314 M. O. MASPEEO 



spelling permits (_2^ = lu, ru) find their justification in 

 Hebrew: y^^ as a proper name is a variant of "^i^, and we 



have also for it "|'i'^?i?, higher. We may then defend the two 

 transcriptions Aruna and Aluna. With this proviso we notice 

 on the maps in the plain of Esdraelon, north of Djenin, 

 a village of Arraneh, whose Arabic orthography djj£. answers 

 exactly to the Egyptian orthography Aruna : I thought for 

 a moment to identify these two localities, and Conder has 

 done so without hesitation."^ Yet the narrative of the 

 campaign against Mageddo will not fit this hypothesis. The 

 king^s army must pass through defiles before reaching 

 Megiddo : in the night of the 19th, 20th, the army en- 

 camped at Aluna-Aruna ; the march on Mageddo was made 

 on the 20th day ; begun at sunrise, it had brought the king 

 to the south of the town by the seventh hour of the day. 

 The text is unhappily mutilated; but from what remains we 

 see that, while the Egyptian rear-guard is still at Aluna- 

 Aruna, the main force issues into the valley and fills the 

 defiles of the valley. The operation was dangerous, for while 

 it was in execution the soldiers exhorted one another to stand 

 firm in case of sudden attack from the people of the country. 

 If we cast a glance on the map we perceive that from Arraneh 

 to Lejjuu the route is always level or skirts the last undula- 

 tions of the hill-country ; we must therefore give up the site 

 of Arraneh. The whole result of the documents which I have 

 elsewhere studied obliges us moreover to seek the track of 

 the route to the west and not to the east of Taanak. M. de 

 Saulcy, who had been struck by these considerations, places 

 Aruna- Aluna in the Wady Arah, at the town of Ararah, but 

 this town is too remote from Lejjun for an army to clear the 

 distance that separates the two towns in seven hours. We 

 must therefore, bring Aruna-Aluna nearer to Lejjun, and, if 

 we remind ourselves that the reading Aluna is possible, and 

 that it leads us to a word Eliun, which means the most high, 

 the most exalted, we are tempted to see in this name of Aluna 

 a significant name borrowed from the position occupied by the 

 village, and consequently to seek for it in a situation which 

 commands the whole country. The point which answers 

 best to these conditions is that of Um-el-Fahm, which Conder 

 has so well described in his reports. f On setting out thence 



* Palestine Expl. F., Quarterly Statement, October, 1880, p. 223. 

 t Pal. Expl. F., 1873, pp. 10 et'jeq. 



