nts of his reform either slain or driven
into exile. The vengeance executed upon them was national as well as
religious. It meant not only a restoration of the national faith, but
also the restoration of the native Egyptian to the government of his
country. The feelings which inspired it were similar to those which
underlay the movement of Arabi in our own time, and there was no English
army to stand in the way of its success. The rise of the nineteenth
dynasty represents the triumph of the national cause.

The cuneiform letters of Tel el-Amarna show that already before
Khu-n-Aten's death his empire and power were breaking up. Letter after
letter is sent to him from the governors in Canaan with urgent requests
for troops. The Hittites were attacking the empire in the north, and
rebels were overthrowing it within. "If auxiliaries come this year,"
writes Ebed-Tob of Jerusalem, "the provinces of the king my lord will be
preserved; but if no auxiliaries come the provinces of the king my lord
will be destroyed." To these entreaties no answer could be returned.
There was civil and religious war in Egypt itself, and the army was
needed to defend the Pharaoh at home.

The picture of Canaan presented to us by the Tel el-Amarna
correspondence has been supplemented by the discovery of Lachish. Five
years ago Prof. Flinders Petrie undertook to excavate for the Palestine
Exploration Fund in the lofty mound of Tel el-Hesi in Southern
Palestine. Tel el-Hesi stands midway between Gaza and Hebron on the edge
of the Judaean mountains, and overlooking a torrent stream. His
excavations resulted in the discovery of successive cities built one
upon the ruins of the other, and in the probability that the site was
that of Lachish. The excavations were resumed by Mr. Bliss in the
following year, and the probability was raised to practical certainty.
The lowest of the cities was the Lachish of the Amorite period, whose
crude brick walls, nearly twenty-nine feet in thickness, have been
brought to light, while its pottery has revealed to us for the first
time the characteristics of Amorite manufacture. The huge walls bear out
the testimony of the Israelitish spies, that the cities of the Amorites
were "great and walled up to heaven" (Deut. i. 28). They give
indications, however, that in spite of their strength the fortresses
they enclosed must have been captured more than once. Doubtless this was
during the age of the Egyptian wars in Canaan.