398 ROD NOT EMPLOYED—REASONS 
King, Rogers, and Jastrow in their later works have seem- 
ingly adopted the date arrived at by Kugler from stellar 
researches for the first Babylonian Dynasty. If Abram were, 
as is now thought, the contemporary of Hammurabi, his 
flitting must have occurred between 2120 and 2080 B.c., but 
since Egyptian chronology beyond the fifteenth century is 
fluid, and no early positive synchronisms with Babylon survive, 
we cannot definitely designate any particular king in Egypt 
as the contemporary of either Hammurabi or Abram. 
The Bible is our main authority for the continuance of the 
association. The stories of Jacob, of Joseph (in whose title 
Abrek 1 some detect a Babylonian influence and a connection 
with that of Abara-rakku, the designation of one of the five 
great officers of state), and of Moses, are but episodes of an 
intercourse which, if we begin with Abram and end with 
Onias, lasted (with intervals of war and invasion) for some 
2000 years. 
Evidence of intercourse crops up again and again through- 
out the four centuries of the Jewish Monarchy. Thus we 
read (xr Kings iii. 1) of the marriage of Solomon with the 
daughter of Pharaoh. From Solomon’s reign onward till the 
birth of Christ and long afterwards, the connection between 
Egypt and Israel, friendly or hostile, never fails. The flight 
of Jeroboam to Shishak (r Kings xi. 40) and the giving of 
presents, probably tribute, by Hosea to the King of Egypt 
(2 Kings xvii. 4) present but two instances. 
Papyri recently discovered prove the settlement near 
Assouan of a corsiderable Jewish, or rather, more correctly, 
Palestinian colony from (say) 500-400 B.c. This, like the 
similar but older community at Tahpanhes, exhibits a mart 
of wide and keen trading. The papyri “show that the 
Aramaic—the common language of Syria—was regularly used 
at Syene (Assouan), and we readily see how five cities in the land 
of Egypt speak the language of Canaan and swear to Yahweh 
sojourn in Goshen. The name used by the older sources is Ibrim, probably 
identical with the Egyptian word Aperu or Apriu. 
1 This is probably a shortening of the Sumero-Babylonian Abavrakku, 
equalling seer. H. de Genouillac was the first to connect the word with the 
Hebrew Abrek, in his Tableties Sumériennes Archaiques. 
