The series of " Books on Egypt and Chalchea "
(Kogan Paul, Trench and Co.,68. each net) is to have an addition, of which the first and second volumes are now before us, both from the indefatigable pen of Dr. E. A. Wallis Budge. The subject is to be Egyptian literature, which will be presented to us by texts (hieroglyphic) and translations, with explanatory introductions. In vol. i. we have Legends of the Gods. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of those documents comes out when we compare them with what we find elsewhere. There is, for instance, a "History of Creation," with an adumbration of the Logos doctrine as in the words, "I was One by myself. . . . I made all things by moans of the Soul- God," and of the doctrine of the Trinity : "I it was who emitted Sha, and I it was who emitted Teprut, and from being the One God (or the only God) I became three Gods." Then we have the " Legend of the Destruction of Mankind," a very confused story. Later on we have " The Legend of Khnomu and a Seven Years' Famine." This is attributed to the time of the Third Dynasty. The Nile figures in it just as in the Genesis story : it is out of the Nilo that the fat and the loan kink, come, Every one must be struck by the superior dignity of the Hebrew stories. Vol. ii. takes us into the region of history. It is the narrative of the Conquest of Egypt by the Nubian king Pankhi, an event which took place in the eighth century. (Dr. Budge puts the beginning of his reign at between 750 and 740 11,0, ; Hastings's
Dictionary of the Bible has 775.) The story brings out a curious religious complication. The priests of Amen had taken refuge in Nubia and had a considerable influence in shaping the events that followed. Tho reason of the secession of the priests seems to have boon the removal by one of the sons of Shashang (the Shishak of the Bible) of the royal mummies, &c., to a place where they would be safe from robbers. (The removal was a success—at least it kept those treasures for robbers of our own time,) We welcome the new development of a most praiseworthy enterprise.
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