seeing even in Beth-lehem the name of the primeval Chaldaean
deity Lakhmu. The Canaanitish Moloch is the Babylonian Malik, and Dagon
was one of the oldest of Chaldaean divinities and the associate of Anu.
We have seen how ready Ebed-Tob was to identify the god he worshipped
with the Babylonian Nin-ip, and among the Canaanites mentioned in the
letters of Tel el-Amarna there is more than one whose name is compounded
with that of a Babylonian god.

Writing and literature, religion and mythology, history and science, all
these were brought to the peoples of Canaan in the train of Babylonian
conquest and trade. Art naturally went hand in hand with this imported
culture. The seal-cylinders of the Chaldaeans were imitated, and
Babylonian figures and ornamental designs were borrowed and modified by
the Canaanitish artists. It was in this way that the rosette, the
cherub, the sacred tree, and the palmette passed to the West, and there
served to adorn the metal-work and pottery. New designs, unknown in
Babylonia, began to develop; among others, the heads of animals in gold
and silver as covers for metal vases. Some of these "vases of Kaft," as
they were called, are pictured on the Egyptian monuments, and Thothmes
III. in his annals describes "the paterae with goats' heads upon them
and one with a lion's head, the productions of Zahi," or Palestine,
which were brought to him as tribute.

The spoil which the same Pharaoh carried away from the Canaanitish
princes gives us some idea of the art which they patronized. We hear of
chariots and tent-poles covered with plates of gold, of iron armour and
helmets, of gold and silver rings which were used in the place of money,
of staves of ivory, ebony, and cedar inlaid with gold, of golden
sceptres, of tables, chairs, and footstools of cedar wood, inlaid some
of them with ivory, others with gold and precious stones, of vases and
bowls of all kinds in gold, silver, and bronze, and of the two-handled
cups which were a special manufacture of Phoenicia. Iron seems to have
been worked in Canaan from an early date. The Israelites were unable to
drive out the inhabitants of "the valley" because of their chariots of
iron, and when the chariot of the Egyptian Mohar is disabled by the
rough roads of the Canaanite mountains the writer of the papyrus already
referred to makes him turn aside at once to a worker in iron. There was
no difficulty in finding an ironsmith in Canaan.

The purple dye of Phoe