26 ANNUAL ADDRESS—PROFESSOR SAYCE. 
remained independent, and we cannot imagine that the old 
traditions of culture and writing were forgotten in any of 
them. In what is asserted by the critical school to be the 
oldest relic of Hebrew literature,—the Song of Deborah,— 
reference is made to the scribes of Zebulon “ that handle 
the pen of the writer” (Judges v. 14), and we have now no 
longer any reason to interpret the words in a non-natural 
sense, and transform the scribe into a military commander. 
Only it is probable that the scribes still made use of the 
cuneiform syllabary, and not yet of the Phoenician alphabet. 
In the hands of writers like Stade, criticism has reached the 
extreme point of scepticism; and, just as in early Greek 
history, the discoveries of Schliemann and others have 
obliged us to reconsider the negative judgments of twenty 
years ago, and to admit a substratum of truth in the old 
traditions, so, too, we may confidently hope that archzological 
discovery will, before long, enable us to reconstruct that 
history of Israel of which modern criticism would fain 
deprive us. Atall events, the Tel el-Amarna tablets have 
overthrown the primary foundation on which much of this 
criticism was built, and have proved that the populations of 
Palestine’ among whom the Israelites settled, and whose 
culture they inherited, were as literary as the inhabitants of 
Egypt or Babylonia. If we are to doubt the statement that 
Othniel, the Kenizzite, took the city of Kirjath-Sepher and 
defeated the forces of the king of Aram-Naharaim, it must 
be for some better reason than the literary ignorance of the 
Hebrews and the neighbouring tribes. 
It is impossible for me now to touch upon the many other 
points in which the tablets of Tel el-Amarna have come to 
the aid of the student of ancient history. Thus light is thrown 
upon the pronunciation of ancient Egyptian by such spellings 
as Nimutriya and Nimmuriya for the prenomen of Ameno- 
phis III., hitherto read Ra-mat-neb and Ra-mi-neb; and the 
etymology I proposed for the name of Moses, in my Hibbert 
Lectures,* has received a striking verification. I had there 
pointed out that the name is the exact equivalent of the Baby- 
lonian word, Masu, “a hero,” an epithet which I tried to 
show was applied to the Sun-god. Within a year after the 
publication of my Lectures, one of M. Bouriant’s tablets 
showed that my conclusions were right. In a despatch from 
Zinarpi to the Egyptian king, the Pharaoh is called, as 
usual, “ the Sun-god rising from the Divine Day’’; and it is 
then added, in a parenthesis, “‘ whose name is Masu.” ‘This 
* On the Religion of the Ancient Babylonians. 
