THE LIST OF SHESHONQ AT KARNAK. 123 



The following communication was tben read : — 



Notes on Professor 2Iaspero's Paper on the List of Shishak. 



From Major C. R. Coxder, R.E., D.C.L., LL.D.. &c. :— 



Professor Maspero's valuable j^aper throws light on a list which 

 was previously very obscure. I began to study the list of Shishak's 

 conquest of Palestine in 1879, and I thought the whole, as published 

 that year in Brugsch's History of Egypt, very difficult, so that I 

 only ventured to publish a few identifications, some of which did 

 not agree with his. In two cases M. Maspero supports my view. 

 He began to study the question next year as appears from his 

 paper. His amended copies of some of the names explain many 

 difficulties. Generally speaking it seems clear that the list begins 

 with the country between Gaza and Megiddo, and goes south, along 

 the Philistine plains and low hills to the east. It then enumerates 

 places in the Beersheba deserts, and it returns north by the Hebron 

 hills, perhaps to Jerusalem. 



One or two general remarks may be of use, before considering 

 the towns in detail, when I think I may be able to reinforce 

 M. Maspero's general view, by some new proposed identifications 

 which he does not notice. Though we are in a Hebrew country it 

 does not follow that the names of the towns are strictly speaking 

 Hebrew. The Canaanites, as shown by the Tell Amarna letter?, 

 spoke, from 1500 B.C. downAvards, an Aramaic dialect. The old 

 town nomenclature was unchanged in most cases by the Hebrews, 

 and in the present list, as in that of Thothmes 111, there are in- 

 dications that the Egyptian scribes followed the Aramaic rather 

 than the Hebrew foi'ms of the words. This is specially marked in 

 the terminations in u which was the nominative in Canaanite, as 

 in Assyrian, but not in Hebrew. 



The order is no doubt roughly consecutive, and M. Maspero has 

 very properly rejected names which have been suggested in dis- 

 tant regions, for others which are near each other ; but it is not 

 always very certain what the order is in detail ; and an identifica- 

 tion may be missed by not looking widely enough on the map. In 

 1880 the Survey Memoirs were not published, and M. Maspero 

 has not referred to them. This has led him into one or two minor 

 errors ; and 1 am sure he would not have brought the charge 

 which he makes against my Survey, if he had personally visited 

 the region, or had read the memoirs. On page 110 he says, "the 



