CONGRES INTERNATIONAL D'HISTOIRE DES RELIGIONS. 45 
Mr. Rousr.—And who was the gentleman who discovered that 
that meant Apollo of Alasiya ? 
Mr. Pincues.—It was a suggestion of Mr. Offord’s. 
Mr. Rouss.—Those who have not yet read the full translation 
into English of the Tell-Amarna tablets made by Colonel Conder 
should not fail to do so at the earliest opportunity. Among the 
fascinating letters in that compilation are several written by a 
king of Alasiya, a country hitherto unheard of in secular history, 
but bearing a name very like that of a group of islands mentioned 
by the prophet Ezekiel (xxvii, 7), namely, Hlishah, and being 
like them a maritime region, for only ships are mentioned as the 
means of conveying the products exchanged between it and 
Egypt, and a region within or near to the Greek settlements of 
Asia Minor, for its neighbours were the northern Hittites and the 
Lukki—~.e., either the Lycians or the Ligyans. Again, the name 
Elishah occurs only once besides in the Bible, namely, in Genesis x, 
where it is given to one of the sons of Javan the son of Japheth ; 
and wherever Greece is mentioned throughout the sacred volume 
it is by the name Javan, as, for instance, where it is stated (in 
Daniel viii and xi) to be an empire that is to overthrow that of 
Persia. 
Now the Greeks fixed as their earliest ancestor one Japetos, a 
son of Heaven and Earth, whose name is evidently only a 
modification of Japheth. Again, as Gladstone tells us, the two 
names under which Homer groups the rank and file of the Greek 
army at Troy were <Argeiov and Jaones (Homer, pp. 101 and 
103); and as the awkwardly coucurring vowel sounds in Argeioi 
had once been severed by the digamma (for the Latins wrote it 
Argivi), so in all likelihood had they been in Jaones—an unstable 
form, which drifted into Jones, but must originally have been 
Javones; and we learn from Adschylus, in his dramas The 
Persians (lines 178, 565) that this nation knew the Greeks at 
large as Jaones—that is, Javones. It would not therefore be 
surprising to discover that the Greeks drew one of the titles of 
their ancient and favourite god Apollo from Alasiyah, or Elishah, 
which, taking its name from the head of one of their earliest 
tribes, must have been one of their earliest settlements. In the 
flourishing days of Tyre’s commerce we had read in the book of 
Ezekiel that the land of Elishah exported to that city fine fabrics 
in blue and purple. And now we read on the Tell-Amarna tablets 
