The engraving on p. 110 is from a beautiful stone coffin, now in the British Museum, Saloon, No. 23, which was formerly used as a reservoir in the mosque of Joseph, at Cairo. It was called by the Arabs, The Lovers' Fountain. The first three lines of inscription beginning from the right, read as follows: "The discourse of the Osirian.* Lord keeper of the royal signet of approved engraving; scribe or clerk of the clothes and rings, (of the king's house.) Lord of the Nilometers of Upper and Lower Egypt. President of the royal clerks of provisions; President of the engravers on hard stones; Governor of Lower Egypt, General of infantry, President of the treasury, (the house of silver.) HAPIMEN, the truth-teller; whose father was Nofre-chons, and his mother Otph-amoniots, to Osiris." It was the natural consequence of the strictly hereditary nature of all offices in Egypt, that at the later periods of its history many of them should centre in the head of one family. The style of sculpture of this sarcophagus shows it to have been executed in the times of Psammetichus, about 600 years A.C. The same peculiarity of many offices held by one individual may be observed on other monuments of the same age.

The other three lines of the inscription are the speech of the divinity represented in the picture. His name was Kebh-sneu; he was one of four brothers, the sons of Osiris, who especially presided over the embalming of the viscera; he is often represented with the head of a sparrow-hawk, his three brothers had respectively those of a man, a fox, and an ape. Four jars, having lids shaped like the heads of these

*That is, the deceased, the devoted to Osiris, or image of Osiris. The meaning of the seven following characters is not certain.

This inscription refers to a device on the lid, which is no longer in existence.

four idols, are often found in the tombs along with the mummy, and contain different portions of the intestines of the deceased person. The inscription reads thus:-"The discourse of Kebh-sneu. I, Kebh-sneu, am thy son; we (probably the four brothers, all of whom are represented on the sarcophagus) come to open thy viscera; to subdue (lay out) thy limbs; to bind thine arms;" (these are all operations of the embalmers.) "We bring thee thine heart; we give them (that is, the whole body: the body in its coffin, the viscera in their jars) to thee in the house of thy race;" that is, in the vault or tomb of the family of Hapimen.

This divinity calls himself the son of the deceased: this is not infrequent. On a splendid mummy-case in the museum at Liverpool, which contains the body of a man named Apries, each of the four says to the deceased, "I am thy son, O Osiris Apries." Mr. Birch, the senior assistant of the British Museum, has very satisfactorily shown, in his description of the coffin of Menchares, that the Egyptians accounted the embalmed body the image or idol of Osiris, the father of these four divinities.

CHAPTER VI.

RELIGION OF THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS.

THE whole of the subject which is now before us is still under investigation; and though, as we have seen, much has been already accomplished, yet much remains to be done in every department of it. On the very difficult question of dates especially, large accessions to our knowledge may be expected from future researches; and they are certainly wanted before we can arrive at satisfactory conclusions respecting many of them, and especially those relating to events occurring at early periods of the history of Egypt. It is on this account that we decline entering upon this difficult and by no means interesting subject. It will abundantly suffice to have ascertained, that the civilization, so many monuments of which are now existing in Egypt, is that which prevailed there in the times of Abraham; and this is a point which we will now endeavour to establish.

It has been already noticed that, according to the Scriptures, Egypt was then governed by a monarch who took the title of Pharaoh. This title is written in the Hebrew Bible, Pharaoh. By the help of two other Egyptian names, which also occur in the inspired narrative, we shall be able to discover its meaning. The one is that of the

I

priest of On, whose daughter the patriarch Joseph married, , Potipherah, or Potiphrah, Gen. xli. 45. This name is by no means uncommon on mummy cases and similar remains; and is written in hieroglyphics thus: ANETE pe. The first two characters represent the demonstrative pronoun Пет, signifying "he who belongs to;" the third corresponds to the definite article T or; the fourth is the representation of the disc of the sun surrounded by the Uræus, or hooded snake, the symbol of sovereignty. The Egyptian word for the sun is PH; in the Hebrew is therefore represented in the hieroglyphics by O.

The other Egyptian name written in Hebrew characters, which we will endeavour to analyze, is that of one of the treasure cities which the children of Israel built in Egypt after they were made bondsmen. It is written or RemsThis name is also a common one with some of the earlier monarchs of Egypt, and a great many transcriptions of it in hieroglyphics have been copied from the monuments. It is not unfrequently written thus

ses.

; the first

syllable of the Hebrew word being represented by the image of the sun's disc, or Ol; and the last, o, by the same consonants, letter for letter, CC; the entire name signifying "child, or descendant of the sun." This comparison afforded us the certainty that is the Hebrew transcription of the Egyptian word PH, and that the definite article of the same language is represented by the Hebrew character . But the mystic or inaugural title of all the ancient monarchs of Egypt commences, without one

exception, with the image of the sun's disc. The following

This title, seems to have denoted, that what the sun was in the firmament, that Pharaoh ought to be in Egypt -the sun of his country. It had also a mythic allusion; for over the second ring, which contains the name of the monarch, is very commonly written the group, which reads "son of the sun," allusive to PH, or the god-sun, as the first monarch of Egypt, and of whose throne the Pharaohs were therefore the heirs and successors. Phre seems on this account to have been, in an especial manner, the tutelary divinity of the kings of Egypt. The epithets and names applied to the kings most commonly connect them with this luminary, either by the ties of relationship or friendship, as "child of the sun," "approved of the sun," "beloved of the sun." These considerations appear to justify the conclusion, that the name of the first monarch of Egypt, (according to the fabulous legends of the Egyptians, PH,) became the generic title of all his successors, Pharaoh; conformably with a custom which also obtained in the neighbouring countries.