BOOK VI.

This last particular is the addition, to which I alluded as being singu❤ larly important. We have already seen, that many foreigners were obliged to quit Egypt at the same time with the Israelites: hence it was not unnatural, that the latter should often be mistaken for a race, with which they had really no national connection. Now from the legend, adduced by Tacitus, it appears that they were sometimes confounded with certain Ethiopians or Cushim; who, like themselves, had been obliged to change their habitations through the fear and hatred of the native Egyptians. This fragment of history therefore teaches us, that a family of Ethiopians was driven out of the country synchronically with the Israelites, and that these Ethiopians were both hated and feared by the aboriginal Mizraim.

It need scarcely be remarked, that the fable of drowning a race of lepers in the sea, while such as escaped fled into the wilderness, has plainly been taken from the destruction of Pharaoh and his host in the Arabian gulph; the punishment being ingeniously transferred from the oppressors to the oppressed but it may not be improper to observe, that the malicious tale of the Israelites being all afflicted with an inveterate cutaneous distemper, which seems to have been so very generally taken up by the pagans, has plainly enough originated from the circumstance of Moses being miraculously struck with a temporary leprosy. The remembrance of a preternatural revulsion of the Red sea has been preserved by those who dwell upon its coast, not only to the time of Diodorus, but even to the present day. That historian relates, that the Icthyophagi had a tradition, handed down to them through a long line of ancestors, that the whole bay was once laid bare to the very bottom, the waters retiring to the opposite shores; but that they afterwards, with a most tremendous swell, returned to their accustomed channel: and, even now, the inhabitants of the neighbourhood of Corondel, as we learn from Dr. Shaw, preserve the recollection of a mighty army having been once drowned in the bay, which Ptolemy calls Clysma'.

II. It remains for us to note the chronology of the pastoral domination in Egypt; and we shall then, I believe, have all the direct information on the subject that is extant,

• Exod. iv. 6.

2

Diod. Bibl. lib. iii. p. 174. Shaw's Travels. p. 349.

The Shepherds are said in the whole to have been lords of Egypt for CHAP. v. the space of 511 years: and the joint reigns of the first six kings amount, if we follow Manetho as cited by Josephus, to 259 years and 10 months; but, if we adopt the numbers as exhibited by Africanus, they amount to 284 years. Manetho places the first expulsion of these tyrants from Auaris at the end of the 511 years; but this, I think, is clearly an error. The entire duration of their empire is but 511 years: and we find them a second time paramount in Egypt, subsequent to their expulsion from Auaris. Hence the 511 years must certainly terminate, not with their first, but with their final, expulsion: and hence their first expulsion ought to have been placed, not at the end of the 511 years, but at the end of those 259 years and 10 months which are comprized within the reigns of their six earliest princes.

Now Eusebius notices another succession of Shepherd-princes, different from that of the six earliest kings; which comprehended the space of 106 years, and which consisted of four sovereigns. In this he agrees with Herodotus, save that that historian places only two kings within the period of the 106 years. To these two kings Herodotus ascribes all the tyranny of the Shepherds; represents them as building the pyramids by the constrained labour of their subjects; and intimates, that those vast edifices were ordinarily called by the name of the shepherd Philitis who then fed his cattle in the country'. Hence there cannot be a doubt, that he speaks of the Shepherd-kings, and that his alleged period of 106 years must be identified with the similar period specified by Eusebius. But this period differs widely, both from the entire period of 511 years, and from the minor period of 259 years and 10 months which is the length of the first pastoral domination. Hence we may safely pronounce it to be the period of the second pastoral domination; and may consequently determine it to be the latter part of the 511 years, as the 259 years and 10 months are the former part of the 511 years.

From the expulsion of the first Shepherd-dynasty at the end of the 259 years and 10 months, to the secession of Armaïs or Danaus into Greece,

Herod. Hist. lib. ii. c. 124-128.

BOOK VI. Manetho, as appears by summing up the reigns of the intervening princes according to his specification of them, places a period of 340 years and 7 months. Hence, between the original entrance of the Shepherds into Egypt and the secession of Danaus, we shall have a period of 600 years and 5 months: namely, the period produced, by adding together the 259 years and 10 months of the first pastoral dynasty and the 340 years and 7 months of the Egyptian kings who reigned until the emigration of Danaus. But the entire duration of the pastoral tyranny and predominance was 511 years; and those 511 years commenced synchronically with the 600 years and 5 months. Hence the second conquest of Egypt by the Shepherds must have been effected in the course of the 340 years and 7 months: and hence, between the final overthrow of the pastoral tyranny at the end of the 511 years and the emigration of Danaus at the end of the 600 years and 5 months, there must have been a period of 89 years and 5 months; that is to say, the period produced by deducting 511 years from 600 years and 5 months.

Now, from this statement and from the general history as detailed by Manetho, it is obvious, that the large period of 511 years, which is described as comprehending the whole duration of the pastoral tyranny, divides itself into four smaller periods: the first is that of the dynasty of the six kings, which comprizes 259 years and 10 months or in a round number 260 years, and which terminates with the expulsion of the Shepherds from Auaris'; the second is the space, which elapses between the expulsion of the Shepherds and the donation of the evacuated Auaris to another race of shepherds who choose for a leader Osarsiph afterwards called Moses; the third contains the time, during which these other shepherds held Auaris until the expelled Shepherds returned from Palestine in consequence of the invitation of Osarsiph; and the fourth is the period, during which the original Shepherds, having returned from Palestine, once more reigned triumphant throughout Egypt until they were at length finally expelled from the country. This last minor period is contracted by Ma

• Africanus, as I have noted above, extends their reigns to 284 years: but, for reasons which will hereafter appear, 260 years, the period assigned by Manetho and Syncellus, must certainly be considered as the genuipe number,

netho within the narrow limits of 13 years: but, as Herodotus and Euse- CHAP. v. bius both mention a period of 106 years during which the Shepherds exercised an intolerable tyranny in the country, and as we shall presently find that this number is established by the testimony of Holy Scripture, I have no scruple in rejecting the 13 years of Manetho and in substituting for them the 106 years of Herodotus and Eusebius and Moses.

We shall now therefore have 260 years for the dynasty of the first Shepherds, and 106 years for another dynasty of the same Shepherds after they had returned from Palestine. Consequently, when these two sums are deducted from the entire period of 511 years, we shall have 145 years for those two intermediate minor periods of the vacancy of the district Auaris and its occupation by the leprous shepherds until the return of its former possessors.

Manetho however assures us, that, at length, both the leprous shepherds under Moses, and the other Shepherds who had returned from Palestine, were synchronically expelled from Egypt. Hence, as the entire duration of the pastoral tyranny from first to last was 511 years, their expulsion of course must have taken place at the end of those years. But the leprous shepherds under Moses were clearly the Israelites; and the exodus of the Israelites fell out in the year 1491 before the Christian era: the other shepherds therefore must have first invaded Egypt 511 years before the epoch of the exodus. If then we count back 511 years, the epoch of the first pastoral invasion from the east will be the year 2002 before Christ. Now that year, according to the Samaritan chronology which we have seen reason to adopt in preference to the palpably corrupt chronologies of the Hebrew and the Greek, coincides with the sixth year before the birth of Abraham, with the two hundred and ninety sixth year after the death of Peleg, with about the three hundred and sixth year after the dispersion from Babel which happened during the life-time of that patriarch, and with the three hundred and twenty third year after the rise of the Cuthic empireof Iran under Nimrod at the commencement of the 1500 years specified by Justin'. Hence it appears, that Manetho was perfectly accurate in

See Append. Tab. III. and V.

BOOK VI.

saying, that the Shepherds invaded Egypt when the Assyrians (by whom we are to understand the Cushim of Ashur and Elam and Aram, or in onę word the Cushim of Iran) were lords of Asia, and that they strongly fortified the eastern frontier of Egypt by way of guarding against a not improbable invasion. For they well knew, that the Cushim had already pushed westward beyond the Euphrates into the further Aram or Syria: and, in the course of their domination, they could not be ignorant of the attempt made by Chedorlaomer and three other vassals of the Iranian empire, in the days of Abraham, to subjugate the whole of Palestine as far as mount Seir and Kadesh and El-Paran on the very confines of Egypt. Thus harmoniously does profane history correspond with sacred.

As for Egypt previous to the first irruption of the Shepherds, it is described by Manetho as a well-ordered kingdom: for at the head of it was a sovereign, whom he calls Timaus or Tammuz; and with him were associated, in the administration of affairs, a regular priesthood and a military nobility. The religion was that, which prevailed in the country even until the establishment of Christianity: for it was the superstition, which originated at Babel, which prevailed (as we learn from Berosus throughout Chaldea, which immediately involved the doctrine of the Metempsychosis, and which was largely built upon the symbolical veneration of the sacred animals. This particular modification of idolatry was despised, it seems, by the invading Shepherds: who, though plainly distinct from the Israelitish shepherds and therefore themselves apostates from the truth, had not as yet learned to adopt the complex theology of Egypt and Babylonia Their conduct in the former country was much the same as that of the Persians, when they invaded Greece under Xerxes. These were mental idolaters indeed, and had deflected from the worship of the one true God: but, adhering to the ancient Scythism or Buddhism of their forefathers, they were disgusted with that gross and palpable image-worship, which had been brought by the Ionizing Danai and Cadmians out of Egypt and Phenicia. Such a peculiarity in the behaviour of the invading Shepherds must be carefully borne in mind: for it is of importance towards ascertaining, who they were and whence they came.

'Euseb. Chron. p. 5. Syncell. Chronog. p. 28, 29.