Ixviii. PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 



HISTORY. 



A flood of light has been thrown upon Oriental history since 

 my anniversary address in 1892, when I passed it under review, 

 especially with regard to that of the Babylonian, Egyptian, and 

 Ilittite. The discovery of Tel-el -Amarna has revolutionised our ideas 

 of ancient Oriental life. Tel-el-Amarna is a long line of mounds 

 which extend along the eastern bank of the Nile, about mid-way 

 between the towns of Minieh and Assiout. They mark the site 

 of a city which for a short time played an important part in 

 Egyptian history. The Pharaoh Amenophis III., of the eighteenth 

 dynasty, owing to internal disasters, retired from Thebes and 

 built a new capital at Tel-el-Amarna, and carried with him the 

 official correspondence received by his father and himself. The 

 letters were all written upon clay in the cuneiform characters of 

 Babylonia. The excavations of Dr. Flinders Petrie show how 

 many Babylonian torms had made their way into the language 

 of Egypt. Amenophis, who changed his name to Khu-en-Aten, 

 reigned about 150 years before the Pharaoh of the Exodus. 

 The tablets of Tel-el-Amarna reveal to us that the population of 

 Western Asia in the age of Moses was as highly cultivated 

 and literary as those of Western Europe in the age of the 

 Renaissance. They go as far back as Sargon of Accad, and prove 

 that Ur, the city of Babylonia, and Haran far away to the North, 

 in Mesopotamia, were connected from a very remote period with 

 each other ; both had temples dedicated to the Moon-god. A 

 native, therefore, of Ur, would find himself perfectly at home at 

 Haran. The tablets of Tel-el-Amarna fix the age to which 

 Abraham belongs. Arioch has left monuments of himself in the 

 bricks of Chaldea. Mr. Pinches has recently discovered a 

 cuneiform tablet on which mention is made not only of Chedor- 

 laomer, but also of his confederate Tidal (see Gen. xiv.) The 

 name Shinar, the king of Admah, one of the Babylonian kings, 

 who opposed them, finds its confirmation in a cuneiform inscrip- 

 tion. The early history of Jerusalem before the Israelitish 

 conquest was unknown. The story of Melchizedek, the priest- 



