The Meeting-Place of Geology and History

by Sir John William Dawson

It follows from all this that the monumental history of Egypt, extending to about 3000 years B.C., gives us the whole story of the country, unless some chance memorial of a population belonging to the post-glacial age should in future be found. There are, however, things in Egypt which illustrate prehistoric times in other countries, and some of these have lately thrown a new and strange light on the early history of Palestine, and especially on the Bible history.

One of the kings of the eighteenth dynasty, whose historical position was probably between the time of Joseph and that of Moses, Amunoph III., is believed to have married an Asiatic wife, and under her influence, he and his successor, Amunoph IV., or Khu en-Aten, seem to have swerved from the old polytheism of Egypt, and introduced a new worship, that of Aten, a god visibly represented by the disk of the sun, and, therefore, in some sense identical with Ra, the chief god of Egypt; but there was something in this new worship offensive to the priests of Ra. Perhaps it was regarded as a Semitic or Asiatic innovation, or led to the introduction of unpopular Semitic priests and officers. Amunoph IV. consequently abandoned the royal residence at Thebes, and established a new capital at a place now called Tel-el-Amarna, almost at the boundary of Upper and Lower Egypt, and from this place he ruled not only Egypt but a vast region in Western Asia, which had been subjected to the Egyptian government in the reign of the third Amunoph. From these subject districts, extending from the frontiers of Egypt to Asia Minor on the north, and to the Euphrates on the east, came great numbers of despatches to the Pharaoh, and these were written not on papyrus or skin, but on tablets of clay hardened by baking, and the writing was not that of Egypt, but the arrow-head script of Chaldea, which seems at this time to have been the current writing throughout Western Asia. [72]

[72] It is possible, however, that it may really have been a language of diplomacy merely, and may have been used by the Semitic agents of Amunoph as a cipher to communicate with the Egyptian court, and which could not be read by messengers or enemies acquainted only with Hittite or Egyptian hieroglyphics or with the Phœnician characters. For a similar case see 2 Kings xviii. 26.

The scribes of the Egyptian king read these documents, answered them as directed by their master, docketed them, and laid them up for reference; and, strange to say, a few years ago, Arabs, digging in the old mounds, brought them to light, and we have before us, translated into English, a great number of letters, written from cities of Palestine and its vicinity about a hundred years before the Exodus, and giving us word-pictures of the politics and conflicts of the Canaanites and Hittites and other peoples, long before Joshua came in contact with them. Among other things in this correspondence, we find remarkable confirmation of the sacred and political influence of Jerusalem, which the Bible presents to us in the widely separated stories of Melchisedec, king of Salem, in the time of Abraham, and of the suzerainty of Adonizedec, king of Jerusalem, in the time of Joshua.

At the time in question, Jerusalem was ruled by a king or chief, subject to Egypt, but, as in the times of Abraham and Joshua, exercising some headship over neighbouring cities. He complains of certain hostile peoples called chabiri, a name supposed by Zimmel [73] to be equivalent to Ibrim or Hebrews, which to some may seem strange, as the Israelites were, according to the generally received chronology, at this time in Egypt. We must bear in mind, however, that according to the Bible the Israelites were not the only 'children of Eber.' The Edomites, Moabites, Ammonites, Ishmaelites, and Midianites were equally entitled to this name; and we know, from the second chapter of Deuteronomy, that these were warlike and intrusive peoples, who had, before the Exodus, dispossessed several native tribes, so that we do not wonder at the fact that a king of Jerusalem might have been suffering from their attacks long before the Exodus. [74] It may be noted incidentally here, that this wide application of the term Hebrew accords with the use of the name Aperiu for Semitic peoples other than Israelites in Egypt.

[731] Inaugural Lecture, Halle, 1891. Possibly these people were merely 'confederate' Hittites and Amorites (Sayce, Records cf the Past).

[74] I cannot agree with Conder that the Exodus took place as early as the time of Amunoph III. The evidence we have from Egyptian sources plainly indicates one of the immediate successors of Rameses II. as the Pharaoh of the Exodus.

We have here also a note on an obscure passage in the life of Moses, namely, his apparent want of acquaintance with the name Jehovah until revealed to him at Horeb. [75] Now, as reported in Exodus, Moses in that interview addressed God as 'Adon,' which is supposed to be the Hebrew equivalent of 'Aten,' the meaning being Lord. This is a curious incidental agreement with the prevalence of the Aten worship in Egypt, and shows that this name may have been currently used by the Israelites, whose God Moses himself calls Adon, till commanded to use the name Jehovah.

[75] Exodus iii. 16 et seqq. This passage has been often misunderstood, but it certainly shows that the name Jehovah had become nearly obsolete among the Hebrews in Egypt, and that the name usually given to God was Adon or Aten.