PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. Ixxi. 



the Ammonites and Hittites the highlands. Before many genera- 

 tions had passed, Moab and Ammon, the children of his nephew, 

 took the eastern tableland, while Edom settled in Mount Seir. 

 Before the patriarchal age came to an end, Egyptian, Babylonian, 

 and Hittite mingled with the earlier races. It may turn out that an 

 earlier stratum of literature than was supposed in its origin is 

 partly Babylonian, partly Aramaic, partly Edomite, and partly 

 Canaanitish, and which may be proved to be the true source of 

 the Book of Genesis. The question, both of age and authenticity, 

 will be required to be decided upon evidence which the archae- 

 ologist alone can s apply, and if he can show that it has the 

 elements of which the Biblical history is composed, the historian 

 has secured all that he requires, and the Book of Genesis will take 

 rank by the side of other monuments of the past as a record of 

 events which have actually happened and been handed down by 

 credible men. It will cease to be mutilated and fitted together 

 again according to the dictates of modern philology, and will 

 become a collection of ancient documents which have all the value 

 of contemporaneous testimony. Oriental discovery in many 

 instances shows that such documents actually exist in it, and that 

 the statements they contain are as worthy of belief as the in- 

 scriptions of Babylonia or Egypt. Soon after came the fall of 

 Khu-en Aten, which happened within 150 years before the reign 

 of the Pharaoh of the Exodus, the date of which has at last been 

 settled by Egyptological records. There is now only one period in 

 Egyptian history when it could have taken place, and the history 

 of the period taken from native monuments is in striking harmony 

 with the requirements of the Scriptural narrative. In the 

 Egyptian texts Pharaoh of the oppression and Pharaoh of the 

 Exodus are found. The Tel-el-Amarna tablets have thrown a 

 flood of light. The death of Khu-en-Aten and the destruction of 

 the capital led to the extinction of the 18th dynasty and the rise of 

 the 19th dynasty. Ramses II., son of Seti L, was the 

 Pharaoh of the oppression, the builder of Pithom and of 

 Ramses, and the father of Meneptah II., who was probably 



