[83] This is independent of the question whether we regard the name Eber as that of an ancestor, or merely of men from beyond the Euphrates.
Thus the monuments confirm the Jewish record, and the confusion which some ethnologists have introduced into the matter arises from their applying in an arbitrary manner the special tests of physical and philological characteristics, and neglecting to distinguish the primary migrations of men from subsequent intrusions.
Another singular point of agreement is that, just as in Egypt we find men civilised from the first, so we find elsewhere. In Egypt writing and literature date from before the time of Abraham. In like manner we have no monumental evidence of any time when the Accadian people of Babylonia were destitute of writing and science, and we now find that there were learned scribes in all the cities of Canaan, and that the Phœnicians and Southern Arabians knew their alphabet ages before Moses, while even the Greeks seem to have known alphabetic writing long before the Mosaic age. [84] These men, in short, were descendants of the survivors of the Noachian Deluge, and therefore civilised from the first; and though we have no certain evidence of letters before the Flood, except the statement of the author of the Babylonian deluge tablets, that Noah hid written archives at Sippara before going into the ark, yet it is quite certain that men who could build Noah's ship are not unworthy ancestors of the Phœnician seamen, who probably launched their barks on the Mediterranean before the death of Noah himself. Thus, whatever value we may attach to the record in Genesis, we cannot refuse to admit that it is thoroughly consistent with itself and with the testimony of the oldest monuments of Asia and Africa, as it is also with the evidence of the geological changes of the pleistocene and early modern epoch.
[84] Petrie, Illahun, Kahun and Garob, 1891.
In like manner the Egyptian inscriptions of the conquests of Thothmes III. give us a pre-Mosaic record of Palestinian geography corresponding with that of the Hebrew conquest, and the pictures of sieges coincide with the excavations of Petrie at Lachish in restoring those Canaanite towns, 'walled up to heaven,' which excited the fear of the Israelites. Neither can we scoff at the illiteracy of men who were carrying on diplomatic correspondence in written despatches before Genesis itself was compiled. Nor can we doubt the military prowess of these people, their chariot forces, their sculptured idols and images, their wealth of gold and silver, their agricultural and artistic skill. All these are amply proved by the monuments of the Egyptians and the Hittites. [85]
[85] Bliss, in the Quarterly Statement of the Palestine Exploration Fund for April 1892, figures many interesting objects, found in the lower or Amorite stratum of the mound of Tell-el-Hesy (Lachish). We have here a bronze battle-axe and heads of javelins that may have been used against the soldiers of Joshua, and axes and pottery of equally early date, along with multitudes of flint flakes, arrow heads, &c., used at this early time. It is to be hoped that the further exploration of this site may yield yet more interesting results.
Palestine thus presents a prehistoric past parallel with the earlier years of Egypt. It has, however, a still earlier period, for in Palestine, as stated in a previous chapter, we have evidence of the existence of man long before the dispersion of the sons of Noah. To appreciate this evidence, we must go back, as in the case of Egypt, to the pre-human period. All along the coast of Palestine, from Jaffa to the northern limit of old Phœnicia, the geological traveller sees evidence of a recent submergence, in the occurrence of sandstone, gravel, and limestone with shells and other marine remains of species still living in the Mediterranean. These are the relics of that pleistocene submergence already referred to, in which the Nile valley was an arm of the sea and Africa was an island. No evidence has been found of the residence of man in Palestine in this period, when, as the sea washed the very bases of the hills, and the plains were under water, it was certainly not very well suited to his abode. The climate was also probably more severe than at present, and the glaciers of Lebanon must have extended nearly to the sea. This was the time of the so-called glacial period in Western Europe.
This, however, was succeeded by that post-glacial period in which, as already explained, the area of the Mediterranean was much smaller than at present, and the land encroached far upon the bed of the sea. This, the second continental period, is that in which man makes his first undoubted appearance in Europe, and we have evidence of the same kind in Syria, to which I have already directed attention in the description of the caverns of the Lebanon, in [Chapter IV].
That the occupancy of these caves is very ancient is proved by the fact that the old Egyptian conquerors, who cut a road for themselves over these precipices before the Exodus, seem to have found them in the same state as at present, while farther south ancient Syrian tombs are excavated in similar bone breccias. But there is better evidence than this. The bones and teeth in these caves belong not to the animals which have inhabited the Lebanon in historic times, but to creatures like the hairy rhinoceros and the bison, now extinct, which could not have lived in this region since the comparatively modern period in which the Mediterranean resumed its dominion over that great plain between Phœnicia and Cyprus. This we know had been submerged long before the first migrations of the Hamites into Phœnicia, even before the entrance of those comparatively rude tribes which seem to have inhabited the country before the Phœnician colonisation. [86] Unfortunately no burials of these early men have yet been found, and perhaps the Lebanon caves were only their summer sojourns on hunting expeditions. They were, however, probably of the same stock with the races (the Cro-magnon and Canstadt) of the so-called mammoth age in Western Europe, who have left similar remains. Thus we can carry man in the Lebanon back to that absolutely prehistoric age which preceded the Noachian Deluge and the dispersion of the Noachidæ. [87]
[86] Some of these tribes also lived in caves, as that of Ant Elias, but the animals they consumed are those now living in the Lebanon.