system, and with the method of administration of justice,
which, even in his time, had enabled the Egyptian people to hold
together, as a complex social organisation, for a period far longer than
the duration of old Roman society, from the building of the city to
the death of the last Caesar. Nor need we look to Moses alone for the
influence of Egypt upon Israel. It is true that the Hebrew nomads who
came into contact with the Egyptians of Osertasen, or of Ramses, stood
in much the same relation to them, in point of culture, as a Germanic
tribe did to the Romans of Tiberius, or of Marcus Antoninus; or as
Captain Cook's Omai did to the English of George the Third. But, at the
same time, any difficulty of communication which might have arisen out
of this circumstance was removed by the long pre-existing intercourse
of other Semites, of every grade of civilisation, with the Egyptians. In
Mesopotamia and elsewhere, as in Phenicia, Semitic people had attained
to a social organisation as advanced as that of the Egyptians; Semites
had conquered and occupied Lower Egypt for centuries. So extensively had
Semitic influences penetrated Egypt that the Egyptian language, during
the period of the nineteenth dynasty, is said by Brugsch to be as full
of Semitisms as German is of Gallicisms; while Semitic deities had
supplanted the Egyptian gods at Heliopolis and elsewhere. On the other
hand, the Semites, as far as Phenicia, were extensively influenced by
Egypt.

It is generally admitted [31] that Moses, Phinehas (and perhaps Aaron),
are names of Egyptian origin, and there is excellent authority for
the statement that the name _Abir,_ which the Israelites gave to their
golden calf, and which is also used to signify the strong, the heavenly,
and even God, [32] is simply the Egyptian Apis. Brugsch points out that
the god, Tum or Tom, who was the special object of worship in the city
of Pi-Tom, with which the Israelites were only too familiar, was called
Ankh and the "great god," and had no image. Ankh means "He who lives,"
"the living one," a name the resemblance of which to the "I am that I
am" of Exodus is unmistakable, whatever may be the value of the fact.
Every discussion of Israelitic ritual seeks and finds the explanation
of its details in the portable sacred chests, the altars, the priestly
dress, the breastplate, the incense, and the sacrifices depicted on the
monuments of Egypt. But it must be remembered that these signs of the