That Moses could not have written the account of his own death was discovered even by the Jewish rabbis; and references to the ‘Book of the Covenant’ and the ‘Book of the Wars of the Lord’ prove that the Pentateuch in its present form has not come down to us from the Mosaic age. The materials may be Mosaic; it may thus be substantially the work of the great Hebrew lawgiver, but the actual work itself is of later date.
How far may we trust the accuracy of the traditional Hebrew text? Modern criticism has been inclined to pronounce the text corrupt, not unfrequently because the critic himself cannot understand it, and to deal pretty freely in conjectural emendations. The Greek text of the Septuagint is invoked against it, and undue weight is often given to its variant readings or omissions, as, for instance, in the case of the history of Saul. Doubtless the Septuagint text is of great value; it goes back to a period centuries older than the oldest Hebrew MS. that has survived to us; but it was made by Jews of Alexandria, whose knowledge of the sacred language of their nation was not always complete or exact. The recent discovery of the original Hebrew text of Ecclesiasticus has gone far to shake our confidence in the readings of the Septuagint, as a comparison of it with the Greek translation made only two generations later has shown that passages are omitted in the latter, through simple carelessness, or perhaps inability to understand them. The discovery has also not been in favour of the emendations of literary and philological criticism, not one of the many attempts made to restore the lost Hebrew original having turned out to be correct.[141]
On the other hand, a comparison of the Hebrew Scriptures with the clay books of Assyria is on the side of accuracy in the text. The scribes employed in the libraries of Assyria, and presumably, therefore, in the older libraries of Babylonia, were scrupulously exact in their copies of earlier texts. Where the tablet which they copied was injured and defective, it was stated to be so, and the scribe made no attempt to fill up by conjecture, however obvious, what was missing in the document before him. He even was careful to note whether the fracture was recent or not. Where, again, he was not certain about the Assyrian equivalent of a Babylonian character of unusual form, he gave alternative representatives of it, or else reproduced the questionable character itself. Perhaps the most striking example of the textual honesty of the Assyrian and Babylonian scribes is, however, to be found in a compilation known as the Babylonian Chronicle—a chronological abstract in which the history of Babylonia is given from a strictly Babylonian point of view. Here the author candidly confesses that he does ‘not know’ the year when the decisive battle of Khalulê took place, which laid Babylon at the feet of Sennacherib; his materials for settling the matter failed him, and, unlike the modern Hexateuchal critics, he abstained from conjecture. We are more fortunate than he was; for, as we possess the annals of Sennacherib, in which the Assyrian king gives a highly-coloured account of the battle, we are able to determine its date.
In the later days of the Jewish monarchy there was a library at Jerusalem similar to those of Assyria and Babylonia, and we hear of the scribes belonging to it in the days of Hezekiah re-editing the Proverbs of Solomon (Prov. xxv. 1). There are indications that they were as careful and honest in their work as the scribes of Assyria whose example they probably followed. Thus the names of Chedor-laomer and his allies are preserved with singular correctness, as well as the forms of two geographical names which seem to imply translation from a cuneiform original.[142] So, again, the Aramaic inscriptions of a contemporary of Tiglath-pileser III. found at Sinjerli, north of the Gulf of Antioch, show that in one case at least the spelling which we find in the books of Kings has remained unchanged since the eighth century B.C. As in the books of Kings, so at Sinjerli, the Assyrian name Tukulti-Pal-Esarra is incorrectly written Tiglath-pileser, with g instead of k, and even the country over which he ruled is in both cases written plene (with the symbol of the vowel u). On the other hand, it cannot be denied that there are many clear and unmistakable corruptions of the text. In the fourteenth chapter of Genesis itself the name of the city Larsa has been transformed into Ellasar;[143] elsewhere glosses have been received into the text, while there are whole passages which are either ungrammatical or unmeaning as they now stand. Ancient authors, whether Hebrew or otherwise, did not write nonsense; and if the natural rendering of a passage does not make sense, we may feel quite sure that it is corrupt.
The historian of the Hebrews, then, is bound to treat his authorities as the Greek historian would treat Herodotos or Thucydides or any other writer on behalf of whose character and age there is a long line of external testimony. The results of the ‘literary analysis’ may be left to the philologist, as well as the conjectures and theories that have been substituted by scholars of the nineteenth century for early Israelitish history. They have vanished like bubbles wherever they have been tested by the archæological evidence, which, on the other hand, has vindicated the substantial truthfulness of those Old Testament statements which had been scornfully thrown aside.
Where it is possible, the Biblical narratives must be compared with the discoveries of archæological research; where this cannot be done, they must be examined from the historical and not from the philological or literary point of view. We are bound to assume their general credibility and faithfulness, except where this can be historically disproved, and to remember that while on the one hand inconsistencies in detail do not affect the general historical trustworthiness of a document, the agreement of such details with the facts of archæology or geography—more especially when they are of the kind termed ‘undesigned coincidences’—is a powerful argument in its favour. Above all, we must beware of that favourite weapon of literary criticism, the argument from silence, which is really merely an argument from the imperfection of our own knowledge, and which a single instance to the contrary will overthrow. The literary criticism of the Old Testament is full of examples of the argument that have been demolished by the advance of Oriental archæology.
Let this accordingly be the rule of the historian: to believe all things, to hope all things, but at the same time to test and try all things. And the test must be scientific, not what we assume to be probable or natural, but external testimony in the shape of archæological or geographical facts. The history of the past is not what ought to have happened according to the ideas of the critic, but what actually did happen.
Such a manner of treating our authorities does not, of course, exclude our recognition of what the literary critics call their several ‘tendencies.’ No history, worthy of the name, can be written without a ‘tendency’ of some sort on the part of the writer, even though it be not consciously felt. We must have some kind of general theory within the lines of which our facts may be grouped; and however much we may strive to be impartial, our conception of the facts themselves, and our mode of presenting them, will be coloured by our beliefs and education. The historian cannot help writing with an object in view; the necessities of the subject require it.
That the historical books of the Old Testament should have been written with a ‘tendency’ is therefore natural. And literary criticism has successfully pointed out in the case of one of these books what the ‘tendency’ was. If we compare the books of Chronicles with those of Samuel and Kings, the contrast between them strikes the eye at once. The interest of the Chronicler is centred in the history of the Jewish temple and ritual, of its priests and Levites, and the manifold requirements of the Law. His history of Israel accordingly becomes a history of Israelitish ritual; all else is put aside or treated in the briefest fashion. The incidents of David’s reign narrated in the books of Samuel are subordinated to elaborate accounts of his arrangements for the services in the tabernacle or temple; the history of the northern kingdom of Israel, which lay outside that of the temple at Jerusalem, is passed over in silence; and the Passover held in Hezekiah’s reign, about which not a word is said in the books of Kings, is dwelt upon to the exclusion of almost everything else. Nor, had we only the Chronicler in our hands, should we know that the pious Hezekiah had entered into an alliance with the Babylonian king and boastfully displayed to his ambassadors the treasures of the Jewish kingdom, thereby bringing upon himself the rebuke of the prophet Isaiah. All that the Chronicler has to say on the matter is that ‘in the business of the ambassadors of the prince of Babylon, who sent to inquire of the wonder that was done in the land, God left him, to try him, that he might know all that was in his heart’; and even here a theological turn is given to the occurrence by the motive assigned for the embassy. As a matter of fact, we know from the cuneiform inscriptions that the real object of Merodach-baladan was to form a league with the princes of the West against their common Assyrian enemy, to which, as the books of Kings inform us, was naturally added a polite inquiry after Hezekiah’s health.
‘Tendencies’ there are, therefore, in the historical writings of the Old Testament; they would not be human productions if there were not. The authors have had one great object in view, that of showing from the past history of the people that sin brings punishment with it, while a blessing follows upon righteous action. They believed in the Divine government of the world, and wrote with that belief clearly before them. They believed also that Israel was the chosen nation in whose history that Divine government had been made manifest to mankind, and that the God of Israel was the one true omnipotent God. In this belief in a theodicy they were theologians, like most other Oriental writers. But their theological point of view did not prevent them from being historians as well. It did not interfere with their honestly recording the course of events as it had been handed down to them, or reproducing their authorities without intentional change. Doubtless they may have made mistakes at times, their judgment may not always have been strictly critical or correct, and want of sufficient materials may now and then have led them into error. But when we find that no attempt is made to palliate or conceal the sins and shortcomings of their most cherished national heroes, that even the reverses of the nation are chronicled equally with its successes, and that the early period of its history is confessed to have been one of anarchy and crime, and not the golden age of which popular (and even historical) imagination loves to dream, we are justified in according to them, in spite of their theological ‘tendencies,’ a considerable measure of confidence.
It will have been noticed that chronology—the skeleton, as it were, on which the flesh of history is laid—has been alluded to in the previous chapter only in the vaguest possible manner. ‘The age of Abraham,’ ‘the age of the Exodus,’ ‘the Mosaic age,’ are the phrases that have been used in referring to Old Testament events. Israelitish chronology in the true sense of the word does not begin till the reign of David, and even then we have to deal with probabilities rather than with facts. Like Egyptian history, which has to be measured by dynasties instead of dates before the rise of the eighteenth dynasty, the early history of the Hebrews has no chronological record. Before we can attach dates to the events of the patriarchal period or the Exodus, it is necessary to find synchronisms between them and the dated history of other peoples.
It is a commonplace of Biblical students that numbers are peculiarly liable to corruption, and that consequently little dependence can be placed on the numbers given in the text of the Old Testament. But the conclusion does not follow from the premiss. The later dates of Israelitish history are for the most part reliable, and it would be strange if the causes of corruption were fatal only to the dates of an earlier period. Moreover, the numbers fit into a self-consistent system, the several fractions of which agree with the whole summation. Such a self-consistent system would perhaps demand acceptance were it not that there are three such systems, rivals one of the other, and mutually incompatible. One is that of the Massoretic Hebrew text, which makes the period from the Creation to the call of Abraham exactly 2000 solar years (or, 2056 lunar years), 1600 of which extend from the Creation to the Deluge, and the remaining 400 from the Deluge to the call of Abraham. A second is that of the Septuagint, according to which the period from the Creation to the Flood is 2200 solar years (or, 2262 lunar years), 1600 of these elapsing between the Creation and the birth of Noah, and 600 from that event to the Flood, while 1200 are counted from the Flood to the call of the patriarch. The third is that of the Samaritan text which divides the period into two halves of 1200 years each; the first 1200 comprising the time from the Creation to the birth of the sons of Noah, and the second 1200 the rest of the period.
It is obvious that all these systems are like the similar chronological systems of the Egyptians, the Babylonians, or the Hindus, mere artificial schemes of an astronomical character, and differing from the latter only in their more modest computation of time. For historical purposes they are worthless, and indicate merely that materials for a chronology were entirely wanting. The ages assigned to the patriarchs before the Flood, for example, stand on a level with the reigns of the ten antediluvian kings of Chaldæa which are extended over 120 sari, or 432,000 years. The post-diluvian patriarchs are in no better position; indeed, one of them, Arphaxad, is a geographical title, and the Septuagint interpolates after him a certain Kainan, of whom neither the Hebrew nor the Samaritan text knows anything.
Even after the call of Abraham, Hebrew chronology is equally uncertain. The length of life assigned to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is surprising, though not quite impossible, but the dates connected with it do not always agree together. How, for example, can Abraham have had six children after the death of Sarah (Gen. xxv. 1, 2), when the birth of Isaac nearly forty years before had been regarded as extraordinary on account of the patriarch’s age? Or, again, to quote the words of Professor Driver[144]: ‘Do we all realise that according to the chronology of the Book of Genesis (xxv. 26, xxvi. 34, xxxv. 28) [Isaac] must have been lying upon his deathbed for eighty years? Yet we can only diminish this period by extending proportionately the interval between Esau’s marrying his Hittite wives (Gen. xxvi. 34), and Rebekah’s suggestion to Isaac to send Jacob away, lest he should follow his brother’s example (xxvii. 46), which from the nature of the case will not admit of any but a slight extension. Keil, however, does so extend it, reducing the period of Isaac’s final illness to forty-three years, and is conscious of no incongruity in supposing that Rebekah, thirty-seven years after Esau has taken his Hittite wives, should express her fear that Jacob, then aged seventy-seven, will do the same!’
The length of the period during which the Israelites were in Egypt has been the subject of endless controversy. The Old Testament statements in regard to it are clear enough. Abraham is told (Gen. xv. 13) that his descendants shall ‘serve’ the Egyptians and be ‘afflicted’ by them for 400 years. As a generation was counted at thirty years, this implies that the whole period spent in Egypt was 430 years, though the statement is not quite exact, since Joseph lived more than thirty years after the settlement of his brethren in the land of Goshen, and their servitude and affliction did not begin till after his death. In Exodus (xii. 40) we are informed explicitly that ‘the sojourning of the children of Israel, who dwelt in Egypt, was 430 years.’ Four hundred and thirty years, therefore, must have been the length of time during which Israel was officially regarded as having lived in Goshen.
But it is difficult to reconcile it with another statement in Gen. xv. 16, where it is said that ‘in the fourth generation’ the children of Israel should return to Canaan. As the words were spoken to Abraham, the fourth generation would be that of Joseph himself. Since this seems out of the question, they are usually interpreted to refer to Moses and Aaron, who are placed in the fourth generation from Levi. Moses and Aaron, however, did not ‘come again’ to Palestine, and the genealogy of the daughters of Zelophehad (Num. xxvii. 1) makes the generation that did so the seventh from Joseph. Time, in fact, cannot be reckoned by generations; we do not know how many links in the chain may have been dropped, ‘son’ in Semitic idiom being frequently equivalent to ‘descendant,’ while the names are often merely geographical, like Gilead and Machir in the genealogy of Zelophehad, and therefore have no chronological value. It was, however, the mention of ‘the fourth. generation’ which produced the rabbinical gloss, alluded to by S. Paul (Gal. iii. 17), according to which the four hundred and thirty years of Gen. xv. 13 did not mean the time during which the Israelites were ‘afflicted’ in Egypt, but—in spite of the definite assertion to the contrary—a period which included the lives of the patriarchs as well as the government of Joseph.
If the statements in regard to the period of the Israelitish settlement in Egypt are contradictory, the statements in regard to the lapse of time from the conquest of Canaan to the building of Solomon’s temple are still more so. In 1 Kings vi. 1 we read that the foundations of the temple were laid in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign, and four hundred and eighty years after the Exodus from Egypt. If we add together the numbers given in the book of Judges, they amount to four hundred and ten years, thus leaving only seventy years for the wanderings in the desert, the judgeships of Eli and Samuel, the reigns of Saul and David, and the first four years of Solomon! The endeavours that have been made to get over the difficulty have all been fruitless. Wellhausen and others, for instance, have conjectured that the four hundred and eighty years are intended to represent twelve generations, each being reckoned at forty years, and the seventy years assigned to the five ‘lesser judges’ being overlooked. But the conjecture is destitute of support, and is contrary to such notices as we have of the number of generations which covered the period of the judges. Moreover, the five lesser judges do not constitute a group by themselves.
The period of four hundred and eighty years cannot be reconciled with the genealogies any better than with the apparent chronology of the book of Judges. Between Nahshon, who was a contemporary of Moses, and Solomon, only five generations are given (Ruth iv. 20-22); and between Phinehas and Zadok, whom Solomon removed from the priesthood, there were only seven generations of priests (1 Chron. vi. 4-8). Doubtless some of the links in the ancestry of David have been dropped, but that can hardly be the case as regards the priests. Seven generations would give, at the most, not more than two hundred and ten years.
That the number four hundred and eighty, however, has really been based on the number forty seems probable. Forty years in Hebrew idiom merely signified an indeterminate and unknown period of time, and the Moabite Stone shows that the same idiom existed also in the Moabite language.[145] Thus Absalom is said, in 2 Sam. xv. 7, to have asked permission to leave Jerusalem ‘after forty years,’ although the length of time was really little more than two years (2 Sam. xiv. 28 sqq.), and Jewish tradition has supplied the lost record of the length of Saul’s reign with a date of forty years. The period of forty years, which meets us again and again in the book of Judges, is simply the equivalent of an unknown length of time; it denotes the want of materials, and the consequent ignorance of the writer. Twenty, the half of forty, is equally an expression of ignorance; and the only dates available for chronology are those which represent a definite space of time, like the eight years of Chushan-rishathaim’s oppression of Israel, or the six years of Jephthah’s judgeship.
We can learn nothing, accordingly, from the books of the Old Testament about the chronology of Israel down to the time of David. For David’s reign we have the seven years of his rule at Hebron, followed by the thirty-three years of his sway over the whole of Israel. For the reign of Solomon we have again the indeterminate ‘forty years’; but since Rezon of Damascus, like Hadad of Edom, was ‘an adversary to Israel all the days of Solomon,’ it is probable that the reign did not actually last more than thirty years at the most. Even the chronology of the divided kingdom after the death of Solomon, in spite of the synchronisms the compiler of the books of Kings has endeavoured to establish between the kings of Judah and those of Israel, has been the despair of historians, and scheme after scheme has been proposed in order to make it self-consistent. The Assyrian monuments, however, have now come to our help, and shown that between the time of Ahab and that of Hezekiah it is forty years in excess.
For Hebrew chronology, therefore, we must look outside the Bible itself. At certain points Hebrew history comes into touch with the monumental records of Egypt, Babylonia, and Assyria; and if we are to date the events it records, it must be by their aid. Egypt can assist us only after the rise of the eighteenth dynasty; before that period it is as much without a chronology as the Israelites themselves. But the case is different as regards Babylonia and Assyria. In Babylonia time was dated by the reigns of the kings and the events of the several years of each reign. The extensive commercial relations of the country, and the contracts that were constantly being drawn up, made accurate dating a matter of necessity. The Assyrians were even more exact than the Babylonians; they were distinguished among Oriental nations by their strong historical sense, and at an early epoch had devised an accurate system of chronology. The years were reckoned by a succession of officers called limmi, each of whom held office for a year and gave his name to it, the king himself, during the earlier period of Assyrian history, taking the office in the first year of his reign. Lists of the limmi were kept, and a reference to them would show at once the exact age of a document dated by the name of a particular limmu. None of the lists hitherto discovered are, unfortunately, older than the tenth century B.C.; but, thanks to those that have been found, from B.C. 909 to 666 we have a continuous and accurate register of time.
Abraham was the contemporary of Chedor-laomer and Amraphel, and the position of Amraphel among the Babylonian kings has been given us by the native annalists. He was the sixth king of the first dynasty of Babylon, and reigned fifty-five years. Unfortunately, the only copy we possess at present of the native Babylonian list of dynasties is broken, and owing to the fracture of the tablet, a doubt hangs over his precise date. The most probable restoration of the text would make it about B.C. 2300.[146] Between this and the Exodus there would be an interval of more than a thousand years.
Dr. Mahler has attempted to fix astronomically the dates of the two leading Pharaohs of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties, Thothmes III. and Ramses II., and his dates have been accepted by Brugsch and other Egyptologists. If his calculations are correct, Thothmes III. will have reigned from the 20th of March B.C. 1503 to the 14th of February B.C. 1449;[147] and Ramses II., the Pharaoh of the oppression, from B.C. 1348 to 1281. The eighteenth dynasty, accordingly, would have commenced about B.C. 1600, and the Exodus would have taken place subsequently to B.C. 1280.
If Apophis II. was the Hyksos king under whom Joseph governed Egypt, he would have lived four generations before Ahmes, the founder of the eighteenth dynasty.[148] The ‘four hundred years,’ therefore, during which Israel was evil-entreated in Egypt (Acts vii. 6) will correspond with the era of four hundred years mentioned on a stela discovered by Mariette at San, the ancient Zoan.[149] The stela commemorates a visit paid to Zoan in the reign of Ramses II. by Seti, the governor of the frontier, on the fourth day of the month Mesori, and ‘the four hundredth year of the king of Upper and Lower Egypt, Set-âa-pehti, the son of the Sun, who loved him, also named Set-Nubti, beloved of Harmakhis.’ Since Set or Sutekh was the Hyksos god, and Zoan the Hyksos capital, it is clear that we have here a Hyksos era, the four hundredth anniversary of which fell in the reign of Ramses II. It seems probable that it marked the accession of the third and last Hyksos dynasty. According to Manetho, as reported by Africanus, this lasted for one hundred and fifty-one years, which would take us to about B.C. 1720, and the same date is obtained if we calculate the four hundred years of the stela of Sân, back from the thirtieth year of Ramses II. One generation more—the thirty additional years given in Exod. xii. 40—will bring us to the period of the Exodus, which, as we shall see hereafter, must have taken place under Meneptah, the son and successor of Ramses II.
The precise connection between the Hyksos and Hebrew eras must be left to the future to discover. At present, the only reference found to the first is that on the stela of Sân. Some connection, however, there must be between them, like the connection between Zoan and Hebron indicated in Numb. xiii. 22, where it is said that ‘Hebron was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt.’ The Hyksos were invaders from Asia, and between them and the Hebrews there may have been a closer relationship than we now suspect.
Two approximate dates have accordingly been found for early Hebrew history. One results from the synchronism between Abraham and Amraphel, and may be set down as about 2300 B.C.; the other is the synchronism with Egyptian history, which gives us about B.C. 1720 for the settlement of the Hebrew tribes in Goshen. We must now see what light can be thrown by the Egyptian monuments on the date of the Exodus.
Various reasons had led an increasing majority of Egyptologists to regard Ramses II., the most prominent figure in the nineteenth dynasty, if not in the whole history of the Pharaohs, as the Pharaoh of the Oppression, and the question was finally settled by Dr. Naville’s excavations at Tel el-Maskhûta on behalf of the Egypt Exploration Fund.[150] Tel el-Maskhûta proved to be the site of Pi-Tum, the Biblical Pithom, and to have had the civil name of Thuku or Thukut from the nome of the district in which it was situated. Brugsch had already pointed out that Thukut is the Succoth of the Old Testament, the Egyptian th corresponding to the Hebrew ’s, and Succoth was the first stage in the flight of the Israelites after their departure from Raamses (Exod. xii. 37). Pi-Tum was the sacred name of the city, which was dedicated to Tum, the setting Sun.
The monuments found on the spot showed that the founder of the city was Ramses II.; and since the Pharaoh of the Oppression was also the builder of Pithom (Exod. i. 11), those who attach any credit to the historical character of the Biblical statement must necessarily see in him the great Pharaoh of the nineteenth dynasty. The conclusion is further supported by the name of ‘Raamses,’ or Ramses, the second of the two cities which it is said the Hebrews were employed in building. Ramses I., the founder of the nineteenth dynasty, and the grandfather of Ramses II., was the first king of Egypt who bore that name; and the shortness of his reign, which does not seem to have exceeded two years, as well as the disturbed condition of the country, would have prevented him from undertaking any architectural works. Ramses II., however, was essentially a building Pharaoh; he covered Egypt from one end to the other with his constructions; he founded cities, erected or restored monuments, and not unfrequently usurped them. There was more than one city or temple of Ramses which owed its existence to his architectural zeal and was called after his name. As the date of the third Ramses of the twentieth dynasty is too late to fit in with any theory of the Exodus, there remains only Ramses II. for ‘the treasure-city’ mentioned in Exodus. Ramses II. restored Zoan, and made it a seat of residence; this will explain why, in Gen. xlvii. 11, Goshen is proleptically said to have been situated in ‘the land of Rameses.’ Brugsch has made it probable that ‘the city of Ramses’ referred to in an Egyptian papyrus was Zoan itself.[151]
If Ramses II. was the Pharaoh of the Oppression, the Pharaoh of the Exodus will have been one of his immediate successors. The choice lies between Meneptah II., who succeeded him, his grandson, the feeble Seti II., and the usurper Si-Ptah, with whom the dynasty came to an inglorious end. The Egyptian legend of the Exodus given by Manetho places it in the reign of Meneptah; and a stela discovered at Thebes in 1896 by Professor Petrie makes any other dating difficult. Here the ‘Israelites’ are spoken of as having been brought low, ‘so that no seed should be left to them’; and since their name alone is without the determinative of locality which is added to the names of all the other conquered populations associated with them, we may conclude that they had already been lost in the desert, and, so far at any rate as was known to the Egyptian scribe, had no fixed local habitation.[152] As this was in the fifth year of Meneptah’s reign, B.C. 1276, according to Dr. Mahler’s chronology, the Exodus from Egypt may be approximately assigned to B.C. 1277. The period of oppression, according to the calculation in Gen. xv. 13, would consequently have commenced in B.C. 1677, or nearly a hundred years before the expulsion of the Hyksos.
It must be remembered, however, that the date is more precise in appearance than in reality. It depends partly on the accuracy of Dr. Mahler’s calculations, which is disputed by Professors Eisenlohr and Maspero, partly on our regarding the round number 400 as representing an exact period of time. If we knew in what year of Ramses II.’s long reign of sixty-seven years the stela of Sân was inscribed, we should be better able to check the reckoning. As it is, we have to be grateful for what we have already learned from the excavated monuments of the past, and to look forward with confidence to more light and certainty in the future.