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end upon the new monuments. According to the Sal lier papyrus, Apophis reared a temple to the god Sutekh; and we cannot doubt that our sphinxes are owing to the piety of this king toward the deity of his nation, nor can we refrain from the thought that the sacred inclosure which these monuments were intended to embellish was the site of the temple of Sutekh at Avaris [Zoan]. . . . And if, as every indication leads us to suppose, Apophis is the Pharaoh of Genesis, it was this Apophis who raised Joseph to the rank of a minister. And, these sphinxes of Zoan being contemporary with Joseph, can it be possible they have the signal honor of owing their origin to the son of Jacob personally, who would have the ordering of

their execution?"

We are now ready to make the verification. The Tablet of Four Hundred Years and these sphinxes were discovered not far apart. Rameses the Great was the author of the tablet confessing descent from the Shepherds, and to-day we possess the features of the latter copied by the sun: the Shepherds were the authors of the Zoan sphinxes, to which they imparted their own faces. Let us compare the two, the profile of the sphinx, as above (4), with the profile of the king in illustration 2. They are parallel! Both have the same roundly retreating brow, the same arched nose, the same prominent lips, the same projecting chin, the same high cheek-bones, the same hollow cheeks - what have they not exactly alike? They are a startling match. An eminent scholar, the Reverend H. G. Tomkins, once wrote of the sphinx :

forming the head of the Shepherd into an image of his own (5). The alteration consisted mainly in removing the shaggy mane of the lion in order to substitute the "grand headdress with spreading wings," a reduction which leaves the head too small for the body, while the outlines of the countenance remain almost untouched in the stolen monument.

However, Rameses II. did inscribe his name on the front of the Sphinx of Apophis at Zoan, which he did not otherwise injure, and upon other sphinxes of the Shepherds where he added the title "Friend" or "Beloved of Set"; while upon various monuments recently uncovered on the same site by Mr. W. M. Flinders Petrie, he is delineated in the act of offering to Sutekh, who in one instance wears the white crown as on the Tablet of Four Hundred Years, but in two instances is uncrowned and long-eared.

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5. HEAD OF SHEPHERD SPHINX ADAPTED TO THE HEAD OF RAMESES 11. THE EGYPT EXPLORATION FUND."

"What a front is this! full of gnarled strength. The brows are knit with anxious care; the full but small eyes seem to know no kindly light; the nose, of fine profile curve, yet broad in form, has its strongly chiseled nostrils depressed in accordance with the saddened lines of the lower cheek. The lips are thick and prominent, but not with the unmeaning fullness of the negro; quite the opposite. The curve is fine, the Cupid's bow' perfect which defines so boldly the upper outline: the channeled and curved upper lip has even an expression of proud sensitiveness, and there is more of sorrow than of fierceness in the drawn-down angles of the mouth."

But if we could throw the lion's mane of the sphinx around the head of the proud and lion-hearted though aged king, this description would apply equally well to him, would it not?

The family resemblance is so complete that one might be tempted to suspect the sphinx of really bearing the portrait of Rameses himself, rather than that of some Shepherd king. But, unhappily for such a suspicion, Rameses II. once, having found a similar sphinx at the site of Pithom or having removed one from Zoan, actually engaged in the discreditable work of appropriating it to himself by trans

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Such a verification is more than satisfactory. We are fully convinced that this tall king, so superhumanly towering as to be frightful to his enemies, rightfully belonged to the ruling rather than to the native race of Egypt; and, strange though it be, we allow his claim of blood-relation to those invaders, the HyksosShepherds, whose expulsion from the Delta required the entire strength of the seventeenth Theban dynasty expended in a war of eighty years. Here lies the secret of that uniform, peculiar, superior cast of physiognomy running through all the countenances of the Ramesside line, a line ever famous for being uncommonly handsome.

And who were these Shepherds? whence did they enter Egypt? Such questions have confounded the wise ever since the revival of learning. The origin of the Shepherds has been referred to the pastoral ranges on the

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east of Egypt, to the Negeb, to the land of the Amorites, to the coast of the Philistines, to the hill of the Jebusites, and especially to the cities of Phoenicia. But grave objections lie against all these conjectures; and the more the ethnic type of the race is studied, the farther north and east, into Asia, its original home is carried. Some Hittite monuments recently discovered show a remarkable approach to its general aspect, yet many of the heads of Assyrian kings a still greater coördination. Very striking agreements appear in some details of custom, such as wearing a profusion of hair and the fashion in which it is dressed, exhibited in the familiar representations of Nimrod strangling a lion, or the statue of the god Nebo. The latest verdict on these inquiries is that of a distinguished scholar whom America delights to honor, Miss Amelia B. Edwards:

to us he is a curiosity, from the fact that the Hyksos features of Rameseshis son must have descended through him, and in so doing left on him the typical marks of this mysterious race. How is it? has he got them too? Consult his portrait in illustration 6, and answer accordingly. Neither a long nor a second examination is required to perceive in his looks a survival of the Sphinx of Zoan on the one hand, and a prophecy of his offspring on the other. A brow reclining, a languid eye, a nose strongly arched, a mouth of almost voluptuous lips, a deep hollow beneath them that throws. a round chin into accent,-all are there. He strikes involuntarily the same attitude of calm contemplation, or even pleasant reverie; but even in his style of wearing the hair he appears to affect that odd, superfluous mane of his pastoral ancestors. Though only an outline, this sketch has been chosen above many splendid examples of pictorial carving, for the sake of presenting features and not a scene. Some of the finest bas-reliefs in all Egyptian sculpture have Setî I. for their subject and central figure, imparting the story of his life through the eye rather than through the ear,

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"The question of the Hyksos type remains unanswered. It is neither Egyptian nor Ethiopic nor Semitic. It bears a more Northern stamp. It reminds us that those early Chaldeans, who were driven out by the Elamites under Kudur-nan-khundi, spoke and wrote a Turanian dialect, and that their blood was akin to that of the yellow races which we now call Tartar and Mongolian.'

When the eighteenth dynasty came to an end with King Haremhebi, the royal line was extinct on the male side. So the nineteenth dynasty was founded by a warrior, Rameses I.; but he was a usurper, lacking in an essential qualification-royal blood.

His son, Setî I., was also a brilliant conqueror; but to the Theban priests and men of learning he, too, was unsatisfactory, because, in like manner, royal blood did not course in his veins, and because he bore the offensive name of Set. However, if, on the contrary, he was a scion of Shepherd stock, then

artistic object-lessons fairly changing study into enjoyment. A late witness, Monsieur Ch. Blanc, testifies :

"Seated upon a round base of a column, we examined the noblest bas-reliefs in the world! Seti was at once human and heroic, mild and proud, stood out present in his own temple of Abydus. His noble head, from the wall and seemed to regard us with a gentle smile. A wandering ray of sunlight penetrat

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ed into the temple, and, falling upon the low salience of the sculptured figures, gave them a relief and animation which was almost illusive."

7. RAMESES' FATHER. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN UNDER THE DIRECTION OF PROF. MASPERO AT BULAQ.

However, so varied are our resources that to-day we are not dependent on ancient art for an acquaintance with this refined and worshipful parent of him who forms the object of our inquisitive study. The famous Setî, too, was found among the royal mummies at Daïr el-Baharî, along with Thothmes III. the illustrious, and Rameses II. the conqueror. And when his winding-sheets of mummy-cloth were unwound, and when, for the first time in so many long centuries, the light re-revealed those idiosyncratic features which of old inspired many beautiful reliefs in stone, the merciless camera was also turned upon them, and in that sort of picture which is notori

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8. TUAA, MOTHER OF RAMESES. FROM LEPSIUS'S DENKMALER AU3 EGYPTEN."

dered their princely subject - and a proof of Ramesside blood. In neither of these lines will any one who makes the comparison require the help of hints as to points of conformity or affinity. Rather, the danger lies toward the opposite extreme. The casual examiner will be likely to declare, "Difference there is none. Why! this pretended Seti is merely another photograph of the Rameses mummyhead taken from another direction of view!" But Seti shrewdly made up for his own deficiency in the nobility then dominant by marrying a princess of the last or eighteenth

dynasty, Tuaa by name. She was descended directly from Thothmes III. and Amenophis III. whose granddaughter she was; and the monumental records acknowledge her as "Royal Wife, Royal Mother, Heiress, and Sharer of the Throne." Her mask, as it were, in illustration 8, reveals another source whence Rameses, her illustrious son, derived some of his "classic type" of countenance, along with the whole of his royal blood. For a work of such high antiquity we are not prepared for a treatment so truly artistic, and productive of so startling an effect. How vividly that sharp profile contrasts with the adjacent background! It speaks for itself as preserving an exact appearance of a living being, with the utmost fidelity and delicacy. Nay, what trace of antiquity does it present? It is not too much to say that it marks a moment of Egyptian Renaissance which so closely approaches the Renaissance of art in Italy that, were its origin unknown, it might be mistaken for a product. of that time.

Tuaa, however, was preeminently royal, not only in that her father was a king of the eighteenth dynasty, but in that on the maternal side, her mother, Tiî by name, the queen of Amenophis III., was a princess in her own right. Her father was a powerful king, and her mother a notable queen, of Naharaina or Mesopotamia. This information is preserved upon a large scarabæus, executed under Amenophis, whose inscription, having the following legend (9), may be translated thus:

"The living Horus, the Strong Bull, crowned by Truth, The Lord of Diadems, establishing laws, pacifier of The Two Countries, great warrior, smiter of the Eastern Foreigners, King of the Upper and Lower Egypt. NEB-MA-RA, Son of the Sun, AMENOPHIS, the ruler of

The Thebaid, the Giver of Life: The Great Royal Lady
TIÎ, the living one; the name of her father was IUA,
The name of her mother was TUAA,

Who is the wife of the powerful King,
His southern frontiers are to the Karui,
His northern are to

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NAHARAINA."

In the record upon another similar scarabæus, of the same age, Tiî, the living one, is called "the marvel, the daughter of the Chief of Naharaina." Of course we are curious to see how this marvelous princess held forth, if, perchance, the monuments have taken and saved a picture of such a "Great Royal Lady" from the land of Rebekah and Rachel and Leah. And mirabile dictu! they have. It is found among the portraits of the queens in the Tombs of the Queens, on the west of the river Nile over against Thebes, where her own chamber of sepulture remains intact, together with all its sculptures and paintings, unharmed by fire (10). The family likeness on the maternal

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5. MARRIAGE RECORD OF AMENOPHIS WITH TIÊ. FROM ROSELLINI.

fanatical worshiper of the sun's beamy disk. In the enthusiasm kindled by a head wrought in white marble and exhibiting a taste surprisingly æsthetic, recognized as that of Ti by Mariette (though not by Maspero) after she had reached the proportions of a matronly queen, Monsieur Charmes declares:

"When we stop in admiration before the head of Taia, at Bûlâq, we feel ourselves unconsciously driven by her charms... to forge a whole history, an historical romance, of which her enigmatic personality is the center and inspiration, and to fancy her the chief author of those religious tragedies which disturbed her epoch and left a burning trace which has not yet disappeared."

Having thus traced the probable origin of Rameses' ancestors on his father's side, by the aid of the Tablet of Four Hundred Years, back to Chaldea, and the lineage of his mother, by the aid of the Marriage-record of Amenophis, back to Mesopotamia, he might be regarded in respect to race as an Assyrian rather than an Egyptian, might he not? Are we aware that a verse exists in the Bible, reading,

"For thus saith the Lord God:

My people went down aforetime into Egypt to sojourn there,

"Now therefore, what have I here, saith the Lord,

That my people is taken away for nought?"

And the Assyrian oppressed them without cause," which always has been an enigma? Commenside, quite different from that of the Rames- tators, indeed, unanimously say the sojourn in side line in respect of angularity, is here re- Egypt is here contrasted with the captivity in vealed with intensity. The nose, especially, is Assyria; but this leaves the statement in the straight and pointed; the brow is high and first clause abruptly suspended, and would far from continuing the slope of the nose, im- characterize a carrying away into captivity inplying an intellect of superior order. Though correctly as an "oppression," while the very her lips indicate a loving heart, she evidently next verse (Is. lii. 4, 5) the discourse proceeds possessed more of spirit than of gentleness; to turn from the Egyptian oppression to the while the remarkably exact relations and equal- contemporary Babylonian captivity in usual ities of her features must have made her not and precise terms: only a very attractive but an exceedingly beautiful woman. If Rebekah and Rachel were only half so fair as she, they were well worth a journey away to Mesopotamia to win. And, possibly, they were not unlike in another very different respect. It will be remembered that Rachel, on the eve of the furtive departure from Mesopotamia, stole away the images of her father's gods, which surely would be of no value to her unless she really trusted in them and meant to be true to their service in the land to which she was going. Tiî, too, was equally loyal to her father's idols, and carried the gods of Mesopotamia to Egypt. Being a worshiper of Baal, her example revived the adoration of the sun, in the religious rites of the royal family at least, leading to endless discord and trouble. Though a wife of Amenophis III., her daughter married his son Khu-en-Aten, who is famous for having discarded the gods of Egypt totally, and (under the influence of Tii?) for becoming a VOL. XXXIV.-3.

10. TIL THE MESOPOTAMIAN PRINCESS. FROM ROSELLINI.

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shown. Isaiah well understood in what way Rameses the Great was an Assyrian in Egypt, and so did they whom he addressed.

And this first-born son of the union between Setî and Tuaa, because inheriting the double royalty of his mother, was instantly hailed as king, and recognized by a fastidious aristocracy as the future sovereign of the land; and not only as a royal but as a divine being. To the people at large he was the personal representation of the divine nature; they adored him, offered prayers to him, sang hymns of praise to him; his ministers addressed him in rever

ent terms, his princes prostrated themselves in his presence, his wives really worshiped him. And he appears to have believed himself superior to men and even allied to the gods; for in such groups as that of Abu Keshaib, or Pithom, he seated himself between two solar deities, Ra on the one side, Tum on the other, and made his own image larger than either of theirs! Indeed, he carried this vanity so far as to represent in certain sculptures Rameses as king burning incense before Rameses a deity. His very name signifies "Derived from Ra," nor does he hesitate to assume the titles "Son of Ra," "Son ofthe Sun." How naturally he cries out, "Where art thou, O my father Amen?" And he blushes not to put into the speech of the Supreme Creator such words as these, "Thus speaks the father of the gods, to his son who loves him, the first-born of his loins, I am thy father, I have begotten thee like a god; all thy limbs are supernal."

One expression of this popular conceit relates to his nurture in early life he was regarded as having been nourished by the vestal divinity Anûkeh, whose maternal embrace, as disclosed in illustration 11, he enjoyed and reciprocated by a pressure of the hand, at the same time looking up into his benefactress's face with filial affection. For observe that the artist has with intention thrown into the features of the goddess that noble "classical" profile of his real mother Tuaa, retaining also in those of Rameses as much as possible of the peculiar mold he developed in after life; both, therefore, are living portraits. The execution of this exquisitely colored intaglio, upon a wall of the temple at Baït el-Walî, dates from the very days of Rameses; its tone is chaste, and its design is carried out to the minutest detail. Both in feeling and in art the original is an advanced attainment in Egyptian effort. It is a composition whose excellence kindles new enthusiasm as a longer study unfolds its merits. Though the bas-reliefs of this temple relate to the opening life and early wars of Rameses, manifestly in this scene, though returning from his first excursion very hungry and thirsty, he had not yet passed beyond a tender age. At first sight we may not be able to suppress a smile nor restrain the remark, Rather large for a babe! But, as the Egyptians would no sooner sketch their hero in the weakness of childhood than in the infirmity of old age, he is always upon the monuments attributed with immortal youth, beauty, felicity. Nor were the Egyptians alone in this sort of estimation of their idols: Josephus indulges in a similar vein respecting that infant brought up by Pharaoh's daughter:

"God did also give him that tallness, when he was but three years old, as was wonderful; and there was

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