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Topic:
Egypt
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" (Isa. 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" (Isa. 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 (Hos. 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. 1348-1281), 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 (Jer. 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" (Ex. 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 (Josh. 10:3), and Jabin, king of Hazor (11:1); also the
Hebrews (Abiri) are said to have come from the desert. The principal
prophecies of Scripture regarding Egypt are these, Isa. 19; Jer. 43:
8-13; 44:30; 46; Ezek. 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 Jer. 46:19,
Ezek. 30:13.
Contributor: George Frederick Wright
Derived from Easton's and Smith's Bible Dictionaries
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