that was the occasion of it. Manetho says that the person who
foreshowed this purgation of Egypt to the king was Amenophis; but
this man says it was Phritiphantes. As to the numbers of the
multitude that were expelled, they agree exceedingly well (24)
the former reckoning them eighty thousand, and the latter about
two hundred and fifty thousand! Now, for Manetho, he describes
those polluted persons as sent first to work in the quarries, and
says that the city Avaris was given them for their habitation. As
also he relates that it was not till after they had made war with
the rest of the Egyptians, that they invited the people of
Jerusalem to come to their assistance; while Cheremon says only
that they were gone out of Egypt, and lighted upon three hundred
and eighty thousand men about Pelusium, who had been left there
by Amenophis, and so they invaded Egypt with them again; that
thereupon Amenophis fled into Ethiopia. But then this Cheremon
commits a most ridiculous blunder in not informing us who this
army of so many ten thousands were, or whence they came; whether
they were native Egyptians, or whether they came from a foreign
country. Nor indeed has this man, who forged a dream from Isis
about the leprous people, assigned the reason why the king would
not bring them into Egypt. Moreover, Cheremon sets down Joseph as
driven away at the same time with Moses, who yet died four
generations (25) before Moses, which four generations make almost
one hundred and seventy years. Besides all this, Ramesses, the
son of Amenophis, by Manetho's account, was a young man, and
assisted his father in his war, and left the country at the same
time with him, and fled into Ethiopia. But Cheremon makes him to
have been born in a certain cave, after his father was dead, and
that he then overcame the Jews in battle, and drove them into
Syria, being in number about two hundred thousand. O the levity