all the elements of Chaldæan culture. Migration from Ur of the Chaldees
to the distant West meant a change only in climate and population, not
in the civilization to which the patriarch had been accustomed.

Even the Babylonian language was known and used in the cities of Canaan,
and the literature of Babylonia was studied by the Canaanitish people.
This is one of the facts which we have learnt from the discovery of the
Tel el-Amarna tablets. The cuneiform system of writing and the
Babylonian language had spread all over Western Asia, and nowhere had
they taken deeper root than in Canaan. Here there were schools and
teachers for instruction in the foreign language and script, and
record-chambers and libraries in which the letters and books of clay
could be copied and preserved.

Long before the discovery of the Tel el-Amarna tablets we might have
gathered from the Old Testament itself that such libraries once existed
in Canaan. One of the Canaanitish cities taken and destroyed by the
Israelites was Debir in the mountainous part of Judah. But Debir, "the
sanctuary," was also known by two other names. It was called
Kirjath-Sannah, "the city of Instruction," as well as Kirjath-Sepher,
"the city of Books."

We now know, however, that the latter name is not quite correct. The
Massoretic punctuation has to be emended, and we must read
Kirjath-Sopher, "the city of the Scribe(s)," instead of Kirjath-Sepher,
"the city of Book(s)." It is an Egyptian papyrus which has given us the
exact name. In the time of Ramses II. an Egyptian scribe composed a
sarcastic account of the misadventures met with by a tourist in
Palestine--commonly known as _The Travels of a Mohar_--and in this
mention is made of two adjoining towns in Southern Palestine called