nfluence of Babylon. We have seen that no
similar problem arises with regard to the legends of Egypt. At first
sight this may seem strange, for Egypt lay nearer than Babylon to
Palestine, and political and commercial intercourse was at least as
close. We have already noted how Egypt influenced Semitic art, and how
she offered an ideal, on the material side of her existence, which
was readily adopted by her smaller neighbours. Moreover, the Joseph
traditions in Genesis give a remarkably accurate picture of ancient
Egyptian life; and even the Egyptian proper names embedded in that
narrative may be paralleled with native Egyptian names than that to
which the traditions refer. Why then is it that the actual myths and
legends of Egypt concerning the origin of the world and its civilization
should have failed to impress the Hebrew mind, which, on the other hand,
was so responsive to those of Babylon?

One obvious answer would be, that it was Nebuchadnezzar II, and not
Necho, who carried the Jews captive. And we may readily admit that the
Captivity must have tended to perpetuate and intensify the effects of
any Babylonian influence that may have previously been felt. But I think
there is a wider and in that sense a better answer than that.

I do not propose to embark at this late hour on what ethnologists know
as the "Hamitic" problem. But it is a fact that many striking parallels
to Egyptian religious belief and practice have been traced among races
of the Sudan and East Africa. These are perhaps in part to be explained
as the result of contact and cultural inheritance. But at the same time
they are evidence of an African, but non-Negroid, substratum in the
religion of ancient Egypt. In spite of his proto-Semitic strain, the
ancient Egyptian himself never became a Semite. The Nile Valley, at
any rate until the Moslem conquest, was stronger than its invaders; it
received and moulded them to its own ideal. This quality was shared in
some degree by the Euphrates Valley. But Babylonia was not endowed with
Egypt's isolation; she was always open on the south and west to the
Arabian nomad, who at a far earlier period sealed her Semitic type.

To such racial division and affinity I think we may confidently trace
the influence exerted by Egypt and Babylon respectively upon Hebrew
tradition.

APPENDIX I

COMPARATIVE TABLE OF THE SUMERIAN, SEMITIC-BABYLONIAN,
HELLENIS