are to be, the joy of God's redeemed people. Most fitly the deep emotions of the people seek expression in song. The oldest song known to history and one of the grandest, is here before us. "I will sing unto the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously:"-Ah, indeed, it was the Lord who wrought the victory; who went down alone into that eventful battle and who came back the mighty conqueror! "The horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea." Over and over this central idea appears: "Pharaoh's chariots and his host hath he cast into the sea; his chosen chariots also are drowned in the Red Sea." "Thou didst blow with thy wind; the sea covered them; they sank as lead in the mighty waters." Let the Great God of Israel be praised for all this! Appropriately this is the burden of the song: "The Lord is my strength and my song, and he is become my salvation." "Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like to Thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders"?

Let us hope that the hearts of the saved people were deeply moved in the spirit of this sublime song; that they saw God as never before, and gave him the homage of their hearts, grateful, trustful, and adoring!

It may be noticed that Moses leads the thought of the people forward to the remote results of this redemption: "The nations shall hear and be afraid; sorrow shall take hold on the inhabitants of Palestine; all the inhabitants of Canaan shall melt away; fear and dread shall fall upon them. till thy people pass over and thou hast planted them in their promised inheritance." The moral results of this scene, we may hope, were really wholesome and effective upon the multitude. It amazes us to find that so soon afterward there were some among them who murmured for water, rebelled against Moses, made and worshiped a calf of gold: but the young, less depraved by their Egyptian life and perhaps more impressible by such manifestations of God, seem to have drank in the solemn lessons of these grand events.

The locality of the Red Sea crossing has been not a little controverted-until the researches of modern times. Since Dr. Robinson's personal examination of that region, including the site of Goshen, the route of their three days' travel till they reached the sea, the width

of the sea at the various points between which the selection must be made, there has been a general if not universal concurrence in the conclusions to which he came. The location a little below Suez where the sea was supposably not far from one mile in width; where a strong easterly wind would drive out the waters from the channel-seems to fulfill all the historical conditions of the problem. See his Researches in Egypt and Palestine, Vol. I. pp. 74–86.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE HISTORIC CONNECTIONS OF MOSES WITH PHARAOH AND EGYPT.

THE thread of our history having now reached a point where we leave Egypt and have seen the last of that one particular Pharaoh, it is in place to take a final review of the questions-Who was this Pharaoh? Can he be identified in the annals of Egyptian antiquities? Have any points of chronological contact between the records of Egypt and the records of Moses been fixed reliably so that the one system can be laid alongside of the other and positive correspondence be made out?

Comparing the Hebrew records with Egyptian monuments and history, the following points of coincidence may be regarded as established.

1. That (as already observed) the kingdom of Egypt was thoroughly organized, was powerful, and had, apparently, the ripeness of age, in the times of Joseph and of Moses. In all these respects it was far in advance of the adjacent populations of Northern Africa and of South-western Asia.

2. That the state of the arts, the attainments of the learned in science, the usages of the people, the reign of law and of social order, indicated a state of civiliza

tion much in advance of any thing else known in that age.

3. That all the minute references in sacred history to the common life of the people, to their occupations, to their skill in the arts, to the productions of the country, to their political relations with outside powers, are abundantly verified in the numerous monuments and authorities which testify what the Egypt of that age really was. The reference to many of these points in the history of the ten plagues admits of most ample verification from the ancient Egyptian authorities.

4. Particularly we find in Egyptian history the means of explaining how a new king might arise who "knew not Joseph (change of dynasty being a chronic infirmity); and how the monarch of an empire so magnificant, wielding a sway so despotic, might be tempted to defy Jehovah and proudly scorn to obey his command to "let the people go."

5. Yet again as to the sort of labor exacted unmercifully of the Hebrew people the evidence from Egyptian antiquities is fully corroborative. "They built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pithom and Rameses," and were put to the severest toil in making brick; in the erection of buildings, including the transportation of the heaviest materials; and to "all manner of service in the field" (Ex. 1: 11, 14). These treasure cities are identified with a high degree of certainty; and proximately some of the very kings by whom this service was exacted. Mons. Chabas* thinks he has found the Hebrews under name in official Egyptian records. He argues well that it must be in vain to look in the public monuments [e. g. in their temples] for any thing disastrous to the king or to his people-those monuments being consecrated to the triumphs and glories of the kingdom-official bulletins for this very purpose. This consideration rules out the ten plagues; the escape of the Hebrews; the overthrow of the Egyptians in the Red Sea. Events so disreputable and disastrous to Egypt need not be looked for on her sacred monuments.

But the records on papyrus, consisting of both official and private correspondence, military reports, surveys of public works, financial accounts, etc., may furnish their name. The Hebrews were an important *See Bibliotheca Sacra, Oct., 1863, p. 881.

colony, held forcibly upon the soil of Egypt, employed largely upon her public works. Consequently some notice of them may be reasonably looked for in the class of documents pertaining to the business of the realm. Mons. Chabas maintains very sensibly that we should look for this people under the name "Hebrews," not "children of Israel"-this being rather a religious than an ethnic designation; not "Israelites"this name not having then come into use; not Jews, this name being first used many centuries later.

Three documents have been recently discovered which speak of a foreign race under the hieroglyphic name "Aperiu." On principles of comparative philology, Mons. Chabas makes this word the equivalent of Hebrew.

In the first document the scribe Kanisar reports to his superior: "I have obeyed the command which my master gave me to provide subsistence for the soldiers and also for the Aperiu who carry stone for the great Bekhen of King Rameses. I have given them rations every month according to the excellent instructions of my master."*The second is similar: "I have furnished rations to the soldiers and also to the Aperiu who carry stone for the sun of [the temple of] the sun, Rameses Meriamen, to the south of Memphis."

Furthermore, Egyptian records show that they put their prisoners of war to such labors; for their kings record on the temples the number of captives they have taken to labor upon the temples of their gods.

Two of these documents on papyri belong to the reign of Rameses II, whom Mons. Chabas assumes to be the king whose daughter adopted Moses and whose son and successor, Mei-en-ptah, experienced the ten plagues and fell in the Red Sea. (Bib. Sacra, Oct., 1865, p. 685.)

6. It is a well-established fact of history that at one period-not yet located definitely-Lower Egypt was subdued and held by a Shepherd race, called by Josephus, "Hyksos," supposed to have come from adjacent provinces of Arabia or from Phenicia or both, and to have held the country from 350 to 500 years-a Vandal race, savagely desolating the noble monuments of Egyptian art and civilization, and known by the native Egyptians

* The term "Bekhen" is used for any kind of building-a temple, palace, or even a common house. Descriptions of what they built correspond to the sacred record, "treasure-cities."

as the Scourge." This Shepherd race was ultimately driven out by the kings of Upper Egypt (a Theban dynasty)-probably before the age of Moses; perhaps before Jacob went down into Egypt. It may be considered certain that Josephus and others err in confounding them with the Hebrew people.-Geo. Rawlinson [in Aids to Faith, p. 293] says "The period of the Shepherd Kings is estimated variously as continuing 500, 600, 900, and even 2,000 years; that historic monuments were generally destroyed during their dominion; that no reliable historic records exist older than the beginning of the eighteenth dynasty which expelled the Shepherd Kings; and that previously to their times, 'Association' in Royalty was practiced, two or even three kings sitting on the same throne at the same time, dividing its labors and its honors between themselves."

As to the date of this Shepherd rule, the diversity in opinion among the best informed students of Egyptian antiquity is by no means comforting or assuring. Dr. Lepsius and others have placed their invasion of Egypt directly after the twelfth dynasty (B. C. 2101), and their expulsion about B. C. 1591. In his chronology, Jacob went down into Egypt B. C. 1414; Moses led the people out B. C. 1314-neither date having the least regard to the scripture chronology.Mons. Mariette dates it in the eighteenth century B. C., i. e. between B. C. 1700 and B. C. 1800. With this we might compare the sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt from B. C. 2033 to B. C. 1603; or on the chronology of Usher, from B. C. 1706 to B. C. 1491.-Brugsch dates their incursion B. C. 2115, and supposes them to have been Arabs from Arabia Petraea. Bunsen's latest recension places their invasion B. C. 1983; their expulsion, B. C. 1548; and the Exodus of the Hebrews B. C. 1320-the last date being certainly wide of the truth.-The_evidence is conclusive that their expulsion preceded the resplendent eighteenth dynasty whose kings ruled over all Egypt, and among whom was the Pharaoh who "would not let the people go." Dr. Thompson argues at considerable length that the entire occupation of Lower Egypt by the Hyksos must have preceded the residence of the Hebrews there; but feels the difficulties of the problem. He says "As yet the terminus a quo remains in obscurity" [the point at which their occupation begins];