[_Sources and Authorities_:--The _Times_ newspaper, 4th August 1881. The _Times_ newspaper, 25th June 1886. “Egyptian Mummies,” lecture by Sir Erasmus Wilson; Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1883.] 4. _Egyptians in Palestine before the Exodus._ When the tribes of Israel were preparing to pass over Jordan, they were told that they were going to possess nations greater and mightier than themselves, a people great and tall, whose cities were fenced up to heaven (Deut. ix. 1; i. 28). Of these early inhabitants of Palestine, the spies had reported that Amalek dwelt in the land of the South; the Hittite, the Jebusite, and the Amorite dwelt in the mountains, and the Canaanite dwelt by the sea and along by the side of Jordan (Num. xiii. 29). We have indeed an enumeration of seven nations dwelling in Palestine at this time, and a testimony to their might:--“The Hittite, the Girgashite, the Amorite, and the Canaanite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite, seven nations greater and mightier than thou.” (Deut. vii. 1). In these passages it is plainly implied that the peoples who occupied Palestine before the Israelitish invasion were in an advanced state of civilisation. Until lately we have known little or nothing about them, beyond the information which these Scripture passages afforded; but now at last the veil is beginning to lift. _The Hittites._ As there were seven “nations” in Canaan, and the land itself is no larger than Wales, it was long supposed that each of the “nations” was but a small tribe, and was too insignificant to make any figure in history. But we have lately learned that if this was the rule, the Hittites were an exception to it. They were a great people, or perhaps a great confederacy or empire, spread over a vast region in northern Syria and some of the adjacent countries. Their dominion extended more or less over Asia Minor, and the influence of their art and culture reached even into Greece. Their capital was Carchemish, on the Euphrates, the site of which city was discovered a few years ago by Mr Skene, English Consul at Aleppo, and again, two years later, by Mr George Smith, as he was returning from Assyria. The place is now called Jerablus. Another centre of Hittite power was Kadesh, on the Orontes, a city which appears to be referred to in the Bible, for it has been maintained that where Joab and the captains “came to the land of Tahtim-hodshi” (2 Sam. xxiv. 6), it should be rendered “the land of Kadesh of the Hittites,” this being the northern border of David’s kingdom at that time. A list of places in Palestine conquered by Thothmes III., and engraved on the walls of his temple at Karnac, includes the name of Kadesh. It is situated where the Orontes flows into the lake of Homs (still called the lake of Kadesh) and had been a sacred city of the Amorites before it was conquered by the Hittites about 1400 B.C. [Rev. H. G. Tomkins, in “Records of the Past.”