l»iS-] CKO [Lesley. 



tion of Butau, vodrawn from a Syrinn or Araliiaii point of view. 

 PTero, told to n Pharaoh's son, it is the tale of a peasant's love ; 

 there, told to peasants, it is the story of the amours of a con it. 

 Both pictnres may be copied after some more anticjne ori<>inal ; 

 for love and fealty, jealousy and revenge, remorse and letrihntion 

 have made themselves this universal dress of lep,end in all ages, 

 and among all people, from the earliest inhabitation of the planet. 



As the Hebrew story contains fragments of Arameean or Mes- 

 opotamiau history, we may expect the Egyptian legend to give 

 lis correspondingly valuable hints of the earlier Egyptian history. 

 Its author, or editor, the scribe Aiinana, has interwoAcn with it 

 certain mystical or mythological elements. In fact, he makes 

 use of the love story to introduce wha.t seems to lie a purposely 

 obscured piece of priestly tradition, not only of the then recent 

 civil and religious commotions of the country, but also of the 

 far more ancient, and perhaps equall}' violent introduction of new 

 deities into the national religious S3'stem l>v Pharaohs of the 

 First Empire. 



The Sun-god's daughter was made in tlie Cedar jNlountnin, that 

 is, Mount Lebanon, and brought to Egypt by order of Pharaoh, 

 to be his wife or chief concubine, and consequently to be one of 

 the chief priestesses of the kingdom. This looks like a traditional 

 statement of the fact of the introduction of sun worship from 

 Syria into Egypt. This Sun-god of Syria is not Baal (the 

 Assyrian " Shining Bel "), but Aten, Adonis, Adoni, Adonai, 

 " the Lord " of the Hebrew Scriptures, represented by the solar 

 disk, worshipped bj^ the H^^ksos Pharaohs of the XA^IIth 

 dynasty, and by that part of the Hyksos nation, afterwards, 

 which continued to live, in a subjugated condition, in the Delta, 

 after the other part had been driven back into Syria b}' the native 

 Pharaohs of the XVIIIth and XlXth dynasties. AYhen one ot 

 the Pharaohs, Amunhotep, of the XYIIlth dynasty (the sou of 

 a Syrian concubine of his father, as is supposed) restored for a 

 time the worship of the Hyksos god (of his mother's family ?) he 

 repudiated the Theban Aniun from bis name, and assumed the 

 the name ;/u-n-Aten, persecuting the Theban Amun worshippers, 

 and erasing the name Amun from the monuments of the Empire, 

 and especiall}^ from the Cartouches of his ancestors, the first and 

 second Amunhotep. • Hor-m-heb, the last Pharaoh of the XYIltli 

 dynasty, restored man}' of these defaced Cartouches.* Menephta, 



* See memoir on this subject, by IILiiclis, in the Trans. U. Irish AcaU. 1811. 



