200 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY 



the Noachian Deluge, and therefore civilised from 

 the first ; and though we have no certain evidence of 

 letters before the Flood, except the statement of the 

 author of the Babylonian deluge tablets, that Noah 

 hid written archives at Sippara before going into 

 the ark, yet it is quite certain that men who could 

 build Noah's ship are not unworthy ancestors of the 

 Phoenician seamen, who probably launched their barks 

 on the Mediterranean before the death of Noah himself. 

 Thus, whatever value we may attach to the record 

 in Genesis, we cannot refuse to admit that it is 

 thoroughly consistent with itself and with the testi- 

 mony of the oldest monuments of Asia and Africa, 

 as it is also with the evidence of the geological 

 changes of the pleistocene and early modern 

 epoch. 



In like manner the Egyptian inscriptions of the 

 conquests of Thothmes III. give us a pre-Mosaic 

 record of Palestinian geography corresponding with 

 that of the Hebrew conquest, and the pictures of 

 sieges coincide with the excavations of Petrie at 

 Lachish in restoring those Canaanite towns, ' walled 

 up to heaven/ which excited the fear of the Israelites. 

 Neither can we scoff at the illiteracy of men who 

 were carrying on diplomatic correspondence in written 

 despatches before Genesis itself was compiled. Nor 

 can we doubt the military prowess of these people, 

 their chariot forces, their sculptured idols and 

 images, their wealth of gold and silver, their agri- 

 cultural and artistic skill. All these are amply 



