THE BIBLE PEDIGREE OP THE NATIONS OF THE WORLD. 143 



based almost wholly upon the misunderstanding of an Assyrian 

 allusion to the northern kingdom of Israel. The theorists say 

 that the Assyrian inscriptions called the Ten Tribes of north 

 and east Canaan " Beth Khumri," or that they so termed the 

 tribe of Ephraim, at all events ; and that some time after these 

 northern Israelites were carried into exile, they, according to the 

 statement of Esdras (in Book II, chapter xiii j, " crossed the Eu- 

 phrates by the narrow passes " (that is, where it works through 

 mountain gorges), " for the Most High, showed signs for them," 

 and thence made their way by " a year and a half's " marching 

 (as that writer again tells) to " a further country, where never 

 mankind dwelt," even as they had resolved to do ; and this region 

 truly is called " Arsareth," as Esdras tells, for is there not a river 

 in Poland by that name, and were not the Kimmerioi once living 

 near to it, as Herodotus and Strabo declared ? But the 

 Kimmerioi had, before their migration to more westerly 

 regions, been so long settled in southern Eussia that they left 

 extensive ruins there for Herodotus to gaze at ; they had time 

 also to bestow their name on a country which is distinctly off 

 the route of this alleged Israelite march — the peninsula of the 

 Crimea, and to protect it with a vast trench across the isthmus 

 of Perekop ; it is hard, therefore, to comprehend how they could 

 be identical with those rapid emigrants of Israel. Still harder 

 is it to understand, if the theory be true, how Homer, who, by 

 the researches of scholars, is determined to have written about 

 850 B.C., or more than a himdred years before the final capture of 

 Samaria, wrote of Kimmerioi, settled long before his time on the 

 very borders of the northern Ocean.* 



But, as a fact, the name Beth Khumri has not yet been found 

 applied to a people as distinct from the country they were in. 

 Whien speaking of a great victory in the sixth year of his reign 

 over Irkhuleni, King of Hamath, and his allies at Qarqara, 

 Shalmanezer II. of Assyria mentions among these and their 

 equipments 2,000 chariots and 10,000 men belonging to Akhabbu 

 mat Sirilaa,! and that this means Ahab, King of the land of 

 Israel, is proved both from the geographical position of Qarqara, 

 the royal city of Hamath, and from the fact that twelve years 

 later Shalmanezer records his then victory over Khaza'-iln 

 (Hazael) and his besieging him in Damascus,^ and his receiving 



* Sayce, Higher Critics, p. 390, etc. ; Pinches. Old Test, and Hist. Rec., 

 p. 329. 



t Sayce, 395, 396 ; Pinches, 336, 337. 



X Thougli unsuccessfully, for God had decreed that he should be king 

 over Damascus and be a scourge to Israel. 



