of old and is now a land of slaves, Lebanon, together with its southern slope, seems, despite of all other changes which time has wrought, still to produce the same indomitable lovers of freedom as it did thousands of years ago. Moreover a nation which kept strictly to the western side of the Jordan could secure its frontiers with tolerable efficiency, by defending the northern approaches and guarding the few fords of the Jordan, since in the south the desert afforded protection against an enemy.

2. But although separated from Egypt by an extensive desert, yet from the general position of surrounding nations, Canaan stands towards that country in a relation which has from the earliest times drawn upon it the weightiest consequences. For Egypt, an extraordinarily cultivated and highly fertile land, exercised upon the northern tribes a power of attraction greater, if possible, than that of Canaan, and, though the most distant, was the most alluring link in the chain of southern lands that attracted this migration. In prehistoric times a stream of nations poured down from the north upon Egypt, like those of Assyrians, Chaldeans, Persians, Greeks and Turks, who in later times approached it by the same route, and either tried to subjugate it or actually did subjugate it. This is proved in the prehistoric history of all these nations and languages,' and will presently be illustrated by an important instance occurring in the pre-Mosaic age. Palestine here lies in the way; and it is possible that many a tribe, intending to go to Egypt, may have remained in Palestine (as is said of Abraham, Gen. xx.), or may have been afterwards driven back upon Palestine (as happened to the Hyksos, and subsequently to Israel under Moses). As Palestine thus became the key of Egypt, it very early became necessary to the latter to keep her eyes on the former, and carefully watch her condition. A strong and united power in Palestine formed the best barrier between Egypt and the northern nations, and its friendship upon equal terms would be courted by Egypt, as actually took place during the reigns of David and Solomon. But when Palestine was weakened by internal discord, Egypt might for her own security begin to think of conquering either the whole of Palestine as far as Lebanon, or at least the fortresses and seaports on the south-west. This last case would especially occur when the ruling power in Egypt had its seat in the north of that country and practised navigation, as under Psammeti

See the second of my Sprachwissenschaftliche Abhandlungen (Göttingen, 1862), p. 74 sq.

chus and his successors, under the Tulunites, the Fatemites, Ajjubites, and the Mamelukes. Thus Palestine is always in some degree fettered to the fortunes of Egypt, and although Israel cherished against Egypt at times a deadly hatred, comparable only to the rancour of brother against brother, yet the inevitable tendencies of nations have always brought them back into a very intimate mutual relation. But when great empires were formed, too large to have their centre of gravity on this strip of coast, and obliged to fix it either in Africa or further towards the interior of Asia, Palestine was never able to maintain herself as a strong independent kingdom, and became a constant apple of discord between Asia and Africa.

3. It appears from all this, how by a combination of most various causes, this strip of coast became from the earliest times a meeting-place for the most diverse nationalities, and how one nation here pressed incessantly upon another, and not one, however small its territory might be, could long enjoy its power in peace. Let it not be supposed that this constant jostling of nations in and around Canaan ceased with the Israelite conquest, or even with the establishment of David's government. No doubt it was greater in the earlier times; but it continued after David, whenever the power of the dominant people was at all relaxed, and is traced down even into the Mohammedan times. The land also, notwithstanding its small extent, possesses such great diversities of aspect and site, and offers such numerous and manifold means of defence, that no one nation could ever easily root out all the others, as might happen in the valley of the Nile, or even reduce them to permanent subjection. Indeed the truth of this can be actually verified from observation of the perplexed relations of the different nationalities and faiths living there side by side at the present day. Any nation, therefore, which, amid this confusion within and danger without, tried to maintain its position with vigour, and compete with other civilised nations, would require the constant straining of all its resources both physical and mental, and even after its first victorious entrance into the land, would still have to pass through many various stages of development and elevation. Nowhere perhaps is the exhortation to constant watchfulness and improvement so powerfully prompted as here by the inexorable pressure of absolute want in the midst of abundance; and indeed the Prophets never hold out warnings of physical ills only, but of war and conquest too.'

In this respect Palestine might indeed be compared with the

For the case of David also, 2 Sam. xxiv. 13.

Caucasus (also a region of continent), where the narrow space is not less crowded with a medley of nations; and as in the earliest times the Caucasus must have been the meeting-place especially of the various Aryan nations, so Palestine was the great crossing-point for those of the Semitic stock. But in reference to civilisation Palestine was incomparably more favourably placed than the Caucasus, inasmuch as it lay on the coast of that sea on whose innumerable promontories and islands all the higher and freer forms of the life of the western nations had from early times manifested themselves, as those of the east upon the Ganges. It is an absurd idea that the Hebrews from living in Palestine were cut off from all brisk intercourse with distant nations. Any inclination to keep aloof from such intercourse, which might be observed in them in early times, sprang rather from the nature of their religion than from deliberate intention, and it was only because the Phoenicians had anticipated them that they long kept aloof from the coasting trade of the Mediterranean. Either with or against their own wish, they must inevitably have been drawn into the busy whirl of life surging around the Mediterranean Sea, especially in its eastern division. We can measure the extent of the knowledge of the position of other nations, early gained in this centre of three continents, by the short sketch of them given in Gen. x. And during the later ages of antiquity, when nations from the most distant parts of the earth, from Persia and India, from Greece and Egypt, exchanged their respective arts and culture, Palestine still formed the central point of transition and communication.

To sum up we now understand the possibility of the formation of nations forced by close contact with others, whether near or distant, constantly to carry on their own further development, and either soon to disappear, or else to conquer and perpetuate themselves. Such nations were not on this account necessarily remarkable for numbers. Even in our times multitude does not do so much as some fancy; but the earliest period of antiquity was an age when nations were not crowded together in such large loose masses, but lived one beside the other, like so many families, each retaining its own. sharply defined character and distinct culture; and when even the smallest tribe shut itself up in its own individuality, and relied solely on its own resources to attain whatever appeared to be its highest good. In this respect the petty nations of ancient Palestine exactly resemble the ancient states of Greece and Italy, and the modern ones of Switzerland and the Netherlands;

and just as Athens and Rome, with the smallest possible territory, could gain a place in the history of the world, so also could a nation of Palestine. Now two nations of Palestine, we know, above all others that met there, bore away this palm,— two nations so different that it is hard to imagine a stronger contrast, and even acting upon each other in virtue of this very contrast to intensify their divergence, yet both of them so constituted that the results of their endeavours became permanent, and among the most conspicuous fruits of the world's history.

III. MIXED NATIONALITY OF OLDEST INHABITANTS. We must therefore now view the land in reference to its earliest medley of inhabitants living there before, and continuing there during the period immediately following the immigration of Israel. The inherent difficulty of surveying such remote events is, indeed, here increased by the fact that we are restricted to very few and scattered notices of them in the Old Testament and elsewhere, and possess scarcely any writings of the pre-Mosaic age, with the exception of the passage Gen. xiv., the original form of which has been shown to have probably belonged to that age (see p. 52). But at all events these notices are from very different and in part extremely early, ages; and besides, as the very essence of such great national relations is to change only by slow degrees, we may be justified in drawing from the conditions continuing at a later period certain conclusions respecting remote times.'

1. In cases like this, the first enquiry naturally refers to the ABORIGINES, tribes of whose immigration the later inhabitants retained neither proof nor even the faintest recollection. Before their subjugation or expulsion by other victorious invaders, these Aborigines may have passed through many stages of fortune, forgotten as layer after layer of population flowed over this lowest and broadest stratum. Total expulsion, however, can rarely have befallen the original inhabitants: upon a strip of coast like Palestine,-the exit from whence was not easy to

The difficulties of this entire question are not removed by the method adopted by Movers (Das Phönikische Alterthum. i. p. 1-82, 1849), as will be hereafter pointed out in some important instances; see also Jahrb. der Bibl. Wiss., ii. p. 37 sqq. For a more accurate enquiry into the state of the Canaanites and other early races of the same region, we must await the com

pletion of the excavations now begun, since investigations on every spot promise greater thoroughness and certainty. See my Erklärung der grossen Phönikischen Inschrift von Sidon, Göttingen, 1856; and the results of E. Renan's Phoenician Journey of Discovery, which are gradually being made public.

a settled population, whether on account of the great attractions of its soil, or because its boundaries were formed by deserts, seas, the easily defended fords of the Jordan, and the mountainglens of the north. We are therefore justified in assuming that many relics of the primitive inhabitants must have been spared, consisting not merely in enslaved persons, but also in manners and traditions. For us, indeed, all such traces are almost erased, because the Israelitish invasion (as will soon be shown) belonged to a later time, when the earlier strata of population were so intermixed that it was no longer easy always to discriminate the earlier and the later inhabitants.

That in the very earliest age, long before the ancient migrations into Egypt (i.e. long before the time of the Hyksos), a more homogeneous group of nations established themselves in this land, is not only probable from the general relations among nations, but to be inferred also from more definite indications. A change in the name of a country, such as Seir, Edom or Esau, itself points to the successive rule of three distinct nations, whose chronological sequence we can in this case distinguish with certainty, as will soon be shown. What these names prove to have happened to the land on the south-eastern border of the Holy Land, and is most easy of demonstration in that instance, is evidently true of other cases occurring within the land itself. Further, all the nations which were settled in the land in historical times, some of which are known even from Biblical testimony to have come in from foreign parts, though differing widely in other respects, possessed a Semitic language, of which amid considerable dialectic varieties the fundamental elements were closely related. Now this is not conceivable, unless one original nation, possessing a distinctly marked character, had lived there, perhaps for a thousand years before the immigration of others, to whose language after-comers had

more

or less to conform. This original nation, moreover, doubtless already had its peculiar ideas, religious ceremonies, and customs, which more or less powerfully influenced subsequent immigrants; as the worship of the horned Astarte is known to have existed here from the earliest ages, and quite independently of the later Phoenicians. All these points will however be more fully discussed as we proceed.

At the time of the Israelite occupation these Aborigines had for many centuries been so completely subjugated, dispersed, and ground down, that but few remains of them were still

' Ashteroth Karnaim, Gen. xiv. 5,

Q