Whatever their origin, the Hittites had been a distinct people before the earliest dawn of history -long before Abraham went forth from Ur; and there are inscriptions which tell of their conflicts with Sargon of Accad as early as the year 3800 в.с. It may well have been with them that Abram the Hebrew joined in repelling the invasion of the four Accadian kings (Gen. xiv.). There was evidently no hostility as yet between the Hebrews and the races already established in Canaan. But Abraham is represented as being ever a stranger and a sojourner with them (xxiii. 4); and we are expressly told that when he stood up from before his dead, and asked from Ephron the Hittite that burying-place which is "the one fixed element in the unstable life of a nomadic race," he refused to take it as a gift, but insisted on weighing out to the children of Heth four hundred shekels of silver, current money with the merchant (xxiii. 16).1 1 The story of the purchase, still told among the modern Arabs of Hebron, is a counterpart of the legendary stratagem by which a Semite of other days, the Phoenician Dido, obtained land. enough for Byrsa, the citadel of Carthage. "Ibrahim asked only as much ground as could be covered with a cow's Thus did he acquire Machpelah, before Mamre : the same is Hebron in the land of Canaan. And the field, and the cave that is therein, were made sure unto Abraham, for a possession of a burying-place, by the sons of Heth (Gen. xxiii. 19, 20). There they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife; there they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife (xlix. 31). There Jacob buried Leah, and thither was his own body brought to be buried, after its embalming far away in the land of the Pharaohs. The mystery which to this day surrounds the cave is, says Dean Stanley, "a living witness of the unbroken local veneration with which the three religions of Jew, Christian, and Mussulman have honoured the great patriarch"-him of whom the Arabs still reverently speak as "The Friend of God." hide; but after the agreement was concluded he cut the hide into thongs, and surrounded the whole of the space now forming the Haram."-Dict. of Bible, ii. 183. Coined money is not mentioned in the Bible before the Babylonian captivity. The Jews do not seem to have had coins of their own till about 140 в.с. (1 Maccabees xv. 6). See British Museum specimen. CHAPTER II "I shall enlarge further on what concerns Egypt, because it contains more wonders than any other country; and because there is none that contains so many works which are admirable beyond expression. "-HERODOTUS, ii. 35. FOLLOWING the brilliant period marked by the XIIth dynasty, there comes another gap in the history of Egypt. From the xIvth to the XVIIIth dynasty there are few monuments or buildings; and the records of foreign conquest give place to a silence and a void, whose very limits we have, as yet, no means of ascertaining. It was probably at the beginning of the XIvth dynasty that Egypt was overwhelmed by the mysterious Asiatic invaders called Hyksos, or "Shepherd kings." "There came up from the East," says Manetho, "in a strange manner, men of an ignoble race, who had the confidence to invade our country, and easily subdued it without a battle. And when they had our rulers in their hands, they burnt our cities, and demolished the temples of the gods, and inflicted every kind of barbarity upon the inhabitants, slaying some, and reducing the wives and children of others to a state of slavery. At length they made one of themselves king, whose name was Salatis: he lived at Memphis, and rendered both the upper and lower regions of Egypt tributary, and stationed garrisons in places which were best adapted for that purpose." He rebuilt the strong city Avaris, "and strongly fortified it with walls, and garrisoned it with a force of two hundred and fifty thousand men completely armed. To this city Salatis repaired in summer-time, to collect his tribute, and pay his troops, and to exercise his soldiers in order to strike terror into foreigners." "All this nation was styled Hycsos, that is the Shepherd kings; for the first syllable, Hyc, in the sacred dialect denotes a king, and Sos signifies a Shepherd ; but this only according to the vulgar tongue; and of these is compounded the term Hycsos: some say they were Arabians. This people who were thus denominated Shepherd kings, and their descendants, retained possession of Egypt during the period of five hundred and eleven years." 1 Their rule seems, in fact, to have been a military occupation. The Hyksos left behind - them no records, no public works, few monuments, little else but the memory of an "ignoble race""lepers" they are styled in the First Sallier Papyrus-who held Egypt in degrading subjection for an uncertain term of years, and were finally expelled after a "long and mighty war." 2 Their exact nationality is still a matter of uncertainty 1 See Cory's Fragments, 169 (from Georgius Sycellus, Jos. Cont. App. etc.). Manetho wrote in Greek about 263 в.с. He was "high-priest and scribe" at Heliopolis, and lays before "the great and august King Ptolemy Philadelphus what I have gathered from the sacred books written by Hermes Trismegistus, our forefather." His work has been preserved to us only in fragments (quoted by other ancient writers), which often differ from the accounts given by Herodotus and Diodorus, but have been generally confirmed by the monumental inscriptions. We may add that it was also during the reign and at the instance of Ptolemy Philadelphus that the Greek translation of the Bible, called the Septuagint, was made by seventy elders. This, and not the original Hebrew, was the Bible used by our Lord and by the Apostles and Evangelists. 2 "The duration of their dominion, which is variously estimated at 260, 511, and 900 years, is wholly uncertain, and will probably never be determined."-Rawlinson, Herodotus, ii. 397. 511 is the duration according to Manetho, as reported by Josephus. |
