Heath, Dunbar I.; Corbaux, Fanny: The Exodus papyri (London, 1855)

SECTION II.----CLAIMS OF MENEPTAH I. 11

SECTION" II.

CLAIMS OF MENEPTAH I.
(Suniamed " hotep-ha-ma;" devoted to Eight.)
The persuasion has been slowly making its way,
on chronological grounds, that we must look to the
end of the 19th dynasty for the Egyptian key to
the civil history of the Exodus; but the relations
of that dynasty after the Great Rameses have
hitherto proved a very stumbling-block to research.
The tablet of Abydos, by ending with his name,
left us to find out his successors as well as we
could; and as the royal title "Bai-en-Ra* comes
between those of Rameses II. and Seti-Menep-
tah II., in the second and finalt arrangement of
the royal statues in the coronation procession of
Rameses III. at Medinet-Abou,—and the same
title has been added to the name of Meneptah,
thirteenth son of Rameses II., in the Ramesseum
family list,—Champollion was first led by this to
infer, what every one since him has repeated
without looking further into the matter—that this
prince, Meneptah, succeeded his father.

The very ambiguity of both these indications
should have suggested their probable fallacy; for
might not the royal title borne by Meneptah, in a
list made out during his father's life-time, imply
that he bore that title while his father ivas alive?
And as to the other piece of evidence assumed as a
corresponding proof of his succession, it is so much

* The « spirit of the Sun." + OhampoJlion, Mon. pi. 214.