A. M. 2515. A. C. 1489; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3765. A. C. 1646. NUM. xviii. TO THE End of deut. but the superlative power of God, who, even by contrary means, can bring about what ends he pleases. tion of physicians, that such people as are bitten with | virtue in the plant, which now can be ascribed to nothing any venomous beast, should be kept from the sight of the very image of the beast from which they received such hurt; and therefore God might take occasion, from the incongruity of the means, to magnify his own power, making use of this kind of remedy, that the Israelites might know, and be convinced, that both the disease and medicine came from him. When our blessed Saviour cured the blind man in the gospel, 'he spit on the ground and made clay, and spread it all over his eyes,' which some standers by might be apt to believe was a likelier way to put them quite out, than to recover them; but when they saw the thing have its effect, they glorified God, and said, 'How can a man that is a sinner do such miracles?' because they could not but perceive, that it was a greater miracle to work the cure by incompetent or incongruous means, than by none at all. And in like manner, if, instead of setting up this brazen serpent upon a pole, God had ordered the Israelites to apply a leaf of any common herb to the bite of these poisonous serpents, as he did Hezekiah to lay a lump of figs for a plaster upon his boil,' the cure might have been the same; but then the singularity of it had not been so remarkable. Men might have imputed it to some secret Is. xxxviii. 21. 1 John ix. 16. which it is very dangerous to approach, because they are infested by very large serpents, which, raised from the ground on wings resembling those of bats, and leaning on the extremity of their tails, move with great rapidity. They exist, it is reported, about these places in such great numbers, that they have almost laid waste the neighbouring provinces. The original term (Mespheph) does not always signify flying with wings; it often expresses vibration, swinging backwards and forwards, a tremulous motion, a fluttering; and this is precisely the motion of a serpent, when he springs from one tree to another. Niebuhr mentions a sort of serpents at Bassorah; they commonly keep upon the date trees; and as it would be laborious for them to come down from a very high tree, in order to ascend another, they twist themselves by the tail to a branch of the former, which making a spring by the motion they give it, throws them to the branches of the second. Hence it is that the modern Arabs call them flying serpents. Admiral Anson also speaks of the flying serpents that he met with at the island of Quibo, but which were without wings. The hydri, it is true, are produced and reared in marshy places; not in burning and thirsty deserts, where the people of Israel murmured because they could find no water. But although that people might find no water to drink, it will not follow, that the desert contained no marshy place. Besides, it is well known, that when water falls, these serpents do not perish, but become chersydri, that is, seraphim, or burners. These chersydri, it is extremely probable, were the serpents which bit the rebellious Israelites; and in this state they were more terrible instruments of divine vengeance; for, exasperated by the want of water, and the intense heat of the season, they injected a deadly poison, and occasioned to the miserable sufferers more agonizing torments. The time of the year when Jehovah sent these serpents among his people, proves that this is no vain conjecture. According to Nicander, the hydri became chersydri, and beset the path of the traveller, about the dog-days. Now, Aaron died on the first day of the fifth month, that is, the month Abib, which corresponds with the nineteenth day of July. The Israelites mourned for him thirty days: immediately after which, they fought a battle with Arad, the Canaanite, and destroyed the country: then recommencing their journey, they murmured for want of water, and the serpents were sent. This, then, must have happened about the end of August; the season when the hydri become seraphim, and inflict the most cruel wounds. The words of Moses seem to countenance the idea, that the hydri employed on this occasion, were not generated on the spot, but sent from a distance. And the Lord sent fiery serpents, or seraphim, among the people.' (Num. xxi. 6.) From these words it is natural to conclude, that they came The design of those men, however, can hardly be good, who, to rob God of the glory of the cure, would impute it to some secret quality in the brazen serpent itself. 3 A talisman, which, according to the common account, is a certain piece of metal, made under the influence of such and such planets and constellations, with a wonderful power to beget love, and overcome enemies; to drive away noxious animals, and cure diseases, &c., is a chimerical notion; and to resemble the figure which God appointed Moses to set up, to any of these vain devices, is a scheme that a deserves our scorn, more than our confutation. The author of the book of Wisdom, addressing himself to God, and speaking of the Israelites, has imputed the virtue of this serpent to its true cause. He that turned himself towards it, was not healed by the thing which he saw, but by thee, who art the Saviour of all.' And accordingly, in the foregoing verse, he calls it a sign, or symbol of salvation, to put them in remembrance of the commandment of the law. 5 The only considerable difficulty in the whole transaction is, why God, who had forbidden all manner of images, should, on this occasion, command one to be made. This the Jewish doctors, Justin Martyr as Saurin's Dissertations. Le Clerc's Commentary on Numbers xxi. from that land of rivers, through which the congregation had They inflicted on this memorable occasion an appropriate chastisement on the perverse tribes. That rebellious people had opened their mouth against the heavens; they had sharpened their tongues like serpents; and the poison of asps was under their lips; therefore they were made to suffer by the burning poison of a creature which they so nearly resembled. In this state of helplessness, they had recourse to him whom they had provoked, and whose patience and goodness they had so long experienced: they entreated Moses to intercede for them with God, that he might forgive their sins, and remove this calamity. He recommended Moses to make a brazen serpent in exact resemblance to the fiery serpent, and to raise it on a pole in the view of the people, so that the wounded might look to it, and be healed. There seemed to be no connexion between the means and the end, between a piece of brass, whatever might be its shape, and the cure which the looking to it, was designed to effect. But it was the appointment of God, and a just conception of his character would at once lead to the conclusion, that he who can accomplish his purposes without means as easily as with them, would not fail to render his own institution efficacious. Accordingly, when Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived. Our Lord has taught us, that as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up; that whoso believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.'—ED. a Sir John Marsham has collected several passages from the profane writers, which hint at charms and enchantments to cure the bite of serpents; and he says the Hebrews made use of enchantments for this very purpose; which assertion he endeavours to support by a citation from Ps. lviii. 4, 5; by another from Ecclesiastes, chap. x. 8; and by a third from Jeremiah, chap. viii. 17; and from the whole of what he offers, he would intimate, that the cure of the Israelites was not miraculous, but that the brazen serpent was properly a charm for the calamity, or an amulet for the distemper; but it would be trifling to refute this opinion.-Shuckford's Connection, vol. 3. b. 12. In his book against Tryphe, he insists upon this serpent as A. M. 2515. A. C. 1489; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3765. A. C. 1616. NUM. xviii. TO THE END OF Deut. observes in his days, could give no account of; but had they known Jesus Christ, and him crucified, they might have soon perceived,' that God intended it for a type of the death of Christ, and the manner in which he was to die; and that the effects of the brazen serpent upon them who looked on it, did represent the virtue received by true believers from the death of their Redeemer. For so we find our Saviour himself applying the mysterious meaning of it: As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up; that whoso believeth in him, should not perish, but have eternal life.' 26 Thus we have answered the several doubts and objections that have been made to that part of the history of Moses which includes this period of time: and if the attestation of profane writers, may be thought any confirmation of what has been said, we have the practice of most subsequent lawgivers, in imitation of this great Jewish leader, pretending to a familiarity with some fictitious deity or other, and thence deriving their institutions; and whoever compares the sacred and fabulous account of things together, will find a near resemblance between Aaron and the heathen Mercury; and that as this false deity is said to have been an Egyptian by birth, the messenger and interpreter of the gods, and is generally painted with a caduceus, or wand in his hand twisted about with snakes; so Aaron was himself born in Egypt, and appointed by God to be an interpreter to his brother Moses, and a messenger to Pharaoh and the Egyptians, in whose presence he threw down his wonder-working rod, and it immediately became a serpent. 3 The whole history of Balaam, as romantic as it seems. is still upon record in the ancient oriental writers, from whence the present Mahometans have borrowed many things. It is not improbable that the speaking of his ass gave handle to the fiction of several other brute creatures, upon less momentous occasions, accosting their masters. That the deserts wherein the Israelites journeyed, were infested with serpents of so venomous a kind, that their biting was deadly, and above the power of art to cure, both Strabo and Diodorus testify. And, to instance no farther, the worship of Esculapius, the known god of physic, under the form of a serpent, and what some late travellers tell us of the Indians carrying about a wreathed serpent upon a perch, to which they pay their adorations every morning, had manifestly their original from some tradition or other of this serpent's image, which Moses was directed to set up. So true is the character, confirmed by testimony of all kinds, which the sacred writers give us of this Moses, the servant of the Lord, that both as the leader, the lawgiver, and historian of his people, he was found faithful in all his house.' 46 'Kidder's Demonstration, p. 73. Exod. vii. 1, 2. a 2 John iii. 14, 15. a type of Christ, and appealing to the company, what reason (exclusive of that) could be given of this matter, one of the Jews confessed that he was in the right, and that he himself had inquired for a reason among the Jewish masters, and could meet with none.-Kidder's Demonstration, p. 73. a There is something very remarkable, and truly horrid, in what Clemens Alexandrinus mentions-that in the orgies of Bacchus Maenolis (or the mad) his worshippers were crowned with serpents, and yelled out Eve, Eve, even her by whom the transgression came. CHAP. III-On the Character and Conduct of [SUPPLEMENTAL BY THE EDITOR.] DIFFERENT opinions have been entertained in regard to the real character of Balaam. The opinion of bishop Patrick, Dr Waterland, bishop Butler, bishop Horsley, and Dr Hales, is, that he was a true prophet of Jehovah, to whom, on this occasion, he offered the sacrifices which he had desired Balak to prepare. Others maintain, that he was merely an eminent soothsayer or diviner, who, it was supposed, could influence the fate of individuals and nations by his enchantments. Origen, Chrysostom, Basil, and Augustine, among the ancients, and Bryant and bishop Gleig, among the moderns, were of the latter opinion. It is certain, as bishop Gleig has observed, that there is nothing recorded in Scripture which has excited more profane ridicule among arrogant infidels than the story of Balaam rebelling, or striving to rebel, against his God; reproved for that rebellion by a contemptible animal; blessing the people whom he was requested to curse, and whom he wished to curse; advising the seduction of that people to idolatry and fornication, immediately after blessing them, under the influence of the Spirit of God, for their abstinence from these vices; praying that he might himself die the death of the righteous, and soon afterwards falling in battle with those who, at his instigation, had provoked to war that very people to whom in his prayer he alludes as the righteous. That a true prophet, long blessed with a familiar though supernatural intercourse with Jehovah, and such Balaam is supposed to have been, should have persisted, to the end of his life, in deliberately thwart ing, as far as he was able, the very designs of Jehovah which he declared were revealed to himself, and that he should at last have enticed to idolatry those whom he had been compelled to bless because they were not idolaters, and have taken up arms against them with whom he had prayed with such apparent earnestness that he might live and die, is an extraordinary picture of human nature. Is this really the picture of Balaam exhibited by the inspired lawgiver of the Hebrews? If Balaam was a prophet of Jehovah, by whom he had long been inspired with the knowledge of future events, and whom he named as the only true God, it certainly is: but if he was an idolatrous diviner or soothsayer, as he is elsewhere styled, and compelled, on this occasion, to bless where he intended to curse, and to foretell, in language not his own, future events of the highest and most general importance, the character and conduct of Balaam, as described by Moses, will be found perfectly consistent with itself; whilst those who have attended to the import of the miracles which were wrought in Egypt for the deliverance of Israel, will at once perceive the wisdom of making the ass the instrument of rebuking the madness of this diviner. diviner, or magician of great renown; but having acMy own opinion is, that Balaam was originally a quired some knowledge of the true God, perhaps by hearing of the wonderful works performed by Moses in A. M. 2515. A. C. 1489; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3765. A. C. 1646. NUM. xviii. TO THE END OF DEUT. his name, he endeavoured to render this knowledge subservient to his interested and ambitious purposes, by professing himself a prophet of Jehovah, and uttering divinations as revelations from him. Thus the exorcists, observing how efficacious the name of Jesus proved in the mouth of the apostle, attempted to cast out devils, 'adjuring them by Jesus whom Paul preached:' and thus Simon Magus, finding the miracles of Philip so much superior to the effects of his magic, embraced christianity; and afterwards offered Peter money to confer on him the same power which he exercised, doubtless intending to enrich or aggrandize himself by it. On this supposition, Balaam's case of incantations, even in seeking Jehovah, was the natural effect of the association of his old practices with his new pretensions.1 There is no evidence that God had ever spoken to him, or by him, before this event: but there is ample proof that he lived and died a wicked man, and an enemy of God and his people. This, however, has not been a singular case. Balaam dwelt in or near Mesopotamia; but his reputation had reached so far, and he was so celebrated, that he was sent for, as it appears, in conse-ass, and the ram, were all considered sacred, and all for quence of the counsel given to Moab by the elders of the same reason, by the Egyptians, and some other Midian; being the only person who was able to contend eastern nations. All these animals were considered, in with Moses, the prophet of Israel. For we may suppose the countries in which Baal-peor was the favourite deity, that they ascribed to the superior skill of Moses in some as emblems of that god, who was, in different temples, unknown arts all that power by which Israel had been worshipped under their different similitudes. brought out of Egypt, notwithstanding Pharaoh's determined opposition; had subsisted for so many years in the wilderness, and had obtained their late victories over the Ammonites. when Joseph was first carried thither: for it was the true God that sent to Pharaoh the dreams which Joseph interpreted, for the good of the country of which Pharaoh was the sovereign; and such was the case in Canaan, during the reign of the two Abimelechs, of whom we read in the book of Genesis. Balaam, as it appears to me, was an idolater who never was a true prophet of the true God; but who had heard of Jehovah, and acknowledged not only his existence, but even his power as the tutelar God of the Israelites, though he may have been doubtful at first, as the Syrians were at a later period, whether the God of Israel, or his own god, were most powerful. The ancient idolaters never hesitated to acknowledge each others' gods, or to worship, along with their own, the gods of those nations in which they had occasion to reside; and the Jews and Christians would never have been persecuted by the Roman emperors for worshipping the true God, had they not refused to worship together with him, the idol deities of the empire. According to Mr Bryant, the goat, the baboon, the On a sacred ass then, Balaam, the priest of Peor, zealous for the cause of his own god, and eager to gain the wages of iniquity, was prosecuting his journey to curse the worshippers of the true God, when he was Bishop Patrick does not think that Balaam was, at encountered by an angel on the way. After various the time when visited by the messengers of Balak, either attempts to escape, the ass fell down before the angel, a true prophet, or a devout worshipper of Jehovah; but who had displayed himself to her, though not yet to her that he had formerly been both, till becoming so covet-rider; that is, the emblem of the god of Balaam bowed ous as to love the wages of unrighteousness, he addicted himself to superstitious rites and ceremonies, making use of teraphim, which had been of ancient practice in his country, and worshipping God perhaps by other images. No evidence, however, can be adduced in support of these suppositions: for we know nothing of Balaam but from what is related of him in the book of Numbers, and in other books of sacred Scripture, which allude to the circumstances which are there mentioned. My own opinion is, that Balaam was a soothsayer; and yet that he was inspired by the Spirit of God to utter important predictions. He was probably one of those early idolaters who did not entirely renounce the true God, or cease to worship him, but only associated with him, in their vain imaginations, a number of subordinate divinities, to whom they supposed that he had committed, under his own superintendence, the administration of the affairs of this world, assigning to the care of different deities different countries. To these fictitious beings, of whom they soon found images, they paid a kind of subordinate worship, without, however, neglecting the worship of Jehovah. Of this we have one instance in the case of Laban, who, while he appears to have acknowledged the supreme divinity of Jehovah, worshipped certain inferior gods, of which his daughter Rachel contrived to carry away the images. Such appears likewise to have been the state of religion in Egypt, down before the servant of the God of Israel; and at last, words proceeded from her mouth expressive of the severest reproof that could be given to the madness and obstinacy of the soothsayer of Pethor. It was a rule with the God of Jacob to display his supremacy to his people, by making all other deities and their agents subservient to his will. On this account, he often forced their representatives, and their prophets, to be the unwilling ministers of his commands; to attest the superiority of his power; and even to execute his vengeance on their own votaries. This was remarkably the case in all the miracles wrought by the ministry of Moses in the land of Egypt, when Jehovah made the gods of that country the instruments of his vengeance on Pharaoh and his host. In every step of his progress, Balaam was foiled at his own weapons. The instrument by which he was first rebuked on the way, though contemptible in our eyes, was sacred to the god in whom he trusted; and therefore the speaking ass, though it has often been the subject of ridicule among ignorant infidels, affords one of the most illustrious proofs of the divine wisdom. God, if he had pleased, might have reproved Balaam in the way without the intervention of the ass; when the soothsayer arrived at the end of his journey, he might have been compelled by the overpowering influence of the Spirit of God, to pour forth all the predictions which he afterwards uttered, without having recourse to any one of his enchantments; but the | proof of Jehovah's superiority over the gods of Midian די A. M. 2515. A. C. 1489; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3765. A. C. 1646. NUM. xviii. TO THE END OF Deut. and Moab would not have been so conspicuous to the grovelling minds either of those nations or of the Israelites themselves, had a single circumstance been omitted which actually took place. Balaam was everywhere compelled to bless the people whom it was his wish to curse; and to foretell the future destruction, by that people, of all the nations which worshipped the gods of Egypt, Midian, and Moab.' CHAP. IV. Of the Profane History, Religion, Government, &c., of such nations as the Israelites had dealings with during this period. TOWARDS the conclusion of the foregoing book, we carried the succession of the Egyptian kings down to the reign of Amenophis, who, according to the most received accounts, was that obstinate prince, that in pursuit of the Hebrews, together with all his army, was lost in the waves of the Red Sea: nor should we, as yet, concern ourselves any farther with the history of that nation, but that his son and successor, Sesostris, a who 1 See Gleig, Horsley, Butler, and Bryant, on the character of Balaam. lived in the time of the Israelites' peregrination in the wilderness, and may therefore properly take his place here, was a person of so distinguished a character, that to pass him by in silence would be doing an injury to our reader. a It is a matter of no small dispute among chronologers, in what time it was this Sesostris lived. The seeming analogy of the name makes Sir John Marsham think, that Sesostris was the same with Shishak, king of Egypt, who, in the days of Rehoboam, came up against Jerusalem, and took away the treasures of the house of the Lord, the treasures of the king's house, and all the shields which Solomon had made,' &c. (1 Kings xiv. 25, 26.) What confirms him in this opinion, is a passage in Josephus, wherein he tells us, that "God avenged himself upon Rehoboam, by the hand of Shishak, king of Egypt, concerning whom Herodotus (being mistaken) ascribes what he did to Sesostris." (Jewish Antiquities, b. 8. c. 4.) But what if, in this matter, Josephus himself should be mistaken, and not Herodotus? Josephus certainly took his antiquities from the records of the Jews, which gave a full account of what happened to Abraham and his posterity, both before and after they inherited the land of Canaan; but gave no account at all of that country while it was in other hands, and particularly while the Israelites were in the wilderness: and therefore it is more probable, that Josephus knew of no conquest of the land of Canaan by the Egyptians, before the time of Rehoboam. For when he applies what Herodotus says of Sesostris' setting up several infamous pillars, to stigmatize the countries which he conquered for cowardice, to Shishak, after his expedition against the Jews, he plainly gives us to understand, that he knew of no other expedition from Egypt against the land of Canaan before that. And indeed these very pillars are enough to decide the matter, that our Sesostris was not Shishak. Shishak made an irruption into Judea, plundered the temple and the country, and so went back again into Egypt. Now, had he set up such pillars, as a perpetual mark of infamy upon the Jews, can we imagine that they would have let them stand, even to be seen in Herodotus' time, and not immediately pulled them down upon his retreat? But, on the other hand, if Sesostris, who succeeded the Pharaoh that was drowned in the Red Sea, conquered Canaan, and set up such pillars, there is good reason to think, that they might continue a long while, because the Canaanites, who were a conquered people, dared not pull them down in his reign, and in the time of the deputies who governed under him; and the Israelites, who knew that these pillars were no reflection on them, but only on their enemies, would be inclinable enough to let them stand. It is much more probable then, that the mistake belongs to Josephus, and not to Herodotus; because Herodotus, in what he asserts of Sesostris, agrees with Diodorus and others: but, to fix the actions of Sesostris upon Shishak, there is no one ancient author that will agree with Josephus. Aristotle affirms, (Polit., b. 1. c. 10.) that the kingdom of Sesostris was much older, in As soon as Sesostris was born, some historians tell us, that Vulcan appeared to his father, in his sleep, and informed him, that his son should conquer the whole world upon which presumption it was, that he took so much care, not of his education only, but of every male child's likewise that was born on the same day with him, even through all his kingdom of Egypt. The number of these is said to have amounted to 1700 in all; and the king gave orders that they should be trained up in the same point of time, than that of Minos in Crete, which every one owns was in the time of Joshua. Pliny maintains, (Nat. Hist., b. 37. c. 8.) that Troy was taken in the time of Ramesses, who was the third descendant from Sesostris. Strabo avers, (b. ult.) that Sesostris was long before the Trojan times; and Sir John Marsham, and in general all the writers of the Argonautic expedition, own plainly, that the colonies of Sesostris had been at Colchis before that, which all agree to have been a century | before the fall of Troy. And, if to these we may add two moderns, both the learned prelate Usher, and the learned bishop Cumberland, do unanimously agree in making Sesostris to be the son of that Pharaoh who was drowned in the Red Sea; which the latter of these has given several arguments to prove, (Sanchon., p. 402.) But these the learned author of the Connection of the Sacred and Profane History has endeavoured to invalidate; and thereupon concludes, "That Sesostris should be the son of Pharaoh who was drowned in the Red Sea, and that in the state which his father's misfortunes must have reduced Egypt to, he should immediately find strength sufficient to subdue kingdom after kingdom, and to erect himself a large empire over many great and flourishing nations; this must be thought, by any one who duly considers things, at first sight, a most romantie fiction;" (vol. 3. b. 11.) Shuckford is undoubtedly right when he says, in his Connection, that Sesostris could not have been the son of Pharaoh who was drowned in the Red Sea. For it seems self-evident that the son of that monarch could not have been in a condition to attempt the conquests which Sesostris is known to have achieved. Had Sesostris returned flushed with victory, and known that the Israelites were wandering in the desert, as our author supposes, there is little doubt but that, in his thirst for universal empire, he would have attempted to reduce them again to bondage; and as the desert in which the Israelites spent the time of their journeyings was close upon Egypt, it would not have been a very difficult task to one who had carried an army through so many inhospitable countries, to have penetrated the desert and attacked the Israelites, and had be done so unsuccessfully, Moses would undoubtedly have recorded his defeat. But Dr Hales has shown, that there was not less than seventeen kings between the date of the exode of the Israelites and Sesostris, whose joint reigns amounted to 340 years. During all this period, there seems to have been no king of any note except Amenophis, or Moeris, the father and immediate predecessor of Sesostris, who seems to have been one of the best and wisest of the Egyptian kings. The formation of the lake that goes by his name is ascribed to him; but the extent of it, and other circumstances, make it evident that it could not have been excavated by human labour. But he seems to have opened a communication between the river and this vast natural basin, eighty stadia in length, and three stadia, or a hundred yards in breadth, according to Diodorus; and this converted the lake into a vast reservoir for the redundant waters of the river while inundated. A stupendous work, and far more glorious than either the pyramid or labyrinth, if we consider its various and important uses for agriculture, commerce, fishery, &c. At present this canal is called Bahr Jussuf, or "Joseph's river." and is vulgarly ascribed to the patriarch Joseph, while regent of Egypt; but was most probably repaired and denominated from the famous sultan, Joseph Saladin, who made that wander of Cairo, called "Joseph's well."-See Hales' Analysis, vol. 4 p. 431, 8vo second edition,-ED. A. M. 2515. A. C. 1489; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3765. A. C. 1646. NUM. xviii. TO THE END OF Deut. prison for debt. In the next place, he resettled the ancient division of the country into six and thirty parts, which the Egyptians call nomi, or provinces; assigned a governor to each of these; and constituted his brother Armais, (whom the Greeks called Danaus,) supreme regent. Him he invested with ample power and authority, but restrained him from wearing the crown, from offering any injury to the queen and her family, and from having any dealings with the royal concubines. discipline and exercises with his son, as justly supposing | by paying what they owed, discharged such as were in that they who had been the constant and equal companions of his childhood and youth, would prove his most faithful ministers, and affectionate fellow soldiers. Having therefore provided tutors and masters, and every thing necessary for this purpose, he had them, by degrees, inured to laborious and manly exercises, as well as instructed in all liberal and useful sciences, that, as they grew up, by the strength of their bodies, and the cultivation of their minds, they might be equally fitted either to command or execute. Having thus settled the government, he proceeded in the last place, to raise an army equal to the vastness of his design, which consisted of 600,000 foot, 24,000 horse, and 27,000 warlike chariots. His principal Amenophis, after he had been at this vast expense and trouble in laying the foundation of his son's future grandeur, resolved to give him and his companions an opportunity of displaying the good effects of their edu-officers were taken out of those brave men who were cation; and accordingly sent him, and them along with trained up with him in martial exploits; and that they him, at the head of an army into Arabia. In this expe- might always be in readiness, without submitting to any dition, the young Sesostris surmounted all the dangers mean employ, to attend him to the wars, he took care to of serpents and venomous creatures, all the wants and bestow on them large estates in land, in some of the hardships of a dry and barren country, and in the end, richest and most fertile parts of Egypt. With this army conquered the Arabians, a rude and barbarous people, he marched at first against the Ethiopians, whom he soon that had never been vanquished before. conquered, and made them pay a tribute of ebony, gold, and elephants' teeth. But his land forces alone were not answerable to the conquests he intended; and therefore he fitted out two fleets of tall ships, somewhat resembling our modern form, one in the Mediterranean Sea, and the other in the Arabian Gulf. With the Me From Arabia his father ordered him westward, where he subdued the greatest part of Africa; but while he was engaged in this expedition, news was brought him, that bis father, and all his army, were drowned in the Red Sea, which made him desist from his conquests, and hasten home with his army, in order to secure his suc-diterranean squadron he conquered Cyprus, the sea cession to the kingdom. Whether it was that he called to mind the prediction of the god Vulcan, or was instructed by Mercury, who prepared him for the war; was assured of success by divination, by dreams in the temple, or prodigies in the air, or persuaded to it by his daughter Athyrte, a young lady of uncommon understanding, and who made it out to her father that the thing was practicable; but so it was, that no sooner was he settled upon the Egyptian throne, but his thoughts began to swell, and his mind to grasp at an universal monarchy. estate. His own country indeed he found but in a lamentable The Israelites, who were their slaves, were gone. All their veteran soldiers, with their arms, chariots, and horses, were lost: the first-born of every family was slain, the cattle killed, the fruit of the earth destroyed, and nothing but famine was to be expected: and yet, notwithstanding all this discouragement, he was resolved to put in practice his scheme for a general conquest. But then considering that this would oblige him to be long absent, and far distant from Egypt, he could not but deem it necessary to gain the love and affection of his subjects, that those who followed him might lay down their lives more cheerfully in his service, and they whom he left behind might not be induced to attempt any innovations while he was gone. To this purpose he endeavoured, in the first place, to oblige every one to the utmost of his power; some by largesses in money; others by donations in land; many by the concession of free pardons; and every one by fair speeches, and a courteous and affable behaviour upon all occasions. Those that were condemned for high treason he released with impunity, and coasts of Phoenicia, and several of the Cyclades; and from the Arabian Gulf, he sailed into the Indian Sea, and there subdued all the coasts thereof, till happening to come into a shallow, and his ships drawing more water than usual, he either was unable or afraid to go any farther, and so returned into Egypt. But he had not been long returned, before his ambition began to operate afresh; and therefore advising with his priests, he recruited his army, and marched into Asia. The Israelites were at this time in the deserts of Arabia, and therefore it may look a little strange, why a man of Sesostris' spirit should not have been tempted to pursue them. But besides the barrenness of the country, which could never support so vast a multitude as he carried with him, he could not but reflect on his father's fate : and therefore dreading the like miraculous overthrow, he declined the Israelites, and marched directly against Canaan, which, without the least opposition, at once submitted to him; so that, imposing an annual tribute upon the people, and putting governors in all their principal towns, he proceeded in the course of his conquests, and in a short time overran all Asia and some parts of Europe. He passed the river Ganges, and pierced through all India; as far as the main ocean eastward: then a he a Though Herodotus, Diodorus, and others, relate, that he was victorious in these countries; yet some will have it that he met Colchians. For Justin tells us that Vexoris, or Sesostris, despatchwith a repulse, fled from the Scythians, and was worsted by the ing ambassadors before him to summon the Scythians to surren der, they sent back his messengers with contempt, and threats, and defiance, and immediately took up arms; that Sesostris being informed that they were advancing towards him, by hasty marches, suddenly turned about, and fled from before them, leaving all his baggage and warlike apparel to the pursuers, who followed him The chief of this account is taken from Diodorus Siculus, till he came on the borders of Egypt (b. 2. c. 3.) Pliny relates (b. 33. c. 3.) that he was overthrown by the king of Colchis; and and Herodotus in his Euterpe, b. 1. |