Patriarchal Palestine

by A. H. Sayce

The language of Mitanni has been revealed to us by the cuneiform correspondence from Tel el-Amarna. It was highly agglutinative, and unlike any other form of speech, ancient or modern, with which we are acquainted. Perhaps the speakers of it, like the Hittites, had descended from the north, and occupied territory which had originally belonged to Aramaic tribes. Perhaps, on the other hand, they represented the older population of the country which was overpowered and displaced by Semitic invaders. Which of these views is the more correct we shall probably never know.

Along with their own language the people of Mitanni had also their own theology. Tessupas was god of the atmosphere, the Hadad of the Semites, Sausbe was identified with the Phoenician Ashteroth, and Sekhrus, Zizanu, and Zannukhu are mentioned among the other deities. But many of the divinities of Assyria were also borrowed—Sin the Moon-god, whose temple stood in the city of Harran, Ea the god of the waters, Bel, the Baal of the Canaanites, and Istar, "the lady of Nineveh." Even Amon the god of Thebes was adopted into the pantheon in the days of Egyptian influence.

How far back the interference of Aram-Naharaim in the affairs of Canaan may have reached it is impossible to say. But the kingdom lay on the high-road from Babylonia and Assyria to the West, and its rise may possibly have had something to do with the decline of Babylonian supremacy in Palestine. The district in which it grew up was called Suru or Suri by the Sumerian inhabitants of Chaldæa—a name which may be the origin of the modern "Syria," rather than Assyria, as is usually supposed, and the Semitic Babylonians gave it the title of Subari or Subartu. The conquest of Suri was the work of the last campaign of Sargon of Accad, and laid all northern Mesopotamia at his feet.

We gather from the letters of Tel el-Amarna that the Babylonians were still intriguing in Canaan in the century before the Exodus, though they acknowledged that it was an Egyptian province and subject to Egyptian laws. But the memory of the power they had once exercised there still survived, and the influence of their culture continued undiminished. When their rule actually ceased we do not yet know. It cannot have been very long, however, before the era of Egyptian conquest. In the Tel el-Amarna tablets they are always called Kassites, a name which could have been given to them only after the conquest of Babylonia by the Kassite mountaineers of Elam, and the rise of a Kassite dynasty of kings. This was about 1730 B.C. For some time subsequently, therefore, the government of Babylonia must still have been acknowledged in Canaan. With this agrees a statement of the Egyptian historian Manetho, upon which the critics, in their wisdom or their ignorance, have poured unmeasured contempt. He tells us that when the Hyksos were driven out of Egypt by Ahmes I., the founder of the eighteenth dynasty, they occupied Jerusalem and fortified it—not, as would naturally be imagined, against the Egyptian Pharaoh, but against "the Assyrians," as the Babylonians were called by Manetho's contemporaries. As long as there were no monuments to confront them the critics had little difficulty in proving that the statement was preposterous and unhistorical, that Jerusalem did not as yet exist, and that no Assyrians or Babylonians entered Palestine until centuries later. But we now know that Manetho was right and his critics wrong. Jerusalem did exist, and Babylonian armies threatened the independence of the Canaanite states. In one of his letters, Ebed-Tob, king of Jerusalem, tells the Pharaoh that he need not be alarmed about the Babylonians, for the temple at Jerusalem is strong enough to resist their attack. Rib-Hadad the governor of Gebal bears the same testimony. "When thou didst sit on the throne of thy father," he says, "the sons of Ebed-Asherah (the Amorite) attached themselves to the country of the Babylonians, and took the country of the Pharaoh for themselves; they (intrigued with) the king of Mitanna, and the king of the Babylonians, and the king of the Hittites." In another despatch he speaks in a similar strain: "The king of the Babylonians and the king of Mitanna are strong, and have taken the country of the Pharaoh for themselves already, and have seized the cities of thy governor." When George the Synkellos notes that the Chaldæans made war against the Phoenicians in B.C. 1556, he is doubtless quoting from some old and trustworthy source.

We must not imagine, however, that there was any permanent occupation of Canaan on the part of the Babylonians at this period of its history. It would seem rather that Babylonian authority was directly exercised only from time to time, and had to be enforced by repeated invasions and campaigns. It was the influence of Babylonian civilization and culture that was permanent, not the Babylonian government itself. Sometimes, indeed, Canaan became a Babylonian province, at other times there were only certain portions of the country which submitted to the foreign control, while again at other times the Babylonian rule was merely nominal. But it is clear that it was not until Canaan had been thoroughly reduced by Egyptian arms that the old claim of Babylonia to be its mistress was finally renounced, and even then we see that intrigues were carried on with the Babylonians against the Egyptian authority.

It was during this period of Babylonian influence and tutelage that the traditions and myths of Chaldæa became known to the people of Canaan. It is again the tablets of Tel el-Amarna which have shown us how this came to pass. Among them are fragments of Babylonian legends, one of which endeavoured to account for the creation of man and the introduction of sin into the world, and these legends were used as exercise-books in the foreign language by the scribes of Canaan and Egypt who were learning the Babylonian language and script. If ever we discover the library of Kirjath-sepher we shall doubtless find among its clay records similar examples of Chaldæan literature. The resemblances between the cosmogonies of Phoenicia and Babylonia have often been pointed out, and since the discovery of the Chaldæan account of the Deluge by George Smith we have learned that between that account and the one which is preserved in Genesis there is the closest possible likeness, extending even to words and phrases. The long-continued literary influence of Babylonia in Palestine in the Patriarchal Age explains all this, and shows us how the traditions of Chaldæa made their way to the West. When Abraham entered Canaan, he entered a country whose educated inhabitants were already familiar with the books, the history, and the traditions of that in which he had been born. There were doubtless many to whom the name and history of "Ur of the Chaldees" were already known. It may even be that copies of the books in its library already existed in the libraries of Canaan.

There was one Babylonian hero at all events whose name had become so well known in the West that it had there passed into a proverb. This was the name of Nimrod, "the mighty hunter before the Lord." As yet the cuneiform documents are silent about him, but it is probable that he was one of the early Kassite kings who established their dominion over the cities of Babylonia. He is called the son of Cush or Kas, and "the beginning of his kingdom" was Babylon, which had now for six centuries been the capital of the country. His name, however, was as familiar to the Canaanite as it was to the inhabitant of Chaldæa, and the god before whom his exploits were displayed was Yahveh and not Bel.

It was about 1600 B.C. that the Hyksos were finally expelled from Egypt. They were originally Asiatic hordes who had overrun the valley of the Nile, and held it in subjection for several centuries. At first they had carried desolation with them wherever they went. The temples of the Egyptian gods were destroyed and their priests massacred. But before long Egyptian culture proved too strong for the invaders. The rude chief of a savage horde became transformed into an Egyptian Pharaoh, whose court resembled that of the ancient line of monarchs, and who surrounded himself with learned men. The cities and temples were restored and beautified, and art began to flourish once more. Except in one respect it became difficult to distinguish the Hyksos prince from his predecessors on the throne of Egypt. That one respect was religion. The supreme object of Hyksos worship continued to be Sutekh, the Baal of Western Asia, whose cult the foreigners had brought with them from their old homes. But even Sutekh was assimilated to Ra, the Sun-god of On, and the Hyksos Pharaohs felt no scruple in imitating the native kings and combining their own names with that of Ra. It was only the Egyptians who refused to admit the assimilation, and insisted on identifying Sutekh with Set the enemy of Horus.

At the outset all Egypt was compelled to submit to the Hyksos domination. Hyksos monuments have been found as far south as Gebelên and El-Kab, and the first Hyksos dynasty established its seat in Memphis, the old capital of the country. Gradually, however, the centre of Hyksos power retreated into the delta. Zoan or Tanis, the modern San, became the residence of the court: here the Hyksos kings were in close proximity to their kindred in Asia, and were, moreover, removed from the unmixed Egyptian population further south. From Zoan, "built"—or rather rebuilt—"seven years" after Hebron (Num. xiii. 22), they governed the valley of the Nile. Their rule was assisted by the mutual jealousies and quarrels of the native feudal princes who shared between them the land of Egypt. The foreigner kept his hold upon the country by means of the old feudal aristocracy.

Thebes, however, had never forgotten that it had been the birthplace and capital of the powerful Pharaohs of the twelfth and thirteenth dynasties, of the mighty princes who had conquered the Soudan, and ruled with an iron hand over the feudal lords. The heirs of the Theban Pharaohs still survived as princes of Thebes, and behind the strong walls of El-Kab they began to think of independence. Apophis II. in his court at Zoan perceived the rising storm, and endeavoured to check it at its beginning. According to the story of a later day, he sent insulting messages to the prince of Thebes, and ordered him to worship Sutekh the Hyksos god. The prince defied his suzerain, and the war of independence began. It lasted for several generations, during which the Theban princes made themselves masters of Upper Egypt, and established a native dynasty of Pharaohs which reigned simultaneously with the Hyksos dynasty in the North.