Patriarchal PalestineSayce, A. H. (Archibald Henry)
History
Patriarchal Palestine
Sayce, A. H. (Archibald Henry)
Jews -- History -- To 953 B.C.; Palestine -- History
If the _Travels of a Mohar_ are a guide-book to the geography of
Palestine in the age of the nineteenth Egyptian dynasty, the lists of
places conquered by Thothmes III., and engraved by his orders on the
walls of his temple at Karnak, are a sort of atlas of Canaanite
geography in the age of the eighteenth dynasty. The name of each
locality is enclosed in a cartouche and surmounted by the head and
shoulders of a Canaanitish captive. The hair and eyes of the figures are
painted black or rather dark purple, while the skin is alternately red
and yellow. The yellow represents the olive tint of the Mediterranean
population, the red denotes the effects of sunburn. An examination of
the names contained in the cartouches makes it clear that they have been
derived from the memoranda made by the scribes who accompanied the army
of the Pharaoh in its campaigns. Sometimes the same name is repeated
twice, and not always in the same form. We may conclude, therefore, that
the memoranda had not always been made by the same reporter, and that
the compiler of the lists drew his materials from different sources. It
is further clear that the memoranda had been noted down in the cuneiform
characters of Babylonia and not in the hieroglyphs of Egypt. Thus, as we
have seen, the name of Beth-el is transcribed from its Babylonian form
of Bit-sa-ili, the Assyrian equivalent of the Hebrew Beth-el.
The names have been copied from the memoranda of the scribes in the
order in which they occurred, and without any regard to their relative
importance. While, therefore, insignificant villages are often noted,
the names of important cities are sometimes passed over. Descriptive
epithets, moreover, like _abel_ "meadow," _arets_ "land," _har_
"mountains," _'emeq_ "valley," _'ên_ "spring," are frequently treated as
if they were local names, and occupy separate cartouches. We must not,
consequently, expect to find in the lists any exhaustive catalogue of
Palestinian towns or even of the leading cities. They mark only the
lines of march taken by the army of Thothmes or by his scouts and
messengers.
Besides the Canaanitish lists there are also long lists of localities
conquered by the Pharaoh in Northern Syria. With these, however, we have
nothing to do. It is to the places in Canaan that our attention must at
present be confined. They are said to be situated in the country of the
Upper Lotan, or, as another list gives it, in the country of the Fenkhu.
In the time of Thothmes III. accordingly the land of the Upper Lotan and
the land of the Fenkhu were synonymous terms, and alike denoted what we
now call Palestine. In the word Fenkhu it is difficult not to see the
origin of the Greek Phoenix or "Phoenician."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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