The Egypt of the Hebrews and Herodotos E-Book

A. H. Sayce

• Herausgeber: A. H. Sayce
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

A few words of preface are needful to justify the addition of another contribution to the over-abundant mass of literature of which Egypt is the subject. It is intended to supplement the books already in the hands of tourists and students, and to put before them just that information which either is not readily accessible or else forms part of larger and cumbrous works. The travels of Herodotos in Egypt are followed for the first time in the light of recent discoveries, and the history of the intercourse between the Egyptians and the Jews is brought down to the age of the Roman Empire. As the ordinary histories of Egypt used by travellers end with the extinction of the native Pharaohs, I have further given a sketch of the Ptolemaic period. I have moreover specially noted the results of the recent excavations and discoveries made by the Egypt Exploration Fund and by Professor Flinders Petrie, at all events where they bear upon the subject-matter of the book. Those who have not the publications of the Fund or of Professor Petrie, or who do not care to carry them into Egypt, will, I believe, be glad to have the essence of them thus extracted in a convenient shape. Lastly, in the Appendices I have put together information which the visitor to the Nile often wishes to obtain, but which he can find in none of his guide-books.

Leseprobe

A. H. Sayce

The Egypt of the Hebrews and Herodotos

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Table of contents

Preface

Chapter I. The Patriarchal Age.

Chapter II. The Age Of Moses.

Chapter III. The Exodus And The Hebrew Settlement In Canaan.

Chapter IV. The Age Of The Israelitish Monarchies.

Chapter V. The Age Of The Ptolemies.

Chapter VI. Herodotos In Egypt.

Chapter VII. In The Steps Of Herodotos.

Chapter VIII. Memphis And The Fayyûm.

Appendices.

Footnotes

Preface

A few words of preface are needful to justify the addition of another contribution to the over-abundant mass of literature of which Egypt is the subject. It is intended to supplement the books already in the hands of tourists and students, and to put before them just that information which either is not readily accessible or else forms part of larger and cumbrous works. The travels of Herodotos in Egypt are followed for the first time in the light of recent discoveries, and the history of the intercourse between the Egyptians and the Jews is brought down to the age of the Roman Empire. As the ordinary histories of Egypt used by travellers end with the extinction of the native Pharaohs, I have further given a sketch of the Ptolemaic period. I have moreover specially noted the results of the recent excavations and discoveries made by the Egypt Exploration Fund and by Professor Flinders Petrie, at all events where they bear upon the subject-matter of the book. Those who have not the publications of the Fund or of Professor Petrie, or who do not care to carry them into Egypt, will, I believe, be glad to have the essence of them thus extracted in a convenient shape. Lastly, in the Appendices I have put together information which the visitor to the Nile often wishes to obtain, but which he can find in none of his guide-books. The Appendix on the nomes embodies the results of the latest researches, and the list will therefore be found to differ here and there from the lists which have been published elsewhere. Those who desire the assistance of maps should procure the very handy and complete Atlas of Ancient Egypt, published by the Egypt Exploration Fund (price 3s. 6d.). It makes the addition of maps to this or any future work on Ancient Egypt superfluous.Discoveries follow so thickly one upon the other in these days of active exploration that it is impossible for an author to keep pace with them. Since my manuscript was ready for the press Dr. Naville, on behalf of the Egypt Exploration Fund, has practically cleared the magnificent temple of Queen Hatshepsu at Dêr el-Bâhari, and has discovered beneath it the unfinished sepulchre in which the queen fondly hoped that her body would be laid; Professor Petrie has excavated in the desert behind Zawêdeh and opposite Qoft the tombs of barbarous tribes, probably of Libyan origin, who settled in the valley of the Nile between the fall of the sixth and the rise of the eleventh dynasty; Mr. de Morgan has disinterred more jewellery of exquisite workmanship from the tombs of the princesses of the twelfth dynasty at Dahshûr; and Dr. Botti has discovered the site of the Serapeum at Alexandria, thus obtaining for the first time a point of importance for determining the topography of the ancient city.The people whose remains have been found by Professor Petrie buried their dead in open situated in the central court. But his most interesting discovery is that of long subterranean passages, once faced with masonry, and furnished with niches for lamps, where the mysteries of Serapis were celebrated. At the entrance of one of them pious visitors to the shrine have scratched their vows on the wall of rock. Those who are interested in the discovery should consult Dr. Botti's memoir on L'Acropole d'Alexandrie et le Sérapeum, presented to the Archæological Society of Alexandria, 17th August 1895.Two or three other recent discoveries may also find mention here. A Babylonian seal-cylinder now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art at New York has at last given me a clue to the native home of the Hyksos leaders. This was in the mountains of Elam, on the eastern frontier of Chaldæa. It was from these mountains that the Kassi descended upon Babylonia and founded a dynasty there which lasted for nearly 600 years, and the same movement which brought them into Babylonia may have sent other bands of them across Western Asia into Egypt. At all events, the inscription upon the seal shows that it belonged to a certain Uzi-Sutakh, “the son of the Kassite,” and “the servant of Burna-buryas,” who was the Kassite king of Babylonia in the age of the Tel el-Amarna correspondence. As the name of Sutakh is preceded by the determinative of divinity, it is clear that we have in it the name of the Hyksos deity Sutekh.In a hieroglyphic stela lately discovered at Saqqârah, and now in the Gizeh Museum, we read of an earlier parallel to the Tyrian Camp at Memphis seen by Herodotos. We learn from the stela that, in the time of King Ai, in the closing days of the eighteenth dynasty, there was already a similar “Camp” or quarter at Memphis which was assigned to the Hittites. The inscription is further interesting as showing that the authority of Ai was acknowledged at Memphis, the capital of Northern Egypt, as well as in the Thebaid.Lastly, Professor Hommel seems to have found the name of the Zakkur or Zakkal, the kinsfolk and associates of the Philistines, in a broken cuneiform text which relates to one of the Kassite kings of Babylonia not long before the epoch of Khu-n-Aten. Here mention is made not only of the city of Arka in Phœnicia, but also of the city of Zaqqalû. In Zaqqalû we must recognise the Zakkur of Egyptian history. I may add that Khar or Khal, the name given by the Egyptians to the southern portion of Palestine, is identified by Professor Maspero with the Horites of the Old Testament.By way of conclusion, I have only to say that those who wish to read a detailed account of the manner in which the great colossus of Ramses ii. at Memphis was raised and its companion statue disinterred must refer to the Paper published by Major Arthur H. Bagnold himself in the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology for June 1888.

Chapter I. The Patriarchal Age.

“Abram went down into Egypt to sojourn there.” When he entered the country the civilisation and monarchy of Egypt were already very old. The pyramids had been built hundreds of years before, and the origin of the Sphinx was already a mystery. Even the great obelisk of Heliopolis, which is still the object of an afternoon drive to the tourist at Cairo, had long been standing in front of the temple of the Sun-god.The monuments of Babylonia enable us to fix the age to which Abraham belongs. Arioch of Ellasar has left memorials of himself on the bricks of Chaldæa, and we now know when he and his Elamite allies were driven out of Babylonia and the Babylonian states were united into a single monarchy. This was 2350 b.c.The united monarchy of Egypt went back to a far earlier date. Menes, its founder, had been king of This (or Girgeh) in Upper Egypt, and starting from his ancestral dominions had succeeded in bringing all Egypt under his rule. But the memory of an earlier time, when the valley of the Nile was divided into two separate sovereignties, survived to the latest age of the monarchy. Up to the last the Pharaohs of Egypt called themselves “kings of the two lands,” and wore on their heads the crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt. The crown of Upper Egypt was a tiara of white linen, that of Lower Egypt a throne-like head-dress of red. The double crown was a symbol of the imperial power.To Menes is ascribed the building of Memphis, the capital of the united kingdom. He is said to have raised the great dyke which Linant de Bellefonds identifies with that of Kosheish near Kafr el-Ayyât, and thereby to have diverted the Nile from its ancient channel under the Libyan plain. On the ground that he thus added to the western bank of the river his new capital was erected.Memphis is the Greek form of the old Egyptian Men-nefer or “Good Place.” The finalrwas dropped in Egyptian pronunciation at an early date, and thus arose the Hebrew forms of the name, Moph and Noph, which we find in the Old Testament,1while “Memphis” itself—Mimpi in the cuneiform inscriptions of Assyria—has the same origin. Another name by which it went in old Egyptian times was Anbu-hez, “the white wall,” from the great wall of brick, covered with white stucco, which surrounded it, and of which traces still remain on the northern side of the old site. Here a fragment of the ancient fortification still rises above the mounds of the city; the wall is many feet thick, and the sun-dried bricks of which it is formed are bonded together with the stems of palms.In the midst of the mounds is a large and deep depression, which is filled with water during the greater part of the year. It marks the site of the sacred lake, which was attached to every Egyptian temple, and in which the priests bathed themselves and washed the vessels of the sanctuary. Here, not long ago, lay the huge colossus of limestone which represented Ramses ii. of the nineteenth dynasty, and had been presented by the Egyptian Khedive to the British Government. But it was too heavy and unwieldy for modern engineers to carry across the sea, and it was therefore left lying with its face prone in the mud and water of the ancient lake, a prey to the first comer who needed a quarry of stone. It was not until after the English occupation of Egypt that it was lifted out of its ignoble position by Major Bagnold and placed securely in a wooden shed. While it was being raised another colossus of the same Pharaoh, of smaller size but of better workmanship, was discovered, and lifted beyond the reach of the inundation.The two statues once stood before the temple of the god Ptah, whom the Greeks identified with their own deity Hephæstos, for no better reason than the similarity of name. The temple of Ptah was coeval with the city of Memphis itself. When Menes founded Memphis, he founded the temple at the same time. It was the centre and glory of the city, which was placed under the protection of its god. Pharaoh after Pharaoh adorned and enlarged it, and its priests formed one of the most powerful organisations in the kingdom.The temple of Ptah, the Creator, gave to Memphis its sacred name. This was Hâ-ka-Ptah, “the house of the double (or spiritual appearance) of Ptah,” in which Dr. Brugsch sees the original of the Greek Aigyptos.But the glories of the temple of Ptah have long since passed away. The worship of its god ceased for ever when Theodosius, the Roman Emperor, closed its gates, and forbade any other religion save the Christian to be henceforth publicly professed in the empire. Soon afterwards came the Mohammedan conquest of Egypt. Memphis was deserted; and the sculptured stones of the ancient shrine served to build the palaces and mosques of the new lords of the country. Fostât and Cairo were built out of the spoils of the temple of Ptah. But the work of destruction took long to accomplish. As late as the twelfth century, the Arabic writer 'Abd el-Latîf describes the marvellous relics of the past which still existed on the site of Memphis. Colossal statues, the bases of gigantic columns, a chapel formed of a single block of stone and called “the green chamber”—such were some of the wonders of ancient art which the traveller was forced to admire.The history of Egypt, as we have seen, begins with the record of an engineering feat of the highest magnitude. It is a fitting commencement for the history of a country which has been wrested by man from the waters of the Nile, and whose existence even now is dependent on the successful efforts of the engineer. Beyond this single record, the history of Menes and his immediate successors is virtually a blank. No dated monuments of the first dynasty have as yet been discovered. It may be, as many Egyptologists think, that the Sphinx is older than Menes himself; but if so, that strange image, carved out of a rock which may once have jutted into the stream of the Nile, still keeps the mystery of its origin locked up in its breast. We know that it was already there in the days of Khephrên of the fourth dynasty; but beyond that we know nothing.Of the second dynasty a dated record still survives. Almost the first gift received by the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford was the lintel-stone of an ancient Egyptian tomb, brought from Saqqârah, the necropolis of Memphis, by Dr. Greaves at the end of the seventeenth century. When, more than a century later, the hieroglyphics upon it came to be read, it was found that it had belonged to the sepulchre of a certain Sheri who had been the “prophet” of the two Pharaohs Send and Per-ab-sen. Of Per-ab-sen no other record remains, but the name of Send had long been known as that of a king of the second dynasty.The rest of Sheri's tomb, so far as it has been preserved, is now in the Gizeh Museum. Years after the inscription on the fragment at Oxford had been deciphered, the hinder portion of the tomb was discovered by Mariette. Like the lintel-stone in the Ashmolean Museum, it is adorned with sculptures and hieroglyphics. Already, we learn from it, the hieroglyphic system of writing was complete, the characters being used not only to denote ideas and express syllables, but alphabetically as well. The name of Send himself is spelt in the letters of the alphabet. The art of the monument, though not equal to that which prevailed a few generations later, is already advanced, while the texts show that the religion and organisation of the empire were already old. In the age of the second dynasty, at all events, we are far removed from the beginnings of Egyptian civilisation.With Snefru, the first king of the fourth dynasty, or, according to another reckoning, the last king of the third, we enter upon the monumental history of Egypt. Snefru's monuments are to be found, not only in Egypt, but also in the deserts of Sinai. There the mines of copper and malachite were worked for him, and an Egyptian garrison kept guard upon the Bedouin tribes. In Egypt, as has now been definitely proved by Professor Petrie's excavations, he built the pyramid of Medûm, one of the largest and most striking of the pyramids. Around it were ranged the tombs of his nobles and priests, from which have come some of the most beautiful works of art in the Gizeh Museum.The painted limestone statues of Ra-nefer and his wife Nefert, for instance, are among the finest existing specimens of ancient Egyptian workmanship. They are clearly life-like portraits, executed with a delicacy and finish which might well excite the envy of a modern artist. The character, and even the antecedents of the husband and wife, breathe through their features. While in the one we can see the strong will and solid common-sense of the self-made man, in the other can be traced the culture and refinement of a royal princess.The pyramids of Gizeh are the imperishable record of the fourth dynasty. Khufu, Khaf-Ra and Men-ka-Ra, the Kheops, Khephrên and Mykerinos of Herodotos, were the builders of the three vast sepulchres which, by their size and nearness to Cairo, have so long been an object of pilgrimage to the traveller. The huge granite blocks of the Great Pyramid of Khufu have been cut and fitted together with a marvellous exactitude. Professor Petrie found that the joints of the casing-stones, with an area of some thirty-five square feet each, were not only worked with an accuracy equal to that of the modern optician, but were even cemented throughout. “Though the stones were brought as close as 1/500 inch, or, in fact, into contact, and the mean opening of the joint was 1/50 inch, yet the builders managed to fill the joint with cement, despite the great area of it and the weight of the stone to be moved—some sixteen tons. To merely place such stones in exact contact at the sides would be careful work; but to do so with cement in the joints seems almost impossible.”2Professor Petrie believes that the stones were cut with tubular drills fitted with jewel points—a mode of cutting stone which it was left to the nineteenth century to re-discover. The lines marked upon the stone by the drills can still be observed, and there is evidence that not only the tool but the stone also was rotated. The great pressure needed for driving the drills and saws with the requisite rapidity through the blocks of granite and diorite is indeed surprising. It brings before us the high mechanical knowledge attained by the Egyptians in the fourth millennium before our era even more forcibly than the heights to which the blocks were raised. The machinery, however, with which this latter work was effected is still unknown.The sculptured and painted walls of the tombs which surround the pyramids of Gizeh tell us something about the life and civilisation of the period. The government was a highly organised bureaucracy, under a king who was already regarded as the representative of the Sun-god upon earth. The land was inhabited by an industrious people, mainly agricultural, who lived in peace and plenty. Arts and crafts of all kinds were cultivated, including that of making glass. The art of the sculptor had reached a high perfection. One of the most striking statues in the world is that of Khaf-Ra seated on his imperial throne, which is now in the Museum of Gizeh. The figure of the king is more than life-size; above his head the imperial hawk stretches forth its wings, and on the king's face, though the features bear the unmistakable impress of a portrait, there rests an aspect of divine calm. And yet this statue, with its living portraiture and exquisite finish, is carved out of a dioritic rock, the hardest of hard stone.The fourth dynasty was peaceably succeeded by the fifth and the sixth. Culture and cultivation made yet further progress, and the art of the painter and sculptor reached its climax. Those whose knowledge of Egyptian art is derived from the museums of Europe have little idea of the perfection which it attained at this remote period. The hard and crystallised art of later ages differed essentially from that of the early dynasties. The wooden figure of the 'Sheikh el-Beled'—the sleek and well-to-do farmer, who gazes complacently on his fertile fields and well-stocked farm—is one of the noblest works of human genius. And yet it belongs to the age of the fifth or the sixth dynasty, like the pictures in low relief, resembling exquisite embroidery on stone, which cover the walls of the tombs of Ti and Ptah-hotep at Saqqârah.The first six dynasties constitute what Egyptologists call the Old Empire. They ended with a queen, Nit-aqer (the Greek Nitôkris), and Egypt passed under sudden eclipse. For several centuries it lies concealed from the eye of history. A few royal names alone are preserved; other records there are as yet none. What befell the country and its rulers we do not know. Whether it was foreign invasion or civil war, or the internal decay of the government, certain it is that disaster overshadowed for a while the valley of the Nile. It may be that the barbarian tribes, whose tombs Professor Petrie has lately discovered in the desert opposite Qoft, and whom he believes to have been of Libyan origin, were the cause. With the tenth dynasty light begins again to dawn. Mr. Griffith has shown that some at least of the tombs cut out of the cliffs behind Siût belonged to that era, and that Ka-meri-Ra, whose name appears in one of them, was a king of the tenth dynasty. The fragmentary inscription, which can still be traced on the walls of the tomb, seems to allude to the successful suppression of a civil war.The eleventh dynasty arose at Thebes, of which its founders were the hereditary chiefs. It introduces us to the so-called Middle Empire. But the Egypt of the Middle Empire was no longer the Egypt of the Old Empire. The age of the great pyramid-builders was past, and the tomb carved in the rock begins to take the place of the pyramid of the earlier age. Memphis has ceased to be the capital of the country; the centre of power has been transferred to Thebes and the south. The art which flourished at Memphis has been superseded by the art with which our museums have made us familiar. With the transfer of the government, moreover, from north to south, Egyptian religion has undergone a change. Ptah of Memphis and Ra of Heliopolis have had to yield to Amon, the god of Thebes. The god of the house of the new Pharaohs now takes his place at the head of the pantheon, and the older gods of the north fall more and more into the background.The Egypt of the Middle Empire was divided among a number of great princes, who had received their power and property by inheritance, and resembled the great lords of the feudal age. The Pharaoh at first was little more than the chief among his peers. But when the sceptre passed into the vigorous hands of the kings of the twelfth dynasty, the influence and authority of the feudal princes was more and more encroached upon. A firm government at home and successful campaigns abroad restored the supreme rule of the Pharaoh and made him, perhaps more than had ever been the case before, a divinely-instituted autocrat.The wars of the twelfth dynasty extended the Egyptian domination far to the south. The military organisation of the Middle Empire was indeed its most striking point of contrast to the Old Empire. The Egypt of the first six dynasties had been self-contained and pacific. A few raids were made from time to time against the negroes south of the First Cataract, but only for the sake of obtaining slaves. The idea of extending Egyptian power beyond the natural boundaries of Egypt has as yet never presented itself. The Pharaohs of the Old Empire did not need an army, and accordingly did not possess one. But with the Middle Empire all this was changed. Egypt ceases to be isolated: its history will be henceforth part of the history of the world. Foreign wars, however, and the organisation of a strong government at home, did not absorb the whole energies of the court. Temples and obelisks were erected, art was patronised, and the creation of the Fayyûm, whereby a large tract of fertile land was won for Egypt, not only proved the high engineering skill of the age of the twelfth dynasty, but constituted a solid claim for gratitude to its creator, Amon-em-hat iii., on the part of all succeeding generations.The thirteenth dynasty followed in the footsteps of its predecessor. We possess the names of more than one hundred and fifty kings who belonged to it, and their monuments were scattered from one end of Egypt to the other. The fourteenth dynasty ended in disaster. Egypt was invaded by Asiatic hordes, and the line of native Pharaohs was for a time extinct.The invaders were called by Manetho, the Egyptian historian, the Hyksos or Shepherd Princes: on the monuments they are known as the Aamu or “Asiatics.” At first, we are told, their progress was marked by massacre and destruction. The temples were profaned and overthrown, the cities burned with fire. But after a while the higher culture of the conquered people overcame the conquerors. A king arose among the invaders who soon adopted the prerogatives and state of the Pharaohs. The fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth dynasties were Hyksos.Recent discoveries have proved that at one time the dominion of the Hyksos extended, if not to the first cataract, at all events far to the south of Thebes. Their monuments have been found at Gebelên and El-Kab. Gradually, however, the native princes recovered their power in Upper Egypt. While the seventeenth Hyksos dynasty was reigning at Zoan, or Tanis, in the north, a seventeenth Egyptian dynasty was ruling at Thebes. But the princes of Thebes did not as yet venture to claim the imperial title. They still acknowledged the supremacy of the foreign Pharaoh.The war of independence broke out in the reign of the Hyksos king Apopi. According to the Egyptian legend, Apopi had sent messengers to the prince of Thebes, bidding him worship none other god than Baal-Sutekh, the Hyksos divinity. But Amon-Ra of Thebes avenged the dishonour that had been done him, and stirred up his adorers to successful revolt. For five generations the war went on, and ended with the complete expulsion of the stranger. Southern Egypt first recovered its independence, then Memphis fell, and finally the Hyksos conquerors were driven out of Zoan, their capital, and confined to the fortress of Avaris, on the confines of Asia. But even here they were not safe from the avenging hand of the Egyptian. Ahmes I., the founder of the eighteenth dynasty, drove them from their last refuge and pursued them into Palestine.The land which had sent forth its hordes to conquer Egypt was now in turn to be conquered by the Egyptians. The war was carried into Asia, and the struggle for independence became a struggle for empire. Under the Pharaohs of the eighteenth dynasty, Egypt, for the first time in its history, became a great military state. Army after army poured out of the gates of Thebes, and brought back to it the spoils of the known world. Ethiopia and Syria alike felt the tread of the Egyptian armies, and had alike to bow the neck to Egyptian rule. Canaan became an Egyptian province, Egyptian garrisons were established in the far north on the frontiers of the Hittite tribes, and the boundaries of the Pharaoh's empire were pushed to the banks of the Euphrates.It is probable that Abraham did not enter Egypt until after the Hyksos conquest. But before the rise of the eighteenth dynasty Egyptian chronology is uncertain. We have to reckon it by dynasties rather than by years. According to Manetho, the Old Empire lasted 1478 years, and a considerable interval must be allowed for the troublous times which intervened between its fall and the beginning of the Middle Empire. We learn from the Turin papyrus—a list of the Egyptian kings and dynasties compiled in the time of Ramses ii., but now, alas! in tattered fragments—that the tenth dynasty lasted 355 years and 10 days, the eleventh dynasty 243 years. The duration of the twelfth dynasty is known from the monuments (165 years 2 months), that of the thirteenth, with its more than one hundred and fifty kings, cannot have been short. How long the Hyksos rule endured it is difficult to say. Africanus, quoting from Manetho, as Professor Erman has shown, makes it 953 years, with which the fragment quoted by Josephus from the Egyptian historian also agrees. In this case the Hyksos conquest of Egypt would have taken place about 2550 b.c.Unfortunately the original work of Manetho is lost, and we are dependent for our knowledge of it on later writers, most of whom sought to harmonise its chronology with that of the Septuagint. When we further remember the corruptions undergone by numerical figures in passing through the hands of the copyists, it is clear that we cannot place implicit confidence in the Manethonian numbers as they have come down to us. Indeed, the writers who have recorded them do not always agree together, and we find the names of kings arbitrarily omitted or the length of their reigns shortened in order to force the chronology into agreement with that of the author. The twelfth dynasty reigned 134 years according to Eusebius, 160 years according to Africanus; its real duration was 165 years, 2 months, and 12 days.With the help of certain astronomical data furnished by the monuments, Dr. Mahler, the Viennese astronomer, has succeeded in determining the exact date of the reigns of the two most famous monarchs of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties, Thothmes iii. and Ramses ii. Thothmes iii. reigned from the 20th of March b.c. 1503 to the 14th of February b.c. 1449, while the reign of Ramses ii. lasted from b.c. 1348 to b.c. 1281. The date of Thothmes iii. enables us to fix the beginning of the eighteenth dynasty about b.c. 1570.The dynasties of Manetho were successive and not contemporaneous. This fact was one of the main results of the excavations and discoveries of Mariette Pasha. The old attempts to form artificial schemes of chronology—which, however, satisfied no one but their authors—upon the supposition that some of the dynasties reigned together are now discredited for ever. Every fresh discovery made in Egypt, which adds to our knowledge of ancient Egyptian history, makes the fact still more certain. There were epochs, indeed, when more than one line of kings claimed sway in the valley of the Nile, but when such was the case, Manetho selected what he or his authorities considered the sole legitimate dynasty, and disregarded every other. Of the two rival twenty-first dynasties which the monuments have brought to light, the lists of Manetho recognise but one, and the Assyrian rule in Egypt at a subsequent date is ignored in favour of the princes of Sais who were reigning at the same time.If, then, any reliance is to be placed on the length of time ascribed to the Hyksos dominion in the valley of the Nile, and if we are still to hold to the old belief of Christendom and see in the Hebrew wanderer into Egypt the Abram who contended against Chedor-laomer and the subject kings of Babylonia, it would have been about two centuries after the settlement of the Asiatic conquerors in the Delta that Abraham and Sarah arrived at their court. The court was doubtless held at Zoan, the modern Sân. Here was the Hyksos capital, and its proximity to the Asiatic frontier of Egypt made it easy of access to a traveller from Palestine. We are told in the Book of Numbers (xiii. 22) that Hebron was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt; and it may be that the building here referred to was that which caused Zoan to become the seat of the Hyksos power.Asiatic migration into Egypt was no new thing. On the walls of one of the tombs of Beni-Hassan there is pictured the arrival of thirty-seven Aamu or Asiatics “of Shu,” in the sixth year of Usertesen ii. of the twelfth dynasty. Under the conduct of their chief, Ab-sha, they came from the mountains of the desert, bringing with them gazelles as well as kohl for the ladies of the court. Four women in long bright-coloured robes walk between groups of bearded men, and two children are carried in a pannier on a donkey's back. The men are armed with bows, their feet are shod with sandals, and they wear the vari-coloured garments for which the people of Phœnicia were afterwards famed.After the Hyksos conquest Asiatic migration must naturally have largely increased. Between northern Egypt and Palestine there must have been a constant passage to and fro. The rulers of the land of the Nile were now themselves of Asiatic extraction, and it may be that the language of Palestine was spoken in the court of the Pharaoh. At all events, the emigrant from Canaan no longer found himself an alien and a stranger in “the land of Ham.” His own kin were now supreme there, and a welcome was assured to him whenever he might choose to come. The subject population tilled their fields for the benefit of their foreign lords, and the benefit was shared by the inhabitants of Canaan. In case of famine, Palestine could now look to the never-failing soil of Egypt for its supply of corn.If, therefore, Abraham lived in the age when northern Egypt was subject to the rule of the Hyksos Pharaohs, nothing was more natural than for him, an Asiatic emigrant into Canaan, to wander into Egypt when the corn of Palestine had failed. He would but be following in the wake of that larger Asiatic migration which led to the rise of the Hyksos dynasties themselves.There is, however, a statement connected with his residence at the court of the Pharaoh which does not seem compatible with the evidence of the monuments. We are told that among the gifts showered upon him by the king were not only sheep and oxen and asses, but camels as well. The camel was the constant companion of the Asiatic nomad. As far back as we can trace the history of the Bedouin, he has been accompanied by the animal which the old Sumerian population of Babylonia called the beast which came from the Persian Gulf. Indeed, it would appear that to the Bedouin belongs the credit of taming the camel, in so far as it has been tamed at all. But to the Egyptians it was practically unknown. Neither in the hieroglyphics, nor on the sculptured and painted walls of the temples and tombs, do we anywhere find it represented. The earliest mention of it yet met with in an Egyptian document is in a papyrus of the age of the Exodus, and there it bears the Semitic name ofkamail, the Hebrewgamal.3Naturalists have shown that it was not introduced into the northern coast of Africa until after the beginning of the Christian era.Nevertheless it does not follow that because the camel was never used in Egypt by the natives of the country, it was not at times brought there by nomad visitors from Arabia and Palestine. It is difficult to conceive of an Arab family on the march without a train of camels. And that camels actually found their way into the valley of the Nile has been proved by excavation. When Hekekyan Bey, in 1851-54, was sinking shafts in the Nile mud at Memphis for the Geological Society of London, he found, among other animal remains, the bones of dromedaries.4The name of the Pharaoh visited by Abraham is not told to us. As elsewhere in Genesis, the king of Egypt is referred to only by his official title. This title of “Pharaoh” was one which went back to the early days of the monarchy. It represents the Egyptian Per-âa, or “Great House,” and is of repeated occurrence in the inscriptions. All power and government emanated from the royal palace, and accordingly, just as we speak of the “Sublime Porte” or “Lofty Gate” when we mean the Sultan of Turkey, so the Egyptians spoke of their own sovereign as the Pharaoh or “Great House.” To this day the king of Japan is called the Mi-kado, or “Lofty Gate.”That the Hyksos princes should have assumed the title of their predecessors on the throne of Egypt is not surprising. The monuments have shown us how thoroughly Egyptianised they soon became. The court of the Hyksos Pharaoh differed but little, if at all, from that of the native Pharaoh. The invaders rapidly adopted the culture of the conquered people, and with it their manners, customs, and even language. The most famous mathematical treatise which Egypt has bequeathed to us was written for a Hyksos king. It may be that the old language of Asia was retained, at all events for a time, by the side of the language of the subject population; but if so, its position must have been like that of Turkish by the side of Arabic in Egypt during the reign of Mohammed Ali. For several centuries the Hyksos could be described as Egyptians, and the dynasties of the Hyksos Pharaohs are counted by the Egyptian historian among the legitimate dynasties of his country.It was only in the matter of religion that the Hyksos court kept itself distinct from its native subjects. The supreme god of the Hyksos princes was Sutekh, in whom we must see a form of the Semitic Baal. As has already been stated, Egyptian legend ascribed the origin of the war of independence to a demand on the part of the Hyksos Pharaoh Apopi that the prince and the god of Thebes should acknowledge the supremacy of the Hyksos deity. But even in the matter of religion the Hyksos princes could not help submitting to the influence of the old Egyptian civilisation. Ra, the sun-god of Heliopolis, was identified with Sutekh, and even Apopi added to his name the title of Ra, and so claimed to be an incarnation of the Egyptian sun-god, like the native Pharaohs who had gone before him.When next we hear of Egypt in the Old Testament, it is when Israel is about to become a nation. Joseph was sold by his brethren to merchants from Arabia, who carried him into Egypt. There he became the slave of Potiphar, “the eunuch of Pharaoh and chief of the executioners,” or royal body-guard. The name of Potiphar, like that of Potipherah, the priest of On, corresponds with the Egyptian Pa-tu-pa-Ra, “the Gift of the Sun-god.” It has been asserted by Egyptologists that names of this description are not older than the age of the twenty-second dynasty, to which Shishak, the contemporary of Rehoboam, belonged; but because no similar name of an earlier date has hitherto been found, it does not follow that such do not exist. As long as our materials are imperfect, we cannot draw positive conclusions merely from an absence of evidence.That Potiphar should have been an eunuch and yet been married seems a greater obstacle to our acceptance of the story. This, however, it need not be. Eunuchs in the modern East, who have risen to positions of power and importance, have possessed their harems like other men. In ancient Babylonia it was only the service of religion which the eunuch was forbidden to enter. Such was doubtless the case in Egypt also.Egyptian research has brought to light a curious parallel to the history of Joseph and Potiphar's wife. It is found in one of the many tales, the equivalents of the modern novel, in which the ancient Egyptians delighted. The tale, which is usually known as that of “The Two Brothers,” was written by the scribe Enna for Seti ii. of the nineteenth dynasty when he was still crown-prince, and it embodies the folk-lore of his native land. Enna lived under Meneptah, the probable Pharaoh of the Exodus, and his work was thus contemporaneous with the events which brought about the release of the Israelites from their “house of bondage.” How old the stories may be upon which it is based it is impossible for us to tell.Here is Professor Erman's translation of the commencement of the tale:— “Once upon a time there were two brothers, born of one mother and of one father; the elder was called Anup, the younger Bata. Now Anup possessed a house and had a wife, whilst his younger brother lived with him as a son. He it was who wove (?) for him, and drove his cattle to the fields, who ploughed and reaped; he it was who directed all the business of the farm for him. The younger brother was a good (farmer); the like of whom was not to be found throughout the country.” One day Anup sent Bata from the field to the house to fetch seed-corn. “And he sent his younger brother,5and said to him: Hasten and bring me seed-corn from the village. And his younger brother found the wife of his elder brother occupied in combing her hair. And he said to her: Rise up, give me seed-corn that I may return to the field, for thus has my elder brother enjoined me, to return without delaying. The woman said to him: Go in, open the chest, that thou mayst take what thine heart desires, for otherwise my locks will fall to the ground. And the youth went within into the stable, and took thereout a large vessel, for it was his will to carry out much seed-corn. And he loaded himself with wheat and dhurra and went out with it. Then she said to him: How great is the burden in thy arms? He said to her: Two measures of dhurra and three measures of wheat make together five measures which rest on my arms. Thus he spake to her. But she spake to the youth and said: How great is thy strength! Well have I remarked thy power many a time. And her heart knew him.... And she stood up and laid hold of him and said unto him: Come let us celebrate an hour's repose; the most beautiful things shall be thy portion, for I will prepare for thee festal garments. Then was the youth like unto the panther of the south for rage on account of the wicked word which she had spoken to him. But she was afraid beyond all measure. And he spoke to her and said: Thou, oh woman, hast been like a mother to me and thy husband like a father, for he is older than I, so that he might have been my begetter. Wherefore this great sin that thou hast spoken unto me? Say it not to me another time, then will I this time not tell it, and no word of it shall come out of my mouth to any man at all. And he loaded himself with his burden and went out into the field. And he went to his elder brother, and they completed their day's work. And when it was evening, the elder brother returned home to his house. And his younger brother followed behind his oxen, having laden himself with all the good things of the field, and he drove his oxen before him to bring them to the stable. And behold the wife of his elder brother was afraid because of the word which she had spoken, and she took a jar of fat and was like to one to whom an evil-doer had offered violence, since she wished to say to her husband: Thy younger brother has offered me violence. And her husband returned home at evening, according to his daily custom, and found his wife lying stretched out and suffering from injury. She poured no water over his hands, as was her custom; she had not lighted the lights for him, so that his house was in darkness, and she lay there ill. And her husband said to her: Who has had to do with thee? Lift thyself up! She said to him: No one has had to do with me except thy younger brother, since when he came to take seed-corn for thee, he found me sitting alone and said to me, ‘Come, let us make merry an hour and repose: let down thy hair!’ Thus he spake to me; but I did not listen to him (but said), ‘See! am I not thy mother, and is not thy elder brother like a father to thee?’ Thus I spoke to him, but he did not hearken to my speech, but used force with me that I might not tell thee. Now if thou allow him to live I will kill myself. “Then the elder brother began to rage like a panther: he sharpened his knife and took it in his hand. And the elder brother stood behind the door of the stable in order to kill the youth when he came back in the evening to bring the oxen into the stable. Now when the sun was setting and he had laden himself with all the good things of the field, according to his custom, he returned (to the house). And his cow that first entered the stable said to him: Beware! there stands thy elder brother before thee with his knife in order to kill thee; run away from him! So he heard what the first cow said. Then the second entered and spake likewise. He looked under the door of the stable, and saw the feet of his brother, who was standing behind the door with his knife in his hand. He threw his burden on the ground and began to run away quickly. His elder brother ran after him with his knife in his hand.”Ra, the sun-god, however, came to the help of the innocent youth, and interposed a river full of crocodiles between him and his pursuer. All night long the two brothers stood on either side of the water; in the morning Bata convinced his brother that he had done no wrong, and reproached him for having believed that he could be guilty. Then he added: “Go home now and see after thine oxen thyself, for I will no longer stay with thee, but will go to the acacia valley.” So Anup returned to his house, put his wife to death, and sat there in solitude and sadness.Joseph, more fortunate than Bata, rose from his prison to the highest office of state. The dreams, through which this was accomplished, were in full keeping with the belief of the age. Dreams even to-day play an important part in the popular faith of Egypt. In the days of the Pharaohs it was the same. Thothmes iv. cleared away the sand that had overwhelmed the Sphinx, and built a temple between its paws, in consequence of a dream in which Ra-Harmakhis had appeared to him when, wearied with hunting, he had lain down to sleep under the shadow of the ancient monument. A thousand years later Nut-Amon of Ethiopia was summoned by a dream to march into Egypt. In Greek days, when the temple of Abydos had fallen into ruin, an oracle was established in one of its deserted chambers, and those who consulted it received their answers in the “true dreams” that came to them during the night. The dreams, however, needed at times an interpreter to explain them, and of such an interpreter mention is made in a Greek inscription from the Serapeum at Memphis. At other times the dreamer himself could interpret his vision by the help of the books in which the signification of dreams had been reduced to a science.The dreams of Pharaoh and “his two eunuchs,” however, “the chief butler” and “the chief baker,” were of a strange and novel kind, and there were no books that could explain them. Even the “magicians” and “wise men” of Egypt failed to understand the dream of Pharaoh. And yet, when the Hebrew captive had pointed out its meaning, no doubt remained in the mind of Pharaoh and his servants that he was right. From time immemorial the Nile had been likened to a milch-cow, and the fertilising water which it spread over the soil to the milk that sustains human life. The cow-headed goddess Hathor or Isis watched over the fertility of Egypt. It was said of her that she “caused the Nile to overflow at his due time,” and the “seven great Hathors” were the seven forms under which she was worshipped. In the seven kine, accordingly, which stood “upon the bank of the river” the Egyptian readily saw the life-giving powers of the Nile.It needed but the word of the Pharaoh to change the Hebrew slave into an Egyptian ruler, second only to the monarch itself. His very name ceased to be Semitic, and henceforth became Zaphnath-paaneah. He even allied himself with the exclusive priesthood of Heliopolis or On, marrying Asenath, the daughter of the priest of Ra. By name and marriage, as well as by position, he was thus adopted into the ranks of the native aristocracy.Such changes of name are not unknown to the inscriptions. From time to time we meet with the records of foreigners who had settled down in the valley of the Nile and there received new names of Egyptian origin. Thus a monument found at Abydos tells us of a Canaanite from Bashan called Ben-Azan, who received in Egypt the new name of Yu-pa-â and was the father of a vizier of Meneptah, the Pharaoh of the Exodus. The Hittite wife of Ramses ii. similarly adopted an Egyptian name, and the tombstones of two Karians are preserved, in which the Karian names of the dead are written in the letters of the Karian alphabet, while a hieroglyphic text is attached which gives the Egyptian names they had borne in Egypt.The exact transcription in hieroglyphics of the Egyptian name of Joseph is still doubtful. But it is plain that it contains the Egyptian wordspa-ânkh, “the life,” or “the living one,” which seem to be preceded by the particlenti, “of.” The termpa-ânkhis sometimes applied to the Pharaoh, and since Kames, the last king of the seventeenth dynasty, assumed the title of Zaf-n-to, “nourisher of the land,” it is possible that in Zaphnath-paaneah we may see an Egyptian Zaf-nti-pa-ânkh, “nourisher of the Pharaoh.” But the final solution of the question must be left to future research.It is now more easy to explain the cry which was raised before Joseph when he went forth from the presence of the Pharaoh with the golden chain around his neck and the royal signet upon his finger. “Abrêk!” they shouted before him, and an explanation of the word has been vainly sought in the Egyptian language. It really is of Babylonian origin. In the primitive non-Semitic language of Chaldæaabriksignified “a seer” or “soothsayer,” and the term was borrowed by the Semitic Babylonians under the two forms ofabrikkuandabarakku. Joseph was thus proclaimed a seer, and his exaltation was due to his power of foreseeing the future. It was as a divinely-inspired seer that the subjects of the Pharaoh were to reverence him.How a Babylonian word likeabrekcame to be used in Egypt it is idle for us to inquire. Those who believe in the late origin and fictitious character of the story of Joseph would find an easy explanation of it. But easy explanations are not necessarily true, either in archæology or in anything else. And since we now know that Canaan, long before the time of Joseph, had fallen under Babylonian influence, that the Babylonian language and writing were employed there, and that Babylonian words had made their way into the native idiom, it does not require much stretch of the imagination to suppose that such words may have also penetrated to the court of the Asiatic rulers of northern Egypt. Up to the era of the Exodus, Egypt and Canaan were for several centuries as closely connected with each other as were England and the north of France in the age of the Normans and Plantagenets.The prosperity of Egypt depends upon the Nile. If the river rises to too great a height during the period of inundation, the autumn crops are damaged or destroyed. If, on the other hand, its rise is insufficient to fill the canals and basins, or to reach the higher ground, the land remains unwatered, and nothing will grow. Egypt, in fact, is the gift of the Nile; let the channel of the great river be diverted elsewhere, and the whole country would at once become an uninhabited desert.A low Nile consequently brings with it a scarcity of food. When provisions cannot be imported from abroad, famine is the necessary result, and the population perishes in thousands. Such was the case in the eleventh and twelfth centuries of our era, when the inundation was deficient for several successive years. The Arabic writers, El-Makrîzî and Abd-el-Latîf, describe the famines that ensued in terrible terms. Abd-el-Latîf was a witness of that which lasted from a.d. 1200 to 1202, and of the horrors which it caused. After eating grass, corpses, and even excrement, the wretched inhabitants of the country began to devour one another. Mothers were arrested in the act of cooking their own children, and it was unsafe to walk in the streets for fear of being murdered for food.The famine described by El-Makrîzî lasted, like that of Joseph, for seven years, from a.d. 1064 to 1071, and was similarly occasioned by a deficient Nile. A hieroglyphic inscription, discovered in 1888 by Mr. Wilbour in the island of Sehêl, contains a notice of another famine of seven years, which occurred at an earlier date. The island of Sehêl lies in the Cataract, midway between Assouan and Philæ, and the inscription is carved on a block of granite and looks towards the south. It is dated in the eighteenth year of a king, who was probably one of the Ethiopian princes that reigned over southern Egypt in the troublous age of the fourth and fifth Ptolemies. According to Dr. Brugsch's translation, it states that the king sent to the governor of Nubia saying: “I am sorrowing upon my high throne over those who belong to the palace. In sorrow is my heart for the vast misfortune, because the Nile flood in my time has not come for seven years. Light is the grain; there is lack of crops and of all kinds of food. Each man has become a thief to his neighbour. They desire to hasten and cannot walk; the child cries, the youth creeps along and the old man; their souls are bowed down. Their legs are bent together and drag along the ground, and their hands rest in their bosoms. The counsel of the great on [...]