The six letters written to Egypt by the King of Jerusalem do not mention the name of the Pharaoh addressed, but, judging from those of other personages concerned, they seem to belong to an early period in this story of rebellion, though Canaan remained in a disturbed condition even as late as 1440 A. D., when Burnaburias of Babylon and Assur-uballid of Assyria--writing to Amenophis IV.--speak of interrupted communications and the robbery of caravans. The name of Jerusalem (_Uru-sa-limu_ or _U-ru-sa-limu_) has been read with certainty by Dr. Winckler, but the name of the Amorite king is variously rendered. It seems, however, to have probably belonged to the same class with that of Melchizedek, and of Adonizedek, the king killed by Joshua.[64] Jerusalem was being attacked by a people called _’Abiri_ or _Ḥabiri_, who destroyed all the Canaanite rulers at Ai, Ajalon, Lachish, and other places; and, since the period is that of the Hebrew Conquest under Joshua, according to the Bible, it is natural to identify these ’Abiri with the Hebrews, as proposed by Dr. Zimmern in Germany. It is true that scholars who follow the views of Lepsius[65] and of Brugsch, formed before any notice of Israel had been discovered in Egyptian monumental texts, have denied this identification. Lepsius argued that the city of Rameses, built by the Hebrews, could not have been so named before the time of Rameses II.; but as it is noticed even as early as the time of Jacob,[66] he was obliged to regard this allusion as an anachronism, which might equally apply to the passage on which he relied. Clearly, however, the allusion can only serve to date the age in which the story of Joseph, as we now have it, was written down together with the narrative of the Exodus. The conclusions of Lepsius--who preferred the libels of Tacitus, and those with which Josephus charges Manetho, to the chronological statements of the Bible--are quite destructive to Old Testament dates. Rameses, however, was the later name of Zoan, the city where the Hebrews dwelt in Egypt, while the site of Pithom--the other “store city” which they built for the Pharaoh--is still doubtful, though supposed by Dr. Naville to be the same as that of Succoth. Lepsius called Rameses II. the Pharaoh of the Oppression, and Mineptah, his son, the Pharaoh of the Exodus, though he ruled two centuries later than the time of Joshua. As, however, we now have a text by Mineptah, in which he notices Israel as being already in Palestine in the fifth year of his reign, it is impossible that the Exodus and the forty years in the desert could have coincided with this period of incipient Egyptian decay. We are left free to accept the new monumental evidence, which illustrates in so remarkable a manner the historic statements of the Book of Joshua.