storehouses. And thou also shalt bring something for me." He had the journal of his fathers brought in, and he had them read it before me. They found 1,000 deben of every (kind of) silver, which was in his book.

He said to me: "If the ruler of Egypt were the owner of my property, and I were also his servant, he would not send silver and gold, saying: 'Do the command of Amon.' It was not the payment of tribute which they exacted of my father. As for me, I am myself neither thy servant nor am I the servant of him that sent thee. If I cry out to the Lebanon, the heavens open, and the logs lie here on the shore of the sea."

A long speech of Wenamon follows, in which he claims Egypt as the home of civilization, and claims Lebanon for Amon. He then continues:

"Let my scribe be brought to me, that I may send him to Nesubenebded and Tentamon, the rulers whom Amon hath given to the north of his land, and they will send all that of which I shall write unto them, saying: 'Let it be brought,' until I return to the south and send thee all thy trifles again.' So spake I to him. He gave my letter into the hand of his messenger. He loaded in the keel, the head of the bow and the head of the stern, with four other hewn timbers, together seven; and he had them taken to Egypt. His messenger went to Egypt, and returned to me, to Syria in the first month of the second season. Nesubenebded and Tentamon sent:

Gold: 4 Tb-vessels, 1 K'k-mn-vessel;

Silver: 5 Tb-vessels;

Royal linen: 10 garments, 10 hm-hrd;

Papyrus: 500 rolls;

Ox-hides: 500;

Rope: 500 (coils);

Lentils: 20 measures;

Fish: 30 measures;
She1 sent me:

Linen 5...

5 hm-hrd;

Lentils: 1 measure;

Fish: 5 measures.

The prince rejoiced, and detailed 300 men and 300 oxen, placing overseers over them, to have the trees felled. They spent the second season therewith.... In the third month of the second season (seventh month) they dragged them [to] the shore of the sea. The prince came forth and stood by them.

He sent to me, saying: "Come." Now, when I had presented myself before him, the shadow of his sunshade fell upon me. Penamon, a butler, he stepped between us, saying: "The shadow of Pharaoh. thy lord, falls upon thee."

He was angry with him, saying: "Let him alone!" I presented myself before him, and he answered and said unto me: "Behold the command which my fathers formerly executed, I have executed, although thou for thy part hast not done for me that which thy fathers did for me. Behold there has arrived the last of thy timber, and there it lies. Do according to my desire and come to load it, for they will indeed give it to thee."

"Come not to contemplate the terror of the sea, (but) if thou dost contemplate the terror of the sea, thou shalt (also) contemplate mine own. Indeed I have not done to thee that which they did to the messengers of Khamwese, when they spent seventeen years in this land. They died in their place." He said to his butler; "Take him, and let him see their tomb, wherein they sleep."

1 "She" refers to Tentamon, the queen.

I said to him: "Let me not see it! As for Khamwese, (mere) people were the messengers whom he sent unto thee; but people...... ..there was no [god among] his messengers. And yet thou sayest, ‘Go and see thy companions.' Lo, art thou not glad? and dost thou not have made for thee a tablet, whereon thou sayest: 'Amon-Re, king of gods, sent to me "Amon-the-way," his [divine] messenger, and Wenamon, his human messenger, after the timber for the great and august barge of Amon-Re, king of gods? I felled it, I loaded it, I supplied him (with) my ships and my crews, I brought them to Egypt, to beseech for me 10,000 years of life from Amon, more than my ordained (life), and it came to pass. Then in future days when a messenger comes from the land of Egypt, who is able to write, and reads thy name upon the stela, thou shalt receive water in the west, like the gods who are there." He said to me: "It is a great testimony which thou tellest me."

I said to him: "As for the many things which thou hast said to me, when I reach the place of the abode of the High Priest of Amon, and he shall see thy command in thy command, [he] will have something delivered to thee."

I went to the shore of the sea, to the place where the timbers lay; I spied eleven ships, coming from the sea, belonging to the Thekel, saying: "Arrest him! Let not a ship of his pass to Egypt!" I sat down and began to weep. The letterscribe of the prince came out to me, and said to me: "What is the matter with thee?" I said to him: "Surely thou seest these birds which twice descend upon Egypt. Behold them! They come to the pool, and how long shall I be here, forsaken? For thou seest surely those who come to arrest me again."

He went and told it to the prince. The prince began to weep at the evil words which they spoke to him. He sent out his letter-scribe to me and brought me two jars of wine and a ram. He sent to me Tento, an Egyptian singer (feminine), who was with him, saying: "Sing for him; let not his heart feel apprehension." He sent to me, saying: "Eat, drink, and let not thy heart feel apprehension. Thou shalt hear all that I have to say unto thee in the morning."

Morning came, he had (the Thekel) called into his..... he stood in their midst and said to the Thekel: "Why have ye come?" They said to him: "We have come after the stove-up ships which thou sendest to Egypt with our...... comrades." He said to them: "I cannot arrest the messenger of Amon in my land. Let me send him away, and ye shall pursue him, to arrest him."

He loaded me on board, he sent me away....to the harbor of the sea. The wind drove me to the land of Alasa [Cyprus]; those of the city came forth to me to slay me. I was brought among them to the abode of Heteb, the queen of the city. I found her as she was going forth from her houses and entering into her other [house]. I saluted her, I asked the people who stood about her: "There is surely one among you who understands Egyptian?" One among them said: "I understand (it)." I said to him: "Say to my mistress: 'I have heard as far as Thebes, the abode of Amon, that in every city injustice is done, but that justice is done in the land of Alasa; (but), lo, injustice is done every day here."" She said: "Indeed! what is this that thou sayest?" I said to her: "If the sea raged and the wind drove me to land where I am, thou wilt not let them take advantage of me to slay me, I being a messenger of Amon. I am one whom they will seek unceasingly. As for the crew of the prince of Byblos whom they sought to kill, their lord will surely find ten crews of thine, and he will slay them on his part." She had the people called and stationed (before her); she said to me: "Pass the night....

Here the papyrus, which contains this vivid personal narrative of travel, is broken off and the rest of the story is lost. We may be

sure that Wenamon escaped from Cyprus and succeeded in reaching Egypt again, or the story would never have been told.

2. Its Illustration of Certain Points of Biblical History.

The story illustrates well a number of points in Biblical history. This adventure was approximately contemporary with the career of Deborah or of Gideon. It shows that the city of Dor, which was situated on the coast just south of Mount Carmel, was in the possession of a tribe kindred to the Philistines, who soon afterward appear in Biblical history. We also learn from it that Egyptian authority in Palestine and Phoenicia, which was at the time of the El-Amarna letters so rapidly decaying, had entirely disappeared. Zakar-Baal stoutly asserts his independence, while the king of the Thekel is evidently quite independent of Egypt. The way in which these petty kingdoms deal with one another is quite after the manner of the international relations reflected in the book of Judges. The expedition of Wenamon to the Lebanon for cedar wood illustrates the way Solomon obtained cedar for the temple.

Lastly, the way one of the noble youths became frenzied and prophesied, is quite parallel to the way in which Saul "stripped off his clothes and prophesied. . . . . . and lay down naked all that day and all that night" (1 Sam. 19: 24). The heed which Zakar-Baal gave to this youth shows that at Gebal, as in Israel, such ecstatic or frenzied utterances were thought to be of divine origin. Later in Israel this sort of prophecy became a kind of profession, or trade. The members of these prophetic guilds were called "sons of the prophets." The great literary prophets of Israel had nothing to do with them. Amos is careful to say that he is not a "son of a prophet" (Amos 7 : 14).

3. Reference to the Philistines.

Ramses III in his inscriptions makes the following statements:1

"The northern countries are unquiet in their limbs, even the Peleset [Philistines], the Thekel, who devastate their land... O my august father [i. e., the god Amon] come to take them, being: the Peleset, the Denyen [Dardanians], and the Shekelesh [Sicilians].

Utterance of the vanquished Peleset: "Give to us the breath for our nostrils, O king, son of Amon."

The Peleset are undoubtedly the same people who appear in the Bible as the Philistines. Ramses III, of the twentieth dynasty, from whose inscriptions the above quotations are taken, reigned

1 These statements are taken from Breasted's Ancient Records, Egypt, IV. §§ 44, 81, and 82.

from 1198-1167 B. C. In his reign the Philistines were coming over the sea and invading northern Egypt along with other wanderers from different parts of the Mediterranean, the Thekel, the Danaoi, and the Sicilians. Upon being repelled from Egypt by Ramses, they passed on and invaded Palestine. As the report of Wenamon shows, the Thekel were in possession of Dor by the year 1100, and no doubt the Philistines had gained a foothold also in the cities farther to the south, where we find them in the Biblical records (Judges 13-16; 1 Sam. 4-7; 13, 14; 17, 18, etc.).

Amos says the Philistines came from Caphtor (Amos 9:7). This has long been supposed to be Crete. Eduard Meyer thinks that confirmation of this has now been found. A disc inscribed in a peculiar writing, which has not yet been deciphered, was found in July, 1908, at Phæstos in Crete in strata of the third middle Minoan period, i. e., about 1600 в. c.1 This writing is pictographic, and although not yet translated, appears to be a contract. One of the frequently recurring signs represents a human head surmounted by a shock of hair (see Fig. 38), almost exactly like the hair of the Philistines as they are pictured by the artists of Ramses III on the walls of his palace at Medinet Habu (see Fig. 36). This sign was probably the determinative for man. This likeness would make the proof of the Cretan origin of the Philistines complete, were it not that some scholars think that the disc exhumed at Phæstos had been brought thither from across the sea. This is possible, but does not seem very probable. The doubt will, perhaps, be resolved when we learn to read the inscription.

1 See Evans, Scripta Minoa, Oxford, 1909, pp. 22, ff., 273, ff.

* See R. A. S. Macalister, The Philistines, Their History and Civilization, London, 1913, p. 83, ff.

CHAPTER XVII

ARCHEOLOGICAL LIGHT ON THE BOOKS OF KINGS

GUDEA AND Cedar-WOOD FOR HIS PALACE. THE EPONYM CANON. THE SEAL OF SHEMA. SHISHAK'S LIST OF CONQUERED ASIATIC CITIES. ASHURNASIRPAL'S DESCRIPTION OF HIS EXPEDITION TO MEDITERRANEAN LANDS. SHALMANESER III'S CLAIMS REGARDING TRIBUTE FROM THE KINGS OF ISRAEL. THE MOABITE STONE. ADADNIRARI IV'S MENTION OF THE "LAND OF OMRI." INSCRIPTION DESCRIBING TIGLATHPILESER IV'S CAMPAIGN. SARGON'S CONQUESTS. SENNACHERIB'S WESTERN CAMPAIGNS. THE SILOAM INSCRIPTION. ESARHADDON'S LIST OF COnquered KinGS. ASHURBANIPAL'S ASSYRIAN CAMPAIGN. NECHO OF EGYPT. NEBUCHADREZZAR II. EVIL-MERODISCOVERIES IN SHEBA.

DACH.

1. Gudea and Cedar-Wood for His Palace.

Gudea, a ruler of Lagash in Babylonia (the modern Telloh; see p. 45), who lived about 2450 B. C., rebuilt Eninnû, the temple of Ningirsu, at Lagash. In his account of the work he makes the following statement:1

From Amanus, the mountain of cedar, cedar wood, the length of which was 60 cubits, cedar-wood, the length of which was 50 cubits, ukarinnu-wood, the length of which was 25 cubits, for the dwelling he made; (from) their mountain they were brought.

The Amanus mountains lay along the Mediterranean to the north of the river Orontes. They belong to the same general range as the Lebanons. Again, in the same inscription, Gudea says:2

From Umanu, the mountain of Menua, from Basalla, the mountain of the Amorites, great cut stones he brought; into pillars he made them and in the court of Eninnû he erected them. From Tidanu, the mountain of the Amorites, marble in fragments (?) he brought.

This passage shows that a ruler of Babylonia came to this region for cedar-wood and stones for his temple, as Solomon is said to have done (1 Kings 5, especially vs. 6 and 17; 2 Chron. 2:8, ff.). That Egyptian rulers did the same is clearly shown by the report of Wenamon. (See p. 352, ff.)

1 See Sarzec, Découvertes en Chaldée, p. ix, col. v, 28, ff. See also Thureau-Dangin, Les inscriptions de Sumer et d'Akkad, Paris, 1905, p. 109, and his Sumerischen und akkadischen Königsinschriften, Leipzig, 1907, p. 68, f.

2 Ibid., col. vi, 3, ff.