In the account of Isaac’s marriage with Rebekah it is again a provision of the old Babylonian code with which we meet. There we hear of the bride receiving a dowry from the father of the bridegroom, and of other presents being made to her mother in conformity with Babylonian usage. So, too, the infliction of death by burning with which Judah threatened his daughter-in-law Tamar, on the supposition that she was a widow, has its explanation in the legislation of Khammu-rabi, where the same punishment is enacted against a nun who has been unfaithful to her vows of virginity or widowhood. The story of the purchase of the cave of Machpelah, moreover, has long been recognized by Assyriologists as pre-supposing an acquaintance with the legal forms of a Babylonian sale of land in the Khammu-rabi age.

With all this heritage of Babylonian culture, therefore, it is curious that the excavators in Palestine have come across so few material evidences of intercourse with Babylonia. Mr. Macalister is inclined to believe that it must belong to a period anterior to the Twelfth Egyptian dynasty. But this raises a chronological question of some difficulty. We have seen that the earlier and inner city wall of Gezer served as the defence of three successive settlements, and that it was partially destroyed along with the city it protected about B.C. 1480. Now the outer and more massive wall which superseded it also served to protect three cities, the latest of which was deserted during the Maccabean period, about B.C. 100. Hence, Mr. Macalister argues, “if we may assume the rate of growth to have been fairly uniform, we are led back to B.C. 2900 as the (latest) date” for the foundation of the first wall. During this long period of time twenty-eight feet of débris accumulated; below this are as much as twelve feet of neolithic accumulation.[130]

The conquests of Sargon of Akkad would accordingly have fallen within the neolithic epoch. But in this case it is strange that the use of copper, with which Babylonia had long been acquainted, was not communicated to its Western province, and that it should have needed a new race and the lapse of nearly a thousand years for its introduction. Moreover, specific evidences of Babylonian civilization are quite as much wanting in the remains of the first Amorite city as they are in those of the second. And unless we adopt a date for the Twelfth Egyptian dynasty, which on other grounds seems out of the question, it is hard to see how the Khammu-rabi dynasty can be placed before it. What little evidence we possess at present goes to indicate that the Khammu-rabi dynasty was contemporaneous with the earlier Hyksos kings or their immediate predecessors. And yet not only do we know that the Khammu-rabi dynasty ruled in Palestine, but the adoption of the cuneiform script, which was at least as old as the age of that dynasty, as well as the testimony of theology and law, proves that its rule must have exercised a profound and permanent influence upon the people of Canaan. How is it, then, that while the excavations have brought to light so many evidences of Egyptian domination, there is so little in the way of material objects to show that Palestine was once and for several centuries a Babylonian province?[131]

Perhaps the excavations which are still proceeding at Megiddo may throw some light upon the problem. Meanwhile, we may remember that thus far the greater part of the objects that have been found belong to the less wealthy and educated part of the population. The annals of Thothmes III. prove that, so far as the upper classes were concerned, the picture of Canaanitish luxury presented in the Old Testament had a foundation of fact. Among the spoils taken from the princes of Canaan we hear of tables, chairs and staves of cedar and ebony inlaid or gilded with gold, of a golden plough and sceptre, of richly-embroidered stuffs similar to those depicted on the walls of the Egyptian monuments, of chariots chased with silver, of iron tent-poles studded with precious stones, and of “bowls with goats’ heads on them, and one with a lion’s head, the workmanship of the land of the Zahi,” that is to say, of the Canaanitish coast. These latter were doubtless imitations of the gold and silver cups with double handles and animals’ heads imported from Krete, which were also received as tribute from the Canaanitish princes by the Egyptian king. Other gifts comprised chariots plated with gold, iron armour with gold inlay, a helmet of gold inlaid with lapis-lazuli, the tusks of elephants, rings of gold and silver that were used as money, copper and lead, as well as jars of wine, oil and balsam. Of all these articles, the copper and lead excepted, it is needless to say next to nothing has been discovered by the excavators. The most valuable work of art yet met with is a bronze sword of precisely the same shape as one found in Assyria, which bears upon it the name of Hadad-nirari I. (B.C. 1330).[132]

On the palæographical side the forms of the cuneiform characters used in Canaan go back to the script of the age of Khammu-rabi and his predecessors. From a purely Assyriological point of view, no regard being had to other considerations, I should date their introduction into Palestine about B.C. 2300. The chronology that would best harmonize the historical facts would thus be one which made the dominance of Egypt in Palestine under the Twelfth dynasty precede the Babylonian rule of the Khammu-rabi period. Against it is the negative evidence of archæological discovery, so few traces of this rule having been discovered in the course of the excavations. But neither in archæology nor in anything else is negative evidence of much value.

At any rate, thanks to the decipherment of the cuneiform inscriptions, the main facts are clear. Canaan was once a province of the Babylonian Empire, and during the long period of time that this was the case it became permeated with the literary culture of Babylonia. The civilization which was partially destroyed by the Israelitish invasion had its roots in the valley of the Euphrates.

Gezer, it is true, was one of the cities in which no visible break with the past was made by the irruption of the desert tribes. It escaped capture by the invaders, and it was only in the reign of Solomon, when the Israelites had already entered into the heritage of the old Canaanitish culture, that it was handed over by the king of Egypt to his Jewish son-in-law. But at Lachish the marks of the destruction of the town by Joshua are still visible. Above the ruins of the Amorite cities is a bed of ashes left by the charcoal-burners who squatted on the site before it was again rebuilt. Above the stratum of ashes all must be Israelitish, and the objects found in the remains of the cities that stand upon it testify accordingly to a complete change. No more cuneiform tablets are met with, and but few Egyptian scarabs; the pottery is different, and the “high place” has disappeared. The bowl and lamp, indeed, are still buried under the walls of the newly-built house, but the bones of sacrificed children which they once contained are replaced by sand. As the Israelitish power increased the old Babylonian influence necessarily lessened. When the cuneiform syllabary finally made way for the so-called Phœnician alphabet is still uncertain, but it was at all events before the days of Solomon. Already in the Amorite period the characters of the Kretan linear script discovered by Dr. Evans are found scratched on fragments of pottery, indicating that besides the cuneiform another form of writing was known; it may be that the Israelitish conquest, by destroying the centres of Canaanitish civilization and the schools of the scribes, gave a first blow to the tradition of Babylonian learning, and that the work of destruction was subsequently completed by the Philistine wars.

CHAPTER VI
ASIA MINOR

If it has been a surprise to learn that Palestine was once within the circle of Babylonian culture, it has been equally a surprise to learn that Asia Minor was so too. It is true that Herodotus traced the Herakleid dynasty of Lydian kings to the gods of Nineveh and Babylon, that Strabo knew of a “mound of Semiramis” in Cappadocia, and that in the Book of Genesis Lud is called the son of Shem. But historians had long agreed that all such beliefs were creations of a later day, and rested on no substratum of fact. The northern limits of Babylonian or Assyrian influence, it was held, were fixed by the Taurus and the mountains of Kurdistan.

The discovery of cuneiform inscriptions on the stones and rocks of Armenia made the first breach in this conclusion. Their existence was known even before Botta and Layard had opened up Nineveh. In 1826 Schulz had been sent by the French Government at the instance of M. Mohl to copy the mysterious characters which had already excited the attention of Oriental writers. Schulz was unexpectedly successful in his quest. The number of inscriptions he discovered was far larger than had been imagined, and his copies of them, as we now know, were remarkably accurate. But the explorer himself never lived to return to Europe. He was murdered by a Kurdish chief, Nurallah Bey, in 1829, while engaged in the work of exploration; his papers, however, were eventually recovered, and the inscriptions he had copied were published in 1840 in the Journal of the Société Asiatique. One of them was a trilingual inscription of Xerxes, the Persian transcript of which was just beginning to be deciphered; the rest were still a closed book.