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4 . THE PRESBYTERIA
THE PHARAOH OF THE EXODUS?
Was He Drowned in the Red Sea?
New light has recently come to us upon this mooted
question of the centuries past. It comes in the form of
the identification of a mummy that is now lying in the
Bulak museum at Cairo, in Egypt.
The reader needs not to be told that the word Pharaoh
is not the name of a particular man but is rather descriptive
of an office: it is similar to the word "King"
or "President." Thus we have Pharaoh Ramcses I.,
who reigned just before the birth of Moses; and Pharnrtli
PomAcoe TT ~ ^ J ^ 1?
.xx., icigntu lur sixty-seven years in
the days when Moses was being educated in Egypt,
and who cruelly oppressed the Israelites; and Pharaoh
Manephthah, who was king in the days of the ten
plagues of Egypt. Of this last the question has been
asked thousands of times whether he was drowned,
along with his army, in the waters of the Red Sea.
On this point the book of Exodus is silent. It declares
that the host of Pharaoh was drowned, but not
that Pharaoh himself was in the Sea. "And the waters
returned and covered the chariots and the horsemen, and
all the host of Pharaoh; . . . there remained not
so much as one of them." "His chosen captains also
are drowned in the Red Sea."
Twenty-five years ago, the scientific explorers in
Egypt found at Deir el Bahari, the mummies of a large
number of the Pharaohs of that period, including those
of Rameses I., and Rameses II., but they did not identify
the mummy of Manephthah. If found, it was not
recognized.
There was also the striking fact that the tomb which
(apparently) Manephthah had built for himself was
used for the burial of his successor.
The statement which we have seen is that this tomb
originally bore the name of Manephthah, chiselled in
the stone facade, but that this name was later covered
with cement and the name of his successor was impressed
in the cement. %From this we have been inclined to the
opinion that he had met with death in the sea.
But in a recent issue of the "Journal des Debats" Prof.
G. Maspero states that in the summer of 1908, on unwrapping
a mummy at the Museum, it was found to be
that of Paraoh Manephthah. We do not know by what
marks it is identified, but simply that Prof. Maspero is
convinced of the fact.
The discovery does not settle the question whether
lip \\to c rlrnurnArl TM-?n o+a? A - r n
a iiv wttiti <11 Liictl part 01 tne oea is
not usually very deep, and the recovery of a particular
body was not impossible. Nor does the present condition
of the mummy give us any light. This question remains
unanswered.
But the identification of this king does much for us.
It meets the cavils of those who write the word "traditions"
across the pages of Exodus. It helps us, as other
discoveries nave helped, to realize the verity of all the
incidents of the Exodus.
In the description of the appearance of this mummy
there is much to interest. The account in Exodus represents
him as weak, vacillating, and defective in will
power. Prof. Maspero finds from the mummy that he
was about eighty years old at the time of his death,
that he had grown fat, and was evidently a victim of
worse infirmities. There is here a correspondence wor%
f
N OF THE SOUTH. March 3, 1909.
thy of note. And almost equally noteworthy is it that
this discovery with its verification of Scripture should
come to us just at the day when critics are trying to
dissect the word of God, and in a form to discredit their
efforts at dissection.
OUR BRIGHT-SIDE LETTER.
John Calvin Coming to His Own.
No great name in history has been defamed so vigorously
and so persistently as that of the Reformer of
Geneva.
His distinguished theological teachings have been
bitterly denounced as horrible beyond expression, and
ins relation to the death of the blasphemous and defiant
anarchist, Servetus, has been held up to scorn and
infamy, but next summer a great monument is to be '
unveiled at Geneva in celebration of the four-hundredth
anniversary of Calvin's birth. And all around the
world the celebration will be observed by great assemblies
representing millions of Christian people of the
most enlightened and most active of the Protestant
churches in many lands.
Before the world there will be shown a far greater
monument than that at Geneva, the great Reformed
Churches of Great Britain and America, of the Continent
of Europe, of Australia, and of all the lands into
which Christian missions have gone; and about that
greater living monument will stand the theology which
is today the backbone of the Church of Christ on earth,
and the splendid literature it has produced, and the
blessings it has given to men, in the rights of man, in
civil and religious liberty, in republican government
and popular education and a free press, and in the zeal
for missions to the ends of the earth.
A few years ago a company of twelve or more dis?
j *i - * -
imguisiicu geiiuemen sat around tlie table of a dinner
party in Virginia. As the later courses came on, it
was proposed that each one should write on the back of
the menu card, the name of the three men, who in his
esteem had done most for the welfare of mankind in
the Christian Era, and the cards were read aloud hv thp
host to the great entertainment of the company. Only
on one card appeared the name of John Calvin, and it
was received with expressions of surprise and a general
tone of protest. It was evident that those gentlemen
had little or no conception of the personal character of
Calvin, or of his towering intellectual greatness, and
no thought of him as the statesman, the founder of
modern republican government, the author of popular
education, the one man from whom came the teachings
that delivered multitudes of his fellowmen from the op
pression of the Romish Papacy and priesthood, and
who made Switzerland and Holland, England, Scotland,
and all America free, enlightened and Christian, to this
day.
With the approaching celebration will come a wide
study of Calvin, and the Reformation, of the Reformed
foUU 1 r r*.
ami <mu us matuiy-ana 4ruus. mere will be defense
of his name and character and a statement of his great
work.
With this should be the perfectly open account of his
part in the death of Servetus, remembering that it was
an age of universal intolerance and religious persecu