THE DISPERSION 199 



nations of Semitic or mixed blood, the Moabites, 

 Ammonites, Edomites, Ishmaelites, &c., whom we 

 find figuring in the Egyptian monuments as yellow 

 or brownish people with a Jewish style of features, 

 and all of whom, as mentioned above, would be known 

 to the Egyptians and Canaanites as ' Hebrews.' l 



Thus the monuments confirm the Jewish record, 

 and the confusion which some ethnologists have 

 introduced into the matter arises from their applying 

 in an arbitrary manner the special tests of physical 

 and philological characteristics, and neglecting to 

 distinguish the primary migrations of men from sub- 

 sequent intrusions. 



Another singular point of agreement is that, just 

 as in Egypt we find men civilised from the first, so 

 we find elsewhere. In Egypt writing and literature 

 date from before the time of Abraham. In like 

 manner we have no monumental evidence of any 

 time when the Accadian people of Babylonia were 

 destitute of writing and science, and we now find 

 that there were learned scribes in all the cities of 

 Canaan, and that the Phoenicians and Southern 

 Arabians knew their alphabet ages before Moses, 

 while even the Greeks seem to have known alpha- 

 betic writing long before the Mosaic age. 2 These 

 men, in short, were descendants of the survivors of 



1 This is independent of the question whether we regard the name 

 Eber as that of an ancestor, or merely of men from beyond the 

 Euphrates. 



2 Petrie, Tllahun, Kahun and Garob, 1891. 



