Kirjath-Anab and Beth-Sopher. In the Book of Joshua the towns of Anab
and Kirjath-Sepher are similarly associated together, and it is plain,
therefore, as Dr. W. Max Müller has remarked, that the Egyptian writer
has interchanged the equivalent terms Kirjath, "city," and Beth,
"house." He ought to have written Beth-Anab and Kirjath-Sopher. But he
has given us the true form of the latter name, and as he has added to
the word _Sopher_ the determinative of "writing," he has further put
beyond question the real meaning of the name. The city must have been
one of those centres of Canaanitish learning, where, as in the libraries
of Babylonia and Assyria, a large body of scribes was kept constantly at
work.

The language employed in the cuneiform documents was almost always that
of Babylonia, which had become the common speech of diplomacy and
educated society. But at times the native language of the country was
also employed, and one or two examples of it have been preserved. The
legends and traditions of Babylonia served as text-books for the
student, and doubtless Babylonian history was carried to the West as
well. The account of Chedor-laomer's campaign might have been derived in
this way from the clay-books of ancient Babylonia.

Babylonian theology, too, made its way to the West, and has left records
of itself in the map of Canaan. In the names of Canaanitish towns and
villages the names of Babylonian deities frequently recur. Rimmon or
Hadad, the god of the air, whom the Syrians identified with the Sun-god,
Nebo, the god of prophecy, the interpreter of the will of Bel-Merodach,
Anu, the god of the sky, and Anat, his consort, all alike meet us in the
names sometimes of places, sometimes of persons. Mr. Tomkins is probably
right in seeing even in Beth-lehem the name of the primeval Chaldæan
deity Lakhmu. The Canaanitish Moloch is the Babylonian Malik, and Dagon