The object of this little book is explained by its title. Discovery after discovery has been pouring in upon us from Oriental lands, and the accounts given only ten years ago of the results of Oriental research are already beginning to be antiquated. It is useful, therefore, to take stock of our present knowledge, and to see how far it bears out that “old story” which has been familiar to us from our childhood. The same spirit of scepticism which had rejected the early legends of Greece and Rome

The third name, which was much longer than the other two, differed from the second chiefly at the beginning, the latter part of it resembling the name of Xerxes. Clearly, therefore, it could be nothing else than Artaxerxes, and that it actually was so, was rendered certain by the fact that the second character composing it was that which had the value of r . Grotefend now possessed a small alphabet, and with this he proceeded to read the word which always followed the royal name, and therefore p

All is changed now. The marvellous discoveries of the last half-century have thrown a flood of light on the ancient oriental world, and some of this light has necessarily been reflected on the Book of Genesis. The monuments of Egypt, of Babylonia, and of Assyria have been rescued from their hiding-places, and the writing upon them has been made to speak once more in living words. A dead world has been called again to life by the spade of the excavator and the patient labour of the decipherer. We

Two centuries later, when the troublous times which saw the close of the eighteenth dynasty had ushered in the nineteenth, the same districts had again to be overrun by the Egyptian kings. Once more victories were gained over the powerful Hittites, in their fortress of Kadesh, on the Orontes, and over the tribes of Palestine. Seti I, the father of Ramses II, records among his conquests Beth-Anoth and Kirjath-Anab 4 in the south, as well as Zor or Tyre. Ramses II himself, the Sesostris of the Gre

But before the alphabet was communicated to Greece by the Phœnician traders, it had already been adopted by their Semitic kinsmen in Western Asia. Excavations in Palestine and the country east of the Jordan would doubtless bring to light inscriptions compiled in it much older than the oldest which we at present know. Only a few years ago the gap between the time when the Phœnicians first borrowed their new alphabet and the time to which the earliest texts written in it belonged was very great in

But they had already left their mark on the pages of the Old Testament. The Canaanite who had betrayed his fellow-citizens at Beth-el to the Israelites dared not entrust himself to his countrymen, but went away “into the land of the Hittites” (Judges i. 26). Solomon imported horses from Egypt, which he sold to the Syrians and the Hittites (1 Kings x. 28, 29), and when God had sent a panic upon the camp of the Syrians before Jerusalem, they had imagined that “the king of Israel had hired against

The campaign of the sixth year is narrated in detail in an inscription engraved by the Assyrian monarch on the rocks of Armenia. Here we learn that, after crossing the Euphrates, he received the tribute of the Hittite states in Pethor, the city of Balaam, which he describes as being situated at the junction of the Euphrates and Sajur. He then marched to Aleppo, where more gifts were brought to him, and after capturing three of the fortresses of Hamath, reached the royal city of Karkar or Aroer.

The empire of Babylonia arose out of the ashes of the empire of Assyria. While the bands of the enemy were gathering round the doomed city of Nineveh, Nabopolassar, the viceroy of Babylonia, seized the opportunity for revolt. There were no armies now, as in former days, that could pour out of the gates of the Assyrian capital to punish the rebel, and Nabopolassar was allowed to establish his new monarchy undisturbed. But the fall of the imperial city left the other provinces of the Assyrian empi

But now, from this very day forward, Khita-sir, the great king of the Hittites, shall look upon this treaty, so that the agreement may remain, which the Sun-god, Ra, has made, which the god Sutekh has made, for the people of Egypt and for the people of the Hittites, that there should be no enmity between them for evermore. And these are the contents:— Khita-sir, the great king of the Hittites, is in covenant with Ramessu Mi-Amun, the great prince of Egypt, from this very day forward, that there

Col. II. “O Sin, lord of the gods, king of the gods of heaven and earth, even the gods of gods, who inhabit heaven, the great ones, for this temple, with joy at thy entrance, may thy lips establish the blessings of Bit-Saggil, Bit-Zida, and Bit-Gis-nu-gal, the temples of thy great divinity; set the fear of thy great divinity in the hearts of his ( i.e. , Nabonidos') men that they err not; for thy great divinity may their foundations remain firm like the heavens. As for me, Nabonidos, the king of