There is, therefore, nothing antecedently improbable in the existence in Southern Palestine of Hittites of the genuine northern stock. But the name may also be due to the Assyrian use of it at the time when the narrative in the book of Genesis was written. The use of the term ‘Amorite’ in several passages of the Pentateuch is certainly of Babylonian origin, and takes us back to the age when all the natives of Palestine were alike included in it; it may be that the ‘Hittites’ of Hebron and Jerusalem owe their title to a similar adoption of a foreign term. If so, the Amorites and Hittites were equally one people; but whereas the name of ‘Amorite’ comes from Babylonia and indicates an earlier date for the sources of the narrative in which it occurs, the name of ‘Hittite’ points to Assyria and the Assyrian epoch of Asiatic history. Against this is the Babylonian colouring of the story of Abraham’s dealings with the children of Heth. During the last few years thousands of contract-tablets have been discovered in Babylonia which belong to the age of Abraham or to a still earlier period. And these tablets show that in the account of the purchase of the field of Machpelah we have a faithful picture of such transactions as they were conducted at the time in the cities of Babylonia. It reads, in fact, like one of the cuneiform documents which have been unearthed from Babylonian soil. It is conformed to the law and procedure of Babylonia as they were in the patriarchal age. At a later date the law and procedure were altered, and a narrative in which they are embodied must therefore go back to a pre-Mosaic antiquity. It must belong to the Babylonian and not to the Assyrian epoch. That the law and custom of Babylonia should have prevailed in Canaan is no longer surprising. The same contract-tablets which have revealed to us the commercial and social life of primitive Chaldæa have also shown us that colonies of ‘Amorite’ or Canaanitish merchants were settled in Babylonia, where they enjoyed numerous rights and privileges, and could acquire land and other property. There were special districts called ‘Amorite’ allotted to them, one of which was just outside the walls of the city of Sippara. They had judges of their own, and where disputes arose between themselves and the native Babylonians the case was tried before both the ‘Amorite’ and the native courts. These foreign settlers could act as witnesses in trials that concerned only Babylonians, and could even rise to high offices of state. It must be remembered, however, that the Babylonian kings claimed to be kings also of ‘the land of the Amorites,’ and that consequently the natives of Canaan were as much subjects of the rulers of Chaldæa as the Babylonians themselves.