# Ancient Egypt, Her Testimony to the Truth of the Bible/Chapter I

CHAPTER I.
The remains of ancient Egypt are the monuments of a religion and polity which prevailed at a period far earlier than any other of which similar memorials are now in existence. The ruins of Thebes illustrate an epoch which precedes by at least a thousand years that of the ruins of Athens. The manners, customs and modes of thought that prevailed in Egypt, and of which its temples and tombs have preserved the record, are therefore those of an age of the world which is removed from the classic era by so wide an interval, that the one cannot, of necessity, be of any material service for the illustration of the other. They must be applied, we repeat, to the events of far earlier periods, before their real illustrative value can be made apparent.
The ample materials furnished by these remains, afford certain traces or memorials of the great event recorded in Scripture to have occurred on the plains of Shinar in Mesopotamia (Gen. xi. 1–9), in which the whole human race participated, and which issued in ​the first colonisation of Egypt as well as of all other ancient kingdoms. These we now proceed to consider.
§ 1. FIRST COLONISATION OF EGYPT.
The monumental indications of the fact, that Egypt was first colonised from the north east, are very apparent.
It will be found on attentively examining this part of the book of the dead, that the soul was supposed to accompany the sun in the whole of his progress through the lower hemisphere, from his setting to his rising.
THE THREE NILES.
There is a passage in the book of the dead which immediately follows the commencing scene, written under the picture of the bark of the first hour of the night, which gives us the geography of the Meh-moou. It reads thus:—
BARK OF THE SUN IN THE FIRST HOUR OF THE NIGHT.
“This water (which the sun is now navigating) is the pool of Natron which is joined with the pool of the field of the great hall of judgment.” . . . “Moreover the waters of the great hall of judgment are joined with the waters of Abydos, and they (together) are called the way along which father Athom travels . . . when he approaches the mountains of his rising.”
This indirect but plain indication of the eastern origin of the first colonisers of Egypt, is confirmed by the dates of the monuments now in existence. The pyramids of Ghizeh, in the burial place of Memphis, are the most ancient of all the greater remains. Several of the tombs in their immediate vicinity also belong to the same remote period. As we proceed up the valley of the Nile to Beni Hassan and Abydos, the remains are those of the era of Osortasen: while at Thebes, and the regions to the south of it, we scarcely find a trace of any thing that is earlier than the eighteenth dynasty. More satisfactory proof could scarcely be desired that the progress of the first inhabitants of the valley was from Heliopolis upwards, not from Thebes downwards, as has been too hastily assumed by certain modern antiquaries. In this particular, therefore, the monuments of Egypt strongly confirm the scripture account of the first dispersion of mankind from the plains of Shinar.
§ 2. ANCIENT GEOGRAPHY.
The sculptures of Ancient Egypt, whence our knowledge of the geographical notions which prevailed among its inhabitants are to be derived, dates between ​the year 1600 and the year 1460 before the Christian era. Foreign nations are occasionally mentioned on works of art of a higher antiquity, but not to such an extent as to throw any light upon their ideas of the great divisions of the earth, and of the original distribution of the sons of Noah.
These names point very intelligibly to the original and natural division of the human race into the descendants of the three sons of Noah. The Shemites retain the name of their progenitor; the Hamathites represented the Japhetians; while in the tribes already darkened by the burning sun of the tropics, who had first braved the terrors of the deserts to the south and west of Egypt, they recognised the sons of Ham. The vanity of the Egyptians, however, allowed to none of these races the slightest affinity with themselves. They were altogether of another and superior stock, which they erected into a fourth patriarchate at the head of the other three. It is pretty evident that the original genealogies of the several families of mankind had been forgotten in Egypt at the period of the monuments we are now considering. A vague ​recollection of the triple division of the human race, and the name of Shem, seems to have been the extent of their knowledge of it.
that is, פוּטִים, with the Hebrew plural termination. It seems, however, always to denote a country or district, not a people. The inhabitants were included among the ⲛⲁϩⲁⲥⲓ, the general appellation of all the black races.
The countries to the south-east and south of Egypt were designated by the group (Hieroglyphic characters), which contains the elements of the name of כוּשׁ Cush, the second son of Ham (Gen. x. 6,etc.), whose descendants peopled the burning desert of Sinai, and, following the direction of the Red Sea, scattered themselves over the dreary waste which separates it from Egypt, and penetrated the regions to the south of it.
A singular verification of the scripture account of the dispersion of the descendants of Ham arises from these hieroglyphic names. Canaan, the first born, who lost his birthright through his grandfather's curse (Gen.ix. 25, seq.), and is therefore always placed last among his brethren (ch. x. 6, &c.), nevertheless seems to have been allowed the claims of seniority, when the sons of Ham together went forth to the westward from the plains of Shinar (Gen. xi.), and gave his name to the first district at which the emigrants would arrive. The descendants of Cush, the second son, took the next region to the westward, which consisted of the sterile sands of the deserts of Sinai. The fertile valley of the Nile was the happier ​lot of Mizraim, the third son; while the descendants of Phut, the youngest, were driven forth to seek a comfortless home amid the trackless wastes of the Sahara. These names are all found on the monuments of Egypt (for as we shall see hereafter the hieroglyphic name of Canaan is still extant) with the exception of the name of Mizraim, which may however possibly be detected in that of the well known demigod and hero of the Egyptian mythology, Osiris, whose hieroglyphic name is thus written (Hieroglyphic characters). The first character is a throne, the Egyptian word for which is ⲟϭ or ⲟⲩϭ; the second, the eye, denotes the verb ⲓⲣⲓ, to do; together ⲟⲩϭⲓⲣⲓ that is, Osiris. This syllabic mode of writing names, is very uncommon in hieroglyphics; and never used, but when the name is a word foreign to the Egyptian language. The first and last characters of the word Mizraim מצרים are serviles, and may therefore be omitted, or changed, without altering the radical signification, so that there is nothing improbable in the supposition that the Mizraim (מִצְרַיִם) of the Shemites may have been pronounced אוצרי, or יוצרי (either of which would reproduce exactly the elements of the Egyptian word, ⲟⲩϭⲓⲣⲓ) by the descendants of Ham.
The countries to the north east of Egypt were—(Hieroglyphic characters), the land of the shepherds or Canaanites; (Hieroglyphic characters), the land of the ϣⲧⲓ, the identification of which will require our attention hereafter; and (Hieroglyphic characters), ⲛϥⲁⲣⲁⲓⲛ. in which we perceive at once the elements of the Hebrew word נַהֲרַיִם, i.e. Mesopotamia, the well-known native country of Abraham.
​It would appear from hence, that the limits of the geographical knowledge of the Egyptians, at the time of the Exodus, extended to Mesopotamia and Syria in the east and north-east, and to Lud and Javan, by which we are most probably to understand the islands of Cyprus and Crete, to the north.
It is submitted that these geographical indications are by no means destitute of value and importance, as illustrative of the scripture account of the progenitors of mankind, and their first dispersion over the countries adjacent to the plains of Shinar.
* ↑ The first great work of benevolence ascribed to Osiris, was the draining of the marshes to the east of the Delta. Plutarch de Iside et Osiride. Diod. Sic. i. 19.
* ↑ This is mentioned by Ammianus Marcellinus. It also appears from the inscriptions on the obelisks themselves. See the translation of the Flaminian obelisk, by the bishop of Gibraltar. Trans. Roy. Soc. Lit. vol. i. (2nd series), p. 176, seq. 9.
* ↑ I am disposed to think that Athom is אֶדֹם red; the colour of the setting sun.
* ↑ The first character is a symbol, not the letter ⲡ p, as it reads in some other groups. The second character is ⲛ n, which alone would be pronounced en, or, on.
* ↑ See his paper just referred to.
* ↑ A copy of the second part of the book of the dead, was published by the French government,in the “Description de l'Egypte,” p. 72–79. The whole of it has also very recently appeared from a full transcription in the Museum at Turin. It is published at Berlin, under the superintendence of Dr. Lipsius.
* ↑ Herodotus appears to have heard of this tradition in Egypt; he informs us—“It is said that the Nile flows out of the ocean, and that the ocean is the cause of its periodical overflow.”—Eut. c. 21. He confutes this notion in c. 23, saying, “I know of no river that is (a part of) the ocean. I suppose that Homer, or some of the ancient poets, gave rise to this notion by calling the Nile Ὠκέανος.” It would rather appear that the Nile was called Oceanus in Homer's time, because it was supposed that it arose out of the ocean and flowed into the ocean again. In another place of the same book, he relates that the priest of Neith, at Sais, told him, as an undeniable fact, “that the Nile rose out of the earth from a deep cavern between two mountains, called Κρῶφι and Μῶφι, situated in the Thebaid between the city of Synia (Syene) and the island of Elephantine,” c. 28. Herodotus laughs at this account; for, having been himself in the Thebaid, he of course knew better. This is evidently the tradition recorded in the book of the dead. The city of Sais is in the Delta.
* ↑ Euterpe, c. 10.
* ↑ Rosellini, M. R., plates 155 and 156.
* ↑ ⲧⲛⲧⲛ This word signifies in Coptic, “likeness, image.” In hieroglyphics it denotes the form of the idol in which the god, of whom it is predicated, appears: thus, means Ptah, wearing this head dress.
* ↑ The sun took a new body at every hour of the day and night.
* ↑ ⲥϥⲥϣ. This word is not in the Coptic texts. The meaning is indicated by the egg which determines the group, and by the context.
* ↑ See Onomasticon.
* ↑ Vide infra.
* ↑ Lit. The lion-headed goddess ϥⲁⲓⲕⲱⲧ, the fire-bearer, the Egyptian Nemesis.
* ↑ Lit. I offer, I devote.
* ↑ Plate 156.
* ↑ See Gen. xv. 18: “Unto the great river, the river Euphrates.”
* ↑ Herodotus mentions this quadruple division of the human race which was made by the Egyptians:—“οἵ φᾶσι τρία μόρια εἶναι γῆν πᾶσαν, Εὐρῶπην τε καὶ Ἀσίαν καὶ Λιβύην. τέταρτον γαρ δἠ σφέας δεῖ προλογίζεσθαι Αἰγύπτου τό Δέλτα.” Eut. c. xvi.
* ↑ In Coptic letters ⲧⲉⲙϩⲏ: the word signifying north in the Coptic texts is ⲡⲉⲙϩⲓⲧ or ⲧⲉⲙϩⲓⲧ.
* ↑ Rosellini, “Monumenti Istorichi,” vol. iii. part 1. This reading is doubtful. Mr. Birch, with much probability, supposes it to be a pleonasm, and to read—“all the lands of the north,” repeating the indication of the preceding ring.—Gallery of Antiquities, Part ii.
* ↑ See Calmet, voce “Phut.”
* ↑ See Taylor's Cahnet, p. 319.
* ↑ Like the name of Phut.
* ↑ The Phœnician dual  ‍ַ יִן is used instead of the Hebrew  ‍ַ יִם infra, Part II.