1881.] 4:iy [Lesley. 



called the name of his first bom Manasseh ; for God hath made me forget 

 all my toil and all my father's house. And the name of the second called 

 he Ephraim : for God hath caused me to be fruitful in the laud of my 

 aflBiction." The Hebrew Scriptures are full of such punning etymologies 

 of later times when true meanings of the old names had been lost, and 

 new meanings had to be invented and corroborated by fictitious anec- 

 dotes.* 



The fiction is particularly unfortunate in this instance, since the legend- 

 ary name of Joseph's wife and Manassah's mother is Asenath, AS-NUT 

 "image of the goddess Naut, " a perfect!}^ well known Egyptian compound. 

 And the legendary name of her child Manassa, "Image of Menes, agrees 

 strictly with her own." One of the elements in the compound being the 

 same in both names ; and the demigod first Pharaoh Menes being sub- 

 stituted in the name of the boy, for the divine Neith in the name of the 

 mother. 



The name of the founder of Egypt is written MNA, and the etymology 

 claimed for it is got from the verb man or men in its meaning of stability, 

 preserved in the Latin manere, to remain. The word AS is used monu- 

 mentally for throne and statue, and for prince. Both throne and statue 

 represent royalty. Man-Assa would then mean "firmly established 

 royal power." 



Whether this was really the sense ascribed to the name, or whether it 

 was tmderstood in some other sense less abstract, matters not. The only 

 point I wish to illustrate is the pure Egyptian quality of the name of this 

 King of Judah, so closely allied both in his politics and in his religion, 

 with the Egypt of his day. His alliance however availed him little. 

 Egypt was always a broken reed to lean on. Esarhaddon came and 

 Manassah was carried away captive to Babylon, where he probably 

 perished ;f although the priestly tradition is that he repented, was re- 

 stored to his throne, and became a pious Jahvist, dying in peace at the 



* The language of the hieroglyphics was gradually made a " benefit of clergy " 

 in Egypt itself; and it is more than doubtful whether Herodotus was permitted 

 to get the least insight into it. Diodorus shows clearly that in his day, first 

 century B. C. it was a sealed book to the most curious of the Greeks. One of 

 the most striking examples of this ignorance in which even common Egyptians 

 were kept, is adduced by Krall (in his Manetho und Diodor, Sitz. d. K. AK. d. 

 Wiss. 1880, p. 245). Herodotus found on the roads from Ephesus to Phoca?a, and 

 from Sardes to Smyrna, Egyptian monuments which local tradition called 

 images of Memnon, made by Sesostris, on one of which was an inscription in 

 hieroglyphics passing from one shoulder to the other. He gives the following 

 absurd interpretation of it, ^yu) rijy ds ttji^ ^ajpav u)tj.oi(n roiq i/id'.(Tc 

 £XTTj(Tdij.ev, "I have won the country with my shoulders (arms)," as quite- 

 reliable. Knowing nothing of the language, lie had the inscription interpreted 

 for him by one of the Egyptian colonists at Larissa (a city not far to the south- 

 east, founded by the Egy tian confederates in the army of Croesus), who, although 

 an Egyptian, knew as little about the hieroglyphic language as Herodotus liim- 

 self did. 



tin 2 Kings 21 : 18, nothing is said about his repentance, but he is buried in his 

 garden Uzza. 



PROC. AMER. PHILOS. SOC. XIX. 109. 3a. PRINTED JULY 13, 1881. 



