insertion of a new volume into the history of the ancient world, by the revelation of the great Hittite empire, the rival of Egypt and Assyria, but of which the very existence had been forgotten. The discovery has shed new light upon several hitherto obscure allusions in the Old Testament. Attention was first drawn to the Hittites by the discovery in Egypt of ample records of the campaigns of the Pharaoh of the oppression, Rameses II., against their kingdom, their defeat at their capital, Kadesh, and a subsequent treaty. No further light, however, was thrown on their history, though numbers of inscriptions in a hieroglyphic character, still unread, had been found at Hamath, until four years ago Professor Sayce discovered that from Lydia to Cappadocia and Lycaonia Hittite sculptures and inscriptions abounded, identical in type with those of Northern Syria. Only three years ago, in 1881, Captain Conder discovered and indisputably fixed the site of Kadesh, still retaining its name, the Cadytis of Herodotus, on the Orontes, a few miles south of Hums. We now know also the other Hittite capital, Carchemish, on the Euphrates, the Hierapolis of the Greeks. For upwards of six hundred years this great nation struggled on equal terms and held its own against its rivals on either side, Egypt and Assyria, till the capture of Carchemish by Sargon of Assyria, in B.C. 717. This exhumed empire casts more light on Old Testament history than might at first sight appear. We find that the Hittites of Southern Judah, in and round Hebron, were but a colony left there when the nation formed a principal part of the Hyksos invasion of Egypt. How natural now the otherwise apparently pointless and needless remark, "Now Hebron was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt," for Zoan, i.e., S'an, was the capital of the Hittite or Hyksos dynasty, and we learn that the Hittites founded Hebron on their way to Egypt. We now see that Abraham's friend, the courteous Ephron, belonged to a civilised and literary nation, whose character is illustrated by one of their towns being called "Kirjath-Sepher," or "Book-town." We know why the traitor who betrayed Bethel fled for safety to the land of the Hittites, i.e., to the Northern kingdom, whose frontier city was Hamath, on the furthest border of the Land of Promise. We see that Solomon in purchasing horses from Egypt, which he supplied to the kings of the Hittites, was providing for his northern ally. We understand the panic which seized. the Syrian host besieging Samaria, under the impression that the Hittite. forces were marching to the relief of the beleagured capital of Israel; for the Turanian Hittites were the hereditary rivals and foes of Semitic Aram, whose powerful and dangerous neighbours they continued to be, and therefore the natural allies of Israel. We see now why David, after the conquest of Syria (Aram), at once had made alliance with the Hittite King of Hamath, an alliance which lasted till Hamath was subdued by Assyria. It was only a common danger which at last united Syria and the Hittite before the fall of Carchemish. Thus we see how the recovery of the Hittite history gives force and point to the hitherto unnoticed or perplexing allusions of the Israelite annals. We now understand that when Josiah mustered the forces of Judah to resist Pharaoh Necho at Megiddo, on his way to attack Carchemish, he was impelled by the historic ties, which from David downwards had bound Judah with Northern Syria. Probably the friendship of Abraham with the sons of

Heth had even an earlier origin than the time of his sojourn at Mamre. Standing not very long ago on the top of the vast mound of Carchemish, overhanging a bend of the Euphrates, I could detect on the southeastern horizon the outline of the vast and rich plains of Harran, and while there, I saw a party of Bedouins cross the river. Even so high up the Euphrates is a mighty river, and I know of no spot further down its course where its turbid and eddying current can be crossed as at Carchemish, which completely commands the passage. The Arabs crossed from the other side in a primitive style. Their goats, asses, and cows were tied together in single file. The leader mounted an inflated hide, on which he paddled himself, with the line of animals attached, down stream, till, taking advantage of the bend, he landed his convoy about a mile down the river on my side. Other files followed, with women sitting astride behind them, or children bound round their shoulders. I went to meet them, and enquiring whence they were, was told they had come across from Harran in quest of fresh pasturage. So crossed Abraham from Harran; so crossed Jacob with wives, wealth, and cattle, doubtless at this very spot. But no one could have made the passage, unless on friendly terms with the holders of the great Hittite city, then the eastern key of Syria. Even now we are but on the threshhold of Hittite history. Startling as are the results, we have hardly begun to spell out its first chapter. One little silver boss with a bilingual inscription in Hittite and cuneiform, is all the key which Professor Sayce has yet recovered to enable him to determine a few characters and three or four names. There are still the sealed inscriptions in Asia Minor, of Karabet, and of Mount Sipylos, round the colossal figure of the goddess of Carchemish, which the Greeks believed to be the Niobe of Homer's age. Burckhardt noticed the inscriptions of Hamath. Captain Burton and the Palestine Exploration Fund have copied and published many more. I saw at Carchemish, in the now uncovered avenue, which led up to the great Hittite temple, huge basalt slabs, rivalling those of Nimroud, covered with those unknown characters. At the wretched town of Barîn, nine hours from Hamath, I found at least a dozen Hittite fragments built into the walls of the hovels; and north-east of Hamath there is scarce a village without some Hittite relics. We can only trust that ere long Sayce may be able to do for Heth what Layard, Botta, and Rawlinson have done for Assyria, or Schliemann for Troy and Mycena.

Scarcely less startling than the resurrection of the history of the Hittite empire, are the recent advances in our knowledge of the topography of Lower Egypt, the Egypt of the exodus. For these we are chiefly indebted to the Egypt Exploration Fund and M. Naville, who has published the result of his researches in the Revue Chrétienne, and the "Biblical Archæological Transactions." These were set forth by Mr. Tomkins in detail before the Reading Congress. Egyptian history, as now unfolded, has explained to us almost every difficulty in connection with the exodus. We now understand why the Pharaohs of the Patriarchs were their friends, for the chronology has proved that they were the Hyksos dynasty of the Hittite race. Then comes the 19th dynasty. It is strange that it should have been reserved for Europeans of the 19th century after Christ to be the first to look on

and handle the mummies of the Pharaohs of the 18th century before Christ. Yet such is the case. At Deir el Bahri, in the mountains west of Thebes, have been discovered a hidden store of royal mummies ranging through 700 years, from the Shepherd Kings downwards, hastily placed there, perhaps, by some loving loyal hands, to save them from desecration by an irreverent Cambyses, or some other profaner of sepulchres. Of many the superb cenotaphs had long been known, rifled we know not when. The inscriptions round these mummies have decided many points of chronology. Among the features on which we may gaze, are those of Rameses II., the Pharaoh of the oppression, but not on those of his son. Most of these kings, however, are apart from Israelite history. I may recall to your recollection, however, the recent discoveries in the Delta. M. Naville has laid bare the enclosure of about twelve acres, and the remains of the temple of Pe-tum, the Pithom of Exodus i. 11, built by the children of Israel for Pharaoh. In it had been found a sculptured group of Rameses II., between two divinities, and he is proved to have been its builder. On its site is the now deserted Arab village of Tel el Maskhutah, and close by is the bed of the old canal of the Pharaohs, which supplied the store city with water. There is an enclosure 200 yards square, filled by a honeycomb of solidly built square chambers, roofless, but without either door or gate of any kind. But on the top of the walls are niches, showing that beams have rested there, and that above them were dwellings, from which they must have been entered by trap-doors. Here, then, we have one of the store cities built for Pharaoh, for these chambers can have been nothing else but granaries. They are unique. Nothing else resembling them has been found in Egypt. But this is not all. Some portions are built of brick made with straw, after the usual fashion, some with chopped reed, as the "stubble" of the Bible should be more correctly rendered, and others, the higher tiers, with dried mud, without even reeds. They are very large, well squared, and all laid with mortar, not usual in such buildings. What a living commentary on the words'They made their lives bitter with hard bondage in morter, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field." The superincumbent Greek and Roman inscriptions show that the place was Heroopolis, Erocastra, the spot where the Septuagint tells us Joseph met his father; but further, the inscriptions prove that, like other cities, it had its civil as well as its sacred name, and that the civil name, mentioned twenty-two times in the inscription, was Thuku or Succoth, within which Pithom, the sacred city, was situate. Burgsch had already shown the identity of Thuku with Succoth. Thus we have definitely fixed the first encampment of Israel as they went out of Egypt, very near the battle-field of Tel el Kebir. Unfortunately the place was formerly identified with Rameses, and the railway station is therefore called Ramsis. But much more remains to be done. S'an with its vast heaps, the Zoan of the Bible, awaits the explorer's spade, and Rameses with its store chambers remains to be identified. One fact is already clear, that it could not have been in the Serbonian bog, but in the waters of the sea, that Pharaoh's host perished. The Israelites could scarcely have marched northwards, and then doubled back, but Succoth being fixed, Etham, the next station, was "in the edge of the wilderness," as we are told, and, therefore,

probably just at the north end of the Bitter Lakes. The further route of the Israelites, as traced by the Rev. F. W. Holland and Professor Palmer-both men whose loss in the field of Exodus Topography is irreparable has been brought already before Congresses, and I need scarcely remind you of the identification of Jebel Mûsa, as Sinai, of Rephidim, of the marvellous discovery of Kibroth Hattaavah, the Erweis el Ebeirig of the Arabs, with the stone heaps, forming the graves of them that lusted, surrounding a vast camp that extended for miles, differing in its arrangements from any others known in Arabia, with hearth-stones still showing the action of fire, and charcoal beneath in great abundance. Here and there were large enclosures, marking the camp of some person more important than the rest. Exactly a day's journey further on, Palmer and Holland discovered the wells and romantic oasis of Ain Hudherah, the Arabic equivalent of Hazeroth. The Arabs on the spot have a tradition that Erweis el Ebeirig are those of a vast pilgrim caravan, who, in remote ages, pitched here on their way to Hazeroth, and were afterwards lost in the desert of the Tih. The tradition cannot apply to any modern Hadj caravan, for such could never have found its way here, while the very word "Tîh," the Arabic name for the wilderness north of Sinai, means, "lost their way." To pass on to the end of the 40 years' wandering. The discovery by Mr. Rowlands, of Kadesh Barnea, in Ain Gadis, so far to the south of Judah, and his renewed visit to the spot last year, have cleared away all uncertainties on that part of the topography; and the Pass of Akrabbim, the mountains of the Amorites, the vineyards of Eschol, Zephath, and Hormah, none of these are now mere traditional names. but actual recognised sites, where the march of Israel can be most distinctly traced. The labyrinth of valleys, slopes, roads, and hilly country in the district north of the desert of Tih, and just south of the Ain Gadis, a region never, till now, trodden by Europeans, solves the difficulties connected with the protracted sojourn of a vast host for many years in this area. One theory, research, whether in Mesopotamia, Syria, Arabia, or Egypt, renders more untenable every day, viz., that which would resolve the individual men and events of sacred primitive history into myths and legends. Everywhere the stones cry out. Each fresh explanation attests or illustrates an incident the more confirmatory, often from its very triviality. The Divine reproach on the rejectors of Christ becomes year by year more scathing, "If ye believe not Moses' writings, how shall ye believe My Words?" If the great events, beyond ordinary annals, as the sequence of creation, the fall, the flood, the dispersion, recorded alike in the Mosaic writings, on the Akkadian cylinders, and sometimes on the Egyptian monuments, are to be explained, as intended by their recorders, to give us figurative descriptions of natural phenomena, we can only say, with George Smith, "If this were true, the myth would have taken to create it, a genius almost as great as that of the philosophers who explain it."

And if chronological difficulties still remain, and genealogies are compressed, and these, let us remember, are all prior to the time of Abraham-when Moses was supernaturally inspired dimly to sketch the great events and epochs of a far reaching past, those great epochs towered one behind the other, as the traveller on the plains of India sees hundreds of miles away the peaks of the great Himalayan range

close array, rising one behind the other, and his eye marks each in succession, without taking note of the vast plains and wide uplands that intervene, hidden and buried between each; it is beneath the standpoint of our faith to measure inspiration by the doubtful position of a dot or a point in the Hebrew numerals, or to apply the cold bald prosaic precision of Western criticism to its poetry, and to the figurative expressions, and vivid metaphors which are the natural outcome of Oriental thought.

PROFESSOR HULL, LL.D., F.R.S.

HAVING been invited to offer some observations on the bearing of recent research on the topography of the Old and New Testament Scriptures, I gladly avail myself of the opportunity of bearing testimony, as far as my own limited observation extends, to the accuracy of the Bible narrative; and for this opportunity I am indebted to the Executive Committee of that excellent Society which has done so much in furtherance of our knowledge of Bible lands, namely, the Palestine Exploration Society, which is represented at this Congress by several of its warmest supporters and fellow-workers.

It seems to me I should best meet the views of the Congress if I select three or four special examples taken along the route of the expedition sent out by the Society under my charge, and these I must be excused for dealing with somewhat concisely, owing to the limit of time allotted to me. I select, therefore,

1. The Passage of the Red Sea by the Israelites under Moses.

2. The Giving of the Law from Mount Sinai.

3. The Position of Kadesh Barnea and Mount Hor.

4. The Site of Calvary.

Making three illustrations from the Old Testament, and one from the New.

1. The Passage of the Red Sea by the Israelites.-From the earliest period of history Egypt was connected with Asia by a narrow neck of land occuping a position to the north of the present Great Bitter Lake. Over this neck lay the road connecting the capital of the Pharaohs at Tanis, or Zoan, with the East by way of Philistia on the one hand, or by the way of Shur, or finally by the way of Elath, at the head of the Elanitic Gulf.

By the first of these roads, leading into Philistia, the Israelities could have reached the Promised Land within the shortest time; but, enfeebled and dispirited by long captivity, they were forbidden to face the warlike inhabitants of Philistia; and on reaching the neck they were ordered by the Lord to turn southwards, and in this direction they continued their march till they found themselves confronted by the sterile mountain range of Jabel Attaka-flanked by the waters of the Red Sea on the east, and pursued by the army of Pharaoh on the north and west. That the place of the passage called "Pi-hahiroth before Baal-Zephon" was in the neighbourhood of the present town of Suez, at the head of the Gulf, there can be little doubt. The locality, as suggested by Dean Stanley, was probably in the vicinity of Ajrûd, the halting-place of the Mecca