The Round Towers of Ireland

instinctively directed towards that great storehouse of bygone consequence. And as the best authority that we can command in gaining any

t boldness invaded the land, and took it without opposition. Their behaviour to the natives was very barbarous; for they slaughtered the men, and made slaves of their wives and children. The whole body of this people were called Huksos, or Uksos; that i

werful, warlike, and enterprising Indian tribe. While the deadly aversion which existed in the minds of the Egyptians a

Egypt, they are at once identified with the Brahmins of India. China still celebrates that festival of lamps which was formerly universal throughout the extent of Egypt;[174] and "we have the most indubitable authority for stating that the sepoys in the British overland army from In

who at that time fed his cattle in those places"; so consonant with the invasion above authenticated. This is additionally confirmed by the Sanscrit records already referred to, informing us of three mountains, Rucm-adri, "the Mount of Gold," Rajat-adri, "the Mount of Silver," and Retu-adri, "the Mount of Gems"; having been raise

pt one near the mummies, whose dimensions and structure are very nearly the same with the largest Gezite one. This latter, according to Greaves, is 693 feet square at the base; its perpendicular height 499 feet; that is, 62 feet higher than St. Peter's at Rome, and 155 feet higher than St. Paul's in London; while the inclining height is 693 feet, exactly equal

ly as taken from the level of the surrounding heap. The small ones above noticed are some quadrilateral, some round, terminating like a sugar-loaf, some rising with a greater and some with a lesser incli

e was ever known to exist, should wait for a designation until Greece should be pleased to christen it. Still more disposed must one be to discard with contempt the usual derivation given them, of πυρ, fire; as this not only labours under the weakness of the former, but betrays an ignorance of the correct idea of the Greek word πυρο?, of which πυρ, fire, is the true derivation, "quia flamm? instar in acutum tendit";[

t argues a disposition on the part of the people to assign the honour-if taken in the latter light-to the workmen employed; if in the former, to a prince of a different dynasty from those whom the Egyptian priests would fain associate with them. This derivation, therefore, will not stand; and we have only to betake ourselves to the ingenious conjecture of Lacroze,[179] which, perhaps,

e images he saw represented a Piromis, begotten by another Piromis, which word, says Herodotus, signifies, in their language, a virtuous and honest man. A passage from Synesius, the celebrated bishop of Cyrene, in his treatise "on Providence," at once coincides with, and is illustrative of this anecdote. "The father of Osiris and Typhon,

althy traders-consigned himself solely to the worship of the gods. Forewarned in a dream, he took flight from the impending visitation, and had scarcely sailed ere the island, with its i

s a sunbeam[181]-not so much in allusion to their form as to their

It has, I trust, additionally appeared that both were essentially Indian. It may not now be "ungermane to the matter," if we woul

g their bondage being exclusively confined to the making of brick. I deny that the Scriptures either allege or insinuate any such thing. On the contrary, we may fairly infer, from Ex. ix. 8, 10, that they were engaged in other servile offices; as also

, what the Scriptures tell us of Moses and Aaron, that is not at once struck with the similarity of the sound? And as to Arm?us, why it bears so evident an affinity with Aram?us or Aramean, that one cannot avoid connecting it with the "Aramite ready to perish," the very name given to Jacob, Deut. xxvi. 5.[183] Nothing, then, prevents, so far as I can see, our concluding one of those str

ty, leaves one hundred and five years to the Exodus. Now we learn from Herodotus that Cheops, the reputed founder of the first or greatest of these pyramids, was the first also of the Egyptian kings who oppressed, or in any way tyrannised over, his subjects. His reign is stated to have been fifty years. Cephrenes, who succeeded, showed himself in every respect his brother, barring

cknowledging their ignorance of the actual date of the pyramids, and the impossibility, on their part,

in the way of our associating them with the structure of them all; and of these one is, the improbability that the victorious invaders would single out the inoffensive Israelites as particular objects of their oppression, when policy should suggest to them a directly different course in securing their adherence in opposition to the native residents. By Josephus's account, however, it would appear that the Is

whom we have before referred, and proves the date of their invasion anterior in point of time to Israel's introduction into the land of Egypt. Joseph was well aware of the particulars of this invasion, and o

nother set of people who were sojourners in Egypt, in the reign of Amenophis. These chose themselves a leader one who was a pries

that, after his slaying the Egyptian, and consequent flight, he dropped his name to ensure concealment, and only resumed it on being invested with his divine commission. Or, what is more likely still, and perhaps the truth,

t of their actual sojourn in Egypt; and, in the second place, of indistinctness, attaching a term of obloquy to those edifices, without condescending to offer therefor any cause. Here are his own words: "When time had obliterated the benefits of Joseph, and the kingdom of Egypt had passed into another family, they inhumanely treated the Israelites, and wore them down in various labours: for they ordered them to divert the course of the river (Nile) into many

them into the Red Sea (Ex. x. 19), Goshen, which we find by Gen. xlv. 10, cannot have been far from Joseph's own residence, will be more aptly fixed in the vicinity of this spot within the Heliopolitan nome, than within any other nome or pr?fecture, particularly the Tanitic, "where the same wind," as has been justly remarked by Dr. Shaw, "would not have blown those insects into the Red Sea, but into the Medi

ember the execration in which their Cushite founders were held by the Egyptians, and their consequent disinclination to associate their name with such splendid memorials. With this view, indeed, it is not at all improbable but that active legislative measures were adopted to c

ablishes between the ancient history of Egypt and the account given of the customs and dynasties of that kingdom, as drawn from the Hindoo Puranas, will at once admit that "there must have been a period when a Hindoo power had reigned in Egypt by right of conquest," and established therein the peculiar rites of th

arning and accomplishments were courted by the philosophers of the day, and were so eminently conspicuous, as to become a proverb (Acts Apost. vii. 22). Homer, we all know, visited that favoured land-so did Pythagoras-so did Solon, Thales, P

d of worldly politics-to a regular system. But much as they excelled other nations in scientific lore, in nothing was their superiority so conspicuous a

the narration; and as I mean to bring home their initiation in the art, as well as in their other several accomplishments, to the Chaldean diviners, or Aire Coti shepherds-a branch of the Tuath-de-danaan colonists of this our western isle-from whom, or their relatives, under the designati