presents are represented in the picture, but not the slaves. The picture is well known in England; for since the publication of it twenty years ago, by Rosellini,* it has been frequently copied into English books, and many conjectures have been hazarded as to its import. The hieroglyphics that accompany it explain very clearly what it means. It is "the delivery of the stibium-makers which the great chief of the Jebusites hath brought, even thirty-seven captives of his club." The transaction took place in the sixth year of Osortasen II., the second successor of the former monarch (as we shall presently see), scarcely a century before the times of Joseph. It is impossible therefore for any fact to rest on a firmer basis of monumental evidence, than that the Canaanite traders to Egypt were in the constant habit of bringing thither for sale slaves from among their own countrymen, whether enslaved as prisoners of war or by other circumstances. To a rightly constituted mind, evidence like this to the truth of a narrative is the most valuable of all.

The meaning of the name Potiphar is, "he who belongs (is devoted to) the sun," the local god of On or Heliopolis, at the head of the Delta. This is a point of great importance for the locality in which Potiphar was a resident.

The title rightly translated "prince" is of constant *M. R. Part 26, seq.

occurrence in the tombs of the magnates of Egypt of the period before us: and, wonderful to tell, the inspired penman has copied it almost letter for letter from the hieroglyphic original—srsh. This title was highly honourable, and always heads the enumeration of the honours of those to whom it is ascribed.

The office borne by Potiphar is also one peculiar to Egypt, and described by two Egyptian words, which at a very late period have been assimilated to two later Hebrew words. We believe Potiphar to have been sar toje, i. e. “prefect (inspector) of the plantations." This is a common office with the princes in the tombs of Ghizeh.

The Pharaoh to whose court Potiphar was attached, and who afterwards became the patron of Joseph, was the king Phiops or Aphophis. All the ancient authorities who have mentioned the subject agree in this with such perfect unanimity, that to reject their testimony is simply to throw overboard all antiquity. Aphophis was one of the Memphite Pharaohs.

The history of Egypt in the interval that has elapsed since it was last the scene of the inspired narrative, will now require our attention.

Josephus, the Jewish historian, relates that when Abram first came into Egypt the Egyptians were engaged in a civil war, arising out of differences in

religion; but by the good offices of the patriarch, the two belligerent parties were reconciled, and he left Egypt at peace. The only parts of this story of the slightest historical value are the statements that there was a religious civil war in Egypt when Abram came thither, and that it had ceased when he departed thence. Had such not been the fact, Apion and the keepers of the temple-records, with whom Josephus was in controversy, would have been too happy to have pointed out the error. The rest of the story they would treat as a mere kompology, as it was called, that is, a boast for the purpose of magnifying his own nation, and for which his own books furnished him with the authority. This was the universal mode of writing history in those days. Now it is the fact that shortly before the times of Abraham a great religious feud arose in Egypt. The cotemporary monuments are the unerring witnesses. to this fact. An imperfect hint at such an event may be detected in the account of Egypt in Herodotus the Greek historian; but without their interpretation no human sagacity could have eliminated the truth from his legend. He however visited Egypt in utter ignorance of the language, and was therefore altogether at the mercy of the mendacious priesthood, and of his far from honest interpreter. According to the legend in question, the names and memories of Cheops and Cephrenes, the builders of

the two great pyramids at Ghizeh, a part of the cemetery of Memphis, were held in great detestation, whereas Mencheres, the monarch who constructed the third and smaller pyramid in their immediate vicinity, was honoured as one of the most eminent of the benefactors of Egypt. The closing of temples was one of the atrocities ascribed to the two delinquent Pharaohs. Their re-construction was one of the blessings conferred upon Egypt by Mencheres. Such is the legend; and the present condition of the three pyramids certainly sanctions the assumption, that it is not altogether without some foundation in fact. The external casing of granite that once covered the pyramids of Cheops and Cephrenes, had been removed in the days of Herodotus, B.C. 450: their appearance at this day is exactly that which he describes. But their bases are encumbered with chips and splinters of this material, worked off by the sculptor's chisel, to an extent and depth of which no one who has not actually visited them can form any conception. These pyramids, after their desecration, have evidently served for ages as the quarry whence the adjacent cities drew their supply of this (in Lower Egypt) precious and costly material. But of the neighbouring pyramid of Mencheres, more than one half of the granite casing now remains, and of the rest, many huge blocks, untouched, lie strewn about its base, bearing all the marks of

comparatively recent removal. Visibly it was not until the final extinction of the Egyptian idolatry, and for the construction of churches and mosques, that the dilapidation of the pyramid of Mencheres was begun. Yet, if we examine the tombs of the princes, the nobles, and warriors of these three monarchs that surround their pyramids, in numbers incredible, we shall find that for the reclaiming of waste lands, and for the conquest of foreign enemies, Cheops and Cephrenes were far greater benefactors to Egypt than Mencheres. The comparison of the monuments of the three bring out nevertheless a difference which solves the difficulty. It is in the religious tenets of the two epochs, and may be thus explained. In the days of Cheops and Cephrenes, every king of Egypt became a god on his decease, and was worshipped in his pyramid, and associated in divine honours with the dead patriarchs of their original pantheon. But in the days of Mencheres (about a century afterwards, according to the monuments,)* this king-worship ceases altogether, and the dead patriarchs are the only gods. Osiris also, who is Mizraim, the tutelary of Abydos, and who is never once mentioned on the tombs of the former epoch, first assumes on the monuments of Mencheres the office of king of the dead, which he ever afterwards retained in the The Greek lists are not to be relied upon.