There still remain two allusions in the papyrus which must not be passed over in silence.  One is the allusion to “Qazairnai, the lord of Asel,” the famous slayer of lions.  We know nothing further about this Nimrod of Syria, but Professor Maspero is doubtless right in believing that Asel ought to be written Alsa, and that the country meant was the kingdom of Alasiya, which lay in the northern portion of Coele-Syria.  Several letters from the king of Alasiya are preserved in the Tel el-Amarna collection, and we gather from them that his possessions extended across the Orontes from the desert to the Mediterranean Sea.  Egyptian papyri tell us that mares were imported into Egypt from Alasiya as well as two different kinds of liquor.  In the age of Samuel and Saul Alasiya was governed by a queen.

The second allusion is to the ironsmith in Canaan.  It is clear that there were many of them, and that it was to the worker in iron and not to the worker in bronze that the traveller naturally turned when his chariot needed mending.  Even the word that is employed to denote the metal is the Canaanitish barzel, which has been adopted under the form of parzal.  Nothing could show more plainly how characteristic of Canaan the trade of the ironsmith must have been, and how largely the use of iron must have there superseded the use of bronze.  The fact is in accordance with the references in the annals of Thothmes III. to the iron that was received by him from Syria; it is also in accordance with the statements of the Bible, where we read of the “chariots of iron” in which the Canaanites rode to war.  Indeed there seems to have been a special class of wandering ironsmiths in Palestine, like the wandering ironsmiths of mediaeval Europe, who jealously guarded the secrets of their trade, and formed not only a peculiar caste, but even a peculiar race.  The word Kain means “a smith,” and the nomad Kenites of whom we read in the Old Testament were simply the nomad race of “smiths,” whose home was the tent or cavern.  Hence it was that while they were not Israelites, they were just as little Canaanites, and hence it was too that the Philistines were able to deprive the Israelites of the services of a smith (1 Sam. xiii. 19).  All that was necessary was to prevent the Kenites from settling within Israelitish territory.  There was no Israelite who knew the secrets of the profession and could take their place, and the Canaanites who lived under Israelitish protection were equally ignorant of the ironsmith’s art.  Though the ironsmith had made himself a home in Canaan he never identified himself with its inhabitants.  The Kenites remained a separate people, and could consequently be classed as such by the side of the Hivites, or “villagers,” and the Perizzites, or “fellahin.”