compound. Some believe these people to have been Arabs." "When these kings, or shepherds, and their posterity had kept the government of Egypt for 511 years, the king of Thebes, and the remainder of Egypt that was not yet subjected, made a violent and obstinate war upon the shepherds, and routed them under the command of king Alisphragmouthosis; and when the greatest part of them had been driven out of Egypt, the rest withdrew into Avaris, which comprehended ten thousand acres; and this the shepherds had enclosed with a strong wall, that secured all their provisions and plunder. Here they were besieged by Thumosis, son of Alisphragmouthosis, with an army of 480,000 men; but despairing to reduce them by assault, he made a treaty with them to depart from Egypt without molestation, and retire whither they pleased. Upon these terms they marched away with all their families and goods, to the number of 240,000, by the way of the wilderness into Syria; and through the fear of the Assyrians, who were lords of Asia, they retired into a country now known by the name of Judæa, and built a city large enough to contain them all, and called it Jerusalem." So far Manetho, who however, still goes on with his story, by mentioning a succession of Egyptian princes, who reigned for the period of 393 years, that is, from the expulsion of the Shepherds to the time of Sethosis, or Egyptus, and the de parture of his brother Armaïs, or Danaus, for Greece. After some interruption, Josephus gives another large extract from Manetho, and introduces to our acquaintance a new race of people afflicted with leprosy, amounting to the number of 80,000, and put to hard labour in the stone-quarries on the eastern side of the Nile, by the Pharaoh Amenophis, at the persuasion of a holy and learned priest of great authority amongst the Egyptians. "This wise heavenly man," continues Manetho, "in a horror of conscience for what he had done, and in the dread of a judicial vengeance from heaven, finding by a revelation that Divine justice, to balance the tyrannical oppression of these leprous people, had, in providence, appointed them the government of Egypt for thirteen years, and being afraid to tell it to the king, committed the inspiration to writing, and laid violent hands on himself, to the great terror of the king." I beg you will pay particular attention to this passage. "The king being now plied with petitions on the behalf of these miserable people, and particularly for some place of retreat, where they might live safe and easy, they pitched upon Avaris, formerly known by the name of Typhon, and the seat of the Shepherds. The prince granted them this boon, and they were no sooner settled in it, but finding it a commodious post for a rebellion, they listed themselves under Osarsiph, a priest of Heli opolis, and took an oath of fidelity to him in whatever he should command them, upon these preliminary conditions, that they should neither worship any of the Egyptian gods, nor abstain from any of the meats that they accounted holy, nor intermarry but with the people of their own opinion. When they had gone thus far in opposition to the Egyptians' interest and customs, the commander presently ordered the fortifying and walling in of the city, and the levying of war against Amenophis; and sent an embassy to the Shepherds at Jerusalem, whom king Themosis had expelled from Egypt, with instructions to the deputies to advise upon the common cause, and to invite them into a league against Egypt, with a promise to join in the confederacy, and receive them into Avaris, the seat of their ancestors, where they were sure they could want nothing; fight when they should find it convenient, and, with all the ease in the world, make themselves masters of the province. The Shepherds were transported with joy at this proposal, and immediately drew out to the number of 200,000, and marched to Avaris." 66 Amenophis, upon the news of this invasion, was at his wit's end what to think of the prophetical paper the priest left behind him, and called a great council of the princes and people together, and sent away all the beasts that passed for sacred, with a strict order to the priests to keep all their idols as close as possible. He committed his son Sethon, otherwise called Ramesses, after his father's name, Rhampses, a child of five years of age, to the care of a particular friend; and so marched away himself at the head of 300,000 fighting men, to encounter the enemy; but upon second thoughts, and a check of conscience, he turned short without fighting, and went to Memphis, where he and his people took shipping, and, with Apis and the rest of their gods, fled into Ethiopia. The king of the country gave them so generous a reception, that they wanted for nothing. during the whole course of that fatal thirteen years' banishment." "In the meantime, the Jerusalem auxiliaries made infinitely more ravage in Egypt than they who had called them; for there was nothing they stuck at, that was either inhuman or wicked, and the very spectacle of their impiety was a calamity not to be expressed. The razing, burning, and rifling of towns and villages was nothing to them; they sacrilegiously broke the images of the gods to pieces, most barbarously tearing the consecrated creatures that the Egyptians adored, limb from limb, forcing the priests and prophets to be themselves the executioners, and then turning them off naked." "The founder of this polity was one Osarsiph, a priest of Heliopolis, so called from Osiris, a god that was worshipped there; and this priest changing his religion, changed his name also, and called himself Moses." "Amenophis and his son Rhampses marched afterward out of Ethiopia with two great armies, encountered the Shepherds and the lepers, routed and had the chase of them, with a very great slaughter, to the borders of Syria.” This is the account we have from Manetho, as it has been preserved and transmitted to us by Josephus. In this account we are to consider several important points. The first, and perhaps the most deserving of attention, is the statement of two different and distinct incursions of the Shepherds into Egypt; the one when they were expelled from Themosis; the other when they were invited by the rebellious lepers, and ultimately driven out by Amenophis and his son Ramesses; but in both cases the city of Avaris had been the residence of these strangers. The seond striking circumstance is, the prophecy of the old priest, foretelling that these strangers were destined to rule over Egypt for the space of thirteen years; on which account king Amenophis retired into Ethiopia, and at the end of these thirteen years attacked, routed, and expelled them. The third fact mentioned by Manetho is, that from the first expulsion of the Shepherds, under Themosis, to the reign of Sethosis, and the departure of Danaus for Argos, there reigned over Egypt sixteen kings, and two queens, the united period of whose government amounts to 348 years; and it further appears, that this Sethosis, son of Amenophis, was eighteen years old when |