On the first, Hadad-sum is represented standing with
his hands uplifted before the Egyptian god Set, while behind him is the
god Resheph with a helmet on his head, a shield in one hand and a
battle-axe in the other. On the seal of Anniy, Set and Resheph again
make their appearance, but instead of the owner of the cylinder it is
the god Horus who stands between them.

When the cuneiform syllabary was superseded in Palestine by the
so-called Phoenician alphabet we do not know. The introduction of the
new script was due probably to the Hittite invasion, which separated the
Semites of the West from the Semites of the East. The Hittite occupation
of Carchemish blocked the high-road of Babylonian trade to the
Mediterranean, and when the sacred city of Kadesh on the Orontes fell
into Hittite hands it was inevitable that Hittite rather than Babylonian
influence would henceforth prevail in Canaan. However this may be, it
seems natural to suppose that the scribes of Zebulon referred to in the
Song of Deborah and Barak (Judges v. 14) wrote in the letters of the
Phoenician alphabet and not in the cuneiform characters of Babylonia. As
long, indeed, as the old libraries remained open and accessible, with
their stores of cuneiform literature, there must have been some who
could read them, but they would have been rather the older inhabitants
of the country than the alien conquerors from the desert. When the
Moabite Stone was engraved, it is clear from the forms of the letters
that the Phoenician alphabet had long been in use in the kingdom of
Mesha. The resemblance of these letters to those found in the earliest
of the Greek inscriptions makes it equally clear that the introduction
of the alphabet into the islands of the AEgean must have taken place at
no distant period from the age of the Moabite Stone. Such an
introduction, however, implies that the new alphabet had already taken
deep root among the merchants of Canaan, and driven out before it the
cumbrous syllabary of Chaldaea. It was in this alphabet that Hiram and
Solomon corresponded together, and it is probable that Moses made use of
it. We may even conjecture that the Israelitish settlement in Palestine
brought with it the gift of the "Phoenician" alphabet.

As we have already seen, the elements of Babylonian art were quickly
absorbed by the Canaanites. The seal-cylinder was imitated, at first
with but indifferent success, and such Babylonian ornamental designs as
the roset