CANAAN IN THE CENTURY BEFORE THE EXODUS
It is now nearly twenty years ago since the archæological world was
startled, not to say revolutionized, by the discovery of the cuneiform
tablets of Tel el-Amarna in Upper Egypt. Nor was it the archæological
world only which the discovery affected. The historian and the
theologian have equally had to modify and forsake their old ideas
and assumptions, and the criticism of the Old Testament writings has
entered upon a new and altogether unexpected stage. The archæologist,
the historian and the Biblical critic alike can never again return to
the point of view which was dominant before 1887, or regard the ancient
world of the East with the unbelieving eyes of a Grote or a Cornewall
Lewis. A single archæological discovery has upset mountains of learned
discussion, of ingenious theory and sceptical demonstration.
At the risk of repeating a well-worn tale, I will describe briefly
the nature of the discovery. In the ruins of a city and palace which,
like the palace of Aladdin, rose out of the desert sands into gorgeous
magnificence for a short thirty years and then perished utterly, some
300 clay tablets were found, inscribed, not with the hieroglyphics
of Egypt, but with the cuneiform characters of Babylonia. They were,
in fact, the contents of the Foreign Office of Amon-hotep IV., the
“Heretic King” of Egyptian history, who endeavoured to reform the old
religion of Egypt and to substitute for it a pantheistic monotheism.
This was about 1400 years before the birth of Christ, and a full
century before the Israelitish Exodus. The attempt failed in spite of
the fanatical efforts of its royal patron to force it upon his people,
and of his introduction of religious persecution for the first time
into the world. The Eighteenth dynasty, to which he belonged, and which
had conquered Western Asia, went down in civil and religious war; the
Asiatic Empire of Egypt was lost, and a new dynasty sat on the throne
of Thebes.
The archives in the Foreign Office included not only the foreign
correspondence of Amon-hotep’s own reign, but the foreign
correspondence also of his father, which he had carried with him from
Thebes when he founded his new capital at Tel el-Amarna. And the scope
and character of it are astounding. There are letters from the kings
of Babylonia and Assyria, of Mesopotamia and the Hittites, of Cilicia
and Cappadocia, besides letters and communications of all sorts from
the Egyptian governors and vassal princes in Canaan and Syria. Most of
the correspondence is in the language of Babylonia; it is only in a few
rare instances that the cuneiform characters embody the actual language
of the people from whom the letters were sent. It is difficult to
imagine anything more subversive of the ideas about the ancient history
of the East, which were current twenty years ago, than the conclusions
to be drawn from this correspondence. It proved that, so far as
literary culture is concerned, the civilized Oriental world in the
Mosaic age was quite as civilized as our own. There were schools and
libraries all over it, in which a foreign language and a complicated
foreign system of writing formed an essential part of education. It
proved that this education was widely spread: there are letters from
Bedâwîn shêkhs as well as from a lady who was much interested in
politics. It showed that this correspondence was active and regular,
that those who took part in it wrote to each other on the trivial
topics of the day, and that the high-roads and postal service were
alike well organized. We learned that the nations of the Orient were no
isolated units cut off from one another except when one of them made
war with the other, but that, on the contrary, their mutual relations
were as close and intimate as those of modern Europe. The Babylonian
king in his distant capital on the Euphrates sent to condole with the
Egyptian Pharaoh on his father’s death like a modern potentate, and was
every whit as anxious to protect and encourage the trade of his country
as Mr. Chamberlain. Indeed, the privileges of the merchant and the
sacredness of his person had long been a matter of international law.
In one respect the advocates of international harmony and arbitration
were better off in the Mosaic age than they are in the Europe of
to-day. There was no difficulty about diversities of language and the
danger of being misunderstood. The language of diplomacy, of education
and trade was everywhere the same, and was understood, read and written
by all educated persons. Even the Egyptian lord of Western Asia had to
swallow his pride and write in the language and script of Babylonia
when he corresponded with his own subjects in Canaan. Indeed, like
English officials in Egypt, who are supposed to write to one another on
official business in French, his own Egyptian envoys and commissioners
sent their official communications in the foreign tongue. The Oriental
world in the century before the Exodus thus anticipated the Roman
Empire.
Canaan was the centre and focus of the correspondence. It was the
battle-ground and meeting-place of the great powers of the Eastern
world. It had long been a province of Babylonia, and, like the rest
of the Babylonian Empire, subject to Babylonian law and permeated
by Babylonian literary culture. It was during these centuries of
Babylonian government that it had come to adopt as its own the script
and language of its rulers; the deities of Babylonia were worshipped
on the high places of Palestine, and Babylonian legends and traditions
were taught in its schools.
Out of Canaan had marched the Hyksos who conquered Egypt. The names
of their kings found on the monuments that have survived to us are
distinctively Canaanite of the patriarchal period; among them is
Jacob-el, or Jacob, whom the Alexandrine Jews seem to have identified
with their own ancestor. While the Hyksos Pharaohs reigned, Egypt
was but a dependency of Canaan; the source of Hyksos power lay in
Canaan, and their Egyptian capital was accordingly placed close to the
Canaanitish frontier.
When, after five generations of warfare, the native princes of Thebes
succeeded at last in expelling the Hyksos conquerors from the valley
of the Nile and in founding the Eighteenth dynasty, they perceived
that their best hope of preventing a second Asiatic conquest lay in
possessing themselves of the land which was, as it were, the key to
their own. The Hyksos conquest, in fact, had shown that Canaan was at
once a link between Asia and Africa, and the open gate which let the
invader into the fertile fields of Egypt. The war, therefore, that had
ended by driving the Asiatic out of Egypt was now carried into his own
home. Campaign after campaign finally crushed Canaanitish resistance,
and the Egyptian standards were planted on the banks of the Euphrates.
Palestine and Syria were transformed into Egyptian provinces; in the
language of the tenth chapter of Genesis, they became the brothers of
Mizraim.
The Tel el-Amarna letters tell us how the new provinces were organized.
The most important cities were placed under Egyptian governors, many
of whom, however, were natives. But they were carefully watched by
Egyptian commissioners, to whom the control of the military forces was
entrusted, as well as by special high-commissioners sent from time
to time by the imperial Government. Local jealousies and rivalries,
moreover, among the governors prevented union among them against the
central power, and up to a certain point were not discouraged by the
Egyptian Foreign Office. The Tel el-Amarna letters offer us a curious
picture of the extent to which their mutual animosities were carried in
the days when the Egyptian Empire was growing feeble. All the governors
protest their devotion to the court, and all like are accused by their
rivals of intriguing and even fighting against it.
Besides the states which were thus directly under Egyptian rule, there
were also protected states. Here the representative of the old line
of kings was allowed to retain a titular authority, though in reality
his power was not greater than that of the governors in other states.
But, whether governor or protected prince his duty to the imperial
Government was clearly marked out for him. He had to levy the taxes and
send a fixed amount of tribute to the Egyptian Treasury, to provide a
certain number of militia, and to send official reports to the king. He
had further to see that the troops of the army of occupation were duly
provided with pay and maintenance.
The army of occupation in the reign of Amon-hotep IV. does not seem to
have been large. The imperial forces were needed at home to enforce
the new faith upon the Egyptian people, and to put down the discontent
that was growing there. We hear, however, of “the household troops,”
who belonged to the standing army of Egypt and formed the nucleus of
the permanent garrison. How many of them were native Egyptians it is
impossible to say; as we hear of Kushites or Ethiopians among them,
it is probable that the Sudanese were at least as largely employed on
foreign service as the Egyptians themselves. The Egyptian has never
been fond of military service, whereas, we all now know, the Sudanese
is essentially a fighting animal.
Both sides of the Jordan were included in the Egyptian administration.
One of the Tel el-Amarna letters, for example, is from a governor of
“the field of Bashan.” It is characteristic of the whole series, and
shows what the relations were between the army of occupation and the
native levies. I cannot do better than quote it in full: “To the king,
my lord, thus says Artamanya, the governor of the Field of Bashan, thy
servant: at the feet of the king, my lord, seven times seven do I fall.
Behold, thou hast written to me to join the household troops, and how
could I be a dog (of the king) and not go? Behold, I and my soldiers
and my chariots will join the household troops in whatever place the
king my lord orders.”
The name of Artamanya is not Semitic; neither is it Egyptian. The fact
brings us to one of the most interesting and unexpected results of the
decipherment of the Tel el-Amarna correspondence. And this is that the
ruling caste in the Palestine of the Mosaic age was largely of Hittite
origin, or had come from those countries of the north whose population
was related in blood and language to the Hittites of Asia Minor.
In Northern Mesopotamia was a kingdom which ranked with those of Egypt
and Babylonia as regarded power and influence. Its native name was
Mitanni; the Hebrews, like the Egyptians, called it the kingdom of
Aram Naharaim. It stretched from Assyria to the Orontes, and contended
with the Hittites of Carchemish for the possession of the fords of
the Euphrates. Its rulers had descended upon it from the highlands of
Armenia and the Caucasus, and had reduced the native Aramæan population
to servitude. There are frequent references in the Tel el-Amarna
tablets to Mitannian intrigues in Canaan. Mitannian armies had from
time to time marched against the Canaanitish cities, and although there
was now a nominal alliance between Mitanni and Egypt, and the royal
families of the two countries were united by marriage, the Mitannian
court never lost an opportunity of sending secret support to the
disaffected princes of Canaan or of encouraging them in their revolts
from the Egyptian Government. In many parts of the country the ruling
family continued to be Mitannian, and accordingly we find more than one
governor who bears a Mitannian name. Thus one of them, as we see, was
governor of Bashan, and there was another who had his seat near the Sea
of Galilee.
Mitannian influence, however, was chiefly confined to the northern part
of Palestine. It was otherwise with the Hittites, whose marauding bands
penetrated as far south as the frontiers of Egypt. The important part
they played in the early history of Canaan and the substantial element
they must have contributed to the future population of the country has
but lately been disclosed to us by the advance that has been made in
the interpretation of the Tel el-Amarna texts. We have at last obtained
an explanation of the fact that whereas in the older Babylonian period
Canaan was known as “the land of the Amorites,” it was called by the
Assyrians “the land of the Hittites.” The Assyrian kings even speak
of Judah and Moab as “Hittite,” and the town of Ashdod is described
by Sargon as a “Hittite” state. What this must mean has indeed long
been recognized by the Assyriologists. When the Assyrians first became
acquainted with Palestine the Hittites must have been there the
dominant power. But how and when this came about we have but just begun
to learn, and it is the story of the Hittite occupation of Canaan, as a
better knowledge of the Tel el-Amarna tablets is making possible, that
I now propose to describe.
The Hittite race was of Cappadocian origin. Professor Ramsay has
pointed out that the hieroglyphic characters which they used in
their inscriptions must have been invented on the treeless plateau
of Central Asia Minor, and that their capital, whose ruins now strew
the ground at Boghaz Keui, north of the Halys, was the centre towards
which all the early high-roads of Asia Minor converge. But they
extended on both sides of the Taurus Mountains, and at an early date
had planted themselves in Northern Syria. I have lately succeeded in
deciphering their inscriptions, which have so long baffled our attempts
to read them, and one result of my decipherment is the discovery of
an unexpected fact. I find that the name of Hittite was confined to
that portion of the race which lived eastward and southward of the
Taurus. In Asia Minor itself, their first cradle and home, they called
themselves Kas or Kasians; it was the kingdom of Kas over which the
Hittite lords of Boghaz Keui claimed to rule, and it is still as kings
of Kas that they are entitled on the monuments of Carchemish, though
here they also acknowledge the name of Hittite.
The name of Kas is met with in the Tel el-Amarna tablets, where it has
hitherto been misunderstood. The kings of the Hittites, of Mitanni
and of Kas are associated together as supporting the enemies of the
Egyptian Pharaoh or attacking his cities in Syria, Hitherto we have
supposed that Kas signified Babylonia, though the supposition had but
little in its favour, and a different name is given to Babylonia in
passages where there is no doubt as to what country is meant. Now,
however, all becomes clear: in the age of the tablets there were still
four Hittite kingdoms in the north: Kas in Asia Minor, the Hittites
proper, east and south of the Taurus, Mitanni in Mesopotamia, and
Naharaim on the Orontes. Shortly afterwards they were all swallowed
up in the empire of the “great king” of the Hittites, whose southern
capital was at Kadesh. Some Kasians had found their way to Jerusalem,
where the king Ebed-Kheba--whose name is compounded with that of a
Mitannian deity--writes to the Egyptian Government to excuse his
conduct in regard to them. They had been accused of plundering the
Pharaoh’s territory and murdering his servants; he assures the court
that nothing of the sort is true. They are still in his house, where
it would seem they formed his bodyguard. But, on the other hand,
there were other Hittites in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem who were
really enemies to the king and threatened Jerusalem itself. These he
calls Khabiri, or “Confederates,” a name in which, despite history and
probability, certain writers have insisted upon seeing the Hebrews
of the Old Testament. But Dr. Knudtzon’s fresh collation of the
Tel el-Amarna texts has at last dispelled the mystery. The Khabiri
turn out to have been bands of Hittite condottieri, who sold their
military services to the highest bidder and carved out principalities
for themselves in the south of Canaan. The Egyptian Government found
them useful in escorting and protecting the trading caravans to Asia
Minor and the Taurus region, and as long as their leaders professed
themselves the devoted servants of the Pharaoh it was quite willing
to overlook such little accidents as their capture and sack of a
Canaanitish town or the murder of a Canaanitish prince.
One of these Hittite leaders, Aita-gama by name, had possessed himself
of the city of Kadesh on the Orontes, which in the following century
was to become the capital of a Hittite empire. In a letter to the
Egyptian court he has the audacity to assert that he was merely
claiming his patrimony, the whole district having belonged to his
father. If there is any truth in this it can only mean that his father
had already led a troop of Hittite raiders into this portion of the
Egyptian territory.
Along with Aita-gama two other Hittite chieftains had marched,
Teuwatti, whose name appears in the native texts under the form of
Tuates, and Arzawaya. Arzawaya means “a man of Arzawa,” the country
whose language has been revealed to us in one of the Tel el-Amarna
letters, and which proves to be the same as the Hittite dialect
found in the cuneiform tablets of Boghaz Keui. We are told that he
came from a city which was in the neighbourhood of the Karmalas, in
Southern Cappadocia. Arzawaya helped Teuwatti to conquer Damascus and
then led his followers further south. Here he acted as a free-lance,
hiring himself and his mercenaries to the rival Canaanitish princes
and professing himself to be all the while a faithful servant of the
Egyptian king. It is amusing to read one of his letters to the Egyptian
court: “To my lord the king thus writes Arzawaya, of Rukhiza. At the
feet of my lord I prostrate myself. My lord the king wrote that I
should join the household troops of the king my lord and his numerous
officers.” Here follow four words of Hittite which are accompanied by
the translation: “I am a servant of the king my lord.” Then the letter
proceeds: “I will join the household troops of the king my lord and
his officers; and I will send everything after them and march wherever
there is rebellion against the king my lord. And we will deliver
his enemies into the hand of the king our lord.” Doubtless Arzawaya
expected to be well paid for his help.
There is another letter from Arzawaya to the Pharaoh in which he calls
himself “the dust of his feet and the ground on which he treads.” But
in this letter he has to explain away the share he took in entering
the town of Gezer along with Labbawa,[156] another Hittite leader,
and there infringing the royal prerogative by summoning a levy of
the militia. In the eyes of the home Government this was a much
more serious matter than merely plundering or killing a few of its
Canaanitish subjects, as it was equivalent to usurping the functions of
the imperial power.
Labbawa also had to write and ask for forgiveness, and assure the
Pharaoh that he is his “devoted slave,” who does “not withhold his
tribute” or disobey the “requests” of the Egyptian commissioners. In
fact, he concludes his letter with declaring that “if the king should
write to me: Run a sword of bronze into your heart and die, I would
not fail to execute the king’s command.” All the same, however, he had
established himself securely on Mount Shechem, from whence, like Joshua
in after days, he was able to make raids on the surrounding Canaanitish
towns. In the north we hear of him at Shunem and Gath-Rimmon, where
he first appeared upon the scene in the train of the Egyptian army at
a time when Amon-hotep III. was suppressing an insurrection in that
part of Palestine. It is probable that he had just arrived with his
band of condottieri, attracted by the pay and the chance of plunder
that the Egyptian Pharaoh offered the free-lance. By a curious fatality
it was also in this same locality that he afterwards met his death at
the hands of the people of Gina--the Cana of Galilee, probably, of St.
John’s Gospel.
Labbawa cast envious eyes on the important city of Megiddo, and its
governor--who, by the way, is mentioned in one of the cuneiform
tablets found three years ago by the Austrian excavators on the
site of Taanach--sent piteous appeals for assistance against him to
the Egyptian Government. The beleaguered governor declared that so
closely invested was he by the Hittite free-lances that he could not
venture outside the gates of his town. The peasantry were afraid even
to bring vegetables into it, and unless help were forthcoming from
Egypt, Megiddo was doomed. After all, however, Labbawa was not only
unable to possess himself of the Canaanitish stronghold, but was taken
prisoner and confined in the very place he had hoped to capture. But
fortune befriended him. He managed to bribe the governor of Acre, and
the latter, on the pretext that he was going to send Labbawa by sea to
Egypt, took him out of prison and set him free.
Labbawa now turned his attention to the south of Palestine--the future
territory of Judah. Here he entered into alliance with the king of
Jerusalem, or, to speak more precisely, was taken into his pay, and
the two together waged war on the neighbouring states. One of the
Egyptian governors complains that they had robbed him of Keilah, and he
had to wait for Labbawa’s death before he could recover his city.
One of the two letters in the Tel el-Amarna collection which are in
the Arzawan or Hittite language was written by Labbawa, as we have
lately learned from Dr. Knudtzon’s revised copy of it. In this he calls
himself a native of the Hittite district of Uan, near Aleppo, and
refers to “the Hittite king,” though our knowledge of the language is
too imperfect to allow us to understand the meaning of the reference.
The letter is addressed simply “to my lord,” and we do not know,
therefore, whether it was intended for Hittite or Egyptian eyes. After
his settlement in Palestine, however, Labbawa adopted the official
language of the country; his letters to the Pharaoh are in Babylonian,
and his son bore the characteristically Semitic name of Mut-Baal. The
fact is an interesting example of the rapid way in which the Hittite
settlers in Palestine were Semitized. They brought no women with them,
and their wives accordingly were natives of Canaan.
Labbawa left two sons behind him, who, in spite of their Semitic
education, followed in their father’s footsteps and continued to
lead his company of Hittite mercenaries. Mut-Baal, moreover, made
himself useful to the Government by escorting the trading caravans to
Cappadocia, a fact which proves that he still maintained relations
with the country of his origin. The alliance between Ebed-Kheba of
Jerusalem and his father, however, had come to an end; Ebed-Kheba now
had the Hittites of Kas in his pay, and no longer needed the services
of the sons of Labbawa. They therefore transferred themselves to
his rivals, together with the sons of Arzawaya, who, like Labbawa,
was now dead, and Ebed-Kheba soon found himself in difficulties.
The result was letter after letter from him to the Egyptian court,
begging for help against his enemies, and declaring that if no help
came the king’s territory would be lost. These appeals seem to have
met with no response; the Egyptian Government was by no means assured
of Ebed-Kheba’s loyalty, and knew that if the territory of Jerusalem
were to pass into the hands of the Hittite chieftain it would make but
little difference to the imperial power. The tribute would still be
paid, the Egyptian commissioner would still be respected, and the new
rulers of the district would profess themselves the faithful subjects
of the Pharaoh. There would merely be a change of governors, and
nothing more. The Hittite mercenaries were formidable only in the petty
struggles which took place between the rival Canaanitish governors;
when it came to dealing with the regular army of Egypt they were
numerically too few to be of account.
Ebed-Kheba calls the followers of Labbawa and Arzawaya “Khabiri.”
I have long ago pointed out that the word is found elsewhere in
the Assyrian texts in the sense of “Confederates,” and that its
identification with the Hebrews of the Old Testament, though
phonetically possible, is historically impossible. Now that we know the
nationality of Labbawa and Arzawaya the question is finally settled,
and we can explain a hitherto puzzling passage in one of Ebed-Kheba’s
letters, in which he says that “when ships were on the sea the arm
of the mighty king seized Naharaim and Kas, but now the Khabiri have
seized the cities of the king.” Naharaim lay southward of the gulf of
Antioch, while Kas extended to the Cilician coast, and they were thus,
both of them, within reach of a maritime Power; they were, moreover,
both of them Hittite regions, Naharaim being the district afterwards
called Khattinâ, “the Hittite land,” by the Assyrians, while Kas was
the Hittite kingdom of Cappadocia. Ebed-Kheba, therefore, is drawing
a comparison between the power of “the mighty king” in the days when
an Egyptian fleet controlled the sea and the present time when Hittite
marauders are seizing without let or hindrance the king’s cities on the
very borders of Egypt. Even Lachish and Ashkelon had joined the enemy.
Perhaps the most important of the King of Jerusalem’s letters is one
which has hitherto been misunderstood, partly owing to its being broken
in half and the relation of the two halves to one another not being
recognized, partly to the imperfections of the published copy. Now
that a complete and accurate text of it lies before us, its meaning
has ceased to be a riddle, and I will therefore give here the first
translation that has been made of the completed text--
“To the king my lord thus says Ebed-Kheba thy servant: at the feet
of my lord the king seven times seven I prostrate myself. Behold,
Malchiel has not separated himself from the sons of Labbawa and the
sons of Arzawaya so as to claim the king’s land for them. A governor
who commits such an act, why has not the king questioned him (about
it)? Behold, Malchiel and Tagi have committed such an act by seizing
the city of Rabbah. And now as to Jerusalem, if this land belongs to
the king, why is it that Gaza has been appointed for the (residence of
the) king (’s commissioner)? Behold the land of Gath-Carmel is in the
power of Tagi, and the men of Gath are (his) bodyguard. He is (now) in
Beth-Sannah. But (nevertheless) we will act. Malchiel wrote to Tagi
that they should give Labbawa and Mount Shechem to the district of
the Khabiri, and he took some boys as slaves. They granted all their
demands to the people of Keilah. But we will rescue Jerusalem. The
garrison which you sent by Khaya the son of Meri-Ra has been taken
by Hadad-mikhir and stationed in his house at Gaza. [I have sent
messengers] to Egypt, [and may] the king [listen to me].... There is
no garrison of the king [here]. Verily by the life of the king Pa-ur
has gone down to Egypt; he has left me and is in Gaza. But let the king
entrust to him a garrison for the defence of the land. All the land of
the king has revolted. Send Yenkhamu and let him take charge of the
king’s land.
“(Postscript): To the secretary of the king says Ebed-Kheba your
servant: [bring] what I say clearly before the king. Kindest regards to
you! I am your servant.”
The references in this letter are explained in other letters from the
same correspondent. Malchiel was the native governor of the Hebron
district, and had married the daughter of Tagi, whose name does not
sound Semitic. The Hittite mercenaries of Labbawa from Shechem and
of Arzawaya, who does not seem to have established himself in any
special district of the country, were now in the pay of Malchiel,
while Ebed-Kheba, as we have seen, had secured the services of another
body of Hittites from Kas. He had been accused at the Egyptian court
of seeking by their means to make himself independent, and more than
one of his letters is occupied with defending himself and bringing a
counter-charge against Malchiel. Malchiel, however, secured the support
of the royal commissioner, Yenkhamu, who agreed to his employment
of the Hittite condottieri. With their assistance Keilah had been
recovered from the hands of Ebed-Kheba, who, at an earlier date,
had got Labbawa to seize it for him, but after Labbawa’s death the
tables were turned, and his sons had offered their services to the
rival party, doubtless for the sake of better pay. It was now that
Malchiel summoned the militia of Gezer, Gath-Carmel and Keilah, and
made himself master of Rabbah, a small place north-west of Keilah and
Hebron, which Ebed-Kheba asserted belonged to _his_ territory.
The tide was beginning to turn against the King of Jerusalem: his
enemies were in greater favour at court than he was himself, and they
had the support of the Hittite bands. It was in vain that he appealed
to the Egyptian Government for aid and declared that not only had his
rivals given Mount Shechem to the Hittite free-lances, but that by
their action against himself they were delivering the whole of Southern
Palestine into Hittite hands. “The king,” he writes, “no longer has
any territory, the Khabiri have wasted all the lands of the king. If
the royal troops come this year, the country will remain my lord the
king’s, but if no troops come, the territory of the king my lord is
lost.”
At this point the story breaks off abruptly. The Tel el-Amarna
correspondence comes to an end and the fate of Jerusalem and the
surrounding districts is unknown to us. Soon afterwards religious
troubles at home forced the Egyptian Government to withdraw its troops
from Canaan altogether, and for awhile the Egyptian empire in Asia
ceased to exist. It was restored, however, by Seti I. and his son,
Ramses II, at the beginning of the Nineteenth dynasty, and among the
cities whose conquest is celebrated by Ramses on the walls of the
Ramesseum at Thebes is Shalem or Jerusalem. But this second Egyptian
empire in Asia did not last long, and when the Israelitish Exodus
took place it was already passing away. When some years later the
Israelitish invaders planted themselves in Labbawa’s old stronghold
on Mount Shechem, the Egyptian occupation of Canaan belonged to the
history of the past.
Like the Saxons in England, however, the Hittite chieftains must have
founded principalities for themselves in the south of Canaan, as we
know from the evidence of the Tel el-Amarna tablets and the Egyptian
monuments that they did in the north. Ezekiel, in fact, tells us that
the mother of Jerusalem was a Hittite, and the Jebusites, from whom
Jerusalem took its name in the age of the Israelitish conquest, were
probably the descendants of the followers of the Hittite Arzawaya.
They had, moreover, found a Hittite population already settled in
the country, descendants of older bands who had made their way from
the highlands of Asia Minor to the frontiers of Egypt in days when
as yet Abraham was unborn. At the very commencement of the Egyptian
twelfth dynasty we hear of the Pharaohs destroying “the palaces of the
Hittites” in Southern Palestine,[157] and archæology has recently shown
that the painted pottery discovered in the earlier strata of Lachish
and Gezer by English excavators had its original home in Northern
Cappadocia and is an enduring evidence of Hittite culture and trade.
The Hittites had been preceded in their occupation of Canaan by the
Amorites, as we have learnt from the Babylonian inscriptions. But in
the Tel el-Amarna age the specifically Amoritish territory was in the
north, eastward of Tyre and Gebal. Here Ebed-Asherah and his son Aziru
had their seat and from hence they led their forces northwards towards
Aleppo to resist “the king of the Hittites” on behalf of the Egyptian
Government, or attacked the Phœnician cities on their own account.
In the north, in fact, they played much the same part as the Hittite
mercenaries did in the south, with the additional advantage of being
able to secure secret assistance when it was needed from Mitanni.
Between Amorites and Hittites the Canaanites must have had a somewhat
unhappy time, like the Britons after the departure of the Roman
legions, who found themselves the alternate prey of Saxons and Scots.
But we can now understand and appreciate the ethnological notice in the
Book of Numbers (xiii. 29), which tells us that “the Hittites and the
Jebusites and the Amorites dwell in the mountains, and the Canaanites
dwell by the sea and by the coast of Jordan.”
The Amorite princes, however, were more formidable to the Egyptian
Government than the Hittite chieftains, or else must have played their
cards a little too openly, for we find Aziru receiving a scolding such
as the Egyptian court seldom had the courage or energy to give. The
letter from the Egyptian Foreign Office, which is a long one, is worth
translating in full--
“To the governor of the land of the Amorites [thus] says the king your
lord. The governor of Gebal, thy brother, whom his brother has driven
from the gate (of the city) has said: ‘Take me and bring me back into
my city, [and] I will then give you money, [for] I have nothing [of
value] with me now.’ So he spoke to you.
“Behold, you write to the king your lord saying: I am your servant like
all the loyal governors who are each in his city. Yet you have acted
wrongly in taking a governor whom his brother had driven from the gate
of his city, and being in Sidon you handed him over to the governors
(there) at your own discretion, as if you did not know that they were
rebellious.
“If you are really a servant of the king why have you not seen that he
should go up to the presence of the king your lord instead of thinking,
‘This governor wrote to me saying, “Take me to thyself and restore me
to my city”’?
“But if you have acted loyally and nothing that I write is correct, the
king has devised a lie in saying that nothing which you declare is true.
“But it happens that one has heard that you have made a treaty with the
(Hittite) prince of Kadesh to deliver food and drink to one another,
and it is true. Why have you acted thus? Why have you made a treaty
with a governor with whom another governor is at enmity? For if you act
with loyalty to him and observe your and his engagements you cannot
look after (our) interests as you have undertaken to do long ago.
Whatever be your conduct in the matter you are not on the side of the
king your lord.
“Now as for these men to whom you want to turn, they are seeking to
get you into the fire and to burn (you) and all you most love. Whereas
if you submit yourself to the king your lord, what is there which the
king cannot do for you? If in anything you love to act wickedly and if
you lay up wickedness, even thoughts of rebellion, in your heart, then
you will die by the axe of the king along with all your family. Submit
therefore to the king your lord, and you shall live, for you know that
the king has no wish to be angry with all the land of Canaan.
“And since you write: ‘Let the king excuse me this year and I will go
next year to the court of the king my lord, my son not being with me,’
the king your lord accordingly will excuse you this year as you have
asked. Go yourself instead of sending your son, and you shall see the
king in the sight of whom all the world lives, and do not say: let me
be excused this year also from going to the court of the king your
lord; and do not send your son to the king your lord; he must not go in
your place.
“And now the king your lord has heard that you wrote to the king
saying, ‘Let the king my lord permit Khanni the messenger of the king
to come to me for the second time, and I will deliver the enemies of
the king into his hand.’ Now he will go to you as you have asked; do
you therefore deliver them (to him) and do not let a single one of
them escape. Now the king your lord sends you the names of the king’s
enemies in this letter by the hand of Khanni the king’s messenger; so
deliver them to the king your lord and let not a single one of them
escape, but put fetters of bronze upon their feet. Behold, the men you
are to send to the king your lord are Sarru with all his sons, Tuia,
Liya with all his sons, Yisyari with all his sons, (and) the son-in-law
of Manya with his sons and wives. The treasurer of Khanni is the
official who will read the dispatch. Dâsirtî, Pâlûwa and Nimmakhî have
gone [to collect taxes?] into the country of the Amorites.
“And know that the king, the Sun-god in heaven, is well; his soldiers
and chariots are many; from the upper country to the lower country,
from the rising of the sun [to] the setting of the sun all is peace.”
We hear again of one of the rebels mentioned in this letter in the
tablet discovered at Lachish in Palestine by Mr. Bliss. Yisyari is
there described as inciting the governor of Lachish to revolt and
promising assistance if he would call out the militia of his city
against the king. That an Amorite of the north should thus have been
able to interfere in the politics of a city in the south of Palestine
is an interesting illustration of what I may call the solidarity of
Syria and Canaan in the pre-Mosaic period. They had not yet been broken
up into a series of isolated States; like the Hittites, the Amorites
still claimed to be a power in the future territory of Judah as well as
in the neighbourhood of Sidon or Hamath.
It is possible that a well-known but somewhat mysterious personage
of the Old Testament was one of the Hittite leaders who succeeded
in carving out a principality for himself: I mean Balaam the son of
Beor. He is said to have come from the Hittite town of Pethor near
Carchemish, and besides being a seer and a prophet he was also a
soldier who fell in the ranks of the Midianites in a war against
Israel. But Balaam the son of Beor was not only a native of Pethor;
we hear of him again in the Book of Genesis, and here he appears as
the first king of Edom, his name heading the list of Edomite kings
extracted from the state annals of Edom and probably brought to
Jerusalem when David conquered the country. In the light of what
we have learnt from the tablets of Tel el-Amarna it is perhaps not
going too far to suppose that in Balaam we have one of those Hittite
chieftains who, after playing the part of prophet, made himself leader
of a band of Hittite free-lances and established a kingdom for himself
in Edom, finally falling in battle by the side of his Midianite allies.
However this may be, the important place occupied by the Hittites in
creating the Canaan which the Israelites invaded is now clear. While
the larger bands of Hittite raiders settled in the north, where they
prepared the way for the Hittite king himself with his regular army,
and where Hittite power became so firmly established that even the
great Ramses could not dislodge it, smaller companies of condottieri
made their way to the extreme south of Palestine, hiring their services
to the rival governors and princes and seizing a town or district
for themselves when the opportunity offered. So long as the tribute
was paid, and its subjects were not too troublesome, the Egyptian
Government looked on with equanimity while the states of Canaan were
practically ruled by the leaders of foreign mercenaries who transferred
their services from one paymaster to another with the most perfect
impartiality.
What is most curious is that the Imperial Government recognized the
legal position not only of the Hittite or Amorite mercenaries, but
even of organized bands of Bedâwîn and outlaws. As for the Bedâwîn,
it had companies of them in its own pay, like the Egyptian Government
in more recent times, and the governor of Gebal complains that the
Egyptian commissioner Pa-Hor had sent some of the latter to murder his
garrison of Serdani or Sardinians, who were themselves mercenaries in
the Egyptian army. That bodies of outlaws should have been subsidized
by the native princes with the permission, or at least the connivance,
of the Egyptian court may seem surprising. But after all it is only
what we find happening in later times when the king of Gath similarly
enrolled David and his band of outlaws into his bodyguard without any
remonstrance on the part of the other Philistine “lords.” Still it is
startling to find one of the Pharaoh’s governors coolly announcing that
he and his soldiers and chariots, together with his brothers, his
“cut-throats” and his Bedâwîn, are ready to join the royal troops, at
the very time when another governor is piteously begging the great king
to “save” him “out of the hands of the cut-throats and Bedâwîn.” Here
is a strange picture of Canaanitish life in the days when as yet the
Israelite was not in the land.
The fact is, the Canaanites were an unwarlike people. Inland, they
were agriculturists; on the sea-coast they were traders. And, like
other trading communities, they were disinclined to fight, preferring
to entrust the protection of themselves and their property to a
paid soldiery, while at the same time their wealth made them a
tempting prize to the assailant. It is true that they maintained a
native militia, as we have learned from one of the cuneiform tablets
discovered at Taanach, but it was upon a small scale, and apparently
so long as the person on the roll could produce the one or two men for
whom he was responsible he was not himself obliged to serve. It was
again a case of paying others to fight instead of themselves.
The fighting population of Canaan, in short, were the foreigners, and
these it was who gradually made themselves its practical masters. The
leaders of the mercenaries became the rulers of the Canaanite states,
which thus passed into the hands of a dominant military caste. When
the Israelites entered the country it was with this military upper
class that they had principally to deal; where the Canaanite had not
its protection he trusted for his defence to his iron chariots and the
strong and lofty walls of his towns. It is instructive to read the
long list of unconquered cities and districts given by the Hebrew
historian in the first chapter of the Book of Judges; among them are
the Jebusites of Jerusalem, while we are told that “the Amorites forced
the children of Dan into the mountain, for they would not suffer them
to come down to the valley.”
Canaan, it will probably be thought, was a somewhat insecure country
in which to live in the days of the Egyptian Empire. There seem to
have been constant turmoil and confusion, governor attacking governor
and bribing bands of foreign mercenaries to help him. But the turmoil
and confusion were mainly on the surface. When a town is taken from
one governor by another we do not hear of its population or their
possessions suffering materially; they soon appear upon the scene again
as prosperous as before. It is merely the governor and his immediate
surroundings who suffer; the capture of the town was probably an affair
amicably arranged between the condottieri who were attacking it and
the condottieri who were its defenders. The Egyptian commissioners go
up and down the country, hearing complaints and settling disputes,
and no one ventures even to protest against their decisions, while a
few Egyptian troops are stationed in places where the Government was
not quite sure of the fidelity of its subjects. Caravans of merchants
passed through Canaan going from Egypt to the north, and the traders
of Babylonia and Asia Minor travelled along its high-roads under the
escort of Hittite and other chieftains who were subsidized for the
purpose by the Egyptian court. Even in the days when the Egyptian
Government was breaking up, the constant fighting among the foreign
mercenaries and their employers seems to have affected the mass of the
population little, if at all.
What happened when the strong hand and controlling power of the
Egyptian Pharaoh were removed we do not yet know. We must look for
information to the systematic excavations that are at last being made
on the sites of the old Canaanitish towns. Already cuneiform tablets
have been found on them, and though these belong to the Egyptian period
we may hope that before long others may be discovered of later date.
We have still to bridge over the age which elapsed between the final
withdrawal of Egyptian domination and the conquest of the country
by Philistines and Israelites. When that age begins the script and
official language of Canaan are still Babylonian; when it closes
the cuneiform characters have been superseded by the letters of the
Phœnician alphabet, and the language of the inscriptions engraved in
them is the language no longer of Babylonia or of Hittite lands, but of
Canaan itself.
INDEX
Abercromby, the Hon. J., 64
Abram, 153
Abû Shahrein. _See_ Eridu
Achæmenian dynasty, 11;
inscriptions, 10;
transcripts (second), 26, 27
Acre, 199
Adamu, Adam, 68, 76, 78, 80, 91
Aita-gama, 197
Akkad, 69, 73, 79, 87, 95
Akkadian, 24, 28–30, 69
Amiaud, 29
Amon-hotep III., 149, 199
Amon-hotep IV., 136, 188, 192
Amorites, 139, 141, 142, 147, 179, 206, 207;
land of, 139, 141, 143, 179, 194
Amraphel (Khammu-rabi), 143
Animals, domesticated, 83, 99
Anquetil-Duperron, 10
Anupum (Anubis), 127
Ape in Babylonia, 129
Apes of Thoth, 127
Arabia, Southern, 123
Archæological _versus_ literary evidence, 43
Archæology, science of, 36, etc.
Arioch (Eri-Aku), 143
Armenia, 31, 160, etc.
Armenian and Sumerian, 59
Armenians, modern, 165
Aryan language, the, 72
Arzawa, 34, 175;
language of, 176, 200
Arzawan letters, vi., 175, 200
Arzawaya, 178, 197, 198, 202, 203, 205
Asari of Eridu, 119
Asherah, 150, 153
Ashtoreth (Istar), 153
Asia Minor, 61, 62, 160 _et seq._, 173, 174;
gold of, 62;
bronze in, 66
Askabad, excavations at, 54, 61, 83
Ass, domesticated, 83
Assur (Qal’at Shirqât), 41
Assur, the god, 95
Assur-bani-pal, 73
Assur-natsir-pal, 33, 163
Assur-yuballidh, 172
Assyria, the sword in, 65
Assyrian culture, 113;
grammar, 25;
kings, 172;
Semitic, 19;
syllabary, 19;
types, 73
Asur, 172
Babylonia (and Egypt), 101, etc.;
Canaanite dynasty in, 142;
copper age in, 55;
no neolithic age in, 45, 157;
picture-writing of, 57, 75
Babylonian anthropomorphism, 94, 125;
chronology, 114;
civilization, 75, 83;
irrigation, 101;
priesthood, 96;
script, 17, 83;
seal-cylinder, 111;
trade, 92
Babylonians a mixed people, 87
Balaam, 210
Barley, origin of, 108
Bashan, 192, 193
Behistun, 15, 16, 20, 22, 26
Bel, 95, 97
Belck, 33, 163, 166, 171, 174
Bellerophon, 183
Bes, 129
Beth-el, 147
Bezold, 28
Black Obelisk, the, 20, 21, 179
Bliss, Mr., 209
Boghaz Keui, vi., 34, 171, 174, 175, 178, 184, 195, 197
Borsippa, 78
Botta, 18
Boz Eyuk, pottery of, 171
Brick, use of, 113
British Museum, how it excavates, 39, 40
Bronze, 56, 59, 66;
scimitars, 57, 65;
earliest use in Egypt, 60;
in Krete, 60;
in the Caucasus, 60;
origin of, in Britain, 64
Bronze age in Europe, 64
Burnouf, 13, 14
Calah, 18. _See_ Nimrûd
Canaan, 126, 137, 190, 213 (_see_ Palestine);
and Egypt, 177;
before the Exodus, 187 _et seq._;
Hittite pottery in, 179;
neolithic age in, 146
Canaanite civilization, 150 _et seq._;
dynasty in Babylonia, 142;
deities, 152;
language, 35, 89, 142;
luxury, 156;
postal service, 143, 189;
pottery, 63;
sacrifice of children, 148
Cappadocia, Assyrians in, 169
Cappadocian tablets, 171
Carchemish, 40, 172, 195
Careri, 9
Chaldæa, port of, 80
Chaldæans, 90
Chantre, 47, 53, 170, 171, 174, 178
Chardin, Sir J., 9
Chedor-laomer, 143
Cilicia, 173, 175
Clay as writing material, 111
Comana, 173
Cones, terra-cotta, 134
Copper, use of, 51, 54, 55, 58, 59, 62;
mines, 170
Copper in Sumerian, 58, 59
Cossæeans. _See_ Kossæans
Crete. _See_ Krete
Cros, Captain, 48, 55
Cubit, Babylonian, 122
Cuneiform a cursive script, 77, 84, 184;
used by Egypt, 126, 190
Cypriotic syllabary, 182
Cyprus, 65, 140, 182;
seal-cylinders in, 140
Damascus, 197
Darius I., 9, 12, 16, 35
Darius, how pronounced, 12
Deecke, 186
Deification of king, 95
Delitzsch, F., 35
Determinatives, 57, 84
Dieulafoy, 73
Dirk, 65;
in Danube valley, 65;
characterizes bronze age, 66
Domestication of animals, 83
Dwarfs, sacred, 127, 128
Ea or Oannes, 75, 79, 81, 119
Ebed-Kheba, King of Jerusalem, 196, 200, 201, 202, 204
Eden, 78, 79
Edin, the “Plain,” 78, 79, 93
Egypt, 47, 54, 102;
Asiatic influence on, 125;
excavations in, 42;
and Babylonia, 101, 107, 110, 133
Egyptian irrigation, 102;
chronology, 115;
hieroglyphs, 104;
language Semitic, 107, 110;
letter of an, 207;
neolithic culture, 125;
rule in Canaan, 213;
seal-cylinders, 112, 114
Egyptians, dynastic, 110, 114
Elam, 26, 46, 71, 73, 144;
copper age in, 51
Elamite pottery, 47, 48;
dialects, 71;
race, 73
El-Hibba, 41
El-Kab, sculpture at, 117
Elwend, inscription of, 20
Erech, 93
Eri-aku (Arioch), 143
Eridu, 76, 78, 79, 81, 82, 85, 92, 118, 120;
excavations at, 55
Erman, 107
Etruscan model of liver, 186
Euphrates, 81, 102, 103
Evans, A. J., 141, 159, 183
Fibula, introduction of, 65, 66
Figurines in Elam, 52, 54;
at Kara Eyuk, 171
Flower, Samuel, 8
Garstang, 62
Gezer, 57, 60, 63, 65, 145, etc., 154, 158, 198, 204, 206;
graves at, 151
Gladstone, Dr., analysis of metals, 60, 61, 170
Gold, word for, 58
Gordium, pottery of, 171
Grotefend, 10–13, 17, 35
Gudea, 53, 59, 73, 141
Guyard, Stanislas, 33, 162
Hadad-nirari I., 57, 157, 172
Halévy, 28
Hall, H. R., 40
Hamadan, inscription of, 15
Hathor identified with Istar, 129
Haupt, 29
Haynes, 56
Hazael, 21
Hebrew, 142
Hebron, 203
Heeren, 13
Heraldic position in art, 117, 180
Herat, seal-cylinder from, 184
Herbert, Thomas, 9
Herodotus, 131
Heuzey, 40, 53, 117, 121, 133
Hezekiah, 21
Hierakonpolis, 62, 115, 117
Hilprecht, 56
Hincks, 17, 19, 21, 22, 23, 25, 31, 161, 162
Hittite, 34;
art, 180 _et seq._;
chiefs, 197;
dirk, 65;
inscriptions, 195;
kings, vi., 175;
language, 34, 174, 176, 200;
mercenaries, 177, 193, 196, etc.;
pottery, vi., 63, 149, 178, 179, 206
Hittites, 169, 170, 173, 174, 179, 194, etc., 206
Hommel, 105, 106, 116, 120
Horus, followers of, 61, 110, 123, 124
Hut-urns, 171
Hyksos, 52, 145, 156, 190;
introduce bronze, 63;
axe-heads, 171
In-Susinak, 50
Iron, name of, 58;
in Armenia, 166;
in Egypt, 62
Isaac, 154
Israelites, their advent in Canaan, 212
Istar, 52, 128, 129, 153
Ivories of Ephesus, 184
Jacob-el (_see_ Ya’qub-el), 145, 190
Jebusites, 205, 213
Jehu, 21
Jensen, 34, 168
Jéquier, 121
Jerusalem, 21, 178, 201, 205, 210, 213;
king of, 196, 199, etc., 202, 204
Jones, F., 24
Kadish, 197, 208
Kara Eyuk, 47, 48, 53, 166, 169, 170, 171, 173, 181
Karnak, 54
Kas, 195, 201, 202
Kassites, 89;
dynasty of, 97
Khabiri, 196, 201, 202
Khaldis, Khaldian, 164, 165
Khammu-rabi (_see_ Amraphel), 81, 127, 143, 152, 157;
code of laws of, 153;
dynasty of, 155, 156, 167;
letters of, 45
Khattinâ (Hittites), 202
Khorsabad, 18, 19
King, L. W., 40
Knossus, clay tablets at, 183
Knudtzon, 174, 196, 200
Kossæeans (Kassites), 35, 144
Kretan script, 141, 159, 181;
pottery, 178;
monsters in art, 180
Krete, 141, 182
Kûyunjik, 18, 131. _See_ Nineveh.
Labbawa, Labbaya, 174, 198, 199, 201, 202, 204
Lachish, 146, 202, 209;
excavations at, 145, 149, 158, 206
Lagas, 73, 141
Language and race, 109
Lassen, 14
Layard, 18, 23, 32, 39, 131, 161
Lebanon, 152
Legrain, 54
Lehmann, 33, 163
Lenormant, Fr., 28, 162, 163
Libraries, Babylonian, 138
Lichtenberg, von, 53
Liver, bronze, 186
Loftus, 26, 80
Longpérier, de, 19
Macalister, 57, 63, 146, 147, 151, 154, 155
Mace-heads, 133
Magan, 134
Mal-Amîr, 27
Map of world, Babylonian, 80
Maspero, 131
Megiddo, 148, 156, 199
Merodach-baladan, 90
Merodach-nadin-akhi, 73
Messerschmidt, 28, 34, 168
Mitanni, 33, 34, 167, 193, 196;
language of, 168
Montellius, 64
Morgan, H. de, 55
Morgan, J. de, 27, 33, 46, 73, 74, 80, 82, 121
Moschians, 173
Münter, Bishop, 10
Muqayyar (_see_ Ur), 55
Mussian, excavations at, 50, 53
Mykenæ, 65
Mykenæan pottery, 171
Myres, J. L., 63, 178
Naharaim (Mitanni), 196, 202
Naram-Sin, 56, 73, 88, 140, 143
Nar-Buzau, palette of, 117, 121, 123
Nar-Mer, 117
Nebuchadrezzar, 17, 21, 45
Neolithic age not in Babylonia, 48, 57
Neo-Susian, 27
Niebuhr, Carsten, 9
Niffer (Nippur), excavations at, 40, 56, 76, 77, 78
Nimrûd, 18, 21
Nineveh, excavations at, 18, 57;
library of, 23, 24, 161
Niobê of Mount Sipylus, 54
Norris, Edwin, 16, 26
Nu-gidda, 128, 129
Oannes, 75
Obelisk, the Black, 20, 21, 179
Obsidian, 51, 171
Oppert, Jules, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28
Osiris, 119, 123
Palestine and Babylonia, 135 _et seq._;
Exploration Fund, 135, 145;
Hittites in, 193, 194
Palette of Nar-Buzau, 121, 123
Papyrus, 84
Pegasus, 180
Pehlevi inscriptions, 10
Pepi, statue of, 62;
Pyramid texts of, 120
Persian Gulf, 75;
land increases at head of, 80
Peters, Dr., 56
Petrie, Flinders, 52, 60, 61, 62, 117, 121, 156, 182
Philology, value of, 43, 44
Phœnician alphabet, 159, 183, 185
Picture-writing, Babylonian, 75, 82, 105;
analysed, 98–100
Pietro della Valle, 8
Pinches, Dr., 73, 74, 144, 171
Polyphony, 22
Postal service in Babylonia, 143;
in Canaan, 143, 189
Pottery, importance of, 36 _et seq._;
Babylonian, 39, 42;
Elamite, 47, 48, 54;
Hittite, 63, 149, 179;
Kretan, 178;
Mykenæan, 171;
South Canaanite, 63, 149, 178, 206;
Susian, 47, 51, 53;
Vannic, 166;
black with incised lines, 52, 53, 171
Ptah, Semitic origin of, 129
Pumpelly, Professor, 54, 64
Pyramid texts, 122
Qal’at Shirqât (Assur), 41
Ramsay, Sir W. M., 174, 195
Ramses II., treaty of, vi.
Rask, 13, 14
Rassam, Hormuzd, 23, 32
Rawlinson, Sir H. C., 15, 16, 20, 21, 22, 24, 26, 80
Razor, use of, 134
Reisner, 118
Resurrection, the Babylonian, 120
Rhind, 41, 42
Rich, 8
Royal Society, 8
Sacred trees of Egypt, 123
Sacy, de, 10
Saint-Martin, 13
Samsu-ditana, 28
Saqia, the, 132
Sardinians, 211
Sargon of Akkad, 19, 49, 56, 59, 87, 88, 132, 139, 140, 155, 182
Sarzec, M. de, 40, 121
Saulcy, de, 19, 20, 25
Scheil, 27
Schliemann, 54, 60, 61, 65, 166, 180
Schools, Babylonian, 138
Schulz, 31, 32, 160, 161
Schweinfurth, 108, 123
Scimitar, Semitic invention, 65, 66;
of Hadad-nirari, 157
Seal-cylinder, 111, 112, 114, 117, 118, 140, 152, 180, 181, 184;
dwarfs on, 128;
from Herat, 184;
in Cyprus, 140;
in Troy, 180
Sellin, 157
Semite culture, origin of, 30;
influence, 49, 52, 86, 90;
religion, 93 _et seq._;
kings deified, 95
Semites in Babylonia, 86
Semitic Empire, 69, 87
Semitic family of speech, 89;
languages, 70, 72;
types, 73, 74
Sennacherib, 21
Shadûf, 99, 130, 131 _et seq._
Shalmaneser I., 172
Shalmaneser II., 179;
annals of, 21
Shechem, 198, 204
“Shepherd” kings, 93
Sidonian seals, 35, 152
Silver, name of, 58
Sin (Sinai), 128, 129
Sippara, 46, 79, 142
Spouted vases, 134
Subari, 172, 181
Sumer, language of, 28, 29, 68 _et seq._, 86
Sumerian, 24, 28–30, 69;
animism, 94;
civilization, 98–100;
culture, 98;
-- in Canaan, 138;
dialects, 29, 69;
origin of, 74;
origin of culture, 75;
physical type, 72;
priest, 96;
study of, 29, 30;
survival in Southern Babylonia, 88
Sumerians, the, 67 _et seq._
Susa, 26;
excavations at, 27, 46, 73;
pottery of, 47, 53;
metal age of, 49
Swords, earliest, 65;
in Cyprus, 65;
in Krete, 65
Syros, 53
Taanach, excavations at, 148 _et seq._, 152, 157, 199, 212
Tablets, writing-, 82, 84
Talîsh, excavations at, 55
Tarkhundaraba, 175
Taylor, 55, 78
Tel el-Amarna, 136, 188;
tablets, 33, 35, 136, 144, 167, 168, 172, 174, 177, 178, 187,
191, 193, 195, 196, 197, 200, 205
Tel el-Hesy, 147. _See_ Lachish
Tello, 29, 40, 53, 55, 72, 73, 91, 121, 122;
pottery of, 48
Thothmes III., annals of, 156
Thureau Dangin, 29, 87, 91, 141
Tiglath-pileser I., 173
Tigris, 80, 102, 103
Tin, 60, 64
Toprak Kaleh, 166, 171
Trees, sacred, in Egypt, 123
Troy, 54, 60, 61, 65, 166, 171, 182
Tychsen, 10
Uan, 175, 200
Ur, 78, 85, 141;
excavations at, 55
Valle, Pietro della, 8
Van (Biainas), 31, 161, 164
Vannic, 31, 162;
deciphered, 32, 162, 163, 164;
deities, 165;
kings, 31, 32
Vases, Egyptian, 121, 128
Vases of hard stone, 82, 121, 133
Vine, home of, 59, 165
Vishtaspa, 13
Vyse, 62
Ward, Hayes, 40, 79
Week, Babylonian, 122;
Cappadocian, 172
Weissbach, 27
Westergaard, 16, 25
Wheat, 132;
in prehistoric graves, 108
Wood, use of, 83, 84
Writing material, primitive, 83
Xerxes, 12, 35, 161;
Persian form of, 12;
name of, on vase, 13
Ya’qub-el (_see_ Jacob-el), 145
Year, division of, 122
Yortan, pottery of, 171
Zend, 10
_Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London and Bungay._
FOOTNOTES:
[1] In this year an elaborate edition of his work was brought out under
the title of _Voyages du Chevalier Chardin en Perse, et autres Lieux
de l’Orient, Enrichis de Figures en Tailledouce, qui représentent
les Antiquités et les Choses remarquables du Païs_ (Amsterdam),
two pages (167–8) in vol. ii. being devoted to the inscriptions, the
cuneiform being printed on plate lxix.
[2] The discovery has sometimes been claimed for Tychsen (_De cuneatis
Inscriptionibus Persepolitanis Lucubratio_, 1798, p. 24), but Tychsen
supposed that the wedge was used to divide sentences, not words.
[3] _Undersögelser om de Persepolitanske Inscriptioner_ (1800),
translated into German in 1802.
[4] _Ideen über die Politik, den Verkehr und den Handel der vornehmsten
Völker der alten Welt_, vol. i. pp. 563 _sqq._; translated into
English in 1833. The revival of interest in Grotefend’s work was due
to the fact that Champollion, after the decipherment of the Egyptian
hieroglyphs, found the name of Xerxes on an alabaster vase at Paris on
which, according to Grotefend’s system, the same name was written in
Persian cuneiform. This led the Abbé Saint-Martin, who was a recognized
Orientalist, to adopt and follow up Grotefend’s discovery in a Memoir
which he read before the French Academy in 1822, and Saint-Martin’s
work attracted the attention of Rask and Burnouf.
[5] “Om Zendsprogets,” in the _Skandinaviske Literaturselskabs
Skrifter_, xxi., translated into German in 1826.
[6] _Mémoire sur deux Inscriptions cunéiformes trouvées près d’Hamadan_
(Paris, 1836).
[7] _Die Altpersischen Keil-Inschriften von Persepolis_ (Bonn, 1836).
[8] _Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society_, x.
[9] _Monument de Ninive_, with plates drawn by Flandin.
[10] See his Memoir, “Sur l’écriture assyrienne,” in the _Journal
asiatique_, 1847–8, ix.-xi.
[11] _Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy_, xxi. pp. 240 _sqq._ See
also pp. 114 _sqq._
[12] _Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy_, xxii. pp. 3 _sqq._
[13] Edinburgh Meeting, p. 140.
[14] _Revue archéologique_, 1847, pp. 501 _sqq._
[15] _Recherches sur l’écriture cunéiforme assyrienne_ (1849).
[16] _Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society_, xii. pp. 401 _sqq._ The
translation of the Black Obelisk inscription is given on pp. 431–48.
[17] _Athenæum_, December 27, 1851.
[18] In the Paper read by Hincks before the Royal Irish Academy in June
1849, and published the following year.
[19] For Hincks’s translation of the annals of Sennacherib, see
Layard’s _Nineveh and Babylon_, pp. 139 _sqq._
[20] _Literary Gazette_, July 5, 1846.
[21] _Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society_, xiv.
[22] _A List of Assyro-Babylonian Characters_ (1852); also the
_Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy_, xxii. (1855), and more
especially _The Polyphony of the Assyro-Babylonian Cuneiform Writing_
(1863).
[23] See his _Asshur and the Land of Nimrod_ (1898).
[24] F. Jones, _Vestiges of Assyria_ (1855); _Journal of the Royal
Asiatic Society_, xv. pp. 297 _sqq._; and more especially _Memoirs_,
edited by R. H. Thomas, 1857.
[25] _Expédition scientifique en Mésopotamie._
[26] In the _Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes_, vi. pp. 337
_sqq._
[27] _Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy_, xxi. pp. 114 _sqq._ and
233 _sqq._
[28] _Journal asiatique_, xiv. pp. 93 _sqq._; xv. pp. 398 _sqq._
[29] _Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society_, xv.
[30] _Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archæology_, iii.
pp. 465 _sqq._; _Actes du VIième Congrès International des
Orientalistes en 1883_, ii. pp. 637 _sqq._ (1885).
[31] _Mémoires de la Délégation en Perse_; the volumes by Dr. Scheil on
the inscriptions that have thus far appeared are ii., iii., iv., v. and
vi.
[32] _Zeitschrift für Assyriologie_, 1889, p. 434.
[33] _Ak-ka-du; Orientalische Literatur-Zeitung_, 1905, p. 268.
[34] _Journal of Philology_, iii. pp. 1 _sqq._ I endeavoured
to settle the nature of Sumerian phonology in a Memoir on “Accadian
Phonology,” published by the Philological Society, 1877–8.
[35] _Die Sumerischen Familiengesetze_ (1879).
[36] Göttingen _Nachrichten_, 17 (1880); _Die Akkadische Sprache_
(1883).
[37] _Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society_, 1848, ix. pp. 387
_sqq._
[38] See my article, “On the Language of Mitanni,” in the
_Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology_, 1900, pp.
171 _sqq._; and Leopold Messerschmidt in the _Mitteilungen der
Vorderasiatischen Gesellschaft_, 1899, part iv. pp. 175 _sqq._
[39] Fr. Delitzsch, _Die Sprache der Kossäer_ (1884).
[40] They are now in the possession of M. de Clercq. For a translation
of the inscriptions upon them, see my _Patriarchal Palestine_, p. 250.
[41] _Thebes, its Tombs and their Tenants_, pp. 62, 66.
[42] For the archæological results of M. de Morgan’s work, see his
_Mémoires de la Délégation en Perse_, vols. i. and vii. The eighth
volume, which will also be devoted to archæology, is in preparation.
[43] Chantre, _Mission en Cappadoce_, plates x.-xii.
[44] The yellow and red wheel-made ware, some of it inscribed with
characters of the age of Gudea, which has been disinterred at Tello,
is quite different. This class of pottery, by the way, seems to have
been preceded by a grey coarse ware, made with the hand. One fragment
of fine polished yellow ware with traces of black ornamentation
has recently been reported from Tello by Captain Cros (_Revue
d’Assyriologie_, 1905, p. 59), but the isolated character of the
discovery makes it probable that it was an importation from Elam.
[45] Copper figurines of the goddess, with hands pressed under the
breasts, found in one of the earliest substructures of Tello (_circa_
B.C. 4000), are published by M. Heuzey in the _Revue d’Assyriologie_,
1899, p. 44.
[46] Heuzey, in the _Revue d’Assyriologie_, 1905, pp. 59 _sqq._ and
plate iii. Von Lichtenberg (_Mitteilungen der Vorderasiatischen
Gesellschaft_, 1906, 2) has lately pointed out that the black incised
pottery with white fillings is identical in Cyprus, Troy, the Laibach
bog and the Mondsee, and that the ornamentation which characterizes
it is found in the valley of the Danube and the pile-dwellings of
Switzerland. His attempt to derive it from Cyprus, however, cannot be
sustained in view of its occurrence in Elam.
[47] _Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology_, 1905, p. 28.
[48] _Ilios_, p. 337. Schliemann called it the Third city. Dörpfeld’s
subsequent excavations, however, have shown that it really was the
Second city, whose history fell into three periods.
[49] Some of these represent the goddess with the arms folded, and not
pressed against the breasts. See, for example, the photograph of one
found at Naxos in the _Comptes rendus du Congrès international d’
Archéologie_, 1905, p. 221. For Trojan examples, see _Ilios_,
pp. 331–6.
[50] See _Mémoires de la Délégation en Perse_, viii. pp. 336–7. A
report of some of the results of the Pumpelly expedition is given by
Dr. Hubert Schmidt in the _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 1906_, Pt.
iii, p. 385.
[51] Flint implements, however, were discovered by Taylor in his
excavations at Abu Shahrein, the site of Eridu (_Journal of the Royal
Asiatic Society_, xv. p. 410 and plate ii.).
[52] See Taylor’s “Notes on the Ruins of Muqeyer,” in the _Journal of
the Royal Asiatic Society_, xv. pp. 271–3 and 415.
[53] _Nippur_, vol. ii. pp. 381–6.
[54] _The Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania_, i.
2, pp. 26–7.
[55] _Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archæology_, 1876,
pp. 347–8.
[56] Figured in the _Quarterly Statement of the Palestine Exploration
Fund_, October 1904, p. 335.
[57] Layard, _Nineveh and Babylon_, pp. 571–3.
[58] ANA-BAR. _Bar_ is given as the Sumerian pronunciation of the
word for “stone” (_Syllabary_ 5, iv. 11, in Delitzsch’s _Assyrische
Lesestücke_, 3rd edition). In Old Egyptian “iron” was similarly
_ba-n-pet_, “stone of heaven,” while “silver” was “white gold,” “gold”
being symbolized by a collar. We may compare the Indo-European “white”
metal as a name of “silver.” The Sumerian _azag-gi_, “gold,” was a form
of _azagga_, “precious,” more especially “precious metal”; the more
specific word for “gold” was _guskin_, with which the Armenian _oski_
must be connected. “Silver” was _bábara_, the “bright” metal, _nagga_
being “lead,” the Armenian _anag_. The identity of the Armenian and
Sumerian words for “gold” and “lead,” coupled with the Armenian origin
of the vine, and the fact that the mountain on which the ark of the
Babylonian Noah rested was Jebel Judi, south of Lake Van, raises an
interesting question as to the origin of Sumerian civilization.
[59] It must be remembered, however, that, according to Aristotle, the
copper of the Mossynœci in Northern Asia Minor was brilliant and white,
owing to its mixture with a species of earth, the exact nature of which
was kept a secret. The Babylonian ideograph for “bronze,” therefore,
may have been a similar kind of hardened copper, which was transferred
to denote “bronze” when the alloy of copper and tin became known.
[60] See Garstang, _El-Arâbah_, p. 10. Dr. Gladstone, however, after
giving the results of his analysis of the Sixth-dynasty copper
discovered by Professor Petrie at Dendera, suggests that the small
amount of tin observable in it (about one per cent.) may have been
added to it artificially (_Dendereh_, p. 61). Bronze was “the normal
metal” of the Amorite period at Gezer (Macalister, _Quarterly Statement
of the Palestine Exploration Fund_, April 1904, p. 119), and the
three cities which represent this period go back beyond the age of
the Twelfth Egyptian dynasty, to at least B.C. 2900 (see _Quarterly
Statement_, January 1905, pp. 28–9). At Troy also Schliemann found
numerous bronze weapons in the Second (prehistoric) city (_Ilios_, pp.
475–9). In Krete bronze daggers of the Early Minoan period (coeval
with the Middle Empire of Egypt) have been found at Patema and Agia
Triada (_Annual of the British School at Athens_, x. p. 198), and the
pottery of the Middle Minoan period (B.C. 2000–1500) was associated
at Palaikastro with a bronze button, two miniature bronze sickles,
and a pair of bronze tweezers (_ibid._ p. 202). As for the Caucasus,
bronze was not known there till a late date. Wilke (_Zeitschrift für
Ethnologie_, 1904, pp. 39–104) has shown that the bronze culture of
the Caucasus was derived from the valley of the Danube, and made its
way eastward along the northern coast of Pontus; see also Rössler,
_Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, 1905, p. 118.
[61] _Dendereh_ (Egypt Exploration Fund), p. 62, for the gold of
the Sixth dynasty; _The Royal Tombs of the Earliest Dynasties_,
pp. 39–40, for that of the First dynasty.
[62] Vyse, _Pyramids of Gizeh_, i. p. 276. The clamp was actually
found by his assistant Hill, after blasting away the two outer stones
behind which it had been placed.
[63] _Abydos_, part ii. p. 33. An iron pin of the age of the
Eighteenth dynasty was found by Garstang at Abydos (_El-Arâbah_,
p. 30).
[64] _Illahun, Kahun and Gurob_, p. 12. Dr. Gladstone’s analyses
give only about 2 parts of tin to 96·35 of copper. The bronze of the
Eighteenth dynasty found at Gurob yielded a less proportion of tin
(about 7 parts to 90 of copper) than the bronze of the Second Assyrian
Empire. A ring of pure tin, however, was also discovered at Gurob.
[65] _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, xxxiii. pp. 367
_sqq._
[66] The two dialects were called _eme_-KU (i.e. _eme-lakhkha_, W.A.I.
iii. 4, 31, 32), “the language of the enchanter,” and _eme_-SAL, “the
woman’s language,” which are rendered in Semitic Babylonian, _lisan
Sumeri_ and (_lisan_) _Akkadi_, “the language of Sumer” and “the
language of Akkad.” In a tablet (81, 7–27, 130, 6, 7) they are said
to be “like” one another. Other dialects were termed “the language of
the sacrificer” and “the language of the anointer,” as being used by
these two classes of priests. They differed, perhaps, from the standard
dialects in intonation or the use of technical words. We hear also of
“a carter’s language” in which _anbarri_--which, it is noticeable, is a
Sumerian word--meant “yoke and reins,” _i.e._ “harness” (_Zeitschrift
für Assyriologie_, ix. p. 164).
[67] Fick, however, is an exception (_Beiträge zur Kunde der
indogermanischen Sprachen_, xxix. pp. 229–247.)
[68] _Mémoires de la Délégation en Perse_, i. pp. 152–3. Photographs of
the two types--Sumerian and Semitic--represented on the early monuments
of Babylonia are given by Dr. Pinches in an interesting Paper in the
_Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society_, January 1900, pp. 87–93.
[69] It is noticeable that the script of the other people whose
civilization grew up on the banks of a river, the Egyptians namely,
contains no special ideograph for “river.” The word is expressed by the
phonetically-written _atur_, with the determinative of “water” or
“irrigation basin.” As in the primitive hieroglyphs of Babylonia, “the
sea” was a “circle.”
[70] For proof of this reading see _Expository Times_, xvii. p. 416 and
note _infra_, p. 91.
[71] See my _Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia_, pp. 373–84.
[72] Taylor found quantities of sea-shells in its ruins (_Journal
of the Royal Asiatic Society_, xv. p. 412). At the time of its
foundation an arm of the sea probably ran up to it from the south-east,
though the myth of Adamu describes him as fishing each day in the
waters of the actual Gulf, rather than in an arm of it.
[73] The Moon-god of Ur was a “son” of El-lil, the god of Nippur.
[74] For proof of this see my _Religion of the Ancient Babylonians_, p.
105.
[75] A tablet obtained by Dr. Hayes Ward divides Sippara into four
quarters, “Sippara of Eden,” “Sippara that is from everlasting,”
“Sippara of the Sun-god,” and “Sippara,” which may be the “Sippara
of Anunit” or “Sippara of Aruru,” the creatress of man, of other
inscriptions. Amelon or Amelu, “man,” who corresponds with the Enos of
Scripture, is said in the fragments of Berossus to have belonged to
Pantibibla, or “Book-town,” and since Euedoranchus of Pantibibla, the
counterpart of the Biblical Enoch, is the monumental Enme-dhur-anki
of Sippara, it is clear that Pantibibla is a play on the supposed
signification of Sippara (from _sipru_, “a writing” or “book”). The
claim to immemorial antiquity made on behalf of Sippara may be due to
the fact that Akkad, the seat of the first Semitic empire, was either
in the immediate neighbourhood of Sippara or another name of one of the
four quarters of Sippara itself.
[76] _Chaldæa and Susiana_, p. 282.
[77] _Journal of the Royal Geographical Society_, xxvii. p. 186.
Rawlinson calculated the rate of advance from that made by the
Babylonian Delta between 1793 and 1833. In the age of Strabo and
Arrian the Tigris and Euphrates were not yet united, while in the
time of Nearchus (B.C. 335) the mouth of the Euphrates was 345 miles
from Babylon. De Morgan calculates that between the age of Nearchus
and that of Sennacherib, when the Euphrates had not yet joined the
more rapid Tigris, the rate of increase must have been much slower
than it is to-day and have not exceeded eighty metres a year. In the
age of Sennacherib Eridu was already seventy miles distant from the
coast (de Morgan, _Mémoires de la Délégation en Perse_, i. pp. 5–23).
The distance from the Shatt el-Arab (the united stream of the Tigris
and Euphrates) to the end of the alluvium in the Persian Gulf is 277
kilometres, or 172 miles. Some idea of the appearance of the coast in
the Abrahamic age may be gained from the map of the world drawn by a
Babylonian tourist in the time of Khammu-rabi which I have published in
the _Expository Times_, November 1906.
[78] There is a striking resemblance between the primitive Babylonian
picture of a boat and the sailing boat depicted on the prehistoric
pottery of Egypt, for which last see Capart, _Les Débuts de l’Art en
Egypte_, p. 116.
[79] Perhaps, however, this was really due to the accidental similarity
of sound between _gi_, “a reed,” and _gin_, “to be firm.”
[80] The various forms of vases represented in the early pictography
are given by de Morgan in a very instructive article, “Sur les procédés
techniques en usage chez les scribes babyloniens,” in the _Recueil
des Travaux relatifs à la Philologie et à l’Archéologie égyptiennes et
assyriennes_, xxvii. 3, 4 (1905). Among special vases were those
for oil, wine and honey. The butter or oil jar was closed with a clay
sealing exactly like those of early Egypt. Vases with spouts were also
used.
[81] The American excavations at Askabad have shown that the
domestication of animals, including the camel, took place during the
neolithic age, the goat being one of the last to be tamed.
[82] This, however, is not absolutely certain, since the ideograph
which, denotes an “ass” originally signified merely “a yoked beast.”
[83] Peters, _Nippur_, ii. p. 299.
[84] Thus in the great historical inscription of Entemena, King of
Lagas (B.C. 4000), M. Thureau Dangin is probably right in seeing in
_dam-kha-ra_ (col. i. 26) a Semitic word. In fact where a word is
written syllabically, that is to say phonetically, in a Sumerian text
there is an _a priori_ probability that it is a loan-word.
[85] This may of course have been only a literary archaism. But if the
kings were really of Semitic origin, it is difficult to understand why
they should have been ashamed of being called by their native Semitic
names.
[86] See Hommel, _Grundriss der Geographie und Geschichte des Alten
Orients_, i. pp. 79–82.
[87] Hitherto read A-da-pa. But the character =PA= had the value
of _mu_ when it signified “man,” according to a tablet quoted by
Fossey, _Contribution au Dictionnaire Sumérien-assyrienne_, No.
2666, and in writing early Babylonian names or words the characters
with the requisite phonetic values were selected which harmonized
ideographically with the sense of the words. Thus out of the various
characters which had the phonetic value of _mu_ that was chosen
which denoted “man” when the name of the first man was needed to be
written. The Semitic Adamu, which M. Thureau Dangin has found used as
a proper name in tablets from Tello of the age of Sargon of Akkad,
was borrowed from the Sumerian _adam_, which signified “animal,”
and then, more specifically “man.” Thus in the bilingual story of the
creation we have (l. 9) _uru nu-dim adam nu-mun-ya_, “a city was
not built, a man was not made to stand upright,” and a list of slaves
published by Dr. Scheil (_Recueil de Travaux_, etc., xx. p. 65) is
dated in “the year when Rim-Anum the king (conquered) the land of ...
bi and its inhabitants” (_adam-bi_). See above, p. 76.
[88] _Records of the Past_, New Series, iii. pp. 124–7.
[89] Erech was one of the earliest of the Semitic settlements in the
Babylonian plain, and Erech was known later as _’supuru_, “the
sheepfold,” as is shown by its ideographic equivalent.
[90] _The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia_, pp. 276–80.
[91] See my _Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia_, pp. 276–89,
348–61.
[92] If, however, the Sumerian pictograph for “city” represents a
tower on a mound, as seems to be the case, the identity in form of the
Egyptian hieroglyph cannot be an accident, since both the tower and
the artificial platform were essentially Babylonian. In the cursive
cuneiform two separate pictographs have coalesced, one representing a
seat, the other what appears to be a tower on a mound.
[93] In Egyptian, however, the bird stands over a door, while in
Babylonian it is over the two-legged stool on which two vases of
offerings are set when it is used to denote the image of a god.
The Sumerian pictograph for “(divine) lord” or “lady” (NIN) is the
representation of a similar vase on a mat, and thus has the same form
as the Egyptian _hotep_. The Egyptian _nefer_, “good,” finds its exact
counterpart in the Babylonian pictograph of “ornament” (ME-TE). The
Babylonian “house,” too, is given the same tower-like shape as the
Egyptian (_āhā_).
[94] In a short Paper entitled _Lexicalische Belege zu meinen Vortrag
über die sprachliche Stellung des Altægyptischen_ (1895), in which
he has attempted to draw up a list of phonetic equivalences between
Egyptian and Sumerian. In this, however, I am unable to follow him, as
his comparisons of Egyptian and Sumerian words are not convincing.
[95] See de Morgan, _Recherches sur les Origines de l’Egypte_, pp.
94, 95. According to Schweinfurth, barley, which is also found in the
prehistoric graves of Egypt, must originally have come from Babylonia
like the wheat. _Qemḥu_ is found in the Pyramid texts (Maspero,
_Recueil de Travaux relatifs à la Philologie et à l’Archéologie
égyptiennes et assyriennes_, v. p. 10). _Boti_, whence the Coptic
_bôti_ and the _battawa_ or “durra cake” of modern Egyptian Arabic, was
“durra,” not “wheat.”
[96] See Maspero, _Études de Mythologie_, ii. pp. 313 _sqq._
[97] I have put “Lower” between parentheses since it is very
questionable whether this particular system of registering time was
known in the Delta until it was introduced from Upper Egypt. On the
Palermo stone a list of the early kings of Lower Egypt is given, but
without any dates, which make their appearance along with the kings of
the First dynasty, who belonged to Upper Egypt. It is interesting to
observe that the ideograph for “year” is denoted in exactly the same
way in both the Babylonian and the Egyptian hieroglyphs by the branch
of a (palm) tree. Such a curious symbol for the idea can hardly have
been invented independently. Professor Hommel further draws attention
to the fact that while the literal translation of a common ideographic
mode of representing “year” in Babylonian is “name of heaven,” that of
the two syllables of the Egyptian word _renpet_, “year,” would
also be “name of heaven.”
[98] _Hierakonpolis_, part i. plate xxix. The name of the king is
usually (but erroneously) written Nar-Mer.
[99] As the royal figures wear no crowns, they can hardly depict the
king in his double office of king of Upper and Lower Egypt, and the
duplication of the Pharaoh must consequently have a purely artistic
origin. That this artistic origin is closely connected with the origin
of the seal-cylinders is shown by the fact that the figures correspond
with one of the most common designs on the latter, in which the _ka_ of
the person to whom the cylinder belonged is seated on a chair similar
to that of the El-Kab king, an altar with offerings of bread being set
before him.
[100] The eye and the ideograph of city or place. Since the eye here
has the phonetic value of _eri_ or _ari_, the ideograph of “city,”
which is _eri_ in Sumerian, must have the Egyptian value of _as_.
[101] See my _Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia_, p. 238.
[102] _Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles
Lettres_, 4 Sér., 1899, xxvii. pp. 60–67; see _Hierakonpolis_, part ii.
plate xxviii. In the _Revue d’Assyriologie_, v. pp. 29–32, Heuzey has
lately drawn attention to the resemblance between the early Egyptian
and Babylonian bowls of calcite or Egyptian alabaster.
[103] _Lectures on the Religion of the Ancient Babylonians_, 1887,
p. 33.
[104] _Nature_, August 9, 1883, p. 341.
[105] Daressy, “Le Cercueil d’Emsaht,” in the _Annales du Service des
Antiquités de l’Égypte_, 1899, i. pp. 79–90.
[106] I have called Upper Egypt the seat of the first Pharaohs, not
only because the earliest dynastic monuments we possess come from
thence, but also because it was of Upper Egypt and its ruling caste
that the hawk-god Horus was the guardian deity. From Upper Egypt he
was carried to Lower Egypt and its nomes, presumably through conquest,
as is monumentally attested by the “palette” of Nar-Buzau discovered
at Hierakonpolis (Capart, _Débuts de l’Art en Égypte_, p. 236).
So, too, the anthropomorphic Osiris--the duplicate of Anhur--made his
way from the south to the north. That Southern Arabia should have been
the connecting-link between Babylonia and Egypt was the result of its
being the source of the incense which was imported for religious use
into both countries alike at the very beginning of their histories.
That this foreign product should have been considered an indispensable
adjunct of the religions of the two civilizations is one of the best
proofs we have of their connection with one another. Dr. Schweinfurth
has shown that the sacred trees of Egypt--the sycamore and the
persea--which needed artificial cultivation for their preservation
there, came from Southern Arabia, where he found them growing wild
under the names of _Khanes, Burra and Lebakh_ (_Verhandlungen
der Gesellschaft für Erdkünde zu Berlin_, July 1889, No. 7).
[107] In the possession of Lord Amherst of Hackney. On an early
Babylonian seal-cylinder, bought by Dr. Scheil at Mossul and figured in
the _Recueil de Travaux relatifs à la Philologie et à l’Archéologie
égyptiennes et assyriennes_, xix. 1, 2, No. 7 of the plate, we have:
“Ili-su-bani son of Aminanum, servant of the gods Bel and Anupum.”
Aminanum may be a Semitized form of the Egyptian Ameni.
[108] Pp. 133, 139, 485.
[109] De Morgan, _Recherches sur les Origines de l’Égypte_, p. 65.
[110] Scheil, _Recueil de Travaux relatifs à la Philologie et à
l’Archéologie égyptiennes et assyriennes_, xix. pp. 50, 54; Sayce,
_Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia_, p. 485. The dwarf
is represented as dancing before the god Sin on an early Babylonian
seal-cylinder published by Scheil in the _Recueil_, xix. 1, 2, No.
16 of the plate.
[111] It is worth notice that the dwarf-god Bes, who is called “God of
Punt” in inscriptions of the Ptolemaic age, appears on Arab coins of
the Roman period (Schweinfurth, _Verhandlungen der Gesellschaft für
Erdkunde 1889_, No. 7).
[112] Layard, _Monuments of Nineveh_, Second Series, pl. 15.
[113] Herodotus, i. 193.
[114] The rope appears to have been _makutum_; see _W. A. I._ v. 26, 61.
[115] K. 56, ii. 14.
[116] For other evidences of contact between primitive Babylonia and
early Egypt, see Heuzey in the _Revue d’Assyriologie_, 1899, v.
2, pp. 53–6. He there enumerates (1) the resemblance between the stone
mace-heads of the two countries in “prehistoric times,” as well as
between the flat dishes of veined and ribboned onyx marble, hollowed
and rounded by the hand; (2) between the lion-heads of stone, the onyx
stone of one of which is stated in an inscription to have come from
Magan; (3) the extraordinary likeness in the delineation of animal
forms, which extends to conventional details “like the two concentric
curves artificially arranged so as to allow the two corners of the
profile to be visible at the same time”; (4) the use of a razor and
the custom of completely shaving the face, and even the skull; and (5)
the ceremonial form of libation by means of a vase of peculiar shape,
with a long curved spout and without a handle. This libation vase was
practically the same in both countries, in spite of its peculiar and
somewhat complicated form. Of later introduction into Egypt was the
inscribed cone of terra-cotta, which was of early Babylonian origin,
but is not met with in Egypt before the age of the Twelfth dynasty.
At any rate, the first specimens of it hitherto found there were
discovered by myself at Ed-Dêr, opposite Esna, in 1905 (_Annales du
Service des Antiquités de l’Égypte_, 1905, pp. 164–5).
[117] _Recueil de Travaux_, etc., xvi. p. 190.
[118] In the later bronze or “Mykenæan” age the seal-cylinders are of a
different type, and are engraved on a black artificial paste resembling
hæmatite (Myres and Ohnefalsch-Richter, _Catalogue of the Cyprus
Museum_, p. 32).
[119] Sayce, _Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archæology_,
1877, v. part ii.; Bezold, _Zeitschrift für Keilinschrift_, 1885,
pp. 191–3.
[120] _Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology_, November
1905, plate No. 11
[121] A cadastral survey, which was drawn up at this period under
Uru-malik, or Urimelech, “the governor of the land of the Amorites,”
would, if perfect, have given us an interesting description of Syria
and Palestine in the third millennium before our era; see Thureau
Dangin in the _Revue Sémitigue_, Avril 1897.
[122] See Heuzey, in the _Revue d’Assyriologie_, 1897, pp. 1–12.
[123] This was “the year when Samsu-iluna the king gave Merodach a
shining mace of gold and silver, the glory of the temple; it made
E-Saggil (the temple of Bel-Merodach at Babylon) shine like the stars
of heaven.” The title of the year was derived from the chief event, or
events, that characterized it. See Dr. Pinches, in the _Quarterly
Statement of the Palestine Exploration Fund_, April and July 1900,
pp. 269–73.
[124] See my analysis of some of the Hyksos names in the _Proceedings
of the Society of Biblical Archæology_, 1901, pp. 95–8. Since the
publication of the Paper other names of the same type, like Rabu and
Sakti, have come to light. The characteristic names of the Hyksos
princes recur among the “Amorite” names found in the contract tablets
of the Khammu-rabi period, but not later. The abbreviated forms of the
names met with on the Egyptian scarabs are also found in the tablets.
Indeed, the contracted form of Ya’qub-el, that is to say, Yakubu,
with _k_ instead of _q_, must have been transcribed from a cuneiform
original.
[125] Macalister, _Quarterly Statement of the Palestine Exploration
Fund_, January 1903, p. 28. It is the seventh stone, however,
which alone has been brought from a distance--the neighbourhood of
Jerusalem--all the others being of local origin (_Quarterly Statement_,
July 1904, pp. 194–5).
[126] See Sellin, _Tell Ta’annek_ (1904) and _Eine Nachlese auf dem
Tell Ta’annek in Palästina_ (1905).
[127] _Tell Ta’annek_, pp. 27–8. The cylinder is earlier than B.C. 2000.
[128] See my _Patriarchal Palestine_, pp. 60, 61.
[129] _Collection De Clercq, Catalogue méthodique et raisonné_, i.
p. 217.
[130] _Quarterly Statement of the Palestine Exploration Fund_, January
1905, pp. 28, 29.
[131] The chronological difficulty, however, would be partially solved
if the date recently proposed by Professor Petrie (_Researches in
Sinai_, ch. xii.) for the Twelfth dynasty--B.C. 3459–3250--be adopted.
The Twelfth dynasty would in this case have reigned a thousand years
before the dynasty of Khammu-rabi, whose domination in Palestine would
have been an interlude in the history of the Hyksos period, while the
conquest of Canaan by Sargon and Naram-Sin would have coincided with
the supersession of the neolithic population by the “Amorites,” who
brought with them the copper and the culture of Babylonia.
[132] Unless we except the gold and silver ornaments found on the body
of a woman in a deserted house at Taanach, which, as Dr. Sellin says,
are by themselves sufficient to remove “all grounds for doubting such
accounts as those in Joshua vii. 21, and Judges viii. 26” (_Eine
Nachlese auf dem Tell Ta’annek_, p. 32).
[133] _Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society_, New Series, xiv. 3,
4, pp. 377–732.
[134] Eustathius on Dion. Perieget. 767. See Lehmann in the
_Zeitschrift für Assyriologie_, 1894, pp. 90 and 358–60.
[135] The Vannic kings always call themselves kings, not of the
Khaldians, but of Biainas or Bianas, the Byana of Ptolemy, the Van of
to-day.
[136] See more especially Belck’s comparison of the Vannic pottery
with that of the Assyrian colony of Kara Eyuk, near Kaisariyeh, in
the _Verhandlungen der Berliner anthropologischen Gesellschaft_,
December 1901, p. 493. Besides the highly-polished lustrous red ware,
he found at Kara Eyuk fragments of the same wheel-made wine-jars, “of
gigantic size,” which characterized Toprak Kaleh, near Van. Similar
jars, as well as lustrous red pottery, were discovered by Schliemann
in the “prehistoric” strata at Troy. The animals’ heads in terra-cotta
found at Kara Eyuk are stated by Dr. Belck to be similar to those of
the Digalla Tepé, near Urumiya. For further details see _infra._
[137] See Pinches in the _Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society_,
1897, pp. 589–613; and myself in the _Proceedings of the Society of
Biblical Archæology_, 1897, p. 286.
[138] Thus we find from the Cappadocian cuneiform tablets discovered
at Kara Eyuk, north-east of Kaisariyeh, that time was reckoned by the
annual succession of officers called _limmi_ as in Assyria.
[139] _Dendereh_, p. 62.
[140] Chantre, _Mission en Cappadoce_, pp. 71–91.
[141] See Belck, _Verhandlungen der Berliner anthropologischen
Gesellschaft_, December 1901, p. 493; and the admirable plates, iii.,
vii.–xiv., in Chantre, _Mission en Cappadoce_. As has been already
mentioned (_supra_, p. 166), Dr. Belck noticed at Kara Eyuk coarse
sherds of great thickness coming from wine-jars similar to those of
Toprak Kaleh. The black vases with long spouts have been found at
Yortan and Boz Eyuk in Phrygia; long-spouted vases of yellow ware with
geometrical patterns in maroon-red on the site of Gordium.
Chantre discovered numerous spindle-whorls in the ruins similar to
those discovered at Troy. He also found terra-cotta figurines, among
which the ram is the most plentiful, as well as covers and handles of
vases in the shape of animals’ heads, and some curious hut-urns not
unlike those of Latium. Few bronze objects were met with, but among
them were five flanged axe-heads of the incurved Egyptian Hyksos type,
totally unlike the straight bronze axe-heads from Troy and Angora
(of Egyptian I-XII dynasty form), with which M. Chantre compares
them. The obsidian implements and stone celts were of the ordinary
Asianic pattern. M. Chantre notes that whereas at Troy the terra-cotta
figurines represented the heads of oxen or cows, at Kara Eyuk they were
the heads of sheep, horses, and perhaps dogs.
[142] _Historical Geography of Asia Minor_, ch. i., ii.; _Cities and
Bishoprics of Phrygia_, i. p. xiv.
[143] Labawa, or Labbaya, for whom see the next chapter. A revised
transcript of his letter in Arzawan (Hittite) is given by Knudtzon,
_Die zwei Arzawa-Briefe_, pp. 38–40. The introductory paragraph
should read: _Ata-mu kît Labbaya ... memis-ta Uan-wa-nnas
iskhani-tta-ra atari-ya ueni_.--“To my lord says Labbaya ... thy
servant of Uan (a district west of Aleppo); seven times I prostrate
myself.” In other letters Labbaya is called prince of Rukhizzi, the
Rokhe’s-na of the treaty between Ramses II. and the Hittites.
[144] The facts were first stated in my article in the _Contemporary
Review_, August 1905, pp. 264–77, which is reprinted as chapter vii.
of the present book.
[145] _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, 1903, xxxiii. pp.
367–400.
[146] By Shalmaneser II. (_Black Obelisk_, 61) and Sargon. Sennacherib
describes his famous campaign against Phœnicia and Judah as made “to
the land of the Hittites.”
[147] _Ilios_, p. 693. What seem to be similar characters on a
seal-cylinder found in the copper-age cemetery of Agia Paraskevi in
Cyprus have recently been published by me in the _Proceedings of the
Society of Biblical Archæology_, June 1906, plate ii. No. xi. See
above, p. 141.
[148] One of these seals, with the name of Tua-is, “the Charioteer,” in
Hittite hieroglyphs, is in the possession of M. de Clercq. Another is
figured by Layard, _Culte de Mithra_, xliv. 3.
[149] See Sayce, _Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia_, pp. 377–9
[150] See Hogarth, “The Zakro Sealings,” in the _Journal of Hellenic
Studies_, xxii. pp. 76–93, and plates vi.-x.
[151] _Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archæology_, 1881, vii.
2, p. 27.
[152] See above, p. 141.
[153] Professor Petrie finds similar marks on Egyptian pottery of the
prehistoric and early dynastic age; see his table of signs in _The
Royal Tombs of the First Dynasty_ (Egypt Exploration Fund), i. p. 32.
[154] _Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal_, xi. pp. 316 _sqq._
The cylinder was bought by Major Pottinger, but afterwards lost.
The inscription seems to read: _AN Nin(?)-zi-in Su-lukh(?)-me-am-el
Khi-ti-sa ARAD-na_--“To the god Nin(?)-zin, Sulukh-ammel (?) son of
Khiti, his servant.”
[155] The Etruscan monument is described by Deecke, _Das Templum von
Piacenza_ (_Etruskische Forschungen_, iv. 1880) and _Etruskische
Forschungen und Studien_, part ii. (1882). For the Babylonian
prototype, see Boissier, _Note sur un Monument babylonien se rapportant
â l’extispicine_ (1899).
[156] Labbawa, or Labawa, is written Labbaya in the letter which is in
the Arzawan language.
[157] A copy of the text (Louvre, C 1) is given by Professor Breasted
in the _American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literature_,
xxi. 3 (1905). The determinative attached to the name is not that of
“country” but of “going,” showing that the scribe supposed the name to
be connected with some otherwise unknown word that signified “to go,”
just as in Gen. xxiii. “The sons of Heth” are supposed by the Hebrew
writer to derive their name from the Hebrew _khath_, “terror.”
Transcriber’s Notes:
1. Obvious printers’, punctuation and spelling errors have been
corrected silently.
2. Where hyphenation is in doubt, it has been retained as in the
original.
3. Superscripts are represented using the caret character, e.g. D^r. or
X^{xx}. Italics are shown as _xxx_.
4. Italics are shown as _xxx_.
5. Bold text is shown as =xxx=.