Now at this place there was no retreat for the Israelites by land. They were compelled to effect their escape from their pursuers by crossing the sea to the opposite shore. Seeing the dangerous position they were in, Moses, the man gifted with supernatural resources, contrived to make a passage through the sea, and, a strong east wind assisting him throughout the night, he accomplished the construction of a road for himself and his followers, which should also serve as a trap to engulph their enemies after they had effected their own escape.
He, the builder of the monuments now extant in Ethiopia and Upper Egypt, and in other parts of the habitable earth (of which mention will be made in the course of this narrative)—he it was who contrived and made this passage during the night, while the Egyptians rested after their weary march. It was the sublimest effort of mechanical skill!
When day dawned the passage was ready, and Moses stood by and saw all his people walk down from the Egyptian shore into the dry road in the sea prepared for them. The waters were divided; “and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand and on their left. And the Egyptians pursued and went in after them to the midst of the sea, even all Pharaoh’s horses, his chariots, and his horsemen.”
When the Israelites gained the Arabian shore, and the Egyptians were in the middle between the two shores, Moses threw back the waters that were driven aside, and the waters returned and covered all the host of Pharaoh that came into the sea; there escaped not so much as one of them! And the Israelites saw the Egyptians dead upon the sea-shore; “and the people feared the Lord, and believed the Lord, and His servant Moses.”
At this crisis there were only women and children left in Egypt, and these in the deepest grief for the death of their first-born sons. No one came back from the camp to relate the terrible catastrophe to these unfortunate widows and orphans; and there was neither priest nor grown-up man to record the events of this period in the sacred books of the nation. Consequently, when Manetho compiled his history from the sacred records, he was unable to relate the events of this period clearly and without contradiction.
He accounts for the non-appearance of the King Amenophis and his forces in Egypt, after his pursuit of the Hebrews, by saying that he retired into Ethiopia, and remained there thirteen years as the guest of the king and people of Ethiopia. The son of this Pharaoh, whom Manetho calls Sethos, was at this time, when his father was drowned, five years old; so that at the end of these thirteen years he attained his majority, and the children that were his contemporaries were old enough to help themselves. These thirteen years form a gap in the history of Egypt.
After the departure of the Israelites, Egypt became a complete wilderness, and the Egyptians were so crushed and desolate that they seemed to have become almost extinct. They mourned and grieved so long that they appear to have quite forgotten even the names of their kings and the history of their nation. No wonder the Nile was termed the Lethe by classic writers.
The present Egyptians, the real descendants of Mizraim, are the Copts and the Fellaheen,—poor wretched specimens of humanity—and if these represent their ancestors, it conclusively proves to every traveller, when he stands in mute admiration on the stupendous monuments of past grandeur, that they never were the founders of such works of art and magnificence; they never were the players on the harp and other musical instruments depicted on the walls of palaces, nor the refined occupants of those noble apartments, representing the highest culture and intelligence—apartments furnished with chairs, sofas, and tables, and embellished with pictures of battles and banquets, marriage-processions, funerals, and other subjects of the greatest interest. The real Egyptians were not the founders or builders of any of those monumental remains which make Egypt the land of wonders and the favourite resort of the learned.
The descendants of Abraham the Hebrew were the guiding intellects that ruled Egypt for her Pharaohs, who possessed discernment enough to appoint them to rule their kingdom on account of their wisdom and activity.
About the year 1900 B.C. Abraham went down to Egypt from Canaan because of the famine. And when he had seen and spoken to Pharaoh, that monarch “gave him leave to enter into conversation with the most learned among the Egyptians, from which conversation his virtue and his reputation became more conspicuous than they had been before. For whereas the Egyptians were formerly addicted to different customs, and despised one another’s sacred and accustomed rites, and were very angry one with another on that account, Abram conferred with each of them, and, confuting the reasonings they made use of every one for their own practices, demonstrated that such reasonings were vain and void of truth; whereupon he was admired by them in those conferences as a very wise man, and one of great sagacity, when he discoursed on any subject he undertook; and this not only in understanding it, but in persuading other men also to assent to him. He communicated to them arithmetic, and delivered to them the science of astronomy; for, before Abram came into Egypt, they were unacquainted with those parts of learning, for that science came from the Chaldeans into Egypt, and from thence into Greece and elsewhere.”[[44]]