The beginning of the story has been in the British Museum many years. It is a fragment of a copy of the myth which was made for the library of Nineveh some eight centuries after the rest of the story, which has now been disinterred on the banks of the Nile, had been buried under the ruins of Khu-n-Aten"s city. I copied it nearly twenty years ago, but had to wait for the discovery of the tablets of Tel el-Amarna before ascertaining its true meaning and significance. Nineveh and Tel el-Amarna had to unite in the restoration of the old Babylonian myth.
Canaan was the country in which the two streams of Babylonian and Egyptian culture met together, and we now know that Canaan was the centre of that literary activity which the Tel el-Amarna tablets have revealed to us.
Canaan, in the age of the eighteenth dynasty, was emphatically the land of scribes and letter-writers. If libraries existed anywhere in Western Asia, they would surely have done so in the cities of Canaan.
One of these cities, Kirjath-Sepher, or "Book-town," is mentioned in the Old Testament. It was also called Kirjath-Sannah, or "City of Instruction," doubtless from the school which was attached to its library.
The site of it is unfortunately lost; should it ever be recovered, we may expect to find beneath it literary treasures similar to those which the mounds of a.s.syria and Babylonia have yielded. Perhaps some day the papyri of Egypt will tell us where exactly to look for it.
A reference to it has already been met with. In the time of Ramses II., an Egyptian scribe composed an ironical account of the adventures of a military officer in Palestine. The officer in question was called a Mohar, a word borrowed from the Babylonians, in whose language it signified "an envoy."
The Egyptian work is consequently usually known as _The Travels of a Mohar_, and it gives us an interesting picture of Canaan shortly before the Israelitish Exodus. The author was clearly very proud of his geographical knowledge, and has therefore introduced the names of a large number of places. In one pa.s.sage he asks: "Hast thou not seen Kirjath-Anab together with Beth-Sopher? Dost thou not know Adullam and Zidiputha?" Dr.
W. Max Muller, to whom the correct reading of the pa.s.sage is due, points out that the scribe has interchanged the words Kirjath, "city," and Beth, "house," and that he ought to have written Beth-Anab and Kirjath-Sopher.
That he was acquainted, however, with the meaning of the Canaanitish word Sopher (in Egyptian Thupar) is shown by his adding to it the determinative of "writing." _Sopher_, in fact, means "scribe," just as _sepher_ means "book," and indicates the fact that Kirjath-Sepher was not only a town of books, but of book-writers as well. It will be remembered that Beth-Anab, "the house of grapes," in the abbreviated form of Anab, is a.s.sociated with Kirjath-Sepher in the Old Testament (Josh. xi. 21; xv. 49, 50), just as it is in the Egyptian papyrus.
In the Tel el-Amarna tablets we have a picture of Canaan in the century which preceded the Exodus of the Israelites out of Egypt. As we have seen, it was at that time an Egyptian province. We can thus understand why, in the tenth chapter of Genesis, Canaan is made a brother of Mizraim, or Egypt. For a while it obeyed the same sovereign and was administered by the same laws; the natives of Canaan held office in the court of the Pharaoh, and Egyptian governors ruled in the Canaanitish cities. It was not until after the death of Ramses II., of the nineteenth dynasty, and about the very time when the Israelites were escaping from their house of bondage, that Canaan ceased to be an Egyptian dependency. From that time forward it was politically and geographically severed from the valley of the Nile, and the geographer could never again couple it with the land of Egypt.
When Khu-n-Aten was Pharaoh, the cities of Canaan were numerous and wealthy. The people were highly cultured, and excelled especially as workers in gold and silver, as manufacturers of porcelain and vari-coloured gla.s.s, and as weavers of richly-dyed linen. Their merchants already traded to distant parts of the known world. The governors appointed by the Pharaoh were for the most part of native origin, and at times a representative of the old line of kings was left among them, though an Egyptian prefect was often placed at his side. The governors were controlled by the presence of Egyptian garrisons, as well as by the visits of an Egyptian "commissioner." Their rivalries and quarrels form the subject of many of the letters which have been found at Tel el-Amarna, both sides appealing to the Pharaoh for protection and help, and alike protesting their loyalty to him. It seems to have been the part of Egyptian policy to encourage these quarrels, or at all events to hold an even balance between the rival governors.
As long as the power of Egypt remained intact, _these quarrels_, which sometimes _resulted in open war_, offered no cause for alarm. Egyptian troops could always be sent to the scene of disturbance before it could become dangerous. But in the troublous days of Khu-n-Aten"s reign, when Egypt itself was restless and inclined for revolt, the position of affairs was changed. The Egyptian forces were needed at home, and the Pharaoh was compelled to turn a deaf ear to the piteous appeals that were made to him for a.s.sistance. The enemies of Egyptian rule began to multiply and grow powerful. In the south the Khabiri or "Confederates" threatened the Egyptian domination; in the north, Amorite rebels intrigued with the Hitt.i.tes and with the kings of Naharaim and Babylonia, while in all parts of Palestine the Sute or Bedouin were perpetually on the watch to take advantage of the weakness of the government.
It was the va.s.sal-king of Jerusalem, Ebed-tob by name, who was especially menaced by the Khabiri. In his letters he describes himself as unlike the other governors, in that he had been appointed to his office by the "arm"
or "oracle" of "the Mighty King," the supreme deity of his city. It was not from his father or his mother, consequently, that he had derived his royal dignity. He was, in fact, a priest-king, like his predecessor Melchizedek, to whom Abram had paid t.i.thes. Ebed-tob, however, was unable to make head against his enemies the Khabiri. One by one the towns which were included in the territory of Jerusalem, from Keilah and Gath-Karmel to Rabbah, fell into their hands; the Pharaoh was unable to send him the help for which he so earnestly begged, and we finally hear of his having fallen into the hands of his Bedouin enemy, Labai, along with the cities of which he was in charge. Labai was in alliance with a certain Malchiel, who also writes letters to the Egyptian monarch, as well as with Tagi of Gath and the Khabiri. The latter seem to have given the name of Hebron, "the Confederacy," to the old city of Kirjath-Arba.
Megiddo was the seat of an Egyptian governor, like Gaza, near Shechem. The name of Shechem has not been found in the Tel el-Amarna tablets, but a reference is made to its "mountain," in the _Travels of a Mohar_. Either Mount Ebal or Mount Gerizim must consequently have been already well known in Egypt. Another Egyptian governor was in command of Phnicia. Gebal, north of Beyrut, was his chief residence, but he had palaces also at Tyre and Zemar, in the mountains of the interior. In one of his letters he alludes to the wealth of Tyre, which must therefore have been already famous.
Phnicia and Palestine are alike included under the name of "Canaan" in the cuneiform doc.u.ments, though in the hieroglyphic records they are called Zahi and Khal (or Khar). North of Palestine came "the land of the Amorites," of which Ebed-Asherah and his son, Aziru or Ezer, were governors, and to the east of the Jordan was "the field of Bashan." The Egyptian supremacy was acknowledged as far south as the frontier of Edom; the latter country preserved its independence.
Such was the condition of Canaan when the cuneiform correspondence of Tel el-Amarna comes suddenly to an end. The death of Khu-n-Aten had been the signal for a revolt against the faith which he had endeavoured to impose upon Egypt, as well as against the Asiatic influences by which he had been surrounded. He left daughters only behind him. One of them was married to a prince who, in order to secure the throne, was forced to return to the old religion of the country, and to call himself by the name of Tutankh-Amon. But his reign was short, like those of one or two other relations and followers of Khu-n-Aten who have left traces of themselves upon the monuments. A rival king, Ai by name, held possession of Egypt for a while, and after his death Hor-m-hib, the Armais of Manetho, ruled once more at Thebes over a united Egypt, and the worship of the solar disk was at end.
But the ruins of Tel el-Amarna show that the restoration of the old creed and the overthrow of Khu-n-Aten"s adherents had not been without a struggle. Most of the tombs in the cliffs and sandhills which surround the old city have been unfinished: the followers of the new cult for whom they were intended have never been allowed to occupy them. The royal sepulchre itself, as we have seen, is in an equally unfinished condition, and the sarcophagus in which the body of the king rested was violated soon after his mummy had been placed in it. Indeed, it had never been deposited in the niche that had been cut to receive it; its shattered fragments were discovered far away on the floor of the great columned hall. The capital of the "heretic king" was destroyed by its enemies soon after his death, and never inhabited again. The ruins of its palace and houses were full of broken statues and other objects which their owners had no time to carry away. The city lasted only for about thirty years, and the sands of the desert then began to close over its fallen greatness. How sudden and complete must have been its overthrow is proved by the cuneiform tablets; not only were these imperial archives not carried elsewhere, the correspondence contained in them breaks off suddenly with a half-told tale of disaster and dismay. The Asiatic empire of Egypt is falling to pieces, its enemies are enclosing it on every side; the Hitt.i.tes have robbed it of its northern provinces, and revolt is shaking it from within. The governors and va.s.sals of the Pharaoh send more and more urgent requests for instant aid: "If troops come this year, then there will remain both provinces and governors to the king, my lord; but if no troops come, no provinces or governors will remain." But no answer was returned to these pressing appeals, and the sudden cessation of the correspondence under the ruins of the Egyptian foreign office itself gives us the reason why.
One of the first acts of Hor-m-hib after the settlement of affairs at home was to chastise the Asiatics, who had doubtless taken advantage of the momentary weakness of Egypt. With the death of Hor-m-hib, after a reign of five years,(7) the eighteenth dynasty came to an end. Ramses I., the founder of the nineteenth dynasty, introduced a new type of royal name, and also, as we learn from the monuments, a new type of royal face. After a short reign of two years, he was succeeded by his son, Seti I., in whose name we have an evidence that the proscribed worship of the G.o.d Set-the G.o.d of the Delta-was again taken under royal patronage. It was an indication that the new dynasty traced its descent from northern Egypt.
Seti I. once more led the Egyptian armies to victory in Asia. With the spoils of conquest temples were built and decorated, and the names of conquered nations engraved upon their walls. One of these temples was at Abydos, the most beautiful of all those which have been left to us in Egypt. But Seti"s fame as a builder was far eclipsed by that of his son and successor, Ramses II., and even the temples which he had raised at Abydos and Qurnah were completed, and to a certain extent appropriated, by his better-known son.
We are told in the Book of Exodus that two of the "treasure cities" which the Israelites built for the Pharaoh of the Oppression were "Pithom and Raamses." The discovery of Pithom was, as we have already seen, the inaugural work of the Egypt Exploration Fund. The discovery, as has been already stated, was made by Dr. Naville, who was led to the site by certain monuments of Ramses II., which had been found there by the French engineers of M. de Lesseps. These monuments consisted of a great tablet and monolith of red granite, two sphinxes of exquisitely polished black granite, and a broken shrine of red sandstone which had been transported to Ismailiyeh, where they formed the chief ornament of the little public garden. As they all showed that Tum, the setting sun, was the supreme deity of the place from which they had come, Dr. Naville concluded that it would prove to be Pi-Tum, "the abode of Tum," the Pithom of Scripture, and not the companion city of Raamses, as Lepsius had believed.
The mounds from which the monuments had been disinterred are about twelve miles to the west of Ismailiyeh, and are called Tel el-Maskhuteh, "the Mound of the Image." In the last century, however, they were known as Abu Keshed, and were famous for a half-buried monolith of granite representing Ramses II. seated between Tum and Ra, the hieroglyphic inscription on the back of which has been published by Sir Gardner Wilkinson. The ca.n.a.l made by the Pharaohs for uniting the Nile with the Red Sea, and afterwards cleared of the sand that choked it by Darius, by Trajan, and by the Arab conqueror "Amru, skirted the southern side of the mounds. At present the modern Freshwater Ca.n.a.l runs along their northern edge, to the north of which again is the line of the railway from Cairo to Suez. The fortifications erected by Arabi, however, hide the site of the old city from the traveller in the train.
Dr. Naville"s excavations proved him to have been right in identifying Tel el-Maskhuteh with Pithom. The inscriptions he found there showed that its ancient name was Pi-Tum, and that it stood in the district of Thukut, the Succoth of the Old Testament. The name of this district was already known from papyri of the age of the nineteenth dynasty, and Dr. Brugsch had pointed out its ident.i.ty with the Biblical Succoth.
But the discovery of the ancient name was not the only result of the explorer"s work. It turned out that the city had been built by Ramses II., and that it contained a number of large brick buildings which seem to have been intended for magazines. Here, then, at last was a proof that the Egyptologists were correct in making Ramses II. the Pharaoh of the Oppression.
The site of Raamses or Ramses, the companion city of Pithom, has still to be discovered. But it cannot be far distant from Tel el-Maskhuteh, and, like the latter, must have been in that land of Goshen in which the Israelites were settled. The discoveries which enabled Dr. Naville to determine the boundaries of the land of Goshen and to fix the site of its ancient capital have already been described. The site of Zoan, the modern San, had long been known, and the excavations, first of Mariette Pasha and then of Professor Flinders Petrie, have laid bare the foundations of its temple and brought to light the monuments of the kings who enriched and adorned it. Built originally in the age of the Old Empire, it was restored by the Hyksos conquerors of Egypt, and became under them a centre of influence and power.
Goshen, Zoan and Pithom, the sites around which the early history of Israel gathered, have thus been brought to light. The disputes which have raged about them are at last ended. Here and there a persistent sceptic, who has been reared in the traditions of the past, may still express doubts concerning the discoveries of recent years, but for the Egyptologist and the archaeologist the question has been finally settled.
We can visit "the field of Zoan" and explore the mounds of Pithom with no misgivings as to their ident.i.ty. When the train carries us from Ismailiyeh to Cairo, we may feel a.s.sured that we are pa.s.sing through the district in which Jacob and his family were settled, and where the kinsfolk of Moses had their homes. The Egypt of the patriarchs and the Exodus was an Egypt narrow in compa.s.s and easily traversed in these days of steam; it represented the western part of the Delta, more especially the strip of cultivable land which stretches along the banks of the Freshwater Ca.n.a.l from Zagazig to Ismailiyeh: that is all. The eastern and northern Delta, Upper Egypt-even the district in which Cairo now stands-lay outside it.
The history which attaches itself to them is not the history of the early Israelites.
CHAPTER III. THE EXODUS AND THE HEBREW SETTLEMENT IN CANAAN.
Ramses II. was the last of the conquering Pharaohs of native Egyptian history. The Asiatic empire of Thothmes III. was in some measure restored by the victories of his father and himself. The cities of Palestine yielded him an unwilling obedience. Gaza, and the other towns in what was afterwards the territory of the Philistines, were garrisoned by Egyptian troops, and on the walls of the Ramesseum were depicted his conquest of Shalem or Jerusalem, Merom, Beth-Anath, and other Canaanite states, in his eighth year. Egyptian armies again marched northward into Syria along the highroad that led past the Phnician cities, and on the banks of the Nahr el-Kelb, or Dog"s River, near Beyrut, the Pharaoh erected a tablet in commemoration of his successes. On the eastern side of the Jordan also Egyptian authority once more prevailed. In front of the northern pylon of the temple of Luxor, Ramses erected six colossal figures of himself, and on their recently-uncovered bases are inscribed the names of the various nations he claimed to have subdued. Among them we find, for the first time in the Egyptian records, the name of Moab, following immediately upon that of a.s.sar, the a.s.shurim of Genesis xxv. 3. That the insertion of the name was not an idle boast we learn from a discovery lately made by Dr.
Schumacher. On the eastern side of the Jordan, but at no great distance from the Lake of Tiberias, is a monolith called the "Stone of Job." On this the German explorer has found Egyptian sculptures and hieroglyphs.
Above the figure of the Pharaoh are the cartouches of Ramses II., and opposite the king, on the left, a local deity is represented with a full face and the crown of Osiris, over whom is written the name of Akna-zapn, or "Yakin of the North." The monument is an evidence of a permanent occupation of the country by the Egyptians, as the name and figure of the G.o.d indicate that it was erected, not by the Egyptians themselves, but by the Egyptianised natives of the land.
Along the Syrian coast Seti I. had already carried his arms. His campaigns were followed by those of his son. Arvad, the sh.o.r.es of the Gulf of Antioch, and even Cilicia, are enumerated among the conquests of the Pharaoh. He even claims to have defeated the armies of a.s.syria, of Matena or Mitanni, the Aram-Naharaim of Scripture, and of Singar in Mesopotamia.
At Luxor, on the western walls of the newly excavated court, we hear of his having been at Tunip (now Tennib), "in the land of Naharaim," of his capture of a fortress of the Kati in the same district, and of how "the Pharaoh" had taken a city in "the land of Satuna." Satuna was one of those countries in the far north whose name is never mentioned elsewhere in the Egyptian texts.
The Syrian conquests, however, could never have been long in the Pharaoh"s possession. Between them and Palestine lay the southern outposts of the Hitt.i.te race. In the troublous times which followed the death of Khu-n-Aten, the Hitt.i.tes had overrun "the land of the Amorites" to the north of Canaan, and fixed their southern capital in the holy city of Kadesh, on the Orontes. It was a stronghold against which the forces of Ramses were hurled in vain. For twenty years did the struggle continue between the Pharaoh of Egypt and "the great king of the Hitt.i.tes," and at last, exhausted by the long conflict, in which neither party had gained the advantage, the two enemies agreed upon peace. A treaty was signed on the twenty-first of the month Tybi, in the twenty-first year of the reign of Ramses (B.C. 1327), "in the city of Ramses," to which the Hitt.i.te amba.s.sadors had come. Ramses, on the one side, and Khita-sir, the son of Mul-sir, the Hitt.i.te prince, on the other, bound themselves in it to eternal friendship and alliance. In case of war they were to send troops to one another"s help, and they agreed to put to death any criminals who might fly from the one country to the other. Political offenders, however, who had taken refuge in the territory of one or other of the two contracting parties, were not to be injured. It was of course the Canaanitish subjects of the Pharaoh, who adjoined the Hitt.i.te kingdom, that were princ.i.p.ally affected by these stipulations. It was further determined that on no pretext whatever should any change be made in the boundaries of the two monarchies. The treaty was placed under the protection of the deities of Egypt and the Hitt.i.tes, and a Hitt.i.te copy of it was engraved on a silver plate. The agreement was cemented by the marriage of Ramses to a daughter of the Hitt.i.te king, who thereupon a.s.sumed an Egyptian name.
Northern Syria was thus formally conceded to the powerful conquerors who had descended from the mountains of Kappadokia, while Palestine remained under Egyptian dominion. But it was not destined to do so long. Ramses was succeeded by Meneptah, the fourteenth of his many sons, who had reigned only four years when the very existence of his kingdom was threatened by a formidable invasion from the west and north. "The peoples of the north"
swarmed out of their coasts and islands, and a great fleet descended upon Egypt, in conjunction with the Libyans and Maxyes of northern Africa.
Aqaiush or Achaeans, Shardana or Sardinians, Tursha or Tyrsenians appear among them, as well as Leku from Asia Minor, and Zakkur, who a little later are the colleagues and brethren of the Philistines. Part of the Delta was overrun and devastated before the Pharaoh could make head against his foes. But a decisive battle was at length fought at Pa-Alu-sheps, not far from Heliopolis, which ended in the complete overthrow of the invading hordes. Egypt was saved from the danger which had threatened it, but it seems never to have recovered from the shock.
The power of the government was weakened in the valley of the Nile itself, and one by one the foreign conquests pa.s.sed out of its grasp. The sceptre of Seti II., who followed Meneptah, seems to have dropped into the hands of a usurper, Amon-messu by name: the history of the period is, however, involved in obscurity, and all that is certain is that the empire of Ramses II. was lost, and that Egypt itself fell into a state of decadence.
With Si-Ptah the nineteenth dynasty came to an inglorious end.
Its fall was the signal for internal confusion and civil war. A Syrian foreigner, Arisu by name, possessed himself of the throne of the Pharaohs, and Egypt for a while was compelled to submit to Canaanitish rule. Its leading n.o.bles were in banishment, its G.o.ds were deprived of their customary offerings, and famine was added to the horrors of war. A deliverer came in the person of Set-nekht, the founder of the twentieth dynasty. He drove the stranger out the country, and restored it again to peace and prosperity. Hardly had his task been completed when he died, and was succeeded by his son, Ramses III. Under him a transient gleam of victory and conquest visited once more the valley of the Nile.
It was well for Egypt that she possessed an energetic general and king.
The same hordes which had threatened her in the reign of Meneptah now again attacked her with increased numbers and greater chances of success.
In the fifth year of Ramses III., the fair-skinned tribes of the western desert poured into the Delta. The Maxyes, under their chieftains Mdidi, Mashakanu, and Maraiu, and the Libyans, under Ur-mar and Zut-mar, met the Pharaoh in battle at a place which ever afterwards bore a name commemorative of their defeat. The victory of the Egyptians was, in fact, decisive. As many as 12,535 slain were counted on the field of battle, and captives and spoil innumerable fell into the hands of the victors.
But Ramses was allowed only a short breathing-s.p.a.ce. Three years after the Libyan invasion, and doubtless in connection with it, came a still more formidable invasion on the part of the barbarians of the north. This time they came partly by land, partly by sea. Vast hordes of them had marched out of Asia Minor, overrunning the kingdoms of the Hitt.i.tes, of Naharaim, of Carchemish, and of Arvad, and carrying with them adventurers and recruits from the countries through which they pa.s.sed. First they pitched their camp in "the land of the Amorites," and then marched southward towards the frontiers of Egypt. The place of the Aqaiush was taken by the Daanau or Danaans, but the Zakkur again formed part of the invading host, this time accompanied by Pulsata or Philistines, and Shakalsh or Siculians. By the side of the land army moved a fleet of ships, and fleet and army arrived together at the mouths of the Nile. The cities in the extreme south of Palestine, once occupied by Egyptian garrisons, were captured by the Philistines, and became henceforward their a.s.sured possession.
But the main body of the invaders were not so fortunate. The Egyptian forces were ready to receive them, and their ships had scarcely entered the mouth of the Nile before they were attacked by the Egyptian fleet. The battle ended in the complete annihilation of the attacking host. A picture of it is sculptured on the walls of Medinet Habu at Thebes, the temple-palace which Ramses built to commemorate his victories, and we can there study the ships of the European barbarians and the features and dress of the barbarians themselves. In the expressive words of the Egyptian scribe, "they never reaped a harvest any more."
Ramses, however, was even now not left at rest. Three years later the Maxyes again a.s.sailed Egypt under Mashashal, the son of Kapur, but once more unsuccessfully. Cattle, horses, a.s.ses, chariots and weapons of war in large quant.i.ties fell into the hands of the Egyptians, as well as 2052 captives, while 2175 men were slain. From this time forward Egypt was secure from attack on its western border.
Freed from the necessity of defending his own territories, Ramses now carried the war into Asia. What in later days was the land of Judah was overrun by his forces; Gaza and the districts round Hebron and Salem or Jerusalem were occupied, and the name of the Dead Sea appears on the walls of Medinet Habu for the first time in Egyptian history. The Egyptian army even crossed to the eastern side of the Jordan and captured the Moabite capital.
Another campaign led it along the Phnician coast into northern Syria.
Hamath was taken, and Ramses seems to have penetrated as far as the slopes of the Taurus. He even claims to have defeated the people of Mitanni or Aram-Naharaim on the eastern bank of the Euphrates. The kings of the Hitt.i.tes and the Amorites, like the chiefs of the Zakkur and the Philistines, were already prisoners in his hands.
But the northern campaigns of Ramses were intended to strike terror rather than to re-establish the Asiatic empire of Egypt. No attempt was made to hold the cities and districts which had been overrun. Though a temple was erected to Amon on the frontiers of the later Judaea, even Gaza was given up, and the fortress which had so long defended the road from Canaan into Egypt was allowed to pa.s.s into Philistine hands. It was the same with the campaign which the Pharaoh conducted at a later date against the "Shasu"
or Bedouin of Edom. For the first time an Egyptian army succeeded in making its way into the fastnesses of Mount Seir, slaying the warriors of Edom, and plundering their "tents." The Edomite chief himself was made a prisoner. The expedition had the effect of protecting the Egyptian mining establishments in the Sinaitic peninsula as well as the maritime trade with southern Arabia. Large quant.i.ties of malachite were brought year by year from the Egyptian province of Mafka or Sinai, and the merchant-vessels of Ramses coasted along the Red Sea, bringing back with them the precious spices of Yemen and Hadhramaut.
Ramses III. died after a reign of more than thirty-two years, and the military renown of Egypt expired with him. His exact date is still a matter of doubt, but his accession must have fallen about B.C. 1200. The date is important, not only because it closes the history of Egypt as a conquering power, but also as it marks a great era of migration among the northern populations of the Mediterranean, as well as the permanent settlement of the Philistines in Palestine. It was, moreover, the period to which the Israelitish invasion of Canaan must belong.
When Ramses III. overran the southern portion of Palestine, and built the temple of the Theban G.o.d at the spot now known as Khurbet Kan"an, not far from Hebron, the Israelites could not as yet have entered the Promised Land. There is no reference to the Egyptians in the Pentateuch, and there is no reference to the Israelites in the hieroglyphic texts of Medinet Habu. Hebron, Migdal, Karmel of Judah, Ir-Shemesh and Hadashah, all alike fell into the hands of the Egyptian invaders, but neither in the Egyptian nor in the Hebrew records is there any allusion to a struggle between Egypt and Israel. When Joshua entered Canaan all these cities belonged to the Canaanites, and when Ramses III. attacked them this was also the case.
The Palestinian campaign of Ramses must have prepared the way for the Israelitish conquest; it could not have followed after it.
Moreover, "the five lords of the Philistines" seem to have already been settled in the extreme south when the Israelitish invasion took place (Josh. xiii. 3). Yet it also seems clear from the Egyptian monuments that the settlement was not fully completed until after the Asiatic campaigns of the Pharaoh had occurred. The Philistines indeed formed part of the great invading host which poured through Syria and a.s.sailed Egypt in the early part of his reign, but Gaza was one of his conquests, and its possession enabled him to march into Canaan. Before Gaza could become a Philistine city it was needful that its Egyptian garrison should be withdrawn. Professor Praek believes that the Philistine occupation of southern Canaan took place in the year B.C. 1209, since the Roman historian Justin tells us that in this year a king of Ashkelon stormed the city of Sidon, and that the Sidonians fled to a neighbouring part of the coast, and there founded Tyre. However this may be, the Philistine settlement in Canaan must be ascribed to the age of Ramses III., and it was already with the Philistines that the Israelites came into conflict under almost the earliest of their judges.
But the date of the Israelitish conquest of Canaan is closely bound up with that of the Exodus out of Egypt. It is true that when we are told of the forty years" wandering in the desert, the word "forty" is used, as it is elsewhere in the Old Testament, as well as upon the Moabite Stone, to denote an indeterminate period of time. It was a period during which the greater part of the generation that had left Egypt had time to die. Joshua and Caleb indeed remained, and Othniel, the brother of Caleb, lived to deliver Israel from the king of Aram-Naharaim, and to be the first of the judges. But otherwise it was a new generation which was led to conquest by Joshua.