CHAPTER I

EARLY ISRAEL

AND THE

SURROUNDING NATIONS

BY THE

REV. A.H. SAYCE

PROFESSOR OF ASSYRIOLOGY AT OXFORD

AUTHOR OF

"THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE HEBREWS," &c

London

SERVICE & PATON

5 HENRIETTA STREET

COVENT GARDEN

1899

INTRODUCTION

One of the first facts which strike the traveller in Palestine is the

smallness of a country which has nevertheless occupied so large a space

in the history of civilised mankind. It is scarcely larger than an

English county, and a considerable portion of it is occupied by rocky

mountains and barren defiles where cultivation is impossible. Its

population could never have been great, and though cities and villages

were crowded together on the plains and in the valleys, and perched at

times on almost inaccessible crags, the difficulty of finding sustenance

for their inhabitants prevented them from rivalling in size the European

or American towns of to-day. Like the country in which they dwelt, the

people of Palestine were necessarily but a small population when

compared with the nations of our modern age.

And yet it was just this scanty population which has left so deep an

impress on the thoughts and religion of mankind, and the narrow strip of

territory they inhabited which formed the battle-ground of the ancient

empires of the world. Israel was few in numbers, and the Canaan it

conquered was limited in extent; but they became as it were the centre

round which the forces of civilisation revolved, and towards which they

all pointed. Palestine, in fact, was for the eastern world what Athens

was for the western world; Athens and Attica were alike insignificant in

area and the Athenians were but a handful of men, but we derive from

them the principles of our art and philosophic speculation just as we

derive from Israel and Canaan the principles of our religion. Palestine

has been the mother-land of the religion of civilised man.

The geographical position of Palestine had much to do with this result.

It was the outpost of western Asia on the side of the Mediterranean, as

England is the outpost of Europe on the side of the Atlantic; and just

as the Atlantic is the highroad of commerce and trade for us of to-day,

so the Mediterranean was the seat of maritime enterprise and the source

of maritime wealth for the generations of the past. Palestine, moreover,

was the meeting-place of Asia and Africa. Not only was the way open for

its merchants by sea to the harbours and products of Europe, but the

desert which formed its southern boundary sloped away to the frontiers

of Egypt, while to the north and east it was in touch with the great

kingdoms of western Asia, with Babylonia and Assyria, Mesopotamia and

the Hittites of the north. In days of which we are just beginning to

have a glimpse it had been a province of the Babylonian empire, and when

Egypt threw off the yoke of its Asiatic conquerors and prepared to win

an empire for itself, Canaan was the earliest of its spoils. In a later

age Assyrians, Babylonians, and Egyptians again contended for the

mastery on the plains of Palestine; the possession of Jerusalem allowed

the Assyrian king to march unopposed into Egypt, and the battle of

Megiddo placed all Asia west of the Euphrates at the feet of the

Egyptian Pharaoh.

Palestine is thus a centre of ancient Oriental history. Its occupation

by Babylonians or Egyptians marks the shifting of the balance of power

between Asia and Africa. The fortunes of the great empires of the

eastern world are to a large extent reflected in its history. The rise

of the one meant the loss of Palestine to the other.

The people, too, were fitted by nature and circumstances for the part

they were destined to play. They were Semites with the inborn religious

spirit which is characteristic of the Semite, and they were also a mixed

race. The highlands of Canaan had been peopled by the Amorites, a tall

fair race, akin probably to the Berbers of northern Africa and the Kelts

of our own islands; the lowlands were in the hands of the Canaanites, a

people of Semitic blood and speech, who devoted themselves to the

pursuit of trade. Here and there were settlements of other tribes or

races, notably the Hittites, who had descended from the mountain-ranges

of the Taurus and spread over northern Syria. Upon all these varied

elements the Israelites flung themselves, at first in hostile invasion,

afterwards in friendly admixture. The Israelitish conquest of Palestine

was a slow process, and it was only in its earlier stages that it was

accompanied by the storming of cities and the massacre of their

inhabitants. As time went on the invaders intermingled with the older

population of the land, and the heads of the captives which surmount the

names of the places captured by the Egyptian Pharaoh Shishak in the

kingdom of Judah all show the Amorite and not the Jewish type of

countenance. The main bulk of the population, in fact, must have

continued unchanged by the Israelitish conquest, and conquerors and

conquered intermarried together. The genealogies given by the Hebrew

writers prove how extensive this intermingling of racial elements must

have been; even David counted a Moabitess among his ancestors, and

surrounded himself with guards of foreign nationality. Solomon's

successor, the first king of Judah, was the son of an Ammonite mother,

and we have only to read a few pages of the Book of Judges to learn how

soon after the invasion of Canaan the Israelites adopted the gods and

religious practices of the older population, and paid homage to the old

Canaanite shrines.

A mixed race is always superior to one of purer descent. It possesses

more enterprise and energy, more originality of thought and purpose. The

virtues and failings of the different elements it embodies are alike

intensified in it. We shall probably not go far wrong if we ascribe to

this mixed character of the Israelitish people the originality which

marks their history and finds its expression in the rise of prophecy.

They were a race, moreover, which was moulded in different directions by

the nature of the country in which it lived. Palestine was partly

mountainous; the great block of limestone known as the mountains of

Ephraim formed its backbone, and was that part of it which was first

occupied by the invading Israelites. But besides mountains there were

fertile plains and valleys, while on the sea-coast there were harbours,

ill adapted, it is true, to the requirements of modern ships, but

sufficient for the needs of ancient navigation. The Israelites were thus

trained on the one hand to the habits of hardy warriors, living a life

of independence and individual freedom in the fastnesses of the hills,

and on the other hand were tempted to become agriculturists and

shepherds wherever their lot was cast in the lowlands. The sea-coast was

left to the older population, and to the Philistines, who had settled

upon it about the time of the Hebrew exodus from Egypt; but the

Philistines eventually became the subject-vassals of the Jewish kings,

and friendly intercourse with the Phoenicians towards the north not only

brought about the rise of a mixed people, partly Canaanite and partly

Israelitish, but also introduced among the Israelites the Phoenician

love of trade.

Alike, therefore, by its geographical position, by the characteristics

of its population, and by the part it played in the history of the

civilised East, Palestine was so closely connected with the countries

and nations which surrounded it that its history cannot be properly

understood apart from theirs. Isolated and alone, its history is in

large measure unintelligible or open to misconception. The keenest

criticism is powerless to discover the principles which underlie it, to

detect the motives of the policy it describes, or to estimate the

credibility of the narratives in which it is contained, unless it is

assisted by testimony from without. It is like a dark jungle where the

discovery of a path is impossible until the sun penetrates through the

foliage and the daylight streams in through the branches of the trees.

Less than a century ago it seemed useless even to hope that such

external testimony would ever be forthcoming. There were a few scraps of

information to be gleaned from the classical authors of Greece and Rome,

which had been so sifted and tortured as to yield almost any sense that

was required; but even these scraps were self-contradictory, and, as we

now know, were for the most part little else than fables. It was

impossible to distinguish between the true and the false; to determine

whether the Chaldæan fragments of Berossos were to be preferred to the

second and third hand accounts of Herodotus, or whether the Egyptian

chronology of Manetho was to be accepted in all its startling magnitude.

And when all was said and done, there was little that threw light on the

Old Testament story, much less that supplemented it.

But the latter part of the nineteenth century has witnessed discoveries

which have revolutionised our conceptions of ancient Oriental history,

and illuminated the pages of the Biblical narrative. While scholars and

critics were disputing over a few doubtful texts, the libraries of the

old civilised world of the East were lying underground, waiting to be

disinterred by the excavator and interpreted by the decipherer. Egypt,

Assyria, and Babylonia have yielded up their dead; Arabia, Syria, and

Asia Minor are preparing to do the same. The tombs and temples of Egypt,

and the papyri which have been preserved in the sandy soil of a land

where frost and rain are hardly known, have made the old world of the

Egyptians live again before our eyes, while the clay books of Babylonia

and Assyria are giving us a knowledge of the people who wrote and read

them fully equal to that which we have of Greece or Rome. And yet we are

but at the beginning of discoveries. What has been found is but an

earnest of the harvest that is yet in store. It is but two years since

that the French excavator, de Sarzec, discovered a library of 30,000

tablets at Tello in southern Chaldæa, which had already been formed when

Gudea ruled over the city in B.C. 2700, and was arranged in shelves one

above the other. At Niffer, in the north of Babylonia, the American

excavators have found an even larger number of tablets, some of which go

back to the age of Sargon of Akkad, or 6000 years ago, while fresh

tablets come pouring into the museums of Europe and America from other

libraries found by the Arabs at Bersippa and Babylon, at Sippara and

Larsa. The Babylonia of the age of Amraphel, the contemporary of

Abraham, has, thanks to the recent finds, become as well known to us as

the Athens of Periklês; the daily life of the people can be traced in

all its outlines, and we even possess the autograph letters written by

Amraphel himself. The culture and civilisation of Babylonia were already

immensely old. The contracts for the lease and sale of houses or other

estate, the documents relating to the property of women, the reports of

the law cases that were tried before the official judges, all set before

us a state of society which changed but little down to the Persian era.

Behind it lie centuries of slow development and progress in the arts of

life. The age of Amraphel, indeed, is in certain respects an age of

decline. The heyday of Babylonian art lay nearly two thousand years

before it, in the epoch of Sargon and his son Naram-Sin. It was then

that the Babylonian empire was established throughout western Asia as

far as the Mediterranean, that a postal service was organised along the

highroads which led from one city of the empire to another, and that

Babylonian art reached its climax. It was then, too, that the Babylonian

system of writing practically took its final form.

The civilisation of western Asia is, as has been said, immensely old.

That is the net result of modern discovery and research. As far back as

excavation can carry us there is still culture and art. We look in vain

for the beginnings of civilised life. Even the pictures out of which the

written systems of the ancient East were developed belong to a past of

which we have but glimpses. Of savagery or barbarism on the banks of the

lower Euphrates there is not a trace. So far as our materials enable us

to judge, civilised man existed from the beginning in "the land of

Shinar." The great temples of Babylonia were already erected, the

overflow of the rivers controlled, and written characters imprinted on

tablets of clay. Civilisation seems to spring up suddenly out of a night

of darkness, like Athena from the head of Zeus.

This is one of the chief lessons that have been taught us by Oriental

archaeology. Culture and civilisation are no new thing, at all events in

the East; long before the days of classical Greece, long before the days

even of Abraham, man was living in ease and comfort, surrounded by

objects of art and industry, acquainted with the art of writing, and

carrying on intercourse with distant lands. We must rid ourselves once

for all of the starveling ideas of chronology which a classical training

once encouraged, and of the belief that history, in the true sense of

the word, hardly goes back beyond the age of Darius or Periklês. The

civilisations of Babylonia and Egypt were already decrepid when the

ancestors of Periklês were still barbarians.

Another lesson is the danger of forming conclusions from imperfect

evidence. Apart from the earlier records of the Old Testament, there was

no literature which claimed a greater antiquity than the Homeric Poems

of ancient Greece; no history of older date than that of Hellas, unless

indeed the annals of China were to be included, which lay altogether

outside the stream of European history. Criticism, accordingly, deemed

itself competent to decide dogmatically on the character and credibility

of the literature and history of which it was in possession; to measure

the statements of the Old Testament writings by the rules of Greek and

Latin literature, and to argue from the history of Europe to that of the

East. Uncontrolled by external testimony, critical scepticism played

havoc with the historical narratives that had descended to it, and

starting from the assumption that the world of antiquity was illiterate,

refused to credit such records of the past as dwarfed the proportions of

Greek history, or could not be harmonised with the canons of the critic

himself. It was quite sufficient for a fact to go back to the second

millennium B.C. for it to be peremptorily ruled out of court.

The discoveries of Oriental archaeology have come with a rude shock to

disturb both the conclusions of this imperfectly-equipped criticism and

the principles on which they rest. Discovery has followed discovery,

each more marvellous than the last, and re-establishing the truth of

some historical narrative in which we had been called upon to

disbelieve. Dr. Schliemann and the excavators who have come after him

have revealed to an incredulous world that Troy of Priam which had been

relegated to cloudland, and have proved that the traditions of Mykenæan

glory, of Agamemnon and Menelaos, and even of voyages to the coast of

Egypt, were not fables but veritable facts. Even more striking have been

the discoveries which have restored credit to the narratives of the Old

Testament, and shown that they rest on contemporaneous evidence. It was

not so long ago that the account of the campaign of Chedor-laomer and

his allies in Canaan was unhesitatingly rejected as a mere reflection

into the past of the campaigns of later Assyrian kings. Even the names

of the Canaanite princes who opposed him were resolved into etymological

puns. But the tablets of Babylonia have come to their rescue. We now

know that long before the days of Abraham not only did Babylonian armies

march to the shores of the Mediterranean, but that Canaan was a

Babylonian province, and that Amraphel, the ally of Chedor-laomer,

actually entitles himself king of it in one of his inscriptions. We now

know also that the political condition of Babylonia described in the

narrative is scrupulously exact. Babylonia was for a time under the

domination of the Elamites, and while Amraphel or Khammurabi was allowed

to rule at Babylon as a vassal-prince, an Elamite of the name of Eri-Aku

or Arioch governed Larsa in the south. Nay more; tablets have recently

been found which show that the name of the Elamite monarch was

Kudur-Laghghamar, and that among his vassal allies was Tudkhula or

Tidal, who seems to have been king of the Manda, or "nations" of

Kurdistan. Khammurabi, whose name is also written Ammurapi, has left us

autograph letters, in one of which he refers to his defeat of

Kudur-Laghghamar in the decisive battle which at last delivered

Babylonia from the Elamite yoke.

The story of Chedor-laomer's campaign preserved in Genesis has thus

found complete verification. The political situation presupposed in

it--however unlikely it seemed to the historian but a few years ago--has

turned out to be in strict harmony with fact; the names of the chief

actors in it have come down to us with scarcely any alteration, and a

fragment of old-world history, which could not be fitted into the scheme

of the modern historian, has proved to be part of a larger story which

the clay books of Babylonia are gradually unfolding before our eyes. It

is no longer safe to reject a narrative as "unhistorical" simply on the

ground of the imperfection of our own knowledge.

Or let us take another instance from the later days of Assyrian history,

the period which immediately precedes the first intercourse between

Greece and the East. We are told in the Books of the Chronicles that

Manasseh of Judah rebelled against his Assyrian master and was in

consequence carried in chains to Babylon, where he was pardoned and

restored to his ancestral throne. The story seemed at first sight of

doubtful authenticity. It is not even alluded to in the Books of the

Kings; Nineveh and not Babylon was the capital of the Assyrian empire,

and the Assyrian monarchs were not in the habit of forgiving their

revolted vassals, much less of sending them back to their own kingdoms.

And yet the cuneiform inscriptions have smoothed away all these

objections. Esar-haddon mentions Manasseh among the subject princes of

the West, and it was just Esar-haddon who rebuilt Babylon after its

destruction by his father, and made it his residence during a part of

the year. Moreover, other instances are known in which a revolted prince

was reinstated in his former power. Thus Assur-bani-pal forgave the

Egyptian prince of Sais when, like Manasseh, he had been sent in chains

to Assyria after an unsuccessful rebellion, and restored him to his old

principality. What was done by Assur-bani-pal might well have been done

by the more merciful Esar-haddon, who showed himself throughout his

reign anxious to conciliate the conquered populations. It is even

possible that Assur-bani-pal himself was the sovereign against whom

Manasseh rebelled and before whom he was brought. In this case

Manasseh's revolt would have been part of that general revolt of the

Assyrian provinces under the leadership of Babylon, which shook the

empire to its foundations, and in which the Assyrian king expressly

tells us Palestine joined. The Jewish king would thus have been carried

to Babylon after the capture of that city by the Assyrian forces of

Assur-bani-pal.

But the recent history of Oriental archaeology is strewn with instances

of the danger of historical scepticism where the evidence is defective,

and a single discovery may at any moment throw new and unexpected light

on the materials we possess. Who, for instance, could have supposed that

the name of the Israelites would ever be found on an Egyptian monument?

They were but a small and despised body of public slaves, settled in

Goshen, on the extreme skirts of the Egyptian territory. And yet in 1886

a granite stela was found by Professor Flinders Petrie containing a hymn

of victory in honour of Meneptah the son of Ramses II., and declaring

how, among other triumphs, "the Israelites" had been left "without

seed." The names of all the other vanquished or subject peoples

mentioned in the hymn have attached to them the determinative of place;

the Israelites alone are without it; they alone have no fixed

habitation, no definite locality of their own, so far at least as the

writer knew. It would seem that they had already escaped into the

desert, and been lost to sight in its recesses. Who could ever have

imagined that in such a case an Egyptian poet would have judged it worth

his while even to allude to the vanished serfs?

Still more recently the tomb of Menes, the founder of the united

Egyptian monarchy, and the leader of the first historical dynasty, has

been discovered by M. de Morgan at Negada, north of Thebes. It was only

a few months previously that the voice of historical criticism had

authoritatively declared him to be "fabulous" and "mythical." The

"fabulous" Menes, nevertheless, has now proved to be a very historical

personage indeed; some of his bones are in the museum of Cairo, and the

objects disinterred in his tomb show that he belonged to an age of

culture and intercourse with distant lands. The hieroglyphic system of

writing was already complete, and fragments of obsidian vases turned on

the lathe indicate commercial relations with the Ægean Sea.

If we turn to Babylonia the story is the same. Hardly had the critic

pronounced Sargon of Akkad to be a creature of myth, when at Niffer and

Telloh monuments both of himself and of his son were brought to light,

which, as in the case of Menes, proved that this "creature of myth"

lived in an age of advanced culture and in the full blaze of history. At

Niffer he and his son Naram-Sin built a platform of huge bricks, each

stamped with their names, and at Telloh clay _bullæ_ have been

discovered, bearing the seals and addresses of the letters which were

conveyed during their reigns by a highly organised postal service along

the highroads of the kingdom. Numberless contract-tablets exist, dated

in the year when Sargon "conquered the land of the Amorites," as Syria

and Canaan were called, or accomplished some other achievement; and a

cadastral survey of the district in which Telloh was situated, made for

the purpose of taxation, incidentally refers to "the governor" who was

appointed over "the Amorites."

Perhaps, however, the discovery which above all others has

revolutionised our conceptions of early Oriental history, and reversed

the critical judgments which had prevailed in regard to it, was that of

the cuneiform tablets of Tel el-Amarna. The discovery was made in 1887

at Tel el-Amarna on the eastern bank of the Nile, midway between the

modern towns of Minia and Siût. Here is the site of the city built by

Khu-n-Aten, the "Heretic" Pharaoh, when the dissensions between himself

and the Theban priesthood became too acute to allow him to remain any

longer in the capital of his fathers. He migrated northward,

accordingly, with his court and the adherents of the new creed which he

sought to impose upon his subjects, carrying with him the archives of

the kingdom and the foreign correspondence of the empire. It was this

foreign correspondence which was embodied in the cuneiform tablets. They

make it clear that even under Egyptian rule the Babylonian language and

the Babylonian system of writing continued to be the official language

and script of western Asia, and that the Egyptian government itself was

forced to keep Babylonian secretaries who understood them. The fact

proves the long and permanent influence of Babylonian culture from the

banks of the Euphrates to the shores of the Mediterranean, and is

intelligible only in the light of the further fact that the empire of

Sargon of Akkad had been founded more than two thousand years before.

Nothing but a prodigiously long lapse of time could explain the firm

hold thus obtained by a foreign language, and a system of writing the

most complex and difficult to learn that has ever been invented.

The tablets further prove the existence throughout the Oriental world of

schools and libraries where the Babylonian language and characters could

be taught and learned and its voluminous literature stored and studied.

The age of Khu-n-Aten, which is also the age of Moses, was essentially a

literary age; a knowledge of reading and writing was widely spread, and

an active correspondence was being constantly carried on from one part

of the civilised world to the other. Even the Bedâwin shêkhs, who acted

as free-lances in Palestine, sent letters to the Pharaoh and read his

replies. The archive-chambers of the cities of Canaan contained

numberless documents contemporaneous with the events they recorded, and

the libraries were filled with the treasures of Babylonian literature,

with legends and stories of the gods, and the earlier history of the

East. Doubtless, as in Babylonia, so too in Palestine there were also in

them contracts and inventories of property, dated in the Babylonian

fashion by the events which characterised the years of a king's reign.

The scribes and upper classes could read and write, and therefore had

access to all these stores of literature and historical materials.

There is no longer any reason, therefore, for doubting that Moses and

his contemporaries could have read and written books, or that the Hebrew

legislator was learned in "all the wisdom of the Egyptians." If we are

to reject the historical trustworthiness of the Pentateuch, it must be

on other grounds than the assumption of the illiterateness of the age or

the impossibility of compiling at the time an accurate register of

facts. The Tel el-Amarna tablets have made it impossible to return to

the old critical point of view; the probabilities henceforward are in

favour of the early date and historical truth of the Old Testament

narratives, and not against them. Accurately-dated history and a reading

public existed in Babylonia long before the days of Abraham; in the age

of Moses the whole Eastern world from the Nile to the Euphrates was knit

together in the bonds of literary intercourse, and all who were in

contact with the great nations of the East--with Egypt, with Babylonia,

or with Assyria--came of necessity under its influence and held the book

and its author in the highest reverence.

But besides thus revolutionising our ideas of the age that preceded the

Hebrew Exodus, the Tel el-Amarna letters have thrown a welcome light on

the political causes of the Exodus itself. They have made it clear that

the reaction against the reforms and government of "the Heretic King"

Khu-n-Aten was as much national as religious. It was directed quite as

much against the foreigner who had usurped the chief offices of state,

as against the religion which the foreigner was believed to have brought

with him. The rise of the Nineteenth dynasty marks the triumph of the

national uprising and the overthrow of Asiatic influence. The movement

of which it was the result resembled the revolt of Arabi in our own

days. But there was no England at hand to prevent the banishment of the

stranger and his religion; the Semites who had practically governed

Egypt under Khu-n-Aten were expelled or slain, and hard measure was

dealt out to such of their kinsfolk as still remained in the land. The

free-born sons of Israel in the district of Goshen were turned into

public serfs, and compelled to work at the buildings with which Ramses

II. was covering the soil of Egypt, and their "seed" was still further

diminished by the destruction of their male offspring, lest they should

join the enemies of Egypt in any future invasion of the country, or

assist another attempt from within to subvert the old faith of the

people and the political supremacy of the Theban priests. That the fear

was not without justification is shown by the words of Meneptah, the son

of Ramses, at the time when the very existence of the Egyptian monarchy

was threatened by the Libyan invasion from the west and the sea-robbers

who attacked it from the Greek seas. The Asiatic settlers, he tells us,

had pitched "their tents before Pi-Bailos" (or Belbeis) at the western

extremity of the land of Goshen, and the Egyptian "kings found

themselves cut off in the midst of their cities, and surrounded by

earthworks, for they had no mercenaries to oppose to" the foe. It would

seem that the Israelites effected their escape under cover of the Libyan

invasion in the fifth year of Meneptah's reign, and on this account it

is that their name is introduced into the pæan wherein the destruction

of the Libyan host is celebrated and the Pharaoh is declared to have

restored peace to the whole world.

If the history of Israel thus receives light and explanation on the one

side from the revelations of Oriental archaeology, on the other side it

sometimes clears up difficulties in the history of the great nations of

Oriental antiquity. The Egyptologist, for instance, is confronted by a

fact towards the explanation of which the monuments furnish no help.

This is the curious change that passed over the tenure of land in Egypt

during the period of Hyksos rule. When the Fourteenth dynasty fell, a

large part of the soil of Egypt was in the hands of private holders,

many of whom were great feudal landowners whose acknowledgment of the

royal supremacy was at times little more than nominal. When, however,

the Hyksos were at last driven back to Asia, and Ahmes succeeded in

founding the Eighteenth dynasty, these landowners had disappeared. All

the landed estate of the country had passed into the possession of the

Pharaoh and the priests, and the old feudal aristocracy had been

replaced by a bureaucracy, the members of which owed their power and

position to the king. The history of Joseph accounts for this, and it is

the only explanation of the fact which is at present forthcoming. Famine

compelled the people to sell their lands to the king and his minister,

and a Hyksos Pharaoh and his Hebrew vizier thus succeeded in destroying

the older aristocracy and despoiling the natives of their estates. It

was probably at this period also that the public granaries, of which we

hear so much in the age of the Eighteenth dynasty, were first

established in Egypt, in imitation of those of Babylonia, where they had

long been an institution, and a superintendent was appointed over them

who, as in Babylonia, virtually held the power of life and death in his

hands.

One of the main results, then, of recent discovery in the East has been

to teach us the solidarity of ancient Oriental history, and the

impossibility of forming a correct judgment in regard to any one part of

it without reference to the rest. Hebrew history is unintelligible as

long as it stands alone, and the attempt to interpret it apart and by

itself has led to little else than false and one-sided conclusions; it

is only when read in the light of the history of the great empires which

flourished beside it that it can be properly understood. Israel and the

nations around it formed a whole, so far as the historian is concerned,

which, like the elements of a picture, cannot be torn asunder. If we

would know the history of the one, we must know the history of the other

also. And each year is adding to our knowledge; new monuments are being

excavated, new inscriptions being read, and the revelations of to-day

are surpassed by those of to-morrow. We have already learnt much, but it

is only a commencement; Egypt is only now beginning to be scientifically

explored, a few only of the multitudinous libraries of Babylonia have

been brought to light, and the soil of Assyria has been little more than

touched. Elsewhere, in Elam, in Mesopotamia, in Asia Minor, in Palestine

itself, everything still remains to be done. The harvest truly is

plentiful, but the labourers are few.

We have, however, learnt some needful lessons. The historian has been

warned against arguing from the imperfection of his own knowledge, and

rejecting an ancient narrative merely because it seems unsupported by

other testimony. He has been warned, too, against making his own

prepossessions and assumptions the test of historical truth, of laying

down that a reported fact could not have happened because it runs

counter to what he assumes to have been the state of society in some

particular age. Above all, the lesson of modesty has been impressed upon

him, modesty in regard to the extent of his own knowledge and the

fallibility of his own conclusions. It does not follow that what we

imagine ought to have happened has happened in reality; on the contrary,

the course of Oriental history has usually been very different from that

dreamed of by the European scholar in the quietude of his study. If

Oriental archæology has taught us nothing else, it has at least taught

us how little we know.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

I. THE ISRAELITES

II. CANAAN

III. THE NATIONS OF THE SOUTH-EAST

IV. THE NATIONS OF THE NORTH-EAST

V. EGYPT

VI. BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA

VII. CONCLUSION

APPENDICES

CHAPTER I

THE ISRAELITES

Israel traced its origin to Babylonia. It was from "Ur of the Chaldees"

that Abraham "the Hebrew" had come, the rock out of which it was hewn.

Here on the western bank of the Euphrates was the earliest home of the

Hebrews, of whom the Israelites claimed to be a part.

But they were not the only nation of the ancient Oriental world which

derived its ancestry from Abraham. He was the father not only of the

Israelites, but of the inhabitants of northern and central Arabia as

well. The Ishmaelites who were settled in the north of the Arabian

peninsula, the descendants of Keturah who colonised Midian and the

western coast, were also his children. Moab and Ammon, moreover, traced

their pedigree to his nephew, while Edom was the elder brother of

Israel. Israel, in fact, was united by the closest ties of blood to all

the populations which in the historic age dwelt between the borders of

Palestine and the mountain-ranges of south-eastern Arabia. They formed a

single family which claimed descent from a common ancestor.

Israel was the latest of them to appear on the scene of history. Moab

and Ammon had subjugated or absorbed the old Amorite population on the

eastern side of the Jordan, Ishmael and the Keturites had made

themselves a home in Arabia, Edom had possessed itself of the

mountain-fastnesses of the Horite and the Amalekite, long before the

Israelites had escaped from their bondage in Egypt, or formed themselves

into a nation in the desert. They were the youngest member of the Hebrew

family, though but for them the names of their brethren would have

remained forgotten and unknown. Israel needed the discipline of a long

preparation for the part it was destined to play in the future history

of the world.

The Hebrews belonged to the Semitic race. The race is distinguished by

certain common characteristics, but more especially by the possession of

a common type of language, which is markedly different from the other

languages of mankind. Its words are built on what is termed the

principle of triliteralism; the skeleton, as it were, of each of them

consisting of three consonants, while the vowels, which give flesh and

life to the skeleton, vary according to the grammatical signification of

the word. The relations of grammar are thus expressed for the most part

by changes of vocalic sound, just as in English the plural of "man" is

denoted by a change in the vowel. The verb is but imperfectly developed;

it is, in fact, rather a noun than a verb, expressing relation rather

than time. Compound words, moreover, are rare, the compounds of our

European languages being replaced in the Semitic dialects by separate

words.

Perhaps one of the most remarkable characteristics of the Semitic family

of speech is its conservatism and resistance to change. As compared with

the other languages of the world, its grammar and vocabulary have alike

undergone but little alteration in the course of the centuries during

which we can trace its existence. The very words which were used by the

Babylonians four or five thousand years ago, can still be heard, with

the same meaning attached to them, in the streets of Cairo. _Kelb_ is

"dog" in modern Arabic as _kalbu_ was in ancient Babylonian, and the

modern Arabic _tayyîb_, "good," is the Babylonian _tâbu_. One of the

results of this unchangeableness of Semitic speech is the close

similarity and relationship that exist between the various languages

that represent it. They are dialects rather than distinct languages,

more closely resembling one another than is the case even with the

Romanic languages of modern Europe, which are descended from Latin.

Most of the Semitic languages--or dialects if we like so to call

them--are now dead, swallowed up by the Arabic of Mohammed and the

Qorân. The Assyrian which was spoken in Assyria and Babylonia is

extinct; so, too, are the Ethiopic of Abyssinia, and the Hebrew language

itself. What we term Hebrew was originally "the language of Canaan,"

spoken by the Semitic Canaanites long before the Israelitish conquest of

the country, and found as late as the Roman age on the monuments of

Phoenicia and Carthage. The Minæan and the Sabæan dialects of southern

Arabia still survive in modern forms; Arabic, which has now overflowed

the rest of the Semitic world, was the language of central Arabia alone.

In northern Arabia, as well as in Mesopotamia and Syria, Aramaic

dialects were used, the miserable relics of which are preserved to-day

among a few villagers of the Lebanon and Lake Urumîyeh. These Aramaic

dialects, it is now believed, arose from a mixture of Arabic with "the

language of Canaan."

On the physical side, the Semitic race is not so homogeneous as it is on

the linguistic side. But this is due to intermarriage with other races,

and where it is purest it displays the same general characteristics.

Thick and fleshy lips, arched nose, black hair and eyes, and white

complexion, distinguish the pure-blooded Semite. Intellectually he is

clever and able, quick to learn and remember, with an innate capacity

for trade and finance. Morally he is intense but sensuous, strong in his

hate and in his affections, full of a profound belief in a personal God

as well as in himself.

When Abraham was born in Ur of the Chaldees the power and influence of

Babylonia had been firmly established for centuries throughout the

length and breadth of western Asia. From the mountains of Elam to the

coast of the Mediterranean the Babylonian language was understood, the

Babylonian system of writing was taught and learned, Babylonian

literature was studied, Babylonian trade was carried on, and Babylonian

law was in force. From time to time Syria and Canaan had obeyed the rule

of the Babylonian kings, and been formed into a Babylonian province. In

fact, Babylonian rule did not come to an end in the west till after the

death of Abraham; Khammurabi, the Amraphel of Genesis, entitles himself

king of "the land of the Amorites," as Palestine was called by the

Babylonians, and his fourth successor still gives himself the same

title. The loss of Canaan and the fall of the Babylonian empire seem to

have been due to the conquest of Babylon by a tribe of Elamite

mountaineers.

The Babylonians of Abraham's age were Semites, and the language they

spoke was not more dissimilar from Canaanitish or Hebrew than Italian is

from Spanish. But the population of the country had not always been of

the Semitic stock. Its first settlers--those who had founded its cities,

who had invented the cuneiform system of writing and originated its

culture--were of a wholly different race, and spoke an agglutinative

language which had no resemblance to that of the Semites. They had,

however, been conquered and their culture absorbed by the Semitic

Babylonians and Assyrians of later history, and the civilisation and

culture which had spread throughout western Asia was a Semitic

modification and development of the older culture of Chaldæa. Its

elements, indeed, were foreign, but long before it had been communicated

to the nations of the west it had become almost completely Semitic in

character. The Babylonian conquerors of Canaan were Semites, and the art

and trade, the law and literature they brought with them were Semitic

also.

In passing, therefore, from Babylonia to Canaan, Abraham was but passing

from one part of the Babylonian empire to another. He was not migrating

into a strange country, where the government and civilisation were alike

unknown, and the manners and customs those of another world. The road he

traversed had been trodden for centuries by soldiers and traders and

civil officials, by Babylonians making their way to Canaan, and by

Canaanites intending to settle in Babylonia for the sake of trade.

Harran, the first stage on his journey, bore a Babylonian name, and its

great temple of the Moon-god had been founded by Babylonian princes

after the model of the temple of the Moon-god at Ur, the birthplace of

the patriarch. Even in Canaan itself the deities of Babylonia were

worshipped or identified with the native gods. Anu the god of the sky,

Rimmon the god of the air, Nebo the interpreter and prophet of

Bel-Merodach, were all adored in Palestine, and their names were

preserved to later times in the geography of the country. Even

Ashtoreth, in whom all the other goddesses of the popular cult came to

be merged, was of Babylonian origin.

Abraham took with him to the west the traditions and philosophy of

Babylonia, and found there a people already well acquainted with the

literature, the law, and the religion of his fatherland. The fact is an

important one; it is one of the most striking results of modern

discovery, and it has a direct bearing on our estimate of the

credibility of the narratives contained in the Book of Genesis. Written

and contemporaneous history in Babylonia went back to an age long

anterior to that of Abraham--his age, indeed, marks the beginning of the

decline of the Babylonian power and influence; and consequently, there

is no longer any reason to treat as unhistorical the narratives

connected with his name, or the statements that are made in regard to

himself and his posterity. His birth in Ur, his migration to Harran and

Palestine, have been lifted out of the region of doubt into that of

history, and we may therefore accept without further questioning all

that we are told of his relationship to Lot or to the tribes of

north-western Arabia.

In Canaan, however, Abraham was but a sojourner. Though he came there as

a Babylonian prince, as an ally of its Amoritish chieftains, as a leader

of armed troops, even as the conqueror of a Babylonian army, his only

possession in it was the burial-place of Machpelah. Here, in the close

neighbourhood of the later Hebron, he bought a plot of ground in the

sloping cliff, wherein a twofold chamber had been excavated in the rock

for the purposes of burial. The sepulchre of Machpelah was the sole

possession in the land of his adoption which he could bequeath to his

descendants.

Of these, however, Ishmael and the sons of Keturah moved southward into

the desert, out of the reach of the cultured Canaanites and the

domination of Babylonia. Isaac, too, the son of his Babylonian wife,

seemed bent upon following their example. He established himself on the

skirts of the southern wilderness, not far on the one hand from the

borders of Palestine, nor on the other from the block of mountains

within which was the desert sanctuary of Kadesh-barnea. His sons Esau

and Jacob shared the desert and the cultivated land between them. Esau

planted himself among the barren heights of Mount Seir, subjugating or

assimilating its Horite and Amalekite inhabitants, and securing the road

which carried the trade of Syria to the Red Sea; while Jacob sought his

wives among the settled Aramæans of Harran, and, like Abraham, pitched

his tent in Canaan. At Shechem, in the heart of Canaan, he purchased a

field, not, as in the case of Abraham, for the sake of burial, but in

order that he might live upon it in tent or house, and secure a spring

of water for his own possession.

In Jacob the Israelites saw their peculiar ancestor. His twelve sons

became the fathers and representatives of the twelve tribes of Israel,

and his own name was changed to that of Israel. The inscribed tablets of

early Babylonia have taught us that both Israel and Ishmael were the

names of individuals in the Patriarchal age, not the names of tribes or

peoples, and consequently the Israelites, like the Ishmaelites, of a

later day must have been the descendants of an individual Israel and

Ishmael as the Old Testament records assert. Already in the reign of the

Babylonian king Ammi-zadok, the fourth successor of Amraphel, the

contemporary of Abraham, a high-priest in the district of northern

Chaldasa assigned to "Amorite" settlers from Canaan, bore the name of

Sar-ilu or Israel.[1]

The fuller and older form of Jacob is Jacob-el. We find it in contracts

drawn up in Babylonia in the time of Abraham; we also find it as the

name of an Egyptian king in the period when Egypt was ruled by Asiatic

conquerors. The latter fact is curious, taken in connection with the

further fact, that the son of the Biblical Jacob--the progenitor of the

Israelites--was the viceroy of an Egyptian Pharaoh, and that his father

died in the Egyptian land of Goshen. Goshen was the district which

extends from Tel el-Maskhuta or Pithom near Ismailîya to Belbeis and

Zagazig, and includes the modern Wadi Tumilât; the traveller on the

railway passes through it on his way from Ismailîya to Cairo. It lay

outside the Delta proper, and, as the Egyptian inscriptions tell us, had

from early times been handed over to the nomad Bedâwin and their flocks.

Here they lived, separate from the native agriculturists, herding their

flocks and cattle, and in touch with their kinsmen of the desert. Here,

too, the children of Israel were established, and here they multiplied

and became a people.

The growth of a family into a tribe or people is in accordance with Arab

rule. There are numerous historical instances of a single individual

becoming the forefather of a tribe or a collection of tribes which under

favourable conditions may develop into a nation. The tribe or people is

known as the "sons" of their ancestor; his name is handed down from

generation to generation, and the names of his leading descendants, the

representatives of the tribe, are handed down at the same time. Where we

speak of the population of a country, the Arab speaks of the "children"

of a certain man. Such a mode of expression is in harmony with Semitic

habits of thought. The genealogical method prevails alike in history and

geography; a colony is the "daughter" or "son" of its mother-city, and

the town of Sidon is the "first-born" of Canaan.

Jacob had twelve sons, and his descendants were accordingly divided into

twelve tribes. But the division was an artificial one; it never at any

time corresponded exactly with historical reality. Levi was not a tribe

in the same sense as the rest of his brethren; no territory was assigned

to him apart from the so-called Levitical cities; and he represented the

priestly order wherever it might be found and from whatever ancestors it

might be derived. Simeon and Dan hardly existed as separate tribes

except in name; their territories were absorbed into that of Judah, and

it was only in the city of Laish in the far north that the memory of Dan

survived. The tribe of Joseph was split into two halves, Ephraim and

Manasseh, while Judah was a mixture of various elements--of Hebrews who

traced their origin alike to Judah, to Simeon, and to Dan; of Kenites

and Jerahmeelites from the desert of Arabia; and of Kenizzites from

Edom. Benjamin or Ben-Oni was, as a tribe, merely the southern portion

of the house of Joseph, which had settled around the sanctuary of

Beth-On or Beth-el. Benjamin means the "Southerner," and Ben-Oni "the

inhabitant of Beth-On." It is even questionable whether the son of Jacob

from whom the tribe was held to be descended bore the name of Benjamin.

Had the name of Esau not been preserved we should not have known the

true name of the founder of Edom, and it may be that the name of the

tribe of Benjamin has been reflected back upon its ancestor.

In Goshen, at all events, the tribes of Israel would have been

distinguished by the names of their actual forefathers. They would have

been "the sons" of Reuben or Judah, of Simeon or Gad. But they were all

families within a single family. They were all "Israelites" or "sons of

Israel," and in an inscription of the Egyptian king Meneptah they are

accordingly called _Israelu_, "Israelites," without any territorial

adjunct. They lived in Goshen, like the Bedâwin of to-day, and their

social organisation was that of Arabia.

The immediate occasion of the settlement of Israel on the outskirts of

Egypt was that which has brought so many Bedâwin herdsmen to the valley

of the Nile both before and since. The very district of Goshen in which

they settled was occupied again, shortly after their desertion of it, by

nomads from Edom who had besought the Pharaoh for meadow-land on which

to feed their flocks. The need of pasturage from time immemorial has

urged the pastoral tribes of the desert towards the fertile land of the

Nile. When want of rain has brought drought upon Canaan, parching the

grass and destroying the corn, the nomad has invariably set his face

toward the country which is dependent for its fertility, not upon the

rains of heaven, but upon the annual overflow of its river. It was a

famine in Canaan, produced by the absence of rain, which made Jacob and

his sons "go down into Egypt."

But besides this immediate cause there was yet another. They were

assured of a welcome in the kingdom of the Nile and the gift of a

district in which they might live. One of the sons of Jacob had become

the Vizier of the Egyptian Pharaoh. Joseph, the Hebrew slave who had

been sold into bondage by his brothers, had risen to be the first

minister of the king and the favourite of his sovereign. He had foretold

the coming years of plenty and dearth; but he had done more--he had

pointed out how to anticipate the famine and make it subserve the

interests of despotism. He was not a seer only, he was a skilful

administrator as well. He had taken advantage of the years of scarcity

to effect a revolution in the social and political constitution of

Egypt. The people had been obliged to sell their lands and even

themselves to the king for bread, and become from henceforth a

population of royal slaves. The lands of Egypt were divided between the

king and the priests; the peasantry tilled them for the state and for

the temples, while the upper classes owed their wealth and position to

the offices which they received at court.

It would seem that the Israelites entered Egypt when the country was

governed by the last of those foreign dynasties from Asia which had

conquered the kingdom of the Pharaoh, and are known by the name of the

Hyksos or Shepherd kings. The Egyptian monuments have shown us that

during their dominion its internal constitution underwent precisely the

change which is described in the history of Joseph. Before the Hyksos

conquest there was a great feudal aristocracy, rich in landed estates

and influence, which served as a check upon the monarch, and at times

even refused to obey his authority. When the Hyksos conquerors are

finally expelled, we find that this feudal aristocracy has disappeared,

and its place has been taken by a civil and military bureaucracy. The

king has become a supreme autocrat, by the side of whom the priests

alone retain any power. The land has passed out of the hands of the

people; high and low alike are dependent for what they have on the

favour of the king.

The Hyksos dynasties were allied in race and sympathies with the

settlers from Asia. Joseph must have died before their expulsion, but it

is probable that he saw the outbreak of the war which ended in it, and

which after five generations of conflict restored the Egyptians to

independence. The Eighteenth dynasty was founded by the native princes

of Thebes, and the war against the Asiatic stranger which had begun in

Egypt was carried into Asia itself. Canaan was made an Egyptian

province, and the Egyptian empire was extended to the banks of the

Euphrates.

But the conquest of Asia brought with it the introduction of Asiatic

influences into the country of the conqueror. The Pharaohs married

Asiatic wives, and their courts became gradually Asiatised. At length

Amenophis IV., under the tutelage of his mother, attempted to abolish

the national religion of Egypt, and to substitute for it a sort of

pantheistic monotheism, based on the worship of the Asiatic Baal as

represented by the Solar Disk. The Pharaoh transferred his capital from

Thebes to a new site farther north, now known as Tel el-Amarna, changed

his own name to Khu-n-Aten, "the Glory of the Solar Disk," and filled

his court with Asiatic officials and the adherents of the new cult. The

reaction, however, soon came. The native Egyptians rose in revolt; the

foreigner fled from the valley of the Nile, and the capital of

Khu-n-Aten fell into ruin. A new dynasty, the Nineteenth, arose under

Ramses I., whose grandson, Ramses II., reigned for sixty-seven years,

and crowded Egypt with his buildings and monuments.

One of the cities he built has been shown by the excavations of Dr.

Naville to have been Pa-Tum, the Pithom of the Old Testament. Ramses

II., therefore, must have been the Pharaoh of the Oppression. The

picture set before us in the first chapter of Exodus fits in exactly

with the character of his reign. The dynasty to which he belonged

represented the reaction against the domination and influence of the

foreigner from Asia, and the oppression of the Israelites would

naturally have been part of its policy. Such of the Asiatics as still

remained in Egypt were turned into public serfs, and measures were taken

to prevent them from multiplying so as to be dangerous to their masters.

The free spirit of the Bedâwin was broken by servitude, and every care

was used that they should be unable to help their brethren from Asia in

case of another "Hyksos" invasion. The incessant building operations of

Ramses needed a constant supply of workmen, and financial as well as

political interests thus suggested that merciless _corvée_ of the

Israelites which rendered them at once politically harmless and

serviceable to the state.

In spite of all repression, however, the oppressed people continued to

multiply, and eventually escaped from their "house of bondage." The

stela of Meneptah, on which the name of "Israelites" occurs, implies

that they had already been lost to sight in the desert. The other

nationalities over whom Meneptah is said to have triumphed all have the

term "country" attached to their names; the "Israelites" alone are

without local habitation. Egyptian legend, as reported by the native

historian Manetho, placed the Exodus in the reign of Meneptah, and as

Meneptah was the son and successor of Ramses II., the correctness of the

statement is antecedently probable. It was in the fifth year of his

reign that the Delta was attacked by a formidable combination of foes.

The Libyans threatened it on the west: on the north, bands of

sea-pirates from the coasts of Asia Minor and the islands of the

Mediterranean attacked it by sea and land. A mutilated inscription of

Meneptah tells us how the tents of the invaders had been pitched on the

outskirts of the land of Goshen, within reach of the Bedâwin shepherds

who fed their flocks there, and how the troops of the Pharaoh, pressed

at once by the enemy and by the disaffected population of Goshen, had

been cooped up within the walls of the great cities, afraid to venture

forth. The fate of the invasion was sealed, however, by a decisive

battle in which the Egyptians almost annihilated their foes. But the

land of Goshen was left empty and desolate; the foreign tribes who had

dwelt in it fled into the wilderness under the cover of the Libyan

invasion. The pressure of the invasion had forced the Pharaoh to allow

his serfs a free passage out of Egypt, quite as much as the "signs and

wonders" which were wrought by the hand of Moses. Egypt was protected on

its eastern side by a line of fortifications, and through these

permission was given that the Israelites should pass. But the permission

was hardly given before it was recalled. A small body of cavalry, not

move than six hundred in number, was sent in pursuit of the fugitives,

who were loaded with the plunder they had carried away from the

Egyptians. They were a disorganised and unwarlike multitude, consisting

partly of serfs, partly of women and children, partly of stragglers from

the armies of the Libyan and Mediterranean invaders. Six hundred men

were deemed sufficient either to destroy them or to reduce them once

more to captivity.

But the fugitives escaped as it were by miracle. A violent wind from the

east drove back the shallow waters at the head of the Gulf of Suez, by

the side of which they were encamped, and the Israelites passed dryshod

over the bed of "the sea." Before their pursuers could overtake them,

the wind had veered, and the waters returned on the Egyptian chariots.

The slaves were free at last, once more in the wilderness in which Isaac

had tended his flocks, and in contact with their kinsmen of Edom and

Midian.

Moses had led them out of Egypt, and Moses now became their lawgiver.

The laws which he gave them formed them into a nation, and laid the

foundations of the national faith. Henceforth they were to be a separate

people, bound together by the worship of one God, who had revealed

Himself to them under the name of Yahveh. First at Sinai, among the

mountains of Seir and Paran, and then at Kadesh-barnea, the modern 'Ain

Qadîs, the Mosaic legislation was promulgated. The first code was

compiled under the shadow of Mount Sinai; its provisions were

subsequently enlarged or modified by the waters of En-Mishat, "the

Spring of Judgment."

The Israelites lay hidden, as it were, in the desert for many long

years, preparing themselves for the part they were afterwards to play in

the history of mankind. But from the moment of their departure from

Egypt their goal had been Canaan. They were not mere Bedâwin; they

belonged to that portion of the Semitic race which had made settlements

and founded kingdoms in Moab and Ammon and Edom, and their residence in

the cultured land of the Nile had made it impossible for them ever to

degenerate into the lawless robbers of the wilderness. They were settled

Bedâwin, not Bedâwin proper; not Bedâwin by blood and descent, but

Semites who had adopted the wandering and pastoral habits of the Bedâwin

tribes. They were like their brethren of Edom, who, though they came to

Egypt seeking pasturage for their cattle, had nevertheless founded at

home an elective monarchy. The true Bedâwin of the Old Testament are the

Amalekites, and between the Israelite and the Amalekite there was the

difference that there is between the peasant and the gypsy. The fact is

important, and the forgetfulness of it has led more than one historian

astray.

The first attempt to invade Canaan failed. It was made from the south,

from the shelter of the block of mountains within which stood the

sanctuary of Kadesh-barnea. The Israelitish forces were disastrously

defeated at Zephath, the Hormah of later days, and the invasion of the

Promised Land was postponed. The desert life had still to continue for a

while. In the fastness of 'Ain Qadîs the forces of Israel grew and

matured, and a long series of legislative enactments organised it into a

homogeneous whole. At length the time came when the Israelites felt

strong enough once more to face an enemy and to win by the sword a

country of their own. It was from the east that they made their second

attack. Aaron the high-priest was dead, but his brother Moses was still

their leader. The Edomites refused them a passage along the high-road of

trade which led northward from the Gulf of Aqaba; skirting Edom

accordingly, they marched through a waterless desert to the green wadis

of Moab, and there pitched their camp. The Amorite kingdoms of Sihon and

Og fell before their assault. The northern part of Moab, which Sihon had

conquered, was occupied by the invaders, and the plateau of Bashan, over

which Og had ruled, fell into Israelitish hands. The invaders now

prepared to cross the Jordan and advance into the highlands of Canaan.

Moses died on the summit of a Moabite mountain and his place was taken

by Joshua.

Joshua was a general and not a legislator. He could win battles and

destroy cities, but he could not restore what he had destroyed, or

organise his followers into a state. Jericho, which commanded the ford

across the Jordan, fell into his hands; the confederate kings of

southern Canaan were overthrown in battle, and the tribe of Ephraim, to

which Joshua belonged, was established in the mountainous region which

afterwards bore its name. Henceforward the mountains of Ephraim formed

the centre and the stronghold of Israelitish power in Palestine, from

whence the invading tribes could issue forth to conquest, or to which

they could retreat for shelter in case of need.

Beyond leading his people into Canaan and establishing them too firmly

in its midst to be ever dislodged, Joshua personally did but little. The

conquest of Canaan was a slow process, which was not completed till the

days of the monarchy. Jerusalem was not captured till the reign of

David, Gezer was the dowry received by Solomon along with his Egyptian

wife. At first the Canaanites were treated with merciless ferocity.

Their cities were burned, the inhabitants of them massacred, and the

spoil divided among the conquerors. But a time soon came when tribute

was accepted in place of extermination, when leagues were made with the

Canaanitish cities, and the Israelites intermarried with the older

population of the country. As in Britain after the Saxon conquest, the

invaders settled in the country rather than in the towns, so that while

the peasantry was Israelite the townsfolk either remained Canaanite or

were a mixture of the two races.

The mixture introduced among the Israelites the religion and the

beliefs, the manners and the immoralities, of the Canaanitish people.

The Mosaic legislation was forgotten; the institutions prescribed in the

wilderness were ignored. Alone at Shiloh, in the heart of Ephraim, was a

memory of the past observed; here the descendants of Aaron served in the

tabernacle, and kept alive a recollection of the Mosaic code. Here alone

no image stood in the sanctuary of the temple; the ark of the covenant

was the symbol of the national God.

But the influence of Shiloh did not extend far. The age that succeeded

the entrance into Canaan, was one of anarchy and constant war. Hardly

had the last effort of the Canaanites against their invaders been

overthrown on the banks of the Kishon, when a new enemy appeared in the

south. The Philistines, who had planted themselves on the sea-coast

shortly before the Israelites had invaded the inland, now turned their

arms against the new-comers, and contended with them for the possession

of the country. The descendants of Jacob were already exhausted by

struggle after struggle with the populations which surrounded them.

Moabites and Midianites, Ammonites and Bedâwin, even the king of distant

Mesopotamia, had sacked their villages, had overrun their fields, and

exacted tribute from the Israelitish tribes. The tribes themselves had

lost coherence; they had ranged themselves under different "judges" or

"deliverers," had forgotten their common origin and common faith, and

had even plunged into interfraternal war. Joshua was scarcely dead

before the tribe of Benjamin was almost exterminated by its brethren;

and a few generations later, the warriors of Ephraim, the stalwart

champion of Israel, were massacred by the Israelites east of the Jordan.

In the south, a new tribe, Judah, had arisen out of various

elements--Hebrew, Kenite, and Edomite; and it was not long before there

was added to the cleavage between the tribes on the two banks of the

Jordan, the further and more lasting cleavage between Judah and the

tribes of the north. Israel was a house divided against itself, and

planted in the midst of foes.

It needed a head, a leader who should bring its discordant elements into

peace and order, and lead its united forces against the common enemy.

Monarchy alone could save it from destruction. The theocracy had failed,

the authority of the high-priests and of the Law they administered was

hardly felt beyond Shiloh; an age of war and anarchy required military

rather than religious control. The Israelites were passing through the

same experience as other kindred members of the Semitic race. In Assyria

the high-priests of Assur had been succeeded by kings; in southern

Arabia the high-priest had similarly been superseded by the king, and

the kings of Edom had but recently taken the place of _alûphîm_ or

"dukes."

The first attempt to found a monarchy was made by the northern tribes.

Jerubbaal, the conqueror of the Midianites, established his power among

the mixed Hebrew and Canaanite inhabitants of Ophrah and Shechem, and

his son Abimelech by a Canaanitish wife received the title of king. But

the attempt was premature. The kingdom of Manasseh passed away with

Abimelech; the other tribes were not yet ready to acknowledge the

supremacy of a chieftain who was not sprung from themselves, and

Abimelech, moreover, was half-Canaanitish by descent.

The pressure of Philistine conquest at last forced the Israelites with a

common voice to "demand a king." Reinforced by bodies of their kinsfolk

from Krete and the islands of the Greek seas, the Philistines poured

over the frontier of Judah, plundering and destroying as they went. At

first they were contented with raids; but the raids gradually passed

into a continuous warfare and a settled purpose to conquer Canaan, and

reduce it to tribute from one end to the other. The Israelitish forces

were annihilated in a decisive battle, the ark of the covenant was taken

by the heathen, and the two sons of the high-priest perished on the

field of battle. The Philistine army marched northward into the heart of

the mountains of Ephraim, the sanctuary of Shiloh was destroyed and its

priesthood dispersed. It was not long before the Philistine domination

was acknowledged throughout the Israelitish territory on the western

side of the Jordan, and Canaan became Palestine, "the land of the

Philistines."

In the more inaccessible parts of Benjamin, indeed, a few Israelites

still maintained a fitful independence, and Samuel, the representative

of the traditions of Shiloh, was allowed to judge his own people, and

preside over a Naioth or "monastery" of dervish-like prophets under the

eye of a Philistine garrison. Israel seemed about to disappear from

among the nations of the world.

But it had not yet wholly forgotten that it was a single people, the

descendants of a common forefather, sharers in a common history, and

above all, worshippers of the same God. In their extremity the

Israelites called for a king. Saul, the Benjamite of Gibeah, was

elected, and events soon proved the wisdom of the choice. Jabesh-gilead

was rescued from the Ammonite king, the Philistine garrisons were driven

out of the centre of the country, and, for a time at least, a large part

of the Israelitish territory was cleared of its enemies. Saul was able

to turn his arms against the Amalekite marauders of the desert, as well

as the princes of Zobah to the north-east of Ammon.

But the Philistine war still continued. Saul had incorporated in his

body-guard a young shepherd of Beth-lehem in Judah of the name of David.

David showed himself a brave and skilful soldier, and quickly rose to

high command in the Hebrew army, and to be the son-in-law of Saul. His

victories over the Philistines were celebrated in popular songs, and the

king began to suspect him of aiming at the throne. He was forced to fly

for his life, and to hide among the mountain fastnesses of Judah, where

his boyhood had been spent. Here he became a brigand-chief, outlaws and

adventurers gathering around him, and exacting food from the richer

landowners. Saul pursued him in vain; David slipped out of his hands

time after time, thanks to the nature of the country in which he had

taken refuge; and the only result of the pursuit was to open the road

once more to Philistine invasion. Meanwhile David and his followers had

left the Israelitish territory, and offered their services to Achish of

Gath; the Philistine prince enrolled them in his body-guard and settled

them in the town of Ziklag.

Saul and the priests were now at open war. Samuel, perhaps naturally,

had quarrelled with the king who had superseded his authority, and had

espoused the cause of David. We are told, indeed, that he had anointed

David as king in the place of Saul. When, therefore, David escaped from

the court, Saul accused the Shilonite priests who were established at

Nob of intentionally aiding the rebel. The high-priest vainly protested

their innocence, but the furious king refused to listen, and the priests

were massacred in cold blood. Abiathar, the son of the murdered

high-priest, alone escaped to David to tell the tale. He carried with

him the sacred ephod through which the will of Yahveh was made known,

and from henceforth the influence of the priesthood was thrown against

the king.

Saul had lost his best general, who had gone over to the enemy; he had

employed his troops in hunting a possible rival through the Judæan wilds

when they ought to have been guarding the frontier against the national

foe, and the whole force of Israelitish religion had been turned against

him. There was little cause for wonder, therefore, that the Philistine

armies again marched into the Israelitish kingdom, and made their way

northward along the coast into the plain of Jezreel. A battle on the

slopes of Jezreel decided the fate of Israel. The Hebrew army was cut to

pieces, and Saul and his sons were slain. One only survived, Esh-baal,

too young or too feeble to take part in the fight. Esh-baal was carried

across the Jordan by Abner and the relics of the Israelitish forces, and

there proclaimed king at Mahanaim. The Philistines became undisputed

masters of Israel west of the Jordan, while their tributary vassal,

David, was proclaimed King of Judah at Hebron. His nephew Joab was made

commander-in-chief.

War soon broke out between David and Esh-baal. Esh-baal grew continually

weaker, and his general Abner intrigued with David to betray him into

the hands of the Jewish king. Abner, however, was slain by Joab while in

the act of carrying out his treason, but Esh-baal was murdered shortly

afterwards by two of his servants. David declared himself his successor,

and claimed rule over all Israel.

This brought him into conflict with his Philistine overlords. It was

equivalent to revolt, and the Philistine army swept the lowlands of

Judah. David fled from Hebron and took refuge in his old retreat. Here

he organised his forces; the Philistines were defeated in battle after

battle, and David not only succeeded in driving them out of Judah and

Israel, but in carrying the war into their own country. The Philistine

cities were conquered, and soldiers from Gath, where David had himself

once served as a mercenary, were drafted into the body-guard of the

Hebrew sovereign.

Before the Philistine war was over, Jerusalem had fallen into David's

hands. The stronghold of the Jebusites was one of the last of the

Canaanitish cities to surrender to the Israelites. Its older inhabitants

were allowed to live in it side by side with colonists from Judah and

Benjamin. The city itself was made the capital of the kingdom. Its

central position, its natural strength, and its independence of the

history of any special tribe, all combined to justify the choice. Here

David built his palace, and planned the erection of a temple to Yahveh.

Meanwhile the kingdom of Israel was passing into an empire. Joab and his

veterans gained victory after victory, and the Hebrew army became what

the Assyrian army was in later days, the most highly disciplined and

irresistible force in western Asia. Moab and Ammon were subdued; the

Aramaic kinglets to the north-east were made tributaries, and the

kingdom of Zobah, which had risen on the ruins of the Hittite power, was

overthrown. The limits of David's rule were extended to the banks of the

Euphrates, and the Syrians on either side of the river were utterly

crushed. Even Edom, which had successfully defied the Pharaohs in the

days of Egyptian greatness, was compelled to submit to the Jewish

conqueror; its male population was mercilessly massacred, and its ports

on the Gulf of Suez fell into Israelitish hands. In the north Hamath

made alliance with the new power that had arisen in the Oriental world,

while Hiram of Tyre was glad to call himself the friend of the

Israelitish king, and to furnish him with skilled workmen and articles

of luxury.

The latter years of David were troubled by revolts which had their

origin partly in the polygamy in which he had indulged, partly in the

discontent of a people still imperfectly welded together, and restless

under military conscription. His son Solomon secured his throne by

putting to death all possible rivals or opponents, including the

grey-haired Joab. Solomon was cultured and well-educated, but his

culture was selfish, and his extravagance knew no bounds. Palaces were

built at Jerusalem in imitation of those of Phoenicia or Egypt, and

Phoenician architects and artisans erected there a sumptuous temple in

honour of the national God. Trade was encouraged and developed: the

possession of the Edomite seaports gave Solomon the command of the

Arabian trade, while his alliance with Hiram opened to him the harbours

of the Mediterranean coast. But the wealth which David had accumulated,

the tribute of the conquered provinces, and the trading monopolies of

the king himself did not suffice for the extravagance of his

expenditure, and heavy fiscal burdens had to be laid on the Israelitish

tribes. Disaffection grew up everywhere except in Judah, where the king

resided, and where the wealth raised elsewhere was spent.

Revolts broke out in Edom and the north. Garrisons, indeed, were planted

in Zobah, which secured the caravan road through Tadmor or Palmyra to

the Euphrates; but Damascus was lost, and became in a few years a

formidable adversary of Israel. The death of Solomon was the signal for

a revolt in Palestine itself. The northern tribes under Jeroboam

separated from Judah and established a kingdom of their own, while Judah

and Benjamin remained faithful to the house of David and to the capital,

which lay on the frontier of both. The Levites also naturally attached

themselves to the kingdom which contained the great national sanctuary,

and to the royal family whose chapel it was. The disruption of the

monarchy necessarily brought with it the fall of the empire; Moab,

however, continued to be tributary to the northern kingdom and Edom to

that of Judah.

Five years after the accession of Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, the

kingdom of Judah seemed in danger of perishing altogether. Shishak, the

Egyptian Pharaoh, invaded the country and sacked Jerusalem itself. But

Jeroboam lost the opportunity thus afforded him of extending his rule

over the south; his own territories had been partially overrun by the

Egyptians, and he was probably not in a position to commence a war.

Judah had time to recover; the walls of Jerusalem were rebuilt, and the

Arabian trade soon supplied it with fresh resources.

The long and prosperous reign of Asa, the grandson of Rehoboam, placed

the line of David on a solid foundation. The Jewish kingdom was compact;

its capital was central, and was not only a strongly-fortified fortress,

but also an ancient and venerable sanctuary. As time went on feelings of

respect and affection gathered round the royal house; the people of

Judah identified it with themselves, and looked back with pride and

regret to the glorious days of David and Solomon. Religion, moreover,

lent its sanction to the Davidic dynasty. The Levitical priesthood had

its centre in the temple which had been built by Solomon, and was, as it

were, the private chapel of his descendants; here were preserved the

rites and traditions of the Mosaic Law, and the ark of the covenant

between Israel and its God. The northern kingdom, on the contrary, had

none of these elements of stability. The first king was a rebel, who had

no glorious past behind him, no established priesthood to support his

throne, no capital even, around which all his subjects could rally. The

sword had given him his crown, and the sword was henceforth the arbiter

of his kingdom. The conservative forces which were strong in Judah were

absent in the north; there the army became more and more powerful, and

its generals dethroned princes and established short-lived dynasties.

Northern Israel, moreover, was not homogeneous; the tribes on the two

sides of the Jordan were never welded together like the inhabitants of

Judah, and the divergence of interests that had once existed between

them was never wholly forgotten.

Israel perished while Judah survived. Dynasty after dynasty had arisen

in it; its capital had been shifted from time to time; it did not even

possess a religious centre. Before a line of kings had time to win the

loyalty of the people they were swept away by revolution, and the army

became the dominating power in the state. There was no body of priests

to preserve the memory of the Mosaic Law and insist upon its observance,

and the prophets who took their place protested in vain against the

national apostasy. Alliance with the neighbouring kingdom of Phoenicia

brought with it the worship of the Phoenician Baal, and Yahveh was

forsaken for a foreign god. In B.C. 722 Samaria, the later capital of

the country, was taken by the Assyrian king Sargon, and northern Israel

ceased to be a nation.

Judah, on the other hand, successfully defied the Assyrian power. The

invasion of Sennacherib was rolled back from the walls of Jerusalem, and

though the Jewish kings paid tribute to Nineveh, they were left in

possession of their territories. Edom, indeed, had long since been lost,

and with it the trade with the Arabian seas, but the Philistines

continued to acknowledge the supremacy of Judah, and commercial

relations were kept up with Egypt. It was not until the Babylonian

empire of Nebuchadrezzar had arisen on the ruins of that of Assyria that

Jerusalem and its temple were destroyed, and the Davidic dynasty passed

away. But they had accomplished their work; a nation had been created

which through exile and disaster still maintained its religion and its

characteristics, and was prepared, when happier days should come, to

return again to its old home, to rebuild the temple, and carry out all

the ordinances of its faith. From henceforth Judah realised its mission

as a peculiar people, separated from the rest of the world, whose

instructor in religion it was to be. More and more it ceased to be a

nation and became a race--a race, moreover, which had its roots in a

common religious history, a common faith, and a common hope. Israel

according to the flesh became Israel according to the spirit.

[Footnote 1: See Pinches in the _Journal_ of the Royal Asiatic Society,

July 1897. In a tablet belonging to a period long before that of

Abraham, Isma-ilu or Ishmael is given as the name of an "Amorite" slave

from Palestine (Thureau-Dangin, _Tablettes chaldéennes inédites_, p.

10).]