The mention of the ‘goodly Babylonish garment’ takes us back to the time when Assyria had not as yet supplanted Babylonia in the west. For centuries Babylonia had been the home of weavers and embroiderers whose fabrics were famous all over the east. The cuneiform tablets contain long lists of articles of clothing, each of which had its own name; and, as we learn from the Tel el-Amarna correspondence, the merchants of Babylonia found a ready market for their goods in the cities of Canaan. The age of the Exodus marks the period when the old peaceful intercourse with Babylonia was coming to an end; alien peoples had barred the road across the Euphrates, and Babylon itself was about to fall into the hands of an Assyrian conqueror. Henceforth it was Assyria, and not Babylonia, whose name was known or feared in Palestine, and the writer of a later day would have spoken of the wares of Assyria rather than those of the Babylonians.[259] The destruction of Ai gave Joshua a foothold in the mountain of Ephraim. Then came the league with the Gibeonites, secured, so we are told, by craft. Modern criticism, with needless scepticism, has seen in the narrative merely a popular legend to account for the fact that the four cities which formed the western half of the future territory of Benjamin were laid under tribute, and not destroyed. But the extermination of the Canaanites was relative, not absolute; their utter destruction, like that of the Britons by the Saxon invaders, was the dream of a later day. As we have seen, the Hebrew occupation of Canaan was a slow and gradual process, and in the more important cities the older population remained to the end. Even the temple of Solomon was built on the threshing-floor of a Jebusite, and the heads of the prisoners which surmount the names of the places captured by Shishak in the south of Palestine are Amorite rather than Jewish. The Amorite population was still predominant there; and the fellahin of to-day, as has been pointed out by M. Clermont-Ganneau, are the lineal descendants of the old races.[260] Gibeon, Chephirah, Beeroth, and Kirjath-jearim are not the only cities of which we hear as having been made tributary. This was also the case with Megiddo and Taanach, Beth-shean, Dor, and Ibleam (Judg. i. 27), as well as with the chief cities in the territories of Zebulon and Naphtali (Judg. i. 30, 33); while, on the other hand, the tribe of Issachar became tributary to its Canaanitish neighbours (Gen. xlix. 15).[261] It is more profitable to exact tribute from a wealthy and industrious population than to exterminate it, as Mohammed found; and the near neighbourhood of the central sanctuaries of Israel, first at Shiloh, then at Jerusalem and Beth-el, afforded a special reason why the Gibeonites should be made ‘hewers of wood and drawers of water for the house of God.’