Lesley.] '^1'^ [May, 



must have disappointed her husband's pious expectation ; for, her son Ma- 

 nasseh was a Jehovah hater ; reversed all his father's arrangements ; re- 

 established idolatry ; erected altars to the solar and lunar deities in the 

 courts of the Temple ; degraded the priesthood, and slew the prophets. 

 , Hezekiah's policy had been to ally himself with Egypt against Syria. It 

 was unsuccessful, and he was saved by a mysterious disaster to the Assyrian 

 host while it lay encamped in face of an Egyptian army. 



Hezekiah's alliance with Egypt was no doubt permanent. 



Did he marry an Egyptian princess ? 



This is not said ; but neither is Hephzibah's parentage given. The name 

 Hephzi-bah is suspicious. It is capable indeed of a plain Hebrew ety- 

 mology ; but the main element in it Hapz, favor, delight, is an exact 

 translation of the most common element in all the Egyptian royal and 

 princely names, Meri, beloved. The great Ramses was surnamed Meri-n- 

 Ba, ieloved of the Sun, or the Sun's delight, which would be translated into 

 Hehrew Heplizi-shemesh.* And a hundred other royal Egyptian names and 

 surnames are constructed by composition with this same elemental Meri, 

 applied to various other deities, like Meri-n-Pta7i, Ptal's delight ; Meri-n- 

 hathor, Hathor's delight, &c.f It would be even possible that Hephtzibah, 

 HPZI-BE may mean Be's delight ; were any deity known named BE. 



* The 36th King of the 2d Tablet Abydos is Ra-meri, Sun's delight. 



fWhen Alexander's conquest grecised the Egyptian court language, the Greek 

 (I'lloq took the place of this meri in official titles, and in comparative philology 

 is its phonetic equivalent. 



The flrst Ptolemy Lagidos was called 8oter. " the preserver," by the Bhodians, 

 grateful for his assistance against Demetrius. 



His son, born in Memphis, educated by men of Egyptian learning, builder of 

 Arsinoe and Berenice, completer of the great canal, constructer of the great high 

 road across the Thebaid, founder of the Ethiopian colonial entrep6ts, and re- 

 storer of Egypt to its ancient glory, was glorified by the natives as their great 

 patron of the ancient learning. His library possessed 400,000 rolls. Callimachus, 

 Euclid, Aristarchus, Aratus, Theocritus, ApeHes, Manetho illustrated his court, 

 compiled history, taught science and translated the Hebrew Bible. 



The Egyptians gave him or he gave himself the surnamie Philadelphus, to ex- 

 press his ardent love for Arsinoe, his sister (and wife). But surely such a name 

 would not have been adopted except in a land, the ancient monarchs of which 

 had so often compounded their surnames, on the same principle, with the 

 word Meri, " loving," or " beloved of,"— and usually some divinity. Arsinoe was 

 Ptolemy's goddess, as Hathor had been of many an older native Pharaoh. 



Ptolemy III, Euergetes, received his surname from the Egyptian priesthood, 

 in reward for bringing back to their proper shrines a multitude of divine statues 

 which Cambyses had carried off to Persia. He also loved and married his own 

 sister Berenice, and revenged an affront to her by conquering Antioehus Theos. 

 King of fjyria, and then extended his conquests to Bactria and India. '■'Well 

 done good and faithful servant," cried the priests, " thou shait henceforth be 

 called by the name of the last and greatest Pharaoh of the most ancient days, 

 Snefra, Euergetes, the beneficent, the well doer, the benefactor. He also 

 patronized the ancient learning. (See Lauth's Manetho ; and the Prisse papyrus 

 I, Ch. 2. line, 8.) 



Ptolemy IV, Philopater, could not have been so called (except in derision ) 

 from his filial piety, for he was supposed to have poisoned his father. This 

 wretch who murdered his own mother, wife, sister and brother, was called by 



