74 THE REV. CANON. TRISTRAM, D.D., F.R.S., 
valleys with their purling brooks, and camped among the exuberant verdure. 
of the moist plains. We find but few traces of towns or cities at that early 
epoch,—only Shechem and Hebron in Canaan proper. A dense population 
cultivated the seething tropical valley of the Jordan, and the shores of the 
Dead Sea. Phoenicians and Philistines fringed the coast-line with their 
settlements, but these did not touch the Canaanite who was then in the 
land. The Canaanites were scarcely yet an organised nation, like their 
neighbours. They seem to have been rather a collection of village com- 
munities who recognised the supremacy of the Hittite invaders. The 
country was not lawless. It was the highway of the great commercial route 
or caravan road between the empires of Chaldza and Egypt, and the few 
allusions in Scripture point to industrious and peaceful communities. Such 
certainly were Shechem and Hebron. 
Recent research has cast a flood of light on the movements of the 
Hittites who then ruled at Hebron ; and we know from Egyptian records 
that, not long before the time of Abram, they had pushed from Northern 
Syria, halted for some little time at Hebron, and then moved on to Egypt, 
where they established for some generations the dynasty of the Hyksos 
or shepherd kings. Hence the significance of that passing remark in 
Numbers xiii. 22; ‘‘ Now Hebron was built seven years before Zoan in 
Egypt.” Zoan was the capital of the Hyksos dynasty, and the Hittites had 
paused seven years at Hebron before making their further advance. 
Through this country Midianite traders could conduct their caravans of 
precious merchandise without danger. The pastoral chieftain from beyond 
the Euphrates could lead his flocks where he would, so long as he refrained 
from interfering with the wells, the earliest kind of real property in history ; 
for cultivation had not yet extended beyond the environs of the few settle- 
ments. That land was of considerable value, is shown by the purchase 
of the burying-ground of Machpelah from Bp —the first legal convey- 
ance recorded in history. 
Very different was the state of Canaan four hundred and fifty years later, 
when conquered by Joshua. The population must have increased enormously. 
The whole country was thickly studded with walled towns. Places which, 
like Bethel, had been but a name in the days of Abraham, were now 
considerable cities. Scripture gives but one incidental hint of the changes 
which had occurred meanwhile. Hebron and Kirjath-Sepher, which had 
been Hittite in the time of the patriarchs, were now Amorite, and the name 
of the latter changed to Debir; while in Joshua’s time, the Hittites were 
found in the mountains. The Egyptian annals explain this. A century 
hefore the Exodus, the Shepherd, or Hyksos, dynasty having been over- 
thrown, Thothmes III., and after him Rameses IJ., prosecuted great 
campaigns against the Hittites, invading Canaan and Syria, driving their 
hereditary foes out of Hebron, and overrunning the country as far as the 
uphrates, but making no permanent conquests. 
The period before Thothmes was the epoch of Canaanite development ; 
for we find, in the Egyptian records, a list of over a hundred places sub- 
