EGYPT

The Land. The Preservation of Antiquities. Egyptian Discoveries. Decipherment. Chronology. Outline of the History: The pre-dynastic period. The archaic period. The old kingdom. The first period of disintegration. The middle kingdom. Second period of disintegration. The empire period. The period of foreign dynasties. The lower empire. The Persian period. The Ptolemaic period. The Roman period. Egyptian Discoveries Which Bear on the Bible: Texts bearing on the story of Joseph. The Invasion of Egypt by the Hyksos. The El-Amarna letters. Period of the Oppression and the Exodus. Campaign of Sheshonk I. Papyri discovered at Elephantine. The palace of Hophra. The castle at Tahpanhes. The Jewish temple at Leontopolis. Papyri from Oxyrhynchus. Discoveries in Nubia.

1. The Land.—Egypt is in many ways unique among the countries of the world. One of these unique features is its form. If we omit the Delta, it has but one dimension,—length. From Cairo to the First Cataract is a distance of 583 miles, while the breadth of the valley, including the barren lands on each side of it, varies from 12½ to 31 miles. If we include Nubia to the Fourth Cataract, which the Egyptians ultimately conquered, the length is much greater, being about 1,100 miles. In Nubia the banks are much more precipitous, the valley varying from 5 to 9½ miles. The verdant portion is, however, often not more than a mile in width.

This land is flanked on each side by extensive barren deserts on which there is almost no rainfall. Egypt itself would be a part of this desert, were it not for the overflow of the Nile. This overflow is caused by the peculiar formation of this marvelous river.

The upper part of the Nile consists of two main branches, called, respectively, the White and the Blue Nile. The White Nile rises 3 degrees south of the equator, some 4,000 miles south of the Mediterranean, to the south of Lake Victoria Nyanza. This region is watered by tropical rains, which fall almost daily. This steady water supply gives to the Nile its constant volume. At Khartum, 1,350 miles from the Mediterranean in a direct line, and 1,650 miles as the river winds, the White Nile is joined by the Blue Nile. This branch of the river drains a large part of Abyssinia, an upland and mountainous region which has a dry and a rainy season. In the dry season this stream dwindles almost to nothing; in the rainy season it is a turbid mountain torrent, which rushes impetuously onward, laden with loose soil from all the land which it drains. For this reason it is called the Blue, i. e., the Dark or Turbid, Nile.

At a distance of 140 miles north of the union of the two Niles the river receives its only other tributary, the Atbara, which also flows in from the eastern side. The Atbara, like the Blue Nile, is an insignificant stream except in the rainy season, when it is a torrent.

It is the variation of the water supply from the Blue Nile and Atbara which causes the overflow of the river in Egypt. At the beginning of June the river begins slowly to swell; between the 15th and the 20th of July the increase becomes very rapid; toward the end of September the water ceases to rise and remains at the same height for twenty to thirty days. In October it rises again, attaining its greatest height. It then decreases, and in January, February, and March the fields gradually dry off. This overflow prepares the soil of Egypt for cultivation, first by softening it and then by fertilizing it. It was easy, under these conditions, to develop agriculture there.

Indeed, the width of productive Egypt is determined by the lateral extent of this overflow. For the last 1,500 miles of its course the Nile receives no tributary. It plows its way through regions of desert which, but for the Nile itself, are unbroken. At six points, beginning at Khartum and ending at Assuan, the river makes its way over granite ridges, through which it has never succeeded in cutting a smooth channel. These are called the Cataracts. As civilized man discovered these from the north, that at Assuan is known as the First Cataract, and that at Khartum as the Sixth. The calendar of ancient Egypt was shaped in part by the Nile. The year was divided into three seasons of four months each. Beginning with the rise of the water about July 19th, there was the season of the inundation, which was followed by four months of winter and four months of summer.

Map of Egypt.

In late geologic time all Egypt north of Cairo was a bay of the Mediterranean. In the course of the centuries the sea has been driven out by deposits of detritus brought down by the Nile. As the mud was deposited in this level region, the water continued to make its way through it here and there. Several mouths were kept open, and thus the Delta was formed. This Delta is called Lower Egypt. Upper Egypt extends from Cairo to the First Cataract; Nubia, from the First Cataract to the Sixth.

2. The Preservation of Antiquities.—Rain in Egypt is very, very rare. One might almost say that it never rains. The country lies in a latitude so far south that frost is rarely known. These two conditions have united to preserve the ruins of many ancient buildings in both Egypt and Nubia in a state of perfection which is rare in other countries. It was the custom of the ancient Egyptians to bury their dead in the dry land beyond the reach of the Nile’s overflow. Like many other peoples, they placed in the tombs of their dead many objects used by the departed in life. Further, their peculiar beliefs concerning immortality led them to mummify the bodies of the departed; i. e., they fortified them against decay. Thus archÆological objects have been preserved in Egypt in an abundance and a perfection without parallel. So many of these are massive temples of stone, which, through all the ages, have stood unconcealed as silent witnesses of a past greatness, that from Cairo to the First Cataract Egypt is one great archÆological museum.

3. Egyptian Discoveries.—Although many Egyptian antiquities have always been visible, they attracted little attention until modern times. Egyptian temple walls are covered with hieroglyphic writing, but the art of reading it had long been lost. Coptic, a language descended from the ancient Egyptian, was still preserved as the sacred language of the Egyptian Church, as Latin is the ecclesiastical language of Roman Catholics, but no one realized that Coptic was simply late Egyptian.

In the seventeenth century European travelers began to bring home Egyptian antiquities. In 1683 a specimen of Egyptian art was presented to the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. In the eighteenth century R. Pococke (1704-1765) and F. L. Norden (1704-1742) described a number of Egyptian ruins and identified a number of the sites mentioned by classical authors. Pococke was an Englishman and Norden a Dane. Others, like the explorer Bruce, who was seeking the sources of the Nile (1768-1773), participated to some extent in the work.

No systematic examination of the antiquities was made, however, until the time of Napoleon I. When Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798, he was accompanied by an army of eminent scholars and artists, nearly a hundred strong, and although in the settlement with England, which followed in 1802, the French were compelled to surrender their archÆological treasures to Great Britain, they were permitted to publish the results of their observations and explorations. The publication of these advanced slowly, but between 1809 and 1822 the great work, consisting of one volume of introduction, three volumes of plates, and three volumes of texts, was given to the world. In these volumes the antiquities from the First Cataract to Alexandria were systematically described, and many of them were reproduced in magnificent water-color illustrations. As the nineteenth century progressed, additional discoveries were made, partly by the labors of such scientists as Lepsius and Mariette, and partly through the rifling of tombs by natives, who often sold their finds to Europeans. Since Egypt passed under English control, exploration has been fostered by the government, and English, French, German, Italian, and American explorers have taken part in it. The tombs of many of the ancient Pharaohs, the mummies of a considerable number of them, all sorts of implements and household furniture, have been discovered, as well as a great variety of historical, literary, religious, and business documents.

Within the last twenty years a series of tombs of a previously unknown type has been discovered. The bodies buried in these tombs did not lie on the back as the ordinary Egyptian mummy does, but on the side, with the knees drawn up to the chin. It was at first thought that these tombs were the work of a new race of men who had invaded Egypt at some time in the historical period, but further study indicates that they are the tombs of the early Egyptians from whom the Egyptians known to history were descended.

4. Decipherment.—One of the objects found by the French at the time of Napoleon’s expedition was the “Rosetta Stone,” so called because found at Rosetta (Ar-Rashid), a town near the mouth of the westernmost of the large branches of the Nile. This stone was set up about 200 B. C. by some priests, who expressed, through the inscription which it bore, their thanks to the young king, Ptolemy V, because certain taxes formerly imposed on them had been remitted. The inscription was written in three kinds of writing—hieroglyphic Egyptian (picture-writing), demotic Egyptian (developed from picture-writing), and Greek; (see Fig. 14). It was among the objects which the English took in 1802, and had been placed in the British Museum. Although the Greek portion of the inscription could be easily read, the attempts of various scholars, through a period of twenty years, had succeeded in establishing the values of only a few characters of the Egyptian. In 1818 Jean FranÇois Champollion, a French scholar, who before this had busied himself with the study of Coptic and Egyptian geography, began the study of the Rosetta Stone. He assumed that the language of the upper registers must be an older form of the Coptic tongue. By a most painstaking comparison of the characters in the upper registers with the Coptic equivalents of the words in the lower or Greek register, he succeeded in deciphering the long-forgotten writing of ancient Egypt. He published his discovery in 1822. Thus the door to the historical and literary treasures of ancient Egypt was unlocked, and from that time to this the study of Egyptian inscriptions and documents has gone steadily forward. Many universities now maintain chairs of Egyptology. The ability to read Egyptian has opened up vistas of history of which men had hitherto no conception.

5. Chronology.—We are dependent for our main outline of Egyptian chronology upon the work of Manetho, an Egyptian priest, who lived about 250 B. C., and wrote a chronicle of his native land in the Greek language. He grouped the kings of Egypt from the time of Menes (or Mena) to the conquest of Alexander the Great (332 B. C.) into thirty-one dynasties. Manetho’s dynasties enable scholars to determine the relative order of the kings, and thus form the backbone of our chronology. Around his statements the discoveries of the excavators and explorers are grouped. Manetho’s work has not, however, come down to us. We know it only through quotations in the Chronographiai of Julius Africanus (221 A. D.) and the Chronicon of Eusebius of Cesarea (265-340 A. D.). The number of years assigned to each king, and consequently the length of time covered by the dynasties, differ in these two copies, so that, while the work of Manetho forms the backbone of our chronology, it gives us no absolutely reliable chronology. It is for this reason that the chronological schemes of modern scholars have differed so widely.

Another source of chronological information is the so-called “Palermo Stone,” which is preserved in the Museum of Palermo, Sicily. This stone is a hard diorite, and is but a fragment of the original. It was inscribed about the middle of the fifth dynasty, and originally contained a list of the kings of Egypt from a time long before Mena to the middle of the fifth dynasty. Though now but a fragment, it is still of great value for the period which it covers. In addition to this, we also have the King List of Karnak, set up by Thothmes III, of the eighteenth dynasty, the King List of Abydos, inscribed by Seti I and Ramses II, of the nineteenth dynasty, and the King List of Sakkarah, inscribed by Ramses II. As these are all simply selections from the list of the predecessors of their authors, they are of secondary importance. The “Turin Papyrus” would be of value chronologically, but for its unfortunate history. This papyrus originally contained the most complete list of Egyptian kings that has come down to us, with the exception of Manetho’s chronology. It formed part of the collection of M. Drovetti, the French Consul-General in Egypt. The collection was offered to the French government in 1818, but was finally purchased by the king of Sardinia. When the collection arrived in Turin, it was found that this papyrus was broken into small fragments in the bottom of the box in which it had been shipped. The fragments were afterward (1824) examined by Champollion the younger, who discovered their true character. In 1826 another Egyptologist went to Turin and joined the fragments; but the science of Egyptology was then in its infancy, and he in his ignorance joined pieces which did not naturally belong together. For this reason it is only occasionally that the document yields us any chronological data.

The greatest aid in fixing Egyptian chronology is the “Sothic Cycle.” At an early date the Egyptians adopted a calendar which made up a year of 365 days. Their year originally began when the rapid rising of the Nile coincided with the rising of the star Sirius, called by them Sothis. These events coincided on July 19th. As their calendar made no allowance for leap year, in four years their new year began a day too soon, in eight years two days too soon, and so on. In 1,460 years (i. e., 365 × 4) their New Year’s Day would make a complete circuit of the year. These periods of 1,460 years are called Sothic Cycles. Censorinus, in Chapters XVIII and XXI of his De Die Natali, written in 238 A. D., tells us that a new Sothic cycle began at some time between 140 and 144 A. D. If a new cycle began in 140 A. D., the previous one began in 1320 B. C.; the one before that, in 2780 B. C.; and the one before that,—if they had their calendar so early,—in 4240 B. C. Reisner holds that the Egyptians adopted their calendar in 2780 B. C., but Meyer and Breasted hold that it is unthinkable that they should have been without a calendar until that time, as by that date the civilization of the pyramid builders was at its height; they accordingly maintain that the Egyptian calendar was adopted in 4240 B. C.

An illustration will show how the Sothic cycle helps in determining dates. A priest in the 120th year of the twelfth dynasty wrote a letter to his subordinates, to inform them that the rising of Sothis would occur on the fifteenth day of the eighth month. As there were thirty days in each month, the year diverged at this time 225 days. This date, then, was just 900 years after the beginning of the cycle in 2780 B. C.; i. e., the letter was written in the year 1880 B. C. It proves that the twelfth dynasty began in 2000 B. C., and fixes for us all the dates of that dynasty. The calendar in the so-called Papyrus Ebers shows that in the tenth year of Amenophis I, of the eighteenth dynasty, the divergence had increased to 308 days. This must have been 1,232 years after the beginning of the cycle, which was the year 1548 B. C. Data gained from these sources are supplemented by what is called dead reckoning; i. e., by adding together all the specific dates of the length of reigns which are given in the inscriptions, and testing them by collateral references. Meyer and Breasted have worked out the chronology from these data in this way. Meyer places the accession of Mena at 3200 B. C., while Breasted places it at 3400 B. C. This difference is slight when compared with the differences in the chronologies of the older Egyptologists.

6. Outline of History.[3]—The history of Egypt, as it concerns our subject, extends over a period of five thousand years. It falls into twelve periods:(1) The Pre-Dynastic Period, which we suppose extended from about 5000 B. C., or earlier, until about 3400 B. C., is the period before that covered by Manetho’s dynasties. At the beginning of this period Egypt was divided into 42 districts, which the Egyptians called spt or ?sp, and which the Greeks afterwards called nomes. Each nome was occupied by a different tribe, which at the first lived in isolation from the other tribes. Each tribe had its god, to which an animal was sacred. This condition prevailed for so many centuries that the customs of this time became permanently fixed. The sacredness of these animals continued right down to Roman times. During this period the dead were buried on their sides with the knees drawn up to the chin; (see Fig. 8). The Egyptians of this period lived partly by hunting, partly by fishing, and partly by agriculture. From objects found in their tombs we infer that they used stone implements, wore a great many beads, made implements and combs of bone, made decorated pottery, constructed boats for use on the Nile and fitted sails to them, and each tribe had its own standard or emblem. Of course, during the centuries when Egypt was so politically divided there were many wars between nome and nome.

After some centuries, through the conquest of one nome by another, these 42 nomes were consolidated into two kingdoms. The 20 nomes of the Delta formed the kingdom of Lower Egypt; the 22 nomes, which were ranged along the Nile from Cairo to the First Cataract, formed the kingdom of Upper Egypt. The symbol of Upper Egypt was a papyrus plant; that of Lower Egypt, the bee. The crown of Upper Egypt was a kind of tall helmet; that of Lower Egypt, a diadem of openwork; (see Figs. 2, 3, and 4).

At what period this union of the nomes into two kingdoms occurred, we can only conjecture. Probably it was as early as 4200 or 4300 B. C. At all events, the two kingdoms existed separately for so long a time that their memory was ever afterward preserved. To the end of Egyptian history the kings bore the title, “king of Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt.” Even in the Hebrew of the Old Testament the name for Egypt is literally “The two Egypts.” In this long pre-dynastic period the people were gradually emerging from savagery toward civilization. They were solving the initial problems of civilized life. According to Meyer and Breasted the people of Lower Egypt had progressed far enough before 4200 B. C. to invent a calendar which approximately coincided with the solar year.

(2) The Archaic Period.—The history of united Egypt begins with the reign of Menes or Mena, who in some way, whether by conquest or marriage is uncertain, united the two crowns. He came from the nome of This, of which the city of Abydos, sacred to the worship of Osiris, was the chief town. He and his successors continued to administer the two parts of Egypt as separate countries. Mena founded the first dynasty, and the second dynasty seems to have been connected with his house; it was, at all events, from the nome of This. These two dynasties ruled Egypt for 420 years, from 3400 to 2980 B. C. This is known as the archaic period of Egyptian history. Men were, during this time, gradually developing the art of expressing thought by means of picture-writing. At some time during the first dynasty the Egyptians began to work the turquoise mines in the Wady Maghara in the peninsula of Sinai. The tombs of this period were low, flat houses of brick. The Arabs call them mastabas or “benches.” During the second dynasty the Egyptians began to conceive of their gods in human form. They preserved the continuity of the earlier animal and bird forms by putting the old heads on human bodies.

(3) The Old Kingdom embraces dynasties three to six, and extended from 2980 to 2475 B. C., a period of more than 500 years. During the third and fourth dynasties the power of the king was supreme and the first great culmination of Egypt’s civilization occurred. It was in this period that the pyramids developed. Zoser, the first king of the third dynasty, built as his tomb the so-called Step Pyramid; (see Fig. 7). It consists of five stages which vary from 29½ to 36 feet in height. It is not, therefore, a true pyramid. At the base it is 352 × 396 feet. Seneferu, the last king of the third dynasty, built a similar tomb, but, as he made the stages lower and more numerous, it approached more nearly the pyramidal form.

Khufu or Cheops, the founder of the fourth dynasty, improving upon the work of his predecessors, constructed the first real pyramid and the greatest of them all. The blocks with which he built were about three feet high, and he made a step with each course of stones. A covering, which has now been removed, was originally placed over the whole, thus securing a perfect pyramidal form. This pyramid is now 750 (originally 768) feet on each side, and 451 (originally 482) feet high. It contains some 2,300,000 blocks of stone, each weighing on the average two and a half tons; (see Fig. 6). The stone was quarried from the Mokattam hills on the other side of the Nile, more than twelve miles away.

Khafre, the next king but one after Khufu, built the second pyramid, which is almost as high as that of Khufu, being 447½ feet, but measures on the sides but 690½ feet. Within and under the pyramids are the tomb chambers. Khafre also carved out of the native rock, not far from these two pyramids, the great Sphinx, the head of which bore a portrait of himself. From the top of the head to the pavement under the paws is 66 feet; the breadth of the face is 13 feet 8 inches, and the other parts are in proportion. Near the Sphinx stands a temple, built of polished granite, which is connected by an underground passage with the pyramid of Khafre. All these are silent but eloquent witnesses to the skill of the Egyptians of this period in stone work, and to the absolute power of the Pharaoh; (see Figs. 5 and 6).

Menkaure, the next king, constructed a smaller pyramid, the side of its base being 356½ feet and its height 204 (originally 219) feet. Either his power was less or the resources of the kingdom were becoming exhausted. Though the pyramidal form of tombs continued for several centuries, no others were ever built that approached these in size.

The fifth dynasty was founded by a priest of On. During its rule the power of the king was not so absolute, and a powerful nobility began to develop. These nobles had themselves buried in tombs of the old mastaba type, and adorned the walls with pictures of the industries which were carried on upon their country estates. One of the most famous of these is the tomb of a certain Ti, from the pictures in which much has been learned of the various industries of ancient Egypt.

By the time of the sixth dynasty a strong nobility had been developed in the different nomes, so that the monarchy was thoroughly feudal. The absolute power that the kings of the first four dynasties had exercised had passed away. During the sixth dynasty the conquest of northern Nubia was begun, an expedition was sent to the far-away land of Punt, a country far to the south. It was probably the region on both sides of the straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, comprising southwestern Arabia and Somaliland. An expedition was also sent over sea to Palestine, to chastise the inhabitants of the southern portion of that country for invading Egypt. The capital of Egypt during the whole of the Old Kingdom was Memphis. The city thus gained a prominence which made it ever afterward famous. In early times it had been called the White Wall, but after the sixth dynasty it was called Men-nofer, of which Memphis (Hosea 9:6) is a corruption. It is in the Old Testament more often called Noph, a corruption of the last part of the name. (See Isa. 19:13; Jer. 2:16; 44:1; 46:14, 19; Ezek. 30:13, 16.)

(4) The First Period of Disintegration covers dynasties seven to ten of Manetho’s list, a period lasting from 2475 to 2160 B. C. At the beginning of this period the powerful nobles in the different nomes seem, many of them, to have set up each a government of his own. Thus Egypt was once more resolved into many contending kingdoms. Through a cycle of 2,500 years a whole circle of political evolution had been completed. Starting with 42 chiefs or kinglets, the country had first become two kingdoms, then one kingdom. In this struggle the local nobility had been eliminated. Through nine hundred years the central monarchy was supreme, then slowly a new nobility developed, which finally overthrew the kingdom and once more made Egypt a group of weak and contending states.

During the last two hundred and fifty years of this period of darkness we gain some glimpses of a feudal monarchy which had its residence at Heracleopolis in central Egypt and controlled a good part of the land with varying degrees of success. These kings were apparently the ninth and tenth dynasties of Manetho.

(5) The Middle Kingdom.—About 2160 B. C. an eleventh dynasty arose and began to struggle for the supremacy, finally achieving it. This family belonged to the nome of Thebes, which had hitherto been of no particular importance. It now became the seat of government, and remained for 1,500 years one of the most important cities of Egypt.

About the year 2000 this dynasty was followed by the twelfth, a powerful line of kings which ruled from 2000 to 1788 B. C. This was the period of the great Middle Kingdom. The nobles were still strong, and the monarchy was thoroughly feudal in its organization. Three of these monarchs bore the name Sesostris. They raised Egypt to a high degree of prosperity and power. Trade with Punt was resumed, Nubia was conquered to the Second Cataract, which was made the southern frontier of the realm, the mines of Sinai were worked, and one of the kings, Amenemhet III, built a large temple there, at a point now called Sarbut el-Khadem. This temple was explored a few years ago by Petrie.

Trade with Palestine and Syria flourished during this period. A noble of middle Egypt pictured in his tomb some of those who came to trade with him. When the pictures were first discovered, it was thought that they were the sons of Jacob, come to buy corn in Egypt; (see Fig. 1).

Sesostris III invaded Palestine before 1850 B. C. and captured a city which was apparently Shechem, though the spelling of the name is peculiar. The kings of this period were buried in tombs of pyramidal form, though the pyramids were not large. One of them built a great administration building at Hawara, which was known to the Greeks as the Labyrinth and was regarded as one of the wonders of the world.

During this and the preceding period a social conscience was developed in Egypt which found expression in a remarkable literature. Extracts from two examples of this, “The Eloquent Peasant” and “The Admonitions of Ipuwer,” are published in Part II, p. 418, ff., 421, ff.

(6) Second Period of Disintegration.—The thirteenth dynasty, which began in 1788 B. C., had not been long upon the throne, when powerful rebellions again broke up the kingdom. Petty kinglets ruled once more in many parts of the land. These kings comprise Manetho’s thirteenth and fourteenth dynasties. The land, disunited, became an easy prey to an invader. Such an invader came. For more than 3,000 years Egypt, protected by her deserts, had lived her life unmolested. The uncivilized Nubians on the south, the Lybians on the west of the Delta, and the uncivilized tribes of Sinai had been easily held in check. But now a powerful invader came from Asia with a well organized, though barbaric army. They conquered Egypt and imposed upon her two dynasties of kings, who ruled for about a hundred years, until they were driven out about 1580 B. C. These kings were Manetho’s fifteenth and sixteenth dynasties. He calls them Hyksos, which has been held to mean “Shepherd Kings,” but which probably meant “Ruler of Countries.” They have been generally believed to be Semitic, though some scholars now think they may have been of Hittite origin. In any event, large numbers of Semites came to Egypt with them, and left many Semitic names in the Delta. Some of these will be discussed below. This invasion broke up Egypt’s splendid isolation and brought her into the current of world events, from which she was never afterward to free herself.

(7) The Empire Period.—At some time before 1600 B. C. a seventeenth dynasty arose at Thebes and began the struggle to expel the foreign kings. This was not accomplished until the founder of the eighteenth dynasty, Amosis I (1580-1577), achieved it. In order to secure freedom from invasion the kings of this dynasty were compelled to follow the invaders into Asia, and in time Thothmes III (1501-1447) conquered Palestine, Phoenicia, and Syria to the Euphrates, and organized it into a compact empire, which held together until about 1360. The kings of this dynasty also carried the conquest of Nubia to Napata, at the Fourth Cataract. They worked the mines of Sinai, traded with Punt, and inaugurated the “empire period,” which lasted in reality till well into the twentieth dynasty, about 1165, and which, for convenience, we count as extending to the fall of the twenty-first dynasty in 945 B. C.

The foreign conquests brought many immigrants to Egypt and also took many Egyptians for longer or shorter periods to foreign lands. Egyptian customs in dress as well as the Egyptian language changed rapidly during this time. The Asiatic conquests of Thothmes III brought Egypt into relations with Asiatic kings, and in time his successors, Amenophis III and Amenophis IV, had an interesting exchange of letters with kings of Babylon, Assyria, Mitanni, and Alashia (or Cyprus), as well as with Egyptian viceroys in Syria and Palestine. Some of these letters are translated in Part II, p. 344, ff.

Amenophis IV made the first attempt known in history to establish a monotheistic religion. Although it was unsuccessful, it produced a beautiful hymn, which is translated in Part II, p. 403, ff. The kings of this period were buried in tombs of a new type. These were excavated out of the solid rock, cut deep into the mountain-side. They were all in the famous Valley of the Tombs of the Kings back of Thebes.

The nineteenth dynasty succeeded the eighteenth about 1350 B. C. During a period of weakness between the two, the Asiatic dominions had been lost. These were in large part reconquered by Seti I and Ramses II. The last-mentioned king ruled 67 years, from 1292 to 1225 B. C. He did much building in all parts of Egypt and Nubia. Among his enterprises were the cities of Pithom and Raamses in the Delta. He has long been thought to have been the Pharaoh who oppressed the Hebrews. Early in his reign he fought with the Hittites, but afterward made a treaty of peace with their king and married his daughter. The text of this treaty has been preserved. It is the earliest extant international treaty, and it contained an extradition clause, though this applied to political offenders only. (For head of Ramses, see Fig. 9.)

Merneptah, the son and successor of Ramses II, has been supposed to be the Pharaoh of the Exodus. His hymn of victory over his enemies is translated in Part II, p. 311.

In the reign of Ramses III, of the twentieth dynasty (1198-1167 B. C.), the Philistines and other tribes, coming from across the sea, from Crete and Asia Minor, invaded Egypt. Repulsed by him, they invaded Palestine, where they secured a foothold. Ramses IV, his successor, was the last Pharaoh to work the mines in Sinai. By the reign of Ramses IX (1142-1123 B. C.), Egypt’s Asiatic empire was gone and her prosperity had so declined that the natives of Thebes took to robbing the tombs of kings for a living. The records of the trials of some of these have survived. In the reign of Ramses XII (1118-1090 B. C.), Wenamon made his famous expedition to Phoenicia, a part of which is narrated in Part II, p. 352, ff.

The twenty-first dynasty (1090-945 B. C.) was a line of weak monarchs, who simply held Egypt together. During their rule David built up Israel’s empire. One of them, either Siamon or Pesibkhenno II, was the Pharaoh whose daughter Solomon married. (See 1 Kings 3:1, f.; 9:16.)

(8) The Period of Foreign Dynasties (945-663 B. C.).—During the time of the twenty-first dynasty the Lybians, who for centuries had made unsuccessful attempts to invade Egypt, settled in large numbers in different parts of the country, and adopted Egyptian customs, while some of them became wealthy and powerful. In 945 B. C. one of these, named Sheshonk, founded the twenty-second dynasty. This king is the Shishak of the Bible. It was he who gave asylum to Jeroboam, when he fled from Solomon (1 Kings 11:40), and who in the days of Rehoboam invaded Palestine. (See 1 Kings 14:25-28.) The dynasty founded by Shishak lasted for two hundred years. During the first century of this time it was very flourishing. One of its kings, Osorkon II, was apparently an ally of Ahab; at all events, a vase bearing Osorkon’s name was found at Samaria in Ahab’s palace. This dynasty made its capital at Bubastis in the Egyptian Delta, called Pi-beseth in Ezekiel 30:17.

During the last century of this dynasty’s rule Nubia, which had been for many centuries under Egyptian sway, gained her independence under a powerful dynasty which made Napata, at the Fourth Cataract, its capital. In 745 B. C. the twenty-second dynasty was succeeded by the twenty-third, which held a precarious existence until 718, when it was succeeded by the one king of the twenty-fourth. Egypt was during this period in great disorder, and in 712 the Nubian kings swept down from the south and conquered the country, establishing the twenty-fifth dynasty. The control thus passed from the Lybians to the Nubians. Tirhakah, the third king of this dynasty, took part in the wars against Sennacherib in Palestine. (See 2 Kings 19:9; Isa. 37:9, and Part II, p. 375, ff.) In 670 Esarhaddon, King of Assyria, invaded Egypt, defeated Tirhakah and made all the Delta as far as Memphis an Assyrian province. Some years later, when Tanut-amon, the successor of Tirhakah, endeavored to regain the Delta, Assurbanipal, of Assyria, marched up the Nile, took Thebes, that for 1,500 years had been mistress of Egypt, and during much of that time mistress of a large part of the then known world, and barbarously sacked it. This was in 661 B. C. This event made a great impression on surrounding nations. It is referred to in Nahum 3:8, where Thebes is called No-amon, or the city of the god Amon.

(9) The Lower Empire is the name given by scholars to the period of the twenty-sixth dynasty, 663-525 B. C. This dynasty was founded by Psammetik I, who became the viceroy of Egypt under Assurbanipal, of Assyria, in 663 B. C. Psammetik was descended from a native Egyptian family of the city of Sais in the western Delta, and a number of his ancestors had been prominent in the history of Egypt during the preceding century. At first he was a vassal of Assyria, but soon troubles in the eastern part of the Assyrian dominions enabled him to make Egypt independent. The Egyptians, finding themselves once more free under a native dynasty, experienced a great revival of national feeling. Everything Egyptian interested them. They looked with particular affection upon the age of the pyramid builders, who lived more than two thousand years before them. They revived old names and old titles, and emulated the art of the olden days. They manifested such vigor and originality withal, that the art of the lower empire rivals that of the best periods of Egyptian history.

Necho, the son and successor of Psammetichus, endeavored, as Assyria was declining to her fall, to regain an Asiatic empire. Josiah, of Judah, who sought to thwart him, was defeated by Necho and killed at the battle of Megiddo in 608 B. C. (2 Kings 23:29). Necho afterward deposed Jehoahaz and took him captive to Egypt (2 Kings 23:34). Four years later, when Necho made a second campaign into Asia, he was defeated by Nebuchadrezzar at Charchemish on the Euphrates, and compelled to hastily retreat to Egypt, hotly pursued by the Babylonians. Jeremiah, who perhaps caught sight of the rapidly moving armies from the JudÆan hills, has given a vivid account of the flight in Jeremiah 46. Jeremiah considered this event so important that he began then to commit his prophecies to writing. (See Jeremiah 36.) After this Necho devoted himself to the internal government of Egypt, though he became the patron of an enterprise for the circumnavigation of Africa, which was carried out by some Phoenicians. (See Herodotus, IV, 42.) Hophra, a later king of this dynasty (588-569 B. C.), in order to gain influence in Asia, tempted King Zedekiah to rebel against Babylon, and thus lured the little state of Judah to its destruction. During the reign of Hophra’s successor, Amosis II, Cyrus the Great founded the Persian empire, and in 525 B. C. Cambyses, the son of Cyrus, overthrew the twenty-sixth dynasty, and made Egypt a Persian province.

(10) The Persian Period.—Cambyses, after conquering Egypt, attempted in vain to conquer Nubia. The Nubian monarchs at this time moved their capital from Napata, at the Fourth Cataract, to Meroe, at the Sixth Cataract. Darius (521-485 B. C.) ruled Egypt with great wisdom and tact, but under his successors there were frequent rebellions. Finally, in 406 B. C., the Egyptians actually gained their independence, which they maintained until 342 B. C. During this period three native dynasties, the twenty-eighth, the twenty-ninth, and the thirtieth, successively occupied the throne. Manetho counts the Persians as the twenty-seventh dynasty. In 342 B. C. the Persians reconquered the country and held it for ten years until it was taken by Alexander the Great. This ten years of Persian rule constitutes Manetho’s thirty-first dynasty.

(11) The Ptolemaic Period (332-31 B. C.).—For eleven years Egypt formed a part of Alexander’s empire. Upon his death, in 323 B. C., it fell to the control of his general, Ptolemy Lagi, who founded a line of Ptolemies that ruled until overthrown by Augustus in 31 B. C. With the accession of the Ptolemies many Greeks settled in Egypt; Greek became one of the languages of commerce, and had a considerable influence in transforming the Egyptian language into Coptic. Until the year 198 B. C. the Ptolemies controlled Palestine. Philadelphus, the second of the line, rebuilt in the Greek style the city of Rabbah Ammon east of the Jordan, and named it Philadelphia. He, like his father, encouraged many Jews to settle in Alexandria, and, according to tradition, became the patron of the translation of the Old Testament Scriptures into Greek. At all events, the Pentateuch was translated in his time, and the translation of the other books followed. This translation is known as the “Septuagint” because of the legend that Ptolemy Philadelphus set 72 men to translate it. By the beginning of the Christian era there were so many Jews in Alexandria that it had become a second Judah.

(12) The Roman Period.—The Romans, upon conquering Egypt, disturbed in no way the internal affairs of the country. They gave it good government and fostered its internal institutions. Many old Egyptian customs persisted among the people; it is in regard to some of these that discoveries of interest to Biblical scholars have been made. From tombs and the places in the dry sands of the desert, where waste-baskets were emptied, many records have been discovered, some of which are translated in Part II, p. 432, ff., 440, ff.

Meantime, a state had developed out of the old monarchy of Nubia, described above, which was ruled by a woman, whose official title was Candace. It was an officer of hers to whom Philip preached, as described in Acts 8:27-39. Recent excavations in Nubia have recovered some of the art of these people, who became Christian in the second or third century, as well as some inscriptions of theirs in a script that is not yet deciphered.

7. Egyptian Discoveries which Bear on the Bible.

(1) Texts Bearing on the Story of Joseph.—A number of texts from the Middle Kingdom and other periods present features similar to parts of the story of Joseph and afford somewhat faint parallels to certain conceptions of the Hebrew Prophets. These are translated in Part II, p. 300, ff., and p. 418, ff.

The name of Joseph’s wife, Asenath (in Egyptian As-Neit, “favorite of the goddess Neith”), occurs from the eighteenth dynasty onward. Such names as Potiphar, the master of Joseph (Gen. 39:1), and Potiphera, Joseph’s father-in-law (Gen. 41:45), in Egyptian Pedefre, “he whom the god Re gives,” as well as the name given to Joseph, Zaphenath-paneah (Gen. 41:45), in Egyptian De-pnute-ef-‘onkh, “the god speaks and he lives,” are common in Egypt from the beginning of the twenty-second dynasty, 945 B. C.

(2) The Invasion of Egypt by the Hyksos.—This took many Semites to Egypt. The very name Hyksos is held by Breasted to mean “ruler of countries.” It was probably a title by which these kings called themselves, for they evidently ruled a considerable portion of western Asia, as well as Egypt. “Ruler of countries” is just the Semitic-Babylonian and Assyrian shar-matÂti, a title which Mesopotamian kings gave to themselves through much of their history. It had been employed by the Sumerians before them, being the familiar Sumerian lugal kurkurra, “king of countries.” If the Hyksos were Amorites, kinsmen of theirs had ruled in Babylonia long before their invasion of Egypt, and that these may have been Amorites is indicated by the name Jacob-her, which was borne by one of their kings. This is an Egyptian form of the Babylonian Yagub-ilu, or Jacob-el, an Amorite name found on business documents in Babylonia three or four hundred years earlier. In the time of Thothmes III this name was, Thothmes tells us, borne by a Palestinian city, to which it had apparently been given by some Amorite from Babylonia. Whether the Hyksos were Amorites or not, a number of Semitic names were given to places in Lower Egypt at the time of their occupation. Such was the name Magdol, or Migdol. The Egyptian name of Tanis was Zar, which Brugsch claims as Semitic. Thakut, an old name of Pithom, is the same as the Semitic Succoth, “booths.”

In the winter of 1905-1906 Petrie, excavating at Tell el-Ye-hudiyeh,[4] about 20 miles north of Cairo, discovered what he believes to have been one of the original encampments of the Hyksos in Egypt. This encampment consisted of a large space, averaging about 1,500 feet in each direction, surrounded by a wall of sloping sand and mud. This wall, varying from 80 to 140 feet wide at the top and from 130 to 200 feet wide at the bottom, presented on the outer side a long slope, and is quite unlike any structure of the native Egyptians. From the nature of the wall and the small objects found near it, Petrie infers that it was the rampart of a people who defended themselves with bows and arrows. A cemetery of the same level yielded to the explorer a considerable amount of black pottery, not at all like pottery of native Egyptian manufacture, and a number of crude scarabs. These objects Petrie believes are products of the art of the Hyksos before they had been in Egypt long enough to adopt Egyptian civilization. In 1912 Petrie discovered a similar Hyksos camp at the site of Heliopolis, the Biblical On.

It has been held by many that Abraham, Joseph, and Jacob all went to Egypt during the reign of the Hyksos dynasty. It would be natural for Semites to enter such a country, if it were ruled by a dynasty of the same blood as themselves. Egypt has, however, furnished no positive archÆological evidence of this view. The Semitic names just alluded to, which are sometimes cited as evidence of it, in reality only prove that many Semites came with the Hyksos. They make it probable, indeed, that some of the Hyksos were Semites, but give us no positive evidence concerning the patriarchs. On the other hand, nothing has been discovered in Egypt to disprove this view.

(3) The El-Amarna Letters.—In the winter of 1887-1888 a native Egyptian woman, according to one account, accidentally discovered some clay tablets in the soil at Tell el-Amarna, about 200 miles south of Cairo on the east bank of the Nile. She is said to have sold her rights in the discovery for about 50 cents. It was thus that nearly four hundred clay tablets, inscribed in the Babylonian language and characters, which opened an entirely unknown vista in the history of Palestine and the surrounding countries, were found. These were letters written to Kings Amenophis III and Amenophis IV, of the eighteenth dynasty. (See § 6 (7).) Seven of them were written by Ebed-hepa, King of Jerusalem, about 1360 B. C., and give us a glimpse of that city more than 350 years before David conquered it for Israel. Others of the letters came from other cities of Palestine and Phoenicia, and reveal to us through contemporary documents the conditions there in the patriarchal age. Some of these are translated in Part II, p. 344, ff.

(4) Period of the Oppression and the Exodus.—The statement in Exodus 1:11 that the Pharaoh who oppressed the Egyptians built the store-cities of Pithom and Raamses, indicates that this Pharaoh was Ramses II, for Naville, who excavated the site of Pithom (Egyptian Pi-tum, “House of the god Tum”) in 1883, found much work of Ramses II there, including colossal statues of this king, and also found no evidence that there had been any town of importance on the site before.[5] The name of the other city, Raamses, also points to the same king, since Ramses I, the only other king of the name Egypt had known, reigned less than two years—a time insufficient for the building of a city. The Bible evidently refers, then, to Ramses II. Concerning Ramses II and his reign much is now known, as has been pointed out in § 6 (7); (see Fig. 10).

All through the nineteenth dynasty peoples from Syria were employed by the kings on public works. Among these was a people called ‘prw = Aperu or Apuri, which some have thought to be Hebrews. Whether the Hebrews are really mentioned in this way is doubted by others, for references to the ‘prw do not cease at the time the Exodus of Israel must have occurred. They were employed by Ramses IV, of the twentieth dynasty, as late as 1165 B. C.

Much has been learned from archÆology about Egyptian brick-making, and it corresponds to the description of it given in Exodus. We have pictures of men at the work. No one thought of burning bricks in Egypt. The clay was moulded and dried in the sun. Straw was mixed with the clay to increase its adhesive quality. Naville says that some of the corners of some of the buildings at Pithom were actually built of bricks without straw. (See Exod. 5:7-18; and Fig. 11.)

The name Pithom continued as one of the names of this store-city or fortress until at least 250 B. C., for it is found on a pillar which Ptolemy Philadelphus set up there, but side by side with this name the place, all through its history, bore the name Thakut, which is philologically the Egyptian equivalent of the Hebrew Succoth. As this was the first station of the Hebrews when they left Egypt (Exod. 12:37; 13:20; Num. 33:5, 6), Naville holds that the Hebrews, after leaving the land of Goshen, must have passed out on the south side of the Isthmus of Suez.

Petrie believes that in the winter of 1905-1906 he discovered the city of Raamses[6] at Tell el-Retabeh, eight miles west of the site of Pithom, on the Wady Tumilat. The objects found here show that the site was occupied in the time of the Old Kingdom and onward, but as Ramses II and Ramses III both set up here statues of themselves, and erected important buildings, and as the location is the only one that fulfils the conditions of the city Raamses, Petrie feels confident that this was the site. This view receives some confirmation from the title of an officer who served here under Ramses III, and who is called: “Chief archer, keeper of the granaries, keeper of the palace; chief archer, keeper of the granaries of Arabia (or Syria).”

Merneptah, who is generally supposed to have been the Pharaoh under whom the Exodus occurred, was not drowned in the Red Sea, as some have wrongly inferred from Exod. 14:23-28, but was duly buried like his predecessors. His mummy has been found and is now in the Gizeh Museum at Cairo.

Merneptah in the fifth year of his reign set up a hymn of victory on a pillar in a temple erected by his father, Ramses II. This hymn, discovered by Petrie in 1896, is famous as the only writing outside the Bible that mentions Israel by name. A part of it is translated in Part II, p. 311, where its bearing on the Exodus is discussed; (see Fig. 15).

(5) Campaign of Sheshonk I.—The record on a wall of the temple of Karnak in Egypt by Sheshonk I, the Shishak of 1 Kings 14:25, of his campaign in Palestine, confirms the statement of Kings and puts the whole campaign in a new perspective. It is treated in detail in Part II, p. 359, f.

(6) Papyri Discovered at Elephantine.—In recent years papyri discovered at Elephantine, an island in the First Cataract, reveal the existence of a Jewish colony there, which had a Jewish temple on the island. This colony was established there at some time during the twenty-sixth dynasty, and was thus one of the earliest of those Jewish settlements in foreign countries which formed the dispersion. A number of the records of these papyri, which relate the fortunes of this temple, the relations of this colony to their Egyptian neighbors and their knowledge of the law, are translated in Part II, p. 387, ff. The origin of the colony is also discussed there.

(7) The Palace of Hophra.—Hophra, of the twenty-sixth dynasty, was, as noted in § 6 (9), the king who lured Judah to her ruin. Petrie in 1907 discovered his palace at Memphis. The discovery makes Hophra seem a little more real.[7]

(8) The Castle at Tahpanhes.—We learn from Jer. 43:7, 8 and 44:1 that, after the destruction of Jerusalem, Jeremiah with many other Jews fled to Tahpanhes in Egypt and established a Jewish colony there. Jeremiah, as a symbolical act, was directed to hide some stones in the cement of the tiled area of the court of Pharaoh’s house there (Jer. 43:8). Tahpanhes was the Daphne of the Greeks. It was on the site of the modern Tell Defenneh. This was in ancient times the easternmost city of the northern Delta. A hundred and fifty miles of desert stretched away to the east of it, until one came to the gardens of Gaza in Palestine. Petrie excavated Tell Defenneh in 1883-1884, and discovered the large castle there, which is probably the building in which Jeremiah buried his stones. This was the last act of Jeremiah’s life of which we have any record. He was then an old man and apparently died soon afterward, probably at Tahpanhes, certainly in Egypt.

(9) The Jewish Temple at Leontopolis.—Josephus tells us twice, once in his Antiquities of the Jews, Book XIII, Chapter III, and again in his Wars of the Jews, Book VII, Chapter X, that, when Jonathan, the Maccabee, was made high priest of the Jews, about 153 B. C., Onias, the son of Onias III, the deposed high priest, went to Egypt and obtained a grant of land and permission to build a Jewish temple. This land was in the region of the city of Bubastis, the nome where the cat goddess was sacred, and was accordingly called by the Greeks Leontopolis. There were at this time about as many Jews in Egypt as in Palestine, and doubtless Ptolemy VII thought to keep them more loyal by granting them a temple. He gave to Onias the revenues of a considerable territory for the support of the temple. Josephus tells us that Onias urged as a reason for the construction of this temple that it would be in fulfilment of the prophecy in Isa. 19:19-22. Josephus goes on to say that this temple was built as an exact reproduction of the temple at Jerusalem and that it continued to exist as a place of worship until after the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, when troubles caused by Jewish zealots led the Roman government to close the temple at Leontopolis and discontinue its worship; (see Fig. 12).

The site of this temple was at Tell el-Yehudiyeh, the “Tell of the Jewess,” about 20 miles north of Cairo. This tell was excavated by Petrie in 1905-1906. He found there remains of the Jewish temple, which fully confirm the statements of Josephus. Not only the temple, but the form of the Jewish settlement, was made as far as possible a replica of the city of Jerusalem. One of the most interesting discoveries was a series of ovens for the roasting of Paschal lambs. Others of a similar character were found higher up in the mound, but this first series was most numerous. Petrie infers that the temple was dedicated by a great Passover Feast, to which Jews came in large numbers from throughout Egypt;[8] (see Fig. 13).

(10) Papyri from Oxyrhynchus.—About 123 miles south of Cairo and nine miles to the west of the Nile lies the town of Behnesa, which the Greeks called Oxyrhynchus, from a sharp-nosed fish which was sacred there. Since 1897 Grenfell and Hunt, two English explorers, have been season after season exploring the rubbish heaps of the old town. The inhabitants committed the contents of their waste-baskets to the sands, and on account of the dry climate these have never decayed. Here were found the “Sayings of Jesus,” some of the documents concerning the Roman census, and some of the letters translated in Part II, pp. 432, ff., 440, ff., as well as many remains of the works of classical authors. Similar documents have been found in other parts of Egypt, but no other site has yielded as many as Oxyrhynchus.

(11) Discoveries in Nubia.—During the winter of 1908-1909 MacIver explored at Karanog in Nubia for the University of Pennsylvania. He found in a cemetery many remains of the civilization of the Christian Nubians. They still called their queen Candace (see Acts 8:27), fed her on milk, and regarded obesity as an attribute of royalty. More will be known of the Nubians of this period when the inscriptions discovered at Karanog and at Shablul, deciphered by Mr. Griffith, have been more completely studied. The explorations of the English at Meroe have afforded a connected view of the development of this Nubian civilization. They found there the remains of an early period extending from about 650-400 B. C., which was followed by about a century when the royal residence was elsewhere, a middle period from 300 to 1 B. C., during the latter part of which Hellenic influences were felt, and a late period, from 1 to 350 A. D., during which Roman forms of art penetrated the country.[9]