CHAPTER III. THE EXODUS AND THE HEBREW SETTLEMENT IN CANAAN.

Ramses II. was the last of the conquering Pharaohs of native Egyptian history. The Asiatic empire of Thothmes III. was in some measure restored by the victories of his father and himself. The cities of Palestine yielded him an unwilling obedience. Gaza, and the other towns in what was afterwards the territory of the Philistines, were garrisoned by Egyptian troops, and on the walls of the Ramesseum were depicted his conquest of Shalem or Jerusalem, Merom, Beth-Anath, and other Canaanite states, in his eighth year. Egyptian armies again marched northward into Syria along the highroad that led past the Phœnician cities, and on the banks of the Nahr el-Kelb, or Dog’s River, near Beyrût, the Pharaoh erected a tablet in commemoration of his successes. On the eastern side of the Jordan also Egyptian authority once more prevailed. In front of the northern pylon of the temple of Luxor, Ramses erected six colossal figures of himself, and on their recently-uncovered bases are inscribed the names of the various nations he claimed to have subdued. Among them we find, for the first time in the Egyptian records, the name of Moab, following immediately upon that of Assar, the Asshurim of Genesis xxv. 3. That the insertion of the name was not an idle boast we learn from a discovery lately made by Dr. Schumacher. On the eastern side of the Jordan, but at no great distance from the Lake of Tiberias, is a monolith called the “Stone of Job.” On this the German explorer has found Egyptian sculptures and hieroglyphs. Above the figure of the Pharaoh are the cartouches of Ramses II., and opposite the king, on the left, a local deity is represented with a full face and the crown of Osiris, over whom is written the name of Akna-zapn, or “Yakin of the North.” The monument is an evidence of a permanent occupation of the country by the Egyptians, as the name and figure of the god indicate that it was erected, not by the Egyptians themselves, but by the Egyptianised natives of the land.

Along the Syrian coast Seti I. had already carried his arms. His campaigns were followed by those of his son. Arvad, the shores of the Gulf of Antioch, and even Cilicia, are enumerated among the conquests of the Pharaoh. He even claims to have defeated the armies of Assyria, of Matena or Mitanni, the Aram-Naharaim of Scripture, and of Singar in Mesopotamia. At Luxor, on the western walls of the newly excavated court, we hear of his having been at Tunip (now Tennib), “in the land of Naharaim,” of his capture of a fortress of the Kati in the same district, and of how “the Pharaoh” had taken a city in “the land of Satuna.” Satuna was one of those countries in the far north whose name is never mentioned elsewhere in the Egyptian texts.

The Syrian conquests, however, could never have been long in the Pharaoh’s possession. Between them and Palestine lay the southern outposts of the Hittite race. In the troublous times which followed the death of Khu-n-Aten, the Hittites had overrun “the land of the Amorites” to the north of Canaan, and fixed their southern capital in the holy city of Kadesh, on the Orontes. It was a stronghold against which the forces of Ramses were hurled in vain. For twenty years did the struggle continue between the Pharaoh of Egypt and “the great king of the Hittites,” and at last, exhausted by the long conflict, in which neither party had gained the advantage, the two enemies agreed upon peace. A treaty was signed on the twenty-first of the month Tybi, in the twenty-first year of the reign of Ramses (B.C. 1327), “in the city of Ramses,” to which the Hittite ambassadors had come. Ramses, on the one side, and Khita-sir, the son of Mul-sir, the Hittite prince, on the other, bound themselves in it to eternal friendship and alliance. In case of war they were to send troops to one another’s help, and they agreed to put to death any criminals who might fly from the one country to the other. Political offenders, however, who had taken refuge in the territory of one or other of the two contracting parties, were not to be injured. It was of course the Canaanitish subjects of the Pharaoh, who adjoined the Hittite kingdom, that were principally affected by these stipulations. It was further determined that on no pretext whatever should any change be made in the boundaries of the two monarchies. The treaty was placed under the protection of the deities of Egypt and the Hittites, and a Hittite copy of it was engraved on a silver plate. The agreement was cemented by the marriage of Ramses to a daughter of the Hittite king, who thereupon assumed an Egyptian name.

Northern Syria was thus formally conceded to the powerful conquerors who had descended from the mountains of Kappadokia, while Palestine remained under Egyptian dominion. But it was not destined to do so long. Ramses was succeeded by Meneptah, the fourteenth of his many sons, who had reigned only four years when the very existence of his kingdom was threatened by a formidable invasion from the west and north. “The peoples of the north” swarmed out of their coasts and islands, and a great fleet descended upon Egypt, in conjunction with the Libyans and Maxyes of northern Africa. Aqaiush or Achæans, Shardana or Sardinians, Tursha or Tyrsenians appear among them, as well as Leku from Asia Minor, and Zakkur, who a little later are the colleagues and brethren of the Philistines. Part of the Delta was overrun and devastated before the Pharaoh could make head against his foes. But a decisive battle was at length fought at Pa-Alu-sheps, not far from Heliopolis, which ended in the complete overthrow of the invading hordes. Egypt was saved from the danger which had threatened it, but it seems never to have recovered from the shock. The power of the government was weakened in the valley of the Nile itself, and one by one the foreign conquests passed out of its grasp. The sceptre of Seti II., who followed Meneptah, seems to have dropped into the hands of a usurper, Amon-messu by name: the history of the period is, however, involved in obscurity, and all that is certain is that the empire of Ramses II. was lost, and that Egypt itself fell into a state of decadence. With Si-Ptah the nineteenth dynasty came to an inglorious end.

Its fall was the signal for internal confusion and civil war. A Syrian foreigner, Arisu by name, possessed himself of the throne of the Pharaohs, and Egypt for a while was compelled to submit to Canaanitish rule. Its leading nobles were in banishment, its gods were deprived of their customary offerings, and famine was added to the horrors of war. A deliverer came in the person of Set-nekht, the founder of the twentieth dynasty. He drove the stranger out the country, and restored it again to peace and prosperity. Hardly had his task been completed when he died, and was succeeded by his son, Ramses III. Under him a transient gleam of victory and conquest visited once more the valley of the Nile.

It was well for Egypt that she possessed an energetic general and king. The same hordes which had threatened her in the reign of Meneptah now again attacked her with increased numbers and greater chances of success. In the fifth year of Ramses III., the fair-skinned tribes of the western desert poured into the Delta. The Maxyes, under their chieftains Mdidi, Mâshakanu, and Mâraiu, and the Libyans, under Ur-mâr and Zut-mâr, met the Pharaoh in battle at a place which ever afterwards bore a name commemorative of their defeat. The victory of the Egyptians was, in fact, decisive. As many as 12,535 slain were counted on the field of battle, and captives and spoil innumerable fell into the hands of the victors.

But Ramses was allowed only a short breathing-space. Three years after the Libyan invasion, and doubtless in connection with it, came a still more formidable invasion on the part of the barbarians of the north. This time they came partly by land, partly by sea. Vast hordes of them had marched out of Asia Minor, overrunning the kingdoms of the Hittites, of Naharaim, of Carchemish, and of Arvad, and carrying with them adventurers and recruits from the countries through which they passed. First they pitched their camp in “the land of the Amorites,” and then marched southward towards the frontiers of Egypt. The place of the Aqaiush was taken by the Daanau or Danaans, but the Zakkur again formed part of the invading host, this time accompanied by Pulsata or Philistines, and Shakalsh or Siculians. By the side of the land army moved a fleet of ships, and fleet and army arrived together at the mouths of the Nile. The cities in the extreme south of Palestine, once occupied by Egyptian garrisons, were captured by the Philistines, and became henceforward their assured possession.

But the main body of the invaders were not so fortunate. The Egyptian forces were ready to receive them, and their ships had scarcely entered the mouth of the Nile before they were attacked by the Egyptian fleet. The battle ended in the complete annihilation of the attacking host. A picture of it is sculptured on the walls of Medînet Habu at Thebes, the temple-palace which Ramses built to commemorate his victories, and we can there study the ships of the European barbarians and the features and dress of the barbarians themselves. In the expressive words of the Egyptian scribe, “they never reaped a harvest any more.”

Ramses, however, was even now not left at rest. Three years later the Maxyes again assailed Egypt under Mashashal, the son of Kapur, but once more unsuccessfully. Cattle, horses, asses, chariots and weapons of war in large quantities fell into the hands of the Egyptians, as well as 2052 captives, while 2175 men were slain. From this time forward Egypt was secure from attack on its western border.

Freed from the necessity of defending his own territories, Ramses now carried the war into Asia. What in later days was the land of Judah was overrun by his forces; Gaza and the districts round Hebron and Salem or Jerusalem were occupied, and the name of the Dead Sea appears on the walls of Medînet Habu for the first time in Egyptian history. The Egyptian army even crossed to the eastern side of the Jordan and captured the Moabite capital.

Another campaign led it along the Phœnician coast into northern Syria. Hamath was taken, and Ramses seems to have penetrated as far as the slopes of the Taurus. He even claims to have defeated the people of Mitanni or Aram-Naharaim on the eastern bank of the Euphrates. The kings of the Hittites and the Amorites, like the chiefs of the Zakkur and the Philistines, were already prisoners in his hands.

But the northern campaigns of Ramses were intended to strike terror rather than to re-establish the Asiatic empire of Egypt. No attempt was made to hold the cities and districts which had been overrun. Though a temple was erected to Amon on the frontiers of the later Judæa, even Gaza was given up, and the fortress which had so long defended the road from Canaan into Egypt was allowed to pass into Philistine hands. It was the same with the campaign which the Pharaoh conducted at a later date against the “Shasu” or Bedouin of Edom. For the first time an Egyptian army succeeded in making its way into the fastnesses of Mount Seir, slaying the warriors of Edom, and plundering their “tents.” The Edomite chief himself was made a prisoner. The expedition had the effect of protecting the Egyptian mining establishments in the Sinaitic peninsula as well as the maritime trade with southern Arabia. Large quantities of malachite were brought year by year from the Egyptian province of Mafka or Sinai, and the merchant-vessels of Ramses coasted along the Red Sea, bringing back with them the precious spices of Yemen and Hadhramaut.

Ramses III. died after a reign of more than thirty-two years, and the military renown of Egypt expired with him. His exact date is still a matter of doubt, but his accession must have fallen about B.C. 1200. The date is important, not only because it closes the history of Egypt as a conquering power, but also as it marks a great era of migration among the northern populations of the Mediterranean, as well as the permanent settlement of the Philistines in Palestine. It was, moreover, the period to which the Israelitish invasion of Canaan must belong.

When Ramses III. overran the southern portion of Palestine, and built the temple of the Theban god at the spot now known as Khurbet Kan’an, not far from Hebron, the Israelites could not as yet have entered the Promised Land. There is no reference to the Egyptians in the Pentateuch, and there is no reference to the Israelites in the hieroglyphic texts of Medînet Habu. Hebron, Migdal, Karmel of Judah, Ir-Shemesh and Hadashah, all alike fell into the hands of the Egyptian invaders, but neither in the Egyptian nor in the Hebrew records is there any allusion to a struggle between Egypt and Israel. When Joshua entered Canaan all these cities belonged to the Canaanites, and when Ramses III. attacked them this was also the case. The Palestinian campaign of Ramses must have prepared the way for the Israelitish conquest; it could not have followed after it.

Moreover, “the five lords of the Philistines” seem to have already been settled in the extreme south when the Israelitish invasion took place (Josh. xiii. 3). Yet it also seems clear from the Egyptian monuments that the settlement was not fully completed until after the Asiatic campaigns of the Pharaoh had occurred. The Philistines indeed formed part of the great invading host which poured through Syria and assailed Egypt in the early part of his reign, but Gaza was one of his conquests, and its possession enabled him to march into Canaan. Before Gaza could become a Philistine city it was needful that its Egyptian garrison should be withdrawn. Professor Prášek believes that the Philistine occupation of southern Canaan took place in the year B.C. 1209, since the Roman historian Justin tells us that in this year a king of Ashkelon stormed the city of Sidon, and that the Sidonians fled to a neighbouring part of the coast, and there founded Tyre. However this may be, the Philistine settlement in Canaan must be ascribed to the age of Ramses III., and it was already with the Philistines that the Israelites came into conflict under almost the earliest of their judges.

But the date of the Israelitish conquest of Canaan is closely bound up with that of the Exodus out of Egypt. It is true that when we are told of the forty years’ wandering in the desert, the word “forty” is used, as it is elsewhere in the Old Testament, as well as upon the Moabite Stone, to denote an indeterminate period of time. It was a period during which the greater part of the generation that had left Egypt had time to die. Joshua and Caleb indeed remained, and Othniel, the brother of Caleb, lived to deliver Israel from the king of Aram-Naharaim, and to be the first of the judges. But otherwise it was a new generation which was led to conquest by Joshua.

If Ramses II. was the Pharaoh of the Oppression, the Pharaoh of the Exodus must have been one of his immediate successors. Egyptologists have hesitated between Meneptah, Seti II., and Si-Ptah. There is much to be said in favour of each. None of them reigned long, and after the death of Meneptah the sceptre fell into feeble hands, and the Egyptian monarchy went rapidly to decay.

Native tradition, as reported by the historian Manetho, made Meneptah the Pharaoh under whom the children of Israel escaped from their house of bondage. Amenôphis or Meneptah, it was said, desired to see the gods. He was accordingly instructed by the seer Amenôphis, the son of Pa-apis, to clear the land of the leprous and impure. This he did, and 80,000 persons were collected from all parts of Egypt, and were then separated from the other inhabitants of the country and compelled to work in the quarries of Tûra, on the eastern side of the Nile. Among them there happened to be some priests, one of whom was Osarsiph, a priest of On, and the sacrilegious act of laying hands on them was destined to be avenged by the gods. The seer prophesied that the impure lepers would find allies, and with their help would govern Egypt for thirteen years, when a saviour should arise in the person of Amenôphis himself. Not daring to tell the king of this prediction, he put it in writing and then took away his own life. After a time the workers in the quarries were removed to Avaris, the deserted fortress of the Hyksos, on the Asiatic frontier of the Egyptian kingdom. Here they rose in rebellion under Osarsiph, who organised them into a community, and gave them new laws, forbidding them to revere the sacred animals, and ordering them to rebuild the walls of Avaris. He also sent to the descendants of the Hyksos at Jerusalem, begging for their assistance. A force of 200,000 men was accordingly despatched to Avaris, and the invasion of Egypt decided on. Amenôphis retired into Ethiopia without striking a blow, carrying with him his son Sethos, who was also called Ramesses after his grandfather, as well as the sacred bull Apis, and other holy animals. The images of the gods were concealed, lest they should be profaned by the invaders. Amenôphis remained in Ethiopia for thirteen years, while Osarsiph, who had taken the name of Moses, together with his allies from Jerusalem, committed innumerable atrocities. At last, however, Amenôphis and his son Sethos returned, each at the head of an army; the enemy were defeated and overthrown, and finally pursued to the borders of Syria.

The tradition is a curious mixture of fact and legend. Osarsiph is but an Egyptianised form of Joseph, the first syllable of which has been explained as representing the god of Israel (as in Ps. lxxxi. 5), and has accordingly been identified with Osar or Osiris. The ancient Egyptian habit of regarding the foreigner as impure has been interpreted to mean that the followers of Osarsiph were lepers. The Exodus of the Israelites has been confounded with the invasion of the northern barbarians in the reign of Meneptah, as well as with the troublous period that saw the fall of the nineteenth dynasty when the throne of Egypt was seized by the Syrian Arisu. And, lastly, the hated Hyksos have been introduced into the story; their fortress Avaris is made the rallying-place of the revolted lepers, and it is through the help they send from Jerusalem that the rule of Osarsiph or Moses is established in the valley of the Nile.

An interesting commentary on the legend has been furnished by a papyrus lately acquired by M. Golénischeff, and dating from the age of Thothmes III. On the last page is a sort of Messianic prophecy, the hero of which has the name of Ameni, a shortened form of Amenôphis. “A king,” it says, “will come from the south, Ameni the truth-declaring by name. He will be the son of a woman of Nubia, and will be born in.... He will assume the crown of Upper Egypt, and will lift up the red crown of Lower Egypt. He will unite the double crown.... The people of the age of the son of man (_sic_) will rejoice and establish his name for all eternity. They will be far from evil, and the wicked will humble their mouths for fear of him. The Asiatics (Âmu) will fall before his blows, and the Libyans before his flame. The wicked will wait on his judgments, the rebels on his power. The royal serpent on his brow will pacify the revolted. A wall shall be built, even that of the prince, so that the Asiatics may no more enter into Egypt.” In this Ameni we should probably see the Amenôphis of the Manethonian story.

Against the identification of Meneptah with the Pharaoh of the Exodus it has, however, been urged that he seems on the whole to have been a successful prince. His kingdom passed safely through the shock of the Libyan and northern invasions, and notices which have survived to us show that, at all events in the earlier part of his reign, Gaza and the neighbouring towns still acknowledged his authority. At Zaru, on the Asiatic frontier of Egypt, a young scribe, Pa-ebpasa by name, was stationed, whose duty it was to keep a record of all those who entered or left the country by “the way of the Philistines.” Some of his notes, made in the third year of Meneptah, are entered on the back of his school copybook, which is now in the British Museum. One of them tells us that on the fifteenth of Pakhons Baal— ... the son of Zippor of Gaza, passed through with a letter to Baal-marom(?)-ga[b]u, the prince of Tyre; another that Thoth, the son of Zakarumu, and the policeman Duthau, the son of Shem-baal, as well as Sutekh-mes, the son of Epher-dagal, had come from Gaza with a message to the king.

A curious despatch, dated in Meneptah’s eighth year, goes to show that at that time the kinsfolk of the Israelites still had liberty to pass from the desert into the land of Goshen and there find pasturage for their flocks. One of his officials informs him that certain Shasu or Bedouin from Edom had been allowed to pass the Khetam or fortress of Meneptah Hotep-hima in the district of Succoth, and make their way to the lakes of the city of Pithom, in the district of Succoth, “in order to feed themselves and their herds on the possessions of Pharaoh, who is there a beneficent sun for all peoples.” The document may be interpreted in two ways. It may be taken as a proof that the Israelites had not yet fled from Egypt, and that there was consequently as yet no restraint placed by the Egyptians upon the entrance of the Asiatic nomads into their country, or it may be regarded as implying that the land of Goshen was already deserted, so that there was abundance of room for both shepherds and flocks. On behalf of this view a passage may be quoted from the great inscription of Meneptah at Karnak, in which we read that “the country around Pa-Bailos (the modern Belbeis) was not cultivated, but left as pasture for cattle because of the strangers. It was abandoned since the time of the ancestors.” More probably, however, this means that the land in question was not inhabited by Egyptian _fellahin_, but given over to the Hebrew shepherds and the “mixed multitude” of their Bedouin kinsmen.

A more serious objection to making Meneptah the Pharaoh of the Exodus is the fact that his son Seti II. was already acknowledged as heir to the throne during his father’s lifetime. The “tale of the two brothers,” to which we have already had to refer, was dedicated to him while he was still crown-prince. Indeed, it would even appear that he was associated with his father on the throne, since the cartouches of Meneptah and Seti II. are found side by side in the rock-temple of Surarîyeh. It would seem, therefore, that the first-born of the Pharaoh, who was destroyed on the night of the Passover, could not have been a son of Meneptah—at all events, if his heir and future successor were his first-born son. That Meneptah should have been buried in one of the royal tombs of Bibân el-Molûk at Thebes, and received divine honours after his death, is of less consequence. As has often been remarked, no mention is made in the narrative of the Exodus that the Pharaoh himself was drowned, and though Meneptah’s tomb (No. 8) is unfinished, the cult that was paid to his memory indicates that his mummy was deposited in it. It was plundered centuries ago, and the numerous Greek inscriptions on its walls make it clear that it was open to visitors in the Roman age.

Professor Maspero has suggested that the Pharaoh of the Bible was Seti II. We know that Seti must have been a weak prince, and that his rule was disputed. A usurper, Amon-messu by name, seized the crown either during his lifetime or at his death, and governed at Thebes, while the authority of the lawful line of princes was still acknowledged in the north. We also know that he must have died suddenly, for his tomb at Thebes (No. 15), though begun magnificently, was never finished. Its galleries and halls were hewn out of the rock, but never adorned with sculptures and paintings, and, except at the entrance, we have merely outline sketches, which were never filled in. His cartouches, however, are found in another tomb, not far off (No. 13), and after his death worship was paid to him and his wife.

A despatch, written during his reign, relates to the escape of two fugitives who had travelled along the very road which the Israelites attempted to take. The scribe tells us that he set out in pursuit of them from the royal city of Ramses on the evening of the 9th of Epiphi, and had arrived at the Khetam or fortress of Succoth the following day. Two days later he reached another Khetam, and there learned that the slaves were already safe in the desert, having passed the lines of fortification to the north of the Migdol of King Seti. The account is an interesting illustration of the flight, on a far larger scale, that must have taken place about the same time. The geography of the despatch is in close harmony with that of the Book of Exodus, and bears witness to the contemporaneousness of the latter with the events it professes to record. It is a geography which ceased to be exact after the age of the nineteenth dynasty.

It is thus possible that Seti II., instead of Meneptah, is the Pharaoh whose host perished in the waves of the Red Sea. But there is yet another claimant in Si-Ptah, with whom the nineteenth dynasty came to an end. Dr. Kellogg has argued ably on behalf of him, and it is possible that the views of this scholar are correct. Si-Ptah’s right to the throne was derived from his wife, Ta-user, and he reigned at least six years. That he followed Seti II. has long been admitted, on the authority of Manetho, though doubts have been cast on it in consequence of a statement of Champollion that he found the name of Seti written over that of Si-Ptah in the tomb of the latter at Bibân el-Molûk (No. 14). All doubts, however, are now set at rest by an inscription I copied at Wadi Halfa two years ago, in which the writer, Hora, the son of Kam, declares that he had formerly belonged to the palace of Seti II., and had engraved the inscription in the third year of Si-Ptah. In another inscription in the same place, dated also in Si-Ptah’s reign, the author states that he had been an ambassador to the land of Khal or Syria. Intercourse with Asia was therefore still maintained.

Si-Ptah’s tomb at Thebes was usurped by Setnekht, the founder of the twentieth dynasty. It is even doubtful whether the king for whom it was made was ever buried in it. In the second sepulchral hall the lid of his sarcophagus was discovered, but of the sarcophagus itself there was no trace. Perhaps it had been appropriated by Set-nekht. At any rate, those who believe that the Pharaoh of the Exodus perished in the Red Sea will find in Si-Ptah a better representative of him than in Meneptah or Seti. And the period of anarchy which followed upon his death may be regarded as the natural sequel of the disasters that befel Egypt before the children of Israel were permitted to go.

However this may be, the question of the date of the Exodus is reduced to narrow limits. The three successors of Ramses II. reigned altogether but a short time. Manetho gives seven years only to Si-Ptah, five years to Amon-messu, and we know from the monuments that Meneptah and Seti II. can have reigned but a very few years. Thirty or forty years at most will have covered the period that elapsed between the death of the great Ramses and the downfall of his dynasty. Then came a few years of confusion and anarchy, followed by the reign of Setnekht. If we place the accession of Ramses III. in B.C. 1230, we cannot be far wrong.

When that happened, the Israelites were hidden out of the sight of the great nations of the world among the solitudes of the desert. They were pitching their tents on the frontiers of Mount Seir, in the near neighbourhood of their kinsmen in Edom and Midian. There, at Sinai and Kadesh-barnea, they were receiving a code of laws, and being fitted to become a nation and the conquerors of Canaan. Were they included among the Shasu of Mount Seir whose overthrow is commemorated by Ramses III.?

For an answer we must turn to the twenty-first chapter of the Book of Numbers. There we read how it is said in the book of the wars of the Lord: “Waheb in Suphah and the brooks of Arnon, and the stream of the brook that goeth down to the dwelling of Ar, and lieth upon the border of Moab.” Of the war against the Amorites on the banks of the Arnon we know something, but the Old Testament has preserved no record of the other war, which had its scene in Suphah. Where Suphah was we know from the opening of the Book of Deuteronomy, which tells us that the words of Moses were addressed to the people “in the plain over against Suph.” Suph, in fact, was the district which gave its name to the _yâm Sûph_ or “Sea of Suph,” the Red Sea of the authorised version, the modern Gulf of Akabah. Here were the Edomite ports of Eloth and Ezion-geber, where Solomon built his fleet of merchantmen (1 Kings ix. 26), and here too was the region which faced “the plain” on the southern side of Moab.

The barren ranges of Mount Seir run down southward to Ezion-geber and Eloth, at the head of the Gulf of Akabah. And it was just in the ranges of Mount Seir that Ramses III. tells us he smote the Shasu and plundered their tents. When he made this expedition, the Israelites were probably still encamped on the borders of Edom. They had not as yet entered Canaan when he marched through the later Judæa, and crossed the Jordan into Moab, and his campaign against the Shasu of the desert did not take place many years later. At Medînet Habu, the “chief of the Shasu” figures among his prisoners by the side of the kings of the Hittites and the Amorites.

Was “the war of the Lord” in Suphah waged against the Pharaoh of Egypt? Chronology is in favour of it, and if the enemies of the Israelites were not the Egyptian army, it is hard to say who else they could have been. We know from the Pentateuch that they were not the people of Edom; “meddle not with them,” the Israelites were enjoined; the children of Esau were their “brethren,” and God had “given Mount Seir unto Esau for a possession.”

But whether or not Ramses III. and the tribes of Israel ever came into actual conflict, it must have been during his reign that the first Israelitish conquests in Canaan were made. The settlement of the twelve tribes in Palestine was coeval with the final decay of the Egyptian monarchy.