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THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
LOS ANGELES
Xibrar^ of Ibistoric ZbcoloQ^
EDITED BY THE REV. WM. C. PIERCY, M.A.
DEAN AND CHAPLAIN OF WHITELANDS COLLEGE
ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
WAS THE OLD TESTAMENT WRITTEN IN HEBREW?
EDOUARD NAVILLE, D.C.L., LL.D., F.S.A.
LIBRARY OF HISTORIC THEOLOGY
Edited by the Rev. \Vm. C. PIERCY, M.A. Each Volume, Demy Svo, Cloth, Red Burnished Top, 5s, nel, VOLUA^ES NOW READY. THE PRESENT RELATION'S OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION.
By the Rev. Professor T. G. Bonney, D.Sc, ARCRAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT,
By Professor Edodard Na^'ille, D.CL. MARRIAGE IN CHURCH AND STATE.
By the Rev. T. A. Lacey, M.A. (VVardea of the Loodoa Diocesan Penitentiary). THE BUILDING UP OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
By the Rev. Canon R. B. GrROLESioME, M..\. CHRISTI.\NITY AND OTHER FAITHS. An Essay in Comparatlvo Religion.
By the Rev. W. St. Clair Tisdall, D.D, THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN. Vols. I. and //,
By the Rev. Alfred Pldmmer, D.D. (formerly Master of University College, Durham). CHAR.\CTER AND RELIGION.
By the Rev. the Hoh. Edward Lyttelton, M.A. (Head Master of Eton College), MISSIONARY METHODS, ST. PAUL'S OR OURS ?
By the Rev. Roland Allen, M.A, (Author of " Missionary Principles "). THE RULE OF FAITH AND HOPE.
By the Rev. R. L. Ottley, D.D. (Canon of Christ Church, and Regius Professor of Pastoral Theology in the University of Oxford), THE RULE OF LIFE AND LOVE.
By the Rev, R. L. Ottley, D.D. THE CREEDS : THEIR HISTORY, NATURE AND USE.
By the Rev, Harold Smith, M.A. (Lecturer at the London College of Divinity), THE CHRISTOLOGY OF ST. PAUL (Hulsean Prize Essay).
By the Rev. S. Nowell Rostron, M.A. (Late Principal of St, John's Hall, Durham). MYSTICISM IN CHRISTIANITY.
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RELIGIOUS EDUCATION I ITS PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE.
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THE C.VfHOLIC CO.NCEPTION OF THE CHURCH. By the Rev. VV. J. Sparrow Siitpsoh, D.D.
COMMON OBJECTIONS TO CHRISTIANITY.
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THE CHURCH OUTSIDE THE EMPIRE.
By the Rev. C. R. Davey Biggs, D.D.
THE NATURE OF FAITH AND THE
CONDITIO.NS OF ITS PROSPERITY.
By the Rev. P. N. VVacgett, M.A.
AUTHORITY AND FREETHOUGHT IN THE MIDDLE AGES.
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By the Rev. Wm. C. Piercy, M.A. GOD AND MAN, ONE CHRIST.
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GREEK THOUGHT AND CHRISTLAN DOCTRINE.
By the Rev. J. K. MoztEY, M.A.
THE GRE.AT SCHISM BETWEEN THE EAST AND WEST.
By the Rev. F. J. Foakks-Jacxson, D.D.
—^ ^rr,,,^^ ^^ t THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL IN
THE ETHICS OF TEMPTATION. OLD TESTAMENT HISTORY.
By the Ven. E. E. Holmes, M.A. I By the Rev. A. Troelstra, D.D.
Full particulars of this Library may be obtained from the Publisher. LONDON: ROBERT SGOTT.
ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
WAS THE OLD TESTAMENT WRITTEN IN HEBREW?
BY
EDOUARD NAVILLE D.C.L., LL.D., F.S.A
FOREIGN ASSOCIATE OF THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE, PROFESSOR OF EGYPTOLOGY AT " ' ^ UNIVERSITY OF GENEVA
LONDON: ROBERT SCOTT
ROXBURGHE HOUSE PATERNOSTER ROW. E.G.
M CMXn I
/I30
a^
EDITOR'S GENERAL PREFACE
IN no branch of human knowledge has there been a more lively increase of the spirit of research during the past few years than in the study of Theology.
Many points of doctrine have been passing afresh through the crucible ; " re-statement " is a popular cry and, in some directions, a real requirement of the age ; the additions to our actual materials, both as regards ancient manuscripts and archaeological discoveries, have never before been so great as in recent years ; Unguistic knowledge has advanced with the fuller possibihties provided by the constant addition of more data for comparative study; cuneiform inscriptions have been deciphered, and forgotten peoples, records, and even tongues, revealed anew as the outcome of dihgent, skilful and devoted study.
Scholars have speciaUzed to so great an extent that many con- clusions are less speculative than they were, while many more aids are thus available for arriving at a general judgment ; and, in some directions at least, the time for drawing such general conclusions, and so making practical use of such speciaUzed research, seems to have come, or to be close at hand.
Many people, therefore, including the large mass of the parochial clergy and students, desire to have in an accessible form a review of the results of this flood of new Hght on many topics that are of hving and vital interest to the Faith ; and, at the same time, " practical " questions— by which is really denoted merely the apphcation of faith to life and to the needs of the day— have certainly lost none of their interest, but rather loom larger than ever if the Church is adequately to fulfil her Mission.
It thus seems an appropriate time for the issue of a new series of theological works, which shall aim at presenting a general survey of the present position of thought and knowledge in various branches of the wide field which is included in the study of divinity.
2071757
vi EDITOR'S GENERAL PREFACE
The Library of Historic Theology is designed to supply such a series, written by men of known reputation as thinkers and scholars, teachers and dirines, who are, one and all, firm upholders of the Faith.
It will not deal merely with doctrinal subjects, though pro- minence will be given to these ; but great importance will be attached also to history — the sure foundation of all progressive knowledge — and even the more strictly doctrinal subjects wiU be largely dealt with from this point of view, a point of view the value of which in regard to the " practical " subjects is too obvious to need emphasis.
It would be clearly outside the scope of this series to deal with individual books of the Bible or of later Christian writings, \vith the hves of individuals, or with merely minor (and often highly controversial) points of Church governance, except in so far as these come into the general review of the situation. This de- tailed study, invaluable as it is, is already abundant in many series of commentaries, texts, biographies, dictionaries and mono- graphs, and would overload far too heavily such a series as the present.
The Editor desires it to be distinctly understood that the various contributors to the series have no responsibihty whatso- ever for the conclusions or particular views expressed in any volumes other than their own, and that he himself has not felt that it comes within the scope of an editor's work, in a series of this kind, to interfere with the personal views of the writers. He must, therefore, leave to them their full responsibility for their own conclusions.
Shades of opinion and differences of judgment must exist, if thought is not to be at a standstiU — petrified into an unpro- ductive fossil ; but while neither the Editor nor all their readers can be expected to agree with every point of view in the details of the discussions in all these volumes, he is convinced that the great principles which he behind every volume are such as must conduce to the strengthening of the Faith and to the glory of God.
That this may be so is the one desire of Editor and contributors alike.
\V. C. P. London.
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
THE title of this book: Archaeology of the Old Testa- ment, does not agree exactly at first sight with its contents, which turn entirely on the question of lan- guage, and in which I have attempted to show that the books of the Old Testament, as we know them, in their present Hebrew form, are not in the original language written by their authors.
This question, which seems purely literary, is, however, archaeological in its origin. It has been raised by excava- tions in Egypt . It arose when first the fellaheen unearthed the Tel-el-Amarna tablets, and afterwards when the pick and spade of scientific explorers brought to light the Aramaic papyri of Elephantine.
When the bearing of these two thoroughly unexpected finds is considered on all sides and when the circumstances in which these documents originated, the political, social and religious conditions which they presuppose are studied without any bias, one cannot help being led to question the assumption which has been long undisputed and held as unassailable, that these books of the Old Testament are in the language used by their authors when they wrote them down, and that they went through one change only, that of the script. For square Hebrew does not go further back than the time of the Christian era, when it took the place of the old Hebrew or Canaanite alphabet. Such is the foundation on which rest all the
viii AUTHOR'S PREFACE
present systems which profess to explain the composition of the Old Testament, especially the constructions of the critics, their minute analysis of the text, and the conclusions they have derived from that analysis.
In regard to this, I put forward the following facts which can hardly be disputed. Before Moses, and after his time, Babylonian cuneiform was used in Palestine for official documents, contracts, and anything connected with law. The popular form of Babylonian and Assj^ian cuneiform, their book form, was Aramaic as we know from the so-called bilingual tablets, and from the Aramaic version or papyrus of the inscription of Behistun. The Jews settled in Egypt wrote and spoke Aramaic, which was not the language of the country. The script peculiar to the Hebrew or Jewish language, the square Hebrew, is derived not from the Canaanite, but from the Aramaic alphabet.
These facts, the historical value of which may be recognized without being a Semitic scholar, do not seem to have been grasped by the critics in their fullness. Philological criticism is here out of place. History is the point of view from which these discoveries have to be studied ; and looking at them in that hght, I have been drawn to conclusions very different from the theories now in vogue. Some of these conclusions have only dawned upon my mind by degrees, from a careful study of the Aramaic papyri.
During the last ten years the historical methods have gone through a period of change. Anthropology and biology claim to be heard. For an explanation of the past, we now look, more than was done before, at the present condition of mankind. This principle I have endeavoured to follow, and the reader will find that in several cases I have taken examples from the
AUTHOR'S PREFACE ix
present day which seemed to strengthen the argument.
Our notion of language is also different from that of the old linguistic school. Language is no more pre- eminently a written text. It is the speech of living men, which may vary according to time and localities. Social circumstances may have induced men to invent an alphabet, to adopt a written language. But this progress towards unity is more or less conventional ; it is not limited by political boundaries. It may extend in religious, literary or legal matters over countries where the people speak different dialects. A written language has not of necessity a script of its own which distinguishes it from neighbouring idioms. It may adopt one in common with other languages. Cuneiform is one of the most striking examples of an alphabet used for different tongues.
Historical facts viewed in the light of new methods are the foundation of my theory, which in certain respects will be considered as more radical and revolutionary even than Reuss' critical system when it first appeared. Relying on that evidence, I can, using the expressions of one of the most conservative critics, the late Dr. Briggs, " have the face " to challenge " the Old Testament scholars of the world." On the other hand the readers wiU recognize that the new line I have taken has brought me back to the old traditional view about the authorship of several books of Scripture. I hope that such chapters as that on Egypt will show that it is not through any " dogmatic environment " but from a sincere con\dction based on facts, that I joined the " contemptible minority " which still believes in the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch and that I have ranked myself among the so-called " anti-critics " in spite of the distinguished divine's prophecy, " The signs of the times indicate that
X AUTHOR'S PREFACE
in a few years they will disappear as completely as the slave-holders."
This book consists of two parts, each of them dealing chiefly with the results of one of the two great discoveries. Since it is intended for the public, and not for scholars only, I have not gone into long discussions. Philological questions being left aside, by the nature of the argument, it was not necessary to mention the names of the critics, except occasionally. For instance, in the chapter on Genesis I quote Kautzsch and Socin, not because their views are not held by others, but because on their analysis of that work rests the coloured or " rainbow " Genesis which is well kno\vTi. The quotations of the BibHcal text are always from the Revised Version, the translation generally used by scholars.
I cannot close without expressing to the Rev. Wm. C. Piercy my deep thankfulness for the invaluable help he gave me in improving my English style. Still, I must beg the British and American readers who will do me the honour to peruse these pages, to be indulgent as regards the form, and not to mind here and there expressions which may sound too much hke French, the native language of the present writer.
Whatever may be the judgment of the critics, I shall feel myself very fortunate if my conclusion that the words of the Old Testament, like those of our Lord, have come to us in a form which is not their original garb, and that the oldest of them are the work of the author whose name they bear, may attract the attention of those who have a sincere reverence for the Holy Writ, and may induce them to look more closely into systems which are now generally presented by their authors and supporters as being above discussion.
EDOUARD NAVILLE.
CONTENTS
PART I
THE BOOKS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT BEFORE
SOLOMON
PAGE
CHAPTER I
THE LANGUAGE 3
Babylonian Cuneiform. ..... 3
The old Hebrew Alphabet ..... 25
CHAPTER II
GENESIS BEFORE THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT . 30
The First Four Tablets ..... 30
The Garden of Eden and the Land of Egypt . 36
Ham and Canaan ....... 43
Abraham ........ 51
Abraham, Isaac and Abimelech .... 57
CHAPTER III
EGYPT 66
The " Days " of Creation ..... 66
Joseph ......... 70
xi
Xll
CONTENTS
CHAPTER IV THE JOURNEY TO CANAAN The Exodus . The Tabernacle . Deuteronomy The Archives
89 89
"5 127 130
PART II
THE LATER BOOKS.
CHAPTER V
THE PAPYRI FROM ELEPHANTINE: . . .139
The Colony at Elephantine . . . .139
The Temple ........ 145
The Language . . . . . . .163
CHAPTER VI ARAMAIC 175
Ezra . . . . . . . . .175
The Prophets . . . . . . .189
CHAPTER VII THE PRESENT FORM OF THE OLD TESTAMENT . 19G
CONCLUSIONS 202
PART I
The Books of the Old Testament before Solomon
ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
Was the Old Testament written in Hebrew ?
CHAPTER I
THE LANGUAGE
Babylonian Cuneiform
IN what language were the earhest books of the Old Testament originally wi-itten ? I mean the Penta- teuch, and the books prior to Solomon's time. This question will certainly startle a great number of my readers. Up to the present, it has always been admitted, and considered as above discussion, that they had been written in Hebrew, and that the texts which we have were original, and not translations, not even adaptations from another idiom.
Still, various circumstances might have brought doubt to the minds of those who have made a closer study of these texts, especially to the higher critics who rely nearly exclusively on philological arguments.
It is an absolutely certain fact that these books have not been written in the square Hebrew of our Bible. This script, which is a modified form not of the old Hebrew or Phoenician alphabet, but of the Aramaic, did not assume the appearance under which we know it, before the time of the Christian era. Even then it was written without vowels. The vowel points added to it by the
3
4 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
Massora do not go further back than the fifth century, and the system was not completed till about the eleventh.
We learn from Joscphus that the manuscripts brought to Ptolemy Philadelphus were written in characters very like the Syrian, or as we should say the Aramaic, and the rabbis tell us that Ezra brought from Babylon the Assyrian writing, ashurit, which was not the square Hebrew, but the Aramaic, such as we know it from the papyri found at Elephantine.
But before the Aramaic, the alphabet commonly in use must have been the Canaanite or Phoenician, known to us by the inscriptions coming from Phoenicia proper and Carthage, and outside of these regions b\' a small number of engraved texts, the most important of which are the stele of Mesha, the king of Moab, and the inscription of Siloah of the time of Hezekiah, and also by the newly discovered ostraca from Samaria.
Was this alphabet ever used for books ? Have the earhest documents of the Old Testament been written with those characters ? This very grave question has been raised quite lately, and discoveries such as the tablets of Tel-el-Amarna compel us to face it and to take it into serious consideration. Looking at it in the light of the different finds of the last thirty years, we cannot but arrive at the conclusion that the oldest documents of Hebrew literature have been written neither in the Hebrew language, nor with the Hebrew script, but in the idiom and witli the characters of the tablets of Tel-el-Amarna, namely Babylonian cuneiform.
In studying the beginnings of a literature hke that of the Hebrews, we must bear in mind an important fact too often overlooked, and which we may observe every- where in oar time in spite of our schools. There is a considerable difference between the speech of the people
THE LANGUAGE 5
and their written language. When we consider nations of the remote past, owing to our own education we can- not sufficiently divest ourselves of the idea that there is an abstract thing called " the tongue " which is subject to strict rules set down by scholars. Every man is imbued with these rules from his childhood, and their domain is limited by definite geographical boundaries. This view, which still prevails largely in philology, is purely theoretical and is opposed to the facts observed by anthropology.
Spoken language existed long before it was put down in writing. In many parts of the world, there are still primitive tribes or nations for whom language is only speech, and who know no writing. They do not feel the want of it. In their commercial intercourse, when they barter or exchange, they do not employ any written document. In any transaction which is binding for the future, they would call for witnesses ; and their laws are mere customs transmitted from father to son, without much change, and these sometimes persist through ages. Writing, or rather written language, is a convention, the result of social progress, and it supposes a more advanced degree of civilization. But written language does not supersede the original speech, it does not mean its abolition, not even its change, except in highly civilized modern nations with compulsory education. Both may have a parallel existence and their own special domain.
Especially if we consider the religious books, the difference is particularly striking. Take for instance the Bible ; even in Protestant countries where it has been translated into the native tongue, the people do not use the language of the Bible. The labourer in the field does not speak as does his clergyman in the pulpit, and a certain respect for Holy Writ may even prevent him from using
6 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
sentences or words taken from its contents. Supposing we wished to ascertain the language of a peasant from one of the rural counties, we should not turn for that to the Authorized Version. The reverse is equally true.
This difference exists not only for religious books, but also for laws which are transmitted in the same form and in the same words during many generations ; and generally speaking for all legal documents, as well as for records of what has taken place in the past. They are composed in a language more or less conventional, although here and there, in official writings, in contracts or anything connected with law, local expressions may appear borrowed from what is spoken by the people. It would be easy to quote many instances of these facts, taken from languages of the present day, though schools and education greatly contribute to unify the language of a country and to wipe away the variety of dialects such as that existing even in a small land like Switzer- land. The origin of these dialects certainly goes back earlier than the first attempts at literary language.
But let us revert to the old Hebrews, to the contem- poraries of Abraham, to Moses or to the early prophets like Samuel. There is absolutely no proof that in that remote time there existed already a written literature ; I mean a written Hebrew such as that which we find in the Bible.
That does not mean that there was no literature of the people, no unwritten compositions such as we find in nearly all nations. Take the primitive men who do not know what writing is, or those who practically have no writing, the illiterate populations of some remote parts of Europe, the peasants of the Middle Ages, or the people who till recently lived chiefly on war and brigandage ; they have their literature, their songs, their myths and
THE LANGUAGE 7
often very fine poetry. The authors of these songs or of these poems are often unknown ; they were not men trained in the schools. They have not composed their songs pen in hand in a language approved by literary authorities and called by them classical. Their poetry has been dictated to them by the inspiration of the hour, and it has been transmitted orally from generation to generation perhaps long before it was put down in writing, or before some lover of folklore gathered it for fear it might be forgotten. We might quote a great number of national songs the origin of which is not known ; they nearly always are in the common and usual language of the people, and they are quite independent of the written literature which may exist at the same time and among the same people.
This unwritten literature may increase and progress even where there is a considerable written literature which rules in its own field. A striking instance may be quoted from the history of the city of Geneva. In the night of the 12th of December, 1602, the city was miracu- lously saved from a treacherous attack by the Duke of Savoy. This event is called in the popular language " V Escalade." The following morning the population flocked to the cathedral and sang Psalm cxxiv. But this was not the popular Te Deum. There arose a long hymn, from beginning to end in the popular dialect. The first words would be translated': "He Who is above." As the original does not belong to the written language, there is no orthography for these words and they may be spelt in various ways. The learned who follow the rules of historic grammar will write : ce que Ven Haut ; but this is not the usual spelling, which is either ce qu'e I'aino, or ce que laino. In a popular song like this, people do not apply the rules of the schoolmaster, they write
S ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
what they hear and what thej* speak ; for them words are sounds, and they are guided by the ear.
This h3'mn arose in a city where a few years before Calvin had pubUshed his works, which are considered as the standard prose of the time, where he had preached his sermons, where his successor, Theodore Beza, was still teaching, and where there was a considerable litera- ture in the French of the time. This was understood by the people, but it was very different from the ever3'-day speech, and from the popular h3'mn. It was their re- hgious language'and also the official one, used for purposes of law and in the councils of the government. Let us suppose the case of a philologist two thousand 3'ears hence, arguing that the WTitten language of Geneva cannot be the same French as that which was used in France, but that there must be a specially Genevese \vritten literature in the Genevese language which becam.e literary when the hymn of 1602 was written. This learned man would reason in a way ver3' similar to that of some Hebrew scholars who consider it to be certain that there existed in early times a Hebrew written literature, and who rely for their conclusion upon the following fact.
I shall quote only one of the most eminent Hebrew scholars. Professor Kocnig tells us that a literary Hebrew language must have existed at least at the time when the song of Deborah originated, which according to the judgment of the most acute critics goes back as far as the time of the Judges. In my opinion the song of Deborah does not prove anything as to the existence of a written Hebrew language. Deborah is a prophetess, she is one of those heroines, of whom we know several in histor\', who arise in critical times. Her nation is crushed down by Jabin the king of the Canaanites. She calls on
THE LANGUAGE Q
Barak and commands him to gather the Israehtes and to march against the oppressor. Barak refuses to do so, unless Deborah goes with him. They smite the enemy, and when Barak pursues him, Jael shows him Sisera whom she has slain.
Hearing of this great deliverance, Deborah does not sit down to write a poem (Judges v.). She breaks forth into a paean of praise and joy. She sings : " Awake, awake. Deborah, utter a song." She is carried away by her feelings, and such a mighty exultation can only be ex- pressed in language spontaneous and familiar to her, such as she, as well as the triumphant Israelites, speak every day. She does not consult the books which may exist at the time, she does not shape her sentences in accordance with the words of the law, of which she was probably absolutely ignorant ; she sings. Her hymn may after- wards have become a national song, a song of victory which one generation transmitted to the following, until it was written down by the author who compiled the book of Judges ; but certainly it is quite independent of an}- written literature, and it does not give the slightest indication as to the existence of books written in the same language. Unless it has been modified in later time, it shows what the Israelites spoke in her time, but nothing more. We might be tempted to consider Deborah's song as a piece of a wxitten literature, if the discoveries of the last twenty years had not revealed to us the great use made in Palestine of Babylonian cunei- form.
It certainly was an archaeological event of first impor- tance when the fellaheen of Tel-el-Amarna in Middle Egypt came upon the hoard of cuneiform tablets, an impor- tant and valuable part of the archives of Amenophis IV. It is hardly necessary to describe anew this correspondence.
10 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
It first revealed the absolutely unknown and startling fact that Babylonian Cuneiform was the usual wxitten language in Palestine at the time of the Eighteenth Dynasty. It is quite natural, and what might have been anticipated, that kings of Mesopotamia like Burnaburiash should use that language and writing, which evidently were their own. But it was all the more surprising and unexpected from governors of the Palestinian cities who had to write to their sovereign and report to him what was going on in the region they governed. Why did Abd-hiba of Jerusalem, Abi-milki of Tyre and all the prefects of Zidon, Megiddo, Ashkelon, Gaza, write in Baby- lonian unless it was their own written language. For the king of Egypt did not understand it ; he was obliged to resort to the help of a targunianu, a dragoman. Letters of that kind must be in the language either of the ruler or of the subject. Since it was not that of the Pharaoh, it could only be that of the Canaanite governors.
The scholars who have studied that correspondence are unanimous in saying that it is Babylonian or Assyrian with a clear Canaanite trace. One of them who has made a special study of those texts with that point of view. Dr. Boehl, says that the Assyrian of these letters is only a thin veil which hides the native language of the writers. This fact seems to me the best proof that these letters show the written language of the country. They are permeated with words and forms belonging to the spoken language. This might have been expected. Take a language like French, which extends over various countries and over a wide area. Two letters, written one at Bordeaux and the other at Brussels, will not be in a language exactly similar. Especially if the writers are not very cultivated, their letters will deviate from the typical and conventional prose which is called French and
THE LANGUAGE ii
contain local words, perhaps also local forms. Two legal documents will perhaps differ still more, since they will be obliged to make a greater use of words to which the people are accustomed. It seems to have been exactly the same with Assyrian or Babylonian. A writer in Babylon would not forget his own dialect, nor would the governor of Ashkelon. The script is the same for both, and so is the language in its general appearance ; neverthe- less it bears traces of what is spoken in the native country of each of them.
The correspondence of Tel-el-Amarna, which is later than the first settlement of the Hebrews in Canaan but older than the conquest of Canaan, is not all that we have of cuneiform documents from Palestine. A rich harvest of tablets was gathered at Boghaz Keui, the capital of the Hittites. In that place was discovered the cuneiform copy of the treaty between Rameses II and the king of the Hittites, Hattusil. From Palestine itself originated a series of letters and edicts written both in Assyrian and Hittite concerning the Amurru, the Amorites, a Palestinian nation.
In Palestine, at Gezer, two contracts have been dis- covered. According to Professor Macalister more might have been found had the excavations on that spot not been stopped by a native cemetery. These contracts are about the sale of property. They are legal documents having a local origin, and in language which must have been the legal language of the city. They are in cunei- form Assyrian ; one very fragmentary letter is said to be in cuneiform Babylonian, These contracts are of the years 650 and 647 B.C., showing that even at that late time cuneiform writing was still in use.
At Taanach also eight tablets or fragments have been discovered. I cannot do better than quote the words of
12 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
the excavator, Dr. Sellin. After having said that from 1500 to 1350 Babylonian writing was the only one used at the courts of the princes of Palestine, the learned author adds : " Even supposing that this writing was used only by the rulers and their officials, and that the people could not read or wiite, this fact is certain : in the already exten- sive excavations carried on in Palestine, no document was ever found except in Babylonian writing. As for the [ Phoenician old Hebrew writing ... it cannot be asserted with certainty that it existed before the ninth century." ^
Thus, from the time preceding the conquest of Canaan down to the seventh century, we find in Palestine cunei- form documents in the Assyrian or Babylonian language, which was the literary language as well as that of laws and religion, differing up to a certain point from the speech, or idiom, of the people, as we see that literary language does at the present day even in the most civilized countries.
It is not necessary to go back to the origin of cuneiform writing, which succeeded a linear script and which took its well-known appearance when the writer saw that he could write much more quickly by pressing his stylus into soft clay. Cuneiform may be called the cursive writing of an old linear script. It entirely superseded the linear since it was copied even on the sculptures of the palaces. Cuneiform writing can be imitated by engraving on stone or metal ; but it cannot be written on anything but wet clay. It cannot be pressed into hard material such as a potsherd, nor can it be written on soft or thin stuff such as papyrus, or even" skin.
In Mesopotamia where clay was abundant, all kinds of documents could be written on tablets. Not so in Palestine, a mountainous and dry country. Clay tablets ^ Tell Taannek Xachlese, p. 35.
THE LANGUAGE 13
were used there for documents of importance which had to be preserved, Hke the deeds of property found at Gezer, letters which had to travel a long way, edicts and treaties of the Amorites ; but for common use, in a country where clay was not always at hand, it was necessary to have also another method of writing. For a short note or memorandum, for inscribing the number of jars of oil or wine, what corresponded to the scrap of paper which we use in such cases was a potsherd. On potsherd it was not possible to impress cuneiform characters with a stylus ; one could only make a coarse engraving or write with pen and ink. Therefore it was necessary to have an alphabet, different from cuneiform, which could be written and not pressed. The Canaanite, or so-called Phoenician, alphabet must have been at first a potsherd writing. If we look at the most ancient specimens, the ostraca found by Mr. Reisner at Samaria, we see that they are notes regarding what may have been the royal cellar, or its contents in wine and oil. The same excavation has produced also a cuneiform fragment which has not yet been deciphered, but which shows the presence of the two \VTitings at the same time.
The Canaanite writing cannot be traced in Palestine before the time of Solomon, that is not until there were close relations with the Phoenicians. Whether the Phoe- nicians were the inventors of that alphabet or whether it is to be attributed to others is a question which is now very much discussed. No doubt they must have made great use of it in their trade, and must have contributed to diffuse it among their neighbours as far as the Greeks. But at the time of the Tel-el- Amarna correspondence the governors of Tyre and Zidon also wrote in cuneiform.
Let us now revert to \\'hat we read in Genesis : Abram went forth from Ur of the Chaldees, came first unto
14 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
Haran, and from there to the land of Canaan. We know the written language of Ur, the present Mukayyar. At first it was Sumerian, and after the Semitic conquest it was the Bab\'lonian, which, later, was called Assyrian. The script was that of the Sumerians taken over b}' the Semites, the engraved linear being very soon entirely superseded by the pressed cuneiform. It is hardly to be supposed that Abram,^ if he could write while he was in Mesopotamia, did not use Babylonian cuneiform.
As for the language which he spoke, we do not know exactly what it was. It certainly belonged to the Semitic family, but it probably differed from the book-language, from the style and forms of edicts, laws, or even religious texts, as is the case, even now, with the colloquial and popular idiom. Semitic scholars tell us that it must have been very like that which was spoken in Canaan. " Whether Abraham adopted the language of the Canaan- ites, or brought the Hebrew with him from the East, is unimportant, for the ancient Assyrian and Babylonian are nearer the Hebrew and Phoenician than they are to the other Semitic languages. If these languages, as now presented to us, differ less than the Roman languages, the daughters of the Latin, in their earlier stages, in the time of Abraham, their differences could scarcely have been more than dialectic." We thoroughly agree with Dr. Briggs' view. Between Abraham's idiom and that of Mamre, the Amorite, or Abimelech, the king of Gerar, there was only a difference of dialects ; therefore they understood each other easily.
Dialects are generally unwritten languages. Here again I may be allowed to take an example from modern times, namely, from the German language. German-speak-
^ In the use of Abram or Abraham, I follow exactly the differing use of the Bible (R.V.) for the different periods of his hfe.
THE LANGUAGE 15
ing nations extend over a vast area in Europe. But what is called German, the literary, conventional language, the origin of which may be traced to Luther's translation of the Bible, covers a considerable number of dialects which are not written, which go back to a high antiquity and which are still in use in the present day. I need not go very far. In the parts of Switzerland where German is spoken, each canton has its own dialect. What is heard at Berne sounds very differently from what is heard at Zurich. Nevertheless two men from these cantons who are in conversation will understand each other without the slightest difficulty ; they will both read the same Bible, which is not in the idiom which they speak ; when they write they will also both use the same forms, the same words, and the same spelling. Here the distinction between written and spoken language is as clearly marked as possible.
The circumstances must have been analogous in Canaan. The excavations have shown that between 2500 and 2000 B.C. a Semitic invasion conquered the old Canaanite population, and covered the greatest part of the country. The invaders evidently brought not only the idiom they spoke, but also their written lan- guage, which was Babylonian cuneiform. The tablets of Tel-el-Amarna and those of Taanach are indisputable proofs that, at the time of the Eighteenth Dynasty, Babylonian cuneiform was the written language of the country. At a later date the finds of Boghaz Keui, the correspondence of the Amorites, show that there had been no change in that respect. Even in the seventh century, at Gezer, cuneiform was still in use for certain documents, although by that time the Canaanite alphabet had been adopted. The old tradition had remained in force.
i6 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
Now let us think of the Israehtes in Egypt. They evidently took with them the language of Canaan, a tongue foreign to the Egyptians, one which thc}^ did not know. We read that Joseph's brethren, "knew not that Joseph understood them, for there was an interpreter between them." During the time of the captivity, living by themselves, apart from the Egyptians, they kept their language, as did, later, the Jewish colonists who settled in the country, like those of Elephantine. If the}' had any writing, we have no proof whatever that they had the Canaanite alphabet, which, if it existed, was not used in Canaan, since the Egyptian captivity is the time of the Tel-el- Amarna correspondence. Besides, it is not probable that there were many of them who could write. The Israelites were nomads, shepherds who had preserved in Egypt their former way of living, and for whom the persecution consisted in a forced change of their habits. Instead of living the easy life of shep- herds, they were compelled to be masons under hard taskmasters. In the life of cattle drivers there are not man}' occasions for writing ; there is hardly any necessity for it. Therefore we must consider that among them, those who could write were only a few exceptional persons.
The only one of them who is known as having had what we might call a literary education is Moses, who was brought up like the son of Pharaoh's daughter, which means, as Stephen says in his speech, " that he was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians." With- out giving a historical value to the legends which Josephus relates about the youth of Moses, we can admit what is shown by the narrative of Exodus, that he kept up some intercourse with his countrymen, and perhaps that he was used as an intermediate agent between the Egyptians and their Hebrew subjects. Moses could wTite ; this is
THE LANGUAGE 17
constantly mentioned in the history of his Hfe. But, certainly, the Semitic writing which he learnt at Phar- aoh's court was not the Canaanitc, and could only be Babylonian cuneiform. Among the discovered tablets there arc answers from the Eg}^ptian king. He must have had at his court men who could write the same lan- guage as that of the letters he received. The reports sent to him by the governors of the Palestinian cities were not in Egyptian, they were in the language of those officials ; and Pharaoh would not have been understood if he had answered in Egyptian hieratic. It was necessary that he should have men who could write the language of Abd-hiba of Jerusalem, or Gitia of Ashkelon, dragomen like those of the embassies of the present day. If Moses was taught a Semitic writing, which seems natural considering his origin and position, it is obvious that he learnt Babylonian cuneiform, a writing which allowed him to have intercourse with the Semitic world of his time.
The first writing of Moses mentioned is the Decalogue, the two tables of the law. The late eminent Semitic scholar, M. Philippe Berger, had already come to the conclusion that the tables of the law were written in cuneiform, this being thus the sacred writing mentioned in Exodus xxxii. 16: "and the tables were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, graven upon the tables." When Moses had hewn "two tables of stone hke unto the first, he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments." (Exod. xxxiv. 28). Therefore Moses knew what is called God's writing.
If we turn to Egypt, we see that hieroglyphical script is also called the writing of the god himself. The Rosetta stone teaches us that hieroglyphs were called " the writing of divine words." and when we read of " writings of divine
i8 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
words which are the book of Thoth," of an inscription engraved in blue " by the god himself," it clearly means writings in hieroglyphs which Thoth was supposed to have taught to mankind, and the expression is quite analo- gous to that of Exodus (xxxi. i8) : tables of stone wTitten with the finger of God.
In the case of the tables of the law, there is absolutely no reason to suppose that they were written in Egyptian hieroglyphs. Egyptian was not the language of the Israelites ; they probably did not understand it, nor was this script their script, while Babylonian cuneiform extended all over Western Asia. Besides, if they had written the Ten Commandments in hieroglyphs, which was a picture writing, they would have had in the very text of their law likenesses of " forms in heaven above or in the earth beneath, or in the water under the earth " which were strictly prohibited by the Second Command- ment.
The existence of a sacred writing which could only be cuneiform, different from the cursive, lasted as late as the prophet Isaiah, perhaps even later. We read (ch. viii. ver. i) : " And the Lord said unto me : Take thee a great tablet, and write upon it with the pen of a man For Maher-shalal-hashbaz." The word which the Revised Version translates " tablet " is found only in this passage. The LXX have here : "a piece of new and large paper," and the Coptic has " a large piece of a new book " ; the word book being that which in old Egyptian means a roll of papyrus. The French transla- tion of M. Phihppe Berger is : " prends un grand rou- leau." Thus, according to all these translations, what the prophet is told to take is a piece of soft material, papyrus or perhaps skin, but neither a wooden nor a stone tablet.
THE LANGUAGE 19
The Hebrew words hereth-enosh, " pen of a man," show that there was a distinct instrument for another writing ; and if we inquire with what this " pen of man " is contrasted, we find only the "finger of God" with which the two tables of the testimony, tables of stone, were written (Exod. xxxi. 18). This explains the word enosh for man, which is generally poetical, and is em- ployed " of man " in comparison " with God," especially when the writer wishes to contrast the weakness and in- feriority of mankind with the majesty of Godhead. A striking instance of this passage of the eighth Psalm, verse 3 : " Wlien I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers . . . What is man (enosh) that Thou art mindful of him. ..." As there are two writings, the writing of God and that of man, the word for man is naturally enosh.
The word hereth is translated in the dictionaries by " style," an instrument for engraving on metal, and by metonymy as we say, style. But the LXX and the Coptic use two Greek words which mean a pencil, or sometimes a drawing in outline. This agrees well with the sense given by them to the first word : a piece of paper or skin on which they cannot draw anything but cursive wTiting ; for cuneiform can be sculptured on stone, but otherwise it is a writing produced only by pressure on wet clay ; it is not a drawing. The instru- ment used for cuneiform can only form wedges, it cannot make any curved line, it cannot draw. The pressure of the four-sided stylus would leave no trace on paper or skin, nor could it be used with ink. At the same time cuneiform could not be pressed into hard stuff like pot- sherds. Therefore, for any material which was not clay, it was necessary to have another alphabet, the Canaanite or the Aramaic alphabet, a writing which could be used with pen and ink or engraved on material like wax,
20 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
wood or potsherds. Undoubtedly this is the writing meant by Isaiah in using the words hereth cnosh. ^^'hat- ever be the Hteral translation of these two words, their true meaning is that given in the margin of the Revised Version : " common characters." Thus it seems certain that as late as the time of Isaiah there were two writings ; one which was considered as having been originally the work of God engraved by His finger, the cuneiform, and one which was called human because it was used in every-day life and not for law or any literary purpose.
The old Hebrew potsherds found at Samaria, which are the accounts of the cellar of the king, show distinctly for what original purpose this alphabet was invented. Can we suppose that this script was used for the word of God or for the sentences of a legislator ? We can hardly think so ; and the fact that Isaiah is specially told to use common characters seems to indicate that he did not employ them when he wrote the word of God. The reason he is told to make this exception is given in verse i6 : " Bind thou up the testimony, seal the law among My disciples." This confirms the translation of the LXX. Isaiah is to take a piece of large paper, he is told afterwards to roll it up, to tie it with a piece of string and seal it, as was done for the Egyptian papyri. Cuneiform could not be pressed on any material which had to be rolled, therefore it was necessary that the prophet should use common writing, but the Babylonian cuneiform was still in existence in Isaiah's time.
Beside the Decalogue, Moses had to write the laws which God Himself had taught him. He would not use hereth enosh, nor the common characters, admitting even that they were invented in his time which is far from being established. They would never have been called the work of God. It is even doubtful whether in Palestine
THE LANGUAGE 21
they were adopted by learned people, for, except the stele of Mesha and the inscription of Siloah, there are no literary documents in that script, which may never have been used for books.
Moses called himself an Aramean like all the Israelites of his time. " An Aramean ready to perish was my father," says the author of Deuteronomy (xxvi. 5.) Even Josephus, the Jewish writer living under the Roman emperor, has preserved that tradition. When in his history he reaches the point of the arrival of Jacob in Egypt, he interrupts his narrative, as Genesis does, in order to introduce the description of the family of the patriarch ; but before beginning the list he gives the follow- ing curious reason for quoting all the names : " I thought it necessary to record those names, in order to inform those who do not suspect it that we are Mesopo- tamians and not Egyptians."
The ancestor of Moses, Abram, is said to have started from Ur. In his native city he must have heard of the great legislator Hammurabi, " the royal offspring whom Sin has created, who enriched the city of Ur," as he says in the introduction to his famous code of laws. Can we suppose that Abram and his tribe, leaving Mesopo- tamia, where the literary language was Babylonian cuneiform, a language which was especially that of such laws as were called a divine inspiration, could take to Canaan any other literary language and any other writing ? If at that time there had been in Mesopotamia a cursive writing, it would have been Aramaic, and not Canaanite Hebrew.
Since, after centuries of bondage in Egypt, the Israelites still considered themselves as Arameans, they must have preserved some tradition of the old country. It is quite possible that Moses knew who Hammurabi was, and that
22 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
this king was for him a legislator above all others. When he had to write laws himself, laws which God had dictated to him, as Marduk was said to have done for the Baby- lonian ruler, Moses must naturally have been inclined to adopt the language and writing in which the great law- giver of his country had proclaimed and written his code. It was the most appropriate language for laws and also for expressing divine words.
The more attentively we consider the circumstances in which Moses lived, the nation to which he belonged, and the traditions which he followed, the clearer it appears that he could not have written anything but Babylonian cuneiform. This fact gives to his books a special character and throws a pecuHar light on his whole work. We are too apt, in studying old writers of that remote time, to apply to them the cut-and-dried rules of the present day. We have now for every author some special fixed requirements which he has to fulfil. We have classified authors, we speak of an historian, a poet, a novel-writer, and for each one of these there are strict regulations which he cannot put aside. Besides this, a writer, especially a prose writer, has before his eyes a definite plan ; his work has a beginning and an end, and unrolls itself in accordance with a scheme which he has in his mind.
There is nothing of this in the case of Moses. He is not a professional writer ; he is a prophet and takes his tablets only when he feels inspired, or, as is often said, when the Lord speaks to him. One day he will be a poet, he will strike up the hymn of Miriam after the passage of the Red Sea. In the desert he will be the law-giver and, hke Hammurabi, he will teach his people the law which he has received from God and write it down in order that it be not forgotten. Another time he will feel prompted
THE LANGUAGE 23
to record the ways of God towards His people since the beginning of the world. He will describe the creation of the earth, of the animals and of man, or he will picture Abraham's life. He will go into great detail about Joseph's time, and, for a reason which we can only presume, omit entirely what happened from Joseph's death to his own time.
It is very important to remember that Moses does not write in a book, not even in a papyrus roll. He is not obliged to take up his narrative where he left off. Cunei- form tablets are independent of each other, each one forms a whole. Nor is it necessary that he should follow the chronological order ; the tablets relating the history of Joseph may have been written before the description of the creation.^ The introduction of a tablet may sum up or even repeat what is found on another, as we see in the first two tablets of Genesis. There is no plan which binds the author to a certain order of his tablets or to -f.. certain proportions. It will be the redactor's task to put the tablets in order chronologically, to make a book out of them, like Genesis, and to link them together by transitions. Nevertheless the fact of Moses having written on tablets wiU always appear in the lack of connection which we notice in certain parts of the Penta- teuch, especially in Genesis and which has been interpreted by the critics as showing the hands of several authors, the most important of whom are the Elohist, the Jahvist and the writer of the Priestly Code.
But the most serious consequence which we derive from the fact that the oldest Hebrew documents were written in Babylonian cuneiform, is that we must recog- nize that these books are not original documents as regards language. In their present form, they are trans- ^ On tablets intended to form a series see p. 183.
24 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
lations or adaptations of documents wxitten in another idiom. This is very much Uke what we have in the case of the New Testament. The rabbinic Hebrew in which we now read the books of Moses is to them what Greek is to the words of our Lord. Philological criticism, on which rests the reconstruction of the books of the Old Testament, has been exercised upon translations. The texts which the critics continually dissect with their philological microscope and in which new authors are constantly being discovered are not original. The pic- ture shown to us of a kind of mosaic made of stones gathered in various places, the manufacture of which is described to us in the most minute detail, is all based upon what is but the latest form given to words and writings of the old Hebrew writers which have under- gone several transformations. I shall only mention two : that of Ezra, who is said to have brouglit from the Captivity the writing called b}^ the rabbis ashurit, the Assyrian, which is the Aramaic of Mesopotamia, and the transforma- tion due to the rabbis of the first centuries of the Christian era who adopted the square Hebrew and the vowel points.
Ezra made a change of language as well as of writing. Where he transcribed the books in Aramaic characters, it was in order that they might be better understood, because at that time the Aramaic language was becoming more and more the idiom of the country. He not only replaced the alphabet by another, he adapjtcd the text to the language which was then spoken and written. One can hardly call it a translation since it was only a dialectic modification. But that is enough to shake considerably, I even might say to destro}', the confidence in results which the critics have attained mainl}' through philological and literary analj^sis of the present text.
THE LANGUAGE 25
How many of the books of the Old Testament may have been written in Babylonian cuneiform ? Evidently everything of which Moses was the author or which was written by Joshua, his disciple and successor. In Joshua we know from the proper names, especially those of the cities, that there was an older text which the LXX used for their translation. From Joshua to David's time, during the period of the Judges and the incessant wars of the Israehtes with their neighbours, it is probable that there was not much writing. The Phihstines against whom the Israelites struggled, and who, according to the latest discoveries, are supposed to have come from Crete, were probably not Semites. It is not likely that they introduced into the country a new alphabet. If any religious book was written at that time, as its author was a prophet or a man instructed in the law, he would naturally employ the sacred script and the language of Moses, the Babylonian cuneiform. However, there must have been, at an early date, an alphabet for common use. There is no doubt that there was one at the time of the prophets. We have seen that it is mentioned by Isaiah, and Jeremiah is described as writing with ink in a roll. That is the regular bookwriting of which we do not know with certainty whether it was Aramaic or the Canaanite alphabet. Old examples of Canaanite are the potsherds found at Samaria by Mr. Reisner and which are of the time of Omri, the father of Ahab. This alphabet, the Canaanite, or so-called old Hebrew, is the same as the Phoenician, and we find it after Phoenician influence was strongly established in the country.
The Old Hebrew Alphabet
Most Semitic scholars admit that the first Canaanite inscriptions are of the time of David or Solomon. It has
26 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
been argued that this alphabet bears the character of a script which has been long in use, therefore it must go back much further. But we do not know where it was invented, whether in Phoenicia or, as Professor Sayce thinks, among the tribes of Northern Arabia. It may be much older in its native country, and yet be a later importation into Palestine. Admitting that it was known in Palestine before Solomon, it does not follow that it was used for books and especially for sacred writings. It is even questionable whether old Hebrew or Canaanite was ever chosen for books, particularly in the most ancient times. We have no remains of anything htcrary in Phoenician or old Hebrew. The stele of Mesha of Moab can hardly be called a literary document. One can fancy a king of Moab having his inscription engraved in the language spoken by his subjects who perhaps had no literature nor script of any kind. What the excavations have revealed to us of literary matters are only two things : the cuneiform tablets of Tel-el-Amarna, Lachish, Gezer, Taanach, and Boghaz Keui, showing that Babylon- ian was the written language of Palestine at the time of Moses and later, and the papyri of Elephantine, from which we gather that the Jews who had left their country to settle in Egypt spoke and wrote Aramaic.
The introduction of the Phoenician, or old Hebrew, alphabet must be connected with the increase of Phoeni- cian influence in Canaan. We do not know when the Phoenician cities first became independent under their own rulers. In the correspondence of Tel-el-Amarna, the letters of Abi-milki of Tyre and Zimrida of Zidon are the same as the other ones, and are written in the same language. The distinct Phoenician character of these cities does not yet appear. As I said before, the Phoeni- cian or Canaanite alphabet seems to have been invented
THE LANGUAGE 27
for common use, for writing on any material. An alpha- bet of that kind would be particularly useful for a nation of tradesmen like the Phoenicians. Various theories have been put forward as to its origin. We shall not inquire whether it comes from a tribe in the Arabian desert, or from the North. But it is hardly to be sup- posed that it originated among the Hebrews who, especi- ally before Solomon's time, were an agricultural nation, and do not seem to have been much occupied with literary, or even industrial, pursuits.
The circumstances changed when Solomon came to the throne. His reign seems to have marked an im- portant step in the progress of civilization. From the first, he was desirous of building a temple which should be a central point for the kingdom in general, but chiefly for worship according to the prescription of Deuteronomy : " the place which the Lord your God shall choose out of all your tribes to put His Name there, even unto His habitation " (xii. 5). But he had neither the necessary material for building a temple worthy of being " God's habitation," nor the skilled workmen who could work metal. He was obliged to apply to Hiram, King of Tyre, with whom he was at peace, and with whom he had made a league. He sent to him saying (i Kings v. 6- 2 Chron. ii. 7-10) : " Now therefore command that they hew me cedar trees out of Lebanon ; and my servants shall be with thy servants ; and I will give thee hire for thy servants according to all that thou shalt say ; for thou knowest that there is not among us any that can skill to hew timber like unto the Zidonians." It is the king himself who says that his subjects did not know how to work timber.
It was the same with metal (i Kings vii 13) : " And King Solomon sent and fetched Hiram out of TjTe.
28 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
He was the son of a widow woman of the tribe of Naph- thah, and his father was a man of Tyre, a worker in brass, and he was filled with wisdom and understanding and cunning to work all works in brass." Now if we consider the enormous levies of men sent to Lebanon to hew cedar and fir under the direction of Zidonians who instructed them how to do this, is it not natural to sup- pose that the Zidonians taught them also their alphabet, that the accounts, probably on potsherds, of the hire for the servants of Hiram which Solomon's ofhcers had to pay were written in Phoenician script ? Industry cannot very well go on without writing ; and if Solomon had to rely upon the industry of the Phoenicians to such a large extent, surely he may well have taken over their writing also, and made use of it. The adoption of this new writing probably took place naturally amongst the workmen of the two nations, but if it became general amongst the subjects of Solomon, it must have emanated from the king himself by a decree or edict proclaimed by the highest authority in the kingdom. WTiat gives to this hypothesis a certain degree of probabihty, is the fact that Solomon is described to us not as a warrior, like his father David, but as a man having literary tastes. He is said to have been an author : " w^ho spoke of trees from the cedar that is in Lebanon, even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall ; he spoke also of beasts and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes." Without taking the above passage too literally, we may infer that he was more qualified than any of the rulers who reigned at Jerusalem to adopt characters infinitely simpler and easier to handle than the cuneiform. After Solomon, the time when we see Phoenician in- fluence most prevalent, was during Ahab's reign. In his father's time the Phoenician script was commonly used
THE LANGUAGE 29
at Samaria, as we know from the great number of ostraca found by Mr. Reisner in Omri's palace. I fancy that it was owing to the conquest of Moab by Omri and Ahab that the Canaanite writing extended as far as Dhibon, where Mesha wrote his inscription. Later, Phoenician influence must have been in conflict with Assyrian, and was entirely superseded, especially in Judea, by the Assyrian conquest.
The idea that Solomon established in his kingdom the Canaanite writing for common use is an hypothesis which is not yet proved, but it seems to me to agree with the historical circumstances such as we know them from the books and with the character of Solomon, which was totally different from that of his father, and from that of the rulers of Israel, whoever they were, judges or kings, who preceded him. We are led again to the con- clusion that before Solomon's time all religious books must have been wTitten in Babylonian cuneiform.
CHAPTER II GENESIS BEFORE THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT
THE evidence that has been reviewed in the pre- ceding chapter seems to prove that the first books of the Old Testament were written in Bab3'lonian cuneiform, on tablets. We should Hke now to consider further the bearing of this fact on the form of the book of Genesis. We shall consider chiefly the events which took place before the arrival of Jacob and his family in Egypt. Literary arguments rather than archaeological will often have to be adduced and also information which may be derived from Egyptian writings. But the reader must not expect to find here a complete study of this venerable document. A few points only will be chosen, showing the ^losaic authorship and the unity of the book.
The First Four Tablets
The review of the facts has led us to conclude that the Pentateuch and the earlier writings of the Old Testa- ment were originally written in Babylonian cuneiform. Therefore they were written not in books, but on tablets. This fact is so important that I must be allowed to dwell again on the character of writings on tablets ; for this circumstance involves a complete change in our views concerning these writings and in our method of studying them. We have to do away with the description and
30
GENESIS BEFORE THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 31
the nature of what we call a book, whether it be written on a papyrus roll or printed like those of the present day. A book, especially an historical one, is made on a definite plan ; it has a beginning and an end, and it must be composed according to a definite order. If it is divided into chapters, the middle ones or the last will not be ^vritten before the earher ones. The second chapter presupposes the first, it is intimately connected with it as its logical successor. There is no break between the two, and the same connexion exists between the second and the third.
A tablet is something quite different. It is a whole, a composition, we might even say a book in itself ; it is not connected with another, it does not follow a pre- vious one, it does not go on to a succeeding one. It has no fixed place in a series as have the chapters of a volume. The author may write his tablets whenever he likes, he is not bound either by a chronological order or by a definite plan. Supposing a tablet to be a narra- tive, it may require an introduction which recalls facts mentioned in another one, or it may even be a summary of such facts. Therefore a series of tablets put together, in book form, as was probably done by Ezra for the tablets of Moses, will necessarily produce a composition hke Genesis, where the connexion is very loose between the different parts, and in which there are repetitions and a complete absence of proportion in the way each subject is treated. - Naturally, a scholar who has not divested himself of the notion which we have of a book will find himself tempted to find different authors in a text which consists of fragments, pieced together, which one author wrote at various times and under various circumstances.
When Ezra compiled the tablets he could not begin
32 ARCHAEOLOGY OF TPIE OLD TESTAMENT
otherwise than b}' those which refenTci to creation. We can easily separate the first four : the creation of heaven and earth, the creation of mankind, the generations of men as far as Noah, and the deluge.
The first begins with an indication of time : in the beginning, iv apxfi, God created the heaven and the earth ; then the writer relates the work of the six days, after which God rested. Being the summary of God's com- plete work, the narrative mentions the creation of man and the fact that he is to have dominion over all that had been made before. Since the creation of man is only an episode in the whole work, one feature in the general picture, it is not treated with such detail as it is in another tablet, the special subject of which is the creation of man- kind. The tablet ended with these words : (ii. ^.) " These are the generations of the heaven and the earth when they were created." It is evidently an error to consider these words as the title of the next narrative — we should say, of the next tablet — which does not speak either of the creation of the heaven or of that of the earth. Some critics, e.g. Kautzsch and Socin, and others, have very cor- rectly considered these words as the end of the first narrative. This seems also to be the interpretation of theLXX., who translate: Avtt) rj ^i/3Xo^ yeKeVew? oupavov Kol <yri<i, ore iyiueTo. ' ' This is the book of heaven and earth when they were created." A book ended there, or as we should say, a tablet. The word yS/ySAo?, papyrus-book, is emploj'ed here because the LXX translated from Aramaic papyrus-rolls.
Now begins a new tablet, which, as we have said, is independent of the first ; it is a book in itself. Therefore the first sentence does not follow the last one of the other tablet, as would be the case with two pages. It is a new narrative which requires an introduction. The events
GENESIS BEFORE THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 33
related occur after the creation, but the author begins with contrasting the primitive state of the earth, when it was first created and before the existence of man, with the Garden of Eden (ii. 4.) " In the day that the Lord made heaven and earth iv rj/juipa i-rron^a-ev Kvpio<; 6 dehi; the earth was entirely barren, " for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no man to till the ground." But, when the Lord had formed man. He put him into the Garden of Eden, the vegetation of which was luxuriant. Why ? — because a " river went out of Eden to water the garden," and man was there " to dress it and to keep it." At the beginning no rain and utter barrenness, on the contrary in the Garden of Eden where man had been put, abundance of plants and fruits due not to rain, but to a river which divides itself into four branches, a detail which it is very important to notice. I do not believe that the critics have ever paid any attention to this fact, since they suppose that all that is said of the river is an interpolation due to a different author. This, I do not hesitate to say, shows a strange lack of insight into the composition of the narrative. Why should the author have mentioned at the beginning the absence of rain and the emptiness which was the result of it, if it was not to put it in opposition to the riches and plenty which a river brought to the garden. It is interesting to notice that this reveals an author who knew Egypt. For him fertility is derived not from rain, but from a river, and this river divides itself into several branches. Evidently when he wrote that description Moses had the Nile before his eyes. We shall see in another chapter that he again quotes Egypt as the type of a fertile and rich country.
After the description of the river, which is somewhat detailed, the \\Titer reverts to man whom the Lord has
D
34 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
put in the garden. He describes the command given to man not to eat from one of the trees, the birth of Eve, the temptation, the fall and its consequences, the birth of Cain and Abel and of their first descendants. The tablet closes, like the former one, with these words, which I translate from the LXX : (v. i.) " This is the book of the generation of mankind." Avtt] rj ^l^\o<; <yev6a€co<; avOpcoTroyv. Here the Hebrew also has the word " book." The tablet of the creation of mankind ends there.
Another tablet begins (v. i. ) It also has the necessary in- troduction and it opens exactly like the former one with the words : "in the day that " . . . 2? VH'^pff- eTroirjcrev 6 deo^. The author is about to describe the generations of men as far as Noah, and very aptly begins by saying that God made men male and female, therefore they could give birth to children. He here mentions only the father, while in the tablet of the generation of mankind the mother is nearly always mentioned. Here again we may recognize the man who knew Egypt, where the idea that a divine being, for instance a god, could give birth to his son from his owti substance, by himself, was very famihar, an idea with which the writer of the tablet disagrees completely.
I beheve we have also the indication of the end of this tablet. It goes as far as Noah, and the words (Gen. vi. g), " these are the generations of Noah," seem to have been misunderstood. They cannot apply to the following narrative, which is that of the deluge. Even critics like Kautzsch and Socin have noticed the discrepancy between the title and the text, since they translate : this is the family-history of Noah. We must translate this rubric like that of the first tablet, to which it is exactly similar in Hebrew : " this is the generation of Noah." It is his genealogy since Adam.
GENESIS BEFORE THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 35
The tablet of the deluge, which follows, is one of the most important of Genesis. It is, in fact, the description of Noah's life until his death. It bears very strongly the same character as each of the previous writings. It is a book in itself, which Moses may perhaps have written before he wrote the tablets of creation. Naturally, at the beginning the writer introduces the man who may be called the hero of the deluge. Noah was a righteous man who had three sons, and he walked with God while the inhabitants of the earth were corrupt. This is a repetition of what is in another tablet, which might be unknown to the reader, since this is not a mere continu- ation of it. In my opinion, this tablet ended with the death of Noah (ix. 29).
We cannot now go further in the separation and analysis of these tablets, which are no longer in their original lan- guage. But such seems to me the method according to which these ancient texts ought to be studied. They are a series of tablets, arranged by Ezra or by some compiler, whoever it might be. Each tablet is a whole in itself and may contain facts or sentences found also in another. The task of the critics is now to separate them and to distinguish the old documents from the work of the com- piler. Putting them together, changing their language and their script must necessarily have had some influence on the text. I should fancy, for instance, that the compiler would replace geographical names absolutely unknown to his contemporaries by those in use in his time, just as a French writer of the present day might put Paris in place of Lutetia.
I believe that if the Pentateuch is studied in this light, many of the assertions which are proclaimed by the critics to be unassailable are bound to disappear. What reason is there for assigning different authors to the four tablets
36 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
which we traced in the first nine chapters of Genesis ? For instance, the first tablet, the creation of heaven and earth, being attributed to the Priestly Code, must be post exilic, and therefore 400 years younger than the second, the creation of mankind, which is Jahvist. Yet there is no discrepancy between them, though they are independent, and we have found no ground whatever to question their being the work of one author.
Kautzsch and Socin distinguish four authors in the first two chapters of Genesis, and one tablet has to be divided between two or three. On the contrary, we have noticed that each tablet is a whole which unfolds itself quite logically, and that so-called repetitions from another form the introduction necessary in order that the tablet may be well understood.
WTiy should Moses not be the author, as he is said to be by the tradition of many centuries ? Why should his tablets not have been preserved just as much as Hammurabi's code, or the letters of the Palestinian governors ? I am convinced that the fact of the Pentateuch having orig- inally been written on cuneiform tablets, when new discoveries shall have confirmed the information which we have already derived from the fact, wiU be a fatal blow struck at Wellhausen's theory, and that it will be the end of the " Rainbow Bible," of the picture with variegated colours, each one representing an author whose name, origin and date are absolutely unknown, and whose conjectural existence is based merely on a literary criticism which is quite irrelevant since it is not applied to an original text.
The Garden of Eden and the Land of Egypt The tablet of the creation of mankind gives the de- scription of the Garden of Eden, out of the ground of which
GENESIS BEFORE THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 37
the Lord God " made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food." We noticed that this luxuriant vegetation was due, not to rain, but to a river which " went out of the garden to water Eden " and after- wards divided itself into four branches described at some length. This seems to reveal an author who knew Egypt, the fertiHty of which proceeded, and still proceeds, not from rain, but from its magnificent river. Moses had Egypt before his eyes ; that country was for him the type of the most fertile and rich land which he could imagine.
We find an allusion to Egypt in another passage also ; in Genesis xiii. 10. Abram has come out of Egypt with his nephew Lot. Their herdsmen quarrel, and in order that there should be no strife, Abram tells Lot that they must separate, and that he may go to the right or to the left. Lot lifts up his eyes and beholds " all the Plain of Jordan that it was well watered everywhere, before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, like the garden of the Lord, hke the land of Egypt as thou goest unto Zoar."
It seems natural to connect this passage with the description of Eden. The Plain of Jordan is well watered, like the garden which the Lord prepared for man, and also like the land of Egypt " as thou goest unto Zoar." Surely the two descriptions must be by the same author.
The critics have cut them up between various writers. The description of Eden is by the Jahvist, except what is said of the river ; that belongs to the redactor. In the thirteenth chapter the verse quoted above is also by the Jahvist, but the words " like the land of Egypt " are put down as a late gloss, the author of which is not known. On the contrary, we shall see that these words belong to the old Mosaic text.
This conjecture of the critics is due to a confusion in the vowel points of the Massora, which resulted in their
38 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
not distinguishing two quite different cities of Zoar. Undoubtedly there was a City of Zoar south of the Dead Sea, in Moab. There Lot took refuge after the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. It is mentioned in Deuteronomy (xxxiv. 4) as the southern point of the view before the eyes of Moses, and also by the prophets Isaiah and Jere- miah. There is what is called a popular etymology of the name in what Lot says to the angel, " Oh, let me escape thither, is it not a little one ? , . . therefore the name of the city was called Zoar," which means "little." The LXX always transcribe the City of Moab Segor, lijyoop. This city was separated from Egypt by the whole Sinaitic desert, so it cannot be meant in the passage of chapter xiii.
" Like the land of Egypt as thou goest unto Zoar " refers to a quite different city, which the LXX read Zogora : Zojopa, the Egyptian Zar. This city is well known. It was on the most eastern branch of the Nile, the Pelusiac. Not only do we find it mentioned in many inscriptions, but we have a picture of it in one of the sculptures repre- senting the campaign of King Seti I, of the Nineteenth Dynasty, against the populations of the Sinaitic peninsula and the southern part of Palestine. It was called a fortress, and we see that it consisted of pylons and towers on both sides of the river, joined by a bridge. It has long ago been identified with the present Kantarah {the bridge), one of the stations on the Suez Canal which used to be, and was tiU quite lately, one of the entrances into Egypt for the caravans coming from Palestine. In- scriptions lately discovered have confirmed the identifi- cation of Zar with the site of Kantarah. The road from Egypt to Canaan through Zar was the most northerly one. There was another more southerly one through Pithom, of which we shall have to speak further. Zar was con-
GENESIS BEFORE THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 39
sidered as the limit of Egypt on that side as late as the Ptolemies. Its name in Egyptian contains a sign indicat- ing that it is a foreign word. On the cast was the desert where, here and there, the Pharaohs had dug wells and built towers and stations on the road to Canaan ; but it was neither so well- watered nor so well cultivated as the land on the west.
The western part of the Delta between the Tanitic and Pelusiac branches was a very rich land. As late as the fourth century a Christian pilgrim, Silvia Aquitana, describing it, says that when she journeyed along the Nile (the Pelusiac branch) she went " through vineyards which produced wine, and vineyards producing balsam, through orchards extremely well cultivated, fields and gardens. What more ? I do not think I ever saw a more beautiful territory." Although the good lady, who is a perfect type of many tourists of the present day, beheves whatever is said to her by her guides and sees the old Israelites every- where, the description she gives of that part of the country is most interesting. It is a striking illustration, given quite unintentionally, of the passage in Genesis.
That part of the country has changed considerably
since Silvia Aquitana's journey. The silting up of
the Pelusiac and Tanitic branches, the formation of Lake
Menzaleh, due to the sinking of the ground, have destroyed
the former beauty of the land. A few years ago the ruins
of the great city of Tanis could only be reached by going
across marshes and a swampy country, the quite barren
white soil of which is the salt land, the type of sterihty for
the Psalms and for Jeremiah. Evidently that part of the
Delta is quite different from what it was even in Ptolemaic
times. Canals are now being dug there in order to restore
to that region part at least of its ancient fruitfulness.
The passage : " like the garden of the Lord, like the
40 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
land of Egypt as thou goest unto Zoar," is extremely embarrassing for the critics. It is supposed to have been WTitten by the Jahvist who lived in the kingdom of Judah in the ninth century (B.C.). In that case, there is absolutely no reason for speaking of Egypt, a country far distant and unknown to the inhabitants of Judea. In comparing the land of Sodom and Gomorrah with another which was particularly beautiful, it is obvious that the writer must have chosen a region which his readers knew, so that they might judge how far his com- parison was true. He has first spoken of the garden of the Lord, which I have no hesitation in considering as being Eden, the ideal type of fruitfulness and beauty. Eden had never been seen by any of the contemporaries of the writer, so he must choose a country which they might see : Egypt.
Then the author cannot have been one who lived in Judea. His comparison would not in that case have appealed in the least to his readers. Supposing it made in our time by a Scotch preacher to his congregation, it would come to this : like the garden of the Lord, like Normandy as thou goest to Le Havre. What kind of impression would such a comparison make upon Scotch hearers ?
Most of the critics consider the words, " hke the land of Egypt," as a gloss. We shall not inquire whether there is any reason for inserting this gloss into the text since this insertion makes the sentence quite incongruous. For Zoar is always considered by them as being the city south of the Dead Sea ; therefore on the way to Zoar thou dost not go through the well- watered land of Egypt, but, on the contrary, through a waterless desert ; so that the whole passage is quite inconsistent and mean- ingless.
GENESIS BEFORE THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 41
It is not much clearer when, with Kautzsch and Socin, we strike out the gloss and translate : hke the paradise as far as Zoar. The paradise does not exist ; how can there be a way from that garden towards Zoar ? Other critics suppose that the Upper Jordan valley is the Garden of the Lord. But we do not think that this name is ever applied to the Jordan valley ; besides, going from there to Zoar it was necessary to skirt the Dead Sea, the very region which had been destroyed. How then could this be the second term of the comparison ? I need not dwell longer on the utter inability of the critics to give a reason- able explanation of this sentence unless they correct the text. Some of their translations are absolutely meaning- less.
There seems to be only one way to solve the difficulty, and to interpret the sentence as it is, without striking out anything. But before coming to Egypt, let us begin with " the Garden of the Lord." In my opinion, this cannot be anything else than the Garden of Eden, the magnificent dwelling which the Lord had devised and prepared for man. The author has before his eyes the vision of the glorious creation of the Lord described in another tablet. The land of Sodom and Gomorrah was a true Eden. This comparison has for Moses a majesty and a nobleness which it has lost entirely in modern times, since the name Eden has been prostituted to hotels and cafes-chantants.
But no one except Adam had been in Eden. The author himself knows its existence only from tradition, or from some early documents which had been preserved unto his time. In order that his comparison may be really telling for his contemporaries, he must quote something which they have before their eyes ; and this is the land of Egypt. Zoar, the Egyptian Zar, is the fortress on the
42 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
frontier, it is the place where Egypt ended. On the eastern side of the Pelusiac branch the country is no longer Egypt, it is the desert. The fertile and beautiful land is on the west, so that the sentence means, as the LXX and the Coptic read "like the land of Egypt, until thou readiest Zoar" : w^ t) j)} Aljiitttov ea)<; iXdelv eh Zoyopa. There is no possible misunderstanding, the sentence is WTitten for a man who lives in Egypt and who goes towards the border-city of Zoar. How then can the author be a writer in the kingdom of Judah ? For this does not apply to a traveller going from Judea to Egypt. It is just the reverse. At Zoar Egypt ends ; west of it, towards Judea, there is the desert inhabited by the nomads called the Shasu.
Let us now revert to the Israelites in Egypt. This beautiful country is contiguous to the land of Goshen where they reside. Probably a great number of them know it, perhaps they know the city of Zoar on the way to Canaan with which they may have intercourse of some kind. Does any explanation account better for the meaning of this sentence than that Moses was its author, and that the tablet relating this episode of Abram's hfe was written before Moses left Egypt ?
As we said before, there seems to be such a strong connection between this passage and the description of Eden, that it shows the hand of one single author for both tablets. This is also the opinion of the critics, except that they take out of the tablet of man's creation the description of the river watering the Garden of Eden, and out of this tablet the words " like the land of Egypt." For the second time we notice that the suppression of so-called interpolations or glosses destroys entirely the drift of the passage ; and in this case takes away from the sentence all reasonable sense. Thus in these short
GENESIS BEFORE THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 43
passages : the description of the river in Eden, and this comparison concerning the state of the land before the destruction of the cities, while the critics trace there different authors, we find only Moses writing in Egypt.
Ham and Canaan
The tenth chapter of Genesis, " the generations of the sons of Noah," is one which has been most discussed by the critics, who attribute it to various writers. We shal consider here only one verse, (6) " And the sons of Ham, Cush and Mizraim, and Phut, and Canaan."
There is no doubt about Mizraim, the ordinary name for Egypt. As for Cush, it is generally translated Ethiopia, the region of the Upper Nile, above Egypt. Certainly this was the meaning of the name of Cush in later times, as we know from Egyptian inscriptions ; but in the chapter of Genesis where we find the origin and the first dwelling of the various branches of mankind, it seems established by the works of Assyrian scholars that Cush is Northern Arabia, " especially the district around Djebel Shammar." ^
Phut, as Rouge first pointed out, is the incense country of Punt situated on both sides of the Red Sea. The Egyptian inscriptions place it either south or east of Egypt, the real position being south-east.
One of the reasons for attacking the authenticity of chapter x. is the name Canaan. Canaan being the residence of the Phoenicians and the Hebrews, who both spoke a Semitic language, the first ancestor of the in- habitants cannot be a son of Ham. He must be a Semite. Therefore they say that the list is certainly erroneous on that point.
Antliropology has now taught us, by unassailable facts,
^ Hommel in Hilprecht : Explorations in Bible Lands, p. 742.
44 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
that language and race are far from being identical and that language is no sure criterion of the ethnical type of those who speak it. If we look at the Egypt of the present day, where nothing but Arabic is spoken b}'' the fellaheen, we should say that the Egyptians are a Semitic popula- tion. Yet Greek had been so generally adopted until the Mohammedan conquest, especially as a written lan- guage, and for documents of all kinds that, if we used the same argument as the Hebrew scholars use about Hebrew and which we controverted in the preceding chapter, we should say that the Egyptians spoke Greek, and therefore they belonged to the Indo-European stock. In this case we can trace when the change of language took place and we know the original idiom.
Not so with the old Asiatic nations about which we have very scanty information, especially considering that a conquest may have influenced language in many ways. In ancient as well as in modern times, if the conquest brought a change in the religion the original language was immediately affected. For example we see that the conquest of Egypt by the Arabs having resulted in the destruction of Christianity and the substitution of the mosque for the church, a change of language followed at once : Arabic took the place of Coptic. The Christian- ized Egyptian, the Coptic, remained only in families where the Christian faith was preserved. It is still a religious language, the language of the Church ; but since the end of the seventeenth century it is dead as a spoken idiom. In the same way Arabic superseded the North African languages, it follows in the steps of the Mohammedan religion. The tribes which have kept their idiom are those whose Mohammedanism is merely nominal. The same also with Turkish. In the empire of the Sultan it Is the language of the conquerors, the followers of the
GENESIS BEFORE THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 45
prophet, who often forced their beUef upon their subjects by the sword.
If we go back to Egypt, we find no trace of the language of the Hyksos, who occupied the country for several centuries, and who were certainly an Asiatic nation, coming, according to all probabihty, directly from Asia. They had another religion than the Egyptians. " They reigned ignoring Ra," as a papyrus says ; and this was one of the reasons why they were the objects of the hatred of the natives. But they did not enforce their worship on the Egyptians. On the contrary, they seem to have adopted more and more the rehgion of the country they had conquered, building temples on the same principle and having the names of their kings enclosed in two cartouches, one of which is introduced by the religious title " son of Ra." The same happened at the Assyrian conquest. Esar-haddon did not build in Egypt sanctuaries to his gods, his religion did not conquer the worship of Amon and Osiris. Therefore the language remained the same.
We see also in antiquity, as well as in our time, that the same language may be written by nations or tribes belonging to different races, as is shown by the tablets of Tel-el-Amarna. The population of Palestine was certainly not homogeneous as to race and origin, neither was it entirely Semitic ; nevertheless the governors of the various cities wrote only a Semitic language ; and certainly it would be a great mistake to draw an ethnological con- clusion from this fact.
Assuming that the whole population of Canaan spoke Semitic, it would not follow that it was a Semitic race. I should even say that the scanty indications which have been preserved lead us to the opposite idea. It is said that Canaan begat Zidon his first-born, and Heth. " And
46 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
the border of the Canaanite was from Zidon as thou goest towards Gerar and Gaza, as thou goest towards Sodom and Gomorrah. . . ." The territory of the Canaanite is described by this passage as being in the first place the fertile plain along the sea, from Zidon to Gaza, and then turning at a right angle, it extends over Southern Pales- tine and Judea as far as the Dead Sea, this part of the country being inhabited by the Jebusites, the Amorites and the Girgashites, evidently the descendants of Heth, while six others, being in the north, must be the sons of Zidon.
Whenever the text sums up the description of the posterity of one of the sons, it adds : " Nations divided in their lands every one after his tongue, after their famihes, in their nations " . . . or " after their families, after their tongues, in their lands, in their nations," showing that the dispersion implies not only different lands, but also different tongues. These passages do not lead to the theoretical idea which has prevailed too long in philology, as to Indo-European and Semitic languages, of a typical mother-tongue whence dialects should have diverged. On the contrary they agree with the idea now advocated by anthropology, of the diversity of lan- guage being simultaneous with the dispersion, so that one does not know where to find the mother-tongue. The further back we go, the greater is the variety, as with the primitive people of the present day.
We learn from the Egyptian inscriptions that the Sinaitic peninsula was first inhabited by a population called the Ann Mentu. There are several branches of Anu which are all African nations, inhabitants of Nubia, and of the countries bordering Egypt on the west ; they occupied also the valley of the Nile itself, where their name has remained in that oiAn On, Hehopolis. They are cer-
GENESIS BEFORE THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 47
tainly not Semites. They are a Hamitic population, sons of Ham as much as are the Egyptians. It is quite possible that the Anu Mentu, the population of the Sinaitic penin- sula, may have marched further north and have occupied also the southern part of Palestine, the mountains of Judea, where the tenth chapter of Genesis locates the sons of Ham. Those who were in the beautiful and fertile plain along the sea might easily push further north as far as Zidon.
On the coast, also, we find the Philistines. We do not know exactly when they settled in the country to which they gave their name. The most recent excavations tend to show that they came from Crete, and also that the civilization of this great island is closely related to that of Egypt. The first inhabitants of Crete were undoubtedly not Semites ; nor do they seem to have been Aryans ; so that here again, even if the Philistines were already settled in Canaan at the time when this tablet was written, that part of the country was inhabited by descendants of Ham.
But we have other indications that the Phoenicians did not originally inhabit the coast of Palestine. Herodo- tus says twice that they came from the Red Sea. It is probable that by that name we must not understand the whole of the present Red Sea. The northern part of the Gulf of Suez is for Herodotus the Arabian Gulf ; so that the name Red Sea may have extended to part of the Indian Ocean and perhaps to the Persian Gulf. This seems to connect them with some Cushite nations which were settled on both sides of the present Red Sea. Lepsius explained the Latin name of Poeni and the Greek (f)oivt^ by that of the inhabitants of Punt, whose name he read Puna, which most Egyptologists read Punti, and which I read Puni. The assimilation made by Lepsius has to
48 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
be considered seriously, in spite of the contempt with which it has been treated by some German scholars. According to this opinion, the Phoenicians would have to be reckoned as belonging to the posterity of Phut, one of the sons of Ham.
The tenth chapter of Genesis raises difficult questions in reference to original authorship. We can understand the Hebrews having preserved the tradition concerning the creation of the world, or that of mankind. Even the flood may be one of those popular narratives handed on from father to son, through many generations. Nearly all nations have traditions of that kind which are put down in writing, sometimes very long after they originated. It is not at all impossible that the Israehtes had these traditions before Abram left ^Mesopotamia, especially since they were intimately connected mth Abram's worship. For we must not consider Abram's migration into Canaan as that of a single family. It must have been that of a tribe of some importance, since we see that on the occa- sion of the war of the Mesopotamian kings against the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah Abram led forth his trained men, born in his house, three hundred and eighteen, so that he must have been a chief having a power worthy to be compared with that of the rulers among whom he settled.
If now we try to find the reason which induced Terah to take his son Abram and his grandson Lot to go to Canaan, stopping first at Haran ; and afterwards Abram to take Lot as his companion and to choose as his abode the South of Canaan, it is hardly possible to find for that migration any other cause but religion. These words : " Now the Lord said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto the land that I will show thee ... So Abram
GENESIS BEFORE THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 49
went, as the Lord had spoken unto him" (Gen. xii. i) seem to show that his worship was not that of his family, and that he went to Canaan, to a country where he could practise his own rehgion without incurring the enmity of those who were not followers of the same worship. Applying to the Abrahamites a modern name, we should call them a sect.
A sect naturally must have its religious books, relating its origin. It has some documents showing whence it comes and how it was born. In fact the first eleven chapters of Genesis are nothing but the generation of Abram, beginning at the first man. They are his pedigree. These chapters may have been wTitten on tablets brought from Haran, which Moses used or copied. He may have chosen from among a larger number those which best answered his purpose. The fact of these tablets having been written in Mesopotamia accounts for their similarity to the Assyrian documents on the deluge or even on creation, a similarity upon which so many theories have lately been based.
A few tablets may easily have been carried by nomads even to a great distance, as were the letters written by the governors of Palestinian cities, or the kings of Babylon to Amenophis III in Egypt. Especially would this be the case if the Abrahamites gave them a religious value ; if these tablets were for them a kind of title-deed showing that they were the tribe set apart to call upon the Name of the Lord and be faithful to the worship of Yahveh Elohim, the people with whom the Lord would make a covenant, and in whom all the famihes of the earth should be blessed ; surely they would take special care of them, and value them as a treasure.
As we said before, these early tablets, which were left by Moses as a collection of independent documents, were prob-
50 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
ablj'^ put into book form by Ezra when he turned them into Aramaic. He may have added or inserted a few glosses so that his [book might be better understood by his contemporaries ; for instance, it is doubtful whether the Philistines were known under that name at the time when the tablet was written ; but here, again, there is no reason for dividing this chapter between three or four absolutely unknown authors.
The tablet describing the posterity of Noah began with these words (x. i) : " Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah." It ended with verse 32, which is the end of the chapter : " These are the famihes of the sons of Noah, after their generations, in their nations : and of these were the nations divided in the earth after the flood." This sums up the genealogy, and teaches us that the division of the nations took place after the flood. We must remember that all this is wxitten, not by a historian who considers it his duty to record all events which took place at a certain time or in a certain country, but by an author who has a quite different aim in view. He has to show how everything is directed towards the choice of Abraham and his posterity as the elect.
" These three were the sons of Noah : and of these was the whole earth overspread " (ix. 19), says the tablet of the deluge. " Of these were the nations divided in the earth after the flood," (x. 32) are the closing words of the tablet which we have just considered. In the following one we learn how this division took place. The narrative begins with the necessary introduction. The author goes back to what happened immediately after the flood. There was a time when the whole earth was of one language and of one speech. But when men tried to build the Tower of Babel, the Lord confounded their languages and scattered them abroad upon the face of all the earth. Now in
GENESIS BEFORE THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 51
this vast confusion of nations and languages, where could be found the chosen ones, those who were set apart ? They spring from one of the sons of Shem ; therefore the writer reverts to this son of Noah, and to part of his descent which he has mentioned before, in another tablet. Arpachshad was the ancestor of the elect, and the writer enumerates all his descendants as far as Abraham and to the death of Terah, Abraham's father.
If we remember that this is a tablet not linked in writing to another as two consecutive chapters of a book ; if we take it as a piece of literature standing by itself, we cannot but recognize that there is an intimate connexion between the two parts which, at first sight, are so dissimilar. There is no inconsistency. The genealogy of Terah is the necessary sequel to the description of the chaos of man- kind. It is the leading thread which will bring us out of this confusion to Abraham's family. Therefore I cannot understand how it can be attributed to three different authors, two of whom would be separated by several hundred of years, and one about whom the critics have a very indistinct idea.
I consider that this is the last of the tablets brought from Mesopotamia. It is quite possible that the first writer gave them a somewhat different form. Moses may have modified them in some respects. We find the trace of his hand in the passage about the Garden of Eden and the land of Egypt. He evidently had these old documents, and embodied them in his own tablets in which he recorded either events preserved by tradition, like the history of Joseph, or those which took place in his time and of which he could speak as an eyewitness.
Abraham One of the striking features of Genesis is the complete
52 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
lack of proportion. Some events are described at great length, others are entirely left alone. For instance, except a few names, giving us the generations of Shem, there is nothing between the dispersion of mankind and Abraham's migration to Canaan. We have no account whatever of the reason why Terah was called to leave Ur with part of his family to settle in Haran, and why he did not go further, but remained there until his death.
We must not consider Genesis as an ordinary book of history. History as we understand it now did not exist at that time. The idea of recording what had taken place in ancient times merely for the sake of preserving the recollection of the past did not occur to these old writers. When they related what had happened many centuries before their time, it was with a definite purpose ; it was to illustrate something they had at heart and which had for them a special importance.
What constitutes the admirable unity of Genesis, al- though it consists of separate parts not joined together like the chapters of a book, and what is utterly disregarded and even destroyed by the critics, is that from the beginning every narrative is chosen so as to show how Israel is set apart from the rest of mankind. The reason of that choice is that a special duty will be laid upon Israel, it will have a primary task to fulfil : the mission of worshipping Yahveh- Elohim, and of having no other God but Him. Every- thing tends towards that central idea from the very begin- ning. The first tablets which we showed could be traced lead us towards what we may call the cornerstone of the history of the Israelites. It is remarkable how everything which has no bearing on that dominating fact, the setting apart of Israel, is passed over rapidly or left entirely out.
First comes the creation of heaven and earth, then that of man and his generations ; those are mentioned with
GENESIS BEFORE THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 53
hardly any detail. Noah is set apart and saved from the destruction of the men who had been wicked and corrupt. The deluge and the preservation of Noah is related at great length ; the Lord made a covenant with Noah, and we are taught how mankind was renewed from the families of his three sons. They are scattered abroad, and are divided into three branches, each bearing the name of one of Noah's sons and described after their families, after their tongues, in their lands, in their nations. In that restored humanity one branch only is chosen, that of Shem ; among his descendants one family only, that of Arpachsad, and from his numerous sons and daughters, those who will be the ancestors of Terah, the father of Abram.
We shall not hear any more cither of the posterity of Japheth or Ham, nor of the other descendants of Shemg They are quite useless for the history of Israel.
Since this narrative is not written in a book, but on tablets, there are what I may call literary irregularities, repetitions and other failures against the rules set down by masters in the art of writing. These hterary faults have been the stumbling-block of the critics, and have driven them to that mincing process, to that cutting up of Genesis into smaU pieces due to various authors from different places and separated sometimes by several centuries. This destroys completely the unity of the book, it hides this liigher conception on which it rests. ]\Iinute philolog- ical analysis has obscured to the critics the true scope and purport of the book. It has deafened their ears to the leading note, though that note sounds m it from beginning to end.
" Now the Lord said unto Abram (xii. i) : Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto the land that I will show thee, and I will make of thee a great nation, and I wiU bless thee, and
54 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
make thy name great." As I said before, this seems to show clearly that it was a religious reason which drove Abraham out of his countr3^ His migiation is connected with a blessing, and a blessing generally implies the promise of multiplying and of giving birth to a numerous posterity.
Abram is the man with whom the Lord made a special covenant. He, above all others, is considered by the Israelites as their ancestor. Therefore his life is described at great length, as well as the various episodes which show how God set him apart and promised him repeatedly that he should be the father of a great nation. Not only do we find here the outward events of his life, such as the deliver- ance of Lot from the hands of the Mesopotamian kings, but the writer of the tablets shows us what we may call his rehgious character, his peculiar intercourse with God, which is revealed by the sacrifice of Isaac, or by the mar- vellous sort of discussion which Abram had with God about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. These two striking episodes, wherein is brought forward in so vivid a way the moral and religious life of Abraham, are attri- buted by the critics to two different writers ; what I have called the discussion with God to the Jahvist and the sacrifice of Isaac to the Elohist who wrote one century later in the Northern Kingdom, the Jahvist residing in Judea. They must have both painted for themselves Abraham's character with very similar colours, since both wrote fragments which fitted so weU into the literary construction raised by the redactor !
Here a question occurs naturally to our minds which I shall have other occasions to repeat : Where did these two authors get the traditions on which they based their nar- rative ? — for we cannot suppose that they are romances of their invention. There must have been in each kingdom a
GENESIS BEFORE THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 55
tradition very similar, I might even say identical, though the writers who recorded them did not live in the same country, and wrote at a different time. How could these two traditions correspond so well to each other ? Who were those authors ? What was their purpose in writing books of which short fragments only have been preserved ? Even if we admitted the existence of these two writers it would be hardly possible to suppose that they had not at their disposal an old document from which they both borrowed the facts of their narratives.
The supposition which seems to me the most reasonable is that these recollections of Abraham's life were preserved by his descendants, and perhaps partly put in writing, until Moses collected and re- wrote them. In the drift of the narrative we find many Mosaic touches. Moses shares the'same feehngs with Abraham and the same faith. He has the same familiar intercourse with God. One may well fancy that it is the same man who wrote Abram's requests about Sodom and Gomorrah, when he dared not plead for less than than six men, and Moses's own prayer when on the border of Canaan he besought the Lord, say- ing : " Let me go over, 1 pray thee, and see the good land that is beyond Jordan," and received the answer : " Let it suffice thee, speak no more unto Me of this matter."
Genesis not being an historical book, but a number of tablets put together, it is not necessary that we should always find a strict chronological order. Some parts may be a summary of previous events in a man's fife. For instance, the last chapter, which refers to Abraham, begins with these words (xxv) : " And Abraham took another wife, and her name was Keturah," and the text goes onto give the list of all Abraham's sons whose mother was Keturah. This tablet gave Abraham's posterity exclusive of Isaac's descendants. We must picture to ourselves
56 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
Abraham as one of those great nomadic chieftains ; what we should now call a sheikh. With those men, polygamy was the rule, as it still is. One of their wives was the predom- inant one ; she had special rights, and her sons were the heirs ; but a powerful and rich man might have slaves and concubines, wives of a lower rank, whose children would receive gifts, hke the children of Keturah, while all that Abraham had was given to Isaac.
We must not think therefore that Keturah became Abraham's wife only after Sarah's death. She is men- tioned at the beginning of the tablet which relates the patriarch's end and which gives the list of his posterity. We do not know when Abraham took Keturah. Here the author of the tablet recalls something in the past, as we have already seen several times. It seems to me that the true meaning would be better rendered if we translated also here : Abraham had taken another wife.
As for Ishmael, he alone is mentioned with Isaac as being Abraham's son. These brothers alone buried their father, though there were many others. The explanation of this fact lies in the circumstances of Ishmael's birth. We see here that Sarai transfers her rights to Hagar : " It may be that I shall obtain children by her." Therefore she will consider Hagar's children as her own, and when once such an utterance had been made to Abraham, and probably before Hagar herself, it could not be withdrawn. Sarai alone could use such language, since she had the privileges of which Abraham could not despoil her, for it rested on blood-kinship. Sarai was Abraham's half-sister. This kind of marriage is often seen in Egypt, especially in the royal family. A king hked to marry his half-sister because in that case his son had a right to the throne on both sides. Between Isaac and Ishmael there was the same difference as between two Egyptian princes, on« of
GENESIS BEFORE THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 57
whom is the son of a queen who entitles herself royal wife and royal sister and the other of whom has royal blood only through his father. In that case the king often confers through association with his son the rights which this son has not got from his mother's side. Sarai substitutes Hagar for herself, and though she repents of it afterwards, and obtains from Abraham the dismissal of Hagar, still Ishmael comes next to Isaac and above his other brothers. Hagar, who twice in her flight took the road to Egypt, probably wishing to return to her own country, receives the promise that her son will become a great nation. She takes for him a wife from her^own people, and Ishmael settles in the desert south of Canaan and also in the northern part of Arabia. His descendants may have been the Shasu, the nomads who, at the time of the Nineteenth Dynasty, were the enemies of Seti I and against whom he made his first campaign.
Abraham, Isaac and Abimelech There is a narrative which occurs three times in Genesis under very similar but not quite identical circumstances. This narrative also has been a stumbling-block for the critics. The first time that Abram goes to Egypt, because there was a famine in Canaan, he says to Sarai his wife (xii. 11) : " Behold now, I know that thou art a fair woman to look upon, and it shall come to pass, when the Egyptians shall see thee, that they shall say, This is his wife, and they will kill me, but they will save thee alive. Say, I pray thee, thou art my sister : that it may be well with me, for thy sake, and that my soul may live because of thee." SaraJi does as she is commanded to do, and she is taken into Pharaoh's house. But Pharaoh and his people are stricken by great plagues, and they hasten to send Abram away, with plenty of sheep and oxen, and he-asses
58 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
and menservants and maidservants, and she-asses and camels. He was not to remain in the land.
A second time Abram does the same thing. Many years afterwards, when both he and his wife were advanced in age, after the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (xx.) he goes to sojourn in Gerar. Again he says of his wife : "She is my sister," and Abimelech, the King of Gerar, takes her. But warned in a dream, he immediately restores Sarah to her husband, and when he questions Abraham why he has deceived him, he receives this curious answer : "It came to pass, when God caused me to wander from my father's house, that I said unto her. This is thy kindness which thou shalt shew unto me ; at every place whither we shall come, say of me. He is my brother."
The third episode of the same kind is in Isaac's life (xxvi). A famine occurs ; Isaac would feel tempted to do as his father did, to go to Egypt, where there was corn in abundance, but the Lord appears to him, and he is told to dwell in the land. He therefore goes to Gerar to Abime- lech, who must have been the son of the king who had known Abraham. Isaac also likewise says of Rebekah : " She is my sister," for he feared to say " my wife." But Abimelech discovers that she is Isaac's wife and reproaches him for having deceived him. Isaac does not leave Abime- lech's country, but he increases so much in wealth and power, that Abimelech says unto him : "Go from us, for thou art most mightier than we." Thereupon we hear of the quarrel between the herdsmen of Gerar and those of Isaac because of the wells.
The critics have attributed the journey of Abram to Egypt to the Jahvist, the episode with Abimelech to the old Elohist writing about 750, and the narrative of Isaac and Abimelech again to the Jahvist with fragments belonging to the redactor. Undoubtedly these repetitions
GENESIS BEFORE THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 59
are difficult, and one may well understand the critics being tempted to see there the hands of several writers ; especi- ally in the case of Abram. If one gives to these stories their most obvious interpretation, it seems that Abram hopes that the beauty of his wife will save him and prevent him from being murdered. This is well in keeping with Abram's journey to Egypt, but not at all with his arrival in Abimelech's territory. In that case one might well suppose that the cuneiform tablets had not been arranged in chronological order, and that this had to be placed earlier in Abram's life.
But I believe there is another explanation, agreeing much better with the circumstances of these three cases. It seems to me to solve the greatest difficulties which stand in the way of the critics.
We see that among the ancient eastern rulers, the pledge, we might say the living pledge, of a treaty of peace between two nations was a marriage or rather the gift of a female relative of one of the kings to the other. If we look at the tablets on Tel-el-Amarna, in the letters of Dushratta the king of Mitanni to Amenophis III and Amenophis IV, father and son, we see the importance which the foreign king gives to these marriages with Giluhipa his sister and Taduhipa his daughter.
Dushratta begins one of his letters with these words : " To Nimmuria (Amenophis III), king of Egypt, my brother. It is well with me, may it be well with you, with Giluhipa my sister, may it be well with your house, your wives, your sons." He singles out his sister among the wives of Amenophis III. He will say the same thing of Taduhipa who is his daughter : " May it be well with you, with my daughter Taduhipa, your wife whom you love, may it be well with your wives, your sons ..." Evidently Taduhipa had taken the place of her aunt in the ro3'al
6o ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
harem. She is said to be the wifeof AmenophisIII, and the word wife is the same as that used when he mentions others. Curiously when Dushratta writes to Amenophis IV he uses exactly the same language as he had done towards Amenophis HI, his father, when speaking of his daughter : May it be well with you, with your houses, your mother Ti and the land of Egypt, my daughter Taduhipa your wife, your other wives, your sons ..."
In one of his letters to Amenophis IV, Dushratta relates how Nimmuria's father (Thothmes IV) sent to Artatama his grandfather, " and for his daughter made request, my grandfather refused. Five or six times he sent, but at no time did he give her, and then when forced he gave her." When Amenophis III sent to Shutarna, Dushratta's father, as king, for his daughter, Dushratta's sister, " he never gave her . . . five or six times he sent, and then forced he gave her." Nimmuria makes the same request to Dushratta. He asks for his daughter. Dushratta first refuses and makes some difficulties about the price the king of Egypt is to pay. Finally he agrees, and sends her with a dowTy which was countless. The princess was conveyed by a messenger who had to pay the dowry of Taduhipa. When Amenophis III saw her he rejoiced very greatly and made her beautiful presents.
As far as one can judge, Amenophis III had not Taduhipa long in his harem. Dushratta writes further : " When my brother Nimmuria died, . . . whenNaphuria (Amenophis IV) the distinguished son of Nimmuria by his distinguished wife Ti entered upon his reign, I spoke say- ing : Nimmuria is not dead, Naphuria his distinguished son by his distinguished wife Ti is in his stead. He will not change from its place one word from what it was before." This means in the first place that he will take over Tadu- hipa, and give her the same position as she had under her
GENESIS BEFORE THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 6i
father, and henceforth we see in his letters that he always calls Taduhipa the wife of Amenophis IV who had thus inherited her from his father.
These letters show the real character of these marriages. The princesses were the Hving pledges of friendship, a kind of hostages which had to be renewed at the beginning of a reign. Amenophis III asks first for Shutarna's daughter, Giluhipa. After Shutarna's death, when Dush- ratta is on the throne, he also asks for Dushratta's daughter Taduhipa. Amenophis III dies and Dushratta contrives that his daughter should be for the son exactly what she had been for the father, his so-called " wife." We must notice that in nearly all cases the king of Mitanni yields only when he is " forced." This looks very much as if his daughter had been taken violently, or as if he could not resist the threats of the king of Egypt who would have considered him as hostile, as an enemy, if he had not given his daughter.
The correspoaidence of Amenophis III with KalHma- Sin, king of Babylonia, turns almost entirely on marriages of this kind. Even Buznaburiash, who corresponds with Amciiophis IV, also speaks of his daughter being sent to the king of Egypt. This custom must certainly have been very old in Babylonia, and Abraham, who was a native of that country, must have known of it.
This same custom prevailed also amongst kings who were not Mesopotamians. When, after long wars in which his successes were certainly not so great as he boasts, Rameses II at last made peace with the Hittites, the token of friendship between the two rulers was a princess, the daughter of the king of Kheta who is seen on a tablet of the temple of Aboo Simbel coming to Egypt. She is accompanied by her father. A custom so general among the eastern sovereigns must
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have been adopted also by the chiefs of tribes. When we think of Abram leaving Mesopotamia, we must not imagine a single family numbering only a few heads. Abram was very likely a sheikh, the head of a tribe sufficiently numerous to provide him with a troop strong enough to rescue Lot from the Mesopotamian kings.
Abram left his country for a religious reason. Probably his faith differed from that of his countrymen. He was going abroad to lands where he supposed he would find a strange worship, and of which he would say : Surely the fear of God is not in this place. Therefore, from the first he made to Sarai the following request. I quote his words (Gen. xx. 13) : " And it came to pass, when God caused me to wander from my father's house, that I said unto her, This is thy kindness which thou shalt show unto me ; at every place whither we shall come, say of me. He is my brother." This was a request made once for all ; he did not say so in view of Egypt only, but for every new place to which his wandering life might lead him. He expected that there might be several occasions when this statement on the part of Sarai would be useful to him. and he instructed her accordingly at the moment of his departure.
We shall not consider here the moral side of Abram's conduct ; we shall only try to discover the reason which induced him to act in this way.
One can imagine that in a time of famine the king of Egypt was afraid of seeing a powerful tribe approaching his frontier. He knew that his kingdom had often suffered from the nomads of the desert, and he might well doubt for what purpose these strangers came to the valley of the Nile. Were they hostile invaders, or people who came with peaceful intentions ? Were they a tribe with whom an alliance might be made and whose friendship might be
GENESIS BEFORE THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 63
guaranteed by the marriage of a daughter of the sheikh with the king of Egypt ?
Abram had no daughter from Sarai ; he could not, hke the chief of Kheta, send to the king of Egypt a daughter of his own family on her mother's as well as her father's side, following himself in her train. He therefore says that Sarai is his sister. He does not actually offer Sarai to the king of Egypt, but he uses this artifice in order to show to the Egyptians that he comes to them as a friend, as a man ready to seal his friendship by a marriage, to contract an alliance with them. Sarai saves his life in that way. Otherwise the Egyptians would have considered him and his tribe as enemies, and would have killed him ; and if they struck the sheikh, the head of the tribe, the tribesmen would soon have been scattered or subdued.
Evidently the Egyptians were rather afraid of Abram's power. When they saw that the marriage could not take place, and that the friendship of Abram could not be guar- anteed, they hastened to send him away, making him all sorts of presents, perhaps on condition that he would leave the country. The king in the narrative seems rather impatient that he should go : "Now therefore behold thy wife, take her and go thy way. And Pharaoh gave men charge concerning him ; and they brought him on the way, and his wife and all that he had."
Something very similar happened with Abimelech (Gen. xx). The king of Gerar took Sarah in good faith, evidently in order to be assured of Abraham's friendship. Having as his wife the sister of the sheikh, he might feel certain that there would be no hostile feeling from his tribesmen. In fact when he also discovers that he cannot marry Sarah, he contracts a kind of alliance with Abraham, makes him presents, and says : " Behold my land is before thee, dwell where it pleaseth thee." Afterwards the two men make a regular covenant.
64 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
If we consider Abraham's conduct in that light, and if we remember that these two incidents are the results of a general instruction given to Sarai by Abram when they first departed from ]\Iesopotamia, there is nothing extra- ordinary that they should occur twice in Abraham's life under similar circumstances.
The third similar occurrence is in Isaac's life. (ch. xxvi) The countr}^ again suffers from famine and Isaac goes unto Abimelech in Gerar. The critics attribute this narra- tive to the Jahvdst, but they strike out the reference to Abraham in the first verse of the chapter, the warning not to go to Egypt and the repetition of the promises made to Abraham. AU this is attributed to the redactor.
This summary way of dealing with the text seems to me again to show a lack of understanding of the whole history. And the Lord appeared unto him and said : " Sojourn in this land." It is quite natural that the Lord should explain to Isaac why he is to remain at Gerar. The Lord repeats to him all the blessings promised to Abraham, which appear here for the first time in the narrative of Isaac's life ; they had not yet been uttered to him in such a distinct way. The Lord then renews with Isaac the alliance made with Abraham, and since Abraham is quoted several times and Isaac might feel tempted to do as his father had done, there is nothing extraordinary that Isaac should be warned not to go to Egypt, but to staj^ in the fertile land of Gerar. Later, his son Jacob will be specially told to go down to Egypt.
The verses struck out by the critics are of primary impor- tance ; they are among those to which Moses must have given the greatest weight. They constitute Isaac as the rightful heir to Abraham ; not the heir merely of his wealth and riches, but the heir to the promises — " For unto thee and unto thy seed I will give^ all these lands, and I will
GENESIS BEFORE THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 65
establish the oath which I sware to Abraham thy father." This is not said anywhere else to Isaac in so many words. There is only an allusion to it a little further on. It is the charter given by the Lord to His chosen people. This is the part which the critics assume not to belong to the original narrative !
When Isaac arrived in Abimelech's land, the repetition of what had happened before with Abimelech's father must again be construed as something different from a mere fancy for a woman " fair to look upon." Like his father, Isaac stayed in the land, a rich country which the Egyp- tians called Zahi, and from whence they drew corn. There he became so great, his flocks and herds grew to such an extent, that Abimelech asked him to depart, and, being afraid on account of a quarrel which arose between the men about the wells, asked Isaac to make a covenant with him that he would do him no hurt. This covenant was made on oath, since no daughter of Isaac's family could be given in marriage to Abimelech.
Except this episode of Isaac with Abimelech, describing how the Lord renewed His alliance \vith Isaac and how Isaac made a covenant with Abimelech, we know hardly anything of Isaac's life. All the rest refers to his sons and explains why Esau the eldest was put aside in favour of the youngest. Nothing else in Isaac's life had any bearing on his position as heir to the promises. Moses left aside all that did not lead him to his aim, which was to show how Israel was the chosen people.
As I said before, there is no reason for attributing these three narratives to different viTiters. Such episodes, when they are understood in the right way, could well happen several times in a man's life, whenever he changed liis dwelling-place.
CHAPTER III EGYPT
IN this chapter I shall not go into the general question of the influence exerted over Israel by Egypt. I should hke to show by a few instances that the writer of the Pentateuch was a man who knew Egypt thoroughly well, as was the case with ]\Ioses. This is often revealed by small details indicating a writer who has lived on the banks of the Nile, and who sometimes speaks from experi- ence. This is especially remarkable in the narrative of Joseph's Ufe. Though these events took place long before the time of Moses, the tradition concerning them had been preserved amongst the Hebrews. The Exodus and the journey through the desert, on the other hand, were events of which Moses had been an eye-witness and where he had often been the leader.
I shall merely follow the books as we find them in the Bible, dwelling on the points most striking in this respect, without attempting any systematic classification.
The " Days " of Creation
I cannot help thinking that in the first chapter of Gene- sis there is decidedly an Egyptian influence ; not at all in the sequence of creation — there is nothing similar in the Egyptian mythology — but in the word day, in the division of the period of creation into six " days." Here we must remember the difficulty which the ancients had to express an abstract idea. They generally had recourse to a meta-
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EGYPT 67
phor or to something perceived by the senses. Even now, though we have philosophical languages expressing the most abstruse ideas, we constantly make use of metaphors because we have not yet found the adequate expression to define with sufficient correctness that which is in our mind. When we say, for instance, " the sun rises," or in French, " le soleil se leve," we use a metaphor to which we no longer pay any attention, because it is too usual. In fact, in both languages, we speak of the sun as of a man who was lying down, and who gets up and stands, or as in German, is going up.
Supposing it is necessary to express the idea which is conveyed to us by the word " period," a certain length of time having a beginning and an end, how will primitive man, or even a man like the old Egyptian whose thought and language have not yet reached what 1 should call the philosophical stage, how will such a man render that idea which is so familiar to us ? For him the abstract conception of a period does not exist. He knows only the measure- ments of time connected with his Hfe or with natural phe- nomena which take place before his eyes. The notion of a period, of a space of time independent of something which touches his body or his life, is quite strange to him. He will understand the day, beginning with sunrise and ending with sunset, the month, the interval between two births of the moon, the year consisting of so many moons ; the Egyptian will know the interval between two risings of the Nile. Therefore if he wishes to speak of a certain duration of time having a definite beginning and end, the most obvious metaphor at his disposal will be to call it a day. This word here does not apply to the astronomical duration of twelve hours opposed to the twelve hours of night ; it is only a metaphor.
This seems to me the meaning of the word day in
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Egyptian. The chief document of the funerary literature has a title translated in various ways : " Three single words," says Le Page Renouf, " perfectly unambiguous when taken singly, but by no means easy of explanation." In fact Renouf 's translation " coming forth by day " hardly conveys any clear idea, especially if we remember that day in Egyptian does not mean daylight, but it is a date or a measure of time. Therefore I translate : " Coming out of the day."
Several passages in the Book of the Dead teach us that a man's life, the period between his birth and his death, is called " his day." For instance the deceased says : "I am delivered from the quarrels of those who are in their day. I shall no more be among them." Or this : " I have come forth from the day, and I shine among the gods." The king Unas goes out of this day in the true appearance of a blessed one (Khu), or he increases his day of life. Elsewhere we find mention of a king being in his day, and the variants say : "in his time."
After death the life of an Egyptian is no more a day, no more a period with beginning and end ; his existence will last with various phases and various episodes ; he will take a great number of forms, but his existence in the other world will be no more limited in time, he will have gone out of the day.
A similar sense, a period with beginning and end, seems to me to have been given to the word " day " in the first chapter of Genesis, the chapter of creation.
We have first to notice that the Hebrew word translated " created " does not apply to all that is done during the six days : it applies to what might be called the prelim- inary work : in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. The earth is described in Hebrew by two words translated waste and void. In the LXX it is some-
EGYPT 69
what different : tto/jaro?, invisible, and dKaraaKevaGTO'i, unprepared, unarranged, void in the sense that nothing that gives the earth its present appearance could be seen at its first creation.
Afterwards begin the six days, the work of which is summed up in the Fourth Commandment by the word " made." If we follow the Egyptian metaphor, each day is a definite period having a well-marked beginning called the morning, and an end called evening. We have no idea of the duration of these periods ; many things may have happened in each of them, requiring a certain length of time. But the important point to notice is that each period had a beginning and an end ; it was not of an indefinite duration. If we carry the Egyptian metaphor still further, we must notice that between the days there was night ; between the periods there was a certain length of time during which nothing happened, when the creative power was inactive. The only day in which there is no mention either of morning or evening is the seventh, when there was no creation at all. This is called " rest."
This conception of the six days of creation, six periods the length of which is unknown, beginning and ending at a definite moment, and separated by intervals, this Egyptian metaphor I humbly submit to astronomers and geologists and to the masters in natural science. It was ^ the picture before the eyes of Moses, a picture which perhaps had aheady been before the eyes of his forefathers in Mesopotamia, of the way in which God had created the earth and mankind. This creation is not an insensible growth from an original atom or cell. The whole process of bringing the world to its present appearance was divided into six successive periods of a duration unknown to the author of the tablet. Evolution may perhaps be found within the space of the days, when the earth brought forth
70 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
the grass or the hving creature after its kmd. But for Moses, evolution is not a principle on which creation in general is based ; there are six breaks in each of which something quite new appears. This sense given to the word " day " seems to me to give us the true description of the way of the creation of the world as Moses imagined that it had taken place.
Joseph
The more one reads the history of Joseph, the more clearly it appears that it must have been written by some one who Imew Egj^pt very well, who had been a witness of its customs, and who also had intercourse with the officials at the court and with the king himself. There are few parts of Genesis which show in a more striking way the strangeness of the critical theory. The whole narrative is remarkably even. There are no unnecessary repetitions ; each part follows the other quite logically, the general tone is the same. However, we are told that we are not to attribute this whole story to a single writer, but to four authors, who lived in different parts of Palestine and several centuries apart. It is impossible to reconstitute the continuous narrative of any of them. They are kno\vn only by fragments and sometimes distinguished only by bits of sentences, or even by a single word.
The writings of two of them, the Elohist and the Jahvist, must have been very similar, since they fit into each other so remarkably well, though the writers are separated by at least a hundred years, and belonged to two different kingdoms. I do not intend here to discuss the evidence upon which this extraordinary theory rests. It is chiefly philological. Therefore if, as we believe, the narrative
EGYPT 71
was written in Babylonian cuneiform, and in its present form is only a translation or an adaptation to a later language, this evidence is of very slender value. But, apart from this, it seems most extraordinary that a sen- tence should be cut up in this way (xl. i) : " And it came to pass after these things," are said to belong to the Elohist (c. 750 B.C.) ; " that the butler of the king of Egypt and his baker offended their lord the king of Egypt," to the Jahvist (c. 8506,0.); "and Pharaoh was wroth," to the Elohist again. Or again (xxxix. 20), " And Joseph's master took him and put him into the prison," Jahvist; "the place where the king's prisoners were bound," a document of unknown date. Surely it is difficult to imagine a writing put together in that way, and producing a narrative the various parts of which are so well connected. I say this only in passing, since this discussion is outside the pale of this book.
Syncellus, the chronographer, says that all authors agree in stating that Joseph was raised to his high position during the reign of Apophis. This king is well known ; he is mentioned in several inscriptions ; he was one of the last Hyksos kings. Eusebius also says that Joseph reigned over Egypt at the time of the Hyksos. We have no reason to challenge the correctness of this statement, which seems in conformity with the narrative.
The Hyksos were Mesopotamians who at the end of their stay in Egypt had adopted the language, the customs, perhaps even part of the worship, of the Egyptians. The inscriptions of Apophis show that he had two cartouches like the native Pharaohs, and that the second was intro- duced by these words, " the son of Ra." The court must have become very Egyptian, and some of the higher officers were natives. For instance, it is said that Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, the captain of the guard, was an
72 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
Egyptian. The mention of this fact indicates that he did not belong to the foreign element of the ruler. Otherwise it would be needless to say that he was a native.
According to the theory of the critics, among the four different hands which they distinguish in Joseph's history, the main part of the work is due to the Elohist and the Jahvist, the Jahvist writing in the Southern kingdom about 850 B.C. and the Eloliist in the Northern about 750 B.C. Taking what is called the short chronology, that of Eduard Meyer, the events must have taken place 600 years before the Elohist and 700 before the Jahvist. How could these authors know of the events of which they are speaking ? What records could they have had, unless the narrative is indeed mere romance which they invented ?
If it were an invention, would it not be extraordinary that their romances should be so very similar, that, put together, they make a continuous writing ? For instance, except for a few sentences, the first journey to Egypt of the sons of Jacob is said to be the work of the later writer. The second journey, with the pathetic speech of Judah, belongs to the Jahvist. Yet it presupposes the first, it even alludes to it. Now when this narrative of the second visit was written, what about the first ? It certainly must have been described somehow, and the description has entirely disappeared. When Judah says to Jacob (xhii. 3), " The man did solemnly protest unto us, saying. Ye shall not see my face, except your brother be with you," we cannot but suppose that the writer who recorded these words must have related on what occasion and how Joseph pronounced them, and so it is. We read of the arrival of Jacob's sons in Egypt, of their being recognized by Joseph, who spake roughly with them, and said : " Bring your youngest brother unto me ; so shall your words be verified, and ye shall not die." This is the neces-
EGYPT 73
sary introduction to the narrative of the second visit, without which this cannot be understood, and we are told that it was written a hundred years later ! How strange are these two narratives : the Jahvist has no beginning, and the Elohist is a mere introduction followed by no- thing ! It is not possible to escape this extraordinary description, if it is contended that the narratives are inventions of the two writers.
If they are not romances, these narratives are not documents based on historical records coming from Egypt. The long period when Egypt was under the dominion of the Hyksos was always considered as a time the remem- brance of which was detested by the Egyptians. The Hyksos are called in a pap5n:us " a pestilence," and it is obvious that the wish of the native rulers and their subjects was to wipe away completely any recollection which remained of the foreign invaders. It is not to be supposed that any record remained in Egypt of what Joseph had been, or even of his name. Why should any- thing have been preserved of the favourite minister to a sovereign of strange origin against whom the Egyptians felt that religious hatred which is the most vivid and the most inveterate ?
Let us fancy one of the two Palestinian authors going to Egypt to get some information about Joseph, and about the time the Hebrews spent in the country. Where would he find it ? Certainly not with the priests, who seem to have had no annals and records of that time ; since Manetho, the Sebennyte priest who wrote the list of kings, and who for that purpose epitomized what I may call the state documents, had such very scanty informa- tion about the Hyksos dynasties. Evidently there were no historical remains of that time. Besides, if there had been any, they would have been written in hieroglyphs.
74 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
a writing certainly unknown to the inhabitants of Judea. Moreover it seems extremely doubtful whether a stranger would have been allowed access to books which were in the hands of the priests, and for the understanding of which he would have required an interpreter.
History for the mass of the people, for the public, if I may say so, was engraved on the walls of the temples. The deeds of the kings were recorded in the fine sculptures which adorned the great sanctuaries of Amon and other gods. This was the way that history was taught to the Eg3'ptians, a teaching given chiefly by sight, by what was familiar to the eyes, since probably very few could read what was engraved on the walls. Its purpose was not to give a faithful record of what had taken place, but to extol the king, to pour on the sovereign the most lavish praise, sometimes quite fanciful and unjustified. For instance, on the walls of the temples and on the basements of statues we often find long lists of nations or cities which were said to have been conquered by the king, and to be his vassals. But we frequently know that these nations, far from being his subjects, were never even reached by the king who is said to have dominion over them. This kind of evidence is absolutely unreliable in the case of a king hke Rameses II, a vain and boastful ruler, who only wished to dazzle posterity by his numerous monuments and the profuseness of the sculptures describing his achievements.
It is certainly not in inscriptions of that character that anj^hing might be expected to fee found about the Israelites, except on the stele of Menephtah, where may be read the only mention of the Israehtes discovered up to the present day. There it is said that they are no more. AU we know of the Israelites in Egypt as late as the time of Moses is the personal history of Joseph and the arrival of his family. Of aU that happened from after Joseph's death
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until the birth of Moses, Genesis is absolutely silent. We do not know anything about it.
The history of the stay of the Israehtes in Egypt may be summed up under two names only : Joseph and Moses. Joseph was a very talented minister who rose to a very exalted position in very extraordinary circumstances. His activity may have been very beneficial to the country, he may have been very successful in preserving the coun- try from famine. By his achievements he may have won the confidence of his sovereign, who perhaps rewarded him with this Egyptian title : " His eyes in the South, and his ears in the North " ; but still, Joseph was a subordinate ; his deeds would not be recorded on inscriptions in the temples. There everything was supposed to originate ^vith the king, and it is very rare to find the mention of a subordinate, except in definite cases.
If the biography of Joseph had been anywhere, it would have been in his tomb, engraved or painted on its walls. There is a tomb of the time of Amenophis III of the Eigh- teenth Dynasty which is that of an official who had a position quite analogous to that occupied by Joseph. We see him receiving the tax-gatherers of the whole country and assessing the taxation of thirty years under the eyes of the king, who is represented as sitting on his throne. This is the biographical record of a high officer hke Joseph, but Joseph certainly had no similar tomb. We know of no such monument of the Hyksos time. Joseph was not a native. Besides, he had taken " an oath from the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you, and ye shall carry up my bones." He was embalmed, as were all the people in Egypt, and " put in a coffin in Egypt," but certainly no painted and ornamented grave was cut in the rock for him ; it would have been an immediate breach of the oath to put him in a "house of eternity," as the
76 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
Egyptians called a tomb. Thus reviewing the historical circumstances and the customs of the old Egyptians, we come to the conclusion that for a Palestinian wTiter there was no information about Joseph to be found in Egypt nor to be derived from Egyptian sources.
The history of Joseph was known by tradition ; but it was not a tradition preserved abroad in a foreign country and WTitten down many centuries afterwards when the conditions in which the Israelites lived were entirely changed. If we study the details of it, we shall recognize that the tradition bears the colour of the country where the events took place, and that it was put down in writing in the same country where the author could himself see some of the customs he describes, and at a time when he could hear some of the names of which he is speak- ing.
Let us take, for instance, Pharaoh's dream : " Behold, he stood by the river. And, behold, there came out of the river seven kine, well-favoured and f atfleshed ; and they fed in the reedgrass " (xli. 2). \Vliy does this take place near the river ? And why do the cows come out of it ? Because the divine cow, the goddess Hathor, goes down to the river : we see her repeatedly in the papyri coming out of the mountain, and walking among the reeds, or rather, the papyrus reeds, near the river. The beautiful cow of Hathor found at Deir-el-bahari has on both sides of her shoulders papyrus reeds which spoil the artistic effect of the monument ; but they, as well as her insignia, are placed there on purpose to indicate that she is not an ordinary cow, but the goddess issuing from among the reeds on the banks of the river. Well might she be con- sidered as the emblem of fruitfuLness and abundance.
We have another example of the cow being taken not only as the emblem but as the cause of abundance. It is
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in one of the chapters of the Book of the Dead, called " To give abundance to the deceased in the Lower world." We read there the following words : "I know the names of the seven cows and their bull, which give bread and drink to the deceased." And the deceased asks that this may be granted to him. The seven cows and the bull are the vignettes which generally accompany this chapter.
Pharaoh's dream is quite Egyptian in character. We can imagine, though that seems strange in some respects, the recollection of this dream being preserved in the oral tradition of the Israelites : the dream of the seven fat cows followed by the seven lean beasts eating up the fat ones. These general features may have persisted in the memory of the descendants of Jacob : but the detail that the scene takes place on the brink of the river, and that the seven kine come out of the river and feed in the reed- grass, reveals an eye-witness who had seen the cows coming out of payrus-reeds, and who knew the idea which the Egyptian associated with the cow. The second part of the dream is not connected with the river, and is not so markedly Egyptian. Nevertheless considering the first part, I cannot help thinking that this dream must have been written down in Egypt, and not in the northern kingdom of Palestine many centuries afterwards.
When the history of Jospeh was written, the tradition was very vivid among the Hebrews ; they knew that they owed their arrival in Egypt and their settlement in the country to Joseph ; he was the author of their present situation. His body had been preserved, embalmed in his coffin, so they certainly knew who he was and what had been the cause of his marvellous rise. His history had a special, I may say even a vital, interest for them, an interest which must have waned considerably in a distant country like Palestine, whether it be the northern or
7ii ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
southern kingdom, when the poHtical conditions of the people had changed entirely. Therefore the writer who recorded it \vith minute details must have done so when the life of Joseph was still fresh in their memor}', when the Hebrews were still living in the circumstances which were the result of Joseph's action. The \\Titer must have been a man to whom the traditions of his people were par- ticularly precious, who was impressed with the idea that the Israelites were the chosen people and that all the events of their history centred upon this fact.
The Egyptian names mentioned in the narrative also point to an author writing in Egypt, with a full knowledge of the Egyptians as well as the Hebrews, such as one might expect in the case of Moses.
We read that Pharaoh rewarded Joseph for his marvel- lous interpretation of the dream. He bestowed upon him all kinds of favours and gave him the second position in the realm. He also called his name Zaphenath-paneah. All kinds of interpretations of that name have been pro- posed. They generally start from the pedantic principle of literal transcription, of seeking in the philological rules the exact correspondence of Semitic letters with the Egyptian signs. This is quite contrary to what takes place in life, and to what we see every day. Supposing a Frenchman has to pronounce a German or an English name, he will imitate, as well as he can, what he hears. There may be in the word letters unknown to him and which he cannot pronounce. If in his transcription he finds a syllable, the sound of which is familiar to him, he wiU put it in, although its sense is absolutely differ- ent from the original. This is what is caUed popular etymology. It is obvious that in writing a name he wiU reproduce what he hears and he will not consult philology and its code of laws. What we see at the present day
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has always been the same, especially in antiquity, where writing was far less used than it is now.
Let us fancy the king surrounded by his court. Joseph has just given his interpretation, and the king wishes to raise him to the dignity which his wisdom and his great shrewdness deserve. He does it as it is constantly done now in the East and the recollection of which remains in the French expression : il le nomme. He calls him by that name. His new dignity is not conferred upon him by a decree in due form registered and signed by a chancel- lor, and confirmed later by a diploma. No, for the ruler to address him by a new name or title is enough ; it is even to-day the regular way of conferring a position ; an eastern prince wishing to make a man a sheikh calls him sheikh before his officials and his court.
Common sense indicates that the name by which Joseph is called must have some reference to what he has just done. This obvious fact, rather than Semitic grammar, must lead us to the true interpretation of the name. Since Joseph has a position next to the king, he must have a name which he alone is to bear, and which must give him some prestige in the eyes of the Egyptians. It cannot be an ordinary name borne by any man. Hence the name is that of an office, of an employment. The second part of it, paneah, is the literal transcription of a word meaning the school of learning, the sacred college. We know from the inscriptions that to that school belonged the learned men, the magicians. From there, according to one Egyptian story, a magician was sent to exorcise a princess in Mesopotamia ; according to the inscrip- tion of Canopus, the hieroglyphical writing was called the writing of the school of learning, of the sacred college. Now we see that the king " sent for all the magicians (margin, sacred scribes) of Egypt and all the wise men
8o ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
thereof, and Pharaoh told them his dream ; but there was none that could interpret them unto Pharaoh " (xli. 8). The whole sacred college was found wanting. And " for- asmuch as God had showed Joseph all this, and there was none so wise and discreet as he was," Pharaoh put him at the head of the sacred college. ZapJienath is only a shght alteration, due to a Semitic mouth, of the Egyptian which means head of, master of. Zaphenath-paneah means therefore the head of the school of learning, of the sacred college. This title is found in Egyptian inscrip- tions.
This seems the natural consequences of what hap- pened. Joseph had been the only one who could inter- pret Pharaoh's dream. All the men who were supposed to have that particular gift, whose ofhce it was to interpret dreams, had remained silent. Therefore the king puts Joseph, to whom God had showed this and in whom the Spirit of God was, over and above these magicians, to be the first among them and their master. Pharaoh does this in their presence and before his court by calling Joseph by this name. Such seems the only reasonable sense which we can give to the word Zaphenath-paneah.
Here the same question arises as about the cow. How could the Elohist writer living in the northern kingdom in the eighth century know this name, the altered form due to a Semite of an Egyptian word ? We might understand the sense of the word, its explanation giving the nature of the title, being preserved by tradition, though it would be somewhat extraordinary that this exact title should have survived in the memory of the Israelites during six or seven hundred years. But a foreign word which the Israelites did not understand, having abso- lutely no sense for them, how could such persist in their memory, since they had no occasion to use that word.
EGYPT 8 1
and it was never pronounced to them ? If the Israehtes of the eighth century had any recollection of Joseph, he was for them the hero, who from his position as slave had risen to be second to the king, who had saved his family from starvation, and who had brought them to Egypt. They would remember the leading features of his life, in reference to themselves ; but as to the matters which were strictly Egyptian, his position towards the priests and the magicians, the Egyptian word naming his dignity, the remembrance of these would quickly disappear as soon as they had left Egypt, and certainly would not persist for centuries.
On the contrary, it is quite natural that Moses should know all this. He had been educated at the court of Pharaoh ; he was well informed as to the hierarchy both clerical and administrative. The body of Joseph had been preserved, it was deposited somewhere, lying in its coffin. To that body was attached a tradition, perhaps even a WTitten record by one of his countrymen, as to what his life had been. The Hebrews staying in Egypt had heard from their fathers that Joseph had been head of the sacred college. They did not translate or explain that title. They repeated it as they heard it. 'They understood what the Egyptian word meant, and when they met Joseph's successor in that office, they called him by that name, as did the Egyptians, merely altering it a little, so that it might be as similar as possible to their own language. In the same way now at Constanti- nople any stranger would call the head of the IMoham- medan rehgion the sheikh-el-islam, though that were a strange word to him. The Arab word will not be repeated exactly alike by a Frenchman, a German, and an EngUsh- man. Evidently the man who wrote that Pharaoh called Joseph's name Zaphenath-pancah was in Egypt, and
82 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
wTote it for people who were staying in the country. The title " Pharaoh " in books like Genesis and Exodus interchanges with " King of Egypt " ; these words are s5monymous. Pharaoh is by far the more frequently employed. The first time a Pharaoh is mentioned is in the narrative of Abram's visit to Egypt ; there no explanation of the word is given, the reader is supposed to know that it means the King of Egypt. If now we turn to the books written in Palestine, we find that the explanation generally follows the word (e.g., i Kings iii. i) : " And Solomon made affinity with Pharaoh, King of Egypt, and took Pharaoh's daughter." Since the explanation is given at the beginning of the narrative of Solomon's reign, it was not necessary to repeat it in the following chapters (i Kings xi. i8). Hadad and the Edomites came to Pharaoh, King of Egypt, and Hadad found great favour in the sight of Pharaoh. It is the same as with Solomon. Shishak is called only King of Egypt (i Kings xxiv. 25), as well as So the King of Egypt, to whom Hoshea sent messengers (2 Kings xvii. 4), Tirhakah is called King of Ethiopia (2 Kings xix. 9). Pharaoh, King of Egypt, is said by Sennacherib to be but a bruised reed (2 Kings xviii. 21). In these instances when the name of the king was given, the title Pharaoh was absent. We find them both in the case of Pharaoh- Necoh, King of Egypt (2 Kings xxiii. 29), who destroyed Josiah's army at Megiddo, when Josiah himself was killed, and of Pharaoh-Hophra, King of Egypt (Jer. xliv.
30)-
Evidently to these later writers the word Pharaoh was not so famihar as to those living in Egypt. The way that this word is used in the speeches of the butler and the baker is a feature which helps to give to these speeches a thoroughly Egyptian character. They would hardly
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have such a character, if written by a writer of the northern kingdom at a great distance in time and space from the conditions under which these speeches were made.
1 might also speak of the two names Potiphar and Poti-phera. Though the LXX give the same transcrip- tion of both, the spelling is different in the Hebrew. The final syllable is the name of a different god. Potiphar is an Egyptian P hotep Har, the gift or offering of Horus, and Poti-phera P hotep Ra, the gift or offering of Ra. Ra is the great god of Heliopolis (On), and it is natural that his high priest should have a name containing that of his god. Hotep Ra, without the article p, is met with on various occasions as the name of the high priest of On, for instance on the beautiful statue found at Medum which is supposed to belong to the Third or early Fourth Dynasty and where the high priest is seen sitting near his wife. Probably this name was assumed when the man entered upon his sacerdotal functions. P hotep Har, Potiphar, is formed in the same way ; Horus is the second name of Ra the God of Heliopolis, who is called Harmachis- Horus on the horizon.
The LXX make no difference between the two names. They must have been the same in the Aramaic document from which they were translated ; I suppose the confusion comes from the fact that at that time the traditions about Heliopohs were disappearing. Hehopolis duiing the Ptolemaic period seems to have been more and more neglected, and it decayed rapidly. Strabo gives the most pitiful description of that city v*'here, instead of a learned college of priests, he found only a few ignorant custodians who showed the monument to the strangers. His description makes one think of many convents or churches in Italy or Spain. Evidently at the time of the LXX there was no longer a Hotep Ra as high
84 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
priest, and the translators gave to both officers a name in a form usual at that time, and which would be translated Heliodorus.
There are two more Egyptian touches in the history of Joseph. They have been struck out by the critics as later additions, but, on the contrary, they are proofs of the old date of the narrative. One of them is the following (xli. 46) : " And Joseph was thirty years old when he stood before Pharaoh, King of Egypt." I believe the word " stood " must not be taken here in the ordinary sense. It would be a very imperfect summary of the scene already related (see p. 79). The great event which took place when Joseph was thirty years of age was not his mere standing before the king. The word has here a sense analogous to that which is said of the tribe of Levi, " to stand before the Lord to minister unto Him " (Deut. x. 8). It would come to this : Joseph was thirty years old when he became a royal servant, minister to the king. In consequence of that, as we read in the following verse : " Joseph went out of the presence of Pharaoh, and went throughout all the land of Egypt." If we had the original Babylonian word of the tablet, I presume we should find that it translated an Egyptian metaphorical expression by which an appointment or a ceremony was indicated.
I do not think that those thirty 5'ears are to be taken literally as referring to Joseph's actual age. His action consists in assessing anew the taxation and rents through- out the land in view of the time of abundance, followed by seven years of distress. These assessments, as we know from various inscriptions, were made at the end of the period called Sed, when the Sed festival was cele- brated. The Sed period lasted originally thirty years. Joseph was at the end of the period of thirty years when he was entrusted by Pharaoh with these new duties.
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This seems to be the Egyptian explanation of the passage. Since the Sed period had expired and had to be renewed, Joseph went out at once to lay upon the Egyptians fiscal conditions which were unusual. I suppose the thirty years of the period have been attributed to Joseph as those of his age either by Moses when he wrote the tablet, or perhaps by the translators, who put it into Aramaic or Hebrew.
Another number, which, 1 think, has to be interpreted in the Egyptian way and must not be taken hterally, is in this passage (1. 22) : " And Joseph Hved an hundred and ten years." It is repeated : " So Joseph died, being an hundred and ten years old." Several Egyptian inscrip- tions teach us that the extreme Umit of old age was for them a hundred and ten years. It is the number they hope to reach. Various instances of it might be quoted. I shall mention only one : Amenophis, the son of Hapi, an official of the Eighteenth Dynasty, has left us his statue, which differs in character from the great mass of these funerary monuments. Instead of being represented as young, strong, and healthy, Amenophis is shown as an old man, with worn features and a decrepit face, and he says : " I have reached eighty years as a great favourite of the king, and I shall reach a hundred and ten years." Nobody thinks of living beyond that number ; it is the necessary end of life. I do not suppose that the Egyptians of the time of Moses knew their age much more exactly than they do at the present day. A man much advanced in years and full of days would naturally be called a man of a hundred and ten years. This is evidently what is meant in the case of Joseph ; he had reached the last limit of old age. As usual, this sentence, which has such a distinctly Egyptian character, has been struck out by the critics as a late gloss. One does not see for
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what reason such a gloss should have been inserted, or where the author of it would have got that information.
I shall not dwell longer on Joseph's history. Its Egyp- tian character is clear from beginning to end. I hope the details which I have quoted will have shown that the author of that biography could have written only in Eg}-pt, 'amongst people who knew Eg^'pt themselves, and who had kept, together with Joseph's body, a \ivid recollection of what he had done, a recollection painted with the Egyptian colouring of the life that Joseph had led. Putting aside philological arguments which, as we have said, have no value for a text which is not in its original language, one cannot understand how such a well-connected narrative, in such complete conformity with the time and country where it takes place, could be attributed to four different authors Uving at various epochs several centuries afterwards and in a distant land.
Details such as those which I have quoted bring out in the best way the original character of the writing. Tradition remembers the leading features, the chief facts of a Ufe or of an epoch, but it neglects the little touches of no importance, and details which it does not understand. These minute remains, sometimes a mere sentence of three or four words, are faithful witnesses to the antiquity of the wTiting, and are traces of the original hand.
I have not spoken of the episode of Joseph with Poti- phar's wife. It is well known that in a papyrus called The Tale of the Two Brothers, there is a scene which is greatly similar. Much has been said and written about the influence of one document upon the other. I cannot agree with these assumptions. The Tale of the Two Bro- thers is essentially different from Joseph's history. The men in that tale move in a very different sphere. The mar- vellous, one of the characteristic features of the Egyptian
EGYPT 87
tale, is so completely absent from the narrative of Genesis, and so fully preseiit in the other story, that I cannot see any connection between them. Besides, the episode itself, by its nature, may so easily occur, especially in Oriental life, that there is no reason why two tales written in two different languages and referring to people belong- ing to two different nations, could not both contain a very similar occurrence without supposing a common origin.
Genesis ends with the death of Joseph, and, if we look back through the whole book, we shall find Ariadne's thread running through the whole of it. The separate tablets of which it consists are not joined together like the chapters of a continuous roll ; nevertheless, they are connected by one thought, and one purpose, the fixed intention of showing how Israel was set apart as the people of God. The book is not the book of the annals of Israel, it is not the complete and continuous narrative of what happened to the people from the beginning, it is the series of documents, if I may so express it, of title- deeds, establishing Israel's special character and the mission which Israel had to fulfil. Moses is so possessed with this idea, he has such a deep sense of his duty as a recorder of the events and circumstances through which God led His people, that he neglects everything which has no direct bearing on the history of his nation. For instance, he does not mention the names of the kings of Egypt of whom he is speaking, of the Hyksos ruler who put Joseph at the head of his land, or of the persecutor, or even of the sovereign before whom he had himself to appear and from whom he had to wrest leave for the departure of the Israelites.
The history of Egypt, as such, does not concern him. Whatever changes have taken place in the land itself.
88 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
the wars which resulted in the expulsion of the foreigners and the re-establishment of the native rulers ; later, the rise in the power of Egypt, the mihtary expeditions north and south, the conquests of the great kings of the Eighteenth Dynasty, especially the conquest of Palestine, all these events, which mark the highest point ever reached by Egyptian power and Egyptian civihza- tion, leave Moses absolutely indifferent. He merely describes the Israelites as prosperous at the end of Joseph's life under the protection of the king of the land. He will not say anything of their stay in Egypt as long as the king does not interfere with their life as shepherds and leaves them alone. He does not even mention that in Egypt they were safe and quiet, while Canaan, the residence of their father Jacob, was the battlefield of Thothmes III and of a confederacy of inhabitants strug- gUng against the foreign invaders. Great battles were fought, the whole land had to submit, governors were put at the head of aU the cities. What would have become of the Israelites had they been in Palestine during that time, especially if they had become rich like Abraham and Isaac ? They would perhaps have had a fate like Lot when the kings of Shinar and others conquered the country where he was living, and they would have had no Abraham to deliver them. The achievements of the Egyptian kings are entirely alien to the purpose of Moses, who records on his tablets only the events about which he had a definite national tradition, or of which he was an eyewitness.
CHAPTER IV
THE JOURNEY TO CANAAN
The Exodus
WITH the Book of Exodus the events begin of which Moses was a witness. This history and legislation was recorded by him on tablets. But, since he now speaks of events of his time, events which concerned himself or his countrymen, the form of his tablets is some- what different. It is not now necessary to put an intro- duction, explaining what the circumstances are in which the events he is going to describe take place, or in which the laws are executed. One tablet only requires this, the first with which the Book of Exodus begins. It is necessary to state in a few words who the Israelites are, his country- men about whom he is going to relate such wonderful events. They are all descendants of Jacob, his eleven sons and their families amounting to seventy souls, who came into Egypt where Joseph, the twelfth, was already. They have " increased abundantly and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty." No further information is required, nor any reference to previous writings.
The narrative begins at once : " Now there arose a king over Egypt which knew not Joseph." These few words sum up events of the greatest importance which had changed entirely the face of Egypt. Under the reign of the last king, Apepi, perhaps the successor of Joseph's king, war had broken out with the princes of Thebes. One
89
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of them, Seqenenra, had been killed in battle, as his mummy shows ; nevertheless, the native rulers had suc- ceeded in driving out the foreign d3Tiasty. King Aahmes, the liberator, had even captured the fortress of Avaris, which they had built in the Delta. His successors were powerful, and under their rule Egypt became a great empire ; her armies went as far as Mesopotamia.
During the reign of this mighty Theban dynasty everything connected with the foreign kings was eradi- cated. Their dominion is described as a time of desolation and ruin. A queen of the Eighteenth Dynasty says in poetical language : "I have restored that which was ruins, I have raised that which was unfinished since the Asiatics were in the midst of Avaris of the Nortliland, and the strangers were in the midst of the land, over- throwing that which was made while they ruled in ignorance of Ra." Evidently no recollection of Joseph had been preserved except among the Hebrews. It would have been hateful to the Egyptians as belonging to a time, the remembrance of which was odious to them.
We see a trace of that feeling in the words, " which knew not Joseph." In Egyptian, " ignore " (khem) has often a hostile sense, for instance, in the inscription just quoted. This sense must have been expressed by the Babylonian word of the tablet. We have here an exact translation of an Egyptian word which is again a Mosaic touch, a detail not to be expected from a late author writing in another country.
The same feeling comes out even more strongly in Ex. i. 12 : " They were grieved because of the children of Israel," where the margin reads, " abhorred." The result of the hostihty of the new dynasty was the persecu- tion inflicted on the Hebrews, as described in the words : " And the Egyptians made the children of Israel to serve
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with rigour, and they made their lives bitter with hard service, in mortar and in brick, and in all matter of service in the field, all their service wherein they made them serve with rigour . . . therefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh store-cities, Pithom and Raamses." Other passages describe how hard this service was. It is said that " they sighed by reason of the bondage, and God heard their groaning " (ii. 23). " And the Lord said : I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows " (iii. 7).
Evidently the persecution consisted in a complete change in their way of living. The Israelites, when they came to Egypt, were shepherds, nomads, possessors of flocks of cattle ; as Joseph said to Pharaoh : " The men are shepherds, for they have been keepers of cattle, and they have brought their flocks and their herds and aU they have." They ask to be allowed^to live in the land of Goshen, which was particularly suitable for their way of living. And Pharaoh says also to Joseph : " If thou knowest any able men among them, then make them rulers over my cattle." The Hebrews had been shepherds for generations, and suddenly were compelled to change entirely their way of life. Instead of the easy- going life of cattle-drivers, they were to become brick- layers, builders, navvies, condemned to a labour unknown to them, and which clashed with all their traditions and their abiUties.
In a painting of the time of Thothmes III, we see what the Israelites had to do. A number of men of a Semitic type, who are called captives, and who probably come from the cities of Palestine which had been conquered by the king, are making bricks. Some of them fetch water
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to wet the clay, others mould the bricks, others carry them towards the place where a building is to be raised. The overseer, or, as Scripture calls him, the taskmaster, is there with his stick in his hand, ready to interfere if he sees that the activity of the men is relaxing.
One can understand that kind of life being very dis- tasteful to shepherds. It would be so at the present day to Bedouin nomads. They merely look after their sheep and goats, they do not know what real work is, there is no activity for them except robbery, and, for some war- like tribes, fighting. A shepherd would resent having a taskmaster who is absolutely necessary to workmen, even at present. The overseer with a stick in his hand, in the picture of Thothmes III, is what we call now a reis ; he has to see that the men are working, and do not sit down and remain idle, as is often done when there is no reis. It was nothing exceptional for the Israelites that they had taskmasters. It was the custom of the country ; work was, and is now done in that way. But that the taskmasters were particularly hard and exacting towards them and embittered still more their new life, which was a heavy burden for them, seems certain. The Israelites were treated as prisoners of war. We know from the Assyrian and Egyptian sculptures what terrible sufferings were inflicted upon enemies who had been taken alive. There was no pity for them. The Israelites had not made war. They were regarded as enemies transported from abroad, from a conquered country ; they were used as workmen, or rather, as slaves. We can easily imagine what slavery was at that time, under such circumstances.
As for the order given to the midwives to kill the boys, we would compare with it customs found now among savage nations, where certain children have to be killed, for instance, twins among several African tribes.
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What seems extraordinary is that there should be only two midwives for such an enormous population as the Jews were at that time. We shall see further on how that may be explained. But I believe no value must be attributed to the numbers given in the Hebrew text. Various explanations have been given of these numbers, among which I have to mention particularly that of Prof. Flinders Petrie.^ I must say that all these explana- tions, even that which I propose myself, seem to be of doubtful value. We must remember that our text is not original ; it is a transcription, if not a translation, and when numbers are represented by letters, it is easy to make an error of transliteration which entirely changes the num- bers. We shall have to revert to this point later. . Certainly the time of the persecution in Egypt was for the Israelites a period of great suffering, but we must consider this also from the other side, from the Egyptian point of view. The king who knew not Joseph says to his people (Exod. i. 9) : " Behold, the people of the children of Israel are too many and too mighty for us (margin). Come, let us deal wisely with them, lest they multiply, and it come to pass that when there falleth out any war, they also join themselves unto our enemies, and fight against us and get them up out of the land. Therefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them. . . ." This is the'reason given by the Pharaoh for dealing so harshly with the Israelites, and aU we can say about his view is that it is quite sensible and true.
Let us picture to ourselves the state of the country at the time when the king spoke these words. I still adhere to the view advocated first by Lepsius, and still held by most Egyptologists, that the persecutor of the Jews was
1 Petric's Israel and Egypt, p. 41 and £E.
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Rameses II, whose very long reign was the beginning of decay for the Egyptian empire, and that the king of the Exodus was his son Menephtah. We see in Scripture that the king before whom Moses had to appear, against whom he had to carry out a long struggle which ended in Israel's deliverance, was not the same as the one who had compelled the Hebrews to build the store-cities. When Moses had been obliged to fly from Egypt and to take refuge with Jethro, " it came to pass in the course of those many days that the king of Egypt died, and the children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage, and they cried, and their cry came up to God by reason of their bondage." Evidently the fact of the change of king had given the Israelites some hope that there might be at least a slight relaxation in the oppression with which they were afflicted.
The reign of Rameses II, the oppressor, is one of the longest in Egjrptian history. He was a vain and boastful character, who wished to dazzle posterity by covering the land with constructions whereon his name was engraved thousands of times, and who plumed himself in his inscrip- tions upon great conquests which he never made.
The political condition of the country was very different from what it had been under his predecessors of the Eight- eenth Dynasty. The great kings, such as Thothmes III and Amenophis III, had nothing to fear from the Hebrews. Probably they were not yet so numerous as they were later ; besides, Egypt was not then threatened by her immediate neighbours. Palestine had been conquered, her cities as far as Zidon were tributary to Pharaoh. He was the sovereign to whom the governors had to report. In order to ensure the subjection of the native rulers, the king had their sons brought to Egypt, and they were sent from Egypt to take their father's place when he died. Rebellion might arise among them, but they would never
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be strong enough to march to the frontiers of Egypt and endanger the safety of the realm.
At the end of the Eighteenth Dynasty, Amenophis IV made a religious revolution. When I say religious, it must not be considered as a change in the belief, or what may be called the faith of the people. It was an attack against the power of the college of priests at Thebes, and an act of hostility against Amon, the god whom they were worshipping. In order to break the power of his priests, it was necessary to destroy their god and to try to eradicate his worship from Egypt. The Tel-el- Amama letters have shown us that, in spite of these troubles, under Amenophis IV the power of Egypt was unbroken in Palestine, and that the Mesopotamian kings wished as strongly as before to make alliance with the Pharaoh.
It is probable that the reaction which followed his reign was accompanied by inner convulsions, during which Palestine regained its independence, and that the domin- ion of Egypt over her Eastern neighbour disappeared. There must also have been migrations of those nations towards the south, for we see that the father of Rameses II, Seti I, had to fight the Shasu, the inhabitants of Sinai and of the South of Canaan. The inscription speaking of this sovereign says that the king goes out to defeat the Shasu, " beginning at the fortress of Zar, as far as Canaan." The fortress of Zar, the present Kantarah, was on the extreme hmit of Egypt, on the Pelusiac branch of the Nile. This shows that the enemies were as close as possible to the kingdom, since they were separated from it only by a branch of the river. Seti, in spite of his successes, did not go farther than the coast of the Phihstines, and the Kadesh which he is said to have taken was that in the South of Palestine.
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The expeditions of Rameses II against the Khetas (the Hittites) were certainly successful. Following the coast of the Mediterranean, he went as far as the Nahr-el-Kelb, but his wars seem to have had more the character of raids ; his conquests were ephemeral, they did not lead to a permanent possession of the coasts, as did those of Thoth- mes III. In his treaty of peace with the Khetas, the two enemies treat on equal terms ; it is even Hkely that the conditions of peace were drawn up by the Khetas. All this shows that there were enemies of the Egyptians in the immediate neighbourhood sufficiently strong to be able to invade some day the Valley of the Nile. The danger which Pharaoh took as a pretext for keeping down the Israelites was not at all imaginary, especially^ since, the enemies being Semites like the inhabitants of Sinai, the IsraeUtes would have been tempted to side with invaders who were of the same race as themselves, and also as the memory of the rulers who had welcomed the ancestors of the Israehtes, Joseph and Jacob, and had settled them in the good land where they had pros- pered, was detested by the Egyptians.
" And they built for Pharaoh store-cities, Pithom and Raamses." This also seems good policy on the part of the king. The land of Goshen, which extended as far as the Red Sea, the present Wady Tumilat, was the key of the country. There ended several desert roads, by which trade, caravans, travellers, and also military expeditions might enter the country. The Wady Tumilat led them to the very heart of the kingdom. The first city reached was Bubastis, from which two or tliree days' march brought them to Heliopolis and Memphis. These large towns were at the head of the Delta, and the enemy who occupied them cut the country in two.
In order to protect his kingdom against possible inva-
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sions on that side, Rameses compelled the Israelites to build two cities which were at the same time fortresses : Pithom and Raamses. Pithom, the city of the god Turn, was at a short distance from the present Ismaihah, at a site called Tel-el-Maskhuta, " the mount of the statue." This place can be identified from the numerous inscriptions found in the excavations on the spot, ranging from the time of Rameses II to the Roman Empire. Latin inscriptions proved the correctness of the guess of the French geographer, d'Anville, that the Greek name of the city was Heroopolis, or Ero, which we know from Strabo to have been at the head of the Heroopolitan gulf. It shows that the Red Sea, even in Roman time, extended much further north, and included what are now called the Bitter Lakes and Lake Timsah, through which the Suez Canal is running. The identity of Pithom and Heroopolis was proved also by a passage in Genesis (xlvi. 28). It is said that Jacob " sent Judah before him unto Joseph to shew the way before him unto Goshen, and Joseph made ready his chariot and went to meet Israel his father to Goshen." Here the LXX are more precise. They read : " He sent Judah before him to Joseph, to meet him at Heroopolis unto the land of Rameses, and Joseph having made ready his chariot, went to meet his father at Heroopolis." Heroopolis is a Greek name, therefore the Coptic version reads in the first sentence : to meet him " at Pithom, the city in the land of Rameses, "and in the second, " at Pithom the city."
The site of Pithom was the first discovered. I had then suggested that Raamses might be the mound called Tel Rotib, a few miles west of Pithom. My excavations had not then given results of any importance. What Prof. Flinders Petrie has found in this mound shows conclusively that it was the City of Raamses. We know now the site
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of the two cities built by the Israehtes : they guarded the southern road from Palestine, and were a very effective protection for Egypt. Therefore we cannot wonder that Pharaoh employed the numerous population settled in the valley to raise this useful defence. At the same time, it is natural that the Hebrews should resent strongly a treatment which no doubt was applied to them with the usual harshness of Eastern nations, and which was par- ticularly oppressive since its purpose was to prevent them from increasing in number so as to become a danger for the State.
The details of the narrative certainly reveal an eye- witness of the events described. For instance, the fear of Pharaoh is expressed in this way : " lest they multiply, and it come to pass that when there falleth out any war, they also join themselves unto our enemies, and fight against us." This shows that there was imminent danger of the kingdom being invaded from abroad. In fact, in the beginning of the reign of Menephtah, the king of the Exodus, we see that a great invasion of African and Mediterranean nations entered the Delta and reached the neighbourhood of Memphis. That there had been danger also from the side of Palestine is proved by the great laudatory tablet of Menephtah discovered by Prof. Flinders Petrie, in which we find the only mention of the Israehtes in an Egyptian text. It says that there is nothing to fear from the Canaanite cities, because they are " prisoners of all kinds of evib," meaning that they are entangled in internecine war. Israel does not exist any more, and Kheta is at peace. Thus Israel is quoted among the nations which the king had had to dread, and this justifies what is said of Pharaoh. Would, as the critics maintain, an inhabitant of Judea, writing many centuries afterwards, be so well informed about the
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state of the country, and relate such details harmonizing so well with the circumstances in which the Hebrews and their oppressors stood when the events occurred which preceded the Exodus ?
How could this writer know the motives which induced Pharaoh to persecute the Israelites ? These motives are given as words spoken by the kmg, and this is m accordance with the minds of these ancient peoples. A thought does not exist for them independently of its outward expression in speech ; it must be spoken, In many cases, when translating these old texts into modern language, we should say, " he thought," instead of, " he said." The word " say " often expresses only an activity of the mind, a thought, a wish, or another mental action. No doubt the writer of later times knew of the captivity and persecution. This tradition has lasted through the whole history of the Jews, down to the present day. But since the persecution arose from a political cause due to the circumstances of the time, it is difficult to imagine how a late writer could have known it, while for Moses, who lived in the midst of those circumstances, it was perfectly clear, and he described exactly what he saw or heard.
Another detail, thoroughly Egyptian, which reveals an author who wrote in Egypt, is found in Exodus i. 15 : " And the King of Egypt spoke to the Hebrews' midwives, of which the name was Shiphrah and the name of the other Puah, and he said : When ye do the office of mid- wife to the Hebrew women, and see them upon the birth- stool. ..." This is exactly what v/e see in two famous sculptures, one of the birth of the Queen Hatshepsu, and another of the birth of King Amenophis HI. In both cases the mother is sitting upon a stool and there are two goddesses acting as midwives near her. In the case of Mutemua, the mother of Amenophis III, each of the god-
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desses holds one of the hands of the mother. It is not hkely that all the Hebrew women had two midwives, like the Egyptian princesses. But here Pharaoh speaks about what he knows and is accustomed to, and it is impossible not to be struck by the thoroughly Egyptian character of the narrative, which cannot be due to a Palestinian writer, whatever be his date.
It is not so easy to discriminate the various tablets of which this narrative consists, as it was in Genesis. However, there is one easily discernible ; it goes from chapter vi. 2 to vii. 7. It is the renewal of the Covenant of the Lord with the Israelites and with the gathering of the elders to whom Moses was sent. That is the reason why the heads of their fathers' houses are here enumerated, and, since at first they had not listened to Moses and Aaron, a charge is given them " unto the children of Israel, and unto Pharaoh, king of Egypt, to bring the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt." The tablet ends with saying that when Moses started for his mission he was fourscore years old, and Aaron fourscore and three.
I shall not dwell on the ten plagues, which, in a weaker degree, can many of them be found in Egypt at the present day. I must say only from experience that the fourth plague, translated " lice," seems to correspond better, as the margin says, to the sandflies, certainly, as travellers know, one of the most tormenting insects in Egypt.
Now we come to the Exodus proper, the marching of the people out of Egypt. It is said that the Israelites numbered about six hundred thousand on foot that were men, besides children (xii. 37). As I said before, we cannot in the least trust the numbers given in the narrative. This census is difhcult to understand. Why should the men and the children only be mentioned, and
THE JOURNEY TO CANAAN loi
the women entirely omitted ? If it were so, that would suppose a population of at least two million people, per- haps even more. It would be a great part of the popula- tion of the whole country. Two miUion people could not inhabit the Wady Tumilat ; they could not be gathered together at one spot, their camp would have covered a wide area, and they would have required an enormous quantity of food and water.
I do not feel competent to enter upon a discussion with the Hebrew scholars upon this passage. I only suggest a translation tentatively, the more so since there may have been an error in the transcription from the cuneiform or the Aramaic text. In this expression, " six hundred thousand on foot that were men," could the words, " on foot that were men," mean the strong ones, those who could stand on their feet and walk and did not require any help ? Only infants who could not walk and had to be carried, :the parvuli of the Vulgate, would then be excluded. There would not be a great number of them. This would make, all told, only a few thousand above the six hundred thousand. That would certainly be a large and powerful tribe, nevertheless, it would be far more manageable than a population of several milHons, and there would be no impossibility of applying to it what is related in the narrative. This is an explanation based on the Hebrew text as we have it ; but as this is not the original, it is quite possible that the transcription may be incorrect.
The excavations at Pithom have thrown a great deal of hght over the direction of the route of the Exodus, and upon its stations. The identification of the site of Heroo- pohs which, according to Strabo, Pliny and the geographer Ptolemy, was situated at the head of the Arabian Gulf, has shown that the sea was very near to the country inhabited by the Israelites, and that it was not necessary to make
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long marches to reach it. Geologists like Du Bois Aym6, Linant Bey, Prof. Hull, and Sir William Dawson had clearly proved from natural science that the Red Sea extended in former times further north than it does now, but here we have a proof from Roman inscriptions that it was so in Roman times.
" The children of Israel journeyed from Rameses to Succoth." Here we must take Rameses as meaning the land of Rameses. In Genesis it seems synonymous with Goshen, the centre of which must have been east of Bubastis. From there they marched to Succoth. This name, meaning " tents," is what we call a popular etymo- logy, a transcription from the sound, in which the original form of the name is sufficiently altered to have a sense in the language of the foreign people who have to pronounce it ; but this sense has nothing do to with the primitive meaning of the word. This is the way in which tran- scriptions are made at the present day ; they are not according to the rules of philology. Succoth is the Hebrew form of Thuket, or Thukot, the region where Pithom was built. The name Thukot has in Egyptian a sign indicating that it has a foreign origin ; it is not Egyptian. I believe it is African : it appears in several Hamitic languages of North Africa, where it means a pasture. The region round Pithom was certainly a pasture land, for we find in a papyrus that Eastern nomads ask to be allowed to enter the country, so that they might graze their cattle in the pastures of Pithom in Succoth.
In that part of the journey of the Israelites, water was abundant, since they followed the fresh-water canal going from Bubastis to the Red Sea. Leaving Succoth, they skirted the Arabian Gulf and reached the desert of Etham. From there, they could go straight across the desert, towards the southern part of Palestine, towards Beer-
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sheba. It was the road which Jacob had taken when he came with his family to settle in Egypt . Caravans followed it as late as the nineteenth century. The way " of the land of the Philistines " along the coast of the Mediterra- nean would have been nearer, but the Israelites would have had to pass fortresses like Zar, which certainly would have been great obstacles and would have occasioned fighting.
Arriving at the edge of the wilderness of Etham, the Israelites could consider themselves well out of Egypt : they had only to look forward to the happy day when, having crossed the desert, they would reach the land of the promise. But they would be in great danger, in case the King of Egypt wished to pursue them. His chariots would soon have overtaken this multitude, which could not march very fast, and his host would have made a slaughter of these fugitives, who had no way of escape. This seems to be the reason why they received a command which they must have considered as very extraordinary and of a nature to shake their confidence in their leader. They were not to change the direction of their march, to incline it more north or more south : they were actually ordered to retrace their steps (Exodus xiv. i) : " And the Lord spoke with Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, that they turn back and encamp before Pi-hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea, before Baal- zephon : over against it shall ye encamp by the sea. And Pharaoh will say of the children of Israel, They are entangled in the land, the wilderness hath shut them in."
This order, at first sight, is certainly most startling. Instead of marching straight on, on a road which was quite open, they are told to turn back and to march south towards a definite spot, where they will have the sea in front of them, an insuperable obstacle between their camp and the desert. It looked as if they were told to
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walk into a trap. That is the way in which Pharaoh interprets their march. The Israehtes are entangled in the country, they wander in it at random, they cannot leave it because the wilderness hath shut them in. They went as far as its edge, but then, he thought, they were afraid of its dangers, and dared not face the hardships and difficulties for such a large tribe of a journey through the desert. " What is this we have done, that we have let Israel go from serving us ? " Pharaoh made ready his horses and chariots to pursue them, and they came upon them at the spot where the Israelites had been ordered to camp.
Although the narrative of Scripture is very concise, and there are no unnecessary details, it tallies so well with the circumstances, especially with the local conditions, that it is impossible not to attribute it to an eyewitness. Supposing with the critics, that this chapter is a compound of two documents, the Jahvist and the Priestly Code, written by two authors living at four hundred years' interval, since according to this theory the idea that they copied an old document is excluded, they must have both followed an oral tradition.
It is well known that tradition recollects the main lines of an event : in this case, the fact that the Israelites had been pursued by the Egyptians and that they had been saved by the miraculous crossing of the Red Sea. But