasions on the side of Egypt, there is a passage in the second Book of Chronicles (ch. xiv.) which asserts that when Asa was on the Jewish throne "there came out against them Zerah the Ethiopian with an host of an hundred thousand and three hundred chariots." Like certain other state ments in the Books of Chronicles the passage stands alone, no other reference to the event being found in the Bible. The " higher " criticism has accordingly thrown doubt upon it, the Chronicler with his ex aggerated numbers and endeavour to transform the earlier history of Israel into a history of ritual being naturally regarded by the " higher " critics with disfavour. Indeed the late Bishop of Natal has gone so far as to speak of his " fictions." The account of the invasion of Judah by " Zerah the Ethopian " has accordingly been pronounced to be unhistorical. But the mere fact that the story rests upon the authority of the Chronicler alone is no argument against its historical character. The Chronicler had access to ancient documents which have long since perished, and we know that he sometimes made use of them (see, for example, 1 Chron. iv. 22). The historical literature at his command was not confined to our present Books of Kings. It is true that the number of soldiers assigned to the Ethiopian army is grossly exaggerated ; but the Chronicler's partiality for high cyphers is equally conspicuous in passages whose historical trustworthiness is vouched for by other books of the Old Testament. It is also true MOABITE STONE AND INSCRIPTION OF SILOAM. 363 that "profane" history knows nothing of an Ethiopian power, at the time when Zerah is said to have reigned, which could have invaded Judah without first possessing itself of Egypt, and the Ethiopian conquest of Egypt did not take place until more than a century later. But nevertheless a discovery made by Mr. Naville among the ruins of Bubastis in Lower Egypt goes to show that the account of Zerah's campaign is founded in fact. One of the monuments disinterred there during the excavations carried on for the Egypt Exploration Fund is dated in the twenty-second year of Osorkon II., the great-grandson of Shishak I. On it the king is made to declare that " the Upper and Lower Rutennu have been thrown under his feet."1 The Upper Rutennu signified Palestine in the geographical language of Egypt, the Lower Rutennu being Syria, and it would seem therefore — though the title of Conqueror may be only honorific— that Osorkon had been engaged in a successful campaign in Asia. Now the twenty-second year of Osorkon II. falls about forty years after the invasion of Judah by Shishak, and consequently in the twenty-fifth year of Asa's reign. The dates accordingly will agree well together, and when we remember that Zerah was not only a Hebrew word signifying " sunrise " but also a Hebrew name, we are justified in believing that it is the Hebrew form given to the Egyptian Osorkon. The two names are sufficiently alike for the foreign one to have been assimilated in sound and spelling to the more familiar native one. 1 " Bubastis (Eighth Memoir of the Egypt Exploration Fund) "pp. 50, 51. 364 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. The only mistake made by the Chronicler is that of calling Zerah a Cushite or Ethiopian. The mis take is doubtless due to the fact that the later kings of Egypt, So and Tirhakah, who intervened in the affairs of Palestine, belonged to an Ethiopian dynasty, and that consequently Tirhakah is called " king of Ethiopia " in the Books of Kings (2 Kings xix. 9), although he is also termed " Pharaoh king of Egypt" (2 Kings xviii. 21). The Chronicler was not a student of Egyptian history, and has therefore transferred a political condition of affairs which was true of the age of Hezekiah to the earlier age of Asa. The long reign of Asa made him a contemporary of Ahab of Samaria, with whom the monumental history of Palestine may be said to begin. One of the oldest memorials of alphabetic writing is the famous Moabite Stone, erected by Mesha king of Moab in record of his successful revolt from Israel, and in honour of his god Chemosh, to whom his successes are ascribed. The stone was discovered in 1868, by a German missionary, the Rev. F. Klein. He was on a visit to Moab, and was informed by an Arab sheikh that close to where he then was a stone was lying, at Dhiban, the ancient Dibon, which was inscribed with old characters. On examining it he found that it was a stele of black basalt, rounded at the top, and measuring nearly four feet in length and two feet in width. It was covered with thirty-four lines of an inscription in the letters of the Phcenician alphabet. Mr. Klein had little idea of the importance of the discovery he had made, and instead of copying the inscription contented himself with noting down a few words, and compiling an alphabet out of the MOABITE STONE AND INSCRIPTION OF SILOAM. 365 rest. On his returij to Jerusalem, however, he in formed the Prussian Consulate of the discovery, and measures were at once taken to secure the stone. A few weeks later Sir Charlen Warren, at that time agent of the Palestine Exploration Fund, was informed of the existence of the monument, but as he knew that the Prussian Consul was negotiating for its purchase he took no action about it. Unfortu nately in the spring of the following year, M. Cler- mont-Ganneau, the dragoman of the French Consulate, heard that the stone was still lying at Dhiban with its inscribed face exposed to the weather, and he determined to get possession of it for France. Natives were accordingly sent to take squeezes of the inscription, and to offer a large sum of money for the monument. The natives quarrelled in the presence of the Arabs, and it was with some difficulty that a half-dried squeeze was carried off safely by Selim el- Qari, M. Clermont-Ganneau's agent, and delivered to the French Consulate. It is upon this squeeze, which is now preserved in the Louvre, that we are largely dependent for our knowledge of the contents of the text. The sum offered for the stone by M. Clermont- Ganneau was as large as £375, whereas £80 had already been promised by the Prussian authorities, and at last agreed to by the Arabs after long and tedious bargaining. The largeness of the sum and the rival bidding of the two European Consulates naturally aroused in the minds of both Moabite Arabs and Turkish officials an exaggerated idea of its mercantile value. The governor of Nablus ac cordingly demanded the splendid prize for himself, 366 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. and the Arabs, rather than lose it for nothing, lighted a fire under it, poured cold water over it, and so shivered it into fragments. The pieces were dis tributed among different families, and placed in their granaries, in order to act as charms in protecting the corn against blight. A considerable number of the fragments have since been recovered, but without the squeeze which was taken while the stone was still intact, it would have been impossible to fit many of them together, while for the missing portions of the text it is our only authority. The work of restoration and interpretation was ably performed by M. Clermont-Ganneau, by way of amends for the over-hasty zeal which brought about the destruction of the monument. The latest and best edition of the text, however, is that which was published in 1886 by the two German Professors Smend and Socin, after weeks of study of the squeeze preserved in the Louvre. Of this text Dr. Neubauer gives the following translation — 1 " I, Mesha son of Chemosh-melech king of Moab, the Di- bonite. My father reigned over Moab thirty years and I reig ned after my father. I made this monument to Chemosh at Korkhah. A monument of sal vation, for he saved me from all invaders, and let me see my desire upon all my enemies. Omri [was] king of Israel, and he oppressed Moab many days, for Chemosh was angry with his land. His son followed him, and he also said : I will oppress Moab. In my days Che[mosh] said : I will see my desire on him and his house. And Israel surely perished for ever. Omri took the land of Medeba2 and [Israel] dwelt in it during his days and half the 1 "Records of the Past," New Series, ii. pp. 194 Sqq. 2 Numb. xxi. 30, Is. xv. 2. MOABITE STONE AND INSCRIPTION OF SILOAM. 367 days of his son, altogether forty years. But there dwelt in it Chemosh in my days. I built Baal-meon 1 and made therein the ditches ; I built Kirjathaim.2 The men of Gad dwelt in the land of Ataroth 3 from of old, and the king of Israel built there Ataroth ; and I made war against the town and seized it. And I slew all the [people of] the town, for the pleasure of Chemosh and Moab ; I captured from thence the Arel of Dodah and tore him before Chemosh in Kerioth.4 And I placed therein the men of Sh(a)r(o)n, and the men of M(e)kh(e)rth. And Chemosh said to me : Go, seize Nebo 5 upon Israel ; and I went in the night and fought against it from the break of dawn till noon ; and I took it, and slew all, 7000 men, [boys ?], women, [girls ?], and female slaves, for to Ashtar-Chemosh I devoted them. And I took from it the Arels of Yahveh and tore them before Chemosh. And the king of Israel built J ahaz,6 and dwelt in it, while he waged war against me ; Chemosh drove him out before me. And I took from Moab 200 men, all chiefs, and transported them to Jahaz, which I took to add to it Dibon. I built Korkhah, the wall of the forests and the wall of the citadel : I built its gates and I built its towers. And I built the house of Moloch, and I made sluices of the water- ditches in the middle of the town. And there was no cistern in the middle of the town of Korkhah, and I said to all the people : Make for yourselves every man a cistern in his house. And I dug the canals for Korkhah by means of the prisoners of Israel. I built Aroer/ and I made the road in [the province of] the Arnon. [And] 1 Josh. xiii. 17. 2 Numb, xxxii. 37. 3 Numb, xxxii. 3. * Jer. xlviii. 24, Amos ii. 2. 6 Is. xv. 2. 6 Is. xv. 4. r Deut. ii. 36. 368 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. I built Beth-Bamoth,1 for it was destroyed. I built Bezer,2 for in ruins [it was. And all the chiefs] of Dibon were 50, for all Dibon is subject ; and I placed one hundred [chiefs] in the towns which I added to the land. I built Beth-Medeba and Beth-diblathaim 3 and Beth-baal-meon 4 and transported thereto the [shepherds ? . . . and the pastors] of the flocks of the land. And at Horonaim5 dwelt there . . . . . . And Chemosh said to me : Go down, make war upon Horonaim. I went down [and made war] . . . And Chemosh dwelt in it during my days. I went up from thence ..." Two more lines follow, but so little is left of them that any translation of them is out of the question. We have only to compare the inscription of Mesha with what we are told about him in the Books of Kings to see at once that while there is a general agreement between the two accounts, there are also discrepancies. It was David and not Omri who, according to the Old Testament, was the conqueror of Moab. But the inconsistency here is apparent rather than real. On the one hand, it is more than probable that Moab followed the common example of the other subject populations of the Israelitish empire in shaking off the yoke of Solomon, so that they had again to be subdued by an Israelitish king. In this way we could explain how it happened that after the partition of the Davidic empire Moab fell to the lot of the northern kingdom instead of follow- 1 Numb. xxi. 19, Is. xv. 2 (A.V. "high-places"). Cp. Josh. xiii. 17. 2 Deut. iv. 43. 3 Jer. xlviii. 22. 4 Josh. xiii. 17, Jer. xlviii. 23. 6 Is. xv. 5, Jer. xlviii. 3, 5, 34. MOABITE STONE AND INSCRIPTION OF SILOAM. 369 ing the fortunes of Judah. On the other hand, it is by no means certain that the word "oppress" (y a' anu), which is used of Omri, is really synonymous with an act of conquest. The country may have already been in the possession of the northern king dom when the founder of a new dynasty signalised his accession to power by increased severity in his treatment of a subject province. Mesha, we are told (2 Kings iii. 4), " was a sheep- master, and rendered unto the king of Israel an hundred thousand lambs and an hundred thousand rams with the wool." We are further told that after Ahab's death he rebelled, and that Joram the son of Ahab marched against him, together with his allies the king of Judah and the tributary king of Edom. The allies made their way by a circuitous path of seven days through the Edomite desert. Here they nearly perished for want of water, but were saved by the prophet Elisha, who caused ditches to be dug which in the morning were found to be filled with water. To the Moabites, however, the water, lighted ap by the rays of the rising sun, seemed to be of the colour of blood, and fancying that the three allies had fallen one upon the other, they hurried tumultu- ously to the camp of the invaders in the hope of spoil. But here they were received by a united and disciplined army, their ranks were broken, and they were driven back into their own land. From this time forward Moab fared badly ; its cities were destroyed, its wells filled with stones, and its trees cut down, and the Moabite king was at last forced to take refuge behind the fortress, where he was closely besieged. In his straits " he took his eldest son that B B 370 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. should have reigned in his stead, and offered him for a burnt-offering upon the wall. And there was great indignation against Israel : and they departed from him and returned to their own land." There is only one way in which this narrative can be reconciled with what we read upon the Moabite Stone. We must suppose that the campaign recorded in the Second Book of Kings, and the successful war of independence waged by Mesha, belonged to dif ferent periods in the life of the Moabite king. In fact that this must have been so seems evident from the statement of Mesha that the Israelites were driven out of Medeba when the reign of Ahab was only half over. The recovery of Medeba, it would appear, was the beginning of the revolt from Samaria, and the first sign that Chemosh had ceased to be "angry" with his people. The war would accordingly have commenced before Ahab's death, otherwise it could not have been said that Israel dwelt in Medeba only " during half the days" of his reign. The assertion, there fore, of the Biblical writer that Mesha did not rebel until after Ahab was dead cannot be strictly correct. The first successes of Moab were gained while Ahab was still on the throne, though it is possible that the most important of the victories recorded on the Stone did not take place until after his death. The Israelitish writer is naturally silent about the victories of Moab, and the Moabite king is equally silent about any successes his enemies may have obtained in the war. It is quite possible, therefore, that the country north of the Arnon had already regained its independence before Joram came to the MOABITE STONE AND INSCRIPTION OF SILOAM. 37 1 throne, and that his campaign was directed to rendering it again tributary. In this case, it would have been Joram who built Jahaz "while he made war" against Moab, the loss of the fortress being one of the results of the retreat of Joram and his allies at the time of the " indignation against Israel." However this may be, a comparison of our earliest monumental record of Israelitish wars with the Biblical narrative tells us in pretty plain language what the historical character of that narrative really is. It shows that the historical records of the Old Testament are like other authentic historical records of the ancient world, and that we must not apply to them a different standard from that which we apply to the earlier records of Greece or Rome, To expect from a Jewish writer of the sixth century before our era the same strict historical methods as those which we require from a historian of to-day, or to demand that the materials he used should have been derived from the reports of "special correspondents" and have been subjected to the criticism of numberless "reviewers," is entirely to mistake the conditions under which ancient history was written. It was not intended to be a colourless narrative, in which all the events which occurred were set down with judicial impartiality, however unfavourable they might be to the people to whom the historian belonged and for whom he wrote his history. On the contrary, the historian was a patriot, often an enthusiastic patriot, and he wrote to celebrate the victories of his nation, not their disasters, their glory and not their shame. What ought to astonish us in the Books of Kings is not that the losses and defeats of Judah and Israel 372 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. are frequently passed over in silence, but that any of them should be recorded. It is not surprising that nothing is said about the loss of Moab in the age of Solomon, or that the victories of Mesha are ignored, a successful raid of Joram being alone mentioned ; what is surprising is that we should hear of Syrian successes against Israel and of Assyrian successes against Judah. It is plain, too, that we cannot look for that strict accuracy of language which, it must be remembered, is a new thing even in the writing of modern history. We now know that the revolt of Moab began some time before the death of Ahab ; but it was not until after that event that the province appears to have been entirely lost to Israel, and consequently the words of the Biblical writer are sufficiently exact for all general purposes. And on the other hand, it is also plain that the narratives of the Books of Kings are neither fictions nor myths. They record history, — defective, not wholly accurate history it may be ; but nevertheless it is history, and the historian, who bears in mind the conditions under which it was compiled, can use it with confidence. There has been a gradual education in the way in which history should be written, as there has been an education in other exercises of the mind, and it is absurd to expect from the compiler of the Books of Kings the critical judgment or the point of view of a Gibbon or a Grote. We cannot leave the Moabite Stone without noticing one or two points which are of considerable interest. There is first of all the evidence it affords of the knowledge of alphabetic writing in the lands MOABITE STONE AND INSCRIPTION OF SILOAM. 373 of the Jordan. The art of writing and reading can have been no new thing. As soon as Mesha has shaken off the yoke of the foreigner, he erects an inscribed monument in commemoration of his victories. It is the first and most natural thing for him to do, and it is taken for granted that the record will have numerous readers. It was like the great slab on which Isaiah was instructed to write with the common "pen of the people" words which all who saw should be able to understand (Is. viii. 1). More over, the forms of the letters as they appear on the Moabite Stone show that alphabetic writing must have been long practised in the kingdom of Mesha. They are forms which presuppose a long acquaintance with the art of engraving inscriptions upon stone, and are far removed from the forms out of which they must have developed. Then again the language of the inscription is noteworthy. Between it and Hebrew the differences are few and slight. It is a proof that the Moabites were akin to the Israelites in language as well as in race, and that like their kinsfolk they had adopted the ancient "language of Canaan." The likeness between the languages of Moab and of Israel extends beyond the mere idioms of grammar and syntax. It is a likeness which exists also in thought. The religious conceptions of the Moabite are strikingly similar to those of the Israelite, and he looks out at the world with much the same eyes. Chemosh is as much the national god of Moab as Yahveh was the national God of Israel. It is true that Moloch is once mentioned, but so also is Dodah in the case of Israel, and elsewhere Chemosh, and 374 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. Chemosh only, is the object of worship and praise. Even the Babylonian and Canaanitish goddess Istar or Ashtoreth cannot maintain a separate existence by the side of him. She has been identified with him, and has accordingly become a male divinity, or rather a mere epithet of the national god. Mesha ascribes his victories to Chemosh, just as the victories of Israel were ascribed by the Jewish kings and prophets to Yahveh. When Moab was oppressed by the enemy, it was because Chemosh was " angry " with his people, reminding us how " the anger of Yahveh was kindled against Israel, and He delivered them into the hands of spoilers that spoiled them." 1 It was Chemosh who " drove " the king of Israel "out before" Mesha, and who said to the Moabite prince, " Go, seize Nebo upon Israel," even as Yahveh declared that He would " drive" the Canaanites " out from before " Israel,2 and " said unto David, Go and smite the Philistines."3 Chemosh had allowed Mesha to "see" his "desire upon all" his "enemies," the very phrase which is used by Yahveh in the Psalms ; 4 and as Samuel set up a " Stone of Help," saying, " Hitherto hath Yahveh helped us," 6 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." 1 Judg. ii. 13, 2 Kings xiii. 3. 2 Exod. xxiii. 29, 30, Judg. ii. 3, vi. 9. 3 1 Sam. xxiii. 2. 4 ps. lix. 10, cxviii. 7. 6 1 Sam. vii. 12. MOABITE STONE AND INSCRIPTION OF SILOAM. 375 Such coincidences of thought and expression are important to the historian as well as to the student of ancient religion. They are a fresh proof of the impossibility of separating the history and historical documents of Israel from those of the surrounding nations, and of judging them by a standard which would not be applied to the latter. They are also a proof of the naturalness of the Biblical language ; it was the language of everyday life and thought, not that of students of the closet who were creating an artificial history in accordance with certain theories and " tendencies " of their own. One of the points in which the Moabite idiom agreed with that of the Hebrew is a point which specially concerns the historian. It is where we read that the northern district of Moab was occupied by Israel during the reign of Omri and half the reign of Ahab, " altogether forty years." As a matter of fact, even if Omri's conquest had been made at the beginning of his reign, the period would not have exceeded twenty-three years. But the phrase " forty years" means merely an indeterminate period of time, just as it does in the Old Testament. Its employ ment on the Moabite Stone is a good commentary on its employment in the Book of Judges, and on the futility of the chronological schemes which see in the " forty years " of the Biblical idiom a definite number of years. The city of Korkhah, in which the monument was set up, must have been the citadel of Dibon. It seems to be the place called " Kir of Moab " by Isaiah (xv. 1), and Kir-haraseth in the Second Book of Kings (iii. 25). As we have seen, it is already 376 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. mentioned in the geographical list of the Egyptian Pharaoh, Ramses III. A more difficult question is to determine exactly who were the "Arels" of Dodah and Yahveh who were captured and " torn " before Chemosh like Agag by Samuel. We know from Egyptian sources1 that Arel signifies a "hero," and the fact that two Arels of Moab were slain by Benaiah (2 Sam. xxiii. 20) may imply that the word was peculiarly characteristic of Moab. The parallelism of Dodah and Yahveh shows that Dodah must have been a deity, who received divine honours in the northern kingdom of Israel by the side of the national God. Dodah, indeed, though like Yahveh the word is provided with a feminine termination, has the same root as the names of Dodo and David, " the beloved one," while the feminine Dido was the name of a Phoenician goddess. In Dodah, therefore, we must see the male divinity of which Dido was the female counterpart. It thus seems probable that in the Israelitish sanctuaries there were certain "heroes" who acted as the champions of the deity to whom they were attached. It was their duty to fight on his behalf, and to represent him in the presence of a foe. If this view is correct, light will be thrown upon the character of Goliath of Gath who came out to "defy the armies of the living God." But more evidence is wanted before any certain conclusion can be reached. Among alphabetic inscriptions the next in import ance to the Moabite Stone is that which was found in the tunnel of Siloam. The Pool of Siloatn at Jerusalem is fed by a conduit which is cut for a 1 See above, p. 349. MOABITE STONE AND INSCRIPTION OF SILOAM. 377 distance of 1708 feet through the solid rock, and takes its start from the so-called Virgin's Spring. The object with which it was cut is unmistakable. The Virgin's Spring is the only spring of fresh water in the immediate neighbourhood of Jerusalem, and in time of siege it was important that while the enemy should be deprived of access to it, its water should be made available for those who were within the city. But the spring rose outside the walls, on the sloping cliff which overlooks the valley of the Kidron. Ac cordingly a long passage was excavated in the rock, by means of which the overflow of the spring was brought into Jerusalem, the spring itself being covered with masonry so that it could be " sealed up " in case of war. That it was actually so sealed we know from a passage in the Second Book of Chronicles (xxxii. 3, 4). Here it is stated that when Sennacherib threatened to invade Judah, Hezekiah "took counsel with his princes and his mighty men to stop the waters of the fountains which were without the city : and they did help him. So there was gathered much people together, who stopped all the fountains, and the brook that ran through the midst of the land, saying, Why should the kings of Assyria come and find much water ? " About sixteen feet from the mouth of the tunnel on the Siloam side an inscription was engraved on the right-hand part of its rocky wall. The discovery of the inscription was made accidentally in 1880. In the summer of that year some native pupils of Mr. Schick, a German architect long settled in Jerusalem, were wading in the Pool of Siloam and the part of the tunnel which opens into it, when one of them slipped 378 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. and fell into the water. On rising to the surface he noticed what appeared to be letters cut in the rock, and accordingly informed Mr. Schick of what he had observed. Mr. Schick visited the spot, and at once saw that an ancient inscription had been found. But the inscription had been carved below the ordinary level of the water which flowed through the subterranean passage. The characters had thus become filled with a deposit of lime, which had equally filled every crack and crevice in the rock, making it difficult to distinguish letters and accidental flaws in the stone one from the other. In fact, it was impossible for any one who was not well acquainted with Semitic palaeo graphy to copy the inscription with even an approach to correctness. The copy sent to Europe by Mr. Schick was consequently little else than a collection of unmeaning scrawls. Nevertheless, it was possible to pick out here and there a Phcenician letter, and to recognise that the forms of these letters indicated a comparatively early date. In the winter after the discovery I arrived at Jerusalem, and one of my first visits was to the newly- found inscription. To make a copy of it, however, proved to be a more troublesome task than I had anticipated. Not only was it difficult to determine the forms of the letters for the reason already stated, it was necessary to sit for hours in the mud and water of the channel deciphering them as best one could by the dim light of a candle. It was not until three afternoons had been spent in this fashion that I had the satisfaction of obtaining a text the greater part of which could be read, and which proved to be MOABITE STONE AND INSCRIPTION OF StLOAM. 379 a record of the construction of the conduit written in pure Biblical Hebrew. About six weeks after my departure from Jerusalem, Dr. Guthe arrived there on behalf of the German Palestine Association, and after making a more com plete fac-simile of the inscription than had previously been possible, removed the deposit of lime by means of an acid, and so revealed the primitive appearance of the tablet. Letters which had before been invisible now became legible, and the exact shapes of all of them could be observed. Casts and squeezes of the text were taken, and the scholars of Europe were able to study it at their leisure amid the comforts of their own homes. The inscription consists of six lines, but a few letters have been destroyed by the wearing away of the stone. The translation of it runs thus — " [Behold] the excavation ! Now this is the history of the excavation. While the excavators were lifting up the pick, each towards his neighbour, and while there were yet three cubits to [excavate, there was heard] the voice of one man calling to his neighbour, for there was an excess in the rock on the right hand [and on the left]. And after that on the day of excavating the excavators had struck pick against pick, one against the other, the waters flowed from the Spring to the Pool for a distance of 1200 cubits. And a hundred cubits was the height of the rock over the head of the excavators." It may be noted that the inscription has added a new word — that rendered " excess " — to the Hebrew lexicon. Apart from the lexical gain, however, it is full of linguistic interest, as it proves the identity of 380 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. the Hebrew spoken in Jerusalem before the Exile with that of our present Old Testament books. At the time when the inscription of Siloam was written the Hebrew language was already that which is embodied in the Biblical text. What that time was cannot unfortunately be fixed with exactness. All we can say positively is that it was earlier than the age of the Babylonian Captivity, and probably not far distant from the reign of Hezekiah. The inscription contains no record of date ; not a single proper name occurs in it, much less the name of a king. A blank space was left on the smooth face of the niche in which it was engraved, apparently for the purpose of inscribing upon it the name of the prince by whose orders the channel had been cut ; but the purpose was never fulfilled, and the blank space was never covered with letters. The inscription itself was concealed below the level of the water, as if the engraver feared that it might become known. But though there is no indication of date in the text, the age of the inscription can be determined approximately by an appeal to history and palaeo graphy. We possess a good many inscribed Jewish and Israelitish seals, characterised partly by proper names compounded with the sacred name of Yahveh, partly by lines drawn across the face of the seal and dividing the lines of writing one from the other. Several of these seals are older than the period of the Exile, and among them is one said to have been found at Jerusalem, which is in the possession of Mr. Clark. The inscription upon it tells us that it once " belonged to Elishama, the son of the king." Now MOABITE STONE AND INSCRIPTION OF SILOAM. 38 1 we know who this Elishama was. He is referred to in Jer. xli. 1 as a Jewish prince of " the seed royal," and grandfather of Ishmael, the contemporary of Zedekiah. He would therefore have flourished about 650 B.C., and his seal shows us what forms were assumed by the letters of the Jewish alphabet in his day. When we compare these with the forms of the same letters found in the Siloam inscription, it becomes evident that the latter are somewhat more archaic, and that consequently the inscription which contains them must go back to the end of the eighth century before our era.1 This would bring us to the reign of Hezekiah, and historical reasons have made many scholars believe that the tunnel of Siloam was the work of that king. It is said of him (2 Chr. xxxii. 30) that he " stopped the upper watercourse of Gihon, and brought it straight down to the west side of the city of David " ; we are further told (2 Kings xx. 20) that " he made a pool and a conduit, and brought water into the city." As the word Gihon means a "spring," it can refer only to the single spring of water possessed by Jerusalem, which is generally known by the name of the Virgin's Well. It would seem, therefore, that what Hezekiah did was to "stop" the spring, and introduce water into the city by means of a tunnel which led to a pool on the western side of the " City of David." There is, however, a passage in the Book of Isaiah (viii. 6) which raises a difficulty. While Ahaz, the father of Hezekiah, was still reigning, Isaiah delivered a prophecy in which he makes allusion to " the waters * See my letter in the Academy, Aug. 2, 1890, p. 94. 382 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. of Shiloah that go softly." Now Shiloah means "tunnel" or "conduit," and the fact that the name was already in use implies that the tunnel had already been excavated. Indeed, this is rendered certain by the statement that "the waters of Shiloah" run softly. Such a statement can apply only to the gentle flow of the water through the artificial channel cut for it in the rock. Moreover, the tunnel of Siloam is not the only conduit of the kind which has been excavated in the so-called hill of Ophel. Below the pool of Siloam are the traces of a lower pool into which the water was conducted from the upper pool through a second tunnel excavated in the rock. This second tunnel must have been made at a later date than the first, the lower pool having been constructed to receive the overflow of the upper one. When the inscription was carved, it will be remembered, there was but one pool, " the Pool," as it is distinctively named. Besides the two tunnels of Siloam, as we may call them, Sir Charles Warren discovered a third, which leads in a due westerly direction from the Virgin's Spring. At a distance of sixty-seven feet from the spring, a round basin has been hollowed out of the rock, above which is a shaft forty feet in height. The shaft communicates with a cavern, the sloping floor of which, after an ascent of about thirty feet, opens upon a landing. North-west of the landing is a passage forty feet long, with a steep staircase some fifty feet high at the end of it. The staircase leads to a vaulted chamber a little below the present surface of the ground. As the first tunnel of Siloam takes its start from MOABITE STONE AND INSCRIPTION OF SILOAM. 383 the passage discovered by Sir Charles Warren at a distance of about fifty feet from the Virgin's Spring, it has often been maintained that the passage must be older than the tunnel. But it does not seem likely that the more elaborate engineering work should have been the earlier, especially as it does not lead to a reservoir, only to a small basin, the supply of water in which could never have been large. It is certainly more reasonable to suppose that the part of the passage which forms a portion of the Siloam tunnel belonged from the outset to the latter. If so, its further extension, and the complicated system of shafts by which it was connected with the surface of the hill, were the work of a later time. Similar arrangements for closing the approach to a spring, and conducting the water through a secret passage within the walls of a town, have been discovered at El Jib, the ancient Gibeon, as well as on the site of Rabbah of Ammon. But whatever may be thought of the age to which Warren's passage is to be referred, it cannot be the conduit made by Hezekiah, as it does not lead from the " Gihon," or Spring, to a " pool." There are only two aqueducts which do so, the first and second tunnels of Siloam. The conduit made by Hezekiah therefore must be one of these. That it was the second, or lower one, is rendered probable by the words already quoted from the prophecies of Isaiah. We gather from these that before Hezekiah's accession the hill in which the two tunnels are excavated had already been pierced by an aqueduct, and that the water was already flowing softly through it. Moreover, it was " the upper water- 384 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. course" or "spring of Gihon," which was "stopped" by Hezekiah, and an upper source implies a lower one. It is difficult to understand what the lower source could have been from which a second supply of water was derived, unless it were the pool on whose site the present Pool of Siloam stands. In this case the second tunnel would have been that through which the water was " brought straight down to the west side of the city of David." The question, however, as to which of the two tunnels was the work of Hezekiah is of little con sequence, since the inscription recording the construc tion of the first, — now, alas ! destroyed — cannot be much older, palaeographically, than Hezekiah's reign. If the tunnel on the wall of which it was engraved was not the work of Hezekiah, we may confidently assume that it had been excavated by one of his immediate predecessors. The second tunnel, in fact, looks like a continuation of the first, the completion of which formed part ofthe original design. The existence of the two aqueducts, therefore, and the inscription which commemorated the excavation of them, have an important bearing on the question of the ancient topography of Jerusalem. It was to the west side of the city of David that the conduit of Hezekiah was brought, and consequently it must be in the city of David that the two tunnels are situated. In other words, the so-called hill of Ophel, on the western side ofthe Virgin's Spring, must be identical with "the city of David." The topographical results which follow from this conclusion are incompatible with the view which makes pre-Exilic Jerusalem occupy much the same MOABITE STONE AND INSCRIPTION OF SILOAM. 385 area as the Jerusalem of to-day. We are told in the Second Book of Samuel (v. 7) that Zion and the city of David were one and the same ; they both alike represented the hill on which the outpost of the Jebusites had been built, and which protected the approach to what afterwards became the temple-hill. The site of Zion is accordingly fixed. It was the southern hill, the so-called Ophel, on the south-western slope of which is the Pool of Siloam, and whose northern boundary is the encircling wall of the sanc tuary. ' The valley of the sons of Hinnom, where children were burnt in the fire to Moloch, will thus have been identical with the Tyropoeon, the valley of the " Cheesemakers," on the western side of the hill. Since the days of the Jewish kings the appearance ofthe hill has undergone much change. The valley ofthe Cheesemakers has been filled with rubbish to a depth of more than seventy feet, while the summit of Zion was cut away in the age of the Maccabees in order that it might be overlooked by the temple-hill. Between the temple-hill, and what I will henceforth call Mount Zion, a valley, of which Dr. Guthe first observed the traces, has been choked with stones and earth. Mount Zion is now but a southernly continua tion of Mount Moriah, the Jebusite stronghold on which the temple once stood, and on which the mosque of Omar still stands. If we would discover the tombs of David and his successors, we must clear away the rubbish which fills the old valley of the sons of Hinnom and covers the rocky slope of the southern hill. Here and here only will excavation be successful, and here only may we c c 386 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. expect to discover the relics of that Jerusalem which Nebuchadrezzar destroyed. The engineering skill exhibited in the construction of the Siloam tunnel was of no mean order. We learn from the inscription that the work of excavating it was begun simultaneously at both ends. Although the tunnel winds considerably for the sake of following the softer lines of rock, the workmen so nearly met in the middle that the noise made by the picks of the one party was heard by the other. In fact, just about the centre of the aqueduct, there are two culs de sac, evidently the extreme points reached by the two gangs of miners before they became aware that they were beginning to pass one another. To join the culs de sac by breaking through the rock between them was the last operation of the engineers, and the small amount of rock that had to be broken through made the task an easy one. When we consider the length ofthe tunnel, its wind ing course, and the depth below the surface of the ground at which it has been cut through the solid rock, it becomes pretty clear that the engineers who superintended the work must have had scientific instruments of some kind to guide them. Once more the truth is brought home to us that the inhabitants of the old oriental world were not the ignorant possessors of an inferior civilisation such as they have often been represented to be. If their science was not on a level with that of the nineteenth century, it was nevertheless science, and sufficed for the require ments of an advanced culture. The same truth is enforced by a study ofthe mere forms of the letters of the Siloam inscription. While MOABITE STONE AND INSCRIPTION OF SILOAM. 387 the angular forms of the Moabite characters as seen upon the Stone of Mesha indicate that writing had long been employed in Moab for monumental pur poses, the forms of the characters in the Siloam in scription prove that the scribes of Judah had been accustomed for an equal length of time to write upon papyrus or parchment. The letters are rounded rather than angular, and their downward lines are curved at the bottom as they would be in writing with a pen. Before such forms could have been imitated upon stone, they must have been firmly fixed in the usage of the people, and so prove that already before the reign of Hezekiah written manuscripts were plentiful in the Jewish kingdom. What then becomes of the theories of a Vernes or a Havet, which assume that before the Babylonian captivity writing was an art rarely, if ever, practised ? On the contrary, an indirect confirmation of a strik ing character is given by palaeography of the claims put forward by the Old Testament Scriptures. These call upon us to believe that books were written and read throughout the royal period of Israelitish history, and that these books were not monuments of stone or metal, but books in the most modern and genuine sense of the word. When it is stated in the Book of Proverbs (xxv. I) that Hezekiah employed men to copy out the proverbs of Solomon, we are reminded of the libraries of Babylonia and Assyria, where scribes were constantly at work copying and re-editing the older literature of the country, and the very forms of the letters in the Siloam inscription rise up in evidence that the statement is true. The art of writing books, let us feel assured, was no new thing in Israel, and 388 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. there was 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. CHAPTER IX. THE ASSYRIAN TESTIMONY TO THE OLD TESTAMENT. The weakness of Egypt and Assyria had been the opportunity of Israel. The empire of David was due as much to the absence of powerful neighbours as to the military skill of Joab. With the exception of the spasmodic revival of strength under Shishak, Egypt remained in a state of powerlessness and decay from the time of Ramses III. till the period when it was conquered by the rulers of Ethiopia. Babylonia had long since ceased to be a conquering power, and after the rise of Assyria was too busily occupied in defending itself from the ambition of a dangerous neighbour to think of attacking other states. Assyria, too, from causes at present unknown to us, was for awhile under eclipse. For a hundred and fifty years its history is a blank ; even the names of its kings disappear from the monuments. But the eclipse of Assyria was not destined to be permanent. A time came when a succession of ener getic and warlike monarchs once more made the name of Assyria dreaded in foreign lands. Year after year the Assyrian armies marched forth from the gates of the capital, carrying ruin and desolation 390 THE higher criticism. in their path. Nothing could resist them ; cities were taken and destroyed, kingdoms were over thrown, and rival sovereigns were compelled to acknowledge the might and supremacy of the god Assur. It was under Assur-natsir-pal that Assyria awoke once more to a career of conquest. During his reign of twenty-five years (from B.C. 883 to 858) the boundaries of the empire were again extended to the vicinity of Lake Van in the north, and to Carche mish and the ranges of the Lebanon in the west. The Hittites were laid under tribute, and "the great king" "hung up" his weapons on the shores of the Mediterranean, and there received the tribute of the Phoenician cities. Among these Phoenician cities were Tyre and Sidon. (The Assyrian forces had thus advanced dangerously near the kingdom of Israel, and it could not be long before Samaria would be forced to follow the example of Tyre and Sidon. This did not happen, however, until after the death of Assur-natsir-pal. He was followed by his son Shalmaneser II., who reigned for thirty-five years (B.C. 858 — 823). Shalmaneser proved to be an able and successful general, and a large part of his long reign was devoted to securing the road to the west, and diverting the trade of Phoe nicia and Carchemish into Assyrian hands. In his sixth year he fell upon Hamath and its allies. An account of the war is given on a monolith which was erected by the Assyrian monarch at Kurkh among the mountains of Armenia. He there tells us that after sacrificing at Aleppo to the god of the city, he moved southward. "To the cities of Irkhuleni the ASSYRIAN TESTIMONY. 39 1 Hamathite I approached. The cities of Eden,1 Barga and Argana his royal city I captured. His spoil, his goods (and) the riches of his palaces I removed ; his palaces I delivered to the flames. From the city of Argana I departed ; to the city of Qarqara I approached. Qarqara his royal city I overthrew, dug up (and) burned with fire; 1200 chariots, 1200 riding- horses (and) 20,000 men belonging to Hadad-idri of the [country] of Damascus ; 700 chariots, 700 riding- horses (and) 10,000 men belonging to Irkhuleni the Hamathite ; 2000 chariots (and) 10,000 men belong ing to Ahab the Israelite ; 2 500 men belonging to the Guans ; 1000 men belonging to the Egyptians ; 10 chariots (and) 10,000 men belonging to the Ar- kites ; 3 200 men belonging to Matin-ba'al of Arvad ; 200 men ofthe U'sanatians ;4 30 chariots (and) 10,000 men belonging to Adon-ba'al the Sianian ; 5 1000 camels from Gindibuh the Arabian (and) . . 00 men belonging to Baasha the son of Rehob of the country of Ammon ; — these twelve kings he took to his assist ance ; to [offer] battle and combat they came against me. With the mighty forces which Assur the lord has given (me), with the powerful weapons which Nergal who goes before me has granted (me), I fought with them ; from the city of Qarqara to the city of Kirzau I utterly defeated them ; 14,000 of their fighting-men I slew with weapons.6 Like Rimmon I rained a 1 See Amos i. 5. 2 Akhabbu mat 'Sir'ald. 3 See Gen. x. 17. 4 Probably from U'su, near Tyre. 6 Probably the Sinite of Gen. x. 17. 6 On an obelisk of black stone on which Shalmaneser has inscribed the annals of his reign the number of the enemy who perished is given as 20,500. The inscription on the black obelisk, however, was not compiled until twenty-five years after 392 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. deluge upon them ; with their corpses I filled the face of the plain ; their vast armies I brought down with my weapons ; their blood choked the lower ground of the district. To restore life to it, purified soil (?) was spread over its fields (which) I distributed among its men. The river Orontes, which was bridge- less (?), I reached. In the midst of this battle I took away from them their chariots, their riding-horses (and) their horses which were bound to the yoke." As the battle was fought in B.C. 853, Ahab must have been still living in that year. The large number of chariots with which he furnished his ally shows that he must have been one of the wealthiest and most powerful of the princes of Syria. We can easily understand, therefore, how a Sidonian princess con descended to marry him. He was a neighbour whose friendship could not be refused or neglected, and his wealth placed him on a footing of equality with the merchant kings of Tyre. The war with Damascus, in which Ahab met his death, probably took place a year o'r two after the battle of Qarqara. The Assyrian invasion had for a time induced the Syrian states to make common cause against the common foe. But as soon as the danger was over and the Assyrian king had with drawn his army from the West, the old jealousies and mutual feelings of hostility broke out afresh. The inscription of Shalmaneser shows that Ahab was superior to the king of Damascus in one arm of military strength, the chariots, which could be man- the campaign against Hamath, whereas the Kurkh monolith was erected in the year following. During the interval the number of the slain at Qarqara had had time to multiply. ASSYRIAN TESTIMONY. 393 ceuvred with special advantage in the plain of Damascus. It is consequently not astonishing that in alliance with Judah he should have considered himself more than a match for the Syrian king. The campaign was accordingly planned against Ramoth- gilead, from which the king of Samaria never returned alive. It will be noticed that although Ammon is men tioned, not a word is said in the inscription about Moab, Edom or Judah. Why Moab sent no con tingent to the allied forces is evident. Moab had just revolted from Israel. Mesha was still engaged in a war of independence, and his sympathies there fore would have been, not with Ahab and his allies, but with their enemy. The absence of Judah from the confederacy is more difficult to explain. But the absence of Judah brought with it also the absence of Edom. We are told in the Second Book of Kings (xxii. 47) that there was at the time " no king in Edom ; a deputy was king." In other words Edom was tributary to Judah, and its ruler was a nominee of the Jewish king. The agreement of the fact with what we may gather from the inscription of Shal maneser is one of those "undesigned coincidences" which, if not pressed too far, cannot fail to increase our confidence in the Biblical narrative. The cunei form text and the Book of Kings supplement one another. But it will also be noticed that the king of Damascus does not bear the same name in the in scription and in the Books of Kings. The Assyrian scribe calls him Hadad-idri ; according to the Jewish writer his name was Ben-hadad. The difference in 394 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. the name, however, admits of an explanation. Pladad- idri is the Aramaean form of the Biblical Hadad-ezer, as Prof. Schrader was the first to point out, and it was doubtless the real name of the Syrian king. Hadad was the Syrian Sun-god whom the Assyrians identified with their Rimmon, although Rimmon was the god of the air and not the sun. But in Hadad the Sun-god and the Air-god were united in one, a union which was expressed by the compound Hadad- Rimmon (Zech. xii. ii). By the side of Hadad stood his son Ben-Hadad. Contract-tablets found in Baby lonia make mention of Syrian names, of which the name Ben-Hadad forms an element. Thus, in the thirteenth year of Nabonidos (B.C. 543) a certain Nadin the son of Kullum-ki-Bin-Hadad borrowed half a maneh and three shekels, and since the deter minative of divinity is prefixed to the word Bin- Hadad, it is clear that we must see in it the name of a god.1 Not only Hadad, therefore, but also Ben- Hadad "the son of Hadad," must have been adored at Damascus. Hadad-idri and Bin-Hadad-idri, then, would have been parallel names, both of which must have been in use. We know that the immediate predecessor of Hadad-idri was a Ben-hadad (1 Kings xv. i8),2 and the confusion between Ben-Hadad the father and 1 Strassmaier: "BabylonischeTexte," III., No. 742. It should be noticed that one of the kings of Edom (Gen. xxxvi. 35) was called " Hadad the son of Bedad," that is Ben-[Ha]dad. Accord ing to the Assyrian lexical tablets, Addu or Hadad and Dadu were different forms of the same name, and were used inter changeably in Syria. 2 We must read Rezon for Hezion in this passage ; see 1 Kings xi. 23 — 25. ASSYRIAN TESTIMONY. 395 Hadad-idri the son is accordingly not difficult to explain. It is an illustration of the unimportant errors of detail which may occur in the Biblical narrative as in all other historical documents, without impairing the authority of the narrative itself. Though Shalmaneser gained the victory at Qarqara, it is evident that his forces had suffered severely. He made no attempt to follow it up, and withdrew at once to Nineveh. Four years intervened before he again marched to the West, and in the year following he claims to have captured eighty-nine towns belong ing to Hamath, and to have defeated Hadad-idri of Damascus and his twelve allies. The " twelve kings '' were again overthrown in the fourteenth year of Shalmaneser's reign, but it was not until his eighteenth year (B.C. 840) that a determined effort was made to break the Syrian power. Hamath now disappears from the scene, and it is Damascus which has to bear the brunt of the Assyrian attack. Hazael had become king, and the Assyrian monarch found in him a more formidable opponent than either Irkhuleni or Hadad- idri had been. The following is the account given by Shalmaneser of his western campaign — "In the eighteenth year of my reign for the sixteenth time I crossed the Euphrates. Hazael of Damascus trusted to the strength of his armies, and assembled his armies to a large number. Shenir, a mountain- summit as you come to Lebanon, he made his strong hold. I fought with him, I defeated him ; 6000 of his soldiers I slew with weapons, 1121 of his chariots (and) 470 of his riding-horses together with his camp I took from him. To save his life he ascended (the country). I pursued after him. In Damascus his 396 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. royal city I shut him up. His plantations I cut down. As far as the mountains of the Hauran I marched. The cities to a countless number I threw down, dug up (and) burned with fire. Their spoil to a countless amount I carried away. As far as the mountain of Baal-rosh (at the mouth of the Dog River), which (is) a headland of the sea, I marched ; an image of my majesty I erected upon it. At that time I received the tribute of the Tyrians, the Sidonians (and) of Jehu (Yahua) the son of Omri (Khumri)." This account is in strict accordance with the narrative in the Books of Kings, excepting only that Jehu is erroneously made the son or descendant of Omri instead of the supplanter of his dynasty. It was, however, in the time of Ahab the son of Omri that the Assyrians first became acquainted with the northern kingdom of Israel, and consequently Samaria continued ever afterwards to be known to them as Beth-Omri " the house of Omri," while the founder of the line of kings who subsequently ruled over it was supposed to be the same sovereign. We gather from the Biblical history that Hazael had murdered Hadad-idri and usurped the throne of Damascus two or three years before Jehu followed his example at Samaria. We further gather that under Hazael the kingdom of Syria became stronger and more powerful than it had ever been before. It was while Jehu was governing Samaria that Hazael smote Israel in all its coasts (2 Kings x. 32) ; under his son Jehoahaz Israel was delivered into the hand of Hazael even as Moab had been delivered into the hand of Omri (2 Kings xiii. 3 — 7), and "Hazael ASSYRIAN TESTIMONY. 397 king of Syria oppressed Israel all the days of Jehoahaz " (2 Kings xiii. 22). Circumstances had indeed changed since the time when Ahab could send to the support of his allies eight hundred chariots more than the king of Damascus was able to provide, and when the honour of marriage with him was sought by a Sidonian princess. In place of the numerous forces which Ahab led into battle against Assyria, there were left to Jehoahaz " but fifty horsemen, and ten chariots, and ten thousand footmen : for the king of Syria had destroyed them, and had made them like the dust by threshing'' (2 Kings xiii. 7). It is interesting to compare the language used by the Hebrew historian, when describing the disasters brought upon Israel by the Syrian king, with the language of Mesha on the Moabite Stone. There we are told that Omri of Israel had "oppressed Moab many days, for Chemosh," the god of Moab, " was angry with his land." But the time came when Chemosh relented, and "saved" the Moabite prince " from all invaders and let " him " see " his " desire upon all" his "enemies." In similar language we read in the Second Book of Kings that " the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he delivered them into the hand of Hazael king of Syria, and into the hand of Ben-hadad the son of Hazael, all their days" (xiii. 3). But "Jehoahaz besought the Lord," and "the Lord was gracious unto them, and had compassion on them," so that " He gave them a saviour " in the person of the son and successor of Jehoahaz. Such a similarity in thought and expression proves better than anything else what we may term the naturalness and good 398 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. faith of the Scriptural writer. It is an indication that he belonged to the same Semitic race as the Moabite king, and to the same period of Semitic history. The story he has given us has not been revised or improved upon by later hands ; it is clear that it comes before us just as it was written, breathing the spirit of the age to which it re fers, and couched in the language of a pre-Exilic time. Though the Biblical narrative tells us of the successes which Jehoash and Jeroboam II. gained against Damascus after the death of Hazael, it does not tell us what was the cause which enabled the Israelites once more to make head against their powerful foe. The cause has been revealed to us by the Assyrian monuments. They have shown that the war waged against Hazael by the Assyrian monarch in B.C. 840, disastrous as it was to the Syrians, was not the last which the king of Damascus had to face. Three years later Shalmaneser again led his troops against " Hazael of the country of Damascus." Four of his cities were captured, and the Assyrian army made its way to the sea-coast, where the people of Tyre and Sidon and Gebal bought off its attack by offering "tribute." After this, however, Shalmaneser and his generals attempted no further campaigns in the West. Hazael was left to pursue his ambitious designs against the independence of Samaria, and it is doubtless to this period that the "oppression" of Israel by the Syrians, described in the Books of Kings, is to be assigned. Many years had to pass before an Assyrian army again marched into the neighbourhood of Palestine. ASSYRIAN TESTIMONY 399 It did not take place until Rimmon-nirari III., the grandson of Shalmaneser, was king. The reign of Rimmon-nirari lasted from B.C. 810 to 781. At some period during his reign, probably in B.C. 797, he reduced the kingdom of Damascus to complete subjection.- Samaria also was laid under tribute, as well as Phoenicia, Edom, and the Phili stines. Among the latter the Jews were probably included. These are the words in which the Assyrian king records his victories— " As far as the shores of the great sea at the rising of the sun, from the banks of the Euphrates, the land of the Hittites, the land of the Amorites to its farthest borders, the land of Tyre, the land of Sidon, the land of Omri, the land of Edom, the land of the Philistines (Palastii), as far as the shores of the great sea at the setting of the sun (the Mediterranean), I subjected (them all) to my yoke, tribute and gifts I imposed upon them. Against the land of Syria I marched ; Marih the king of the land of Syria I shut up in Damascus his royal city. The terror of the glory of Assur his lord overwhelmed him ; he took my feet, he became a vassal : 2300 talents of silver, 20 talents of gold, 3000 talents of copper, 5000 talents of iron, many-coloured garments of linen, a couch of ivory, a canopy of ivory, hilts in abundance, his goods, his property to a countless amount I received in Damascus his royal city, in the midst of his palace." In B.C. 773, towards the end of the reign of Shal maneser III. the successor of Rimmon-nirari, there ¦ was another Assyrian campaign against Damascus, and in the following year the Assyrian forces marched 400 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. into "the country of Khatarika." This is the Hadrach of the Bible (Zech. ix. i), from which we learn that it formed part of the territory of Damascus. We have no details of these two campaigns ; we may feel pretty sure, however, from the record of them, that they were favourable to Assyria. This would also have been the case as regards another campaign against Khatarika in B.C. 765, during the reign of the successor of Shalmaneser III. Throughout all this period cf attack Damascus must have remained weak and enfeebled, and its capture by Rimmon-nirari must have been the final blow to its power and prestige. It is not astonishing, therefore, if the decay of Damascus was as rapid as its rise, or if Jeroboam II. was able to restore " the coast of Israel from the entering of Hamath unto the sea of the plain " (2 Kings xiv. 25). The passage in which the wars of Jeroboam are alluded to (2 Kings xiv. 28) is un fortunately corrupt, but we may gather from it that Damascus was forced to become tributary to Israel. It is possible that the alliance between Pekah of Israel and Rezin of Syria in later days was a result of this subjugation of Damascus by the Israelitish king. However this may be, the overthrow of Damascus by Rimmon-nirari led to the first exercise of Assyrian power and influence throughout the whole of Palestine. The submission of Samaria, Edom and Philistia to the Assyrian monarch was doubtless voluntary ; had it been otherwise Rimmon-nirari would not have contented himself with an account only of his Syrian campaign. We should have heard also of a campaign ASSYRIAN TESTIMONY. 40 1 on the western side of the Jordan, and of the capture of the cities of Palestine. What happened at a later day, when Ahaz purchased the help of the Assyrian conqueror against his Syrian and Israelitish foes, may easily have happened earlier. The homage and tribute of the Samaritan king may have induced Rimmon-nirari to turn his arms against Damascus ; and the Assyrian king may have represented the "saviour" who was given to Israel "so that they went out from under the hand of the Syrians." With the power of Damascus thus broken, Samaria had no longer anything to fear from its once dangerous neighbour. No second Hazael appeared to restore the fallen fortunes of his city. In spite of military revolutions Israel seemed destined to take the place left vacant by Damascus, and to become the dominant power of the West. Assyrian armies were no longer seen on the shores of the Mediter ranean, and the people of Palestine doubtless imagined that they would be heard of no more. The dream of restoring the empire of David appeared every day more easy of realisation : the northern boundaries of Israel had been again carried as far as " the entering of Hamath," and all that remained was to overthrow the Davidic dynasty at Jerusalem, and establish a Samaritan ruler in its place. The favourable moment seemed to have arrived with the accession of the young and weak-minded Ahaz to the Jewish throne. He had alienated a part of his subjects, and in the court itself there was a party ready to intrigue against him. Moreover the attempt to dethrone him could appeal to motives of patriotism and policy. The Assyrian was once more D D 402 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. threatening the West ; he had laid tribute upon Menahem and Azariah of Judah had been reduced to vassalage. If Syria and Palestine were to resist him successfully, it was necessary that they should show a united front, and be prepared to follow a common policy. In alliance, therefore, with Rezin of Damascus, Pekah the Israelite fell upon Ahaz. Judah was invaded, and the invaders found a rival to Ahaz in a creature of their own, whose father's name, Tab-el, indicates his Syrian descent.1 The strong walls of Jerusalem protected Ahaz for awhile ; but his country was overrun by the enemy, his resources were ex hausted, and a party hostile to himself was plotting to dethrone him in the capital itself. In his extremity he turned to Assyria for aid ; Tiglath-pileser was more than ready to listen to an appeal which enabled him to crush the confederated western powers before their work of union was completed, and at the same time placed Judah at his feet with its important fortress of Jerusalem. There were keen-sighted politicians in Jerusalem, like Isaiah, who saw that the policy of Ahaz would eventually prove fatal to Jewish independence. To the king and his advisers it seemed that the danger from Assyria was remote, the danger from their imme diate neighbours pressing. Syria and Samaria were threatening the existence of the Davidic dynasty and the independence of Judah ; while the armies which marched out of Nineveh had long tracts of country to traverse and hostile states to encounter before they could reach the frontiers of the Jewish kingdom. 1 Isai. vii. 6. ASSYRIAN TESTIMONY. 403 Less than a century previously, an Assyrian king had extorted tribute from the populations of Palestine and had sacked the city of Damascus ; but there his forward progress was arrested, and many years elapsed before an Assyrian army was again seen in the West. What had happened once might, it seemed, happen again, and the act of homage paid by Ahaz to the Assyrian monarch appeared but a small price for preservation from the overthrow that was threaten ing him. The Jewish king, however, judged wrongly. Rim mon-nirari had represented a waning power ; Tiglath- pileser represented a rising power. In crushing Damascus and Samaria the king of Assyria opened the way to Judah. The barriers which had separated Judah from the Assyrian invader were broken down ; after the fall of Syria and the northern kingdom Judah and Assyria stood face to face. The voluntary vassalage of Ahaz became a lever in the hands of the Assyrian princes for destroying not only the independence but even the existence of Judah, and for possessing themselves of the fortress of Jerusalem. The days were soon to come when Judah was to be called on to confront a mightier enemy than any it had ever met with before ; an enemy which the most powerful states of Western Asia had been unable to resist, and which in the years to come was destined to conquer Egypt itself. Tiglath-pileser III. was the founder of the second Assyrian empire. The first Assyrian empire had perished partly from internal decay, partly through the attacks of its Armenian neighbours. Rimmon- nirari had been the last of the" conquering kings 404 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. of the old dynasty. It is true that the Assyrian armies still continued to march year by year out of the gates of Nineveh ; but it was rather to defend the existing boundaries of the kingdom than to achieve fresh conquests. At last a time came when revolt broke out in Assyria itself. Assur the old capital of the country rose in rebellion, and its example was followed by other cities. The Assyrian king and his troops were needed at home, and apart from an expedition against some mountain-tribes in the south-east, no campaigns were made throughout the reign of Assur-nirari, the last king of the old stock. In B.C. 747 a rival claimant to the throne started up ; in the following year there was " insur rection in the city of Calah," within sight of Nineveh, and in B.C. 745 the first Assyrian empire came to an end. The last representative of the ancient dynasty died or was slain, and Pulu, or Pul, a military captain of obscure origin, seized the throne on the thirteenth day of the month Iyyar. He attempted to legitimise himself by adopting the name of Tiglath-pileser which had been borne four centuries before by one of the most famous of the monarchs of the older dynasty. In Assyria he was henceforth known during his reign of eighteen years as Tiglath-pileser III. But the Babylonians refused to acknowledge the title. When the Assyrian monarch had reduced Babylonia to obedience, and by " taking the hands of Bel" had become the legitimate ruler of Babylon, he was still addressed there as Pul. In the Babylonian dynastic tablets discovered by Mr. Pinches the two years' reign of Tiglath-pileser is given as that of ASSYRIAN TESTIMONY. 405 "Pulu."1 So, too, in the list of Babylonian kings preserved in the Almagest of Ptolemy, the Assyrian king is called Pdros, where the name of Pul has passed through a Persian channel, in consequence of which the / has been changed into r. In the Old Testament the first mention made of Tiglath-pileser is under his original name of Pul. " Pul, the king of Assyria," we are told, "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" (2 Kings xv. 19). The tribute offered by Menahem is referred to in the cuneiform texts. In one of his inscriptions Tiglath- pileser mentions the tribute of " Menahem of Samaria" {Menikhimme Samerind), which he re- ceive'd along with that of Hiram of Tyre, Rezon of Damascus, and other princes in the eighth year of his reign. In the same year Tiglath-pileser had overthrown the combined forces of Hamath and Judah. Azri- yahu or Azariah " of the land of Judah " had sent help to the king of Hamath. The mutilated annals of Tiglath-pileser give us some details of the war. The city of Siannu or Sin, and other cities near the Mediterranean "as far as Mount Saue which is in Mount Lebanon," as well as the mountain of Baal- zephon, the province of the cities of Kar- Hadad and Hadrach, the province of Nuqudina, the land of Khazu or Huz, together with many other districts and cities, were occupied by the Assyrian forces. Tiglath-pileser goes on to say : " I added to the 1 See " Records of the Past," New Series, i. p. 18. 406 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. territory of Assyria nineteen districts of the city of Hamath as well as the cities within them, which are on the coast of the sea of the setting sun, which in their faithlessness had revolted to Azariah ; my officers as governors I placed over them." These contemporaneous accounts of the western campaigns of Tiglath-pileser which have been rescued from the mounds under which they were so long buried, have at last cleared up the chronology of the later kings of Samaria. The synchronisms estab lished between them and the kings of Judah by the compiler of the Books of Kings have been the despair of chronologists, and various expedients have been devised for reconciling the conflicting dates given in the Scriptural record. Interregna have been interpolated for which no authority can be found in the Biblical text, and a system of co-regents has been invented, for which equally little authority can be cited. The cuneiform annals of Tiglath-Pileser have swept away all these ingenious schemes. The Bibli cal chronology must be rejected, and the synchronisms established by the compiler must be regarded as based on an erroneous calculation of dates. The conclusion is important, as it shows us very distinctly what are the limits within which criticism of the Biblical writer is justifiable. On the one hand the inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser prove that he was scrupulously honest in recording the earlier history of his people, and that the materials he employed were thoroughly trustworthy. But on the other hand they also prove that he was not an accomplished chrono- logist, and that where he attempted to arrange his Assyrian Testimony. 40? materials in a chronological system he fell into error. The synchronisms he endeavoured to establish were sometimes based on imperfect data; at other times his scheme did not take account of all the facts. It was, in short, an artificial scheme which, like most artificial schemes, was nothing more than what the student of physical science would call a " useful working hypothesis." Confronted with the facts which the contemporaneous monuments of Assyria have given us the scheme breaks down. But the " higher critic " cannot claim the credit of being the first to anticipate this result. The incon sistent character of the Biblical chronology of the royal houses of Judah and Israel has been known ever since chronologists set to work upon it. System after system has been proposed to reduce it to order and harmony ; the systems have been unsatisfactory only because the materials on which they rested were insufficient to solve the chronological problem. To-day all is changed. The Assyrian records have given us fixed points of departure for dating the reigns of the Jewish and Israelitish kings ; from Ahab to Hezekiah we can check the chronological statements of the Books of Kings and determine the value to be attached to them. Archbishop Usher's chronology is that which represents most naturally and with the least amount of distortion the chronology of the Hebrew Scriptures. If we compare it with that which has been revealed to us by the Assyrian inscriptions we shall find an irreconcilable difference between the two. The following table will show at a glance how great is the discrepancy between them— 408 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. Usher : Ahab, B.C. 918—897. Jehu, 884—856. Ben-hadad murdered by Ha zael cir. 880. Azariah of Judah, 810 — 758. Menahem pays tribute to Pul, cir. 770. Pekah, 759—739. Accession of Hoshea, 739. War with Rezin of Damascus, 741. Capture of Damascus, 740. Ahaz of Judah, 742 — 726. Capture of Samaria, 721. Invasion of Judah by Senna cherib, 712. Assyrian Monuments: Ahab fights at Qarqara, B.C. 853. Jehu pays tribute to Assyria, 841. Hadad-ezer murdered by Ha zael, 843. Azariah defeated by Tiglath- Pileser, 737. Menahem pays tribute, 737. War with Pekah, 734. Death of Pekah and accession of Hoshea, 729. War with Rezon, 734. Capture of Damascus, 732. Submission of Jeho-ahaz of Judah, 734. Capture of Samaria, 722. Sennacherib invades Judah, 701. chronological The facts are the same, but the framework in which the facts are set is wholly different. There can be but one conclusion from this. The materials at the disposal of the Biblical compiler were not sufficient to allow him to adjust his dates accurately, and like other historians he was forced to supply what was wanting by conjectures of his own. The result was a scheme of chronology, which could be made to agree with the data he had before him, but which fuller information has caused to share the fate of all similar artificial schemes. The fact is instructive, and is a fresh proof that the historical records of the Old Testament do not differ from other historical records whose claim to con fidence has been accepted by the verdict of posterity. ASSYRIAN TESTIMONY. 409 The facts contained in them are trustworthy, and have been honestly copied from older and in many cases contemporaneous documents; it is only their setting and framework, the order in which they are arranged and the links of connection by which they are bound together that belong to the later compiler. We can question his chronology while admitting to the fullest the correctness of his facts. In some instances it is possible to discover the cause of his chronological errors. It is plain that the sixteen years' reign of Jotham must have been coeval t with that of his father Azariah. Indeed the fact is clearly stated in the Books of Kings themselves. There we are told (2 Kings xv. 5) that Azariah became a leper, and was accordingly compelled to live in a separate house, while "Jotham the king's son was over the palace, judging the people of the land." The independent reign of Jotham can have lasted at the most only a few months. . The Biblical compiler overlooked this fact, and accordingly introduced a series of erroneous synchron isms between his reign and that of Pekah of Israel. He even extended the reign of Jotham to twenty years (2 Kings xv. 30), though the latter date admits of a different explanation. As we have seen, " forty years " in Hebrew idiom signified an indefinite period of time, more commonly shorter than longer. When the exact length of the period was unknown, it was described as "forty years." The half of forty is twenty, and accordingly a portion of the unknown period was described as consisting of " twenty years." Hence the statement that Pekah was slain in the twentieth year of Jotham 410 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. means simply that the murder took place when the reign of Jotham was about half over. Pekah himself is asserted to have reigned twenty years (2 Kings xv. 27). The Assyrian inscriptions have proved that this was not the case, and that his reign could not have really lasted for more than seven or eight years. In the twenty years of Pekah, therefore, we must again see the half of the indefinite '' forty." The documents accessible to the Biblical writer did not inform him how long Pekah had actually reigned ; " forty " years would have been too long a period for his chrono logical scheme, and accordingly it was halved. The murder of Pekah vis referred to in one of the mutilated texts of Tiglath-pileser. Here the Assyrian king describes the capture of certain cities " on the outskirts ofthe land of Beth-Omri" or Samaria, and as one of them begins with the syllable Gal, while another was an Abil or Abel, it is tempting to see in them the names of Gilead and Abel-Beth-Maachah, which as we learn from 2 Kings xv. 29 were among. the places wrested from Pekah by Tiglath-pileser. Tiglath-pileser then goes on to say that the conquered districts were added to Assyria and placed under Assyrian governors. After this he marched to Gaza, and on his return to the north, the inscription pro ceeds : " The country of Beth-Omri [I occupied], all its men [as well as their possessions] I carried away to Assyria. Pekah their king [I] slew, and I ap pointed Hoshea to be king over them." Though the. first syllable of the Assyrian word aduk " I slew " is destroyed, enough is left of the end of the word to show that it represented the first person singular, and consequently the statement of Tiglath- ASSYRIAN TESTIMONY. 41 1 .pileser can be reconciled with that of the Biblical writer, who informs us that Pekah was murdered by Hoshea, only by supposing that Hoshea acted as the instrument of the Assyrian king. It was against Pekah and Rezon that the campaign of Tiglath- pileser was directed, and the overthrow and death of the two allied princes was one of the objects for which it was undertaken. With the death of Pekah resistance to Assyria on the part of Samaria came to an end. Hoshea came forward as the vassal and representative of the king of Assyria, and Samaria was thus spared the siege and destruction which fell to the lot of Damascus. It' was not until some years later that Hoshea refused to pay the tribute due to his suzerain, and the ruling aristocracy of Samaria were ill-advised enough to follow his example. For a time Samaria and Jerusalem alike had acknow ledged the supremacy of Assyria, and submitted to be tributary to " the great king." The siege of Damascus lasted two years. It was in B.C. 734 that Tiglath-pileser had marched into Syria. Rezon was defeated in a pitched battle, and saved his life only by flying to Damascus. Here behind the strong walls of his capital he defied for awhile the forces of his enemy, while the Syrian captains who had been captured in the battle were impaled on stakes round about the town. After cutting down the plantations by which Damascus was surrounded, and leaving a sufficient force to reduce it by famine, the Assyrian monarch moved westward in order to punish the Palestinian allies of the Syrian king. Pekah was the first to feel his vengeance, and then came the turn of the Philistines. That they should 412 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. have joined the enemies of Judah is not wonderful ; between Judah and the Philistine cities there was perpetual feud, and the weakness of Judah was always the opportunity of the Philistines. We learn from the Second Book of Chronicles (xxviii. 18) that during the war with Syria the Philistines had invaded the Jewish kingdom and captured many of its towns. It will be noticed that the name ofthe Syrian king, which is written Rezin in the Old Testament, is written Rezon (Razunnu) in the cuneiform texts. That the latter is the correct form of the name is clear from the Books of Kings themselves. The founder of the kingdom of Damascus bore the same name as its last sovereign. But this name is given in the Bible 'as Rezon, not Rezin (2 Kings xi. 23). In fact the 2' of Rezin is merely an example of a weakened pronunciation of an older u or 0 which we meet with elsewhere in Hebrew words and names. Thus, Hiram of Tyre is called Huram by the Chronicler, and Toi of Hamath is written Tou (1 Chr. xviii. 9). The spelling of the name of Rezon, however, in the Books of Kings is rendered noteworthy by a discovery recently made in Northern Syria, to which attention has already been directed. At a place called Sinjerli, to the north-east of Antioch, German explorers have found the remains of ancient palaces, as well as monuments which bear inscriptions in the letters of the Aramaic alphabet. Two of them record the name of Panammu king of Sama'la, who, as we know from the Assyrian texts, was a contemporary of Tiglath-pileser III., and mention is more than once made of "Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria." The names, both of the king and of the country over which ASSYRIAN TESTIMONY. 413 he ruled, are written in precisely the same way as they are in the Books of Kings. The name of Assyria has the vowel u expressed in the second syllable, contrary to the usual custom of early Semitic writing, in which only the consonants are written, while the first syllable ofthe name of Tiglath- pileser ends with the letter g, just as it does in the Old Testament. What makes this remarkable is the fact that such a spelling testifies to a mispronunciation of the name. In Assyrian the name is Tukulti-Pal-6sar, where the guttural is k and not g.1 An inference of some moment can be drawn from the agreement between the representation of the name at Sinjerli and in the pages of the Old Testa ment. The misspelling of the name of the king and the notation of the vowel in the name of Assyria could not have originated independently in Northern Syria and in Judah. We know the age to which the monuments of Sinjerli belong ; two of them at least were erected by Bar-Rekeb the son of Panammu, and consequently a contemporary of Tiglath-pileser, whose "servant" he calls himself. Here then we have a proof that even the peculiarities of spelling in the historical annals of the Books of Kings go back to the period of the events recorded in them. The document or documents from which the account of Tiglath-pileser is derived must have been coeval with the Assyrian king. But this is not all. We have a proof that the spelling of these documents was fol lowed even where it was inaccurate. Nothing can put in a more vivid light the trust worthy character of the Books of Kings. If the 1 See above, p. 196. 414 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. Biblical compiler reproduced faithfully the mere spelling of the documents of which he made use, we may conclude that he reproduced their contents with equal fidelity. Moreover, oriental archaeology has shown us that in one instance at all events this spelling goes back to the age of the events described in the narrative to which it belongs, and that this age is anterior to the Babylonian Captivity by more than a century. The fact raises the presumption that in other instances, where as yet we cannot check the verbal accuracy of the Biblical writer, he is equally trustworthy, and that in reading the records he has preserved for us we may feel confident that we have before us the actual words of a contemporaneous authority. But it is time to return to the story of the Assyrian invasions and the gradual consolidation of Assyrian power on the shores of the Mediterranean. More than once it has been necessary to refer to the reign of Ahaz over Judah, and to the league of Syria and Ephraim against him which led to the intervention of Tiglath-pileser, to the overthrow of Damascus and Samaria and the subjection of Jerusalem to the Assyrian king. In the cuneiform records Ahaz is called Jehoahaz. This doubtless was his full name, and it has been conjectured that his tendency to idolatry and his desertion of the national religion of Israel caused the Jewish historians to drop that part of his name which implied a worship of the national God. However that may be, it remains that the Jehoahaz of the Assyrian inscriptions is the Ahaz of the Old Testament. The act of vassalage performed by Ahaz when he went to " meet " his Assyrian ASSYRIAN TESTIMONY. 415 suzerain after the capture of Damascus is mentioned in the annals of Tiglath-pileser. From these we learn that the Assyrian king held an assembly of all the Western princes who paid him tribute. " Jehoahaz the Jew" is named along with the kings of Komagene, of Melitene, of Tubal and of Hamath, with Panammu of Samahla, Mattin-baal of Arvad, Sanib of Ammon, Solomon of Moab, Kaus-melech of Edom and the rulers of Ashkelon and Gaza. It will be noticed that the king of Ammon bears the same name as the king of Admah in the time of Abraham (Gen. xiv. 2). Tiglath-pileser, as we have seen, made himself master of Babylonia, and by performing a ceremony at Babylon which consisted in " taking the hands " of the image of Bel and thus becoming the adopted son of the chief Babylonian god, caused himself to be acknowledged as the rightful sovereign. He sur vived the ceremony only two years. In December B.C. 728 he died, and the crown was seized by another usurper, Ulula, who assumed the name of Shalman- eser IV. It is this Shalmaneser whose name occurs in the second Book of Kings. Immediately after his accession Shalmaneser marched to the West. The city of Sibraim between Damascus and Hamath (Ezek. xlvii. 16) was the first to fall before his arms. His attention was next called to Samaria. Encouraged by the death of Tiglath-pileser, Hoshea had renounced his allegiance to Assyria, and was intriguing with "So" king of Egypt. At first, it would seem, the presence of Shalmaneser in the West terrified Hoshea into sub mission. But it was not for long. "The king of Assyria found conspiracy in Hoshea . . . therefore 416 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. the king of Assyria shut him up and bound him in prison " (2 Kings xvii. 4). But it would seem that Hoshea had been supported in his "conspiracy" by the leading inhabitants of Samaria. The imprisonment of the king therefore made but little difference to the policy of the city. Samaria still refused its tribute to Assyria and was accordingly besieged. The siege went on for three years. It was in B.C. 722 that Samaria was taken. But its conqueror was not Shalmaneser. Shalmaneser had died in December B.C. 723 after a short reign of five years, and another soldier of fortune had usurped the throne. This was Sargon, called Sargon II. to distinguish him from the famous monarch and hero who had reigned in Babylonia more than 3000 years before. When we consider that the two usurpers who had preceded Sargon had adopted the names of older Assyrian kings in order to legitimise their title to the throne, while the name of Sargon had been borne by one of the most illustrious of early Babylonian monarchs, and (so far as we know) by no subsequent king, it becomes probable that Sargon also was an assumed title, and that the successor of Shalmaneser IV. had originally been called by another name. The probability is strengthened by the meaning of the title. Sometimes it is written Sarra-yukin "(the god) has appointed the king " ; at other times Sarru- kinu " the legitimate king." In assuming it, therefore, Sargon would have emphasised the fact that he had no competitor who could dispute the crown with him, and that he was rightful lord not of Assyria only but ASSYRIAN TESTIMONY. 417 of Babylonia as well. Moreover the fact that Sargon had been the name of a Babylonian prince would have caused the Babylonians to forget the original name of the usurper, if he had had any, whereas Tiglath-pileser and Shalmaneser, having been Assyrian monarchs, were distasteful to the people of Chaldaea, and the kings who borrowed their names were accord ingly known at Babylon by the names they had originally borne. The earlier name of Sargon, however, is not met with in any cuneiform text. But it is possible that it has been preserved in the prophecies of Hosea. Jareb there appears as the title of the reigning king of Assyria, and as the passages in which it appears seem to relate to the last struggles of Samaria, it may be that in Jareb we have to see the birth-name of Sargon of Assyria.1 It was at the very "beginning" of Sargon's reign that Samaria fell. In one of the inscriptions found in the palace which he built near Nineveh Sargon declares : " The city of Samaria I besieged, I took ; 27,280 of its inhabitants I carried away ; 50 chariots that were among them I collected, and the rest (of the people) I caused to keep their possessions ; my governor I appointed over them, and the tribute of the former king I laid upon them." Another inscrip tion adds that in place of that part of the population which had been carried away, Sargon " caused the men ofthe countries" he had "conquered to inhabit" 1 See Hos. v. 13, x. 6. In the latter passage it is stated that " the calves " of Beth-el shall be carried captive to Assyria along with the other spoil of Samaria, whose King Hoshea has already been " cut off." E K 418 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. the land, and imposed upon them the same taxes as those which were paid by the Assyrians themselves. Samaria thus became a province of Assyria, and was treated accordingly. The " former king " referred to in the inscription is of course Hoshea. We learn from the Old Testament that he had sent ambassadors to " So king of Egypt," and trusting to Egyptian help had refused to pay any longer the tribute which was .due to Assyria. So, or Seve, as the name would be more correctly vocalised, seems to be mentioned in a text of Sargon which follows immediately after the account of the capture of Samaria. Sargon here says : " Hanon king of Gaza, along with Sab'e the commander-in- chief of Egypt, came against me at Raphia to make combat and battle : I utterly overthrew them. Sab'e feared the sound of my weapons, and he fled away and his place was not seen : Hanon king of Gaza I took with my hand. I received the tribute of Pharaoh {Piru) king of Egypt, Samse queen of the Arabs, and Ithamar of the Sabaeans, gold the product of the mountains, horses and camels." In this passage Sab'e, the general of the Egyptian forces, is carefully distinguished from the Pharaoh who was " king of Egypt." As a matter of fact the Pharaoh of Egypt at this time was either Shabaka, the founder of the Ethiopian dynasty, or his prede cessor, Bokkhoris, the Bok-n-ren-f of the native monu ments. On the other hand it is obvious that the Biblical Seve or So and the Assyrian Sab'e must be one and the same. In calling Seve " king of Egypt," therefore, the Biblical writer has made a mistake ; he was the commander of the Egyptian army, and at ASSYRIAN TESTIMONY. 419 most one of the local kinglets who abounded at the time in the Delta. But as commander-in-chief of the army he doubtless possessed more authority than the Pharaoh himself, and it may well have been with him rather than with his nominal master that the negoti* ations of Hosea were carried on. In any case we have here one of those smaller inaccuracies from which no historian can hope alto* gether to escape. Where the materials before him are scanty or imperfect it is inevitable that he should at times draw false conclusions, which fuller evidence may subsequently correct. The existence of such inaccuracies in the Biblical narrative is the best proof we can have of its conformity with other historical writings. It is to be judged like them ; an impossible standard of mathematical accuracy is not to be demanded for it. The substantial truth of the story has been abundantly vindicated : the errors due to the defectiveness of his materials show only the honesty of the compiler and set the general trust worthiness of his history in a clearer light. Perhaps one of the best examples of the carefulness with which his materials have been treated is to be found in the account of the capture of Samaria, "Shalmaneser, king of Assyria," we are told, came up against Hoshea, who thereupon became his vassal. At a later date Hoshea revolted from " the king of Assyria," and was in consequence shut up in prison. " Then the king of Assyria " marched against Samaria " and besieged it three years. In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria took Samaria and carried Israel away into Assyria." No one who had only the Biblical narrative before him could avoid believing 420 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. that the " king of Assyria " of the last sentence was the " king of Assyria " of the earlier part of the story, and as the latter was Shalmaneser it was universally assumed that Shalmaneser must have not only begun the siege of Samaria but have finished it as well. We now know, however, that this was not the case. Shalmaneser died before the conquest of Samaria was completed, and the capture of the Israelitish capital was the first achievement of the reign of his successor Sargon. It is plain that the documents used by the compiler of the Books of Kings did not mention the name of the conqueror of Samaria. He was called in them simply " the king of Assyria," and the compiler may accordingly well have supposed that this "king of Assyria " was Shalmaneser. At all events, if he did not suppose it himself, his readers for more than two thousand years have done so. No blame, however, can attach to him for having occasioned the erroneous inference. On the contrary the fact redounds to his credit. It shows how scrupulous he was to reproduce his authorities just as he found them. They spoke only of " the king of Assyria " without specifying his name : the compiler has done the same. It may be questioned whether many modern historians would have been equally reticent and exact. The temptation to conclude that "the king of Assyria" who finished the siege of Samaria was identical with the one who commenced it would have been too strong for most of them, and we should have been told that " Shalma neser took Samaria and carried Israel away." It was not all Israel, however, that was carried into captivity. The comparatively small number of those ASSYRIAN TESTIMONY. 42 1 who were transported by Sargon shows that only the upper and military classes who were held responsible for the rebellion were visited with punishment. The great bulk of the people were left in quiet possession of their country and property. The northern kingdom of Israel was transformed into an Assyrian satrapy, and it was necessary that such of the old inhabitants as were agriculturists or artisans should remain there. The treatment Tof Samaria, in fact, resembled the treatment of Jerusalem by Nebuchadrezzar after the rebellion of Jehoiakim and Jehoiachin. It was only " the mighty of the land " and those " that were strong and apt for war" who were carried into captivity. The fate that befell the northern kingdom was very different from that which befell Judah a few years later, when Sennacherib carried away no less than 200,150 of its inhabitants, " small and great." The Ten Tribes never underwent a captivity such as that which was the lot of the Jews. Some of the captive Israelites were settled in Mesopotamia on the banks of the Khabour, " the river of Gozan," called Guzana in the Assyrian inscriptions. It was here, in the neighbourhood of Rezeph, that a cuneiform tablet places Khalakhkhu or Halah. Others were transported to the cities of the Medes. Their places were supplied, as we have seen, by exiles from other countries which were subse quently overrun by Sargon. Babylon, Cuthah, and Sepharvaim, as well as Hamath, sent their contingents. Hamath was annexed to the Assyrian empire two years after the capture of Samaria ; Media was invaded in B.C. 713, and it was not until B.C. 709 that Sargon's conquest of Babylonia was complete. Con- 422 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. sequently it must have been after that event that the last of the colonists planted by Sargon in the northern kingdom of Israel were established in their new homes. Other colonists were added to them in later days. Some of them were introduced by Esar-haddon (Ez. iv. 2), others by " Asnapper " or Assur-bani-pal after his conquest of Elam (Ez. iv. 9, 10). These, however, were settled not in Samaria only, but in the other cities of the northern kingdom as well. The compiler of the Books of Kings seems to have included all three colonisations in his narrative, since he de scribes the new settlers as dwelling in " the cities " of Samaria, and as adding to the worship of their own deities that of the God of Israel, a cult which, accord ing to the Book of Ezra (iv. 2), was not practised before the time of Esar-haddon. In this case we shall have an example of what we may call a shortening of the historical perspective similar to that which will meet us again in the account of Sennacherib's death. With the overthrow of Israelitish independence the way to Jerusalem was made clear for Assyria. The possession of the Jewish capital was strategically important. It was a strong fortress, fortified at once by nature and by art. As long as it remained independent the Assyrian frontier in Asia was exposed to attack from Egypt, while the coveted conquest of Egypt itself was a difficult and dangerous undertaking. It is true that the Assyrian armies could march along the coast-road which led past the Philistine cities and "the way of the Philistines," but while Jerusalem remained in hostile hands there was ASSYRIAN TESTIMONY. 423 danger in crossing the desert that lay between Raphia and the Delta. A disaster to the Assyrian arms would under such circumstances be irretrievable ; the Jewish allies of Egypt could attack the Assyrian invader in the rear and cut off his retreat to his own provinces. The fall of Samaria thus pointed naturally to the fall of Jerusalem ; the one was the prelude to the other. Hezekiah had witnessed the destruction of his neighbours, and must have felt that his own turn could not be long delayed. Accordingly he looked about him for allies who were menaced by the same peril as himself. A league was formed among the states of Palestine to resist the Assyrian. The Philistine cities were occupied by Jewish garrisons, and Moab and Edom joined the confederacy. The " Pharaoh " of Egypt promised help, and an embassy came to Hezekiah even from Babylon. The Biblical history of Hezekiah's reign has come to us in detached fragments. We have two versions of it, one in the Books of Kings, the other in the Book of Isaiah, but the two versions differ but little from each other. A comparison of them makes it pretty plain that they have both been taken from a common source, though the narrative in the Books of Kings is the more consecutive and well-arranged of the two. The Chronicler informs us that " the acts of Heze kiah " were " written in the vision of Isaiah the prophet." This vision, then, would have been a biography of the king, and we may conclude that the fragmentary history of his reign which we now possess was extracted from it. The most striking 424 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. fact connected with this fragmentary history, how ever, has been revealed to us by the Assyrian monu ments. The fragments are not arranged in chrono logical order ; the embassy of Merodach-baladan took place ten years before the campaign of Sennacherib in Judah. The latter event happened, not in the fourteenth year of Hezekiah's reign, but in his twenty- fourth year ; the visit of the Babylonian ambassadors and the sickness of Hezekiah were ten years earlier than the great Assyrian invasion. But this is not all. In the account of Sennacherib's campaign there are references which apply only to Sargon, the father and predecessor of Sennacherib. It was Sargon, and not Sennacherib, who conquered Hamath, Arpad, and Sepharvaim, and into whose hand Samaria had been delivered (2 Kings xviii. 34). The name of Sargon occurs once only in the Old Testament. In Isaiah xx. 1, it is said that "Sargon the king of Assyria " sent his tartan or " commander- in-chief " against Ashdod, and that the city was taken by the Assyrian general. The statement is in full accordance with what we learn from the annals of Sargon himself. Akhimit, whom Sargon had ap pointed king of Ashdod, had been dethroned and the crown given to a usurper, who seems to have been a nominee of Hezekiah.1 As the usurper is called Yavan or " the Greek," it would appear that Greeks were already settled in this part of Palestine, and 1 The words of Sargon are, " Hittites who plotted rebellion repudiated the sovereignty of Akhimit, and exalted over them a Greek who had no right to the throne, and, like them, had no reverence for my sovereignty." Does this imply that a part of the population in Southern Palestine was still known by the name of Hittites ? ASSYRIAN TESTIMONY. 425 that Hezekiah had found in them allies against the Philistines. He was now exercising a sort of suzerainty over the Philistine cities, and Ashdod, under its Greek prince, was induced to head them in the revolt against Assyria. Judah, Edom, Moab, and Egypt were the other members of the league. All this took place in the year 711 B.C. The Babylonian embassy from Merodach-baladan had already been received by Hezekiah, and it had doubtless a good deal to do with the outbreak of the revolt. Merodach-baladan, " the son of Yagina,'' as he is called in the inscriptions, was a Kaldu or Chaldaean from the marshes of Southern Babylonia. He had taken advantage of the death of the Assyrian king, Shalmaneser IV., in B.C. 722 to enter Babylon and seize the throne. For twelve years he governed the country. Sargon was employed elsewhere, and his wars in the north and west left him no leisure for restoring Babylonia to Assyria. Gradually, however, the enemies who had threatened the frontiers of the empire were overthrown and subdued, and a time came when Sargon was free to turn his eyes towards the south. Year by year he had grown more power ful, and the Assyrian army had become irresistible in attack. It was clear that it could not be long before a fresh Assyrian invasion of Babylonia would be attempted, and even with the help of his Elamite friends, Merodach-baladan could not hope to resist it successfully. His sole chance was to divide the forces of the foe by exciting trouble in the west. The illness of Hezekiah was the pretext for the Babylonian embassy ; but it was a pretext which 426 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. deceived no one. It did not deceive Hezekiah, who in the pride of his heart showed all his treasures and military resources to the envoys, and thus tried to impress upon them that his alliance was well worth seeking. It did not deceive Sargon, who at once determined on his plan of action. Before either Babylonia in the east or Palestine in the west was ready, he had flung his army on the western con spirators. Ashdod, which had already committed an overt act of treason, was besieged, and its Greek ruler fled to the " desert-land " of Melukhkha, between Palestine and Egypt. There he was betrayed by the Arab king, who sent him in fetters to his Assyrian enemy. Meanwhile Ashdod and Gath were captured, their leading men carried into exile, and new colonists from "the East" introduced in their place, an Assyrian governor being placed over them. The Assyrian forces then overran the neighbouring country, and Judah, Edom, and Moab were com pelled to submit long before Egyptian succour could be sent to them. Sargon entitles himself " the con queror of the widespread land of Judah," and certain chapters in the Book of. Isaiah (x. and xxii.) seem to imply that Jerusalem was taken after a short siege. At all events the language of the chapters (x. 9, 11, 32, xxii. 3, 5, 7, 14) does not agree with the history of Sennacherib's campaign, when no " bank" was cast against Jerusalem, or "arrow" shot there (2 Kings xix. 32), while the mention of the fourteenth year of Hezekiah in connection with the Assyrian campaign (2 Kings xviii. 13), and the references on the part of the Assyrian invader to his conquest of Hamath and ASSYRIAN TESTIMONY. 427 Samaria (2 Kings xviii. 34), point explicitly to an invasion by Sargon. In this case the Jewish historian will have fused in one two separate Assyrian inva sions of Judah, one in B.C. 711, when the "tartan " of Sargon entered Jerusalem and forced Hezekiah to become his tributary, and another ten years later, when the armies of Sennacherib were compelled ignominiously to retreat from the soil of Palestine. The historical perspective will have been shortened in the way already noticed, and to the eye of one who wrote more than a century later, the two in vasions, so similar in their beginning, so dissimilar in their final result, will have blended into a single picture. Sargon, however, has left us no description of his conquest of Judah. He did not take part in it himself. The Book of Isaiah tells us that the cam paign against Ashdod was conducted by the com mander-in-chief of the Assyrian monarch, and in strict accordance with this the Assyrian annals describe the king as spending the whole year "at home." Moreover, his attention was centred on a more important war and a more difficult conquest than that of Judah or Ashdod. The revolt in the west had been crushed before it had time to be dangerous ; it was now the turn of Merodach-baladan in Babylonia to feel the heavy arm of the Assyrian monarch. It was in vain that help came to the Chaldaean prince from Elam and from the nomad tribes on the eastern frontiers of Babylonia ; Mero dach-baladan fled from Babylon, and after a decisive battle, in which he was utterly defeated and his camp taken, took refuge within the walls of his ancestral 428 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. city of Dur-Yakin. The city stood among the marshes at the mouth of the Euphrates, and its fortifications had been recently repaired and extended ; it was, however, unable to resist the Assyrian assault, and after a short while fell into the hands of Sargon, along with Merodach-baladan and his family. It was burned with fire and its walls razed to the ground. Meanwhile the Assyrian prince had returned to Babylon, and had there been solemnly enthroned as the adopted son of Bel and the successor of the ancient Babylonian kings. The capture of Dur-Yakin did not take place till B.C. 706, four years after the commencement of the war with Merodach-baladan. In the following year Sargon was murdered, and on the twelfth day of the month Ab or July, his son Sennacherib ascended the throne. The death of the old king of Assyria was the signal for fresh revolts in Babylonia and Pales tine. Hezekiah " rebelled against the king of Assyria, and served him not." The first task Sennacherib had to undertake was the reconquest of Babylonia, and the pacification of its eastern frontier. This required two campaigns. His third campaign was directed against the west. The following is the description which he gives of it— " In my third campaign I marched against the land of the Hittites.1 The fear of the glory of my sove- 1 From the ninth century B.C., when the Assyrian kings began to make their way into the district of the Lebanon, the name of " Hittite" came to be more and more applied to all the popula tions of the west. True Hittite kingdoms had ceased to exist in this part of the world after the fall of Carchemish in B.C. 717, ASSYRIAN TESTIMONY. 429 reignty overwhelmed Elulaeus {Lull) king of Sidon, and he fled from the city of Tyre to the land of Yanana J in the middle of the sea. I subdued his coun try. The power of the weapons of Assur my lord overwhelmed the cities of Great Sidon,2 Little Sidon, Bit-Zitti, Sarepta, Makhalliba, Usu,3 Ekdippa, (and) Accho (Acre), his fortified cities, the fortresses, the pasture and irrigated lands, (and) his stronghold, and they submitted unto me. Ethbaal (Tubahlu) I set on the royal throne over them, and I laid upon him annual tribute and gifts to my sovereignty, never to be discontinued. As for Menahem of Samsi-murun, Ethbaal of Sidon, Abdilihti of Arvad, Uru-melech of Gebal, Mitinti of Ashdod, Pudu-il of Beth- Ammon, Chemosh-nadab of Moab (and) A-rammu of Edom, the kings of the Amorite land, all of them, they brought to my presence in sight of the city of Usu numerous offerings and abundant tribute, and kissed my feet. And Tsidqa4 king of Ashkelon, who had not sub mitted to my yoke, the gods of the house of his father, himself, his wife, his sons and daughters (and) his brothers, the seed of his father's house, I carried but as it had been the Hittites who for several centuries had represented to the Assyrians the furthest western population with whom they were acquainted, the name of " Hittite " had been extended to the Semites of Syria and Palestine when the Assyrians came into contact with them in the time of Shalman eser II., and continued to be so used down to the closing days of the Assyrian monarchy. 1 Cyprus, the land of the " Ionians." 2 See Josh. xi. 8, xix. 28. 3 The Hosah of Josh. xix. 29. 4 Probably a contracted form of Zadkiel, or possibly of Zedekiah. 430 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. away and brought to Assyria. Sarru-ludari, the son of Rukibti, their former king, I appointed over the people of Ashkelon, and I imposed upon him the payment of tribute and homage to my sovereignty, and he became my vassal. In the course of my campaign I besieged and captured the cities of Beth- Dagon, Joppa, Bene-berak and Azur, the cities of Tsidqa, which did not submit at once to my yoke ; I carried away their spoil. The priests, the chief men and the common people of Ekron, who had thrown into chains of iron their king Padi, because he was faithful to his oaths to Assyria, and had given him up to Hezekiah the Jew, who imprisoned him like an enemy in a dark dungeon, feared in their hearts. The king 1 of Egypt, the bowmen, the chariots (and) the horses of the king of Melukhkha 2 had gathered together innumerable forces and gone to their assistance. In sight of the town of Eltekeh before me was their order of battle drawn up ; they demanded their weapons. In reliance upon Assur my lord I fought with them and overthrew them. My hands took the captains of the chariots and the sons of the king3 of Egypt, as well as the captains of the chariots of the king of Melukhkha, alive in the midst of the battle. The towns of Eltekeh and Tim- nath I besieged (and) captured ; I carried away their spoil. I marched against the city of Ekron and put to death the priests (and) chief men who had com mitted the sin (of rebellion), and I hung up their bodies on stakes all round the city. The citizens 1 Another copy of the text reads "kings." 3 The " salt "-desert between Gaza and El-Arish. 8 Another copy has " kings." ASSYRIAN TESTIMONY. 43 1 who had done wrong and wickedness I counted as a spoil ; as for the rest of them who had committed no sin or crime, in whom no fault was found, I declared an amnesty for them. I caused Padi their king to be brought out from the midst of Jerusalem, and I seated (him) on the throne of sovereignty over them, and I laid upon him the tribute due to my lordship. But as for Hezekiah of Judah, who had not submitted to my yoke, forty-six of his strong cities together with innumerable fortresses and small towns which de pended on them, by overthrowing the walls and open attack, by battle, engines, and battering-rams, I besieged (and) captured. I brought out of the midst of them and counted for a spoil 200,150 persons great and small, male and female, horses, mules, asses, camels, oxen and sheep without number. (Hezekiah) himself I shut up like a bird in a cage in Jerusalem his royal city. I built a line of forts against him, and kept back his heel from going forth out of the great gate of the city. I cut off his cities which I had despoiled from the midst of his land, and gave them to Metinti king of Ashdod, Pad! king of Ekron, and Tsil-baal king of Gaza, and I made his country small. In addition to their former tribute and yearly gifts I added the tribute due to my sovereignty, and I laid (it) upon them. The terror of the glory of my sovereignty overwhelmed him, even Hezekiah, and he sent after me, to Nineveh, the city of my sovereignty, the Arabs and x his body-guard whom he had brought for the defence of Jerusalem his royal city, and had furnished with pay, along with 30 talents of gold, 800 talents of silver, a treasure of 1 The conjunction is omitted in one copy of the text. 432 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. carbuncles and other precious stones, a couch of ivory, a throne of ivory, a chain of ivory, an elephant's hide, an elephant's tusk, rare woods of every sort, a vast treasure, as well as his daughters, the eunuchs of his palace, the princes and the princesses, and he sent his ambassador to offer gifts and perform homage." It is instructive to compare this account of the campaign which is given by "the great king" of Assyria himself, and was written only ten years after the events recorded in it, with the account given in the Old Testament. The two accounts supplement and complete one another. The Jewish narrative naturally dwells on the latter portion of the invasion, when Jerusalem was saved at the last moment, as if by miracle, from the arms of the all-powerful foe. The Assyrian record dwells just as naturally on the earlier history of the campaign, and the period when the whole of Judah outside the walls of the capital was swept with fire and sword. But a difference may nevertheless be observed between the two narratives. The Biblical writer does not disguise the fact that Hezekiah submitted himself to Sennacherib, saying : " I have offended ; return from me : that which thou puttest on me I will bear." We are told of the tribute which he sent to the Assyrian monarch in the vain hope of buying off his resentment, and how the treasures which had been shown to the ambassadors of Merodach-baladan found their way to the palaces of Assyria. It was only when Sennacherib proved obdurate in his deter mination of transforming Jerusalem into an Assyrian fortress that Hezekiah formed the desperate resolution of defending himself to the last. It was only when ASSYRIAN TESTIMONY. 433 his subjects had learned that the invader was bent on exiling them from their land that they determined to die round the person of their king. It is true that the capture of Lachish is not stated in express terms. But it is implied in the statement that Sennacherib had departed from Lachish in order to " war against " Libnah, another of the fortified towns of Southern Judah. Moreover thereis a reference to the march of " Tirhakah king of Ethiopia " to the assistance of his Jewish ally, even though nothing is said of the battle at Eltekeh. Sennacherib's description of his campaign presents a great contrast. We hear of nothing except conquest, spoil and success. The cities of the Philistines are not only wrested from Hezekiah, but he is compelled to reinstate on the throne of Ekron the Assyrian vassal whom he had kept as a hostage in Jerusalem. The Egyptian army is defeated and driven back to Egypt, the Jewish tov/ns are besieged and taken, and Sennacherib returns to Nineveh laden with booty. Even the Arab mercenaries and bodyguard of Hezekiah are among the captives whom he carries away. Nevertheless the narrative of Sennacherib itself contains an indication that the conclusion of the campaign was not so successful as the author of it would have us believe, and that the Assyrian king was forced to return home without having accomplished the main object of his invasion of Judah. Though Hezekiah was shut up in Jerusalem like a bird in a cage, and a line of forts built against him, he was nevertheless allowed to remain there unmolested. Sennacherib admits by his silence that he never F F 434 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. penetrated within the walls of Jerusalem. He was compelled to retreat for reasons about which he says nothing, without having possessed himself of the Jewish capital and imprisoned or slain his contum acious vassal. Hezekiah was preserved from the fate which had overtaken Rezon and Hoshea ; for the cause of his preservation we have to look elsewhere than in the Assyrian texts. The number of silver talents paid by Hezekiah differs in the Assyrian and Biblical accounts. Sen nacherib claims to have received eight hundred talents of silver ; according to the Old Te-stament it was three hundred talents only. Brandis, however, has en deavoured to show that the difference really originates in a difference of computation, eight hundred "light" Assyrian talents being equivalent to three hundred "heavy" Palestinian ones. Be this as it may, we may feel pretty sure that the Assyrian king would wish to make the sum he received seem as large as possible> while we may suspect that a Jewish scribe would be equally inclined to minimise it. There is another statement in the Assyrian account which at first sight appears to conflict with the Biblical history. " Tirhakah king of Ethiopia" is described as " the king of Egypt." But we have learned from the Egyptian monuments that Egypt was at the time under Ethiopian domination. Tir hakah was an Ethiopian by birth ; it was conquest which had made him king of Egypt. The Old Testament is consequently more exactly accurate in calling him "king of Ethiopia" than the Assyrian inscription. His army was Egyptian ; but the Pharaoh himself was Ethiopian. ASSYRIAN TESTIMONY. 435 We cannot refuse to believe the assertion of Sennacherib that he defeated the Egyptian forces. Had it been otherwise, the Egyptian princes would not have retreated from the frontier of Palestine and left Hezekiah to his fate. It is true that on a statue in the Gizeh Museum Tirhakah claims to have con quered the Shasu, or Bedawin, the Hittites, the Phoeni cians of Arvad, the Assyrians and the people of Aram- Naharaim.1 But such a legend is merely a copy of the inscriptions engraved by the great conquerors of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth dynasties, and proves at most nothing more than that Tirhakah had gained some successes over an Asiatic enemy. The fact that Sennacherib did not follow up his victory at Eltekeh shows that he too had suffered in the conflict, and would have furnished the Egyptian scribes with a sufficient pretext for describing Tirhakah as a successor of a Thothmes or a Ramses. The Greek writer, Herodotos, has left us evidence that Egyptian vanity not only did not allow the retreat of Sennacherib to be forgotten, but assigned to it an exaggerated importance. The dragoman, or cicerone, who showed him such portions of the temple of Ptah at Memphis as an " uncircumcised " foreigner was permitted to see, attached a story to a statue there which connected it with an imaginary defeat of Sennacherib. The statue was that of a deity, and as the god bore in his hand the figure of a " mouse," or rather ichneumon, it is probable that it represented the god Horus. But it was transformed by the ignor ance of the guides into the figure of a priest-king 1 De Rouge" in the " Melanges d'Archeologie egyptienne et assyrienne," i. p. 13. 436 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. to whom the name of Sethos or Seti was given. The following is the version handed down by Herodotos of this early example of a dragoman's folk-lore.1 " The next king, I was told, was a priest of Hephaestos, called Sethos. This monarch despised and neglected the warrior-class of the Egyptians, as though he did not need their services. A.mong other indignities which he offered them, he took from them the lands which they had possessed under all the previous kings, consisting of twelve acres of choice land for each warrior. Afterwards, therefore, when Sen nacherib king of the Arabians and Assyrians marched his vast army into Egypt, the warriors one and all refused to come to his aid. On this the monarch, greatly distressed, entered into the inner sanctuary, and before the image of the god bewailed the fate which impended over him. As he wept he fell asleep, and dreamed that the god came and stood at his side, bidding him be of good cheer, and go boldly forth to meet the Arabian host, which would do him no hurt, as he himself would send those who should help him. Sethos then, relying on the dream, collected such ofthe Egyptians as were willing to follow him, who were none of them warriors, but traders, artisans, and market- people ; and with these marched to Pelusium, which commands the entrance into Egypt, and there pitched his camp. As the two armies lay here opposite to one another, there came in the night a multitude of field-mice, which devoured all the quivers and bow strings of the enemy, and ate the thongs by which they managed their shields. Next morning they com menced their flight and great multitudes fell, as they 1 Herodotos, ii. 141 (Rawlinson's translation). ASSYRIAN TESTIMONY. 437 had no arms with which to defend themselves. There stands to this day in the temple of Hephaestos a stone statue of Seth6s, with a mouse in his hand, and an inscription to this effect : ' Look on me and learn to reverence the gods.' " It is hardly needful to point out the fabulous character of this story. The meaning assigned to the inscription on the statue proves that it was in large measure an invention of Greek or Karian guides who did not understand the hieroglyphic writing. But there are also indications that the substance of it was derived from native Egyptian folk-lore. Thus the assertion that Sennacherib was king of the Arabians, and that his army consisted of Arabians, implies an Egyptian source, the Shasu or Arabians being better known to the Egyptian people than the other inhabitants of Asia on account of their proximity to Egypt. It is somewhat curious that whereas in the Assyrian account the Arabians form the body guard of Hezekiah, while the king of Malukhkha, or the " salt-desert " between Egypt and Palestine, is the ally of the Egyptian Pharaoh, in the Egyptian story the Assyrian enemy is transformed into a king of the Arabs. How little truth, however, there can be in the Egyptian legend may be judged from its state ment that Sennacherib made his way as far as Pelusium. As a matter of fact he never crossed the Egyptian border. Equally apocryphal is the existence of a priest-king Sethds. No priest of Ptah (the Hephaestos of Herodotos) ever made himself king of Egypt, or attempted to rob the military class of their lands. It has been thought that one of the traits in the 438 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. story has been borrowed from the Old Testament. In the prayer of Sethds to Ptah has been seen a reflection of the narrative which tells us how Hezekiah spread the letter of Sennacherib before the Lord, and besought the God of Israel to save His people. But such a supposition is by no means either necessary or probable. The act of Hezekiah was one which would have seemed natural to his contemporaries. Assur-bani-pal the grandson of Sennacherib describes a similar act on his own part. When the formidable war with Elam broke out, and the Elamite king Teumman sent messengers to Nineveh saying: "I will not desist until I march to make war with him," Assur-bani-pal entered the sanctuary of Istar and besought the aid of the goddess. "I stood before her,'' he says, "I bowed myself down before her; I supplicated her divinity, and she came to give peace to me, saying : ' The goddess of Arbela am I ; O Assur-bani-pal king of Assyria, the creation of my hands [art thou]' . . . My bitter lamentation did Istar hear, and ' Fear not,' she said, she caused my heart to rejoice." That night, we are further told, a certain seer dreamed a dream in which Istar appeared to him and bid him say to the Assyrian king : " Eat food, drink wine, make music, exalt my divinity, while I go (and) this work is accomplished. I will cause thee to obtain the desire of thy heart, thy face shall not grow pale, thy feet shall not totter, thy beauty shall not fade (?). In the midst of the conflict, in her kindly womb she takes thee to her bosom and overthrows all who obey thee not." Here, it will be noticed, the parallelism extends beyond the visit of the king to the shrine of his ASSYRIAN TESTIMONY. 439 divinity. The "seer" who is instructed by Istar to carry her message of consolation to Assur-bani-pal performs the same office as that which was performed by the prophet Isaiah. If no real contradiction can be pointed out between the details of the campaign of Sennacherib as described in the Assyrian and the Biblical narratives, there is nevertheless one respect in which they are hopelessly at variance. And in this one respect we know that the truth lies on the Assyrian side. The invasion of Sennacherib took place in B.C. 701 in the twenty-fourth year of Hezekiah's reign, and not in his fourteenth, as is alleged in the Books of Kings. An easy evasion of the difficulty would be to assume that " fourteen " has been written by mistake for "twenty-four" in the Hebrew text. But it so happens, as we have seen, that there actually was an Assyrian invasion of Palestine and Judah in the fourteenth year of Hezekiah, though the invader was Sargon and not Sennacherib. Moreover, there are passages in the Biblical account of Sennacherib's invasion which imply that the King of Assyria who is referred to was Sargon, the conqueror of Samaria and Hamath (2 Kings xviii. 34). We seem therefore forced to the conclusion that two independent Assyrian campaigns, separated from one another by a distance of ten years, have been joined by the Jewish compiler into one. I have already described this as a foreshortening of the historical perspective. A similar foreshortening is to be found in the sort of appendix which is added to the account of Sennacherib's campaign. The disaster that befell the Assyrian army was followed 440 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. by the retreat of the Assyrian king to his own country, where he "dwelt at Nineveh. And 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." The only inference which can be drawn from these words is that the murder of Sennacherib took place immediately after his return to Nineveh, and accordingly such was universally assumed to have been the case before the decipherment of the Assyrian inscriptions. We now know, however, that Sennacherib continued to reign for twenty years after the Judaean campaign, and that so far from dwelling all that time in Nineveh he engaged in several military expeditions. Indeed the very year after his retreat from Palestine he undertook a campaign against Babylonia. Here, then, we have another illustration of the limits of our confidence in the historical accuracy of the Biblical narrative. The narrative itself is limited by the amount of the materials at the disposal of its compiler. He reproduced them faithfully, and it is consequently but seldom that an unprejudiced critic can detect a real inconsistency between his story and that of the monuments. But his materials were sometimes less complete than ours, and when this was the case he naturally drew wrong inferences from them, or grouped them in such a way as to occasion wrong inferences in others. The materials them selves, however, were trustworthy, and they were honestly reported. The story of Sennacherib's campaign offers us abundant proof of this. It is not only in its general ASSYRIAN TESTIMONY. 44 1 outlines that it is corroborated by the Assyrian records ; it agrees with them also in those points of detail in which even a modern historian is sometimes caught tripping. Thus the military force detached by Sennacherib from the main body of the Assyrian army and sent against Hezekiah was placed, we are informed, under the command of " Tartan, and Rab- saris, and Rab-shakeh." Since the early days of Assyrian discovery it has been known that " Tartan " is the Assyrian Turtanu or " Commander-in-chief," who took the supreme command of the troops in the absence of the king. Prof. Schrader has pointed out that Rab-shakeh is the Assyrian Rab-saki or " Chief of the princes," the title of the highest civil functionary in Nineveh, and Mr. Pinches has lately discovered that Rab-saris corresponds with the Assyrian title Rabu-sa-resu " Chief of the heads." The exact office held by the latter is still to be determined. The accuracy with which these titles have been reproduced in the Hebrew text suggests of itself that the document from which they are quoted was contemporaneous with Sennacherib's campaign. Equally suggestive are the words addressed to the Rab-shakeh by the servants of Hezekiah : " Speak, I pray thee, to thy servants in the Aramaean language ; for we understand it; and talk not with us in the Jews' language." The fall of Samaria had caused the language of Israel to become that of the Jewish kingdom alone, while the contract-tablets found at Nineveh have thrown a flood of light on the first part of the request. They have made it clear that Aramaic was at the time the commercial language of the civilised East, the medium of intercourse 442 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. among the educated classes of the Assyrian empire. It was a language which every one was expected to know who was concerned with trade or diplomacy, and accordingly Eliakim and Shebna not only under stood it themselves, but expected the Rab-shakeh to understand it also. Even the words with which the Rab-shakeh opens his address are indicative of the Assyrian epoch. "The great king, the king of Assyria," is the stereotyped expression with which the Assyrian monarchs describe themselves. But this accuracy of detail is of course not mathematical. It is not probable that the number of the dead in the Assyrian camp could have been so large as 185,000. Apart from the fact that the number is a round one, or the difficulty of ascertaining how many persons had actually died, an Assyrian army did not contain so many men. Wherever we have any clue to the size of it, we find that it was comparatively small. The name of Nisroch, again, is incorrect. No such deity was known to the Assyrians. But it is probable that the text is here at fault, and that it has been corrupted by the scribes. At all events the Septua gint reads Meserach and even Assarach, and it is possible that the original word was Asshur. Dr. Winckler finds a further inaccuracy in the statement that two of Sennacherib's sons were con cerned in the murder of their father. According to the cuneiform document known as the " Babylonian Chroncile " : " Sennacherib king of Assyria was murdered by his own son in an insurrection on the twentieth day of the month Tebet." But because only one son is here mentioned as the actual assassin, ASSYRIAN TESTIMONY. 443 it does not at all follow that no other son took part in the deed. We have, in fact, indirect testimony that the Biblical narrative is correct. Abyd£nos stated in his Assyrian history that Sennacherib was assassinated by his son Adramelus and was succeeded by Nergilus, who was in turn put to death by Esar- haddon.1 As Professor Schrader remarks, Nergilus and Sharezer are alike mutilated names, the full form of the name being Nergal-sharezer (" O Nergal, defend the king "). The " Babylonian Chronicle " tells us that from the day of Sennacherib's murder until the second of Adar Assyria was in the hands of the rebels, and that it was not until the eighth of Sivan that Esar-haddon mounted the throne, after the defeat of the rebel army. It would therefore have been during this "period of insurrection," which lasted forty-two days, that Nergal-sharezer reigned in Nineveh. On the second of Adar the flight of himself and his sup porters would have taken place. What happened afterwards is described by Esar-haddon himself. " The snow and cold of the month Sebat and the might of the tempest I did not fear : like a 'si sin bird in its flight I opened my hands to overthrow the enemy. I trod the road to Nineveh forcefully, hastily. Be fore me in the land of Khani-rabbat (Kappadokia) all the flower of their warriors opposed my march and brandished their weapons. The terror of the 1 Ap. Euseb. " Chr. Arm." ed. Mai, p. 25. According to Alexander Polyhistor the murderer was Ardumusanus. See Schrader : " Cuneiform Inscriptions and the Old Testament," Engl, transl., ii. p. 15. Adramelech is possibly a corrupt reading for Ardamelech, Assyrian Arad-milki " servant of the king." 444 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. great gods my lords overwhelmed them and they beheld the onset of my powerful attack and pressed forward. Istar the mistress of war and battle who loves my priesthood stood at my side and shattered their bows ; she broke their serried ranks, and in their army they said : ' This is our king.' At her supreme command they came over to my side." The course of events is pretty clear. Esar-haddon was not in Nineveh at the time of his father's murder. It is probable that he was in the field, leading the veteran army of Assyria against some enemy who may have been the king of Ararat. The native cunei form inscriptions of Armenia show us that the king of Ararat at the time was a certain Erimenas, whose father had been engaged in war with Sennacherib. If hostilities were still going on between the Armenian kingdom on Lake Van and Assyria it is easy to under stand why the conspirators should have fled to Ararat after the failure of their rebellion. At any rate the Biblical statement that they did so is fully borne out by the narrative of Esar-haddon. It was in Khani-rabbat that he met the rebel army, and Khani- rabbat was the Assyrian name of the district on the western frontier of Ararat, of which the modern centre is Malatiyeh. Here, on the extreme boundary of the Assyrian empire, the conflict took place which was decided by the desertion of the Assyrian portion of the hostile forces to Esar-haddon. He was saluted as king not only by his own soldiers but by the troops of his rivals as well. Three months, however, had elapsed in the conflict. In Sebat or January, immediately on receiving the news of his father's death, Esar-haddon had marched ASSYRIAN TESTIMONY. 445 through a country which was covered with snow, and must therefore have lain to the north of Assyria. It was not until the eighth of Sivan or May that he was proclaimed king. It is probable that the murder of the old king had been due to his partiality towards Esar-haddon. Esar-haddon was his representative at the head of the army in the field, and a sort of will exists in which Sennacherib bequeaths to his son Esar-haddon, " who was afterwards called Assur-sarra-yukin the son of his name," a large quantity of treasure. Like Solomon, therefore, Esar-haddon would have been pointed out as Sennacherib's successor, and his brothers would have taken advantage of his absence to organise a conspiracy and seize the throne. That they failed in their attempt was due as much to Esar-haddon's promptitude as to the fact that he was at the head of the best part of the Assyrian army. I have dwelt thus long on the Assyrian wars in the West in the time of Hezekiah because they offer us fuller materials than any other portion of the Books of Kings for testing the historical character of the statements we find in the latter. Nowhere else is the Biblical narrative and the monumental narrative alike so full. Nowhere else have we records, contemporary with the events they describe, which cover so com pletely the same ground as the Scriptural story. It was only in the reign of Hezekiah that Jerusalem played an important part in Assyrian history. Before the fall of Samaria its possession was not a matter of moment ; after the fall of the sister-kingdom it sheltered Egypt and prevented the soldiers of Sen nacherib from overrunning the valley of the Nile. 446 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. Egypt did not become an Assyrian province until the Jewish king had first become a vassal of Esar- haddon. A comparison of the two accounts of Hezekiah's reign, the Jewish and the Assyrian, brings two facts very clearly to light. In the first place the good faith of the compiler of the Books of Kings has been fully vindicated, as well as the trustworthiness of the documents which he employed. In the second place the mist which has surrounded Hezekiah for so many centuries has disappeared. He takes his place by the side of the other oriental princes who were his contemporaries. His policy was the same as theirs, and so too was the character of his court. His body guard, with whom he defends his capital, are Gentile Arabs, his harem is guarded by eunuchs, and he claims to be lord of the Philistines as well as of the Jews. But there is another fact which results from the de cipherment of the cuneiform texts. The events of Hezekiah's reign narrated in the Books of Kings and in the parallel passages of the Book of Isaiah are not arranged in chronological -order. The sickness of Hezekiah and the embassy from Merodach-baladan which followed upon it, instead of taking place after the campaign of Sennacherib, occurred more than ten years before. The "king of Assyria" from whom Hezekiah and Jerusalem were to be delivered (2 Kings xx. 6) was not Sennacherib but Sargon. The campaign which Isaiah had in view when he declared to the Jewish king that fifteen more years were to be added to his life was the same campaign as that which was forced on by the Babylonian embassy. Consequently the expression " in those days," with ASSYRIAN TESTIMONY. 447 which the account of Hezekiah's illness is introduced, has no reference to the retreat of Sennacherib and still less to the accession of Esar-haddon twenty years later. There is only one way of accounting for it. It must have formed part of the document which was used by the compiler, and this document was not the same as that from which he had extracted the history of Sennacherib's campaign. In other words the materials he" employed did not constitute a con secutive history ; they were independent authorities, the connection of which with one another had to be supplied by the compiler himself. This is an important conclusion. On the one hand it explains to us why we can accept without hesita tion the history contained in the Books of Kings, even in its details, while the chronological framework of the history must be thrown aside as artificial and misleading, and also why, as we have seen, we meet from time to time with statements which imply a de fective knowledge of the facts. On the other hand it shows that the compiler had at his disposal a greater number of documents than those which he quotes by name. It has long been recognised that the Books of Kings must have been compiled in Babylonia, prob ably during the two years' reign of Evil-Merodach. Indeed it is difficult to understand how it can be said that Jehoiachin ate bread before Evil-Merodach " all the days of his life " (2 Kings xxv. 29), if the Baby lonian king had been already dead. But whether or not this were the case, the book must have been written before the end of the Exile, since no allusion is made to it. And furthermore, the reference to 448 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. Jehoiachin indicates that it was written in the land of the Captivity. The Jewish exiles, therefore, must have had access to their older literature. Not only the "Chronicles of the kings of Israel " and the " Chronicles of the kings of Judah " must have been at their disposal, but a large mass of other literature as well. The library of Jerusalem, where the scribes of Hezekiah were employed, like the scribes of the Assyrian and Baby lonian libraries, in copying and re-editing the earlier literary works of their country (Prov. xxv. i), must have been carried away by Nebuchadrezzar. Such a proceeding would have been in entire harmony with custom and precedent. When the generals of Assur- bani-pal stormed a city of Babylonia the most precious booty they could obtain from it was a cuneiform text which the library of Nineveh did not possess, and even Sennacherib, whose tastes seem hardly to have been literary, did not disdain to carry away a portion at least of the library of Merodach-baladan when he wreaked his savage vengeance on Babylon by utterly destroying the city. And Nebuchadrezzar resembled Assur-bani-pal rather than Sennacherib. His inscrip tions show that he was not only a man of deep religious feeling, but a man of education as well. His relations with Jeremiah further make it clear that he knew something about Judah and its inhabitants, and was not inclined to deal harshly with the literary class among them. Like the Assyrian kings before him, his quarrel was with men, not with books. The library of Jerusalem must have contained books which emanated from the northern kingdom as well as from Judah itself. In no other way can we ASSYRIAN TESTIMONY. 449 explain the existence in the Old Testament Canon of the works of the two northern prophets Amos and Hosea, or the marks they bear of having passed through the hands of a Jewish editor. If, then, the library of Jerusalem had been transported to Babylon along with the other treasures of " the king's house," there would have been Israelitish as well as Jewish documents contained in it, and we could understand how it was possible for a writer who lived in Baby lonia to quote the " Chronicles of the kings of Israel." A small stone weight discovered on the site of Samaria has been the means of confirming the belief, long held by Hebraists, that the Book of Canticles was composed within the limits of the northern kingdom, and has at the same time dissipated one of the linguistic objections to its early date. The weight was purchased by Dr. Chaplin, and it bears on either side an inscription cut in beautifully executed Phcenician letters of the eighth century B.C. We owe the explanation of it to Dr. Neubauer, who has pointed out that it must be rendered " a quarter of a quarter of a natsag." According to Prof. Flinders Petrie the weight exactly corresponds with the sixteenth part of an Asiatic standard of 640 grains which he believes to be Hittite. The genitival relation between the two words, each of which denotes " a quarter," is shel ("of"), which is also found in Canticles iii. 7.1 Instead of being a sign of late date, the word is thus shown to have been used in the northern kingdom before the overthrow of Samaria and the fall of the Israelitish monarchy. It is an incidental proof that books of 1 See my letters in the Academy for Aug. 2, 1890, and Oct. 1893. G O 450 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. northern origin were admitted into the library of Jerusalem, and so bears out the evidence afforded by the prophecies of Amos and Hosea. Just as the library of Nineveh contained the literary works of Babylonia, so, too, the library of Jerusalem contained the literary works of Samaria. The disaster which overtook the army of Sennacherib in Palestine saved the Jewish monarchy from ex tinction, but it did not save it from becoming the tributary of Assyria. We find the name of Manasseh of Judah among the vassal princes of the West who were summoned to the Assyrian court by Esar-haddon and his successor Assur-bani-pal, and the fact that both these Assyrian kings were able to neglect Judah in their campaigns against Egypt shows that the fortress of Jerusalem had passed into their possession. The reign of Esar-haddon lasted from B.C. 68 1 to B.C. 668, and it seems to have been shortly before his death that the " twenty-two kings " of Palestine, Phoenicia and Cyprus were required to furnish him with materials for a new palace and to appear before him in person. The names of the kings are given in the following order : Baal king of Tyre ; Manasseh king of Judah ; Kaus-gabri king of Edom ; Mutsuri (" the Egyptian ") king of Moab ; Tsil-Baal king of Gaza ; Metinti king of Ashkelon ; Ika-shemesh king of Ekron ; Melech-asapa king of Gebal ; Matan- baal king of Arvad ; Abibaal king of Samsi-muruna ; Pudu-il (Pedael) king of Beth-Ammon ; and Ahime- lech king of Ashdod. Sidon had been destroyed by Esar-haddon and consequently is omitted from the list. The Philistine cities have ceased to be depen dent on Judah — that no doubt was one of the results ASSYRIAN TESTIMONY. 45 1 of Sennacherib's campaign — but Padi of Ekron, like his enemy Hezekiah, has passed away from the scene. A few years later another muster of the kings of the West was made by Assur-bani-pal. All the princes who are named by Esar-haddon were present, with two exceptions. Pedael of " Beth-Ammon '' had been succeeded by Amminadab, and Matan-baal of Arvad by Yakinel. From this time forward all further mention of Judah disappears from the monuments of Assyria. Its rulers were content to pay their annual tribute to Assyria, and to acknowledge the supremacy of " the great king." But the power of the great king himself was beginning to wane. The wars of Assur-bani-pal with Elam exhausted the military resources of Assyria, and the revolt of Babylonia shook the Assyrian empire to its foundations. The revolt was indeed suppressed, and Elam was overrun with fire and sword, the ancient city of Shushan being razed to the ground ; but the victory was bought dearly. Egypt, with the help of Lydia, had freed itself from the Assyrian yoke ; the nomad Skyths, or Manda, as the Babylonians called them, were harassing the eastern frontiers of the empire, and the descendants of Sargon were losing their energy and strength. The prestige of the past, however, still kept the falling empire together, and the government continued to be acknow ledged on the shores of the Mediterranean. As late as B.C. 609 Josiah of Judah still considered himself bound to oppose the march of the Egyptian Pharaoh in the name of his suzerain " the king of Assyria " (2 Kings xxiii. 29). But it is clear from the history of Josiah that the 452 The higher criticism. substance of Assyrian authority had passed away from Palestine. We cannot otherwise explain his occupa tion of the old kingdom of Israel, when he carried out at Beth-el and " in the cities of Samaria " the same religious reforms as those which he had carried out in Judah. Had an Assyrian satrap still held rule in Samaria such high-handed doings on the part of a tributary prince would never have been allowed. But satrap and troops were alike needed nearer home, and what had once been the northern kingdom was left undefended, to be again united to the house of David. Two years after the death of Josiah in defence of his nominal sovereign, Nineveh was captured and destroyed by its enemies. The " bloody city " became a ruinous heap. The Assyrian empire vanished from the earth, and its very existence soon became little more than a name. The oriental world over which it had tyrannised became the fighting-ground of three rival powers — the Babylonians, the Egyptians, and the so-called Medes. For four years Palestine remained in the hands of Egypt. Then came the battle of Carchemish, in which Pharaoh-necho was utterly defeated by Nebu chadrezzar, and driven back to his own country. From this time forward the fortunes of Judah are bound up with those of Babylonia. When the battle of Carchemish was fought, Nebu chadrezzar was not yet king. His father, Nabo- polassar, under whom Babylonia had recovered its independence, was still on the throne. But the news ofthe victory had hardly reached Babylon when the old king died. His successor found himself heir not to a kingdom, but to an empire. ASSYRIAN TESTIMONY. 453 Recent investigations have made it probable that Nebuchadrezzar was by race a Kaldu or Chaldaean, like Merodach-baladan. The Kalda had been a tribe who were settled in the marshes on the shores of the Persian Gulf. It is probable that they belonged to the Semitic race ; but even this is not certain. Except in the prophecies of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, the name of Nebuchadrezzar is mis-spelt in the Hebrew text. In Babylonian it is written Nabium- kudurri-utsur — " O Nebo, defend the landmark !" and the substitution of n for r can be explained only as the error of a copyist. A similar error has been pointed out in another passage of the Old Testament. In the name of Asnapper (Ez. iv. 10), Assyriologists have seen a contracted form of that of Assur-(bani)- pal, with the final / changed into r in accordance with Persian pronunciation. The consistent mis-spelling of the name of Nebu chadrezzar in so many of the Biblical books points to a period when the Babylonian empire had passed away, and the Jewish scribes no longer knew the true pronunciation of the name of the great Baby lonian conqueror. It is somewhat remarkable that the mis-spelling should be found in the Books of Kings, considering that in another case — that of the name of Tiglath-pileser — the spelling implies an exact reproduction of an early document. We must suppose that the text of the Books of Kings has in this parti cular instance been altered so as to make it agree with the text of those later historical books in which the name of Nebuchadrezzar has assumed a misshapen form. Though Nebuchadrezzar has left us many inscrip- 454 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. tions, they all relate to his buildings or to his acts of devotion towards the gods. A mere fragment only has been discovered of his annals. That records the events of his thirty-seventh year (B.C. 568), when he marched against Amasis king of Egypt, and made himself master of the eastern portion of the Delta. Otherwise Nebuchadrezzar stands in marked contrast to the Assyrian kings. While they delighted to describe their campaigns and victories, his chief plea sure is to enumerate the temples he had built and restored, and to utter prayers and praises to the gods of Babylon. The contrast is accentuated by the character of the ruins which Assyria and Babylonia have severally bequeathed to us. In Assyria it is the royal palaces whose remains we discover, in Baby lonia the temples of the gods. It might have been thought that if Nebuchadrezzar had recorded anywhere the history of his Palestinian conquests, it would have been in Syria itself. Three inscriptions cut on the rocks of " the western land " have been found. Two were discovered by a French man, M. Pognon, in the Wadi Brissa, not far from that Riblah of Hamath where the eyes of Zedekiah were put out (Jer. xxxix. 7), the other was discovered on the northern bank of the Nahr el-Kelb, on the Phoenician coast. It was along the valley of the Nahr el-Kelb or " Dog's River," eight miles north of Beyrout, that the great military road of the ancient East once ran. It had been trodden by Egyptian and Assyrian armies as well as by the troops of Babylonia. Ramses II. had erected monuments of himself at its side, and his example had been followed by the Assyrian kings. In 1881 a long inscription ASSYRIAN TESTIMONY. 455 of Nebuchadrezzar was also found there (by Mr. Loytved, the Danish consul) hidden beneath the ferns and creeping plants of a lofty cliff. But such portions of the inscription as were still legible proved to be like the inscriptions of Wadi Brissa, a mere recital of the architectural and religious labours of the Baby lonian monarch. They contain no reference to a Palestinian campaign or to any other historical event. The only passage in them which possesses an interest for the Biblical student is one in which mention is made of " the wine of Helbon." In one of the inscriptions in the Wadi Brissa, it is true, there is allusion to an " enemy " who seems to have been overthrown in the neighbourhood of the Lebanon. But the passage is unfortunately mutilated, and it may after all relate only to the general success of Nebuchadrezzar in war. For our knowledge of the final overthrow of the Davidic monarchy we are still dependent on the Old Testament alone. Here and there, it is true, illus trations of the Biblical narrative may be gleaned from the monuments, but they relate only to inci dental details, not to the general story. Thus we are told in Jer. xxxix. 3, that " all the princes of the king of Babylon came in, and sat in the middle gate (of Jerusalem), even Nergal-sharezer, Samgar-nebo, Sarseehim, Rab-saris, Nergal-sharezer, Rab-mag." Sarsechim, Rab-saris, and Rab-mag are titles, and it is probable that they have been misplaced in the text, Sarsechim originally standing between Nergal- sharezer and Samgar-nebo. As we have seen, Mr. Pinches has discovered the Assyrian or Babylonian forrn of the title Rab-saris— Rabu-sa-resu or " Chief 456 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. ofthe Heads "—and to the same scholar we owe the recovery of the Assyrian form of the title Rab-mag. It was Rab-mugi, and denoted the Chief Physician who was attached to the king.1 Nergal-sharezer the Sarsechim or " Prince of the nobles," is probably the usurper who murdered his brother-in-law, Evil-Merodach, in B.C. 559, and seized the crown. But this was subsequent to the time when the Books of Kings come to a close. Nebuchadrezzar had died in B.C. 661, and his son had succeeded to the heritage of the mighty empire he had founded. It would seem, therefore, that the Biblical writer brought his task to an end in B.C. 660. Evil-Merodach was already on the throne, but his as sassination had not yet taken place. His act of kind ness to the exiled Jewish king is all that is recorded of him. It is, however, sufficient to date the compila tion ofthe Books of Kings, and it brings the history of royal Judah down to its pathetic termination. The blind Zedekiah was doubtless dead, since his name is no longer mentioned ; and Jehoiachin, the last of the line of David who had sat on the throne, had spent nearly thirty-eight out ofthe fifty-six years of his life in a Babylonian prison. It may be that the murder of his friend and benefactor brought with it the death of Jehoiachin as well ; at any rate, the writer of the Books of Kings can tell us nothing more. 1 "Records ofthe Past," New Series, ii. p. 182. CHAPTER X. THE LATER HISTORICAL BOOKS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. WHETHER we are " higher critics " or not, we cannot fail to be struck by the ecclesiastical tone of the Books of the Chronicles. From the beginning of the Books to their end a single object is kept steadily in view, and that object is the growth and consum mation of the Israelitish theocracy. We have only to compare the Books of Kings with the Books of the Chronicles to see how wide is the difference between them. In the one it is the history of Israel and Judah in the royal period that is set before us ; in the other, it is rather the history of the temple and the temple services. The history of the northern kingdom whose seats of worship were else where than at Jerusalem, is put aside as valueless, and the history of Judah alone is given in detail. But even here the Chronicler dwells rather on the liturgical observances of the Jewish kings than upon their secular policy, and the civil history of Judah is made use of to point the moral that observance of the Levitical laws brought with it prosperity, while disaster followed upon their neglect. There is another fact which ought also to strike us, 458 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. At times the Chronicler refers to earlier documents which are not alluded to elsewhere in the Old Testa ment, and gives us information about secular events which supplements the statements of the Books of Kings. Thus, quite at the outset of the work, we find an account, almost unintelligible in its present form, to which is attached the statement " And these are ancient things," or rather "ancient words" (i Chron. iv. 22), while in a later chapter the acts of Jehoshaphat are said to have been " written in the Book of Jehu, the son of Hanani, who is mentioned in the Book of the Kings of Israel" (2 Chron. xx. 31). It has been questioned whether the writings referred to were ever actually seen and consulted by the Chronicler, and doubt has been cast upon the narratives of political events which are supplementary to what we read in the Books of Kings. But there is one case in which oriental archaeology enables us to test the trustworthiness of these supplementary narratives, and in this case, as Professor Schrader has pointed out, the suspicions of the higher criticism have been shown to be unfounded. Manasseh, it is stated by the Chronicler, was carried in chains to Babylon by the king of Assyria, and subsequently allowed to return to his own land. The fact that the Assyrian king carried the Jewish prince to Babylon instead of Nineveh seemed to militate decisively against the truth of the story. The cuneiform in scriptions, however, have set the matter in a new light. We have learned from them that Esar-haddon, the contemporary of Manasseh, was king of Baby lonia as well as of Assyria, and that he was also the restorer of Babylon, thus reversing the policy of his HISTORICAL BOOKS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 459 father, Sennacherib. Sennacherib had crushed the Babylonians with fire and sword, and razed their capital to the ground. Esar-haddon, on the contrary, endeavoured to conciliate his Babylonian subjects ; he rebuilt the ruined capital of the country, and pro bably resided there from time to time. At his death the empire was divided between his two sons, Samas- sum-yukin receiving Babylonia, while Assyria and the other provinces of the empire fell to Assur-bani- pal. Babylonia, however, still continued subject to Assyria, and a time came when its vassal king raised a revolt against his brother. Among those whom he induced to rebel with him were the kings of Syria and Palestine. One of these kings would have been Manasseh of Judah. The revolt was, however, suppressed in both west and east, and the authority of Assyria was re established in Syria as well as in Babylon. This re-establishment of the Assyrian power would have fallen towards the end of Manasseh's long reign. What more likely, therefore, than that the disaffected Jewish prince was punished, like so many other princes of his time, by being led away into captivity ? After the suppression of the Babylonian revolt and the death of his rebel brother, Assur-bani-pal pro bably imitated the example of his predecessors and visited Babylon in person. There is, indeed, a passage in his annals which seems to imply as much. Here he tells us that after removing the corpses of the rebels from the midst of Babylon, Cutha and Sippara, and piling them in heaps, " in accordance with pro phecies I cleansed the mercy-seats of their temples, I purified their chief places of prayer. I appeased 460 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. their angered gods and their wrathful goddesses with supplications and penitential psalms. Their daily sacrifices which they had discontinued I restored and established as they had been of old. As for the rest of the sons of Babylon, Cutha and Sippara, who had fled at the stroke of slaughter and destruction, I had mercy upon them, I proclaimed an amnesty to them, I let them live in Babylon. The men of Accad along with the Chaldaeans, the Aramaeans and the Marsh- men whom Samas-sum-yukin had led away and united in one conspiracy, who revolted against me by their own decision, I trod down to the uttermost part of their borders by the command of Assur, Beltis, and the great gods my helpers ; the yoke of Assur which they had shaken off I laid upon them. I appointed over them governors and sub-prefects, the creation of my own hands." Professor Schrader reminds us that when Sargon conquered Babylon, the ambassadors of the seven kings of Cyprus, who had come to him with presents, were received, not in Nineveh, but in the conquered city. If, then, the revolt of Manasseh had been put down at the same time as the revolt of Babylon, Babylon would have been the most natural place to which the Jewish king could have been brought. Assur-bani-pal would have been there rather than in Nineveh, cleansing the temples of the gods, in augurating divine services, and establishing the future government of the country. But another objection has been raised against the narrative of Manasseh's exile. It has been urged that a foreign prince, who had once been convicted of the crime of rebellion and had been carried in chains Historical books of the old Testament. 461 to the presence of "the great king," would never have been again restored to his throne. Such an objection, however, falls away before the plain state ments of the Assyrian inscriptions. More than once do we hear of similar cases. Assur-bani-pal himself had caused Necho the Egyptian king of Sais to be deposed and brought to Nineveh in "iron chains," and yet a little later he allowed him to return to Egypt and assume once more his royal powers. What happened to Necho could happen also to Manasseh. We can draw a conclusion of some moment from this vindication of the account given us by the Chronicler of the captivity of Manasseh. We have no right to reject as unhistorical a narrative which is found only in the Books of the Chronicles, merely because there are no traces of it in the Books of Kings. On the contrary, as it has been proved that one of these narratives is in strict accordance with historical facts, we may assume that in other instances also we should find the same accordance if only the monumental testimony were at hand. This conclusion leads on to another. A narrative like that of the captivity of Manasseh must have been extracted from some more or less contemporary document which was not used by the compiler of the Books of Kings. Consequently the Chronicler was not confined to the Books of Kings and the writings of the canonical prophets for the sources of his history, and we can thus accept with confidence the claim he makes to the employment of other means of information. We can accordingly grant him a much higher 462 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. degree of historical trustworthiness than critics have of late years been disposed to allow. But at the same time oriental archaeology makes it clear that his statements are not always exact. We cannot follow him with the same confidence as that with which we should follow the author of the Books of Kings. His use of the documents which lay before him was uncritical ; the inferences he drew from his materials were not always sound, and he makes them subserve the theory on which his work is based. Two examples will be sufficient to prove the truth of this. We have seen that Pul and Tiglath-pileser were one and the same person. Pul was the original name of the Assyrian king, and it was the name he con tinued always to bear among Babylonian, as opposed to Assyrian, writers. He is mentioned in the Books of Kings under both names. But the passages in which the different names occur are separated from one another, and the one in which the king is called Pul may be regarded as emanating from a Babylonian source. Whether or not the compiler of the Books of Kings knew that the two names alike belonged to the same monarch, we do not know ; there is nothing in his narrative which implies that he was aware of the fact, but there is equally nothing which implies his ignorance of it. When we turn to the Chronicler, however, there is a change. The Chronicler tells us deliberately that Pul and Tilgath-pilneser, as the name is mis spelt, were distinct one from the other. In 1 Chr. v. 26 it is said that "the God of Israel stirred up the spirit of Pul king of Assyria, and the spirit of HISTORICAL BOOKS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 463 Tilgath-pilneser king of Assyria," to carry certain of the tribes of the northern kingdom into captivity. It is evident that the Chronicler had no authority for the statement except what he had read in the Books of Kings, and it is also evident that he drew from them the same erroneous inferences as those drawn by subsequent commentators down to the time when the cuneiform inscriptions of Assyria were discovered and deciphered. The mis-spelling of the name of Tiglath-pileser, moreover, shows how carelessly he could at times repeat his authorities. The second example is one of which we have abundant illustration. The Chronicler displays that partiality for large numbers which is still character istic of the Oriental. During the war between Ahaz and the kings of Damascus and Samaria, 120,000 fighting-men of Judah are declared to have fallen "in one day," while the army of Uzziah is said to have consisted of 300,750 men under 2600 generals. We have only to compare these numbers with the ciphers given in the Assyrian texts to be assured of their groundlessness. When Ahab came to the help of the Syrians he could muster no more than 10,000 men and 2000 chariots, while Damascus itself could provide only 20,000 foot-soldiers, and Shalmaneser does not claim to have slain more than 14,000 men out of the whole combined army of his enemies. Assur-natsir-pal thinks it a subject of boasting that he had slain 50 or 172 of the enemy in battle, and even in his war with Komagene he does not pretend that more than 2800 men fell in fight. But the annals of Sennacherib enable us to determine ap proximately what was the amount of the population 464 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. in Judah during the royal period. When Sennacherib had overrun the whole country outside the walls of Jerusalem, and was carrying the inhabitants of it into exile, they did not exceed 200,150 all told, men, "women, and children together. The Assyrian kings were not likely to underrate the number of their conquered foes, Sennacherib least of all. Nor was the case different when Samaria was captured by Sargon. The Samaritans who were led into captivity were only 27,280 in number, and yet Samaria had been a more powerful state than Jerusalem. The consistent exaggeration of numbers on the part of the Chronicler shows us that from a historical point of view his unsupported statements must be received with caution. But they do not justify the accusations of deliberate fraud and "fiction" which have been brought against him. What they prove is that he did not possess that sense of historical exactitude which we now demand from the historian. He wrote, in fact, with a didactic and not with a historical purpose. That he should have used the framework of history to illustrate the lessons he wished to draw was as much an accident as that Sir Walter Scott should have based certain of his novels on the facts of mediaeval history. .He cared as little for history in the modern European sense of the word as the Oriental of to-day, who considers himself at liberty to embellish or modify the narrative he is repeating in accordance with his fancy or the moral he wishes to draw from it. In dealing, therefore, with the picture of Jewish history presented by the Chronicler, we must con stantly keep in mind its personal and idealistic HISTORICAL BOOKS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 465 character. We must remember that it has been coloured by the religious theory of the writer, to which all else has been made subordinate. Uncritical conclusions have been drawn from imperfect materials, and historical facts have been considered of value, not in so far as they represent exactly what has happened in the past, but in so far as they can be made to teach a theological or moral lesson. We thus have in the Books of the Chronicles the first beginnings of that transformation of history into Haggadah, which is so conspicuous in later Jewish literature. The history, which is a parable for our instruction, tends to make way for the parable itself. Nevertheless, as we have seen, there is all the difference in the world between a cautious acceptance of the unsupported statements of the Chronicler and a rejection of them altogether. The corroboration of his account of Manasseh's captivity proves that they are not " fictions " ; he had authority for the facts he has recorded, even though the facts have not been critically handled, or have been modified and added to in the interests of a theory. The narrative of the invasion of Judah by Zerah the Ethiopian is a signal instance of the hastiness of modern criticism in depriving the Chronicler of any independent historical authority, as well as an illustra tion of his method of work. It falls chronologically, as we have seen, during the reign of Osorkon II. of Egypt, and we may gather from the inscription of this Pharaoh found by Mr. Naville among the ruins of Bubastis, that his armies had defeated the natives of Palestine, if not of Syria. He there asserts that "all countries, the Upper and the Lower Retennu, H H 466 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. have been thrown under his feet." 1 In the language of the Egyptian texts, it must be remembered, the "Upper Retennu" signified Palestine, the "Lower Retennu " Northern Syria. We may therefore conclude that the Chronicler had historical authority for his account of Zerah's invasion of Palestine, just as he had for his account of the captivity of Manasseh. But in his treatment of the account he illustrates the amount and nature of the historical accuracy which we are to expect from him. Apart from the mis-spelling of the name of the Egyptian king, which shows only that the narrative was derived from a Palestinian and not from an Egyptian source, the title given to Zerah is inaccurate. He is called " the Ethiopian," and his troops are called " Ethiopians." Either the Chronicler himself, or the source from which he quotes, has drawn an incorrect conclusion from imperfect pre mises, and referred to the age of the Twenty-second Egyptian dynasty a political condition of affairs which was applicable only to the age of the later Ethiopian dynasty. Nearly two centuries had to elapse before Egypt was ruled by Ethiopian con querors and an Ethiopian army could march out of it against the land of Judah. What was true of So and Tirhakah was not true of Zerah ; and while the Books of Kings are correct in calling Tirhakah " king of Ethiopia," the Books of the Chronicles are in error in giving the same title to the Egyptian Zerah. The account of Zerah's invasion, moreover, begins with that numerical exaggeration which is character- 1 " Bubastis : Eighth Memoir of the Egypt Exploration Fund." By E. NaVille (1891), p. 51. HISTORICAL BOOKS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 467 istic of the Chronicler. He tells us that Zerah came against Asa with "an host of an hundred thousand," while the Jewish king himself had an army of five hundred and eighty thousand, the little tribe of Benjamin alone, with its petty territory, supplying no less than "two hundred and fourscore thousand" men. It is clear that although we may accept the otherwise unsupported narratives of the Chronicler in their general outlines, the details they contain must be submitted to criticism. We must ever bear in mind that in the Books of the Chronicles we have to look for Haggadah rather than for history in the modern sense of the word. From time to time we find the Chronicler recording the same events as those which are narrated in the Books of Kings, but mentioning places and peoples which are not referred to in the latter books. Thus we are told that Uzziah fought successfully against the Philistines, as well as against " the Arabians that dwelt in Gur-baal and the Mehunims.'' It may be asked whether these additions to what we read in the Books of Kings are to be regarded as belonging to the details or to the general outline of the narratives in which they occur ? The account of the war of the Syrians and Israelites against Judah in the reign of Ahaz affords an answer to this question. We are there told that the Syrians and Israelites were not alone in their attack upon the kingdom of Ahaz. It was also invaded from the south by the Edomites as well as by the Philistines. The fragmentary annals of Tiglath-pileser III. furnish an indirect corroboration of this statement. We learn from them that, on taking up the quarrel of 468 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. his Jewish vassal, Tiglath-pileser marched not only against Damascus and Samaria, but also against Hanno of Gaza. Gaza therefore must have joined the confederacy which had been formed to overthrow Judah, and Gazi at the time seems to have been the leading Philistine state. As for the Edomites, we know from the Books of Kings (2 Kings xvi. 6) that the Syrians expelled the subjects of Ahaz from Elath on the Gulf of Aqabah, and they could not have done this without Edomite help. The way to Elath lay through Edomite territory. We may, then, consider the notices by the Chronicler of nations whose names are not mentioned in the Books of Kings as worthy of full credit. Even the " Mehunims," of whom Uzziah is said to have been the conqueror, have had light cast upon them by oriental archaeology. Prof. Hommel and Dr. Glaser see in them the Minaeans of Southern Arabia, whose power extended at one time as far north as Gaza, and who have left memorials of themselves in the neigh bourhood of Teima, the Tema of the Old Testament. The " Mehunims," or " Maonites," are referred to in another passage ofthe Chronicles (1 Chron. iv. 41), as well as in the Book of Judges (x. 12). As the power of the Minaeans waned before that of Saba, or Sheba, any notice of their presence on the borders of Palestine must go back to a considerable antiquity. If, there fore, their identification with the Mehunim of the Chronicler is correct, the reference to them bears the stamp of contemporaneous authenticity. From the Books of the Chronicles we should pass naturally to the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah, more especially if the opinion can be sustained which HISTORICAL BOOKS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 469 assigns the compilation of all these books to one and the same hand. But from the archaeological and monumental point of view the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah belong to the same period as the Book of Daniel, and it will accordingly be more convenient to defer any consideration of them until we come to deal with the narratives of Daniel. The return ofthe Jews from their exile in Babylonia is so closely bound up with the history of the rise and fall of the Babylonian empire as to make it difficult to treat of the one without at the same time treating of the other. Cyrus was the successor of Nebuchadrezzar and Nabonidos, and we cannot understand the motives of the policy which allowed the Jewish captives to return to thejr own land and there rebuild the temple of their fathers without first understanding the causes which made Cyrus the master of Babylon. The Book of Esther stands on a different footing. It carries us on to a time when the Persian king was undisputed lord of the oriental world and the ancient power of Babylonia had become a thing of the past. In Ahasuerus, as has long been recognised, we have the Xerxes of the Greek historians, and the scene of the story must be laid at some period subsequent to that of the Greek campaign. Of the three capitals of the empire, Shushan or Susa was the one in which Ahasuerus was holding his court at the time when the book opens. The names of those about him, as far as they can be interpreted, are all Persian, with two exceptions. The names of Mordecai and Esther are Babylonian in origin. Mordecai is the Babylonian Marduka " devoted to Merodach " ; Esther is " Istar," the name 470 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. of the great Babylonian goddess, who became Ash toreth in the West. More than one inference can be drawn from this fact. On the one hand, it is clear that Jews who still held fast to the worship of their national God, were nevertheless not averse to being called after the names of the Babylonian deities. In the contract-tablets which have been discovered under the soil of Babylonia we occasionally find the names of Jews, and in some instances these Jews are associ ated with persons evidently of the same nationality but who have adopted, if not the beliefs, at all events the divine names of the Babylonian religion. Thus we have the name of Bel-Yahu, " Bel is Yahveh," a very pronounced assertion that the national gods of Babylonia and Judaea were one and the same. Bel- Yahu was the ancestor of Nergal-ebus " the god Nergal has made," the father of Ea-bani " the god Ea has created." At a later date we meet with the names of Gamar-ya'ava, Natanu-ya'ava, Subunu- ya'ava, and Aqabi-yava, in which Mr. Pinches was the first to point out that we have the full form of the name of Yahveh.1 Gamar-ya'ava or Gamariah is associated with Barikia or" Berechiah, Samas-iriba (" the Sun-god has descended ") and others as witness to the sale of a slave by Sa-Nabu-duppu (" Nebo's is the tablet "), the son of Nabu-sarra-utsur (" O Nebo, defend the king!"), and it is a curious coincidence that the scribe who drew up the deed of sale was called Marduka or Mordechai.2 1 See Pinches in the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, Nov. i, 1892, pp. 13 — 15. 2 Pinches in the " Records of the Past," New Series, iv. pp. 104 sqq. It must be remembered, however, that the author of the HISTORICAL BOOKS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 47 1 A second inference which may be drawn from the names of two of the chief actors in the history of Esther is that Babylonia rather than Susa was the home of the writer who has recorded it, or at any rate of the sources from which it has been derived. Mordecai and Esther may have been settled in Elam, but their names show that they had first been settled in Babylonia. At the same time it is pretty certain that the name of Esther without any qualifying addition could not have been a personal name. It must have formed part of a compound in order to become the name of a woman. Either, therefore, the qualifying portion of the compound has been dropped, or else the name must at the outset have signified the goddess and not a human being. In this latter case the woman Esther can have had no existence save in the imagination of a Jewish writer, and the identification of Hadassah with the old Babylonian goddess Istar would have been the work of an age which had forgotten who Istar was. At any rate, whatever be the view we adopt, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that a Jewish author who made Mordechai and Esther the hero and heroine of his Book of Tobit was acquainted with a version of the quarrel between Haman and Mordechai which is entirely different from that which we have in the Book of Esther, and that in place of Mordechai we find the name of Achiacharus, the nephew of Tobit and the cupbearer of Esarhaddon (Tob. xiv. 10. " Re member, my son, how Aman handled Achiacharus that brought him up, how out of light he brought him into darkness, and how he rewarded him again ; yet Achiacharus was saved, but the other had his reward ; for he went down into darkness. Manas- ses gave alms, and escaped the snares of death which they had set for him ; but Aman fell into the snare and perished.") 472 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. story could not have had a very distinct idea of what these names actually meant. They must have come to him through the mist of antiquity, it may be through oral tradition, and ofthe Babylonian language he himself could have known nothing. But the names of Mordechai and Esther are not the only indications of Babylonian influence upon the language of the Book of Esther. In ix. 26 we meet with the word 'iggereth "a letter.'- 'Iggereth, which also occurs in the Book of Nehemiah, is the Assyrian egirtu, the term applied to " a letter " as opposed to a duppu or " tablet." It is probable that it made its way into Persia after the Persian conquest of Babylon, as we know that duppu did. From Persian it would have passed to the language of the later books of the Old Testament. How largely this language was affected by Persian is illustrated by the Book of Esther. Numerous words of Persian origin are to be found in it. Apart from the mysterious Purim, the etymology of which is still an unsolved problem, we come across words like pathshegen " a copy " (iii. 14, iv. 8, viii. 13), the Persian pati-thagana "correspond ent," and akhashteranim "royal" (not "camels" as in the Authorised Version of viii. 10, 14), from the Persian khshatram " a crown " with the adjectival termination dtia. Kshatram is also the source of kether "a crown" (i. 11, ii. 17, vi. 8), as it is of the Greek Kibapts, and karpas " cotton " in the first chapter (i. 6) claims connection with the Sanskrit karpdsa and the Greek Kapnacros. Reference is more than once made to " the book of the chronicles of the kings of Media and Persia," or, as it is also called, " the book of records of the HISTORICAL BOOKS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 473 chronicles" (ii. 23, vi. 1, x. 2 ; see also ix. 32). The mention of these chronicles reminds us of the " parch ment" archives of the Persian kingdom which Ktesias the Greek historian consulted, and from whence he asserted that he derived his accounts of Assyrian and Persian history. These accounts, so far as they have been preserved, are little more than historical romances ; the proper names are exact, though they may not always belong to the same age as the scene of the story in which they occur, but the narrative itself resembles the Haggadah of the Jews rather than sober history. Now it is impossible to read these stories of Ktesias side by side with the Book of Esther without being struck by their startling resem blance, at all events in general character. The scenery in both is Persian with a Babylonian background ; the proper names are partly Persian, partly Babylonian ; and just as the name of the Babylonian goddess Istar becomes the personal name Esther, so the Babylonian Moon-god Nannar appears in the frag ments of Ktesias as the satrap Nannaros. The curious exaggerations and improbabilities of the nar rative of Esther find their counterpart in the semi- historical legends of Ktesias. Thus Ahasuerus or Xerxes is said to have ruled over 127 provinces, the stake on which Haman was impaled was fifty cubits or seventy-five feet high, and the number of Persians slain by the Jews amounted to 75,000. In fact, the story of the massacre of the Persians sounds like an echo ofthe massacre of the Magians after the revolu tion which gave Darius his throne ; it seems almost incredible that a Persian king could have issued an edict to Haman for the massacre of the Jews, and 474 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. then, instead of rescinding it, have arranged a civil war among his own subjects. It is equally difficult to believe that Haman could have given the Jews so long a notice as from nine to eleven months (iii. 12) of his intention to destroy them without their quitting the kingdom, or that he could have been ignorant of the Jewish parentage of Esther. The long interval of time that elapsed between the divorce of Vashti and the marriage of Esther is similarly improbable ; while the cause of the divorce would have aroused the strongest feelings in Persia against Xerxes, his summons to his wife that she should leave the harem and show herself publicly at a carouse being a violation of all Persian modes of thought. The narrative implies that Vashti and Esther were the legitimate wives of " the great king " ; otherwise there would be no point in the stress laid upon the fact that Esther was made queen in the place of Vashti (i. 19, ii. 4). The only wife of Xerxes, how ever, known to history was Amestris, who was married to him before the third, year of his reign, and who continued queen until his death. Either, there fore, Esther must be identified with Amestris, or else we must consider Amestris to have been reduplicated under the variant forms of Vashti and Esther. In either case the historical character of the Book of Esther is invalidated. Apart from the cruelty for which Amestris was distinguished, and which agrees but ill with what we are told about the Jewish orphan, a Persian king was not allowed to marry outside the seven chief Persian houses, to which accordingly Amestris belonged. Esther, on the other hand, was not a Persian, much less a member of the Persian HISTORICAL BOOKS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 475 aristocracy. To suppose that she was not "queen," but one of the many illegitimate wives Xerxes may have had, is contrary to the narrative in the Book of Esther, which states explicitly that she was " queen," and it is upon this fact that the plot of the story is made to turn. Only one conclusion consequently seems to be possible : the story of Esther is an example of Jewish Haggadah which has been founded upon one of those semi-historical tales of which the Persian chronicles seem to have been full. Of the remaining books of the Old Testament the oriental archaeologist has but little to say. The prophets, indeed, have bequeathed to us documents of the highest historical value ; sometimes it is a detailed fragment of history which they have recorded for us, sometimes it is an allusion to some single contemporaneous event. But in most cases such fragments of history have already been noticed ; they have found their place in that general history of the Hebrew people upon which the monuments of the past have shed such light. Here and there, however, we come across passages which have been illuminated by the progress of oriental research, but which do not fit into the continuous history of Israel. Thus in the Book of Proverbs there are two statements, the importance and true signification of which can now be realised for the first time. The twenty-fifth chapter of the book is prefaced by the words, " These are also proverbs of Solomon which the men of Hezekiah king of Judah copied out." The words point to the existence in Jerusalem of a library similar to those which were established in the cities of Babylonia and Assyria. The vassalage of Judah 476 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. to the king of Assyria in the reign of Ahaz had necessarily led to the introduction of Assyrian culture and science into Jerusalem. Ahaz himself had led the way. In the court of the palace he had erected a sun-dial, a copy of the gnomons which had been used for centuries in the civilised kingdoms ofthe Euphrates and the Tigris. But the erection of the sun-dial was not the only sign of Assyrian influence. The most striking feature of Assyrian and Babylonian culture were the libraries where scribes were kept constantly employed, not only in writing and compiling new books, but in copying and re-editing older ones. The " men of Hezekiah " who " copied out " the proverbs of Solomon performed duties exactly similar to the royal scribes of Nineveh. They imply the existence at Jerusalem of a royal or public library which resembled those of Assyria, where the past literature of the country was preserved and stored. When and by whom it had been formed we do not know ; what is certain is that it existed. The literature with which the libraries of Assyria were filled was not limited to that of Assyria itself. On the contrary, a large part of it was derived from the sister-kingdom of Babylonia. Indeed, among the most precious spoils of a Babylonian city were the books of its library, of which no copy had previously existed in Nineveh. Nothing seems to have been despised ; even a list of the plants grown in the gardens of the Chaldaean usurper, Merodach-baladan, found its way. into the great library of Nineveh. What happened in Assyria we may reasonably expect to have happened also in Judah in the days when Assyrian influence was strong. Here too there HISTORICAL BOOKS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 477 had been a sister-kingdom, that of Samaria, which had possessed its prophets and writers. Some of their works at least would have probably found a place in the library where " the men of Hezekiah " were employed in re-editing ancient texts. That such was actually the case is testified by the Book of Hosea. Hosea was a northern prophet, and his prophecies were delivered to the rulers and the inhabitants of Samaria. But they have undergone a revision in Judah ; in other words, they have passed through the hands of Jewish editors. Even the introduction which assigns to them their date names the contemporaneous kings of Judah rather than those of Israel (Hos. i. 1), and there are passages where the context shows that the name of Judah has been substituted for that of Israel (e.g. viii. 14). Perhaps there are other passages where the prophecy has been adapted to the needs of Judah by the insertion of words which refer to the southern kingdom. Whether the library of Hezekiah contained other literature besides that of Samaria cannot be proved. But it is not improbable that it did. The list ofthe Edomite kings, given in the thirty-sixth chapter of Genesis, for instance, may have been derived from a document preserved in it, and if the Book of Job — or rather its Edomite original — is older than the age of the Exile, it may also have been a work which was edited, and as it were Hebraised, by the Jewish scribes. All this is possible, and the possibility should not be neglected by literary criticism. It has often been remarked that the prophecies of Isaiah exhibit a wide acquaintanceship with the earlier literature of his country. Here and there they contain 478 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. passages which are quoted from older prophets and adapted to the occasion for which he needed them. "The burden, of Moab" (ch. xv., xvi.) is a notable example of this. It breaks off in the middle of a sentence, and the prophet adds : " This is the word which the Lord spake concerning Moab long ago. But now the Lord hath spoken " again, this time defining the period within which the predictions uttered " long ago " should come to pass. When we remember that Isaiah was one of the advisers of Hezekiah, and that he played a leading part in the politics of the day, we naturally conclude that the older prophecies which he used so freely formed part of the literature of the royal library. We have in them fragments of the literary works which lay before the prophet and his contemporaries. Indeed it may be that Isaiah was himself the son of one of the scribes who were attached to the library of the king. A seal belonging to Dr. Grant-Bey of Cairo has upon it, in Hebrew letters of the period before the Exile, the name of " Amoz the scribe." Amoz was also the name of the father of Isaiah, and as the name does not seem to have been a very common one, it is possible that the father of the prophet and the scribe of the seal were one and the same. There is another statement in the Book of Proverbs which has received light from the decipherment of the cuneiform monuments. This is to be found in the first verse of the thirty-first chapter, where the true signification of the verse has been disguised in the Authorised Version by an incorrect translation. The verse should be rendered : " The words of Lemuel the king of Massa which his mother taught him." HISTORICAL BOOKS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 479 Massa is mentioned in Gen. xxv. 14 among the sons of Ishmael, and is there associated with the Nabathaeans, the Kedarites, and the people of Dumah and Tema. In Gen. x. 23 Mash is, along with Uz, one of the four sons of Aram. Modern epigraphic discovery has fully confirmed the accuracy of the latter assertion. The Nabathaean and other inscriptions found on the rocks and tombs of Northern Arabia have shown that the older language of the country was Aramaic. It was not until the followers of Mohammed swept north ward and eastward, carrying with them the sword and language of Islam, that Arabic, as we now term it, became the language of the northern portion of the peninsula. In the days, not only of the Old Testament, but of the New Testament as well, the speech of the descendants of Ishmael was still for the most part that of Aram. It is possible that Mesha also, the western limit of the children of Joktan (Gen. x. 30), was identical with Massa and Mash. However that may be, there is frequent mention of the latter country in the cunei form inscriptions. It corresponded roughly with the Arabia Petraea of the geographers. It was the desert district which stretched away eastward and southward of Babylonia. The "country of Mas" is already alluded to in the great Chaldaean Epic of Gilgames, and it was through the desert of Mas that Esar- haddon led his army in his expedition against the tribes of Central Arabia. In the pre-Semitic period of Babylonia it gave its name to the copper which was brought from it ; a Sumerian name of the metal being ki-mas, literally " (of) the land of Mas," which was borrowed subsequently by the Semites under the 480 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. form of kemassu. In the inscriptions of Tiglath- pileser III. and Assur-bani-pal, one of the tribes which inhabited this land of Mas is frequently called the tribe of Ma'sa. That the proverbs of a king of Massa should be included in the literature of the Old Testament is of interest from several points of view. On the one hand it makes it clear that the books with which the library of Jerusalem was stored were not confined to the works of Jewish or Israelitish authors. On the other hand it indicates that the language spoken in Massa was not very dissimilar from that spoken in Palestine. All this increases the probability that in the Book of Job we have a genuine specimen of North Arabian or Edomite literature which has passed through the hands of Jewish editors. This would explain to a large extent the philological difficulties that meet us in the book. We should expect to find in it idioms and syntactical constructions which are different from those of Hebrew, as well as words which are either foreign to the Hebrew lexicon or else used in other senses than those attached to them in Hebrew. That Hebrew, the " language of Canaan," was spoken with slight dialectical variations beyond the boundaries of Canaan we know from the Moabite Stone, and the Edomite proper names which have been preserved make it probable that the language of Edom also was substantially that of Judah. On the other hand Uz was not only the son of Aram and the brother of Massa ; we learn from the Book of Lamentations (iv. 21) that Uz was further a district of Edom. If we pass from the Book of Proverbs to the HISTORICAL BOOKS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 48 1 writings of the prophets we shall find abundant examples of the debt which historical criticism owes to the revelations of the ancient monuments. The date of Nahum, for instance, has thus been approxi mately fixed. In his denunciation of Nineveh the prophet asks : " Art thou better than No-Amon ? . . . Yet was she carried away, she went into captivity : her young children also were dashed in pieces at the top of all the streets " (Nah. iii. 8, 10). No-Amon, "the No of Arnon," called Ni in the Assyrian inscrip tions, was Thebes in Upper Egypt, whose protecting divinity was Arnon, the god to whom the great temple of Karnak was dedicated. The sack of Thebes to which Nahum makes reference is described upon the Assyrian monuments. Egypt had revolted from Assyria under Urdaman the son of Tirhakah, and summary vengeance was accordingly taken by the Assyrian generals. Ni or Thebes, in which Urdaman had taken refuge, was captured, and "swept like a deluge." Its temples were destroyed, its inhabitants enslaved, and its treasures carried away to Assyria. Among other objects two obelisks which had stood at "the entrance ofthe temple," and which were 2500 talents in weight, were transported as trophies of war to Nineveh. All this happened during the early part ofthe reign of Assur-bani-pal, about B.C. 665, and the memory of the destruction of the ancient capital of Egypt must have been still fresh in the minds of the neighbouring populations when the Hebrew prophet referred to it. The date of his prophecy, therefore, cannot have been much later than B.C. 660 ; nor could it have been earlier than B.C. 666. It is probable that Professor Schrader is right in 482 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. the explanation he gives of another passage in the minor prophets. In Hos. x. 14 we read that the fortresses of Ephraim are to be spoiled, " as Shalman spoiled Beth-Arbel in the day of battle." It has usually been assumed that in Shalman we are to see the name of some Assyrian king or general, while Beth-Arbel has often been identified with the Assyrian city of Arbela. But though the name of more than one king of Assyria is compounded with that of the god Sulman or Sallimannu, the god of "peace," we find none which consists of the divine name alone. For this we have to look to the West. Apart from Shelomoh or Solomon of Israel, the Assyrian texts make us acquainted with a 'Salamanu king of Moab. This 'Salamanu or Solomon was a tributary of Tiglath- pileser III. and consequently a contemporary of Hosea. It is probable therefore that he is the Shalman to whose recent attack upon Israel the prophet alludes, more especially as Beth-Arbel was the name of an Israelitish townvnear Pella on the eastern side of the Jordan, and thus in the line of Moabite invasion. There is yet another passage upon which the cuneiform records have thrown light. In Obad. 20 it is said that the captives of Jerusalem were "in Sepharad." Sepharad is the 'Saparda of the cuneiform inscriptions which we first hear of in connection with the closing days of the Assyrian empire. Its enemies were gathering against it from the north-east, and a hundred days and nights of prayer to the Sun-god were enjoined by the prophets in order that he might " remove the sin " of the people and deliver Nineveh from its foes. These foes consisted of Kastarit of HISTORICAL BOOKS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 483 Karu-kassi, Mamiti-arsu of the Medes, the Gimirra or Kimmerians, and the people of the Minni and of 'Saparda. The Medes lay to the east of the Minni, who again were the eastern neighbours of Ararat, while the Kimmerian hordes had established them selves in the north and west of Asia Minor. We have therefore to look for the land of 'Saparda in the same direction. Its precise situation has lately been made known to us by a cuneiform tablet published by Dr. Strass- maier.1 It is one of the numerous astronomical tablets which belong to the era of the Seleukid and Arsakid dynasties, and have been brought to the British Museum from Babylonia. It is dated in "the thirty-seventh year of Antiochus and Seleucus the kings," that is to say in B.C. 275. In the previous year it is stated that the king had collected his troops and marched to the country of 'Saparda. Here Antiochus left a garrison in order to face the Egyptian army at the ford of the river. It was not until the following year that " the royal body-guard, which had gone to 'Saparda the year before to meet the king, returned to Seleucia the royal city which lies upon the Tigris." Classical history informs us that the campaign in 'Saparda here referred to was a campaign in Bithynia and Galatia. Here then was the land of Sepharad to which the captives of Jerusalem were brought. The fact points to a comparatively late date, since neither the Assyrians nor the Babylonians held possession of this northern portion of Asia Minor. It formed part, however, of the empire of Cyrus which was re- 1 Zeitschrift fur Assyriologie, vi. 3, pp. 235, 236. 484 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. conquered by Darius Hystaspis. Darius organized it into a satrapy, and in his inscriptions it is named between the satrapies of Kappadokia in Eastern Asia Minor and Ionia in the West. The northern confederacy which threatened Assyria in the, days of Esar-haddon II., and of which Kastarit or Kyaxares was the head, clears up certain passages in the prophecies of Jeremiah which have hitherto puzzled the commentator. In "the judgment of Babylon " the nations who are called upon to over throw the city of the oppressor are neither Elam nor Persia, but the Medes and " the kingdoms of Ararat, Minni and Ashkenaz" (li. 11, 27, 28). The Medes, moreover, are not the Medes of the classical writers, the Manda or "Nomads" of the cuneiform texts, but the Mada, the true " Medes " of the Assyrian in scriptions. This is evident, partly because they are associated with the nations of the north, and not with Elam, partly because they are spoken of as governed by " kings " and not by a single monarch. The Manda of Ekbatana were under a single ruler ; the Medes proper, on the other hand, as we know from the monuments, obeyed a number of different princes. The kingdom of Minni adjoined that of Ararat on the south-east. Ararat, as we have seen, was the name given by the Assyrians and Hebrews to the country called Biainas in the native inscriptions, the capital of which was at Van, while the Minni of Scripture are termed Manna in the Assyrian texts and Mana in those of Van. Ashkenaz seems to be the Asguza of the Assyrian monuments which is spoken of by Esar-haddon in connection with the Manna; at all events, if it is not Asguza, there is HISTORICAL BOOKS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 485 no other country known to the cuneiform inscriptions with which it can be identified. It is clear, therefore, that the political situation presupposed in "the word which the Lord spake against Babylon and against the land of the Chaldaeans by Jeremiah the prophet " is not that of the time of Cyrus. Ararat is still a formidable power, and the place of the Manda over whom Astyages ruled is taken by the Medes, by Minni, and by Ashkenaz. If we turn to the prayers addressed to the Sun-god by the king of Nineveh at the time when his kingdom and capital were being threatened by the northern hosts, we cannot fail to be struck by their parallelism with the prophecy of Jeremiah. The enemies against whom the Assyrian monarch lifts up his prayers are the enemies whom Jeremiah summons to march against Babylon. " O Sun-god, great lord, I beseech thee," says Esar-haddon of Assyria. " O god of fixed destiny, remove our sin ! Kastarit, lord of the city of Kar-kassi, has sent to Mamiti-arsu, lord of the city of the Medes, saying: We are confederate with one another ; let us revolt from the country of Assyria .... Kastarit with his soldiers, the soldiers of the Kimmerians (Gomer), the soldiers of the Medes, the soldiers of the Minni .... have taken the city of Kisassu .... into their hands thy great divinity is being delivered." Kar-kassi seems to have been in the country of Ararat, while Ashkenaz, according to the tenth chapter of Genesis, was the eldest son of Gomer. It may be that the prophecy of Jeremiah was one which had first been uttered against Nineveh, and adapted subsequently to the political circumstances 486 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. of a later time. That such adaptations of older prophecies were not infrequent we already know; Isaiah's prophecy of the coming doom of Moab is an illustration of them. It is therefore possible that in Jeremiah's denunciation of Babylon the prophet has made use of some earlier prophecy of which Nineveh was the burden. But it is also possible that the prophecy belongs to a time when Ballon had already taken the place of Nineveh as the seat and capital of oriental despotism, but when in other respects the political condition of Western Asia still remained what it was in the closing days of the Assyrian empire. In any case the prophecy must be earlier than the age of the "Second Isaiah" to which modern criticism has so often referred it. Upon this point, at all events, the evidence of the monuments is clear. The nations who are called upon to take vengeance upon Babylon are the nations of the north (Jer. 1. 3) ; Cyrus of Elam and Persia has not yet appeared upon the scene. Ararat is still a formidable power, like Minni, it has not as yet been absorbed into the empire of Cyrus ; and in place of Astyages, king of the nomad Manda of Ekbatana, it is " the kings of the Medes" who are "consecrated" to the holy war (Jer. Ii. 28). Nebuchadrezzar is still the ruler of Babylon ; the days are as yet far off when his dynasty has perished and his throne been usurped by Nabonidos. There is yet another of the prophetical writings upon which the cuneiform monuments of Assyria and Babylonia might be expected to throw light. This is the Book of Jonah. Nineveh and not Jerusalem is HISTORICAL BOOKS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 487 the subject and centre of it, and the story it contains would seem fitter to have been preserved in the library of Nineveh than in the library of Jerusalem. At present, however, the Assyriologist can add but little to the discussions and controversies of which the book has been the subject. The name of the Assyrian king is not mentioned ; indeed, he is called " the king of Nineveh," a title that could never have been applied to him in Assyria, nor at a time when the Assyrian empire was still in existence. Had the Book of Jonah been compiled while the power of Assyria was still felt and feared in the West, we should have heard, as in the Books of Kings and Isaiah, of "the great king," "the king of Assyria." Professor Schrader has pointed out a further indication that the compilation of the book belongs to a later period than the age of the prophet " Jonah the son of Amittai" (2 Kings xiv. 25). Nineveh is said to have been " an exceeding great city of three days' journey" (Jon. iii. 3), and to have contained 120,000 children "who could not discern between their right hand and their left hand " (Jon. iv. 1 1). These statements are in strict accordance with actual facts if we include within the circuit of Nineveh not only Nineveh itself, the modern Kouyunjik, but also Calah in the south (now Nimrud) and Dur-Sargon (now Khorsabad) in the north. The circumference of the whole of this district is about ninety miles, which may be roughly described as a three days' journey. Dur-Sargon, however, was not built until the reign of Sargon, a hundred years later than the time when Jonah of Gath-Hepher delivered his prophecies in the kingdom of Samaria. 488 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. Dr. Trumbull has lately called attention to the parallelism that exists between the earlier history of Jonah and that of the divine monster, half man and half fish, from whom the Babylonians believed they had derived the elements of culture and civilisation.1 Jonah, we are told, was thrown as a sacrifice into the sea and swallowed by a great fish, in whose belly he remained three days and three nights. At the end of that time he was cast forth upon the dry land, and thereupon proceeded to Nineveh, there to "preach" as the Lord had commanded him. The Babylonian legend was told by the Chaldaean Berossos in the following words — " In the first year (of the world) there appeared, rising up from the Persian Gulf, a being endowed with reason whose name was Oannes. The body of this monster was that of a fish, but below the fish's head was a second head which was that of a man, together with the feet of a man which issued from his tail, and with the voice of a man ; an image of him is preserved to this day. This being passed the day among men, but without taking any food, teach ing them letters, sciences, and the first principles of every art, how to found cities, to construct temples, to measure and assign limits to land, how to sow and reap ; in short everything that can soften manners and constitute civilisation, so that from that time forward no one has invented anything new. Then at sunset this monster Oannes descended again into the sea and spent the night among the waves, for he was amphibious. Afterwards there appeared several other similar creatures. . . . Oannes wrote a book 1 See fournal of Biblical Literature, xi. i, HISTORICAL BOOKS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 489 on the origin of things and the rules of civilisation, which he delivered to mankind." x It is possible to trace a resemblance between even the name of Jonah and that of Oannes, especially when we find that the latter name is also written Iannes.2 It may be that the Hebrew writer identified the Babylonian teacher with the prophet of his own nation. But it is also possible that in the name of Jonah we have to see Yavanu " the Greek." In the time of Sargon (B.C.) 711 the Greeks were already so numerous on the coast of Palestine as to permit a "Yavanu" or "Greek" "who had no right to the throne " to become king of Ashdod.3 When first we hear of Jonah he is making his way to the Phcenician port of Joppa, and his destination is Tarshish in the far West. All this, however, is mere matter of speculation ; what is more certain is that the fast ordained by the "king of Nineveh" (Jon. iii. 5, 6) finds its parallel in the cuneiform tablets. It was just such a fast as was ordained by Esar-haddon II. when the northern foe was gathering against the Assyrian empire, and prayers were raised to the Sun-god to "remove the sin" of the king and his people. "From this day," runs the inscription, " from the third day of this month, even the month Iyyar, to the fifteenth day 1 Eusebius: "Chron. armen.," p. 9, ed. Mai; Syncellus, p. 28. 2 By Pindar, according to the " Philosophoumena," v. 7, p. 97, ed. Miiller. Hyginus (" Fabul." 274) makes it Euahanes, and Helladius (ap. Photium : " Biblioth." 279) Oes. 3 According to Stephanus Byzantinus (s.v. 'Ioj/ioj/) Gaza was also called I6n§, while the sea between Gaza and the frontier of Egypt was called " Ionian," 490 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. of Ab of this year, for these hundred days (and) hundred nights the prophets have proclaimed (a period of supplication)." The prophets of Nineveh had declared that it was needful to appease the anger of heaven, and the king accordingly issued his proclamation enjoining the solemn service of humiliation for one hundred days. The Book of Jonah, the scene of which is mainly Nineveh, leads fittingly to the Book of Daniel, of which Babylon forms the background. Here, if anywhere, would be the place to turn aside from the history and archaeology of the ancient monuments to their philological bearing upon the language of the Old Testament. Some of the strongest weapons of the "higher" criticism are drawn from the armoury of the Hebrew language, and conclusions as to the date of a particular passage or book have again and again been based on the occurrence of words and idioms supposed to be of late date, or of Persian and Greek origin. On the philological side the decipher ment of the cuneiform texts has opened up a new and wide field of view to the Biblical student. The dialects of Babylonia and Assyria were closely allied to Hebrew ; they must moreover have influenced the Hebrew language, not only during the Babylonian Exile but also during the earlier period of Assyrian influence in the West. In the Babylonian and Assyrian inscriptions we have a series of texts, a large part of which have come to us from the hands of their first writers, and have therefore been pre served from the corruptions which are the necessary lot of all ancient documents when once the laneuaee of them has ceased to be that of their copyists. The HISTORICAL BOOKS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 49 1 Assyro-Babylonian texts, moreover, go back to a remote period in the history of civilised humanity, and we can follow them step by step through the long centuries of Babylonian and Assyrian culture. In these precious contemporaneous documents there fore we have a picture not only of the life and thoughts and history of the people, but also of the language they spoke and of the various phases through which it passed. There is no possibility here of asserting that a particular document must be of late date because a word or an idiom which is found in it is in the opinion of the critic of the time of the Greek Alexander ; the age of most cuneiform texts is fixed without the aid of the philologist, and it is the philologist who has to accept the date furnished him by the archaeologist. If therefore the Assyrian representative of a Hebrew word is met with in an inscription of early date, it is no longer permissible for the Biblical critic to maintain that the word in question is of Greek origin or the formation of a recent age. One or two examples will illustrate the force of this argument. In the Song of Songs (iii. 9) we meet with the word appirydn, usually translated " a litter." The word has been supposed to have been borrowed from Greek, appirydn being a Hebrew modification of the Greek cpopaov, and the composition of the Song of Songs has been accordingly assigned to the epoch of Alexander the Great and his successors, when Greek influence made itself strongly felt for the first time in Palestine. But all such conclusions and specula tions have been overthrown by the discovery of the Assyrian equivalent of appirydn, apartie, in one of the 492 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. so-called Kappadokian cuneiform tablets. These are records of the loan of money and other objects which have been discovered in Kappadokia, and are memorials of an Assyrian colony once settled in that part of Asia Minor. They are of early date, pro bably, indeed, as early as the age of the Tel el-Amarna tablets, that is to say the fifteenth century before the Christian era. Already, therefore, the word aparne or appirydn was known to the Semites, and its occurrence in a Biblical book ceases to be a criterion of the period to which the book must be assigned.1 As a second example let us take the word 'iggereth, which occurs in the Books of Chronicles, Nehemiah and Esther in the sense of "a letter." Hebrew philologists had little doubt that it was of Persian derivation, the Persian original being engdre " a writing," from which the Greek ayyapos was derived. But we now know that 'iggereth has an Assyro- 1 The case would be different with the word parde's "garden " or "paradise," which occurs in Cant. iv. 13, if we could be sure that the reading is correct. Parde's, like the Greek napaStiooc, was borrowed from Persian, its Zend equivalent being pairi- daiza, from which the Sanskrit paradSsa and Arabic firdaus are also derived. But I believe that the reading is corrupt, and that the word which originally stood in the text was a loan-word {pare's) from the Assyrian pir'su. Pir'su comes from a root which means " to divide " or " separate," and it had the signifi cation of a " garden." Nothing would have been more natural than for a copyist of a later period to have regarded the un familiar pare's as a mistake for parde's and to have altered it accordingly. Both were aliens in the Hebrew lexicon, but whereas the one would have belonged only to the earlier age of Hebrew literature, parde's was a word which succeeded in forcing its way into the later vocabulary of Hebrew speech. HISTORICAL BOOKS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 493 Babylonian origin, and is really borrowed from the Assyrian egirtu which signifies "a letter," more especially one which was sent by the royal post. Just as the decipherment of the cuneiform inscrip tions has expelled from the pages of the Hebrew lexicon the explanations which Sanskrit was once supposed to afford of such proper names as Tiglath- pileser and Sennacherib, so also has it expelled many of the Persian etymologies which were formerly proposed for certain Hebrew words. Tiph'sar, for instance (Jer. Ii. 27), which was supposed to mean "captain," and to have been introduced from the Persian language, turns out to be the Babylonian dup- sarru " a scribe," itself borrowed by the Baby lonian Semites from the old non-Semitic Sumerian dup- sar or " tablet-writer." It is, in fact, an abiding testimony to the use of clay tablets for writing purposes among the early population of Chaldaea. Dup was the tablet on the soft clay of which the cuneiform or wedge-shaped characters were im pressed by the stylus, and though a time came when it was used to signify other writing materials besides those of clay, it continued to the last to denote more especially the favourite Babylonian and Assyrian substitute for papyrus or leather. But the decipherment of the cuneiform inscriptions has done more than explode the Persian or San skrit etymologies of Hebrew words. It has made it pretty clear that no Persian influence could have been exerted upon either the Jews or their language before the fall of the Babylonian Empire. We have numberless contract-tablets from Babylonia which belong to the age of Nebuchadrezzar and his sue- 494 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. cessors, and we look in vain in them for any traces of Persian influence. And yet these tablets represent the language of every-day commercial life, and if Persian terms were to be found anywhere in Baby lonia, it would be here that we should have to look for them. The Babylonian language would neces sarily have been affected by Persian influence before that influence could have been felt in Hebrew ; it would have been only through Babylonia that Persia could have affected the language of the Jewish exiles. If, therefore, the language of Babylonia shows no contact with Persia, much less would any be shown by the language of Israel. Before the conquest of Babylonia by Cyrus, or rather by Darius, there could have been no direct and immediate intercourse between the exiles from Judah and the natives of Persia. Wherever therefore we find in the Old Testament clear traces of Persian influence, we may be sure that we are dealing with documents that did not take their present shape before the reign of Darius. On the other hand,' cuneiform decipherment has made it questionable whether the occurrence of words which may be of Greek origin is equally certain evidence of a late date. As we have seen, there were Greek colonies on the coast of Palestine in the time of Hezekiah, and they already enjoyed so much power there that a Greek usurper was made king of Ashdod. The Tel el-Amarna tablets have enabled us to carry back a contact between Greece and Canaan to a still earlier period. In one of them mention is made of a Yivana or " Ionian," who went on a mission in the country about Tyre. Dr. Peters HISTORICAL BOOKS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 495 furthermore tells us that the American Expedition to Babylonia has discovered at Niffer magnesite from Eubcea among the remains of the Kassite dynasty, which ended in B.C. 1229. It is thus possible that there was intercourse and contact between the Canaanites or Hebrews in Palestine and the Greeks of the ^Egean as far back as the age of Moses, and if so, that the languages of Greece and Canaan borrowed a few words one from the other at a period far earlier than has hitherto been supposed. The word mekheroth in the Blessing of Jacob (Gen. xlix. 5), which is rendered "swords" in the margin of the Authorised Version, has often been identified with the Greek \x.i.\aipa " a sword " : it is now quite possible to accept this derivation, and yet at the same time to maintain the early date of the passage in which the word is found. Lappid "a torch " is another word which may be a loan from Greek. It has no satisfactory etymology in the Semitic languages, while the Greek Kaunas is con nected with the root of Ka^im, and therefore cannot have been borrowed from abroad. Lappid is found in Genesis (xv. 17) and Isaiah (lxii. 1), and Lapidoth was the husband of Deborah (Jud. xiv. 4). Even the Hebrew name of " wine," yayin or y ain, which appears as inu in Assyrian, is almost certainly borrowed from Greek. The vine was not a native of the countries in which the Semitic peoples lived, while the natural ists tell us that it was indigenous in Armenia and the Balkans. Yayin, moreover, like lappid, has no Semi tic etymology. We may therefore see in it a word which came to the inhabitants of Canaan from the west or the north, and was by them handed on to 496 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. their kinsfolk in Assyria.1 In Assyria, however, it never took root ; the word used for " wine " by the writers of the cuneiform texts is a different one, and inu is preserved only in the lexical lists, which were intended to explain foreign or rare words. Philology apart from archaeology is not always a safe criterion for the age and date of a book. The conclusions of "the literary analyst" are doubtless valuable, but they need to be controlled by archaeo logical evidence. The existence of Persian words in a book of the Old Testament does not of itself prove anything, except contact with the Persian people and language ; it is only when the archaeologist steps in and shows that such contact could not have taken place before a certain date, that the facts presented by the philologist become of use in determining the age of the document in which they occur. Once more, therefore, we are brought to see that in settling the disputed questions of the " higher criticism " it is to archaeology that the first appeal must be made. In the facts of archaeology we have to look for the tests by which the conclusions of. the critic must stand or fall. A crucial instance is afforded by the Book of Daniel and to the Book of Daniel we will now proceed. 1 See my letter in the Academy, Oct. 22, 1892, pp. 365, 366. CHAPTER XI. THE BOOKS OF DANIEL AND EZRA.1 Until quite recently it was assumed that we were well acquainted with the main outline of the events which led to the fall of the Babylonian empire and the rise of that of the Persians. We had received the story of them from two sources, the one Biblical and the other classical, and the Old Testament writers agreed sufficiently with those of Greece to warrant us in believing that the picture presented to us was substantially correct. In one or two points only was there divergence. While our Greek authorities made Nabonidos the last king of the Babylonian empire, the Book of Daniel substituted for him " Bel- shazzar, the son of Nebuchadnezzar." In the same Book also "Darius the Mede" made his appearance by the side of Cyrus " the Persian," whereas no trace of the Median prince could be found in the classical authors, unless perhaps in the Kyaxares of Xeno- phon's romance, the Cyropcedia. In the main outlines of the story, however, there was agreement. From both alike we learned that 1 It is but right to note here that some of Professor Sayce's views on the Book of Daniel are not shared by other authorities. See the article Daniel in the new edition of the Bible Dictionary, and the late Professor Fuller's articles in the Expositor, 3rd Series, Vols. I. and II., "The Book of Daniel in the light of recent research and discovery." [Note of Tract Committee.] K it 498 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. Cyrus was king of Persia and the founder of the Persian empire, that Babylon was taken after a long siege, and that the conquest of Babylon by Cyrus was a work of time and difficulty. The overthrow of Bel and Nebo to which the Hebrew prophet had looked forward was literally accomplished ; Cyrus was an adherent of Zoroastrian dualism with its abhorrence of idolatry, and his conquest of Baby lonia brought with it the fall of the Babylonian religion. He was not only a Messiah, he was also a monotheist, whose sympathy with the faith of Israel permitted the Jewish exiles to return to their own land, and there rebuild the temple of their fathers. Herodotos and the Books of the Old Testament seemed to agree in presenting us with this picture of ancient history. And there was nothing either in the Hebrew Scriptures or in the writers of Greece and Rome which appeared to cast any doubt upon it, or to suggest that it required modification. What our manuals of ancient history told us about Cyrus and Astyages and Nabonidos seemed to be among the most certain of the facts which had come down to us from the past. No one dreamed of disputing or doubting them. And yet it is just this portion of ancient history which the archaeological discoveries of the last few years have obliged us to remodel and reconstruct. We now possess the actual records of Nabonidos and Cyrus written by their instructions, and as it were under their own eyes, in the language and characters of Babylonia. They are records the truth of which cannot be doubted. They are official records, drawn up at a time when the events to which they refer had THE BOOKS OF DANIEL AND EZRA. 499 but just happened, and although one is a record of Nabonidos and the others of his conqueror Cyrus, they are in full harmony with one another. It may be indeed that in the case of Cyrus the Babylonian priests have coloured the language of the record in accordance with their own views and prejudices, but the evidence of the inscriptions of Nabonidos, as well as the annalistic character of one of the documents, shows that it was a colouring only and nothing more. In order properly to understand and appreciate the importance of our new sources of information, it is necessary to give them in full. First in importance comes what is termed the Annalistic Tablet of Cyrus. It is a.cuneiform tablet first brought to light by Mr. Pinches in 1880, which gives a summary ac count of the reign of Nabonidos, and of his conquest by Cyrus. The object of it was twofold ; on the one hand to chronicle the events of the previous seventeen years, on the other to trace the rise of the power of Cyrus, and to prove that his conquest of Babylon was due to the impiety of Nabonidos. The chosen of Bel-Merodach, the true worshipper of the gods of Babylonia was Cyrus and not Nabonidos. The beginning of the tablet is unfortunately broken. Where the sense first becomes clear, mention is made of the country of Hamath, in which the Babylonian army had been encamped during the month of Tebet or December. In the following year the army marched to Mount Amanus and the Mediterranean. After this we read as follows — " Astyages (Istuvegu) gathered [his forces] and marched against Cyrus king of Ansan, and [joined battle ? ]. The army of Astyages revolted against 500 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. him and seized [him] with the hands ; to Cyrus they delivered him]. Cyrus marched against the country of Ekbatana (Agamtanu) the royal city. Silver, gold, goods and chattels, [the spoil] of the country of Ekbatana, they carried away, and to the country of Ansan he brought. The goods and chattels were deposited in [Ansan]. "In the seventh year (B.C. 548) king (Nabonidos) was in Teva (the western suburb of Babylon) ; the king's son, the nobles and his soldiers were in the country of Accad (Northern Babylonia). [The king in the month Nisan] did not go to Babylon. Nebo did not go to Babylon ; Bel came not forth ; the [new year's] festival [took place] ; they offered sacrifices as [peace- offerings] to the gods of Babylon and Borsippa in the temples of E-Saggil and E-Zida. In the eighth year (no event happened). "In the ninth year Nabonidos the king was in Teva. The king's son, the nobles and the soldiers were in the country of Accad. The king did not go to Babylon in the month of Nisan. Nebo did not go to Babylon ; Bel came not forth ; the new year's festival took place. They offered sacrifices as peace- offerings to the gods of Babylon and Borsippa in E-Saggil and E-Zida. The fifth day of the month Nisan the mother of the king who was in the fortress of the camp on the Euphrates above Sippara died. The king's son and his soldiers mourned for three days. There was lamentation. In the month Sivan there was lamentation in the country of Accad over the mother of the king. In the month Nisan Cyrus THE BOOKS OF DANIEL AND EZRA. 501 king of the country of Persia collected his army and crossed the Tigris below Arbela, and in the month Iyyar [marched] against the country of the Sute (or Bedawin). He slew its king ; his goods he captured ; he ascended the country. [He departed again] after his ascent, and a king existed there again. "In the tenth year the king was in Teva; the king's son, the nobles and his soldiers were in the country of Accad. The king in the month [Nisan did not go to Babylon]. Nebo did not go to Babylon ; Bel came not forth ; the new year's festival took place. They offered sacrifices as peace-offerings to the gods of Babylon and Borsippa in E-[Saggil and E-Zida]. On the twenty-first of the month Sivan ... of the country of Elam, in the country of Accad ... a governor in the city of Erech . . -1 "In the eleventh year the king was in Teva; the king's son, the nobles and his soldiers were in the country of Accad. [In the month Nisan the king did not go to Babylon.] The king did not come forth to Bel [in the month Elul]. The new year's festival took place. They offered sacrifices [as peace-offerings to the gods of] Babylon [and Borsippa in E-Saggil and E-Zida]." Here the tablet is broken. Where it again becomes intelligible the translation is as follows — "And the lower sea (the Persian Gulf) revolted . . . Bel came forth ; the new year's festival as a peace- 1 It is possible that the lacunae in this passage should be supplied thus: "[Cyrus, king] of the country of Elam [de scended] into the country of Accad ; [he appointed] a governor in the city of Erech." 502 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. offering was kept ; in the month . . . [Lugal-banda and the other gods] of Marad, Zamama and the other gods of Kis, and Beltis and fhe other gods of Kharsak-kalama entered Babylon ; at the end of the month Elul the gods of the country of Accad which are above the sky and below the sky entered Babylon ; the gods of Borsippa, Kutha and Sippara did not enter. In the month Tammuz (June) when Cyrus had delivered battle against the soldiers of Accad in the city of Rutu (?) on the banks of the river Nizallat, when the men of Accad also had de livered battle, the men of Accad raised a revolt: some persons were slain. On the fourteenth day of the month Sippara was taken without fighting ; Naboni dos fled. On the sixteenth day Gobryas (Ugbaru),the governor of the country of Kurdistan (Gutium), and the soldiers of Cyrus entered Babylon without fight ing. Afterwards Nabonidos was captured after being bound in Babylon. At the end of the month Tam muz the javelin-throwers ofthe country of Kurdistan guarded the gates of E-Saggil ; no cessation of ser vices took place in E-Saggil and the other temples, but no special festival was observed. The third day of the month Marchesvan (October) Cyrus entered Babylon. Dissensions were allayed before him. Peace to the city did Cyrus establish, peace to all the pro vince of Babylon did Gobryas his governor proclaim. Governors in Babylon he appointed. From the month Chisleu to the month Adar (November to February) the gods of the country of Accad, whom Nabonidos had transferred to Babylon, returned to their own cities. The eleventh day of the month Mar chesvan, during the night, Gobryas was on the bank of the river . . The wife of the king died. From THE BOOKS OF DANIEL AND EZRA. 503 the twenty-seventh day of Adar to the third day of Nisan there was lamentation in the country of Accad; all the people smote their heads. On the fourth day Kambyses the son of Cyrus conducted the burial at the temple of the Sceptre of the world. The priest of the temple of the Sceptre of Nebo, who upbears the sceptre [of Nebo in the temple of the god], in an Elamite robe took the hands of Nebo . . . the son of the king (Kambyses) [offered] free-will offerings in full to ten times [the usual amount]. He confined to E-Saggil the [image] of Nebo. Victims before Bel to ten times [the usual amount he sacrificed]." The rest of the text is destroyed, but the fragments of it which remain indicate that it described the various attempts made by Cyrus and his son Kam byses after the overthrow of Nabonidos to settle the affairs of Babylonia and conciliate the priesthood. We must now pass on to another inscription, which was drawn up by Cyrus soon after his conquest of Chaldaea, and in which we may see a manifesto of his policy and of the claim he made to be the legiti mate successor of the older Babylonian monarchs. He had been called to the throne, he tells us, by Bel- Merodach, who had rejected the impious usurper Nabonidos, and he thus held the sovereignty by the same right as David had done in Israel. In reading the words of Cyrus we are irresistibly reminded of the language in which the Books of Samuel describe the rejection of Saul and the selection of David in his place. But it is not only the Books of Samuel of which the inscription reminds us, there are other books and passages in the Old Testament to the language of 504 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. which it presents a remarkable resemblance. It is, in fact, the most Hebraic of all the cuneiform texts known to us, and on this account is more than usually difficult to translate. We are sometimes left in un certainty as to where a sentence ought to end or begin, and a double translation of the passage thus becomes possible. The construction of the sentences is often wanting in that simplicity which generally distinguishes the syntax ofthe Babylonian and Assy rian monuments ; we are reminded by it of the lan guage of the later Hebrew prophets which similarly gives occasion to a disputed interpretation. Even the vocabulary of the inscription is not altogether free from what we may term a Hebraism. Twice we find malku, the Hebrew melech, used in the sense of " king," in the place of sarru, the Hebrew sar. Every where else in cuneiform literature sarru is the "king," malku the subordinate "prince." It is only here that the Hebrew usage is followed, according to which melech was. the " king" and sar the " prince." The inscription is engraved on a cylinder, and was first published, with translation and commentary, by Sir Henry Rawlinson in 1880. The commencement and conclusion of it are destroyed ; what remains is as follows : " [Nabonidos] commanded for Ur and the other cities what did not befit them ... the costly duty of the daily sacrifice he caused to cease ... he had established within the city (of Babylon) the worship of Merodach the king of the gods (alone) .... At their complaining Bel (the lord) of the gods was mightily wrathful, and [the men deserted ?] their abode. The gods who dwelt among them left their habitations in wrath when they were made to enter THE BOOKS OF DANIEL AND EZRA. 505 Babylon. Merodach in . . . journeyed to all peoples wherever they are found, and visited the men of Sumer and Accad who are like his own body ... he granted mercy to all peoples, even all of them ; he rejoiced and fed them ; he appointed also a prince who should guide in righteousness the wish of the heart which his hand upholds, even Cyrus the king of the city of Ansan ; he has prophesied his name for sovereignty; all men everywhere commemorate his name. The country of Kurdistan and all the people of the Manda he has subjected to his feet ; the men of the black heads (of Babylonia) he has caused his hand to conquer. In justice and righteousness has he governed them. Merodach, the great lord, the restorer of his people, beheld with joy the deeds of his vice gerent who was righteous in hand and heart. To his city of Babylon he summoned his march ; he bade him also take the road to Babylon ; like a friend and a comrade he went at his side. The weapons of his vast army, whose number like the waters of a river could not be known, were marshalled in order, and it spread itself at his feet. Without fighting and battle (Merodach) caused him to enter into Babylon ; his city of Babylon he spared ; in a hiding-place Nabo nidos the king, who revered him not, did he give into his hand. The men of Babylon, all of them, and the whole of Sumer and Accad, the nobles and the high- priest, bowed themselves beneath him ; they kissed his feet ; they rejoiced at his sovereignty ; their coun tenances shone. Bel who through trust in himself raises the dead to life, who benefits all men in difficulty and fear, has in goodness drawn nigh to him, has made strong his name. I am Cyrus the king of 506 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. multitudes, the great king, the powerful king, the king of Babylon, the king of Sumer and Accad, the king of the four zones, the son of Kambyses, the great king, the king of the city of Ansan : the grand son of Cyrus, the great king, the king of the city of Ansan ; the great-grandson of Teispes, the great king, the king of the city of Ansan ; of the ancient seed- royal, whose rule Bel and Nebo love, whose sovereignty they desire according to the goodness of their hearts. When I entered into Babylon in peace, with joy and gladness I founded the seat of dominion in the palace of the princes. Merodach the great lord enlarged my heart ; the sons of Babylon and [its cities] on that day I appointed as his ministers. My vast army spread itself peacefully in the midst of Babylon ; throughout [Sumer and] Accad I permitted no gain- sayer. Babylon and all its cities I governed in peace. The sons of Babylon [and its cities gave me] the fulness of their hearts and bore my yoke ; and their lives, their seat and their ruins I restored. I delivered their prisoners. For my work . . Merodach the great lord established a decree ; unto me, Cyrus, the king, his worshipper, and Kambyses my son, the offspring of my heart, and to all my people, he graciously drew nigh, and in peace before them we duly [reigned]. All the kings who inhabit the high places of all regions from the Upper Sea (of Lake Van) to the Lower Sea (of the Persian Gulf), the inhabitants of the inlands, the kings of Syria and the inhabitants of tents, all of them brought their rich tribute, and in Babylon kissed my feet. From [the city of . . .] to the cities of Assur and Arbela (?), Accad, the land of Umlias, the cities of Zamban, Mc-Turnat and Dur-ili, as far as the THE BOOKS OF DANIEL AND EZRA. 507 frontier of Kurdistan, the cities [which lie upon] the Tigris, whose seats had been established from of old, I restored the gods who dwelt within them to their places, and I founded for them a seat that should be long-enduring; all their peoples I collected and I restored their habitations. And the gods of Sumer and Accad, whom Nabonidos, to the anger of (Mero dach) the lord of the gods, had brought into Babylon, by the command of Merodach the great lord I settled peacefully in their sanctuaries in seats which their hearts desired. May all the gods whom I have brought into their own cities intercede daily before Bel and Nebo that my days be long, may they pro nounce blessings upon me, and may they say to Merodach my lord : ' Let Cyrus the king, thy wor shipper, and Kambyses his son [accomplish the desire] of their hearts ; [let them enjoy length] of days.' " After this the text is too much injured for a translation of it to be possible. Mention, however, is made of the. offerings presented by Cyrus to the temples of the Babylonian deities ; beyond this nothing is clear. Before we proceed to consider the facts disclosed to us by these two monuments of the great Asiatic conqueror, and the wholly new aspect of the history of his reign which they present to us, it will be as well to give an extract from an inscription of Nabonidos compiled soon after the overthrow of Astyages in B.C. 549, when Cyrus was first beginning his career of conquest. The inscription records the restoration of the great temple of the Moon-god at Harran by the Babylonian monarch in accordance with a dream. Nabonidos tells us : " E-Khulkhul, the temple of the Moon-god which is in the city of Harran, within 508 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. which since dr.ys remote Sin (the Moon-god) the great lord has founded the habitation of his heart's delight, with this city and temple his heart was enraged,- and he caused the people of the Manda to come, and they destroyed this temple, and caused it to go to ruin. In my firmly established reign Bel the great lord in his love of my sovereignty has granted peace to this city and temple, has accorded mercy. At the beginning of my long-enduring reign Merodach the great lord and Sin, the light of heaven and earth, caused me to behold a dream ; they stood on either side of me ; Merodach spoke with me : O Nabonidos, king of Babylon, with the horses of thy chariot bring bricks, build E-Khulkhul, and let Sin the great lord establish his seat within it. Reverently I answered the lord of the gods Merodach : As for this temple which thou orderesttobe built the people of the Manda surround it and noisome are their forces. Merodach again spoke with me : The people of the Manda of whom thou speakest, they, their land, and the kings who are their allies, exist no more. In the third year, when it shall arrive, I will cause them to come, and Cyrus the king of Anzan, their little servant, with his little army shall overthrow the widespread people of the Manda ; he shall capture Istuvegu, the king of the people of the Manda, and bring him a prisoner to his own country. Such was the word of the great lord Merodach, and of Sin, the light of heaven and earth, whose promises change not. Unto their supreme promises I attended reverently ; I prostrated myself, I made prostrations, and my face was troubled ; I turned not or withdrew my side (where I lay). Moreover I caused my vast armies to THE BOOKS OF DANIEL AND EZRA. 509 come from the land of Gaza on the frontier of Egypt, and the Upper Sea beyond the Euphrates as far as the Lower Sea, kings, princes, priests and my wide spread peoples, whom Sin, Samas and Istar my lords have entrusted to me, in order that they might rebuild E-Khulkhul the temple of Sin, my lord who marches beside me, which is in the city of Harran." Nabonidos had been an usurper, the son of Nebo- baladhsu-ikbi, and in no way related to the family of Nebuchadrezzar. That had come to an end in the person of Evil-Merodach, who had been murdered by Nergal-sharezer, his sister's husband. But the crown was not destined to remain long in the family of Nergal-sharezer. His infant son was put to death soon after his own decease, and the throne was seized by Nabonidos. Recent researches seem to show that Nebuchad rezzar had been by race a Kaldu or Chaldaean, and therefore not of pure Babylonian descent. Nabonidos, on the contrary, came forward as the representative and successor of the ancient Babylonian kings. He spent his time not only in restoring the older shrines and temples of the country, but also in digging up their foundation-stones, in order to read the buried records of the early princes who had erected them, and so to verify the historical traditions of Babylonia. Babylonia, however, was a land of mixed nation alities ; it was in the capital Babylon that the purest representatives of the true Babylonian race were to be found, and it was around E-Saggil, the great temple of Bel-Merodach at Babylon, that the national life and history mainly gathered. The patriotism and antiquarian zeal of Nabonidos, accord- Jio THE HIGHER CRITICISM. ingly, worked along with a desire for centralisation. Babylonian religion was both the image and the unifying bond of the national life, and the most effective way of producing political centralisation was to centralise Babylonian religion. Bel-Merodach was not only to be the supreme deity of the imperial city and the. reigning monarch; he was to become also the supreme deity of the Babylonian divinities. They were to be brought into his temple at Babylon and there become his servants, a symbol of the subjection which Babylon and its master now exacted from the cities and aristocracy of the rest of the country. Nabonidos thus attempted in Babylonia what the kings of Judah had successfully carried out in Palestine. The attempt cost him his throne. The cylinder inscription of Cyrus shows us plainly that he had roused against himself the hatred of the powerful hierarchies whose influence and wealth were bound up with the maintenance of the local cults of Baby lonia. Several of the cities of Babylonia claimed to be of older date than Babylon itself, and the gods they worshipped to have been revered long before Bel-Merodach was heard of. At Nipur indeed Merodach was regarded as merely "the younger Bel," the god of Nipur, the old Sumerian Mul-lil or El-lil, being the "older Bel." Deep therefore must have been the resentment of the local aristocracies and priesthoods of Babylonia when they saw the images of their deities carried away from their ancient shrines, and added to the undistinguishable crowd which filled the temple of the god of Babylon. It meant the suppression of the local cults and the THE BOOKS OF DANIEL AND EZRA. 511 subordination of those who served them to the priestly courtiers of the capital. It was a blow struck at local independence ; at Babylon the priesthood were under the immediate control of the king, who himself acted from time to time as high-priest ; and the concentration of Babylonian worship in the capital placed the priesthood everywhere in the same dependent position. We need not wonder therefore that there was a large party in Babylonia who plotted the overthrow of Nabonidos, and were ready to intrigue with his enemies whenever they should arise. The adherents of the dynasty of Nebuchadrezzar, the local priesthoods and aristocracies, not to speak of the Jews and other foreign exiles who were settled in the country, all joined together to drive him from the throne. It was of these discontented elements in the Babylonian population that Cyrus made skilful use, and his first act after the conquest of Nabonidos was to show how fully mindful he was of his obligations to them by restoring the local and foreign gods to their former shrines. In this work of restoration Bel- Merodach himself was naturally made to sympathise. The fall of Nabonidos had brought with it the fall of what we may term the centralising party in the Babylonian hierarchy, and those to whom the task of drawing up the cylinder inscription of Cyrus was entrusted saw in the conqueror the chosen vicegerent of Merodach whom the god had summoned to avenge his injured brother deities. Cyrus had proved him self a worthier and truer successor of the ancient Babylonian kings than Nabonidos, and the crown which Bel had removed from the head of the 512 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. usurper he had accordingly transferred to the king of Anzan. What the power of Nabonidos really rested upon is pretty clear. His own inscription speaks of his "vast armies," and we learn from the annalistic tablet that he kept a large standing army perman ently encamped in Northern Babylonia. The defeat of this army caused the immediate fall of Nabonidos's power. Sippara, the leading city of Northern Baby lonia, in whose vicinity the camp had been, submitted without further opposition, and Babylon itself, whose almost impregnable walls might have defied the invaders for months, opened its gates to receive and welcome the victorious troops. Indeed so fully did Nabonidos realise what the defeat of his army meant for him, that he never attempted to stand a siege either in Babylon or anywhere else, but fled and concealed himself in a " hiding-place." The conqueror felt equally confident in the good-will of the Baby lonian population towards himself. The wife of Nabonidos was buried with royal honours, the eldest son of Cyrus conducting the funeral in person ; while Nabonidos, according to the Chaldaean historian Berossos, was made governor of Karmania. Cyrus evidently knew that he had nothing any longer to fear from him. The reception given to Cyrus by the Babylonians offers a striking contrast to the rebellious restlessness of the same people under Darius and Xerxes. The death of Kambyses was the signal for revolt. Again and again the Babylonians reasserted their ancient independence. Kings, who called themselves the descendants of Nabonidos, again reigned over them, THE BOOKS OF DANIEL AND EZRA. 513 and Babylon endured long and painful sieges before it could be taken by the Persian troops. It was not until Xerxes had destroyed the temple of Bel as well as the walls of the city that the rebellious spirit, of its inhabitants was at length quelled. Darius and Xerxes, in fact, were looked upon as enemies, as aliens in both race and religion, whereas Cyrus and Kambyses were, as they are called in the contract-tablets, " kings of Babylon," the representa tives of the ancient monarchs, the honourers of the national gods, the restorers of the national shrines. Babylon occupied in the old oriental world much the same place as that which was occupied by Rome in the mediaeval world. It was the holy city of the East, the seat of a theocracy as well as of the earliest imperial authority with which the East was acquainted. Founders of empires might arise elsewhere, but unless they conld become the adopted sons of Bel-Merodach by "taking his hands," their claims to universal dominion could not be recognised. They remained merely successful generals or local princes ; it was not until their rule was acknowledged in Babylon and by the god of Babylon that it became legitimate. Even Tiglath-pileser III. and Sargon, in the height of their power and conquests, do not venture to assume the coveted title of " king of Babylon " until they have " taken the hands " of Bel. To be recognised by Bel-Merodach and his people, therefore, meant a great deal more than the mere conquest of Babylonia. It raised the conqueror at once to a position far above that of the contemporary monarchs of Asia, and made him the undisputed successor of the ancient Babylonian lines of kings, L L 514 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. Babylonia became his adopted country ; he inherited its history and traditions, its religion, its glories, and its name. This was a fact of which Cyrus was well aware, and he took full advantage of it. He appeared in Babylon not as a conqueror, but as a restorer of the old paths, the allayer of dissensions, and the deliverer of the people from the tyranny and impieties of Nabonidos. He had been summoned to the work by Bel, and it was as the vicegerent of Bel that he carried it out. The deities who had been sacrilegiously torn from their ancient seats were restored to their shrines, the temples of Bel and Nebo were filled with the rich offerings of Cyrus and his son, the language and writing of Babylonia were adopted in the official documents, and the sole territorial title assumed by the prince was that of " king of Babylon." The names of Anzan and Persia were dropped, and in cluded along with those of the other countries over which he ruled in the title " king of the provinces." It was because the policy of Darius and Xerxes was diametrically opposed to that of Cyrus that the /results of it also were so different. Darius was, and remained, an Aryan Persian, proud of his origin and contemptuous of other races. For him Babylon was but one of the great cities of his empire, and the capital of a province from which he could extract a large amount of revenue. For its traditions and history he cared but little ; he was " king of Persia," not of Babylonia, and the successor of the Persian Akhsemenes, not of the Babylonian kings. Babylonian religion was in his eyes a false idolatry ; the god whose supremacy he acknowledged was Ormazd the god of THE BOOKS OF DANIEL AND EZRA. 515 Zoroaster, not Bel-Merodach of Babylon. With the consolidation, therefore, of the power of Darius, the sceptre of empire passed finally from the ancient city on the Euphrates, and an Asiatic conqueror never again came to " take the hands of Bel." Persia rose on the ruins of the empire of Nebuchadrezzar, and Persepolis took the place of Babylon. This contrast between Cyrus and Darius must be kept in mind if we would understand the character of the empire of Cyrus, and the motives which governed his policy. But it is a contrast which the cuneiform monuments of Babylonia have revealed to us for the first time. The Persian empire of Darius and his successors so thoroughly blotted out and obscured the earlier empire of Cyrus as to make the writers who lived under it identify the one with the other. The identification was assisted, and to a certain extent suggested, by the policy of Darius himself. In re conquering the disintegrated empire of Cyrus and Kambyses, he essayed to prove that he was after all the successor and heir of the great conqueror of Western Asia, and Cyrus had been like himself an Aryan and a Persian prince. The claim, indeed, was partly true. Both alike drew their descent from the Persian house of Akhaemenes, and in Teispes, the probable conqueror of Anzan, both alike had a com mon ancestor. Cyrus, moreover, had been king of Persia before he became king of Babylonia. But here the resemblance ceased. Cyrus was not originally king of Persia, but of the Elamite province of Anzan. When he overthrew Astyages, and thus raised himself to an equality with Nabonidos of Babylonia, Persia was not yet included in his dominions. The Annalistic 516 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. tablet shows us that the occupation of Persia did not take place until between the years 549 and 546 B.C. It is in B.C. 546 that he is called for the first time " king of Persia." Whether or not the occupation were the result of conquest, we do not know. What is certain is that Persia and Ansan or Anzan (for the name is written in both ways) were not the same country. A lexical tablet from the library of Nineveh states that Anzan was the country known to the Semitics as Elam on the eastern border of Babylonia, and Gudea, one of the earliest of the Sumerian kings whose monuments we possess, records his conquest of " Anzan in the country of Elam." The Elamite kings, whose capital was at Susa, entitle themselves lords " of the kingdom of Anzan, kings of Shushan." The inscriptions of Sennacherib distinguish Anzan from Parsuas or Persis, and imply that it formed part of the dominions of the Elamite monarch. The country of Anzan took its name from the city of Anzan, which does not seem to have been far distant from the Babylonian frontier. It was the union of Anzan and Susa or Shushan, and of the districts of which they were severally the centres, which created the monarchy of Elam. In becoming kings of Anzan, therefore, Cyrus and his predecessors became kings of Elam. They succeeded to the ancient inheritance of the Elamite sovereigns and so lost the purity of their Persian nationality. In the old Eastern world the adoption of a new nationality meant the adoption of a new religion and of new deities. Consequently we need no longer be surprised at finding Cyrus- and his son so readily THE BOOKS OF DANIEL AND EZRA. 517 acquiescing in the requirements of Babylonian poly theism, and acknowledging themselves the devout worshippers of the gods of their new possession. The Zoroastrian spirit of iconoclasm which led Xerxes to destroy the image of Bel found no echo in the breast of Cyrus ; the king of Anzan was a polytheist, not a follower of the Aryan Zoroaster. The fact is important, as it overthrows the attempts that have been made to discover references to Persian Zoroastrianism in the prophecies of Isaiah or else where. When God declares that He has formed both the light and the darkness, and that He has created evil as well as good (Isai. xiv. 7), it is no longer necessary to believe that an answer is intended to the doctrines of Zoroastrian dualism, still less that the return of the Jewish exiles and the permission granted them to rebuild their temple were due to the sympathy of Cyrus with their religious faith. On the contrary, the cuneiform documents translated above show that this permission formed part of a general policy, and that the Jews were no better treated in this respect than the other sufferers from Babylonian oppression. If Sheshbazzar was ordered to convey to Jerusalem the sacred vessels of the Lord, it was only because the Jews, unlike their fellow-exiles, had no image of their national God. The sacred vessels were the sole part of the furniture of their temple which they could carry back. The discovery that Cyrus was king of Anzan or Elam rather than of Persia throws light on certain passages of the Old Testament which have hitherto been somewhat puzzling, and at the same time proves their historical ^exactitude. In the Book of Isaiah 518 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. (ch. xxi.), where the approaching fall of Babylon is predicted, the spoilers who are summoned to the work are Elam and Media (v. 2). It is not Persia who is bidden to " go up," but Elam. We know now how historically true this statement is, and that what was once supposed to be an evidence of inaccuracy turns out to be a proof of the trustworthiness and antiquity of the document in which it occurs. The writers of Greece and Rome, like those of the later books of the Old Testament itself, have agreed with Darius in forgetting who Cyrus really was ; the sole record of the fact which remained before the dis covery of the cuneiform texts was a single passage in the Book of Isaiah. The conqueror of Babylonia was an Elamite prince. There is another passage in the Old Testament which is cleared up by the new discovery. A prophecy of Jeremiah delivered at the beginning of Zedekiah's reign (xlix. 34 — 39), declares that Elam is about to be scattered towards the four winds of heaven, and that its king and princes are to be destroyed. Elam had been one of the last conquests of the Assyrian empire. Assur-bani-pal had sent army after army to invade it, and eventually the whole country was ravaged with fire and sword, Shushan was captured and spoiled, and it became a province of Assyria. With the decay of the Assyrian empire it seems to have recovered its independence ; at all events in Jer. xxv. 25 mention is made of "the kings of Elam." This was in B.C. 604, the first year of Nebuchadrezzar's reign, and seven years before the date of the other prophecy. That there were "kings" of Elam, and not one THE BOOKS OF DANIEL AND EZRA. 519 king only, appears to imply that when the power of Assyria was broken the old Elamite monarchy fell into the hands of more than one ruler. However this may be, we cannot fail to see in the conquest of the country of which Jeremiah speaks its conquest by Teispes. First Anzan fell before the invaders, and then Shushan. The new line of kings, however, continued to call themselves " kings of Anzan " ; it was not until a later period that the name of Shushan overshadowed again that of Anzan. While Cyrus I. the great-grandfather of Cyrus the Great reigned in Anzan, it is probable that Ariaramnes the great-grandfather of Darius succeeded his father Teispes in Persia. Both Ariaramnes and Cyrus I. were sons of Teispes, and since Darius in his inscription at Behistun declares that "eight" of his predecessors had been .kings before him "in two lines," it is clear that both Ariaramnes and his son Arsames must have enjoyed royal power. We must assume, therefore, with Sir Henry Rawlinson that Teispes was the conqueror of Anzan, and that upon his death his kingdom was divided, the newly- acquired conquest being assigned to Cyrus I., and his ancestral dominions to Ariaramnes. It is true that Darius does not give Ariaramnes and Arsames the title of kings ; but this proves little, as he does not give the title to Teispes and Akhaemenes, both of whom were independent monarchs. If it is startling to learn that Cyrus was in reality an Elamite prince, it is equally startling to find that Istuvegu or Astyages was king, not of the Medes, but of the Manda. As we have seen in an earlier chapter, the name of Manda was applied by the 520 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. Babylonians and Assyrians to the "nomad" tribes who at times threatened their eastern and northern borders. The astrological tablets refer to a period when the Manda overran Babylonia itself, when Bel and the other gods of Chaldaea fled to Elam for safety, and the barbarians ruled the country for thirty years. It may be that the disaster here described was that conquest of Chaldaea which the fragments of Berdssos ascribe to the "Medes." Be that as it may, Teuspa or Teispes, the leader of the Gimirra, is called a "Manda" by Esar-haddon, and an inscription of Assur-bani-pal recently discovered by Mr. Strong returns thanks to the Assyrian gods for the defeat of "that limb of Satan," Tuktammu of the Manda. It is possible that Tuktammu (or rather Duktammu) is the Lygdamis of Strabo who led the Kimmerians into Kilikia from whence they after wards marched westward and burned Sardes.1 At all events we must see in him a forerunner, if not a predecessor of Istuvegu, the Astyages of the Greeks, who governed the Manda in Ekbatana. Ekbatana, the modern Hamadan, called Achmetha in the Old Testament (Ezra vi. 2), and Hangmatana in the Persian inscriptions, had been built in the territory of the old kingdom of Ellipi. Ellipi had been tributary to Sargon, and in the time of Sennacherib we find it in alliance with Elam. After this it disappears from history; the "Manda" had descended upon it, and made it the chief seat of their power. It would seem that the Manda of Ekbatana were the Scythians of classical history. As we have seen 1 Strabo, i. 3, 16. Cf. my letter in the Academy, Sept. 30, 1893. the books of daniel and ezra. 52 1 Teuspa the Kimmerian and his people are termed Manda by Esar-haddon, and in the inscriptions of Darius the Gimirra Umurgah of the Babylonian text correspond with the Saka Humuvarka of the Persian text.1 The Saka Humuvarka are the Amyrgian Sakae of Herodotos (vii. 64), who, he tells us, were the Scythians of the Greeks. Totally distinct from the Manda were the Mada or Medes. Their land lay to the north-east of that of Ekbatana and extended as far as the shores of the Caspian. They consisted for the most part of Aryan tribes, allied in blood and language to the Persians, and governed by a number of petty independent chieftains. It was they who in concert with the Kimmerians, the Minni and Kastarit or Kyaxares of Karu-Kassi attacked the tottering Assyrian empire in the time of Esar-haddon II., and it is they again who are called upon in the prophecies of Jeremiah to join in invading the empire of Nebuchadrezzar. When, in the generations which succeeded Darius Hystaspis, Cyrus became the founder of the Persian empire, the Medes and the Manda were confounded one with the other. Astyages, the suzerain of Cyrus, was transformed into a Mede, and the city of Ekbatana into the capital of a Median empire. The illusion has lasted down to our own age. There was no reason for doubting the traditional story ; neither in the pages of the writers of Greece and Rome, nor in those of the Old Testament, nor even in the great inscription of Darius at Behistun, did 1 The reading Nammirr4 instead of Gimirra proposed by Delitzsch is erroneous, and is inconsistent alike with geography and philology. 522 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. there seem to be anything which cast suspicion upon it. It was not until the discovery of the monuments of Nabonidos and Cyrus that the truth at last came to light, and it was found that the history we had so long believed was founded upon a philological mis take. It is not the first time that philology has misled the historian, and needed the correcting guidance of archaeology. There is still another point in which the inscriptions of Cyrus have revolutionised our conceptions of the history of his reign. There was no siege and capture of Babylon ; the capital of the Babylonian empire opened its gates to his general as Sippara had done before. Gobryas and his soldiers entered the city "without fighting," and the daily services in the great temple of Bel-Merodach suffered no interrup tion. Three months later Cyrus himself arrived, and made his " peaceful " entry into the new capital of his empire. We gather from the contract-tablets that even the ordinary business of the place had not been affected by the war.1 1 Even after the entrance of Gobryas into Babylon on the 1 6th of Tammuz, the contracts made there and at Sippara continued to be dated in the reign of Nabonidos. Thus Dr. Strassmaier has published contracts dated in the 17th year of " Nabonidos king of Babylon " on the 22nd of Tammuz, the 5th, 2 1 st and 29th of Ab, the 3rd, 5th, nth, 18th, 21st and 28th of Elul, and the 10th of Marchesvan. There is also one relating to " the daily sacrifice " dated in the month Chisleu. On the other hand there is a contract dated in the month Tisri of "the accession year of Cyrus king of Babylon," as well as others dated the 24th of Marchesvan, and the 7th of Chisleu of the same year. It is clear that the transference of power from Nabonidos to Cyrus must have been a peaceful one, so far as the commercial community was concerned. It should be added THE BOOKS OF DANIEL AND EZRA. 523 All this is in direct opposition to the story of the conquest of Babylonia as it has hitherto been re ceived. According to Herodotos it occupied a long space of time. Babylon itself was besieged by Cyrus for months, and was taken only by a stratagem. The Persian invader drained off the waters of the river, and his army under the shelter of night crept into the city through the empty channel. The story of Herodotos was repeated by historian after his torian, and the Book of Daniel seemed to set its seal upon it. But we now know that the siege never took place. The tale told by Herodotos of the draining of the river is as mythical as the further tale told by him of the dissipation of the Gyndes into three hundred and sixty channels by the army of Cyrus before it entered Babylonia at all. There can be no reference to it either in the words of Isaiah : " (The Lord) saith to the deep, Be dry, and I will dry up thy rivers," x or in those of Jeremiah : " I will dry up her sea, and make her springs dry." 2 Such language, indeed, applies rather to the destruction of the reservoirs and other means of irrigation, which made the plain of Baby lonia a fruitful garden. It may have suggested the idea which took shape in the legend reported by the Greek writers, but the legend itself derives from it no support. that the contracts dated in the reign of Nabonidos, which were witnessed on the 21st of Ab and the 5th of Elul, were drawn up in " the city of the king's palace, Babylon," while that dated the 7th of Chisleu of the accession-year of Cyrus is simply inscribed " Babylon." 1 Isa. xliv. 27. 2 Jer. Ii. 36. 524 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. The siege and capture of Babylon by Cyrus is really a reflection into the past of the actual sieges undergone by the city in the reigns of Darius Hystaspis and Xerxes. It was Darius who first proved that the fortifications of the city of Nebuchad rezzar were not impregnable, and who made his way within its walls by means of stratagem. In B.C. 521 he took it for the first time, capturing in it Nidintu- Bel who had proclaimed himself a son and successor of Nabonidos, and had assumed the name of Nebu chadrezzar. In B.C. 515 it was again taken by him after a siege of nearly twenty months. The Baby lonians had revolted a second time under a pretender of Armenian origin, who like his predecessor pro fessed to be Nebuchadrezzar, the son of Nabonidos. On this occasion the walls of Babylon were partially destroyed. They must, however, have been subse quently restored, since a third revolt broke out in the reign of Xerxes shortly after the return of the Persian monarch from his disastrous campaign in Greece. A certain Samas-erba took the title of " king of Baby lon," and occupied the throne for a few months. He was the last native king of Babylonia, and on his overthrow Xerxes destroyed not only the fortifications of the city, but also the temple of Bel-Merodach.1 It was a sign and token that the power had finally passed away from the god of Babylon. We are now in a position to test the historical statements of the Book of Daniel by the facts of contemporaneous evidence, and to see whether or not modern criticism is justified in rejecting them. At the outset we are struck by two assertions : 1 Arrian, vii. 17. THE BOOKS OF DANIEL AND EZRA. 525 Belshazzar, and not Nabonidos, is said to be the last " king of the Chaldaeans," and his successor is called "Darius the Mede." The name of Belshazzar or Bil-sarra-utsur has been found in. the cuneiform texts. He was the son and heir of Nabonidos, and is apparently " the son of the king " who is referred to in the Annalistic tablet. His father alludes to him more than once in his inscriptions, calling him " Bil-sarramtsur (my) eldest son, the offspring of my heart," and records exist of the offerings made by him to the temple of the Sun- god at Sippara by the hands of his stewards.1 But Belshazzar never became king in his father's place. No mention is made of him at the end of the Annalistic tablet, and it would therefore appear that 1 Thus, in the month Iyyar and the ninth year of his father Nabonidos, Belshazzar is stated to have presented two oxen and thirty-three sheep for sacrifice to Bit-Uri at Sippara through the agency of a certain Bel-sarra-bullidh (Strassmaier : Inschrif- ten von Nabonidus, No. 332). Two years later we find Bel shazzar acting as a wool-merchant. The contract which con tains a record of the fact is as follows (Strassmaier, No. 581) : " Twenty manehs of silver, the price of wool, the property of Belshazzar the son of the king, which by the agency of Nebo- tsabit, the steward of the house of Belshazzar, the son of the king, and the secretaries of the son of the king, has been handed over to Nadiu-Merodach the son of Basa the son of Nur-Sin, in the month Adar, the silver, namely twenty manehs, he shall give. The house of ... a Persian, and all the (rest of the) property of Nadin-Merodach in town and country, shall be the security of Belshazzar the son of the king, until Belshazzar shall receive in full the money. The debtor shall pay the whole sum of money as well as the interest upon it." Then follow the names of six witnesses, including that of the priest who drew up the deed, as well as the date : "At Babylon, the twentieth day of the month (Adar), the eleventh year of Nabonidos king of (Babylon)." 526 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. he was no longer in command of the Babylonian army when the invasion of Cyrus took place. Owing to the unfortunate lacuna in the middle of the tablet we have no account of what became of him, but since we are told not only of the fate of Nabonidos, but also of the death of his wife, it seems probable that Belshazzar was dead. At any rate when Cyrus entered Babylonia he had already disappeared from history. Here, then, the account given by the Book of Daniel is at variance with the testimony of the inscriptions. But the contradictions do not end here. The Biblical story implies that Babylon was taken by storm ; at all events it expressly states that " the king of the Chaldaeans was slain." Nabonidos, the Babylonian king, however, was not slain, and Cyrus entered Babylon " in peace." Nor was Belshazzar the son of Nebuchadrezzar, as we are repeatedly told in the fifth chapter of Daniel. He was the son of the usurper Nabonidos, and Nabonidos did not even belong to the family of Nebuchadrezzar. The error is an indication of the age to which it belongs. It is an error which we find again in the pages of Herodotos, though Hero dotos substitutes Labynetos, that is to say Nabonidos, for Belshazzar, and transforms Nebuchadrezzar into Labynetos I., making him the father of Labyn6tos II. For the origin of the error and the forgetfulness of Babylonian history which it implies, we have to go to the period when Babylon was bearing with sullen impatience the yoke of Darius and his successors. The two pretenders to the Babylonian throne who arose in the reign of Darius called themselves THE BOOKS OF DANIEL AND EZRA. 527 " Nebuchadrezzar, the son of Nabonidos," thus link ing the last king of the Babylonian empire with the glorious name of its founder. The disgrace and disaster associated with the name of Nabonidos were thus absorbed and forgotten in the memory of the mighty Nebuchadrezzar, while the oriental love of contrast was gratified by the picture of the father who gained everything, and the son who lost it all. It is clear, then, that the editor of the fifth chapter of the Book of Daniel could have been as little a contemporary of the events he professes to record as was Herodotos. For both alike the true history of the Babylonian empire has been overclouded and foreshortened by the lapse of time. The three kings who reigned between Nebuchadrezzar and Nabonidos have been forgotten, and the last king of the Baby lonian empire has become the son of its founder. In one respect the compiler of the Book of Daniel is even less well informed than the Greek historian. Herodotos still knows that Nabonidos was the king who was overthrown by Cyrus ; in the Book of Daniel even this is forgotten. But, as we have seen, the cuneiform inscriptions have proved that the Belshazzar of Daniel is no figment of the imagination. Though he never became king of Babylon, he was at one time heir to the throne, and the commander of the Babylonian army. While his father remained in the capital, busied with his antiquarian pursuits and his endeavour to centralise his kingdom both politically and re ligiously, Belshazzar showed himself to the world as a man of action. Outside Babylon he was probably better known than Nabonidos himself. 528 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. What wonder, then, if he became a prominent figure in popular tradition, and in course of time absorbed the name and person of his father ? Na bonidos, who had lost his crown, faded out of the remembrance of his countrymen ; Belshazzar, who was prepared to fight for it, naturally lingered in their memories. If Belshazzar "the king of the Chaldaeans" has thus been shown to be a reflection of a historical Belshazzar distorted by popular tradition, we are prepared to find that " Darius the Mede " owes his origin to the same cause. We know from the in scriptions of Cyrus that the successor of Nabonidos was Cyrus himself, and not a Mede, and the long series of contract-tablets we now possess, dated as they are month by month and almost day by day from the reign of Nebuchadrezzar to that of Xerxes, proves that between Nabonidos and Cyrus there was no intermediate ruler. The overthrow of Nabonidos was followed immediately by the acces sion of Cyrus. The scribes and merchants of Babylon know nothing either of a king Belshazzar or of Darius the Mede. Moreover, the name of" Mede" reminds us of the later confusion between the Medes and the Manda. It was the conquest of the Manda, and not of the Medes, which changed Cyrus from the tributary king of Anzan into an independent and powerful monarch. If, therefore, his troops consisted of others besides Elamites and Persians, they would have been the Manda of Ekbatana. " Darius the Mede " is, in fact, a reflection into the past of Darius, the son of Hystaspes, just as the THE BOOKS OF DANIEL AND EZRA. 529 siege and capture of Babylon by Cyrus is a reflec tion into the past of its siege and capture by the same prince. The name of Darius and the story of the slaughter of the Chaldaean king go together. They are alike derived from that unwritten history which in the East of to-day is still made by the people, and which blends together in a single picture the manifold events and personages of the past. It is a history which has no perspective, though it is based on actual facts ; the accurate calculations of the chronologer have no meaning for it, and the events of a century are crowded into a few years. This is the kind of history which the Jewish mind in the age of the Talmud loved to adapt to moral and religious purposes. This kind of history thus becomes as it were a parable, and under the name of Haggadah serves to illustrate the teaching of the Law. The story of the overthrow ofthe Babylonian empire which we read in the Book of Daniel belongs to the age in which this kind of history originated, in which the memory of the conquest of Babylonia by Darius Hystaspis was still fresh. Darius and not Cyrus accord ingly is the destroyer of the Babylonian monarchy, and Cyrus becomes his successor. Darius, moreover, is a Mede ; this is because from the reign of Darius onwards the Medes were not only fused with the Persians but were even named before them. Indeed, in the earlier Greek writers, the name of Persian is entirely supplanted by that of Mede. It was, therefore, only natural that in- the unwritten history of the people the fall of Babylon should have been attributed to Darius, and that a Median king should have been made to precede the Persian Cyrus. M M 53O THE HIGHER CRITICISM. In one passage ofthe Book of Daniel (ix. i) Darius is called the son of Ahasuerus or Xerxes. Here, again, we have another limitation of date. Before Darius Hystaspis could have been transformed into the son of his own son Xerxes, the reign not only of Darius but of Xerxes also must have been past. We . are carried at the earliest to the close of the fifth century B.C.1 A leading feature in the story of the overthrow of Belshazzar by Darius is the appearance of the mysterious handwriting on the wall of the Babylonian palace. In the very midst of the sacrilegious feast at which the Babylonian king was drinking wine and praising his gods out of the golden vessels of the temple of Jerusalem, "the fingers of a man's hand" wrote certain words on the palace wall. All the wise men of Babylon were summoned to read and interpret the writing, but in vain, and it was not until Daniel was brought in that the words were deciphered. They were, we are told, " Mene, Mene, tekel upharsin." It has long been recognised that the words in question are Aramaic. But it was reserved for the acuteness of M. Clermont-Ganneau to point out their philological explanation. Par'su or ba/su in Assyrian means " a part of a shekel," while tekel is the Aramaic representative of the Hebrew shekel, the Assyrian siklu. Mene is the equivalent alike of the Assyrian rnana or " maneh," the standard weight, and of the verb manti " to reckon." In the Babylonian language, therefore, the mysterious words which appeared upon 1 In the Book of Tobit (xiv. 1 5) Assuerus or Xerxes takes the place of Kyaxares, evidently in order to bring the statement in the Book of Daniel into harmony with profane history. THE BOOKS OF DANIEL AND EZRA. 53! the wall would have been mant maua sikla u bar si, " Reckon a maneh, a shekel and (its) parts." Why the wise men of Babylon could not decipher the words we are not informed. Aramaic was studied and known there not only by the more highly culti vated classes but by the commercial classes as well. It was, in fact, the common language of trade, and the sentence which was written upon the wall was one which must have been often employed in the transactions of the bazaar. It may be we are to understand that it was the interpretation of the words rather than the reading of them which baffled " the astrologers, the Chaldaeans and the soothsayers." Indeed even now the connection between the inter pretation assigned to them and their, literal meaning is far from clear. The last word alone is easy to explain. Pere's or par'su, " a part of a shekel," comes from a root which signifies " to divide," while the name of Persia is written in precisely the same 'manner both in Baby lonian and in Aramaic. Here therefore we have an obvious play upon the name of the Persians. But what play can be intended by the words Mene and tekel is difficult to discover. It has been suggested that Mene was intended to refer to " Media," but the similarity between the two words is not great. Our examination of the fifth chapter of the Book of Daniel has led us to a very definite result. The same monumental evidence which has vindicated the historical accuracy of the Scriptural narrative in other places has here pronounced against it. The story of Belshazzar's fall is not historical in the modern sense of the word history. 532 The higher criticism. We can now pass with surer steps to the other portions of the book. The fifth chapter so thoroughly resembles them in character that we may expect to find archaeology pronouncing the same verdict upon them as it has passed upon that chapter. And such indeed is the case. It is with good reason that the Book of Daniel has been excluded from the historical books of the Old Testament in the Jewish Canon and classed along with the Hagiographa. The first two chapters afford evidences of a compiler of a later age than that of a contemporary of Nebuchad rezzar. The name of the great Babylonian monarch is misspelt. Nebuchadrezzar — Nabiu-kudurri-utsur in the cuneiform — has been corrupted into Nebuchad nezzar. The other Babylonian names mentioned in the chapters are equally incorrect. Belteshazzar, we are told, was the name given to Daniel after his adoption among the " wise men " of Babylon. Now Bilat-sarra- utsur, " O Beltis, defend the king," is a good Baby lonian name. But in the Book of Daniel the name is written, not with a tau, as would be required by the word Bilat, but with a teth, so that the first element in it is transformed into the Assyrian word ballidh " he caused to live." The result is a compound which has no sense, and would be impossible in the Babylonian language. Abed-Nego, again, is a corrupted form. Abed, " servant," must be followed by the name of a deity, and the word Nego does not exist in Babylonian. The name ought to be Abed-Nebo " Servant of Nebo," and its corruption indicates want of acquaint ance with the language and the gods of Babylonia.1 1 I have found the name of Abed-Nebo in an Aramaic inscrip- THE BOOKS OF DANIEL AND EZRA. 533 Of Shadrach and Meshach little can be said. Nothing like them has been found among the multi tudinous names met with in the Babylonian contract- tablets, and their termination is, to say the least, a very uncommon one in Assyria. Ashpenaz, again (i. 3), is not Babylonian, whatever may be its ex planation, and though Arioch (ii. 15) is found in the cuneiform inscriptions, it would not have been used in Babylonia in the age of Nebuchadrezzar. It was, as we have seen in a former chapter, a name of Sumerian origin, and it had passed out of use centuries before Nebuchadrezzar was born. It may have made its way into the Book of Daniel from the fourteenth chapter of Genesis ; it certainly did not do so from the Babylonia of the Exile. Besides the proper names there is another note of late date. "The Chaldaeans" are coupled with the "magicians," the "astrologers," and the "sorcerers," just as they are in Horace or other classical writers of a similar age (Dan. ii. 2). The Hebrew and Aramaic equivalent of the Greek or Latin " Chal daeans '' is Kasdim (Kasdayin), a name the origin of which is still uncertain. But its application in the earlier books of the Bible is well known. It denoted the Semitic Babylonians, and more especially that portion of them to which the family of Nebuchad rezzar belonged. It was in fact a national name ; when Abraham is said to have been born in " Ur of the Kasdim," what is meant is that he was born in the Ur which was in the land of the Babylonians. tion of the sixth or fifth century B.C. engraved on the sandstone rocks north of Silsilis in Upper Egypt. 534 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. The classical term " Chaldaean " is of later date than the Biblical term " Kasdim." The Kalda. or Chaldaeans of the monuments were a tribe which lived in the marshes at the mouths of the Tigris and Euphrates, and we first hear of them in the twelfth century before our era.1 But, as we have seen, Merodach-baladan was their hereditary prince, so that after his conquest of Babylon, and acknowledgment as king of Babylonia, they became the ruling caste in the country. Dr. Winckler and M. Delattre have brought forward some powerful arguments to prove that Nebuchadrezzar also belonged to the same race ; if so, we should have abundant reason for accounting for the fact that the word " Chaldaean " came in time to denote a native of Babylonia, to whatever tribe or race of it he may have belonged. It thus came to have precisely the same signification as the Biblical Kasdim, and when the Jews became acquainted with Greek literature, " Kas dim '' and " Chaldaeans " were regarded as the national equivalents of one another. But after the fall of the Babylonian empire the word Chaldaean gradually assumed a new meaning. The people of the West ceased to be acquainted with the Babylonians through their political power or their commercial relations ; the only " Chaldaeans" known to them were the wandering astrologers and fortune tellers who professed to predict the future or practise magic by the help of ancient " Chaldaean books." " Chaldaeans " consequently became synonymous with fortune-tellers, and fortune-tellers, moreover, who, like the Gypsies or " Egyptians " of to-day, were not 1 See Hilprecht : " The Babylonian Expedition of the Uni versity of Pennsylvania," i. pp. 38, 39. THE BOOKS OF DANIEL AND EZRA. 535 considered of a very respectable character. The term lost its national and territorial signification, and became the equivalent of " sorcerer " and " magician." It is in this sense that the term Kasdim is used in the Book of Daniel. It is a sense which was unknown in the age of Nebuchadrezzar or of Cyrus, and its employment implies, not only that the period was long since past when Babylonia enjoyed a political life of its own, but also that the period had come when a Jewish writer could assign to a Hebrew word a signification derived from its Greek equivalent. This last fact is of considerable importance, if we would determine the age of the Book of Daniel. We are transported to a period later than that of Alexander the Great, when the influence of Greek ideas and habits of thought was so strong in Palestine as to cause a Hebrew writer to forget the true signification of a name which was of frequent occurrence in his own literature, and to use it in precisely the same errone ous sense as that in which it was used by the Greeks of his own day. In the eyes of the Assyriologist the use ofthe word Kasdim in the Book of Daniel would alone be sufficient to indicate the date of the work with unerring certainty. An almost equally clear indication of date is furnished by the statement that " the Chaldaeans " spoke to Nebuchadrezzar " in Syriac " or Aramaic. It is true that their words are given in Aramaic, and that after the age of the Exile the common language of the Jews was Aramaic both in Palestine and in Babylonia. But it never was the language of the " Chaldaeans," unless it were in those later days when " Chaldaeans " told fortunes to Syrians and Greeks in 536 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. what had become the language of the Mediterranean coast. The cuneiform texts show that even as late as the reign of the Parthian kings the language of the native Babylonians was still that of their fathers. Aramaic indeed had been spoken in Babylonia long before the time of Nebuchadrezzar, but it was spoken by the Aramaean tribes who had settled there. It had also become to a certain extent the language of international trade, and it is very probable that it was commonly used as a means of intercourse with foreign populations like that of the Jewish exiles who inhabited Chaldaea. But it would have been the last language to be spoken at the court of a great Baby lonian monarch by his native subjects, more especially by those who belonged to the learned class. The wisdom of Babylonia, including its astrology, its pseudo-science of omens, and its interpretation of dreams, was stored up in a literature which was written in the two old languages of the country — Semitic Babylonian, and agglutinative Sumerian — and to have discarded them for the language of the trader and the conquered Aramaean would have been an act of sacrilege. Nor would Nebuchadrezzar and his courtiers have been likely to understand what was said. The statement, therefore, that the king of Babylonia was addressed by his native subjects in Aramaic proves that its author was unacquainted with the real language of the Chaldaeans. He cannot have had a first-hand acquaintance with Babylonia, and must have been misled by the fact recorded in the Books of Kings, that the Rab-shakeh of Sennacherib was requested by the ministers of Hezekiah to speak THE BOOKS OF DANIEL AND EZRA. 537 to them in the Aramaic tongue. This, however, did not mean that Aramaic was the language of Assyria and Babylonia, but that it was the language of foreign diplomacy. The decipherment ofthe cuneiform monu ments has shown us that Assyrian and Babylonian differed from Aramaic as much as French differs from Portuguese. The period to which the Apocalypse of Daniel is assigned is also the period of which the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah treat. It has long been recognised by commentators of various schools that these two books, together with the Books of Chronicles, really constitute a single work. Their compiler and the Chronicler seem to have been one and the same, and they must once have formed a continuous narrative. Indeed the First Book of Esdras — so long accounted canonical by the Church — commences where the Books of the Chronicles break off, and ends where the Book of Nehemiah begins. In the Masoretic Book of Ezra the fact is disguised by the repetition at its com mencement of the last two verses of the Chronicles, and the break between it and the Book of Nehemiah. Sir H. H. Howorth has recently argued that the First Book of Esdras is the older and better version of the Masoretic Book of Ezra. It was at all events the version that was known to Josephus, from which we may infer that as late as the time of the destruction of Jerusalem it was still the commonly accepted version of the Jewish Church. It was also the version which was found in the Septuagint, and was accord ingly regarded as canonical by the early Christians. The Greek translation of the Book of Ezra was made subsequently to the lifetime of Josephus, probably 538 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. by Theodotion, and its insertion in the Septuagint belongs to a still later age. That it should have taken the place previously held by the First Book of Esdras in the estimation of the Christian Church was due to St. Jerome, who wished to restrict the canon of the Old Testament to such books only as were preserved in his day in their original Hebrew dress. But whether we regard the First Book of Esdras or the Book of Ezra as best representing the primitive form of the work of which they are but variant versions, the fact remains that the work in question was only part of a larger whole, which comprised the Books of the Chronicles and the Book of Nehemiah. For the history of the return from the Exile and the events which immediately followed it, the author of the work made use of an Aramaic chronicle, portions of which he has quoted from time to time in its original language. The high value of this Aramaic chronicle is acknowledged by the most sceptical critics as well as its contemporaneity with the events it recorded. Other documents besides the Aramaic chronicle were made use of by the compiler and incorporated in his work. His arrangement of them is not always strictly chronological, and the result has been extreme perplexity to the commentators and interminable controversies. The question is rendered still more complex by the fact that some of the passages which offer the greatest difficulty to the historian are omitted in the First Book of Esdras, and may therefore have been interpolations. Of course the opposite supposi tion is also possible, their omission in the version known as the First Book of Esdras having been due THE BOOKS OF DANIEL AND EZRA. 539 to a desire to get rid of the difficulties which they occasion. The primary difficulty concerns the date to which the rebuilding of the temple must be assigned and consequently the age of Zerubbabel and the high- priest Jeshua, and of their contemporaries, the pro phets Haggai and Zechariah. The question partly depends, however, upon a previous one : Was Zerub babel identical with Sheshbazzar, "the prince of Judah," to whom Cyrus entrusted the office of leading back the Jewish exiles to their old homes ? In view of the fifth chapter of Ezra it is impossible to believe that he was. Here Zerubbabel, the con temporary of Darius (vv. 2 — 5), is expressly distin guished from Sheshbazzar who lived in the first year ofthe reign of Cyrus as king of Babylon (vv. 14 — 16). The actual words of the official letter are quoted which was written to the Persian king by Tatnai, the governor of Syria,1 and there is no escape from their obvious meaning. Moreover, as Sir H. H. Howorth has remarked, although a person might bear two names in two different languages, it was very unusual that he should do so where the language to which the names belonged was the same. Now Zerubbabel as well as Sheshbazzar is Babylonian. It represents the Babylonian Ziru-Babili "the seed of Babylon," while Sheshbazzar, as a Belgian scholar has pointed out, is the Babylonian Samas-bil-utsur " O Sun-god, defend the lord." The fact would not be changed if we were 1 'Abarnaharah mistranslated " on this side the river " in the Authorised Version means " on the other side of the river " Euphrates, the geographical point of view being that of a resident in Persia or Babylonia. 540 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. to adopt the reading of the First Book of Esdras and of Josephus, Sanabazzar instead of Sheshbazzar, since Sana is the Babylonian Sinu " the Moon-god." It appears in the name of Sanballat, the Babylonian Sinu-ballidh " the Moon-god has given life." In the letter of Tatnai and his companions (Ezra v. 14) the title given to Sheshbazzar is that of pekhdh. Pekhdh is the Assyro-Babylonian pakhat or pikhat " a satrap " or " governor," a word of constant occur rence in the cuneiform inscriptions. Like so many other words relating to the administration of the country, it was borrowed by the Persians when the conquests of Cyrus and Darius had made them the successors of the monarchs of Babylonia. It thus continued to be the official title of the Persian satrap who governed a Semitic population. In the first chapter of Ezra (i. 8) the title is changed into that of "prince of Judah." This shows us that we here have the work of a Jewish writer, who looks at the earlier history of his country from a purely Jewish point of view, and accordingly translates even an official title into one which had a special meaning and interest for a Jew. The title, therefore, which he bestows upon Sheshbazzar does not necessarily imply that the Persian governor was himself of Jewish descent ; for aught we know, he might have been a Babylonian. Perhaps the fact that his father is not named indicates his foreign origin. Zerubbabel, on the other hand, is called the son of Shealtiel not only in the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah but also by his contemporary Haggai. It is therefore strange to find a different genealogy assigned to him by the Chronicler (1 Chron. iii. 17—19), who makes him THE BOOKS OF DANIEL AND EZRA. 541 the son of Pedaiah and the grandson of Salathiel or Shealtiel. Salathiel was the son of Jehoiachin, the exiled king of Judah, who was still living when Evil- Merodach mounted the throne of Babylon in B.C. 561. All through the long reign of Nebuchadrezzar had Jehoiachin pined in a Babylonian prison, where it is not likely that a son could have been born to him. Shealtiel, therefore, must have been born before B.C. 598 or after B.C. 561. Zerubbabel's contemporary was the high-priest Jeshua or Joshua. According to the prophets Haggai and Zechariah, Joshua was the son of Josedech, who is called Jehozadak by the Chronicler (1 Chron. vi. 15). The Chronicler adds that Jehozadak was carried captive to Babylon by Nebuchadrezzar. This, how ever, can hardly be correct, since, according to the second Book of Kings (xxv. 18), it was his father Seraiah who shared the captivity of Zedekiah, unless indeed we are to suppose that Jehozadak acted as high-priest along with his father. However this may be, it is clear that Jehozadak or Josedech was a contemporary of Zedekiah, and also of Shealtiel the " father " of Zerubbabel. With this agrees the genealogy of the high-priests which we read in the twelfth chapter of Nehemiah (xii. 10, 11). From this we learn that between Jeshua and Jaddua, the contemporary of Alexander the Great, there were four generations, or about one hundred and twenty years. This would bring us to the reign of Darius Hystaspis for the date of Jeshua, the same date as that to which we should be brought if, as the Chronicler asserts, Zerubbabel were the grandson of Shealtiel. 542 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. How, then, are we to explain the very definite statements in the fourth chapter of Ezra, statements which are equally to be found in the first Book of Esdras ? Here we are told that " the people of the land" intrigued against the Jews "all the days of Cyrus king of Persia, even until the reign of Darius," and that their intrigues continued into the reigns of Xerxes and of Artaxerxes. A copy of the letter to Artaxerxes is then given, as well as the answer of the king, the result of which was to put a stop to the erection of the temple at Jerusalem " until the second year of Darius king of Persia." Then at last the work was begun anew, and brought to a successful termination by Zerubbabel and Jeshua, aided by the prophets Haggai and Zechariah. This account thus transfers Zerubbabel and his contemporaries from the reign of Darius Hystaspis to that of Darius Nothos, just a century later. The decree of Darius ordering the governor of Syria and his companions to assist the Jews in the restor ation of their temple would have been issued, not in B.C. 519 but in B.C. 422. And that this is the date to which the compiler of the Book of Ezra refers it is made doubly certain by his dwelling upon the fact that " they builded and finished it according to the commandment of the God of Israel and according to the commandment of Cyrus and Darius and Arta xerxes king of Persia." The work was accomplished after the reign of Artaxerxes, which lasted from B.C. 465 to B.C. 425. There is no possible means of avoiding the con clusion. Before the decipherment of the cuneiform inscriptions it was imagined that, like the Pharaohs of THE BOOKS OF DANIEL AND EZRA. 543 Egypt, the Persian kings may have borne double names, and that the Xerxes of the Book of Ezra may have been intended for Kambyses, and Artaxerxes for the pseudo-Smerdes. But we now know that such was not the case. The kings of Persia, like the kings of Babylonia before them, were contented with but one name, and by that name alone they were known in all parts of their dominions. The son and successor of Cyrus is Kambyses in Babylon and the other " provinces " as well as in Persia and Egypt, and Darius the son of Hystaspes is Darius and nothing else, whatever the language in which he addresses his subjects. The Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes, Artaxerxes, and Darius of the Book of Ezra can be none other than the Cyrus, Darius I., Xerxes, Arta xerxes, and Darius II. of Persian history. And yet there is a passage in which Zerubbabel not only appears to be identified with Sheshbazzar, he also appears to be carried back to the reign of Cyrus. This is at the beginning of the fourth chapter, where it is stated that Zerubbabel and Jeshua had told " the adversaries of Judah " that they were restoring the temple, " as King Cyrus the king of Persia hath commanded us " (v. 3), and immediately after this statement comes the passage in which we are told of the intrigues that were carried on " all the days of Cyrus" and his successors. But the first four verses of the chapter are not found in the First Book of Esdras, and those scholars therefore who consider the latter a more trustworthy version of the original work than the Masoretic Ezra, regard them as a late and unauthorised interpolation. In support of this view it is urged that the same verses make 544 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. Esar-haddon the transporter of the foreign colonists to Samaria, whereas we know from the Assyrian monuments that it was Sargon who captured the Israelitish capital and settled in it certain Arab tribes. But it is by no means clear that the majority of the foreign colonists in the Samaritan district were not really brought there by Esar-haddon. In the second Book of Kings, where the names of the colonists are enumerated, it is simply said that they were settled there by " the king of Assyria " ; who the king actually was is not recorded. The colonists whom Sargon in one of his inscriptions tells us he had established in " Beth-Omri " or Samaria were Thamudites and other Arab tribes, of whom no notice is taken in the Books of Kings, though it may be that " Geshem the Arabian," who is so prominent a figure in the Book of Nehemiah, was one of them. Moreover the number of Israelites carried away by Sargon was comparatively small ; they must have belonged to the upper classes only, and been mainly, if not altogether, inhabitants of the capital itself. It can hardly have been to supply their place that the numerous settlers from Hamath and Babylonia were planted not only in Samaria but also " in the cities thereof," and to these, as we learn from the Book of Ezra, were subsequently added Elamites. That Esar-haddon did establish a colony in Syria — "the land of the Hittites" as it was called in his day — we have monumental evidence. He tells us in one of his inscriptions that after the overthrow of the rebellious king of Sidon he " collected all the kings of the land ofthe Hittites and the coast of the (Mediter ranean) Sea," and founded a city which he named " the THE BOOKS OF DANIEL AND EZRA, 545 city of Esar-haddon." Here he settled the captives he had made among " the mountains and sea of the rising sun," in other words an Elamite population. The conquest of Elam, however, was the work of his son and successor Assur-bani-pal, who sacked Shushan, the ancient capital ofthe country, and carried away its population. In the name of Assur-bani-pal Professor Gelzer has proposed to recognise that of "the great and noble Asnapper," who, according to the fourth chapter of the Masoretic Book of Ezra (vv. 9, 10), " set in the cities of Samaria" " the Dinaites, the Apharsathchites, the Tarpelites, the Apharsites, the Archevites, the Babylonians, the Susankites, the Dehavites and the Elamites." The passage in which this statement is made is one of those that are omitted in the First Book of Esdras. But it bears upon its face the stamp of authenticity. The form " Susankite" is found in the native inscrip tions of Susa, and could never have been invented by a Jewish interpolator. The Apharsites are probably the people of Apirti, now Mai Amir, in Eastern Elam, while Erech and Babylon were captured by Assur- bani-pal after the suppression of the Babylonian revolt, and such of their inhabitants as were not put to the sword may very well have been transported to Palestine. It is not difficult to identify Asnapper with Assur- bani-pal, when we remember that a Babylonian / became r in Persian, and that the name of Assur is often expressed by the abbreviation As. It is strange, however, that Asnapper is not entitled "king of Assyria," and it may therefore be that he was a general of " the great king." In any case the names N N 546 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. of the populations he is said to have settled in the cities of Samaria guarantee the genuineness of the passage in which they are found. The fact, therefore, that certain verses in the fourth chapter of the Book of Ezra do not exist in the First Book of Esdras is no proof of their untrustworthiness. That Zerubbabel and Sheshbazzar should seem to be identified in one of them is better evidence against them. But even in the First Book of Esdras (vi. 18) Zerubbabel is once named along with Sanabassar as having received the gifts of Cyrus. Here, however, , the insertion of the name of Zerubbabel is certainly due to an interpolator. In the next verse the pronoun is singular, not plural, showing that in the original text the name only of Sanabassar occurred. We must, then, conclude that Sheshbazzar and Zerubbabel were different persons, and consequently we are not obliged to make Zerubbabel a contem porary of Cyrus. But this leaves untouched the question as to who was the Darius under whom he lived. We have seen that the fourth, fifth and sixth chapters of Ezra make him Darius II., while the genealogies as distinctly require him to have been Darius I. That the genealogies must be right is evident from the facts which are subsequently recorded. We need not lay much stress on the introduction to the seventh chapter, in which it is stated that the visit of Ezra to Jerusalem in the seventh year of the reign of Artaxerxes took place " after " the restoration of the temple of Zerubbabel, since the passage is not the books of Daniel and Ezra. 547 free from inaccuracies. The Persian king is called "the king of Assyria" (vi. 22), and Ezra himself is made the son of Seraiah, the contemporary of Zedekiah and the grandfather of Jeshua the high- priest. It is obvious that the scribe who came to Jerusalem in B.C. 458 in the plenitude of his strength could not have been the son of a man who flourished one hundred and thirty years before.1 But in the history both of Ezra and of Nehemiah the temple is described as already finished. The statement is made in the official letter of Artaxerxes which Ezra carried with him (Ezra vii. 16, 19), while the proposal was made to Nehemiah by Shemaiah that they should " meet together in the house of God, within the temple, and let us shut the doors ofthe temple" (Neh. vi. 10). Nothing can be more . explicit than this. It could not have been merely the foundations of the temple that had been laid, or a temporary building that had been erected ; the temple itself must already have been standing, finished and complete. Moreover, the high-priests who were contemporary with Nehemiah and Ezra were Joiakim and Eliashib the son and grandson of Jeshua, the friend and com panion of Zerubbabel (Neh. iii. I, xii. 10, 26, xiii. 4). This is in perfect agreement with the date of the latter if he lived under Darius Hystaspis. But it 1 From Seraiah back to the reign of Solomon the list of high- priests given in Ezra vii. I — 5 agrees with that in I Chr. vi. 4—1 5, but at that point omits the names of six priests given by the Chronicler. On the other hand the list in Neh. xi. 1 1 makes Seraiah the son of Hilkiah instead of Azariah, and interpolates a Meraioth between Zadok and Ahitub. 548 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. renders the later date of Darius Nothos altogether impossible. Here, then, we are confronted by a chronological inconsistency which no amount of ingenuity can explain away. Darius I. and Darius II. are con founded with one another, just as in the Book of Daniel the siege and capture of Babylon by Darius Hystaspis is transferred back to the reign of Cyrus, and the place of Cyrus is accordingly usurped by "Darius the Mede." How Darius I. came to be confounded with Darius II. we may perhaps gather from some verses in the twelfth chapter of Nehemiah (xii. 22, 23). There we read — "The Levites in the days of Eliashib, Joiada, and Johanan, and Jaddua,'were recorded chief of the fathers : also the priests, to the reign of Darius the Persian. The sons of Levi, the chief of the fathers, were written in the book of the chronicles, even until the days of Johanan the son of Eliashib." The name of Johanan is given as Jonathan in the list of the high-priests at the beginning of the chapter (v. 1 1), and he was the grandson, not the son of Eliashib. If, therefore, Eliashib were alive in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes, that is to say in B.C. 445, we can easily understand how his grandson came to be a contemporary of Darius II., whose reign lasted from B.C. 425 to 405. It is true that if Jaddua were the son of Johanan we are confronted by a fresh difficulty, since Jaddua, according to Josephus, was the high-priest who met Alexander the Great. But the chronology of Josephus is hopelessly at variance with that of the canonical books, the Jewish historian making Sanballat, the adversary of Nehemiah, a THE BOOKS OF DANIEL AND EZRA. 549 contemporary of Jaddua and Alexander, and assert ing that Manasseh, the grandson of Eliashib, who was driven away by Nehemiah (Neh. xiii. 28), was a brother of Jaddua and the founder of the Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim. If we are to accept the narrative of Josephus, the Darius of Neh. xii. 22 will be, not Darius II., but Darius III. Kodomannos (B.C. 336—330)- But whether we follow Josephus or the text of Nehemiah matters but little for our present purpose. The fact remains that it was in the reign of " Darius the Persian" that the names of the priestly and Levitical families were recorded in " the book of the chronicles,'' and that this was done in the time of Johanan and Jaddua. At this time, therefore, some thing happened which caused a new register of the ministers of the temple to be made ; it may even be that work was carried on in the temple itself. Accu sations may have been brought against the Jews before Xerxes and Artaxerxes, and both these monarchs — the latter certainly not before the close of his reign — may have interfered with the repair and maintenance of the temple and its service. The error of the compiler of the Book of Ezra would then have Iain in coupling this with the attempts that were made by the enemies of the Jews at an earlier period to prevent them from rebuilding the temple at all. That Xerxes may have been unfavourably disposed to the Jewish religion is very possible. We know from his inscriptions that he was a strict Zoroastrian. We also know that after his return from his Greek campaign he destroyed the great temple of Bel at 550 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. Babylon as well as the golden image which it con tained. Dr. Oppert has lately pointed out what was the cause of this latter act. One of the Babylonian contract-tablets is dated in the reign of a king called Samas-erba, and the names of the witnesses men tioned in it show that the king in question must have been a contemporary of Xerxes. It would appear, therefore, that the Babylonians took advantage of the absence of the Persian monarch and his army in Greece, and the disasters which befell it there, to assert once more their independence. Summary punishment was dealt out to them when Xerxes found himself again in his Asiatic dominions. But it was upon their religion that the blow chiefly fell. Xerxes or his advisers saw plainly that to destroy the national life and feeling of Babylon it was necessary to destroy the religion of Babylon. And this could be done only by destroying the ancient temple which formed the centre of the national life and the citadel of a discontented priest hood. As long as the temple of Bel remained, the Babylonians could not forget that they were a people distinct from their Persian masters, and that they had behind them a glorious past. Now it would have been easy for the Persian governors of Syria to represent to the king that the Jewish temple at Jerusalem was quite as much a menace to the tranquillity of the empire as the temple of Bel at Babylon. Like the Babylonians, the Jews in Palestine had preserved a national life which centred round the newly-restored temple of Yahveh. Like Babylon Jerusalem was "a rebellious city," which " of old time had made insurrection against kings," THE BOOKS OF DANIEL AND EZRA. 55 1 while it had itself once been ruled by " mighty '' princes. In fact the analogy between Babylon and Jerusalem was so striking, that it would not have been wonderful if the suppression of the Babylonian revolt and the destruction of the temple of Bel had been followed by an attempt to injure the temple of the Jews. Be this, however, as it may, we cannot read the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah without being im pressed by the extent to which the influence not only of the Babylonian civil administration but also of Babylonian religion had been felt by. the Semitic populations of Syria and Palestine. The names of the leaders of the returning exiles, Sheshbazzar and Zerubbabel, are alike Babylonian, and the first con tains the name of the Babylonian Sun-god. San ballat of Beth-Horon bears a specifically Babylonian name, with which the name of the Moon-god of Babylonia is compounded. One of the eleven elders who accompanied Zerubbabel was called Mordecai, " he who is devoted to Merodach," the divine patron of Babylon (Ezra ii. 1, Neh. vii. 7) ; another, Bilshan, seems to have the Babylonian name of Bil-sunu. For Syrian and Jew alike, it was the Semitic Babylonian, kindred in race, in language, and in religious concep tions, who caused his influence to be felt ; not the alien Persian. From the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah we should naturally pass to the Books of the so-called Apo crypha. But about them the oriental archaeologist has but little to say. The decipherment of the cuneiform inscriptions has finally destroyed all claim on the part of the Books of Tobit and Judith to be con- j52 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. sidered as history, and has banished them to the realm of Haggadah. Sennacherib was the son of Sargon, not of " Enemessar," by whom Shalmaneser must be meant, and in his time Rages in Media did not form a part of the Assyrian empire, even if it existed at all. The murder of Sennacherib did not take place fifty-five days after his return from his campaign against Judah, but twenty years later; Ekbatana was not yet built, and Elam or Elymais not yet added to the empire of Nineveh. The men tion of the evil spirit Asmodeus, whose name is derived from the Persian Aeshma-daeva, indicates the date of the book.1 The statements of the Book of Judith are still more wide of the truth. Nebuchad rezzar did not reign in Nineveh, which his father had helped to reduce to a heap of ruins, nor was Ar- phaxad a Median king. Arphaxad, in fact, is merely a geographical expression, and the name has been taken from the Book of Genesis. Arioch " king of the Elymeans " equally owes his name to the Book of Genesis. Ekbatana was not taken by Nebuchad rezzar, whose commander-in-chief could hardly have borne the Persian name of Holofernes. The Persian name of "Bagoas the eunuch" is equally an anachron ism. Throughout the book Nebuchadrezzar is trans formed into a king of Nineveh, and the Ten Tribes have apparently not yet been carried into captivity. How hopeless its chronology is,however, may be judged from the fact that the contemporary high-priest at Jeru salem is asserted to have been "Joacim" (xv. 8), who, as we learn from Neh. xii. 10, lived after the Exile. 1 Aeshma-daeva is called in the Avesta "the wicked Aeshma," and ranked next to Angro-mainyus the representative of evil. THE BOOKS OF DANIEL AND EZRA. 553 The condemnation passed by the Assyriologist upon the historical trustworthiness of the Books of Tobit and Judith must be extended also to the Stories of Susanna and of Bel and the Dragon. The latter story, however, is based upon a Babylonian myth, and may therefore be considered to be of Babylonian origin. It rests upon the legend of the great fight waged by Bel-Merodach against Tiamat, the dragon of chaos and darkness, which is so graphic ally told in the Chaldaean epic of the Creation. But the Jewish writer has changed the evil spirit of Baby lonian mythology into a living " dragon " worshipped by the inhabitants of Babylon, and has made Daniel's imprisonment in the den of lions a part of the story. Whereas, however, in the canonical Book of Daniel the latter event is stated to have happened in the reign of Darius, in the deutero-canonical History of the Destruction of Bel and the Dragon it is placed under Cyrus. The other apocryphal books are untouched by monumental discovery. They belong to the period when the monumental records of the past have to make way for the literature of Greece and Rome. The inscriptions of Egypt and Babylonia can shed but little light upon them, much less pronounce a judgment upon their historical accuracy. The Greek language in which they have been preserved is a symbol of the change that has passed over the civil ised world. The ancient culture of the Orient has been handed on to the nations of Europe, and the part once played in the history of mankind by Egypt, by Babylonia, and by Assyria has become a half-forgotten tale. CHAPTER XII. CONCLUSION. Our task is done. The records of the Old Testa ment have been confronted with the monuments of the ancient oriental world, wherever this was possible, and their historical accuracy and trustworthiness has been tested by a comparison with the latest results of archaeological research. It is true that in some instances the facts are still so imperfectly known as to make the conclusions the oriental archaeologist draws from them probable only. It is also true that in some cases a conclusion which seems certain and evident to one student may not seem equally certain and evident to another. If the facts of history could always be interpreted in the same way, there would be no need to write new his tories of the past. In all departments of study, more especially in history and archaeology, there are certain groups of facts which admit of more than one ex planation. But such groups can easily be distinguished from those about which the scholar who is really acquainted with his subject can have no shadow of doubt. It is the half-scholars, those who have not so thoroughly fathomed a subject as to know where its boundaries conclusion. 555 actually lie, that are never sure of their conclusions. They have not sufficient knowledge to separate the certain from the probable, and every fact or conclusion which is placed before them seems enveloped in the same nebulous atmosphere of uncertainty. Doubtless this attitude of scepticism is on the whole better than that attitude of unintelligent credulity which is begotten of ignorance and vanity. But it does not the less impede the progress of science, or diminish the number of false theories which are current in the world. There is such a thing as ignorant scepticism, as well as ignorant credulity, and the intellectual society of modern Europe is more likely to be influenced by it. Lord Bolingbroke, in his letter to Alexander Pope, remarks with good reason on the "pride" which renders men "dogmatical in the midst of ignorance, and often sceptical in the midst of knowledge." Unfortunately this attitude of ignorant scepticism is sometimes assumed by men who are really great scholars in some other department of learning than that in which it is displayed. The history of the decipherment of the Egyptian and Assyrian inscrip tions affords a good illustration of the fact. The earlier results of the decipherment were rejected with contempt by learned classical and oriental scholars, and it was triumphantly proved how impossible it must be to decipher a lost language which was written in a forgotten script. Scholars have unfortunately been only too ready to sneer at facts that were pre sented to them by workers in fields of which they knew little or nothing, and orientalists have not been always guiltless in this respect. Time after time we 556 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. have seen assured facts stolidly rejected, because they were combined with statements that were doubtful or improbable ; because those who put them forward were not agreed among themselves in all points ; because, finally, theyknew less about the special subject of the sceptic than the sceptic himself. But in history and archaeology " truth is great " and will eventually prevail, whatever may be the case elsewhere. A fact will in time come to be recognised and accepted, however strange and unpalatable it may be at first. And we must not forget that in a fact of history and archaeology is included its inter pretation by the archaeologist and the historian. The conclusion he draws is, in short, part of the fact itself. If the fact is really a fact, the conclusion must be accepted as well as the premisses on which it rests. The facts of history and archaeology resemble the facts of ordinary life. Their certainty or probability is the certainty and probability which shape and determine our daily actions. What view the philo sopher may take of them is immaterial. For him a fact may not exist at all, and a relative probability may be all that he is prepared to grant to our most cherished beliefs. But philosophy and archaeology or history are wholly separate things, and the attempts that have been made to introduce the terms and conceptions of philosophy into history have led only to bad philosophy and still worse history. It is not so much the character of the archaeologist's facts, as the imperfection of his records, that makes it so often impossible for him to arrive even at a fair degree of certainty. The past history of civilised man is still in a fragmentary condition. The record conclusion. 557 fails us just where we need it most, the links are broken just where the chain ought to be strongest. It is a picture in which the lights and shadows do not harmonise with one another; the shadows are darkness and the lights lie scattered and apart. The "apologist" who deliberately shuts his eyes to archaeological light is far less blameworthy than the "higher critic" who does the same. The one can plead that he is defending what he believes to have been the time-honoured doctrine of a community, while the other rejects the testimony of the archaeologist for the sake of the theory of some modern scholar. There is all the difference in the world between views which have received the sanction of large masses of mankind in various ages and of various degrees of knowledge, and opinions based on the " literary tact " or " critical insight " of an individual who not only belongs to the nineteenth century but is not even an oriental. We may perhaps trust the "literary tact" of a modern European when he is dealing with modern European literature, but such "tact" is worthless when it is exercised on the ancient books of the East. Between the scholar who has been trained in a German study and the oriental even of to-day, there is a gulf fixed which cannot easily be passed. If we are to have judgments upon ancient oriental literature based solely on the previous education and beliefs of the critic, let them be pronounced by men like Burckhardt or Sir Richard Burton, not by those whose knowledge of oriental ideas has been derived from books. But it is just men like Burckhardt and Burton who shrink from pronouncing such judgments at all. 558 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. Perhaps it is this inability to recognise the vital difference that exists between the Oriental and the European world that has been the cause of so vast an amount of wasted time and labour over the records of the Old Testament. "Apologists" and " higher critics " alike have treated the Old Testa ment books and their contents as if they had been written in England or France or Germany. We approach them from our own modern and Western point of view, and read into their language and narratives the ideas which seem natural, if not necessary, to us who have received them by educa tion and inheritance. We transform the men of ancient Israel into the men of mediaeval Europe, sometimes even into the men of modern Europe, and we criticise the Biblical writers as if they had lived in an age of newspapers and reviews. In fact, we cannot help doing so. We are, to use the language of a current philosophy, the creatures of our environment ; we cannot escape from the influences which surround us, and the ideas and habits of thought in which we have been brought up. Those who have been much in the East and have tried to mingle with the native population know well how utterly impossible it is for the European to look at the world with the same eyes as the Oriental. For a while indeed the European may fancy that he and the Oriental understand one another ; but sooner or later a time comes when he is suddenly awakened from his dream, and finds himself in the presence of a mind which is as strange to him as would be the mind of an inhabitant of Saturn. But this is not all. It is difficult, if not impossible, conclusion. 559 for us to realise the intellectual point of view and beliefs of those by whom the books of the Old Testament were written, and of those by whom they were read. It is almost as difficult for us to realise the events which they record. Very few of us indeed ever think of trying to realise them ; even com mentators, whose business it ought to be to do so, too commonly are contented with giving us a his torical picture, which is that of the nineteenth century rather than of the ancient Hebrew world. How many of those who read the Bible ever attempt to translate into living reality the narratives they profess to study, or to understand exactly what it was that the writers meant ? We imagine that we understand them now because we have never endeavoured seriously to dis cover what they were actually intended to signify. It has been said, especially by Keltic writers, that one of the chief defects of the Teutonic and Anglo- Saxon mind is its want of the historical imagination. The ordinary man has not the power of transporting himself into a situation with which he is unfamiliar, or where the springs of action are new to him. He cannot divest himself of his own personality, with all its beliefs, prejudices and inherited instincts. Oriental archaeology is a corrective of this inability to realise and therefore to understand the history of the ancient East. It speaks to us in the tones of the nineteenth century — tones which we can comprehend and listen to. It sweeps away the modern romance which we have woven around the narratives of the Old Testament, and shows us that they are no theological fairy tales, but accounts of events which are alleged to have taken place in this work-a-day 560 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. world. It tells us how the men thought and acted who were contemporary with the heroes of the Hebrew Scriptures, it brings before us as in a photograph the politics of the day, and the theatre wherein those politics were represented. In reading Sennacherib's account of his campaign against Hezekiah we are brought face to face with history just as much as we should be by the columns of a modern newspaper, and we can picture the events with as much definite- ness of outline in the one case as we can in the other. No conventional ideas of what the narrative ought to mean come between us and the picture it presents. We judge it rightly or wrongly according to our capacity for forming a judgment upon purely historical grounds. Our concern is with history, and we realise that such is the case. It is in this way that oriental archaeology has come to teach us how to read and understand the narratives of the Old Testament. We begin to learn what the history of the Orient was in the days of Moses, of Solo mon, or of Hezekiah, and with this key in our hands can unlock the historical treasures of the Bible. We can see in Hezekiah one of those oriental despots who benefited their country, not indeed by a government which would approve itself to the Englishman of to day, but by one which was eminently suited to his time and country. By prudent alliances and timely submission he preserved the practical independence of the great fortress which constituted his capital, and organised a national feeling and resistance to the enemy by centralising there the religion of his country, and thereby the unifying principle of the state. The policy which destroyed the local high-places, each of CONCLUSION. 561 which might have proved a rallying-place for factions like those which nearly overthrew the dynasty of David in the preceding reign, was a policy which, while it aggrandised the royal power, afforded Judah its best chance of resisting the fate that had over taken Samaria. In glancing over the preceding pages we cannot fail to be struck by the fact that the evidence of oriental archaeology is on the whole distinctly un favourable to the pretensions ofthe " higher criticism." The " apologist " may lose something, but the " higher critic" loses much more. That primary assumption of the late use of writing for literary purposes in Palestine, which, consciously or unconsciously, has done so much to wreck the belief of the critic in the earlier narratives of the Bible, has been shown to be utterly false. The cuneiform inscriptions have restored the historical credit of certain passages of the Pentateuch which had been resolved into myth, and have demonstrated the worthlessness of the arguments by which their mythic character had been maintained. The archaeology of Genesis seems to show that the literary analysis of the book must be revised, and that the confidence with which one portion of a verse is assigned to one author and another portion of it to another is a confidence begotten of the study of modern critical literature and not of the literature of the past. Such microscopic analysis is the result of short sight. On the other hand, the same evidence which obliges us to reject the conclusions of the newer critics in one place equally obliges us to reject those of the older school of commentators in another. We must accept o o 562 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. the evidence in both instances or in neither. We cannot admit it where it makes for our own favourite views and disallow it where it makes for the views of others. We cannot crush the " higher critic " with it at one time and shut our eyes to its testimony at another, on theground that it may yet be supplemented. Nor can we quote it with approval when it condemns the historical accuracy of the narratives in the Book of Daniel, and ignore its judgment when it restores the credit of the earlier books of the Bible. Nor can we, whether as " higher critics " or as " apologists," take refuge in the assertion that since many of the facts of oriental archaeology are not as yet before us in a final shape, we may disregard such of them as do not suit our views. There is never much difficulty in explaining away a fact when it is unpalatable. If the fact itself is difficult to deal with, it is always easy to maintain that those who put it forward are " uncritical," " credulous," or finally " untrustworthy philologists." Sooner or later, how ever, facts have a way of revenging themselves, and the facts of oriental archaeology are no exception to the rule. The facts of oriental archaeology, let it be remem bered, have nothing to do with theology. The archae ologist writes for the historian, not for the homilist or the defender of dogma. The facts he deals with, whether monumental or Biblical, are historical facts, to be judged like all other historical facts in accord ance with the canons of historical reasoning. Such questions as the possibility of miracles lie outside his sphere. If his historical documents contain an account of what is commonly called a miracle he is bound to CONCLUSION. 563 say so, and he is also bound to state the amount of historical credibility they possess. But there his duties end. A cuneiform text, for instance, declares that Sargon of Accad was brought up and beloved by the goddess Istar. All that the archaeologist is required to say on the subject is that the text is not contemporaneous with the reign of Sargon himself. It is not for him to enter into the theological side of the question, and discuss the hypothetical possibility ofthe occurrence. In the preceding pages I have done my best to speak simply as an archaeologist. I have placed the records ofthe monuments and the records of the Old Testament side by side and endeavoured to treat them both with an equal amount of impartiality and an equal freedom from theological prepossessions. How far I have succeeded it is for others to say. It is difficult altogether to escape from our surrounding, and to regard the sacred books of one's own faith with precisely the same equanimity as the sacred books of some other religion. It is easier to adopt a neutral attitude towards the Qoran or the Veda than it is towards the Hebrew Bible. But if any one can do so successfully, it ought to be the oriental archaeologist, who has spent his life among documents which in age, spirit, and even language resemble those of the Old Testament. The habit of mind cultivated by their study ought to fit him for ap proaching the historical examination of the Old Testament books without partisanship and without theological prepossessions. INDEX. Abdilihti, 429 Abed-nebo, 177 Abed-nego, 532 Abel-mizraim, 227, 228 Abibaal, 450 Abila or Abel, 227 ^-Abram (Abraham), 159, 176, 178, 184, 1S6, 187, 201 Absaqbu, 349 Abu Shahrein, 97 Accad, 102, 149, 156, 460, 500, 501, 502, 505, 506, 507 Achaeans, 129 Achshaph, 336, 344 Acre, 336, 429 Adamim, 344 Adapa, 94 Adbeel, 202 Adonai, 88 Adon-ba'al, 391 Adoraim, 353 Adra-khasis, 108, 109, 113 Adullam, 345 Ahab, 391, 396, 397, 463 Ahasuerus, 469, 473 Ahaz, 401, 402, 414, 468, 476 Ahimelech, 450 Ahmes, 224 Ainin, 349 Ain- Qadis, 180 Akhaemes, 514, 515, 519 Aleppo, 342 Allophyli, 183 Almagest of Ptolemy, 405 Aluna, 331, 353 AmadS, 126 Amanus, Mt., 312, 499 Amenephthes, 245, 247 Amendphis, 47, 245, 246, 247, 289, 294. 331 Amestris, 474 Ammi-satana, 163, 164. 165 Ammu-Snshi, 203 Amon, 48, 393, 415 Amorites, 50, 164, 290, 300, 353, 355 Amraphel, 166 Anaharath, 336 Anak, or Anakim, 189 Anamim, 135 Anath, 79, 308 Anaugas, 332 Anaximander, 82 Annalistic Tablet of Cyrus, 499, 525 Ansan, 499, 500, 505, 512, 515, 516, 517, 519, 528 An-sar, 64, 65, 69, 150 Anu, 33, 63, 64, 65, 69, 79, 92, 94, 102, 107, no, 112, 198, 326 Apharsathchites, 545 Apharsites, 545 Apheka, 296, 341 Aphrodite", 79 Apophis, 190, 219, 223, 224 Aqabah, Gulf of, 256, 257, 267, 314, 468 Aqaiush, 129 Arad-Kin, 324 Arakhtu, 99 Aram (Aramaeans), 121, 194, 200, 202, 274, 460, 479, 480, 536 A-rammu, 429 Aram-Naharaim, 47, 54, 129, 138, 200, 201, 274, 297, 300, 301, 303 Ararat, 484, 485, 486 Arbela, 500 Archevites, 545 Ardys, 125 566 Index. Arel or Ariel, 350, 351, 367, 376 Arezzo, 236 Argana, 391 Ariaramnes, 519 Arioch, 102, 165, 533, 552 Arka, 145 Aroer, 367 Arphaxad, 146, 552 Arsames, 519 Artaxerxes, 542, 543, 546, 547 Aruru, 92 Arvad, 145, 335 Asa, 362, 364, 467 Asenath, 213 Asguza, 131 Asherah, 81 Ashkenaz, 131, 484 Ashtoreth, 80, 81, 87, 169, 198, 374 Ashtoreth-Karnaim, 169 Asmodeus, 552 Aman, 65, 104 Asnapper, 453, 545 Assur, 86, 97, 10S, 150, 151, 198, 277, 39i. 404. 506 Assur-bani-pal, 124, 134, 422, 438, 448, 451, 459. 46o, 461, 480, 481, 518, 520, 545 Assur-bil-kala, 276, 312, 323 Assur-irbi, 276, 277, 312 Assur-natsir-pal, 152, 313,390,463 Assyrian Conquests, 389 Assyrian Epic, The, 62, 63, 64, '7L 73, 74. 77. 83, 84 Astrtu, 336 Astyages, 498, 499, 507, 515, 519, 521 Ataroth, 367 Aten, 48 Athribis, 239 Atropatene, 126 Augah, 177 Aupa, 342 Authu, 344 Avaris, 221, 224 Azai, 344 Azariah, 405 Aziru, 142, 215, 305 Azur, 430 Baal, So, 86, 450 Baalrosh, 396 Baal-meon, 367, 368 Baal-zephon, 252, 254, 261, 262, 405 Baasha, 391 Baba, 219 Babili, 155, 156 Babylon, 72, 78, 97, 138, 153, 500, 501, 509, 522, 524, 534 Babylonian Alphabet, 33, 49, 50, 52 Babylonian Epic, The, 33, 90, 113, 114, 479 Babylonian Epic of the Flood, 107 — 114 Baka, 346 Balaam, 275 Balak, 275 Ball, Mr., 185 Barga, 391 Bar-Rekeb, 195, 413 Bashan, 251 Baya, 291, 293 Bazu, 147 Beeroth, 343 Beersheba, 181, 182 Behistun, 519, 521 Bel, 34, 63, 66, 67, 69, 70, 102, 107, 108, 112, 154, 291, 470, 499. 5°o. 5°i, 5°3. 5o8, 509, 510, 513, 514, 522, 524 Bel-Bit-Uri, 324 Bel-natsir, 324 Belshazzar, 497, 525, 526, 528, 530 Belteshazzar, 532 Beltis, 79 Bene-berak, 430 Ben-Hadad, 316, 393, 394, 397 Berossos, 13, 61, 156, 488, 512, 520 Berothai, 317 Beth-Anath, 336, 340, 341 Beth-Arbel, 482 Beth-Bamoth, 368 Beth-diblathaim, 368 Bethel (Bethuel), 198, 199, 278, 337 Beth -Medeba, 368 Beth-Omri, 410, 544 Beth-sha-el, 345 Beth-Shemesh, 336 Beth-Thupar, 345 Beyrout, 343 INDEX. 567 Bezold, Dr., 90 Birs-i-Nimrud, 157 Bttshailla, 352 Bit-Zitti, 429 Black Obelisk, The, 354, 364-70 Blessing of Jacob, The, 58 Bliss, Mr. F. J., 283, 290, 294 Book ofthe Dead, 31 Borsippa, 157, 500, 501, 502 Boscawen, Mr., 104 Botta, 19, 36 Brandis, Mr., 434 Brugsch, Dr., 204, 209, 218, 240, 254, 261, 299, 342, 349 Bubastis, 235, 239, 322, 363, 465 Buzur-sadi-rabi, no Calah, 106, 150, 151, 152, 170, 404, 487 Calneh, 150 Caphtorim, 136, 183 Carchemish, 200, 274, 301, 390, 452 Carmel, 336, 340 Casluhim, 136 Cesnola, General di, 128 Chabas, 342 Chaldaean Epic, The, 33, 90, 113, "4,479 Chaplin, Dr., 449 Charax, 97 Chedor-laomer, 161, 163, 164, 167, 168, 171, 180 Chemosh, 80, 86, 87, 351, 364, 366, 367. 373. 374, 376 Chemosh-nadab, 429 Chinnereth, 336 Chusan-rish-athaim, 297, 303, 311 Circumcision, Rite of, 280 Clark, Mr., 380 Clerniont-Ganneau, M., 185, 354, 365. 366, 53° Conder, Major, 354 Creation, Assyrian Epic of, 62, 63, 64,71 Cuneiform Inscriptions, 35, 36, 41, 42, 47, 49. 5°, 5i, 62, 78, 83, ¦ 94, 134, 206, 214, 291, 295, 323, 324 Cush, 120, 132, 133, 148, 149 Cutha, 90, 459, 460, 502 Cyrus, 469, 486, 494, 497, 498, 499, 500, 5°2, 5°5, 5°6> 5'°, 5", 513, 514, 5i5, 5i6, 517, 519, 521, 522, 524, 526, 528, 529, 539. 543 Cyrus, Annalistic Tablet of, 499, 525 Dagar, 338, 344 Dagon, 325, 326, 327, 430 Damascus, 391, 392, 395, 398, 399, 400, 411,414,463 Danaans, 129, 299 Dan-Hadad, 291 Daniel, Greek words in Book of, 4 Dapur, 340, 344 Darius, 473, 484, 494, 497, 512, 513, 5'4, 515, 519, 521, 525, 526, 528, 529, 530, 541, 542, 543, 546, 547, 548, 553 David, King, 312, 313, 315, 316, 368 Deborah, Song of, 14, 56, 58, 305, 3°8, 3°9, 360 Dedan, 133, 201 Dehavites, 545 Delattre, M., 534 Delitzsch, Prof., 98, 99, 131 Deluge, Babylonian Story of, 33 De Rouge, 37, 38, 337 Deser, 204 Dhiban or Dibon, 364, 366, 368, 375 Doughty, Mr., 41 Du-azagga-ki-namtartarenc, 154, 186 Dudu, 142, 215, 222, 305 Dugga-summu, 102 Dumah, 207, 479 Dur-ili, 506 Dur-Sargon, 487 Dur-Yakin, 428 Ea, 63, 64, 69, 70, 94, 101, 102, 103, 107, 108, 112, 197, 470 E-Ana, 92 Ebed-tob, 174, 188, 201, 293, 333 Eber, 121 Ebers, Prof., 136, 183 Eden, Edinu or Edin, 83, 93, 95, 101, 105, 391 Edomites, 207 Edomite Kings, List of, 2 •568 INDEX. Egyptian Records, 216, 218, 219, 221, 222, 223, 225, 228, 230 Ekbatana, 197, 499, 520, 521, 552 Ekdippa, 429 E-Khulkhul, 197, 507, 508 Ekron, 336, 430, 431, 433 Ekura, 91 Elam and Elamites, 122, 501, 516, 5l8, 545, 552 El-Arish, 180 Elath, 267, 268, 468 Elim, 268 Elishah, 130, 380 El-Jib, 383 El-Kab, 219 Ellipi, 520 Elohim, 84, 87 "Elohistic" Narrative, 83, 84, 93, 95, »4, 171 El-Makrizi, 218 Eltekeh, 430, 433 Elulseus, 429 Emeq, 336, 352 En-mishpat, 168, 183 En-nugi, 107 Epic, The Assyrian, 62, 63, 64, 71, 73, 74, 77, 83, 84 Epic, The Babylonian, 33, 90, 113 Erech, 92, 102, 149, 501 Eri-Aku, 102, 164, 165 Eridu, 92, 93, 94, 97, 98, 101, 102, 103 Erimenas, 444 Erman, Prof., 224 E-sagila (E-saggil), 92, 154, 155, 500, 501, 502, 503, 509 Esar-haddon, 124, 147, 422, 443, 444, 445, 447, 45°, 45 '» 45s, 484, 485, 489, 544 E-sarra, 69 Esther, 469, 471, 473, 474 Etham, 255, 261, 262 Eth-baal, 429 E-Udda-im-tigga, 102 Euphrates, 95, 96 Euting, 41 Evil-Merodach, 447, 456, 509, 541 Exodus, The, 237, 249, 252, 255 Ezer, 142, 215 Ezion-geber, 256, 264, 267 E-Zida, 500, 501 FayOm, 19 Flood, Epic of, 107 Galeed, 194 Gar-Emerisu, 145 Gath, 336 Gaza, 307, 334, 335, 340, 341 352, 468 Gebelen, 223 Genesis, Tenth Chapter of, 9 Gesse, Land of, 236 Gezer, 336 Gibborim, 91 Gihon, 97, 381, 383 Gikhan, 99 Gilgames, 33, 107, 199, 479 Gindibuh, 391 Ginsburg, 374 Girgasite, 144, 145 Glaser, Dr., 39, 272, 468 Gobryas, 502, 522 Gog, 9, 124, 125 GolenischefT, 299 Gomer, 9, 123, 125, 485 Goodwin, Mr., 261, 342 Goshen, Land of, 221, 227, 234, 235, 236, 239 Grant-Bey, Dr., 478 Greene, Mr. Baker, 268 Groff, Mr., 337 Guthe, Dr., 379, 385 Gutium, 167 Gyges ( = Gog), 9, 124, 125, 134 Hadad-ezer, 313, 314, 315, 316 Hadad-idri, 391, 393, 395, 396 Hadad Rimmon, 338, 394 Hadashath, 296, 302, 340 Hadhramaut, 39, 44 Hagri, 352 Halevy, M., 207 Halys, 126, 127 Haman, 473, 474 Hamath, 315, 316, 341, 344, 390, 395, 400, 405, 406, 415, 421, 499, 544 Haphraim, 352 Hapurama, 352 Haqrama, 352 Haran, 158, 159, 197, 198, 200, 507 Har-el, 187, 336, 350 INDEX. ;69 Harnammata, 344 Harris Papyrus, The, 265 HaShepsu, Queen, 221 Hauran, 396 Havet, 13, 23 Havilah, 98, 123 Hazael, 395, 396, 397, 398 Hazor, 309, 336 Hebron, 187, 188, 189, 191, 192, 194, 3°7, 333, 336, 341 Heliopolis, 235 Hellas, 130 Hephaestos, 436, 437 Herodotos, 435, 498, 526, 527 Heshan, 177 Hezekiah, 377, 381, 384, 423, 425, 426, 430, 431, 432, 433, 434, 437, 446, 477 Hharam Ramet-el-Khalil, 193 Hincks, Dr., 274 Hiram, 405, 412 Hittites, 16, 18, 120, 121, 122, 137. 138, HO, 143, 205, 242, 300, 310, 311, 315, 390 Hivites, 145 Hommel, Prof., 38, 69, 102, 468 Horns, Lake of, 142 Hor, Mt , 180, 264 Horites, 203 Horus, 218, 435 Hosea, 477 Hoshea, 419, 434 Howorth, Sir H., 537, 539 Hri-Hor, 213 Huber, 41 Huinivu, 20, 128 Huzana, 348 Hyksos, 38, 42, 162, 189, 220, 221, 223 "Hymn to the Nile," 243 Ibleam, 336 Igadai, 342 Igig", 65 Ikama, 344 Ika-shemesh, 450 Irkhuleni, 390, 395 Ishmael, 178 Isis, 177 Istar, 33, 80, 87, no, 374, 438, 471, 473, 5°9 Ithamar, 40, 418 Jabin, 309 Jabneel, 338 Jacob-el, 337, 339, 340 Jaddua, 548 Javan, 20 Jebusite, 138 Jehoahaz, 397 Jehoash, 398 Jehoiachin, 541 Jehoshaphat, 45S Jehovah, 88 "Jehovistic" Narrative, 83, 92, 95, 103, 107, 114, 115, 116, 171 Jehozadak, 541 Jephthah, 338 Jerahmeel, 181, 338, 353 Jeroboam, 398 Jerusalem, 16, 52, 53, 176, 177, 332, 333, 34°, 414, 421, 432, 445, 476 Jeshua, 541, 542 Jiphthah-el, 338 Jonah, 487, 488 Joppa, 336, 347, 430, 489 Joram, 315, 316, 369, 370 Joseph-el, 337, 339 Josiah, 451, 452 Jotham, 409 Kabyle, 139 Kadesh, 142, 180, 187, 310, 332, 342, 344 Kadesh-barnea, 256, 264, 269, 355 Kafir-Marlona, 344 Kaisariyeh, Inscriptions at, 196, 318 Kaivan, 79 Kalah Sherghat, 97 Kaldi, 158 Kantarah, 251 Karnak, inscriptions at, 144, 186, 251, 322, 329, 330, 335, 337, 340, 481 Kasdim, 158, 533, 534, 535 Kasios, Mt., 254, 261, 348 Kass or Kassi, 98, 132, 148, 151, 162, 521 Kastarit, 482, 485, 521 Kaus-gabri, 450 Kaus-melech, 415 Kedar or Kidra, 202 Kemi, 204 570 INDEX. c Kenaz, 205 Kerkhah, 98 Ketis, 332 Khabiri, 175, 188, 191, 333, 336 Khalakhkhu, 421 Khambyses, 324, 503, 506, 512, 5'3, 515, 543 Khani-rabbat, 443, 444 Kharsak-kalama, 502 Khatarika, 400 Khatuma, 342 Khazu, 147 Khetmu or Khetem, 252, 254, 348 Khnum, 218 Khoaspes, 98 Kliubur, 63 Khu-n-Aten, 48, 50, 52, 54, 215, 222, 223, 226, 238, 241, 289 Khurbet-Kan'an, 204 Kimmerians, 9, 125, 483, 485, 520, 521 Kinakhkhi, 121, 137, 332 Kings, Book of : Table of Com parative Chronology, 408 Kingu, 64, 67, 68 Kir-haiaseth, 375 Kirjath-arba, 187, 189, 191 Kirjath-eneb, 344 Kirjath-sannah, 54, 55 Kirjath-sepher, 54, 55, 59 Kirzau, 391 Kisar, 63 Kishon, 336 Kition, 130 Kittim, 130 Klein, Rev. F., 364 Kolzum, 260 Komagene, 415, 463 Korkha, 303, 340, 366, 367, 375 Kosem, 235 Ktesias, 473 Kudur-mabug, 164, 165 Kurkh, 390 Laban, 197, 198 Labynetos, 526 Lachish, 36, 52, 193, 283, 285, 287, 288, 289, 292, 294, 332, 433 Laish, 336 Lakhkha, 65 Lakhamu, 63, 64, 65 _ Lakhmu, 63 Larnaka, 130 Layard, 19, 36 Lehabim, 135 Lemuel, 478 Lenormant, 32, 38 Lepsius, 216 Liusa or Laish, 336 Loytved, Mr., 455 Lugal-banda, 501 Lugal-du-azaga, 92 Lybians, 129 Lydia, 124, 126 Lygdamis, 520 Machir, 56, 58 Madai, 126 Madir, 218 Mafka, 266, 267 Magharah, 266, 341, 342 Magog, 125, 126 Mahler, 220, 242 Ma'in, 39, 41, 42, 43, 44, 59 Makarib, 41 Makhalliba, 429 Makkedah, 352 Makna, 270 Malik, 79 Mamre, 187, 191, 193 Manasseh, King, 450, 458, 459, 465 Manda, 95, 105, 126, 146, 197, 45i. 484, 486, 505, 508, 519, 521, 528 Manetho, 13, 223, 224 Mannft, 131 Marad, 502 Mareshah, 188 Maspero, Prof., 32, 203, 332, 351, 352 Massa, 202, 207, 478, 479, 480 Massoretes, 22 Matin-ba'al, 391, 415, 450 Matsor, 133 Maxyes, The, 301 Medeba, 366, 368, 370 Medes, 483, 484, 485, 519, 520, 521, 528 Medinet Habu, 296, 299, 302, 305, 3°6, 330, 340 Mehunims, 467, 468 Melchizedek, 16, 60, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 187 INDEX. 571 Melech-asapa, 450 Melitene, 415 Melkarth, Temple of, 199 Melukhkhi, too, 332, 426, 430, 437 Menahem, 405, 429 "Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin," 530 Menelaos, 18, 127 Meneptah, 220, 241, 242, 247 Merodach, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 73, 92, 97, 103, 104, no, 154, 197, 499, 5°3, 5°4, 5°5, 506, 507, 508, 510, 522, 551 Merodach-baladan, 424, 425, 427, 432, 446, 476, 534 Merom, 340 Mesha, 87, 207, 351, 364, 366, 3^9, 370, 373, 393, 397, 479 Meshach, 533 Meshech, 126, 130 Me-Turnat, 506 Meyer, Prof., 38 Midian, 269, 270 Migdol, 244, 252, 254, 255, 261, 34i, 353 Milcah, 179 Millo, The, 321, 322 Minaeans (Minni), 39, 41, 42, 46, 483, 484, 486, 521 Mishma, 202 Mitinti, 429, 431, 450 Mittani, 47, 200, 300, 301, 303, 304 Mizraim, 121, 133, 134 Moabite Stone, The, 38, 46, 86, 89, 3°3, 351, 357, 364, 37°, 372, 373, 376, 387, 397, 480 Moloch, 79, 367, 373 Mordechai, 469, 471 Mugheir, 158 Mukallim, 324 Mu-seri-ina-namari, no Musezib-Bel, 324 Mut-Ammi, 259 Mutkinu, 312 Mutsuri, 450 Mykenie, 12, 127 Nabatim:ans, 180, 202, 205, 479 Nabonidos, 197, 394, 486, 497, 498, 5°o, 5°3, 5°5, 5°7, 5°8, 509, 510, 511, 512, 525, 526, 528 Naharanna, 47 Nahr-el-Kelb, 454 Nahrina, 200, 201 Nannar, 473 Napata, 132 Naphtuhim, 136 Naville, Mr., 31, 234, 235, 237, 239, 253, 259, 465 Nazana, 343 Nebo, 79, no, 374, 500, 501, 503, 5°6, 5H Nebo-bil-utsur, 324 Nebo-zira-yukin, 324 Nebuchadrezzar, 448, 452, 453, 454, 456, 486, 497, 511, 524, 527, 532, 541 Necho, 461 Negeb, 181 Neith, 212, 213 Nergal, 3^1, 470 Nergal-sharezer, 443, 455, 456, 5°9 Neubauer, Dr., 257, 275, 366, 449 Nidittum, 324 Nimrod, 123, 148, 149, 150, 171 Nineveh, 106, 151, 395, 404, 431, 433, 438, 44°, 441, 444, 452, 458, 476, 481, 486, 487, 490, 5i6 Nin-girsu, 102 Nin-ip, 50 Nipur, 91, 102, 510 Nisroch, 440, 442 Nizir, in, 155 No-Amon, 3, 481 Nod, 105, 146 Nukhasse, 305, 306 Nut-Amon, 229 Oannes, 488 Omri, 366, 369 On, 220, 235, 236, 246 Ophel, 384 Oppert, Dr., 105, 550 Ormazd, 514 Osariph, 246, 247 Osorkon, 363, 465 Othniel, 297, 304 Padan, 200 Padi, 430, 431, 451 Pa-Kakina, 344 572 INDEX. Pallakopas, 98, 99 Palmanothes, 245 Panammu, 195, 412, 415 Paran, 264 Pa-t-Baal, 213 Pathros, 134 Pa-tu-pa-Ri, 212 Pekah, 400, 402, 409, 410, 411 Pekod, 147 Pelusium, 137, 251, 436 Pepi Monuments, 190 Peters, Dr., 494 Petrie, Dr. F., 36, 177, 193, 215, 283, 284, 285, 287, 288, 289, 292, 294, 449 Pharaoh, Title of, 228 Philistines, 183, 307, 313 Philo Byblius, 60, 72, 327 Phoenicians, 18 Phcenician Alphabet, 35, 36, 43, 44 Phut & Phutites, 135, 136, 137 Pi-Bailos, 236, 239 Pi-hahiroth, 252, 253, 254, 255, 262 Pinches, Mr., 64, 88, 91, 104, 155, 163, 404, 441, 455, 47°, 499 Pi-Qerhet, 253 Pi-Ramses-Meri-Amon, 239, 251, 252 Pison, 97, 98 Pi-Sopd, 235 Pithom, 239, 250 Pognon, M, 454 Poseidon, 79 Psammetichus, 135 Ptah, 437, 438 Pudu-il, 429, 450 Pulu or Pul, 404, 462 Purat, 96 Pura-nun, 96 Qamdu, 341 Qarqara, 320, 391, 392, 395 Qarqish, 145 Qazairnai, 346 Ra, 221 Rabbah, 336 Rab-saris, 441, 455 Rab-shakeh, 441, 442 Ramses II., 138, 142, 188, 191, 1 192, 238, 242, 297, 329, 330 Ramses III., 188, 193, 239, 244, 258, 296, 298, 330 Rapib, 349 Rawlinson, Sir H., 167, 504, 519 Rehob, 345, 352 Rehoburta, 349 Rephidim, 269 Resen, 150, 152 Resheph, 303 Rhodians, 130 Rib-Hadad, 226 Rimmon, 79, no, 197, 198, 391, 394 Rimmon-nirari, 318, 399, 400, 403 Rimmon-yume, 324 Rimut, 324 Riphath, 131 Rodanim, 130 Rosetta Stone, The, 128 Rosh-Kadesh, 301, 336, 341 Rothpana, 303, 331, 340 Rowlands, Mr. J., 180 Saba or Sheba, 39, 42, 43, 201, 272, 468 Sabaeans, 39, 122 Sabako, 132 Sabbath, 74—77 Sab'e, 418 Saft-el-Henneh, 235, 239 Sakkut, 79 Salathiel, 541 Salatis, 224 Salem or Shalim, 295, 296, 302, 303 Samahla, 195, 306, 415 Samaria, 402, 405, 406, 410, 41 1, 4H, 415, 417, 441, 445, 449, 4^3, 4^4, 544 Samas, 34, 109, 197, 509 Samas-edhir, 324 Samas-erba, 524 Samas-Rimmon, 338 Samas-sum-yukin, 459, 460 Samas-yuballidh, 324 Samgar-nebo, 455 SamsS, 418 Sanballat, 540, 548, 551 Sanchuniathon, 61 Sar, 63, 64, 104 Sarah (Sarai), 179 Sarbut-el-Khadem, 266 INDEX. 573 Sarepta, 429 Sargon, 40, 86, 89, 128, 156, 162, 269, 416, 418, 421, 424, 426, 427, 428, 439, 446, 464, 513, 544 Sarru-ludari, 430 Sati or Sute, 203 Saue, Mt., 405 Schick, Mr., 377, 378 Schliemann, Dr., 17, 18, 284 Schmidt, Mr. V., 337 Schrader, Prof., 394, 441, 443, 458, 460, 4S1, 487 Schumacher, Dr., 295 Sehel, Inscription at, 217 Sernimieh, 340 Sennacherib, 421, 424, 426, 428, 432, 433, 435, 437, 439, 440, 441, 442, 446, 459, 464, 493, 552 Sepharad or 'Saparda, 482, 483 Sesostris, 348 Sethos, 246, 436, 437 Seti I., 191 Seti II., 243, 244 Set-nekht, 244 Shabaka, 418 Shabbalut, 352 Shakalsh, 129, 299 Shalmaneser, 390, 392, 395, 398, 415, 416, 417, 419, 420, 463, 552 Shamgar, 308 Shardana, 129 Shasu, 204, 300, 304, 306, 342, 346, 437 Shechem, 335 Shemesh-Aduma, 331 Shenir, 301, 302, 341, 395 Sherohan, 224 Sheshbazzar, 539, 540, 543, 546, 551 Shimshana or Shimshon, 296, 340 Shinar, 166, 168 Shishak, 181, 212, 320, 321, 351, 36l Shmana, 339 Shunem, 336, 352 Shur, 99, 261 Shusan, or Susa, 469, 516, 545 Sidon, 390, 429 Siloam, Pool of, 377, 382 Silsileh, 135, 177, 322 Sin, 145, 405, 508, 509 Sinai, 263, 264, 265, 268, 269, 270, 271 Sinjerli, 194, 197, 306, 412, 413 Si nope, 124 Sinuhit, 203, 266 Sippara, 324, 459, 460, 500, 502, .512,525 Sirbonian Lake, The, 261 Sisera, 309, 310 Sisuthros, 107, 113 Smith, Mr. George, 62, 90, 107, 115, 153 Socoh, 336, 353 Solomon (of Moab), 415 Speos Artemidos, 221 Steindorff, Dr., 213 Stone of Job, 295 "Story of the Two Brothers," 209 Strassmaier, Dr., 483, 522 Strong, Mr., 520 Succoth, 240, 250, 252 Sumer, 102, 103, 166, 507 Sun-God, 70, 73, 85, 97, 113, 221, 293 . Surappi, 100 Surippak, 107, 108, 115 Susankites, 545 Taanach, 336, 352 Tahtim-Hodshi, 143 Takhis, 344 Talmai, 189 Tammuz, ioi Tamnah, 344 Tarqa-el, 345 Tarshish, 130 Tartan, 424, 441 Tartessos, 130 Tatnai, 539, 540 Teie, 290, 294 Teima, 133, 201, 202, 468, 479 Teispes, 506, 515, 519 Tekkeh, The, 198 Tel-el-Amarna Tablets, 19, 47, 48, 51, 52, 72, 78, 79, 81, 85, 86, 94, 100, 105, 113, 128, 132, 137, 141, 149, 155, 160, 162, 171, 174, 179, 183, 191, 215, 222, 237, 241, 251, 259, 289, 290, 574 INDEX. 292, 3°5, 308, 329, 332, 333, 337, 356, 494 Tel el-Maskhutah, 240 Tel es-Safi, 193 Tell el-Hesy, 283, 284, 292 " Temple of the Giants," 199 Teukrians, 129, 299 Thebes, 3, 243, 481 Thorgal, 167 Thothmes III., 47, 225, 227, 310, 3»,329, 331, 335 Thothmes, List of, 335, 337, 350 Thuku or Thuket, 240, 241, 243, 250, 252, 254 Tiamat, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 72, 73, 9°, 553 Tibhath or Tubikhi, 317, 342 Tiglath-Pileser, 40, 99, 145, 195, 196, 311, 402, 403, 404, 406, 411, 412, 415, 462, 463, 468, 480, 493, 513 Tigris, 95, 96, 98 Timnath, 430 Til-Garimmi, 131 Tiras, 131 Tirhakah, 433, 434, 435, 466 Tiryns, 18, 127 Togarmah, 131 Toi or Toil, 315, 316 Tomkins, Mr., 186, 212, 213, 227, 310, 336, 339 "Travels of the Mohar," 329, 338, 342, 349 Troglodytes, 203 Troy, 12 Trambull, Dr. Clay, 180, 265, 488 Tsidqt, 429, 430 Tsil-baal, 431, 450 Tsilli, 324 Tubal, 126, 130, 415 Tuktammu, 520 Turn, 240 Tunip, 142, 306 Turbazu, 333 Tylor, Dr., 102 Tyre, 335, 344, 390, 392, 494 Tyropaeon, The, 385 Ubara-Tutu, 108, 115 Ubsuginna, 154 Ugarit, 335 Uinivu, 20, 128 Uknu, 100 UluIS, 415 Ummu-dhabat, 324, 325 Ur, 102, 158, 159, 504, 533 Uras, 50, 79, 107, no, 112, 176 Uru-melech, 429 User, 344 Usu, 429 Uz, 207, 348, 479, 480 Uzziah, 463, 468 Van, Lake, 390, 444, 484 Vashti, 474 Vernes, 23 Virgin's Spring, The, 377, 381, 382, 384 Wadi-Brissa, 454 Wadi-Feiran, 264 Wadi-Tumilat, 249, 250 Warren, Sir C, 365, 382 Wellhausen, Mr., 281 Wilbour, Mr., 217 Winckler, Dr., 176, 442, 534 Xerxes, 469, 473, 474, 475, 5 12, 513, 5H, 517, 524, 53o, 542, 55° Xisuthros, 115, 116 Yabni-el, 293, 294, 338 Yahu-bihdi, 89, 316 Yahveh, 85, 87, 88, 149, 186, 187, 191, 247, 326, 338, 351, 367, 373, 374. 376, 47o Yakub Artin Pasha, 249 Yam Silph, 255, 256, 257, 259, 261, 262, 267, 268, 314 Yanana, 429 Yarami, 291 Yardana, 303 Yarza, 353 Yaudu, 306 Yavan, 128 Yavna, 127 Yemen, 39, 44 Yeud-ha-melek, 352 Yivana, 20, 494 Yurahma, l8l, 353 Zagazig, 235 Zagmuku, 154 INDEX. 575 Zahi, 332 Zakar-Baal, 129 Zakkur, 1 29, 299 Zamama, 502 Zamban, 506 Zamzummim, 160 Zaphnath-paaneah, 213 Zar, 241, 251, 252, 342 Zelah, 333, 338 Zemar, 145 Zerah, 363, 364, 465, 466 Zerubbabel, 539, 540, 541, 542, 543, 546, 547, 55i Zidiputa, 345, 353 Zimuda or Zimridi, 291, 293, 333 Zion, Mount, 385 Zoan, 189, 191 Zobah, 313, 314, 315, 316 Zophar, 40 Zorah, 344 Zoroaster, 515, 517 Richard Clay & Sons, Limited London & Bungay. 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