(Egyptian Pi-tum, "House of the god Tum") in 1883, found much work of Ramses II there, including colossal statues of this king, and also found no evidence that there had been any town of importance on the site before.1 The name of the other city, Raamses, also points to the same king, since Ramses I, the only other king of the name Egypt had known, reigned less than two years-a time insufficient for the building of a city. The Bible evidently refers, then, to Ramses II. Concerning Ramses II and his reign much is now known, as has been pointed out in § 6 (7); (see Fig. 10).

All through the nineteenth dynasty peoples from Syria were employed by the kings on public works. Among these was a people called 'prw= Aperu or Apuri, which some have thought to be Hebrews. Whether the Hebrews are really mentioned in this way is doubted by others, for references to the 'prw do not cease at the time the Exodus of Israel must have occurred. They were employed by Ramses IV, of the twentieth dynasty, as late as 1165 B. c.

Much has been learned from archæology about Egyptian brickmaking, and it corresponds to the description of it given in Exodus. We have pictures of men at the work. No one thought of burning bricks in Egypt. The clay was moulded and dried in the sun. Straw was mixed with the clay to increase its adhesive quality. Naville says that some of the corners of some of the buildings at Pithom were actually built of bricks without straw. (See Exod. 57-18; and Fig. 11.)

The name Pithom continued as one of the names of this storecity or fortress until at least 250 B. C., for it is found on a pillar which Ptolemy Philadelphus set up there, but side by side with this name the place, all through its history, bore the name Thakut, which is philologically the Egyptian equivalent of the Hebrew Succoth. As this was the first station of the Hebrews when they left Egypt (Exod. 12:37; 13: 20; Num. 33: 5, 6), Naville holds that the Hebrews, after leaving the land of Goshen, must have passed out on the south side of the Isthmus of Suez.

Petrie believes that in the winter of 1905-1906 he discovered the city of Raamses2 at Tell el-Retabeh, eight miles west of the site of Pithom, on the Wady Tumilat. The objects found here show that the site was occupied in the time of the Old Kingdom and onward, but as Ramses II and Ramses III both set up here statues

1 See Naville, The Store-City of Pithom and the Route of the Exodus, 4th ed., London, 1903. * See Petrie, Hyksos and the Israelite Cities, p. 28. f.

of themselves, and erected important buildings, and as the location is the only one that fulfils the conditions of the city Raamses, Petrie feels confident that this was the site. This view receives some confirmation from the title of an officer who served here under Ramses III, and who is called: "Chief archer, keeper of the granaries, keeper of the palace; chief archer, keeper of the granaries of Arabia (or Syria)."

Merneptah, who is generally supposed to have been the Pharaoh under whom the Exodus occurred, was not drowned in the Red Sea, as some have wrongly inferred from Exod. 14 : 23-28, but was duly buried like his predecessors. His mummy has been found and is now in the Gizeh Museum at Cairo.

Merneptah in the fifth year of his reign set up a hymn of victory on a pillar in a temple erected by his father, Ramses II. This hymn, discovered by Petrie in 1896, is famous as the only writing outside the Bible that mentions Israel by name. A part of it is translated in Part II, p. 311, where its bearing on the Exodus is discussed; (see Fig. 15).

(5) Campaign of Sheshonk I.-The record on a wall of the temple of Karnak in Egypt by Sheshonk I, the Shishak of 1 Kings 14:25, of his campaign in Palestine, confirms the statement of Kings and puts the whole campaign in a new perspective. It is treated in detail in Part II, p. 359, f.

(6) Papyri Discovered at Elephantine.-In recent years papyri discovered at Elephantine, an island in the First Cataract, reveal the existence of a Jewish colony there, which had a Jewish temple on the island. This colony was established there at some time during the twenty-sixth dynasty, and was thus one of the earliest of those Jewish settlements in foreign countries which formed the dispersion. A number of the records of these papyri, which relate the fortunes of this temple, the relations of this colony to their Egyptian neighbors and their knowledge of the law, are translated in Part II, p. 387, ff. The origin of the colony is also discussed there.

(7) The Palace of Hophra.-Hophra, of the twenty-sixth dynasty, was, as noted in § 6 (9), the king who lured Judah to her ruin. Petrie in 1907 discovered his palace at Memphis. The discovery makes Hophra seem a little more real.1

(8) The Castle at Tahpanhes.-We learn from Jer. 43:7, 8 and

1 See Petrie, The Palace of Apries, London, 1909.

44:1 that, after the destruction of Jerusalem, Jeremiah with many other Jews fled to Tahpanhes in Egypt and established a Jewish colony there. Jeremiah, as a symbolical act, was directed to hide some stones in the cement of the tiled area of the court of Pharaoh's house there (Jer. 43:8). Tahpanhes was the Daphne of the Greeks. It was on the site of the modern Tell Defenneh. This was in ancient times the easternmost city of the northern Delta. A hundred and fifty miles of desert stretched away to the east of it, until one came to the gardens of Gaza in Palestine. Petrie excavated Tell Defenneh in 1883-1884, and discovered the large castle there, which is probably the building in which Jeremiah buried his stones. This was the last act of Jeremiah's life of which we have any record. He was then an old man and apparently died soon afterward, probably at Tahpanhes, certainly in Egypt.

(9) The Jewish Temple at Leontopolis.-Josephus tells us twice, once in his Antiquities of the Jews, Book XIII, Chapter III, and again in his Wars of the Jews, Book VII, Chapter X, that, when Jonathan, the Maccabee, was made high priest of the Jews, about 153 B. C., Onias, the son of Onias III, the deposed high priest, went to Egypt and obtained a grant of land and permission to build a Jewish temple. This land was in the region of the city of Bubastis, the nome where the cat goddess was sacred, and was accordingly called by the Greeks Leontopolis. There were at this time about as many Jews in Egypt as in Palestine, and doubtless Ptolemy VII thought to keep them more loyal by granting them a temple. He gave to Onias the revenues of a considerable territory for the support of the temple. Josephus tells us that Onias urged as a reason for the construction of this temple that it would be in fulfilment of the prophecy in Isa. 19: 19-22. Josephus goes on to say that this temple was built as an exact reproduction of the temple at Jerusalem and that it continued to exist as a place of worship until after the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, when troubles caused by Jewish zealots led the Roman government to close the temple at Leontopolis and discontinue its worship; (see Fig. 12).

The site of this temple was at Tell el-Yehudiyeh, the "Tell of the Jewess," about 20 miles north of Cairo. This tell was excavated by Petrie in 1905-1906. He found there remains of the Jewish temple, which fully confirm the statements of Josephus. Not only the temple, but the form of the Jewish settlement, was made as far as possible a replica of the city of Jerusalem. One of the

most interesting discoveries was a series of ovens for the roasting of Paschal lambs. Others of a similar character were found higher up in the mound, but this first series was most numerous. Petrie infers that the temple was dedicated by a great Passover Feast, to which Jews came in large numbers from throughout Egypt;1 (see Fig. 13).

(10) Papyri from Oxyrhynchus.-About 123 miles south of Cairo and nine miles to the west of the Nile lies the town of Behnesa, which the Greeks called Oxyrhynchus, from a sharp-nosed fish which was sacred there. Since 1897 Grenfell and Hunt, two English explorers, have been season after season exploring the rubbish heaps of the old town. The inhabitants committed the contents of their waste-baskets to the sands, and on account of the dry climate these have never decayed. Here were found the "Sayings of Jesus," some of the documents concerning the Roman census, and some of the letters translated in Part II, pp. 432, ff., 440, ff., as well as many remains of the works of classical authors. Similar documents have been found in other parts of Egypt, but no other site has yielded as many as Oxyrhynchus.

(11) Discoveries in Nubia.-During the winter of 1908-1909 MacIver explored at Karanog in Nubia for the University of Pennsylvania. He found in a cemetery many remains of the civilization of the Christian Nubians. They still called their queen Candace (see Acts 8:27), fed her on milk, and regarded obesity as an attribute of royalty. More will be known of the Nubians of this period when the inscriptions discovered at Karanog and at Shablul, deciphered by Mr. Griffith, have been more completely studied. The explorations of the English at Meroe have afforded a connected view of the development of this Nubian civilization. They found there the remains of an early period extending from about 650-400 B. C., which was followed by about a century when the royal residence was elsewhere, a middle period from 300 to 1 B. C., during the latter part of which Hellenic influences were felt, and a late period, from 1 to 350 A. D., during which Roman forms of art penetrated the country.2

1 See Petrie, Hyksos and the Israelite Cities, p. 191, ff.

2 See Annals of Archæology and Anthropology, VII, Liverpool, 1914, pp. 1–10.

CHAPTER II

BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA

THE LAND. THE PRESERVATION OF ANTIQUITIES. THE DISCOVERY OF ANTIQUITIES: By Benjamin of Tudela. By Rich. By Botta and Place. By Layard. By Loftus and Rawlinson. By Oppert and Rassam. By George Smith. By Sarzec. By Peters, Ward, and Haynes. By Koldeway. By Andrae. By de Morgan. By Harper and Banks. By Genouillac. THE DECIPHERMENT OF THE INSCRIPTIONS: By Niebuhr. By Grotefend, De Sacy, and Rawlinson. Babylonian column. Babylonian-Semitic. CHRONOLOGY. OUTLINE OF THE HISTORY: The prehistoric period. Sumerians. The PreBabylonian period. "Stele of the Vultures." The early Babylonian period. Kassites. Pashe dynasty. The early Assyrian period. The second Assyrian period. The NeoBabylonian period. The Persian period. The Greek and Parthian periods. DISCOVERIES WHICH ILLUMINE THE BIBLE.

1. The Land. The Mesopotamian Valley, as the great region watered by the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers is called, in many respects resembles Egypt, although in other respects it differs strikingly from Egypt. The country is like Egypt in that it is formed by rivers; it differs from Egypt in that it has two rivers instead of one. In late geologic time the Persian Gulf extended far up toward the Mediterranean. All of what was Babylonia has been formed by detritus (silt) brought down by the Tigris and the Euphrates. The process of forming land is still going on. At the head of the Persian Gulf about seventy feet a year is still formed in this way, or a mile in about seventy-five years.

Both the Tigris and the Euphrates rise in the mountainous regions of Armenia, on opposite sides of the same range of mountains. The melting of the snows on these mountains gives both rivers, like the Nile, a period of overflow. As the source of the Tigris is on the south side of the mountains, it begins to rise first. Its rise begins about the first of March, its overflow is at its height in May, and the water recedes in June or July. The Euphrates begins to rise about the middle of March, continues to rise until June, and does not recede to its ordinary level until September. The soil thus formed is of rich materials, and the retreating flood leaves it each year well watered and softened for agriculture. Here, as in Egypt, one of the earliest civilizations of the world developed.