B. C. 1531 1531 also into Lybia. The Sidonians (&paan) were his allies. His works of art, of taste, and of public utility are exceedingly numerous. He cut a canal from the Red Sea to the Nile; erected two beautiful obelisks at Luxor, and some at Tanis (or Zoan); built the elegant palace-temple of the Memnonium, and many other edifices at Thebes and Abydos; hewed temples in the rock at Ipsambul; erected a colossus and several statues at Memphis; made extensive additions to the grand palace at Karnak, &c.* MEN-PHTHAH. His reign shows no action of eminence, either in the arts of war or peace. Moses refuses to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter. Moses slays an Egyptian, and flees to Midian. 1511 1492 NINETEENTH DYNASTY. PTHAH-MEN-SEPTHAH. OSIREI-MEN-PTHAH. God looks upon the children of Israel. 1491 Moses, commissioned to deliver Israel, returns to Egypt. The ten dreadful plagues. Moses leads the children of Israel out of bondage. Pharaoh pursues them, and with army, is drowned in the Red Sea. his *Wilk. i. 69, 73. B. C. The Shepherds taking advantage of the desolated condition of Egypt, invade the coun try, and are joined by a rebel faction,* who place on the throne 1490 REMERRI, an usurper: Rameses, the youthful son of the late king, being driven into Ethiopia. 1478 RAMESES IV.† returns from Ethiopia, expels the Shepherds, and ascends the throne. 1473 He seems to have driven the invaders back to Palestine, and to have there prosecuted the war; for in his fifth year he celebrates his triumph over the Hittites (TI) and the Shethites. In this severe contest the Philistines (п&&) were the auxiliaries of the Egyptians.‡ 1466 In the twelfth year of his reign the combined forces of the Egyptians and the Sidonians (ayapaan) invade the country of the Philistines, and surprise a fortress. The Sidonians, however, having gone over to the Philistines, a sea-fight in a harbour ensues, the Egyptians, under the conduct of Rameses and his sons, capturing the confederate fleets.§ 14? Another war with the inhabitants of Canaan took place in the reign of this prince, the date of which cannot be ascertained. * Manetho (Jos. cont. Ap.). + Both Rameses IV., and his predecessor Rameses III., seem to have borne the title of Mei-amun. (See Wilk. i. 48, 76.) Ros. pl. 135–141. § Ib. pl. 128, 131. B. C. The temple of Medinet-Habú was completed by this prince; its walls are covered with sculptures, representing his conquests. 1451 The Israelites, under Joshua, cross the Jordan, and begin a war of extermination upon the Canaanites: whose names never afterwards occur on the Egyptian monuments. 1423 Rameses dies after an illustrious reign of fifty-five years, and is succeeded by his son, RAMESES V. In reviewing the above chronological table we may discover many striking confirmations, and not a single contradiction of the Scriptural record. From there appearing in the Egyptians' intercourse with Abram, no trace of the antipathy to shepherds, which is so strong in the time of Joseph, it is manifest that the invasion of the land by the Canaanitish cywc had not yet occurred. In conformity with this deduction, we find that Osirtasen I. is styled "Lord of the upper and lower country;" and the remains of his monuments extending from the Delta to Thebes, shew that he swayed the sceptre of an undivided empire. The attention given in the reign of Amun-mha II. to agriculture, the erection of temples and stations to protect the wells in the desert, and particularly the fact of a successful war with the Punt, the northwest neighbours of Egypt, shew that his dominion was equally free from foreign invasion. From this period, however, until the accession of the eighteenth dynasty, we learn nothing of importance concerning the Egyptian monarchs, except what we may gather from the occurrence of their names on the rocks of Upper Egypt; a curious silence which, at least, does not contradict the statement of Manetho, that the shepherd-usurpation was contemporary with the seventeenth dynasty of Theban princes, and that it was ended by the successful struggles of Amosis, the first monarch of the eighteenth. The Pharaoh who exercised the rites of courteous hospitality to the Hebrew Patriarch, appears to have been a man who cultivated the social and domestic affections; who lived in the enjoyment of peaceful security, and agricultural prosperity; who, though alive to the attraction of feminine charms, possessed a tenderness of conscience, which shrank from the infraction of the marriage tie; a moral uprightness which shines with the brighter lustre because of its rarity among those whose will is law, and because of its contrast with the failure of Abram himself.* Now the character of Amun-m-ha II. seems to have been of this stamp, for Sir J. G. Wilkinson says,† in speaking of this monarch and his son ;"Independent of the encouragement given by them to the agricultural interests of their country, they consulted the welfare of those who were employed in the inhospitable desert; and the erection of a temple, and a station, to command the wells, and to serve for their abode, in the Wadee Jasoos, proved that they were mindful of their spiritual as well as temporal protection." * It is a solemn thing when worldly persons manifest a conscience more alive to sin than that of the people of God. Man. and Cust. i. 45. The next notice we have of Egypt in the Sacred Word, is in connexion with the captivity and exaltation of Joseph. If our chronology be correct, the Pharaoh who then reigned over that country was the renowned Thothmes III. The fact of a tribute of gold and spices being brought to this powerful monarch from Arabia, has already come under our notice, and it is remarkable that it was a company of Arabian spice-merchants, who carried the youthful slave to the scene of his future glory. We have then Egyptian testimony to the existence and to the value of this traffic. That the bottles and vases of porce ANOINTING A GUEST. lain contained precious unguents compounded of rare spices, is probable from the representations of servants anointing guests out of such vases; as well as from the fact that elegant alabaster and porcelain vases are found which still contain the fragrant oil. "One of the alabaster vases in the museum at Aln |