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PRESIDENT'S ADDBESS. Ixix. 



king, stood alone unsupported by any fragment of antiquity that 

 had come down to us, and accordingly it was counted to be 

 unhistorical. The mention of the kings of the Hittites in the 

 account of the Siege of Samaria by the Syrians (IT. Kings, 

 vii., 6) was declared to be an error ; now it is shown that it was 

 the ignorance of the critic himself that was at fault. The early 

 traditions of Greece had also been made the subject of 

 destructive criticism until Dr. Schliemann brought to light the 

 buried empire of Agamemnon, its intercourse with the Egyptians, 

 the Phoenicians of Canaan, and the Hittites of Asia Minor. The 

 discoveries of Petrie in the Fayum and at Tel-el-Amarna have 

 settled the date of the remains found at Mycenae and Tiryns 

 by showing that the pottery which characterises them belongs 

 to the age of the 18th and 19th dynasties, of which the most 

 famous monarchs were Thothmes III., who reigned from 1503 

 B.C. to 1449 B.C., and Ramses II. from 1348 B.C. to 1281 

 B.C. The tablets show that the Babylonian language was known 

 to the people of Canaan, and when Abraham entered that country 

 the inhabitants were familiar with the literature, history, and 

 tradition of his native country, and in his days the king claimed 

 to rule over Canaan. We have seen that Chedorlaomer, king of 

 Elam and lord of the kings of Babylonia, marched to punish his 

 rebellious subjects in Canaan. The Patriarch had not, therefore, 

 escaped beyond Babylonian control. It is well to dwell upon this 

 fact, as it has only recently dawned upon us, and is one of the 

 many gains that the decipherments of the cuneiform inscriptions 

 have brought in support of the Bible. It is found that Abraham 

 did not migrate into an unknown region among a people of a 

 different civilisation. The spot on which the sacrifice of Abraham 

 was offered had been the seat of a kingdom in the old Canaanitish 

 days. The king was the priest of the god who was worshipped 

 there. The list of Palestinian cities conquered by Thothmes III. 

 and recorded by the Egyptian monarch on the walls of Karnac 

 contains an indication of the sanctity of the spot. We know from 

 the tablets of Tel-el-Amarna that Jerusalem was an important 



