which modern research has placed in a new light.

Successive discoveries of contemporary historical and archæological material have made it impossible to ignore either the geographical position of Palestine, which exposes it to the influence of the surrounding seats of culture, or its political history, which has constantly been controlled by external circumstances. Although Palestine reappears as only a small fraction of the area dominated by the ancient empires of Egypt and Western Asia, the uniqueness of its experiences can be more vividly realised. If it is found to share many forms of religious belief and custom with its neighbours, one is better able to sever the features which were by no means the exclusive possession of Israel from those which were due to specific influences shaping them to definite ends, and the importance of the little land in the history of humanity can thereby be more truly and permanently estimated.

Method.—Although Palestine was the land of Judaism and of Christianity, and has subsequently been controlled by Mohammedanism, it has preserved common related elements of belief, which have formed, as it were, part of the unconscious inheritance of successive generations. They have not been ousted by those positive religions which traced their origin to deliberate and epoch-making innovators, and they survive to-day as precious relics for the study of the past. Indeed, the comparative method, which investigates points of resemblance and difference among widely-severed peoples, can avail itself in our case of Oriental conservatism, and may range over a single but remarkably extensive field. From the archæology and inscriptions of Ancient Babylonia to Punic Carthage, from the Old Testament to the writings of Rabbinical Judaism, from classical, Syrian, and Arabian authors to the observations of medieval and modern travellers, one may accumulate a store of evidence which is mutually illustrative or supplementary. But it would be incorrect to assume that every modern belief or rite in Palestine, for example, necessarily represents the old religion: there have been reversion and retrogression; some old practices have disappeared, others have been modified or have received a new interpretation. This warning is necessary, because one must be able to trace the paths traversed by the several rites and beliefs which have been arrested, before the religion of any age can be placed in its proper historical perspective. Unfortunately the sources do not permit us to do this for our period. The Old Testament, it is true, covers this period, and its writers frequently condemn the worship which they regard as contrary to that of their national God. But the Old Testament brings with it many serious problems, and, for several reasons, it is preferable to approach the subject from external and contemporary evidence. Although its incompleteness has naturally restricted our treatment, the aim has been to describe, in as self-contained a form as possible, the general religious conditions to which this evidence points, and to indicate rather more incidentally its bearing upon the numerous questions which are outside the scope of the following pages.

Survey of Period and Sources.—Many different elements must have coalesced in the history of Palestinian culture from the days of the early palaeolithic and neolithic inhabitants. It is with no rudimentary people that we are concerned, but with one acquainted with bronze and exposed to the surrounding civilisations. The First Babylonian Dynasty, not to ascend further, brings with it evidence for relations between Babylonia and the Mediterranean coast-lands, and intercourse between Egypt and Palestine dates from before the invasion of the Hyksos.[1] With the expulsion of these invaders (about 1580 B.C.), the monarchs of Egypt enter upon their great campaigns in Western Asia, and Palestine comes before us in the clear light of history. The Egyptian records of the Eighteenth to Twentieth Dynasties furnish valuable information on the history of our period. Babylonia and Assyria lie in the background, and the rival parties are the kingdom of the Nile and the non-Semitic peoples of North Syria and Asia Minor ('Hittites') whose influence can probably be traced as far south as Jerusalem. Under Thutmose III. (fifteenth century) Egypt became the queen of the known world and the meeting-place of its trade and culture. But the northern peoples only awaited their opportunity, and fresh campaigns were necessary before Amenhotep III. (about 1400 B.C.) again secured the supremacy of Egypt. His successor, the idealist Amenhotep IV. (or Ikhnaton), is renowned for his temporary religious reform, and, at a time when Egypt's king was almost universally recognised, he established in Egypt what was practically a universal god. Meanwhile, amid internal confusion in Egypt, Hittites pressed downwards from Asia Minor, seriously weakening the earlier Hittite kingdom of Mitanni (North Syria and Mesopotamia). The cuneiform tablets discovered in 1887 at El-Amarna in Middle Egypt contain a portion of the diplomatic correspondence between Western Asia (from Babylonia to Cyprus) and the two Amenhoteps, and a few tablets in the same script and of about the same age have since been unearthed at Lachish and Taanach. It is at this age that we meet with the restless Khabiri, a name which suggests a connection with that of the 'Hebrews.' The progress of this later Hittite invasion cannot be clearly traced; at all events, Sety I. (Sethos, about 1320 B.C.) was obliged to recommence the work of his predecessors, but recovered little more than Palestine. Ramses II., after much fighting, was able to conclude a treaty with the Hittites (about 1290), the Egyptian version of which is now being supplemented by the Hittite records of the proceedings. Nevertheless, his successor, Merneptah, claims conquests extending from Gezer to the Hittites, and among those who 'salaamed' (lit. said 'peace') he includes the people (or tribe) Israel.

[1] For approximate dates, see the Chronological Table.

The active intercourse with the Aegean Isles during this age can be traced from Asia Minor to Egypt (notably at El-Amarna), and movements in the Levant had accompanied the pressure southwards from Asia Minor in the time of the Amenhoteps. A similar combination was defeated by Ramses III. (about 1200); among its constituents the Philistines may doubtless be recognised. But Egypt, now in the Twentieth Dynasty, was fast losing its old strength, and the internal history of Palestine is far from clear. Apart from the sudden extension of the Assyrian empire to the Mediterranean under Tiglath-pileser I. (about 1100 B.C.), no one great power, so far as is known, could claim supremacy over the west; and our period comes to an end at a time when Palestine, according to the Israelite historians, was laying the foundation of its independent monarchy.

Palestine has always been open to the roaming tribes from Arabia and the Syrian desert, tribes characteristically opposed to the inveterate practices of settled agricultural life. Arabia, however, possessed seats of culture, though their bearing upon our period cannot yet be safely estimated. But a temple with an old-established and contemporary cult, half Egyptian and half Semitic, has been recovered by Professor Petrie at