89. Cf. Gen. xlix. 14, 15. The Hebrew word rendered ‘two burdens’ by the Authorised Version in v. 14 should be translated ‘sheepfolds,’ as it is in Judg. v. 16.
90. Thus the ancient Abshek, the Abokkis of classical geography, has become Abu Simbel, or ‘father of an ear of corn’; and Silsila is said to have derived its name from a ‘chain’ or silsila stretched across the Nile from the rocks on either bank, though it really has its origin in the classical Silsilis, the Coptic Joljel or ‘barrier.’
91. In the list of Thothmes III. the name of Nekeb of Galilee (Josh. xix. 33) is followed by that of Ashushkhen, which may be compared with Issachar, since the interchange of final n and r is not uncommon. But the substitution of kh for k (ch) is difficult to account for.
92. Shmâna is the thirty-fifth name in the Palestine list of Thothmes, and follows the name of Chinnereth (Josh. xix. 35; comp. also Shmânau, No. 18. See Tomkins in Records of the Past, new series, v. pp. 44, 46). One of the Tel el-Amarna tablets (W. and A. ii., No. 39) mentions ‘the Yaudu’ in the neighbourhood of Tunip, now Tennib, north-west of Aleppo. The name of the Jews is written in the same way in the cuneiform texts, though the Yaudu of the Tel el-Amarna tablets are probably to be identified with the land of Ya’di, which the inscriptions of Sinjerli place in Northern Syria. But it is noticeable that the Tel el-Amarna correspondence makes Kinza a district near Kadesh on the Orontes, close to the Lake of Homs, and Kinza is letter for letter the Biblical Kenaz. The Kenizzites, it will be remembered, formed an integral part of the later tribe of Judah.
93. Hommel, Aufsätze und Abhandlungen sur Kunde der Sprachen, Literaturen und der Geschichte des vorderen Orients (1890), p. 31.
94. The Rev. H. G. Tomkins (Quarterly Statement of the Palestine Exploration Fund, April 1885) first pointed out the true signification of the name of Beth-lehem, Lakhmu was one of the primeval gods of Chaldæan religion.
95. The village of Rachel, which was probably where the stone stood, is referred to in 1 Sam. xxx. 29.
96. E.g. Yeôr, ‘river,’ Egyptian aur; akhu, ‘herbage on the river bank’ (Gen. xli. 2), Egyptian akhu; rebid, ‘collar,’ Egyptian repit. See Ebers, Aegypten und die Bücher Mose’s, pp. 337-339.
97. See my Egypt of the Hebrews and Herodotos, pp. 25 sq.
98. See Tomkins, Life and Times of Joseph, p. 184.
99. Asenath is probably Nes-Nit, ‘Attached to Neith,’ as Subanda is Nes-Bandid, ‘Attached to Bandid.’
100. Mattan-Baal. The corresponding Hebrew name is Mattaniah.
101. A translation of the Sallier Papyrus is given by Maspero in the Records of the Past, new series, ii. pp. 37 sq. For the scarab of ‘Sutekh-Apopi’ see Maspero’s Struggle of the Nations (Eng. tr.), p. vii. The names of Beth-On or Beth-el in Canaan, and of On near Damascus (Amos i. 5), indicate a connection with the cult of the Sun-god at On in Egypt. On in the ‘Beka’’ of Damascus is probably the Heliopolis of Syria, to which the worship of Ra of Heliopolis of Egypt was brought in the reign of the Pharaoh Senemures (Macrobius, Saturnal. i. 23, 10).
102. Aegypten und die Bücher Mose’s, p. 299.
103. Maspero, The Struggle of the Nations, p. 271, note 5.
104. Cf. Brugsch, Aegyptologie, pp. 218 sq.
105. Ebers, Aegypten und die Bücher Mose’s, pp. 323-333.
106. Ebers, l.c., pp. 335, 336.
107. See Wiedemann, Religion der alten Aegypter, pp. 142-144. The khartummîm and khakâmîm (Authorised Version, ‘magicians’ and ‘wise men’) seem to correspond with the Egyptian kherhebu, ‘interpreters of the sacred books,’ and rekhu khetu, ‘wise men.’
108. See Tomkins, Life and Times of Joseph, p. 44; Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt (Eng. tr.), p. 439.
109. Mariette, Abydos, p. 421 (Ben-Mazan from Bashan becomes Ramses-em-per-Ra); Daninos-Pasha and Maspero in the Recueil de Travaux relatifs à la Philologie et à l’ Archéologie égyptienne et assyrienne, xii. p. 214; and Sayce in the Academy, 1891, p. 461.
110. See Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt (Eng. tr.), p. 439.
111. See Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt (Eng. tr.), pp. 102, 103.
112. Thus ‘Captain’ Ahmes had land given him according to his biographical inscription, ll. 22, 24; see Brugsch, Egypt under the Pharaohs (Eng. tr.), second edit. i. p. 249.
113. See Virey in Records of the Past, new ser., iii. pp. 7 sqq. There were similar public granaries in Babylonia called sutummi, under the charge of an officer who bore the title of satammu, and the institution was probably introduced into Egypt from Asia.
114. Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt (Eng. tr.), p. 108.
115. See Brugsch’s translation of the inscription in his Die biblischen sieben Jahre der Hungersnoth (1891).
116. See Brugsch, Egypt under the Pharaohs (Eng. tr.), 2nd edit., i. pp. 262, 263. ‘Captain’ Ahmes, who took part in the War of Independence under Ahmes I., calls himself the son of Abana, and traces his descent to his ‘forefather Baba.’ In Abana, Maspero (The Struggle of the Nations, p. 85) sees the Semitic Abîna, ‘Our father.’
117. Thus in the Tel el-Amarna tablets, Rib-Hadad, the governor of Phœnicia, asks the Pharaoh to send corn to Gebal, as the crops there had failed (Winckler and Abel, No. 48, ll. 8-19), and Meneptah sent corn to the Hittites when they suffered from a famine (Brugsch, Egypt under the Pharaohs, Eng. tr., 2nd edit., ii. p. 119).
118. According to Abulfarag (Chron. p. 14), Joseph became Vizier in the seventeenth year of the reign of Apopi. Maspero (Struggle of the Nations, pp. 59, 107) makes Apopi Ra-aa-kenen the third of the name.
119. See Maspero’s translation in Records of the Past, new ser., ii. pp. 37 sq.
120. E. Naville, Goshen and the Shrine of Saft el-Hennah, Fourth Memoir of the Egypt Exploration Fund (1887), pp. 14 sq.
121. See Naville, Goshen, p. 26.
122. Bibl. Hist., i. 91.
123. N. H. xix. 5.
124. Abel-Mizraim may be the Abel that is mentioned in connection with the ‘gardens,’ the ‘tilth,’ and the ‘spring’ of Carmel of Judah in the list of places in Canaan conquered by Thothmes III. (No. 92). Another Abel is mentioned two names earlier (No. 90).
125. See Virey’s translation in Records of the Past, new ser., iii. p. 34.
126. This, however, is beginning to be doubtful, in view of the discoveries made by Messrs. de Morgan and Amélineau in 1886-87.
127. For the logical goal of the ‘Higher Criticism,’ see Bateson Wright, Was Israel ever in Egypt? (1895.)
128. The theory of Jean Astruc, the French Protestant physician, was set forth in his Conjectures sur la Genèse published anonymously at Paris in 1753. In this he assumes that Moses wrote the book of Genesis in four parallel columns like a Harmony of the Gospels which were afterwards mixed together by the ignorance of copyists. Astruc intended his work to be an answer to those who, like Spinoza, asserted that Genesis was written without order or plan. It is interesting to note that Dr. Briggs in his able defence of the ‘critical’ hypothesis (The Higher Criticism of the Hexateuch, pp. 138-141) quotes with approval Professor Moore’s appeal to Tatian’s Diatessaron—a mere ‘patchwork’ of the Gospels—in support of the literary analysis of the Pentateuch.
129. See Bissell, Introduction to Genesis printed in Colours (1892), pp. xi-xiii; also p. vii, where he says: ‘The argument from language outside the divine names requires extreme care for obvious reasons. It is admitted to be relatively weak, and can never have more than a subordinate and supplementary value. There is no visible cleavage line among the supposed sources.’ Professor Bissell’s work is an attempt to represent by different colours the text of Genesis as it has been analysed and disintegrated by the ‘higher critics,’ and the result at which he arrives in his Introduction is that the analytical theory is a house built upon sand. As regards the account of the Flood, in which ‘it is claimed’ that two distinct narratives can be distinguished from each other, he remarks: ‘Two flood-stories, originating, according to the theory, hundreds of years apart, and literally swarming with differences and contradictions ... are found to fit one another like so many serrated blocks, and to form, united, a consecutive history whose unity, with constant use for millenniums, has been undisputed till our day. Is this coincidence, or is it miracle? But let us take a closer look. We shall find no loosely joined, independent sections, but mutually dependent parts of one whole. An occasional overlapping of ideas, a repetition for emphasis, or enlargement, in complete harmony with Hebrew style, there undoubtedly is. But there is also a marked interdependence and sequence of thought wholly inconsistent with the theory proposed. Let the reader test what J’s story would be alone. Beginning it has none; no preliminary announcement of the catastrophe; no command to make preparations; no report of Noah’s attitude.... And so P’s story, taken by itself, would be equally incomplete.... As to the alleged discrepancies in other respects, they appear, as we have seen, to be true in other cases, only after the text is rent asunder. The lighting system of the one does not exclude the one window of the other; nor the covering for the roof, the door in the side. Without the door, for which one document alone is responsible, how is it supposed that the occupants of the ark got in and out of it? If objects are thrown out of their due perspective, as in a mirage, it need surprise no one if they appear distorted and grotesque.... It is particularly in the matter of language and style that resort is taken to this illogical and dangerous means of text-mutilation. There are certain stylistic peculiarities of one or the other document, it is claimed, which are fixed from the usage of previous chapters. But unfortunately for the scheme, they appear not unfrequently in the wrong place. For instance, the expression “male and female” is held to be characteristic of P, J using another for it. In vii. 3, 9, J uses this expression twice, and our critics must make the redactor deny it. The oft-recurring formula, “both man, beast, and creeping thing and fowl of the air,” is found in the first chapter of Genesis, and so is said to be characteristic of P. Here J has it in vi. 7 and vii. 23, and the redactor is called in to square the document to the theory.... In all these changes we are supposed to have the work of a redactor. How is it possible? What motive could a redactor have had for it? It is claimed by our critics that he has left the principal points of contrast between the two great documents from which he compiled in their original ruggedness. The principal changes made, with rare exceptions, are of single words, detached phrases, verses or parts of verses,—every one of them changes in what was originally homogeneous matter to what is now heterogeneous, from what was once true, from the point of view of the document, to what is now false!’
130. Cf. the plates in Flinders Petrie’s Tel el-Amarna (Methuen and Co., 1894).
131. Literally, ‘Aten-Ra! the Record Office.’ Many of the bricks with the inscription upon them still lay on the spot when I visited it in 1888.
132. See my Patriarchal Palestine, p. 222.
133. Hommel, Aufsätze und Abhandlungen zur Kunde der Sprachen, Literaturen und der Geschichte des vorderen Orients, pp. 2 sqq.
134. See my Higher Criticism and the Verdict of the Monuments, pp. 56 sq.
135. The Elohist and the Chaldæan story further agree in making the hero of the Deluge the tenth in descent from the first man.
136. See my Archæological Commentary on Genesis, in the Expository Times, July and August, 1896.
137. Cf. Gunkel, Schöpfung und Chaos, p. 114.
139. Naville, Das aegyptische Todtenbuch der XVIII. bis XX. Dynastie, Einleitung; Maspero, Études de Mythologie et d’ Archéologie égyptiennes, i. pp. 325-387.
140. Sanctuary and Sacrifice, by W. L. Baxter (Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1895).
141. Cowley and Neubauer, The Original Hebrew of a Portion of Ecclesiasticus, p. xviii.
142. Ham for Am or Ammon, and Zuzim for Zamzummim (Gen. xiv. 5); see my Higher Criticism and the Verdict of the Monuments, pp. 160, 161.
143. This probably stands for the Babylonian al-Larsa, ‘the city of Larsa.’
144. Contemporary Review, February 1890, p. 221.
145. Mesha says in the inscription (l. 8): ‘Omri took the land of Medeba, and [Israel] dwelt in it during his days and half the days of his son, altogether forty years.’ The real length of time was not more than fifteen years.
146. Oppert dates the reign B.C. 2394 to 2339; Sayce, B.C. 2336-2281; Delitzsch, B.C. 2287-2232; Winckler, 2264-2210; and Peiser, 2139-2084; while Hommel suggests that the compiler of the list of dynasties has reversed the true order of the first two dynasties in it, and accordingly brings down the date of Khammu-rabi or Amraphel three hundred and sixty-eight years. This would better suit the Biblical data, but so far nothing has been found on the monuments in support of the suggestion. Dr. Hales’s date for the birth of Abraham was B.C. 2153.
147. Zeitschrift für Aegyptische Sprache, 1889, pp. 97-105.
148. The ‘prince’ of Thebes who revolted against Apophis was Skenen-Ra Taa I., whose fourth successor was Ahmes.
149. Revue Archéologique, March 1865.
150. E. Naville, The Store-city of Pithom and the Route of the Exodus (1885).
151. Zeitschrift für Aegyptische Sprache, 1872, p. 18; see also J. de Rougé, Géographie ancienne de la Basse-Égypte, pp. 93-95.
152. Cf. the articles of Sayce and Hommel in the Expository Times for August, October, and November 1896, pp. 521, 18, and 89.
153. See Sayce, The Higher Criticism and the Monuments, p. 249.
154. E. Naville, Goshen and the Shrine of Saft el-Hennah, Fourth Memoir of the Egypt Exploration Fund (1887).
155. Brugsch, Egypt under the Pharaohs (Eng. tr.), second edit., ii. p. 133.
156. Flinders Petrie, Tel el-Amarna, pp. 40-42.
158. For Khar, the Horites of the Old Testament, see Maspero, Struggle of the Nations, p. 121.
159. On the road from Assuan to Shellâl, ‘Messui, the royal son of Kush, the fan-bearer on the right of the king, the royal scribe,’ has left his name and titles on a granite rock (Petrie, A Season in Egypt, No. 70). Below the inscription is Meneptah in a chariot, with Messui holding the fan and bowing before him.
160. For Dr. Neubauer’s suggestion that the name of Aaron, otherwise so inexplicable, is the Arabic Âron or Âran written in the Minæan fashion, see above, p. 34, note 1. If the suggestion is right, it was specially appropriate that Aaron should have met Moses in ‘the Mount of God,’ on the frontiers of Midian (Exod. iv. 27).
161. A translation of the papyrus has been given by Professor Maspero in The Records of the Past, new series, ii. pp. 11-36.
162. See Preface to Maspero’s Dawn of Civilisation, p. v.
163. Reuel, ‘Shepherd of God,’ was a son of Esau, according to Gen. xxxvi. 4. It may have been a title of the high-priest, since rêu, ‘shepherd,’ is one of the titles given to the kings and high-priests of early Babylonia. The high-priest Gudea, for instance, calls himself ‘the shepherd of the god Nin-girsu.’ On the other hand, Hommel (The Ancient Hebrew Tradition, p. 278) compares the name Reuel-Jethro with the Minæan Ridsvu-il Vitrân.
164. In the word seneh a popular etymology seems to have been found for the name of Mount Sinai. Hence it is that in Deut. xxxiii. 16, Yahveh is described as ‘him that dwelt in the seneh.’ The seneh was probably the small prickly acacia nilotica.
165. No satisfactory etymology of the name Yahveh has yet been found. This, however, is not strange, considering that the etymology was unknown to the Hebrews themselves, as is shown by the explanation of the name in Exod. iii. 14, where it is derived from the Aramaic hewâ, the Hebrew equivalent being hâyâh, with y instead of w (or v). The Babylonians were also ignorant of the original meaning of the word, since one of the lexical cuneiform tablets gives Yahu or Yahveh as meaning ‘god’ (in Israelitish), and identifies it with the Assyrian word yahu, ‘myself’ (83, 1-18, 1332 Obv.; Col. ii. 1). No certain traces of the name have been found except among the Israelites. It is a verbal formation like Jacob, Joseph, etc.
166. Maspero, Dawn of Civilisation, pp. 132-134.
167. For ‘strikes’ among the Egyptian artisans, see Spiegelberg, Arbeiter und Arbeiterbewegung im Pharaonreich unter den Ramessiden (1895).
168. At Tel el-Maskhuta, or Pithom, however, the bricks were not mixed with straw.
169. See Wiedemann, Religion der alten Aegypter, pp. 142 sq.
170. Exod. vii. 19 contains an exaggeration which could easily be omitted without any injury to the sense of the narrative. The change of water in the river would affect the canals and such pools and ponds as were fed from the Nile, but nothing else. The river-water is not considered fit for drinking in the early days of the inundation. The green and slimy vegetation brought from the Equatorial regions renders it quite poisonous, and it is not until some days after it has become ‘red’ that it is again fit to drink.
171. The ‘camels’ mentioned along with the cattle in Exod. ix. 3 have been inserted from an Israelitish point of view. The Egyptians had no camels; and though the Bedâwin doubtless used them from an early period, none were employed by the Egyptians themselves until the Roman or Arab age.
172. The passage is, unfortunately, mutilated. What remains reads thus: ‘... the tents in front of the city of Pi-Bailos, on the canal of Shakana; ... [the adjoining land] was not cultivated, but had been left as pasture for cattle for the sake of the foreigners. It had been abandoned since the time of (our) ancestors. All the kings of Upper Egypt sat within their entrenchments ... and the kings of Lower Egypt found themselves in the midst of their cities, surrounded with earthworks, cut off from everything by the (hostile) warriors, for they had no mercenaries to oppose to them. Thus had it been [until Meneptah] ascended the throne of Horus. He was crowned to preserve the life of mankind.’ The word translated ‘tents’ is ahilu, the Hebrew ôhêl, which is used by Ramses III. of the ‘tents’ of the Shasu or Edomites of Mount Seir. For translations of the text, see E. de Rougé, Extrait d’un Mémoire sur les Attaques dirigées contre l’Égypte, pp. 6-13 (1867); Chabas, Recherches pour servir à l’histoire de la xixe Dynastie, pp. 84-92 (1873); Brugsch, Egypt under the Pharaohs, Eng. tr. (2nd edit.), ii. pp. 116-123; Maspero, The Struggle of the Nations, pp. 433-436.
173. Cont. Apion. i. 26.
174. This name, however, varied in different versions of the legend. Chærêmôn makes it Phritiphantes, which may represent Zaphnath-paaneah, the dental (t) taking the place of z, and pa-Ra, ‘the sun-god’ of pa-Ankhu, ‘the living one.’
175. The papyrus is in the Hermitage at St. Petersburg (Golénischeff, Recueil de Travaux relatifs à la Philologie et à l’Archéologie égyptiennes et assyriennes, xv. pp. 88, 89).
176. Dr. Wilcken has pointed out (Zur Aegyptisch-hellenistischen Literatur in the Festschrift für Georg Ebers, 1897, pp. 146-152) that two fragments of a Greek papyrus published by Wessely in the Denkschriften der Wiener Akademie, 42, 1893, pp. 3 sqq., contain a legend which closely resembles that of the Egyptian version of the Exodus. In this, however, a potter takes the place of the seer Amenôphis, the desire of the king to see the gods is explained by his wish to know the future, the ‘impure people’ are called the ‘girdle-wearers,’ and the beginning of a Sothic cycle is apparently combined with the story. Moreover, it would seem that the papyrus does not yet know of the identification of the ‘impure people’ with the Jews.
177. The Threshold Covenant or the Beginning of Religious Rites (New York, 1896).
178. The Threshold Covenant, pp. 203, 204.
180. Egypt under the Pharaohs (Eng. tr.), second edit., ii. pp. 96-98.
181. Anastasi, v. 19. For the translation, see Brugsch, Egypt under the Pharaohs (Eng. tr.), second edit., ii. p. 132.
182. First pointed out by Goodwin in the Sallier Papyrus, iv. 1, 6.
183. Josh. ii. 10; iv. 23; xxiv. 6-8.
184. Ps. cvi. 7-9, 22; cxxxvi. 13-15; Neh. ix. 9; see also Acts vii. 36.