ing Lower Egypt, Apapi was king of the Hyksôs and Tekenen-Ra ruled over the native Egyptians of the South. A papyrus, as interpreted by M. Chabas, narrates that King Apapi worshipped only the god Sutech (Set), and refused to allow the Egyptian gods to be adored. This added to the war of races a war of religion, which resulted in the final expulsion of the Shepherds, about B. C. 1700. The Hyksôs are designated on the monuments and in the papyri as the "Scourge " or " Plague," equivalent in Hebrew to the Tzir'ah, commonly translated hornet," but evidently the same as the Hebrew tzavaath, "plague," and the Arabic tzeria, " scourge," or " plague." *

According to the learned Egyptologist, Dr. Brugsch, the Hebrew slaves in Egypt are referred to in a papyrus in the British Museum of the date of Ramses II. (B. C. 1400), in a description by a scribe named Pinebsa of the new city of Ramses. He tells how the slaves throng around him to present petitions against their overseers. Another papyrus reads (Lesley, "Man's Origin and Destiny"): "The people have erected twelve buildings. They made their tale of bricks daily, till they were finished." The first corroboration of the biblical narrative which the Egyptian monuments afford, and the first synchronism between Jewish and Egyptian history, appear in the reign of Ramses II., about B. C. 1400, in the nineteenth dynasty.

It appears from the monuments and from the historians that somewhere about B. C. 2000, or earlier, this great movement of warlike nomadic tribes occurred, which resulted in the conquest of Lower Egypt by the pastoral people known as Hyksôs. It was perhaps a movement of Semitic races, the Bedouins of the desert, like that which nearly three thousand years after united them as warriors of Islam to overflow North Africa, Syria, Persia, and Spain. They oppressed Egypt for five hundred years (Brugsch), and appear on the monuments under the name of Amu (the herdsmen) or of Aadu (the hated ones).

* The "hornets," Ex. xxiii. 28, and Josh. xxiv. 11, 12, are not insects, but the Hyksôs, who, driven from Egypt were overrunning Syria. See New York Nation, article on the Hyksôs, May 13, 1869.

Their kings resided at Tanis (in Egyptian Avaris), in the Delta. That their conquests had a religious motive, and were made, like that of Mohammed, in the interest of monotheism, seems possible. At all events, we find one of them, Apapi, erecting a temple to Sutech (the Semitic Baal), and refusing to allow the worship of other deities.* The majority of Egyptologists believe that the Hebrews entered Egypt while these Hyksôs kings, men of the same Semitic family and monotheistic tendencies, were ruling in Lower Egypt. The bare subterranean temple discovered by M. Mariette, with the well near it filled with broken statues of the Egyptian gods, is an indication of those tendencies. The "other king, who knew not Joseph," was a king of the eighteenth dynasty, who conquered the Hyksôs and drove them out of Egypt. Apparently the course of events was like that which many centuries later occurred in Spain. In both cases, the original rulers of the land, driven to the mountains, gradually reconquered their country step by step. The result of this reconquest of the country would also be in Egypt, as it was in Spain, that the Semitic remnants left in the land would be subject to a severe and oppressive rule. The Jews in Egypt, like the Moors in Spain, were victims of a cruel bondage. Then began the most splendid period of Egyptian history, during the seventeenth, sixteenth, fifteenth, and fourteenth centuries before Christ. The Egyptian armies overran Syria, Asia Minor, and Armenia as far as the Tigris.

Ramses II., the most powerful monarch of this epoch, is probably the king whose history is given by Herodotus and other Greek writers under the name of Sesostris.+ M. de Rougé believes himself able to establish this identity. He found in the Museum at Vienna a stone covered with inscriptions, and dedicated by a person whose name is given as Ramses Mei-Amoun, exactly in the hieroglyphics of the great king. But this person's name is also

Pap. Tallier (Bunsen IV. 671) as translated by De Rougé, Goodwin, &c. "In the days when the land of Egypt was held by the invaders, King Apapi (at Avaris) set up Sutekh for his lord; he worshipped no other god in the whole land."

+ I follow here De Rougé, Brugsch, and Duncker, rather than Bunsen.

written elsewhere on the stone Ses, and a third time as Ses Mei-amoun, showing that Ses was a common abbreviation of Ramses. It is also written Sesu, or Sesesu, which is very like the form in which Diodorus writes Sesostris, namely, Sesoosis.* Now Ramses II., whose reign falls about B. C. 1400, erected a chain of fortresses to defend the northeastern border of Egypt against the Syrian nomads. One of these fortresses was named from the King Ramses, and another Pachtum. The papyri contain accounts of these cities. One papyrus, in the British Museum,† is a description by a scribe named Pinebsa, of the aspect of the city Ramses, and of the petitions of the laborers for relief against their overseers. These laborers are called Apuru, Hebrews. In a papyrus of the Leyden Museum, an officer reports to his superior thus: "May my lord be pleased. I have distributed food to the soldiers and to the Hebrews, dragging stones for the great city Ramses Meia-moum. I gave them food monthly.' This corresponds with the passage (Exodus i. 11): "They built for Pharaoh treasure-cities, Pithom and Raamses." +

+

The birth of Moses fell under the reign of Ramses II. The Exodus was under that of his successor, Menepthes. This king had fallen on evil times; his power was much inferior to that of his great predecessor; and he even condescended to propitiate the anti-Egyptian element, by worshipping its gods. He has left his inscription on the monuments with the title, "Worshipper of SutechBaal in Tanis." The name of Moses is Egyptian, and signifies "the child."

"Joseph," says Brugsch, "was never at the court of an Egyptian Pharaoh, but found his place with the Semitic monarchs, who reigned at Avaris-Tanis in the Delta, and whose power extended from this point as far as Memphis

* Athenæum Français, 1856.

Lesley, Man's Origin and Destiny, p. 149. Brugsch, Aus dem Orient,

p. 37.

A common title on the monuments for the king is Per-aa, in the dialect of Upper Egypt, Pher-ao in that of Lower Egypt, meaning "The lofty house," equivalent to the modern Turkish title, 'The Sublime Porte."

and Heliopolis." The "king who knew not Joseph" was evidently the restored Egyptian dynasty of Thebes. These monarchs would be naturally averse to all the Palestinian inhabitants of the land. And the monuments of their reigns represent the labors of subject people, under taskmasters, cutting, carrying, and laying stones for the walls of cities.

To what race do the Egyptians belong? The only historic document which takes us back so far as this is the list of nations in the tenth chapter of Genesis. We can

*

not, indeed, determine the time when it was written. But Bunsen, Ebers, and other ethnologists are satisfied that the author of this chapter had a knowledge of the subject derived either from the Phoenicians or the Egyptians. Ewald places his epoch with that of the early Jewish kings. According to this table the Egyptians were descended from Ham, the son of Noah, and were consequently of the same original stock with the Japhetic and Semitic nations. They were not negroes, though their skin was black, or at least dark. According to Herodotus they came from the heart of Africa; according to Genesis (chap. x.) from Asia. Which is the correct view?

The Egyptians themselves recognized no relationship with the negroes, who only appear on the monuments as captives or slaves.

History, therefore, helps us little in this question of race. How is it with Comparative Philology and Comparative Anatomy?

The Coptic language is an idiom of the old Egyptian tongue, which seems to belong to no known linguistic group. It is related to other African languages only through the lexicon, and similarly with the Indo-European. Some traces of grammatic likeness to the Semitic may be found in it; yet the view of Bunsen and Schwartz, that in very ancient times it arose from the

*

"Ægypten und die Bücher Mosis, von Dr. Georg Ebers. Leipzig, 2868." "Bunsen, Bibel-Werk," Erster Theil, p. 63.

66

Eschylus calls the Egyptian sailors μeλáyxiuos, Lucian calls a young Egyptian "black-skinned," but Ammianus Marcellinus says, Ægyptii plerique subfusculi sunt et atrati."

union of Semitic and Indo-European languages, remains only a hypothesis.* Merx (in Schenkel's Bibel-Lexicon) says this view "rests upon a wish formed in the interest of the Philosophy of History; and the belief of a connection between these tongues is not justified by any scientific study of philology. No such ethnological affinity can be granted, a proof of which is that all facts in its favor are derived from common roots, none from common grammar." Benfey, however, assumed two great branches of Semitic nationalities, one flowing into Africa, the other into Western Asia.t. Eberst gives some striking resemblances between Egyptian and Chaldaic words, and says he possesses more than three hundred examples of this kind; and in Bunsen's fifth volume are comparative tables which give as their result that a third part of the old Egyptian words in Coptic literature are Semitic, and a tenth part Indo-European. If these statements are confirmed, they may indicate some close early relations between these races.

The anatomy of the mummies seems to show a wide departure from negro characteristics. The skull, chin, forehead, bony system, facial angle, hair, limbs, are all different. The chief resemblances are in the flat nose, and form of the backbone.§ Scientific ethnologists have therefore usually decided that the old Egyptians were an

* 66

Ægypten und die Bücher Mosis, von Ebers, Vol. I. p. 43." + "Th. Benfey, Ueber das verhältniss der ägyptischen Sprache zum semitischen Sprachstamme, 1844."

Ægypten, &c.

"The skulls of the mummies agree with history in proving that Egypt was peopled with a variety of tribes; and physiologists, when speaking more exactly, have divided them into three classes. The first is the Egyptian proper, whose skull is shaped like the heads of the ancient Theban statues and the modern Nubians. The second is a race of men more like the Europeans, and these mummies become more common as we approach the Delta. These are perhaps the same as the modern Copts. The third is of an Arab race, and are like the heads of the laborers in the pictures."-Sharpe, Hist. of Egypt, I. 3. He refers to Morton's Crania Egyptiaca for his authority.

Prichard (Nat. Hist. of Man and Researches, &c.), after a full examination of the question concerning the ethnical relations of the Egyptians, and of Morton's craniological researches, concludes in favor of an Asiatic origin of the Egyptians. connected with an amalgamation with the Afri can autocthones.