early Egyptian History, 187 



Egypt, but are stated to have been absent in Ethiopia. If the 

 Exodus occurred during the reign of any of the kings of the 

 eighteenth dynasty, it could only have been in the reign of the 

 immediate predecessor of Sesostris j since his conquests in 

 Phoenicia, and his expeditions against the Assyrians and Medes, 

 must have brought him in contact with the Israehtes, had they 

 been then residing in the Holy Land, so as at least to have 

 caused some mention to have been made in their history of the 

 passages of so great a conqueror. But presuming Amenophis, 

 father and predecessor of Sesostris, to have been the Pharaoh of 

 the Exodus, the wandering of the Israelites in the desert for 

 forty of the fifty-five years ascribed to the reign of Sesostrisi, is a 

 sufficient explanation of his being unnoticed in the Jewish his- 

 tory ; whilst the fact of that nation having been subject to the 

 Egyptians during the reign of Ousirei^ commencing 124 years 

 before the death of Amenophis, is attested by the paintings on 

 the wall of one of the chambers of the tomb of that king, dis-* 

 covered by Belzoni, and with which we are so well acquainted 

 by means of the model exhibited in England. 



Whilst recalling to recollection the peculiar physiognomy of 

 the Jews pourtrayed in that tomb, — and which is as character- 

 istic of their present physiognomy as if it had been painted in 

 the present age, instead of above 3000 years ago, — the equally 

 well characterized, but very different physiognomy of the Phce-. 

 nician shepherds, represented on the monuments of the same 

 period, is decisive of the error of Josephus, who imagined the 

 Jews and the Shepherds to be the same people. The Phoeni-, 

 cian shepherds, long the inveterate enemy of the Egyptians, form 

 a leading feature as captives, in the representations of the ex- 

 ploits of the monarchs who conducted the warfare against them. 

 These people are always painted with blue eyes and light hair ; 

 and it is not a little curious to see assembled on the wall of the 

 same apartment, different races, so distinctly characterised as 

 the Jew, the Phoenician, the Egyptian, and the Negro ; the 

 latter in colour, and in the outline of the features, in painting 

 and in sculpture, precisely as at present; all, moreover, inhabi- 

 tants of countries not very distant from each other, and at a 

 period when not more than twelve or thirteen centuries had 

 passed since all these races had descended from a single parent. 

 In the writings which attempt to explain from p?^tural causes 



