CHAPTER XI.

DIRECT MONUMENTAL CONFIRMATION OF SCRIPTURAL

HISTORY.

OUR task would be left incomplete, should we fail to bring before the reader evidence to be found on the monuments confirmatory of historical facts, not written in the Pentateuch, but in other parts of the Old Testament.

We must now come up to a period long posterior to the exode of the Israelites, even to the time when dissensions among the Hebrews had caused a division of the tribes into two parts, which were respectively governed by Jeroboam and Rehoboam. In the twelfth chapter of the second book of Chronicles, we have the history of the invasion of Shishak the king of Egypt. We find him marching against Jerusalem with chariots and horsemen, and people without number-the Lubims, the Sukiims, and the Ethiopians. The humiliation and penitence of Rehoboam under the warnings of Shemaiah the Prophet, averted from him the calamity of an entire loss of his kingdom; but while the Lord declared that he should not be utterly destroyed, he nevertheless added, that the people should be the servants of Shishak, (that is, should be made his prisoners.) Shishak came and took away the trea sures of the house of the Lord, and the king's treasures-" he

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took all;" and, in short, reduced the kingdom to the condition of a conquered province.

is Shishak is the Pharaoh Sesonchis of Manetho, and was the head of the twenty-second dynasty of kings, which originated at Bubastis, a very ancient city of Lower Egypt. It so happened (and it is a striking instance of the remarkable faculty possessed by Champollion le Jeune in prompt deciphering) that before the mixed commission of French and Italians that visited Egypt in 1828, Champollion, without then having ever seen Egypt, detected the cartouche of this Pharaoh in some of the engraved representations of Europe, and read it, "Beloved of Amon, SHESHONK." It was four years afterward before Champollion saw Egypt, "during which interval" (says Mr. Gliddon) "the name of Sheshonk and his captive nations had been examined times without number by other hieroglyphists, and the names of all the prisoners had been copied by them and published, without any one of them having noticed the extraordinary biblical corroboration thence to be deduced." On his passage up the Nile, Champollion landed for an hour or two, about sunset, to snatch a hasty view of the ruins of Karnac; and on entering one of the halls, he found a picture representing a triumph, in which he instantly pointed out in the third line of a row of sixtythree prisoners, (each indicating a city, nation, or tribe,) presented by Sheshonk to Amun-ra, the figure on the opposite page, and translated it, Judah melek kah, "king of the country of Judah."

The picture had been executed by order of Shishak, or Sheshonk, so that here was found the sculptured record of the invasion and conquest recorded in the "Chronicles." On the same picture were shields, containing in hieroglyphics the

names Beth-horon, Megiddo, Mahanaim, and some others, all towns through which Shishak passed on his invasion of Judea.

Champollion supposed that the figure of the captive `was Rehoboam himself. We know not that this is so; some have doubted it, nor is it of any moment historically, because the cartouche equally represents the conquest of Judea by Shishak, whether the picture be that of the king, or one of his captive princes or subjects.

In other parts of the picture, the conquest of other places is represented without the introduction of the portrait of the subjugated monarch. It is worthy of notice, while on this subject, that in the museum of Dr. Abbot in Cairo, there is a rusty helmet and chain that were found at Thebes, and on some of the links of the latter may just be distinguished the same cartouche of Shishak that is represented in the painting.

But of the numerous captives that were once represented on that picture, why is it that now, but three remain? for such, we believe, is the fact. Those who defaced or removed some of them are known. They are Europeans, and profess to be scholars seeking for the truth. Is the suspicion well-founded that the mutilation is the work of those who deem it more honorable to be deemed scientific neologists, than it is to sustain Scriptural truth? We would fain hope that the destruction may have been accidental. Fortunately for truth, many copies of the picture had been made before its mutilation.

It is the more to be lamented that this picture has been defaced, because the sculptured memorials of the Jews in Egypt, as we have already intimated, were not likely to be very common. The Egyptians could not but be humbled by that portion of their history which connected them with the