important. In the New Empire we have various sovereigns of the house of Ramses confounded frequently with the Sesortosidæ of the Old Empire in common tradition. We had hoped to proceed to the Hebrew chronology connected with the discussion of our subject without showing in greater detail the vicissitudes of the Egyptian throne, but this proves to be impossible. The theories of Bunsen, sustained, we think, by monumental evidence, are wholly different from those of Brugsch, discussed lately in the book notices of the Examiner. According to Bunsen a much longer period than five hundred years is necessary to account for the growth of the Hebrew nation, and the Semitic kings left no more traces of themselves upon the monuments of Egypt than upon the desert sands their invading feet had crossed. We remind our readers, then, that Thirty Dynasties complete the historic record of Egypt, and that for these thirty Bunsen is able to account; but they are not put upon record in their numerical order, that order consisting of the mistaken inferences of old writers. The monuments prove that they did not succeed each other, but were often cotemporaneous; and that in times of internecine war the old lists frequently put the struggling princes into the line of descent, as if they were father and son, instead of lord and rebel. To give some idea of the succession of princes must then be our first work; the greatest difficulty encountered in the work of restoration, appertaining, of course, to the Old Empire. The First Dynasty was Thinite, and consisted of five kings. This era Bunsen places between 4000 and 2800 years before Christ; and it would seem, from recent decisions in reference to the age of the Great Pyramid, as if the older date were most likely to be true. Menes, the first king, reigned over both countries, 3643 B.C., and found a matured civilization. He regulated the course of the Nile, improved its western arm, and drained the Nome of Memphis, so that the city of that name could be built. His influence was religious and distinct. The succeeding kings made themselves famous in medicine and mathematics. Physicians still use the Egyptian signs for drachms and grains, and mark their recipes with the sacred sign of a constellation, in its contracted form [ ]. Our numerals also are Egyptian, to which India added the cypher. The last king of this dynasty Bunsen marks as a "Heraclide," perhaps the progenitor of the Greek family. The pyramids of Kokomi were built. Then, perhaps because of a royal marriage, the line divides, and The Second Dynasty and the Third are on two thrones at This and Memphis, 3453 B.C. Here the lists bear an interesting testimony in reference to the age and size of man, for the first king of the second dynasty is mentioned as a giant 8 feet tall, who built the pyramids at Gaza; and the generations averaged, six thousand years ago, exactly as they do to-day. In these dynasties females were admitted to the throne, a fruitful source of confusion afterward. To this was soon added another, the spiteful habit of erasing the escutcheons of preceding kings after family divisions or civil wars. In the second and third dynasties animal worship took the place of a cosmical and astral faith, writing became cursive, a system of castes began, and the brick pyramids at Dashoor and Abouseer were built. Then, too, the Nile ran honey for eleven days. Under the Fourth Dynasty the empire was united again for 155 years (3229 years before Christ). It began with the Cheops of Herodotus, the builder of the Great Pyramid. 'Compulsory labor began; but Mencheres, the holy, abolished it, and restored the old and purer religion. Then came cotemporaneously the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties, the fifth consisting of one man, a usurper, Othoes, who founded the tormenting and confusing line of Heracleapolitan kings, and was killed by his own guards. The Sixth Dynasty opened with the wonderful reign of Phiops Apappus, 3074 B.C. He was crowned at six years of age, and reigned 100 years, as great a wonder then, as it would be now. His son, and after him his son's widow, Nitocris, reigned with this old man. She put her husband's murderer to death, and with her, 5,000 years ago, the pretty story of Cinderella originated. She had been a slave, and one day while she was bathing the wind carried her slipper to the king, who would not rest till he had found her. With the grand-children of old Phiops came a confused period. The Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Dynasties on the throne together, 2915 B.C. His race continued on the throne at Memphis as the Seventh and Eighth. The Eleventh, composed of a Theban family, the Nantefs, reigned at Thebes; and the Ninth and Tenth were in the Delta, near Pelusium. Here the glory of Memphis ends. The Theban family of Nantefs, whose monuments, coffins, gilded bodies and votive tablets still exist to tell the story, comes up again in the twelfth dynasty with the Sesostridæ. Arabs ravaged the grand old city, and the native princes who kept their thrones began to pay the Hycsos tribute. With this Twelfth Dynasty the glory of the Old Empire rose to its height. The first Sesostris, 2754 B.C., created the fertile Nome of the Fayoum by filling a rocky basin with Nile mud, its magnificent drains, dams and gates still challenging the brains of the archeologist. He conquered all the land, from Cush to the copper mines of Sinai. His tombs have Doric columns. His statue is now at Berlin. In the reign of his son, Sesostris II., we find fine colored sculpture, chess-playing, and glass-blowing. Sesostris III. made canals, built forts, and conquered Europe to Thrace. Mares, his son (?), built the Labyrinth, in which the provinces were afterwards convened, and Lake Moris. Under Sesostris I., the second king of this family, Joseph went down into Egypt, and Jacob emigrated. In his Bible Work Bunsen fixes this date at 2747 B.C., which gives nearly 1400 years for the development of the Hebrew nation. The monuments show that it was no uncommon thing for such immigrations to take place. Driven by famine, war, or local distresses, bands of Arabs came down, were received, and devoted themselves to the care of the king's flocks. Such communities doubtless swelled the "mixed multitude" of the Exodus. The Scripture indicates very distinctly that the king whom Joseph knew was no Bedawin or Hycsite. An inscription in Upper Egypt records the terrible famine which the Hebrew viceroy relieved; and connected with the reign of this Sesostris was that change in the tenure of the soil which added to the oppressions of the people, and is recorded in Gen. xlvii. 20-26. It would seem, then, that we have here a fixed synchronistic point; and there can be no dispute except about the length of the interval between this king and the Menepthah of the Exodus. The wise reign of Sesostris, intended to avert national ruin, was followed by a period of victory and prosperity. Sesostris found the empire, under the control of three or four Dynasties. The kings in the Delta had once grasped imperial power. When the building of the splendid monuments at Syene was followed by the grand erection of the Labyrinth, and the most useful creation of Lake Mors, then popular hatred rose to its height. The kings in the Delta hated the Labyrinth—a perpetual reminder of their own inferiority—and helped to destroy it. They made use of religious differences to create discontent-an easy task, where one province worshipped the Crocodile and another the Ichneumon, its natural destroyer. The treachery of the Delta brought in the invading Hycsos without a blow. From the Twelfth to the Seventeenth Dynasty desolation and confusion reigned. Native monuments-among others the tablet of the dead at Gurnah-represent the native kings as tributary to the Hycsos down to the time of the Eighteenth Dynasty; but the Arab has not perpetuated here—only in remote legends of his wandering race-the memory of his usurpation. In Arabia, they say, the shepherds ruled 800 years in Egypt. The proof of Manetho's Hycsos chronology lies in the evidence, that upon no other assumption can the second Sothiac cycle fall in the Eleventh Dynasty. A!! scholars admit that the third fell in the Nineteenth. The Eighteenth Dynasty of Theban kings makes us familiar with the names of Amosis, Tuthmosis, and Amenophis. It opens with the reign of the wonderful Amos, who drove out the shepherds, and had a lovely Ethiop wife, whose name meant " fair and blameless," in accordance with the old Homeric suggestion. A very striking portrait of her was once shown by Professor Lesly at the Lowell Institute. From her time no honor could be conferred on an Egyptian woman so great as the being permitted to bear her name. A daughter of Amos and Aahmes-Nefruari built Cleopatra's Needle; but one of her brothers afterward enviously erased her escutcheons. Three of her brothers built at Karnak and Tetmes. The statue called Memnon by the Greeks was really a statue erected in this glorious Eighteenth Dynasty to the great conqueror Tuthmosis III., a son of Amos and the beautiful Nefruari. It was erected by his own grandson, and the mistake grew out of the misapprehension of the Egyptian word for monument—mem-nen. The young Amenophis, who erected the mem-nen, was a heretic, worshipping the visible disc of the Sun. He built the palace of Luxor. His grandfather, Tuthmosis III., had a history which may be thus summed up: He forced the shepherds to evacuate Suez, Made a campaign, and was victorious over Nineveh and Babylon, - 1548 B.C. 1534 66 oppression may be said to have begun Might he not have been content to leave untouched the escutcheons of his sister, Mespres, which he enviously destroyed? The Nineteenth Dynasty teems with warlike expeditions into Barbary and Crete, and magnificent erections of temples, obelisks and fortresses. Its six kings beginning to reign about 1450 B.C., all bear familiar names. They are called Sethos or Ramessis, with one exception, the fanatic of the Exodus, whose name was Menepthah. The heresy of the young Amenophis spread. The whole country was in confusion. Ramesis II. who reigned from 1391 to to 1325 B.C., a date positively ascertained, was the first oppresser of the Jews. There is a signet ring of his, which the child Moses may have played with. His portrait is now at Memphis. There was some ground for the popular hatred of the Jews and the royal abuse. The people could remember a time before Joseph, when they had land of their own. The king, a fanatic, trying to make amends for heresies, believed that their presence in the country offended the Gods. Menepthah followed Ramessis II. and in his reign occurred the Exodus. The remains of this period in an artistic point of view are extremely beautiful. The most finished papyri in the world, Moses might have carried, and possibly did carry, beyond Jordan. Menepthah was a weak fanatic. The hatred of the people, for Ramessis, who had overtasked Egyptians as well as Jews, was so great, that his son could never finish his tomb. He yielded, Manetho tells us, to a "revolt of lepers." Not so fortunate as to be drowned in the Red Sea, which swallowed up his host, he fled to Ethi opia with his heir and his sacred bull, and remained there until his son was old enough to recover the kingdom. When Moses went out of Egypt there were two claimants of the throne beside Menepthah. Sipthah and AmenMessu. Does not this give some meaning to the king's fear, that if the Jews staid, they might unite with his enemies? Sipthah was married in infancy to Tauser, the sister of Menepthah, and daughter of Ramses the oppressor. One of Sipthah's inscriptions is a prayer beseeching Heaven for children to inherit the throne. Was Tauser the princess who, despairing of issue by her boy-husband, begged the lovely babe she found in the bulrushes, of the stern old Ramses? The character of the times makes it easy to see what position Moses might have held in that court, and recalls the appeal of Satan in the temptation, "All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me." The Twentieth Dynasty, still Theban, opens with the name of a mean fellow named Marres Phruores, whose precise relationship to Menepthah is not clear. He found nothing better to do, than to put his own throne mark on older monuments and suggest to the Greeks the God Proteus. His son was Ramses III., a magnificent conqueror, whose splendid tomb contains a painted sea-fight. His beautiful red granite coffin is at Paris, its lid at Cambridge, England. It was in the 14th year of this king, that Joshua crossed the Jordan. His conquests in Palestine had compelled the Jews to refrain from entering Canaan up to that time. He was succeeded by ten kings who all bore the name of Ramses, the eighth of whom was the last who carried the God Set on his escutcheon. With the extinction of the Ramessidæ, a great revolution occurred. The Twenty-first Dynasty, containing seven kings, consisted of a priestly caste who had at last got the better of the struggling heretics. Nine kings constitute the Twenty-second Dynasty. The first of these Bubastites was Shishak. In the front court at Karnak is the sculpture which shows how he treated Rehoboam at Jerusalem, the Bible Work says in 968 B.C. In the Twenty-third Tanite Dynasty we have four strange kings. In the Twenty-fourth Dynasty one Saite, in whose reign (Bocchoris's) "a lamb spoke." The people received from him peace and a constitutional government. In the Twenty-fifth Dynasty three Ethiops reigned. In the Twenty-sixth Dynasty we have nine Saite kings, two of them known to us in the Scripture. The fifth of them Necho II. defeated Josiah at Megiddo, and took Jerusalem, 607 B.C. Two years after, he was defeated in his turn by Nebuchadnezzar. The next but one who succeeded him was the Hofra of Scripture, properly Uaphres. The Twenty-seventh Dynasty records the Persian rule from Cambyses to Darius II. The Twenty-eighth, Twenty-ninth, and Thirtieth, only an obscure succession of Saites, Mendesians and Sebennytes; eight kings in all. This is the scaffolding which is to sustain the new walls of the historic erection we are contemplating. SYNCHRONISMS. Starting from well established facts, we find various fixed points of synchronism, between Egyptian monuments and Asiatic history. Calculating upwards we fail to find anything certain in the Hebrew records, until the 10th century before Christ. From Egyptian monuments we obtain the date of Moses, and conclude that the Exodus took place under the Pharaoh, whose name is attached to the last Imperial Canicular Cycle. We have also fixed the age of Joseph who was minister of Sesortosen of the Twelfth Dynasty. From this we work upwards on critical grounds, to the period when Abraham |