bably because he was successful. Misfortune with the Pharaohs was infamy."*

According to Manetho, the king Amenophath, (probably the same as Osirei-men-phthah,) was driven from his throne and country by the victorious Shepherds, and died in exile. His infant son, Rameses, accompanying him, was sheltered in Nubia for thirteen years, at the end of which period he appeared again in Egypt with a strong army, defeated the Shepherds after a severe struggle, and drove them to the bounds of Syria.

Some of the events of the wars prosecuted by this prince in his enemies' country, have already come before us. He appears to have emulated the achievements of his illustrious predecessors of the eighteenth dynasty, nor to have been satisfied until he had reduced the Canaanitish tribes to submission. These struggles were going on during the forty years of Israel's wanderings in the desert, and doubtless, in the providence of God, were one means of humbling the pride and breaking the power of those warlike nations, before the arrival of their Hebrew invaders. We know what a vigorous and determined. resistance they were still able to make, a resistance which a mightier arm than Joshua's was necessary to subdue; and we may thus acquire a somewhat adequate idea of the martial power and resources which had coped with Egypt's most illustrious princes through centuries of warfare, and yet had come out. of the contest so little scathed.

We have said that the names of the Canaanitish * Ancient Egypt, p. 94.

nations appear no more on the Egyptian monuments. The long hereditary enmity which had subsisted through so many dynasties, which neither the lapse of time, nor the force of arms, could quench, suddenly, in the very height of its rage, ceases, and that for ever! And at what period? in the reign of a monarch who is contemporary with Joshua. At the very epoch when, divinely led, the Hebrew wanderers march into the land of Promise; and, as the ministers of God, execute his righteous vengeance against nations whose "iniquity is full," and utterly destroy their national existence. We need make no comments on these facts. They exhibit not the coincidence of accident, but the coincidence of truth.

Should any of our readers feel disappointed that no sculptures or paintings have been found commemorating the departure of the Israelites, or events connected with it, we would ask, could they be reasonably expected? The uniform object of every public record yet found, is the aggrandisement of the reigning Pharaoh, the exaltation of his personal glory, the flattering of his vanity. Events which had no tendency to do this would be studiously concealed. We have already alluded to the absurd egotism, even to the extent of ludicrous impossibility, displayed in the battle scenes, the triumphs, &c. Now the incidents of the Exodus were, without exception, of an opposite character. They were the details of a contest between the God of the Hebrews and the gods of Egypt (Exod. xii. 12.), in which Jehovah received only glory, and the idols

nothing but shame. What Egyptian would wish to perpetuate the memory of this?

Nearly the same cause will account also for the absence of all allusion to the part that Joseph had in the prosperity of the nation. Kings are proverbially ungrateful to their subjects: allusions to the wealth that poured into the coffers of Thothmes are not wanting, but they are recorded for Thothmes' own glory, and not for that of the vizier under whose administration it was accumulated. Officers of rank and consideration did, it is true, find means to hand down their own history to posterity, to write their own illustrious annals, but it was on the walls of their tombs, and at their own expense. Joseph had no permanent tomb in Egypt; "By faith Joseph when he died, made mention of the departing of the children of Israel; and gave commandment concerning his bones." (Heb. xi. 22.) He was put in a coffin in Egypt, waiting the moment when God should visit his people, and his bones should lie with his fathers'. Nor, if he had occupied a sepulchre in Egypt, can we for a moment suppose that he would have adorned it with the incidents of his own life, like the idolaters among whom he lived. For Joseph was one of the children of God; and sought not his own glory. (See Gen. xli. 16.) On the whole then, the omission of any direct and purposed records of the presence of Israel in Egypt, other than such as would glorify Egyptian nationality, is so far from a thing to be lamented, that it could not be otherwise.

Of the expedition which a king of Egypt had

undertaken against Gezer, an unsubdued city in Ephraim, for the purpose of giving it as a present to his daughter, the wife of Solomon, the monuments have preserved no record that has been yet found. But in the reign of Rehoboam, the son and successor of Solomon, there was a hostile invasion of the land of Judea, which is commemorated by the Egyptian historians. It is thus announced in the Sacred Annals::

And it came to pass, when Rehoboam had established the kingdom, and had strengthened himself, he forsook the law of the LORD, and all Israel with him. And it came to pass, that in the fifth year of king Rehoboam, Shishak king of Egypt came up against Jerusalem, because they had transgressed against the LORD, with twelve hundred chariots, and three-score thousand horsemen and the people were without number that came with him out of Egypt; the Lubims, the Sukkiims, and the Ethiopians. And he took the fenced cities which pertained to Judah, and came to Jerusalem. Then came Shemaiah the prophet to Rehoboam, and to the princes of Judah, that were gathered together to Jerusalem because of Shishak, and said unto them, Thus saith the LORD, Ye have forsaken me, and therefore have I also left you in the hand of Shishak. Whereupon the princes of Israel and the king humbled themselves; and they said, The LORD is righteous. And when the LORD saw that they humbled themselves, the word of the LORD came to Shemaiah, saying, They have humbled themselves; therefore I will not destroy them, but I will grant them some deliverance: and my wrath shall not be poured out upon Jerusalem by the hand of Shishak. Nevertheless they shall be his servants; that they may know my service, and the service of the kingdoms of the countries. So Shishak king of Egypt came up against Jerusalem, and took away the treasures of the house of the LORD, and the treasures of the king's house; he took all he carried away also the shields of gold which Solomon had made. 2 Chron. xii. 1-9.

The first king of the twenty-second dynasty is named by Manetho, SESONCHIS; or, as it is written in the hieroglyphics, cycynk, Sheshonk; some of

whose achievements were recorded on the walls of the palace at Karnak. Little of these pictures is preserved that is intelligible: that little, however, includes a very interesting confirmation of the inspired narrative. The monarch presents his captives, bound to a stake, to the idol of the temple, in the usual manner; and seizing them by the hair, prepares

SYMBOL OF JUDAH.

(symbolically?) to strike off their heads at a blow. In another scene, he leads a symbolic procession of