A few years ago the subject-matter of the present volume might have been condensed into a few pages. Beyond what we would gather from the Old Testament, we knew but little about the history and geography of Canaan before the age of its conquest by the Israelites. Thanks, however, to the discovery and decipherment of the ancient monuments of Babylonia and Assyria, of Egypt and of Palestine, all this is now changed. A flood of light has been poured upon the earlier history of the country and its i

Dynasty XV.— Of the Sixteenth Dynasty nothing is known. Of the Seventeenth the monuments have given us the names of Apôphis II. (Aa-user-Ra) and Apôphis III. (Aa-ab-tani-Ra), in whose reign the war of independence began under the native prince of Thebes, and lasted for four generations. Dynasty XVIII.— Dynasty XIX.— Dynasty XX.— Dynasty I. of Babylon— 1. Sumu-abi, 15 years, B.C. 2458. 2. Sumu-la-ilu, his son, 35 years. 3. Zabû, his son, 14 years. 4. Abil-Sin, his son, 18 years. 5. Sin-muballidh,

Patriarchal Palestine! There are some who would tell us that the very name is a misnomer. Have we not been assured by the German critics and their English disciples that there were no patriarchs and no Patriarchal Age? And yet, the critics notwithstanding, the Patriarchal Age has actually existed. While criticism, so-called, has been busy in demolishing the records of the Pentateuch, archaeology, by the spade of the excavator and the patient skill of the decipherer, has been equally busy in rest

In the days of Abraham, Chedor-laomer, king of Elam and lord over the kings of Babylonia, marched westward with his Babylonian allies, in order to punish his rebellious subjects in Canaan. The invading army entered Palestine from the eastern side of the Jordan. Instead of marching along the sea-coast, it took the line of the valley of the Jordan. It first attacked the plateau of Bashan, and then smote "the Rephaim in Ashteroth Karnaim, and the Zuzim in Ham, and the Emim in the plain of Kiriathai

It is in the cuneiform records of Babylonia that we catch the first glimpse of the early history of Canaan. Babylonia was not yet united under a single head. From time to time some prince arose whose conquests allowed him to claim the imperial title of "king of Sumer and Akkad," of Southern and Northern Babylonia, but the claim was never of long duration, and often it signified no more than a supremacy over the other rulers of the country. It was while Babylonia was thus divided into more than o

Abraham had been born in "Ur of the Chaldees." Ur lay on the western side of the Euphrates in Southern Babylonia, where the mounds of Muqayyar or Mugheir mark the site of the great temple that had been reared to the worship of the Moon-god long before the days of the Hebrew patriarch. Here Abraham had married, and from hence he had gone forth with his father to seek a new home in the west. Their first resting-place had been Harran in Mesopotamia, on the high-road to Syria and the Mediterranean.

Palestine has been a land of pilgrims and tourists from the very beginning of its history. It was the goal of the migration of Abraham and his family, and it was equally the object of the oldest book of travels with which we are acquainted. Allusion has already been made more than once to the Egyptian papyrus, usually known as The Travels of a Mohar , and in which a satirical account is given of a tour in Palestine and Syria. The writer was a professor, apparently of literature, in the court of

We have already learned from the annals of Thothmes III. how high was the state of civilization and culture among the merchant princes of Canaan in the age of the eighteenth Egyptian dynasty. Artistically finished vases of gold and silver, rich bronzes, furniture carved out of ebony and cedar, and inlaid with ivory and precious stones—such were some of the manufactures of the land of Palestine. Iron was excavated from its hills and wrought into armour, into chariots, and into weapons of war; whi