30 The Fundamentals. emptorily demand either the acknowledgment of a mythical element in the stories, or the belief in a suitable historical set ting therefor. Obscure, insignificant, private citizens are not accorded such recognition at a foreign and unfriendly court. While some have been conceding a mythical element in the stories(3), archaeology has uncovered to view such appropriate historical setting that the patriarchs are seen not to have been obscure, insignificant, private citizens, nor Zoan a foreign and unfriendly court. The presence of the Semitic tongue in6Hyksos’ territory has long been known'4’ ; from still earlier than patriarchal times until much later, the Phoenicians, first cousins of the He brews, did the foreign business of the Egyptians(5), as the English, the Germans, and the French do the foreign business of the Chinese of today; and some familiarity, even sympa thy, with Semitic religion has been strongly suspected from the interview of the Hyksos kings with the patriarchs'6’ ; but the discovery in 1906'7’, by Petrie, of the great fortified camp at Tel-el-Yehudiyeh set at rest, in the main, the biblical question of the relation between the patriarchs and the Hyksos. The abundance of Hyksos scarabs and the almost total ab sence of all others mark the camp as certainly a Hyksos camp(8); the original character of the fortifications, before the Hyksos learned the builders’ craft from the Egyptians, shows them to have depended upon the bow for defense'9’ ; and, finally, the name Hyksos, in the Egyptian Haq Shashu'10’ “Bedouin princes,” brings out, sharp and clear, the harmonious picture of which we have had glimpses for a long time, of the Hyksos as wandering tribes of the desert, of “Upper and Lower Ruthen” ' 11’ ; i. e., Syria and Palestine, northern and western Arabia, “Bow people” '18’, as the Egyptians called them, their traditional enemies as far back as pyramid times'13’. Why, then, should not the patriarchs have had a royal re ception in Egypt? They were themselves also the heads of
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