and beyond them, the salt, dusty, dry tracts of Persia and Beloochistan, for at least an equal distance; so that Egypt is a narrow strip of fertility, reclaimed in the midst of 8000 miles of desert by the waters of a vast tropical river. The rest of the earth's surface presents no parallel to this.

The phenomena strictly peculiar to Egypt arise out of these circumstances.

The annual overflow of the Nile is the result of the tropical rains on the mountains of Abyssinia and South Ethiopia. It first appears at Memphis, about the summer solstice. It reaches its height about the autumnal equinox. It has entirely subsided at the winter solstice. The diffusion of this fertile flood, over the arid surface of the desert, requires the mind and the labour of man to an extent unknown in any other country. The digging of canals, of overflow and recession, the close observation of the right moment when the waters are to be admitted through the flood-gates, and when, the flood-gates being closed, the sluices which allow them to return to the bed of the river must be opened, are niceties upon which the success of the husbandman entirely depends, and which keep both his mental and bodily faculties in constant exercise. A day's mistake in either, is fatal to his hopes. Then, by means of irrigation during the low Nile, the fertile loam of Egypt will produce yet another crop and the governors of Egypt have never been slow or gentle in their exactions from the wretched slaves that till the soil; so that the creak of the water-wheel and of the

shadoof, or balance-bucket, never ceases. And "the land of Egypt is still the house of bondage" to the hu

man race.

One other peculiarity of Egypt will also require some

notice. The extreme dryness of the atmosphere tends to the preservation of all remains of ancient constructions and of every other monument of human labour, to an extent without example in any other country. From the granite of Syene, down to the coat of Nile mud, stuccoed, and inscribed with hieroglyphics in colours, nothing appears to have undergone any change from atmospheric causes since the day it was finished. Bread, fruit, flowers, bakemeats, corn, seeds, linen in quantities incredible, wooden figures of most delicate execution are found in the tombs of Egypt, as little changed by the 4000 years wherein they have lain there, as the gems in the metal rings that accompany them. From the first king that sat upon the throne of Egypt, down to Caracalla and Septimius Severus the Roman emperors, whatever memorial the hand of man has spared, the tooth of time has in no degree injured.

In addition to the preservation of the monuments of Egypt, their number also far surpasses those of any other ancient nation. Every city, town and village, of ancient Egypt, had its temple and its cemetery. There was not a pillar or a stone in the temple which was not covered with reliefs and inscriptions. There was not a tomb, or sarcophagus, or mummy-case in the cemetery which was not similarly decorated. All these inscriptions were in a sense, historical. Those on the temples related the exploits in war, or the acts of devotion in peace, of the king who had constructed them. On the remains in the tombs are inscribed the names of the deceased persons whose property they had been, and whose mummies were deposited in them; -so that in a sense, there is scarcely a monument of ancient Egypt that does not throw light upon her history, and from the days she first

became a kingdom until now, it would be hard to say that any one memorial had perished through the lapse of time.

These inscriptions are written in very remarkable characters (called hieroglyphics, by the Greeks), the mode of reading which is now, as we have seen, to a great extent, recovered.

These monuments, however, would be unavailable as history, were it not that the Greeks in the times that followed those of Alexander of Macedon, had very great curiosity in all that related to Egypt, and translated the histories on the walls of the temples. Little remains to us of these translations, save mere lists of royal names; but these are of great value, because they can be identified with the hieroglyphic originals, and by their help we can' place the names of the kings we read on the temples in the order of their succession.

So that the climate of Egypt itself has combined with the curiosity of the Greeks regarding its early history, to preserve to us a far more copious and connected series of memorials of its ancient greatness, than of any other kingdom that ever existed on the earth.

That the history of Egypt bears some close and intimate relation to the inspired history of Israel, is a very obvious truth. So plainly is the Bible, the book which of all others belongs to, and requires the history of Egypt, that the connection between the two has been always acknowledged, both by Jews and Christians. Josephus the Jew has preserved to us portions of the lists and histories of the Greeks to which we have already alluded, in his works on the Old Testament; the remaining fragments of these lost works we owe altogether to the Scrip-tural comments and illustrations of Eusebius, Syncellus and other early Christian writers. The same connection

and necessity were perceived by the Christian scholars of the more modern era of the Reformation; and many learned and laborious efforts were embodied in ponderous folios, all directed to the illustration of Scripture from what was then known regarding Egypt. These all failed, for lack of knowledge of the subject, and of the means of acquiring it. That they were made, however, sufficiently proves the existence in their day, of the conviction we have explained. These details will suffice to show, that when we claim Egypt and her ancient history, as especially a Bible subject, and illustrative of, and illustrated by, the Bible far more than any other book, we are making no fanatical or bigotted appropriation, but are merely stating a fact which has at all times been acknowledged, and to the consciousness of which we owe the preservation of the Greek illustrative records by the early Jewish and Christian writers.

It is the object of the present work to show that the recovery of the mode of reading the inscriptions which cover the monuments of Egypt now in existence, has by no means disappointed these expectations; and that the principal purpose which the facts thereby elicited will subsérve, is that of Scriptural illustration.

The notices of Egypt in the Bible are to the full as remarkable, and as distinct from those which allude to any other ancient nation, as the natural and historical phenomena we have already explained. The name of Egypt in the Old Testament, was that of the third son of the patriarch Ham, so that the fact that Egypt was first colonized by him, rests on exactly the same evidence as that Assyria was colonized by Ashur, or Canaan by the patriarch's first-born. The names of Ashur and Canaan have been long forgotten; but the name of Egypt in the east, to

this day, is that of Mizraim, the third son of Ham. The same fact, moreover, though not formally stated, flows as a clear inevitable inference from the tenor of the inspired narrative. In the tenth chapter of Genesis, the name of Mizraim occurs in the enumeration of the sons of Ham, verses 6, 13. In the eleventh chapter is the narrative of the dispersion of Babel. In the twelfth chapter, the event that immediately follows the call of Abram, is his emigration into the land of Mizraim; and that at this remote epoch, this epithet had the same meaning as at all subsequent times, is demonstrated by the context, where the king of Mizraim is called Pharoah; which, we need scarcely explain, is a title common to all the kings of Egypt and peculiar to them. Verses 10, 15.

This is by no means the only inference regarding Egypt that flows from this portion of the inspired narrative. Egypt was a monarchy settled upon a basis very similar to that which obtained long afterwards at the time of the call of Abram. Pharaoh was surrounded by his princes when the patriarch sojourned in Egypt, and therefore ruled as a king over a considerable territory. This was not the case with any other ancient monarchy at this remote period. We find in the course of the same narrative, that Shinar, afterwards Babylon, Elam, afterwards Persia, (Gen. xiv. 1.) Damascus, afterwards Syria, (xv. 2.) were then small independent cities, each under its Melek,* or petty king.

All these specialties regarding Egypt in its connexion with the Old Testament, are equally to be noted in the subsequent periods of that history. The interpretation of the hieroglyphics has greatly increased both the num

* The word melek abbreviated mek is the name of the hereditary ruler town or village, to this day, in East Africa.

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