6 REV. A. H. SAYCE, M.A., LL.D. 



while the Israelites destroyed the cities and culture of the 

 Canaanites, already exhausted, as they were, by the Hittite 

 invasion and the campaigns of the Egyptian Pharaoh. We 

 know from the Old Testament that Kirjath-Sepher, with its 

 library, was one of the cities smitten by Othniel, never to rise 

 again (Joshua xv. ; Judges i.). A knowledge of cuneiform 

 writing ceased to extend westward of the Euphrates, and for 

 a while the inhabitants of Syria had to be content with the 

 hieroglyphs of the Hittites. But it was not long before the 

 practical traders of Phoenicia devised a better means of re- 

 cording their thoughts or registering their cargoes than 

 the cumbrous pictorial forms which the mountaineers of the 

 Taurus had brought with them. The characters of the 

 Egyptian alphabet were borrowed in their hieratic form, and 

 adapted to the needs of the borrowers. In the tenth century 

 before our era, the Phoenician alphabet comes before us already 

 fully formed. 



Among the Tel el-Amarna tablets now in Berlin and 

 London are some from the Babylonian king Burna-buryas, 

 the son of Kuri-galzu, who reigned about 1430 B.C. But the 

 larger part of them are written by persons who were in no 

 way connected with Babylonia, and to whom therefore Baby- 

 lonian was a foreign language. A considerable number are 

 despatches from Egyptian officers in Palestine and Syria, 

 many of whom bear Semitic names. They throw a curious 

 and unexpected light on the inner history of the country in 

 the age when " the Canaanite was still in the land." 



In the present paper, however, I intend to confine myself 

 to the tablets belonging to M. Bouriant and to the Boulaq 

 Museum which I have myself examined and copied. They 

 include some of the most important contained in the whole 

 collection. 



Those relating to Palestine first claim our attention. They 

 bear out the evidence of the Egyptian monuments, and indi- 

 cate that the cities of Palestine acknowledged the suzerainty 

 of the Egyptian sovereign. The affairs of Phoenicia were 

 directed by an Egyptian governor, who bears the Semitic 

 name of Rib-Addu or Rib-Hadad, and who was assisted by 

 Yapa-Addu and Aziru.* Several of his despatches relate to 

 the city of Tsumura or Simyra, the Zemar of Gen. x. 18, 

 which he describes in one of them as " very strongly situated, 

 like a bird whose nest is built on a precipice/' At the end 



* The name of Rib-Adda may also be read Rip-Dadu. Yapa-Addu, or 

 Dadu, is probably " Hadad is beautiful " (from pa') 5 and Aziru seems to be 

 the Biblical -tf. 



