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 we learn from another
letter, Ebed-Tob himself along with his capital was captured by the foe.
It was this event, perhaps, which made Jerusalem a Jebusite city. If so,
we must see in the enemies of Ebed-Tob the Jebusites of the Old
Testament.

The Girgashite is named after the Amorite, but who he may have been it
is hard to say. In the Egyptian epic composed by the court-poet Pentaur,