Lebanon, with its lofty peak Hermon, the derh·atiou. Others, however, derive it from highest point in Palestine, is visible from an Aryan source, and regard it as equivo.lent all p1u-ts of the Holy Land, even from the to" the flowing river." This mighty stre11m, depths of the Jordan ..-a.Hey near the Dead especially after its junction witll the Tigris, Seit. Dr. Thomson (' Land and the Book,' far transcended in size any other with p. 2) sit~·s that it is ,;sible from Cyprus. which the Israelites were acquainted. The C1mon Tristram (· Le.nd of Israel,' p. 609) plains of Mesopot11mia, even as far as tells how he had seen Hermon from Tyre, Nineveh and Babylon, were destined to h11va Sidon, Carmel, Gerizim, from the neigh- been occupied hy the Jewish race, had not bourhood of Jerusalem, from Gilead, from their impiety and rebellion prevented ; and Nebo, and from the Dead Sea. The name the world-empire obt11ined by Nineveh and Lebanon, derived from ;;i~ to be white, like Babylon might, and had they been obedient would, have been theirs. All the Ia.nd of the the Arabic lehanon, milk, is supposed by Hittites. The Hittites, or Chittites, seem to Robinson to have been given from the have been the most considerable of the tribes whitish colour of the chalk or limestone which inhabited Canaan. We find them in rock (so Conder, • Handbook,' p. 206). But possession of Hebron in the time of Abraham it is at least equally probable that it derives (Gen. xxiii.), but their more usual dwelling- its name, like Mont Blanc in Savoy, from place was in the valley. They appear from its snowy peaks. Hermon is still called by the narrative above quoted to have been a the Arabs Jebel-el-Thelj, or "the snowy peaceable people. We have records of them peak.•· The Jordan, the river o.f Palestine in Egyptian and Assyrian inscriptions. Thus par c.1;ccllence, derived its copious and ever- we hear of the Khita in the inscriptions of flowing streams, so essential in that "thirsty Rameses II., who reigned between 1383 and land," from the Anti-Lebanon range. "Abana 1322, n.c.; that ie, about the time of Deborah and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus," as well and Barak (' Records of the Past,' ii. 67- as the Orantes, and the Litany or Leontes, 78; iv. 25-82). They were the inhabitants, derive their waters from the same source however, of a region further to the north- (see Tristram, • Land of Israel,' chap. :xxv.; ward, beyond the borders of the Holy Land, Thomson, • Land and the Book,' pp. 172, on the banks of the Orantes. So a Mohar, 173). We have a viv1d description of the or scribe, of Rameses II., in an account of region of Lebanon and the adjacent range a tour in Palestine, in which he mentions of Anti -Lebanon and Hermon, in the Kirjath Anab, Achsaph, Megiddo, and the spring, at the time of the melting of the land of Ramath, describes Khita as to the snows, in the 42nd Psalm. There David, north, bordering on this latter territory recalling to mind hiB sojourn in the " la.nd (' Records of the Past,' ii. 106). The various of the Jordan,'' and of Hermon, speaks of translators of the Assyrian inscriptions of the " deep calling nnto deep," of the noise Assur-bani-pal, Tiglath Pileser, Shalmaneser, of the cataracts as they dashed from rock to and Sennacherib recognise the Hittites in the rock and foamed along the mountain Bides; people mentioned as dwelling to the north and Le describes his sorrows as ovenvhelm- of Palestine (ibid. iii. 52; v. 21, 32, 33 ; vii. ing him by their number and magnitude, 61), though Ewald thinks that the Khatta just as the multitudinous torrents that rose there mentioned must be sought still fur- in that snowy region threatened to engulf ther north. Prof. Sayce, in a recent lecture, the unwary traveller in their onward sweep. regards the Hittites as having occupied a The far-famed cedars of Lebacon are in- large portion of Asia Minor, and as having digenous to this region, and to it alone, but had great influence upon early Greek art, and the climatic changes which Palestine has adds, " Till within the last few years the undergone have reduced their number largely, Bible alone has preserved the name of a and comparatively few specimens now re- people who must have had almost as great main, in a wild condition, of that noble tree, an influence on human history as Assyria once the pride of the dwellers in the land. or Egypt." Shalmaneser mentions the "We cannot study all the rassages in the Old kings of the Hittites, just as they are men- Testament which refer to the cedar, without tioned in the later narratives of Kings and feeling certain that in ancient times it was Chronicles (see note on chap. iii. 10). Unto a far more conspicuous feature in the land- the grea.t sea.. As the Euphrntcs was the scape thau it is now " (Tristram, ' Land of greatest river, the Mediterranean was the Israel,' p. 631). The great river, the river greatest sea, known to the Jews. Unlike the Euphrates. Das grosse Wasser Phrath race they displaced, the Canaanites-or, to (Luther). The Hebrew name is as Luther call them by a title by which they are better gives it. The Greeks added the euphonic known to profane history, the Phrenicians- syllable at the commencement, according to the Jews were no sailors. It may have been ihose who assign to the word a Semitic even before the conquest of Canaan under CH. I. 1-4.] 'I'HE BOOJ! OF JOSHUA. Ii
,Joshuo. tho.t the Phrenicio.n fleete eo.iled out flowed. It seeme stre.nge that, with the ex- beyond the pillo.rs of Hercules, e.nd brought ample of Tyre and Sidon before them, the ho.ck tin from the British isles. For Canaan, bra.elites should have been so indifferent to or Phrenicia, was a powerful and civilised navigation. Even in the time of David, it country when conquered by the Jews. But was Hiram's ships that brought him big whether it were before this period that treasuree and building materials. The later Brito.in was discovered, or whether the fleets navies of Solomon and Jehoshaphat did but of Tyre o.nd Sidon first sailed thither o.t a coast along the Red Sea and the Persian later period, to the Jews the Mediterranean Gulf to Ophir, which has been identified still remained the great sea. They knew with India, or more probably with Arabia. nothing of the vaster ocean into which it