1 78 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY 



frontiers of Egypt to x Asia Minor on the north, and 

 to the Euphrates on the east, came great numbers of 

 despatches to the Pharaoh, and these were written 

 not on papyrus or skin, but on tablets of clay har- 

 dened by baking, and the writing was not that of 

 Egypt, but the arrow-head script of Chaldea, which 

 seems at this time to have been the current writing 

 throughout Western Asia. 1 



The scribes of the Egyptian king read these docu- 

 ments, answered them as directed by their master, 

 docketed them, and laid them up for reference ; and, 

 strange to say, a few years ago, Arabs, digging in 

 the old mounds, brought them to light, and we have 

 before us, translated into English, a great number 

 of letters, written from cities of Palestine and its 

 vicinity about a hundred years before the Exodus, 

 and giving us word-pictures of the politics and con- 

 flicts of the Canaanites and Hittites and other 

 peoples, long before Joshua came in contact with 

 them. Among other things in this correspondence, 

 we find remarkable confirmation of the sacred and 

 political influence of Jerusalem, which the Bible pre- 

 sents to us in the widely separated stories of Mel- 

 chisedec, king of Salem, in the time of Abraham, 



1 It is possible, however, that it may really have been a language 

 of diplomacy merely, and may have been used by the Semitic agents 

 of Amunoph as a cipher to communicate with the Egyptian court, 

 and which could not be read by messengers or enemies acquainted 

 only with Hittite or Egyptian hieroglyphics or with the Phoenician 

 characters. For a similar case see 2 Kings xviii. 26. 



