ning. In a papyrus roll of his reign, preserved at Leyden, the scribe Kanitsir writes to his chief: "Now I have heard the message which my Lord sent, saying: Give corn to the men and soldiers and Hebrews who are drawing the stone for the great fortress of the palace of Ramses, lover of Truth, delivered to the general Amennema. I have given them their corn every month according to the good instruction of my Lord." The original of this paper is given in Bunsen's 5th volume. One of the objects in building these gigantic cities, whose separate structures are enumerated in the papyrus of Pinebsa now in the British Museum, is indicated by a treaty recorded on the walls of Thebes between Ramses II. and Chetasar, King of the Hittites: "If the subjects of Ramses go over to Chetasar, that king is to compel them to return." At the time that Moses was born and educated, whatever may have been the condition of the government, the civilization and literature of the Egyptians had reached their highest point. How ancient royal libraries were, we have no means of telling. The earliest papyri represent scribes registering flocks and harvests. In the first recorded dynasty they had already "Annals of the monarchy." The Annals of the New Empire extend 1500 years farther back than any ancient records known. A fragment of Livy at Berlin, dated in the first century of our era, is the oldest manuscript out of Egypt. The book of the Dead at Turin goes back to the 13th century B. c. Songs, annals, almanacs and contracts were frequently packed into the vases in the tombs. Ramses, the oppressor, built a library at Thebes, 1350 years B. C., 30 years before the Exodus. Its ruins, as described by Diodorus, (I. 49) may still be traced, and at the entrance sat Thoth and Saf, the gods of Wisdom and History. Behind Wisdom, with significant transcendentalism, sat the god of Hearing; behind History, the god of Seeing! Many existing papyri were written in this Rameseion. Lepsius found at Thebes the tombs of the librarians. The office of Neb-nufre," Superior over the books," was hereditary. This was not the first library, for long before, the gods of Wisdom and History had for titles the "Master and Mistress of the Hall of Books." "They of all people stored up most for recollection," said Herodotus, so a library of 400,000 volumes was easily collected in Alexandria, at a time when the private collection of Aristotle served for all Greece. There Thales learned to measure heights by shadows; there Archimedes perfected his water-screw, and Eudoxus built his observatory. Shall we ever know what modern civilization owes to Egypt? Thence came the numerals; thence, thinks Taylor, all modern weights and measures. We never suspect, when we fill our demijohn, that it is the very vessel Moses called a " damagan." It was in Egypt that Pythagoras first heard of immortality. The records show that the priests believed in one God. They held the name of God unpronounceable, and expressed him by the Hebrew formula, "I am that I am:”—“nuk-pu-nuk." It is a curious question, that no one seems able to answer, whether this formula is found in priestly records before the era when Moses himself might have given the impulse to such a faith. 4. In our former article we showed that the era of the Exodus can be precisely fixed by ascertaining the year in which the 15th of Epiphi corresponded to the April full moon. It is impossible that there should be any doubt extending over fifty or sixty years since the Sothiac cycle began in Menepthah's reign, a point as clearly fixed as our own leap-year. JEWISH CHRONOLOGY THEN HAS THREE PERIODS, 1. The period of Exodus, closing 18 years after the death of Moses. 2. The time of the Judges and the undivided kingdom. 3. The period of the kings of the divided kingdom. They journey from Kadesh to Akaba, with one month's rest at Hor. The middle of this year they arrive at the brook Zend, the south-eastern part of the Red Sea. Eighteen years intervene before they pay tribute to Mesopotamia; three hundred before the building of the temple, 1014 B. C., a date astronomically and critically determined. Moses went into Midian in the life of Ramesis II. He returned to find Menepthah on the throne. In the 19th year after the death of Joshua, the Jews became tributary to the Assyrians. They remained so until the election of Saul. The first "Shepherds" of the 15th dynasty were Arabs, whose names correspond to the Amalekite rule, which the Arabs say lasted 800 years in Egypt. The second were doubtless Southern Palestinians akin to Jethro. What created the mutiny at Kadesh Barnea when the Jews desired so earnestly to return to Egypt? Only five days away, on the direct route of the caravans, where they could hear of the dismay of the Egyptians, of the successful inroads that followed the Exodus, they desired to return and enrich themselves. This was the real difficulty Moses had to meet. He and Aaron threw themselves upon their faces to pray for aid, and finally led the Hebrews round the gulf of Akaba into the country east of Jordan. How great must have been the enthusiasm and faith that conquered! The coincidences which determine these points are found in three separate lines of investigation, and cannot be accidental. Nor is there any satisfactory account to be given of the tributary condition of the Hebrews nineteen years after the death of Joshua, except the sudden rise of the Assyrian power. The enumeration in the 12th chapter of Joshua is a cotemporary document. This is proved by the account in the first chapter of their taking possession of Canaan, and the mention of Kirjath Sipher, or the "City of Writing," by its early name. The nations they had dispossessed now paid them tribute. The two and a half tribes beyond Jordan formed a living wall, yet when they became tributary to Mesopotamia, 1246 B. C., they remained so for 175 years. Nothing changed but the names of their rulers. Under David, they rose for the first time to the height of power, which had enabled them to take possession of Canaan in the beginning. No imperfection of their own government will explain this continued dependence. That was due to the rising power of Assyria. Semiramis was no myth, but a Phoenician of the hated race they knew, the wife of the Assyrian satrap at Ascalon. POINTS SETTLED. 1. The Exodus can only have been possible between 1324 and 1320 B. C. 2. The undisturbed possession of the peninsula is only to be explained by the war in Egypt. 3. Moses determined the destiny of the Hebrews at Kadesh. 4. Canaan could not have been conquered seven years earlier than 1280 B. c., for Ramses was then raging through Palestine, nor seven years later, for Assyria then claimed it. 5. The original difficulties grow out of our possessing only a few shreds of the old story. From the Exodus to death of Joshua then was The Supremacy of Mesopotamia lasted 65 years. 8 The time of Othniel, Independence and the Judges lasted. 7 18 Of Tola, Ibdam, Elon and Abdon in Canaan, Of Jair, the Ammonites and Jepthath in E. Jordan, 3 48 48 This whole period coincides with the Assyrian supremacy in Western Asia. It began the year after Joshua's death, 1273 B. C., and came to its height at the death of Semiramis in 1222 B. C. Sardanapalus is the Tiglath Pileser of the Scripture, and in his day the Jews were carried to Babylon, Judges 11., 8. Khusan Risathaim, the Judge of the Two Rivers, was the Assyrian satrap who had married Semiramis. In the Assyrian tongue this. name means only satrap of Mesopotamia. For Semiramis, Palestine was only a bridge to Egypt, which she conquered 1250 B. C., twenty-three years later. Her successors strained every nerve to get possession of it. There is no instance known to us of a history so faithful to its own purpose as that of our own Scripture. The new The old Empire of Egypt was isolated as that of China was. Empire was drawn under the influence and policy of Asia. That was a noble life which the long Hycsos usurpation had chilled, and if the New Empire had not expelled the Hebrews, it might have come to new power. To the Egyptians, therefore, the Exodus was God's judgment, a link in a well devised plan of avenging justice. A new invasion of Palestinians was merely a cover for the Exodus; the Sicilian vespers in which Asia avenged herself on Egypt! When, in the third year of Menepthah, such invaders slew the first-born, they were messengers of the most high, in Hebrew eyes. When the king fled, the invaders plundered all the Delta, and to his fanatical horror devoured all the sacred animals Very likely Jethro incited this invasion. It was the death blow of the new Empire. In thirteen years the invaders were expelled, but the strength of the nation was gone forever. The 19th dynasty outlived the Exodus only 22 years. Ramses III., the "Man of Memphis," restored order. He conquered back the old renown and erected sumptuous buildings. In the 50th year of this dynasty, 1250 B. C., Semiramis conquered Egypt. No more victories, no more monuments. Shishak, the founder of the 22d dynasty, ransacked Jerusalem in the reign of Rehoboam. The names of his family indicate some Assyrian connection. 250 years before, in the time of Eli, the high priest, Ramses XII. had sent a sacred mission from Thebes to Nineveh. Perhaps it went, to cure of some illness, Nefruari, "Beauty of the Sun," who is recorded to have been healed and married to Ramses. This account, given by Macrobius, and a stele in the Louvre, translated by Champollion, may indicate the opening of an alliance, which ended by breaking up the isolation of the Empire. In the reign of David, an Edomite prince had taken refuge in Egypt. Solomon married Pharaoh's daughter. War chariots and cavalry were sent to him from Egypt. Hezekiah evidently thought it bad policy to lean on Egypt, yet kindly memories prevailed with him over the memories of the bondage. "Thou shalt not abhor an Egyptian, for thou wert a stranger in his land," is said in Deut. xxiii., 7-8 et seq. See also, RIGHT royally dies the stormy day! On the northern hills kneel black Ꭱ browed cloud-giants, the priests whose somber robes sweep grandly through the purple flame of his funeral pyre. The waters climb sobbing up the desolate rocks with his last touch of blessing on their silvery locks, and the restless winds haunt the shadows with dirges learned far across seas in cathedral aisles. Fastward are the mourners-rank upon rank of forest trees, lifting scarred and maimed arms into the glory, in a dumb agony of appeal against the coming night of storm. All the world without is filled with their patient grandeur. Within, in this quaint, quiet room, whose stillness is naunted by fragments of old, old tunes "with the saddest of closes," whose shadows are frames for some bright faces of long ago, that look down on its solitary watcher, is something grander-a soul that has battled bravely and well with life, almost to the end, and waits for the last storm that lowers through its sunset. A worn face, calm to the depths of its steady eyes, some grey black hair gathered away from the brow, an upward fearless turn of the head, as though used to facing some bitterer sleet than will beat upon the treegiants to night. One sees only so much. No heroic story is written on any feature, for it is a commonplace life outwardly. No great event has ever thrilled through it to wake up the dormant genius that lies in all of us. Only life's commonest joys and sorrows, storm and sunshine, have moulded it. |