Chapter I: The First Chaldæan Empire and the Hyksôs in Egypt (3)

From the natives of the Delta, who were temporarily paralysed by their reverses, he had, for the moment, little to fear: restricting himself, therefore, to establishing forts at the strategic points in the Nile valley in order to keep the Thebans in check, he led the main body of his troops to the frontier on the isthmus. Pacific immigrations had already introduced Asiatic settlers into the Delta, and thus prepared the way for securing the supremacy of the new rulers; in the midst of these strangers, and on the ruins of the ancient town of Hâwârît-Avaris, in the Sethroifce nome--a place connected by tradition with the myth of Osiris and Typhon--Salatis constructed an immense entrenched camp, capable of sheltering two hundred and forty thousand men. He visited it yearly to witness the military manoeuvres, to pay his soldiers, and to preside over the distribution of rations. This permanent garrison protected him from a Chaldæan invasion, a not unlikely event as long as Syria remained under the supremacy of the Babylonian kings; it furnished his successors also with an inexhaustible supply of trained soldiers, thus enabling them to complete the conquest of Lower Egypt. Years elapsed before the princes of the south would declare themselves vanquished, and five kings--Anôn, Apachnas, Apôphis I., Iannas, and Asses--passed their lifetime in a perpetual warfare, desirous of tearing up Egypt to the very root. These Theban kings, who were continually under arms against the barbarians, were subsequently classed in a dynasty by themselves, the XVth of Manetho, but they at last succumbed to the invader, and Asses became master of the entire country. His successors in their turn formed a dynasty, the XVIth, the few remaining monuments of which are found scattered over the length and breadth of the valley from the shores of the Mediterranean to the rocks of the first cataract.

The Egyptians who witnessed the advent of this Asiatic people called them by the general term Amûû, Asiatics, or Monâtiû, the men of the desert.* They had already given the Bedouin the opprobrious epithet of Shaûsû--pillagers or robbers--which aptly described them;** and they subsequently applied the same name to the intruders--Hiq Shaûsû--from which the Greeks derived their word Hyksôs, or Hykoussôs, for this people.***

* The meaning of the term _Monîti_ was discovered by E. de
Rougé, who translated it _Shepherd_, and applied it to the
Hyksôs; from thence it passed into the works of all the
Egyptologists who concerned themselves with this question,
but _Shepherd_ has not been universally accepted as the
meaning of the word. It is generally agreed that it was a
generic term, indicating the races with which their
conquerors were supposed to be connected, and not the
particular term of which Manethos word _Hoiveves_ would be
the literal translation.

** The name seems, in fact, to be derived from a word which
meant to rob, to pillage. The name Shausu, Shosu, was
not used by the Egyptians to indicate a particular race. It
was used of all Bedouins, and in general of all the
marauding tribes who infested the desert or the mountains.
The Shausu most frequently referred to on the monuments are
those from the desert between Egypt and Syria, but there is
a reference, in the time of Ramses II., to those from the
Lebanon and the valley of Orontes. Krall finds an allusion
to them in a word (_Shosim_) in _Judges_ ii. 14, which is
generally translated by a generic expression, the
spoilers.

*** Manetho declares that the people were called Hyksôs,
from _Syk_, which means king in the sacred language, and
_sôs_, which means shepherd in the popular language. As a
matter of fact, the word _Hyku_ means prince in the
classical language of Egypt, or, as Manetho styles it, the
_sacred language_, i.e. in the idiom of the old religious,
historical, and literary texts, which in later ages the
populace no longer understood. Shôs, on the contrary,
belongs to the spoken language of the later time, and does
not occur in the ancient inscriptions, so that Manethos
explanation is valueless; there is but one material fact to
be retained from his evidence, and that is the name _Hyk-
Shôs_ or _Hyku-Shôs_ given by its inventors to the alien
kings. Cham-pollion and Rosellini were the first to identify
these Shôs with the Shaûsû whom they found represented on
the monuments, and their opinion, adopted by some, seems to
me an extremely plausible one: the Egyptians, at a given
moment, bestowed the generic name of Shaûsû on these
strangers, just as they had given those of Amûû and Manâtiû.
The texts or writers from whom Manetho drew his information
evidently mentioned certain kings _hyku_-Shaûsû; other
passages, or, the same passages wrongly interpreted, were
applied to the race, and were rendered _hyku_-Shaûsû = the
_prisoners_ taken from the Shaûsû, a substantive derived
from the root _haka_ = to take being substituted for the
noun _hyqu_ = prince. Josephus declares, on the authority
of Manetho, that some manuscripts actually suggested this
derivation--a fact which is easily explained by the custom
of the Egyptian record offices. I may mention, in passing,
that Mariette recognised in the element _Sôs_ an Egyptian
word _shôs_ = soldiers, and in the name of King Mîrmâshâû,
which he read Mîrshôsû, an equivalent of the title Hyq-
Shôsû.

But we are without any clue as to their real name, language, or origin. The writers of classical times were unable to come to an agreement on these questions: some confounded the Hyksôs with the Phoenicians, others regarded them as Arabs.* Modern scholars have put forward at least a dozen contradictory hypotheses on the matter. The Hyksôs have been asserted to have been Canaanites, Elamites, Hittites, Accadians, Scythians. The last opinion found great favour with the learned, as long as they could believe that the sphinxes discovered by Mariette represented Apôphis or one of his predecessors. As a matter of fact, these monuments present all the characteristics of the Mongoloid type of countenance--the small and slightly oblique eyes, the arched but somewhat flattened nose, the pronounced cheekbones and well-covered jaw, the salient chin and full lips slightly depressed at the corners.** These peculiarities are also observed in the three heads found at Damanhur, in the colossal torso dug up at Mit-Farês in the Fayum, in the twin figures of the Nile removed to the Bulaq Museum from Tanis, and upon the remains of a statue in the collection at the Villa Ludovisi in Rome. The same foreign type of face is also found to exist among the present inhabitants of the villages scattered over the eastern part of the Delta, particularly on the shores of Lake Menzaleh, and the conclusion was drawn that these people were the direct descendants of the Hyksôs.

* Manetho takes them to be Phoenicians, but he adds that
certain writers thought them to be Arabs: Brugsch favours
this latter view, but the Arab legend of a conquest of Egypt
by Sheddâd and the Adites is of recent origin, and was
inspired by traditions in regard to the Hyksôs current
during the Byzantine epoch; we cannot, therefore, allow it
to influence us. We must wait before expressing a definite
opinion in regard to the facts which Glaser believes he has
obtained from the Minoan inscriptions which date from the
time of the Hyksôs.

** Mariette, who was the first to describe these curious
monuments, recognised in them all the incontestable
characteristics of a Semitic type, and the correctness of
his view was, at first, universally admitted. Later on Hamy
imagined that he could distinguish traces of Mongolian
influences, and Er. Lenormant, and then Mariette himself
came round to this view; it has recently been supported in
England by Flower, and in Germany by Virchow.

This theory was abandoned, however, when it was ascertained that the sphinxes of San had been carved, many centuries before the invasion, for Amenemhâît III., a king of the XIIth dynasty. In spite of the facts we possess, the problem therefore still remains unsolved, and the origin of the Hyksôs is as mysterious as ever. We gather, however, that the third millennium before our era was repeatedly disturbed by considerable migratory movements. The expeditions far afield of Elamite and Chaldæan princes could not have taken place without seriously perturbing the regions over which they passed. They must have encountered by the way many nomadic or unsettled tribes whom a slight shock would easily displace. An impulse once given, it needed but little to accelerate or increase the movement: a collision with one horde reacted on its neighbours, who either displaced or carried others with them, and the whole multitude, gathering momentum as they went, were precipitated in the direction first given.*

* The Hyksôs invasion has been regarded as a natural result
of the Elamite conquest.

A tradition, picked up by Herodotus on his travels, relates that the Phoenicians had originally peopled the eastern and southern shores of the Persian Gulf;* it was also said that Indathyrses, a Scythian king, had victoriously scoured the whole of Asia, and had penetrated as far as Egypt.** Either of these invasions may have been the cause of the Syrian migration. In. comparison with the meagre information which has come down to us under the form of legends, it is provoking to think how much actual fact has been lost, a tithe of which would explain the cause of the movement and the mode of its execution. The least improbable hypothesis is that which attributes the appearance of the Shepherds about the XXIIIrd century B.C., to the arrival in Naharaim of those Khati who subsequently fought so obstinately against the armies both of the Pharaohs and the Ninevite kings. They descended from the mountain region in which the Halys and the Euphrates take their rise, and if the bulk of them proceeded no further than the valleys of the Taurus and the Amanos, some at least must have pushed forward as far as the provinces on the western shores of the Dead Sea. The most adventurous among them, reinforced by the Canaanites and other tribes who had joined them on their southward course, crossed the isthmus of Suez, and finding a people weakened by discord, experienced no difficulty in replacing the native dynasties by their own barbarian chiefs.***

* It was to the exodus of this race, in the last analysis,
that the invasion of the shepherds may be attributed

** A certain number of commentators are of opinion that the
wars attributed to Indathyrses have been confounded with
what Herodotus tells of the exploits of Madyes, and are
nothing more than a distorted remembrance of the great
Scythian invasion which took place in the latter half of the
VIIth century B.C.

*** At the present time, those scholars who admit the
Turanian origin of the Hyksôs are of opinion that only the
nucleus of the race, the royal tribe, was composed of
Mongols, while the main body consisted of elements of all
kinds--Canaanitish, or, more generally, Semitic.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by M. de Mertons.
It is the palette of a scribe, now in the Berlin Museum, and
given by King Apôpi II Âusirrî to a scribe named Atu.

Both their name and origin were doubtless well known to the Egyptians, but the latter nevertheless disdained to apply to them any term but that of she-maû, * strangers, and in referring to them used the same vague appellations which they applied to the Bedouin of the Sinaitic peninsula,--Monâtiû, the shepherds, or Sâtiû, the archers. They succeeded in hiding the original name of their conquerors so thoroughly, that in the end they themselves forgot it, and kept the secret of it from posterity.

The remembrance of the cruelties with which the invaders sullied their conquest lived long after them; it still stirred the anger of Manetho after a lapse of twenty centuries.** The victors were known as the Plagues or Pests, and every possible crime and impiety was attributed to them.

* The term _shamamil,_ variant of _sliemaû,_ is applied to
them by Queen Hâtshopsîtu: the same term is employed shortly
afterward by Thutmosis III., to indicate the enemies whom he
had defeated at Megiddo.

** He speaks of them in contemptuous terms as _men of
ignoble race_. The epithet _Aîti, Iaîti, Iadîti_, was applied
to the Nubians by the writer of the inscription of Ahmosi-
si-Abîna, and to the Shepherds of the Delta by the author of
the _Sallier Papyrus_. Brugsch explained it as the rebels,
or disturbers, and Goodwin translated it invaders;
Chabas rendered it by plague-stricken, an interpretation
which was in closer conformity with its etymological
meaning, and Groff pointed out that the malady called Ait,
or Adit in Egyptian, is the malignant fever still frequently
to be met with at the present day in the marshy cantons of
the Delta, and furnished the proper rendering, which is The
Fever-stricken.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Insinger.

But the brutalities attending the invasion once past, the invaders soon lost their barbarity and became rapidly civilized. Those of them stationed in the encampment at Avaris retained the military qualities and characteristic energy of their race; the remainder became assimilated to their new compatriots, and were soon recognisable merely by their long hair, thick beard, and marked features. Their sovereigns seemed to have realised from the first that it was more to their interest to exploit the country than to pillage it; as, however, none of them was competent to understand the intricacies of the treasury, they were forced to retain the services of the majority of the scribes, who had managed the public accounts under the native kings.* Once schooled to the new state of affairs, they readily adopted the refinements of civilized life.

* The same thing took place on every occasion when Egypt was
conquered by an alien race: the Persian Achæmenians and
Greeks made use of the native employés, as did the Romans
after them; and lastly, the Mussulmans, Arabs, and Turks.

The court of the Pharaohs, with its pomp and its usual assemblage of officials, both great and small, was revived around the person of the new sovereign;* the titles of the Amenemhâîts and the Usirtasens, adapted to these princes of foreign lands, ** legitimatised them as descendants of Horus and sons of the Sun.*** They respected the local religions, and went so far as to favour those of the gods whose attributes appeared to connect them with some of their own barbarous divinities. The chief deity of their worship was Baal, the lord of all,**** a cruel and savage warrior; his resemblance to Sit, the brother and enemy of Osiris, was so marked, that he was identified with the Egyptian deity, with the emphatic additional title of Sutkhû, the Great Sit.^

* The narrative of the _Sallier Papyrus,_ No. 1, shows us
the civil and military chiefs collected round the Shepherd-
king Apôpi, and escorting him in the solemn processions in
honour of the gods. They are followed by the scribes and
magicians, who give him advice on important occasions.

** Hiqu Situ: this is the title of Abîsha at Beni-Hassan,
which is also assumed by Khiani on several small monuments;
Steindorff has attempted to connect it with the name of the
Hyksôs.

*** The preamble of the two or three Shepherd-kings of whom
we know anything, contains the two cartouches, the special
titles, and the names of Horus, which formed part of the
title of the kings of pure Egyptian race; thus Apôphis IL is
proclaimed to be the living Horus, who joins the two earths
in peace, the good god, Aqnunrî, son of the Sun, Apôpi, who
lives for ever, on the statues of Mîrmâshâu, which he had
appropriated, and on the pink granite table of offerings in
the Gizeh Museum.

**** The name of Baal, transcribed Baâlu, is found on that
of a certain Petebaâlû, the Gift of Baal, who must have
flourished in the time of the last shepherd-kings, or rather
under the Theban kings of the XVIIth dynasty, who were their
contemporaries, whose conclusions have been adopted by
Brugsch.

^ Sutikhû, Sutkhû, are lengthened forms of Sûtû, or Sîtû;
and Chabas, who had at first denied the existence of the
final _Jehû_, afterwards himself supplied the philological
arguments which proved the correctness of the reading: he
rightly refused, however, to recognise in Sutikhû or Sutkhû
--the name of the conquerors god--a transliteration of the
Phoenician Sydyk, and would only see in it that of the
nearest Egyptian deity. This view is now accepted as the
right one, and Sutkhû is regarded as the indigenous
equivalent of the great Asiatic god, elsewhere called Baal,
or supreme lord. [Professor Pétrie found a scarab bearing
the cartouche of Sutekh Apepi I. at Koptos.--Te.]

He was usually represented as a fully armed warrior, wearing a helmet of circular form, ornamented with two plumes; but he also borrowed the emblematic animal of Sît, the fennec, and the winged griffin which haunted the deserts of the Thebaid. His temples were erected in the cities of the Delta, side by side with the sanctuaries of the feudal gods, both at Bubastis and at Tanis. Tanis, now made the capital, reopened its palaces, and acquired a fresh impetus from the royal presence within its walls. Apôphis Aq-nûnrî, one of its kings, dedicated several tables of offerings in that city, and engraved his cartouches upon the sphinxes and standing colossi of the Pharaohs of the XIIth and XIIIth dynasties.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by E. Brugsch.

He was, however, honest enough to leave the inscriptions of his predecessors intact, and not to appropriate to himself the credit of works belonging to the Amenemhâîts or to Mirmâshâû. Khianî, who is possibly the Iannas of Manetho, was not, however, so easily satisfied.* The statue bearing his inscription, of which the lower part was discovered by Naville at Bubastis, appears to have been really carved for himself or for one of his contemporaries. It is a work possessing no originality, though of very commendable execution, such as would render it acceptable to any museum; the artist who conceived it took his inspiration with considerable cleverness from the best examples turned out by the schools of the Delta under the Sovkhotpfts and the Nofirhotpûs. But a small grey granite lion, also of the reign of Khianî, which by a strange fate had found its way to Bagdad, does not raise our estimation of the modelling of animals in the Hyksôs period.

* Naville, who reads the name Râyan or Yanrâ, thinks that
this prince must be the Annas or Iannas mentioned by Manetho
as being one of the six shepherd-kings of the XVth dynasty.
Mr. Pétrie proposed to read Khian, Khianî, and the fragment
discovered at Gebeleîn confirms this reading, as well as a
certain number of cylinders and scarabs. Mr. Pétrie prefers
to place this Pharaoh in the VIIIth dynasty, and makes him
one of the leaders in the foreign occupation to which he
supposes Egypt to have submitted at that time; but it is
almost certain that he ought to be placed among the Hyksôs
of the XVIth dynasty. The name Khianî, more correctly
Khiyanî or Kheyanî, is connected by Tomkins, and Hilprecht
with that of a certain Khayanû or Khayan, son of Gabbar, who
reigned in Amanos in the time of Salmanasar II., King of
Assyria.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Naville.

It is heavy in form, and the muzzle in no way recalls the fine profile of the lions executed by the sculptors of earlier times. The pursuit of science and the culture of learning appear to have been more successfully perpetuated than the fine arts; a treatise on mathematics, of which a copy has come down to us, would seem to have been recopied, if not remodelled, in the twenty-second year of Apôphis IL Aûsirrî. If we only possessed more monuments or documents treating of this period, we should doubtless perceive that their sojourn on the banks of the Nile was instrumental in causing a speedy change in the appearance and character of the Hyksôs. The strangers retained to a certain extent their coarse countenances and rude manners: they showed no aptitude for tilling the soil or sowing grain, but delighted in the marshy expanses of the Delta, where they gave themselves up to a semi-savage life of hunting and of tending cattle. The nobles among them, clothed and schooled after the Egyptian fashion, and holding fiefs, or positions at court, differed but little from the native feudal chiefs. We see here a case of what generally happens when a horde of barbarians settles down in a highly organised country which by a stroke of fortune they may have conquered; as soon as the Hyksôs had taken complete possession of Egypt, Egypt in her turn took possession of them, and those who survived the enervating effect of her civilization were all but transformed into Egyptians.

If, in the time of the native Pharaohs, Asiatic tribes had been drawn towards Egypt, where they were treated as subjects or almost as slaves, the attraction which she possessed for them must have increased in intensity under the shepherds. They would now find the country in the hands of men of the same races as themselves--Egyptianised, it is true, but not to such an extent as to have completely lost their own language and the knowledge of their own extraction. Such immigrants were the more readily welcomed, since there lurked a feeling among the Hyksôs that it was necessary to strengthen themselves against the slumbering hostility of the indigenous population. The royal palace must have more than once opened its gates to Asiatic counsellors and favourites. Canaanites and Bedouin must often have been enlisted for the camp at Avaris. Invasions, famines, civil wars, all seem to have conspired to drive into Egypt not only isolated individuals, but whole families and tribes. That of the Beni-Israel, or Israelites, who entered the country about this time, has since acquired a unique position in the worlds history. They belonged to that family of Semitic extraction which we know by the monuments and tradition to have been scattered in ancient times along the western shores of the Persian Gulf and on the banks of the Euphrates. Those situated nearest to Chaldæa and to the sea probably led a settled existence; they cultivated the soil, they employed themselves in commerce and industries, their vessels--from Dilmun, from Mâgan, and from Milukhkha--coasted from one place to another, and made their way to the cities of Sumer and Accad. They had been civilized from very early times, and some of their towns were situated on islands, so as to be protected from sudden incursions. Other tribes of the same family occupied the interior of the continent; they lived in tents, and delighted in the unsettled life of nomads. There appeared to be in this distant corner of Arabia an inexhaustible reserve of population, which periodically overflowed its borders and spread over the world. It was from this very region that we see the Kashdim, the true Chaldæans, issuing ready armed for combat,--a people whose name was subsequently used to denote several tribes settled between the lower waters of the Tigris and the Euphrates. It was there, among the marshes on either side of these rivers, that the Aramoans established their first settlements after quitting the desert. There also the oldest legends of the race placed the cradle of the Phoenicians; it was even believed, about the time of Alexander, that the earliest ruins attributable to this people had been discovered on the Bahrein Islands, the largest of which, Tylos and Arados, bore names resembling the two great ports of Tyre and Arvad. We are indebted to tradition for the cause of their emigration and the route by which they reached the Mediterranean. The occurrence of violent earthquakes forced them to leave their home; they travelled as far as the Lake of Syria, where they halted for some time; then resuming their march, did not rest till they had reached the sea, where they founded Sidon. The question arises as to the position of the Lake of Syria on whose shores they rested, some believing it to be the Bahr-î-Nedjif and the environs of Babylon; others, the Lake of Bambykês near the Euphrates, the emigrants doubtless having followed up the course of that river, and having approached the country of their destination on its north-eastern frontier. Another theory would seek to identify the lake with the waters of Merom, the Lake of Galilee, or the Dead Sea; in this case the horde must have crossed the neck of the Arabian peninsula, from the Euphrates to the Jordan, through one of those long valleys, sprinkled with oases, which afforded an occasional route for caravans.* Several writers assure us that the Phoenician tradition of this exodus was misunderstood by Herodotus, and that the sea which they remembered on reaching Tyre was not the Persian Gulf, but the Dead Sea. If this had been the case, they need not have hesitated to assign their departure to causes mentioned in other documents. The Bible tells us that, soon after the invasion of Kudur-lagamar, the anger of God being kindled by the wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah, He resolved to destroy the five cities situated in the valley of Siddim. A cloud of burning brimstone broke over them and consumed them; when the fumes and smoke, as of a furnace, had passed away, the very site of the towns had disappeared.** Previous to their destruction, the lake into which the Jordan empties itself had had but a restricted area: the subsidence of the southern plain, which had been occupied by the impious cities, doubled the size of the lake, and enlarged it to its present dimensions. The earthquake which caused the Phoenicians to leave their ancestral home may have been the result of this cataclysm, and the sea on whose shores they sojourned would thus be our Dead Sea.

* They would thus have arrived at the shores of Lake Merom,
or at the shores either of the Dead Sea or of the Lake of
Gennesareth; the Arab traditions speak of an itinerary which
would have led the emigrants across the desert, but they
possess no historic value is so far as these early epochs
are concerned.

** _Gen._ xix. 24-29; the whole of this episode belongs to
the Jehovistic narrative.

One fact, however, appears to be certain in the midst of many hypotheses, and that is that the Phoenicians had their origin in the regions bordering on the Persian Gulf. It is useless to attempt, with the inadequate materials as yet in our possession, to determine by what route they reached the Syrian coast, though we may perhaps conjecture the period of their arrival. Herodotus asserts that the Tyrians placed the date of the foundation of their principal temple two thousand three hundred years before the time of his visit, and the erection of a sanctuary for their national deity would probably take place very soon after their settlement at Tyre: this would bring their arrival there to about the XXVIIIth century before our era. The Elamite and Babylonian conquests would therefore have found the Phoenicians already established in the country, and would have had appreciable effect upon them.

The question now arises whether the Beni-Israel belonged to the group of tribes which included the Phoenicians, or whether they were of Chaldæan race. Their national traditions leave no doubt upon that point. They are regarded as belonging to an important race, which we find dispersed over the country of Padan-Aram, in Northern Mesopotamia, near the base of Mount Masios, and extending on both sides of the Euphrates.*

* The country of Padan-Aram is situated between the
Euphrates and the upper reaches of the Khabur, on both sides
of the Balikh, and is usually explained as the plain or
table-land of Aram, though the etymology is not certain;
the word seems to be preserved in that of Tell-Faddân, near
Harrân.

Their earliest chiefs bore the names of towns or of peoples,--N akhor, Peleg, and Serug:* all were descendants of Arphaxad,** and it was related that Terakh, the direct ancestor of the Israelites, had dwelt in Ur-Kashdîm, the Ur or Uru of the Chaldæans.*** He is said to have had three sons--Abraham, Nakhôr, and Harân. Harân begat Lot, but died before his father in Ur-Kashdîm, his own country; Abraham and Nakhor both took wives, but Abrahams wife remained a long time barren. Then Terakh, with his son Abraham, his grandson Lot, the son of Harân, and his daughter-in-law Sarah,**** went forth from Ur-Kashdîm (Ur of the Chaldees) to go into the land of Canaan.

* Nakhôr has been associated with the ancient village of
Khaura, or with the ancient village of Hâditha-en-Naura, to
the south of Anah; Peleg probably corresponds with Phalga or
Phaliga, which was situated at the mouth of the Khabur;
Serug with the present Sarudj in the neighbourhood of
Edessa, and the other names in the genealogy were probably
borrowed from as many different localities.

** The site of Arphaxad is doubtful, as is also its meaning:
its second element is undoubtedly the name of the Chaldæans,
but the first is interpreted in several ways--frontier of
the Chaldæans, domain of the Chaldæans. The similarity of
sound was the cause of its being for a long time associated
with the Arrapakhitis of classical times; the tendency is
now to recognise in it the country nearest to the ancient
domain of the Chaldæans, i.e. Babylonia proper.

*** Ur-Kashdîm has long been sought for in the north, either
at Orfa, in accordance with the tradition of the Syrian
Churches still existing in the East, or in a certain Ur of
Mesopotamia, placed by Ammianus Marcellinus between Nisibis
and the Tigris; at the present day Halévy still looks for it
on the Syrian bank of the Euphrates, to the south-east of
Thapsacus. Rawlin-sons proposal to identify it with the
town of Uru has been successively accepted by nearly all
Assyriologists. Sayce remarks that the worship of Sin, which
was common to both towns, established a natural link between
them, and that an inhabitant of Uru would have felt more at
home in Harrân than in any other town.

**** The names of Sarah and Abraham, or rather the earlier
form, Abram, have been found, the latter under the form
Abirâmu, in the contracts of the first Chaldæan empire.

And they came unto Kharân, and dwelt there, and Terakh died in Kharân.* It is a question whether Kharân is to be identified with Harrân in Mesopotamia, the city of the god Sin; or, which is more probable, with the Syrian town of Haurân, in the neighbourhood of Damascus. The tribes who crossed the Euphrates became subsequently a somewhat important people. They called themselves, or were known by others, as the Ibrîm, or Hebrews, the people from beyond the river;** and this appellation, which we are accustomed to apply to the children of Israel only, embraced also, at the time when the term was most extended, the Ammonites, Moabites, Edomites, Ishmaelites, Midianites, and many other tribes settled on the borders of the desert to the east and south of the Dead Sea.

* Gen. xi. 27-32. In the opinion of most critics, verses 27,
31 32 form part of the document which was the basis of the
various narratives still traceable in the Bible; it is
thought that the remaining verses bear the marks of a later
redaction, or that they may be additions of a later date.
The most important part of the text, that relating the
migration from Ur-Kashdîm to Kharân, belongs, therefore, to
the very oldest part of the national tradition, and may be
regarded as expressing the knowledge which the Hebrews of
the times of the Kings possessed concerning the origin of
their race.

** The most ancient interpretation identified this nameless
river with the Euphrates; an identification still admitted
by most critics; others prefer to recognise it as being the
Jordan. Halévy prefers to identify it with one of the rivers
of Damascus, probably the Abana.

These peoples all traced their descent from Abraham, the son of Terakh, but the children of Israel claimed the privilege of being the only legitimate issue of his marriage with Sarah, giving naïve or derogatory accounts of the relations which connected the others with their common ancestor; Ammon and Moab were, for instance, the issue of the incestuous union of Lot and his daughters. Midian and his sons were descended from Keturah, who was merely a concubine, Ishmael was the son of an Egyptian slave, while the hairy Esau had sold his birthright and the primacy of the Edomites to his brother Jacob, and consequently to the Israelites, for a dish of lentils. Abraham left Kharân at the command of Jahveh, his God, receiving from Him a promise that his posterity should be blessed above all others. Abraham pursued his way into the heart of Canaan till he reached Shechem, and there, under the oaks of Moreh, Jahveh, appearing to him a second time, announced to him that He would give the whole land to his posterity as an inheritance. Abraham virtually took possession of it, and wandered over it with his flocks, building altars at Shechem, Bethel, and Mamre, the places where God had revealed Himself to him, treating as his equals the native chiefs, Abîmelech of Gerar and Melchizedek of Jerusalem,* and granting the valley of the Jordan as a place of pasturage to his nephew Lot, whose flocks had increased immensely.** His nomadic instinct having led him into Egypt, he was here robbed of his wife by Pharaoh.***

* Cf. the meeting with Melchizedek after the victory over
the Elamites (_Gen_. xiv. 18-20) and the agreement with
Abîmelech about the well (Gen. xxi. 22-34). The mention of
the covenant of Abraham with Abîmelech belongs to the oldest
part of the national tradition, and is given to us in the
Jehovistic narrative. Many critics have questioned the
historical existence of Melchizedek, and believed that the
passage in which he is mentioned is merely a kind of parable
intended to show the head of the race paying tithe of the
spoil to the priest of the supreme God residing at
Jerusalem; the information, however, furnished by the Tel-
el-Amarna tablets about the ancient city of Jerusalem and
the character of its early kings have determined Sayce to
pronounce Melchizedek to be an historical personage.

** _Gen._ xiii. 1-13. Lot has been sometimes connected of
late with the people called on the Egyptian monuments
Rotanu, or Lotanu, whom we shall have occasion to mention
frequently further on: he is supposed to have been their
eponymous hero. Lôtan, which is the name of an Edomite clan,
(_Gen_. xxxvi. 20, 29), is a racial adjective, derived from
Lot.

*** _Gen._ xii. 9-20, xiii. 1. Abrahams visit to Egypt
reproduces the principal events of that of Jacob.

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph brought home by Lortet.

On his return he purchased the field of Ephron, near Kirjath-Arba, and the cave of Machpelah, of which he made a burying-place for his family* Kirjath-Arba, the Hebron of subsequent times, became from henceforward his favourite dwelling-place, and he was residing there when the Elamites invaded the valley of Siddîm, and carried off Lot among their prisoners.

* _Gen_. xiii. 18, xxiii. (Elohistic narrative). The tombs
of the patriarchs are believed by the Mohammedans to exist
to the present day in the cave which is situated within the
enclosure of the mosque at Hebron, and the tradition on
which this belief is based goes back to early Christian
times.

Abraham set out in pursuit of them, and succeeded in delivering his nephew.* God (Jahveh) not only favoured him on every occasion, but expressed His will to extend over Abrahams descendants His sheltering protection. He made a covenant with him, enjoining the use on the occasion of the mysterious rites employed among the nations when effecting a treaty of peace. Abraham offered up as victims a heifer, a goat, and a three-year-old ram, together with a turtle-dove and a young pigeon; he cut the animals into pieces, and piling them in two heaps, waited till the evening. And when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abraham; and lo, an horror of great darkness fell upon him, and a voice from on high said to him: Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years; and also that nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge: and afterward shall they come out with great substance.... And it came to pass, that when the sun went down, and it was dark, behold a smoking furnace, and a burning lamp that passed between those pieces. Jahveh sealed the covenant by consuming the offering.

* _Gen._ xiv. 12-24. 2 Gen. xv., Jehovistic narrative.

Two less important figures fill the interval between the Divine prediction of servitude and its accomplishment. The birth of one of them, Isaac, was ascribed to the Divine intervention at a period when Sarah had given up all hope of becoming a mother. Abraham was sitting at his tent door in the heat of the day, when three men presented themselves before him, whom he invited to repose under the oak while he prepared to offer them hospitality. After their meal, he who seemed to be the chief of the three promised to return within a year, when Sarah should be blessed with the possession of a son. The announcement came from Jahveh, but Sarah was ignorant of the fact, and laughed to herself within the tent on hearing this amazing prediction; for she said, After I am waxed old shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also? The child was born, however, and was called Isaac, the laugher, in remembrance of Sarahs mocking laugh.* There is a remarkable resemblance between his life and that of his father.** Like Abraham he dwelt near Hebron,*** and departing thence wandered with his household round the wells of Beersheba. Like him he was threatened with the loss of his wife.

* _Gen_. xviii. 1-16, according to the Jehovistic narrative.
_Gen_. xvii. 15-22 gives another account, in which the
Elohistic writer predicts the birth of Isaac in a différent
way. The name of Isaac, the laugher, possibly abridged
from Isaak-el, he on whom God smiles, is explained in
three different ways: first, by the laugh of Abraham (ch.
xvii. 17); secondly, by that of Sarah (xviii. 12) when her
sons birth was foretold to her; and lastly, by the laughter
of those who made sport of the delayed maternity of Sarah
(xxi. 6).

** Many critics see in the life of Isaac a colourless copy
of that of Abraham, while others, on the contrary, consider
that the primitive episodes belonged to the former, and that
the parallel portions of the two lives were borrowed from
the biography of the son to augment that of his father.

*** _Gen_. xxxv. 27, Elohistic narrative.

Like him, also, he renewed relations with Abîmelech of Gerar.* He married his relative Rebecca, the granddaughter of Nâkhor and the sister of Laban.** After twenty years of barrenness, his wife gave birth to twins, Esau and Jacob, who contended with each other from their mothers womb, and whose descendants kept up a perpetual feud. We know how Esau, under the influence of his appetite, deprived himself of the privileges of his birthright, and subsequently went forth to become the founder of the Edomites. Jacob spent a portion of his youth in Padan-Aram; here he served Laban for the hands of his cousins Rachel and Leah; then, owing to the bad faith of his uncle, he left him secretly, after twenty years service, taking with him his wives and innumerable flocks. At first he wandered aimlessly along the eastern bank of the Jordan, where Jahveh revealed Himself to him in his troubles. Laban pursued and overtook him, and, acknowledging his own injustice, pardoned him for having taken flight. Jacob raised a heap of stones on the site of their encounter, known at Mizpah to after-ages as the Stone of Witness --G-al-Ed (Galeed).*** This having been accomplished, his difficulties began with his brother Esau, who bore him no good will.

* _Gen._ xxvi. 1--31, Jehovistic narrative. In _Gen._ xxv.
11 an Elohistic interpolation makes Isaac also dwell in the
south, near to the Well of the Living One Who seeth me.

** _Gen._ xxiv., where two narratives appear to have been
amalgamated; in the second of these, Abraham seems to have
played no part, and Eliezer apparently conducted Rebecca
direct to her husband Isaac (vers. 61-67).

*** _Gen._ xxxi. 45-54, where the writer evidently traces
the origin of the word Gilead to Gal-Ed. We gather from the
context that the narrative was connected with the cairn at
Mizpah which separated the Hebrew from the Aramæan speaking
peoples.

One night, at the ford of the Jabbok, when he had fallen behind his companions, there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day, without prevailing against him. The stranger endeavoured to escape before daybreak, but only succeeded in doing so at the cost of giving Jacob his blessing. What is thy name? And he said, Jacob. And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for thou hast striven with God and with men, and hast prevailed. Jacob called the place Penîel, for, said he, I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved. The hollow of his thigh was strained as he wrestled with him, and he became permanently lame.* Immediately after the struggle he met Esau, and endeavoured to appease him by his humility, building a house for him, and providing booths for his cattle, so as to secure for his descendants the possession of the land. From this circumstance the place received the name of Succôth--the Booths --by which appellation it was henceforth known. Another locality where Jahveh had met Jacob while he was pitching his tents, derived from this fact the designation of the Two Hosts--Mahanaîm.** On the other side of the river, at Shechem,*** at Bethel,**** and at Hebron, near to the burial-place of his family, traces of him are everywhere to be found blent with those of Abraham.

* _Gen._ xxxii. 22-32. This is the account of the Jehovistic
writer. The Elohist gives a different version of the
circumstances which led to the change of name from Jacob to
Israel; he places the scene at Bethel, and suggests no
precise etymology for the name Israel (_Gen._ xxxv. 9-15).

** _Gen._ xxxii. 2, 3, where the theophany is indicated
rather than directly stated.

*** _Gen._ xxxiii. 18-20. Here should be placed the episode
of Dinah seduced by an Amorite prince, and the consequent
massacre of the inhabitants by Simeon and Levi (_Gen._
xxxiv.). The almost complete dispersion of the two tribes of
Simeon and Levi is attributed to this massacre: cf. _Gen._
xlix. 5-7.

**** _Gen._ xxxv. 1-15, where is found the Elohistic version
(9-15) of the circumstances which led to the change of name
from Jacob to Israel.

By his two wives and their maids he had twelve sons. Leah was the mother of Keuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, and Zabulon; Gad. and Asher were the children of his slave Zilpah; while Joseph and Benjamin were the only sons of Rachel--Dan and Naphtali being the offspring of her servant Bilhah. The preference which his father showed to him caused Joseph to be hated by his brothers; they sold him to a caravan of Midianites on their way to Egypt, and persuaded Jacob that a wild beast had devoured him. Jahveh was, however, with Joseph, and made all that he did to prosper in his hand. He was bought by Potiphar, a great Egyptian lord and captain of Pharaohs guard, who made him his overseer; his masters wife, however, cast her eyes upon Joseph, but finding that he rejected her shameless advances, she accused him of having offered violence to her person. Being cast into prison, he astonished his companions in misfortune by his skill in reading dreams, and was summoned to Court to interpret to the king his dream of the seven lean kine who had devoured the seven fat kine, which he did by representing the latter as seven years of abundance, of which the crops should be swallowed up by seven years of famine. Joseph was thereupon raised by Pharaoh to the rank of prime minister. He stored up the surplus of the abundant harvests, and as soon as the famine broke out, distributed the corn to the hunger-stricken people in exchange for their silver and gold, and for their flocks and fields. Hence it was,that the whole of the Nile valley, with the exception of the lands belonging to the priests, gradually passed into the possession of the royal treasury. Meanwhile his brethren, who also suffered from the famine, came down into Egypt to buy corn. Joseph revealed himself to them, pardoned the wrong they had done him, and presented them to the Pharaoh. And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, Say unto thy brethren, This do ye; lade your beasts, and go, get you unto the land of Canaan: and take your father and your household, and come unto me: and I will give you the good of the land of Egypt, and ye shall eat the fat of the land. Jacob thereupon raised his camp and came to Beersheba, where he offered sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac; and Jahveh commanded him to go down into Egypt, saying, I will there make of thee a great nation: I will go down with thee into Egypt: and I will also surely bring thee up again: and Joseph shall put his hand upon thine eyes. The whole family were installed by Pharaoh in the province of Goshen, as far as possible from the centres of the native population, for every shepherd is an abomination unto the Egyptians.

In the midst of these stern yet touching narratives in which the Hebrews of the times of the Kings delighted to trace the history of their remote ancestors, one important fact arrests our attention: the Beni-Israel quitted Southern Syria and settled on the banks of the Nile. They had remained for a considerable time in what was known later as the mountains of Judah. Hebron had served as their rallying-point; the broad but scantily watered wadys separating the cultivated lands from the desert, were to them a patrimony, which they shared with the inhabitants of the neighbouring towns. Every year, in the spring, they led their flocks to browse on the thin herbage growing in the bottoms of the valleys, removing them to another district only when the supply of fodder was exhausted. The women span, wove, fashioned garments, baked bread, cooked the viands, and devoted themselves to the care of the younger children, whom they suckled beyond the usual period. The men lived like the Bedouin--periods of activity alternating regularly with times of idleness, and the daily routine, with its simple duties and casual work, often gave place to quarrels for the possession of some rich pasturage or some never-failing well.

A comparatively ancient tradition relates that the Hebrews arrived in Egypt during the reign of Aphôbis, a Hyksôs king, doubtless one of the Apôpi, and possibly the monarch who restored the monuments of the Theban Pharaohs, and engraved his name on the sphinxes of Amenemhâît III. and on the colossi of Mîrmâshâû.* The land which the Hebrews obtained is that which, down to the present day, is most frequently visited by nomads, who find there an uncertain hospitality.

* The year XVII. of Apôphis has been pointed out as the date
of their arrival, and this combination, probably proposed by
some learned Jew of Alexandria, was adopted by Christian
chroniclers. It is unsupported by any fact of Egyptian
history, but it rests on a series of calculations founded on
the information contained in the Bible. Starting from the
assumption that the Exodus must have taken place under
Ahmosîs, and that the children of Israel had been four
hundred and thirty years on the banks of the Nile, it was
found that the beginning of their sojourn fell under the
reign of the Apôphis mentioned by Josephus, and, to be still
more correct, in the XVIIth year of that prince.

The tribes of the isthmus of Suez are now, in fact, constantly shifting from one continent to another, and their encampments in any place are merely temporary. The lord of the soil must, if he desire to keep them within his borders, treat them with the greatest prudence and tact. Should the government displease them in any way, or appear to curtail their liberty, they pack up their tents and take flight into the desert. The district occupied by them one day is on the next vacated and left to desolation. Probably the same state of things existed in ancient times, and the border nomes on the east of the Delta were in turn inhabited or deserted by the Bedouin of the period. The towns were few in number, but a series of forts protected the frontier. These were mere village-strongholds perched on the summit of some eminence, and surrounded by a strip of cornland. Beyond the frontier extended a region of bare rock, or a wide plain saturated with the ill-regulated surplus water of the inundation. The land of Goshen was bounded by the cities of Heliopolis on the south, Bubastis on the west, and Tanis and Mendes on the north: the garrison at Avaris could easily keep watch over it and maintain order within it, while they could at the same time defend it from the incursions of the Monatiû and the Hîrû-Shâîtû.*

* Goshen comprised the provinces situated on the borders of
the cultivable cornland, and watered by the infiltration of
the Nile, which caused the growth of a vegetation sufficient
to support the flocks during a few weeks; and it may also
have included the imperfectly irrigated provinces which were
covered with pools and reedy swamps after each inundation.

The Beni-Israel throve in these surroundings so well adapted to their traditional tastes. Even if their subsequent importance as a nation has been over-estimated, they did not at least share the fate of many foreign tribes, who, when transplanted into Egypt, waned and died out, or, at the end of two or three generations, became merged in the native population.* In pursuing their calling as shepherds, almost within sight of the rich cities of the Nile valley, they never forsook the God of their fathers to bow down before the Enneads or Triads of Egypt; whether He was already known to them as Jahveh, or was worshipped under the collective name of Elohîm, they served Him with almost unbroken fidelity even in the presence of Râ and Osiris, of Phtah and Sûtkhû.

* We are told that when the Hebrews left Ramses, they were
about six hundred thousand on foot that were men, beside
children. And a mixed multitude went up also with them; and
flocks and herds, even very much cattle (_Exod._ xii. 37,
38).

The Hyksôs conquest had not in any way modified the feudal system of the country. The Shepherd-kings must have inherited the royal domain just as they found it at the close of the XIVth dynasty, but doubtless the whole Delta, from Avaris to Sais, and from Memphis to Buto, was their personal appanage. Their direct authority probably extended no further south than the pyramids, and their supremacy over the fiefs of the Said was at best precarious. The turbulent lords who shared among them the possession of the valley had never lost their proud or rebellious spirit, and under the foreign as under the native Pharaohs regulated their obedience to their ruler by the energy he displayed, or by their regard for the resources at his disposal. Thebes had never completely lost the ascendency which it obtained over them at the fall of the Memphite dynasty. The accession of the Xoite dynasty, and the arrival of the Shepherd-kings, in relegating Thebes unceremoniously to a second rank, had not discouraged it, or lowered its royal prestige in its own eyes or in those of others: the lords of the south instinctively rallied around it, as around their natural citadel, and their resources, combined with its own, rendered it as formidable a power as that of the masters of the Delta. If we had fuller information as to the history of this period, we should doubtless see that the various Theban princes took occasion, as in the Heracleopolitan epoch, to pick a quarrel with their sovereign lord, and did not allow themselves to be discouraged by any check.*