makes the date of the first, at latest, 1542. Supposing these campaigns to have been directed towards Phoenicia, or to the Euphrates, he must have expelled the Hyksos from Avaris as early as the second year of his reign, or 1543. But the bondage need not necessarily have commenced on that account in 1542, only it could not have commenced earlier. Adding on 215 years to this date, the Exodus would have taken place in 1326, that is, six years earlier than we have assumed, one year before the accession of Menephthah. It is unnecessary, however, to fix upon the year 1542 as the beginning of it. The earlier campaigns can hardly have reached beyond the frontiers of South Palestine, their object being to cut off the supplies of the besieged Hyksos. The first mention made of actual conquests in Asia (Mesopotamia), or Mauritania (Ludim), was during the later campaigns, which lasted till 1527. Adding 215 years from that year, the Exodus would have taken place at the earliest in 1313. But Tuthmosis may have commenced his persecution of the Israelites as soon as he had expelled the Shepherds and had made a few successful campaigns in Asia, by which Egypt was relieved, and then have continued his campaigns in Asia. There is, consequently, nothing to interfere with our assuming that the 215th year before 1320, or 1535 (the tenth year of the single reign of Tuthmosis III.), was the year in which the bondage commenced. It is singular also that no buildings are known to have been erected by that powerful and energetic Pharaoh prior to his tenth year. The forced labour required for these buildings must naturally have been the hard task-work to which the Israelites were subjected.

The remarkable coincidence between the historical possibilities and facts, and the biblical tradition of 215 years, and the year 1320 as being the year of the Exodus, evidently gives a totally different character to that date. That the coincidence should be accidental,

it is difficult to believe. The Scripture date of 215 years is intended to mark the length of the bondage, the earlier portion of the sojourn in Egypt could not have been in reality one of bondage under the Pharaohs. When Lower Egypt was in the hands of kindred races from Palestine and Arabia, it is barely possible that the descendants of Jacob who were already settled there could have been their bond-servants. The Bible, indeed, not only never intimates any such thing; but on the contrary, expressly states that it was a Pharaoh who imposed the yoke upon them,- that it was a king "who knew not Joseph," a ruler of the empire which had been reconquered from the confines of Upper Egypt.

A writer, therefore, whose object it was to fix the date prior to the bondage, and who had no chronological data to guide him, would not be unlikely to make the whole term of the sojourn double that of the bondage: and hence the origin of the 430 years. In truth, this is the process by which the length of the period immediately preceding, between the immigration of Abraham into Canaan and the journey of Jacob into Egypt, is made up. It again is fixed at 215 years, although, as we shall see, according to the strict dates of the Bible, it can only be 130.

The 430 years, consequently, have not grown out of the four prophetic centuries or generations spoken of in Abraham's vision - how indeed could they have done so ?

We are once more, therefore, thrown back upon Egyptian chronology and history.

III. THE IMMIGRATION OF THE ISRAELITES INTO EGYPT DID NOT TAKE PLACE UNDER THE HYKSOS, BUT UNDER THE PHARAOHS, NAMELY, UNDER THE SESORTOSIDÆ, AND INDEED UNDER SESORTŌSIS I.

THE Bible narrative is derived from a purely authentic tradition about the immigration, dating from

the days of Jacob and Joseph. Any attempt to couple it with the notion of Joseph having been a Shepherd King himself, or the minister of a Shepherd King, would deprive it of its historical basis.

I have already, in my preliminary treatment of the question of synchronisms, when illustrating the history of the 12th Dynasty, established this proposition, which is self-evident to any person of common sense, and familiar with the Bible. Since that time, Lepsius, in his "Introduction," has completed the proof.

The result, however, when applied to Egyptian history, is simply this, that Joseph was the minister of one of the Sesortosidæ.

The question is, which of the first three Sesortosida was the real "Sesostris," in whose reign, according to Herodotus, that vast and important change was made in the rights of property in Egypt, by which the whole of the real estate, excepting the lands of the priests, became the domains of the crown. This has been discussed at some length in a previous volume. It appears from Lepsius' discoveries at Semneh in Upper Nubia, above Wadi Halfa, that Sesortosen III. erected fortifications and other works of gigantic extent there, and that the greatest hero of the Tuthmosis family, the third of the name, paid divine honours to the memory of his great ancestor in two temples. Rougé has ingeniously shown that this attribution of divine honours to the Pharaoh of the empire after the restoration is unique in Egyptian history. Tuthmōsis IV. erected also the temple of Amada in Nubia to the same Sesortosen, in which country we find another temple dedicated to him, where he is styled "The God, the great Lord of Nubia!"

De

This third Sesortōsis (with the throne-scutcheon: Sun, Diadem, Adorations, Ra Sah Karu) is, consequently, the most eminent personage in the second period of the 12th Dynasty, and not his elder co-regent, Sesortōsis II.

(Ra Sah Kheper). Amenemha IV., however, who built the Labyrinth, and made Lake Maris, is the hero of the third, as Sesortōsis I. is of the first (which lasted fortynine years). We have, therefore, three great kings: Sesortōsis I. the founder, Sesortōsis III., and Amenemha IV. The vast buildings erected by the latter seem to have weakened the empire, which shortly after fell into decay. It was the real conqueror and hero who raised the power of the family to its culminating point; but it was the first who enriched it by laying a tax upon all the land in the country except the temple estates. In his reign Joseph collected the treasures, and founded the financial prosperity of the empire, which furnished Sesortōsis III. with the means of erecting those gigantic works high up in Nubia, and enabled Amenemha IV. to undertake the grandest of them all, by which Egypt acquired the most fertile of its provinces,

In one meagre epitome of Manetho's criticism, of Herodotus, this is said to have been done by the great hero, to whom he applied certain of the main features in the Sesostris-tradition of Herodotus, and others to Sethōsis the father of Ramses II., the hero of the 19th Dynasty. It by no means follows, however, that Herodotus did not also introduce some circumstances connected with the reign of the first Sesortosis into his history of Sesostris, as he has mixed up the Sesortosen traditions with those of the Ramessides.

Joseph might just as well have been made vicegerent by the second or third, as by the first Sesortōsis. The question is settled, however, in favour of the first by a very unexpected and singular discovery. We find that this sovereign was first of all co-regent with the founder of the dynasty, Amenemha I., and afterwards reigned alone twenty-three years, so that he seems to have reigned in all forty-five years. The monuments testify to his colonisation in the heart of the Peninsula of

Sinai, and to his conquests over the Kushites. His two obelisks and the remarkable tombs in Upper Egypt, with their Doric pilasters, display a similar picture of power and civilisation. The high estimation in which he was held among the great Pharaohs of the New Empire, is evinced by the fact of Rameses the Great causing his name to be engraved on the sitting statue of this old ruler, which now adorns the Berlin Museum.

There is authentic proof that in his reign a terrible famine raged in Egypt.

We are indebted to Birch for this unforeseen confirmation and more accurate determination of the synchronism of Joseph and the first Sesortosis, by deci phering a remarkable tomb-inscription of the lieutenant of Amenemha, which was published in the great work of the Prussian expedition. The person entombed states that he was governor of a district in Upper Egypt under the above king, and is made to say: 151

"When, in the time of Sesortosis I., the great famine prevailed in all the other districts of Egypt, there was corn in mine."

Nobody would venture to build up a synchronism upon such a notice as this; but admitting that Joseph was vicegerent of one of the three Sesortosidæ, and that he owed his power and consideration to his foresight in providing against the seven years of scarcity, no one will contend that such a notice is not deserving of very great attention, and it must turn the scale in favour of Sesortosis I.

But the more I think over the development and chronology of Egypt, the more convinced I am that the juxtaposition of these two personages is certain and incontrovertible. The proof is completed by the present restoration of the Jewish chronology in the

151 Leps. Mon. of Pruss. Exp. iv. 122. Comp. Brugsch, Travels.