thus furnishing a curious confirmation of the truth of the narrative. According to the fragment of Manetho, Moses passed the early part of his life as a priest in the temple dedicated to the worship of the sun at Heliopolis. The notice is curious, and runs as follows: "It is said that a priest who founded their (the Jews') polity and laws-a Heliopolitan by race, named Osarsiph-when he went over to this nation from the service of the god Osiris in Heliopolis, received a change of name and was called Moses." I have already alluded to Joseph's connection with the same temple; and it is not unlikely that during the whole of this time the Israelites had, to some extent, conformed to the religion of the country with which both Joseph and Moses were so intimately associated, and in which the latter, with his great talents, had probably distinguished himself by his priestly learning. Indeed it would seem as though his theology, even after he became lawgiver to the Israelites, had been imbued with this early training. It is a singular and interesting fact that we find much of it embodied in the early funereal papyri. Thus the departed soul, pleading his justification before

Osiris, recounts the temptations he has resisted in such words as these: "I have not committed murder; I have not stolen; I have not committed adultery; I have not removed my neighbour's landmark, nor caused him to shed tears," -and so on, developing a moral code of a very high order. It was as a general, however, that Moses rose to the highest distinction; for Josephus tells that he was placed by Rameses in command of the Egyptian armies in Ethiopia, where he waged a successful war, and married the daughter of the king whom he had conquered, returning to Egypt in the reign of Meneptah. He was thus a man of varied experience, of great learning, and of high position in Egypt when he was compelled to flee to Midian, returning at the age of eighty, eminently qualified by the training he had undergone for the functions he was then called upon to fulfil.

It was under Meneptah the Second that the exodus took place, about the year B.C. 1325. He does not seem to have perished in the Red Sea, though, according to the song of Moses, his horse was lost. His tomb is at Thebes, in the Bab el Molook, immediately behind that

of Rameses the Great. At the same time, this does not furnish absolute proof that he was placed in it, as the Egyptian kings used to commence to build their tombs when they began to reign. I have been led by the discovery of the head of a Hyksos king in the Fayoum, and the traditional connection of Joseph with that province, into a digression which only belongs to it in so far as it goes to establish the possibility of his tomb being here, and to confirm the impression, also evidently entertained by Leo Africanus, that the Jews were settled here as well as in the land of Goshen, as it must have been for more than 400 years under Semitic rule.

The oasis is next mentioned in the days of Osorkon the First, of the twenty-second dynasty, when Crocodilopolis was so embellished and extended by that monarch, that it was called "the city of Osorkon" in the celebrated stele of Piankhi. This Osorkon was the Zerah of the Bible, who invaded Palestine with an army of a million of men, and was defeated by Asa. He lived about 950 years before Christ. Seven hundred years after this, Crocodilopolis lost its uncouth name, and Ptolemy Phila

delphus bestowed upon it the more euphonious appellation of Arsinoë, after his wife, and the "Land of the Lake" became "the Arsinoite Nome." One of the modern names for Medinet el Fayoum is Medinet el Faris, or "the City of the Horseman or Knight;" and these ruins, after having been called successively Pi-Sebek, Crocodilopolis, and Arsinoë, are known in the present day to the natives as Kom Faris. The most perfect relics of the magnificence of this once rich and populous city are to be found in the mosque of Kait Bey, which spans the Bahr Youssef, at the point where it finally emerges from the town, and which is itself a most picturesque ruin, about 400 years old. It has long since lost its roof, and from its centre, by the side of a well with an old stone basin, rise two tall date-trees; but the marble and granite columns, with their Corinthian capitals, which are all still standing, came from Arsinoë. There are two small fluted marble columns near the pulpit, which are particularly delicate and beautiful. The pulpit itself is an elaborate work of arabesque, inlaid with ivory. On the bridge in front of this mosque are the remains of an old wall; and the view

of the Bahr Youssef, seen through the crumbling arches, as it winds away under the datetrees which fringe its banks, when the women are filling their water-jars, is one of the most striking in the town, and equalled only, perhaps, by one a little further on, where there is another old mosque, also roofless, and also ornamented with columns plundered from Arsinoë, that stands on the brink of the river, and is irresistible in its situation and picturesque decay, from an artistic point of view. Indeed our walks and rides about Fayoum were being perpetually interrupted by the charming studies for the pencil which they presented; and we spent half our time squatting on heaps of brickbats, surrounded by admiring crowds of women and children, in the attempt to carry away in our sketch - books reminiscences of the scenes which it afforded us so much enjoyment to discover. One of the most characteristic and interesting of these was the fair, which takes place every Tuesday, when a large proportion of the country population flock to Medinet, to buy and sell produce. There must have been nearly 2000 people assembled on the large open space outside the