4 PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 



that they were governors of Tsar and Ashur and the further banks 

 of the river. In Ashur we have the Ashurim of the Bible, who 

 are called the sons of Asshurim, Gen. xxv. 3, whilst Tsar was a 

 fortress mentioned in the Egyptian monuments as guarding the 

 approach to Egypt, what would be now the Arabian side of the 

 Suez Canal. Mahdi is identified by Dr. Glazer to be Mizzah, the 

 grandson of Esau (Gen. xxxvi. 17). The reference proves that the 

 power of the Mineean kingdom was acknowledged as far as the 

 borders of Egypt at an age supposed by Professor Hommel to be 

 the age of the Hyksos, or Shepherd kings. Its authority was also 

 recognised in Edom, as is shown by an inscription in which mention 

 is made of Gaza. If these records reach back to the age now 

 claimed for them they must be far the oldest known inscriptions in 

 Phoenician letters, and instead of seeking in Phoenicia for the 

 primitive home of Alphabets we shall have to look for it in Arabia. 

 The labours of a few men in recent years have drawn out much 

 light from the records of Egypt and Assyria, and we find the 

 nineteenth century before Christ yielding up its secrets to the 

 nineteenth century of our era. From these records the Hittites 

 are recognised among the existing nations. They were a powerful 

 and warlike nation, whose centre lay in the north of Syria, 

 between the Orontes and the Euphrates, but whose outposts, about 

 1200 B.C., extended as far west as the ^Egean Sea. In the 

 Egyptian inscriptions they are called the Khita, or Kheta ; in the 

 Assyrian, the Khatti ; in the Hebrew Scriptures, the Khittim. 

 Under the name of Khatti we meet with the Hittites in the 

 astronomical work in seventy tablets drawn up by Sargon of Agane 

 about 1700 B.C., in which the Hittites are already spoken of as 

 formidable rivals of the Babylonians, between whom hostilities 

 were continually arising. We shall see as we go on that the Khita 

 played an important part in the history of Egypt, and that the age 

 of Hittite supremacy belongs to a date earlier than the monarchy 

 of Israel. There were Hittites round Hebron, to whom the origin 

 of Jerusalem was partly due. The Hittites in Palestine were 

 confined to a small district in the mountains, of Judah, but were 



