The Egypt of the Hebrews and Herodotos Part 4

If Ramses II. was the Pharaoh of the Oppression, the Pharaoh of the Exodus must have been one of his immediate successors. Egyptologists have hesitated between Meneptah, Seti II., and Si-Ptah. There is much to be said in favour of each. None of them reigned long, and after the death of Meneptah the sceptre fell into feeble hands, and the Egyptian monarchy went rapidly to decay.

Native tradition, as reported by the historian Manetho, made Meneptah the Pharaoh under whom the children of Israel escaped from their house of bondage. Amenophis or Meneptah, it was said, desired to see the G.o.ds. He was accordingly instructed by the seer Amenophis, the son of Pa-apis, to clear the land of the leprous and impure. This he did, and 80,000 persons were collected from all parts of Egypt, and were then separated from the other inhabitants of the country and compelled to work in the quarries of Tura, on the eastern side of the Nile. Among them there happened to be some priests, one of whom was Osarsiph, a priest of On, and the sacrilegious act of laying hands on them was destined to be avenged by the G.o.ds. The seer prophesied that the impure lepers would find allies, and with their help would govern Egypt for thirteen years, when a saviour should arise in the person of Amenophis himself. Not daring to tell the king of this prediction, he put it in writing and then took away his own life. After a time the workers in the quarries were removed to Avaris, the deserted fortress of the Hyksos, on the Asiatic frontier of the Egyptian kingdom. Here they rose in rebellion under Osarsiph, who organised them into a community, and gave them new laws, forbidding them to revere the sacred animals, and ordering them to rebuild the walls of Avaris. He also sent to the descendants of the Hyksos at Jerusalem, begging for their a.s.sistance. A force of 200,000 men was accordingly despatched to Avaris, and the invasion of Egypt decided on. Amenophis retired into Ethiopia without striking a blow, carrying with him his son Sethos, who was also called Ramesses after his grandfather, as well as the sacred bull Apis, and other holy animals. The images of the G.o.ds were concealed, lest they should be profaned by the invaders. Amenophis remained in Ethiopia for thirteen years, while Osarsiph, who had taken the name of Moses, together with his allies from Jerusalem, committed innumerable atrocities. At last, however, Amenophis and his son Sethos returned, each at the head of an army; the enemy were defeated and overthrown, and finally pursued to the borders of Syria.

The tradition is a curious mixture of fact and legend. Osarsiph is but an Egyptianised form of Joseph, the first syllable of which has been explained as representing the G.o.d of Israel (as in Ps. lx.x.xi. 5), and has accordingly been identified with Osar or Osiris. The ancient Egyptian habit of regarding the foreigner as impure has been interpreted to mean that the followers of Osarsiph were lepers. The Exodus of the Israelites has been confounded with the invasion of the northern barbarians in the reign of Meneptah, as well as with the troublous period that saw the fall of the nineteenth dynasty when the throne of Egypt was seized by the Syrian Arisu. And, lastly, the hated Hyksos have been introduced into the story; their fortress Avaris is made the rallying-place of the revolted lepers, and it is through the help they send from Jerusalem that the rule of Osarsiph or Moses is established in the valley of the Nile.

An interesting commentary on the legend has been furnished by a papyrus lately acquired by M. Golenischeff, and dating from the age of Thothmes III. On the last page is a sort of Messianic prophecy, the hero of which has the name of Ameni, a shortened form of Amenophis. "A king," it says, "will come from the south, Ameni the truth-declaring by name. He will be the son of a woman of Nubia, and will be born in.... He will a.s.sume the crown of Upper Egypt, and will lift up the red crown of Lower Egypt. He will unite the double crown.... The people of the age of the son of man (_sic_) will rejoice and establish his name for all eternity. They will be far from evil, and the wicked will humble their mouths for fear of him.

The Asiatics (amu) will fall before his blows, and the Libyans before his flame. The wicked will wait on his judgments, the rebels on his power. The royal serpent on his brow will pacify the revolted. A wall shall be built, even that of the prince, so that the Asiatics may no more enter into Egypt." In this Ameni we should probably see the Amenophis of the Manethonian story.

Against the identification of Meneptah with the Pharaoh of the Exodus it has, however, been urged that he seems on the whole to have been a successful prince. His kingdom pa.s.sed safely through the shock of the Libyan and northern invasions, and notices which have survived to us show that, at all events in the earlier part of his reign, Gaza and the neighbouring towns still acknowledged his authority. At Zaru, on the Asiatic frontier of Egypt, a young scribe, Pa-ebpasa by name, was stationed, whose duty it was to keep a record of all those who entered or left the country by "the way of the Philistines." Some of his notes, made in the third year of Meneptah, are entered on the back of his school copybook, which is now in the British Museum. One of them tells us that on the fifteenth of Pakhons Baal- ... the son of Zippor of Gaza, pa.s.sed through with a letter to Baal-marom(?)-ga[b]u, the prince of Tyre; another that Thoth, the son of Zakarumu, and the policeman Duthau, the son of Shem-baal, as well as Sutekh-mes, the son of Epher-dagal, had come from Gaza with a message to the king.

A curious despatch, dated in Meneptah's eighth year, goes to show that at that time the kinsfolk of the Israelites still had liberty to pa.s.s from the desert into the land of Goshen and there find pasturage for their flocks. One of his officials informs him that certain Shasu or Bedouin from Edom had been allowed to pa.s.s the Khetam or fortress of Meneptah Hotep-hima in the district of Succoth, and make their way to the lakes of the city of Pithom, in the district of Succoth, "in order to feed themselves and their herds on the possessions of Pharaoh, who is there a beneficent sun for all peoples." The doc.u.ment may be interpreted in two ways. It may be taken as a proof that the Israelites had not yet fled from Egypt, and that there was consequently as yet no restraint placed by the Egyptians upon the entrance of the Asiatic nomads into their country, or it may be regarded as implying that the land of Goshen was already deserted, so that there was abundance of room for both shepherds and flocks. On behalf of this view a pa.s.sage may be quoted from the great inscription of Meneptah at Karnak, in which we read that "the country around Pa-Bailos (the modern Belbeis) was not cultivated, but left as pasture for cattle because of the strangers. It was abandoned since the time of the ancestors." More probably, however, this means that the land in question was not inhabited by Egyptian _fellahin_, but given over to the Hebrew shepherds and the "mixed mult.i.tude" of their Bedouin kinsmen.

A more serious objection to making Meneptah the Pharaoh of the Exodus is the fact that his son Seti II. was already acknowledged as heir to the throne during his father's lifetime. The "tale of the two brothers," to which we have already had to refer, was dedicated to him while he was still crown-prince. Indeed, it would even appear that he was a.s.sociated with his father on the throne, since the cartouches of Meneptah and Seti II. are found side by side in the rock-temple of Surariyeh. It would seem, therefore, that the first-born of the Pharaoh, who was destroyed on the night of the Pa.s.sover, could not have been a son of Meneptah-at all events, if his heir and future successor were his first-born son. That Meneptah should have been buried in one of the royal tombs of Biban el-Moluk at Thebes, and received divine honours after his death, is of less consequence. As has often been remarked, no mention is made in the narrative of the Exodus that the Pharaoh himself was drowned, and though Meneptah's tomb (No. 8) is unfinished, the cult that was paid to his memory indicates that his mummy was deposited in it. It was plundered centuries ago, and the numerous Greek inscriptions on its walls make it clear that it was open to visitors in the Roman age.

Professor Maspero has suggested that the Pharaoh of the Bible was Seti II.

We know that Seti must have been a weak prince, and that his rule was disputed. A usurper, Amon-messu by name, seized the crown either during his lifetime or at his death, and governed at Thebes, while the authority of the lawful line of princes was still acknowledged in the north. We also know that he must have died suddenly, for his tomb at Thebes (No. 15), though begun magnificently, was never finished. Its galleries and halls were hewn out of the rock, but never adorned with sculptures and paintings, and, except at the entrance, we have merely outline sketches, which were never filled in. His cartouches, however, are found in another tomb, not far off (No. 13), and after his death wors.h.i.+p was paid to him and his wife.

A despatch, written during his reign, relates to the escape of two fugitives who had travelled along the very road which the Israelites attempted to take. The scribe tells us that he set out in pursuit of them from the royal city of Ramses on the evening of the 9th of Epiphi, and had arrived at the Khetam or fortress of Succoth the following day. Two days later he reached another Khetam, and there learned that the slaves were already safe in the desert, having pa.s.sed the lines of fortification to the north of the Migdol of King Seti. The account is an interesting ill.u.s.tration of the flight, on a far larger scale, that must have taken place about the same time. The geography of the despatch is in close harmony with that of the Book of Exodus, and bears witness to the contemporaneousness of the latter with the events it professes to record.

It is a geography which ceased to be exact after the age of the nineteenth dynasty.

It is thus possible that Seti II., instead of Meneptah, is the Pharaoh whose host perished in the waves of the Red Sea. But there is yet another claimant in Si-Ptah, with whom the nineteenth dynasty came to an end. Dr.

Kellogg has argued ably on behalf of him, and it is possible that the views of this scholar are correct. Si-Ptah's right to the throne was derived from his wife, Ta-user, and he reigned at least six years. That he followed Seti II. has long been admitted, on the authority of Manetho, though doubts have been cast on it in consequence of a statement of Champollion that he found the name of Seti written over that of Si-Ptah in the tomb of the latter at Biban el-Moluk (No. 14). All doubts, however, are now set at rest by an inscription I copied at Wadi Halfa two years ago, in which the writer, Hora, the son of Kam, declares that he had formerly belonged to the palace of Seti II., and had engraved the inscription in the third year of Si-Ptah. In another inscription in the same place, dated also in Si-Ptah's reign, the author states that he had been an amba.s.sador to the land of Khal or Syria. Intercourse with Asia was therefore still maintained.

Si-Ptah's tomb at Thebes was usurped by Setnekht, the founder of the twentieth dynasty. It is even doubtful whether the king for whom it was made was ever buried in it. In the second sepulchral hall the lid of his sarcophagus was discovered, but of the sarcophagus itself there was no trace. Perhaps it had been appropriated by Set-nekht. At any rate, those who believe that the Pharaoh of the Exodus perished in the Red Sea will find in Si-Ptah a better representative of him than in Meneptah or Seti.

And the period of anarchy which followed upon his death may be regarded as the natural sequel of the disasters that befel Egypt before the children of Israel were permitted to go.

However this may be, the question of the date of the Exodus is reduced to narrow limits. The three successors of Ramses II. reigned altogether but a short time. Manetho gives seven years only to Si-Ptah, five years to Amon-messu, and we know from the monuments that Meneptah and Seti II. can have reigned but a very few years. Thirty or forty years at most will have covered the period that elapsed between the death of the great Ramses and the downfall of his dynasty. Then came a few years of confusion and anarchy, followed by the reign of Setnekht. If we place the accession of Ramses III. in B.C. 1230, we cannot be far wrong.

When that happened, the Israelites were hidden out of the sight of the great nations of the world among the solitudes of the desert. They were pitching their tents on the frontiers of Mount Seir, in the near neighbourhood of their kinsmen in Edom and Midian. There, at Sinai and Kadesh-barnea, they were receiving a code of laws, and being fitted to become a nation and the conquerors of Canaan. Were they included among the Shasu of Mount Seir whose overthrow is commemorated by Ramses III.?

For an answer we must turn to the twenty-first chapter of the Book of Numbers. There we read how it is said in the book of the wars of the Lord: "Waheb in Suphah and the brooks of Arnon, and the stream of the brook that goeth down to the dwelling of Ar, and lieth upon the border of Moab." Of the war against the Amorites on the banks of the Arnon we know something, but the Old Testament has preserved no record of the other war, which had its scene in Suphah. Where Suphah was we know from the opening of the Book of Deuteronomy, which tells us that the words of Moses were addressed to the people "in the plain over against Suph." Suph, in fact, was the district which gave its name to the _yam Suph_ or "Sea of Suph," the Red Sea of the authorised version, the modern Gulf of Akabah. Here were the Edomite ports of Eloth and Ezion-geber, where Solomon built his fleet of merchantmen (1 Kings ix. 26), and here too was the region which faced "the plain" on the southern side of Moab.

The barren ranges of Mount Seir run down southward to Ezion-geber and Eloth, at the head of the Gulf of Akabah. And it was just in the ranges of Mount Seir that Ramses III. tells us he smote the Shasu and plundered their tents. When he made this expedition, the Israelites were probably still encamped on the borders of Edom. They had not as yet entered Canaan when he marched through the later Judaea, and crossed the Jordan into Moab, and his campaign against the Shasu of the desert did not take place many years later. At Medinet Habu, the "chief of the Shasu" figures among his prisoners by the side of the kings of the Hitt.i.tes and the Amorites.

Was "the war of the Lord" in Suphah waged against the Pharaoh of Egypt?

Chronology is in favour of it, and if the enemies of the Israelites were not the Egyptian army, it is hard to say who else they could have been. We know from the Pentateuch that they were not the people of Edom; "meddle not with them," the Israelites were enjoined; the children of Esau were their "brethren," and G.o.d had "given Mount Seir unto Esau for a possession."

But whether or not Ramses III. and the tribes of Israel ever came into actual conflict, it must have been during his reign that the first Israelitish conquests in Canaan were made. The settlement of the twelve tribes in Palestine was coeval with the final decay of the Egyptian monarchy.

CHAPTER IV. THE AGE OF THE ISRAELITISH MONARCHIES.

Ramses III. was the last of the great Pharaohs in whose veins ran native Egyptian blood. His successors all bore the same name as himself, but they possessed neither his energy nor his power to rule. He had saved Egypt from further attack from without, and it was well he had done so, for the feeble monarchs of the twentieth dynasty would have been unable to resist the foe. They ceased even to build or to erect the monuments which testified to the prosperity of the country and the progress of its art.

The high-priests of Amon gradually usurped their authority, and a time came at length when the last of the Ramses fled into exile in Ethiopia, and a new dynasty governed in his stead. But the rule of the new monarchs was hardly acknowledged beyond the Delta; Thebes was practically independent under its priest-kings, and though they acknowledged the authority of the Tanite Pharaohs in name, they acted, in real fact, as if they were independent sovereigns. One of them, Ra-men-kheper, built fortresses not only at Gebelen in the south, but also at El-Hibeh in the north, and thus blocked the river against the subjects of the Tanite princes, as well as against invaders from the south. At times, indeed, the Tanite Pharaohs of the twenty-first dynasty exercised an actual sovereignty over Upper Egypt, and Smendes, the first of them, quarried stone at Dababiyeh, opposite Gebelen, with which to repair the ca.n.a.l of Luxor; but, as a general rule, so far as the south was concerned, they were Pharaohs only in name. The rival dynasty of Theban high-priests was at once more powerful and more king-like. They it was who, in some moment of danger, concealed the mummies of the great monarchs of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties in the pit at Der el-Bahari, and whose own mummies were entombed by the side of those of a Thothmes and a Ramses.

The Egyptian wife of Solomon was the daughter of one of the last Pharaohs of the twenty-first dynasty. She brought with her as a dowry the Canaanitish city of Gezer. Gezer had been one of the leading cities of Palestine in the days of the Tel el-Amarna correspondence, and through all the years of Israelitish conquest it had remained in Canaanitish hands. It was a Pharaoh of Tanis, and not an Israelite, into whose possession it was destined finally to fall.

The waning power of Solomon in Israel coincided with the waning power of the twenty-first dynasty. Long before the death of the Hebrew monarch, a new dynasty was reigning over Egypt. s.h.i.+shak, its founder, was of Libyan origin. His immediate forefathers had commanded the Libyan mercenaries in the service of the Pharaoh, and inscriptions lately discovered in the Oasis of El-Khargeh write the name Shashaka. The Egyptians slightly changed its p.r.o.nunciation and made it Shashanq, but in the Old Testament the true form is preserved.

s.h.i.+shak brought new vigour into the decaying monarchy of the Nile. The priest-kings of Thebes went down before him, along with the effete Pharaohs of Tanis. It may be that Solomon attempted to a.s.sist his father-in-law; if he did so, the only result was to bring trouble upon himself. His rebel subject Jeroboam fled to Egypt, and found shelter and protection in s.h.i.+shak's court.

s.h.i.+shak must have looked on with satisfaction while the neighbouring empire of Israel fell to pieces, until eventually the central power itself was shattered in twain. The rebel he had so carefully nurtured at his own court was the instrument which relieved him of all further fear of danger on the side of Asia. So far from being a menace to Egypt, Jerusalem now lay at the mercy of the Egyptian armies, and in the fifth year of Rehoboam, s.h.i.+shak led his forces against it. The strong walls Solomon had built were of no avail; its temple and palace were plundered, and the golden s.h.i.+elds in its armoury were carried away. A record of the campaign was engraved by the conqueror on the southern wall of the temple of Amon at Karnak. There we read how he had overthrown the Amu or Asiatics, and the Fenkhu or people of Palestine, and underneath are the cartouches, each with the head of a captive above it, which contain the names of the conquered places. At the outset come the names of towns in the northern kingdom of Israel. But, as Professor Maspero remarks, this does not prove that they were actually among the conquests of s.h.i.+shak. If Jeroboam had begged his aid against Judah, and thereby acknowledged himself the va.s.sal of the Pharaoh, it would have been a sufficient pretext for inserting the names of his cities among the subject states of Egypt. But it may be that the campaign was directed quite as much against Israel as against Judah, and that Judah suffered most, simply because it had to bear the brunt of the attack.

In any case, the list of vanquished towns begins first with Gaza, the possession of which was necessary before the Egyptian army could force its way into Palestine; then come Rabbith of Issachar, Taanach, near Megiddo, Hapharaim and Beth-Horon, while Mahanaim, on the eastern side of the Jordan, is also included among them. But after this the list deals exclusively with the towns and villages of Judah, and of the Bedouin tribes in the desert to the south of it. Thus we have Ajalon and Makkedah, Socho and Keilah, Migdol and Beth-anoth. Then we read the names of Azem and Arad, farther to the south, as well as of the Hagaraim or "Enclosures"

of Arad, and Rabbith 'Aradai, "Arad the capital." Next to Arad comes the name of Yurahma, the Jerahme-el of the Old Testament, the brother of Caleb the Kenizzite (1 Chron. ii. 42) whose land was ravaged by David (1 Sam.

x.x.x. 29). But the larger portion of the list is made up of the names of small villages and even Bedouin encampments, or of such general terms as Hagra, "enclosure," Negebu, "the south," 'Emeq, "the valley," Shebbaleth, "a torrent," Abilim, "fields," Ganat, "garden," Haideba, "a quarry," and the Egyptian Shodinau, "ca.n.a.ls."(8) Among them we look in vain even for names like those of Gezer and Beer-sheba. Jerusalem, too, is conspicuous by its absence, unless we agree with Professor Maspero in seeing it in the last name of the list (No. 133), of which only the first syllable is preserved. Were it not for the record in the First Book of Kings, we should never have known that the campaign of s.h.i.+shak had inflicted such signal injury on the kingdom of Judah.

Champollion, indeed, the first discoverer of the list and of its importance, believed that he had found in it the name of the Jewish capital. The twenty-ninth cartouche reads Yaud-hamelek, which he explained as signifying "the kingdom of Judah," while Rosellini made it "the king of Judah." But both interpretations are impossible. _Melek_, it is true, means "king" in Hebrew, but "king of Judah" would have to be _melek-Yaudah_; "kingdom of Judah," _malkuth-Yaudah_. In the Semitic languages the genitive must follow the noun that governs it.

Yaud-hamelek is the Hebrew Ye(h)ud ham-melech "Jehud of the king." Jehud was a town of Dan (Josh. xix. 45), which Blau has identified with the modern El-Yehudiyeh, near Jaffa, and the t.i.tle attached to it in the Egyptian list implies that it was an appanage of the crown. The faces of the prisoners who surmount the cartouches are worthy of attention. The Egyptian artists were skilled delineators of the human features, and an examination of their sculptures and paintings has shown that they represented the characteristics of their models with wonderful truth and accuracy. For ethnological purposes their portraits of foreign races are of considerable importance. Now the prisoners of s.h.i.+shak have the features, not of the Jew, but of the Amorite. The prisoners who served as models to the Egyptian sculptors at Karnak must therefore have been of Amorite descent. It is a proof that the Amorite population in southern Palestine was still strong in the days of Rehoboam and s.h.i.+shak. The Jews would have been predominant only in Jerusalem and the larger cities and fortresses of the kingdom. Elsewhere the older race survived with all its characteristic features; the Israelitish conquest had never rooted it out.

Hence it is that it still lives and flourishes in its ancient home. The traveller in the country districts of Judah looks in vain for traces of the Jewish race, but he may still see there the Amorite just as he is depicted on the monuments of Egypt. The Jews, in fact, were but the conquering and dominant caste, and with the extinction of their nationality came also in Judah the extinction of their racial type. The few who remained were one by one absorbed into the older population of the country.

s.h.i.+shak died soon after his Jewish campaigns. None of his successors seem to have possessed his military capacity and energy. One of them, however, Osorkon II., appears to have made an expedition against Palestine. Among the monuments disinterred at Bubastis by Dr. Naville for the Egyptian Exploration Fund are the inscribed blocks of stone which formed the walls of the second hall of the temple. This hall was restored by Osorkon, who called it the "Festival Hall" of Amon, which was dedicated on the day of Khoiak, in the twenty-second year of the king's reign. On one of the blocks the Pharaoh declares that "all countries, the Upper and Lower Retennu, are hidden under his feet." The Upper Retennu denoted Palestine, the Lower Retennu Northern Syria, and though the boast was doubtless a vainglorious one, it must have had some foundation in truth.

In the Second Book of Chronicles (xiv. 9-15) we are told that when Asa was on the Jewish throne, "there came out against them Zerah the Ethiopian with an host of a thousand thousand and three hundred chariots." The similarity between the names Zerah and Osorkon has long been noticed, and the reign of Osorkon II. would coincide with that of Asa. Dr. Naville, therefore, is probably right in believing that some connection exists between the campaign of Zerah and the boast of Osorkon. It is true that the Chronicler calls Zerah an Ethiopian, and describes his army as an Ethiopian host; but this seems due to the fact that the next kings of Egypt who interfered in the affairs of Palestine, So and Tirhakah, were of Ethiopian descent. In the time of Asa, at any rate, when the twenty-second dynasty was ruling over Egypt, no Ethiopian army could have entered Judah without the permission of the Egyptian monarch. However, Dr. Naville draws attention to the fact that Osorkon seems to have had some special tie with Ethiopia. His great festival at Bubastis was attended by natives of Ethiopia, the Anti came with their gifts from "the land of the negroes,"

and are depicted like the priests on the walls of the hall.

But troublous times were in store for Egypt. The twenty-second dynasty came to an end, and a period followed of confusion, civil war, and foreign invasion. The kings of Ethiopia sailed down the Nile and swept the country from a.s.suan to the sea. Petty princes reigned as independent sovereigns in the various cities of Egypt, and waged war one against the other. Pi-ankhi the Ethiopian was content with their momentary submission; he then retired to his ancestral capital at Napata, midway between Dongola and Khartum, carrying with him the spoils of the Nile. Another Ethiopian, Shabaka or Sabako, the son of Kashet, made a more permanent settlement in Egypt. He put to death the nominal Pharaoh, Bak-n-ran-f or Bokkhoris, and founded the twenty-fifth dynasty. Order was again restored, the petty princes suppressed, and Egypt as well as Ethiopia obeyed a single head. The roads were cleared of brigands, the temples and walls of the cities were rebuilt, and trade could again pa.s.s freely up and down the Nile.

An Egyptian civilisation and an Egyptian religion had been established in Ethiopia since the days of the eighteenth dynasty. For some centuries, even after they had become independent of Egypt, the ruling cla.s.ses boasted of the purity of their Egyptian descent. But before the age of Sabako the Egyptian element had been absorbed by the native population. We have learned from a monument of the a.s.syrian king, Esar-haddon, lately found at Sinjerli, in northern Syria, that Sabako and his successors had all the physical characteristics of the negro. But no sign of this is allowed to appear on the Egyptian monuments. With the contempt for the black race which still distinguishes them, the Egyptians refused to acknowledge that their Pharaohs could be of negro blood. In the sculptures and paintings of the Nile, accordingly, the kings of the Ethiopian dynasty are represented with all the features of the Egyptian race.

In spite, however, of all attempts to conceal the fact, we now know that they were negroes in reality. But they brought with them a vigour and a strength of will that had long been wanting among the rulers of Egypt. And it was not long before their Asiatic neighbours found that a new and energetic power had arisen on the banks of the Nile. a.s.syria was now extending its empire throughout Western Asia, and claiming to control the politics of Syria and Palestine. The Syrian princes looked to Egypt for help. In B.C. 720, a.s.syria and Egypt met face to face for the first time.

Sib'e, the Tartan, or commander-in-chief, of the Egyptian armies, with Hanno of Gaza and other Syrian allies, blocked the way of the a.s.syrian invaders at Raphia, on the border of Palestine. The victory was won by the a.s.syrian Sargon. Hanno was captured, and Sib'e fled to the Delta. But Sargon turned northward again, and did not follow up his success. He was content with receiving the tribute of Pharaoh (Pir'u) "king of Egypt," of Samsi, the queen of Arabia, and of Ithamar the Sabaean.

In Sib'e we must see the So or Seve of the Old Testament (2 Kings xvii.

4). He is there called "king of Egypt," but he was rather one of the subordinate princes of the Delta, who acted as the commander-in-chief of "Pharaoh." Pharaoh, it would seem, was still Bak-n-ran-f.

A few years later Sabako was established on the throne. He reigned at least twelve years, and was succeeded by his brother-in-law, Tirhakah, the Tarqu of the a.s.syrian texts. Under him, Egypt once more played a part in Jewish history.

It was trust in "Pharaoh, king of Egypt," that made Hezekiah revolt from a.s.syria after Sargon's death. The result was the invasion of his kingdom by Sennacherib in B.C. 701. Tirhakah moved forward to help his ally. But his march diverted the attention of the a.s.syrian monarch only for a while.

The armies of Sennacherib and Tirhakah met at Eltekeh, and Tirhakah the Pharaoh of Egypt was forced to retire. Both claim a victory in their inscriptions. Sennacherib tells us how "the kings of Egypt and the bowmen, chariots, and horses of the king of northern Arabia, had collected their innumerable forces and gone to the aid" of Hezekiah and his Philistine allies, and how in sight of Eltekeh, "in reliance on a.s.sur," he had "fought with them and utterly overthrown them." "The charioteers and the sons of the king of Egypt, together with the charioteers of the king of northern Arabia," he had "taken captive in the battle." Tirhakah, on the other hand, on a statue now in the Gizeh Museum, declares that he was the conqueror of the Bedouin, the Hitt.i.tes, the Arvadites, the a.s.syrians, and the people of Aram-Naharaim. The battle, in fact, was a Kadmeian victory.

Tirhakah was so far defeated that he was forced to retreat to his own dominions, while Sennacherib's victory was not decisive enough to allow him to pursue it. He contented himself with marching back into Judah, burning and plundering its towns and villages, and carrying their inhabitants into captivity. Then came the catastrophe which destroyed the larger part of his army and obliged him to return ignominiously to his own capital. The spoils and captives of Judah were the only fruits of his campaign. His rebellious va.s.sal went unpunished, and the strong fortress of Jerusalem was saved from the a.s.syrian. Though Sennacherib made many military expeditions during the remaining twenty years of his reign, he never came again to the south of Palestine.

Egypt lay sheltered from invasion behind Jerusalem. But with the death of Sennacherib there came a change. His son and successor, Esar-haddon, was a good general and a man of great ability. Mana.s.seh of Judah became his va.s.sal, and the way lay open to the Nile. With a large body of trained veterans he descended upon Egypt (B.C. 674). The sheikh of the Bedouin provided him with the camels which conveyed the water for the army across the desert. Three campaigns were needed before Egypt, under its Ethiopian ruler, could be subdued. But at last, in B.C. 670, Esar-haddon drove the Egyptian forces before him in fifteen days (from the 3rd to the 18th of Tammuz or June) all the way from the frontier to Memphis, thrice defeating them with heavy loss, and wounding Tirhakah himself. Three days later Memphis fell, and Tirhakah fled to Ethiopia, leaving Egypt to the conqueror. It was after this success that the a.s.syrian monarch erected the stele at Sinjerli, on which he is portrayed with Tirhakah of Egypt and Baal of Tyre kneeling before him, each with a ring through his lips, to which is attached a bridle held by the a.s.syrian king.

Egypt was reorganised under a.s.syrian rule, and measures taken to prevent the return of the Ethiopians. It was divided into twenty satrapies, the native princes being appointed to govern them for their a.s.syrian master.

At their head was placed Necho, the va.s.sal king of Sais. Esar-haddon now returned to Nineveh, and on the cliffs of the Nahr el-Kelb, near Beyrout, he engraved a record of his conquest of Egypt and Thebes by the side of the monument whereon, seven centuries previously, Ramses II. had boasted of his victories over the nations of Asia.

At first the Egyptian princes were well pleased with their change of masters. But in Thebes there was a strong party which sympathised with Ethiopia rather than with a.s.syria. With their help, Tirhakah returned in B.C. 668, sailed down the Nile, and took Memphis by storm. Esar-haddon started at once to suppress the revolt. But on the way to Egypt he died on the 10th of Marchesvan or October, and his son, a.s.sur-bani-pal, followed him on the throne.

The Ethiopian army was encountered near Kar-banit, in the Delta. A complete victory was gained over it, and Tirhakah was compelled to fly, first from Memphis, then from Thebes. The tributary kings whom he had displaced were restored, and a.s.sur-bani-pal left Egypt in the full belief that it was tranquil. But hardly had he returned to Nineveh before a fresh revolt broke out there. Tirhakah began to plot with the native satraps, and even Necho of Sais was suspected of complicity. The commanders of the a.s.syrian garrisons, accordingly, sent him and two other princes (from Tanis and Goshen) loaded with chains to a.s.syria. But a.s.sur-bani-pal, either really convinced of Necho's innocence or pretending to be so, not only pardoned him but bestowed upon him a robe of honour, as well as a sword of gold and a chariot and horses, and sent him back to Sais, giving at the same time the government of Athribis, whose mounds lie close to Benha, to his son, Psammetikhos. Meanwhile Tirhakah had again penetrated to Thebes and Memphis, where he celebrated the festival in honour of the appearance of a new Apis. But his power was no longer what it once had been, and even before the return of Necho he found it prudent to retire to Ethiopia. There he died a few months later.

The Thebaid, however, continued in a state of revolt against the a.s.syrian authority. Another Ethiopian king, whom the a.s.syrians call Urd-Aman, had succeeded Tirhakah, and was battling for the sovereignty of Egypt.

Urd-Aman is usually identified with the Pharaoh Rud-Amon, whose name has been met with on two Egyptian monuments, but about whom nothing further is known. Some scholars, however, read the name Tand-Aman, and identify it with that of Tuatan-Amon or Tuant-Amon, whose royal cartouches are engraved by the side of those of Tirhakah in the temple of Ptah-Osiris at Karnak. An inscription found built into a wall at Luxor mentions his third year, and a large stele erected by him at Napata was discovered among the ruins of his capital in 1862, and is now in the Museum of Gizeh. On this he states that in the first year of his reign he was excited by a dream to invade the north. Thebes opened its gates to him, and after wors.h.i.+pping in the temple of Amon at Karnak, he marched to Memphis, which he captured after a slight resistance. Then he proceeded against the princes of the Delta, who, however, shut themselves up in their cities or else submitted to him.