Antæo eripui.
This war was at length composed by the intervention of Mercury, who in memory thereof was said to reconcile two contending serpents, by casting his Ambassador's rod between them: and thus much concerning the ancient state of Egypt, Libya, and Greece, described by Solon.
The mythology of the Cretans differed in some things from that of Egypt and Libya: for in the Cretan mythology, Cœlus and Terra, or Uranus and Titæa were the parents of Saturn and Rhea, and Saturn and Rhea were the parents of Jupiter and Juno; and Hyperion, Japetus and the Titans were one Generation older than Jupiter; and Saturn was expelled his Kingdom and castrated by his son Jupiter: which fable hath no place in the mythology of Egypt.
During the Reign of Sesac, Jeroboam being in subjection to Egypt; set up the Gods of Egypt in Dan and Bethel; and Israel was without the true God, and without a teaching Priest and without law: and in those times there was no peace to him that went out, nor to him that came in, but great vexations were upon all the inhabitants of the countries; and nation was destroyed of nation, and city of city: for God did vex them with all adversity. 2 Chron. xv. 3, 5, 6. But in the fifth year of Asa the land of Judah became quiet from war, and from thence had quiet ten years; and Asa took away the altars of strange Gods, and brake down the Images, and built the fenced cities of Judah with walls and towers and gates and bars, having rest on every side, and got up an army of 580000 men, with which in the fifteenth year of his Reign he met Zerah the Ethiopian, who came out against him with an army of a thousand thousand Ethiopians and Libyans: the way of the Libyans was through Egypt, and therefore Zerah was now Lord of Egypt: they fought at Mareshah near Gerar, between Egypt and Judæa, and Zerah was beaten, so that he could not recover himself: and from all this I seem to gather that Osiris was slain in the fifth year of Asa, and thereupon Egypt fell into civil wars, being invaded by the Libyans, and defended by the Ethiopians for a time; and after ten years more being invaded by the Ethiopians, who slew Orus the son and successor of Osiris, drowning him in the Nile, and seized his Kingdom. By these civil wars of Egypt, the land of Judah had rest ten years. Osiris or Sesostris reigned long, Manetho saith 48 years; and by this reckoning he began to Reign about the 17th year of Solomon; and Orus his son was drowned in the 15th year of Asa: for Pliny [[321]] tells us, Ægyptiorum bellis attrita est Æthiopia, vicissim imperitando serviendoque, clara & potens etiam usque ad Trojana bella Memnone regnante. Ethiopia, served Egypt 'till the death of Sesostris, and no longer; for Herodotus [[322]] tells us that he alone enjoyed the Empire of Ethiopia: then the Ethiopians became free, and after ten years became Lords of Egypt and Libya, under Zerah and Amenophis.
When Asa by his victory over Zerah became safe from Egypt, he assembled all the people, and they offered sacrifices out of the spoils, and entered into a covenant upon oath to seek the Lord; and in lieu of the vessels taken away by Sesac, he brought into the house of God the things that his father had dedicated, and that he himself had dedicated, Silver and Gold, and Vessels. 2 Chron. xv.
When Zerah was beaten, so that he could not recover himself, the people [[323]] of the lower Egypt revolted from the Ethiopians, and called in to their assistance two hundred thousand Jews and Canaanites; and under the conduct of one Osarsiphus, a Priest of Egypt, called Usorthon, Osorchon, Osorchor, and Hercules Ægyptius by Manetho, caused the Ethiopians now under Memnon to retire to Memphis: and there Memnon turned the river Nile into a new channel, built a bridge over it and fortified that pass, and then went back into Ethiopia: but after thirteen years, he and his young son Ramesses came down with an army from Ethiopia, conquered the lower Egypt, and drove out the Jews and Phœnicians; and this action the Egyptian writers and their followers call the second expulsion of the Shepherds, taking Osarsiphus for Moses.
Tithonus a beautiful youth, the elder brother of Priamus, went into Ethiopia, being carried thither among many captives by Sesostris: and the Greeks, before the days of Hesiod, feigned that Memnon was his son: Memnon therefore, in the opinion of those ancient Greeks, was one Generation younger than Tithonus, and was born after the return of Sesostris into Egypt: suppose about 16 or 20 years after the death of Solomon. He is said to have lived very long, and so might die about 95 years after Solomon, as we reckoned above: his mother, called Cissia by Æschylus, in a statue erected to her in Egypt, [[324]] was represented as the daughter, the wife, and the mother of a King, and therefore he was the son of a King; which makes it probable that Zerah, whom he succeeded in the Kingdom of Ethiopia, was his father.
Historians [[325]] agree that Menes Reigned in Egypt next after the Gods, and turned the river into a new channel, and built a bridge over it, and built Memphis and the magnificent Temple of Vulcan: he built Memphis over-against the place where Grand Cairo now stands, called by the Arabian historians Mesir: he built only the body of the Temple of Vulcan, and his successors Ramesses or Rhampsinitus, Mœris, Asychis, and Psammiticus built the western, northern eastern, and southern portico's thereof: Psammiticus, who built the last portico of this Temple, Reigned three hundred years after the victory of Asa over Zerah, and it is not likely that this Temple could be above three hundred years in building, or that any Menes could be King of all Egypt before the expulsion of the Shepherds. The last of the Gods of Egypt was Orus, with his mother Isis, and sister Bubaste, and secretary Thoth, and unkle Typhon; and the King who reigned next after all their deaths, and turned the river and built a bridge over it, and built Memphis and the Temple of Vulcan, was Memnon or Amenophis, called by the Egyptians Amenoph; and therefore he is Menes: for the names Amenoph, or Menoph, and Menes do not much differ; and from Amenoph the city Memphis built by Menes had its Egyptian names Moph, Noph, Menoph or Menuf, as it is still called by the Arabian historians: the necessity of fortifying this place against Osarsiphus gave occasion to the building of it.
In the time of the revolt of the lower Egypt under Osarsiphus, and the retirement of Amenophis into Ethiopia, Egypt being then in the greatest distraction, the Greeks built the ship Argo, and sent in it the flower of Greece to Æetes in Colchis, and to many other Princes on the coasts of the Euxine and Mediterranean seas; and this ship was built after the pattern of an Egyptian ship with fifty oars, in which Danaus with his fifty daughters a few years before fled from Egypt into Greece, and was the first long ship with sails built by the Greeks: and such an improvement of navigation, with a design to send the flower of Greece to many Princes upon the sea-coasts of the Euxine and Mediterranean seas, was too great an undertaking to be set on foot, without the concurrence of the Princes and States of Greece, and perhaps the approbation of the Amphictyonic Council; for it was done by the dictate of the Oracle. This Council met every half year upon state-affairs for the welfare of Greece, and therefore knew of this expedition, and might send the Argonauts upon an embassy to the said Princes; and for concealing their design might make the fable of the golden fleece, in relation to the ship of Phrixus whose ensign was a golden ram: and probably their design was to notify the distraction of Egypt, and the invasion thereof by the Ethiopians and Israelites, to the said Princes, and to persuade them to take that opportunity to revolt from Egypt, and set up for themselves, and make a league with the Greeks: for the Argonauts went through [[326]] the Kingdom of Colchis by land to the Armenians, and through Armenia to the Medes; which could not have been done if they had not made friendship with the nations through which they passed: they visited also Laomedon King of the Trojans, Phineus King of the Thracians, Cyzicus King of the Doliones, Lycus King of the Mariandyni, the coasts of Mysia and Taurica Chersonesus, the nations upon the Tanais, the people about Byzantium, and the coasts of Epirus, Corsica, Melita, Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, and Gallia upon the Mediterranean; and from thence they [[327]] crossed the sea to Afric, and there conferred with Euripylus King of Cyrene: and [[328]] Strabo tells us that in Armenia and Media, and the neighbouring places, there were frequent monuments of the expedition of Jason; as also about Sinope, and its sea-coasts, the Propontis and the Hellespont, and in the Mediterranean: and a message by the flower of Greece to so many nations could be on no other account than state-policy; these nations had been invaded by the Egyptians, but after this expedition we hear no more of their continuing in subjection to Egypt.
The [[329]] Egyptians originally lived on the fruits of the earth, and fared hardly, and abstained from animals, and therefore abominated Shepherds: Menes taught them to adorn their beds and tables with rich furniture and carpets, and brought in amongst them a sumptuous, delicious and voluptuous way of life: and about a hundred years after his death, Gnephacthus one of his successors cursed him for it, and to reduce the luxury of Egypt, caused the curse to be entered in the Temple of Jupiter at Thebes; and by this curse the honour of Menes was diminished among the Egyptians.