Recent Testimony of Archaeology to the Scriptures. 35 (b) The closing up of the great tunnel to the spring with in the fortifications at Gezer is placed by the layers of his tory in thé rubbish heaps at the period of the Conquest'34’. But when a great fortification is so ruined and the power it represents so destroyed that it loses sight of its water-supply, surely the culture of the time has had an interruption, though it be not much changed. Then this tunnel, as a great engineer ing feat, is remarkable testimony to the advanced state of civilization at the time of its construction; but the more remarkable the civilization it represents, the more terrible must have been the disturbance of the culture which caused it to be lost and forgotten(35). (c) Again, there is apparent an enlargement of the popu lated area of the city of Gezer by encroaching upon the Temple area, at the period of the Conquest'36’, showing at once the crowding into the city of the Israelites without the destruction of the Canaanites, as stated in the Bible, and a corresponding decline in reverence for the sacred inclosure of the High Place. While, at' a time corresponding to the early period of the Mon- archy<37), there is a sudden decrease of the populated area corresponding to the destruction of the Canaanites in the city by the father of Solomon’s Egyptian wife'38’. (d) Of startling significance, the hypothetical Musri Egypt in North Arabia, concerning which it has been saidC39) the patriarchs descended thereto, the Israelites escaped there from, and a princess thereof Solomon married, has been final ly and definitely discredited. For Gezer was a marriage dower of that princéss whom Solomon married'40’, a por tion of her father’s dominion, and so a part of the supposed Musri,, if it ever existed, and if so, at Gezer, then, we should find some evidence of this people and their civilization. Of such there is not a trace. But, instead, we find from very early times, but especially at this time, Egyptian remains in great abundance'41’. (e) Indeed, even Egyptian refinement and luxuries were
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