We begin with Egypt, which has supplied the most abundant materials for study, which has yielded the richest reward for patient research and which is still a great mystery. Through its whole extent it abounds in relics, inscriptions and monuments which confirm the truth of holy word.
The first scene in the great emancipation under Moses presents the Hebrew bondmen bowed down under heavy burdens in the brick kiln and scattered abroad over the land in search of stubble for the rude manufacture. And to this day millions of bricks are found there, made of mud mixed with straw and dried in the sun, lying just where they were placed by the hands of the children of Israel when they worked in the slime-pits under the rod of the taskmaster. I have myself seen fifty children, boys and girls, carrying earth and stones in aprons and baskets to build a mound in the pleasure-grounds of the modern monarch of Egypt, while taskmasters stood over them with rods to see that they did their work.
Some have wondered how the Hebrews could contribute vast quantities of gold and silver and precious stones, as Moses says they did, for the construction of the tabernacle and its furniture in the desert. But they had learned the art of ornamentation from their masters, and they had conformed to the social life around them in the clays of their freedom and prosperity; and now necklaces of gold and cornelian, engraved signets, girdles, rings, pendants, bracelets, armlets, amulets, chains, metallic mirrors, costly and elegant ornaments of every description, are found in tombs with mummies, and the forms are engraven and painted on monuments of the age of Moses. The explorer in the valley of the Nile to-day can see the models from which Bezaleel and Aholiab learned the art of setting precious stones and of making wreathen chain-work in gold and of carving in wood, and of devising all manner of tasteful forms in gold and silver and brass.
The children of Israel brought an offering of red skins of rams and badgers' skins for the service of the sanctuary; and the monuments show us the forms and devices which they used for the adornment of the sacred tent. In the tombs of Thebes leather has been found stamped with beautiful figures in various colors, with the names of the most ancient kings. Sandals, shields, harps, quivers, are ornamented with green morocco. The stamp of the Lotus blossom can still be traced in the leather, and the shop of the workers is pictured on the walls of the tomb.
At Beni Hassan the Bible student can see to-day the representation of the whole process of preparing the fine-twined linen which was used in making the curtains of the tabernacle, and the pictures are as old as the days of Moses. Men are beating the yarn with sticks to make it soft. They are boiling it in water to increase its pliability. Women join with men in twining the thread for weaving. The blue and the purple and the scarlet thread which the wise-hearted Hebrew women spun for the tabernacle in the desert has been kept thirty-three hundred years in the dry air of Egypt for our eyes to see.
Moses was commanded to prepare holy oil for, the consecration of the tabernacle and all the vessels used in the service of the sanctuary. He was to compound it with sweet spices, after the art of the Egyptian perfumer, as he himself had known it to be done in Egypt. The vases in which these perfumes were kept have been found in the valley of the Nile. In some cases the precious ointment remains in the alabaster box just as it was put up by the Egyptian apothecary, and the spices still exhale their odor. The sweet savor of the costly preparation, three thousand years old, in the tombs of Egypt is a testimony that the word of Moses is true.
The Greek historian Herodotus says that no vines grew in Egypt; and yet the history of Joseph, as given by Moses, tells us that Pharaoh had a chief butler, and that the office of cupbearer was a post of honor in the court of the king. But the monuments show that the native-born Hebrew knew the country better than it was known to the much-traveled and wonder-loving Greek. In the oldest tombs of Gizeh are representations of vines trained upon poles, of gathering grapes in baskets, treading the wine-press, straining off the juice, bottling, decanting and storing the wine. At Thebes boys are seen frightening away birds from the vineyards. At Beni Hassan kids are browsing among the vines after the vintage. Many monuments represent kings presenting offerings of wine to the gods. And these pictures go back to the time when the chief butler told his dream to Joseph in prison.
The chief baker dreamed that he was carrying three wicker baskets of white bread upon his head in the streets. In the top basket were all kinds of pastry for the king, and the birds ate it out of the uppermost basket as he walked. This is just what I have seen many a time in the streets of old Cairo-bakers and confectioners carrying wide wicker-baskets on their heads, and birds flying about among the people and alighting on the burdens which men and beasts are carrying. In the ancient tombs at Biban el Moluk and elsewhere are found fancy loaves of wheaten and barley bread, kneaded in the form of stars, triangles, disks and other figures; and the monuments show that the custom of carrying on the head was then, as now, universal.
Potiphar made Joseph overseer in his house, and the whole management of everything in the great establishment of the Egyptian lord was left in the hands of the Hebrew slave. Joseph himself had such a confidential steward after he became prime minister to Pharaoh. In a tomb at Kumel el Ahmar is a picture for which Joseph might have sat when he managed the affairs of Potiphar's house. The steward is taking an account of stores received and given out. His clerks are about him with account-books and implements of writing. One has the pen over his ear, the paper in his hand and the writing-table under his arm.
The sacred record says that Joseph built storehouses for grain in anticipation of the years of famine. In the tombs of Elethya and Beni Hassan there are pictures of the storehouse and of the whole process of taking in grain as it was prescribed by the Hebrew prime minister of Pharaoh. The accountant stands by writing down the number of bushels, the measurer pours the grain into sacks, porters carry the full bags into the granary, and still another overseer chalks down the tally of bushels in rude characters on the wall of the storehouse. And these pictures run parallel to the words of Moses, that Joseph gathered corn as the sands of the sea very much, until he left numbering.
We have given only a few specimens of the testimonies to the books of Moses which have been found by research among the ruins and ancient monuments of Egypt. It would take many volumes to exhaust the theme if we should examine every passage in which the sacred record refers to the land of the Nile and we should bring forward every discovery which illustrates and confirms the inspired word. The monuments, mysterious and mighty in their desolation; the sites of once populous cities, where now there is not an inhabitant; the one great pyramid, containing stone material enough to build a wall six feet high and one foot thick from New York to San Francisco; the solemn Sphynx looking forever with stony eyes toward the sun-rising, as if waiting for a day that never dawns; the Serapeum of Sakkara, with subterranean galleries that must have cost a kingdom and a generation to cut in the solid rock, standing at the door of which one now sees no living thing in the whole range of the eye; the pictured tombs; the colossal statues; the miles of columns standing like a stone forest in the drifted sand; the temples covering acres of ground, with sculptures and pillars and obelisks; the long succession of ruins, extending five hundred miles, from Cairo to the Cataracts,—all confirm what the Hebrew historians wrote and the prophets of Israel foretold concerning the pride and the power, the glory and the desolation, of the wisest and the basest of the ancient kingdoms.