Punt, who are not PŒNI, furnish no evidence as to the conquest of the Phoenicians; nor do we meet with any trace of Sidon, the ancient Tsidon of Scripture (probably therefore in Egyptian, Titun, Tintun), or of Tyre. But Seti did conquer the land of Kanaana and the Kheta (Hittites); and Phoenicia, according to the most ancient phraseology, belonged to the land of Canaan. With a Phoenician fleet, therefore, he may very well have gone to the island of Cyprus. Hence, it is not in itself impossible that the Kheta and Kittæans, i. e. Cyprians, the Kittim of Scripture, were the same name. If they are different names, according to all analogy of sound, as far as we know, they must be Hittites. The Egyptians must have written the word Kittæans with a K instead of Ch.

But Cyprus cannot have been more than temporarily subject to Egypt. The occupation of a remote island in the Mediterranean must necessarily have been perilous to them. How could they retain it for any length of time, not only without being certain of Phoenicia, but of Crete also, which they doubtless knew as Kaphtor, where their arch-enemies the Philistines of Palestine, probably the remains of the northern Hyksos races themselves, were settled? But there is no trace of anything of the kind on the monuments. On the contrary, the struggle with the Kheta lasts throughout the whole period, and it was evidently one of primary importance to the Egyptians. The monuments of Ramesses place this in the clearest light.

From all these considerations, we draw the conclusion that the statement in Manetho as to the conquest of Cyprus arises from a misunderstanding of the Kheta on the monuments. This assumption has everything in its favour, and nothing against it. Long before the time of Manetho the Hittites had disappeared entirely from Palestine and from history, the Jewish and Philistine conquests having, shortly after the time of Ra

messes, destroyed their power for ever. On the other hand, in Manetho's time the name of the Kittæans, or Kittites, was in every body's mouth in Egypt as well as in Greece.

In imputing, however, to Manetho a misunderstanding of the meaning of the name of a foreign people who had ceased to exist, we do not derogate from his high value as an annalist, especially as regards his knowledge of the monuments of the kings whose history he wrote. Such a misunderstanding is as compatible with a knowledge of the monuments, as a correct interpretation of them. There is, on the other hand, nothing to be said against the statement as to the subjugation of the Phonicians. If the account of Ramesses's expedition to Babelmandeb be historical, it may have been performed by Phoenician sailors. But an expedition to Mesopotamia, at all events, implies the submission of the Phonician cities. There are to this day, indeed, scutcheons of Ramesses on the coast.

Thus much as to the first part of the campaigns and conquests of Seti according to Manetho. We may venture to assert that the monuments offer ample evidence of the historical character of these notices.

As regards the campaigns "against the Assyrians and Medes," we certainly have no records, except as to the expedition to Mesopotamia (Naharina) and the uncertain mention of Edessa on the Euphrates. But this may suffice to explain Manetho's statement, if we assume that Mesopotamia was the point in dispute between Egypt and an Assyro-Babylonian empire, as it was under Tuthmōsis III.; add to which, that much that has been transmitted to us is mutilated, much more entirely lost. The flourishing age of Assyria only begins with Ninus, 120 years after Seti. But the empires of the Euphrates are much older, as well as the Bactrian state. It must especially be remembered, however, that successful forays are not lasting con

quests. The son and successor of Sethos had to reconquer the same countries; Tuthmosis III. received tribute from Nineveh and Babel.

The representation of the third historical campaign, the return to Pelusium, is drawn in very marked colours. The prominence given to his triumphant entry into a place that every victorious Pharaoh must have touched at on his return, his brilliant reception there, and apotheosis, as it were, may be most naturally accounted for by a circumstance about which the monuments are silent, though it is mentioned in the annals, the miraculous escape of the king from the murderous attack of his treacherous brother.

In this manner it seems that the reign of Seti I. emerges most satisfactorily from the obscurity of ancient misunderstandings and fables into historical light. We have shown in the First Book that the name of Sesostris given by Herodotus to Ramesses, and his campaigns of nine years' duration ascribed by Diodorus to the same Ramesses, belong to the Great Sesortosis of the 12th Dynasty. The confusion in the names of Sethos and Ramesses, the father and son, in the history of the great conquests of the 19th Dynasty, was, however, the source of still greater blunders. These we may now hope to rectify by combining a study of the monuments with the criticism of Manetho and the Greek writers. general results of these two reigns of the fourteenth century B.C. can be developed with the same authentic certainty as those of David and Solomon, three centuries later. Our knowledge of their personality and of their intellectual development will, it is true, always remain as far inferior as it now is to our knowledge of the two Jewish kings: but it must correspond exactly with their intellectual importance to history generally.

The

C.

THE THIRD REIGN: RAMESSES II. (RAMESSU: WITH THE ADDITION MERI-AMN (MIAMÛ), RA-SeSeR-MA: FREQUENTLY WITH THE ADDITION SETEP-EN-RA), SON OF SETHOS I.

(Plate VII. 41.)

(Lepsius, Hist. Mon. vol. vi. Pl. 142-172.: end of volume.)

"Mox visit (Germanicus) veterum Thebarum magna vestigia. Et manebant structis molibus litteræ Ægyptiæ, priorem opulentiam complexæ, jussusque e senioribus sacerdotum patrium sermonem interpretari referebat habitasse quondam septingenta millia ætate militari, atque eo cum exercitu regein Ramsen Libya, Ethiopia Medisque et Persis et Bactriano ac Scytha potitum, quasque terras Syri Armeniique et contigui Cappadoces colunt, inde Bithynum hinc Lycium ad mare imperio tenuisse. Legebantur et indicta gentibus tributa, pondus argenti et auri, numerus armorum equorumque, et dona templis, ebur atque odores, quasque copias frumenti et omnium utensilium quæque natio penderet, haud minus magnifica, quam nunc vi Parthorum aut potentia Romana jubentur."-Tacit. Annal. ii. 60.

I.

SETHOS, RAMSES, MENEPHTHAH: OR THE ELEVATION, CULMINATION, AND FALL OF THE HOUSE OF RAMESSES.

RAMESSES the Ammon-loving, with the throne-name "Helios, strength of truth," and usually with the addition "tried by Helios," is one of those false idols which criticism may be pardoned for having set up. He was certainly a warrior and a conqueror. His

reign was long, and the beginning of it glorious, externally, at least. The ruins of his buildings still cover the land over which he ruled. But the name so loudly extolled is that of the father, Sethosis. He is the celebrated hero, second only to the divine Osiris. His reign was short, but triumphant to the last. He left his monuments unfinished, but the highest honours were paid to him, not merely by the priests, but also by the people. Ramesses reigned above sixty-six years. He inherited from his father a mighty empire, and an army accustomed to fight and to conquer. With it he subdued, or rather marched through, Nubia to the south, Mesopotamia and Palestine to the north; but he left behind him an exhausted and debilitated kingdom, and a dynasty so shattered, that his son and successor was obliged, in a few years, to flee the country before rebellious outcasts and prisoners employed on his buildings, and before the Palestinian hordes who joined them. This is the concise picture which the monuments offer of these three remarkable races, and which we with confidence introduce into the history of the old world. But what further detail have we of the brilliant appearance of this Ramesses, who before the discovery of the hieroglyphics was in the eyes of many scholars the echo of a fable; and is still perhaps in Germany, to many a speculative hunter after myths and dreamy antiquarian, a mythological hero in disguise, if not even a fallen God, or a raindrop that has evaporated? The critical question at present is simply this: What part of the Sesostris-Sethosis tradition belongs to him, and what to his father? What part of it, again, is to be abstracted from both of them and given to the two great rulers of the 3rd and 12th Dynasties, the two Sesortoses or genuine Sesostrises?