This fourth city at Gezer--the second since the Semites first settled there--has yielded objects which enable us to assign to it an approximate date. These objects are Egyptian, and belong to the age of the Twelfth dynasty. Many of them are scarabs, but there is also the tombstone of the Egyptian who was buried under the shadow of the Amorite sanctuary. Fragments of diorite and alabaster vases also occur, telling of trade with Egypt, and in the upper and later part of the stratum painted pottery makes its appearance similar to that met with in the corresponding stratum at Lachish. I shall have more to say about this painted pottery in the next chapter; here it is sufficient to state that it is related to the early painted pottery of the Ægean, but is itself of Hittite origin, and can be traced back to the Hittite centre in Cappadocia. The fourth city had a long existence. It lasted from the period of the Twelfth Egyptian dynasty to the middle of the Eighteenth. Then it was ruined by an enemy and its old wall partially destroyed--doubtless by Thothmes III. when he conquered Palestine (about B.C. 1480). Upon its ruins rose another Amorite town. A new city wall was built of larger circumference and greater strength; it measured fourteen feet in thickness, and the stones of which it was composed were large and well shaped. The houses erected on the _débris_ of the brick towers belonging to the old wall were filled with scarabs, beads, fragments of pottery and other objects contemporary with the reign of Amon-hotep III. (B.C. 1400). At Lachish the ruins of the third city were full of similar objects, and among them was a cuneiform tablet in which reference is made to the governor of Lachish mentioned in the Tel el-Amarna correspondence. At Taanach the Austrian excavators discovered an archive-chamber, the contents of which were of the same age. Taanach was merely a third-rate or fourth-rate town, but its shêkh possessed a fortified residence, in a subterranean chamber of which his official records and private correspondence were kept in a coffer of terra-cotta. They were all in the Babylonian language and script. Among them is a list of the number of men each landowner (?) was required to furnish for the local militia, and there are also the letters which passed between the shêkh and his friends about their private affairs. How little of an official character is to be found in these letters may be gathered from the following translation of one of them: “To Istar-yisur (writes) Guli-Hadad.--Live happily! May the gods grant health to yourself, your house and your sons! You have written to me about the money ... and behold I will give fifty pieces of silver, since this has not (yet) been done.--Again: Why have you sent your salutation here afresh? All you have heard there I have (already) learned through Bel-ram.--Again: If the finger of the goddess Asherat appears, let them announce (the omen) and observe (it), and you shall