Serabit el-Khadem in the Sinaitic Peninsula, and the archæological evidence frequently illustrates the results of the excavations in Palestine. Excavations have been undertaken at Tell el-Hesy (Lachish), at various sites in the lowlands of Judah (including Tell es-Sāfy, perhaps Gath), at Gezer, Taanach, and Tell el-Mutesellim (Megiddo), and, within the last few months, at Jericho. Much of the evidence can be roughly dated, and fortunately the age already illuminated by the Amarna tablets can be recognised. Its culture associates it with North Syria and Asia Minor, and reveals signs of intercourse with the Aegean Isles; but, as a whole, it is the result of a gradual development, which extends without abrupt gaps to the time of the Hebrew monarchy and beyond. Chronological dividing-lines cannot yet be drawn, and consequently the archæological evidence which illustrates the 'Amarna' age is not characteristic of that age alone.

The Land and People.—For practical purposes a distinction between Palestine and Syria is unnecessary, apart from the political results of their contiguity to Egypt and Asia Minor respectively. Egypt at the height of its power was a vast empire of unprecedented wealth and splendour, and the imported works of art or the descriptions of the spoils of war speak eloquently of the stage which material culture had reached throughout Western Asia. Even the small townships of Palestine and Syria—the average city was a small fortified site surrounded by dwellings, sometimes with an outer wall—could furnish rich booty of suits of armour, elegant furniture, and articles of gold and silver. The pottery shows some little taste, music was enjoyed, and a great tunnel hewn out of the rock at Gezer is proof of enterprise and skill. The agricultural wealth of the land was famous. Thutmose III. found grain 'more plentiful than the sand of the shore'; and an earlier and more peaceful visitor to N. Syria, Sinuhe (about 2000 B.C.), speaks of the wine more plentiful than water, copious honey, abundance of oil, all kinds of fruits, cereals, and numberless cattle. Sinuhe was welcomed by a sheikh who gave him his eldest daughter and allowed him to choose a landed possession. Life was simpler and less civilised than in Egypt, but not without excitement. He led the tribesmen to war, raiding pastures and wells, capturing the cattle, ravaging the hostile districts. Indeed, 'lions and Asiatics' were the familiar terror of Egyptian travellers, and the turbulence of the petty chieftains, whose intrigues and rivalries swell the Amarna letters, made any combined action among themselves exceptional and transitory. We gather from these letters that foreign envoys were provided with passports or credentials addressed to the 'Kings of Canaan,' to ensure their speedy and safe passage as they traversed the areas of the different local authorities. Such royal commissioners are already met with in the time of Sinuhe.

Egyptian monuments depict the people with a strongly marked Semitic physiognomy, and that physical resemblance to the modern native which the discovery of skeletons has since endorsed. We can mark their dark olive complexion; the men with pointed beards and with thick bushy hair, which is sometimes anointed, and the women with tresses waving loosely over their shoulders. The slender maidens were admired and sought after by the Egyptians, and later (in the Nineteenth Dynasty) we find the men in request as gardeners and artisans, and some even hold high positions in the administration of Egypt. The script and language of Babylonia were still in use in the fifteenth century, although the supremacy of that land belonged to the past; they were used in correspondence between Western Asia and Egypt, also among the Hittites, and even between the chieftains of Palestine. Apart from the tablets found at Lachish and Taanach, several were unearthed at Jericho, uninscribed and ready for use. But the native language in Palestine and Syria was one which stands in the closest relation to the classical Hebrew of the Old Testament, and it differed only dialectically from the Moabite inscription of Mesha (about 850 B.C.), the somewhat later Hamathite record of Ben-hadad's defeat, and the Phoenician inscriptions.

The general stock of ideas, too, was wholly in accord with Semitic, or rather, Oriental thought, and the people naturally shared the paradoxical characteristics of the old Oriental world:—a simplicity and narrowness of thought, intensity, fanaticism, and even ferocity.[2] To these must be added a keen imagination, necessarily quickened by the wonderful variety of Palestinian scenery, which ranges from rugged and forbidding deserts to enchanting valleys and forests. The life of the people depended upon the soil and the agricultural wealth, and these depended upon a climate of marked contrasts, which is found in some parts (e.g. the lower Jordan valley) to be productive of physical and moral enervation. In a word, the land is one whose religion cannot be understood without an attentive regard to those factors which were unalterable, and to those specific external influences which were focussed upon it in the entire course of the Second Millennium B.C. We touch the land at a particular period in the course of its very lengthy history; it is not the beginnings of its religion, but the stage it had reached, which concerns us.

[2] See Th. Nöldeke, Sketches from Eastern History (London, 1892), chap. i., 'Some Characteristics of the Semitic Race.'

CHAPTER II

SACRED SITES

The Sanctuary of Gezer.—Of the excavations in Palestine none have been so prolific or so fully described as those undertaken by Mr. Macalister on behalf of the Palestine Exploration Fund at Gezer. This ancient site lies about eighteen miles W.N.W. of Jerusalem, and, between its two knolls, on a commanding position, one of the most striking which Palestine can offer, were found the remains of a sanctuary whose history must have extended over several centuries. Gezer itself has thrown the strongest light upon the religion of the land, and a brief description of its now famous 'high-place' will form a convenient introduction to the cult and ritual of the period.

Looking eastwards we face eight rough monoliths, which stretch in a slightly concave line, about 75 feet in length, from north to south. They are erected upon a platform of stones about 8 feet wide; they vary from 5-½ ft. to 10 ft. in height, and have uniformly a fairer surface on the western (front) than on the eastern side. Number 1, on the extreme right, is the largest (10 ft. 2 in. high, and 4 ft. 7 in. by 2 ft. 6 in.). Next (No. 2), stands the smallest (5 ft. 5 in. high, 1 ft. 2 in. by 1 ft. 9 in.), whose pointed top with polished spots on the surface speaks of the reverent anointing, stroking and kissing which holy stones still enjoy at the present day. No. 7, the last but one on our extreme left, is of a limestone found around Jerusalem and in other districts, but not in the neighbourhood of Gezer. Under what circumstances this stone was brought hither can only be conjectured (see p.