Ixx. PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 



city, and that it had submitted to the Pharaoh. The picture of 

 Canaan shown by the Tel-el-Amarna tablets has been sup- 

 plemented by the excavations of Prof. Flinders Petrie, which 

 have resulted in the discoveries of successive cities, built one upon 

 the ruins of the other, and it is probable that the lowest stratum was 

 the Lachish of the Amorite period, and the pottery reveals for the 

 first time the characteristics of Amorite manufacture. Its huge 

 walls were 29 feet high, which bears out the testimony of the 

 Israelitish spies. Here Prof. Petrie found a regular series of 

 pottery, and to him belongs the credit of determining the 

 characteristics of the various strata and fixing their approximate 

 age. In the cuneiform letters of Tel-el-Amarna, Ebed Tob, the 

 native king of Jerusalem and vassal of Pharaoh, made urgent 

 appeals for help, which could not be afforded him, as his suzerain 

 was himself in difficulties, and subsequently Ebed Tob, along with 

 his capital, was captured. It was this event which made 

 Jerusalem a Jebusite city. Ebed Tob held a position which was 

 unlike any other Egyptian governor in Canaan. He had been 

 confirmed in his post, not by the Pharaoh, but by the oracle and 

 power of the God whose sanctuary stood on the summit of 

 Mount Moriah. It was not from his father or from his mother 

 that he inherited this dignity. He was king of Jerusalem because 

 he was the priest of his god. In one of his letters to Pharaoh he 

 says " Behold, neither my father nor my mother have exalted me 

 to this place, but the arm of the mighty king established me in 

 the house of my father." The " Mighty King" is distinguished 

 from the king of Egypt. The etymology of Jerusalem shows 

 that it was a sacred city from the beginning, and we can under- 

 stand why Abraham paid tithes to its priestly ruler out of the 

 spoils of war. Does it not follow that the history of Melcliizedek 

 and his reception of Abraham may have been derived from a 

 cuneiform record of the age to which it refers, and does not its 

 occurrence with what we now know to have been an historical fact 

 make it probable that such was the case 1 When Abraham 

 migrated to Palestine, the Canaanites inhabited the lowlands, and 



