NOTES ON LITERATURE IN EGYPT IN THE TIME OF MOSES. 171 



Asia Minor, and some of these were written probably as early 

 as twenty-five hundred years before the Christian era. 



Another race which has a Kterature is now claiming recog- 

 nition. Hittite inscriptions in native hieroglyphics and monu- 

 ments with Hittite sculptures may be traced continuously, 

 following the two great highways which formerly led through 

 Asia Minor, even to the shores of the ^geau Sea. The cele- 

 brated treaty of peace between Khitasar, King of the Hittites, 

 and Rameses the Great, though it has come down to us in the 

 Egyptian language, was doubtless a Hittite composition 

 inscribed on a silver tablet in the Hittite language when it 

 was first presented to the king or at least a translation from 

 the original Hittite document. It shows not only that its 

 authors were acquainted with diplomacy and held some 

 advanced ideas upon subjects connected with international 

 law, but also that they were accustomed to literary composi- 

 tion. 



The explorations of Dr. Edward Glaser in southern., 

 Arabia have thrown a new and unexpected light upon 

 another seat of early literary culture. 



He has recopied the inscriptions of Yemen and Hadramaut 

 which had aready been submitted to modern scholarship, and 

 has added more than a thousand fresh inscriptions to those 

 already known. These inscriptions have been found to 

 belong to two different dialects and to two separate king- 

 doms, the Sabaiaii and Minasan, of which the latter is the 

 more ancient. The kingdom ruled by the Queen of Sheba 

 must have bordered close upon the territory immediately 

 south of the kingdom of Israel. Both the Sabasan and 

 Minsean kingdoms seem to have extended over the larger 

 part of the Arabian peninsula, and the latter probably came 

 to an end before the former was founded. Now it is known 

 that the sovereign princes of Saba were preceded by a line 

 of ruling priests or priest-kings ; and, furthermore, we have 

 been made acquainted with the names of thirty-three Min^an 

 kings. This would push back the foundation of this latter 

 kingdom to a period much preceding the Exodus. The first 

 Babylonian dynasty which was founded before the migration 

 of Abraham was Arabian in origin. Professor Sayce says : 

 " In days which, if Dr. Glaser is right, were contemporaneous 

 with the exodus of Israel, Ma'in was a cultured and pros- 

 perous realm, the mart and centre of the spice merchants of 

 the east, whose kings founded settlements on the frontiers of 

 Edom, and whose people followed the art of alphabetic 



