laomer in the records of Babylonia ; but this is all the * evidence ' as 

 to the existence of ancient Jews which has been advanced, and the 

 most is made of it in Dr. Birch's opening address on * The Progress 

 of Biblical Archeology,' at the inauguration of that Society. The only 

 logical conclusion justifiable, when we give up the inspiration theory, is 

 that Arabs and Syro-Phenicians were known to Assyrians and Egyptians, 

 and this none would deny. Indeed, we readily grant with Dr. Birch 

 that, 'under the nineteenth and twentieth Egyptian dynasties, the 

 influence of the Armenian nations is distinctly marked ; that not only, 

 by blood and alliances, had the Pharaohs been closely united with the 

 "princes of Palestine and Syria, but that the language of the period 

 abounds in Semitic words, quite different from the Egyptian, with 

 which they were embroidered and intermingled.' Could it possibly be 

 otherwise? Is it not so this day? Is a vast and rapidly-spawning 

 Shemitic continent like Arabia not td influence the narrow delta of a 

 river adjoining it, or the wild highlands of Syria to its north ? Of course, 

 Arabs, or Shemites, were everywhere spread over Egypt, Syria, and 

 Phenicia, as well as in their ancient seats of empire in Arabi Irak 

 (Kaldia), and on the imperial mounds of Kalneh and Kouyunjik, but 

 not necessarily as Jews. I cannot find that these last were anything more 

 than possibly a peculiar religious sect of Arabs, who settled down from 

 their pristine nomadic habits, and obtained a quasi government under 

 petty princes or sheks, such as we have seen take place in the case of 

 numerous Arabian and Indian sects." 



Again, the author of " Rivers of Faith " remarks : " No efforts, say 

 the leaders of the Biblical Archaeological Society, have been able to find, 

 either amid the numerous engravings on the rocks of Arabia Petrea or 

 Palestine, any save Phenician inscriptions not even a record of the Syro- 

 Hebrew character, which was once thought to be the peculiar property 

 of Hebrews. ' Most of those inscriptions hitherto discovered do not date 

 anterior to the Roman Empire ' (Dr. Birch, President of Soc., op. cit, 

 p. 9). { Few, if any, monuments (of Jews) have been obtained in 

 Palestine ' or the neighbouring countries of any useful antiquity, save 

 the Moabite Stone, and the value of this last is all in favour of my 

 previous arguments on these points. At the pool of Siloam we have 

 an ' inscription, in the Phenician character, as old as the time of the 



kings It is incised upon the walls of a rock chamber, apparently 



dedicated to Baal, who is mentioned on it? So that here, in a most holy 

 place of this ' peculiar people,' we find only Phenicians, and these 

 worshipping the Sun-God of Fertility, as was customary on every coast 

 of Europe, from unknown times down to the rise of Christianity. The 

 Biblical Archaeological Society and British Museum authorities tell us 

 frankly and clearly that no Hebrew square character can be proved to 



