204 TffE SHEFHERB KINGS OF EGYPT, 



cannot definitely say, but it is evident that he died before the birth of 

 the young Jabez^ — Mceris, who acted as regent, not standing in this 

 relation to his royal \^ard. As far as I can at present discover, Tlas or 

 Jediael occupied the position of father or stepfather to young Jabez, 

 I have already indicated that the plac-e named after him in 1 Chron. 

 ii. 55 ia really Thebes or Tei Jabez, the chief god of which was hi& 

 maternal ancestor Am^mon, and which acquired the Bible name of 

 No-Ammon. Monuments relating to monarchs of the twelfth dynasty 

 have been found at Thebes. It very probably existed before, but the 

 name of Jabez must have superseded any former designation at the time 

 of the conquest of the region in which it was situated by PhiopSv 

 Medinet Abou, the modern name of part of this ancient city, 

 commemorates Jabez. He is Apis the bull, and the god of the Kile 

 who superseded Jehaleleel, as he had sitperseded his grandfather 

 Ashchur, in giving a name to the river. Abydos may not improbably 

 have been a lengthened or full form of this monarch's name as Jabets, 

 a supposition which the fact of a god Besa having been worshipped 

 there tends to rescue from- the class of mere conjectures. The 

 striking statements of the Book of Chronicles regarding one who 

 appears in a line of Egyptian Pharaohs can apply to no other than- 

 the young king to whom Joseph was as a father, (Genesis xlv. 8), 

 and who, doubtless by virtue of the instructions of that son of 

 Israel, became the worshipper of the true God, thus incurring the 

 inveterate hatred of subsequent dynasties of idolaters, to whose 

 minds he appeared the symbol of all that was evil and impious. Th^ 

 scribes of Thebes were famous even in the time of Herodotus, and 

 seem to have been so for ages. Will some leai-ned interpreter of 

 the Theban records restore the names and deeds of the Tirathites, 

 Shimeathites and Suchathites, who came of the Kenite Hemath, the 

 father of the house of Rechab (1 Chron. ii, 55), to a place among the 

 historical characters of antiquity 1 



Among the Shepherds we find, in one list preceding, in another 

 following Apophis or Jabez, the noteworthy name Archies. He is a 

 veritable Hercules, and is indeed the man whose name has been 

 applied to many heroes of antiquity. In him we have no difficulty 

 in seeing the Acharchel, son of Harum., whose families (1 Chron. iv. 

 8,) are said to belong to the line of Coz. His father must furnish 

 the name Hermes to Greece, and in Egypt is, I think, Armais, the 

 head of the Hermotybians, and, perhaps, the founder of Hermonthis 

 or Erment. As Armais, he appears in the eighteenth dynasty, which 



