Rome for empire far renown'd, Tramples on a thousand states; Ruffians, pitiless as proud, Heaven awards the vengeance due: Shame and ruin wait for you." This most remarkable testimony to the ruin of the great empires of the ancient world in general, and that of Tyre in particular, is to be found in the works of a celebrated French infidel, whose unbelief is so strong, that notwithstanding his learning and experience as a great traveller, he had the folly to declare that "the existence of Jesus Christ is no better proved than that of Osiris and Hercules, or that of Fôt, with whom the Chinese continually confound Him, for they never call Jesus by any other name than Fôt. There are absolutely no other monuments of the existence of Jesus Christ as a human being, than a passage in Josephus, a single phrase in Tacitus, and the Gospels ! " 8 Such is M. Volney's idea of the proof at our command for the existence of the Founder of the Christian religion. Any educated person in the present day putting forth such an argument in favour of infidelity, might justly be pronounced more fit for Bedlam than any place else. Its reckless folly sufficiently refutes itself. 8 Volney's Ruins of Empires, p. 355. 394 CHAPTER XIX. PROPHECIES RELATING TO EGYPT. IF archæology has brought to light much in the cuneiform inscriptions relating to the histories of Assyria and Babylon, this is still more evident in the information which the Egyptian monuments with their numerous hieroglyphic and hieratic inscriptions afford to the student, not only in respect to its history, but also in the Scripture prophecies relating to the land of Ham. We pass on, therefore, to consider what three of the greater prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, were inspired to foretell respecting the calamities which were destined to overtake the cities of that doomed land. We must not forget that Egypt, for upwards of a thousand years after the dispersion at Babel, and the formation of different nations in Europe, Asia and Africa, was the mightiest kingdom on the face of the earth. The Pyramids, which were the mausoleums or tombs of the kings of the first six of Manetho's dynasties, as Job appears to state, are the only buildings which have stood the wear and tear of time. The Great Pyramid of Ghizeh is the only one of the seven wonders of the ancient world which still remains; and the corpse of King Mykerinus, brought by Col. Howard Vyse about half a century ago from the third Pyramid of that same locality, and now in the British Museum, is one of the very few relics which can claim an undoubted antiquity of at least 4000 years. ISAIAH. This prophet begins by announcing God's judgment in the usual formula — "The Burden of Egypt....The idols of Egypt shall melt at the presence of Jehovah. I will set the Egyptians against the Egyptians: and they shall fight every one against his brother, and every one against his neighbour.... And the Egyptians will I give over into the hands of a cruel lord; and a fierce king shall rule over them, saith Jehovah.... Surely the princes of Zoan are fools, the counsel of the wise counsellors of Pharaoh is become brutish.... Where are they? Where are thy wise men? Let them know what the Lord hath purposed upon Egypt....Jehovah hath mingled a perverse spirit in the midst of them: and they have caused Egypt to err in every work thereof.... In that day Egypt shall fear because of the shaking of the hand of the Lord of hosts" (ch. xix. 1—16). "And the land of Judah shall be a terror unto Egypt....In that day shall five cities in the land of Egypt speak the language of Canaan, and swear to (by) the Lord of hosts; one shall be called, The city of destruction. In that day shall there be an altar to the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt, and a pillar at the border thereof to the Lord. And it shall be for a sign and for a witness unto Jehovah in the land of Egypt....And the Lord shall be known to Egypt, and the Egyptians shall know the Lord in that day....And the Lord shall smite Egypt and heal it: and they shall return to the Lord" (ch. xix. 17—22). "In that day there shall be a highway out of Egypt to Assyria, and the Egyptians shall serve with the Assyrians. In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and with Assyria, even a blessing in the midst of the land: Whom Jehovah shall bless, saying, Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel mine inheritance" (ch. xix., 23-25). I have divided the ninteenth chapter of Isaiah's prophecy into three divisions, as each of these prophecies appear to refer to different epochs. The first portion foretells the civil war in Egypt, and ends with the Persian conquest of Egypt by Cambyses. The second seems to speak of a great change taking place among the Egyptians, when they are brought to the knowledge of the true God. The third may be understood either as applicable to the same period, or, as some suppose, to a time yet future, when the children of Israel will be restored "a second time" to the land which God gave to Abraham and his descendants as "an everlasting possession." 9 Isaiah commences his predictions against Egypt by alluding to the "idols being moved at the presence of Jehovah," when 9 Gen. xvii. 8. "it shall fear because of the shaking of the hand of the Lord of hosts over it (xix. 1—16). Isaiah prophesied in the middle of the eighth century B.C., when, as Herodotus says, a dynasty of priests was ruling in Egypt; and it seemed the most unlikely thing in the world that the system of idolatry, which had so long stood the test of time, having then existed for sixteen centuries, or about double the period which separates the Norman Conquest from our own day, should be so completely overthrown as it was by the Persian conquest of Egypt, which happened about two and a half centuries after Isaiah wrote. 1 Moreover, Isaiah predicted the coming desolation of Egypt by the civil wars which ensued shortly after this time, first by the invasion of the Ethiopians, and then by the subsequent conquests of the Assyrians, the Babylonians, and the Persians. The Assyrian conquest has been already considered in our notice of the prophecies relating to Nineveh (see pp. 356-361); Nebuchadnezzar's conquest of Egypt will be noticed presently; but that of the Ethiopians is so remarkable a confirmation of Isaiah's prophecy, that we may profitably consider the subject at some length. Until the recent decipherment of the Egyptian monuments, Biblical students were unable to reconcile many of the statements recorded in Scripture with those of secular historians on the latter times, or the last days of the Pharaohs. Canon Cook, the editor of the Speaker's Commentary, has given to the Church most interesting information respecting the sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt, by his two essays which enrich the first volume of that commentary; but in the pamphlet which he has published, entitled The Inscription of Pianchi-Mer-Amon, King of Egypt, in the eighth century B.C., he has thrown a flood of light on the prophecies of Isaiah as bearing upon that very confused period of Egyptian history, not only by his skill in translating the lengthy hieroglyphic 1 For the condition of Egypt at this period of her history, see Records of the Past, ii., pp. 79-104; Brugsch-Bey's History of Egypt under the Pharaohs, ch. xviii.; Rawlinson's History of Egypt, chaps. xxv. and xxvi.; Birch's History of Egypt, p. 159, et seq. inscription, but also by his valuable "Introductory Remarks" with which the inscription is accompanied. While referring our readers to this valuable pamphlet for a complete understanding of the history of Egypt in the eighth century B.C., and to show how well it harmonizes with what Isaiah had predicted concerning the civil war, when "the Egyptians were set against the Egyptians, and every one fought against his neighbour; city against city, and kingdom against kingdom" (v. 2); it will be sufficient to mention that at this period when the Ethiopian dynasty commenced to rule in Egypt, there was no prince or Pharaoh in Lower Egypt who could be regarded as an independent sovereign. The civil war may be said to have begun by the revolt of a certain chieftain named Tafnecht, against the authority of Pharaoh Pianchi, the Ethiopian, about the year B.C. 740-730, a few years before the capture of Samaria, the capital of the kingdom of Israel, by Sargon king of Assyria, the first of that nation who invaded the hitherto unconquered kingdom of Egypt. We learn from the inscription that Pharaoh Pianchi Mer-amon, although residing chiefly in Nubia, with his capital at the ancient Napata, the "Noph " of Isaiah's prophecy, now termed Gebel, where the inscription was found, was a native Egyptian prince of royal birth, devoted to the idol gods of Egypt, and connected with the priestly family which had obtained supremacy in the Thebaid under a previous dynasty; and which, as Canon Cook considers, answers to Manetho's twenty-first dynasty, adding that "he (Pianchi) derived his right partly through his father representing the priestly line of Theban kings, and partly through his mother; hence he calls himself king from the egg." The chief point, however, in the inscription is the confirmation which it affords to Isaiah's prophecy respecting the civil war, and which before its discovery, as Canon Cook remarks— "Was considered by commentators to be incompatible with any date preceding the Dodecarchy.... At present it proves that the divisions which culminated in the Dodecarchy, existed before and during the predominance 2 Isa. xix. 13. |