THE TRUE STORY 
 
 OF THB 
 
 Exodus of Israel 
 
 TOGETHER WITH A BRIEF VIEW OF 
 
 THE HISTORY OF MONUMENTAL EGYPT 
 
 COMPILED FROM THE WORK OF 
 
 DR. HENRY BRUGSCH-BEY 
 
 EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION 
 AND NOTES 
 
 By FRANCIS H. UNDERWOOD 
 
 BOSTON 
 LEE AND SHEPARD PUBLISHERS 
 
 NEW YORK CHARLES T. DILLINGHAM 
 

 COPYRIGHT, 
 
 1880, 
 
 Br LEE AND SHEPAED. 
 
 All Rights Reserved. 
 
 
 Electrotyped at the Bo&ton Stereotype Foundry, 
 19 Spring Lane. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 »&• 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introduction, 9 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 Origin of the Ancient Egyptians.— Their Neighbors, 21 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Division of the Country. — Mental Peculiarities of 
 THE Egyptians, 28 
 
 CHAPTER HI. 
 The Chronology of the Pharaonic History, ... 42 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Mena, and the Early Dynasties.— The Pyramids and 
 Sphinx .47 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 Art and Architecture in the Twelfth Dynasty, . • 59 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 Semites and the Egyptians, . 64 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 The Time of Foreign Dominion. — Joseph in Egypt, . 95 
 
 5 
 
 457R91 
 
6 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 The Eighteenth Dynasty. — Thutmes III., . . . . 139 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 AmENHOTEP III., AND l^UNATEN, THE HeRETIC, . . . 153 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 The Pharaoh of the Oppression, . . . . . . .168 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 The Pharaoh of the Exodus, and a Summary of 
 Succeeding History, 183 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 The Exodus and the Egyptian Monuments. — A Me- 
 moir BY Henry Brugsch-Bey, ....... 196 
 
 -K>^ 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 The Table of Abydus, 243 
 
 Obelisks of Thutmes III. at Heliopolis, .... 248 
 
 Notes, 253 
 
 Index, 257 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 " Egypt under the Pharaohs," by Dr. Henry 
 Brugsch-Bey, is prominent among the ablest works 
 upon the history and antiquities of the dead mother 
 of arts. The author, under the patronage of the 
 Egyptian government, spent thirty years in explo- 
 ration and in the study of inscriptions, mostly in 
 company with the distinguished French savant^ 
 Mons. Mariette-Bey, whose numerous discoveries 
 have been fortunatelj^ complemented by the pro- 
 found knowledge and the far-reaching deductions 
 of his associate. 
 
 The most important fact established by their 
 labors is the verification (in the main) of the chron- 
 ological tables of Manetho, and the proof of the 
 high antiquity of the kingdom. This antiquity, 
 beside which the origin of every other historic 
 nation is modern, is made clear by many indepen- 
 dent proofs, sometimes jarring as against each other, 
 but agreeing in general tendenc3^ The Turin 
 papyrus, an enormous list of pharaohs, unfortunately 
 
 9 
 
10, , ; < Jiv:FnepucTiOK 
 
 much dilapidated and illegible in places; the Table 
 of Abydus, a smaller list of kings ; a well-authenti- 
 cated chart of genealogies of court architects ; the 
 various inscriptions upon temple walls ; the portrait 
 statues ; and the cartouches of kings (like coats-of- 
 arms) sculptured upon contemporary monuments, — 
 these are the chief sources of the evidence which 
 fixes the age of Mena, founder of the monarchy, 
 between forty-four and fifty-seven centuries before 
 the Christian era, and which shows a succession of 
 pharaohs down to the time of Alexander the Great, 
 (b. c. 332.) The architectural remains in Asia and 
 in Central America may be older than the pyramids, 
 but there are no inscriptions, and the date of Indian 
 and of Aztec temples is wholly conjectural. 
 
 The antiquity of Egypt, however, is not its only 
 claim upon the veneration of men : literature, the 
 arts, and the ideas of morality and religion, so far 
 as we know, had their birth in the Nile valley. 
 The alphabet, if it was constructed in Phoenicia, 
 was conceived in Egypt, or developed from Egyp- 
 tian characters. Language, doubtless, is as old as 
 man, but the visible symbols of speech were first 
 formulated from the hieroglyphic figures. 
 
 The early architecture of the Greeks, the Doric, 
 is a development of the Egyptian. Their vases, 
 ewers, jewelry, and other ornamental works, are 
 
INTR OD UCTIGN. \ \ 
 
 copied from the household luxury of the pharaohs. 
 The peculiar genius of Egypt, however, appears to 
 be repulsive to gay and lively people like the 
 French, and the critics of Paris do scant justice to 
 the colossal works of the elder pharaohs. Edmund 
 About says : " The contemporaries of Sesostris were 
 miraculous constructors rather than great architects, 
 skilful and expeditious workmen rather than re- 
 markable sculptors. From the time of Moses to 
 the epoch of the Ptolemies, all the fine arts of the 
 country, such as architecture, sculpture, and paint- 
 ing, have struck us by their solidity and harshness, 
 by the spirit of tradition pushed to the extreme, 
 rather than by their originality of genius. It is 
 necessary to go back to the first dynasties to meet 
 pure and ingenious talent, that hieratic regulations 
 were soon to paralyze. A few specimens, well exe- 
 cuted, are found here and there ; but one could 
 search the whole of Egypt from one end to the 
 other, without finding a work to be compared to 
 the Temple of Theseus, or to the Venus of Milo. 
 The enormous is not the great ; knowledge and 
 facility bear no relation to genius." 
 
 There is a singular mixture of truth and error in 
 this shrewd paragraph. ' Sesostris,' or Ramses the 
 Great, was not long before Moses, but the art of 
 Egypt culminated in the reign of Thutmes III., 
 
12 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 in the dynasty preceding. The art of the Greeks 
 did not reach its perfection until long after the 
 decadence of Egypt. In the time of the Ptolemies 
 Egypt was a Greek province. The great works of 
 Eg3'pt, as About says, were not the latest ; neither 
 were they the earliest. The same is true of Greek, 
 and of Roman art. In no country has the growth 
 of art been continuous and uninterrupted. In 
 Egypt, as in Greece, the period of greatness was 
 comparatively ancient. The most truthful state- 
 ment in the passage quoted is that which mentions 
 the influence of the priests in preventing the devel- 
 opment of art in sculpture and painting, by requiring 
 the use of certain formal and conventional outlines. 
 After all, the appreciation of one or another kind of 
 art is greatly owing to inherited traits, and to the 
 distinctive quality of race. The exquisite perfec- 
 tion of a Greek temple will most delight the 
 beauty-loving Latin races ; the monumental gran- 
 deur of Karnac will most strongly affect the Ger- 
 mans, the English, and other Gothic peoples. It is 
 the sombre magnificence of a Gothic minster against 
 the tawdry splendors of the opera house ; it is the 
 glory of Handel's Messiah^ or of Beethoven's Fifth 
 Symphony^ against the elegance of La Dame Blanche^ 
 or the gayety of La Belle Helena^ of Offenbach. 
 Surely M. About can have his choice. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 13 
 
 The influence of Egyptian, ideas upon the race 
 of Israel has a profound interest for the whole 
 Christian world. The time of Abraham is properly- 
 considered to have been about 1900 B. c* — an 
 epoch that, in the minds of unreflecting persons, is 
 almost at the beginning of all things. Yet the 
 Great Pyramid, built by the first pharaoh of the 
 fourth dynasty, had been standing from twelve hun- 
 dred to two thousand years before the ' Father of 
 the Faithful ' was born. Egypt had a school of 
 architecture and sculpture, a recorded literature, re- 
 ligious ceremonies, mathematics, astronomy, music, 
 agriculture, scientific irrigation, the arts of war, 
 ships, commerce, workers in gold, ivory, gems, and 
 glass, the appliances of luxury, and the insignia 
 of pride, ages before the race of Hebrews had been 
 evolved from the fierce Semitic tribes of the desert. 
 
 The Five Books of Moses, the beautiful poem of 
 Job, and the other sacred writings of the Jews, 
 were then so far in the future ! Ages before the 
 giving of the law on Mount Sinai, the * Book of the 
 Dead,' with its high moral precepts, was in the 
 possession of every educated Egyptian ; portions of 
 
 * The epoch of Abraham may be fixed by that of Joseph, who 
 went to Egypt b. c. 1730. It is possible that from Joseph back to 
 Abraham there might have been two hundred and ten years, allow- 
 ing seventy years for each intervening life. 
 
14 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 it, transcribed upon papyrns leaves, were even then, 
 in the time of Abraham, securely folded in the 
 funeral cerements of kings and priests, laid in their 
 •" everlasting habitations." 
 
 The prayers of King Khunaten and of his queen, 
 and those of Amenhotep 11. , all dating long before 
 any biblical writing, may be found translated in this 
 work of Dr. Brugsch ; and it is but simple truth 
 to say, that, in beauty of expression and grandeur of 
 thought, and in that piety which is the reaching 
 out of the soul after God, no prayers of any people, 
 under any form of religion, can be placed before 
 them. One or two specimens will be found in the 
 following pages. 
 
 We read with a vague awe when the sacred 
 writer mentions "The God of Abraham, and of 
 Isaac, and of Jacob ; " but who was the God of 
 Khunaten, whose cry to the deity he could not 
 name comes to us from the dim twilight of time ? 
 
 Other literary fragments, translated by Dr. 
 Brugsch, attest the acute observation, the good 
 sense, and the moral elevation of writers who pre- 
 ceded by centuries all others of every other race. 
 
 In this essay we leave out of view the civilization 
 of Assyria and of other nations whose art and let- 
 ters, so far as we know, have not greatly affected 
 our own. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 15 
 
 The people of modern Europe are heirs to the 
 Romans in literature and the arts. The more 
 northern of the nations inherit, also, the laws, 
 language, and genius of the Goths. The Romans, 
 with their allies and congeners, drew their ideas 
 from the Greeks. The Greeks had their original 
 learning and art from Egypt, though partly through 
 the medium of Phoenicia. Greek historians like 
 Herodotus, and philosophers like Pythagoras, went 
 to Egypt to study, just as, long after, Roman schol- 
 ars went to Athens. The Jews went out from 
 Egypt with a modified Semitic speech, and a pure 
 Semitic blood ; but they carried with them in the 
 person of their great leader " all the wisdom of the 
 Egyptians." This is shown by their architecture, 
 their religious customs and vestments, and their 
 persistent kindred traditions. The nations we have 
 mentioned are those that developed and taught the 
 rude primitive races that peopled England, and 
 whose descendants in all quarters of the globe are 
 tending to supreme power in human affairs. 
 
 We see there is sufficient reason for the absorbing 
 interest felt by all thoughtful men in the annals of 
 Egypt. Wonderful developments have taken place 
 since the greatest of the pharaohs wore the double 
 crown, but the germ of all future civilizations was 
 in that powerful people. The thinking and the 
 
16 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 living of all mankind have been moulded by the 
 influences of Moses and Jesus ; and both were of 
 the race whose early lessons were received with 
 stripes from Egyptian masters. The hieratic sym- 
 bols are uncouth to modern eyes, but they con- 
 tained the possibilities of Genesis and the Iliad, of 
 the Psalms, the jEneid, and the Inferno, — of Pro- 
 metheus, Hamlet, and Paradise Lost. 
 
 " Earth proudly wears the Parthenon 
 As the best gem upon her zone ; " 
 
 but in the thought that planned the Hall of Col- 
 umns, or sculptured the rock temple of Amon, was 
 involved the conception of all Athenian and all 
 Roman fanes. 
 
 We hail, therefore, the continued results of ex- 
 plorations in this wonderful land, the remote but 
 undoubted source of letters and morals, sciences 
 and arts. Every newly-found inscription helps to 
 confirm or correct a date or a tradition, and to 
 make certain the long and dim tract of its history. 
 
 The difficulties that have surrounded the delvers 
 in buried cities can scarcely be over-estimated. 
 Suppose that, by some convulsion of nature, or by 
 some mischance in war, the venerable abbey of 
 Westminster with its historic monuments had been 
 levelled to the ground, and the stones lay in 
 
INTRODUCTION. 17 
 
 heaps in the cloisters, or about Whitehall, or along 
 the Thames embankment ; — suppose, after twenty 
 centuries had covered these stones with their accu- 
 mulations, and after spoliators had built some of 
 them into modern edifices, that a new Mariette or 
 Brugsch should excavate and measure and decipher, 
 and should attempt to reconstruct the towers, nave, 
 transepts, chapels, choir, and tombs ; — think of the 
 confusion of arches and rosaces, pinnacles and col- 
 umns, of headless statues and overturned pedestals, 
 of half-effaced inscriptions and fragmentary dates ! 
 Conceive what it would be to put in order the 
 various parts of the building, and to identify its 
 centuries of memorials ! Such, and so broken and 
 dispersed, are the remains of the fabric of the 
 Egyptian state. So, through the Nile valley, and 
 around Thebes and Memphis, Zoan-Tanis and 
 Pitom, Thinis, Philse, Bubastis and Abydus, lie the 
 almost irrecoverable fragments of monumental 
 Egypt, too many of them mere disjointed stones. 
 Upon such materials the labors of Egyptologists 
 have been patiently spent. The gaps in chronology 
 are still enormous and deplorable, due to the numer- 
 ous wars which, age after age, desolated the coun- 
 try and destroyed its statues and public buildings ; 
 but the results are still grand, and fully repay the 
 toil and money spent in the search. 
 2 
 
18 INTR OD UCTION. 
 
 Much remains to be done ; and it is to be hoped 
 that future viceroys may be as intelligent and lib- 
 eral as Ismail Pacha, to whom so much honor is 
 due, and that future archaeologists may be as untir- 
 ing, as keen and as just, as the author whose work 
 is under consideration. 
 
 This volume contains so much of Dr. Brugsch's 
 work as relates to the settlement of the family of 
 Jacob, and to their exodus as a people under Moses. 
 To enable the reader to understand the historic 
 connection, the editor has made a brief summary 
 of leading events, and an account of the most emi- 
 nent of the pharaohs. Some account is given of 
 the early races, also of the royal residences, and 
 of the Hyksos, under the last of whom Joseph was 
 the favorite minister. As far as is consistent with 
 fluency in narration, all these topics are presented 
 in the author's own words. 
 
 The original work is large and expensive, and its 
 chief interest to general readers, and especially to 
 biblical students, lies in the contact of the Jewish 
 with the Egyptian race. Many people might be 
 indifferent as to the history of Ramses the Great, 
 unless they knew that it was his daughter, the 
 Princess Meri, who found the infant Moses. Aahmes 
 would be a meaningless name, unless we knew that 
 he overthrew and seated himself on the throne of 
 
INTRODUCTION. 19 
 
 the pharaoh who had been the patron of Joseph. 
 Mineptah would be passed by, unless we were told 
 that he was the pharaoh of the Exodus, upon whom 
 the judgments of heaven fell, and who was drowned 
 with his host in pursuing his slaves. 
 
 It will be interesting, even to the firmest believer 
 in the literal inspiration of the Books of Moses, to 
 know that, although Egyptian history is silent with 
 regard to the Hebrews and their miraculous escape 
 from bondage, the Scripture narrative, when rightly 
 interpreted, is found, to accord with known events 
 and dates, and with the permanent facts of geog- 
 raphy. Translators and commentators have dark- 
 ened and perplexed the sacred record ; and clerical 
 chronologists have made havoc with arithmetic and 
 with science and history in fixing the unknowable 
 anno mundi as a point of reckoning ; but in the 
 new light shed upon the story of the Exodus by 
 Dr. Brugsch it comes out with wonderful vivid- 
 ness. 
 
 The long sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt was 
 productive of great and lasting results. Had they 
 remained outside the barrier of Shur among the 
 Shasu, their descendants to-day would have been 
 like the Bedouins, dwellers in the black tents of the 
 desert. Centuries of oppression consolidated them, 
 and made them a hardy and warlike people. They 
 
20 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 learned the sciences and arts of their oppressors; 
 they built upon their customs and laws. They 
 came to have a proper pride in an unmixed lineage ; 
 and they carried into Syria the certainty of a one 
 God, — a God long before dreamed of by Egyptian 
 priests and kings. Other influences have doubtless 
 aided, but it was chiefly the primal impulse from 
 Egypt that made them a leading race ; and that it 
 has not yet spent its force is shown by their de- 
 served prominence in literature, music, finance, and 
 statesmanship. Familiar as the sacred story ought 
 to be, it is thought best to copy the passages of 
 scripture that refer to Joseph and to Moses, that 
 they may be considered with Dr. Brugsch's irre- 
 sistible demonstration. 
 
 Feancis H. Underwood. 
 Boston, Feb. 2, 1880. 
 
THE TRUE STORY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 OEIGIN OF THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS. — THEIR 
 NEIGHBOES. 
 
 Although, in so long a space of time as sixty- 
 centuries, events and revolutions of great historical 
 importance must of necessity have completely al- 
 tered the political state of Egypt^ yet, notwith- 
 standing all, the old Egyptian race has undergone 
 but little change ; for it still preserves to this day 
 those distinctive features of physiognomy, and those 
 peculiarities of manners and customs, which have 
 been handed down to us, by the united testimony 
 of the monuments and the accounts of the ancient 
 classical writers, as the hereditary characteristics of 
 this people. 
 
 The forefathers of the Egyptians cannot be reck- 
 oned among the African races, properly so called. 
 The form of the skull — so at least the elder school 
 
 (21) 
 
22 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 teaches — as well as the proportions of the several 
 parts of the body, as these have been determined 
 from examining a great number of mummies, are 
 held to indicate a connection with the Caucasian 
 family of mankind. The Egyptians, together with 
 some other nations, form, as it would seem, a third 
 branch of that race, namely, the family called Cush- 
 ite, which is distinguished by special characters from 
 the Pelasgian and the Semitic families. Whatever 
 relations of kindred may be found always to exist 
 between these great races of mankind, thus much 
 may be regarded as certain, that the cradle of the 
 Egyptian people must be sought in the interior of 
 the Asiatic quarter of the world. In the earliest 
 ages of humanity,, far beyond all historical remem- 
 brance, the Egyptians, for reasons unknown to us, 
 left the soil of their primeval home, took their way 
 towards the setting sun, and finally crossed that 
 bridge of nations, the Isthmus of Suez, to find a 
 new fatherland on the favored banks of the holy 
 Nile. 
 
 Comparative philology, in its turn, gives powerful 
 support to this hypothesis. The Egyptian language 
 — which has been preserved on the monuments of 
 the oldest time, as well as in the late-Christian manu- 
 scripts of the Copts, the successors of the people of 
 the pharaohs — shows in no way any trace of a 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 23 
 
 derivation and descent from the African families of 
 speech. On the contrary, the primitive roots and 
 the essential elements of the Egyptian grammar 
 point to such an intimate connection with the Indo- 
 Germanic and Semitic languages, that it is almost 
 impossible to mistake the close relations which 
 formerly prevailed between the Egyptians and the 
 races called Indo-Germanic and Semitic. 
 
 We will not pass over in silence a Greek account, 
 remarkable because of its origin, according to which 
 the primitive abode of the Egyptian people is to 
 be sought in Ethiopia. According to an opinion 
 strongly advocated by ancient writers, and even 
 subscribed to by some modern historians little 
 conversant with the facts of the case, the honor 
 of first founding Egyptian civilization should be 
 awarded to a society of priests from the city of 
 Meroe. Descending the course of the Nile — so 
 runs the story — they are supposed to have settled 
 on the territory of the later city of Th'ebes, and 
 there to have founded the first state with a theo- 
 cratic form of government. Although, on the 
 ground of the ancient tradition, this view has been 
 frequently repeated in the historical works of sub- 
 sequent times, it is nevertheless stamped with the 
 mark of error, as it dispenses with any actual proof. 
 It is not to the Ethiopian priests that the Egyptian 
 
24 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 empire owes its origin, its form of government, and 
 the characteristic stages of its iiigh civilization ; but 
 much rather was it the Egyptians that first ascended 
 the river, to found in Ethiopia temples, cities, and 
 fortified places, and to diffuse the blessings of a civ- 
 ilized state among the rude dark-colored population. 
 Whichever of the Greek historians concocted the 
 marvellous fiction of the first Ethiopic settlement 
 in Egypt was led into the mistake by a confusion 
 with the influence which Ethiopia exercised on the 
 fortunes of Egypt during a comparatively late pe- 
 riod, and by carrying this back, without further 
 consideration, into the prehistoric age. 
 
 Supposing, for a moment, that Egypt had owed 
 her civil and social development to Ethiopia, noth- 
 ing should be more probable than the presumption 
 of our finding monuments of the highest antiquity 
 in that primitive home of the Egyptians, while in 
 going down the river we ought to light only upon 
 monuments of a later age. Strange to say, the 
 whole number of the buildings in stone, as yet 
 known and examined, which were erected on both 
 sides of the river at the bidding of the Egyptian 
 and Ethiopian kings, furnish the incontrcfvertible 
 proof, that the long series of temples, cities, sepul- 
 chres, and monuments in general, exhibit a distinct 
 chronological order, of which the oldest starting- 
 
TEE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 25 
 
 point is found in the Pyramids, at the apex of the 
 Delta, south of the bifurcation of the great river. 
 As, in proceeding southwards, we approach nearer 
 and nearer to the rapids and cataracts of the Upper 
 Nile, right into the heart of the later Ethiopian 
 kingdom, the more does the stamp of antiquity van- 
 ish from the whole body of extant monuments ; the 
 more evident is the decline of art, of taste, and of 
 beauty. In short, the Ethiopian style of art — so 
 far as the monumcxits still preserved allow us to 
 form a judgment — is destitute of all independent 
 character. The first view of the Ethiopian monu- 
 ments at once carries the conviction, that we can 
 recognize no special quality beyond the rudest con- 
 ception and the most imperfect execution of a stj'le 
 of art originally Egyptian. The most clumsy imita- 
 tion of Egyptian attainments in all that relates to 
 science and the arts, appears as the acme of the 
 intellectual progress and the artistic development 
 of Ethiopia. 
 
 According to the accounts of the Greek and Ro- 
 man writers who had occasion to visit Egypt and to 
 have close intercourse with the people of the coun- 
 try, the Egyptians themselves held the belief, that 
 they were the original inhabitants of the land. Tlie 
 fertile valley of the Nile, according to their opinion, 
 formed the heart and centre of the whole world. 
 
26 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 To the west of it dwelt the groups of tribes which 
 bore the general name of Ribu, or Libu, the ances- 
 tors of those Libyans who are so often mentioned in 
 the historical works and geographical descriptions 
 of the ancients. Inhabiting the north coasts of 
 Africa, they extended their abodes eastward as far 
 as the districts along the Canopic branch of the 
 Nile, now called that of Rosetta, or Rashid. From 
 the evidence of the monuments, they belonged to 
 a light-colored race, with blue eyes and blond or 
 red hair. According to the very remarkable re- 
 searches of the French general Faidherbe, they may 
 have been the earliest representatives of that race 
 (perhaps of Celts?) who migrated from the north 
 of Europe to Africa, making their way through the 
 three Mediterranean peninsulas, and gradually tak- 
 ing possession of the Libyan coasts. 
 
 Turning our eyes to the east, across the narrow 
 Isthmus of Suez, we meet on the ancient soil the 
 people of that great nation, which the Egyptians 
 designated by the name of Amu. Whether we pre- 
 fer to explain this name by the help of the Semitic 
 languages, in which it has the general significance 
 of ' people,' or whether we resort to the Egyptian 
 vocabulary, in which ame (more usually amen) has 
 the meaning of 'herdsman,' — in either case, this 
 one thing is certain, that the Egyptians of the pha- 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 2T 
 
 raonic age used the term in a some what contemptu- 
 ous sense. These Amu were the Pagans, the Kaf- 
 firs, or ' infidels ' of their time. In the colored 
 representations they are distinguished chiefly by 
 their yellow or yellowish-brown complexion, while 
 their dress has sometimes a great simplicity, but 
 sometimes shows a taste for splendor and richness 
 in the choiceness of the cut and the colored designs 
 woven into the fabric. In these Amu scientific re- 
 search has long since perceived the representatives 
 of the great Semitic family of nations, though, in 
 our own opinion, the same name includes also many 
 peoples and families, who appear to have but a 
 slight relationship with the pure Semitic race. 
 
 The most remarkable nations among the Amu, 
 who appear in the course of Egj'ptian history as 
 commanding respect by their character and their 
 deeds, are the Kheta, the Khar (or Khal), and the 
 Ruten (or Luten). But moreover it is to be espe- 
 cially remarked, as a fact established beyond dis- 
 pute, that even in the most glorious times of the 
 Egyptian monarchy the Amu were settled as perma- 
 nent inhabitants in the neighborhood of the present 
 lake Menzaleh. A great number of towns and vil- 
 lages, canals and pools, in that region, formerly bore 
 names unmistakably Semitic. 
 
28 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 
 DIVISION OF THE COUNTRY. — MENTAL PECULIAR- 
 ITIES OF THE EGYPTIANS. 
 
 Egypt is designated in the old inscriptions, as 
 well as in the books of the later Christian Egyp- 
 tians, by a word which signifies * the black land,' 
 and which is read in the Egyptian language Kern, or 
 Kami. The ancients had early remarked that the 
 cultivable land of Egypt was distinguished by its 
 dark and almost black color, and certainly this 
 peculiar color of their soil suggested to the old 
 Egyptians the name of the black land. This name 
 and its derivation receive a further corroboration 
 from the fact, that the neighboring region of the 
 Arabian desert bore the name of Tesher, or ' the 
 red land,' in contradistinction to the black land 
 (the A'in of the monuments, uEan in Pliny, an ap- 
 pellation of the nome afterwards called the Heroo- 
 politan). On countless occasions the king is men- 
 tioned in the inscriptions as ' the lord of the black 
 country and of the red country,' in order to show 
 that his rule extended over cultivated and unculti- 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 29 
 
 vated Egypt in the wider sense of the word. We 
 must take this opportunity of stating that the 
 Egyptians designated themselves simply as the 
 people of the black land, and that the inscriptions, 
 so far. as we know, have handed down to us no 
 other appellation as the distinctive name of the 
 Egyptian people. 
 
 Ancient Egypt, most commonly mentioned in 
 general as ' the double land,' consisted of two 
 great divisions, which, after their situation, were 
 called in contrast with each other the land of the 
 South and the land of the North, as is attested by 
 the inscriptions. The first corresponds to that part 
 of Egypt which, following the Greek name, we now 
 know as Upper Egypt, and which the Arabs of the 
 present day call by the appellation of Said. The 
 land of Upper Egypt began on the south at the 
 ivory-island-city of Elephantine, which lay opposite 
 to Syene (the modern trading-town of Assouan), on 
 the right bank of the river ; and its northern boun- 
 dary reached to the neighborhood of the Memphian 
 district on the left bank of the holy river. North- 
 ern Egypt comprehended the remaining part of the 
 land, called the Low country, the land of Behereh 
 of the Arabs, the Delta of the Greek writers. 
 This division, which exists just as much in our 
 own day as it did in the most ancient times, is 
 
30 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 neither accidental nor arbitrary ; for it is founded 
 not only on a local difference in the respective dia- 
 lects of the inhabitants, but on the marked distinc- 
 tion of habits,-manners, and customs, which divides 
 the Egyptians in the north and the south from 
 one another. Already in the thirteenth century 
 before our era, this difference of speech is proved- 
 by documentary evidence. 
 
 The land of Egypt resembles a small narrow gir- 
 dle, divided in the midst by a stream of water, and 
 hemmed in on both sides by long chains of moun- 
 tains. On the right side of the stream, to the east, 
 the chain of hills called Arabian accompany the 
 river for its whole length ; on the opposite, the 
 western side, the low hills of the Libyan desert 
 extend in the same direction with the river from 
 south to north, up to the shore of the Mediterra- 
 nean Sea. The river itself was designated by the 
 Greeks and Romans by the name of Neilos, or 
 Nilus. Although this word is still retained in the 
 Arabic language as Nil, with the special meaning 
 of ' inundation,' yet its origin is not to be sought 
 in the old Egyptian language ; but, as has been 
 lately suggested with great probability, it is to be 
 derived from the Semitic word Nahar, or Nahal, 
 which has the general signification of 'river.' 
 From its bifurcation south of the ancient city of 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 31 
 
 Memphis, the river divided itself into three great 
 arms, which watered the Lower Egyptian flat lands 
 which spread out in the shape of the Greek letter 
 jd (Delta), and with four smaller arms formed the 
 seven famous months of the Nile. 
 
 The Egyptian districts, called by the Greeks 
 Nomes (iVo/uoi), which in the upper land lay on both 
 sides of the river, comprehended in the inner part 
 of the Delta larger circuits, which were surrounded 
 like islands by the arms of the Nile and their canals. 
 Beyond these island nomes other districts extended 
 on the Arabian and Libyan sides of the Lower 
 Egyptian region of the stream. They are called in 
 the lists the Western and Eastern nomes. This 
 special division of the upper and lower countries 
 into the districts called Nomes is of the highest 
 antiquity, since we already find on the monuments 
 of the fourth dynasty some nomes mentioned by 
 their names, as well as some towns with the nomes 
 to which they belonged. Upper Egypt contained 
 twenty-two nomes, Lower Egypt twenty, so that 
 there was a total for all Egypt of forty-two nomes. 
 
 Each district had its own capital, which was at the 
 same time the seat of the captain for the time being, 
 whose office and dignity passed by inheritance, ac- 
 cording to the old Egyptian laws, from the father 
 to the eldest grandson on the mother's side. The 
 
32 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 capital formed likewise the central point of the par- 
 ticular divine worship of the district which belonged 
 to it. The sacred lists of the nomes have handed 
 down to us the names of the temple of the chief deity, 
 of the priests and priestesses, of the holy trees, and 
 also the names of the town-harbor of the holy canal, 
 the cultivated land and the land which was^ only 
 fruitful ^during the inundation, and much other in- 
 formiation, in such completeness that we are in a 
 position, from the indications contained in these lists, 
 to form the most exact picture of each Egyptian 
 nome in all its details, almost without any gaps. 
 
 There are three districts, above all others, which in 
 the conrse of Egyptian history maintained the bril- 
 liant reputation of being the seats of government for 
 the land : in Lower Egypt the nomes of Memphis 
 and Heliopolis (On), and in Uxjper Egypt that of 
 Thebes. 
 
 The old inhabitants of Egypt, like the^ir descend- 
 ants of to-day who inhabit the ' black country,' ob- 
 tained nourishment and increase from their favored 
 soil. The wealth and prosperity of the country and 
 its inhabitants were founded on agriculture and the 
 breeding of cattle. Tillage, favored by the prover- 
 bial fertility of the soil, had its fixed seasons regu- 
 lated by the annual inundations. The special care 
 already bestowed in the remotest antiquity on that 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 33 
 
 important part of agricultural industry, the breeding 
 and tending of cattle, is set in the clearest light by. 
 the evidence of the monuments. The walls of the 
 sepulchral chapels are covered with thousands of 
 bas-reliefs and their explanatory inscriptions, which 
 preserve for us the most abundant disclosures re- 
 specting the labors of the field and the rearing of 
 cattle, as practised by the old Egyptians. In them, 
 also, navigation plays an important part, as the sole 
 means of transport for long distances. In ancient 
 times, as in our own day, commerce and travelling 
 were carried on upon the Nile and its canals. On 
 the chief festivals of the Egyptian year the pharaohs 
 themselves did not disdain to sail along the sacred 
 river in the gorgeous royal ship, in order to perform 
 mystic rites in special honor of agriculture. The 
 priests regarded the plough as a most sacred imple- 
 ment, and their faith held that the highest happiness 
 of man, after the completion of his pilgrimage here 
 below, would consist in tilling the Elysian fields of 
 the subterranean god Osiris, in feeding and tending 
 his cattle, and navigating the breezy water of the 
 other world in slender skiffs. The husbandman, the 
 shepherd, and the boatman, were in fact the first 
 founders of the gentle manners — the honored au- 
 thors of that most ancient peaceful life — of the peo- 
 ple who flourished in the blessed valley of the Nile. 
 3 
 
34 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 We cannot close this chapter without still taking 
 an inquiring look at the peculiar mental endow- 
 ments of the ancient Egyptians, about which the 
 information of the monuments will be of course our 
 faithful guides. There are not wanting very learned 
 and intelligent persons — not excepting some who 
 have won an illustrious name in historical inquiries — 
 who teach us to regard the Egyptians as a people 
 reflective, serious, and reserved, very religious, occu- 
 pied only with the other world, and caring nothing 
 or very little about this lower life; just as if they 
 had been the Trappists of antiquity. But could it 
 have been possible — we ask with wonder and be- 
 wilderment — that the fertile and bounteous land, 
 that the noble river which waters its soil, that the 
 pure and smiling heaven, that the beaming sun of 
 Egypt, could have produced a people of living 
 mummies and of sad philosophers, a people who only 
 regarded this life as a burden to be thrown off as 
 soon as possible ? No ! Travel through the land 
 of the old pharaohs ; look at the pictures carved or 
 painted on the walls of the sepulchral chapels ; read 
 the words cut in stone or written with black ink on 
 the fragile papyrus ; and you will soon be obliged to 
 form another judgment on the Egyptian philoso- 
 phers. No people could be gayer, more lively, of 
 more childlike simplicity, than those old Egyptians, 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL: 35 
 
 who loved life with all their heart, and found the 
 deepest joy in their very existence. Far from long- 
 ing for death, they addressed to the host of the holy 
 gods the prayer to preserve and lengthen life, if 
 possible, to the ' most perfect old age of one hundred 
 and ten years.' They gave themselves up to the 
 pleasures of a merry life. The song, and dance, and 
 flowing cup, cheerful excursions to the meadows and 
 thepapyrus marshes — to hunt with bow and arrow 
 or sling, or to fish with spear and hook — heightened 
 the enjoyment of life, and were the recreations of 
 the nobler classes after work was done. In connec- 
 tion with this merry disposition, humorous jests and 
 lively sallies of wit, often passing the bounds of 
 decorum, characterized the people from age to age. 
 They were fond of biting jests and smart innuen- 
 dos ; and free social talk found its way even into 
 the silent chambers of the tomb. But the propensity 
 to pleasure was a dangerous trap for the youth of 
 the old Egyptian schools, and the judicious teachers 
 had much need to keep a curb on the young peo- 
 ple. If admonition utterly failed, the chastising 
 stick came into play, for the sages of the country 
 believed that ' The ears of a youth are on his 
 back.' 
 
 The lowest classes of the people, 'the mob,' as 
 the inscriptions call them, were occupied with hus- 
 
36 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 bandry, the breeding of cattle, navigation, fishing, 
 and the different branches of the most simple in- 
 dustries. From a very early period stone was 
 wrought according to the rules of an advanced 
 skill ; and metals, namely, gold, silver, copper, iron 
 (at first meteoric iron), were melted and wrought 
 into works of art, or tools and implements; wood 
 and leather were formed into a great variety of 
 valuable objects ; glass was cast ; flax was spun and 
 woven into stuffs ; ropes were twisted ; baskets and 
 mats of rushes were plaited ; £ftid on the round 
 potter's wheel great and small vessels were formed 
 by clever artists from the rich clay of the Nile, and 
 baked in the fiery furnace. Sculptors and painters 
 found profitable work among the rich patrons of art 
 at the court of the pharaohs ; and a whole world 
 of busy artisans worked for daily wages under the 
 bright blue sky of Egypt. 
 
 But all these, the humble followers of the earliest 
 human art industry, were held ' in bad odor,' and 
 the lowest scribe in the service of a great man 
 looked down with the greatest contempt on the 
 toiling, laboring people. It was esteemed better to 
 be a servant in the house of the pharaoh, and to 
 bustle about in the service of their masters in the 
 halls of the noble families. Though themselves 
 children of the people, the class of servants found 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL, 37 
 
 help and protection from their lords, and had a share 
 in the honor of the court. Spoiled by the plenty, 
 luxury, and extravagance of splendid life, they 
 knew not the painful lot of the workman. Death 
 itself did not grudge the servants a part with the 
 owners of the gorgeous sepulchres ; for in the cham- 
 bers of the dead, the deep pits of which hid in the 
 place of honor the embalmed bodies of the noble 
 masters, room was reserved by the artist's hand for 
 the memory of the faithful servant. But too obedi- 
 ent to the orders of their lords, the servants held in 
 slight regard the ' stinking ' masses of the people, 
 and abhorred the society of the ' miserable ' traders 
 and workmen. 
 
 Returning from successful campaigns abroad to 
 the banks of the holy river, the princes and cap- 
 tains of the warriors, in the course of time, brought 
 a great number of prisoners into the country, as 
 booty of war : king's children, nobles, and common 
 people of foreign origin. Some as hostages, others 
 as slaves, inhabited the towns of their Egyptian 
 lords ; those not noble being promoted to the rank 
 of domestic servants, or condemned to work in the 
 fields with the common herd of the people. Dark- 
 colored inhabitants of the southern regions of the 
 Upper Nile, and light-colored Canaanites, armed 
 with sticks, attended the great men on their jour- 
 
38 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 neys as guards of honor, or, in the service of the 
 court, enforced respect in an office like that of the 
 cawasses of our day. 
 
 The noble class of the Egyptian people had noth- 
 ing in common with the vulgar ' mob ; ' for they 
 derived their origin, for the most part, from the 
 royal house, the nearest branches of which, the 
 king's children and grandchildren (Sutenrekh), 
 were held in high honor and respect. To them 
 were committed the highest offices of the court, 
 to which they were attached by abundant rewards 
 from the pharaoh's ever open hand. The nobles 
 held as their hereditary possessions villages and 
 tracts of land, with the people thereto belonging, 
 bands of servants, and numerous herds of cattle. 
 To their memory, after their decease, were dedicated 
 those splendid tombs, the remains of which, on the 
 raised plain of the Libyan desert, or in the caverns 
 of the Egyptian hills, are still searched with admiring 
 wonder by later ages down to our own day. Am- 
 bition and arrogant pride form a remarkable feature 
 in the spirit of the old dwellers on the Nile. Work- 
 man competed with workman, husbandman with hus- 
 bandman, official with official, to outvie his fellow, 
 and to appropriate the favor and praises of the 
 noble lords. In the schools, where the poor scribe's 
 child sat on the same bench beside the offspring of 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 39 
 
 the rich, to be trained in discipline and wise learn- 
 ing, the masters knew how by timely words to goad 
 on the lagging diligence of the ambitious scholars, 
 by holding out to them the future reward which 
 awaited youths skilled in knowledge and letters. 
 Thus the slumbering spark of self-esteem Avas 
 stirred to a flame in the youthful breast, and emu- 
 lation was stimulated among the boys. The clever 
 son of the poor man, too, might hope b}^ his knowl- 
 edge to climb the ladder of the higher offices ; for 
 neither his birth nor p\)sition in life raised any 
 barrier, if only the youth's mental power justified 
 fair hopes for the future. In this sense, the 
 restraints of caste did not exist, and neither descent 
 nor family hampered the rising career of the clever. 
 Many a monument consecrated to the memory of 
 some nobleman gone to his long home, who during 
 life had held high rank at the court of the pharaoh, 
 is decorated with the simple but laudatory inscrip- 
 tion, ' His ancestors were unknown people.' 
 
 It is a satisfaction to avow tliat the training and 
 instruction of the young interested the Egyptians 
 in the highest degree ; for they fully recognized in 
 this the sole means of elevating their national life, 
 and of fulfilling the high civilizing mission which 
 Providence seemed to have placed in their hands. 
 But above all things they regarded justice, and 
 
40 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 virtue had the highest price in their eyes. The 
 law which ordered them ' to pray to the gods, to 
 honor the dead, to give bread to the hungry, water 
 to the thirsty, clothing to the naked,' reveals to us 
 one of the finest qualities of the old Egyptian char- 
 acter — pity towards the unfortunate. The forty- 
 two commandments of the Egyptian religion, which 
 are contained in the one hundred and twenty-fifth 
 chapter of the ' Book of the Dead,' are in no way 
 inferior to the precepts of Christianity; and, in read- 
 ing the old Egyptian inscriptions concerning moral- 
 ity and the fear of God, we are tempted to believe 
 that the Jewish lawgiver Moses modelled his teach- 
 ings on the patterns given by the old Egyptian 
 sages. 
 
 But the medal has its reverse side. The fore- 
 fathers of the Egyptians were not free from vices 
 and failings, which we cannot pass over in silence 
 without exposing ourselves to the reproach of flat- 
 tery at the expense of truth. Hatred, envy, cun- 
 ning, intrigue, combined with an overweening senti- 
 ment of pride, opposition, and perversity, added to 
 avarice and cruelty — such is the long series of 
 hereditary faults which history reveals to us among 
 the Eg3^ptians by unnumbered examples in the 
 course of centuries. We must especially beware 
 of cherishing the belief that the rule of the pha- 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 41 
 
 raohs opened to the inhabitants of the land the 
 gates of a terrestrial paradise. The people suffered 
 and endured under the blows of their oppressors, 
 and the stick settled the dispatch of business 
 between the peasant and the tax-gatherer. We 
 need but glance at the gigantic masses of the 
 pyramids ; they tell more emphatically than living 
 speech or written words of the tears and the pains, 
 the sufferings and miseries, of a whole population, 
 which was condemned to erect these everlasting 
 monuments of pharaonic vanity. Three thousand 
 years were not able to efface the curse resting on 
 their memory. When Herodotus, about the mid- 
 dle of the fifth century before Christ, visited the 
 field of the great pyramids of Gizeh, the Egyptians 
 told him of the imprecations wrung from their un- 
 happy forefathers, and they would not, from abhor- 
 rence, so much as utter the names of the kings 
 who constructed the two highest pyramids, whom 
 we now know to have been the pharaohs Khufu 
 and Khafra. 
 
42 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE CHKONOLOGY OF THE PHABAONIC HISTORY. 
 
 If the reader's curiosity leads him to an inquiry 
 concerning the epochs of time already fixed in the 
 history of the pharaohs, and to a critical examina- 
 tion of the chronological tables thus far composed 
 by scholars, he must be strangely impressed by the 
 conflict of most diverse views in the computations 
 of the most modern school. As to the era, for 
 example, when the first pharaoh, Mena, mounted 
 the throne, the German Egyptologers have attempt- 
 ed to fix it at the following epochs: 
 
 
 B.C. 
 
 
 B. c. 
 
 Boeckh, . 
 
 . 5702 
 
 Lauth, . 
 
 . 4157 
 
 linger, 
 
 . 5613 
 
 Lepsius, . 
 
 . 3892 
 
 Brugsch, . 
 
 . 4465 
 
 Bunsen, . 
 
 . 3623 
 
 The calculations in question are based on the ex- 
 tracts that have been preserved from a work by the 
 Egyptian priest Manetho on the history of Egypt. 
 That learned man had then at his command the 
 annals of his country's history, which were pre- 
 served in the temples, and from them, the best 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 43 
 
 and most accurate sources, he derived the mate- 
 rials for his work, composed in the Greek hin- 
 guage, on the history of the ancient Egyptian 
 dynasties. His book, which is now lost, contained 
 a general review of the kings of the land, divided 
 into thirty dynasties, arranged in the order of their 
 names, with the lengths of their reigns, and the 
 total duration of each dynasty. Though this inval- 
 uable work was little known and certainly but little 
 regarded by the historians of the old classical age, 
 large extracts were made from it by some of the 
 ecclesiastical writers. In process of time the copy- 
 ists, either by error or designedly, corrupted the 
 names and the numbers, and thus we only possess 
 at the present day the ruins instead of the com- 
 plete building. The truth of the original, and «the 
 authenticity of his sources, was first proved by the 
 deciphering of the Egyptian writing. And thus 
 the Manethonian list of the kings served, and still 
 serves, as a guide for assigning to the royal names 
 read on the monuments their place in the dynasties, 
 as, on the other hand, the monuments have enabled 
 us with certainty to restore to their correct orthog- 
 raphy many of the kings' names which have been 
 corrupted in the Manethonian lists. The very 
 thorough investigations, to which learned experts 
 have subjected the succession of the pharaohs and 
 
44 TEE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 the chronological order of the dynasties, have showr 
 the absolute necessity of supposing in the list oi 
 Manetho contemporary and collateral dynasties, and 
 thus of diminishing considerably the total duration 
 of the thirty dynasties. Notwithstanding all these 
 discoveries, the figures are in a deplorable state. 
 From the nature of the calculation, based on the 
 exact determination of the regnal years of the 
 kings, every number which is rectified necessarily 
 changes the results of the whole series of numbers. 
 It is only from the beginning of the twenty-sixth 
 dynasty that the chronology is founded on data 
 which leave little to be desired as to their exacti- 
 tude. 
 
 Assuming, according to £he well-known calcula- 
 tion of the father of history, Herodotus, the round 
 number of a century for three consecutive human 
 lives, we possess a means of determining approxi- 
 mately the periods of time which have elapsed, on 
 the one hand, from king Mena to the end of the 
 twelfth dynasty, and again from the beginning of 
 the eighteenth dynasty to the end of the twenty- 
 sixth. 
 
 The new Table of Abydus, discovered eleven 
 years ago in a corridor of the temple of Seti I., at 
 Harabat-el-Madfoimeh, gives a succession of sixty- 
 five kings from Mena, the founder of the line, down 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 45 
 
 to the last reign of the twelfth dynasty. To* these 
 sovereigns therefore would be assigned a period of 
 ^ X 100 = 2166 years, leaving the fractional re- 
 mainder out of the account. 
 
 If we were to believe the Table of Abydus alone, 
 the princes of the twelfth dynasty would have had 
 the pharaohs of the eighteenth dynasty for their 
 immediate successors, without any break or inter- 
 regnum. This would be in accordance with the 
 fact perceived by the acujteness of Mariette-Bey, 
 that the old Egyptian proper names of the persons 
 of the twelfth, and especially of the eleventh dy- 
 nasty, recur in the same forms on the monuments 
 of the commencement of the eighteenth dynasty ; 
 and further, that at these two periods of Egyptian 
 history the form and ornaments of the coffins are 
 so alike as to be undistinguishable. Here we have 
 a remarkable enigma, for the solution of which we 
 do not yet possess the requisite data. 
 
 If we admit, according to the evidence of the 
 Table of Abydus, the sudden transition from the 
 twelfth to the eighteenth dynasty, the historical 
 beginning of the Egyptian empire would fall about 
 the year 3724 b. c, namely, two thousand one hun- 
 dred and sixty-six years before 1558 B. c. But if, 
 on the other hand, we assume in round numbers 
 five hundred years as the intermediate space of 
 
46 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 time ^hich divides the end of the twelfth from the 
 beginning of the eighteenth dynasty, the result 
 would be that Mena ascended the throne of Horus 
 five hundred years before the year 3724, that is, in 
 4244 B. c. 
 
 Had the Turin papyrus been preserved to us in 
 its entire state ; had we possessed the complete list 
 of the historical kings of the Egyptian empire, we 
 should probably have been in a position to mould 
 into a perfect shape even the most ancient part 
 of Egyptian history, with the dates belonging to it. 
 But, as the case stands at present, no mortal man 
 possesses the means of removing the difficulties 
 which are inseparable from the attempt to restore 
 the original list of kings from the fragments of the 
 Turin papyrus. 
 
 The chronological table of the history of the 
 Egyptian kingdom, which is given at the end of 
 this work (Appendix A), is founded on the prin- 
 ciples above explained, as far as dates are con- 
 cerned, and is only presented to the reader with 
 the extremest caution. I would make the general 
 remark, that the numbers of years assigned to the 
 dynasties and to the individual pharaohs claim 
 merely the value of an approximation, but never- 
 theless they do not on the average exceed their 
 actual ages obtained from the monuments. 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL, 47 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 MENA, AND THE EARLY DYNASTIES. — THE 
 PYRAMIDS AND SPHINX. 
 
 Mena, the founder of the monarchy, whose name 
 signifies ' the constant,' reigned first at Tini, a little 
 town of which scarce a trace now remains. Ac- 
 cording to tradition, he also built the larger capital 
 of Memphis, having first made a site for the city 
 by turning the course of the Nile. The Egyptian 
 name is Mennofer, ' the good place.' The ruins of 
 this city were well preserved down to the thir- 
 teenth century, at which time they were described 
 in glowing phrases by an Arabian physician, Abd- 
 ul-Latif. But the stones were transported to Cairo 
 and used for the construction of mosques and pal- 
 aces. This city, next to Thebes, holds a large place 
 in Egyptian history. It was the first great seat of 
 power, and for a long time the religious metropolis. 
 Along the far-stretching margin of the desert, from 
 Abu-Roash to Meidum, lay in silent tranquillity the 
 necropolis of Memphis with its wealth of tombs, 
 overlooked by the stupendous buildings of the 
 
48 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 pyramids, which rose high above the monuments 
 of the noblest among the noble families, who, even 
 after life was done, reposed in deep pits at the feet 
 of their lords and masters. The contemporaries of 
 the third, fourth, and fifth dynasties are here bur- 
 ied ; but their memory has been preserved by pic- 
 tures and writings on the walls of the sacrificial 
 chambers built over their tombs. From this source 
 flows the stream of tradition which carries us back 
 to the time and to the soil of the oldest kingdom in 
 the land. If this countless number of tombs had 
 been preserved to us, it would have been an easy 
 task to reconstruct before our eyes, in uninter- 
 rupted succession, the genealogy of the kings and 
 of the noble lines related to them. Fate, however, 
 has not granted this ; for their monuments, names, 
 and deeds are buried and forgotten ; but even the 
 few remaining heaps of ruins enable us to imagine 
 the lost in all its greatness. 
 
 The eloquent language of the stones, speaking to 
 us from the tombs of the necropolis of Memphis, 
 tells us much concerning the usages of pharaoh and 
 his court. The king himself is officially designated 
 by the most complete title, ' king of Upper and 
 Lower Egypt.' His high dignity is also concealed 
 under other names, as, for instance, Perao — that 
 is, ' of the great house/ well known as Pharaoh in 
 
TEE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 49 
 
 the Bible. For his subjects the pharaoh was a god 
 (nuter) and lord (neb) par excellence. At sight of 
 him thej were obliged to prostrate themselves, rub- 
 bing the ground with their noses; sometimes, by 
 the gracious order of the king, they only touched 
 the knee of the omnipotent. In speaking of him, 
 they very often used the words ' his holiness.' 
 
 The royal court was composed of the nobility of 
 the country, and of the servants of inferior rank. 
 Not only the splendor of their origin gave the 
 nobles dignity in the eyes of the people, but still 
 more their wisdom, manners, and virtues. The 
 persons belonging to the first class of the nobility 
 generally bore the title Erpa, ' hereditary highness ; ' 
 Ha, 'prince;' Set, 'the illustrious;' Semer-ua-t, 
 ' the intimate friend.' The affairs of the court and 
 of the administration of the country were conducted 
 by ' the chiefs ' or the secretaries, and by a numer- 
 ous class of scribes. 
 
 The first king of whom much is really known is 
 Senoferu, ' he who makes good ; ' his predecessors 
 are shadows ; he is an undoubtedly historic man. 
 
 So far as we are acquainted with the monuments, 
 king Senoferu is the first ruler who had four titles 
 of honor. Three name him commonly without dif- 
 ference ' the lord of truth ; ' the fourth is the name 
 Senoferu, by which he was known to his father and 
 4 
 
50 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 his people. On the steep rock of Wodj-Magharah, 
 where ancient caverns have been formed by the 
 hand of man, and the traces of the miners are 
 easily discovered, Senoferu appears as a warrior, 
 who strikes to the ground a vanquished enemy with 
 a mighty club. The inscription, engraved by the 
 side of the picture, mentions him clearly by name 
 and with the title of ' vanquisher of foreign peoples' 
 who in his time inhabited the cavernous valleys of 
 the mountains round Sinai. 
 
 Even at this day the pilgrim, whom the desire of 
 knowledge brings to these parts, and whose foot 
 treads hurriedly the gloomy, barren valleys of 
 Sinai, sees traces of the old works in the caverns 
 dating from the spring-time of the world's history. 
 He sees and reads on the half-worn stone a vast 
 number of pictures and writings. Standing on the 
 high rock, which boldly commands the entrance to 
 Wady-Magharah, his eye discovers without trouble 
 the last ruins of a strong fortress, whose stout walls 
 once contained huts near a deep well, and protected 
 the Egyptian troops from hostile attack. 
 
 The pharaohs of the fifth dynasty still resided at 
 Memphis, and were the builders of the hugest of the 
 pyramids. 
 
 According to the sure testimony of the tables 
 of Abydus and Saqqarah, the successor of the 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 51 
 
 good king Senoferu was . Khufu. It is he whom 
 the writers of Greek antiquity call sometimes 
 Cheops (Herodotus), Chemmis or Chembes (Dio- 
 dorus), while the epitomist of Manetho transcribes 
 his name Suphis, and Eratosthenes, in the Theban 
 list of kings, cites it as Saophis. With him begin 
 the memorable traditions of Egyptian history. 
 
 No one who has had the happiness — whether 
 from chance or purpose, or in the way of his call- 
 ing — to set foot on the black soil of Egypt, ever 
 turns back on his homeward way before his eyes 
 have looked upon that wonder of antiquity, the 
 threefold mass of the pyramids on the steep edge 
 of the desert, which you reach after an hour's ride 
 over the long causeway from the village of Gizeh, 
 which stands close upon the left bank of the Nile. 
 The desert's boundless sea of yellow sand — whose 
 billows are piled up around the gigantic mass of 
 the pyramids, deeply entombing the tomb itself, 
 like a corpse long since deceased — surges hot and 
 dry far up the green meadow, with its scattered 
 vegetation where the grains of sand and corn 
 are intermingled. From the far distance you see 
 the giant forms of the pyramids, as if they were 
 regularly crystallized mountains, which the ever- 
 creating Nature has called forth from the mother 
 soil of rock, to lift themselves up towards the blue 
 
52 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 vault of heaven. And yet they are but tombs, built 
 by the hands of men, which, raised by king Khufu 
 and two other pharaohs of the same family and 
 dynasty, have been the admiration and astonish- 
 ment alike of the ancient and modern world, as an 
 incomparable work of power. Perfectly adjusted 
 to the cardinal points of the horizon — the S. and 
 N., the E. and W. — they differ in breadth and 
 height, as is shown by the measurements of Colonel 
 Vyse : 
 
 Height. Breadth at base. 
 
 1. Pyramid of Khufu, 450-75 feet. 746 feet (Eng.) 
 
 2. Pyramid of Khafra, 447-5 " 690 75 " 
 
 3. Pyramid of Menkara, 203 « 352-878 " 
 
 As soon as a pharaoh mounted the throne, the 
 sovereign gave orders to a nobleman, the master 
 of all the buildings of his land, to plan the work 
 and cut the stone. The kernel of the future edi- 
 fice was raised on the limestone soil of the desert, 
 in the form of a small pyramid built in steps, of 
 which the well-constructed and finished interior 
 formed the king's eternal dwelling, with his stone 
 sarcophagus lying on the rocky floor. Let us sup- 
 pose that this first building was finished while the 
 pharaoh still lived in the bright sunlight. A sec- 
 ond covering was added, stone by stone, on the 
 outside of the kernel \ a third to this second ; and 
 to this even a fourth ; and the mass of the giant 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 53 
 
 building grew greater the longer the king enjoyed 
 existence. And then, at last, when it became al- 
 most impossible to extend the area of the pj^ramid 
 further, a casing of hard stone, polished like glass, 
 and fitted accurately into the angles of the steps, 
 covered the vast mass of the king's sepulchre, 
 presenting a gigantic triangle on each of its four 
 faces. 
 
 More than seventy such pyramids once rose on 
 the margin of the desert, each telling of a king, of 
 whom it was at once the tomb and monument. Had 
 not the greater number of these sepulchres of the 
 pharaohs been destroyed almost to the foundation, 
 and had the names of the builders of those which 
 still stand been accurately preserved, it would have 
 been easy for the inquirer to prove and make clear 
 by calculation what was originally, and of necessity, 
 the proportion between the masses of the pyra- 
 mids and the years of the reigns of their respective 
 builders. 
 
 The Sphinx was sculptured at some time not far 
 removed from the building of the three great pyra- 
 mids. Recent discoveries have increased the aston- 
 ishment of mankind at the huge bulk of this mon- 
 strous figure, and at the vast and unknown buildings 
 that stood around it, and, as it were, lay between 
 its paws. It is within a few years that the sand has 
 
54 TEE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 been blown away and revealed these incomprehen- 
 sible structures. In a well near by was found a 
 finely executed statue of Khafra, builder of the sec- 
 ond pyramid. Clear and significant inscriptions 
 upon these temple-buildings attest the truth of 
 tradition, and support the received chronology. 
 
 After Khafra's passage home to the realm of the 
 dead, where the king of the gods, Osiris, held the 
 sceptre, Men-kau-ra ascended the throne. His 
 pyramid is called in the texts by the name of hir^ 
 that is, * the high one.' When Colonel Vyse found 
 his way to the middle of the chamber of the dead, 
 and entered into the silent space of ' Eternity,' his 
 eye discerned, as the last trace of Menkaura's place 
 of burial, the wooden cover of the sarcophagus, and 
 the stone coffin hewn out of one hard block,, beau- 
 tifully adorned outside in the style of a temple, 
 according to the fashion of the masters of the old 
 empire. The sarcophagus rests now at the bottom 
 of the Mediterranean, the English vessel which was 
 conveying it having been wrecked near Gibraltar. 
 The cover, which was saved, thanks to the material 
 of which it was composed, is now exhibited in the 
 gallery of Egyptian antiquities in the British Mu- 
 seum. Its outside is adorned with a short text con- 
 ceived in the following terms : 
 
 " O Osiris, who hast become king of Egypt, Men- 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 55 
 
 kaura living eternally, child of Olympus,* son of 
 Urania, heir of Kronos, over thee may she stretch 
 herself and cover thee, thy divine mother, Urania, 
 in her name as mystery of heaven. May she grant 
 that thou shouldest be like God, free from all evils, 
 King Menkaura, living eternally." 
 
 This prayer is of very ancient origin, for there 
 are examples of it found on the covers of sarcophagi 
 belonging to the dynasties of the ancient empire. 
 The sense of it is full of significance. Delivered from 
 mortal matter, the soul of the defunct king passes 
 through the immense space of heaven to unite itself 
 with God, after having overcome the evil which op- 
 posed it during its life on its terrestrial journey. 
 
 The kings of the fifth dynasty continued to reside 
 at Memphis, and each appears to have built a pyra- 
 mid for his tomb, although but few of them can 
 now be identified. The names, however, are pre- 
 served, such as Qebeh, ' the cool,' Nuter-setu, ' the 
 most holy place,' and the like. 
 
 According to the monuments, the successor of 
 Menkaura bore two names. The first, the most 
 frequent, is Tat-ka-ra, and the second Assa. He 
 has also left texts at Wady-Magharah, which tell 
 us of works executed during his reign in the mines 
 
 * The translator here uses Greek equivalents that aflfect one 
 like anachronisms. 
 
56 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 of this mountain. His pjTamid is called nofer^ that 
 is, ' the beautiful ; ' unfortunately we have no means 
 of fixing its position. A very precious recollection 
 of him has been preserved in a literary work com- 
 posed by his son, Prince Patah-hotep. Let us sa}^ 
 a word on this papyrus, which is probably the most 
 ancient manuscript in the world, and which is bet- 
 ter known under the name of the Prisse papyrus. 
 It was bought by a Frenchman of this name at 
 Thebes, and given to the National Library at Paris. 
 The greater part of this document contains a 
 treatise by the son of Assa, and relates to the vir- 
 tues necessary for man, and to the best manner 
 of arranging his life and making his way in the 
 world. The general title is conceived in these 
 words : " This is the teaching of the governor Patah- 
 hotep under the majesty of King Assa ; long may 
 he live." At the time when he composed his book, 
 he must have been very old, since he describes the 
 decrepitude of his old age in very significant terms. 
 " The eyes," he says, " are very diminutive, and the 
 ears stopped up ; power is constantly diminished, 
 the mouth is silent and does not speak, the mem- 
 ory is closed and does not remember the past. 
 The bones are not in a state to render service ; 
 that which was good is become bad. Even the 
 taste is gone. Old age makes a man miserable in 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 57 
 
 every way. The nose is stopped and does not 
 breathe." It was thus that the prince begins the 
 question which forms the subject of his book, 
 which was to give to youth precepts which were 
 justified by the practice of his long life, and fre- 
 quently given in a humorous vein. 
 
 It is extremely interesting to follow the simple 
 words which in an antique style represent the 
 thoughts of the old man, and which touch almost 
 all the conditions of human life. One of the most 
 beautiful specimens is without doubt the following 
 piece. He characterizes admirably the spirit of 
 humanity which breathes through these precepts 
 of a very high moral tendency. " If thou art be- 
 come great, after thou hast been humble, and if 
 thou hast amassed riches after poverty, being 
 because of that the first in thy town ; if thou art 
 known for thy wealth, and art become a great 
 lord, let not thy heart become proud because of 
 thy riches, for it is God who is the author of them 
 for thee. Despise not another who is as thou wast ; 
 be towards him as towards thy equal." 
 
 Although the tombs of this ancient epoch reveal 
 to us frequently traits, extremely favorable to our 
 ideas of humanity, we cannot compare what they 
 tell us with the na'ive and simple language of the 
 precepts of Prince Patah-hotep. It is neither the 
 
5S ^^^ TRUE STORY OF 
 
 priest nor the prince wlio addresses the youth of 
 his day; it is simply the man who teaches them. 
 Nor is he a morose philosopher. Is there anything 
 truer, and at the same time more persuasive, than 
 his exhortation, " Let thy face be cheerful as long 
 as thou livest ; has any one come out of the coffin 
 after having once entered it ? " 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 59 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 AET AND AECHITECTURE IN THE TWELFTH 
 DYNASTY. 
 
 With this fifth dynasty ended the first great 
 division of the series of pharaohs, and also the pre- 
 eminence of Memphis. The seat of government 
 vras transferred to middle Egypt, and at some time 
 during the sixth dynasty Thebes arose. But though 
 there are many pharaohs whose names are well 
 known and of whose exploits there are some traces, 
 yet for the most part a veil of impenetrable dark- 
 ness rests upon the long period down to the end of 
 the eleventh dynasty. 
 
 The twelfth dynasty stands out in a light that 
 has almost the clearness of authentic history. It was 
 a period in which strong monarchs ruled, and in 
 which art was cultivated with magnificent results. 
 Thebes was the capital, and upon its temples and 
 palaces the most enormous labor and expense was 
 lavishly bestowed. The sanctuary of the great tem- 
 ple of Amon, at Karnac, whose ruins present to 
 us walls, columns (the so-called Proto-Doric), and 
 
60 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 pictures covered with the names of the kings of this 
 house, kept on increasing from this time of its 
 foundation, till it became an imperial building, 
 whose walls of stone reveal to us the history of the 
 Theban kings. 
 
 What lends a high worth to these ages is not only 
 the greatness of the kings, founded on the wisdom 
 of their domestic rule, and the glory of their vic- 
 tories in foreign countries : art also, with all its 
 striving after beauty and noble forms, was cherished 
 by these rulers, and skilful masters produced an 
 immense number of beautiful works and pictures. 
 Their ancestors of earlier times had already under- 
 stood how to work with unknown but incomparable 
 tools the hard substance of the granite and similar 
 stones, to polish the surface like a mirror, and to fit 
 the gigantic masses together, not unfrequently with 
 iron clamps, as in the structure of the Great Pyra- 
 mid. But, although the hand of the studious artist 
 had worked in hard stone, and fashioned after life 
 what nature had already produced in flesh and bone> 
 yet there was still wanting the last stamp of per- 
 fection — namely, beauty which moves us to admi- 
 ration. Beginning with the race of the Theban 
 kings of the twelfth dynasty, the harmonious form 
 of beauty united with truth and nobleness meets the 
 eye of the beholder as well in buildings as in statues. 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 61 
 
 The great labyrinth and the excavation for the 
 artificial lake Moeris were made during this period. 
 In every part of the kingdom the power of these 
 pharaohs was felt. In Tanis, 'the great city' of 
 the lower country, inhabited all round by races of 
 Semitic origin, the kings of the twelfth dynasty had 
 already raised buildings and invoked the sculptor's 
 art, to do honor to the gods themselves by these 
 splendid works. *The portrait of Usurtasen even 
 has been found in some ruins of this temple world. 
 
 The rich paintings placed with profusion on the 
 walls of the tomb of Khnumhotep, a great lord 
 under the reign of Usurtasen II., have an inestima- 
 ble value for a knowledge of the arts, the trades, 
 and the domestic and public life of the Egyptians 
 of this epoch, quite apart from the holy things to 
 which, in detail, the paintings and inscriptions re- 
 late. The very interesting scenes with which the 
 hall of sacrifice is adorned are of great importance 
 in an historical point of view. They relate to the 
 arrival in Egypt of a family of the Semitic nation 
 of the Amu, which has quitted its native country to 
 fix its abode on the blessed banks of the Nile. This 
 family is composed of thirty-seven persons, men, 
 women, and children, who present their respects 
 to the person of Khnumhotep, asking of him, as it 
 seems, a good reception. The royal scribe Nofer- 
 
62 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 hotep, an official in the service of Khnumliotep, 
 offers to his chief a leaf of papyrus, with an inscrip- 
 tion in this sense : " In the sixth year in the reign 
 of King Usurtasen II. ; an account of the Amu who 
 brought to the king's son, Khnumhotep, while he 
 was alive, the paint for the eyes called Mastemut 
 of the country of Pitshu. Their number is com- 
 posed of thirty-seven persons." The scribe in ques- 
 tion is followed by another personage, an Egyptian 
 by nation, whom a small hieroglyphic legend desig- 
 nates as ' the steward of those, of the name of 
 Khiti.' Without doubt, then, these Semitic immi- 
 grants, as soon as they arrived in the territory of 
 Khnumhotep, were placed under the care of Khiti. 
 After these personages, who are charged with the 
 introduction, the chief of the Amu presents himself 
 with his suite. The first bears the name and the 
 title of ' hak prince of the country of Abesha.' 
 Tills name is of pure Semitic origin, and recalls that 
 of Abishai, borne by the son of the sister of king 
 David, who was distinguished by his military tal- 
 ents in the service of his uncle. Our Abesha 
 approaches respectfully the person of Khnumhotep, 
 whom 'the eldest son whom God had given him 
 accompanies,' and offers him, as a gift or baksheesh, 
 a magnificent wild goat of the kind still found in 
 our day on the rocks of the peninsula of Sinai. Be- 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 63 
 
 hind him we see his travelling companions, bearded 
 men, armed with lances, bows, and clubs ; the 
 women, dressed in the lively fashions of the Amu ; 
 the children, and the asses, loaded with the baggage 
 of the travellers, fixing their curious eyes on the 
 Egyptian lord Khnumhotep; while a companion 
 of the little party seems to elicit the harmony of 
 sounds, by the aid of a plectrum, playing on a lyre 
 of very old. form. An inscription, traced above the 
 scene which we have been describing, reads, ' paint for 
 the eyes, Mastemut, which thirty-seven Amu bring.' 
 The paint in question was an article very much 
 prized in Egypt. It served as a cosmetic to dye 
 the eyebrows and the eyelids a black color ; and 
 they painted under the two eyes a green stripe as a 
 strange adornment. This paint was furnished by 
 the Arabs or Shasu, who inhabited the land called 
 Pitshu (the particular Egyptian term for the better 
 known Midian), and, with their laden beasts, took 
 *■ the desert route from the east to Egypt, to traffic 
 with the inhabitants of the Nile valley. This 
 curious picture may serve as an illustration of the 
 ■ history of the sons of Jacob, who arrived in Egypt 
 to implore the favor of Joseph. But it would be 
 a singular error to suppose in this picture at Beni- 
 Hassan any allusion to the history in the Holy 
 Scriptures. 
 
64 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 SEMITES AND EGYPTIANS. 
 
 According to the testimony of the Turin book 
 of the kings, the reigns of the rulers, who towards 
 the end of the thirteenth dynasty occupied the 
 throne, must have been of comparatively short 
 duration, since they scarcely lasted on an average 
 for four 3^ears. The cause of such a striking fact 
 must be sought in internal troubles in the empire, 
 in civil wars and struggles of individual occupants 
 of the throne, who interrupted the regular succes- 
 sion, and made the existence of collateral dynasties 
 very probable. Next to the kings of the thirteenth 
 dynasty of Theban or Upper Egyptian origin, there 
 appeared seventy-six pharaohs, who, according to 
 the Manethonian account, had fixed their royal 
 abode in the Lower Egyptian town Sakhau, or 
 Khasau, called by the Greeks Xois. This internal 
 discord, caused by the ambitious plans of the pos- 
 sessors of power in Upper and Lower Egypt, gives 
 us on the one hand the explanation of the long 
 silence of the contemporary monuments, and on 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. Q^ 
 
 the other hand a key to the full understanding of 
 the success of the warlike invasion, which brought 
 a foreign race into Egypt, who would never have 
 dared to oppose the armed powers of the united 
 empire of Kemi. 
 
 The inhabitants settled between the branches of 
 the Nile were for the most part of pure Egyptian 
 race. The boundary of demarcation, which sepa- 
 rated this race from the neighboring peoples, was 
 on the west the so-called Canopic branch of the 
 Nile, as the Pelusiac branch was the boundary in 
 the opposite direction to the east. 
 
 When we turn to the eastern boundary of the 
 Delta, Semitism meets us according to the testimony 
 of the monuments in the most evident manner. 
 The principal region of it comprehends the country 
 to the east of the Tanitic branch of the Nile, in 
 which were situated the three Lower Egyptian 
 nomes VIII., XIV., and XX. The capital of the 
 fourteenth nome, the town of Tanis, which gave 
 its name to the branch of the Nile which runs by 
 it, bore the foreign designation Zar, Zal, and even 
 in the plural Zaru, as if it were to be translated ' the 
 town of Zar.' The name Tanis, which was given 
 to it by the Greeks, is to be carried back to another 
 designation of it, namely to the Egyptian form Zean, 
 Zoan. It is the same name which we meet with 
 5 
 
QQ TEE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 in Holy Scripture as Zoan, which was built seven 
 years later than Hebron ; (Numbers xiii. 23.) The 
 town of Tanis is everywhere in the Egyptian 
 inscriptions designated as an essentially foreign 
 town, the inhabitants of which are represented ' as 
 the people in the eastern border lands.' The east- 
 ern border land is however nothing else than the 
 ordinary designation of what was later the Tanaitic 
 nome, which, although not often, appears in the 
 list of nomes under the denomination of Ta mazor, 
 that is, ' the fortified land,' in which may easily be 
 recognized the long-sought most ancient form of 
 the Hebrew name for Egypt, Mazor or Misraim. 
 
 On the granite memorial stone of the year 400, 
 of the era of king Nubti, or Nub, which was dis- 
 covered in Tanis, and whose designation of the 
 year to this day puzzles the heads of the learned, 
 there appears ' a governor of the fortress,' Zal, who 
 besides this office enjoyed the title of ' governor of 
 the foreign peoples.' In this example also there is 
 question of inhabitants of foreign origin in that por- 
 tion of the Egyptian Delta which we have mentioned. 
 
 The papyrus rolls of the time of the nineteenth 
 dynasty with a certain preference busy themselves 
 with this town, which, besides the two names we 
 have mentioned, bore also a third, Pi-ramses, that 
 is the ' town of Ramses.' About the origin of this 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 67 
 
 name, and about the identity of the town Ramses 
 with the biblical Ramses, w'e will further on collect 
 together what is necessary to elucidate the subject. 
 With reference to this question, the papyrus rolls 
 to which we have alluded mention a number of 
 lakes and waters, situated in the neighborhood of 
 the foreign town Zal, whose peculiar designations 
 at once remind us of their Semitic origin. I will 
 mention as an example of the names of waters rich 
 in fish and birds — the Shaanau, Putra, Nachal, Pu- 
 harta or Puharat. The marshes and lakes rich in 
 water-plants, which at this day are known by the 
 name of Birket Menzaleh, were then called by the 
 name common to all these waters, Sufi (or with the 
 Egyptian article, Pa-sufi, which is the same as ' the 
 Sufi'), which word completely agrees with the 
 Hebrew Suf. The interpreters generally under- 
 stand this word in the sense of rushes or a rushy 
 country, while in old Egj^ptian it almost completely 
 answers to a water rich in papyrus plants. 
 
 To the east of the Tanaitic nome, or the ' Eastern 
 border land,' another nome was situated on the 
 sandy banks of the Pelusiac branch of the Nile, 
 the eighth in the general enumeration of the Egyp- 
 tian nomes, which the inscriptions represent under 
 the designation of the 'point of the east.' The 
 capital of the nome we have mentioned bore the 
 
(38 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 name Pi-tom, that is, ' the town of the sungod 
 Tom,' in which we must immediately recognize the 
 Pithom of the Bible. The town occupied a central 
 situation of the district, whose name also must be 
 referred to a foreign origin. It is the district Suko, 
 or Sukot, the Succoth of the Holy Scriptures at the 
 exodus of the children of Israel out of Egypt, the 
 meaning of which, ' tent,' or ' tent camp,' can be 
 only established by the help of the Semitic. Such 
 a designation is not extraordinary for a district 
 whose natural peculiarity quite answers to the 
 meaning of the name, since it embraces places with 
 meadows, the property of pharaoh, on which the 
 wandering Bedouins of the eastern desert pitched 
 their tents to afford necessary food for their cattle. 
 Even as late as the Grseco-Roman times of Egyp- 
 tian history appears the designation ' tents ; ' and 
 tent-camp (Scense) is also applied to places where 
 they were accustomed to pitch their camp of tents. 
 The site of the town Pitom is on the monuments 
 frequently more closely defined by the important 
 designation 'at the entrance of the east,' 'at the 
 eastern entrance,' namely from the desert into 
 Egypt. A piece of water in the neighborhood of 
 the town received again a name borrowed not 
 from the Egyptian, but Semitic language, namely, 
 Charma, or Charoma, which means ' the piercing.' 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 69 
 
 To return once more to Sukot, we must remind 
 the reader that the children of Israel in their 
 journey out from the town Ramses pitched their 
 first camp in the country called ' the tents.' On 
 the second day they reached in their wanderings 
 th3 place to which the Bible gives the name of 
 Etham. I have elsewhere proved that this place 
 also, according to Egyptian testimony, was either 
 in the country of Sukot, or at least in its close 
 neighborhood. It is the place called Chetam, on 
 various occasions, in the hieratic papyrus rolls, the 
 meaning of which, ' a shut-up place, fortress,' com- 
 pletely agrees with the Hebrew Etham. We shall 
 have the opportunity of returning to this Chetam- 
 Etham when we describe the exodus of the chil- 
 dren of Israel. 
 
 In the same nome, the eighth of the description 
 on the monuments, and the same which the Greeks 
 and Romans used to call the Sethroitic, lay without 
 doubt that most important town, which became the 
 turning-point in the following history, the town 
 Hauar, the literal interpretation of which is ' the 
 house of the leg' (uar). In a particular place in 
 the Manethonian description of the dominion of the 
 foreigners, the so-called Hyksos kings, which has 
 fortunately been preserved in an extract of the 
 Jewish historian Josephus, there occurs a mention 
 
70 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 of the same name. Manetho names the town 
 Auaris — and incidentally deduces its origin from 
 a religious tradition. A closer examination of the 
 nome with its towns, as they are described to us in 
 the different more or less detailed and well-arranged 
 lists on the monuments of the Ptolemies, renders 
 it probable that other places also of the land of 
 Egypt bore the name of Hauar, and particularly 
 those which in their Serapeums, that is, in the 
 temples of the dead, dedicated to the benefactor 
 of the land, Osiris, carefully preserved the legs of 
 the god as holy relics. Thus was named, for exam- 
 ple, the capital of the third Lower Egyptian nome, 
 or the Libyan, with a name added, Hauar-ament, 
 that is, ' the town of the right leg.' The great 
 inscription, so important for a know^ledge of the 
 land of Egypt, on the wall of the most holy place 
 in the middle of the temple of Edfou (Apollinopolis 
 Magna), completely confirms the statement that 
 the inliabitants of that town of the Libyan nome, 
 ' worshipped this leg in one of the temples dedi- 
 cated to the Apis bull.' We may, therefore, with 
 complete justice, maintain that the name also of the 
 town Avaris, on the eastern side of the Delta, was 
 connected with this peculiar worship of the leg of 
 Osiris. Lastly, it is not difficult to recognize the 
 left leg of the god, because of the evident refer- 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 71 
 
 ence to the peculiar situation of the arms of the 
 Nile, which was well known to be considered as 
 another form and manifestation of Osiris. After 
 the stream has divided itself at the point of the 
 Delta, into a fork in the neighborhood of a place 
 called Kerkasorus (this designation seems to have 
 the meaning of split, ' Kerk,' of Osiris), so as to 
 form two main arms, or, as the Egyptians were 
 accustomed to say, legs, the Canopic to the west, 
 and the Pelusiac to the east, the western arm was 
 considered as the right leg of Osiris, and the Pelu- 
 siac on the contrary as the left leg of the god. The 
 towns situated in the neighborhood of the mouth 
 were naturally considered as peculiar Osiris cities, 
 in whose holy of holies the legs of that god played 
 so peculiar a part. By this method of understand- 
 ing it the saga finds its full explanation. 
 
 The town Hauar Avaris, with which we are at 
 this moment occupied, lay, as we said, to the east 
 of the Pelusiac branch of the Nile, with which, 
 according to all probability, it was connected by a 
 canal, if the theory should not be accepted that it 
 was placed directly on the shore of the branch of 
 the Nile at its mouth, when the river had become 
 very broad. By a gradual silting up of this branch 
 in the course of thousands of ^'ears, the restitution 
 of the ancient bed of the river, and the right deter- 
 
72 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 mination of the situation of the towns on its banks, 
 has become so difficult a task, that we can have no 
 hope of finding anywhere the site of the Hyksos 
 town Avaris, which • has disappeared, unless some 
 very fortunate accident should bring about its 
 discovery. But that Hauar must in any case be 
 sought in the neighborhood of a lake is taught us 
 in the most positive manner by the much cited 
 inscription in the tomb at El-kab of the navigator 
 Aahmes, the faithful servant of the pharaoh who, 
 in the history of his life, relates how he came there, 
 when the Egyptian fleet was engaged in fighting 
 the foreign enemies in the waters Pa-zetku, or 
 Zeku, of the town of Hauar. This name also, in 
 spite of the Egyptian article placed before it, has 
 a Semitic appearance, so that -I should not hesitate 
 to compare it with corresponding roots of Semitic 
 languages. 
 
 Another place situated on the same territory of 
 the Sethroite nome, bears on the monuments a 
 purely Semitic name, Maktol, or Magdol ; this is 
 nothing else than the Hebrew Migdol, with the 
 meaning of a ' town,' or fortress, out of which the 
 Greeks formed on their side the well-sounding^ 
 name Magdolon. That the ancient Egyptians were 
 well acquainted with the meaning of this word, 
 which was foreign to their language, is conclu- 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 73 
 
 sively proved by the masculine article being placed 
 before it, and the sign of a wall which was added 
 to the foreign word when written in Egyptian. 
 The site of this Migdol, of which mention is made 
 in the Bible, not only in the description of the 
 exodus of the Jews out of Egypt, but also in 
 occasional passages, was distinctly stated to be at 
 one of the most northern points of the inhabited 
 country of the Egyptians ; and as it also bore on 
 the monuments the native name of Samut, must 
 be sought in the heaps of rubbish at Tell-es-Samut 
 on the eastern side of Lake Menzaleh. With this 
 fortress Migdol, between which and the sea King 
 * Ramses III. once tarried with a portion of his 
 infantry, as a not inactive witness of the victory 
 of his Egyptian fleet over the confederated sea- 
 faring people of the islands and coasts of the Medi- 
 terranean, the list of defences, which were intended 
 to protect the country on the east, is not yet closed. 
 There lay in the direction of the north-east, on the 
 western border of the so-called Lake Sirbonis, an 
 important place for the defence of the frontier, 
 called Anbu, that is ' the Avail,' ' the circumvalla- 
 tion.' It is frequently mentioned by the ancients, 
 not under its Egyptian appellation, but in the form 
 of a translation. The Hebrews call it Shur, that 
 is ' the wall,' and the Greeks ' to Gerrhon,' or ' ta 
 
74 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 Gerrha,' which means ' the fences,' or ' enclosures.'' 
 This remark will at a stroke remove all difficulties 
 which have hitherto existed with reference to the 
 origin of this word, which in spite of difference in 
 sound nevertheless refers to one and the same 
 place. 
 
 Whoever travelled eastwards from Egypt to leave 
 the country, was obliged to pass the place called 
 ' the walls,' before he was allowed to enter the 
 road of the Philistines, as it is called in Holy Writ, 
 on his further journey. An Egyptian garrison, 
 under the command of a captain, guarded the pas- 
 sage through the fortress, which only opened and 
 closed on the suspicious wanderer if he was fur- 
 nished with a permission from the royal authorities. 
 Anbu-Shur-Gerrhon was also the first stopping- 
 place on the great military road, Avhich led from the 
 Delta by Chetam-Etham and Migdol to the desert 
 of Shur. From Anbu, passing by the fortress of 
 Uit, in the land of Hazi, or Hazion (Kassiotis of 
 the ancients), the traveller reached the tower, or 
 Bechen, of Aanecht (Ostrakene), where occurred 
 the boundary of the countries of Kemi and Zaha. 
 On the foreign territory of the last-named place the 
 traveller reached, always passing along the coast 
 of the sea, the place Ab-sakabu (having the same 
 meaning in Semitic as Rhinokolura, or Rhinokorura 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 75 
 
 with the Greeks, namely, ' the place of the mutila- 
 tion of the noses '), and at length reached the 
 country of the inhabitants living on the borders of 
 Palestine. 
 
 Thus there lay in the neighborhood of Mendes, 
 perhaps even in Mendes itself, a fortified place 
 called ' the fortress of Azaba,' the last part of which 
 does not belong to the Egyptian tongue but to a 
 Semitic stock. This is the fortress of Ozaeb, in 
 Hebrew — i.e. 'of the idol.' Another well-known 
 town, in the account of the war of the first Menep- 
 tah against the Libyan groups of peoples on the 
 east side of the Delta, bore the appellation Pi- 
 bailos, ' the town Bailos ' (Greek, Byblos ; Coptish, 
 Phelbes), the Semitic origin of which is made clear 
 by it^ evident relationship with the Hebrew, Balas 
 (the mulberry). In its neighborhood was the lake 
 Shakana, also with a non-Egyptian name, the 
 meaning of which is only explained by the Semitic 
 root shakan — ' to settle down, to live, to be neigh- 
 bors to.' More inland, in the middle of the same 
 region of the Delta, the traveller met, to the west 
 of the Athribitic nome, the town Kahani, a name 
 with a foreign Semitic sound, which recalls at once 
 the Hebrew hohen^ ' priests.' In this way it is 
 not difficult by comparative philology to point out 
 other examples of the connection between the 
 
76 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 names of Egyptian settlements and towns and ancient 
 Semitic inhabitants. 
 
 But the presence of Semitic natives on the Egyp- 
 tian land is shown from other sources, whether they 
 were planted pure and unmixed on the soil, or were 
 led by time and circumstances to seek their bread 
 there. The memorial stones found in the cities of 
 the dead in Ancient Egypt, and the coffins and the 
 rolls of papyrus, show unmistakably the presence 
 of Semitic persons, who were settled in the valley 
 of the Nile, and had, so to speak, obtained the. rights 
 of citizenship; as also, on the other side, the incli- 
 nation of the Egyptians to give to their children 
 Semitic, or, by a siiigular mixture, half Egyptian 
 and half Semitic names. 
 
 The inclination of the Egyptian mind to Semitic 
 modes of life must, in my opinion, be explained from 
 their having long lived together, and from very 
 early existing mutual relations of the Egyptian and 
 Semitic races. Above all things else, it must not 
 be lost sight of that the trade relations, which ex- 
 tended from the Nile to the Euphrates, had con- 
 tributed to introduce into Egypt foreign expressions 
 for many products of the soil and foreign works of 
 art. The animal world also, when they had not 
 their home in the valley of the Nile, brought their 
 contributions of words borrowed from the Semitic — 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 77 
 
 as, ' sns ' for a horse, ' kamal ' for a camel, ' abir ' for 
 a particular kind of ox. The endeavor to pay court, 
 in the most open manner, to whatever was Semitic, 
 became, in the time of the nineteenth and twentieth 
 dynasties, a really absurd mania. They introduced 
 Semitic words in place of Egyptian words already 
 existing in their own mother-tongue, and in the 
 writing of their country ; and turned even Egyptian 
 words into Semitic, by transposition of the syllables, 
 if we may use such an expression. But the worst 
 of it was that the most educated and best informed 
 portion of the Egyptian people, the world of priests 
 and scribes, found an especial pleasure in decking 
 their history with Semitic words, which they used 
 to employ in the place of good Egyptian expressions. 
 They used Semitic expressions like the following : 
 rosh, ' head ' ; sar, ' a king ' ; belt, ' a house ' ; bab, 
 ' a door ' ; bir, ' a spring ' ; birkata, ' a lake ' ; ketem, 
 ' gold ' ; shalom, ' to greet ' ; rom, ' to be high ' ; 
 barak, ' to bless ' ; and many others. 
 
 We must here, on this subject, not forget a re- 
 mark which, when ;tvell understood, is calculated to 
 explain in some degree this striking fact, and to 
 excuse what seems worthy of blame in this mania 
 for the introduction of foreign words into the 
 mother-tongue. In the east' of the lowlands, in 
 those countries of which we have spoken above, 
 
78 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 and whose central point was the cities of Ramses and 
 Pitom, the Semitic immigration had extended so 
 widely, and had reached such a preponderance over 
 the Egyptian population, that, in the course of 
 centuries, a gradual blending of both nations took 
 place. It led to the formation of a mixed people, 
 traces of which have been preserved unchanged in 
 tliQse places to the present day. The neighboring 
 Egyptians, weaker in numbers, found it convenient 
 not only to adopt the manners and usages of the 
 Semites, but began to take an inclination to the 
 worship of foreign idols, and to enrich their own 
 divine lore with new and hitherto unknown heavenly 
 forms of foreign origin. At the head of all stood, 
 half Egyptian and half Semitic, the godhead of Set 
 or Sutech, with the additional name Nub,* 'gold,' 
 who was considered universally as the representa- 
 tive and king of the foreign deities in the land of 
 Mazour. According to his essence, a most ancient 
 Egyptian creation, Set, at the same time gradually 
 became the representative of all foreign countries — 
 the god of the foreigners. 
 
 * It is a very remarkable fact, that, from the times of the 
 highest antiquity in Eastern representations, the curse of the 
 Typhonic deities adheres to gold. According to a Greek tradi- 
 tion (Plutarch on Isis and Osiris, p. 30), at the sacrificial feast of 
 Helios the worshippers of the god were directed to carry no gold 
 about their persons, just as in the present day the followers of 
 Mohammed take off all gold trinkets before they go through the 
 appointed prayers. 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 79 
 
 If I mention the names of Baal and Astarta, 
 which we so frequently meet with in the inscrip- 
 tions, it is scarcely necessary to state that both 
 have their origin in the Phoenician divine lore. As 
 in Sidon, so in Memphis, the warlike Astarta (who 
 in the Egyptian monuments of a later time was 
 represented as a lion-headed goddess, guiding with 
 her own hand her team of horses yoked to the 
 chariot of war) had her own temple ; and we have 
 proof that Ramses II. raised a particular temple to 
 her houor and her service on the lonely shore of 
 the Mediterranean, near the Lake Sirbonis. 
 
 Less frequently occurring on the monuments than 
 the previously mentioned representatives of the 
 Semitic divinities, the fierce Reshpu still had his 
 place in the Egyptian host of heaven. He was 
 called ' the end of long times, the king of eternity, 
 the lord of strength in the midst of the host of 
 gods ; ' and the goddess, Kadosh, that is ' the holy,' 
 whose name already indicates the peculiar character 
 of her heavenly existence. The frolicsome Bes, or 
 Bas, also, the chief of song and of music, of pleasures, 
 and all social amusements, must be mentioned in this 
 place, since he was, according to his origin, a pure 
 child of the Semitic race of the Arabs. His name, in 
 their language, means Lynx and Cat ; and we think 
 we are not carrying the comparison too far if we 
 
igO THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 at once place by his side tlie cat-headed goddess, 
 the protectress of the town of Bubastus, the much 
 venerated lissom Bast. If we also mention that 
 the Phoenician Onka, and the Syrian Anait, or 
 Anaitis, belong to those heavenly beings whose 
 names and forms are again found in the Egyp- 
 tian divine world, where they take their places 
 under the names of Anka and Anta, then we have 
 exhausted the principal representatives of the 
 Semitic deities in the old Egyptian theology. 
 
 Perhaps the influence of the Semitic neighbor- 
 hood on Egyptian matters might be proved from 
 looking at it in a new point of view. In this case 
 a very remarkable and striking fact will bear con- 
 vincing evidence in favor of our views. We allude 
 here to the peculiar era, found nowhere else, which 
 an Egyptian courtier once used, in the fourteenth 
 century before Christ, to indicate the year of the 
 execution of an inscription. I refer to the cele- 
 brated memorial stone of Tanis, erected in the reign 
 of the second Ramses. 
 
 Contrary to the custom and usage, of reckoning 
 time b}^ the day, month, and year of the reigning 
 king, the stone of Tanis offers us the only example 
 as yet discovered, which, according to appearances, 
 resorts to a foreign and not an Egyptian mode of 
 reckoning time. There is here question of the year 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 81 
 
 400 of king Nub, a prince belonging to the foreign 
 lords of the Hyksos. In other words, if we do not 
 misunderstand the main issue, in the town of Tanis, 
 whose inhabitants for the most part belonged to 
 Semitic races, this mode of reckoning was in such 
 general use that the person who raised the memo- 
 rial-stone thought it nothing extraordinary to em- 
 ploy it as a mode of reckoning time in the beautifully 
 engraved inscription on granite which was exhibited 
 before all eyes in a temple. There can hardly be a 
 stronger proof of the influence of Semitic manners 
 on the Egyptian spirit and customs than the testi- 
 mony we have brought forward of the stone of 
 Tanis. A preponderating and almost irresistible 
 power of Semitism lies hidden here, the importance 
 of which it is as well to remark upon before we 
 undertake to describe the history of the irruption 
 of the foreigners into Egypt, and the consequences 
 connected with it on the condition of the empire. 
 Taking into consideration all this testimony, which 
 seems to speak in favor of our view of the impor- 
 tance of Semitic influence on Egyptian relations, we 
 will question the monuments for confirmation of the 
 presence of Semitic races and families on Egyptian 
 soil. We will direct our attention to the eastern 
 provinces of the Delta, which offered the only 
 entrance to wanderers from the east. 
 6 
 
82 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 As an answer, we insert the -literal translation of 
 a circular, whicli was composed in the course of the 
 nineteenth dynasty, and with the view on the part 
 of the writer to give a report to his superior on the 
 admission of foreign immigrants to Egyptian soil. 
 
 "I will now pass to something else which will 
 give satisfaction to the heart of my lord (namely 
 to give him an account of it), that we have per- 
 mitted the races of the Shasu of the land of Aduma 
 (Edom) to pass through the fortress Chetam (Etham) 
 of Mineptah-Hotephimaat — Life, weal, and health 
 to him — which is situated in the land of Sukot near 
 the lakes of the town Pitom of King Minex)ta]i-IIo- 
 tephimaat, which is situated in the land of Sukot, 
 to nourish themselves and to nourish their cattle 
 on the property of Pharaoh, who is a good sun 
 for all nations." 
 
 In this extremely important document of the time 
 of the first Mineptah, the son of Ramses II., there 
 is question of the races of the sons of the desert, or 
 to use the Egyptian name for these, the races of the 
 Shasu, in which science has for a long time and wjth 
 perfect certainty recognized the Bedouins of the 
 highest antiquity. They inhabited the great desert 
 between Egypt and the land of Canaan, and ex- 
 tended their wanderings sometimes as far as the river 
 Euphrates. According to the monuments, the Shasu 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 83 
 
 belonged to the great race of the Amu, of which 
 they were the head representatives. In the times 
 of the first Seti, the father of Ramses II., the laud 
 passed through by the Shasu began at the fortress 
 Zal Tanis, and stretched towards the east as far as 
 the hill-town ' of Canana,' in Wady Araba to the 
 south of the Dead Sea, which Seti I. took hj storm 
 in his campaign against the Bedouins. The author 
 of the writing designates those Shasu who were per- 
 mitted by superior authority to enter the Egyptian 
 kingdom, as the Shasu of the land of Aduma, which 
 was the Edom of the Bible and the land of Idumsea 
 of later times. The tribes of the Shasu, who are 
 referred to in the circular we have quoted, were 
 therefore sufficiently designated as inhabitants of 
 the land of Edom. The position of these last is 
 more closely defined in Holy Writ as the moun- 
 tainous country of Seir. 
 
 On this occasion we have the satisfaction to 
 declare once again the complete agreement of the 
 information on the monuments with the statements 
 of Holy Writ. In that place of the Harris papyrus, 
 in which mention is made of the campaigns of king 
 Ramses III. against these very Shasu, an impor- 
 tant observation is introduced into the speech of 
 the king. He speaks thus: 'ari-a sek Sair-u em 
 mahaut Sasu ; ' that is, ' I annihilated the Sair among 
 
84 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 the tribes of the Shasu.' The name of Sair answers 
 letter for letter with the Hebrew word Seir. The 
 comparison must appear all the more founded, as 
 the Egyptian writer has appended to the written 
 words of the name the sign for dumbness, which is 
 the hieroglyphic for a child, as if he wished by this 
 to prove his knowledge of the Semitic language, in 
 which Sa'ir means ' the little one.' The Se'irites, 
 the children of Se'ir, were dwellers in caves, and 
 original inhabitants of the mountain range of Se'ir. 
 At a later period, hunted down by the children of 
 Esau, they yielded their land to the conquerors, to 
 whom the appellation of Se'irites, as inhabitants of 
 the Se'ir range, was afterwards transferred. 
 
 With the help of this knowledge beforehand, it is 
 no longer difficult to assign their true place to the 
 Shasu on the theatre of events which are the object 
 of our inquiry. The land of Edom and the neigh- 
 boring hill-country was the home of the principal 
 races of the Shasu, which in the fifteenth and six- 
 teenth centuries before our era left their mountains 
 to fall upon Egypt with weapons in their hands, or 
 in a friendly manner followed by their flocks and 
 herds to beg sustenance for themselves and their 
 cattle, and to seek an entrance into the rich pas- 
 tures of the land of Succoth. Manifestly the calls 
 of hunger drove them to the rich corn lands of the 
 
TnE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 85 
 
 blessed Delta, where they took up their abode in 
 huts near thgir brethren of the same race, who had 
 become settled inhabitants. 
 
 As in the neighborhood of the town of Ramses 
 and the place Pitom the Semitic population had 
 formed the main foundation of the inhabitants from 
 hoar antiquity, and as subjects of the pharaoh had 
 been obedient to the laws of the empire, so in the 
 lapse of time, in another part of the eastern prov- 
 inces, in the country of Pibailos (the Bilbeis of 
 modern maps), close on the edge of the desert and 
 in sight of the cultivated land, disagreeable neigh- 
 bors had fixed themselves and pitched their tents 
 where they found pasture for their cattle. These 
 were Bedouins, who according to all probability 
 found their way from the dreary desert through the 
 difficult paths of the great papyrus marsh near the 
 present town of Suez in a north-western direction, 
 to find the object of their wandering near the town 
 of Pibailos. Mineptah I., the son and successor of 
 Ramses II., gives on the monument of his victories 
 in Karnak a graphic account of the dangerous 
 character of these unbidden guests to whom, from 
 Pibailos to On and Memphis, the way lay open, 
 without the kings his predecessors having found it 
 worth while to establish fortresses, to bar the way 
 of these strangers to the most important cities of 
 
86 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 the lower country. When the pharaoh we have 
 named succeeded to the throne of his fathers, the 
 danger of a sudden irruption on this side appeared 
 all the more threatening, because on the other side 
 the Libyans, the western neighbors of the Egyp- 
 tians, with their allies suddenly passed the frontiers 
 of Kemi, and extended their plundering raids into 
 the heart of the inhabited and cultivated western 
 nomes of the Delta. According to the report of 
 the inscription of his victories (unfortunately in- 
 jured by the lesion of the upper part), Mineptah 
 I. saw himself obliged to take precautions for the 
 safety of the land. For the protection of the east- 
 ern frontier, the capitals On and Memphis were 
 provided with the necessary fortifications, for as 
 the cited inscription expressly says, " the foreigners 
 had pitched their ahil* or tents before the town of 
 Pibailos, and the districts at the lakes of Shakana 
 to the north of the canal of the Heliopolite nome 
 had remained unused, for they had been abandoned 
 to serve as mere pasture of the herds because of the 
 foreigners, and had become deserted from the time 
 of our forefathers-! All the kings of Upper Egypt 
 
 ♦Again a Semitic word ; the Hebrew Ohil, with the same meaning. 
 
 t The translation of this sentence presents a difficulty which I 
 can hardly think I have solved. There can, however, be no 
 doubt of the general meaning, and that the author of the inscrip- 
 tion intended to say what I have pointed out in my translation. 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 87 
 
 were living in their magnificent buildings, and the 
 kings of Lower Egypt enjoyed peace in their cities. 
 All around the order of the land was threatened by 
 disturbers. The armed force was wanting in people 
 to assist them to give them an answer." 
 
 Before we cast a glance at the neighbors of the 
 Egyptians of the Delta, who carried on war and 
 traffic with the inhabitants of Kemi, it seems useful 
 to attend to a particular circumstance, which is not 
 without importance for arriving at a right judgment 
 on Semitism. 
 
 Our advancing knowledge of the contents of the 
 Egyptian papyri permits us, even at the present 
 time, to cast an intelligent glance at the administra- 
 tion of the eastern provinces, which had for its cen- 
 tral point the town of foreigners, Zoan-Tanis, in the 
 time of the great Ramessides and their successors. 
 Hence went forth the commands of the king, or of 
 the chief officials of the king, relating to the man- 
 agement of business or the regulation of trade with 
 ' the foreign nations,' or, to use the Egyptian ex- 
 pression for these, with the Pit. A portion of these 
 consisted of the industrious settled population in 
 towns and villages ; another portion served in the 
 army, of the pharaoh as infantry and cavalry, or as 
 sailors ; others were used in the public works, the 
 most laborious of which were the mines and quar- 
 
88 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 ries. Over each larger and smaller division of 
 ' foreigners,' who with their names and origin were 
 carried on the list of the royal archives, an official 
 was placed, the so-called. Hir-pit, or steward of the 
 foreigners. His next superior was the captain of 
 the district, or Adon (here also they used the Semitic 
 form for this title), while as chief authority the Ab 
 of the pharaoh (this was the dignity which Joseph 
 held), or royal Wezer, issued orders in the name of 
 the ruler. The authority over the foreign people 
 lay in the hands of particular bailiffs (the so-called 
 Mazai), who in the principal cities of the land had 
 to look after and preserve public order, and who 
 were under an Ur, or superior, by whom the carry- 
 ing out of public buildings was frequently under- 
 taken as an additional duty. I pass over a host of 
 other officials, who, in the eastern provinces of the 
 Delta as in the rest of Egypt, carried on the admin- 
 istration of the nomes, and I will only mention that 
 frequently the foreign subjects were promoted to 
 important offices in connection with the govern- 
 ment. They seem to have been most appreciated as 
 the bearers of official documents in the trade trans- 
 actions between Egypt and the neighboring Pales- 
 tine: The chief seats of this trade, the importance 
 of which is shown by individual papyri, besides the 
 frontier town of Ramses, seem to have been the 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 89 
 
 fortified places near the Mediterranean sea-coast, 
 and further inland to the east the country of the 
 Edomites and Amorites. 
 
 We will embrace the opportunity we have long 
 desired, in this place to consider the neighbors in 
 Palestine, who continually carried on the most 
 lively intercourse with the Egyptians in old time, 
 and partially formed the foundation of the foreign 
 inhabitants in the eastern provinces of the Delta. 
 In the first rank stand the Char, or Chal, by which 
 name not only a people but the country they inhab- 
 ited was also known, namely, those parts of west- 
 ern Asia lying on the Syrian coast, and before all 
 others the land of the Phoenicians. Richly laden 
 ships went and came from the land of Char ; for the 
 inhabitants of Char carried on a lively trade with 
 the Egyptians, and seem, if we are not to mistrust 
 the monuments and the rolls of the books, to have 
 been a highly-esteemed and respectable people. 
 
 Even the male and female slaves from Char were 
 highly esteemed as merchandise, and were procured 
 by distinguished Egyptians at a high price, whether 
 for their own houses, or for service in the holy 
 dwellings of the Egyptian gods. 
 
 The land of the Char bears in the inscriptions 
 another name, the most ancient mention of which 
 is supported by all the testimony we could desire^ 
 
90 TEE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 namely, by witnesses in the first times of the eigh- 
 teenth dynasty, about the year 1700 B. c. It is 
 always called Kefa, or Keft, Kefeth, Kefthu, on the 
 monuments. As at a certain time of Egyptian his- 
 tory, namely, at the beginning of the reign of the 
 first Seti, the territory of the Shasu extended as far 
 as the town of Ramses, about a hundred years later, 
 the seats of the people of Char, or the Phoenicians, 
 were described as ' beginning with the fortress Zar 
 (Tanis Ramses), and extending to Aupa, or Aup.' 
 The last-mentioned name designates a place in the 
 north of Palestine, without our being able more 
 nearly to define its situation. On the other hand, 
 the information is of very great importance, that 
 these same Char had extended their seats quite into 
 the heart of the Tanitic nome. We can, after the 
 reasons we have given above, no longer be surprised* 
 that these descendants of Phoenician race consti- 
 tuted on the eastern frontier of the Egyptian em- 
 pire the real kernel of its fixed, industrious, artis- 
 tic, and before all, its sea-faring and commercial 
 population. In their habits and mode of life they 
 were directly opposed to those wandering Shasu, 
 the children of Esau, who traversed the deserts, 
 and only remained with their herds so long on the 
 property of pharaoh as the pastures suited them and 
 supplied sustenance for themselves and their cattle. 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 91 
 
 The influence of the settled Char on Egyptian 
 life is unmistakable in a thousand details, for a 
 knowledge of which we have to tbank the monu- 
 ments, and particularly the little rolls of papyrus. 
 Even the fortified town of Zoan, if we are not com- 
 pletely deceived, seems to have been a very ancient 
 habitation of the Phoenicians, since as well on the 
 water side of it as by land, Zoan-Tanis constituted 
 at the entrance to the Delta on the east, an impor- 
 tant emporium of intercourse and trade with the 
 whole of the rest of Egypt. The name of the city 
 Zor, used as well as that of Zoan, reminds us too 
 much of the celebrated Zor-Tyrus in the native 
 country of the Phoenicians, for us to leave it unno- 
 ticed in an account of the traces of the Phoenician 
 race. 
 
 The presence of the Char-Phoenicians in Egypt 
 is, as already observed, made known to us in the 
 most detailed manner by the inscriptions. I have 
 already before spoken of those Semitic inhabitants 
 who were employed in Egypt in all sorts of official 
 service. To these in the first line belong the Phoe- 
 nicians, or Char. Their importance culminates in 
 the fact newly communicated to us by the monu- 
 ments, that a Char-Phoenician, towards the end of 
 the nineteenth dynasty, was able to conquer the 
 throne and dominion over the Egyptians. 
 
92 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 The Char spoke their own language, the Phoenician, 
 upon the pecuharities of which, in relation to the 
 other Semitic languages, the Phoenician inscriptions 
 that have been hitherto discovered have already 
 preserved plentiful information. Of all the lan- 
 guages spoken by Arab and western Asiatic nations, 
 the monuments only notice the language of the 
 Char, with a clear reference to its importance as the 
 most cultivated representative of all the others. 
 Whoever lived in Egypt spoke Egyptian (the lan- 
 guage of the people of Kemi) ; whoever stayed in 
 the south was obliged to speak the language of the 
 'Nahesi, or dark-colored people ; while those who 
 went northwards to the Asiatic region must have 
 been well acquainted with the language of the Phoe- 
 nicians, in order in some degree to understand the 
 inhabitants of the country. 
 
 The historical fact that the Phoenicians already, 
 in the most ancient times of Egyptian history, 
 formed a fixed settled population in the eastern 
 provinces of the Egyptian empire, finds a kind of 
 confirmation, or, if it is preferred, an explanation, 
 from a remarkable circumstance. We mean the 
 presence of the latest descendants of the old Phoe- 
 nician race in the same seats which their forefathers 
 occupied thousands of years ago. At this day the 
 traveller meets on the shores of the Lake Menza- 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 93 
 
 leh, near the old towns and districts of Ramses and 
 Pitom, a peculiar race of fishermen and sailors, whose 
 manners and customs, whose historical traditions, 
 however weak they may be, and whose ideas on 
 religious matters, prove them to have been strangers 
 to the real Egyptians. The inhabitants of this 
 country, formerly Christians, who call themselves 
 by the name of Malakin, were restless and rebellious 
 subjects of the Khalifs. 
 
 The same inhabitants of the eastern provinces, 
 who at this day navigate in their barks the shallow 
 waters of Lake Menzaleh, and carry on the fishery 
 as their chief business, are, as has been said, the 
 descendants of the Phoenician inhabitants of the 
 Tanitic and Sethroitic nomes. These were the peo- 
 ple who ages ago gave to the fortified places of their 
 Egyptian lands, and to the towns and villages which 
 they once inhabited, and to the lakes and canals on 
 which they navigated, those Semitic appellations by 
 which we well know these places from the papyrus 
 rolls. 
 
 What most marks their ancient and now forgotten 
 origin, is their non-Egyptian countenance, so like 
 the pictures of the Hyksos, with broad cheek-bones, 
 and with daring pouting lips, which more than any- 
 thing else marks the boatmen of Lake Menzaleh 
 with the stamp of a foreign origin. 
 
94 . THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 The history of the inhabitants of the eastern 
 provinces lies buried and forgotten under the rubbish 
 heaps of thousands of years. And yet their fathers 
 were once the lords of the fate of Egypt, before 
 whose rough strength the pharaohs bowed them- 
 selves powerless, and were obliged for centuries to 
 pass a furtive existence in the southern portions of 
 the empire. Set had conquered Osiris. 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 95 
 
 CHAPTER VII. V 
 
 THE TIME OF.FOEEIGN DOMINION. — JOSEPH IN EGYPT. 
 
 AccoEDiNG ,to the Manethonian account which 
 the Jewish historian Josephus has preserved to us 
 by transcribing it, the Egyptian Netherlands were 
 at a certain time overspread by a wild and rough 
 people, which came from the countries of the East, 
 overcame the native kings who dwelt there, and 
 took possession of the whole country, without find- 
 ing any great opposition on the part of the Egyp- 
 tians. The account of it in Josephus is literally 
 as follows : — 
 
 *' There was a king called Timaius (or Timaos, 
 Timios). In his reign, I know not for what reason, 
 God was unpropitious, and people of low origin 
 from the country of the East suddenly attacked the 
 land, of which they easily and without a struggle 
 gained possession. They overthrew those who ruled 
 there, burned down the cities, and laid waste the 
 temples of the gods. They ill-treated all the in- 
 habitants, for they killed some, and carried into 
 captivity others, with their wives and children. 
 
96 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 " And they made one from the midst of them 
 king, whose name was Salatis (Saltis, Silitis). He 
 fixed his seat in Memphis, collected the taxes from 
 the upper and lower country, and placed garrisons 
 in the most important places. But he particularly 
 fortified the eastern boundary, for he foresaw that 
 the Assyrians, then the most powerful people, would 
 undertake to make an attack on his kingdom. 
 
 " When he had found a town very conveniently 
 situated, in the Sethroite nome to the east of the 
 Bubastic branch of the Nile — on the grounds of an 
 old mythical legend — it was called Auaris — he 
 extended it, fortified it with very strong walls, and 
 placed in it as a garrison two hundred and forty 
 thousand heavy armed troops. 
 
 '* There he betook himself in summer, partly to 
 watch over the distribution of provisions and the 
 counting out their pay to his army, and partly also 
 to strike fear into foreigners by making his army 
 perform military manoeuvres. 
 
 He died after he had reigned . . 19 years. 
 
 His successor, by name Bnon (or Banon, 
 
 Beon), reigned 44 years. 
 
 After him another, Apachnan (or Apach- 
 
 nas) ....... 36 years, 7 months. 
 
 After him Aphobis (or Aphophis, Apo- 
 
 phis, Aphosis) 61 years. 
 
 And Annas (or Janias, Jannas, Anan) . 60 years, 1 month. 
 
 Last of all Asseth (or Aseth, A&es, Assis) 49 years, 2 months. 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL: 97 
 
 " These six were the first kings. They carried on 
 war uninterruptedly with a view to destroy the land 
 of Egypt to the roots. 
 
 ''The whole people bore the name of Hyksos, that 
 is, 'shepherd kings.' For hyh means in the holy 
 language a king, sos in the dialect of the people a 
 shepherd or shepherds. These syllables, when put 
 together, make the word Hyksos. Some think they 
 were Arabs." 
 
 We will first of all turn our attention to the last 
 statement, because it is of great importance for the 
 fixing of the origin of this obscure people. If the 
 kind reader will now recall to his thoughts what we 
 have said about the Arab Bedouins, who inhabited 
 the desert to the east of Egypt, and were called in 
 Egyptian Shasu (also Shaus, Shauas), he will cer- 
 tainly be of the same opinion as ourselves, that those 
 who maintain the Arab origin of the Hyksos, must 
 have drawn their information from a pure Egyptian 
 source. For that word Sos answers completely to 
 the old Egyptian Shasu, in which the sound sA,* 
 
 * We will adduce further examples, borrowed from the work of 
 Manetho, which leave no doubt that the Greek sign for s was used 
 to represent the old Egyptian sound sh. Manetho transcribes the 
 kings' names, Sheshonq as Sesonchis, Shabak as Sabakon, Shaba- 
 tak as Sebichos. Also the name of king Chufu, which the Egyp- 
 tians at the time of the composition of the work of Manetho 
 
 7 
 
98 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 which did not exist in Greek, according to usage 
 was replaced by a simple s . Although Manetho, 
 when he talks of the Hyksos, insists upon the mean- 
 ing of shepherd, he could only do this in consequence 
 of a strange confusion, since he turns to the new 
 and popular language of his own time to explain the 
 second syllable sos, in which accidentally sos (or 
 shos^ as the same word is still pronounced in Coptic) 
 means a shepherd. 
 
 We have already before remarked how from time 
 to time the Bedouin people *of the Shasu knocked at 
 the eastern frontier door to obtain an entrance into 
 Eg3^pt. We have, on the ground of testimony from 
 an inscription of the time of the nineteenth dynasty, 
 stated the certainty of their presence on the Egyp- 
 tian soil, when hunger drove them from their native 
 hills and valleys to the eastern provinces of the 
 Pharaonic empire. Like the modern Bedouins, the 
 Shasu were a pastoral people in the full sense of the 
 word. The old name of the race of the Shasu and 
 Shaus-Bedouins in the course of time became equiva- 
 lent in the popular language to 'shepherds,' that is, 
 a wandering people, who occupied themselves in 
 bringing up cattle, which formed the only wealth 
 
 pronounced Shufu, was transcribed by Manetho Suphis. The 
 older, and only correct pronunciation of this name has been care- 
 fully preserved in the Cheops of Herodotus. 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 99 
 
 of the inhabitants of the desert in all times down to 
 the present day. 
 
 If the objection should be raised that the monu- 
 ments (note well, those which have been discovered 
 up to the present time) pass over in complete silence 
 the name of Hyksos, this appearance of proof loses 
 all its importance from the following consideration. 
 By far the greater number of contemporary monu- 
 ments which once existed as individual witnesses of 
 the remembrance of the historical events under the 
 rule of tiie foreign kings, have entirely disappeared 
 from the surface of the Egyptian soil. It must be 
 left to some lucky accident, that somewhere the 
 stones now hidden or buried in the rubbish may 
 come to the light of day, to give us new information 
 about these portions of the history of the Egyptian 
 empire, which are as obscure as they are important. 
 The wonderland on the banks of the mighty Mle is 
 a land of continual and startling discoveries, and will 
 remain so for all coming times and generations. In 
 the hope of finding important discoveries in the soil 
 of Egypt in consequence of new excavations, we 
 should esteem it unwise to give to our views the 
 absolute form of a fixed unalterable judgment. But 
 we may well be allowed to compare the information 
 in the inscriptions of the few remains of the monu- 
 ments which have been preserved with the ac- 
 
100 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 counts whicli the Greeks have handed down to us, 
 and from this to form our own opinion, and leave 
 it to the consideration of the future, if by a happy 
 accident our conjectures should be confirmed or 
 refuted. 
 
 At the present moment we expressly affirm the 
 complete agreement of the name of Hyksos with the 
 Egyptian double word we have mentioned above — 
 Hak Shaus, that is, ' king of the Arabs,' or ' king of 
 the shepherds,' — the probability of which is proved 
 by the actual existence of a similar form in the 
 term Hak Abisha, 'king (or prince) of the land of 
 Abisha,' which we meet with in the hall of the tomb 
 of Khnumhotep at Beni-Hassan. We will not, how- 
 ever, on the other hand, maintain that the appella- 
 tion Hak Shaus is the same which the bearers of it, 
 of whatever descent they might boast, either formed 
 of their own accord for themselves, or assumed on 
 account of their office. It is far more probable that 
 the Egyptians, when at last they drove away their 
 tyrants of Semitic blood, gave these princes, who for 
 several centuries had considered themselves as the 
 legitimate kings of Egypt, the nickname Hak Shasu 
 by way of a contemptuous expression. 
 
 An ancient tradition furnishes an important addi- 
 tion to the proofs of the Arab origin of the hated 
 Hyksos kings, which has been preserved by sev- 
 
THE EXODUS^OF ISRAEL. ' 101' 
 
 eral_Arab historians of the Middle Ages. An Arab 
 tradition tells us of a certain Sheddad (the name 
 means a powerful ruler), the son of Ad, who made 
 an irruption into Egypt, conquered the country, 
 and extended his victorious campaign as far as the 
 Straits of Gibraltar. He and his descendants, the 
 founders of the Amalekite dynasty, are said to have 
 maintained themselves more than two hundred years 
 in Lower Egypt, where they made the town Awaris 
 their capital.* 
 
 According to another tradition, on the testimony 
 of Africanus (one of those who extracted from the 
 work of Manetho), the Hyksos kings were Phoeni- 
 cians, who took possession of Memphis, and made 
 the town of Auaris, or Awaris, in the Sethroite 
 norne, their chief fortress. This tradition also is 
 not without a certain air of truth, if the reader will 
 recall to mind what I ventured to state above 
 regarding the Char-Phoenicians and the town Au- 
 aris. The ancient seats of the Shasu-Arabs and of 
 the Phoenicians extended towards the west as far 
 as the same town of Zor-Tanis. The two races must 
 therefore have been located together in the closest 
 manner — the first as wanderers, the last as fixed 
 inhabitants of the eastern provinces of the Egyptian 
 empire, which were possessed by the foreigners. 
 
 * Compare Fluegel's History of the Arabs, 2d ed. p. 11. 
 
rO'2 'i'li^ "tRVE ST OR Y OF 
 
 That the cultivated Khar in such a mixture of 
 nations claimed the first rank, can scarcely need 
 proof. Whether they or the Shasu were the oi-igi- 
 nators of this movement against the native kings of 
 the empire, is a point for the decision of which sci- 
 entific research has hitherto failed to discover the 
 means. 
 
 Let us leave entirely the ground of conjectures 
 and probabilities, and turn now to the monuments, 
 to see if they can furnish us with any existing traces 
 of these foreigners to assist our researches. The 
 answer is decidedly in the affirmative, but in such a 
 general way that further inspection and examination 
 is very necessary. The inscriptions designate this 
 foreign people, which once ruled in Egypt till it 
 was driven from the country by the The ban kings, 
 by the name of Men, or Menti. According to the 
 great table of nations on the walls of the temple of 
 Edfou, those called Menti are inhabitants of the 
 land of Asher. By the help of the demotic trans- 
 lation of the inscription, in two languages, on the 
 great stone of Tanis (known Under the name of the 
 decree of Canopus, a voucher, it is true, of the Pto- 
 lemaic times), we can establish that such was the 
 common name of Syria in the mouths of the Egyp- 
 tians who were then living ; while the older name 
 of the same country, in the hieroglyphic part of the 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 103 
 
 stone, was5 Rutennu, with the addition, *of the East.' 
 In the different languages, and in the different times 
 of history, the following names, Syria, Rutennu of 
 the East, Asher, and Menti, were therefore synony- 
 mous. We wish here to point out, although we 
 leave the matter undecided, that Asher, in late 
 Egyptian, may perhaps have meant the Semitic 
 Ashur, or Assyria, and at last may have become 
 contracted both as to the extent of country and 
 common usage to the well-known geographical term 
 Syria. 
 
 Of high importance with regard to the foregoing 
 question appears to us the derivation of the old 
 national name Rutennu (or Lutennu), which, in the 
 history of the eighteenth dynasty, aud in the war- 
 like campaigns of the pharaohs in the east, plays 
 such an important part. As to the geographical 
 extent to which this name applied, we are fortu- 
 nately so well informed that no mistake can ever 
 occur again. In the great catalogue of the towns of 
 western Asia conquered by Thutmes III., whose 
 inhabitants, after the battle of Megiddo, submitted 
 to the Egyptian rule, they are described in a gen- 
 eral superscription as all the population of ' the 
 upper land of the Rutennu.' This proves, in the 
 most positive manner, that the name of Upper 
 Rutennu must have included in its circumference 
 
104 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 almost exactly the frontiers of the country which 
 was later that of the twelve tribes of Israel. 
 
 With this key in our hand, we can open many 
 a closed door to the right understanding of the 
 great movement of nations to the east of Egypt, 
 so that we can survey with a clear glance the 
 horizon of these migrations. If it is an undeniable 
 fact, resulting from historical inquiry under the 
 guidance of the monuments, that, immediately after 
 the driving out of the Menti, the Egyptian kings of 
 the eighteenth dynasty planned their campaigns of 
 conquest against the countries of western Asia 
 inhabited by the Rutennu, then there lay at the 
 bottom of these obstinate constantly repeated in- 
 roads a fixed feeling of revenge and retribution for 
 losses and injuries received. The conviction forces 
 itself upon us almost irresistibly, that the irrup- 
 tion of the foreigners into Egypt was made by 
 the Syrians, who, in their campaigns through the 
 arid deserts, found in the Shasu-Arabs welcome 
 allies who well knew the country. And here I 
 am reminded of a similar alliance which Cambyses 
 formed with the Arabs in his campaign against 
 Egypt. They found also in the Semitic inhabitants 
 settled in the eastern provinces brothers of the same 
 race, with whose assistance they succeeded in giv- 
 ing a death-blow to the Egyptian empire, and of 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 105 
 
 robbing: it for centuries of all power of action and 
 independent life. 
 
 The present state of Egyptian inquiry, concern- 
 ing the history of the Hyksos, has enabled us to find 
 an answer to a number of questions which stand in 
 close connection with these matters, and embrace 
 the following facts : — 
 
 1. A certain number of non-Egyptian kings of 
 foreign origin, belonging to the nation of the Menti, 
 ruled for a long time in the eastern portion of the 
 Delta. 
 
 2. The foreign princes had, besides the town 
 Zoan, chosen as the capital of their power the 
 typhonic place Hauar-Auaris, on the east side of 
 the Pelusiac arm of the Nile, within what was 
 called later the Sethroite nome, and had provided 
 it with strong fortifications. 
 
 3. The foreigners had, besides the customs and 
 manners, adopted the official language and the holy 
 writing of the Egyptians. The whole arrangement 
 of their court was formed on the Egyptian model. 
 
 4. These same foreign kings were patrons of art. 
 Egyptian artists made, according to the old pattern 
 and according to the prescribed usage of their fore- 
 fathers, the monuments in honor of the foreign 
 tyrants ; yet, in the statues of them, they were 
 obliged to give way with regard to the expression 
 
106 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 of the foreign countenances, the peculiar arrange- 
 ment of the beard, and the head-dress and other 
 deviations of foreign costume. 
 
 5. These foreign kings honored, as the supreme 
 god of their newly-acquired country, the son of the 
 heavenly goddess Nut, the god Set or Sutekh, with 
 the additional name Nub, ' gold,' or ' the golden,' — 
 according to the Egyptian mode of viewing things, 
 the origin of all that is bad and perverse in the seen 
 and unseen world ; the opponent of what is good, 
 and the enemy of light. In the towns of Zoan 
 and Auaris the foreigners had constructed to the 
 honor of this god splendid temples and other monu- 
 ments, especially sphinxes, constructed of stone 
 from Syene. 
 
 6. In all probability one of the foreign lords was 
 the originator of the new era, which most likely 
 began wdth the first year of his reign. Up to the 
 reign of the second Ramses, four hundred full years 
 had elapsed of this reckoning, which was acknowl- 
 edged by the Egyptians. 
 
 T. The Egyptians were indebted to the stay of 
 the foreigners, and to their social intercourse with 
 them, for much useful knowledge. Especially the 
 horizon of their artistic views was enlarged, and 
 new forms and shapes were introduced into Egyp- 
 tian art, the Semitic origin of which is obvious from 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. \{f[ 
 
 a single glance at these productions. The winged 
 Sphinx may be. reckoned as a notable example of 
 this new direction of art introduced from abroad. 
 
 We remarked above that the number of the 
 monuments which contain memorials of the time of 
 the Hyksos is very limited ; and we must add that 
 the names of the Hyksos kings, with which they 
 ornamented their own memorial-stones (statues, 
 sphinxes, and similar works), or those of earlier 
 Egyptian kings of the times before them, have 
 arrived to us half obliterated or carefully chiselled 
 out, so that the decipherment of the faint traces 
 which remain has to struggle with great difficulties. 
 These important lacunae in the study of the Egyp- 
 tian monuments find a sufficient explanation in the 
 proved and easily understood practice of the kings 
 of native race who ascended the throne after the 
 expulsion of the foreigners, and who particularly 
 set themselves carefully to obliterate all remem- 
 brance of the hated princes, and to destroy and 
 annihilate their works. 
 
 The names of the Hyksos kings, which are en- 
 graved on the more than life-size statue at Tell 
 Mukhdam, the border of the stand of the colossal 
 sphinxes in the Louvre, the lion found near Bag- 
 dad, the sacrificial stone in the Museum of Boulak, 
 are scratched out with great care, so as to be 
 
108 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 almost undistinguishable ; and science has to thank 
 a happy accident for the preservation and decipher- 
 ment of the names of two Hyksos kings. These 
 are : 
 
 1. The king, whose first cartouche contains the 
 name Ra aa-ab-taui, and whose second cartouche 
 encloses the family name Apopi, or Apopa ; and, 
 
 2. King Nubti, or Nub, with the official name 
 Set aa-pe-huti (properly, ' Set the powerful '). 
 
 The name of the first-mentioned .king, which 
 would be pronounced in the Memphitic dialect 
 Aphophi, differs little from that of the Shepherd 
 king Aphobis, or Aphophis, Apophis, which, accord- 
 ing to the Manethonian tradition, was the fourth of 
 the above-named Hyksos kings. We will also not 
 withhold the remark, that many Egyptians of these 
 times call themselves Apopi, or Apopa, in the same 
 way, with a certain predilection. 
 
 The names which designate the other Hyksos 
 kings are in a striking manner similar in sound with 
 the names which the god ' Set-Nub the powerful ' is 
 accustomed to bear on the Egyptian monuments. 
 Was it the intention of the foreign prince to be 
 prayed to as the god Set ? 
 
 In the deep obscurity in which a pitiless fate has 
 hidden the history of the irruption and the domin- 
 ion of the Hyksos kings in Egypt, a ray of light is 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL, 109 
 
 visible onlj^ towards the close of the tyranny of the 
 foreigners. 
 
 In a roll of papyrus in the British Museum (Sal- 
 lier, No. 1) there is, although unfortunately much 
 interrupted with lacunse, the beginning of an his- 
 torical description which is connected with the 
 names of the foreign king Apopi and the Egyptian 
 underlying Ra-Sekenen (the victorious Sun-god Ra), 
 both contemporaries. It is the glory of that master 
 of science, E. de Rouge, too soon lost to us, to have 
 first recognized the high value of this writing in 
 its full importance. It begins with the following 
 words : — 
 
 (I. 1) "It came to pass that the land of Kemi 
 belonged to enemies. And nobody was lord in the 
 day when that happened. At that time there was 
 indeed a king Ra-Sekenen, but he was only a Hak 
 of the town of the south, but the enemies sat in 
 the town of the Amu, and there was king (Ur) (2) 
 Apopi in the town of Auaris. And the whole world 
 brought him its productions, also the northern land 
 did the same with all the good things of Ta-meri ; 
 and the king Apopi (3) chose the god Set for his 
 divine master, and he did not serve any of the gods 
 which were worshipped in the whole land. He 
 built him a temple of beautiful work, to last a long 
 time [. . . and the king] (4) Apopi (appointed) 
 
110 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 feasts (and) days to offer (sacrifices) at each time 
 to the god Sutech." 
 
 The king Ra-Sekenen in ' the city of the south' 
 had, according to all appearance, incurred the par- 
 ticular displeasure of the tyrant of Auaris, who 
 intended to hurl him from the throne, and sought 
 for means and pretexts to carry out his intention. 
 
 There had evidently before this begun a corre- 
 spondence between the tyrant in the north and the 
 Hak in the southern land, in which the first-named 
 among other things required of the last to give up 
 the worship of his gods, and, to worship Amon-Ra 
 alone as the only divinity of the country. Ra- 
 Sekenen had declared himself prepared for all, but 
 had added a proviso to his letter, in which he 
 expressly declared, to allow him to speak for him- 
 self (II. 1) " that he was not able to promise to 
 serve any other of the gods which were worshipped 
 in the whole country but Amon-Ra, the king of the 
 gods alone." 
 
 A new message to the unfortunate Hak of the 
 southern city was deliberated upon and agreed to 
 by king Apopi. The papyrus announces this in 
 these words : — '' Many days later after these events 
 (II. 2) King Apopi sent to the governor of the 
 town in the land of the south this message, . . . 
 which his secretaries had advised him. (3) And 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. HI 
 
 the messenger of Apopi betook himself to the gov- 
 ernor of the city of the south. And (the messen- 
 ger) was brought before the governor of the city of 
 the south. (4) He spoke thus, when he spoke to 
 the messenger of King Apopi : ' Who sent thee 
 here to this city of the south ? How hast thou 
 come to spy out ? ' " 
 
 The messenger of king Apopi thus addressed, 
 first answered the governor in these simple words, 
 ' King Apopi it is who sends to thee ; ' and there- 
 upon delivers his message, the particular contents 
 of which are very disquieting to the first-mentioned 
 personage. It was a question of stopping a canal. 
 The first remark of the messenger that he had not 
 taken sleep either day or night, until he had ful- 
 filled his mission, must appear like scorn. The 
 writer paints the situation of the Hak wdth few 
 words, but those full of meaning. 
 
 " (6) And the governor of the town in the south 
 was for a long time troubled so that he could not 
 (7) unswer the messenger of King Apopi." 
 
 But he nerved himself and made a speech to the 
 messenger. Unfortunately the chief contents of it 
 have been torn out by the destruction of the papyrus 
 at this place. After the foreign messenger had been 
 hospitably entertained, he betook himself back to 
 the court of king Apopi, while Ra-Sekenen as 
 
112 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 quickly as possible called his friends around him. 
 The papyrus thus relates what occurred : 
 
 " (11) And the messenger of King Apopi returned 
 to the place where his lord tarried (III. 1). There- 
 upon the governor of the town of the south called 
 unto him the great and chief men, as the command- 
 ers and captains who accompanied him, (2) in order 
 (to communicate) to them the message which King 
 Apopi had sent to him, but they all of one accord 
 were silent through great grief, and wist not what 
 to answer him good or bad." 
 
 After the following words, ' then sent King Apopi 
 to the,' the writer breaks off in the middle of a sen- 
 tence, without satisfying the curiosity of his read- 
 ers two-and-thirty centuries afterwards. For next 
 comes the beginning of the letters of Pentaur, the 
 poet of the well-known heroic song of the great 
 deeds of Ramses II. at Kadesh. 
 
 Although this precious writing is frequently, in 
 the most important passages of the narrative of 
 Apopi, interrupted through holes and rents, owing 
 to the splitting of the papyrus, still what remains is 
 amply sufficient to make known to us the persons, 
 the places, and the circumstances of this historical 
 drama. 
 
 King Apopi meets us as chief hero. His royal 
 residence is in Auaris. The enemies, foreigners, 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 113 
 
 have taken possession of Egypt. Its inhabitants are 
 obliged to pay a tax of their possessions and sub- 
 stance to the foreign tyrants. Apopi worships his 
 own divinity, the god Sutech, who is already known 
 to us as the Egyptian expression of the Semitic Baal, 
 especially of Baal Zapuna, the Baal-zephon of Holy 
 Scripture. He builds a splendid temple to his god, 
 and appoints festivals and offerings for him. 
 
 In the south of the land, in No, ' the town ' of 
 the south, that is in Thebes, the capital of Patoris, 
 ' the region of the south ' (the biblical Pathros), 
 there sat an offshoot of the oppressed pharaohs, Ra- 
 Sekenen, only invested with the title of Hak, or 
 sub-king. 
 
 King Apopi is the all-powerful lord, the general 
 ruler of the land. Complaisant learned men belong 
 to his court, who bear the remarkable title of Rechi- 
 chet, that is, the experts.* They give counsel to the 
 king, bad counsel as it appears, since they induce 
 him to send a messenger to the sub-king in No, with 
 still more severe demands worthy of a Cambyses. 
 The messenger enjoys no rest, but day and night 
 hurries to the southern land. 
 
 The sub-king, Ra-Sekenen, receives him with the 
 
 * On the stone of Tanis the Greek translator renders this term 
 by the well-known word Hierogrammats, or Temple scribes. 
 
 8 
 
114 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 same question which Joseph, his contemporary, put 
 to his own brethren when thej came down to Egypt 
 to buy corn, since he said to them, ' Whence come 
 ye ? Ye are spies, and ye are come here to see 
 wh'ere the land is open.' 
 
 After the Hak had received all the communica- 
 tions of the tyrant Apopi from the mouth of his 
 messenger, he was deeply moved by their dangerous 
 import. The great lords and chief men of his court 
 were summoned to a council ; and the leaders also 
 of the army, the Uau or officers, and the Hauti or 
 captains, took part in it. 
 
 But good counsel is dear. No one dared to 
 make any proposal from the fear of unfortunate 
 consequences. 
 
 Such is an abstract of this remarkable document. 
 We may rest assured, even without knowing the 
 conclusion of the whole story, that the author of it 
 must have aimed, by his description, at portraying 
 something more important than the humiliation of a 
 native Hak. The subject without doubt really was 
 the history of the uprising of the Egyptians against 
 the yoke of the foreigners. In order to teach us the 
 cause and meaning of this, the unknown narrator 
 begins his history of the war of liberation, which 
 was brought about in the way we have mentioned, 
 by a description of the unfortunate position of the 
 
TEE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 115 
 
 empire. His history, which began so sadly, ends 
 happily, and the actual proofs from the monuments 
 bear out his fortunate conclusion. 
 
 In order to find the proofs from the monuments, 
 let us betake ourselves to the land of the south, let 
 us pass by the towns of Thebes, Hermonthis, and 
 Latopolis, on both sides of the stream, and let us 
 stop on the right bank, in sight of the most ancient 
 walls of the city of El-Kab. This discovers to us 
 the position and extent of the former capital of 
 the third upper Egyptian nome, which the Greeks 
 designated as the town of Eileithyia, the * goddess 
 presiding over births,' and the Romans as the town 
 of Lucina in their description of Egyptian places. 
 In the background towards the east there rise rocky 
 hills, with long rows of tombs, whose dark openings 
 appear to the traveller like the broken windows of 
 a ruined castle. 
 
 We will betake ourselves to the chambers of the 
 tombs. 
 
 In truly venerable forms, which seem to people 
 the chambers of the dead, we greet the contempo- 
 raries of the H3^ksos kings, whose progeny belonged 
 to the heroes of the great war of liberation of the 
 Eg3^ptians from the tyranny of the foreigners. 
 
 Let us enter these chambers of the dead, which a 
 grandson has dedicated to the hero Aahmes, the 
 
116 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 son of Abana-Baba, and his whole house as the 
 last memorial of their existence and of their deeds. 
 The walls of the narrow chamber are covered by a 
 widely-spread genealogical tree of his race, which 
 has suffered much injury. 
 
 Aahmes, the son of Baba-Abana, and his daugh- 
 ter's son Pahir, form the most important persons of 
 the genealogical tree. 
 
 We will lay before the reader a faithful transla- 
 tion of the inscription in which Aahmes portrayed 
 in the old speech the course of his life as a picture 
 of the time for posterity. The actual author of the 
 inscription is ' the son of his daughter, who exe- 
 cuted the work in this sepulchral chamber, in order 
 to perpetuate the name of the father of his mother, 
 the master of the drawing art of Amon, Pahir.' 
 
 The following are the words of the inscription as 
 the clever Pahir executed it : 
 
 1. The deceased chief of the sailors, Aahmes, a son of 
 Abana 
 
 2. speaks thus. I speak to you, to all people, and I 
 give 3^ou to know the honorable praise which was givQn 
 to me. I was presented with a golden chain eight times 
 in the sight 
 
 3. of the whole land, and with male and female slaves 
 in great numbers. I had a possession of many acres. 
 The surname of * the brave ' which I gained never van- 
 ished away 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 117 
 
 4. in this land. He speaks also further. I have com- 
 pleted my 3^outhful wandering in the town of Nukheb. 
 My father was a captain of the deceased Ra Sekenen, 
 Baba 
 
 5. son of Roant, was his name. Then I became cap- 
 tain in his place on the ship ' The Calf,' in the time of the 
 lord of the country, Aahmes, the deceased. 
 
 6. I was still young and unmarried, and was girded 
 with the garment of the band of youths. Still, after I 
 had prepared for myself a house, I was taken 
 
 7. on the ship ' The North,' because of my strength. 
 It was m}' duty to accompany the great lord — life, pros- 
 perity, and health attend him ! — on foot, when he rode 
 in his chariot. 
 
 8. They besieged the town of Auaris. My duty was 
 to be valiantl}^ on foot before his holiness. Then was I 
 changed 
 
 9. to the ship 'Ascent in Memphis.' They fought by 
 sea on the lake Pazetku of Auaris. I fought in a strug- 
 gle with fists, and 
 
 10. I gained a hand. This was shown to the herald 
 of the king. They gave me a golden present for my 
 bravery. After that a new fight arose in this place, and 
 anew I fought in a struggle with fists 
 
 11. in that place, and I gained a hand. They gave me 
 a golden present another time. And they fought at the 
 place Takem to the south of the town (Auaris) . 
 
 12. I gained of living prisoners a grown-up man. I 
 went into the water — him also bringing to remain aside 
 from the road to 
 
 13. the town. I went, firmly holding him, through the 
 water. They announced me to the herald of the king. 
 Then I was presented with a golden present again. They 
 
118 TEE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 14. conquered Auaris. I gained in that place prison- 
 ers, a grown-up man and three women, which makes in 
 all three heads. His holiness gave them to me for my 
 possession as slaves. 
 
 15. They besieged the town Sherohan in the sixth year. 
 His holiness took it. I brought booty home from here, 
 two women and a hand. 
 
 16. They gave me a golden present for valor. In ad- 
 dition, the prisoners from it were given to me as slaves. 
 After then that his holiness had mown down the Syrians 
 of the land of Asia, 
 
 17. he went against Khont-Hon-nofer to smite the 
 mountaineers of Nubia. His holiness made a great 
 destruction among them. 
 
 18. I carried booty away from that place, two living 
 grown-up men and three hands. I was presented with a 
 golden gift another time ; they also gave me three female 
 slaves. 
 
 19. His holiness descended the stream. His heart was 
 joyful because of brave and victorious deeds. He had 
 taken possession of the south and of the north land. 
 There came an enemy from the southern region. 
 
 20. He approached. His advantage was the number 
 of his people. The gods of the southern land were against 
 his fist. His holiness found him at the water Tent-ta-tot. 
 His holiffess brought him forth 
 
 21. as a living prisoner. All his people brought booty 
 back. I brought back two young men, when I had cut 
 them off from the ship of the enemy. They 
 
 22. gave me five heads, besides my share of five hides 
 of arable land in my town. It happened thus to all the 
 ship's crew in the same way. Twice 
 
 23. there came that enemy whose name was Teta. He 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 119 
 
 had assembled with him a bad set of fellows. His holi- 
 ness annihilated him and his men, so that they no longer - 
 existed. So there were 
 
 24. given to me three people and five hides of arable 
 land in my town. I conveyed by water the deceased king 
 Amenhotep I., when he went up against Kush to extend 
 
 25. the borders of Egypt. He smote these Nubians 
 b}^ means of his warriors. Being pressed closely, they 
 could not escape. Bewildered 
 
 26. they remained in the place just as if they were 
 nothing. Then I stood at the head of our warriors, and 
 I fought as was right. His holiness admired my valor. 
 I gained two hands, 
 
 27. and brought them to his holiness. They sought 
 after* their inhabitants and their herds. I brought down 
 a living prisoner and brought him to his holiness. I 
 brought his holiness in two daj's to Egypt 
 
 28. from Khnumt-hirt (that is, the upper spring). 
 Then I was presented with a golden gift. Then I 
 brought forward two female slaves, besides those which 
 lied 
 
 29. to his holiness, and I was raised to the dignity of 
 a ' champion of the prince.' I convej^ed the deceased 
 King Thutmes I., when he ascended by water to Chont- 
 hon-nofer, 
 
 30. to put an end to the strife among the inhabitants, 
 and to stop the attacks on the land side. And I was 
 brave (before him) on the water. It went badly on the 
 (attack) 
 
 31. of the ship on account of its upsetting. They 
 raised me to the rank of a captain of the sailors. His 
 holiness — may life, prosperity, and health be allotted to 
 him ! — 
 
120 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 32. (Here follows a rent, which, according to the con- 
 text, is to be filled up in such a manner as to show that a 
 new occasion calls the king to war against the people of 
 the south.) ^ 
 
 33. His holiness raged against them like a panther, and 
 his holiness slung his first dart, which remained sticking 
 in the bod}^ of his enemy. He 
 
 34. fell fainting down before the royal diadem. There 
 was then in a short time a (great defeat) , and their people 
 were taken away as living enemies. 
 
 35. And his holiness travelled downwards. All nations 
 were in his power. And this wretched king of the Nu- 
 bian people found himself bound on the fore part of the 
 ship of his holiness, and he was placed on*the ground 
 
 36. in the town of Thebes. After this his holiness be- 
 took himself to the land of the Rutennu, to cool his anger 
 among the inhabitants of the land. His holiness reached 
 the land of Naharina. 
 
 37. His holiness found — life, prosperitj'', and health 
 to him ! — these enemies. He ordered the battle. His 
 holiness made a great slaughter among them. 
 
 38. The crowd of the living prisoners was innumerable, 
 which his majesty carried away in consequence of his vic- 
 Xory. And behold, I was at the head of our warriors. 
 His holiness admired my valor. 
 
 39. I carried off a chariot of war and its horses, and 
 those which were upon it, as living prisoners, and brought 
 them to his holiness. Then I was afterwards presented 
 with gold. "* 
 
 40. Now I have passed many days and reached a gray 
 old age. My lot will be that of all men upon the earth. 
 [I shall go down into the lower world, and be placed in 
 the] coflSn, which I have made for myself 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 121 
 
 The hard time of distress and tyranny was now 
 past for the Egyptian people. The reign of oppres- 
 sion was at once broken up, when Auaris had fallen, 
 and another town of the Hyksos, the fortress Shero- 
 han, had been taken by storm. In the sixth year of 
 the reign of king Aahmes, the founder of the eigh- 
 teenth house of the pharaohs, Kemi was at length 
 freed from the long oppression of the foreigner, and 
 the armed soldiers of the pharaoh passed trium- 
 phantly through the lands of the south and the east 
 of Egypt, to conquer what had been lost, and ' to wash 
 their heart,' that is, to cool their anger against the 
 enemies from a foreign land. Yet we must not fore- 
 stall the events, the true portraying of which the 
 simple narratives of two warriors of those days have 
 handed down to us, and we will next cast another 
 glance at the conclusion of the seventeenth dynasty. 
 
 King Taa III., with the surname of ' the brave,' 
 the predecessor of the Pharaoh Aahmes, the con- 
 queror of Auaris, reigned in No-Thebes. His atten- 
 tion was directed to the creation of a Nile flotilla, 
 with the intention one day of conquering Auaris, 
 which was under the dominion of the Lower Egyp- 
 tian Netherlands. 
 
 His successor, of the name of Kames, seems only 
 to have reigned a short time. He was 'the husband 
 of the much venerated queen Aah-hotep, whose 
 
122 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 coffin with the golden ornaments on the body was 
 some years ago found by some Theban agriculturists 
 in the ancient necropolis of No, buried only a few 
 feet below the surface of the soil.* These venerable 
 artistic and historically precious remains of Egyp- 
 tian antiquity, were delivered over to the Museum 
 of Boolaq. 
 
 * The cover of the coffin has the shape of a mummy, and it is 
 gilt above and below. The holy royal asp decks the brow. The 
 eyelids are gilt. The white of the eyes is represented by quartz, 
 and the pupils by black glass. A rich imitation necklace covers 
 the breast and shoulders ; the Uraeus serpent and the vulture — 
 the holy symbols of the Upper and the Lower land of Kemi — lie 
 below the necklace. A closed pair of wings seems to protect the 
 rest of the body. At the soles of the feet stand the statues of the 
 mourning goddesses Isis and Nephthys. Tlie inscription in the 
 middle row gives us the name of the queen, Aah-hotep, that is, 
 * servant of the moon.' 
 
 When the coffin was opened, there were found between the 
 linen coverings precious weapons and ornaments : daggers, a 
 golden axe, a chain with three large golden bees, and a breast- 
 plate. On the body itself was found a golden chain with a scara- 
 baaus attached, armlets, a fillet for the brow, and other objects. 
 Two little ships in gold and silver, bronze axes, and great bangles 
 for the ankles, lay immediately upon the wood of the coffin. 
 
 The richest and the most precious of the ornaments showed the 
 shields of the Pharaoh Aahmes. He bears on them the surname 
 of Nakht, that is, 'the brave or victorious.' Without doubt, then. 
 Queen Aah-hotep was buried in Thebes during the reign of her 
 son Aahmes. Mention has already been made of the tomb of her 
 royal husband at Thebes. Aah-hotep is therefore the proper an- 
 cestress of the eighteenth dynasty. It was her son Aahmes who 
 ' was destined to rise up as the avenger of his native country for 
 the shame and oppression which it had so long endured. If there- 
 fore Apopi was the pharaoh that honored Joseph, Aahmes was the 
 king that succeeded him. 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 123 
 
 And yet a strange enigma covers this age of 
 shame, the veil of which we are not yet able to lift. 
 For on a minute examination of the monuments of 
 the times of the seventeenth and eighteenth dynas- 
 ties, many well-founded reflections force themselves 
 upon us involuntarily ; since, in fact, it would seem 
 as if the hatred of the Egyptians against the Hyksos 
 kings had not been so intense as the story handed 
 down by Manetho appears to represent it. We of 
 course except, when we speak of the Egyptians, the 
 legitimate but oppressed kings of ' the region of the 
 south,' in the Upper country, to whom the foreign 
 tyrants in the Lowlands must have appeared in no 
 agreeable light. 
 
 Between the Egyptian and Semitic races — and 
 whatever may have been the exact complexion and 
 descent of the latter — there certainly was no deep- 
 rooted hereditary enmity, as the interpreters would 
 make us believe. There was, indeed, a hatred on 
 the part of the Theban race of kings, to whom their 
 humiliation by the foreigners appeared all the more 
 unendurable, as they had not the strength and 
 power to free themselves from their dependence on 
 the foreign lords of the Netherlands. They had 
 only at their command the weapon of the weaker 
 against the stronger — namely, an exaggeration of 
 the real existing relations between them — by pic- 
 
124 TEE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 turing the foreigners as relentless against everything 
 native. Hence they derived consolation, and an 
 excuse for their own incapability to shake off the 
 yoke, and to regain the firm possession of the whole 
 kingdom. 
 
 We will simply put the question, If those foreign 
 kings were in fact desecrators of the temples, devas- 
 tators and destroyers of the works of bygone ages, 
 how is it that these ancient works, although only 
 the last remains of them, still exist, and especially 
 in the chief seats of the Hyksos dominion ; and 
 further, that these foreign kings allowed their names 
 to be engraved as memorial witnesses on the works 
 of the native pharaohs ? Instead of destroying they 
 preserved them, and sought by appropriate measures 
 to perpetuate themselves and their remembrance on 
 the monuments already existing of former rulers. 
 
 Zoan-Tanis, the capital of the Egyptian eastern 
 provinces, with its world of temples and statues of 
 the times of the sixth, twelfth, and thirteenth dynas- 
 ties, had so little to suffer from the Hyksos, that on 
 the contrary these princes thought it incumbent 
 upon them to increase the splendor of this vast 
 temple-town by their own constructions, although 
 in a Semitic style of execution. 
 
 To the Theban kings of the eighteenth dynasty 
 must first be attributed the doubtful praise of nxik- 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 125 
 
 ing war on the dead stones as a vengeance against 
 the Hyksos kings, which their forefathers had in 
 vain sought to wreak on the living monarchs. To 
 destroy the monuments of the- opposition kings, to 
 annihilate their names and titles so as to render 
 them unrecognizable, and to falsify historical truth 
 by inscribing their own names, such was the system 
 invented by the Egyptian pharaohs, who set about 
 their work with such success as nearly to root out 
 from the face of the earth the contemporary memo- 
 rials of the Hyksos kings. We have to thank this 
 persecution for the difficulties which lie in the way 
 of restoring the history of the m'ost ancient domina- 
 tion of the foreigners in Egypt. 
 
 Before we conclude this chapter, perhaps we may 
 be allowed to make some remarks on the relation, 
 in point of time, of these historical events, with the 
 stay of the Hyksos on one side, and on the other 
 side with the stay of the children of Israel, on Egyp- 
 tian soil. We have already made mention of a 
 memorial stone of the time of the second Ramses 
 found in Tanis, the inscription on which commences 
 with the following indication of its date : ' In the 
 year 400, on the 4th day of the month Mesori of 
 King Nub.' As on the basis of the newest and 
 best inquiries into the question of old Egyptian 
 chronology we fix the reign of Ramses II. at the 
 
126 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 year 1350 b. c. as a mean rate between various pro- 
 posals, the reign of the Hyksos king Nub, and prob- 
 ably the beginning of his reign, would fall about 
 the year 1750 b. c, that is, four hundred years 
 before Ramses II. Although we are completely in 
 the dark as to what place king Nub occupied in the 
 succession of the princes of his house, yet the num- 
 ber mentioned has a certain importance in fixing an 
 approximative date for the stay of the foreign kings 
 in Egypt. This importance becomes much enhanced 
 by its very clear relation to a similar statement in 
 Holy Writ in relation to the total duration of the 
 stay of the children of Israel in Egypt. According 
 to this statement (Exodus xii. 40) the Hebrews 
 from the time of the immigration of their ancestor 
 Jacob till the exodus had remained four hundred 
 and thirty years in Egypt. In another place (Gen- 
 esis XV. 13) the duration of their stay is expressed 
 by the round number of four hundred years. Now, 
 as according to general acceptation the exodus from 
 Egj'pt took place after the death of Ramses II., the 
 pharaoh of the oppression, the year 1300 will ap- 
 proximately correspond to the time of the exodus 
 in the reign of Mineptah, the son and successor of 
 Ramses II. If we add, therefore, four hundred and 
 thirty j^ears as the expression for the total duration 
 of the stay of the Hebrews in Egypt, we arrive at 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 127 
 
 the year 1780 B. c. as the approximative date of the 
 immigration of Jacob into Egypt, and for the time 
 of the official career of his son Joseph at the court 
 of pharaoh. In other words, we arrive at the con- 
 clusion that the time of Joseph (1730 B. c.) must 
 have fallen in the time of the Hyksos' domination, 
 about the reign of the previously mentioned foreign 
 prince. Nub (1750). 
 
 This singular coincidence of numbers, as we 
 openly admit, appears to us to have a higher value 
 than the data fixed on the grounds of particular 
 calculations of the chronological tables of Manetho 
 and the fathers of the church. For these numbers 
 neither change nor rectify the great building of 
 general chronology. Their importance is of quite 
 a different character. Independently of every kind 
 of arrangement and combination of numbers, ihey 
 prove the probability of a fixed date for a very 
 important section of the general history of the 
 world on the grounds of two chronological data, 
 which in a most striking way correspond with one 
 another, and of which each separately has its origin 
 in an equally trustworthy and respectable source. 
 
 The supposition that Joseph was sold into Egypt 
 and afterwards rose to great honor under the Hyk- 
 sos, as results from the chronological relations we 
 have mentioned, receives fresh support for its prob-' 
 
128 TEE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 ability from a Christian tradition preserved by Y. 
 Syncellus. According to this tradition ' received by 
 the whole world,' Joseph ruled the land in the reign 
 of king Aphophis (Apopi of the monuments), whose 
 age within a few years corresponds with the com- 
 mencement of the eighteenth dynasty. 
 
 We have great satisfaction in adding another very 
 remarkable and clear confirmation of our remarks 
 upon the time of Joseph and his master the pharaoh. 
 Upon the grounds of an old Egyptian inscription 
 hitherto unknown, whose author must have been a 
 contemporary of Joseph and his family, we hope to 
 adduce a proof that Joseph and the Hyksos cannot 
 henceforth be separated from one another. 
 
 As a previous remark we will recall to the recol- 
 lection of our readers the well-known fact that in 
 the days of the patriarch in Egypt a seven years' 
 famine occurred, the consequence of a deficiency of 
 water in the overflowing of the Nile at that time.. 
 
 This inscription, which appears to us so impor- 
 tant, exists in one of the tombs at El-Kab, of which 
 we have before spoken more particularly. From 
 the peculiarities of the language, and from the 
 style of the internal pictorial decoration of the rock 
 chambers, but principally from the name of its 
 former possessor, Baba, we may consider that the 
 tomb was erected in the times immediately preced- 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 129 
 
 ing the eighteenth dynasty. Although no royal car- 
 touche ornaments the walls of the tomb to give us 
 certain information about the exact time of its erec- 
 tion, yet the following considerations are calculated 
 to inform us on this point, and fortunately to fill up 
 the gaps. 
 
 The name of the old possessor of the tomb, Baba, 
 is already well known to us. Among the members 
 of the great family of the times of the thirteenth 
 dynasty, whose genealogical tree we have before laid 
 before our readers, and the greater number of whose 
 tombs are situated in the rocky city of the dead at 
 El-Kab, Baba appears in the third generation as the 
 additional name of a certain Sebek-tut, the father 
 gf queen Nubkhas. In the genealogical tree of the 
 family of the Captain Aahmes at El-Kab the name 
 Baba appears on another occasion, and also as the 
 second appellation of our hero, Abana, a captain 
 under king Ra-Sekenen (Taa III.). Unless we are 
 mistaken, it is this Baba whose tomb, situated near 
 that of Aahmes at El-Kab, promises us important 
 disclosures. For the whole descendants of Aahmes, 
 children, and grandchildren, and great-grandchil- 
 dren, repose in their ancestors' tomb, and in the 
 excavations of the rock which Pahir, once the gov- 
 ernor of Eileithyia, had prepared for himself and 
 them. We should, however, in vain look round the 
 9 
 
130 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 sepulchral chambers of the ancestors of Baba, were 
 it not for the rock tomb of a Baba in the neiorhbor- 
 hood of that we have alread}^ mentioned. The in- 
 scription, which exists in the hall of sacrifice of this 
 tomb on the wall opposite to the door of entrance, 
 contains the following simple childlike representa- 
 tion of his happy existence on earth, owing to his 
 great riches in point of children : 
 
 " The chief at the table of princes, Baba, the 
 risen again, he speaks thus : I loved my father, I 
 honored my mother ; my brother and my sisters 
 loved me. I stepped out of the door of my house 
 with a benevolent heart ; I stood. there with refresh- 
 ing hand, and splendid were the preparations of 
 what I collected for the feast-day. Mild was (my) 
 heart, free from noisy anger. The gods bestowed 
 upon me a rich fortune on earth. The city wished 
 me health and a life full of freshness. I punished 
 the evil-doers. The children which stood opposite 
 to me in the town during the days which I have 
 fulfilled were small as well as great, 60 ; there were 
 prepared for them as many beds, chairs (?) as many, 
 tables (?) as many. They all consumed 120 Epha 
 of Durra, the milk of 3 cows, 52 goats, and 9 she- 
 asses, of balsam a hin, and of oil 2 jars. 
 
 " My speech may appear a joke to some opponent. 
 But I call as witness the god Month that my speech 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 131 
 
 is true. I had all this prepared in my house ; in 
 addition I gave cream in the pantry and beer in the 
 cellar in a more than sufficient number of hin 
 measures. 
 
 *' I collected the harvest, a friend of the harvest 
 god. I was watchful at the time of sowing. And 
 now when a famine arose, lasting many years, I 
 issued out corn to the city at each famine." * 
 
 There ought not to be the smallest doubt as to 
 whether the last words of the inscription relate to 
 an historical fact or not; to something definite or 
 something only general. Strongly as we are inclined 
 to recognize a general way of speaking in , the 
 narrative of Ameni, where ' years of famine ' are 
 spoken of, here we are compelled by the context 
 of the report before us to understand the term ' the 
 many years ' of the famine which arose as relating to 
 a definite historical time. For famines following 
 one another on account of a deficiency of water in 
 the overflowing of the Nile were of the greatest 
 rarity, and history knows and mentions only one 
 example of it, namely, the seven years' famine of 
 the pharaoh of Joseph. Besides, Baba (or if the 
 term is preferred, the Babas, for the most part the 
 contemporaries of the thirteenth and seventeenth 
 dynasties), about the same time as Joseph exercised 
 
 * Or also, ' to each hungry person.' 
 
132 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 his office under one of the Hyksos kings, lived and 
 worked under the native king Ra-Sekenen (Taa III.) 
 in the old town of El-Kab. The only just conclu- 
 sion is that the many years of famine in the time 
 of Baba must precisely correspond with the seven 
 years of famine under Joseph's pharaoh, one of the 
 shepherd kings. 
 
 We leave it to the judgment of the reader to 
 arrive at a conclusion on the probability of a clear 
 connection between the two different reports on the 
 same extraordinary occurrence. The simple words 
 of the biblical account and the inscription in the 
 tomb of Baba are too clear and convincing, to leave 
 any room for reproach on the ground of possible 
 error. The account in Holy Scripture of the eleva- 
 tion of Joseph under one of the Hyksos kings, of his 
 life at their court, of the reception of his father and 
 brothers in Egypt with all their belongings, is in 
 complete accordance with the manners and customs, 
 as also with the place and time. 
 
 Joseph's Hyksos-Pharaoh reigned in Auaris, or 
 Zoan, the later Ramses-town, and held his court in 
 the Egyptian style, but without excluding the Se- 
 mitic language. His pharaoh has proclaimed before 
 him in Semitic language an Abrek, that is, ' bow the 
 knee,' a word which is still retained in the hiero- 
 glyphic dictionary, and was adopted by the Egyptians 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 133 
 
 to express their feeling of reverence at the sight of 
 an important person or object. He bestows on him 
 the high dignity of a Zaphnatpaneakh, 'governor 
 of the Sethroitic nome."^ On the Egyptian origin 
 of the offices of an Adon and Ab which Joseph 
 attributes to himself before his family, I have al- 
 ready made all the remarks that are necessary. 
 The name of his wife Asnat is pure Egyptian and 
 almost entirely confined to the old and middle em- 
 pire. It is derived from the very common female 
 name Sant, or Snat. The father of his wife, the 
 priest of On-Heliopolis, is a pure Egyptian, whose 
 name Potiphera meant in the native language 
 Putiper'a (or pher'a), 'the gift of the sun.' The 
 chamberlain who bought the boy Joseph from his 
 brothers, and whose wife tempted the virtue of the 
 young servant, was Putipher, a name which could 
 not be pronounced in Egyptian otherwise than 
 Putipar or (phar), 'the gift of the risen one.' His 
 titles are given in Semitic language, although the 
 word Saris, or chamberlain, is found written with 
 Egyptian letters. 
 
 * Pa'anekh, * the place of life,' was the peculiar designation of 
 the capital of this nome in the holy writing. The whole long word 
 is to be analyzed into its component parts in the old Egyptian lan- 
 guage. 
 
 Za p- u nt p- a 'anekh. 
 
 * Governor of the district of the place of life.' 
 
134 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 We will not neglect at the mention of Putipliar's 
 wife to call attention to the passage of the Orbiney 
 papyrus, which at the same time is calculated to cast a 
 bad light on the wantonness of the Egyptian women, 
 but which before all things stands in a particular 
 relation to the history of Joseph. Anepu, a married 
 man, sends his young brother, the unmarried hero 
 of the story, from the field to the house to fetch seed 
 corn. What occurred the following literal transla- 
 tion sufficiently explains : — " And he sent his little 
 brother, and said to him, ' Hasten and bring us seed 
 corn from the village.' And his little 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 Durra corn, and went out 
 with it. Then she said to him, ' How great is the 
 burden in thine arms ? ' He said to her, ' Twq 
 measures of Durra and three measures of wheat 
 make together five measures which rest pn my 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 135 
 
 arms.' Thus he spake to her. But she spake to 
 the 3''outh and said, ' How great is thy strength ! 
 Well have I remarked thy power many a time.' 
 And her heart knew him ! . . . and she stood np 
 and laid hold of him, and she said to him, ' Come, 
 let us celebrate an hour's repose. The most beauti- 
 ful things shall be thy portion, for I will prepare 
 for thee festal garments.' Then was the youth like 
 to the panther of the south for rage, on account of 
 the evil word which she had spoken to him. But 
 she was afraid beyond all measure. And he spoke 
 to her and said, ' Thou, O 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. Why this great sin that thou hast spoken 
 to 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 com- 
 pleted their day's work. And when it was evening 
 the elder brother returned home to his habitation. 
 And his little brother followed behind his oxen, 
 which he had laden with all the good things of 
 the field, to prepare for them their place in the 
 stable in the village. And behold the wife of his 
 elder brother feared because of the word which she 
 
136 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 liad spoken, and she took a jar of fat, and she was^ 
 like one to whom an evil-doer had offered violence, 
 since she wished to say to her husband, ' Thy little 
 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 gave him no water for 
 his hands according to her custom. And the can- 
 dles were not lighted, so that the house was in dark- 
 ness. But she lay there. And her husband spoke 
 to her thus, ' Who has had to do with thee ? Lift 
 thyself up ! ' She said to him, ' No one has had to 
 do with me except thy little 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 spoke I 
 to him, but he did not hearken to my speech, and 
 used force with me, that I might not tell thee. 
 Now if thou alio west him to live, I will kill my- 
 self.' " 
 
 We will break off at this place the thread of the 
 narrative in which the simple mode of speech and 
 exposition corresponds in the most striking manner 
 with the style of the Bible. What we want to point 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. ' 137 
 
 out, the reader of the foregoing sentences will im- 
 mediately perceive. Potiphar's wife and Anepu's 
 wife precisely resemble one another^ and Joseph's 
 and Bata's resistance and virtue appear so closely 
 allied that one is almost inclined to assign a com- 
 mon origin to both traditions. In any case the pas- 
 sage we have just quoted from the Egyptian poem 
 of the two brothers is a most precious and important 
 elucidation of the history of Joseph in Egypt. 
 
 That Joseph was in fact clothed with the highest 
 rank at court next to his king is evident from the 
 office he filled of an Adon ' over all Egypt ; ' (com- 
 pare Genesis xlv. 9.) On the monuments Adon 
 answers to the Greek Epistates, an overseer, one 
 set over others. The rank varied according to the 
 business each had to perform. We find an Adon of 
 the Amon town Diospolis, of the seat of justice, of 
 the infantry, of the royal harem, of the treasur}^ of 
 the workshops of pharaoh, of the beer-cellars, &c. 
 
 IF 
 
 The office of Joseph was quite different as an 'Adon 
 over the whole land,' which I have only once again 
 found in an old Egyptian inscription. Before king 
 Horemheb of the eighteenth dynasty (the Horus of 
 Manetho) ascended the throne, according to the 
 account of a monument preserved at Turin, he was 
 clothed with several very high offices, which brought 
 him near to the person of the king. Finall}^ the 
 
138 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 pharaoh was so pleased with his good services that 
 he named him Ro-hir, that is Epitropos, or Procu- 
 rator of the whole land. In this capacity, without 
 having any one to share his authority with him, he 
 was called to be ' the great lord in the king's house,' 
 and ' he gave answer to the king and pleased him 
 with the utterances of his mouth.' In such' a ser- 
 vice was Horemheb ' an Adon of the whole land for 
 the duration of many years,' until he rose to the 
 position of ' heir of the throne of the whole land,' 
 and finally placed the royal crown on his head. 
 We see from this that an ' Adon of the whole land ' 
 was so important a position that Joseph, in fact, 
 deserved the appellation of a Moshel, or Shallith, 
 that is, a Prince or Regent over the whole land, as 
 Luther translated the Hebrew word. "With these 
 remarks on Joseph, we will conclude this portion of 
 the history of the middle empire. 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 139 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH DYNASTY. — THUTMES III. 
 
 Keeping in view our main purpose, of dwelling 
 chiefly upon such portions of Egyptian history as 
 concern more nearly the biblical narrative, a large 
 space has been given to the Hyksos and to the 
 relations with Semitic tribes. We have now come 
 to the eighteenth dynasty, which succeeded the 
 foreign domination. Aahmes, the conqueror, was 
 the first, and after him came several illustrious 
 kings, each one bearing the name of Thutmes or 
 Amenhotep. In many respects this is the most in- 
 teresting period in the long annals. Thutmes III., 
 perhaps the greatest of all the pharaohs, reigned 
 fifty-three years, and was justty renowned through- 
 out all the known world. He is the Alexander the 
 Great of Egyptian history. He carried on no less 
 than thirteen campaigns in foreign countries, and 
 made the power of Egypt felt in the heart of Africa, 
 as well as of Asia. Countless memorials of his reign 
 exist in papyri, on temple walls, in tombs, and even 
 upon scarabsei and other ornaments. 
 
140 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 In still clear characters may be read most of the 
 accounts of these wars, the numbers of troops that 
 were engaged, the numbers killed and taken prison- 
 ers, and all the details of the vast booty brought 
 into Egypt. When so many periods are in utter 
 darkness, it is wonderful that such full records exist 
 of this great reign. The statistician can easily form 
 an idea of the civilization of the age by observing 
 the quantity and character of the spoil and of the 
 tributes afterwards imposed upon the conquered 
 nations. Both the quantity and the character of the 
 merchandise fill the mind of the modern reader with 
 wonder. Meanwhile the monarch constructed new 
 temples at Thebes and enlarged the old ones, and 
 everywhere his triumphs were blazoned. The Ro- 
 man emperor Germanicus, as Tacitus has recorded, 
 saw these temples and their inscriptions when their 
 glory had not been so far obscured. 
 
 Among the records of that day were catalogues 
 of the towns and cities in Syria that had submitted 
 to the Egyptian arms. One of these catalogues is 
 filled with Semitic names. 
 
 What gives the highest value to the catalogue is 
 the undisputed fact that more than three hundred 
 years before the entrance of the Jews into the land 
 of Canaan, a great league of peoples of the same 
 race, which the monuments call by the name of the 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 141 
 
 Ruthen, existed in Palestine under little kings, who 
 dwelt in the same towns and fortresses as we find 
 stated on the monuments, and who for the greater 
 part by conquest fell into the hands of the Jewish 
 immigrants. Among these the -king of Kadesh, on 
 the Orontes, in the land of the Amorites — as the 
 inscriptions expressly state — played the first part, 
 since there obeyed him, as their chief leader, all the 
 kings and their peoples from the water of Egypt 
 (which is the same as the biblical brook, which 
 flowed as the boundary of Egypt) to the rivers of 
 Naharain, afterwards called Mesopotamia. To these 
 had joined themselves the Phoenician Khalu, who 
 dwelt in the country on the sea-coast called Zahi by 
 the Egyptians, and whose capital was Aradus, as 
 also the Kiti (the Chittim of Holy Scripture), who 
 possessed the island of Cyprus, and in all proba- 
 bility the sea-coast lying to the north of the Phoeni- 
 cians. The triangle between the points Kadesh, 
 Semyra, and Aradus, represented the theatre of the 
 hostile engagements which have been so often men- 
 tioned. 
 
 An unknown poet, out of the number of the 
 holy fathers, felt himself inspired to sing in mea- 
 sured words the glory of the king, and the might 
 and grandeur of the god Amon. His song has out- 
 lived the ravages of time and the enmity of man. 
 
142 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 Having been well concealed, the tall granite tablet 
 adorns at this day the rooms of the Egyptian Mu- 
 seum at Boolaq. As Moses, after the overthrow of 
 pharaoh and his host in the Reedy Sea, sang a fer- 
 vent hymn of praise to exalt the wondrous might 
 and strength of the eternal God, so, three hundred 
 years before the wise legislator of the Jewish peo- 
 ple, the nameless seer of Amon praised, after his 
 own fashion, his god and his king. Thus run his 
 words : — 
 
 1. "Come to me," said Amon, " and enjo}' yourself, and 
 
 admire my excellences. 
 Thou, my son, who honorest me, Thutmes the 3d, 
 
 ever living. 
 I shine in the hght of the morning sun through thy 
 
 love. 
 
 2. And m}^ heart is enraptured, if thou directest thy 
 
 noble step to my Temple. 
 I stand upright there 
 
 3. In my dwelling. 
 
 Therefore will I mark thee out as wonderful. I give 
 
 thee power and victory over all lands. 
 All people shall feel a terror before thy soul, 
 And shall fear thee to the utmost ends of the world, 
 to the 
 
 4. four props of Heaven. 
 
 I let thy strength grow great in all bodies. 
 
 I let thy war-cry resound in all the lands of foreign 
 
 peoples. 
 Let the kings of the world be all at once in thj^ 
 
 grasp. 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 143 
 
 5. I stretch out my own hands. 
 
 I bind thee with bands, and enclose for thee the 
 wandering Nubians to ten thousands and thou- 
 sands. 
 
 Those who inhabit the north, let them be taken 
 prisoners by hundreds of thousands. 
 
 6. I place thy gainsayers under thy feet. 
 Strike the host of thine enemies. 
 
 Also I give thee the earth, in its length and in its 
 
 breadth. 
 Let the inhabitants of the west and of the east be 
 
 thy subjects. 
 
 7. Pass through with joyful heart the lands which none 
 
 have trodden till thy time. 
 I will be thy leader ; reach them ; 
 pass through the great ring of water 
 
 8. In the land of Naharain, in full victorious power. 
 It is my will that the peoples hear thy war-cry, 
 
 which penetrates to their caverns. 
 I have taken away from their nostrils the breath of 
 life. 
 
 9. I make thy manl}^ courage penetrate even to their 
 
 hearts. 
 My crown on thy head is a consuming fire ; 
 It goes forth and conquers the false brood of the 
 
 Kittim. 
 
 10. By the sparkle of its flames the lords among them 
 
 are turned to ashes. 
 It cuts off the heads of the 'Aamu ; they cannot 
 
 escape ; 
 It strikes to the ground whocA^er turns himself round 
 
 before its strength. 
 
 11. I make thy victories to go on through all nations ; 
 
144 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 M}^ rojal serpent shines on th}" forehead, 
 
 And th}' enemy is reduced to nothing as far as the 
 
 horizon. 
 They come and bring the tribute on their shoulders, 
 And bow themselves 
 
 12. Before thy Holiness ; for such is my will. 
 
 I make the rebellious ones fall down exhausted near 
 
 thee, 
 A burning fire in their hearts, and in their limbs a 
 
 trembling. 
 
 13. I came, and thou smotest the princes of Zahi. 
 
 I scatter them under thy feet over all their lands. 
 I make them behold thy Holiness like the beaming 
 
 (sun). 
 Thou shinest in sight of th^m in my form. 
 
 14. I came, and thou smotest those who dwell in Asia. 
 Thou madest prisoners the goatherds of Ruthen. 
 
 I make them behold thy Holiness in the adornment 
 
 of th}' ro3'al dignity, 
 As thou graspest the weapons on the war-chariots. 
 
 15. I came, and thou smotest the land of the East, 
 Thou earnest to those who dwell in the territories of 
 
 the Holy Land. 
 I make them behold thy Holiness like the star Ca- 
 
 nopus, 
 "Which pours his light in a glance of fire 
 When he disperses the morning dew. 
 
 16. I came, and thou smotest the land of the West, 
 Kefa (Phoenicia) and Asebi (Cj'prus) fear thee. 
 
 I make them behold thy Hohness like a young bull. 
 Full of courage, when he whets his horns, he is un- 
 approachable. 
 
 17. I came, and thou smotest the subjects of their lords ; 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 145 
 
 The land of Mathen trembles for fear of tftee. 
 I make them behold thy Hohness like a crocodile, 
 The terrible one in the water ; he is not to be en- 
 countered. 
 
 18. I came, and thou smotest the islanders in the middle 
 
 of the great sea ; 
 Thy war-cr}' is over them. 
 
 I make them behold thy Holiness as the avenger, 
 Who appears on the back of his sacrifice. 
 
 19. I came, and thou smotest the land of the Thuhen ; 
 The people of Uthent is in thy power. 
 
 I make them behold thy Holiness as a lion, with a 
 
 fierce ej-e. 
 Who leaves his den and stalks through the valleys. 
 
 20. I came, and thou smotest the hinder lands, 
 
 The circuit of the Great Sea is bound in thy grasp. 
 I make them behold thy Holiness like the hovering 
 
 sparrow-hawk. 
 Which seizes with his glance whatever pleases him. 
 
 21. I came, and thou smotest the lands in front ; 
 Those who sit upon the sand thou hast made pris- 
 oners alive. 
 
 I make them behold thy Holiness like the jackal of 
 
 the south ; 
 A concealed wanderer he passes through the land. 
 
 22. I came, and thou smotest the nomad tribes of Nubia, 
 Even to the land of Shat, which is in thy grasp. 
 
 I make them behold thy Holiness like thy pair of 
 
 brothers. 
 Whose hands I have united to bless thee. 
 
 23. As for th}^ pair of sisters, I make them shed on thee 
 
 good fortune and prosperity. 
 My hands in the height of heaven ward oflT misfortune ; 
 
 10 
 
146 ^^^^ TRUE STORY OF 
 
 I protect thee, my beloved son, 
 
 The powerful bull, who didst stand np as king va 
 
 Thebes, 
 Whom I have begotten out of [my loins] , 
 
 24. Thutmes, who lives for evermore. 
 Who has shown all love to my Being. 
 
 Thou hast raised m}^ dwelling in long-lasting works 
 More extensive and broader than they have ever been- 
 A great gate [protects against the entrance of tb** 
 impious]. 
 
 25. Thou hast established joyful feasts in favor of Amon. 
 Greater are thy monuments than those of all former 
 
 kings. 
 
 I gave thee the order to execute them, 
 
 And thou hast understood it. 
 
 Therefore I place thee on the chair of Hor for never- 
 ending many j'ears. 
 
 Conduct and guide the living generations ! " 
 
 The foregoing song of victory of the unknown 
 Theban poet, the similar songs of victory in honor 
 of the kings Ramses II. and III., the heroic song of 
 the poet Pentaur on the great deeds of king Ramses 
 II. during his campaign against the king of Kadesh 
 and his allies, will remain for all times unequalled 
 specimens of the old Egyptian language at its high- 
 est epoch. 
 
 The victories of the heroic king Thutmes III., 
 who during his numerous campaigns brought the 
 lands and cities of western Asia into his power, to 
 
THE EXODUS. OF ISRAEL. 147 
 
 whom Libya and the peoples of Nubia and Ethi- 
 opia, as far as the promontory now called Gardafui 
 opposite the south coast of Arabia, were subject, — 
 had brought to Egypt unnumbered prisoners of 
 every race, who, according to the old custom, found 
 their fit occupation in the public works. It was 
 principally to the great public edifices, and among 
 these especially to the enlarged buildings of the 
 temple of Amon, at Ape (near Karnak), that the 
 foreigners were forced to devote all their labor, 
 under the superintendence of the Egyptian archi- 
 tects (Mer) and overseers (Rois), who had on their 
 part to carry out the orders and directions of the 
 royal head architect. In those days a certain Puara 
 was clothed with this high office at the court of 
 pharaoh ; his name is of Semitic origin, meaning 
 ' one who has the mouth full of dinner.' The pris- 
 oners were obliged, in a mannier answering to their 
 condition, to undergo the severest labors at the 
 buildings. To these belonged especially the bak- 
 ing of the bricks, as it is portraj^ed in so clear 
 and lively a manner in the Book of Books in the 
 description of the oppression of the children of 
 Israel in Egypt. 
 
 Fate has preserved to us on the walls of a cham- 
 ber in a tomb in the interior of the hill of Abd-el- 
 Qurnah, in the region of the melancholy * coffin-hill' 
 
148 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 (Du-neb-ankh), a very instructive pictorial repre- 
 sentation, in which the pencil of the deceased mas- 
 ter has portrayed in lively colors to future gen- 
 erations the industry of the prisoners. Far more 
 convincing than the explanations, written by the 
 side in old Egyptian letters and words, these curi- 
 ous drawings themselves allow us to recognize to 
 their full extent the fate and the severe labor of the 
 unfortunate prisoners. Some carry water in jugs 
 from the tank hard by ; others knead and cut up the 
 loamy earth ; others again, by the help of a wooden 
 form, make the bricks, or place them carefully in 
 long rows to dry ; while the more intelligent among 
 them carr}^ out the Work of building the walls. The 
 words which are added as explanations of each occu- 
 pation give us the authentic information that the 
 laborers are captive people which Thutmes III. has 
 carried away to build the temple of his father Amon. 
 They explam that the ' baking of the bricks ' is a 
 work for the new building of the provision-house of 
 the god Amon, of Apet (the east side of Thebes), 
 and they finally declare, in a copious manner, the 
 strict superintendence of the steward over the for- 
 eigners in the following words : " (Here are seen) 
 the prisoners which have been carried away as liv- 
 ing prisoners in very great numbers ; they work at 
 the building with active fingers ; their overseers 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 149 
 
 <3how themselves in sight; these insist with vehe- 
 mence, obeying the orders of the great skilled Lord 
 (who prescribes to them) the works, and gives direc- 
 tions to the masters ; (they are rewarded) with wine 
 and all kinds of good dishes ; they perform their 
 service with a mind full of love for the king ; they 
 build for Thutmes III. a Holy of Holies for (the 
 gods), may it be rewarded to him through a range 
 of many years." 
 
 The overseer (Rois) speaks thus to the laborers 
 at the building : ' The stick is in my hand, be not 
 idle.' 
 
 The picture and the words, which we have laid 
 before our readers exactly as they have been trans- 
 mitted to us, present an important illustration of 
 the accounts in the Bible concerning the hard bond- 
 age of the Jews in Egypt. We also there read, ' And 
 they set overseers over them, who oppressed them 
 with hard servitude, for they built for pharaoh the 
 towns of Pithom and Raamses as treasure-cities.' 
 ' And they made their life hard to them with severe 
 work in clay and brick.' ' And the overseers urged 
 them and said. Fulfil your day's work.' 
 
 The severe and continuous labor so represented 
 was bestowed upon the various great temples at 
 Thebes ; among them was the Sekhem, or Holy of 
 Holies of the god Amon, and the stupendous Hall 
 
150 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 of Pillars, called Khu-mennu, or ' splendid memo- 
 rial,' which was dedicated not only to the god Amon, 
 but also to the deified rulers, whom Thutmes III. 
 acknowledged as his legitimate predecessors on the 
 throne, and as the ancestors of his own house. 
 Here, in one of the chambers situated towards the 
 south, was found that celebrated wall of the kings 
 which is known to science under the designation of 
 the Table of Kings of Karnak. In this the pharaoh 
 traces back his pedigree to his great ancestor Se- 
 noferu, of the third dynasty (of Memphis), and 
 reckons the kings Assa, Pepi, the petty kings of the 
 name of Antef, the famous sovereigns of the twelfth 
 dynasty, and some thirty princes of the thirteenth, 
 as his ancestors. 
 
 The great southern propylsea of the temple have 
 suffered much from the corroding tooth of time and 
 the destroying hand of man. But even the remains 
 which have survived, a heap of lonely ruins, enable 
 us to judge of the high perfection of the artistic 
 powers, which created such almost unrivalled master- 
 works, and were able, by means to us inexplicable, 
 to overcome the resistance of the hardest stone. 
 Whether we suffer our attention to dwell on the 
 way in which these great masses of stone have been 
 brought together and united in a complete structure 
 perfectly well arranged and producing the effect of 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 151 
 
 symmetry alike in the whole and in the several 
 parts ; whether we feast our sight upon the marvel- 
 lous ornamental work in stone, by means of which 
 the artist's hand had the skill to delight us with a 
 welcome interruption of the great plain surfaces; 
 whether we gaze with astonished eyes upon the 
 indescribable dignity and th^ kingly mien of the 
 remaining statues of standing or sitting pharaohs 
 and deities ; whether, in fine, we admire the sharp 
 cutting and the dexterity, never after attained, in 
 the drawing of the hieroglyphics, which in long 
 lines and columns cover walls, pillars, and sculp- 
 tures, rather as ornaments than inscriptions : wher- 
 ever we turn, there presents itself to us — the late 
 heirs to that long-buried world of old — that six- 
 teenth century before our era, the age of the 
 Thutmes and their immediate successors, as the 
 most perfect acmd of the old Egyptian art, as grand 
 in its conception of the whole, as it was full of taste 
 and refinement in the execution of the several parts. 
 Dr. Brugsch devotes a large space to the various 
 edifices, obelisks, and statues which have been iden- 
 tified by himself and others as the work of this great 
 king, and which show that his care was co-exten- 
 sive with his dominion. In Nubia and in the island 
 of Elephantine, in ancient Memphis, in various cities 
 in the north, and even in far Mesopotamia, the evi- 
 dences of his power have been found. 
 
152 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 We will here bid farewell to the greatest king of 
 Egyptian history ; the victorious conqueror and 
 ruler of a whole world, from the southernmost 
 lands of inner Africa to the columns of heaven in 
 the land of Naharain ; to the founder of a multitude 
 of new temples, to the upholder of the temples of 
 his forefathers, to th^ celebrated benefactor of the 
 servants of the gods, to whom, during a long exist- 
 ^ence, it was granted by the divine ones to see per- 
 petuated on their temple walls the deeds of his 
 arm and the achievements of his genius. What 
 wonder then that his contemporaries already wor- 
 shipped him while alive as a divine being, and 
 allotted to him after his death the honors of an 
 inhabitant of heaven ? His name Was inscribed on 
 thousands of little images, and small stone scarabsei, 
 which were used for rings ; he was considered as 
 the luck-bringing god of the country, and a pre- 
 server against the evil influence of wicked spirits 
 and magicians. 
 
 Thus the memory of the king has lasted to our 
 days ; and it is not by accident that even the sons 
 of Europe and America, whom a love of knowledge 
 and curiosity, or the mild air of the Egyptian heaven, 
 leads to the blessed shores of the Nile, of all the 
 pharaohs, first learn the name of Ra-men-kheper, 
 which Thutmes III. bore in his cartouche. 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 153 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 AMEKHOTEP III., AND KHUNATEN, THE HERETIC. 
 
 The great Thutmes was succeeded b}^ Amenho- 
 tep II., and by Thutmes IV., both vigorous and 
 renowned kings. The next in the line, however, 
 Amenhotep III., was far more illustrious. There 
 exists a famous memorial of this monarch in the 
 form of a pair of immense statues in sitting post- 
 ure, of which, fortunately, there is an authentic 
 account written by the sculptor himself. His name, 
 like that of the king, was Amenhotep. 
 
 "My lord promoted me to be the chief architect. I 
 immortalized the name of the king, and no one has done 
 the like of me in my works, reckoning from early times. 
 For him was created the sand- stone hill ; he is indeed the 
 heir of the god Toom. I acted according to what seemed 
 best in my estimation, inasmuch as I executed two por- 
 trait-statues of noble hard stone in this his great building. 
 It equals heaven. No king has done the like since the 
 time of the reign of the Sun-god Ra, who possessed the 
 land. Thus I executed these works of art, his statues — 
 (they were astonishing for their breadth, and height in a 
 
154 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 perpendicular direction : their completed form made the 
 propylon look small; 40 cubits was their measure) — in 
 the splendid sand-stone mountain,* on its two sides, 
 that of Ra and that of Toom (that is, the east and west 
 sides). 
 
 " I caused to be built eight ships ; they (the statues) 
 were carried up (the river) and placed in their sublime 
 building. Thej^ will last as long as heaven. 
 
 " I declare to you who shall come here after us, that 
 of the people who were assembled for the building, every 
 one was under me. They were full of ardor ; their heart 
 was moved with joy ; they raised a shout and praised the 
 gracious god. Their landing in Thebes was a joyful event. 
 The monuments were raised in their future place." 
 
 We must not fail here to remark to our readers, 
 that the statues of the king, of forty cubits high 
 (that is, twenty-one metres, or nearly seventy Eng- 
 lish feet), mentioned in the inscription, are the two 
 celebrated statues of Memnon, about which we shall 
 speak presently. The measure assigned to them an- 
 swers to the modern measurements,! and so does the 
 
 * Perhaps the quarries of Silsilis are here meant, which in fact 
 lie on the east and west sides of the river, and the inscriptions of 
 which refer to these works. 
 
 t According to actual measurement, the height of the sitting fig- 
 ures, from the crown of the head to the sole of the feet, is 14-28 
 metres, not counting the destroyed head-dress. The footstool has 
 a height of 4-25 metres. The whole height of the statues, with 
 the foundation, is 18 -53 metres. According to the above inscrip- 
 tion, which gives the whole a height of 21 metres, the head-dress 
 must be reckoned at 2-47 metres, which answers exactly to the 
 height of a so-called pshent-crown. 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 155 
 
 description of their size, which must have made the 
 tower gateway (propylon) which stood behind them 
 look small. Thus, thanks to a peculiar ordering of 
 destiny, which has preserved to us his own statues, 
 we. now know the noble lord and master who con- 
 ceived the plan of this double gigantic work, the 
 size and extent of which has excited the greatest 
 astonishment and unqualified admiration of the an- 
 cients as well as the moderns. It was the head 
 architect, Amenhotep, the son of Hapoo, who had 
 the skill to create them in the sandstone quarries of 
 Silsilis, besides building the temple. 
 
 On the further bank of the river, in a north- 
 easterly direction from the temple of Thutmes III., 
 in Medinet Abu, a new temple to the god Amon 
 was raised by the king's command. Its site is indi- 
 cated from a great distance by the gigantic sitting 
 statues of the king, the fame of which the ancients 
 spread over the whole world, under the name of the 
 Statues of Memnon. Although little more than the 
 foundation-walls of the temple itself are left, yet a 
 memorial tablet, which now lies thrown down on its 
 back, bears witness to the size and importance of 
 the original building. In the inscription which 
 adorns its surface, there is described a dialogue be- 
 tween the king and the god. First the king, Amen- 
 hotep III., speaks thus : 
 
156 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 " Come then, Amon-Ka, lord of Thebes in Ape, behold 
 thy dwelling, which is prepared for thee on the great place 
 of Us (Thebes) ; thy glory resides in the western part 
 (of the city). Thou passest through the heaven to unite 
 thyself with her (the city), and thou risest on the circle 
 of heaven (in the east) ; then is she enlightened by the 
 golden beams of thy countenance. Her front turns to- 
 wards the east, &c. 
 
 " Thy glory dwells in her. I have not let her want for 
 excellent works of lasting beautiful white stone. I have 
 filled her with monuments in my (name), from the hill of 
 the wonderful stones. Those who show them in their 
 place are full of great joy on account of their size.'* 
 
 The temple, now in ruins, was carried out accord- 
 ing to the plan of the chief architect, the same who 
 boasts of having designed the two gigantic statues 
 of the king in front of it. 
 
 These rise, at the present day, like two solitary 
 watchers with the heaps of ruins at their backs, 
 on the cultivated Theban plain, reached every year 
 by the water of the inundation, which often mois- 
 tens their rigid feet. 
 
 The two statues — which represent king Amen- 
 hotep in a sitting position, having at their feet small 
 sitting statues of his wife Thi, and of his mother, 
 Mut-em-ua — are carved each out of a single block 
 of a firm red-broWn sandstone, mixed with pieces 
 of white quartz, and are in fact marvellous pro- 
 ductions of treatment in the hardest and most 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 157 
 
 brittle material. They stand at a distance of 
 twenty-two feet from one another. The northern 
 one is that which the Greeks and Romans cele- 
 brated in poetry and prose by the name of the 
 vocal statue of Memnon. Its legs are covered with 
 the inscriptions of Greek, Roman, Phoenician, and 
 Egyptian travellers, written to assure the reader 
 that they had really visited the place, or had heard 
 the musical tones of Memnon at the rising of the 
 sun. 
 
 In the year 2T b. c, in consequence of an earth- 
 quake, the whole of the upper part of the statue 
 was removed from its place and thrown to the 
 ground. From that time, the tourists of antiquity 
 began to immortalize themselves by scratching their 
 names, and adding befitting or unbefitting remarks. 
 The assurances that they had heard Memnon sing, 
 or rather ring (or tinkle), end under the reign of 
 the emperor Septimius Severus, who completed the 
 wanting upper part of the body as well as he could 
 with blocks of stone piled up and fastened together. 
 It is a well-known fact, of which that immortal 
 master of science, Alexander von Humboldt, per- 
 sonally assured me, that split or cracked rocks, or 
 stone walls, after cooling during the night, at the 
 rising of the sun, as soon as the stone becomes 
 warmed, emit a prolonged ringing (or tinkling) 
 
158 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 note. The sudden change from cold to heat cre- 
 ates quick currents of air, which press through the 
 crevices of the rock, and emit a peculiar melan- 
 choly singing tone. When, in the year 1851, I 
 chose as my dwelling for some months the temple 
 of Ape, to the west of the temple of Khonsu at 
 Karnak, I heard of a morning, after the sun had 
 been some time up in the heaven, from a side cham- 
 ber warmed by it, a melancholy note like that of 
 the vocal Memnon. The fact was so well known 
 to the Arabs who lived there, that they showed me 
 this very chamber as that where the death-watch 
 struck. After the statue of Memnon had been 
 restored in the manner I have described, the sound 
 naturally ceased of itself. The crack in the sand- 
 stone was covered by the masonry which was built 
 up over it. 
 
 The historical legend of the vocal Memnon is 
 thus a very modern story, about which the old 
 Egyptians knew nothing. The song of Memnon, 
 however poetical it may have been in the fancy of 
 antiquity, must be at once struck out of the history 
 of Egypt. In its place the dry narrative of the 
 Greek historian Pausanias resumes its full right, 
 according to which the statue was that of a man of 
 the country, by name Phamenoph, that is, ' Amen- 
 hotep.' We know now who this Amenhotep was, — 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 159 
 
 a king of that name, who, in spite of himself, was 
 made the Memnon of the Greek fable. 
 
 The architect Amenhotep, the son of Hapoo, 
 who had the ability to execute so great a work, 
 deserves so much the more, the honor of having his 
 name perpetuated, -as he independently and with- 
 out any order from the king, conceived so grand 
 a plan and carried it out successfully. It was not 
 only necessary to loosen the stone from the rocks 
 and work it, but also to entrust the vast weight to 
 the Nile, and to convey it from the Theban river- 
 bank to its proper position. He was obliged, as 
 he himself tells us, to build eight ships, in order to 
 carry the burden of these gigantic statues. Even 
 in our highly cultivated age, with all its inventions 
 and machines, which enable us by the help of 
 steam to raise and transport the heaviest weights, 
 the shipment and erection of the statues of Mem- 
 non remain to us an insoluble riddle. Verily Amen- 
 hotep, the son of Hapoo, must have been not only 
 a wise, but a specially ingenious man of his time. 
 
 Amenhotep IV., who afterwards adopted the 
 surname of Khu-n-aten, had a singular origin and 
 history. He stands alone, the solitary heretic king. 
 According to the laws of descent, he was not in 
 the direct line, because his father had by a mis- 
 alliance passed over the hereditary princesses of 
 
160 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 the royal race. The priests of Amon never recog- 
 nized him as a lawful ruler, and their hostility to 
 hira was increased by his aversion to the worship 
 of Amon, the greatly venerated god of Egypt. 
 
 In the house of his mother Thi, the daughter 
 of the foreigner, beloved by his father, hated by 
 the priests, the young prince had willingly received 
 the teaching about the one God of Light ; and 
 what the mouth of his mother had impressed upon 
 his childish mind in tender youth became a firm 
 faith when he arrived at man's estate. The king 
 was so little prepared to renounce the new doctrine, 
 that he designated himself within the royal car- 
 touche itself as *a high-priest of Hormakhu,' and 
 'a friend of the sun's disk,' Mi-aten. Such a 
 heresy in the orthodox city of Amon, full of tem- 
 ples, was at once deemed an unheard-of thing ; 
 and open hate soon took the place of the aversion 
 which had existed from the first. To the great 
 misfortune of the king himself, his outward appear- 
 ance betrayed, in a very unpleasing manner, his 
 descent from his foreign mother. 
 
 To fill up the measure of hatred against the caste 
 of the priests of Amon, and to give it public ex- 
 pression, the king issued a command to obliterate 
 the names of Amon and of his wife Mut from the 
 monuments of his royal ancestors. Hammer and 
 
TEE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 161 
 
 chisel were put in active requisition on the en- 
 graved stones, and the scribes of the royal court 
 sought with care the places, even to the very names 
 of his forefathers, in which the word Amon met 
 the reader's eye. 
 
 The discontent of the priests and the people had 
 reached its highest point, and open rebellion broke 
 out against the heretic king, who, ashamed of his 
 honorable baptismal name of Amenhotep, had as- 
 sumed the new name Khunaten, that is, ' splendor 
 >f the sun's disk,' by which we must hencefor- 
 ward designate him. 
 
 The king, under the conviction that he could not 
 any longer remain in the city of Amon, determined 
 to turn his back on the cradle of his ancestors, and 
 to found a new capital, which he called Khu-aten, 
 far from Memphis and Thebes, at a place in middle 
 Egypt, which at this day bears the name of Tell- 
 el-Amarna. 
 
 Artists, overseers, and workmen were summoned 
 with hot haste. According to the plans of the 
 king, a splendid temple was erected in hard stone, 
 in honor of the sun-god Aten, composed of many 
 buildings, and with open courts, in which fire-altars 
 "were set up. The plan of the great building was 
 new, with little of the Egyptian .character, and 
 arranged in a peculiar manner. 
 11 
 
162 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 As the chief official who was set over the king's 
 house, there lived at the court of this pharaoh a 
 certain Aahmes, who also had the superintendence 
 of the provision-houses of the temple. Next to 
 Meri-ra, he was one of the most zealous adherents 
 of the new teaching. His prayer to the Sun, which 
 is preserved to us among the sepulchral inscriptions 
 at Tell-el-Amarna, will confirm this : 
 
 " Beautiful is thy setting, thou Sun's disk of life, thou 
 lord of lords, and king of the worlds. When thou unitest 
 thyself with the heaven at thy setting, mortals rejoice 
 before thy countenance, and give honor to him who has 
 created them, and pray before him who has formed them, 
 before the glance of thy son, who loves thee, the King 
 Khunaten. The whole land of Egypt and all peoples 
 repeat all thy names at thy rising, to magnify thy rising 
 in like manner as thy setting. Thou, O God, who in 
 truth art the living one, standest before the two e^^es. 
 Thou art he which createst what never was, which formest 
 everything, which art in all things ; we also have come 
 into being through the word of thy mouth. 
 
 "Give me favor before the king forever; let there 
 not be wanting to me a peaceful burial after attaining old 
 age in the land of Khu-aten, w^hen I shall have finished 
 my course of life in a good state. 
 
 "■I am a servant of the divine benefactor (that is of 
 the king), I accompany him to all places where he loves 
 to dwell. I am his companion at his feet. For he raised 
 me to greatness jsvhen I was yet a child, till [the da}^ of 
 my] honor in good fortune. The servant of the prince 
 rejoices, and is in a festive disposition every day." 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 163 
 
 In these and similar creations of a poetic form 
 there reigns such a depth of view, and so devout a 
 conception of God, that we are almost inclined to 
 give our complete assent to the teaching, about 
 which the king is wont to speak so fully and with 
 so much pleasure. 
 
 His royal spouse also, Nofer-i-Thi, was deeply 
 penetrated with the exalted doctrines of the new 
 faith, which to contemporaries appeared in the light 
 of an open heresy against the mysterious traditions 
 on the being of the godhead in the rolls of the holy 
 books df the other temples of the land. 
 
 According to the wall-pictures in two sepulchral 
 chambers in the hills behind the town, the pharaoh 
 Khunaten enjoyed a very happy family life. Sur- 
 rounded by his daughters and wife, who often, from 
 a high balcony, threw down all kinds of presents to 
 the crowd which stood below, the mother holding 
 on her lap the little Ankh-nes-aten, — he reached 
 a state of the highest enjoyment, and found in the 
 love of his family, and the devout adoration of his 
 god, indemnification for the loss of the attachment 
 of the ' holy fathers ' and of a great part of the 
 people. The widowed queen-mother Thi also shared 
 this family happiness, and thus we find her sitting 
 in peaceful intercourse with her son and his wife, in 
 the hall of the royal palace. 
 
164 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 King Khunaten gave remarkable expression to his 
 love for his relations by three rock pictures, with 
 inscriptions all to the same effect, which remain oq 
 the steep face of the rock near the city of Khu-aten, 
 but are barely within reach of the eye. The king 
 and queen are seen in the upper compartment, rais- 
 ing their hands in an attitude of prayer to the god 
 of light, whose disk rises over their heads in the 
 full splendor of his beams, each ray of the sun 
 terminating in a hand dispensing life. Two daugh- 
 ters, Meri-aten and Mak-aten, accompany their royal 
 parents. 
 
 Here is one paragraph of the inscription : 
 
 " Thereupon King Khunaten swore an oath to his 
 father thus : Sweet love fills my heart for the queen, for 
 her young children. Grant a great age to the Queen 
 Nofri-Thi in long years ; may she keep the hand of Pha- 
 raoh. Grant a great age to the royal daughter Meri- 
 aten, and to the royal daughter Mak-aten, and to their 
 children ; may they keep the hand of the queen, their 
 mother, eternally and forever." 
 
 This meniorial, in the form of a rock tablet, re- 
 mains to this day. 
 
 King Khunaten died without male issue, — possi- 
 bly by violence, — and his three sons-in-law in turn 
 succeeded him upon the throne. But neither of 
 them had the favor of the priests, and their hold 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 165 
 
 upon the supreme power was short. A certain Ai, 
 who had been master of the horse under king Khu- 
 naten, seized upon the empire ; and, as he brought 
 back the worship to the old temples and reinstated 
 the old priests in power, he had a prosperous reign, 
 and went through the usual campaigns against the 
 neighbors of Egypt. During his reign all possible 
 damage was inflicted upon the works of the mono- 
 theist king Khunaten, with the intent to blot out 
 his name from the earth. Ai was succeeded by 
 Horemhib, or Horus, who had no shadow of title, 
 except that his wife was sister to a former queen. 
 His reign seems to have been more than ordinarily 
 brilliant ; and full particulars of his coronation and 
 memorials of his deeds are preserved in a papyrus 
 preserved at Turin, of which Dr. Brugsch gives a 
 full and stately translation. 
 
 We give the concluding portion. The gods of 
 Egypt are represented as having assembled to wel- 
 come and to crown the new pharaoh : 
 
 " Then came forth from the palace the holiness of 
 this splendid god Amon, the king of the gods, with 
 his son before him, and he embraced his pleasant 
 form, which was crowned with the royal helmet, in 
 order to deliver to him the golden protecting image 
 of the sun's disk. The nine foreign nations were 
 under his feet, the heaven was in festive disposi- 
 
166 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 tion, the land was filled with ecstasy, and as for 
 the divinities of Egypt, their souls were full of 
 pleasant feelings. Then the inhabitants, in high 
 delight, raised towards heaven the song of praise ; 
 great and small lifted up their voices, and the whole 
 land was moved with joy. 
 
 " After this festival in Ape of the southern coun- 
 try was finished, then went Amon, the king of the 
 gods, in peace to Thebes, and the king went down 
 the river on board of his ship, like an image of 
 Hormakhu. Thus had he taken possession of this 
 land, as was the custom since the time of the sun- 
 god Ra. He renewed the dwellings of the gods, 
 from the shallows of the marsh-land of Nathu as 
 far as Nubia. He had all their images sculptured, 
 each as it had been before, more than . . . And the 
 sun-god Ra rejoiced, when he beheld (that renewed) 
 which in former times had been destroyed. He set 
 them up in their temple, and he had a hundred 
 images made, one for each of them, of like form, 
 and of all kinds of costly stones. He visited the 
 cities of the gods, which lay as heaps of rubbish in 
 this land, and he had them restored just as they had 
 been from the beginning of all things. He took 
 care for their daily festival of sacrifice, and for all 
 the vessels of their temples, formed out of gold and 
 silver. He provided them (the temples) with holy 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 167 
 
 persons and singers, and with the best of the body- 
 guards ; and he presented to them arable land and 
 cattle, and supplied them with all kinds of provi- 
 sions which they required, to sing thus each new 
 morning to the sun-god Ra : ' Thou hast made the 
 kingdom great for us in thy son, who is the conso- 
 lation of thy soul, king Horemhib. Grant him the 
 continuance of the thirty years' feasts, give him the 
 victory over all countries, as to Hor, the son of Isis, 
 towards whom in like manner thy heart yearned in 
 On,* in the company of thy circle of gods.' " - 
 
 * Heliopolis. 
 
168 TUE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE PHAKAOH OF THE OPPRESSION. 
 
 The nineteenth dynasty began with Ramses I., 
 a monarch of little renown. He was succeeded by 
 his son Mineptah I., Seti I., commonly known as 
 Seti, a famous warrior, who pushed his armies in 
 every direction and inflicted the severest punish- 
 ment upon every nation that resisted. The weight 
 of his wrath fell upon the unhappy Canaanites and 
 the Shasu (ancestors of the modern Arabs). A 
 contemporary record says : " His joy is to undertake 
 the battle, and his delight is to dash into it. His 
 heart is only satisfied at the sight of the stream of 
 blood when he strikes off the heads of his enemies. 
 A moment of the struggle of men is dearer to him 
 than a day of pleasure. He slays them with one 
 stroke, and spares none among them." 
 
 He carried his victorious arms to Mount Lebanon, 
 and when he returned to Egypt brought numbers 
 of tall cedars for masts, and for flagstaffs to adorn 
 Theban temples. 
 
 The buildings erected in this reign, especially the 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 169 
 
 temples, are grand specimens of the art. These 
 concessions to the priests, however, did not in their 
 estimation counterbalance the injury done to the 
 national religion by the king's worship of foreign 
 deities. He was wholly devoted to the service of 
 the Canaanitish god Baal (so often mentioned in 
 Scripture), whose second name, Set, was reproduced 
 in his own, Seti. 
 
 When his son Ramses II. was twelve years old he 
 was associated with his father in the government ; 
 and his reign extended to not less than sixty-seven 
 years, so that he was nearly eighty years of age at 
 the time of his death. 
 
 Ramses II. is sometimes called Ramses Miamun, 
 and one of the royal prefixes is Soter-en-ra. 
 
 This is the king who above all others bears the 
 name of honor of A-nakhtu, ' the Conqueror,' and 
 whom the monuments and the rolls of the books 
 often designate by his popular names of Ses, Ses- 
 tesu, Setesu, or Sestura, that is, the ^ Sethosis, who 
 is also called Ramesses ' of the Manethonian record, 
 and the renowned legendary conqueror Sesostris of 
 the Greek historians. 
 
 TJie number of his monuments, which still to the 
 present day cover the soil of Egypt and Nubia in 
 almost countless numbers, as the ruined remnants 
 of a glorious past, or are daily brought to light from 
 
170 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 their concealment, is so great and almost countless, 
 that the historian of his life and deeds finds himself 
 in a difficulty where to begin, how to spin together 
 the principal threads, and where to end his work. 
 
 The first care of Ramses after his father's death 
 was to restore the dilapidated temples and public 
 buildings, to set up statues, and to engrave last- 
 ing memorials of his ancestors, not forgetting his 
 own extraordinary merits. On the wall of a temple 
 at Abydus is still to be seen an inscription, of which 
 the translation occupies over eight closely printed 
 octavo pages. This is wholly occupied with an 
 account of the great works done by the king in the 
 restoration of ancient edifices and in brightening 
 the records of history. The style is ornate and at 
 times poetical, full of figures and of bold apostro- 
 phes, and at the same time wonderfully like that of 
 the biblical writers. But Ramses appears to have 
 been a boaster, and his real works are far inferior 
 to those of his father, the ferocious Seti. 
 
 It is scarcely worth while to relate what Ramses 
 II. did for the buildings of his father at Abydus. 
 In the course of his long reign the king completed 
 the temple. When the great building was finished, 
 he must have been advanced in years, since not less 
 than sixty sons and fifty-nine daughters greeted in 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 171 
 
 their pictures the entrance of the pilgrims at the 
 principal gate. In proportion as the works executed 
 under Seti, the father, present to the astonished 
 eyes of the beholder splendid examples of Egyp- 
 tian architecture and sculpture, just so poor and 
 inferior are the buildings which were executed 
 under the reign of Ramses, and which bear the 
 names of the Conquering King. The feeling also 
 of gratitude towards his parent seems to have grad- 
 ually faded away with Ramses, as years increased 
 upon him, to such a degree, that he did not even 
 deem it wrong to chisel out the names and memo- 
 rials of his father in many places of the temple 
 walls, and to substitute his own. 
 
 Ramses II., like most of his predecessors, carried 
 on foreign wars, especially against the Khita or 
 inhabitants of Canaan. He obtained a doubtful 
 victory over them at Kadesh ; and as he "came out 
 of the fight alone, and preserved his life by his per- 
 sonal braverv, the event was celebrated in the most 
 extravagant manner. The long and boastful ac- 
 counts of this action and of the campaign were 
 sculptured upon temple walls, and were illustrated 
 by battle-scenes containing multitudes of figures, 
 including, of course, the effigies of the conqueror 
 himself. These vast pictured tablets are among the 
 most valuable of historical monuments. The same 
 
172 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 exploit was made the occasion of a long heroic 
 poem, the earliest of war lyrics preserved to us. 
 
 The temple-scribe, Penta-ur, a jovial companion, 
 who, to the special disgust of his old teacher, mani- 
 fested a decided inclination for wine, women, and 
 song, had the honor, in the seventh year of Ramses 
 II., to win the prize as the composer of an heroic 
 song, a copy of which we not only possess in a 
 roll of papyrus, but its words cover the whole sur- 
 face of walls in the temples of Abydus,* Luqsor, 
 Karnak, the Ramesseum at Ibsambool, in order to 
 call the attention of the visitor, even at a distance, 
 to the deeds of Ramses. 
 
 The fact that it was engraved on the temple 
 walls, and on the hard stone, may serve as a proof 
 of the recognition which was accorded to the poet 
 by the king and his contemporaries. And, indeed, 
 even our own age will hardly refuse to applaud 
 this work, although a translation cannot reach the 
 power and beauty of the original. Throughout 
 the poem the peculiar cast of thought of the Egyp- 
 tian poet fourteen centuries before Christ continu- 
 ally shines out in all its fulness, and confirms our 
 opinion, that the Mosaic language exhibits to us an 
 exact counterpart of the Egyptian mode of speech. 
 
 ♦ The parts of this temple which were dug out have been again 
 carefully covered up with sand. 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 173 
 
 The whole substance of thought of minds living at 
 the same time, and in society with each other, must 
 needs have tended towards the same conception 
 and form, even though the idea which the one had 
 of God was essentially different from the views of 
 the other concerning the nature of the Creator of 
 all things. 
 
 From the poet we pass to the unknown painter 
 and sculptor, who has chiselled in deep work on the 
 stone of the same wall, with a bold execution of 
 the several parts^ the procession of the warriors, 
 the battle before Kadesh, the storming of the for- 
 tress, the overthrow of the enemy, and the camp 
 life of the Egyptians. The whole conception must 
 even at this day be acknowledged to be grand be- 
 yond measure, for the representation sets before our 
 eyes the deeds which were performed more vividly 
 than any description in words and with the richest 
 handling of the material, and displays the whole 
 composition even to its smallest details. 
 
 The poem of Penta-ur (Penta the Great) is doubt- 
 less full of fire, and is a priceless relic ; but it is 
 too long for the limits of this work, and no satis- 
 factory abridgment could be made of it. The song 
 of triumph attributed to Moses in the book of Exo- 
 dus came a generation later. 
 
 After a long war, a peace was made at the city of 
 
174 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 Ramses,* between the two most powerful nations of 
 the world at that time, Khita in the east, and Kemi 
 in the west. It was to be hoped that the new offen- 
 sive and defensive alliance, which united the princes 
 and countries in the manner thus described, would 
 attain its end, and bridle the fermenting restless 
 world of the people of the Canaanites, which lay 
 between them, and keep down every rising and 
 movement of the hostilely disposed Semites, and 
 confine them within the limits once for ail fixed. 
 For that a ferment existed, even in the inmost heart 
 of the Egyptian land, is sufficiently proved by the 
 allusion in the treaty to the evasions of evil-disposed 
 subjects. We may perhaps read between the lines 
 that the Jewish people are meant, who, since their 
 migration into the land of Egypt, had increased 
 beyond measure, and without doubt were already 
 making preparations to withdraw themselves from 
 the power of their oppressors on the banks of the 
 Nile. But how? and when? — this was hidden in 
 the councils of the Eternal. 
 
 Although Ramses raised his monuments in Thebes, 
 and went up to the old capital of the empire to cele- 
 
 * The ancient name of the city was Zoan, often written Zoan- 
 Tanis, because situate in the Tanitic nome. Wlien Ramses II. 
 made it tlie royal residence it was called Pi-Ramses (city of Ram- 
 ses), or sometimes Zoan-Ramses. It is called in the book of 
 Exodus Raamses. 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 175 
 
 brate the festival of Amon ; although he held public 
 courts iu Memphis, to take counsel about the^ gold- 
 fields in the Nubian country ; although he visited 
 Abydus, to see the tombs of the kings and the 
 temple of the dead built by his father ; — not to 
 mention Heliopolis, in which he dedicated a temple 
 and obelisks to the sun-god; — yet neither these nor 
 other cities formed his permanent abode. On the 
 eastern frontier of Egypt, in the lowlands of the 
 Delta, in Zoan-Tauis, was the proper royal residence 
 of the pharaoh. 
 
 We have often mentioned this city, and have come 
 to understand its important position. Connected 
 with the sea, being situated on the then broad and 
 navigable Tanitic arm of the Nile, it commanded 
 also the entrance of the great road, covered by 
 ' Khetams,' or fortresses, which led to Palestine 
 either in a north-easterly direction through Pelu- 
 sium, or in an easterly direction through Migdol, on 
 the royal road. Zoan-Tanis was, in the proper sense 
 of the word, the key of Egypt. Impressed with the 
 importance of the position of this ' great city,' Ra- 
 messu transferred his court to Zoan, strengthened 
 its fortifications, and founded a new temple-city. 
 
 The hieratic rolls of papyrus, which have outlived 
 the ravages of time, with one voice designate the 
 newly founded temple-city (for the kings of the 
 
176 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 eighteenth dynasty had quite abandoned the old 
 Zoan) as the central point of the court history of 
 Egypt. Here resided the scribes, who in their let- 
 ters have left behind for us the manifold informa- 
 tion which the life at the court, the ordinances of 
 the king and of the chief officials, and their rela- 
 tions with their families in the most distant parts 
 of the country, required them to give without 
 reserve. Zoan, or, as the place is henceforth 
 called, Pi-Ramessu, ' the city of Ramses,' became 
 henceforward the especial capital of the empire. 
 
 It will be useful to the reader to hear in what man- 
 ner an Egyptian letter-writer described the impor- 
 tance of this town on the occasion of his visit to it : 
 
 *' So I arrived .in the city of Ramses-Miamun, and I 
 have found it excellent, for nothing can compare with 
 it on the Theban land and soil. (Here is the seat) of the 
 court. It is pleasant to live in. Its fields are full of 
 good things, and life passes in constant plenty and abun- 
 dance. Its canals are rich in fish, its lakes swarm with 
 birds, its,meadows are green with vegetables, there is no 
 end of the lentils ; melons with a taste like honey grow in 
 the irrigated fields. Its barns are fall of wheat and durra, 
 and reach as high as heaven. Onions and sesame are in 
 the enclosures, and the apple-tree blooms. (?) The vine, 
 the almond-tree, and the fig-tree grow in the gardens. 
 Sweet is their wine for the inhabitants of Kemi. The}'- 
 mix it with honey. The red fish is in the lotus-canal, the 
 Borian-fish in the ponds, many kinds of Bori-fish, besides 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 177 
 
 carji and pike, in the canal of Pu-harotha ; fat fish and 
 Khipti-pennu fish are in the pools of the inundation, the 
 Hauaz-fish in the full mouth of the Nile, near the ' city 
 of the conqueror ' (Tanis) . The city-canal Pshenhor pro- 
 duces salt, the lake region of Pahir natron. Their sea- 
 ships enter the harbor, plenty and abundance is perpetual 
 in it. He rejoices who has settled there. Mj^ information 
 is no jest. The common people, as well as the higher 
 classes, say, ' Come hither ! let us celebrate to him his 
 heavenly and his earthly feasts.' The inhabitants of the 
 reedy lake (Thufi) arrived with lilies, those of Pshensor 
 with pap3'rus flowers. Fruits from the nurseries, flowers 
 from the gardens, birds from the ponds, are dedicated to 
 him. Those who dwell near the sea came with fish, and 
 the inhabitants of their lakes honored him. The youths 
 of the ' Conqueror's city ' were perpetuall}' clad in festive 
 attire. Fine oil was on their heads of fresh-curled hair. 
 They stood at their doors, their hands laden with branches 
 and flowers from Pahathor, and with garlands from Pahir, 
 on the day of the entry of king Ramessu-Miaraun, the god 
 of war Monthu upon earth, in the early morning of the 
 monthly feast of Kihith (that is, on the 1st of Khoiakh). 
 All people were assembled, neighbor with neighbor, to 
 bring forward their complaints. 
 
 " Delicious was the wine for the inhabitants of the 
 ' Conqueror's city.' Their cider was like . . . . , their 
 sherbets were like almonds mixed with honey. There was 
 beer from Kati (Galilee) in the harbor, wine in the gar- 
 dens, fine oil at the lake Sagabi, garlands in the apple- 
 orchards. The sweet song of women resounded to the 
 tunes of Memphis. So they sat there with joyful heart, or 
 walked about without ceasing. King Ramessu-Miamun, 
 he was the god they celebrated." 
 
 12 ^ * 
 
178 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 In spite of the unexplained names of the fishes 
 and plants, the scribe could hardly have given a 
 clearer or livelier account of the impression made 
 on his susceptible mind by the new city of Ramses 
 in its festal garments on the day of the entry of 
 pharaoh. We may suppose that many a Hebrew, 
 perhaps Moses himself, jostled the Egyptian scribe 
 in his wandering through the gaily dressed streets 
 of the temple-city. 
 
 And this city of Ramses is the very same which 
 is named in Hol}^ Scripture as one of the two places 
 in which pharaoh had built for him ' arei miskenoth,* 
 ' treasure cities,' as the translators understand it.* 
 It would be better, having regard to the actual 
 Egyptian word ' mesket,' ' meskenet,' * temple, holy 
 place' (as, for example, king Darius designates his 
 temple erected in the great Oasis to the Theban 
 Amon), to translate it * temple-cities.' The new 
 pharaoh, * who knew not Joseph,' f who adorned the 
 city of Ramses, the capital of the Tanitic nome, and 
 the city of Pithom, the capital of what was after- 
 wards the Sethroitic nome, with temple-cities, is no 
 other, can he no other, than Ramessu II., of whose 
 
 * Exod. i. 13: " And they built for Pharaoh treasure cities, 
 Pithom and Raamses." 
 
 t Who did not recognize what Joseph had long before done for 
 
 Egypt. 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 179 
 
 buildings at Zoan the monuments and fhe papyrus- 
 rolls speak in complete agreement. And although, 
 as it happens, Pitum is not named as a city in which 
 Ramses erected new temples to the local divinities, 
 the fact is all the more certain, that Zoan con- 
 tained a new city of Ramses, the great temple- 
 district of the newly founded sanctuaries of the 
 above-named gods. Ramessu is the pharaoh of the 
 oppression, and the father of that unnamed princess 
 who found the child Moses exposed in the bul- 
 rushes on the bank of the river. 
 
 While the fact, that the pharaoh we have named 
 was the founder of the city of Ramses, is so strongly 
 demonstrated by the evidence of the Egyptian rec- 
 ords both on stone and papyrus, that only want 
 of intelligence and mental blindness can deny it, 
 the inscriptions do not mention one syllable about 
 the Israelites. We must suppose that the captives 
 were included in the general name of foreigners, 
 of whom the documents make such frequent men- 
 tion. The hope, however, is not completely ex- 
 cluded, that some hidden papyrus may still give 
 us information about them, as unexpected as it 
 would be welcome. 
 
 We must again remark, and insist with strong 
 emphasis on the fact, that from this time, and in 
 the future history of the empire, the town of Zoan- 
 
180 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 Tanis is of great importance. On the wide plains 
 before Zoan, the hosts of the warriors were mus- 
 tered to be exercised in the manoeuvres of battle ; 
 here the chariots of war rolled by with their stamp- 
 ing pairs of horses ; the sea-going ships and their 
 crews came to land at the harbors on the broad 
 river. From this place Thutmes III. had started 
 in his war against western Asia ; it was to Tanis 
 that Ramses II. had directed his return from 
 Thebes ; here he had received the embassy of 
 peace from the king of Khita ; and from hence, as 
 we shall presently have to relate, Moses led the 
 Hebrews out of the land of bondage to the land of 
 promise, to give his people the milk and honey 
 of the Holy Land, in exchange for the flesh-pots 
 of Egypt. 
 
 The influx of Semite-Asiatic hostages and prison- 
 ers exercised a continually increasing influence on 
 religion, manners, and language. The Egyptian lan- 
 guage was enriched (we might almost say, for our 
 profit) with foreign expressions, often indeed from 
 mere whim, but more often for good reasons, in 
 order properly to designate unknown objects by 
 their native names. The letters and documents 
 of the time of the Ramessids are full of Semitic 
 words thus introduced, and in this respect they are 
 scarcely less affected than the German language 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 181 
 
 now, the strength and beauty of which are so much 
 degraded by the borrowing of outlandish words. 
 
 Ramses II. enjoyed a long reign. The monuments 
 expressly testify to a rule of sixty-seven years, of 
 which probably more than half must be assigned to 
 his joint reign with his father. Great in war, and 
 active in the works of peace, Ramses seems also to 
 have enjoyed the richest blessings of heav-en in his 
 family life. The outer wall of the front of the tem- 
 ple of Abydus gives us the pictures and the names 
 (only partially preserved) of 119 children (59 sons 
 and 60 daughters). 
 
 The elder sons died during the long reign of their 
 father. The fourteenth in the long list of children, 
 by name Mineptah, ' the friend of Ptah,' was chosen 
 by destiny to mount at last the throne of the pha- 
 raohs. He had already taken part in the affairs of 
 government during the lifetime of his aged father, " 
 and in this capacity he appears on the monuments 
 of Ramses II., by the side of his royal parent. 
 
 Of the daughters of the king, the monuments 
 name, during the lifetime of the pharaoh, as real 
 queens and wives of Egyptian kings (perhaps sub- 
 kings or brothers), his favorite daughter, called by 
 tlie Semitic name of Bint-antha, ' the daughter of 
 Anaitis,' and Meri-amon, and Neb-taui. A much 
 younger sister of the name of Meri (Dear) deserves 
 
182 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 to be mentioned, since her name reminds us of the 
 Princess Merris (also called Thermuthis), according 
 to the Jewish tradition,* who found the child Moses 
 on the bank of the stream, when she went to bathe. 
 Is it by accident, or by divine providence, that in 
 the reign of Ramses III., about one hundred years 
 after the death of his ancestor, the great Sesostris, 
 a place is mentioned in Middle Egypt, which bears 
 the name of the great Jewish legislator ? It is 
 called T-en-Mosh^, ' the island of Moses,' or ' the 
 river-bank of Moses.' It lay on the eastern side of 
 the river, near the city of the heretic king Khu-n- 
 aten.f The place still existed in the time of the 
 Romans ; those who describe Egypt at that time 
 designate it with a mistaken apprehension of its 
 true meaning, as Musai, or MusOn, as if it had 
 some connection with the Greek Muses. 
 
 * Joseph. Antiq. ii. 9, § 35; Artapanus, ap, Euseb. Prcep 
 Evang. ix. 27. 
 t See p. 161. 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 183 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 THE PHARAOH OF THE EXODUS AND A SUMMARY 
 OF SUCCEEDING HISTORY. 
 
 MiNEPTAH II. makes but an insignificant figure 
 among the proud kings of Egypt, being neither 
 renowned for arts nor arms, and being remembered 
 as a weak, cowardly, and cruel ruler. He does not 
 rank with those pharaohs who have transmitted 
 their remembrance to posterity by grand buildings 
 and the construction of new temples, or by the 
 enlargement of such as already existed. 
 
 With the exception of small portions, hardly 
 worthy of being named, the new pharaoh contented 
 himself with the cheap glory of utilizing, or rather 
 misusing, the monuments of his predecessors, as 
 far back as the twelfth dynasty, and not excepting 
 even the works of the Hyksos, as bearers of his 
 royal shields ; for in the cartouches of former kings, 
 whence he had chiselled out their names, he unscru- 
 pulously inserted his own, without any respect for 
 the judgment of posterity. The nomad tribes of the 
 Edomite Shasu — who under Seti I. still regarded 
 the eastern region of the Delta, up to the neighbor- 
 
184 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 hood of Zoan, the city of Ramses, as their own pos- 
 session, until they were driven out by that pharaoh 
 over the eastern frontier — bestirred themselves 
 anew under Mineptah, but now in a manner alike 
 peaceful and loyal. As faithful subjects of pha- 
 raoh, they asked for a passage through the border 
 fortress of Khetam, in the land of Thuku (Sukoth), 
 in order to find sustenance for themselves and their 
 herds in the rich pasture lands of the lake district 
 about the city of Pitom. 
 
 On this subject an Egyptian official makes the 
 following report : 
 
 "Another matter for the satisfaction of my master's 
 heart. We have carried into effect the passage of the 
 tribes of the Shasu from the land of Aduma (Edom), 
 through the fortress (Khetam) of Mineptah-Hotephiraa, 
 ■which is situated in Thuku (Sukoth), to the lakes of 
 the city Pit-um, of Mineptah-Hotephima, which are situ- 
 ated in the land of Thuku, in order to feed themselves 
 and to feed their herds on the possessions of pharaoh, 
 who is there a beneficent sun for all peoples. In the 
 3'ear 8 . . . . Set, I caused them to be conducted, accord- 
 ing the list of the .... for the .... of the other names 
 of the da3's, on which the fortress (Khetam) of Minep- 
 tah-Hotephima is opened for their passage," 
 
 If Ramses-Sesostris, the builder of the temple- 
 city of the same name in the territory of Zoan- 
 Tanis, must be regarded beyond all doubt as the 
 pharaoh under whom the Jewish legislator Moses 
 
TEE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 185 
 
 first saw the light, so the chronological relations — 
 having regard to the great age of the two contem- 
 poraries, Ramses II. and Moses — demand that 
 Mineptah should in all probability be acknowledged 
 as the pharaoh of the Exodus. He also had his 
 royal seat in the city of Ramses, and seems to have 
 strengthened its fortifications. The Bible speaks 
 of him only under the general name of Pharaoh, 
 that is, under a true Egyptian title, which was 
 becoming more and more frequent at the time now 
 under our notice. Pir-'ao — ' great house, high 
 gate' — is, according to the monuments, the desig- 
 nation of the king of the land of Egypt for the 
 time being. This does not of itself furnish a deci- 
 sive argument. Only the incidental statement of 
 the Psalmist, that Moses wrought his wonders in the 
 .field of Zoan,* carries us back again to those sover- 
 eigns, Ramses II. and Mineptah, who were fond of 
 holding their court in Zoan-Ramses. 
 
 Some have very recently wished to recognize the 
 Egyptian appellation of the Hebrews in the name of 
 the so-called 'Aper, 'Apura, or 'Aperiu, the Ery- 
 thraean people in the east of the nome of Heliopolis, 
 in what is known as the ' red country ' on the ' red 
 mountain ' ; and hence they have drawn conclusions 
 which — speaking modestly, according to our knowl- 
 edge of the monuments — rest on a weak founda- 
 * Psalm Ixxviii. 43. 
 
186 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 tion. According to the inscriptions, the name of 
 this people appears in connection with the breeding 
 of horses and the art of horsemanship. In an his- 
 torical narrative of the time of Thutmes III. (unfor- 
 tunately much obliterated), the 'Apura are named 
 as horsemen, or knights (senen), who mount their 
 horses at the king's command. In another docu- 
 ment, of the time of Ramses III., long after the 
 exodus of the Jews from Egypt, two thousand and 
 eighty-three 'Aperiu are introduced, as settlers in 
 Heliopolis, with the words, ' Knights, sons of the 
 kings and noble lords (Marina) of the 'Aper, settled 
 people, who dwell in this place.' Under Ramses IV. 
 we again meet with 'Aper, eight hundred in num- 
 ber, as inhabitants of foreign origin in the district of 
 'Ani or 'Aini, on the western shore of the Red Sea, 
 in the neighborhood of the modern Suez. 
 
 These and similar data completely exclude all 
 thought of the Hebrews, unless one is disposed 
 to have recourse to suppositions and conjectures 
 against the most explicit statements of the biblical 
 records. On the other hand, the hope can scarcely 
 be cherished that we shall ever find on the public 
 monuments — rather let us say in some hidden roll 
 of papyrus — the events, repeated in an Egyptian 
 version, which relate to the exodus of the Jews 
 and the destruction of pharaoh in the Red Sea. 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 187 
 
 For the record of these events was inseparably 
 connected with the humiliating confession of a 
 divine visitation, to which a patriotic writer at the 
 court of pharaoh would hardly have brought his 
 mind. 
 
 Presupposing, then, that Mineptah is to be re- 
 garded as the pharaoh of the Exodus, this ruler 
 must have had to endure serious disturbances of all 
 kinds during the time of his reign : — in the west the 
 Libyans, in the east the Hebrews, and — let us at 
 once add — in the south a spirit of rebellion, which 
 declared itself by the insurrection of a rival king 
 of the family of the great Ramses-Sesostris. The 
 events, which form the lamentable close of his rule 
 over Egypt are passed over by the monuments with 
 perfect silence. The dumb tumulus covers the mis- 
 fortune which was suffered. 
 
 In casting a glance over the most eminent contem- 
 poraries of this king, we are reminded especially of 
 his viceroy in Egypt, the * king's son of Kush,' 
 named Mas, — the same who had been invested with 
 this high office in the southern province under Ram- 
 ses II. His memory has been perpetuated in a rock 
 inscription at Assuan. We may further make men- 
 tion — instructed by a record in the quarries of Sil- 
 silis — of the noble Pinehas, an Egyptian namesake 
 of the Hebrew Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, son of 
 
188 TEE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 Aaron. In conclusion, let us not forget the very 
 influential high-priest of Amon, Roi, or Loi, Lui 
 (i. e. Levi), who under Mineptah held the command 
 of the legion of Amon, administered the treasury 
 of Amon, and, according to the custom of the time, 
 was chief architect to pharaoh. To be sure, this 
 must have been an easy office for him, since there 
 was not much building, except perhaps the royal 
 sepulchre, which the drowned pharaoh probably 
 never entered. 
 
 Having arrived at the time when the Hebrews 
 began the conquest of Canaan, and were henceforth 
 a separate nation, it will not be expected that from 
 this point anything more than a brief summary of 
 Egyptian affairs will be given. The twentieth dynasty 
 begins with the reign of Ramses HI., and ends with 
 that of Ramses XIII. Foreign war is the one un- 
 varying subject that presents itself as we look over 
 the accounts that have been preserved. Ramses 
 III. appears to have conquered Cyprus, CiHcia, and 
 parts of Asia Minor, and he erected in various parts 
 of Egypt and in foreign countries a large number 
 of memorial buildings ' in his name,' called Ra- 
 messea. He is known as Rhampsinitus in the his- 
 tory of Herodotus. The remaining princes of the 
 dynasty require no special mention here. Their 
 reigns were in no way remarkable ; and toward the 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 189 
 
 last the Theban priests had become so influential 
 as to vie with the pharaoh in power. After the 
 death of Ramses XIII. a priest named Hirhor as- 
 cended the throne, being the first of the twenty- 
 first dynasty. The descendants of the Ramessu 
 were banished. 
 
 Then came an Assyrian invasion under the mighty 
 king Nimrod (Naromath), ostensibly to reinstate 
 the Ramessids, but really to effect a conquest of 
 Egypt. Nimrod died while in Egypt, and was 
 buried at Abydus. His son Shashank (Shishak 
 in the Bible), became king, and fixed his seat at 
 Buba-tus. Egypt was at this time virtually an 
 Assyrian province. This portion of Egyptian his- 
 tory was first made known to the world through 
 the discoveries of Dr. Brugsch. The evidence 
 comes from inscriptions on a large granite block 
 found at Abydus. The twenty-second dynasty be- 
 gan with Shashank I. This monarch — the Shishak 
 of the Bible, the Sesonchis of Manetho — has be- 
 come a conspicuous person in the history of Egypt, 
 in connection with the records of the Jewish mon- 
 archy, through his expedition against the kingdom 
 of Judah. It is well known how Jeroboam, the 
 servant of king Solomon, rebelled against the king 
 his master. After the prophet Ahijah had publicly 
 designated him beforehand, as the man best quali- 
 
190 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 fied to be the future sovereign, Jeroboam was obliged 
 to save himself from the anger and the snares of 
 the king, and for this reason he fled to Egypt, to 
 the court of Shashanq I.* Recalled after the death 
 of Solomon, he returned to his home, to be elected 
 king of Israel according to the word of the prophet, 
 while the crown of Judah fell to Solomon's son, 
 Rehoboam.f In the fifth year of this latter king's 
 reign, and probably at the instigation of his former 
 guest (Jeroboam), Shashanq made his expedition 
 against the kingdom of Judah, which ended in the 
 capture and pillaging of Jerusalem. J 
 
 This attack of the Egyptian king on the king- 
 dom of Judah and the levitical cities, which the 
 Scripture relates fully and in all its details, has 
 been also handed down to later ages in outline on 
 a wall of the temple of Amon in the Theban Api. 
 On the south external wall, behind the picture of 
 the victories of king Ramessu II., to the east of the 
 room called the Hall of the Bubastids, the spec- 
 tator beholds the colossal image of the Egyptian 
 sovereign dealing the heavy blows of his victorious 
 club on the captive Jews. The names of the towns 
 and districts, which Shashanq I. conquered in his 
 
 * 1 Kings xi 26-40. f 1 Kings xii. ; 2 Chron. ill. 
 
 X 1 Kings xiv. 25-28 ; 2 Chron. xii. 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 191 
 
 expedition against Judah, are paraded in long rows, 
 in their Egyptian forms of writing, and frequently 
 with considerable repetitions, each name being en- 
 closed in an embattled shield. 
 
 This succession of Assyrian kings continued, 
 though with many vicissitudes, for many reigns. 
 The twenty-third dynasty consisted of three kings, 
 and the period was one of incessant struggle with 
 Assyrians on the north and Ethiopians on the south. 
 The twenty-fourth dynasty is unknown. The long 
 commotions resulted in the establishment of the Ethi- 
 opian kings upon the Egyptian throne. They were 
 Ethiopian only in name, however, being descend- 
 ants of priests and princes of the Egyptian race, 
 who had taken refuge during the Assyrian domi- 
 nation in the regions watered by the Upper Nile. 
 The Assyrians still ruled by means of petty kings 
 whom the}^ supported in Lower Egypt, while the 
 Ethiopians had sway iji Thebes and the country 
 above. Full accounts of this period of intestine 
 commotion have been found in memorial stones at 
 Mount Barkal. These relate principally to the ex- 
 ploits of the kings Piankhi and Miamun Nut. 
 It is needless for any but archaeologists to attempt 
 to follow the few and uncertain lights in this dark 
 era. It is perhaps enough to add that after a long 
 period of utter confusion, in which Egyptians, As- 
 
192 THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 
 
 Syrians, and Ethiopians were constantly in arms, 
 peace came to the distracted country under the 
 benign rule of Psametik I., who was doubly fortu- 
 nate in preserving his own northern realm and in 
 wedding the heiress of the Ethiopian line, the great- 
 grand-daughter of the king Piankhi and of the 
 beautiful queen Ameniritis. 
 
 The splendid alabaster statue of the queen-mother 
 Ameniritis, which was found at Karnak, and now 
 adorns the rooms of the Egyptian Museum at 
 Boulaq, is in this point of view ar most important 
 and suggestive memorial of that age. Sweet peace 
 seems to hover about her features ; even the flower 
 in her hand suggests her high mission as reconciler 
 of the long feud. 
 
 The name Psametik is also of Ethiopian origin, 
 and signifies 'Son of the sun.' His seat was at 
 Sair in the north. The dynasty so happily begun 
 lasted one hundred and thirty-eight years, when 
 Egypt was once more conquered, B. c. 527, by a 
 Persian army under Cambyses. The rule of the 
 Persians, under six or more kings, lasted one hun- 
 dred and three years. 
 
 From this epoch the monuments are conspicu- 
 ously silent. There are only isolated inscriptions, 
 containing no records of the victories of each age, 
 but continual songs of woe, which we must read 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 193 
 
 between the lines. They form the dying swan- 
 song of the mighty empire on the Nile. 
 
 It is no longer the everlasting stone or monument 
 that makes known to us the unenviable fortune of 
 the land ; but it is the inquisitive Greek, who trav- 
 els through the Nile valley under the protection of 
 the Persians or the kings of his own race, and gath- 
 ers his information from ignorant interpreters, that 
 becomes henceforth the source of our knowledge. 
 
 The monuments of the twenty-sixth dynasty, 
 belonging to the seventh and sixth centuries B. c, 
 are distinguished by a peculiar beauty — one might 
 almost use the word elegance — in which we can- 
 not fail to recognize foreign, that is, Greek, influ- 
 ence. An extreme neatness of manipulation in the 
 drawings and lines, in imitation of the best epochs 
 of art in earlier times, serves for the instant recog- 
 nition of the work of this age, the fineness of which 
 often reminds us of the performances of a seal- 
 engraver. There rests upon the work, which is 
 executed in the hardest stone with a finish equal 
 to metal-casting, a gentle and almost feminine ten- 
 derness, which has impressed upon the imitations of 
 living creatures the stamp of an incredible delicacy 
 both of conception and execution. 
 
 It should be mentioned that Darius I. conceived 
 the bold plan of connecting the Red Sea with the 
 13 
 
194 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 Nile by a canal. The remains of a statue of the 
 king, as well as several memorial stones covered 
 with triplicate cuneiform inscriptions and with 
 Egyptian hieroglyphics, which have been found 
 near the line of the canal (north of Suez), place 
 the fact beyond all doubt. One of the tablets is 
 thus translated: 
 
 " Says Darius the king : ' I am a Persian ; with (the 
 power of) Persia I conquered Egypt (Mudraya). I 
 ordered this canal to be dug, from the river called Pirava 
 (the Nile) , which flows in Eg^-pt, to the sea which comes 
 out of Persia.* This canal was afterwards dug there, as 
 I had commanded, and I said, " Go, and destroy half of 
 the canal from Biraf to the coast." For so was my 
 will.* " 
 
 According to Strabo's statement, cited by Oppert,$ 
 Darius left off constructing the canal because some 
 
 * This seems to apply to the Erythrasan Sea, in the wide sense 
 in which the name is used by Herodotus, including what is now 
 called the Arabian Sea, with the Persian Gulf and Red Sea, the 
 latter having also the special name of the Arabian Gulf. — Ed. 
 
 t May we perhaps understand by Bira the Egyptian Pi-ra, ' the 
 [city of] the Sun,' namely, Heliopolis? 
 
 X Strabo, xvii., p. 804. Oppert's own words will be found inter- 
 esting: "We can read through the laconism of this inscription 
 which, allowing for the position in which the king places himself, 
 nevertheless establishes a failure. Darius wished to unite the 
 Nile and the sea by a fresh-water canal ; to resume and finish the 
 work which had been attributed first to Sesostris, and which Neco, 
 the son of Psamnietichus, had in vain tried to accomplish. But 
 neither was Darius able to bring the work to a successful issue." 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 195 
 
 had assured him that Egypt lay below the level of 
 the Red Sea, and so the danger was threatened of 
 seeing the whole land laid under water. 
 
 Two dynasties followed, the twenty-ninth and 
 thirtieth, at Mendes and Sebennytus, but the rec- 
 ords are for the most part silent concerning them. 
 The thirty-first dynasty was Persian, and consisted 
 of three monarchs, whose reigns amounted only to 
 eight years. In the year 332 B. c, Egypt was con- 
 quered by Alexander the Great, and with this event 
 the history as written by Dr. Brugsch concludes. 
 The subsequent history is to be found in the clas- 
 sical writers, and in various modern reproductions. 
 
196 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE EXODUS AND THE EGYPTIAN MONUMENTS. 
 
 A Discourse delivered on the Occasion of tlie International Con- 
 gress of Orientalists in London^ September 17, 1874. By 
 Henry Brugsch-Bey, Delegate of his Highness Ismael /., 
 Khedive of Egypt. Translated from the French Original. 
 
 AD VERTISEMENT 
 
 TO THE ORIGINAL EDITION. 
 
 The publication of this Memoir, which should 
 have appeared a year ago, has been delayed by the 
 absence of the author, while in official charge of an 
 expedition into the interior of the Libyan Desert, of 
 Egypt, and of Nubia. On returning from this jour- 
 ney, he was able to take advantage of his stay in 
 the eastern part of Lower Egypt, to examine the 
 sites, and to verify the topographical and geograph- 
 ical views, which form the subject of this Memoir. 
 
 The author is happy to be able to state, that his 
 new researches have contributed to prove, even to 
 the smallest details, the conclusions which the 
 papyri and the monuments compelled him to form 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 197 
 
 with regard to the topographical direction of the 
 Exodus, and to the stations where the Hebrews 
 halted, as related in Holy Scripture. 
 
 In a special Memoir, which will form a complete 
 chapter of my periodical publication, ' The Bible 
 and the Monuments ' (^Bibel und BenJcmaeler') , an- 
 nounced several months since, the reader will find 
 a collection of all the materials drawn from the 
 monuments, which have enabled me to re-establish 
 the route of the Jews after their departure from 
 Egypt, and which prove incontestably that the la- 
 bors of Messrs. Unruh and Schleiden * on the same 
 subject were based on views as near the truth as 
 was then possible. 
 
 Notwithstanding the very hostile and sometimes 
 not very Christian attacks which these new views 
 have had to sustain on the part of several orthodox 
 scholars, the author of this discourse ventures to 
 affirm that the number of monumental indications 
 is every day accumulating, and continually furnish- 
 ing new proofs in favor of our discovery. Any one 
 must certainly be blind who refuses to see the flood 
 of light which the papyri and other Egyptian mon- 
 uments are throwing upon the venerable records of 
 Holy Scripture ; and, above all, there must needs be 
 
 * See page 203 of the following Discourse. 
 
198 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 a wilful mistaking of the first laws of criticism by 
 those who wish to discover contradictions, which 
 really exist only in the imagination of opponents. 
 
 Note. — In our translation, we follow Dr. Brugseh's 
 orthography of the proper names, which, in this Memoir, 
 he has adapted to the French language in which it was 
 written, as, for the chief example, in the use of ou for 
 the pure u used in his German text. 
 
 We have not thought it necessary to encumber the 
 pages with Notes referring to all the points already 
 touched on in the Historj^, and here collected into one 
 focus of light thrown on the subject in hand. — Ed. 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 The 'following pages contain the printed report 
 of the Discourse which the delegate of his Highness 
 Ismael I., Khedive of Egypt, had the honor to .de- 
 liver on the evening of September 17, 1874, at the 
 International Congress of Orientalists in London. 
 
 Although the necessarily restricted limits of time, 
 and the consideration due to an indulgent audience, 
 did not permit him to develop all the details of a 
 question, the solution of which has occupied him 
 through a long course of years, the lively maiks of 
 satisfaction with which his hearers were pleased to 
 honor him, and which were echoed by journals held 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 199 
 
 in the highest esteem, impose on him the duty of 
 presenting to the public the contents of this dis- 
 course under the form of a Memoir drawn up on 
 the programme of his subject. 
 
 The more that his researches and investigations 
 on the Exodus, founded on the study of the monu- 
 ments, appear to present to the author results which 
 are entirely opposed to the views hitherto adopted 
 with regard to this part of the history of the He- 
 brews, so much the more does he feel almost com- 
 pelled to publish the materials which have supplied 
 him with a foundation, and which have imperatively 
 led him to present the departure of the Jews from 
 Egypt in its true light. 
 
 Those who are afraid of meeting in these new 
 hypotheses attacks upon the statements of Holy 
 Scripture, — from which may God preserve me, — or 
 the suggestion of doubts relative to the sacred his- 
 tory, may feel completely reassured. Far from les- 
 sening the authority and the weight of the Books 
 on which our religion is founded, .the results at 
 which the author of this Memoir has arrived — 
 thanks to the authentic indications of the monu- 
 ments — will serve, on the contrary, as testimonies 
 to establish the supreme veracity of the Sacred 
 Scriptures, and to prove the antiquity of their ori- 
 gin and of their sources. 
 
200 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 The author cannot conclude without fulfilling a 
 sacred duty by thanking his. august Master, in the 
 name of science, for the numerous efforts which he 
 has generously devoted to the development of his- 
 torical studies and to the service of the monuments 
 of his country. Having found in the person of our 
 excellent and learned friend and colleague, Mariette 
 Bey, one as devoted as he was qualified by skill and 
 experience to carry out his enlightened ideas, his 
 Highness the Khedive of Egypt has perfectly under- 
 stood and accomplished the high mission which 
 divine Providence has reserved for him, that of 
 being the regenerator of Egypt, ancient as well as 
 modern. H. B. 
 
 THE MEMOIR. 
 
 His Highness the Kh'edive of Egypt, Ismael 
 Pacha, has granted me the honor of representing 
 his country at the International Congress of Orien- 
 talists in London. On this occasion, the enlight- 
 ened prince, who has rendered so many services to 
 the science I profess, has ordered me to express, in 
 his name, to the illustrioas members of the Qori- 
 gress, his most lively sympathy, and his sincere 
 admiration for the invaluable labors with which 
 they have enriched science, in bringing back to life 
 
TEE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 201 
 
 by their researches the remotest past of those happy 
 countries of the East, which were the cradle of 
 humanity and the centres of primitive civilization. 
 
 If his Highness has deigned to fix his choice on 
 me as his delegate to London, I owe this distinction 
 less to my humble deserts than to the special char- 
 acter of my latest researches on the subject of the 
 history of the Hebrews in Egypt. 
 
 Knowing the lively interest with which the Eng- 
 lish world follows those discoveries, above all others, 
 which have a bearing upon the venerable records of 
 Holy Scripture, his Highness has charged me to lay 
 before this honorable Congress the most conspicuous 
 results of my studies, founded on the interpretation 
 of the monuments of Egypt. 
 
 In thus laying before you a page of the history of 
 the Hebrews in Egypt, I would flatter myself with 
 the hope that I may be able to reward your atten- 
 tion, and thereby justify the high confidence with 
 which his Highness has been pleased to honor me. 
 
 I am to speak of the exodus of the Hebrews. 
 Bat, before entering on my subject, I will take 
 leave to make one observation. I wish to state that 
 my discussion is based, on the one hand, upon the 
 texts of Holy Scripture, in which I have not to 
 change a single iota ; on the other hand, upon the 
 Egyptian monumental inscriptions, explained ac- 
 
202 TEE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 cording to the laws of a sound criticism, free from 
 all bias of a fanciful character. 
 
 If for almost twenty centuries, as I shall have 
 occasion to prove, the translators and the interpre- 
 ters of Holy Scripture have wrongly understood and 
 rendered the geographical notions contained in that 
 part of the biblical text which describes the sojourn 
 of the Hebrews in Egypt, the error, most certainly, 
 is not due to the sacred narrative, but to those 
 who, unacquainted with the history and geography 
 of the remote times which were contemporary with 
 the events in the history of the Hebrews in Egypt, 
 have labored to reconstruct, at any cost, the exodus 
 of the Hebrews after the scale of their scanty knowl- 
 edge, not to say, of their most complete ignorance. 
 
 According to Holy Scripture, Moses, after having 
 obtained from the pharaoh of his age permission to 
 lead into the Desert the children of Israel, worn out 
 with their hard servitude in building the two cities 
 of Pitom and Ramses,* started with his people from 
 the city of Ramses,! ^^^ arrived successively at the 
 stations of Succoth % and Etham.§ At this last en- 
 
 * Exod. i. 11. Observe that Rameses has already been men- 
 tioned by anticipation, to mark tlie locality in which the children of 
 Israel were settled when they came into Egypt : — Gen. xlvii. 11 : 
 " And Joseph placed his father and his brethren, and gave them 
 a possession m the land of Egypt, in the best of the land, in the 
 land of Rameses, as Pharaoh had commanded." — Ed. 
 
 t Exod. xii. 37. J Ibid, and xiii. 20. § Ibid. xiii. 20. 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 203 
 
 campment he turned,* taking the direction towards 
 Migdol and the sea — observe that there is not here 
 a word about the ' Sea of sea-weed 'f (the Red Sea) 
 — opposite to the ' entry of Khiroth,' J over against 
 Baal-zephon. Then the Hebrews passed by way of 
 the ' Sea of sea- weed ' (translated by the interpre- 
 ters 'the Red Sea');§ they remained three days 
 ■in the Desert without finding water ; || arrived at 
 Mar^h, where the water was bitter ; *^ and at length 
 encamped at Elim, a station with springs of sweet 
 water and a little grove of date-palms.** 
 
 The different opinions and different results, in 
 tracing the direction of the march of the Hebrews, 
 are just as many as the scholars who have attempted 
 to reconstruct the route of the Hebrews from the 
 data of Holy Scripture. But all these scholars, 
 except only two (see p. 197), have agreed unani- 
 mously that the passage through the Red Sea 
 must be regarded as the most fixed point in their 
 system. 
 
 I dare not weary your patience by enumerating 
 
 * Exod. xiv. 2. 
 
 t *Mer des Algues,' the translation of the Hebrew hlD-Qt 'the 
 sea of soKph,* which the LXX. always render by v i()v6^ie ^ukuctaa 
 (as also in the N. T., Acts vii. 36, Heb. xi. 29), except in Judges xi. 
 16, wliere they preserve the Hebrew name in the form 2up. — Ed. 
 
 X Pi-hahiroth, Exod. xiv. 2. § Exod. xiii. 18, xv. 22. 
 
 II Thid. XV. 22. As to the name Shur, see below, p. 215. 
 t Ibid. XV. 23. ** Ibid. xv. 27. 
 
204 ^HE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 all the routes reconstructed by these scholars, who 
 had certainly the best intentions, and who lacked 
 only one thing — but that very essential — the neces- 
 sary knowledge of facts in the geography of ancient 
 Egypt. Their general practice, in order to redis- 
 cover the itinerary of the Hebrews, was to resort 
 to the Greek and Roman geographers, who lived 
 more than a thousand years after Moses, and to 
 mark the stations of the Hebrews by the Greek or 
 Latin names belonging to the geography of Egypt 
 under the rule of the Ptolemies or the Caesars. 
 
 If a happy chance had preserved that Manual of 
 the Geography of Egypt, which, according to the 
 texts engraved on the walls of the temple of Edfou, 
 was deposited in the Library of that vast sanctuary 
 of the god Horus, and which bore the title of ' The 
 Book of the Towns situated in Egypt with a De- 
 scription of all that relates to them,' we should have 
 been relieved from all trouble in rediscovering the 
 localities referred to in Holy Scripture. We should 
 only have had to consult this book, to know of 
 what we might be sure with regard to these bib- 
 lical names. Unfortunately, this work has perished 
 together with so raan}^ other papyri, and science has 
 once more to regret the loss of so important a work 
 of Egyptian antiquity. But even this loss is not 
 irreparable ! The monuments and the papyri, espe- 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 205 
 
 cially those of the dynasty of the Ramessids, contain 
 thousands of texts and notices of a purely geograph- 
 ical kind, making frequent allusion to topographical 
 positions ; besides which, a very considerable num- 
 ber of inscriptions, engraved on the walls of the 
 temples, contain tables more or less extensive, which 
 give us the most exact knowledge of the political 
 divisions of Egypt, and the most complete lists of 
 the departments of that country, accompanied by a 
 host of the most curious details. 
 
 Let me lay before you the scattered leaves of 
 the lost book of which I have just spoken. Our 
 purpose is to collect them carefully, to put them 
 together in their relation to each other, to try to 
 fill up the gaps, and finally to make out the list of 
 them. 
 
 After having been engaged on this work for 
 twenty years, I have succeeded, at the beginning 
 of this year, in reuniting the membra disjecta of the 
 great Corpus G-eographice of Egypt, which is com- 
 posed, according to the Index of. my collections, of 
 a number exceeding three thousand six hundred 
 geographical names. In the work of applying the 
 laws of a sound and calm criticism to these rich 
 materials, without allowing myself to be enticed by 
 an accidental resemblance of form in the foreign 
 proper names, when compared with the Egyptian 
 
206 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 names, I have undertaken to traverse Egypt through 
 all its quarters, in order to obtain a knowledge of 
 the ancient ground in its modern condition, and to 
 satisfy myself, from my own eye-sight, of the changes 
 which the surface of the soil has undergone in 
 different parts of the country during the course of 
 the past centuries. 
 
 Having in this manner accomplished a labor which 
 had the only drawback of being sometimes beyond 
 my strength, but which has never worn out my 
 patience, I have the honor of presenting its results, 
 in the form of a summary, to this honorable Con- 
 gress, as a tribute of respect and esteem due to the 
 illustrious scholars here assembled. While, for my 
 own part, I experience deep satisfaction at having 
 in some sort reached the goal which I proposed 
 to myself twenty years ago, it would prove, on the 
 other hand, my highest recompense, to learn from 
 your judgment that I have recovered a great part 
 of the lost book of the Geography of Ancient Egypt. 
 The application of the geographical results settled 
 and laid down in this summary, which will form the 
 special subject of the present meeting, will furnish 
 you with a fair test of the importance of these 
 results and of their value to historical science. 
 
 Will you permit me to begin my exposition by a 
 remark concerning the general topography of the 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 207 
 
 ' country which we are about to traverse, in order to 
 discover and follow the traces of the Hebrews during 
 their sojourn in Egypt ? All the scholars, who have 
 given attention to this subject, are agreed that this 
 country lay on the eastern side of Lower Egypt, to 
 the east of the ancient Pelusiac branch, which has 
 disappeared from the map of modern Egypt, but the 
 direction of which is clearly indicated by the position 
 of the ruins of several great cities which stood on 
 its banks in ancient times. Beginning from the 
 south of the country in question, the city of Anu, 
 the same which Holy Scripture designates by the 
 name of On, identifies for us the position of the 
 Heliopolite nome of the classic authors. 
 
 Next, the mounds of Tell-Bast, near the modern 
 village of Zagazig, enable us to fix the ancient site 
 of the city of Pi-bast, a name which Holy Scripture 
 has rendered by the very exact transcription of 
 Pibeseth,* while the Greeks called it Bubastus. It 
 was the chief city of the ancient Bubastite nome. 
 
 Pursuing our course towards the north, the vast 
 mounds, near a modern town called Qous by the 
 Copts and Faqous by the Arabs, remove all doubt as 
 to the site of the ancient city of Phacoussa, Pha- 
 coussee, or Phacoussan, which, according to the 
 Greek accounts, was regarded as the chief city of 
 * Ezek. XXX. 17. 
 
208 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 the Arabian nome. It is the same place to which 
 the monumental lists have given the appellation of 
 Gosem, a name easily recognized in that of ' Guesem 
 of Arabia,' used by the Septuagint version as the 
 geographical translation of the famous Land of 
 Goshen.* 
 
 Directly to the north, between the Arabian nome, 
 with its capital Gosem, and the Mediterranean Sea, 
 the monumental lists make known to us a district, 
 the Egyptian name of which, * the point of the 
 north,' indicates at once its northerly position. The 
 Greek writers call it the Nomos Sethroites, a word 
 which seems to be derived from the appellation 
 Set-ro-hatu, ' the region of the river-mouths,' which 
 the ancient Egyptians applied to this part of their 
 country. While classical antiquity uses the name 
 of Heracleopolis Parva to designate its chief town, 
 the monumental lists cite the same place under the 
 name of ' Pitom,' with the addition, ' in the country 
 of Sukot.' Here we at once see two names of great 
 importance, which occur in Holy Scripture under 
 the same forms, the Pithom and the Succoth of the 
 Hebrews. 
 
 Without dwelling, for the moment, on this curious 
 discovery, I pass on to the last district of this region^ 
 situate in the neighborhood of the preceding one, 
 
 * Gen. xlv. 10; xlvi. 34; xlvii. 4, 6, 27; Exod. viii. 22; ix. 2Q, 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 209 
 
 between the Pelusiac and Tanitic branches of the 
 Nile. The Egyptian monuments designate it by a 
 compound name, which signifies ' the beginning of 
 the Eastern country,' in complete agreement with 
 its topographical position. Its chief town is named, 
 sometimes Zoan, sometimes Pi-ramses, ' the city of 
 Ramses.' Here again we have before us two names, 
 which Holy Scripture has preserved perfectly in 
 the two names, Zoan and Ramses, of one and the 
 same Egyptian city. 
 
 As the new geographical definitions which I have 
 now set forth involve certain necessary conse- 
 quences, I do not for a moment hesitate to declare 
 that I willingly take upon myself the whole re- 
 sponsibility, as much for the accuracy of the philo- 
 logical part of my statement, as for the precision of 
 the geographical sites which I have brought to your 
 knowledge. 
 
 After these remarks, I return to Pitom and Ram- 
 ses. When you have entered, at Port Said, from 
 the Mediterranean into the maritime Canal of Suez, 
 your vessel crosses the middle of a great plain, from 
 one end to the other, before stopping on the south 
 at the station called by the engineers of the canal 
 El-Kantara. But during this transit you must give 
 up all hope of being cheered by the view of those 
 verdant and smiling meadows, those forests of date- 
 14 
 
210 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 palms and mulberry-trees, which give to the in- 
 terior of Lower Egypt — covered with numerous 
 villages and intersected with thousands of canals — 
 the picturesque character of a real garden of God. 
 This vast plain stretches out from the two sides 
 of the maritime canal, without affording your eye, 
 as it ranges over the vast space to the farthest 
 bounds of the horizon, the least point to rest upon. 
 It is a sea of sand, with an infinite number of islets 
 covered with reeds and thorny plants, garnished 
 with a sort of white efflorescence, which leads us 
 to recognize the presence of salt water. In spite 
 of the blue sky, the angel of death has spread his 
 wings over this vast sad solitude, where the least 
 sign of life seems an event. You but rarely meet 
 with the tents of some poor Bedouins, who have 
 wandered into this desert to seek food for their 
 lean cattle. 
 
 But the scene changes from the time when the 
 Nile, in the two months of January and February, 
 has begun to cover the lands of Lower Egypt with 
 its waters. The vast plains of sand disappear be- 
 neath the surface of immense lakes. The reeds 
 and rushes, which form large thickets, shoot up 
 wonderfully, and millions of water-birds, ranged 
 along the banks of the lagoons or collected in flocks 
 on the islets of the marsh, are busy fishing, dis- 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 211 
 
 puting with man the rich prey of the waters. Then 
 come the barks manned by the fishermen of Lake 
 Menzaleh, who, during the two or three winter 
 months, ply their calling vigorously, in order after- 
 wards to sell the ' fassikh ' (salted fish) to the 
 inhabitants of the Delta and of Upper Egypt. 
 
 Such is the general character of this region, which 
 I have traversed three times at different seasons 
 of the year, in order to become acquainted with 
 the peculiarities of its* surface ; and such are the 
 impressions which I have brought away from my 
 repeated visits. These are the plains, now half 
 desert, half lagoons and marshes, that correspond 
 to the territory of the ancient district of the Se- 
 throite nome, ' the point of the East,' according to 
 the monuments, the capital of which was called 
 Pi-tom, the city of Pithom of the Bible. 
 
 In ancient times this district comprised both 
 banks of the Pelusiac branch of the Delta, and 
 extended on the western side as far as the eastern 
 bank of the Tanitic branch. Marshes and lagoons, 
 with a rich vegetation consisting of rushes and reeds, 
 of the lotus and, above all, the papyrus plant, are 
 met with towards the sea-shore: these are the 
 places called by an Egyptian word, Athu, or by the 
 foreign word Souf, that is, ' the marshes of papyrus ' 
 of the Egyptian texts. There were also pools and 
 
212 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 lakes, called b}^ the Semitic name of Birkata, which 
 reached to the neighborhood of Pitom. The dis- 
 trict was traversed in all directions by canals, two 
 of which were near the city of Pelusium ; each 
 bearing a special name which recalls the use of a 
 Semitic language spoken by the inhabitants of the 
 district in question. The city of Pithom, identical 
 with that of Heracleopolis Parva, the capital of the 
 Sethroitic nome in the age of the Greeks and Ro- 
 mans, was situate half-way on the great road from 
 Pelusium to Tanis : and this indication, given on 
 the authority of the itineraries, furnishes the sole 
 means of fixing its position towards the frontier of 
 the conterminous district of Tanis. 
 
 The Egyptian texts give us evident and incon- 
 testable proofs that the whole of this region, which 
 formed the district of the Sethroite nome, was de- 
 noted by the name of Suku, or Sukot. The foreign 
 source of this designation is indicated by the mon- 
 uments, and is proved by its relations with the 
 Hebrew words sok^ sukkah, in the plural sukkoth, 
 which bear the primary sense of * tent.' There is 
 nothing surprising in such an appellation, analogies 
 to which are found in the names Scense Mandrorum, 
 Scense Veteranorum, Scense extra Gerasa, given by 
 the ancients to three places situate in Egypt. In 
 these names, then, the principal word, Scense, 'tents,' 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 213 
 
 has the same signification as the Semitico-Egyptian 
 word Sukot, which recalls to us the name of Suc- 
 coth, given in Holy Scripture to the first station of 
 the Hebrews when they had left the city of Ramses. 
 This name of ' tents ' takes its origin from the en- 
 campments of the Bedouin Arabs, who, with the 
 permission of the pharaohs, had taken up their abode 
 in the vast plains of the country of Succoth, and who, 
 from the most remote periods of Egyptian history, 
 had there preserved the manners, the customs, and 
 the religious beliefs, peculiar to their race, and had 
 spread the use of Semitic words, which were at 
 length adopted officially by the Egyptian authori- 
 ties and scribes. 
 
 Thus it is that the greatest number of the proper 
 names, used on the monuments and in the papyri 
 to denote the towns, villages, and canals of the 
 district of Succoth and of the adjacent nome of 
 Tanis, are explained only by means of the vocabu- 
 lary of the Semitic languages. Very often the ex- 
 isting Egyptian names are changed in such a manner 
 that the Semitic name contains the exact translation 
 of the meaning of the Egyptian name. In this case 
 the Semites have used the same method that the 
 Greeks and Romans employed, namely, to render 
 the proper names of the geography of Egypt by 
 
214 THE TRUE STORY OP 
 
 translation into the corresponding words of their 
 own language. In this process thej went so far as 
 to substitute the names of the divinities of classical 
 mythology for those of the gods and divinities of 
 the Egyptian pantheon. Hence it is that the classic 
 authors give us names of cities such as Andron- 
 polis (the ' city of men '), Gynsecon-polis (the ' city 
 of women '), Leonton-polis (the ' city of lions '), 
 Crocodilon-polis, Lycon-polis, Elephantine, that is, 
 the cities df crocodiles, of wolves, of the elephant, 
 &c., which exhibit actual translations of the cor- 
 responding Egyptian names. And it is thus, also, 
 that the same authors speak 'of cities called Dios- 
 polis, Hermo-polis, Helio-polis, Aphrodito-polis — 
 that is to say, the cities of the gods Zeus, Hermes, 
 Helios (the sun), and of the goddess Aphrodite — in 
 order "to render into Greek the Egyptian names 
 No-Amon, ' the city of Amon,' Pi-thut, ' the city 
 of Thut,' Pi-tom, ' the city of the sun-god Tom,' 
 Pi Hathor, ' the city of the goddess Hathor.' The 
 Hebrews did just the same : and thus there was, at 
 the entrance of the road leading to Palestine, near 
 the lake Sirbonis, a small fortification, to which, as 
 early as the time of the nineteenth dynasty, the 
 Egyptians gave the name of Anbu, that is, ' the 
 wall' or 'fence,' a name, which the Greeks trans- 
 lated according to their custom, calling it Gerrhon 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 215 
 
 (xb riQQov^, or, in the plural, Gerrha (rd riggu').* 
 The Hebrews likewise rendered the meaning of the 
 Egyptian name by a translation, designating the 
 military post on the Egyptian frontier by the name 
 of Shur, which in their language signifies exactly 
 the same as the word Anbu in Egyptian and the 
 word Gerrhon in Greek, namely, ' the wall.' This 
 Shur is the very place which is mentioned in Holy 
 Scripture, not only as a frontier post between Egypt 
 and Palestine, but also as the place whose name 
 was given to the northern part of the desert on that 
 side of Egypt. 
 
 It is in the same manner that the Hebrew word 
 Souph, — whose meaning of ' sea-weed, reeds, papy- 
 rus-plant' is certified by the dictionaries of the 
 Hebrew language, and which was used to denote 
 a town situate on the Egyptian frontier, at the 
 opposite end of the great Pharaonic road which led 
 towards the south of the Dead Sea, besides giving 
 its name to the Yam Souph, ' the sea of sea-weed,' 
 — this name, I say, contains simply the translation 
 of the Egyptian word Athu, which again signifies 
 the same as the Hebrew word Souph, that is, ' sea- 
 weed, or the papyrus plant,' and which was applied 
 
 * There was a Chaldaean town of the same name on the Euphra- 
 tes, and another in Arabia; and a district riuong, or Ffooot, on the 
 Borysthenes, in European Sarmatia ; all in positions where we 
 should expect to find frontier fortresses. — Ed. 
 
216 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 as a general term to denote all the marshes and 
 lagoons of Lower Egypt, which are characterized 
 by their rich vegetation, consisting of papyrus and 
 of rushes. The Egyptians, on their part, knew so 
 well the meaning of the Hebrew word, that they 
 frequently adopted the foreign name of Souph, in- 
 stead of the word Athu in their own tongue, to 
 denote not only the name of the City of Weeds, but 
 also the Sea of Weeds, the Yam Souph, which we 
 shall meet with further on. 
 
 After these remarks of a philological character, 
 which have appeared to me indispensable for the 
 understanding of my subject, I return to the city of 
 Pitom, the chief place of the region of Sukot, about 
 which the monuments furnish us with some very 
 curious pieces of information. I will begin with the 
 divinity worshipped at Pitom and in the district of 
 Sukot. Although the lists of the nomes, as well as 
 the Egyptian texts, expressly designate the sun-god 
 Tom — the same who had splendid temples at On 
 or Heliopolis — as the tutelar deity of Sukot, they 
 nevertheless add, that the god Tom represents solely 
 the Egyptian type corresponding to the (iivinity of 
 Pitom, who is called by the name of ankh, and sur- 
 named ' the great god.' The word ankh, which is of 
 Egyptian origin, signifies ' life,' or ' he who lives,' 
 'the Living One.' This is the only case, in the 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 211 
 
 Egyptian texts, of the occurrence of such a name 
 for a god as seems to exclude the notion. of idolatry. 
 And in fact, if we take into consideration the 
 presence of families of the Semitic race, who have 
 resided in Egypt at all periods of her history, — 
 including the nation of the Hebrews, — we cannot 
 refuse to recognize in this divine name the trace of 
 a religious tradition, which has been preserved even 
 in the monumental records of the Egyptians. I 
 dare not decide the question, whether the god ' He 
 who Lives' of the Egyptian text is identical with 
 the Jehovah of the Hebrews. At all events, every- 
 thing tends to this belief, when we remember that 
 the name of Jehovah contains the same meaning 
 as the Egyptian word ankh, 'He who lives.' Ac- 
 cording to the monuments, this god, in whose honor 
 a great feast was celebrated on the 13th day of 
 the second month of summer, was served, not by 
 priests, like the other divinities of the Egyptian 
 pantheon, but by two young girls, sisters, who bore 
 the title of honor of Ur-ti, that is, ' the two queens.' 
 A serpent, to whom the Egyptian texts give the 
 epithet of ' the magnificent, splendid,' was regarded 
 as the living symbol of the god of Pitom. It bore 
 the name of Kereh, that is, ' the smooth ; ' (compare 
 Kep^e, calvus, rib3, smooth, bald.) And this ser- 
 pent, again, transports us into the camp of the 
 
218 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 children of Israel in the wilderness ; it recalls to us 
 the brazen serpent of Moses, to which the Hebrews 
 offered the perfumes of incense until the time 
 when king Hezekiah decreed the abolition of this 
 ancient serpent worship.* 
 
 The relations of the Hebrews with Pitom and 
 Sukot do not, however, end here. 
 
 According to the indications of the monuments, 
 the town of Pitom, the chief place of the district of 
 Sukot, had an appellation which it owed to the pres- 
 ence and existence of its god ankh, ' He who lives,' 
 or ' the Living One,' and which, in the terms of the 
 Egyptian language, was pronounced p-aa-ankh, 
 ' the habitation, or the dwelling-place, of the god 
 ankh.' In conformity with this name, the district 
 of Sukot was otherwise called p-u-nt-paa-ankh, 'the 
 district of the dwelling-place of the Living One.' 
 Add to this monumental name the Egyptian word 
 za, the well-known designation of the governor of a 
 city or a district, and you will have the title Za-p- 
 u-nt-p-aa-ankh, ' the governor of the district of the 
 dwelling-place of the Living One,' which a Greek 
 of the time of the Ptolemies would have rendered 
 by the translation, 'the nomarch of the Sethroite 
 nome.' 
 
 And now turn to Holy Scripture : it will inform 
 
 * Numbers xxi. 9 ; 2 Kings xviii. 4, 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 219 
 
 you that the pharaoh of Joseph honored his vizier 
 with the long title of Zaphnatpaneakh, which, letter 
 for letter, answers exactly to the long Egyptian 
 word, the analysis of which I have just laid before 
 you. More than this, when Joseph made himself 
 known to his astonished brethren, he said to them : * 
 "I am Joseph your brother; it is not' you that sent 
 me into Egypt, it is God. It is God who estab- 
 lished me as privy councillor to Pharaoh, and as 
 lord over all his house." The first title, in Hebrew, 
 is written, Ab le-Pharaoh, in which the translators, 
 from the LXX. downwards, recognized the Hebrew 
 word Ab, ' father ; ' but we learn from the Egyptian 
 texts that, far from being Hebrew, the title of Ab 
 en pirao- designates the first minister or officer, who 
 was attached exclusively to the household of the 
 pharaoh. Several of the precious historical papyri 
 of the time of the nineteenth dj^nasty, now in the 
 British Museum, the texts of which consist of sim- 
 ple letters and communications written by scribes 
 and officers of the court, relate to these Ab en pirao, 
 these superior officers of the pharaoh, whose high 
 rank is clearly indicated by the respectful style of 
 these scribes of inferior* rank. 
 
 All these observations, the number of which I 
 
 * Gen. xlv. 4, 8. We follow Dr. Brugsch's translation, which 
 the reader can, of course, compare with the Authorized Ver- 
 sion. — Ed. 
 
220 T^E TRUE STORY OF 
 
 could easily extend by other examples, will serve to 
 demonstrate, in general, the presence of a foreign 
 race on the soil of Sukot, and, especially, to give 
 incontestable proofs of the close relations between 
 the Egyptians and the Hebrews. By what we may 
 call the international use of words ^belonging to 
 their languages, the Egyptian texts fariiish us with 
 direct proofs which certify the existence of foreign 
 peoples in the district of Pitom. 
 
 The Egyptian texts, with the famous papyrus of 
 the British Museum at their head, tell us continu- 
 ally of the Hiru-pitu, or Egyptian officers, who were 
 charged with the oversight of these foreign popu- 
 lations residing in the region of Sukot. These 
 same texts make known to us the Adon (a word 
 entirely Semitic in its origin) or superior chiefs of 
 Sukot, magistrates who served as intermediaries in 
 the relations of the Egyptian authorities with these 
 populations. This service, which was not always 
 of a peaceable character, was supported by a body 
 of police (the Mazaiou), whose commander (the 
 Ser) was chosen from among the great personages 
 of the pharaonic court. The Egyptian garrisons 
 of two fortresses constructed on the frontiers of the 
 nome of Sukot watched the entrance and departure 
 of all foreigners into and out of that territory. 
 The first, called Khetam (that is, the fortress), of 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 221 
 
 Sukot, was situate near the town of Pelasium. It 
 guarded the entrance into the district of Sukot 
 from the side of Arabia. The other, called by a 
 Semitic name Segor, or Segol, that is, ' the barrier,' 
 of Sukot, prevented foreigners from passing the 
 frontier on the southern side and setting foot on the 
 territory of the district adjacent to Tanis-Ramses. 
 Thus the two forts were placed at the two ends of 
 the great road which traversed the plain of Sukot 
 in the midst of its lakes, marshes, and canals. The 
 description which a Roman author, Pliny, has left 
 us of the nature of the roads of this country, 
 may serve to prove that, as early as the begin- 
 ning of our era, the great road of the district of 
 Sukot was somewhat like the track of the pres- 
 ent day, by which the Bedouins of the country and 
 their families alone are able to travel. As might 
 be easily imagined beforehand, the marshy condi- 
 tion of Sukot scarcely permitted the foundation of 
 towns in the interior of this district. Hence the 
 Egyptian texts, in agreement with the notices of 
 the classic writers, speak only of towns and forts 
 on the frontier. Allow me to direct your attention 
 especially to a fortress situate at the east of the 
 nome of Sukot, on the border of the Arabian desert, 
 in the neighborl^od of a fresh- water lake, and called 
 by its Semitic name, which was adopted by the 
 
222 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 Egyptians, Migdol, that is, 'the tower,' and by its 
 purely Egyptian name, Samout. The site of this 
 place is fixed by the position of Tell-es-Semo.ut, a 
 modern name given to some heaps of ruins, which 
 at once recalls the ancient appellation of Samout. 
 As early as the age of the eighteenth dynasty, about 
 two hundred years before the time of Moses, this 
 place was regarded as the most northern point of 
 Egypt, just as on th6 southern border the city of 
 Elephantine, or Souan (the Assouan of our time), 
 was considered the most southern ppint of the 
 country. When king Amenophis IV. summoned 
 all the workmen of the country, from the city of 
 Elephantine to Samout (Migdol), the Egyptian text, 
 which has preserved this information for us, says 
 precisely the same as does the prophet Ezekiel, in 
 predicting to the Egyptians of his time the devasta- 
 tion of their country *from Migdol as far as Seve 
 (Assouan) on the frontier of the land of Kush.' * 
 When I observe that this Migdol is the only place 
 of that name which I have met with in the (Egyp- 
 tian) geographical texts, among more than three 
 thousand geographical proper names, the proba- 
 
 ♦ Ezek. xxix, 10; xxx. 6. In our Authorized Version, as so 
 frequently happens, the rigkt translation is given in the margin, 
 * from Migdol to Syene,' the text being wrong, and in fact non- 
 sense : ' from the tower of Syene to the border of Ethiopia ' is like 
 saying ' from Berwick to the frontier of Scotland.' — Ed. 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 223 
 
 bility at once follows, that the Migdol of the 
 prophet Ezekiel is not different from the Migdol 
 of the Exodus. 
 
 It is time to leave the district of Sukot, and to 
 follow by way of Pitom the ancient road which led 
 to Zoan-Tanis, the capital of the frontier district, a 
 distance of twenty-two Roman miles, according to 
 the ancient itineraries. A sandy plain, as vast as 
 it is dreary, called at this day San in remembrance 
 of the ancient name of Zoan, and covered with 
 gigantic ruins of columns, pillars, sphinxes, - stelae, 
 and stones of buildings, — all these fragments being 
 cut in the hardest mateiial from the granite of 
 Syene, — shows you the position of that city- of 
 Tanis, to which the Egyptian texts and the classic 
 authors are agreed in giving the epithet of ' a great 
 and splendid city of Egypt.' According to the geo- 
 graphical inscriptions, the Egyptians gave to this 
 plain, of which Tanis was the centre, the name of 
 Sokhot Zoan, 'the plain of Zoan,' the origin of 
 which name is traced back as far as the age of Ram- 
 ses II. The author of the 78th Psalm makes use 
 in two verses (12 and 43) of precisely the same 
 phrase in reminding the Hebrews of his time of 
 the miracles which God wrought before their ances- 
 tors ' the children of Israel in Egypt, in the plain of 
 Zoan."* This remarkable agreement is not acciden- 
 
224 '^HE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 tal, for the knowledge of the Hebrews concerning 
 all that related to Tanis is proved by the note of an 
 annalist, likewise reported in Holy Scripture, that 
 the city of Hebron was built seven years before the 
 foundation of Zoan.* 
 
 If the name of Zoan — which the Egyptians, as 
 well as the Hebrews, gave to this -great city, and 
 which means ' a station where beasts of burden are 
 laden before starting on a journey ' — is of a purely 
 Semitic origin, two other names, which are likewise 
 given to the same place and are inscribed on the 
 monuments discovered at San, reveal their deriva- 
 tion from the Egyptian language. These are the 
 names of Zor and Pi-ramses. The first, Zor — 
 sometimes Zoru in the plural — has the meaning 
 of the ' strong ' place, or places, which agrees with 
 the nature of the country lying towards the east 
 and defended by a great number of fortifications, 
 of which Tanis was one of the strongest.! 
 
 The second appellation, Pi-ramses, '• the city of 
 Kamses,' dates from the time of the second king of 
 
 * Numb. xiii. 22. Respecting the probable connection in the 
 origin of the cities, which seems to be implied in this mention of 
 them together, see the Student's Ancient History of the East, 
 p. 115.— Ed. 
 
 t The Egyptian name of Mazor, applied to this country, shows 
 us the origin of the Hebrew word Mazor, which is given in Holy 
 Scripture to the same region. 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 225 
 
 that name, the founder of all those edifices whose 
 gigantic ruins still astonish the traveller of our day. 
 This is the new city, built close to the ancient Zor, 
 and so often mentioned in the papyri of the British 
 Museum, at which Ramses II. erected sanctuaries 
 and temples in honor of a circle of divinities, called 
 ' the gods of Ramses.' The king caused himself also 
 to be honored with a religious worship, and the 
 texts of the later age make mention of the 'god- 
 king Ramses, surnamed the very valiant.' I cannot 
 omit to quote the name of the high-priests who pre- 
 sided over the different services of religion in the 
 sanctuaries of Zor-Ramses. According to the Egyp- 
 tian texts these priests bore the name of Khar-toh, 
 that is, ' the warrior.' The origin of this appella- 
 tion, which seems strange for persons so peaceful, 
 is satisfactorily explained by the Egyptian myths 
 concerning the divinities of the city of Ramses. But 
 the interest attached to this title arises, not so much 
 from these religious legends, as from the fact that 
 Holy Scripture designates by the same name the 
 priests whom Pharaoh summoned to imitate the 
 miracles wrought by Moses. The interpreters of 
 Holy Scripture are agreed that the name of Khartu- 
 mim, given in the Bible to the Egyptian magicians, 
 in spite of its Hebrew complexion, is evidently de- 
 rived from an Egyptian word. And here we have 
 15 
 
226 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 the word Khartot, which supplies us not only with 
 the means of discovering the real meaning of Khar- 
 tumim, but also with a new proof that the scene of 
 the interviews between Pharaoh and Moses is laid 
 iri the city of Zoan-Ramses. 
 
 The Egyptian records, especially the papyri, 
 abound in dates relating to the building of the 
 new city and sanctuaries of Ramses, and to the 
 labors in stone and in bricks with which the work- 
 men were overburdened to make them complete 
 their task quickly. These Egyptian documents fur- 
 nish details so precise and specific on this sort of 
 work, that it is impossible not to recognize in them 
 the most evident connection with the 'hard bond- 
 age ' and * rigorous service ' of the Hebrews on the 
 occasion of building certain edifices at Pitom and 
 Ramses.* Any one must be blind who refuses to 
 see the light which is beginning to shine into the 
 .darkness of thirty centuries, and which enables us 
 to transfer to their true places the events which 
 the good Fathers of the Church — excellent Chris- 
 tians, indeed, but ill acquainted with antiquity — 
 would have confounded till the end of time, had 
 not the monuments of the Khedive and the treas- 
 ures of the British Museum come in good time to 
 •our help. 
 
 To alter the position of the city of Ramses, in 
 * Exod. i. 11, 14. 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 227 
 
 defiance of the evidences of the Egyptian monu- 
 ments, woidd involve the introduction of irrepara- 
 ble confusion into the geographical order of the 
 noraes and cities of Egypt. 
 
 It was from this city of Zoan- Ramses that, about 
 the year 1600 before our era, and in the twenty-sec- 
 ond year of his glorious reign, the great conqueror, 
 Thutmes III., set out at the head of his army to 
 attack the land of Canaan. It was this city into 
 which, in the fifth year of his reign, Ramses II. 
 made his triumphal entry, after having won his vic- 
 tories over the people of the Khetians, and in which, 
 sixteen years later, the same pharaoh concluded the 
 .treaty of peace and alliance with the chief of that 
 people. It was this city whose great plains served . 
 as the field for the cavalry and troops of the kings 
 to practise their warlike manoeuvres. It was this 
 city, whose harbor was filled with Egyptian and 
 Phoenician vessels, w^hich carried on the commerce 
 between Egypt and Syria. It is this city which 
 the Egyptian texts designate expressly as the end 
 of the proper Egyptian territory and the beginning 
 of that of the foreigner. It is' this city, of which an 
 Egyptian poet has left us the beautiful description 
 contained in a papyrus of the British Museum. 
 It is the same city where the Ramessids loved to 
 reside, in order to receive foreign embassies and 
 
228 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 to gYVQ orders to the functionaries of their court. 
 This is the very city where the children of Israel 
 experienced the rigors of a long and oppressive 
 slavery, where Moses wrought his miracles in the 
 presence of the pharaoh of his age ; and it was from 
 this same city that the Hebrews set out, to quit the 
 fertile land of Egypt. 
 
 We will now follow them, stage by stage. 
 
 Travellers by land, who were leaving Ramses to 
 pursue their journey towards the east, had two 
 roads that they might follow. One of these led, 
 in a northeasterly direction, from Ramses to Pelu- 
 sium ; passing half-way through the city of Pitom, 
 situate at an equal distance from Ramses and from 
 Pelusium. This is that bad road, described by 
 Pliny, across the lagoons, the marshes, and a whole 
 system of canals of the region of Sukot. According 
 to what the monuments tell us, this road was not 
 very much frequented. It was used by travellers 
 without baggage, while the pharaohs, accompanied 
 by their horses, chariots, and troops, preferred the 
 great Pharaonic road, the Sikkeh-es-soultanieh of 
 the Orientals. 
 
 This last contained four stations, each separated 
 from the next by a day's march. These were 
 Ramses, ' the barrier ' of Sukot, Khetam, and Mig- 
 dol. We already know the names and position of 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 229 
 
 these stations, with the exception of the third, ealled 
 Khetam. This word Khetam, which the Hebrews 
 have rendered by Etham, has the general sense of 
 ' fortress,' as I have proved before. To distinguish 
 it from other Khetams which existed in Egypt, and 
 especially from the Khetam of the province of Sukot, 
 situate near Pelusium, the Egyptian texts very often 
 add to the word the explanatory remark, ' which is 
 situate in the province of Zor,' that is, of Tanis- 
 Ramses. 
 
 There is not the least doubt as to the position of 
 this important place, of which we even possess a 
 drawing shown on a monument of Sethos I. at Kar- 
 nali. According to this drawing, the strong place 
 of Khetam was situate on both banks of a river 
 (the Pelusiac branch of the Nile), and the two 
 opposite parts of the fortress were joined by a great 
 bridge, a Qanthareh (or Kantara), as it is called 
 in Arabic. At a little distance from these two for- 
 tresses, and behind them, is found the inhabited 
 town, called in Egyptian Tabenet. While this 
 name at once recalls the name of Daphnee (^J&cppat), 
 given by the Greek historian Herodotus* to an 
 
 * Herod, ii. 30 : where all the three frontier fortresses and their 
 objects are mentioned, viz. on the S., the N.E., and the N.W. : 
 inl Vttf/fiiTlxov ^aaiUog cpvXazal xar iaraarai^ eV tg ' EXecpavrlpri 
 ndh TiQog Mdi6n(x)v xal h ^6.cpvriav rriai U^Xovalriav ^Xlrj 
 dh7tQdg'AQu(iltofifal^v(JO}P,xulei' Magiri ngog Ai^vrjg &Ui]. 
 
230 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 Egyptian fortress, the following observations will 
 result in furnishing proofs of the greatest certainty 
 for the identification now proposed. Herodotus 
 speaks, in the first place, of Daphnae, in the plural, 
 in agreement with the existence of the two for- 
 tresses according to the Egyptian drawing. He 
 gives them the surname of ' the Pelusian ' on ac- 
 count of the position of the fortresses in question, 
 on the two opposite banks of the Pelusiac branch. 
 Herodotus says expressly, that at his day (as in 
 former times) there was in this Pelusian Daphnse 
 a garrison which guarded the entrance into Egypt 
 on the side of Arabia and Syria. The ruins of 
 these two forts, standing over against one another, 
 still exist in our day ; and the name of Tell-De- 
 fenneh, which they bear, at once recalls the Egyptian 
 name of Tabenet and the name of Daphnse men- 
 tioned by Herodotus. The remembrance of the 
 bridge, the Qanthareh, which joined the two forts 
 of Khetam-Daphnse, has been likewise preserved 
 to our time, for the name of Guisr-el-Qanthareh,. 
 ' the dike of the bridge,' which is now applied to 
 a place situate a little distance east of Khetam, 
 must be regarded as the last reminiscence of the 
 only passage, which, in ancient times, allowed a trav- 
 eller to enter Egypt dry-shod from the east. 
 Having thus re-discovered, by means of their 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 231 
 
 ancient names and their modern positions, the four 
 geographical points which Holy Scripture calls 
 Ramses, Succoth, Etham, and Migdol, situate at a 
 day's distance from one another, I am quite ready 
 to answer the question, whether the Eg} ptian texts 
 prove to us the existence of a road which led from 
 Ramses to Migdol, through these intermediate 
 stations of Succoth and Etham. Once more the 
 answer is in the highest degree affirmative. 
 
 A happy chance — rather let us say, Divine Prov- 
 idence — has preserved, in one of the papyri of the 
 British Museum, the most precious *memorial of the 
 epoch contemporary with the sojourn of the Israel- 
 ites in Egypt. This is a simple letter, written, more 
 than thirty centuries before our time, by the hand 
 of an Egyptian scribe, to report his journey from 
 the royal palace at Ramses, which was occasioned 
 by the flight of two domestics. 
 
 " Thus (he says) I set out from the hall of the roj^al 
 palace on the 9th day of the 3d month of summer towards 
 evening, in pursuit of the two domestics. Then I ar- 
 rived at the barrier of Sukot on the 10th day of the 
 same month. I was informed that they (that is, the two 
 fugitives) had decided to go by the southern route. On 
 the 12th day I arrived at Khetam. There I received 
 news that the grooms who came from the country [the 
 lagoons of Suf, said] that the fugitives had got beyond 
 the region of the Wall to the north of the Migdol of King 
 Seti Meneptah." 
 
232 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 If you will substitute, in this precious letter, for 
 the mention of the two domestics the name of 
 Moses and the Hebrews, and put in place of the 
 scribe who pursued the two fugitives the pharaoh 
 in person following the traces of the children of 
 Israel, you will have the exact description of the 
 march of the Hebrews related in Egyptian terms. 
 
 Exactly as the Hebrews, according to the biblical 
 narrative, started on the 5th day of the 1st month 
 from the city of Ramses,* so our scribe, on the 
 9th day of the 11th month of the Egj^ptian year, 
 quits the palace- of Ramses to go in pursuit of the 
 two fugitives. 
 
 Exactly as the Hebrews arrive at Succoth on the 
 day following their departure,! so the Egyptian 
 enters Sukot the day after he set out from Ramses. 
 
 Exactly as the Hebrews stop at Etham, on the 
 third day from their leaving Ramses, J so the Egyp- 
 tian scribe, on the third day of his journey, arrives 
 at Khetam, where the desert begins. 
 
 Exactly as the two fugitives, pursued by the 
 scribe, who dares no longer to continue his route in 
 the desert, had taken the northerly direction to- 
 wards Migdol and the part called in Egyptian ' the 
 Wall,' in Greek ' Gerrhon,' in the Bible ' Shur,' — 
 all names of the same meaning, — so the Hebrews 
 
 * Exod. xii. 37. t l^id. % Exod. xiii. 20. 
 
TEE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 233 
 
 'turned,' as Holy Scripture says,* to enter on the 
 flats of the lake Sirbonis. 
 
 To add a single word to these topographical com- 
 parisons would only lessen their value. Truth is 
 simple ; it needs no long demonstrations. 
 
 According to the indications of the monuments, 
 in agreement with what the classical accounts tell 
 ns, the Egyptian road led from Migdol towards the 
 Mediterranean Sea, as far as the Wall of Gerrhon 
 (the Shur of the Bible), situate at the (western) 
 extremity of the lake Sirbonis. This latter, which 
 was well known to the ancients, had again long 
 fallen out of remembrance, and even in the last 
 century a French traveller in Egypt naively ob- 
 served that ' to speak of the lake Sirbon is speaking 
 Greek to the Arabs.' f Divided ftom the Mediter- 
 ranean by a long tongue of land which, in ancient 
 times, formed the only road from Egypt to Pales- 
 tine, this lake, or rather this lagoon, covered with 
 a luxuriant vegetation of reeds and papyrus, but 
 in our days almost entirely dried up, concealed un- 
 expected dangers owing to the nature of its shores 
 and the presence of those deadly abysses of whict 
 a classic author has left us the following descrip- 
 tion : j 
 
 * Exod. xiv. 2. 
 
 t Le Mascrier, Description de VEgypte, 1735, p. 104. 
 
 X Diodorus, i. 30. 
 
234 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 " On the eastern side, Egypt is protected in 
 part by the Nile, in part by the desert and marshy 
 plains known under the name of Gulfs (or Pits, 
 xdL ^dqudqix). For between Coele-Syria and Egypt 
 there is a lake, of very narrow width, but of a 
 wonderful depth, and extending in length about 
 two hundred stadia (twenty geographical miles), 
 which is called Sirbonis ; and it exposes the trav- 
 eller approaching it unawares to unforeseen dan- 
 gers. For its basin being ver}'^ narrow like a riband, 
 and surrounded on all sides by great banks of sand, 
 when south winds blow for some time, a quantity 
 of sand is drifted over it. This sand hides the 
 sheet of water from the sight, and confuses the 
 appearance of the lake with the dry land, so that 
 they are indistinguishable. From which cause many 
 have been swallowed up with their whole armies 
 through unacquaintance with the nature of the spot 
 and through having mistaken the road. For as 
 the traveller advances gradually, the sand gives 
 way under his feet, and, as if of malignant purpose, 
 deceives those who have ventured on it, till at 
 length, suspecting what is about to happen, they 
 try to help themselves when there is no longer any 
 means of escaping safe. For a man drawn in by 
 the swamp can neither swim, the movements of his 
 body being hampered by the mud, nor can he get 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 235 
 
 out, there being no solid support to raise himself 
 on. The water and sand being so mixed that the 
 nature of both is changed, the place can neither 
 be forded nor crossed in boats. Thus those who 
 are caught in these places are drawn to the bottom 
 of the abyss, having no resource to help them- 
 selves, as the banks of sand sink with them. Such 
 is the nature of these plains, with which the name 
 of gulfs ((?u^«^^a) agrees perfectly."* 
 
 Thus the Hebrews, on approaching this tongue 
 of land in a north-easterly direction, found them- 
 selves in face of the gulfs, or, in the language of 
 the Egyptian texts, in face of the Khirot (this is 
 
 * In this description and a subsequent passage (see p. 239) 
 Diodorus is generally thought to have exaggerated the fate which ■ 
 befell a part, at least, of the Persian army of Artaxerxes Ochus in 
 B. c. 350 ; but the discoveries and reasonings of Dr. Brugsch give 
 a far more striking significance to the passage and to Milton's 
 image founded on it {Paradise Lost, ii. 592-594) : 
 
 " A gulf profound as that Serbonian bog 
 Betwixt Damiata and Mount Casius old, 
 Where armies whole have sunk." 
 
 As to the different manner of the catastrophe, we may observe 
 that the description of Diodorus throws a new light on the descrip- 
 tion in Exodus. Pharaoh thought he had caught the Israelites 
 ' entangled ' between the sea, the desert, and the bog (Exod. xiv. 
 2) ; but when they were led safely through by the guiding pillar 
 of fire, which was turned into darkness for their pursuers, it was 
 the Egyptians that became entangled on the treacherous surface, 
 through which ' their chariots dragged heavily' (verse 25) before 
 the whelming wave borne in from the Mediterranean completed 
 their destruction. — Ed. 
 
236 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 the ancient word which applies exactly to the gulfs 
 of weedy lakes), near the cite of Gerrhon. We 
 can now perfectly understand the biblical term 
 Pihakhiroth,* a word which literally signifies 'the 
 entrance to the gulfs,' in agreement with the geo- 
 graphical situation. This indication is finally fixed 
 with precision by another place, named Baal-zephon, 
 for f " The Lord spake unto Moses saying, Speak 
 to the children of Israel, that they turn and en- 
 camp before Pihakhiroth, between Migdol and the 
 sea, opposite to (lit. ' in the face of ') Baal-zephon ; 
 ye shall encamp opposite to it, by the sea." 
 
 The name of Baal-zephon, which (as the eminent 
 Egyptologist Mr. Goodwin has discovered^ ^'s met 
 with in one of the papyri of the British Museum 
 under its Egyptian orthography, Baali-Zapouna, 
 denotes a divinity whose attribute is not far to 
 ^eek. According to the extremely curious indica- 
 tions furnished by the Egyptian texts on this point, 
 the god Baal-zephon, the ' Lord of the North,' 
 represented under his Semitic name the Egj'^ptian 
 god Amon, the great bird-catcher who frequents 
 the lagoons, the lord of the northern districts and 
 especially of the marshes, to whom the inscriptions 
 expressly give the title of Lord of the Khirot, that 
 is ' gulfs ' of the lagoons of papyrus. The Greeks, 
 
 * Exod. xiv. 2. t Ibid. 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 237 
 
 after their manner, compared him with one of their 
 corresponding divine types, and thus it was that 
 the god Amon of the. lagoons was represented, from 
 the time of the visits made to this region by the 
 Greeks, under the new form of a ' Zeus Kasios 
 (Casius).' The geographical epithet of Casius, given 
 to this Zeus, is explained by the Semitico-Egyptian 
 name of the region where his temple was built. 
 This is Hazi, or Hazion, that is, 'the land of the 
 asylum,' a name which perfectly suits the position 
 of a sanctuary situate at the most advanced point 
 of the Egyptian frontiers towards the east. 
 
 It was on this naprow tongue of land, bounded 
 on the one side by the Mediterranean Sea, on the 
 other by the lagoons of weeds, between the entrance 
 to the Khiroth, or the gulfs, on the west, and the 
 sanctuary of Baal-zephon, on the east, that the great 
 catastrophe took place. I may repeat what I have 
 already said upon this subject in another place. 
 
 After the Hebrews, marching on foot, had cleared 
 the flats which extend between the Mediterranean 
 Sea and the lake Sirbonis, a great wave took by 
 surprise the Egyptian cavalry and the captains of 
 the war-chariots, who pursued the Hebrews. Ham- 
 pered in their movements by their frightened horses 
 and their disordered chariots, these captains and 
 cavaliers suffered what, in the course of history, 
 
238 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 has occasionally befallen not only simple travellers, 
 but whole armies. True, the miracle then ceases 
 to be a miracle ; but, let us avow it with full sin- 
 cerity, the Providence of God still maintains its 
 place and authority.* 
 
 When, in the first century of our era, the geog- 
 rapher Strabo, a thoughtful man and a good ob- 
 server, was travelling in Egypt, he made the follow- 
 ing entry in his journal : 
 
 " At the time when I was staying at Alexandria 
 the sea rose so high about Pelusium and Mount 
 Casius that it inundated the land, and made the 
 mountain an island, so that the road, which leads 
 past it to Phoenicia, became practicable for vessels." 
 (Strabo, i. p. 58.) 
 
 * Dr. Brugsch has here made a perfectly gratuitous concession, 
 and fallen into the common error of confounding a miracle with a 
 special providence. The essence of the miracle consists in the 
 attestation of the Divine presence with His messenger by the time 
 and circumstances of an act, which may nevertheless be in itself 
 an application of what we call the laws of nature to a particular 
 case. It shows the Creator, whose word established the laws of 
 nature — (' He spake and it was done. He commanded and it 
 stood fast') —repeating the word through his prophet or minister, 
 by which those laws are applied to a special purpose and occasion. 
 Thus here the wind and sea waves are the natural instruments : 
 their use, at the will of God and the signal given by Moses, con- 
 stitute the miracle, without which all becomes unmeaning. — Ed. 
 
 The important fact is that the destruction of the Egyptian host is 
 shown to have been brought about by the operation of natural 
 forces. This being established, it does not matter wliether theolo- 
 gians call it a miracle, or an instance of divine interposition. — U. 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 239 
 
 Another event of the same kind is related by an 
 ancient historian. Diodorus, speaking of a campaign 
 of the Persian king Artaxerxes against Egypt, men- 
 tions a catastrophe which befell his army in the 
 same place : * 
 
 " When the king of Persia," he says, " had gath- 
 ered all his forces, he led them against Egypt. Bat 
 coming upon the great lake, about which are the 
 places called the gulfs, he lost a part of his army, 
 because he was unaware of the nature of that 
 region." 
 
 Without intending to make the least allusion to 
 the passage of the Hebrews, these authors inform 
 us incidentally of historical facts, which are in per- 
 fect agreement with all that the sacred books tell 
 us of the passage of the Hebrews across the sea. 
 
 Far from diminishing the value of the sacred 
 records on the subject of the departure of the He- 
 brews out of Egypt, the Egyptian monuments, on 
 the faith of which we are compelled to change our 
 ideas respecting the passage of the Red Sea — tra- 
 ditions cherished from our infancy — the Egyptian 
 monuments, I say, contribute rather to furnish the 
 most striking proofs of the veracity of the biblical 
 narratives, and thus to reassure weak and sceptical 
 minds of the supreme authority and the authenticity 
 of the sacred books. 
 
 * Diodorus, xvi. 46. 
 
240 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 If, during the course of eighteen centuries, the 
 interpreters have misunderstood and mistranslated 
 the geographical notions contained in Holy Scrip- 
 ture, the error is certainly: not due to the sacred his- 
 tory, but to those who, without knowledge of the 
 history and geography of ancient times, have at- 
 tempted the task of reconstructing the Exodus of 
 the Hebrews, at any cost, on the level of their own 
 imperfect comprehension. 
 
 Permit me still one last word on the sequel of the 
 march of the Hebrews after their passage across the 
 gulfs. The sacred books tell us:* "Then Moses 
 led the Israelites, from the sea of weeds, and they 
 went out into the desert of Shur, and having gone 
 three days in the desert, they found no water. 
 From thence they came to Marah, but they could 
 not drink of the waters of Marah, because they 
 were bitter. Wherefore the place was called Ma- 
 rah (bitter). Then they came to Elim, where were 
 twelve wells of water and seventy palm-trees ; and 
 they encamped there by the waters."! 
 
 All these indications agree — as might have been 
 expected beforehand — with our new views on the 
 route of the Israelites. After reaching the Egyp- 
 tian fortress near the sanctuary of the god Baal- 
 zephon, which stood on one of the heights of Mount 
 Casius, the Hebrews found in front of them the road 
 
 * T7'-»./^/1 v,r OQ 9A + TT.vrirl -s-ir 97. 
 
THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 241 
 
 which led from Egypt to the land of the Philistines. 
 According to the command of God, forbidding them 
 to follow this route,"^ they turned southwards, and 
 thus came to the desert of Shur. This desert of 
 * the Wall ' — so called from a place named in 
 Egyptian ' the Wall,' and in Greek ' Gerrhon,' a 
 word which likewise signifies ' the Wall,' as I have 
 shown above — lay to the east of the two districts 
 of Pitom and Ramses. There was in this desert a 
 road, but little frequented, towards the Gulf of 
 Suez (as we now call it), a road which the Roman 
 writer has characterized as ' rugged with mountains 
 and wanting in water-springs.' f 
 
 The bitter waters, at the place called Marah, are 
 recognized in the Bitter Lakes of the Isthmus of 
 Suez. Elim is the place which the Egyptian mon- 
 uments designate by the name of Aa-lim or Tent- 
 lim, that is 'the town of fish,' situate near the Gulf 
 of Suez, in a northerly direction. 
 
 When the Jews arrived at Elim, the words of 
 Holy Scripture — "But God caused the people to 
 make a circuit, by the way of the wilderness, to- 
 wards the Sea of Weeds" f — were definitively ac- 
 complished. 
 
 * Exod. xiii. 17. 
 
 t Plin. H. N. vi. 33 : ' asperum montibus et in ops aquarum.* 
 
 X Exod. xiii. 18. 
 
 16 
 
242 THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 
 
 To follow the Hebrews, stage by stage, till their 
 arrival at Mount Sinai, is not our present task, nor 
 within the scope of this Conference. I will only 
 say that the Egyptian monuments contain all the 
 materials necessary for the recovery of their route, 
 and for the identification of the Hebrew names of 
 the different stations with their corresponding names 
 in Egyptian.* 
 
 * See the mention, in the prefixed 'Advertisement' of the 
 Memoir on this subject in Dr. Brugsch's Bihel und Denkmaeler. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 THE TABLE OF ABYDtJS. 
 
 List of the Kings, with their Epochs, who ruled in Egypt, 
 FROM the First Pharaoh, Mena, to the End of the Thirty- 
 first Dynasty. 
 
 Their names and order, down to the Pharaoh Ramses II. (about 
 B. c. 1350), are founded on the List of Kings in tlie Table of 
 Abydus (Nos. 1-77). 
 
 The numbers added, to mark their Epochs, refer to the succes- 
 sion of generations assumed in our work; but these, from the 
 year GGQ onwards, are superseded by the regnal years actually 
 proved. 
 
 First Dynasty : op Thinis. b. c. 
 
 1. Mena, 4400 
 
 2. Tola, 4366 
 
 3. Atoth, 4333 
 
 4. Ata, 4300 
 
 5. Sapti, 4266 
 
 6. Mirbapen, 4233 
 
 7. (Semempses), 4200 
 
 8. Qebeh, . 4166 
 
 Second Dynasty : of Thinis. 
 
 9. Buzau, 4133 
 
 10. Kakau, . . , . . . . 4100 
 
 11. Bainnuter, 4066 
 
 12. Utnas, 4033 
 
 13. Seuta, 4000 
 
 243 
 
244 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Third Dynasty : op Memphis. ' b. c. 
 
 14. Zazai, 3966 
 
 15. Nebka, 3933 
 
 16. Toser [sa], 3900 
 
 17. Tota, 3866 
 
 18. Setes, . ... . . . 3833 
 
 19. Noferkara, . . . . . . 3800 
 
 20. Senoferu 3766 
 
 Fourth Dynasty: of Memphis. 
 
 21. Khufu, 3733 
 
 22. Ratatf, 3700 
 
 23. Khafra, 3666 
 
 24. Menkara, . . . . . . 3633 
 
 25. Shepseskaf, 3600 
 
 Fifth Dynasty: of Elephantine. 
 
 26. Uskaf, . 
 
 27. Sahura, . 
 
 28. Keka, . 
 
 29. Noferfra, . 
 
 30. Ranuser, 
 
 31. Menkauhor, 
 
 32. Tatkara, 
 
 33. Unas, 
 
 Sixth Dynasty : of Memph 
 
 34. Uskara, 
 
 35. Teta, 
 
 36. Merira Pepi, . 
 
 37. Merenra, . 
 
 38. Noferkara, 
 
 39. Merenra Zafemsaf, . 
 
 Seventh and Ninth Dynast 
 
 40. Nuterkara, 
 
 41. Menkara, . . 
 
 42. Noferkara, , 
 
 3566 
 . 3533 
 
 3500 
 . 3466 
 
 3433 
 . 3400 
 
 3366 
 ". 3333 
 
 s. 
 
 ES. 
 
 3300 
 3266 
 3233 
 3200 
 3166 
 3133 
 
 3100 
 3066 
 3033 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 43. Noferkara Nebi, 
 
 44. Tatkara Shema, . 
 
 45. Noferkara Khontu, . 
 
 46. Merenhor, 
 
 47. Senoferka, 
 
 48. Kanka, .... 
 
 49. Noferkara Terel, 
 
 50. Noferkahor, . 
 61. Noferkara Pepiseneb, 
 
 52. Noferkara Annu, . 
 
 53. . . . kaura, 
 
 54. Noferkaura, . 
 
 65. Noferkauhor, . 
 
 66. Noferarkara, . 
 
 57. Nebkherra Mentuhotep, . 
 
 58. Sankhkara, . 
 
 Twelfth Dynasty: of Thebes. 
 
 59. Amenemhat I., 
 
 60. Usurtasen I., 
 
 61. Amenemhat II., 
 
 62. Usurtasen II., 
 
 63. Usurtasen III., 
 
 64. Araenembat III., . 
 
 65. Amenembat IV., 
 
 A gap, which comprises more than 
 and during which the time of 
 kings falls. In all, five dynast 
 
 XVII.) 
 
 245 
 
 Eighteenth Dynasty : 
 QQ. Aahmes, 
 
 67. Amenhotep I., . 
 
 68. Thutmes I., 
 
 69. Thutmes II. . 
 
 70. Thutmes III., 
 
 71. Amenhotep II., 
 
 72. Thutmes IV., 
 
 73. Amenhotep III., 
 
 OF Thebes 
 
 B. c. 
 
 3000 
 2966 
 2933 
 2900 
 2866 
 2833 
 2800 
 2766 
 2733 
 2700 
 2666 
 2633 
 2600 
 2566 
 2533 
 2500 
 
 . 2466 
 
 2433 
 
 . 2400 
 
 2366 
 
 . 2333 
 
 2300 
 
 . 2266 
 
 500 years, ^ 2233 
 
 ■" Hyksos- I to 
 
 (xiii.— j 1733 
 
 the 
 
 les 
 
 Jnoo 
 (circ.) 
 
 1700 
 1666 
 1633 
 
 1600 
 
 1566 
 1533 
 1500 
 
246 APPENDIX. 
 
 B. C. 
 
 74. Horemhib, 1466 
 
 (One generation of heretic kings), . . 1433 
 
 Nineteenth Dynasty : of Thebes. 
 
 75. Ramessu I., 1400 
 
 76. Mineptah I. Seti I., . . . . 1366 
 
 77. Miamun I. Ramessu II., .... 1333 
 Mineptah II. Hotephima, . . . 1300. 
 Seti II. Mineptah III., . . , . 1266 
 Setnakht Merer Miamun II., . , 1233 
 
 Twentieth Dynasty: of Thebes. 
 
 Kamessu III. Haq-On, 1200 
 
 Ramessu IV., 
 
 Ramessu VI., . • . . . 
 
 Meritum, . [ 1166 
 
 Ramessu VII., 
 
 Ramessu VIII., 
 
 Ramessu IX.— XII., 1133 
 
 Twenty-first Dynasty: of Thebes and Tanis. 
 
 Hirhor, . 1100 
 
 Piankhi, . 1066 
 
 Pinotem I., 1033 
 
 Pisebkhan I., 1000 
 
 Twenty-second Dynasty: of Bubastus. 
 
 Shashanql,, 966 
 
 Usarkon I., 933 
 
 Takeloth I., . 900 
 
 Usarkon IT., 866 
 
 Shashanqll., ...... 833 
 
 Takeloth II., . . . . . . .800 
 
 Twenty-third Dynasty : of Tanis and Thebes. 
 Usarkon 766 
 
 Twenty-fourth Dynasty: of Sais and Memphis.. 
 Bokenranef, 733 
 
APPENDIX. 247 
 
 I 700 
 
 Twenty-fifth Dynasty: the Ethiopians. b. c. 
 
 Shabak, , 
 
 Shabatak, 
 
 Taharaqa, 693 
 
 Twenty-sixth Dynasty: op Sais. 
 
 Psamethik I., ^QQ 
 
 Neku, 612 
 
 Psamethik II., 596 
 
 Uahabra, 691 
 
 Aahmes, 572 
 
 Psamethik III., 528 
 
 Twenty-seventh Dynasty: the Persians. 
 
 Cambyses, 527 
 
 Darius I., . . . . . . . 521 
 
 Xerxes I., 486 
 
 Artaxerxes, ...... 465 
 
 Xerxes II., 425 
 
 Sogdianus, ....... — 
 
 Darius II., 424 
 
 Twenty-eighth Dynasty. 
 (Amyrtaeus.) 
 
 Twenty-ninth Dynasty : of Mendes. 
 
 Naifaurot I., . . ... .399 
 
 Hagar, 393 
 
 Psamut, ....... 380 
 
 Naifaurot II., 379 
 
 Thirtii TH Dynasty: of Sebennytus. 
 
 Nakhthorib, 378 
 
 Ziho, 360 
 
 Nahktnebef, 358 
 
248 APPENDIX. 
 
 Thirty-first Dynasty : the Persians. b. c. 
 
 Ochus, 340 
 
 Arses, 338 
 
 Darius III., . . . . . . . 336 
 
 Conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great, 332 
 
 OBELISKS OF THUTMES III. AT HELIOPOLIS. 
 
 (Note to page 139.) 
 
 One of the obelisks set up by Thutmes III. at Heliopolis has a 
 special interest for English readers. Besides the largest pair 
 mentioned by Dr. Brugsch, now at Constantinople and Rome, a 
 smaller pair were transported to Alexandria under Tiberius, and 
 set up in front of Ca9sar's temple, where they obtained the well- 
 known name of ' Cleopatra's Needles.' One of them still stands 
 in its place ; the other, after lying prostrate for centuries in the 
 sand, was presented to England by Mehemet Ali Pasha in 1820, as 
 a memorial of the famous Egyptian campaign of 1801. But the 
 intention of transporting it to England was only fulfilled in 1878 
 by the munificence of the eminent surgeon, Mr. Erasmus Wilson, 
 and the persevering enterprise of Mr. John Dixon, C. E., and it is 
 now erected on the Thames Embankment. Its height is sixty- 
 eight feet five inches (less three and one half inches cut oflf from 
 the broken end to give the ba~se an even surface). The hieroglj'phs 
 on two of its faces express the titles of Thutmes III.; on the other 
 two, Ramses II. has added his own ; illustrating Dr. Brugsch's 
 remark on the ofiicial pomp, devoid of historical information, 
 which is the usual substance of the inscriptions on Egyptian 
 obelisk*. The inscriptions have been translated by Dr. Birch; 
 and a full account of the obelisk, from jts cutting out of the 
 quarries at Syene to its adventurous voyage across the Bay of 
 Biscay, has been published by Mr. Erasmus Wilson, and in Mr. 
 Dixon's paper, illustrated with plans, in the 'Proceedings of the 
 Royal United Service Institution.' The very similar inscriptions 
 
APPENDIX. 249 
 
 of Thutmes III. and Ramses II. on the other obelisk, still stand- 
 ing at Alexandria, are translated by M. Chabas in the 'Records 
 of the Past,' Vol. X. pp. 21, foil. — Ed. 
 
 PASSAGES OF SCRIPTURE TO WHICH 
 REFERENCE IS MADE. 
 
 And Joseph was brought down to Egypt : and Potiphar, an of- 
 ficer of Pharaoh, captain of the guard, an Egyptian, bought him 
 of the hands of the Ishmaelites, which had brought him down 
 thither. And the Lord was with Joseph, and he was a prosperous 
 man ; and he was in the house of his master the Egyptian. And 
 his master saw that the Lord was with him, and that the Lord 
 made all that he did to prosper in his hand. And Joseph found 
 grace in his sight, and he served him : and he made him overseer 
 over his house, and all that he had he put into his hand. And it 
 came to pass from the time that he had made him overseer in his 
 house, and over all that he had, that the Lord blessed the Egyp- 
 tian's house for Joseph's sake ; and the blessing of the Lord was 
 upon all that he had in the house, and in the field. And he left 
 all that he had in Joseph's hand ; and he knew not aught he had, 
 save the bread which he did eat. And Joseph was a goodly per- 
 son, and well favored. — Gen. xxxix. 1-6. 
 
 And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, See, I have set thee over all the 
 land of Egypt. And Pharaoh took off his ring from his hand, and 
 put it upon Joseph's hand, and arrayed him in vestures of fine 
 linen, and put a gold chain about his neck; and he made him to 
 ride in the second chariot which he had : and they cried before 
 him. Bow the knee : and he made him ruler over all the land of 
 Egypt And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, I am Pharaoh, and with- 
 out thee shall no man lift up his hand or foot in all the land of 
 Egypt. And Pharaoh called Joseph's name, Zaplmath-paaneah ; 
 and he gave him to wife Asenath the daughter of Poti-pherah, priest 
 of On. And Joseph went out over all the land of Egypt. — Gen. 
 xli. 41-45. 
 
250 APPENDIX. 
 
 They said moreover unto Pharaoh, For to sojourn in the land 
 are we come : for thy servants liave no pasture for their flocks ; 
 for the famine is sore in the land of Canaan : now therefore, we 
 pray thee, let thy servants dwell in the land of Goshen. 
 
 And Joseph placed his father and his brethren, and gave them 
 a possession in the land of Egypt, in the best of the land, in the 
 land of Rameses, as Pharaoh had commanded. 
 
 And Israel dwelt in the land of Egypt, in the country of Goshen, 
 and they had possessions therein, and grew, and nmltiplied ex- 
 ceedingly. — Gen. xlvii. 4, 11, 27. 
 
 Now there arose up a new king over Egypt which knew not 
 Joseph. And he said unto his people, Behold, the people of the 
 children of Israel are more and mightier than we : Come on, let 
 us deal wisely with them, lest they multiply, and it come to pass, 
 that, wlien there falleth out any war, they join also unto our ene- 
 mies, and fight against us, and so get them up out of the land. 
 Tlierefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with 
 their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pithom 
 and Raamses. But the more they afflicted them, the more they mul- 
 tiplied and grew. And tliey were grieved because of the children 
 of Israel. And the Egyptians made the children of Israel to serve 
 with rigor. And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, 
 in mortar, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field : 
 all their service, wherein they made them serve, was with rigor. — 
 Ex. i. 8-U. 
 
 And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself at the 
 river ; and her maidens walked along by the river's side : and when 
 she saw the ark among the flags, she sent her maid to fetch it. 
 And when she had opened it, she saw the child: and, behold, the 
 babe wept. And she had compassion on him, and said. This is 
 one of the Hebrews' children. Ttien said his sister to Pharaoh's 
 daughter, Shall I go and call to thee a nurse of the Hebrew wo- 
 men, that she may nurse the child for thee? And Pharaoh's 
 daughter said to her. Go. And the maid went and called the 
 child's mother. And Pharaoh's daughter said unto her, Take this 
 child away and nurse it for mo, and I will give thee thy wages. 
 And the woman took the cliild, and nursed it. And the child grew, 
 and she brought him unto Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her 
 
APPENDIX. 251 
 
 son. And she called his name Moses : and she said, Because I 
 drew him out of the water. — Ex. ii. 6-10. 
 
 And the children of Israel journeyed from Rameses to Succoth, 
 about six hundred thousand on foot that were men, beside chil- 
 dren. — Ex. xii. 37. 
 
 And they took their journey from Succoth, and encamped in 
 Etham, in the edge of the wilderness. — Ex. xiii. 20. 
 
 And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children 
 of Israel, that they turn and encamp before Pi-hahiroth, between 
 Migdol and the sea, over against Baal-zephon : before it shall ye 
 encamp by the sea. 
 
 But the Egyptians pursued after them, all the horses and char- 
 iots of Pharaoh, and his horsemen, and his army, and overtook 
 them encamping by the sea, beside Pi-hahiroth, before Baal- 
 zephon. — Ex. xiv. 1, 2, 9. 
 
 So Moses brought Israel from the Red Sea, and they went out 
 into the wilderness of Shur ; and they went three days in the wil- 
 derness, and found no water. And when they came to Marah, 
 they could not drink of the waters of Marah, for they were bitter : 
 therefore the nameof it was called Marah. 
 
 And they came to Elim, where were twelve wells of water, and 
 threescore and ten palm trees : and they encamped there by the 
 waters. —Ex. xv. 22, 23, 27. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 The body of this work was written in German, and the conclud- 
 ing Memoir in French. The translation was begun by the late 
 Henry Danby Seymour, F.R.G.S., and was completed by Philip 
 Smith, B.A. Most of the foot-notes are by Dr. Brugsch; those 
 by the latter of the translators are signed " Ed." A few have been 
 added by the editor of the present compilation. 
 
 The chief difficulty that presents itself to the English reader is 
 the confusion of names arising from the different modes of repre- 
 senting the ancient symbols of sounds in modern letters. Dr. 
 Brugsch has adopted a mode of spelling which is unusual, and is 
 not uniform. He has followed the (^erman use of letters generally, 
 though in the Memoir his method is often like the French. In his 
 reproduction of Egyptian names, a has the broad sound as in fa- 
 ther, e the sound of a, i the sound of e, and o is generally long. 
 Consonants are used without much system. K or Kh and Q (with- 
 out the u following) appear to be equivalents. 5' has generally the 
 sound of Sh at the beginning of a word. The liquids I and r are 
 interchangeable ; so, sometimes, are u and v. Thus we have Ribu 
 or Libu ; Ruten or Luten ; Khar, Char, Khal or Chal ; Nahar or 
 Nahal ; Rutennu or Lutennu ; Khetam or Chetam ; Boolaq or Bou- 
 lak; Kheta, Khita, Khiti or Kiti; Avaris, Auaris or Awaris. So, 
 also, Pi-tom, Pithom or Pitum: Serbonis or Sirbonis. The use 
 of Q and q is noticeable, as in Qebeh and Saqqarah. 
 
 Page 46. Horus, a god, fabled as an ancestor of pharaohs, son 
 of Osiris and Isis. 
 
 P. 87. Ramessides, Ramesids, the pharaohs that bore the name 
 of Ramses or Ramessu. 
 
 253 
 
254 NOTES. 
 
 Pp. 97, 98. The note by Dr. Brugsch on the pronunciation of 
 Khufu (Shufu, Shoofoo) shows how difficult it is to understand 
 the resemblance of modern to ancient sounds. 
 
 P. 117. ^^ I gained a hand" means that having killed an enemy- 
 he cut off one of his hands as a trophy. 
 
 P. 119. Kush, Nubia. 
 
 P. 133. The title Zaphnatpaneakh is translated or "guessed" 
 by one of the principal commentators as "revealer of the secret"! 
 
 P. 189. Scarabceus, literally a beetle, a favorite form of golden 
 ornament. 
 
 P. 154. Ra appears to have been the sun-god of the east, or 
 morning; Tom^ or Toom, the god of the west, or the setting sun. 
 
 P. 184. Dr. Brugsch had already inserted this document on 
 page 82. 
 
 Mineptah was the second title of Seti I. ; and his son and suc- 
 cessor, who is the only one that wore the name as his leading title, 
 is called sometimes Mineptah I. and sometimes II. The name 
 signifies '* the friend of Ptah." 
 
 P. 205. Membra disjecta, the scattered parts of the body -of 
 Egyptian geography. 
 
 P. 225. Khartoh, in French would have the same sound as 
 Khartot on page 226. 
 
 P. 228. " The bad road " would of course be impassable at the 
 time of the inundation. 
 
 The termination hotep signifies servant. The name Amon-hotep 
 (servant of Amon) was called Amunoph by the Greeks, as Aahmes 
 was called Amosis, and Seti, Sethos or Sethosis. 
 
 Semites (descendants of Shem), a branch of the human family 
 that includes the Jews, Arabs, and a few other peoples. 
 
 Pi and No signify a town or city, as PL-Ramses, No-Amon. 
 
 TeU, a mound (Arabic), indicating the site of a ruined city. 
 
 Nome (Greek, Nomos), a district. 
 
NOTES. 255 
 
 Cartouche, a royal escutcheon, or coat of arms, consisting of 
 symbols arranged in oval form, and graven upon the public works 
 erected in the reign of the pharaoh for tlie time being. Sometimes 
 a jingle oval was used ; sometimes two or more (or even six) were 
 sculptured. This discovery, made by Champollion, has been of the 
 utmost importance in determining the chronology of Egypt. 
 
 Asebi, Cyprus. 
 
 Khita, Canaan. 
 
 Naharain, Mesopotamia. 
 
 The gods of Egypt were many. The chief were 
 
 (1) Amon (corresponding to Zeus), universally venerated. 
 
 (2) Ptah, Patah (Former, Creator), worshipped at Memphis for 
 the most part. 
 
 (3) Osiris, fabled to have been of the human race, afterwards 
 deified, and become the Judge of All. 
 
 (4) Tsis, the wife of Osiris. 
 
 (5) Ilorus, son of Osiris and Isis. 
 
 (6) Thnt, scribe of the gods. 
 
 (7) Bast or Pasht, goddess of lust (cat-headed), whose seat was 
 at Bubastus. 
 
 A further enumeration is unnecessary here. 
 
 The Book of the Dead, referred to by Dr. Brugsch, is a manual 
 of morals, observances, and worship. It is of unknown antiquity, 
 but portions of it have been found in the grave-clothes of persons 
 who died before the building of the pyramids. Its circulation was 
 universal among lettered Egyptians, and a number of more or less 
 perfect copies are extant. 
 
 In the 125th chapter is described the appearance of the soul be- 
 fore the tribunal of Osiris. Each one of the forty-two inquisitors 
 puts a question to the individual on trial. Some questions refer to 
 matters of local importance and the internal regulations of the 
 kingdom, but as a whole they embrace the moral code. We quote 
 some of the declarations : 
 
 " Placer of Spirits, Lord of Truth, is thy name . . . 
 
 I have not privily done evil against mankind. 
 
256 NOTES. 
 
 I have not told falsehoods. 
 I have not done what is hateful to the gods. 
 I have not murdered. 
 I have not smitten men privily. 
 I have not stolen. 
 I have not been idle. 
 I have not committed adultery. 
 I have not corrupted women or men. 
 I have not polluted myself. 
 I have not blasphemed a god. 
 I have not falsified measures. 
 I have not cheated in the weight of the balance. 
 I have given food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, clothes to 
 the naked." 
 
INDEX. 
 
 PAGES 
 
 AAHME3 116, 121, 129 
 
 Aah-hotep, Queen, her jewels 122 
 
 About, Edmond U 
 
 Abraham 13 
 
 Abydus, Table of 44,46 
 
 Agriculture 33 
 
 Alphabet 10 
 
 Amenhotep, architect and sculptor 153 
 
 Amenhotep III 153-156 
 
 Amenhotep IV. See Khunaten. 
 
 Ameniritis, Queen , 192 
 
 Amu, the 26,61, 62 
 
 Apopi, King 108 
 
 Art 11, .36, 60, 193 
 
 Architecture 10, 193 
 
 Asia, the birthplace 22 
 
 Assyrian conquest 189 
 
 Auaris 70, 96, 107 
 
 Baal-Zephon t . 236 
 
 Baba, tomb of 128 
 
 Eeni Hassan, tombs of CI 
 
 Book of the Dead ' 40 
 
 Cambyses 192 
 
 Cephrenes. See Kafra. 
 
 Char, or Chal, the 89, 91 
 
 Cheops. See Khufu. 
 
 Chetam. See Khetam. 
 
 Commentators, ignorance of 204 
 
 Darius 194 
 
 Delta, the 209 e^ seq. 
 
 Egypt, geography of 29, 207 
 
 Life in 34 
 
 Art 36, 193 
 
 17 257 
 
258 INDEX. 
 
 Egypt, Schools 38 
 
 Morals 40 
 
 Oppression 41 
 
 Chronology 42 
 
 Assyrian Conquest of 189 
 
 Persian Conquest of 192 
 
 Egyptians, their origin 22 
 
 Elim 241 
 
 Ethiopia , 25, 192 
 
 Exodus, the 202, 203, 228, 231 
 
 Gerrhon 214, 215 
 
 Greeks as pupils 15 
 
 Their art in Egypt . 193 
 
 Hebrew poetry, prototype of 142-146, 172 
 
 Scriptures - 13 
 
 Heretic King. See Khunaten. 
 
 Herodotus on Lake Sirbonis 234 
 
 Hirhor 189 
 
 Horemhib, 165 
 
 Hyksos, the 93, 95, 97-100, 105, 107, 115, 125 
 
 Israelites in Egypt 19 
 
 As Laborers 149, 226 
 
 Dates of 126 
 
 Jehovah, the name 217 
 
 Joseph, place in chronology 126, 127, 132 
 
 Temptation 134 
 
 Honors 137, 219 
 
 Josephus 95 
 
 Kafra, Khafra 54 
 
 Kem, Kemi, Khemi 28 
 
 Kheta, the 27 
 
 Khetam 69, 220, 229 
 
 Khufu 51, 97, 98 (note) 
 
 Khunaten 14, 159, 163 
 
 Letter-writer, an Egyptian 176 
 
 Living One, the 216 
 
 Marah 241 
 
 Mauetho . . . .' 9,42,43,95,98 
 
 Miiriette-Bey 9, 45 
 
 Memnon, statues of 154 
 
 Memphis 47 
 
INDEX. 259 
 
 Mena 10, 42, 47 
 
 Menkaura c 54 
 
 Menzaleh, Lake 67, 93 
 
 Morris, Princess 182 
 
 Migdol 72,222 
 
 Mineptah 1 85, 86 
 
 Mineptah II 183, 185-188 
 
 Moeris, Lake 61 
 
 Moses 179 
 
 Naval Battle of Aahmes 116 
 
 Nimrod 189 
 
 Nomes 31 
 
 Novel, an Egyptian 134 
 
 Nub, King 66, 108, 126 
 
 Osiris 70 
 
 Patah-hotep, Prince, an author • 56 
 
 Penta-ur, poem of 172 
 
 Pharaoh 48, 49 
 
 The Biblical 183 
 
 Drowning of his host , 237 
 
 Fhoeniciau gods , 79 
 
 People 89, 91, 101 
 
 Pi-Ramses. See Zoan. 
 
 Pi-tom, Pithom 68 
 
 Poem in honor of Thutmes III 142 
 
 Potiphar's wife, story of 134 
 
 Prayer of Khunaten 14, 162 
 
 Psaraetik 1 192 
 
 Pyramids, the, 51-55 
 
 Bamses, the town. 5eeZoan. 
 
 Ramses II. the Great 169-172,178, 181 
 
 Ramses III 188 
 
 Ra-Sekenen 109 
 
 Red Sea, the 239 
 
 Reedy Sea, the 233, 241 
 
 Eutennu, the 103, 104 
 
 Seir 84 
 
 Semitic subjects and neighbors 64 e? seq. 
 
 . Words 77 
 
 Idols 78 
 
 Hcckoning of Time 81 
 
 Relations with 123 
 
 In Canaan 140 
 
260 INDEX. 
 
 Senoferu 49 
 
 Sirbonis, Lake, 233 
 
 Setliroitic nome 69 
 
 Seti 1 168 
 
 Shashank r . 189 
 
 Shasu, the. (See aZso Semitic neighbors.) 82,97,98 
 
 Shepherd Kings. See Hyksos. 
 
 Shur . 240 
 
 Sphinx the 53 
 
 Strabo, his relation 238 
 
 Suez Canal of Darius 193 
 
 The modern 209 
 
 Sukot, Succoth 68, 212 
 
 Taa TIT ; 121 
 
 Tanis. See Zoan. 
 
 Thebes 59 
 
 Thutmes III 139, 142, 150 
 
 Tini, Thinis 47 
 
 Tombs, historical pictures in 61, 128, 148 
 
 Zoan, Zoar. Zor 65, 85, 87, 106, 124, 175, 180, 185, 223, 227 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Table of Abydus 243-248 
 
 Obelisks of Thutmes III. at Heliopolis 248 
 
 Passages of Scripture to which reference is made 249-251 
 
 Notes 253-256 
 
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