The Storehouses of the King

all the particulars regarding them; and as almost every existing religion is derived from his writings, it will not be deemed superfluous. Moses was b

d that they might drive them away from their own country. At first they gave the Israelites hard work to reduce their numbers, but, as that was unavailing, they advised the King, wh

he would be discovered, and, by falling under the King's displeasure, both he and his child would perish, and so he should make the promise of God of none effect-determined rather to entrust the safety and care of the child to God, than to depend on his own concealment of him, which he looked upon as a thing uncertain, and whereby both the child, so privately to be nourished, and himself should be in imminent danger; but he believed that God would in some way procure the safety of the child, in order to realise the truth of his own predictions. When they had thus determined, they made an ark of bulrushes, after the manner of a cradle, and of a size sufficiently large for an infant to be laid in without being too straitened. They then daubed it over with slime, which would naturally keep the water from entering between the bulrushes, and put the infant into it, and setting it afl

en to Moses by the different

rom out the water," by The

reunited to his famil

ed in God," by hi

the river to watch him,

e of Jacob, and the Egyptians ceased from that time to

onths he was hidden," b

od heard their groaning and delivered them fro

e daughter of Pharaoh, as a child belon

hey fly they are caught and devoured by them. As soon, therefore, as Moses came to the land which bred these serpents, he let loose the ibises, and by their means repelled the serpentine kind; using them as his assistants before the army came upon that ground. When, therefore, he proceeded thus on his journey he came upon the Ethiopians before they expected him; and, joining battle with them, he beat them and overthrew their cities, and, indeed, made a great slaughter of the Ethiopians. Moses laid siege to Saba, afterwards called Mero?, the capital of Ethiopia, a strong city encompassed by the Nile and by two other rivers, Astapus and Astaboras, and strongly fortified with great ramparts, insomuch that when the waters come with the greatest violence it can never be overthrown; these ramparts also make it next to impossible for even such as have crossed over the rivers to take the city. However, while Moses was uneasy at the

t over his remains, inscribing upon it the memorable deeds of his life. After the death of King Kikanus the army appointed Moses to be their King and leader. This took place in the hundred and fifty-seventh year after Israel went down into Egypt. The Ethiopians placed Moses upon their throne and set the crown of state upon his head, and they gave him the widow of Kikanus for a wife; but the widow of Kikanus was a wife to Moses in name only. When Moses was made King of Ethiopia the Assyrians again rebelled as they had done before; but Moses subdued them and placed them under yearly tribute to the Ethiopian dynasty. Moses reigned in Ethiopia in justice and righteousness. But the dowager Queen of Ethiopia, Adonith, who was a wife to Moses in name only, said to the people: "Why should th

and deeds. Still the King persisted in his refusal; till at last the anger of the Lord became great towards Pharaoh. God then commanded Moses and Aaron to prepare the Passover sacrifice, saying: "I will pass over the land of Egypt and slay the first-born, both of man and beast." The Israelites did as they were commanded, and at midnight the angel of the Lord passed over the land and smote the first-born of Egypt, both of man and beast. Then there was a great and gr

of the King, with him; for Joseph had strictly sworn the children of Israel, saying: "God will surely visit you; and ye shall carry up my bones away hence with you." And they t

ssages by which they imagined the Hebrews might fly, shutting them up between precipices and the sea; for there was on each side a ridge of mountains that terminated at the sea, which were impassable by reason of their roughness, and obstructed their flight. Wherefore they were in great distress

l in their journey, they made haste to pursue them, hoping that the sea would be calm for them also. They put their horse foremost, and went down themselves into the sea. By this time the Hebrews had got over to the land on the opposite side without any hurt. Whence the others were encouraged, and more courageously pursued them, as hoping no harm would come to them; but they were mistaken, for as soon as ever the whole Egyptian army was within it, the sea flowed to its own place, and came down with a torrent raised by storms of wind, and encompassed the Egyptians. Showers of rain also came down from the sky, and dreadful thunder and lightning, with flashes of fire. Thunderbolts also were darted upon them; nor was there anything which used to be sent by God upon men as indications of His wrath which did not happen at this time, for a dark and dismal night oppressed them. And thus did the King of Egypt and all his men perish, so that there was not one man left to be a messenger of this calamity to the rest of the Egyptians.[6] On the next day Moses gathered together the weapons of the Egyptians, which were brought on shore by the current of the sea, the force of the winds assisting it; and he armed the Hebrews with them. After returning grateful thanks for this miraculous deliverance, he led the people to Mount Sinai, as he was ordered by God beforehand. Here he instructed them, and prepared them against the time when they should enter the land of Canaan, which country they considered their inheritance, and to which they looked as the destination of their journey. And Moses gave them, among other lessons, the Ten Commandments, which were engraved upon two stone slabs or tables, five on each table, and two and a half upon each side of them. The First Com

the two tables. This Tabernacle served as a church in the wilderness, and wherever they travelled they carried it about with them. Moses appointed his brother Aaron to be the Hi

ple and their commander. Now, as Moses went from them to the place where he wished to vanish out of their sight, they all followed after him weeping; but he beckoned with his hand to those that were remote from him, and bade them stay behind in quiet, while he exhorted those that were near him that they would not mourn so at his departure. Whereupon they thought they ought to grant him that favour, to let him depart according as he himself desired; so they restrained themselves, though weeping still towards one another. All those

seldom seen, as well as a king and a prophet as was never known, and this to such a degree, that whatsoever he pronounced one would think he heard the voice of God Himself. So the people mourned for him thirty days, nor did any grief so deeply affect the Hebrews as did this upon the departure of Moses; nor were those who had witnessed his conduct the only persons who desired him, but those also who perused the laws he left behind him greatly longed for him, and from those laws learned the extraordinary virtue he was master of.[10] At this period of his life his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated. "And Joshua, the son of Nun, was

cquaintance with the watering-places and seasons of the desert, enabled them to carry the goods in safety through a dangerous land; while the regular profits they derived from the trade, and the oaths by which they were bound, induced them to act fairly to those by whom they were employed. At this time, 1451 B.C., a mighty tide of the Aryans immigrated to the basin or valley plain of the Indus. They called themselves Arya, or noble, and spoke a language the common source of Sanskrit, Prakrit, Zand, Persian, and Armenian in Asia. They settled down as agriculturists in the districts surrounding the Indus, their wealth consisting of flocks and herds; thence, after a time, they overran by successive irruptions the plains of the Ganges, and spread themselves over the regions called Aryavarta, occupying the whole of Central India. They were the promoters of the moral and intellectual progress and civilization in India; and notwithstanding all the diversities of the Hindoo populations throughout India, their religious faith has been preserved in their one language and one literature, furnishi

it is written: "And the Lord said, I have pardoned according to thy word." But when he became convinced that he would not be pardoned, he made the following supplication: "Sovereign of the universe, my trouble and my exertion for Israel's sake is revealed and known before Thee. How I have laboured to cause thy people to know Thee, and to believe in Thy Holy Name, and practise Thy holy law, has come before

" But Moses continued: "If thou wilt not permit me to pass over this Jordan, let me live as the beasts of the f

atter." Yet again Moses prayed: "Let me live even as the fowls; they gather their food in t

more on this matter." Then Moses proclaimed: "He is the Rock; His work is p

ered up this prayer: "O Lord, Lord God, Creator of all things, Who art fearful and strong, and righteous and merciful, and the only and gracious King, the only giver of all things, the only just, almighty, and everlasting, Thou that deliverest Israel from all trouble, and didst choose the fathers, and sanctify them: Receive the sacrifice for Thy whole people Israel, and preserve Thin

he light that shined from the altar. So when this matter was known, it was told the King of Persia that, in the place where the priests that were led away had hid the fire, there appear

nted fiction, but a confirmation of those Scriptures which have been revealed to Moses before it, and a distinct explicat

Mount Abarim, hidden there by Jeremiah the prophet, before the sack and burning of the Temple of Solomon by the Babylonians. They are in a cave, wherein Jeremiah laid them and stopped the door, saying, "As for that place, it shall be unknown until the time that God gath

of Egypt. They must have avoided the sight of these monuments, thereby to forget the misery and desolation they had brought on themselves by their cruel treatment of the Hebrews. The Egyptian priests knew what these buildings were, for they were the historians of their country; but when Herodotus visited Egypt and made minute inquiries regarding the Pyramids, they gave him a confused account, telling him, however, that for one hundred and six years the Egyptians suffered all kinds of calamities, and that for this length of time the temples were clo

e they are the food of a multitude of birds, and the receptacle of their ordure. The walls of this enclosure are of a bad construction; they have nothing in their appearance which announces an ancient building, and the love of the marvellous alone could have attributed its elevation to the patriarch Joseph."[18] The French Government gained nothing, and its attention was diverted from the Storehouses of the King. Since that time many explorers have gone to the Pyramids, and spent princely fortunes in trying to solve the mystery as to what they were and who built them. But the Arabs are too cunning an