The prænomen of Thothmos III. appears in fig. L, and if the preceding supposition be well founded, it will read Phra Me Ares or Pharaoh Mares. From all these circumstances I without hesitation identify Thothmos III. with the first Mares of Eratosthenes and the Moris of the Greeks, and Thothmos I. with the Stochus Ares of Eratosthenes.

Though Joseph began his administration in the reign of Amenoph I., he could only in that reign have laid the foundation of the mighty monarchy, which arose from his exertions; and the works and embellishments and arts, which gave the empire its lustre, could hardly have begun to show themselves till the succeeding reign: and I submit that this is the interpretation of the opinion which attributes to Moris the invention of the arts and sciences. Again, as the kings of Egypt recommenced their rule over the entire realm as Pharaohs with Amos, I

would suggest that his successor Amenoph I. must have been the king whom Cedrenus mentions as the Sesostris* in whose reign Hermes reappeared, and from whose successor the line of Pharaohs sprung, for indeed Thothmos I. held the throne only in right of his wife, and commenced that line of Pharaohs.

From a curious plate, which is given by Rosellini, from monuments at Thebes of about the age of Thothmos III., it might almost be concluded that though Thothmos III. had himself known Joseph, and deified him after his death, yet, that before the expiration of his reign, his sentiments had so far changed, that he had not only erased his name from the monuments, regarding him as little better than a usurper, but that he himself began, at the conclusion of his reign, to treat the Israelites with seve

* Dicæarchus places a Sesostris as the first mortal king of Egypt. Anc. Frag. 101.

rity. The plate of Rosellini is that of a people of a Jewish appearance making bricks, and building under the superintendance of Egyptian taskmasters. The plate is not from one of the royal monuments, but from a tomb of some superintendant of the architectural works, who, though he might have been appointed to his office under Thothmos III., might have continued in his office during the whole of the succeeding reign. The Israelites, however, were always occupied in Lower Egypt; and as they were so confined to a single spot, the land of Goshen, that during the plagues they were completely separate, and departed together in a body, they could hardly have been employed in Thebes or Upper Egypt: I should therefore conceive, that the people here represented must have been captives, the remnant of the shepherds, whose main body had capitulated and departed, or perhaps some captives

from Ishmael, Esau, Moab, or other neighbouring nations, the descendants of Abraham.

Every person, at all acquainted with the monuments of Egypt, is aware of the magnificent structures, as well as the capricious disposition of Thothmos III., which appears so manifestly upon his works. He evidently came to the throne young, and Joseph apparently retained the government some few years after his accession, but died long before the conclusion of his reign. Thothmos III. turned his chief attention to architecture and the arts, and appears very freely to have disbursed upon his favorite art the treasures acquired under the administration of Joseph. In the course of things also he must have completed, and perhaps inscribed with his own name and signet, several of the buildings which Thothmos I. and II. had begun; as the inscription upon St. Peter's gives to Alexander VII. the glory of having

erected it. And it is indeed a complaint against this king, that he constantly appropriated to himself the works, which preceding kings had erected, by the erasure of their names, and by the inscription of his own. And to me it appears that this further complaint may be alleged, that if Joseph did ever succeed in eradicating idolatry, Thothmos III. was the first who relapsed into it again. This relapse appears to have been a gradual return. Upon his monuments I am not aware that we find any of the gross representations, and variety of gods, which appear to multiply in each succeeding reign. Amun, however, which I take to have been originally a name for the true God (like the Allah of the Mahomedans), is delineated in the human form, and this and Ra, the Sun, as his representative, are

* Allah is but a slight variation of the word used throughout the book of Job.