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RAMESES II.
 Rameses II., the renowned soldier, son of Seti I., known to the Greeks
as Sesostris. The oppression of the Israelites, probably begun by Seti
I., was continued under Rameses II. In the sixth year of his reign,
however, Moses was born. The mummy of Rameses II. was found
deposited in a coffin of the twenty-first dynasty, like that of Rameses I.
This gave rise to doubts as to which particular Rameses was enclosed,
but on unwrapping the mummy an inscription was found, explaining
that the original coffin had been accidentally broken, and leaving no
doubt that this was Rameses II. Most striking, when compared with
the mummy of Seti I., is the astonishing resemblance between father
and son. The nose, mouth, chin, all the features are the same, but in
the father they are more refined than in the son. Rameses II. was over
six feet in height, and we see by the breadth of his chest and the
squareness of his shoulders that he must have been a man of great
bodily strength. Professor Maspero, in his official report, describes the
body as that of a vigorous and robust old man, with white and well-
preserved teeth, white hair and eyebrows, long and slender hands and
feet, stained with henna, and ears pierced for the reception of ear-
rings. Rameses II. reigned sixty-six years, and was nearly a hundred
years old at the time of his death. He exhibited great zeal as a builder,
and was a patron of science and art. It was he who built the
Ramesseum at Thebes, and presented it with a library. He also built
the Pylons and Hall of Columns of the Temple of Luxor, and a score of
minor temples in Egypt and Nubia, and made the marvellous rock-cut
temples at Abousimbel.
Rameses II. was succeeded by his thirteenth son, Meneptah II.,
who continued the oppression of the Israelites, and pursued them
when they were escaping.
Besides all these monarchs, there were found in the strange
repository at Deir el-Bahari, coffins and mummies of Rameses III. (of
the twentieth dynasty), the last of the great warrior kings of Egypt,
Pinotem I., and Pinotem II., priest-kings of the twenty-first dynasty,
and several queens, princes, and notabilities of the same periods. An
affecting story, which brings home to us very vividly the universal
kinship of humanity, is revealed by the contents of the coffin of
Makara, wife of King Pinotem, of the priest-king dynasty. A little coiled-
up bundle lay at the feet of the Queen, her infant daughter, in giving
birth to whom she gave likewise her life. Thus, and so touchingly, are
we led to participate in the affliction of the sick chamber of three
thousand years ago. Already had the still-born babe of a queen
received a name, Mautemhat, the firstling of the goddess Maut, wife of
Amen; and not a name alone, for she is born to a title strange to our
ears, namely, “principal royal spouse.”
[Sources and Authorities:—The Times newspaper, 4th August 1881. The Times
newspaper, 25th June 1886. “Egyptian Mummies,” lecture by Sir Erasmus Wilson;
Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1883.]

4. Egyptians in Palestine before the Exodus.

When the tribes of Israel were preparing to pass over Jordan, they
were told that they were going to possess nations greater and mightier
than themselves, a people great and tall, whose cities were fenced up
to heaven (Deut. ix. 1; i. 28). Of these early inhabitants of Palestine,
the spies had reported that Amalek dwelt in the land of the South; the
Hittite, the Jebusite, and the Amorite dwelt in the mountains, and the
Canaanite dwelt by the sea and along by the side of Jordan (Num. xiii.
29). We have indeed an enumeration of seven nations dwelling in
Palestine at this time, and a testimony to their might:—“The Hittite, the
Girgashite, the Amorite, and the Canaanite, the Perizzite, the Hivite,
and the Jebusite, seven nations greater and mightier than thou.”
(Deut. vii. 1). In these passages it is plainly implied that the peoples
who occupied Palestine before the Israelitish invasion were in an
advanced state of civilisation. Until lately we have known little or
nothing about them, beyond the information which these Scripture
passages afforded; but now at last the veil is beginning to lift.

The Hittites.

As there were seven “nations” in Canaan, and the land itself is no

larger than Wales, it was long supposed that each of the “nations” was
but a small tribe, and was too insignificant to make any figure in
history. But we have lately learned that if this was the rule, the Hittites
were an exception to it. They were a great people, or perhaps a great
confederacy or empire, spread over a vast region in northern Syria and
some of the adjacent countries. Their dominion extended more or less
over Asia Minor, and the influence of their art and culture reached even
into Greece. Their capital was Carchemish, on the Euphrates, the site
of which city was discovered a few years ago by Mr Skene, English
Consul at Aleppo, and again, two years later, by Mr George Smith, as
he was returning from Assyria. The place is now called Jerablus.
Another centre of Hittite power was Kadesh, on the Orontes, a city
which appears to be referred to in the Bible, for it has been maintained
that where Joab and the captains “came to the land of Tahtim-hodshi”
(2 Sam. xxiv. 6), it should be rendered “the land of Kadesh of the
Hittites,” this being the northern border of David’s kingdom at that
time. A list of places in Palestine conquered by Thothmes III., and
engraved on the walls of his temple at Karnac, includes the name of
Kadesh. It is situated where the Orontes flows into the lake of Homs
(still called the lake of Kadesh) and had been a sacred city of the
Amorites before it was conquered by the Hittites about 1400 B.C. [Rev.
H. G. Tomkins, in “Records of the Past.” New Series, vol. v.] The
Hittites were thus seated in a region north of Palestine proper; but
they appear to have had colonies in the country, and it is these
isolated settlements which are classed with the small nations of
Canaan by the Bible writer. When Abraham, at Hebron, required a
parcel of earth in which to bury his wife Sarah, he bought it of Ephron
the Hittite; whence it is clear that there were Hittites owning land in
the south. From the mention of Hebron in association with Zoan in
Numbers xiii. 22, it is even suspected that the Shepherd Kings who
reigned in Zoan were a dynasty of Hittites. At any rate the Hittites
were a powerful people, able to hold their own both against the
Egyptians and against the Assyrians, and did so in the region of
Carchemish for a thousand years.
Thothmes III., “the Egyptian Alexander,” who accomplished thirteen
campaigns in twenty years, and made Egypt the centre of history,
invaded Palestine and gained a victory at Megiddo over the king of
Kadesh and his allies. “They fled, head over heels, to Megiddo, with
terror in their countenances, and left behind their horses and their gold
and silver chariots, and were drawn up, with ropes to their clothes,
into this town, since the people had closed the gates of the said town
on account of the deeds of the king.” “The miserable king of Kadesh”
and the miserable king of Megiddo would not have escaped in this way,
only that the Egyptian warriors relaxed the pursuit and engaged in
plunder. The Pharaoh was beside himself. However, the warriors
captured the tent of the miserable king, in which his son was found.
Then they raised a shout of joy and gave honour to Amon, the lord of
Thebes, who had given to his son Thothmes the victory. After this the
neighbouring kings came together to worship before Pharaoh, “and to
implore breath for their nostrils.” And then came the children of the
kings and presented gifts of silver, gold, blue-stone, and green-stone;
they brought also wheat, and wine in skins, and fruits for the warriors
of the king, since each of the Kitti [Hittites] had taken care to have
such provisions for his return home. Then the king pardoned the
foreign princes.
A catalogue of the booty includes 3401 living prisoners, 83 hands,
2041 mares, 191 foals, 6 bulls, one chariot, covered with plates of
gold, of the king of ..., 892 chariots of his miserable warriors, one
beautiful iron armour of the hostile king, one beautiful iron armour of
the king of Megiddo, 200 accoutrements of his miserable warriors, 602
bows, 7 tent-poles covered with plates of gold from the tent of the
hostile king. Pharaoh’s warriors had also taken as booty ... bulls, ...
cows, 2000 kids, and 20,500 white goats.
A catalogue is also given of persons and things which Pharaoh
afterwards carried off as his property, including 39 noble persons, 87
children of the hostile king and the kings allied with him, 5 marina
(lords), 1596 men and maid-servants, 105 persons who gave
themselves up because of famine. Besides these prisoners there were
taken precious stones, golden dishes, and many utensils of this sort, a
large jug with a double handle, 97 swords, 1784 lbs. of gold rings
which were found in the hands of the artists, 969 lbs. of silver rings,
one statue with head of gold, 6 chairs and footstools of ivory and
cedar wood, 6 large tables of cedar wood inlaid with gold and precious
stones, one staff of the king worked as a kind of sceptre entirely of
gold, one plough inlaid with gold, many garments of the enemy, &c.,
&c.
These catalogues enable us to form some estimate of the degree of
perfection in art and refinement which had been arrived at in Northern
Palestine and Syria before the Israelitish invasion. Lists are also given
of the towns conquered and the peoples made to submit. Remarking
upon these, Brugsch justly says that what gives the highest importance
to the catalogue is the undisputed fact that more than three hundred
years before the entrance of the Jews into the land of Canaan, a great
league of peoples of the same race existed in Palestine under little
kings, who dwelt in the same towns and fortresses as we find stated
on the monuments, and who for the greater part fell by conquest into
the hands of the Jewish immigrants. Among these the King of Kadesh,
on the Orontes, in the land of the Amorites—as the inscriptions
expressly state—played the first part, since there obeyed him, as their
chief leader, all the kings and their peoples from the water of Egypt
(which is the same as the Biblical brook which flowed as the boundary
of Egypt) to the rivers of Naharain, afterwards called Mesopotamia.
After the death of Thothmes III. the Hittites recovered their
independence, and their importance grew from year to year, in such a
way that even the Egyptian inscriptions mention the names of their
kings in a conspicuous manner, and speak of their gods with
reverence. Seti I. came to the throne of Egypt about two centuries
after the death of Thothmes, and with him the martial spirit of Egypt
revived. Seti drove back the Syrians who had invaded his frontier, and
pursued them as far as Phœnicia, where he overthrew with great
slaughter “the kings of the land of Phœnicia.” He probably suspected
the Hittites of abetting his enemies, for, from the overthrow of the
Phœnicians, he advanced against Kadesh, professedly as “the avenger
of broken treaties.” The battle scene is represented on the north side
of the great temple of Karnak, where Pharaoh is shown as having
thrown to the ground the Hittites, and slain their princes.
Rameses II. was first associated with his father on the throne, and
afterwards succeeded him. The great battle of his reign was fought
against the Hittites at Kadesh, and was an event of first-class
importance. The King of the Hittites had brought together his forces
from the remotest parts of his empire, and was aided by allies and
satraps from Mesopotamia to Mysia, and from Arvad in the sea. The
Egyptian advance followed the coast line, through Joppa, Tyre, Sidon,
and Beyrout. On the cliff by the Dog River, Rameses cut his bas-reliefs,
and then appears to have advanced up the valley of the Eleutherus.
Bringing his army before Kadesh, a great battle was fought, in which
the Egyptians claim to be the victors; but at one point of the struggle
the Pharaoh was surrounded and in the greatest danger, and at the
close of the fighting a treaty was signed as between equals.
On the great temple at Ibsamboul there is a picture of the battle of
Kadesh, nineteen yards long by more than eight yards deep. In this
great battle scene there are eleven hundred figures, and among these
there is no difficulty in recognizing the slim Egyptians and their
Sardonian allies, with horned and crested helmets, and long swords,
shields, and spears. “The hosts also of the Hittites and of their allies
are represented” (says Brugsch) “with a lively pictorial expression, for
the artist has been guided by the intention of bringing before the eyes
of the beholder the orderly masses of the Hittite warriors, and the less
regular and warlike troops of the allied peoples, according to their
costume and arms. The Canaanites are distinguished in the most
striking manner from the allies, of races unknown to us, who are
attired with turban-like coverings for the head, or with high caps, such
as are worn at the present day by the Persians.” Conder also remarks
that the one race is bearded, the other beardless, and that this battle
picture gives us most lively portraits of the Hittite warriors in their
chariots, and of their walled and tower-crowned city, with its name
written over it, and its bridges over the Orontes. The Hittites have long
pigtails, and their Chinese-like appearance is very remarkable.
 Hittites (Abou-simbel).
(By permission of Messrs C. Philip & Son.)

Pentaur of Thebes, the poet-laureate of Egypt, had accompanied

Rameses in this expedition, and he celebrated the achievements of the
day in a poem which has come down to us in several editions. It is
found on a papyrus roll, and again in conjunction with splendid battle
scenes, on the walls of temples at Abydos, Luxor, Karnak, and
Ibsamboul.
This prize poem of Pentaur’s was written three thousand two
hundred years ago, and is the oldest heroic poem in the world. “It may
be relied upon,” says Dr Wright, “as the earliest specimen of special
war correspondence.” Besides this narration there is a simple prose
account of the same battle, and this is followed by a copy of the treaty
of peace which established an offensive and defensive alliance
between the empire of the Hittites and Egypt.
 I here insert a few incidents from the prize poem of Pentaur, written
two years after the battle of Kadesh. Reading between the lines of the
boastful hieroglyphs, it is clear that the Hittites must have maintained
their ground in the battle, for their king, who, at the beginning of the
fight, is “the vile king of the Hittites,” and “the miserable king of the
Hittites,” towards the close of the battle becomes “the great king of the
Hittites.”
According to Pentaur, the Hittites and their allies covered mountains
and valleys like grasshoppers, and no such multitude had ever been
seen before.... Pharaoh was young and bold, he seized his arms, he
armed his people and his chariots, and marched towards the land of
the Hittites.... Arab spies were caught, who told Pharaoh that the
Hittite army was in the neighbourhood of Aleppo; but “the miserable
king of the Hittites” was all the time lying in ambush with his allies
north-west of Kadesh. They rose up and surprised the Egyptians.
Pharaoh’s retreat was cut off. In this crisis he prayed to his god and
father, Amon, and was assisted to perform prodigies of valour. He
hurled darts with his right hand and fought with his left; the two
thousand three hundred horses were dashed to pieces, and the hearts
of the Hittites sank within them. The King of the Hittites sent eight of
his brother kings with armed chariots against Pharaoh; but six times he
charged the unclean wretches, who did not acknowledge his god; he
killed them, none escaped. Pharaoh upbraided his worthless warriors,
who had left him to fight the battle single-handed, and promised that
on his return to Egypt he would see the fodder given to his pair of
horses which did not leave him in the lurch.
The battle was renewed the following morning and went sore
against the Hittites. Then the hostile king sent a messenger to ask for
peace, and to say that the Egyptians and the Hittites ought to be
brothers. Pharaoh assembled his warriors to hear the message of “the
great king of the Hittites,” and by their advice he made peace, and
returned to Egypt in serene humour.
On the outer wall of the temple of Karnak we find inscribed the
treaty of peace which was made on this or a later occasion, and the
terms of the offensive and defensive alliance entered into. It is related
that Kheta-sira, King of the Hittites, sent two heralds, bearing a plate
of silver, upon which the treaty was engraved. The treaty is between
the Grand-Duke of Kheta, Kheta-sira, the puissant, and Rameses, the
great ruler of Egypt, the puissant. The arrangement is sanctioned by
the Sun and by Sutekh, the chief gods respectively of Egypt and Kheta.
There is to be peace and good brotherhood for ever—he shall
fraternize with me and I will fraternize with him. The Grand-Duke of
Kheta shall not invade the land of Egypt for ever, to carry away
anything from it, nor shall Ramessu-Meriamen, the great ruler of
Egypt, invade the land of Kheta for ever, to carry away anything from
it. If Egypt is invaded by some other enemy, and Pharaoh sends to
Kheta for help, the Grand-Duke is to go, or at least to send his infantry
and cavalry; and he is, of course, to look for reciprocal aid. If
emigrants or fugitives pass from one country to the other they are not
to find service and favour, but to be given up; nevertheless, when
taken back, they are not to be punished as criminals. In support of the
provisions of the treaty the parties thereunto invoke “the thousand
gods of the land of Kheta, in concert with the thousand gods of the
land of Egypt.” Whosoever shall not observe the provisions of the
treaty, the gods shall be against his house and family and servants; but
to whomsoever shall observe them the gods shall give health and life—
to his family, himself, and his servants.
“In such a form,” says Brugsch, “were peace and friendship made at
Ramses, the city in Lower Egypt, between the two most powerful
nations of the world at that time—Kheta in the east, and Kemi (Egypt)
in the west.”
Following upon the conclusion of this treaty we have a happy
dynastic alliance. Kheta-sira, the great king of the Hittites, appeared in
Egypt in Hittite costume, accompanied by his beautiful daughter, and
Pharaoh made this princess his queen. A memorial tablet at Ibsamboul
speaks of this as a great, inconceivable wonder—“she herself knew not
the impression which her beauty made on thy heart”—and we may
fairly infer that her influence contributed to the international friendship
which lasted as long as Rameses lived. We do not know the native
name of the Hittite princess, but the name given her on her marriage
was Ur-Maa-Noferu Ra.
 Since it has become evident that the Hittites were a great people,
and not a petty local tribe like the Hivites or the Perizzites, scholars
have naturally turned again to the Bible references to see what they
really imply. On careful examination the Bible passages are seen to be
all consistent with the idea that the Hebrew writers were well
acquainted with the power and greatness of the Hittites. Their
greatness is nowhere denied; on the contrary there are some passages
which seem plainly to imply it. When Solomon imported horses and
chariots from Egypt, he sold them to the kings of Syria and to “all the
kings of the Hittites” (2 Chron. i. 16). Again, when Ben-hadad, king of
Syria, was besieging Samaria, and the Syrians were smitten with panic,
believing that they heard “a noise of chariots, and a noise of horses,
even the noise of a great host,” what nations did they suppose were
alone able to send great hosts into the field with horses and chariots?
They said one to another, “Lo, the King of Israel has hired against us
the kings of the Hittites and the kings of the Egyptians” (2 Kings vii. 6).
Further—to take an instance nearer to the age of Rameses II.—when
the future wide inheritance of Israel is promised to Moses and to
Joshua, the description runs thus:—“From the wilderness and this
Lebanon, even unto the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of
the Hittites, and unto the great sea toward the going down of the
sun”—words which had been regarded as a pictorial exaggeration, but
which may now be looked upon as literally accurate (Deut. xi. 24;
Josh. i. 4).
Exploration and research are now making us acquainted with Hittite
works of art and with inscriptions in the Hittite character and language;
while, as already stated, we have Egyptian portraits of their soldiers on
the Temple wall at Ibsamboul.
Burckhardt the traveller was perhaps the first to discover and
describe a Hittite inscription. He gives an account of a stone which he
saw in a wall in the city of Hamath, which was covered with
hieroglyphs differing from those of Egypt. The discovery was without
result at the time; but when the stone had been seen again, with four
others, in 1870, by the American visitor, Mr J. A. Johnson, interest
began to be aroused. Similar stones have been found at Carchemish,
at Aleppo, and in various parts of Asia Minor. Some have been removed
to the Museum at Constantinople, some are in the British Museum, and
some inscriptions remain on rock faces irremovable. A very good
collection of illustrative plates will be found appended to Dr Wm.
Wright’s “Empire of the Hittites.” The Hittite hieroglyphs cannot yet be
deciphered, although Dr A. H. Sayce and Major Conder may be said to
have made a promising beginning. The inquiry has been aided a little
by a short inscription in Hittite and Cuneiform characters, engraved on
a convex silver plate, which looked like the knob of a staff or dagger,
and is known as the boss of Tarkondêmos. We shall probably have to
wait for the discovery of some longer bi-lingual inscription before much
progress can be made. Meanwhile Major Conder finds much reason to
think that the affinities of the Hittites and their language were
Mongolian. The inscriptions of course are quite a mystery to the Asiatic
folk in whose districts they are found, and they attribute magical
virtues to some of them. The particular stone figured above was very
efficacious in cases of lumbago: a man had only to lean his back
against it and he was effectually cured.

Hamath Inscription (Hittite).

(Specially drawn by W. Harry Rylands, F.S.A.)
 We know something of the religion of the Hittites from their
invocation of the gods in their treaty with Rameses II. They adored the
sun and moon, the mountains, rivers, clouds, and the sea. But their
chief deity was Sutekh, “king of heaven, protector of this treaty,”
supposed by Brugsch to be a form of Baal, but who is more likely to
have been allied to Set or to Dagon. We cannot suppose that their
worship was purer than that of the nations round about them; but it
may not have been less pure, nor their life less moral. The appeal to
the King of Heaven to protect a treaty is admirable so far as it goes. To
what height they could sometimes rise in their conceptions of duty is
pleasantly shown if, as seems possible, that beautiful passage in Micah
vi. 8 is to be attributed to them—“What doth the Lord require of thee
but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.” The
prophet quotes the sentiment from Balaam, and gives it as Balaam’s
answer to the question of Balak, king of Moab, who had sent for him
to curse Israel. A conversation took place which may be set forth as
follows:—
King—Wherewithal shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself
before the high God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
with calves of a year old?
Prophet—Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with
ten thousands of rivers of oil?
King—Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my
body for the sin of my soul?
Prophet—He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what
doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and
to walk humbly with thy God?[2]
In the Book of Numbers we find that Balaam had been sent for from
another country, and came from the city of Pethor. Now, in the temple
of Karnak, Thothmes III. gives a list of two hundred and eighteen
towns in Syria and Aram, which he claims to have conquered, and
among them we find Pethor. It was a city on the Upper Euphrates, not
far from Carchemish, and so was well within the circle of the Hittite
dominion. Balaam, then, may be regarded as a Hittite, or as belonging
to the Hittite confederacy,[3] and since the text quoted shows his idea
of the Divine requirements, it indicates the standard of duty which had
been arrived at by some among that people.
The rock inscriptions prove that the Hittites possessed a written
language, and this is further shown by their engraved treaty sent to
Rameses II. They appear even to have possessed a literature, for the
Egyptian records mention a certain Khilp-sira as a writer of books
among the Hittites. One of their cities in the south of Palestine was
called Kirjath-Sepher, or Book-Town, so that the place must have been
noted for writings of some kind.
The fact that the copy of the treaty sent to Rameses was engraved
upon a silver plate, with a figure of the god Sutekh in the middle,
shows that the Hittites were an artistic people also. In fact their
civilisation was far advanced. “They had walled towns, chased metal
work, chariots and horses, skilled artificers. They could carve in stone,
and could write in hieroglyphic character. All this wonderful cultivation
they possessed while Israel as yet was hardly a nation. Thus the Bible
account of the Canaan overrun by Joshua is fully confirmed by
monumental evidence.”[4]
[Authorities and Sources:—“A History of Egypt under the Pharaohs.” By Henry
Brugsch-Bey. “The Empire of the Hittites.” By William Wright, D.D. “The Hittites:
the Story of a forgotten Empire.” By A. H. Sayce, LL.D. “Transactions of the
Society of Biblical Archæology.”]

5. Semites in Egypt before the Oppression.

If, as seems probable, the Pharaoh of Joseph was Apepi, the last of
the Shepherd Kings, and the Pharaoh of the Oppression was Rameses
II., the third king of the nineteenth dynasty, we have a period of nearly
three centuries between Joseph and the “new king who knew not
Joseph.” The period appears to be much too long to make the
expression “new king” seem natural, while at the same time a shorter
period would hardly leave room for the descendants of Jacob to
multiply and become a danger to Egypt. This perplexity is removed by
the recent discovery of ancient writings under the extensive ruins
existing at Tell-el-Amarna in Upper Egypt—a site about midway
between Minieh and Siout, and on the eastern bank of the Nile. From
these documents it appears that Semites were in great favour with
Amenhotep IV. (Amenôphis), the last king of the eighteenth dynasty,
whereas the new dynasty that succeeded abominated this foreign
influence.
In the latter part of the eighteenth dynasty friendly relations
prevailed between Egypt and Mitanni or Nahrina (Aram Naharaim,
Judges iii. 8), a Mesopotamian district which lay opposite to the Hittite
city of Carchemish. Amenôphis III. married a wife from the royal house
of Mitanni; and the offspring of this marriage—Amenôphis IV.—in his
turn married Tadukhepa, daughter of Duisratta, the Mitannian king. He
was thus doubly drawn to look favourably upon the Mitannian form of
faith, which, like that of the Semites, included the adoration of the
winged solar disk. Meantime the Egyptian conquest of Palestine, whose
petty kings and governors now ruled as satraps for the Egyptian
monarch, had paved the way for strangers from Canaan and Syria to
rise into favour at Pharaoh’s court. Amenôphis IV. surrounded himself
with Semitic officers and courtiers, thus offending the nobles of Egypt;
and by forsaking the ancient religion of his country, brought about a
rupture with the powerful priesthood of Thebes. Forced to go forth, the
“heretic king” built a new capital on the edge of the desert to the
north. Here he assumed the name of Khu-en-Aten, “the glory of the
solar disk,” while his architects and sculptors consecrated a new and
peculiar style of art to the new religion, and even the potters
decorated the vases they modelled with new colours and patterns.
“The archives of the empire were transferred from Thebes to the
new residence of the king, and there stored in the royal palace, which
stood among its gardens at the northern extremity of the city. But the
existence and prosperity of Khu-en-Aten’s capital were of short
duration. When the king died he left only daughters behind him, whose
husbands assumed in succession the royal power. Their reigns lasted
but a short time, and it is even possible that more than one of them
had to share his power with another prince. At any rate it was not long
before rulers and people alike returned to the old paths. The faith
which Khu-en-Aten had endeavoured to introduce was left without
worshippers, the Asiatic strangers whom he and his father had
promoted to high offices of State were driven from power, and the new
capital was deserted never to be inhabited again. The great temple of
the solar disk fell into decay, like the royal palace, and the archives of
Khu-en-Aten were buried under the ruins of the chamber wherein they
had been kept.”
It is these archives which have now come to light, and which furnish
such extraordinary information concerning the state of Egypt and
Palestine in the century before the Oppression. In the winter of 1887
the fellahin of Egypt, searching for nitrous earth with which to manure
their fields, discovered some three hundred ancient tablets inscribed
with Babylonian cuneiform writing. The tablets are copies of letters and
despatches from the kings and governors of Babylonia and Assyria, of
Syria, Mesopotamia, and Eastern Cappadocia, of Phœnicia and
Palestine, exchanging information with the Pharaoh of Egypt, or
making reports as to the state of the country they governed. Among
the correspondents of the Egyptian sovereigns were Assurynballidh of
Assyria and Burnaburyas of Babylonia, which thus fix the date of Khu-
en-Aten to about 1430 B.C. This shows incidentally that the
Egyptologists have been quite right in not assigning the Exodus to an
earlier period than 1320 B.C., that is to say, the reign of Menephtah,
the son and successor of Rameses II.
At the date of the despatches Palestine and Phœnicia were
garrisoned by Egyptian troops, and their affairs were more or less
directed by Egyptian governors. But in some cases the native prince
was allowed to retain his title and a portion of his power. Thus
Jerusalem (which was then called Uru-’Salim—the seat or oracle of the
god Salim, it is supposed, whose temple stood on the mountain of
Moriah)—was ruled over by Ebed-tob. He appears to have been a
priest rather than a king, since he tells us that he was appointed by an
oracle of the god; and in that case the state over which he presided
would be a Theocracy. Dr Sayce considers that an unexpected light is
thus thrown on the person and position of Melchizedek. He was priest
of El-Elyon, the “Most High God,” and king only in virtue of his priestly
office. His father therefore is not named. [“Records of the Past.” New
Series, vol. v.] There were as yet no signs of the Israelites coming into
the land. But the Canaanite population was already threatened by an
enemy from the north. These were the Hittites, to whom references
are made in several of the despatches from Syria and Phœnicia. After
the weakening of the Egyptian power, in consequence of the religious
troubles which followed the death of Khu-en-Aten, the Hittites were
enabled to complete their conquests in the south, and to drive a
wedge between the Semites of the East and the West. With the revival
of the Egyptian empire under the rulers of the nineteenth dynasty the
southward course of Hittite conquest was checked; but the wars of
Rameses II. against the Hittites of Kadesh on Orontes desolated and
exhausted Canaan and prepared the way for the Israelitish invasion.
Phœnicia seems to have been the furthest point to the north to which
the direct government of Egypt extended. At any rate the letters which
came to the Egyptian monarch from Syria and Mesopotamia were sent
to him by princes who called themselves his “brothers,” and not by
officials who were the “servants” of the king.
It is wonderful to find that in the fifteenth century before our era,
active literary intercourse was carried on throughout the civilised world
of Western Asia, between Babylonia and Egypt and the smaller states
of Palestine, of Syria, of Mesopotamia, and even of Eastern
Cappadocia. And this intercourse was carried on by means of the
Babylonian language and the complicated Babylonian script. It implies
that all over the civilised East there were libraries and schools, where
the Babylonian language and literature were taught and learned.
Babylonian in fact was as much the language of diplomacy and
cultivated society as French has been in modern times, with the
difference that whereas it does not take long to read French, the
cuneiform syllabary required years of hard labour and attention before
it could be acquired. There must surely have been a Babylonian
conquest. In fact, Mr Theo. G. Pinches now finds, from a text of about
B.C. 2115 to 2090, that Animisutana, king of Babylon at that time, was
also king of Phœnicia among other places. [“Records of the Past” New
Series, vol. v.]
One of the facts which result most clearly from a study of the
tablets is that, not only was a Semitic language the medium of literary
intercourse between the Pharaoh of Egypt and his officers abroad, but
that Semites held high and responsible posts in the Egyptian Court
itself. Thus we find Dudu, or David, addressed by his son as “my lord,”
and ranking apparently next to the monarch; and there are in the
Egyptian National Collection not only letters written by officials with
Egyptian names, like Khapi or Hapi (Apis), but with such Semitic
names as Rib-Addu, Samu-Addu, Bu-Dadu (the Biblical Bedad) and
Milkili (the Biblical Malchiel). A flood of light is thus poured upon a
period of Egyptian history which is of high interest for the student of
the Old Testament. In spite of the reticence of the Egyptian
monuments, we can now see what was the meaning of the attempt of
Amenophis IV. to supersede the ancestral religion of Egypt. The king
was in all respects an Asiatic. His mother, who seems to have been a
woman of strong character,—able to govern not only her son, but even
her less pliable husband,—came from the region of the Euphrates, and
brought with her Asiatic followers, Asiatic ideas, and an Asiatic form of
faith. The court became Semitised. The favourites and officials of the
Pharaoh, his officers in the field, his correspondents abroad, bore
names which showed them to be of Canaanite and even of Israelitish
origin. If Joseph and his brethren had found favour among the Hyksos
princes of an earlier day, their descendants were likely to find equal
favour at the court of “the heretic king.”
We need not wonder, therefore, if Amenophis IV. found himself
compelled to quit Thebes. The old aristocracy might have condoned his
religious heresy, but they could not condone his supplanting them with
foreign favourites. The rise of the nineteenth dynasty marks the
successful reaction of the native Egyptian against the predominance of
the Semite in the closing days of the eighteenth dynasty. It was not
the founder of the eighteenth dynasty (Aahmes, who drove out the
Hyksos) but the founder of the nineteenth dynasty that was “the new
king who knew not Joseph.” Ever since the progress of Egyptology had
made it clear that Rameses II. was the Pharaoh of the Oppression, it
was difficult to understand how so long an interval of time as the
whole period of the eighteenth dynasty could lie between him and that
“new king,” whose rise seems to have been followed almost
immediately by the servitude and oppression of the Hebrews. If
Aahmes began the Oppression, how was it that a whole dynasty
passed away before the Israelites cried out? The tablets of Tell-el-
Amarna now show that the difficulty does not exist. Up to the death of
Khu-en-Aten the Semite had greater influence than the native in the
land of Mizraim.
How highly educated this old world was we are but just beginning to
learn. But we have already learned enough to discover how important
a bearing it has on the criticism of the Old Testament. It has long been
tacitly assumed by the critical school that the art of writing was
practically unknown in Palestine before the age of David. Little
historical credence, it has been urged, can be placed in the earlier
records of the Hebrew people, because they could not have been
committed to writing until a period when the history of the past had
become traditional and mythical. But this assumption can no longer be
maintained. Long before the Exodus Canaan had its libraries and its
scribes, its schools and literary men. The annals of the country, it is
true, were not inscribed in the letters of the Phœnician alphabet on
perishable papyrus; the writing material was imperishable clay, the
characters were those of the cuneiform syllabary. Though Kirjath-
Sepher (i.e., Book-Town) was destroyed by the Israelites, other cities
mentioned in the Tell-el-Amarna tablets, like Gaza, or Gath, or Tyre,
remained independent, and we cannot imagine that the old traditions
of culture and writing were forgotten in any of them. In what is
asserted by the critical school to be the oldest relic of Hebrew
literature, the Song of Deborah, reference is made to the scribes of
Zebulon “that handle the pen of the writer” (Judges v. 14); and we
have now no longer any reason to interpret the words in a non-natural
sense, and transform the scribe into a military commander (an officer
who arranges men in a row instead of arranging letters and words).
Only it is probable that the scribes still made use of the cuneiform
syllabary, and not yet of the Phœnician alphabet. At all events the Tell-
el-Amarna tablets have overthrown the primary foundation on which
much of this criticism was built, and have proved that the populations
of Palestine, among whom the Israelites settled, and whose culture
they inherited, were as literary as the inhabitants of Egypt or
Babylonia.
 But apart from such side-lights as these upon ancient history, the
discovery of the Tell-el-Amarna tablets has a lesson for us of
momentous interest. The collection cannot be the only one of its kind.
Elsewhere, in Palestine and Syria as well as in Egypt, similar collections
must still be lying under the soil. Burnt clay is not injured by rain and
moisture, and even the climate of Palestine will have preserved
uninjured its libraries of clay. Such libraries must still be awaiting the
spade of the excavator on the sites of places like Gaza, or others
whose remains are buried under the lofty mounds of Southern Judea.
Kirjath-Sepher must have been the seat of a famous library, consisting
mainly, if not altogether, of clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform
characters. As the city also bore the name of Debir, or “Sanctuary,” we
may conclude that the tablets were stored in its chief temple, like the
libraries of Assyria and Babylonia. When such relics of the past have
been disinterred—as they will be if they are properly searched for—we
shall know how the people of Canaan lived in the days of the
Patriarchs, and how their Hebrew conquerors established themselves
among them in the days when, as yet, there was no king in Israel.
[The information contained in this section is derived almost exclusively from
the writings of Dr A. H. Sayce, who has taken a chief part in England in the
decipherment of the Tell-el-Amarna inscriptions. See “Proc. Soc. Bib. Arch.”
“Records of the Past.” New Series, vols, ii., iii., iv., and v.; “Victoria Institute
Annual Address, 1889.” See additional facts in the Contemporary Review, Dec.
1890, and opinions in Naville’s Bubastis. For later excavations at Tell-el-Amarna,
by Mr Flinders Petrie, see the Academy, 9th April 1892. For a suggestion by
Conder that the tablets are in the Phœnician or Amorite language and writing of
that time, see Quarterly Statement, July 1891.]

6. Israel in Egypt.

We have seen how well the general political circumstances in Egypt

and Palestine, in the centuries before the Exodus, supplement the Bible
narrative, explaining on the one hand why the Israelites were
oppressed, and showing on the other how Canaan was prepared for
their easy conquest. But while the fact that Rameses II. was the
Pharaoh for whom Israel built “treasure cities” is demonstrated beyond
reasonable contradiction, it is remarkable that the inscriptions do not
say anything about the Israelites. We must suppose, with Brugsch,
that the captives were included in the general name of foreigners, of
whom the documents make very frequent mention. It would be
satisfactory, no doubt, to find upon some contemporary Egyptian
monument, a record of the arrival of Jacob, or the tasks imposed upon
the Israelites, or the destruction of Pharaoh’s host in the Red Sea. But
the Egyptians were not accustomed to record their defeats, and as to
the labours imposed upon the Israelites, they were but a matter of
course in the case of captives.
But short of direct mention, the Egyptian monuments and records
afford ample confirmation to the Biblical account of the Sojourn. The
Scripture references to Egyptian manners and customs are, in all
respects, accurate; and this absolute accuracy could only result from
actual contact and intimate acquaintance.
The Bible history of Abraham implies that when he visited Egypt,
driven thither by famine, that country was already under a settled
government, having a king, and princes who acted as the king’s
subordinates. It requires us to believe that the king was called
Pharaoh, or by some name or title which conveyed that sound to
Hebrew ears. And further, it assumes that Egypt was so fruitful and so
prosperous, as to be a granary for surrounding nations in years of
famine. On all these points the Bible is in harmony with what we learn
from other sources.
Again, according to Genesis xii. 12, Abram feared for Sarai his wife,
lest the Egyptians should take her from him, and should kill him in
order to make the proceeding safer. The possibility of such a thing
being done by a people so civilised and cultured as the Egyptians has
sometimes been doubted: but M. Chabas has called attention to a
papyrus which actually states that the wife and children of a foreigner
are by right the lawful property of the king. In the “Tale of the Two
Brothers” also—an Egyptian romance of the days of Seti II.—we are
told that the king of Egypt sent two armies to bring a beautiful woman
to him, and to murder her husband.
In this same tale of The Two Brothers the wife of the elder solicits
the love of the younger in almost exactly the same way that the wife
of Potiphar tempts Joseph. The whole story of Joseph agrees minutely
with what we learn of Egypt from her own records. The outward
details of life, the officers of the court, the traffic in slaves, the visits
for corn, are all pictured on temple walls and stone slabs. No feature in
the Bible narrative is out of harmony with what we know of the
country from other sources. “Potiphar” appears to be a good Egyptian
name, and Egyptologists have pointed out that its probable equivalent
in hieroglyphs signifies “Devoted to the Sun-god.” Joseph’s new name,
Zaphnath-paaneah, means “Storehouse of the house of Life,” and was
given to him when he entered Pharaoh’s service, just as a new name
was given to the Hittite princess when she became Pharaoh’s wife. The
king’s absolute authority appears abundantly from Herodotus, Diodorus
and others. He enacted laws, imposed taxes, administered justice,
executed and pardoned offenders at his pleasure. He had a bodyguard,
which is constantly seen on the sculptures, in close attendance on his
person. He was assisted in the management of state affairs by the
advice of a council, consisting of the most able and distinguished
members of the priestly order. His court was magnificent and
comprised various grand functionaries, whose tombs are among the
most splendid of the early remains of Egyptian art. When he left his
palace for any purpose, he invariably rode in a chariot. His subjects,
wherever he appeared, bowed down or prostrated themselves.[5] The
civilisation of the Egyptians, even at a period long before the Israelitish
Sojourn, comprised the practice of writing, the distinction into classes
or castes, the peculiar dignity of the priests, the practice of embalming
and of burying in wooden coffins or mummy cases, the manufacture
and use of linen garments, the wearing of gold chains, and almost all
the other points which may be noted in the Bible description.
In Genesis xl. 20, Pharaoh held a feast on his birthday, and the chief
butler being restored to favour, gave the cup into Pharaoh’s hand. We
know from the Rosetta Stone that as late as the reign of Ptolemy
Epiphanes it was customary to make great rejoicing on the king’s
birthday, to consider it holy, and to do no work on it. That it should be
a day on which pardons were granted as an act of grace, is more than
probable. Cups such as the king would have taken his wine from are
portrayed on the monuments; baskets such as the baker would have
carried his bakemeats in are used even unto this day, and may be seen
in the British Museum. Before Joseph entered the royal presence he
shaved himself and changed his raiment: and here, again, the
monuments and profane history offer us illustrations. The Egyptians
only allowed their hair to grow during the times of mourning, and to
neglect the hair was considered very slovenly and dirty. When a man
of low station had to be represented, the artist always drew him with a
beard. The British Museum possesses Egyptian razors of various
shapes; and in a tomb at Beni-Hassan the act of shaving is actually
represented.
With regard to the seven years of famine, it is true that Egypt was
less likely to suffer in this way than the countries round about; yet still,
when the inundation of the Nile fell below the average, it was liable to
this scourge. History tells of numerous cases in which the inhabitants
have suffered terribly from want, and several famines are even
mentioned on the monuments. Professor Rawlinson refers us to a case
which furnishes a near parallel to the famine of Joseph. In A.D. 1064 a
famine began in Egypt which lasted seven years, and was so severe
that dogs and cats, and even human flesh, were eaten; nearly all the
horses of the Caliph perished, and his family had to fly into Syria.
When Jacob goes down into Egypt, he is advised to tell Pharaoh
that he and his sons are keepers of cattle, so that the land of Goshen
may be assigned to them, shepherds being an abomination unto the
Egyptians. The Egyptian contempt for herdsmen appears plainly on the
monuments, where they are commonly represented as dirty and
unshaven, and are sometimes even caricatured as a deformed and
unseemly race. When Jacob dies, his body is embalmed by the
physicians, forty days being taken up with the processes, and seventy
days being spent in mourning. The methods of embalming are
described by Herodotus and Diodorus, and it is stated that in preparing
the body according to the first method the operators commenced by
extracting the brain and pouring in certain drugs. Then they made an
incision in the side of the body with a sharp Ethiopian stone, and drew
out the intestines, filling the cavity with powder of pure myrrh, cassia,
and other fragrant substances, and sewing up the aperture. This being
done, they salted the body, “keeping it in natron during seventy days,”
after which they washed it and wrapped it up in bands of fine linen
smeared on their inner side with gum. Remarking upon the number of
days, seventy or seventy-two, mentioned by the two historians, Sir
Gardner Wilkinson says there is reason to believe it comprehended the
whole period of the mourning, and that the embalming process only
occupied a portion of it.
Subsequently to the burial of his father, Joseph himself died, and his
body also was embalmed. At some later period there arose a king who
knew not Joseph. This monarch is generally supposed to be Rameses
II., and if the identification were correct, the indications of his
character afforded by the Book of Exodus agree exactly with what the
monuments reveal concerning that haughty oppressor; but, as already
stated, the reference is probably to Rameses I. The slavery of the
Israelites was of a kind to which all hostile or conquered people were
reduced by the Egyptians. Thothmes III., during his many campaigns,
brought to Egypt unnumbered prisoners of every race, and made them
labour like convicts on the public works, under the superintendence of
architects and overseers. On the walls of a chamber in a tomb at
Thebes there is a very instructive pictorial representation of such
forced labour, and the Asiatic countenances of the workers strongly
resemble those of the Hebrew race. The date is too early, and we may
suppose them to belong to some other nation of the Semitic family;
but the picture none the less shows the method of working under
taskmasters. Some carry water in jugs from the tank hard by; others
knead and cut up the loamy earth; others, again, by the help of a
wooden form, make the bricks, or place them carefully in long rows to
dry; while the more intelligent among them carry out the work of
building the walls. The hieroglyphic explanations inform as that the
labourers are captives whom Thothmes III. has carried away to build
the temple of his father Amon. They explain that the baking of the
bricks is a work for the new building of the provision house of the god
Amon of Apet (the east side of Thebes), and they finally declare the
strict superintendence of the steward over the foreigners. The words
are—(Here are seen) the prisoners which have been carried away as
living prisoners in very great numbers; they work at the building with
active fingers; their overseers show themselves in sight, these insist
with vehemence, obeying the orders of the great skilled lord [the head
architect] who prescribes to them the works, and gives directions to
the masters; (they are rewarded), with wine and all kinds of good
dishes; they perform their service with a mind full of love for the king;
they build for Thothmes III. a holy of holies for (the gods), may it be
rewarded to him through a range of many years.
The overseer speaks thus to the labourers at the building: “The stick
is in my hand, be not idle.”
Some of the captives thus set to labour by Thothmes belonged to a
people called the Aperiu; and in the days of Rameses II. they are
mentioned as still in a condition of servitude, quarrying and
transporting stone for the great fortress of the city of Paramessu or
Tanis.
Diodorus tells us that Rameses II. put up an inscription in each of
his buildings, saying that it had been erected by captives, and that not
a single native Egyptian was employed on the work. Again, this king
manufactured bricks for sale, and, by employing the labour of captives,
was enabled to under-sell other makers. The use of crude bricks baked
in the sun was universal throughout the country for private and for
many public buildings, and the dry climate of Egypt was peculiarly
suited to those simple materials. They had the recommendation of
cheapness, and those made three thousand years ago, whether with or
without straw, are even now as firm and fit for use as when first put
up. When made of the Nile mud or alluvial deposit they required straw
to prevent their cracking; but those formed of clay taken from the
torrent beds on the edge of the desert held together without straw;
and crude brick walls frequently had the additional security of a layer
of reeds or sticks placed at intervals to act as binders.
[Authorities and Sources:—Brugsch’s “Egypt under the Pharaohs.” Wilkinson’s
“Ancient Egyptians.” Birch’s “Egypt” (Series, Ancient History from the
Monuments). G. Rawlinson’s “Historical Illustrations of the Old Testament.” E. A.
Wallis Budge, “Dwellers on the Nile.” M. E. Harkness, “Egyptian Life and
History.”]

7. Buried Cities of the East—Preliminary.

 If the buried cities of the East had been altogether destroyed and
lost, and we possessed only a brief record of their disappearance, the
subject might not possess much interest for us, and there would be no
material for writing a book. But we are now witnessing a resurrection
of some of them, and are recovering a story of the past, such as
revived Egyptian mummies might be able to tell. Nay, not only
Egyptians who walked about—

“In Thebes’s streets three thousand years ago,

When the Memnonium was in all its glory,”

but Chaldean shepherds who watched the stars and were perhaps the
first to give names to the signs of the Zodiac. The ancient relics and
records which are now being recovered from Egypt, Palestine, Assyria,
and Babylonia, revive forgotten stories of human struggle, and furnish
material for new chapters in the history of Art, Science, Laws, and
Language, of Mythology, Morals, and Religion. They also throw
frequent side lights upon the Bible narrative, and enable us to compare
the Israelites more fairly with their contemporaries and predecessors.
The catastrophes which led to the partial destruction, and the
eventual burial of the cities of the East must have seemed nothing less
than pure calamities at the time; but one of the results has been the
providential preservation of the remains for the enlightenment of the
present generation. When a buried city is unearthed, it serves to
confute the scepticism which had been growing up, and to rectify the
errors which had found their place in books of history. We are familiar
with the fact that the cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii were
overwhelmed—the former by streams of lava, the latter by showers of
ashes, pumice, and stones, from the crater of Vesuvius, in A.D. 79. The
existence of those cities had come to be doubted, and for ages they
were spoken of as “the fabulous cities;” nevertheless, after sixteen
centuries, they were brought to light, and they present us with a
picture of Roman life, such as history by itself could never have
supplied. The site of Pompeii had always borne the name of Civita, or
the city; and in 1748, a Spanish colonel of engineers, having heard
that the remains of a house had been discovered, with ancient statues
and other objects, obtained leave to excavate. In a few days his
labours met with encouraging reward, and eventually about one third
of the ancient city was uncovered. We may now walk about in Pompeii,
observing how its houses were built, and how its streets were paved.
We see the ruts worn by the wheels of chariots, we note the public
fountains, the temples, the theatre, which would seat 10,000 people.
We notice the corn-mills in the bakers’ shops, the vats in the dyers’
shops, and in private houses we observe with interest the many
articles of domestic use. Excepting that the upper stories of the houses
have been destroyed—either burnt by the red-hot stones, or broken
down by the weight of matter which fell upon them—“we see a
flourishing city in the very state in which it existed nearly eighteen
centuries ago—the buildings as they were originally designed, not
altered and patched to meet the exigencies of newer fashions; the
paintings undimmed by the leaden touch of time; household furniture
left in the confusion of use; articles, even of intrinsic value, abandoned
in the hurry of escape, yet safe from the robber, or scattered about as
they fell from the trembling hand, which could not pause or stoop for
its most valuable possessions: and in some instances, the bones of the
inhabitants, bearing sad testimony to the suddenness and
completeness of the calamity which overwhelmed them.”[6]
Remains of Roman London are found 16 or 17 feet underground, in
the neighbourhood of the Bank of England and the Mansion House,
although London has not been buried in volcanic ashes. Rome itself is
a buried city, for the capital of modern Italy stands upon the ruins of
the city of the Cæsars. In Eastern countries the site of an ancient city
is sometimes occupied by a squalid village, which is its degenerate
successor; in other instances the site is quite deserted, and only a tell
or mound remains to call attention to it. Ancient sites have also
occasionally become submerged beneath the waters of seas or lakes.
Thus the Lake of Aboukir in Egypt was drained lately, in order to
reclaim the area for cultivation, and when the floor was laid bare from
the water, there appeared everywhere traces of streets, of stone-
covered ways, and of fields for tillage marked out by lines of shells.
Professor Maspero describes the process by which Egyptian temples
become buried. “Just as in Europe during the Middle Ages the
population crowded most densely round about the churches and
abbeys, so in Egypt they swarmed around the temples, profiting by
that security which the terror of his name and the solidity of his
ramparts ensured to the local deity. A clear space was at first reserved
round the pylons and the walls; but in course of time the houses
encroached upon this ground, and were even built up against the
boundary wall. Destroyed and rebuilt, century after century, upon the
self-same spot, the débris of these surrounding dwellings so raised the
level of the soil that the temples ended for the most part by being
gradually buried in a hollow, formed by the artificial elevation of the
surrounding city. Herodotus mentions this of Bubastis, and on
examination it is seen to have been the same in many other localities.
At last, when the temple had been thrown down and was forsaken, the
rubbish covered it up, and so the ruins have been preserved to reward
the modern explorer.”

EGYPT & PENINSULA OF SINAI

London; Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co. F. S. Weller, F.R.G.S.
 8. Biblical Sites in Egypt.

It is justly remarked by Rev. Greville J. Chester that there is scarcely

a better or more striking commentary upon the prophets of Israel than
the present condition of the ancient Biblical cities of Lower Egypt. For
information regarding these cities—or what remains of them, buried in
the soil—we are largely indebted to the Egypt Exploration Fund, which
was founded in 1883, for the purpose of promoting historical
investigation in Egypt, by means of systematically conducted
explorations. Particular attention is given to sites which may be
expected to throw light upon obscure questions of history and
topography, such as those connected with the mysterious Hyksos
period (the period of the Shepherd Kings), the district of the Hebrew
Sojourn, the route of the Exodus, and the early sources of Greek art.
Explorers have been sent out every season, and each year has been
fruitful in discoveries. The objects of antiquity discovered are first
submitted to the Director and Conservators of the National Egyptian
Museum; and those which can be spared are divided between the
British Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, U.S.A.
Excavations at San.—San, in the north-eastern part of the Delta, is
the Tanis of the Septuagint and the Greek historians, and the Zoan of
the Bible. At the time of the Exodus Zoan was the capital of Egypt, and
the Pharaoh resided there. The wonders wrought by Moses and Aaron
are referred to by the Psalmist as having been manifested in the field
of Zoan (Psalm lxxviii. 43). We are told that Hebron was built only
seven years before Zoan (Num. xiii. 22), and therefore, since Hebron
was flourishing in Abraham’s time, Zoan also must have been a very
ancient city.
The modern village of San is a small collection of mud hovels,
situated on the banks of a canal, which was once the Tanitic branch of
the Nile. Near the village there are huge mounds which contain a
ruined temple and other ancient remains. The place has been to a
large extent explored by Mr W. M. Flinders Petrie, and the Memoir
containing his interesting results is published by the Egypt Exploration
Fund.
 Rameses II., the Pharaoh of the Oppression, seems to have fixed
upon Zoan and made it a new capital, because by its position it
commanded the northern route to Syria and placed the king, after the
conquest of that country, in easy communication with all his
dominions. It was also close to the very centre of the Hyksos rule,
which was only lately ended.
The Hyksos were the so-called Shepherd Kings, who appear to have
come from the Arabian desert, or perhaps beyond, and established
themselves in Lower Egypt at a period when native rule was weak.
“The monuments of the Hyksos are among the most curious in Egypt;
and it is to San that we owe the greater number of those brought to
light. They are all distinguished by an entirely different type of face
from any that can be found on other Egyptian monuments, a type
which cannot be attributed to any other known period; and it is
therefore all the more certain that they belong to the foreign race.
Another peculiarity is that they are without exception executed in black
or grey granite. The Hyksos only held the Delta, and occasionally more
or less of Middle Egypt, and so they had no command of the red
granite quarries of Assouan, which remained in the power of the native
rulers. Whether the black granite came from Sinai or from the
Hammamat district is not certain.” Mr F. Ll. Griffith, the coadjutor of Mr
Flinders Petrie, mentions several interesting monuments of a kind
peculiar to this people. One is a group of two men, with bushy plaited
hair and long beards: they stand with a tray of offerings in front of
them, on which lie fishes, with papyrus plants hanging round. The
details are beautifully worked, the flowers and buds being most
delicately wrought. The black granite sphinxes made by the Hyksos
have been often described. They have the flat, massive, muscular,
lowering face, with short whiskers and beard around it, the lips being
shaven; and the hair is in a mat of thick, short locks descending over
the whole chest, a style copied from the great sphinxes of the twelfth
dynasty. It is a curious fact that the inscriptions on Hyksos sphinxes,
&c., are always in a line down the right shoulder, never on the left. Mr
Petrie suggests that this honouring of the right shoulder by this Semitic
people is analogous to the particular offering of the right shoulder
continually enjoined in the Jewish law.[7] The Egyptians missed this