The cuneiform writing was in use up to within 100 years of the birth of Christ, and its use extended {72} from very far up in the north of Asia Minor to the Persian Gulf and away south-westward of the Red Sea in Upper Egypt. It is there found on some very important tablets of just about that greatest date in all Egyptian history, 1500. And it was in use for trading and correspondence from Elam on the eastern boundary of Babylonia, right to the Mediterranean Sea. Thus it was of far more general use in those old days than the picture-writing of the Egyptians. Probably it was far more convenient. Then, in its turn, it fell out of use because of the invention of a mode of writing more convenient still, and not unlike ours--from which, indeed, ours is taken. But that is "another story," as Rudyard Kipling says. Let us just take a look now and see what Abraham and his descendants were doing in this interval between their coming up from Ur, which was in the land of the Chaldee, in the south of Babylonia, and the year 1500 B.C. The story will not be long in the telling, because we know so little about it. What we do know is that they lived for many many years in the southern part of the country which, later on, was called Judah. We may imagine that they increased and multiplied, till they became a large and formidable tribe. It is thought that they stayed in this Southern Judah, leading a pastoral life, with sheep and cattle, for some 600 years. And then there came upon them a time of famine, when there was no food for their sheep or oxen and very little for themselves. But they lived right on the great road by which the traders and merchants travelled when they went from Egypt into Babylonia, or _vice versâ_, and it was told to them that "there is corn in Egypt." {73} You will remember that, about the corn in Egypt, from the story of Joseph and his brethren, as told in the Bible. And the end of that story, as you know, is that the whole tribe--all the children of Israel, as the Bible says--moved down into that "land of Goshen" which was in the north-east of Egypt. It was a country of rich land, lying low. Now, what are we to suppose was the reason that the Egyptians allowed these foreigners to come down, as they did, and settle on this land over which they claimed to rule? We may answer that question in this way. [Sidenote: The Shepherd Kings]