From various archæological considerations Mr. Macalister estimated that the diminutive cave-dwelling men lived at Gezer for about 500 years, from 3000 to 2500 B. C., when they were displaced by a Semitic people. =3. The Amorites.=--We are accustomed to call this Semitic people Amorites, and it is probable that this is right. About 2800 B. C., under a great king named Sargon,[85] a city of Babylonia called Uru, or Amurru,[86] and Agade conquered all of Babylonia. The dynasty founded by Sargon was Semitic and ruled Babylonia for 197 years.[87] Even before Sargon conquered Babylonia, Lugalzaggisi, King of Erech, had penetrated to the Mediterranean coast. Sargon and two of his successors, Naram-Sin and Shargali-sharri, carried their conquests to the Mediterranean lands. A seal of the last-mentioned king was found in Cyprus. It is probable that the coming of the Amorites began in the north with the conquests of these kings. To the east of the Lebanon the Princeton expedition found stone structures similar to Babylonian _Ziggurats_, which they attribute to the Amorites, and hold to indicate the prevalence of Babylonian influence in this region. It is probable that the Amorites slowly worked southward, occupying different cities as they went. Mr. Macalister’s estimate that they reached Gezer about 2500 B. C. is not, therefore, unreasonable, though they may have arrived there a century earlier than that. This was the beginning of that long intercourse with Babylonia which resulted in the employment of the Babylonian language and script for the purpose of expressing written thought in Palestine long after the Egyptians had conquered the country. This intercourse was the more natural because the Semites who came to Palestine were of the same race as those who were dominant in Babylonia. Meantime, the Egyptians had begun to take notice of Palestine. Uni, an officer of Pepi I of the sixth Egyptian dynasty, relates that he crossed the sea in ships to the back of the height of the ridge north of the “sand-dwellers” and punished the inhabitants.[88] This refers to the coast of Palestine in the neighborhood of the Philistine cities or Gezer. The time was between 2600 and 2570 B. C. Egypt was at this time only anxious to make her own borders secure; she had no desire to occupy this Asiatic land.