BABYLONIAN THE LINGUA FRANCA 353 



the IVth or Vth Dynasties there were overland relations 

 between Egypt and Chaldea.^ 



{b) Petrie 2 places the beginning of the invasion of Egypt 

 by the Semites about 3400 b.c. When referring to a painting 

 of one of these Princes of the Desert named Absha coming 

 into Egypt, he writes that " though 1000 years before Abram " 

 (whom he himself dates about 2100 b.c.) " he was one of the 

 same race : it is therefore invaluable as an historical type of 

 the great Semitic invasion." Evidence from Egyptian sources 

 seems to show that before and after the conquest by the 

 Hyksos, Semitic invasions occurred after the Vlth Dynasty 

 and again c. 2250 B.C. 



Petrie, on the strength of the cylinder of Khendy and the 

 tablet of Khenzerm — two Babylonians " who rose to the 

 throne of Egypt " — concludes that an invasion from Syro- 

 Mesopotamia took place in the XlVth Dynasty, say 2800 b.c. 



(c) It is not, however, till the XVIIIth Dynasty, c. 1400 b.c, 

 that we reach firm ground for fixing the first point of direct 

 historical contact between Babylonia and Egypt. 



Authority for this dating is found in the famous tablets 

 brought to light in 1887 at Tel-el-Amarna, which include 

 letters from the rulers of Babylonia and Assyria to Amenhotep 

 III. and his son Akhenaton. Apart from the historical value 

 of their presumptive indication of an earher intercourse, the 

 discovery discloses three points of great interest. 



First, the fact that these were written in Babylonian 

 shows that this language had already become the lingua franca 

 of the civilised world. Second, a more human personal note, 

 the probability from the red dots (still visible) made by some 

 Egyptian with a reed for the purpose of marking the divisions 

 of the foreign words, that the acquisition of this lingua franca 

 was advisable, perhaps necessary, to qualification for a clerkship 

 or an embassy. Third, that Babylonian literature had found 

 its way among the nations which used its language. 



Of this we have conclusive evidence in two documents. 



J Egyptian Archceology (1902), p. 366. 



- Historical Studies (London, 1910), II. p. 22. Others would make the 

 invasion about 2466. 



