THE CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTIONS OP TEL EL-AMARNA. 15 



history of the past had become traditional and mythical. But 

 this assumption can no longer be maintained. Long before 

 the Exodus, Canaan had its libraries and its scribes, its 

 schools and literary men. The annals of the country, it is 

 true, were not inscribed in the letters of the Phoenician 

 alphabet on perishable papyrus ; the writing-material was the 

 imperishable clay, the characters those of the cuneiform 

 syllabary. A new light is thus thrown on royal lists like that 

 contained in Genesis xxxvi. Why should this not be an 

 extract from the chronicles of Edom originally written in the 

 cuneiform syllabary of Babylonia ? A connection with 

 Babylonia is indicated by the statement that Saul came from 

 " Eehoboth " or " the city-streets by the river" Euphrates, 

 more especially when it is remembered that Saul, or Sawul, is 

 the Babylonian name of the Sun-god. Though Kirjath- 

 Sepher was destroyed by the Israelites, other cities mentioned 

 in the Tel el-Amarna tablets, like Gaza, or Gath, or Tyre, 

 remained independent, and we cannot imagine that the old 

 traditions of culture and writing were forgotten in any of 

 them. In what is asserted by the critical school to be the 

 oldest relic of Hebrew literature, the Song of Deborah, 

 reference is made to the scribes of Zebulon " that handle 

 the pen of the writer " (Judges v. 14), and we have now no 

 longer any reason to interpret the words in a non-natural 

 sense, and transform the scribe into a military commander. 

 Only it is probable that the scribes still made use of the 

 cuneiform syllabary, and not yet of the Phoenician alphabet. 



In the hands of writers like Stade, criticism has reached the 

 extreme point of scepticism; and, just as in early Greek 

 history, the discoveries of Schliemann and others have 

 obliged us to re-consider the negative judgments of twenty 

 years ago, and to admit a substratum of truth in the old 

 traditions, so, too, we may confidently hope that archa3ological 

 discovery will, before long, enable us to reconstruct that 

 history of Israel of which modern criticism would fain 

 deprive us. At all events, the Tel el-Amarna tablets have 

 overthrown the primary foundation on which much of this 

 criticism was built, and have proved that the populations of 

 Palestine among whom the Israelites settled, and whose 

 culture they inherited, were as literary as the inhabitants of 

 Egypt or Babylonia. If we are to doubt the statement that 

 Othniel, the Kenizzite, took the city of Kirjath-Sepher and 

 defeated the forces of the king of Aram-Naharaim, it must 

 be for some better reason than the literary ignorance of the 

 Hebrews and the neighbouring tribes. 



It is impossible for me now to touch upon the many other 



