Egypt: The land of the Nile and the pyramids, the oldest kingdom of which we
have any record, holds a place of great significance in Scripture.
The Egyptians belonged to the white race, and their original home is
still a matter of dispute. Many scholars believe that it was in
Southern Arabia, and recent excavations have shown that the valley of
the Nile was originally inhabited by a low-class population, perhaps
belonging to the Nigritian stock, before the Egyptians of history
entered it. The ancient Egyptian language, of which the latest form
is Coptic, is distantly connected with the Semitic family of speech.
Egypt consists geographically of two halves, the northern being the
Delta, and the southern Upper Egypt, between Cairo and the First
Cataract. In the Old Testament, Northern or Lower Egypt is called
Mazor, "the fortified land"
(Isaiah 19:6; 37:25) where the A.V.
mistranslates "defence" and "besieged places"); while Southern or
Upper Egypt is Pathros, the Egyptian Pa-to-Res, or "the land of the
south"
(Isaiah 11:11) But the whole country is generally mentioned under
the dual name of Mizraim, "the two Mazors." The civilization of Egypt
goes back to a very remote antiquity. The two kingdoms of the north
and south were united by Menes, the founder of the first historical
dynasty of kings. The first six dynasties constitute what is known as
the Old Empire, which had its capital at Memphis, south of Cairo,
called in the Old Testament Moph
(Hosea 9:6) and Noph. The native name
was Mennofer, "the good place." The Pyramids were tombs of the
monarchs of the Old Empire, those of Gizeh being erected in the time
of the Fourth Dynasty. After the fall of the Old Empire came a period
of decline and obscurity. This was followed by the Middle Empire, the
most powerful dynasty of which was the Twelfth. The Fayyum was
rescued for agriculture by the kings of the Twelfth Dynasty; and two
obelisks were erected in front of the temple of the sun-god at On or
Heliopolis (near Cairo), one of which is still standing. The capital
of the Middle Empire was Thebes, in Upper Egypt. The Middle Empire
was overthrown by the invasion of the Hyksos, or shepherd princes
from Asia, who ruled over Egypt, more especially in the north, for
several centuries, and of whom there were three dynasties of kings.
They had their capital at Zoan or Tanis (now San), in the
north-eastern part of the Delta. It was in the time of the Hyksos
that Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph entered Egypt. The Hyksos were
finally expelled about B.C. 1600 by the hereditary princes of
Thebes, who founded the Eighteenth Dynasty, and carried the war into
Asia. Canaan and Syria were subdued, as well as Cyprus, and the
boundaries of the Egyptian Empire were fixed at the Euphrates. The
Soudan, which had been conquered by the kings of the Twelfth Dynasty,
was again annexed to Egypt, and the eldest son of the Pharaoh took
the title of "Prince of Cush." One of the later kings of the dynasty,
Amenophis IV., or Khu-n-Aten, endeavoured to supplant the ancient
state religion of Egypt by a new faith derived from Asia, which was a
sort of pantheistic monotheism, the one supreme god being adored
under the image of the solar disk. The attempt led to religious and
civil war, and the Pharaoh retreated from Thebes to Central Egypt,
where he built a new capital, on the site of the present
Tell-el-Amarna. The cuneiform tablets that have been found there
represent his foreign correspondence (about B.C. 1400 He surrounded
himself with officials and courtiers of Asiatic, and more especially
Canaanitish, extraction; but the native party succeeded eventually in
overthrowing the government, the capital of Khu-n-Aten was destroyed,
and the foreigners were driven out of the country, those that
remained being reduced to serfdom. The national triumph was marked by
the rise of the Nineteenth Dynasty, in the founder of which, Rameses
I., we must see the "new king, who knew not Joseph." His grandson,
Rameses II., reigned sixty-seven years (B.C. 1348 and was an
indefatigable builder. As Pithom, excavated by Dr. Naville in 1883
was one of the cities he built, he must have been the Pharaoh of the
Oppression. The Pharaoh of the Exodus may have been one of his
immediate successors, whose reigns were short. Under them Egypt lost
its empire in Asia, and was itself attacked by barbarians from Libya
and the north. The Nineteenth Dynasty soon afterwards came to an end;
Egypt was distracted by civil war; and for a short time a Canaanite,
Arisu, ruled over it. Then came the Twentieth Dynasty, the second
Pharaoh of which, Rameses III., restored the power of his country. In
one of his campaigns he overran the southern part of Palestine, where
the Israelites had not yet settled. They must at the time have been
still in the wilderness. But it was during the reign of Rameses III.
that Egypt finally lost Gaza and the adjoining cities, which were
seized by the Pulista, or Philistines. After Rameses III., Egypt fell
into decay. Solomon married the daughter of one of the last kings of
the Twenty-first Dynasty, which was overthrown by Shishak I., the
general of the Libyan mercenaries, who founded the Twenty-second
Dynasty
(1 Kings 11:40; 14:25,26) A list of the places he captured in
Palestine is engraved on the outside of the south wall of the temple
of Karnak. In the time of Hezekiah, Egypt was conquered by Ethiopians
from the Soudan, who constituted the Twenty-fifth Dynasty. The third
of them was Tirhakah
(2 Kings 19:9) In B.C. 674 it was conquered by the
Assyrians, who divided it into twenty satrapies, and Tirhakah was
driven back to his ancestral dominions. Fourteen years later it
successfully revolted under Psammetichus I. of Sais, the founder of
the Twenty-sixth Dynasty. Among his successors were Necho
(2 Kings 23:29)
and Hophra, or Apries
(Jeremiah 37:5,7,11) The dynasty came to an end in
B.C. 525 when the country was subjugated by Cambyses. Soon
afterwards it was organized into a Persian satrapy. The title of
Pharaoh, given to the Egyptian kings, is the Egyptian Per-aa, or
"Great House," which may be compared to that of "Sublime Porte." It
is found in very early Egyptian texts. The Egyptian religion was a
strange mixture of pantheism and animal worship, the gods being
adored in the form of animals. While the educated classes resolved
their manifold deities into manifestations of one omnipresent and
omnipotent divine power, the lower classes regarded the animals as
incarnations of the gods. Under the Old Empire, Ptah, the Creator,
the god of Memphis, was at the head of the Pantheon; afterwards Amon,
the god of Thebes, took his place. Amon, like most of the other gods,
was identified with Ra, the sun-god of Heliopolis. The Egyptians
believed in a resurrection and future life, as well as in a state of
rewards and punishments dependent on our conduct in this world. The
judge of the dead was Osiris, who had been slain by Set, the
representative of evil, and afterwards restored to life. His death
was avenged by his son Horus, whom the Egyptians invoked as their
"Redeemer." Osiris and Horus, along with Isis, formed a trinity, who
were regarded as representing the sun-god under different forms. Even
in the time of Abraham, Egypt was a flourishing and settled monarchy.
Its oldest capital, within the historic period, was Memphis, the
ruins of which may still be seen near the Pyramids and the Sphinx.
When the Old Empire of Menes came to an end, the seat of empire was
shifted to Thebes, some 300 miles farther up the Nile. A short time
after that, the Delta was conquered by the Hyksos, or shepherd kings,
who fixed their capital at Zoan, the Greek Tanis, now San, on the
Tanic arm of the Nile. All this occurred before the time of the new
king "which knew not Joseph"
(Exodus 1:8) In later times Egypt was
conquered by the Persians (B.C. 525) and by the Greeks under
Alexander the Great (B.C. 332) after whom the Ptolemies ruled the
country for three centuries. Subsequently it was for a time a
province of the Roman Empire; and at last, in A.D. 1517 it fell into
the hands of the Turks, of whose empire it still forms nominally a
part. Abraham and Sarah went to Egypt in the time of the shepherd
kings. The exile of Joseph and the migration of Jacob to "the land of
Goshen" occurred about 200 years later. On the death of Solomon,
Shishak, king of Egypt, invaded Palestine
(1 Kings 14:25) He left a list
of the cities he conquered. A number of remarkable clay tablets,
discovered at Tell-el-Amarna in Upper Egypt, are the most important
historical records ever found in connection with the Bible. They most
fully confirm the historical statements of the Book of Joshua, and
prove the antiquity of civilization in Syria and Palestine. As the
clay in different parts of Palestine differs, it has been found
possible by the clay alone to decide where the tablets come from when
the name of the writer is lost. The inscriptions are cuneiform, and
in the Aramaic language, resembling Assyrian. The writers are
Phoenicians, Amorites, and Philistines, but in no instance Hittites,
though Hittites are mentioned. The tablets consist of official
dispatches and letters, dating from B.C. 1480 addressed to the two
Pharaohs, Amenophis III. and IV., the last of this dynasty, from the
kings and governors of Phoenicia and Palestine. There occur the names
of three kings killed by Joshua, Adoni-zedec, king of Jerusalem,
Japhia, king of Lachish
(Joshua 10:3) and Jabin, king of Hazor
(Joshua 11:1)
also the Hebrews (Abiri) are said to have come from the desert. The
principal prophecies of Scripture regarding Egypt are these,
(Isaiah 19:1)ff
(Jeremiah 43:8-13; 44:30; 46:1)ff
(Ezekiel 29-32,) and it might
be easily shown that they have all been remarkably fulfilled. For
example, the singular disappearance of Noph (i.e., Memphis) is a
fulfilment of
(Jeremiah 46:19; Ezekiel 30:13)
