Egypt. Jacob, with the women and young children, went thither in palanquins, which were either drawn by men-slaves, or borne upon their shoulders.

FROM THE TOMB OF NAHRAI.

"And they took their cattle and their goods which they had gotten in the land of Canaan, and came into Egypt, Jacob and all his seed with him. His sons, and his sons' sons with him; his daughters and his sons' daughters, and all his seed brought he with him to Egypt.

"All the souls that came with Jacob into Egypt of his issue, besides Jacob's sons' wives, all the souls were three-score and six. And the sons of Joseph which were born him in Egypt were two souls all the souls of the house of Jacob which came into Egypt, were three-score and ten." Gen. xlvi. 6, 7, 26, 27.

The great precision after which the writer of this passage labours in the detail of these facts is very remarkable. It is impossible for a statement to be made more carefully. Now there are but two motives conceivable by which the penman can have been actuated in this writing. The one is his conviction, that the facts he had to state were deeply important to his history: the other his conscious. ness, that he was writing a falsehood which nevertheless he wished to impose upon his readers for truth. If in this or any other numerical statement the numbers thus formally recorded may be accepted in a vague indefinite sense, so that any one number may mean any other, (a mode of interpretation very much in vogue among certain critics of the present day) assuredly the passage before us was written. for the purpose of deceiving and misleading the reader. This conclusion is inevitable.

And he sent Judah before him unto Joseph, to direct his face unto Goshen; when they came into the land of Goshen.* And Joseph made ready his chariot, and went to meet Israel his father in Go

The city of On, or Heliopolis, was some miles to the southward of the Delta, of which (as we have already explained) Goshen was one of the ancient names. The circumstances here detailed, correspond very exactly both in time and place. The tribe of Jacob sought the grassy plains of the Delta for the pasturage of their cattle immediately on their arrival in Egypt. Judah, the first-born of Jacob, is sent to On, to announce to Joseph his father's arrival.

I

shen, and presented himself unto him, and he fell on his neck and wept on his neck a good while. And Israel said unto Joseph, now let me die, since I have seen thy face, because thou art yet alive." Gen. xlvi. 28-30.

It would be with the state and habiliments of a military chief that Joseph went forth on this occasion; by no other order of the community were horse-chariots, na, ever used.

"And Joseph said unto his brethren and unto his father's house, I will go up and shew Pharaoh, and say unto him, My brethren and my father's house, which were in the land of Canaan are come unto me. And the men are shepherds, they are also herdsmen, and their flocks and their herds, and all their possessions they have brought. And it shall come to pass when Pharaoh shall speak to you, and shall say, What is your occupation? that ye shall say, Thy servants have tended cattle from our youth, even until now, both we and also our fathers, that ye may dwell in the land of Goshen, for every shepherd is the abomination of Egypt." Gen. xxxi. 34.

So universally is the very well-known passage of Manetho preserved by Josephus in his first book against the sophist Apion, quoted as a comment upon this text, that we are absolutely compelled to follow a precedent so firmly established, and take here the question of the first shepherd-invasion of Egypt.

Having quoted this passage, commentators generally consider, that the abhorrence of the shepherd by the Egyptian is hereby fully accounted for. To this assumption we shall be compelled to demur.

It is as follows:-"There was a king [of Egypt] named Amountimæus. In his reign God was unpropitious, I do not know why; and unexpectedly, some men of ignoble race, rushing boldly from the East, made war upon the country and took it easily without a battle, and having made prisoners of the principal men in it, they burnt down the cities and overthrew the temples of the gods. They likewise used all the inhabitants as harshly as possible, slaying some, and selling others with their wives and children into slavery." Kaτ, Aπiov. I. 14.

This passage, which we have translated as closely as possible, convicts itself of intentional exaggeration by its phraseology. Nevertheless, that it is a genuine extract from the temple-records, there can be no doubt. We have already explained, that the men of ignoble race were the lower Egyptians, that they were the partizans of the older religion, and that the Canaanite settlers in the Delta took part with them in the schism that arose in Egypt upon the change made in her mythology by Mencheres. The monuments whence Manetho extracted this history being kept by the partizans of the opposite faction, we hereby fully explain both the application

of the opprobrious nicknames of "shepherds" and foreigners," to the Lower Egyptian Pharaohs, and the fearful picture which the account gives of the barbarities committed by the men from the east, who conquered Amountimæus, which the existing monuments of Egypt contradict in toto.

"At length they made one of themselves king, whose name was Salatis. He lived at Memphis, and put to tribute both the Upper and the Lower Country, and garrisoned the most important places. But he principally fortified the eastern parts, [of his dominion] fearing the growing desire of the Assyrians, who were then becoming very powerful, to invade his kingdom. So that, finding in the Setheoite nome a city very advantageously situated upon the eastern banks of the Bubastite branch [of the Nile] and called from some ancient myth, Avaris, he fortified it, making it very strong with walls, and garrisoned it with an immense force, amounting to 240,000 men. Here he held his court in the summer season, administering both the provisioning [of the garrison] and the collection of tribute, training [his troops] diligently in martial exercise through fear of a hostile attack from without. Having reigned for nineteen years, he died. After him another named Beon reigned for twenty-four years, and then another named Apachnas for forty-six years and seven months; then Aphophis for sixty