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[288]
And now I have done with Manetho, I will inquire into what Cheremon
says. For he also, when he pretended to write the Egyptian history, sets
down the same name for this king that Manetho did, Amenophis, as also of
his son Ramesses, and then goes on thus: "The goddess Isis appeared
to Amenophis in his sleep, and blamed him that her temple had been demolished
in the war. But that Phritiphantes, the sacred scribe, said to him, that
in case he would purge Egypt of the men that had pollutions upon them,
he should be no longer troubled. with such frightful apparitions. That
Amenophis accordingly chose out two hundred and fifty thousand of those
that were thus diseased, and cast them out of the country: that Moses and
Joseph were scribes, and Joseph was a sacred scribe; that their names were
Egyptian originally; that of Moses had been Tisithen, and that of Joseph,
Peteseph: that these two came to Pelusium, and lighted upon three hundred
and eighty thousand that had been left there by Amenophis, he not being
willing to carry them into Egypt; that these scribes made a league of friendship
with them, and made with them an expedition against Egypt: that Amenophis
could not sustain their attacks, but fled into Ethiopia, and left his wife
with child behind him, who lay concealed in certain caverns, and there
brought forth a son, whose name was Messene, and who, when he was grown
up to man's estate, pursued the Jews into Syria, being about two hundred
thousand, and then received his father Amenophis out of Ethiopia."
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