66 the diversity of colour as well as of their countenances distinguish the oppressed Hebrew slaves; and the whole process of their labour is seen till the tale of bricks may be counted. "Their countenances are as perfectly Jewish," according to the Literary Gazette, as those of any old clothesmen from St. Mary Axe who now perambulate the streets of London. Neither Lawrence nor Jackson could have painted more real Jews; the features so changeless and so peculiar to that people. And then their occupation; the several portions of the process of brick-making, their limbs bespattered with the mud, and their Egyptian taskmasters with the scourge superintending their labour. The whole seems to us to be a clear and decisive evidence, not only of the captivity, but of the actual circumstances related in the history of Moses. The Egyptians in the original are painted in the usual red; the Israelites of a sallow colour; and when we reflect that, throughout all the other subjects figured in these sepulchres of Beni-Hassan, the utmost regard is paid to individuality, and even to minute accessories, we cannot imagine a reason to induce us to question the truth and application of this remarkable discovery."* "Rosselini's last livraison of illustrations brings those Jews before our eyes who were captives in Egypt under the eighteenth dynasty, and previous to the Exodus. Independently of other evidence drawn from the phonetic language to prove that they are Jews, no cursory reader who glances at their lineaments or persons will for a moment doubt their identity. These Jews are employed under the dynasty of the very kings contemporary with Moses, in the specific act of slavery, which he and Manetho both describe, viz., making bricks and working in the quarries. An Egyptian taskmaster superintends the work; and the bricks, according to their delineation, are precisely those which are found in walls constructed of bricks, the date of which is assignable to the era in question." The Egyptians set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens, and made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field.‡ Exclusive of the brickmakers set before our eyes by Rosselini, a small picture is also introduced in the annexed plate, which was kindly furnished by Mr. Wilkinson. The outline of some of the heads and features are exactly engraved of the full size of the original drawings. The temporary triumph of the Egyptians over the Jews in a subsequent age has also, in that land of their enemies, a striking memorial. Shishak, or Shéshouk, king of Egypt, is represented in another of Champollion's drawings as "drag* Literary Gazette, No. 943, p. 99. + Foreign Quarterly Review, No. xxxii., p. 318. the diversity of colour as well as of their countenances distinguish the oppressed Hebrew slaves; and the whole process of their labour is seen till the tale of bricks may be counted. "Their countenances are as perfectly Jewish," according to the Literary Gazette, as those of any old clothesmen from St. Mary Axe who now perambulate the streets of London. Neither Lawrence nor Jackson could have painted more real Jews; the features so changeless and so peculiar to that people. And then their occupation; the several portions of the process of brick-making, their limbs bespattered with the mud, and their Egyptian taskmasters with the scourge superintending their labour. The whole seems to us to be a clear and decisive evidence, not only of the captivity, but of the actual circumstances related in the history of Moses. The Egyptians in the original are painted in the usual red; the Israelites of a sallow colour; and when we reflect that, throughout all the other subjects figured in these sepulchres of Beni-Hassan, the utmost regard is paid to individuality, and even to minute accessories, we cannot imagine a reason to induce us to question the truth and application of this remarkable discovery."* "Rosselini's last livraison of illustrations brings those Jews before our eyes who were captives in Egypt under the eighteenth dynasty, and previous to the Exodus. Independently of other evidence drawn from the phonetic language to prove that they are Jews, no cursory reader who glances at their lineaments or persons will for a moment doubt their identity. These Jews are employed under the dynasty of the very kings contemporary with Moses, in the specific act of slavery, which he and Manetho both describe, viz., making bricks and working in the quarries. An Egyptian taskmaster superintends the work; and the bricks, according to their delineation, are precisely those which are found in walls constructed of bricks, the date of which is assignable to the era in question." The Egyptians set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens, and made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field.‡ Exclusive of the brickmakers set before our eyes by Rosselini, a small picture is also introduced in the annexed plate, which was kindly furnished by Mr. Wilkinson. The outline of some of the heads and features are exactly engraved of the full size of the original drawings. The temporary triumph of the Egyptians over the Jews in a subsequent age has also, in that land of their enemies, a striking memorial. Shishak, or Shéshouk, king of Egypt, is represented in another of Champollion's drawings as "drag* Literary Gazette, No. 943, p. 99. + Foreign Quarterly Review, No. xxxii., p. 318. * ging the chiefs of above thirty conquered nations to the feet of the idols of Thebes." One of these is represented in hieroglyphic characters as Joudaha Malek, the king of Judah. And in the chronicles of the kings of Judah we read that Rehoboam (the son of Solomon) forsook the law of the Lord, and all Israel with him. And in the fifth year of King Rehoboam, Shishak, king of Egypt, came up against Jerusalem, and took the fenced cities of Judah, and came to Jerusalem. Then came Shemaiah the prophet to Rehoboam and to the princes of Judah that were gathered together to Jerusalem because of Shishak, and said unto them, Thus saith the Lord, Ye have forsaken me, and therefore have I also left you in the hands of Shishak. So Shishak, king of Egypt, came up against Jerusalem, and took away the treasures of the house of the Lord, and the treasures of the king's house he carried away also the shields of gold which Solomon had made. Rehoboam, the king of Judah, is still to be seen, as for a time he was left, according to the word of the prophet, in the hand of Shishak, king of Egypt. The history of the Jews needs not any other concurring evidence to show that their prophetic fate was portrayed by Moses as faithfully as a painter could depict their visage. While he is thus set forth as the prophet of the Highest, it may be mentioned, as Grotius and others have shown, that pagan writers in ancient times failed not to pay some tribute of respect to the legislator of Israel. As a writer, he was deemed worthy by Longinus of honourable mention in his treatise on the Sublime. As the promulgator of a new religion wholly divested of idolatry, Strabo describes him as abandoning Egypt, followed by those who worshipped God alone, and planting his people and his faith in that land of which Jerusalem was afterward the capital.‡ The name of the desert, El Tih, or the wandering, is yet a testimony of the wanderings of the Israelites. And in reference to the history of Moses, Laborde, who partly traversed the same route, states that the Bible is so concise and so precisely true, that it is only by a close attention to each word that all its merit can be discovered. The tomb of Aaron, on the summit of Mount Hor, is one of the most conspicuous objects in the land of Edom, and, surrounded as it is by many an evidence of prophetic truth, still bears testimony to the death and burying-place of the first high-priest of Israel. Aaron died there on the top of the mount. Though, till within these * See the Saturday Magazine, No. 81. +1 Kings xiv., 25, 26. 2 Chron. xii., 1-9. Strabo, 1. xvi., tom. ii., p. 1082, 1083, ed. Falcon. "La Bible est si concise, mais en même temps d'une precision si vraie, que c'est avec une attention fixée sur chaque mot qu'on peut en retrouver tout le mérite.-Voyage de L'Arabie Petrée, p. 39. |