398 ROD NOT EMPLOYED— REASONS 



King, Rogers, and Jastrow in their later works have seem- 

 ingly adopted the date arrived at by Kugler from stellar 

 researches for the first Babylonian Dynasty. If Abram were, 

 as is now thought, the contemporary of Hammurabi, his 

 flitting must have occurred between 2120 and 2080 B.C., but 

 since Egyptian chronology beyond the fifteenth century is 

 fluid, and no early positive synchronisms with Babylon survive, 

 we cannot definitely designate any particular king in Egypt 

 as the contemporary of either Hammurabi or Abram. 



The Bible is our main authority for the continuance of the 

 association. The stories of Jacob, of Joseph (in whose title 

 Ahrek ^ some detect a Babylonian influence and a connection 

 with that of Abara-rakku, the designation of one of the five 

 great officers of state), and of Moses, are but episodes of an 

 intercourse which, if we begin with Abram and end with 

 Onias, lasted (with intervals of war and invasion) for some 

 2000 years. 



Evidence of intercourse crops up again and again through- 

 out the four centuries of the Jewish Monarchy. Thus we 

 read (i Kings iii. i) of the marriage of Solomon with the 

 daughter of Pharaoh. From Solomon's reign onward till the 

 birth of Christ and long afterwards, the connection between 

 Egypt and Israel, friendly or hostile, never fails. The flight 

 of Jeroboam to Shishak (i Kings xi. 40) and the giving of 

 presents, probably tribute, by Hosea to the King of Egypt 

 (2 Kings xvii. 4) present but two instances. 



Papyri recently discovered prove the settlement near 

 Assouan of a considerable Jewish, or rather, more correctly, 

 Palestinian colony from (say) 500-400 B.C. This, like the 

 similar but older community at Tahpanhes, exhibits a mart 

 of wide and keen trading. The papyri " show that the 

 Aramaic — the common language of Syria — was regularly used 

 at Syene (Assouan), and we readily see how five cities in the land 

 of Egypt speak the language of Canaan and swear to Yahweh 



sojourn in Goshen. The name used by the older sources is Ibrim, probably 

 identical with the Egyptian word Aperu or Apriu. 



1 This is probably a shortening of the Sumero-Babylonian Abarrakku, 

 equalling seer. H. de Genou iliac was the first to connect the word with the 

 Hebrew Abrek, in his Tablettes Sumeriennes Avchaiques. 



