of "Canaan" among the Israelites, and
of "Palestine" among ourselves. But it bears witness to the important
part which was played by the Amorites in what we must still call the
prehistoric age of Syria, as well as to the extent of the area which
they must have occupied.

Of course it does not follow that the whole of this area was occupied at
one and the same time. Indeed we know that the conquest of the northern
portion of Moab by the Amorite king Sihon took place only a short time
before the Israelitish invasion, and part of the Amorite song of triumph
on the occasion has been preserved in the Book of Numbers. "There is a
fire gone out of Heshbon," it said, "a flame from the city of Sihon: it
hath consumed Ar of Moab, and the lords of the high places of Arnon. Woe
to thee, Moab! thou art undone, O people of Chemosh: he hath given his
sons that escaped, and his daughters, into captivity unto Sihon king of
the Amorites." (Num. xxi. 28, 29.) In the south, again, the Amorites do
not seem to have made their way beyond Hazezon-Tamar, while the Tel
el-Amarna tablets make it probable that neither Bashan nor Jerusalem
were as yet Amorite at the time they were written. It may be that the
Amorite conquests in the south were one of the results of the fall of
the Egyptian empire and the Hittite irruption.

Between the Hittite and the Amorite the geographical table of Genesis
interposes the Jebusite, and the Book of Numbers similarly states that
"the Hittites and the Jebusites and the Amorites dwell in the
mountains." The Jebusites, however, were merely the local tribe which in
the early days of the Israelitish occupation of Canaan were in
possession of Jerusalem, and they were probably either Hittite or
Amorite in race. At any rate there is no trace of them in the cuneiform
letters of Tel el-Amarna. On the contrary, in these Jerusalem is still
known only by its old name of Uru-salim; of the name Jebus there is not
a hint. But the letters show us that Ebed-Tob, the native king of
Jerusalem and humble vassal of the Pharaoh, was being hard pressed by
his enemies, and that, in spite of his urgent appeals for help, the
Egyptians were unable to send any. His enemy were the Khabiri or
"Confederates," about whose identification there has been much
discussion, but who were assisted by the Beduin chief Labai and his
sons. One by one the towns belonging to the territory of Jerusalem fell
into the hands of his adversaries, and at last, as w