[170]. Exod. vii. 19 contains an exaggeration which could easily be omitted without any injury to the sense of the narrative. The change of water in the river would affect the canals and such pools and ponds as were fed from the Nile, but nothing else. The river-water is not considered fit for drinking in the early days of the inundation. The green and slimy vegetation brought from the Equatorial regions renders it quite poisonous, and it is not until some days after it has become ‘red’ that it is again fit to drink.
[171]. The ‘camels’ mentioned along with the cattle in Exod. ix. 3 have been inserted from an Israelitish point of view. The Egyptians had no camels; and though the Bedâwin doubtless used them from an early period, none were employed by the Egyptians themselves until the Roman or Arab age.
[172]. The passage is, unfortunately, mutilated. What remains reads thus: ‘... the tents in front of the city of Pi-Bailos, on the canal of Shakana; ... [the adjoining land] was not cultivated, but had been left as pasture for cattle for the sake of the foreigners. It had been abandoned since the time of (our) ancestors. All the kings of Upper Egypt sat within their entrenchments ... and the kings of Lower Egypt found themselves in the midst of their cities, surrounded with earthworks, cut off from everything by the (hostile) warriors, for they had no mercenaries to oppose to them. Thus had it been [until Meneptah] ascended the throne of Horus. He was crowned to preserve the life of mankind.’ The word translated ‘tents’ is ahilu, the Hebrew ôhêl, which is used by Ramses III. of the ‘tents’ of the Shasu or Edomites of Mount Seir. For translations of the text, see E. de Rougé, Extrait d’un Mémoire sur les Attaques dirigées contre l’Égypte, pp. 6-13 (1867); Chabas, Recherches pour servir à l’histoire de la xixe Dynastie, pp. 84-92 (1873); Brugsch, Egypt under the Pharaohs, Eng. tr. (2nd edit.), ii. pp. 116-123; Maspero, The Struggle of the Nations, pp. 433-436.
[173]. Cont. Apion. i. 26.
[174]. This name, however, varied in different versions of the legend. Chærêmôn makes it Phritiphantes, which may represent Zaphnath-paaneah, the dental (t) taking the place of z, and pa-Ra, ‘the sun-god’ of pa-Ankhu, ‘the living one.’
[175]. The papyrus is in the Hermitage at St. Petersburg (Golénischeff, Recueil de Travaux relatifs à la Philologie et à l’Archéologie égyptiennes et assyriennes, xv. pp. 88, 89).
[176]. Dr. Wilcken has pointed out (Zur Aegyptisch-hellenistischen Literatur in the Festschrift für Georg Ebers, 1897, pp. 146-152) that two fragments of a Greek papyrus published by Wessely in the Denkschriften der Wiener Akademie, 42, 1893, pp. 3 sqq., contain a legend which closely resembles that of the Egyptian version of the Exodus. In this, however, a potter takes the place of the seer Amenôphis, the desire of the king to see the gods is explained by his wish to know the future, the ‘impure people’ are called the ‘girdle-wearers,’ and the beginning of a Sothic cycle is apparently combined with the story. Moreover, it would seem that the papyrus does not yet know of the identification of the ‘impure people’ with the Jews.
[177]. The Threshold Covenant or the Beginning of Religious Rites (New York, 1896).
[178]. The Threshold Covenant, pp. 203, 204.