portant, though not so impressive to the sensitive imagination, is the definitive establishment of the fact, of a foreign domination (the Hyksos) for some long period, on the part of a Semitic race from the north-east, having in that region the seat of its dominion. The discovery of a Semitic family depicted on an older Egyptian monument, might not signify much apart from the general fact of Semitic movement in that direction. And the discovery of a few bricks that must have been made without straw might have been insignificant if this had not been in Pithom (a city built by the Israelites), which now is shown to have been almost wholly built of bricks, and to have been partly built with bricks made without straw.

The monuments do not name the Hebrews, nor describe the oppression of them, nor record the judgments upon the oppressor. But was there any occasion to speak of these things in liturgies for the Egyptian dead, or philosophical treatises, or heroic poems in praise of the Pharaohs' prowess in a foreign war? On their sacred tombs they would of course have no memorial of despised slaves, foreigners, heretics, of the hateful Semitic cousinhood of Hyksos. As for the Ten Plagues, culminating in the Red Sea disaster: nations do not raise monuments of their disastrous disgraces. Is there a national monument of Waterloo at Paris, or Jena at Berlin, or Sadowa at Vienna? There might have happened to be some traces of the sojourning. But mere absence of them is of no importance. And the mere presence of them; what purpose would it have served? To prove the fact of Israelitish residence in Egypt? That needs no proof. It is admitted that the Exodus is not only historical, but (Bunsen) the true beginning of history for mankind. And an historical exodus from Egypt of course presupposes an historical residence in that land. The ground is thus literally taken from beneath the feet of merely "mythic theories,” which require a dreamland for their theatre of events. Here, historical reality is clear as Mount Sinai.

“The bricks are there to bear witness," might be conclusive to the judges addressed by Jack Cade; but it is because those judges were incapable of truly judging. The proof-or disproof-depends, not upon the presence or absence of any sort of mere detailed coincidences, but upon testing coincidence. And in the present case, where a historical picture has to be identified with the alleged original, the really satisfactory proof is constituted by those characteristic aspects and features in the history, which produce upon a

sound mind the impression, "This is that Egypt, with which we are otherwise acquainted." Rasselas, for example, Prince of Abyssinia, is a very moral personage, with finer English than Moses; but he never saw the Nile.

There is another species of proof that is constituted simply by the truth of the history, reflecting reality of the recorded facts. The intuitive perception of this is what we proceed upon in the ordinary intercourse of life. An honest man speaking what he knows does not need to prove what he says. We believe him. Every one believes him. It is natural to believe him, as to believe our eyes. Though we had never seen nor heard of him before, a true man saying what he knows is believed. Hence, a story so strange as that of the Gospel Histories is always believed when read. No one really doubts in his heart the reality of what is said as matter of fact within their knowledge by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. So of the very strange ancient Egypt of the Pentateuch. It is satisfactory now, on various accounts, to have a distinct proof of its reality. But a sterling good proof of its reality has always been the Pentateuch itself; an honest book, giving the story of really experienced fact.

It is not critical sagacity, it is wiseacre perversity, stupidity, or crass ignorance, to ignore the substantive reality, of an exodus and a sojourning, which is a fact of history as solidly fixed and established as any Egyptian pyramid, and more enduring than the very land of Egypt. The kind of corroboration, that may be expected from our knowledge of that country, is constituted by the characteristic features or aspects, of land or people, which are fitted for identification of that individual country, as distinguished from other countries. Herodotus was so impressed with the distinctness of those characteristics, as to say that the Egyptians were in everything the opposite of the rest of mankind, a lively manner of his speaking, which really means, that this country is quite different in its aspect from all others ;—here is a unique face of nature and of human life. And as thus reasonably understood, his statement is fully justified by the Egypt of Exodus and "the monuments," which both bring to view the same unique face.

NOTE (1). History of Egypt. The monumental history of Egypt has no chronology. That is to say, the ancient Egyptians had no era, like the birth of Christ, or the founding of Rome, or the first Olympiad, from which to date an

event. In all the monumental discoveries, there is only one case in which a detailed event is dated by stating the number of years between it and a memorable event in the long past history. Ordinarily, events are placed according to their year in a king's reign, or in the lifetime of a sacred bull, without specification of the period of the flourishing of the monarch or the beast. The archeologist is thus placed at a disadvantage, as if the specimens in a museum had all been rolled together down a hill into a heap at the foot of it; while the life of that ancient Egypt remained so much the same through the whole ruin, that it may be difficult from internal evidence of the things to determine with confidence to what period this or that belongs, and impossible to decide as to the extent or duration of the periods. Accordingly, in the estimates of not irrational Egyptologists, as to the duration of the whole time of authentic history of Egypt, there is a difference of some 3000 years: as if one historian had placed the crusades a thousand years before the birth of Christ, and another, two thousand years after it. Of course the events of the history may nevertheless be real: the pyramids do not cease to be, because we differ as to their age. There were crusades, witness even Tasso. But in relation to that old Egyptian history, we are put on guard against the fallacy of dates.

It has been attempted to make out an Egyptian Chronology from the written history of Manetho:-a native Egyptian priest who, in the third century before Christ, wrote the history of his country for the information of Greeks, who had come into command of Egypt with Alexander the Great. He is said to have used materials of authentic history that are lost. But his work is known to us only from some fragments of quotation (by Josephus), and from a sort of abstract (by Eusebius and Syncellus) which we do not even know to have been made from the original work. He is suspected of having exaggerated the duration of his country's history, for what he deemed its glory of antiquity. He is known to have some 25,000 years of what is really a mythic period, of gods, heroes, etc., previous to the time of Menes, with whom authentic history begins. Counting all the years of his dynasties within this period, we should be carried back to 5004 B.C. But, with only one exception (Mariette), all the Egyptologists admit, that some of the dynasties, which he gives as continuously consecutive, really were contemporaneous; there being different kingly houses reigning in different parts of Egypt at one time. A good-sized congregation, if all the ages of its members, infant and adult, were added together might thus be made out as 100,000 years old. And further, even the detailed numbers, when they can be compared with monumental tests, are found far from trustworthy in accuracy. By various processes, his 5004 years have thus been reduced, until respectable Egyptological experts have named 2500 B. C. as a probable date of the beginning of the history with Menes.

Nevertheless, by comparison with the monuments, his history is shown to have not been a mere romance, but to have had some foundation in authentic facts. The 5000 years may be regarded as a "maximum limit," tending to shrink through discovery of limiting conditions, such as we have referred to. For our study of Exodus it is not necessary to "synchronize" the Bible history with the old Egyptian; so as, for instance, to know at what point in the old Egyptian

history to place the visit of Abraham, the settlement in Joseph's time, or the exodus. For the general aspect, which appears in Genesis and Exodus, is presented by the Egypt of every period that can be supposed to have witnessed those events. But for convenience of memory we will suppose the date of Menes, the beginning of real history of Egypt, to have been about 2500 B.C. In this we are warranted by the fact, that all that is really and positively known of the Egyptian history can be brought within this date. And a very strong corroboration, with cumulative force of circumstantial evidence, is constituted for us by an independent proof of the duration of the Assyrian and Babylonian empire of the Euphrates valley. That empire, the only one whose antiquity is comparable to that of Egypt, is now known to have begun to exist not earlier than about 2500 B.C. And it is quite unreasonable to imagine that the origin of civil order and settled government should have been earlier to any considerable extent in the valley of the Nile. The two governments must have begun to be somewhere in the same period, soon after the Babel dispersion of mankind,—and that, long before the beginning of real authentic history of India and China. Assuming the date of 2500 B.C., we have 500 years between Menes and Abraham's time, and 1000 years before 1500 B.C.; which latter is about the middle point among various dates assigned to the Exodus (see following note, (2), on Exodus Chronology), whose true date is to be ascertained from the Scripture history, if it is to be precisely ascertained at all.

The Old Egyptian history was distributed over three periods of the Old Empire, the Middle Empire, and the New Empire; the Middle period being characterized as one seemingly of suspended progress in civilisation, with effacement of monuments of the preceding civilisation of the first period. It is certain that the exodus took place in the third period, not far from the beginning of it. With reference to the middle period, in which may have fallen the times both of Joseph and of Abraham, there long were disputed questions among the learned as to the reality of an alleged foreign domination of "shepherd kings" or Hyksos; of which the original story according to Manetho was to the effect,-that these foreigners had domineered over Egypt 500 years (another reading has 250); but were at last expelled by insurrection of native Egyptians, under a hero (Amosis or Ahmes) of native kingly race; in a war which terminated in campaign-siege of Avaris, the capital of the Hyksos, to which they had fallen back as an intrenched camp. Josephus imagined, that this was a discoloured and distorted version of the story of the sojourning and exodus of Israel. He was followed in this view by many Christian scholars. Even the late distinguished Egyptologist Hengstenberg, in his latest work,1 maintained, that there were no Hyksos but the Israelites. That long controversy has now been finally and strangely set at rest.

The learned world will not soon forget the deep thrill of wondering interest occasioned within this decade by the discovery (in A.D. 1881) of the bodies and other remains of some thirty or forty Egyptian kings of that most ancient period. One result of the discovery has been the establishment of the fact of that foreign Hyksos domination beyond all rational doubt. There has even been identified

1 Lectures on The Kingdom of God in the Old Testament; Clark, Edinburgh.

the body of that hero who led the insurgent Egyptians to their final success. And there is ocular demonstration of his having died in battle, in the arms of victory, leaving his country free. Three terrible wounds on the head are the manifest cause of his death, and the distortion of his countenance bears witness to the agony of dying by violence; while the manner of his burial shows, that those who buried their king were not broken discomfited fugitives, but in victorious command of the situation.1 A picturesque illustration of the closeness of connection of our Exodus interest with these discoveries is furnished by a recent letter 2 from M. Naville, in charge of the exploration, intimating the discovery of a Hyksos king bearing the unique name of "Jan-Ra;" which curiously coincides with “Roy-an;' the name which in Arabic literature is assigned to the Pharaoh of Joseph. More important is the really wonderful discovery (by Mr. Petrie in 1884), and conclusive identification of Tanis, the Zoan" of Scripture (Nu. xiii. 22), shown to have been a great imperial city, specially the seat of Ramesês II. (“The Great " Sesostris of the Classics), who is understood to have been the father of (Menephtah) the Pharaoh of the exodus, and also of that princess who was adoptive mother of Moses (Dr. Robinson's work referred to above, p. 27).

In the light of information incomplete and not yet digested, we will venture upon a provisional view of what may have been the real fact as to that Hyksos domination: -The native Egyptians are historically distinct from the Semitic peoples to the north and east of their valley. But in the Tanaitic region to the north-east, where even now (in the Menzaleh district) the type of man is different from the true Egyptian, there always was some considerable basis of Semitic population; which may have been under the native Egyptian power as the Saxon English were under the Normans, or the Hungarian Slavs under the Magyars. Now the Hyksos movement may have originally been simply a "wave" of Semitic migration of nomads (cp. Ge. xlvi. 34) into the land among their kindred. Or, it may have been distinctly an invasion, like that of the Roman empire by "barbarians;" which might gather into itself accessions of the resident kindred Semitic population. Considering that the arable land of Egypt was in area only about as large as Yorkshire, we can understand that the invaders, once within the belt of border fortresses (“land of forts," is an etymology of Mitzraim, “Egypt”), and with helpful sympathy of a vigorous rustic population-like Israel-in the north and east, would meet no very formidable resistance at the centre of old "empire." Apparently the invading race always had its main seat of dominion in the lowlands of the Delta and the Tanaitic region. In the Nile "valley" of Egypt proper, there seems to have remained some native Egyptian sovereignty. About the duration of the domination—whether 500 or 250 years-we need not inquire (see Canon Cook, Appendix to Speaker's Comm. on Exodus). Its character, as comparatively rude and barbarous, we can believe in from the nature of the case: though Charles Lamb has taught us, in his instructions about a hue and cry, not to repose implicit confidence in the native Egyptian tradition; in which the

1 There is an account of the Discovery, beautifully illustrated from photographs, in The Century Magazine of May, 1887.

2 Journal Transactions of the "Victoria Institute," 1888, No. 184.