It ajipears, then, that the supposed astronomical notes of time hitherto discovered lend but little aid, and bring nothing like certainty into the inquiry. We cannot ac- cept the lists as they stand. How are they to be recti- fied? Until we have the means of rectifying them, every attempt to put forth a definite scheme of Egyp- tian chronology is simply futile. The appeal to author- ity avails nothing here. Lepsins, Bunsen, Brugsch, and many more, all claim to have settled the matter. Their very discrepancies — on the scale of wliich half a century is a mere trifle — sufficiently prove that to thera, as to us, the evidence is defective. The profoundest scholar- ship, the keenest insight, cannot get more out of it than is in it ; " that which is crooked cannot be made straight, and that which is wanting cannot be numbered." Yet, from the easy confidence with which people assign dates — their own, or taken on trust — to the Pharaohs after Amosis, and even of much earlier times, it might be thought that from Manetho and the monuments together a connected chronology has been elicited as certain as that of the Roman emperors. In particular, there ap- pears to be a growing belief— even finding its way into popular Bible histories and commentaries — that the Pha- raoh of the Exodus can be identified in Manetho, and so tlie time of that event determined.
Early Christian writers usually assumed, with Jose- phus, that the Hyksos or " shepherd-kings," whose story he gives from Manetho (Apion, i, 14-16), were the Isra- elites, and their expulsion by Amosis or Tethmosis — one or both, for the accounts are confused — the Egyp- tian version of the story of the exode. This view has still its advocates (quite recently Mr. Nash, The Pharaoh of the Exodus, 1863), but not among those who have been long conversant with the subject. Indeed, there is a monument of Thothmes III which, if it has been truly interpreted, is conclusive for a much earlier date of tlie exode than this reign, or perhaps any of the dy- nastj-. A long inscription of his twenty-third year gives a list of tlie confederates defeated by him at Megiddo, in which De Rouge reads the names .Jacob and Joseph, and Mr. Stuart Poole thinks he finds the names of some of tlie tribes, Reuben, Simeon, Issachar, Gad (Report of R. S. Lit. in Athenceum, March 21, 1863).
But the story of the Jews put forth by " Manetho" himself (Josephus, Apion, i, 26, 27), v.-ith the confession, however, that he obtained it not from ancient records, but from popular tradition (dffff— orojc iw^u'Koyovf.uva), reiirescnts them as a race of lepers, who, oppressed by the reigning king, called to their aid the Hyksos from Palestine (where these, on their expulsion some centu- ries earlier by Tethmosis, had settled and built .Terusa- lem ). and with these allies overran all Egypt for thirteen years, at tlie end of which Amenophis, v.lio had taken refuge in Ethiopia, returning thence with his son Se- thos, drove out the invaders. These, headed by Osar- siph ( = Moses), a priest of Heliopolis, retired into Pales- tine, and there became the nation of the Jews. Josephus
protests against this story as a mere figment, prompted by Egyptian malignity, and labors to prove it inconsist- ent with Manetho's own list : unsuccessfully enough, for, in fact, Amenophis (Ammenephthes, Afr.) does ap- pear there just where the story places him, i. e. next to Sethos and Rameses II, with a reign of nineteen years and six months. The monuments give the name Me- nephtha, and his son and successor Seti = Sethos II, just as in the story. The names are not fictitious, whatever may be the value of the story as regards the Israelites. This Meuephtha, then, son and successor of Rameses the Great, is the Pharaoh of the Exode, according to Lep- sius and Bunsen, and of late accepted as such by many writers, learned and unlearned. Those to whom the name of Manetho is not voucher enough, will demand independent evidence. In fact, it is alleged that the monuments of the time of Menephtha attest a period of depression : no great -works of that king are known to exist; of his reign of twenty years the highest date hitherto found is the fourth ; and two rival kings, Amcn- messu (the Ammenemses of the lists) and Si-phtha, are reigning at the same time with him, i. e. holding preca- rious sovereignty in Thebes during the time of alien occupation and the flight of Menephtha (Bunsen, Aeg. Stelle, iv, 208 sq.). That these two kings reigned in the time of IMenephtha, and not with or after Sethos II, is assumed without proof; that the reign of Rameses II was followed by a period of decadence proves notliing as to its cause; and the entire silence of the monuments as to an event so memorable as the final expulsion of the hated " Shepherds" (Shas-v), who so often figure in the monumental recitals of earlier kings (e. g. of Sethos I, who calls them shas-u pi'kana7ia-lar, "shepherds of the land of Canaan"), tells as strongly against the story as any merely negative evidence can do it. More impor- tant is the argument derived from the mention (Exod. i, 11) of the " treasure -cities Pithom and Raamses," built for the persecuting Pharaoh by the forced labor of the Hebrews ; the Pharaoh (says Eosellini, Mon. Storici, I, 294 sq.) was Rameses [II, son of Sethos I], who gave one of the cities his own name. (Comp. Ewald, Gesch. ii, 66, note.) Lepsius, art. Aegjqiten, in Herzog's En- ajldop., calls this "the weightiest confirmation," and in Chronol. der A eg. i, 337-357, enlarges upon this argu- ment. Raamses, he says, was at the eastern, as Pithom (Harofjuot,') was certainly at the western end of the great canal known to lie the work of Rameses II, and the site of the city bearing his name is further identified with him by the granite group disinterred at Abu Kei- sheib, in which the deified king sits enthroned between the gods Ra and Tum. Certainly a king Rameses ap- pears first in the 19th dynasty, but the place may have taken its name, if from a man at all, from some earlier person.