thousand years
after his death,* and all that was known about him marked him out for
the important part he came to play in those romantic stories so popular
among the Egyptians.

* One of these books, which is mentioned in several
religious texts, is preserved in the _Louvre Papyrus_.

The Pharaoh in whose good graces he lived had a desire, we are informed,
to behold the gods, after the example of his ancestor Horus. The son of
Hapu, or Pa-Apis, informed him that he could not succeed in his design
until he had expelled from the country all the lepers and unclean
persons who contaminated it. Acting on this information, he brought
together all those who suffered from physical defects, and confined
them, to the number of eighty thousand, in the quarries of Turah. There
were priests among them, and the gods became wrathful at the treatment
to which their servants were exposed; the soothsayer, therefore, fearing
the divine anger, predicted that certain people would shortly arise who,
forming an alliance with the Unclean, would, together with them, hold
sway in Egypt for thirteen years. He then committed suicide, but the
king nevertheless had compassion on the outcasts, and granted to them,
for their exclusive use, the town of Avaris, which had been deserted
since the time of Ahmosis. The outcasts formed themselves into a nation
under the rule of a Heliopolitan priest called Osarsyph, or Moses,
who gave them laws, mobilised them, and joined his forces with the
descendants of the Shepherds at Jerusalem. The Pharaoh Amenophis, taken
by surprise at this revolt, and remembering the words of his minister
Amenothes, took flight into Ethiopia. The shepherds, in league with the
Unclean, burned the towns, sacked the temples, and broke in pieces the
statues of the gods: they forced the Egyptian priests to slaughter even
their sacred animals, to cut them up and cook them for their foes, who
ate them derisively in their accustomed feasts. Amenophis returned from
Ethiopia, together with his son Ramses, at the end of thirteen years,
defeated the enemy, driving them back into Syria, where the remainder of
them became later on the Jewish nation.*

* A list of the Pharaohs after Ai, as far as it is possible
to make them out, is here given:

[Illustration: 281.jpg Table]

This is but a romance, in which a very little history is mingled with a
great deal of fable: the scribes as well as the people were acquainted
with