68 
51. But it is not the historic fact, so much as the chronolo- 
gical synchronism which we need to prove, and this, as I have 
before remarked, lias been very fully done by Palmer in his 
“ Egyptian Chronicles.” He calls attention to two Egyptian 
inscriptions, from which he draws the following conclusion. 
Pharaoh Shishak, before recording his conquests alluded to 
above, ordered the “ chief architect of all Egypt for the time 
being to quarry stone for this purpose at Silsilis, and he recorded 
his sovereign’s order by an inscription in the quarries, which, 
together with the work itself, was left imperfect at his death, 
but w r as completed by his son and successor. In this tablet, 
which is dated in the twenty-first year of the reign of King 
Shishak, the name of the chief architect to whom the order 
had been first given is recorded as Hor-em-bes-ef. Now, it is 
a well-known fact that in ancient Egypt it was customary for 
the son to inherit the employment or profession and even the 
dignities of the father, just as in England the office of High 
Constable was once hereditary in the family of de Boliun, or as 
that of Earl Marshal is held by the Dukes of Norfolk in the 
present day. 
52. In another quarry on the Cosseir road, between Coptos 
and the Red Sea, there is another inscription dated the forty- 
fourth year of Amasis, who succeeded Pharaoh Hophra, and 
whose reign lasted until the year before the conquest of 
Egypt by Cambyses, which all chronologers are agreed in 
dating B.C. 525. In this inscription the chief architect of all 
Egypt of that time, by name Aahmes-si-Nit, has recorded on 
the rock the pedigree of his ancestors, who had each in turn 
been architects of all Egypt, going back to the twenty-fourth 
generation, i.e. twenty-three generations above his own. Now r 
twenty-four generations calculated backwards at the ordinary 
rate of three to a century, would carry us up 800 years, from 
B.C. 525 to B.C. 1325, i.e. just before, as we have already 
seen, the reign of Rameses III. began. If, therefore, we 
reckon either down from that year B.C. 1325 or up from the 
year B.C. 525 at the afore-named rate of three generations to a 
century, we arrive at the years B.C. 902 to 959 for the eleventh 
name, which proves to be that of Hor-em-bes-ef, occurring just 
where it ought to do — i.e. during the period that we know 
from other sources Pharaoh Shishak was on the throne, and 
Avho had commanded his chief architect to record the order in 
the twenty-first year of his reign. 
53. Palmer observes on this striking confirmation of the 
agreement between the chronologies of Israel and Egypt at this 
period of history: — “ Hor-em-bes-ef is the chief architect of 
