291r
Homer Odyss.
8. v. 268 & seq.
et Hymn. 1 & 2 in
Venerem. Et He
siod. Theogon. v.
192 married Calycopis the mother of Æneas & daughter of
Otreus king of Phrygia, & for his skill on the harp was
called Cinyras & said to be exceedingly beloved of Apollo
or Orus. Homer. Odyss l.
8. v. 292.The great Bacchus loved his wife, & being
caught in bed with her in Phrygia, composed the
matter by making him king of Cyprus & Byblus, &
then came over the Hellespont with his army & conquered Thrace. Thoas reigned in Cyprus & Byblus
till the times of the Trojan war, living to a very
great age & becoming exceeding rich. And after the
death of his wife Calycopis he built temples to herClemens Admonit.
ad Gent. p. 10. Apol
lodor. l. 3. c. 13. Pin
dar. Pyth. Ode 2.
Hesych. in Κινυ
ράδαι. Steph. in
Amathus. Tacit.
Hist. l. 11. p. 338.
Strabo l. 16. p. 755.
at
tuted Priests to her with sacred rites & lustfull orgia:
whence she became the Dea Cypria & the Dea Syria.
And from temples erected to her in several places
she was also called Cytharea, Amathusia, Phaphia,
Byblia, Salaminia, Gnydia, Erycina, Idalia. Fama
T tradit a Cyinyra consecratum vetustissimum Paphiæ
Veneris temptum, deamque ipsam conceptam maryi
huc apulsam: Tacit. hist. l. 2. p.338. From her sailing
from Phrygia to the island Cythara & thence to be Queen
of Cyprus she was said (by the Cyprians) to be born of the
froth of the sea & was painted sailing upon a shell. Cinyras
deified also his son Gingris by the name of Adonis. And
for assisting the Egyptians with armour its probable that
he himself was deified by his friends the Egyptians by the
name of [Baal-Canaan,]Baal-Canaan. Vulcan. For Vulcan was celebrated chiefly by
the Egyptians & was a king according to Homer, & reigned
in Lemnos; & Clemens Alexand.
Admonit. ad Gent.
p. 21. Plin. l. 7.
c. 56Cinyras was an inventor of arts & found
out copper in Cyprus, & the hammer & anvil & tongues
& laver, & imployed workmen in making armour &
other things of brass & iron, & was the only king celebrated in history for
working in metalls, & was king of Lemnos & the husband
of Venus, all which is the character of Vulcan; & about
the time of the death of Cinyras, the Egyptians built a
very sumptuous temple at Memphys to Vulcan, & near
it a smaller temple to Venus hospita, not an Egyptian Venus but a foreigner.
And as the Egyptians, Phenicians & Syrians in those days deified their own kings, so upon their coming into Asia minor & Greece with Cadmus & Sesostris they taught
those nations to do the like. ⭗ For then it came there into
fashion κτερίζειν, parentare, to celebrate the funerals of
their dead fathers with festivals & invocations & sacrifices
offered to their ghosts, & to erect magnificent sepulchres
in the form of temples with Altars & Statues to persons of
renown, & there to honour them with sacrifices & invocations.
Every man might do it to his ancestors, & the Greeks did it to all the eminent Greecians, as to Minos & Rhadamanthus
the nephews of Cadmus, to Ino his daughter & Melicertes
the son of Ino, to Bacchus the son of his daughter Semele
Aristæus the husband of his daughter Autonoe, Iasion the brother of302r of his wife Harmonia, Hercules the son of Alcmena, Æsculapius
the son of Apollo or Orus, Machaon the son of Æsculapius, & Pa
lemocrates the son of Machaon; to Pandion & Theseus kings of
Athens, Hippolytus the son of Theseus, Pan the son of Penelope
Ceres, Proserpina Triptolemus, Celeus, Trophonius, Castor, Pollux,
Helena Menelaus, Agamemnon, Amphiaraus, & his son Am
philochus. Cybele. Hector & Alexandra the son & daughter
of Priam, Phoroneus, Orpheus Protesilaus, Achilles & his mother
Thetis, Ajax, Arcas, Idomeneus, Merion, Æacus, Melampus,
Britomartis Adrastus, Iolæus & divers others. They deified
their dead in divers manners according to their abilities
& circumstances & the merits of the persons, some only
in private families as houshold Gods or Dij penates, others
by erecting gravestones to them in publick for annual
sacrifices, others by building also to them sepulchres
in the form of houses or Temples, & some by appointing
mysteries & ceremonies & set sacrifices & festivals &
initiations & a succession of Priests for observing & per
forming those institutions in the temples & handing them
down to posterity. Altars might begin to be erected in
Europe a little before the days of Cadmus, but temples
began a little after. Arnob. adv. gen
tes l. 6. p. 191.For Æacus the son of Ægina who
was two generations older then the Trojan war, was one of
the first, some say the first, who built a temple in Greece.
Oracles came from Ægypt into Greece about the same
time, as did also the custome of forming the Egyptian
images of the Gods with their leggs bound up in the
shape of the Egyptian mummies. But idolatry began in
Egypt & Assyria & spread thence into the neighbouring
countries long before it came into Europe. For the coun
tries upon the Tigris & the Nile being exceeding fertile
were first frequented by mankind & grew first into king
doms & therefore first began to adore their kings. But
these kingdoms were little ones in the beginning & every
kingdom worshipped only its own kings untill they con
quered one another, & at length Sesostris by conquest
spread the worship of the Gods of Egypt into all his
conquests & made them more famous & universal then
the Gods of any other kingdom had been before, so as
to be called Dij magni majorum gentium. For by the
names of the cities of Egypt dedicated to many of these
Gods & by their hieroglyphical symbols, you may know
that they were of an Egyptian original.
For in those days the writing of the Thebans &
Ethiopians was in hieroglyphicks. And this way of writing
seems to have spread into the lower Egypt before the
days of Moses. For thence came the worship of their
Gods in the various shapes of birds beasts and fishes forbidden
in the second commandment. Now this emblematical way
of writing gave occasion to the Thebans & Ethiopians who
in the days of Samuel David Solomon & Rehoboam conquered
Ægypt & the nations round about, & erected a great Empire, to313r to represent & signify their conquering Kings & Princes not by
writing down their names but by making various hieroglyphical
figures, as by painting Ammon with Rams horns to signify the
King who conquered Libya a country abounding with sheep; his
father Amosis with a sith to signify the king who conquered
the lower Egypt a country abounding with corn; his son Osiris
by an Ox because he taught the conquered nations to plow
with oxen & Bacchus with Bulls horns for the same reason,
& with grapes because he taught the nations to plant vines
& upon a Tyger because he subdued India; Orus the son
of Osiris with a harp to signify the Prince who was emi
nently skilled on that instrument; Iupiter upon an Eagle
to signify the sublimity of his dominion & with a thunder
bolt to represent him a warrior; Venus in a Chariot drawn
wthwhich two doves to represent her amorous & lustfull; Neptune
with a Trident to signify the commander of a fleet com
posed of three squadrons; Thoth wthwhich a doggs head & wings at
his cap & feet & a caduceus writhen about wthwhich two serpents
to signify a man of craft & an Embassador who reconciled
two contending nations; Pan with a pipe & with the leggs
of a Goat to signify a man delighted in piping & dancing,
& Hercules with pillars & a club because Sesostris set up
pillars in all his conquests & in the reign of his father
Ammon fought against the Libyans with clubs. So Hyginus:Hygin. Fab. 274
Apri et Ægyptij prinum fustibus dimicaverunt, postea Belus
Neptuni filius gladio beligeratus est, unde bellum dictum Apud Athenæum l. ix. p. 392. This is that Hercules who (according to Eudoxus) was slain by Typhon & who conquered Geryon wthwhich his three sons in Spain, & set up the famous pillars at the straits mouth called Hercules pillars Strabo ✝✝ l. 16. p. 776. tells us that the Ethiopians called Megabares fought with clubs. And some of the Greeks did so till the times of the Trojan war. Now from this hieroglyphical way of writing it came to pass that upon the division of Egypt into Nomes by Sesostris the great men of the kingdom to whom the Nomes were dedicated were represented in their sepulchres, or temples of the Nomes, not by various hieroglyphicks, as by an Ox, a Cat, a Dog, a Cebus, a Goat, a Lion, a Scarabaeus an Ichneumen, a Crocadile, an Hippopotamus, an Oxyrinchus, an Ibis, a Crow, an Hawk, a Leek, & were worshipped by the Nomes in the shape of these creatures.
Diodor. l. 3. c. 4.The Atlantides related that Vranus was their first king, & reduced them from a salvage course of life & caused them to dwell in towns & cities & to use & lay up the fruits of the earth, & that he reigned over a great part of the world & by his wife Titæa had eighteen children, among which were Hyperion & Basilea the parents of Helio & Selene; that the brothers of Hyperion slew him & drowned his son Helio in the Nile, & divided his kingdom amongst themselves; & that the country bordering upon the ocean fell by lot to Atlas, from whom the people were called Atlantides By Vranus, Hyperion, Basilea, Helio & Selene I understand Ammon, Osiris, Isis, Orus & Bubaste; & by the sharing of the kingdom of Hyperion among his brothers the Titans I understand the division of the earth among the Gods mentioned in the poem of Solon.
For324r
For Solon having travelled into Egypt & conversed with the Priests of Sais about their antiquities, wrote a poem of what he had learnt but did not finish it. And this poem fell into the hands of Plato who relates out of itPlato in Timæo et Critia that at the mouth of the straits near Hercules pillars there was an island called Atlantis, the people of wchwhich nine thousand years before the days of Solon reigned over Libya as far as Egypt & over Europe as far as the Tyrrhene sea, & all this force collected into one body invaded Egypt & Greece & whatever was conteined within the Pillars of Hercules, but was resisted & stopt by the Athenians & other Greeks, & there by the rest of the nations not yet conquered escaped were preserved. He saith also that in those days the Gods [having finished their conquests] divided the whole earth amongst themselves partly into larger partly into smaller portions, & instituted Temples & sacred rites to themselves, & that the island Atlantis fell to the lot of Neptune who made his eldest son Atlas king of the whole Island, a part of which was called Gadir, & that in the history of the said wars mention was made of Cecrops, Erechtheus, Erechthonius, Erisichthon & others before Theseus, & also of the weomen who warred with the men & of the habit & status of Minerva, the study of war in those days being common to men & weomen. By all these circumstances it is manifest that these Gods were the Dij magni majorum gentium & lived in the ages between Cecrops & Theseus, & that the wars which Sesostris made upon the nations by sea & land & the resistance he met with in Greece & the following invasion of Egypt by Neptune are here described & how the captains of Sesostris shared his conquests amongst themselves, as the captains of Alexander the great did his conquests long after, & instituting Temples & Priests & sacred rites to themselves caused the nations to worship them after death as Gods; & that the island Gadir or Gades with all Libya as far as Egypt fell to the lot of him who after death was deified by the name of Neptune. For in that island HomerHomer. Odyss. 1 & 5. places Calypso the daughter of Atlas presently after the Trojan war, when Vlysses being shipwrackt escaped thither. Homer calls it the Ogygian island & places it 18 or 20 days sail westward from Pheacia or Corcyra: & so many days sail Gades is from Corcyra, recconing with the ancients a thousand stadia to a days sail. This island is by Homer described a small one destitute of shipping & cities & inhabited only by Calypso & her weomen who dwelt in a cave in the midst of a wood, there being no men in the island to assist Vlysses in building a new ship & to accompany him thence to Corcyra: wchwhich description of the island agrees to Gades. And the time when the Gods made war & shared the earth & caused themselves to be worshipped as Gods, is by Solon limited to the age of Neptune the father of Atlas & grandfather of Calypso, & so was but two generations before the destruction of Troy. This is that Neptune who with Apollo and or335r or Orus, fortified Troy with a wall in the reign of Laomedon the father of Priamus, & left many children in Greece some of wchwhich were Argonauts & others were contemporary to the Argonauts; & therefore he flourished one generation before the Argonautic Expedition & by consequence about 400 years before Solon went into Egypt. But the Priests of Egypt in those 400 years had magnified the stories & antiquity of their Gods in those 400 years so exceedingly as to make them nine thousand years older then Solon, & the island Atlantis bigger then all Afric & Asia together, & full of people. And because in the days of Solon this great island did not appear, they pretended that it was sunk into the sea with all its people. Thus great was the vanity of the Priests with all its people of Egypt in magnifying their antiquities.
The Cretans✝✝Apud Diodor. l. 5. c. 4. affirmed that Neptune was the first man who set out a fleet having obteined this prefecture of Saturn [the father of Iupiter, Neptune & Plato] whence posterity recconed things done in the sea to be under his government, & mariners honoured him with sacrifices. The invention of tall ships with sails, is also ascribed to him. He was first deified worshipped in Afric as Herodotus affirmsHerod. l. 2. c. 50. & therefore reigned over that Province. For his eldest son Atlas who succeeded him, was not only lord of the island Atlantis but also reigned over a great part of Africk, giving his name to the people called Atlantij & to the mountain Atlas & the Atlantic ocean. Plutarch. in IsideThe outmost parts of the earth & promontories & whatever bordered upon the sea & was washed by it, the Egyptians called Heptys, & on the coasts of Marmorica & Cyrene Bochart & Arius Montanus place the Naphtuim a people sprung from Mizrain, Gen. 10.13. And thence Neptune & his wife Neptys might have their names, the words Neptune Neptys & Naphtuim signifying the king queen & people of the sea coasts. He & his son Atlas are celebrated in the ancient fables for making war upon the Gods of Egypt: as where Lucian saithLucian. de Saltatione that Corinth being full of fables tells the fight of Sol & Neptune, that is, of Apollo & Python or Orus & Typhon; & where AgatharcidesAgatharc. apud Photium. relates how the Gods of Egypt fled from the Gyiants till the Titans came in & saved them by putting Neptune to flight; & where HyginusHygin. Fab. 150 tells the war between the Gods of Egypt & the Titans commanded by Atlas. The Titans are the posterity of Titæa some of wchwhich under Hercules assisted the Gods, others under Atlas or Neptune & Atlas warred against them: for wchwhich reason (saith PlutarchPlutarch in Iside) the Priests of Egypt abominated the sea & had Neptune in no honour. By Hercules I understand here the General of the forces of Thebais & Ethiopia whom the Gods (or great men) of Egypt called to their assistance against the Giants (or great men of Libya who slew Osiris & invaded Egypt. For DiodorusDiodor. l. 1. c. 1. p. 10 saith that when Osiris made his expedition over the world, he left his kinsman Hercules general of his forces over all his dominions, & Antæus governour of Libya346r Libya & Ethiopia. Antæus reigned over all Afric to the Atlantic ocean & built Tingis or Tangiers. PindarPindar. Pyth. Ode 9. tells us that he reigned at Irasa a town of Libya where Cyrene was afterwards built. He invaded Egypt & Thebais: for he was beaten by Hercules & the Egyptians neare Antæa a town of Thebais & DiodorusDiodor l. 1. p. 12. tells us that this town had its name from Antæus whom Hercules slew in the age of Osiris. Hercules overthrew him several times, & every time he grew stronger by recruits from Libya his mother earth. But Hercules at length intercepted his recruits & slew him & took the Libyan world from his successor Atlas & made Atlas pay tribute out of his garden Orchard the kingdom of Libya. Whence its probable that Antæus was the proper name of Neptune the father of Atlas, & Neptune the name by wchwhich Antæus was deified. For it was usual in those days to deify men by new names. So Sesac was deified in several countries by the several names of Osiris, Bacchus, Dionysus, Belus, Mars & Hercules; Ino & her son Melicertes by the names of Leucothea & Palæmon; Thoas, Calycopis & Gingris by the names of Vulcan Venus & Adonis; Alcæus the son of Alcmena by the name of Hercules; the son of Semele by the name of Bacchus; & Romulus by the name of Quirinus. Some tell us that Antæus was the son of Neptune; but in his age, dominion & actions he agrees with Neptune himself, unless you will say that he governed Afric by land while Neptune commanded at sea. The invasion of Egypt by Antæus Ovid has relation unto where he makes Hercules say – Sævoque alimenta parentis Antæo eripui. And thus much concerning the ancient state of Ægypt Libya & Greece described by Solon.
During the reign of Sesak Ieroboam set up the Gods of Egypt in Dan & Bethel & Israel was without a teaching Priest & without law, & the nations were in great adversity. For in those times there was no peace to him that went out nor to him that came in but great vexations were upon all the inhabitants of the countries. And nation was destroyed of nation & city of city: for God did vex them sore 2 Chron xv.3, 5, 6. But in the fift year of Asa the land of Iudah became quiet from war & had quiet ten years, & Asa took down away the Altars of strange gods & brake down the images & built the fenced cities of Iudah with walls & towers & gates & barrs having rest on every side & got up an army of 580000 men, with which in the 15th year of his reign he met Zerah the Ethiopian who came out against him with an army of a thousand thousand Ethiopians & Libyans. The way of the Libyans was through Egypt & therefore Zerah was now Lord of Egypt. They fought at Maresha neare Gerar between Egypt & Iudea, & & Zerah was beaten so that he could not recover himself. And from all this I seem to gather that Osiris or Sesak was slain in the fift year of Asa & thereupon Egypt fell into civil wars, being invaded by the Libyans & defended by the Ethiopians for a time, & afterwards becoming subject to the Ethiopians who slew Orus the son & successor of Sesak, drowning him in the Nile, & seized his kingdom. By these civil wars of Egypt the land of Iudah had rest ten years. Sesostris reigned long, Manetho saith 48 years, & therefore he began his reign about the 17th year of Solomon; & his son Orus wa (the Phaeton of the ancients) was drowned & Egypt subdued by the Ethiopians before the 15th year of Asa. For Pliny Plin. l. 6. c. 29 tells us: Ægyptiorum bellis attrita est Æthiopia vicissim imperitando357r imperitando serviendoque clara et potens, etiam usque ad Trojana bella Memnone regnante. Æthiopia might reign over the upper part of Egypt as far as Thebes till Ammon or his father conquered it: for Homer places Thebes in Ethiopia. Then it served Egypt till the death of Sesack & no longer: for HerodotusHerod. l. 2. c. 110. tells us that he alone injoyed the Empire of Ethiopia. Then the Ethiopians under Zerah became lords of Egypt & Libya.
As Homer places Thebes in Ethiopia, so Herodotus tells us that Egypt was anciently the name of Thebais, meaning by Thebais the upper part of Egypt including Coptus; & to this day the Egyptians call themselves Coptites. Whence its probable that Ethiopia & Egypt were originally the names of two kingdoms under the dominion of Thebes & Coptus the Hebrew word Ai or Greek word Αἰα which signifies a land being præfixed to denote the Land of Thebes & the land of Coptus; & that the names were afterwards extended by conquest, Ethiopia to all the people upon the Nile above Thebes & Egypt to all the people upon the Nile below Syene. And so Mizraim might at first signify only the people on both sides the Nile next above the Delta subject to the city Mesir & afterwards be extended to all the lower Egypt peopled from thence by the invention of corn.
When Asa by his victory over Zerah became safe from Egypt, he assembled all the people & they offered sacrifices out of the spoiles & entred into a covenant upon oath to seakseek the Lord; & in lieu of the vessels taken away by Sesak he brought into the house of the Lord the things wchwhich he & his father had dedicated the gold & the silver & the Vessels, 2 Chron. 15.
Manetho apud Ioseph. cont. Apion p. 1052, 1053.When Zerah was beaten so that he could not recover himself; the people of the lower Egypt revolted from the Ethiopians, called in to their assistance 200000 Iews, & under the conduct of one Osarsiphus caused the Ethiopians, now under Memnon to retire to Memphis where he turned the river into a new channel, built a bridge over it & fortified that pass, & then went back into Ethiopia. But after 13 years Memnon wthwhich his young son Ramesses came down with a great army from Ethiopia conquered the lower Egypt & drove out the Iews. And this action the Egyptian writers & their followers call the second expulsion of the shepherds, taking Osarsiphus for Moses. Manetho saith that the Shepherds kept Egypt 511 years. Count backwards those years from the expulsion of the Iews, & the kingdom of the Shepherds in Egypt will begin about 6 or 8 years after the expulsion of the Canaanites by Ioshua.
Tithonus a beautifull youth, the elder brother of Priam, went into Ethiopia, being carried thither, I think, among many368r many captives by Sesostris. And the Greeks before the days of Hesiod feigned that Memnon was his son. Memnon therefore in the opinion of those ancient Greeks was born after the return of Sesostris into Egypt. He is said to have lived very long, & so might dye about 90 or 100 years old after Solomon as we recconed above. His mother (called Cessia by Æschylus) in a statue erected to her in EgyptDiodor. l. 1. c. 4. p. 31 was represented the daughter, the wife & the mother of a king, & therefore he was the son of a king: which makes it probable that Zerah was his father whom he succeeded in the kingdom might be his father; unless you had rather say that Zerah זרה might be Orus ורה Orus.
Historians agree that Menes reigned in Egypt next after the Gods & built Memphys & the magnificent temple of Vulcan. He built Memphys in the old channel of the Nile after he had turned the river. He built it over against the place where Gran Cairo now stands called by the Arabian historians Mesir. He built only the body of the Temple of Vulcan, & his successors built the Ramesses or Rhampsinitus, Mœris, Asychis & Psammiticus built the western northern eastern & southern Porticos thereof: Psammiticus who built the last Portico of this Temple, reigned three hundred years after the victory of Asa over Zerah, & it is not likely that this Temple could be above three hundred years in building, or that any Menes could be king of all Egypt before the expulsion of the Shepherds. The last of the Gods of Egypt was Orus and his mother Isis & sister Bubaste & secretary Thoth & Vnkle Typhon, & the king who reigned next after their deaths was Memnon or Amenophis called by the Egyptians Amenoph, & therefore he is Menes. For the names Amenoph or Menoph & Menes do not much differ. And from Amenoph the city Memphis said to be built by Menes had its Egyptian names Moph Noph Menoph or Meauf Menuf, as it is still called by the Arabian historians. The fortifying of this place against Osarsiphus gave occasion to the building of it.
The Egyptians originally Vpon the revolt of During the Vpon the revolt of the lower Egypt under Osarsiphus & the retirement of Amenophis into Ethiopia, the Amphictyonic Council sent the flower of Greece in the ship Argo on an Embassy to Æetes, Prometheus & other Princes on the coasts of the Euxine & Mediterranean seas, to signify the distraction of Egypt & perswade them to take that opportunity to revolt & set up for themselves. And thus ended the great Empire of Egypt.
Diodor. l. 1. c. 3. p. 29.The Egyptians originally lived on the fruits of the earth & fared hardly & absteined from animals & fared hardly therefore abominated shepherds. Menes taught them to adorn their tables & beds with rich carpets & brought in amongst them a sumptuous delicious & voluptuous way of life; & about an hundred years after his death Gnephactus one of his successors cursed him for doing it & to reduce the country of Egypt caused the curse to be entred in the Temple of Iupiter at Thebes. And by this curse the honour of Menes has diminished among the Egyptians.
As the Priests of Egypt had the ages of their Gods, & those ages lasted till the reign of Menes that is during the reign of the first four kings of all Egypt Amosis Ammon Sesac & Orus, the first king who reigned after their Gods being Menes: so the Curetes & Phenician Colonies who came into Crete & Greece with Europa & Cadmus, imitating the Egyptians, had the ages of their Gods which were one generation later then those of Egypt & lasted during the reign of Asterius, Minos, Deucalion & Idomeneus the four first kings of Crete the greatest kingdom then in Greece. For HesiodHesiod. Opera v. 108. recconing the four ages of the Gods & Demigods describes them to be four generations eac of men each of wchwhich ended when the men then living grew old & dropt into the grave, & tells us that the fourth ended with the wars of Thebes & Troy. And Apollonius RhodiusArgonaut l. iv. v. 1638 saith that when the Argonauts came to Crete, they slew Talus a brazen man who remained of those that were of the brazen age & guarded that Island. Talus was the son of Minos & therefore the sons of Minos lived in the brazen age And the next age was that of his grandsons. Idomeneus the son of Deucalion & grandson of Minos & fourth king of Crete His son Deucalion was an Argonaut & his grandson Idomeneus upon returning home from the Trojan war sacrificed his own son & for that fact was expelled the kingdom of Crete. And Chiron the son of Saturn & Philyra born in the golden age when Iupiter was a child lived till after the Argonautic Expedition & therefore might be born in the reign of Asterius & Europa & not before. The Mythologists say that Niobe the daughter of Phoroneus was the first woman with whom Iupiter lay & Alcmena the mother of Hercules the last, & this intervall of time comprehends the last reign of Minos Apollonius Rhodius tells us that Saturn deceived Rhea & begot Chiron of Philyra when he reigned over the Titans in Olympus & Iupiter was educated by the Idæan Curetes in the Cretan Cave, that is in the golden age. Now Chiron lived till the Argonautic Expedition & two of his grand-children were in that Expedition, & theforetherefore he might then be about 80 or 85 years old, & so be born in8v in the reign of Asterius & Europa & not before.
The kings of Egypt reigned – – The kings of Egypt reigned first at Thebes & then at Memphis, & Thebes was famous in Homers days, having been the royal city of Ammon Osiris & Orus, but Memphys grew famous afterwards & therefore became not the seat of the kings of Egypt before the days of that Poet; nor were the Pyramids & other famous works at Memphys then erected. For Homer celebrated Thebes as then in its greatness, but knew nothing of Memphys & its miracles. After Menes had built that city Mœris adorned it & made it the seat of the kingdom; & this was one or two generations after the Trojan war. Cyinyras the Vulcan who married Venus & under the kings of Egypt reigned over Cyprus & part of Phenicia & being subject to those kings made armour for them, lived till after the times of the Trojan war. And upon his death Menes or Memnon might deify him & found the famous temple of Vulcan in that city for his worship, but not live to finish it. ManethoIn a plane not far from Memphys are many small Pyramids said to be built by Venephes or Enephes & I suspect that Venephes & Enephes have been corruptly written for Menephis or Amenophis
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imperitando serviendoque clara et potens etiam usque ad Trojana bella Memnone regnante. Æthiopia might reign over the upper part of Egypt as far as Thebes till Ammon & Sesak conquered it. For Homer places Thebes in Ethiopia. Then it served Egypt till the death of Sesak & no longer for HerodotusHerod. l. 2. c. 110. tells us that he alone enjoyed the Empire of Ethiopia. Then the Ethiopians under Zerah became lords of Egypt & Libya.
When Asa by his victory over Zerah became safe from Egypt, he assembled all the people & they offered sacrifices out of the spoils & entred into a covenant upon oath to seek the Lord, & in lieu of the vessels taken away by Sesak he brought into the house of the Lord the things which he & his father had dedicated the gold & the silver & the vessels, 2 Chron. xv.
When Zerah was beaten so that he could not recover himself, Manetho apud Ioseph. cont. Apion p. 1052, 1053.the people of the lower Egypt revolted from the Ethiopians, called in to their assistance 200000 Iews, & under the conduct of one Asarsiphus caused the Ethiopians now under Memnon to retire to Memphys where he turned the river into a new channel, built a bridge over it & fortified that pass & then went back into Ethiopia. But after 13 years Memnon with his young son Ramesses came down with a great army from Ethiopia, conquered the lower Egypt & drove out the Iews. And this action the Egyptian writers & their followers call the second expulsion of the shepherds, taking Osarsiphus for Moses. Manetho saith that the shepherds kept Egypt 511 years. Count backwards those years from the expulsion of the Iews, & the kingdom of the shepherds in Egypt will begin about 6 or 8 years after the expulsion of the Canaanites by Ioshua.
Tithonus a beautifull youth the elder brother of Priam went into Ethiopia being carried thither, I think, among many captives by Sesostris & the Greeks before the days of Hesiod feigned that Memnon was his son. Memnon therfore in the opinion of those ancient Greeks was born after the return of Sesostris into Egypt. He is said to have lived very long, & so might die about 90 or 100 years after Solomon, as we recconed above. Diodor. l. 1. c. 4. p. 31.His mother in a statue erected to her in Egypt was represented the daughter the wife & the mother of a king, & therefore he was the son of a king: which makes it probable that Zerah whom he succeeded in the kingdom might be his father, unless you had rather say that Zerah זרה should be ורה Orus.
Historians agree that Menes reigned in Egypt next after the Gods & built Memphys & the magnificent Temple of Vulcan. He built Memphys in the old channel of the Nile after he had turned the river. He built only the body of the Temple, & his successors Ramses or Rhampsinitus, Mœris Asychis & Psammiticus built the western northern eastern & southern Porticos thereof. Psammiticus who built the last Portico of this Temple reigned three hundred years after the victory of Asa over Zerah, & it is not likely that this Temple could be above three hundred years in building, or that any Menes could be king of all Egypt before the expulsion of the Shepherds. The last of the3810r the Gods of Egypt was Orus with his mother Isis & sister Bubaste & secretary Thoth, & Vnkle Typhon & the king who reigned next after their deaths was Memnon or Amenophis called by the Egyptians Amenoph, & therefore he is Menes. For the names Amenoph or Menoph & Menes do not much differ. And from Amenoph the city Memphis said to be founded or built by Menes had its Egyptian names Moph, Noph Menoph or Menuf as it is still called by the Arabian historians. The fortifying of this place against Osarsiphus gave occasion to the building of it.
The kings of Egypt reigned first at Thebes & then at Memphis, & Thebes was famous in Homers days having been the royal city of Ammon, Osiris & Orus, but Memphys grew famous afterwards, & therefore became not the seat of the kings of Egypt before the days of the Poet, nor were the Pyramids & other famous works at Memphys then erected. After Menes whoad built that city Mœris adorned it & made it the seat of the kingdom & he & his successors adorned it this was after the times of the Trojan war: Cyinyras the Vulcan who married Venus & under the kings of Egypt reigned over Cyprus & part of Phenicia, & being subject to those kings made armour for them, lived till after the times of the Trojan war. And upon his death Menes or Memnon might deify him & found the famous Temple of Vulcan in that city for his worship, but not live to finish it. Manetho.In a plane not far from Memphys are many small Pyramids said to be built by Venephes or Enephes & I suspect that Venephes has been corruptly written for Menephis or Amenophis. For after the example of these Pyramids the following kings Mœris & his successors built others much larger. The place in wchwhich they were built was the burying place of that city as appears by the Mummies there found & therefore the Pyramids were the sepulchral monuments of the Kings & Princes of that city. And the city by these & such like works grew famous after the days of Homer & Hesiod.
HerodotusHerod. l. 2. the oldest historian (next after Solon) who wrote of the Egyptian antiquities & had what he wrote from the Priests of Egypt, tells us that those Priests recited out of their books the names of 330 kings who reigned after Menes but did nothing memorable except Nitocris & Mœris the last of them. After Mœris he reccons Sesostris Pheron, Protius, Rhampsinitus, Cheops, Cephren, Mycerinus, Asychis, Amysis, Sabacus &c. The Egyptians before the days of Solon had made their antiquities 9000 year older then the truth & here to make it out, they reccon to Herodotus a succession of 330 Kings reigning so many generations that is 11000 years before Sesostris. But before the use of letters they knew not how to write down the names of their kings. They could only represent them by symbols & write down the histories of the men represented by those symbols: & therefore we may with Herodotus omit ‡ the names of those kings who did nothing memorable. ‡ the names of those kings who did nothing memorable & consider only those whose actions are recorded. For those reduced into order due order will give us the of allmost all the kings of Egypt from the days of Ammon & Sesostris downwards to the reign of Sabacus. And their names corrupted will give us many others recited in the uncertain dynasties of Manetho & Eratosthenes. Sesostris reigned in the age of the Gods of Egypt being the Bacchus & Osiris of the ancients & therefore Menes Nitocris & Mœris are to be placed after him Pheron is by Herodotus called the son & successor of Sesostris & so seems to be the same king with Orus, called Pharaoh or Pheron after his fathers death. Pliny calls him Nuncoreus. With his death & the death of Isis, Bubaste, & Thoth ended the age of the Gods, & then reigned Menes Proteus reigned as in the lower Egypt when Alexander Paris sailed thither with Helenes, that is, 20 years before the taking of Troy, & so might be Osarsiphus. The name Proteus signifies a Prince & Herodotus tells us that it was the kings name translated into Greek & that he rose up from among the common people. Conon calls him an Egyptian Prophet, that is, a Priest; & Iosephus tells us that Osarsiphus was Priest of Heliopolis. Amenophis was in the beginning of his reign was contemporary to began to reigned before Osarsiphus the revolt of Osarsiphus & conquered him & then reigned over became king of all Egypt; as above; & since he reigned next after the Gods, he is Menes, as above.
After Menes had built Memphis & the Temple of Vulcan, he was succeeded by his son called by Herodotus Rhampsinitus & by others Ramses, Rameses, Ramesses, Remphis, Rhampses. This king built the western Portico of the Temple of Vulcan & Mœris built the northern Portico thereof more stately & therefore reigned after both. He also built made the Lake of Mœris with two great Pyramids of brick in the midst of it & the Labyrinth. And for præserving the division of Egypt into equal shares amongst the soldiers this king wrote a g book of surveying, wchwhich gave a beginning to Geometry He is called also Maris, Myris, Meres, Marrus, & corruptly by changing M into A, VI, Σ, YX, Α & such like mistakes) Ayres, Biyres, Soris, Vchoreus, Lacharis, Labaris, Thoris, &c.
Diodorus places Vchoreus Between Osimanduas & Miris ( i.e. Memnon & Mœris) Diodorus places Vchoreus, & says that he built Memphys & fortified it to admiration with a mighty rampart of earth & a broad & deep trench wchwhich was filled with the water of the Nile, & built palaces in it; & that this place was so commodiously seated that most of the kings who reigned after him preferred it before Thebes & & removed the Court thence to this place, so that the magnificence of Thebes from that time began to decrease & that of Memphys to increase till Alexander king of Macedon built Alexandria. These great works of Vchoreus, & those of Mœris savour of one & the same genius, & I take them to have been done by one & the same king made distinguished into two by a corruption of the name.
After the example of the two brick Pyramids made by Mœris, the next kings Cheops, Cephren & Mycerinus built the three great Pyramids of marble
Ramses called by Herodotus Rhampsinitus was the son & successor of Amenophis or Menes. He built the western Portico of the Temple of Vulcan, & Mœris built the the northern Portico of that Temple & therefore succeeded reigned after them both. He also built the Lake of Mœris with two great Pyramids of brick in the midst of it. And for preserving