1 84 THE ARAB THE HORSE OF THE FUTURE 



an ancient Hebrew sepulchral tablet in the British 

 Museum, brought from Aden, which is in the ancient 

 Hebrew characters, and that, while the characters 

 of the inscriptions on Mount Sinai are mostly 

 Hebrew, the language they utter is the old Arabic. 

 This shows how very close was the connection ; in 

 fact, it has been said that the Arabian thread runs 

 through the long lines of earth's history almost 

 since the Flood ; and it has also been said that the 

 Arabic language is of primeval antiquity, and prior 

 to all of the other Semitic tongues. 



The Assyrians were allied in blood and language 

 to the Arabs, and they were frequently fighting one 

 another. Sennacherib, King of Assyria, in a trans- 

 lation given by Professor Sayce of a despatch of 

 his, says that Hezekiah of Judah sent to him ' the 

 Arabs whom he had brought for the defence of 

 Jerusalem.' And the Professor also says that 

 Sennacherib's son Esar-haddon sent an expedition 

 'into the heart of Northern Arabia,' and that his 

 son Assur-bani-pal chastised the ' tribes of Northern 

 Arabia,' but that afterwards Babylonia, Egypt, 

 Palestine, and Arabia, made common cause, and 

 delivered Egypt from the Assyrian yoke. The 

 Professor also gives an inscription of Sargon, King 

 of Assyria, which states that he slaughtered certain 

 * distant Arab tribes,' which he enumerates. 



Job was Arab, as were also his three friends. He 

 was an Arab Sheikh who lived on the edge of the 

 desert and thoroughly knew the desert and its 



