expulsion from Memphis by the shepherd kings. All the personages commemorated on these monuments were attached to the court or the palace; and the names of Osortasen and Amenumis, which were alternately assumed by the kings of this race, appearon one of them. These personages, therefore, were of the blood royal; and very probably the city in which they were buried was also that in which they had lived.

It will have been noticed that these tablets, which are very common in collections of Egyptian antiquities, served as title pages to the tombs; corresponding in this with the propyla of the temples, which have before been considered. They conveyed a general idea of the contents of the sepulchres they closed. As they generally commemorate certain officers attached to the service of the reigning Pharaoh, and as they were found at Abydos, we have the probability, though not the certainty, that it was the abode of the kings of this family. Abydos is situated near the northern limit of Upper Egypt.

In the style of their execution, they closely resemble those of the epoch of the pyramids. This fact, so important in the decision of the dates of Egyptian monuments, is mentioned here on the high authority of Mr. Birch, the senior assistant at the Museum, the extent and depth of whose learning in his department are only equalled by the kindness and urbanity with which he communicates the information he possesses. From hence also it would therefore appear that these epochs were separated from each other by no very long period, which is in accordance with the tenor of the Scripture chronology.

These remains of the Abrahamic period of Egyptian

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history bear evident marks of having been executed by a peaceful race of men, who lived in the midst of plenty and affluence, cultivating the parental and social affections, and the arts of civilization. The allusions to war and to military life are less frequent on their monuments than on those of their successors of the eighteenth and following dynasties. All this is what the inspired narrative of the sojourn of Abraham in Egypt would have led us to infer, Gen. xii. Pharaoh expresses much conscientious feeling of the sacredness of the obligation of matrimony, and much horror at the idea of having been betrayed into the danger of sin against it, verses 17-19. Abram also returned from Egypt with much wealth, at a time when the neighbouring countries were desolated by famine.

This indication of the monuments is likewise in accordance with Manetho's account of the invasion of the shepherds, which is preserved by Josephus. This event took place after the return of Abram from Egypt. He writes that "Under the reign of Timaos (Amenumis) God was angry, it is not known why, and an ignoble race of men came unawares from the east country, invaded Egypt, and took possession of it in a very short time, and almost without a battle." The tenor of this account shows plainly enough that a quiet and peaceable state of society, such as generally produces the beautiful and highly finished works of art we are considering, prevailed at that time in Egypt.

The sixth monarch of this seventeenth dynasty was named Amosis; thus his name appears both in the lists of Manetho, and on the monuments. This was the monarch by whom the foundations of the temple of Amoun were first laid at Thebes; and as Amoun was the tutelary deity of that city, doubtless it

would be one of the earliest public buildings erected there. This fact is recorded in a tablet which still exists in the quarry whence the stones were hewn. When this most important document is published, it will probably set at rest the question respecting the relative antiquities of Thebes and Memphis. We are again indebted to the curator of the Egyptian antiquities in the British Museum for this valuable confirmation of the view of the question which so necessarily follows upon the narrative of Holy Scripture.

The most celebrated act of the reign of Amosis was the expulsion of the shepherds from Memphis. The two races had, throughout the whole period of the usurpation, kept up a war along the confines of their kingdoms with various success. But Amosis recovered the possession of Memphis, and of the whole Delta, from Asseth, the second successor of Aphophis, compelling him and his army to take refuge in Aouaris, a fortified city or camp, which they had prepared on the eastern borders of Egypt.

It has just been noticed that, during the 260 years of their expulsion from Memphis, the Pharaohs of Upper Egypt had been engaged in continual wars; and this circumstance seems to have had a strong effect upon the national character of the Egyptians: they became a warlike race, able to expel these conquerors, before whom their ancestors had fled almost without striking a blow. Some cause must also have been at work to enervate the warlike spirit of the shepherd kings at Memphis, and the wealth which the administration of Joseph had poured into their coffers from the whole of the neighbouring countries, may with some probability be pointed out as that cause. The fame of this wealth would also violently stimulate the

ambition and avarice of the hereditary Pharaohs, and doubtless it fell into their possession with the territory they recovered. Some extraordinary circumstance like that with which the inspired history supplies us is certainly needed to account for the style of magnificence that distinguishes the monuments of the era which immediately followed the expulsion of the shepherds from those of all other periods.

An inscription on the tomb of one of the officers of Amosis, which has been found at Thebes, implies that his war against the shepherds was of long duration, and that he fought many battles with them both by land and sea, before he succeeded in expelling them from Egypt; an additional proof that they were not such barbarians as the Egyptian priests have described them to be. An inscription in the quarry of Mansarah also relates that Amosis hewed stones from thence for the construction of the temples of Ptha, Apis, and Amoun, at Memphis, in the twenty-second year of his reign.

CHAPTER X.

THE MONUMENTAL HISTORY OF EGYPT.

PART II.

THE Pharaohs of the eighteenth dynasty will now require our attention. According to the Greek authors, this was the most celebrated of all the generations of kings that ever upon the throne of Egypt. The monuments fully confirm this account. There is scarcely a temple or palace in Egypt which has not been founded by this illustrious race of

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monarchs.

As the tablet of Abydos is the link by which the written and the monumental histories of ancient Egypt are connected together, and as this invaluable document principally respects the eighteenth dynasty, we give a few of the coincidences between it and the lists of Manetho, which establish the certainty of the connexion. The fifth legible ring in the second line of the tablet from the right,* constantly occurs on other monuments in connexion with a second ring. The two are here subjoined; they read together,

"Sun, or Pharaoh, lord of the region of Moue," 002-uc Amosis, that is, "son of the moon." The interpretation of the remainder of the tablet shows that this is the hieroglyphic name of Amosis, the last monarch of the seventeenth dynasty, who

*See page 179.