One object was steadily pursued by the king during these campaigns. In accordance with the ancient policy of the Pharaohs,75 but as it would seem because such a measure was especially important at that time, and probably one main motive for the repeated razzias, Thotmes brought an immense number of captives into Egypt. These are his own words: 76 "I made a great offering to Ammon in recognition of the first victory which he granted me, filling his domain with slaves, to make him stuffs of various materials, to labour and cultivate the lands, to make harvests, to fill the habitation of Father Ammon."7 At Abd el Kurna, in the temple before mentioned, there is a well-known picture of such captives employed in making bricks. It is an admirable illustration of the labours of the Israelites, whom it was formerly supposed to represent: the inscription, however, states that they are" captives taken by his Majesty to build the temple of his Father Ammon."

We have now to call special attention to this fact. The wars of Thotmes III. were terminated by the complete overthrow of all his foes in Syria and Mesopotamia in the fortieth year of his reign. No question is raised about this date. But according to our present hypothesis this took place exactly forty years after the Exodus, immediately before the entrance of the Israelites into Palestine.

They would then have found the country in a state of utter prostration. With the exception of such strongholds as might be retained by the Egyptians to command the road into Syria, the petty kings would keep each his own fortress, with no common head, no powerful ally, accustomed to see their neigh bours and kinsmen beaten and subjugated, and, though warlike, well supplied with arms, and occupying forts well-nigh impregnable,78 yet habituated to defeat, and liable, as the Scrip

cate a different origin. Most Egyptologers, however, retain the older view, which is defended by very convincing arguments by M. de Rouge. It is confirmed also by the Assyrian inscriptions, which make the Khati or Hatti occupy the country between the Mediterranean and Carchemish, their frontier city in the times of Tiglath Pileser I., see Rawlinson's 'Ancient Monarchies,' vol. ii. pp. 315, 317, and Menant, Syllabaire Assyrien,' p. 155, who identifies them with the Hittites. The identification of the Remenen is proposed by Brugsch.

4

tural narrative describes them, to wild fits of panic at the approach of a new foe. If again, as there is reason to believe, the kings of Bashan, and other districts east of the Jordan, were among the confederates defeated on his first invasion by Thotmes, it would account for their exhaustion, and the extreme terror of the princes of Midian and Moab.

(19.) It may be asked how could the Israelites during that period escape the notice of the king? It is certain that the high road, always followed by the Egyptian armies, ran along the coast of the Mediterranean till it turned off towards Megiddo. The Israelites were in the desert of Tih, a district not easily accessible and offering no temptation to a conqueror whose energies were concentrated in a desperate war. Had they remained in the peninsula of Sinai they would have been within his reach, for its western district was subject to Egypt from a very early period. It is possible that their flight might have been one motive for an expedition which, as we learn from an inscription in the Wady Mughara, was undertaken by the forces of Hatasou and Thotmes in the sixteenth year of their joint reign.

A far more serious objection rests on the improbability that the powerful kings of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties would have permitted the invasion or the continued occupation of Palestine by the Israelites.

We might answer in the first place that this objection applies to every other date suggested by chronologers. The very latest date assumes that the Exodus took place under the son or grandson of Rameses II., and that the Israelites passed the Jordan in the time of Rameses III. But that Pharaoh was one of the most powerful sovereigns of Egypt, and it is certain that his descendants, the princes of the twentieth dynasty, retained command of the communications by land and water with Mesopotamia. This is proved by

79 This gives a peculiar force and suitableness to the words of Balaam, twice repeated, "God brought them out of Egypt. He hath, as it were, the strength of an unicorn." Num. xxiii. 22, xxiv. 8.

so The intercourse between Egypt and the west of the peninsula began under Snefru, the last Pharaoh of the third dynasty. He defeated the Anu, the ancient inhabitants, and founded a colony at the Wady Mughara. The most ancient monument in existence records this event. The copper-mines there were worked under Chufu (Cheops) and other sovereigns of the fourth and following dynasties. We read

of a formal inspection by Pepi. See M. de Rouge, 'Recherches,' pp. 7, 30, 31, 42, 81, 115. The mines were worked under Amenemha, twelfth dynasty, and the influence or sovereignty of Egypt continued unbroken till long after the Exodus. M. Chabas shows that under the twentieth dynasty the communications were regularly carried on.

81

an inscription of great interest and importance, well known to Egyptian scholars, which belongs to the reign of Rameses XII., towards the close of the dynasty. M. de Rougé says, "Elle suppose une domination encore incontestée sur la Mesopotamie, des relations amicales entre les princes d'Asie et le Pharaon, ainsi que des routes habituellement parcourues par le commerce." However it may be accounted for, it is certain that during the whole period between Joshua and Rehoboam the Israelites were not disturbed in the possession of the strongholds of Palestine, although the Pharaohs, as we have just seen, retained an undisputed supremacy in Western Asia up to the time of Samuel or Saul.

There are, however, facts, which, though seldom noticed, are sufficiently obvious, and may enable us to understand the policy of the Pharaohs.

It is clear, even from the history of the campaigns of Thotmes III., that at the end of each campaign the Egyptians withdrew their forces altogether from the countries which they overran, content with the plunder, and especially the capture of prisoners, with the submission of the chiefs, and the tributes which they were secure of exacting. This might be a result of the constitution of the Egyptian armies. The Calasirians and Hermotybians, the warrior caste, had settled homes to which they would certainly choose to return, probably each year after the subsidence of the inundation, when their labours would be required for the cultivation of the fields. We have no trace of permanent occupancy of foreign stations, excepting one in Mesopotamia, another at the copper-mines in the Wady Mughara, and perhaps of a few fortresses on the route through Syria. A rapid campaign directed against the nations to the north of Palestine, who were in a state of chronic insurrection, and threw off the yoke at every opportunity, would give an Egyptian king neither the leisure nor the inclination to assail the strongholds occupied by the Israelites. It must also be borne in mind that the Israelites attacked the most powerful enemies of Egypt, the Hittites and Amorites, and that, whereas their conquest certainly did not result in the establishment of a formidable empire, it was an effectual check to the restoration and consolidation of the powers which Thotmes had overthrown.

We do not find notices of many incursions

under the immediate successors of Thotmes. That which is recorded, under Amenophis II., appears from the inscription 82 to have been 81 Journal Asiatique,' 5th series, vol. viii.

p. 204.

82 The word used in reference to the invasions

carried on by sea. The three invasions under the nineteenth and twentieth dynasties, by Seti I., Rameses II., and Rameses III., had each the same general object, and was pursued on the same system and with the same general results, although as we shall find presently a considerable number of Israelites were probably carried into captivity by the two last-named kings.

If the date which is here assumed be correct, we shall expect that those events which are ascertained from later Egyptian monuments of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties will harmonise with it. An absolute contradiction would be fatal to the hypothesis, which of course will be materially strengthened by general and special coincidences.

(20.) The reign of Thotmes III. was followed by a period of great prosperity. The supremacy of Egypt in Western Asia was unbroken, certainly during the two following reigns. Is this general statement compatible with the conquest of Palestine by the Israelites? To answer this question we must look closely at the events in each reign, not forgetting that, as we have already shown, a general supremacy was undoubtedly retained from the accession of the nineteenth to the termination of the twentieth dynasty: that is throughout the period which all chronologers hold to have extended to the end of the book of Judges.

Immediately after the accession of Amenophis II. he undertook an expedition against the Rutens. He appears to have advanced as far as Nineveh; he certainly returned to Egypt with the trophies of a great victory. An inscription at Amada in Nubia, quoted by M. Brugsch, H. E.,' p. 111, and by M. Chabas, ' Voyage d'un Egyptien,' p. 194, states that this king slew seven princes of the confederates at Tachis (a city in Syria), and that they were hung head downwards on the prow of his Majesty's ship."

66

These facts are of considerable importance. They show that the whole energies of the Pharaohs were directed against the confederates on the north of Palestine, whose defeat and prostration would of course effectually prevent them from marching into Palestine either to support their allies, or to avenge

Chabas, who quotes the inscription, 'Voyage d'un Egyptien,' p. 194, refers, of course by

oversight, to Amenophis I. It is a point of much importance in this inquiry to have this intimation of the transport of troops to Phoenicia by water. It is more than probable that the Egyptians had a considerable navy under the vigorous administration of the early kings of this dynasty. We bave, in fact, the representation of the transport of chariots and horses on

$399, which indicates a naval

dition.

expe

See Denkmäler,' iii. pl. 82. M.

belongs to this very period. See Rosellini, M. C., pl. cx., and Duemichen, Fleet of an Egyptian Queen,' taf. xxviii. 5.

their fall before Joshua. The mention of the ship of war has a special interest. It is obvious that, as the Pharaohs were the undisputed masters of the sea after the conquest of Phoenicia under Thotmes III., the most ready and effectual way of transporting their troops would be by ships.83 We have not sufficient data to prove that they did adopt this mode of carrying on their communications, but there are other indications which make it extremely probable. The word used in the inscriptions which record invasions of Asia under Amenophis III. is specially if not exclusively used of naval expeditions. (See note 82.) It has been shown very lately by a contemporary inscription that at a far earlier period, under the sixth dynasty, the Pharaoh Pepi sent large forces by sea against the Herusha, probably Asiatics. See De Rougé, 'Recherches,' p. 126. The rapid march of an Egyptian army along the coast of Palestine some seven or eight years after the passage over the Jordan would not present any considerable difficulty, directed as it was against the confederates of the Amorites, but every semblance of a difficulty disappears if the expedition was by sea.

Under Thotmes IV. we have no notice of Asiatic war. The tributes were probably paid without any further attempt at resist ance during that reign, which, though undistinguished and probably short, does not appear to have been a period of disturbance.84

(21.) The reign of Amenophis III. was long and prosperous. His supremacy in Syria and Mesopotamia was uncontested; but though the inscriptions speak of expeditions into the Soudan, and of tributes brought from all nations, there is no indication of Asiatic warfare. It was a period of almost uninterrupted peace. There is no probability that the struggles in Palestine would have attracted the attention or called for the interposition of a monarch engaged in magnificent works which surpass in beauty and rival in extent those which were completed under any succceding dynasty.

There are, however, facts which may perhaps justify a conjecture that the relations between Egypt and the Israelites underwent some modification in the interval after the

occupation of Palestine which corresponds to this period. In 1 Chron. iv. 17, we read that Mered, of the tribe of Judah, founded two families, one by an Egyptian wife Bithia, who is called a daughter of Pharaoh. This family was settled at Eshtemoa, on the hilly district of Judah, south of Hebron, now Isemna; the ruins indicate the site of a considerable city. The exact place of Ezra, the father of Mered, in the genealogy is uncertain, but it belongs apparently to the second generation from Caleb. Now we have the fact that Amenophis III. was married to a very remarkable personage who was not of royal parentage and not an Egyptian by creed. Under her influence Amenophis IV., her son (whose strongly marked features have a Semitic, not to say Jewish character),85 completely revolutionised the religion of Egypt, more especially attacking its most loathsome form, the phallusworship of Khem. The names of this princess, Tei, and of her parents, Iuaa and Tuaa, bear a singularly near resemblance to that of Mered's wife.86

(22.) However this may be, the few known facts of Egyptian history from the accession of Amenophis IV., or Khu-n-Aten (ie. Glory of the Sunbeam), are readily adjusted to the early annals of the Judges. For a few years the ascendancy of Egypt in Mesopotamia was unimpaired. The Rutens and their allies were kept in submission; no indication of an occupation of Palestine by Egypt or its opponents is to be found: then comes a time of internal struggle and confusion, during which all the Asiatics threw off the yoke. We have here a place for the invasion of Cushan Rishathaim, the King of Meso-, potamia; which must have taken place about a century after the death of Joshua. The

85 The most striking portraits of this king are in Prisse, Monuments,' pl. x., and in the 'Denkmäler III.;' all the portraits have the strongest character of individuality, wild, dreamy, fanatic, with features in some points unlike those of his predecessors, and approaching closely to the Hebrew type. Ewald recognises and attaches much importance to the traces of an attempt to introduce a more spiritual form of religion at this period: see Geschichte,' v. I. ii., p. 51,

note, 2nd edition.

86 In Egyptian, 44.

The name

104.

corn from Egypt to the land of the Kheta under Merneptah. "Histor. Ins.,' iii. 24.

84 Some scholars hold that the Exodus took place at the close of this reign. This theory is supported by ingenious arguments, but is scarcely reconcileable with the condition of Egypt at the beginning of the next reign, nor does it present the coincidences which are drawn from the reign of Thotmes II. and his successors.

Iua, is markedly Jewish. See the inscription in Brugsch, Geographische Inscriften,' i., taf. ix., No. 333. In a work lately published (1868), 'The Fleet of an Egyptian Queen,' M. Duemichen points out the resemblance and apparent connection between Aten and N, Lord, observing that the hieroglyphic group is certainly used with reference to this Semitic name of God. See explanation of pl. iii,

growth of the power of the Moabites, and of the nomads bearing the general denomination of Shasous in Egyptian, of Amalek, Edom, Ammon, &c., in Hebrew, was a natural result of the expulsion of the Mesopotamians on the one side, and the prostration of Egypt on the other.87 In the mean time the Cheta were gradually acquiring the ascendancy from Cilicia to the Euphrates,88 occupying the strongholds in Syria, and encroaching gradually on the borders of Palestine, a position which, notwithstanding repeated and triumphant invasions of their own territory, they occupied during the whole period of the nineteenth and apparently also the twentieth dynasties.

The duration assigned by M. Brugsch to the eighteenth dynasty from the decease of Thotmes III, is about 100 years. The corresponding period, on the hypothesis we are now considering, brings us near to the occupation of Palestine by Eglon King of Moab. It will be observed that, although the results of comparison of Egyptian and Hebrew annals are, and must be to a great extent conjectural, inasmuch as no direct or distinct notice of the events preceding the Exodus or following the occupation of Palestine by the Israelites is found on Egyptian monuments, and no notice of Egyptian history occurs in the books of Joshua, Judges, and Samuel, yet the conjectures rest on data established beyond all contradiction. They do not profess to do more than show that the two series of events dovetail, and mutually sustain and explain each other: the coincidences, whether they be held complete and convincing or not, are unsought; they forced themselves on the writer's attention, and gradually led him to give a decided preference to the hypothesis which has been here defended, over that which is at present generally supported by Egyptian scholars.

(23.) We have now to consider what arguments favourable or unfavourable to this hypothesis are drawn from Manetho and other documents known to us through the medium of Greek. Here we must carefully distinguish between facts borne out by contemporary monuments, and statements which, whether correctly or incorrectly represented by the translators and epitomizers, are contradicted or not corroborated by such authority.

The Exodus is assumed by all ancient chronologers, who derived their information from Egyptian sources, to have taken place under the eighteenth dynasty.89 Josephus,

87 It is also to be remarked that the Rutens, or Assyrians, were so weakened towards the end of the eighteenth dynasty that they lost the ascendancy; a fact sufficiently explained by the overthrow of Cushan Rishathaim.

88 See Brugsch, H. E.,' p. 127, and M. Chabas, 'Voyage,' p. 325.

89 All the passages are collected in the first volume of Bunsen's 'Egypt.'

who regards the expulsion of the Hyksos to be but a confused tradition of the departure of the Israelites, places it under the first king whom he calls Tethmosis; Africanus, who follows Ptolemy the Mendesian, under Amos, ie. Amosis, or Aahmes. Eusebius brings the transaction lower down, but still long before the nineteenth dynasty, viz. under Achencherses or Achencheres, i. e. probably Khunaten, the son of Amenophis III. This opinion is said by Syncellus to be avowedly in contradiction to all other authorities. Eusebius was probably led to it by the evident indications of great disturbances under that reign, and by the tradition that emigrations of considerable extent took place soon afterwards.90

Passing to Manetho's own statements, we find that he represents the kings of the Thebaid and of Upper Egypt as engaged in a great and long-continued warfare with the Hyksos: he asserts that the king, Misphragmuthosis, drove them out of all the other districts in Egypt, and confined them within the vast enclosure of Avaris. His son Tethmosis besieged the city with an immense army, and, being unable to capture it, made a treaty with them, permitting their departure: they are said to have gone forth with their furniture and their cattle, forming a host not less than 240,000 in number, then to have traversed the desert between Egypt and Syria, and at last, fearing the Assyrians, at that time masters of Asia, to have settled in Judæa, where they built the city of Jerusalem.

Setting the account which has been given in these pages side by side with the statement of Manetho, we see at once the character of his history, and the corroboration which it supplies to what has been advanced.

(1) A war of considerable duration was carried on between the kings of Upper Egypt and the Shepherds. Here Manetho and the monuments agree. (2) The king whom Manetho calls Misphragmuthosis achieved great successes in war, but did not capture Avaris. It is true that the Shepherds were attacked by the first king of the dynasty, but untrue that Avaris was not captured by him. Here we have a partial agreement, but the name of the king is not correct. (3) Certain enemies of the Egyptians were in possession of a limited district under his successor. The monuments are silent, but from the Pentateuch we know that the Israelites occupied Goshen at this time, as nearly all Egyptian scholars agree. (4) These enemies left Egypt by permission, traversed Syria, and occupied Palestine. Their forces amounted to 240,000. The monuments are silent. We have the Scriptural account with scarcely a variation.

90 Viz. the expulsion of Danaus and his settlement at Argos. See the statement of Diodorus, P. 462.

The principal inference bearing on our present subject is that all these notices refer to the same period, viz. the early years of the eighteenth dynasty.

In another work Manetho gives what may have been in his time the Egyptian account of the Exodus: it is utterly worthless, and, as nearly all critics have observed, was evidently invented by a person who had the Scripture narrative before him.91 It represents the Israelites as lepers, and identifies Moses with Osarsiph, a priest of Heliopolis, evidently Joseph. The Egyptian king, in whose reign the enemies first made themselves masters of all Egypt, committing atrocities far beyond those attributed to the Hyksos, is called Amenophis. According to this strange figment, Amenophis committed his son Sethos, called also Rhamses, to the charge of some private individual, and retired into Ethiopia, whence he returned with a great army, and finally ejected the lepers and their allies the Shepherds from Egypt, pursuing them unto the borders of Syria.

All names and events are here in hopeless confusion: but each name and each event is found, though under very different circumstances, either in Egyptian or in sacred history. Osarsiph and Moses, the character of the Mosaic law, the prevalence of leprosy, the connection of Osarsiph with Heliopolis, are taken from Scripture; the names of Avaris, Amenophis, Sethos, Rhamses, from Egyptian monuments. The expulsion of the Shepherds by an Egyptian king with forces brought from Ethiopia is, as we have seen, historical. Amenophis himself, the son of Amosis, made an expedition into Ethiopia. There was a religious aspect of the struggle between the Shepherds and the Egyptians. No inference of any value can be drawn from the whole narrative in favour of either hypothesis now under consideration. On the one side the names of Sethos and Rameses would point to the nineteenth dynasty, but it is scarcely conceivable that a man having the least acquaintance with Egyptian history should have confounded Sethos and his son, or have represented Amenophis as the father of Sesostris. On the other side, the name of Amenophis would point distinctly to the eighteenth dynasty, and the whole narrative might get into the shape which it here assumes, if the facts above proved, and the combinations which we have assumed, had been manipulated by an Egyptian priest under the Ptolemies.

The story told by Chæremon (see Josephus c. Apion, i. 32) is a modification of this. The Israelites are led by Moses and Joseph,

91 See Browne, 'Ordo Sæclorum,' p. 581.

92 There is an evident reference to one or both of Joseph's names. The last syllable, Siph, answers to seph, and also to Zaf, food. Osir means rich, powerful, &c.; Osersiph, rich in food.

whose Egyptian names are said to be Tisithen and Peteseph. They join an army of 300,000 men, whom Amenophis had left at Pelusium, because he did not wish to bring them into Egypt. Amenophis retreated into Ethiopia, where he had a son named Mepenes, who, when he became a man, drove the Jews into Syria, and recalled his father Amenophis from Ethiopia.

An extract from Lysimachus, given also by Josephus, is a mere corruption of the Scriptural narrative, invented under the Ptolemies. It names Bocchoris (B.C. 721) as the Pharaoh of the Exodus: a striking instance of contemptuous disregard of all historical probabilities.

Diodorus has two accounts: 94 in one (c. xxxiv. 1) the adherents of Antiochus Sidetes represent the Jews as a despicable race expelled from Egypt, hateful to the gods on account of foul cutaneous diseases; in the other (c. xl. 1) he relates that in ancient times a pestilence which raged in Egypt was ascribed to the wrath of the gods on account of the multitude of aliens who with their strange worship were offensive to the gods of the land. The aliens were therefore expelled. The most distinguished among them betook themselves to Greece and other adjoining regions, among whom were Danaus and Cadmus. The main body, however, retired into the country afterwards called Judæa, which at that time was a desert. This colony was led by Moses.

From what source Diodorus derived this latter statement is quite uncertain, but the colouring is Egyptian. It undoubtedly points to an earlier period than the nineteenth dynasty; most probably to that assigned by Eusebius to the emigration into Palestine and Greece, viz. the latter reigns of the eighteenth dynasty.

As a general result from this part of our inquiry, we find that, with two exceptions, all the names and transactions noticed by Manetho, and by Greek writers, whether heathen or Christian, harmonise with the course of events under the eighteenth dynasty. One exception is simply noticeable for its absurdity, bringing the Exodus down to the eighth century and the twenty-fourth dynasty : the other is more important since it introduces the names of Sethos and Rameses, but under circumstances and in a relationship which evince either an entire ignorance or a wilful perversion of the best known facts of Egyptian history.

One argument remains of which the importance will not be questioned. Critics of the most opposite schools who have carefully

93 Seph, the last syllable of Joseph's Hebrew, and the first of his Egyptian name, seems to have left a permanent impression, and that a very natural one, as meaning "food." See Essay II.

94 See Browne, 'Ordo Sæclorum,' p. 584.