368 HAUPT— THE BURNING BUSH [April 23. 



Every statement with regard to prehistoric periods is, of course, 

 more or less conjectural. But I adhere to the principle that the 

 probably right is preferable to the undoubtedly wrong. The possi- 

 bility cannot be denied. It is even possible that the Sumerians are 

 Egyptian emigrants of the pre-Semitic population of Egypt, who 

 left their native land after the double Semitic invasion across the 

 isthmus of Suez and the Red Sea near Koseir. The Sumerians 

 may have come from Eg}'pt to Southern Babylonia through the 

 Persian Gulf. This would explain the legend of Oannes^' and 

 several remarkable points of contact between Egyptian culture and 

 Babylonian civilization. There is even a racial resemblance between 

 the Sumerian heads of Telloh and the head of the famous statue of 

 the Egyptian scribe in the Louvre or the head of the well-known 

 wooden statue known as the sheikh al-baladJ'^ 



We have, of course, no mathematical evidence for the prehistoric 

 periods of Arabia, Egypt, and Babylonia. But so much is certain : 

 Jewish monotheism is derived from Egypt, ^^ and the sacred moun- 

 tain of the Edomite ancestors of the Jews was a volcano near the 

 ancient Edomitic port of Elath at the northeastern end of the Red 

 Sea. The Burning Bush on the Mountain of God as well as the 

 miraculous passage of the Hebrews through the Red Sea^*^ are not 

 legendary, but historical. 



"See Zimmern's remarks in E. Schrader, Die KeilinscJiriftcn und 

 das Alte Testament (Berlin, 1903) page 535. 



^* See the plates in Ed. Meyer, Surncricr und Scmiten (Berlin, 1906) 

 and Aegypten cur Zeit der Pyramidenerbauer (Leipzig, 1908). 



^^ We can trace the beginning of the solar monotheism of ancient Egyptian 

 theology to the Fifth Dynasty (2680-2540 e.g.). Horus was gradually 

 superseded by Ra, just as Jhvh was substituted for Esau. Compare above, 

 page 357, note 6. 



°° The Edomite ancestors of the Jews may have crossed the Red Sea at the 

 small peninsula, 75 miles (120 kilometers) south of the northern end of the 

 modern Suez Canal, between the larger and the smaller basins of the Bitter 

 Lakes which formed at that time the northern end of the Red Sea. Major- 

 General Tulloch observed that under a strong east wind the w-aters of 

 Lake Menzalah, at the northern end of the Suez Canal receded for a distance 

 of several miles. In the same way the water northeast of this peninsula may 

 have been driven by a strong east wind (Exodus, xiv., 21) into the larger 

 basin of the Bitter Lakes, while the water in the shallow lower basin receded 

 at low tide. Although the Bitter Lakes and the Red Sea are now connected 



