Home › The Monuments of Rameses The › The Monuments of Rameses The: Moses

The Monuments of Rameses The: Moses

The concordance of the periods of time, and the minutie of the narrative do not leave room to attribute these wants to any other Pharaoh. Rameses is the only one who by his reign of sixty-eight years presents a sufficient lapse of time for the long withdrawal of Moses to the deserts of Arabia.

The book of Exodus informs us, in fact, that the king whose anger Moses had aroused died after a very long time, and that then only did the prophet venture to return to Egypt. "Moses, therefore, was reared in a country which had carried art and industry to a very high pitch, and at a moment when its literature shone with more than usual brilliance. It is easy to recognize in the Egyptian texts, the peculiar turn of verses and the parallelism of the ideas or of the expressions which form the special character of Hebrew poesy. The earliest sacred writers even have directly borrowed from the priestly annalists certain expressions whose energy and beauty have long been admired, and it is no mean glory for the poet Penta-our and for the other men of letters assembled at the court of Rameses Mei-Amoun to have had a considerable share in the literary education of the Hebrew legislator."* - X.

BEFORE going farther we should point out the fact that the cruel policy practised by Rameses toward the Hebrews, was not exclusively his own.

It had been that of all his predecessors. A very curious painting found at Thebes, upon the walls of a burial chapel attributed to Thothmes III., shows * Viscount E. de Rougé in the paper already cited.