63 
against him. And the confusion arisiug from the long civil 
war which ensued, makes the exact date of Chins:-tana-’s reign 
less clear than it otherwise would be; but since the two reigns, 
which include a period of sixty-five years, contain the time of 
the seven years' famine in Egypt, we have fair grounds for 
assuming that in the two statements we have a record of one 
and the same event. 
44. Mariette Bey's discovery of a stele in the ruins of the 
great temple at Tanis (the Zoan of Scripture), bearing a date 
of “ the year 400," affords further confirmation of the correct- 
ness of this chronology. The stele was erected by Rameses the 
Great, in honour of “ Sutech, the god of the Shepherds," in 
which mention is made of the 400th year of the era of Nubti 
at the time when the tablet was set up. Egyptologers are 
tolerably well agreed as to the exact meaning of the term 
Nubti. De Rouge considers that “the name Nubti belongs 
to the Dynasty of the Shepherd Kings, and that Rameses liked 
to trace back his genealogy to him," adding that “ Nubti is 
the Egyptian name for the god Sutech."* I have endeavoured 
to show in a previous paperf the grounds for believing that 
Sutech was the national god of Syria, and that the Pharaoh who 
so readily recognized the power by which Joseph had interpreted 
his dream, saying, “ Forasmuch as God has showed thee all this,” 
& c., accords with what Moses wrote — “ A Syrian ready to 
perish was my father, and he went down into Egypt and 
sojourned there, &c." (Deuteronomy xxvi. 5.) Hence it is not 
improbable that “the era Nubti," or Sutech, may have taken 
its rise from Pharaoh's recognition of Sutech as “ the god of 
the Hebrews " ; and this agrees chronologically with what 
Egyptologers have assumed for the commencement of the Nubti 
era upon totally different grounds. M. Vincent, a member of 
the French Institute, asserts that B.C. 1801 is the exact year 
for the beginning of the era,J and Joseph's viceroyalty com- 
menced, according to the Hebrew chronology, B.C. 1803. Now, 
counting on 400 years, we are brought to the date B.C. 1401, 
at which time all are agreed that Rameses the Great was 
reigning in Egypt. It is, of course, not certain when “the 
Nubti era " commenced, whether as I have suggested, or as 
Mariette considers with the commencement of the rule of the 
* Revue Arclieologique, 1864, vol. x. p. 180 ; and for Mariette’s account 
of the stele, see Revue Arch., 1865, vol. xi. p. 169. 
f Journal of the Transactions of the Victoria Institute , Vol. VI. p. 99. 
£ Revue Arclieologique, 1864, p. 489. 
