228 British Ethnology.
(Judg. iv. 11), though their chief seats seem to have been at
Sela or Petra (Numb. xxiv. 21), and the South of Judah
(1 Chron. ii. 55, 1 Sam. xxvii. 10). The name is identical
with the Aramaic kainay, 'a smith,' which makes it clear
what the occupation of the tribe must have been. Whether
'the smith' took his name from the tribe, as 'the mer-
chant 'from the Canaanite of Phoenicia, or whether the
tribe derived its name from its occupation is immaterial; the
word kayin, 'a spear,' however, renders the second alterna-
tive the more probable. In any case, the Kenites will have
been a clan of wandering blacksmiths, like the clan of smiths
who once wandered over Europe. This explains the curious
fact that at the beginning of Saul's reign 'there was no
smith found throughout the land of Israel,' and the Israelites
had to go to the Philistines in order to sharpen their agri-
cultural implements (1 Sam. xiii., 19-22). The Philistine
invasion, in fact, had driven the Kenites, or 'smiths,' out of
a country where in the time of Harrises II., according to the
'Travels of a Mohar,' a blacksmith could be met with whenever
the chariot of an Egyptian tourist needed repair. Perhaps it
is not without significance that the wife of Heber the Kenite
finds a hammer ready to her hand in her tent (Judg. iv. 21).
At all events it is noticeable that Tubal-Kain was the 'in-
structor of every artificer in brass and iron'; and that his
father, Lamech, like Kain, the son of Adam, had slain a man.
A. H. Sayce."
Queen's College, Oxford: Nov. 22, 1886.
[Editorial Note.—The first series of the 'Transactions of
the Essex Field Club' terminates with the present sheet. On
and after January, 1887, the 'Transactions' and 'Proceedings'
of the Club will be combined, and issued as a monthly
periodical, entitled, 'The Essex Naturalist, being Journal of
the Essex Field Club.']