consisting mainly, if not altogether, of clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform characters. As the city also bore the name of Debir, or "Sanctuary," we may conclude that the tablets were stored in its chief temple, like the libraries of Assyria and Babylonia. When such relics of the past have been disinterred—as they will be if they are properly searched for—we shall know how the people of Canaan lived in the days of the Patriarchs, and how their Hebrew conquerors established themselves among them in the days when, as yet, there was no king in Israel.
[The information contained in this section is derived
almost exclusively from the writings of Dr A. H. Sayce,
who has taken a chief part in England in the decipherment
of the Tell-el-Amarna inscriptions. See "Proc. Soc.
Bib. Arch." "Records of the Past." New Series, vols, ii.,
iii., iv., and v.; "Victoria Institute Annual Address, 1889."
See additional facts in the Contemporary Review, Dec. 1890, and opinions in Naville's Bubastis. For later excavations at Tell-el-Amarna, by Mr Flinders Petrie, see the Academy, 9th April 1892. For a suggestion by Conder that the tablets are in the Phœnician or Amorite language and writing of that time, see Quarterly Statement, July 1891.]
6. Israel in Egypt.
We have seen how well the general political circumstances in Egypt and Palestine, in the centuries before the Exodus, supplement the Bible narrative, explaining on the one hand why the Israelites were oppressed, and showing on the other how Canaan was prepared for their easy conquest. But while the fact that Rameses II. was the Pharaoh for whom Israel built "treasure cities" is demonstrated beyond reasonable contradiction, it is remarkable that the inscriptions do not say anything about the Israelites. We must suppose, with Brugsch, that the captives were included in the general name of foreigners,
