p. 16 | MELCHIZEDEK AND EGYPT

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Jan 31, 1906

MELCHIZEDEK AND EGYPT.

THERE was published in the Chicago Times of Feb. 7, 1892, among the wonderfully-sensational things the Sunday journals serve to the public, the following, which has been lately resurrected and used as an evidence that Melchizedek was a veritable king in Jerusalem:

Professor Sayer of Oxford, England, has written a history in which he gives an account of the discovery on the banks of the Nile of a royal library which dates back to 1430 B.C. Such a discovery was sufficiently important in itself, but what lends to it an uncommon degree of interest is the fact that it contains sundry letters written by Melchizedek himself. In these letters he speaks of himself as king of Salem, or Shalem, and sometimes as king of Urusalem. The identity of this latter name with Jerusalem can hardly be successfully disputed. This is certainly a remarkable confirmation of the historical integrity of the Pentateuch. . . . It shows, too, that Palestine had libraries and historical documents at a much earlier period than has been generally believed. Finding the letters of Melchizedek on cuneiform tablets on the banks of the Nile is certainly a most important and unexpected discovery.

The Professor Sayer mentioned is evidently Prof. A. H. Sayce of Oxford, no one, so far as we know, has ever heard of any Professor Sayer of Oxford who has gained celebrity in archeological discovery, but Prof. A. H. Sayce is known the wide world over as one of the greatest. I enclosed a copy of this clipping to Professor Sayce of Oxford, and received from him the following, dated "Istar, Egypt, Dec. 18, 1905."

As you have guessed, the newspapers tatement is an echo, and a very faint one, of the discovery of the Tel El-Amarna tablets in 1887, and of what I wrote about them in my 'Higher Criticism' etc., in 1893. As you know, a king of Jerusalem does appear in the correspondence, but his name was Ebedtobor Ebed-kheba.

The statement in the Chicago Times was published before Professor Sayce's book was written, and the writer finding reference to a king of Jerusalem seems to have jumped to the conclusion that it must have been Melchizedek, inasmuch as Melchizedek is a title instead of a name, as is the case with so many of the ancient names which have come down to us; as for instance Pharaoh and Agag, titles instead of names.

More and more he who attempts to analyze newspaper reports will find that they are not to be depended upon at all. For instance, one comes to us in the Chicago American giving three pictures of persons every one of which is faked, and a story a little over half a column long in which there are no less than sixteen absolute misstatements, some of them without any sort of foundation at all; and that, as we have learned at different times, is a characteristic of the statements in papers of a sensational character. This, with the three false portraits published, make, it is safe to say, a score of false statements in the one little report.

What makes it clearly evident that the mistake is made in the name of "Sayer" for "Sayce" is the misspelling of the word "cuneiform."