Egyptian mythology. The motive for this elevation is a perfectly obvious and natural one, according to the modes of thought that prevailed in the ancient world. The deceased patriarch who founded the Egyptian monarchy was jure divino, the king of all dead Egyptians. Mencheres merely gave him his rights.

A civil war in Egypt was the consequence of the changes in religion effected by Mencheres. The monuments and the lists combine in their indication of trouble and confusion in the times that follow his. Now, if Abram, (according to the uncontradicted tradition of Josephus), came into Egypt while this civil war was raging, and if it ceased before his departure, the time of this cessation corresponds, of course, with that of Abram's visit. We know the time in the history of Egypt, when this peace was concluded. It was at the commencement of the 12th dynasty of kings, as it is called in the lists. We know it by this: the lists then come once more into perfect harmony with the monuments; whereas, for the five preceding dynasties, nothing can be made of the lists when compared with the monuments. They tell of hundreds of kings, mostly nameless; whereas the monuments interpose five kings only between the last monarch of the sixth dynasty, and the first of the 12th, and of those five, four are found nowhere but in genealogies. The conclusion regarding

the lists which this comparison suggests, is fully established by the recurrence of the same confusion in every other period of anarchy throughout the history of the monarchy. Advantage was afterwards taken by the priesthood, of such times, to insert in their lists dynasties of nameless kings reigning through fabulous centuries, for the purpose of exaggerating thereby the antiquity of Egypt.

The inspired narrative very satisfactorily confirms this our assumed date for the visit of Abram to Egypt. The commencement of the 12th dynasty precedes the times of Phiops or Aphophis by about two centuries :—which is also the proximate interval between the epochs of Abram and Joseph.

A time of great prosperity, lasting for upwards of a century, is the combined indication of the monuments and the lists, as the consequence of this pacification. The adherents of Mencheres were clearly in the ascendant, and were the unquestioned rulers of all Egypt. They extended the bounds of Egypt far to the southward. The greater part of Nubia was added by them to the monarchy, and it is in this quarter only that their monuments shew their territorial acquisitions to have been made. Their northern frontier must in the nature of things have been comparatively neglected :-for at this earlier period it is not possible that their forces would be sufficient adequately to maintain both frontiers.

D

We have said that the religious tenets prevalent were those of Mencheres. This sufficiently appears by their writing their names in two rings; a practice which commences with the immediate successors of Mencheres.

That the adherents of the old religion would be exceedingly depressed, and probably persecuted during this period, we may readily suppose; but at the same time it is not at all likely that the schism should have been healed. We therefore find, without any surprise, that the shepherd-kings have left us the evidence that they still received the old religion, by writing their names in one ring only. Nothing is more likely, than that their co-religionists in Egypt proper, would flee from the persecution of the opposite party, to the strongholds which the shepherds had built in the swamps of the Delta, and that thereby the shepherds would receive a considerable accession of force. The attention of the native Pharaohs was so centred upon the Southern frontier of the kingdom, that they would scarcely perceive the danger that threatened it from the North. These considerations render natural and probable the event that actually followed. During the reign of the seventh monarch of the 12th dynasty, who is called in the lists Ammenemes, in a fragment of their temple histories preserved by Josephus,* Amun Timous, * Against Apion. Vol. I. c. 14.

and on the monuments Timaeus Amenemes, the Shepherds or Lower Egyptians, under a king named Saites, made a sudden incursion into Middle Egypt, defeated Amun Timous, and obtained possession of Memphis, which they made their ecclesiastical capital during six successive reigns, and for a period of somewhat more than a century.

The conquests of the Shepherds or Lower Egyptians extended far to the southwards. There is monumental evidence that they were at Essiout, which is near Abydos, on the southern frontier of Middle Egypt. Amun Timous seems to have fled before them. The later monuments of his long reign, and those of his few obscure successors, are all found very far in Ethiopia. These, however, are matters which belong to the history of Egypt. We return to the Delta and the Lower Egyptian kingdom: Aphophis, or Phiops, was the third or fourth successor of Saites. His political capital was Heliopolis. The proof of this, which is perfectly irrefragable, we shall consider hereafter.

Joseph, then, is at On, or Heliopolis, at the crown of the Delta, a magnificent city, famous in after ages for the number, magnitude and beauty of its temples, all dedicated to Re Athom,-i. e, to the sun as the father of the gods, impersonate in Adam, the father of mankind. The obelisks with which ancient Rome was adorned, and which still remain

in modern Rome, were all brought from the ruined temples of Heliopolis. This is the united testimony of their inscriptions, and of the classic authors. One obelisk remains upright to this day, amid its sandcovered ruins. It is of a more ancient date than any in Rome, of the times of Osortasen I. of the 12th dynasty. When Joseph arrived at Heliopolis, it had stood where it now stands, for more than a century.

The Hebrew boy has been sold to Potiphar, one of the princes of Pharaoh Aphophis, and the inspector of the royal plantations.

"And Joseph was brought down into Egypt; and Potiphar, a prince of Pharaoh, and inspector of the plantations, an Egyptian, bought him of the hands of the Ishmaelites, which had brought him down thither. And the Lord was with Joseph, and he was a prosperous man, and he was in the house of his master the Egyptian.

And his master saw that the Lord was with him, and that the Lord made all that he did to prosper in his hand. And Joseph found grace in his sight, and he served him; and he set him over all his house, and all that he had he put into his hand. And it came to pass, from the time that he had set him over all his house and over all that he had, that the Lord blessed the Egyptian's house for Joseph's sake; and the blessing of the Lord was upon all that he had in the house and in the field.