the Babylonians were
still intriguing in Canaan in the century before the Exodus, though they
acknowledged that it was an Egyptian province and subject to Egyptian
laws. But the memory of the power they had once exercised there still
survived, and the influence of their culture continued undiminished.
When their rule actually ceased we do not yet know. It cannot have been
very long, however, before the era of Egyptian conquest. In the Tel
el-Amarna tablets they are always called Kassites, a name which could
have been given to them only after the conquest of Babylonia by the
Kassite mountaineers of Elam, and the rise of a Kassite dynasty of
kings. This was about 1730 B.C. For some time subsequently, therefore,
the government of Babylonia must still have been acknowledged in Canaan.
With this agrees a statement of the Egyptian historian Manetho, upon
which the critics, in their wisdom or their ignorance, have poured
unmeasured contempt. He tells us that when the Hyksos were driven out of
Egypt by Ahmes I., the founder of the eighteenth dynasty, they occupied
Jerusalem and fortified it--not, as would naturally be imagined, against
the Egyptian Pharaoh, but against "the Assyrians," as the Babylonians
were called by Manetho's contemporaries. As long as there were no
monuments to confront them the critics had little difficulty in proving
that the statement was preposterous and unhistorical, that Jerusalem did
not as yet exist, and that no Assyrians or Babylonians entered Palestine
until centuries later. But we now know that Manetho was right and his
critics wrong. Jerusalem did exist, and Babylonian armies threatened the
independence of the Canaanite states. In one of his letters, Ebed-Tob,
king of Jerusalem, tells the Pharaoh that he need not be alarmed about
the Babylonians, for the temple at Jerusalem is strong enough to resist
their attack. Rib-Hadad the governor of Gebal bears the same testimony.
"When thou didst sit on the throne of thy father," he says, "the sons of
Ebed-Asherah (the Amorite) attached themselves to the country of the
Babylonians, and took the country of the Pharaoh for themselves; they
(intrigued with) the king of Mitanna, and the king of the Babylonians,
and the king of the Hittites." In another despatch he speaks in a
similar strain: "The king of the Babylonians and the king of Mitanna are
strong, and have taken the country of the Pharaoh for themselves
already, and have seized the cities of thy gover