THE CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTIONS OF TEL EL-AMARNA. 15 
at Vienna, and eventually bought by the Museum at Berlin. 
Here they were examined by two young Assyriologists, Drs. 
Winckler and Lehmann, who soon discovered that they con- 
sisted of letters and despatches sent to Amenophis III. and 
his son, Amenophis IV., thus explaining how it was that they 
had been disinterred at Tel el-Amarna. Another collection 
of 82 tablets was subsequently acquired by the British Museum, 
and, during the past winter, the courtesy of M. Grébaut and 
Dr. Brugsch-Bey has afforded me every facility for copying 
and examining the collection in the Boulaq Museum. This 
includes not only the tablets which I had failed to see the 
preceding spring, but others also which had been afterwards 
obtained by M. Grébaut. 
My visit to Tel el-Amarna, in January, 1889, confirmed M. 
Grébaut’s belief that no other tablets now remain there. 
The collection was found together in one place, which was 
pointed out to me, and the discoverers have been careful not 
to leave a fragment behind them. It is possible, however, 
that a few pieces may still be in the hands of native dealers ; 
but, substantially, the whole body of tablets is now in European 
hands. We know, consequently, what they have to tell us. 
And the tale is indeed a wonderful one. We learn that in the 
fifteenth century before our era,—a century before the Exodus 
—active literary intercourse was going on throughout the 
civilised world of Western Asia, between Babylonia and 
Egypt and the smaller states of Palestine, of Syria, of 
Mesopotamia, and even of Hastern Kappadokia. And this 
intercourse was carried on by means of the Babylonian 
language, and the complicated Babylonian script. It implies 
that, all over the civilised Hast, there were libraries and schools, 
where the Babylonian language and literature were taught 
and learned. Babylonian, in fact, was as much the language 
of diplomacy and cultivated society as French has been in 
modern times, with the difference that, whereas it does not 
take long to learn to read French, the cuneiform syllabary 
required years of hard labour and attention before it could be 
acquired. We can now understand the meaning of the name 
of the Canaanitish city which stood near Hebron, and which 
seems to have been one of the most important of the towns 
of Southern Palestine. Kirjath-Sepher, or ‘ Book-town,” 
must have been the seat of a famous library, consisting mainly, 
if not altogether, as the Tel el-Amarna tablets inform us, of 
clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform characters. As the city 
also bore the name of Debir, or “Sanctuary,” we may conclude 
that the tablets were stored in its chief temple, like the 
libraries of Assyria and Babylonia. It may be that they are 
