By M. G. Kyle, D.D., LL. D., Egyptologist. Professor of Biblical Archaeology, Xenia Theological Seminary; Consulting Editor of “The Records of the Past,” Washington, D. C.
(The numbers in parentheses throughout this article refer to the notes at the end of the article.)
INTRODUCTION.
“Recent” is a dangerously capacious word to intrust to an archaeologist. Anything this side of the Day of Pentecost is “recent” in biblical archaeology. For this review, however, anything since 1904 is accepted to be, in a general way, the meaning of the word “recent.”
“Recent testimony of archaeology” may be either the testimony of recent discoveries or recent testimony of former discoveries. A new interpretation, if it be established to be a true interpretation, is a discovery. For to uncover is not always to discover; indeed, the real value of a discovery is not its emergence, but its significance, and the discovery of its real significance is the real discovery.
The most important testimony to the Scriptures of this five year archaeological period admits of some classification:
I. THE HISTORICAL SETTING OF THE PATRIARCHAL RECEPTION IN EGYPT.
The reception in Egypt accorded to Abraham and to Jacob and his sons (1) and the elevation of Joseph there (2) peremptorily demand either the acknowledgment of a mythical element in the stories, or the belief in a suitable historical setting therefor. Obscure, insignificant, private citizens are not accorded such recognition at a foreign and unfriendly court. While some have been conceding a mythical element in the stories (3), archaeology has uncovered to view such appropriate historical setting that the patriarchs are seen not to have been obscure, insignificant, private citizens, nor Zoan a foreign and unfriendly court.
The presence of the Semitic tongue in Hyksos’ territory has long been known (4); from still earlier than patriarchal times until much later, the Phoenicians, first cousins of the Hebrews, did the foreign business of the Egyptians (5), as the English, the Germans, and the French do the foreign business of the Chinese of today; and some familiarity, even sympathy, with Semitic religion has been strongly suspected from the interview of the Hyksos kings with the patriarchs (6); but the discovery in 1906 (7), by Petrie, of the great fortified camp at Tel-el-Yehudiyeh set at rest, in the main, the biblical question of the relation between the patriarchs and the Hyksos. The abundance of Hyksos scarabs and the almost total absence of all others mark the camp as certainly a Hyksos camp (8); the original character of the fortifications, before the Hyksos learned the builders’ craft from the Egyptians, shows them to have depended upon the bow for defense (9); and, finally, the name Hyksos, in the Egyptian Haq Shashu (10) “Bedouin princes,” brings out, sharp and clear, the harmonious picture of which we have had glimpses for a long time, of the Hyksos as wandering tribes of the desert, of “Upper and Lower Ruthen” (11); i.e., Syria and Palestine, northern and western Arabia, “Bow people” (12), as the Egyptians called them, their traditional enemies as far back as pyramid times (13).
Why, then, should not the patriarchs have had a royal reception in Egypt? They were themselves also the heads of wandering tribes of ‘“Upper and Lower Ruthen,” in the tongue of the Egyptians, Haq Shashu, “Bedouin princes”; and among princes, a prince is a prince, however small his principality. So Abraham, the Bedouin prince, was accorded princely consideration at the Bedouin court in Egypt; Joseph, the Bedouin slave, became again the Bedouin prince when the wisdom of God with him and his rank by birth became known. And Jacob and his other sons were welcome, with all their followers and their wealth, as a valuable acquisition to the court party, always harassed by the restive and rebellious native Egyptians. This does not prove racial identity between the Hyksos and the patriarchs, but very close tribal relationship. And thus every suspicion of a mythical element in the narrative of the reception accorded the patriarchs in Egypt disappears when archaeology has testified to the true historical setting.
II. THE HITTITE VINDICATION.
A second recent testimony of archaeology gives us the great Hittite vindication. The Hittites have been, in one respect, the Trojans of Bible history; indeed, the inhabitants of old Troy were scarcely more in need of a Schliemann to vindicate their claim to reality than the Hittites of a Winckler.
In 1904 one of the foremost archaeologists of Europe said to me: “I do not believe there ever were such people as the Hittites, and I do not believe ‘Kheta’ in the Egyptian inscriptions was meant for the name Hittites.” We will allow that archaeologist to be nameless now. But the ruins of Troy vindicated the right of her people to a place in real history, and the ruins of Boghatz-Koi bid fair to afford a more striking vindication of the Bible representation of the Hittites.
Only the preliminary announcement of Winckler’s great treasury of documents from Boghatz-Koi has yet been made(14). The complete unfolding of a long-eclipsed great national history is still awaited impatiently. But enough has been published to redeem this people completely from their half-mythical plight, and give them a firm place in sober history greater than imagination had ever fancied for them under the stimulus of any hint contained in the Bible.
There has been brought to light a Hittite empire (15) in Asia Minor, with central power and vassal dependencies round about and with treaty rights on equal terms with the greatest nations of antiquity, thus making the Hittite power a third great power with Babylonia and Egypt, as was, indeed, foreshadowed in the great treaty of the Hittites with Rameses II., inscribed on the projecting wing of the south wall of the Temple of Amon at Karnak (16), though Rameses tried so hard to obscure the fact. The ruins at the village of Boghatz-Koi are shown also to mark the location of the Hittite capital (17), and the unknown language on the cuneiform tablets recovered there to be the Hittite tongue (18), while the cuneiform method of writing, as already upon the Amarna tablets (19), so still more clearly here, is seen to have been the diplomatic script, and in good measure the Babylonian to have been the diplomatic language of the Orient in that age (20). And the large admixture of Babylonian words and forms in these Hittite inscriptions opens the way for the real decipherment of the Hittite language (21), and imagination can scarcely promise too much to our hopes for the light which such a decipherment will throw upon the historical and cultural background of the Bible.
Only one important point remains to be cleared up, the relation between the Hittite language of these cuneiform tablets and the language of the Hittite hieroglyphic inscription (22). That these were identical is probable; that the hieroglyphic inscriptions represent an older form of the language, a kind of “Hieratic,” is possible; that it was essentially different from the language of these tablets is improbable. There has been the Hittite vindication; the complete illumination of Hittite history is not likely to be long delayed.