It is wonderful to find that in the fifteenth century before our era, active literary intercourse was carried on throughout the civilised world of Western Asia, between Babylonia and Egypt and the smaller states of Palestine, of Syria, of Mesopotamia, and even of Eastern Cappadocia. And this intercourse was carried on by means of the Babylonian language and the complicated Babylonian script. It implies that all over the civilised East there were libraries and schools, where the Babylonian language and literature were taught and learned. Babylonian in fact was as much the language of diplomacy and cultivated society as French has been in modern times, with the difference that whereas it does not take long to read French, the cuneiform syllabary required years of hard labour and attention before it could be acquired. There must surely have been a Babylonian conquest. In fact, Mr Theo. G. Pinches now finds, from a text of about B.C. 2115 to 2090, that Animisutana, king of Babylon at that time, was also king of Phœnicia among other places. [“Records of the Past” New Series, vol. v.] One of the facts which result most clearly from a study of the tablets is that, not only was a Semitic language the medium of literary intercourse between the Pharaoh of Egypt and his officers abroad, but that Semites held high and responsible posts in the Egyptian Court itself. Thus we find Dudu, or David, addressed by his son as “my lord,” and ranking apparently next to the monarch; and there are in the Egyptian National Collection not only letters written by officials with Egyptian names, like Khapi or Hapi (Apis), but with such Semitic names as Rib-Addu, Samu-Addu, Bu-Dadu (the Biblical Bedad) and Milkili (the Biblical Malchiel). A flood of light is thus poured upon a period of Egyptian history which is of high interest for the student of the Old Testament. In spite of the reticence of the Egyptian monuments, we can now see what was the meaning of the attempt of Amenophis IV. to supersede the ancestral religion of Egypt. The king was in all respects an Asiatic. His mother, who seems to have been a woman of strong character,--able to govern not only her son, but even her less pliable husband,--came from the region of the Euphrates, and brought with her Asiatic followers, Asiatic ideas, and an Asiatic form of faith. The court became Semitised. The favourites and officials of the Pharaoh, his officers in the field, his correspondents abroad, bore names which showed them to be of Canaanite and even of Israelitish origin. If Joseph and his brethren had found favour among the Hyksos princes of an earlier day, their descendants were likely to find equal favour at the court of “the heretic king.”