The Egypt of the Hebrews and Herodotos
By
The Rev. A. H. Sayce
Professor of Assyriology at Oxford
London
Rivington, Percical & Co.
1895
CONTENTS
Preface
Chapter I. The Patriarchal Age.
Chapter II. The Age Of Moses.
Chapter III. The Exodus And The Hebrew Settlement In Canaan.
Chapter IV. The Age Of The Israelitish Monarchies.
Chapter V. The Age Of The Ptolemies.
Chapter VI. Herodotos In Egypt.
Chapter VII. In The Steps Of Herodotos.
Chapter VIII. Memphis And The Fayyûm.
Appendices.
Appendix I.
Appendix II. Biblical Dates.
Appendix III. The Greek Writers Upon Egypt.
Appendix IV. Archæological Excursions In The Delta.
Index.
Footnotes
PREFACE
A few words of preface are needful to justify the addition of another
contribution to the over-abundant mass of literature of which Egypt is the
subject. It is intended to supplement the books already in the hands of
tourists and students, and to put before them just that information which
either is not readily accessible or else forms part of larger and cumbrous
works. The travels of Herodotos in Egypt are followed for the first time
in the light of recent discoveries, and the history of the intercourse
between the Egyptians and the Jews is brought down to the age of the Roman
Empire. As the ordinary histories of Egypt used by travellers end with the
extinction of the native Pharaohs, I have further given a sketch of the
Ptolemaic period. I have moreover specially noted the results of the
recent excavations and discoveries made by the Egypt Exploration Fund and
by Professor Flinders Petrie, at all events where they bear upon the
subject-matter of the book. Those who have not the publications of the
Fund or of Professor Petrie, or who do not care to carry them into Egypt,
will, I believe, be glad to have the essence of them thus extracted in a
convenient shape. Lastly, in the Appendices I have put together
information which the visitor to the Nile often wishes to obtain, but
which he can find in none of his guide-books. The Appendix on the nomes
embodies the results of the latest researches, and the list will therefore
be found to differ here and there from the lists which have been published
elsewhere. Those who desire the assistance of maps should procure the very
handy and complete _Atlas of Ancient Egypt_, published by the Egypt
Exploration Fund (price 3s. 6d.). It makes the addition of maps to this or
any future work on Ancient Egypt superfluous.
Discoveries follow so thickly one upon the other in these days of active
exploration that it is impossible for an author to keep pace with them.
Since my manuscript was ready for the press Dr. Naville, on behalf of the
Egypt Exploration Fund, has practically cleared the magnificent temple of
Queen Hatshepsu at Dêr el-Bâhari, and has discovered beneath it the
unfinished sepulchre in which the queen fondly hoped that her body would
be laid; Professor Petrie has excavated in the desert behind Zawêdeh and
opposite Qoft the tombs of barbarous tribes, probably of Libyan origin,
who settled in the valley of the Nile between the fall of the sixth and
the rise of the eleventh dynasty; Mr. de Morgan has disinterred more
jewellery of exquisite workmanship from the tombs of the princesses of the
twelfth dynasty at Dahshûr; and Dr. Botti has discovered the site of the
Serapeum at Alexandria, thus obtaining for the first time a point of
importance for determining the topography of the ancient city.
The people whose remains have been found by Professor Petrie buried their
dead in open situated in the central court. But his most interesting
discovery is that of long subterranean passages, once faced with masonry,
and furnished with niches for lamps, where the mysteries of Serapis were
celebrated. At the entrance of one of them pious visitors to the shrine
have scratched their vows on the wall of rock. Those who are interested in
the discovery should consult Dr. Botti’s memoir on _L’Acropole
d’Alexandrie et le Sérapeum_, presented to the Archæological Society of
Alexandria, 17th August 1895.
Two or three other recent discoveries may also find mention here. A
Babylonian seal-cylinder now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art at New York
has at last given me a clue to the native home of the Hyksos leaders. This
was in the mountains of Elam, on the eastern frontier of Chaldæa. It was
from these mountains that the Kassi descended upon Babylonia and founded a
dynasty there which lasted for nearly 600 years, and the same movement
which brought them into Babylonia may have sent other bands of them across
Western Asia into Egypt. At all events, the inscription upon the seal
shows that it belonged to a certain Uzi-Sutakh, “the son of the Kassite,”
and “the servant of Burna-buryas,” who was the Kassite king of Babylonia
in the age of the Tel el-Amarna correspondence. As the name of Sutakh is
preceded by the determinative of divinity, it is clear that we have in it
the name of the Hyksos deity Sutekh.
In a hieroglyphic stela lately discovered at Saqqârah, and now in the
Gizeh Museum, we read of an earlier parallel to the Tyrian Camp at Memphis
seen by Herodotos. We learn from the stela that, in the time of King Ai,
in the closing days of the eighteenth dynasty, there was already a similar
“Camp” or quarter at Memphis which was assigned to the Hittites. The
inscription is further interesting as showing that the authority of Ai was
acknowledged at Memphis, the capital of Northern Egypt, as well as in the
Thebaid.
Lastly, Professor Hommel seems to have found the name of the Zakkur or
Zakkal, the kinsfolk and associates of the Philistines, in a broken
cuneiform text which relates to one of the Kassite kings of Babylonia not
long before the epoch of Khu-n-Aten. Here mention is made not only of the
city of Arka in Phœnicia, but also of the city of Zaqqalû. In Zaqqalû we
must recognise the Zakkur of Egyptian history. I may add that Khar or
Khal, the name given by the Egyptians to the southern portion of
Palestine, is identified by Professor Maspero with the Horites of the Old
Testament.
By way of conclusion, I have only to say that those who wish to read a
detailed account of the manner in which the great colossus of Ramses II.
at Memphis was raised and its companion statue disinterred must refer to
the Paper published by Major Arthur H. Bagnold himself in the
_Proceedings_ of the Society of Biblical Archæology for June 1888.
A. H. Sayce.
_October 1895._
CHAPTER I. THE PATRIARCHAL AGE.
“Abram went down into Egypt to sojourn there.” When he entered the country
the civilisation and monarchy of Egypt were already very old. The pyramids
had been built hundreds of years before, and the origin of the Sphinx was
already a mystery. Even the great obelisk of Heliopolis, which is still
the object of an afternoon drive to the tourist at Cairo, had long been
standing in front of the temple of the Sun-god.
The monuments of Babylonia enable us to fix the age to which Abraham
belongs. Arioch of Ellasar has left memorials of himself on the bricks of
Chaldæa, and we now know when he and his Elamite allies were driven out of
Babylonia and the Babylonian states were united into a single monarchy.
This was 2350 B.C.
The united monarchy of Egypt went back to a far earlier date. Menes, its
founder, had been king of This (or Girgeh) in Upper Egypt, and starting
from his ancestral dominions had succeeded in bringing all Egypt under his
rule. But the memory of an earlier time, when the valley of the Nile was
divided into two separate sovereignties, survived to the latest age of the
monarchy. Up to the last the Pharaohs of Egypt called themselves “kings of
the two lands,” and wore on their heads the crowns of Upper and Lower
Egypt. The crown of Upper Egypt was a tiara of white linen, that of Lower
Egypt a throne-like head-dress of red. The double crown was a symbol of
the imperial power.
To Menes is ascribed the building of Memphis, the capital of the united
kingdom. He is said to have raised the great dyke which Linant de
Bellefonds identifies with that of Kosheish near Kafr el-Ayyât, and
thereby to have diverted the Nile from its ancient channel under the
Libyan plain. On the ground that he thus added to the western bank of the
river his new capital was erected.
Memphis is the Greek form of the old Egyptian Men-nefer or “Good Place.”
The final _r_ was dropped in Egyptian pronunciation at an early date, and
thus arose the Hebrew forms of the name, Moph and Noph, which we find in
the Old Testament,(1) while “Memphis” itself—Mimpi in the cuneiform
inscriptions of Assyria—has the same origin. Another name by which it went
in old Egyptian times was Anbu-hez, “the white wall,” from the great wall
of brick, covered with white stucco, which surrounded it, and of which
traces still remain on the northern side of the old site. Here a fragment
of the ancient fortification still rises above the mounds of the city; the
wall is many feet thick, and the sun-dried bricks of which it is formed
are bonded together with the stems of palms.
In the midst of the mounds is a large and deep depression, which is filled
with water during the greater part of the year. It marks the site of the
sacred lake, which was attached to every Egyptian temple, and in which the
priests bathed themselves and washed the vessels of the sanctuary. Here,
not long ago, lay the huge colossus of limestone which represented Ramses
II. of the nineteenth dynasty, and had been presented by the Egyptian
Khedive to the British Government. But it was too heavy and unwieldy for
modern engineers to carry across the sea, and it was therefore left lying
with its face prone in the mud and water of the ancient lake, a prey to
the first comer who needed a quarry of stone. It was not until after the
English occupation of Egypt that it was lifted out of its ignoble position
by Major Bagnold and placed securely in a wooden shed. While it was being
raised another colossus of the same Pharaoh, of smaller size but of better
workmanship, was discovered, and lifted beyond the reach of the
inundation.
The two statues once stood before the temple of the god Ptah, whom the
Greeks identified with their own deity Hephæstos, for no better reason
than the similarity of name. The temple of Ptah was coeval with the city
of Memphis itself. When Menes founded Memphis, he founded the temple at
the same time. It was the centre and glory of the city, which was placed
under the protection of its god. Pharaoh after Pharaoh adorned and
enlarged it, and its priests formed one of the most powerful organisations
in the kingdom.
The temple of Ptah, the Creator, gave to Memphis its sacred name. This was
Hâ-ka-Ptah, “the house of the double (or spiritual appearance) of Ptah,”
in which Dr. Brugsch sees the original of the Greek Aigyptos.
But the glories of the temple of Ptah have long since passed away. The
worship of its god ceased for ever when Theodosius, the Roman Emperor,
closed its gates, and forbade any other religion save the Christian to be
henceforth publicly professed in the empire. Soon afterwards came the
Mohammedan conquest of Egypt. Memphis was deserted; and the sculptured
stones of the ancient shrine served to build the palaces and mosques of
the new lords of the country. Fostât and Cairo were built out of the
spoils of the temple of Ptah. But the work of destruction took long to
accomplish. As late as the twelfth century, the Arabic writer ’Abd
el-Latîf describes the marvellous relics of the past which still existed
on the site of Memphis. Colossal statues, the bases of gigantic columns, a
chapel formed of a single block of stone and called “the green
chamber”—such were some of the wonders of ancient art which the traveller
was forced to admire.
The history of Egypt, as we have seen, begins with the record of an
engineering feat of the highest magnitude. It is a fitting commencement
for the history of a country which has been wrested by man from the waters
of the Nile, and whose existence even now is dependent on the successful
efforts of the engineer. Beyond this single record, the history of Menes
and his immediate successors is virtually a blank. No dated monuments of
the first dynasty have as yet been discovered. It may be, as many
Egyptologists think, that the Sphinx is older than Menes himself; but if
so, that strange image, carved out of a rock which may once have jutted
into the stream of the Nile, still keeps the mystery of its origin locked
up in its breast. We know that it was already there in the days of
Khephrên of the fourth dynasty; but beyond that we know nothing.
Of the second dynasty a dated record still survives. Almost the first gift
received by the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford was the lintel-stone of an
ancient Egyptian tomb, brought from Saqqârah, the necropolis of Memphis,
by Dr. Greaves at the end of the seventeenth century. When, more than a
century later, the hieroglyphics upon it came to be read, it was found
that it had belonged to the sepulchre of a certain Sheri who had been the
“prophet” of the two Pharaohs Send and Per-ab-sen. Of Per-ab-sen no other
record remains, but the name of Send had long been known as that of a king
of the second dynasty.
The rest of Sheri’s tomb, so far as it has been preserved, is now in the
Gizeh Museum. Years after the inscription on the fragment at Oxford had
been deciphered, the hinder portion of the tomb was discovered by
Mariette. Like the lintel-stone in the Ashmolean Museum, it is adorned
with sculptures and hieroglyphics. Already, we learn from it, the
hieroglyphic system of writing was complete, the characters being used not
only to denote ideas and express syllables, but alphabetically as well.
The name of Send himself is spelt in the letters of the alphabet. The art
of the monument, though not equal to that which prevailed a few
generations later, is already advanced, while the texts show that the
religion and organisation of the empire were already old. In the age of
the second dynasty, at all events, we are far removed from the beginnings
of Egyptian civilisation.
With Snefru, the first king of the fourth dynasty, or, according to
another reckoning, the last king of the third, we enter upon the
monumental history of Egypt. Snefru’s monuments are to be found, not only
in Egypt, but also in the deserts of Sinai. There the mines of copper and
malachite were worked for him, and an Egyptian garrison kept guard upon
the Bedouin tribes. In Egypt, as has now been definitely proved by
Professor Petrie’s excavations, he built the pyramid of Medûm, one of the
largest and most striking of the pyramids. Around it were ranged the tombs
of his nobles and priests, from which have come some of the most beautiful
works of art in the Gizeh Museum.
The painted limestone statues of Ra-nefer and his wife Nefert, for
instance, are among the finest existing specimens of ancient Egyptian
workmanship. They are clearly life-like portraits, executed with a
delicacy and finish which might well excite the envy of a modern artist.
The character, and even the antecedents of the husband and wife, breathe
through their features. While in the one we can see the strong will and
solid common-sense of the self-made man, in the other can be traced the
culture and refinement of a royal princess.
The pyramids of Gizeh are the imperishable record of the fourth dynasty.
Khufu, Khaf-Ra and Men-ka-Ra, the Kheops, Khephrên and Mykerinos of
Herodotos, were the builders of the three vast sepulchres which, by their
size and nearness to Cairo, have so long been an object of pilgrimage to
the traveller. The huge granite blocks of the Great Pyramid of Khufu have
been cut and fitted together with a marvellous exactitude. Professor
Petrie found that the joints of the casing-stones, with an area of some
thirty-five square feet each, were not only worked with an accuracy equal
to that of the modern optician, but were even cemented throughout. “Though
the stones were brought as close as 1/500 inch, or, in fact, into contact,
and the mean opening of the joint was 1/50 inch, yet the builders managed
to fill the joint with cement, despite the great area of it and the weight
of the stone to be moved—some sixteen tons. To merely place such stones in
exact contact at the sides would be careful work; but to do so with cement
in the joints seems almost impossible.”(2)
Professor Petrie believes that the stones were cut with tubular drills
fitted with jewel points—a mode of cutting stone which it was left to the
nineteenth century to re-discover. The lines marked upon the stone by the
drills can still be observed, and there is evidence that not only the tool
but the stone also was rotated. The great pressure needed for driving the
drills and saws with the requisite rapidity through the blocks of granite
and diorite is indeed surprising. It brings before us the high mechanical
knowledge attained by the Egyptians in the fourth millennium before our
era even more forcibly than the heights to which the blocks were raised.
The machinery, however, with which this latter work was effected is still
unknown.
The sculptured and painted walls of the tombs which surround the pyramids
of Gizeh tell us something about the life and civilisation of the period.
The government was a highly organised bureaucracy, under a king who was
already regarded as the representative of the Sun-god upon earth. The land
was inhabited by an industrious people, mainly agricultural, who lived in
peace and plenty. Arts and crafts of all kinds were cultivated, including
that of making glass. The art of the sculptor had reached a high
perfection. One of the most striking statues in the world is that of
Khaf-Ra seated on his imperial throne, which is now in the Museum of
Gizeh. The figure of the king is more than life-size; above his head the
imperial hawk stretches forth its wings, and on the king’s face, though
the features bear the unmistakable impress of a portrait, there rests an
aspect of divine calm. And yet this statue, with its living portraiture
and exquisite finish, is carved out of a dioritic rock, the hardest of
hard stone.
The fourth dynasty was peaceably succeeded by the fifth and the sixth.
Culture and cultivation made yet further progress, and the art of the
painter and sculptor reached its climax. Those whose knowledge of Egyptian
art is derived from the museums of Europe have little idea of the
perfection which it attained at this remote period. The hard and
crystallised art of later ages differed essentially from that of the early
dynasties. The wooden figure of the ’Sheikh el-Beled’—the sleek and
well-to-do farmer, who gazes complacently on his fertile fields and
well-stocked farm—is one of the noblest works of human genius. And yet it
belongs to the age of the fifth or the sixth dynasty, like the pictures in
low relief, resembling exquisite embroidery on stone, which cover the
walls of the tombs of Ti and Ptah-hotep at Saqqârah.
The first six dynasties constitute what Egyptologists call the Old Empire.
They ended with a queen, Nit-aqer (the Greek Nitôkris), and Egypt passed
under sudden eclipse. For several centuries it lies concealed from the eye
of history. A few royal names alone are preserved; other records there are
as yet none. What befell the country and its rulers we do not know.
Whether it was foreign invasion or civil war, or the internal decay of the
government, certain it is that disaster overshadowed for a while the
valley of the Nile. It may be that the barbarian tribes, whose tombs
Professor Petrie has lately discovered in the desert opposite Qoft, and
whom he believes to have been of Libyan origin, were the cause. With the
tenth dynasty light begins again to dawn. Mr. Griffith has shown that some
at least of the tombs cut out of the cliffs behind Siût belonged to that
era, and that Ka-meri-Ra, whose name appears in one of them, was a king of
the tenth dynasty. The fragmentary inscription, which can still be traced
on the walls of the tomb, seems to allude to the successful suppression of
a civil war.
The eleventh dynasty arose at Thebes, of which its founders were the
hereditary chiefs. It introduces us to the so-called Middle Empire. But
the Egypt of the Middle Empire was no longer the Egypt of the Old Empire.
The age of the great pyramid-builders was past, and the tomb carved in the
rock begins to take the place of the pyramid of the earlier age. Memphis
has ceased to be the capital of the country; the centre of power has been
transferred to Thebes and the south. The art which flourished at Memphis
has been superseded by the art with which our museums have made us
familiar. With the transfer of the government, moreover, from north to
south, Egyptian religion has undergone a change. Ptah of Memphis and Ra of
Heliopolis have had to yield to Amon, the god of Thebes. The god of the
house of the new Pharaohs now takes his place at the head of the pantheon,
and the older gods of the north fall more and more into the background.
The Egypt of the Middle Empire was divided among a number of great
princes, who had received their power and property by inheritance, and
resembled the great lords of the feudal age. The Pharaoh at first was
little more than the chief among his peers. But when the sceptre passed
into the vigorous hands of the kings of the twelfth dynasty, the influence
and authority of the feudal princes was more and more encroached upon. A
firm government at home and successful campaigns abroad restored the
supreme rule of the Pharaoh and made him, perhaps more than had ever been
the case before, a divinely-instituted autocrat.
The wars of the twelfth dynasty extended the Egyptian domination far to
the south. The military organisation of the Middle Empire was indeed its
most striking point of contrast to the Old Empire. The Egypt of the first
six dynasties had been self-contained and pacific. A few raids were made
from time to time against the negroes south of the First Cataract, but
only for the sake of obtaining slaves. The idea of extending Egyptian
power beyond the natural boundaries of Egypt has as yet never presented
itself. The Pharaohs of the Old Empire did not need an army, and
accordingly did not possess one. But with the Middle Empire all this was
changed. Egypt ceases to be isolated: its history will be henceforth part
of the history of the world. Foreign wars, however, and the organisation
of a strong government at home, did not absorb the whole energies of the
court. Temples and obelisks were erected, art was patronised, and the
creation of the Fayyûm, whereby a large tract of fertile land was won for
Egypt, not only proved the high engineering skill of the age of the
twelfth dynasty, but constituted a solid claim for gratitude to its
creator, Amon-em-hat III., on the part of all succeeding generations.
The thirteenth dynasty followed in the footsteps of its predecessor. We
possess the names of more than one hundred and fifty kings who belonged to
it, and their monuments were scattered from one end of Egypt to the other.
The fourteenth dynasty ended in disaster. Egypt was invaded by Asiatic
hordes, and the line of native Pharaohs was for a time extinct.
The invaders were called by Manetho, the Egyptian historian, the Hyksos or
Shepherd Princes: on the monuments they are known as the Aamu or
“Asiatics.” At first, we are told, their progress was marked by massacre
and destruction. The temples were profaned and overthrown, the cities
burned with fire. But after a while the higher culture of the conquered
people overcame the conquerors. A king arose among the invaders who soon
adopted the prerogatives and state of the Pharaohs. The fifteenth,
sixteenth, and seventeenth dynasties were Hyksos.
Recent discoveries have proved that at one time the dominion of the Hyksos
extended, if not to the first cataract, at all events far to the south of
Thebes. Their monuments have been found at Gebelên and El-Kab. Gradually,
however, the native princes recovered their power in Upper Egypt. While
the seventeenth Hyksos dynasty was reigning at Zoan, or Tanis, in the
north, a seventeenth Egyptian dynasty was ruling at Thebes. But the
princes of Thebes did not as yet venture to claim the imperial title. They
still acknowledged the supremacy of the foreign Pharaoh.
The war of independence broke out in the reign of the Hyksos king Apopi.
According to the Egyptian legend, Apopi had sent messengers to the prince
of Thebes, bidding him worship none other god than Baal-Sutekh, the Hyksos
divinity. But Amon-Ra of Thebes avenged the dishonour that had been done
him, and stirred up his adorers to successful revolt. For five generations
the war went on, and ended with the complete expulsion of the stranger.
Southern Egypt first recovered its independence, then Memphis fell, and
finally the Hyksos conquerors were driven out of Zoan, their capital, and
confined to the fortress of Avaris, on the confines of Asia. But even here
they were not safe from the avenging hand of the Egyptian. Ahmes I., the
founder of the eighteenth dynasty, drove them from their last refuge and
pursued them into Palestine.
The land which had sent forth its hordes to conquer Egypt was now in turn
to be conquered by the Egyptians. The war was carried into Asia, and the
struggle for independence became a struggle for empire. Under the Pharaohs
of the eighteenth dynasty, Egypt, for the first time in its history,
became a great military state. Army after army poured out of the gates of
Thebes, and brought back to it the spoils of the known world. Ethiopia and
Syria alike felt the tread of the Egyptian armies, and had alike to bow
the neck to Egyptian rule. Canaan became an Egyptian province, Egyptian
garrisons were established in the far north on the frontiers of the
Hittite tribes, and the boundaries of the Pharaoh’s empire were pushed to
the banks of the Euphrates.
It is probable that Abraham did not enter Egypt until after the Hyksos
conquest. But before the rise of the eighteenth dynasty Egyptian
chronology is uncertain. We have to reckon it by dynasties rather than by
years. According to Manetho, the Old Empire lasted 1478 years, and a
considerable interval must be allowed for the troublous times which
intervened between its fall and the beginning of the Middle Empire. We
learn from the Turin papyrus—a list of the Egyptian kings and dynasties
compiled in the time of Ramses II., but now, alas! in tattered
fragments—that the tenth dynasty lasted 355 years and 10 days, the
eleventh dynasty 243 years. The duration of the twelfth dynasty is known
from the monuments (165 years 2 months), that of the thirteenth, with its
more than one hundred and fifty kings, cannot have been short. How long
the Hyksos rule endured it is difficult to say. Africanus, quoting from
Manetho, as Professor Erman has shown, makes it 953 years, with which the
fragment quoted by Josephus from the Egyptian historian also agrees. In
this case the Hyksos conquest of Egypt would have taken place about 2550
B.C.
Unfortunately the original work of Manetho is lost, and we are dependent
for our knowledge of it on later writers, most of whom sought to harmonise
its chronology with that of the Septuagint. When we further remember the
corruptions undergone by numerical figures in passing through the hands of
the copyists, it is clear that we cannot place implicit confidence in the
Manethonian numbers as they have come down to us. Indeed, the writers who
have recorded them do not always agree together, and we find the names of
kings arbitrarily omitted or the length of their reigns shortened in order
to force the chronology into agreement with that of the author. The
twelfth dynasty reigned 134 years according to Eusebius, 160 years
according to Africanus; its real duration was 165 years, 2 months, and 12
days.
With the help of certain astronomical data furnished by the monuments, Dr.
Mahler, the Viennese astronomer, has succeeded in determining the exact
date of the reigns of the two most famous monarchs of the eighteenth and
nineteenth dynasties, Thothmes III. and Ramses II. Thothmes III. reigned
from the 20th of March B.C. 1503 to the 14th of February B.C. 1449, while
the reign of Ramses II. lasted from B.C. 1348 to B.C. 1281. The date of
Thothmes III. enables us to fix the beginning of the eighteenth dynasty
about B.C. 1570.
The dynasties of Manetho were successive and not contemporaneous. This
fact was one of the main results of the excavations and discoveries of
Mariette Pasha. The old attempts to form artificial schemes of
chronology—which, however, satisfied no one but their authors—upon the
supposition that some of the dynasties reigned together are now
discredited for ever. Every fresh discovery made in Egypt, which adds to
our knowledge of ancient Egyptian history, makes the fact still more
certain. There were epochs, indeed, when more than one line of kings
claimed sway in the valley of the Nile, but when such was the case,
Manetho selected what he or his authorities considered the sole legitimate
dynasty, and disregarded every other. Of the two rival twenty-first
dynasties which the monuments have brought to light, the lists of Manetho
recognise but one, and the Assyrian rule in Egypt at a subsequent date is
ignored in favour of the princes of Sais who were reigning at the same
time.
If, then, any reliance is to be placed on the length of time ascribed to
the Hyksos dominion in the valley of the Nile, and if we are still to hold
to the old belief of Christendom and see in the Hebrew wanderer into Egypt
the Abram who contended against Chedor-laomer and the subject kings of
Babylonia, it would have been about two centuries after the settlement of
the Asiatic conquerors in the Delta that Abraham and Sarah arrived at
their court. The court was doubtless held at Zoan, the modern Sân. Here
was the Hyksos capital, and its proximity to the Asiatic frontier of Egypt
made it easy of access to a traveller from Palestine. We are told in the
Book of Numbers (xiii. 22) that Hebron was built seven years before Zoan
in Egypt; and it may be that the building here referred to was that which
caused Zoan to become the seat of the Hyksos power.
Asiatic migration into Egypt was no new thing. On the walls of one of the
tombs of Beni-Hassan there is pictured the arrival of thirty-seven Aamu or
Asiatics “of Shu,” in the sixth year of Usertesen II. of the twelfth
dynasty. Under the conduct of their chief, Ab-sha, they came from the
mountains of the desert, bringing with them gazelles as well as kohl for
the ladies of the court. Four women in long bright-coloured robes walk
between groups of bearded men, and two children are carried in a pannier
on a donkey’s back. The men are armed with bows, their feet are shod with
sandals, and they wear the vari-coloured garments for which the people of
Phœnicia were afterwards famed.
After the Hyksos conquest Asiatic migration must naturally have largely
increased. Between northern Egypt and Palestine there must have been a
constant passage to and fro. The rulers of the land of the Nile were now
themselves of Asiatic extraction, and it may be that the language of
Palestine was spoken in the court of the Pharaoh. At all events, the
emigrant from Canaan no longer found himself an alien and a stranger in
“the land of Ham.” His own kin were now supreme there, and a welcome was
assured to him whenever he might choose to come. The subject population
tilled their fields for the benefit of their foreign lords, and the
benefit was shared by the inhabitants of Canaan. In case of famine,
Palestine could now look to the never-failing soil of Egypt for its supply
of corn.
If, therefore, Abraham lived in the age when northern Egypt was subject to
the rule of the Hyksos Pharaohs, nothing was more natural than for him, an
Asiatic emigrant into Canaan, to wander into Egypt when the corn of
Palestine had failed. He would but be following in the wake of that larger
Asiatic migration which led to the rise of the Hyksos dynasties
themselves.
There is, however, a statement connected with his residence at the court
of the Pharaoh which does not seem compatible with the evidence of the
monuments. We are told that among the gifts showered upon him by the king
were not only sheep and oxen and asses, but camels as well. The camel was
the constant companion of the Asiatic nomad. As far back as we can trace
the history of the Bedouin, he has been accompanied by the animal which
the old Sumerian population of Babylonia called the beast which came from
the Persian Gulf. Indeed, it would appear that to the Bedouin belongs the
credit of taming the camel, in so far as it has been tamed at all. But to
the Egyptians it was practically unknown. Neither in the hieroglyphics,
nor on the sculptured and painted walls of the temples and tombs, do we
anywhere find it represented. The earliest mention of it yet met with in
an Egyptian document is in a papyrus of the age of the Exodus, and there
it bears the Semitic name of _kamail_, the Hebrew _gamal_.(3) Naturalists
have shown that it was not introduced into the northern coast of Africa
until after the beginning of the Christian era.
Nevertheless it does not follow that because the camel was never used in
Egypt by the natives of the country, it was not at times brought there by
nomad visitors from Arabia and Palestine. It is difficult to conceive of
an Arab family on the march without a train of camels. And that camels
actually found their way into the valley of the Nile has been proved by
excavation. When Hekekyan Bey, in 1851-54, was sinking shafts in the Nile
mud at Memphis for the Geological Society of London, he found, among other
animal remains, the bones of dromedaries.(4)
The name of the Pharaoh visited by Abraham is not told to us. As elsewhere
in Genesis, the king of Egypt is referred to only by his official title.
This title of “Pharaoh” was one which went back to the early days of the
monarchy. It represents the Egyptian Per-âa, or “Great House,” and is of
repeated occurrence in the inscriptions. All power and government emanated
from the royal palace, and accordingly, just as we speak of the “Sublime
Porte” or “Lofty Gate” when we mean the Sultan of Turkey, so the Egyptians
spoke of their own sovereign as the Pharaoh or “Great House.” To this day
the king of Japan is called the Mi-kado, or “Lofty Gate.”
That the Hyksos princes should have assumed the title of their
predecessors on the throne of Egypt is not surprising. The monuments have
shown us how thoroughly Egyptianised they soon became. The court of the
Hyksos Pharaoh differed but little, if at all, from that of the native
Pharaoh. The invaders rapidly adopted the culture of the conquered people,
and with it their manners, customs, and even language. The most famous
mathematical treatise which Egypt has bequeathed to us was written for a
Hyksos king. It may be that the old language of Asia was retained, at all
events for a time, by the side of the language of the subject population;
but if so, its position must have been like that of Turkish by the side of
Arabic in Egypt during the reign of Mohammed Ali. For several centuries
the Hyksos could be described as Egyptians, and the dynasties of the
Hyksos Pharaohs are counted by the Egyptian historian among the legitimate
dynasties of his country.
It was only in the matter of religion that the Hyksos court kept itself
distinct from its native subjects. The supreme god of the Hyksos princes
was Sutekh, in whom we must see a form of the Semitic Baal. As has already
been stated, Egyptian legend ascribed the origin of the war of
independence to a demand on the part of the Hyksos Pharaoh Apopi that the
prince and the god of Thebes should acknowledge the supremacy of the
Hyksos deity. But even in the matter of religion the Hyksos princes could
not help submitting to the influence of the old Egyptian civilisation. Ra,
the sun-god of Heliopolis, was identified with Sutekh, and even Apopi
added to his name the title of Ra, and so claimed to be an incarnation of
the Egyptian sun-god, like the native Pharaohs who had gone before him.
When next we hear of Egypt in the Old Testament, it is when Israel is
about to become a nation. Joseph was sold by his brethren to merchants
from Arabia, who carried him into Egypt. There he became the slave of
Potiphar, “the eunuch of Pharaoh and chief of the executioners,” or royal
body-guard. The name of Potiphar, like that of Potipherah, the priest of
On, corresponds with the Egyptian Pa-tu-pa-Ra, “the Gift of the Sun-god.”
It has been asserted by Egyptologists that names of this description are
not older than the age of the twenty-second dynasty, to which Shishak, the
contemporary of Rehoboam, belonged; but because no similar name of an
earlier date has hitherto been found, it does not follow that such do not
exist. As long as our materials are imperfect, we cannot draw positive
conclusions merely from an absence of evidence.
That Potiphar should have been an eunuch and yet been married seems a
greater obstacle to our acceptance of the story. This, however, it need
not be. Eunuchs in the modern East, who have risen to positions of power
and importance, have possessed their harems like other men. In ancient
Babylonia it was only the service of religion which the eunuch was
forbidden to enter. Such was doubtless the case in Egypt also.
Egyptian research has brought to light a curious parallel to the history
of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife. It is found in one of the many tales, the
equivalents of the modern novel, in which the ancient Egyptians delighted.
The tale, which is usually known as that of “The Two Brothers,” was
written by the scribe Enna for Seti II. of the nineteenth dynasty when he
was still crown-prince, and it embodies the folk-lore of his native land.
Enna lived under Meneptah, the probable Pharaoh of the Exodus, and his
work was thus contemporaneous with the events which brought about the
release of the Israelites from their “house of bondage.” How old the
stories may be upon which it is based it is impossible for us to tell.
Here is Professor Erman’s translation of the commencement of the tale:—
“Once upon a time there were two brothers, born of one mother and of one
father; the elder was called Anup, the younger Bata. Now Anup possessed a
house and had a wife, whilst his younger brother lived with him as a son.
He it was who wove (?) for him, and drove his cattle to the fields, who
ploughed and reaped; he it was who directed all the business of the farm
for him. The younger brother was a good (farmer); the like of whom was not
to be found throughout the country.” One day Anup sent Bata from the field
to the house to fetch seed-corn. “And he sent his younger brother,(5) and
said to him: Hasten and bring me seed-corn from the village. And his
younger brother found the wife of his elder brother occupied in combing
her hair. And he said to her: Rise up, give me seed-corn that I may return
to the field, for thus has my elder brother enjoined me, to return without
delaying. The woman said to him: Go in, open the chest, that thou mayst
take what thine heart desires, for otherwise my locks will fall to the
ground. And the youth went within into the stable, and took thereout a
large vessel, for it was his will to carry out much seed-corn. And he
loaded himself with wheat and dhurra and went out with it. Then she said
to him: How great is the burden in thy arms? He said to her: Two measures
of dhurra and three measures of wheat make together five measures which
rest on my arms. Thus he spake to her. But she spake to the youth and
said: How great is thy strength! Well have I remarked thy power many a
time. And her heart knew him.... And she stood up and laid hold of him and
said unto him: Come let us celebrate an hour’s repose; the most beautiful
things shall be thy portion, for I will prepare for thee festal garments.
Then was the youth like unto the panther of the south for rage on account
of the wicked word which she had spoken to him. But she was afraid beyond
all measure. And he spoke to her and said: Thou, oh woman, hast been like
a mother to me and thy husband like a father, for he is older than I, so
that he might have been my begetter. Wherefore this great sin that thou
hast spoken unto me? Say it not to me another time, then will I this time
not tell it, and no word of it shall come out of my mouth to any man at
all. And he loaded himself with his burden and went out into the field.
And he went to his elder brother, and they completed their day’s work. And
when it was evening, the elder brother returned home to his house. And his
younger brother followed behind his oxen, having laden himself with all
the good things of the field, and he drove his oxen before him to bring
them to the stable. And behold the wife of his elder brother was afraid
because of the word which she had spoken, and she took a jar of fat and
was like to one to whom an evil-doer had offered violence, since she
wished to say to her husband: Thy younger brother has offered me violence.
And her husband returned home at evening, according to his daily custom,
and found his wife lying stretched out and suffering from injury. She
poured no water over his hands, as was her custom; she had not lighted the
lights for him, so that his house was in darkness, and she lay there ill.
And her husband said to her: Who has had to do with thee? Lift thyself up!
She said to him: No one has had to do with me except thy younger brother,
since when he came to take seed-corn for thee, he found me sitting alone
and said to me, ‘Come, let us make merry an hour and repose: let down thy
hair!’ Thus he spake to me; but I did not listen to him (but said), ‘See!
am I not thy mother, and is not thy elder brother like a father to thee?’
Thus I spoke to him, but he did not hearken to my speech, but used force
with me that I might not tell thee. Now if thou allow him to live I will
kill myself.
“Then the elder brother began to rage like a panther: he sharpened his
knife and took it in his hand. And the elder brother stood behind the door
of the stable in order to kill the youth when he came back in the evening
to bring the oxen into the stable. Now when the sun was setting and he had
laden himself with all the good things of the field, according to his
custom, he returned (to the house). And his cow that first entered the
stable said to him: Beware! there stands thy elder brother before thee
with his knife in order to kill thee; run away from him! So he heard what
the first cow said. Then the second entered and spake likewise. He looked
under the door of the stable, and saw the feet of his brother, who was
standing behind the door with his knife in his hand. He threw his burden
on the ground and began to run away quickly. His elder brother ran after
him with his knife in his hand.”
Ra, the sun-god, however, came to the help of the innocent youth, and
interposed a river full of crocodiles between him and his pursuer. All
night long the two brothers stood on either side of the water; in the
morning Bata convinced his brother that he had done no wrong, and
reproached him for having believed that he could be guilty. Then he added:
“Go home now and see after thine oxen thyself, for I will no longer stay
with thee, but will go to the acacia valley.” So Anup returned to his
house, put his wife to death, and sat there in solitude and sadness.
Joseph, more fortunate than Bata, rose from his prison to the highest
office of state. The dreams, through which this was accomplished, were in
full keeping with the belief of the age. Dreams even to-day play an
important part in the popular faith of Egypt. In the days of the Pharaohs
it was the same. Thothmes IV. cleared away the sand that had overwhelmed
the Sphinx, and built a temple between its paws, in consequence of a dream
in which Ra-Harmakhis had appeared to him when, wearied with hunting, he
had lain down to sleep under the shadow of the ancient monument. A
thousand years later Nut-Amon of Ethiopia was summoned by a dream to march
into Egypt. In Greek days, when the temple of Abydos had fallen into ruin,
an oracle was established in one of its deserted chambers, and those who
consulted it received their answers in the “true dreams” that came to them
during the night. The dreams, however, needed at times an interpreter to
explain them, and of such an interpreter mention is made in a Greek
inscription from the Serapeum at Memphis. At other times the dreamer
himself could interpret his vision by the help of the books in which the
signification of dreams had been reduced to a science.
The dreams of Pharaoh and “his two eunuchs,” however, “the chief butler”
and “the chief baker,” were of a strange and novel kind, and there were no
books that could explain them. Even the “magicians” and “wise men” of
Egypt failed to understand the dream of Pharaoh. And yet, when the Hebrew
captive had pointed out its meaning, no doubt remained in the mind of
Pharaoh and his servants that he was right. From time immemorial the Nile
had been likened to a milch-cow, and the fertilising water which it spread
over the soil to the milk that sustains human life. The cow-headed goddess
Hathor or Isis watched over the fertility of Egypt. It was said of her
that she “caused the Nile to overflow at his due time,” and the “seven
great Hathors” were the seven forms under which she was worshipped. In the
seven kine, accordingly, which stood “upon the bank of the river” the
Egyptian readily saw the life-giving powers of the Nile.
It needed but the word of the Pharaoh to change the Hebrew slave into an
Egyptian ruler, second only to the monarch itself. His very name ceased to
be Semitic, and henceforth became Zaphnath-paaneah. He even allied himself
with the exclusive priesthood of Heliopolis or On, marrying Asenath, the
daughter of the priest of Ra. By name and marriage, as well as by
position, he was thus adopted into the ranks of the native aristocracy.
Such changes of name are not unknown to the inscriptions. From time to
time we meet with the records of foreigners who had settled down in the
valley of the Nile and there received new names of Egyptian origin. Thus a
monument found at Abydos tells us of a Canaanite from Bashan called
Ben-Azan, who received in Egypt the new name of Yu-pa-â and was the father
of a vizier of Meneptah, the Pharaoh of the Exodus. The Hittite wife of
Ramses II. similarly adopted an Egyptian name, and the tombstones of two
Karians are preserved, in which the Karian names of the dead are written
in the letters of the Karian alphabet, while a hieroglyphic text is
attached which gives the Egyptian names they had borne in Egypt.
The exact transcription in hieroglyphics of the Egyptian name of Joseph is
still doubtful. But it is plain that it contains the Egyptian words
_pa-ânkh_, “the life,” or “the living one,” which seem to be preceded by
the particle _nti_, “of.” The term _pa-ânkh_ is sometimes applied to the
Pharaoh, and since Kames, the last king of the seventeenth dynasty,
assumed the title of Zaf-n-to, “nourisher of the land,” it is possible
that in Zaphnath-paaneah we may see an Egyptian Zaf-nti-pa-ânkh,
“nourisher of the Pharaoh.” But the final solution of the question must be
left to future research.
It is now more easy to explain the cry which was raised before Joseph when
he went forth from the presence of the Pharaoh with the golden chain
around his neck and the royal signet upon his finger. “_Abrêk!_” they
shouted before him, and an explanation of the word has been vainly sought
in the Egyptian language. It really is of Babylonian origin. In the
primitive non-Semitic language of Chaldæa _abrik_ signified “a seer” or
“soothsayer,” and the term was borrowed by the Semitic Babylonians under
the two forms of _abrikku_ and _abarakku_. Joseph was thus proclaimed a
seer, and his exaltation was due to his power of foreseeing the future. It
was as a divinely-inspired seer that the subjects of the Pharaoh were to
reverence him.
How a Babylonian word like _abrek_ came to be used in Egypt it is idle for
us to inquire. Those who believe in the late origin and fictitious
character of the story of Joseph would find an easy explanation of it. But
easy explanations are not necessarily true, either in archæology or in
anything else. And since we now know that Canaan, long before the time of
Joseph, had fallen under Babylonian influence, that the Babylonian
language and writing were employed there, and that Babylonian words had
made their way into the native idiom, it does not require much stretch of
the imagination to suppose that such words may have also penetrated to the
court of the Asiatic rulers of northern Egypt. Up to the era of the
Exodus, Egypt and Canaan were for several centuries as closely connected
with each other as were England and the north of France in the age of the
Normans and Plantagenets.
The prosperity of Egypt depends upon the Nile. If the river rises to too
great a height during the period of inundation, the autumn crops are
damaged or destroyed. If, on the other hand, its rise is insufficient to
fill the canals and basins, or to reach the higher ground, the land
remains unwatered, and nothing will grow. Egypt, in fact, is the gift of
the Nile; let the channel of the great river be diverted elsewhere, and
the whole country would at once become an uninhabited desert.
A low Nile consequently brings with it a scarcity of food. When provisions
cannot be imported from abroad, famine is the necessary result, and the
population perishes in thousands. Such was the case in the eleventh and
twelfth centuries of our era, when the inundation was deficient for
several successive years. The Arabic writers, El-Makrîzî and Abd-el-Latîf,
describe the famines that ensued in terrible terms. Abd-el-Latîf was a
witness of that which lasted from A.D. 1200 to 1202, and of the horrors
which it caused. After eating grass, corpses, and even excrement, the
wretched inhabitants of the country began to devour one another. Mothers
were arrested in the act of cooking their own children, and it was unsafe
to walk in the streets for fear of being murdered for food.
The famine described by El-Makrîzî lasted, like that of Joseph, for seven
years, from A.D. 1064 to 1071, and was similarly occasioned by a deficient
Nile. A hieroglyphic inscription, discovered in 1888 by Mr. Wilbour in the
island of Sehêl, contains a notice of another famine of seven years, which
occurred at an earlier date. The island of Sehêl lies in the Cataract,
midway between Assouan and Philæ, and the inscription is carved on a block
of granite and looks towards the south. It is dated in the eighteenth year
of a king, who was probably one of the Ethiopian princes that reigned over
southern Egypt in the troublous age of the fourth and fifth Ptolemies.
According to Dr. Brugsch’s translation, it states that the king sent to
the governor of Nubia saying: “I am sorrowing upon my high throne over
those who belong to the palace. In sorrow is my heart for the vast
misfortune, because the Nile flood in my time has not come for seven
years. Light is the grain; there is lack of crops and of all kinds of
food. Each man has become a thief to his neighbour. They desire to hasten
and cannot walk; the child cries, the youth creeps along and the old man;
their souls are bowed down. Their legs are bent together and drag along
the ground, and their hands rest in their bosoms. The counsel of the great
ones of the court is but emptiness. Torn open are the chests of
provisions, but instead of contents there is air. Everything is
exhausted.” The text then goes on to declare how Khnum the Creator came to
the help of the Pharaoh, and caused the Nile once more to inundate the
lands. In return for this the king gave the priests of Khnum at
Elephantinê twenty miles of river bank on either side of the island,
together with tithes of all the produce of the country.
Dr. Brugsch has brought to light yet another record of a famine in Upper
Egypt which belongs to an older period. Among the rock-cut tombs of
El-Kab, where the princes of Thebes held their court in the days of the
Hyksos, is one which commemorates the name of a certain Baba. The name
occurs elsewhere at El-Kab, and was that of the father of “Captain Ahmes,”
whose tomb is one of the most interesting there, and who, in his youthful
days, assisted Ahmes of the eighteenth dynasty in driving the Hyksos from
their last fortress in Egypt. Baba enumerates his wealth and many good
deeds, and adds: “When a famine arose, lasting many years, I issued out
corn to the city.”
It may be that the famine here referred to is the famine of Joseph. All we
know about the date of Baba is that he lived in the age of the Hyksos. If
he flourished before the war of independence and in days when the
authority of the Hyksos Pharaoh was still paramount in Upper Egypt, we
should have good reason for believing that the famine of which he speaks
was the same as that described in Genesis. One of the results of the
latter was that the Egyptians parted with their lands and stock to Joseph,
so that henceforth they became the tenants of the Pharaoh, to whom they
paid a fifth of all their produce. If this statement is historical, the
administration of Joseph must have extended from one end of Egypt to the
other. His Hyksos master must have been like Apopi, of whom the Sallier
Papyrus tells us that “the entire country paid him tribute, together with
its manufactured products, and so loaded him with all the good things of
Egypt.”
The account of Joseph’s famine, however, betrays in one respect a sign of
later date. The famine is said to have extended to Canaan. But a famine in
Egypt and a famine in Canaan were not due to the same cause, and the
failure of the waters of the Nile would have no effect upon the crops of
Palestine. In Canaan it was the want of rain, not of the inundation of the
Nile, which produced a failure of corn. We hear from time to time, in the
inscriptions, of corn being sent from Egypt to Syria, but it was when
there was plenty on the banks of the Nile and a scarcity of rain on the
Syrian coast. The Hebrew writer has regarded the history of the past from
a purely Asiatic rather than an Egyptian point of view.
Joseph must have entered Egypt when it was still under Hyksos domination.
The promise made to Abraham (Gen. xv. 13) is very explicit: “Know of a
surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and
shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years.” Equally
explicit is the statement of the book of Exodus (xii. 40, 41): “The
sojourning of the children of Israel who dwelt in Egypt was four hundred
and thirty years. And it came to pass at the end of the four hundred and
thirty years, even the self-same day it came to pass, that all the hosts
of the Lord went out from the land of Egypt.” Here thirty years—the length
of a generation—are added to the four hundred during which the Israelites
were to be afflicted in the land of the foreigner. If the Exodus took
place in the latter years of the nineteenth dynasty—-and, as we shall see,
the Egyptian monuments forbid our placing it elsewhere—the four hundred
and thirty years of the Biblical narrative bring us to the beginning of
the last Hyksos dynasty.
It is a curious fact that Egyptian history also knows of an epoch of four
hundred years which covers almost the same period as the four hundred
years of Genesis. Mariette Pasha, when excavating at Sân, the ancient
Zoan, found a stela which had been erected in the reign of Ramses II. by
one of his officers, the governor of the Asiatic frontier. The stela
commemorates a visit to Sân made by the governor, on the fourth day of the
month Mesori, in the four hundredth year of “the king of Upper and Lower
Egypt, Set-âa-pehti, the son of the Sun who loved him, also named
Set-Nubti.” Since Set or Sutekh was the god of the Hyksos, while Sân was
the Hyksos capital, it is clear that Set-âa-pehti or Set-Nubti was a
Hyksos prince who claimed rule over the whole of Egypt, and with whom a
Hyksos era commenced. Professor Maspero and Dr. de Cara consider the
prince in question to have been really the god Sutekh himself; this,
however, is not the natural interpretation of the titles assigned to him,
and it is not improbable that Professor Wiedemann is right in identifying
him with a certain Hyksos Pharaoh, Set-[Nub?]ti, mentioned on a monument
discovered by Mariette at Tel-Mokdam. This latter Pharaoh is entitled “the
good god, the star of Upper and Lower Egypt, the son of the Sun, beloved
by Sutekh, the lord of Avaris.”
But whether or not the Hyksos Pharaoh of Tel-Mokdam is the same as
Set-Nubti of Sân, it would seem probable that the era connected with his
name marked the rise of the last Hyksos dynasty. According to Eusebius,
the leader of this dynasty was Saitês, a name which reminds us of
Set-âa-[pehti]. Eusebius makes the length of the dynasty 103 years, but
Africanus, a more trustworthy authority, gives it as 151 years. This would
assign the rise of the seventeenth dynasty, the last of Hyksos rule, to
about B.C. 1720, a date which agrees very well with that of the monument
of Sân.(6) The Exodus of the Israelites, if it took place in the reign of
Meneptah, would have happened about B.C. 1270 (or B.C. 1250, if it
occurred in the reign of Seti II., as Professor Maspero maintains); in
this case the 430 years of sojourning in the land of Egypt brings us to
B.C. 1700 (or 1680). This would be about twenty years after the
establishment of the last Hyksos line of Pharaohs, and one hundred and
thirty years before the foundation of the eighteenth dynasty. Joseph would
thus have been vizier of the country long before the war of independence
broke out, and there would have been time in abundance for him to have
lived and died before his friends and protectors were driven from the land
they had so long occupied.
Chronologically, therefore, the Biblical narrative fits in with the
requirements of Egyptian history, and allows us to see in the Hebrew
captive the powerful minister of a race of kings who, like himself, had
come from the highlands of Asia. But it must be remembered that it was
only in the north of Egypt that Hyksos rule made itself actually visible
to the eyes of the people. Southern Egypt was nominally governed by its
native princes, though they did not assume the title of king or Pharaoh.
They were _hiqu_, “hereditary chieftains,” the last representatives of the
royal families of earlier days. They acknowledged the supremacy of the
Hyksos Pharaoh, and tribute was sent to him from Thebes and El-Kab.
Though Memphis, the ancient capital of the country, was in the hands of
the strangers, Zoan, the Tanis of classical geography, was rather the seat
of Hyksos power. Protected by the marshes which surrounded it, Zoan, the
modern Sân, lay on the eastern side of the Delta at no great distance from
the frontier of Asia and the great Hyksos fortress of Avaris. From Zoan,
the “road of the Philistines,” as it is called in the Pentateuch, ran
almost in a straight line to Pelusium and the south of Palestine, skirting
on one side the Mediterranean Sea, and leaving to the right the lofty
fortress-rock of El-Arîsh on the waterless “river of Egypt.” Tanis had
existed in the days of the Old Empire, but either the Hyksos conquest or
earlier invasions had caused it to decay, and when the Hyksos court was
established there its ancient temple was already in ruins. The restoration
of the city was due to the Hyksos kings, who have left in it memorials of
themselves. The Hyksos sphinxes in the Museum of Gizeh, on one of which
the name of Apopi is engraved, were found there by Mariette, as well as a
curious group of two persons with enormous wigs holding fish and
water-fowl in their laps. When it is stated in the book of Numbers (xiii.
22) that “Hebron was built seven years before Zoan,” it is probable that
the building of Zoan by the Shepherd kings is meant.
In journeying from southern Palestine to Zoan, Jacob and his sons had no
very long distance to traverse. Nor had they to pass through a long tract
of Egyptian territory. From the desert, with its roving bands of kindred
Bedouin, to the Pharaoh’s court at Zoan, was hardly more than a day’s
journey. There was little fear that the Semitic traveller would meet with
insult or opposition from the Egyptian _fellahin_ on the way. The
_fellahin_ themselves were doubtless then, as now, mixed with Semitic
elements; it was needful to go westward of Zoan in order to find Egyptians
of pure blood.
Nor was the land of Goshen, the modern Wadi Tumilât, far from the Hyksos
capital. It lay to the south of Zoan, on the banks of a canal whose course
is now marked by the Freshwater Canal of Lesseps. The tourist who takes
the train from Ismailîyeh to Zagazig traverses the whole length of the
land of Goshen. The tradition that here was the territory assigned by
Joseph to his brethren lingered long into the Christian centuries, and had
been revived by more than one Egyptologist in later years. But the
question was finally settled by Dr. Naville, and the excavations he
undertook for the Egypt Exploration Fund. In 1883 he disinterred the
remains of Pa-Tum, or Pithom, one of the two “store-cities” which the
children of Israel were forced to build. The ruins are now known as Tel
el-Maskhuteh, “the mound of the Statue,” about twelve miles to the
south-east of Ismailîyeh, and the monuments discovered there show that the
Pharaoh for whom the city was built was Ramses II. There was more than one
Pa-Tum, or temple-city of the Sun-god of the evening, and the Pa-Tum of
the eastern Delta is referred to in papyri of the nineteenth dynasty.
Thus, in the eighth year of Meneptah II., an official report speaks of the
passage of certain Shasu or Bedouin from Edom through the
frontier-fortress of Thukut or Succoth, to “the pools of the city of
Pa-Tum of Meneptah-hotep-hir-ma, in the district of Thukut.”
In 1884 Dr. Naville excavated, at Saft el-Henneh, an ancient mound close
to the railway between Zagazig and Tel el-Kebîr. His excavations resulted
in the discovery that Saft el-Henneh marks the site of the ancient Qesem
or Qos (Pha-kussa in the Greek geographers), the capital of the nome of
the Egyptian Arabia. Qesem corresponds exactly with Geshem, which
represents in the Septuagint the Hebrew Goshen, and points to the fact
that the Egyptian Jews, to whom the Greek translation of the Old Testament
was due, recognised in the Biblical Goshen the Qeshem of Egyptian
geography.
The district immediately around Saft el-Henneh is fertile, but the name of
the Egyptian Arabia which it once bore shows unmistakably who its
cultivators must have been. They were the Semitic nomads from the East
who, like their descendants to-day, occasionally settled on the
frontier-lands of Egypt, and became more or less unwilling agriculturists.
But the larger part of them remained shepherds, leading a nomad life with
their flocks and camels, and pitching their tents wherever the monotony of
the desert was broken by water and vegetation. The Wadi Tumilât, into
which the district of Saft el-Henneh opened, was thus eminently suited for
the residence of the Hebrew Bedouin. Here they had food for their flocks,
plenty of space for their camping-grounds, and freedom from interference
on the part of the Egyptians, while in the background was a fertile
district, in close connection with the capital, where those of them who
cared to exchange a pastoral for an agricultural life could find rich soil
to sow and cultivate.
Hard by Zagazig are the mounds of the ancient Bubastis, and here the
excavations carried on by the Egypt Exploration Fund have brought to light
remains of the Hyksos Pharaohs, including one of Apopi. Bubastis,
therefore, must have been a Hyksos residence, and its temple was adorned
by the Hyksos kings. Between Bubastis and Heliopolis stood Pa-Bailos, and
of this town Meneptah II. says at Thebes that “the country around was not
cultivated, but left as pasture for cattle because of the strangers,
having been abandoned since the times of old.” What better proof can we
have that the Arabian nome was in truth what the land of Goshen is
represented to be?
By a curious coincidence, the Wadi Tumilât, the old land of Goshen, has,
in the present century, again been handed over to Bedouin and Syrians, and
again been the scene of an Exodus. Mohammed Ali was anxious to establish
the culture of the silk-worm in Egypt, and accordingly planted
mulberry-trees in the Wadi Tumilât, and settled there a large colony of
Syrians and Bedouin. The Bedouin were induced to remain there, partly by
the pasturage provided for their flocks, partly by a promise of exemption
from taxes and military conscription. When Abbas Pasha became Khedive,
however, the promise was forgotten; orders were issued that the free
Bedouin of the Wadi Tumilât should be treated like the enslaved
_fellahin_, compelled to pay the tax-gatherer, and to see their children
driven in handcuffs and with the courbash to serve in the army. But the
orders were never carried out. Suddenly, in a single night, without noise
or warning, the whole Bedouin population deserted their huts, and with
their flocks and other possessions disappeared into the eastern desert.
The Pasha lost his slaves, the culture of the silk-worm ceased, and when
the Freshwater Canal was cut not a single mulberry-tree remained.
In the land of Goshen, the Israelitish settlers throve and multiplied. But
a time came when a new king arose “which knew not Joseph,” and when the
descendants of Jacob seemed to the Egyptians a source of danger. Like
Abbas Pasha in a later century, the Pharaoh determined to reduce the
free-born Israelites into the condition of public slaves, and by every
means in his power to diminish their number. The male children were
destroyed, the adults compelled to labour at the cities the Egyptian
monarch was building in their neighbourhood, and the land in which they
lived was surrounded by Egyptian garrisons and controlled by Egyptian
officers.
The slaves, however, succeeded in escaping from their “house of bondage.”
Under the leadership of Moses they made their way into the eastern desert,
and received, at Sinai and Kadesh-Barnea, the laws which were henceforth
to govern them. The army sent to pursue them was swallowed up in the
waters of the sea, and the district they had occupied was left desolate.
A variety of reasons had led Egyptologists to the belief that in the
Pharaoh of the Oppression we were probably to see Ramses II. Ramses II.,
the Sesostris and Osymandyas of Greek story, was the third king of the
nineteenth dynasty, and one of the most striking figures of Egyptian
history. His long reign of sixty-seven years was the evening of Egyptian
greatness. With his death the age of Egyptian conquests passed away, and
the period of decay set in. Like Louis XIV. of France, the _grand
monarque_ of ancient Egypt exhausted in his wars the resources and
fighting population of his country.
But it was as a builder rather than as a conqueror that Ramses II. was
famous. Go where we will in Egypt or Nubia, we find traces of his
architectural activity. There is hardly a place where he has not left his
name. His whole reign must have been occupied with the construction of
cities and temples, or the restoration and enlargement of previously
existing ones, and, in spite of its length, it is difficult to understand
how so vast an amount of work could have been accomplished in the time.
Much of the work, however, is poor and scamped; it bears, in fact, marks
of the feverish haste with which it was carried through. Much of it, on
the other hand, is grandiose and striking in its colossal proportions and
boldness of design. The shattered granite colossus at the Ramesseum, once
nearly sixty feet in height, the fragment of a standing figure of granite
found by Professor Flinders Petrie at Sân, which must originally have been
over a hundred feet high, the great hall of columns at Karnak, the temple
of Abu-Simbel in Nubia, are all so many witnesses of vast conceptions
successfully realised. Abu-Simbel, indeed, where a mountain has been
hollowed into a temple, and a cliff carved into the likeness of four
sitting figures, each with an unrivalled expression of divine calm upon
its countenance, justly claims to be one of the wonders of the world.
Apart from the colossal proportions of so many of them, the buildings of
Ramses II. are distinguished by another trait. They were erected to the
glory of the Pharaoh rather than of the gods. It is the name and titles of
Ramses that everywhere force themselves upon our notice, and often
constitute the chief decoration of the monument. He must have been
vainglorious above all other kings of Egypt, filled with the pride of his
own power and the determination that his name should never be forgotten
upon the earth.
It is not strange, therefore, that Ramses II. should be the most prominent
figure in ancient Egyptian history. His name and the shattered relics of
his architectural triumphs force themselves upon the attention of the
traveller wherever he goes. His long reign, moreover, was a period of
great literary activity, and a considerable portion of the literary papyri
which have survived to us was written during his lifetime. He was,
furthermore, the last of the conquering Pharaohs; the last of the Theban
monarchs whose rule was obeyed from the mountains of Lebanon and the
plateau of the Haurân to the southern frontiers of Ethiopia. With his
death the empire, which had been founded by the military skill and energy
of the kings of the eighteenth dynasty, began to pass away. His son and
successor, Meneptah, had to struggle for bare existence against an
invasion of barbarian hordes, and the sceptre dropped from the feeble
hands of Seti II., who next followed, into those of rival kings. The
nineteenth dynasty ended in the midst of civil war and foreign attack: for
a while Egypt submitted to the rule of a Syrian stranger, and when
Setnekht, the founder of the twentieth dynasty, restored once more the
native line of kings, he found a ruined and impoverished country, scarcely
able to protect itself from hostile assault.
But the age of the twentieth dynasty was still distant when Jacob and his
sons journeyed into Egypt, or even when his descendants, under the
leadership of Moses, succeeded in escaping from the land of their slavery.
Before that age arrived more than one revolution was destined to pass over
the valley of the Nile, which had momentous consequences for the foreign
settlers in Goshen. The Hyksos were driven back into Asia, and a united
Egypt once more obeyed the rule of a native Pharaoh.
But the centre of power had been shifted from the north to the south.
Memphis and Zoan had to make way for Thebes, and it is probable that the
monarchs of the eighteenth dynasty, under whom Egypt recovered its
independence, had Nubian blood in their veins. A new life was breathed
into the ancient kingdom of Menes, and for the first time in its history
Egypt became a great military power. The war was transferred from the
Delta to Asia itself; Canaan and Syria were conquered, and an Egyptian
empire established, which extended as far as the Euphrates. With this
empire in Asia, however, came Asiatic influences, ideas, and beliefs. The
Pharaohs intermarried with the royal families of Asia, and little by
little their court became semi-Asiatic. Then followed reaction and
counter-revolution. A new king arose—the founder of the nineteenth
dynasty—“who knew not Joseph,” representing the national antagonism to the
Asiatic foreigner and his religious faith. For a while the Asiatic was
proscribed; and the expulsion of the stranger and his religion, which
Arabi endeavoured to effect in our time, was successfully effected in the
troublous days which saw the fall of the eighteenth dynasty. In this war
against the hated Asiatic the Israelites were involved; their children
were destroyed lest they should multiply, and they themselves were
degraded into public slaves. We have now to trace the events which led to
such a result, and to show how the political history of Egypt was the
ultimate cause of the Israelitish Exodus.