destroy him.

When he arose, he took the young child and his mother by night, and departed into Egypt, and was there until the death of Herod; that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called my son." These references, which might be much increased, clearly show how intimately and closely the Jews were connected with the Egyptians for many hundreds of years.

To attempt even an outline of the history of ancient Egypt, would consume too much space, and exclude a mass of facts in connection with its civil, social, and religious condition, which is far more interesting and instructive. Besides, its chronology is so involved in obscurity and uncertainty, that the narrative is denuded of half its attractions. Some writers have seriously given to Egypt a history of tens of thousands of years, and tried to show that some of the ancient monuments were erected long before the period fixed for the Deluge; but nothing has yet been discovered amongst its vast mass of ancient inscriptions which points to so remote a chronology, while there are many presumptive evidences that her monuments are all subsequent to the time of Noah. Herodotus, indeed, speaks of 341 kings, whose united reigns reached over 11,340 years; and in connection with this, he states that during this time the sun twice rose in the west, and twice set in the east, and that these strange phenomena produced no particular effect on the inhabitants, the country, or the Nile.* These statements are, probably, two fables which Herodotus picked up amongst the gossiping priests, and which he felt bound to give because they were extraordinary. Often, when relating the strange tales of the sacerdotal order, he gives plain indications of his own want of faith, though in his relation of the account of these 341 kings he expresses no doubts of its accuracy. But the alleged antiquity of Egypt has been satisfactorily accounted for by men who have carefully investigated the subject. At one period of Egyptian history, a considerable number of princes ruled at the same time in different parts of the country. Each of these princes has been given a distinct period, the whole years of each prince have been added together, and the sum total has shown a chronology of tens of thousands of years. Besides this, Bryant has shown that still falser reckonings have helped to make up this pretended antiquity. All the Egyptian kings had a numerous list of names and titles. Each of these names and titles has been made into a separate person, and each person into a separate and independent sovereign, to which an appropriate number of years has been attached, and thus the rule of a single dynasty has been multipled many times over, and the chronology of Egypt has become utterly confused and

uncertain.

The first rulers of Egypt, according to tradition, were the gods; the accounts connected with whose reigns are plainly mythological; and where mythology has to deal with periods, twenty or thirty thousand years are matters of little consideration. During Bible times, beginning with Abraham, the history, and chronology too, become more reliable; and had the Scripture accounts given the specific

• Herodotus, Book II. chap. 42.

names of the kings who reigned, instead of the general name of "Pharaoh," which simply means "monarch," the history and chronology of Egypt would have been considerably improved. But, taking the authority of Bunsen, who certainly had no predilections in favour of the commonly received chronology, it may be stated generally, that for about one thousand years before Christ there begins a series of contemporaneous events of which evidence is found in the Bible and the Egyptian authorities. "Here," he says, "are found manifold and interesting points of contact, of which the latest is the contemporaneousness of Zedekiah and Jeremiah with Pharaoh-Hophra, the fourth king of the twenty-sixth dynasty; and the most ancient the contemporaneousness of Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, with the head of the twenty-second, namely, Schesonk-sesak. All these Biblical statements accord with the traditions and the contemporaneous monuments of the Egyptians in the most satisfactory manner.' Other, and equally careful students of history, however, have found "points of contact" between the Bible accounts and Egyptian monuments at a much more ancient date than that of Rehoboam, the son of Solomon.

Some authors have endeavoured to show that the original inhabitants of Egypt came from Ethiopia proper, a country immediately south of Egypt; but there is good reason to believe that they came from the north-east, from towards the plain of Shinar, where "the Lord confounded the language of all the earth" at the building of Babel (Gen. xi. 1-9). Besides, there was another Ethiopia to the east of Egypt, called in Scripture "the land of Cush," which is often by the Greek writers confounded with the Ethiopia south of it. No very early monuments exist in Ethiopia proper, according to Osburn, for the most ancient of them were erected by kings of the eighteenth dynasty, a period when Egypt had long been a settled kingdom. Had the original inhabitants come from the south, there is no doubt we should have found their most ancient works southwards, somewhere in the neighbourhood of Thebes, or before they reached that point; but according to all the Greek writers, who derived their information from the Egyptian priests, the pyramids are the most ancient monuments, and these are situated near Memphis, a city at the crown of the Delta of the Nile, and on the east bank of the river too, just where we should expect a people coming from "the land of Cush" would settle, and where the fruitfulness of the country could not fail to invite them. At that time the Delta is said to have been a mere marsh, undrained by canals and embankments, and the site of Memphis would be the first eligible spot for emigrants making their way across the narrow isthmus of Suez. But Manetho, an Egyptian priest, who wrote about 180 years before Christ a history of his country, in three books, of which, however, only some very small fragments have been preserved by Josephus and Eusebius, states that the first mortal king of Egypt after the regal gods and their rule of 36,000 years, was Menes. The foundations of Memphis are

Bunsen's "Egypteus Stelle." All the statements of the Bible in relation to Egypt so far are admitted even by Bunsen to be historically accurate, because they agree with the teachings of the monuments; surely, then, it is presumable that all the Scripture statements as far down as Abraham are equally reliable.

said to have been laid by this sovereign, and he is said to have first drained the Delta, which before had been a vast marsh, largely perhaps covered with water. Menes was an inhabitant of a city called Tanis, a place to the north-east of Memphis; and Menes being the first Egyptian king, and coming from the north-east, it seems strongly probable that the first settlers were emigrants from the plain of Shinar or its neighbourhood. The Egyptian priests indeed had a fable that Thebes was the seat of government when the gods ruled, and that Menes overthrew this rule and built Memphis as a rival capital; but the accounts of the reigns of gods and demigods are scarcely to be relied upon as grounds of settlement in so important a question. It is indeed very difficult to account for the different modes of reading the history of different countries. adopted by men of similar modes of thought and intellectual tendencies. In regard to Rome, and even to our own country, as well as many others, the fashion with the same class of thinkers is to throw all that is mythological, or even merely poetic, aside as utterly unworthy, both as to facts and chronology. Rome in its early periods, comparatively modern, however, historically, is cut up and cast away as if it were known to be purely fabulous, while the traditions, legends, and myths of Egypt are set up with all the confidence of certainty, and made the basis of a chronology which contradicts all reliable history, outrages reason, and is right in the face of the facts of science. The good old Book is a sad puzzle for our modern materializing philosophers, who can quite easily believe, against the testimony of all history and observation, that the human race has descended from the ape, and the ape after a series of progressions from a single animalcule, but who cannot at all believe that God created man. They cannot see at all how Romulus could have built Rome, or that the ancient Gauls really slew the white-bearded senators in the Forum; but the myths of the Egyptian priests about the 36,000 years' rule of the gods are credible enough, and, as it would appear, mainly because the Bible fixes the period of man's appearance on the earth at a much later date.

Menes, however, according to Manetho, was the first Egyptian king of the first dynasty or family of man. There is nothing certain as to the precise time at which he began to reign. Josephus tells us that it was many years before the time of Abraham; yet Josephus, in many points, seems to have been misled by the traditions and legends of the priests. It is not impossible that this Menes may be the Mizraim, the son of Ham, of the Bible (Gen. x. 13). From Babel did "the Lord scatter them" (i. e., the descendants of Noah) "abroad upon the face of all the earth;" besides which we know that Egypt is often called in Scripture "the land of Mizraim." However, whether Mizraim, the son of Ham, is identical with Menes or not, there can be no doubt that he early migrated to Egypt, and that. the country bore his name; nor can it be much doubted that Menes was the first mortal king of Egypt. If it be true that the Temple of Belus or Tower of Babel at Babylon was a pyramidal structure, as stated by Herodotus, it is not improbable that the architects of the three great Pyramids, near Memphis, took their plans from that great. monument of human folly in Babylonia.

Some writers, who seem to have a taste for an entirely new chronology, have fixed the date of Menes' accession to the throne at about six thousand years before the birth of Christ (Lepsius has fixed it at 3893, and Bunsen at 3643 B.C.), but they have reached such conclusions on grounds which are utterly unreliable, and in the face of strong evidence pointing to a much later period. Dr. Hales, after much research, fixes the date at about 2,412 years before the birth of Christ; and several other authorities, including Dr. Pritchard, Clinton, Syncellus-who wrote what is called the Old ChronicleEratosthenes, Eusebius, and Julius Africanus, make it about 200 years later than Dr. Hales. The most prosperous and successful dynasty of Egyptian kings was doubtless what is called the eighteenth. It began with Amenophis I., according to Osburn, in the year 1822 B.C., and finished with Sethos III., in 1479 B.C., the sixteenth king of this family. The monuments of this period have recorded something of every one of these kings, and so far their history is placed beyond doubt. These sovereigns have covered the whole country with the wonders of their period. Temples-many of the ruins of which remain are said to have been erected in every city of Egypt. In the neighbourhood of Thebes and Memphis, crowds of palaces and temples were reared, the remains of which at this day defy all powers of description in their magnificence and splendour. The immense wealth by which they were enabled to execute these vast works, is supposed by some writers to have been the result of the wise legislation of Joseph, while prime minister for the predecessors of these Pharaohs, while, we are told, their successors on the throne for a thousand years after found themselves utterly unable to complete all the immense piles of buildings which the monarchs of the eighteenth dynasty had commenced. Some unfinished structures were destroyed by Cambyses the Persian, others were completed by the Ptolemies, and others so late as the times of the Roman Empire by the emperors. One of the sovereigns of this dynasty was a female named Amense. She began her rule in 1757 B.C., and reigned above twenty-one years. Her son and successor, Moris, the fifth monarch of this dynasty, reigned over twelve years, and was evidently a man of great capacity and resolution. He erected a large part of the great buildings of Karnac. Inscriptions are still found on many monuments in Upper Egypt, and in Nubia, bearing the name of this illustrious king. He formed, too, a vast lake, which bore his name, of which we shall say more, to take away the superfluous waters of the Nile, and to supply the necessities of the land when the Nile's overflow was defective. But it was under this king that the children of Israel suffered so grievously. The "shepherd kings," who treated them with so much leniency and consideration, had been expelled, and now the people, whose representative had made the country so rich and prosperous, were reduced to the most cruel bondage: the Egyptians "made their lives bitter with hard bondage in mortar and in brick." This sad slavery is strikingly commemorated on the walls of the tomb of Rek-sharé, the chief architect of Moris in the building of the temples and palaces of Thebes. There could hardly be a better commentary on the sacred text than that supplied in this invaluable picture. The countenances of Jews are plainly distinguishable from

those of Egyptians. There they are, hard at work, moulding bricks, cutting clay, carrying bricks and clay by means of the yoke; turning the bricks out of the moulds; placing them up in walls; some stooping, some standing, mostly unshaven, to show their servitude; marked about their legs and feet with splashes of clay; and amongst them an Egyptian, the real "task-master," with his Egyptian physiognomy and head-dress, and a great club or baton in his hand ready to strike down any one who refused to do his bidding. Ramses III., called by the Greeks Sesostris, is said to have been the greatest of all the Pharaohs. He was the thirteenth king of this dynasty, began to reign in 1571 B.C., and reigned above sixty-eight years. On the celebrated tablet of Abydos, which Ramses constructed, his name is given as "Pharaoh, Sun, Guardian of Justice, approved of the Sun, the beloved of Amoun Ramesses." In the British Museum, there is now a tablet brought from Egypt which is dated in the sixtysixth year of his reign. This Ramses, or Sesostris, formed the project of conquering the world; and, collecting a vast army, he began to carry out his design. He had 300 ships on the Red Sea, by which he passed through the Straits of Bab-el-Mandel to the shores of India. He marched through India to the banks of the Ganges, and northward, through Scythia, to the river Tanais. He then entered Europe, penetrated into Thrace, and returned to Egypt, after an absence of nine years, by the eastern shores of the Mediterranean. There is a vast mass of monumental evidence recording the exploits of Sesostris, not only in Egypt, but in most of the countries which he conquered during his great expedition. On the walls of a cave in Nubia, is a design which tells of his exploits in Mesopotamia, but where, in the hieroglyphic inscription which explains the picture, Mesopotamia is frequently called by the Scripture name "Naharaim." No monument commemorating the "plagues of Egypt," the departure of the Israelites, or the destruction of Pharaoh's army in the Red Sea, has been found, and it is probable that no such monument ever will be found, for it was never the custom of the Egyptians to perpetuate the memory of their misfortunes. Sesostris was succeeded by his son, Sethos II.; and five other sovereigns, during the thirty years that followed his father's death, completed the eighteenth dynasty. During the five last reigns, Egypt declined in her glory; and though the first king of the nineteenth dynasty, Ramses Meiamoun, endeavoured to re-establish her greatness, her arm was broken, and her magnificence and power gradually decayed.

FULFILLED PROPHECY.

BABYLON — THE PREDICTIONS RESPECTING IT, AND THE EVIDENCE OF HISTORY AND MODERN DISCOVERY TO THEIR FULFILMENT.