It has, I trust, satisfactorily been proved that the erection and nomination of those wondrous edifices were not of native growth. It has, I trust, additionally appeared that both were essentially Indian. It may not now be “ungermane to the matter,” if we would for a moment digress, to consider the era of their probable date, as introductory to the character of their probable destination.
Josephus expressly informs us that the Israelites were employed in the construction of the pyramids. Is there any reason why we should doubt so respectable an authority? Oh, yes, it is said the Scriptures are against it—the task of the Israelites during their bondage being exclusively confined to the making of brick. I deny that the Scriptures either allege or insinuate any such thing. On the contrary, we may fairly infer, from Ex. ix. 8, 10, that they were engaged in other servile offices; as also from Ps. lxxxi. 6, where it is said, “I removed his shoulder from the burden, and his hands were delivered from the mortar-box”—not pots, as our translation has it; and such rendering is supported by the Septuagint, Vulgate, Symmachus, and others.[182]
This ascription receives further countenance from a passage in Diodorus, i. 2, where, referring to those immense piles, and the ideas of the Egyptians themselves respecting them, he adds: “They say the first was erected by Armæus, the second by Amosis, the third by Inaron.” Who is it that pronounces the last two names, if only spelled, aMosis and inAron, and recollects, at the same time, what the Scriptures tell us of Moses and Aaron, that is not at once struck with the similarity of the sound? And as to Armæus, why it bears so evident an affinity with Aramæus or Aramean, that one cannot avoid connecting it with the “Aramite ready to perish,” the very name given to Jacob, Deut. xxvi. 5.[183] Nothing, then, prevents, so far as I can see, our concluding one of those structures at least—I say one at least to conciliate the brick-party; and I think, besides, I have read somewhere, that one of the pyramids, the smaller ones no doubt, was built of such material—to have been the work of the sons of Israel. And the rather as it was consonant with the uniform practice of the ancient Oriental nations to employ captive foreigners on servile and laborious works.
The usual time, too, assigned to the slavery of the Israelites corresponds very nearly with that generally allotted to the erection of those masses. The stay of the sons of Israel in the land of Egypt is generally understood to have been two hundred and fifteen years. Of these Joseph ruled seventy; forty is a fair average for the generation that succeeded—which, added to his seventy, leaves one hundred and five years to the Exodus. Now we learn from Herodotus that Cheops, the reputed founder of the first or greatest of these pyramids, was the first also of the Egyptian kings who oppressed, or in any way tyrannised over, his subjects. His reign is stated to have been fifty years. Cephrenes, who succeeded, showed himself in every respect his brother, barring, as the other before him, the approach to every temple, stopping the performance of the usual sacrifices, and keeping his subjects all the while employed in every species of oppressive task and laborious drudgery. The period of his reign is stated to have been fifty-six years, which, added to the preceding fifty, make one hundred and six, exactly answering to the above calculation.
The Exodus, besides, is stated to have occurred B.C. 1791; and Herodotus and Diodorus together, while acknowledging their ignorance of the actual date of the pyramids, and the impossibility, on their part, to ascertain it, declare also their conviction that they must have been built at least about that period.
I have thus, I trust, done honourable justice to the testimony of Josephus. I have done so for many reasons—firstly, because of the importance of the subject itself; secondly, from my respect for the merits of the writer; and, thirdly, because that I think it very probable indeed that the Israelites may have been occupied in the erection of some of the minor and later pyramids. But insuperable obstacles stand in the way of our associating them with the structure of them all; and of these one is, the improbability that the victorious invaders would single out the inoffensive Israelites as particular objects of their oppression, when policy should suggest to them a directly different course in securing their adherence in opposition to the native residents. By Josephus’s account, however, it would appear that the Israelites alone were engaged upon those edifices; and the Scriptures themselves confine the intimation of drudgery to the Israelitish race: it therefore is manifest that the Egyptian natives were favoured by the then existing dynasty, while it is on all hands agreed, that the new-comers had treated during the whole period of their dominion, the entire Egyptian nation with indiscriminate rigour and chastisement.
Besides this, that deadly animosity existing in the Egyptian mind to the name and profession of shepherds, above alluded to, at once identifies their character with that of the “Uksi,” or “King-shepherds,” to whom we have before referred, and proves the date of their invasion anterior in point of time to Israel’s introduction into the land of Egypt. Joseph was well aware of the particulars of this invasion, and of the sting it left behind it in the mind of the Egyptians; and accordingly he acquaints his brothers, whose “trade also had been about cattle,” that “every shepherd was an abomination to the Egyptians.”[184]
Manetho himself, the Egyptian priest, is my voucher for this deduction, when he says that, “After these—the shepherd-kings—came another set of people who were sojourners in Egypt, in the reign of Amenophis. These chose themselves a leader one who was a priest of Heliopolis, and whose name was Osarsiph; and after he had listed himself with this body of men he changed his name to Moses.”
But this, it will be said, is at variance with Moses’ own account, which states that he obtained his name on being rescued from a watery cradle by Pharaoh’s daughter. Not in the least, I reply; for it is more than probable that, after his slaying the Egyptian, and consequent flight, he dropped his name to ensure concealment, and only resumed it on being invested with his divine commission. Or, what is more likely still, and perhaps the truth, that Osarsiph was the name which his “mother” had given him, and which adhered to him until “he grew up,”—a term in Scripture which expresses mature age,—until when it was not that the princess had designated him as Moses.
Strong, too, as my veneration is for Josephus, I cannot conceal either from myself or from the reader, that his testimony in this instance is rather of a dubious character. The idea of interpolation I altogether waive—it is, at all times, a contemptible subterfuge. I will take for granted that the text is genuine; and, on the very face of it, it bears the impress—in the first place, of inaccuracy, confounding the period of his countrymen’s servitude with that of their actual sojourn in Egypt; and, in the second place, of indistinctness, attaching a term of obloquy to those edifices, without condescending to offer therefor any cause. Here are his own words: “When time had obliterated the benefits of Joseph, and the kingdom of Egypt had passed into another family, they inhumanely treated the Israelites, and wore them down in various labours: for they ordered them to divert the course of the river (Nile) into many ditches, and to build walls, and raise mounds by which to confine the inundations of the river (Nile); and, moreover, vexed our nation in constructing FOOLISH PYRAMIDS, forced them to learn various arts, and inured them to undergo great labours; and after this manner did they, for four hundred years, endure bondage; the Egyptians doing that to destroy the Israelites by overmuch labour, whilst we ourselves endeavoured to struggle against all our difficulties.”