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THE ANCIENT WORLD 
 
 EGYPT AND THE 
 OLD TESTAMENT 
 
EGYPT AND THE 
 OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 T. ERIC PEET 
 
 Brunner Professor of Egyptology in the University of Liverpool ; 
 formerly Craven Fellow in the University of Oxford 
 
 LIVERPOOL 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF LIVERPOOL LTD. 
 
 LONDON 
 
 HODDER AND STOUGHTON LTD. 
 
 MCMXXII. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Yet another book on Egypt and the Bible ! It 
 might have been thought that all that is worth 
 saying on the subject had been said, and well 
 said. This would be a mistake. Each year 
 some fresh discovery modifies our conception of 
 Egypt and its history, and it is not a rare event 
 for a belief which no one ever thought of question- 
 ing to be destroyed by a single blow of the 
 excavator's pick. 
 
 Perhaps no portion of Egyptian history has 
 ■ been more brightly illumined by the discoveries 
 of the last ten years than that into which the 
 ~ sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt and the exodus 
 f> must have fallen. It is therefore no unsuitable 
 ^-time to put into words free, as far as possible, 
 t- from the technicalities of the excavator and the 
 philologist the bearing of the latest finds in 
 Egypt on the narrative of the Old Testament. 
 £ It is not, however, without a feeling of anxiety 
 ^that an archaeologist enters the much trodden 
 "c field of biblical criticism, for many whose good- 
 Cwill and opinion he values still feel a traditional 
 < resentment at any attempt to treat the biblical 
 
 5 
 
 520647 
 
6 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 narrative like any other ancient document, and 
 to expose it to the full light of modern discovery. 
 Such as these may refuse to compromise with 
 archaeology and philology, and their attitude is 
 at least consistent. If, however, these sciences 
 are to be consulted at all let it be done honestly. 
 If they are to be quoted when they support the 
 Bible story they should also be faced when they 
 contradict it. And above all things, let their 
 evidence be produced in its original form, and 
 not twisted and perverted by being taken out 
 of its context and clothed in question-begging 
 epithets. Let it not be forgotten, moreover, 
 that the great masters of thirty and forty years 
 ago in these sciences have been succeeded by a 
 younger generation of scholars, who, starting 
 from the foundations which their predecessors 
 laid, and benefiting by ever accumulating dis- 
 coveries and improved methods of research, have 
 reached results which, in many cases, do not 
 agree with those of the older band, and which 
 nevertheless can be proved to be correct. 1 
 
 There are writers, too, both among excavators 
 and among biblical students who, in their anxiety 
 to prove, by means of archaeology, the accuracy 
 
 l Numerous writers on the relations of archaeology and the Bible are 
 either unacquainted with, or purposely ignore, the work of such masters 
 as Griffith, Gardiner, Reisner, Sethe, Erman, Devaud and Lacau. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 7 
 
 of the Bible narrative, display a zeal which proves 
 their own undoing. They make identifications of 
 place-names which can be shown to be incorrect 
 or at least unjustifiable, and in some cases they 
 go so far as to make statements with regard to 
 Egyptian history and religion which any serious 
 student knows to be inaccurate. Such writers, 
 instead of vindicating the narrative of the Old 
 Testament, merely discredit it by a disingenuous- 
 ness which is bound in the end to be exposed. 
 The truth is that there is in Egypt singularly 
 little evidence which bears directly on the Bible 
 narrative. This does not indicate that that 
 narrative is false, for even greater historical events 
 have taken place in Egypt and left practically no 
 traces. Those who are anxious to vindicate the 
 Old Testament story would do well to realize 
 this, and to perceive that to distort or falsify 
 facts in order to bring them into connection with 
 the sojourn or the exodus can do nothing but 
 harm to the cause they seek to defend. 
 
 My thanks are due to the Rev. L. W. Grensted, 
 Principal of Egerton Hall, Manchester, with 
 whom I have discussed many points connected 
 with this volume. My indebtedness to Dr. A. H. 
 Gardiner's recent researches on Delta geography 
 will be obvious to every reader. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PREFACE 5 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I NATURE AND VALUE OF BIBLICAL TRADITION u 
 II EARLY RELATIONS OF EGYPT AND PALESTINE 37 
 
 III ABRAM'S DESCENT INTO EGYPT .... 47 
 
 IV THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 64 
 
 V THE EXODUS 105 
 
 VI SOLOMON, JEROBOAM AND ASA .... 146 
 
 VII SO AND TIRHAKAH 167 
 
 VIII NECHO AND THE PROPHET JEREMIAH . .180 
 IX THE JEWISH COLONIES IN EGYPT . . .189 
 
 X THE EPISODE OF ONIAS 209 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 229 
 
 INDEX 231 
 
 Two Maps at end of volume 
 
 1. The Near and Middle East. 
 
 2. The Geography of the Exodus. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 NATURE AND VALUE OF BIBLICAL TRADITION 
 
 The contents of the first few books of the Old 
 Testament form the most considerable mass of 
 tradition which has, so far as we know at present, 
 survived from the ancient world. That it has so 
 survived is due to two causes. In the first place 
 the Jewish people has been endowed with a 
 sense of nationality to which there is perhaps no 
 parallel in history ; this has enabled it not only 
 to survive but also to preserve its records. In 
 the second place the fact that Christianity was 
 grafted on to the Jewish religion has resulted in 
 the embodiment of Jewish tradition in the 
 literature of Christianity and in its consequent 
 survival. 
 
 The connection of this tradition with our 
 
 religion for a long time protected it, for better 
 
 or for worse, from criticism of every kind. In 
 
 the last century, however, the rise of the sciences 
 
 of geology and physics gradually showed that a 
 
 literal interpretation of the legends of the 
 
 creation and the flood was impossible. A little 
 
 ii 
 
12 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 later the development of archaeology began to 
 make it clear that even some of the later episodes 
 of the Pentateuch could not be accepted in 
 their literal form, while the study of anthrop- 
 ology, folklore, ancient history and comparative 
 religion showed that Hebrew tradition was not 
 something unique in its formation and structure, 
 but followed much the same lines as that of other 
 ancient peoples. 
 
 But when we proceed to ask what these lines 
 are we at once find ourselves face to face with 
 a difficulty, for the subject is one regarding 
 which the keenest controversy at present rages 
 among anthropologists. To an age which took 
 all traditions for historical fact succeeded one 
 which regarded them all as baseless fairy tales, 
 or at the best as a series of astral or nature 
 myths. 
 
 " So, I bent brow o'er Prolegomena. 
 And, after Wolf, a dozen of his like 
 Proved there was never any Troy at all, 
 Neither Besiegers nor Besieged, — nay, worse, — 
 No actual Homer, no authentic text, 
 No warrant for the fiction I, as fact, 
 Had treasured in my heart and soul so long." 
 
 This view was directly antipodal to that which 
 it displaced, and, as usual in such cases, a partial 
 reaction was inevitable. The present attitude 
 
VALUE OF BIBLICAL TRADITION 13 
 
 towards the problem of more sober critics as 
 typified by such a scholar as Farnell may be 
 rapidly summed up as follows. 
 
 The most fruitful classification of myth, used 
 in its widest sense to include " all the various 
 forms of unattested oral tradition that we 
 distinguish from written history," is according to 
 the sources from which they are or may reasonably 
 be supposed to be derived. " Two leading 
 divisions emerge clearly, on the one hand nature- 
 myths, referring to the phenomena of the heavens, 
 the earth and the waters ; and on the other hand 
 myths that we may call human or social, including 
 stories concerning ritual, the origin of social 
 institutions and culture, wars, raids, hunting, the 
 movements of peoples, the prowess of indivi- 
 duals." The tendency of a certain school of 
 thought has been to assign practically all myth 
 to the former of these classes. Thus Penelope is 
 stated to have been originally a water-fowl of 
 Arcadia, and Odysseus her husband a year- 
 daemon. Now though there are doubtless cases 
 where a myth at first sight human eventually rests 
 on some fact in nature, yet the indiscriminate 
 assigning of all myth to such sources fails to 
 reckon with the fact that the main interest of 
 savage conversation, and therefore of oral tradi- 
 
14 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 tion, is not so much the course of regular nature 
 as the irregular course of human action. More- 
 over, to assign a myth full of complex and curious 
 detail to a " natural " origin is not to explain it, 
 but to make it far more incomprehensible than 
 before ; the assumption that Amphiaraos of 
 Boeotia and Argos was the daemon of a lake does 
 not in the least explain the curious events of his 
 career. In some cases it is abundantly clear that 
 the myth arose in precisely the opposite way to 
 that postulated here, and that tales which 
 originally had a purely human origin and bearing 
 have in course of time received the addition 
 of a nature element. " We might," says Farnell, 
 " establish it as a rule of sanity never to interpret 
 a myth as a nature-myth if the human social 
 explanation lies nearer to hand." 
 
 Passing from true nature-myths to the human 
 and social class, we may notice that these group 
 themselves conveniently into three sub-classes : 
 firstly religious and ritual, dealing chiefly with the 
 relations of gods and men, and the origins of 
 religious observances and ceremonies ; secondly, 
 sociological myths, which explain the origins of 
 culture, generally centring in the person of a hero ; 
 and thirdly, historic myths, dealing with wars and 
 migrations of peoples and the exploits of individual 
 
VALUE OF BIBLICAL TRADITION 15 
 
 men. Since the history of an early people is very 
 frequently that of its protecting deities, religious 
 myth will often contain a considerable amount of 
 history proper. On the other hand it has long 
 been recognized that ritual is itself a frequent 
 source of myth, a story being invented in order 
 to furnish an explanation for a custom or ritual 
 whose true origin has been forgotten. The Feast 
 of the Passover is an excellent instance of this. 
 It is certainly older than the time of the exodus, 
 in fact there are reasons for supposing it to be 
 very primitive indeed in origin. Before the 
 eighth century b.c. its origin had been lost, 
 but was restored by a method well known to all 
 students of ancient religion, that of a pun or play 
 upon words. Its unintelligible name pesah was 
 explained as a derivation from pdsah "to pass 
 over," and made to refer to the Lord's passing over 
 the houses of the Israelites when He smote the first- 
 born of the Egyptians. The tenth plague was also 
 employed to explain one of the central features of 
 the Passover, namely the smearing of blood on lintels 
 and side-posts, a custom of immense antiquity in 
 the East. The whole forms an instructive example 
 of the methods of the Hebrew folklorists. 
 
 The second type of human myth, the socio- 
 logical, is of value in that it may reasonably be 
 
1 6 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 expected to preserve some nucleus of true 
 information concerning the social organization of 
 the people among which it arose. Yet in using 
 myths for this purpose extreme caution is 
 necessary, for it is always to be borne in mind 
 that myth is apt to form not round what is 
 normal but what is abnormal in human action, 
 and that thus a myth which appears to contain 
 an instance of, for example, matriarchal succession, 
 may prove, not that this was the rule, but rather 
 that it was the exception in the society where the 
 myth took its rise. 
 
 With regard to the third type of human myth, 
 that which deals with events purporting to be 
 historic, the modern attitude may be summed up 
 in Farnell's words. " There has come in recent 
 years, to aid both our sanity and our science, the 
 conviction that the most potent cause of the type 
 of myths just referred to has been actual reality 
 or historic matter of fact." Chadwick's researches 
 have shown that much of the content of the great 
 Teutonic saga has a historical background, and 
 it is probable that the same will eventually prove 
 to be true of the Greek. The detail may be and 
 probably is mostly incorrect, but the underlying 
 basis of fact is true in many cases, and, surprising 
 as this may seem at first sight, there seems to be 
 
VALUE OF BIBLICAL TRADITION 17 
 
 good reason for believing that the personal names 
 are often historical. 
 
 When we come to apply these principles to the 
 contents of the Old Testament it is at once 
 apparent that these consist of material of very 
 various nature and value, which can, however, for 
 practical purposes, be divided into three heads. 
 
 Under the first head, the prehistoric, we may 
 class the whole of the narrative down to the 
 beginning of the patriarchal period, including of 
 course the narratives of the creation and the 
 flood. The remarkable Sumerian and Babylonian 
 parallels which have been recently discovered to 
 both these legends show that here we are dealing 
 with a tradition so ancient as to be common to the 
 Hebrews and their eastern neighbours in 
 Mesopotamia. Historically these stories are pro- 
 bably almost valueless ; they merely show us the 
 mind of primitive man reflecting on his own 
 origin and on that of the universe. The names of 
 Adam and Eve are simply the Hebrew words for 
 " man " and " life " respectively. If there ever 
 took place an event which gave rise to the flood 
 story — and there are scholars who still find this 
 the simplest way of accounting for the legend — it 
 has left no other trace in history, and in the 
 
1 8 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 Hebrew account as it has come down to us it 
 occurs in suspicious company, for it is closely 
 bound up with two myths which were clearly 
 invented, the one to explain diversity of language, 
 and the other to provide an origin for the rainbow. 
 
 Under the second head, the semi-historic, we 
 may place the story of the patriarchs. Here the 
 principles which have been enunciated above for 
 the appraisement of the value of myth must be 
 rigorously applied. There is no contemporary 
 written evidence for the period, and the compilers 
 of the earliest documents embodied in Genesis and 
 Exodus, those known as J and E, probably had 
 before them little more than an oral tradition 
 already handed down through many centuries 
 and suffering from all the defects inherent in 
 such a tradition. While it undoubtedly contains 
 in its general lines certain historical truths, yet 
 its detail, added at various periods, may be 
 regarded as of most doubtful value, and in some 
 cases it would be unwise to accept even the main 
 outlines without very careful sifting of evidence. 
 
 Strangely enough, the adherents of the extreme 
 astral or nature school in mythology have devoted 
 but little time to the myths of the Old Testament, 
 which might have been expected to provide them 
 with a happy hunting ground. It is true that 
 
VALUE OF BIBLICAL TRADITION 19 
 
 a few writers, as for example Jensen, have 
 attempted to show the astral origin of much of 
 the pre-patriarchal legend, but they have not 
 extended their attempt into the domain of 
 patriarchal story. Here we have undoubtedly 
 myth vof the second main class, the human and 
 social. Each of the three sub-divisions of that 
 class is well represented. The history of the 
 Hebrew people is that of their god, and for this 
 reason the large portion of their myth which is 
 directly connected with their god and their 
 religion may be expected to contain much 
 historical truth. On the other hand, one of the 
 documents on which the present compilation of 
 the Pentateuch is founded, that known as P, is the 
 work of a priestly school mainly bent on explaining 
 the origin of its ritual and ceremonies ; we must 
 therefore expect cases where the desire to explain 
 an observance is the father of the myth. In the 
 attempt to glean information about the state of 
 society among the early Hebrews from myths of 
 the sociological type it will be necessary to keep 
 constantly in mind that what the legend has 
 recorded is less often the obvious and normal than 
 1 the unusual and abnormal, and that what might 
 at first sight appear to be a custom embedded 
 in a story is often not a custom but a breach of it. 
 
20 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 And finally, we must be prepared to find that 
 much of the biblical myth does actually record the 
 deeds and prowess of historical races and persons, 
 wrapped up, no doubt, in a mass of incorrect 
 detail. Never must we lose sight of the axiom 
 that the most probable reason for the existence 
 of a story which is not palpably a nature-myth, 
 or an explanation of an existing custom or practice, 
 is that the thing actually happened. What has 
 been said with regard to the probable correctness 
 of personal names in myth must also be borne in 
 mind. The patriarchal narrative is rich in such 
 names. It is true that many of these are quite 
 clearly names of tribes and not of persons. 
 Keturah, for instance, is spoken of as Abram's 
 second wife (Gen. 25.1), but her sons and grandsons 
 are represented as tribes (Gen. 25.2-4), and 
 Genesis is full of such examples. At the same 
 time any attempt to explain the patriarchs as 
 exclusively tribes rather than individuals brings in 
 its train a host of difficulties, and the possibility 
 that individuals of importance in Hebrew history 
 named Isaac and Jacob really existed should not 
 be lightly dismissed, even though we are not 
 prepared to credit all the stories which cluster 
 about their names or to believe that the one lived 
 180 years and the other 147. 
 
VALUE OF BIBLICAL TRADITION 21 
 
 It is interesting for the purpose of this book to 
 apply these considerations to the story of the 
 sojourn in Egypt. The exact value of its detail is 
 judged differently by different scholars, and it 
 will be seen in the sequel that much of it can be 
 shown to be later than the events themselves. 
 But, with regard to the main fact that at some 
 time or other certain of the people who sub- 
 sequently came to be known as the Hebrews dwelt 
 in Egypt for a period, and afterwards entered or 
 re-entered Canaan, there is hardly a dissentient 
 voice. The fact that Egyptian records contain no 
 reference to the sojourn does not in the least affect 
 the problem, for in the first place our Egyptian 
 lfecords are far from complete, in the second the 
 Sojourn may well have been on so small a scale 
 that the Egyptians never thought it worthy of 
 recording, and in the third place the Delta, which 
 <vas the scene of the events, is still almost a closed 
 book to us in early times, at least nine-tenths of 
 our records coming from and referring to Upper 
 Egypt. 
 
 From the Hebrew point of view a strong 
 confirmation of the historicity of the sojourn is to 
 be found in the fact that a period of slavery in 
 a foreign country is not an event of which any 
 people would be particularly proud ; and it is 
 
22 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 the very last type of incident which they would 
 have troubled to invent. It is rather one which 
 even if it had ever happened would tend to drop out 
 of their traditions. That it did not do so is due 
 to the remarkable fact that they closely connected 
 it with the most important event in their 
 religious experience, God's revelation of himself 
 to them under the name of Yahweh or Jehovah 
 (Ex. 6.3), and the establishment of a covenant 
 between him and his people (Ex. 6.7). Now this 
 revelation is made through Moses, who is not only 
 the leader of the Israelites in the exodus, but is, 
 in the story of the cradle and Pharaoh's daughter, 
 represented as an Egyptian by upbringing. It will 
 be clear that, whether we regard Moses as a 
 historical figure or not, Yahweh's covenant, 
 obviously an event of immense importance in later 
 Hebrew eyes, is definitely connected with Egypt 
 and the sojourn. Quite apart from all other 
 considerations this fact makes it highly probable 
 that the story of the sojourn in Egypt and the 
 exodus corresponds to a definite historical fact. 
 The precise nature of that fact and the amount of 
 truth which is contained in the elaborate detail 
 with which it is clothed by the narrative will be 
 discussed in Chapters IV and V. 
 
 The third type of material, the historical, is 
 
VALUE OF BIBLICAL TRADITION 23 
 
 illustrated by the narratives of the judges, and 
 still more by those of the kings and the later 
 periods of history. Here the compilers had 
 before them documents contemporary in many 
 cases with the events which they were relating. 
 No doubt there is still much inaccuracy of detail, 
 the chronology given is of very dubious value, and 
 sense of proportion is still lacking. But at the 
 same time the main lines are historical, and agree 
 with contemporary records from Egypt and 
 Babylonia. 
 
 While modern scholarship has tended to restore 
 some measure of belief in the ultimate historical 
 basis of much of tradition, it has by no means 
 done the same for its chronology. Tradition is 
 always at its most untrustworthy when it comes to 
 deal with dates and lengths of time, so much so 
 that the wise will attribute no value whatsoever 
 to a traditional date unless it can be shown on 
 external grounds to be probable. The reason for 
 this is a simple one. Oral tradition as such 
 scarcely deals with dates at all ; its formula with 
 regard to dating is the " once upon a time " of 
 our fairy stories. All we are entitled to expect 
 from tradition — and even that we by no means 
 always get — is the recognition that one event or 
 
24 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 series of events took place before, during the 
 course of, or after another. This phenomenon is 
 familiar to all who have lived among the less 
 educated natives of the Near or Far East. An 
 Egyptian peasant has no conception of his own 
 age, or of that of any of his friends. If asked 
 how old he is he can only reply " About as old as 
 so-and-so," and if pressed will give figures as far 
 apart as " Perhaps 30, perhaps 50." In other 
 words, oral tradition preserves no absolute, but 
 only a relative chronology. 
 
 How then are we to account for the figures 
 which we find in the biblical narrative ? Figures 
 appear in tradition only when some mind with 
 a historical sense sets itself to edit tradition and 
 to fit it into a chronological scheme. The actual 
 material which such a mind has to draw on for 
 time-data is naturally very small. It consists 
 mainly in the family relations between the various 
 personalities of the narratives, which enable time 
 to be measured by generations. The defects of 
 such a system are obviously many, but the worst 
 of all is the variation observed in the number of 
 years allotted to a generation, and the tendency 
 to put this number higher and higher according 
 as the tradition becomes more and more remote. 
 Further complications arise out of the nature of 
 
VALUE OF BIBLICAL TRADITION 25 
 
 the numeral systems of the nations concerned. 
 In Babylonian legend, for instance, there is a 
 distinct tendency to work out chronology in terms 
 of periods of 60 years or even 3600 (60 multiplied 
 by 60) years, 60 being a unit of the Sumerian 
 system of numeration. Similarly in Hebrew 
 tradition we find that a period of 40 years is 
 constantly used, either alone or in multiples, in 
 estimating time, 40 being a number in high favour 
 among the Hebrews, and 40 years being perhaps 
 regarded as a generation. 
 
 However small may be the value of the figures 
 which appear in tradition they have to be still 
 further discounted by the fact that even when they 
 get into writing they are not proof against 
 alteration. It is an axiom in palaeography that 
 numbers are much more liable to alteration or 
 corruption than words. There could be no more 
 admirable example of this than the case of the 
 Egyptian historian Manetho, who wrote about 
 250 B.C. a history of Egypt, which is now lost, 
 but excerpts from which have been preserved by 
 the later writers Eusebius, Africanus and Syncellus. 
 Both Eusebius and Africanus give us some of 
 Manetho's king-lists, with the names of the rulers 
 and the lengths of their reigns, and the astonishing 
 variations between their figures are an eloquent 
 
26 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 testimony to what may happen to numbers in a few 
 centuries through textual corruption. If these 
 things are possible in so short a space, what may 
 not be possible in the case of our Bible manuscripts. 
 Though the Pentateuch in its present form, or 
 nearly so, had already been committed to writing 
 as early as the fourth century B.C., yet the earliest 
 copy which has survived dates from the tenth 
 century a.d. It is true that we have a Greek 
 translation of the third century B.C., and a 
 Samaritan transcript of perhaps about the same 
 date, but these serve only to emphasise the risk of 
 error, for one of the most important chronological 
 indications given by the Hebrew, namely the 
 430 years of the sojourn (Ex. 12.40-41) is in the 
 Greek and in the Samaritan reduced to 215 years 
 by the addition of the words " and in the land of 
 Canaan " (see below, p. 27). 
 
 For these reasons we shall do well to found no 
 very serious arguments on the chronological data 
 offered either explicitly or implicitly by the 
 biblical narrative, especially for the earlier periods, 
 and there is the more need for caution since such 
 as are to be found are almost entirely derived not 
 from sources J and E, but from the much later P. 
 This document has, indeed, running through it, 
 a systematic chronology, conveyed in the form of 
 
VALUE OF BIBLICAL TRADITION 27 
 
 genealogies, from the creation to the flood 
 (Gen. 5 and 7.1 1) and from the flood to the call of 
 Abraham (Gen. 1 1. 10-26 and 12.4). The Hebrew, 
 the Samaritan, and the Greek version differ con- 
 siderably in the figures given for the various 
 generations — an admirable instance of the textual 
 corruption of numbers referred to above — and the 
 totals from the creation to the call of Abraham 
 are 2021 years in the Hebrew, 2322 in the 
 Samaritan, and 3407 in the Greek. The same 
 document P gives the period of the patriarchs' 
 sojourn in Canaan, from the call of Abraham to 
 Jacob's descent into Egypt, as 215 years. It 
 further, in Ex. 12.40-41, gives the length of the 
 sojourn in Egypt as 430 years, though even here 
 the Samaritan and Greek versions take this period 
 as including the sojourn of the patriarchs in 
 Canaan, thus reducing the sojourn in Egypt 
 to 215 years, and opening our eyes to the possibility 
 that the original figure of P for the sojourn may 
 have been 215, arrived at simply by balancing the 
 sojourn in Canaan with that in Egypt. In any 
 case, even if P originally wrote 430, the fact of its 
 being double 215 is suspicious, and with regard 
 to P's figures for the patriarchs in general it 
 is hardly necessary to point out that their 
 being based on the assumption of men living 
 
28 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 to such ages as 175 or 180 deprives them of all 
 value. 
 
 In Gen. 15.13 the length of the sojourn is 
 stated to have been 400 years, a figure highly 
 suspect, firstly as being a round number, and 
 secondly as being ten times the stereotyped period 
 of 40 years ; it need not, however, disagree with 
 the 430 of Ex. 12.40-41, if we suppose the 30 years 
 to refer to the first part of the sojourn, before 
 oppression began. 
 
 Finally, in I Kings 6.1, we read that from the 
 building of the temple in the fourth year of 
 Solomon to the exodus was 480 years. Here again 
 is a figure open to the utmost suspicion, consisting 
 as it does in twelve periods of 40 years. It will be 
 seen in Chapter III that the figures above men- 
 tioned give us a means of dating the descent of 
 Jacob into Egypt, and that the date arrived at is 
 one which would accord remarkably with the one 
 piece of external evidence we have, namely, the 
 known date of Amraphel or Khammurabi of 
 Babylon. That this is the case we take to be a 
 mere coincidence, and the fact does not in any way 
 demonstrate the value of the figures given, the arti- 
 ficial nature of which is obvious at every point. 
 
 Such are in general the results of the application 
 
VALUE OF BIBLICAL TRADITION 29 
 
 to the biblical narrative of the principles of the 
 modern sciences, more particularly of mythology 
 and archaeology. Side by side with this external 
 criticism went an internal criticism, mainly 
 philological. It was observed that of certain 
 incidents, notably the creation and flood, there 
 were two separate accounts, differing considerably 
 in detail. Closer examination revealed the fact 
 that the Hebrew originals of the separate accounts 
 showed marked differences of style, and could not 
 possibly be due to a single writer. In other 
 words, it was clear that the compiler of Genesis 
 as we have it had before him two or more versions 
 of tradition, and after the naive manner of early 
 chroniclers he either set down both side by side, 
 ignoring their incompatibility, or made selections 
 from both and wove them into a single account. 
 These various early versions used by the compiler 
 are distinguished one from another not only by 
 unmistakable peculiarities of style, but also by the 
 fact that each was clearly written with some 
 definite purpose in view. It is thus easy to break 
 up most of the Pentateuch into the various 
 documents from which it was compiled, and also 
 to ascertain the rough date of the original 
 composition of these documents. 
 
 This process is still doubtless viewed with the 
 
3 o EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 utmost suspicion by many lovers of trie Old 
 Testament who wrongly associate it with 
 atheistical propaganda, and who. reasonably 
 perhaps, mistrust a process in which they see a 
 critic assigning half a verse to Source E and the 
 other half to Source J, or two critics assigning one 
 and the same verse to different sources. But have 
 these people followed the developments of modern 
 philology, and do they realize that the critics who 
 so freely cut up the Old Testament into its 
 component parts are men whose whole lives are 
 devoted to the study of such problems, and whose 
 knowledge of Hebrew and of the Semitic languages 
 in general is so great that differences of style in the 
 Hebrew are as patent to them as they would be 
 in the English to a layman ? Suppose some 
 portion of English History compiled from lost 
 works by Macaulay, Gibbon and Grote, and 
 suppose that neither the names nor any other works 
 of these men had survived. What thoughtful 
 reader of English could fail to be alive to the fact 
 that there were three writers, three styles, and 
 three different conceptions of history represented 
 in the medley ? Or imagine a history of Greece 
 culled from works by a Herodotus, a Thucydides 
 and a Xenophon. What intelligent sixth-form 
 boy would fail to perceive the patchwork ? 
 
VALUE OF BIBLICAL TRADITION 31 
 
 These may be exaggerated examples, but they 
 illustrate fairly in kind if not perhaps in degree the 
 appearance which the early books of the Old 
 Testament present to the eyes of the Semitic 
 philologist. He may often be in doubt as to 
 the source of a particular sentence — there are 
 sentences in Macaulay which Gibbon might have 
 written and vice versa — he may sometimes be 
 dogmatic when he would be wiser to confess his 
 uncertainty, but no reasonable being can doubt 
 that his main conclusions are right. 
 
 These conclusions may be briefly stated as 
 follows. The chief documents from which the 
 first five books of the Old Testament were 
 compiled are three in number. The two oldest 
 of these are known as J and E respectively, 
 J having been composed in Judah during the 
 ninth century b.c. and E in the Northern 
 Kingdom during the eighth century b.c. The 
 separation of J and E is not always easy, but 
 among the most obvious differences of style may 
 be noted the fact that E almost always uses 
 Elohim for God, whereas J prefers Jehovah 
 (Yahweh), and that E calls the sacred mountain 
 Horeb, while J calls it Sinai. In general character 
 the two documents have considerable similarity, 
 both showing a brightness of style which is 
 
32 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 absent in the third document P ; J, however, 
 is superior to E in literary power and in the 
 portrayal of life and character. 
 
 Document P was written at some period during 
 the Babylonian exile and the century which 
 followed ; it is clearly distinguishable from 
 both J and E in style and purpose. It comes 
 from a priestly school and is interested in history 
 mainly in so far as it bears on the origin of the 
 various ceremonials of the Jewish religion. 
 
 The probable history of the compilation is as 
 follows. During the seventh century an editor 
 combined J and E with unimportant additions of 
 his own. A later editor combined with this 
 whole the discourses of Deuteronomy, and 
 finally, in the fifth or fourth century B.C., a still 
 later compiler combined the result with P, 
 using P as the framework of his narrative, and 
 giving the Pentateuch, if we disregard slight later 
 additions, its present form. 
 
 In other words our present Pentateuch was 
 compiled not earlier than the fifth century b.c. 
 and contains no material written down earlier 
 than the ninth century, except possibly certain 
 laws and a few fragments such as the Song of 
 Deborah. It follows at once from this that 
 practically the whole contents of these books, as 
 
VALUE OF BIBLICAL TRADITION 33 
 
 we have them, were written down only long after 
 the time at which they were enacted. 
 
 One other point must be considered in assessing 
 the value of our material. The early books took 
 their present form not later than the fourth 
 century b.c. Yet our earliest Hebrew manu- 
 script of the Old Testament dates from the 
 tenth century a.d. In other words we have no 
 copy of the text until fifteen hundred years 
 subsequent to the date of its composition. Those 
 who are acquainted with the classics will realize 
 what this implies, and will imagine what corrup- 
 tions and alterations may take place in a text in 
 the course of a millennium and a half. In the 
 case of Greek and Latin authors we have some 
 check on this, for there are generally several 
 manuscripts, and where one is corrupt another 
 often preserves the right reading, or, at the worst, 
 a reading which will indicate the nature of the 
 corruption. In the case of the Old Testament 
 we are deprived of such an aid as this, for our 
 manuscripts are clearly from a single source and 
 do not contain more than about twenty variant 
 readings in all. On the other hand we have one 
 means of ascertaining the state of the Hebrew 
 text as far back as the third century b.c, for it 
 was in this century that one of the early Ptolemies 
 
 c 
 
34 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 — possibly, but by no means certainly, Ptolemy II 
 — of Egypt, ordered a Greek translation of the 
 Old Testament to be made from the Hebrew- 
 text. This text was then not more than a few 
 centuries old, and this translation, known as the 
 Septuagint, should reproduce it almost in its 
 original form. 1 A comparison of the two shows 
 that on the whole the text of the Hebrew has 
 not suffered very badly between the third century 
 b.c. and the tenth a.d., and in some of those 
 cases where the divergence is greatest it is to be 
 attributed not to the fact that the old Hebrew text 
 differed from that which has come down to us, 
 but to the fact that the Greek translators, instead 
 of translating quite literally the Hebrew words, 
 substituted some sophisticated interpretation of 
 their own. Information of a similar though less 
 valuable nature as to the ancient Hebrew text is 
 afforded by the Samaritan transcript made some 
 time after 333 b.c, the Syriac, made not later 
 than the fourth century a.d., the various Coptic 
 translations made in the fourth to sixth centuries 
 a.d., and the Latin Vulgate, about 400 a.d. ; but 
 it must always be remembered that we have not 
 the original texts of any of these versions but only 
 
 iThe few biblical fragments found in Egypt are hardly sufficient to 
 prove anything definite as to the state of the Hebrew text in the early 
 centuries a.d. 
 
VALUE OF BIBLICAL TRADITION 35 
 
 much later copies which must themselves contain 
 errors. 
 
 So much then for the nature of the material 
 with which we have to work. For the relations 
 of Egypt and Israel the possible corruption of the 
 Hebrew text is fortunately not a matter of very 
 great importance, though in one or two cases it 
 becomes of moment. The recognition of the 
 composite nature of the Pentateuch and of the 
 comparatively late date of the composition even 
 of its earliest documents is, however, vital to our 
 subject, for it follows immediately that much of 
 the contents of these books rests on oral tradition, 
 and that, in consequence, all the canons which 
 must be followed in examining and dissecting 
 such tradition are to be observed in this case. 
 
 There is nothing unique about the early 
 traditions of the Hebrews except the fact that 
 they have come down to us in so complete a form. 
 Every nation has its body of tradition. We 
 ourselves have our Arthurian legend, Teutonic 
 Europe has its Niebelungenlied, Egyptian liter- 
 ature teems with legend and tradition, and when 
 Mesopotamia comes to be fully excavated we 
 shall have from there a body of tradition which, 
 for quantity, will doubtless put into the shade 
 the contents of the Hexateuch. To set this last 
 
36 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 apart, and to refuse to apply to it the principles 
 which are day by day making the others more 
 intelligible and more valuable is simply in- 
 tellectual dishonesty. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE EARLY RELATIONS OF EGYPT AND PALESTINE 
 
 The earliest tombs found in Egypt belong to 
 a period which we are accustomed to call the 
 Predynastic Period, because it is earlier than the 
 1st Dynasty, i.e. the first House or Line of Kings 
 of which the Egyptians themselves have preserved 
 any record as such. In this distant period Egypt 
 seems to have consisted of two separate kingdoms, 1 
 Upper and Lower Egypt, the latter including 
 little more than the Delta, the former the higher 
 portions of the Nile, at least as far as El Kab. 
 At the beginning of the 1st Dynasty a king whom 
 later legend named Menes, but of whom we have 
 no certain contemporary record, united the 
 " Two Lands," as the Egyptians themselves 
 called them, into one kingdom. Egypt continued 
 to be a single realm until the end of the Vlth 
 Dynasty, when the country seems to have fallen 
 into a state of anarchy. The next four dynasties, 
 Vllth to Xth, known as the Earlier Intermediate 
 Period, are dark to us, though light is already 
 
 i The new fragments of the Palermo Stone show, however, that there 
 were kings of United Egypt before the 1st Dynasty. 
 
 37 
 
38 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 beginning to appear. Thus in 191 3 there were 
 published for the first time two hieratic papyri 
 in the Hermitage in Petrograd from which it 
 becomes quite clear that these dynasties were 
 marked by an invasion of the Egyptian Delta by 
 Asiatics (Aamu) from the east. One of the two 
 papyri actually describes the state of things in 
 the Eastern Delta during the presence of the 
 foreigners. The story, though really written 
 after the events it describes, purports to be a 
 prophecy written before them, and foretells a 
 saviour for Egypt: "A king shall come from the 
 south whose name is Ameny. . . . The Asiatics 
 shall fall by his sword. . . . There shall be 
 built the Wall of the Prince to prevent the 
 Asiatics from going down into Egypt." Fortun- 
 ately we can identify this saviour, for the Wall of 
 the Prince is said, in the story of Sinuhe, to have 
 been built by Amenemhet I, the first king of the 
 Xllth Dynasty, to keep off the Asiatics, and 
 Ameny is known to be nothing more than a 
 nickname for Amenemhet, who did indeed come 
 from a city in the south, namely Thebes. The 
 papyrus thus has a real historical background. 
 The other Petrograd papyrus shows us a king of 
 the IXth or Xth Dynasty, whose name is lost, 
 giving advice to his son Merykere, a known ruler 
 
EARLY RELATIONS 
 
 of one of those two dynasties, which ruled at 
 Herakleopolis. The king here describes the 
 character of the Asiatics and relates their defeat 
 at his own hands. " I caused the North-land to 
 smite them ; I carried away captive their 
 inhabitants, I plundered their cattle." He also 
 gives his son some directions for the effective 
 fortification of the north-eastern frontier of the 
 Delta. 
 
 From these and from other less definite 
 indications it may be regarded as certain that in 
 this period between the Vlth andXIth Dynasties, 
 known to Egyptologists as the Earlier Inter- 
 mediate Period, the Egyptian Delta was invaded 
 by Asiatics, just as it was again in the Later 
 Intermediate Period. This fact is of importance 
 to us in our present quest, for it may be that we 
 shall have to place in this interval the descent of 
 Abram into Egypt. 
 
 The foreigners finally expelled by Amenemhet I 
 of the Xllth Dynasty, Egypt enjoyed a period 
 of peace and prosperity for 200 years under his 
 able successors. It is not impossible that measures 
 of retaliation against the Asiatics were carried 
 out in the form of expeditions into Southern 
 Palestine. The gravestone of a certain Sebek-khu 
 who lived in this dynasty relates how " his 
 
4 o EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 majesty went down the Nile (from Thebes, the 
 capital) to overthrow the Mentu of Sethet 
 (Syria-Palestine). His majesty arrived at a region 
 whose name is Sekmem." Here a fight took 
 place with the Asiatics, in which Sebek-khu 
 distinguished himself by taking a prisoner. Max 
 Miiller has attempted to identify Sekmem with 
 Shechem, but the philological difficulties in the 
 way of this identification are very great, and it 
 is more probable that Sekmem is some place in 
 Southern Palestine, or even nearer to the Egyptian 
 frontier than this. There are other indications 
 of warfare with Nearer Asia during this dynasty, 
 but they do not enable us to form any clear idea 
 of the operations, or even to assert that a definite 
 career of conquest in that country was embarked 
 upon by the Egyptian kings. 
 
 At the end of the Xllth Dynasty Egypt once 
 more became a prey to internal confusion. Once 
 more she paid the penalty of her position in a 
 fertile valley at the western end of the isthmus 
 which led into Africa from the over-populated 
 Nearer Asia ; once more the Delta was invaded 
 by Asiatics. The details of this invasion are 
 again obscure, and so little do we know of the 
 XHIth to XVIIth Dynasties that we can find for 
 them no better name than the Later Intermediate 
 
EARLY RELATIONS 
 
 Period. The period was one on which the 
 Egyptians of later days looked back with loathing 
 and hatred, together with a keen desire to forget, 
 which is doubtless in part responsible for our 
 ignorance of what actually happened. 
 
 Before we can bring these Asiatic invasions of 
 Egypt into any relation with the biblical story 
 we must decide to what dates they are to be 
 assigned. Here there is a serious preliminary 
 difficulty. The student of history who finds two 
 Egyptological authorities assigning dates 2,000 
 years apart to one and the same event is liable to 
 be dismayed and discouraged, and it is therefore 
 necessary to explain how this vast discrepancy 
 arises. 
 
 There are two methods by which Egyptian 
 dating may be established ; firstly by adding 
 together the lengths of single reigns or dynasties 
 as given in the history written in Greek about 
 250 b.c. by the Egyptian priest Manetho, and 
 now lost, save for excerpts preserved by later 
 historians, and secondly by the astronomical 
 method. This last is based on the fact that the 
 Egyptian civil year consisted of only 365 days 
 (12 months of 30 days each, and 5 "additional 
 days") instead of about 365 J; in other words the 
 Egyptians had no Leap Year. Owing to this 
 
42 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 the civil year kept getting out of gear with the 
 true or solar year, and consequently with the 
 seasons, the error obviously amounting to a 
 quarter of a day each year, or a day in four years, 
 a month in 120 years, and so on, until after 1460 
 years (365 multiplied by 4) the beginning of the 
 civil and solar years coincided once more. The 
 Egyptians were not unacquainted with this shift 
 of the calendar, for they measured the true or 
 solar year by observing the heliacal rising 1 of the 
 star Sothis or Sirius. The consequence is that 
 whenever we find it stated in a text or inscription 
 dated to a certain year of a certain king that 
 Sothis in that year rose heliacally on a certain 
 date of the civil year, we can ascertain the 
 amount of the divergence between civil and solar 
 years at that date. 
 
 Now we learn from the Roman writer 
 Censorinus that the beginning of the civil year 
 coincided with that of the solar or Sothic year 
 in 139 a.d., and from what has been said above 
 it will easily be seen that the same thing would 
 have happened 1,460 years previously, i.e. in 
 1 321 B.C., and again 1,460 years before that, i.e. 
 in 2781 b.c, and so on. These periods of 1,460 
 
 1 A star is said to rise heliacally when it first appears again above the 
 eastern horizon at sunrise after having been for some time invisible in tha 
 position. 
 
EARLY RELATIONS 
 
 years from 139 a.d. to 1321 B.C., from 1321 b.c. 
 to 2781 B.C., etc., are called Sothic Periods. 
 
 Returning now to our ascertained shift of the 
 civil year, it is clear that this will enable us to 
 fix a certain year of a certain king to its correct 
 position in a Sothic Period, but, and here comes 
 the rub, it will not tell us which Sothic Period. 
 Thus, when we find in the Ebers Medical Papyrus 
 a calendar informing us that, in the ninth year 
 of King Amenhotp I of the XVIIIth Dynasty, 
 Sothis rose heliacally on the ninth day of the 
 eleventh month of the civil year, we can see that 
 at this moment the shift had made a full cycle 
 all but 57 days, made up of the 22 remaining 
 days (including the ninth) of the eleventh month, 
 30 of the twelfth and the five " additional days " 
 added on by the Egyptians to their twelve months 
 of thirty days each to complete the 365. The 
 year in question was therefore 228 years before 
 the completion of a Sothic Cycle. Now in this 
 case we happen to know from comparisons with 
 Mesopotamian and other history that the cycle 
 in question can have been no other than that 
 which ended in 1321 b.c. Adding to this the 
 228 years we get 1549 for the year in question. 1 
 
 1 Strictly speaking, since Sirius rose on the same day of the civil 
 calendar four years in succession, any of the years 1 550-1 547 b.c. would 
 suit. 
 
44 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 So far so good. All Egyptologists are agreed 
 on this dating, which brings the beginning of 
 the XVIIIth Dynasty to roughly 1580 b.c. The 
 trouble begins when we go back to the Xllth 
 Dynasty and find that in the seventh year of 
 Senusret III Sothis rose on the 16th day of the 
 eighth civil month. Reckoning as before, we can 
 show that this year must have fallen 560 years 
 before the end of a Sothic Cycle. But which 
 Sothic Cycle, that which ended in 278 1 B.C., or that 
 which ended in 1321 b.c. ? Here we have no 
 obvious comparisons to guide us. Most Egypto- 
 logists, especially those of Germany and America, 
 vote for the second and thereby get about 1882 
 b.c 1 for the year in question, and roughly 2000 b.c. 
 for the beginning of the Xllth Dynasty. A few, 
 with Petrie in their van, are convinced that the 
 earlier cycle is the right one, and thus get a date 
 of about 3460 b.c, a whole Sothic Cycle earlier, 
 for the beginning of the Xllth Dynasty. 
 
 The discrepancy which amazes the layman is 
 now explained. We must either choose between 
 these two dates, or suppose that some flaw exists 
 in the Sothic method of reckoning, which is, 
 it must be confessed, not very probable. 
 
 1 Strictly speaking, since Sirius rose on the same day of the civil 
 calendar four years in succession, any of the years 1882- 1879 b.c. would 
 suit. 
 
EARLY RELATIONS 
 
 It should be noted that the Long Dating is 
 at first sight far more in accordance than the 
 Short with the addition of lengths of reigns as 
 given by Manetho and in part supported by the 
 Turin Papyrus of Kings. This fact, as may well 
 be imagined, is made the most of by the sup- 
 porters, not very numerous, of the Long Dating, 
 but it is rightly pointed out by their opponents 
 that many of the kings and even some of the 
 dynasties given by Manetho in the obscure 
 Intermediate Periods probably reigned simul- 
 taneously in different parts of Egypt. King's 
 astonishing discovery that the Ilnd Babylonian 
 Dynasty ruled not in Babylon itself but in the 
 Country of the Sea, and may therefore for 
 chronological purposes be eliminated from the 
 king-lists, has shortened dates in Mesopotamia 
 by centuries, thereby not only warning us not 
 to overdate the parallel periods in Egypt, but 
 illustrating the danger of dating by the mere 
 addition of reign-lengths in king-lists. 
 
 Many of us, too, in view of the archaeological 
 evidence, find it impossible to believe that the 
 Later Intermediate Period lasted nearly 1,700 
 years, as it must have done on the Long Dating 
 theory. So few are the remains which this 
 period has left in Egypt, and so inconsiderable 
 
46 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 the development in art and civilisation between 
 the Xllth Dynasty and the XVIIIth that the 
 200 years postulated by the Short Dating seem 
 not insufficient. The recent publication of a 
 cylinder of lapis lazuli, inscribed partly in Baby- 
 lonian cuneiform of a style which can hardly be 
 much earlier than 2000 b.c. and partly in Egyptian 
 with the cartouche of Amenemhet I, the first 
 king of the Xllth Dynasty, will prove a hard nut 
 to crack for those who would date this dynasty 
 to something like 3500 b.c. For these and other 
 reasons too complex to be discussed here the 
 shorter chronology, which places the beginning 
 of the Xllth Dynasty at about 2000 b.c, has been 
 adopted in this volume. 
 
 Behind the Xllth Dynasty all is guesswork, 
 for no Sothic datings have been preserved. 
 Since the dates of the earlier Egyptian periods 
 are of little importance for our present purpose 
 suffice it to state that the advocates of the Short 
 Dating imagine the 1st Dynasty to have begun 
 about 3300 b.c, while the other school of thought 
 speaks of dates ranging from 4000 to 5000 b.c. 
 for this event. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 ABRAM'S DESCENT INTO EGYPT 
 
 " And Abram went down into Egypt to sojourn 
 there ; for the famine was grievous in the land." 
 
 In these words we find our first biblical point 
 of contact between the history of Egypt and that 
 of the Israelites. Abram has just left Haran and 
 journeyed through the land of the Canaanites, 
 passing Bethel " going on still toward the south." 
 It is at this point that famine forces him to 
 descend into Egypt. 
 
 Before going any further with this story one 
 possibility must be considered, the possibility 
 that it is nothing more than a ' ' duplication" 1 
 of the descent of Jacob into Egypt. It is often 
 difficult and even impossible to prove, or even to 
 establish a probability, that any particular 
 incident in a tradition is a duplication, and in 
 the case before us the data are so slight that 
 
 i Duplication is the invention of two separate legends to cover a single 
 set of facts, or the attribution by tradition of a single set of exploits to two 
 different persons or groups of persons. Thus, in the present case the question 
 to be asked is, whether a single descent of certain persons or tribes into 
 Egypt may not have given rise to two separate traditions, the one connected 
 with the name of Abram and the other with that of Jacob. 
 
48 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 we can make no progress. Two details alone 
 are common to both stories, firstly, the ascrip- 
 tion of both descents into Egypt to famine, 
 and secondly, the fact that in both cases 
 Pharaoh sends the Hebrews out of his land in 
 consequence of plagues. The first point is of 
 little significance, for the most natural reason for 
 tradition to give for any descent into Egypt 
 would be " a famine in the land." In the case 
 of the second point of similarity the resemblance 
 is by no means a close one in detail. 
 
 It cannot then be satisfactorily shown that the 
 descent of Abram is a mere doubling of that of 
 Jacob, and it may quite well be that it contains 
 an actual kernel of fact. Can we, from Egyptian 
 history, get any conception of what this con- 
 sisted in ? 
 
 In the last chapter we have referred to those 
 two great overflowings of Asiatic peoples from 
 Nearer Asia into the Delta of the Nile which 
 took place in the Earlier and Later Intermediate 
 Periods respectively, that is to say, the one 
 shortly before 2000 b.c. and the other between 
 1780 and 1580 b.c. Is the descent of Abram, be 
 he a man or be he a tribe, into Egypt a distant 
 echo of one of these movements, and if so, of 
 which of the two ? 
 
ABRAM'S DESCENT INTO EGYPT 49 
 
 A fortunate accident of tradition enables us to 
 decide between the two. In Genesis 14.1 we are 
 told that " Amraphel king of Shinar, Arioch 
 king of Ellasar, Chedorlaomer king of Elam, and 
 Tidal king of nations " made war with certain 
 of the peoples of Canaan who had been subject to 
 them for thirteen years and rebelled in the 
 fourteenth. Now the names of these kings are 
 not mere inventions of the historian. However 
 much they may have suffered in transmission, 
 they are the names of actual historical kings, and 
 the great battle of five kings with four probably 
 corresponds to a historical fact. 
 
 Search has been made on the Mesopotamian side 
 for kings with which these four could reasonably 
 be identified. It is not possible here to enter 
 into the controversy which has raged round the 
 various identifications proposed, and we must 
 content ourselves by giving the main results. 
 In the first place there is a fairly general agreement 
 that in Amraphel of Shinar we may recognize 
 Khammurabi of the 1st Dynasty of Babylon. 
 The reader who is unacquainted with the subject 
 of Semitic phonetics may stand aghast at the 
 proposal to equate two names which at first sight 
 have so little in common. Two things, however, 
 must be pointed out : firstly, that in the trans- 
 
 D 
 
50 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 mission of names in Semitic the vowels have little 
 importance, for in most Semitic dialects they were 
 not written and hence peculiarly liable to be 
 altered in handing on ; and secondly it must be 
 noted that in Khammurabi and Amraphel we 
 have three consonants alike, namely m, r and b, 
 the last weakened in the Hebrew to ph {i.e. f). 
 The absence in the Hebrew form of the initial 
 Kh is a little disconcerting, though the form 
 Ammurabi does occur once in a Babylonian 
 document of the king's own reign. The final -el 
 in the Hebrew is perhaps less disturbing, and 
 several not unreasonable explanations of it have 
 been given. On the whole it may be said that 
 the identification is distinctly probable. Arioch 
 of Ellasar has by some been equated with Eriaku, 
 a dialectal Sumerian form of the name of Warad 
 Sin, king of Larsa, a town in Sumeria or South 
 Babylonia (Map i). Up till quite recently this 
 seemed a not unreasonable proposition, but 
 unfortunately the discovery of the famous date-list 
 of the Dynasty of Larsa puts it out of court. It 
 had long been known that Kudur-mabuk, father 
 of Warad Sin, and king of Elam, a district in the 
 west of Persia, conquered Larsa from the 
 Sumerians and placed his son on the throne. It 
 therefore seemed not at all unreasonable to find 
 
AB RAM'S DESCENT INTO EGYPT 51 
 
 Warad Sin (Eriaku) in league with a king of Elam, 
 Chedorlaomer, against the cities of Canaan, he 
 being himself an Elamite. The difficulty raised 
 by the Larsa date-list is that it proves 
 Khammurabi, another member of the league, to 
 have come to the throne no less than thirty years 
 after the death of Warad Sin. The suggestion 
 that the Jewish historian mentioned Warad Sin 
 in mistake for his successor on the throne of Larsa, 
 Rim Sin, is not worthy of consideration, for what 
 we are concerned with is not what he might have 
 said but what he actually did say. It is far wiser 
 to suppose that Eriaku and Arioch are not one 
 and the same, especially as it is far from certain 
 that Ellasar is Larsa, there being considerable 
 difficulty in deriving the one from the other 
 without doing violence to phonetic laws. 
 
 With regard to Chedorlaomer, we know as yet 
 of no king of Elam bearing this name, but it has 
 been pointed out that the name may well be the 
 Hebrew form of Kudur-lagamar, the element 
 Kudur being frequent in Elamite names of this 
 period {e.g. Kudur-mabuk), and Lagamar 
 occurring in an Assyrian text as the name of an 
 Elamite deity. Tidal, king of nations or Goiim, 
 is unknown, but Sayce has pointed out that the 
 name is probably Hittite. 
 
52 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 Even supposing that we could accept all these 
 identifications there would still be difficulties in 
 our way, for the account in Gen. 14 represents 
 these four rulers as allies in a campaign against the 
 dynasts of Eastern Palestine. Yet from archaeo- 
 logical and inscriptional evidence in Mesopotamia 
 it is clear that Khammurabi was throughout the 
 deadly foe of Elam and of the Elamite dynasty in 
 Larsa, rather than their ally. But surely this need 
 not be pressed, and we need hardly expect to find 
 the Jewish chronicler quite au fait with the 
 complicated state of politics in Babylonia and 
 Persia. Let it suffice that he has preserved for 
 us some record, valuable if hazy, of hostile contact 
 between the peoples of Palestine and those of the 
 east, dating, if our identification of Amraphel be 
 correct, as far back as the reign of Khammurabi. 
 Now until the time of King's discovery that the 
 1st and Ilnd Dynasties of Babylon partly over- 
 lapped, and that the Ilnd ruled not at Babylon 
 but in the Country of the Sea, many Assyriologists 
 placed the reign of Khammurabi as far back as 
 2400 B.C. The new discovery naturally shortened 
 the dates considerably, and a fresh piece of 
 evidence of an entirely different type has fixed the 
 reign with some certainty. The Dutch astro- 
 nomer Kugler has worked out certain observations 
 
ABIAM'S DESCENT INTO EGYPT 53 
 
 of the heliacal rising and setting of the planet 
 Venus taken in the reign of King Ammi-zaduga 
 of the 1st Babylonian Dynasty, and recorded on 
 a cuneiform tablet, and has found to what years 
 these must refer. The result of his work is to 
 fix the accession of Ammi-zaduga to 1977 B.C., 
 and consequently that of Khammurabi to 
 2123 B.C. 
 
 Now, if Khammurabi is the Amraphel of 
 Genesis who fought in the battle of the four 
 kings against five, in which Lot was made captive 
 and afterwards released by Abram, it is clear that 
 Abram had returned from Egypt before the death 
 of Khammurabi in 2081 b.c This date is 
 satisfactory from the Egyptian point of view, for 
 if Abram left Egypt not later than 2081 b.c, his 
 sojourn must have fallen into the period just 
 preceding the Xllth Dynasty, which, it will be 
 remembered, was in Egypt a time of anarchy and 
 Asiatic invasion. From recent discoveries we 
 know that though Amenemhet I, the Ameny of 
 the Petrograd papyrus, was regarded as the 
 saviour of Egypt, and was the builder of the great 
 wall in the Eastern Delta made to keep back the 
 Asiatics, yet the war of liberation had already 
 begun under his predecessors of the Xlth Dynasty, 
 the Antefs and Mentuhotps of Thebes, and the 
 
54 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTA MENT 
 
 retirement of Abram may conceivably 'lave been 
 due to pressure by the Egyptian armies. 
 
 It is a curious coincidence that the date 
 obtained from the Babylonian evidence for 
 Abram's return from Egypt corresponds almost 
 exactly with that given by the Hebrew chrono- 
 logy. In I Kings 6.1 we are told that from the 
 foundation of Solomon's temple back to the 
 exodus was 480 years. The foundation of the 
 temple can be fairly accurately fixed by reckoning 
 back from the known Assyrian date, 854 B.C., for 
 the battle of Qarqar, at which Ahab and Ben- 
 hadad II (Hadad-idri) of Damascus were allies. 
 There is considerable reason for placing this 
 alliance (I Kings 20.34) m Ahab's twenty-first 
 year, and reckoning back by the lengths of reigns 
 as given in I Kings we get 970 for the accession of 
 Solomon and therefore 966 for the beginning of 
 the Temple in his fourth year (I Kings 6.1). 
 The traditional date for the exodus was thus 
 about 1446 B.C. In Ex. 12.40 the length of the 
 sojourn in Egypt is said to be 430 years, a number 
 with which the 400 years given in Gen. 15.15 for 
 the length of the oppression need not disagree. 
 The descent of Jacob into Egypt would thus fa 
 about 1876 B.C. Now Jacob was 130 years ol 
 when he went into Egypt, and was therefor 
 
ABRAM'S DESCENT INTO EGYPT 55 
 
 born about 2006 b.c. Isaac, who was 60 when 
 Jacob was born, must have been born in 2066 b.c, 
 and since his birth took place after the return of 
 his father from Egypt to Canaan this last must 
 have happened before, perhaps very shortly 
 before, 2066 b.c. 
 
 According to the Hebrews' own tradition then 
 this is the date to which the Egyptian incident is'< 
 to be attributed, and it will be seen that this date 
 differs by only fifteen years from that obtained 
 from the Babylonian evidence. After what has 
 been said in Chapter I concerning the chronology 
 of the Hebrew compilers it is hardly necessary to 
 point out that this coincidence is purely fortuitous 
 and has no corroborative value whatsoever. 
 
 We may sum up the results of this investigation 
 as follows. If the descent of Abram into Egypt is 
 not a mere " double " of a later incident, and if 
 Hebrew tradition is correct in making Abram, 
 whether this be the name of a historical individual 
 or stand merely for a particular people or tribe, 
 the contemporary of Amraphel of Babylon, then 
 Abram must have left Egypt before 2081 b.c 
 In this case the descent into Egypt must have 
 fallen into the Earlier Intermediate Period, and 
 it is not impossible that the story is the echo in 
 Hebrew tradition of that Asiatic invasion of 
 
56 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 Egypt to which the Petrograd papyri (p. 38-39) 
 bear unwilling testimony on the Egyptian side. 
 
 We are now able to place the movements of 
 Abram and his tribe in their correct position in 
 the early history of the Middle East. It is 
 believed by many geographers that the land of 
 Arabia is subject to periodic droughts, which, 
 recurring in long cycles of centuries, drive the 
 pastoral peoples of the land out into the neigh- 
 bouring countries in search of pastures for their 
 flocks. History records four main eruptions of 
 these Semites . or primitive Arabians (Map 1). 
 The first gave the Semitic dynasty of Sargon and 
 Naram-sin to Akkadia or Northern Babylonia, and 
 took place before 2500 b.c. The second, which 
 happened about five hundred years later, gave to 
 Canaan its Semitic people and to Babylon its 
 1st Dynasty. The third, shortly after 1500 B.C., 
 is represented by the Aramaeans, and the fourth 
 is the great Moorish movement of the seventh 
 century a.d. 
 
 It is to the second of these eruptions that the 
 episode of Abram is to be assigned. The memories 
 of this great movement must have survived long in 
 Hebrew tradition, and are undoubtedly reflected 
 in the accounts of the original coming of Abram's 
 
ABRAM'S DESCENT INTO EGYPT 57 
 
 family or tribe from Ur of the Chaldees and from 
 Haran. It is hardly worth while to point out 
 that, supposing the Hebrews to have come from 
 Ur in South Babylonia, Haran on the Middle 
 Euphrates would have lain directly on their 
 shortest, indeed their only route into Canaan (Map 
 1), for it is quite probable that in the names Ur and 
 Haran two entirely separate traditions survive as 
 to the early home of the Hebrews, and there is 
 little point in an attempt to combine them. 
 The names may in this case have no historical 
 value whatsoever, and merely indicate a later 
 belief in an eastern origin. So far as we can see at 
 present the second Semitic movement, to which 
 we are inclined to attribute the migration of 
 Abram, apparently took a course precisely opposed 
 to that indicated by the itinerary Ur-Haran- 
 Canaan. The Semites who invaded Babylonia 
 and founded the Dynasty of Nisin and the 
 1st Dynasty of Babylon were apparently Western 
 Semites, who, having perhaps moved up from 
 Arabia into Canaan, proceeded to conquer Syria, 
 the Middle Euphrates, and finally Babylonia. 
 The recent excavations at Ur have discovered no 
 traces whatsoever of any early Semitic occupation 
 such as the Hebrew tradition would suggest, the 
 early remains found being either partly, as would 
 
58 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 be expected in this region, Sumerian, and partly, 
 according to one of the excavators, even pre- 
 Sumerian. On the other hand it is necessary to 
 remember that the site is by no means fully 
 excavated as yet. 
 
 It is a curious fact that both Ur and Haran were 
 in early times centres of moon- worship. This can 
 hardly be a coincidence, and the guess may be 
 hazarded that their appearance side by side as 
 places of Hebrew origin may be due to the fact 
 that they were introduced to explain the pre- 
 valence of moon-worship at some stage in the life 
 history of one or more Hebrew tribes. There is, 
 of course, no direct trace of this in the Bible 
 narrative, unless we accept the dubious derivation 
 of the sacred mountain Sinai from the Babylonian 
 moon-god Sin, but it is a very usual process in 
 the accumulation of tradition. It has, however, 
 been pointed out that a god called Ya-u was 
 known in Babylonia at the time of the 1st 
 Dynasty, and that this name is equivalent with 
 Yeho or Yo, the shorter form of Yahweh, used 
 in Hebrew personal names compounded with 
 the name of the deity, such as Joab, Jehoshaphat. 
 This fact, together with the probable Babylonian 
 origin of the name Abram and its variant Abraham, 
 tends to confirm the connection of Abram 
 
ABRAM'S DESCENT INTO EGYPT 59 
 
 with the second Semitic migration, which was 
 responsible for the 1st Dynasty of Babylon. 
 It is further worthy of remark that the names 
 Sarah and Milcah, the patriarch's wife and 
 sister-in-law, are identical with Sharratu 1 and 
 Malkatu 1 , two members, side by side with Sin, of 
 the pantheon of Haran. Some authorities would 
 go further still and attempt to show the identity 
 of the Hebrew Yahweh with the Babylonian 
 Moon-god, and their evidence, even if not 
 conclusive, is not to be lightly set aside. 
 
 Leaving aside doubtful questions, it may be said 
 that the evidence justifies the conclusion that the 
 story of the migrations of Abram preserves some 
 faint record of the second great Semitic migration. 
 The direct connection of the Hebrew ancestors 
 with Ur and Haran we may either accept as 
 literally true, or explain as a later conception 
 invented to account for the known lunar nature 
 of certain elements in Hebrew religion. 
 
 Does the colouring of the narrative of Abram's 
 stay in Egypt help us in determining either its 
 authenticity or its date ? Unfortunately it is too 
 vague and too scanty to afford any real help. 
 The undignified incident of Abram's passing his 
 
 1 The -atu is the feminine ending in Assyrian just as -ah is in Hebrew. 
 
6o EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 wife off as his sister in order to save his own skin 
 has been cited, with a backing of mistranslations 
 or misconceptions from Egyptian documents, as in 
 peculiarly close keeping with Egyptian customs. 
 With regard to Abram's camels, often quoted as 
 Egyptian local colour, it should be pointed out 
 that the camel was not introduced into Egypt 
 until centuries after this period ; the 1st Dynasty 
 skeletons of " camels " which have found their way 
 into several books proving on examination to be 
 those of donkeys. On the other hand there is no 
 reason a priori why a Semite going down into 
 Egypt should not be accompanied by camels. 
 
 Before concluding this chapter it is impossible 
 to refrain from mentioning a very famous scene 
 from an Egyptian tomb which has appeared in 
 more than one book with the title " The arrival of 
 Abram in Egypt," and has doubtless misled many. 
 In the tomb of an Egyptian noble called 
 Khnemhotp at Beni Hasan is painted, among 
 other episodes of his career, a scene in which a 
 scribe called Neferhotp leads before him a small 
 group of Aamu or Syrians. Their leader, identi- 
 fied by early writers with Abram, is called " Ruler 
 of a foreign country," and his name is given as 
 Ibsha. The incriptions accompanying the scene 
 
ABRAM'S DESCENT INTO EGYPT 61 
 
 inform us that 37 of the Syrians or Aamu were 
 brought bearing green eye-paint, in the sixth 
 year of Senusret II of the Xllth Dynasty, the 
 date of which year would be roughly 1900 b.c. 
 Now the identification with Abram and his 
 family, fantastic in any case, is made quite 
 impossible by the fact that the leader's name is 
 Ibsha. At the same time the scene is not without 
 interest to the biblical student. Though these 
 are not Abram and his family they are men and 
 women and children of his race or of one akin to 
 his, brought to Egypt with presents or tribute 
 not many decades after Abram himself had left 
 the country. Their spears and bows and throw- 
 sticks are the weapons which Abram himself must 
 have carried, and the lyre which we see in the 
 hands of one of the group was perhaps an instru- 
 ment to whose sound Jehovah was praised. The 
 facial characteristics, totally un-Egyptian, are 
 those of the Israelites, and in the long gaudy 
 cloaks which some of the male figures wear we 
 may see the counterpart of Joseph's " coat of 
 many colours." 1 
 
 Finally, this picture reflects the Egyptian 
 attitude towards the native of Syria during this 
 
 1 More accurately " a tunic of palms and soles," i.e. a long cloak reaching 
 to the hands and feet. 
 
62 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 period. In the first place it is to be noted that 
 the word Syrians is followed by a determinative 
 sign representing a captive with hands tied behind 
 him. It would be unwise to argue from this 
 that these people were captives taken in war, but 
 it is quite clear that the Egyptians regarded them 
 as a people whom they had once defeated and 
 driven out, and whom were they wont to defeat. 
 After the expulsion of the Asiatics from Egypt by 
 Ameny, it is probable that the Egyptians carried 
 the war into the enemies' country. Reference 
 has been made above to the gravestone of an 
 Egyptian officer called Sebek-khu, which mentions 
 a campaign in which Sebek-khu followed his 
 king Amenemhet III into Syria, where a battle 
 took place near a place called Sekmem. In the 
 tomb of a certain Dhouthotp, who lived about 
 the same time, at El Bersheh, are shown captive 
 Syrian cattle to whom a herdsman is saying 
 " Once ye trod the sand, now ye walk on herbage," 
 an obvious allusion to the bleak and desert 
 nature which every good Egyptian attributed 
 to Syria as contrasted with his own fertile 
 homeland. 
 
 From these and similar indications, such as 
 the occurrence in temple documents of this 
 period of a type of temple-slave called simply 
 
ABRAM'S DESCENT INTO EGYPT 63 
 
 iamu or Syrians, we may gather that the 
 position of the patriarchs, or the tribes for 
 whose history they stand, in or about South 
 Palestine was not altogether a secure one, 
 that region being, if not subject to Egypt, 
 at least liable to attack by slave- and 
 cattle-raiding expeditions. It would not surprise 
 us if Abram, like his kinsman Ibsha, occasionally 
 thought it wise to propitiate the King of Egypt 
 with a gift. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 
 
 " And they took their cattle and their goods . . . 
 and came into Egypt, Jacob, and all his seed with 
 him." 
 
 Nature of the sojourn and exodus. 
 
 Before entering upon any discussion concerning 
 the date of the sojourn, and the date and route 
 of the exodus, it is necessary to ask exactly what 
 we mean by these two events. 
 
 It has been explained in Chapter I that tradition 
 is often incorrect in detail, that its chronology 
 is generally poor, that it telescopes and dup- 
 licates, and that its geography is rarely consistent. 
 But in most cases in which archaeology has 
 permitted a test the central facts of tradition 
 have been found to contain some kernel of truth. 
 Thus in the case of the sojourn we may consider 
 it as highly probable, if not certain, that at some 
 period in the history of the Hebrews one or more 
 
 of their tribes or clans did actually visit Egypt, 
 
 6 4 
 
THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 65 
 
 sojourn there, and afterwards return to Canaan. 
 This fact became an integral part of the tradition 
 preserved by this tribe or these tribes, from 
 whence it passed into the general tradition of 
 the Hebrews. 
 
 A belief in the fact of a sojourn and an exodus 
 does not, however, involve of necessity a belief 
 in any of the detail with which they are invested 
 in the biblical narrative. On the contrary it 
 will be the aim of some of the following pages to 
 show how a very simple story became gradually 
 encrusted with accretions of later and very 
 various dates. What then was the real nature of 
 the episode, and can we find any trace of it in 
 Egyptian history ?* 
 
 An Egyptian papyrus known as Anastasi VI 
 contains a letter from an Egyptian frontier 
 official stationed at the eastern entrance of the 
 Wadi Tumilat (see below pp. 79-80), in which we 
 find the following words : " We have finished 
 causing the Bedawi tribes of Edom to pass the 
 fortress of Merenptah, belonging to Theku, 
 towards the pools of Pithom (of) Merenptah, 
 belonging to Theku, in order to feed themselves 
 
 1 The theory of Winckler, adopted by Cheyne, to the effect that the 
 Mizraim in which the Hebrews sojourned was not Egypt but a hypothetical 
 land of Musri, in Arabia, has been so often and so effectively refuted as to 
 need only a passing mention here. 
 
66 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 and to feed their flocks." From this it is clear 
 that the Egyptians of the XlXth Dynasty or 
 later were in the habit of allowing some of the 
 Bedawi tribes on their eastern frontier to use the 
 district called Theku, in the Wadi Tumilat, as a 
 pasturage (Map 2). If this custom obtained at 
 earlier dates it is by no means impossible that 
 certain Hebrew tribes had at some time been among 
 those to whom this privilege was accorded, and 
 in such a visit we might easily see the basis of the 
 story of the sojourn and exodus. On the other 
 hand it is thought by some that despite the low 
 number, seventy, which the biblical tradition 
 gives to the immigrants, the sojourn must have 
 referred to something on a larger scale than this, 
 to have assumed so important a place in Hebrew 
 history, even supposing that originally it formed 
 part of the tradition of only one tribe or group 
 of tribes. 
 
 If this view be taken, and there is much to be 
 said for it, some larger event in the history of 
 Egypt must be looked for. There is no difficulty 
 in finding such an event. We saw that the 
 descent of Abram into Egypt, if not a mere 
 duplication of the descent of Jacob, might not 
 unreasonably be brought into connection with 
 the invasion of the Egyptian Delta by Asiatic 
 
THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 67 
 
 Semites in the Earlier Intermediate Period which 
 separates the Vlth from the Xllth Dynasty. 
 Similarly the descent of Jacob and his seed, if 
 we are to regard it as a tribal or folk migration 
 of any size and importance, and not the mere 
 isolated movement of a single family, would seem 
 to fall most naturally into the Later Intermediate 
 Period, between the Xllth and the XVIIIth 
 Dynasties. During the prosperous days of the 
 Xllth Dynasty we can hardly conceive a foreign 
 people being allowed to make their way into 
 Egypt in any considerable force, though it should 
 be remembered that we are in almost complete 
 ignorance of conditions in the Delta during that 
 period. But in the days of confusion which 
 followed the fall of that dynasty the Delta became 
 the prey of an Asiatic people, known to us as the 
 Hyksos, and the temptation to bring Jacob's 
 descent into connection with this incursion is 
 almost irresistible. 
 
 Who then were the Hyksos and from whence 
 did they come ? The Egyptian historian Manetho 
 begins his account of them in the following 
 manner. "There was a king of ours whose name 
 was Timaios, in whose reign it came to pass, I 
 know not why, that God was displeased with us, 
 and there came unexpectedly men of ignoble 
 
68 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 birth out of the eastern parts, who had boldness 
 enough to make an expedition into our country 
 and easily subdued it without a battle. And 
 when they had got our rulers under their power, 
 they afterwards savagely burned down our cities 
 and demolished the temples of the gods and used 
 all the inhabitants in a most hostile manner, for 
 they slew some and led the children and wives of 
 others into slavery. At length they made one 
 of themselves king whose name was Salatis, and 
 he lived at Memphis and made both Upper and 
 Lower Egypt pay tribute, and left garrisons in 
 places which were most suitable for them." The 
 account goes on to tell us that these people made 
 their capital at a place called Avaris, in the Delta. 
 Manetho further informs us that the word 
 Hyksos consists of two parts, byk, which means 
 in Egyptian, a ruler, and sos, which he says 
 means shepherd, but, he adds, " only in the 
 vulgar tongue." Now although it is true that 
 hyk is good Egyptian for a ruler it has sometimes 
 been said that there is no Egyptian word sos 
 meaning shepherd. Quite lately, however, a 
 German scholar has pointed out that the Egyptian 
 sbos, a general name for the Asiatic bedawin who 
 lived on the fringes of the Delta between Egypt 
 and Palestine, came in later times to have the 
 
THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 69 
 
 meaning of shepherds, these people being mainly 
 pastoral in their pursuits. It would therefore 
 seem that Manetho was not erring when he 
 translated Hyksos as Shepherd Kings. 
 
 It has also been shown quite recently that 
 Avaris, which had previously been identified with 
 Tell el-Yahudiyeh in the Eastern Delta, is in 
 reality the same as the later Pelusium, at the 
 mouth of the most easterly or Pelusiac branch of 
 the Nile, now dried up (Map 2). This would be 
 the obvious position for the capital of a people 
 who were ruling not only the Egyptian Delta but 
 also Palestine. This, added to the fact that the 
 Egyptians, when they drove out the invaders, 
 pursued them into Palestine and besieged them 
 in the town of Sharuhen, places it almost beyond 
 doubt that the invaders were a people who came 
 from the direction of Palestine. This being so 
 it becomes extremely probable that in the story 
 of the descent of Jacob into Egypt Hebrew 
 tradition has preserved the memory of some 
 episode or group of episodes in this Asiatic 
 invasion of Egypt. 
 
 The period was one on which the Egyptians 
 looked back with hatred and shame, and it is with 
 apparent unwillingness that they chronicle any 
 events connected with it. This aversion to the 
 
7 o EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 invaders was religious as well as political, for the 
 god of the conquerors was the hated Set or 
 Sutekh, and they seem to have pursued a definite 
 policy of destroying the temples of the Egyptian 
 gods. Thus Queen Hatshepsut of the XVIIIth 
 Dynasty tells us in an inscription over a sacred 
 cave at Beni Hasan " I have re-established that 
 which was in ruins, I have raised up that which 
 was previously destroyed, when the Asiatics were 
 in the midst of Avaris in the Delta, overthrowing 
 that which had been made, while they ruled in 
 ignorance of Ra." Here the opposition of the 
 Hyksos to the Egyptian state worship of Ra, the 
 sun-god, is clearly brought out. 
 
 Although the Egyptian monuments give us few 
 details with regard to the actual rule of the Hyksos 
 they do furnish us with some information as to 
 the final expulsion of the intruders by the Kings 
 of the XVIIth and early XVIIIth Dynasties. 
 A folk-story preserved in a papyrus (Sallier I) in 
 the British Museum records a curiously obscure 
 interchange of messages between an Egyptian 
 King Seqenenre, ruling at Thebes in Upper 
 Egypt (the modern Luxor), and the Hyksos 
 Apophis, ruling at Avaris in the Delta. The 
 latter makes a complaint against " the pool of the 
 hippopotamus which is in Thebes, for they permit 
 
THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 71 
 
 me no sleep day or night, the noise of them is in 
 my ear." Although the exact nature of the 
 complaint which is expressed in these figurative 
 words is unknown to us, it is clear that we here 
 have the Hyksos king attempting to pick a quarrel 
 with Seqenenre, doubtless with the intention of 
 making it an excuse for the invasion and annex- 
 ation of Upper Egypt. The damaged papyrus 
 only allows us to conjecture that King Seqenenre 
 attempted to extricate himself by offers of 
 increased tribute. But the tables were soon to 
 be turned, and a glimpse of the turning has 
 come down to us in a romantic way. While 
 excavating at Thebes some years ago, Lord 
 Carnarvon discovered a wooden tablet which 
 had served some Egyptian boy as a copy-book. 
 On it is written in ink a copy of part of an inscrip- 
 tion evidently set up in stone in some temple, 
 and now lost to us. Here we find King Karnes, 
 the last king of the XVIIth Dynasty, actually 
 engaged in the task of expelling the Hyksos. 
 " I have gone forth victorious " he says, " to 
 drive back the Asiatics by the command of Amon. 
 I stopped the Asiatics, I freed Egypt. I drove 
 him out, I hacked down his wall, I slew his 
 people, I caused my soldiers to embark like 
 wolves with their prey, with slaves and cattle, 
 
72 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 dividing their property." Here we have clearly 
 the middle stages of the war of expulsion, which 
 had doubtless been begun by Karnes' prede- 
 cessors, the three Seqenenres. The mummy of 
 one of these, perhaps the one mentioned in the 
 hippopotamus story, has actually been found at 
 Thebes, and it is clear from its condition that 
 the king was killed in battle at some distance from 
 Thebes. The skull bears the mark of a heavy 
 blow in front of the left ear ; over the right eye 
 there is a spear wound, and the left side of the 
 skull has been cleft by a mortal blow from a 
 battle axe. 
 
 We should not infer from Karnes' glowing 
 account of his prowess that he put a decisive 
 end to the Hyksos peril, for we find his successor, 
 Aahmes, left with the task of besieging and 
 sacking Avaris, the Hyksos capital in Egypt. 
 This we know from the tomb-biography of a 
 famous Egyptian admiral who bore the same 
 name as the king himself. The Egyptian army 
 was apparently conveyed to the Delta by river, 
 and two actions took place near Avaris, in which 
 our admiral distinguished himself and gained 
 the decoration known as the " gold of valour." 
 "We took Avaris" he proceeds, " and I carried 
 off as captives from thence one man and three 
 
THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 
 
 women, in all four, and his majesty gave them 
 to me for slaves." This surely marks the final 
 sack of Avaris and the expulsion of the Hyksos 
 from Egypt, for the next campaign in which the 
 admiral took part was in Southern Palestine, 
 where the Egyptians captured Sharuhen. So 
 ends, shortly after 1580 B.C., the history of the 
 Hyksos in Egypt. 
 
 Such is the period into which the entry of the 
 Hebrews into Egypt would seem most naturally 
 to fall. It would explain very simply the fact that 
 the newcomers at first met with good treatment 
 at the hands of the " King of Egypt " for, from 
 the point of view of a people dwelling in Goshen, 
 probably a region in the Eastern Delta, the 
 King of Egypt would be the Hyksos King reigning 
 at Avaris, doubtless related by race to the Hebrews 
 themselves, and not the Egyptian king reigning, 
 probably in a half dependent state, at Thebes 
 in Upper Egypt. Should we care to go into 
 details it would further explain the favour with 
 which Joseph was received by the king, and, 
 should we care to assume that the Jacob tribes 
 were not the first of the Asiatics to move into 
 the Delta, the apportioning to them of the land 
 of Goshen would be merely an incident in the 
 allotment of the captured Egyptian Delta to the 
 
74 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 invading tribes as they arrived. If we accept 
 this it is easy to explain the " king who knew not 
 Joseph " as the first, or at any rate as one of the 
 true Egyptian kings who again ruled the Delta 
 after the expulsion of the invaders. In this case 
 we are forced to believe that certain of the 
 invaders had escaped expulsion and were suffered 
 to remain in the Delta, but in a subservient 
 position, and under conditions which became 
 more and more severe as the Egyptians felt 
 themselves more thoroughly masters of the Delta, 
 and more free from the fear of any recurrence 
 of the irruption. This solution is that which 
 has been most generally adopted by scholars, 
 partly, perhaps, because it avoids the rejection of 
 the biblical chronology of 400 years for the 
 sojourn, and partly because on no other hypothesis 
 can the state of things prevailing during the 
 later part of the sojourn be accepted as at all 
 probable. At the same time it is to be noted 
 that some scholars, and in particular Dr. H. R. 
 Hall, are more inclined to believe that the exodus 
 must be considered as an incident in the expulsion 
 of the Hyksos, the supposition that any portion 
 of this people was allowed to live on in the Delta 
 being regarded by them as most improbable. 
 Dr. Hall thus dates the exodus to roughly 
 
THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 75 
 
 1580 b.c, and since he holds that in the Khabiru 
 of the Tell el-Amarna letters (about 1380 B.C.) we 
 are to see the Hebrews under Joshua entering 
 Palestine, he is forced to lengthen the 40 years 
 wandering in the wilderness to 200. From the 
 biblical point of view this involves serious chrono- 
 logical difficulties, and for this and other reasons 
 the view has not been very widely accepted by 
 scholars. 
 
 Although an attempt has been made in this 
 chapter to show that the entry of the Jacob 
 tribes into Egypt might reasonably have fallen 
 into the Hyksos period, which began not earlier 
 than 1780 and ended in about 1580 b.c, it cannot 
 be too strongly asserted that the point is one 
 which cannot be proved. Archaeology is not an 
 exact science, and deals more often in probabili- 
 ties and possibilities than in irrefutable demon- 
 strations. It is therefore by no means surprising 
 to find that some authorities do not accept a 
 Hyksos date for the entry into Egypt. Burney, 
 for instance, points out that the Samaritan 
 transcript of the Bible, as well as the Greek 
 Septuagint, which, be it remembered, is a trans- 
 lation from Hebrew versions many centuries 
 older than the earliest which has survived to our 
 days, gives 430 years for the sojourn in Egypt 
 
76 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 " and in the land of Canaan" that is to say for 
 the whole patriarchal period. On biblical 
 reckoning the period in Canaan adds up to 215 
 years, and thus the same period, namely 215 years, 
 is left for the sojourn in Egypt. Now Burney 
 accepts the very widely held belief, which we 
 shall discuss later (pp. 105 ff.) that the exodus took 
 place under King Merenptah of the XlXth 
 Dynasty, about 1225-1215 B.C., and by adding 
 215 years to this he obtains for the rough date 
 of the entry the year 1435 B.C., a year which falls 
 within the reign of King Amenhotp II of 
 the XVIIIth Dynasty, the very reign to which, 
 as will be seen later, some writers would assign 
 the exodus. From the Egyptian point of view 
 there is nothing intrinsically impossible about this 
 view. It is not impossible that a small Asiatic 
 tribe should have been allowed by the Egyptians 
 to settle in the land of Goshen in the reign of 
 Amenhotp II, as we know from the passage from 
 Papyrus Anastasi VI quoted above (p. 65). 
 On the other hand it should be clearly understood 
 that Burney's view involves throwing over the 
 430 years given by the Hebrew text of the Bible 
 for the sojourn, as well as the identification of 
 the Khabiru of the Tell el-Amarna letters with 
 the Hebrews under Joshua. He may be justified 
 
THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 
 
 in both cases (see below pp. 120-123). Whatever 
 view we adopt, the Hebrew chronology offers 
 difficulties, and the identification of Khabiru 
 with Hebrews is not certain, though probable. 
 However this may be, the present writer is 
 inclined to think that a more consistent and 
 intelligible account of the sojourn is to be had 
 by placing the entry, as suggested earlier in this 
 chapter, in the Hyksos period. 
 
 The geography of the sojourn. 
 
 There is nothing which lends at first sight a 
 more lively or convincing colour to the Bible 
 narrative of the sojourn in Egypt than its confident 
 use of geographical names. To the uncritical 
 mind a story which has a merely indefinite local 
 background is naturally far less likely to appeal 
 as accurate than one which names the places in 
 which its events took place. Moreover, when, 
 towards the close of the last century, excavators 
 in the Eastern Delta began to announce the 
 identification of the sites of Raamses, Pithom 
 and Succoth, and the discovery of the exact 
 route of the exodus, the matter seemed settled 
 once for all, and archaeology appeared to have 
 
78 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 vindicated the geographical accuracy of the 
 scriptural narrative. 
 
 And yet the matter is not quite so simple. 
 It was observed that the town of Raamses, 
 clearly named after one of the Pharaohs of that 
 name, necessitated a Ramesside date for the 
 exodus, a date which, although popularly 
 accepted, clashed with the evidence of the 
 Merenptah Victory Stela (see p. 109). It was 
 further observed that Jacob, on his first entry 
 into Egypt, was placed by Joseph " in the land 
 of Rameses," a fact which would date the descent 
 into Egypt to Ramesside times, a dating which 
 few were prepared to accept. Moreover, quite 
 lately it has been shown, mainly from more 
 accurate examination of the Egyptian documents, 
 that not all the early identifications of explorers 
 can be accepted. It becomes therefore, neces- 
 sary to examine the geography of the sojourn, 
 and to ask firstly whether it is consistent with 
 itself and with what we know of Egyptian 
 geography, and secondly whether the names are 
 contemporary with the events related and not 
 a colouring added at a later date. 
 
 The first place-name which calls for attention 
 is the Land of Goshen. The conception of this 
 district existing in the mind of the compiler of the 
 
THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 
 
 biblical story is fortunately perfectly clear. It 
 is a region on the borders of Egypt, containing 
 good pasturage, but not occupied by the Egyptians 
 themselves (see especially Gen. 46.34, Ex. 8.22, 
 9.26). It is tempting to identify this land with 
 the Wadi Tumilat, the long shallow valley about 
 thirty miles in length, bordered by desert on 
 either hand and joining Egypt proper to the Suez 
 Canal region (Map 2). In Egyptian times, exactly 
 how early is uncertain, there existed in this valley 
 a canal which joined the Nile to the Red Sea, and 
 the modern railroad follows the same course. 
 The Septuagint translators certainly identified 
 this district with the land of Goshen, for the 
 Greek version of Gen. 46.28-29 runs : " And 
 he (Jacob) sent Judah before them to Joseph to 
 meet him at Heroonpolis," where the Hebrew 
 version gives the place of meeting as " the Land 
 of Goshen." Heroonpolis we know to have lain 
 in the Wadi Tumilat, and there can therefore 
 be no doubt as to what was in the mind of the 
 Greek translator. At the same time we should be 
 wrong in assuming that he has correctly repro- 
 duced the geographical belief of the Hebrew 
 compiler of the narrative. It is far from unlikely 
 that the Greek translator, like many of the 
 modern critics, has been misled by the fact that 
 
8o EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 Pithom, one of the store-cities which the Israelites 
 built, lay in the Wadi Tumilat, into the belief 
 that this valley was identical with Goshen. 
 As against this there is a passage in Judith (1.7-10) 
 in which Goshen clearly stands for the whole of 
 the Eastern Delta, if not for the Delta in general. 
 " And Nebuchadnezzar . . . sent unto all that 
 dwelt in Persia, . . . and to all that were in 
 Samaria and the cities thereof, and beyond Jordan 
 unto Jerusalem, and Betane, and Chellus, and 
 Kadesh, and the river of Egypt, and Tahpanes 
 (Daphnae), and Rameses, and all the land of 
 Goshen, until thou comest above Tanis and 
 Memphis, and to all that dwelt in Egypt, until 
 thou comest to the borders of Ethiopia." Here 
 the point of view is that of one moving from 
 Assyria through Syria down into the Eastern 
 Delta of Egypt and on up the Nile. Clearly 
 Egypt stands for what we now call Upper Egypt, 
 above Memphis (near the modern Cairo), while 
 Goshen stands for a considerable part at least of 
 the Delta. Under these circumstances it would 
 be well not to accept as final the view of the 
 Septuagint, but to suppose that Goshen, though it 
 doubtless included the Wadi Tumilat, may in the 
 mind of the Hebrew geographer have also had a 
 wider interpretation. 
 
THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 81 
 
 Unfortunately the whole question has been 
 sadly obscured by an incorrect identification 
 made many years ago by a prominent hiero- 
 glyphic scholar, Heinrich Brugsch. He originated 
 the belief that Goshen was the same as Gsm (the 
 vowels are unknown) which was supposed to be 
 the name of a well-known ancient Egyptian town 
 also called Pi-Sopd, the capital of the XXth nome 
 of the Delta, which stood on the site of the 
 modern village of Saft el-Henneh (Map 2). 
 Despite the fact that Goshen is clearly a district and 
 not a town, the equation seems to have been widely 
 accepted almost without question, and it remained 
 for Gardiner in 191 8 to point out how utterly 
 fallacious it really was. He showed that the 
 initial consonant given by Brugsch as G should 
 almost certainly be Sh, and clinched his argument 
 by showing that there was very good reason why 
 the town of Pi-Sopd, " House of the god Sopd," 
 should also be called Shsm. In view of this 
 argument and of others far too technical to be 
 introduced here we must follow Gardiner in 
 giving up the identification of Goshen with the 
 town site of Saft el-Henneh, and accepting the 
 much more natural and simple view that Goshen 
 is a region in the Eastern Delta which includes the 
 Wadi Tumilat, with the understanding that we 
 
 F 
 
82 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 have now no Egyptian authority for the name, 
 and that it rests solely on the scriptural evidence. 
 This conclusion appears all the more probable in 
 view of a passage in the papyrus known as 
 Anastasi VI, where a frontier official writes : 
 " We have finished causing the Bedawi tribes of 
 Edom to pass the fortress of Merenptah belonging 
 to Theku towards the pools of Pithom (of) 
 Merenptah belonging to Theku, in order to feed 
 themselves and to feed their flocks." Though the 
 event recorded here took place no earlier than the 
 XlXth Dynasty it affords evidence that the 
 Wadi Tumilat was a district into which foreign 
 shepherds and their flocks were sometimes 
 admitted. 
 
 The next geographical name to be dealt with is 
 Raamses or Rameses. In the Hebrew version 
 this name first occurs in Gen. 47.11, where 
 Joseph places his father and brethren " in the 
 land of Egypt, in the best of the land, in the land 
 of Rameses, as Pharaoh had commanded." There 
 is clearly a difficulty here, for a town or land called 
 Rameses must have been named after one of the 
 various Ramesses of the XlXth and XXth 
 Dynasties, a period far too late, on any generally 
 accepted theory, for the entry of Jacob into Egypt. 
 The mention of the land of Rameses is here 
 
THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 83 
 
 therefore either an error or at the best an anach- 
 ronism, and we may pass it over, merely remarking 
 that the Greek version of Gen. 46.28-29 also 
 mentions Rameses as the land in which Judah was 
 sent by Jacob to meet Joseph at the city of 
 Heroonpolis (see above). 
 
 In Ex. 1 2. 1 1 we read " They built for Pharaoh 
 store cities, Pithom and Raamses," and in 
 Ex. 12.37, " The children of Israel journeyed from 
 Rameses to Succoth." Rameses then is definitely 
 a town, a " store-city " as the Hebrew has it, 
 or a " strong city " as the more colourless Greek 
 translation prefers + It may be suggested that 
 there is no need to discuss the position of Rameses, 
 for Petrie has actually found it at the modern 
 village of Tell er-Retabeh in the Wadi Tumilat, 
 precisely where we should have expected it (Map 
 2). Now exactly what Petrie did find at Tell 
 er-Retabeh is as follows : some small objects from 
 burials of about the IXth Egyptian Dynasty, a 
 temple wall bearing in relief a scene in which 
 Ramesses II slaughters prisoners before the god 
 " Turn, Lord of Theku," a stela of the same king 
 recording defeats inflicted on the Bedawin, a double 
 statue of Ramesses II and the god Turn, and some 
 foundation deposits of Ramesses III. There is in 
 all this not a particle of evidence for identifying 
 
84 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 this site with the biblical Raamses, and the 
 ancient name of the place was not recovered. 1 
 Moreover, the biblical story does not make it at 
 all certain that Raamses lay in the Land of Goshen, 
 for, as several critics have pointed out, there is 
 a curious geographical confusion underlying the 
 early chapters of Exodus. At one moment the 
 Israelites are conceived as living aloof from the 
 Egyptians in the Land of Goshen, while at another 
 they are clearly represented as in the midst of 
 them. Thus the swarms of flies and the plague 
 of hail did not visit the Land of Goshen " where 
 the children of Israel were," but at the same time 
 Moses could " rise up in the morning and stand 
 before Pharaoh " ; his cradle too, deposited in the 
 river, was found by Pharaoh's daughter, and the 
 Hebrew women were instructed each woman to 
 <c ask of her neighbour, and of her that sojourneth 
 in her house, jewels of silver, and jewels of gold 
 and raiment " ; above all, if the two races were 
 separated, why the need to mark the Hebrew 
 lintels and side-posts with blood that the Lord 
 
 i The excavator's claim that " this was a store-city of Ramessu II " 
 is without foundation. In an inscription found on the site is mentioned 
 an official among whose titles is one which the excavator mis-translates 
 " overseer of the granaries." In reality the title is the common " overseer 
 of the foreign lands." This kind of " reasoning," like that by which the 
 discoverer of Pithom sought to show that the place was a " store city," 
 is typical of the way in which the facts of archaeology are twisted and 
 distorted in the service, so-called, of biblical study. 
 
THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 85 
 
 might " pass over the door." We see then that 
 we cannot without further enquiry assume the 
 town of Raamses to have been in the Wadi 
 Tumilat, even if this last constituted the whole of 
 the Land of Goshen. Nor does the occurrence of 
 the name in Ex. 12.11, along with that of Pithom, 
 which, as will be seen shortly, certainly is in the 
 Wadi Tumilat, lend any support to the idea, for 
 the passage contains not the slightest hint that the 
 two places were near to one another. 
 
 Now Gardiner has exhaustively examined the 
 Egyptian papyri and inscriptions in search of 
 towns in the Delta named after one or other of the 
 kings called Ramesses, and he finds only one with 
 which the Raamses-Rameses of the Bible can 
 conceivably be identical, and that is the town of 
 Pi-Ramessu, " House of Ramesses II," the Delta 
 capital of the XlXth Dynasty, which occupied the 
 site of the later Pelusium, the Avaris of the Hyksos. 
 In his own words " either Raamses-Rameses of 
 the Bible is the residence-city of the Ramessides 
 near Pelusium, or else it is a town unknown to 
 the Egyptian monuments, the existence of 
 which is merely postulated." If we accept his 
 identification the narrative becomes much more 
 understandable. It is clear from Ex. 12.37 anc ^ 
 Num. 33.3-6 that it was at Rameses that Moses 
 
86 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 stood before Pharaoh, and from Rameses that the 
 exodus began. It is hardly likely that Pharaoh 
 would be in residence at some petty town in the 
 Wadi Tumilat, which was, as we have seen, 
 semi-foreign ground, and it is perhaps no mere 
 coincidence that the Targum of Palestine in all 
 the three passages where Raamses-Rameses is 
 mentioned replaces it by Pelusin (Pelusium). 
 
 Perhaps the Psalmist was not so far from the 
 truth when he spoke of the wonders which God 
 performed " in the land of Egypt, in the field of 
 Zoan," for Zoan is certainly Tanis, 1 and points 
 to the north-east of the Delta rather than the 
 Wadi Tumilat as the scene of Moses' activities. 
 
 Great was the satisfaction of biblical archaeo- 
 logists when, in 1883, Naville, excavating at a 
 modern village called Tell el-Maskhuteh (Map 2), 
 discovered evidence which seemed to prove that the 
 ancient name of that site was Pithom 2 or Pi-Tum, 
 " House of the god Turn." From that day the 
 
 1 The Field of Zoan was the current Egyptian name for a district 
 somewhere in the North-east Delta. 
 
 2 Naville's description of the ruins as those of a " store-city," enthusi- 
 astically received and repeated by many biblical archaeologists, is incorrect. 
 The " store-chambers " which he unearthed, and which he assumed, on 
 no evidence whatever, to extend " over the greater part of the space sur- 
 rounded by the enclosure," are probably nothing more than the foundation- 
 walls of a fortress, precisely similar to those found at Naukratis and Daphnae. 
 These late Egyptian fortresses were built up on massive brick platforms 
 containing hollow compartments. No one who examines Naville's plan can 
 remain in doubt as to the real nature of what he found. Observe, too, 
 that he discovered no evidence of the Ramesside date of this structure. 
 
THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 
 
 proposed identification has remained unquestione 
 and once again it remained for Gardiner, in 191 8, 
 to show that the evidence is by no means so 
 conclusive as had been imagined. Let it be noted 
 in the first place that the Bible story gives no 
 more evidence for placing Pithom in the Wadi 
 Tumilat than it does for Raamses, though it is 
 clear from a rather difficult passage in the Greek 
 historian Herodotus that Pithom lay somewhere 
 on the canal which led from the Nile to the Red 
 Sea through the Wadi Tumilat. It is further 
 clear on both traditional and linguistic grounds 
 that Pithom is the city known to the Greeks as 
 Heroonpolis, the correct original name for which 
 was probably Heropolis, " City of Hero," a rather 
 obscure god who had a temple at Magdola. 
 Now Naville's evidence for the identification of 
 Pithom-Heropolis with Tell el-Maskhuteh lies in 
 the fact that he found there Egyptian inscriptions 
 mentioning Pi-Tum, and two Latin ones men- 
 tioning Hero or Ero. Despite this, Gardiner is 
 inclined to deny the identification, and to place 
 Pithom at Tell er-Retabeh, eight and a half miles 
 further west, the very site wrongly identified by 
 Petrie with Raamses-Rameses. He points out 
 that the name Pithom is found on only two 
 hieroglyphic inscriptions at Tell el-Maskhuteh, 
 
EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 while the name most frequently found there is 
 Theku ; that Tell er-Retabeh, being a city in which 
 Turn was worshipped, might equally well be 
 regarded as Pi-Tum, " House of Turn " ; that 
 the massive walls of Tell el-Maskhuteh suggest 
 very strongly the " fortress of Merenptah of 
 Theku " mentioned in the passage from the 
 papyrus Anastasi VI quoted above (p. 65), from 
 which it is clear that Pithom lay west of Theku ; 
 and finally he shows that one of the two Roman 
 inscriptions, so far from proving that the place is 
 Hero or Ero rather shows that Ero lay nine 
 Roman miles further east. Altogether he has 
 made out a very strong case for the belief that 
 Pithom is to be looked for not at Tell el-Maskhuteh 
 but at Tell er-Retabeh. 
 
 The case of Succoth is fortunately much simpler. 
 It was Brugsch who, many years ago, first proposed 
 the identification with the place known from 
 Egyptian inscriptions as tkzv (the vowels being 
 unknown). The identification is not perfect, for 
 though the t and k of the Egyptian will correspond 
 perfectly with the Hebrew consonants which we 
 render s and c, the w of the Egyptian cannot be 
 rendered by th in Hebrew. We might, however, 
 suppose that, w being the plural ending in 
 Egyptian, the Hebrew authors took the word 
 
THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 89 
 
 for a plural and so rendered it by their own 
 plural ending otk, thus obtaining a good Hebrew 
 word Succoth, which means " booths," an 
 instance of a phenomenon common in philology 
 and known as " popular etymology." It would 
 be foolish to pretend that this solution, though 
 possible, is satisfactory. Had it not been for the 
 existence in the minds of so many scholars of a 
 preconceived notion that the Israelites left Egypt 
 by the Wadi Tumilat it would probably never 
 have commanded acceptance. It will shortly 
 be seen that there is no evidence in the Bible 
 narrative for believing that this was the route 
 followed, and the identification of Succoth with 
 Theku may therefore be regarded as very 
 improbable. No other identification has up to 
 the present been suggested. 
 
 The outcome of our enquiry into the geography 
 of the entry into Egypt and the oppression may 
 be briefly summed up as follows. The name 
 Goshen is unknown from Egyptian inscriptions ; 
 at the same time there is a district on the borders 
 of Egypt, the Wadi Tumilat, which would answer 
 very well to the description of the land of Goshen, 
 and which undoubtedly formed a part if not the 
 whole of that land. There is probably no city 
 called after Ramesses in this district, but, as it is 
 
9 o EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 clear from the biblical story that the Israelites 
 were not imagined as at all times confined to 
 the part, we may with considerable confidence 
 identify this town with Pi-Ramessu, the later 
 Pelusium, the residence of the Pharaohs under 
 the XlXth Dynasty. A town called Pithom or 
 Pi-Tum existed in Ramesside times in the Wadi 
 Tumilat, and is to be identified in all probability 
 with the modern Tell er-Retabeh. Succoth is 
 hardly likely to be identical with the Egyptian 
 district of Theku. 
 
 The date at which the narrative was invested 
 with this geographical colouring is manifestly not 
 earlier than the XlXth Dynasty, from the 
 occurrence of the town-name Rameses. This, 
 however, need not for a moment prejudice the 
 belief in a much earlier date for the actual 
 sojourn. Of the geography as we have it there 
 are two possible explanations. If tradition had 
 preserved any geographical names from the time 
 of the actual event the compilers would naturally 
 replace these by their modern equivalents in 
 cases where a change of name had taken place, as, 
 for example, Pi-Ramessu (Rameses) for Avaris. 
 If, on the other hand, tradition had preserved 
 no geography of the sojourn at all, it is by no 
 means unlikely that an editor would, in order to 
 
THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 
 
 increase the brightness and verisimilitude of his 
 narrative, introduce what appeared to him 
 suitable place-names from his own knowledge of 
 Egyptian geography, doubtless confined to a few 
 place-names in the Northern and Eastern Delta. 
 Between these two possibilities we have no means 
 whatsoever of deciding and we shall be wise not 
 to try. 
 
 The local colour of the sojourn. 
 
 Next to the use of place-names, nothing has 
 done more to give the narrative of the sojourn an 
 air of accuracy than the abundant Egyptian local 
 colour with which it is invested. Again and again 
 this has been appealed to in proof of the historicity 
 of the story, and so long as our knowledge of the 
 history and customs of the Egyptians was in its 
 infancy the appeal was a strong one. As, however, 
 excavation in Egypt and advancing knowledge of 
 the language began to enlarge our grasp of 
 Egyptian history, it became more and more clear 
 that the compiler of the narrative of the sojourn 
 knew less than had been imagined of the Egypt of 
 the period into which the sojourn, both according 
 to biblical chronology and external probability, 
 
92 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 must have fallen. We have already seen that the 
 geographical names of the sojourn, in part at 
 least, cannot be earlier than the XlXth Dynasty, 
 and we shall shortly find that the Egyptian names 
 of persons mentioned in the narrative can hardly 
 be earlier than the XXIst Dynasty. 
 
 For the moment it is necessary to deal with 
 some of the more general aspects of the Egyptian 
 colouring. Here it is easy to show, for example, 
 that dreams were indeed regarded with super- 
 stitious attention in Egypt, that when Potiphar 
 made Joseph " overseer over his house " he was 
 entrusting to him an office which did in fact exist 
 in the houses of the great Egyptian nobles, the 
 office of imi r pr ; that the titles " chief of the 
 butlers 99 and " chief of the bakers " actually 
 occur in Egyptian inscriptions ; that Pharaoh's 
 birthday was indeed an occasion for feasting, and 
 possibly even for release of prisoners ; that 
 " magicians " really existed in Egypt ; that 
 famines did occur there ; that the signet-ring, the 
 " vestures of fine linen " and the " gold chain 
 about his neck " with which Pharaoh invested 
 Joseph were fitting gifts from an Egyptian king to 
 one whom he was in effect making his viceroy ; 
 that the period of Joseph's life, no years, is the 
 traditional length for a happy life in the Egyptian 
 
THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 
 
 papyri and stelae ; that the mummification of 
 both Jacob and Joseph was in accordance with 
 Egyptian custom ; that the biblical statement 
 " every shepherd is an abomination to the 
 Egyptians " is borne out, to some extent at least, 
 by the Egyptian evidence. It has been pointed 
 out, too, that the ten plagues are based on various 
 natural scourges known in Egypt to this day, 
 which perhaps occurred with particular severity 
 about the time of the oppression, but which 
 Moses ingeniously represented to Pharaoh as due 
 to the wrath of the god of the Hebrews, and 
 which later Hebrew tradition magnified until they 
 reached miraculous proportions. It is easy to 
 show all this, and more of a similar nature. And 
 yet the main fact which strikes the Egyptologist is 
 that there is nothing whatsoever in it which 
 suggests the Hyksos period, or indeed any parti- 
 cular period at all. It is all the sort of vague 
 general knowledge which any ancient tourist 
 spending a few weeks in Egypt at almost any date 
 after about 1600 b.c. might have acquired from 
 hs dragoman. The references to chariots do 
 indeed indicate that the writer is describing a state 
 of things not earlier than Hyksos date, when 
 the horse was first introduced into Egypt. But 
 this is the only indication of time. 
 
94 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 Under these circumstances, and in view of the 
 late date of the proper names both geographical 
 and personal, it is clear that, supposing a sojourn 
 connected with the Hyksos movement, the local 
 colouring must be subsequent to the events, which 
 is merely in keeping with what we know of the 
 composition of the Pentateuch. Instead of facing 
 this, however, some writers have insisted on trying 
 to show that some of this local colour is peculiarly 
 applicable to Hyksos times or shortly later. Thus 
 we find attempts to show that a famine did 
 actually occur in Egypt about this period. In 
 order to prove this, for instance, some writers 
 quote a tomb-inscription at El Kab of one 
 Beby, who, they state, was an official under 
 Seqenenre III of the XVIIth Dynasty, and 
 hence a contemporary of Joseph. This inscrip- 
 tion contains the words " When a famine occurred 
 for many years I gave corn to my city in each 
 shortage." In the first place, the inscription is 
 undated, and, though it would appear from its 
 style to be earlier than the XVIIIth Dynasty, it 
 cannot be fixed to any one reign or even to any one 
 dynasty. 1 In the second place, there is no 
 
 i The dating to the reign of Seqenenre III is presumably arrived at 
 by the totally unjustified assumption that this man Beby was the same as 
 Baba, the father of the famous admiral Aahmes, who took part in the expulsion 
 of the Hyksos under Aahmes I, the first king of fhe XVIIIth Dynasty. The 
 admiral states that his father, Baba, served as a soldier under Seqerenre. 
 
THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 95 
 
 evidence that famines were infrequent in Egypt ; 
 indeed, it is on the contrary quite remarkable how 
 often they are mentioned on the grave stelae of 
 the nobles. Thus Mentuhotp, the son of Hapi, 
 says : " When there came a low Nile in Year 25 
 I suffered not my nome to hunger. I gave her 
 Upper Egyptian corn and spelt ; I allowed no 
 want to occur therein until high Niles came." 
 Similar cases could be quoted from various 
 periods, with such comparative frequency as to 
 make it manifest that any attempt to identify 
 some one particular famine with that mentioned 
 by Genesis is the merest waste of time. All that 
 can be argued from the inscriptions is that 
 famines did occur in Egypt, a fact which we could 
 well have inferred from mediaeval and even 
 modern parallels without the need of a voice 
 from the dead. 
 
 Further proof of the Hyksos date of the 
 narrative is often said to lie in the fact that 
 " Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh : 
 for the Egyptians sold every man his field . . . and 
 the land became Pharaoh's." Now under the 
 Middle Kingdom the land system of Egypt had 
 been a feudal one, the great nobles forming a 
 powerful aristocracy owning most of the land, and 
 threatening the power of the crown. Under the 
 
96 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 XVIIIth Dynasty this system has totally changed ; 
 these great feudal land-holders have disappeared, 
 and the land is vested in the king. The explana- 
 tion suggested for this change is that it was due to 
 Joseph's shrewd policy in buying up the land for 
 Pharaoh in the time of the seven years' famine. 
 Now quite apart from the high improbability of 
 this story, both as a whole and in detail, the real 
 explanation of the great change in the land 
 system which took place in Egypt between the 
 Xllth and XVIIIth Dynasties is perfectly well 
 known to us. The invasion of the Hyksos 
 destroyed all rights of property in Egypt, and, as 
 there were no Egyptian owners, the kings who 
 expelled the Hyksos naturally took over the whole 
 of the land and disposed of it by gift or lease to 
 whomsoever they thought fit. This is the true 
 and obvious explanation of the change which took 
 place in Egypt at this time. In fact, the story of 
 Joseph's buying up the land is one of those stories 
 which tradition so frequently invents to account 
 for existing customs. The custom in question is 
 a system of land tenure by which the Pharaoh 
 owned all the land except that held by the 
 priests, and let it out at a rental of 20 per cent, in 
 kind. Unfortunately we cannot fix the date or 
 even the existence of such a system from our 
 
THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 97 
 
 Egyptian evidence. The Greek historians 
 Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus speak of the land 
 as belonging to the king, the priests and the 
 warriors. Their evidence dates of course not 
 earlier than the fifth century b.c, and how far 
 back this system was in vogue it is quite impossible 
 to say. The priests practically throughout 
 Egyptian history held a share in the lands which 
 were the property of the temples in which they 
 served, and in this sense were landowners indepen- 
 dent of the king. Gifts of lands to warriors may 
 be traced as far back as the foundation of the 
 XVIIIth Dynasty, though it is more probably to 
 the assignment of lands to mercenaries in much 
 later times that the Greek historians are referring. 
 In short, we cannot state that the system of land 
 tenure described in Genesis 47 is more typical of 
 any one Egyptian period than of any other, at any 
 rate after the Middle Kingdom (Xllth Dynasty), 
 and we are therefore not at liberty to appeal to 
 this system as a proof that the detail of Joseph's 
 life is to be dated back to the Hyksos period. 
 
 There is indeed a very serious difficulty involved 
 in any such attempt. This lies in the fact that 
 Pharaoh marries Joseph to Asenath, daughter of 
 Poti-pherah, priest of On. Now On is the town of 
 Heliopolis in the Delta, and was the centre of the 
 
 G 
 
98 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 Egyptian worship of Ra the Sun-god. The very 
 name of the priest Poti-pherah means " He whom 
 Ra has given." The Hyksos, who certainly 
 occupied the whole of the Delta and even a 
 considerable portion of Upper Egypt, were 
 worshippers of Set and, as we have seen (p. 70), 
 were especially hateful to the Egyptians because 
 " they ruled in ignorance of Ra." If we suppose 
 with most commentators that Joseph was a 
 Semite who rose to favour under a Hyksos 
 (Semitic) king, and that the oppression only began 
 after the expulsion of the Hyksos, when the 
 Egyptian kings of the XVIIIth Dynasty recon- 
 quered the Delta, we must admit that the Hyksos 
 king not only allowed the worship of Ra to 
 continue at Heliopolis, but even encouraged his 
 favourite Joseph to marry the daughter of Ra's 
 priest. All that we know of the Hyksos occupa- 
 tion of Egypt from the Egyptian side makes such 
 an admission very difficult, 1 and it is almost 
 beyond doubt that the story of this marriage, like 
 the names of the priest and his daughter, cannot 
 date from Hyksos times, but is a later colouring. 
 
 Before leaving this subject it is perhaps 
 necessary to dispel the error which is still per- 
 
 1 The fact that certain Hyksos kings adopted Egyptian names com- 
 pounded with Ra, does not necessarily point to a toleration of his worship. 
 
THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 
 
 petuated in popular books with regard to the use 
 of straw in brick-making. It is probably based 
 on a statement of Mr. Villiers Stuart, who visited 
 the site of Pithom during the excavations of 1883. 
 He says : " I carefully examined round the 
 chamber walls, and I noticed that some of the 
 corners of the brickwork throughout were built 
 of bricks without straw. I do not remember to 
 have met anywhere in Egypt bricks so made." 
 The implication obviously intended is that here 
 we have a proof of the accuracy of the Bible 
 narrative, for here in the walls of Pithom, a store- 
 city built by the Hebrew bondmen, are the very 
 bricks which they were forced to make without 
 straw. It is almost inconceivable that any 
 traveller in Egypt should make this statement 
 with regard to the use of straw in bricks, for 
 though straw has been used both in ancient and 
 modern times, its use is somewhat rare, more 
 particularly in ancient times. What is more, 
 the writer of this passage in the narrative is 
 certainly under some strange delusion as to the 
 function of the straw when used. Its purpose is 
 to bind the mud more tightly together, though 
 as a matter of fact the Nile mud coheres so well of 
 itself that no binding material is really necessary. 
 Consequently the refusal of the task-masters to 
 
ioo EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 provide the Israelites with straw would not in the 
 slightest degree increase the difficulty of their 
 labours. As a piece of local colour the whole 
 incident is unsatisfactory, and goes to prove the 
 writer's ignorance of Egyptian customs rather 
 than his close acquaintance with them, as is so 
 often averred. 1 
 
 The personal names of the sojourn. 
 
 For many years biblical students insisted on 
 believing that the names Potiphar, Poti-pherah, 
 Asenath and Zaphenathpaneah were good 
 Egyptian names of the Hyksos period or there- 
 abouts, and it is only quite lately that the efforts 
 of Egyptian philologists have really succeeded in 
 dispelling this illusion, which, indeed, still lingers 
 on in the minds of the uncritical. Potiphar and 
 Potipherah are two spellings of a common 
 Egyptian name which means " He whom Ra has 
 given." Names of the type " He whom such and 
 such a god has given " are unknown in Egypt 
 before the XXIst Dynasty, and do not become at 
 
 i The ingenious suggestion of one writer that the chopped straw was 
 used to spread on the hands and floor and moulds, in order to prevent the 
 wet bricks from sticking and thus delaying the worker, is not supported by- 
 modern or, as far as we know, by ancient usage in Egypt. Chopped straw 
 is, however, used for a similar purpose by the modern potters. 
 
THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 101 
 
 all frequent before the XXI Ind, roughly the ninth 
 and eighth centuries B.C. Naville, anxious to 
 escape the consequences involved by the late date 
 of such names in Egypt, interprets Potiphar and 
 Potipherah as being separate names derived from 
 the Egyptian p-hotep-har " the gift or offering 
 of Horus," and p-hotep-re "the gift or offering 
 of Ra" respectively. Quite apart from various 
 grammatical difficulties involved this explanation 
 is ruled out by the absence of the h of hotep in 
 the Hebrew equivalents, and by the fact that 
 names of this type are totally unknown in Egypt, 
 the word hotep never bearing the meaning of 
 " gift " in the sense in which a child could be 
 said to be (and therefore named) " The gift of Ra." 
 Asenath is an Egyptian name meaning " Belonging 
 to the goddess Neit." Names of this type are 
 not absolutely wanting in the earlier periods, 
 but they are extremely rare, and it is only in the 
 XXIst Dynasty that they begin to be common. 
 Zaphenathpaneah has been explained with a 
 very high degree of probability as an attempt 
 to render in Hebrew an Egyptian name meaning 
 " The god spoke and he (the child) lived." 
 This is the only interpretation of the name 
 which is free from objections, either phonetic or 
 grammatical, and the correspondence between 
 
102 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 Egyptian and Hebrew is so striking that there is 
 hardly room for doubt. Names of this type are 
 absent in Egypt until the end of the XXth 
 Dynasty and do not become usual until the 
 XXIInd. Some object to this explanation on 
 the ground that what the sense here requires is 
 not an ordinary proper name, but some specially 
 honorific title conferred on Joseph for his services. 
 To these it may be replied that this inconsistency, 
 instead of being used to discredit the explanation 
 of the name here offered, can just as well be 
 used as evidence for the inaccurate nature of the 
 Egyptian colouring supplied to the narrative 
 by the compilers of the ninth and eighth 
 centuries b.c. 1 
 
 Thus the three Egyptian proper names of 
 persons in the Joseph narrative are all seen to be 
 of types frequent in the XXIInd Dynasty, but 
 very rare or even wanting in earlier periods. 
 The conclusion cannot be avoided that the 
 colouring which gave these names to the narrative 
 
 i Naville's very attractive suggestion that the word means " Head of 
 the per ankh " or " College of Learning " is ruled out by the fact that, on 
 his hypothesis, the th in the Hebrew rendering would require the first word 
 to be feminine. This word, therefore, cannot be the masculine tsw ** a 
 commander " or " leader " but only tst " a body of men " (especially 
 soldiers). In the example which he quotes from Bubastis to prove that the 
 feminine tst can be used for the masculine tsw in the sense of " head " or 
 " leader " Naville has failed to observe that the phrase tst nt pr <n(> refers 
 not to one person but to a group of persons, so that tst here means not the 
 " head " but the " staff " or " personnel." 
 
THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 103 
 
 is not earlier than the ninth century B.C., that 
 is to say about the time of the writing of docu- 
 ments J and E. It would be difficult to say 
 whether the whole of the local colour is to be 
 attributed to one period. The general atmos- 
 phere we have already seen to be so vague that 
 we cannot refer it to its place in Egyptian history, 
 while the geographical detail is clearly not earlier 
 than Ramesside times (XlXth to XXth Dynasty). 
 
 The Egyptian words actually used in the 
 Hebrew of the Joseph story give us no help what- 
 ever. In the first place they are all words which 
 were commonly used in Hebrew, and which 
 occur in other passages of the Old Testament ; 
 and in the second place they are all words which 
 had a very long life in Egyptian and can be taken 
 to point to no one period more than any other. 
 They are four in number ; Pharaoh, literally 
 " The Great House," commonly used as an 
 official designation of the King from the XVIIIth 
 Dynasty onward ; ye' or, the usual Hebrew name 
 for the Nile, meaning in Egyptian " a stream " ; 
 ahii, meaning " reed-grass," and shesh, meaning 
 " fine linen." 
 
 To these is possibly to be added the abrech of 
 Genesis 41.43 (A.V. marginal rendering). Of the 
 
io 4 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 various theories advanced as to the origin of this 
 word the most attractive is that which sees in it 
 the Semitic word to " bow the knee." On the 
 other hand, Spiegelberg's suggestion that it is the 
 Egyptian expression tb rk used in the sense of 
 " Look out " merits serious consideration, though 
 the examples he quotes cannot quite be said to 
 establish the use of the phrase in precisely the 
 sense here needed. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE EXODUS 
 
 Date of the exodus 
 
 A historian who proposed to discuss the date 
 and geography of the siege of Troy would begin 
 by satisfying himself that such an event actually 
 occurred, and by striving to ascertain its true 
 nature. In the same way, it is useless to try to fix 
 the date and the route of the exodus unless we have 
 first satisfied ourselves that it really happened, and 
 then made every effort to discover its nature and 
 the scale on which it occurred. Thus, for instance, 
 if the exodus consisted or appeared to consist of 
 the departure from Egypt of some 70 souls, the 
 same number as those who originally entered 
 Egypt, living apart in a remote corner of the 
 Eastern Delta, it would be almost useless to look 
 for any record of such a pigmy movement in the 
 Egyptian sources ; whereas, if the numbers of the 
 emigrants were nearly 2,000,000, which is a 
 legitimate deduction from Exodus 12.37, tne 
 movement was one which would have shaken 
 
 105 
 
io6 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 Egypt to its very foundation, and which, even if it 
 had failed to be recorded in one of the numerous 
 monuments which have survived in Egypt, would 
 at any rate have left some unmistakable impression 
 on Egyptian history. 
 
 That an exodus occurred need not for a moment 
 be doubted. It has already been pointed out 
 that the whole incident of the sojourn in Egypt is 
 bound up so closely with the revelation of Jehovah 
 that it is hardly likely to be a pure invention. 
 If, then, some of the ancestors of the later 
 Israelites were once in Egypt they must at some 
 moment have come out of it, and therefore there 
 must have been an exodus. 
 
 But when we come to the nature and scale of 
 the movement, difficulties beset us on every side. 
 The biblical account as we have it dates from long 
 after the event, and is clearly heavily biassed on the 
 Hebrew side. The point of view of the later 
 Israelites was that Yahweh had brought them out 
 of Egypt " with an high hand," and the account 
 was written with the express object of illustrating 
 this. We must therefore be prepared to reject as 
 later embellishment much of the story as it 
 appears in the Book of the Exodus, and to imagine 
 the actual event as of a much more humble nature. 
 As for the numbers of the Israelites we cannot for 
 
THE EXODUS 107 
 
 a moment entertain a belief in the two millions 1 
 suggested by Ex. 12.37. It is incredible that 
 this vast people could have maintained themselves 
 in the desert between Egypt and Canaan for the 
 forty years demanded by tradition, and extremely 
 doubtful, in the light of modern experience, 
 whether they could even have made the direct 
 march from Egypt to Kadesh. 
 
 The exodus when reduced to its proper pro- 
 portions becomes an event which may well have 
 left no trace in Egyptian history, and any attempts 
 to fix its date and its route must unfortunately be 
 based mainly on a 'priori evidence. 
 
 If there is one firmly rooted idea in the popular 
 mind with regard to the exodus it is that the 
 Pharaoh under whom it took place was King 
 Merenptah of the XlXth Dynasty, who ruled 
 from about 1225 to 1215 b.c. Even the discovery 
 of the king's mummy safely reposing in a tomb at 
 Thebes failed to shake the belief, for it was pointed 
 out that, though the biblical narrative states that 
 the Pharaoh and all his chariots were overwhelmed 
 in the Red Sea, there is no reason why his body 
 
 1 It has been suggested that these high numbers might be greatly 
 reduced by translating the word alaf, generally rendered " thousands," by 
 " families." Thus, in place of the 46,500 of the tribe of Reuben we should 
 get " the 46 families of the tribe of Reuben, numbering in all 500 " and 
 so on, giving a total of 5550. Hebrew scholars, however, are not prepared 
 to admit that the word alaf could in a passage of this nature bear the meaning 
 of " families " here attributed to it. 
 
io8 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 should not have been recovered and brought b ick 
 to Thebes for burial. Enthusiasts have even gene 
 so far as to attempt to show from the condition of 
 the mummy that the king died from drowning. 
 
 The evidence for the belief that Merenptah 
 was the Pharaoh of the exodus, nevertheless, can 
 only be described as so flimsy that it is difficult 
 to see how the belief can ever have arisen. If 
 analysed impartially it amounts to nothing more 
 than the facts that the Pharaoh of the oppression 
 has generally been assumed to be Ramesses II, and 
 that Merenptah succeeded him. The identifica- 
 tion of Ramesses II with the oppressor is based 
 merely on the statement that under the oppression 
 the Israelites " built for Pharaoh store cities, 
 Pithom and Raamses." It was assumed, quite 
 rightly, that Raamses must have been named 
 after a king, and that, as Ramesses I was an 
 ephemeral king who did very little building, the 
 probable founder of the city was Ramesses II. 
 Now we have already seen (pp. 82 ff.) that this 
 evidence proves nothing, since the geographical 
 names of the sojourn are much later than the 
 period at which the events took place ; because 
 the town which the Israelites built was called 
 Raamses in, say, 900 B.C. it does not for a moment 
 follow that it was so called when the Israelites 
 
THE EXODUS 
 
 built it, and therefore we may not argue that this 
 building, which incidentally need not mean the 
 original foundation, took place as late as the reign 
 of Ramesses II, or for the matter of that 
 Ramesses I. 
 
 This popular hypothesis of an exodus under 
 Merenptah was, curious to relate, regarded by 
 many as established fact when the great 
 Merenptah Victory Stela was discovered at Thebes 
 by Petrie in 1896. Not later than the fifth year 
 of his reign Merenptah conducted, or at least 
 organized, a campaign against Palestine, to the 
 successful results of which he refers in an inscrip- 
 tion recording his Libyan war, on the back of 
 a large black granite stela set up by an earlier 
 conqueror, Amenhotp III of the XVIIIth 
 Dynasty. At the end of the lengthy song of 
 triumph occur the sentences " Canaan is captured 
 with every evil circumstance (?). Askalon is 
 carried captive. Gezer is taken. Yenoam is 
 brought to nought. Israel is destroyed, its seed 
 is not. Syria has become as the widows of Egypt. 
 All the lands together are at peace." It is almost 
 incredible that in some minds the discovery of this 
 new document merely served to clinch the belief 
 in the dating of the exodus to the reign of 
 Merenptah. Cooler heads, however, were much 
 
no EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 more concerned to note that, so far from con- 
 firming the Merenptah date it made it practically 
 impossible, for obviously, if the Israelites left 
 Egypt in Merenptah's own reign and wandered 
 forty years before reaching Canaan, he could 
 hardly have found them settled there as early as 
 his fifth year. Some would avoid the difficulty 
 by supposing that the Israel tribe whom 
 Merenptah attacked in Canaan were either 
 Israelites who had never descended into Egypt 1 
 with Jacob, or a portion who had left Egypt before 
 the biblical exodus, and find confirmation of this 
 in the fact that in certain lists of Syrian places 
 dating from the reigns of Seti I and Ramesses II, 
 the predecessors of Merenptah, we find a district 
 mentioned whose consonants are identical with 
 those of the Hebrew tribe Asher. Some have 
 gone so far as to attempt to show that this 
 district, judging by its position among the names 
 in the lists, lay precisely in the position known to 
 have been occupied by the tribe Asher in the time 
 of the judges. Their arguments, however, are 
 far from convincing, and the identity of the place 
 
 i That there were such they would argue from the occurrence in a list 
 of southern Syrian towns dating from the reign of Thothmes III, about 
 1480 b.c, of two town-names which appear to read Jacob-el and Joseph-el 
 respectively, though with regard to the reading of the second there is great 
 uncertainty. The existence of towns in Syria with these names, if the readings 
 be correct, is certainly a warning against the assumption that the whole of 
 the people later known as the Israelites necessarily descended into Egypt. 
 
THE EXODUS 
 
 in 
 
 mentioned by Seti and Ramesses with the Asher 
 of the biblical story must be regarded as most 
 doubtful. 
 
 In any case, it is hardly worth while going to all 
 this trouble to defend the theory of an exodus 
 under Merenptah, for which there is so little to 
 be said on other grounds. 1 Is there no earlier 
 date at which, in view of Egyptian and Syrian 
 history, an exodus might reasonably have fallen ? 
 Let us take the Hebrews' own chronology, and, 
 without assuming its accuracy, see whether it will 
 furnish us with a useful and reasonable indication. 
 
 We are told in I Kings 6.1 that the building of 
 the temple in Solomon's fourth year took place 
 480 years after the exodus. Now we can date 
 Solomon's reign very accurately, for the battle 
 of Qarqar, at which Ahab was present in alliance 
 with Hadad-idri of Damascus, the Benhadad II 
 of I Kings 20.33, as related by the Assyrian account 
 of it, can be fixed astronomically to 854 b.c. 
 This alliance seems to have been made in Ahab's 
 twenty-first year, and, by reckoning backward 
 over a period the documentary sources for which 
 are in part at least contemporary and should 
 
 1 Eerdmans' startling suggestion that the descent into Egypt did not 
 take place until after the reign of Merenptah is worthy of mention in passing, 
 though from the biblical point of view the chronological difficulties involved 
 are quite insuperable. 
 
ii2 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 therefore be worthy of considerable credit, we 
 get 970 b.c. for Solomon's accession, 1 and 966 for 
 the building of the temple. Adding 480 to this 
 we obtain 1446 b.c for the traditional date of the 
 exodus. Now we must not assign to this 480 
 years, which, like Assyrian numbers of precisely 
 the same type, is nothing more than a round 
 figure, more importance than it can bear ; at the 
 same time it is worthy of note that if the exodus 
 took place under Merenptah, who came to the 
 throne in 1225 b.c, then Hebrew tradition has 
 made an error of about 230 years, or nearly half 
 the whole figure, an error which, though not 
 inconceivable in dealing with very remote events, 
 is a little unlikely in dealing with comparatively 
 recent times. 
 
 Let us then take this date 1446 b.c, and ask 
 whether it is for any reason a probable date for 
 an exodus. The reigning king in Egypt at this 
 date was Amenhotp II, who succeeded 
 Thothmes III, the great conqueror who had 
 carried the Egyptian arms through Palestine and 
 Syria up into the Lebanon, and even on to the 
 upper reaches of the Euphrates. The vast 
 Asiatic Empire thus founded had been maintained 
 
 1 We have of course to assume the rather suspicious 40 years given as 
 the length of Solomon's reign. 
 
THE EXODUS 
 
 ii3 
 
 more or less intact through the reigns of 
 Amenhotp II, Thothmes IV and Amenhotp III. 
 To the last of this great line of kings succeeded, 
 however, the strange individual known as 
 Akhenaton. He was the son of his predecessor on 
 the throne and of his queen Ty, who, though she 
 may have inherited some slight strain of Asiatic 
 blood on the mother's side, cannot rightly be 
 described, as she sometimes has been, as a 
 " foreigner." Not later than the sixth year of 
 his reign the young king, then apparently still in 
 his teens, had effected a religious revolution in the 
 state. He had moved his capital from Thebes, 
 where it had stood for centuries, down the Nile 
 to a desolate spot near the modern village of 
 et-Til, a spot to which Europeans have given the 
 misnomer of Tell el-Amarna. Here he set to 
 work to erect on virgin ground a new city called 
 Akhetaton, the Horizon of the Disk, in which he 
 might devote himself to the worship of the Sun's 
 Disk or Aton, a deity already existent but 
 insignificant, whose worship he had established as 
 the state religion in Egypt. From Amenhotp, 
 " Amon is satisfied," he changed his own name to 
 Akhenaton, " The Disk is pleased," and he 
 completely suppressed the numerous gods whom 
 his fathers had been wont to serve. 
 
 H 
 
1 1 4 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 With the causes of this revolution we have here 
 no concern ; our business is rather with its results. 
 Occupied in beautifying Akhetaton and in inditing 
 hymns to the Disk, the young king appears to have 
 completely neglected politics both internal and 
 external. A happy chance has preserved to us the 
 archives of the Foreign Office at Akhetaton, for 
 in 1887 a peasant-woman, searching among the 
 ruins, unearthed a large number of clay tablets 
 inscribed almost without exception in Babylonian 
 cuneiform. These tablets proved on examination 
 to form the diplomatic correspondence which 
 passed between the kings of Egypt, Akhenaton and 
 his father, and the various rulers and dynasts of 
 Syria and other parts of Nearer Asia with regard 
 to political events of the utmost importance to 
 Egypt which were then happening in Syria and 
 Palestine. From these letters we can see that 
 while Akhenaton played and sang the Egyptian 
 Empire in Asia was tottering to its downfall. 
 In the north, in Syria proper, the subject rulers 
 of various city states were in open revolt against 
 Egypt,, with the connivance and encouragement of 
 the Hittites, a people who had already established 
 a great kingdom in Asia Minor and were anxious to 
 overrun Syria (Map 1). In Palestine an equally 
 serious state of things existed, and, while some of 
 
THE EXODUS 
 
 US 
 
 the rulers were already in revolt, others, along with 
 the governors left in some cases by the Egyptians 
 themselves, were appealing desperately for help 
 against the inroads of a people called the Khabiru. 
 Abdakhiba, the governor left by the Egyptians in 
 Jerusalem writes (Letter 181) " The whole of the 
 king's land, which has begun hostilities against me, 
 will be lost. Behold the land of Seir as far as 
 Carmel, its princes are wholly lost, and hostility 
 prevails against me. There remains not one 
 prince to my lord the king, every one is ruined. 
 Let the king take care of his land and send troops, 
 for if no troops come this year the whole territory 
 of my lord the king will perish." 
 
 Are these Khabiru the Hebrews, and are we to 
 see in the state of things revealed in Palestine the 
 Syrian version of the entry of the tribes under 
 Joshua ? These questions, for they are two and 
 not one and the same, have formed the centre of 
 one of the most vehement discussions in biblical 
 archaeology, and the best scholars are completely 
 divided in opinion on the matter. 
 
 Firstly, then, are the Khabiru the Hebrews ? 
 The spelling of Khabiru which we find in the 
 cuneiform letters is a perfectly sound phonetic 
 equivalent for Hebrews. The initial letter of the 
 word Hebrew which we write as an H is in reality 
 
n6 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 not an H, but the Semitic guttural 'ain, which 
 European languages do not possess. Babylonian, 
 too, was wanting in this sound, and in writing 
 foreign proper names it substituted for it a kh. 
 Philologically, then, the identification of the 
 Khabiru with the Hebrews is unexceptionable. 
 This proves nothing in itself, for it is always 
 possible, though not very probable, that two 
 totally different peoples should have existed whose 
 names were so closely alike as to contain precisely 
 the same consonants written in precisely the same 
 order. Thus, though we cannot prove it, we are 
 left with the feeling that the identification of the 
 Khabiru with the Hebrews of Bible history is far 
 from unlikely. 
 
 If this identification is right, and the Khabiru 
 are the Hebrews, are these Hebrews either wholly 
 or partially identical with the tribes who came out 
 of Egypt ? This problem can obviously only be 
 attacked by examining the Tell el-Amarna letters 
 with a view to discovering the nature and magni- 
 tude of the Khabiru-movement, and then asking 
 whether this movement can be equated with the 
 entry into Canaan of the people of the exodus. 
 In order to do this it is first necessary to clear up 
 the identity of a people spoken of in the letters 
 as Sagaz. They occur both in the letters referring 
 
THE EXODUS 
 
 117 
 
 to the northern part of Syria and in those referring 
 to Palestine proper, always as a force hostile to 
 the present occupants of the cities. One of the 
 tablets contains what is known as a syllabary, that 
 is to say, a dictionary of difficult words or signs, 
 in which the ideogram which we render Sagaz is 
 explained as equivalent to khab-b(atum), which 
 means robber, and in another tablet a marginal 
 note or gloss explains it as khab-ba-a-te. More- 
 over, the Babylonian verb shagashu means to slay 
 or destroy. From this Burney concludes that 
 the ideogram Sagaz was read and understood 
 as khabbatum, " the robber people." Now 
 Abdakhiba, governor of Jerusalem, speaks in his 
 letters to Egypt of the invading Khabiru, while 
 other princes in Palestine never mention Khabiru 
 but only Sagaz. It is hard to escape the con- 
 clusion that Khabiru and Sagaz are two names for 
 one and the same people, and this is supported in 
 remarkable fashion by an inscription found at 
 Boghaz Keui, the Hittite capital in Asia Minor, 
 in which the phrase " Khabiru-gods " is used as 
 an equivalent for " Sagaz-gods." 
 
 Now if this identification of Sagaz with 
 Khabiru be accepted it carries in its train an 
 important corollary. The Khabiru-Sagaz attacks 
 were not limited to Palestine, but also affected 
 
n8 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 Syria further to the north ; it would therefore 
 seem difficult to identify this movement as a whole 
 with the entry of the tribes under Joshua into 
 Canaan, which, as is abundantly clear from the 
 Bible narrative, affected only a limited area within 
 Palestine. Burney accepts the logical consequences 
 involved and definitely dissociates the Khabiru 
 from that group of the Hebrews who entered 
 Canaan under Joshua. He would connect the 
 Khabiru movement with the third of those vast 
 migrations of Semitic peoples from their original 
 home, possibly in Arabia, to which reference was 
 made in Chapter I, that of the Aramaeans. 
 He points out that in the marriage of Isaac with 
 Rebekah we have a traditional connection between 
 the Hebrews and the Aramaeans, Rebekah's 
 brother being an inhabitant of Padan-aram. 
 He therefore regards the Khabiru who invaded 
 Canaan in Akhenaton's time as descendants of the 
 original Hebrews who had settled in Canaan in 
 Abram's days, been afterwards crowded out over 
 the Jordan, and were now again entering borne on 
 the stream of the immigration of the Aramaeans, 
 to whom they were closely akin. 
 
 This is not the place to discuss in full such a 
 theory, and in any case our almost complete 
 ignorance of the early history and movements of 
 
THE EXODUS 
 
 119 
 
 the Aramaeans would render discussion almost 
 futile. Nevertheless, Burney's view should warn 
 us not to accept too lightly the proposed identifica- 
 tion of Khabiru with the tribes under Joshua. 
 Excavation in Palestine is still in its infancy, and 
 we are certainly not yet in a position to deny the 
 possibility of some such explanation as Burney 
 has given. 
 
 At the same time it is possible that the correct 
 view lies in a compromise. If the Khabiru-Sagaz 
 are not as a whole identical with the Hebrews from 
 Egypt they may be so in part. Is it perhaps 
 significant that we never hear of Khabiru in the 
 northern part of Syria,but that they are mentioned 
 only in the letters of Abdikhiba of Jerusalem ? 
 In other words, is it not possible that the Hebrews 
 under Joshua, after reaching the east of Jordan, 
 combined with other elements of allied race 
 in a united attack on the whole of Syria-Palestine, 
 the Joshua-group forming the southern wing of 
 this huge immigration ? Here again is a question 
 which we cannot answer, but which it is not 
 improbable that archaeology will be in a position 
 to answer after another decade or two of systematic 
 excavation in Syria. 
 
 The results of this investigation are dis- 
 appointingly negative. At every point we are 
 
i2o EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 baulked by lack of sufficient information. 
 Egyptian sources never mention the Israelites ; 
 the Tell el-Amarna letters do mention a people 
 who may be Hebrews, but who, even in this case, 
 need not be those Hebrews who came out of 
 Egypt. The biblical sources do not give us the 
 means of settling the point raised by the letters, 
 for we never discern there what is the relation of 
 the tribes of the exodus to the twelve tribes after- 
 wards known as Israel. Only one thing is clear, 
 namely, that the exodus from Egypt did not 
 include the whole of these latter. 
 
 In the absence of sound evidence scholars have 
 allowed themselves to be swayed by slight 
 indications. The two main schools of thought are 
 those which identify the Khabiru, or a part of 
 them, with the Hebrews of the exodus, thus 
 obtaining a date of about 1400 b.c, for this event, 
 and those who believe that the building by the 
 Israelites of the " store city " of Rameses dates the 
 oppression to Ramesses II and the exodus to his 
 successor Merenptah, about 1220 b.c. Neither 
 school has the evidence to prove its case, and both 
 may well be wrong. If the Khabiru-school argue 
 " Our hypothesis fits in admirably with the 
 biblical chronology, while yours would reduce the 
 480 years of I Kings 6.1 to half, and condense the 
 
THE EXODUS 
 
 121 
 
 period of the Judges into 250 years," the 
 Merenptah-school reply " We may do violence to 
 biblical chronology, which is a thing of very 
 uncertain value. You, however, do worse. You 
 ask us to believe that the period of the Judges 
 covers the years between 1400 and 1000 B.C., and 
 that although Israel was in Canaan all this time 
 yet her records have not preserved a single hint 
 of those numerous campaigns which the great 
 Egyptian conquerors Seti I, Ramesses II, 
 Merenptah and Ramesses III carried out in 
 Palestine and Syria during those four centuries." 
 
 Surely it is not pusillanimous to refuse to 
 identify oneself with either of these two schools so 
 long as neither can produce evidence which would 
 be seriously listened to in a court of law, and so 
 long as a dozen other solutions are equally possible 
 a priori. Still, where reason fails feeling always 
 comes in, and the writer is bound to confess to 
 a feeling of greater antipathy to the Merenptah 
 date than to the earlier. The argument that had 
 the Israelites been in Canaan during the period of 
 the great Egyptian expeditions of the XlXth and 
 XXth Dynasties, urged with such plausibility by 
 Burney, loses its force when we read the same 
 scholar's own account of the extremely artificial 
 composition of the Book of Judges, which consists 
 
122 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 mainly in a collection of incidents arranged by an 
 editor in such a fashion as to show that defection 
 from the worship of Yahweh invariably led to 
 deliverance into the hand of foreign enemies, and 
 that the ensuing repentance was followed by the 
 raising up of a deliverer. The illustrations of this 
 principle " are, at any rate in most cases, merely 
 local, some particular tribe or group of tribes 
 falling temporarily under the dominion of a 
 foreign oppressor, but Israel as a whole being 
 unaffected." Surely in such a narrative as this, 
 compiled long after the events, we can argue 
 nothing from the absence of any reference to 
 Egyptian invasions. These invasions, rapid and 
 far-reaching, probably in many cases had but little 
 effect on any part of Israel, and the fact that they 
 have left no record in an account which by 
 admission makes no claim to completeness hardly 
 amounts to evidence. That the Khabiru school 
 can cite in their favour the agreement of their 
 chronology with that of I Kings 6.1 is probably 
 a matter of very little importance, and those who 
 resent " criticism " may well be allowed a 
 malicious smile when they find a German adherent 
 of the Khabiru theory defending the 300 years of 
 Judges 1 1.26 as older than the framework in which 
 it is set and therefore of value, while a great 
 
THE EXODUS 
 
 123 
 
 British biblical scholar, an ardent follower of the 
 Merenptah theory, condemns it as a late and 
 worthless interpolation. 
 
 It is impossible to leave this part of the subject 
 without a reference to the famous Aperu or Aperiu 
 of the Egyptian monuments, whom some authori- 
 ties have tried to identify with the oppressed 
 Hebrews. The word is written in Egyptian with 
 the consonants 'prw or 'pryzv, the w being merely 
 the plural ending, the ' representing the Semitic 
 guttural 'ain, and the vowels of course being 
 unwritten and therefore unknown. The word 
 occurs five times, four times determined by the 
 signs determining a foreign people, once by those 
 used to indicate a foreign land. In the passage 
 from the Papyrus Harris 500, written during the 
 XXth Dynasty and containing a folk-story about 
 the siege of Joppa under Thothmes III, it is 
 difficult to determine from the damaged context 
 whether the Aperiu belong to the Egyptian army 
 or to the inhabitants of Joppa, the former being 
 the more probable. The passage throws no light 
 on their functions. In two papyri in the Museum 
 of Leyden, of the time of Ramesses II, these people 
 are represented as engaged in dragging up stone 
 for temples built by Ramesses. In the great 
 
124 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 Harris Papyrus (Ramesses III) certain Aperu are 
 mentioned as belonging to a temple endowment 
 together with " sons of foreign chiefs " and 
 " Maryn " (Syrian warriors of some kind). 
 Finally in the time of Ramesses IV we find on 
 a rock stela in the quarries of the Hammamat 
 valley that " 800 Aperu of the Anu-troops "* took 
 part in an expedition thither. 
 
 Are these people the Hebrews ? Their position 
 as forced labourers in the Leyden Papyri passages 
 make this theory extremely attractive. On the 
 other hand, there is a slight philological difficulty, 
 for the Semitic word for a Hebrew ought to be 
 rendered in Egyptian not by f pr but by r br. 
 It is true that rare examples exist where Hebrew b 
 is represented by Egyptian p, but it is a large 
 assumption to suppose that this is one of such cases. 
 Chronologically the difficulty is practically 
 insuperable. With the exception of Eerdmans 
 no scholar postulates a later date than the reign 
 of Merenptah for the exodus, and yet there are 
 still Aperu in Egypt in the reigns of Ramesses III 
 and IV, which bring us down to 1 160 B.C. If the 
 Aperu are the Hebrews we must either adopt 
 Eerdmans' theory that the Israelites only entered 
 
 1 The text is damaged here and the translation is therefore not quite 
 certain. 
 
THE EXODUS 
 
 125 
 
 Egypt after the fifth year of Merentpah, or we 
 must suppose that some of the Hebrews remained 
 in Egypt after the exodus of the main body, 
 a supposition which, though the biblical narrative 
 lends no colour to it, some scholars, notably 
 Driver, are prepared to accept. If the philo- 
 logical equivalence of Hebrew and Aper were 
 perfect there would be much to be said for this 
 conclusion, but, as it is not, it would seem safer to 
 refuse to accept on present evidence the identity 
 of the two peoples. 
 
 Route of the exodus 
 
 The question of the route of the exodus has 
 proved a happy playing-field for the amateur. 
 The reason is, as always in such cases, that it is 
 a field where it is extremely difficult either to 
 prove or to disprove anything at all, so that the 
 sage and the fool may work in it almost on level 
 terms. Even in the more scholarly discussions 
 of the subject one point of vital importance is 
 almost always overlooked. The whole geography 
 of the sojourn in Egypt is, as has been demons- 
 trated in the last chapter, anachronistic, having 
 been imposed on the original tradition long after 
 
126 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 the events themselves. Thus we are not in a 
 position to discover what route the Israelites 
 really followed, except in so far as we may 
 conjecture it by the application of common sense 
 to the problem. All we can hope to recover is the 
 route which the compilers of the ninth century 
 b.c. and onward thought that they followed, which 
 is a very different thing. Having premised so 
 much we can now proceed to our problem. 
 
 For practical purposes it will be convenient to 
 reverse the natural order of events, by asking first 
 what was the general direction of the exodus as 
 imagined by the compilers of the narrative, and 
 only afterwards returning to the more detailed 
 question of the precise route by which the 
 emigrants left Egypt, the answer to which 
 depends to a great extent on our answer to the 
 former. 
 
 In the first place, we may clear the ground by 
 noticing that the peninsula now known as Sinai 
 only acquired that name in comparatively modern 
 times. Modern research has shown that the 
 attaching of this name to the peninsula, and more 
 particularly the identification of the biblical 
 Mt. Sinai with a certain mountain in the south of 
 it can only be traced back to about the third 
 century a.d., when certain colonies of Christians 
 
THE EXODUS 
 
 127 
 
 who lived there, anxious to increase the import- 
 ance of their home, made it the scene of the 
 wanderings of the Israelites. It follows from this 
 that whatever view we take of the geographical 
 names of the biblical story of the exodus we are 
 not justified in placing any of them in the 
 peninsula merely because it now goes by the name 
 of Sinai. The Christians of Sinai might, of course, 
 have been right in their identification, but on the 
 other hand they might equally well have been 
 wrong, and in the sequel it will appear that they 
 probably were. 
 
 The narrative of the exodus contains a very 
 large number of geographical names, hardly one 
 of which can, with complete certainty, be identi- 
 fied with any known locality, and leaves us in total 
 darkness as to the scene of the wanderings from 
 the moment of leaving Egypt to the moment of 
 arriving at the Jordan. Wildernesses and deserts 
 are multiplied ; we have the wilderness of Shur, 
 the wilderness of Sin, the wilderness of Sinai, the 
 wilderness of Zin and the wilderness of Paran, and 
 at first sight it would seem impossible to make 
 anything of the confusion. If, however, the 
 reader will take a marked Bible and read only 
 those passages in the story of the exodus which are 
 derived from the oldest document, J, he will find 
 
128 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 that the narrative, far from being confused, is 
 remarkably straightforward. The Israelites leave 
 Egypt and march direct across to Kadesh. This 
 place is almost certainly to be identified with the 
 oasis of 'Ain Gadis on the southern borders of 
 Palestine, a place distinguished in modern times as 
 having been for some time the railhead of the 
 Turkish army in its attack on Egypt during the 
 war. If we suppose that the Israelites left Egypt 
 with any definite idea of their destination it 
 would seem extremely probable that J has given 
 a correct if summary account of their movements. 
 
 From Kadesh 1 the Israelites make a pilgrimage 
 to Mount Sinai, where the commandments are 
 given to them. This must be a primitive 
 sanctuary of Yahweh. But where does it lie ? 
 Much depends on the meaning of Deut. 33.2, 
 " The Lord came from Sinai, and rose from Seir 
 unto them : he shined forth from mount Paran, 
 and came from Meribath-Kadesh." Unfor- 
 tunately it is uncertain whether the original read 
 " from " or " to " Meribath-Kadesh, and thus 
 the conclusions to be drawn from the passage are 
 uncertain. In Judges 5.4 Yahweh is represented 
 as coming to the assistance of his people from 
 
 1 Some critics think that J combines two versions, in the earlier of 
 which the law is given by Yahweh at Kadesh itself. The question is im- 
 material for our investigation. 
 
THE EXODUS 
 
 129 
 
 Seir and Edom : " in thy progress from Seir, in 
 thy march from the field of Edom." In the 
 passage from Deut. 33.2 Seir and Mount Paran 
 would appear to be in Yahweh's course. The 
 prayer of Habakkuk tells us that " God came from 
 Teman, and the holy one from Mount Paran." 
 Here Teman, literally the right hand side or south 
 country, refers, as is clear from Ezekiel 25.13 and 
 Obadiah 9, to a part of Edom. Now Seir is the 
 mountain range which runs southward from the 
 Dead Sea towards the Gulf of Akaba, and Edom 
 is the country round about that range. These 
 indications would place Sinai somewhere in or 
 near Edom and not very far from Kadesh, with 
 which it is moreover closely connected in the 
 narratives. Such a position seems quite con- 
 sistent with all that we learn of Sinai in the Old 
 Testament. Any attempt to reach greater 
 precision meets with difficulties. Some, for 
 instance, would place the mountain actually 
 east of the Gulf of Akaba. They believe, and 
 there is much to be said for it, that the close 
 connection between Moses and Yahweh is due 
 to his relations with Jethro the Midianite priest. 
 The Greek geographer, Ptolemy, and the Arabic 
 writers mention a place called Modiana or 
 Madyan in Arabia, east of the Gulf of Akaba, 
 1 
 
1 3 o EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 and this place may mark the original site of the 
 Midianite country, and therefore of Sinai the 
 sacred mountain of Yahweh. Others would 
 place Mount Sinai much nearer to Kadesh, on 
 the western border of Edom. To this it may 
 be objected, that in Deuteronomy 1.2, Horeb is 
 said to be no less than 11 days' journey from 
 Kadesh. Now Horeb, in Document E, appears 
 to answer in every respect to Sinai in J, and is 
 generally assumed to be another name for the 
 sacred mountain, and if this is right then Sinai- 
 Horeb is 11 days' journey from Kadesh and can 
 hardly be as near it as the west border of Edom. 
 But the criticism is not very cogent, for the fact 
 that E calls the sacred mountain Horeb while J 
 calls it Sinai may mean that the two sources 
 preserved traditions differing not only in the 
 name given to the mountain but in the geograph- 
 ical position assigned to it. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to go more deeply into 
 a question which is doubtless beyond solution, 
 indeed our intention in going so far has been 
 merely to insist on the total absence of 
 any serious evidence for the placing of 
 Mount Sinai in the Sinai Peninsula, and for 
 its having been identified by the compilers 
 of the Bible narrative with any particular 
 
THE EXODUS 
 
 mountain there, such as Gebel Musa or Gebel 
 Serbal. 
 
 So much for the simple narrative of Document 
 J. If the passages due to E are now examined 
 it will be seen that a new episode is introduced 
 into the story after the passage of the Sea of 
 Reeds, namely the visit to Marah and Elim 1 
 (Ex. 15.22-27). Is this compatible with the 
 narrative of J, or does it represent a separate 
 tradition ? Those who accept as the original 
 and correct version the simple story of J have 
 no difficulty in placing Marah and Elim between 
 Egypt and Kadesh, actually identifying Elim 
 with the Eloth of I Kings 9.26, the modern 
 Akaba at the head of the gulf (Map 1). Others, 
 however, have placed Marah and Elim near the 
 west coast of the peninsula of Sinai, and an 
 enormous amount of ingenuity has been expended 
 on trying to find sites which will answer to the 
 conditions required. This anxiety to place these 
 two sites on the west of Sinai is due partly to 
 the inability of scholars to cut their minds loose 
 from the Christian tradition of the fourth 
 century a.d., which fixed the peninsula as the 
 scene of the wanderings and actually marked out 
 
 1. Some critics assign this episode to J. If this is correct the question 
 discussed here does not arise. 
 
132 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 a route for the edification of pilgrims, partly to 
 a curious indication in the itinerary as given by 
 the latest document, P, to which we must now 
 turn. In Numbers 33 P follows the route of 
 the combined JE from Rameses through Succoth, 
 Etham, Pi-hahiroth and Migdol to Marah and 
 Elim. Then follows a return to the Sea of Reeds, 
 after which is a long list of place names not one 
 of which can be identified until we reach Ezion- 
 geber and Kadesh. For those who suppose an 
 exodus via the Wadi Tumilat, with a crossing 
 of some ancient extension of the Red Sea, now 
 dried up, this return to the Sea of Reeds (which, 
 with the Septuagint, they persist in identifying 
 with the Red Sea) can hardly mean anything 
 other than that the people had now reached 
 some spot near the west coast of the Sinai Penin- 
 sula, from whence they turned down to the 
 Red Sea, i.e. east side of the Gulf of Suez. This 
 once fixed there was no difficulty in finding 
 suitable spots for Marah and Elim. A century 
 ago Burckhardt had identified Marah with the 
 well of Hawwarah, 47 miles S.E. of f Ain Musa 
 and 7 miles from the coast, on the modern path 
 from Egypt to Gebel Musa, a well so brackish as to 
 be almost unfit to drink. f Ain Naba, 10 miles 
 south-east of Suez, has also been suggested. 
 
THE EXODUS 
 
 i33 
 
 Similarly Elim was identified by Burckhardt with 
 a spot in the Wady Gharandel, while others find it 
 in f Ain Musa, 6 miles south-west of f Ain Naba. 
 The Middle Ages were not without their identi- 
 fications, for early travellers were shown at 
 Klysma the spot where the Red Sea was crossed, 
 at f Ain Musa the site of the bitter spring of 
 Marah, and in the oasis of the Wady Gharandel 
 the springs and the palm trees of Elim. Further 
 towards the south the town of Faran was shown 
 to them as the site of Rephidim, and so the 
 journey continued until it reached its climax 
 at the foot of the " sacred mountain." 
 
 Such is the process by which the simple 
 account of J, involving nothing more than a 
 direct journey from Egypt to Kadesh, has been 
 enlarged and mishandled by critics both ancient 
 and modern until it has developed into a round- 
 about wandering through the mountainous 
 regions of the peninsula of Sinai. For those who 
 have time it may be a pleasing occupation to 
 identify the various sites in the route of the 
 exodus with places in this district, but those 
 who do it should do it with their eyes open to 
 the fact that not a single place name in J, E or 
 P can with certainty, or even with probability, 
 be placed there, and that in none of these narra- 
 
134 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 tives is there, for an unprejudiced mind, the 
 slightest indication that the scene of the exodus 
 lay so far to the south. 
 
 The route of the earlier part of the exodus, 
 namely the journey from Rameses into the 
 wilderness, though not simple, is far less compli- 
 cated than that of the wanderings. Document 
 P alone gives geographical names and details. 
 The writer, though he lives 800 or 1000 years 
 after the events, whatever they were, which gave 
 rise to the story of an exodus, has at any rate 
 some kind of geographical scheme in his mind. 
 This scheme has been completely obscured by 
 the obstinacy of critics in insisting on an exodus 
 by way of the Wadi Tumilat, for which there is 
 not a particle of evidence. The mistake, how- 
 ever, was not unnatural, and had its rise in the 
 fixing of the site of Pithom in that region. It 
 was next assumed that Rameses-Raamses must 
 be near Pithom, and that the two must be in 
 Goshen, which must therefore be the Wadi 
 Tumilat. This assumption once made, it was 
 natural to suppose that the Hebrews left Egypt 
 via this valley, and the matter seemed beyond 
 doubt to those who accepted the identification 
 of Succoth with Theku in the valley (Map 2). 
 
THE EXODUS 
 
 135 
 
 The story of the exodus as given for instance 
 by Naville, one of the earliest formulators of a 
 definite route, is as follows : Setting out from 
 Rameses the Israelites pass the district of Succoth 
 and reach Etham, a desert region, lying according 
 to Naville to the west and south of Lake Timsah. 
 Here they are commanded to turn southward and 
 encamp before Pi-hahiroth, between Migdol and 
 the sea, over against Baal-zephon. Naville iden- 
 tifies all these three places. Pi-hahiroth is for him 
 Pi-keheret, House of Keheret the Snake Goddess, 
 a place mentioned on the famous Pithom stela, 
 inscribed by King Ptolemy Philadelphos, who 
 came to the throne in 285 B.C., and he identifies it 
 with the later town of Serapiu, on the west edge of 
 the present southern extension of Lake Timsah. 
 Migdol he places about three miles south of this, 
 near the modern railway station called Serapeum, 
 where there is a mound with ruins of the Persian 
 period. East of the camp lies the Red Sea, which, 
 he believes, in those days extended far more to the 
 north than it now does, passing through what is 
 now Lake Timsah up into the Wadi Tumilat and 
 reaching Heroonpolis. On the far side of this 
 gulf the Israelites can see Baal-zephon, which 
 Naville identifies with a hill which now holds 
 the tomb of a famous Mohammedan sheikh. 
 
136 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 There are innumerable difficulties about such 
 a theory as this. In the first place it assumes 
 wrongly that Rameses is in the Wadi Tumilat 
 and that the exodus started from there. In the 
 second place it accepts the Greek Septuagint 
 translation " Red Sea " instead of the original 
 Hebrew " Sea of Reeds," a substitution made 
 by the Greek translators doubtless precisely 
 because they had made the same mistake of 
 identifying the starting point of the exodus with 
 the Wadi Tumilat. In the third place the 
 identification of Pi-hahiroth with Pi-keheret 
 is philologically impossible 1 , and even if it were 
 correct we have no evidence for fixing the site 
 of the town at Serapiu. And finally Naville's 
 identifications of the site of Migdol and Baal- 
 zephon are pure guesswork. 
 
 Any attempt to deal scientifically with the 
 question must recognize three points. Firstly, 
 the itinerary given in the Bible is due entirely to 
 
 i Naville defends such loose identifications as this by the statement 
 that names taken over from one language to another are only reproduced 
 approximately without any consultation of " philology and its code of laws." 
 He forgets that philology's " code of laws " is not the mere abstract con- 
 struction of philologists, but an induction from the concrete facts. Nowhere 
 are these facts better illustrated than in the borrowing of names from 
 Egyptian into Semitic and vice versa, the original pronunciation being 
 most accurately and consistently indicated. Thus, in the case of Keberet 
 the K could in Hebrew appear only as k and not as b ; moreover, the 
 final * of the feminine was almost certainly mute in Egyptian, and therefore 
 in an etymology such as Naville postulates would not have been 
 reproduced by tb in Hebrew. 
 
THE EXODUS 
 
 137 
 
 document P, compiled at least 800 years after the 
 exodus, and even if we can fix this itinerary 
 it will give us not necessarily the route actually 
 taken by the Israelites but merely the route 
 ascribed to them by a tradition which has only 
 come down to us in a very late form. Secondly, 
 in the Hebrew version there is no mention of 
 the Red Sea at all, the expression used in Ex. 14 
 being simply " the sea," while in 13.18 and 15.4 
 and 22 it is the " Sea of Reeds," and the trans- 
 lation w Red Sea " being based purely on the fact 
 that the Greek version uses this. Thirdly, 
 Gardiner's work has shown that Rameses-Raamses 
 is almost beyond doubt Pi-Ramessu, "House of 
 Rameses," the capital of XlXth Dynasty Egypt, 
 lying on the site of the later Pelusium. Once 
 these facts are grasped it will be realized that the 
 scene of the exodus in the mind of the compilers 
 of the biblical narrative is not the Wadi Tumilat, 
 but a region considerably further to the north. 1 
 This is corroborated by the very remarkable 
 statement (Ex. 13.17) that "God led them not 
 through the way of the Philistines, although that 
 
 1 Sir William Willcocks, in his From the Garden of Eden to the Crossing 
 of the Jordan, p. 69, has rightly pointed out that the story of the quails shows 
 that a northerly route was in the mind of the compiler of the narrative. 
 These birds drop in thousands on the Mediterranean shore between Egypt 
 and Palestine, exhausted with their long flight across the sea. Similar 
 conditions are not found anywhere on the Gulf of Suez or the Red Sea proper. 
 
138 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 was near ; for God said, ' Lest peradventure the 
 people repent when they see war, and they 
 return to Egypt.' But God led the people 
 about by the way of the wilderness of the Sea of 
 Reeds." There can be no doubt that by " the 
 way of the Philistines " the writer meant the 
 great military route which formed the highway, 
 in ancient as in modern times, from Egypt to 
 Syria, leaving Egypt at Thel, east of the modern 
 el-Kantareh, moving slightly north of east along 
 the southern edge of Lake Serbonis, reaching 
 the sea at el-'Arish, and passing through Rafa to 
 Gaza. A glance at Map 2 will convince the 
 reader that, while for a people leaving Egypt 
 by the Wadi Tumilat this road could not possibly 
 be described as " near," yet for a people moving 
 out from Pelusium (Rameses) it is so near and 
 so obviously the route to take that the compiler 
 is but doing his duty in explaining why it was 
 not taken. 
 
 There is an alternative to the first or Egyptian 
 portion of this military road, namely the track 
 leading by the sea over the narrow spit of land 
 which separates Lake Serbonis from the Medit- 
 erranean. This is a much less popular route 
 than the more southerly one just described, 
 which it joins eventually before reaching el-'Arish, 
 
THE EXODUS 
 
 l 39 
 
 though it has on occasion been used for the 
 transport of troops. Its unpopularity is doubt- 
 less due to its exposed nature, to the prevalence 
 of quicksands, and to its liability to sudden 
 swamping through a north wind. Some, how- 
 ever, have identified it with the route of the 
 exodus, and it obviously furnishes a simple 
 explanation of the overwhelming of Pharaoh 
 and his Egyptians. 
 
 Assuming then a start from Pelusium, can we 
 identify more of the biblical place names ? The 
 first stage is Succoth, for which no identification 
 has been proposed except Theku, in the Wadi 
 Tumilat. Philologically, as was seen in the 
 previous chapter, the identification is not happy, 
 and now that we have disengaged ourselves from 
 the idea of an exodus by this route it may be 
 given up without regret. The next stage is 
 Etham which is " in the edge of the wilderness." 
 This again has not been satisfactorily identified. 
 It has been suggested that it stands for the 
 Egyptian word khetem " a fortress " and is an 
 abbreviation of " The fortress of Thel," but, in 
 addition to the fact that the Egyptian kh would 
 hardly be rendered in Hebrew by aleph, there 
 is no authority for the use of " The Fortress " 
 alone for Thel. However this may be, we are 
 
i 4 o EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 already faced with a difficulty, for the Israelites, 
 despite their having marched two whole stages 
 from Pelusium, have only just reached the " edge 
 of the wilderness." But for the moment let us 
 proceed. They now " turn and encamp before 
 Pi-hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea, over 
 against Baal-zephon : before it shall ye encamp 
 by the sea. For Pharaoh will say of the children 
 of Israel, ' They are entangled in the land, the 
 wilderness hath shut them in.' " It would seem 
 from this that the turn made by the wanderers 
 is of the nature of a return into Egypt, and, 
 moreover, it brings them to " the sea." How 
 do the place-names agree with this. Pi-hahiroth 
 is unknown. Baal-zephon is also unknown, 
 though on the verso of the papyrus Sallier IV is 
 mentioned a goddess called Baalit-zephon. 
 Bearing a Semitic name, the place should lie on 
 the extreme edge of Egyptian territory, perhaps 
 actually in Bedawi country, and its signification 
 " Baal of the North " is undoubtedly a confirm- 
 ation of the northerly locality of the scene of 
 the exodus. With regard to Migdol there is 
 more to be said. Migdol is simply the Semitic 
 word for a tower ; but it was borrowed by the 
 Egyptians, probably as early as the XVIIIth 
 Dynasty, and became a very popular name for 
 
THE EXODUS 141 
 
 towns. A Cairo papyrus mentions no fewer 
 than four Migdols in the Eastern Delta alone, but 
 it is worthy of note that only one of these is called 
 Migdol simply, without further qualification. 
 This one may well be identical with the Magdolo 
 of the Antonine Itinerary, described as lying 
 half-way between Pelusium and Sele (Thel), at 
 a distance of 12 Roman miles from each. An 
 important town called Migdol was known to 
 the Hebrew prophets, and that it was situated 
 in the extreme north-east corner of the Delta 
 would seem clear from the passages in which 
 Ezekiel (29.10, and 30.6 marginal rendering in 
 Authorised Version) curses Egypt " from Migdol 
 to Syene," where Syene is the modern Aswan at 
 the First Cataract, the southern extremity of 
 Egypt, and Migdol must stand for the northern. 
 Jeremiah, too, speaks of Migdol together with 
 Daphnae and Memphis (44.1 and 46.14). We 
 are probably justified in concluding that in late 
 Egyptian days there was a town called Migdol, 
 in the north-eastern Delta, which was of 
 considerable size and importance, and since on 
 other grounds we have found the scene of the 
 exodus to lie in this part of Egypt, it is not 
 unlikely that this town was in the mind of the 
 compiler of the exodus narrative. The site of 
 
i 4 2 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 this Migdol has been with great probability 
 identified with the mound called Tell el-Her, 
 which does indeed lie roughly half-way between 
 Pelusium and Thel, and which seems the only 
 likely site in the neighbourhood. It lies a little 
 to the north of the great military road, but it 
 is probably, despite this, identical with the 
 Migdol of Menmare (King Seti I) shown in the 
 Karnak sculptures illustrating the Asiatic cam- 
 paigns of Seti I of the XlXth Dynasty. 
 
 One passage, however, at first sight seems to 
 point to a Migdol of Seti I as lying near Theku, 
 a district in the Wadi Tumilat, and therefore 
 to tell against a northern localization of the 
 exodus. In the papyrus Anastasi V, 19.6 to 20.2, 
 a difficult and probably corrupt passage, we read 
 in the report of an officer sent to recover some 
 escaped slaves, " I was despatched from the 
 Courts of the Royal Palace on the ninth day of 
 the third month of summer, at eventide, in quest 
 of those two servants. I reached the enclosure 
 wall of Theku (probably Tell el-Maskhuteh) on 
 the tenth day of the third month of summer, 
 where they told me that they had said in the 
 south that they (the slaves) had passed on the 
 tenth (sic ?) day of the third month of summer. 
 And when I reached the fortress they told me 
 
THE EXODUS 
 
 H3 
 
 that the groom had come from the desert to say 
 that they had passed the north wall of the 
 Migdol of Seti-Merneptah (Seti I)." It is 
 impossible to discern exactly what is happening 
 in this passage, one thing alone is certain, namely 
 that it contains nothing to contradict the identi- 
 fication of this Migdol with Tell el-Her. 
 Gardiner is right in pointing out that it was only 
 the incorrect identification of Theku with 
 Succoth and the desire to " co-ordinate this 
 passage with the story of the exodus " that gave 
 rise to the belief that the Migdol of Seti I here 
 mentioned was other than the well-known 
 Migdol of Seti I, probably at Tell el-Her. 
 
 Summing up the evidence it may be said that 
 we have considerable reason for believing that by 
 Migdol the compiler of the narrative intended 
 the Migdol of Seti I, lying half-way between 
 Pelusium and Thel. Yet in the absence of any 
 indication of the positions of Baal-zephon and 
 Pi-hahiroth it would be the merest waste of time 
 to try to reconstruct the route which lay in the 
 mind of the compiler. All we can be sure about 
 is that it is to be looked for not in the Wadi 
 Tumilat but much further to the north, in the 
 region of Pelusium and Tell el-Her. 
 
 In this case what is the Sea of Reeds which 
 
i 4 4 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 figures so prominently in the story ? Clearly 
 it is not the Red Sea, as the Greek translators 
 thought, but some piece of water on the edge 
 of the Mediterranean fresh enough to allow 
 reeds to grow in it. 1 The continual changes 
 which take place in the extension and nature of 
 the lagoons which edge the sea between Egypt 
 and Palestine make it almost a waste of time to 
 attempt to place more closely the position of the 
 biblical " Sea of Reeds." The result would also 
 depend very largely on the exact amount and 
 kind of credence which we place on the story of 
 the crossing of the Sea of Reeds. Thus, if we 
 believe that a passage was miraculously made for 
 the Israelites it is useless to look for a suitable 
 spot, for it might have happened anywhere. 
 On the other hand, those who believe that the 
 Israelites reaped the advantage of a natural 
 phenomenon so impressive as to appear to them 
 in their circumstances miraculous have met with 
 little success in trying to find a spot where an east 
 wind could have produced the effect attributed 
 to it. Others have concentrated on the incident 
 of the destruction of Pharaoh's charioteers, and 
 
 i In I Kings 9.26, the Sea of Reeds is quite clearly the Gulf of Akaba, 
 and possibly also in Numb. 21.4. It is obvious that it cannot have that 
 meaning here. For an ingenious suggestion with regard to this point and 
 others concerning the first part of the route of the exodus see a forthcoming 
 article by A. H. Gardiner in Melanges Cbampollion, Paris, 1922, pp. 231-241. 
 
THE EXODUS 145 
 
 have looked for a locality where such an event 
 might reasonably have taken place. The varying 
 conclusions to which the searchers after truth in 
 these matters have come only serve to show the 
 inadequacy of the evidence to prove anything 
 whatsoever. Unless some new means be found of 
 identifying more of the geographical names given 
 by Document P we are hardly likely to make much 
 progress towards fixing the scheme of the exodus 
 which existed in the mind of the author of that 
 document, and even then we shall be as uncertain 
 as ever regarding the route actually taken by the 
 emigrants. 
 
 K 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 SOLOMON, JEROBOAM, AND ASA 
 
 From the time of the exodus, whenever that may 
 have been, the biblical narrative mentions neither 
 Egypt nor the Egyptians until the reign of 
 Solomon ; thus from the point of view of Hebrew- 
 Egyptian relations the period of the judges and 
 the early part of the monarchy is a blank. During 
 these years great changes had taken place in Egypt. 
 It has been seen in Chapter V that the great 
 Egyptian empire of the XVIIIth Dynasty, begun 
 by its earliest kings, the expellers of the Hyksos, 
 and extended to its widest limits by Thothmes III, 
 had fallen to pieces in the reign of Akhenaton 
 (Amenhotp IV), 1 375-1 350 b.c. This king was 
 followed by his son-in-law Sakere, who after a 
 short reign gave place to another son-in-law 
 Tut-ankh-aton, " Living image of the Disk." 
 The latter, finding popular and probably priestly 
 prejudice too strong for him, relinquished the 
 worship of the Sun's Disk and returned to the 
 orthodox cult of Amon, moving the court back 
 
 to Thebes and changing his name to Tut-ankh- 
 
 146 
 
SOLOMON, JEROBOAM AND ASA 147 
 
 amon, " Living image of Amon." It needed 
 a stronger man, however, to deal with the state 
 of internal chaos into which Egypt had fallen 
 during the heresy, and a famous inscription has 
 preserved to our days the enactments by which 
 Horemheb restored order and security. 
 
 This king is reckoned as the first of the XlXth 
 Dynasty, and was followed by two conquerors, 
 Seti I and Ramesses II, who recovered a very 
 considerable portion of Thothmes' empire in 
 Palestine and Syria. The recovery, however, was 
 but short-lived, for the great movements of 
 peoples which set the Mediterranean in a turmoil 
 about 1200 b.c. did not leave Egypt unscathed, 
 and though she managed under Merenptah, the 
 successor of Ramesses II, and later under Ramesses 
 III, the first king of the XXth Dynasty, to save 
 her own shores from all but the most temporary 
 invasion, she was forced to relinquish her Asiatic 
 dependencies. From this moment her story is 
 for many years one of decline. A series of 
 Pharaohs, each bearing the famous name of 
 Ramesses, and each unworthy of it, followed one 
 another, until, under Ramesses XII, the high 
 priest of Amon at Thebes displaced his king and 
 seated himself upon the throne, thus founding the 
 XXIst Dynasty, about 1090 b.c. This priest, 
 
148 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 Hrihor by name, was, however, unable to control 
 the whole of Egypt, and a rival, Nesubanebded, 
 succeeded in establishing himself at Tanis as king 
 of the Delta. 
 
 The degradation at which Egypt had arrived 
 is well illustrated by the story of Wenamon, an 
 envoy sent by Hrihor to the Syrian coast to 
 procure wood from the Lebanon for the building 
 of the sacred boat of Amon. Arrived at Byblos, 
 with a mere handful of silver to pay for the 
 timber, and an image of Amon which would, it 
 was hoped, secure him a favourable hearing, he 
 is at first ordered by Theker-baal, the Prince of 
 Byblos, to remove himself. An accident, how- 
 ever, causes the prince to revoke this harsh 
 command, but from the manner in which he 
 delays the envoy day by day for eight months, 
 and from the haughty tone in which he addresses 
 him, it is evident that the prestige of Egypt in 
 Syria has gone, and that what had been demanded 
 almost as a right by a Ramesses II must be 
 begged for with humility by a Hrihor. 
 
 The end of the XXIst Dynasty with its divided 
 rule may be easily foretold. Once again Egypt 
 paid the inevitable penalty of disunion ; she was 
 invaded from the west by the Libyans, who first 
 established themselves in the Delta, and gradually 
 
SOLOMON, JEROBOAM AND ASA 149 
 
 extended their rule over the whole of Egypt. 
 For two centuries, roughly 945 to 745 B.C., 
 Libyan kings ruled in the Nile valley, and it is 
 in this period that the events fall which again 
 give us our points of contact with Palestine. 
 
 After what has been said in Chapter I it will 
 here be necessary merely to remind the reader 
 that we are now arriving at a portion of the 
 biblical story which is historical, not in the sense 
 that every detail is correct, but in the sense that 
 the main lines of the story are derived from 
 contemporary documents. 
 
 In I Kings, 11. 14-22 we read that " the Lord 
 stirred up an adversary to Solomon, Hadad the 
 Edomite : he was of the king's seed in Edom." 
 This Hadad, a member of the royal family of 
 Edom, had fled to Egypt as a child, at the time 
 when David had defeated his country and 
 " smitten every male in Edom." In Egypt he 
 was well received by the Pharaoh, whose name is 
 not mentioned, who gave him in marriage the 
 sister of Tahpenes, his own wife, and she bore 
 him a son, Genubath, who was brought up in the 
 palace among Pharaoh's sons. After the death 
 of David and his captain of the host Joab, Hadad, 
 despite Pharaoh's protests, returned to his own 
 country. Unfortunately, the narrator is merely 
 
ISO EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 interested in telling us how Solomon was punished 
 for his sins by the raising up of various " advers- 
 aries" and gives us little detail of their deeds; 
 in fact, with regard to the sequel of Hadad's 
 return, we only gather from verse 25 that " he 
 did mischief." 
 
 It is, however, relevant to ask what part the 
 Pharaoh was playing in this drama. It is curious 
 that another of Solomon's " adversaries," 
 Jeroboam, also fled into Egypt, and one is tempted 
 to wonder whether the two stories are not doubles 
 of a single event. The detail with which Hadad's 
 story is told is, however, distinctly against such a 
 supposition, and it seems best to take the story at 
 its face value. Since Hadad was already married 
 when David died in 970 B.C. (for the date see 
 p. 112), and was but a child when he fled before 
 David, he must have reached Egypt towards the 
 end of the XXIst Dynasty, possibly in the reign 
 of one of the two last kings of the dynasty, 
 Siamon and Pisebkhanu II. It is, perhaps, 
 scarcely worth while to ask why these rulers at 
 Tanis should give so warm a welcome to the 
 fugitive. We need hardly doubt that the object 
 was political. Possibly the successful and warlike 
 career of David and the conquest by the Israelites 
 of the Philistines had alarmed the Egyptians, 
 
SOLOMON, JEROBOAM AND ASA 151 
 
 who, by kind treatment of Hadad, sought to 
 secure the friendship of his country and to use 
 Edom as a buffer state between themselves and 
 Palestine. 
 
 With the accession of Solomon we reach a 
 period of alliance between Egypt and Palestine, 
 for in I Kings 3.1 we are told that " Solomon 
 made affinity with Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and 
 took Pharaoh's daughter, and brought her into 
 the city of David." This is not the first instance 
 of intermarriage between royal houses of Egypt 
 and Asia, the policy having already been inaug- 
 urated under the XVIIIth Dynasty, when 
 Amenhotp III, as we know from the Tell el- 
 Amarna letters, received in marriage a daughter 
 of the king of Babylonia and also a daughter of 
 the king of Mitanni. Moreover, Ramesses II 
 married the eldest daughter of a Hittite ruler. 
 
 The name of the Egyptian king to whom 
 Solomon became a son-in-law is not recorded, but 
 we can arrive at it with a considerable degree of 
 probability. The new queen was lodged in the 
 city of David until Solomon should have " made 
 an end of building his own house, and the house of 
 the Lord." The temple was begun in his fourth 
 year (I Kings 6.1), and finished in his eleventh 
 (I Kings 6.37). The building of his own house 
 
152 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 occupied 13 years (I Kings 7.1), and from 9.20 
 it is clear that it followed at once on the com- 
 pletion of the temple, for the two together 
 occupied him twenty years. The marriage there- 
 fore took place some time between his accession 
 about 970 B.C. and his 24th year, 945 b.c. This 
 latter date is in Egypt the generally accepted 
 year for the beginning of the reign of Sheshonk I, 
 the first king of the XXIInd or Libyan Dynasty, 
 and, could this dating be regarded as certain, it 
 would be probable that Solomon's wife was the 
 daughter of one of the last kings of the XXIst or 
 Tanite Dynasty, perhaps of Siamon or Pisebkhanu 
 II. Unfortunately the Egyptian dates are 
 nothing more than approximate, and Sheshonk 
 may well have come to the throne several years 
 earlier than 945 b.c, in which case the princess 
 whom Solomon married might quite well be his 
 daughter. 
 
 There is perhaps one argument in favour of 
 such a supposition. Almost more interesting 
 than the alliance itself is the wedding gift which 
 the king of Egypt gave to his daughter. " For 
 Pharaoh king of Egypt had gone up and taken 
 Gezer, and burnt it with fire, and slain the 
 Canaanites that dwelt in the city, and given it 
 for a present to his daughter, Solomon's wife." 
 
SOLOMON, JEROBOAM AND ASA 153 
 
 This must have been a peculiarly pleasing gift, 
 for Gezer was precisely one of those towns from 
 which the Israelites had never succeeded in 
 dislodging the Canaanites (Judges 1.29). It has 
 been rightly pointed out that the ability of the 
 Egyptian king to sack Gezer assumes his mastery 
 over the Philistine country on the coast, for 
 Gezer commands one of the main routes which 
 leads up from the coastal plain to the hill country 
 of Palestine, which the Philistines of David's 
 time had been so anxious to win, and that an 
 Egyptian should advance as far north as Gezer 
 without securing his left flank is unthinkable (Map 
 1). In Egypt this campaign, extensive as it must 
 have been, has left no certain trace. Its political 
 significance is however clear. The Egyptians 
 are once more attracted by the hope of empire in 
 Syria-Palestine. The first step is an alliance by 
 marriage with Solomon, king of the Israelites, 
 accompanied by an attack on the Philistine plain. 
 Solomon, to whom this last might seem a matter 
 for anxiety, is propitiated by the gift of Gezer, 
 which would enable him to secure his land against 
 possible aggression by the Philistines, still a 
 redoubtable foe. The following up of this new 
 policy in Syria-Palestine is not long delayed, and 
 as soon as Solomon is removed by death the 
 
1 54 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 Egyptians, having secured their left flank in the 
 coastal plain, invade both Israel and Judah (see 
 below). 
 
 It is a little difficult to reconcile an extensive 
 invasion of the Philistine country and the 
 inauguration of a forward policy in Asia with what 
 we at present know of these feeble kings at the 
 end of the XXIst Dynasty, and it is tempting to 
 attribute the capture of Gezer to the great 
 Sheshonk (Shishak) himself. Is this possible 
 chronologically? We have just seen that the 
 absolute date of Sheshonk's accession is too rough 
 to help us. We can, however, establish a relative 
 dating, for we know that Shishak invaded 
 Rehoboam in the latter's fifth year. According 
 to the biblical chronology of Kings, Solomon 
 reigned forty years (a figure which, it is true, is in 
 itself suspect), and married the daughter of the 
 conqueror of Gezer not later than his twenty- 
 fourth year, possibly not later than his eleventh, 
 for I Kings 3.1 gives the impression that the 
 temple was not completed at the time. The 
 space between this marriage and the capture of 
 Jerusalem is at least twenty-one years, and 
 possibly even thirty-four years. Of Shishak we 
 only know with certainty that he reigned at least 
 twenty-one years, and there is a slight presump- 
 
SOLOMON, JEROBOAM AND ASA 155 
 
 tion (see below) that the expedition into Israel 
 and Judah took place not long before his twenty- 
 first year. It is thus within the bounds of 
 possibility that he was the despoiler of Gezer and 
 the father of Solomon's wife, a possibility which 
 must not be ruled out by the change of policy 
 towards Palestine involved by the invasion under 
 Rehoboam. The question cannot, however, be 
 decided until fresh evidence enables us to fix the 
 true length and details of Solomon's reign and the 
 exact date and length of Shishak's. 
 
 Before leaving Solomon's reign we have still to 
 consider the difficult passages which refer to his 
 obtaining horses out of Egypt. In I Kings 10.28 
 we read in the Authorized Version that " Solomon 
 had horses brought out of Egypt, and linen yarn : 
 the king's merchants received the linen yarn at 
 a price." Now the Hebrew text of this passage is 
 manifestly corrupt ; but, if anything is certain 
 about it, it is that the words "linen yarn" never 
 stood there at all. By a slight change in the 
 pointing (i.e., in the vocalization, which was not 
 indicated in the old Hebrew, but added by much 
 later scribes), and the addition of the word "and," 
 which in Hebrew is a mere stroke, we can get a 
 perfectly intelligible translation : " Solomon had 
 horses brought out of Mizraim and out of Kue ; 
 
156 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 the king's merchants received them out of Kue 
 at a price." The correctness of this rendering is, 
 perhaps, supported by the Greek version of the 
 Septuagint, which appears to read, though not 
 quite grammatically, " The going forth of 
 Solomon's horsemen was out of Egypt, and the 
 king's merchants were out of Thekoue ; and they 
 received (them) out of Thekoue by barter." 
 Here it has been suggested that Thekoue is a 
 combination of the Egyptian word for "land" with 
 Kue, so that Thekoue would stand for " the land 
 of Kue." Now it is clear from the Assyrian texts 
 that this land lay in Cilicia (Map i). Moreover, 
 on the obelisk of Shalmaneser II recording the 
 battle of Qarqar the countries of Kue and Musri 
 are closely juxtaposed, and might thus be expected 
 to lie close together. It has therefore been 
 suggested that in the passage we are considering, 
 the Hebrew Mizraim, which elsewhere in the Old 
 Testament certainly means Egypt, stands for the 
 country of Musri which lay in Cilicia or Northern 
 Syria. This suggestion is accepted by those who 
 find a difficulty in supposing an export of horses 
 from Egypt, where indeed the horse was known at 
 this time, but where the evidence for its being 
 bred for export is rather scanty. 1 They point 
 
 i See, however, the remarkable passage Deut. 17.16 (below, p. 192). 
 
SOLOMON, JEROBOAM AND ASA 157 
 
 with justice to the well-known fact that in ancient 
 times Cilicia was famous for its horses. To this 
 others have replied that in the Assyrian inscrip- 
 tions of this period the word Musri can quite 
 reasonably be taken as referring in every case to 
 Egypt and not to the Cilician Musri ; this latter 
 is, it is true, mentioned in Assyrian inscriptions, 
 but only in those dating from the last few centuries 
 of the second millenium b.c. They see no 
 inherent improbability in the exportation of 
 horses from Egypt, or in the supposition that 
 Solomon procured his horses from two entirely 
 separate countries, Egypt and Kue. 
 
 It would be hard indeed to say on which side 
 the balance of probability lies. Seeing that the 
 Hebrew text is hopelessly corrupt, and that the 
 Greek version, though suggesting a reasonable 
 emendation, is far from inspiring confidence, it 
 is barely worth while to devote much time or 
 space to theories based on such uncertain 
 foundations. 
 
 The next events in the relations of Israel and 
 Egypt mark an important moment in the biblical 
 narrative, which for the first time records the 
 name of an Egyptian king, and fortunately one 
 
158 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 which can be identified. The biblical Shishak 
 is beyond all question the first ruler of the Libyan 
 XXIInd Dynasty, Sheshonk I. His name first 
 occurs in I Kings 11.40, where he welcomes in 
 Egypt the fugitive Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, 
 who was one of the " adversaries " whom God 
 raised up against Solomon. The close parallel 
 offered by this story to that of Hadad has already 
 been remarked. Politically it would appear to 
 mean that the friendly relations with Solomon 
 marked by the royal alliance were coming to an 
 end, and that Egypt, having possibly already 
 subdued the Philistine country, was now only 
 waiting for a suitable opportunity for interfering 
 in the hill country of Palestine. The opportunity 
 came with the death of Solomon, followed by the 
 return of Jeroboam to Palestine, perhaps sent 
 thither by Shishak with the direct intention of 
 causing division and weakness, and by the split 
 of the kingdom into Judah and Israel. Whether 
 Shishak consciously engineered this scission or not 
 he made no delay in taking advantage of it, for 
 the biblical story tells us that " it came to pass, 
 in the fifth year of king Rehoboam, that Shishak 
 king of Egypt came up against Jerusalem : And 
 he took away the treasures of the house of the 
 Lord, and the treasures of the king's house ; he 
 
SOLOMON, JEROBOAM AND ASA 159 
 
 even took away all." (I Kings 14.25-26). The 
 account in II Chron. 12.2 gives a little more 
 detail ; " With twelve hundred chariots, and 
 threescore thousand horsemen : and the people 
 were without number which came with him out 
 of Egypt ; the Lubims, the Sukiims, and the 
 Ethiopians. And he took the fenced cities which 
 pertained to Judah, and came to Jerusalem." 
 That the numbers quoted are valueless is clear 
 from the fact that the Egyptians never fought on 
 horseback, but only in chariots, two men to each 
 chariot, so that twelve hundred chariots implies 
 only 2,400 " horsemen," while 60,000 horsemen 
 would require 30,000 chariots. The Lubims are 
 the Libyans, who doubtless under Shishak formed 
 the chief portion of the Egyptian army. The 
 Kushim are the inhabitants of Kush or Upper 
 Nubia (Ethiopia). No reasonable suggestion has 
 yet been made for the identification of the 
 Sukiims, rendered in the Septuagint by Trog- 
 odutai, probably meant for Troglodutai or 
 " Cave-dwellers." 
 
 In the biblical account the invasion appears as 
 affecting only Judah. This is merely due to the 
 fact that the narrative in which it appears is one 
 which keeps apart the story of the two kingdoms, 
 except when narrating relations between the two, 
 
i6o EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 and here it is dealing with Judah alone. That 
 Israel as well as Judah felt the force of Shishak's 
 arm is evident from the Egyptian version of the 
 story, from which it is abundantly clear that the 
 campaign was no interference in Palestine in the 
 interest of his former guest Jeroboam, but a 
 serious attempt at empire-building in Syria. 
 Shisak's main contribution to Egyptian archi- 
 tecture was the building or continuation of the 
 great southern court of the temple of Amon at 
 Karnak. Here, on the wall, near what is now 
 known as the Bubastite Gate, he inscribed the 
 record of his campaign in Palestine. On the 
 right is the figure of the king, never finished, and 
 now almost totally lost, holding by the hair a 
 group of kneeling Syrians and brandishing his 
 club over their heads. On the left the god Amon 
 and certain other deities lead forward 156 captives, 
 each symbolising a Palestinian town or district 
 the name of which is written in an oval completely 
 covering the lower half of each man. Many of 
 the names have perished, and not more than about 
 half are now legible with certainty. Much 
 controversy has gathered round this list, many 
 wishing to regard it as a mere copy of that of 
 some earlier XVIIIth or XlXth Dynasty con- 
 queror. But though such a thing is by no means 
 
SOLOMON, JEROBOAM AND ASA 161 
 
 impossible or unparalleled in Egypt there is not a 
 fragment of evidence that Sheshonk's list is a 
 copy, and the idea has mainly been suggested by 
 the failure to realize that the presence of names 
 of towns in Israel as well as in Judah does not in 
 the least impugn the accuracy of the biblical 
 account, which only deals with Judah (see above). 
 Even some of those who admit the originality of 
 the list have found the presence of these Israel 
 names difficult in view of the biblical limitation of 
 the campaign to Judah, and have endeavoured to 
 explain them as merely places at which the 
 Egyptian army touched in a friendly spirit, or 
 ] aces which gave tribute to the invader and 
 1 ere not attacked. This is a good instance of 
 an unsound procedure. Here we have a list of 
 conquered towns, which in itself is in no way 
 suspect. To throw this evidence over merely 
 because the Bible story does not (and that for a 
 good reason already given) mention an invasion 
 of Israel, is merely to reject positive evidence for 
 negative. To raise the difficulty that Shishak 
 would hardly have attacked his former guest in 
 this way is to display complete ignorance of 
 Egyptian, and indeed of all Eastern diplomacy. 
 
 The list itself is not without interest. The 
 larger towns mentioned are all in Israel, though 
 
 L 
 
1 62 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 none lie north of the Kishon valley. Judah, on 
 the other hand, is represented by small and 
 mostly unidentifiable places, but it is highly 
 probable that the larger towns, including 
 Jerusalem itself, stood in ovals which are now 
 destroyed. Among the more interesting names 
 are Yadhamelek and " The Field of Abram." 
 The first of these was by early philologists read 
 Judah-melek and translated " the king of Judah " ; 
 the absurdity of this has long been recognized, 
 and the error is now perpetuated only by the 
 Luxor dragomans, who point out the captive 
 bearing this town-name as Rehoboam, in the 
 hope of an extra five piastres from the pious 
 tourist. The " Field of Abram " merely shows 
 the survival of this name, not necessarily that of 
 the patriarch, in a place-name in Palestine. 
 
 Unfortunately for our chronological researches 
 Shishak did not record the year of his reign in 
 which this campaign took place, or, if he did, it 
 has perished. We have, however, a rock inscrip- 
 tion in the sandstone quarries of Gebel Silsileh 
 in which the architect Horemsaf relates how he 
 had been entrusted with the quarrying of stone 
 for the work which his master Shishak intended 
 to carry out in the temple of Amon at Karnak. 
 This inscription is dated in the 21st year of the 
 
SOLOMON, JEROBOAM AND ASA 163 
 
 reign, and there is a strong possibility that the 
 Palestine campaign had already taken place, 
 though we must not ignore the possibility that 
 the war inscription, which bears no date, is later 
 than the actual building to which reference is 
 here made. Should this be the case it would 
 the more easily enable us to equate Shishak with 
 the conqueror of Gezer and father of Solomon's 
 wife (see above, p. 154). It is even possible that 
 an inscription of Shishak found on a stela at 
 Karnak, which speaks of a victory on the shores 
 of Kemwer, a lake on the isthmus of Suez, records 
 the beginnings of the campaign against the 
 Philistines and Gezer. 
 
 No more is heard of Egypt in the biblical 
 narrative until we come to the difficult question 
 of the invasion of Judah in the reign of Asa by 
 Zerah the Ethiopian (II Chron. 14. 9-15). The 
 date of this from the Palestinian side is easily 
 fixed. Rehoboam ruled seventeen years ; his 
 successor Abijah three years. The latter was 
 followed by Asa, under whom "the land was quiet 
 ten years" (II Chron. 14. 1). The invasion of 
 Zerah must therefore fall after this, that is to 
 say at least 25 years later than Shishak's capture 
 of Jerusalem in the fifth year of Rehoboam. 
 
1 64 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 Moreover it seems a legitimate inference from 
 II Chron. 15.10, taken with its context, that 
 Asa's victory actually took place in his fifteenth 
 year or just before, that is thirty years after the 
 capture of Jerusalem. In Egypt this would bring 
 us almost certainly into the reign of Osorkon I, 
 the successor of Shishak, a king who ruled 
 thirty-six years. The slight similarity of the 
 names Zerah (Greek Zare) and Osorkon has 
 tempted many to identify them and to regard 
 the incident as a fresh attempt on the part of 
 Egypt to reconquer the whole of Palestine. But 
 there are difficulties. Philologically it is ab- 
 solutely impossible to get Zerah out of Osorkon, 
 though many ingenious attempts have been 
 made. Thus if these two names are one and the 
 same the Hebrew form has been so transformed 
 that it is no longer recognizable. On the other 
 hand it is noteworthy that Zerah's army, after 
 its defeat by Asa at Mareshah in the valley of 
 Zephathah, was pursued to Gerar, which is held 
 by some to indicate that it was making for Egypt 
 by the shortest route in its flight. Yet it is 
 difficult to see how, during the reign of Osorkon 
 the Libyan, or indeed during the early part of 
 the dynasty to which he belonged, an Ethiopian 
 could be in a position to lead an army against 
 
SOLOMON, JEROBOAM AND ASA 165 
 
 Palestine. It is true that in II Chron. 16.8 
 Libyans are said to have taken part in this cam- 
 paign as well as Ethiopians, but this is probably 
 an error which has crept through a false analogy 
 with II Chron. 12.3. 
 
 In view of these serious difficulties two explan- 
 ations of the incident have been proposed. 
 Firstly that the whole story is an invention by a 
 patriotic Hebrew writer anxious to balance 
 Shishak's humiliation of Judah by a subsequent 
 victory of Asa over the Egyptians, and secondly 
 that the Hebrew Kushim, translated here "Ethi- 
 opians," in reality refers to a people of this name 
 living in Arabia. The first explanation is perhaps 
 too radical. The second, although it might be 
 urged in its defence that " tents of cattle " and 
 " sheep and camels in abundance " are a booty 
 more likely to be taken from an Arabian tribe 
 than from an Egyptian army (the camel not being 
 in use in Egypt at this- date), is based on the 
 hypothesis of a Kush in Arabia which has yet to 
 be proved. 
 
 The whole incident in fact is difficult on 
 present evidence. The Ethiopian conquest of 
 Egypt did not take place until 150 years after 
 these events. On the other hand, the vicissitudes 
 of Egypt in the first millennium b.c. were such 
 
1 66 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 that a Hebrew writer might well be excused for 
 having very hazy ideas as to the nationality of its 
 kings at any particular moment, and might well 
 have written Zerah the Ethiopian for Zerah the 
 Libyan. There would still remain the difficulty 
 that we have no Libyan king bearing this name. 
 
 At the same time it is hard to rid oneself of the 
 impression that the story records, if inaccurately, 
 some new collision with Egypt. Why else does 
 Asa smite the cities around Gerar ? This part 
 of Palestine must surely have fallen into Egyptian 
 hands after the campaign of Gezer and that which 
 ended in the fall of Jerusalem. Zerah, defeated 
 at Mareshah, retires on Gerar, which, with the 
 towns in its neighbourhood, has an Egyptian 
 garrison. The victorious Asa pursues him and 
 expels the garrisons from Gerar and its district. 
 It is difficult to see in this anything but a fresh 
 and unsuccessful attack by Egypt on Palestine. 
 On the Egyptian side there is nothing against it, 
 but if we do accept it let us be perfectly clear that 
 the supposed equation of the names Zerah and 
 Osorkon is far too uncertain to be urged in its 
 support. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 SO AND TIRHAKAH 
 
 We now enter on an entirely new phase in the 
 relations of Palestine and Egypt. The change is 
 due to the expansion towards the west of the 
 second Assyrian Empire. A glance at the map 
 will show that Syria and Palestine form the 
 natural way of communication between Assyria 
 and Egypt, the more direct route being impract- 
 icable by reason of its desert nature. The 
 consequence of this was that as soon as Assyria, 
 as well as Egypt, began to cherish designs of 
 empire in Syria-Palestine the petty kingdoms of 
 this country were bound to serve as buffer states 
 between their two powerful neighbours, vassals 
 now of the one and now of the other, occasion- 
 ally for short intervals free from allegiance to 
 either. 
 
 The rise of the second Assyrian Empire may 
 be dated to the reign of Adad-nirari II, who 
 reigned from 911 to 890 b.c. In this reign, 
 incidentally, begins the series of lists of eponymous 
 magistracies which enables us to date to the 
 
 167 
 
1 68 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 exact year the main events of Assyrian history. 
 Ashur-nasir-pal III, who reigned from 884 to 
 860, was the first monarch of this period to come 
 into direct contact with Syria, for he overran 
 the Lebanon and reached Phoenicia and the sea. 
 At his death the Aramaean kingdoms of Hamath 
 and Damascus revolted, and at the great battle 
 of Qarqar in 854 B.C., we find Ahab of Israel in 
 alliance with Benhadad II (Hadad-idri) of 
 Damascus, and Irkhuleni of Hamath, against the 
 might of Assyria. Shalmaneser II, the Assyrian 
 king, records the battle as a victory, but since 
 Benhadad II remained in possession of his kingdom 
 this is doubtless an exaggeration. Amongst the 
 allies on the Israelite side appear 1,000 men of 
 Musri, in whom some see Egyptians, while others 
 would assume them to be from the Musri in 
 Northern Syria or Cilicia. 
 
 If we set aside this rather doubtful piece of 
 evidence the first actual contact between Assyria 
 and Egypt does not occur until a century later. 
 In 734 b.c. the Assyrian Tiglath-pileser IV 
 entered Syria, and marching south into the 
 country of the Philistines captured Gaza, thus 
 bringing the Assyrian arms within striking distance 
 of Egypt (Map 1). Meanwhile, in Egypt itself, 
 great changes had taken place. The Libyans of 
 
SO AND TIRHAKAH 169 
 
 the XXIInd Dynasty had ruled for two centuries, 
 from about 945 to 745 B.C. The first three 
 kings of the XXIIIrd Dynasty were also Libyans, 
 but their power was undoubtedly waning, and in 
 the reign of the second of these, Osorkon III, 
 Egypt was invaded by a certain Piankhi, king of 
 the Ethiopian kingdom which had its capital at 
 Napata, far up the Nile. Recent excavations 
 have shown that these Ethiopian kings were 
 themselves of Libyan descent. After a victorious 
 campaign in Egypt Piankhi withdrew to Napata 
 as suddenly as he had come, and left Osorkon III 
 ruling at Thebes, side by side with a number of 
 other petty dynasts in the Delta. These between 
 them constitute the XXIIIrd and XXIVth 
 Dynasties. About 712 b.c the Ethiopians again 
 attacked Egypt and one of them, Shabaka, brother 
 of Piankhi, assumed the throne as first ruler of 
 the XXVth or Ethiopian Dynasty. 
 
 It is at this critical moment in the history of 
 Egypt that the Old Testament gives us our next 
 point of contact between Egypt and Palestine. 
 We find in II Kings 17.1 ff. that Hoshea reigned 
 in Samaria over Israel nine years. " Against him 
 came up Shalmaneser king of Assyria ; and Hoshea 
 became his servant, and gave him presents. And 
 the king of Assyria found conspiracy in Hoshea : 
 
i yo EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 for he had sent messengers to So king of Egypt 
 (Mizraim), and brought no present to the king of 
 Assyria, as he had done year by year ; therefore 
 the king of Assyria shut him up and bound him 
 in prison. Then the king of Assyria came up 
 throughout all the land, and went up to Samaria, 
 and besieged it three years. In the ninth year 
 of Hoshea the king of Assyria took Samaria, and 
 carried Israel away into Assyria." This is a 
 perfectly clear account. Hoshea is tributary to 
 Assyria. So or Seve the king of Egypt intrigues 
 with him and persuades him to withhold his 
 yearly tribute, with consequences disastrous for 
 Samaria. But who is So, king of Egypt ? The 
 name rendered So in our translation, and Soa by 
 most manuscripts of the Greek version, was 
 probably pronounced something like Sev'e or even 
 Seb'e, and it is practically certain that the same 
 person is referred to by Shalmaneser's successor 
 Sargon in his Annals for 720 B.C., where " Sib'i, 
 the turtan (commander-in-chief) of Musri " is 
 mentioned as among those defeated at the battle 
 of Raphia. Just as So was the ally of the revolting 
 Hoshea in 726, so here in 720 Sib'i is in league 
 with the rebel Hanum of Gaza, and in view of the 
 close similarity of the names, the phonetic 
 correspondence of which is beyond reproach, it is 
 
SO AND TIRHAKAH 171 
 
 highly probable that they are to be regarded as 
 one and the same. The fact that in the one case 
 he is called " king" and in the other " commander- 
 in-chief " need cause no misgiving, for in the 
 period in question it would probably be difficult 
 even for an Egyptian to decide who was actually 
 " king of Egypt." The main result of these 
 intrigues so far as Egypt is concerned was that 
 in 715 B.C. we find Pir'u the king of Musri, i.e. 
 Pharaoh, king of Egypt, mentioned among a list 
 of rulers who rendered tribute to Assyria. 
 
 Some authorities have attempted to identify 
 this So or Sib'i with Shabaka, the Ethiopian king 
 of Egypt. On philological grounds this is quite 
 impossible, for the aleph (which is here rendered ') 
 of the Hebrew and Assyrian forms cannot possibly 
 stand for the Egyptian or Ethiopian k of Shabaka 
 or Sabaka. Brugsch did indeed suggest that the 
 -ka was merely the definite article, as in modern 
 Nubian, and, since sab in the same language 
 means a wild cat, he proposed to translate the 
 name as " the wild cat," and suggested that in 
 the Hebrew form Seb'e the definite article had 
 been omitted. But it has been pointed out 
 that the modern Barabra speech of Nubia was 
 not necessarily the speech of the Ethiopian kings, 
 and that Brugsch's -ka (more correctly -kt) is 
 
172 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 not the definite article but a case-ending. More- 
 over, the Egyptian Shabaka is in the Annals of 
 Ashurbanipal rendered in Assyrian by Shabaku, 
 and can therefore hardly be identical with Sib'i. 
 
 Even if philology could admit the identity of 
 Seb'e and Shabaka there would still remain 
 serious chronological difficulties, for the fall of 
 Samaria is dated by Assyrian sources to 722 B.C., 
 and So's intrigue must therefore have occurred 
 not later than 725 B.C., whereas Shabaka, according 
 to Egyptian dating, did not come to the throne 
 of Egypt until about 712 b.c Unless, therefore, 
 we suppose some serious error in the accepted 
 Egyptian dating for the accession of Shabaka we 
 must not attempt to identify him with So. Hall, 
 who accepts the equation Shabaka equals Seve 
 or So, avoids the difficulty by supposing that when 
 Piankhi conquered Egypt about 727 B.C. he left 
 his brother Shabaka as commander in Egypt 
 while he himself retired to Napata. This, 
 however, is a pure guess, and is supported by 
 nothing in the Egyptian inscriptions. 
 
 Putting aside the fanciful and now discredited 
 belief of Winckler that by Mizraim in this passage 
 (as in many others) is meant not Egypt but a 
 hypothetical land of Musri somewhere in Arabia, 
 the wisest course would seem to be to identify So 
 
SO AND TIRHAKAH 173 
 
 king of Egypt with one of those numerous petty 
 dynasts who ruled in the Egyptian Delta during 
 the years which elapsed between Piankhi's con- 
 quest of Egypt and Shabaka's establishing himself 
 on the Egyptian throne. 
 
 Shortly afterwards an Egyptian king was 
 tempted to interfere once more in Palestinian 
 politics. In 715 b.c. Ashdod and other towns 
 revolted against Assyria under the instigation 
 of a man whose proper name or, perhaps, whose 
 ethnic name was Yamani. Sargon tells us that 
 they sent gifts to Pir u, king of Musri, " a prince 
 who could not help them, and asked him for an 
 alliance." Whether the alliance was granted or 
 not we do not gather. The rebellion was crushed 
 — Isaiah 20.1 mentions the fall of Ashdod — and 
 Yamani fled " to the land of Musri, which belongs 
 to the territory of Melukhkha," where the king of 
 Melukhkha put him in irons and sent him to 
 Assyria. The identification of Melukhkha in 
 this passage is a very thorny problem which 
 cannot here be discussed at length. The balance 
 of probability appears to lie with the view that 
 in certain Assyrian inscriptions of this period the 
 term was used in an archaistic sense instead of the 
 more usual Kushi to represent Ethiopia. The 
 
174 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 very curious description of Musri as dependent 
 (politically, no doubt, rather than merely geo- 
 graphically) on Melukhkha, difficult to account for 
 on any other hypothesis, is now easily explained as 
 due to the fact that Egypt had just come under the 
 domination of Ethiopia. Yamani's flight must 
 have taken place in 711 B.C., when, according to 
 Egyptian dating, Shabaka the Ethiopian had just 
 conquered Egypt. The gifts of Ashdod had been 
 sent presumably not to him but to one of the 
 feeble monarchs who preceded him in Egypt 
 Proper (Musri), whom he had possibly in the 
 meantime deposed. His surrender of the fugitive 
 was doubtless meant as a show of friendship 
 towards Assyria. Confirmation of this friendly 
 attitude is seen by some in the discovery at 
 Nineveh of a clay sealing of Shabaka which had 
 originally served to close some package sent from 
 the king of Egypt to Assyria. 
 
 The accession to the Assyrian throne of 
 Sennacherib in 705 b.c marks a new stage in the 
 relations of Egypt and Palestine. The death of 
 Sargon had led both in east and west to extensive 
 revolts against Assyrian supremacy, and for the 
 first few years of his reign Sennacherib was fully 
 occupied in crushing the rebels in the immediate 
 
SO AND TIRHAKAH 
 
 vicinity of Assyria. Meantime the Philistines 
 were in open mutiny, and they had been joined by 
 Hezekiah of Judah. What followed we know 
 both from II Kings 18 and 19 and from 
 Sennacherib's own account, inscribed on the 
 so-called Taylor Prism. The biblical account 
 presents certain complications and difficulties 
 which, as they do not affect the Egyptian share in 
 the campaign, may be passed over. From the 
 prism it is clear that Sennacherib passed by the 
 hill country of Judah and marched straight into 
 Philistia, where a great battle was fought at 
 Altaqu. In this battle Sennacherib tells us that 
 the Philistines had summoned to their aid the 
 kings of Musri and the troops of the king of 
 Melukhkha. Melukhkha is here certainly 
 Ethiopia, and in the kings of Musri we must see 
 the local dynasts of the Egyptian Delta, who are 
 presumably still enjoying some measure of 
 independence under the suzerainty of the 
 Ethiopian. The date of the battle was 701 B.C. 
 
 Now in II Kings 19.9 we find the name of the 
 Ethiopian king given as Tirhakah, and since 
 Tirhakah did not come to the throne until 688 
 b.c. according to the Egyptian dating, on which 
 considerable confidence may be placed at this 
 point, there is a discrepancy of thirteen years 
 
176 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 at least to be accounted for. Two means of 
 accounting for it have been suggested. The 
 first is to suppose that Tirhakah did actually 
 command the Egyptian forces .at Altaqu, but 
 that he was not yet king at the time. An inscrip- 
 tion found at Tanis in the Egyptian Delta seems 
 to suggest that Tirhakah was in the Delta for 
 some years before his accession to the throne, 
 and that he occupied a position of some import- 
 ance there. It is, therefore, not impossible that 
 the reigning king, Shabaka, put him in command 
 of the Egyptian troops sent to support the 
 Philistine and Judaic rising, which indeed had 
 not improbably been fomented, if not instigated, 
 by Shabaka himself. That the Hebrew chron- 
 icler should call him king in place of commander- 
 in-chief is not difficult to believe. 
 
 The other explanation of the difficulty is to 
 suppose that the coming of Tirhakah and his 
 troops, together with the story of the pestilence 
 which destroyed Sennacherib's army, are 
 " doubles " of events which in reality belong to 
 a second campaign of Sennacherib against 
 Palestine, about 690 B.C. Assyrian sources do 
 not mention such a campaign, but Herodotus 
 (II. 141) states that Sennacherib marched with a 
 huge force to attack Egypt, and lay at Pelusium. 
 
SO AND TIRHAKAH 177 
 
 Here, however, a vast army of mice devoured the 
 bow-strings and shield-thongs of the Assyrians, 
 so that morning found them an unarmed prey to 
 the Egyptians. It is tempting to see in this 
 some record of the tradition of the plague 
 mentioned in II Kings 19.35. 
 
 However these things may be it is clear that 
 the policy of Egypt still consisted in stirring up 
 revolt in Palestine against the Assyrians. Three 
 times had Assyrian armies penetrated Syria to 
 the very boundaries of Egypt, and three times 
 had they, for various reasons, retired without 
 crossing it. But the end could not be long 
 delayed. In 681 b.c. Esarhaddon ascended the 
 Assyrian throne. In 677 he quelled a revolt in 
 Sidon, which there is some reason for believing 
 was instigated by Tirhakah, and the year 675 saw 
 his army actually en route for the conquest of 
 Egypt, but recalled by news of peril nearer home. 
 In 670 Tirhakah was foolish enough to incite 
 Tyre to rebellion. Quickly reducing the revolted 
 city, Esarhaddon pressed on against the real 
 authors of the trouble, and for the first time an 
 Assyrian army entered Egyptian territory. 
 Memphis was taken by storm after a hard struggle, 
 and the Delta was seized and garrisoned with 
 Assyrian troops. Tirhakah fled to Thebes, 
 
 M 
 
178 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 but within a year he had gathered an army, retaken 
 Memphis, and destroyed the foreign garrisons. 
 Esarhaddon, who had returned to Nineveh set 
 out once more for Egypt, but died on the way. 
 
 Nevertheless Egypt's hour had sounded, and 
 even the courage and determination of Tirhakah 
 were not enough to avert the final catastrophe. 
 In 668 Ashurbanipal arrived in Egypt with a 
 force which included contingents from his Syrian 
 subjects, and at Karbanit Tirhakah was once 
 more defeated. Memphis was at once taken, and 
 a Phoenician fleet sailed up the Nile and occupied 
 Thebes. Tirhakah retired to his Ethiopian home 
 in Napata. 
 
 In the next year he was once more in Egypt, 
 intriguing with certain of the local dynasts whom 
 the Assyrians had recognized in the Delta, 
 including Necho of Sais. The Assyrian garrisons 
 proved too strong for the rebels, and Tirhakah 
 again retired to Nubia, while Necho was sent as 
 a prisoner to Nineveh, where, curious to relate, 
 he was well treated, and from whence he was 
 shortly afterwards sent back to be viceroy of 
 Egypt. In the last year of Tirhakah's reign, 
 663 b.c, his successor Tanutamon made a last 
 effort to re-conquer Egypt. The attempt merely 
 brought down on Egypt the wrath of the Assyrian 
 
SO AND TIRHAKAH 179 
 
 conqueror. Ashurbanipal states that he appeared 
 in person, quickly recovered the Delta, and 
 sacked Thebes, which had previously been spared. 
 It was to this event that the prophet Nahum 
 referred (3.8-10) when he apostrophized Nineveh 
 in these words " Art thou better than No-Amon 
 (Thebes), that was situate among the rivers, that 
 had the waters round about it, whose rampart 
 was the sea, and her wall was from the sea . ?1 
 Ethiopia and Egypt were her strength, and it 
 was infinite ; Put and Lubim were thy helpers. 
 Yet she was carried away, she went into captivity : 
 her young children also were dashed in pieces at 
 the top of all the streets ; and they cast lots for 
 her honourable men, and all her great men were 
 bound in chains." 
 
 1 The Hebrew text is in part at least corrupt. Although the word 
 rendered " sea " might equally well mean " the Nile," Spiegelberg finds 
 the passage so unsuitable as a description of Upper Egyptian No-amon, i.e. 
 Thebes, that he proposes to refer it to the Lower Egyptian No-amon, which 
 he places at the modern Tell Balamun, in the north-eastern Delta. Of 
 this place we know nothing except the fact that it existed ; it is possible, 
 but surely a little improbable, that the destruction of a town which had 
 made such an impression among foreign nations should have left no trace 
 in Egyptian history. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 NECHO AND THE PROPHET JEREMIAH 
 
 The Assyrian domination of Egypt was not of 
 
 very long duration. Necho of Sais, established 
 
 as ruler of that town by the Assyrians, had in all 
 
 probability been killed in battle by the rebel 
 
 Tanutamon, and his son Psammetichus, who had 
 
 thereupon fled to Assyria, was set up by Ashur- 
 
 banipal in his father's place. This king, founder 
 
 of the XXVIth Dynasty, proved to be one of 
 
 the most able rulers ever possessed by Egypt. 
 
 Seeing that war was imminent between Assyria 
 
 and Babylon, he took the opportunity to throw 
 
 of! the yoke of the Assyrian governors in Egypt, 
 
 to suppress his brother dynasts in the Delta, and 
 
 as early as 654 b.c. he had forced Thebes to 
 
 acknowledge him. The next few years were 
 
 devoted to establishing the commercial prosperity 
 
 of the country. Trade relations with Syria 
 
 were restored and direct communication opened 
 
 with several of the Greek states. At the same 
 
 time a great archaistic revival took place, both in 
 
 religion and art of every kind. So successfully 
 
 180 
 
NECHO AND JEREMIAH 181 
 
 did the plans of Psammetichus I work out that 
 by 640 B.C. he found himself in a position once 
 more to dispute with Assyria the possession of 
 Syria-Palestine. A distant memory of this cam- 
 paign is preserved in Herodotus' story that 
 Psammetichus besieged Azotus (Ashdod in Phil- 
 istia) for twenty-nine years without intermission, 
 until finally he took it. Any success with which 
 the Egyptians met on this expedition was, how- 
 ever, erased by the irruption into Syria of the 
 Scythian hordes. 1 
 
 When in 609 B.C. Psammetichus' son Necho 
 ascended the throne, the time was again ripe for 
 an invasion of Palestine. Assyria, rudely shaken 
 by the Scythian inroad, was now tottering to 
 its fall, and within a year or two the armies of 
 the Medes and the Babylonians were to clamour 
 at its gates. Psammetichus, delaying only to 
 build a fleet, attacked Philistia in his first year. 
 The opening stages of the campaign are undoubt- 
 edly alluded to in Jeremiah 47. 1 and 5. " The 
 word of the Lord that came to Jeremiah against 
 the Philistines, before that Pharaoh smote Gaza. 
 . . . Baldness is come upon Gaza ; Askhelon is 
 cut off with the remnant of their valley." The 
 
 1 Some, however, hold that these Scythians were actually the defenders 
 of Ashdod against Psammetichus. There is no evidence for this view. 
 
1 82 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 later stages are very briefly touched on by 
 Herodotus II. 159 : " He also made war by land 
 upon the Syrians, and defeated them in a pitched 
 battle at Magdolus (probably a garbled form of 
 Megiddo), after which he made himself master 
 of Cadytis (Kadesh ?), a large city of Syria." 
 The biblical narrative, however, is much more 
 explicit. In II Kings 23.29 ff. we read that in 
 the days of Josiah king of Judah " Pharaoh-nechoh 
 king of Egypt went up against the king of 
 Assyria to the river Euphrates : and king Josiah 
 went against him ; and he slew him at Megiddo 
 when hehad seen him." The account of II Chron- 
 icles 35.20 ff. is even fuller. Here Necho 
 is said to be on his way " to fight against Carche- 
 mish by Euphrates : and Josiah went out against 
 him." The succeeding verses would suggest 
 that Necho was merely seeking a peaceful passage 
 through Judah on his way to challenge Assyria. 
 It is difficult to believe that he should move his 
 army so far afield leaving an unconquered and 
 unreliable neutral in his rear, and the desire of 
 the Egyptian to avoid a conflict and the per- 
 versity of Josiah in insisting on it are distinctly 
 puzzling, and should perhaps not be taken too 
 seriously. If Necho pursued his march to the 
 Euphrates on this occasion he failed to provoke 
 
NECHO AND JEREMIAH 183 
 
 the Assyrians to battle, for it must be clearly 
 understood that the reference to Carchemish 
 here made by the Jewish historian has, in reality, 
 nothing whatever to do with the great battle 
 fought there a few years later, though he has 
 quite possibly confused the two campaigns. It 
 was presumably on his return from the fruitless 
 march to the Euphrates that Necho deposed 
 Jehoahaz, the elected successor of Josiah, and 
 " put him in bands at Riblah, in the land of 
 Hamath, that he might not reign in Jerusalem ; 
 and put the land to a tribute of an hundred 
 talents of silver, and a talent of gold. And 
 Pharaoh-nechoh made Eliakim the son of Josiah 
 king in the room of Josiah his father, and turned 
 his name to Jehoiakim, and took Jehoahaz away : 
 and he came to Egypt and died there " (II Kings 
 
 23-33-34)- 
 
 The significance of this campaign from the 
 Egyptian point of view is immense. At a single 
 stroke Necho had recovered the Egyptian empire 
 in Asia to its fullest extent, from the borders of 
 Egypt through Palestine, Syria proper and 
 Naharina to the upper waters of the Euphrates. 
 He was, however, not destined to enjoy it long. 
 In 606 B.C. the combined forces of the Medes 
 and Babylonians had accomplished the destruction 
 
1 84 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 of Nineveh, and the Assyrian empire was divided 
 between them, the south and south-west falling 
 to Babylon. Nabopolassar, the king of Babylon, 
 was too old to undertake the re-conquest of Syria, 
 but sent his son Nebuchadnezzar in his place. 
 Necho advanced to meet him and was routed in 
 a great battle fought at Carchemish, of which 
 Jeremiah 46.2 has preserved the record. In the 
 ruins of Carchemish has been found a bronze 
 shield which probably belonged to one of the 
 Ionian mercenaries who fought in his army. 
 Pursued by the insults and revilings of Jeremiah 
 and his exultant countrymen (Jeremiah 46) the 
 discomfited army made its way back to Egypt, 
 leaving Syria to fall into the hands of Babylon. 
 " And the king of Egypt came not any more out 
 of his land " we read in II Kings 24.7, " for the 
 king of Babylon had taken from the river of 
 Egypt unto the river Euphrates all that pertained 
 to the king of Egypt." The new masters of 
 Syria-Palestine were not long in making their 
 appearance in Judah, for in 596 B.C. Nebuchad- 
 nezzar captured Jerusalem and deported to 
 Babylon all but the poorest inhabitants of the 
 land (II Kings 24.10 ff.). 
 
 The moral effect of this event was so great 
 that during the rest of Necho's reign and during 
 
NECHO AND JEREMIAH 185 
 
 that of his successor Psammetichus II, 593 to 
 588 B.C., Egypt abstained from all participation 
 in Syrian affairs. Early in the next reign, that 
 of Apries, the Hebrew Hophra, the policy of 
 interference was resumed. In Judah Jehoiakim, 
 carried off captive by Nebuchadnezzar, had 
 been followed by his son Jehoiachin, who after 
 a short reign had also been taken to Babylon. 
 The successor chosen by the king of Babylon was 
 Zedekiah, the brother of Jehoiakim. It is 
 perhaps not an accident that it was precisely in 
 the year of Apries' accession that Zedekiah 
 rebelled against Babylon. Ezekiel 17.15 records 
 the fact that Zedekiah " rebelled against him in 
 sending his ambassadors into Egypt, that they 
 might give him horses and much people." The 
 details of the campaign which followed are 
 derived solely from the Greek and the Hebrew 
 historians, and it is difficult to follow the exact 
 course of events. Herodotus IV. 161 tells us 
 that Apries " marched an army to attack Sidon, 
 and fought a battle with the king of Tyre by 
 sea," and from Diodorus we gather that he 
 carried out the subjugation of the whole Phoen- 
 ician coast. But we do not know the date of 
 this expedition, and its relation to the rebellion 
 of Zedekiah against Babylon is not clear. It 
 
1 86 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 is, however, not unlikely that it was this move- 
 ment of Apries which caused the temporary 
 retreat of Nebuchadnezzar's forces from before 
 Jerusalem in 587 B.C. (Jeremiah 37.5 and 11). 
 The relief was but momentary, for in the 
 following year Jerusalem fell and was destroyed. 
 Zedekiah was haled before the Assyrian king at 
 his headquarters at Riblah in northern Syria, and, 
 after witnessing the slaughter of his sons, was 
 blinded and carried away to Babylon. Over the 
 wretched remnant of the people of Judah allowed 
 to remain in their own land one Gedaliah was 
 set as governor. This man, after seven months 
 of rule, was murdered by the adherents of the 
 old royal house of Judah, and in fear of the 
 consequences " all the people, both small and 
 great, and the captains of the armies, arose, and 
 came to Egypt ; for they were afraid of the 
 Chaldees " (II Kings 25.26). Among these volun- 
 tary exiles was the prophet Jeremiah, and there 
 is a cruel irony in the fact that he who for so 
 long had poured out his execrations upon the 
 Egyptians and upon the Egyptophile party in 
 Judah should thus be forced to flee to the country 
 which he had spent his life in denouncing. The 
 site chosen for the dwelling place of the exiles 
 was Tahpanhes, or Daphnae, a town in the Eastern 
 
NECHO AND JEREMIAH 187 
 
 Delta, which had quite recently come into 
 prominence in Egypt. 
 
 Egyptologists are still divided in opinion as 
 to whether the supposed invasion of Egypt by 
 Nebuchadnezzar in 568 b.c. actually took place ; 
 the two inscriptions on which the supposition 
 is based are by no means decisive and have 
 certainly been misunderstood by some authori- 
 ties. There is nothing improbable in such 
 an event, but until further evidence is forth- 
 coming on the point we are not justified in 
 assuming its reality. Jeremiah's " prophecy " 
 (43.9-10) that Nebuchadnezzar would set his 
 throne on the great stones which he (Jeremiah) 
 had hidden in the brick pavement of Pharaoh's 
 house at Daphnae (Tahpanhes) need not neces- 
 sarily have been fulfilled (cf. Ezekiel 29.32). 
 When Petrie excavated the site of Daphnae in 
 the early eighties he found a building begun by 
 Psammetichus I, which he describes as something 
 " more than a mere garrison fortress " and 
 identifies with " Pharaoh's house in Tahpanhes " 
 mentioned by the prophet. In front of this 
 building was found a large brick pavement or 
 platform, which the excavator opines was that 
 in which Jeremiah hid the large stones. It 
 was, unfortunately, much denuded in places, 
 
1 88 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 and a search among what remained of it failed 
 to yield the hoped-for stones. The remains of 
 the fortress are still known by the name of the 
 " Castle of the Jew's Daughter," a name which 
 may well have originated in much later times 
 than that of the Jewish exile here. In any case 
 it is barely worth while to try to prove the 
 identity of this building with Jeremiah's " House 
 of Pharaoh," an expression which the prophet 
 may quite well have used figuratively, and which 
 need not for a moment pre-suppose the real 
 existence of a palace-fort of the king at Daphnae. 
 The excavations showed that the fortress was 
 mainly occupied by Greek mercenary troops, 
 and no Jewish remains of any kind whatsoever 
 were brought to light. This fact does not in 
 any way discredit the narrative of Jeremiah. In 
 the first place, the excavation of the site was not 
 complete. And in the second the sojourn of the 
 Jewish exiles may have been very short. Indeed 
 Josephus preserves a story that Nebuchadnezzar, 
 when he conquered Egypt (in the supposed 
 invasion of 568 B.C.), " took those Jews that were 
 there captive, and led them away to Babylon ; 
 and such was the end of the nation of the 
 Hebrews." 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE JEWISH COLONIES IN EGYPT 
 
 If we may trust the evidence of Jeremiah 44.1, 
 
 there were at the time of the destruction of 
 
 Jerusalem, or shortly after this event, Jewish 
 
 colonies in various parts of Egypt, in Migdol, 
 
 Daphnae, Noph or Memphis, and in the country 
 
 of Pathros (Southern Egypt). These colonies 
 
 need not necessarily all have consisted of persons 
 
 who had left Judah along with Jeremiah. The 
 
 XXVIth Dynasty had encouraged the settlement 
 
 of foreigners in the Nile valley, partly as traders, 
 
 partly as mercenaries in the Egyptian armies. 
 
 Among those who flocked in there may well have 
 
 been many Jews, more especially in the period 
 
 preceding the fall of Jerusalem, when the factions 
 
 of Assyrophile and Egyptophile were rife. The 
 
 temporary ascendancy of one party must often 
 
 have forced prominent members of the other 
 
 to retire to the country whose interests they 
 
 supported. Yet of these colonies in Egypt we 
 
 know nothing, and it is not until the fifth century, 
 
 after Egypt had become a Persian province, that, 
 189 
 
igo EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 through a happy chance, we are given an insight 
 into the daily life of one of them. 
 
 In 1904 the antiquity dealers of Aswan, the 
 ancient Syene, 600 miles up the Nile above 
 Cairo, sold to two English buyers a number of 
 papyri written in the Aramaic language, which 
 in Palestine succeeded Hebrew as the speech of 
 the Jewish people. The contents of these papyri 
 made it clear that during the period of the 
 Persian occupation of Egypt a Jewish colony had 
 existed in the town of Yeb or Elephantine, at 
 the south end of a small island lying in the 
 Nile opposite Aswan (Map 1). In 1906 to 1908 
 excavations undertaken by the Berlin Museum 
 led to the recovery of more papyri of a similar 
 kind, which enable us to reconstruct with 
 certainty the main features of the life of this 
 curious settlement. 
 
 Its nature was purely military. Elephantine 
 was the frontier fortress of the south, just as 
 Daphnae and Marea were the frontier fortresses 
 of the Eastern and Western Delta respectively. 
 It was responsible not only for holding in check 
 the Nubians further up the Nile, but also for 
 the maintenance of order throughout Upper 
 Egypt, the biblical Pathros. The garrison con- 
 sisted partly of Persian soldiery with a Persian 
 
THE JEWISH COLONIES IN EGYPT 191 
 
 commander-in-chief, partly of mercenaries com- 
 prising both Jews and other Semites. 
 
 The papyri found extend in date from the 
 27th year of Darius I, 494 B.C., through the 
 reigns of Xerxes, Artaxerxes I and Darius II, 
 down to the fifth year of Amyrtaeus (400 B.C.), 
 the first of the restored Egyptian kings after the 
 throwing off of the Persian yoke. They comprise 
 official documents issued both by the Persian 
 government and by the Jewish community, 
 private business papers, accounts, lists of names, 
 letters and literary texts. The language and 
 script are Aramaic, a Semitic dialect which had 
 already become widespread in Assyrian times, 
 and which the Persians had adopted as the 
 medium of official communication in the western 
 portion of their vast empire. It is not surprising 
 to find this language used in the documents 
 emanating from the Persian government of 
 Egypt, but it is remarkable that it should have 
 been also used in the private documents, for it 
 shows that the Jews who had entered Egypt 
 speaking Hebrew even as late as Jeremiah's time 
 had now adopted Aramaic. Well might 
 Nehemiah (13.23 ff.) complain that in his time 
 children of mixed marriages in Palestine could 
 no longer speak Hebrew. 
 
192 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 The Jews of Elephantine had, according to 
 their own account, been settled there since " the 
 days of the kings of Egypt," from which we might 
 infer that they had entered Egypt as mercenaries 
 during the warlike days of the XXVIth Dynasty. 
 The Jews whom Jeremiah mentions (44.1) as 
 scattered over Egypt as far as Pathros (Upper 
 Egypt) were doubtless among these. The Letter 
 of Aristeas, a document with regard to whose 
 value as evidence authorities are divided, states 
 that Psammetichus II, 593-588, used Jewish 
 troops in a campaign against the Ethiopians. 
 The importation of Jewish mercenaries is perhaps 
 to be traced back even further than this. In 
 the book of Deuteronomy, which consists of a 
 body of law promulgated under Josiah in 621 B.C., 
 we read (17.16) among the qualifications required 
 of the King of the Jews " But he shall not multiply 
 horses to himself, nor cause the people to return 
 to Egypt, to the end that he should multiply 
 horses." This passage has puzzled the comment- 
 ators, but it becomes clear if we follow Meyer in 
 supposing that the kings of Judah had been in 
 the habit of bartering mercenaries for Egyptian 
 horses (see above p. 156). 
 
 If this suggestion is correct, the origin of the 
 Jewish diaspora in Egypt would reach back into 
 
THE JEWISH COLONIES IN EGYPT 193 
 
 the seventh century b.c. This is perhaps con- 
 firmed by the fact of the existence at Elephantine 
 of a temple of Yahu (Yahweh), for one of the main 
 effects of Josiah's legislation was to concentrate 
 the worship of the Jewish god at Jerusalem, and 
 to forbid the making of a temple to him in any 
 other place. 
 
 The colony thus formed a religious community 
 which had its own organization quite apart from 
 that imposed on it by the Persians in its capacity 
 of a mercenary garrison. At its head stood a 
 chief, who in the time of Darius II was one 
 Yedoniah son of Gemariah. Among the col- 
 leagues who assisted the chief in his functions 
 were " the priests (of Yahu) in the fortress of 
 Elephantine." The community was divided into 
 groups each nominally consisting of one hundred 
 souls ; the whole colony must have numbered 
 about 600 persons including women and children. 
 
 The personal names are mostly those known 
 to us from the later portions of the Old 
 Testament ; among them occur from time to 
 time others, Babylonian, Aramaic or Egyptian, 
 no fewer than one quarter of the pure Jewish 
 names are compounded with Yahu. Yet it is 
 not to be argued from this that Yahu was the 
 only deity worshipped at Elephantine. We have 
 
 N 
 
194 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 already seen reason to believe that the worship 
 which prevailed had been established by Jews who 
 left Palestine before the legislation of Josiah 
 reduced the Jewish religion to what was practic- 
 ally a monotheism. Thus a papyrus containing 
 the names of some 120 members of the community 
 who contributed two shekels each to the common 
 cult apportions the total sum collected as follows : 
 
 Silver, 31 karsh and 8 seqel. 
 
 Thereof for Yahu 12 karsh and 6 (sic) seqel. 
 
 for Ashim-betel 7 karsh. 
 
 for Anath-betel 12 karsh. 
 
 The deity Ashim (the vocalization is uncertain) 
 is probably to be connected with the goddess 
 Ashima of Samaria, whose worship Amos (writing 
 about 750 B.C.) reproves in his countrymen, 
 " They that swear by Ashima 1 of Samaria and say 
 ' By the life of thy god, O Dan,' and 6 By the 
 life of thy deity, O Beersheba ' " (Amos 8.14). 
 
 Anath is well known to us from Egyptian 
 texts as a warrior-goddess of Palestine. She 
 gave her name to Bethany " House of Anath," 
 and seems to have been especially regarded in 
 
 I. The translation of the A.V., " They that swear by the sin of Samaria," 
 is manifestly nonsense. If the rendering given above, due to Gressmann, 
 is correct, then the statement of II Kings 17.30 that the " men of Hamath 
 made Ashim " when they were brought in to colonize Samaria after its 
 depopulation by Sargon of Assyria, in 722 B.C., cannot be literally true. 
 
THE JEWISH COLONIES IN EGYPT 195 
 
 the neighbourhood of Jerusalem. It has even 
 been suggested that she is identical with the 
 " queen of heaven " against whose worship by 
 the Jewish women both in Upper Egypt and 
 previously in Jerusalem, Jeremiah 44 inveighs 
 so heavily. 
 
 Thus we find that Yahu had been accompanied 
 into Egypt by two of the deities who had been 
 worshipped side by side with him in Palestine, 
 though these are regarded as occupying a very 
 inferior position. This is indicated in each case 
 by the addition of the word betel or bethel to 
 the name. Bethel, literally "House of God," 
 is the name of the sacred stone in which the deity 
 is regarded as dwelling. In this case the bethel 
 must be that of Yahu, and the two names " Ashim 
 of the Bethel" and " Anath of the Bethel" 
 clearly show the dependence on him of the two 
 goddesses. This is corroborated by ao oath 
 formula where the oath is taken by the goddess 
 " Anath of Yahu." 
 
 The most valuable document for the history 
 of this colony of Jews in Egypt is the letter of 
 complaint written by the community in 407 b.c. 
 in reference to the destruction of the temple of 
 Yahu in 410 b.c. This letter is of such import- 
 ance that it may be quoted practically in full. 
 
196 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 " To our Lord Bagoas, Governor of Judah. 
 Thy servants Yedoniah and his colleagues, the 
 priests in the fortress of Yeb (Elephantine)." 
 Then follow the usual formulae of greeting. 
 " Thy servants Yedoniah and his colleagues 
 speak as follows : 
 
 In the month of Tammuz in year 14 of King 
 Darius (410 b.c.) when Arsames (the Persian 
 governor of Egypt) had left and gone to the 
 King, the priests of the god Khnum in the 
 fortress of Elephantine conspired with Widarnag, 
 who was commander here, to make away with 
 the temple of the god Yahu in the fortress of 
 Yeb. Thereupon this Widarnag, the accursed 
 one, sent a message to his son Nephayan, who 
 was the officer commanding in the fortress of 
 Syene (Aswan), to this effect, ' The temple of 
 the god Yahu in the fortress of Elephantine 
 shall be destroyed.' Thereupon Nephayan 
 brought up Egyptians and other soldiery ; they 
 came to the fortress of Elephantine with their 
 weapons, entered the aforesaid temple and 
 destroyed it even down to the ground, and they 
 broke up the stone columns which were there. 
 They also destroyed the five stone doorways, 
 built of blocks of stone, which were in the afore- 
 said temple, and their doors and the brazen 
 
THE JEWISH COLONIES IN EGYPT 197 
 
 hinges of those doors ; likewise the roof of cedar 
 wood together with the rest of the fittings and 
 whatsoever else there was they burned with fire. 
 And the gold and silver bowls and all else that 
 was in the temple they removed and appro- 
 priated. Our fathers had built the aforesaid 
 temple in the fortress of Yeb in the days of the 
 kings of Egypt, and when Cambyses marched 
 against Egypt he found this temple already built. 
 And though the temples of the gods of Egypt 
 were all destroyed, yet no man did any harm to 
 the aforesaid temple. 
 
 And since the time when they did this we 
 and our wives and our children have worn 
 mourning, and fasted and prayed to Yahu, Lord 
 of Heaven. . . . 
 
 Once previously, at the time when this evil 
 deed was done to us, we sent a letter to our 
 lord, as also to Jochanan the High Priest, and 
 his colleagues, the priests in Jerusalem, and to 
 Ostanes the brother of Anani, and the principal 
 Jews ; but they have sent us no reply. 
 
 Since the month of Tammuz of Year 14 of 
 King Darius until this day we have worn mourn- 
 ing and fasted ; our womenfolk are become as 
 a widow ; we anoint ourselves no more with oil 
 and we drink no wine. Moreover, from that 
 
198 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 time until now, Year 17 of King Darius, no 
 food-offerings, incense and burnt offerings have 
 been offered in the aforesaid temple. 
 
 And now thy servants Yedoniah and his 
 colleagues and the community of Jews, inhabi- 
 tants of Yeb, say as follows : 
 
 If it seem good to our lord may he bethink 
 him of this temple to build it up, for they do 
 not suffer us to build it up. Look upon the 
 receivers of thy benefits and favours here in 
 Egypt. May a despatch be sent for them by 
 thee concerning the temple of the god Yahu, 
 to build it up in the fortress of Yeb even as it 
 was built aforetime, and they will offer the 
 food-offerings and the incense and the burnt 
 offerings upon the altar of the god Yahu in thy 
 name ; and we will at all time pray for thee, we 
 and our wives and children and all the Jews who 
 are here, if so be that this temple shall be built 
 up. And thou shalt win for thyself merit in the 
 sight of Yahu the God of Heaven, more than a 
 man who offers to him burnt-offerings and slaugh- 
 terings to the value of 1,000 silver talents. And 
 concerning gold we have sent a messenger and 
 given instructions. 
 
 We have, moreover, reported the whole matter 
 in a letter in our name to Delaniah and Shelemiah 
 
THE JEWISH COLONIES IN EGYPT 199 
 
 the sons of Sin-uballit, governor of Samaria. 
 Further, Arsames has no knowledge of what has 
 been done to us." 
 
 The letter needs little comment for it explains 
 itself. The last paragraph exculpates Arsames, 
 the Persian satrap of Egypt, from all share in 
 the attack on Yahu's temple, and the last words 
 of the previous paragraph clearly hint at a bribe 
 to Bagoas. But who are the addressees ? Bagoas 
 the governor of Jerusalem was already known to 
 us before the discovery of the Elephantine papyri. 
 Josephus records only one piece of Jewish history 
 between the time of Nehemiah and that of 
 Alexander the Great, namely that the High 
 Priest Jochanan, grandson of Eliashib, who held 
 the office in the days of Nehemiah, slew his own 
 brother Jesus in the temple at Jerusalem, fearing 
 that the latter, being a friend of Bagoas " the 
 general of Artaxerxes," might be set in his place. 
 This Bagoas had previously been identified with 
 the great Persian minister who controlled the 
 policy of Persia in the later years of Artaxerxes III 
 (359-338 b.c). But our papyrus makes it clear 
 that this is incorrect, and that the Bagoas of 
 Josephus is identical with him to whom the 
 letter of the Jews of Yeb was written, for the 
 letter actually mentions Jochanan as High Priest. 
 
200 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 Bagoas then must have been a successor of 
 Nehemiah as governor of Jerusalem who was in 
 office in 407 b.c. and who, therefore, is hardly 
 to be identified with the great minister of 
 Artaxerxes Ill's reign fifty years later. 
 
 Of Ostanes, brother of Anani, we know nothing. 
 His Persian name need not indicate Persian 
 nationality, the more so as his brother's name 
 is Jewish. 
 
 The addressees whose appearance most sur- 
 prises us are Delaniah and Shelemiah, sons of 
 Sin-uballit, governor of Samaria. Their father 
 is clearly Nehemiah's opponent Sanballat, who 
 did so much to prevent the rebuilding of the 
 temple of Jerusalem (Neh. 4.1, etc.). Nehemiah 
 never gives him the title of governor of Samaria, 
 though it is clear from 4.2 that he held a position 
 of some importance there. In 407 b.c. Sanballat 
 must, if still living, have been of considerable 
 age, and it may be for this reason that his sons 
 are appealed to. 
 
 But why should the Jews of Elephantine 
 appeal to Samaritans at all ? Not a generation 
 previously the Samaritans had been foremost in 
 opposing the rebuilding of the Temple at 
 Jerusalem, and though they had accepted the 
 legislation of Nehemiah in 433 b.c the breach 
 
THE JEWISH COLONIES IN EGYPT 201 
 
 had never been entirely healed. It would thus 
 seem hardly likely that their influence would go 
 far to secure the Egyptian Jews a favourable 
 hearing at Jerusalem. Some would meet this 
 difficulty by supposing that the Elephantine 
 Jews were of Samaritan origin. Of this there is 
 no proof. Another possibility is suggested by 
 Neh. 13.28, where we read that one of the 
 grandsons of Eliashib the High Priest was son-in- 
 law to Sanballat. Thus Sanballat's family was 
 connected by marriage with the High Priestly 
 family in Jerusalem, and so it may be that his 
 sons had influence in that quarter. If this is so 
 a reconciliation between the two families must 
 have taken place since Nehemiah's time, for the 
 verse referred to above concerning Eliashib's 
 grandson ends " therefore I chased him from 
 me." In any case it should be remembered that 
 what was needed for the rebuilding of the 
 Elephantine temple was not merely the permis- 
 sion of the High Priest of Jerusalem, but also 
 that of the Persian governor Bagoas. It may 
 have been with this latter that the Samaritans 
 were believed to have influence. 
 
 The preamble of the first reply of Bagoas and 
 Delaniah has fortunately been preserved. The 
 instructions of the bearer are " to speak in Egypt 
 
202 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 concerning the altar-house of the God of Heaven 
 which was formerly built in the fortress of 
 Yeb, ... to build it up in its place as it was 
 aforetime, and they shall bring food-offerings 
 and incense on that altar even as it happened 
 formerly." 
 
 It is clear from this that the Jewish arguments, 
 whether logical or metallic, had prevailed in 
 Palestine. It is equally clear that the omission 
 of all reference to burnt offerings as opposed to 
 unburnt food-offerings is intentional. The Jews 
 had specifically requested permission to offer 
 three kinds of offering ; permission is granted 
 in the case of food-offerings and incense, and 
 withheld in the case of burnt offerings. That 
 the omission was important is shown by a fragment 
 of another appeal, possibly of later date, by five 
 of the Jews to some influential person not actually 
 named. In it we find the following words, " If 
 our lord (the addressee) [intercedes for us ?] and 
 if the temple of Yahu [is rebuilt] as it was before, 
 and if sheep, oxen and goats . . . are not offered 
 there, but only incense and food-offerings ... we 
 will deliver to the house of our lord iooo bushels 
 of corn." It is not easy to see why the permission 
 for burnt offerings was refused. The position 
 of Bagoas was doubtless far from easy, so much 
 
THE JEWISH COLONIES IN EGYPT 203 
 
 so that he had spent three years without taking 
 action at all. On the one side was his Persian 
 master, on the other the Jews of Palestine, who 
 doubtless resented the existence of a temple of 
 Yahweh outside Jerusalem. It may have been 
 in an attempt to propitiate these last that the 
 name of Yahweh was so significantly omitted 
 from his reply quoted above. Yet again he had 
 to pacify the Egyptians, who were probably not 
 too well disposed towards the foreign worship 
 of the Jews in their midst, as their destruction 
 of the temple had abundantly shown. Was it 
 in deference to these that the permission to make 
 burnt offerings was withheld ? It is hardly likely. 
 Our evidence, though scanty, is conclusive as to 
 the fact that the Egyptians themselves made 
 burnt offerings, and, though the animals sacrificed 
 by the Jews, the ox, the sheep and the goat, 
 were all regarded as sacred in some part of Egypt 
 or other, none of these was worshipped locally 
 at Elephantine with the exception of the sheep, 
 the local god Khnum being represented with 
 the head of a ram, a fact which may indeed have 
 helped towards the destruction of Yahweh's 
 temple in 410 b.c. It is perhaps more likely that 
 burnt animal sacrifice was regarded as an offence 
 against the Persian religion of fire-worship, for the 
 
2o 4 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 teaching of Zoroaster was that the sacred element 
 of fire was polluted by contact with the animal 
 bodies. 
 
 Whether the community of Yeb ever re-built 
 their sanctuary we never learn, for only two 
 years later, 405 b.c, occurred the revolt of Egypt 
 against her Persian conquerors and her liberation 
 from the yoke. That our community survived 
 this is clear from a document dated in Year 5 of 
 Amyrtaeus the first king of the restored Egypt. 
 But with this the history of the colony appears 
 to end. 
 
 It hardly falls within the compass of a work 
 of this nature to describe at length the internal 
 conditions prevailing in the colony of Yeb as 
 illustrated by the private documents, or to deal 
 with the marriage contracts of Mibhtahyah the 
 daughter of Mahseiah, or with her dowry and 
 her trousseau on the occasions of her two 
 marriages. It is impossible, however, to pass 
 unnoticed another official document, the permis- 
 sion granted by Darius in 419 b.c. for the holding 
 of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. 
 
 This document is in the form of a letter from a 
 certain Jew, Khananiah, to the Jewish community 
 in Yeb. It contains an account of an official 
 instruction sent by Darius II to the Persian 
 
THE JEWISH COLONIES IN EGYPT 205 
 
 governor of Egypt, Arsames, and perhaps brought 
 to Egypt by Khananiah himself. Unfortunately 
 half of most of the lines has been lost, and the 
 filling in of the lacunae thus formed must be a 
 matter of considerable uncertainty. The letter 
 is addressed " To my brother Yedoniah and his 
 colleagues, the Jewish army, your brother 
 Khananiah." It reads as follows : 
 
 " [To my brother] Yedoniah and his colleagues, 
 the Jewish army, your brother Khananiah. May 
 God bless you. In this year, Year 5 of King 
 Darius, instructions have been sent from the 
 King to Arsames. . . . 'You are now to count 
 thus ; fourteen [days of Nisan] . . . and from 
 day 15 to day 21 of [Nisan]. ... Be ye pure 
 (?) and beware. Ye shall do no work. . . . Ye 
 shall not drink [beer], nor [shall ye] . . . anything 
 in which is leaven . . . from the going down of 
 the sun [on the 15th of Nisan] until the 21st of 
 Nisan . . . [ye shall not] bring it into your rooms. 
 And ye shall make a separation between the 
 days. ..." 
 
 In the eyes of many scholars the significance 
 of this document lies in the absence of all reference 
 to the Passover proper, with its sacrifice of a 
 lamb and the meal which followed this. The 
 Jewish Feast of the Passover clearly comprehended 
 
2o6 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 two festivals entirely separate in origin, firstly, 
 a very primitive ceremony in which a lamb was 
 slain and its blood smeared on the door-posts of 
 each house, and secondly, a feast which took 
 place at the time of the beginning of the barley 
 harvest, and the chief ceremony in which was 
 the eating of unleavened bread. Both these 
 feasts took place in the spring, and by a process 
 which need not here be described, they became 
 united into a single feast in which a lamb was 
 killed towards sundown on the 14th day of Abib 
 (pre-exilic calendar), and eaten the same evening, 
 i.e. the evening of the 15th according to Jewish 
 reckoning ; on this followed at once the seven 
 days of unleavened bread, from the 14th to the 
 2 1 st, the first 1 and last of which were holy and 
 no work was done on them. 
 
 In the decalogue of Exodus 34 and the Book 
 of the Covenant of Exodus 23 the two feasts 
 are still clearly distinct. But in Deuteronomy 16 
 they are already combined, and the Passover-lamb 
 is only to be slaughtered at the Temple in 
 Jerusalem, not in the private houses. This last 
 must have been an unendurable hardship, and 
 we find that the Priestly Codex as exemplified 
 
 1 Note, however, that Deuteronomy 16.8 mentions no holy day on the 
 first day but only on the seventh. 
 
THE JEWISH COLONIES IN EGYPT 207 
 
 by Exodus 12 returns to the old custom of a 
 family Passover-lamb. 
 
 Some authorities see in the absence from 
 Darius' proclamation of any reference to the 
 sacrifice of the lamb a proof of the fact that at this 
 time the sacrifice was made only in the Temple 
 at Jerusalem. It must be confessed that this 
 reasoning is not altogether convincing. In the 
 first place the argument is a negative one, and 
 though there is a probability that a document 
 prescribing in detail how the combined Passover- 
 Unleavened-Bread-Feast should be observed 
 would have dealt with the question of the 
 sacrifice had such existed, it is not quite a 
 certainty. In the second place Naville may be 
 right in attacking Eduard Meyer's assumption 
 that these ordinances were intended not for 
 Elephantine alone but for the Jews of the whole 
 Persian Empire. There was indeed a special 
 reason why the sacrifice of a lamb, harmless 
 enough at Migdol or Daphnae, might be very 
 obnoxious at Elephantine, for the local Egyptian 
 god was Khnum, who is represented under the 
 form of a ram. 
 
 We do not know the eventual fate of the 
 Jewish military colony at Yeb. Some have 
 supposed that it perished, or came nigh to 
 
208 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 perishing, in the revolt of Egypt against Persia 
 in 405 b.c. A sadly damaged papyrus contains 
 a list of names headed by Yedoniah, son of 
 Gemariah, " who were found at the door and 
 killed (??) " and a list of women possibly carried 
 off prisoners. But the document is undated, 
 and its translation and bearing are quite uncertain. 
 We can only be sure that the colony was still 
 in existence in 400 b.c, from which date we have 
 a statement of debt made by a Jew, Menakhem, 
 son of Shallum, an Aramaean of the fortress of 
 Yeb, against a Jewess, Selua. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE EPISODE OF ONIAS 
 
 On the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C. 
 
 the vast empire which he had conquered in the 
 
 East was divided up among his generals. Egypt 
 
 fell to Ptolemy, who founded there the line known 
 
 as that of the Lagides, which ruled Egypt until 
 
 the country became a Roman province in 29 b.c. 
 
 Syria was taken over by Antigonus, who, however, 
 
 was dispossessed by Seleucus in 301 B.C., after the 
 
 battle of Ipsus. Seleucus became by this victory 
 
 master not only of Syria but also of parts of 
 
 Asia Minor, of Babylonia and of Assyria, and the 
 
 line which he founded, the Seleucids, ruled this 
 
 wide empire for nearly two centuries. 
 
 Under the earlier kings of this house the Jews 
 
 had experienced very considerable religious 
 
 toleration. It has been said that they went 
 
 into captivity a political society and returned a 
 
 church, and it is at least true that during the 
 
 period which followed the return from Babylon 
 
 they approximated most closely to the ideal of a 
 
 kingdom of priests. In 175 b.c. Antiochus 
 o 209 
 
2io EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 Epiphanes ascended the throne of Syria, and 
 very unwisely departed from the example of 
 his predecessors by trying to force on the Jews 
 conformity with the Hellenistic practices both 
 civil and religious. At this moment Onias III 
 was High Priest in Judea, and his brother Jason 
 or Jesus was the leader of a powerful Hellenizing 
 faction in the country, whose policy was to 
 betray the old theocratic party to Antiochus 
 for its own profit. Jason began by offering the 
 king a bribe to establish him in the High Priest- 
 hood. Antiochus, anxious to weld his empire 
 into one homogeneous whole by introducing 
 Greek ideas throughout, readily accepted the 
 offer, and Jason, by neglecting the Temple 
 worship and generally encouraging Greek ideas, 
 appears to have performed his share of the 
 compact. In 172 B.C., however, Jason was 
 outbidden for the High Priesthood by his own 
 ambassador to the king, Menelaus. Not to be 
 outdone, he attacked Jerusalem in 168 b.c. with 
 a force of 1000 men. It was at this moment 
 that Antiochus returned in no pleasant humour 
 from Egypt, where the Roman legate Popilius 
 had forbidden him to carry out his projected 
 attack on Ptolemy, the Egyptian king, unless he 
 wished to face another meeting with the dreaded 
 
THE EPISODE OF ONIAS 211 
 
 Roman legions. Determined to put an end to 
 these civil broils, he took Jerusalem by storm 
 and massacred many of the inhabitants. An 
 altar of Olympian Zeus was set up in the city, 
 the Temple of Jehovah was re-dedicated to that 
 god, and the Jews were forced to observe the 
 festival of Dionysus. Every student of Jewish 
 history knows the sequel, the rise of the Maccabees 
 and their courageous fight against the Syrian 
 kings, as a result of which the Jews attained 
 not only religious but also civil liberty. 
 
 For the moment, however, we are to leave 
 the main stream of Jewish story and follow one 
 of its backwaters, which once again leads us into 
 Egypt. Onias III, whom Jason had deposed, 
 and who had finally been murdered in 172 B.C., 
 had a son known to historians as Onias IV. 
 About 162 b.c. the new king of Syria, Antiochus 
 Eupator, appointed as High Priest in Jerusalem 
 one Alkimos, who did not belong to the priestly 
 family. The young Onias, disgusted with the 
 turn which events had taken, and apprehensive 
 that the new priestly family might make their 
 own succession the more secure by murdering 
 him, fled to Egypt, to the court of Ptolemy 
 Philometor and Cleopatra his queen. The rest 
 of his story is told by Josephus. We need not 
 
212 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 regard as genuine the letter which Onias wrote 
 to Ptolemy requesting permission to build a 
 temple " to Almighty God " at Leontopolis, 
 nor yet Ptolemy's answer, in which Onias is 
 given permission " to purge an old temple which 
 had fallen into ruins at Leontopolis, in the 
 nome of Heliopolis, and which is named after 
 Bubastis Agria." The letters are doubtless his- 
 torical forgeries of Josephus after the manner 
 of Thucydides' speeches, but about the facts 
 there is no doubt. " So Onias took the place, 
 and built a temple, and an altar to God, like 
 indeed to that at Jerusalem, but smaller and 
 poorer." In his Wars of the Jews Josephus 
 gives us further details about this temple. The 
 place lay 180 stadia from Memphis, in the nome 
 of Heliopolis, " where Onias built a fortress and 
 a temple, not like to that at Jerusalem, but 
 such as resembled a tower. He built it of large 
 stones to the height of 60 cubits ; he made the 
 structure of the altar in imitation of that in our own 
 country, and in like manner adorned with gifts, 
 . . . but the entire temple was encompassed with 
 a wall of burnt brick, though it had gates of stone." 
 Josephus further tells us that this temple was 
 finally closed by Paulinus the Roman governor 
 of Alexandria shortly after the capture of 
 
THE EPISODE OF ONIAS 213 
 
 Jerusalem by Titus in 70 a.d. His statement 
 that it was open for 343 years in all is an obvious 
 error of calculation. 
 
 Egyptian history unfortunately throws no 
 light on this incident. Excavation claims to 
 have been more successful. About twenty miles 
 north of Cairo lies a site called Tell el-Yahudiyeh, 
 the Mound of the Jewess (Map 2). It was first 
 excavated in 1887 by Naville and Griffith, who 
 found there antiquities of various Egyptian 
 periods, and a cemetery with gravestones some of 
 which bore Jewish proper names. In 1 906 further 
 excavations were carried out in the mound by 
 Petrie. A vast walled encampment of the 
 Hyksos period was discovered, together with the 
 cemetery of its inhabitants. In addition to this 
 a building was found, constructed on an artificial 
 mound, which Petrie identifies with the Temple 
 of Onias. 
 
 Is this identification correct ? There are 
 two questions to be considered, not entirely 
 independent the one of the other. Firstly, is 
 Tell el-Yahudiyeh the site described by Josephus, 
 and secondly, is the building found by Petrie 
 the temple of Onias. 
 
 Josephus tells us that Onias built his temple 
 at Leontopolis, in the Heliopolite nome, in a 
 
2i 4 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 fortified place " named after Bubastis Agria," 
 while in another passage the ruined temple 
 referred to in the letter to Ptolemy and Cleopatra 
 is said to be " named after Bubastis Agria." 
 Now Leontopolis is the " City of the Lion " and 
 the most natural translation of the words 
 " Bubastis Agria " is " the Fierce Bast," 1 namely 
 that form of the cat-headed goddess Bast which 
 was identified with the lion-headed goddess 
 Sekhmet. Tell el-Yahudiyeh, to judge by its 
 position, may well have been in the Heliopolite 
 nome, and if we can show that Sekhmet the 
 lion-headed goddess was worshipped there we 
 shall have made out a strong presumptive case 
 for the identification. The sole piece of evidence 
 which points in this direction is a statue found 
 on the site by Petrie. It is the figure of an 
 admiral called Hor who served under Psam- 
 metichus II, and who is represented as holding 
 up a shrine in which is a cat- or lion-headed 
 goddess, clearly some form of Bast. This figure 
 was found in the city, but not in a temple, indeed 
 
 i The translation " Bubastis of the Fields " is barely possible, and 
 Naville's further proposal to identify this with a goddess Sekhet-neter (in 
 which Sekhet is written with the field-sign), followed by Petrie, is not to 
 be accepted, for this goddess has no real existence. In the inscription 
 Naville, Bubastis, PI. XLIII.A the words simply mean " The Divine Field," 
 and Naville has turned them into a god by combining with them the next 
 sign (the snake-sign) as determinative of deity, whereas in reality this goes 
 with what follows, " priestess of the goddess Uto." 
 
THE EPISODE OF ONIAS 215 
 
 the excavator uses it to prove the existence of 
 a temple of Bast here in the XXVIth Dynasty. 
 The presence of a figure of Bast in a town does 
 not prove conclusively that that town was devoted 
 to the worship of Bast, for it may have been 
 brought there from elsewhere ; still less does it 
 prove that the town was in Greek times called 
 Leontopolis " City of the Lion-headed Goddess," 
 for not every town in which Bast was worshipped 
 was called Leontopolis. At the same time the 
 presence of the figure is a piece of evidence 
 which must not be under-rated. 
 
 Josephus states that the place given to Onias 
 lay 180 stadia from Memphis. The Greek 
 stadion, which one would naturally expect 
 Josephus to employ, is rather more than 600 
 English feet in length, and 180 of these would 
 not nearly take us from Memphis to Tell el- 
 Yahudiyeh. In order to avoid this difficulty 
 Petrie supposes Josephus to have intended by 
 the stadion an Egyptian measure of 500 cubits, 
 various multiples of which are marked off by stone 
 pillars along the desert road from Saqqara to 
 the Fayyum. Of such stadia he states that there 
 would be 186 from Tell el-Yahudiyeh to the 
 north gate of Memphis. To suppose that 
 Josephus, writing in Greek for readers whose 
 
216 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 language was Greek, used an Egyptian measure 
 and called it by the name stadion, without 
 warning his readers that he did not refer to the 
 ordinary Greek stadion, is a very large assumption, 
 and the fact is that this figure of 180 stadia is 
 a serious difficulty in the identification of 
 Leontopolis with Tell el-Yahudiyeh, at any rate 
 for those who are inclined to take Josephus' 
 figures very seriously. 
 
 The fact that the mound is called Tell el- 
 Yahudiyeh is worth nothing as evidence. Names 
 of this type are not rare in the Eastern Delta. 
 At Daphnae (Tell Defenneh) we have a mound 
 called Qasr Bint el-Yahudi " The Castle of the 
 Daughter of the Jew," and not sixteen miles 
 north-east of Tell el-Yahudiyeh itself is another 
 mound called Tell Yahud " The Mound of Jews." 
 There were no doubt Jewish colonies in many 
 other towns of the Eastern Delta besides Daphnae, 
 and for this same reason we cannot take the 
 presence of Jewish burials at Tell el-Yahudiyeh 
 as proof that this site was that of Onias. 
 
 Thus the evidence for the identification of 
 Tell el-Yahudiyeh with the site allotted to Onias 
 must be admitted to be far from conclusive. 
 At the same time could Petrie show us the 
 Temple of Onias itself on the site there would 
 
THE EPISODE OF ONI AS 217 
 
 be no further reason for doubt. Has he done 
 this ? 
 
 The site had been occupied in Hyksos times 
 by a large rectangular fortified enclosure, a mile 
 in circumference. The rampart consisted mainly 
 of sand, with a sloping face on the outer side 
 covered with a coating of hard white plaster. 
 Outside this had been added, at a later date, a 
 stone wall of fine white limestone, which has 
 been completely destroyed, partly in ancient, 
 partly in modern times. 
 
 Outside the north-east corner of this camp 
 lies an artificial mound about 70 feet in maximum 
 height and roughly triangular in form. The north 
 side of the triangle runs almost due east and west 
 and is 716 feet in length. The east side, running 
 due north and south, is 788 feet in length. The 
 third side is irregular and slightly concave, its 
 general direction being north-west and south- 
 east. In order to hold together the material 
 of which the mound was composed it was revetted 
 on all sides. On the north the revetment was 
 of mud brick, which had been burnt red in some 
 subsequent conflagration ; on the east it consists 
 of a fine wall of stone ; on the west it has almost 
 entirely disappeared, but the slight traces which 
 remain show it to have been of brick. 
 
2i 8 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 On the northern or lower portion of the 
 summit of this mound once lay a small town, 
 the houses of which have been completely 
 destroyed. There were two modes of access 
 to the town, one by a stone gateway in the north- 
 west corner, and the other by a long stairway 
 14 feet wide in the centre of the east side. 
 
 At the highest point of the mound, just south 
 of the head of this stairway, lies a group of 
 buildings which Petrie identifies with the Temple 
 of Onias. An enclosure wall, rather boldly 
 restored by the excavator from very minute 
 remains, appears to bound the temple area on 
 the east side. The temple itself consists of a long 
 narrow structure running roughly N.N.W.- 
 S.S.E., entered from the north end, and containing 
 three rooms, an outer court, an inner court and 
 a sanctuary or temple proper. 
 
 This structure has been almost completely 
 destroyed. Nothing remains of the outer and 
 inner courts except portions of the foundations 
 of their outer walls, which were probably of 
 brickwork plastered over. The wall which 
 divided the two courts may have been of stone, 
 for nothing now remains save the trench into 
 which it was set. Of the temple proper there 
 has survived only its foundation platform of 
 
THE EPISODE OF ONI AS 219 
 
 mud brick, solid except for a space of a foot up 
 the main axis. The platform measures 658 
 inches by 201. 
 
 North of the temple buildings and at the head 
 of the great eastern stairway are indications in 
 the ground which led the excavator to restore 
 a rectangular building about 73 by 52 feet. 
 This he calls the Citadel. It stands on the 
 highest point of the mound and commands the 
 stairway, the temple courts, and the town on 
 the north half of the mound. 
 
 Such is, in brief, the description of what Petrie 
 found, and he is of opinion that the site is nothing 
 other than the Mound of Onias with its temple. 
 He points out that the place and the buildings 
 fit in very reasonably with Josephus' description. 
 Thus the fortress mentioned as already existing 
 here would be the Hyksos camp, the stone from 
 the later wall of which might well have been 
 used by Onias for his work. The burnt wall 
 to the north would account for Josephus' story 
 that the temple was surrounded by a wall of 
 burnt brick, and the fortifications with the 
 commanding tower would justify his calling it 
 a fort (pbrourion). His description of it as like 
 a tower (purgon) well might be due to the 
 impression made by the lofty retaining walls of 
 
220 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 the mound, surmounted by those of the temple 
 buildings and the keep, and Petrie has by a not 
 unreasonable calculation worked out the height 
 of the temple roof as very close on 60 cubits from 
 the ground level. He points out, moreover, that 
 the platform of the sanctuary, 658 inches long 
 by 201 broad, approximates in shape fairly 
 closely to the Temple of Solomon, which measured 
 70 cubits by 20. 1 If, moreover, we allow a 
 footing of half a cubit (between 9 and 10 inches) 
 between the edge of the platform and outer edge 
 of the walls which were based on it we should 
 get a room whose outer measurements were 638 
 by 182 inches, which is almost precisely 35 cubits 
 by 10, or half the linear measurements of 
 Solomon's Temple. May it not well be that 
 Onias, unable to build on the lordly scale of 
 Solomon, simply halved the measurements, or, 
 in other words, is not the fact of these dimensions 
 being so exactly half of those at Jerusalem a good 
 reason for identifying the building with the 
 temple of Onias, " like, indeed, to that at 
 Jerusalem, but smaller and poorer." Petrie 
 goes even further than this and sees in the 
 general shape and arrangement of the mound 
 an attempt to reproduce the topographical 
 
 1 Only, however, if we include the porch (I Kings 6.2-3). 
 
THE EPISODE OF ONIAS 
 
 features of Jerusalem. The parallel is far from 
 convincing and we may agree with Petrie himself 
 when he says that it " might seem fanciful, were 
 we not certain of the nature of the place." 
 
 But are we so certain ? It is true that we 
 have found that certain of Josephus' descriptions 
 might conceivably be made to apply to Tell 
 el-Yahudiyeh, but it is not without making very 
 liberal allowances. Thus Josephus actually says 
 that the entire temple was encompassed with a 
 wall of burnt brick, which was manifestly not the 
 case. He states that the temple (not the fortress) 
 was built of large stones to the height of 60 
 cubits, though all that remains in position of 
 the temple, including the walls of the outer and 
 inner court, is actually of brick, and even if the 
 various stone columns and capitals of which 
 fragments were found by Petrie below the mound 
 actually belonged to this temple it could never 
 have been accurately described as " built of 
 large stones." In fact we cannot avoid the 
 conclusion that Josephus' description of the 
 temple of Onias, if this be it, is very far from 
 accurate. It is not even consistent, for in the 
 Antiquities he describes the building as " like, 
 indeed, to that at Jerusalem, but smaller and 
 poorer," while in the Wars it is " not like to that 
 
222 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 at Jerusalem, but such as resembled a tower." 
 It is, therefore, very doubtful whether any 
 attempt to identify this building on Josephus' 
 general description of it can ever be successful, 
 and we must, therefore, fall back on other 
 arguments. 
 
 It is, indeed, sti iking that the dimensions of 
 the brick platform which forms the foundation 
 of the sanctuary should be so nearly half of those 
 of Solomon's temple. But for purposes of 
 argument all the value is taken out of the resem- 
 blance when we remember that the temple at 
 Jerusalem which Onias copied, if he copied any, 
 was not that of Solomon, which had been 
 destroyed some centuries previously, but that 
 begun by Zerubbabel, which we have no reason 
 for supposing to have had the same dimensions 
 as that of Solomon. Indeed, there is evidence 
 to the contrary, for Josephus tells us that Herod, 
 in his speech to the people on the foundation of 
 his temple, exonerated Zerubbabel and his 
 fellow builders from all blame for having built 
 their temple 60 cubits lower than that of Solomon, 
 stating that they had obeyed the measures given 
 them by Cyrus and Darius. It is true that only 
 the height is here mentioned as having been 
 different, but in Ezra 6.3 we read that the 
 
THE EPISODE OF ONIAS 
 
 breadth was 60 cubits, as against the 20 of 
 Solomon's. This evidence may not be of the 
 highest value, but, such as it is, it justifies no 
 attempt to assume that Zerubbabel's temple, 
 which Onias copied, was of the same size as 
 Solomon's. The argument from the proportions 
 and absolute dimensions of the platform at 
 Tell el-Yahudiyeh therefore falls to the ground. 
 
 It may still be argued that even though 
 definite proof of the identity of the building on 
 Tell el-Yahudiyeh with Onias' temple cannot be 
 found, yet it is highly probable. Even this is 
 doubtful. Let it be granted that this mound 
 was piled some time during the second century 
 B.C., that the heaping up of such mounds was 
 not a procedure used by Egyptian architects, 
 that some of the details are un-Egyptian, notably 
 the drafting of the stones in the eastern retaining 
 wall, and the cornices and battlements; grant 
 that there are Jews buried in the cemetery found 
 here by Naville, and that on a potsherd inscribed 
 in Egyptian demotic and bearing certain accounts 
 relating to the furnishing of bricks we find the 
 names Abram and Shabtai. If all this be granted 
 it amounts to nothing more than that, at some 
 time in the second century B.C., a colony of 
 foreigners lived there, consisting in part of Jews, 
 
224 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 and built a fortress and a building which may 
 possibly have been a temple. There were many 
 colonies of foreigners in Egypt in the second 
 century, many Jews among them, and many 
 fortresses and garrisons in the Delta. It may be 
 significant, though negative evidence is never 
 entirely to be trusted, that among the remains 
 of the houses on the mound the earliest coins 
 found were not of Onias' time 1 , about 154 B.C., 
 but of the reign of Ptolemy Soter II, who came 
 to the throne in 117 B.C., more than a generation 
 later. 
 
 But, it may be asked, is not the whole matter 
 clinched by the passover-ovens found by Petrie 
 in the base of the mound ? To this it is to be 
 replied that the term passover-oven is a question- 
 begging compound. The objects to which 
 Petrie gave this name were found in various 
 places at the base of the mound, enveloped in the 
 earth of which it is composed. They are cylind- 
 rical jars of pottery roughly two feet wide and 
 two and a half high, rather narrower at the open 
 top than at the bottom. Sometimes they were 
 bricked round and coated with mud plaster, and 
 in some cases they had, before use, apparently 
 been let into the ground. At the bottom of each 
 
 i The statement in Knight, Nile and Jordan, p. 157, to the effect 
 that " coins of Onias " were found here is incorrect. 
 
THE EPISODE OF ONIAS 225 
 
 jar was from one to three inches of wood ash ; 
 " bones of lambs lay upon the ashes, usually burnt, 
 sometimes unburnt." The jars had no lids, but 
 were of course full of the earth of which the mound 
 was composed. 
 
 For Petrie these jars represent the remains of 
 a Passover feast, but one of a special nature, 
 celebrated to mark the foundation of the New 
 Jerusalem in Egypt. He believes that after the 
 roasting of the lambs earth was thrown over the 
 the ovens so as to smother the fires ; " thus they 
 began to found the new city in the dying flames 
 of sacrifice." " There was a deep meaning in 
 this," he adds, " though not strictly orthodox. 
 The Canaanites had sacrificed a child to place 
 beneath their buildings : in the Jewish age it is 
 found in Palestine that a lighted lamp was covered 1 
 with a bowl, and then built over with the founda- 
 tions, thus killing a flame of fire instead of a life. 
 Here this fire-killing was done on the largest 
 scale, and the whole mound rests upon the 
 extinguished fires of the sacrifices." 
 
 Now when Petrie states that such a procedure 
 is " not strictly orthodox " he is correct. We 
 might go further and say that it is most unorth- 
 odox. Whatever may have been the original 
 
 1 By Canaanites, be it noted, not by Jews. 
 
 P 
 
226 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 meaning of the Passover we know that from 
 at least the ninth century b.c. onward it was 
 believed to celebrate the deliverance from Egypt. 
 We should, therefore, hardly expect to find it 
 used as a foundation ceremony. Onias, too, 
 might well have been reproached with a lack of 
 the sense of the fitting if he had proposed to 
 celebrate by a feast which commemorated the 
 deliverance from Egypt the foundation of a 
 building which marked the abandonment by 
 himself and his followers of the promised land 
 and their return to the land of bondage. What 
 is more, we have no evidence for the use, by the 
 Jews, of a foundation sacrifice of any kind, be it 
 of a human being or of a living flame, though, 
 once again, negative evidence is not final. But 
 in any case it would be a long and illogical step 
 from the burial, in the foundations, of lighted 
 lamps at certain fixed points, to the burying of 
 large numbers of ovens. 
 
 We shall, therefore, be wise to rid our minds 
 of the idea that these jars are " passover-ovens." 
 That they are ovens is beyond doubt. They 
 may even mark some special feast held at the 
 time when the piling of the mound was begun, 
 but such feast could hardly be a Passover. In 
 all probability the explanation is something much 
 
THE EPISODE OF ONIAS 227 
 
 simpler, and, despite the fact that they seem to 
 occur only in the base of the mound, it is perhaps 
 unwise to discard entirely the possibility that 
 they were merely the ovens of the community 
 who built it. 
 
 Petrie has, indeed, made out a clever case for 
 the identity of Tell el-Yahudiyeh with the 
 Mound of Onias the Jew, but it is a case which 
 when closely examined fails to carry complete 
 conviction, and it may well be that the ruins 
 of Onias' temple still await the spade of some 
 fortunate explorer. 
 
 pi 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 The following is a brief list of books dealing 
 with the subject. It will be understood that 
 they represent but a fraction of those consulted 
 by the writer in the preparation of this volume. 
 
 ENGLISH 
 
 Burney, C. F. The Book of Judges. London, 1918. 
 
 . Israel's Settlement in Canaan (Schweich Lectures for 
 
 1917). London, 1918. 
 Driver, S. R. The Book of Genesis, nth edit. London, 1920. 
 . The Book of Exodus (The Cambridge Bible). 
 
 Cambridge, 191 8. 
 Gardiner, A. H. The Delta Residence of the Ramessides, in 
 
 Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Vol. V. London, 191 8. 
 . The Ancient Military Road between Egypt and 
 
 Palestine ; ibidem, Vol. VI, pp. 99 ft". London, 1920. 
 Hall, H. R. The Ancient History of the Near East, 4th edit. 
 
 London, 1919. 
 Knight, G. A. F. Nile and Jordan. London, 1921. 
 Hommel, Fritz. The Ancient Hebrew Tradition as illustrated 
 
 by the Monuments, translated by E. McClure and 
 
 L. Crossle. 1897. 
 McNeile, A. H. The Book of Exodus. London, 1908. 
 
 229 
 
230 EGYPT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 Naville, E. Archaeology of the Old Testament. London, 191 3. 
 . The Store-city of Pithom and the Route of the Exodus 
 
 (Egypt Exploration Fund). London, 1903. 
 . The Mound of the Jew and the City of Onias (Egypt 
 
 Exploration Fund). London, 1890. 
 . The Shrine of Soft el Henneh and the Land of Goshen 
 
 (Egypt Exploration Fund). London, 1888. 
 Petrie, W. M. F. Egypt and Israel. London, 191 2. 
 
 . Hyksos and Israelite Cities. London, 1906. 
 
 Sayce, A. H. Patriarchal Palestine. London, 1895. 
 
 . The ' Higher Criticism ' and the Verdict of the 
 
 Monuments. London, 5th edit, 191 3. 
 and Cowley, A. E. Aramaic Papyri discovered at 
 
 Assuan. London, 1906. 
 
 FRENCH 
 
 Dhorme, Paul. Les Pays Bibliques et VAssyrie {Revue 
 
 Biblique, 1910-11). Paris, 191 1. 
 Weill, Raymond. La Presqrfile du Sinai. Paris, 1908. 
 
 GERMAN 
 
 Meyer, Eduard. Die Israeliten und ihre Nachbarstamme. 1906. 
 
 . Der Papyrusfund von Elephantine. Leipzig, 191 2. 
 
 Alt, A. Israel und Aegypten. Leipzig, 1909. 
 
 Bohl, F. Kanaanaer und Hebraer. Leipzig, 191 1. 
 
 Sachau, Eduard. Aramdische Papyrus und Ostraka aus einer 
 
 J udis chen Militar-Kolonie zu Elephantine. Leipzig, 191 1. 
 Spiegelberg, W. Der Aufenthalt Israels in Aegypten. 
 
 Strassburg, 1904. 
 . Aegyptische Randglossen zum Alien Testament. 
 
OF TK£ 
 
mum 
 
INDEX 
 
 Aahmes, admiral, 947*. 
 Aahmes I, 72, 94.W. 
 Aamu (Syrians), 38, 61, 62. 
 Abdakhiba, 115, 117, 119. 
 Abijah, 163. 
 
 Abram, 20, 27, 39, 47 ff., 223. 
 abrecb, meaning of, 103. 
 Adad-nirari II, 167. 
 Adam, 17. 
 Africanus, 25. 
 Ahab, 54, in, 168. 
 dlpu, meaning of, 103. 
 'Ain Gadis, 128. 
 'Ain Naba, 132-3. 
 Akaba, Gulf of, 129, 144. 
 Akhenaton, 146. 
 Akhetaton, 113, 114. 
 Akkadia, 56. 
 
 Alexander the Great, 209. 
 Altaqu, 175-6. 
 Amenemhet I, 38-9, 46, 53. 
 Amenemhet III, 62. 
 Amenhotp I, 43. 
 Amenhotp II, 76, 112, 113. 
 Amenhotp III, 109, 113, 151. 
 Amenhotp IV, 146. 
 Ameny, 38, 53, 62. 
 Ammi-zaduga, 53. 
 Ammurabi, 50. 
 Amon, 71, 146-8, 160. 
 Amos, 194. 
 
 Amraphel, 28, 49-53, 55. 
 
 Amyrtaeus, 191, 204. 
 
 Anani, 197, 200. 
 
 Anastasi V, Papyrus, 142. 
 
 Anastasi VI, Papyrus, 65, 76, 82, 88. 
 
 Anath, 194. 
 
 Antigonus, 209. 
 
 Antiochus Epiphanes, 209-210. 
 
 Antiochus Eupator, 211. 
 
 Aper, 125. 
 
 Aperiu, see Aperu. 
 
 Aperu, 123-5. 
 
 Apophis, 70. 
 
 Apries, 185-6. 
 
 Arabia, 56, 57, 118, 129, 165, 172. 
 Aramaeans, 118, 119, 168. 
 
 Aramaic language, 191. 
 Aramaic papyri, 190 ff. 
 Arioch, 49-50. 
 Aristeas, Letter of, 192. 
 Arsames, 196, 199, 205. 
 Artaxerxes, 199. 
 Artaxerxes I, 191. 
 Artaxerxes III, 199, 2co. 
 Asa, 163-6. 
 Asenath, 97, 100-1. 
 Ashdod, 173-4, 181. 
 Asher, tribe of, 110. 
 Ashim, 194. 
 Ashima, 194. 
 Ashkelon, 181. 
 
 Ashurbanipal, 172, 178-9, 180. 
 Ashur-nasir-pal III, 168. 
 Askalon, 109. 
 
 Assyria, 167, 168, 170, 173. 
 
 Aswan, 141, 190. 
 
 Aton (deity), 113. 
 
 Avaris, 68, 69, 70, 72, 73, 85, 90. 
 
 Azotus, 181. 
 
 Baal-zephon, 135-6, 140, 143. 
 Baba, 94M. 
 
 Babylon, 49, 52, 56, 57, 184, 1 
 
 186, 188. 
 Babylonia, 17, 25, 45, 52, 57, 58, 1 
 
 180. 
 
 Bagoas, 196, 199-202. 
 Bast, 214-5. 
 Beby, tomb of, 94. 
 Ben-hadad II, 54, ill, 168. 
 Beni Hasan, 60, 70. 
 Betane, 80. 
 Bethany, 194. 
 Bethel, 47, 195. 
 Boghaz Keui, 1 17. 
 Brick-making, 99. 
 Bubastis, 102//. 
 Bubastis Agria, 212-3-4. 
 Burnt offerings, 202. 
 Byblos, 148. 
 
 Cambyses, 197. 
 Camels, 60, 165. 
 
 23 
 
232 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Canaan, 21, 26, 27, 49, 55, 56, 57, 76, 
 
 102, 109, no, 118. 
 Canaanites, 47, 152-3, 225. 
 Carchemish, 182-3-4. 
 Carmel, 115. 
 Carnarvon Tablet, 71 
 Censorinus, 42. 
 Chedorlaomer, 49, 51. 
 Chellus, 80. 
 
 Chronology, 23 ff., 41 ff., 54-5, 11 1-2, 
 
 120-1. 
 Cilicia, 156-7, 168. 
 Cleopatra, 211. 
 Coat, Joseph's, 61. 
 Coptic versions, 34. 
 Country of the Sea, 52. 
 Creation, 17. 
 Cyrus, 222. 
 
 Damascus, 54, in, 168. 
 
 Daphnae, 80, 141, 186-190, 216. 
 
 Darius I, 191, 193, 196-7-8, 204, 207. 
 
 Darius II, 191. 
 
 David, 149, 150. 
 
 Deborah, Song of, 32. 
 
 Delaniah, 198, 200-1. 
 
 Dhouthotp, tomb of, 62. 
 
 Diodorus, 185. 
 
 Diodorus Siculus, 97. 
 
 Dionysus, 211. 
 
 Duplication in tradition, 47. 
 
 E, Document, 26, 31, 32, 130, 131, 
 
 132, 133. 
 Ebers Papyrus, 43. 
 Edom, 65, 129, 130, 149. 
 Elam, 49-50, 52. 
 El-Arish, 138. 
 El-Bersheh, 62. 
 Elephantine, 190 ff. 
 Eliakim, 183. 
 Eliashib, 199, 201. 
 Elim, 131-2, 133. 
 El-Kab, 37, 90. 
 El-Kantareh, 138. 
 Ellasar, 49-50-51. 
 Elohim, 31. 
 Eriaku, 50-51. 
 Ero, 87-8. 
 Esarhaddon, 177. 
 Etham, 132, 135, 139. 
 
 Ethiopians, 80, 157, 159, 165, 169, 
 
 173-4-5, 179- 
 Et-Til, 113. 
 
 Euphrates, 57, 112, 182-3. 
 Eusebius, 25. 
 Eve, 17. 
 
 Ezion-geber, 132. 
 
 Famines, 48, 95. 
 Faran, 133. 
 Fayyum, 215. 
 
 Feast of Unleavened Bread, 204-8. 
 Field of Abram, 162. 
 Flood, 17. 
 
 Gaza, 138, 168, 170, 181. 
 Gebel Musa, 131, 132. 
 Gebel Serbal, 131. 
 Gebel Silsileh, 162. 
 Gedaliah, 186. 
 Gemariah, 193, 208. 
 Genubath, 149. 
 Gerar, 164, 166. 
 Gezer, 109, 152-3-4-5, 163. 
 Goiim, 51. 
 
 Goshen, 73, 76, 78 ff., 84, 89, 134. 
 
 Greek mercenaries, 188. 
 
 Greek states, 180. 
 
 Greek version (see Septuagint). 
 
 Hadad, 149-15 1, 158. 
 
 Hadad-idri, 54, in, 168. 
 
 Hamath, 168, 183, 194 n. 
 
 Hanum, 170. 
 
 Hapi, 95. 
 
 Haran, 47, 57-8-9. 
 
 Harris 500, Papyrus, 123. 
 
 Harris Papyrus, the Great, 124. 
 
 Hatshepsut, 70. 
 
 Hawwarah, 132. 
 
 Hebrew version, 26, 27, 33, 82. 
 
 Hebrews, 115 ff., 124-5, l8 &- 
 
 Heliopolis, 97-8, 212, 213. 
 
 Herakleopolis, 39. 
 
 Hero, 87-8. 
 
 Herodotus, 87, 97, 176, 182, 185. 
 
 Heroonpolis, 79, 87, 135. 
 
 Hezekiah, 175. 
 
 Hittites, 51, 114, 117, 157. 
 
 Hophra, 185. 
 
 Hor, 214. 
 
 Horeb, 31, 130. 
 
INDEX 
 
 233 
 
 Horemheb, 147. 
 Horemsaf, 162. 
 
 Horses in Egypt, 93, 155-157, 192. 
 Horus, 101. 
 Hoshea, 169, 170. 
 Hrihor, 148. 
 Human sacrifice, 225. 
 Hyksos, 67 ff., 93-4, 96-7-8, 213, 217, 
 223. 
 
 Ibsha, 60, 63. 
 Ipsus, battle of, 209. 
 Irkhuleni, 168. 
 Isaac, 20, 55, 118. 
 Israel, 158, 160-1, 170. 
 
 J, Document, 26, 31, 32, 127-8, 130, 
 
 131, 132, 133. 
 Jacob, 20, 28, 47, 54-55, 67, 78, 79, 
 
 82, 83, 90, no. 
 Jacob-el, no n. 
 Jason, 210. 
 Jehoahaz, 183. 
 Jehoiachin, 185. 
 Jehoiakim, 183, 185. 
 Jehovah, 211. 
 Jeremiah, 184, 186-7, 18 9- 
 Jeroboam, 150, 158, 160. 
 Jerusalem, 80, 102, 115, 117, 119, 159, 
 
 184, 186, 193, 194, 200, 21 1-2, 222. 
 Jesus, 199, 210. 
 Jethro, 129. 
 Joab, 149. 
 Jochanan, 197, 199. 
 Joppa, 123. 
 Jordan, 127. 
 
 Joseph, 61, 73, 74, 79) 82 > 8 3, 9 2 > 93, 
 
 94, 95, 97- 
 Joseph-el, 1 10 n. 
 
 Josephus, 188, 199, 211, 212, 215, 
 
 219, 221. 
 Joshua, 75, 76, 118, 119. 
 Josiah, 182, 192, 194. 
 Judah (person), 79. 
 Judah (kingdom), 158-9, 160-1, 163, 
 
 165, 175, 182, 184, 185, 186. 
 Judea, 210. 
 Judges, the, 12 1-2. 
 
 Kadesh, 80, 107, 128, 129, 130, 131. 
 Karnes, 71, 72. 
 Karbanit, 178. 
 
 Karnak, 160. 
 Keheret, 135-6. 
 Kemwer, 163. 
 Keturah, 20. 
 
 Khabiru, 75, 76, 77, 115 ff. 
 Khammurabi, 28, 49-53. 
 Khananiah, 204-5. 
 Khnemhotp, tomb of, 60. 
 Khnum, 196, 202. 
 Kishon, 162. 
 Klysma, 133. 
 Kudur-lagamar, 51. 
 Kudur-mabuk, 50. 
 Kue, 155-6-7. 
 Kush, 159, 165. 
 Kushi, 173. 
 Kushim, 159, 165. 
 
 Lagamar, 51. 
 Lagides, 209. 
 
 Land tenure in Egypt, 95-7. 
 Larsa, 50-51. 
 Lebanon, 112, 168. 
 Leontopolis, 212, 213-4-5-6. 
 Leyden Papyri, 123. 
 Libya, 109. 
 
 Libyans, 148, 159, 165, 169. 
 Lot, 53. 
 I.ubim, 179. 
 Lubims, 159. 
 Luxor, 70. 
 
 Maccabees, 21 l 
 Madyan, 129. 
 Magdola, 87. 
 Magdolo, 141. 
 Magdolus, 182. 
 Magicians, 92. 
 Mahseiah, 204. 
 Malkatu, 59. 
 
 Manetho, 25, 41, 45, 67-9. 
 Marah, 13 1-2-3. 
 Marea, 190. 
 Mareshah, 164, 166. 
 Maryn, 124. 
 Medes, 181, 183. 
 Megiddo, 182. 
 Melukhkha, 173-4. 
 
 Memphis, 68, 80, 141, 177-8, 189, 
 
 212, 215. 
 Menakhem, 208. 
 Menelaus, 210. 
 
2 34 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Menes, 37. 
 Menmare, 142. 
 Menthu, 40. 
 
 Mentuhotp, son of Hapi, 95. 
 Merenptah, 65, 76, 78, 82, 88, 107-10, 
 
 112, 1 20- 1. 
 Meribath-Kadesh, 128. 
 Merykere, King, 38. 
 Mesopotamia, 49. 
 Mibhtahyah, 204. 
 Midianites, 129-130. 
 Migdol, 132, 135-6, 140-3, 189. 
 Milcah, 59. 
 Mitanni, 151. 
 Mizraim, 155-6, 172. 
 Modiana, 129. 
 Moon-god, 59. 
 Moses, 22, 84-5, 93, 129. 
 Mound of Onias (so-called), 219. 
 Mummification, 93. 
 Musri, 156-7, 168, 170-5. 
 Myth, nature of, 13 ff. 
 
 Nabopolassar, 184. 
 Naharina, 183. 
 Napata, 169, 172, 178. 
 Naram-sin, 56. 
 Nebat, 158. 
 
 Nebuchadnezzar, 80, 184, 186-7-8. 
 
 Necho, 178, 180-4. 
 
 Neferhotp, 60. 
 
 Nehemiah, 191, 199, 200. 
 
 Neit, 101. 
 
 Nephayan, 196. 
 
 Nesubanebded, 148. 
 
 Nile, 79, 87. 
 
 Nineveh, 174, 178, 184. 
 
 Nisin, Dynasty of, 57. 
 
 No-amon, 179. 
 
 Noph, 189. 
 
 Nubia, 159, 178. 
 
 On, 97. 
 
 Onias III, 21c, 211. 
 Onias IV, 211 ff. 
 Osorkon I, 164. 
 Osorkon III, 169. 
 Ostanes, 197, 200. 
 
 P, Document, 26, 27, 32, 132-3, 137. 
 Padan-aram, 118. 
 
 Palestine, 69, 112, 114, 1 17-8, 121 
 
 164, 167. 
 Paran, 127-9. 
 Passover, 15, 205, 224-6. 
 Pathros, 189, 190-1. 
 Paulinus, 212. 
 Pelusiac Nile, 69. 
 Pelusin, 86. 
 
 Pelusium, 69, 85, 86, 90, 137-40 
 
 142-3, 176. 
 Persia, 50, 52, 80. 
 Persians, 1 90- 1. 
 Petrograd papyri, 38, 53, 56. 
 Pharaoh, meaning of, 103. 
 Philistia, 181. 
 
 Philistines, 150, 153, 158, 163, 168, I 
 
 Philistines, Way of the, 137-8. 
 
 Phoenicia, 168, 185. 
 
 Phoenician fleet, 178. 
 
 Piankhi, 169, 172-3. 
 
 Pi-hahiroth, 132, 135-6, 140, 143. 
 
 Pi-keheret, 135-6. 
 
 Pi-Ramessu, 85, 90, 137. 
 
 Pir u (Pharaoh), 171, 173. 
 
 Pisebkhanu II, 150, 152. 
 
 Pi-Sopd, 81. 
 
 Pithom, 65, 77, 80, 82-4 h, 85-6, 90 
 
 99, 108, 134-5. 
 Pithom stela, 135. 
 Pi-Turn, 86, 87, 90. 
 Plagues, 15, 48, 93. 
 Popilius, 210. 
 Potiphar, 92, 100. 
 Poti-pherah, 97, 98, 100, 101. 
 Predynastic Period, 37. 
 Priests, Egyptian, 97. 
 Proper names, Egyptian, 100 ff. 
 Psammetichus I, 181, 187. 
 Psammetichus II, 185, 192, 214. 
 Ptolemy, 210. 
 Ptolemy I, 209. 
 Ptolemy II, 34. 
 Ptolemy Philadelphus, 135. 
 Ptolemy Philometor, 211. 
 Ptolemy Soter II, 224. 
 Put, 179. 
 
 Qarqar, Battle of, 54, 111, 156, 168 
 Qasr Bint el-Yahudi, 216. 
 Quails, 137 ». 
 
 Ra, 70, 98, 100, 101. 
 
INDEX 
 
 235 
 
 Raamses, see Rameses. 
 Rafa, 138. 
 
 Rameses (town or land), 77, 78, 80, 
 82 ff, 108, 120, 134, 137-8. 
 
 Ramesses II, 83, 84 «, 108-9, 1 IO > 11 x > 
 120, 121, 123, 147, 148, 151. 
 
 Ramesses III, 83, 121, 124. 
 
 Ramesses IV, 124. 
 
 Ramesses XII, 147. 
 
 Raphia, 170. 
 
 Rebekah, 118. 
 
 Red Sea, 79, 87, 107, 132, 135, 137, 
 144. 
 
 Rehoboam, 154, 158, 163, 166. 
 Reuben, tribe of, 107 n. 
 Riblah, 183, 186. 
 Rim Sin, 51. 
 
 Sabaka, see Shabaka. 
 
 Saft el-Henneh, 81. 
 
 Sagaz, 116, 117. 
 
 Sais, 178. 
 
 Sakere, 146. 
 
 Salatis, King, 68. 
 
 Sallier I, Papyrus, 70. 
 
 Sallier IV, Papyrus, 140. 
 
 Samaria, 80, 169, 170, 172, 194, 200. 
 
 Samaritan transcript, 26, 27, 34, 75. 
 
 Sanballat, 200, 201. 
 
 Saqqara, 215. 
 
 Sarah, 59. 
 
 Sargon, 56, 170, 174. 
 Scythians, 181. 
 
 Sea of Reeds, 131, 132, 136, 137, 143-5. 
 
 Seb'e, see So. 
 
 Sebek-khu, 39-40, 62. 
 
 Seir, 115, 128, 129. 
 
 Sekhet, 214 n. 
 
 Sekhmet, 214. 
 
 Sekmem, 40, 62. 
 
 Sele, 141. 
 
 Seleucus, 209. 
 
 Selua, 208. 
 
 Semitic migrations, 56, 66-7, 118. 
 Sennacherib, 174-5-6. 
 Senusret II, 61. 
 Senusret III, 44. 
 
 Septuagint, 26-7, 34, 75, 79, 83, 156, 
 159. 
 
 Seqenenre, 70, 71, 72. 
 Seqenenre III, 94. 
 Serapeum, 135. 
 
 Serapiu, 135. 
 Serbonis, Lake, 138. 
 Set, 70, 98. 
 Sethet, 40. 
 
 Seti I, iio-n, 121, 142-3, 147. 
 Seve, see So. 
 Sev'e, see So. 
 
 Shabaka, 169, 171, 172, 174, 176. 
 Shabaku, see Shabaka. 
 Shabtai, 223. 
 Shallum, 208. 
 Shalmaneser, 170. 
 Shalmaneser II, 156. 
 Sharratu, 59. 
 Sharuhen, 69, 73. 
 Shechem, 40. 
 Shelemiah, 198, 200. 
 Shepherd Kings, 69. 
 shesb, meaning of, 103. 
 Sheshonk I, 152, 154, 158 ff. 
 Shinar, 49. 
 
 Shishak, see Sheshonk I. 
 Shur, 127. 
 Siamon, 150, 152. 
 Sib'i, 1 70- 1. 
 Sidon, 177. 
 Sin (deity), 58, 59. 
 Sin (wilderness), 127. 
 Sinai, 31. 
 
 Sinai, Mount, 58, 126, 128, 129, 130. 
 Sinai, Peninsula of, 127, 130, 131, 133. 
 Sinai (wilderness), 127. 
 Sin-uballit, 199, 200. 
 Sinuhe, 38. 
 Sirius, 42. 
 So, 170-3. 
 Soa, see So. 
 
 Solomon, 28, 54, 111-2, 149-58. 
 
 Sothic Cycle, 43-4. 
 
 Sothic Period, 43. 
 
 Sothis, 42-3. 
 
 Store-cities, 83, 108. 
 
 Straw in bricks, 99. 
 
 Succoth, 77, 83, 88-9, 132, 134-5, 
 
 I39> H3- 
 Suez Canal, 79. 
 Suez, Gulf of, 132. 
 Sukiims, 159. 
 Sumeria, 17. 
 Sun's Disk, 113, 146. 
 Sutekh, 70. 
 Syene, 141, 190, 196. 
 
236 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Syncellus, 25. 
 
 Syria, 57, 61-2, 109-10, 112, 114, 1 17, 
 119, 121, 148, 156, 167-8, 180, 209. 
 Syriac version, 34. 
 Syrians, 160. 
 
 Tahpanes, 80, 149. 
 Tahpanhes, 186-7. 
 Tanis, 80, 86, 148, 176. 
 Tanutamon, 180. 
 Targum of Palestine, 86. 
 Taylor Prism, 175. 
 Tell Balamun, 179 n. 
 Tell Defenneh, 216. 
 Tell el-Amarna, 113. 
 Tell el-Amarna letters, 75, 76, 144 fL, 
 151- 
 
 Tell el-Her, 142-3. 
 Tell el-Maskhuteh, 86, 87, 88, 142. 
 Tell el-Yahudiyeh, 69, 213, 215-6, 
 223. 
 
 Tell er-Retabeh, 83, 87-8, 90. 
 Tell Yahud, 216. 
 Teman, 129. 
 
 Temple of Onias (supposed), 218 ff. 
 Temple of Solomon 28, 54, ill, 
 
 151-2, 220, 221. 
 Textual corruption, 25-6, 33-4. 
 Thebes, 70-2, 146, 169, 177-8, 180. 
 Theker-baal, 148. 
 Thekoue, 156. 
 
 Theku, 65-6, 82-3, 87-9, 134, 139, 
 142-3- 
 
 Thel, 138, 139, 141, 142-3. 
 Thothmes III, 112, 146. 
 Thothmes IV, 113. 
 Tidal, 49, 51. 
 Tiglath-pileser IV, 168. 
 Timaios, King, 67. 
 Timsah, Lake, 135. 
 Tirhakah, 175-8. 
 Titus, 213. 
 Troglodutai, 159 
 Trogodutai, 159. 
 Turn, 83, 86. 
 
 Turin Papyrus of Kings, 45. 
 
 Tut-ankh-amon, 146. 
 Tut-ankh-aton, 146. 
 Ty, Queen, 113. 
 Tyre, 177. 
 
 Ur, 57-9. 
 
 Venus, 53. 
 Vulgate, 34. 
 
 Wadi Gharandel, 133. 
 
 Wadi Tumilat, 65, 66, 79, 80, 81, 82, 
 
 83, 85, 86, 87, 89, 132, 134, 136. 
 Wall of the Prince, 38. 
 Warad Sin, 50-51. 
 Wenamon, 148. 
 Widarnag, 196. 
 
 Wilderness, wanderings in, 107, 127. 
 
 Xerxes, 191. 
 
 Yadhamelek, 162. 
 
 Yahu (Yahweh), 193^. 
 
 Yahweb, 22, 31, 106, 122, 128, 129, 
 
 130, 202. 
 Yamani, 173-4. 
 Ya-u (deity), 58. 
 Yeb, 190 ff . 
 
 Yedoniah, 193, 196, 198, 205, 208. 
 
 Yeho, 58. 
 
 Yenoam, 109. 
 
 ye'or, meaning of, 103. 
 
 Yo, 58. 
 
 Zaphenathpaneah, IOO- 1. 
 Zare, 164. 
 Zedekiah, 185-6. 
 Zephathah, 164. 
 Zerah, 163-6. 
 Zerubbabel, 222-3. 
 Zeus, 211. 
 Zin, 127. 
 Zoan, 86. 
 
 Zoan, Field of, 86. 
 Zoroaster, 204. 
 
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