Why should not a body of Hittites have settled in Southern Palestine, and there have been, as it were, interlocked with the older Amorite inhabitants, as they were according to the testimony of the Egyptian inscriptions at Kadesh on the Lake of Homs? Indeed, there is indirect evidence that such was really the case.
Thothmes III., who conquered Syria for the eighteenth Egyptian dynasty, tells us that he received tribute from the king of ‘the greater Hittite land.’ There was then a lesser Hittite land; and as the ‘greater Hittite land’ was in the north, it is reasonable to look for the lesser land in the south. Half a century later, at a time when the Tel el-Amarna correspondence was being carried on, the Hittites were actively interfering in the internal politics of Canaan; and in one of the bas-reliefs of Ramses II. at Karnak the vanquished population of Ashkelon—in the near neighbourhood of Hebron—is represented with the peculiar Hittite type of face.[[66]] At a still earlier date, when the Assyrians first became acquainted with Western Asia, the dominant people there were the Hittites. In the Assyrian inscriptions, accordingly, the whole of Syria, including Palestine, came to be known as ‘the land of the Hittites.’ Shalmaneser II. even speaks of Ahab of Israel and Baasha of Ammon as ‘Hittite’ kings.[[67]] ‘The land of the Hittites’ in the Assyrian texts thus corresponds with the ‘land of the Amorites’ in the texts of Babylonia. Just as Canaan was ‘the land of the Amorites’ to the Babylonian of the age of Abraham, so too it was ‘the land of the Hittites’ to the Assyrian of the age of Moses. Before Assyria had become acquainted with the shores of the Mediterranean, the Hittites had taken the place of the Amorites and become the leading power in the West.
There is, therefore, nothing antecedently improbable in the existence in Southern Palestine of Hittites of the genuine northern stock. But the name may also be due to the Assyrian use of it at the time when the narrative in the book of Genesis was written. The use of the term ‘Amorite’ in several passages of the Pentateuch is certainly of Babylonian origin, and takes us back to the age when all the natives of Palestine were alike included in it; it may be that the ‘Hittites’ of Hebron and Jerusalem owe their title to a similar adoption of a foreign term. If so, the Amorites and Hittites were equally one people; but whereas the name of ‘Amorite’ comes from Babylonia and indicates an earlier date for the sources of the narrative in which it occurs, the name of ‘Hittite’ points to Assyria and the Assyrian epoch of Asiatic history.
Against this is the Babylonian colouring of the story of Abraham’s dealings with the children of Heth. During the last few years thousands of contract-tablets have been discovered in Babylonia which belong to the age of Abraham or to a still earlier period. And these tablets show that in the account of the purchase of the field of Machpelah we have a faithful picture of such transactions as they were conducted at the time in the cities of Babylonia. It reads, in fact, like one of the cuneiform documents which have been unearthed from Babylonian soil. It is conformed to the law and procedure of Babylonia as they were in the patriarchal age. At a later date the law and procedure were altered, and a narrative in which they are embodied must therefore go back to a pre-Mosaic antiquity. It must belong to the Babylonian and not to the Assyrian epoch.
That the law and custom of Babylonia should have prevailed in Canaan is no longer surprising. The same contract-tablets which have revealed to us the commercial and social life of primitive Chaldæa have also shown us that colonies of ‘Amorite’ or Canaanitish merchants were settled in Babylonia, where they enjoyed numerous rights and privileges, and could acquire land and other property. There were special districts called ‘Amorite’ allotted to them, one of which was just outside the walls of the city of Sippara. They had judges of their own, and where disputes arose between themselves and the native Babylonians the case was tried before both the ‘Amorite’ and the native courts. These foreign settlers could act as witnesses in trials that concerned only Babylonians, and could even rise to high offices of state. It must be remembered, however, that the Babylonian kings claimed to be kings also of ‘the land of the Amorites,’ and that consequently the natives of Canaan were as much subjects of the rulers of Chaldæa as the Babylonians themselves.
Through the Canaanitish colonies in Babylonia a knowledge of Babylonian law was necessarily communicated to the commercial world of the West. Moreover, Babylonian rule brought with it Babylonian culture and law as well. The ‘Amorites’ when the Babylonians first met with them were doubtless in a semi-barbarous condition, and their subsequent culture, as we now know, was wholly Babylonian. A very important part of this culture, at all events in the eyes of the trading world, was the law of Babylonia, more especially in its relation to contracts. That the purchase of the field of Machpelah should have been conducted with all the formalities to which Abraham had been accustomed in his Chaldæan home, is consequently what archæological discovery has informed us ought to have been the case.
A simple form of contract for the sale and purchase of landed property in Babylonia is to be found in one that was drawn up in the reign of Eri-Aku or Arioch. It is written in Sumerian, the old legal language of Chaldæa, as Latin was the legal language of Europe in the Middle Ages, and runs as follows:—‘One and five-sixths sar[[68]] of a terrace with a house upon it, bounded on three sides by the house of Abil-Sin, and on the fourth side by the street, has been purchased by Sin-uzilli the son of Tsili-Istar from Sin-illatsu the son of Nannar-arabit: 2-½ shekels of silver he has weighed as its full price. In days to come Sin-illatsu shall never make any claim in regard to the house or dispute the title. The (contracting parties) have sworn by the names of Sin, Samas, and king Eri-Aku. Witnessed by Abu-ilisu the son of Tsili-Istar, Abil-Sin the son of Uruki-bansum, Nur-Amurri the son of Abi-idinnam, Ibku-Urra, son of Nabi-ilisu, and Sin-semê his brother. The seals of the witnesses (are attached).’[[69]]
Still more insight into the character and procedure of Babylonian commercial law is given by the record of a case of disputed property which came before the judges in the reign of Khammu-rabi or Amraphel. The following is a translation of it:—‘Concerning the garden of Sin-magir which Naid-Amurri bought for silver, but to which Ilu-bani laid claim on the ground that he had bred horses there. They went before the judges, and the judges took them to the gate of the goddess Nin-Martu (the mistress of the land of the Amorites), and to the judges of the gate of Nin-Martu Ilu-bani thus declared in the gate of Nin-Martu: I am indeed the son of Sin-magir; he adopted me as his son; the sealed documents (recording the fact) he never destroyed. Thus he declared, and under (king) Eri-Aku they adjudged the garden and house to Ilu-bani. Then came Sin-mubalidh and claimed the garden of Ilu-bani; so they went before the judges, and the judges (said): To us and the elders they have been taken, and must stand in the gate of the gods Merodach, Sussa, Sin, Khusa, and Nin-Martu the daughter of Merodach ... and the elders who have already appeared in the case of Naid-Amurri have heard Ilu-bani declare in the gate of Nin-Martu that “I am indeed the son (of Sin-magir)”; accordingly, they adjudged the garden and house to Ilu-bani. Sin-mubalidh cannot come again and make a claim. Oaths have been sworn by the names of Sin, Samas, Merodach, and king Khammu-rabi. Witnessed by Sin-imguranni the noble, Elilka-Sin, Abil-irzitim, Ubarrum, Zanbil-arad-Sin, Akhiya, Bel-dugul (?), Samas-bani the son of Abid-rakhas, Zanik-pisu, Izkur-Ea the major-domo, and Bau-ila. The seals of the witnesses (are attached). The 4th day of the month Tammuz, the year when Khammu-rabi the king offered prayers to Tasmit.’[[70]]
It is needless to quote other documents of a similar nature, unless it be to add that when a field or garden is sold, the palms and other trees planted in it are carefully specified. So they were also in the case of the field of Machpelah. Here, too, the transaction took place before the ‘elders’ of the city, at ‘the gate’ through which the people entered, and it was duly witnessed by ‘the children of Heth.’[[71]] The fact that ‘a stranger and a sojourner’ could thus acquire landed property and hand it down to his descendants was in strict accordance with Babylonian law. As the Canaanite in Babylonia could buy land and leave it to his children, so too the Babylonian in Canaan could do the same. Even the technical words used in recording the deed of sale are of Babylonian origin. The shekel is the Babylonian siqlu, and the Babylonian was the first who spoke of ‘weighing silver’ in the sense of ‘paying money.’[[72]] The statement that the shekels were ‘current with the merchant’ takes us back to those Babylonian ‘merchants’ who played so great a part in the early Babylonian world. It was for them that Dungi, king of Ur, long before the birth of Abraham, had fixed the monetary standard which remained in use down to the later days of the Chaldæan monarchy. He had determined by law the weight and value of the maneh, of which the sixtieth part was a shekel, and only those manehs and shekels which conformed to it could be accepted by the Babylonian trader. The words of Genesis are a curious indication of the period of society to which they must belong.[[73]]
There was evolution in Babylonian law as in the law of all other countries; and though the early contracts remained a model for those of a later epoch, their style and form underwent change. The Assyrian and later Babylonian contracts resemble them, it is true, in their main outlines; but they have become more complicated, and the older phraseology is altered in many respects. The ‘elders’ no longer appear as witnesses; it is no longer needful to try cases of disputed title at the various gates of the city; and it is questionable whether foreigners could claim the same rights in regard to possessions in land that they did in the days of Amraphel and Arioch. The sale of the field of Machpelah belongs essentially to the early Babylonian and not to the Assyrian period.