The most valuable work of art yet met with is a bronze sword of precisely the same shape as one found in Assyria, which bears upon it the name of Hadad-nirari I. (B.C. 1330).[132] On the palæographical side the forms of the cuneiform characters used in Canaan go back to the script of the age of Khammu-rabi and his predecessors. From a purely Assyriological point of view, no regard being had to other considerations, I should date their introduction into Palestine about B.C. 2300. The chronology that would best harmonize the historical facts would thus be one which made the dominance of Egypt in Palestine under the Twelfth dynasty precede the Babylonian rule of the Khammu-rabi period. Against it is the negative evidence of archæological discovery, so few traces of this rule having been discovered in the course of the excavations. But neither in archæology nor in anything else is negative evidence of much value. At any rate, thanks to the decipherment of the cuneiform inscriptions, the main facts are clear. Canaan was once a province of the Babylonian Empire, and during the long period of time that this was the case it became permeated with the literary culture of Babylonia. The civilization which was partially destroyed by the Israelitish invasion had its roots in the valley of the Euphrates. Gezer, it is true, was one of the cities in which no visible break with the past was made by the irruption of the desert tribes. It escaped capture by the invaders, and it was only in the reign of Solomon, when the Israelites had already entered into the heritage of the old Canaanitish culture, that it was handed over by the king of Egypt to his Jewish son-in-law. But at Lachish the marks of the destruction of the town by Joshua are still visible. Above the ruins of the Amorite cities is a bed of ashes left by the charcoal-burners who squatted on the site before it was again rebuilt. Above the stratum of ashes all must be Israelitish, and the objects found in the remains of the cities that stand upon it testify accordingly to a complete change. No more cuneiform tablets are met with, and but few Egyptian scarabs; the pottery is different, and the “high place” has disappeared. The bowl and lamp, indeed, are still buried under the walls of the newly-built house, but the bones of sacrificed children which they once contained are replaced by sand. As the Israelitish power increased the old Babylonian influence necessarily lessened. When the cuneiform syllabary finally made way for the so-called Phœnician alphabet is still uncertain, but it was at all events before the days of Solomon. Already in the Amorite period the characters of the Kretan linear script discovered by Dr. Evans are found scratched on fragments of pottery, indicating that besides the cuneiform another form of writing was known; it may be that the Israelitish conquest, by destroying the centres of Canaanitish civilization and the schools of the scribes,