Patriarchal Palestine Part 8

Isaac was not a wanderer like his father. Lahai-roi in the desert, "the valley of Gerar," Beer-sheba and Hebron, were the places round which his life revolved, and they were all close to one another. There is no trace of his presence in the north of Palestine, and when the prophet Amos (vii. 16) makes Isaac synonymous with the northern kingdom of Israel, there can be no geographical reference in his words. Isaac died eventually at Hebron, and was buried in the family tomb of Machpelah.

But long before this happened Jacob had fled from the well-deserved wrath of his brother to his uncle Laban at Harran. On his way he had slept on the rocky ridge of Bethel, and had beheld in vision the angels of G.o.d ascending and descending the steps of a staircase that led to heaven. The nature of the ground itself must have suggested the dream.

The limestone rock is fissured into steplike terraces, which seem formed of blocks of stone piled one upon the other, and rising upwards like a gigantic staircase towards the sky. On the hill that towers above the ruins of Beth-el, we may still fancy that we see before us the "ladder"

of Jacob.

But the vision was more than a mere dream. G.o.d appeared in it to the patriarch, and repeated to him the promise that had been made to his fathers. Through Jacob, the younger of the twins, the true line of Abraham was to be carried on. When he awoke in the morning the fugitive recognized the real character of his dream. He took, accordingly, the stone that had served him for a pillow, and setting it up as an altar, poured oil upon it, and so made it a Beth-el, or "House of G.o.d,"

Henceforward it was a consecrated altar, a holy memorial of the G.o.d whose divinity had been mysteriously imparted to it.

The Semitic world was full of such Beth-els, or consecrated stones. They are referred to in the literature of ancient Babylonia, and an English traveller, Mr. Doughty, has found them still existing near the Tema of the Old Testament in Northern Arabia. In Phoenicia we are told that they abounded. The solitary rock in the desert or on the mountain-side seemed to the primitive Semite the dwelling-place of Deity; it rose up awe-striking and impressive in its solitary grandeur and venerable antiquity; it was a shelter to him from the heat of the sun, and a protection from the perils of the night. When his wors.h.i.+p and adoration came in time to be transferred from the stone itself to the divinity it had begun to symbolize, it became an altar on which the libation of oil or wine might be poured out to the G.o.ds, and on the seals of Syria and the sculptured slabs of a.s.syria we accordingly find it transformed into a portable altar, and merged in the cone-like symbol of the G.o.ddess Asherah. The stone which had itself been a Beth-el wherein the Deity had his home, pa.s.sed by degrees into the altar of the G.o.d whose actual dwelling-place was in heaven.

The Canaanitish city near which Jacob had raised the monument of his dream bore the name of Luz. In Israelitish days, however, the name of the monument was transferred to that of the city, and Luz itself was called the Beth-el, or "House of G.o.d." The G.o.d wors.h.i.+pped there when the Israelites first entered Canaan appears to have been ent.i.tled On,--a name derived, perhaps, from that of the city of the Sun-G.o.d in Egypt.

Bethel was also Beth-On, "the temple of On," from whence the tribe of Benjamin afterwards took the name of Ben-Oni, "the Onite." Beth-On has survived into our own times, and the site of the old city is still known as Beitin.

It is not needful to follow the adventures of Jacob in Mesopotamia. His new home lay far away from the boundaries of Palestine, and though the kings of Aram-Naharaim made raids at times into the land of Canaan and caused their arms to be feared within the walls of Jerusalem, they never made any permanent conquests on the coasts of the Mediterranean. In the land of the Aramaeans Jacob is lost for awhile from the history of patriarchal Palestine.

When he again emerges, it is as a middle-aged man, rich in flocks and herds, who has won two wives as the reward of his labours, and is already the father of a family. He is on his way back to the country which had been promised to his seed and wherein he himself had been born. Laban, his father-in-law, robbed at once of his daughters and his household G.o.ds, is pursuing him, and has overtaken him on the spurs of Mount Gilead, almost within sight of his goal. There a covenant is made between the Aramaean and the Hebrew, and a cairn of stones is piled up to commemorate the fact. The cairn continued to bear a double name, the Aramaean name given to it by Laban, and the Canaanitish name of Galeed, "the heap of witnesses," by which it was called by Jacob. The double name was a sign of the two populations and languages which the cairn separated from one another. Northward were the Aramaeans and an Aramaic speech; southward the land of Canaan and the language which we term Hebrew.

The spot where the cairn was erected bore yet another t.i.tle. It was also called Mizpah, the "watch-tower," the outpost from which the dweller in Canaan could discern the approaching bands of an enemy from the north or east. It protected the road to the Jordan, and kept watch over the eastern plateau. Here in after times Jephthah gathered around him the patriots of Israel, and delivered his people from the yoke of the Ammonites.

Once more "Jacob went on his way," and from the "two-fold camp" of Mahanaim sent messengers to his brother Esau, who had already established himself among the mountains of Seir. Then came the mysterious struggle in the silent darkness of night with one whom the patriarch believed to have been his G.o.d Himself. When day dawned, the vision departed from him, but not until his name had been changed. "Thy name," it was declared to him, "shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel; for as a prince hast thou power with G.o.d and with men, and hast prevailed." And his thigh was shrunken, so that the children of Israel in days to come abstained from eating "of the sinew which shrank, which is upon the hollow of the thigh." The spot where the struggle took place, beside the waters of the Jabbok, was named Penu-el, "the face of G.o.d." There was more than one other Penu-el in the Semitic world, and at Carthage the G.o.ddess Tanith was ent.i.tled Peni-Baal, "the face of Baal."

The name of Israel, as we may learn from its equivalent, Jeshurun, was really derived from a root which signified "to be straight," or "upright." The Israelites were in truth "the people of uprightness." It is only by one of those plays upon words, of which the Oriental is still so fond, that the name can be brought into connection with the word _sar_, "a prince." But the name of Jacob was well known among the northern Semites. We gather from the inscriptions of Egypt that its full form was Jacob-el. Like Jeshurun by the side of Israel, or Jephthah by the side of Jiphthah-el (Josh. xix. 27), Jacob is but an abbreviated Jacob-el. One of the places in Palestine conquered by the Pharaoh Thothmes III., the names of which are recorded on the walls of his temple at Karnak, was Jacob-el--a reminiscence, doubtless, of the Hebrew patriarch. Professor Flinders Petrie has made us acquainted with Egyptian scarabs on which is inscribed in hieroglyphic characters the name of a king, Jacob-bar or Jacob-hal, who reigned in the valley of the Nile before Abraham entered it, and Mr. Pinches has lately discovered the name of Jacob-el among the persons mentioned in contracts of the time of the Babylonian sovereign Sin-mu-ballidh, who was a contemporary of Chedor-laomer. We thus have monumental evidence that the name of Jacob was well known in the Semitic world in the age of the Hebrew patriarchs.

Jacob and Esau met and were reconciled, and Jacob then journeyed onwards to Succoth, "the booths." The site of this village of "booths" is unknown, but it could not have been far from the banks of the Jordan and the road to Nablus. The neighbourhood of Shechem, called in Greek times Neapolis, the Nablus of to-day, was the next resting-place of the patriarch. If we are to follow the translation of the Authorised Version, it would have been at "Shalem, a city of Shechem," that his tents were pitched. But many eminent scholars believe that the Hebrew words should rather be rendered: "And Jacob came in peace to the city of Shechem," the reference being to his peaceable parting from his brother.

There is, however, a hamlet still called Salim, nearly three miles to the east of Nablus, and it may be therefore that it was really at a place termed Shalem that Jacob rested on his way. In this case the field bought from Hamor, "before the city of Shechem," cannot have been where, since the days of our Lord, "Jacob's well" has been pointed out (S. John iv. 5, 6). The well is situated considerably westward of Salim, midway, in fact, between that village and Nablus, and close to the village of 'Askar, with which the "Sychar" of S. John's Gospel has sometimes been identified. It has been cut through the solid rock to a depth of more than a hundred feet, and the groovings made by the ropes of the waterpots in far-off centuries are still visible at its mouth. But no water can be drawn from it now. The well is choked with the rubbish of a ruined church, built above it in the early days of Christianity, and of which all that remains is a broken arch. It has been dug at a spot where the road from Shechem to the Jordan branches off from that which runs towards the north, though Shechem itself is more than a mile distant. We should notice that S. John does not say that the well was actually in "the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph," only that it was "near to" the patriarch's field.

If Jacob came to Shechem in peace, the peace was of no long continuance.

Simeon and Levi, the sons of the patriarch, avenged the insult offered by the Shechemite prince to their sister Dinah, by treacherously falling upon the city and slaying "all the males." Jacob was forced to fly, leaving behind him the altar he had erected. He made for the Canaanitish city of Luz, the Beth-el of later days, where he had seen the great altar-stairs sloping upward to heaven. The idols that had been carried from Mesopotamia were buried "under the oak which was by Shechem," along with the ear-rings of the women. The oak was one of those sacred trees which abounded in the Semitic world, like another oak at Beth-el, beneath which the nurse of Rebekah was soon afterwards to be buried.

At Beth-el Jacob built another altar. But he could not rest there, and once more took his way to the south. On the road his wife Rachel died while giving birth to his youngest son, and her tomb beside the path to Beth-lehem was marked by a "pillar" which the writer of the Book of Genesis tells us remained to his own day. It indicated the boundary between the territories of Benjamin and Judah at Zelzah (1 Sam. x. 2).

At Beth-lehem Jacob lingered a long while. His flocks and herds were spread over the country, under the charge of his sons, browsing on the hills and watered at the springs, for which the "hill-country of Judah"

was famous. In their search for pasturage they wandered northward, we are told, "beyond the tower of the Flock," which guarded the Jebusite stronghold of Zion (Mic. iv. 8). Beth-lehem itself was more commonly known in that age by the name of Ephrath. Beth-lehem, "the temple of Lehem," must, in fact, have been the sacred name of the city derived from the wors.h.i.+p of its chief deity, and Mr. Tomkins is doubtless right in seeing in this deity the Babylonian Lakhmu, who with his consort Lakhama, was regarded as a primaeval G.o.d of the nascent world.

At Beth-lehem Jacob was but a few miles distant from Hebron, where Isaac still lived, and where at his death he was buried by his sons Jacob and Esau in the family tomb of Machpelah. It was the last time, seemingly, that the two brothers found themselves together. Esau, partly by marriage, partly by conquest, dispossessed the Horites of Mount Seir, and founded the kingdom of Edom, while the sons and flocks of Jacob scattered themselves from Hebron in the south of Canaan to Shechem in its centre. The two hallowed sanctuaries of the future kingdoms of Judah and Israel, where the first throne was set up in Israel and the monarchy of David was first established, thus became the boundaries of the herdsmen's domain. In both the Hebrew patriarch held ground that was rightfully his own. It was a sign that the house of Israel should hereafter occupy the land which the family of Israel thus roamed over with their flocks. The nomad was already pa.s.sing into the settler, with fields and burial-places of his own.

But before the transformation could be fully accomplished, a long season of growth and preparation was needful. Egypt, and not Canaan, was to be the land in which the Chosen People should be trained for their future work. Canaan itself was to pa.s.s under Egyptian domination, and to replace the influence of Babylonian culture by that of Egypt. It was a new world and a new civilization into which the descendants of Jacob were destined to emerge when finally they escaped from the fiery furnace of Egyptian bondage. The Egypt known to Jacob was an Egypt over which Asiatic princes ruled, and whose vizier was himself a Hebrew. It was the Egypt of the Hyksos conquerors, whose capital was Zoan, on the frontiers of Asia, and whose people were the slaves of an Asiatic stranger. The Egypt quitted by his descendants was one which had subjected Asia to itself, and had carried the spoils of Syria to its splendid capital in the far south. The Asiatic wave had been rolled back from the banks of the Nile, and Egyptian conquest and culture had overflooded Asia as far as the Euphrates.

But it was not Egypt alone which had undergone a change. The Canaan of Abraham and Jacob looked to Babylonia for its civilization, its literature, and its laws. Its princes recognized at times the supremacy of the Babylonian sovereigns, and the deities of Babylonia were wors.h.i.+pped in its midst. The Canaan of Moses had long been a province of the Egyptian Empire; Egyptian rule had been subst.i.tuted for that of Babylon, and the manners and customs of Egypt had penetrated deeply into the minds of its inhabitants. The Hitt.i.te invasion from the north had blocked the high-road to Babylonia, and diverted the trade of Palestine towards the west and the south. While Abraham, the native of Ur, and the emigrant from Harran, had found himself in Canaan, and even at Zoan, still within the sphere of the influences among which he had grown up, the fugitives from Egypt entered on the invasion of a country which had but just been delivered from the yoke of the Pharaohs. It was an Egyptian Canaan that the Israelites were called upon to subdue, and it was fitting therefore that they should have been made ready for the task by their long sojourn in the land of Goshen.

How that sojourn came about, it is not for us to recount. The story of Joseph is too familiar to be repeated, though we are but just beginning to learn how true it is, in all its details, to the facts which Egyptian research is bringing more and more fully to light. We see the Midianite and Ishmaelite caravan pa.s.sing Dothan--still known by its ancient name--with their bales of spicery from Gilead for the dwellers in the Delta, and carrying away with them the young Hebrew slave. We watch his rise in the house of his Egyptian master, his wrongful imprisonment and sudden exaltation when he sits by the side of Pharaoh and governs Egypt in the name of the king. We read the pathetic story of the old father sending his sons to buy corn from the royal granaries or _larits_ of Egypt, and withholding to the last his youngest and dearest one; of the Beduin shepherds bowing all unconsciously before the brother whom they had sold into slavery, and who now holds in his hands the power of life and death; of Joseph's disclosure of himself to the conscious-stricken suppliants; of Jacob's cry when convinced at last that "the governor over all the land of Egypt" was his long-mourned son. "It is enough; Joseph my son is yet alive: I will go and see him before I die."

Jacob and his family travelled in wagons along the high-road which connected the south of Palestine with the Delta. It led past Beer-sheba and El-Arish to the Shur, or line of fortifications which protected the eastern frontier of Egypt. The modern caravan road follows its course most of the way. It was thus distinct from "the way of the Philistines,"

which led along the coast of the Mediterranean, on the northern edge of the Sirbonian Lake. In Egypt the Israelitish emigrants settled not far from the Hyksos capital in the land of Goshen, which the excavations of Dr. Naville have shown to be the Wadi Tumilat of to-day. Here they multiplied and grew wealthy, until the evil days came when the Egyptians rose up against Semitic influence and control, and Ramses II.

transformed the free-born Beduin into public serfs.

But the age of Ramses II. was still far distant when Jacob died full of years, and his mummy was carried to the burial-place of his fathers "in the land of Canaan." Local tradition connected the name of Abel-mizraim, "the meadow of Egypt," on the eastern side of the Jordan, with the long funeral procession which wended its way from Zoan to Hebron. We cannot believe, however, that the mourners would have so far gone out of their road, even if the etymology a.s.signed by tradition to the name could be supported. The tradition bears witness to the fact of the procession, but to nothing more.

With the funeral of Jacob a veil falls upon the Biblical history of Canaan, until the days when the spies were sent out to search the land.

Joseph was buried in Egypt, not at Hebron, though he had made the Israelites swear before his death that his mummy should be eventually taken to Palestine. The road to Hebron, it is clear, was no longer open, and the power of the Hyksos princes must have been fast waning. The war of independence had broken out, and the native kings of Upper Egypt were driving the foreigner back into Asia. The rulers of Zoan had no longer troops to spare for a funeral procession through the eastern desert.

The Chronicler, however, has preserved a notice which seems to show that a connection was still kept up between Southern Canaan and the Hebrew settlers in Goshen, even after Jacob's death, perhaps while he was yet living. We are told that certain of the sons of Ephraim were slain by the men of Gath, whose cattle they had attempted to steal, and that their father, after mourning many days, comforted himself with the birth of other sons (1 Chron. vii. 21-26). The notice, moreover, does not stand alone. Thothmes III., the great conqueror of the eighteenth Egyptian dynasty, states that two of the places captured by him in Palestine were Jacob-el and Joseph-el. It is tempting to see in the two names reminiscences of the Hebrew patriarch and his son. If so, the name of Joseph would have been impressed upon a locality in Canaan more than two centuries before the Exodus. The geographical lists of Thothmes III.

and the fragments of early history preserved by the Chronicler would thus support and complete one another. The Egyptian cavalry who accompanied the mummy of Jacob to its resting-place at Machpelah, would not be the only evidence of the authority claimed by Joseph and his master in the land of Canaan; Joseph himself would have left his name there, and his grand-children would have fought against "the men of Gath."

But these are speculations which may, or may not, be confirmed by archaeological discovery. For the Book of Genesis Canaan disappears from sight with the death of Jacob. Henceforward it is upon Egypt and the nomad settlers in Goshen that the attention of the Pentateuch is fixed, until the time comes when the age of the patriarchs is superseded by that of the legislator, and Moses, the adopted son of the Egyptian princess, leads his people back to Canaan. Joseph had been carried by Midianitish hands out of Palestine into Egypt, there to become the representative of the Pharaoh, and son-in-law of the high-priest of Heliopolis; for Moses, the adopted grandson of the Pharaoh, "learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians," it was reserved, after years of trial and preparation in Midian, to bring the descendants of Jacob out of their Egyptian prison-house to the borders of the Promised Land.

CHAPTER V

EGYPTIAN TRAVELLERS IN CANAAN

Palestine has been a land of pilgrims and tourists from the very beginning of its history. It was the goal of the migration of Abraham and his family, and it was equally the object of the oldest book of travels with which we are acquainted. Allusion has already been made more than once to the Egyptian papyrus, usually known as _The Travels of a Mohar_, and in which a satirical account is given of a tour in Palestine and Syria. The writer was a professor, apparently of literature, in the court of Ramses II., and he published a series of letters to his friend, Nekht-sotep, which were long admired as models of style. Nekht-sotep was one of the secretaries attached to the military staff, and among the letters is a sort of parody of an account given by Nekht-sotep of his adventures in Canaan, which was intended partly to show how an account of the kind ought to have been written by an accomplished penman, partly to prove the superiority of the scribe's life to that of the soldier, partly also, it may be, for the sake of teasing the writer's correspondent. Nekht-sotep had evidently a.s.sumed airs of superiority on the strength of his foreign travels, and his stay-at-home friend undertook to demonstrate that he had himself enjoyed the more comfortable life of the two. Nekht-sotep is playfully dubbed with the foreign t.i.tle of Mohar--or more correctly Muhir--a word borrowed from a.s.syrian, where it primarily signified a military commander and then the governor of a province.

Long before the days of the nineteenth dynasty, however, there had been Egyptian travellers in Palestine, or at least in the adjoining countries. One of the Egyptian books which have come down to us contains the story of a certain Sinuhit who had to fly from Egypt in consequence of some political troubles in which he was involved after the death of Amon-m-hat I. of the twelfth dynasty. Crossing the Nile near Kher-ahu, the Old Cairo of to-day, he gained the eastern bank of the river and made his way to the line of forts which protected Egypt from its Asiatic enemies. Here he crouched among the desert bushes till night-fall, lest "the watchmen of the tower" should see him, and then pursued his journey under the cover of darkness. At daybreak he reached the land of Peten and the wadi of Qem-uer on the line of the modern Suez Ca.n.a.l. There thirst seized upon him; his throat rattled, and he said to himself--"This is the taste of death." A Bedawi, however, perceived him and had compa.s.sion on the fugitive: he gave him water and boiled milk, and Sinuhit for a while joined the nomad tribe. Then he pa.s.sed on to the country of Qedem, the Kadmonites of the Old Testament (Gen. xv. 19; Judges vi. 3), whence came the wise men of the East (1 Kings iv. 30).

After spending a year and a half there, 'Ammu-ans.h.i.+, the prince of the Upper land of Tenu, asked the Egyptian stranger to come to him, telling him that he would hear the language of Egypt. He added that he had already heard about Sinuhit from "the Egyptians who were in the country." It is clear from this that there had been intercourse for some time between Egypt and "the Upper Tenu."

It is probable that Dr. W. Max Muller is right in seeing in Tenu an abbreviated form of Lutennu (or Rutenu), the name by which Syria was known to the Egyptians. There was an Upper Lutennu and a Lower Lutennu, the Upper Lutennu corresponding with Palestine and the adjoining country, and thus including the Edomite district of which 'Ammu-ans.h.i.+ or Ammi-ans.h.i.+ was king. In the name of 'Ammu-ans.h.i.+, it may be observed, we have the name of the deity who appears as Ammi or Ammon in the kingdom of the Ammonites, and perhaps forms the second element in the name of Balaam. The same divine name enters into the composition of those of early kings of Ma'in in Southern Arabia, as well as of Babylonia in the far East. (See above, p. 64.)

'Ammu-ans.h.i.+ married Sinuhit to his eldest daughter, and bestowed upon him the government of a district called Aia which lay on the frontier of a neighbouring country. Aia is described as rich in vines, figs, and olives, in wheat and barley, in milk and cattle. "Its wine was more plentiful than water," and Sinuhit had "daily rations of bread and wine, cooked meat and roast fowl," as well as abundance of game. He lived there for many years. The children born to him by his Asiatic wife grew up and became heads of tribes. "I gave water to the thirsty," he says; "I set on his journey the traveller who had been hindered from pa.s.sing by; I chastised the brigand. I commanded the Beduin who departed afar to strike and repel the princes of foreign lands, and they marched (under me), for the prince of Tenu allowed that I should be during long years the general of his soldiers."

Sinuhit, in fact, had given proof of his personal prowess at an early period in his career. The champion of Tenu had come to him in his tent and challenged him to single combat. The Egyptian was armed with bow, arrows, and dagger; his adversary with battle-axe, javelins, and buckler. The contest was short, and ended in the decisive victory of Sinuhit, who wounded his rival and despoiled him of his goods.

A time came, however, when Sinuhit grew old, and began to long to see once more the land of his fathers before he died. Accordingly he sent a pet.i.tion to the Pharaoh praying him to forgive the offences of his youth and allow him to return again to Egypt. The pet.i.tion was granted, and a letter was despatched to the refugee, permitting him to return. Sinuhit accordingly quitted the land where he had lived so long. First of all he held a festival, and handed over his property to his children, making his eldest son the chief of the tribe. Then he travelled southward to Egypt, and was graciously received at court. The coa.r.s.e garments of the Beduin were exchanged for fine linen; his body was bathed with water and scented essences; he lay once more on a couch and enjoyed the luxurious cookery of the Egyptians. A house and pyramid were built for him; a garden was laid out for him with a lake and a kiosk, and a golden statue with a robe of electrum was set up in it. Sinuhit ceased to be an Asiatic "barbarian," and became once more a civilized Egyptian.

The travels of Sinuhit were involuntary, but a time came when a tour in Palestine was almost as much the fas.h.i.+on as it is to-day. The conquests of Thothmes III. had made Syria an Egyptian province, and had introduced Syrians into the Egyptian bureaucracy. Good roads were made throughout the newly-acquired territory, furnished with post-houses where food and lodging could be procured, and communication between Egypt and Canaan thus became easy and frequent. The fall of the eighteenth dynasty caused only a momentary break in the intercourse between the two countries; with the establishment of the nineteenth dynasty it was again resumed.

Messengers pa.s.sed backward and forward between Syria and the court of the Pharaoh; Asiatics once more thronged into the valley of the Nile, and the Egyptian civil servant and traveller followed in the wake of the victorious armies of Seti and Ramses. _The Travels of a Mohar_ is the result of this renewed acquaintance with the cities and roads of Palestine.

The writer is anxious to display his knowledge of Syrian geography.

Though he had not himself ventured to brave the discomforts of foreign travel, he wished to show that he knew as much about Canaan as those who had actually been there. A tour there was after all not much to boast of; it had become so common that the geography of Canaan was as well known as that of Egypt itself, and the stay-at-home scribe had consequently no difficulty in compiling a guide-book to it.

The following is the translation given by Dr. Brugsch of the papyrus, with such alterations as have been necessitated by further study and research. "I will portray for thee the likeness of a Mohar, I will let thee know what he does. Hast thou not gone to the land of the Hitt.i.tes, and hast thou not seen the land of Aupa? Dost thou not know what Khaduma is like; the land of Igad'i also how it is formed? The Zar (or Plain) of king Sesetsu (Sesostris)--on which side of it lies the town of Aleppo, and how is its ford? Hast thou not taken thy road to Kadesh (on the Orontes) and Tubikhi? Hast thou not gone to the Shasu (Beduin) with numerous mercenaries, and hast thou not trodden the way to the Maghar[at] (the caves of the Magoras near Beyrout) where the heaven is dark in the daytime? The place is planted with maple-trees, oaks, and acacias, which reach up to heaven, full of beasts, bears (?), and lions, and surrounded by Shasu in all directions. Hast thou not ascended the mountain of Shaua, and hast thou not trodden it? There thy hands hold fast to the [rein] of thy chariot; a jerk has shaken thy horses in drawing it. I pray thee, let us go to the city of Beeroth (Beyrout).

Hast thou not hastened to its ascent after pa.s.sing over the ford in front of it?

"Do thou explain this relish for [the life of] a Mohar! Thy chariot lies there [before] thee; thy [feet] have fallen lame; thou treadest the backward path at eventide. All thy limbs are ground small. Thy [bones]

are broken to pieces, and thou dost fall asleep. Thou awakest: it is the time of gloomy night, and thou art alone. Has not a thief come to rob thee? Some grooms have entered the stable; the horse kicks out; the thief has made off in the night, thy clothes are stolen. Thy groom wakes up in the night; he sees what has happened to him; he takes what is left, he goes off to bad company, he joins the Beduin. He transforms himself into an Asiatic. The police (?) come, they [feel about] for the robber; he is discovered, and is immovable from terror. Thou wakest, thou findest no trace of them, for they have carried off thy property.

"Become [again] a Mohar who is fully accoutred. Let thy ear be filled with that which I relate to thee besides.

"The town 'Hidden'--such is the meaning of its name Gebal--what is its condition? Its G.o.ddess [we will speak of] at another time. Hast thou not visited it? Be good enough to look out for Beyrout, Sidon, and Sarepta.

Where are the fords of the land of Nazana? The country of Authu (Usu), what is its condition? They are situated above another city in the sea, Tyre the port is its name. Drinking-water is brought to it in boats. It is richer in fishes than in sand. I will tell thee of something else. It is dangerous to enter Zair'aun. Thou wilt say it is burning with a very painful sting (?). Come, Mohar. Go forward on the way to the land of Pa-'Aina. Where is the road to Achshaph (Ekdippa)? Towards which town?

Pray look at the mountain of User. How is its crest? Where is the mountain of Sakama (Shechem)? Who can surmount it? Mohar, whither must you take a journey to the land of Hazor? How is its ford? Show me how one goes to Hamath, Dagara, [and] Dagar-el, to the place where all Mohars meet? Be good enough to spy out its road; cast a look on Ya....

When one goes to the land of Adamim, to what is one opposite? Do not draw back, but instruct us. Guide us, that we may know, O leader!

"I will name to thee other cities besides these. Hast thou not gone to the land of Takhis, to Kafir-Marona, Tamnah, Kadesh, Dapul, Azai, Harnammata, and hast thou not seen Kirjath-Anab, near Beth-Sopher? and dost thou not know Adullam [and] Zidiputa? Or dost thou not know any better the name of Khalza in the land of Aupa, [like] a bull upon its frontiers? Here is the place where all the mighty warriors are seen. Be good enough to look and see the chapel of the land of Qina, and tell me about Rehob. Describe Beth-sha-el (Beth-el) along with Tarqa-el. The ford of the land of Jordan, how is it crossed? Teach me to know the pa.s.sage that leads to the land of Megiddo, which lies in front of it.

Verily thou art a Mohar, well skilled in the work of the strong hand.