use as evidence of the customs and manners of the times, both of when they were written and previously, and very often of dry unconnected facts which may turn out to be of consequence. Thus Virgil makes Memnon black,[1] as does also Pindar.[2] That Pindar and Virgil were right, the features of the bust of Memnon in the British Museum prove, for they are evidently those of the Negro.
8. It is probable that the Memnon here spoken of, if there ever were such a man, was the leader of the Shepherds, who are stated by Manetho and other historians to have come from the East, and to have conquered Egypt. The learned Dr. Shuckford thinks, that the troubles caused in Egypt by the shepherd kings appear to have happened about the time the Jews left it under Moses. He places these events between the death of Joseph and the birth of Moses.[3] And he supposes that the Jews left the country in consequence of the oppressions of these shepherd kings. It is very clear that much confusion has arisen in this part of ancient history from these eastern shepherds having been confounded with the Israelites, and also from facts relating to the one having been attributed to the other. Josephus takes the different accounts to relate to the same people. This is attended with great difficulty. The shepherds are said by Manetho, after a severe struggle with the old inhabitants, to have taken refuge in a city called Avaris or Abaris,[4] where they were a long time besieged, and whence at last they departed, two hundred and forty thousand in number, together with their wives and children, (in consequence of a capitulation,) into the deserts of Syria.
If there were two races of people who have been confounded together, one of which came from India and overran Arabia, Palestine, and Egypt, and brought thence its religion to the Egyptians, and was in colour black, it must have come in a very remote period. This may have been the race of shepherd kings, of whom Josephus speaks when he says, they oppressed the Israelites: but the assertion of Josephus can hardly have been true, for they must have been expelled long before the Israelites came. The second race were the Arabian shepherd tribe called captives, who, after being settled some time in the land of Goshen, were driven or went out into the open country of Arabia. They at last, under the command of Joshua, conquered Palestine, and finally settled there. Bishop Cumberland has proved that there was a dynasty of Phenician shepherd kings, who were driven out three hundred years before Moses. These seem to have been the black or Ethiopian, Phenician Memnonites. They may have exactly answered to this description, but to his date of three hundred years I pay no attention, further than that it was a great length of time.
Josephus says that the copies of Manetho differed, that in one the Shepherds were called Captives, not kings, and that he thinks this is more agreeable to ancient history; that Manetho also says, the nation called Shepherds were likewise called Captives in their sacred books; and that after they were driven out of Egypt, they journied through the wilderness of Syria, and built a city in Judea, which they called Jerusalem.[5]
Josephus[6] says, that Manetho was an Egyptian by birth, but that he understood Greek, in which he wrote his history, translating it from the old Egyptian records.
If the author understand Mr. Faber rightly in his Horæ Mosaicæ,[7] he is of opinion that these
- ↑ Æneid, Lib. i.
- ↑ Olymp. Od. ii.; vide Diss. of Bishop Huet, ch. xiii. p. 185.
- ↑ Shuckford, Conn. pp. 233, 234.
- ↑ We read of a person coming from the Hyperboreans to Greece, in the time of Pythagoras, called Abaris or Avaris. Josephus also tells us that the city in the Saite Nomos, (Seth-roite,) i. e. Goshen, where the oriental Shepherds resided, was called Avaris. Now I suspect that this man was called from the Hebrew word עבהר ober, as was also the name of the city, and that they both meant stranger or foreigner: the same as the tribe of Abraham, in Syria.
- ↑ Jos. vers. Apion, B. i. § xiv., Whiston, p. 291.
- ↑ Ut sup. § xiv.
- ↑ Ch. ii. Sect. xi. p. 23.
