The Pharaohs of the bondage and the exodus

Contents

PAGE THE MODERN LAND OP EGYPT 1 make the land of Egypt utterly waste and desolate, from the tower of Syene even unto the border of Ethiopia.— Ezekiel xxix. 10.

II THE GREAT DISCOVERY IN 1881 18

For lo, they are gone because of destruction: Egypt shall gather them up, Memphis shall bury them.— Hosea ix. 6.

Preface

These lectures were all delivered by a pastor in the ordinary course of pulpit ministration upon the Sabbath. They are published in the form they first received. This will explain some repetitions, and show reason for some passages of direct religious address.

Much of the writer's tvork in them has been that of compilation. The facts are brought from all the sources of information he could obtain. He could not load his lectures nor bulk his book with lengthy citations ; but everything here given to the public is carefully stated, and behind it all are to be named authorities of the highest character. As yet the information from Egypt rests in a hundred scattered official reports, voluminous histories, review articles, together with letters to the English, French, and German press. To collect and collate this has been a task of the greatest labor, and every help has been employed that was within reach in order to accuracy and expedition.

The worst trouble of all has been found in the absolute disagreement and antagonism of the supreme, authorities themselves. Many questions are still

Til viii PREFACE.

mooted, and some will remain unsettled till time shall bring new discoveries from the rock-tombs along the banks of the Nile.

The Egypt Exploration Fund Association is doing a great and good work ; it ought to have a wider and more vigorous support. The writer of these discourses ivishes sincerely that even this small book may aid in calling attention to it, and in kindling interest in it, so that larger expeditions may be sent forth, and fresh achievements made.

CHAS. S. ROBINSON.

THE PHARAOHS OF THE BONDAGE AND THE EXODUS.

I THE MODERN LAND OF EGYPT.

I will make tbc land of Egypt utterly waste and desolate, from the tower of Syene even unto tlie border of Ethiopia.

— Ezekicl xxix. 10.

IN the winter of 1880, while in the ordinary course of pulpit duty, I commenced a series of lectures upon the Bondage in Egypt, intending to take up at some subsequent time another series upon the Wandering in the Wilderness. This plan was carried out in no conspicuous or unusual way ; and I only mention the fact in order to show that naturally my mind was very much on the alert for information when, the spring following, I went to England for the customary vacation granted to the somewhat overworked pastors and professors in New-York.

Almost immediately upon my arrival in London, I found the entire town excited by the report 2 i of a strange "find" of mummies in an out-of-theway sepulcher somewhere on the banks of the Upper Nile. It was in the telegraphic dispatches given to the press generally ; and the account stated that forty or fifty Pharaohs had been discovered piled in one rock-cave among the hills, the cartouches and inscriptions showing beyond contradiction that they were the bodies of the greatest of monarchs in all the dynasties of ancient Egypt. Soon there came letters and further dispatches, and then something like orderly descriptions.

It was -evident that there had been opened a fresh chapter in the history of that hitherto almost silent land. But time would be needed to verify and establish conclusions. The very contradictions that the journals published day by day showed almost amusingly how little could be trusted until after the wise men who understood such things had the chance for careful and close examination of the coffins with the papyri, the records of the priests, and the shrouds of the mummies, so that an intelligible and consistent report could be made to the world.

All I could do was to wait. I collected every scrap of published information as I found it in the magazines and the newspapers ; and the consciousness that my lectures on the Exodus could not proceed till an orderly classification of events should have been made rendered me patient in procedure. In the summer of the next year, 1882, being again in London, I found that the official documents had already begun to arrive; some of the newer books had taken the items into discussion ; the historians and archaeologists had been studying the papyri ; indeed, the whole advancement made had been rapid and accurate. Then for the next three seasons I kept collecting books of illustrations and photographs of objects, till my table was loaded with helps and suggestions, ready for use. So at last I propose now to move on with my course of Exodus expositions, following the general plan with which I first started.

Before taking up the plain text of the Scripture, it seems to be necessary for me to give a succinct account of what the discoveries have been. I should like to familiarize your minds with certain features of modern geography and life in Egypt, this old, strange land that has buried in it so much mystery. To-night I propose to sketch briefly some incidents of the visit we made in the neighborhood just before.

There is no use in denying it, the land of the Pharaohs makes a very poor show from the ofling. Far as the weary eye can reach, that dirty-white beach extends, flat and tame, witli but one variegation to suggest a thought or invite a question. Pompey's Pillar — which, by the way, never had anything to do with Pompey — lifts its fine shaft conspicuously a little distance back, as if just to call one's mind to the remembrance of how much grander the old times were than these are.

For a while in history Alexandria was really the chief of all commercial centers. Nineveh had been destroyed, and Babylon was fallen. Then it bore the lofty name of the " City of Cities," and was called the " Queen of the East." Now a confused huddle of houses and a ruined multitude of refuse people of all nations alone mark the desolate spot. Probably sixty or seventy thousand inhabitants eke out a miserable existence in the neighborhood, finding occupation for the most part in conveying travelers by "the overland route" through the country. • Since the opening of the Suez Canal, however, and the extension of the railway systems, a good deal of wealth has come into the city and its suburbs. The guide-books for tourists estimate the whole population at two hundred thousand, of which multitude near fifty thousand are Europeans.

What interested us more than anything else was the historical form of associations which surround this ancient city. Certain secular names come in contact with others definitely scriptural and religious.

Apollos was a citizen of Alexandria; and the day was when some people thought he was a better preacher than Paul. The ecclesiastical historian Origen began his commentaries in these once scholastic precincts. Here the motto was earliest raised, " Athanasius against the world " — for here, during forty-six fierce years of conflict, did the brave old schoolman defend " the faith once delivered to

TEE MODERN LAND OF EGYPT. 5

the saints." Here, too, was laid the scene of sorrowful persecution, when the pen of eternal record had to write the tales of horror concerning the Jews. In fearful tragedies of blood was fulfilled the ancient prophecy, which declared that God's chosen people should, one day, " tremble as a bird out of Egypt."

Long and intricate is the story of Alexandria's glory and shame. Only the remnants of its grandeur are left to prove its present desolation. Alas, who can conceive, as he passes the wretched hovels in which camel, dog, and donkey dwell on equal terms with human beings, such as we saw a hundred times in a day, that here at the time when a lighthouse, reckoned one of the seven wonders of the world, was shining at the entrance of the harbor, a library of seven hundred thousand volumes was offering the beams of its intelligence to a race bewildered, each book in that typeless age worth more than its weight in gold! All these were burnt by the Saracens in a single sweep of the torch.

Three names will always be linked with memories of Alexandria. One has been mentioned — Apollos, the early preacher of the faith. Then there was a bright young man called Mark, whom God inspired in after years to write one of the Gospels. The history of all those times is confused, and there is no knowing precisely how much of what is called this evangelist's biography may be believed. It has been asserted that he was horribly martyred in these precincts ; that he was seized during divine service, bound, beaten, then dragged with cords through the roadways and over the most craggy places of the cliff by the sea ; that he was remanded to prison, whence an angel appeared in a midnight vision strengthening him ; the next day after, he was dragged again until the flesh was torn from his bones, and his suffering spirit took its flight ; then the excited populace burned his body, leaving only a few charred fragments, which his Christian fellow-workers cautiously gathered up for decent interment. All this staggers one's belief, when the evidence is so slight, and the mind of the student so unwilling.

There was yet a third young man, the fortunes of whoso life culminated at Alexandria. That imperial soldier, who gave his own name to the city, died at Babylon ; but tradition claims he was buried here. At thirty years of age Alexander had subdued all the nations and was weeping that he had no more worlds to conquer. And not far from the same time of life, John Mark was recording the question, " What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul ? " Alexander was " great " in human exploits; Apollos was " mighty in the Scriptures." The one turned many to righteousness; the other is remembered only " to point a moral and adorn a tale."

We stood thoughtfully by the spot where they say (without much accuracy) Alexander was buried.

He was laid in the grave in a coffin of gold ; that was put in an encasement of glass; and that was surrounded with a sarcophagus of stone. But the stone has been crushed, the glass shattered, the gold rifled, the body lost, and the exact grave forgotten. So it seems it does not matter much how one is interred. " And, on the whole, the reflection is most salutary when we remember that not the burial, but the character, settles the future. One of the oldest questions in the oldest book of the Bible is worth a pondering — "Man dieth, and wasteth away, and where is he f "

We who have been lately celebrating our centennial year of existence as a nation scarcely could be expected to appreciate the remoteness of the annals of a land like this. Some of those places have actually been dead ten or twelve times longer than this republic has already lived. A famous papyrus has been found in the Fayilm and deposited at Vienna ; most of it has been deciphered ; and from this we learn the fact that there was once a town in Lower Egypt, all trace of which seems to have disappeared for the last twelve hundred years or more in utter silence of history. This document, a foot wide and four feet in length, contains a marriage contract; it is written in the Greek language, and is in excellent preservation. The date is not given, but it has upon it other signs for identification so that it is authentically pronounced to belong to the early part of the sixth century. The name of the bridegroom was Theon, and that of the bride Maria. She had for her fortune the snug little sura of a hundred gold pieces, and her future husband contracts to furnish her with food and clothing, and every other thing suitable for what he calls his " ordinary legitimate wife." There are witnesses, and then there is added the certificate of a notary-public. All the parties are described as belonging to the town of " Justianopolis." Now there is no mention of any such place on any old list of hamlets, villages, or cities in that region of Africa. It is pathetic always to notice how persistently human life evidences itself as the one immortal thing on this planet. Two hearts love each other, and two people are married ; soon the town dies, and geography wipes it off from the map, and history forgets it ; and then the wedding certificate comes up to notice, and the town is rehabilitated and looked up. Some of the regions of that laud are like tombs in continental cemeteries ; the graves of the buried cities lie over each other two or three deep, as the excavations go down and reveal the different dynasties.

It is no place to see Egypt in the cities alone. The entering in of the French and English customs is slowly but certainly making all the ancient habits pass away. The process has thus far, however, only reached confusion. A brook, let suddenly into a stagnant pool, will only roil it for a while ; by and by it will cleanse it of the creatures in the slime, and the water will become crystal.

THE MODEBN LAND OF EGYPT. 9

Out in the country one meets Egypt face to face. The regions through which one passes to-day are just as singular as the people. No fences can be seen anywhere. Yet the fields through what is called the Delta of the Nile are singularly fruitful, and are under highest cultivation. Windmills stand awkwardly out upon the hillocks of sand j the well-sweeps are frequent, and groan upon their unoiled swings ; canals are cut in every direction, banked up for channels of water ; in many places the soil is parched, caked, dried hard as clay, and cracked into deep seams by the heat of the sun ; great lumbering, creaking wheels, turned by donkeys, and sometimes by cows, all blindfolded as they walk heavily around in the circle, lift buckets of water high up in the air, and wail dismally as they tip the contents over into a trough ; aqueducts, leaking most uuthriftily, conduct the scant streams far away upon the distant gardens ; sycamores and palms are scatteringly gathered into little sparse tufts here and there across the flat landscape ; while the long, white, dusty, hot roads are sprinkled with lonely travelers ; big men made to look bigger by their baggy, high-colored clothes, mounted most preposterously on insignificant donkeys, like Maltese cats on rats domesticated, their ungainly feet hanging unstirruped so that their red and yellow slippers almost touch the ground ; men and women are working in the shade, or lolling by the scarce fountains, gazing stupidly up at the flying train, as if glad of any

•

event which contained promise of a sensation and yet too tame, after all, to rise and partake of it — all this with its oddity and confusion is old Egypt to-day.

What seems strangest of all is the absence of houses. Villages of dreadful filth, meanness, squalor indescribable, meet your eye now and then; but miles often intervene between them. Crops of all kinds of grain are growing, and you occasionally discover what you suppose, are the tillers of the soil, squat like the letter N, their knees drawn up to touch the chin, precisely as if their bodies were hinged only at two points, arid would fold up in the shape of what printers call " condensed " type. But there seems to be a mysterious absence of laborers. Near the wretched villages you see people ; but an indefinite sense of loneliness appears to rest upon all these extensive sweeps of territory. A feeble patch of corn, a palm of exquisite proportions, a close clump of olive-trees, may attract your notice ; but you will mark no husbandmen near. Herein again you find a Scriptural illustration, and are reminded of the opening of the parable, "Behold, a sower went forth to sow."

The explanation we received of this seemed quite satisfactory. The inhabitants are crowded together for mutual defense. They rarely linger in the neighborhoods they cultivate. The Arabs are their hereditary foes. Distance from them is their only safety. Now that the country is opened up, there is hardly a shadow of danger; but old habits are never broken up there. So they do their tasks in all expedition (for an oriental), and then hurry aAvay to their homes.

Now this is what God has said concerning Egypt : " It shall be the basest of kingdoms, neither shall it exalt itself any more among the nations. The pride of her power shall come down. And they shall be desolate in the midst of the countries that are desolate; and her cities shall be in the midst of the cities that are wasted. I will sell the land into the hand of the wicked. I will make the land waste, and all that is therein by the hand of strangers. And there shall be no more a prince of the land of Egypt." These are specific, clear denunciations; have any of them been fulfilled ? Are any left unfulfilled ?

Every one of them has been proved true in each particular. This miserable strip of soil, lying out there on the margin of the desert, must always be to the world of an importance entirely incommensurate with its worth. Inconvenient of access, unhealthy in climate, dangerous to traverse, ineffably vexatious with its beggary and extortion, it yet attracts and rivets the attention of the successive ages. Divine purpose seems to preserve it in its ruin to witness to its ruin. Ground to the dust, Egypt has no prospect, not even a gleam of promise of redemption. England and France now hold it down under Turkish sway, only that eventually they may divide it between them.

Is it " desolate " ? Did inspiration catch the precise word in that utterance of prediction ? Alas, the very type of desolation could nowhere be found as well as it can in this enslaved land !

Now the glory is all departed, and the scenes which Abrara visited, which Moses saw. and which Joseph moved among as a prince in power, are vanished into indescribable desolation. Of the continent at large, Egypt, once the most splendid portion, now actually seems by contrast to lie in lowest degradation.

It is admitted that the best test of civilization or of barbarism in this age of the world is found in the condition of the female sex. And in Africa women are the simple burden-bearers of the men. Day by day each maiden carries upon her head the huge pile of brushwood she has painfully gathered for her scant fuel, as she makes ready the meager cake for her master. All that toil can attain, all that thrift can save, goes to the inevitable publican who comes grinding for taxes. Beaten, impoverished, worn, and weary, Egypt is the basest of kingdoms, as prophecy predicted. Men are too selfish to be decent, and quite too brutal to be gallant. So women are hiding agony, as well as shame, behind veils.

It is interesting to know, as one of the most significant of illustrations, that some years ago the attempt was made by a famous musician to represent in an orchestral composition what he intended to call " Souvenirs of Egypt." Into the music he introduced the many characteristic sounds he heard while on a visit to that country. But so unutterably sad and wild were the strains that the piece was rejected. One lonely and unchanging creak was evermore present in the windings of the harmony — the sound of the terrible instrument for the lifting of the water, as the wheel and bucket turned on the unoiled axle. Any one would notice that now. If you listen out in the fields, where the men would be likely to be the most jocund and where the women would feel freest, you at times might hear the fellaheen singing. But alas for the tunes they produce ! The best melody they possess is one called " The Song of the Harvest." But even this is a plaintive strain, the intervals of which are all minor. You cannot catch the tones easily, so as to know it. Rowing, digging, planting, the laborers will keep droning and crooning with each other; but the sound is only like that of men wailing over pain. So the whole land weeps and groans under the oppression of man and the reprobation of God.

" Therefore thus saith the Lord God ; Behold, I am against Pharaoh king of Egypt, and will break his arms, the strong, and that which was broken ; and I will cause the sword to fall out of his hand. And I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations, and will disperse them through the countries. Son of man, I have broken the arm of Pharaoh king of Egypt; and lo, it shall not bo 3 bound up to be healed, to put a roller to bind it, to make it strong to hold the sword. And the sword shall come upon Egypt, and great pain shall be in Ethiopia, when the slain shall fall in Egypt, and they shall take away her multitude, and her foundation shall be broken down."

These were the predictions which came to Ezekiel from heaven, in the days of the last of the Pharaohs. He was bidden to "howl" when he uttered them : " Woe worth the day ! " They howl of themselves ; they have all been fulfilled ; and the land howls to-day under the weight of them from Syene to Zoan. "We are wont to imagine that what is orientalmust necessarily be bright and happy-hearted. We picture the home of these strange foreigners we meet in the streets as sunny and glad ; for they wear garments of silk and slippers embroidered with gold ; they ring as they walk as if they had bells on their ankles ; they dance on the rich carpets they carry for sale; what mirthful days they must have in that beautiful region where the good Caliph ruled in the Arabian Nights.

Alas ! there is anything but glee in Egypt. If there is pleasure at night in Cairo or gayety in the daytime, it is enjoyed by the opulent classes and tourists, and is crushed out of the poor. It is ever sad and lonesome in the villages. The inhabitants never seem to laugh or sing. Boys are not antic ; girls look frightened till the day comes when they lose their shame ; men and women appear tired and hopeless.

But is it true that there is no national fame or feeling in that country? Is it exact to say that " no prince " has sat on the throne of Egypt since Ezekiel's prophecy was fulfilled? To such questions it is sufficient to answer, that, from Alexandria to the Cataracts, and from the Red Sea to the Libyan Desert, Egypt has been a battle-ground soaked with blood for a thousand years. It has always been torn to pieces by outside people; the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Mohammedans, the French, the English, the Turks : each in turn, and some one of such always, has held that country in bondage of hateful oppression.

Some years ago, when I happened to be in Constantinople, I stood looking out on the Bosphorus at the fine show of shipping there was in the harbor One of our mission friends called our attention to two or three very costly and beautiful ironclad war-steamers that lay at anchor in the stream. They seemed quite new, and he told us a story about them. The Egyptian Khedive was suspected of some small notion of making a strike for national freedom, but nobody interfered, although a rumor reached Constantinople that he was building some serious vessels with dangerous armaments. By and by, when the expensive monsters were just getting finished, the Khedive received a most polite missive from the Sultan, saying in effect that he had heard of the loyal purpose of his faithful people in Egypt to help him in his need of war-ships, and it had given him exceeding pleasure ; the time was most propitious, for it so happened that he was at this moment going to start an expedition to the far East ; would the Khedive pardon him for the suggestion of an increase in hastening preparation, if it would not give him inconvenience? Of course, the quick thing to be done was to make the best of a discovery so fatal, and send the iron-clads as a gift of the most truly loyal and obsequious attachment to the Sublime Porte. So, just then the vessels had come in, and all the city was out in admiration. That is the way in which Egypt is treated ; whoever makes, she always loses.

The picture is very melancholy; yet I have nothing with which to render even the close of the lecture more cheerful. Two peculiarities there are, one a religious custom, and the other a natural phenomenon, whicli have very much to do with the importance of these late discoveries of mummies. The ancient Egyptians believed that the soul of a human being was wont to return sometimes to the form it used to inhabit. They therefore embalmed each body instantly after death, with the view of preserving it absolutely through the eternity of years. There have been found sculptured upon the walls of temples certain very significant representations of their ideas on the subject. A winged insect, with a human head, is just flitting down toward the coffin-lid, underneath which is the shrouded form preserved in its spices; outside, upon the case, is painted the countenance in bold outlines, seeming just glad to give a welcome with its wideopen eyes, as it used to give.

The other peculiarity of Egypt is found in its almost positively rainless climate. There might be said to be no showers ever in Egypt. The river Nile gives all the moisture the fields have, with its annual inundation, but this covers only the plains ; the hillsides are dry always. Hence it results that, when the bodies of the dead were properly embalmed, and then deposited in one of these dry receptacles of the rocks beneath the unchanging sands, they might be considered wellnigh imperishable. It need give no surprise whatsoever to us that the bodies of veritable men and women, who lived four thousand years ago, are still on the earth, unchanged in lineament and feature. Not unlikely, there are countless thousands of those who saw Joseph on his throne in Egypt now lying undisturbed in their sycamore coffins, their hands on their breasts, their eyes closed, their funeral garlands still twined.

So at last this old, dreamy, dreary land, which is first and even foremost in the inspired history, comes forth into conspicuousness because of its deadness. We have lived through the ages until now, in this year of our Lord, there is offered before the world a new species of logical argument, a fresh kind of Evidences of Christianity.

II

For lo, they are gone because of destruction : Egypt shall gather them up, Memphis shall bury them. — Hosea ix. 6.

A HUNDRED years ago one of the best read TV of historians expressed his wonder that the place where old Memphis stood could not, even to this day, be identified. It is only now, within the limits of a generation or two, that the spot has been found, and little enough there is left to mark it. There used to be palaces and villas which were the wonder of the age in that famous city. They are entirely gone now. Even the foundations of the temples can be traced only by difficult excavation. One beautiful statue remains, broken already, and fallen flat on its face, but still preserving, in attractive expression, the fair countenance of Rameses II., whose name it bears. It was originally more than forty feet high. Half buried in the mud, the head of the sore-eyed orange- vender, who follows the traveler around as he gazes upon it, only reaches up to the level of its thickness. Fair type is this prostrate monument of all the sunken grandeur of the city.

THE GREAT DISCOVERT IN 1881. 19

It is easy to understand here, however, the meaning of the ancient prophet, when lie says of the unfortunate people whom he denounced, " Egypt shall gather them up, Memphis shall bury them " ; for the most notable memorials of all the splendor onee triumphant here are the tombs. The entire bed of stone, which seems to underlie the cemetery, is honeycombed with cavities for sepulture, long ago rifled of their contents for the sake of possible gold ornaments interred with the dead. We know, as we gaze upon these acres of graves, that we are in the grand cemetery of the empire. Tremendous burial-ground is this we are gazing upon ! One cannot fail to be impressed with its solemn majesty ; he must heed its admonition.

For all those thousands of seasons came funeral processions filing across the sand, and bringing down their burdens to deposit here. Some of the excavations are fifty, sixty, and seventy feet deep. Mausoleums of structure marvelously beautiful are lying shattered and open ; one wonders what forgotten monarch there could have been to tenant the hollow chambers. Mortifying end he certainly came to at the last, whoever he was ; for the miscreant Ishmaelites have already stolen the mummy, and quite possibly burnt it for fuel. The spices would make the fire pleasantly odorous for these sons of the desert ! These myriads of scpulohers of high and low, opened just for plunder — what are they ? Mere sockets, into which the lights of