Now Ham is the same as Kham or Khem, Egypt, and a proof of this may be deduced from Ps. 1XXViii :51, where it is said 'And smote all the firstborn in Egypt; the chief of their strength in the tabernacles of Ham' ( Ps. cxi :22). And again, 'Wondrous works in the land of Ham, and ter rible things by the Red Sea' ( Ps. cvi :22). Mit raim also mentioned in the table of the nations is Egypt itself (Gen. x •fi, t3)• The inhabitants of Kush (the region called after the sons of I lam) arc represented on the Egyptian monuments. Their personal appearance is about the same, ex cept that their skin is darker, and at this time they seem to have had a religion and speech al most akin to the Egyptians.
We find Phut. the 'Punt' of the inscriptions, the land where spices came front, to be situated in the south of Egypt on both sides of the Red Sea. The fourth son. Canaan, is represented by the original inhabitants of Canaan. After then,. of the Old Empire, the dominant race ceased to be pure. Thus the Pharaohs of the twelfth dynasty seem to have had Nubian blood in their veins; the Phoenicians of the Delta have left their descend ants, and the long dominion of the Hyksos must have affected the population of the country. The Egyptians resembled the modern Arabs in form and their Syrian neighbors in features. They were tall, and with the head well placed upon their shoulders; their movements were graceful and dig nified. Their frames were spare and in color the men were brown and the women yellow. The forehead was straight but low, and the hair was usually black and straight. They were mild in their general character, polished in their manners, cleanly in their habits, religious and obedient by nature, and in consequence were a healthy, hardy people.
3. Early Dynasties. The Egyptian monarchy according to the most moderate calculations must have already been in existence fifteen hundred or two thousand years before the book of Exodus was written.
Egyptian history shows that Moses was a con temporary of the 'Great Rameses' (or Ra-am-ses), the Pharaoh of the oppression. The date of the Great Pyramid cannot be more recent than 3000 B.C. This is undoubtedly a great and venerable antiquity, but no unbiased judge can doubt that an immensely long period of years must have been required for the development of civilization up to the state in which we there find it. The investiga
tions in the bed of the Nile in connection with the rate of earth deposit by the Nile warrant the conclusion that man existed in that valley thou sands of years before the longest time admitted until recently by chronologists. (A. D. \Vhite.) Menes. At present nothing is really known of the Egyptian rulers before Menes, the first his torical king of Egypt. "The evidence of a vastly longer existence of man in the Nile Valley than could be made to agree with even the longest du ration accorded by modern chronology is now seen to be overwhelming. Manetho, the Egyptian scribe at Thebes, in the third century B.C., as signed a longer duration to human civilization than that which accords with the chronologies of modern writers. Manetho has given a statement according to which Mena, or Mencs, must have lived nearly 6,000 years before the Christian era." Many dates have been given by scholars for the reign of this king. Champollion Figeac gives it about B. C. 5867; Petrie, B. C. about 4777; Marl ette, the eminent French authority, puts the date at 5004 B. C., and with this the foremost English authority, Professor Sayce, agrees; Brugsch, the leading German authority, puts it at about B. C. We have it, then, as the result of a century of work by the most trained Egyptologists that the reign of Mena must be placed close upon 7,000 years ago. (See Antiquity of Egypt by Andrew D. \Vhite, LL. D., Pop. Sc. Monthly, June, 189o.) Mena, or M-nes, came from the town of Teni near Abydos. He built the great temple of Ptah and by many is supposed to have founded the great city of Memphis. He built a large dyke to protect the city, which is still in a good state of preservation, and protects Gizeh from excessive inundation. Menes was a mighty warrior, as the Libyans had reason to know. Very little was actually known of Nfenes until the recent discov eries made by M. de Moyan, the late director of the Antiquities of Egypt, who believed that he had found the tomb and remains of this famous monarch. (See ARCHtEOLOGY ; CRITICISM.) His son, Athothis, succeeded him and wrote many books on anatomy. The next king of note was Ata, or as the Greeks called him, Ouenephes.
He is famous for having built pyramids at Ko chome. Of the other kings of the first, second and third dynasties but little of consequence is known.