JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS 



tized by King Merenptah, who is gifted with life like the sun 

 ever}^ day." 



A variety of deductions have been made from this inscription. 

 Prof. Orr of Edinburgh thinks that Israel must have already been 

 settled in Canaan, but it is difficult to see how this could have 

 taken place so early. Hommel thinks that Asher and one or two 

 other tribes had preceded the main body. Sayce as usnal is quite 

 certain of his own interpretation. He concludes from the fact that 

 there is no geographical reference in the mention of Israel that the 

 tribes had been lost in the desert. 



A few words must be said about the Tel-el-Amarna tablets. 

 The expulsion of the Hyksos kings from Egypt in the sixteenth 

 century B. C. was followed by the conquest of Asia Minor, and 

 this in its turn brought Asiatic influences into Egypt. Finally the 

 throne was occupied by a Pharaoh whose mother and grandmother 

 had alike been Asiatics. More than that, he had been brought up 

 in the x'Vsiatic faith. This king is known as Amenophis IV. He 

 was much under the influence of his mother and soon declared 

 himself a convert to her religion and established the worship of the 

 solar disk. This naturalh' meant trouble with the priests of 

 Thebes, and the result was the removal from Thebes to Tel-el- 

 Amarna of the court and all the royal archives. Some of these 

 royal archives form part of the collection of cuneiform tablets dis- 

 covered at Tel-el-Amarna in 1888. The strange thing is that the 

 writing is in the cuneiform character of Bab3donia, not in Egyptian 

 hieroglyphics. Babylonian was evidently the language of diplo- 

 mac}^ and correspondence that was extensively carried on between 

 the courts of Egypt and Bab}- Ion. From the banks of the 

 Euphrates to those of the Nile letters were constantly passing to 

 and fro, sometimes on matters of little importance. Canaan was 

 therefore the centre of a stream of literary activity. Not only pro- 

 fessional scribes but military commanders are shown to have pos- 

 sessed a ready knowledge of writing. Perhaps Sayce goes too far 

 when he says that it would have been a miracle if Israel had not 

 been a race of scribes, but at any'- rate these critics have certainly 



