101 



of all, to prove the liistorical accuracy of tlie documents 

 relating to the period. 



The Hebrew people owed much of the part which they 

 played in the political dramas of Western Asia to the geo- 

 graphical position of the land they lived in. From a geo- 

 graphical position it was, as Dean Stanley has fitly called it, 

 the Piedmont of Western Asia ; so, politically, it became the 

 Austria of the ancient world. Situated midway between the 

 two great Oriental empires of Egypt and Assyria, it was ever 

 yielding to the influence, first of the one, then of the other ; 

 and, when these mighty powers met in the clash of battle, it 

 was upon the plains of Palestine or Syria that the conflict was 

 waged. The great battles of the Egyptian age, as we may 

 call the period from the seventeenth to the twelfth centuries 

 l^efore the Christian era, were fought upon the plains or in the 

 northern borders of the land. 



The battles of Mageddo and Kadesh, in which Thothmes III. 

 and Rameses II. (Sesostris) crushed the Syrians (Ruten), the 

 Ilittites (Keta) and the Asia Minor allies, were fought, the one 

 beneath the slopes of Carmel, the other in the Orontes valley, 

 the northern gateway of Palestine. In the Assyrian age, from 

 the ninth to the seventh centuries B.C., we have several 

 important battles. The battle of Karkar (B.C. 558), in which 

 Shalmanesar III. defeated the Syrian allies, among whom was 



Ahab Y Y y -<^ '!i<^>- A-Khi-bu, King of Sirlai or Israel, was 



fought in the Orontes valley, in the neighbourhood of 

 Hamath.* During the long struggle between Egypt and 

 Assyria, the great battles of Raphia (B.C. 720) in which 

 Sargon stemmed the tide of the Egyptian invasion and forced 

 Sibakhe, the So of the Bible {'?. Kings xvii. 4-5), the Sabaka 

 of the hiei'Oglyphic inscriptions to give tribute, and Eltakeh, in 

 which Sennacherib crushed the rebellion that Tirhakah had 

 raised in Philistia and Judea (2 Kings xix. 9), were both 

 fought in southern Palestine. The sieges of Ashdod, Samaria, 

 Tyi*e, Sidon, and Jerusalem show how unceasing was the 

 straggle between the Nile aild the Euphrates for the dominion 



■•■■ The City of ^f <T--II<y -^f KI'-^IH Ka-nr-Ka-ar, Hebrew -^p -^p 

 is represented on the bronze ,c;ates found by Mr. Rassam at Ballawat (pi. 14 

 of the Soc. Bib. Arch, publication). ]t was situated near to Hamath, and 

 I am therefore inchned to identify it with either Kalat-el Sed.oar, tlic ancient 

 Larissa, or Kahtt-el Mudjik the ancient Apamea. Both of these places, 

 especially the latter, would be important strongholds in times more ancient 

 than the Roman and Greek au,es. 



