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Egypt Before the Time Of: Memphis

The prophets of Thebes and of Memphis might have exclaimed, as those of Judea had occasion to do in later years, in the presence of an irruption of similar hordes. "Behold a people cometh from the north; a mighty nation hath arisen from the loins of the Earth! They carry the bow and the buckler: they break and destroy without pity! - The noise of their coming is like the roaring of the sea. "They come up as a cloud; their chariots fly as the whirlwind. Woe unto us! "I looked upon the Earthand it was a desert; I beheld the mountains, and lo they trembled, and all the hills, and they dashed together. I beheld and lo! there was no man, and all the birds of the heavens were fled; * * * all the cities were broken down. * * * The whole land shall be desolate.* * * "It is a mighty nation, an ancient nation, a nation whose language thou knowest not, neither understandest what they say. * * * Their quiver is an open sepulchre. * * * And they shall eat up thine harvest and thy bread which thy sons and thy daughters should eat." * Jeremiah, ch. iv. v. and viii.

XI.

HERE, the avowal of Manetho should be received with credence; since sapping the foundation of his system of national antiquity, better than any other argument, it must have sorely wounded his pride. "In the ancient times," he says, "during the reign of one of our kings named Timaos, the anger of God was aroused against us, I know not why; and there came from the direction of the east a multitude of men of ignoble race who, precipitating themselves by surprise upon our country, possessed themselves of it without a struggle and with the greatest ease. They slew part of the chiefs and cast the rest into chains. They burnt our cities and threw down the temples of the gods. Their barbarity toward the Egyptians were such that all who had not perished by the sword were reduced with their women and children to the hardest servitude. "They then took one from among themselves named Salatis, for a king, and he made his seat at Memphis and subjected all the provinces, superior and inferior alike, to tribute, by occupying them with military garrisons. "The latter he established principally in the direction of the east, with a view to closing the gates of his conquest against the future masters of Asia.

Having discovered in the Saitic nome or district to the eastward of the Bubastic branch of the Nile, a convenient spot called Avaris (Wara), he fortified it, and placed within its confines and in its neighborhood, two hundred and forty thousand warriors. Every year, at harvest time, he quited Memphis to come to that place, to superintend the harvests, to pay the salaries and wages, to exercise the multitude in warlike evolutions, and thus inspire the vanquished and foreigners with a salutary fear.

Dying after a reign of nineteen years, he had for a successor Beon, who was replaced by Apachnas, to whom succeeded Apophis, then Janas, then Assis, in all, six kings in 259 years and three months."