14 EEV. A. H. SAYCE, M.A., LL.D. 



and it was not until the end of that fatal period, that Ameno- 

 phis returned from Ethiopia with his son Sethos, and expelled 

 the enemy under their leader Osarsiph, who had assumed the 

 name of Moses. Sethos is plainly Seti II., Rameses being 

 Rameses II., and Amenophis his son Meneptah, in whose reign, 

 as we now know, the Exodus must have taken place. Oros, 

 whose conduct Amenophis desired to imitate, was a king of 

 the 18th Dynasty, and takes the place of Khu-en-Aten in the 

 list of Manetho. In the tablets of Tel el-Amarna, Khu-en- 

 Aten is usually called Nimkhururiya, corresponding to the 

 prsenomen hitherto read by Egyptologists, Nofer-kheperu-Ra; 

 but, as we have seen, Subbi-kuzbi, in the letter mentioned 

 above, gives him the abbreviated title of Khuriya, which is 

 exactly the Oros of Manetho. It would appear, then, that the 

 Egyptian legend has mixed together Amenophis IV., under 

 whom the Semites and their religion became predominant in 

 Egypt, with Meneptah, the Pharaoh of the Exodus. As Pro- 

 fessor Erman has pointed out, Amenophis, the son of Pa- Apis, 

 must be Amen-hotep, the son of Hapi, who erected the 

 colossus of Memnon at Thebes during the reign of Amen- 

 ophis III. 



So far as the date of the Exodus is concerned, the newly- 

 found tablets confirm the conclusions already arrived at 

 by Egyptology, and so brilliantly verified by M. Naville's 

 discovery of the site of Pithom. At the close of the 18th 

 Dynasty, Palestine was still Canaanite; the Israelitish inva- 

 sion had not as yet taken place, and the only foreign dominion 

 acknowledged by its cities was that of Egypt. Between 

 Canaan and Egypt, indeed, there was close and constant 

 intercourse. The towns of Palestine were garrisoned by 

 Egyptian troops, and, though its governors bore Semitic names, 

 they were officials of the Egyptian king. Egyptian influence 

 and supremacy extended through Syria as far as the banks of 

 the Euphrates ; the Hittite conquests in the north and the 

 Israelitish conquests in the south had not as yet driven Egypt 

 back into Africa, and separated the eastern and western 

 portions of the educated world one from the other. 



How highly educated this old world was we are but just 

 beginning to learn. But we have already learnt enough to 

 discover how important a bearing it has on the criticism of 

 the Old Testament. It has long been tacitly assumed by the 

 critical school that writing was not only a rare art in Palestine 

 before the age of David, but was practically unknown. Little 

 historical credence can be placed, it has been urged, in the 

 earlier records of the Hebrew people, because they could not 

 have been committed to writing until a period when the 



