Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 October 1891 — A Most Interesting Find. [ARTICLE]

A Most Interesting Find.

According to the Washington Star the Smithsonian Institution has received information of the recent discovery at Tel-el-Amaria, in Upper Egypt, of a number of tablets relating to the history of Jerusalem and dating back 600 years earlier than any records hitherto known. When it is understood that these tablets of stone are letters passed between the King of Jerusalem and the Pharaoh of Egypt 400 years before the birth of David, who was the father of Solomon, some notion will be formed of their extreme interest. Several of the letters were addressed to the ruler of Egypt by the King of Jerusalem. Abdi-Taba. The cities of Palestine were at that time tributary to Egypt, and in one of the letters the writer says; “The Habiri people are conquering the cities of the King”—i. e., the cities tributary to the Pharaoh-* “therefore the King may turn his face to his subjects and send troops. If the troops arrive this year the countries of the King, my Lord, may be saved, but if no troops arrive the countries of the King, my Lord, will exist no longer." This tremendous “find” at Tel-el-Amaria includes two hundred tablets, largely of Babylonian cuneiform script, which is thus discovered for the first time to have been in use at so early a period in Egypt and Palestine. Many of the other tablets are dispatches of about the same date from prefects of other cities of Palestine to the Pharaoh. Some of the inscriptions are in an unknown language, which no one so far has been able to translate. Solomon himself would have looked upon these tablets as remote antiquities.