THE CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTIONS OF TEL EL-AMARNA., 27 
proves not only that the term “‘ Masu” was applied to the 
Sun-god, but was actually used of the Egyptian Pharaoh in 
the century before Moses was born. It may be that later ages 
confounded the Semitic “ Masu” with the Egyptian mesu, ‘a 
son,” and the Hebrew “ Mosheh,”’ or Moses, with ‘‘ Mes,” “‘ the 
Prince of Kush,” in the reign of Rameses IJ., thus originating 
the legend, recorded by Josephus, of the campaign of Moses 
in Ethiopia; but it is impossible to believe that the great 
law-giver of the Hebrew nation could have continued to bear 
through life an Keyptian name. 
But, apart from such side-lights as these upon ancient 
history,—apart also from the more important facts which have 
already resulted from an examination of the texts,—the dis- 
covery of the tablets of Tel el-Amarna has a lesson for us of 
momentous interest. The collection cannot be the only one 
of its kind. Elsewhere in Palestine and Syria, as well as in 
Kegypt, similar collections must still be lying under the soil. 
Burnt clay is not injured by rain and moisture, and even the 
climate of Palestine will have preserved uninjured its libraries 
of clay. Such libraries must still be awaiting the spade of 
the excavator on the sites of places like Gaza or Kirjath- 
Sepher, or others whose remains are buried under the lofty 
mounds of Southern Judea. Why should Palestine, the 
sacred land of our faith, remain unexcayated, while all over 
the rest of the ancient Oriental world the disinterrers of the 
past have been vieing with one another with feverish activity ? 
Why should workmen and funds be found for exhuming the 
buried history of early Greece, while the religious public is 
content with surveying the surface of the soil of Palestine ? 
There is not much to be discovered on that surface which has 
survived the wreck of centuries ; it is only within the kindly 
bosom of the earth that we shall find, hidden and preserved, 
the precious relics of the past. The tablets of Tel el-Amarna 
are an earnest that they will yet be found, if they are properly 
searched for ; and that our children, if not ourselves, will yet 
know how the people of Canaan lived in the days of the 
Patriarchs, and how their Hebrew conquerors established 
themselves among them in the days when, as yet, ‘“‘ there was 
no king in Israel.” 
