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1859.]

Bunsen's Egyptian History.

all ended in the twenty-first year of his reign, when the Egyptian troops appear to have retired from Syria, leaving the Hittites in successful rebellion behind them. During the remainder of his long reign of sixtysix years, he devoted himself to his magnificent and ostentatious monuments at Karnak and elsewhere, particularly at Aboosimbel, in Nubia. This profusion led, as often happens, to cruelty and oppression; the bondage of the Israelites, which had been severe, was fearfully aggravated. Their murmurs grew loud and deep, and though the storm did not break in Ramses' life, he left the kingdom in a wretched state of dissatisfaction and decay.

The misfortunes of Menophres, his successor, were owing to his father's crimes, but and here we have surer testimony than Baron Bunsen's-he deserved them for his own. The Israelites revolted and quitted the country. The king escaped the waters of the Red Sea, but an irruption of the Philistines and the discontent of his subjects forced him to flee into Ethiopia, from whence he did not return for thirteen years.

It may perhaps be considered as a corroboration of Holy Writ that he had no son to succeed him, but was the last of his family. Ramses III., the first king of the twentieth dynasty, if a relation at all, was only a distant one. He was a great commander, and for a time restored the fallen glory of the nation. The theatre of his campaigns was Pales. tine as far as Phoenicia, but they can hardly be considered as more than mere transitory incursions. They, however, served an important purpose in repressing the power of the tribes which inhabited that country. While these events were transacting, the Israelites, under Joshua, numbering six hundred thousand men capable of bearing arms, were encamped beyond Jor. dan, and did not cross that river till the Egyptians had definitively withdrawn. The list of nations vanquished by this king is a long one. Amongst them may be distinguished the Kheta, the Amar, the Pursata, Rabu, the men of Tira, Tuirsa, and Saintana, and the Gai krui; who may very probably be

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identified with the Hittites, the Amorites, the Philistines, and the inhabitants of Tyre, Tarsis, Sodom, and Accho or Acre.

This conqueror was succeeded by a number of insignificant kings, also named Ramses, and then a great revolution took place. The Theban dynasties were overthrown by the sacerdotal caste, and the sceptre was assumed by a priest of Ammon from Zoan, in Lower Egypt. After four kings of little note, Sheshonk, or Shishak, the conqueror of Jerusalem, founded the twenty-second or Bubastic dynasty. His famous expedition to Palestine is memorated on the walls of Karnak, where the king of Judah (or as Baron Bunsen says, Judah personified as a king) appears as one of a huge row of captives, amongst whom can be recognised the chiefs of Maharaim, Bethhoron, and Megiddo.

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Here Baron Bunsen closes his Egyptian history for the present. In the short abstract we have offered we have carefully abstained from doing more than give the results of his laborious investigations, without questioning any more than pledging ourselves to their accuracy. The world owes much gratitude to inquirers like him, even should his conclusions be hereafter questioned or disproved. Where authorities cannot be referred to, as obviously must be the case in the present instance, praise or blame will be of little value; but we cannot but give it as our own opinion, that in this account of the New Empire we see nothing but what is a very fair deduction from the premises.

We fear we cannot say quite the same with respect to the Baron's views on Scripture chronology, contained in this volume. We have not the slightest desire of accusing any one of impiety or infidelity who does not happen to believe that Noah lived nine hundred and fifty years, or because he thinks that the sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt lasted fourteen centuries, but still the English mind is hardly prepared for such expressions as the following :

The ordinary chronology, then, we declare to be devoid of any scientific foundation; the interpretation indeed

by which it is accompanied, when carefully investigated, makes the Bible a tissue of old women's stories and children's tales which contradict each other. When confronted with authentic chronology, it generally leads to impossible results. It does not harmonize with anything which historical criticism finds elsewhere, and which it is under the necessity of recognising as established fact. It is, as regards the religious views of educated persons, the same thing as the stories in the Vedas about the world-tortoise are to those who are supposed to believe them-a stone of stumbling; and it will become more and more so every ten years. For it contradicts all reality, and necessitates the denial of facts which are as clear as the sun; or if it does not succeed in that, compels them to be passed over altogether as matters of no moment. countries where research cannot be prohibited by the police, or is not punishable by excommunication, this indeed in the long run becomes exceedingly laughable, but it does not on that account cease to be immoral.-Vol. iii. P. 348.

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Though not quite yet, we fear, unprejudiced enough to believe it to be immoral to prefer the literal Bible to Baron Bunsen, we are far, we beg leave to say, from the superstitious reverence for it with which it has been too much regarded. Romanists and Protestants have both erred in this respect. former treat the sacred volume as some Oriental despots have been treated by their ministers, who, while they issued decrees in his name, would never allow him to be seen by his subjects. The latter have, on the other hand, too often brought it into discredit, by parading it, like a constitutional king, on the most trivial occasions, and citing it as authority when it was never intended for such.

In the outset we must say that we entirely agree in the change the Baron proposes to make in the received computation of the time between the Exodus and the building of the Temple; which, instead of lengthening, as might perhaps have been expected, he shortens from four hundred and eighty or four hundred and forty years to about three hundred and six. We strongly recommend those who are interested in this topic to read the very able work by Lord Arthur Hervey, on

Scripture Genealogies. The noble and reverend author, who, it need hardly be said, writes in a spirit as far removed as possible from German neologism, has arrived on entirely independent grounds at very nearly the same conclusion as the Baron. He starts from the fact that between Nahshon, Prince of Judah at the time of the Exodus, and David there were only four generations-Salmon, Boaz, Obed, Jesse. It is obviously impossible, he remarks, that there can have been four generations averaging more than a hundred years each; still more when we find nearly all the other genealogies of the time to contain about the same number of names. Either, then, the genealogies are defective, or the chronology is at fault.' We have not space to give all the minute circumstances which have led Lord A. Hervey to the conclusion that the latter is the case. His manner of treating the historical part of the book of Judges is even bolder than Baron Bunsen's. For instance, he considers that Othniel and Barak may have been cotemporary at one time; and Ehud, Gideon, and Jephthah at another, all engaged as independent chieftains in the war of liberation, and each with his own local historian.

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Baron Bunsen proceeds in a slightly different manner. Egypt, according to him, being invaded by the Philistines, was in no condition to molest the Israelites, though they marched through countries formerly subject to it, and the latter accordingly reached the left bank of the Jordan without serious impediment. But there they found the Hittites too powerful to be attacked; nor was it till Ramses III. had broken down their power that Joshua ventured to cross. His war lasted only five years, and he died in the twenty-fifth year of his leadership. The Israelites now enjoyed eighteen years of prosperity and independence, till another foe came down upon them. A vast empire was founded by Ninus in Assyria; and not long afterwards one of its Mesopotamian satraps, Chushan Rishathaim, subjugated the whole of Palestine. His domination did not last more than eight years, but the

1859.] Bunsen's Explanation of Scripture Chronology.

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Hellenic. After this we fear Lord Arthur Hervey's solution will appear tame and commonplace ; it being merely that the different sheets of contemporaneous and independent histories got mixed, and their sequence disordered when collected at a subsequent period.

rising power of the Israelites re- to the Hebrew Epos' over the ceived such a check that they thenceforward had to contend on equal terms with the Pagan tribes around them. It is needless to say that the Baron unhesitatingly rejects the terms of forty and eighty years for the various rests under the heroes; and few will doubt that these numbers merely mean an indefinite time, as indeed they do in the East at the present day. He allows about a hundred and fortyfive years for the contests and deliverances under Ehud, Deborah, and Abimelech. Tola and the inferior judges in the north-west he considers to have been cotemporary with Jair and Jephthah in the south; and by placing the exploits of Samson entirely within the forty years allotted to Eli and Samuel, he arrives at the before-mentioned term of three hundred and six years between the Exodus and the building of the Temple.

The scheme by which the German writer accounts for the discrepancy of the chronology is so truly characteristic that we must give it at length:

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I think the best way of meeting this demand, in furtherance of the purpose of this book, is to lay before our readers in a summary manner, the simple idea which, with all its childlike simplicity, is truly sublime and epical. aim and purpose of the authors [of the sacred narrative] was not to make a compilation of the dry annalistic entries of ordinary external events. Their object was to bring into notice the guidance of the people of God, from generation to generation. . Hence, as

might be expected, there sprung up an Epos which was an intermediate step between Mythos and strict history. It exhibits no trace of the mythological fictions which give historical form to the idea of the relation between the divine and the human. It is this which marks its superiority to every heathen Epos, not excepting even altogether the Hellenic. Its basis is historical, exclusively historical; the shape in which it is composed is exclusively popular epic, by generations of forty years.-p. 300.

No one can doubt the perfect good faith in which this explanation is given, but few readers in this country will, we hope, be disposed to acquiesce in the extremely qualified superiority which is granted

VOL. LX. NO. CCCLV.

Having dealt thus leniently with the Book of Judges, the Baron makes amends by the havoc he causes in the earlier history of the Pentateuch. The patriarchs fare extremely badly at his hands; their ages, nay, even the existence of most of them, being dismissed as merely childish delusions.'

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None but those who still cling to the infatuation that Noah and Shem lived from six hundred to one thousand years, have any excuse to offer for such purely childish delusions, persistence in which can only be productive of doubt and unbelief. p. 340.

This solitary heir (Isaac) of the patriarchal emir could not have been at most more than sixteen when the faithful Eliezer was commissioned to seek

a wife for him.-p. 340.

There is no country in which it is so improbable that a man of one hundred years old should have a son, as in a land of early development like Syria and Canaan.-p. 341.

Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, these are allowed to be real personages; but their ages, instead of 175. 180, and 147, are cut short to 100, 80, and 97. As for the others, they are nearly all allegorized away. The years assigned to Arphaxad, Salah, and Heber being somewhat similar, 438, 453, 464, our author boldly considers them to be in fact the same number, and to refer to the sojourn of the race in the primeval land-Arra-pakhitis, whence Arphaxad. In the same crucible Salah becomes the Mission,' Heber' the Settler,' Peleg the Partition,' or names of events turned into names of men. Reu and Serug are changed into Rohi and Sarug, districts, we are informed, near what is at present Edessa. Lastly, the number 600, which our author finds, we don't exactly see how, in the ages of both Noah and Shem, is the original Chaldaic equation between lunar and solar time' (p. 368). After this we can only be too thankful to be spared the discovery

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that Enoch lived 365 years, and that consequently he is Apollo, Hercules, Baal, and every other sun-god in every heathen Pantheon; but this is perhaps reserved for volume four.

It may possibly be imagined that the Baron, having thus demolished the extraordinary longevity assigned to the Patriarchs, and even got rid of some of them altogether, is disposed to shorten the received chronology, and give a much less duration to the sojourn of man upon the earth than is commonly supposed. Far from it; for instead of the usual term of less than 6000 years, he considers it proved that man has existed at least 13,000, and very probably 20,000. The proofs of this, founded on that very uncertain guide, the theory of language,' he promises us in his next volume; but he considers that he has found a remarkable corroboration of his views in Mr. Horner's researches near Cairo. What this authority amounts to may be stated in a few words, and we leave our readers to judge for themselves. There is a certain statue of Ramses the Great lying near Cairo, and from the position in which it lies it is computed that there has been an accumulation of nine feet four inches of Nile mud since that statue was erected. Now, Ramses lived, according to Lepsius, about 1394 B.C., consequently some 3245 years ago. This would give a mean rate of increase of deposited mud of about 3 inches a century. Now, close to the statue, Mr. Horner excavated to the depth of 24 feet, and bored 17 more, the two last of which were sand, making 39 feet of mud; which, at the above-mentioned rate,

must have taken 13,500 years to collect. But at this depth of 39 feet, his instrument brought up fragments of burnt brick and pottery, one inch square.* These burnt bricks must have been made by man, consequently man existed 13,500 years ago. Q. E. D. (See Transactions of the Royal Society, 1855.)

Wonderfully slight data these for so momentous a conclusion. All the annals of circumstantial evidence can produce nothing like this piece of burnt brick one inch square. Indeed it proves a little too much. There are no old buildings of burnt brick in Egypt now, because the climate does not require them. Consequently, if used there, the climate must have changed. If the climate has changed, what becomes of the inundation of the Nile mud? But, in fact, the whole argument rests on the assumption that 13,000 years ago the rate of increase of Nile mud was exactly the same as at present, which it is obviously impossible, in the present state of our knowledge, to prove.

We must here conclude this short notice of Baron Bunsen's third volume. We have neither space nor time to notice his remarks on Indian, Chinese, and Bactrian chronological systems; all of which will repay perusal by those who are fond of these subjects. We desire to do all honour to his profound learning, his indefatigable industry, and his genuine religious feeling; and can only wish it joined to a little less dogmatism, and somewhat less readiness to believe in any idle conjecture which may appear to militate against the statements of Holy Writ.

E. E.

* It may perhaps be surmised that these pieces of brick, &c. were placed where they were found by the excavators themselves. We, however, entirely disbelieve this. The researches were directed by Hekekyan Sey, one of those remarkable self-taught men who occasionally rise up in the East, and whose attainments and enthusiasm in the pursuit of knowledge form a remarkable contrast to the ignorance and apathy of those around them. He is well known to many English travellers in Egypt; and none, we think, will believe him capable of any fraud in this matter or any other. He may have been imposed upon by his labourers; but we should doubt it ever occurring to an uneducated fellah that pieces of brick would have so much significance.

1859.]

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NOTES ON THE NATIONAL DRAMA OF SPAIN.

BY J. R. CHORLEY.

CHAPTER II.

OUTLINES.

IT is not requisite for the purpose of these Notes to deduce a pedigree of the Spanish Drama, from the cradle of mimetic art in the Middle Ages. It would occupy too much space to describe the process by which its several elements were gradually evolved and matured, until the time was ripe for the genius who moulded them into form, and animated that form with a life which the nation claimed as its own. Our business here is with the comedy which Lope de Vega planted and brought to maturity on the ground prepared by the endeavours of many previous ages. To trace the rise and progress of those essays down to the period when the genetic nisus ended in a new and brilliant creation, is the office of the historian.

That office has been ably fulfilled by Professor Ticknor; in whose History of Spanish Literature, chap. 13 to 15, vol. i., and chap. 7 and 8, vol. ii., will be found an account of the antecedents of the national drama, sufficient for general purposes. But those who wish to study them in detail must be referred to the first volume of Von Schack's History,* a work to which I owe many obligations.

The

author, a man of fine taste, and learned as well as diligent, was the first to unveil to modern eyes the full figure of the Spanish drama, and to do justice to its neglected poets. The light he throws on all the material parts of his subject is invaluable to the student; not less so is th genial criticism with which he displays its poetic worth. It is a book, too, the fidelity of which may be trusted. Considering the vast extent of the field, which before him was all but untrodden,

and the multiplicity of details which had to be sought for its illustration in remote and obscure places, his general accuracy is surprising; indeed, he will rarely be found in error on any point of consequence. This tribute is offered here, not merely as the acknowledgment which one much indebted to his guidance is bound to pay, but also for the benefit of other students, to whom no better instructor can be recommended.

Referring, therefore, to Ticknor and Von Schack for particulars, I may briefly observe that in the earliest rudiments of a drama in the Middle Ages two distinct elements are visible—the religious, fostered by the Church, that turned to the profit of its influence the propensity inherent in mankind to enliven the utterance of their conceptions or feelings by dialogue and gesture; and the profane, which whether, as some think, derived by unbroken succession from the mimes of the Roman period, or spontaneously produced by natural causes, must have been at least as old as the other. Were there not proof, which there is, of the early use of purely secular shows and mummings, it might be inferred from the recourse of the Church to a principle which it did not create, but must have found among the laity since this is implied by its effect as an aid to religious offices. It is therefore erroneous to describe the Church mysteries or miracle plays as the sole root of the modern drama. The copious infusion of profane matter, indeed, in those sacred exhibitions, would of itself attest the existence of another, which also contributed to its growth. It was natural that, in times when

* Geschichte der Dramatischen Kunst und Literatur in Spanien. Von Adolf Friedrich von Schack. 2te Ausgabe. Frankfurt. 1854. I name this second edition, or rather re-issue of the first, because it is enriched by an appendix containing much that is new and important, chiefly obtained from private libraries in Spain, and hitherto unpublished. It is to be regretted that this excellent work has no index.

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