The importance of the Jebusites, who were, to all appearance, but a small tribe, lies in the circumstance, that their capital and stronghold, at the time the Israelites entered the Holy Land, was Jerusalem. In consequence of this, Jerusalem is mentioned, in one or two places (Jud. xix. 10; 1 Chron. xi. 4, 5, etc.), apparently poetically, under the name of Jebus, perhaps so called by the Jebusites because of its being the capital of their tribe. The original name of the city, however, as we know from Gen. xiv. and the Tel-el-Amarna tablets (see p. 239), was Uru-salim. When the Jebusites took possession of the city, however, is unknown, but in all probability neither Melchizedek nor Abdi-ṭâba belonged to the race. Apart from the references to this tribe in connection with Jerusalem, there is no indication as to its origin and race. The name of their ruler, Adoni-zedek, however, seems to show clearly that they were Semites, and we may suppose, with Driver, that they were Canaanites (Hastings, _Dict. of the Bible_, s.v.). It is apparently one of the tribes of which the Babylonian and Assyrian inscriptions know nothing as a body, but the name of Yabušu, which would be the old form of Jebus, occurs in a contract tablet of the time of the first dynasty of Babylon (about 2200 B.C.), and, if really the name of the tribe, as it would seem to be, confirms its antiquity, as indicated by the references to it in Genesis. It is not improbable that future discoveries will give us more information concerning this tribe, interesting principally on account of its having come into contact with the Jews. Girgashites. This nation, descended from the fifth son of Canaan, seems to have inhabited the tract on the western bank of the Jordan, and on that account was not within easy reach of the Babylonians and Assyrians. The name, it is thought, is closely connected with that of Gergesa, where Christ healed the demoniac, and allowed the evil spirits to enter into the herd of swine which then ran down the slope into the sea. This Gergesa has, in its turn, been identified with Kersa, a ruined town near the mouth of the Wady Samakh. If this be the case, there is some probability that the Girgashites are the Kirkišāti of a tablet from Assyria which seemingly contains an early historical record, or an historical legend. Whether the Kirkišāti be identical with the Girgashites or not, the text is of sufficient importance to make it a valuable record, and a translation of the more perfect and interesting of the lines is given here—