“The mountain of User” reminds us curiously of the tribe of Asher, whose territory included the mountain-range which rose up behind the Phoenician coast.  But it may denote Mount Carmel, whose “crest” faces the traveller as he makes his way southward from Tyre and Zib.  In any case the allusion to it brings to the writer’s mind another mountain in the same neighbourhood, the summit of which similarly towers into the sky.  This is “the mountain of Shechem,” either Ebal or Gerizim, each of which is nearly 3000 feet above the level of the sea.  It is the first mention that we have of Shechem outside the pages of the Old Testament.

Shechem, however, did not lie in the path of the Mohar, and the reference to its mountain is made parenthetically only.  We are therefore carried on to Hazor, which afterwards became a city of Naphtali, and of which we hear in the letters of Tel el-Amarna.  From Hazor the road ran northwards to Hamath, the Hamah of to-day.  Hazor lay not far to the westward of Adamim, which the geographical lists of Thothmes III. place between the Sea of Galilee and the Kishon, and which is doubtless the Adami of Naphtali (Josh. xix. 33).  Here the tour of the Mohar comes to an abrupt close.  After this the writer contents himself with naming a number of Syrian cities without regard to their geographical position.  He is anxious merely to show off his knowledge of Canaanitish geography; perhaps also to insinuate doubts as to the extent of his correspondent’s travels.

Takhis, the Thahash of Gen. xxii. 24, was, as we have seen, in the land of the Amorites, not very far distant from Kadesh on the Orontes.  Kafir-Marona, “the village of Marona,” may have been in the same direction.  The second element in the name is met with elsewhere in Palestine.  Thus one of Joshua’s antagonists was the king of Shim-ron-meron (Josh. xii. 20), and the Assyrian inscriptions tell us of a town called Samsi-muruna.  Tamnah was not an uncommon name.  We hear of a Tamnah or Timnah in Judah (Josh. xv. 57), and of another in Mount Ephraim (Josh. xix. 50).  Dapul may be the Tubuliya of the letters of Rib-Hadad, Azai, “the outlet,” seems to have been near a pass, while Har-nammata, “the mountain of Nammata,” is called Har-nam by Ramses III., who associates it with Lebanoth and Hebron.  The two next names, Kirjath-Anab and Beth-Sopher, are of peculiar interest, since they contain the first mention that was come down to us of Kitjath-Sepher, the literary centre of the Canaanites in the south of Palestine, which was captured and destroyed by Othniel the Kenizzite.  In the Old Testament (Josh. xv. 49, 50) Kirjath-Sannah or Kirjath-Sepher and Anab are coupled together just as Kirjath-Anab and Beth-Sopher are by the Egyptian scribe, and it is therefore evident that he has interchanged the place of the equivalent terms Kirjath, “city,” and Beth, “house.”  But his spelling of the second name shows us how it ought to be punctuated and read in the Old Testament.  It was not Kirjath-Sepher,