JoxE 30, 1882.] 



♦ KNOWJ_EDGE • 



66 



^ >^ MACA21NE OF SqiENCE^ 



PLAINLTY/ORDED -JEXACTLTBESCRIBED , ! 



LONDON: FBIDAY, JUNE 30, 1882. 



Contents op No. 35. 



»Aa». 

 ■Was Ramescs II. the Pharaoh ot 

 the Oppression? By Amelia B. 

 Edwards. III.— The Pharaoh of 



Joseph 65 



Honey Ants. By Grant Alien 66 



How to Ride a Tricycle. By John 



Home Cures for Poisons .... 



The Amateur Electrician - 



trie Generators 



Electromania. By "W. Mattiei 



Williams .'. 



A Surgeon's Tools: Clean or Un 



Weather Chart for the Week 74 



Star Map for July 73-78 



CoBRBSPOXDSMCE ; Tobacco and 



Consumption— The Fever Tree,&c. 79 



Answers to Correspondents 52 



Oar Mathematical Column 83 



Our Whist Column S4 



Onr Chess Column 85 



WAS RAMESES II. THE PHARAOH 

 OF THE OPPRESSION? 



By Amelia B. Edwards. 

 III.— THE PHARAOH OF JOSEPH. 



BUT, it will be asked, ■what was the name of this 

 Pharaoh, and what place did he occupy in the suc- 

 cession of Hykshos kings ] 



Tradition, represented by the Byzantine monk, George 

 Syncellus before mentioned, and also by John of Antioch, 

 of whose work only a few fragments are preserved (see 

 Miiller : Fragmenta JiistoricorJivi f/racoriini, vol. iv., 

 p. 555), assigns the name of Aphobis to the Pharaoh whose 

 dream was intei-preted by Joseph. Now Aphobis, or 

 Aphophis, is the Greek way of writing Apapi ; and Apapi 

 was a name borne by at least two Hykshos rulers, one of 

 whom belongs to the 15th and one to the 17th dynasty. 

 Of the first Apapi nothing is known but his name. It is 

 the second Apapi nnder whom Joseph is believed to have 

 tlourished; and this Apapi — the Apapi of the 17th 

 dynasty— was the last of the Hykshos kings. It was in 

 his time that a tributary prince of Thebes, Rasekenen 

 Ta-aken, raised the war of national independence wliich 

 ended in the expulsion of the shepherds. Sphinxes and 

 statues engraved with the name of Apapi have been found 

 in the mounds of Sfm (the Zoan of the Bible) where the 

 Hykshos est.ablished their capital ; and a succinct contem- 

 porary account of the war of independence is found at El 

 Kab, Upper Egypt, sculptured on the walls of the toml. of 

 a certain naval officer named Aaiimes, whose father servetl 

 on the legitimate side under Rasekenen Ta-aken, and who 

 was himself distinguished for personal valour tliroughout 

 the later campaigns of that same war, when the fortresses 

 of Avaris and Sherohan were besieged and taken, and the 

 Hykshos were driven from their la.st strongholds. In 

 Apapi II., therefore, we are dealing with an historical 

 personage ; and in all that relates to the war of liberation 

 and the expulsion of the usurpers, we are dealing with 

 historical facts. The Sphinxes of Apapi arc liuman- 

 headed, and in their hard-featured, melancholy faces not 

 only preserve the record of a singular and distinct Asiatic 



or Asiatic-Scythian type, but in all probability hand down 

 to us tlie poi-trait of the king himself. The fortress-camp 

 of Avaris (in Egyptian Ha-uar) exists to this day in the 

 mounds of Tel Herr ; and as for Rasekenen Ta-aken, Prince 

 of Thebes, and King Ahmes I., by whom Apapi was 

 expelled and Avaris captured, their mummies were both 

 found last summer in the famous hiding-plate at Dayr-el- 

 Baharee, and are now on view in the Museum of Boolak. 



Historians are agreed in representing the war of libera- 

 tion as a very long war, and Professor Maspero attributes 

 to it a duration of more than 1 50 years. I venture, how- 

 ever, to think that the hypothesis which makes Joseph the 

 interpreter of Apapi's dream is incompatiljle with the 

 hypothesis of so very long a war. 1 would even 

 go so far as to suggest that Joseph must not only 

 have risen to power under some earlier Hykshos king, 

 but that the war did not, Ln all probaliijity, last 

 longer than thirty years. Let us frst take the 

 internal evidence of the Bible narrative. That narrative 

 relates to the youth and prime of Joseph, and the scene is 

 evidently laid in a time of profound peace. There is plenty 

 in the land, and there is famme in the land, and people 

 come from far and near to buy and sell ; but there is no 

 hint of either internal or external strife. It is even said 

 that Joseph, after he had bought up the land for Pharaoh, 

 removed the people to cities " from one end of the 

 borders of Egypt even to the other end thereof ; " a 

 precautionary measure which, by the way, was pecu- 

 liarly Egyptian, and which Barneses II. is especiallj- 

 recorded to have taken in dealing with captives from the 

 north and captives from the south, whom he transplanted 

 in enormous gangs, from one extremity of the country to the 

 other. But neither Rameses II. nor Joseph could have s'> 

 transplanted large bodies of either citizens or captives, if 

 the whole of Upper Egypt had been in arms. Seeing, 

 .also, with what minuteness of detail the early biography 

 of Joseph is given, it seems impossible that no mention 

 should be made of a harassing and prolonged civil war, if 

 such a war had at that time distracted the country. 

 Besides, it is expressly stated that "Joseph was thirty 

 years old when he stood before Pharaoh ; " and although 

 the age at which ho is said to have died — namely, 110 

 years — was a typical phrase in use among the ancient 

 Egyptians to express the ideal length of days, and is, there- 

 fore, not perhaps to be accepted literally, yet it is certain 

 that Joseph lived to be a very aged man ; so aged that he 

 may well have flourished under two, or even under three. 

 Pharaohs. Be this as it may, however, I do not think wc 

 can be very far wrong if we place the promotion of Joseph 

 under the predecessor of Apapi ; nor if we conclude that, 

 Iiaving, as an old man, witnessed the beginning and greater 

 part of the war of liberation, he died, was embalmed, and 

 " put in a coflin in Egypt," towards the end of the reign of 

 Apapi, the last Hykshos king. 



The immediate predecessor of Apapi is identified by Pr. 

 Birch* with a cirtaiii Hykshos Pharaoh calknl Sut-aa peh- 

 peh (or Sut-aa-peli ti) Nubti, whose name appears on a tablet 

 discovered by the late Mariette Pasha in the ruins of SSn 

 (the Zoan of the Hebrews, the Tanis ot the Greeks), where 

 the Hykshos established their capital city. In this tablet, 

 which was put up by a certain governor of the province who 

 held office under Rameses II., it is recorded that the king 

 ordered the tablet to bo made in honour of his ancestors, 

 and that the governor came to Zain "on the 4th day of 

 the month of :Mesori (the twelfth month of the year) of 

 the lOOtli year of Sutraa-peh-peh Nubti, Son of the Sun." 

 in order to be present at the festival of its installation. 



See " Records of the Part," toI. vi. p. 36. 



