Anthropoid Sarcophagus, or Cartonnage

Dead Men Tell Tales

by
HARRY RIMMER, D. D., Sc. D.

With 37 Plate Illustrations in the Text

Eleventh Edition

Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
Grand Rapids, Michigan

Dead Men Tell Tales
BY HARRY RIMMER, D.D., SC.D.

Copyright 1939 by
Research Science Bureau, Incorporated
Printed in the United States of America
All rights in this book are reserved
No part of the book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission.
For information address the publishers.

ELEVENTH EDITION

FOREWORD

In an older generation, especially among the writers of the more lurid types of fiction, it was an accepted axiom that “Dead men tell no tales!” But this was before the great era of modern archeology had impressed its findings on the general public, and indeed before most of those discoveries had been made.

Our generation knows better. Dead men do tell tales, and marvelous and wonderful are the stories they bring to us. By means of an archeological resurrection, the great men of antiquity are with us again. Once more we hear the accounts of their fascinating lives and adventures, and read again the records of their culture. The tongueless tombs of the distant past have suddenly become vocal, and this mighty chorus of the dead great has forced us to revise many of our once cherished opinions.

Nowhere is this more strikingly true than in the case of the coincidence of these old ages with the page of the Holy Bible. The richest finds of archeology come to us from the very periods of history that are dealt with in the pages of Holy Writ, and names that were known only from the record of the Scripture are now the common possession of the scholarly world. So much is this the case, that we have a new technique of Bible study in our day. Just as the microscope is the instrument for the study of biology, and the spectroscope has become the means of study in physics, so the Bible is best read today in the light that is reflected upon its pages from the blade of a spade! This, of course, is intended to apply to the historical sections of the Book, and refers to the problem of its authenticity and historicity. It still remains true that spiritual understanding of its message can be derived only from study that is supervised and directed by the Holy Spirit.

This volume, the fourth in the promised series to be known as the

“JOHN LAURENCE FROST
MEMORIAL LIBRARY”

will deal with some of those fascinating discoveries that bear particularly on the problem of the Old Testament. The succeeding and companion volume, which will be entitled “Crying Stones,” will deal in like manner with the records of the New Testament.

The material contained in this apologetic is derived from various sources. Much of it came from records in the famed British Museum, in London, England. This marvelous storehouse of treasure from the most remote antiquity is the greatest collection of evidence bearing upon these questions, that is at present in the possession of man. There is scarcely a section of the Bible that does not receive some authentication from the limitless wealth of this noble treasury.

A great deal of the remainder of this information and proof has been derived from other museums, such as the Egyptian Museum at Cairo, Egypt, and the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania. Much of the contents of this book has come from the excavations now in progress in Egypt, and from the ruins at Sakkara, Luxor, Karnak, Iraq, and other centers of present activity. The earth seems eager indeed to offer its treasures of proof concerning the Word of God.

The author is especially grateful for the help accorded to him in Egypt by Mr. and Mrs. Erian Boutros of Cairo, and by certain officials of the Egyptian government, chief of whom in helpfulness was M. Abdul Nabi, and the Egyptian Tourist Bureau, whose gracious efforts on our behalf won us many privileges from the Department of Antiquities.

The illustrations used in this volume are largely from the author’s own photographs of exhibits and evidences, made by him and presented with the assurance that they are not retouched or altered in any manner. In the course of his studies and travels in search of this material, he made hundreds of negatives, only a few of which appear in this work. The exceptions to this are noted where they appear. The zinc etchings are made from original drawings by Miss Elizabeth Elverhoy from our photographs, and are authentic in all details.

We hand you now Tales of Dead Men, rendered by Men Long Dead, as they unconsciously accredit the sacred page of the Word of God. If you have a tithe of the pleasure and profit in the reading of these pages that we have experienced in the gathering of their contents, we shall be repaid for the labor involved.

CONTENTS

[Chapter I The Premise Stated] 13 [Chapter II The Tides of Culture] 37 [Chapter III Converging Streams of Revelation and History] 55 [Chapter IV Modern Science and the Ten Plagues of Egypt] 85 [Chapter V Sources] 125 [Chapter VI Fragments] 163 [Chapter VII The Rebirth of an Empire] 195 [Chapter VIII The Resurrection of Edom] 225 [Chapter IX The Brazen Shields of Rehoboam] 247 [Chapter X Mingled Voices] 269 [Chapter XI Vindication of Daniel] 317 [ Bibliography] 349

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

[Anthropoid Sarcophagus, or Cartonnage] Frontispiece [Egyptians at a wine orgy] Facing Page 32 [Crude hieroglyphics on an ancient statue] 33 [Example of embellished statue] 40 [Colossi at Luxor] 41 [The Sheltered Wife] 41 [Khnum and Thoth in Creation Tradition] 56 [Colossi of Karnak] 64 [Colossi of Luxor] 64 [Colossi of Amen-Hetep III guarding Valley of Kings] 65 [At Tomb of Tutanhkamen] 65 [Open burial] 72 [Mural from an ancient tomb: Butchers at work] 73 [The god Hapi drawing the Two Kingdoms into one] 73 [Mace-head in British Museum] 128 [Cuneiform writing and sculpture on stone weapon] 129 [Ancient seals depicting historic events] 136 [Section of funerary papyrus, showing progress of the soul] 137 [Herds of cattle, such as Hyksos kings possessed] 160 [Ancient mural: Slaughter of cattle] 161 [Papyrus showing capture of quail] 161 [Cartonnage in the anthropoid sarcophagus] 168 [Outside and inside writings and decorations on anthropoid sarcophagus] 169 [Detailed study of outside and inside of anthropoid coffin] 176 [Outside of rectangular coffin covered with writings] 176 [Murals and frescoes from tomb walls] 177 [Commemorative stele] 184 [Ancient boundary markers] 185 [Stone ouches, or door-sockets] 192 [The famed Black Obelisk, which confirmed record of Jehu] 193 [Hamath inscription] 195 [Small ivory lion from Ahab’s palace] 200 [Fragmentary frieze showing ancient chariots] 201 [Hittite inscription] 208 [Egyptian funerary papyri] 209 [Monuments of Petra, showing ruins from one direction] 216 [Monuments of Petra, looking in opposite direction] 217 [The rough approach to Petra] 240 [Approaching Petra by way of the main siq] 241 [“El Kahzne”, the Temple of the Urn] 248 [Building carved from living stone] 249 [El Deir] 256 [Additional view of El Deir] 257 [En route to the “High Place”] 264 [The Altar of Sacrifice] 265

CHAPTER I
The Premise Stated

In the romantic vocabulary of the twentieth century few words are more potent to arouse the interest of the average man than the fascinating word “archeology.” A flood of volumes has come forth from the press of our generation covering almost every phase of this now popular science. After one hundred years of steady plodding and determined digging, this school of research has at last come into its own and today occupies deserved prominence in the world of current literature. This science, which deals exclusively with dead races and the records of their conduct is, to many, the most fascinating field of investigation at present open to the inquiring mind of man. Nothing is of such interest to the human as is humanity. The study of the life and record of our own kind rightly means more to us than can most other subjects.

But the true appreciation of the value of the contribution of archeology to our modern learning can be appreciated only by those who grasp an outstanding fact that should be self-apparent, but is so often overlooked: Namely, these records derived from musty tombs and burial mounds constitute the daily events in the lives of human beings! The folks who left these records were ordinary people such as make up the nations of the earth today. They are not merely names on tablets or faces carved in stone. They were actual flesh-and-blood individuals with all that this implies. In hours of merriment they laughed, and they shed tears in moments of sorrow. They hungered, and ate for satisfaction; they drank when they were thirsty. They loved and they hated; they lived and they died. Pleasure and pain were their alternating companions, while ambition, aspiration, and hope drove them on the endless round of their daily tasks.

In a word, they were real. Their life was as important to them as is your life, and they lived it in much the same way. Therefore, the records written by humans and studied by their kind, who now live these thousands of years later, constitute the source of the most human science with which our generation has to deal.

The contributions of archeology have reached almost every branch of study, but to no particular group of people have they been more timely and valuable than to students of the Bible. The hoary antiquity of the Book which has been received in every generation by the intelligent and the discerning as the Word of God, has its roots in the same generations that archeology is investigating today. It is inevitable that much of the material being recovered by modern excavations shall have important bearing upon the various questions skepticism may raise concerning the text of the Scripture.

To the open-minded scholar who approaches this subject without prejudice, the science of archeology has a twofold contribution to make. Some of the evidences derived from digging are (a) of incalculable value in illuminating the text of the Scripture, and are (b) equally priceless when viewed as a body of indisputable evidence. Under this latter heading the proofs would come into four classifications:

1. The historicity of the text

2. The accuracy of the account

3. The authenticity of the record

4. The inspiration of the whole

By way of illustrating the manner in which the Scripture may be illumined by the findings of archeology, we would introduce a semi-humorous and partially tragic event that occurred in the dim and distant days of our own earlier studies. During a short term spent at a well known California college, we were specializing in the field of history. The teacher of this course, Professor Rosenberger, was one of the ablest pedagogues who ever wasted her life in the more or less important task of teaching a rising generation how to think! At the end of the first few weeks in a class in English history, she informed the student group that the following day we would be privileged to have a test in this particular subject. When the class gathered for the happy event, there were twenty questions written on the board which were to constitute our examination.

The first question was something like this, “What new treaty had just been signed between France and Spain at this particular period?”

The next question had to do with the political commitments of the Holy Roman Empire.

The third question took us into the Germanic states, and in all of the twenty questions not one word concerning England was mentioned!

As the class sat with the usual and habitual expression of vacuity which generally adorns the countenance of a college student facing a quiz, the Professor said, “You may begin.”

Some hapless wight procured the courage to protest, by saying, “But you said this was to be an examination in English history!”

The Professor replied, “Quite so! This is English history!”

Then leaning forward over the desk she said, in impressive tones, “How can you expect to know what England is doing, and why, if you do not know the pressure upon her of her enemies and friends at that particular period?”

A long distance back in our mental vacuum a dim light began to glow, and we never were caught that way again! When the teacher said French history, we read everything else! When she said German history, we specialized on the surrounding countries. One day as we were thinking over this helpful technique of understanding, the idea began to grow that if this was the proper way to study secular history, it ought to apply to Bible study as well!

There is an illumination that brightens the meaning of the Sacred Text when read in the light of collateral events that can come no other way. As an instance of this, we will remind the reader of the background of Isaiah. When this prophet first began to write, there was trouble between Israel, the northern confederation, and Judah, the southern kingdom. The king of Israel at this time was Pekah, the son of Remaliah, and although his people were numerically superior to Judah, he was fearful that he might not be strong enough to overcome the southern kingdom in the threatened war. Therefore, he made a close alliance with Rezin, the king of Syria, promising him all the spoils of the battle, if he would aid with his army and strength. The Syrian king hastened to accept this offer, and signed the required covenant. When this alliance became known in Judah, a natural alarm spread throughout the tiny kingdom. Realizing that they were incapable of resisting the strong forces of Israel and Syria which had combined against them, the princes of Judah desired outside help. The only apparent source of such assistance was Egypt. So in the court of Ahaz, the king of Judah, a strong party began agitating for a military alliance with Egypt. That being the only apparent aid within any reasonable distance, it seemed natural to turn to them for a military alliance.

The prophet Isaiah, who was a strong force and exercised a vital influence in the policies of Judah, began to object most strenuously. In the light of this background, we can understand such outbursts of Isaiah as are found in the thirtieth chapter of his prophecy, verses one to three:

“Woe to the rebellious children, saith the Lord, that take counsel, but not of me; and that cover with a covering, but not of my Spirit, that they may add sin to sin:

“That walk to go down into Egypt, and have not asked at my mouth; to strengthen themselves in the strength of Pharaoh, and to trust in the shadow of Egypt!

“Therefore shall the strength of Pharaoh be your shame, and the trust in the shadow of Egypt your confusion.”

His protest seems to reach a climax in the thirty-first chapter in that magnificently written plea for faith in God which we find in these graphic words:

“Woe to them that go down to Egypt for help; and stay on horses, and trust in chariots, because they are many; and in horsemen, because they are very strong; but they look not unto the Holy One of Israel, neither seek the Lord!

“Yet he also is wise, and will bring evil, and will not call back his words: but will arise against the house of the evil doers, and against the help of them that work iniquity.

“Now the Egyptians are men, and not God; and their horses flesh, and not spirit. When the Lord shall stretch out his hand, both he that helpeth shall fall, and he that is holpen shall fall down, and they all shall fail together.”

All through this period of prophecy, Isaiah’s voice is aggressively raised against the folly of trusting Egypt. His protest is, “Since God redeemed us once from bondage in that land, why put ourselves back again under their yoke?”

The princes replied in some such terms as this: “The objection is o. k. in principle; as a basic thesis we will admit that it is safe to trust in God. But right now we need real help and we need it in a hurry.”

The prophet cried out in response, “God will send the help that you need!”

The natural question was “Whence? Syria and Egypt are the only two powers near us. One is arrayed against us and the help of the other you forbid us to seek. Whence then is the aid that God will send?”

The prophet’s reply was short and terse, “God will send aid from very far off.”

The reluctant court agreed to take a chance on Isaiah’s insistence, and so to trust their cause to the God of Israel. Quickly, then, upon the heels of this decision, as we learn from the records of archeology, there came one of the earlier battles that were fought at Charchemish.

The rising power of Assyria first made itself felt in that engagement. As a result, Syria was shattered and Israel made captive. The help that God had promised did come, and now the definite prophecy of Isaiah, in chapters seven and eight, may be correlated into this simple summary; and against this background we can understand the vehemence of Isaiah in crying out against an alliance with Egypt.

It is not too much to say, as we shall later show in detail, that in our present possession there is sufficient knowledge derived from the monuments and records of antiquity to authenticate every prophecy that Isaiah made concerning Egypt, Israel, Syria, and Assyria. Thus the text of the Old Testament is illumined, and a floodlight of understanding thrown upon its prophetic utterance by the findings in this field.

Even more striking is the contribution of archeology in the second field, that of evidence in defense of the accepted text. The museums, monuments, and libraries of the world are teeming with such evidences, and it shall be the purpose of this volume to condense, epitomize, and present much of that evidence in a simple and readable form, divorced from technical obscurities. Right here, however, we offer just one simple illustration under each of the subdivisions suggested in the paragraph above.

To demonstrate the evidence of the Bible’s historicity, we shall offer the illustration made famous by the late Dr. Robert Dick Wilson, as to the record of the forty-seven kings of antiquity. It is probably known to the reader that the historical sections of the Old Testament contain the names of forty-seven kings, aside from the rulers of Israel and Judah. These foreign, or Gentile kings, have been known by name for many centuries to every reader of the Old Testament.

The odd thing is that until comparatively recent times, these names had been dropped out of secular history. Mighty as these men had each been in his day, they were completely forgotten by posterity and for some twenty-three hundred years their names were unknown to the scholars of secular events. For this reason the learned leaders of “higher criticism” relegated these forty-seven monarchs to the columns of mythology. They were grouped among “the fables and folklore of the Old Testament” which this deluded school mistakenly taught was one of the basic weaknesses of the text. Then one after another these disputed monarchs began to rise from the dead in an archeological resurrection. In some cases a burial mound was uncovered; in others, an annalistic tablet, a boundary marker, or a great building inscribed with the monarch’s name. Now, all forty-seven of these presumably fabulous characters have been transferred from the columns of “mythology” to the accepted records of established history.

In forty-seven specific instances, as these kings rose from the dead past, they were recognized, as their names were not strange to true historians. Each was remembered from his appearance in the page of the Old Testament which had preserved his memory with accuracy. Thus, in this simple instance there are forty-seven definite and specific evidences of the complete historicity of the text.

To stress this point, the accuracy of the record, we shall cite a semi-humorous illustration. The great Greek historian, Herodotus, who is supposed to be the “Father of History,” wrote some more or less accurate observations concerning the land of Egypt. Among other things, he said that the Egyptians grew no grapes and drank no wine.

There was another ancient who preceded this historian by many centuries, who also wrote voluminously about Egypt and her customs. This was the man Moses, who being reared in the bosom of the royal family as the crown prince and heir apparent, might be presumed to know considerably more about Egyptian customs than any casual visitor. Moses stated that the Egyptians did grow grapes and that they did drink wine. In fact, he recounts that Joseph was in jail with the chief cupbearer of Pharaoh, the butler whose business was the purveying of wine to the royal table. It may be remembered that in the butler’s dream he saw himself standing by the vine, squeezing the grapes into the cup.

This brought these two authorities into sharp opposition. Since Herodotus was supposed to be the final authority on matters of antiquity, the critics fell upon this discrepancy with considerable glee. The argument might still be going on, if it were not for the discovery of an unquestionable bit of evidence among the frescoes that decorate the tombs of Egyptian antiquity. These frescoes showed the Egyptians engaged in the art of viticulture. In some of these pictures they were dressing and pruning the vines, cultivating and tending their crop. In others of the pictures they were seen to be gathering the grapes and conveying them to the press. The ingenious method of extracting the juice was clearly portrayed in these illuminating frescoes, which showed the juice being stored in stone jugs, clay pots, and skin bottles for future use. Since the ancients called any fruit juice that was used for drinking purposes by the name of wine, whether it was fresh or sweet, it is highly probable that some of this juice was drunk in an unfermented condition.

However, one of the murals depicted an Egyptian party gathered around the banquet board, making merry with the juice of the grape (See [Plate 1]). The incidental evidences show very clearly that the juice was fermented. Off in the corner, the picture depicts a noble lady who is portrayed with her slave holding a silver bowl, while she gave up the excess fluids that had evidently disagreed with the more commendable parts of the banquet! Another of these murals showed the morning light coming into such a banqueting hall, as the slaves were all carrying their masters home; with the exception of one inebriate who had slid under the table and had evidently been overlooked in the excitement!

Did the Egyptians grow grapes and drink wine?

Herodotus said “No.”

Moses said “Yes.”

The critics, to their later embarrassment, lined up solidly with Herodotus.

But since archeology has accredited the accuracy of Moses, this argument is no longer heard in the halls of learning.

When we come to the question of authenticity, we shall later give many evidences that none of the records of the Bible, either the Old Testament or the New, are, in any sense of the word, forgeries. They are uniformly authentic in that they were written by the men whose names they bear.

A classical illustration of this is found in the fact that Sir William Ramsay, one of the greatest archeologists of our generation, began his work in his early days under the bias of the critical position that Luke was not the author of either the Gospel that bears his name or the book of the Acts of the Apostles. After forty years of research in Asia Minor, Sir William Ramsay himself discovered the evidence that converted him personally to the orthodox and historical view, and demonstrated conclusively that Luke unquestionably wrote the two books that are accredited to him. As we shall deal with this matter more extensively in the fifth volume of this series, we pass on to the present cause of modern controversy, namely, the inspiration of the text.

The fact of inspiration is stated so often by the writers of the Scripture that we must accept their explanation of the origin of these pages, or else classify them as the most consistent liars that humanity has ever produced. They claim a supernatural guidance by the Holy Ghost which has kept their records free from error or discrepancy. For one who has examined and analyzed the Scripture in the unprejudiced light of archeology, this claim is vindicated at every turn of the spade.

A simple illustration of the manner in which our science does show the inspiration of the Scripture, may be found from the prophetic sections of the Old Testament. In the days of Isaiah and his fellow prophets, the capital of Egypt was the city of No. It is also called Amon, and sometimes, No-Amon. It was a populous city of wealth and culture, being the center of learning, as well as the seat of government. In a day when Egypt dominated the world and No-Amon was the mistress of antiquity, obscure Hebrew prophets raised their voices in denunciation of No in such arbitrary and extreme statements as are found in the thirtieth chapter of Ezekiel. Denouncing the sin of Egypt and their repeated betrayals of Israel, Ezekiel warns Egypt that her land shall be overrun with fire and sword, and that No-Amon shall be desolate and forsaken.

There must have been a strong element of humor in all of this outcry to the proud mind of the Egyptian of that day! No-Amon, also called Thebes, spreading out on both banks of the Nile, in complacent, serene command of the ancient world, apparently had nothing to fear from the bitter cries of a prophet of Israel. Yet today the visitor to the site of Thebes, or No-Amon, to use the more ancient name, is faced with a scene of desolation that is utterly devoid of any human habitation.

Since it is impossible for the human mind to pick up the curtain of time and peer ahead into future events, prophecy can derive only from the Holy Spirit. The work of archeologists in identifying the bleak and barren site of No-Amon portrays the inspiration of the Scripture. The proud city is forgotten except for its inscriptions on records of antiquity and the denunciations to be found in the Word of God. Thus we have simply illustrated how this dignified and sober science is bringing to us illumination of the text, together with the evidences of the HISTORICITY, ACCURACY, AUTHENTICITY, and INSPIRATION of the Bible.

This is eminently fitting, since this peculiar science is most intimately concerned with the problem of the credibility of the Bible. The unique and heavenly nature of the Book is in itself a divisive factor. Multitudes of men and women love it and would die for its preservation. Indeed, it is no exaggeration of fact to say that multitudes have died in its defense. There are others who hate the Book and would go to any length to discredit it, except the extreme length of martyrdom. It is very natural for men to die for what they believe, but few men will surrender their lives for what they disbelieve!

This division is decidedly fitting and proper. Men and women who are saved by the grace of God recognize the supernatural nature of the Book that is the means of their redemption. Men and women who are lost, resent the honesty of that Book in that it condemns their sin and iniquity.

In our day and age, infidelity has, under the guise of an attempted scientific refutation, directed its chief argument against the integrity of the Scripture. Living in an age of science, when all things are again evaluated in the light of man’s technical knowledge, it is inevitable that the Bible should come in for this type of investigation. No exponent of Scripture would wish it otherwise. If the Bible is honestly examined without prejudice, under any system of truth, it will maintain its integrity and establish its own supernatural character.

The so-called scientific investigation of the Scripture, however, has not been made on the basis of credible science. Rather, the prejudiced enemies have sought to gather from pseudo-scientific claims such help and hope for their opinions as would bolster their failing school. We frankly admit that the text of the Bible does refute the fallacies of men of science. There is a great deal of theoretical speculation indulged in by men who call themselves scientists, and who march under the banner of technical learning. In every age, when such fallacious theories are current, the Bible is necessarily repudiated by the exponents of those false ideas. Few such men, however, know the Bible, and their opposition has no lasting effect. This Book does not stand in any age by human consent, but has been able to maintain itself in every age by the inherent power of its supernatural character.

The science of archeology has played a great and leading role in demolishing these fallacies of a pseudo-scientific generation.

As an instance of this, we may note that the theory of organic evolution is unquestionably incompatible with the record of the Scripture. In the “dark ages” of biology which began to draw to a close at the beginning of this present decade, the thoughts of men were so darkened by the general acceptance of the baseless and unscientific theory of man’s animal origin, as sadly to handicap capable research and frustrate the pursuit of real knowledge. We see again, however, that truth, though crushed to the earth, will rise again. For certainly no one who is within ten years of being up to date in the facts of biology and the discoveries of archeology, will contend any longer for the animal origin of the human species.

The theory cannot be harmonized with the record of the Scripture. Therefore, in the days of blindness, when this particular theory possessed the imagination of men, it was used as an argument against the integrity of the text of the Word of God. This whole problem simmers down to a simple illustration. In dealing with the origin of man, there are two horses. The problem of every man is to decide which one he shall ride. One horse is known by the name of “specific creation,” and the other is called “organic evolution.”

It is impossible to ride them both at once. In riding two horses at one time, it is necessary to keep them close together and both going in the same direction. There is no record of anyone who successfully rode two horses simultaneously when they were headed in opposite directions!

These two premises are irreconcilable. The first is that man was created in perfection. In the moment of his fiat origin, he was formed by the hand of God, gifted with all the arts and cultures by a process of involution. The word “involution” simply means “to come down into.” That is to say, all of the graces and abilities possessed by man were imparted by creation.

The second theory is that “man has himself consummated a gradual ascent from a brutish state to our present high and civilized condition.” (If there were room in such a work as this for sarcasm, we might say that this is another way of noting that we have left the arrow and the club for heavy artillery, poison gas and aerial bomb. If one were to wax facetious, one might be tempted to suggest that if the present condition of international hatred, mass murder, violated treaties, forgotten honor, and civilian extermination in the holy name of war, are the best that evolution can accomplish, we should hand the whole mess back to the monkeys and ask them to stir up another batch!)

But to remain upon the sober grounds of scientific inquiry, it is not too much to say that the archeologist speaks upon this problem with absolute finality. There is nothing theoretical about archeology. What you dig up with your own hands, you are inclined to believe.

Some years ago we had a college lad on one of our expeditions who was strongly addicted to the theory of organic evolution. At the beginning of the work the lad showed some disposition to argue, and was somewhat disappointed that we refused to enter into debate with him upon our differing theories. As day followed day, however, and we got into the rich contents of burial mounds containing a fabulous amount of ossi, this lad became deeply concerned with the discrepancies between his textbook learning and what he saw in his own personal recoveries of ancient skeletons.

Every time he came to us with some bone that did not fit in with his classroom theories, we would laugh and say, “Don’t bother us. You dug that up. This poor bone never read your textbook and it doesn’t know how you want it to be. Now, which are you going to believe? The schematized drawing in a textbook written by some professor who never saw a burial mound, or this evidence that you yourself have acquired by your own labor?”

At the end of that one summer, this student returned to the campus an ardent and bitter anti-evolutionist, denouncing the false teachings which had misled him by means of the printed page.

In a word, other sciences may speculate, theorize and deduce, but archeology delves and demonstrates. Some of these demonstrations will be seen in the contents of the following pages. We say some: for if all the evidence from the realm of archeology were massed into one great volume, no derrick ever built by man could lift its tremendous bulk and weight. In such a work as this one we are handicapped and embarrassed, not by the paucity of evidence, but rather by its over-abundance.

Plate 1

Egyptians at a wine orgy

Crude hieroglyphics on an ancient statue. Depicting the early development of art and writing

It shall be the purpose of the following pages to cull and summarize some of the striking facts of archeology, which demonstrate beyond question that the Book which men call the Bible is historically credible, scientifically accurate, and has been derived by inspiration from the Spirit of God.

CHAPTER II
The Tides of Culture

In almost every branch of this fascinating science, archeology has been the handmaid of revelation. Even more, it has acted as a beacon to illuminate the pathway to God, which men call the Bible. The problem of the antiquity and culture of man was the battleground of infidelity which the skeptical chose to demonstrate the fallacy of the Bible’s claims to supernatural origin.

If it can be proved by the aid of science that the human race is older than is implied by the Genesis account of creation, and if it can be shown that man has ascended from a dim and brutish ancestry, instead of being created perfect by the hand of God, the foundation would admittedly be swept from beneath the Scripture, and the entire structure of revelation collapses. However, this unwarranted attempt to confuse the issue and refute the Scripture, is manifestly unfair to science. It is not too much to say that this is a debasing of the highest labors of human mentality. Research, in the exact sense of the word, cannot be used legitimately to establish a pet theory to which the advocate clings without regard to evidence in the case. The attempt to demonstrate the organic evolution of man belongs in the realm of philosophy and not of science. The work of science is the correlation of facts. The sphere of philosophy is the interpretation of facts. In all of this controversy, we are not debating the facts of humanity, but are at odds concerning the application of those facts. The real issue then is not the antiquity of man, but the origin of man!

In the hope of obscuring the manner of origin, the enemy of our faith has sought to raise the dust storm of antiquity. It is here more than anywhere else, that archeology has been such a tremendous aid to the establishment of the truth. This science has demonstrated the premise of the Scripture, namely, the fixity and origin of our species. As far back as the spade has been able to thrust the history of humanity, we find the same types and varieties of the human family that exist upon the earth today. Since we are covering this problem of antiquity and origin in the sixth volume of this series, we will hasten on with this brief statement of the issue involved. We will later show that all of the statements made in the text of the Scripture concerning the degeneration and moral collapse of humanity have been abundantly demonstrated in the realm of archeology. Further, the claims that we make as to the historicity of the Bible can be demonstrated satisfactorily in one single field; namely, the recording of the story of man and the care used by the Scripture writers in the exactness of their statements. In this display of historical accuracy, the writers of the Bible have incidentally repudiated the entire philosophy of organic evolution. It is not too much to say that no single evidence derived in the entire realm and history of archeology has sustained the theory of organic evolution. Remember that we are dealing specifically with evidence. If the evidence is rightly interpreted and honestly implied, item by item and in the aggregate mass, it refutes the entire fallacy of this weird philosophy.

Since it deals with the realm of human history, archeology is the final voice as to the antiquity and culture of man. No race of man has ever lived upon the face of this earth and failed to leave some relics or evidences of its existence and culture.

The science of anthropology postulates the beginning of the human family somewhere in Mesopotamia. The Bible is a little more specific, in that it states that it was in that portion of Mesopotamia which lies between the two rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates. The oldest relics of man, however, are not found in Mesopotamia. This is due to the climatic conditions in certain parts of that ancient land. The rainfall is heavy. We have ourselves suffered great inconvenience, delay, and loss by being isolated from our objective in Mesopotamia by floods that filled the wadies and gullies and made travel impossible. Also, the outlying country is underlaid to a great extent by water. When excavators dig but a short way into the strata of that land, they are handicapped and hindered by seepage. Because of this excess moisture, some of the oldest relics of our race have been destroyed by the ravages of time and the power of the elements.

The situation in Egypt, however, is quite the opposite. In most of that land there is no rain and in no part of that bleak country do we experience frost. The climate is dry to the utmost extreme, and the soil is largely sand. Due to this natural condition, the oldest records of the human race are found in Egypt. The oldest records of man and the most complete records so far recovered of his early existence have been preserved for us by this combination of climate and soil. Since the Egyptians buried in sand or in stone tombs, the deposits being protected from the elements, man was the only destroyer. Even though there has been a sad record of vandalism, as ruthless hands of the ignorant have despoiled magnificent tombs of priceless records and information, there is much that remained undisturbed. The people of Egypt built for endurance. The mighty pyramids, from Sakkara to the Great Pyramid; the Colossi at Luxor and the awe-inspiring ruins of Karnak, are present evidences of the durability of their labors. (See plates [2], [3] and [4].) Because of the strange beliefs concerning the life after death, these people also buried for eternity. We shall later consider, in the light of their customs and religious practices, the tremendous value that modern civilization has derived from this ancient fact. We have mentioned this fact now merely to note that the greatest treasure trove of preserved antiquity is found in the land of Egypt.

Plate 2

Magnificent example of embellished statue, conveying the name, hopes, and some of the record of an early ruler

Colossi at Luxor

The Sheltered Wife

Strangely, in view of the consistent demands of the evolutionary school, we find no evidence of human evolution in the land of Egypt. More than this, the doctrine that man began with a brutish intellect and gradually developed his high and peculiar culture, is refuted by the evidences from this country. In fact, the contrary is strikingly the case. Instead of proving a process of evolution, the history of man as found in the archeology of Egypt is a consistent record of degeneration.

The eminent Sayce, one of the ablest archeologists in the whole history of that great science, expressed his wonder and amazement at the high stage of culture met with in the very earliest records of the Egyptian people. Other authorities, such as Baikie, have written voluminously upon this subject. It had been hoped that when excavators finally reached undisturbed tombs of the first dynasty, they would find themselves in the dawn of Egyptian culture. It was our fortunate privilege to be at Sakkara a year ago when the first complete and unmolested tombs of the first dynasty were uncovered. It was our privilege to keep a close check and watch upon all that was done at that time, and the conclusions and postulations of hopeful theorists were utterly shattered in such discoveries as were made.

Indeed, we can no longer start Egyptian culture with the beginning of the dynastic ages. Through the first tombs, we peer back into an older preceding culture that dazzles and amazes the human understanding. Instead of finding the dawn of a developing humanity, we see mankind already in the high noon of cultural accomplishments. Instead of nomadic dwellers in shaggy tents, we look upon works of enduring stone. Instead of brutish, Egyptian ancestral artifacts, we find a pottery culture that is really superb. It almost seems that the farther back we go into Egyptian antiquity, the more perfect was their culture and learning. The art of writing was the common possession of the Egyptian in the pre-dynastic period.

It is true that there was a so-called stone age in Egypt, which preceded the first dynasty. We are showing here, however, a photograph of one of the most ancient open burials ever discovered in Egypt. This is accompanied by various heads of mummies, to show the state of preservation. (See [Plate 5].) Before the art of embalming was invented and the dead were mummified, they were buried by intrusion in the dry sands. You will note the perfection of the culture of this people as depicted by the pottery undisturbed in this grave. In contrast to this type of burial, the mummies shown in this same plate are no better preserved than the earlier burial. Indeed, there is no evidence to show that these cultures were consecutive rather than contemporary. In various sections of Egypt it is quite probable that different burial customs prevailed simultaneously, and it is a pure speculation to say that the more primitive type of burial is ages older than the advanced style.

There are many anomalies and mysteries in this so-called stone age in Egypt. In the museum at Cairo there will be found some of the most remarkable specimens of stone flaking to be seen on the face of this earth. Others may be seen in the British Museum, in the various exhibits of Egyptian culture. One of these knives is equipped with two points, and all of them are equally sharpened on both edges. In the author’s own gatherings from the various stone cultures of mankind, there are something over 25,000 artifacts. We have seen every important collection of stone implements in the present world, but these specimens from ancient Egypt are unquestionably the most magnificent types of stone culture we have ever been privileged to observe.

The significant and startling fact is that these stone knives have handles of beaten gold. At once we are impressed with the anomalous fact that the stone age was thus synonymous with an age of metal. Furthermore, it was an artistic age. The golden handles on these stone weapons are engraved with scenes common to the life of the people. On one side of the stone dagger with the double points, there is a sailing vessel typical of the pleasure craft that were common to all ages of Egyptian life. On the raised deck of this boat, dancing maidens were entertaining the circle of spectators. This work was not crude and brutish, but showed a high development of the engraver’s art. The reverse side of the handle was even more interesting in that it contained, in beautifully incised characters, the cult sign of the owner.

Here is, indeed, a weird super-imposition of ages and cultures. The body of the weapon is of a stone age; the handle of the weapon is of an age of metal; the engravings upon that metal show an age of art and the possession of written characters. There is no comfort for the evolutionary hypothesis in the antiquity of Egypt. The contrary rather is the case. There is a strange tide sweeping through the record, portraying an ebb and flow of culture that is fascinating to observe.

The culture of Egypt starts on a magnificently high level and is later reduced to a tremendous degree by a consistent record of degeneration. It might be said that by the end of the fourth dynasty, the people had reached the high peak of Egyptian art and learning. But after the sixth dynasty had well begun, a definite decline and retrogression had set in. We find ourselves then groping in a dark age wherein were no arts and no written history. No great monuments come from that period, and no great buildings were begun, repaired, or finished. Writing became extremely scarce and in many sections of the land the art seems to have been completely forgotten. As in the dark ages of medieval Europe, learning was in eclipse and the mental life of man degenerated. Just when the renaissance began, it is impossible to say, but in the eleventh dynasty we are suddenly back into the light again.

Egypt emerges from those dark ages, ruled by powerful feudal lords, with the pharaohs appearing to be mere figure-heads. These great barons left voluminous records, which depict their conquests and their powers, and tell of their own individual greatness. They constructed magnificent tombs for their eternal rest, and the land blossomed culturally under their dominion.

These conditions prevailed until the coming of the Hyksos dynasty. These conquering kings were of Semitic origin and they seem to have come from the region of Ur. After this conquest, Egypt suddenly became an unlimited monarchy. The great lords became landless, stripped of their power and robbed of all authority. The people literally passed into the possession of the crown, and Egypt became a nation of slaves who owed their very existence to the royal head of the government. The reason for this change will be made manifest later in this present work. We are now interested only in presenting these strange cycles of culture as shown by archeology.

It would take many volumes to give a detailed picture of the early golden age in Egypt. As an illustration of the art and development of that culture, we refer the reader to the tomb of a court official at the dawn of the sixth dynasty. Buried with this minor official were certain small wooden effigies depicting customs, trades, and tools of his day. There were porters laden with their heavy burdens. There were scribes bearing stylus and plaque. Certain tradesmen were found in these brilliant statuettes, each man’s craft being shown by the tools that he carried in his hand. Priests appeared clad in their pontifical robes. Perhaps the most interesting of all were the statuettes of candy vendors, each man equipped with his tray of sweets, and a horsehair tail wherewith to fan the flies. Some of these statues were so perfect in their execution that the eminent Phidias might well have envied their perfection. When we compare this art and culture with the so-called pictures of brutish cave-dwellers, we have one more failure in the collapsing chain of evidences that was supposed to show man’s constantly advancing culture.

We might also give, by way of illustration, the magnificent statue of Kephren. This memorial was exquisitely carved from stone so hard that it would blunt most modern tools. Kephren constructed one of the pyramids at Giza. This latter work was notable in that there were evidences that some of the stones had been cut with what appeared to be tubular drills. Since this is possible in our modern culture with the use of diamond-pointed instruments, there is food for considerable thought and speculation as to the culture and learning of Kephren’s age! As a general statement, it is not too much to say that the farther back we go into Egyptian antiquity, the more perfect the arts and culture in general seem to be.

When we compare, for instance, the brilliant workmanship of the priceless pectoral of the daughter of Usertesen (or Usertsen) with the crude and amateurish workmanship of the jewelry of the later queen Abhotep, it is evident that the centuries brought retrogression. The reign of Usertesen may be correlated with the early period of the patriarchal age, which fact has an important bearing upon our study. The hopeful critics of the Book of Genesis have postulated for the age of Abraham a barbaric lack of culture comparable to the nomadic tribes of Arabia in the Middle Ages. We now see, however, that the entire age of the patriarchs was a period of exquisite culture and high learning. To refer again to Usertsen, he seems to have been a capable strategist, and his system of working out his plan of battle was something like the game of chess. His artists had made for him models of the various kinds of soldiers that made up his variegated corps. The bowmen were armed with exquisite miniature weapons that had, to our delight and wonder, been preserved against all the passing centuries. The black troops that he used, of whatever origin, were carved from a wood like our ebony, and the tiny features were negroid in faithful representation of the difference between the races of men employed in his army. These model soldiers could be moved about a board which depicted the terrain of battle, and his strategy thus wrought out. Our present point, however, is the artistic perfection of the models of the soldiers that he used. The art of his age was as nearly perfect as one could wish.

Then there came another cycle of retrogression and decay which climaxed in a period of cultural darkness that reigned too long over that ancient people. It is highly significant, for instance, that the best glass of Egypt is dug from the more ancient sites. There came a time when the art of making glass was forgotten by the people of Egypt and had later to be rediscovered by other races.

If there is one voice that can be heard in archeology, and one lesson that can be specifically learned, it is the certainty of the fallacy of the theory of evolution. Egypt, as elsewhere, shows us no dim, brutish beginning, but a startling emergence of this people in a high degree of culture. No gradual ascent up the ladder of learning, but cycles of retrogression and advancement, followed by decay: then a new dawning of art and science. The entire record of archeology is thus a complete vindication of the premise and basic contention of the inspired record of God’s Word. No greater voice may be heard in our day than this definite, adamant cry from Egypt, which depicts cycles of culture that begin with a crest of learning. It must not be presumed that this condition is unique in Egypt, or peculiar to any one race or country. The same queer discrepancy between the fallacious theories of the philosophy of organic evolution and the facts of human history is observed wherever archeology has been able to hold the torch of discovery over a given area.

We have illustrated, for instance, in Plates Number [6] and [7], one of the most interesting of the exhibits in the British Museum. This is a stone weapon from the archaic ages of the Chaldeans. It consists of a mace head, made of limestone. Incidentally, this was a very common type of weapon among those people in their warlike culture. The particular one that is illustrated is typical of its time. Note that it is a STONE AGE WEAPON.

A note of wonder is caused in our inquiring minds by the odd and utterly incompatible fact that it is engraved clearly in high relief, thus testifying to the fact that in the archaic stone age of Babylon, men who wrought in a time when the evolutionary advocates demand a dim and brutish stage of development were already gifted in the art of sculpture!

To complicate the case still further, they were possessed as well with a highly developed written language! Their stone implements are in some instances crude, as they did not spend time polishing and decorating rude tools that were used for a base purpose. Others of their artifacts, like this stone mace head, are not only covered with finely sculptured figures but are also inscribed with written characters that are clear and well executed. A “stone age” with a written culture, scholars, and books, is an anomaly, indeed!

Where, then, in the light of these archeological facts, is the evidence of the slow development of the human mentality and the emergence of primitive man from his “brutish” state? Unfortunately for the high-priests of the dying sect of organic evolution, the science which delineates the true condition of ancient races offers them no help or proof whatever. The opposite is the case in archeology, as all the evidence that has come to us from the honest attempt to see man as he was, and not as he was reported to have been, has proved conclusively that organic evolution is a false religion. It is inevitable that this fact should some day come to light; for although it may be that science moves with leaden feet, when it does finally overtake error, it smites with an iron fist!

Thus the false theory that man has struggled upward from a valley of brutish darkness is refuted by archeology, and the premise of specific creation, as set forth in the Bible, is established by the discoveries in the realm of this science. In every land that man has occupied for a long period of time, the tide of culture has ebbed and flowed from that hour to this present moment of writing. Just as the night follows the day, and the next day dawns only to be succeeded by the darkness in turn, so the learning and progress of man has been a cycle, rather than a steady climb up a ladder of learning, from level to level, until the heights of present civilization were reached. The old error must now be abandoned, or else we must close our eyes to the entire record of archeological discovery, and frankly confess that we are not interested in facts which refute erroneous, but accepted theories.

CHAPTER III
Converging Streams

In a systematic presentation of the evidences in the field of Christian apologetics, it is necessary to review the Egyptian and Chaldean records as they bear upon the text of the Scripture, and illumine its meaning. For it is here that the streams of History and Revelation converge, to continue their flow in mingled harmony throughout all the centuries which follow this original conjunction.

In the very nature of the case we would not expect direct archeological confirmation of a great deal of the earlier portions of the Old Testament. The record of creation which was handed down from Adam to each generation delineated an event which was not witnessed by any human being. As has been very clearly shown in the illuminating book, “New Discoveries in Babylonia about Genesis,” by P. J. Wiseman, this record was undoubtedly preserved in a written form from the very time of Adam himself.

Khnum and Thoth in Creation Tradition.

The events of the Garden of Eden and the subsequent history are not such as would leave archeological material for the exact enlightenment of later generations. There is, however, a manner in which the study of antiquity can bring a tremendous light to shine upon the dark problem of the credibility of these records. It is generally conceded by ethnologists that when races of people hold a strongly developed idea or belief, in common, there must have been an historical incident as the basis of that universal tradition. Thus, among the very earliest traditions of ancient Egypt, there is a record of the creation of man that bears a valuable relationship to the account in Genesis.

The Mosaic record states that God stooped and created the body of man out of the dust of the earth. Life was imparted to that body by the very breath of God.

The earliest Egyptian record recounts how the god Khnum took a slab of mud, and placing it upon his potter’s wheel, moulded it into the physical form of the first man. The illustration facing this page shows the entire process, with Thoth standing behind Khnum, and marking the span of man’s years upon a notched branch. Here then is a coincidence of traditional belief in the manner of creation of man that is of tremendous significance.

We also note that the earliest records of Sumeria have this same incidental bearing upon certain portions of the Old Testament text.

All of the records of antiquity begin the history of man in a garden. This is of considerable significance in view of the account of Eden that is so prominently given in the record of Genesis.

Among the seals to which we shall occasionally refer and which are shown in [Plate 8], there is one from an early period in Sumeria from which we have derived considerable understanding of Sumerian beliefs. This seal shows Adam and Eve on opposite sides of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and can be nothing less than a direct reference to the event that is recorded in the Book of Genesis.

One of the most constantly cited documents of antiquity, is the so-called Gilgamesh epic. The high antiquity of the original form in which this occurs may be seen from the fact that many of the seals that go as far back as the year 3,000 B. C. are made of illustrations of the various episodes that are contained in this valuable document. The original home of Gilgamesh seems to have been at Erech. The city was evidently besieged by an army led by Gilgamesh, who, after a three-year war, became the king of the city. So harsh was the despotic rule of the conquering monarch that the people petitioned the goddess Aruru to create a being strong enough to overthrow Gilgamesh and release them from his sway.

Some of the gods joined in with this prayer and as a result a mythical being, partly divine, partly human, and partly animal, was created and dispatched to Erech for the destruction of Gilgamesh. This composite hero bears a great many different names, but the earliest accepted form in the Babylonian account was Enkedu. Gilgamesh, learning that an enemy had been created for his destruction, exercised craft and lured Enkedu to the city of Erech. The two became fast friends and set out finally to do battle with a mighty giant named Khumbaba. When they arrived at his castle, they besieged and captured the stronghold of the giant, whom they slew. They carried off his head as a trophy and returned to Erech to celebrate their victory.

The plan of the gods being thus frustrated, the goddess Ishtar besought her father Anu to create a mighty bull to destroy Gilgamesh. The bull being formed and dispatched upon its duty, also failed of its purpose when Enkedu and Gilgamesh vanquished the animal after a tremendous battle. And so on, the story goes with episode after episode, culminating with a crisis in the account of the deluge.

In this climax, in a notable and fascinating manner, we see again the coincidence of tradition with a record of the Scripture. In the Babylonian account of the deluge, every major premise of the Mosaic record is sustained in its entirety. The Gilgamesh account tells of the heavenly warning, it depicts the gathering of material and the building of an ark. In the ark was safely carried the hero, his wife and his family with certain beasts of the earth for seed. The ark of the Gilgamesh episode was made water tight with bitumen exactly as was the ark of Noah in the record in the Book of Genesis. Entering this ark, the Babylonian account tells how the boat came under the direct supervision of the gods. On the same night a mighty torrent fell out of the skies. The cloudburst continued for six days and nights, until the tops of the mountains were covered. The sea arose out of its banks and helped to overflow the land. After the seventh day, the storm abated and the sea decreased. By that time, however, the whole human race had been destroyed with the exception of the little company who had been within the Babylonian ark.

The ark of Babylon grounded in that portion of the ancient world known as Armenia, the Hebrew name of which is Ararat. Seven days after the landing of the ark, the imprisoned remnant sent forth a dove. When she found no place to light and rest, the dove returned to the ship. They waited a short while and then sent forth a swallow. The swallow also returned, wearied from a long flight, and several more days were allowed to elapse. The next attempt to discover the condition of the earth by the imprisoned remnant resulted in the sending forth of a raven. The bird returned and approached the ark, but refused to re-enter the ship. The remnant knew then that the flood was ended. They accordingly went forth with all the redeemed life, and celebrated their preservation by offering up sacrifices to the gods upon the mountains.

The goddess Ishtar was so pleased with the sacrifice of the godly remnant that she hung in the heavens a great bow, which Anu, the father of the gods, had made for the occasion. She swore by the sacred ornaments that hung about her neck that mankind should not again be destroyed by a flood, and this heavenly bow was the sign of that covenant.

The incidental details which are found in this hoary manuscript coincide too closely with the record of Genesis to admit of coincidence. Archeology has brought no stronger testimony to the historicity of the Mosaic record of the deluge than this great account in the Gilgamesh epic, although interspersed with mythological characters and deviating from the simplicity of the Genesis account.

One of the most valuable publications of the British Museum is their monograph on the Gilgamesh legend, which contains a fine and scholarly translation of the deluge tablet in an unabridged form. Our own copy of this publication has been of great value to many students who have sought its aid in their detailed studies of the Old Testament.

Another one of the disputed portions of the Old Testament text which brought great comfort to the habitually hopeful among the destructive critics, is that section of Genesis which deals with the record of Nimrod and the tower of Babel.

Modern archeology not only has failed to bring any aid to the critics in this particular incident, but has robbed them of all their carefully erected structure of argument which was predicated upon the assumption that the tower of Babel was entirely mythological. Among the recent excavations in Mesopotamia was the work in the region which bore the oriental name of Birs-nimroud. When the excavators had finished their enormous task, they had laid bare a magnificent ziggurat of tremendous antiquity which was the largest so far discovered. At the time these ruins were first seen, this enormous tower covered an area of 1,444,000 square feet. It towered to the height of a bit more than 700 feet. Time has, of course, ravished this monument to some extent, but enough of its grandeur and glory remains to show it forth as the most ancient as well as the most magnificent of the Babylonian ziggurats.

According to the description given by Herodotus, in the middle of the fifth century, B. C., the structure then consisted of a series of eight ascending towers, each one recessed in the modern fashion of cutting-back that is used in certain types of sky-scraper architecture. The famous Step Pyramid at Sakkara is another ancient example of this type of structure, each successive and higher tower being smaller than the one upon which it rests. A spiral roadway, according to Herodotus, went around the entire ziggurat, mounting rapidly from level to level. He states that at each level a resting place was provided in this spiral roadway. At the top of the structure was a magnificent temple in which the religious exercises of the day were observed.

That this was the tower of Nimrod is generally accepted by the authorities of our present day. The name of Nimrod which in the Sumerian ideographs is read “Ni-mir-rud” is found on a number of artifacts and records of high antiquity, and reference is made as well to the great monument that he built.

So as we read our way through the episodes which constitute the earlier records of Genesis, we also dig our way into the older strata of humanity and find ourselves walking hand in hand with the twins of revelation and scientific vindication! They coincide in all their utterances, teaching us that all that the Word of God has to say to men may be accepted without question or doubt.

The late Melvin Grove Kyle has written extensively of his own researches at Sodom and Gomorrah, so that it is unnecessary to recapitulate the results of his lifetime of labor. The sulphurous overburden and the startling confirmation of the Book of Genesis derived from the work of Dr. Kyle and his associates would vindicate the Scriptural claims to historical accuracy even if they stood by themselves.

In the general argument and discussion that long has clustered about the record of Abraham, the starting point of critical refutation has generally been the fourteenth chapter of Genesis. It is stated that the battle of the kings that occurred in this disputed portion of Holy Writ, was in the days of Amraphel, king of Shinar. Since a contemporary is named as Ched-or-la-o-mer, a storm of argument has swept over and about that one opening verse of this important chapter. The allies of Ched-or-la-o-mer are well known from his own records, and Amraphel was not to be found among them. It was a tremendous blow to criticism when the discovery was made that Amraphel is the Hebrew name of the Sumerian form, Khammurabi.

Plate 3

Colossi of Karnak

Colossi of Luxor

Plate 4

Colossi of Amen-Hetep III guarding Valley of the Kings

At tomb of Tutanhkamen, in the Valley of Kings

The brilliant ability of this mighty ruler is one of the high points of far antiquity. The king-lists of antiquity, derived from many sources, were compiled by order of several of the kings of Assyria and constitute another of the many valuable records to be found in the British Museum. A recent publication of the Museum entitled “The Annals of the Kings of Assyria” is well worth many times the price of one pound sterling which is demanded for the volume. This scholarly and brilliant piece of work contains the original Assyrian text transliterated and translated with historical data that the careful scholar cannot be without. It settles the question of Khammurabi. This Khammurabi, whom we shall now call by his Hebrew name Amraphel, has left us a long series of tablets, monuments, letters, and a code of laws which stands engraved upon a great monument preserved also in the British Museum.

It is a long way back to that twentieth century before Christ, but neither time nor distance prevents our hearing the clamoring voices of men long dead, who shout to us their vindication of the nature, character, and integrity of these testimonies which are the Word of God!

It is a matter of common knowledge in our day that the word, or name, pharaoh, may be applied either to a person or to an office. Exactly as our modern word “president” may be applied to the function of the office, or to the possessor of it in person, so the ruler of Egypt could be known simply as The Pharaoh, or shorter still, as Pharaoh. As every president, emperor or king, however, has his own proper name, so each pharaoh also is designated by his personal name. Fortunately for our purpose, many pharaohs are mentioned in the pages of Holy Writ under the clear identification of their proper names. Many of them, however, are not identified by their personal name but are referred to only by the title of their kingly office. Thus, for instance, the pharaoh of the Exodus is not named personally in the text. Such attempts at identification of this pharaoh as are made, must be made from external sources. However, there can be no question of the identity of the rulers of Egypt, who are specifically named in the Word of God. Such men as the Pharaoh Shishak, the Pharaoh Zera and the Pharaoh So, are identified beyond any possibility of question.

It is a happy circumstance for the student of apologetics that each of the pharaohs who is so named in person by the writers of the Bible, has been discovered and identified in the records of archeology. No more emphatic voice as to the credibility and the infallible nature of the historical sections of the Scripture can be heard than that which is formed by the chorus of these pharaohs.

To note the background of this record, may we remind the reader that in early times, Egypt was a divided kingdom. It was known as Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt, and a separate monarch reigned over each section. It happens that in the period of the divided kingdom, there were fourteen dynasties in each section of the land. The Egyptian, like all Eastern people, highly prized ancestral antiquity. The farther back into antiquity a man’s family could be traced in his genealogy, the more the honour that accrued to him. We are not without modern counterparts, even in our present democracy.

Therefore, when the two kingdoms were united, the first kings of the united kingdom added together the fourteen dynasties of Upper and Lower Egypt, making them consecutive instead of contiguous. Thus they built a spurious antiquity of twenty-eight dynasties to enhance their greatness.

The earlier archeologists fell into this trap, and consequently erected an antiquity phantom which obscured the problem of chronology for some considerable time. When it was discovered that these dynasties were concurrent, a great deal of the fallacious antiquity of Egypt was abandoned. This fictional antiquity, which doubled the factor of time for that period, had been used to discredit the text of the Bible by the critical scholars, so-called. Now, in the light of our present learning, we find no discrepancy between the antiquity of Egypt, properly understood, and the chronology of the Scripture, when it is divorced from the errors of Ussher. Incidentally, the chronology and antiquity demands of both archeology and revelation coincide beautifully with the demands of sane anthropology.

To delineate this background so necessary to the proper understanding of the record of the pharaohs, it is necessary to introduce the first occasion of the coincidence of the text of the Scripture with the land and the people of Egypt, as it is here that the streams of revelation and history begin to converge. This beginning is made, of course, in the flight of Abraham into Egypt at the time of a disastrous famine. Overlooking for the moment the reprehensible conduct of Abraham concerning the denial of his wife Sarah, and the consequent embarrassment of the pharaoh, we digress to make a brief survey of the incidents that lead up to the kindness of Pharaoh to Abraham.

There had been previous Semitic invasions of Egypt. The first reason for these forays, of course, was famine. Due to the unfailing inundation by the river Nile, the fertile land of Egypt was a natural storehouse. The land of Egypt is fertile, the sun is benevolent, and wherever water reaches the land, amazingly prodigious crops are the inevitable result. So in the ancient days, whenever there was drought in the desert countries surrounding Egypt, the hungry hordes looked on the food supplies of their neighboring country, and, naturally, moved in that direction. Thus the pressure of want was the primary reason for these early Semitic invasions.

The secondary cause was conquest. These people of antiquity were brutal pragmatists, as are certain nations in our present Twentieth Century. The theme song of antiquity undoubtedly was, “I came, I saw, I conquered.” The motive for living in those stern days seems to have been, “He takes who can, and keeps who may.”

The activating motive of much past history is simply spoils. Here now is a case in point. A family of kings ruled in Syria, who counted their wealth by flocks and herds. Driven by a combination of circumstances, they descended upon Egypt. They were pressed by the lack of forage in their own land, due to the drought, and they also lusted after the treasure and wealth of the neighboring country. So, without need for any other excuse, they descended with their armed hordes and conquered Egypt. There they ruled, established a dynasty and possessed the land for themselves. Since their principal possessions were their flocks and herds, they were known as the Shepherd Kings. They have come down in history as the Hyksos Dynasty. They unified Syria and Egypt, and it is intriguing to study the development of this unification as that process is seen in the pottery of that period. The work of Egyptian artisans began to take on certain characteristics of Syrian culture until, finally, the characteristic Egyptian line and decoration disappeared and the pottery became purely Syrian. The Shepherd Kings established commerce between the two halves of their empire and prosperity followed their conquest. These kings imported artists from their native Syria, together with musicians and dancers innumerable.

This intrusion of a foreign culture so changed the standards of Egypt that for generations the ideal of beauty was a Syrian ideal. Later, when the Syrian kings were expelled by Tahutmas the 2nd, the situation was reversed and Egypt, now governed by an Egyptian, kept Syria as her share of the spoils.

Four hundred years later another Semitic invasion swept over the land from Ur. It is quite probable that these conquerors were Sumerians. They established the sixteenth dynasty and brought with them also their treasure in the form of livestock. Thus, when Abraham entered Egypt, he found that it was ruled by his relatives! Thus we have an explanation of the cordial welcome that a Sumerian from Ur received from a pharaoh in Egypt. This contact is well established through the arts of that day, by pottery, by frescoes, and by means of the records of ancient customs. We know these things to be facts.

So when we read of the record of Abraham, we have at our disposal a vast and overwhelming source of evidence as to the credibility of this section of the record. The statements that are made in Genesis could have been written only by one who was intimately familiar with the Egypt of that day and time.

The second contact of Egypt and the Genesis record is found in the experience of Joseph. Although harsh and unkind, the action of the brothers in selling the youngest into slavery was perfectly legal under the code of that day. The younger brethren were all subject to the elders, and the law of primogeniture gave to the elder almost unlimited power over the life of the younger. The brutality and envy of this act are far from unparalleled in the secular records of that day. Nor was Joseph’s phenomenal rise to power unusual in the strange culture of that day and time. We must remember that Joseph was a Semite at a Semitic court. There is an unconscious introduction of a collateral fact in the simple statement of Genesis, chapter thirty-nine, verse one. After being told that Joseph was sold to a man named Potiphar, the statement is made that Potiphar was an Egyptian.

At first thought it would seem to be expected that a trusted officer in the court of a pharaoh would naturally be an Egyptian. The contrary is the case here, however. The pharaoh himself being an invader, he had surrounded himself with trusted men of his own race and family. As far as may now be ascertained, Potiphar was the only Egyptian who had preserved his life and kept his place at the court. He seems to have been the chief officer of the bodyguard of Pharaoh, and as such was entrusted with the dubious honor of executing the Pharaoh’s personal enemies. This, then, is a simple and passing statement that gives us an unexpected means of checking the scrupulous accuracy of the Genesis record.

Joseph was comely, attractive, and faithful. With an optimistic acceptance of his unfortunate circumstances, which seem much harder to us in our enlightened generation than would actually be the case to one accustomed to such vicissitudes of fortune, he set himself to serve with fidelity and industry. But above all this, the blessing of God rested upon him and upon all that he did. Since he was in the line of the promised Seed, and was under the direct blessing of that promise, it was inevitable that he should prosper.

There is a flood of illumination that shines upon this period from the frescoed tombs, the ancient papyri, and the records crudely inscribed upon walls and pillars. Particularly is this true of the entire section of Genesis that begins with the fortieth chapter and continues to the end of that Book.

Plate 5

{open burial}

{open burial}

{open burial}

Open burial lower left

Another mural from an ancient tomb: butchers at work

The god Hapi drawing the Two Kingdoms into one

Among the quaint frescoes of antiquity, there is one that has no word of explanation. There are many such murals in Egyptian tombs, and the cattle also figure often in the pictures on the papyri. (See [Plate 9].) This fresco, however, was quite unique. Across the scene there parade fourteen cattle. The first seven are round, fat and in fine condition. They are followed by seven of the skinniest cows that ever ambled on four legs! No word of explanation is needed to clarify this scene for those who are familiar with the history of that time.

There is another mural showing the chief baker of Pharaoh, followed by his servants and porters. In his hand he holds a receipt for the one hundred thousand loaves that were daily delivered to the palace of Pharaoh. These “loaves” were in the nature of large buns.

The multiplicity of these paintings would require a volume to delineate carefully, but there is information here that cannot be passed over in silence. They bring to us the solution of one of those mysteries of Egyptian history, which is found in the collapse of the feudal system and the consequent complete possession of the land by the crown. We can now read from the secular evidences thus derived, that in a time of plenty a trusted lieutenant of the king built granaries to store the surplus left over from the time of plenty. Of course, to our enlightened times or in the culture of this generation, that is the height of ignorance. The proper thing to do in a time plenty is to destroy the surplus and plow under the excess. We sometimes wonder what would have happened in Egypt if our modern culture had prevailed in the seven years of plenty, in the light of the famine that followed!

We now find that when the whole land hungered, the lords ceded their real estate to the crown for grain to keep themselves and their families alive. The people sold themselves to Pharaoh and became slaves, on condition that he feed them as he would his cattle. When this time of famine was ended, Egypt was so absolute a monarchy that Pharaoh owned even the bodies of those who had been his subjects.

As an illuminating collateral incident, we now learn that a Sumerian name was given to Joseph, the trusted lieutenant. To him was accorded the title “Zaph-nath-pa-a-ne-ah.” The Sumerian meaning is “Master of hidden learning,” and was a title of honour and distinction which was conferred because of his wisdom and forethought in providing for the future. To him also was accorded the royal honour. He was to be preceded by a herald who called upon the people to bow down as Joseph passed by. Herein there comes the explanation of a slight philological difficulty in the text of Genesis. They have tried to make this title of honour to mean “Little Father.” This difficulty, however, disappears when we understand that it is not a Hebrew word that is found in the text, but an ancient Egyptian phrase. The common form of the word is “Ah-brak” and literally it means “bending the knee.” The Babylonian form of the word is “Abarakhu.” In some parts of the ancient world the term “Ah-brak” is still used by cameliers to make their beasts of burden kneel to receive their load. Thus when Joseph, the master of the hidden learning, went abroad throughout the land the herald preceded him crying, “Bend the knee,” and all the populace bowed in homage to him in acknowledgment of his distinguished accomplishments.

Against this background of understanding, we now turn our thoughts to one of the most stirring dramas in all human history. Again there was a famine in the entire land of Sumeria, and the people turned, as was customary, to the land of Egypt for succor and relief. Had this epic been invented by some literary genius of antiquity, the arrival of the brothers of Joseph to buy grain for their starving clan would be deemed one of the most melodramatic episodes ever conceived by the human mind. Therein we see again how God overruled the evil deed of the brethren, and by that very deed saved the guilty. In a time of world oppression and bitter famine, the family of Abraham was reunited in the shelter of Egypt.

As the story unfolds, we see the significance of Joseph’s instructions to his brethren. These Semitic kings were shepherds who highly prized their flocks and herds. The Egyptians, however, despised husbandry, and thus the monarchs were in great distress because of the want of capable herdsmen. The brethren of Joseph were distantly related to the reigning pharaoh. They were of the same race of people, and their father Abraham had been a prince in that land of Sumeria. So when the pharaoh asked them what their occupation was, recognizing them as distant relatives, they were canny enough to reply, “We be shepherds; to sojourn in the land are we come.” With great delight, the pharaoh employed them to be the personal overseers of his treasured animals.

Goshen, which consisted of two hundred square miles of fertility, and was the finest province and the juiciest plum in Egypt, was turned over to them for a pasture! They entered into a life of comparative ease, of absolute security, and of importance in the court of their day.

So there came into Egypt that group which was to constitute the spring that gave rise to the historic stream of the Hebrew people. The tribes were there in the persons of their founders, and the long contact of Israel and Egypt began through the pressure and want occasioned by a time of famine.

One further interesting and collateral evidence of the accuracy of these records is found in the various texts and sections of the Books of the Dead, and in the records of the customs and practices of the ancient art of embalming. In Egypt the general rule was to allow seventy days for the embalming of a dead body, the burial, and the mourning for the dead. But the fiftieth chapter of Genesis dealing with the death and burial of Joseph tells us, in the third verse, “And forty days were fulfilled for him; for so are fulfilled the days of those which are embalmed: and the Egyptians mourned for him threescore and ten days.”

These statements could be true only in the days of a Hyksos or Sumerian dynasty. The manner of embalming introduced by these Syrian conquerors, required forty days for the complete process and the burial. Seventy days was their custom for mourning, thus making a total of one hundred ten days. Only in these exact periods of Egyptian history could this record of Genesis be thus established and accredited.

It is a fascinating experience for the student of archeology to wend his way through the mass of evidence derived from these generations and now in the possession of the great museums of our earth. A pilgrimage begun in the British Museum, at London, continuing through the Egyptian Museum at Cairo, passing by way of Sakkara to culminate at Karnak, will enable the fascinated student to read this entire book of Genesis from the sources of antiquity. Thus in the very beginning of the convergence of the two streams, Revelation and History, we see that dead men indeed tell tales; and their stories vindicate the record of the Word of God!

Much of this evidence is, in the very nature of the case, inductive, and is valuable largely because of the light it sheds on dark places in the text of the Scripture. The customs of the people of antiquity were in many ways so different from those of our day, we have lost the comprehension of their conduct that is dependent upon mutual experience. There are thus certain obscurities in the pages of the Bible that have baffled modern man for a long time, but which are now clearly understood in the light of fresh understanding of the beliefs and practices of the times that are dealt with in the Scriptures. This is by no means the least of the benefits of archeological investigation.

One such field will be found in the record of the exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt, and the manner in which God shook the power of the conquering pharaoh and devastated Egypt for the relief of the oppressed. The entire record has been repudiated point by point by the various critics and the varying schools of criticism, until their limited opinions leave no grounds for belief in the very fact of the event itself. These objections, when analyzed carefully, are all predicated upon the personal ignorance of the individual critic concerning some phase of the proceedings that climaxed with the departure of Israel from servitude.

One of the commonest objections to the credibility of the Old Testament history was the oft-repeated assertion that though the children of Israel were in bondage for a long period in Egypt and left that land in the most dramatic exodus antiquity had known, there is no record from Egyptian sources of the people or history of Israel. Such is not now the case, but had it been so this would not necessarily have diminished the value of the historical statements to be found in the record of the book of Exodus.

Very few of the races of antiquity recorded in detail their defeats! Certainly no nation that prided itself upon its greatness and power ever suffered a more complete overthrow than did Egypt in the redemption of Israel. It is only natural to presume that they would make very little reference to the crushing blow that they suffered at that time. There is even today a strong tendency on the part of the Egyptians to hush up all evidence of this event as far as it is possible to do so. In the great Egyptian Museum at Cairo, for instance, we find a record of one of these texts that does refer to the Israelites.

Exhibit 599 in this aforesaid Museum is a large stele in dark gray granite, which is beautifully engraved on both sides. On one side there is an extensive inscription in which Amenophis the Third gives a categorical list of his gifts and offerings for the temple of Amon. The other side of the stele has been appropriated by Amenpthah. He gives a highly dramatic account of his battles and victories over the Libyans, and then alludes to the assault of Ascalon, of Gezer, and of Yanoem in Palestine. In the course of this later record, the inscription reads, “Israel is crushed. It has no more seed.”

In the Egyptian Museum this exhibit is accompanied by the following ingenious statement: “This is the sole mention of the Israelites in the Egyptian texts known up to the present day.”

This is not exactly the truth. The Egyptian Museum itself at Cairo has a number of the tablets containing the correspondence between the Egyptian court and the kings and governors who were vassals to Egypt in Palestine and Syria. These communications make urgent demands upon the crown of Egypt for military help against the invasion of an armed horde who are called in the text, Hebiru. The word “Hebiru” is commonly identified with the modern term Hebrew.

Again, the late Director General of the Department of Antiquity of Egypt and the great founder of the Cairo Museum, Maspero, has left us an interesting note of this monument of Menepthah. Maspero points to the fact that in comparison to Egypt, Chaldea and Assyria, Israel was a very insignificant race. If this was true when the nation was ruled by her greatest and most glorious dynasty, that of David and Solomon, it would be more so when the nation consisted of a slave company lodged in a corner of the delta.

The later ravages undergone by the temples of Egypt, when they suffered incalculable harm through the vandalism of the darker ages, makes it indeed extraordinary that any record of those earlier times has remained.

In the very nature of the case, these details could not have been comprehended by the scholars of the past generation, as they dealt with customs and ideas that were lost to our age. The insatiable curiosity of the archeologist, combined with the care with which the Egyptians preserved their records, can be credited with the recovery of this lost information, the possession of which so wonderfully establishes our faith in this more enlightened age.

CHAPTER IV
The Ten Plagues

The prosecutors of the old charge of “folklore and mythology” so constantly directed against the faith of those who hold to the credibility of our present Scripture text, found some of their keenest shafts in the Biblical account of the exodus from Egypt. Scrutinizing the record of that notable event under the microscope of prejudice, the critics claimed to have found many outstanding weaknesses in the text. Particularly was this so in that section of the story which dealt with the plagues with which Almighty God smote the land and broke down the resistance of Pharaoh.

There is, therefore, a manifestation of a sardonic humor in the present situation. After denying for generations that these plagues ever occurred, the critics now seek to rob the account of any value by their new technique of acquiescence. The really modern method of discrediting the Scripture is to admit that there is some truth in the record and then subtly twist the meaning of the text out of all harmony with the general plan of revelation. As a noteworthy example of this modern technique of criticism, we submit a leading article which appeared in the London Express of Sunday, September 6, 1936.

Professing to accept the historical record of the ten plagues, the writer of this article then craftily proceeds to offer a peculiarly human and mechanistic theory to account for the disaster. In reading this news item, we are at once struck by the fact that every element of a supernatural nature is deleted from the strange series of events, and the credit for the entire victory of Israel is ascribed to the human genius of the man Moses. This news item appeared in the following form:

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT
SHOW THAT MOSES ANTICIPATED BY 3,000 YEARS THE GREATEST FEAR OF MODERN SCIENCE

Science has been inquiring into one of the greatest catastrophes that befell a nation—the ten plagues of Egypt.

They have found that modern theories are in accord with the Bible story.

The plagues were brought upon the Egyptians by Moses in the days of Israel’s captivity. Dr. Charles J. Brim, a New York authority on public health, says that Moses must have anticipated by 3,000 years modern science’s greatest fear—the use of disease germs, water pollution and other attacks on sanitation as war weapons—in short, bacteriological warfare.

Moses, states Dr. Brim, in addition to being the founder of the science of hygiene, showed that germ warfare could annihilate man and beast more effectively than arms and man power. With it he bent the mighty Egyptians to his will and thus brought about the Exodus, the release of the Israelites from Egyptian slavery. With it he so undermined their man power and morale that it became impossible for them to face the hardships of war.

The ten plagues, in their order, were:

Changing the water into blood;

The frogs;

The lice;

The flies;

The murrain of cattle;

The boils on the Egyptians;

Hail;

The locusts;

The darkness;

The death of the first-born.

“The first step in this carefully planned attack,” says Dr. Brim in a newly published book, “Medicine in the Bible,” “was the pollution of Egypt’s water supply.”

This had two results: First, it attacked the god of Egypt—the Nile; secondly, it sapped the very fountain of the country.

Egyptian legend said that the Nile sprang from the blood of the god Osiris. Hence, “the waters of the Nile were turned into blood.”

Egypt depended on the Nile for its drinking water, on its yearly inundations for the irrigation of the fields.

A polluted Nile was a smashing blow at the water supply and at the crops and cattle. Nobody could wash or drink.

The fish—one of the staple foods—died. Frogs were forced to leave their natural haunts in the river banks and invaded the streets, fields and houses in their millions.

Swarms of frogs, with no water or food, died and rotted over the countryside. Cartloads were burned, but not before the germs of pollution had time to multiply.

The air became filled with the disease germs bred in this ideal forcing-ground. People and animals became infected.

Flies descended in swarms greater than people had ever seen, bringing more germs with them. Cattle died in their thousands.

Dust, in a naturally dusty country, became infected, spreading more disease and death. Nature took a turn. A terrific hailstorm shrieked over Egypt. The few crops that were left standing were flattened and destroyed. Animals were killed by the force of the hailstones. Next came the locusts, dropping in their millions on the fields, eating everything the hail had left.

When they passed, a dust storm, caused probably by the hot, electrical wind known as the hamsin, blew up and darkened the sky for days on end, as sandstorms still do in that part of the world. The tenth and last plague, the death of the first-born, was a natural consequence of all that had happened since the day the water became polluted.

The Bible does not say explicitly that only the first-born died in this plague.

What it does say is:

And it came to pass that at midnight the Lord smote all the first-born in the land of Egypt, from the first-born of Pharaoh that sat on his throne to the first-born of the captive that was in the dungeon.

The epidemic killed many others, but in the death of the first-born lay the greatest calamity, for the first-born son was chief in every Egyptian household.

Dr. Brim does not explain how the first plague was brought about, but if Moses did pollute the Nile it must have been done when the water was low.

It is certain that Moses was a medical genius, as his laws of health prove, and knew the certain effects of water pollution.

Neither does the doctor explain how Moses foresaw the hail, but it is possible he could judge atmospheric conditions with precision.—V. B.

And it came to pass that at midnight the Lord smote all the first-born in the land of Egypt, from the first-born of Pharaoh that sat on his throne to the first-born of the captive that was in the dungeon.

It is perhaps an inaccuracy to talk about “modern” attempts to thwart and deny the Word of God! There is nothing modern about this entire propaganda, popular as it may be in our own day. The error is ancient, as is the attitude of mind that would set aside the element of the supernatural in Holy Writ, and oppose the time-honored revelation of God’s will by the modern self-satisfaction with human learning. Indeed, this common and basic sin of our generation is so far from being modern, that the very first recorded case of denial of God’s Word comes from the Garden of Eden, man’s first and original home.

Even before sin had reared its ugly head, to shatter the sweet communion and spoil the fair harmony that was the basis of man’s fellowship with his Creator, this error appeared. It was Satan who, encroaching upon the beauty of Eden’s fair content, first said, “Hath God said?” The denial of the truth of God’s spoken word originated with the enemy of man: and it would behoove us all to remember that any man who has questioned His written word from that hour to this, is also an enemy, and an emissary of the original foe of mankind! Do we owe Satan so great a debt of gratitude for the deep and dark pit of woe into which he has lured our race, that we must lend slavish attention to the same old error when he sponsors it today?

For this “modern” attempt to discredit the Scripture is but a recrudescence of his ancient and simple strategy for the hurt of mankind. Well does he know that if he can but shake the faith of our generation in the integrity of the Bible, faith in God must soon be lost as well. Once more pedantic scoffers, professors of this and of that, arise solemnly to refute the truth of the only “map” that can ever guide men back to the Paradise we lost when the first man rejected God’s revelation.

It is interesting to see that this old error is in no new guise, in the article referred to above. This is nothing new, it is just an original approach to the same old mess of Satanic whispering. Indeed, Paul warned us of the possibility of this very article and method in II Timothy 3:8, when he said:

Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith.

He introduces the very age of Egyptian history, and the events connected with the Exodus in speaking thus of the false teachers of the apostate days that should precede the time of our Lord’s return. And lo! the event transpires in this year of grace, as the press of the twentieth century casts doubt upon the Ten Plagues in this subtle manner.

It is subtle. Also dishonest to the nth degree. Professing to accept the historicity of the events, the article then proceeds to demolish the credibility of the record, by ascribing all the plagues to natural forces, directed by the genius of a human being, namely, Moses. God is ruled out, the supernatural denied, and common sense prostituted to infidelity in a manner that the shallowest thinker could not countenance. For a man of medicine, or a scholar in any realm of science, to foster such a contemptible evasion of plain fact, passes understanding.

A few years ago it was customary for criticism to deny that these plagues ever happened. Classifying them among the reputed folklore of the Hebrews, and relegating them to the realm of the purely mythological, the critic calmly and boldly denied that they ever occurred at all. But these past years of research and study have so established the historicity of the record, that this procedure is no longer possible; so the new attack is made, on the basis of naturalism.

It is plainly stated that Moses himself brought about these plagues upon the Egyptians, and that he did so by the use of his own superior knowledge. In a word, he was a bacteriologist, three and a half thousand years before Pasteur! That in itself is a greater miracle than the plagues could ever have been! No microscope, no instruments of research, yet he not only anticipated the discoveries of Lister and Pasteur, but he also applied germ warfare to the redemption of Israel, and “bent the Egyptians to his will.”

More marvelous than all this, he did it by simply polluting the Nile River, the source of the life of Egypt. This of course was a simple task! The Nile is a mighty river. If we follow its course just from the First Cataract at Assuan to the mouth, it is over five hundred miles as the river twists and bends round and about.

Now all Moses had to do was to impregnate those five hundred miles of winding river with some deadly form of disease germs, that would affect the Egyptians but not the Israelites! Any nice germ would do! Of course, he had also to keep those five hundred miles of flowing stream polluted, in spite of the rushing current that swept fresh water down day by day! Let us not forget, that he did all this while Pharaoh was looking on: and that for seven days the condition continued, then to end as suddenly as it had begun. We should like to know something of his technique!

Then, after the river had cleared its waters, Moses boldly announced that the Lord would overrun the land with frogs! This was done, not as a result of a polluted river, but rather after the river was clear. Pollution with disease germs might have driven the frogs out of the river: but how did Moses get them to go back, as Pharaoh entreated him to do?

Most conveniently, the author of the above cited article does not mention how the lice were spread over the land by Moses! Did he personally catch them and spread them all around, or had he been breeding and storing them for years in advance? The flies may have increased in the rotting piles of frogs, but what kept this pest of flies out of the small section of Egypt called the Land of Goshen, where the children of Israel were? Given the conditions that caused the flies to breed, why did they refrain from the particular portion of the land where Moses and his people were camping?

So also for the murrain on the cattle, and the boils on the Egyptians. None of Israel were affected by these disasters. Did Moses have some kind of salve or prophylactic serum that he used, he being the great medical genius that this article makes him to be? Even that will not account for the fact that when the hail came, it, also, avoided the camp of Moses and his three and a half million compatriots!

But even a great medical genius and an accomplished meteorologist could not have foreseen the coming of the locusts that darkened the sky and the land as well. Nor could this great medical genius, even had he also been an able entomologist, have seen to it that the locusts ate only Egyptian vegetation, as Goshen greenery would have been just as acceptable to hungry locusts! And who ever saw any other kind?

Passing over the supernatural darkness with the simple observation that it was not an ordinary phenomenon such as a sandstorm (which left the houses of the Israelites unaffected), we will hasten to the conclusion of the matter, the death of the first-born. The article we are quoting makes a terribly strained attempt to prove that others died as well as the first-born, but the text of the Scripture does not so state or imply. Indeed, the text very clearly sets forth the fact that it was only the first-born who died. They died dramatically; all at the same hour.

At midnight, simultaneously, death smote a certain restricted class.

The prince in the palace, and the felon in the dungeon; the cattle as well.

But the first-born of Israel did not die!

They were all under the blood!

Quaint epidemic, was it not? It came as a result of disease germs in the river Nile, it killed all its victims out of just one class, the first-born, and it passed over any home that had lamb’s blood on the door posts!

Is it necessary for a man to believe such arrant nonsense, and accept such utterances of folly before he can qualify as an educated man, or a scientist?

Most fortunately, it is not!

To show the truth of this matter, we can indeed study these ten plagues in the light of modern science. Not by the flickering rays of the lamp of human speculation can understanding be achieved. Only in the full illumination of the sunshine of historical fact can the truth be discerned. So, we will turn to the great and truly modern science of archeology to study the Ten Plagues of Egypt, and see what the truth of the matter really is.

In the first place, thanks to the vast amount of research in the archeology of Egypt, we now know that these ten plagues were a contest between the Lord God of the Israelites, and the pantheon of Egypt.

The genesis of the contest is given in Exodus 3:18. Here Moses is instructed by God to ask Pharaoh for a three-day furlough for the entire company of the Twelve Tribes, that they might go three days’ journey into the wilderness, and sacrifice to Jehovah. This initial request was to be the first step in a campaign that would result in the redemption of Israel from their long bondage, and the apparently reasonable request was made with the certainty that it would be refused. Indeed, the request was such that Pharaoh could not grant it!

As we shall later see, the Egyptians were the most polytheistic nation that ever lived. In their pantheon of deities there were more than twenty-two hundred gods and goddesses, and each of them had a particular theophany. That is to say, these gods and goddesses had certain animals that were sacred to them, and in which animal form the particular god or goddess occasionally manifested a personal presence. So very often the deities of Egypt are depicted in stone and painting as having a human body, but an animal head. Thus Thoth might be seen with the head of an ibis, while Hathor sometimes has a human head, but more often she is portrayed with the head of a cow.

So there was no animal that the Hebrews could sacrifice to their God, Jehovah, that would not be sacred to some Egyptian deity. This sacrifice would constitute blasphemy in the eyes of the Egyptian masters, and trouble would eventuate immediately! Indeed, when Pharaoh, worn out by the troubles brought upon him by the plagues, suggested to Moses that the people sacrifice to Jehovah without going to the wilderness, Moses simply replied in the language that is recorded in Exodus 8:26:

“What shall we sacrifice, that will not be an abomination in the eyes of the Egyptians? Will they not stone the people if they sacrifice in the land?”

The justice of the reply was so self-apparent that the ruler did not press his suggestion, as the text shows. Thus God forced the issue and provoked the conflict that not only freed His people from slavery and eventually established them in the land that He had promised them through Abraham, but also showed His supremacy over the gods of Egypt. Even more than that, in the resultant series of events, the Lord God brought such glory to His own Name, and showed such omnipotence that the world has never forgotten this drama, even to our own day and time. Witness the very article that is the subject of this present comment!

The clear statement of God’s attitude toward the conflict is seen in Exodus 4:23, 24. The figure of speech used there is a divine choice, therefore we use it just as God Himself expressed His own mind to Moses. The “first-born” was the chief object of interest in every Egyptian household, for two reasons. The law of primogeniture ruled in that day and land, even as it does in England and other countries today. Also, the first-born of every species, animal or human, was dedicated to the gods, and was a sacred object, in a very strong sense of that word. So later, we hear the law of Israel as set forth by God, that the first-born of man or beast in the land is to be sacred to Jehovah: not to the gods of Egypt.

Now then, as Moses was sent to Pharaoh, to carry the demands of God for the release of the people, he was instructed to tell the ruler that Israel was, in God’s sight, as prized and beloved a group as the “first-born” was in an Egyptian household. In a figure of speech that Egypt as a whole could most clearly grasp, God said: “Israel is My son, My first-born: And I have said unto thee, Let my son go that he may serve me; and thou hast refused to let him go; behold, I will slay thy son, thy first-born.”

With this introduction, we can see clearly the genesis of the conflict. It is most clearly stated in Exodus 5:1-3. When Moses said to Pharaoh, “Thus saith Jehovah, the God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto Me in the wilderness:” the ruler of the land said, in just so many words, “Who is Jehovah? I never heard of him!” Not only did the mighty king reject the word and the commands of God, but he also denied Him in no uncertain terms. This upstart Jehovah, who was He to give orders to Pharaoh the mighty? He was the god of an humbled and captive people, therefore the king reasoned that his own gods must be far mightier! So the proud and haughty monarch said, “I’ll stick by the gods of Egypt; I know not this Jehovah, and I will not obey His words.”

Moses left with the clearly expressed warning that the king might not then know Jehovah, but that he was certainly destined to find out about Him! The call to arms, the challenge to combat, and the prophecy of God’s victory are all expressed in the single verse in Exodus the seventh chapter, where God tells Moses that “the Egyptians shall know that I am Jehovah, when I stretch out my hand upon Egypt....” This, then, was the primary reason for the ten plagues. God would teach the Egyptians a lesson through judgments that the land would never forget! When he finished with them, none were ever again able to say, “And who is this Jehovah? The gods of Egypt are stronger.”

Thus we see that the contest was primarily between the monotheism of Israel and polytheism of Egypt. We would emphasize the fact that the Egyptians were perhaps the most polytheistic race the world has so far known. It is impossible to say just how many deities existed to the Egyptian mind, but “their name was legion”! Two hundred separate deities are named in the Pyramid Text, and four hundred and eighty more are named in the Theban Recension of the Book of the Dead. Altogether, archeologists have recovered the names of over two thousand two hundred different gods and goddesses that were worshipped by the Egyptians! Is it any wonder that Jehovah must start His laws to His people with the commandment: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me!”?

A word about these objects of Egyptian worship will be necessary to clear up the necessary later references to the practices and the beliefs of the Egyptians. While these ancient folks never had the idea of an immanent, pervasive God, in the monotheistic sense, they still had a dim conception of a super-god principle, behind and over the various individual gods and goddesses. There was first of all the grouping of gods into triads, which was a widely accepted custom. Since each triad consisted of a god, a wife, and a son, this grouping is less a degeneration of the principle of the Trinity than might seem to be suggested at first thought. Rather, it was a glorification of the family principle.

Thus we see that at Thebes, the principal triad of deities consists of Amon-Ra, the king of all the gods, Mut, his Wife, and Khons, their son.

Ba-neb-Ded, with his wife Het-mehit, and their son Harpakhrad (whom the Greeks later called Harpokrates) constituted the triad at Mendes. In like manner, the Memphis triad was composed of Ptah, Sekhmet, and Imhotep. Sometimes the greater gods were grouped into a company of nine, called the Ennead. There was also the grouping of the major deities into the “Three Companies,” being the gods of the heaven, the earth, and the Other or Under World.

All the gods had human bodies, but some of them had animal heads. Sometimes a god who customarily had a human head would appear wearing the animal head of his theophany, as in the case of Hathor, cited above. Thus when Hathor appears with a cow’s head upon a human body, she appears with the solar disk between her horns; and when she appears with the human head, she wears as a headdress the bonnet of the goddess Mut, the wife of Amon-Ra, the horns of the cow, the solar disk which shows her relationship to Horus, and the feather of the goddess Maat.

We have previously asserted that each plague was a direct blow at one of these celestial beings, and it might be profitable to demonstrate this fact with a few concrete illustrations.

Hapi

The First Plague was a direct and definite blow at a numerous company of these objects of worship. In the first place, the River Nile was itself an object of worship. It was reputed to flow from the celestial stream called Nu, and was heavenly in its origin. It brought life to the entire land of Egypt, and was worshipped with appropriate and very exact ritual. There were hymns to the Nile, prayers and offerings to and for the Nile, and the river possessed in itself a very real personality. The River is pictured in the form of a man wearing a cluster of water plants upon his head, and the idea of fertility is conveyed by giving him the heavy pendant breasts of a nursing mother! In the British Museum may be seen a remarkable papyrus, containing the Hymn to the Nile. To show the reverence felt for the power of the great River, we quote just a sentence or two from this Hymn:

... Thou art the Lord of the poor and needy. If thou wert overthrown in the heavens, the gods would fall upon their faces, and men would perish....

This deified river, then, the source of life and blessing in Egypt, was smitten by God, and its waters turned to blood. Frantically the Egyptians sought to dig shallow wells by the banks of the stream, as their water supply failed them for the first time in the memory of man! Truly, Jehovah was greater than the Nile! And not only greater than the River itself, there was more than this involved. There were many issues involved, and many deities suffered “loss of face” that day!

Osiris

There was the mighty Osiris, who was himself the cause and source of the resurrection and of everlasting life. Greatest of all the gods of the underworld, he has an important part in the text of the Book of the Dead. The Nile was supposed to be his bloodstream! When God smote the Nile, he laid the mighty Osiris low in the dust! With him fell Hapi—who was the Nile-god, and also Satet, the wife of Khnemu, the goddess of the annual inundation. Her divine sister, Anqet, bit the dust that day, as she was the personification of the Nile waters, which turned into an offense and a stench when Moses stretched out his staff. Time will not permit the presentation of the characters of Isis-Sothis, Isis-Hathor, Ament, Menat, Renpit and at least two score more, all of whom met defeat in the First Plague. None of them could sustain their prestige and power in the face of the action of Jehovah, and He emerged victorious in the first trial of strength.

Khnum

The Second Plague was likewise a contest between the Lord of the heavens and the earth, and certain specific ideas of the Egyptian system of worship. The plague of frogs that covered the land, making life a burden to the people, was a blow struck at Heqt, the wife of the great Khnum, whose theophany was a frog. Indeed, she was called the “frog-goddess,” and this lowly creature was sacred to her. The frog was the symbol of the resurrection, and the emblem of fertility. It was reverenced by the people, and to have one around the dwelling place was a sign of good fortune and was supposed to ensure a fertile year for farm and family alike.

They got enough of this quaint object of reverence when God flooded their land with myriads of the beastly things! They were in the bread-trough, and got tangled up in the dough, thus adding a rather quaint flavor to the bread! The bread could not be baked, however, as the baking ovens crawled with frogs, and the fires could not be lighted. They hopped all over the master of the house, and when he sought his bed in disgust they were there before him.

Like a blanket of filth the slimy, wet monstrosities covered the land, until men sickened at the continued squashing crunch of the ghastly pavement they were forced to walk upon. If a man’s feet slipped on the greasy mass of their crushed bodies, he fell into an indescribably offensive mass of putrid uncleanness, and when he sought water to cleanse himself, the water was so solid with frogs, he got no cleansing there. In sheer desperation the mighty king was forced to beg, “Call off your frogs, and I will let the people go!” Read Exodus 8:1-15.

And with that cry, the prestige of Heqt and Khnum was gone forever, drowned out in the tidal wave of disgust that rolled up in protest at too much of her theophany!

It is a bit difficult to imagine that generation of Egyptians ever worshipping the Frog again.

Plagues Three and Four are a bit more difficult to deal with at the present writing, because of the personal ignorance of the writer. By that he means to say that more light is required here as he does not know definitely the exact god that was meant to suffer in the estimation of the people, with the plague of lice. There can be no question, however, that the people themselves were hard hit, as any veteran of the A. E. F. will be only too glad to testify! This unclean parasite must have been a source of misery that was well-nigh insuperable, when it became as numerous as the very dust of the ground! It must have made the Egyptians somewhat envious to see the Israelites basking in peace and bodily comfort, while they, the lords of the land, itched and scratched and suffered the misery of this vicious pest! How much better to trust the God Jehovah who demonstrated His ability to keep His followers free from even such a plague as this.

As for the flies, there is this suggestion, at least: one of them was sacred to the name of Uatchit. What variety of fly is intended in the text we cannot definitely say, as there are numerous species of flies. But the ichneumon fly is a symbol of this god, and their figures in tiny statues and on papyri are well known to the modern archeologist. They are a brilliant and beautiful insect, somewhat prized by the entomologists of our day as specimens, but they can be a pest when they come in too numerous companies!

Some years ago we were encamped in Mexico, with a company who were digging for archeological treasure. The site was pleasant, the camp was near a clear, meandering stream, and the shade trees were enjoyable. There was just “one fly in the ointment” and that fly was the ichneumon. Every time food was placed upon the camp table, this gorgeous insect responded with enthusiasm and delight. They came in regiments and companies, bringing all their relatives and friends with them! So we could say from experience, that anyone who had to fight with a swarm of ichneumon flies for his own share of the lunch, would soon come to revile the god to whom this symbol was sacred! Not only Jehovah, but any god would seem preferable to Uatchit after an invasion of his particular pets. Or should we turn this last word around and make it pest, instead?

Hathor

When we come to the Fifth Plague, we are again on solid and assured territory. Once more firm archeological ground supports the theme of this chapter. When God smote the cattle of Egypt, He dealt most definitely and drastically with Egyptian polytheism. There were many of the supreme objects of Egyptian worship that met their Waterloo in the murrain on the cattle.

Chief of these is the mighty and venerated Hathor. She was the “cow-goddess” that was universally worshipped in all the land, and was to the human race of that day the “mother” principle of deity. Her most common name in the Egyptian language is Het-Hert, which literally means “the House of Horus.” The House of Horus is that portion of the sky where Horus lives and is daily born, namely, the east. Hathor is depicted in antiquity in many forms. Always she appears with a human body, and may sometimes have a human head as well. But more often she has a cow’s head on a human body, as the cow was her symbol. She often walked the land in the theophany of a cow, and one could tell when a calf was born, whether Hathor had come to earth, or not.

When this great goddess is pictured with a human head, she wears an impressive headdress. This is composed of the spreading horns of a cow, between which are seen the bonnet of Mut, the divine wife of Amon-Ra, the king of the gods. Above this is seen the solar disk, as Hathor was of “The Great Company” and was associated with all the beneficence of the glorious and life-giving sun. The Book of the Dead teaches that Hathor provides nourishment for the soul in the other-world, and as such a provider she excels all the minor gods. So in all the forms in which she is carved or drawn, she wears the sacred uraeus, to show her exalted power.

When God smote the cattle, her especial symbol, He struck a mighty blow at the tottering system for which Pharaoh had confidently expressed his preference. The other forays were but skirmishes: this was a real and decisive battle! This shrewd and telling victory was the beginning of the end of the conflict. If the divine Hathor could not protect her faithful following from the power of Jehovah, who could?

For not only Hathor was thus challenged and defeated, but other important members of the Heavenly Company met defeat and disgrace in the plague that smote the cattle. A common object in the Egypt of that day was the sacred bull, Apis, whose power was vast indeed. His temples dotted the land, and the priests of his cult were many and their power was impressive in the extreme. On the forehead of Apis appears the sacred triangle of eternity, and on his back is always seen the sacred scarab, with spread wings.

Apis was the theophany of the god whose name was Ptah-Seker-Asar, and he also was one of the triune resurrection gods. The living worshipped him that they might live again in the world to come, and the dead, of course, all worshipped him because he had made them to live again. Now, alas, for those who trusted in him against Jehovah! He could not even defend his own earth-form from the blight that his new enemy, Jehovah, had sent on all that represented the great and powerful Ptah-Seker-Asar. Thus God humbled the sacred Apis in the same stroke that crushed the cult of Hathor.

To this record must also be added the name of Nut, the goddess of the sky, and the wife of Geb. She it was who produced the egg out of which the sun hatched, so in reality she preceded Horus and even Amon-Ra, even though they ascended to a higher power and authority later. She is depicted with a female human body, and the head of a cow. However, she does not wear the solar disk, nor the headdress of Hathor, as she was a little lower in the social company of the weird organization of nonsense and mysticism that was the religion of Egypt.

The simple summary of the whole record is just this: all the gods of Egypt were not able to defend the cattle, when the Lord God Jehovah stretched out His hand to smite them! This the people of Egypt were forced to concede, as their cattle died by the thousand before their bewildered eyes, while not one of the herds of Israel lost so much as one head of cattle by the murrain.

Reshpu

The Sixth and Seventh Plagues are simple to deal with, as the record of Egypt gives valuable aid to the unprejudiced student here. Imhotep was the god of medicine, and the guardian of all the healing sciences. Prayers were made to him for protection as well as for cures, and he was greatly revered. In like manner, Reshpu and Qetesh were the gods of storm and of battle, and they controlled all the natural elements except the light. So the noisome and painful boils struck the devotees of Imhotep and left him powerless to aid his praying following, and their plight was pitiful indeed. How little it helped to see that the followers of the god Jehovah, at whom Pharaoh had sneered with ridicule, were comfortable, and with unblemished skins! No suppurating sores advertised the pain of the Hebrews; the good hand of their God was upon them, to protect them from the very disaster that came upon all the Egyptians for Israel’s sake!

The medical man of the twentieth century, whose article we are now considering, attributes all this painful consequence to the bacteriological pollution of the Nile, which was accomplished by the skill and wisdom of Moses. The present writer of this refutation is not utterly ignorant of the science of bacteriology, but he humbly confesses that he does not know of any pathogenic micro-organism that would bite everybody except a Hebrew! We would like to know the name and the nature of such a bacterium or bacillus! The Hebrews were exposed to the same flies, the same germs, the same stench of the dead frogs, the same epidemic that was consequent upon this chain of events, unless Moses vaccinated or inoculated them all, some three and a half millions in number. Truly the natural explanations of the supernatural cause reason to totter on her throne!