CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION.

Fresh Light from the Ancient Monuments

A Sketch of the Most Striking Confirmations of the Bible, From Recent

Discoveries in:

Egypt. Palestine. Assyria. Babylonia. Asia Minor.

by

Archibald Henry Sayce, M.A.

Deputy Professor of Comparative Philology, Oxford.

Hon. LL.D., Dublin.

Second Edition.

London:

The Religious Tract Society.

36, Paternoster Row; 65, St. Paul’s Churchyard.

1884

CONTENTS

Preface.

Chapter I. Introduction.

Chapter II. The Book of Genesis.

Chapter III. The Exodus out of Egypt.

Chapter IV. The Moabite Stone and the Inscription of Siloam.

Chapter V. The Empire of the Hittites.

Chapter VI. The Assyrian Invasions.

Chapter VII. Nebuchadrezzar and Cyrus.

Appendix I.

Appendix II.

Index.

Footnotes

PREFACE.

[Illustration.]

Monument of a Hittite king, accompanied by an inscription in Hittite

hieroglyphics, discovered on the site of Carchemish and now in the British

Museum.

The object of this little book is explained by its title. Discovery after

discovery has been pouring in upon us from Oriental lands, and the

accounts given only ten years ago of the results of Oriental research are

already beginning to be antiquated. It is useful, therefore, to take stock

of our present knowledge, and to see how far it bears out that “old story”

which has been familiar to us from our childhood. The same spirit of

scepticism which had rejected the early legends of Greece and Rome had

laid its hands also on the Old Testament, and had determined that the

sacred histories themselves were but a collection of myths and fables. But

suddenly, as with the wand of a magician, the ancient eastern world has

been reawakened to life by the spade of the explorer and the patient skill

of the decipherer, and we now find ourselves in the presence of monuments

which bear the names or recount the deeds of the heroes of Scripture. One

by one these “stones crying out” have been examined or more perfectly

explained, while others of equal importance are being continually added to

them.

What striking confirmations of the Bible narrative have been afforded by

the latest discoveries will be seen from the following pages. In many

cases confirmation has been accompanied by illustration. Unexpected light

has been thrown upon facts and statements hitherto obscure, or a wholly

new explanation has been given of some event recorded by the inspired

writer. What can be more startling than the discovery of the great Hittite

Empire, the very existence of which had been forgotten, and which yet once

contended on equal terms with Egypt on the one side and Assyria on the

other? The allusions to the Hittites in the Old Testament, which had been

doubted by a sceptical criticism, have been shown to be fully in

accordance with the facts, and their true place in history has been

pointed out.

But the account of the Hittite Empire is not the only discovery of the

last four or five years about which this book has to speak. Inscriptions

of Sargon have cleared up the difficulties attending the tenth and

eleventh chapters of Isaiah’s prophecies, and have proved that no “ideal”

campaign of an “ideal” Assyrian king is described in them. The campaign,

on the contrary, was a very real one, and when Isaiah delivered his

prophecy the Assyrian monarch was marching down upon Jerusalem from the

north, and was about to be “the rod” of God’s anger upon its sins. Ten

years before the overthrow of Sennacherib’s army his father, Sargon, had

captured Jerusalem, but a “remnant” escaped the horrors of the siege, and

returned in penitence “unto the mighty God.”

Perhaps the most remarkable of recent discoveries is that which relates to

Cyrus and his conquest of Babylonia. The history of the conquest as told

by Cyrus himself is now in our hands, and it has obliged us to modify many

of the views, really derived from Greek authors, which we had read into

the words of Scripture. Cyrus, we know now upon his own authority, was a

polytheist, and not a Zoroastrian; he was king of Elam, not of Persia. It

was Elam, and not Persia, as Isaiah’s prophecies declared, which invaded

Babylon. Babylon itself was taken without a siege, and Mr. Bosanquet may

therefore have been right in holding that the Darius of Daniel was Darius

the son of Hystaspes.

Hardly less interesting has been the discovery of the inscription of

Siloam, which reveals to us the very characters used by the Jews in the

time of Isaiah, perhaps even in the time of Solomon himself. The discovery

has cast a flood of light on the early topography of Jerusalem, and has

made it clear as the daylight that the Jews of the royal period were not

the rude and barbarous people it has been the fashion of an unbelieving

criticism to assume, but a cultured and literary population. Books must

have been as plentiful among them as they were in Phœnicia or Assyria; nor

must we forget the results of the excavations undertaken last year in the

land of Goshen. Pithom, the treasure-city built by the Israelites, has

been disinterred, and the date of the Exodus has been fixed. M. Naville

has even found there bricks made without straw.

But the old records of Egypt and Assyria have a further interest than a

merely historical one. They tell us what were the religious doctrines and

aspirations of those who composed them, and what was their conception of

their duty towards God and man. We have only to compare the hymns and

psalms and prayers of these ancient peoples—seeking “the Lord, if haply

they might feel after Him and find Him”—with the fuller lights revealed in

the pages of the Old Testament, to discover how wide was the chasm that

lay between the two. The one was seeking what the other had already found.

The Hebrew prophet was the forerunner and herald of the Gospel, and the

light shed by the Gospel had been reflected back upon him. He saw already

“the Sun of Righteousness” rising in the east; the psalmist of Shinar or

the devout worshipper of Asshur were like unto those “upon whom no day has

dawned.”

CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION.

_How the Cuneiform Inscriptions were deciphered.—Grotefend’s

guess.—Lassen and Rawlinson’s studies.—Discoveries of Botta,

Layard, George Smith, and Rassam.—Certainty of our present

knowledge._

The decipherment of the cuneiform or wedge-shaped inscriptions of Assyria

has been one of the most marvellous achievements of the present century.

It has often been asked how Assyrian scholars have been enabled to read an

Assyrian text with almost as much certainty as a page of the Old

Testament, although both the language and the characters in which it is

written were utterly unknown but a few years ago. A brief history of the

origin and progress of the decipherment will best answer the question.

Travellers had discovered inscriptions engraved in cuneiform, or, as they

were also termed, arrow-headed, characters on the ruined monuments of

Persepolis and other ancient sites in Persia. Some of these monuments were

known to have been erected by the Achæmenian princes—Darius, the son of

Hystaspes, and his successors—and it was therefore inferred that the

inscriptions also had been carved by order of the same kings. The

inscriptions were in three different systems of cuneiform writing; and,

since the three kinds of inscription were always placed side by side, it

was evident that they represented different versions of the same text. The

subjects of the Persian kings belonged to more than one race, and just as

in the present day a Turkish pasha in the East has to publish an edict in

Turkish, Arabic, and Persian, if it is to be understood by all the

populations under his charge, so the Persian kings were obliged to use the

language and system of writing peculiar to each of the nations they

governed, whenever they wished their proclamations to be read and

understood by them.

It was clear that the three versions of the Achæmenian inscriptions were

addressed to the three chief populations of the Persian Empire, and that

the one which invariably came first was composed in ancient Persian, the

language of the sovereign himself. Now this Persian version happened to

offer the decipherer less difficulties than the two others which

accompanied it. The number of distinct characters employed in writing it

did not exceed forty, while the words were divided from one another by a

slanting wedge. Some of the words contained so many characters that it was

plain that these latter must denote letters, and not syllables, and that

consequently the Persian cuneiform system must have consisted of an

alphabet, and not of a syllabary. It was further plain that the

inscriptions had to be read from left to right, since the ends of all the

lines were exactly underneath one another on the left side, whereas they

terminated irregularly on the right; indeed, the last line sometimes ended

at a considerable distance from the right-hand extremity of the

inscription.

The clue to the decipherment of the inscriptions was first discovered by

the successful guess of a German scholar, Grotefend. Grotefend noticed

that the inscriptions generally began with three or four words, one of

which varied, while the others remained unchanged. The variable word had

three forms, though the same form always appeared on the same monument.

Grotefend, therefore, conjectured that this word represented the name of a

king, the words which followed it being the royal titles. One of the

supposed names appeared much oftener than the others, and as it was too

short for Artaxerxes and too long for Cyrus, it was evident that it must

stand either for Darius or for Xerxes. A study of the classical authors

showed Grotefend that certain of the monuments on which it was found had

been constructed by Darius, and he accordingly gave to the characters

composing it the values required for spelling "Darius" in its old Persian

form. In this way he succeeded in obtaining conjectural values for six

cuneiform letters. He now turned to the second royal name, which also

appeared on several monuments, and was of much the same length as that of

Darius. This could only be Xerxes; but if so, the fifth letter composing

it (_r_) would necessarily be the same as the third letter in the name of

Darius. This proved to be the case, and thus afforded the best possible

evidence that the German scholar was on the right track.

The third name, which was much longer than the other two, differed from

the second chiefly at the beginning, the latter part of it resembling the

name of Xerxes. Clearly, therefore, it could be nothing else than

Artaxerxes, and that it actually was so, was rendered certain by the fact

that the second character composing it was that which had the value of

_r_.

Grotefend now possessed a small alphabet, and with this he proceeded to

read the word which always followed the royal name, and therefore probably

meant “king.” He found that it closely resembled the word which signified

“king” in Zend, the old language of the Eastern Persians, which was spoken

in one part of Persia at the same time that Old Persian, the language of

the Achæmenian princes, was spoken in another. There could, consequently,

be no further room for doubt that he had really solved the great problem,

and discovered the key to the decipherment of the cuneiform texts.

But he did little further himself towards the completion of the work, and

it was many years before any real progress was made with it. Meanwhile,

the study of Zend had made great advances, more especially in the hands of

Burnouf, who eventually turned his attention to the cuneiform

inscriptions. But it is to Burnouf’s pupil, Lassen, as well as to Sir

Henry Rawlinson, that the decipherment of these inscriptions owes its

final completion. The discovery of the list of Persian satrapies in the

inscription of Darius at Naksh-i-Rustem, and above all the copy of the

long inscription of Darius on the rock of Behistun, made by Sir H.

Rawlinson, enabled these scholars independently of one another to

construct an alphabet which differed only in the value assigned to a

single character, and, with the help of the cognate Zend and Sanskrit, to

translate the language so curiously brought to light. The decipherment of

the Persian cuneiform texts thus became an accomplished fact; what was

next needed was to decipher the two versions which were inscribed at their

side.

But this was no easy task. The words in them were not divided from one

another, and the characters of which they were composed were exceedingly

numerous. With the assistance, however, of frequently recurring proper

names even these two versions gradually yielded to the patient skill of

the decipherer; and it was then discovered that while one of them

represented an agglutinative language, such as that of the Turks or Fins,

the other was in a dialect which closely resembled the Hebrew of the Old

Testament. The monuments found almost immediately afterwards in Assyria

and Babylonia by Botta and Layard soon made it clear to what people this

dialect must have belonged. The inscriptions of Nineveh turned out to be

written in the same language and form of cuneiform script; and it must

therefore have been for the Semitic population of Assyria and Babylonia

that the kings of Persia had caused one of the versions of their

inscriptions to be drawn up. This version served as a starting-point for

the decipherment of the texts which the excavations in Assyria had brought

to light.

It might have been thought that the further course of the decipherment

would have presented little difficulty, now that the values of many of the

Assyrian characters were known, and the close resemblance of the language

they concealed to Hebrew had been discovered. But the complicated nature

of the Assyrian system of cuneiform—the great number of characters used in

it, the different phonetic values the same character might have, and the

frequent employment of ideographs, which denoted ideas and not

sounds—caused the progress of decipherment to be for some time but slow.

Indeed, had the Assyrian inscriptions been confined to those engraved on

the alabaster bulls and other monuments of Nineveh, our knowledge of the

language would always have remained comparatively limited. But,

fortunately, the Assyrians, like the Babylonians before them, employed

clay as a writing material, and established libraries, which were filled

with a literature on baked bricks.

One of the most important results of Sir A. H. Layard’s explorations at

Nineveh was the discovery of the ruined library of the ancient city, now

buried under the mounds of Kouyunjik. The broken clay tablets belonging to

this library not only furnished the student with an immense mass of

literary matter, but also with direct aids towards a knowledge of the

Assyrian syllabary and language. Among the literature represented in the

library of Kouyunjik were lists of characters, with their various phonetic

and ideographic meanings, tables of synonymes, and catalogues of the names

of plants and animals. This, however, was not all. The inventors of the

cuneiform system of writing had been a people who preceded the Semites in

the occupation of Babylonia, and who spoke an agglutinative language

utterly different from that of their Semitic successors. These Accadians,

as they are usually termed, left behind them a considerable amount of

literature, which was highly prized by the Semitic Babylonians and

Assyrians. A large portion of the Ninevite tablets, accordingly, consists

of interlinear or parallel translations from Accadian into Assyrian, as

well as of reading books, dictionaries, and grammars, in which the

Accadian original is placed by the side of its Assyrian equivalent. It

frequently happens that the signification of a previously unknown Assyrian

word can be ascertained by our finding it given as the rendering of an

Accadian word, with the meaning of which we are already acquainted. The

bilingual texts have not only enabled scholars to recover the

long-forgotten Accadian language; they have also been of the greatest

possible assistance to them in their reconstruction of the Assyrian

dictionary itself.

The three expeditions conducted by Mr. George Smith, as well as the later

ones of Mr. Hormuzd Rassam, have added largely to the stock of tablets

from Kouyunjik originally acquired for the British Museum by Sir A. H.

Layard, and have also brought to light a few other tablets from the

libraries of Babylonia. Although, therefore, only one of the many

libraries which now lie buried beneath the ground in Babylonia and Assyria

has, as yet, been at all adequately explored, the amount of Assyrian

literature at the disposal of the student is already greater than that

contained in the whole of the Old Testament. Apart from the help afforded

by the old dictionaries and lists of words and characters, he has more

facilities for determining the meaning of a word by a comparison of

parallel passages than the student of Biblical Hebrew; and in many

instances, accordingly, Assyrian has made it possible to fix the

signification of a Hebrew word, the sense of which has hitherto been

doubtful.

The Assyrian student, moreover, possesses an advantage which is not shared

by the Hebraist. Owing to its hieroglyphic origin, the cuneiform system of

writing makes large use of what are called determinatives, that is to say,

of characters which have no phonetic value, but which determine the class

to which the word they accompany belongs. It is, therefore, always

possible to tell at a glance whether the word with which we are dealing is

the name of a man, of a woman, of a deity, of a river, of a country, or of

a city; or, again, whether it denotes an animal, a bird, a vegetable, a

stone, a star, a medicine, or the like. With all these aids, accordingly,

it is not wonderful that the study of Assyrian has made immense progress

during the last few years, and that an ordinary historical text can be

read with as much certainty as a page from one of the historical books of

the Old Testament. Indeed, we may say that it can be read with even

greater certainty, since it presents us with the actual words of the

original writer; whereas the text of the Old Testament has come to us

through the hands of successive generations of copyists, who have

corrupted many passages so as to make them grammatically unintelligible.

At the same time, the hieroglyphic origin of the cuneiform mode of writing

has been productive of disadvantages as well as of advantages. The

characters which compose it may express ideas as well as sounds; and

though we may know what ideas are represented, we may not always know the

exact pronunciation to be assigned to them. Thus, in English, the

ideograph + may be pronounced “plus,” “added to,” or “more,” according to

the pleasure of the reader. The Assyrian scribes usually attached one or

more phonetic characters to the ideographs they employed, in order to

indicate their pronunciation in a given passage; but these “phonetic

complements,” as they are termed, were frequently omitted in the case of

well-known proper names, such as those of the native kings and deities.

Hence the exact pronunciation of these names can only be settled when we

find them written phonetically; and there are one or two proper names,

such as that of the hero of the great Chaldean epic, which have never yet

been met with phonetically spelt.

Another disadvantage due to the hieroglyphic origin of the Assyrian

syllabary is the number of different phonetic values the same character

may bear. This caused a good deal of trouble in the early days of Assyrian

decipherment; but it was a difficulty that was felt quite as much by the

Assyrians themselves as it is by us. Consequently they adopted various

devices for overcoming it; and as these devices have become known the

difficulty has ceased to be felt. In short, the study of Assyrian now

reposes on as sure and certain a basis as the study of any ancient

language, a knowledge of which has been traditionally handed down to us;

and the antiquity of its monuments, the copiousness of its vocabulary, the

perfection of its grammar, and the syllabic character of the writing—which

expresses vowels as well as consonants—all combine to make it of the

highest importance for the study of the Semitic languages. Its recovery

has not only shed a flood of light on the history and antiquities of the

Old Testament, it has served to illustrate and explain the language of the

Old Testament as well.

CHAPTER II. THE BOOK OF GENESIS.

Recent discoveries, especially in Babylonia and Assyria, have

thrown much light on Genesis.—The Accadians.—An Assyrian account

of the Creation.—The Babylonian Sabbath.—Traces of an account of

the Fall.—Site of Paradise.—“Adam” a Babylonian word.—The Chaldean

story of the Deluge.—This compared with the record in Genesis.—The

Babylonian account of the building of Babel.—The light thrown by

the Assyrian inscriptions on the names in Gen. x.—Gomer; Madai;

Javan; Cush and Mizraim; Phut; Canaan; Elam; Asshur; Arphaxad;

Aram; Lud; Nimrod.—The site of Ur.—Approximate date of the rescue

of Lot by Abraham.—Egypt in the time of Abraham.—Records of

famines.—The date of Joseph’s appointment as second ruler in

Egypt.—The Tale of the Two Brothers.—Goshen.

There is no book in the world about which more has been written than the

Bible, and perhaps there is no portion of the Bible which has given rise

to a larger literature than the Book of Genesis. Every word in it has been

carefully scrutinised, now by scholars who sought to discover its deepest

meaning or to defend it against the attacks of adversaries, now again by

hostile critics anxious to expose every supposed flaw, and to convict it

of error and inconsistency. Assailants and defenders had long to content

themselves with such evidence as could be derived from a study of the book

itself, or from the doubtful traditions of ancient nations, as reported by

the writers of Greece and Rome. Such reports were alike imperfect and

untrustworthy; historical criticism was still in its infancy in the age of

the classical authors, and they cared but little to describe accurately

the traditions of races whom they despised. It was even a question whether

any credit could be given to the fragments of Egyptian, Babylonian, and

Phœnician mythology or history extracted by Christian apologists from the

lost works of native authors who wrote in Greek. The Egyptian dynasties of

Manetho, the Babylonian stories of the Creation and Flood narrated by

Berossus, the self-contradicting Phœnician legends collected by Philo

Byblius, were all more or less suspected of being an invention of a later

age. The earlier chapters of Genesis stood almost alone; friends and foes

alike felt the danger of resting any argument on the apparent similarity

of the accounts recorded in them to the myths and legends contained in the

fragments of Manetho, of Berossus, and of Philo Byblius.

All is changed now. The marvellous discoveries of the last half-century

have thrown a flood of light on the ancient oriental world, and some of

this light has necessarily been reflected on the Book of Genesis. The

monuments of Egypt, of Babylonia, and of Assyria have been rescued from

their hiding-places, and the writing upon them has been made to speak once

more in living words. A dead world has been called again to life by the

spade of the excavator and the patient labour of the decipherer. We find

ourselves, as it were, face to face with Sennacherib, with Nebuchadnezzar,

and with Cyrus, with those whose names have been familiar to us from

childhood, but who have hitherto been to us mere names, mere shadowy

occupants of an unreal world. Thanks to the research of the last

half-century, we can now penetrate into the details of their daily life,

can examine their religious ideas, can listen to them as they themselves

recount the events of their own time or the traditions of the past which

had been handed down to them.

It is more especially in Babylonia and Assyria that we find illustrations

of the earlier chapters of Genesis, as, indeed, is only natural. The

Semitic language spoken in these two countries was closely allied to that

of the Old Testament, as closely, in fact, as two modern English dialects

are allied to each other; and it was from Babylonia, from Ur of the

Chaldees, now represented by the mounds of Mugheir, that Abraham made his

way to the future home of his descendants in the west. It is to Babylonia

that the Biblical accounts of the Fall, of the Deluge, and of the

Confusion of Tongues particularly look: two of the rivers of Paradise were

the Tigris and Euphrates, the ark rested on the mountains of Ararat, and

the city built around the Tower which men designed should reach to heaven

was Babel or Babylon. Babylonia was an older kingdom than Assyria, which

took its name from the city of Assur, now Kalah Sherghat, on the Tigris,

the original capital of the country. It was divided into two halves, Accad

(Gen. x. 10) being Northern Babylonia, and Sumir, the Shinar of the Old

Testament, Southern Babylonia. The primitive populations of both Sumir and

Accad were related, not to the Semitic race, but to the tribes which

continued to maintain themselves in the mountains of Elam down to a late

day. They spoke two cognate dialects, which were agglutinative in

character, like the languages of the modern Turks and Fins; that is to

say, the relations of grammar were expressed by coupling words together,

each of which retained an independent meaning of its own. Thus

_in-nin-sun_ is “he gave it,” literally “he-it-gave,” _e-mes-na_ is “of

houses,” literally “house-many-of.” At an early date, which cannot yet,

however, be exactly determined, the Sumirians and Accadians were overrun

and conquered by the Semitic Babylonians of later history, Accad being

apparently the first half of the country to fall under the sway of the

new-comers. It is possible that Casdim, the Hebrew word translated

“Chaldees” or “Chaldæans” in the Authorised Version, is the Babylonian

_casidi_, or “conquerors,” a title which continued to cling to them in

consequence of their conquest.

The Accadians had been the inventors of the pictorial hieroglyphics which

afterwards developed into the cuneiform or wedge-shaped system of writing;

they had founded the great cities of Chaldea, and had attained to a high

degree of culture and civilisation. Their cities possessed libraries,

stocked with books, written partly on papyrus, partly on clay, which was,

while still soft, impressed with characters by means of a metal stylus.

The books were numerous, and related to a variety of subjects. Among them

there were more particularly two to which a special degree of sanctity was

attached. One of these contained magical formulæ for warding off the

assaults of evil spirits; the other was a collection of hymns to the gods,

which was used by the priests as a kind of prayer-book. When the Semitic

Babylonians, the kinsmen of the Hebrews, the Aramæans, the Phœnicians and

the Arabs, conquered the old population, they received from it, along with

other elements of culture, the cuneiform system of writing and the

literature written in it. The sacred hymns still continued to serve as a

prayer-book, but they were now provided with interlinear translations into

the Babylonian (or, as it is usually termed, the Assyrian) language. Part

of the literature consisted of legal codes and decisions; and since the

inheritance and holding of property frequently depended on a knowledge of

these, it became necessary for the conquerors to acquaint themselves with

the language of the people they had conquered. In course of time, however,

the two dialects of Sumir and Accad ceased to be spoken; but the necessity

for learning them still remained, and we find accordingly that down to the

latest days of both Assyria and Babylonia the educated classes were taught

the old extinct Accadian, just as in modern Europe they are taught Latin.

From time to time, indeed, the scribes of Sennacherib or Nebuchadnezzar

attempted to write in the ancient language, and in doing so sometimes made

similar mistakes to those that are made now-a-days by a schoolboy in

writing Latin.

The Accadians were, like the Chinese, pre-eminently a literary people.

Their conception of chaos was that of a period when as yet no books were

written. Accordingly, a legend of the Creation, preserved in the library

of Cuthah, contains this curious statement: “On a memorial-tablet none

wrote, none explained, for bodies and produce were not brought forth in

the earth.” To the author of the legend the art of writing seemed to mount

back to the very beginning of mankind.

This legend of the Creation, however, is not the only one that has been

recovered from the shipwreck of Assyrian and Babylonian literature.

Besides the account given in the fragments of Berossus, there is another,

which bears a striking resemblance to the account of the Creation in the

first chapter of Genesis. It does not appear, however, that this last was

of Accadian origin; at all events, there is no indication that it was

translated into Assyrian from an older Accadian document, and there are

even reasons for thinking that it may not be earlier—in its present form

at least—than the seventh century B.C. We possess, unfortunately, only

portions of it, since many of the series of clay tablets on which it was

inscribed have been lost or injured. The account begins as follows:—

1. At that time the heavens above named not a name,

2. Nor did the earth below record one:

3. Yea, the deep was their first creator,

4. The flood of the sea was she who bore them all.

5. Their waters were embosomed in one place, and

6. The flowering reed was ungathered, the marsh-plant was ungrown.

7. At that time the gods had not issued forth, any one of them,

8. By no name were they recorded, no destiny (had they fixed).

9. Then the (great) gods were made,

10. Lakhmu and Lakhamu issued forth (the first),

11. They grew up....

12. Next were made the host of heaven and earth,

13. The time was long (and then)

14. The gods Anu (Bel and Ea were born of)

15. The host of heaven and earth.

It is not until we come to the fifth tablet of the series, which describes

the appointment of the heavenly bodies—the work of the fourth day of

creation, according to Genesis—that the narrative is again preserved. Here

we read that the Creator “made beautiful the stations of the great gods,”

or stars, an expression which reminds us of the oft-recurring phrase of

Genesis: “And God saw that it was good.” The stars, moon, and sun were

ordered to rule over the night and day, and to determine the year, with

its months and days. The latter part of the tablet, however, like the

latter part of the first tablet, is destroyed, and of the next tablet—that

which described the creation of animals—only the first few lines remain.

“At that time,” it begins, “the gods in their assembly created (the living

creatures). They made beautiful the mighty (animals). They made the living

beings come forth, the cattle of the field, the beast of the field, and

the creeping thing.” What follows is too mutilated to yield a connected

sense.

There is no need of pointing out how closely this Assyrian account of the

Creation resembles that of Genesis. Even the very wording and phrases of

Genesis occur in it, and though no fragment is preserved which expressly

tells us that the work of the Creation was accomplished in seven days, we

may infer that such was the case, from the order of events as recorded on

the tablets. But, with all this similarity, there is even greater

dissimilarity. The philosophical conceptions with which the Assyrian

account opens, the polytheistic colouring which we find in it further on,

have no parallel in the Book of Genesis. The spirit of the two narratives

is essentially different.

The last tablet probably contained an account of the institution of the

Sabbath. At all events, we learn that the seventh day was observed as a

day of rest among the Babylonians, as it was among the Jews. It was even

called by the same name of Sabbath, a word which is defined in an Assyrian

text as “a day of rest for the heart,” while the Accadian equivalent is

explained to mean “a day of completion of labour.” A calendar of saints’

days for the month of the intercalary Elul makes the seventh, fourteenth,

twenty-first, and twenty-eighth days of the lunar month Sabbaths, on which

certain works were forbidden to be done. On those days, it is stated,

“flesh cooked on the fire may not be eaten, the clothing of the body may

not be changed, white garments may not be put on, a sacrifice may not be

offered, the king may not ride in his chariot, nor speak in public, the

augur may not mutter in a secret place, medicine of the body may not be

applied, nor may any curse be uttered.” Nothing, in fact, that implied

work was allowed to be done. Where the Babylonian Sabbath differed from

the Jewish one was in its essentially lunar character. The first Sabbath

was the first day of a month, whatever might be the length of the month

that preceded it. While Sabbaths and new moons are distinguished from one

another in the Old Testament, they are found united in the Babylonian

ritual. It is no wonder, therefore, that the Babylonians were acquainted

with a week of seven days, each day of which was dedicated to one of the

seven planets; it was the space of time naturally marked out by the four

quarters of the moon.

No account of the Fall of Man, similar to that in Genesis, has as yet been

found among the fragments of the Assyrian libraries. Mr. George Smith,

indeed, supposed that he had discovered one, but the text which he

referred to the Fall, is really an ancient hymn to the Creator. It is,

nevertheless, pretty certain that such an account once existed. An archaic

Babylonian gem represents a tree, on either side of which are seated a man

and woman, with a serpent behind them, and their hands are stretched out

towards the fruit that hangs from the tree. A few stray references in the

bilingual (Accadian and Assyrian) dictionaries throw some light upon this

representation, and inform us that the Accadians knew of “a wicked

serpent,” “the serpent of night” and “darkness,” which had brought about

the fall of man. The tree of life, of which so many illustrations occur on

Assyrian monuments, is declared to be “the pine-tree” of Eridu, “the

shrine of the god Irnin;” and Irnin is a name of the Euphrates, when

regarded as the “snake-river,” which encircled the world like a rope, and

was the stream of Hea, “the snake-god of the tree of life.” The Euphrates,

we must remember, was one of the rivers of Paradise.

The site of Paradise is to be sought for in Babylonia. The garden which

God planted was in Eden, and Eden, as we learn from the cuneiform records,

was the ancient name of the “field” or plain of Babylonia, where the first

living creatures had been created. The city of Eridu, which the people of

Sumir called “the good” or “holy,” was, as we have seen, the shrine of

Irnin, and in the midst of a forest or garden that once lay near it grew

“the holy pine-tree,” “the tree of life.” The rivers of Eden can be found

in the rivers and canals of Babylonia. Two of them were the Euphrates and

Tigris, called by the Accadians _id Idikla_, “the river of Idikla,” the

Biblical Hiddekhel, while Pishon is a Babylonian word signifying “canal,”

and Gihon may be the Accadian Gukhan, the stream on which Babylon stood.

Even the word _cherub_ is itself of Babylonian derivation. It is the name

given to one of those winged monsters, with the body of a bull and the

head of a man, which are sometimes placed in the Assyrian sculptures on

either side of the tree of life. They stood at the entrance of a

Babylonian palace, and were supposed to prevent the evil spirits from

entering within. The word comes from a root which means “to approach” or

“be near,” and perhaps originally signified one who was near to God.

Like _cherub_, _Adam_ also was a Babylonian word. It has the general sense

of “man,” and is used in this sense both in Hebrew and in Assyrian. But as

in Hebrew it has come to be the proper name of the first man, so, too, in

the old Babylonian legends, the “Adamites” were “the white race” of

Semitic descent, who stood in marked contrast to “the black heads” or

Accadians of primitive Babylonia. Originally, however, it was this dark

race itself that claimed to have been “the men” whom the god Merodach

created; and it was not until after the Semitic conquest of Chaldea that

the children of Adamu or Adam were supposed to denote the white Semitic

population. Hence it is that the dark race continued to the last to be

called the Adamatu or “red-skins,” which a popular etymology connected

with _Adamu_ “man.” Sir H. Rawlinson has suggested a parallel between the

dark and white races of Babylonia and the “sons of God” and “daughters of

men” of Genesis. Adam, we are told, was “the son of God” (Luke iii. 38).

But nothing similar to what we read in the sixth chapter of Genesis has as

yet been met with among the cuneiform records, and though these speak of

giant heroes, like Ner and Etanna, who lived before the Flood, we know

nothing as yet as to their parentage.

The Babylonians, however, were well aware that the Deluge had been caused

by the wickedness of the human race. It has often been remarked that

though traditions of a universal or a partial deluge are found all over

the world, it is only in the Old Testament that the cause assigned for it

is a moral one. The Chaldean account of the Deluge, discovered by Mr.

George Smith, offers an exception to this rule. Here, as in Genesis,

Sisuthros, the Accadian Noah, is saved from destruction on account of his

piety, the rest of mankind being drowned as a punishment for their sins.

The story of the Deluge formed the subject of more than one poem among the

Accadians. Two of these were amalgamated together by the author of a great

epic in twelve books, which described the adventures of a solar hero whose

name cannot be read with certainty, but may provisionally be pronounced

Gisdhubar. The amalgamated account was introduced as an episode into the

eleventh book, the whole epic being arranged upon an astronomical

principle, so that each book should correspond to one of the signs of the

Zodiac, the eleventh book consequently answering to Aquarius. Sisuthros,

who had been translated without dying, like the Biblical Enoch, is made to

tell the story himself to Gisdhubar. Gisdhubar had travelled in search of

health to the shores of the river of death at the mouth of the Euphrates,

and here afar off in the other world he sees and talks with Sisuthros.

Fragments of several editions of the poem have been found, not only among

the ruins of Nineveh, but also in Babylonia; and by fitting these together

it has been possible to recover almost the whole of the original text. The

translations of it made by different scholars have necessarily improved

with the progress of Assyrian research, and though the first translation

given to the world by Mr. George Smith was substantially correct, there

were many minor inaccuracies in it which have since had to be corrected.

The latest and best version is that which has been published by Professor

Haupt. The following translation of the account is based upon it:—

(Col. I) “Sisuthros speaks to him, even to Gisdhubar: Let me reveal unto

thee, Gisdhubar, the story of my preservation, and the oracle of the gods

let me tell to thee. The city of Surippak, the city which, as thou

knowest, is built on the Euphrates, this city was already ancient when the

gods within it set their hearts to bring on a deluge, even the great gods

as many as there are—their father Anu, their king the warrior Bel, their

throne-bearer Adar, their prince En-nugi. Ea, the lord of wisdom, sat

along with them, and repeated their decree: ‘For their boat! as a boat, as

a boat, a hull, a hull! hearken to their boat, and understand the hull, O

man of Surippak, son of Ubara-Tutu; dig up the house, build the ship, save

what thou canst of the germ of life. (The gods) will destroy the seed of

life, but do thou live, and bid the seed of life of every kind mount into

the midst of the ship. The ship which thou shalt build, ... cubits shall

be its length in measure, ... cubits the content of its breadth and its

height. (Above) the deep cover it in.’ I understood and spake to Ea, my

lord: ‘The building of the ship which thou hast commanded thus, if it be

done by me, the children of the people and the old men (alike will laugh

at me).’ Ea opened his mouth and said, he speaks to me his servant: ‘(If

they laugh at thee) thou shalt say unto them, (Every one) who has turned

against me and (dis-believes the oracle that) has been given me, ... I

will judge above and below. (But as for thee) shut (not) the door (until)

the time comes of which I will send thee word. (Then) enter the door of

the ship, and bring into the midst of it thy corn, thy property, and thy

goods, thy (family), thy household, thy concubines, and the sons of the

people. The cattle of the field, the wild beasts of the field, as many as

I would preserve, I will send unto thee, and they shall keep thy door.’

Sisuthros opened his mouth and speaks; he says to Ea, his lord: ‘(O my

lord) no one yet has built a ship (in this fashion) on land to contain the

beasts (of the field). (The plan?) let me see and the ship (I will build).

On the land the ship (I will build) as thou hast commanded me.’...

(Col. II) “... On the fifth day (after it was begun) in its circuit(?)

fourteen measures its hull (measured); fourteen measures measured (the

roof) above it. I made it a dwelling-house(?).... I enclosed it. I

compacted it six times, I divided (its passages) seven times, I divided

its interior (seven) times. Leaks for the waters in the midst of it I cut

off. I saw the rents, and what was wanting I added. Three _sari_ of

bitumen I poured over the outside. Three _sari_ of bitumen I poured over

the inside. Three _sari_ of men, carrying baskets, who carried on their

heads food, I provided, even a _saros_ of food for the people to eat,

while two _sari_ of food the boatmen shared. To (the gods) I caused oxen

to be sacrificed; I (established offerings) each day. In (the ship) beer,

food, and wine (I collected) like the waters of a river, and (I heaped

them up) like the dust(?) of the earth, and (in the ship) the food with my

hand I placed. (With the help) of Samas [the Sun-God] the compacting of

the ship was finished; (all parts of the ship) were made strong, and I

caused the tackling to be carried above and below. (Then of my household)

went two-thirds: all that I had I heaped together; all that I had of

silver I heaped together; all that I had of gold I heaped together; all

that I had of the seed of life I heaped together. I brought the whole up

into the ship; all my slaves and concubines, the cattle of the field, the

beasts of the field, the sons of the people, all of them, did I bring up.

The season Samas fixed, and he spake, saying: ‘In the night will I cause

the heaven to rain destruction. Enter into the midst of the ship and close

thy door.’ The season came round; he spake, saying: ‘In the night will I

cause the heaven to rain destruction.’ Of that day I reached the evening,

the day which I watched for with fear. I entered into the midst of the

ship and shut the door, that I might close the ship. To Buzur-sadi-rabi,

the boatman, I gave the palace, with all its goods. Then arose

Mu-seri-ina-namari (The Water of Dawn at Daylight) from the horizon of

heaven (like) a black cloud. Rimmon in the midst of it thundered, and Nebo

and the Wind-God go in front: the throne-bearers go over mountain and

plain: Nergal the mighty removes the wicked; Adar goes overthrowing all

before him. The spirits of earth carried the flood; in their terribleness

they sweep through the land; the deluge of Rimmon reaches unto heaven; all

that was light to (darkness) was turned.

(Col. III) “(The surface) of the land like (fire?) they wasted; (they

destroyed all) life from the face of the land; to battle against men they

brought (the waters). Brother saw not his brother; men knew not one

another. In heaven the gods feared the flood, and sought a refuge; they

ascended to the heaven of Anu. The gods, like a dog in his kennel,

crouched down in a heap. Istar cries like a mother, the great goddess

utters her speech: ‘All to clay is turned, and the evil I prophesied in

the presence of the gods, according as I prophesied evil in the presence

of the gods, for the destruction of my people I prophesied (it) against

them; and though I their mother have begotten my people, like the spawn of

the fishes they fill the sea.’ Then the gods were weeping with her because

of the spirits of earth; the gods on a throne were seated in weeping;

covered were their lips because of the coming evil. Six days and nights

the wind, the flood, and the storm go on overwhelming. The seventh day

when it approached the storm subsided, the flood which had fought against

(men) like an armed host was quieted. The sea began to dry, and the wind

and the flood ended. I watched the sea making a noise, and the whole of

mankind was turned to clay; like reeds the corpses floated. I opened the

window, and the light smote upon my face; I stooped and sat down; I weep,

over my face flow my tears. I watch the regions at the edge of the sea; a

district rose twelve measures high. To the land of Nizir steered the ship;

the mountain of Nizir stopped the ship, and it was not able to pass over

it. The first day, the second day, the mountain of Nizir stopped the ship.

The third day, the fourth day, the mountain of Nizir stopped the ship. The

fifth day, the sixth day, the mountain of Nizir stopped the ship. The

seventh day when it approached I sent forth a dove, and it left. The dove

went and returned, and found no resting-place, and it came back. Then I

sent forth a swallow, and it left. The swallow went and returned, and

found no resting-place, and it came back. I sent forth a raven, and it

left. The raven went and saw the carrion on the water, and it ate, it

swam, it wandered away; it did not return. I sent (the animals) forth to

the four winds, I sacrificed a sacrifice. I built an altar on the peak of

the mountain. I set vessels [each containing the third of an ephah] by

sevens; underneath them I spread reeds, pine-wood, and spices. The gods

smelt the savour; the gods smelt the good savour; the gods gathered like

flies over the sacrifices. Thereupon the great goddess at her approach

lighted up the rainbow which Anu had created according to his glory. The

crystal brilliance of those gods before me may I not forget;

(Col. IV) “those days I have thought of, and never may I forget them. May

the gods come to my altar; but may Bel not come to my altar, since he did

not consider but caused the flood, and my people he assigned to the abyss.

When thereupon Bel at his approach saw the ship, Bel stopped; he was

filled with anger against the gods and the spirits of heaven: ’Let none

come forth alive! let no man live in the abyss!’ Adar opened his mouth and

spake, he says to the warrior Bel: ‘Who except Ea can form a design? Yea,

Ea knows, and all things he communicates.’ Ea opened his mouth and spake,

he says to the warrior Bel: ‘Thou, O warrior prince of the gods, why, why

didst thou not consider but causedst a flood? Let the doer of sin bear his

sin, let the doer of wickedness bear his wickedness. May the just prince

not be cut off, may the faithful not be (destroyed). Instead of causing a

flood, let lions increase, that men may be minished; instead of causing a

flood, let hyænas increase, that men may be minished; instead of causing a

flood, let a famine happen, that men may be (wasted); instead of causing a

flood, let plague increase, that men may be (reduced). I did not reveal

the determination of the great gods To Sisuthros alone a dream I sent, and

he heard the determination of the gods.’ When Bel had again taken counsel

with himself, he went up into the midst of the ship. He took my hand and

bid me ascend, even me he bid ascend; he united my wife to my side; he

turned himself to us and joined himself to us in covenant; he blesses us

(thus): ‘Hitherto Sisuthros has been a mortal man, but now Sisuthros and

his wife are united together in being raised to be like the gods; yea,

Sisuthros shall dwell afar off at the mouth of the rivers.’ They took me,

and afar off at the mouth of the rivers they made me dwell.”

It is hardly necessary to indicate the points of agreement and

disagreement between this Babylonian account of the Deluge and that of

Genesis. The most striking difference between the two, that which first

meets the eye, is the polytheism of the Babylonian version, in contrast

with the monotheism of the Biblical narrative. Here, in place of the gods

of Chaldea, we are confronted by the one supreme Deity; we have no longer

to do with a Bel who requires the intercession of Ea before he will

consent not to destroy the guiltless with the guilty; it is the Lord

Himself who “said in His heart, I will not again curse the ground any more

for man’s sake.” In the Babylonian legend, moreover, Noah and Enoch have

been confounded together; Sisuthros is not only saved from the waters of

the flood, but translated to the abode of the gods. The vessel itself in

which the seed of life was preserved is not the same in the two accounts.

According to the Hebrew narrative, it was an ark; according to the

Babylonian poem, a ship. It is true that in one place it is called “a

palace,” the word used being the same as that which in many passages of

the Old Testament is applied to God’s “palace” of heaven; but it is

provided with a pilot, Buzur-sadi-rabi, “the Sun-god of the mighty

mountain,” and Sisuthros is made to expostulate on the strangeness of

building a ship which should sail over the land. It must, however, be

noticed that the shrines in which the images of the gods were carried in

Babylonia were called “ships,” and that these “ships” corresponded with

the ark of the Hebrew tabernacle.

The land of Nizir, in which the vessel of Sisuthros rested, was among the

mountains of Pir Mam, to the north-east of Babylonia. Rowandiz, the

highest peak in this part of Asia, rises a little to the north of the Pir

Mam, and it seems probable, therefore, that it represents “the mountain of

Nizir.” The whole country had been included by the Accadians in the vast

territory of Guti, or Gutium, which roughly corresponds with the modern

Kurdistan. It is accordingly worth notice that a wide-spread eastern

tradition makes Gebel Gudi, or Mount Gudi, the mountain on which the ark

rested, and that in early Jewish legend this mountain is called Lubar or

Baris, the boundary between Armenia and Kurdistan, in the land of the

Minni. Ararat, or Urardhu, as it is written in the cuneiform inscriptions,

denoted Armenia, and more particularly the district about Lake Van; so

that “the mountains of Ararat,” of which Genesis speaks, might easily have

been the Kurdish ranges of Southern Armenia. It was not until a very late

period that the name of Ararat was first applied and then confined to the

lofty mountains in the north.

Rowandiz seems also to have been regarded in Accadian mythology as the

Olympos on which the gods dwelt. In this case it was usually called “the

mountain of the east;” but the east was here the north-east, since other

legends identified it with Aralu, or Hades, the mountain of gold which was

fabled to be in the far north. It is to this Accadian Olympos that

reference is made in Isa. xiv. 13, where the King of Babylon is described

as boasting that he would “ascend into heaven, and exalt his throne above

the stars of the gods,” that he would “sit on the mountain of the assembly

of the gods in the extremities of the north.” The mountain was sometimes

known as the “mountain of the world,” since the firmament was supposed to

revolve on its peak as on a pivot. We must not imagine, however, that the

Accadians, any more than the Greeks, actually believed the gods to live

above the clouds on the terrestrial Rowandiz, except at a very early

period in their history. Just as we do not think of the sky when we use

the word heaven in a spiritual sense, so by “the mountain of the assembly

of the gods” they meant a spiritual mountain, of which Rowandiz was the

earthly type. It is in this way that we must explain the position assigned

to Sisuthros after his translation. He does not live along with the gods

in the north, but has his station fixed “at the mouth of the rivers”

Euphrates and Tigris, which in ancient times flowed into the Persian Gulf

through separate channels. At an epoch when the geographical knowledge of

the Accadians did not extend very far, the unknown district beyond the

mouth of the Euphrates became a representative of the other world; and the

Euphrates itself was identified with Datilla, the river of “the God of

life and death,” as well as with the stream or “great deep” which was

supposed to encircle the earth like a monstrous serpent.

The name of the Chaldean Noah, Sisuthros, or, as it is written in the

cuneiform, Khasis-adra, or Adra-khasis, is really a title, given to him on

account of his righteousness, and signifying “wise (and) pious.” His

proper name is one which means “the Sun of Life,” though the exact

pronunciation of it is somewhat uncertain. Neither of these names agrees

with that of the Biblical Noah, but the latter has received a full

explanation from the Assyrian language, where it signifies “rest.”

After the Flood, we are told in Genesis that men journeyed from the east

until they came to the plain of Shinar, where they built the tower of

Babel, in the vain hope of ascending into heaven. God, however, confounded

their language and scattered them over the face of the earth. The

references in this narrative to Shinar and Babel, or Babylon, indicate

that here again we may expect to find a Babylonian account of the

Confusion of Tongues, just as we have found a Babylonian account of the

Deluge. As we have seen, the Accadians regarded themselves as having come

from the “mountain of the east” where the ark had rested, while Shinar is

the Hebrew form of the native name Sumir—or Sungir, as it was pronounced

in the allied dialect of Accad—the southern half of pre-Semitic Babylonia.

Now Mr. George Smith discovered some broken fragments of a cuneiform text

which evidently related to the building of the Tower of Babel. It tells us

how certain men had “turned against the father of all the gods,” and how

the thoughts of their leader’s heart “were evil.” At Babylon they essayed

to build “a mound” or hill-like tower, but the winds blew down their work,

and Anu “confounded great and small on the mound,” as well as their

“speech,” and “made strange their counsel.” The very word that is used in

the sense of “confounding” in the narrative of Genesis is used also in the

Assyrian text. The Biblical writer, by a play upon words, not uncommon in

the Old Testament, compares it with the name of Babel, though

etymologically the latter word has nothing to do with it. Babel is the

Assyrian Babili, “Gate of God,” and is merely a Semitic translation of the

old Accadian (or rather Sumirian) name of the town, Ca-dimíra, where Ca is

“gate” and dimíra “God.” Chaldean tradition assigned the construction of

the tower and the consequent confusion of languages to the time of the

autumnal equinox; and it is possible that the hero-king Etanna (Titan in

Greek writers), who is stated to have built a city in defiance of the will

of heaven, was the wicked chief under whom the tower was raised.

The confusion of tongues was followed by the dispersion of mankind. The

earth was again peopled by the descendants of the three sons of Noah—Shem,

Ham, and Japhet. Shem is the Assyrian Samu, “olive-coloured,” Ham is

Khammu, “burned black,” and Japhet Ippat, “the white race.” The tribes and

races which drew their origin from them are enumerated in the tenth

chapter of Genesis. The arrangement of this chapter, however, is

geographical, not ethnological; the peoples named in it being grouped

together according to their geographical position, not according to their

relationship in blood or language. Here it is that the non-Semitic

Elamites are classed along with the Semitic Assyrians, and that the

Phœnicians of Canaan, who spoke the same language as the Hebrews, and

originally came from the same ancestors, are associated with the

Egyptians. When this fact is recognised, there is no difficulty in showing

that the statements of the chapter are fully consistent with the

conclusions of modern research.

The Assyrian inscriptions have thrown a good deal of light upon the names

contained in it. Gomer, the son of Japhet, represents the Gimirrai of the

inscriptions, the Kimmerians of classical writers. Pressed by the Scyths

of the Russian steppes, they threatened to overrun the Assyrian empire

under a leader named Teispes, but were defeated by Esar-haddon, in B.C.

670, in a great battle on the north-eastern frontier of his kingdom, and

driven westwards into Asia Minor. There they sacked the Greek town of

Sinôpè, and spread like locusts over the fertile plains of Lydia. Among

the gifts sent to Nineveh by the Lydian king, Gugu or Gyges—a name in

which we may see the Gog of Ezekiel—were two Kimmerian chieftains whom he

had captured with his own hand. Gyges was afterwards slain in battle with

the barbarians, and it required some years before they could be finally

extirpated.

Madai are the Medes, a title given by the Assyrians to the multifarious

tribes to the east of Kurdistan. They are first mentioned in the

inscriptions about 820 B.C., and were partially subdued by Tiglath-Pileser

II and his successors. At this time they lived in independent communities,

each governed by its “city-chief.” The Median empire, which rose upon the

ruins of Nineveh, was really the creation of the kings of Ekbatana, the

modern Hamadan. The population of this district was known among the

Babylonians as _manda_, or “barbarians;” and through a confusion of the

latter word with the proper name Madâ, or “Medes,” historians have been

led to suppose that the empire of Ekbatana was a Median one.

Javan is the Greek word “Ionian,” but in the Old Testament it is generally

applied to the island of Cyprus, which is called the Island of Yavnan, or

the Ionians, on the Assyrian monuments. A more specific name for it in

Hebrew is Kittim, derived from the name of the Phœnician colony of Kition,

now represented by Larnaka. Cyprus was first visited by the Babylonians at

a very remote period, since Sargon I of Accad, who, according to Nabonidos

(B.C. 550), lived 3,200 years before his time, carried his arms as far as

its shores. As for Tubal and Meshech, they are as frequently associated

together in the Assyrian inscriptions as they are in the Bible. The Tubal

or Tibarêni spread in Old Testament times over the south-eastern part of

Kappadokia, while the Meshech or Moschi adjoined them on the north and

west. Ashkenaz is the Assyrian Asguza, the name of a district which lay

between the kingdoms of Ekbatana and the Minni.

Cush and Mizraim denote Ethiopia and Egypt, Ethiopia roughly corresponding

to the Nubia of today. As Ethiopia was largely peopled by tribes who had

come across the Red Sea from Southern Arabia, the name of Cush was given

in the Old Testament (as in verse 7 of this chapter) to Southern Arabia

also. Properly speaking, however, it denoted the country which commenced

on the southern side of the First Cataract. Mizraim means “the two

Matsors,” that is Upper and Lower Egypt. Lower Egypt was the original

Matsor, a word which signifies “wall,” and referred to the line of

fortification which defended the kingdom on the eastern side from the

attacks of Asiatic tribes. The word occurs more than once in the Biblical

writers, though its sense has been obscured in the Authorised Version.

Thus in Isaiah xxxvii. 25, Sennacherib boasts that he has “dried up all

the rivers of Matsor,” that is to say, the mouths of the Nile; and in

Isaiah xix. 6, we ought to translate “the Nile-arms of Matsor,” instead of

“brooks of defence.” While Matsor was the name of Lower Egypt, Upper Egypt

was termed Pathros (Isa. xi. 11), which is the Egyptian Pe-to-res or

“southern land.” The Pathrusim or inhabitants of Pathros are mentioned

among the sons of Mizraim in the chapter of Genesis upon which we are

engaged.

Phut seems to be the Egyptian Punt, on the Somali coast. Spices and other

precious objects of merchandise were brought from it, and the Egyptians

sometimes called it “the divine land.” The Lehabim of verse 13 are the

Libyans, while the Naphtuhim may be the people of Napata in Ethiopia. The

Caphtorim or inhabitants of Caphtor are the Phœnician population settled

on the coast of the Delta. From an early period the whole of this district

had been colonised by the Phœnicians, and, as Phœnicia itself was called

Keft by the Egyptians, the part of Egypt in which they had settled went by

the name of Keft-ur or “greater Phœnicia.” From various passages of the

Old Testament(1) we learn that the Philistines, whom the kings of Egypt

had once employed to garrison the five cities in the extreme south of

Palestine, had originally been Phœnicians of Caphtor, so that the words of

the verse before us must have been moved from their proper place,

“Caphtorim, out of whom came Philistim,” being the correct reading.

Canaan signifies “the lowlands,” and was primarily the name of the coast

on which the great cities of Phœnicia were built. As, however, the inland

parts of the country were inhabited by a kindred population, the name came

to be extended to designate the whole of Palestine, just as Palestine

itself meant originally only the small territory of the Philistines. In

Isaiah’s prophecy upon Tyre (xxiii. 11) the word is used in its primitive

sense, though here again the Authorised Version has misled the English

reader by mistranslating “the merchant-city” instead of “Canaan.” Sidon,

“the fishers’ town,” was the oldest of the Canaanite or Phœnician cities;

like Tyre, it was divided into two quarters, known respectively as Greater

and Lesser Sidon. Heth or the Hithites adjoined the Phœnicians on the

north; we shall have a good deal to say about them in a future chapter,

and therefore pass them by now. The Amorite was the inhabitant of the

mountains of Palestine, in contrast to the Canaanite or lowlander, and the

name is met with on the Egyptian monuments. The towns of Arka and Simirra

(or Zemar) are both mentioned by Tiglath-Pileser II, while the city of

Arvad or Arados (now Ruâd) is repeatedly named in the Assyrian

inscriptions. So also is Hamath (now Hamah), which was conquered by

Sargon, and made by him the seat of an Assyrian governor.

The name of Elam has first received its explanation from the decipherment

of the Assyrian texts. It was the name of the mountainous region to the

east of Babylonia, of which Shushan or Susa was at one time the capital,

and is nothing more than the Assyrian word _elam_, “high.” _Elam_ was

itself a translation of the Accadian _Numma_, under which the Accadians

included the whole of the highlands which bounded the plain of Babylonia

on its eastern side. It was the seat of an ancient monarchy which rivalled

in antiquity that of Chaldea itself, and was long a dangerous neighbour to

the latter. It was finally overthrown, however, by Assur-bani-pal, the

Assyrian king, about B.C. 645. The native title of the country was Anzan

or Ansan, and the name of its capital, Susan or Shushan, seems to have

signified “the old town” in the language of its inhabitants.

Asshur or Assur was originally the name of a city on the banks of the

Tigris, the ruins of which are now known as Kalah Sherghat. The name was

of Accadian derivation, and signified “water-bank.” The city long

continued to be the capital of the district which was called after it

Assyria, but was eventually supplanted by Ninua or Nineveh. Nineveh lay

opposite the present town of Mosul, and it is from the remains of its

chief palace, now buried under the mounds of Kouyunjik, that most of the

Assyrian inscriptions in the British Museum have been brought. A few miles

to the south of Nineveh, on the site now known as Nimrûd, was Calah, a

town built by Shalmaneser I, who lived B.C. 1300. Calah subsequently fell

into ruins, but was rebuilt in the ninth century before our era. “Between

Nineveh and Calah” stood Resen, according to Genesis. Resen is the

Assyrian _Ris-eni_, “head of the stream,” which is once mentioned in an

inscription of Sennacherib. Rehoboth ´Ir, or “the open spaces of the

city,” must have denoted the suburbs of Nineveh, and cannot be identified

with Dur-Sarrukin, founded by Sargon at Khorsabad, several miles to the

north.

It is plain from the context that Arphaxad must signify Chaldea; and this

conclusion is verified by the fact that the name might also be pronounced

Arpa-Chesed, or “border of Chaldæa.” Chesed is the singular of Casdim, the

word used in the Old Testament to denote the inhabitants of Babylonia. The

origin of it is doubtful, but, as has been suggested above, it most

probably represents the Assyrian _casidi_, “conquerors,” a term which

might very well be applied to the Semitic conquerors of Sumir and Accad.

The Greek word Chaldeans is derived from the Kaldâ, a tribe which lived on

the shores of the Persian Gulf, and is first heard of in the ninth century

before our era. Under Merodach-Baladan, the Kaldâ made themselves masters

of Babylonia, and became so integral a part of the population as to give

their name to the whole of it in classical times.

Aram, the brother of Arphaxad, represents, of course, the Aramæans of

Aram, or “the highlands,” which included the greater part of Mesopotamia

and Syria. In the later days of the Assyrian Empire, Aramaic, the language

of Aram, became the common language of trade and diplomacy, which every

merchant and politician was supposed to learn, and in still later times

succeeded in supplanting Assyrian in Assyria and Babylonia, as well as

Hebrew in Palestine, until in its turn it was supplanted by Arabic.

Lud seems to be a misreading; at all events, Lydia and the Lydians, on the

extreme western coast of Asia Minor, had nothing to do with the peoples of

Elam, of Assyria, and of Aram. What the original reading was, however, it

is now impossible to say.

In the midst of all these geographical names we find a notice inserted

relating to “the mighty hunter” Nimrod, the beginning of whose kingdom, we

are told, was Babylon, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh in the land of

Shinar. His name has not yet been discovered in the cuneiform records.

Some Assyrian scholars have wished to identify him with Gisdhubar, the

hero of the great Chaldean epic, which contains the account of the Deluge;

but Gisdhubar was a solar hero who had originally been the Accadian god of

fire. It is true that Gisdhubar was the special deity of the town of

Marad, and that Na-Marad would signify in the Accadian language “the

prince of Marad”; such a title, however, has not been found in the

inscriptions. Erech, called Uruk on the monuments, is now represented by

the mounds of Warka, far away to the south of Babylon, and was one of the

oldest and most important of the Babylonian cities. Like Calneh, the

Kul-unu of the monuments, it was situated in the division of the country

known as Sumir or Shinar. Accad, from which the northern division of the

country took its name, was a suburb of Sippara (now Abu-Habba), and, along

with the latter, made up the Sepharvaim or “Two Sipparas” of Scripture.

The Accadian form of the name was Agadê, and here was the seat of a great

library formed in remote days by Sargon I, and containing, among other

treasures, a work on astronomy and astrology in seventy-two books.

The translation of the verse which follows the list of Nimrod’s Babylonian

cities is doubtful. It is a question whether we should render with the

Authorised Version: “Out of that land went forth Asshur,” or prefer the

alternative translation: “Out of that land he went forth to Assyria.” The

latter is favoured by Micah v. 6, where “the land of Nimrod” appears to

mean Assyria. But the question cannot be finally decided until we discover

some positive information about Nimrod on the monuments.

If, however, little light has been thrown by modern research on the person

of Nimrod, this is by no means the case as regards Abraham. Abu-ramu or

Abram, “the exalted father,” Abraham’s original name, is a name which also

occurs on early Babylonian contract-tablets. Sarah, again, is the Assyrian

_sarrat_, “queen,” while Milcah, the daughter of Haran, is the Assyrian

_milcat_, “princess.” The site of Ur of the Chaldees, the birthplace of

Abram, has been discovered, and excavations have been made among the ruins

of its temples. The site is now called Mugheir, and lies on the western

side of the Euphrates, on the border of the desert, immediately to the

west of Erech. The chief temple of Ur was dedicated to the moon-god, and

the Accadian inscriptions on its bricks, which record its foundation, are

among the earliest that we possess. It was, in fact, the capital of one of

the oldest of the pre-Semitic dynasties, and its very name, Uru or Ur, is

only the Semitic form of the Accadian _eri_, “city.” It is probable that

it had passed into the hands of the Semitic “Casdim” before the age of

Abraham; at all events, it had long been the resort of Semitic traders,

who had ceased to lead the roving life of their ancestors in the Arabian

desert. From Ur, Abraham’s father had migrated to Haran, in the northern

part of Mesopotamia, on the high road which led from Babylonia and Assyria

into Syria and Palestine. Why he should have migrated to so distant a city

has been a great puzzle, and has tempted scholars to place both Ur and

Haran in wrong localities; but here, again, the cuneiform inscriptions

have at last furnished us with the key. As far back as the Accadian epoch,

the district in which Haran was built belonged to the rulers of Babylonia;

Haran was, in fact, the frontier town of the empire, commanding at once

the highway into the west and the fords of the Euphrates; the name itself

was an Accadian one signifying “the road”; and the deity to whom it was

dedicated was the moon-god of Ur. The symbol of this deity was a conical

stone, with a star above it, and gems with this symbol engraved upon them

may be seen in the British Museum.

The road which passed through Haran was well known to the Chaldean kings

and their subjects. Sargon I of Accad, and his son Naram-Sin, had already

made expeditions into the far west. Sargon had carved his image on the

rocks of the Mediterranean coast, and had even crossed over into the

island of Cyprus. The campaign, therefore, of Chedor-laomer and his

allies, recorded in the fourteenth chapter of Genesis, was no new thing.

The soil of Canaan had already felt the tramp of Babylonian feet. We can

even fix the approximate date at which the campaign took place, and when

Abraham and his confederates surprised the invaders and recovered from

them the spoils of Southern Palestine. For twelve years, we are told, the

tribes in the neighbourhood of the Dead Sea had served Chedor-laomer, king

of Elam, and then they rebelled; but the rebellion was quickly followed by

invasion. Chedor-laomer and “the kings that were with him,”—Amraphel, king

of Shinar, Arioch, king of Ellasar, and Tidal, “king of nations,”—marched

against the revolters, overthrew them in battle, and carried them away

captive. The name of Arioch is actually found on the cuneiform monuments.

Bricks have been discovered engraved with the legend of Eri-aku, king of

Larsa, the son of Kudur-Mabug the Elamite. Eri-aku means in Accadian “the

servant of the moon-god,” and Larsa, his capital, is now represented by

the mounds of Senkereh, a little to the east of Erech. Kudur-Mabug is

entitled “the father of Palestine,” and it would, therefore, seem that he

claimed supremacy over Canaan. His name is an Elamite one, signifying “the

servant of the god Mabug,” and is closely parallel to the Biblical

Chedor-laomer, that is, Kudur-Lagamar, “the servant of the god Lagamar.”

Lagamar and Mabug, however, were different deities, and we cannot,

therefore, identify Chedor-laomer and Kudur-Mabug together. But it is

highly probable that they were brothers, Chedor-laomer being the elder,

who held sway in Elam, while his nephew Eri-aku owned allegiance to him in

Southern Babylonia. At any rate, it is plain from the history of Genesis

that Babylon was at this time subject to Elam, and under the government of

more than one ruler. Amraphel would have been king of that portion of

Sumir, or Southern Chaldea, which was not comprised in the dominions of

the king of Larsa; and the fact that the narrative begins by stating that

the campaign in Palestine was made in his days, seems to imply that the

whole account has been extracted from the Babylonian archives. As for

“Tidal, king of nations,” it is very possible that we ought to read Turgal

(Thorgal), with the Septuagint, while Goyyim or “nations” has been shown

by Sir Henry Rawlinson to be a misreading for Gutium, the name given to

the tract of country northward of Babylonia, which stretched from

Mesopotamia to the mountains of Kurdistan, and within which the kingdom of

Assyria afterwards arose.

Now, the Assyrian king Assur-bani-pal tells us that an image of the

goddess Nana had been carried away from Babylonia by the Elamite king

Kudur-Nankhundi when he overran Chaldea 1635 years before his own time,

that is to say, in 2280 B.C. It is possible that this invasion of the

country by Kudur-Nankhundi was the beginning of Elamite supremacy in

Babylonia, and that Kudur-Mabug and Chedor-laomer were descendants of his.

If so, we shall have an approximate date for the rescue of Lot by Abraham,

and consequently for the age of Abraham himself.

The fourteenth chapter of Genesis is the last in the Book that relates to

Babylonia. The history now turns to Egypt; and it is, therefore, from the

monuments of Egypt, and not from those of Babylonia and Assyria, that we

henceforth have to look for light and information.

No traditions of a deluge had been preserved among the Egyptians. They

believed, however, that there was a time when the greater part of mankind

had been destroyed by the angry gods. A myth told how men had once uttered

hostile words against their creator Ra, the Sun-God, who accordingly sent

the goddess Hathor to slay them, so that the earth was covered with their

blood as far as the town of Herakleopolis. Then Ra drank 7,000 cups of

wine, made from the fruits of Egypt and mingled with the blood of the

slain; his heart rejoiced, and he made an oath that he would not destroy

mankind again. Rain filled the wells, and Ra went forth to fight against

his human foes. Their bows were broken and themselves slaughtered, and the

god returned victorious to heaven, where he created Paradise and the

people of the stars. This myth agrees with another, according to which

mankind had emanated from the eyes of Ra, though there was a different

legend of the creation, which asserted that all men, with the exception of

the negroes, had sprung from the tears of the two deities Horus and

Sekhet.

When Abraham went down into Egypt the empire was already very old. Its

history begins with Menes, who united the independent states of the Nile

valley into a single kingdom, and established his capital at Memphis. The

first six dynasties of kings, who reigned 1,478 years, represent what is

called the Old Empire. It was under the monarchs of the fourth dynasty

that the pyramids of Gizeh were built; and at no time during its later

history did the art and culture of Egypt reach again so high a level as it

did under the Old Empire. With the close of the sixth dynasty came a

period of disaster and decline. When Egypt again emerged into the light of

history it was under the warrior princes of the twelfth dynasty. The

capital had been shifted to the new city of Thebes, in the south, a new

god, Amun, presided over the Egyptian deities, and the ruling class itself

differed in blood and features from the men of the Old Empire. Henceforth

Egyptian art was characterised by a stiff conventionality wholly unlike

the freedom and vigour of the art of the early dynasties; the government

became more autocratic; and the obelisk took the place of the pyramid in

architecture. But the Middle Empire, as it has been termed, did not last

long. Semitic invaders from Canaan and Arabia overran the country, and

established their seat at Zoan or Tanis. For 511 years they held the

Egyptians in bondage, though the native princes, who had taken refuge in

the south, gradually acquired more and more power, until at last, under

the leadership of Aahmes or Amosis, the founder of the eighteenth dynasty,

they succeeded in driving the hated foreigners out. These foreigners are

known to history as the Hyksos or Shepherds, Hyksos being the Egyptian

_hik shasu_, “prince of the Shasu,” or “Beduins.” The name which they bear

upon the monuments is Menti.

It must have been while the Hyksos monarchs were holding their court at

Zoan that Abraham entered the land. He found there men of Semitic blood,

like himself, and speaking a Semitic language. A welcome was assured him,

and he had no need of an interpreter. But the Hyksos kings had already

begun to assume Egyptian state and to adopt Egyptian customs. In place of

the Semitic _shalat_, “ruler,” the title by which their first leaders had

been known, they had borrowed the Egyptian title of Pharaoh. Pharaoh

appears on the monuments as _pir-aa_, “great house,” the palace in which

the king lived being used to denote the king himself, just as in our own

time the “porte” or gate of the palace has become synonymous with the

Turkish Sultan.

By the time that Joseph was sold into Egypt there was little outward

difference between the court at Zoan and the court of the native princes

at Thebes. The very names and titles borne by the Hyksos officials had

become Egyptian; and though they still regarded the god Set as the chief

object of their worship, they had begun to rebuild the Egyptian temples,

and pay honour to the Egyptian deities. Potiphar, to whom Joseph was sold,

bore a purely Egyptian name, meaning “the gift of the risen one,” while

the name of Potipherah, the high priest of On, whose daughter, Asenath,

was married by Joseph, is equally Egyptian, and signifies “the gift of the

Sun-God.” The Sun-God was the special deity of On; to him the great temple

of the city was dedicated, and the name by which the place was known to

the Greeks was Heliopolis, “the city of the sun.” It was the city whose

name is played upon in Isaiah xix. 18, where the prophet declares that in

the day when Egypt shall be converted to the Lord, “the City of the Sun”

(_’ir ha-kheres_) shall become “the city of the destruction” of idols

(_’ir ha-heres_). Jeremiah, too, plays similarly upon the name, when he

says that Nebuchadnezzar, “shall break also the images of Beth-Shemesh

(the house of the Sun-God) that is in the land of Egypt” (Jer. xliii. 13);

while Ezekiel changes the Egyptian word On into the Hebrew _aven_,

“nothingness,” and prophesies that “the young men of Aven shall fall by

the sword” (Ezek. xxx. 17). The ruins of On are within an afternoon’s

drive of Cairo: but nothing remains of the city except mounds of earth,

and a solitary obelisk that once stood in front of the great temple of the

sun, and had been reared by Usertasen I, of the twelfth dynasty, a

thousand years before the daughter of its priest became the wife of

Joseph. The name of this daughter, Asenath, is the Egyptian ’Snat.

We are told that when the Pharaoh had made Joseph “ruler over all the land

of Egypt” he gave him a new name, Zaphnath-paaneah (Gen. xli. 45).

According to Dr. Brugsch, this name is the Egyptian _Za pa-u nt

pa-aa-ankh_, “governor of the district of the place of life,” that is, of

the district in which the Israelites afterwards built the towns of Raamses

and Pithom, and in which the land of Goshen seems to have been situated.

In after times Egyptian legend confounded Joseph with Moses, and changing

the divine name which formed the first element in his into that of the

Egyptian god Osiris, called him Osar-siph. The Jewish historian, Josephus,

has preserved for us the story which made Osar-siph the leader of the

Israelites in their flight from Egypt.

The seven years’ famine, which Joseph predicted, is a rare occurrence in

Egypt. In a country where rain is almost unknown, the fertility of the

fields depends upon the annual inundation of the Nile when swollen by the

melting snows of Abyssinia. It is only where the waters can penetrate, or

can be led by canals and irrigating machines, that the soil is capable of

supporting vegetation; but wherever this takes place the mud they bring

with them is so fertilising that the peasantry frequently grow three

luxuriant crops on the same piece of ground during the same year. For the

inundation to fail in any single year is not common; for it to fail seven

years running is a most unusual event. The last recorded time when there

was a seven years’ failure of the river, and a consequent famine, was in

A.D. 1064-1071, under the reign of the Khalif El-Mustansir Billah. A

similar failure must have taken place in the age of the twelfth dynasty,

since Ameni, an officer of King Usurtasen I, who has engraved the history

of his life at the entrance of his tomb among the cliffs of Beni-Hassan,

states that “no one was hungry in my days, not even in the years of

famine. For I had tilled all the fields of the district of Mah, up to the

southern and northern frontiers. Thus I prolonged the life of its

inhabitants, and preserved the food which it produced. No hungry man was

in it. I distributed equally to the widow as to the married woman. I did

not prefer the great to the humble in all that I gave away.”(2)

Another long famine of the same kind happened at a later date, and may

possibly be that against which Joseph provided in Northern Egypt. The

sepulchral tablet of a nobleman, called Baba, far away at El-Kab in

Southern Egypt, informs us of the fact. In this the dead man is made to

say: “When a famine arose, lasting many years, I distributed corn to the

city each year of famine.”

Baba is supposed to have lived shortly before the establishment of the

eighteenth dynasty; and this would agree very well with the date which we

must assign to Joseph. As we shall see in the next chapter, we now know

the exact period of Egyptian history at which the Exodus must have taken

place; and if we count 430 years, “the sojourning of the children of

Israel who dwelt in Egypt” (Exod. xii. 40), back from this, we shall be

brought to the reign of the Hyksos king Apophis or Apepi, the very king,

in fact, under whom, according to ancient authors, Joseph was raised to be

the _adon_, or second ruler of the state. It was not until the Hyksos were

driven out of the country, and Aahmes, the founder of the eighteenth

dynasty, was pursuing with bitter hatred both them and their friends that

“there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph.”

The earlier history of Joseph in the house of Potiphar finds a curious

parallel in an old Egyptian romance, known as the Tale of the Two

Brothers, which was composed by a scribe named Enna in the thirteenth

century B.C. Anepu, it is there said, sent his younger brother, Bata, from

the field where they were working, to fetch corn from the village. “And

the young brother found the wife of his elder brother occupied in braiding

her hair. And he said to her, ‘Rise up, give me seed-corn, that I may

return to the field, for thus has my elder brother enjoined me, to return

without delay.’ The woman said to him, ‘Go in, open the chest, that thou

mayest take what thine heart desires, otherwise my locks will fall by the

way.’ And the youth entered into the stable, and took thereout a large

vessel, for it was his wish to carry away much seed-corn. And he loaded

himself with wheat and grains of durra, and went out with it. Then she

said unto him, ‘How great is the burden on thine arm?’ He said to her,

‘Two measures of durra and three measures of wheat, making together five

measures, which rest on my arms.’ Thus he spake to her. But she spake to

the youth and said, ‘How great is thy strength! Well have I remarked thy

vigour every time.’ And her heart knew him!... And she stood up and laid

hold of him, and she said to him, ‘Come, let us enjoy an hour’s rest. The

most beautiful things shall be thy portion, for I will prepare for thee

festal garments.’ Then the youth became like the panther of the south for

rage, on account of the evil word which she had spoken to him; but she was

afraid beyond all measure. And he spoke to her and said, ‘Thou, O woman,

hast been to me like a mother, and thy husband like a father, for he is

older than I, so that he might have been my parent. Why this so great sin,

that thou hast spoken to me? Say it not to me another time, then will I

not tell it this time, and no word of it shall come out of my mouth about

it to any man whatsoever.’ And he loaded himself with his burden, and went

out into the field. And he went to his elder brother, and they completed

their day’s work. When it was now evening, the elder brother returned home

to his dwelling. And his young brother followed behind his oxen, which he

had laden with all the good things of the field, driving them before him,

to prepare for their resting-place in the stable in the village. And,

behold, the wife of his elder brother was afraid because of the word which

she had spoken, and she took a jar of fat, and she made herself like one

to whom an evil-doer had offered violence. She wished thereby to say to

her husband, ‘Thy young brother has offered me violence.’ And her husband

returned home at evening, according to his daily custom, and entered into

his house, and found his wife stretched out and suffering from injury. She

gave him no water for his hands, according to her custom. And the lamp was

not lighted, so that the house was in darkness. But she lay there and

vomited. And her husband spoke to her thus, ‘Who has had to do with thee?

Lift thyself up!’ She said to him, ‘No one has had to do with me except

thy young brother; for when he came to take seed-corn for thee, he found

me sitting alone, and he said to me, “Come, let us make merry an hour and

rest! Let down thy hair!” Thus he spake to me; but I did not listen to him

(but said), “See, am I not thy mother, and is not thy elder brother like a

father to thee?” Thus I spoke to him; but he did not hearken to my speech,

and used force with me, that I might not make a report to thee. Now, if

thou allowest him to live, I will kill myself.’ ”(3) Anepu then took a

knife, and went out to kill his brother. The cows, however, warned Bata of

his danger, and the Sun-God came to his aid, and set a river full of

crocodiles between himself and Anepu. When Anepu eventually learned the

real truth, he hurried back to his house, and put his wife to death.

No name like that of Goshen, where the Israelites were settled by order of

the Pharaoh, has as yet been discovered upon the monuments. Goshen,

however, could not have been far from the north-eastern frontier of Egypt,

and from Genesis xlvii. 11, we learn that it was in the land of Rameses.

Now, Dr. Brugsch has shown that Ramses, or Rameses, was the title given to

Zoan by Ramses II, when he raised it anew from the ruins in which it had

lain since the expulsion of the Hyksos, and filled it again with stately

edifices. Goshen consequently must have been in the neighbourhood of Zoan,

as, indeed, we might expect, since Joseph’s family would naturally be

settled not far from the capital and the residence of the powerful

minister. It was from hence that Jacob’s body, after being embalmed, as

was customary in Egypt, was carried to the old family tomb at Hebron; and

we can therefore understand why Zoan and Hebron were brought into such

close relation in the well-known passage of Numbers (xiii. 22) where it is

said that “Hebron was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt.” Hebron and

Zoan were the two points around which centred the patriarchal history

which is set before us in the Book of Genesis.