one years, and Jannas for fifty years and a month. After all these, Asses reigned also forty-nine years and two months. And these six were the first rulers over them, always at war with Egypt, and desiring principally to uproot it altogether."-Ibid.

These names of shepherd-kings are all opprobrious epithets, used as nicknames with punning allusions to the real names of the Lower Egyptian Pharaohs, to whom they were applied.

The passage itself is totally irreconcileable with the one that precedes it, whence it must have been inferred, that the shepherd invasion was a mere irruption of armed barbarians; but it agrees perfectly with the indirect testimony of the remaining monuments of this event, and with the scripture notices of Egypt under the shepherds, that is, the Lower Egyptian Pharaohs. Their kingdom was well ordered and peaceable; and a succession of the greatest and best that had ever ruled in Egypt, exercised the sovereign authority during reigns of long duration.

The expression, "these six were the first rulers over the shepherds," is well deserving of more attention than it has hitherto received; inasmuch as it distinctly alludes to a fact which the monuments have irrefragably established, namely, that the so-called shepherd-kingdom in Egypt, by no means ended with Asses, though he was probably expelled from

Memphis by the Mencherian Pharaohs.

To this point, which is of the last importance to the history of Israel in Egypt, we must return hereafter.

"This entire nation [that of the shepherds] was called hyksōs, that is king-shepherds, for the word hyk signifies king,' in the sacred tongue, and sōs means a shepherd,' and shepherds' in the vulgar dialect; and the two united make hyk-sōs.” Ibid.

This criticism is perfectly correct in every particular. The word hyk occurs in the sacred tongue, that is, in the hieroglyphics, with the meaning which Josephus assigns to it.

hk is a group of king"

it means 66

common occurrence in the texts; of a foreign nation generally. The word sōs (ows) also is of equally common occurrence in the Coptic texts, which, being as we have explained, the Egyptian translation of the Bible and other Christian books, represents the vulgar dialect of ancient Egypt. It is written shos, and signifies "shepherd," also" ignominy," and, "one that is beaten." In the sacred tongue it is not read with this import; but the group which has been thus transcribed is of very common occurrence in the texts that explain the reliefs, representing wars with Lower Egypt shsu or shus, which is evidently the same word. The determinative of the group shows us, however, that in hieroglyphics this word

was not a common noun, but the proper name of some tribe or nation of foreigners, and enemies of Egypt. Sos, or Shos, was the name of a powerful tribe among the Canaanite auxiliaries of the Lower Egyptian Pharaohs, by whom the Mencherians were expelled from Memphis. So conspicuous a part did they take in this war, that their proper name in after ages had passed paræmiastically from the sacred to the vulgar dialect as the common appellative of "shepherd," and also of ignominy and opprobrium " generally. The identification of the shos we will consider hereafter.

"

"Some say that these shepherds were Arabs. In another transcription 'king' is not signified by the common noun hyk, but, on the contrary, it means captive:' for the words hyk and hak in Egyptian signify literally captive,' 'prisoner of war.' This last [import] seems to me more credible, and in better agreement with ancient history." Ibid.

Josephus here is by no means equally happy. It is perfectly true that the words hak Hierog., and HK hak, Copt. mean "to lead captive," "to take prisoner," though it is only by a pun that they can be brought into relation with the word hyksos. But our author was misled by an absurdity which, to the great detriment of the truth, he mixed up with his defence of the sacred books of

the Jews. In order to magnify his own nation, he endeavours to prove throughout his work, that the Israelites were the shepherds who conquered Egypt. This at once accounts for his ready acceptance of this quibbling criticism, which, as he tells us afterwards, greatly favors his view, inasmuch as his forefathers were both shepherds by occupation and also captives in Egypt.

There is no subject in the entire compass of human knowledge which so imperatively demands from him that discusses it, a perfectly honest intention, or (we grieve to add) that so seldom obtains this its demand on any hand, as Biblical criticism. "He (Manetho) says, that these before-named kings of the shepherds, as they were called, and those who were descended from them, ruled Egypt for 511 years. But after these things, he says, that there was an insurrection against the Shepherds, of the kings of the Thebaid and of the rest of Egypt, and there broke out against them a great war, and of long duration." Ibid.

The sum of the reigns of the Shepherd-kings he had before catalogued, is 259 years and ten months. So that, by the place before us, their kingdom lasted 251 years after Asses, who was expelled from Memphis. But the lists of kings which profess to be the compend or digest of Manetho's history, put down the whole duration of the Shepherd-kingdom in

Egypt at 953 years. We have elsewhere expressed our conviction that this kingdom in the Delta had been founded long before the conquest of Memphis by Salatis or Saites, in the reign of Amun-Timæus. The scriptural and monumental grounds upon which this opinion has been formed, we have already detailed in part, and they will appear further in the course of our present undertaking.

Most unwilling as we are to add needlessly to our already sufficiently copious subject, it seems incumbent on us to remark on the present passage from Josephus, that a very large and influential school of modern investigators have been entirely mistaken in their interpretation of it: and that their mistake has led to chronological assumptions altogether incompatible with the truth of the Bible. They read Josephus as though he had said, that the Shepherd kings ruled Egypt for 511 years after the taking of Memphis by Salatis, and then the insurrection of the Theban kings arose whereas, in the original, Josephus says no such thing. He merely tells us that in Manetho's narrative the account of the duration of the Shepherd-kingdom is followed by that of the insurrection which ultimately overthrew it. It was not his intention to state at all in this place the chronological connection between the two events, -for, assuredly, he never could have meant to say that the Shepherds ruled in Egypt for 511 years,