It appears, then, that the supposed astronomical notes of time hitherto discovered lend but little aid, and bring nothing like certainty into the inquiry. We cannot accept the lists as they stand. How are they to be rectified ? Until we have the means of rectifying them, every attempt to put forth a definite scheme of Egyptian chronology is simply futile. The appeal to authority avails nothing here. Lepsius, Bunsen, Brugsch, and many more, all claim to have settled the matter. Their very discrepancies—on the scale of which half a century is a mere trifle— sufficiently prove that to them, as to us, the evi dence is defective. The profoundest scholarship, the keenest insight, cannot get more out of it than is in it : that which is crooked cannot be made straight, and that which is wanting cannot be numbered.' Yet, from the easy confidence with which people assign dates—their own, or taken on trust—to the Pharaohs after Amosis, and even of much earlier times, it might be thought that from Manetho and the monuments together a connected chronology has been elicited as certain as that of the Roman emperors. In particular, there appears to be a growing belief—even finding its way into popular Bible histories and commentaries—that the Pharaoh ofthe Exodus can be identified in Manetho, and so the time of that event determined.
Early Christian writers usually assumed, with Josephus, that the Hyksos or `shepherd-kings' whose story he gives from Manetho (c. Apion, i. 14-16), were the Israelites, and their expulsion by Amosis or Tethmosis—one or both, for the accounts are confused*—the Egyptian version of the story of the Exode. This view, once favoured by the present writer, by him long since abandoned, has still its advocates (quite recently Mr. Nash, The Pharaoh of the Exodus, '63), but not among those who have been long conversant with the subject. In deed, there is a monument of Thothmes III., which, if it has been truly interpreted, is conclusive for a much earlier date of the Exode than this reign, or perhaps any of the dynasty. A long inscription of his 23d year gives a list of the confederates de feated by him at Megiddo, in which De Rouge reads the names 7acob and 7oseph, and Mr. Stuart Poole thinks he finds names of some of the tribes, Reuben, Simeon, Issachar, 'Gad (Report of R. S. Lit., in Atheneum, Mar. 21, '63).
But the story of the Jews put forth by `Manetho' himself ( Joseph. c. Apion, i. 26, 27), with the con fession, however, that he obtained it not from ancient records, but from popular tradition (dBea r6rws ILUGoXo-yo4ceva.), represents them as a race of lepers, who, oppressed by the reigning king, called to their aid the Hyksos from Palestine (where these, on their expulsion some centuries earlier by Tethmosis, had settled and built Jerusalem), and with these allies overran all Egypt for thirteen years, at the end of which Amenophis, who had taken refuge in Ethiopia, returning thence with his son Sethos, drove out the invaders. These, headed by Osarsiph (= Moses), a priest of Heliopolis, retired into Palestine, and there became the nation of the Jews. Josephus protests against this story as a mere figment, prompted by Egyptian malignity,t and labours to prove it inconsistent with Manetho's own list : unsuccessfully enough, for in fact Ameno phis (Ammenephthes, Afr.) does appear there just where the story places him, i.e., next to Sethos and Rameses II., with a reign of nineteen years and six months. The monuments give the name Meneph tha, and his son and successor Seti = Sethos II., just as in the story. The names are not fictitious,$ whatever may be the value of the story as regards the Israelites. This Menephtha, then, son and successor of Rameses the Great, is the Pharaoh of the Exode, according to Lepsius and Bunsen, and of late accepted as such by many writers, learned and unlearned. Those to whom the name of Manetho is not voucher enough, will demand inde pendent evidence. And in fact it is alleged that the
monuments.of the time of Menephtha attest a period of depression : no great works of that king are known to exist ; of his reign of twenty years the highest date hitherto found is the fourth ; and two rival kings, Amen-messu (the Ammenemses of the lists) and Si-phtha, are reigning at the same time with him, i.e., holding precarious sovereignty in Thebes during the time of alien occupation and the flight of Menephtha (Bunsen, Aeg. Stelle, iv. 208, ff.)—That these two kings reigned in the time of Menephtha, and not with or after Sethos II., is assumed without proof ; that the reign of Rameses II. was followed by a period of decadence proves nothing as to its cause; and the entire silence of the monuments as to an event so memorable as the final expulsion of the hated ' Shepherds' (Shas-u), who so often figure in the monumental recitals of earlier kings (e.g., of Sethos I., who calls them shas-u p'kanana-kar, ' shepherds of the land of Canaan '), tells as strongly against the story as any merely negative evidence can do for it.—More im portant is the argument derived from the mention (Exod. i. t t) of the treasure-cities Pithom and Raamses,' built for the persecuting Pharaoh by the forced labour of the Hebrews ; the Pharaoh (says Rosellini, Mon. Storiei, i. 294, ff.) was Rameses [II., son of Sethos I], who gave one of the cities his own name. (Comp. Ewald, Gesch, ii. 66, note.) Lepsius, Art. Aegypten, in Herzog's En cyclop., calls this the weightiest confirmation,' and in Chronol. der Aeg., i. 337-357, enlarges upon this argument. Raamses, he says, was at the eastern, as Pithom (IldrovLos) was certainly at the western end of the great canal known to be the work of Rameses II., and the site of the city hearing his name is further identified with him by the granite group disinterred at Abu Keisheib, in which the deified king sits enthroned between the gods Ra and Tum.*— Certainly a king Rameses appears first in the i9th dynasty, but the place may have taken its name, if from a man at all, from some earlier person.* That the Exode cannot be placed before the rgth dynasty, Bunsen (u.s., p. 234) holds to be conclu sively shown by the fact that on the monuments which record the conquests of Rameses the Great in Palestine, no mention occurs of the Israelites among the Kbeti (Hittites) and other conquered nations ; while, on the other hand, there is no hint in the book of Judges of an Egyptian invasion and servitude. On similar negative grounds he urges that the settlement in Palestine must have been subsequent to the conquests made in that country by Rameses III., first king of the zoth dynasty. To which it may be replied—(I.) that we have no clear information as to the route of the invaders ; if it was either along the coast or to the east of Jordan, the tribes, perhaps, were not directly affected by it. (2.) The expeditions so pompously described on the monuments (as in the Statistical Table of Karnak, Thothmes III., and similar recitals of the conquests of Rameses II. and III. ; see Mr. Birch in Trans. of R. S. .Lit., ii. 317, ff. ; and vii. so, ff.) certainly did not result in the permanent subjugation of the countries invaded. This is sufficiently shown by the fact that the conquests repeat themselves under different kings, and even in the same reign. Year by year the king with his army sets out on a gigantic razzia, to return with spoil of cattle, slaves, and produce of the countries overrun. (3.) If the lands of the tribes were thus overrun, it may have been during one of the periods of servitude, in which case they suffered only as the vassals of their Canaanite, Moabite, or other oppressors. That this may pos sibly have been the case is sufficient to deprive of all its force the argument fetched from the silence of the monuments, and of the book of Judges.