HAMILTON SCIENTIFIC ASSOCIATION. 61 



Archaeology and The Origin of the Hebre^v 



People 



Rev, Logic cMacdonnelU B,A, 



March 8, 1906. 



No matter what subject a man takes up it seems to require an 

 infinite amount of reading and study before he is able to give any 

 judgment or information about it that is vital and definite, so that 

 one hesitates to say there are special difiiculties connected with 

 archaeology. And yet it does seem to present some difiiculties that 

 are not met elsewhere. The archaeologist must have a gift for 

 scientific research, and also for literary interpretation. He must 

 be able to formulate some theory as to the history of the country 

 whose archaeology he is studying in spite of the fact that special- 

 ists differ on almost every conceivable point. Add to this the fact 

 that archaeology as we now understand it is hardly a century old, 

 so that the great majority of the facts with which the archaeologist 

 deals are new, and you have some conception of the difficulties un- 

 der which the men work who are are trying to re-write the history 

 of times which until recently were regarded as prehistoric. The 

 evidence has only just come in — it has not yet been properly sifted, 

 and more evidence is still coming in in such quantities that it baflfles 

 the ingenuity of translators and publishers to convey it to the pub- 

 lic in an intelligible form. The great bulk of the information that 

 we now have from the Babylonian and Egyptian monuments has 

 come to us within the last fifty years. Many of the most valuable 

 and startling discoveries have been made within the last fifteen 

 years. So much is this the case that when one reads a book pub- 

 lished say three years ago he is inclined to wonder if new dis- 

 coveries have not been made since the book was published showing 

 that its theories were founded on insufficient evidence and putting 



