ke
inferential reference to the Hebrews, and the marvellous collection of
letters of the XVIIIth dynasty found at Tel el-Amarna--letters to which
we shall refer later--have the utmost importance as proving a possible
early date for the Mosaic accounts. But such inferences as these are but
a vague return for the labour expended, and an almost cruelly inadequate
response to seemingly well-founded expectations.

When we turn to the field of Babylonian and Assyrian archaeology,
however, the case is very different. Here we have documents in abundance
that deal specifically with events more or less referred to in the
Bible. The records of kings whose names hitherto were known to us only
through Bible references have been found in the ruins of Nineveh and
Babylon, and personages hitherto but shadowy now step forth as clearly
into the light of history as an Alexander or a Caesar. Moreover, the
newly discovered treasures deal with the beliefs of the people as well
as with their history proper. The story of the books now spoken of as
the "Creation" and "Deluge" tablets of the Assyrians, in the British
Museum, which were discovered in the ruins of Nineveh by Layard and by
George Smith, has been familiar to every one for a good many years. The
acute interest which they excited when George Smith deciphered their
contents in 1872 has to some extent abated, but this is only because
scholars are now pretty generally agreed as to their bearing on the
corresponding parts of Genesis. The particular tablets in question date
only from about the 7th century B.C., but it is agreed among
Assyriologists that they are copies of older texts current in Babylonia
for many centuries before, and it is obvious that the compilers of
Genesis had access to the Babylonian stories. In a word, the Hebrew
Genesis shows unequivocal evidence of Babylonian origin, but, in the
words of Professor Sayce, it is but "a paraphrase and not a
translation." However disconcerting such a revelation as this would have
been to the theologians of an elder day, the Bible scholars of our own
generation are able to regard it with entire composure.

From the standpoint of the historian even greater interest attaches to
the records of the Assyrian and Babylonian kings when compared with the
historical books of the Old Testament. For some centuries the
inhabitants of Palestine were subject to periodical attacks from the
warlike inhabitants of Mesopotamia, as even the most casual