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Solomon, as well as many other princes, made no opposition, but surrendered without a battle. Shishak pursued his course northwards to the shores of the Euxine, spreading terror all around him, wherever he advanced. He is said to have ravaged the country from Thrace in Europe to Media in the east. His Indian expedition is, however, fabulous; the exaggerated account of his admirers, the priests. It is utterly improbable that this Egyptian inroad passed the Indus, far less the Ganges; or that its effects were useful and permanent. We know from the best of all authority, that even the border nations of Palestine were instantly free; and neither before nor after that time, till the battle of Megiddo, were they subject to any Egyptian. Shishak returned with much spoil and many captives, which he employed in the public works of the country.

This was the brightest age of Egyptian glory. Mistress of all the contiguous nations, and the plunder of Asia, Memphis aspired to the empire of the world. On his return, Shishak built magnificent temples in most of the Egyptian cities; and raised six colossal statues of himself and his family, before the temple of Pthash. Two obelisks, each 120 cubits high, preserved at Heliopolis the memory of his conquests.

The lands of Egypt had long been the property of the crown. Shishak now divided them into meshshot, or cantons. His army received a great proportion of these, which became a military cast, each family having an arura of land allotted to it. The grand divisions of this order were the Helshairi (Kahas) who got possessions in the Thebean, Bubastite, Aphthite, Tanite, Mendesian and Sebennite nomes. To them also pertained those of Athrib, Pharbait, Thmui, Ihnouph, Anysis, or Hanes, and of the isle Myecphoris opposite Bubastis. Their strength was computed at 250,000 men. The second division was the Er-motoubi: Their cantons were those of Busiri, Sai, Chemmi, Papremi, the isle Prosopi, and Natho, or Neout. They could raise 160,000 soldiers.

3. It is impossible to read the arrangements of Sesostris in the civil and military government of Egypt, the number of his

* The name Helshairi signifies, in Coptic, the youth, or militia; Ermotoubi, fighting men, or defenders.

E.

chariots and horses, and the magnificent works raised during his reign, without being convinced of the similarity of his court to that of Solomon, who was nearly his contemporary. The authors to be consulted on his splendid history are Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, and Josephus, or the united view of all their information in Marsham's chronology. In the same work may be found the Tyrian Annals by Menander, from Hirom to Pygmalion, which are evidently authentic, and of great use in illustrating the collateral history of Syria.

To those who contend that Shishak is not Sesostris, we may fairly propose the question; Is there any evidence in the most authentic history of Palestine and Syria, that an Egyptian monarch conquered a single state in them before Shishak, or after him, till the age of Necho? In Egyptian history the only extensive conquerors, before that age, are Sesostris and Ramses. With regard to the latter it is much to be suspected that the actions of Sesostris were imputed to his successor. Herodotus, an excellent authority, mentions the immense wealth and avarice of Rhampsinitus, the Ramses of Strabo and Tacitus, but nothing concerning his warlike expeditions. The curious translation of the record on the large obelisk of Heliopolis by Hermapion, celebrates Ramestes, as victorious over the Phenicians and (DES) foreigners. This might be a campaign against the Philistines and Tyrians, who had attacked the country; but his conquest of Lybia, Ethiopia, Media, Persia, Bactria, Scythia, Assyria, Armenia, Cappadocia, and Lycia, as mentioned by Tacitus, is merely a correct outline of the great expedition of Sesostris, who subdued the two first, and over-ran some of the territories of the rest of these nations. In such an expedition Judah and Israel must again have become tributary to Egypt; a fact too important to escape the sacred historians.

Judea was in the reign of Asa attacked by Zerah, who led a million of Cushites and Lybians through the desert along the Egyptian side of the Red Sea, probably with the permission of the Pharaoh, into Asia. His army was utterly defeated, and pursued as far as Gerar in the way of Egypt. There is no evidence to support the conjecture that Zerah was king of Egypt, as Shishak is affirmed to have been. But it is considerably certain, that Zerah and his Cushites were settled in Gerar at the time, as Asa destroyed its

towns, and carried off the spoil, the tents of oxen, sheep, and camels, to Jerusalem.

4. To these remarks on Shishak, which might be much augmented in number and force by a variety of particulars from the Grecian accounts of Sesostris, we may add the evidence of probable etymology. The Greek historians write the name of this prince Σεστωσις, Σεσονχρωσις, Σεσόγχυσις, and Σεσωσεις : By Manetho it was written ws. In the Hebrew the name is Shishac; the LXX from a copy in which the second letter was Vaw write axes. It may even be suspected, that the word was in the MSS. of those times written Susakis, which, allowing the final Samech to be mistaken for Mem (a very usual error), brings it still nearer to the Coptic. But, dismissing entirely all conjecture, the name of the king is evidently Sesonch, in Hebrew written Shishac, instead of Shishank, the letter n being thrown out, as is always done in similar positions in the Hebrew language. Sesonchoosis is plainly Sesonch-ōou-si, Sesonch the glorious; and Sesostris, Sesonch-sro-si, Sesonch the victorious. In this word, the syllable onch is nasal, as in the French; the n is very evanescent; and omitted on account of the harsh sounds that follow it. As etymology is at best but a very deceptious aid, and probably in no instance more so than in this, the reader is requested to observe, that the truth of the preceding remarks rests on very different foundations from that of the changes of vowels and consonants. Whether accurately identified or not, the difference of the two names, as they stand, cannot materially affect the argument.

The identity of Shishak and Sesostris being once admitted, all the æra of Egyptian splendour follows in uninterrupted succession. That Egypt was in the height of prosperity when the pyramids were erected, requires no proof, if we only attend to the riches, the population, and tranquillity both at home and abroad, which were requisite for the finishing of these monuments. The period of two centuries, which elapsed between Shishak and So, the Ethiopian king of

The mention of the joint army of Cushites and Lybians, 2 Chron. c. 26 v. 8. shews, that they were Africans, not Arabs; and the detail of the spoils, c. 14. v. 12-14, that they were Shepherds.

Egypt, in the days of Hosea, affords a reign of twenty-five years a-piece to the eight kings enumerated by Herodotus, which is more than the medium rate allowed by most calculators. The pyramids must have been raised, when Memphis was the capital, in a time of long uninterrupted peace, when the nation was wealthy, magnificent, and servile. There is not the smallest reason for calling in question the account of their founders by Herodotus. Posterity might have attempted to forget the names of Cheops, Cephren, and Mycerinus, but they were too memorable to sink into

oblivion.

These observations may be balanced against the vague accounts of the Greek writers, on whose authority the reign of Sesostris is made to precede the age of Shishak. The identity of the two princes is no new doctrine, but the arguments produced here in support of it, and of the theory of Mr Bruce, have not been discussed in any statement of that opi

nion.

No. III.

LETTER FROM MR BRUCE TO DR BURNEY, ON EGYPTIAN AND ABYSSINIAN MUSIC *.

DEAR SIR,

I

Kinnaird, October 20. 1774.

HAVE employed the first leisure that bad weather has enabled me to steal from the curiosity and kindness of my friends, to make you two distinct drawings of the musical instruments you desired of me. I sit down now to give you some particulars relative to them, and to other instruments of less consequence, which I found in my voyage in Abyssinia, to the fountains of the Nile.

I need not tell you that I shall think myself overpaid, if this, or any thing else in my power, can be of service to you, or towards the history of a science which I have always cultivated, with more application than genius; and to which I

*This letter, the first publication to which Mr Bruce affixed his name, is copied from Dr Burney's General History of Music, Vol. I. pp. 205. 214. It was addressed to that ingenious and elegant writer, for whom Mr Bruce had conceived a high esteem, soon after the traveller had arrived in his native country. It contains a minute description of the musical instruments used at present in Abyssinia, and might have resolved, in the most satisfactory manner, the doubts of those, had they been capable of examining the subject, who suspected the truth of his journey into that kingdom. It is placed here, on account of its relation to the travels in Egypt. E.

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