Thermuthis therefore perceiving him to be so remarkable a child,
adopted him for her son, having no child of her own. And when one time
had carried Moses to her father, she showed him to him, and said she thought
to make him her successor, if it should please God she should have no legitimate
child of her own; and to him, I have brought up a child who is of
a divine form, What Josephus here says of the beauty of Moses, that he was of a divine
form, is very like what St. Stephen says of the same beauty; that Moses
was beautiful in the sight of Acts 7:20. 
and of a generous mind; and as I have received him from the bounty of the
river, in , I thought proper to adopt him my son, and the heir of thy kingdom. 
And she had said this, she put the infant into her father’s hands: so he
took him, and hugged him to his breast; and on his daughter’s account,
in a pleasant way, put his diadem upon his head; but Moses threw it down
to the ground, and, in a puerile mood, he wreathed it round, and trod upon
his feet, which seemed to bring along with evil presage concerning the
kingdom of Egypt . But when the sacred scribe saw this, (he was the person
who foretold that his nativity would the dominion of that kingdom low,)
he made a violent attempt to kill him; and crying out in a frightful manner,
he said, This, O king! this child is he of whom God foretold, that
if we kill him we shall be in no danger; he himself affords an attestation
to the prediction of the same thing, by his trampling upon thy government,
and treading upon thy diadem. Take him, therefore, out of the way, and
deliver the Egyptians from the fear they are in about him; and deprive
the Hebrews of the hope they have of being encouraged by him. But
Thermuthis prevented him, and snatched the child away. And the king was
not hasty to slay him, God himself, whose providence protected Moses, inclining
the king to spare him. He was, therefore, educated with great care. So
the Hebrews depended on him, and were of good hopes great things would
be done by him; but the Egyptians were suspicious of what would follow
such his education. Yet because, if Moses had been slain, there was no
one, either akin or adopted, that had any oracle on his side for pretending
to the crown of Egypt , and likely to be of greater advantage to them, they
abstained from killing him. HOW MOSES MADE WAR WITH THE ETHIOPIANS, MOSES, therefore, when he was born, and brought up in the foregoing
manner, and came to the age of maturity, made his virtue manifest to the
Egyptians; and showed that he was born for the bringing them down, and
raising the Israelites. And the occasion he laid hold of was this: - The
Ethiopians, who are next neighbors to the Egyptians, made an inroad into
their country, which they seized upon, and carried off the effects of the
Egyptians, who, in their rage, fought against them, and revenged the affronts
they had received from them; but being overcome in battle, some of them
were slain, and the rest ran away in a shameful manner, and by that means
saved themselves; whereupon the Ethiopians followed after them in the pursuit,
and thinking that it would be a mark of cowardice if they did not subdue
all Egypt , they went on to subdue the rest with greater vehemence; and
when they had tasted the sweets of the country, they never left off the
prosecution of the war: and as the nearest parts had not courage enough
at first to fight with them, they proceeded as far as Memphis , and the
sea itself, while not one of the cities was able to oppose them. The Egyptians,
under this sad oppression, betook themselves to their oracles and prophecies;
and when God had given them this counsel, to make use of Moses the Hebrew,
and take his assistance, the king commanded his daughter to produce him,
that he might be the general This history of Moses, as general of the Egyptians against the Ethiopians,
is wholly omitted in our Bibles; but is thus by Irenaeus, from Josephus,
and that soon after his own age: — Josephus says, that when Moses
was nourished in the palace, he was appointed general of the army against
the Ethiopians, and conquered them, when he married that king’s daughter;
because, out of her affection for him, she delivered the city up to him. 
See the Fragments of Irenaeus. ap. edit. Grab. p. 472. Nor perhaps did
St. Stephen refer to any thing else when he said of Moses, before he was
sent by God to the Israelites, that he was not only learned in all the
wisdom of the Egyptians, but was also mighty in words and in deeds, Acts
7:22. 
of their army. Upon which, when she had made him swear he would do him
no harm, she delivered him to the king, and supposed his assistance would
be of great advantage to them. She withal reproached the priest, who, when
they had before admonished the Egyptians to kill him, was not ashamed now
to own their want of his help. So Moses, at the persuasion both of Thermuthis and the king himself,
cheerfully undertook the business: and the sacred scribes of both nations
were glad; those of the Egyptians, that they should at once overcome their
enemies by his valor, and that by the same piece of management Moses would
be slain; but those of the Hebrews, that they should escape from the Egyptians,
because Moses was to be their general. But Moses prevented the enemies,
and took and led his army before those enemies were apprized of his attacking
them; for he did not march by the river, but by land, where he gave a wonderful
demonstration of his sagacity; for when the ground was difficult to be
passed over, because of the multitude of serpents, (which it produces in
vast numbers, and, indeed, is singular in some of those productions, which
other countries do not breed, and yet such as are worse than others in
power and mischief, and an unusual fierceness of sight, some of which ascend
out of the ground unseen, and also fly in the air, and so come upon men
at unawares, and do them a mischief,) Moses invented a wonderful stratagem
to preserve the army safe, and without hurt; for he made baskets, like
unto arks, of sedge, and filled them with ibes, Pliny speaks of these birds called ibes; and says, The Egyptians
invoked them against the serpents, Hist. Nat. B. X. ch. 28. Strabo
speaks of this island Meroe , and these rivers Astapus and Astaboras, B.
XVI. p. 771, 786; and B XVII. p. 82]. 
and carried them along with them; which animal is the greatest enemy to
serpents imaginable, for they fly from them when they come near them; and
as they fly they are caught and devoured by them, as if it were done by
the harts; but the ibes are tame creatures, and only enemies to the serpentine
kind: but about these ibes I say no more at present, since the Greeks themselves
are not unacquainted with this sort of bird. As soon, therefore, as Moses
was come to the land which was the breeder of these serpents, he let loose
the ibes, and by their means repelled the serpentine kind, and used them
for his assistants before the army came upon that ground. When he had therefore
proceeded thus on his journey, he came upon the Ethiopians before they
expected him; and, joining battle with them, he beat them, and deprived
them of the hopes they had of success against the Egyptians, and went on
in overthrowing their cities, and indeed made a great slaughter of these
Ethiopians. Now when the Egyptian army had once tasted of this prosperous
success, by the means of Moses, they did not slacken their diligence, insomuch
that the Ethiopians were in danger of being reduced to slavery, and all
sorts of destruction; and at length they retired to Saba , which was a royal
city of Ethiopia , which Cambyses afterwards named Mero , after the name
of his own sister. The place was to be besieged with very great difficulty,
since it was both encompassed by the Nile quite round, and the other rivers,
Astapus and Astaboras, made it a very difficult thing for such as attempted
to pass over them; for the city was situate in a retired place, and was
inhabited after the manner of an island, being encompassed with a strong
wall, and having the rivers to guard them from their enemies, and having
great ramparts between the wall and the rivers, insomuch, that when the
waters come with the greatest violence, it can never be drowned; which
ramparts make it next to impossible for even such as are gotten over the
rivers to take the city. However, while Moses was uneasy at the army’s
lying idle, (for the enemies durst not come to a battle,) this accident
happened: - Tharbis was the daughter of the king of the Ethiopians: she
happened to see Moses as he led the army near the walls, and fought with
great courage; and admiring the subtility of his undertakings, and believing
him to be the author of the Egyptians’ success, when they had before despaired
of recovering their liberty, and to be the occasion of the great danger
the Ethiopians were in, when they had before boasted of their great achievements,
she fell deeply in love with him; and upon the prevalency of that passion,
sent to him the most faithful of all her servants to discourse with him
about their marriage. He thereupon accepted the offer, on condition she
would procure the delivering up of the city; and gave her the assurance
of an oath to take her to his wife; and that when he had once taken possession
of the city, he would not break his oath to her. No sooner was the agreement
made, but it took effect immediately; and when Moses had cut off the Ethiopians,
he gave thanks to God, and consummated his marriage, and led the Egyptians
back to their own land. HOW MOSES FLED OUT OF EGYPT INTO MIDIAN. Now the Egyptians, after they had been preserved by Moses, entertained
a hatred to him, and were very eager in compassing their designs against
him, as suspecting that he would take occasion, from his good success,
to raise a sedition, and bring innovations into Egypt ; and told the king
he ought to be slain. The king had also some intentions of himself to the
same purpose, and this as well out of envy at his glorious expedition at
the head of his army, as out of fear of being brought low by him and being
instigated by the sacred scribes, he was ready to undertake to kill Moses:
but when he had learned beforehand what plots there were against him, he
went away privately; and because the public roads were watched, he took
his flight through the deserts, and where his enemies could not suspect
he would travel; and, though he was destitute of food, he went on, and
despised that difficulty courageously; and when he came to the city Midian,
which lay upon the Red Sea , and was so denominated from one of Abraham’s
sons by Keturah, he sat upon a certain well, and rested himself there after
his laborious journey, and the affliction he had been in. It was not far
from the city, and the time of the day was noon, where he had an occasion
offered him by the custom of the country of doing what recommended his
virtue, and afforded him an opportunity of bettering his circumstances. For that country having but little water, the shepherds used to seize
on the wells before others came, lest their flocks should want water, and
lest it should be spent by others before they came. There were now come,
therefore, to this well seven sisters that were virgins, the daughters
of Raguel, a priest, and one thought worthy by the people of the country
of great honor. These virgins, who took care of their father’s flocks,
which sort of work it was customary and very familiar for women to do in
the country of the Troglodytes, they came first of all, and drew water
out of the well in a quantity sufficient for their flocks, into troughs,
which were made for the reception of that water; but when the shepherds
came upon the maidens, and drove them away, that they might have the command
of the water themselves, Moses, thinking it would be a terrible reproach
upon him if he overlooked the young women under unjust oppression, and
should suffer the violence of the men to prevail over the right of the
maidens, he drove away the men, who had a mind to more than their share ,
 and afforded a proper assistance to the women; who, when they had received
such a benefit from him, came to their father, and told him how they had
been affronted by the shepherds, and assisted by a stranger, and entreated
that he would not let this generous action be done in vain, nor go without
a reward. Now the father took it well from his daughters that they were
so desirous to reward their benefactor; and bid them bring Moses into his
presence, that he might be rewarded as he deserved. And when Moses came,
he told him what testimony his daughters bare to him, that he had assisted
them; and that, as he admired him for his virtue, he said that Moses had
bestowed such his assistance on persons not insensible of benefits, but
where they were both able and willing to return the kindness, and even
to exceed the measure of his generosity. So he made him his son, and gave
him one of his daughters in marriage; and appointed him to be the guardian
and superintendent over his cattle; for of old, all the wealth of the barbarians
was in those cattle.