228 
British Ethnology. 
(Judg. iv. 11), though their chief seats seem to have been at 
Sela or Petra (Numb, xxiv. 21), and the South of Judah 
(1 Chron. ii. 55, 1 Sam. xxvii. 10). The name is identical 
with the Aramaic haincty, ‘ a smith,’ which makes it clear 
what the occupation of the tribe must have been. Whether 
‘ the smith ’ took his name from the tribe, as ‘ the mer¬ 
chant ’ from the Canaanite of Phoenicia, or whether the 
tiibe derived its name from its occupation is immaterial; the 
word hay in, ‘ a spear,’ however, renders the second alterna¬ 
tive the more probable. In any case, the Kenites will have 
been a clan of wandering blacksmiths, like the clan of smiths 
who once wandered over Europe. This explains the curious 
fact that at the beginning of Saul’s reign ‘ there was no 
smith found throughout the land of Israel,’ and the Israelites 
had to go to the Philistines in order to sharpen their agri¬ 
cultural implements (1 Sam. xiii., 19-22). The Philistine 
invasion, in fact, had driven the Kenites, or ‘ smiths,’ out of 
a country where in the time of Ramses II., according to the 
Travels of a Moliar,’ a blacksmith could be met with whenever 
the chariot of an Egyptian tourist needed repair. Perhaps it 
is not without significance that the wife of Heber the Kcnite 
finds a hammer ready to her hand in her tent (Judg. iv. 21). 
At all events it is noticeable that Tubal-Kain was the ‘ in¬ 
structor of every artificer in brass and iron’; and that his 
father, Lamech, like Kain, the son of Adam, had slain a man. 
A* JET# Sayce 
Queen's College , Oxford: Nov. 22, 1886. 
[Editorial Note.— The first series of the ‘ Transactions of 
the Essex Field Club ’ terminates with the present sheet. On 
and after January, 1887, the ‘ Transactions’ and ‘Proceedings’ 
O 
of the Club will be combined, and issued as a monthly 
periodical, entitled, ‘ The Essex Naturalist, being Journal of 
the Essex Field Club.’] 
