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

SECTION V.----DATE OF THE EXODUS. 41

SECTION V.
DATE OE THE EXODUS.

The conviction has lately been gaining ground that
Usher's date, B.C. 1491, adopted in the common
scheme of Biblical chronology which is printed in
the margins of our Bibles, was not borne out by
the evidence of the genealogies from the Exodus
to the time of Solomon, which scarcely cover 300
years; and that Manetho's tale of the last Shep-
herd-revolution had something in it worth attend-
ing to, which also pointed to a much more recent
date. Dr. Lepsius in particular has bestowed much
labour and erudition in working out this view, in
his "Chronology of the Egyptians." He even en-
deavours to plead for the vulgar Jewish date, 1312;
and to bring about the required correspondence of
this date with Egyptian history, by making out
Meneptah, son of Barneses II., the same name as
Menophres of the Sothic era mentioned by Theon
of Alexandria; consequently, the suppositious reign
of Meneptah is placed by this scheme in the first
year of the Sothic cycle, 1325.*

The Duke of Northumberland was the first to
suggest this historical connection of the period of
the Exodus with that of the successor of the great
Rameses; not by interfering with the marginal
Bible-date, but by putting back the Egyptian series

* For the reasons against these two dates see the Chronolo-
gical Appendix to the table, Section C, conclusion.