NOTES ON LITERATUEE IN EGYPT IN THE TIME OP MOSES. 193 



A discussion of a conversational character ensued, after which 

 the meeting was adjourned. 



REMARKS ON THE FOREGOING PAPER. 

 By Colonel C. R. Conder, R.E., D.C.L. 



With respect to the main question treated in Dr. Fraden- 

 burgh's intei-esting paper, there can be no doubt that civilisation 

 and religious thought had by the time of Moses reached a high 

 level in Egypt, and that one learned in the Egyptinn knowledge 

 would have been acquainted with such ideas. They were not, 

 however, confined to Egypt. tSome of the Akkadian psalms must 

 be older than the age of Moses, and, in thought and language, they 

 show remarkable resemblance to Hebrew psalms, except that they 

 are polytheistic and not monotheistic. The civilisation of Baby- 

 lonia, Syria and Palestine was as advanced as that of Egypt, and 

 such things as inscribed gems, tents with pillars of gold and silver, 

 altars, and arks, can be proved by existing dated examples, and 

 by contemporary texts, to hav<i been in general use even before 

 Moses. 



In respect to the original documents whence the Pentateuch 

 was derived, we know that the Ten Commandments were written 

 on both sides of a pair of stone tablets, and it is probable that the 

 other laws and narratives may also have been so written, since 

 tablets were still in use among the Hebrews down to the time 

 of Jeremiah, though gradually superseded by scrolls. Careful 

 inspection of the various episodes in Genesis, and elsewhere in 

 the Pentateuch, seems clearly to indicate the original existence of 

 such tablets. If they were written in some syllabic character — 

 very probably the cuneiform which was then in use in Egypt 

 itself and all over Western Asia — this would supply a simple 

 explanation of apparent discrepancies in personal names and 

 other words. Thus, for instance, it is possible to write, in 

 cuneiform, a name which could be read either "Jethro priest 

 of Midian " or " Reuel Prince of Midian " as two renderings 

 of the same group of signs. And what so applies to the two 

 names of Moses' father-in-law will be found to apply equally to 

 many other names. The discrepancies arose in copying the 

 original documents, and need not be regarded as evidence of 

 distinct authorship. The average length of any episode in the 

 earlier parts of the Pentateuch does not exceed what could have 



