We now know, however, that the latter name is not quite correct. The Massoretic punctuation has to be emended, and we must read Kirjath-Sopher, "the city of the Scribe(s)," instead of Kirjath-Sepher, "the city of Book(s)." It is an Egyptian papyrus which has given us the exact name. In the time of Ramses II. an Egyptian scribe composed a sarcastic account of the misadventures met with by a tourist in Palestine--commonly known as _The Travels of a Mohar_--and in this mention is made of two adjoining towns in Southern Palestine called Kirjath-Anab and Beth-Sopher. In the Book of Joshua the towns of Anab and Kirjath-Sepher are similarly associated together, and it is plain, therefore, as Dr. W. Max Müller has remarked, that the Egyptian writer has interchanged the equivalent terms Kirjath, "city," and Beth, "house." He ought to have written Beth-Anab and Kirjath-Sopher. But he has given us the true form of the latter name, and as he has added to the word _Sopher_ the determinative of "writing," he has further put beyond question the real meaning of the name. The city must have been one of those centres of Canaanitish learning, where, as in the libraries of Babylonia and Assyria, a large body of scribes was kept constantly at work. The language employed in the cuneiform documents was almost always that of Babylonia, which had become the common speech of diplomacy and educated society. But at times the native language of the country was also employed, and one or two examples of it have been preserved. The legends and traditions of Babylonia served as text-books for the student, and doubtless Babylonian history was carried to the West as well. The account of Chedor-laomer's campaign might have been derived in this way from the clay-books of ancient Babylonia. Babylonian theology, too, made its way to the West, and has left records of itself in the map of Canaan. In the names of Canaanitish towns and villages the names of Babylonian deities frequently recur. Rimmon or Hadad, the god of the air, whom the Syrians identified with the Sun-god, Nebo, the god of prophecy, the interpreter of the will of Bel-Merodach, Anu, the god of the sky, and Anat, his consort, all alike meet us in the names sometimes of places, sometimes of persons. Mr. Tomkins is probably right in seeing even in Beth-lehem the name of the primeval Chaldæan deity Lakhmu. The Canaanitish Moloch is the Babylonian Malik, and Dagon was one of the oldest of Chaldæan divinities and the associate of Anu. We have seen how ready Ebed-Tob was to identify the god he worshipped with the Babylonian Nin-ip, and among the Canaanites mentioned in the letters of Tel el-Amarna there is more than one whose name is compounded with that of a Babylonian god.