Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/764

740 740 EGYPT [HISTORY. been of a &quot;branch holding a local principality. Seteell. suc ceeded them and restored the legitimate line. His reign ilosed in anarchy. There was no longer one king : the chiefs of the nonies ruled and engaged in civil war. A worse period followed. A Syrian, Arisn by name, became chief of the nomarchs, society was dissolved, and the temple- services neglected. We are as yet unable to say how this revolution began. It seems to have had nothing to do with foreign wars, but to have been brought about by internal weakness. The time it lasted must have been long, according to the Papyrus of Ramses III., from which alone we know of it. There &quot; many years &quot; are assigned to the period of the nomarchs and &quot;years&quot; to the rule of the Syrian. As the Exodus is now generally held to have occurred in the later years of Dynasty XIX., its place in Egyptian history may best be here noticed. The view referred to was first carefully worked out by Prof. Lepsius. It rests upon chronological and historical grounds. Manetho, apparently adopting a tradition, placed the Exodus in the reign of Menptah. The number of generations assigned in the Bible to the interval from the Exodus to Solomon would bring the former event to about the same time. This approximative date is in accordance with that of the Rabbinical chronology, B.C. 1314-13. The coincidence is, however, valueless, for the interval from the Exodus to the building of Solomon a Temple, in the Rabbinical chronology, is that of the Hebrew text, 480 years. The date of the Exodus should therefore be about B.C. 1480. The difference between 1480 and 1314-13 is caused by an error in the date of the building of the Second Temple, which is put B.C. 354, only 46 years before the date of Alexander s death, which is dated B.C. 308, or 15 years too late. There is thus a mistake of more than a century in so cardinal a date as the building of the Second Temple. If an event of this importance, occurring only 800 years before the drawing up of the chronology, is thus incorrectly dated, and a period of Jewish history obliterated, surely the date of the Exodus cannot rest upon any accurate information. The historical grounds are far stronger than the chronological. Manetho, relating, if we may trust Josephus, a current tradition (vTrep &v 8 6 Mave$o)V OVK CKTWV Trap AtyuTrriois ypa/x/xarwv, aAA. , a&amp;gt;s auros wp,oyr]Kv, e/c TWV dSecrvroTOJS fJ-vOoXoyovfj^lvtav 7rposTe$ei/cev, varepov efeXey^a) /cara /xe po?, K. T. A.., Contr. Ap., 1G), and Josephus is here confirmed by the evidence which the narrative shows of historical inaccuracy, has given an account of the Exodus from an Egyptian point of view. This story is the fullest version of one current in various forms in antiquity. As Manetho tells it, the chief points are these. King Amenophis, identified by him with Menptah, who occurs in his lists as Amenophis and Ammenephthis, determined, under the advice of a priest of the same name as himself, Amonophis the son of Papis, to cleanse Egypt of all lepers and other unclean persons, whom, accordingly, he set to work in the quarries. On their petition he gave them the city Avaris, left in ruins by the
 * Shepherds. Having occupied the city, they chose one of

themselves, a priest of Heliopolis, by name Osarsiph, as their ruler, who changed his name to Moyses. He made laws particularly directed against the Egyptian religion, and sent messengers to Jerusalem to the Shepherds, who had been expelled by the Egyptians, asking their aid and promising to give them their old territory Avaris, and to assist them to subdue Egypt. Accordingly the Shepherds invaded Egypt, when Amenophis came against them, but for superstitious reasons did not fight them, and withdrew to the friendly king of Ethiopia, in whose country he remained thirteen years, his ally protecting the southern Egyptian border. Meanwhile the people of Jerusalem and the un clean Egyptians ravaged Egypt, and destroyed everything connected with the national religion. Afterwards Amenophis and his son Sethos, also called Harnesses, returned and expelled the Shepherds and the unclean people. Choeremon gives a similar account with the same name for the king. Lysimachus and Tacitus vary in calling the king Bocchoris. The Egyptian evidence for the date of the Exodus would place it about this time. The geographical inquiries of Lepsius have been carried on by Brugsch, who, in a paper read before the Oriental Congress, has identified the prin cipal geographical names of the narrative of the oppression and of the Exodus (Brugsch, L Exode). In particular, Rameses is shown to have been another name of Tanis. The occurrence of this name in Genesis and Exodus is most important as bearing on the date of the Exodus, for it is almost certain that it was given by Ramses II., who rebuilt the great temple of the town. Another cardinal piece of evidence is the mention of the Aperiu, or Apuriu, as engaged in public works under Ramses II. and later kings, but not after Dynasty XX. In this name that of the Hebrews has been recognized. If the identification were certain we should have much reason for dating the oppression under Ramses II., which would accord with the Exodus under Menptah. The difficulties of this theory are not slight. On the chronological side Manetho s date is only dependent on a tradition, and we cannot fix the chronology of the dynasty, B.C. 1300 for Menptah being about the middle point in a doubtful two centuries. The evidence of the Hebrew genealogies therefore is not conclusive for a date identical with that of Menptah, which we cannot yet say is irreconcilable with the chronology founded on the interval of 480 years from the Exodus to the building of Solomon s Temple. If, however, the genealogies are to be taken as a guide for the chronology up to the Exodus, Egyptologists prefer for the period of the sojourn the longer intervals stated in the Hebrew text to the very short ones that would result from the genealogical method. Still greater difficulties arise when we give a critical examina tion to Manetho s story. It reads like a perverted narra tive of the calamities which closed Dynasty XIX., for we cannot suppose two conquests by Asiatics and two ex pulsions, one by Menptah and Setee II., the other by Set- nekht, who subdued the Syrian, nor resort to the violent hypothesis that the Papyrus of Ramses III. attributes to Set-nekht that which Setes II. achieved. The name of Amenophis is suspicious, the two names of his son Sethos, &quot;who is Ramesses,&quot; still more so; the recall of the Shep herds from Jerusalem, and the easy conquest of Egypt with out a battle, all read like a legend founded on a fusion of the two periods of Eastern occupation. There is, moreover, another suspicious circumstance in the occurrence of the name of Bocchoris in two versions of the story. This would either point to Bocchoris of Dynasty XXIV., in whose time it is quite possible that there was a large number of Israelite fugitives in Egypt, or to some other king of the same or a similar name ; we do not, however, know of any earlier Bocchoris. It may be reasonably asked whether this story has anything to do with the Exodus. Those who hold that it has yet, in common with all Egyptologists, argue, when they examine the Biblical data, on the ground of the minute accuracy of many of these data. If, then, the two narratives, that of Manetho and that of the Papyrus of Ramses III., relate to the Exodus, it may reasonably be inferred that the Manethonian is a faulty and distorted one. It is, however, quite possible that Manetho may have known when the Exodus happened, and yet may have confused it with an event of the same period. The argument from the Biblical data that Ramses II. ruled during the oppression of the Israelites is very strong, though it may be conjectured that a redactor haa substituted the later name Rameses for the earlier Zoan.