The Eliminator; or, Skeleton Keys to Sacerdotal Secrets. Westbrook Richard Brodhead
historical crux mentioned above, but they introduce us to the family life of the early kings. They picture to us the splendors of the royal palaces; they enable us to assist at the betrothal of the kings’ daughters and to follow the kings to their hunting-grounds. Most of the tablets are letters addressed to Amenophis III., and some are from Tushratta, king of Mesopotamia.
“Amenophis III. was a mighty hunter, and once on a shooting-trip into Mesopotamia after big game he, like a king in a fairy-tale, met and loved Ti, the daughter of Tushratta. They were married in due time, and Ti went down into Egypt with three hundred and seventeen of her principal ladies. This brought a host of their Semitic countrymen along, who found in Egypt a good field for their business capacities, and gradually, like the modern Jews in Russia, got possession of the lands and goods of their hosts. The influence of the Semitic queen is attested by the very fact that this library of cuneiform tablets was preserved. And under the feeble sovereigns who followed, her countrymen doubtless held their own. But at last came the nineteenth dynasty and the Pharaoh ‘who knew not Joseph.’ Then they were set to brick-making and pyramid-building, till the outbreak which led to the Red Sea triumph.
“Mr. Budge, of the British Museum, has translated three of the letters. One is from Tushratta to Ameno-phis. After many complimentary salutations, he proposes to his son-in-law that they should continue the arrangement made by their fathers for pasturing doublehumped camels, and in this way he leads up to the main purport of his epistle. He says that Manie, his great-nephew, is ambitious to marry the daughter of the king of Egypt, and he pleads that Manie might be allowed to go down to Egypt to woo in person. The alliance would, he considers, be a bond of union between the two countries, and he adds, as though by an after-thought, that the gold which Amenophis appears to have asked for should be sent for at once, together with ‘large gold jars, large gold plates, and other articles made of gold.’ After this meaning interpolation he returns to the marriage question, and proposes to act in the matter of the dowry in the same way in which his grandfather acted, presumably on a like occasion. He then enlarges on the wealth of his kingdom, where ‘gold is like dust which cannot be counted,’ and he adds an inventory of presents which he is sending, articles of gold, inlay, and harness, and thirty eunuchs.”
In speaking of the sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt, Dr. Knappert says: “According to the tradition preserved in Genesis, it was the promotion of Jacob’s son, Joseph, to be viceroy of Egypt that brought about the migration of the sons of Israel from Canaan to Goshen. The story goes that this Joseph was sold as a slave by his brothers, and after many changes of fortune received the viceregal office at Pharaoh’s hands through his skill in interpreting dreams. Famine drives his brothers, and afterward his father, to him, and the Egyptian prince gives them the land of Goshen to live in. It is by imagining all this that the legend tries to account for the fact that Israel passed some time in Egypt. But we must look for the real explanation in a migration of certain tribes which could not establish or maintain themselves in Canaan, and were forced to move farther on.”
The author of the Religion of Israel says: “The history of the religion of Israel must start from the sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt. Formerly it was usual to take a much earlier starting-point, and to begin with a discussion of the religious ideas of the patriarchs. And this was perfectly right so long as the accounts of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were considered historical. But now that a strict investigation has shown us that these stories are entirely unhistorical, of course we have to begin the history later on.” The author of The Spirit History of Man says: “The Hebrews came out of Egypt and settled among the Canaanites. They need not be traced beyond the Exodus; that is their historical beginning. It was very easy to cover up this remote event by the recital of mythical traditions, and to prefix to it an account of their origin in which the gods (patriarchs) should figure as their ancestors.”
But how about the Jewish exodus from Egypt? What was the real cause? Whom shall we credit, the writer of the book called Exodus or other writers? What follows differs very much from the Hebrew story.
Lysimachus relates that “a filthy disease broke out in Egypt, and the oracle of Ammon, being consulted on the occasion, commanded the king to purify the land by driving out the Jews (who were infected with leprosy, etc.), who were hateful to the gods. The whole multitude of the people were accordingly collected and driven out into the wilderness.”
Diodorus Siculus says: “In ancient times Egypt was afflicted with a great plague, which was attributed to the anger of God on account of the multitude of foreigners in Egypt, by whom the rites of the native religion were neglected. The Egyptians accordingly drove them out. The most notable of them went under Cadmus and Danaus to Greece, but the greater number followed Moses, a wise and valiant leader, to Palestine.”
Tacitus, the Roman historian, says: “In this clash of opinions one point seems to be universally admitted—a pestilential disease, disfiguring the race of man and making the body an object of loathsome deformity, spreading all over Egypt. Bocchoris, at that time the reigning monarch, consulted the oracle of Jupiter Hammon, and received for answer that the kingdom must be purified by exterminating the infected multitude, as a race of men detested by the gods. After diligent search the wretched sufferers were collected together, and in a wild and barren desert abandoned to their misery. In that distress, while the vulgar herd was sunk in deep despair, Moses, one of their number, reminded them that by the wisdom of his counsels they had been already rescued out of impending danger. Deserted as they were by men and gods, he told them that if they did not repose their confidence in him as their chief by divine commission they had no resource left. His offer was accepted. Their march began, they knew not whither. Want of water was their chief distress. Worn out with fatigue, they lay stretched on the bare earth, heartbroken, ready to expire, when a troop of wild asses, returning from pasture, went up the steep ascent of a rock covered with a grove of trees. The verdure of the herbage round the place suggested the idea of springs near at hand. Moses traced the steps of the animals, and discovered a plentiful vein of water. By this relief the fainting multitude was raised from despair.”
In a learned work on Egypt by Mr. William Oxley of England, published in 1884, the author writes: “Taking the records as we find them, if they are real history, and as Palestine is contiguous to Egypt, we should naturally expect to find some reference to the Israelites in the Egyptian annals, but what does appear in regard to Palestine is certainly not favorable to the assumption that it was the home of the Israelites as a nation. I cull the following from such materials as are at present within reach, partly taken from the Records of the Past:
“It has been generally acknowledged by Egyptian biblicists that ‘the cruel bondage of the Israelites, culminated under the reign of Rameses II., nineteenth dynasty, and that the Exodus took place under his successor, Menephtah I., 1326 b. c., who was drowned in the Red Sea with all his host in his attempt to bring the wanderers back again. But, as I have already said, the tomb of this very king at Thebes contains an inscription to the effect that he had lived to a good old age, and was a child of good-fortune from his cradle to the grave. In the annals of Rameses III., who reigned some fifty or sixty years after the Israelites ought to have been settled in their own land, many references are made to the country in which they were located (according to biblical accounts). The king goes to what is known to us as Palestine, Phœnicia, and Syria to receive the annual tribute from the chiefs/ whom he calls Khetas. In the enumeration of his conquests, extending from Egypt east and northward, he enumerates thirty-eight tribes and peoples, and says: ‘I have smitten every land, and have taken every land in its extent.’ In his reminder to the God Ptah of the benefits he had conferred on the god, the king says: ‘I gave to thy temple from the store-houses of Egypt, Tar-neter, and Kharu (i, e. Palestine and Syria) more numerous offerings than the sand of the sea, as well as cattle and slaves’ (Syrians). He also built a temple to Ammon in the same country, to which ‘the nations of the Rutenna came and brought their tribute.’ Making full allowance for the usual Egyptian flattery, the fact is clear that in the time of this king the Israelites could not have been a settled and distinct people; and the incident of their Exodus would have been too fresh and recent to be passed over without some comment by this vainglorious monarch.
“From a papyrus translated in the Records of the Past (ii. 107), entitled Travels of an Egyptian, who gives a full account of Palestine, etc., it appears there was a fortress there which