5. Yet again as to the sort of labor exacted unmercifully of the Hebrew people the evidence from Egyptian antiquities is fully corroborative. “They built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pithom and Rameses,” and were put to the severest toil in making brick; in the erection of buildings, including the transportation of the heaviest materials; and to “all manner of service in the field” (Ex. 1: 11, 14).――――These treasure cities are identified with a high degree of certainty; and proximately some of the very kings by whom this service was exacted. Mons. Chabas[34] thinks he has found the Hebrews under name in official Egyptian records. He argues well that it must be in vain to look in the public monuments [_e. g._ in their temples] for any thing disastrous to the king or to his people――those monuments being consecrated to the triumphs and glories of the kingdom――official bulletins for this very purpose. This consideration rules out the ten plagues; the escape of the Hebrews; the overthrow of the Egyptians in the Red Sea. Events so disreputable and disastrous to Egypt need not be looked for on her sacred monuments.――――But the records on papyrus, consisting of both official and private correspondence, military reports, surveys of public works, financial accounts, etc., may furnish their name. The Hebrews were an important colony, held forcibly upon the soil of Egypt, employed largely upon her public works. Consequently some notice of them may be reasonably looked for in the class of documents pertaining to the business of the realm.――――Mons. Chabas maintains very sensibly that we should look for this people under the name “_Hebrews_;” not “children of Israel”――this being rather a religious than an ethnic designation; not “Israelites”――this name not having then come into use; not Jews, this name being first used many centuries later. Three documents have been recently discovered which speak of a foreign race under the hieroglyphic name “Aperiu.” On principles of comparative philology, Mons. Chabas makes this word the equivalent of _Hebrew_.――――In the first document the scribe Kanisar reports to his superior: “I have obeyed the command which my master gave me to provide subsistence for the soldiers and also for the Aperiu who carry stone for the great Bekhen of King Rameses. I have given them rations every month according to the excellent instructions of my master.”[35]――――The second is similar: “I have furnished rations to the soldiers and also to the Aperiu who carry stone for the sun of [the temple of] the sun, Rameses Meriamen, to the south of Memphis.” Furthermore, Egyptian records show that they put their prisoners of war to such labors; for their kings record on the temples the number of captives they have taken to labor upon the temples of their gods.