** Urusalim is mentioned only in the Tel el-Amarna tablets, alongside of Kilti or Keilah, Ajalon, and Lachish. The remaining towns are noticed in the great lists of Thûtmosis III.
The plough which they employed was like that used by the Egyptians and Babylonians, being nothing but a large hoe to which a couple of oxen were harnessed.* The scarcity of rain, except in certain seasons, and the tendency of the rivers to run low, contributed to make the cultivators of the soil experts in irrigation and agriculture. Almost the only remains of these people which have come down ti us consist of indestructible wells and cisterns, or wine and oil presses hollowed out of the rock.
* This is the form of plough still employed by the Syrians in some places.
** Monuments of this kind are encountered at every step in Judaea, but it is very difficult to date them. The aqueduct of Siloam, which goes back perhaps to the time of Hezekiah.
Fields of wheat and barley extended along the flats of the valleys, broken in upon here and there by orchards, in which the white and pink almond, the apple, the fig, the pomegranate, and the olive flourished side by side.
[Illustration: 192.jpg AMPHITHEATRE OF HILLS]
Drawn by Boudier, from a plate in Chesney.
Jerusalem, possibly in part to be attributed to the reign of Solomon, are the only instances to which anything like a certain date may be assigned. But these are long posterior to the XVIIIth dynasty. Good judges, however, attribute some of these monuments to a very distant period: the masonry of the wells of Beersheba is very ancient, if not as it is at present, at least as it was when it was repaired in the time of the Cæsars; the olive and wine presses hewn in the rock do not all date back to the Roman empire, but many belong to a still earlier period, and modern descriptions correspond with what we know of such presses from the Bible.
If the slopes of the valley rose too precipitously for cultivation, stone dykes were employed to collect the falling earth, and thus to transform the sides of the hills into a series of terraces rising one above the other. Here the vines, planted in lines or in trellises, blended their clusters with the fruits of the orchard-trees. It was, indeed, a land of milk and honey, and its topographical nomenclature in the Egyptian geographical lists reflects as in a mirror the agricultural pursuits of its ancient inhabitants: one village, for instance, is called Aubila, the meadow; while others bear such names as Ganutu, the gardens; Magraphut, the mounds; and Karman, the vineyard. The further we proceed towards the north, we find, with a diminishing aridity, the hillsides covered with richer crops, and the valleys decked out with a more luxuriant and warmly coloured vegetation. Shechem lies in an actual amphitheatre of verdure, which is irrigated by countless unfailing streams; rushing brooks babble on every side, and the vapour given off by them morning and evening covers the entire landscape with a luminous haze, where the outline of each object becomes blurred, and quivers in a manner to which we are accustomed in our Western lands.* Towns grew and multiplied upon this rich and loamy soil, but as these lay outside the usual track of the invading hosts--which preferred to follow the more rugged but shorter route leading straight to Carmel across the plain--the records of the conquerors only casually mention a few of them, such as Bîtshaîlu, Birkana, and Dutîna.
**