BABYLONIA AND PALESTINE
A very few years ago Palestine was still archæologically an unknown
land. Its history subsequent to the Israelitish conquest could be
gathered from the Old Testament, and Egyptian papyri of the age of
the Nineteenth dynasty had told us something about its condition
immediately prior to that event. Thanks to the Palestine Exploration
Fund, the country had been carefully surveyed, and the monuments
still existing on its surface had been noted and registered. But the
earlier history of the people, their races and origin, their social
and religious life, and their relation to the rest of the world, were
still a blank. Of the Canaan invaded by the children of Israel we knew
nothing from an archæological point of view, and very little even of
the Palestine that was governed by Israelitish judges and Jewish kings.
The veil has at last been lifted which so long lay over the face of
Palestine. Cuneiform texts have come to clear up its civil history,
while the spade of the excavator has supplemented their evidence on
the more purely archæological side. The history of Palestine can
now be followed back not only into the neolithic, but even into
the palæolithic age, and the source and character of Canaanite
civilization have been in large measure revealed to us.
First and foremost among the materials which have made this possible
are the cuneiform tablets of Tel el-Amarna in Upper Egypt, which
were discovered in 1887. Tel el-Amarna, about midway between Minia
and Assiut, is the site of a city which sprang, like a meteor, into
a brief but glorious existence under the so-called “heretic king”
Amon-hotep IV. about B.C. 1400. Amon-hotep, under the guidance
of his mother, had endeavoured to suppress the old state religion of
Egypt, and to substitute for it a pantheistic monotheism. In spite
of persecution, however, the adherents of the old faith proved too
strong for the king; he was forced to leave Thebes, the capital of his
fathers, and to build a new capital further north, where he changed
his name to that of Khu-n-Aten, and called artists from the islands
of the Mediterranean to adorn his palace. When moving from Thebes he
naturally transferred to the new seat of government both the Foreign
Office and its records in so far as they covered the reign of his
father Amon-hotep III. and his own. For reasons unknown to us they do
not extend further back.
They were all in the cuneiform script, and for the most part in the
Babylonian language. The fact came upon the historian with a shock
of surprise, and had far-reaching consequences, historical as well
as archæological. In the first place, they proved what had already
been suspected, that under the Eighteenth dynasty Egypt possessed an
Asiatic empire which stretched to the banks of the Euphrates. Then,
secondly, they showed that Western Asia was at the time intersected by
high-roads along which merchants and couriers were constantly passing,
and an active literary correspondence was carried on. Thirdly--and
this was the greatest surprise of all--they made it clear that this
correspondence was in the script and language of Babylonia, and that it
was shared in by writers of various nationalities and languages, of all
classes of society and of both sexes. The Hittite and Cappadocian kings
wrote to the Pharaoh in cuneiform characters, just as did the kings
of Babylonia and Assyria. Arab shêkhs and Hittite condottieri joined
in the correspondence, and politically-minded ladies did the same.
Even the Egyptian Government was compelled to suppress all feelings of
national vanity, and to conduct the whole of its correspondence with
its own governors and vassals in Palestine or Syria in the foreign
language and syllabary. There is no trace anywhere of the use of either
the Egyptian language or the Egyptian mode of writing.
From these facts other facts follow. The age of the Eighteenth Egyptian
dynasty must have been quite as literary as the age of our own
eighteenth century, and international correspondence must have been
quite as easy, if not easier. Education, moreover, must have been very
widely spread; all the civilized world was writing and reading; and the
system of writing was a most complicated one, demanding years of study
and memory. In spite of this it was known not only to a professional
class of scribes and the officials of the Government, but also to the
shêkhs of petty Canaanitish towns and even to Bedâwîn chiefs. And along
with the system of writing went a knowledge of the foreign language
of Babylonia--the French of Western Asia--including some slight
acquaintance with the extinct language of the Sumerians. All this
presupposes libraries and archive-chambers where books and dispatches
could be stored, as well as schools where the Babylonian script and
language could be taught and learned.
Such libraries and schools had existed in Babylonia from a very
early age. Every great city had its library, every great temple
its muniment-room. Here the clay books were numbered and arranged
on shelves, catalogues being provided which gave their titles. The
system under which the longer literary or semi-scientific works were
arranged and catalogued was at once ingenious and complete. By the
side of the library was naturally the school. Here every effort was
made to facilitate the progress of the scholars, more especially in
the study of the Sumerian language and texts. The characters of the
syllabary were classified and named; comparative grammars, dictionaries
and reading-books of Sumerian and Semitic Babylonian were compiled,
lists of Semitic synonyms were drawn up, explanatory commentaries were
written on older works, and interlinear translations provided for the
Sumerian texts. But with all this the cuneiform system of writing
must have been hard even for the native Babylonian to learn, and in
the case of the foreigner its difficulties were multiplied. It may be
doubted whether the average boy of to-day, who finds the spelling of
his own English almost too much for him, would have had the memory and
patience to learn the cuneiform characters. Even in Sumerian times the
difficulty of the task was realized, for there is a Sumerian proverb
that “he who would excel in the school of the scribes must rise with
the dawn.”[117] It says much for the educational zeal of the Oriental
world in the century before the Exodus that it was just this difficult
and complicated script which it chose as its medium for correspondence.
The fact, however, points unmistakably to its cause. The reason why the
Babylonian language and syllabary were thus in use throughout Western
Asia, and why even the Egyptian Government was obliged to employ them
in its communications with its Asiatic subjects, can only have been
because Babylonian culture was too deeply rooted there to be superseded
by any other. Before Egypt appeared upon the scene under the conquerors
of the Eighteenth dynasty, Western Asia, as far as the Mediterranean,
must have been for centuries under the direct influence and domination
of Babylonia. I say domination as well as influence, for in the ancient
East military conquest was needed to enforce an alien language and
literature, theology and system of law upon another people. And even
military conquest was not always sufficient, as witness the Assyrian
and Persian conquests of Egypt, or the Roman conquest of Syria.
We now have monumental testimony that such domination there actually
was. As far back as B.C. 3800, Sargon of Akkad had founded a
Semitic empire which had its centre in Babylon, and which stretched
across Asia to the shores of the Mediterranean. We learn from his
annals that three campaigns were needed to subdue “the land of the
Amorites,” as Syria and Palestine were called, and that at last, after
three years of warfare, all the coast-lands of “the sea of the setting
sun” acknowledged his sway. He set up an image of himself on the Syrian
coast in commemoration of his victories, and moulded his conquests
“into one” great empire. His son and successor, Naram-Sin, extended his
conquests into the Sinaitic peninsula, and a seal-cylinder, on which he
is adored as a god, has been found in Cyprus. But Sargon was a patron
of literature as well as a conqueror; his court was filled with learned
men, and one of the standard works of Babylonian literature is said
to have been compiled during his reign. The extension of Babylonian
rule, therefore, to Western Asia meant the extension of Babylonian
civilization, an integral part of which was its script.
[Illustration: VIEW OF THE TEMPLE OF UR IN ITS PRESENT STATE,
ACCORDING TO LOFTUS.]
Here, then, is an explanation of the archæological fact that the graves
of the copper and early bronze age in Cyprus, which mark the beginning
of civilization in the country, contain numerous seal-cylinders made in
imitation of those of Babylonia.[118] Examples of the seal-cylinders
from which they were copied have also been discovered there. Among
them is the cylinder on which Naram-Sin is adored as a god, another is
an extremely fine specimen of the style that was current in the age
of Sargon of Akkad.[119] Along with the seal-cylinder it is probable
that the clay tablet was also introduced to the people of the
West. Though the clay tablets found by Dr. Evans and others in Krete
may not go back to so remote a date, the linear Kretan characters
belong to the same system of writing as the Cypriote syllabary, and an
inscription in the letters of this syllabary on a seal-cylinder from
the early copper-age cemetery of Paraskevi near Nikosia has recently
been published by myself.[120] We may infer that the prototypes of the
tablets of Knossos or Phæstos once existed in Cyprus and Syria, though
in the damp climate of the Mediterranean the unbaked clay of which they
were made has long since returned to its original dust.
A few centuries after the age of Sargon of Akkad we find Gudea, a
Sumerian prince in Southern Babylonia, bringing limestone from “the
land of the Amorites,” blocks of alabaster from the Lebanon, and beams
of cedar from Mount Amanus, for his buildings in the city of Lagas.
Gold-dust and acacia wood were at the same time imported from the
“salt” desert which lay between Palestine and Egypt, and stones from
the mountains of the Taurus, to the north-east of the Gulf of Antioch,
were floated down the Euphrates on rafts.[121] At a later date we hear
of the kings of the Babylonian dynasty which had its capital at Ur,
conducting military expeditions to the district of the Lebanon.
About B.C. 2100 Northern Babylonia was occupied by a dynasty
of kings, whose names show that they belonged to the Western division
of the Semitic family. The language of Canaan--better known to us as
Hebrew--and that of Southern and North-eastern Arabia, were at the time
substantially one and the same, and as the same deities were worshipped
and the same ancestors were claimed throughout this portion of the
Semitic world, Assyriologists are not agreed as to whether the dynasty
in question should be regarded as coming from Canaan or from Southern
Arabia. The Babylonians themselves called the names Amorite, so it is
possible that they would have pronounced the kings to have been Amorite
also. The point, however, is of little moment; the fact remains that
Northern Babylonia passed under the rule of sovereigns who belonged to
the Western and not to the Babylonian branch of the Semitic race, and
who made Babylon their capital. The contract tablets and other legal
documents of this period show that Babylonia was at the time full of
Amorite, that is Canaanite, settlers, most of whom had come there for
the sake of trade. At Sippara there was a district called “the field
of the Amorites,” over which, therefore, they must have had full legal
rights. Indeed, it would seem that in the eyes of the law the Amorite
settlers were on a complete footing of equality with the natives of the
country.
This fact, so little in harmony with our ordinary idea of the
exclusiveness of the ancient East, is largely explained by the further
fact that Canaan and Syria were now acknowledged portions of the
Babylonian Empire. When Babylonia was conquered by the Elamites,
and the West Semitic king of Babylon allowed to retain his crown as
an Elamite vassal, his claim to rule over “the land of the Amorites”
passed naturally to his suzerain. Accordingly we find Chedor-laomer
of Elam in the Book of Genesis marching to Canaan to put down a local
rebellion there, while Eri-Aku, or Arioch, of Larsa, at the same date
describes an Elamite prince as “governor of the land of the Amorites.”
When Khammu-rabi, or Amraphel, the king of Babylon, at last succeeded
in shaking off the Elamite yoke and making himself monarch of a
free and united Babylonia, “the land of the Amorites” followed the
fortunes of Babylonia as a matter of course. On a monument discovered
at Diarbekir, in Northern Mesopotamia, the only title taken by the
Babylonian sovereign is that of “king of the land of the Amorites.”
And the same title is borne by one at least of his successors in the
dynasty.
For more than two thousand years, therefore, Western Asia was more or
less closely attached to Babylonia. At times it was as much a part
of the dominions of the Babylonian king as the cities of Babylonia
itself, and it is consequently not surprising that it should have
become thoroughly interpenetrated with Babylonian culture. There was
an excellent postal service connecting Canaan with Babylonia which
went back to the days of Naram-Sin, and some of the clay _bullæ_
which served as stamps for the official correspondence at that period
are now in the Museum of the Louvre.[122] On the other hand, a clay
docket has been found in the Lebanon, dated in the reign of the son of
Khammu-rabi, which contains one of the notices sent by the Babylonian
Government to its officials at the beginning of each year, in order
that they might know what was its official title and date.[123]
When this close connection between Babylonia and its Syrian provinces
was broken off we do not as yet know. Perhaps it did not take
place until the conquest of Babylonia by a horde of half-civilized
mountaineers from Elam about B.C. 1800. At any rate, from this
time forward, though the influence of Babylonian culture continued,
Babylonian rule in the West was at an end. From the Tel el-Amarna
correspondence we learn that the Babylonian Government was still
inclined to intrigue in Palestine; the memories of its ancient empire
were not altogether obliterated, and just as the English sovereigns
called themselves kings of France long after they had ceased to possess
an inch of French ground, so the Babylonian kings doubtless persuaded
themselves that they were still by right the rulers of Canaan.
The wild mountaineers from the Kossæan highlands who had conquered
Babylon soon passed under the spell of Babylonian culture, and became
themselves Babylonian in habits, if not in name. They founded a dynasty
which lasted for five hundred and seventy-six years and nine months. It
is a curious coincidence that Egypt also was governed about the same
time by foreign conquerors, whose primitive wildness had been tamed
by the influences of Egyptian civilization, which they had adopted as
the Kossæan mountaineers adopted that of Babylonia, and whose rule
also lasted for more than five hundred years. The Hyksos who conquered
Egypt have been convincingly shown by recent discoveries to have been
Semites, speaking a language of the West Semitic type.[124] They came
from Canaan, and their conquest of Egypt made of it a dependency
of Canaan. Hence they fixed their head-quarters in the northern
part of their Egyptian territories, where they could easily keep up
communication with Asia.
The excavations undertaken by the Palestine Exploration Fund at
Lachish, Gezer and other sites in Southern Canaan have made it clear
that throughout the Hyksos period Egypt and that part of Palestine
were closely connected with one another. How much further eastward
the government or influence of the Hyksos may have extended we do not
know; the figure of a lion inscribed with the name of a Hyksos Pharaoh
has been discovered in Babylonia, but this may have been brought from
elsewhere. At any rate, so far as Palestine is concerned, we may say
that the Hyksos period in Egypt coincides with the disappearance of
Babylonian rule in Canaan. From that time onward Canaan looks towards
Egypt, and not towards Babylonia.
But even before the beginning of the Hyksos period Canaan--or at all
events Southern Canaan--is Egyptian rather than Babylonian. That has
been abundantly proved by Mr. Macalister’s excavations at Gezer.
Objects of the age of the Twelfth dynasty have been disinterred there,
and of such a character as to make it evident that the country was
already subject to Egyptian influence long before the appearance of the
Hyksos. An Egyptian of that age was buried within the precincts of the
consecrated “high place,” and a stela commemorating him erected on the
spot.
Both at Gezer and at Lachish it has been possible to trace the
archæological chronology of the sites by the successive cities which
arose upon them. Gezer was the older settlement of the two; its history
goes back to the neolithic age, when it was inhabited by a race of
short stature who lived in caves and burned their dead, and whose
pottery was of the roughest description. Some of it was ornamented with
streaks of red or black on a yellow or red wash, like coarse pottery of
the age of the Third Egyptian dynasty which I have found in so-called
“prehistoric” graves at El-Kab. Two settlements of the neolithic
population can be made out, one resting upon the other; in the second
there was a distinct advance in civilization, and the place became a
town surrounded by a wall. The neolithic race was succeeded by a taller
race with Semitic characteristics, to whom the name of Amorite has
been given; they buried the dead in a contracted position, and were
acquainted with the use of copper and later of bronze. The city was
now defended by a solid wall of stone, intersected with brick towers;
as Mr. Macalister observes, in a country where stone is the natural
building material the employment of brick must be due to foreign
influence. He thinks the influence was Egyptian; this is very possible;
but considering that building with brick was a salient feature in
Babylonian civilization, the influence may have come rather from the
side of Babylonia.
The first “Amorite” city at Gezer was coeval with the earliest city
at Lachish--the modern Tel el-Hesy, where the Amorite settlers had no
neolithic predecessors. At Gezer their sanctuary has been discovered.
It was a “high place” formed of nine great monoliths running from north
to south, and surrounded by a platform of large stones. The second
monolith, polished with the kisses of the worshippers, was possibly the
central object of veneration, the _bœtylos_ or _beth-el_,
as it was termed.[125] This _beth-el_, or “house of God,” takes
us back to Semitic Babylonia. The veneration of isolated stones was
common to all branches of the Semitic race; it may have come down
to them from the days when their ancestors wandered over the desert
plains of Arabia, where the solitary rocks assumed fantastic shapes
that appealed to their imagination and excited feelings of awe, while
their shadows offered a welcome retreat in the heat of noon-day. In the
historical age, however, it was not the rock itself that was adored,
but the divinity whose home it had become by consecration with oil.
The brick-built temple was called by the Babylonians a _bit-ili_,
_beth-el_, or “house of God,” and the name was easily transferred
to the consecrated stones, the worship of which was coeval with the
beginnings of Semitic history. But though the worship of stones
was primitive, the belief that the stone was not a fetish, but the
shrine of divinity, belonged to an age of reflection and points to a
Babylonian source.
The first Amorite city at Gezer was succeeded by a second, in which the
high place underwent enlargement and was provided with a temenos. Under
its pavement have been found memorials of the grim rites performed
in honour of its Baal--the bones of children and even adults who
had been sacrificed and sometimes burnt and then deposited in jars.
Similar sacrifices, it would seem, were offered when a new building was
erected, since children’s bones have been disinterred from under the
foundations of houses, both at Gezer and at Taanach and Megiddo. The
bones were placed in jars along with lamps and bowls, which, it has
been suggested, were intended to receive the blood of the victim. The
old sacred cave of the neolithic race was now brought into connection
with the high place of the “Amorite” settlers, and the skeleton of a
child has been found in it resting on a flat stone.
This fourth city at Gezer--the second since the Semites first settled
there--has yielded objects which enable us to assign to it an
approximate date. These objects are Egyptian, and belong to the age
of the Twelfth dynasty. Many of them are scarabs, but there is also
the tombstone of the Egyptian who was buried under the shadow of the
Amorite sanctuary. Fragments of diorite and alabaster vases also occur,
telling of trade with Egypt, and in the upper and later part of the
stratum painted pottery makes its appearance similar to that met with
in the corresponding stratum at Lachish. I shall have more to say about
this painted pottery in the next chapter; here it is sufficient to
state that it is related to the early painted pottery of the Ægean,
but is itself of Hittite origin, and can be traced back to the Hittite
centre in Cappadocia.
The fourth city had a long existence. It lasted from the period of the
Twelfth Egyptian dynasty to the middle of the Eighteenth. Then it was
ruined by an enemy and its old wall partially destroyed--doubtless by
Thothmes III. when he conquered Palestine (about B.C. 1480).
Upon its ruins rose another Amorite town. A new city wall was built of
larger circumference and greater strength; it measured fourteen feet in
thickness, and the stones of which it was composed were large and well
shaped. The houses erected on the _débris_ of the brick towers
belonging to the old wall were filled with scarabs, beads, fragments
of pottery and other objects contemporary with the reign of Amon-hotep
III. (B.C. 1400). At Lachish the ruins of the third city
were full of similar objects, and among them was a cuneiform tablet
in which reference is made to the governor of Lachish mentioned in
the Tel el-Amarna correspondence. At Taanach the Austrian excavators
discovered an archive-chamber, the contents of which were of the same
age. Taanach was merely a third-rate or fourth-rate town, but its
shêkh possessed a fortified residence, in a subterranean chamber of
which his official records and private correspondence were kept in a
coffer of terra-cotta. They were all in the Babylonian language and
script. Among them is a list of the number of men each landowner (?)
was required to furnish for the local militia, and there are also the
letters which passed between the shêkh and his friends about their
private affairs. How little of an official character is to be found in
these letters may be gathered from the following translation of one of
them: “To Istar-yisur (writes) Guli-Hadad.--Live happily! May the gods
grant health to yourself, your house and your sons! You have written
to me about the money ... and behold I will give fifty pieces of
silver, since this has not (yet) been done.--Again: Why have you sent
your salutation here afresh? All you have heard there I have (already)
learned through Bel-ram.--Again: If the finger of the goddess Asherat
appears, let them announce (the omen) and observe (it), and you shall
describe to me both the sign and the fact. As to your daughter, we know
the one, Salmisa, who is in the city of Rabbah, and if she grows up,
you must give her to the prince; she is in truth fit for a lord.”[126]
These Taanach letters are a final proof, if any were needed, of the
completely Babylonian nature of Canaanitish civilization in the
century before the Exodus. When we find the petty shêkhs of obscure
Canaanite towns corresponding with one another on the trivial matters
of every-day life in the foreign language and syllabary of Babylonia,
it is evident that Babylonian influence was still as strong in
Palestine as it had been in the days when “the land of the Amorites”
was a Babylonian province. It is also evident that there must have been
plenty of schools in which the foreign language and syllabary could be
taught and studied, and that the clay literature of Babylonia had been
carried to the West. Indeed the Tel el-Amarna collection contains proof
of this latter fact. Along with the letters are fragments of Babylonian
literary works, one of which has been interpunctuated in order to
facilitate its reading by the Egyptian scholar.
On the other hand, apart from the cuneiform tablets the more strictly
archæological evidence of Babylonian influence upon Canaan is
extraordinarily scanty. Naturally we should discover no traces of
“the goodly Babylonish garments” which, as we learn from the Book of
Joshua, were imported into the country, the climate of Palestine not
being favourable to their preservation; but it is certainly strange
that so few seal-cylinders or similar objects have been disinterred,
either at Gezer and Lachish in the south, or at Taanach and Megiddo
in the north. What makes it the stranger is that Mr. Macalister has
opened a long series of graves, beginning with the neolithic race and
coming down to Græco-Roman times, and that while the influence of Egypt
is sufficiently visible in them, that of Babylonia is almost entirely
absent. It is true that a few seal-cylinders have been met with in
the excavations on the city sites, but with the exception of one found
at Taanach[127] I do not know of any that can be said to be of purely
Babylonian manufacture; most of them are of Syrian make, and represent
a Syrian modification of the Babylonian type. And yet there are
seal-cylinders from the Lebanon, now in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford,
which are purely Babylonian in origin, and belong to the period of
Khammu-rabi.[128]--There are also two seal-cylinders of later pattern
in M. de Clercq’s collection, on which are representations of the
Egyptian gods Set and Horus--similar to those found on scarabs from the
Delta of the time of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth dynasties--as well
as of the Canaanite god Reshef, accompanied by cuneiform inscriptions
which on palæographic grounds must be assigned to the age of the Tel
el-Amarna tablets. As the inscriptions record the names of Hadad-sum
and his son Anniy, “citizens of Sidon, the crown of the gods,” we
know that they have come from the Phœnician coast.[129] Like the
cuneiform tablets, they bear witness to the long-continued influence of
Babylonian culture in Canaan on its literary side.
When we turn to theology and law, the same influence is recognizable.
The deities of Canaan were to a large extent Babylonian, with
Babylonian names. The Babylonian gods Ana, Nebo, Rimmon (Rammân), Hadad
and Dagon meet us in the names of places and persons, and Ashtoreth,
who shared with Baal the devotion of the inhabitants of Palestine,
is the Babylonian Istar with the suffix of the feminine attached to
her name. Even Asherah, in whom Semitic scholars were long inclined
to see a genuinely Canaanitish goddess, turns out to have been of
Babylonian origin, and to be the feminine counterpart of Asir, or
Asur, the national god of Assyria. The recently-discovered legal code
of Khammu-rabi has shown that such glimpses as we have in the Book of
Genesis of the laws and legal customs of Canaan in the patriarchal age
all presuppose Babylonian law. From time to time usages are referred
to and laws implied which have no parallel in the Mosaic code, and are
therefore presumably pre-Israelite. But though they have no parallel
in the Mosaic code, we have now learnt that they were all provided for
in the code of Khammu-rabi. Thus Abram’s adoption of his slave and
house-steward Eliezer is in strict accordance with the provisions of
the old Babylonian law. Adoption, indeed, which was practically unknown
among the Israelites, was a leading feature in Babylonian life, and
the childless man was empowered to adopt an heir, even from among his
slaves, to whom he left his name and his property. So, again, Sarai’s
conduct in regard to Hagar, or Rachel’s conduct in regard to Bilhah, is
explained by the Babylonian enactment which allowed the wife to present
her husband with a concubine; while we can now understand why Hagar was
not sold after her quarrel with Sarai, for the Babylonian law laid down
that “if a man has married a wife, and she has given a concubine to her
husband by whom he has had a child, should the concubine afterwards
have a dispute with her mistress because she has borne children, her
mistress cannot sell her; she can only lay a task upon her and make her
live with the other slaves.”
In the account of Isaac’s marriage with Rebekah it is again a provision
of the old Babylonian code with which we meet. There we hear of the
bride receiving a dowry from the father of the bridegroom, and of other
presents being made to her mother in conformity with Babylonian usage.
So, too, the infliction of death by burning with which Judah threatened
his daughter-in-law Tamar, on the supposition that she was a widow,
has its explanation in the legislation of Khammu-rabi, where the same
punishment is enacted against a nun who has been unfaithful to her
vows of virginity or widowhood. The story of the purchase of the cave
of Machpelah, moreover, has long been recognized by Assyriologists as
pre-supposing an acquaintance with the legal forms of a Babylonian sale
of land in the Khammu-rabi age.
With all this heritage of Babylonian culture, therefore, it is curious
that the excavators in Palestine have come across so few material
evidences of intercourse with Babylonia. Mr. Macalister is inclined
to believe that it must belong to a period anterior to the Twelfth
Egyptian dynasty. But this raises a chronological question of some
difficulty. We have seen that the earlier and inner city wall of
Gezer served as the defence of three successive settlements, and
that it was partially destroyed along with the city it protected
about B.C. 1480. Now the outer and more massive wall which
superseded it also served to protect three cities, the latest of which
was deserted during the Maccabean period, about B.C. 100.
Hence, Mr. Macalister argues, “if we may assume the rate of growth to
have been fairly uniform, we are led back to B.C. 2900 as the
(latest) date” for the foundation of the first wall. During this long
period of time twenty-eight feet of _débris_ accumulated; below
this are as much as twelve feet of neolithic accumulation.[130]
The conquests of Sargon of Akkad would accordingly have fallen within
the neolithic epoch. But in this case it is strange that the use
of copper, with which Babylonia had long been acquainted, was not
communicated to its Western province, and that it should have needed a
new race and the lapse of nearly a thousand years for its introduction.
Moreover, specific evidences of Babylonian civilization are quite as
much wanting in the remains of the first Amorite city as they are
in those of the second. And unless we adopt a date for the Twelfth
Egyptian dynasty, which on other grounds seems out of the question, it
is hard to see how the Khammu-rabi dynasty can be placed before it.
What little evidence we possess at present goes to indicate that the
Khammu-rabi dynasty was contemporaneous with the earlier Hyksos kings
or their immediate predecessors. And yet not only do we know that
the Khammu-rabi dynasty ruled in Palestine, but the adoption of the
cuneiform script, which was at least as old as the age of that dynasty,
as well as the testimony of theology and law, proves that its rule
must have exercised a profound and permanent influence upon the people
of Canaan. How is it, then, that while the excavations have brought to
light so many evidences of Egyptian domination, there is so little in
the way of material objects to show that Palestine was once and for
several centuries a Babylonian province?[131]
Perhaps the excavations which are still proceeding at Megiddo may
throw some light upon the problem. Meanwhile, we may remember that
thus far the greater part of the objects that have been found belong
to the less wealthy and educated part of the population. The annals
of Thothmes III. prove that, so far as the upper classes were
concerned, the picture of Canaanitish luxury presented in the Old
Testament had a foundation of fact. Among the spoils taken from the
princes of Canaan we hear of tables, chairs and staves of cedar and
ebony inlaid or gilded with gold, of a golden plough and sceptre, of
richly-embroidered stuffs similar to those depicted on the walls of the
Egyptian monuments, of chariots chased with silver, of iron tent-poles
studded with precious stones, and of “bowls with goats’ heads on them,
and one with a lion’s head, the workmanship of the land of the Zahi,”
that is to say, of the Canaanitish coast. These latter were doubtless
imitations of the gold and silver cups with double handles and animals’
heads imported from Krete, which were also received as tribute from
the Canaanitish princes by the Egyptian king. Other gifts comprised
chariots plated with gold, iron armour with gold inlay, a helmet of
gold inlaid with lapis-lazuli, the tusks of elephants, rings of gold
and silver that were used as money, copper and lead, as well as jars
of wine, oil and balsam. Of all these articles, the copper and lead
excepted, it is needless to say next to nothing has been discovered by
the excavators. The most valuable work of art yet met with is a bronze
sword of precisely the same shape as one found in Assyria, which bears
upon it the name of Hadad-nirari I. (B.C. 1330).[132]
On the palæographical side the forms of the cuneiform characters used
in Canaan go back to the script of the age of Khammu-rabi and his
predecessors. From a purely Assyriological point of view, no regard
being had to other considerations, I should date their introduction
into Palestine about B.C. 2300. The chronology that would
best harmonize the historical facts would thus be one which made the
dominance of Egypt in Palestine under the Twelfth dynasty precede the
Babylonian rule of the Khammu-rabi period. Against it is the negative
evidence of archæological discovery, so few traces of this rule having
been discovered in the course of the excavations. But neither in
archæology nor in anything else is negative evidence of much value.
At any rate, thanks to the decipherment of the cuneiform inscriptions,
the main facts are clear. Canaan was once a province of the Babylonian
Empire, and during the long period of time that this was the case
it became permeated with the literary culture of Babylonia. The
civilization which was partially destroyed by the Israelitish invasion
had its roots in the valley of the Euphrates.
Gezer, it is true, was one of the cities in which no visible break with
the past was made by the irruption of the desert tribes. It escaped
capture by the invaders, and it was only in the reign of Solomon,
when the Israelites had already entered into the heritage of the old
Canaanitish culture, that it was handed over by the king of Egypt to
his Jewish son-in-law. But at Lachish the marks of the destruction of
the town by Joshua are still visible. Above the ruins of the Amorite
cities is a bed of ashes left by the charcoal-burners who squatted
on the site before it was again rebuilt. Above the stratum of ashes
all must be Israelitish, and the objects found in the remains of the
cities that stand upon it testify accordingly to a complete change.
No more cuneiform tablets are met with, and but few Egyptian scarabs;
the pottery is different, and the “high place” has disappeared.
The bowl and lamp, indeed, are still buried under the walls of the
newly-built house, but the bones of sacrificed children which they once
contained are replaced by sand. As the Israelitish power increased
the old Babylonian influence necessarily lessened. When the cuneiform
syllabary finally made way for the so-called Phœnician alphabet is
still uncertain, but it was at all events before the days of Solomon.
Already in the Amorite period the characters of the Kretan linear
script discovered by Dr. Evans are found scratched on fragments of
pottery, indicating that besides the cuneiform another form of writing
was known; it may be that the Israelitish conquest, by destroying the
centres of Canaanitish civilization and the schools of the scribes,
gave a first blow to the tradition of Babylonian learning, and that the
work of destruction was subsequently completed by the Philistine wars.