The family of Remeses II., by his two wives, was numerous, consisting of twenty-three sons and three daughters, whose names and figures are introduced in the Memnonium.

The duties of children were always more severe in the East than among any European people, and to the present day a son is not expected to sit in the presence of his father without express permission. Those of the Egyptian princes were equally austere. One of their officers was "fanbearer on the left of the king," and they were also obliged to carry the monarch in his palanquin or chair of state. As fanbearers, they attended him while seated on his throne, or in processions to the temples; and in this capacity they followed his chariot on foot as he celebrated his triumphant return from battle. Nor did they lay aside their insignia of office in time of war; and sometimes in the heat of battle, whether mounted in cars or engaged on foot, they carried them in their hand or slung behind them; and, as a distinguishing mark of princely rank, they wore a badge depending from the side of the head, perhaps intended to cover and enclose the lock of hair, which, among the Egyptians, was the sign of extreme youth, and the usual emblem of the god Harpocrates.

The reign of Remeses the Great was long and prosperous; nor does the period of sixty-six years appear too much, when we consider the extent of his conquests, and the many grand monuments

* The names of the daughters are omitted. The families in the East are frequently mentioned by ancient authors as being very numerous. Artaxerxes had 153 children; Rehoboam begat 28 sons and 60 daughters. † Vide Plate I.

he erected in every part of Egypt, after his victorious return. Indeed, the number I have stated is derived from the authority of Manetho; and in the monuments, we have already met with the date of his 62d year. The extensive additions to the great temples of Karnak and Luqsor, where two beautiful obelisks of red granite, bearing his name, proclaim the wonderful skill of the Egyptians in sculpturing* those hard materials: the elegant palace-temple of the Memnonium, and many other edifices at Thebes and Abydus: the temples hewn in the hard grit-stone rock of Aboosimbel: those erected at Dayr, Sabooa, and Gerf Hossayn in Nubia: the obelisks at Tanis, and vestiges of ruins there and in other parts of the Delta, — bear ample testimony to the length of time required for their execution: and from these we may infer a proportionate number founded or enlarged by him at Memphist, and other of the principal cities, whose sites are now unknown or concealed by mounds.

Besides his military exploits, another very remarkable event is said to have distinguished his reign; the partition of the lands among the peasants §, who were required to pay a fixed tax to the government, according to the extent of the property they obtained. But that this division could have been the origin of land surveying, as Herodotus

* Many of the hieroglyphics are two inches deep. One of the obelisks has been removed to Paris; the other is said to be ceded to the city of Marseilles.

† At Memphis, a Colossus, and fragments of several statues, bearing his name, are still met with.

Vide infrà, chap. iv. under " Different Lawgivers."

Herodot. ii. 109.

supposes, is contrary to probability, and the evidence of the Bible as well as of the sculptures, both which show the rights and limits of landed property to have been long since well defined; and the necessity of ascertaining the quantity of land irrigated by the Nile, or changed by the effect of the inundation, must have led a people already highly civilised before the accession of this prince, to the practice of geometry at least some centuries previous to his era. The Bible informs us, that a Pharaoh, the contemporary of Joseph, bought all the land (except that of the priests) from the Egyptian landholders: the partition of land mentioned by the historian, could not therefore have been the first instance of such a system in the country; and he may either allude to a new regulation made subsequently to the time of Joseph, or to the very change that took place by his advice. In this case, the tax imposed refers to the fifth part* annually paid to the government by the Egyptian peasant, which continued to be the law of the country long after the time of Josepht; and hence some may derive an argument in favour of the idea before suggested, that the original Sesostris (so often confounded with Remeses II.) was Osirtasen I. ‡, the Pharaoh in whose reign Joseph arrived in Egypt.§

* Gen. xlvii. 24.

+ Gen. xlvii. 26., "a law over the land of Egypt unto this day, that Pharaoh should have the fifth part, except the land of the priests, which became not Pharaoh's."

Osirtasen's living posterior to the erection of the pyramids is an objection.

I must, however, confess, that Herodotus's statement does not agree exactly with that mentioned in Genesis; the people then selling their lands for corn, and afterwards farming it from the king.

His thirteenth son, Pthahmen, succeeded him; and, from the kingly oval accompanying his name at the Memnonium, it is highly probable that the first prenomen he took on ascending the throne was afterwards changed to that by which he is known in the lists of the Egyptian monarchs. But his reign was not marked by any military event of consequence, nor by any particular encouragement given to the arts of peace. He may be the Sesoosis II. of Diodorus, and the Pheron of Herodotus, a title mistaken by the latter historian for the name of the monarch, and evidently corrupted from Phra or Pharaoh. * Two obelisks are reported + to have been erected by him, at Heliopolis, in honour of the sun; but they no longer remain; and though his name appears on some of the monuments of his father and of his predecessors, those founded by him were comparatively few, at least in Upper Egypt; and the additions he made to those buildings are neither numerous nor remarkable for their magnificence.

In Pthahmen terminated the eighteenth dynasty, and a second family of Diospolitan or Thebant monarchs succeeded to the dominion of Upper and Lower Egypt, and reigned eighty-nine years.

The Arabs now call Phrab, or Pharaoh, Pharaóon.

Pliny calls him Nuncoreus, and says that he dedicated two obelisks to the sun on the recovery of his sight. Herodotus states the same of Pheron. Plin. xvi. 16. Herodot. ii. 111.

Sethos, or Pthah-men-Se-pthah, appears to have been an exception, and was, perhaps, a Memphite, or from Lower Egypt, as his name is omitted in the lists of Thebes and Abydus. It also seems to indicate a Memphite origin.

19th Dynasty, of 1 Memphite? and 6 Diospolite Kings,

Thus far I have stated my own opinions respecting the accordance of the monuments with some of the historical data furnished by Manetho; particularly about the period of his eighteenth dynasty. I have placed the arrival of Joseph in the reign of Osirtasen I.; the birth of Moses in that of Amosis, the leader of this Theban succession, whom I suppose to be the "new king who knew not Joseph;" and the Exodus of the Israelites in that of the third Thothmes. I have assigned the date of 1355 for the accession of the great Remeses, and have had the satisfaction of finding the period thus fixed for his reign fully accords with, and is confirmed by, the astronomical ceiling of the Memnonium. But as another opinion, which ascribes to these events a higher antiquity, may