At all events the Tell-el-Amarna tablets have overthrown the primary foundation on which much of this criticism was built, and have proved that the populations of Palestine, among whom the Israelites settled, and whose culture they inherited, were as literary as the inhabitants of Egypt or Babylonia. But apart from such side-lights as these upon ancient history, the discovery of the Tell-el-Amarna tablets has a lesson for us of momentous interest. The collection cannot be the only one of its kind. Elsewhere, in Palestine and Syria as well as in Egypt, similar collections must still be lying under the soil. Burnt clay is not injured by rain and moisture, and even the climate of Palestine will have preserved uninjured its libraries of clay. Such libraries must still be awaiting the spade of the excavator on the sites of places like Gaza, or others whose remains are buried under the lofty mounds of Southern Judea. Kirjath-Sepher must have been the seat of a famous library, consisting mainly, if not altogether, of clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform characters. As the city also bore the name of Debir, or “Sanctuary,” we may conclude that the tablets were stored in its chief temple, like the libraries of Assyria and Babylonia. When such relics of the past have been disinterred--as they will be if they are properly searched for--we shall know how the people of Canaan lived in the days of the Patriarchs, and how their Hebrew conquerors established themselves among them in the days when, as yet, there was no king in Israel. [The information contained in this section is derived almost exclusively from the writings of Dr A. H. Sayce, who has taken a chief part in England in the decipherment of the Tell-el-Amarna inscriptions. See “Proc. Soc. Bib. Arch.” “Records of the Past.” New Series, vols, ii., iii., iv., and v.; “Victoria Institute Annual Address, 1889.” See additional facts in the _Contemporary Review_, Dec. 1890, and opinions in Naville’s _Bubastis_. For later excavations at Tell-el-Amarna, by Mr Flinders Petrie, see the _Academy_, 9th April 1892. For a suggestion by Conder that the tablets are in the Phœnician or Amorite language and writing of that time, see _Quarterly Statement_, July 1891.] 6. _Israel in Egypt._