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The Student's Ancient History.

THE ANCIENT HISTORY

OF

THE EAST.

FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE CONQUEST BY ALEXANDER THE GREAT.

INCLUDING EGYPT, ASSYRIA, BABYLONIA, MEDIA, PERSIA; ASIA .MINOR, AND PHOENICIA.

By PHILIP SMITH, B.A.,

AUTHOR OF TUE " UISTOllY OF THE WOULD."

Early Assyrian Chariot.

Illustrated by Engravings on Wood,

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,

NEW YORK AND LONDON,

Assyrian Cylinder.

PREFACE.

A knowledge of the History of the East is indispensable to the student of Classical Literature. In the earliest records, he meets with doubtful traditions—and further study reveals undoubted signs — of older forms of civilization, which helped to determine those of Greece and Rome. Egypt and Phoenicia loom up, however vaguely, in what he learns of the origin of Greek society, arts, and letters. The earliest and noblest poetry of Greece and of the world, as well as the legend of Koine's original, bring him at once in contact with an Asiatic kingdom, of whose real existence even he is left in doubt. As his first reading of Greek poetry excites his curiosity about Troy, so his earliest lessons in Greek prose plunge him into the midst of the history of Persia, and into the heart of the region of the great Eastern empires. His first guide to the history of Greece is an author who—with a wise prescience of that method of study which we have only learned of late—carries him at once to Assyria and Babylon, Egypt and Libya, Lydia and Persia, that, in the light of the knowledge of the East, he may see the true meaning of the victories which form the glory of the history of Greece. And, at every succeeding step, he finds himself in contact with Oriental forms of government and civilization, and he learns that the victories of Alexander, Scipio, and Augustus were the decisive steps in the <n*eat confiict between Eastern aiul Western principles of Social life. 44l6id

viii

PREFACE.

Clearly, therefore, he has learned but half the lesson of an cient history, so long as he sees the Oriental element only in that background which is all that can be allotted to it in the special histories of Greece and Rome. To present the other half is the object of the present work, which is designed to be at once a necessary supplement to those histories, and a sketch of the Oriental states which deserve study for their own intrinsic interest.

That interest has been immeasurably increased, within the period of one generation, by those wonderful discoveries in hieroglyphic and cuneiform literature which—at least in the principles of interpretation and in a large mass of positive results—have outlived the stage of incredulity, and become a recognized branch of ancient learning. That the results thus gained may be made more clear and interesting, the present work contains some account of the processes of discovery. How much the interest of these discoveries is enhanced by the light they throw npon Scripture history, will be apparent to every reader of the following pages.

The diversities of interpretation—though based on the same essential principles, and leading to results for the most part wonderfully consistent—have given rise to what may be almost called two schools of cuneiform scholarship : the English, headed by Sir Henry C. Rawlinson, and the French, headed by M. Jules Oppert. The authorities quoted in the following pages will show the desire of the writer to use the best results of the labors of both schools. The nature of these inquiries—so novel, and still in a state so progressive—has made it necessary to give authorities and explanatory notes more fully than in other volumes of this series. The advanced student, for whom this work is designed, will thus be aided to distinguish certain from doubt' ful results, and will see the lines along which his further studies should be directed.

The work is based on an independent study of the ancient writers, and a careful use of the best modern authorities. Great advantage has, of course, been derived from the inval

PREFACE.

liable materials collected in the Notes and Essays to Professor Raavlinson's Translation of Herodotus by Sir Gardner Wilkinson, Sir H. C. Raavlinson, and the Editor himself ; and from Professor Raavlinson's " Five Ancient Monarchies."¹ For Egypi^ besides the works of Sir Gardner Wilkinson, Professor Kenrick's "Ancient Egypt" has been constantly consulted; and so, also, has the same author's scholarly Avork upon " Phoenicia." The book on Assyria and .Babylonia could not have been written without the works of Mr. La yard, and some invaluable results of the latest researches are due to the writings of M. Oppert, Special acknowledgment has to be made of the use made throughout the work of M. Charles Lenormant's " Histoirc Ancienne de l'Orient."² How little the present writer has adhered slavishly to that work, the merits of which marked it as a good general guide, how often he has maintained other views, and how constantly he has expressed his own judgment on the events related, will be best seen by a comparison of the two books. Moreover, the present work is brought down to Alexander's conquest, the true epoch at which the East yielded to the West; whereas M. Lenormant stops, with a somewhat startling abruptness, at the beginning of the Persian wars with Greece.

As the History of the Jews has been treated at length in the " Student's Old Testament History," the writer has thereby acquired fuller space for the other branches of the subject. For the object has not been to draw up a mere skeleton or epitome, but a narrative full and circumstantial enough to possess life and interest, and to leave that impression on the memory which mere outlines can never produce; since a summary can only be of real service as an index to knowledge already acquired. To this narrative only so much has been added in the way of discussion as the nature

¹ The first editions of both these works are quoted throughout, except in a feu-special instances.

² It may be weli to explain that the whole of this work was written, printed, and revised (excepting the two concluding chapters on Phoenicia) before the appearance of the English translation of M. Lenormant's history.

x

PREFACE.

of the, subject seemed actually to require. In fine, an ear nest effort has been made to produce a Manual, both for the student and general reader, of the present state of our knowledge on a subject the interest of which is daily growing, its bounds enlarging, and its details becoming more definite and certain by the progress of inquiry.

Plants from Egyptian Sculptures.

CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION.

pagb

The Nations and their Abodes.........................-...................... 17

Notes and Illustrations:

(A.) Table of the Indo-European Family of Languages.... 2* (B.) Table of the Semitic Family of Languages............. 29

BOOK I. EGYPT AND ETHIOPIA.

OHAP.

I. The Country, the River, and the People.................. 30

II. Authorities for the History of Egypt...................... 47

Notes and Illustrations:

Contemporaneousness of Dynasties............................... 59

III. The Old Memphian Monarchy.................................. 00

IV. The Middle Monarchy and the Shepherd Kings........ 81

V. The New Theban Monarchy.—The Eighteenth Dynasty................................................................... 103

VI. The new Theban Monarchy (continued).—The Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties........................... 118

VII. New Kingdoms in the Delta and the Ethiopian Dynasty— Dynasties XXI.-XXV.—u. c. 1100 (about)-

GG-t..................................................................... 135

VIII. The Later Sa'ite Monarchy—Twenty-sixth Dynasty—

b.c. (5G5-527 or 525...........................,.................... 1G3

IX. The Institutions, Religion, and Art? of Egypt.......... 181

xii

CONTENTS.

BOOK II. ASSYRIA AND BABYLON.

OIIAP. PAGE

X. The Region of the Euphrates and Tigris—Primitive

Kingdoms............................................................. 219

Notes and Illustrations:

(A.) Early Babylonian Chronology.............................. 243

(B.) On the Chaldajans and the Akkad........................ 244

XI. Early History of Assyria. The Mythical Legends ;

and the Earlier Kings of the Old Monarchy......... 247

Notes and Illustrations :

On the Site and Extent of Nineveh.............................. 273

XII. The Old Assyrian Empire, b.c. 886-746................... 27G

XIII. The New Assyrian Empire, Part I. Tiglath-Pileser

II., Shalmaneser, and Sargon. b.c. 745-704........... 300

XIV. The New Assyrian Empire (concluded). Sennacherib

and his Successors, b.c. 704-625........................... 316

XV. The Babylonian or Ciiald^ean Empire, b.c. 625-538... 339 Notes and Illustrations:

^Standard Inscription" of Nebuchadnezzar.................. 362

XVI. The Art and Civilization of Babylonia and Assyria... 364 XVII. The Cuneiform Writing and Literature, the Science

and Religion, of the Babylonians and Assyrians.... 387

BOOK III.

THE MEDO-PERSIAN EMPIRE, AND ITS SUBJECT-COUNTRIES

IN ASIA.

XVIII. The Primitive Aryans and the Religion of Zoroaster 413

XIX. Rise of the Median Kingdom.................................... 439

XX. The Nations of Asia Minor—The Table-land and

North Coast......................................................... 457

XXI. The Nations of Asia Minor—The South and West

Coasts................................................................. 473

XXII. Early History of Lydia........................................... 498

XXIII. Lydia and Media.—From Gyges to Cyaxares and Aly-

attes.—About b.c. 716 to b.c. 560.—The Cimmerian and Scythian Invasions of Asia.............................. 508

XXIV. The Median Empire overthrown by Cyrus.—b.c. 594-

558...................................................................... S26

CONTENTS. _s

hap. , _p^

XXV. Crnus the Great and Cr<esus. Overthrow of Lydia

and Babylon.—b.c. 560-529................................... 542

XXVI. Cambyses.—The Magian Usurpation.—Restoration of

the Monarchy by Darius.—b.c. 529-522.................. 552

XXVII. Climax of the Persian Empire.—Darius, the Son of

Hystaspes.—b.c. 521-486....................................... 567

XXVIII. The Decline and Fall of the Persian Empire.—Xerxes

I. to Darius III., b.c. 486-330................................ 581

THE HISTOIIY OF PHOENICIA.

XXIX. Part I.—To the Time of Tyre's Supremacy............... 594

XXX. Part II.—From the Age of David and Hiram r<> the taking of Tyre by Alexander.—About b.c. 1050 to

b.c. 332................................................................ G18

Index..................................................................... Go 7

Head of a Persian King (Persepoiis).

HIEROGLYPHICS.

AN EGYPTIAN THRESHING-SONG.

{From a Tomb at Eileithyias).

0 ~vvv^

// /vwnaa /vwwva III III

//......

/WVWNA I I I

» « b b'

I I I

I t

TRANSLATION. (By Champoilion.)

(1) "Thresh for yourselves {twice, a),

(2) 0 Oxen,

(3) Thresh for yourselves {twice, b),

(4) Measures for yourselves,

(5) Measures for your masters."— {From Sir J. G. Wilkinson.)

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

An Egyptian Temple, with the Priests bringing in the Ark of the

God.........................................................................Frontispiece.

Early Assyrian Chariot....................................................Title-Paye.

Assyrian Cylinder................................................Back of Title-Page.

pagr

Plants from Egyptian Sculptures.........,........................................ xi

Head of a Persian King (Persepolis)............................................ xiii

Hieroglyphics—An Egyptian Threshing-Song............................. xiv

Assyrian Pattern (Nimrud)......................................................... 17

The Nile during the Inundation................................................... 30

Boat of the Nile....................................................................... 46

Ruins and Vicinity of Philas....................................................... 47

Hieroglyph of Menes................................................................. 56

Sphinx and Pyramids................................................................ 60

Quarry-marks on Stones in the Great Pyramid................................ 62

Plan of the Pyramids of Jizeh..................................................... 63

Hieroglyph of Shafre................................................................ 64

Hieroglyph of Memphis............................................................. 71

Bull-Fight......................................................................... 81

Memnonium during the Inundation.............................................. 103

Pavilion of Rameses III............................................................ 118

An Egyptian Archer carrying spare Arrows.................................... 134

Allies of the Egyptians.............................................................. 135

Dress of an Egyptian King...................................................•..... 163

Funeral Boat, or Baris............................................................... 181

Hieroglyphic Characters............................................................. 213

Tomb at Sakhara, arched with Stone, inscribed with the Name of Psam-

atikll...............................................................................• 217

The Mound of Birs-Nimrud......................................................... 219

Figures from the Signet Cylinder of King Urukh............................. 245

The Mesopotamian Plain........................................................... 247

Figure of Tiglath-pileser I. (From a Rock-Tablet near Korkhar.)....... 269

Site of Nineveh........................................................................ 272

Ruins of Nineveh...................................................................... 274

The Mound of Nimrud.............................................................. 276

Plan of the Mound of Nimrud..................................................... 279

Plan of Palace of Asshur-nasir-pal................................................ 282

Black Obelisk, from Nimrud....................................................... 289

Prisoners presented by the Chief Eunuch (Nimrud Obelisk)................ 293

xvi

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAOfl

Nebo (from a Statue in the British Museum)..........................,.....296

Excavations at Koyunjik....................................„....................„.. 300

Glass Vase, bearing the Name of Sargon, from Nimrud...................... 314

King punishing Prisoners (Khorsabad).......................................... 315

Assyrians flaying their Prisoners.................................................. 316

Hound held in Leash (Koyunjik)................................................. 338

View of Babil from the West...................................................... 339

Ancient Assyrian Cylinder in Serpentine........................................ 364

Babylonian Brick..............................................................._s..... 366

Chaldaiau Reeds (from a Slab of Sennacherib)................................. 367

Bowariyeh............................................................................. 368

Temple of the Moon, Mugheir..................................................... 372

Seal-Cylinder on metal Axis....................................................... 375

Serio-Comic Drawing. (From a Cylinder).................................... 386

Fallen Rock Sculptures at Bavian................................................ 387

Cuneiform Characters................................................................ 389

Hieratic Characters................................................................... 390

Emblems of Asshur (after Lajard)................................................ 410

Royal Cylinder of Sennacherib.................................................... 410

Emblems of the Principal Gods. (From an Obelisk in the British

Museum)............................................................................ 412

Persepolis............................................................................... 413

The Persian "Ferouher"........................................................... 437

The Rock of Behistun................................................................ 438

Sculptures on the Rock of Behistun.............................................. 456

Mons Argasus, in Cappadocia....................................................... 457

Rock-cut Lycian Tomb.............................................................. 473

Coin of Lycia......................................................................... 497

Tomb of Midas, King of Phrygia, at Nacolicia............................. .. 498

Coin of Sardis......................................................................... 506

Ruins of Miletus...................................................................... 508

Tomb of Alyattes, Sepulchral Chamber.......................................... 525

Tomb of Cyrus at Murg/idb, the ancient Pasargadaj......................... 526

Ruins of Sardis........................................................................ 542

Double Griffin Capital (Persepolis)............................................... 551

Bronze Figure of Apis............................................................... 552

Gateway to Hall of a Hundred Columns (Persepolis)........................ 565

Tomb of Darius........................................................................ 567

Mound of Susa......................................................................... 581

Grand Range of Lebanon........................................................... 594

Damascus............................................................................ 618

Bronze Lion, from Nimrud.............. ........................ ................. 624

Assyrian Pattern (Nimrud),

THE

ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST.

INTRODUCTION.

THE NATIONS AND THEIR ABODES.

5 1. The province and limits of Secular History. § 2. Distinguished from Sacred History. § 3. Antediluvian and Postdiluvian civilization. Primitive arts and institutions, § 4. Cradle of the Human Race. § 5. Geographical view of the Ancient World. Mountain-systems of Asia, Europe, and Africa. § G. The Great Desert Zone and its interruptions. The Nile, Euphrates, and Red Sea. The Oxns and Jaxartes. The outposts of aucient civilization. §7. The Races of mankind, and theirfirst migrations. The record in Genesis x. Four principles of Classification : race, language, country, and nation. § 8. Physiological distinction of Races. The Caucasian alone belongs to ancient history. § 9. Range of the ethnological table in Genesis. § 10. The Hamite Race, in Ethiopia and Arabia, Egypt, Libya, Palestine, and Babylonia. Cushite Kingdom of Nimrod. Characteristics of the race. 5 11. The Japhethite Race in Asia and Europe. § 12. The Shemite Race, in s. W Asia. § 13. Classification according to Language. § 14. Threefold division of Languages, the isolating, agglutinative, and inflecting; not-perfect tests of race. The Turanian family, almost beyond the range of ancient history, f 15. The two families of inflectional languages. § 10. The Indo-European Family. § 17. The Semitic Family. Sub-Semitic branch. The Egyptian language. § is. Correspondence of the families of languages with the classification of races. § 19. Distinction between the Eastern and Western nations. Its physical and moral causes. § 20. Antagonism of the East and West. Importance of the history of the East.

§ 1. Secular History treats of the human race as civilized, and as organized into political societies. It begins only when it can be based upon contemporary records. Mere indications of man's presence on the earth at some uncertain period are insufficient authorities. For the most part, they relate to the natural history of the species, not to the civil history of the race; and what further significance they may have belongs to historical hypothesis rather than to history. The flint implements and weapons found in certain strata of the earth's surface, and bearing the marks of human contriv ance—the piles covered by Swiss lakes, which have supported human habitations—the human bones carefully hidden in sepulchral barrows, or rudely scattered amidst the remains

18

THE NATIONS AND THEIR ABODES.

of extinct animals—are of the deepest interest to the student of anthropological science. Diffused over the surface of the world, both old and new, they may bear witness to the almost universal existence at some primeval age, whether antediluvian or still earlier, of men whose civilization was of the lowest and their labor of the hardest; but whose implements, however rude, prove that they rose above and had dominion over the brutes; whose rough pictures show some idea of art, while their care for sepulchral rites suggests their belief in a future state. But such inferences form no materials for history, unless these remains could be connected (like the monuments of Egypt) with races of which we have authentic records.

§ 2. On the other hand, the authoritative accounts, derived only from revelation, of the creation of man and the preparation of the earth for his abode ; of his primeval innocence and his fall; of the entrance of sin and the promise of redemption ; of his first probation and his destruction by the Flood; of the new patriarchal line that sprang from Noah, and their renewed declension ; of the choice of Abraham and his race to preserve religious truth and hope amidst a new moral deluge; and of the law given to them by Moses ; in short, the whole period till Israel, as a nation, comes in contact with the other nations, is best treated separately as Sacred History.¹

§ 3. With the antediluvian age, therefore, we have now no concern, except in so far as the relics of its civilization, preserved by Noali, were revived in the New World. Marriae/e had been ordained from the creation ; but polygamy was practised by Lamech, the seventh from Adam in the line of Cain. Material civilization received its stimulus from the curse which first made needful labor painful. The pursuits of the first two sons of Adam gave an example of the different occupations of the husbandman and the ])asto?'al life. The Cainite race, in their spirit of proud independence, gathered themselves into civic communities, and invented the industrial and some of the fine arts. Cain built the first city ; and of Lamech's two pairs of children, Jabal and Jubal represent the nomad pastoral life and the invention of musical instruments ; while Tubal Cain was the first worker in brass and iron, and (tradition adds) his sister, Naamah, invented spinning and weaving. Here are all the essential germs of material civilization, to which was added by Noah (if not before) the culture of the vine, and the art of wine-making.

¹ This part of Ancient History will be found in the "Student's Old Testament History," books i., ii., and iii.

CRADLE OF THE HUMAN RACE.

19

The use of animal food, perhaps already practised in the bloody banquets of the lawless antediluvians, was permitted to Noah, under the restriction of abstinence from blood ; and the new law against murder granted the power of life and death to the civil magistrate." That authority belonged for the present to the patriarch, whose family embraced (so far as the only historic record gives us any information) the whole surviving race of man." The narrative of the Deluge itself, and the wide-spread traditions which preserve its memory over the earth, are best referred to Sacred History.²

§ 4. Neither the place nor the time of the second origin of our race can be determined with any certainty.

The latter rests on calculations, for which we have neither a fixed starting-point nor undisputed methods. We have no trustworthy chronology till the time of the Babylonian empire.³

As to the former, there is more agreement. Nearly all interpreters of Scripture place the cradle of the Postdiluvian race in the highlands of Asia; and, while some contend for the Alpine plateau of Little Bokhara (the Belourtac/li) as the Merou and Berezat or Albora of Indian and Persian tradition, the more general opinion adheres to the mountains of Armenia. If the former is the more natural centre for the Aryan race, which took possession of Iran and Northern India, the latter (which prevalent tradition identifies with Ararat) seems the appropriate starting-place for the peoples of Europe, Western Asia, and North Africa.

§ 5. The regions just named form the whole scene of Ancient History; for of India we only have an occasional glimpse, as it is touched by the conquerors of Western Asia. That portion of the tripartite continent of the Old World which is the field of Ancient History lies wholly within the northern temperate zone ; for the tropic of Cancer passes just south of the Persian Gulf and the frontier of Egypt, It is divided by great mountain-chains and table-lands into three portions, both physically and historically distinct. The chief nucleus of its mountain system is in Armenia, whence ranges, prolonged to the west and east, sever the seats of ancient civilization from the great plain of Northern Europe and Asia, which slopes away to the Arctic Ocean.

The central Asiatic range, after sweeping round the southern margin of the Caspian Sea, pursues an easterly course to the Hindoo Koofth (the Indian Caucasus of the ancients),

² " Student's Old Testament History," chap. iv.

³ See the note on Scripture Chronology iu the " Student's Old Testament nistory," chap, iii., note A.

20

THE NATIONS AND THEIR ABODES.

north of Afghanistan and the Punjab, where another great knot is formed. One system running to the north-east under the names of Moussour and Altai, and another, the Himalayas, to the east, inclose between them the great table-lands of Tibet and Mongolia, which the former chains divide from the great Siberian plain, and the latter from the two Indian peninsulas ; while a third range, prolonged from the Himalayas to the north-east, divides the plateaux of Tibet and Mongolia from the maritime plains of China and Manchouria, From the central knot in Armenia, another chain runs to the southeast, along the edge of the Tigris and Euphrates valley, the Persian Gulf, aiuf the northern shore of the Indian Ocean, to the Delta of the Indus, where it is linked to the Hindoo Koosh by the Soliman Mountains, running north and south along the western margin of the Indus valley. These three ranges inclose the table-land of Iran.

The two chief Asiatic ranges are extended westward from Armenia in the chains of the Taurus and Anti-Taurus, which support between them the Peninsula of Asia Minor; while the Taurus throws off a southern branch, the Amanus, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, prolonged in the ranges of Lebanon, and culminating in the awful granite masses of the Peninsula of Sinai. The islands of the ^Egean connect, as by stepping-stones, the mountains of Asia Minor with those of Greece ; while the northern chain of Anti-Taurus (here called the Mysian Olympus) is only severed by the Bosporus from the Thracian system of Hremus (the Balkaii). Thence, prolonged to the north-west along the southern margin of the Danube valley, and thus linking itself to the Alps, and through them to the Pyrenees, this chief range of En-rope serves as the northern barrier of the three fair peninsulas which are formed by its southern branches. Above this chain (in latitude, not in height) a second, like a vast arch with its ends resting also on the Pyrenees and the Black Sea, the Cevennes, the Jura, the Vosges, the mountains of South German)-, and the Carpathians, inclose the valleys of the Rhone and Danube. From this second range the great plain of Northern and Western Europe slopes away ; but along its north-west edge, though broken by the sea into severed links, a transverse chain^runs through Scandinavia, the British Isles, Brittany, and the western side of the Spanish Peninsula, exhibiting in its geological formation some of the most ancient rocks of the earth's surface. Crossing the straits to Africa, the chain of Atlas forms the southern wall of the Western Mediterranean, and looks across to the mountains of Sicily from its eastern termination at Cape Bon.

RACES OF MANKIND.

2i

A secondary and much lower chain runs off to the southeast, skirting the Syrtes and forming the Libyan shore, to the Delta of the Nile, except where the Cyrenaic Peninsula rises to a greater height.

§ 6. South of the Atlas, the Syrtes, and the Libyan shore, the low land of the Great Libyan Desert (commonly, but scarcely accurately, called the Sahara) interposes its rainless waste of sand, broken only by an oasis here and tl er > between the basin of the Mediterranean and the rest o Africa, excluding the latter regions from the sphere of ancunt civilization. But this desert is only the western portion ol a great belt, of the same physical character, which stretches in an east and north-easterly curve from the Atlantic coast of Africa to the mountains of Manchouria ; rising into the desert table-lands of Arabia and Syria, Iran and Turan, and Gobi in Eastern Tartary. ■ -The valley of the Nile, the chasm filled by the Red Sea, and the basin through which the Tigris and Euphrates flow to the Persian Gulf, are breaks in this desert belt.

The valley of the Nile was the most ancient seat of a mighty kingdom, whose independent isolation was aided by its physical character, while its opening to the Mediterranean connected it with the European world. The valley of the Tigris and Euphrates was the ground on which various races disputed the mastery of Western Asia, from the age of Nimrod to the Caliphs ; while its possessors came in contact with the West by extending their conquests to Syria and * Asia Minor. The waters of the Red Sea, running up almost to the Mediterranean, have formed in all ages the highway of commerce between the countries of Europe and the shores of the Indian Ocean. So early was this commerce and that by way of the Persian Gulf opened, that we find the kings of Egypt and Assyria, as well as Solomon, supplied with the products of India; and, at a later period, the silk of China was used by the Asiatic Greeks and by imperial Rome.

On the north, the farthest part of Central Asia knowui to the ancients was the table-land of Turan, which, sloping westward to the Sea of Arcd, is traversed by the Oxus (Amou or Jy/nin) and the Jaxartes (Syr-deria). Their upper streams watered the fertile districts of Bactriana and Sogdi-ana, which formed the outposts of civilization, both under the Persians and the successors of Alexander; and through their passes commercial routes were established with China.

§ 7. Of the several races of mankind which peopled^ the ancient world—their first movements from their primitive seats ; their successive displacements by conquest or volunta

22

THE NATIONS AND THEIR ABODES.

ry migration ; and the positions they occupied at each period —our information depends chiefly upon the science of ethnology, ami still more on the comparison of languages, aided by tradition. But of the first steps in these movements we have one trustworthy record, clear in many points, though difficult in some, which is more and more confirmed by every conclusion to which science comes.

The Book of Genesis affirms the unity of the human race, while it distinguishes the three families which sprang from the three sons of Noah ; and describes their first diffusion from their primeval centre.⁴ That ancient record distinguishes the four principles of classification, which, to this day, are constantly confounded. The component members of the three races are described "after their families, after their tongues, in their lands, and in their nations:" and all sound research must still have regard to race and language, geographical position and political nationality;'° though each of these elements is more or less mixed up with the others. Nor must we forget the complex nature of the inquiry. We have to seek, not for any single movement from a common centre, nor even for successive impulses at intervals of time; but we must allow for the frequent flux and reflux of the tides of population.

§ 8. The most obvious test of race is physiological formation, as seen in the stature and proportions of the body, the complexion of the skin, the color and set of the hair, and, above all, the size and shape of the skull. Four races are thus distinguished—the White, or Caucasian / the Yellow, or Mongolian; the Black, Negro, or Xigritian ; and the Red, or American. The first was the sole possessor of ancient civilization; the second appears only occasionally on the scene of ancient history, when its nomad hordes come down from their homes in the plateaux of Central Asia, over which they have always wandered ; the third is only represented by the slaves depicted on Egyptian monuments ; the fourth does not yet appear at all.' The three last are excluded from the families enumerated in Genesis x.; not as negativing their descent from Noah, but because they lay beyond the geographical range embraced by the writer.

§ 9. That range is limited to the primary settlements of the Caucasian race. It seems to lie entirely within the 20th

⁴ Genesis x.

⁵ The tendency of onr own age to confound the first and last of these elements leads to remarkable complications.

⁶ This name does not prejudge the question of the primitive abode of the race: but it is given because the most perfect physical types are regularly found among the natives of the Caucasian ir-thmus.

RACES OF MANKIND.

23

arid 60th meridians of east longitude, and the 10th and 50th parallels of north latitude ; extending from the peninsula of Greece to the table-land of Iran, and from the northern shores of the Black Sea to the mouth of the Red Sea. Without discussing the several names in detail, we may be tolerably sure of these general results.

§ 10.—I. The Hamite Race, which seems first to have left the common home, is located in Africa and South Arabia, in four branches: 1. The Oushites. in Ethiopia and the South part of Arabia, separated only by, the Straits of Bab-el-Man-deb. 2. The Egyptians, under their historic name of M'iz-raim; with the kindred Philistines on the one side, and (probably) North African tribes on the other. 3. The Libyans (probably), designated by the name of Phut. 4. The Ca-. naanites, whose tribes are particularly enumerated. The mention of Sidon among these indicates that the first settlers in Phoenicia were Hamite; though the Phoenicians of history were undoubtedly Semitic. The like displacement clearly happened in Arabia, where the same names (Havilah and SJieba) occur among the sons of Cush, and again among those of the Shemite JoMan.

Besides these nations, the record mentions a personal name among the sons of Cush, JVi?nrod, the founder of a kingdom, with four cities, in the plain of Babylonia ;⁷ and there are later traces of Cushites in the East. They seem, in fact, to have spread over India and the islands of the Eastern Archipelago.

In all the countries of their abode, the Hamite race seem to have been the pioneers of material civilization, and the founders of states based on mere force. Their enduring monuments are gigantic buildings, the sculptures upon which attest the grossness of their worship of nature. Everywhere except in Egypt (and there also at last) they gave way before the races of Shem and Japheth, fulfilling Noah's prophetic curse, that Ham should be the servant of his brethren. Material grandeur yielded to spiritual power and the active energy of political life.

§ 11.—II. The Japhethite Race extends from the Caucasian region to the south-east over the table-land of Iran ; to the west over the peninsula of Asia Minor and the neighboring islands, as far as Greece (the " Isles of the Gentiles ") ; and to the north-west all round the shores of the Black Sea. That the tribes enumerated in the record were the parents of those which overspread all Europe on the one hand, and became masters of Northern India on the other, admits of no reasonable doubt.

⁷ See below, Book II., chap. x.

24 THE NATIONS AND THEIR ABODES.

§ 12.—TIL Between the other two, the Shemite Race remained nearer its primeval seats, as the destined guardian of the primeval religion and traditions. Its nucleus in Armenia (probably represented by the name Arpliasad) forms the apex of a triangle, resting on the Arabian peninsula ; along the east side of which we have the Assyrians (Asshur) and Elymaaans (Elam), the latter of whom gave way to the Japhethite Persians ; and on its west side the Aramaean race (Aram, denoting highland) of Northern Mesopotamia and Syria, whose Hebrew descendants (Eber) afterwards possessed the land of Canaan. The middle space of the Syrian Desert and the whole peninsula of Arabia is the seat of the Arab tribes denoted by JoMan, the son of Eber, with whom were afterwards mingled other Semitic descendants of Abraham.

§ 13. These general results are in striking agreement with the conclusions derived from the science of Comparative Language, which is now universally regarded as the best test of national affinity. As thought 1s the most characteristic function of man, so language, the organ of thought, is his most characteristic and permanent possession—permanent in its modifications as well as in its substance. Some caution is, indeed, necessary in applying the principle. That language is not always, and of itself alone, a sufficient test of race, we see in the English-speaking Celts of our own islands, whose native dialects are only partially retained, and still more in the nations of South-western Europe, absurdly called " the Latin races,¹' because of the language which they adopted from their Roman conquerors. Such acquired languages may generally, but not always, be distinguished by direct sources of historical information.

§ 14. Languages are divided, according to their form, into the three classes of isolating, agglutinative, and inflecting. Those of the first class consist of monosyllabic root^, entirely destitute of composition and grammatical inflection. In the second, grammatical changes are denoted by the mere juxtaposition of different roots. In the third, the prefixes and terminations which modify the meaning and relations of the principal root are welded with it into one word, having lost their radical character. But we can not regard these different forms of speech as tests of different races: they seem rather to be stages through which all languages have passed. They run into each other by imperceptible gradations ; from which we may safely conclude that every inflecting language must once have been agglutinative, and every agglutinative language once isolathig. The great type of an

THE SEMITIC "FAMILY, 25

isolating language is the Chinese. The agglutinative dialects are spoken chiefly by the nomad tribes of Asia and Northern Europe, and by some of those of Southern India, the Malay peninsula, and the Indian and Pacific archipelagos. Modern ethnologists regard them as characteristic of what they call the Turanian family. As this family lies almost entirely without the range of ancient history, we are under no necessity t& discuss the questions involved in this attempted classification.

§ 15. The inflectional languages are divided into two families, distinguished with great clearness, and comprehending those of all the nations with whose history we are now concerned. With sufficient resemblance in some of their most important roots to justify belief in their ultimate common origin, these two families exhibit the most striking diversities from one another and resemblances among their respective members. These diversities and resemblances are seen, not only in the roots, but chiefly in the grammatical inflections—elements necessarily developed by processes of change which make accidental coincidences on a large scale impossible. The two families are known by the names of Indo-European and Semitic.

§ 16.—I. The^Indo-European or Indo-Germanic languages are so named from the two extremities of the chain in which they stretch from south-east to north-west across Asia and Europe. They are sometimes also called Aryan, from the races which peopled Eastern Persia and Northern India. The sacred language of India, the Sanskrit, stands first in the series. The latter is also, organically, the most complete in its forms ; but it is too much to affirm that it is always the nearest to the common parent tongue, to which all the languages of the family point back. Next come the ancient and modern languages of Persia and the other countries on the table-land of Iran : then those of Armenia and the Caucasian isthmus; whence the family spreads out over all Europe, to the shores of the North Sea and the Atlantic.⁸

§ 17.—II. The. Semitic languages are so called, not as implying necessarily the common descent of the nations speaking them from Shem—for the linguistic classification is independent of', though co-ordinate with, the classification by race—but because the most conspicuous members of the family are those whose Shemite descent is affirmed in Scrip-ture : the Hebrews and Arabs, Syrians and Assyrians. These nations occupied, and for the most part still occupy, the south-west corner of Asia, to the left of the Lido-Germanic

⁸ See Notes and Illustrations—(A.) "Tabic of th« Indo-European Languages."

26-

TH E NATIONS AND THEIR ABODES.

zone ; pent in between the highlands of Armenia and Iran on the east, the Mediterranean and Red Sea on the west, and the Gulf of Arabia on the south.

But some languages are included in the family which have by no means the same marked affinity with the rest as that which unites the Indo-European tongues. Some authorities, guided by theories respecting the early relations of the Shemite and Hamite races, consider the Semitic family as originally Hamitic. But, as yet, comparative philology has not succeeded in establishing a distinct family of languages corresponding to the Hamitic race; and the languages of the latter are meanwhile classed as Sub-Semitic. Hence, we have the division into (1) Semitic Proper, including Ara-ma?an, Hebrew, Arabic, and Ethiopic ; and (2) the Sub-Semitic, including the Egyptian or Coptic, and perhaps the languages of the ancient Libyans, still preserved by the Ka-byles and Touargs of North Africa, and by some tribes of the Upper Nile.⁹ The affinities of the Egyptian language, however, are still an open question. It has elements in common with the Indo-European as well as the Semitic families, which may perhaps aid in guiding us a step nearer to the common original of human speech.

§ 18. The classification of nations by their languages has the great advantage of enabling us to construct an ethnological picture for any period at which the languages are known, and to follow the migrations of the peoples speaking the several tongues. Thus, for example, the common evidence of a Low German tongue enables us to trace back our own ancestors to their homes on the other side of the German Ocean. Language is a living fact, while the recorded or traditional history of the movements of races are in many points most doubtful.

Still, what has now been said will show the striking general agreement of the record in Genesis with the results of comparative philology. The Indo-European family corresponds to the Japhethite races, not only as far as the range included in the biblical record, but the extensions of the former are what might be expected from the latter. The range of the Semitic family proper is precisely that assigned to the Shemite races, with the addition of Ethiopia, where, as in neighboring parts of Arabia, they displaced the Cushites; while the more complicated relations of the sub-Semitic languages are what we might have expected from the movements of the Hamites and Shemites. The whole result is to divide the nations of the ancient world into two great

⁹ See Notes and Illustrations—(B.) "Table of Semitic Languages."

EASTERN AND WESTERN NATIONS.

27

groups, of which the one expanded, and made more free and powerful, the civilization begun by the other. The very names of Shera (exaltation) and Japheth (enlargement) are symbolical of those destinies of the races which, were foretold in Noah's prophecy:—" God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tabernacles (inherit the power and high privileges) of Shem."

§ 19. The course of history establishes another broad division of the ancient nations into the Eastern and the Western. The latter represents the free energy of the Indo-European races ; the former, not uninfluenced" by the same element, as contributed by the Aryan stock, absorbed it into its own mass of immobility and despotism. Thus the Median and Persian conquerors of the Babylonian Empire, and long afterwards the Greek rulers of Egypt and Syria, conformed to the Oriental type. The causes of this were both physical and moral. In those early ages, when men saw that

"The world was all before them, where to choose,'

the virgin basins of great rivers like the Euphrates and the Nile, teeming beneath a sub-tropical sun, became the flrst seats of civilization. An agricultural population, wedded to the soil, easily submitted to the royal claims which were the exaggeration of patriarchal power, and consoled themselves by admiring the pomp and luxury of their kings. The principle of obedience to authority, which preserved the true religion among the chosen people of God, was elsewhere debased into a religious reverence for despots. The same causes, which at first stimulated civilization, gave it a fixed and immobile character. The vast river basins, with only a narrow opening to the sea, were excluded from the vivifying influences which were ever moving on the indented shores of the Mediterranean, and on the varied surface of its great peninsulas; and the climate of the East admitted not the free life of European energy.

§ 20. From these causes, quite as much as from difference of race, springs that great distinction which marks the two different streams, and the two antagonistic principles, of ancient history; the eastern and the western ; the civilization of the Nile and the Euphrates with the fixed principles of their great monarchies, and the higher civilization and no-bier political, literary, and artistic life which grew up on the shores of the Mediterranean, and was destined to cover the whole world. Our early study of, and sympathy with the latter, is, however, left imperfect, unless we are familiar with what the former did to prepare its way-, so as to under

28

THE NATIONS AND THEIR ABODES.

stand the full significance of the ultimate triumph of the West.

The permanent character of Asiatic civilization enables us still to study its principles in their ancient abodes; and though the old Asiatic empires have long since vanished before the energy of conquering races, dissolving as easily as they were formed, leaving but fragmentary notices in ancient literature, the time has come when the newly deciphered records of Egypt and Assyria supply materials for the authentic ancient history of the East.

(A). Classes.

NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. Table or the Indo-European Family or Languages.

Branches.

Indic.

Iranic.

f Cymric..

Celtic... \

LGadhelic

Illyric... Hellenic.

Lettic.

Windic... <

Dead Languages. Living Languages,

Dialects of: (Prakrit and Pali, Modern) India.

\ and Vedic Sanskrit........)" The gypsies.

'Parsi, Pelilevi, Zend.......... Persia.

Afghanistan. Kurdistan. Bokhara.

Old Armenian................. Armenia.

.................................... Ossetlii.

⁷................................... Wales.

....................... Brittany.

< Cornish (...........

Scotland. Ireland. Isle of Man. Portugal. Spain. Provence.

.Dialects of Greek.

Oscan .................

Unibrian - Langue d'oc .

Latin ) Langue d'oil...... France.

................................... Italy.

jWallachia.

.................................... (The Grisons.

(Albania.

...... "(Greece.

f................................. Lithuania.

j Old Prussian................................

] (Friesland and

I .................................... - Livonia (Let-

( tish).

. _{t c}„ (Ecclesiastical Slavonic........ Bulgaria.

Southeast Sla- ^x Russia

^vonic........(.;."'. v.'.v.V....... . .........myna.'

(................................... Poland.

• Old Bohemian.................. Bohemia.

(Polabian............Eusatm._

West nic.

Slavo-

»° From Professor Max.Mi'iller's " Lectures on the Science of Language," p. 380.

NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

20

Classes.

Teutonic. <

Branches. Dead Languages. Living Languages.

Dialects of:

* . . r, (Old High German and) _n___

High German. -J _Middt_e High German.} ^Ge™y-

f Gothic...................................

! Anglo-Saxon............... England.

Low German.. { Old Dutch.................. Holland.

| Old Friesian................ Friesland.

I^Old Saxon.................. North Germany

(Piatt Deutsch). f Den mark.

Scandinavian.. Old Norse...................<j ^^way'

^Iceland.

(B). Table of the Semitic Family of Languages.

Classes. Dead Languages. Living Languages.

Arabic (....................................................... Dialects of Arabic.

or - Ethiopic............................................. Amharic.

Southern. (Himvaritic Inscriptions.....................................

f Biblical Hebrew................................."1 Dialects of the

Hebraic j ^ _Jews

or

at' 111 i Samaritan Pentateuch, 6a centnrv a.d..... ............

Middle. ^Q_arti_ing:_ni_ani Phoenician Inscriptions......J ............

f Chaldee, Masora, Talmud, Targum, Bibli-^j

Aramaic j cal Chaldee.................................... | ............

or { Syria e, Peshito, 2d century a.d............... } Neo-Syriac.

Northern, j Cuneiform Inscriptions of Babylon and Nip.- I

L even............................................. J ...........«

The Nile during the InundatioH.

BOOK I.

EGYPT AND ETHIOPIA.

CHAPTER I.

THE COUNTRY, THE RIVER, AND THE PEOPLE.

§ 1. The Egyptians were the first civilized state. § 2. Egypt formed by the valley of the Nile. Its boundaries. § 3. Description of the Nile. The Blue and White Rivers. Sources of the Nile. § 4. Course of the Nile : (i.) to its junction with the Tacazze. The Island of Meroe. § 5. (ii.) Through Nnbia to Syene. The Cataracts. Islands of Philai and Elephantine. Legend related by Herodotus. Proximity to the tropic. § G. (iii.) To the apex of the Delta. The Fyum. The Pyramids. § 7. (iv.) The Delta. Distinction of Lower aud Upper Egypt. Months of the Nile in ancient and modern times. Lakes and Canals. Extent of the Delta. Its formation. § 8. Annual inundation of the Nile. Its regularity and beneficial effect. Its cause and season. Fertility of Egypt. § 0. Causes of the early prosperity of Egypt, (i.) Its inaccessibility to foreign invasion. § 10. (ii.) Its abundant supply of food. § 11. (iii.) Means of communication afforded by the Nile. § 12. The Nile a stimulus to mental effort and the cultivation of the sciences. Astronomy, Geometry, Engineering. § 13. Inflnence of the Nile upon the ideas aud religion of the Egyptians. The Nile and the Desert: Life and Death: Osiris aud Typhon. Burial of the Dead. Belief in a future state. §14. The geological formation of Egypt supplied abundant materials for the workman. Limestone, granite, marble, porphyry, basalt, etc. Iron and other mines in Sinai worked by the early Kings. § 15. Origin of the Egyptians. Hypotheses of their Ethiopian and Indian origin untenable. § 10. Physiological evidence. The Egyptian mummies and portraits show an Asiatic type. § 17. The Egyptian language is intermediate between the Asiatic and African dialects. § IS. Names of Egypt: native : Hebrew and Arabic: and Greek.

§ 1. In the earliest dawn of history the Egyptians appear as a highly civilized and powerful people. Many centuries

INFLUENCE OF RIVERS.

31

before any empire had been established on the banks of the Euphrates and the Tigris, and while the Hebrew patriarchs were wandering with their flocks and herds on the plains of Mesopotamia,¹ the valley of the Nile wns governed by a great and mighty sovereign, whose country was the granary of_% the surrounding nations,² and whose people cultivated the arts which refine and embellish life. But even then the pyramids were old, and the tombs at their base reveal a high degree of civilization. The inquisitive Greeks, who visited Egypt in the fourth and fifth centuries before the Christian era-, gazed with wonder upon the stupendous monuments which we still behold, and were powerfully impressed with the immemorial antiquity of the people.³ Tn short, there can be no doubt, from the concurrent testimony of Hebrew and Greek literature, and from the evidence afforded by the monuments of the country, that the Egyptians formed a great and civilized community long anterior to any other people, and consequently that they deserve the earliest place in the history of the ancient world.

§ 2. The history of all nations has been influenced by their rivers; and the course of civilization has usually followed, whether upward or downward, the course of the streams. But the influence exercised by the Euphrates, the Tigris, and the Ganges, upon the inhabitants of their plains, has been small compared with the influence of the Nile upon the people of its valley. To the Nile the Egyptians owed, not only their civilization and their peculiar institutions, but the very existence of their country. Egypt has been emphatically called " the gift of the Nile,"⁴ without whose fertilizing waters it would have been only a rocky desert. It is a long narrow valley, shut in by two ranges of mountains, through which flows the deep and mighty river, leaving on either side a slip of fertile land created by the deposits of its inundation. The average breadth of this valley is about seven miles ; but the mountain-ranges sometimes approach so near as almost to touch the river, and in no place are they more than eleven miles apart.

The boundaries of Egypt are marked by nature, and have been in all ages the same. On the east and west the Arabian and Libyan hills accompany the Nile, till the valley expands into the broad plain of the Delta upon the Mediterranean Sea, where the xYrabian Desert separates it from Pal-

¹ The history of the wars of the petty princes of Mesopotamia, recorded in Genesis xiv., proves that no powerful kingdom existed in that, country in the time of Abraham. ² Genesis xiii. 10 ; xlii. 1.

^s See especially the striking words of Plato, ^il De Leg.," ii. 0, p. 050.

⁴ Herod, ii. 5.

32

EGYPT AND ETHIOPIA.

estine upon'the east, and the Libyan Desert forms its western boundary. On the south, Egypt was divided from Ethiopia by the rapids (or "first cataract") between the islands of Elephantine and Philae. An ancient oracle of Amnion defined the Egyptians to be the people who dwelt below the cataracts, and drank of the waters of the Nile.⁵ Under the Romans these rapids were the southern boundary, not only of Egypt, but of their own empire ;⁶ and at the present day they separate the Egyptians and the Arabic language, to the north, from Uie Nubians and the Berber language to the south.⁷. But the Egyptian monarchy, in its palmy days, extended far beyond the First Cataract. The course of civilization and empire has always followed the course of the Nile, either upward or downward ; and this mysterious river is so closely interwoven with the history and institutions of the Egyptians, that a brief description of its course and its physical phenomena is an essential preliminary to the history of the country.

§ 3. The Nile⁶ is formed by the junction of two rivers, which meet in the latitude of 15° 37' north and longitude 33° east of Greenwich, near the modern village of Khartum, where it is above two miles broad. From the color of their waters these streams have received the names of the White and the Blue rivers. The White River flows from the south-west, and brings down the larger volume of water; the Blue River comes from the south-east, and is much the more rapid. The latter, and the Black River, Atbarah, or Tacazz'e (the ancient Astaboras), which joins the Nile from the east, both flow down from the highlands of Abyssinia with a moderate volume, except at the season of the summer rains, when their swollen and turbid waters wash down the earthy matters from which they derive their color and their najnes. The clear perennial stream of the White River has always been recognized as the true Nile; and its sources have been from the remotest times a mystery, and have given rise to various conjectures.⁹ Herodotus supposed that the river, which the Nasamones, after crossing the Great Desert, found flowing eastward, was really the

⁵ Herod, ii. IS. ⁶ Tac. "Ann.," ii. CI.

⁷ Parthey, "De Philis Insula." Berlin, 1S30.

⁸ The name of the Xile (NelXos-, Nilns) comes to us from the Greeks, who probably derived it from the Phoenicians. By Homer the river is called uEggjAus (Od. iii. 300, iv. 477); but in Hesiod (Theng. 33S) the name of Xile appears, and tin's designation is uniformly used by succeeding Greek writers. In hieroglyphic inscriptions the Nile is termed Hcipimu, or "the abyss of waters," and in Coptic Pcro,ov "The River." The Hebrews entitled it Xahal-Misrairn, or "River of Egypt" (Genesis xv. 18), and sometime¹? SiJwr, or " The Black " (Isaiah xxiii. 3 ; Jerem. ii. IS).

⁹ The sources of the Bine River were discovered by the traveller Bruce (a.o. 1770); but they had been visited before by the Jesuit missionary PaOz.

COURSE OF THE NILE THROUGH EGYPT.

3.3

Nile.¹⁰ Under the Roman empire, it was believed by many that the Nile rose in Mauretania, and, after flowing through the centre of Africa as the Niger, at last entered Ethiopia as the Nile.¹¹ Ptolemy, with that wonderful amount of information which he derived from adventurous traders, for later ages to lose and rediscover, marks the Nile as rising from some lakes or swamps, the " Paludes Nili," south of the Equator, which are in their turn fed by streams flowing from a range which he calls the " Mountains of the Moon.'' His views had been discredited for centuries, when the discoveries of Speke and Grant (in 1862), and Baker (in 1864), proved that the Nile issues, in lat. 2° 45' north and long. 31° 25' east from the reservoir of the lake Albert Nyanza, which receives, near the outlet of the river, a secondary stream from the lake Victoria Nyanza; these two lakes covering a vast space under and on both sides of the Equator.¹² Still, in strict geographical science, the problem is not finally solved, till the sources which feed these lakes, and especially the Albert Nyanza, shall have been discovered.

§ 4. From the Albert Nyanza the Nile flows to the north and north-east, increased by numerous tributaries, for about 1000 miles, to its junction with the Blue River at Khartum, and thence 170 miles farther, till, in lat. 17° 40' north and long. 34° east, it receives the Black River, its last confluent. The vast plain inclosed between these two chief tributaries was called the island of Meroe,¹³ and was the seat of the great sacerdotal kingdom of Ethiopia, connected by kindred and customs with Egypt, over which it once ruled for a time. In this part of its course the river flows by ruined temples and pyramids, which clearly indicate the connection.

§ 5. From the Astaboras to Syene, a distance of about 700 miles through Nubia, the navigation of the Nile is interrupted by various rapids, or, as the Greeks called them, cataracts. They are seven in number, and are formed by shelves of granite lying across the bed of the river. For a long distance the Nile traverses almost a desert till a little below the fourth cataract,¹⁴ where pyramids and temples, and oth-

¹⁹ Herod, ii. 33.

¹¹ This was stated by Juba, who lived in the reign of Augustus, ou the authority of Carthaginiau writers (Plin. v. 9, § 10). It is repeated by Dion Cassias (Ixxv. 13).

¹² The Victoria Nyanza lies betweeu lat. 0° 15' N. and 2° 30' S: the Albert Nyanza Is reported by the natives to be known as far as 2° S., and thence to trend away W, to an unknown distance. It is in this quarter that some considerable affluent may perhaps be looked for.

¹³ The ancient geographers frequently applied the name of isla7id to a space included between two or more confluent rivers. The modern name of Sennaar, denoting the country between the White and Blue Rivers, is probably identical with that of Shinar, in Mesopotamia, being both Semitic terms signifying Twc Rivers.

^u The cataracts are numbered in the order of the ascent of the river.

o*

EGYPT AND ETHIOPIA.

er traces of ancient civilization again appear. Between the second, or Great Cataract, and the First Cataract at Syene, the remains of ancient art are still more numerous; but the two ranges of hills almost shut in the river, and leave little space for cultivation.

" Immediately above the First Cataract lies the sacred island ofPhila?, the burial-place of the god Osiris, still coverecVwith numerous temples and colonnades. The fails extend from Philae to Syene¹⁵ and the island of Elephantine, a distance of five miles. Throughout this space the river is broken by fantastic masses of black porphyry and granite, which rise to the height of forty feet, and between which the waters force their" way in violent eddies and currents. According to a tale which Herodotus heard from the treasurer at Sai's, in Lower Egypt, the Nile rose at this point between two peaked mountains, called Crophi and Mophi, from which it ran down northward into Egypt, and southward into Ethiopia.¹⁶ It is not difficult to imagine that an inhabitant of Lower Egypt, who had been accustomed to the cairn unbroken flow of his majestic river, would be astonished at the strange convulsion of the water, and would endeavor to account for it by supposing that the river here burst forth from unfathomable caverns. Marvellous tales reached the "West of the deafening sound with which the water descended from lofty precipices ;¹⁷ whereas, in reality, the entire descent is only eighty feet in a space of five miles.

The statement of the ancient geographers, that the sun passed vertically over Syene at the summer solstice—his image being reflected perpendicularly in a well, and an upright stick casting no shadow, at noon—though not precisely accurate, may serve to remind us that the southern limit of Egypt is only just outside of the tropic of Cancel'. The true latitude of Syene is 24° 5' 23", and the least shadow of a vertical stick is only injTjth of its length.

§ 6. From its entrance into Egypt at Syene, the Nile flows in one unbroken stream for upward of 600 miles, as far as the apex of the Delta. The two chains of mountains which inclose its valley press unequally upon its banks. The western range recedes farther from the river, and hence most of the Egyptian cities were on its western side. The breadth of the valley varies from ten miles at the most to as little as two miles in some parts of Upper Egypt: the river itself is from 2000 to 4000 feet wide. For abo*ut fifty miles north of

¹⁵ The frontier city of Syene (Assouan) stood on the right bank of the river, just opposite to Elephantine. ¹⁶ Herod, ii. 28.

¹¹ Cicero, '• Soinn. Scip." 5; Seneca, "Nat. Qnsest." iv. 2.

COURSE OF THE NILE THROUGH EGYPT.

35

Syene, the valley is contracted and sterile, since the inundation is checked by the'rocks which approach the banks on either side; but at Apollinopolis the Great (JEklfou, in 25° north lat.) the valley begins to expand, and becomes still wider at Latopolis (EsneJi). Below this, it again contracts so closely as barely to leave space for the passage of the river; but almost immediately afterwards it opens out into a still wider plain, in which stood the royal city of Thebes. Here the western hills attain their greatest elevation, rising precipitously from the plain to the height of 1200 feet above the level of the river. The plain of Thebes is shut in on the north by another approach of the hills ; but they soon recede again, and henceforth the Xile flows through a valley of considerable width. Near Diospolis Parva, on the left bank, begins the canal called the Bahr- Ymsuf (Canal of Joseph¹"), which is, however, more probably an ancient branch of the Xile. It runs in a direction nearly parallel to the river, at a distance varying from three to six miles.

About eighty miles before reaching Memphis, the Libyan hills take a wide sweep to the north-west, and, again approaching the river, inclose a considerable space, known in ancient times as the district (nome) of Arsinoe, and now called the Fyum. This district, which was one of the most fertile in Egypt, contained the Lake of Moeris and the Labyrinth. Before reaching Memphis, the capital of Lower Egypt, and sometimes of the^whole land, we see the gigantic Pyramids standing upon a natural terrace of rock on the borders of the Libyan Desert. In that vast level, as they grow and grow upon the approaching traveller, they bear a nearer resemblance to artificial mountains than could have seemed within the compass of human art.

§ 7. A little below Memphis, the hills, which have so long accompanied the river, turn off on either side, leaving a flat alluvial plain, called from its triangular shape the Delta (A), through which the Xile finds its way into the sea by several sluggish streams. The Delta was also called Lower Egypt, while the valley of the Xile, from above the Delta to Syene, received the name of Upper Egypt.¹⁹ The apex of the Delta, or the point where the Xile divides, was in the time of Herodotus at the city of Cercasorus, about ten miles below Memphis; but it is now six or seven miles lower down the river.

The ancients reckoned seven branches of the Xile, of which

¹⁸ So named, not from the patriarch, bnt from an Arab ruler who improved it.

¹⁹ The term Middlk E^vrx is of late origin. As Mr. Kenrick truly observes, " the distinction of Upper aud Lower Egypt exists in geological structure, iu language, in religion, and in historical tradition."

36

EGYPT AND ETHIOPIA.

five were natural and two artificial; but the main arms were the Pelusiac, which formed the eastern boundary of the Delta ; the Ototopic, which formed the western ; and the Sebennytic, which continued in the direction of the river before its division. The bifurcation of the western branch made the Bolbitine mouth, east of the Canopic ; and three branches from the middle stream made the Phatnitic, the Meudesian, and the Tanitic or Static mouths, between the Sebennytic and Pelusiac. The navigable arms are now reduced to two, that of Posetta, the ancient Bolbitine, and that of Damiat, the ancient Phatnitic; and a vast tract between this and the old Pelusiac mouth is converted into the lake of Menzaleh, which communicates with the sea by the old Mendesian and Tanitic mouths. In fact, the Delta has always been fringed by lakes; such as that of Mareotis (now a mere lagoon), on the bank between which and the sea Alexandria was built; Buto (Bourlos), through which the Sebennytic mouth flowed ; and, half-way between Pelusium and the frontier of Palestine, the lake or morass of Serbonis, celebrated for the disaster of the army of Darius Ochus in b.c. 350 :

"That Serbonian bog, Betwixt Damiata aud Mount Casius old, Where armies whole have snnk."—Milton.

Besides the mouths of the Xile, the Delta was intersected bv numerous canals, said to have been dug by the hosts of prisoners whom Sesostris brought home after his victorious expeditions.²⁰ Of the canal designed to unite the Mediterranean ami the Red Sea we shall have to speak in another place.

The alluvial plain of the Delta forms a vast expanse unbroken by a single elevation, except where mounds of earth mark the site of ruined cities, or raise the towns and villages above the inundation. Its length in a straight line, from north to south,is nearly 100 miles; the breadth of its base, following the line of the coast from the Canopic to the Pelusiac mouth, is more than 200 miles; but the name of Delta is now applied only to the space between the Rosetta and Damiat branches, which is about 90 miles in extent,

Geological science shows that the Delta was once a deep bay and the valley of Upper Egypt an arm of the sea, from the bottom of which it has been raised, together with the adjoining isthmus of Suez. But during the whole course of human history, the country has shown the same chief features ; and the moderate rate of deposit of the soil, within the period measured by the existing monuments, leaves no ground for the speculations of Herodotus on the myriads of

²⁰ Herod, ii. 10S.

INUNDATION OF THE NILE.

37

years which the Nile must have taken in filling up a gulf which once resembled the Red Sea. The alluvium is only a superficial deposit on a bed of limestone, and the sea-shore of the Delta has rather receded than advanced within the memory of man.

§ 8. The most wonderful occurrence in Egypt, the event upon which the very existence of the people depends, is the annual inundation of the Xile. In all hot countries an abundant supply of water is indispensable to agriculture; and as .Egypt possesses no natural springs, and rain rarely falls in the upper country,³¹ the inhabitants can rely upon nothing but the waters of the Xile. The inundations of other rivers are capricious and uncertain, and carry with them desolation and destruction of life and property ; but the overflow of the Xile occurs at a regular and certain period, and spreads fertility and opulence over the land. The reasons of this periodical overflow early excited the curiosity of observers ■■ and various theories were invented to account for it.

The true cause, the periodical rains which fall in Ethiopia, was first pointed out by Agatharcides of Cnidus,²² who wrote in the second century before the Christian era. The periodic storms which, as in all tropical countries, follow the course of the vertical sun, descend in torrents of rain on the lofty mountains of Abyssinia. The White and Blue rivers are filled in May; but it is not till after the summer solstice that the Xile begins to rise in Egypt. At the beginning of July the rise becomes clearly visible, and the water mounts higher and higher every day. About the middle of August, the dams are cut, and the flood is drawn off by numerous canals; but the waters still continue to rise, and attain their greatest height in the last week of September, The. level of the flood remains stationary for about a fortnight, and then begins gradually to decline. During the inundation the land bears the aspect of a vast lake, out of which the towns rise like islands."

When the waters subside, they leave behind a thick black mud, which is superior to the richest manure, and produces crops of extraordinary fertility with hardly any cultivation. The ground requires the labor neither of the plough nor of the spade to prepare it for the seed, which, after being scattered upon the soil, and trodden in by cattle, springs up-rapidly under the warm sun of Egypt.²⁴. It was this which

3¹ Herodotus says, not at all (iii. 10); but, in fact, rain falls nbnfrt four or five limes^: a year in Upper Egypt ²² Bfiodonrs, i. 41.

²³ Herodotns (ii. 97) compares them to the islands rising out of the iEgean Sea.

²⁴ The intermixture of the black mud and bright green with v»Mch the land i* covered at this season i? happily alluded to by the poet (Virg.'^; Georg^ iv. 291) :•

"Et Viridem iEgyptum nigra fecnndat arena."

3>s

EGYPT AND ETHIOPIA.

made Egypt the granary of the ancient world from the time of the Jewish patriarchs to the downfall of the Roman empire.

Sometimes,however,the Nile fails to reach its usual height; large districts are left beyond its reach ; the harvest is scanty, and much misery is the consequence. For this reason intense anxiety prevails throughout Egypt, when the Nile begins to increase; and from the 3d of July its rise is proclaimed daily in the streets of Cairo.²⁵ In ancient times also its rise was carefully noted at Memphis, and messengers were sent to different parts of Egypt to inform the inhabitants of its increase or decline.²⁶ There were Kilometers in different parts of Egypt: that at Elephantine, remains of which still exist, was in the form of a staircase. The height of a good inundation is now about 24 feet, which appears to have been the usual quantity in ancient times.²⁷ If it falls below 18 feet dreadful famines ensue, and the wretched population perishes by thousands. So terrible have been their sufferings upon these occasions, that instances have occurred, both in ancient and modern times, when they have been driven to feed on human flesh.²⁸ On the other hand, an excessive inundation overflows the villages, and causes much destruction.²⁹

§ 9. The physical features of Egypt enable us easily to account for the early prosperity of the country. In the first place, its inhabitants were shut off from the rest of the world in a rock-bound valley, and had little to apprehend from foreign intruders. On its western side, it stood in little fear of the barbarous tribes of the desert; while, on the only open part of its eastern side, over the isthmus of Suez, the broad sandy desert which separated it from Asia presented obstacles to an invading army, which even Cambyses, wielding the whole power of the Persian empire, found it difficult to surmount. Hence, while other lands were constantly changing their inhabitants, and one nomad tribe was chasing another nomad tribe, the Egyptians remained stationary in the valley where they originally settled, cultivating the arts of agriculture and peace, and retaining the civilization which they early acquired. We shall see, as we proceed, the contrast presented by the revolutions that fol-

²⁵ Lane, Mod. Ewwtiavs, vol. ii. p. 257. ²⁶ Died. i. 36.

^J7 In the time of Herodotus (ii. 13) the height of a good Nile was fifteen or sixteen cubits; and the statue of the Nile, which Vespasian placed in the Temple of Peace, at Eome, was surrounded by sixteen diminutive figures emblematic of there measures (Plin. xxxvi. 9, § 14). This statue is preserved in the Vatican (Visconti, "Museo Pio Clement," vol. i. p. 291). See Kenrick's " Ancient Egypt." vol. i. p. S4.

²⁸ D;od. i. s4 ; Abdallatiph's " History of Egypt," p. 107, ed. White. ^ .

^ai For example, in January, 1x70. the Nile has risen higher than within living memory, causing a damage e^tnmrerl at £8,000,000 steiling.

CAUSES OF EGYPT'S PROSPERITY.

lowed one another in the more open valley of the Tigris and Euphrates, surrounded by the homes of warlike and conquering races.

§ 10. Two other causes contributed to the rapid growth of the nation—an abundant supply of food, and easy means of communication between different parts of the country. The increase of population in every country depends mainly upon the food which it produces; and, till there is a surplus quantity of food, and a part of the population is relieved from the necessity of tilling the ground for its subsistence, a nation can make no progress in the cultivation of the arts and sciences. In Egypt, the annual inundation of the Xile made a nomad life impossible; and the abundant crops, which the rich deposits yielded, stimulated population, and required the labor of only a small portion of the community.

§11. The other cause which favored the growth of the nation was the easy and uninterrupted communication at-forded to the inhabitants by the Xile. One of the great difficulties with which an infant state has to struggle is the absence of roads; and, till these are made, each part of the community must remain isolated, and dependent upon itself for the supply of its wants. It has taken powerful nations many centuries before they have been able to establish safe and easy means of communication bet ween distant parts of their dominions. But the Egyptians possessed from the beginning a natural highway—broad, level, aud uninterrupted. In Ethiopia, the cataracts of the river and the intervening deserts prevented intercourse between neighboring tribes, and confined each to its own district; whereas in Egypt the river flows on, without any impediments to navigation, from Syene to the Mediterranean.

There is another remarkable provision of nature, which renders the Xile a still easier means of communication. While the force of the current carries vessels downward, the northerly winds, which blow nearly nine months in the year, enable them to ascend the river. Moreover, these winds blow the most steadily during the time of the Hoods, when the stream is strongest, and when navigation upward would otherwise be impossible. These winds we're called by the Greeks Etesian, or yearly winds.³⁰

§ 12. While the Xile conferred so many material blessings upon the inhabitants of its valley, it also stimulated their rational faculties, and taught them to exercise forethought and prudence. Though it yielded an abundant supply of

³⁰ Herod, ii. 20. Some supposed that they caused Ihe iuuudatiou of the Nile bj folding back its waters from euteriug Ihe sea.

40

EGYPT AND ETHIOPIA.

food with little labor, yet it did not cherish habits of idleness. The Egyptians (lid not find, like the South Sea islanders, a continuous supply of food growing upon the trees over their heads, and were not able to neglect provision for the future. The annual inundation of the Nile compelled them to secure their dwellings and their property from the violence of the floods, and to collect a sufficient supj/ly of food to last while the land was covered with water.

As the inundation occurred at a stated period of the year, it became necessary to calculate the time of its recurrence, which could only be done by observing the course of the heavenly bodies. Hence the Egyptians divide with the Chaldeans the honor of having laid the foundations of Astronomy; and Herodotus tells us that they discovered the solar year, that is, the circuit of the sun among the stars, and divided it into 12 months and 365 days.³¹ As the inundation swept away all natural landmarks, it was necessary, when the floods subsided, to make an accurate division of the land, and to assign to each proprietor his proper fields. Hence arose the* science of Geometry.³³ With an increasing population, and with a territory limited by the sands of the desert, it became necessary to extend the inundation by artificial means to spots which it did not naturally reach. Experience taught that the fields were the most productive where the flood remained the longest, and had most time to deposit its fertilizing mud. Hence engineering science was early called into existence. Canals were dug to conduct the water where it was wanted, and its course was controlled by sluices, dikes, and similar works.

§ 13. But this was not all. This beneficent river, regarded as a god by the ancient Egyptians,³³ exercised a powerful influence upon their ideas, and especially upon their whole system of religion. Alongside of the Kile, the giver of every blessing, there was a potent enemy, the Desert, whose wasting sands were continually driving through the ravines of the mountains, and threatening to destroy the life-giving powers of the river. Hence there was ever before the eyes of the Egyptians a struggle between Life and Death, The Kile, never growing old, renewing its life every year, and calling forth nature into new and vigorous existence, was

⁵¹ Herod, ii. 9. He adds that their method of adding every year live days to their twelve months of thirty days each made the circuit of the seasons to return with uniformity} which it would not do, unless they also intercalated the odd quarter of a day which belongs to every year. This was in fact d me. though Herodotus did not Understand it, by the Sot Me (or Dog-Star) period of the priests, in which 14(5') Sot hi? years of P.e.H days were equal to 14">1 "vulgar" or " vairue" years of P,i>5 days ; f.»f one day in every four ye.irs make.? up a year (;!G,'5 days; in li'JO years.

³³ Herod, ii. 109. ³³ Herodoats (ii. 90) speaks of ^u the priests of the Nile."

IDEAS CONNECTED WITH THE NILE.

+ 1

the symbol of Life. The Desert, with its sombre hues, its unchanging appearance, its deadening and desolating influence, was the symbol of Death. The Xile, representing Life, became the Good Power, or Osiris; the Desert, representing Death, the Evil Power, or Typhon.

The nature of their country also determined the Egyptians respecting the disposal of their dead. They could not inter them in the valley, where the remains would be disturbed by the inundation ; they could not consign them to the river, which was too sacred to be polluted by any mortal body. But above the valley was the long line of rocks, in which caves could easily be excavated for the reception of the dead. The dryness of the climate was favorable to their preservation ; and the practice of embalming still further secured them from corruption and decay.

After a few generations the number of the dead in these receptacles far exceeded the number of the living. Hence the idea of death was brought prominently before the Egyptians. The contest, which was ever going on for the very existence of their land, gave a more present reality to the conflict of humanity itself; and while, on the margin of their valley, they were disputing the means of their existence with the devouring sand, they were also disputing with corruption their ofrn persons and immortality. The present life seemed only a small moment in time ; while the other world appeared vast, unlimited, and eternal. Accordingly, the present life was regarded by the Egyptians as only a preparation for a higher and better state of existence.³⁴

§ 14. Xo nation of antiquity possessed such a vast variety of monuments as the Egyptians. They studded the whole valley of the Xile in one long series. Of this, again, a reason is to be found in the physical formation of the country. The rocks on either side of the river yielded an unlimited supply of stone, of almost every variety, for the Egyptian workman; while the Xile afforded the ready means of conveying the largest masses from one part of the country to the other. In ascending the Xile from the Delta, two parallel courses of limestone accompany the traveller for a long distance. A little above Thebes begins the red sandstone, of which most of the Egyptian temples were built. In the neighborhood of Syene the particular kind of granite appears to which the name of syenite has been given; and on the eastern bank of the river are the granite quarries, from

³¹ There are some striking remarks respecting the influence of the Nile on the ideas anl religious system of the Egyptians in Miss Martine.iu's "Eastern Life. Past aud Pier-eut," vol. i. p. G-t seq.

42

EGYPT AND ETHIOPIA.

which the obelisks and colossal statues have been hewn. One obelisk still remains there, cut out but never removed from its native rock. In the mountainous district between the Nile and the Red Sea there is a still greater variety. Here are found quarries of white marble, of porphyry, of basalt, and of the line green breccia, which is known by the name of Verde d^Egitto. The same district was rich in othei mineral treasures ; in gold, emerald, iron, copper, and lead. The Egyptians must have possessed iron at an early period, since without it they could not have worked the hard rocks of the granite quarries. Accordingly we find on the western flank of Mount Sinai heaps of scoriae, produced by the ancient smelting of the copper, mixed with iron ore, which still exist in this locality; and hieroglyphic inscriptions still attest the working of the mines of the peninsula by the same early kings of the Fourth Dynasty who built the Great Pyramid.

§ 15. The origin of the inhabitants of this singular country has been, from the earliest times, a favorite subject of speculation. The Egyptians themselves, like many other nations of antiquity, believed that they were sprung from the soil.³⁵ Diodorus,who had conversed with Ethiopian envoys in Egypt, held that the tide of civilization had descended the Nile, and that the Egyptians were a colony from the Ethiopians of Meroe.³⁶ This hypothesis has been revived in modern times, with much ingenuity, by Heeren; but it rests upon no historical facts, is improbable in itself, and is almost disproved by the absence of all ancient monuments in Upper Nubia, where nothing is found earlier than the times of the Ptolemies and the Romans. Even where the evidence of inscriptions is wanting, the monuments reveal, in their more careless workmanship and debased forms and decorations, not the primitive efforts of a ruder age, but the decay of the more perfect Egyptian art.

When the Greeks became acquainted with Western India by the conquests of Alexander, they were struck with certain similarities between the Egyptians and Hindoos, and were induced to assign a common origin to both.³⁷ This hypothesis, likewise, has been received with much favor by some modern scholars, who have pointed out the striking resemblance between the system of castes, the religious doctrines, and the temple-architecture of the two nations. But the points of difference are very striking, even in many of their institutions. The rite of circumcision was practised from time immemorial by the Egyptians, but was unknown to the Hindoos till the Mohammedan conquest. The system of hiero-

35 Diodor. i. 10. ^3fi Diodor. iii. 11- ³⁷ Arrimi, " Indica," c. G.-

ORIGIN OF THE EGYPTIANS.

43

glyphic writing, which is peculiarly characteristic of Egypt, never existed in India; and it is impossible to believe'that an Egyptian colony would have settled in India without bringing with them their hieroglyphics, or that the Hindoos would have colonized Egypt without introducing their alphabetic writing and their religious books (the " Vedas"). Lastly, the languages spoken by the two nations are so different, that we may safely dismiss the hypothesis of a common origin of the Egyptians and Hindoos."

§ 16. As we have seen in the Introduction, the only sure means of ascertaining the origin of any people is a knowledge of their physical features and their language. Xo peo-pie has bequeathed to us so many memorials of its form, complexion, and physiognomy, as the Egyptians. From the countless mummies preserved by the dryness of the climate we can ascertain their crania and osteology. From the numerous paintings upon the tombs, which have been preserved through the same cause, we also obtain a vivid idea of their forms and appearance. If we were left to form an opinion upon the subject by the description of the Egyptians left by the Greek writers, we should conclude that they were, if not negroes, at least closely akin to the negro race. That they were much darker in color than the neighboring Asiatics'; that they had hair frizzled either by nature or by art; that their lips were thick and projecting and their limbs slender, rests upon the authority of eye-witnesses, who had travelled in the country, and who could have had no motive to deceive.³⁹ But, on the other hand, the mummies and the paintings clearly prove that the Egyptians were not negroes; and, even if no mummies or paintings had been preserved, there are other circumstances which would make us hesitate before ascribing to the Egyptians the true negro character. If they had resembled the inhabitants of the coast of Guinea, the striking difference between their appearance and that of all the other nations of antiquity would have been distinctly stated ; and their intermarriages with fairer races would have excited remark. So far was this from being the case, that Joseph's brethren, when they saw him in

³⁸ One of the most learned snpporters of this hypothesis was the late Von Bohlen, in his work entitled "Das alte Indien, mit besonderer Rucksicht auf Aegypteu ;" but the author subsequently abandoned the hypothesis as untenable. The arguments, both for and against the theory, are fairly stated by Prichard ("Researches into the Physical History of .Mankind," vol. ii. p. 21T), who, however, attributes more importance to the similarity between the institutions of the two peoples than is perhaps warranted by the facts of the case.

³⁹ Herodotus, in proof that the Colchians were an Egyptian colony, says (ii. 104) that they were neXnyxpo^ re kuI ouXorpixer, or "black in complexion and with curl' ing hair," bnt not " woolly," as Prichard translates it. See also Lucir.ii, "Xavigiuin," C. 2, and Ammianus Marcellinus, xxii. 16, § 23.

44

EGYPT AND ETHIOPIA.

Egypt, took him for an Egyptian ;⁴⁰ that the Jewish legislator permitted intermarriages with the Egyptians ;⁴¹ and that Solomon married an Egyptian princess. It is also worthy of remark that no part of Africa situated in the latitude of Egypt is the native country of a genuine negro race.⁴³

The existing mummies are of various ages, going back at least as far as the time of the patriarch Joseph, and coming down to the time of St. Augustine. During this long period Egypt was repeatedly conquered and overrun. Various races took up their permanent abode in the valley of the Nile; and natives as well as foreigners were alike embalmed according to the Egyptian fashion. But the vast majority of the mummies are those of the native Egyptians, and their osteo-logical character proves that they belonged to the Caucasian and not to the African race. The monuments and paintings, however,show thatthe Egyptians possessed a peculiarphysiog-nomy, differing from both these races, approaching more nearly to the negro type than to any of the other Caucasian races.⁴³ The'fullness of the lips, seen in the Sphinx of the Pyramids and in the portraits of the kings, is characteristic of the negro, and the elongation of the eye is a Nubian peculiarity.

New light has recently been thrown upon the whole subject by M. Mariette's discovery, in the north-easternmost part of Egypt, of a race of men of a type quite different from the Egyptians, both ancient and modern, who seemed not improbably to represent a more ancient population. The distinct separation of classes, though it be incorrect to term them castes, is an indication that the dominant Egyptians had overcome a previous population; and it now appears that there was sueh a population, more nearly approaching to the African type, but decidely not negroes. Whether this aboriginal population entered Egypt from the south of Arabia and down the Nile, is an hypothesis which awaits further discussion.

§ IV. The intermediate position of the Egyptians between the Asiatic and African races is also proved by an examination of their language. This language is preserved in the Coptic,⁴⁴ which was the native tongue of the Christian pop-

⁴⁰ Genesis xlii. 23, 30, 33. n Deuteron. xxiii. 7, 8.

⁴² Prichard, vol. ii. p. 230. The American writers, Nott and Gliddon (" Types of Mankind," Philadelphia, 1854, p. 21G), are of course opposed to the negro origin of the Egyptians; but they have stated the argument fairly and, it seems to us, conclusively against this hypothesis.

⁴³ See K. O. Midler, "Archaologie der Knnst," § 215, n. 1.

⁴⁴ Many Egyptian words, preserved by Greek writers, are clearly Coptic. The following examples, among others, are quoted by Ken rick, "Ancient Egypt," vol. i. p. 102. Herodotus (ii. G9) says that the crocodile was called x''M<l"*: in hieroglyphics it is hremso; in Coptic amsah. Instruction was called by the Egyptians Sbo (Horapollo, i. 38), which is the Coptic word for learning. Erjris was an Egyptian word lor wins

NAMES OF EGYPT.

45

ulntion in Egypt, and -which, though it has now ceased to he spoken,⁴⁵ is still preserved in the translation of the Scriptures and in other ecclesiastical works. Many of the words and grammatical forms of the Coptic are akin to those found in the Semitic languages ; but the peculiarities of its grammatical structure have a still stronger resemblance to those of several of the native idioms of Africa.⁴⁶

§ 18. The Egyptians themselves called their land Chem?¹ or the Black, in opposition to the blinding whiteness of the adjacent desert. In the Hebrew Scriptures it is usually called Mizraim™ the name of the second son of Ham in the genealogical table in Genesis x. But this name, although employed as a singular, is a dual in form, and is appropriately applied to a country which is divided by nature into the upper and lower provinces. By the Arabs it is called JSIisr, which is only the singular of the Hebrew Mizraim, and which signifies in Arabic red, or reddish brown. Hence the ordinary Hebrew and Arabic name of Egypt has the same signification as the native name. Moreover, in the Hebrew records, Egypt is frequently called the Land of Ham,;™ and it is merely our faulty orthography that conceals the identity of the name of Noah's son, Cham, with the Egyptian Chem. According to the strictly geographical interpreta-

(Eustath. ad Od. i. p. 1633); removing the Greek termination, we have the Coptic erp. The origin of the word Coptic is doubtful. Some derive it from the city Coptos; but this is only a guess from the similarity of the names. Others connect it with the Christian sect of Jacobites ClaKw/firat), to which the Egyptians belonged. But it is perhaps the ancient form of the name Egypt, by which the Greeks designated the country (Gypt, Kypt, Kox>t). See Prichard, "Researches, etc.," who decides, however, in favor of the second of the above etymologies.

⁴⁵ It is usually stated that the last person who could speak Coptic died in 1GG3; but it is said, on credible authority, that it was spoken-as recently as ninety years ago. See Nott and Gliddon's " Types of Mankind," p. 234. A recent writer in the " Quarterly Review" (July, 1SG9, vol. xxvii. p. 40) says:—"The ancient Coptic language is, indeed, still maintained in church rituals and the like; but though all among the. clergy can read, we have never found any one of them who could understand the meaning of its characters. Coptic was, however, till within recent memory spoken by the peasantry in some towns of Upper Egypt, at Achmim in particular; but want of school instruction has allowed this curious remnant of the past to fade away and ultimately disappear altogether."

⁴⁰ This question is fully discussed by Prichard ("Researches," vol. ii. p. 213, seq.) Ths arguments of this writer are more convincing than those of Bunsen, who maintains that the Coptic stands clearly between the Semitic and Indo-European, since its forms and roots can not be explained by either of these singly, but are evidently a combination of the two. (See "Egypt's Place in Universal History," Preface, p. x. trans.; and "Outlines of the Philosophy of Universal History," vol. i. p. 185. seq.) _

⁴⁷ Chem or Khem is the name of Egypt in hieroglyphic inscriptions : in Coptic it is written Chemi. Plutarch savs that the Egyptians called their land Chernia on account of the blackness of the earth ("De Iside et Osiride,"c. 33). This name is apparently preserved in that of Chemmix, a large city in the Thebaid, which the Greeks called Panopolis (Herod.ii. 91).

⁴⁸ Genesis x. G. In the Assyrian cuneiform inscriptions Egypt is called Misir, Mu-sur, Miifiuri, and Mn-its-ri; in the Persian inscriptions Mudraim.

⁴⁹ Psalm cv. 23, 27 ; cvi. 22.

46

EGYPT AND ETHIOPIA.

tion of Genesis x., we may suppose the original name of Chem, for the whole land, to have been superseded by the dual Mizraim, when the two divisions were fully recognized.

The origin of the Greek name,⁵⁰ by which the country is known throughout Western Europe, is uncertain ; but the most plausible conjecture connects it with the name of the Copts.⁵¹

⁶¹ Some writers have connected the first half of A'i-yvnTos, with ala (land), so that the word would mean " the land of the Copts," but this interpretation of the first syllable is doubtful.

Boat of the Nil*.

Ruins and Vicinity of Philae.

CHAPTER II.

AUTHORITIES FOR THE HISTORY OF EGYPT.

! 1. The earliest historical records are Egyptian. The Scripture notices of Egypt no* a history of the country. § 2. Greek writers on Egypt. Herodotus. Eratosthe. nes. Diodorus. Strabo. Pliny. § 3. Manetiio. His Egyptian History lost. His List of Dynasties. Its defects and value. § 4. The real history of Egypt is in her own monuments and books. Testimony of Bunsen and Lepsins. Multitude and permanence of the records. Constant use of hieroglyphics. Private documents. § 5. Order of the monuments along the Valley of the Nile. Extant Books. § 0. Monuments of special historical value. Class I., for the general history of Egypt, (i.) Turin Papyrus, (ii.) Chamber of Ancestors, (iii.) Old aud New Tables of Abydos. (iv.) Table of Sakkara. (v.) The Apis-Stela;. § 6. Class II., relating to particular reigns. A book of the time of Rameses II. Historical value of the private monuments. Method of studying the History .of Egypt. § T. Fabulous antiquity of the nation. Divine rulers; Phthah; Ra ; Agathodamion ; Seb and Netpe ; Osiris and Isis ; Typhon and Horns. § s. Mkxes the first man who reigned over Egypt; perhaps a mythical impersonation. § 0. Egyptian History of Hekop-otits. 330 kings from Menes to Moeris. Nitocris, Sesostris, Pheron, Proteus, and Rhampsinitus. Cheops, Cephren, Myceriuus, Asychis, and Anysis. The Ethiopian conquest by Sabacos. His story first becomes historical with Psammetichus. § 10. The Lists of Manetiio. Are they consecutive or, in part, contemporaneous? Periods of Egyptian History.

§ 1. This most ancient of the nations offers to us the most ancient of contemporary records; and in this sense, also, history begins with Egypt. If the sacred story of the patriarchs embodies documents of an earlier age than that of the Pentateuch itself, they preserve the narrative of individual lives, for a moral and religions purpose, not the history of a nation. While the Hebrew patriarchs had as yet no possession in their promised land, they had dealings with powerful kings of Egypt; and the Exodus, which first made Israel a nation, falls under an advanced period of the Egyptian monarchy. These relations, as well as the part afterwards taken by Egypt in conflict with Assyria and Babylon over the dying body of .the Hebrew monarchy, add a peculiar interest to Egyptian history. "Egypt, in fact, appears as the insU'u

48

HISTORICAL AUTHORITIES.

merit of Providence for furthering its eternal purpose, but only as forming the background and contrast to that free spiritual and moral element which was to arise out of Israel."¹ But it is not the design of Scripture to satisfy the curiosity thus stimulated. Its scenes of Egyptian events and of Egyptian life are most real and most truthful ; but they supply no history of Egypt. The kings who received Abraham and Isaac, Joseph and Jacob; the new ruler, who " knew not Joseph;" and he whose "heart was hardened;" are all merely "Pharaohs," whose own names are unrecorded, and of whom we have no chronology.

§ 2. The Greeks took an interest in Egypt similar to our own ; but the relation which excited it was even more direct. Egyptian kings were among the mythical founders of their own nation ; in" Egypt they sought the chief source of their religion and civilization, their philosophy and art; and even Egyptian jealousy of foreigners did not forbid them a footing in the land as traders and mercenary soldiers. The Persian conquest of Egypt was a prelude to the like attack on their own liberty ; and they allied themselves with Egyptian insurgents to oppose the common enemy.²

It was, then, most natural that the inquisitive ^reek traveller, who conceived the design of gathering up all-jie^Hj-M learn of the East into a focus which should throw light on the great conflict of his age, allotted the largest space in his preliminary work to Egypt, of which he tells us all he could learn down to its conquest by Cambyses.³ The testimony of Herodotus to what he himself saw of Egyptian life and manners is in the highest degree trustworthy and valuable ; but all the information that he gives at second-hand needs to be tested by other lights. Precious, indeed, would have been his testimony, had"he known the native tongue, and could he have read those hieroglyphics which lie saw in their freshness, and of which he has only given one triviaHransla-tion, to the effect that the radishes, onions, and garlick, consumed by the laborers who built the Great Pyramid, cost 1600 talents of silver !⁴

Much wasted labor might have been spared, had critics been content to heed the historian's own warning: ''Such as think the tales told by the Egyptians credible, are free to accept them for history. For my own part, I propose to myself, throughout my\vhole work, faithfully to record the traditions of the severed nations.""

¹ Bun sen, " Egypt's Place in Universal History," vol. iv. p. 104.

² See below, chapters viii. and xxviii.

³ Herodotus, book ii., and the earlier part of book iii. Herodotus wrote his history about 445 u.o. ⁴ Herod, ii. 125. ⁵ Herod, ii. 123.

HERODOTUS—DIODORUS—MANETHO 4U

The information doled out to him by the priests was such as suited their ^purpose and their traditions, and it was of course frequently misunderstood; nor did he attempt to weave it into a consecutive history of Egypt. He relates such .anecdotes as seemed to him interesting or amusing; but his chronological order is in complete confusion. He avowedly repeats just what he was told. His own ingenuous statement marks the reign of Psammetichus (b.c. 664) as the epoch at which his account begins to be historical. " Thus far," he says, " my narrative rests on the account given by the Egyptians ;"⁶ and then he resumes, " In what follows I have the authority, not of the Egyptians only, but of others also who agree with them. I shall speak likewise in part from my own observation."⁷

The new means of knowledge acquired under the Ptolemies bore little fruit in the Greek and Roman literature. Eratosthenes, who lived in Egypt under Ptolemy II. Philadelphia,⁰ drew up for that king, in Greek, a list of the " Theban kings " (meaning kings of all Egypt) whose names he received from the priests or hierogramniatists of Thebes : its chief use is for comparison with Manetho. Diodorus⁹ increases darkness, rather than light, by his additions to the anecdotes of Herodotus, whose ingenuous care he entirely lacked ; nor do Strabo¹⁰ and Pliny'¹ yield much further information, except quite incidentally.

§ 3. There remains one writer, who alone professed to give a complete history of Egypt. This was Manetho, an Egyptian priest, of Sebennytiis in the Delta, who lived in" the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus (b.c 285-247), and was the first Egyptian who wrote the history of his country in Greek, from information preserved in the records of the temple. Of the body of his work we have only a few fragments ; but the chronographers, Julius Africanus and Eusebius, who wrote in the third and fourth centuries after Christ, have preserved the list of" Dynasties " which was appended to Manetho's history. This list has come down to us with many obvious imperfections, and with the distortions due to ignorance of Egyptian names on the part of the Greek copy-

^{6 IIerod}- »• 14G, fin. n u_)ici. _c. 14T, imt.

* B.C. 2S5-247. Eratosthenes was born in 275, n.o. His List is preserved by Geor-gins Syncellus. See the criticism on Eratosthenes by Kenrick, "Ancient Egypt," vol. ii. p. 97 seq.

⁹ Abont c.o. 5S. It is very important to observe one distinction between Herodotus and Diodorus, as to their sources of information, which is well put by Mr. Kenrick: "The history of Hf.roootus turns abont Memphis as a centre: he mention! Thebes only incidentally, and does not describe or allude to ono of its monuments. DropoRLs, on the contrary, is full in hie description of Thebes, and says little of Mem-l^)u'^s-" ¹⁰ Abont a.i>. IS. ¹¹ About jj.o. 70.

3

50

HISTORICAL AUTHORITIES.

ists. Its early stages are manifestly fabulous, and, like every other document of a similar origin, it reflects the tendency of priests to give their own version of history, in the interest of the ruling classes. But it unquestionably embodies a large amount of real information ; and the statements of Manetho are continually being confirmed by the monuments, as an index to the study of which the list has real value. But there is danger in feeling bound to Manetho's arrange ment, which is probably his own; and the lengths of the reigns, often doubtless mere computations of the chronographers, are frequently contradicted by the monuments. While professed Egyptologers are more and more disposed to believe in Manetho, Sir George Cornewall Lewis regards his list as " his own invention ; aided, doubtless, by some traditionary names and stories derived from his predecessors."

§ 4. The real records of Egypt's history are to be found in her own monuments and her own books. The nation which stands first in history was also the first to write it, and the record has been preserved by a concurrence of favorable circumstances. Bunsen says, " No nation of the earth has •shown so much zeal and ingenuity, so much method and regularity, in recording the details of private life, as the Egyptians. No country in the world afforded greater facilities for indulging such a propensity than Egypt, with its limestone and its granite, its dry climate, and the protection afforded by its desert against the overpowering force of nature in southern zones. Such a country was adapted, not only for securing its monuments against dilapidation, both above and below ground, for thousands of years, but even for preserving them as perfect as the day they were erected. In the North, rain and frost corrode; in the South, the luxuriant vegetation cracks or obliterates the monuments of time. China has no architecture to bid defiance to thousands of years ; Babylon had but bricks; in India the rocks can bare ly resist the wanton power of nature. Egypt is the monumental land of the earth, as the Egyptians are the monumental people of history. Their contemporary records, therefore, are at once the earliest and most certain source of all Egyptian research."

Let us add the testimony of Lepsius to the nature and multiplicity of these records: "An intense desire after posthumous fame and a place in history seems to have been universal in ancient Egypt. This exhibits itself in the incredible multitude of monuments of all descriptions which have been found in the valley of the Nile, Ail the principal cities of

THE NATIVE RECORDS.

51

Egypt were adorned with temples and palaces. Towns of lesser note, and even villages, were always distinguished by one temple at least—oftener more. These temples were filled with the statues of gods and kings, generally colossal, and hewn from costly stones. Their walls, also, within and without, were covered with colored reliefs. To adorn and maintain these public buildings was at once the duty and pride of the kings of Egypt. But even these were rivalled by the more opulent classes of the people in their care for the dead, and in the hewing and decoration of sepulchral chambers. In these things the Egyptians very far surpassed the Greeks and Romans, as well as other known nations of antiquity.

" Still further to enhance to after-times the value of these ever-during monuments of ancient Egypt, it was universal with the inhabitants to cover their works of art of every description with hieroglyphics, the purport of which related strictly to the monuments on which they^T were inscribed. No nation that ever lived on the earth has made so much use of its written system, or applied it to a purpose so strictly historical, as ancient Egypt. There was not a wall, a platform, a pillar, an architrave, a frieze, or even a doorpost, in an Egyptian temple, which was not carved, within, without, and on every available surface, with pictures in relief. There is not one of these reliefs that is not history; some of them representing the conquests of foreign nations ; others the offerings and devotional exercises of the monarch by whom the temple, or portion of the temple, on which the relief stood, had been constructed. Widely different from the temples of Greece and Rome, on which inscriptions were evidently regarded as unwelcome additions, forming no part of the original architectural design, but, on the contrary, interfering with and marring it—the hieroglyphic writings were absolutely essential and indispensable to the decoration of a perfect Egyptian temple.

" This writing, moreover, was by no means confined to constructions of a public nature, such as temples or tombs, but was also inscribed on objects of art of every other conceivable description. Nothing, even down to the palette of a scribe, the style with which a lady painted her eyelashes with powdered antimony, or even a walking-stick, was deemed too insignificant to be inscribed with the name of the owner, and a votive dedication of the object itself to his patron divinity. Inscriptions with the names of the artists or owners, so rare on the remains of Greece and Rome, are the universal rule in Egyptian art. There was no colossus too great, and no amulet too small, to be inscribed with the

52 HISTORICAL AUTHORITIES.

name of its owner, and some account of the occasion on which it was executed."¹³

The vast variety of these inscriptions supplies a check oil their trustworthiness. In those of a public character, we may suspect a fictitious history composed by priests, or displayed for their own glory by despotic monarchs; but we can turn to the private records of tombs which have been sealed up since the day when they were closed.

§ 5. It has already been said that those monuments stud the whole valley of the Nile, with one interruption, from the Delta, through "Upper Egypt and Nubia, to the island of Meroe. Their antiquity and perfection corresponds very nearly with their order along the river, the best and oldest being the lowest—one striking proof that the civilization which they represent ascended the course of the river. They may be grouped in the following series :¹³ (i.) About Memphis.—The Pyramids and tombs at Abou-Boash,Jizeh, Abou-Seir, Sakkara, and Das/ioor. These are the monuments of the Old Monarchy, chiefly of the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Dynasties of Manetho. (ii.) Contemporary with the oldest of these are the monuments in the peninsula of Sixai, at Wady-Feiran (Paran), Wady-el-Mayharali, and Sarbut-el-Kadern. (iii.) In Middle Egypt.—The monuments, partly perhaps of the kings of Manetho's Ninth and Tenth Dynasties, but chiefly of those of the Twelfth, at Jfeidnn, Illahiln, and the Fydm. (iv.) Returning to Sals, Taxis, and Heliopolis, we find monuments which break the geographical series, owing to the power which the New Monarchy, of Theban Kings, held also over Lower Egypt, (v.) But in their own proper district the series continues upward, in the sculptured tombs of Beni-hassan, opposite Hermopolis the Great, and at Tel-Amarna. (ri.) At This and Abydos (about Arabat-el-Mad-foitneh), the old seat of Manetho's First and Second Thinite Dynasties (but none of the monuments are theirs), (vii.) The stupendous remains of Thebes about the villages of Medinet-Abou, Luxor, and Karnak. (viii.) The remains at Esneh (Latopolis), El-Kab and El-ITdlaal (Eileithyia), Edfou (Apollinopolis), Iladjar-Selseleh (Silsilis), with its quarries, (ix.) The quarries of Syene, and the rock-hewn temples of Elephantine and Phi lie. (x.) Above Egypt itself; the monuments at Abou Simbel, fioleb, and Barhd. (xi.) And lastly, those of Meroe, at Sofra, Nay a, etc. These last are the smallest, the poorest in* style, and the most decayed, though

« On the Hieroglyphic Writing, see chap. ix. sec. 5.

¹³ Lepsius: " Der.kmaler." This great work has tiie advantage of depicting the Egyptian monuments in chronological order.

RECORDS OF SPECIAL VALUE.

tlie most modern. To these monuments must be added the innumerable extant book's, chiefly of religious ritual and moral precepts, which the Egyptians wrote, from time immemorial, upon the delicate membrane prepared from the reed called papyrus, which anciently fringed the banks of the Nile, and which gave its name lo paper.

§ 6. Among these records there are some which deserve especial mention for their historical value. They may be divided into two classes, according as they relate to the history of Egypt in general, or to particular reigns. Of the first class, the following are the most important: (i.) The Turin Papyrus, if perfect, would give us an authoritative Egyptian counterpart of the Lists of Manetho, down to the most flourishing period of the monarchy. It is a list drawn up under, and apparently by order of, the great Rameses II. (of the 19th dynasty), of ali the personages, whether mythological or historical, who were believed to have reigned in Egypt from the earliest age. Lmfortunately it only exists in 164 small fragments, which it is often impossible to piece together, (ii.) The Chamber of Ancestors was found at Kar-nak, and is now in the Imperial Library at Paris. It is a sort of shrine, on the- walls of which is depicted Thothmes III., the greatest king of the 18th dynasty, making offerings before the images of 61 of his predecessors, whose names, as usual, are inscribed in hieroglyphics. Besides, however, some unfortunate mutilations, the ancestors form a selection, not a complete list, (iii.) The Table of Abydos, now in the British Museum, represents a similar adoration of ancestors by Rameses II., but in a sadly mutilated condition. Of 50 names, only 30 remain more or less legible. Happily, however, nearly all the lacuna* have been supplied by the New Table of Abydos, of Seti I., the father of Rameses II., recently discovered by M. Mariette. (iv.) The Table of Sakkara, another discovery of M. Mariette, and now in the Museum at Cairo, was found in the tomb of a priest named Tonnari, who lived under Rameses II. In accordance with the belief cf the Egyptians, it represents the pious deceased as admitted, in the other world, to the society of the kings, of whom 58 are represented on the monument. These are doubtless the kings most honored at Memphis; and the selection corresponds very nearly with that on the Table of Abydos, but with a few interesting differences. It must not be forgotten that, while these lists are, beyond all reasonable doubt, the authentic memorials of the historical belief of the priests and scribes who compiled them, they are no more conclusive evidence that all the kings they represent ever lived and reign

54

HISTORICAL AUTHORITIES.

ed,than are the pictures of the Scottish sovereigns at Holy-rood ; and that their conformity with the lists of Manetho carries us back no farther than the same priestly tradition. But they are invaluable aids in determining the succession of the kings whose names we find on contemporary documents, (v.) For the Apis-stela, or Apis-tablets, we are also indebted to M. Mariette's discovery of the sepulchre of the sacred bulls at Memphis. We have to speak, in the proper place, of that celebrated article of the Egyptian faith, that Osiris was periodically revealed in the form of a bull, known by certain marks, and named Apis at Memphis, and Ifnevis at Heliopolis. When an Apis died, he was buried with a pomp that sometimes ruined his curator. The sepulchre is an arched gallery, hewn in the rock, about 20 feet in width and height, to the length of 2000- feet, besides a lateral branch. On both sides of the gallery are hewn recesses, or, as Sir Gardner Wilkinson calls them, stalls, each containing a sarcophagus of granite 15 feet by 8, on only a few of which is a cartouche of the name of the inclosed Apis. But on the walls at the entrance of the cavern, as well as scattered on the floor beneath, tablets were found, recording the visits paid to the sepulchre by kings and other persons. These "Apis-stela}" are contemporary documents.

§ 6. Of the second class of monuments—those referring to particular reigns—the most important will require notice as we proceed. "They are of two descriptions—papyrus MSS. and monumental inscriptions. Among the former are panegyrics on the deeds of kings, official correspondence and accounts, and literary compositions of a more general nature. We may mention one interesting example. At the brilliant court of Rameses II. there werenine principal men of learning attached to the person of the king ; and at their head one whom we may venture to style Pharaoh's Master of the Rolls. This officer, named Kagabu, who is described as unrivalled in elegance of style, wrote a work for the use of the crown prince,"Seti Menephtha (who is now identified with the Pharaoh of the Exodus), the moral of which resembles that of the story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife.¹⁴

The monumental inscriptions of this class are both public and private. The former are engraven on obelisks or tablets, or on the walls of temples, where they often serve as the written exposition of scenes presented more vividly to the eve bv immense colored bas-reliefs, depicting the military exploits of the kings, or their triumphs after battle. The in-

¹⁴ This papyrus, acquired by Mrs. D'Orbiney in 1S52, and now in the British Museum, is translated, among other documents, by Brngsch, -'Aus dem Orient," 1365.

REIGNS OF THE GODS IN EGYPT.

sorptions and paintings relating to private persons throw a flood of light on the daily life of the people, the condition of their families and slaves, the economy of their estates, the construction of their houses and gardens, their banquets and recreations, within and out of doors, and sometimes even on their individual history and character. Besides all this, they ijive most important data for history and chronology; when, for instance, we find it recorded that the occupant of the tomb was born on a particular day and month and year of the reign of one king, and died at such an age on a particular day and month and year of another.

This mass of records, however, was sealed up in an unknown character till the present century ; when, among the fruits of the French exhibition to Egypt, the famous " Roset-ta Stone" was brought to our Museum. This trilingual inscription, in the hieroglyphic, demotic (or ordinary Egyptian), and Greek characters, supplied the key by which the ingenuity of Young and Champollion independently unlocked the secret of hieroglyphic writing, and gave a living voice to ancient Egypt.¹⁵" The results of this discovery have prescribed the course of all inquiries into Egyptian history. We must rest upon the native records as our only sure foundation, but of course submitting them to the laws of criticism. The scanty accounts of ancient writers are generally to be interpreted by the monuments; but sometimes they supply other facts. The Lists of Manetho may serve to some extent as a guide to the order of the whole.

§ 7. As in India and China, so in Egypt, a fabulous antiquity was claimed for the beginning of the nation. The reign of the gods, for ages before that of human kings, is supposed to indicate a primeval hierarchy. Manetho prefixes to his list of purely human dynasties, reckoned from Menes, a period of about 25,000 years for the reigns of gods, demigods, heroes, and manes (the souls of the departed). The series of the seven divine rulers looks like a religious allegory of the creative energy and conflicts of nature, by which the land was prepared for human habitation. The first is the creative Phtiia, the worker by the energy of Fire. Next comes Ra, the Sun, who was worshipped from time immemorial at On (Heliopolis). The third is Agathod^emox, the Greek translation of an Egyptian name,.which is supposed to represent the vital principle generated from the 'waters, The middle place is filled by Seb (Cronos or Saturn), the personification of Time, standing between the creative powers and those hy which the world'is governed. The latter are the children of

¹⁵ Sec chap. ix. sec:t. 5.

56

HISTORICAL AUTHORITIES.

Seb and Nctpe ; and among them are Osiris and Isis. Of these, Osiris appeared in human form, as the fifth divine ruler, who, after working all manner of good for men, is put to death by the malice of Typhon, the evil principle, but is restored to life and made the judge of souls. Typhon, the usurper, is slain by Isis, with the assistance of her son IIorus, who fills the seventh and last place (as a demigod) among the divine kings of Egypt, and, as the type of youthful energy perpetually renewed (like Apollo), lie is the source of succeeding dynasties and the special leader of the Egyptians. The demigods of Manetho (on the authority of Syncellus) were eight: Mars, Anubis, Hercules, Apollo, Amnion, Tithoes, Zosos, Jupiter.¹⁶ This mythological age is called on the inscriptions "the times of the JTor-sJieson " (servants of Horns).

§ 8. The Lists of Manetho, the statements of the priests to Herodotus and Diodorus, and the inscriptions, all agree in making Men or Menes the first man who reigned in Egypt; and the very name suggests a mythical impersonation of the human race, like the Indian Menu, the Greek Minyas and Minos, the Etruscan Menerfa, and the German Mcnnus. His claim to historical existence fails before the only proper test; for the hieroglyphs of his name are not contemporary.™ The priestly tradition connected him with the widest range of Egypt's dominion, placing his birth and early kingdom at This, in Upper Egypt, his great works at Memphis, and his conquests and death in Ethiopia, where he was killed by a hippopotamus. The significance of the legends respecting Menes will be seen better when we gain some sure basis of genuine history.

§ 9. The priests read to Herodotus, from a papyrus, the names of 330 kings, the successors of Menes, among whom were eighteen Ethiopian kings and one native queen, Nito-cris ; all the rest were kings and Egyptians. The last of them was Mceris, the constructor of the great lake in the Fyilm, who had not been dead 900 years when Herodotus visited Egypt.¹⁸ Mceris, as we shall see, represents probably one or more kings of Manetho's 12th dynasty. Herodotus then passes on to Sesostris,¹⁹ the great conqueror, and his son Piieron,²⁰ who was struck blind; names which, like Mceris, are disguised under their Greek form, but point to the great exploits of the 18th and 19th dynasties, though the name of Sesostris may possibly come from the 12th. The Mem-

¹⁶ See Sir G. Wilkinson's Note on Herod, ii. 44 (Rawlinson).

¹⁷ His hieroglyph reads Mna or Meimi. ¹⁶ Herod, ii. 101 and 13. MENES. ¹⁹ Herod, ii. 102 seq. ²⁰ Herod, ii. 111.

CONQUEST BY SABACOS.

phian Proteus, the successor of Pheron,²¹ is made com temporary with the Trojan war, a pseudo-chronological inference from the Homeric fable of Proteus ; while the amusing anecdote about his successor, Rhampsixitus,²² and the thief, puts all chronology at defiance by placing a Rhamses (as the name seems to imply) before the Py rain id-kings. It would seem, in fact, that Herodotus had before him two lists of kings, the one belonging to Upper and the oilier to Lower Egypt; and, having told all that he found interesting about the Thinites and Thebans, from the 1st dynasty to the 19th, he passes to the earliest Mempbians of the 4th, unaware of his chronological disorder.²³ We shall have to notice in their proper place his statements about the pyramid-builders, Cheops, Cephrex, and Mycerinus,⁸⁴ names now perfectly identified. That of Asychis, the builder of a brick pyramid, is more doubtful ;²⁵ and so is Anysis, the blind king, who was driven into the marshes, while Egypt was conquered by a vast army of Ethiopians, led by Sabacos, who ruled for fifty years.'²" This conquest corresponds to the 25th (Ethiopian) dynasty of Manetho, which we find synchronizing with Assyrian and Hebrew history about the time of the downfall of the kingdom of Israel ; and the restoration of Anysis maybe probably connected with the revolution by which the native princes who had preserved their independence in the Delta expelled the Ethiopians.²⁷

With the completion of that revolution by the establishment of Psammeticiius on the throne (about b.c. 664), the notes of Herodotus fall into historical order. We have now collected into one view the outline of his contributions to the earlier history of Egypt. His order, or rather disorder, is followed by Diodorus, with the addition of a few facts of some importance, of which, however, no separate statement need be made at present.²⁸

²¹ Herod, ii. 112 seq. The "successor," iu these anecdotes, is simply the king whom Herodotus pleases to mention next. ²² Herod, ii. 121 seq.

²³ See Sir G. Wilkinson's note to Herodotus, ii. 124 (Rawliuson). The two following sets of five comprise all the kings selected by Herodotus from the 330 read out to him by the priests:

hinites and Thebans. Memphite*. Menes. Cheops. Mceris. Cephren. Sesostris. Mycerinus. Pheron. Asychis. Rhampsinitns. Anysis.

²⁴ Herod, ii. 124 s"q.

²⁵ Herod, ii. 136. Sir G. Wilkinson supposes him to have been Shishak, of the 22(1 dynasty (called Asocha?us by Josephus), perhaps partly confounded with some other king. Iu Rawlinson's " Herodotus," I. c.

²⁶ Herod, ii. 137. See further iu chap. vii.

²⁷ Herod, ii. 139,140. The legend of the priest-king Setuos (c. 141) seems to be a confusion of various stories belonging to different times. ²⁸ Diod. i. 45-6S

3*

58

HISTORICAL AUTHORITIES.

•

§ 10. Turning to the Lists of Manetho, we find the whola succession of kings, from Menes to the final conquest of Egypt by the Persians, divided into 30 dynasties, to which is added a 31st, composed of the Persian kings till the conquest by Alexander. The 30 dynasties are distinguished by the seats of the royal power, except the three dynasties of Shepherd Kings (15-17),²⁹ the Ethiopians (25), and the Persians (27) of the first Persian conquest. The se capitals were, in Upper Egypt, This, Elephantine, and Thebes; in Middle Egypt, Heracleopolis ; and in Eower Egypt, Memphis, Xoi's, Tanis, Bubas.tis, Sais, Mendes, and Sebennytus. The years assigned by Manetho to the respective dynasties make up a total of 5462 years ; but his own statement at the end gives a period of 3555 years.³⁰

This discrepancy seems almost decisive of the question whether the dynasties of Manetho are successive and contin-"uous or in part contemporaneous.³¹ The former alternative seems quite incredible, with refprence both to the times and places; and, if not irreconcilable with the monuments, it is certainly not confirmed by them. The latter view is adopted by the best modern authorities, with a few distinguished exceptions;³² nor is the difficulty of arranging the contemporaneous dynasties in an exact scheme a sufficient objection to the principle. Neither is the attempt of much consequence ; for the whole history of Egypt may easily be grouped under the following broad divisions : (i). The Old Monarchy, which had its capital at Memphis, in Lower Egypt, but probably ruled over the whole land, (ii.) The Middle Monarchy, and the foreign domination of the Shepherd Kings. (iii). The New Monarchy of Thebes, under which Egypt was reunited and raised to the acme of its power, (iv.) A period during which power was held by various princes of Lower Egypt, till the establishment of a second foreign domination —the Ethiopian, (v.) The later Sa'ite Monarchy, which reunited Egypt till it was conquered by Cambyses. (vi.) The Persian Domination, with one episode of recovered independence, down to the conquest by Alexander, (vii.) The Hellenist Kingdom of the Pi-olenites, till Egypt became a Roman province, (viii.) The Roman Province of Egypt, till tho conquest of the' country by the Arabs..

²⁰ But in some copies these are Theban.

³⁰ Reckoning back from abont n.c, 350, the former date would carry us to b.o. 5S12, the latter to n.o. 39C5. But the numbers vary in different copies.

³¹ Manetho himself speaks of contemporary "kings of Thebais and of the othe? provinces of Egypt."

³² Bunsen and Renan are the mosi eminent advocates of the long chronology.

ARRANGEMENT OF DYNASTIES.

NOTE.

contemporaneousness of dynasties.

The following is the arrangement proposed by Mr. Lane and Mr. Stuart Poole for the Dynasties down to the New Theban Monarchy.

jl. THIXITES.	II.
| III. Memphites.	IV.	|v,.		VII. | VIII. |
	V. Elephantiues.			1
		IX. Heracleopolites. | X.
i>iospolites.		XI. |	XII.	| XIII.	XVIII. | XIX.
			XIV. Xoites.
			xv. i XVI. f	Shepherds.
				j XVII. Shepherds.

Sphinx and Pyramid*.

CHAPTER HI.

THE OLD MEMPHIAN MONARCHY.

1. Memphis the first seat of the Egyptian monarchy. What is meant by the origin of Menes from Tins? § i. The First and Second (TJrinite) Dynasties of Manetho. Introduction of animal-worship. Succession of women to the crown. § 3. The Third Dynasty (Memphian). The Libyans subdued. § 4. Contemporary History begins with the Fourth Dynasty (Memphian), and the Pyramids. Names of Knc-fu and his brother in the Great Pyramid: the Ciieoto of Herodotus. § 5. The Second Pyramid of Ckpiiben or Suafee. His temple and statue. 5 G. The Third Pyramid of Mycf.eincs or Mknkabe. His coffin and mummy. Soris and the Pyramid of Abou-Seir. § 7. The Pyramids in general. Motives for their construction. § S. Their testimony to the power and art of the Memphian kings. Absence of all figured decorations and inscriptions. They are the temple-tombs of deified kings. § 9. The colossal Sphinx: probably of the time of Shafre. Symbolical meaning of the figure. § 10. Tombs of the Pyramid-period. Their vivid pictures of life under the Old Monarchy. Physical appearance and dress. Social and economical condition. Wealth and oppression of the land-owners. Pastoral and agricultural operations. Amusements. Domesticated animals. Absence of the horse. Mechanical arts. Writing. High state of art. Moral philosophy of the age. § 11. It was a period of peace and prosperity. Sudden appearance of this high civilization. §12. Traditions of earlier works. Menes turned the conrse oftheNile. §13. The city of Memphis. Its precedence over Thebes and Heliopolis. § 14. Necropolis of Memphis. Architecture of the tombs. § 15. The Memphian Dynasties: 3d, 4th, 6th, 7th, Sth. Connection of the Fifth (Elephantine) Dynasty with Memphis. Relations between Upper and Lower Egypt. § 1G. Religious conflicts under the Fourth Dynasty. Impiety and oppression of Cheops and Cephren. Piety and deification of Mycerinus. Confirmations from the monnments. § 17. Bnnsen's view of the religions and political union of Upper and Lower Egypt. § IS. The Sixth Dynasty: difficulties abont its origin. Pepi-Maire andPepi Nefer-

MEMPHIS.

Gl

gera. Nitookts. Her connection with the Third Pyramid. 5 13. Seventh and Eighth Dynasties. Fall of the Memphian monarchy. Sinth and Tenth Dynasties at Heracleopolis. § 20. Absence of a chronology thus far. Various hypotheses.

§ 1. Memphis was the earliest seat of the Egyptian kingdom. There are the oldest monuments, and its foundation is ascribed to Menes. If the origin of Menes from This¹ indicates a still older local kingdom in Upper Egypt, that kingdom has disappeared, leaving no contemporary records, but only the traditions recorded in the List of Manetho. The removal of Menes from This to Memphis implies the subjection of the former to the latter; and the New Table of Abydos and the Table of Sakkara appear to make the two contemporaneous. The traditions seem to indicate a rivalry between the priests of Upper and Lower Egypt for the first honors of national civilization. While both rendered equal reverence to Menes, Necherophes, the head of the Third (the first Mem-phite) Dynasty was regarded as his contemporary ; and to Athothis, the son of Menes, and Tosorthus, the son of Xeche-rophes (who seem indeed to be identical) are ascribed in common the possession of great medical knowledge, the patronage of letters, and the first use of hewn stones in building a temple at Memphis.

§ 2. Manetho assigns to his First (Tuinite) Dynasty seven kings during a period of 250 years. The fifth king, Hesep-ti (Usaphaidos, M.²), is often mentioned in the Funereal Ritual (an extant papyrus) as the author of some sacred books. The Second Dynasty, also of T/iinites, consisting of nine kings in 302 years, is signalized as the period of the introduction of animal-worship, which is thus marked as an inno-.vation. In the reign of Caiechos (Kekeoii), the second king of this dynasty, the bulls Apis and Mnevis were worshipped at Memphis and Heliopolis respectively, and the goat at Mendes; all, be it observed, in Lower Egypt. His successor, Binothris (Ba?iete?'-en),is said to have legalized the succession of women to the crown ; and the eighth king, Seso-chris, is described as a giant.

§ 3. The Third Dynasty of Manetho consists of nine or eleven Memphian kings, for a space of 214 years. The first king, Necherophes, the contemporary of Menes, subdued a revolt of the Libyans, the rebels being panic-stricken at a sudden increase of the moon ; so early did tradition place the subjugation of the tribes of the Western Desert.

§ 4. These notices are culled by Manetho from the tradi-

¹ This was a city of Upper Egypt, about 100 miles below Thebes, and near Abydoe (Arabat-el-Madfov.nah), which supplanted it.

² This abbreviation indicates the name given by Manetho.

G2

THE OLD MONARCHY.

tions of the priests; but now we approach the confines of that real history which is attested by contemporary records. The ovals³ of the first and second dynasties are certainly none of them contemporary; they are votive or traditional inscriptions on buildings, tablets, or writings of a much later date. Some are ascribed to the Third Dynasty; but the only three legible names, which are clearly contemporary, are assigned by the highest authority, Lepsius, to the Fourth and Fifth Dynasties. The most important of these is on a bus-relief carved on the rocks of the Sinai group, representing Kins: Snofru (commonly identified with Sephuris of Manetho's Third Dynasty) as subduing the Arabs of the peninsula.

It is with the Fourth Dynasty of Memphian kings that we first find monumental records coinciding with historical tradition ; and with them the real history of Egypt begins. Their names are recorded alike in the pages of the father of histo-rv and on the stones of the oldest and most majestic monuments of the world, the Pyramids of Jizeh, north-west of Memphis. If the mound of the Birs-Nimroud be indeed the remains of the Tower of Babel,⁴ it has been for ages a shapeless ruin, while the oldest Pyramids, preserving their first form, and not entirely stript even of the outermost stones, still rise like everlasting mountains over the vast level plain, challenging, from the beginning of recorded history, research into the mystery of their meaning.

Hidden during all those ages in the very centre of the mass of the Great Pyramid, safe from defacement and mutilation, and so placed as to be beyond all suspicion of their genuineness,⁵ General Howard Vyse discovered, as lately as the year 1837, the hieroglyphic characters which the workmen painted, for their own mechanical uses, on the huge stones before they left the quarry; and those characters have been deciphered as Kiiufu or Siiofo, and Num-Khufu or Nu-Siiofo (the brother of Khnfu or Shofo, and doubtless co-reo-ent with him).⁶ In these kings we at once recognize the Suphis I. and II. of Manetho⁷ and the royal tablets, and in

³ In hieroglyphic writing the name of a king is always inclosed in an oval or cartouche, as the name of Menes on p. 5G. ⁴ See below, chap. x. » On the rough surfaces of stones built into the mass.

⁶ On Horace's principle, "Segnins irritant auimos, etc.," we give copies of these

quarry-marks

Khvfu, or, iu an abridged form.

⁷ That these two reigned together, in part at least, is confirmed by the lengths of their reigns as stated by Manetho, either fifty and fifty-six years, or sixty-three and sixty-six; for even the smaller pair could hardly have been filled up by two brothers successively.

THE PYRAMIDS.

63

the former the Cheops to whom Herodotus expressly ascribes the Great Pyramid. Justly, therefore, does Lepsius describe this work as " the Pyramid of Cheops, to ichich the first link of our monumental liistory is fastened immovably, not only for Egyptian, but for Universal History."

§ 5. The Second Pyramid of Jizeh is doubtless that which

Plan of the Pyramids of -Jii.eh.

Herodotus says was built by Cephren, th° successor of Cheops, close to the former, and of nearly the same size, but somewhat lower.⁸ This king is probably identified with Shcrfre, the Sephres of Manetho's Fifth Dynasty, but, according to Lepsius, of the Fourth. His name has not, indeed, been found on the Pyramid, but it appears on several tombs

* Herod, ii. 127. In calling Cephren the brother of Cheops, Herodotus seems to have confused him with Nnm-Khufu or Snphis II. Diodorus (i.64) mentions a tradition, that this king was the xon (not the brother) of Cheops, and that his true name was Chabryis, a much nearer approach to Shafrc.

THE OLD MONARCHY.

and tablets, often with the addition " of the Lesser Pyramid." It is also distinguished, in the tablets of kings, like that of Cheops, by a pyramid among its component hieroglyphics.

A most interesting monument of this king is the great temple, close to the Sphinx, only lately uncovered by M. Mariette, wlio found in it a life-sized portrait-statue of the king, sculptured in the hard trap-rock called diorite, and inscribed

with his name, j^"*^ fz^j ; besides fragments of other

statues with the same inscription.

§ 6. The Third Pyramid, much inferior in size to the other two, but excelling them in beauty, as it was cased half-way up with Ethiopian granite, is ascribed by Herodotus to Mycerinus, whom he makes the successor of Cephren ;⁹ and, in Manetho, Suphis II. is followed by Mencheres.¹⁰ In this case, the identification is even more striking than in that of the Pyramid of Cheops. The Third Pyramid still retains some courses of its granite facing, bevelled at the edges ; and when Belzoni entered the edifice, he found indeed that Arab spoilers had been there before him ; the coffin had been taken from the sarcophagus, and broken open ; but there lay the coffin-lid, inscribed with the name of Mex-ka-re, and in the neighboring passage, were the withered relics of a body, supposed to be that of the king himself; though some say tli.it it is the corpse of an Arab, who perished in the Pyramid when it was entered by Othman. The human relics and the fragments of the case may both be seen in the British Museumand the hieroglyphics of the name are repeated on the tablets of kings, in one of the small pyramids which are grouped abont the great ones, and elsewhere.

The Middle Pyramid of Aboa-Seir, to the south of those of Jizeh,has been claimed, on the authority of a name inscribed as a quarry-mark, for Soris, the first king of the Fourth Dynasty; but Lepsius refers it to Usercheres, of the Fifth.

§ 7. These Pyramids are but the chief and the most ancient of a series extending along the rocky platform, which raises them beyond reach of the inundation, to the west of Memphis, along a space of about twenty miles, from Jizeh on the north to Pashoar on the south.

Such was the extent of the vast cemetery, where the myriads of the Memphian dead reposed in their rock-hewn sepulchres, high over which the temple-tombs of their sovereigns pointed tq the sky. Monuments of haughty grandeur and despotic power as they are, common sense suggests the

⁹ Herod, ii. 129,134. ¹' The name also occurs in the Fifth Dynasty.

THE PYRAMIDS.

higher artistic motive for their size and form ; a motive which is felt as soon as they are seen. Like the cathedral, spires of the Middle Ages, they are the landmarks of a vast space which sets them before the eye in their sacred dignity while their huge mass is in harmony with all the objects that surround them, and with the very atmosphere through which they are seen. The emotions excited in a thousand generations are the justification of their builders.

§ .8. It is a misleading generality to speak of the Pyramids simply as Egyptian. "They are the characteristic monuments of the old Memphian Monarchy, just as the vast temples of Luxor and Karnak, with their pillared naves and towering propyls, are of the New Theban Monarchy. The practice of pyramid - building can not be traced" beyond the Twelfth Dynasty, for the pyramids of Nubia are later and very inferior resuscitations of the form. Equally distinct is the religious idea of the Pyramids from that of"the palaces and temples of after-ages. While the walls of the latter display immense reliefs and paintings, and are covered with hieroglyphics, to the glory of their kings and their patron deities, the former are almost, and in the best and oldest example, the Great Pyramid, quite bare of even structural decoration. Not for want of skill and art, as is abundantly shown by the contemporary tombs around them, and by the perfection of their own workmanship. Had we no other monuments of the age, the mechanical skill required to remove the huge stones" from the opposite side of the Nile, and to raise^ them to the height of nearly 500 feet; to quarry, and polish, and transport the granite used in the linings and sarcophagi ; to preserve every form and angle with geometrical exactitude, and to fit the masonry with joints as thin as writing-paper (not to insist on the supposed evidences of high astronomical and other science)—all this would, of itself, display the work of a highly civilized people, governed by a power which, in the security of peace, could command unlimited resources of labor, and was ready to expend the human material with the unsparing selfishness of a despot. The priests told Herodotus¹¹ that "Cheops closed the temples and forbade the Egyptians to sacrifice, compelling them instead to labor, one and all, in his service. A hundred thousand men labored constantly, and were relieved every three months by a fresh lot. It took ten years' oppression of the people to make the causeway for the conveyance of the stones. The Pyramid itself was twenty years in building."

The fairest conclusion from the absence of those decora-

¹¹ Herod, ii. 100.

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THE OLD MONARCHY.

tions which were lavished on private tombs, is that the Pyramids were regarded as temples, us well as tombs, in an age and nation which had not yet adopted image worship ; and when, as we have seen, the pantheistic symbolism of animal worship was new. Tombs, in general, were sacred to the deities of Amenti, the Egyptian Uncles; but the pyramid-kin^s seem themselves to have aspired to divine honors after death, and among the epitaphs of their subjects we find such titles as "priest of Khufu," "priest of Shafre;" nay,the Great Pyramid is called the "Temple of King Khufu.*" The absence of decoration is equally remarkable in the great temple of Shafre, near the Pyramids. The temple-towers of Babylonia, though in many respects of a different type,¹² have a sufficient resemblance to the Pyramids to suggest a common derivation of the idea from the Tower of Babel, a suggestion quite consistent with the Cushite origin of the Egyptians, and the position of the Pyramids in time as the earliest extant of human works. Their perfection shows that they were no first rude essays in architecture.

§ 9. In front of the Pyramids, on the edge of the platform of rock on which they stand, but lower down and looking eastward over the Nile, stands the colossal Sphinx (at e on the Plan). A man's head rises above the sands which leave visible only the back of the body of a lion, both hewn out of the solid rock, the strata of which are not only clearly seen, but " the figure appears all cruelly cut into by the weathering of its rock."¹³ " The head and face are reddish, the neck and line of the back white, on the yellow sand."¹⁴ "About the face and head, though nowhere else, there is much of the original statuary surface still, occasionally painted dull red ; and the curvature of the cheeks and cheek-bones shows a certain degree of high sculpture, especially when we observe the scale on which it~is wrought."¹⁵ The temporary clearance of the sand effected by Captain Caviglia, in 1818, showed that the length of the body is 140 feet f the fore-paws, which are constructed in masonry, project fifty feet farther; and the height from the platform between the paws to the top of the head is 62 feet, the original elevation of the native rock.¹⁵

The rock is not, however, levelled to this depth, but the platform is approached from the side of the Nile by a sloping descent cut in the rock for 135 feet, and ending in a flight of 13 steps; from the platform there is another descent of 30 steps to the space between the Sphinx's feet. Like the

¹² See below, cbap. x.

¹³ Piazzi Smyth. " Life ami Work at the Great Pyramid," vol. i. p. 322.

« Ibid., vol.i. p!5S. ¹⁵ Ibid., vol. i. p. 323.

^la Howard 7yse, " Pyramids of Gizeh," vol. iii. Appendix, pp. 109-110.

THE COLOSSAL SPHINX.

07

Pyramids, it is free from hieroglyphics ; but, on the side of a little temple between its paws, Caviglia discovered tablets representing Thothmes IV., of the 18th~dynasty, and Rameses the Great, of the 19th, worshipping the figure of" the Sphinx, liar-Hat, the giver of life, etc., the ruler of the upper and lower world, etc., like the sun forever and ever." These tablets only prove it to be older than the kings who set them ud ; its real age is probably, from many indications, that of the Pyramids themselves.

Its meaning has no connection with the classic fable of CEdipus. The Greek Sphinx was female;¹⁷ the Egyptian was male—the symbolical statue of a god or king, uniting the attributes of power and intelligence~in the lion's body and the man's head, crowned with the royal fillet.¹⁸ From the proximity of the Sphinx to the building called Shafre's temple, and some other indications, it is thought by some to be the statue of that king, by others a divine image which he consecrated. If the former, it was doubtless a portrait; but the weathering of the strata has worn the essentially Egyptian features into what some have mistaken for the negro type. In the later ages of Egypt, we find sphinxes used in the decoration of temples ; and the human head is often replaced by those of animals symbolical of divine attributes, such as the ram and hawk.

§ 10. The silence of the Pyramids respecting the life of the Egyptians under the Old Monarchy is made up for by the surrounding tombs. Their internal walls are covered with hieroglyphics and with the more universally intelligible language of pictures, which show us the subjects of the Old Memphian kingdom in the midst of their daily business, banquets, and recreations. "Here we see the regular physical type of the Egyptians : a reddish-brown complexion, with the nose long, and either straight or slightly aquiline, the lips rather full, and the forehead not high \ but the shape of the head is hidden by the already universal wiy™ Other clothing is scanty; a short kilt, sandals, a necklace; and in some cases a leopard's skin over the shoulders, the distinctive dress of the priests. The complexion of the women is a yellowish pale olive; they wear a single, close-fitting,elastic dress of a brilliant scarlet, supported under the breasts by shoulder-straps, and coming down, without a fold or wrinkle, to the ankles, where it^is wide enough to allow of

^1T If the Greeks borrowed the idea from the Egyptians, they may have been misled as to the sex by the wig aud head-dress. It is remarkable that the sphinx is not mentioned by Herodotus, nor by any Greek or Latin author earlier than Pliny.

>s Clemens "Alex. Strom." 5, p. G71 (Potter). 'AXxn? Me™ Twlaew o6y.(3o\ov h o<pint.

¹⁹ An Egyptian wig may be seen in the British Museum.

GS

THE OLD MONARCHY.

the separation of the feet in walking or dancing. The wig is larger than that of the men ; and princesses are only distinguished from servants by their necklaces, bracelets, and anklets of blue and white glass beads."

The social state is that of an aristocracy of land-owners, using with harsh oppression the labor of a servile peasantry and of domestic slaves. " Throughout the whole of the pictured'scenes, there is not a single instance of a peasant enjoying, or working for, himself under his own vine and his own tig-tree; no independent thought, or look,or action, on the part of the poor men is allowed; but they are all in official training to serve the prince of the time being; and administration is the order of the day."²⁰ According to a constant convention in Egyptian pictures, the owner of the tomb is represented by a colossal figure, armed with a baton, and standing the whole height of the wall, which is divided, in front ofhim, into horizontal compartments, in which his servants are at their various occupations. The task-master is always present,and the bastinado at work: not even the cripples are exempt from labor; and over them we often find the words " Slaves born in the house (registered) in the books of the house forever."

The estates were large, as many as ten or fifteen belonging to one owner, who receives from his overseers accounts of the produce, which a scribe records, each with its distinctive name. Every thing seems done on a scale of vastness and profusion : the droves of oxen are numbered by thousands; two or three rows of cows are milked at once ; long trains of servants come in laden with provisions; whole droves of oxen are slaughtered before the master; and his table is piled up with slices of bread, pyramids of fruit, joints of meat, and the favorite dishes of roast geese. Pastoral operations are on a larger scale than agricultural. The seed is sown broadcast, and^beaten in by driving sheep²¹ and goats over the newly-inundated land; reaping is performed with a sickle; threshing by driving herds of donkeys about a floor; and winnowing with spades.

The amusements of the field are eagerly pursued : hunting, fishing, and fowling. We see the fowler, in his papyrus boat, approaching the reeds that then fringed the banks of the

²⁰ Piazzi Smyth, " Life and Work, etc.," vol. iii. p. 3S0.

²¹ M. Kenan (in his valuable article in the " Revue des Deux Mondes," April, 18G5) denies that there are any sheep; but Professor Piazzi Smyth (p. 3S1) distinguishes the sheep, "long-legged things, with horizontal and mutually-diverging horns, and the goats with venerable beards and lyre-shaped retreating horns." But neither are numerous, compared with the oxen, "of magnificent quality, and of a portliness which shows them rather intended for the butcher than the farmer."

LIFE DEPICTED IN THE TOMBS.

GO

Nile, to strike the birds which fly into the clap-nets spread by his servants. The chief in-door amusements arc concerts and the performances of dancing-girls, witnessed by the master and by ladies, who sit on chairs of an elegant form.

One curious feature of these scenes is the number and variety of the domestic animals : donkeys, dogs, apes, antelopes, gazelles, geese, ducks, tame storks, and pigeons ; but others, familiar to a latter age of Egypt, are never seen, as fowls, camels, giraffes, elephants, aud horses. The absence of the horse is peculiarly interesting, as showing that we have not reached the period of that Pharaoh who made Joseph to ride in the second chariot that he had.²² It was to their Semitic neighbors, and probably to the invasion of the Shepherd Kings that the Egyptians were indebted for the horse.

Among the mechanical arts depicted are cabinet-making, and what has been interpreted as glass-blowing; but the handleless hammers of the carpenters show an age in which human labor was unrelieved by even the simplest machinery. Writing with a reed on papyrus is in constant use; and the cursive characters of the quarry-marks in the Great Pyramid prove that it had passed out of its earliest stage. Iu short, the civilization represented is in every respect as high as that of any later period of the Egyptian monarchy; and the art is even higher. The ignorance of perspective, common to every period of Egyptian art, and the absence of any idealizing power, must not lead us to undervalue the perfect truth to nature with which the animals and other objects are depicted, or the freedom of form and motion in the human figure, not yet trammelled by the sacred conventionalism of later ages. This free style of art is thought to show a period when the sacerdotal power was not dominant; and the inscriptions, which tell us of the social position and offices of these long-buried dead, confirm the view that the country had readied that political stage in which the government had passed from the priestly to the military class.

Nor are we without testimony to the moral views of these oldest Egyptians. In the Imperial Library at Paris there is a papyrus written by PhtJia-hotep, an old man of the royal blood'in the reign of Assa-Tatkera (probably the Tancheres of Manetho's 5th dynasty), and containing thirty-five moral precepts addressed to his son ; in which filial obedience is made the basis of morality, and its principle is extended to the duties of a subject to his king—the sign of an age of patriarchal despotism. It contains such precepts as the following : "The son who receives the words of his father shall

²² Genesis xli. 43. Comp. chap. v. § 10,

70

THE OLD MONARCHY.

grow old thereby. The obedience of a son to his father is happiness. He is dear to his father, and his renown is on the tongues of the living who walk upon the earth. The rebellious sees knowledge in ignorance, virtue in vice; each day he audaciously perpetrates frauds of every kind ; and so he lives as one already dead. That which the wise know to be death, is his daily life; he goes on in his way, loaded with maledictions."²³

The conclusion is interesting as an example of longevity, and breathes the spirit of self-satisfaction which characterized the religion and morality of the old Egyptians : " I have become one of the old men of the land ; I have accomplished one hundred and ten years with the grace of the king and the approbation of the elders, fulfilling my duty towards the king in the place of favor."

§ 11. The monuments, inscriptions, and pictured scenes of this period, all testify to a period of prosperity and peace.

Xo soldiers appear on the monuments; and none of the great men carry arms. The only sign of war is the coercion of troublesome Arab tribes in the peninsula of Sinai, where the Memphian kings, as we have seen, worked copper mines.²⁴ The country is at a high pitch of wealth under a powerful government. That such should be the earliest scene presented to us in the ancient world, fills every student of history with amazement. "When we think of this civilization," says M. Kenan, "that it had no known infancy ; that this art, of which there remain innumerable monuments, had no archaic epoch; that the Egypt of Cheops and Cephren is superior, in a sense, to all that followed, on est jyrjs de verthje"

Of the ruder labors which prepare the country for this high condition, we have no other indication than the traditions preserved by Herodotus about Menes.

§ 12. Before the time of Menes, he says, the Xile flowed close under the sandy range of hills which skirts Egypt on the side of Libya. By raising a dike at the bend which the river forms about a hundred furlongs south of Memphis, Menes turned the river into a new course half-way between the two lines of hills ; and on the site thus reclaimed on the left bank he built Memphis. He also built the temple of IIepha?stus (Phtha) within the city.²⁵ Herodotus testifies²⁶ to the care with which the dike was preserved by the Persians

²³ Lenormant, " Histoire Aueienne," vol. i. p. 208. ²⁴ See chap. i. 5 14.

²⁵ The Temple was enlarged by successive kings at distant periods. See Herod, ii. 99, 101, 10S-110, 121, 100, 15f:, 1TG; Diod. i. 45, 51, 62, 07. Its grand avenue (dromos) was used for bull-lights, which are represented on the tombs ; though the bull Apis was the sacred animal of Memphis. ²⁶ Herod, ii. 99.

ENGINEERING WORKS OF MENES.

71

in his time, lest the inundation should hurst upon Memphis. There seems no reason to reject this tradition of some great engineering works connected with the lirst establishment of Memphis; but their nature may have been misunderstood.

It is not improbable that the true object was to confine the Nile to its clayey bed, and to prevent the percolation of its waters through the sand-hills of the Libyan Desert and behind the pyramid-hills, into the chain of the lower Natron Lakes on the west of the Delta, which wasted its fertilizing waters and caused its lower arms to be lost in marshes, which, in the earliest age of Egypt, were probably uninhabitable, so that the population was confined to the narrow valley. The bifurcation of the river appears to have been at one time some 14 miles above Memphis, at JCasr-el-Syat, whence an ancient bed may be traced to the Libyan hills. Here is the elbow of which Herodotus speaks ; and the dike of Menes (of which all trace is obliterated by the rise of the soil) may have stopped up this western branch, and diverted the rest of its water into the lake which, Herodotus says, Menes constructed on the west of Memphis.²⁷

§ 13. This securing of the site of Memphis was the first pressing labor of its founders. Of the city itself our knowledge is sadly small. Its position " in the narrow part of Egypt"²⁸ —just below the expansion of the valley towards the Fytim, and above the opening to the Delta—commanded the passage between Upper and Lower Egypt, and fitted it to be the capital of the whole country.²⁹

It seems to have occupied the whole space of about three miles between the river and the hills. Its circuit is said by Diodorus to have been 150 stadia, or 15 geographical miles. Its walls contained three inclosures, of which the innermost, or citadel was called " the White Wall ;"³⁰ and one of its hieroglyphic names is " the white building." It is also called " the land of the pyramid " and " the abode of Phtha,"³¹ its

²⁷ It was across this lake the dead were ferried to their sepulchres. See Piazzf Smyth, vol. iii. p. 3S6 seq.; and Kenrick, "Ancient Egypt," vol. i. pp. 112,113.

²« Herod, ii. 99; comp. ii. S. ²⁹ Diod. i. 50. ao Thucyd. i. 10S; Herod, iii. 13,91.

³¹ Memphis is the Greek form of the Egyptian name, which is compounded of th« hieroglyphics, "Men" = foundation, or station, and ".Vo/re" = good, variously interpreted as " the place or haven of good men," or "the gate of the blessed," and " the tomb of the good man," i. e. Osiris. Plutarch (" De Isid. et Osir." 20) explains it by '6_Pfio^ uyaOiLv or ratpov'Oatpidov. Both senses, Gesenins remarks, are applicable to Memphis, as the sepulchre of Osiris, the Necropolis of the Egyptians, and hence also the haven of the blessed, ftV^&ft since the right of burial was conceded only to the good. The name seems vww\ also connected with that of Men-en, the hero eponymus of the city. In He- t A brew, it was No])h (Isaiah xix. 13; Jeremiah ii. 1G, xlvi. 14, 19; Ezekiel A A xxx. 13,10), or Moph (Hosea ix. (i). The name is preserved in the Coptic Qdfcfl Mephi, Memphi, Menofre, Mojjh, and Panovf; aud in the modern Manouf of the Delta. See Sir G. Wilkimon's Note to Herod, ii. 91, Rawlinson.

72

THE OLD MONARCHY.

great patron deity. The worship of that oldest of the gods marks its religious precedence Jjefore both Heliopolis and Thebes, whose patron deity was Ra, the Sun. As is usual in the old lands of castes, the priestly Memphis preceded the warlike Thebes. The substructions of the temple of Phtha, and of other buildings, as well as the colossal statues and stelae of Rameses II., and a broken statue bearing the name of Sabaco, identify its site with the plain covered with palm-trees, in which stands the village of Mitrahenny or Mitrauich, about 10 miles south of Cairo. (This modern capital, how ever, is on the opposite, or right, bank of the river.) The mounds which mark the ancient site extend over a circumference of three leagues.³²

§ 14. To the west, on the foot-terraces of the Libyan range of hills, the great Plain of the Pyramids extends from Abou-Moash, a little to the north-west of Cairo, to Meydoom, about 40 miles to the south, and thence in a south-westerly direction about 25 miles farther, to the pyramids of Howard and BlaJuuu; containing about 60 pyramids great and small. But the proper Memphite Necropolis is comprised within a length of about 15 miles from Jlzeh, to Sakkara, and contains, probably, 30 tombs of the sovereigns of Memphis.³³ There are no tombs on the eastern side of the Xile: the West was regarded as the land of darkness and of death.

The internal architecture of these tombs is instructive. The sepulchral abodes of the dead, who only slept, would naturally be modelled after the homes of the living. Partaking of that simplicity which we have seen in the Pyramids and in the temple of Shafre, their only decoration consists in bands, both vertical and horizontal, with rounded surfaces, as if reproducing in stone the trunks of trees most common in Egypt, the palm and sycamore. It may be inferred that the primitive Egyptians were no dwellers in caves (troglodyte), as some have supposed, but that their habitations were wooden houses, in which the natural trunks served for pillars and mouldings.

§ 15. Memphis was unquestionably the seat pf the Third, Fourth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Dynasties of Manetho. He styles his Fifth Dynasty Elephantine; and assigns to it 31 kings³⁴ and nearly 600 years. Their names are associated in Memphian tombs with those of the Fourth Dynasty; and some are identical in both lists. Xo facts are recorded of

³² Kenrick, "Ancient Egypt," vol. i. p. 111.

³³ Bnnsen, "Egypt's Place," etc., vol. ii. p. ss.

⁸⁴ According to the better reading in the Armenian Chronicle of Ensebins: th9 Greek text has only nine in 21S years. The hypothesis that they reigned at some unknown Elephantine in Lower Egypt violates a sound canon of criticism.

THE MEMPHIAN DYNASTIES.

73

these kings. They seem to have been a contemporary branch of the royal house of Memphis, ruling at Elephantine on the southern border of Egypt; the t wo governments being sometimes united under the sovereign reigning at Memphis.

But, in truth, the relation of the Memphian Monarchy to Upper Egypt is altogether obscure. " No mention is even incidentally made of Thebes; a city may have existed there, but not of sufficient importance to be a rival power to Memphis. Hitherto no trace of the dominion of the Memphian kings has been found at Thebes or elsewhere in Upper Egypt, except some alabaster vases from Abydos, bearing the standard of Chufu ; and portable antiquities afford no decisive evidence. But this is no proof of Theban independence, since the fixed monuments of this age are entirely sepulchral; and the Memphian kings and their great officers would be buried near their own capital. Ii' Thebes has no monuments of Memphian dominion, neither has it any of its own, and it appears probable that, till the Twelfth Dynasty of Manetho, it continued to be a place of little account."³⁰

§ 16. The period of these great Memphian kings of the Fourth Dynasty seems to have been one of religious strife and convulsion. Their memory had an ill-savor with the sacerdotal colleges. The priests told Herodotus that Egypt was well governed till the reign of Cheops,who closed the temples and forbade the Egyptians to offer sacrifice; a statement contradicted by the evidence of contemporary tombs.³⁶ Manetho only says that Suphis I. (Cheops) was arrogant towards the gods,but, repenting, wrote the sacred book; but Diodorus declares that Chembes (i. e. Cheops) was excluded after death from his own pyramid, and buried in a secret place to save his body from the insults of the oppressed people.³⁷ The period of oppression, Herodotus adds, lasted for 106 years, the united reigns of Cheops and Cephren, whose names the Egyptians so detested that they chose rather to call the Pyramids after Philition, a shepherd who at that time fed his flocks about the place.³⁸

Mycerinus at length opened the temples, and allowed the

« Kenrick, "Ancient Egypt," vol. ii. pp. 142,143. The removal of the dead to their family sepulchre?, however distant, was a sacred custom of the Egyptians.

³⁹ Herod, ii. 194: comp. the absurd tale in c. 120. Observe the historian's own caution (c. 123), already quoted. See chap. ii. § 2.

³⁷ Diod. i. G4. The argument has been urged, that the traditional character of Cheops but ill accords with the prosperity shown on the monuments of his reign. But this prosperity of the landed aristocracy is quite consistent with the oppression of the common people; and of their happiness, as we have seen, the monuments give lib proof.

³⁸ Herod, ii. 12S. Iu this curious and obscure tradition thcro may possibly be an allusion to the inroad of the Shepherd Kings from the side of Palestine; and their oppression may have been confounded with that of the Pyramid Kings.

4

74

THE OLD MONARCHY.

people to return to their occupations and to resume the rites of sacrifice. He surpassed all former kings in justice ; and, if any man was dissatisfied with his decision, he paid the penalty he had awarded out of his own purse. Yet another story made him die of grief from a passion for his own daughter, and another shows forth the opposition between king and priest in his grotesque device for proving the oracle of Buto a liar. The fatalism of the Egyptian religion is shown in the sentence on Mycerinus for his very virtues towards his people, because he had not fulfilled the destined term of their oppression for 150 years.³⁹

These traditions of a religious conflict are not unconfirmed by the monuments. In the temple of Shafre is a well, containing broken fragments of statues of that king, made of the most costly stones, and evidently flung in by violence; a token, so far as it goes for any thing, of an outburst of revolutionary hatred. The respect of the priests for the memory of Mycerinus looks like their tribute to the author of a new establishment, which secured the sway they afterwards exercised over the whole life of the Egyptians. We have many proofs of his deification. On the coffin-lid found in the Great Pyramid, Menkera is identified with Osiris. In the Tablet of Abydos, his shield contains the sign denoting " god." In the "Ritual of the Dead" he appears as a deceased and deified king; and his name is often found on the carved beetles (scarabcei), which were used as amulets, of a date (as their workmanship proves) long subsequent to his death.⁴⁰

§ 17. According to the view of Bunsen, "The amalgamation of the religions of Upper and Lower Egypt had already united the two provinces, before the power of the race of This in the Thebaid extended itself to Memphis ; and before the giant work of Menes converted the Delta from a desert, checkered over with lakes and morasses, into a blooming garden." After this, the political union of the two divisions was effected by the builder of Memphis. " Menes founded the Empire of Egypt by raising the people who inhabited the valley of the Nile from a little provincial station to that of an historical nation."⁴¹ The process of consolidating this power would not unnaturally lead to conflicts with the priests of the local deities that were revered in every part of Egypt. At all events, it seems certain that the main elements of the

³⁹ Herod, ii. 129-133. Two kings of the same name are perhaps mixed up in these Ptories. Lepsius suspects that the skeptical Psammetichus, on whose shield we find ihe name Menkera as an "augmentation," may have been confonuded Avith the pious r.vramid-kiug. ⁴⁰ Kenrick, " Ancient Egypt," vol. ii. p. 138.

⁴¹ Buuseu, "Egypt'sPlace," etc., vol. i. p. 441; vol. ii. p.409.

UNION OF UPPER AND LOWER EGYPT.

75

Egyptian religion had received their permanent form under the old Memphian kings. M. Mariette has found the names of Osiris, Isis, and Nephthys, the great deities common to all Egypt, on monuments at Sakkara, which he regards as contemporary with Cheops.

§ 18. The Sixth Dynasty, of six kings in 203 years, is styled by Manetho Memphian. Some hold that this Sixth Dynasty succeeded the Fourth at Memphis, while the Fifth continued to reign at Elephantine, even as late as the domination of the Shepherd-kings in Lower Egypt.⁴² In the absence of Manetho's History, his mere List fails to show the ground of distinction between the dynasties, or the causes which handed down, or handed over, the power from each to its successor. But he tells us that the first king of the Sixth Dynasty, Othoes, was killed by his guards, after a reign of thirty years.⁴³ Now, if the critics are right who identify this Othoes with the Onnos who closes the Fifth Dynasty, we have the not improbable inference that the original Memphian monarchy was supplanted by a revolution, which had its beginning with the guards stationed on the frontier at Elephantine.

But, be the cause what it might, the second king of the Sixth Dynasty, Pepi-Maire or Pepi-Pemai (Phios, M.),⁴⁴ ruled over the whole country, with a power attested by the number and variety of his monuments, from Syene at the cataracts to Tanis in the Delta.

The monument which gives us his titular name indicate? that he constructed or improved the road to the port of Kos-seir, on the Red Sea, and so raises the presumption of a conv merce between Egypt and the seas of Arabia, and perhaps India. The military prowess of Pepi is attested by his monuments to the east and south of Egypt. We see him warring

⁴² The evidence for this is an inscription, making Unas, the last king of the Fifth Dynasty (Onnos in Manetho) contemporary with Assa, the Fifth king of the Fifteenth Dynasty (of Shepherds) at Memphis ; but the reading is very doubtful. Lepsius con-eiders not only the fifth dynasty (whose seat at Elephantine bordered on Ethiopia) bat the sixth also, as Ethiopian ; their fifteen kings, with the three of the twenty-fifth dynasty, making up the eighteen Ethiopian kiugs of Herodotus.

⁴³ The monuments show two competitors against this king, whose name appears as A ti.

⁴⁴ Either reading has the same meaning—" beloved of Re (the Sun)." The full form of the name is Pepi-meri-ro. The title is derived from a monument on the road to Kosseir, on the Red Sea, exhibiting two kings, named I'^n, and Maire or Remai, seated on thrones side by side, one wearing the crown oi Upper, the other that of Lower Egypt. At first sight we should take them for contemporary sovereigns; but, as the second name appears nowhere else, and as its meaning is perfectly analogous to the titles which the Theban kiugs prefixed in a separate shield to that containing the phonetic characters of their own names, it seems most pr.obable that this was another mode of signifying the same thiug. If so, Pepi's is the first example of a titular prse-nomen among the Egyptian kings" The kings of the Fourth and other eai ly dynasties have but one shield, containing their names in phonetic characters.

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THE OLD MONARCHY.

against the Arabs of the peninsula of Sinai (like the kings of the Fourth Dynasty) ; against other Arab tribes between Upper Egypt and the Red^Sea; and in Ethiopia, above the second cataract, against the Wa-Wa, a people of a decidedly negro type.⁴⁵ A second Pepi, surnamed Neferkera (Fhiops, M.), is distinguished by Manetho for the phenomenon of a centenarian reign. He came to the throne at six years of age, and reigned for 100 years all but a month;⁴⁶ but nothing else is recorded of him ; only his monuments confirm the length of his reign by the festivals which he celebrated at the^completion of its several periods.

The successor of Phiops reigned but one year, and then we come to the one queen, whose name was read to Herodotus among the 330 kings, the " rosy-cheeked " Nitocris⁴⁷ of Manetho, who also calls her " the most spirited and most beautiful woman of her time." The character is justified, and the shortness of her predecessor's reign accounted for, by the legend which the priests related to Herodotus, that she succeeded her brother, who had been put to death by his subjects ; and, having invited the principal murderers to a banquet in a subterranean chamber, she let in the river upon them as they were feasting. Then, to escape the vengeance of their friends, she threw herself into an apartment full of ashes.⁴⁸

Manetho assigns 12 years to her reign, and says that she built the Thirdly ram id, that, namely, of Mycerinus^ Now it is remarkable that this pyramid has been at some time enlarged, the original entrance having been built over by the new masonry, and a second entrance constructed, as if to receive a second occupant. Even the story, which Herodotus himself rejects, of the building of the Third Pyramid by the courtesan Rhodope, is an undesigned corroboration of its connection with Nitocris, for the Greek word Rlwdope has the same meaning as the " rosy-cheeked" queen of Manetho.⁴"

⁴⁵ It is enousrh to mention, without discussing, the inference, that Nubia was at this time occuoied by a negro population, previous to the entrance of the Cushite Ethiopians from S. Arabia across the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb. (See Lenormant, " Histoire Ancienne," vol. i. p. 200.)

⁴⁶ Eratosthenes assigns 100 years to Apappus; and the name Pepi may be read Apap. The Turin papyrus gives 00 years to a nameless king; and that this was Pepi is confirmed by the one year and one month assigned to his successor.

⁴⁷ In Egyptian Xeitakri, i. e. " Neith (Minerva) the Victorious." Her name is iu the Turin papyrus. There is another Nitocris of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty, living about the same time as the celebrated Babylonian queen of the same name, who (Sir G. Wilkiuson conjectures) may have been au Egyptian princess, demanded in marriage by the King of Babylon on his invasion of Egypt. The wife of Psammetichus III. was also named Neitakri. See'Rawlinson's " Herodotus," Note to ii. 100.

^4S Herod, ii. 100. The last part of the story, at all events, seems of foreign origin. Smotheriug in ashes was a Persian punishment, but unknown to the Egyptians. ⁴⁹ Herod, ii. 134. The historical Ithodope, whose proper name was Doricha (as

NITOCRIS.

77

§ 19. With Nicotris ends the splendor of the Old Memphian Monarchy ; and the result of the preceding troubles is traced in the eclipse that settles over Egyptian history from the Sixth Dynasty to the Eleventh. For this interval the monuments are dumb ; or rather, there are no monuments to speak.⁵⁰ The Seventh Dynasty, of 70 kings in as many days, looks like an interregnum of a senate or a priestly college.¹'¹ To the Eighth Dynasty Manetho assigns 28 kings in 146 years,⁵² and that is all we know. On the hypothesis that 'Manetho's dynasties are in part contemporary, these shadowy dynasties seem the remnants left at Memphis of a divided empire,-on the ruins of which new kingdoms were founded in Middle and Upper Egypt, probably during the troublous times of the Sixth Dynasty.⁵³ The seat of the former was at Heracleopolis ;⁵⁴ that of the latter was at the new capital of Upper Egypt, which the Greeks called Thebes, and of which we have soon to speak more fully.

The double conflict which Heracleopolis must have had to maintain, against Thebes on the one side, and the Shepherd invaders on the other, will account for the darkness of its history. Of the 4 kings of the Ninth Dynasty in 100 years⁵⁶ and the 19 of the Tenth in 185 years, we are only told that the first, Achthoes, was the most atrocious of all who preceded him, and having done much mischief to the people of all Egypt, he went mad, and was killed by a crocodile. His

Sappho calls her) lived in Egypt in the reign of Amasis. The story of her marriage to Psammetichus, under circumstances resembling the tale of Cinderella, and of her burial iu the Third Pyramid, seems to have arisen from a double confusion with the two Neitakris, the ancient queen and the wife of Psammetichus III. (^Eliau. " Var. Hist." xiii. 33 ; Strabo, xvii. p. 300.

⁵⁰ The hypothesis of a foreign invasion has been snggested, on the ground that the comparison of the skulls found in the tombs prior to the sixth dynasty with those subsequent to the eleventh, shows the introduction of a new element of race. But this is confessedly very doubtful. See Lenormant, " Histoire Ancienne," vol. i. p. 211.

⁶¹ The reading of Eusebins (Armenian Version), five kings in seventy-five days, seems an arbitrary correction. Mr. Poole regards the seventh and eighth as native dynasties who temporarily recovered power at Memphis, at the end of the Fifteenth Dynasty, the first of the Shepherd Kings.

⁵² Or five kings in one hundred years.—Euseb. " Chron. Arm."

⁶« Even M. Lenormant, who sees no reason to question the continuity of Manetho's dynasties, speaks of an energetic struggle of the Theban kings of the eleventh dynasty against the separatists of the Delta, represented in the ninth aud tenth Herac-leopolite dynasties.

⁵⁴ Heracleopolis the Great is doubtless meant, since Heracleopolis Parva, in the Delta, is only mentioned in later times. The former (so named by the Greeks after its patron deity, whom they identified with Hercules) stood at the month of the opening from the valley of the Nile into the Fyum, on an island formed by the Nile, the Bahr Yusnf, and a canal, in a position well suited for a capital both of Upper and Lower E<rypt. Its site is marked by the mounds about the village of Anasieh or Anas-el-Mcdineh, the Coptic Hues. There is, however, a doubt both as to the name and numbers of these two dynasties. See chap. iv. § 3.

" So in Eusebins, " Chron. Arm." Africanus has 19 kings in 409 years.

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THE OLD MONARCHY.

fate looks like a local tradition, to account for the permanent hostility of the Heraeleopolites to the crocodile, which was worshipped by their neighbors of Arsinoe in the Fytlm.

Considering the position of Heracleopolis, and the number of years assigned to its two dynasties, it seems not improbable that the great engineering works by which the Lake Mceris was made a reservoir for regulating the inundation of the Nile, were at least commenced during this period. " If the Fyum was rendered habitable and fertile by the kings of the Heracleopolitan dynasties, it will be explained how it becomes of so much importance under the Twelfth.⁵⁶

§ 20. In this account of the old Memphian Monarchy, we have not attempted to give a single date. There is, thus far, and long after, no established Egyptian chronology; and, if data exist from which it might be constructed, the results as yet obtained are purely hypothetical. Various Schools of Egyptologers place the era of Menes as high as b.c. 5735, and as low as b.c. 2429, and that of the Great Pyramid at the beginning of the fifth or the second chiliad b.c. All the stronger for this diversity is that body of testimony to the antiquity of Egyptian civilization which places the lowest date, not of its beginning, but of its perfection, in all essential elements, at least 4000 years ago!

The. chief principles on which the construction of a chronology has been attempted are the following: — (i.) The simple expedient of adding together the numbers assigned by Manetho to his dynasties, leads us back to the sixth chiliad b.c.⁵⁷ But, besides that the various numbers in the different texts make even this method inexact, it falls to the ground if any of the dynasties were contemporary, (ii.) A more refined and more probable system is based on calculations derived from the various epochs and periods which are known to have been used by the Egyptians, bnt which are too technical to be explained here. Following this method, authorities such as Sir Gardner Wilkinson, Mr. Lane, and Mr. Stuart Pool, place the Era of Menes at or about b.c. 2700, and that of the Fourth Dynasty about b.c. 2440.'⁸' (iii.) Partly in conjunction with the preceding method, and partly

⁵⁶ Kenrick, "Ancient Egypt," vol. ii. p. 156.

⁵⁷ The priests told Herodotus that there had been S41 generations, both of kings and high priests, from Menes to Sethos ; and this he calculates at 11,340 years. The " Loug Chronology " has been adopted, with various modifications, by the most distinguished Continental Egyptologers, as Bunsen, Lepsius, aud Kenan. Lepsius, in his "Letters from Egypt" (1S52), makes the Era of Menes n.c. 4S00, and that of the Fourth Dynasty i$.o. 4000 ; bnt in his " Konigsbuch " he brings down the same dates about 900 years lower, namely, u.o. 3S92 and n.o. 3124. Bunsen puts them at u.o. 3623 and b.o. 320D respectively.

⁵⁸ See Mr. Poole's " Horse E°-yptiaca;," and art. Egypt in the "Encyclopaedia Bri-tannica," ninth editiou.

EARLY CHRONOLOGY.

7ii

by itself, the Great Pyramid has been made, by astronomical calculations, to tell the date of its own erection. This method is too interesting to be passed over in silence ; but its very ingenuity is a ground of suspicion. It has been mixed up with certain extraordinary theories about the origin and object of the Pyramid, which lie quite beyond our province.⁵⁹ The three chief pyramids are all accurately placed with their four faces to the four points of the compass, a fact itself suggestive of the astronomical knowledge of their builders. Their entrance is always on the northern face, by a long sloping passage, the angle of which with the horizon differs but slightly from 30°, which is just the latitude of Jizeh. Moreover, this difference is almost uniform in the three pyramids, and its mean gives 26° 16' for the inclination of the passage. If the angle were exactly 30°, the passage would point to the true North Pole of the heavens. But this is an invisible point, though at present marked very nearly by what Ave therefore call the Polar Star, a in Ursa Minor. Owing, however, to the precession of the equinoxes, the true Pole, though fixed in our celestial hemisphere, is always changing its place among the stars; and about 4000 years ago the star a Draconis was the only conspicuous star near the Pole, its distance from which was then just 3° 44'. Consequently, its lower culmination on the meridian would be 26° 16' above the horizon. Astronomy enables us to calculate the exact date when these conditions were fulfilled, and that (it is argued) must have been the date of the Great Pyramid.

By an elaborate comparison with various other data, the Astronomer Royal for Scotland has fixed this date within narrower limits than preceding inquirers—at 21*70 b.c.

The reasoning is beautiful; and, to those who know how many scientific discoveries have been based on the mutual coherence of observed facts, it is not improbable. But the sterner spirit of criticism hesitates to accept it in the absence of some independent evidence that its assumed principle is true—that the inclination of the entrance-passage was intended to point to the polar star.⁶⁰ On the whole, however,

⁵⁹ The curious in such matters are referred to the late Mr. John Taylor's work on " The Great Pyramid " (1S5⁽.) and 1S64), which is at all events worthy of the ingenious author of "Junius Identified;" and to Professor Piazzi Smyth's two books, "Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid" (1S'J4), and "Life and Work at the Great Pyramid in 1S65 " (3 vols. 1S67). The leading idea of these authors is that the Great Pyramid is (whether with any other purpose or not) a monument of metrological standards. Bnt the pains-taking measurements and scientific authority of the Astronomer Royal for Scotland give his work a valne, which is quite independent of his theory.

⁶⁰ Sir Henry James—in his valuable tract ("Notes on the Great Pyramid of Egypt and the Cubits u-:ed in its Design"), 1SG9, giving the results of the measurements of the Great Pyramid by the Ordnance Surveyors in the winter of 1S6S-9—points out that the 8loi>e of the entrance passage (a little over 20°) is just the "angle of rest" for

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THE OLD MONARCHY.

we may venture so far as to say that there is a concurrence of probability in favor of a date, for the Fourth Dynasty and the Great Pyramids, not exceeding b.c. 2000. But this is hypothesis, not chronology.

The chronology of Scripture, even if thoroughly established, would only aid us with a maximum limit of time; for it is agreed on all hands that we have not yet reached the epoch of Abraham's visit to Egypt.

such materials as the stoue of the Pyramids, and therefore the proper inclination for enabling the sarcophagus to be easily moved, without lettiug it descend of itself. This is just as good a " sufficient reason" as the astronomical theory, and equally accounts for the near agreement of the slope in both of the passages, and in all the chief pyramids. The exact slope in the Great Pyramid is 26° 23'.

Bull-fight.

CHAPTER IV.

THE MIDDLE MONARCHY AND THE SHEPHERD KINGS.

5 1 Summary of the Period. Dynasties XI. to XVII. The Theban, Shepherd, and Xolte Kingdoms. § 2. The Eleventh Dynasty. Infancy of the Theban Monarchy. § 3. Monuments of the Enente/s and Muntotps. Ame.nf..mks I. § 4. Order of the Kings of the Twelfth Dyuasty. § 5. Their recovery of Egypt and Sinai. Monuments of Sesortaseu I. § 6. Amenemks II., killed by his eunuchs. Arabian conquests. § 7. Sf.sortasen III. Prototype of SEsorsTins. His conquests and fortresses in Ethiopia. His deification. State of Ethiopia at this time. His brick pyramid at Dashoor. § 8. Amenemes III., builder of the Labyrinth. § 9, The Lake Moeris, as described by Herodotus. The natural lake, Birket-el-Kerun, not the Lake Mceris. Discovery of the latter by M. Linaut. § 10. Use of the Lake Mceris. Change in the Nile by the breaking of the rocky barrier at Silsilis. § 11. The Art of the Twelfth Dynasty. § 12. Sepulchral grottoes of Beni-hassan. Scenes of life under the Middle Monarchy. Great lords: their possessions and functions. § 13. Tomb of Ameni: its pictures and epitaph. § 14. First appearance of military exploits aud captives. Group of Jebusites, formerly taken from the Family of Jacob. § 15. The Thirteenth (Theban), and Fourteenth (Xolte) Dynasties: their relations to each other and to the Shepherd Kings. 5 16. The Hvk-sos, or Shepherd Kings. Their story as qnoted from Manetho by Josephns. Absurdity of their identification with the Hebrews. § 17. Real meaning of the narrative. Race of the Shepherd Kings. § IS. Progress of the conquest. Their relations to the kingdom of Upper Egypt. § 19. Mounmental Discoveriesr Saites or Set-aa-pehti Xoubti their chief King. Worship of the Hittite god, Set, or Sou-tekh. Indications of time and place. Importance of Tanis. Style of the Shepherd Monuments. 5 20. Adoption of Egyptian customs. Time of JosErn. § 21. Expulsion of the Hyksos. Interesting contemporary narrative. § 22. Relations of Egypt with Phoenicia and Greece.

§ 1. As a key to the difficulties of the ensuing period, it may be well to prefix the general results which seem to be established. During the decline and fall of the Memphian Monarchy, a new kingdom arose in Upper Egypt; new, at least, in its extensive power, though perhaps developed from an old local monarchy or viceroyalty. This kingdom is called by Manetho Diospolitan (that is, Tlteban); but that capital was only as yet in the infancy of its power. Beginning with the obscure Eleventh Dynasty, this monarchv, m the

4*

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THE MIDDLE MONARCHY.

Twelfth Dynasty, extended its power over all Egypt, and gave a presage of the brilliant period of the New Theban Monarchy of the 18th and 19th Dynasties.

About or just after the time of this dynasty, nomad hordes, probably of Semitic race (or of Hamite and Semitic intermingled), who are included under the general name of Ilyk-sos, or Shepherd Kings, entered the Delta from the East, whether in mere rapacity for the country's wealth, or pressed forward by other conquerors, or invited by the decayed princes of Lower Egypt to aid them against their southern masters, or from a combination of these motives. Becoming masters of the lower country, and fixing their capital at Memphis—where they appear at length to have respected the religion and adopted the usages, as well as the name, of the Egyptians—they waged long wars with the kingdom of the Theba'id. The Hyksos were ultimately successful; but the continuity of the Theban Monarchy was never entirely broken. Sometimes, as under a part of the Thirteenth Dynasty, its kings took refuge in Ethiopia, and used the military resources of that country against the invaders ; sometimes they seem to have become tributary to the Hyksos; and so intricate were their relations that, in the various copies of Manetho's Lists, the 15th, 16th, and 17th dynasties figure both as Shepherd and Theban,

At the same time another native dynasty, the 14th, survived at Xoi's, in Lower Egypt, perhaps protected by the Shepherds, or even coalescing with them in rivalry against Thebes. At length, by a great national movement, the people of Upper Egypt rallied their force under Amosis (or Aahmes),who expelled the shepherds, and reunited all Egypt under the Eighteenth Dynasty, with its capital at Thebes.¹

§ 2. A line of demarcation is drawn by Manetho, or his copyists, at the end of his Eleventh Dynasty:—"Thus far Manetho brought his first volume, altogether 192 kings, 2300 years, 70 days." To this eleventh dynasty he assigns 16 Diospolitan kings in 43 years, " after whom Ammeiiemes," the immediate ancestor of the Twelfth Dynasty. The monuments confirm the view that the 12th dynasty sprang from the 11th; and the line of demarkation is* best drawn at the beginning of the Eleventh Dynasty, as the true commencement of the dominion of Upper Egypt. Such a line is justified by the monuments :—" When/' says M. Mariette, " with the Eleventh Dynasty we see Egypt awake from her long sleep, the old traditions are forgotten. The proper names used in the old families, the titles given to the functionaries,

¹ The description of Thebes belongs more properly to the next chapter.

THE ENENTEFS AND MUNTOTPS. 8*

the writing itself, and every thing, even to the religion, seem,, to he new. Thinis, Elephantine, Memphis, are no longer the chosen capitals: it is Thebes which becomes, for the first time, the seat of the sovereign power. Egypt is, besides, dispossessed of a notable part of her territory, and the authority of the legitimate kings no longer extends beyond a limited district of the Thebaid. The study of the monuments confirms these general views. They are rude, primitive, sometimes clumsy; and, from their appearance, we might believe that Egypt, under the Eleventh Dynasty, was recommencing the period of infancy through which it had passed under the Third."

§ 3. Very few monuments, however, of the Middle Monarchy are found at Thebes. Those of the Eleventh are chiefly at Hermdnthis, and the most remarkable of the Twelfth are about Lake Mceris (in the Fyum) and in the rock-hewn tombs of JBeni-hassan, opposite to Hermopolis the Great, just where the line was afterwards drawn between Upper and Middle Egypt. At Hermonthis (Erment), a great seat of the worship of Osiris, Isis, and Horus, we find the monuments of several kings, all of whom have the same name, Nentef or Enentef except two, who are called Mandopt or Muntotp, from Mctndoo or Munt, the patron god of Hermonthis.² It was to Muntotp I., probably the founder of this dynasty, that the*later Theban kings traced back their origin ; for in the List of Rameses II. his name alone occurs between that of Menes and that of Aahmes, the founder of the 18th dynasty ; and he is repeatedly mentioned as an ancestor on the monuments of other kings of the 18th and 19th dynasties. On a monument at Silsilis we see an Enentef doing homage to Muntotp I. Muntotp IT. is mentioned on a tablet on the road to Kosseir, with Amenemes I.,³ whom he may have established in the kingdom during his own lifetime. The Turin papyrus shows that Amenemes was twice deposed by othei kings; and several other synchronisms, too intricate for discussion here, confirmed Manetho's mention of "Theban and other kings." In the name of Amenemes, compounded as it is of Amen or Anain, the patron god of Thebes, we at length see a decisive proof of the supremacy of that city; and his name is the earliest found upon its monuments.

² Sir Gardner Wilkinson refers these kings to the Ninth Dynasty; the title of which (as well as of the Tenth), HeraclcopolUe, he supposes to "ho an error fir Hcr-monthite, arising from the circumstance that the immea of the Euentefn begin with the hieroglyphic characters which constitute the title of Hercules. (App, to Herod. II., ch. viii. § 12: Rawlinson.)

³ We use this, the Greek form of the name, f>r convenience of pronunciation. The hieroglyphic name is read Amenemhe or Amun-m-he. Manetho's copyists spell it -aminenemes.

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THE MIDDLE MONARCHY.

§ 4. In the Twelfth Dynasty the name of Amenemes alternates with that of Osirtasen, or (for the first syllable is doubtful) Sesortasen or Sesertesen, in which we may trace the Se-sostris of the Greeks, at least as far as the name only is concerned.⁴ The series of kings has been made out satisfactorily through the correction of Manetho's list by the monuments:

The names are found in their due succession, partly in the tables of Abydos, and partly in the Turin papyrus.

§ 5. From the beginning of this dynasty the monarchy of Egypt has recovered its widest ancient limits.⁵ The monuments of Sesortasen I. (son of Amenemes I.)⁶ are found, not only from the Delta to Syene, but upward in Nubia as far as the second cataract, on the tablet of Wady-halfa ; while his name, inscribed on the rocks of Sinai, proves the re-conquest of that peninsula and the renewed working of its mines. So far as the monuments are concerned, he may claim to rank as the founder of Thebes, for his name is seen on the oldest portion of t he great temple of Karnak, and on a broken statue. Sepulchral tablets bearing his name are found in the necropolis of Abydos and in that of Memphis. In Lower Egypt an obelisk of his is still erect at Ileliopolis, aud a fallen one in the FyUm is the first sign of the great works of his dynasty in that district.

§ 6. Of Amenemes II. Manetho only says that he was killed by his own eunuchs ;⁷ but a monument of his 28th year records his conquests over the people of Pount, while its position at a watering-place on the road to Kosseir attests commercial intercourse with the Arabian Gulf.⁸ This monument even indicates Egyptian conquests in Arabia; for "the Pount, with whom the kings of the 18th and 19th dynasties were afterwards at war, were a northern race, being placed, on monuments at Soleb and elsewhere, with the Asiatic tribes. They

* Lepsius, Bunsen, etc., read the Si: Sir G. Wilkinson adheres to the 0.

⁵ This fact seems to contradict the theory which places the irruption of the Shepherds at or before this epoch. ⁸ Manetho.

⁷ Kenrick translates e'uvov_Xot literally " guards of the bed-chamber," on the ground, maintained by Wilkinson, that the Egyptians had no ennuchs. On this question see ^u Diet, of the Bible," art. Eunuch.

^b There is a tablet of Sesortasen ii. at the same place.

Manetho.

1. Sesonchosis.

2. Ammenemes.

3. Sesostris.

4. Laclmres. f>. Ameres.

G. Ammenemes.

7. Skemiophris (his sister).

2. Amenemlie II.

3. Sesortasen II.

4. Sesortasen III.

5. Amenemlie III.

6. Amenemlie IV.

7. Ka-SebeknofVu.

1. Sesortasen I.

Monuments.

SESORTASEN II., A SESOSTRIS.

85

appear to have lived in Arabia, probably in the southern as well as northern part; and their tribute at Thebes, in the time of Thothmes III., consisted of ivory, ebony, apes, and other southern productions; partly, perhaps, obtained by commerce."⁹

§ 7. The next king, Sesortasen II., was the greatest of this dynasty. In his 8th year he completed the conquests of his two predecessors in Ethiopia, and built the fortress of Semneh, some distance above the second cataract. Here a temple was erected to him, as a deified king, by his descendant, Thothmes III., and he was also worshipped as a god by Thothmes IV. at Amada, in lower Ethiopia; and one variation of his name has the epithet good. These divine honors were probably paid to Sesortasen II. on account of the vast importance of his Ethiopian conquests, in respect of which also he was the prototype of the Greek Sesostris, a personage, however, made up of several kings of different dynasties and ej)och$.¹⁰

On these conquests Lenormant observes : "At this epoch a state extended beyond the First Cataract almost to the extremity of Abyssinia, which was to Ancient Egypt what Soudan is to Modern Egypt; this was the Land of Gash (Kesh), or Ethiopia. Without well-defined limits, Avithout unity of organization or territory, Ethiopia supported numerous tribes, differing in origin and in race; but the bulk of the nation was formed by the Cushites of the race of Ham, who had lately established themselves there since the time of the Sixth Egyptian Dynasty. These Cushites appear to have been, under the Twelfth Dynasty, the real enemies of Egypt. Jt was towards Ethiopia that the forces of the nation were

⁹ Sir G. Wilkinson's Note to Herod, ii. 102, Rawlinson.

¹⁰ In the List of Manetho, Sesortasen ii. is expressly identified with Sesostris, who " was esteemed by the Egj'ptians the first after Osiris." The exploits added are evidently copied front Herodotus by the Greek editors. Sesostris may also include Sesortasen i., whose name in Manetho, Sesonchosis, seems even to point backward to Sesochris, the eighth king'of the second dynasty, and downward to Sesonchis (She-shonk) of the twenty-second. The former was a giant (Manetho): and such both Herodotus and Manetho make Sesostris. The name Sesonchosis is also found in the "Scholiast to Apollonius Rhodins " (iv. 272), as "King of all Egypt after Horus, son of Isis and Osiris : he conquered all Asia and the greater part of Europe: Herodotus calls him Seisin's.'" Here is a confusion of the mythical age with both the nineteenth dynasty aud twenty-second dynasty ; for the wider conquests of Sesostris answer to those of Rameses ii. and his father Sefi L, who was the son of Horus, the last of the eighteenth dynasty; and the true Sesonchis (Sheshonk) was really a great foreign conqueror, and inscribed the palace of Karuak with the representations of numerous sovereigns whom he had led captive. In the same spirit, " Dicaearchus, whom the Scholiast appears to follow, ascribes to Sesonchosis the institution of castes and of the use of horses for riding—a fresh illustration of the propensity to refer the origin of customs lost in immemorial antiquity to some eminent name."—Kenrick's "Ancient Egypt," vol. ii. p. 1G3. On Sesostris as the representative of Rameses ii., sea the reign of that king, chap. vi. § 5.

86

THE MIDDLE MONARCHY.

then turned ; against the tribes of Cush were raised, on both banks of the Nile above the second cataract, the fortresses of Khumneh and of Semneh, which mark the southern limit at which the empire of the Pharaohs then stopped."¹¹ The testimony of an inscription at Semneh, that the frontier was thus fixed by Sesortasen II., accords with the statement of Herodotus, that Sesostris was the only (he should rather have said the first) Egyptian monarch that ever ruled over Ethiopia.¹²

The monuments on the Kosseir road may justify our repeating here also the story which the priests told Herodotus, that Sesostris was the first of all who proceeded in a fleet of ships of war from the Arabian Gulf along the shores of the Ery-thnean Sea (i. e., from the Red Sea to the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean) until he finally reached a sea which could not be navigated by reason of the shoals.¹³ All else that Herodotus relates of Sesostris seems to belong to Seti I. and Rameses II., of the Nineteenth Dynasty. An evidence that the Twelfth Dynasty recovered the power of the old monarchy is the burial of Sesortasen II. (or perhaps III.) in the pyramid of Lashoor, the southernmost of the Memphian pyramids, remarkable as the first example of a building constructed of bricks. (It was, however, faced with stone.) This might connect him with the Asychis of Herodotus, the sage legislator, who left a brick pyramid as his peculiar monument; but there are several pyramids of brick.¹⁴

§ 8. The name of Amenemes III. is associated with his father's in the records of their victories in Ethiopia and over the negroes, but it shines with a higher splendor in those of art and civilization. The monuments have now cleared up the riddle hidden in the words of Manetho: "Labaris (or La-cheres), who prepared the Labyrinth in the Arsinoite nome " (the Fyuni) "as a tomb for himself." The false name, La-baris, perpetuated by the copyists for the sake of an etymol ogy of Labyrinth, and written Lamar is by Eusebins, probably conceals the Mceris, whom Herodotus makes the greatest king after Menes, and to whom he ascribes the formation of the great lake named after him ; but, since meri is the Egyptian for lake, it would rather seem that the name of the king

¹¹ Lenormant, "Histoire Ancienne," vol. i.p.215. Besides the evidence of the inscription referred to in the text, the water-gates of both fortresses are on the Egyptian side of the works. (Wilkinson's Note to Herod, ii. 102.)

¹² Herod, ii. 130. See Sir G. Wilkinson's Note on the power of Egypt in Ethiopia.

¹³ Herod, ii. 102. "This is perhaps an indication that the Egyptians, in the time of Herodotus, were aware of the difficulties of the navigation towards the mouths of the Indus."—Sir G. Wilkinson, who, however, regards " the conquests of Sesostris iu this direction " (Herodotus only speaks of a voyage) as pure fables.

¹⁴ Herod, ii. 130. See Sir G. Wilkinson's Note, in Rawlinson's translation.

LAKE MCERIS—VALLEY OF THE FYUM.

8?

was invented from his work of engineering.¹⁵ But, in fact, both Labaris of the labyrinth, and Mceris of the mere, may now be disentangled and merged in the historic name of Amexemhe III., discovered by Lepsius on the ruins of that great palace, which the Greek traveller, bewildered as he was led in darkness through its countless halls and corridors, called a labyrinth.™ This discovery proves, what the style of the building attests, the great mistake of Herodotus in assigning the edifice to the much later age of the Dodec-archy. From his own observation he declares that the Pyramids surpass description, and are severally equal to a number of the greatest works of the Greeks; but the Labyrinth surpasses the Pyramids.¹⁷

§9. "Wonderful as is the Labyrinth," Herodotus goes on to say, " the work called the Lake of Mceris, which is close by the Labyrinth, is yet more astonishing.¹⁶ And with good reason ; for in utility it excelled the Labyrinth as much as the works on the channel of the Nile, ascribed to Menes, excelled the Pyramids. He gives its circuit as 60 schoeni, or 3600 stadia (360 geographical miles), equal to the entire length of Egypt along the sea-coast.¹⁹ Its longest direction was from north to south, and its greatest depth 50 fathoms. " It is manifestly," he adds, " an artificial excavation, for nearly in the centre there stand two pyramids, rising to the height of 50 fathoms above the surface of the water, and extending as far beneath, crowned each of them with a colossal statue sitting upon a throne. Thus the whole height is 600 feet" (which is one-fourth higher than the great Pyramid). "The water of the lake does not come out of the ground, which is here excessively dry,²⁰ but is introduced by a canal from the Nile. The current sets for six months from the lake into the river, aud for the next six months from the river into the lake"—that is, evidently, according to the rise and ebb of the inundation. Till yery^ recently, this account was as great a puzzle as the origin of the lake itself was to the ancients.

In describing the country of Egypt, we have mentioned the position of the great valley, or basin, called in the Ptole-

¹⁶ The other Egyptian name of the lake, pi-om (the sea), is preserved in the modern Fyum, the province in which it lies.

¹⁸ This passage of Herodotus atfords the earliest known example of the nse of the word ~\_apipn0o<;, hut it is clearly not an Egyptian word. It is probably connected etymologically with \avpa, an alley.

¹⁷ Herod, ii. 148. Comp. chap. ix. § 13. ¹⁸ Herod, ii. 149.

¹⁹ The manifest exaggeration may be explained, at least in part, by the supposition that the visit' of Herodotus was at the time of the iuundatiou, when the whole valley was under water, and the natural lake was united with the artificial excavation.

²⁰ The whole valley of the Nile is almost destitute of springs: bnt there are some in the BUh:t-el-Kerun.

88

THE MIDDLE MONARCHY.

maic age the Nome of Arsinoe, and in modern times the Fyum. It is formed by a depression in the limestone plateau which here intersects the valley of the Nile transversely, and is inclosed on the north and south by ridges of natural rocks. The bottom of the valley sinks on the north-western side ; and this depression is filled up by the lake called Blrkei-el-Kertin, the water of which is supplied partly by springs, and partly by an artificial branch of the Yusuf canal, which connects it with the Nile. This lake is now 30 miles long and 7 broad ; its greatest depth is only 24 feet, and is gradually becoming shallower from the mud brought into it by the canals. Its level is inconsistent with Ilerodotus's account of the influx and efflux of the Nile, the bed of which was then much lower. In short, this natural lake (for such it unquestionably is) was not the Lake Mceris, which had vanished even in Pliny's time.²¹ The site of the artificial lake has been recently discovered by M. Linant, on the limestone plateau between the Blrket-el-Kerun and the river, near Me-clinet-el-Fyum, the ancient Crocodilopolis. It has long formed part of the cultivated plain of the Fyum, which is still irrigated from " a small reservoir at the modern town, a very humble imitation of the Lake Mceris."²²

§ 10. The function of the ancient lake, however, was far more extensive ; it evidently formed a reservoir for regulating the inundation over a considerable part of the valley of the Nile, and recent discoveries on this point have added a strong argument for its date to the presumption raised by its connection with the labyrinth. In remote ages, the hills which border the valley of the Nile approached so close to one another at some points, as either to form lakes, or at least to dam up the waters of the inundation in certain parts, till the river forced its way through the barrier of rocks. Such a barrier once existed at Silsilis (Ilcaljar Scheldt), some 40 miles below the first cataract.²³ The effect of this, in spreading the water of the inundation over the now barren plains of Nubia, is still seen in. ancient alluvial deposits, which reach northward as far as Silsilis, and in water-worn rocks at a considerable distance from the river. But this is not

²¹ As is proved by the word fuit. Plin. v. 9, s. 9. Of course, however, from the nature of the case, the natural lake would have some connection with the artificial basin, and would be used as a second reservoir.

²² Sir G. Wilkinson's Note to Herod, ii. US, Rawlinson.

²³ By a coincidence not nuusual in names, silsili is the Arabic for a chain; and there is a tradition that a king at one time threw a chain across the channel, which is here only 1095 feet broad. Wilkinson thinks that the ancient name represents the Coptic Golgel, an earthquake, as the supposed cause of the catastrophe, or Golgol, alluding to the many channels of the cataracts, or to the breaking away of the rocks at the time of the fall of the barrier. (Appendix to Herod, ii. chap. 4, § 4; Rawlinson.)

ART IN TH*.TWELFTH DYNASTY.

89

all: we can determine the historic period within which the barrier was broken down. On the rocks at Semneh, Inscriptions of Amenemes III. and other kings of the Twelfth Dynasty, show that the inundation then reached 27 feet above its present height; while on the other hand, the foundations of buildings on the old deposit, and the caves in the rocks near the Nile, prove that the lower level was permanently established by the time of the Eighteenth Dynasty. What period, then, could be so suited for the construction of the Lake Mceris as that in which these mighty changes were affecting the regularity of the inundation, and what kings so likely to do the work as those who were then erecting gigantic buildings in the neighborhood of the lake ? These were Amenemes III. and his successors. But it must be observed that the name of this king gives us only an upncard limit; and among the inscriptions at Semneh, some are now said to bring down the period of the river's higher rise into the Thirteenth Dynasty.²⁴

The Avant of any particulars concerning Amenemes IV. and his sister Skemiophris (or Sebel'nofru, whom some make a king) is perhaps a sign that the dynasty was beginning to suffer from the attacks of the Shepherds.

§ 11. Besides the ruins of the Labyrinth, the principal remains of art of the 12th dynasty are the two obelisks of Osirtasen I. at Heliopolis and in the Fyum, and some fine fragments of colossal statues ; among them one of the same king found at Thebes. The style of the sculpture is scarcely inferior to the finest works of the 18th and 19th dynasties. The realistic freedom of the primitive school has yielded to the hieratic canons which henceforth prevail; but traces of it are seen in the powerful rendering of the muscles of the arms and legs. The distinctive excellences of this period are harmony of proportions and delicacy of execution in the most refractory materials. The mode in which the colossal statues were transported on a sledge is represented in a tomb near El-Bershehr.

§ 12. In architecture we have the remarkable phenomenon of columns, Avhich seem to furnish the prototype of the Doric order.²⁵ This occurs in the rock-hewn frontispiece to the sepulchral grottoes at Beni-hassan (the ancient Speos Artemidos, Cave of Artemis or Diana) on the east side of the Nile, opposite to Hermopolis Magna.²⁶ Within

²⁴ We can only just allude to the ingenious suggestion which connects the catastrophe at Silsilis with the seven years' plenty and seven years' famine in the time ot Joseph. (See Piazzi Smyth, " Life and Work," etc. vol. iii. pp. 410-413.)

²⁵ The prototype of the Ionic has been fonud in Assyria. ²⁸ Also in a similar position at Kalabsclie in Nubia.

90

THE MIDDLE MONARCHY.

those caverns are preserved pictures of life under the Middle Monarchy, as. vivid and instructive as those of the Old Monarchy which we have seen in the Memphian tombs:— "Egypt caught in the fact," says Kenan. "The actors therein are still, in their leading characteristics, the same people as under the fourth dynasty, or at least their literal descendants. All the occupations, manners, or customs, represented of old in the tombs around the Great Pyramid, are represented in those of Beni-hassan ; there are the same toiling multitude, the same official system of scribes, overseers, and task-masters, and the same feasting according to order. Something, indeed, of the gloomy sameness is gone ; manufactures now compete with agricultural operations; the plough drawn by oxen dispenses with many sheep treading the seed into the soft mud ; the cultivation of the vine, and the process of wine-making, diversify the scenes; flax may be traced through its several stages—men reaping it in the fields, and women weaving its fibres in-doors. But there sits the great man still in colossal grandeur and unbending severity, overlooking the busy hive, every one of whose human bees is working for his benefit. And he still enjoys his field-sports much as his ancestors did before him, but with a variation ; for now the ropes of the clap-nets are led by ingenious devices to his hands, as he sits far away on an easy-chair, so that he may have the honor, by giving a little pull to the trigger, of appearing to have caught all the birds himself. Or, if his designs are against four-footed game, as the graceful antelopes of the desert—no longer content with taking them alive and taming them—he pursues them now cruelly, both tearing them with dogs and transfixing them with long arrows; whence some most touching pictures of a poor gazelle turning round in pain to lick the place where one of these darts"is sticking in its flesh, and even protruding through the opposite side of its body ; or another that has fallen lifeless on its tender offspring.

"Very great lords are still the many chiefs who ruled over the people, under the king ; one of them records his estates and privileges ; first, the range of the eastern desert and its oasis, for his antelope-hunting ; and of the hinder and nether pools for his bird-catching ; second, the land of Kao-phis, or a track near the month of the Fyum, and a sluice in the eastern bank of the canal to water it; third, the land of the Hawk mountain, and another sluice from the canal of the Fyum; fourth, the land of the two streams, or a narrow slip of ground between the canal and the Nile, together with a license for enlarging the sluices from both, so as to irrigate

TOMB OF AMENI.

91

the fields to the extent prescribed in the sacred book for the growth of the plant asut; and the fifth, the land of the hare, with a permit to construct two sluices on the Nile.²⁷ But this chief is described as holding honorable offices both in church and state; being, first, the eustos of the divine stable of the sacred baJJ ; second, the constable of the palace of the King Amenemes; and, third, steward of the laud-tax for the support of the schools of the sons of the kings of Lower Egypt."⁸⁸

§ 13. Thus it is, as M. Kenan observes, that, in these tombs, " the dead lifts up his voice and relates his life." Perhaps the inost interesting of these two-fold utterances is that which we both see and read on the tomb of another o;reat functionary of this highly-administered monarchy, whose name was Ameni. On one wall we see the fat oxen grazing, and the sheaves of wheat carried in carts of the very model still used by the Fellahs of Egypt, and threshed out by the feet of oxen ; on another is depicted the navigation of the Nile ; the building and lading of large ships ; the fashioning of elegant furniture from costly woods ; and the preparation of garments : in a word, ths scenes of busy husbandry and navigation, commerce and handicrafts. These pictures are interpreted by Ameni himself in a long inscription. As a general, he made a campaign in Ethiopia, and was charged with the protection of the caravans, which transported the gold of Jebel-Atoky across the desert to Coptos. As the gov* ernor of a province, he recites the praises of his administration :—"All the lands under me were ploughed and sown from north to south. Thanks were given to me on behalf of the royal house for the tribute of"fat cattle which I collected. Nothing was ever stolen out of my workshops; I worked myself, and kept the whole province at work. Never was a child afflicted, never a widow ill-treated by me ; never did I disturb the fisherman, or molest the shepherd. Famine never occurred in my time, nor did I let any one hunger in years of short produce. I have given equally to the widow and the married woman ; and I have not preferred the great to the small in the judgments I have given."

§ 14. Now, for the first time, too, the military element begins to appear upon the tombs; "and'in vaults beneath some of them, and not yet discovered, are deposited the mummies (so the hieroglyphics tell us) of many hundred soldiers who had fallen in the wars of King Sesortosis against the black Cushites in Nubia. Prisoners, moreover, are brought back

²⁷ All these "water-privileges" suggest the age of the lake Mceris.

²⁸ Piazzi Smyth, " Life and Work," etc., vol. iii. pp. 403, '4. Since it is clear that the twelfth dynasty were not "Kings of Lower Egypt" exclusively, it would seem to follow that there were such kings under their protection.

92

THE MIDDLE MONARCHY.

from these, campaigns, and account for the negro slaves now occasionally seen in the great man's household ; while under previous dynasties, we had met with no closer acquaintance with Southern lands than the unpacking of a box containing elephant's tusks. At the same time, however, other personages now appear on the scene, sometimes singly,sometimes in groups ; men of aquiline features, brighter color than, and different dress from, the Egyptians; immigrants from Arabia and Palestine."'²*

One such picture at Beni-hassan startled the world some years back oy its supposed discovery of the arrival of Jacob and his family in Egypt, and their presentation to Pharaoh. It is on the tomb of a man of the military caste named Neoofth; and depicts the presentation of a procession of foreigners to a standing figure, whom some make the son of Neoofth, and others the King Sesortasen II. They are preceded by a royal scribe, holding forth a scroll inscribed with the 6th year of Sesortasen II., and declaring that they are 37 vanquished foreigners ; though only 12 adults and 3 children are seen, all unbound. The king of the strangers advances, bowing reverently, and leading an ibex by the horns; he wears a tunic of bright colors and elaborate pattern, and carries a curved staff resembling that of Osiris. A man of humbler rank leads another ibex. Then, preceded by four armed men, comes an ass, carrying two children in a pannier; next, a boy on foot, armed with a lance, precedes four females, who are followed by another ass with panniers; and the procession is closed by two men, one of whom carries a lyre and plectrum, the other a bow and club. Their light complexion and aquiline noses show a Semitic race from a more northern climate than Egypt; and the gift of the ibex implies a pastoral tribe from Arabia or Palestine.³⁰ The inscription has been read by Mr. Osburn, as a group of 37 Jebusites, purchased for slaves by one of their petty kings, and presented by the chief Neoofth to King Sesortasen II. in the 6th year of his reign, on account of their skill in preparing stibium, a black powder produced from antimony, and used profusely throughout ancient Egypt as a cosmetic.³¹ It is scarcely, perhaps, necessary to remind the student of Scripture that the Jebusites, or Canaanite people of Jerusalem, were a race alien to that of the Hebrew patriarchs.

39 Piazzi Smyth, I. c, p. 405.

⁸⁰ Mr. Kenrick. whose description we follow in the main, compares Isaiah lx. 7. "The rams ol'Nebaioth shall minister unto thee."—" Ancient Egypt," vol. ii. p. 1G9.

³¹ Osbnm, "Egypt, her Testimony to the Truth of the Bible," pp. 3S, 39. The labors of this painstaking author have not been sufficiently recognized by the Egyptologers.

THE HYKSOS OK SHEPHERD KINGS.

93

§ 15. After the Twelfth Dynasty comes a period .of great obscurity, the darkness of the Middle Age of Egypt, preceding the splendid dawn of the New Theban Monarchy under the Eighteenth Dynasty. At this time, it is confessed on all hands, the dynasties of Manetho become contemporary; but very different interpretations are given of their names, localities, and relations to each other.

The Thirteenth Dynasty, of 60 Diospolitan kings, reigned 453 years, and the Fourteenth Dynasty, of 76 Xoi'te kings (that is, of Xois, in the Delta), reigned 184 years:³² this is all we learn from Manetho, but we hud numerous monuments in Ethiopia, which are ascribed to the former dynasty ; and the generally-received view is that, under the domination of the Hyksos, the native Theban line took refuge in Ethiopia, which the preceding dynasty had conquered; while the rival dynasty of Lower Egypt, which had never abandoned its pretensions, held some local power at Xois, either in defiance, or under the protection, of the Hyksos. But there is another opinion, that the earlier kings of the 13th dynasty retained the power of the 12th over all Egypt; but that the Xoi'te Dynasty was set up against them in the Delta, and that the invasion of the Hyksos was brought about by these dissensions.

It is argued, on the one hand, that the monuments found at Tanis, as well as at Abydos, of several kings who all bear the names of Seveklwtep or Xofrehotep>, belong to this dynasty ; and on the other, the name Sevekhotep (Sabaco), which characterizes the Ethiopian kings of the 25th dynasty, is pleaded as a sign of the Ethiopian oeat of the 13th.³³ At all events, the principal monuments of this dynasty are in Ethiopia, where a colossus at the island of Argo, in Dongola, shows that their power reached far beyond the old frontier at Semneh, and above the Third Cataract; and there are no monuments whatever of the later kings, whose names are only known from the royal lists. It may be safely concluded that the conquest of the Thebaid by the so-called " Hyksos " or "Shepherd Kings" was completed in the course of the 13th dynasty, if not at its beginning. Of the Xoi'te kings we

³² Or4S4years: the Armenian "Chronicle" of Ensehins has 434; evidently making the 13th and 14th Dynasties nearly contemporary.

³³ Sir Gardner Wilkinson finds in the Sabaco* of the 13th dynasty the "IS Ethiopian kings" of the list which the priests read to Herodotus (Herod, ii. 100: see note by G. W. in Rawlinson). He also makes their flight into Ethiopia the origin of Manetho's story of the similar flight of Ainenophis III. of the Eighteenth Dynasty. The colossus of that, king, in rose-colored granite, now in the Louvre, is referred by some Egyptian antiquaries, from its style, to the 13th dynasty, and supposed to have been adopted by Amenophis as his own. »Such appropriations are not uncommon in all ages.

THE SHEPHERD KINGS.

have no monuments whatever ; and even the locality of Xois is uncertain.³⁴

§ 16. The great catastrophe of the kingdom of Egypt, brought about by the invasion of the Hyksos, is related in one of the few extant fragments of the History of Manetho, a fragment preserved by the strange ambition of the Jewish historian, Josephus, to glorify his nation by identifying the conquering hordes, whom the Egyptians at length expelled, with the chosen people who were led forth in triumph by the power of C4od and the hand of Moses ! It is the answer of Josephus to the taunt of his antagonist Philo on the mean origin of the Jews ; and the narrative of Manetho has evidently been tampered with in some points to suit this purpose. As it stands, the following is the passage cited by Josephus from the Second Book of Manetho's "iEgyptiaca :"³⁵ " We had once a king named Timasus (or Amintima3us), under whom, from some cause unknown to me, the Deity was unfavorable to us; and there came unexpectedly,from the eastern parts, a race of obscure extraction, who boldly invaded the country and easily took forcible possession of it without a battle. Having subdued those who commanded in it, they proceeded savagely to burn the cities, and razed the temples tff the gods; inhumanly treating all the natives; murdering some, and carrying the wives and children of others into slavery. In the end they also established one of themselves as a king, whose name was Salatis (Saites in the list); and he took up his abode at 3Iemp1ds, exacting tribute from both the upper and the lower country, and leaving garrisons in the most suitable places. He especially strengthened the parts towards the east, foreseeing that on the part of t\\o, Assyrians^ who were then powerful, there would be a desire to invade their kingdom. Finding, therefore, in the Sethroi'te noine U city very conveniently placed, lying eastward of the Bubas-tic river, and called from some old religious reason Avaris (or Abaris), he built it up and made it very strong with walls, settling there also a great number of heavy-armed soldiers, to the amount of 240,000 men, for a guard. Hither he used to come in the summer season, partly to distribute the rations of corn and pay the troops, partly to exercise them carefully by musters and reviews, in order to inspire fear

³⁴ Champollion placed it at Sakkra or Sakha, the Arabic synonym of the Coptic Xeos and the old ^Egyptian Skhoo: its position, on an island formed by the Sebennytic and Phatnitic branches of the Nile, defended by the marshes, would enable it to hold out long against the Hyksos, or to come to terms by paying them tribute. So, in later times, Anysis and Inarus long held out in the marshes against the Ethiopian and Persian masters of Egypt.

³⁵ Joseph, contra "Apion," i. 14. We mark some of the most important points in italics. The translation is, in the main, IVlr. Kenrick's.

NOT OF HEBREW ORIGIN.

into foreign nations." After enumerating the five successors of this first king, he proceeds : " Their whole nation was called Hyksos, that is, Shepherd Kings; for Hyk in the sacred language denotes King, and Sos is a shepherd in the common dialect.³⁶ The before-named kings, he says, and their descendants, were masters of Egypt for 511 years. After this, he says that a revolt of the khigs of the Thebald and the rest of Egypt took place against the Shepherds, and a great and prolonged war was carried on with them. Under a king whose name was Jllsjdiragmuthosls,³'' he says that the Shepherds were expelled by him from the rest of Egypt after a defeat, and shut up in a place having a circuit of 10,000 arurae. This place was called Avarls. Manetho says that the Shepherds surrounded it entirely with a large and strong wall, in order that they might have a secure deposit for all their possessions and all their plunder. Thuthmosis, the son of Misphragmuthosis, endeavored to take the place by siege, attacking the walls "with 480,000 men. Despairing of taking-it by siege, he made a treaty with them, that they should leave Egypt, and withdraw without injury whithersoever they pleased; and, in virtue of this agreement, they withdrew- from Egypt, with all their families and possessions, to the number of not fewer than 240,000, and traversed the desert Into Syria. Fearing the power of the Assyrians, icho were at that time masters of Asia, they built a city in that which is now called Judcea, which should suffice for so many myriads of men, and called it Jerusalem."

It will be observed that, in the words quoted from Manetho, there is nothing to identify, or even to eonnect, the Hyksos with the Hebrews ; for the words "our forefathers" are put in by Josephus. They come, indeed, from tne East, and they retreat into Palestine; but every other circumstance of their entrance into Egypt, their conduct and condi-

³⁶ Josephus here interpolates a statement, which he presently repeats, from another copy, or another book, of Manetho, evidently to get rid of the objection, that the Hebrews were not kings, bnt slaves. He says that Hyk or Hak, with the aspirate, means Captives, and so Hyksos is cai>tive-shephcrds; adding, "And he, (Manetho) says rightly; for the keeping of sheep was the ancient habit of our forefathers ; and they were not unnaturally described nsca])tives by the Egyptians, since our forefather Joseph declares himself to the King of the Egyptians to be a captive." As to the true meaning, Wilkinson says that hyk is the common title, signifying king or rider, given even to the Pharaohs on the monuments, and shos signifies shcp>herd. But sha-80 means Arabs, and hyk seems cognate to sheik; so that the name may perhaps signify Arab kings or sheiks. This view becomes more probable if, as some say, hak denotes, on the monuments, the chiefs of Semitic tribes. The invaders are designated on the monuments Mena or A mv, i. e. shepherds of oxen," and Aadu, "detested."

³⁷ This name, which occurs again in the list of the eighteenth dynasty, seems to be for Miphra Thouthmosis, i. e. " Thothmes beloved of Phra (or Ba)." The true founder of the eighteenth dynasty was not a Thothmes but Amasis: but, as the war was long, Thotmes I. (the third king) may hay finished it.

9G

THE SHEPHERD KINGS.

tion there, and their final retreat, is totally opposite to the true biblical history of "Israel in Egypt." Even the startling mention of Jerusalem is an argument against the identity, for that city belonged to the Canaanite Jebusites for some time after the entrance of Israel into the Holy Land.

§ 1 7. The only likeness of the Hyksos to the Hebrews is their occupation as shepherds, and (probably) their Semitic race. They were a nomad pastoral horde, like those which have ever been descending upon the rich settled countries of the East for the sake of plunder. They ravage all before them, with religious hatred, as is attested by the ruins of Memphis and the demolished mpnuments of the twelfth dynasty at Thebes ;³⁸ and they collect their plunder into a great fortified city. That fortress, moreover, is established near the eastern frontier, against the constantly threatened attacks of a powerful enemy, who is expressly named. That enemy, Assyria, is the master of Asia, both when the shep-herds'enter Egypt and when they depart; and the inference seems almost irresistible that, as most great movements of nomad tribes are due to pressure from behind, the Shepherd invasion of Egypt was due to the growth of the Assyrian empire. But which Assyrian empire? for the term Assyrian, in Greek writers, includes the old obscure Chaldtean monarchy, and the Assyrian properly so called. An answer to this question has been sought in the name Phoenician,²⁹ which is applied in the List of Manetho to the same kings who are enumerated in his text, as quoted by Josephus; and the entrance of the Hyksos into Egypt has been connected with that great Phoenician migration of which we have to speak in its°proper place. The latest view derived from recent monumental discoveries is that the Hamite Canaanites, who had recently entered the land of Canaan⁴⁰ as a part of the great migration referred to, pressed forward into Egypt at the head" of a mixed horde of nomads, of whom the chief tribe appears to have been the Kheta so often named on the Theban monuments, the Ilittites of the Bible.

§ 18. Entering the country from the side of Arabia and Palestine, they "first subdued Lower Egypt, and fixed their capital at Memphis. The statement, that this was effected without a battle, is best explained by a confederacy with the native powers of Lower Egypt, who had risen against the

³⁸ Of all the temples prior to this time, bnt one is left, standing.

³⁹ But it is possible that the name may be only used in its Greek meaning of red, as opposed to the swarthy Egyptians.

⁴⁰ "The Canaanite was then (already, recently) iu the land." Genesis, xil. b. Among the synchronisms now generally received is that of Abraham with the time of the Twelfth Dynasty.

PROGRESS OF THE CONQUEST.

i>7

Theban Dynasty.⁴¹ The latter was unable to resist the coalition of its enemies, and the Shepherd King who consolidated the power of his dynasty received tribute from Upper as ivell as Lower Egypt. But, when we come to details, the difficulty of tracing the relations between the several parties may be judged from Manetho's lists of the 15th, 16th, and 17th dynasties, which fall within the period of the Hyksos. A comparison of the ordinary text (of Africanus and Syncellus) with that of Eusebins gives the following curious results :

Ordinary Text. Years.

15th Dynasty........ Of Shepherds: C foreign Phoenician Kings............ 248

lGth Dynasty........ bJ othe* Shepherd Kings............................. 51S

17th Dynasty........43 other Shepherd Kings and 43 Theban Diospolites.

Together they reigned.............................. 151

Ev.sebius. Years.

15th Dynasty.......Diospolitan Kings.................................... 250

10th Dynasty........ 5 Theban Kings..................................... 190

17th Dynasty........ Foreign Phoenician Shepherd Kings...-............... 103

Moreover, the names and remarks given in the 15th dynasty of the ordinary text are the same (as far as they go) as those of the 17th in Eusebins, whom Syncellus censures for the transposition.⁴² Of the other dynasties no names are given ; and the exact correspondence of "43 Shepherd Kings," and "43 Theban Diospolites," iu the same dynasty, is manifestly artificial. Thus much,however, we may safely infer: that the continuity of the Theban Monarch}- was never entirely broken during the Shepherd rule, though it was probably reduced to a tributary condition in Upper Egypt, while Lower and Middle Egypt were ruled by the Shepherd Kings in person.

§ 19. It is only of late that light has been thrown on this

⁴¹ Osbnrn and some others go so far as to reject a Shepherd Kingdom altogether; making the immigrants the auxiliary allies, and not the conquerors, of the native Dynasty of Lower Egypt, on which the ultimately victorious Thebans fastened, from this alliance, the hateful name of Shepherd*.* But this view can hardly be pressed iuto consistency with Manetho and the monuments.

⁴² The following comparison is instructive as showing what distortions the lists of Manetho have suffered, and consequently how little dependence can be placed on them when unconfirmed by the monuments :

Shepherd Kings. 1 lUh Dyn. of Shepherds. Yllh Dyn. of Phoen. Shep.

(Manetho ix Josephus). I (Manetho's List). (Eusebiis).

1. Salatis.............. 19 j 1. Sa'ites............... 19 1. Suites............... 19

2. Bnon (? Anon)...... 44 2. Bnon (? Anon)...... 44 2. Boon ............... 40

3. Apachnas........... 30 I 3. Pachuan............61 3. Aphophis...........14

4. Apophis............ 01 4. Staan............... 50 4. Archies.............30

5. Jannas..............51 5. Archies.............49 -

6. Asses...............49 I 0. Aphobis ............ 61 l

* "Every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians" (Gen. xlvi. 34; eomp xliii. 32), a feeling of caste, we think, much older than the Shepherd Kings. If derived from hatred of them, it would surely not have been felt by them; but, if older, its being felt by the Egyptianized nomads towards strangers whose actual occupation was pastoral, is a proof (as is every part of Joseph's story) of tl;?:r thorough adoption of Egyptian ideas and usages.

5

THE SHE1TIEKD KENGS.

period by the monuments; and very important light it is. The first* Shepherd king, Suites, or, in Egyptian, Set-aa-pe/tti N'oubti, is mentioned on a tablet of Rameses II., found at Tanis, as having, 400 years before, rebuilt the city, and reared in it the temple of Set or Soutekh, the national god of the Khetas (Hittites). This is invaluable testimony in respect to time, place, nationality, and religion. The fabulous length of the Shepherd domination is reduced within reasonable limits ;⁴³ for, by a very probable computation, 400 years before Barneses II would leave only about 200 years for the whole Shepherd rule, and would bring the date of King Saites to about the ISth century.'¹⁴

Next, as to the p>lace. The Avaris of the Shepherds has been usually identified with Pelusium, on the eastern side of the Pelusiac mouth of the Nile, which was the frontier fortress of later times; but the discoveries of M. Mariette have proved it to be Tanis (San). The inscription says that the Shepherd King rebuilt Tanis ; Manetho says that the Shepherds found Avaris an old town and built up its walls ; we have the testimony of Scripture to the high antiquity of Zoau (the Greek lanis aud the Coptic San): at this city the Pharaoh of the Exodus held his court when "God wrought his wonders in the field of Zoan ;"⁴⁵ and this city, not Memphis, is the seat of the dynasty that succeeded the great Theban Empire (the 21st), as well as of the 23d. All these indications point to the elevation of Tanis by the Shepherd Kings to a rank above Memphis, which seems never to have recovered from their devastation. Now it is also at Tanis that we find the chief monuments of the Shepherd Kings; and those monuments are as thoroughly Egyptian as are these of the Ptolemies of later times. Nay, their art is finer, their workmanship more delicate and more perfect, than in the contemporary monument of Thebes; and they are in perfect accordance with the Egyptian religion. It seems from the discoveries made at Tanis that the Shepherd Kings set up again the statues of former ages, belonging to the temples overthrown in the first violence of their invasion, only carving their own names upon them as dedicators. Their monuments are entirely of sculpture, none of architecture: all yet found are in the museum at Cairo. There is a splendid group in granite, representing two persons in Egyptian costume, but with the thick beard .and large locks of hair foreign to Egyptian use. There are four spinxes in diorite, bearing the name

⁴³ This particular example throws a strong light on the general chronological ex< aggeration of the Egyptian trnditiors. ⁴⁴ Sec chapter vi.

⁴⁵ Psalm lxxviii. 43. On the identity of Tanis and Avaris, and the meaning of the latter name, see further in chap. § 2.

ADOPTION OF EGYPTIAN CUSTOMS.

of Apepi¹⁶ (the Aphophis of Manetho); but with the lion's mane in place of the regular Egyptian head-dress. In a word, these sculptures represent the type of a Semitic race.

§ 20. The monuments prove how completely the Shepherd Kings became true Pharaohs. As is usual when a wilder race subdues a more civilized people, without exterminating them wholly or in part, they and their followers were assimilated to the conquered nation. Though they intruded their god, Set or Soutekh (the Egyptian name of Baal), into the Egyptian Pantheon, and built his temple beside the temples of the old gods, they gave the latter the supreme place. They and their followers adopted the manners of their new country, mixed with some Semitic usages.

Now this is precisely the state in which the narrative of Genesis depicts Egypt under the Pharaoh whom Joseph served. The King and his people are "Egyptians," both in name and customs, and yet they have some characters of a foreign race. Such are their cordial reception of strangers, whom the Egyptians hated and despised; and the pure despotism of Joseph's Pharaoh, whose will is absolute, and who reduces the Egyptians to serfdom, whereas the native mon-arehs were restrained bylaw, and set a high value on the attachment of their subjects. A Semitic ruler would be much more likely than a native king to make a Hebrew slave prime minister, in contempt of the objections which the people dared not utter; and the policy of Joseph would be more easily enforced on a conquered country.

And here the contemporary monuments reveal a most striking coincidence. The only names of the contemporary Theban kings, as yet made out, are those of the last two before the founder of the Eighteenth Dynasty. They are Tia-aken and Kamls ; and the last bears the title of "nourisher of the world," written in the very same form, Tsaf-en-to, as the title (in Hebrew Zaphnath) which was conferred on Joseph by Pharaoh.⁴⁷ Is this a mere coincidence, or did the Theban king adopt the title in^ rivalry with the Memphian government, or does he assume the merit of the policy which he had to administer? That policy would, at all events, be sure to aggravate the hatred of the subject Thebans; and the oppression of Israel may have been, in part at least, a retaliation, when the power was recovered by the "King who knew not Joseph." All these things, as well as the indications of time and place already pointed out, tend to confirm

48 The-Turin papyrus has the name of Anovb, which corresponds to the Anon of

?rT,'metho (an emendation for Bnon), followed by a name beginning Ap.....whiV-

inay be Manetho's Apachnas. *⁷ Genesis xli. 45.

THE SHEPHERD KINGS.

the express statement made in a fragment of Manetho, that Joseph was brought into Egypt under the Shepherd Ei?ig Aphophis—the Apepi, whose monuments are by fur the most numerous of this dynasty.⁴⁸ The invitation of Semitic settlers was a natural act of policy on the part of the Shepherds, to strengthen themselves against a native rising. On this point there is now a general consent among Egyptologers ; and thus we find what has generally been esteemed the " Egyptian darkness" of the country's early history, emerging into the light and life of Scripture; and in its turn helping to weave the fragmentary allusions of Scripture into the web of general history.

§ 21. The expulsion of the Hyksos is related, not only in the passage quoted from Manetho by Josephus, but in contemporary Egyptian records. An invaluable papyrus in the British Museum begins with a description of the vassalage of the Theban Dynasty: "Now it came to pass that the land of Egypt fell into the hands of enemies; and there was no longer any king (i.e. of the whole country) at the time when this happened. And it was so, that the king Tiaaken was only a hak (vassal prince) of Upper Egypt. The enemies were in Heliopolis, and their chief Apepi (Aphophis, M.) in Avaris."⁴⁹ Here, the document tells us, Apepi received the news of a virtual renunciation of subjection by the Theban Tiaaken, who refused to worship Soutekh, the god to whom Apepi had built " an everlasting temple." To the formal demand now made by Apepi, Tiaaken sent a contemptuous rejoinder, and both kings prepared, for war. This account shows that the Hyksos, residing in Lower Egypt, and occupied with the military cars of the eastern frontier, had allowed the native dynasty to consolidate itself in the Thebaid,till it had strength to begin a religious revolt.

Manetho, as quoted by Josephus, says that " the kings of the rest of Egypt" joined those of. the Thebaid in this revolt; and he agrees with the papyrus in representing the ensuing

⁴⁸ Mr. Stuart Poole, who, even before the most important discoveries from the monuments, argued convincingly that the Pharaoh of Joseph was a Shepherd King, identifies him with Asses, the last of the first series of six kings mentioned in Jose-phns's extract from Manetho, and the Assa of the monuments. But it is very doubtful if this Assa is the same as Asses. In Manetho's List of the 15th dynasty the sixth place is occupied by Aphobis, of course the Aphojihis of the fragment.

⁴⁹ It will be observed that the royal title is here withheld from the chief of the Hyksos: but an inscription, comparing a new invasion in the time of Menephtha, son of Rameses II., with the calamities inflicted by the Shepherds, uses some remarkable expressions :—" Nothing was seen the like of this even in the time of the Kings of Lower Egypt, when this land of Egypt was in their power, and the calamity lasted, at the time when the Kings of Upper Egypt had not the, strength to repulse the foreigners:"—expressions which countenance the view that the war was as much one for the supremacy of Upper Egypt, as for the liberation of the whole country.

EXPULSION OF THE HYKSOS.

101

war as long and bloody. It occupied the remainder of Tia-aken's time, the short reign of his successor, Karnes, and the greater part of that of Aahmes, who brought it to an end.⁵⁰ The soil of Egypt seems to have been disputed foot by foot between the insurgent patriots, animated with religious enthusiasm, and the disciplined hordes of the Semitic invaders, till the latter were shut up in their great fortress of Avaris. We have already quoted the account of Manetho, in Josephus, how they withdrew from Egypt, under a convention, to the number of 240,000, and crossing the desert into Syria, built Jerusalem.⁵¹

It is one very striking result of recent Egyptian discoveries, that we are able to quote, if not exactly the dispatch of the admiral who commanded Pharaoh's fleet, its equivalent in his epitaph. This officer, who bore the same name as the kino-, Aahmes, says:—"When I was born in the fortress (if Ilithyia [in Upper Egypt], my father was lieutenant of the late king Tiaaken. .. . I acted as lieutenant in turn with him on board the vessel named the Calf, in the time of the late King Aahmes⁵² .... I went to the fleet of the north to fight. It was my duty to accompany the sovereign when he mounted his chariot. They were besieging the fortress of Tanis,⁵³ and I fought on my legs before His Majesty. This is what followed on board the vessel named the Enthroniza-tion of Memphis.™ A naval battle was fought on the Water of Tanis (Lake Menzaleh). . . . The praise of the king was bestowed on me, and I received a collar of gold for my bravery. . . . The (decisive) combat took place at the southern part of the fortress. . . . They took the fortress of Tanis ; and I carried off a manand two women, three heads in all, whom His Majesty granted me as slaves."⁵⁵ This very moderate booty, while it shows the veracity of the narrator, seems to indicate the very partial success of the assault, and so far confirms the account of Manetho, that the fortress was evacuated under a capitulation.

⁵⁰ This is according to the Egyptian accounts: bnt Manetho (ap. Joseph.) places the eveut under Misphragmnthosis and his sou Thnthmosis (as crown prince), who seem (from a comparison of the lists aud monnments) to correspond to Thothmes III. and IV.: for the former is probably for Mi-])hra-Touthmosis (Thotmes beloved of Phra). There may, however, be a confusion between the names of Amosis and Tethmosis.

⁵¹ The last statement, which looks like a willfnl gloss of the Jewish historian, may have arisen from a confusion between the sacred name of Jerusalem (Kodesh, i.e. holy) with the other Kadcsh, or sacred city, of the Ilittites on the Orontes, which is often mentioned in the wars of the XVIIIth and XlXth dynasties.

⁵² The ship was doubtless so named in honor of Apis.

This leaves little doubt of the identity of Avaris and Tauis. ⁶⁴ Perhaps in honor of the coronation of Aahmes as king of Lower Enypt. ⁵⁵ Prom the translation of M. le Viscomte de Kongo, in Lenormant's "Histoire An lienne," vol. i. p. 231.

102

THE SHEPHERD KINGS.

It must not, however, be supposed that the whole mass of the invaders were driven, with their warriors, from the soil of Egypt. Many were permitted to remain as cultivators of the lands on which they had long been settled, in a condition very similar to that of the Hebrews. In fact, the more the condition of ancient Egypt unfolds itself to our researches, the more clearly do we see that the Delta was largely peopled (at all events in the east) by Semitic races, forming a nationality distinct from that of the true Egyptians, and becoming at last, under the tyrants of the XlXth dynasty, the Poland of the New Monarchy. The descendants of some of these Shemites, perhaps of the Hyksos themselves, are supposed to have been discovered by M. Mariette in the ptrong-limbed people, with long faces and a grave expression, who live at the present day on the borders of the Lake Menzaleh.⁵⁶

§ 22. This episode of Egyptian history has some very interesting relations to other countries. " The account given by Apollodorus," that ^Egyptus, the son of Belus, brother of Agenor, king of Phoenicia, came from Arabia and conquered Egypt, unhistorical as it is, may have had its origin in the invasion of the Hyksos, who are called both Phoenicians and Arabians, and who settled in Palestine on their expulsion from Egy)-^f. The connection of the myth of Isis, Osiris, and Typhon, with Phoenicia, of the Tyrian with the Egyptian Hercules,⁵* and generally of Phoenician with Egyptian civilization, will be best explained by the supposition that the nomad tribes of Palestine were masters of Egypt for several generations, and subsequently returned to the same country, carrying with them the knowledge of letters and the arts, which they were the instruments of diffusing over Asia Minor and Greece. Phoenicia has evidently been the co)meeting link between these countries and Egypt, which directly can have exercised only a very slight and transient influence upon them."⁵⁹

³⁶ It will be sufficient merely to refer to the speculations of Dr. Beke on the Shepherd Kings, and on the distinction which he imagines between the Semitic Mizralm of the Delta, and the true Cushite Enji]ih'nnH. (See Beke's " Origines Biblica?," and the " Athensenm," June 12th, 19th, and 26th, 1SG9.) ⁵⁷ Apollod. ii. 1, § 3.

58 Herod, ii. 44 ⁶⁹ Kenrick, "Ancient Egypt," vol. ii. pp. 192; 193.

Memnomium during the Iuuudation.

CHAPTER V.

THE NEW THEBAN MONARCHY.-THE EIGHTEENTH DYNASTY

k 1 Aahmes, or Amasig, founder of the Thebau Monarchy. The XVIIIth, XlXth, and XXth Dynasties. § 2. The city of Tiieises. Classical notices. Its gates and war-chariots. § 3. Site of Thebes. Its extent. Villages on its site. Vestiges of the city and its streets. § 4. Remains of its principal edifices. The Necropolis and tombs of the Kings. Kartiak and Luxor. § 5. Sources of the prosperity of Thebes. Its manufactures and population. The religious capital of Egypt and Ethiopia. § 6. The rise, decline, and fall of Thebes. § 7. The Eighteenth Dynasty. Rapid revival of Egypt. Aahmes. His Ethiopian queen, and the consequent dynastic claims. § 8. His Asiatic wars. Peoples of Western Asia. The Shasou (Arabs). Canaanites. Klteta (Hittites) on the Orontes. The Rotennou audXaharain (Mesopotamia). Armenia. 5 9. Amen-hotepor Amenophis I. His wars in Asia aud Ethiopia. Policy of Egypt to subject states. The Egyptian calendar. Brick arches. § 10. Thothmes I. reaches the Euphrates. The home brought into Egypt. Temple of Karnak begun. § 11. Tuotumes II. Ethiopia becomes a viceroyalty. Tuothmes III. Regency of Hatasou. Her obelisks at Karnak and other works. Conquest of Arabia Felix. Her name erased from her monuments. § 12. The reign of Thothmes III. the climax of the power of Egypfc Extent of her empire, from the Euphrates to Abyssinia. The "Numerical WaU of Karnak." Victory over the Syrians at Meyiddo. Submission of Assyria. §13. Conquest of Coele-Syria. Foreign princes brought np in Egypt. Conquest of Nineveh and Babylon. Armenia reached. § 14 Maritime power of Thothmes

III. Conquests in the Mediterranean. § 15. His monuments in Ethiopia. Expeditions into Negro-land. § 16. General view of the nations and tributes represented on his monuments. § 17. Buildings of Thothmes III. Brick-making by captives. Thirty variations of his name. § IS. Amen-hotep II. and Thothmes

IV. Conquests aud monuments of Amen-iiotep III. Great slave-hunting raids. Arrogance of his titles. § 19. Identification of him with the Memnon of the Greeks and Romans. His colossi on the plain of Thebes. " The vocal Memnon." Solution of the mystery. § 20. Religious revolution. Amen-hotep IV. and the " Stranger Kings." Subsequent Kings. Amontouonk and Hae-em-iiebi or Ho-eus. Restoration of the gods of Egypt. End of the Eighteenth Dynasty.

§ 1. The conqueror of the Hyksos, Aahmes, A/wies, or Ames (i. e., the Moon : Ames or Amosis in Manetho),¹ was the

¹ He is sometimes called Aahmes I., in contradictiuction to Aahmes II., the Amosis of the Greek writers.

104

THE NEW THEBAN MONARCHY.

founder of the New Theban Monarchy, which raised Egypt to the climax of her power under the XVIIItli dynasty; maintained her empire with splendor, but not without many struggles, under the XlXth; and lost it after some flashes of dying glory (as kings use the word) under the XXth ; when the supremacy passed finally from Thebes. The monarchy lasted, according to Manetho, nearly 600 years; but more probable calculations limit its duration to about 430 years, from b.c. 1530 to about b.c. 1100.

§ 2. The seat of this power was the great city of Upper Egypt, which the Greeks called Thebes (G/j/ku), not by any perversion, but by one of those curious coincidences which are often found in names that have no connection. It represents the form AP-T or T-AP, which is the usual name of the city in the hieroglyphic inscriptions.⁸ But the resemblance of name led to a confusion of the legends relating to the Egyptian and Boeotian Thebes. The fame of the former city, and of the war-chariots of its kings, was well-known to Homer, who speaks of "Egyptian Thebes, where are vast treasures laid up in the houses; where are a hundred gates, and from each two hundred men go forth with horses and chariots;" that is, 10,000 chariots, with two men for each. The numbers are of course poetical, but the epithet of Ilecatom-pylos endured.³

All traces of the city wall had already disappeared in the time of Diodorus, and the absence of any vestige of a wall goes far to show that there never was one.⁴ As Pliny describes Thebes as " a hanging city," built upon arches, so that an army could be led forth from beneath it, without the knowledge of the inhabitants, it has been suggested that there may have been near the river-line arched buildings used as barracks, from whose gateways 10,000 war-chariots may have issued forth.

² The name is Ap or Ape (head, i.e. capital), with the feminine article T. Tape was prononuced, in the Memphite dialect of Coptic, Thaba, whence the Greek Thebce, and the Latin Thcbe, a.- Pliny and Jnvenal write it. The city was also called Za'm, the name of its noni", the fourth in order proceeding northward from the cataracts: this name was applied in later times to a particular locality on the western side of Thebes. It had, besides, the sacred name of P-amen or Aviun-ei (the abode of Amnn), from its patron deity, whom the Greeks identified with their Jove, under the special title of Zeus Ammon (Jupiter Amnion, Lat.); and hence they called the city also Diospolis the Great, in contradistinction to Diospolis the Less near Abydos. The Hebrew name of No-Amon (Jer. xlvi. 25 ; Nah. iii. S), or simply Xo (Ezek. xxx. 14,1G), has a similar origin, though the force of the Xo is disputed : it is commonly interpreted " the portion of Amun." (See " Diet, of the Bible," arts. Xo-Amon and Thebes.)

³ Horn. "II." ix. 3S1-3S5. The explanation of Diodorus (i. 45, § 7) that the "100 gates" refer to the propiilwa of the temples is as decidedly nnpeetical.

⁴ Sir G. Wilkinson holds that it was not the custom of the Egyptians to wall in their cities. See his account of their fortifications in Kawlinson's "Herodotus," vol. ii. p. 25= •

SITE AND EXTENT OF THEBES.

§ S. The site of Thebes seems marked by nature for the •capital city of Upper Egypt. In about 25° 40' of north latitude, the two chains of hills which hem in the valley of the Nile sweep away on both sides, and return again on the north, leaving a circular plain of about ten miles In diameter, divided almost equally by the river, and protected by a narrow entrance against a force ascending the Nile. In the days of its magnificence, the city, with "its necropolis, seems to have covered the whole plain ; but our earliest accounts date from a thousand years after the days of its glory, and five hundred years from the time when itwas devastated by Cambyses.⁶ Diodorus gives it a circuit of 140 stadia (14 geographical miles); and states that some of its private houses were four or live stories high. But these houses, which were chiefly on the eastern side of the river, occupied a small space as compared with the temples, palaces, and tombs, which still remain to attest its grandeur and to reveal its history. Strabo, just at the Christian era, writes :—"Vestiges of its magnitude still exist, which extend 80 stadia (8 geographical miles) in length.⁶ . . . The spot is at present occupied by villages."

And so it is' at this day: the site is marked by the villages of Karnak and Luxor (or El- Uqsor) on the east, or Arabian side, and Kurneh and Medinet-Abou on the west, or Libyan side, of the Nile. The river averages about half a mile in width ; but at the inundation it overflows the plain, especially on the western side, over a breadth of two miles or more : in ancient times it may have been embanked, perhaps by the arched constructions mentioned by Pliny. The alluvial deposit has, in about 32 centuries, raised the surface to the height of seven feet round the bases of the twin colossi of Amunoph III., which stand several hundred yards from the bed of the low Nile. The four villages named mark the angles of a quadrangle, measuring two miles from north to south, and four from east to west,'which forms the site of the present monumental city, and probably defines that of the ancient royal and sacred quarters. At these four angles are the ruins of four great temples,⁷ each of which seems to have been connected with those facing it on two sides by grand avenues (dromoi) lined with sphinxes and other colossal figures. Upon the western bank there was an almost continuous line of temples and public edifices for a distance of two

⁶ Herodotus gives no particular account of it; and some critics even question his statement that he visited the city. (Herod, ii. S, 9.)

⁶ This gives a circuit much greater than that assigned by Diodorus.

* The student should bear in mind, when the temples, etc., of Karnak, Luxor, Kur-nah, and Medinet-Abou are referred to, that they are all monuments of Thebkb itself

10G

THE NEW THEBAN MONARCHY.

miles, from Kurneh to Medinet-Abou; and Wilkinson conjee-tures that from a point near the latter, perhaps in a line of the colossi, the "Royal Street" ran down to the river, which was crossed by a ferry terminating at Luxor on the eastern side.

§ 4. The principal edifices, which we have frequent occasion to mention for their historical testimony, are the following : (1) At the north-west corner, the Menephtheion^ or palace-temple of Seti I. of the 19th dynasty, at the deserted village of Old Kurneh: (2) Nearly a mile to the south is the so-called Memnoulum (now also called the Jlatneseion), the palace-temple of Rameses IE, Miamun," the son of Seti I., with its marvellous shattered colossus of the king ; and, about a third of a mile farther south, the twin colossi above named, one of which is the famed " vocal Memnon." Farther south, at Medinet-Abou, are (3) A temple built by Thothmes I., and (4) The magnificent southern Bameselon, or palace-temple of Rameses III., of the 20th dynasty, with its splendid battle-scenes from that king's history. (5) On the same (west) side of the river is the vast Necropolis, excavated to a depth of several hundred feet in the Libyan hills, over a length of five miles. The extent of the tombs may be imagined from the example of one of them, which has an area of 22,217 square feet. A retired valley in the mountains, the Blban-el-Melook, " Gates of the Kings," contains the sepulchres of the kings. These tombs, like those of Memphis, preserve treasures of the knowledge of ancient Egypt, which explorers have only begun to gather up. The whole western quarter bore the distinctive name of Fathy-rls,⁹ or the abode of Atur {Athor), the goddess who was believed to receive the sun in her arms as he sank behind the Libyan hills. It was divided into separate quarters, as the Meninoneia, and the Thynabunum, where the priests of Osiris were interred.

On the eastern side, the monuments of Karnak and Luxor are far too numerous to mention. The site of Karnak (probably the original city of Amun), at the north-east angle of the quadrangle, forms a city of temples. Its grandest edifice is a temple, covering a space of nearly 1800 feet square, with its courts and propylrea, the work of nearly every age of Egypt (except that of the old Memphian Monarchy), from the Twelfth Dynasty to the Ptolemies. Here are the oldest monuments of Thebes, belonging to Sesortasen I.¹⁰

⁸ One derivation of the Greek names Memnon and Memnmnum is from this surname of Rameses.

⁹ The Greek form of the word is Pathros (comp. Isa. rl. il; Ezek. xxix. 14, xxx. 13-1S). The Pathros of Jeremiah (xMv. 31) may be another city of Athor in the Delta.

¹⁰ Excepting the few fragments of n building on the W. side, where Wilkinson has

KISE, DECLINE, AND FALL OF THEBES.

107

§ 5. The power and prosperity of Thebes arose from three sources—trade, manufactures, and religior, Its position on the Xile, near the great avenues through the Arabian hills to^ the lied Sea, and to the interior of Libya through the Western Desert—rendering it a common entrepot for the Indian trade, on the one side, and the caravan trade with the gold, ivory, and aromatic districts, on the other—and its comparative vicinity to the mines which intersect the limestone borders of the Red Sea, combined to make Thebes the greatest emporium in Eastern Africa, until the foundation of Alexandria turned the stream of commerce into another channel.

It was also celebrated for its linen manufacture—an important fabric in a-country where a numerous priesthood was interdicted from the use of woollen garments.¹¹ The glass, pottery, and intaglios of Thebes were in high repute; and, generally, the number and magnitude of its edifices, sacred and secular, must have attracted to the city a multitude of artisans, who were employed in constructing, decorating, or repairing them. The priests alone and their attendants doubtless constituted an enormous population; for, as regarded Egypt, and for centuries Ethiopia also, Thebes stood in the relation occupied by Rome to medieval Christendom—it was the sacerdotal capital of all who worshipped Amnion, from Pelusium to Axnme, and from the Oases of Libya to the Red Sea.

^ § 6. We have seen that Thebes disputed the palm of antiquity with Memphis; but its political importance dates from the Twelfth Dynasty, and its supremacy from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth. But its continued importance under the succeeding dynasties, whether sprung from the Deltaor from Ethiopia, is attested by their pictures and inscriptions on its walls. The first great blow that fell upon it from a foreign conqueror was struck by the Assyrian As-shur-banipal, and repeated more severely by Nebuchadnezzar ;¹² and " the Persian invader completed the destruction that the Babylonian had begun. The hammer of Cambyses levelled the proud statue of Rameses, and his torch consumed the temples and palaces of the city of the hundred gates. No-Ammon, the shrine of the Egyptian Jupiter, 'that was situate among the rivers, and whose rampart was the sea,' sank from its metropolitan splendor to the position of a mere provincial town; and, notwithstanding the spas-discovered the name of Amenemes I. The non-appearance of earlier names, and the dilapidated state of the oldest part of the building, are doubtless due to the ravages of revolution and invasion, and especially to the Hyksos.

^{11 plin}M ix. 1, s. 4. i'2 See below, chap. vii. and viii.

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THE NEW THEBAN MONARCHY.

niodie efforts of the Ptolemies to revive its ancient glory,¹⁵ became at last only the desolate and ruined sepulchre of the empire it had once imbodied. It lies to-day a nest of Arab hovels amid crumbling columns and drifting sands."¹⁴ But on those crumbling stones, and preserved while hidden by those drifting sands, are the pictorial scenes and the inscriptions which enable us to reproduce the history of the Theban Monarchy as if from authentic books.

§ 7. With the Eighteenth Dynasty begins a continuous monumental history' of Egypt, which reveals the confusion that has been introduced into the lists of Manetho. For example, his copyists have tacked on the first three kings of the XlXth dynasty to the XVIIIth, and have repeated them in the XlXth dynasty. The succession of kings determined from the monuments is as follows:—(l) Aahmes or Ames: (2) Amex-hotep I.: (3) Thothmes I.: (4) Thothmes II. and the queen-regent Hatasou : (5) Thothmes III.: (6) Amex-hotep II.: (7) Thothmes IV.: (8) Amen-hotep III.: (9) Amex-hotep IV.: (10) Hap-em-heei, the Horus of Manetho.

It is surprising how rapidly Egypt seems to have recovered from the effects of the Shepherd invasion ; perhaps we should rather say that their conformity to Egyptian manners fostered the revival. Agriculture, commerce, art, are all in full vigor at the beginning of the new era. The perfection of the jeweller's art is shown in the ornaments (now in the Cairo Museum) discovered by M. Mariette on the mummy of Queen Aah-hotep, the widow of Karnes and mother of Aahmes. The care of the new king in restoring the temples destroyed by the Hyksos, especially at Memphis and Thebes, is proved by an inscription, of his 22d year, in the quarries of Jebel Mokattem, opposite to Cairo ; which also shows that Lower Egypt was then under his sway. Aahmes quelled a revolt in Nubia, and married an Ethiopian princess, Ntfre-t-arl, whom the monuments represent with regular Caucasian features, but a black skin. This marriage appears to have been the ground of the claims raised by his successors to the throne of Ethiopia.

§ 8. On the other side, Aahmes, going to attack the Hyksos in their new abodes, began those wars in Western Asia, which his descendants carried on even beyond the Euphrates. The chief populations of that region, with whom the Egyptians thus came into contact, were the following : (l) The Arab tribes (called Mtasou on the monuments), in the deserts on the north-eastern frontier, including the Midianites and Edom-

¹² Its trade with Arabia and Ethiopia was at this time diverted to Coptos and Apol linopolis.

¹⁴ Dr. J. p. Thompson, in the " Diet, of the Bible," vol. iii. p. 1175.

. WARS JN ASIA AND ETHIOPIA.

ites (or Idumeans), besides the Amalekites, who were the chief of these tribes. (2) Palestine was occupied, as at the time of the'conquest under Joshua, by the numerous tribes of the (Janaanites, under their petty kings, who often ruled over only a single city—a condition which made conquest easy, but favored insurrection. The great maritime plain along the Mediterranean, afterwards the seat of the Philistine confederacy, was early taken into the military occupation of Egypt, as the highway into Asia. (3) North of Canaan, in Coele-Syria and the valley of the Orontes, was the great nation of the Kheta or Hittites, the wars with whom form so conspicuous a part of the history of the XlXth dynasty. (4) Eastward through the whole of Aram, as far as and beyond the Euphrates, was the great confederacy of the •Bot-u-uo, or Pot-en-nou,ov Paten, whose name is constantly reappearing on the monuments. Marked by no well-defined territory or unity of race, it embraced all Mesopotamia,¹⁵ and possessed the cities of Nineveh and Babylon, where the Old Chalda'an monarchy had probably lost its strength, and the Assyrian empire had not yet risen. The Semitic Assyrio-Chaldteans, then under petty kings, seem to have formed the kernel of the confederacy, which, perhaps, derived its name from Pesen,one of the oldest and greatest cities of Assyria;¹' but it included also all the Aramaean tribes on both sides of the Euphrates. (5) The farthest people reached by the Egyp tian arms were the Japhetic races in the mountains of Armenia; for the conquests of Sesostris beyond the Caucasus seem to be wholly fabulous.

§ 9. The war in Asia was pursued by Amex-hotep I. (i. e. Serenity of Amnion), the son and successor of Aahmes,-who is otherwise called Amunoph,oY, in G\'Qek,Amenophis" He chastised the Bedouin S/iasou, and made progress in the reduction of Palestine. In dealing with the petty principalities of Asia, the policy of the Egyptian kings was the same that was afterwards followed by the Assyrians and Persians, as well as by the Tnrks to this day. The little royalties were rendered tributary without being suppressed. So long as his sovereignty was acknowledged, the tribute paid, and the military contingents furnished, the Pharaoh viewed the quarrels of the petty princes rather as a security for the maintenance of his power. The wars of this king in Ethiopia are attested by a passage of the above-quoted inscription of the mariner Aahmes :—"I conducted the ship of King Amen-ho-

¹⁵ The name Naharain (two rivers) is found on the monuments, and seems identical with the Aram-Xaharaim of the Bible. ¹⁶ See Genesis x. 12

¹⁷ Chebson, whom Manetho places second iu the dynasty, is not named on the monuments.

no

THE NEW THEBAN MONARCHY.

tep, when he made an expedition against Ethiopia to enlarge the boundaries of Egypt. The king took the mountain-chief prisoner in the midst of his warriors."

From a sepulchral box and a mummy-case bearing this king's name, it is evident that the Egyptians had already adopted the five intercalary days to complete the year of 365 days, as well as the division of day and night into 12 hours each. His name is also found on arches of crude brick at Thebes. But there is reason to believe that all these inventions had been made long before the time at which these proofs occur.¹⁸ Amenophis was deified after his death.

§ 10. Thothmes I.¹⁹ has left the proof of his progress in Ethiopia by an inscription, belonging to his second year, on the rocks opposite to the Isle of Toni.bos, recording nis victories over the Nahsi, or Negroes. But his great exploits were in Asia. Having finished the conquest of the Canaan-ites, he gained a great victory over the llotennou, nearDamas-cus, and pressed on to the Euphrates, which he crossed at Carchenush.'²⁰ Tablets commemorating his passage were set up on the banks of the river, as well as of the Upper Nile; and the same mariner, who has been twice cited, records his service under Thothmes I. when he captured 21 men,« horse, and a chariot in the land of Naharain. This is the first appearance of the horse (under its Semitic name of S/ts) in the Egyptian records; and henceforth we find the Theban kings using war-chariots; but the chariots of Joseph's Pharaoh afford a proof that the horse and the war-chariot had already been introduced by the Hyksos. Thothmes I. also leads the way in the great architectural works which distinguished this and the following dynasties. He seems to have begun the great palace of Karnak, in the central court of which stood two obelisks bearing his name. One of these records a victory over the nation of the Nine Botes, who are supposed to be the Libyans.

§11. The final submission of Ethiopia is all that marks the reign of Thothmes II. We now first find, on the rocks of Syene, the title of" Royal Son of Cush,'⁵ which appears to denote a viceroy of Ethiopia, of the royal blood.

¹⁰ Wilkinson's " App. to Herod, book ii.," in Rawlinson's " Herod." vol. ii. p. 355.

¹⁹ The name is also written Thoiithmes and Thotitmen, and, by Manetho, ThoutmonU. It is derived from Thoth (the Egyptian Hervics), the god of letters and of the moon.

²⁰ This city, so often mentioned on the Egyptian monuments, and also in the Bible, as a chief key to the line of the Euphrates, is usually identified with the classical Cir-cesium (KarkMa) at the junction of the Chaboras (Khabur) with the Euphrates ; but some place it, on the authority of the Assyrian inscriptions, much higher up the river, at or near the site of the later Mabocj or Hicrapolis. The word means the fort of Chemosh, the well-known deity of the Moabites. At about u.o. 1000 it was iu the possession of the Hittites.

THOTHMES HE— HATASOU.

lit

After a very short reign, Thothmes II. was succeeded by his brother Thothmes III., who was still a child. His eldest sister, Hatasotj (also called JYemt-Amen), who seems to have had a large share in the government during the preceding reign, now assumed the full style and functions of royalty for seventeen years. She has left a monument of her splendor in the two great obelisks in the central court of the palace of Karnak, one of which is still erect. It is of rose-colored granite, 90 feet high, and carved with figures and hieroglyphics of such fine and free workmanship that, as Kosellini says, " every figure seems rather to have been impressed with a seal than graven with a chisel." From the inscription on the base we learn that the obelisk was a monument to her father, Thothmes I., that seven months were occupied in cutting it out from the rocks at Syene and transporting it to Thebes, and that the pyramidion on its summit was made of gold taken from enemies.

On the walls of the temple of Deir-el-Bahari, at Thebes, Hatasou has recorded, in splendid reliefs, her conquest of Pount, or Arabia Felix. Her name has been cut out of many of her monuments, probably to brand her royal style as an usurpation. Her power seems to have lasted till her death, even after the young king attained his majority, for her name is found on an inscription at Wady Magharah in the sixteenth year of the reign of Thothmes III., whose first military expedition was made in his twenty-second year.

§12. It is the reign of Thothmes HE, not that of Rameses IE, that forms the true climax of the power of Egypt, who now boasted that " she fixed her frontiers where she would." She now attained a real Empire, embracing on the south Abyssinia, Soudan, and Nubia; on the west a part of Libya ; on the east the peninsula of Sinai, and Yemien ; and on the north Syria, Mesopotamia, and Irak-Araby to the mountains of Armenia and Kurdistan; and her internal organization was never more complete. On the greatest of his architectural works, the Temple of Karnak, Thothmes has left the record of his chief exploits in a magnificent bas-relief, which is known, from its statistics of booty and of prisoners, as the " Numerical Wall of Karnak," or the "Annals of Thothmes IH."²'

In the twenty-second year of the king^ys reign, probably soon after the death of Hatasou, the Rotennou had refused to pay tribute and had stirred up an insurrection in Canaan. Gaza, one of the few strong places left, was chosen by Thothmes as his base of operations. Here, in the following

⁸¹ The moderation of many of these numbers gives a strong presumption of veracity.

112

THE NEW THEBAN MONARCHY.

spring, he learned that the confederated Syrians and Canaan-ites, under the King of Kadesh (on the Orontes), had posted themselves in the valley of Megiddo. Rejecting more cautious counsels, he marched straight against them, and gained a decisive victory on the field of battle where Necho, long afterwards, slew Josiah. No less than 2132 horses and 914 war-chariots were the prize of the victory, though the enemy lost only 83 killed and 340 prisoners. Perhaps the neighboring mountains saved the fugitives. Megiddo, where the hostile chiefs had taken refuge, was soon reduced by famine, and Thothmes marched in triumph to the Euphrates.

Returning the next year, he crossed the river at Carche-mish, where he built a fortress, and the Rotennou submitted without a battle. Among the kings who paid tribute were those of Resen and of Asshur, or Elas.sar (KalaJi-tihergat). It should here be remembered that, according to the custom of those days, chiefs " often agreed to make this acknowledgment of their defeat without yielding up their country to the victorious enemy as a conquered province; and, in some eases, a country may have been called conquered (by the Egyptians, Assyrians, or others), when in fact a victory had only been gained over its army; perhaps even when that army was beyond its own frontier."²²

§ 13. Four years of peace were followed in the 29th year of the king's reign, by the conquest of Coele-Syria, whose people are seen bringing their tribute of wine, wheat, cattle, honey, and iron. Aradus, which was taken in this campaign, had to be retaken in the following year, when also Kadesh, on the Orontes, fell for the first time before the arms of Egypt.²³, The Assyrian princes beyond the Euphrates now renewed their submission, giving their sons and brothers as hostages to be brought up in Egypt, and agreeing that, in case of death, their successor should be appointed by Pharaoh, doubtless from the E«_rypti.mized princes. This campaign in his 30th year is called his sixth expedition.

In his 31st year Thothmes repaired in person to Mesopotamia to receive tribute ; and in his 33d he appears to have completed the conquest of the country, for the inscription says that " he stopped at Nineveh (N'inieu), where he set up" his stela in Naharai'u, having enlarged the frontiers of Egypt." Singar and Babylon also are represented as belonging to his empire; and, in Syria beyond the Jordan, Heshbon and Rabbath-Ammon appear first as tributaries. Carrying on his conquests to their farthest limits, he received

²³ Wilkinson's " App. to Herod, ii.," in Rawlinson's " Herod." ii. p. 257. 23 rp_h^ ruins of ihia ci^ <?xist a little above Emesa,

MARITIME POWER OF THOTHMES III.

113

tribute from the Pemenen, who are supposed to be the people of Armenia, " where," says a hieroglyphic inscription, "heaven rests upon its four pillars."

§ 14. Meanwhile the maritime power of Thothmes HE gave a promise of supremacy in the Mediterranean, which Egypt was not however destined to acquire. As in later ages, her fleet was manned by the Phoenicians, who seem to have submitted to Thothmes on favorable terms, and (except some cities, as Aradus) remained for ages the faithful allies of Egypt. A monumental stela, discovered at Thebes by M. Mariette, and translated by M. de Kongo, describes, in a Biblical style of poetry, the conquest of Cyprus, Crete, and the southern isles of the iEgean, the neighboring shores of Asia Minor and of Greece, and perhaps the southern extremity of Italy. It has even been conjectured, from the mention of the Asi among the northern nations who paid tribute to the fleet of Thothmes, that his maritime expeditions reached the shores of the Black Sea, where the Col-chians were believed by Herodotus to have been a colony founded by the Egyptians to work the mines. Monuments of the power of Thothmes along the northern shore of Africa have been found at Zershell, in Algeria, the Cassarea Julia of the Mauretanian kings.

§ 15. Ethiopia was still peaceably subject to the Egyptian viceroy, " the royal son of Cush," who is seen in the grotto of I brim, in Lower Nubia, bringing to Thothmes the tribute of gold, silver, and grain. At Amada he dedicated a temple to the sun, which was completed by Amen-hotep II. and Thothmes IV.; and at Semneh, as already mentioned, he restored that of the deified Sesortasen. Besides other monuments between the first and second cataracts, records of his power are found at Kumneh, opposite to Semneh, which seems still to have been the frontier fortress, and at the isle of Sdi, higher up the river. Frequent expeditions were made into the negro country; and a bas-relief at Karnak shows no less than 115 conquered African tribes, each represented, as is usual, by a single figure with the name of his tribe.

§ 16. The following general view of the nations and tributes represented on the monuments of Thothmes III., is given by Sir Gardner Wilkinson :—" The successes obtained by Thothmes over the Pount (a nation of Arabia), the Kvfa (supposed to be the people of Cyprus), the Pot-h-no, and the southern Ethiopians, are commemorated on the monuments of Thebes. . . . The elephant and bear, horses, rare woods, bitumen, and the rich gold and silver vases brought by the

114

THE NEW THEBAN MONARCHY.

Rotai-no ; the ebony, ivory, and precious metals, by those of Fount; the gold aud silver vases of the Kufa ; and the cameleopards, apes, ostrich-feathers, ebony, ivory, and gold (in dust, ingots, and rings), from Ethiopia, show the distance from which they were brought, as well as the richness of the tribute. The tight dresses, the long gloves, the red hair and blue eyes of the Rot-n-no, also proclaim them to be of a colder climate than Syria, though the jars of bitumen appear to place them in the neighborhood of the Euphrates or the Tigris. The beauty of their silver, gold and porcelain vases, at all events, point them out as a people far advanced in luxury and taste.¹'²⁴

§ 1 7. The monuments of this king, which are found through the whole valley of the Nile, from the Delta to above the Second Cataract, exhibit almost the perfection of Egyptian art. The most important of them, besides those already mentioned, are at Memphis, Ileliopolis, Coptos, Ombos, and Thebes. The extent of his buildings at the capital is proved by the inclosures of crude brick that surrounded them. "There are, indeed, more bricks bearing his name than that of any other king; and it is on the tomb where the tribute before mentioned is recorded that the curious process of brick-making is represented, which tallies so exactly with that described in Exodus. In these pictures we see the reprisals of Egypt on their Shemite oppressors of the time of the Hyksos. Thousands of Semitic prisoners are represented on the temple-walls in the act of carrying water to knead the mortar, forming bricks in wooden "frames, spreading them out to dry in the sun, carrying them to the buildings in course of erection, and the like; all this being done under the eye of Egyptian officials, lounging about armed with weighty sticks, while different inscriptions inform us of the nature of the special work done by these ' prisoners whom the king has taken, that they might build temples to his gods.'"²⁵ The British Museum" contains the head and arm of his huge colossal statue in red granite at Karnak. His ovals also appear far more commonly on the smaller scarabsei than those of any other Pharaoh, and he is remarkable for the great variety in the mode of writing his name, of which we have more than thirty variations"™ Manetho assigns him (under the name of Misphragmuthosis) only 2G years ; but his 47th year is found on the monuments. The difference may be accounted for in part by the time of his sister's regency.

²⁴ Appendix to Herod, book ii., in Rawlinson's " Herodotus," vol. ii. p. 357-S. ²*> Brr.gsch, " Aus dem Orient," quoted in the " Saturday Review," Dec.1SG5. ²⁶ Sir G. Wilkinson, I c. p. 359.

CONQUESTS ()P AMEX-HOTEP III.

115

§ 18. During the short reigns of Amex-hotep IE (who is omitted by Manetho) and Thothmes TV., the condition and boundaries of the empire remained much the same. The former repressed an insurrection of Mesopotamia, and scjit the dead bodies of seven kings to be hung, six under the walls of Thebes and the seventh at Napata, the capital of Ethiopia," that the blacks might see that the king's victories went on forever, in all lands and all peoples of the world, since he at once held possession of the nations of the south, and chastised the nations of the north."²⁷ Thothmes IV. is represented in his 7th year as conquering the negroes and receiving tribute from Assyria. Manetho assigns him nine years. His name is found on the Great Sphinx.²"

His son, Amex-hotep HE, rivalled the fame of Thothmes III. as a conqueror and a builder; and, adds Manetho,"he is thought to be Memnon and the Speaking Statue." The list assigns him 31 years, but his 36th is found on the monuments. On the columns of his beautiful temple at JSoleb, in Nubia, he records the names of the nations conquered by him in Asia and in Africa; the former including the Poiuit, Carchemish, the fort of Aiesh (Kctdesh ?), Ntihardin (i. e. Mesopotamia), and many others. His arms were carried above Napata (Jebel Berkel), the capital of Ethiopia, and an inscription on one of the large scarabcet, which he frequently used as records, boasts that his empire extended from Mesopotamia to Killee or Karo, in Abyssinia.²⁰ He appears to have carried on those great slave-hunting raids into the Negro-land, which have disgraced the rulers of Egypt down to recent times, for on an inscription at Semneh we read of 740 and 1052 "living head" of negroes, many of them children, as among his captives.

His buildings in Egypt are at Syene, Elephantine, Silsilis, Ilithyia,the Serapeum at Memphis, and especially at Thebes, where he added to the temple of Karnak and erected a chief part of that of Luxor. The dedication of this temple is worth quoting, as an example of the style and titles arrogated to themselves by the Egyptian kings :—" He is Horus, the potent bull, who governs by the sword and destroys all the Barbarians; he is the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, the absolute master, the son of the Sun ; he smites the chiefs of all countries; he marches on and gathers victory, like Horus, son of Isis, like the Sun in the heaven ; he overthrows their fortresses ; lie obtains for Egypt the tribute of all na-

²⁷ From an inscription at the temple of Amada in Nnhia. ²⁸ See p. <>G.

²⁹ This place is supposed to be the same as ColoC, about 100 miles e. or e.x.e. of A.xum.

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tions by bis valor, he, the lord of the two worlds, the son of the Sun."

§ 19. It was in this last character that the Greeks and Romans identified Amenophis III. with Memxox,³⁰ son of Aurora, whom Homer represents as coming from Ethiopia to the aid of Troy. His colossal statue on the plain of Thebes was heard, at sunrise, to emit sounds, which were taken to be his morning salutation to his father. This celebrated statue, hence called the Vocal Memnon, is one of two seated colossi, of breccia, 47 feet high, or 53 feet with their bases, which Amenophis set up in front of a temple which he erected in the western quarter of Thebes. It was broken in half (some said by Cambyses, others by an earthquake under Tiberius) and repaired with several layers of sandstone in the time of Septimius Severns. On its "back is the name of Amen-hotep III., with the title "Phra (the Sun), the Lord of Truth ;" and on its legs are numerous attestations in Greek and Latin, by visitors in the time of the Roman empire, who heard it emit a sound like a harp-string, or, as Strabo says, like a slight blou\^3]

The last statement tends to confirm the explanation of Sir Gardner Wilkinson, who found in the lap of the colossus (where, he suggests, a priest or servant may have been concealed) a stone which, on being struck with a hammer, emitted a metallic sound, such that the peasants, whom he had placed to listen below, said," You are striking brass." Another modern traveller says, "Not at sunrise, but in the glaring noon, the statue emitted a sharp clear sound, like the ringing of a disk of brass under a sudden concussion. This was produced by a ragged urchin, who, for a few piastres, clambered up the knee^T of the ' vocal Memnon,' and there, effectually concealing himself from observation, struck with a hammer a sonorous stone in the lap of the statue."³²

³⁰ How easily these fancied resemblances of names led to confusion, we have seen in the probable derivation of the Memnonium at Thebes from the surname of Rameses II. Miamun. There is no connection between the Memnonium and the vocal Memnon. Pansanias (i. 42, § 3) preserves the true name of the statue slightly altered : —" The Thebans say this is not a statue of Memnon, but of Phamenoph, a native of the country.

⁵¹ Strabo xvii. 46. It.is worth while to notice the great geographer's caution in describing even a marvel witnessed by himself: "When I was at those places, with iElius Gall us, and numerous friends and soldiers about him, I heard a noise at the first hour of the day, but whether proceeding from the base, or from the colossus, or produced on purpose by some of those standing around the base, I can not con fidently assert.

³² Dr. j. P. Thompson, in the ¹¹ Diet, of the Bible," art. Theism?, vol. iii. p. 1472. Le tronue, however, explained the sounds as produced by a crepitation of the stone under the heat of the snn, when impregnated with the morning dew. It is urged that all the attestations of the sounds belong to the time during which the upper part of the statue lay upon the ground, and the broken surface of the seated part exposed \t> veins to the action of the dew. We have little doubt that Wilkinson's solution is r.^ht-

CLOSE OF THE EIGHTEENTH DYNASTY.

11?

§ 20. The death of Amen-hotep III. was followed by an attempted religious revolution, of which the records arc-obscure. Both the Lists of Manetho and the monuments give the name of several occupants of the throne, some of whom are designated " Stranger Kings." The chief of these, Amex-hotep IV., claims to be the son of Amen-hotep III., but his features are essentially un-Egyptian.³³ It is supposed to have been under the influence of his mother Taia, whose portraits show her to have been a foreigner, that he discarded the old gods of Egypt for the direct worship of the Sun, under the Syrian name of At en; changed his own name to Chou-en-Aten {brilliancy of the solar disk); and set up a new capital, in the ruins of which, at Tel-Amarna, he is seen presiding over the new cult.

Amon^ his obscure successors, the monuments furnish the names of Amontouonkh and Har-cm-hebi, sons of Amenophis III. To the latter of these, under the name of Horus, Manetho assigns 36 to 38 years;³⁴ but the only date upon the monuments is that of his 2d year, when an inscription and relief at Silsilis represent his triumphant return from a campaign in Ethiopia. The features of Horus are remarkable for their likeness to Amenophis III. There are traces of a violent reaction against the religious innovations of Amenophis IV, whose buildings have been overthrown, and his capital at Tel-Amarna systematically devastated; and the names of the "Stranger Kings" are effaced from their monuments. Amidst these troubles the Eighteenth Dynasty came to an end, having lasted about 200 years, from the middle of the 16th to the middle of the 14th century b.c.

³³ Wilkinson regards the features of Amunoph III. himself as nu-Egyptian, and observes that his tomb at Thebes is placed apart from those of the other Pharaohs, and in company with that of one of the " Stranger Kings."

³⁴ Sir Gardner Wilkinson supposes the 36 to 3S years to have covered the whole period of the Stranger Kings. M. Mariette found on an Apis-stela the name of a successor of Horus, Reai-totiov R&sitot, who would be the Raihos of Manetlio.

Pavilion of Rameses HI.

CHAPTER VI.

the new theban monarchy (continued).-THE nineteenth and twentieth dynasties.

S 1. Character of the Nineteenth Dynasty, Rameses i. § 2. Seti. i. His position in the dynasty. Perhaps descended from the Hyksos. His son shares the kingdom. § 3. Bnildings of Seti i. Hall of Columns at Xarnak. § 4. The reliefs on its walla —a Sethcicl of his conquests. Absence of nnu itime exploits. The Red Sea Canal. §5. Rameses ii. Meriamun. His fictitious glory. Legend of Sesostris—contrast-eel with the facts. His campaigns defensive. His character; a cruel despot. §6. His first wars. Epic of the scribe Pentaour: a. Rameseid. War in Syria against a great confederacy. Siege operations. § 7. a personal exploit of Rameses, related by the poet. § 8. Renewal of the war. Treaty with the Hittite King. Submission of Mesopotamia. Peace for the rest of his reign. § 9. Character of his Administration. His immense harem. Cruelsentenc.es. § 10. Oppression of the subject races of the Delta ; especially of the Hebrews. Rameses ii. proved to he their oppressor. The Hebrews named as the builders of the city Rameses. § 11. Wretched condition of the native peasantry. Razzias to kidnap negroes. Deportation of whole tribes. § 12. Buildings of Rameses ii. His colossal statues § 13. Egypt's power begins to decline. Invasion from Libya and the Mediterranean. § 14. Mebenfhtha. or Mehepiitha, the Pharoah of the Exodus. Progress and defeat of the Libyan invaders. The Exonus, and its disastrous consequences to Egypt. § 15. New invasion from the East. Distorted account of Manetho. Flight of Menephtha. § 10. Intrnsive dynasty at Chev. Sen ii., son of Menephtha, restored. Conquest of Canaan by the Israelites. The military route to Asia preserved. § 17. The Twentieth Dynasty founded by Seti iii. Rameses iii. restores the empire. His exploits depicted at Medinet-A bou. §18. His great campaign in Syria. Naval victory at the "Tower of Rameses." Wealth of Rameses iii. His tomb. § 19. Series of Kings named Rameses. Rameses viii. Decline of Egypt. Power of the Priests of Amnion. Relations of Rameses xii. with Mesopotamia. § 20. Rise of Assyria. Usurpation of the priests of the liue of Her-Hor. Their relation to the XXIst Dynasty.

§ 1. The Nineteenth Dynasty is often regarded, in the light of the splendid records of Rameses II., as having reached a climax above its predecessor. But the true difference has been well put by M. Lfuiorinant: " Egypt, so threatening under the Eighteenth Dynasty, becomes now almost ah

NINETEENTH DYNASTY—SETI L »

119

ways threatened." Riiamses, or Rameses L, the founder of the* dynasty, was either the grandson of Horns by the female line, or, according to those who believe Amenophis HE to have been of foreign race, the pedigree of Rameses is to be traced from Amenophis I. and his queen Ames-nofri-are. At all events, he represented the legitimate line of the Theban kings. His position as the head of a new dynasty is marked by his tomb at Thebes being the first that was made in the valley of Piban-el-Molooh. His reign was short, and his monuments are few. His only recorded expedition was against the KJieta (Hittites) of the Orontes, who seem to have taken advantage of the recent troubles in Egypt to acquire the power which now makes them conspicuous.

§ 2. The glories of the XlXth dynasty begin with Seti I., surnamed Merenphtlia or Menephtha {dear to Phtha), whose exploits, however, are often confounded with those of his son Rameses II. For this there seems to have been a reason. M. Mariette has discovered inscriptions in which Rameses says that he was king before his birth, and that his father Seti only governed for him. The probable explanation is, that Seti, though called the son, was really the son-in-law of Rameses E, whose rights were transmitted direct to Rameses II. as soon as he was born, or rather conceived ; and that the latter was associated with his father iu the kingdom. This will account for the ascription by Manetho of 51 or 55 yeara to Sethos, and 61 or 68 to Rameses II. It even appears that Seti was not of pure Egyptian race, but had a share of Hyksos blood. Foreign features have been traced in his portrait and his son's ; and, what is most remarkable, an inscription, discovered at Tanis by M. Mariette, exhibits Rameses II, as restoring the worship of the god Soutekh in the ancient capital of the Shepherds, and calling the founder of their dynasty, Set-aa-pehti JSToubti, his ancestor. In that name, too, the resemblance to Seti is worth noting.

§ 3. Seti and his son were the most magnificent builders imong the Egyptian kings; and the latter finished many • » works begun by the former. Among the monuments of Seti are the grand temple of Osiris at Abydos, recently brought to light, the palace of Kurneh at Thebes, and his tomb, which, by its sculptures and colored decorations, and its alabaster sarcophagus, excels all the other sepulchres of the Theban kings ; but all these are surpassed in majesty by the hypostyle hall, or "Hall of Columns," in the palace of Karnak, the triumph of Egyptian architecture.¹ This grand

¹ The reader may he aided in perceiving the design, but must not imagine that he at all sees the effect, of this edifice from the miniature reproduction in the Crystal Palace

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THE NEW THEBAN MONARCHY.

hail is a forest of sculptured columns: in the central avenue are twelve, measuring each 60 feet in height by 12 in diame* * ter, which formerly supported the most elevated portion of the roof, answering to the clerestory in Gothic architecture; on either side of these are seven rows, each column nearly 42 feet high by nine in diameter, making a total of 134 pillars in an area measuring 170 feet by 330. Most of the pillars are yet standing in their original site, though in many places the roof has fallen in. A moonlight view of this hall is the most weird and impressive scene to be witnessed among all the ruins of antiquity—the Coliseum of Rome not excepted.

§ 4. The walls of this vast hall are eovered with the exploits of its founder, in the most powerfully-executed reliefs, accompanied by inscriptions, the whole forming what has been well called "an epic of war, a real Setheul." In one picture, the king attacks the S/tasoa of the Arabian Desert; in another, the Assyrians are partly cut in pieces, and partly Dringing tribute. In Armenia,the Remenen are felling trees to open the conqueror a passage through their forests; in Syria, great victories are gained over the Kheta. Another picture shows Seti's triumphant return to Egypt with hosts of captives. Among the vanquished nations are the SJtasou, the Pount, the Rotennou, JVahara'm, Singar, and about forty more, including the Cushites and other Africans. In short, the empire of Egypt in Asia and Africa recovered the extent Avon for it by Thothmes III. On the side of Ethiopia there seem to have been only slave-hunting expeditions. The Libyans were kept down, and the fleet commanded the Red Sea; but the total absence of maritime exploits in the Mediterranean has been accounted for by the mastery of the seas acquired by the Pelasgo-Tyrrhenians. More peaceful works were the sinking of an artesian well to aid in working the gold-mines of the south; and, if we may trust Brugsch's interpretation of a picture, Seti began the canal uniting the Nile to the Red Sea, which appears to have been completed by his successor, whose monuments are found along its course. Ho monument has been discovered later than Seti's 30th year.

§ 5. Rameses II., surnamed Meriamun or Miamun {beloved of Amwi)* has long been invested with a fictitious glory by the splendor of the works executed during his long reign, and covered with poetical records of his exploits, and, above all, through their exaggeration by the Greeks in the legend of Sesostris³—a legend which bears the same relation

² Rameses III. bore the same title, but only as a ]>ra??iomen, not a part of his name.

³ One of the many attempts to connect the name Sesostris with the known kings of Egypt derives it from a title actually borne by Rameses ii., Sestestou or Sesou-\- Ba (the Sun).

UAMESES II.—LEGEND OF iSESOiSTKIS.

121

to his real deeds tliat tlie Lays of Charlemagne bear to the history of Charles the Great. Even the real facts which it embodies are combined, as we have already seen, from the exploits of different kings and dynasties.

His education and training to martial exercises, with the youths born on the same day, reads like a chapter of the Cyropaidia; but we have evidence of the care with which Egyptian princes were trained in the extant lessons prepared for his son, Merenphtha, by a royal scribe, as well as in the case of Moses. His first conquests were in Ethiopia and the Arabian Gulf, where he maintained a fleet of 400 ships of war, the first that the Egyptians had seen! Meanwhile he led his conquering army through Syria, Mesopotamia, Assyria, Media, Persia, Bactria, and India, even beyond the Ganges ! Thence, turning northward, he subdued the Scythian tribes as far as the Tanai's, placed a colony in Colchis, and traversed Asia Minor, where he set up stelw as monuments of his victories, carved with male or female emblems according as he had been met with courage or cowardice. Crossing the Bosporus, he was at length stopped by famine and by the rugged land and inhospitable climate of Thrace; and so he led back his army to Egypt, after nine years' absence, laden with booty, and dragging after him hosts of captives.*

On the very face of this legend we see that it was framed so as to include all the countries known to its inventors. The evidence of his own monuments confines the victories of Rameses almost entirely to the nortltern part of Syria. Though a great warrior, he was not a conqueror. His campaigns were essentially defensive; and it was only by prodigious efforts that he maintained the limits of the empire. For the rest, he was a cruel, headstrong despot. We may venture to call him the Louis XIV. of the Egyptian monarchy ; and " after him came the deluge."

§ 6. Rameses II. first appears in the later wars of his father, with whom, as we have seen, he was probably associated in the throne. But his regnal years are counted from the death of Seti I., when his age was about 28. His accession was attended by a revolt of southern Ethiopia, which was only subdued by the viceroys after long wars,⁵ in which Rameses took part in person, in his second or third year.

* Compare the remarkable passage in which Tacitus ("Ann.¹' ii. 60) relates the interpretation which the priests gave to Germanicus of the inscriptions at Thebes relating to the exploits of Ruamses, theextent of his cmpire, and his tributes. Tacitus does not call the king Sesostris, but he speaks of Sesosis in his account of the Phoenix ("Ann." vi. 2s).

⁶ These wars are depicted on the walls of the rock-hewn temples of Abou-uiml>el and Beit-Wa'Uy.

6

122

THE NEW THEBAN MONARCHY.

But the great scene of his own exploits was in Syria ; and we have the record of them not only on the Avails of the Ra-meseum, but in a remarkable epic poem by the scribe Pen* taour, which has been justly called the Bamese'id.

It was in his fifth year that he was called to meet a great uprising of the Kheta, who seem to have seized the opportunity of the troubles in Ethiopia to attack Palestine, and to threaten Egypt itself, at the head of a great confederacy of Western Asia. Among the twelve nations leagued togeth er, besides the Kheta, the Aramaeans, the Rotennou, the Phoenicians of Aradus, and the Canaanites, some interpreters have found the principal peoples of Asia Minor, and Troy itself! The chief theatre of the war was the valley of the Orontes, where was a stronghold of the Kheta, protected by the river and a double ditch, bridged with planks. The sculptures exhibit the whole system of attack and defense : here are the scaling-ladder and the testudo, with its Avicker roof covering the terebra, or boring-pike ; there the pioneers attack the gates Avith axes, Avhile the archers clear the wall of its defenders. " Nor have the sculptures failed to show the strength of the enemy in the attack made upon them by Rameses^or the skill with which they drew up their army to oppose him; and the tale of their defeat is graphically told by the death of their chief, drowned as he endeavored to pass the river, and by the dispersion of their numerous chariots."⁶

§ 7. To these general scenes of the Avar the epic of Pen-taour adds a personal exploit of Rameses, told in a true Homeric spirit, even to the vow which the king makes in the moment of extremest danger. By the fault of his generals and scouts, Rameses had fallen into an ambush, where, disdaining to fly, and deserted by his followers, he rushes with his charioteer alone into the midst of the enemy, and cuts his Avay through their 2500 chariots of Avar. The passage is too long to quote, but the following version of a feAV lines may serve to give some rough idea of it:

•Nor foot nor horse could make a stand: against the warlike foe, AVho on Orontes'farther bank: held Kadesh' citadel. Then forth in glorious health and strength: came Rameses the King: Like Mouth the god he roused himself: and donned his dress of war: Clad in resplendent arms he shone: like Baal in his might. Right on he urged his chariot wheels: amidst the Hittite foes:

⁶ Sir G. Wilkinson, in Rawlinson's " Herodotus," vol. ii. p. 3G9. The wars of Rameses II. in Syria were doubtless the occasion of his carving the three tablets which bear his name in the living rock at the month .of the Lycos (Xahr-cl-Kclb), north of Beyrout. According to Lepsius the three refer to different campaigns: one in his fourth year, the other in his second or tenth. These are doubtless the stelce mentioned by Herodotus, though he mistook their character. Besides them are six others of Assyrian kings.

OPPRESSIVE GOVERNMENT.

15?3

Ad by himself alone was he: none other by him stood.

The chariots compassed him about: by hundreds twenty-five;

The swiftest of the Hittites fluug themselves across his path.

And round him surged the unnumbered hosts: that followed them to war.

Each chariot held three warriors: but with him there was none,

Captain, nor geueral of the cars: nor of the archer band."

The scene ends with an Homeric reproof to his warriors and praise of his horses, who alone have saved him, in reward whereof they are to be served each day with grain in his palace, before the god Ka. After the final victory, we have his return to Egypt, and his welcome by Amun : "Health to thee, Rameses, our cherished son. We grant thee terms of years innumerable. Sit forever on the throne of thy father Amun, and let the barbarians be crushed beneath thy sandals."

§ 8. Notwithstanding all this glorification, the war was renewed two years later, and lasted fourteen years. At one time Palestine is nearly lost, and Rameses has to retake As-calon to save the military road; at another he advances to the very north of Syria. At length, in his 21st year, he makes peace with the Hittite king, on terms of remarkable equality, and in language which raises a smile from its likeness to the phraseology of modern treaties—perpetual amity —surrender of deserters—equality of commercial privileges —and so forth. These terms set in a clear light the contrast between Rameses and the conqueror Sesostris ! An interesting article is the provision for the restoration of the worship of Soutekh at Tanis ; while the Hittite king, Khetasar, engages on his part to pay like honor to the gods of Egypt. This peace was followed by the submission of Mesopotamia ; the limits of the empire of Thothmes III. were once more recovered ; aud the rest of the reign of Rameses II. was tranquil. In a stela set up at Abou-simbel, in his 35th year, he represents the god Phtha-Sokari as granting to him that the whole world should obey him like the Kheta.

§9. Of his internal administ. ation, the more the monuments reveal, the more do Ave see that the epithet " Great" is, as usual in history, but the tribute rendered by the weak judgment of men to arrogant despotism and barbaric pomp. He showed it in his enormous harem: 170 children were born to him during the 67th year of his reign; and one of his w^rives was his own daughter, Bent Anat. A papyrus at Turin, containing the notes of a criminal process, shows the cruelty with which he punished a conspiracy of the harem. The sentences pronounced being too mild to please him, he commuted them all into death, and beheaded the judges themselves.

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THE NEW THEBAN MONARCHY.

§ 10. The splendor of his court, and the magnificence of the buildings with which he covered all Egypt, were purchased by that cruel oppression, not only of the Hebrews, but of the subject populations of the Delta, of which Ave have the true picture in the Book of Exodus.

It appears now—as Ave shall presently see—placed beyond a doubt that the great individual oppressor of the Israelites Avas Rameses II.; and it is generally agreed by the best modern authorities that the persecuting dynasty—" the neAv king that arose over Egypt," and " that kneAV not Joseph"— Avas the XlXth, rather than the XVIIIth.⁷ Secure in their conquests abroad, the Thothmeses and Amunophs seem to have cherished the Shemites of the Delta as useful subjects; though they doubtless exacted from them the full tribute of their fertile lands; for the extreme harshness of the field-labor was a feature of the subsequent oppression.⁸

During this period the children of Israel multiplied so as to excite the jealous fears of the Egyptians, lest, seizing the occasion of the great Hittite Avar, they might join the enemy of kindred race, and, AA'hile adding to the dangers of Egypt, deprive her of a useful peasantry.⁹ They Avere therefore organized into gangs,under task-masters, as Ave see in the vivid pictures of the monuments,¹⁰ to Avork upon public edifices, and especially in building tAVO treasure-cities, one of Avhich Avas called by the name of their oppressor. " But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and greAV;" and so grew the jealousy of the Egyptians.¹¹

The oppression Avas now redoubled. "And the Egyptians made the children of Israel to serve with rigor. And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar and in brick, and in cdl manner of service in the field."™ These means still failing, the diabolical expedient of infanticide Avas attempted, which stamps the character of the tyrant, and which prepared its retribution in the training up at his OAvn court of the deliverer,¹³ who at length led out Israel, while

⁷ Perhaps sufficient notice has not been taken of the distinction between the generality of the language in Exodus i. 9,11, 12,14 ("he," and "his people," "they," " the Egyptians"), aud the individuality of the "Pharaoh" for whom "they built Pithom and Rameses" (v. 11); of the infanticide "King of Egypt" (ver. 15, IT, IS), and again of " Pharaoh" (ver. 19, 22). ⁸ Exodus i. 14.

⁹ Exodus i. 7-11. AA^re see a striking confirmation of this in the treaty of Rameses with the Hittite King (§ 8, above), which provides that—"If the subjects of King Rameses should come to the King of the Hittites, the King of the Hittites is not to receive them, but to force them to return to Rameses, the King of Egypt"—as if he knew that the one desire of the Semitic population was to escape from Egypt and join their brethren at home in their wars against the Pharaohs, or rather now to renew those wars.

¹⁰ See above, chap. v. § 17. ¹¹ Exodus i. 12> ¹² Exodus i. 14. ¹³ Dr. Brngsch holds that Moses was born abont the Gth year of Rameses IL He

considers the name to be Egyptian, from mas or vnasu (child).

OPPRESSION OF THE HEBREWS.

12.-.

Egypt was plagued in her turn and her first-born were slain.¹⁴

Critics who distrust the "unerring instinct," by which any reader of the Bible would identify Rameses II. (or at least some great Barneses) with the " Pharaoh " for whom " the children of Israel built treasure-cities, Pithom and Raam-se6-,"¹⁵have wasted much ingenuity in explaining away the coincidence of the names; but the question is now set at rest by the distinct testimony of Egyptian literature. Papyri of the time of Rameses II. give a glowing description of the chain of fortified cities which the hieroglyphics tell us that Per-aa for Phera-o¹⁶ erected from Pelusium to Heliopolis, and of which the principal two bore the names of Bhamses and Pachtum; both situated in the present Wady-Tumeilat, near the sweet-water canal that joined the Nile with the Red Sea. along the course of which we still find monuments bearing the name of Rameses II. One of these documents describes the reception of the king at the city of Rameses, in the tenth year of his reign.¹⁷ But this is not all. Hie very name of the Hebrews is officially recorded by their persecutors as the*builders of the city. In a papyrus preserved in the Museum of Leyden, the scribe Kautsir reports to his superior, the scribe Baken-phtha, that in compliance with his instructions he has " distributed the rations among the soldiers, and likewise among the Hebrews (Aberiou or Apuru) who carry the stones to the great city of King Rameses Mia-mux, the lover of truth, and who are under the orders of the captain of the police-soldiers, Ameneman. I distribute the food among them monthly, according to the excellent instructions which my lord has given me." Similar distinct indications of the people and their state of serfdom are found in another Leyden papyrus, and also in the long rock-inscription of Hamamat.™

§ 11. Nor was the condition of the native peasantry much better. Among the precious relics of Egyptian literature is a papyrus containing a correspondence between Ameneman, the chief librarian of Rameses II., and his pupil, the poet Pen-

¹⁴ The view that the oppression included the foreign populations of the Delta generally will help to account for the " mixed multitude," or, literally, "great mixture," that went up out of Egypt with the Israelites, and proved so troublesome in the wilderness (Exod. xii. 38; Numbers xi. 4).

¹⁵ Exod. i. 11. Let the reader remember that Rhamses is the Egyptian form : we have only adopted the more common Greek form Rameses for the sake of accentual euphony.

¹⁶ This title, which is usually derived from (Ph)ra (the Szm), Is explained by Brugsch as meaning high house. It is at all events an equivalent of " king."

¹⁷ This was 11 years before the end of his long war with the Hittites; whence wa may infer the object of these fortresses.

is Brugsch ; " Aus dem Orient," as quoted above.

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THE NEW THERAN MONARCHY.

taour. "Have you ever figured to yourself," says one of these letters," what is the life of the peasant who tills the land ? Even before he has reaped, the insects destroy a portion of his crop ; there are multitudes of rats in the fields; then come the flights of locusts, the beasts that ravage his harvest, the sparrows that settle in flocks upon his sheaves. If he is slow to get in what he has reaped, thieves come and take it from him: so his horse dies with fatigue in dragging the cart. The tax-gatherer arrives at the store-house of the district, having with him officers armed with sticks, and negroes armed w^Tith palm-branches. All cry, ' Give us your corn,' and he has no means of repelling their extortions. Then the Wretch is seized, bound, and carried off to forced labor at the canals : his wife is bound: his children are stripped of their all. During all this time his neighbors are each at his own work, unable to help, and fearing for his own turn." The Egyptian peasant under " the great " Rameses was no better off than the fellah under the Mameluke or Turk.

The mania of Rameses for building could not find an adequate supply of labor in Egypt, even in the myriads of captives that worked under the stick, bedewing every brick and stone with sweat and blood. So the system of slave-hunting was carried on to a vaster extent than ever; and nearly every year we find records of razzias into Soudan, bringing back thousands of negroes. Rameses II. appears also to have been the first king of Egypt who practised the system, afterwards so common with the Assyrian and Babylonian conquerors, of deporting whole tribes from one part of his dominions to another, settling negroes in Asia and Asiatics in Nubia.

§ 12. The works of Rameses in architecture and sculpture are found along the course of the Nile, from Tanis in the Delta to Napata,the capital of Ethiopia. There is scarcely a ruin or a colossal fragment that does not bear his mark; but, with characteristic arrogance, he often erased the names of his predecessors to substitute his own. Among his greatest buildings are the wonderful rock-hewn temples of Abou-sim-bel in Nubia; at Thebes the Rameseuni* (or Memnonium) at Kurneh, on the walls of which are the sculptured records of his reign ; and a large portion of the temple-palaces of Karnak and Luxor ; a small temple at Abydos; besides several works in the Fyum, and at Memphis, where he beautified the temple of Phtha, and at Tanis, which was a favorite residence of his family.

¹⁹ This is the edifice which Diodorus describes as the tomb of Osymandyas,

MENEPHTHA.

127

But the most characteristic of all his works are his colossal statues, for the most part portraits of himself. Such are-the four seated colossi, the largest of all in Egypt except the Sphinx, carved in the rock as the frontispiece to the great temple of Abou-simbel. Next in size was the colossus, of which the fallen fragments still mark the site of the temple of Phtha at Memphis.²⁰ The most beautiful was the statue, about 60 feet high, which adorned the great court of the Rameseum, and the bust of which was brought to England by Belzoni. Every visitor to the British Museum may admire the features, so finely chiselled, though of so huge a size, marked by an expression of dignity, with a cpiiet smile about the lips characteristic of the self-satisfied despot. As a portrait, it carries its own evidence, and strikingly resembles a small wooden statue of Rameses in the same room.

§ 13. In these works, the art of Egypt reached its climax, and began to show the first symptoms of decline. And so was it also with her power. The weakness produced by sixty years of despotism showed itself in the old age of Rameses II. The command of the Mediterranean had passed into the hands of the Pelasgo-Tyrrhenians, who were allied with a race of Japhetic settlers on the north coast of Africa, who had displaced the Hamite race of Phut. These were the Zebu or Bebu (Libyans) and Mashuash (Maxyes) of the Egyptian monuments, which also designate the confederates as 'Tamdhou (men of the north) and ^Tohennou (men of the mists). With them were also joined the people of Crete, Sicily, and Sardinia. Having begun to threaten the coasts of Egypt as early as the time of Seti I., their assaults had been repulsed by Rameses II., whose armies were recruited by prisoners taken from them ; but in his last years they renewed their attacks, and effected settlements in the west of the Delta. Under his successor we have the most vivid accounts of their ravages, as surpassing any thing that Egypt had suffered even in the time of the Shepherd Kings.

§ 14. This state of things, at the accession of Merenphtha or Menephtha,²¹ the 13th son of Rameses II., together with his conflict with Moses, will account for the fact that nearly all his monuments are found at Memphis; a fact which tends to identify him with the Pharaoh of the Exodus. At first,

²⁰ Its vast proportions may be estimated from the fist, in the British Museum, which measures 32 inches in length from the wrist to the knuckle of the middle linger, and 3fti inches in breadth. a cast of the head is also in the British Museum: it is less effective as a portrait than that from the Rameseum.

²¹ He is also called Seti Menephtha II. in contradistinction to his grandfather. Other readings of his name are Menphtha and Phthamen. In Manetho's list he is Ammenephthes, a form which passes into Amenophism an extract quoted from Manetho by Josephus, thus making a confusion with the Amen-hoteps of Dyu. XVIII.

128

THE NEW THEBAN MONARCHY.

indeed, the progress of the invaders, who took Ileliopolis and Memphis, and advanced as far as a town called Paari, in Middle Egypt, drove him for refuge to the Thebaid. Thence he dispatched an army under the generals of his father, which defeated the Libyans and their allies at Paari. An inscription records the losses of the several contingents. The mass of the invaders was driven out of Egypt; but lands were assigned to some bodies of them in the Delta.

The result of this campaign would naturally lead Menephtha to take up his residence in Lower Egypt, chiefly at Memphis, but sometimes also at Tanis, which, from its proximity to the land of Goshen, is the probable scene of his contest with Moses, when " Jehovah did wondrous things in the field of Zoan."²² Tt is, however, a mistake to suppose that Pharaoh himself perished in the lied Sea : the Scripture narrative declares only the destruction of his army. Menephtha survived the Exodus, the date of which is probably early in his reign, for many years, and was buried in his royal tomb, which is one of the most magnificent at Thebes. His reign, to which Manetho assigns 20 or (in Euseb.) 40 years, is known from the monuments to have lasted at least 30 years. But the state of Egypt in his later years, and after his death, confirms one striking expression in the Scripture: " Knowest thou not yet that Egypt is destroyed?" The part of the land left vacant by the Israelites appears to have been occupied by a new invasion from the side of Palestine, the details of which, as quoted from Manetho by Josephus, are again obscured (like the story of the Shepherd Kings) by an attempt (this time on the part of his antagonist Philo) to connect it with the Exodus.

§ 15. The story is, that King Menophis, or Amenophis (but Menephtha, the "son of Rameses, is evidently meant), resolved to propitiate the gods by purging the land of all lepers and unclean persons, whom he banished to the eastern hills; but he afterwards gave them the city of Avaris, from which the Shepherds had been expelled. They numbered 80,000; and, from the leprous priests among them, they chose as their leader an apostate priest of Heliopolis, whose name of Osarseph was changed to Moses. He gave them new laws, bidding them to disregard the gods and sacrifice the sacred animals, and forbidding all intercourLe with the Egyptians. He fortified Avaris, and called in the aid of the expelled Shepherds, who heal settled at Jeruscdem, and who

²² Psalm lxxviii. 12, 43. All the circumstances of the narrative, and especially the point of departure of the Israelites, make it certain that the scene was in Lower Egypt For the story of the contest itself, and of the Exodus, the reader is referred to the " Student's O.T. History," chap. xi.

THE JEWISH EXODUS

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advanced to Avaris with an army of 200,000 men. The king of Egypt marched against them with 300,000 men, but returned to Memphis through fear of an ancient prophecy. He then fled to Ethiopia, whence he returned after an absence of 13 years, drove the rebels out of Egypt, and pursued them to the confines of Syria.

The key to the story seems to lie in the confusion, already mentioned, between Jerusalem (Kodesh, or Kadusha, the Holy) and the holy city of the Hittites, Kadesh on the Orontes. The truth seems to be that, the calamities attending the Exodus having left Lower Egypt in a state of confusion and of partial revolt, the KJieta seized the opportunity for an invasion, before which Menephtha fled to Thebes, sending his infant son, Seti, for safety, to Ethiopia.

§ 16. The monuments do not mention the invasion, any more than the Exodus; nor is it the custom of any nation to make monumental record of its disastrous defeats. But we learn from them that, on the death of Menephtha, and while his young son was still in Ethiopia,'a prince of the royal family, named Amexmneses (Ammenemnes, M.), assumed the crown at Chev (Aphroditopolis) in the Fyum, and soon recovered most of Egypt from the invaders. His son, who assumed the name of Merexphtha Siphtha,²³ sought to legitimate his power by marriage with the princess Taosiri, daughter of the late king Merenphtha; and her rights were formally acknowledged ; so that,*on the monuments, she takes precedence of her husband. The prince Seti was at first content with the rank of viceroy of Ethiopia (Roycd Son of Cush); but, as soon as he found himself strong enough, he marched down the Nile, took Thebes and Meinphis, and regained the throne as Seti II. The kings of Chev were now regarded as usurpers, and their names erased from the monuments ; but Amenmneses and Taosiri have a place in the lists of Manetho, the latter under the disguise of a king Thuoris, whom the Greek copyists identify With the Poly-bus of Homer, at the epoch of the fill of Troy.

Amidst these internal troubles, Egypt was manifestly in no state to interfere with Israel's conquest of Canaan, though a land which she regarded as her territory. On the contrary, some of the tribes that once obeyed her rose up, in their turn, to oppress Israel, in the time of the judges. But Egypt had not lost her hold on Syria and Mesopotamia, so long as she commanded the route along the maritime plain of Palestine; and this was the very portion of the Promised Land that Joshua was not strong enough to attack. The Nineteenth

²³ Also written Phthamen-se-Phtha. 0*

130

THE NEW THEBAN MONARCHY.

Dynasty ends with Seti II., having lasted, according to Manetho, 174 vears.

§ 17. Of the Twentieth Dynasty the List of Manetho only says that it consisted of twelve Diospolitan ^ (i. e. Theban) kings, who reigned 135 years, or, in the Armenian version of Eusebins, 172. Their names, now recovered from the monuments, show that they claimed descent from the great Rameses of the XlXth Dynasty, and adopted his name as an appellation of royalty, like that of Cmsar. The first of the line, Nekht-tkt (whom some call Seti III.), is followed by a series of kings, who are all called Rameses, as far as Rameses XII., and perhaps even farther. The line was ended by a sacerdotal usurpation.

The one great king of this dynasty was Rameses III., whose exploits threw a dying lustre over the last years in which Egypt had an empire ; but his campaigns, like those of the great Roman emperors, were essentially defensive. Their memorial is preserved in some of the most splendid of the Egyptian bas-reliefs, in the palace-temple of Medinet-Aboti, called the southern Rameseum.

Sir Gardner Wilkinson describes this edifice as " one of the most interesting monuments in Thebes, the battle-scenes most spirited, and the history of his campaigns most important, and if the style of the sculptures is not quite equal to those of Sethi I. and his son, their designs are full of spirit; . . . . but the change he made in the mode of sculpturing the figures and hieroglyphics seems to have been the prelude to the decadence of art."²⁴

Having been Viceroy of Lower Egypt at Heliopolis under his lather, Rameses was still young when he came to the throne. In his fifth year, Egypt was attacked on the northwestern side by the "Libyans, in league with the Tokari or Zakkaro, apparently a maritime people, but of doubtful locality. Their repulse is the subject of three great pictures at Medinet-Abou ; but the hieroglyphic text is obscure.

§ 18. A long and more intelligible inscription relates the most important of the king's campaigns, in which he^recov-ered the dominions of Thothmes III. and Seti I. in Western Asia. The maritime peoples of the Mediterranean, who had been repulsed from the western side of the Delta, seem to have chosen a new point of assault on the coast of Syria, and to have allied themselves to the Kheta. The leaders of the maritime invasion were the Zakkaro and the IvJiairetana or Shairetana, who are supposed to be the same as the Chert-thim or Cretans, a race allied to the Philistines.

^s* Iu Rawlinson's " Herod.," vol. ii. pp. 372-3,

TWENTIETH DYNASTY.—RAMESES III.

131

Rameses anticipated their attack by assailing them in detail, and the ensuing war occupies several large pictures. In the first, his departure from Thebes is accompanied by a grandiloquent description : "The king starts for the country of Tsahi (Ccele-Syria), like an image of the god Month, to trample under foot the nations that have violated his frontiers. His soldiers are like bulls charging flocks of sheep, his horses like hawks in a flock of small birds."

In the second scene, Rameses marches through several friendly countries, and in one place he traverses a mountainous and woody country, abounding in lions, probably a spur or advanced range of Lebanon. In Ccele-Syria he finds the Kheta and their allies in force; among the latter are the Phoenicians of Aradus, the people of Carchemish and the Kalti; but the Mesopotamians seem to have kept to their loyalty. He takes by escalade several fortified towns, some of them surrounded by water, and defended b)^r double walls; and finally defeats the enemy in a great battle in the valley of the Orontes. "I have blotted out," he says, "these nations and their country, as if they had never been."

He now turns to meet the maritime invaders, who had already disembarked, and are seen advancing along the coast in the guise of a migrating nation, their women and children carried in wagons drawn by oxen. They are composed of the Shai/etana and the Zebu (or Rebu), the Mashuash or Maxyes of Libya. Their utter defeat is followed by a calculation of the slain, represented by several heaps of hands, 12,500 in all, while the prisoners are drawn up in two lines, each of 1000 men. On the scene of his victory, the king erected a fort called " the Tower of Rameses;" and here, joined \>f his fleet, which " appeared upon the waters like a strong wall," he awaited the arrival of the next body of the foes by sea. These consisted principally of the Zakkaro, with whom were joined Libyans, Sicilians, Sardinians, Tyrrhenians, and (if we may trust the interpreters) Greeks from the Peloponnesus, called no longer Achfeans (as in the time of Menephtha),. but Danai. The sea-fight off the tower of Rameses forms one of the grandest bas-reliefs on the Egyptian monuments. The ships of Rameses, ornamented with a lion's head upon each prow, have shut in the enemy's fleet between themselves and the lofty shore, whence the soldiers, commanded by the king himself, hurl showers of missiles.²⁵ In a long inscription Rameses vaunts the prowess of his sol-

²⁵ The naval battle which is thus depicted before our eyes must be dated between 500 and GOO years earlier than the sea-fight between the Corinthians and Coreyraeans. which the Greek historians considered as the first on record.

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THE NEW THEBAN MONARCHY.

diers ; and especially his own : as for his enemies, " they will reap no more harvests in this world; the time of their soul is counted in eternity."

But the war was followed by an arrangement disastrous for the power of Egypt. The prisoners taken in the first victory, chiefly of Philistine race, were settled in the maritime plain of Palestine, where this new population aided the rise of the confederacy which soon gained power as the Egyptians lost theirs. The bas-reliefs of Medinet-Abou represent other campaigns of Rameses in Asia and Africa, and an inscription records the tribute brought to him by the people of the south and other regions: vessels of gold and silver, bags of gold-dust, objects made of various metals, lapis-lazuli, and all sorts of precious stones. The deposit of all this wealth in his treasury at Thebes reminds us of the curious story of Herodotus about the treasury of Rhampsinitus and the cleverest of all thieves.²⁶ The vast subterranean tomb of Rameses III. is one of the finest in the Biban-el-Molook at Thebes.

§ 19. Rameses IV. seems to have succeeded to the full power of his father, and to have died without leaving a son. Then follow at least three younger sons of Rameses HI., all bearing the same name, not without indications of rivalry and of partitions of the kingdom.

Rameses VIII., whose descent is traced by a different line from Amunopb I., appears to have restored the unity of Egypt, and to have maintained her foreign empire. He made some additions to the great temple at Karnak, and we have historical papyri of his reign. His face, conspicuous for the high bridge of the nose, furnishes one of the most decisive proofs that the effigies of the Egyptian kings are real portraits.

He is followed by a succession of other Rameses (some say six or even more), of whom we know little more than of the long evanescent line of kings shown in vision to Macbeth ; and with them the empire of Egypt recedes to a vanishing-point. She succumbed to the inherent weakness of all despotisms, and even her foreign conquests hastened her decay. Asia revenged herself by inroads upon that exclusive nationality which was Egypt's strength. Semitic words had appeared in her language, foreign gods in her inaccessible sanctuaries. And now the sacerdotal power attempted to restore itself on the ruins of the royal authority that hnd held it in check. Strong in their corporate character and their hereditary functions, the high-priests of Ammon,

26 Herod, ii. 121.

PRIEST-KINGS.

133

after assuming all the civil and military offices of the kingdom, ended by usurping the crown. But the process was long and gradual. As Tate as the time of Rameses XII. Ave find Mesopotamia still tributary to Egypt, as is seen by a curious tale recorded on a stela found at Thebes, some incidents of which have a resemblance to points of Scripture history.

While passing through Mesopotamia, to collect his tribute, the king was captivated by the beauty of a chief's daughter, and married her. Some time afterwards, in the fifteenth year of Rameses, the chieftain came to Thebes, to ask the services of one of the king's physicians for his younger daughter, who was possessed by an evil spirit. This spirit proved stronger than the physician; and eleven years later the father made another journey to Thebes, to seek more effectual aid from the gods of Egypt. The king granted him the use of the ark of the goS'Chons, which reached Mesopotamia after a journey of eighteen months; and the desired cure was at once wrought. Bnt the Mesopotamian prince was unwilling to part with so potent a talisman, till, after three years and three quarters, a dream, in which he saw the god fly back to Egypt, in the form of a golden hawk, showed that he could not retain him against his will. So the ark was sent back to Egypt, in the thirty-third year of the reign of Rameses. The whole tenor of the story shows how loosely the authority of Rameses sat upon his Mesopotamian vassal.

§ 20. In fact, we have now reached the period when the Assyrian monarchy of Nineveh, established since the beginning of the fourteenth century b.c, was consolidating itself behind the Euphrates, though"not yet strong enough to pass that boundary; while, nearer home, the Philistines had barred the great military road to Asia, and for a time obtained the mastery which Egypt had once held in Canaan. It was at this epoch, when Egypt was thrown back within her natural limits, that the high-priest of Amnion, at Thebes, Her-Hor, "the supreme Horns,''assumed the crown of the Pharaohs. To establish his power at home, it seems that the new ruler gave up all claim to dominion in Asia, as the price of an alliance with the power now ruling at Nineveh. Hence, probably, the Assyrian names which we find in his family and the following dynasty. After his death, the old line of Thebes appears to have regained power for a time ; and Piankh (or Pionkh), the son of-Her-Hor, bears only the title of high-priest. But the royal title revives with his son, Pinetsem: I. (or Pisham), and is continued through several generations of priest-kinos, who also appear as the heads of the military class, by the title of " Commander of the Soldiers" (or

134

THE NEW THEBAN MONARCHY.

"Archers "). The power of the new line was legitimated by a marriage with the princess Isi-em- Chev, a descendant of the competitors of Seti II., and the house and name of the Rameses finally disappears.

It has been doubted whether these priest-kings formed the Twenty-first (Tanite) Dynasty of .Manetho, or whether the latter was one of the old rival houses of Lower Egypt, which seized the opportunity of the troubles attending the fall of the Theban line to establish itself at Tanis. In favor of the former hypothesis is the resemblance of the names of Her-Hor, Piankh, and Pinetsem, to Osochor, Psinaches, and Psouennes, who stand in Manetho's list as the last three of the seven kings of the tw^Tenty-first dynasty. Perhaps we may reconcile the two vieAvs by supposing that the priest-kings obtained a place in the Tanite dynasty by marriage ; and this adoption of the claims of a monarchy in LoAver Egypt, together with their Assyrian alliance, would confirm their power against the legitimate Theban line.

An Egyptian Archer carrying spare Arrows.

Allies of the Egyptians.

CHAPTER VII.

NEW KINGDOMS IN THE DELTA AND THE ETHIOPIAN DYNASTY -DYNASTIES XXI.-XXV.—B.C. 1100 (AB0UT)-664.

§ 1. Twenty-first Dynasty. Transfer of the capital from Thebes to Tanis. Convergence of Egyptian, Assyrian, and Jewish history. Alliance of a Tanite king with Solomon. Commerce'between Egypt and Judaea. § 2. Origin of Tanis or Zoan, the Avaris of the Shepherds. Connection of Zoan and Hebron. §3. Site of Tanis, the "field of Zoan." Its value as a fortress. § 4. Tanis as a residence of the Theban kings. The capital of the XXIst and XXIIId dynasties. Decline. § 5. The ruins and plain of San. Researches of M. Mariette. § G. The Twenty-second (Bubastite) Dynasty. Military adventurers of Assyrian origin. § 7. Bubastis, the sacred city of Pasht. Temple and festival of Bubastis. § 8. Its ruins at Tel-Bas-ta. § 9. SniisnoNK I., the Shisuak of Scripture. Protects Jeroboam. Conquers Rehoboam and makes Judah tributary. Name of Judah on his monuments. Narrow limits of his conquests. Osorohon I. Question involved iu the defeat of Ze-rah, the Ethiopian, by Asa, King of Judah. Kingdom of Napata. Priests of the Bubastite house. § 10. Twenty-third (Tanite) Dynasty. Rival Kings of Lower and Middle Egypt. Invasion of the Ethiopian Piankh. Tnephachthus, of Sais. His curse on Menes. § 11. Bokenkanf or Bocchokis, sole king of the Twenty-fourth (Salte) Dynasty. Greek traditions of his character. He is conquered and burnt alive by Sabaco, the Ethiopian. § 12. The Twenty-fifth (Ethiopian) Dynasty. Account of Ethiopia. MeroG. Napata. Its wealth. Ruins of Jebel-Berkel. § 13. Ethiopia under the Egyptian rule. Kingdom of Napata. Affinity of the two states. Limited effect of the Ethiopian conqnest. § 14. The kings of the XXVth dynasty. Sabaco I. aids Hoshea, King of Israel. Capture of Samaria by Sargon. Conqnest of Syria claimed by Sabaco. Assyrian account; Sargon's victory at Raphia; defeat and flight of Sabaco. § 15. Sabaoo II. Sargon's mention of a "Pharaoh." War of Ashdod. The "King of Ethiopia" makes peace with Sargon. § 16. Sennacherib^ Jewish campaign. His victory at Altakn. State of Egypt at this time. Destruction of Sennacherib's army. Egyptian version of the miracle: The priest-kin^ Setuos of Herodotus. § 17. Tak-haka or Tiruakau. His conquests compared with those of Sesostkis. Long and fluctuating conflict

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NEW KINGDOMS IN THE DELTA.

with Assyria. New light from the Assyrian annals. § IS. His son Rotmen driven out by Asshur-bani-pal. Disastrous invasion of Egypt. Sack of Thebes. § 19. Prophecies of Isaiah and Nahum. § 20. New invasion and retirement of the Ethiopian Amen-meri-Nout. Retirement both of the Assyrians and the Ethiopians.

§ 1. The transfer of the sceptre, under the Twenty-first Dynasty, from Thebes to Taxis, the new capital of Lower Egypt, forms an epoch of great importance. The separate currents of the Egyptian, Assyrian, and Jewish annals now converge into the stream of universal history; and Ave at length obtain a basis of chronology.

During the decline of Egypt, and before Assyrian conquests Avere carried Avest of the Euphrates, the newly-founded kingdom of Israel had fought out its hard conflict with the Philistines; and David, having subdued his enemies on every side, left to his son,Solomon (the "peaceful"), a real empire, the greatest at this time in Western Asia, occupying the region promised to Abraham,

"From the bordering flood Of old Euphrates to the stream that parts Egypt from Syrian ground."

The building of Solomon's temple, on the hill of Jerusalem, recovered by David from the Jebusites, marks a fixed epoch in chronology—the millennium before the birth of Christ.¹ Now, in the early part of his reign, Solomon made affinity with Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and married his daughter,² and since Ave shall presently find, by the double testimony of Scripture and the monuments, Shishak, the first King of the 22d dynasty, harboring the enemies of Solomon and invading Judah under Rehoboam, it follows, almost to demonstration, that the ally of Solomon Avas one of the last kings of the 21st dynasty. The presentation by Pharaoh to his daughter of the site of Gezar, between Jaffa and Jerusalem, which he had taken from the Canaanites and destroyed, and which Solomon rebuilt and fortified,³ seems to indicate, first, that the kings of Egypt had recovered their hold upon the route to Asia by the maritime plain, and, secondly, that this last remnant of their sovereignty over Palestine audits neighborhood Avas now surrendered as the price of Solomon's alliance.

The protection involved in that sovereignty had been ex-

¹ The Epoch of the Destruction of the Temple by-Nebuchadnezzar is fixed so accurately, by a concurrence of proofs from sacred aud secular history, that the limits of doubt lie within two years, between is.o. 5SS and 5SI5; and the Babylonian Canon decides for the latter date. Reckoning backward by the Jewish annals, Ave have a margin of ouly fifteen years of doubt in the period fr«uv the building of the Temple to its destruction. The highest date for the former is n.o. 1027 : the received dates are n.o. 1005 for its completion, u.o. 1012 for its commencement, and u.o. 1015 for tha accession of Solomon.

² 1 Kings iii. 1; vii. 8; ix. 24. a ₁ Kings ix. 15-17.

ORIGIN OF TANIS.

137

ereised during the reign of David, in the case of Hadad, an Edomite prince, who had been carried as an infant to Egypt, after escaping from the massacre of Joab, and had received in marriage the sister of Tahpenes, the queen of Pharaoh.⁴ The total silence of Scripture about the history and state of Egypt from the Exodus to the time of Solomon proves at least the absence of active hostility ; and Solomon carried on a steady commerce with Egypt in linen yarn, and in horses and chariots: the latter he not only imported for his own use, but sold them to the kings of tlie Hittites and of Syria. The price of a chariot, as it came from Egypt, was 600 silver shekels, and of each horse 150 shekels.⁵ We may well pause to notice the change from the time when the Theban kings fought against the chariots of the Hittites and their Syrian allies, to that when these nations were supplied with chariots from Egypt through the medium of a great commercial empire founded by a people once her slaves. The old maritime power of Egypt, both in the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, which had long declined or ceased, was now superseded by the commerce carried on by the fleets of Solomon, in conjunction with those of Tyre, from the ports of Joppa on the one side, and of Elath and Ezion-Geber on the other.

§ 2. The revival of a monarchy of Lower Egypt at Tanis, rather than at Memphis, may be easily accounted for by the importance which the former city had acquired under the Shepherds and the kings of the XVIIIth and XlXth Dynasties. Taxis is the Greek form of the Semitic name Zoan (in modern Arabic Sun), which signifies & place of removal, doubtless as being the point of departure for caravans on the eastern frontier. This sense is confirmed by the Egyptian name HA-AWAR or PA-AWAR (house of going forth or departure), the Avaris (Ouapig) of Manetho's story of the Shepherd Kings. The Scripture has assigned its date with a precision such as few of the oldest cities of the world can claim : " Hebron was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt."⁰ This statement shows a knowledge of the origin of both cities, which was most probably derived from the residence of Abraham at Hebron (then Kirjath-Arha, the City ofArba,& name curiously like Awar); and the two cities would hardly have been thus compared had there not been some connection in

⁴ 1 Kings xi. 14-22. As the name of Tahpencs has not been found on the monuments, we can not identify this Pharaoh. The relnctance with which Pharaoh allowed Hadad to return to Edom may have been a tribute to the obligations of the alliance with Solomon ; but it is not clear whether this Pharaoh was the last of the Tanites, or Shishak, the first of the 22d dynasty, who protected Jeroboam against Solomon. See further in the " Diet, of the Bible," «. v. Tahpenes.

⁵ 1 Kings x. 2S, 29. At the value of 3s. for the shekel, each chariot would cost £00, and each horse £22 10s. 6 Numbers xiii. 22.

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NEW KINGDOMS IN THE DELTA.

their origin. Now Hebron was under the rule of the Anakim; who were of the old warlike Palestinian race that long dominated over the southern Canaanites. The Shepherds who built Avaris were apparently of the Phoenician stock, which was referred to the same race. Hebron was already built in Abraham's time, and the Shepherd invasion may be dated about the same period. Hence, whether or not, as Manetho states, some older village or city was succeeded by Avaris, its building and fortification by the Shepherd Kings forms the t rue'beginning of the history of the city of Tanis.

§ 3. Its site was admirably chosen for their great fortress.⁷ Like the other principal cities of this tract—Pelu-sium, Bubastis, and Heliopolis—it lay on the east bank ot the river, towards Syria. Its ruins are situate in 31° N. latitude and 31° o E. longitude, on the eastern bank of the canal which was formerly the Tanitic branch of the Nile. Anciently a rich plain extended due east as far as Pelusium, about 30 miles distant, gradually narrowing towards the east, so that in a direction S.E. from Tanis it was not more than half this breadth. The whole of this plain was known as the fields or plains, the marshes or pasturedands (JJucolia). Anciently, it was rich marsh-land, watered by four of the seven branches of the Nile, and swept by the cool breezes of the Mediterranean ; but, through the subsidence of the coast, it is now almost covered by the great lake Menzxdeh.

The city, lying outside of the main line of defense along the Nile, afforded a protection to the cultivated lands to the east, and an obstacle to an invader; while to retreat from it was always possible, as long as the Egyptians held the river. But Tanis was too far inland to be properly the frontier fortress. It was near enough to be the place of departure for caravans—perhaps it was the last town in the Shepherd-period—but not near enough to command the entrance of Egypt. Pelusium lay upon the great road to Palestine—it has been, until lately, placed too far north—and the plain was here narrow from north to south, so that no invader could safely pass the fortress; but it soon became broader, and, by turning in a south-westerly direction, an advancing enemy would leave Tanis far to the northward, and a bold general would detach a force to. keep its garrison in check, and

⁷ Mr. Poole, whose account of Tanis we mainly follow (" Diet, of the Bible," art. Zoan), points out the caution with which Manetho's statement of the policy of the Shepherds must be received : "Throughout, we trace the influence of the pride that made the Egyptians hate, and aflfect to despise, the Shepherds above all their conquerors, except the Persians. The motive of Salatis (in building Avaris) is not to overawe Egypt, bnt to keep out the Assyrians: not to terrify the natives, but these foreigners, who, if other history be correct, did not then form an important state."

TANIS A RESIDENCE OF THE THEBAN KINGS. 139

march upon Heliopolis and Memphis. An enormous standing militia, settled in the Bacolia, as the Egyptian militia afterwards was in the neighboring tracts of the Delta, and with its head-quarters at Tanis, would overawe Egypt, and secure a retreat in case of disaster, besides maintaining hold of some of the most productive land in the country ; and mainly for the two former objects we believe Avaris to have been fortified.

§ 4. After the expulsion of the Shepherds, Tanis would naturally continue of importance to the kings of the XVIIIth and XlXth dynasties, both for their maritime operations in the Mediterranean and for their expeditions into Asia. "Although Thebes continued to be the place in which the splendor of the monarchy was chiefly displayed, and where the sovereigns held their court during intervals of peace, they must have needed a residence in that part of Lower Egypt which was nearest to the scene of their most important operations. That it should be at the same time not very distant from the sea was also necessary..... And, as the

eastern branches of the Nile one afte/another became silted up, it is probable that even in this age the Pelusiac mouth may have been too shallow to admit ships of war."⁸

We have seen that Tanis received the special care of Rameses II., and that "the held of Zoan" was the scene of his son's contest with God's prophet.⁹ It is well worthy of remark that the season of the plagues and Exodus (the beginning of harvest, at the vernal equinox) was the very time of the year at which the Shepherd Kings were wont to visit their armies at Avaris. The custom may have been kept up ; and thus Menephtha would have had his frontier militia ready for the pursuit of the Israelites. The position of Tanis would be alike valuable in the naval and Asiatic wars of Rameses III., and for the commerce carried on with Solomon by the XXIst dynasty, which at length made it the capital of Egypt.

That dignity was transferred to Bubastis under the XXIId dynasty, whose abolition of the worship of Set or Soutekh must have given a great blow to Tanis ; and it may have been a religious war that re-established the latter as the capital of the XXIIId dynasty. In this position it appears in the contemporary Hebrew prophecies. " The princes of Zoan, the wise counsellors of Pharaoh," are named by Isaiah before " the princes of JSToph " (Memphis).¹⁰ At a later time

⁸ Kenrick, " Ancient Egypt," vol. ii. p. 341.

⁹ Psalm lxxviii. 12, 43: where the word field may mean territory, name, or even kinadom.

¹⁰ Isaiah, xix. 11,13; comp. xxx. 4, where Mr. Poole takes Hanea for Tahpanhcr, (Daphme) not Heracleopolis.

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NEW KINGDOMS IN THE DELTA.

Ezekiel predicts the destruction of Zoan by fire as a consequence of the invasion of Egypt by Nebuchadnezzar;¹¹ but long before this blow the capital had been transferred to Sais under the XXIVth dynasty. In the time of Strabo Tanis was still a large town, the capital of a nome ;¹² in the age of Titus it was a small place.¹³

§ 5. The site of this ancient capital is described by Sir Gardner Wilkinson as " remarkable for the height and extent of its mounds, which are upward of a mile from N. to S., and nearly three-quarters of a mile from E. to W. The area in which the sacred inclosure of the temple stood is about 1500 feet by 1250, surrounded by mounds of fallen houses. The temple was adorned by Rameses II. with numerous obelisks and most of it sculptures. It is very ruinous, but its remains prove its former grandeur. The number of its obelisks, ten or twelve, all now fallen, is unequalled, and the labor of transporting them from Syene shows the lavish magnificence of the Egyptian kings. The oldest name found here is that of Sesertesen III. of the Xllth dynasty; the latest that of Tirhakah. The plain of San is very extensive, but thinly inhabited : no village exists in the immediate vicinity of the ancient Tanis ; and, when looking from the mounds of this once splendid city towards the distant palms of indistinct villages, we perceive the desolation spread around it. 'The field of Zoan' is now a barren waste: a canal passes through it without being able to fertilize the soil; ' fire ' has been ' set in Zoan ;' and one of the principal capitals or royal abodes of the Pharaohs is now the habitation of fishermen, the resort of wild beasts, and infested with reptiles and malignant fevers." Its desolation and nnhealthi-ness caused it to be neglected by explorers, till the task was undertaken by M. Mariette, whose researches have' already thrown immense light on the history of the Shepherd Kings.

§ 6. The same indefatigable explorer has recovered, from the Apis-steke and the Serapeum at Memphis, the true order of the nine kings whom Manetho assigns to the 7\centy-sec-ond Dynasty, of Bubastis. With one exception (Iler-sha-se£),they all bear the distinctly Assyrian names of Sheshonk, Osorchon (the same as Sargon), and Tiklat or Tiglath or Takeloth (Tigulti in pure Assyrian).¹⁴ They were a military dynasty, sprung (like the Mamelukes) from the king's body-guard ; and the history of their accession is now known from the monuments. A certain officer named Sargon, who was posted at Bubastis, being already allied by marriage to

ii Ezek. xxx. 14. ^J2 Strabo, xvii. p. S02. 1³ Joseph." Bell. Jud." iv. 11.

1⁴ This is said to be identical with the old Assyrian name of the river Tigris.

BUBASTIS.

141

the royal sacerdotal line of Her-Hor, appears to have married the daughter of the last king of the XXIst dynasty. Their son, Sheshonk, having been adopted by his grandfather, became at first regent, and afterwards king.

§ 7. Bubastis (or Bubastus), the seat of the new dynasty, was the sacred city of the goddess by whose name simply it is usually denoted in the hieroglyphics, I3A-HEST or BAST.¹⁵ This goddess was the same as Pasht, the goddess of fire. The cat was sacred to her, and she is represented by a lion-headed figure: eats were buried at Bubastis. The Greeks identified her with Artemis,¹⁶ whence her rock-hewn temple near Beni-hassan was called Speos Artemiclos (the Cave of Artemis) ; and her oracle at Bubastis was very popular with the Greek visitors to Egypt. Though the city was so ancient that Manetho mentions it as the scene of a most destructive earthquake in the time of Boethus, or Bochus, the first king of the Second Dynasty, it does not appear in history till the accession of the Twenty-second Dynasty, whose foreign origin and policy accounts for their choice of it as their eapital.

Bubastis was situate about half-way up the Pelusiac or Bubastite branch of the Nile, on the route of an invader marching from the East against Heliopolis and Memphis, and a little below the mouth of the Red Sea canal.¹⁷ The city seems to have reached the height of its prosperity shortly before the Persian Invasion ; and Iierodotus takes pains to describe it.¹⁸ It was raised, he says, more than any other city above the inundation by the embankments constructed, first by those who dug the canals in the time of Sesostris, and afterwards by the criminals whom the Ethiopian Sabaco condemned to this sort of labor. Of the temple of" Bubastis "as he calls the goddess, he says, " Other temples maybe grander, and may have cost more in the building, but there is none so pleasant to the eye as this of Bubastis. . . . Excepting the entrance, the whole forms an island. Two artificial channels from the Nile, one on either side of the temple, encompass the building, leaving only a narrow passage by which it is approached. These channels arc each a hundred feet wide, and are thickly shaded with trees. The gateway is sixty feet in height, and is ornamented with figures put upon the stone, six cubits high and well worthy of notice.

¹⁵ Also with the prefix HA-BAHEST, which appears to have been the sacred form. It seems to have been by prefixing the mascnline definite article that the name became PA-BAHEST the (city) of Pasht, whence the Hebrew Pi-beseth (Ezek. xxx. IT: Bou/3a<rTor LXX.), the Coptic Pi-Bast, Poubast, Pouasti, Bouasti, and the Greek aud Latin Bubastis (Boiz/Wti?, Herod.), or Bubastus (Bcm''/3u<tto?, Strabo, Diod., Plin., Ptol.). There 13 a similar variety in the name of HA-HESAR, the Coptic Bousiri and Pousiri, aud the Greek aud Latin liov<n_P^. Busiris.

¹⁶ Herod, ii. 137. ¹⁷ Herod, ii. 15S. ¹⁸ Herod, ii. 137,138.

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The temple stands in the middle of the city, and is visible on all sides as one walks round it; for, as the city has been raised up by embankment, while the temple has been left untouched in its original condition, you look down upon it wheresoever you are. A low wall runs round the Enclosure, having figures engraved upon it, and inside there is a grove of beautiful tall trees growing round the shrine which contains the image of the goddess. The inclosure is a furlong in length and the same in breadth. The entrance to it is by a road paved with stone for a distance of about three furlongs, which passes straight through the market-place, with an easterly direction, and is 400 feet in width. Trees of an extraordinary height grow on each side the road, which conducts from the temple of Bubastis to that of Hermes."

In another passage¹⁹ he describes the festival of Bubastis as the best attended of all the yearly local feasts of Egypt; the proceedings being as follows: " Men and women come sailing all together, vast numbers in each boat, many of the women with "castanets, which they strike, while some of the men pipe during the whole time of the voyage ; the remainder of the voyagers, male and female, sing the while, and make a clapping with their hands. "When they arrive opposite any of the towns upon the banks of the stream, they approach the shore, and, while some of the women continue to play and sing, others call aloud to the females of the place and load them with abuse, while a certain number dance, and some standing up uncover themselves. After proceeding in this way all along the river-course, they reach Bubastis, where they celebrate the feast with abundant sacrifices. More grape-wine²⁰ is consumed at this festival than in all the rest of the year besides. The number of those who attend, counting only the men and women, and omitting the children, amounts according to the native reports to 700,000."

§ 8. The great"mounds of Tel-Basta (the hill of Pasht) confirm the "description of Herodotus: "The height of the mound, the site of the temple in a low space beneath the houses, from which you look down upon it, are the very peculiarities any one would remark on visiting the remains at Tel-Basta. The street which Herodotus mentions as leading to the temple of Mercury is quite apparent, and his length of three stadia falls short of its real length, which is 2250 feet. On the way is the square he speaks of, 900 feet from the temple of Pasht, and apparently 200 feet broad, though now much reduced in size by the fallen materials of

'9 Herod, ii.5'.), 00.

-'•»-' In contradistinction to barley-wine, which was largely made in. Egypt.

SI1ESII0NK I.

113

the houses that surrounded it. Some fallen blocks mark the position of the temple of Mercury ; but the remains of that of Pasht are rather more extensive, and show that it measured about 500 feet iu length. We may readily credit the assertion of Herodotus respecting its beauty, since the whole was of the finest red granite, and was surrounded by a sacred inelosure about 600 feet square (agreeing with the stadium of Herodotus), beyond which was a larger circuit, measuring 940 feet by 1200, containing the minor one and the canal he mentions, and once planted, like the other, with a grove of trees. In this perhaps was the usual lake belonging to the temple. Among the sculptures are the names of a goddess (who may be either Pasht or Buto), and of Re-meses II., of Osorkon I., and of Amyrtams (?) ; and as the two first kings reigned long before the visit of Herodotus, we know that the temple was the one he saw. The columns of the vestibule had capitals representing the buds of water-plants, but near the old branch of the river (the modern canal of Moez) is another column with a palm-tree capital, said to have been taken from this temple, which has the names of Remeses II. and Osorkon I. Amidst the houses on the north-west side are the thick walls of a fort, which protected the temple below ; and to the east of the town is a large open space, inclosed by a wall now converted into mounds."²¹ The two royal names found upon these remains afford another proof of the care of Rameses H. for the cities of Lower Egypt, and also connect the temple of Bubastis with the Twenty-second Dynasty.

§ 9. We now meet with one of the most important synchronisms between sacred and.secular history. Siiesiioxk I., the first Pharaoh icho is mentioned in Scripture by his personal name, is also the first on whose monuments we read the name of the Jewish kingdom. A new military dynasty of Asiatic origin would naturally revive the claim of Egypt to suzerainty over Palestine ; and opportunities were offered by the declining power of Solomon and the weakness of his headstrong son. Eirst, we find Pharaoh permitting the return of the Edomite prince, Hadad, to reclaim his birthright.²² Next, Jeroboam, flying for his life from Solomon, is received by the king of Egypt, whose name Shishak (i. e. Sheshonk) b now expressly mentioned ;²³ and he starts from Egypt at the invitation of the ten tribes.²⁴ That he returned as a vassal of Egypt, is a fact implied in his being allowed to depart,

²¹ Sir G. Wilkinson's Xote to Herod, ii. loS, Rawlinson.

²² 1 Kings xi. 14-22. ²³ 1 Kings xi. 40.

²⁴1 Kings x4i. 2, 3; 2 Chron. x. 2, 3. Hence it appears that Jeroboam's rebellion involved the gnilt so constantly denounced by the prophets as "looking back to

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NEW KINGDOMS IN THE DELTA.

and confirmed by his setting up the worship of the Egyptian gods at the two ends of his kingdom.²⁵ This by no means involved hostilities between Egypt and Judah, except, perhaps, in the case of the latter attacking Israel—an attempt contemplated by the headstrong Rehoboam, but forbidden by a prophet.²⁶

*It was not till Rehoboam proved his resolution to reject the friendship as well as the suzerainty of Egypt by fortifying and garrisoning the cities of southern Judah, and even of the maritime plain,²⁷ that Shishak marched against him, in the fifth year of his reign,²⁸ with 1200 war-chariots, 60,000 cavalry, and an immense body of infantry, composed of Libyans (Lubim), Sukkiim, and Ethiopians.²⁹ After reducing the newly fortified places, Shishak advanced to Jerusalem, where, under the direction of the prophet, Rehoboam and the princes of Judah made unreserved submisflp5n ;³⁰ and Shishak, entering the city, carried off the treasures of the temple, and the golden shields dedicated by Solomon. It is quite in accordance with the policy of Egypt towards her vassals that Rehoboam, having made this submission, "strengthened himself in Jerusalem, and reigned," while "in Judah things went well;" and that Pharaoh abstained from interference during his unceasing war with Jeroboam.³¹ Such is the history in the Jewish records: now let us turn to the Egyptian.

In a great bas-relief on the outer wall of thehypostyle hall of Karnak, a Pharaoh, with his name appended—Amunmai (or Micumini) S/ieshonk^S2—depicted, as usual, of gigantic size, stands before the god Amun-re, who with one hand holds out to him a seimiter, and with the other leads up, by cords passed round their necks, five rows of bound figures, emblematic of conquered cities: for each figure is covered (except the head) by an embattled shield, inscribed with its name. There are thirteen shields in each row, making 65; and on the same wall a goddess holds, in like manner, four cords,

Egypt," "going down for aid to Egypt," and so forth; and thns the schismatic kingdom of Israel was tainted from its origin with vassalage to Egypt.

²⁵ 1 Kings xii. 2S, 29; 2 Chron. xi. 15. ²⁶ 1 Kings xii. 21-24; 2 Chron. xi. 1-1.

²⁷ 2 Chron. xi 5-12. ²« 1 Kings xiv. 25, 2G; n.c. 971 of the received -chronology.

²⁹ 2 Chron. xii. 2 seq. The Sukkiim seem to have been the Troglodyte; (cave-choe.llers) on the W. shore of the Red Sea, where there was a town called Suche, probably the modern SvaJcin (PIin. " H. N." vi. 34). They were skillful sliugers, and very useful as light troops (Heliod. "^Eth." viii. 10). Kenrick, " Ancient Egypt," vol. ii. p. 34S, note.

^3C The words in 2 Chron. xii. S clearly imply a state oT vassalage—" Nevertheless they shall be his servants; that they may know (the difference between) my service and the service of the kingdoms of the countries.'"

³¹ 1 Kings xiv. 30; xv. G.

³² Here we see Sheshonk using tlie surname of Rameses II., " beloved of Amnion," but only as a praeuomen.

OSORCHOX I,

with 17 shields attached to each ; in all 113 shields. The first of the rows is distinguished by the lotus, the symbol of the south; the second by the papyrus, the symbol of the north. Several of the shields refer to Ethiopia and Libya, countries of which Shishak was master, since their people inarched with him against Rehoboam. Among the rest are a large number of cities of Judah, well-known from Scripture; confirming the statement that Shishak "took the fenced cities which pertained to Judah."³³ The most important figure bears the inscription "Jeiiouada-Malek," with the usuaf character for land. The identification is equally clear, whether we read the phrase, with some, " the Land of the King of Judah," or, with others, " Judah the royal (city) of the land'"

There is no reason to believe that Sheshonk's expedition extended beyond Judah. The Assyrian kingdom was now fully established; and the smaller but powerful Syrian kingdom had lately been established by Rezon at Damascus/*⁴ In spite of the parade he has made of his conquests " in the long list of places, amounting to more than thirty times the number of those previously recorded by the o-Veat Egyptian conquerors, they have not," as Wilkinson observes, " the same importance, from the mention of large districts, as the * oldest lists; and none of these conquests, on which the older Pharaohs justly prided themselves, arc here mentioned. We look in vain for Carchemish, Xaharayn, or the Rot-h-?io."^3b Manetho assigns 21 years to Sesonchis; and a stele of his 21st year records his excavations in the quarries at Silsilis for buildings at Thebes. Bunsen suggests his identification with the Asychis (Sasychis in Diodorus), whom Herodotus celebrates as a wise legislator, as well as conqueror—the author of the law by which a debtor could pledge his father's body and his family sepulchre, as a security certain to be redeemed.

The obscure reign of Osorchox I. (Sargon in Assyrian), son of Sheshonk I., whose 11th year is found on the monu-ments,³⁶ involves one point of much interest. From the Second Book of Chronicles we find that, for the space of a generation after the conquest by Shishak, the kingdom of Judah waxed stronger and stronger, and inflicted severe defeats on Israel, under Rehoboam, Abijah, and especially under Asa, who restored the fortresses of Judah, and maintained an army (according to the received text) of 580,000 men—all without any interference from Egypt. Bnt now " there came

³³ 2 Chron. xii. 4. - 34 i Kings xi. 23-25.

³⁵ Append, to Herod., Rook IT., in Rawlinson, vol. ii. p. 377.

³⁶ Manetho gives him fifteen years. The name, Osorthon, is repeated in the Twenty-third dynastv in the more correct form, Osorchon.

7

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NEW KINGDOMS IN THE DELTA.

out against them Zerah (Zerach) the Cushite (or Mhiopian\ with a host of a million, and 300 chariots;" and over him Asa gained a most complete victory in the valley of Zapathah at Mareshah, near the later Eleutheropolis.³⁷ This was in, or immediately before, the 15th year of Asa (b.c. 941, received chronology),³⁸ exactly 30 years after the invasion of Shishak, and consequently, by an easy calculation from the years assigned to Shishak and Osorchon, about the end of the reign of the latter.

Considering the absence of any sign of an invasion of Egypt from Ethiopia at this time, and the fact that Zerah's army was composed, like that of Shishak, of" Ethiopians and Lubim,"³⁹ whence he himself also might be called an Ethiopian, especially at the late period when the Chronicles were written—on these grounds, and a sufficient likeness in the names, Ewald and "some Egyptologers identify Zerach with Osorchon I. Others believe that there was at this time a real invasion of Egypt by Azerch-Amen, ruler of the Ethiopian kingdom of Napata, whose overthrow by Asa involved also the Toss of Egypt and his retreat into his own country.⁴⁰ The question requires further light. Thus much, however, seems clear, that while the Tanite and Bubastite dynasties established their power over Egypt, the priests of the line of Her-Hor retired to Ethiopia, and founded the purely sacerdotal kingdom of Xapata, with an oracle of Amnion in rivalry with that of Thebes. While, however, they claimed to have transferred the legitimate rights of the priesthood to their new capital, we find its functions exercised by members of the royal house of Bubastis, named Sheshonk and Osorchon, and bearing the old title of "captain of the archers" besides that of "priest."

§ 10. The sacerdotal monarchy of Xapata would, of course, watch every opportunity for recovering Egypt ; and recent discoveries nave shown that they had a party in Thebes. The later years of the 22d dynasty, and the time of the twenty-third (Tanite) Dynasty, which succeeded it, appear to have been a time of constant trouble and internal division.

³" 2 Chron. xiv. 9-13. The numbers of the received text are not to be trusted.

³⁸ 2 Chron. xv. lo, tixes the date, as the convocation was the immediate result of the victory over Zerah.

³⁹ 2 Chron. xvi. S. On the other hand, these nations would of course appear in the army of an Ethiopian king who had conquered Egypt. The important place occupied by the Libyans in the militia of Egypt is in itself an interesting fact, and disposes of the theory that Zerah was an eastern Cushite, and any other than an invader from Egyj)t, as is shown also by liis retreat by way of Gerar. In fact, there was at this time no great eastern Cushite monarchy.

⁴⁰ "The Ethiopians were overthrown, that they could not recover themselves;" 2 Chron. xiv. 13.

TWENTY-FOURTH DYNASTY.

147

"The princes of Zoan (Tanis) have become fools, the princes of Xoph (Memphis) are deceived," says Isaiah, in his prophecy of the destruction coming upon Egypt—thereby testifying to the existence of rival dynasties; and three Memphite kings of this age have been discovered from the inscriptions of the Serapeum. It ^nust be remembered that Manetho only registers the kings and dynasties which were ultimately admitted as legitimate in the archives of the priests. But we have now the Ethiopian version of this period, on a stela discovered at Xapata by M. Mariette. It appears that Lower and Middle Egypt were divided among no less than thirteen petty states when the Ethiopian king Piankh marched from Xapata, and, having been welcomed at Thebes as a deliverer, took Memphis by force and gained several battles against the princes of the Delta. Among these princes, several of whom were military adventurers of the Libyan race, live only are called kings. The most powerful were Osorchon (or Sargon) and Pefaa-bus- (or Pet-se-Pasht),⁴¹ both of whom are placed by Manetho in the 23d Tau.te Dynasty, and Taf-nekht, of Sais, the Tnephachthus of Diodorus Siculus. The curse said to have been pronounced by this Tnephachthus upon Menes, observes Wilkinson, " is consistent with the fact of his seeing the decline of Egyptian power, and with the common habit of attributing to some irrelevant cause (such as the innovations of an early king) the gradual tall of a nation ; aud is only worth noticing as illustrating the declining condition of Egypt during the age of Tnephachthus and his son."⁴² § 11. Under that son, Bokexraxf, the Bocchoris of Manetho and. the Greeks,⁴³ who stands alone as forming the Twenty-fourth Dynasty, the capital was transferred to Sais (Sa-el-IIagar), which afterwards became the seat of a race of kings who raised Egypt to revived splendor before the final extinction of the monarchy. The Greeks had many traditions about Bocchoris, as of all the kings of Sa'is, the city which they frequented more than any other in Egypt. These traditions are consistent only in representing him as an able administrator and judge. Though eminent for the wisdom of his decisions, and especially for his laws regulating commercial contracts and the royal prerogatives and duties, he is charged with meanness and severity, and even with wanton cruelty and sacrilege—a composite portrait which may reflect the prejudices excited by his reforms. He

⁴¹ This name contains that of the goddess Pasht. Oppert explains it as "the man of Pasht." But the king was of a different race from the Osorchons and Sheshonka of the Bubastite and Tanite lines.

⁴² Append, to Herod., Book ii. in Rawlinson, vol. ii. p. S79.

⁴³ Hiod. i. 45. For a description of Sais. see chap. viii.

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THE ETHIOPIAN DYNASTY.

reigned for six years, according to the Greek copyists of Manetho ; but the Armenian version of Eusebins assigns him 44.⁴⁴ Xo details of his reign are found on the monuments ; and it is doubtful whether, as some say, he expelled the Ethiopians for a time, or whether lie reigned as their vassal. If the latter, we may account for the statement that he was burnt alive by Sabaco, as the punishment of an attempt at rebellion. At all events, he was overthrown by that conqueror. Sais continued, however, the seat of a native line of princes—one of many which reigned over the cities of the Delta, a country easy of defense—during the rule of the Ethiopians, on whose retirement they regained power as the twenty-sixth dynasty. There seems reason to believe, from the annals of the Assyrian kings, that the Sa'ite princes were distinguished from the rest by being the line especially recognized by Assyria.

§ 12."Meanwhile the Ethiopians, who had figured for so many ages on the monuments of the great Egyptian dynasties "as "the vile race of Cush," came in their turn to rule Egypt, as the Twenty-fifth Dynasty. It is time to speak more precisely of these Ethiopians and their country. The Greek word Ethiopian (Aldio^, burnt-faced), like the Semitic Cush, is a generic term for the dark races.⁴⁵ In this wide sense it included not only the people of Central Africa, from the Atlantic to the Red and Arabian Seas, but also the black find swarthy races of Asia.⁴⁰ In a narrower sense, like the Cush of the Egyptian monuments, there was an " Ethiopia nbove Egypt, which may be described generally as the country watered by the Xile and its tributaries above the First Cataract, so far as it was known, and answering pretty nearly to the modern Nubia and Sennaar, with the neighboring regions of Northern Abyssinia and Kordofan. As a geographical term, it may have included so much as was known of Negro-land ; and we have seen that there were probably mutual displacements of the negro and the Cushite races; but the two must not be confounded. The Ethiopians or Cushites of Egyptian history—the probable ancestors of the Bisharies and Sham/cdlas—were a straight-haired race, having the Egyptian physiognomy, but with those features that border oil" the negro type somewhat more pronounced, and

⁴⁴ The Cth year of Bocchoris is said to be fixed by an Apis-stela to u.c. 715; a very Drobable date for the time of his being put to death by Sabaco.

⁴⁵ The name of Eih'^rla has also been traced to the Egyptian name of the country Ethaush or Ethosh. If this is the true derivation, we have another example of the practice, so common with the Greeks, of assimilating a foreign name to a significant form in their own language. The Arabs have followed the same practice; and so have all nations, more or less.

Herod, iii. 04 ; vii. 70.

ACCOUNT of ETHIOPIA.

149

darker, but not jet-black. The Nubian eye, more elongated than the Egyptian, is still seen in the Shany alias.

But still more definite limits may be assigned to " Ethiopia above Egypt" in the political sense, in which it coincides with the kingdoms of Napata and of Meroe, and very nearly with Nubia and Sennaar. The southern boundary, indeed, can not be precisely fixed; but it seems not to have been higher than the junction of the Blue and White Rivers at the village of Khartum. The Astaboras (Atbarah or la-cazze) formed the eastern boundary both of the kingdom and of the island of Meroe: below its junction with the Nile, the deserts bordering the. river assigned natural limits on both sides. The northern region, for about a degree and a quarter of latitude above the First Cataract, hence called the Dodecascluxmus (80 miles' space) or ^Ethiopia jEyypti,\vns a debatable land, reckoned sometimes to Egypt, though properly in Ethiopia.

A natural division of the whole country is formed by the great desert and the range of hills which cross the valley of the Nile between the Fourth Cataract and the confluence of the Astaboras; and there is an equally marked division, in its political history, between the old Ethiopian kingdom of Napata and the later kingdom of Meroe. Of the latter we know little till the time of the Ptolemies and the Roman empire, though it is mentioned by Herodotus as the capital of Upper Ethiopia.⁴⁷ Napata,⁴⁸ the capital of the older kingdom, is a place whose position has been much disputed, and some have even supposed the name to denote simply the royal city, which might have occupied different positions at different times. But it is now generally identi-

⁴⁷ Herod.'ii. 29. There are very different opinions abont the origin of Meroe. The story mentioned by Diodorus and Strabo, that it was built by Cambyses, is simply absurd. Some modern writers trace its origin to the Deserters from Psammetichus {see the next chapter); bnt others hold it to have been the seat of an independent kingdom as early as Napata, arguing its antiquity from the appearance of its pyramids at Dankalah. Though M. Oppert can hardly be wrong in regarding the Miluh-ha or Miluhhi of the Assyrian inscriptions (which some read Mirukh) as the etymological equivalent of Meroe, it does not follow that the name denotes specifically the inland of Meroe, or a kingdom with its seat there. On the contrary, its most definite use is for the kingdom of Tirhakah; and his monumental records are found, not at Meroe, but at Napata. Esar-haddon, in styling himself " King of Egypt and Ethiopia," uses both Miluhhi and Kuxi (Cnsh) for the latter name, and that in the same set of inscriptions. Sometimes, indeed, there seems to be a distinction, as if Miluhhi were the more general term for the whole valley of the Nile. In any case, it seems in vain at this early period to seek for any more specific sense of Miluhhi than as a general name for Ethiopia. It seems not unlikely that, in what Herodotus says of Meroe, he may sometimes mean Xapata, which he does not name.

⁴⁸ Sir G. Wilkinson says that the name "h-ape-t" seems to signify "0/ Ape-t or Tape," i. e., Thebes, as if it were derived from Thebes, and that it was not unusual to give the names of Egyptian cities to those of Ethiopia, as was often done in Nubia. Note to Herod, ii. 29, Rawlinson.

ISO THE ETHIOITAX DYNASTY.

fied with the extensive ruins at Iebel-Berkel,n little below the Fourth Cataract, the highest point on the Nile at which we find any considerable monuments of the Pharaohs.⁴⁹ It was also the farthest point reached by the Roman expedition which was sent under Petronius, in the time of Augustus, against Candace, queen of the Ethiopians (n.c. 22).⁵⁰ Can-dace was the title of a race of queens who reigned at Napata,, which was probably at this time a dependency of Meroe.

Napata owed much of its wealth and importance to its be ing the terminus of two considerable caravan routes, one crossing the desert of BaJdouda S.E. to Meroe, the other running in the opposite direction to the island of Gagaudes (Argo),m the Nile. Its commerce consisted in an interchange of the products of Libya and Arabia, and it was near enough to the marshes of the Nile to enjoy a share of the profitable trade in the hides and ivory which were obtained from the chase of the hippopotamus and elephant. The ruins at Jebel-Berkel denote a city well deserving the epithet of golden, which was given to Napata as well as to Meroe. On the western bank of the Nile are found two temples and a considerable necropolis. The former were dedicated to Osiris and Amun,⁵¹ and the sculptures representing the worship of those deities are inferior to none of the Nubian monuments in design and execution. Avenues of sphinxes lead up to the Ammonium, which exhibits the plan of the great temples of Egypt. On the walls of the Osirian temple are represented Amun-re and his usual attendants. The intaglios exhibit Amun or Osiris receiving gifts of fruit, cattle, and other articles, or offering sacrifice : strings of captives taken in war are kneeling before their conqueror. On the gateway leading to the court of the necropolis Osiris was carved, in the act of receiving gifts as lord of the lower world. The pyramids are of considerable magnitude, but, having been built of tiie sandstone of Mount Berkel, they have suffered greatly from the periodical rains, and have been still more injured

⁴⁹ The two lions of red. granite now in the British Museum, bearing the names of Amen-hotep III. and Amnntuonkh, which some have supposed to mark the farthest limit of the dominions of the XVIIIth dynasty, were originally at Solt-b, as the inscription on them shows, and were removed by Tirhakah to adorn his Ethiopian capital. Sir G. Wilkinson, in Rawlinson's " Herodotus," vol. ii. p. 362.

⁵⁰ Strabo, xvii. p. S20: Plin. " H. N." vi. 35.

⁵¹ Herodotus (ii. 29) says that great honors were paid at Meroe, the capital of the Ethiopians, to Jove and Dionysus, i. c, Amun and CMrU. By the former he means the ram-headed god (Xou, Xoub, Xoum, or Knsph), who was the chief deity of Ethiopia ; bnt the Theban Amun was also worshipped in Ethiopia, as well as most of the Egyptian gods. There were also gods peculiar to Ethiopia, and of uncommon forms. " At Wachj Owatayb is one with three lions' heads and fonr arms, more like an Indian than an Egyptian god, though he wears a head-dress common to gods and kings, especially in Ptolemaic and Roman times."—Wilkinson's Note to Herod, ii. 29, Rawlinson.

POLITICAL STATE OF ETHIOPIA.

151

bv man.⁶² "There are some curiously-fortified lines on the hills about five or six miles below Jebel-Berkel, commanding the approaches to that place by the river and on the shore, apparently of Ethiopian origin."⁵³

§ 13. Of the political state of Ethiopia, before its conquest by the kings of the XHth and XVIIIth and following dynasties we know next to nothing. We have seen that it became a vice-royalty under a prince of the reigning family, " the royal son of Cush," and occasionally the refuge of the Pharaohs from invasion and revolution. At length, when the capital of Egypt was finally fixed in the Delta, under the XXIst dynasty, the expelled family of the priest-king, Iler-Hor, set up a sacerdotal kingdom at Xapata, the institutions of which were doubtless perpetuated in those of Meroe, as described by the Greek and Roman writers. The latter resembled those of Egypt, except that the priest had supreme power over the king" * " In Ethiopia," says Diodorus, " the priests send a sentence of death to the king, when they think he has lived long enough. The order to die is a mandate of the gods."⁵⁴ The Ethiopians of the 8th century, therefore, were kindred to the Egyptians in race, religion, and institutions ; nor were they inferior in civilization ; and they used the same system of hieroglyphics.⁵⁵ "Both the historical and prophetic books of the Jews afford evidence of their military power. They bear a part in the invasion of Palestine ; they are joined by Isaiah with the Egyptians when he endeavors to dissuade his countrymen from relying on thebaic! to resist Assyria. In the 87th Psalm Ethiopia is mentioned, along with Egypt, Babylon, Tyre, and Philistia, as one of the most illustrious nations. Throughout the prophetic writings the Ethiopians are very generally conjoined with Egypt, so as to show that the union between them, produced sometimes by the ascendency of one country, sometimes of the other, was so close that their foreign policy was usually the same.⁵⁸ "We are not, therefore, to consider the subjugation of Egypt by the Ethiopians as if they had fallen

under the dominion of a horde of Arabs or Scythians.....

The dynasty was changed, but the order of government appears to have suffered little change. Xo difference of religion or manners imbittered the animosity of the two nations;

⁵² Iloskius, "Travels in Ethiopia," pp. 161, 2SS; Calliaud, "LTsle de Merou."

⁵³ Wilkinson's Note to Herod, ii. 29, Rawlinson.

⁵⁴ Diod. iii. 6. In the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus the influence of Greek culture lad the King Ergamenes to throw off the yoke of the priests aud put them to death.

⁵⁵ Being applied, however, to a different and less known language, this system has been found more difficult to decipher.

⁵⁶ Isa. xxx. 5 : Nahum iii. 9; Ezek. xxx. 4.

152

THE ETHIOPIAN DYNASTY.

they had been connected by royal intermarriages.....and

to the inhabitants of Upper Egypt the Ethiopians would seem hardly so foreign as the people of Sa'is."⁶⁷ In fact, we now know that their power was thoroughly established in the Thebiad before, and during the greater part of, the time when they were struggling for ascendency in the Delta. Politically, Egypt seems now to be divided between the Se» mitized states of the Delta, leaning more or less upon Assyria, and Upper Egypt and Ethiopia as the stronghold of the old and genuine Egyptians.

§ 14. The Ethiopian conqueror of Egypt is called Sabacos by Herodotus, who says that, after a rule of fifty years, he quitted Egypt of his own free-will, moved by religious scruples.⁵⁸ But the historian, by including two kings of the same name in one, and omitting a third, has confounded the duration of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty with the reign of its founder. Manetho's three Ethiopian kings, Sabaco, SebicJm or Sevechos, his son, and Tarkus or Tarakus, correspond to the Shabaka or Shebek I, Shabatoka or Shebek II., and Tar-haka, of the monuments.⁶⁹ Under them Egypt again comes into contact with Judaea and Assyria, and we have reached the decisive period "when Egypt with Assyria strove" for the mastery of Western Asia. The warlike Ethiopian, after conquering Egypt, carried his arms into Asia, on the opportunity afforded by Hoshea, king of Samaria, who asked the support of Sabaco I. in his rebellion against Assyria. Slial-maneser invested Samaria before aid came from Egypt, and his successor, Sargon, took the city after a three years' siege.⁶⁰ Meanwhile. Sabaco seems to have undertaken some opera, tions on the strength of which he indulged himself in the flattery of claiming Syria as his tributary in an inscription at Karnak.

Bat now for the Assyrian version. In the great inscription on his palace at Khorsabad, Sargon tells us that, after

⁵⁷ Kenrick, "Ancient Egypt," vol. ii. pp. 365, 366.

⁵⁸ Herod, ii. 137, 139. We have already had occasion to refer to what Herodotus says of his having substituted for the punishment of death the labor of embanking the cities, so as to raise them above the inundation. Diodorus says that he surpassed all his predecessors in piety and clemency.

⁵⁹ The syllable ka, in which all these names end, was the article in the Cushite lan guage, and the Semitic forms seem to drop the peculiar Ethiopic guttural. The Ethiopian origin of the name of Sabaco is confirmed by its occurrence on the monuments of private persons, calling themselves "natives of Cush." Thus,, the name which stands in the Egyptian monuments and the list of Manetho as Shabaka, with the article, becomes in"the Bible Seba or Seva or Sua (with the Masoretic points, So, 2 Kings xvii.4; Sin up in the LXX.), and Sab'e in Assyrian (the ' marking an hiatus). The second Sabaco is always distinguished on the monuments from the first by the t in the final syllable of his name. So in Assyrian he is Sabti'. This is a strong argument for "Mis identification with the Sethos of Herodotus (ii. 141). See § 15.

⁰⁰ u.o. 721 in the received chronology, confirmed by the canon. See c. xiii. §§ 0. 7-

THE TWO SABACOS.

153

the capture of Samaria, Hanon, king of Gaza, and SaVe, sultan of Egypt, met the king of Assyria in battle at Rapih (Raphia), and were defeated. Sabaco disappeared, but Hanon was captured⁶¹ (about b.c. 718). The night of the Ethiopian sultan may have some connection with the statement of Herodotus that Sabaco withdrew from Egypt; but we shall presently see that the Ethiopians were driven back more than once into the upper country. Of course, we do not expect a record of his flight on the monuments of Sabaco; but his name is found, with the full titles of Egyptian sovereignty, on the internal face of the propylaea at Luxor, built by Rameses II., whose name he has erased. Among others of his monuments, there is a fragment inscribed with his 12th year, his last, according to Eusebins.⁶²

§ 15. Sabaco II. (Shebetek, Shabatoka, or, in Assyrian, Sabti) is now considered by the best authorities to be identified with the priest-king Sethos, whom Herodotus places immediately after the retirement of Sabaco I.⁶³ Further light is thrown on the state of Egypt in his time by the annals of Sargon and Sennacherib, with both of whom he was contemporary.

Four years after the battle of Raphia (in b.c 714), Sargon records the receipt of tribute from " Pharaoh (Pir'u), king of Egypt," as well as from a queen of Arabia and a Sabasan king. Here we have a sovereign of Egypt recognized both by the old royal name, and by the title which Sargon withholds from the " sultan " who had fought at Raphia. In his great inscription at Khorsabad, this "Pharaoh" is mentioned immediately after the record of that battle.

Four years later still (in b.c. 710), Sargon was again on the confines of Egypt, chastising a revolt of Ashdod. Yaman, the rebel king of that city, had fled, at Sargon's approach, " beyond Egypt, on the side of Ethiopia." But now, instead of marching out to resist the Assyrian, " the king of Ethio-

⁶¹ Oppert, " Les Inscriptions Assyriennes des Sargonides," etc., p. 22.

⁰² It seems that his flight marked, or very shortly preceded, the end of his reign, which M. Oppert places in i$.c. TIC. If his reign ended between n.o. 71S and 716, it began between b.c. 730 and 72S ; possibly earlier, for it may have exceeded 12 years. Comparing the close of his reign with another computation, we have the evidence of an Apis-stela for placing the accession of Tirhakah in «.o. 693. Adding to this the 12 years assigned by Manetho to Sabaco II. (or rather 14, as in Eusebins), we reach b.o. 707; bnt if 14 is an error for 24, we come to u.o. 717, the very year after the battle of Raphia and the flight of Sabaco I. This result is highly probable on other grounds.

⁶³ The identification, which is maintained byM. de Rouge and M. Oppert, is said to be now clearly established by Dr. Brugsch. The modes of reconciling the characters ascribed to the king—as an Ethiopian (Manetho, etc.), as a priest-king reigning after the withdrawal of the Ethiopian (for Herodotus knows of but one), and as a Pharaoh —can not be conveniently discussed here. The story told of him by Herodotus ia given below (§ 16).

THE ETHIOPIAN DYNASTY.

]>ia, dwelling in a remote country, whose fathers had never, from the remotest days, sent ambassadors to the kings, my ancestors, to demand peace and friendship," sends an embassy to sue for peace. " The immense terror inspired by my royalty took possession of him, and fear changed his purpose. He threw Yaman into chains and fetters of iron, sent him to Assyria, and had him brought before me."⁶⁴

§16. The distinction between the kings of Egypt and of Ethiopia appeal's still more clearly ten years later, in the Jewish campaign of Sennacherib, both from his own annals and from the Bible (b.c. TOO). After subduing Phoenicia and Philistia, he was on his march to chastise Migron™ the revolt of which had been encouraged by " Hezekiah, king of Judah." But he found his way barred, precisely as his lather's had been in the campaign of Raphia, by the united forces of Egypt and Ethiopia.

He tells us that " the men of Migron had called to their aid the kings ofEgypt^l,and the archers, the chariots, and the horses of the king of Ethiopia; and they came to their help, an innumerable host. Near the town of Altaku their line of battle confronted me, and they tried their arms. In the adoration of my lord Asshur, I fought with them and put them to flight. My hands seized the charioteers and sons of the king of Egypt, together with the charioteers of the king of Ethiopia. The town of Altaku and the town of Tamna I besieged, I took ; I spoiled their spoils."⁶⁶

Here, besides a '* king of Ethiopia " (probably the great Tirhakah), who was not yet king of Egypt in b.c. TOO,⁶⁷ we have, first, ^u kings of Egypt," and then one who seems to be recognized as "the king of Egypt" in some special sense. The latter is supposed to have been Sabaco II. (or Sethos) : the full meaning of the plural will presently be made apparent." The sequel of this campaign, in its relation to Judah and Hezekiah, will be related in the history of Sennacherib.

⁶⁴ Oppert, " L'Egypte et l'Assyrie," p. IS. Of course, ou the view stated above, this " king of Ethiopia " was not Sabaco II., who was uow reigning in Egypt as Pharaoh. M. Oppert thinks he may have been the father of Tirhakah ; for it is only by a gratuitous assumption that Tirhakah is made the son of Sabaco II.

⁶⁵ The Migron mentioned in Isaiah x. 2S, among the cities attacked by the Assyrian, was near Ai and Michmash, on the western edge of the Jewish highlands, towards the maritime plain. But some take the Migron of Sennacherib's annals for Ekron.

⁶⁶ Oppert, " L'Egypte et l'Assyrie," pp. 25-27. Altaku is evidently the Levitical city of Eltekeh (Joshua xix. 44; xxi. 2?»); and Tamna is Timnath, famous in the story of Samson (Judges xiv. 1, 2, 5). Both were in the border of Dan, in, or on the edge of the maritime plain.

⁶⁷ Respecting the time of Tirhakah's accession, see above, note G2.

⁶⁸ M. Oppert considers the "kings of Egypt" to have been those of the Upper and Lower conntry respectively; but this is not in accordance with the subsequent mention of many more in both parts, and Upper Egypt seems to have been now subject to Ethiopia.

SETHOS AND SENNACHERIB.

Meanwhile we have to notice the distinct mention, in the scriptural narrative also, of a " king of Egypt " and a " kino-of Ethiopia," the former by the usual title of Pharaoh, the latter by his name, Tirhakah.

In the course of his operations against " the fenced cities of Judah," after the battle of Altaku, Sennacherib had laid siege to Lachish ; and thence he sent a summons to Jerusalem. Our knowledge of his recent victory sets in a new light the taunt of the Assyrian envoys, " Behold, thou trustest upon the staff of this braised reed ; upon Egypt, on which, if a man lean, it will go into his hand and pierce it: so is i-.'ia-raoh, king of Egypt, unto all that trust on him."⁶⁹ Presently afterwards we find the movement of Sennacherib from Lachish to Libnah connected with a report, which had reached him, that Tirhakah, king of Ethiopia, had come out to fight with him.⁷⁰

Such is the concurrence of testimony to the fact that, both when Sargon gained the victory of Kaphia and when Sennacherib made war on Egypt and Judah, there were distinct but allied kingdoms of Egypt and Ethiopia. It is in, as weli as after, this interval that the reign of Sabaco Ik seems to fall (about b.c 717-693). If this king was the Sethos of Herodotus, his destitution of an army may perhaps be explained by the flight of the warriors with Tirhakah to the upper country after their great defeat. There Tirhakah may have rallied his forces for another struggle with Sennacherib, while he was occupied with the siege of Lachish ; and the movement of the Assyrian to Libnah may have been designed to crush that " bruised reed," the destitute king of Egypt, before his powerful ally could return to help him.⁷¹

The reader of the Scripture narrative, whose attention is fixed on what was going on at Jerusalem, is apt to think that Sennacherib's army perished before that city. But ordinary attention to the narrative shows that the real scene of the catastrophe was near the confines of Egypt; and the Egyp-

⁰⁹ 2 Kings xviii. 21; Isaiah xxxvi. G. The figure, which is repeated in Ezekiel xxix. G, 7, becomes doubly expressive when we findrt bent reed as the initial prefixed to tba common hieroglyphic for the Egyptian word suten, "king." The annals of Sennach erib show that his attack on the Jewish fortresses, and consequently the summons to Jerusalem, was immediately after the battle of Altaku. M. Oppert well says, "La victoire seule a pu dieter ces hautaincs paroles." Observe that the king of Ethiopia is not mentioned here; as if no more were to he hoped from him since his flight from Altaku.

⁷⁰ 2 Kings xix. 8, 9; Isaiah xxxvii. 9. It is not said that Tirhakah came into con flict with Sennacherib ; on the contrary, it seems to be implied that he had not ar rived before the miraculous overthrow of the Assyrian host.

⁷¹ The Libnah of the Scripture narrative agrees* fairly with the place of that nanii iu or near the maritime plain, near Lachish (Joshua x. 31; xv. 42); but M. Oppert argues very ingeniously that here it is nothing else than a Hebrew rendering of the name of Pelusium (" L'Egypte et l'Assyrie," pp. 34, 35).

15G

THE ETHIOPIAN DYNASTY".

tians gave their gods the honor of the miracle. There was, Herodotus tells us, a priest of Hephaestus (Phtha), named Sethos, who reigned soon after the retirement of Sabaco.⁷² Having neglected and despoiled the warrior class, he was reduced to great straits by their refusal to serve, when " San-acharib, king of the Arabians⁷³ and Assyrians," marched his vast army into Egypt. Encouraged, however, by the god, Sethos gathered an army of traders, artisans, and market-people, and marched to Pelusium, which commands the entrance into Egypt, and there pitched his camp. "Here, as the two armies lay opposite one another, there came an army of field-mice, which devoured all the quivers and bow-strings of the enemy, and ate the thongs by which they managed their shields. Next morning they commenced their flight, and great multitudes fell, as they had no arms with which to defend themselves. The historian saw in the temple of Phtha a stone statue of Sethos, with a mouse in his hand,⁷⁴ and an inscription to this effect: ' Look on me, and learn to reverence the gods.' "

§ 17. Besides the mention thus made of him in Scripture, Tahraka (Tirhakah), the Tarkus or Tarakus of Manetho, appears on his monuments and in the Greek writers as one of the most famous kings in the later history of Egypt. Strabo⁷⁵ speaks of him, by the name of Tearko, as rivalling Sesostris, by carrying his foreign expeditions as far as the Pillars of Hercules; and a bas-relief at Medinet-Abou represents him as about to cut off the heads of a mass of captives whom he holds by the hair—the usual symbol of a number of conquered tribes. But his most interesting relations are those with Assyria, against which empire he maintained a constant struggle, with alternate successes and reverses. The particulars are learnt chiefly from the Assyrian monuments; but some light is thrown on the Ethiopian version by stelee at the capital of Xapata.

We* have already distinguished, by aid of the records of Sargon and Sennacherib, the actual sovereignty of the

™ Herod, ii. 141.

⁷³ It is quite natural that the Arabians bordering on Mesopotamia should have served in the army of Sennacherib.

⁷⁴ This mouse was, of course, a sacred emblem, perhaps of the generative principle_; and prophetic power was ascribed to mice. The people of Troas are said to have revered mice ^i; because they gnawed the bow-strings of their enemies and the leathern part of their arms " (Eustath. ad Horn. II. i. 30 ; Strab. xiii. p. 416), and their Apollo Smintheus was represented with a mouse in his hand. Wilkinson's Xote to Herod I.e.

Strabo i. p. 67; xv. p. gs". M. Oppert considers Tearko to be nearest to the true form of the name, which he reads Tearqu. The Scriptural form, which we adopt as the best known, is obtained by a transposition of the r ; the i comes from the Ma-soretic punctuation.

TIRHAKAH AND THE KINGS OF EGYPT.

157

Ethiopians in Egypt from the state of things in which there was not only a " king of Egypt," but more than one, in alliance—though doubtless subordinate alliance—with a " king of Ethiopia." Instead of Tirhakah's simply succeeding Sabaco II. as the third Ethiopian king of Egypt, his first appearance (by his name) has been made in b.c 700, when there appear with him " kings of Egypt," and a " Pharaoh, king of Egypt."

These relations come out far mure clearly in the records before us, which for the first time explain the state of Egypt just before the well-known period of the Sai'te dynasty. From their comparison it seems clear that Esar-haddon, who was the first Assyrian that invaded Egypt, made his campaign in that land near the very end of his reign (b.c. 670, or even later). The success which gave him the title of *' King of Egypt and Ethiopia" was gained (as we learn from his son's annals) against Tirhakah; but the Ethiopian king is now recognized in the character of " King of Egypt and Ethiopia;"⁷" and Ave are expressly told that, when Esar-haddon conquered Tirhakah, lie did not deprive him of the sovereignty of the country. If the dates on the Apis-stelas are rightly calculated, the reign of Tirhakah over Egypt began in e.g. 693, by his succession (as we may suppose) to Sabaco II. or Sethos. But the petty kings of the several cities were always attempting to regain their independence; and it was by their aid that Esar-haddon forced Tirhakah to retire to the upper country, under an engagement to remain there. It seems that Upper Egypt and Ethiopia were left to him, while Esar-haddon set up Assyrian officers beside the vassal petty princes

It is his son Asshur-bani-pal who gives us the above information by way of preface to his own first campaign in Egypt (n.e. 667-666).⁷⁷ On the departure of Esar-haddon, or

⁷⁶ In the Annals of Esar-haddon, Egypt is only mentioned in one doubtful passage ; and what we know of his conquests there is from the records of his son. Bui_r in his other inscriptions, Esar-haddon has repeated the above title (which he bore first and last of the Assyriau kings) in a variety of very interesting forms: (1.) He is a "King of the Kings of Egypt and conqueror of Ethiopia showing the plurality of native princes in Egypt. (2.) Not only in different inscriptions, but in the same (at Ximrud), the last country is called both Kusi (the more usual name in his records) aud Miluhhi. (3.) In two cases a word intervenes between " Egypt" and " Ethiopia." In one the copy is doubtful; in the other, though the third element is uncertain, the reading appears to be Pa-tulruysi; from which M. Oppert dednces a strong confirmation of the view that Pathros (Isaiah xi. 11 ; Jerem. xliv. 1, 15 ; Ezek. xxix. 14) and Patrmim (Gen. x. 13,14) denote Upper Egypt, and especially the Thebaid. (See Oppert, "L'Egypte et l'Assyrie," pp. 41, 42 fund Dr. Smith's "Diet, of the. Bible," s. c. Pa-turos.) On the whole of these Assyrian records, comp. ch. xiv.

⁷⁷ These annals have come down to us in a very mutilated condition. The fragments fonnd in his palace at Calah reached our Museum thoroughly shuffled, and the utmost ingenuity of Mr. Cox and M. Oppert has only produced a conjectural restoration. Fortnuately, there are separate copies on four decagonal prisms (but ali broken to pieces), besides other copies on fragments of tablets.

THE ETHIOPIAN DYNASTY.

at least on his death, Tirhakah had returned, retaken Memphis, where he established his capital, and killed, imprisoned, or carried away as hostages, many of the officers set up by the Assyrian. The rest sent to Nineveh to implore aid, and Asshur-bani-pal led his whole army to a place called Kar-ban it, probably the new Assyrian name given by Esar-haddon to some border fortress of the Delta. Tirhakah marched out from Memphis to meet him there ; and, being defeated in a great battle, tied in his ships, leaving his tent as a spoil, but carrying away his captives of the Assyrian party as hostages to Thebes, which is described as "the city of the empire of Tirhakah, king of Ethiopia." After a difficult march of forty days, Asshur-bani-pal reached Thebes, whence Tirhakah had fled at his approach, and took the city with a great slaughter.

But the vassal kings, who had sided with Tirhakah on his return, did not submit till they were defeated in another great battle.⁷⁸ And here it is that these annals throw their great light on the political state of Egypt, The names of these kings and of their cities are mentioned, to the number of twenty" including cities of Upper Egypt as well as of the Delta; not only Sais, Tanis, Sebennytus, Mendes, Bubastis, etc., but Chemmis, This, and Thebes itself, the name of whose king contains the second element (ankh), which occurs in the priestly line of Her-Hor.⁷⁹ A Sheshonk is still reigning at Bubastis. Neciio (doubtless the father of Psammetichus) is kino; of Memphis as well as Sa'is, and leader of the confederacy. This marks the " hegemony " of Sais, which was established by Bocchoris and doubtless confirmed by Esar-haddon, and helps to explain the jealousy which Herodotus ascribes to the princes of the so-called " dodecarchy,'¹ lest one of them, and especially Psammetichus, should gain the supremacy.

Hence, too, it is that Necho, fearing special punishment for his rebellion, flies to Thebes, leaving his gods at Memphis, which the Assyrian takes by storm. Presently, however, we find him submitting, with"the other kings, whom the Assyrian restores " to the place suitable to their subjection ;" while he " places Egypt and Ethiopia under a new government." He then returns to Nineveh, " laden with a great booty and splendid spoils," after strengthening the garrisons and fortifications of the cities, a very needful precaution against Tirhakah's return.

⁷⁸ lie expressly pays that thev had rendered homage to his father ; but " on the occasion of Tirhakah's lifting up' his bucklers" they had forgotten their duty, and had revolted.

⁷⁹ For a full discussion of the names in this list, and the many questions they involve, see Oppert, " L'Egypte et l'Assyrie," p. SS foil.

ASSYRIAN CONQUEST OF EGYPT.

159

For the annals here explain, with an amusing frankness, the dilemma in which the Egyptian kings were left between the rival sovereigns, and the motives which drew them to the nearer. " They said among themselves, Tirhakah will never renounce his designs on Egypt; it is him we have to fear." So they sent ambassadors to " the king of Ethiopia," to make a treaty of peace and friendship, promising not to desert him any more. They also tried to corrupt the Assyrian army; but the officers discovered their plots, intercepted their messengers, and bound the kings themselves hand and foot in fetters and chains of iron. Asshur-bani-pal came back in person to exact vengeance. Memphis, Sais, Mendes, Tanis, and the other rebel cities, were taken, and their people massacred : " I left not one," boasts the conqueror. The captive kings appear to have been carried to Nineveh; whence Necho was sent back to his throne at Sais (the name of which was changed to Kar-bel-mate),⁸⁰ to hold Lower Egypt against Tirhakah, who had again retired to Thebes, if indeed he had left it.

The end of this campaign is, unfortunately, wanting in the annals, which are resumed after the death of Tirhakah. But we have a curious piece of evidence that the Ethiopian regained his power over all Egypt. For a stela in the Serape-•um records that an Apis, born in the 26th year of Tirhakah, died in the 21st year of Psamatik, aged 21 years.⁶¹ It follows that Tirhakah was the king recognized at Memphis in the 26th and last year of his reign, a monumental testimony all the more important from the silence of Herodotus and Diodorus concerning this great conqueror.⁸² The Egyptian priests in the interest of the Saite dynasty would have all the more reason to suppress his name if it be true that he put Necho to death.⁸³ Be this as it may, the removal of

⁸⁰ M. cle Rouge interprets this as "lord of the two regions," a title which marks Sais as the capital Qf Upper and Lower Egypt. The restoration of Necho may he compared to that of Manasseh by Esar-haddon.

⁸¹ Manetho also assigns Tirhakah 26 years, and we have here the elements for a settlement of the chronology within a very slight limit of error. For, as already stated, an Apis-stela places the accession of Tirhakah in n.o. G93 (say G93-2). His death, therefore, would fall (allowing him 26 full years) in u.o. G67 or GGG. Now, is.c. 667-666 is the first year of Asshur-bani-pal, and Tirhakah appears to have died between that king's first and second years, which would be in n.o. GGG. On quite distinct grounds, the Egyptologers place the accession of Psammetichus (whose years, as we see from this record, are dated at once from the death of Tirhakah) in the year u.o. G65 to 664.

^:"² Herodotus appears to preserve the name of Tirhakah (Tearqu, Taracus, Tarcns) in his incidental mention of Etearchus, a king of the Ammonites (ii. 3-2). But whether this was the great Tirhakah. or another Ethiopian king of the same name, or a king of the Ethiopian house reigning separately at the Oas-is of Amnion, we have no means of deciding.

⁸³ Herodotus (ii. 152) says that.Necho was put to death by Sabaco, who died about 50 years earlier ! But as Sabaco i-= llie only Ethiopian conqueror known to Herodo-

THE ETHIOPIAN DYNASTY

Necho might he the occasion for the final recognition of Tir hakah in the royal lists, as the immediate predecessor of the restored Sai'te line.

§ 18. Both from the monuments of Napata and from the Assyrian annals, we learn that Tirhakah was succeeded, as king of Ethiopia, by his son Rut-amen, or Rot-men, or, as the°Assyrian texts say, by his wife's son, Urdaman'e, which :s evidently the same' name. The absence of any recognition of him as king of Egypt seems to imply that he was in Ethiopia when Tirhakah died, and that the petty kings of Egypt seized the opportunity to cast oft* the Ethiopian yoke, under the protection of Assyria.⁸⁴ But Rot-men resolved to strike a blow for his inheritance in Egypt. Having first recovered the Thebaid (if he did not possess it already), he invaded Lower Egypt. The Assyrian annals are resumed with an allusion to the death of Tirhakah, and to this invasion by Urdamane, who was totally defeated by Asshur-bani-pal, and "escaped alone to Thebes, the city of his royalty." The pursuit of the Assyrians occupied, as before, 40 days, through difficult roads ; and, like Tirhakah, Urdamane fled, at their approach, to Kip-Hp, evidently a place in Ethiopia.

The second capture of Thebes by Asshur-bani-pal was far more terrible than the first. " They took possession," says the king, " of the whole city, and sacked it to its foundations. They carried off in this city the gold, the silver, the metals, the precious stones, all the treasures of Ins palace" (another copy has "all the treasures of the country"), "dyed stuffs of berom and linen, great horses (elephants ?), huge apes, natives of their hills—the whole not to be computed by accountants and they treated it as a captured city. They brought this booty safe to Nineveh, and they kissed my feet." In another copy the king mentions the captives, " men male and female, great and small," as well as the works in basalt and in marble, and the palace-gates, which he tore off and carried to Assyria.⁸⁵

§ 19. Till the discovery of this record, we knew of no As Syrian invasion and captivity of Egypt and Ethiopia, and particularly of Thebes, which could correspond to the warn-

tus, the error may be only in the r,ame. It is possible, however, that Necho may have been put to death by Asshur-bani-pnl. Of course, the priests suppressed every allusion to the Assyrian conquest of Egypt.

⁸⁴ Here, probably, begins that period of transition which is marked by the Dodcc-archy and anarchy of Herodotus and Diodorus.

⁸⁵ The former version preserves the third person throughout; bnt the latter has the first, ending with "I returned in safety to Nineveh, the city of my dominion." Wc may suppose the king to have led his army into Egypt (as, in fact, he says), hut not to have marched iu persou against Thebes.

SECOND CAPTURE OF THEBES.

ing which Tsaiali uttered to the Egyptian party in Judah at the time of the siege of Ashdod,or to the still more striking prophecy (or, rather, the historical allusion) of Xahum. But here at length we see " the king of Assyria leading away the Egyptians prisoners and the Ethiopians captives, young and old, naked and barefoot, to the shame of Egypt."⁸⁶ In the very hour of her triumph, Xahum denounces on " Nineveh, the city of bloods"—we have seen how well she earned the title!—the very fate she had inflicted upon Thebes: "Art thou better than populous Ao, that was situate among the rivers " (on both sides of the Xile) ; " that had the waters round about her; whose rampart was the sea, and her wall was from the sea ? Ethiopia and Egypt were her strength, and it was infinite; Put and Lubim were thy helpers. Yet was she carried away, she went into captivity; her young children also were dashed in pieces at the top of all the streets ; and they cast lots for her honorable men, and all her great men were bound in chains."⁸⁷

§ 20. This is the last notice of Egypt in the Assyrian annals; and we may assume that the country was now left to its native princes, under the suzerainty of Assyria, which her rapid decline soon made an empty name. The sack and captivity of Thebes must have broken the power of Ethiopia in Upper Egypt, and the princes of the Delta were now strong enough to repel her last attempt. The curious record of that attempt, lately discovered by M. Mariette, on a stela at Xapata, evidently conceals a decisive repulse.

Rot-men, the son of Tirhakah, having died without heirs, the crown of Ethiopia was assumed by a certain Amen-meri jXout** in consequence of a prophetic dream, which had also

⁸⁶ Isaiah xx. 1. The prophecy, uttered at a time when the forces of Egypt and Ethiopia were united against Sargon, is peculiarly appropriate to a conquest gained over Thebes as the capital of an Ethiopian king, many of whose best soldiers, Avho were led away as captives, Avere of course Ethiopians. The express mention of " the Assyrian"" excludes the idea that this prophecy was first fulfilled by the invasion of Nebuchadnezzar (see chap. viii. 5 14). The three years, during which the prophet went naked and barefoot for a sign, aud Avhich had probably a primary reference to the duration of the war of Ashdod, may also denote the three separate campaigns made in Egypt (very likely in three successive years), one by Esar-haddon, and two by Asshur-bani-pal.

⁸⁷ Nahum iii. S-10. This important passage is fully disenssedin Dr. Smith's "Diet. r>f the Bible," art. No Ammon, and Oppert's "L'Egypte et l'Assyrie." Besides Ihe clear allusions to the aid which the Arabs and Libyans on the borders of Egypt (Put and Lubim) gave to Assyria in the war against. Thebes, M. Oppert has an ingenious argument to show that Carthage (named as Karbanit in the annals) joined Avith Assyria to avenge the attacks of Tirhakah on the northern coasts of Africa; or at least that there were Carthaginian auxiliaries in the Assyrian army. Iu this event he sees the origin of a tradition preserved by Ammianns I.larccllinns, that Thebes had onre been taken and sacked by the Carthaginians.

*^H Evidently the Ethiopian Ammcris, whom Mauetho (Enseb.) places at the head of the XX*^TIth (Saite) Dynasty.

1G2

THE ETHIOPIAN DYNASTY.

promised him the two crowns of Egypt. Marching down the Nile, he was received at Thebes with acclamations; but he only gained Memphis after a bloody battle with the chiefs of the Delta, whom he drove into the Marshes.⁶⁹ But he was unable to take their towns, and the inundation soon forced him to withdraw from Memphis. AY'bile preparing for a new attack, he received a large tribute from the chiefs, content with which he retired finally into Uper Egypt.

In the long struggle which was thus ended, we can not fail to see how essentially there was involved a contest between Upper Egypt, which sided with the old priestly party, and Lower Egypt, where a number of rival claimants were more or less influenced by connections with Assyria⁹⁰ and ideas derived from intercourse with foreign countries. The triumph of these influences was the spirit of the new era, in which Egypt at last connects herself with Europe. She now presents the aspect of a stage, from which the chief actors have just retired; and, after a last scene of confusion, the curtain rises again amidst the full light of well-known history.

^S9 Herodotns's story of the blind King, Anysis, a native of Auysis (perhaps Ei-h-si, city of Isis, or Hemes, if Hanes be Daphnre)—who was conquered by Sabaco, and took refuge in the marshes, where the natives brought him food, unbeknown to the Ethiopians, and whence be came forth and was restored, after the forty years of Ethiopian domination—may perhaps refer to one of the minor princes of the Delta. At all events, it is a testimony both to the perpetuation of the native royal houses in the Delta and to the sympathy of the people with them during the Ethiopian rule. The information we have obtained from the Assyrian annals as to the state of Egypt gives a caution against hastily rejecting the notices in Herodotus and Diodorus of kings otherwise unknown. The monuments, also, are constantly giving royal names which are not in the lists of Manetho.

⁹⁰ We have traced such coimectnms for at least 300 years, from the time of the She shonks. At the time before us several of the petty kings were clearly set up by As* eyria.

Dress of an Egyptian King.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE LATER SAITE MONARCHY—TWENTY-SIXTH DYNASTY—-

B.C. 665-527 or 525.

II. The Dodecarchy. Oracles of the Bronze Cnp and Brazen Men. Psammetichus, son of Nechao I., becomes king. § 2. Psamatik or Psammeticucs I. His name Libyan. Marries an Ethiopian princess, and reunites Egypt. Dates his reign from the death of Tirhakah. Chronological Epoch. § 3. Position of Sais, the sacred city of Keith (Athena). Remains at Sa-el-Hagar. § 4. Feast of Lamps at Sais. § 5. Connection of Sais with the Greeks, especially Athens. § 6. Psammetichus encourages Greek commerce. His Greek and other mercenaries, and Phoenician sailors. Siege of Azotns. § T. Desertion of the Egyptian military caste. Their settlement in Ethiopia. Greek inscription. § S. Works of Psammetichus. Renaismnee of Egyptian art. § 9. Neciiao II., Nf.oo, or PnARAOn-Nn-cno, invades Asia. Battle of Megiddo and death of Josiah. Neco advances to Carchemish, on the Euphrates. Deposes Jehoahaz, and sets up Jehoiakim ae tributary King of Judah. § 10. Neco's power in Asia extinguished by Nebnchad-nezzar. Prophecies against Egypt. §11. Partial reopening of the Red Sea Canal § 12. Maritime enterprises of Neco. Story of the circumnavigation of Africa Growth of Hellenic influence. Psamatik II., or Psammis. Ambassadors from Elis: the Olympic Games. § 13. Reign of Wah-jwa-hat, PnARAon-HornRA or Apkiks, as related by Herodotus. Successes against Si don and Tyre. War with Cyreue. Mutiny of the Egyptian army. Elevation of Amasis. Death of Apries. § 14. The Scriptural account of Pharaoh-Hophra. His Alliance with Zedekiah. Prophetic testimonies to the destructive invasion of Egypt by Nebuchadnezzar. § 15. Amasis or Aahmes II. His early life and character. Union of business and pleasure. § 10. Prosperity of Egypt. Law against idleness. § 17. Encouragement of foreign commerce. Greeks allowed to reside at Naucratis, and to build temples. The Ht llenion. § IS. Flourishing state of Egyptian art. Works

lGi

THE LATER SATTE MONARCHY.

of Amasis. His gifts to Greek temples. Friendship with Polycrates. Alliance with Cyreue. § 19. League with Lydia and Babylon against Cyrus. Pbammen iTva. Conquest of Egypt by Cambyses. Dynasty XX VII. of Persians. §20. Revolts against Persia. Dynasties XX VIII. {Salte), XXIX. (Mendesian), XXX. {Se-bennyte). Final conquest by Ochus. XXX 1st Persian Dy:msty. Conquest by Alexander.

§ 1. "Ix what follows,"says Herodotus at this point, " I have the authority, not of the Egyptians only, but of others also who agree with them."¹ The republican historian sarcastically remarks, that the liberated Egyptians were unable to continue any longer without a king ; and so they divided Egypt into twelve districts,² and set twelve kings over them, who ruled in peace, bound to each other .by intermarriages and by the most solemn engagements. This Dodecarchy, as it is called, seems to have been a union of the petty princes of the Delta against the Ethiopian power iii Upper Egypt. Of course, it could not last; and its end, after 15 years, is related by Herodotus in the spirit of the age.

The voice of oracles had great weight in public affairs, but ambitious men had learned how to bribe the oracles or to contrive the fulfillment of their ambiguous responses. The twelve chiefs had been the stricter in making their mutual engagements, as an oracle had predicted "that he among them who should pour in the temple of Phtha a libation from a cap of bronze would become monarch of the whole land of Egypt." They were wont to worship together in all the chief temples; and they had thus met in the temple of Phtha, when the high-priest (of course, by accident) brought out only eleven golden goblets for the libations of the twelve kings. The one who stood last was Psammetichus, the son of that Xechno who had been put to death by Sabaco (or by Tirhakah). He forthwith took off his helmet of bronze, stretched it out to receive the liquor, and so made his libation. His colleagues remembered the oracle, and banished Psammetichus to the marshes. Meditating revenge, he sent to the oracle of Buto, the most veracious of all the Egyptian oracles, and received with incredulity the answer that "Vengeance would come from the sea, when brazen men should appear." Shortly afterwards, certain Carian and Ionian adventurers, in search of plunder, being driven by stress of weather to Egypt, disembarked in their brazen armor; and a terrified native carried the tidings to Psammetichus that brazen men had come from the sea,aw(\ were plundering the plain. Psammetichus engaged the strangers in his service ;

¹ Herod, ii. 147.

² Wilkinson supposes these to be the twelve nomes of the Delta. M. Lenormant supposes the twelve rulers to have beeu military chiefs of the Libyan (.Maxyan) militia. They would rather seem to have been the chief local princes.

ACCESSION OF PSAMMETICHUS I.

165

and by their aid, and that of the Egyptians who sided with him, he vanquished the eleven and made himself king of Egypt.³

§ 2. Such is the picturesque dress of the bare fact that Psamatik I., the son of Xechao, or Necho L, and consequently the representative of the Sai'te and Memphian monarchy, regained the throne of Egypt by the aid of Greek mercenaries, whose regular employment dates from his reign. His apparently Libyan name is thought by some to mark his origin from the Maxyan militia. We have seen the part played by his father in the late contests,⁴ and the son had taken refuge in the marshes when Necho was put to death.⁵ But now the politic chief formed a matrimonial alliance with the Ethiopians, whether after a successful campaign or to avoid war does not appear; and thus he reunited the whole of Egypt under the Twenty-sixth Dynasty, of jSa'is* He asserted his legitimate claim to the throne by ignoring the 17 years of the anarchy and dodecarchy, and dating his reign from the death of Tirhakah.⁷

The chronology of the Sai'te kings is now pretty well fixed within a limit of doubt not exceeding two years ; the accession of Psammetichus being from b.c 666 to 664, and the Persian conquest in b.c. 527 or 525. The succession of kings is as follows:

³ Herod, ii. 147,151,152. Respecting the obvious inconsistencies and improbabilities of the story, and the whole question of the previous employment of foreign auxiliaries and mercenaries by the Kings of Egypt, see Wilkinson's note on the passage, in Rawlinson's " Herodotus." ⁴ See chap. vii. § 17. •'

⁵ Herod, ii. 152. We have no positive information of a relationship between the Saites of the XXVIth dynasty and Bocchoris of the XXIVth ; but it seems now quite clear that the monarchy of Psammetichus was a revival of that founded by Bocchons at Sais. Manetho places Nechao next before Psammetichus in his XXVIth Dynasty; the name being probably inserted to recognize his right rather than in order of time. So also before him stand Xechepsos and Stephnuites, who may have been princes of the Dodecarchy. Before them Eusebins places as the lirst King of the Dynasty "Ammeris, the Ethiopian," who is evidently the Ethiopian invader, Amen-meri-nout.

⁶ We learn from the monuments of Thebes that, during the Dodecarchy, Upper Egypt was governed by the Ethiopian Piankh II, who reigned conjointly with bis wife, Ameniritis (or Amunatix), sister of Shabaka, a woman of high intelligence, who had been several times regent of Upper Egypt under the Ethiopian dynasty. It was their daughter and heir, Shap-cn-ap, or (Tapesiifa^e-s), that Psamatik I. married.

⁷ See chap. vii. § 17.

⁸ The computation depends on the Jpis-stcla>, the numbers given by Mauetho and Herodotus, and the Assyrian and Jewish annals. We have seen how the annals of Asshur-bani-pal bear on the beginning of the period : its end depends on the date of the Persian conquest, which is usually placed in the 5th year of Cambyses (n.o.525) ; but some of the highest authorities (as M. de Rouge) refer it to that king's 3d year

1. Psammetichus I........ .

2. Neco (Pharaoh-Nechoh) .

3. Psammetichus II.........

4. Apries (Pharaoh-Hophra)

5. Amasis (Aahmes II.).....

6. Psammenitns............

Years.

..54

..16

.. 6

..19

..44

Accession B.C. G6G or G64 G12 or G10 59G or 594 590 or 5SS 571 or 5G9 527 or 525«

G mo.

166

THE LATER SA1TE MONARCHY.

§ 3. The very position of Sais, the last capital of independent Egypt, is significant of the foreign relations which now begin to be conspicuous. It was situate in 31° 4' N. lat., on the right bank of the Ototopic, the most westerly branch of the Nile, more than 40 miles from the sea. The great embankment which raised it above the inundation made the city conspicuous to voyagers ascending the river; and its site is still marked by the great mounds to the north of Sa-el-Ha* f/ar (Sa of the stone),⁹ the village which preserves the old Egyptian name of Ssa, the sacred city of Keith, whom the Greeks identified with Athena. The splendid temple of the goddess, which Amasis decorated with great works of art, besides building its magnificent propyhea,¹⁰ contained the tombs of the Sai'te kings,¹¹ and the burial-place of Osiris, whose mysteries were celebrated in a lake near the temple.

" The remains are now confined to a few broken blocks, some ruins of houses, and a large inclosure surrounded by massive crude-brick walls. These last are about 70 feet thick, and of very solid construction. Between the courses of bricks are layers of reeds, intended to serve as binders.

. . The walls inclose a space measuring 2325 feet long by 1960, the north side of which is occupied by the lake mentioned by Herodotus. As he says it was of circular form, and it is now long and irregular, we may conclude that it has since encroached on part of the temenos, or sacred incisures, where the temple of Minerva and the tombs of the Sai'te kings stood. The site of the temple appears to have been in the low open space to the west, and parts of the wall of its temenos may be traced on two sides: it was about 720 feet in breadth, or a little more than that around the temple of Tanis. To the east of it are mounds, with remains of crude-brick houses, the walls of which are partially standing, and here and there bear evident signs of having been burnt. This part has received the name of 'el Kala' (the citadel), from its being higher than the rest, and from the appearance of two massive buildings at the upper and lower end, which seem to have been intended for defense. It is not impossible that this was the royal palace."¹²

(h.c. 527). The important testimony of a stela, which mentions a man as born in the 3d year of Neco, and dying in the 35th of Amasis, seems to prove that the shorter of the two lengths assigned to the reign of Apries (19 years and 25 years) is to be preferred. Herodotus places the accession of Psammetichus 14^ years before the invasion of Cambyses, which carries us back to about u.o. 670. The difference is slight; and these long periods are seldom exact. The total would probably be lengthened by the overlapping of reigns.

⁹ So called from the broken blocks of stone that belonged to the ancient city.

¹⁰ Herod, ii.175.

¹¹ Herodotus (ii. 169) particularly mentions those of Amasis, and of Apries and his family, and describes the latter. ¹² Wilkinsou's " Handbook to Egypt," p. 102.

THE CITY OF SAIS.

1g7

§ 4. At Sais was celebrated the " Feast of Lamps," in honor of Xeith, which Herodotus ranks third in honor among the annual festivals of Egypt; and it must have been among the most beautiful. "At Sais, when the assembly takes place for the sacrifices, there is one night on which the inhabitants all burn a multitude of lights round their houses in the open air. They use lamps, which are flat saucers filled with a mixture of oil and salt, on the top of which the wick floats. These burn the whole night, and give to the festival the name of the Feast of Lamps. The Egyptians who are absent from the festival observe the night of the sacrifice, no less than the rest, by a general lighting of lamps; so that the illumination is not confined to the city of Sa'is, but extends over the whole of Egypt."¹³

§ 5. Lying on that branch of the Nile along which was the direct route of the Greeks into Egypt, and a little above Naucratis, which was assigned for their abode, Sais was especially interesting to the Athenians from the identification of its patron goddess with their own.¹⁴ Their civic hero, Cecrops, was said to be a native of Sais; and another tradition even made Sais a colony of Athens,¹⁵ so strong was the Hellenic element in the Egyptian city. How early the connection began it is impossible to say. Eusebins¹⁶ says that, in the reign of Bocchoris, the Milesians became powerful at sea, and built the city of Xaucratis ; but the reign of Psammetichus was certainly the epoch at which the Chinese-like exclusiveness of Egypt was broken through by the admission of foreigners to that harbor, whence they would proceed to the neighboring capital. Pythagoras is said to have visited Sais in the reign of Amasis ;¹⁷ and there, about the same time, Solon conversed with a Saite priest,¹⁸ from whom he learnt the fable of Atlantis and the primeval renown of Athens.¹⁹ Diodorus mentions a number of instances which show the anxiety of the priests of Sals to ingratiate themselves with the Athenians, by discovering resemblances between Attic and Egyptian institutions.²⁰ Manetho says that the Greek population of Sais was governed by their own laws and magistrates, and had a separate quarter of the city assigned to them.

§ 6. Diodorus thus describes the Hellenizing policy of

¹³ Herod, ii. 62.

¹⁴ It has been observed that the essential letters of Xeith and 'AO^a are the same in the inverse order.

¹⁵ Compare Diod. i. 28, § 3, and v. 57, § 45.

¹⁶ Chron. Canon, under Olymp. vi. ¹⁷ Plin. xxxvi. 9, s. 14.

¹⁸ Pint. Solon, 26. Herodotns (ii. 177) speaks of his adopting the law of Amasis, that all who could show no visible means of subsistence should be put to death.

¹⁹ Plato, " Timaeus," iii. p. 25. ²⁰ Diod. i. 2S.

168

THE LATER SAITE MONARCHY.

Psammetichus: " He received with hospitality the strangers who came to visit Egypt; he loved Greece so much that he caused his children to be taught its language.²¹ He was the first of the Egyptian kings who opened to other nations em-poria for their merchandise, and gave security to voyagers ; for his predecessors had rendered Egypt inaccessible to foreigners by putting some to death, and condemning others to slavery." He kept on foot a large body of mercenaries, Ionians,²² and Carians, as well as Arabians, and assigned to his Greek soldiers two "camps " (as the abodes of foreign settlers were called) on the two banks of the Pelusiac branch, a little below Bubastis, evidently as a garrison for the eastern frontier.²³

" From the date of the original settlement of these persons in Egypt," says Herodotus, "we Greeks, through our intercourse with them, have acquired an accurate knowledge of the several events of Egyptian history, from the reign of Psammetichus downward; but before his time no foreigners had ever taken up their residence in that land."

Besides these Greeks, Psammetichus engaged Phoenician sailors ; and, with such forces at his command, he aspired to recover the empire of Western Asia, where the power of Assyria was in the last stage of its decline. But his enterprise was stopped on the very threshold by the resistance of the Philistine city of Azotus (Ashdod) key to the great military route, which he only took afler a siege of twenty-nine years.²⁴

§ 7. Meanwhile an event occurred which proved that the "new wine" of Hellenism, instead of infusing new life-blood into Egypt, would " burst the old bottles " of her rigid institutions, and cause both to perish together. The favors heaped by Psammetichus-upon his mercenaries roused the jealousy of the native military class, which broke out into open mutiny when, in his Syrian expedition, he gave the foreigners the post of honor on the right wing. Upon this the whole class of warriors, to the number of 200,000 (Herodotus says 240,000), deserted in a body, and marched away into Ethiopia. This is the account of Diodorus, which is not

Herodotus (loc. inf. cit.) says that he intrusted certain Egyptian children to his Greek soldiers to learn Greek;" aud that those so taught became the parents of the class of " interpreters."

22 Ionian,* was now the Egyptian name for the Greeks in general.

2* Herod, ii. 151. He adds that Amasis removed the Greeks to Memphis, to guard him against the native Egvptians.

24 Herod, ii. 157. He adds that this was the longest siege known. The captura aud colonization of the city by Sargon accounts for its long resistance. Ashdod (which, like the Arabic shedeed, menus strong) was the great stronghold of the Philistines (1 Sam. v. 2), and continued the main fortress on this frontier. It was repeatedly taken and retaken iu the wars between E;;ypt and Asia.

DESERTION OF THE WARRIORS.

169

only more probable than the motive assigned by Herodotus for the desertion, but is confirmed by Herodotus's own statement that these Automoli (deserters) bore the name of As-mach, meaning " the men on the left hand of the king " (or, rather, the left icing of the army).²⁵ Herodotus adds that Psammetichus pursued and overtook them; but his entreat-ties that they, would return were insolently repelled; and they received from the king of Ethiopia the grant of the lands of certain Ethiopians with whom he was at feud. "From the time that this settlement was formed their acquaintance with Egyptian manners has tended to civilize the Ethiopians,"²⁶ is a remark which, however inaccurate, proves that Herodotus did not believe that the course of civilization was down the Xile.

From a curious Greek inscription at Abou-Simbel, it appears that Psammetichus himself did not follow the deserters higher than Elephantine, but that the pursuit was continued to a considerable distance up the river by his Greek soldiers, who, on their return, left this record of the adventure." The part of Ethiopia in which these deserters settled is hard to determine. Herodotus makes it as far above Meroe as Meroe is above Elephantine, which would be in Abyssinia.²⁸ Dio-dorus says that they settled in the most fertile part of Ethiopia, which would answer to the neighborhood of Meroe ; and the geographers mention a people called Euonymitw (those on the left hand, equivalent to the Asmach of Herodotus), to the north-west of Meroe.²⁹

§ 8. The desertion of the military caste was a reason why Psammetichus should show the more favor to the priests. He erected propylaea to the great temple of Phtha at Memphis, and built or enlarged the edifice where the bull Apis was kept. The sacred books, and especially the Ritual of

²⁵ Herod, ii. CO. The motive which he assigns for the desertion is the non-relief for three years of the frontier garrisons, which were kept in Elephantine against the Ethiopians, in the Pelusiac Daphnaj against the Syrians and Arabians, and in Marea against the Libyans, who, he says, consulted together, and, having determined by common consent to revolt, marched away towards Ethiopia-a highly improbable combination.

²⁶ Herod. I. e.

²⁷ For the inscription, see Wilkinson's Note to Herod, ii. 30, Rawlinson. There is no reasonable doubt that it refers to the occasion in question. The king's name is spelt Psamatichos, a form nearer the Egyptian than that of Herodotus. The names of " Psamcctichus, the sou of Theocles," the leader of the force, as well as of ''Amasis," indicate that Egyptian names of honor were given to the Greek commanders, as in the case of Joseph. No inference can be drawn as to any connection of this "Amasis" with the family of the later king of that r.ame. The words describing the farthest point reached by the soldiers are unfortunately obscure.

²⁸ It is possible that Herodotus may have confused .Meroe with Napata, which he does not mention. (See chap. vii. § 13. note 4T.)

²⁹ Strabo, xvii. p. 7S6 ; Pliu. vi. 30. These writers, however, olace the Automoli above Meroe.

S

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the Dead, appear to have been revised in his reign. In fact, the whole period of the twenty-sixth dynasty may be justly called the renaissance of the religious art of Egypt. Manetho assigns fifty-four years to his reign; and his fifty-fourth year is found on the monuments.

§ 9. Under Keku or Neciiao II.,³⁰ the JYecos of Herodotus, and the Pliaraoh-necho of the Bible, the Saite monarchy reached its acme, only to receive a decisive blow from the new power of Babylon. The capture of Ashdod had opened the road to Asia; and the fall of Nineveh, whether accomplished or impending, left the empire of Western Asia once more, as a Greek would have said, "in the midst,"as the prize of a contest between Egypt and Babylon.³¹ Neco set out for the Euphrates along the well-worn road through the maritime plain and the valley of Esdraelon. ' Here, however, he encountered an unexpected obstacle. Josiah, the reforming King of Judah, faithful to his liege, and ardent in the anti-Egyptian policy prescribed by the prophets to his house, marched out to withstand him. Disregarding the friendly remonstrance of Neco, except so far as to disguise his own person, the King of Judah marched down from the highlands of Manasseh,by the pass which issues near Megiddo, only to be carried off in his chariot, mortally wounded by the Egyptian archers.³²

Having won this last of Egypt's victories in Asia, on the

³⁰ Herodotus calls him the son of Psammetichns; but he appears, from the monuments, to have been his son-in-law, as he married Neit-akri (Nitocris), the daughter of Psammetichus. But it is quite possible that he may have married his half-sister. We adopt the simplest spelling of the name.

³¹ The text is so worded as not to involve a decision of the doubt respecting the epoch of the fall of Nineveh. Those who adopt the date of b.c. 625 regard Nabopo-Jassar as too much engaged with the consolidation of his new power, and with the aid he rendered to Cyaxares in the Lydian war, to concern himself with the provinces west of the Euphrates. On the other hand, the express statement, in the book of Kings, that " Pharaoh-nechoh went np against the king of Assyria,"' is a strong argument for the later date of the fall of Nineveh (b.o. 606): for the date of Josiah's death is fixed both by Egyptian and Biblical chronology (see note 35). The Jewish writers do not confound Assyria and Babylon. (2 Kings xxiii. 29: in 2 Chron. xxxv. 20, Necho goes up " to tight against Carcliemish," neither Assyria nor Babylon being mentioned.) It seems probable that Neco would have used the opportunity for joining in the general attack on Assyria, when, as Herodotus says, "she stood alone, de sorted by her allies" (Herod, i. 102). Comp. chap. xiv. § 20.

^3S 2 Kings xxiii. 20, 30; 2 Chron. xxxv. 20-24. The latter passage is remarkable for giving the nar.ie of the king without the title of Pharaoh. Herodotus (ii. 150) says that Neco? made war by land upon the Syrians, and defeated them in a pitched battle at Magdolus (evidently not here, as elsewhere, Migdol, in Egypt); after which he made himself master of Cadytis, a large city of Syria. This is commonly supposed to mean Jerusalem (Kodcsh or Kadnsha, the Holy); but some take it for Kadesh on the Orontes, the old capital of the Hittites. It may have been worth Neco's while to complete the conquest of Syria ; but it seems more probable that he would not delay his march to the Euphrates. He may, however, have taken Kadesh on his return through Ccele-Syria (see what follows in the text). In the other passage where Herodotus mentions Cadytis (iii. 5), Gaza is generally supposed to be meant.

NECO AND NEBUCHADNEZZAR.

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old battle-field of Thothmes III., Neco advanced to Carchemish, the object of his expedition,³³ and once more posted an Egyptian garrison in that key to the line of the Euphrates. Returning through Cade-Syria (Hamath), Neco sent for Je-hoahaz, whom the people had made king at Jerusalem, and put him in bonds, making his brother Eliakim (who was now called Jehoiakim) king in his place; and imposed a heavy tribute on Judah. He then returned to Egypt, taking with him Jehoahaz, who died there.³⁴

§ 10. The recovery of the boundary of the Euphrates was but a dying gleam of military glory for the Sai'te Pharaohs. Four years later (b.c 604) Nebuchadnezzar ascended the throne of Babylon,³⁵ having, in the previous year, before his father's death, crushed the Egyptian army at Carchemish,³' marched on to Jerusalem, received the submission of Jehoiakim, and at one blow stripped Egypt of all power in Asia. In the emphatic words of the sacred annalist, " The king of Egypt came not again any more out of his land ; for the king of Babylon had taken, from the river of Egypt unto the river Euphrates, all that pertained to the king of Egypt."³⁷ The brief warlike enterprise of Neco was out of date, and left nothing but its fame. "Pharaoh king of Egypt is but a noise ; he hath passed the time appointed," says Jeremiah,³" in the great prophecies delivered while the armies were marshalled at Carchemish for the " sacrifice to the Lord of Hosts in the north country b}^r the river Euphrates ;" in which he predicts the invasion of Egypt by Nebuchadnezzar, and her destruction like one of her own sacred heifers ; the fall of Memphis, and the punishment of Thebes and Pharaoh and Egypt, with their gods and all that trust in Pharaoh.³⁰ The prophecy was fulfilled in the time of Pharaoh-Hophra or Apries, the second from Neeo.

§ 11. In the works of Neco at home we trace those new movements of foreign intercourse which give to the Sa'ite dynasty its peculiar character. Foremost among them was

³³ 2 Chron, xxxv. 20.

³⁴ 2 Kiugs xxiii. 30-35; 2 Chron. xxxvi. 1-4. There is nothing to show that Neco -nsited Jerusalem. From this time to the captivity the course of events in Judaea was mainly influenced by the struggles between the Egyptian and Babylonian parties, as before between the Egyptian and Assyrian parties, at Jerusalem. Jeremiah is now, as Isaiah was before, the great opponent of the Egyptianizing'priests and princes.

³³ In Jerem. xxv. 1-3, the fourth year of Jehoiakim is reckoned as the first of Nebuchadnezzar, and also as the 23d year from the 13th year of Josiah. Supposing the fourth of Jehoiakim to be current at Nebuchadnezzar's accession (Jan. b.c 604), it follows that the first of Jehoiakim was b.c. 60S-607; aud, adding the three months of Jehoahaz, we have the beginning of b.o. 60S, or the very end of b.c. 609, as the ear' iest possible date for Oosiah's death.

³³ Jerem. xlvi. 1, 2, 6,10. ³⁷ 2 Kiugs xxiv. 7. ³⁸ Jcreui. xlvi. 17.

⁸⁹ Jerem. xlvi. 1-27.

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his attempt to re-open and complete the canal connecting the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, which had been begun and perhaps completed by Seti I. and Rameses II.⁴⁰ The canal, which was four days' journey in length, and wide enough to admit of two triremes being rowed abreast, left the Pelusiac branch of the Nile a little" above Bubastis, and was carried by a circuitous route, first eastward and then southward, to the head of the Gulf of Suez.⁴¹ It cost the lives of a hundred and twenty thousand of the Egyptians during the reign of Neco, who at length desisted on account of an oracle, which warned him that he was laboring for the barbarians⁴² —a sign of the growth of foreign commerce, and probably of the "obstructive power of the old Egyptian party.

§ 12. Neco maintained fleets both" in the Mediterranean and the Erythraean Seas ; and Herodotus says that the docks on the Red Rea for the latter fleet were visible in his time.⁴³ To his Red Sea fleet Herodotus ascribes the most signal achievement of ancient maritime discovery—the circumnavigation of Africa.⁴⁴ The story is that Neco, when disappointed of connecting the Mediterranean and Eastern Seas by his canal, sent to sea a fleet manned by Phcenicians,with orders to make for the Pillars of Hercules, and return to Egypt through them and by the Northern Sea (/. e. the Mediterranean). They sailed through the Erythraean Sea into the Southern Ocean. When autumn came, they went on shore, wherever they might be, and, having sown a tract of land with corn, waited until the grain was fit to cut.⁴⁵ Having reaped it,

⁴⁰ Ilerod. ii. 15S; iv. 39. The mistake of Herodotus, in saying that Neco was the first to construct the canal, arose from its being filled up by the sandy soil, so that the attempt to open it was virtually a new work. Aristotle, Strabo, and Pliny ascribe its commencement to Sesostris, and monuments of Rameses II. mark its course. Its completion by Darius is still a disputed question. There is on the Suez stone, near its ancient mouth, a cuneiform inscription with the name of "Daryaoush naga waz-arka" (Darius the Great King), stating that he completed it, but filled up a part of it again ; which may be a mode of evadiug a confession of failure. For an account of the course and history of the canals, see Wilkinson's Note to Ilerod. ii. 15S, aud " Handbook for Egypt," pp. 194-190.

⁴¹ The modern canal of M. de Lesseps, opened in November, 1S69, proceeds, not from the Nile, but southward from Lake Menzaleh to join the course of the old canal where it bends to the S. near the Bitter Lakes, between which and Suez it is said to have been still open as late as the time of Mohammed Ali. The ancient canal was of fresh water.

⁴- Ilerod. ii. 15S. Diodorus ascribes the cessation of the work to the discovery that the level of the Red Sea was higher than the soil of Egypt; and Pliny repeats the statement in connection with its resumption by Ptolemy Philadelphus, an imaginary reason for a doubtful fact. Herodotus in the one case and Strabo in the other assert that both kings did open the canal to the Red Sea: nor would the difference of level (if real) have been an obstacle, for we learn, from Diodorus himself, as well as from Strabo, that there were sluices at the mouth of the canal, probably to keep out the sea-waler and to suit the change of level at the time of the inundation.

^ Herod, ii. 159. ⁴⁴ Herod, iv. 42.

⁴⁵ Wilkinson observes that this is less surprising i_n an African climate, where bar-lei', doora, peas, etc., are reaped in from 3 months to 100 days after sowing.

APRIES OR PHARAOH-HOPHRA.

173

they again set sail; and thus it came to pass that two whole years went by, and it was not till the third year that they doubled the Pillars of Hercules and made good their voyage home. True to his principle of honestly reporting even what he deemed incredible, the historian has added the, very circumstance which affords the strongest argument against his own incredulity: " On their return they declared—for my part, I don't believe them—that in sailing round Libya they had the sun upon their right hand"—which would be a simple astronomical fact.⁴⁶. It is remarkable that the king, who is said to have been so fully occupied with his wars and maritime expeditions, has left no great buildings : but his 16th year appears upon an Apis-stela; and this is the length assigned by Manetho to his reign.

The growing influence of Greek ideas is shown by the statement of Herodotus that Neco dedicated the dress which he wore in the campaign of Megiddo to Apollo at Branchida?, near Miletus. His son, Psammis, is represented as discussing with an embassy from Elis the fairness of the rules for the Olympic games.⁴⁷ This king, the Psamatik II. of the monuments, and the Psammuthis of Manetho, reigned only six years, and died soon after his return from an expedition against Ethiopia.⁴⁸ He made several additions to the temples at Thebes (at Karnak) and in Lower Eg'ypt.

§ 13.