races had taken the place of the older
ones, new kingdoms had arisen, and the earlier landmarks had been
displaced. The Amalekite alone continued what he had always been, the
untamable nomad of the southern desert.

Rephaim or "Giants" was a general epithet applied to the prehistoric
population of the country. Og, king of Bashan in the time of the Exodus,
was "of the remnant of the Rephaim" (Deut. iii. 11); but so also were
the Anakim in Hebron, the Emim in Moab, and the Zamzummim in Ammon
(Deut. ii. 11, 20). Doubtless they represented a tall race in comparison
with the Hebrews and Arabs of the desert; and the Israelitish spies
described themselves as grasshoppers by the side of them (Numb. xiii.
33). It is possible, however, that the name was really an ethnic one,
which had only an accidental similarity in sound to the Hebrew word for
"giants." At all events, in the list of conquered Canaanitish towns
which the Pharaoh Thothmes III. of Egypt caused to be engraved on the
walls of Karnak, the name of Astartu or Ashteroth Karnaim is followed by
that of Anaurepa, in which Mr. Tomkins proposes to see On-Repha, "On of
the Giant(s)." In the close neighbourhood in classical days stood Raphon
or Raphana, Arpha of the Dekapolis, now called Er-Rafeh, and in Raphon
it is difficult not to discern a reminiscence of the Rephaim of Genesis.

Did these Rephaim belong to the same race as the Emim and the Anakim, or
were the latter called Rephaim or "Giants" merely because they
represented the tall prehistoric population of Canaan? The question can
be more easily asked than answered. We know from the Book of Genesis
that Amorites as well as Hittites lived at Hebron, or in its immediate
vicinity. Abram dwelt in the plain of Mamre along with three Amorite
chieftains, and Hoham, king of Hebron, who fought against Joshua, is
accounted among the Amorites (Josh. x. 1). The Anakim may therefore have
been an Amorite tribe. They held themselves to be the descendants of
Anak, an ancient Canaanite god, whose female counterpart was the
Phoenician goddess Onka. But, on the other hand, the Amorites at Hebron
may have been intruders; we know that Hebron was peculiarly a Hittite
city, and it is at Mamre rather than at Hebron that the Amorite
confederates of Abram had their home. It is equally possible that the
Anakim themselves may have been the stranger element; we hear nothing
about them in the days of the patriarchs, and it is only when the
Israelit