16 EEV. A. H. SAYCE, M.A., LL.D. 



points in which the tablets of Tel el- A mama have come to 

 the aid of the student of ancient history. Thus light is thrown 

 upon the pronunciation of ancient Egyptian by such spellings 

 as Nimutriya and Nimmuriya for the prasnomen of Ameno- 

 phis III., hitherto read Ra-mat-neb and Ra-ma-neb; and the 

 etymology I proposed for the name of Moses, in my Hibbert 

 Lectures,* has received a striking verification. I had there 

 pointed out that the name is the exact equivalent of the Baby- 

 lonian word, Masu, " a hero/' an epithet which I tried to 

 show was applied to the Sun-god. Within a year after the 

 publication of my Lectures, one of M. Bouriant's tablets 

 showed that my conclusions were right. In a despatch from 

 Zinarpi to the Egyptian king, the Pharaoh is called, as 

 usual, " the Sun-god rising from the Divine Day " ; and it is 

 then added, in a parenthesis, ' ' whose name is Masu." This 

 proves not only that the term " Masu " was applied to the 

 Sun-god, but was actually used of the Egyptian Pharaoh in 

 the century before Moses was born. It may be that later ages 

 confounded the Semitic " Masu " with the Egyptian mesu, " a 

 son," and the Hebrew " Mosheh," or Moses, with " Mes," "the 

 Prince of Kush," in the reign of Rameses II., thus originating 

 the legend, recorded by Josephus, of the campaign of Moses 

 in Ethiopia ; but it is impossible to believe that the great 

 law-giver of the Hebrew nation could have continued to bear 

 through life an Egyptian name. 



But, apart from such side-lights as these upon ancient 

 history, apart also from the more important facts which have 

 already resulted from an examination of the texts, the dis- 

 covery of the tablets of Tel el-Amarna has a lesson for us of 

 momentous interest. The collection cannot be the only one 

 of its kind. Elsewhere in Palestine and Syria, as well as in 

 Egypt, similar collections must still be lying under the soil. 

 Burnt clay is not injured by rain and moisture, and even the 

 climate of Palestine will have preserved uninjured its libraries 

 of clay. Such libraries must still be awaiting the spade of 

 the excavator on the sites of places like Gaza or Kirjath- 

 Sepher, or others whose remains are buried under the lofty 

 mounds of Southern Judsea. Why should Palestine, the 

 sacred land of our faith, remain unexcavated, while all over 

 the rest of the ancient Oriental world the disinterrers of the 

 past have been vieing with one another with feverish activity ? 

 Why should workmen and funds be found for exhuming the 

 buried history of early Greece, while the religious public is 

 content with surveying the surface of the soil of Palestine ? 



* On the Religion of the Ancient Babylonians. 



