14
THÈ KING’S BUSINESS
delight, so matchless is the workman ship, so elegant and varied the designs, and never possessed nor reproduced it, is highly improbable. Objectors have held that in the Mosaic and the preceding ages there could have been no intercourse between the Nile and tne Euphrates, and the intervening Medi terranean coast. That since the early chapters of Genesis are Chaldean in their content they must have been written m a late period, when Israel had become acquainted with Chaldean records. This objection is refuted by the arch ives discovered at Tel El Amarna. This i f 1 lf!Jbe slte of a village on the east of the Nile, between Minieh and Assiut. It marks the seat of government of Am- enophis IV, in the century preceding Moses. Excavations in wEat Sayce calls the Foreign Office” of Amenophis, dis covered hundreds of clay tablets with cuneiform inscriptions, constituting the corespondence of kings of Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, and particularly of de pendent rulers and governors of Pale stine, with the Pharoah. Thus it is dem onstrated that long before Moses Egypt was in intimate communication with the far North and East, and that, too, in the Chaldean language. The Babylonian tongue and literature was familiar from the Nile to the Lebanons, in fact so generally in use, in international cores- pondence, that there can be no doubt that it had been studied, ,spoken, written and r®ad\ from Melchisedec to Ebed Tob, from Abraham to Moses. “Kirjath Sopher,” of Seribes>” in Palestine, is identified with the “Bpth Thuphor,” or “o ii186, Scribes,” of the monuments, schools and colleges must have exist ed all over the land” of Canaan. The learning of the Egyptians” included the literature that was enriched by tradi tions of Eden, the flood, and the mighty hunter before the Lord, and must have been embraced in the curriculum of the University of Seti at Thebes, where the great lawgiver seems to have taken his degrees, ‘when schools were thicker in than in France in the days of Louis XII,” and students sang, Tel Amarna has double lined the eras- ure through the infidel Renan’s sentence, Writing was an art unknown in the days of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” Beside pappus, skins and parchments, hiero glyphic and demotic (written characters of early Egypt), Moses 'had at hand the day and cuneiform (Chaldean charac “Give thy heart to letters; Love letters as thy mother ”
ters) in which these archives of Egypt were embalmed, and in which his father Abraham had been instructed. It would have been a miracle if he had not in scribed his legislation and the history of his people. The ingenious suggestions of Dr. Hay- man, of Ulverston, are worthy of con sideration. He thinks the fragmentary and repetitious cnaracter of the Mosaic and later Scriptures may be due to their having first been committed to bricks of soft clay, after the Chaldean custom. He has examined many sections of the record and finds a remarkable uniformity m the number of lines embraced in them as might be expected if limited severally to one surface of such tablets. The abruptness and apparent incompletion, in many instances, may be attributed to abrasures. Citing the seventh of Num bers, comprising the account of the gifts of the twelve princes of the tribes, which has been a stumbling block to many, he shows that if to each of these contrib utors a tablet receipt had been given and according to custom a duplicate re tained, it would be natural for the later scribe to copy each, as it stood, into his manuscript. The clays of Tel Amarna supplementing Sf J eL E1 Hesy or Uachish, discovered by Mr. J. R. Bliss, show that Canaan, in the period immediately pre- ceding the exodic was in a state of un- rest. Governor Zimridi, of Lachish, re ports diligent and not unsuccessful ef- rorts to put down rebellion. Abdi Heba King in Uru Salem (Jerusalem), appeals for help against the Habiri (Hebrews’)- and very curiously, speaks of himself as the servant of the Mighty King, and alludes to his authority as not derived trom descent, and unavoidably we are reminded of his predecessor, Melchisedec King of Salem, priest of the Most High G°i?’ r ^ ltlhout fatller aad without moth er. These ancient state papers mention numerous towns, cities, and other geo graphical items, familiar to the Bible removing some stumbling problems in orthography, showing that Moses could spell better than his critics, and supply ing data bearing on the date of the Exo dus and even of the tenth chapter of Genesis. The relations of Egypt and Palestine at the time this correspondence took place are shown to have been such that, geographically, Canaan could be represented as “the younger brother of Mizraim, a statement inconsistent with their relations in the age preceding or in the age succeeding, and the Mosaic
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