172 EEV. J. N. FRADENBUEGH, PH.D., D.D.^ LL.D., 



writing." Professor Fritz Hommel says : " It is my conviction 

 that Arabia itself will furnish us the direct jDroofs that the 

 modern destructive criticism of the Pentateuch is absolutely 

 erroneous. The age of the Min^ean inscriptions runs parallel 

 with that of the so-called code of the priests. If the former 

 are as old as Glaser believes them to be and the Arabian 

 civilization, as I have proved, already existed at the time of 

 Abraham, then the laws of the priests of Israel are also very 

 ancient." This ncAV argument is worthy of our serious 

 •consideration. 



Almost innumerable fragments of pottery found by Professor 

 W. M. Flinders Petrie at Kahun and Gurob are unmistakably 

 foreign. The pottery from Gurob in paste, in colour, and 

 in design, is " indistinguishable from the earliest pottery 

 found on Greek soil, at Mykena3, at Thera, and at Mitylene." 

 Hundreds of these potsherds have certain signs scratched 

 upon their surfaces which are doubtless mason's marks. 

 These characters are of exceptional interest. They may be 

 dated from 2500 to 1300 B.C. Professor Petrie thinks that 

 the signs under consideration represent the stage in alpha- 

 betic development which connects the hieratic with modern 

 systems. He says : " The mixture of well-known signs, and 

 of others which have not survived, is only what would be 

 probable during the course of natural selection which was 

 going on during the centuries in which the later order of 

 things was being established. And the mixture of signs 

 known in diverse alphabets of later times is also what we 

 should expect to see at a time when the various alphabets 

 Avere very likely unseparated, and still in one confused use. 

 In fact, the very confusion of these marks is the best proof 

 of their age being anterior to the clean division into the 

 separate well-defined alphabets that we know in later ages." 

 Miss Amelia B. Edwards says: "Dr. Petrie has brought to 

 light the earliest Greek alphabetical signs yet discovered. . . . 

 The potsherds carry back the history of the alphabet to a 

 period earlier than the date of the Exodus, and six centuries 

 earlier than any Greek inscriptions known." She speaks of 

 some of the characters as being " unquestionabl}' identical 

 with certain letters of the Etruscan alphabet." 



A goodly number of the characters from Kahun — repro- 

 duced on Plate XXVII of Professor Petrie's Kahun, Gurob 

 and HawarCi — seem to be the origmals of Greek alphabetical 

 signs; and there is a lesser number of similar characters 

 from Gurob reproduced on Plate xxviii. Donot som e of 



