LIBRARY The Student's Ancient History. THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST. FROM TilE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE CONQUEST BY ALEXANDER THE GREAT. INCLUDING EGYPT, ASSYRIA, BABYLONIx\, MEDIA, PERSIiV ASIA .MINOR, AND PIICENICIA. By PHILIP smith, B.A., AUTJIOK OF TUE "uiBTOliY OF TUE WOELD." Early Assyrian Chariot. Illustrated by Engravings on Wood. HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK AND LONDON, 1899. Assyrian Cylinder. PREFACE A KNOWLEDGE of the Histoiy of the East is indispensable to the student of Classical Literature. In the earliest rec- ords, 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 Rome'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 poet- ry 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 au- thor 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 knOAvledge 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 Alexan- der, Scipio, and Augustus were the decisive steps in the great conflict between E?^t^i;i] ^lOil Western principles of social life. '^ ill} it viii PKEFACE. 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 design- ed 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 dis- covery. How much the interest of these discoveries is en- hanced by the light they throw upon Scripture history, will be apr^&rent to every reader of the following pages. The diversities of interpretation — though based on the sawie essential ])rinciples, 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. Raavlinson, and the French, headed by M. Jules Oppert. The authorities quot- ed 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 de- signed, 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. .X ual)le materials collected in the Notes anfl Essays to. Pro- fessor Rawlinson's Translation of Herodotus by Sir Gard- ner WiLKixsox, Sir H. C. Rawlixson, and the Editor him- self; and from Professor Rawlinson's " Five Ancient Mon- archies."^ For Egypt, besides the works of Sir Gardner Wilkinson, Professor Kenrick's "Ancient Egypt " has been constantly consulted ; and so, also, has the same au- thor's scholarly work upon " Phoenicia." The book on As- syria and Babylonia could not have been written without the works of Mr. Layard, 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 I'Orient."^ 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 com- parison of the two books, ^loreover, 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 begin- ning 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 impres- sion on the memory which mere outlines can nevei* produce; since a summnry 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 ' The jirst editions of both these works are quoted throughout, except in a few special iustances. ' It may be well to explain that the whole of this work was written, printed, and revised (excepting the two conchiding chapters on Phoenicia) bcfine the appeannice of the English translation of M. Lenorinant's history. 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 knowl- edge 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. cMM^jj Plants from Egj^ptiau Sculptures. CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION. PAGB The Nations and their Abodes -. 17 Notes and Illustrations : (A.) Table of the Indo-European Family of Languages.... 28 (B.) Table of the Semitic Family of Languages 29 BOOK I. EGYPT AND ETHIOPIA. CHAP. I. The Country, the River, and the People 30 II. Authorities for the History of Egypt 47 Notes and Illustrations : Contemporaneousness of Dynasties al* III. The Old Memphian Monarchy 00 IV, The Middle Monarchy and the Shepherd Kings 81 V. The New Theban Monarchy. — The Eighteenth Dy- nasty 108 VI. The new Theban Monarchy (continued).— The Nine- teenth AND Twentieth Dynasties 118 VII. New Kingdoms in the Delta and the Ethiopian Dy- nasty — Dynasties XXI. -XXV. — b. c. 1100 (about)- 664 r,)ry VIII. The Later Saite Monarchy — Twenty-sixth Dynasty — B.C. 605-527 OR 525 16.3 IX. The Institutions, Religion, and Arts of Egypt... 181 L CONTENTS. BOOK IL ASSYRIA AND BABYLON. OUAP. PAGE X. The Region of the Euphrates and Tigris — Primitive Kingdoms 219 Notes and Illustrations : (A.) Early Babylonian Chronology 243 (B.) On the Chaldaans and the Akkad 244 XL 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 AssYRLVN Empire, b.c. 88G-746 276 XIII. The New Assyrian Empire, Part I. Tiglath-Pilesek 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 Chaldean 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. niE 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. — Prom Gyges to Cyaxares and Aly- attes. — About b.c. 716 to b.c. 560. — The Cimmerian AND SCYTHI.VN INVASIONS OF AsiA 508 XXIV. The Median Empire overthrown by Cyrus. — b.c. 594- 558 ^26 CONTENTS. xiii "''^^- PAGE XXV. Ci'Rus TiiK Great and Crcksus. 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 XXVTI. Climax of the Persian Empire. — Darius, the Son of Hystaspes.— B.C. 521-486 567 XX VIII, The Decline and Fall of the Persian Empire. — Xerxes I. to Darius III., b.c. 486-330 581 THE HISTOIiY OF PHCENICIA. XXIX. Part I. — To the Time of Tyre's Supremacy 594 XXX. Part II. — From the Age of David and Hiram ro thii: TAKING OF Tyre by Alexander. — About b.c. J 050 to B.C. 332 018 Index 637 Head of a Persian King (Persepoiis). HIEROGLYPHICS. AN EGYPTIAN THRESHING-SONG. (From a Tomb at Eileithijias). III III // rrr rrr^ ^^ /VvWW\ ) e I VVAAAA g ^ » « B B^ I I I > I I TRANSLATION. (By Champollion.) (1) "Thresh for yourselves (tioice, a), (2) O Oxeu, (3) Thresh for yourselves {twice, b), (4) Measures for yourselves, (5) Measures for your masievs.''-—{From Sir J. G. Wilkin»on.\ LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. An Egj'ptian Temple, Avith the Priests bringing in tlie Ark of the God Frontispiece. Early Assyrian Chariot Tifle-Page. Assyrian CyHnder Back of Title-Paye. 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 Philaj 47 Hierogl}-ph of Menes 5G Sphinx and Pyramids fiO 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-Eight ...r-. 81 Memnonium during the Inundation 103 Pavilion of Rameses III 118 An Eg}'ptian Archer carrying spare Arrows 134 Allies of the Egyptians 135 Dress of an Egyptian King 163 Euneral 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 270 Plan of the Mound of Nimrud ■• 279 Plan of Palace of Asshur-nasir-])al 282 Black Obelisk, from Nimrud 289 Prisoners presented by the Chiaf Eunuch (Nimrud Obelisk) 29 J xvi LIST (JF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAOll Nebo (from a Statue in the British Museum) , c 296 Excavations at Koyunjik 300 Glass Vase, bearing the Name of Sargon, from Nimrud 314 Kmg punishing Prisoners (Khorsabacl) 315 Assyrians flaying their Prisoners , 316 Hound held in Leash (Koyunjik) 338 View of Babil from tlie West 339 Ancient Assyrian Cyhnder in Serpentine 364 Babylonian IBrick ,.,... 366 Chaldffian 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 Argreus, 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 Murglulh, tlie ancient Pasargadre 526 Ruins of Sardis 542 Double Griffin Capital (Persepolis) 551 Bronze Figure of Apis 552 Gateway to Hall of a Himdred Columns (Persepolis) 565 Tomb of Darius ».... 567 Moimd of Susa 581 Grand Range of Lebanon 594 Damascus • 618 Bronze Lion , from Nimrud 024 Assyrian Pattern (Nimrud). THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST. INTRODUCTION. THE NATIONS AND THEIR ABODES. § 1. The province and limits of Secular History, § 2. Distinguished from Sacred History. § 3. Antediluvian and Postdilnvian civilization. Primitive arts and institutions. § 4. Cradle of the Human Race. § 5. Geographical view of the An- cient World. Mountain-systems of Asia, Europe, and Africa. § G. The Great Des- ert Zone and its interruptions. The Nile, Euphrates, and Red Sea. The Oxus and Jaxartes. The outposts of ancient civilization. § 7. The Races of mankind, and theirtirst migrations. The record in Genesis x. Four principles of Classitication : 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, Pales- line, and Babylonia. Cushite Kingd(mi of Nimrod. Characteristics of the race. 5 11. The Japhethite Race in Asia and Europe. § 12. The Shemite Race, in S. W Asia. § 13. Classitication according to Language. § 14. Threefold divisicni of Languages, the -isolating, agnlutinative, and inTlectimj ; not -perfect tests of race. The Turanian family, almost beyond the range of ancient history. ' 15. The two families of inflectional languages. § 10. The Indo-European Family. § 17. The Semitic Family. Sub-Semitic branch. The Egyptian language. § IS. Corre- spondence of the families of languages with the classification of races. § 19. Dis- tinction 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 liuman race as civil- ized, and as organized into political societies. It begins only when it can be based upon contemporary records. Mere in- dications of man's presence on the earth at some uncei-tain 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 signiiicance 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 sup})ort- ed human habitations — the human bones carefully hidden in sepulchral barrows, or rudely scattered amidst the remains 18 THE NATIONS AND THElli ABODES. of extinct animals — ave of the deepest interest to the stu- dent of anthropological science. Diffused over the surfice 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 civiliza- tion was of the lowest and their labor of the hardest; but whose implements, however rude, prove tliat 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) witli races of which we liave authentic records. § 2. On the other hand, the authoritative accounts, derived only from revelation, of the creation of man and the prepa- ration of the earth for his abode ; of his primeval innocence and his fall ; of the entrance of sin and the promise of re- demption ; 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 dehige ; and of the law given to them by IVEoses ; in siiort, the whole period till Israel, between the basin of the Mediterranean and the rest o Af rica, excluding the latter regions from the sphere of aneunt 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 JVianchouria ; rising into the desert table-lands of xVrabia and Syria, Iran and Turan, and Gobi in Eastern Tartary. • -The valley of the Nile, the chasm filled by the Ked 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 Mediterra- nean 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 w\ay 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 known^ to the ancients was the table-land of Turan, which, sloping westward to the Sea of Aral, is traversed by the Oxus (Arnou or Jyhuii) and the Jaxailes {Syr-derict). 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 w^ere 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 concpiest or volunta- 22 THE NATIONS AND THEIR ABODES. ry migration ; and the positions they occupied at each period —our information depends diiefly upon the science of ethnol- ogy, and 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, tlu)ugh 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 tlieir primeval centre.' That ancient record distinguish- es 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, 2indi in their nations:'' and all sound research must still have regard to race and language, geo- graphical position and political nationality f though each of these elements is more or less mixed up with the othei^s. 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 forma- tion, 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 f the Yelloio, or .Mongolian; the Black, Negro, ox Nigritian ; and the Red, or American. The first was the sole possessor of an- cient 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 Asin, over which they have always wandered ; the third is only repre- sented by the slaves depicted on Egyptian monuments ; the fourth does not yet appear at all. The three last are ex- cluded 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 2^rimarij settlements of the Caucasian race. It seems to lie entirely within the 20th ^ Gcucsis X. 6 The teudency of our own n^e to coufouucl the first and last of these elements leads to remarkable complications. 6 This name does not prejiid-^e the question of the primitive abode of the race: but it is given because the most perfect physical types are regularly found amoug the natives of the Caucasiiiu i>iliiiuis. RACE!-- OF MANKIND. 23 and 60th nieridians 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. With- out discussing the several names in detail, we may be tolera- bly sure of these general results. I 10. — I. The ilcmiite Bace, which seems first to have left the common home, is located in Africa and South Arabia, in four branches: 1. The CushitesAu Ethiopia and the South part of Arabia, separated only by. the Straits of Bab-el-Man- deb. 2. The Egyptians, under their liistoric name of 3Iiz- raim; with the kindred Philistines on the one side, and (probably) North African tribes on the other. 3. The Liby- ans (probably), designated by the name oi P/uit. 4. The Ca- . naanites, Avhose tribes are particularly enimierated. The mention of Sidon among these indicates that the first set- tlers in Phoenicia were Hamite; though the Phoenicians of histoi-y were undoubtedly Semitic. The like displacement clearly happened in Al^.bia, where the same names {Havilah and Sheba) occur among the sons of Cush, and again among those of the Shemite Joktan. Besides these nations, the record mentions a personal name among the sons of Cush, JVimrod, the founder of a kingdom, with four cities, in the plain of Babylonia f 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 m.aterial civilization, and the founders of states based on mere force. Their enduring mon- uments are gigantic buildings, the sculptures upon whicli attest the grossness of their worship of nature. Everywhere except in Egypt (and there also at last) they gave way be- fore the races of Shem and Japheth, fulfilling Xoah's pro- Shetic curse, that Ham should be the servant of his brethren, laterial grandeur yielded to spiritual poAver and the active energy of political life, § 11. — II. The Japhetliite Eace extends from the Cauca- sian region to the south-east over the table-land of Iran ; to the west over the peninsula of Asia Minor and the neighbor- ing 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 XATIONP AND THEIR ABODES. § 12. — ITT. Between the other two, the Shemite Race re^ luained nearer its primeval seats, as the destined guardian of the primeval religion and traditions. Its nucleus in Ar- menia (probal)ly rejji-esented by the name Arphaj'ad) forms the apex of a triangle, resting on the Arabian peninsula ; along the east side of which we have the Assyrians {AssMir) and Elymaeans (Elam)^ the latter of whom gave way to the Japhethite Persians ; and on its west side the Aramaean race (Aram, denoting Jiigliland) of Northern Mesopotamia arid Syria, Avhose Hebrew descendants (Eber) afterw'ards possess- ed the land of Canaan. The middle space of the Syrian Desert and the whole j^eninsula of Arabia is the seat of the Arab tribes denoted by Joktan, the son of Eber, with whom were afterwards mingled other Semitic descendants of Abra- ham. § 13. These general results are in striking agreement with the conclusions derived from the science of (Urmparative Jjcmguage, which is now universally regarded as the best test of national affinity. As thought is the most characteris- tic 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 cau- tion 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 isl- ands, whose native dialects are only partially retained, and still more in the nations of South-western Europe, absurdly called " the Latin races," 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 infiecting. Those of the first class consist of monosyllabic roots, entire- ly destitute of composition and grammatical intiection. \\\ the second, grammatical changes are denoted by the mere juxtaposition of difierent 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 difierent forms of speech as tests of difierent races : they seem rather to be stages through which all languages have passed. They run into each other by imperceptible grada- tions ; from which we may safely conclude that every inflect- ing language must once have been agglutinative, and every agglutinative language once isolating. The great type of an THE SEMITIC TAMILY, 25 isolating language is the Chinese. The agglutinative dia- lects are spoken chiefly by tlie nomad tribes of Asia and Northern Europe, and by some of those of Southern India, the Malay peninsula, and the Indian and Paciflc archipela- gos. Modern ethnologists regard them as characteristic of what they call the Turanian family. As this family lies al- most entirely without the range of ancient history, we are under no necessity Xq discuss the questions involved in this attempted classification. § 15. The inflectional languages are divided into two fam- ilies, distinguished with great clearness, and comprehending those of all the nations with Avhose history we are now con- cerned. With suflicient resemblance in some of their most important roots to justify belief in their ultimate common origin, these two families exhibit the most striking diversi- ties from one another and resemblances among their respect- ive members. These diversities and resemblances are seen, not only in the roots, but chiefly in the grammatical inflec- tions — elements necessarily developed by processes of change Avhich make accidental coincidences on a large scale impossi- ble^ The two families are known by the Y\2i\nQ?> of Indo-Eu- ropean and Semitic. § 16. — I. ThQ Indo-European or Indo-G€r?na?nc]angnages 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 Argan, from the races which peopled Eastern Persia and E^orthern India. The sacred language of India, the /Sans/crit, stands first in the series. The latter is also, organically, the most complete in its forms ; but it is too much to aflirm that it is always the nearest to the common parent tongue, to which all tlie 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 Cau- casian isthmus ; wlience the family spreads out over all Eu- rope, to the shores of the North Sea and the Atlantic* § 17. — II. The. Semitic languages are so called, not as im- plying necessarily the common descent of the nations speak- ing them from Shem — for the linguistic classification is in- dependent of, though co-ordinate with, the classification by race — bat because the most conspicuous members of the family are those whose Shemite descent is aflirmed in Scrip' ture : the Hebrews and Arabs, Syrians and Assyrians. These nations occupied, and for the most |)art still occupy, tlie south-west corner of Asia, to the left of the Indo-Germanic 8 See Notes and Illustrations— (A.) "Tabic of tli« liiuo-Ei;rc})ean Langdages." 2 26 THE NATIONS AND THEIR ABODES. zone ; pent in between the highlands of Armenia and Iran on the east, the Mediterranean and Red Sea on tlie west, and the Gulf of Arabia on the south. But some languages are included in the flimily which have by no means the same marked affinity with the rest as that which unites the Indo-European tongues. Some authori- ties, guided by theories respecting the early relations of the Shemite and Hamite races, consider t>he 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- maean, Hebrew, Arabic, and Ethiopic ; and (2) the Sub-Se- 7nitic, 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.® The affinities of the Egyptian language, how- ever, are still an open question. It has elements in common with tlie 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 classitication of nations by their languages has the great advantage of enabling us to construct an ethnolog- ical picture for any pei'iod at which the languages are known, and to follow the migrations of the pGoples speaking the several tongues. Thus, for example, the common evi- dence of a Low German tongue enables us to trace back our own ancestors to their homes on the other side of the Ger- man Ocean. Language is a living fact, while the recorded or traditional history of the movements of races are in many points most doubtful. Still, wdiat has now been said will show the striking gen- eral agreement of the record in Genesis with the results of comparative philology. The IiKlo-European family corre- sponds to the Japhethite races, not only as far as the range included in the biblical record, but the extensions of the for- mer are what might be expected from the lattei*. The range of the Semitic family proper is pi'ecisely 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 i-elations of the sub-Semitic lan- guages are what we might have expected from the move- ments of the Hamites and Shemites. The whole result is to divide the nations of the ancient world into two great » 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 Eames of Shem {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 di- vision of the ancient nations into the Eastern and the West- ern. The latter represents the free energy of the Indo-Eu- ropean races ; the former, not uninfluenced by the same ele- ment, as contributed by the Aryan stock, absorbed it into its own mass of immobility and desi)otism. Thus the Me- dian and Persian conquerors of the Babylonian Empire, and long afterwards the Greek rulers of Egypt and Syria, con- formed to the Oriental type. The causes of this were both physical and moral. In those early ages, when men saAV that "The wo'.-kl was all before them, where to choose,' the virgin basins of great rivers like the Euj^hrates and the Nile, teeming beneath a, sub-tropical sun, became the first 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 luxur}^ of their kings. The prin- ciple of obedience to authority, which preserved the true re- ligion among the chosen people of God, was elsewhere de- based 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 vivify- ing influences v,hich 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 mucli as from difference of race, springs that lireat distinction which marks the two different streams, and the two antagonistic principles, of an- cient history ; the eastern and the western ; the civilization of the Kile and the Euphrates with the fixed principles of their great monarchies, and the higher civilization and no- bler political, literary, and artistic life which grew up on the shores of the Mediterranean, and was destined to cover the whole Yv orld. Our early study of, and sympathy with the lat- ter, is, however, left imperfect, unless we are familiar with what the forniei" did to prepare its way^ so as to under- 28 THE NATIONS AND THEIR ABODES. stand the full significance of the ultimate tiiunq»]i 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 be- fore the energy of conquering races, dissolving as easily as they were formed, leaving but fragmentary notices in an- cient literature, the time has come when the newly decipher- ed records of Egypt and Assyria supply materials for the authentic ancient history of the East. NOTES AND II.LUSTRATIOaS. (A). Table or the Indo-European Family or Languages Classes. Branches Indic Iranic . Celtic. Jllyric. Dead Languages. Living Languages, Dialects of: (Prakrit and Pali, Modern) India. ( and Vedic Sanskrit )" The gypsies. Parsi, Pehievi, Zend Persia. Afghanistan. Kurdistan. ^ Bokhara. I Old Armenian vVrnicnia. I Ossethi. ( Wales. fCymric - Brittany. \ (Cornish "^1 ^ Scotland. I^Gadhelic - Ireland. ( Isle of Man. r Portugal. I Oscan ) Spain. , ^ Unibrian - Langne d'oc Provence. Latin ) Langue d'oil France. t Italv. (Wa'ilachia. ° (The Grisons. (Albania. "(Greece. Lithuania. HiiLLENic Dialects of Greek. Lettic. Old Prussian. L^ (Friesland and - Livonia (Let- ( tish). WiNDIC... i u .c^^ ( Ecclesiastical Slavonic Bulgaria. Southeast Sla- ^ Russia ^■o"i^ (;;;;" ■■'".".' '.'..'. .'.'.'.".".".".".".".".' '.'''.Z my ria.' ^\. Poland. . Old Bohemian Bohemia. "'^' (Polabian .^...^.... . Lu sati a. West Slavo- »o From Professor Max-Miiller's '• Lectures on the Science of Language," p. 380. NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 29 ClasscE I Tkutonic. <( Branches. Dead Lauguages. Living Languages. Dialects of: TT- 1 r. ^Old High German and) ^, _„„„ High German. .^ Middle High German. / ^^^"7- f Gothic ! Anglo-Saxon England. Low German.. { Old Dutch , Holland. I Old Friesian Eriesland. l^Old Saxon North Germany (Piatt Deutsch). fDenmark. Scandinavian. . Old Norse < Norway*. I^Iceland. (B). Table of the Semitic Family of Laxguages. Classes. Dead Languages. Living Languages. Arabic ( Dialects of Arabic. or - Ethiopic Amharic. Southern. < Ilimvaritic Inscriptions r Biblical Hebrew , 1 Dialects of th« Hebraic j '^ je^,, Af'ni I Samaritan Pentateuch, 3d centnn- a.d ' Miciciie. |^c;.^rthaginian, Phoenician Inscriptions f Chaldee, Masora, Talmud, Targum, Bibli- Aramaic i cal Chaldee I or ^ Svilac, Peshito, 2d century a. D } Neo-Syriac. Noilherii. j Cuneiform Inscriptions of Babylon and Nin- I L even j The Nile during the luundatioH. BOOK I. EGYPT AND ETHIOPIA. CHAPTER I. THE COUNTRY, THE KIVER, AND THE PEOPLE. § 1. The Egyptians were the first civilized state. § 2. Egypt formed by the valley of the Nile. I;s boundaries. § 3. Description of the Nile. The Blue and White Rivers. Sources of the Nile. § 4. Course of the Nile : (i.) to its junction Avith the Tacazze. The Island of Meroii. § 5. (ii.) Through Nubia to Syene. The Cata- racts. Islands of Philai and Elephantine. Legend related by Herodotus. Prox- imity to the tropic. § (3. (iii.) To the apex of the Delta. The Fijinn. The Pyra- mids. § 7. (iv.) The Delta. Distinction of Lower and Upper Egypt. Mouths of the Nile in ancient and modern times. Lakes and Canals. Extent of the Delta. Its formatioi]. § 8. Annual inundation of the Nile. Its regularity and benefi- cial eff"ect. 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 aff"orded by the Nile. § 12. The Nile a stimulus to mental eft'ort and the cultivation of the sci- ences. Astronomy, Geometry, Engineering. § 13. Influence of the Nile upon the ideas and religion of the Egyptians. The Nile and the Desert: Life and Death: Osiris and T5'phon. Burial of the Dead. Belief in a future state. § 14. The geo- logical formation of Egypt supplied abundant materials for the Avorknian. Lime- stone, granite, marble, porphyry, basalt, etc. Iron and other mines in Sinai work- ed by the early Kings. § 15. Origin of the Egyptians. Hypotheses of their Ethi- opian and Indian origin untenable. § IG. Physiological evidence. The Egyptian mummies and portraits show an Asiatic type. § IT. The Egyptian language is intermediate between the Asiatic and \frican dialects. §18. Names of Egypt: native: Hebrew and Arabic: and Greek. § 1, In the earliest dawn of history the Egyptians appear as a highly civilized nnd powerful people. Many centuries INFLUEXCE OF RIVERS. 31 before any empire had been established on the banks of the Euphrates and the Tis^ris, and while the Hebrew patriarchs were wandering with their flocks and lierds on the plains of Mesopotamia/ the valley of the Nile was lioverned by a great aiid mighty sovereign, ^vhose country was the grana- ry of, the surrounding nations," and whose i)eople cultivated the arts which reiine 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 lifth centuries before the Christian era, gazed with wonder upon the stupendous momiments which w^e still behold, and were powerfully impressed with the immemorial antiquity of the people.^ In short, there can be no doubt, from the concurrent testimony of Hebrew and Greek literature, and from the evidence aflbrded 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 fol- lowed^ whether u])ward or downvvavd, the course of the streams. But the influence exercised by the Euphrates, the Tigris, and the Ganges, upon the inliabitants of their plains, has been small compared with the influence of the Xile 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 em- phatically called " the gift of the Nile,"* without whose fer- tilizing 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. Tlie 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 Ara- bian and Libyan hills accompany the Nile, till tlie valley ex- pands into the broad plain of the Delta upon the Mediter- ranean Sea, where the Arabian Desert se})arates it from Pal- 1 The history of the wars of the petty princes of Metsopolamia, recorded in Genesis xiv., proves that no powerful ki:iydom existed in that country in the time of Abra- ham. 2 Genesis xiii. 10 ; xlii. 1. * See especially the s'.rikiny; w.irds <.)'.' Philo, •' Dc Leg.," ii. H, p. 050. * Herod, ii. 5. 32 EGYPT AND ETHIOPIA. estine upon the east, and tlie Libyan Desert forms its west- ern boundary. On the south, Egypt Avas divided from Ethi- opia by the rapids (or "first cataract") between the islands of Elej^hantine and Philae. An ancient oracle of Amnion de- fined the Egyptians to be the people who dwelt below the cataracts, and drank of the waters of the Xile/ Under the Romans these rapids were the southern boundary, not only of Egypt, but of their own empire f and at the present day they separate the Egyptians and the Arabic language, to the north, from ^^e Nubians and the Berber language to the soutli/- But the Egjqjtian monarchy, in its j^almy days, ex- tended far beyond the First Cataract. The course of civili- zation and empire has always followed the course of the Nile, either upward or downward ; and this mysterious riv- er is so closely interwoven with the history and institutions of the Egyptians, that a biief description of its course and its physical phenomena is an essential preliminary to the his- tory of the country, § 3. The Nile* 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 Khar- tum^ 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 I'ivers. The White River flows from the south-west, and brings down the larger volume of wa- ter; the Blue River comes from the south-east, and is much the more rai)id. The latter, and the Black Biver, Atharah^ or Tacuzz'e (tlie ancient Astaboras), which joins the Nile from the east, both flow down from the highlands of Abys- sinia with a moderate volume, except at tlie season of the summer rains, when their swollen and turbid waters wash down the earthy matters from which they derive their color and their najues. 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." Herodotus sup- posed that the river, which the Nasamones, after crossing the Great Desert, found flowing eastward, was really the 5 Herod, ii. IS. « Tac. "Ann.," ii. Gl. '' Parthey, " De Philis Iiisuln," Berlin, 1S30. 8 The name of the V?7e (NeLXos, XiUis) comes to us from the Greeks, who probably derived it from the Phoeniciaus. By Homer the river is called u¥^guptuH (Od. iii. 300, iv. 477) ; but in Hesiod {Tlmxj. S3S) the name of 'Sile appears, and this designation is nniformly nsed by succeeding Greek writers. In hieroglyphic inscriptions the Nile is termed Hainmu, or "the abyss of waters," ;ijid in Coptic Pero,o\: '-The River." The Hebrewo entitled it Nahal-Misraim , or "River of Egji^t" (Genesis xv. 18), and sometime- Sihor, or " The Black " (Isaiah xxiii. 3 ; Jerem. ii. IS). ^ The sources of the Blue River were discovered by the traveller Bruce (a.d. 1770) : but they had been visited before by the Jesuit missionary Pai-z. COURSE OF THE NILE THROUGH EGYPT. 33 Nile.'" Under the Roman empire, it was believed by many tliat the Xile rose in 3Iauretania, and, after flowing throuuh the centre of Africa as the Xiger, at last entered Ethiopia as the Xile/' Ptolemy, with that wonderful amount of in- formation which he derived from adventurous traders, for later ages to lose and rediscover, marks the Xile as rising from some lakes or swamps, the " Paludes Xili," south of the Equator, which are in their turn fed by streams floAving from a range Avhich he calls the " Mountains of the Moon,'' His views had been discredited for centuries, when the dis- coveries of Speke and Grant (in 1862), and Baker (in 1864), proved that the Xile issues, in lat. 2° 45' north and long. 31° 25' east from the reservoir of the lake Albert J^yanza^ which receives, near the outlet of the river, a secondary stream from the lake Victoria N^yanza; these two lakes covering a vast space under and on both sides of the Equa- tor.'^ Still, in strict geographical science, the problem is not Anally solved, till the sources which feed these lakes, and especially the Albert Xyanza, shall have been discovered. § 4. From the Albert X^yanza the Xile 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,'^ and was the seat of the great sacerdotal kingdom of Ethiopia, connected by kindred and customs with Egypt, over which it once ruled for £i 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 Xubia,the navigation of the X^ile is interrupt- ed by various rapids, or, as the Greeks called them, cata- racts. They are seven in number, and aie formed by shelves of granite lying across the bed of the river. For a long dis- tance tlie Xile traverses almost a desert till a little below the fourth cataract,'^ where pyramids and temples, and oth- i« Hei-ocl.ii. 33. 11 This Avas stated by Jnba, who lived in the reign of Augustus, ou the authoritj of Carthaginian writers (Plin. v. 9, § 10). It is repeated by Dion Cassiiis (Ixxv. 13). 12 The Victoria Nyanza lies between 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 Ijcrhaps be looked for. 15 The ancient geographers frequently applied the name of island to a space in- cluded between two or more confluent rivers. The modern name of Soinaar, de- Vioting Ihe country between the White and Blue Rivers, is probably identical with that o( Shinar, in Mesop itnmin, being both Semitic terms signifying Tict Riccrf<. '* The cataracts are numbered in the order of the ascent of the river. 34 EGYPT AND ETHIOPIA. or traces of aricient civilization again appear. Between tlie 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 of PhiloB, the burial-place of the god Osiris, still covered'with numerous temples and colonnades. The fails extend from Philae to Syene'" and the island of Elephantine, a distance of five miles. Throughout this space the river is bi-oken by fantastic masses of black porphyry and granite, which rise to the height of forty feet, and between vvhich the waters force their way in violent eddies and currents. According to a tale which Herodotus heard from the ti-easurer at Sals, in Lower Egypt, the Nile rose at this point between two peaked mountains, called Crophi and Jfo/V/?*, from which it ran down northward into Egypt, and southward into Ethi- opia.'" It is not difficult to imagine that an inhabitant of Lower Egypt, who had been accustomed to the calm un- broken flow of his majestic river, would be astonished at the strange convulsion of the water, and would endeavor to ac- count 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 descend- ed from lofty precipices ;'' whereas, in reality, the entire de- scent 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 im- age being reflected peri^endicularly in a well, and an upright stick casl;ing no shadow, at noon — though not precisely ac- curate, may serve to remind us that the southern limit of Egypt is only just outside of the tropic of Cancer. The true latitude of Syene is 24° 5' 23", and the least shadow of a ver- tical stick is only 4^-o^h 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 w^estern 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 about fifty miles north of 15 Tho frontier city of Syeue {Afisouan) stood on the riyht bank of the river, jnst opposite to Elopliantino. ^® Herod, ii. 28. i"? Cicero, '-Soinu. Scip." 5 ; Seneca, "Nat. Qn?est." iv. 2. COURSE Ott^ THE NILE THROUGH EGYPT. 35 Syene, the valley is contracted and sterile, since the iniinda- t:"on is checked by the rocks Avhicli approach the banks on eitlier side ; but at Apollinopolis the Great (Etlfou, in 25° north lat.) the valley begins to expand, and becomes still wider at Latopolis \Esndi). 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 Avider 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 ri\ er. The plain of Tliebes is shut in on the north by another approach of the lulls ; but they soon re- cede again, and henceforth the Nile fiows through a valley of considerable width. Near Diosjjolis Parva, on the left bank, begins the canal called the Bahr-Yussuf {C^n^X of Jo- seph'"), which is, however, more probably an ancient branch of the Nile. 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 ap- proaching 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 Laby- rinth. Before reaching Memphis, the capital of Lower Egypt, and sometimes of the'whole land, we see the gigantic Pyra- mids standing upon a natural terrace of rock on the borders of the Libyan Desert. Li 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 t!ie compass of human art. § 7. X little below Memphis, the hills, which have so long accompanied the river, turn oif on either side, leaving a Hat alhnial plain, called from its triangular shape the Delta (A), throuo'h which the Nile finds its v/ay into the sea by se^-eral sluo-glsh streams. The Delta was also called Lower Egypt, while the valley of the Nile, from above the Delta to Syene, received the name of Upper Egypt.'^ The apex of the Del- ta, or the point where the Nile 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 Nile, of which i8 So naraed, not from the patriarch, bnt from an Arab ruler who improved it. •s The term .Mif.dlk Ecypt is of late origin. As Mr. Kenrick truly observes, " the distinction of Upper and Lower Egypt exists in geological structnre, in language, iu religion., and in historical tradition." 36 EGYPT AND ETHIOPIA. five were natural and two artificial; but the main arras were the Pelusiac^ whicli formed the eastern boundary of the Del- ta ; the CanopiCj which formed tlie western ; and the Seben- nytic^ which continued in the direction of the river before its division. The bifurcation of the Avestern branch made the Bolbitlne mouth, east of the Canopic ; and three branches from the middle stream made the Phatnitic, the Mendeslan^ and the Tanitic or Saltic mouths, between the Sebemiytic and Pelusiac. The navigable arms are now reduced to two, that of Mosetta^ 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^ whicli communicates with the sea by the old Mendesian and Tanitic mouths. In fact, the Delta has always been fringed by lakes ; such as tliat of Mareotis (now a mere lagoon), on tlie 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 Damiafa and Mount Casins old, Where armies whole have sunk." — Milton. Besides the moiUhs of the Nile, the Delta was intersected by numerous canals, said to have been dug by the hosts of prisoners whom Sesostris brought home after his victorious expeditions.^'' Of the canal designed to unite the Mediterra- nean and the Eed Sea we shall have to speak in anothei- place. The alluvial plain of the Delta forms a vast expanse un- broken by a single elevation, except where mounds of earth mark the site orruined 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 oncp 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 Avhole course of human history, the country lias shown the same chief fea- tures ; and the modei-ate 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. 108. INUNDATION OF THE NILE. 37 years which the Xile must have taken in filling up a gulf which once resembled tlie 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 abun- dant supply of water is indispensable to agriculture ; and as Egypt possesses no natural springs, and rain rarely falls in tliV upper country,^' the inhabitants can rely upon nothing but tlie waters of the Nile. The inundations of other rivers are capricious and uncertain, and carry with them desolation and destruction of life and property ; but the overflow of tlie Nile occurs at, a regular and certain period, and spreads fertility and opulence over the land. The reasons of thi& 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 Ethio> pia, was first pointed out by Agatharcides of Cnidus," 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 Nile beg-ins to rise in Egypt. At the begin- ning 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 di'awn off by nu- merous canals; but the waters still continue to rise, and at- tain their greatest height m the last week of September, The level of the flood remains stationary far about a fort* niglit,and then begins gradually to decline. During the iw- iindation the land bears the aspect of a vast lake, out o^f which the towns rise like islands." When the waters subside, they leave behind a thick black mud, which is superior to the richest ma].ure,and pi'oduces crops of extraordinary fertility with hardly any cultivation. The ground recpiires the labor neither of the plough nor of the spade to prepare it for the seed, which, after being scat' tered upon the soil, and trodden in by cattle, springs up= rapidly under tlie warm sun of Egypt.^V It was this which 31 Herodottis says, not at all (iii. 10) ; but, iu fact, rain falls nlmirt fonr or five [\mes- a year in Upper Ejrypt ^^ BHwTorni^, i. 41. 28 Herodotus (li. 97) compares them to the islands rising? out of the JEcenn Sea. 24 The intermixture of the black mud and bright srreen with \»Mch the land is; covered at this season i? happily /'.linded to by the poet (Vir, § 14). This statue is preserved in the Vatican (Visconti, "Musea Pio Clement," vol. i. p. 291). See Kenrick's " Ancient Eirypt," vol. i. p. 84. 2»D:od. i.S4; Abdallatiph's "History of Egypt," p. 197, ed.Whire. ^ . -'i' For example, in Jannary, l'i70. the Nile has risen higher than within living ineiunry, causing a damnge e-iin'.a'ed at £8,000,000 steiliiig. CAUSES OF EGYPT'S PROSPERITY. 3'j lowed one another in the more open valley of the Tigris and Euphrates, surrounded by the homes of ^.varlike and conquer- ing races. "§ 10. Two other causes contributed to the rapid growth of the nation— an abundant supply of food, and easy means of communication between diiierent 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 m.ake no progress in the cultivation of the arts and sciences. In Egypt, the annual inundation of the Nile 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 al- forded to the inhabitants by the Nile. One of the great dif- ficulties with which an hiiant 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 powerlul nations many centuries before they have been able to establish safe and easy means of communication between distant parts of their dominions. But the Egyptians possessed from the be- ginning a natural highway — broad, level, and uninterrupted. In Ethiopia, the cataracts of the river and the intervening deserts prevented intercourse between neighboring tribes, and conhned 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 Nile 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, enal)le them to ascend the river. Moreover, these winds blow the most steadily during the time of the floods, when the stream is strongest, and when navigation upward would otherwise be impossible. These winds wei'e called by the Greeks Etesian^ or yearly winds. ^^ § 12. While the Nile conferred so many material blessings upon the inhabitants of its valley, it also stimulated their rational faculties, and taught them to exercise foi-ethoiight and prudence. Though it yielded an abundant supply of 30 Herod, ii. 20. Some supposed that they caused Ihe inuudaliou of the Nile hj folding back its waters from euteriug the sea. 40 EGYPT AND ETHIOPIA. food with little labor, yet it did not cherish habits of idle' ness. The Egyptians did not find, like the South Sea isl- anders, a continuous supply of food growing upon the trees over their heads, and were not able to neglect provision for the future. Tlie annual inundation of the Nile compelled them to secure their dwellings and their pro])erty fi-om the violence of the floods, and to collect a sufficient supply of food to last while tlie 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 ChakhT3ans the honor of having laid the foundations of As- tronomy; 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.^' As the inun- dation swept away all natural landmarks, it Avas 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.^""* With an increasing popu- lation, and with a territory limited by the sands of the des- ert, it became necessary to extend the inundation by arti- ficial means to spots which it did not naturally reach. Ex- perience taught that the fields were the most productive where the fiood remained tlie 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 whei'e it w\as wanted, and its course was control- led by sluices, dikes, and similar works. § 13. But tills was not all. This beneficent river, regard- ed as a god by the ancient Egyptians,^^ exercised a powerful influence upon their ideas, and especially upon their whole system of religion. Alongside of the JSTile^ the giver of ev- ery 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 oi* the Egyptians a struggle between Life and Death. The Nile, never growing old, renewing its life every year, and calling forth nature into new and vigorous existence, was si Hei-ocL ii. 9. He adds that their method of addinc: every year five days to their twelve months of thirty days each made the circuit of the seasons to rernrn wiih nni- formity; which it would not do, Unless they also intercalated the odd quarter of a flay which belonsj;s to every year. This was in facr d .ne. thoiiirh Herodotus did not Understand it, by the Hvthic ^or Do5 days ; f »f one day in every four ye.irs Miake^ up a year (.-iO!) days; in 1 i'JO years. 32 Kerod. ii. 109. ^^ Herodoats (ii. 90) speaks of '• the priests of the Nile.' IDEAS CONNECTED WITH THE NILE. 41 the symbol of Life. The Desert, with its sombre luies, its iuithn.i]ging appearance, its deadening and desolating iniliv ence, was the symbol of Death. The Xile, representing Life, became the Good Power, or Osiris; the Desert, representing Death, the Evil Power, or Typhon. Tlie nature of their country also determined the Egyp- tians respecting the disposal of their dead. They could not inter them in the valley, where the remains would be dis- turbed by the inundation ; thej^ could not consign them to the river, which was too sacred to be polluted by any mor- tal 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 se- cured 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 Egyp- tians. 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 own persons and immortality. The present life seemed only a small moment in time ; while the other world ap- peared vast, unlimited, and eternal. Accordingly, the pres- ent life was regarded by the Egyptians as only a prepara- tion for a higher and better state of existence.^* § ]4. No nation of antiquity possessed such a vast variety of monuments as the Egyptians. They studded the whole valley of the Nile in one long series. Of this, again, a rea- son is to be found in the physical foi-mation 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 Nile afforded the ready means of con- veying the largest masses from one part of the country to the other. In ascending the Nile from the Delta, two paral- lel courses of limestone accompany the traveller for a long distance. A little above Thebes begins the red sandstone, of 7/hich most of the Egyptian temples were built. In tlie neighborhood of Syene the particular kind of granite ap- pears to whicli the name of syenite has been given; and on the eastern bank of the river are the granite quarries, from ^'^ There are some striking: remarks respecting the influence of the Nile on the ideas nnl religious system of the E^'yptiaus in Miss Martineau's "Eastern Life. Past iiud Pie>ent," vol. i. p. (>i scq. 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 ))orphyry, of ba- salt, and of the fine green breccia, which is known by the name of Verde crEgitto. The same district was rich in other 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 Avorked the hard i-ocks 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 tlie 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 specu- lation. The Egyptians themselves, like many other nations of antiquity, believed that they were sprung from the soil.^''' Diodorus,who had conversed with Ethiopian envoys in Egypt, held that the tide of civilization had descended the Nile, and that the Egyptians Avere a colony from the Ethiopians of Meroe.'" This hypothesis has been revived in modern times, with much ingenuity, by Heeren ; but it rests upon no his- torical facts, is im'probable in itself, and is almost dis- proved by the absence of all ancient monuments in Upper Nubia, where nothing is found earlier than the times of the Ptolemies and the Px^mans. Even where the evidence of in- scriptions is wanting, the monuments reveal, in their more careless workmanship and debased forms and decorations, not the primitive eftbrts of a i-uder age, but the decay of the more perfect Egyptian art. When the Greeks became acquainted with Western India by the conquests of Alexander, they Avere struck Avith cer- tain similarities between the Egyptians and Hindoos, and Avere induced to assign a common origin to both." This hy- pothesis, likcAvise, has been received Avith much favor by some modern scholars, Avho have pointed out the striking resem- blance betAveen the system of castes, the religious doctrines, and the temple-architecture of the tAVO nations. But the points of difierence are very striking, even in many of their institutions. The rite of circumcision Avas practised from time immemorial by the Egyptians, but Avas unknown to the Hindoos till the Mohammedan conquest. The system of hiero- 35 Diodor. i. 10. ="' Diodor. iii. U- =*' Arrian, " 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 believethat an Egyptian colony would have settled in India witliout bringing witli them their hieroglyphics, or that the Hindoos would have colonized Egypt witliout introducing their al- phabetic writing and their religious books (the " Vedas"). Lastly, the languages spoken by the tw^o nations are so dif- ferent, that we may safely dismiss the hypothesis of a com- mon 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 knowl- edge of their physical features and their language. No 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 nu- merous 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"; tliat they had hair frizzled either by nature or by art ; that their lips were thick and projecting and their limbs slen- der, rests upon the authority of eye-witnesses, who had travelled in the country, and who could liave had no mo- tive to deceive.'' 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 liad 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 ap- pearance 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 Que of the most learned supporters of this hypothesis was the late Von Bohlen, in his work entitled "Das alte Indien, mit besonderer Rucksicht auf Aefrypten ;" but the author subsequently abandoned the hypothesis as untenable. The artru- raents, both for and against the theory, are fairly stated by Prichard ("Researches into the Phy?ical History of Mankind," vol. ii. p. 217), who,"however, attributes more importance to the similarity between the institutions of the two peoples than is per- haps warranted by the facts of the case. 3^ Herodotus, in proof that the Colchians were an Egyptian colony, says (ii. 104) that they were /xehdyxp'^^^ -e Kai ou\6Tf}ixe^, or " black in c()ni;)]exioi5 and with crah ing hair," but not " woolly," as Prichard translates it. fc.'ee also Li:ci;.iJ, " Navigiam," C. 2, and Ammianus Marcellinus, xxu. 16, i 23. U EGYPT AND FPHIOriA. Egypt, took liim for an Egyptian ;^" that tiie Jewish legisla- tor pei-mitted intermarriages witii tlie Egyptians;"' and" that Solomon married an Egyptian princess. It is also wortliy of remark that no part of Africa situated in the latitude of Egypt is the native country of a genuine negro race/'^ The existing mummies are of various ages, going back at least as far as the time of the patriarcli 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 accord- ing 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, ho\vever,show thatthe Egyptians possessed a peculiar physiog- nomy, diifering from both these races, approaching more near- ly lo the negro type than to any of the other Caucasian races." 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 njDon the whole sub- ject by M. Mariette's discovery, in the north-easternmost part of Egypt, of a race of men of a type quite difterent from the Egyptians, both ancient and modei-n, who seemed not im- probably to represent a more ancient population. The dis- tinct separation of classes, though it be incorrect to terra them castes, is an indication that the dominant Egyptians had overcome a previous population ; and it now appears that there was such a population, more nearly a])proaching to the African type, but decidely not negroes. Whether this abo- riginal population entered Egypt from the south of Arabia and down the Nile, is an hypothesis which awaits further discussion. § 17. Tlie intermediate position of the Egyptians between the Asiatic and African races is also proved by an examina- tion of their language. This language is preserved in the Coptic,** which was the native tongue of the Christian pop- ■»» Genesis xlii. 23, 30, 33. 4i Denteron. xxiii. 7, S. 42 Prichard, vol. ii. p. 230. The American writers, Nott and Gliddon (" Types of Mankind," Philadelphia, 1S54, p. 21G), are ol" course opposed to the ueijro oriiijin of the Eg^yptiaus ; but they have stated the argument fairly and, it seems to us, con- clusively against this hypothesis. *3 See K. O. Midler, "Archiiologie der Knnst," § 215, n. 1. ^'i Many Egyptian words, preserved by Greek writers, are clearly Coptic. The fol- lowing examples, among others, are qnoted by Kenrick, "Ancient Egypt," vol. i. p. 102. Herodotus (ii. C9) says that the crocodile Avas called x'^J^yka : in hieroglyphics it is havisn ; in Coptic mnmh. Instruction was called by the Esryptians Sbo (Horapollo, i. 38), which is the Coptic word f )r learning. Erpis was an Egyptian word tor wini NAMES OF EGYPT. 45 Illation in Egypt, and Avhich, thongh it has now ceased to be spoken,*^ is still preserved in the translation of the Scrip- tures and in other ecclesiastical works. Many of the words and grammatical forms of tlie Coptic are akin to those found in the Semitic languages ; but the peculiarities of its gram- matical structure have a still stronger resemblance to those of several of the native idioms of Africa." § 18. The Egyptians themselves called their land Chein^^ or the Blacl:^ in opposition to the blinding whiteness of the adjacent desert. In the Hebrew Scriptures it is usually call- ed Mizraim^^" the name of the second son of Ham in the gen- ealogical table in Genesis x. But this name, although em- ployed as a singular, is a dual in form, and is appropriately applied to a country which is divided by nature into the up- per and lower provinces. By tlie Arabs it is called 3Tisi\ which is only the singular of tlie Hebrew 3Iizraiin^ and which signifies in Arabic red^ or reddish brown. Hence the ordi- nary Hebrew and Arabic name of Egypt has the same sig- nification as the native name. Moreover, in the Hebrew rec- ords, Egypt is frequently called the Land of Ilam.;^^ and it is merely our faulty orthograpliy that conceals the identi- ty of the name of Xoah's son, CJtam^ with the Egyptian Chem. According to the strictly geographical interpreta- (Eustath. ad Od. i. p. 1633) ; renioTiiig the Greek terminatioii, 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 simihirity of the names. Others C(niiiect it with the Christian sect of Jacobites ('laKoo/irraf), to which the Egyptians belonged. But it is perhaps the ancient form of the name Egypt, by which the Greeks designated the country {Gii2>t, Kypt, Kojjt). See Prichard, "Researches, etc.," who decides, howev- er, in favor of the second of the above etymologies. 45 It is usually stated that the last person who could speak Coptic died in 10G3 ; but it is said, on credible authority, that it was spoken -as recently as ninety years ago. See Nott and Gliddon's " Types of :\Iankind," p. 234. A recent writer in the " Quarterly Review" (July, 1SG9, vol. xxvii. p. 40) says:— "The ancient Coptic language is, in- deed, still maintained in church rituals and the like ; but though all among the cler- gy can read, we have never found any one of them who could understand the mem- ing of its characters. Coptic was, however, till within recent memory spoken by the peasantry in some towns of Upi)er Egypt, at Achmim in particular ; but want of school instruction has allowed this curious remnant of the past to fade away and ul- timately disappear altogether." 4G This question is fully discussed by Prichard ("Researches," vol. ii. p. 213, .seq.) The arguments of this writer are more convincing than those of Buusen, who main- tains that the Coptic stands clearly between the Semitic and Indo-European, since iis forms and roots can not be explained by either of these singly, but are eAJdently 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. rS.^), seq.)_ 4'' Chem or Khem is the name of Etrypt in hieroglyphic inscriptions : in Coptic it is written Chemi. Plutarch sa vs that the Egyptians called their land Chcviia on account of the blackness of the earth ("De Iside et 0siride,"c. 3.3). This name is apparently preserved in that oi Chptumix, a large city in the Thebaid, which the Greeks called Panopolis (Herod. ::. 01). 4s Genesis x. fi. In the Assyrian cuneiform inscriptions Etoncal records are Egyptian. The Scripture notices of Egypt no^ a history of the country. § 2. Greek writers on Egypt. Herodotus. Eratosthe ues. Diodorus. Strabo. Pliny. § 3. Manetho. 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 Lepsius. 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. § G. Monuments of special historical value. Class I., for the general history of Egypt, (i.) Turin Papyrus, (ii.) Chamber of Ancestors, (iii.) Old and New' Tables of Abydos. (iv.) Table of Sakkara. (v.) TheApis-Stelfe. § G. Class II., relating to particular reigns. A book of the time of Rameses II. Historical value oflhe private monuments. Method of studying the History of Egypt. § 7. Fabulous antiquity of the nation. Divine rulers; Phthah; Ra ; Agathodtemon ; Seb and Netpe ; Osiris and Isis ; Typhou and Horns. § S. Mknes the first man who reigned over Egypt; perhaps a mythicalimpersonation. §9. Egyptian History of Heuoo- oxns. 330 kings from Menes to Moeris. Nitocris, Sesostris, Pheron, Proteus, and Rhampsinitus. Cheops, Cephren, Mycerinus, Asj'chis, and Anysis. The Ethio- pian 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 ns the most ancient of contemporary records ; and in this sense, also, his- tory begins with Eo-ypt. If the sacred story of the patri- archs embodies documents of an earlier age than that of the Pentateuch itself, they preserve the narrative of individual lives, for a moral and religious purpose, not the histoiy of a nation. Wiiile the Hebrew jiatriarclis liad as yet no posses- sion in their ])romised land, they had dealings with powerful kings of Egypt ; and the Exodus, which fii-st made Israel a nation, falls under an advanced period of the Egyptian mon- archy. These relations, as well as the part afterwards taken by Egypt in conflict w^ith Assyria and Babylon over the dy- ing body of the Hebrew monarchy, add a peculiar interest to Egyptian history. "Egypt, in fact, appears as the insti:u- 48 HISTOEICAL AUTHORITIES. ment 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 Is- rael.'" But it is not the design of Scripture to satisfy the cu- riosity thus stimulated. Its scenes of Egyptian events and of Egyptian life are most real and most truthful ; but they sup- ply 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 di- rect. Egyptian kings were among the mythical founders of their own nation ; in Egypt they sought tlie 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 PersiaTi conquest of Egypt was a prelude to the like attack on their own liberty ; and they allied themselves with Egyp- tian insurgents to oppose the common enemy.^ It was, then, most natural that the inquisiti^:e ^reek .t^ray- eller, who conceived the design of gatherhig up allJieifcbirri^. learn of the East into a focus which should throw liglit on the great_ conflict of his age, allotted the largest space in liis preliminary work to Egypt, of wliich he tells us all lie could learn down to its conquest by Cambyses.' 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 he saw in their freshness, and of which he has only given one trivial transla- tion, to the effect that the radishes, onions, and garlick, con- sumed by the laborers w^ho built the Great Pyramid, cost 1600 talents of silver !'' Much Avasted 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 ac- cept them for history. For my own part, I propose to my- self, throughout my\vhole \yovV, faithfully to record the tra- ditions of the several nations^" i Bunseii, " Ecrypt'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 iiL Herodotus wrote his historj abput 445 ii.o. ' Herod, ii. 1-25. ^ Herod, ii. 1'2 5. HERODOTUS— DIODORUS--MANHTHO. • 4y The inforniatioM doled out to him by the priests was such as suited their ^^ui-pose and their traditions, and it was of course frequently misunderstood; iior 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 Avas told. His own ingenu- ous 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 ;"° and then he resumes, " In what follows I have the authority, not of the E-^yptians only, but of others also who agree with them. I shall speak likewise in part from my own observation.'" The new means of knowledge acquired under the Ptolemies bore little fruit in the Greek and Roman literature. Eratos- thenes, wdio lived in Egypt under Ptolemy II. Philadelphus,' 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 hierogrammatists of Thebes : its chief use is for comi)arison with Manetho. Diodorus" increases dark- ness, rather than light, by his additions Lo the anecdotes of Herodotus, whose ingenuous care he entirely lacked ; nor do Strabo'" and Pliny" yield much further information, except quite incidentally. § 3. There ronains one '.vritei', who alone professed to give a complete history of Egypt, This was Manetho, an Ei^vp- tian priest, of Sebennytus in the Delta, who lived in^the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus (b.c. 285-247), and was the first EgAqjtian who wrote the history of his country in Greek, from information preserved in the i-ecords of the temple. Of the body of his work we have only a few frac^ments ; 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- " Herod, ii. 146, fin. 7 ibij, c. 14T, imt. « B.C. 2S5-247. Eratoslheues was boni in 2T5, k.o. His List is preserved by Geor- gius Syncellus. See the criticism on Eratosthenes by Kenrick, "Ancient Ejrvpt," vol. ii. p. 97 seq. » About B.C. 58. It is very important to observe one distinction between Herodo- tus and Diodorns, as to their sources of information, which is well put by Mr. Ken- riclv: "The history of Hi-rotsotus turns abont Memjihifi as a centre: he meiitioiii Thebes only incidentally, and does not describe or allude to one of its monuments. DroiioRcs, on the contrary, is full in his description of Thebes, and says little of Mem- P"'s-" '" About A.i). IS. n About u.o. 70. H 50 HIJSTOKICAL AUTHORITIES. ists. Its early stages are manifestly fabulous, and, like ev- ery other document of a similar origin, it rejects the tenden- cy of priests to give their o\y^n version of history, in the in- terest 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 chronog- raphers, 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 ow^n invention ; aided, doubtless, by some •traditionary names and stories derived from his predeces- sors." § 4. The real records of Egypt's liistory are to be found in her own monuments and her own books. The nation which stands first in history Avas also the first to write it, and the record has been preserved by a concurrence of favorable cir- cumstances. Bunsen says, " No nation of the earth has shown so much zeal and ingenuity, so much method and reg- ularity, in recording the details of private life, as the Egyp- tians. No country in the world afforded greater facilities for indulging such a propensity than Egypt, with its lime- stone and its granite, its dry climate, and tlie protection af- forded 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 pre- serving them as perfect as the day they were erected. In the North, rain and frost corrode ; 'in the South, the luxuri- ant 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 bai-e ly resist the wanton power of nature. Egypt is the monu- mental land of the earth, as the Egyptians are the monu- mental people of history. Their contemporary records, there- fore, are at once the earliest and most certain source of all Egyptian research." Let us add the testimony of Lepsius to the nature and mul- tiplicity of these records: "An intense desire after posthu- mous fame and a place in history seems to have been univer- sal 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 Ey^ypt were adorned witli temples and palaces. Towns of leaser note, and even villagX'S, were pJways distinguished by one temple at least — oftener more. Tliese temples were fill- ed with the statues of gods and kings, generally colossal, and hewn from costly stones. Their walls, also, within and with- out, were covered with colored reliefs. To adorn and main- tain 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 nniversal 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 were inscribed, Iso nation that ever lived on the earth has made so much i;8e 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 door- post, in an Egyptian temple, which was not carved, within, without, and on every available surface.^ with pictures in re- lief. There is not one of these reliefs that is not history ; some of them representing the conquests of foreign nations ; others the ofterings and devotional exercises of the monarch by wdioni 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, in- terfering with and marring it— the hieroglyphic writings were absolutely essential and indispensable to the decoration of a perfect Egyptian temple. " This writnig, moreover, was by no means confined to constructions of a public nature, snch as temples or tombs, but was also inscribed on objects of art of every other con- ceivable description. Xothing, even down to the palette of a scribe, the style with which a lady painted her eyelashes with powdered antimony, or even a Avalking-stick, was deem- ed too insignificant to be inscribed with the name of the owner, and a votive dedication of the object itself to his pa- tron 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 orcat, and no amulet too small, to be inscribed with the 52 HISTORICAL AUTHUIilTIES. name of its owner, Miid sonic account of tlie occasion on which it was executed.'"" The vast variety of these inscriptions supplies a check on their trustworthiness. In those of a piiblic character, we may suspect a fictitious history composed by priests, or dis- played for their own glory by desi)otic monarchs ; but we can turn to the private records of tombs which have been sealed up since the day when tliey 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 i)erfection corresponds very nearly with their order along the river, the best and old- est being the lowest — one striking proof that the civiliza- tion which they represent (iscended the course of the river. They may be grouped in the following series :'' (i.) About Memphis. — The Pyramids and tombs at Ahou-Roash^Jizeh^ Abou-Seir, Sakkairf, and Bashoor. Tliese 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 (Faran), Wady -el-Ma c/harah, and ,Sarhut-el-Kadeni. (iii.) In Middle Egypt. — TJie monuments, partly perhaps of the kings of Manetho's Ninth and Tenth Dynasties, but chiefly of those of tha Twelilli, at 3Ieidt(u, Ill((hiln, and the Fijdm. (iv.) Returning to Sais, Taxis, and Heliopolis, we And monuments which break the geographical series, owing to the power which the New ]\Ionarchy,of Theban Kings, held also over Lower Egypt, (v.) But in their own ])roper dis- trict the series continues upward, in the sculptured tombs of Henl-hassan, opposite Hermopolis the Great, and at 7'ei- Amarna. (ri.) At This and Abydos (about Arah(it-el-3Iad- fotnieh), 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-Ahou^ Luxoi\ and Karimk. (viii.) The remains at Emeh (Latopolis),7^7-ii7^?> and El-mU(ml{l^\\Q\i\\Y\^),Fdfoii (A})ollinopolis), Iladjar-Selseleh (Silsilis), with its quarries. (i\.) The quarries of Syene, and the rock-hewn temples of Elephantine and Phila^. (\.) Above Egypt itself; the monu- ments at Abou Simhel, Soleb^ and Barhd. (xi.) And lastly, those of Meroi^, at Sofra, Naga^ etc. These last are the smallest, the poorest in' style, and th<' most decayed, though J2 Oil the Hieroglyphic Wriiinir, see chap. ix. :^ec. 5. 13 Lep^i'is: " Der.kmaler." This prcat work has ihe advantage of depicting the Egyptian raonumeuti? in clironoloiacul ordei-. RECORDS OF SPECIAL VALUE. 53 tlie n!'>st modern. To tljese monuments must be udded the innumerable extant books, chiefly of religious ritual and mor- al precepts, which the Egyptians wrote, from time imme- morial, upon the delicate membrane prepared from the reed called papyrus, which anciently fringed the baidcs of the Nile, and which gave its name to 2)((per. § 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 his- tory of Egypt in general, or to particular reigns. Of the first class, the following are the most important: (i.) The Turin Pa2njrus, if perfect, would give us an authoritative Egyptian counterpart of the Lists of Manetho, down to the most flourishing period ol the monarchy. It is a list drawn up under, and apparently by oi'dei- of, the great Rameses II. (of the 19th dynasty), of all the personages, whether mytho- logical or historical, who were believed to have reigned in Egypt from the earliest age. Unfortunately it only exists in 164 small fragments, which it is often impossible to piece together, (ii.) The Ckcnnher of Ancestors was found at ICar- 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 oflerings 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 com.plete list, (iii.) The Table of Abi/dos, 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, how- ever, nearly all the lacunm have been supplied by the New Table of Abi/dos, of Seti I., the father of Rameses II., recently discovered by M. Mariette. (iv.) The Table of Sakkara, an- other discovery of M. Mariette, and now in the Jluseum at Cairo, was found in the tomb of a priest named Tounari, 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 corre- sponds very nearly with that on the Table of Abydos,but witli a few interesting differences. It must not be forgotten that, while these lists are, beyond all reasonable doubt, the au- thentic memorials of the historical belief of the priests and scribes who comjjiled them, they are no more conclusive evi- dence that all the kii;gs they represent ever lived and reign- 54 HISTORICAL AUTHORITIES. eel, than are the pictures of the Scottish sovereigns at Holy- rood ; and that their conformity with the lists of Manetho carries us back no fartlier than the same priestly tradition. But they are invaluable aids in determiuing the succession of the kings whose names we find on contemporary docu- ments, (y.) For the Apis-steke, 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 pluce, ofthat celebrated article of the Egyptian faith, that Osiris was periodically revealed in the form of a bull, known by cei-taiu marks, and named Apis at Memphis, and 3fnevis 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 liewn 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. Tliese '^Apis-steke " are contem.porary 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 pane- o-yrics on the deeds of kings, official correspondence and ac- counts, and literary compositions of a more general nature. We may mention one interesting example. At the brilliant court of Rameses II. there wei'e nine principal men of learn- ing 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 un- rivalled in elegance of style, wrote a work for the use of the crown prince,"Seti Menephtha (who is now identified with the Phai-aoh of tlie Exodus), the moral of which resembles that of the story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife.'* The monumental inscriptions of this class are both public and private. The former are engraven on obelisks or tab- lets, or on the walls of temples, where they often serve as the written exposition of scenes presented more vividly to the eve by immense colored bas-reliefs, dcjiicting the military exploits of the kings, or their triumphs after battle. The in- " This papyri!?, acquired by Mrs. D'Orbiney in 1352, and uow in the British Mnse- am, is translated, among other dociiinent.', by Bni-scli, "Aiis dem Orient," 1865. REIGNS OF THE GODS IN EGYPT. 5n scriptions and paintings relating to private persons tlirow a Hood ot" 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 ^ive most important data for history and chronology; when, for instance, we iind 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 particu- lar day and month and year of another. This mass of records, however, was sealed up in an un- known 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 in- scription, in the hieroglyphic, demotic (or ordinary Egyptian), and Greek characters, supplied tlie key by which the inge- nuity of Young and Champollion independently unlocked the secret of hieroglyphic writing, and gave a living voice to an- cient Egypt.'^ 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 inter- preted 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 antiq- uity 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 pc- riod of about 25,000 years for the reigns of gods, demigods, heroes, and manes (the souls of the departed). Tlie 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 ^ire. Next comes Ra, the Siui, wdio was worshipped from time immemorial at On (Heliopolis). The third is Agathod^mox, the Greek trans- lation 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 by wliich tlie world is governed. The latter are the childi-cn of 13 See chap. ix. sec-t. 5. 56 HISTORICAL AUTHORITIES. Seb and Netpe ; ai]d among them are Osiris and Isis. Of these, Osiris appeared in luirnan form, as tlie fifth divine ruler, who, after \voi"king 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 tho judge of souls. Typiion, 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 en- ergy ])ei-[)etually renewed (like Apollo), he is tlie source of succeeding dynasties and the special leader of the Egyptians. Tlie demigods of Manetho (on the authority of Syncellus) w^ere eight : Mars, Anubis, Hercules, Apollo, Amnion, Tithoes, Zosos, Jupiter. ^"^ This mythological age is called on the in- scrijjtions "the times oi i\\Q Ilor-sheson'''' (servants of ITorus). § 8. The Lists of Manetho, the statements of the priests to Herodotus and Diodorus, and the inscriptions, all agree in making Mex 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^ tha Greek Minyas and Minos^ the Etruscan Menerfa^ and the German M(fn/ms. His claim to historical existence fail* before the only proper test; for the hieroglyphs of his name are not contemporary.^'^ The pi-iestly tradition connected him v/ith 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, whore he was killed by a liippopotamus. The significance of the legends respecting Menes will be seen better wlien we gain some sure basis of genuine liistory. § 9. The priests road 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 wei-e kings and Egyptians. The last of them was Mceris, the constructor of the great lake in the FyUm^ wlio had not been dead 900 years when Herodotus visited Egypt.'* Moeris, as we shall see, represents proba- bly one or more kings of Manetho's 12th dynasty. Herodo- tus then passes on to Sesostris,'^ the great conqueror, and his son PiiERON,"" who was struck blind ; names which, like Moeris, are disguised under their Greek form, but point to the great exploits of the 18th and 19th dynasties, though the name of Sesos- ^ I tris may possibly come from the 12th. The Mem- ■V. M J« See Sir G. Wilkinson's Note on Herod, ii. 44 (Rawliuson). His hieroglyph reads Mna or Metmi. "^ Ileiod. ii. 101 and 13. MENES. I'* Heiod. 11.102 seq. 20 Herod, ii. 111. CONQUEST BY SABACOS. 57 phian Proteus, the successor of Piicroii,''' is made con< temporary with the Trojan war, a pseudo-chronological in- ference from the Homeric fable of Proteus ; while the amus- ing anecdote about his successor, Kiiampsixitus,^" and the thief, puts all chronology at defiance by placing a Rhamses (as the name seems to imply) before the Pyrannd-kings. It would seem, in fact, that Herodotus had before him two lists of kings, the one belonging to Upper and the oiher to Low- er Egypt; and, having told all that he found interesting about the Thinites and Thebans, from the 1st dynasty to the IDtli, he passes to the earliest Memphiajis of the 4th, unaware of his chronological disorder."^ We shall have to notice in their proper place his statements about the ])yramid-bui]ders, Cheops, Cephrex, and Mycerixus,'* names now perfectly identified. That of Asychis, the builder of a brick pyramid, is more doubtful f and so is Axysis, the blind king, who w^as driven into the marshes, w hile Egypt was conquered by a vast army of Ethiopians, led^by Sabacos, who ruled for fifty years.-" This conquest corresp^onds to the 25th (Ethiopian) dynasty of Manetho, which we find synchronizing with As-^ Syrian and Hebrew history about the time of the downfall of the kingdom of Israel ; and the restoration of Anysis may be probably connected with the revolution by which the native princes who had preserved their independence in the Delta expelled the Ethiopians.^' With the completion of that revolution b.y the establish- ment of PsAMMETiciirs ou the throne (about b.c. 664), the notes of Herodotus fall into historical oi-dei-. We have now collected into one view the outline of his contributions to the earlier history of Egypt. His order, or rather disordei-, 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. ^^ 21 Herod, ii. 112 seq. The "successor," in 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 (Rawlinson). The two follow- in>r sets of five comprise all the klni?s selected by Herodotns from the 330 read out to him by the priests : hinites and Thebans. MemphiteA. Menes. Cheops. Moeris. Cephren. Sesostris. Mycerinus. Pheron. Asychis. Rhanipslnitns. Auysis. 24 Herod, ii. 124 fi"q. '"•> Herod, ii. 136. Sir G. Wilkinson supposes him to have been Shishak, of the 22d dynasty (called Asochieas by Josephus), perhaps partly confounded with some other kiu?, This, Elephantine, and Thebes; in Middle Efjypt^ Heracleopolis ; and in Lov^er Ei) NOTE. CONTEMPORANEOUSNESS OF DYNASTIES. The following is the arrangeiment proposed by Mr. Lane and Mr. Stiiars Poole for the Dynasties down to the New Theban Monarchy. (l. THINITES. III. Memphites. II. IV. VI. VII. VIII. V. Elephanliues. JDiospulites IX. Heracleopolites. 1 X. XI. 1 XII. |XIII. XVIII. Ixix. XIV. Xoites. ^yjj- Shepherds. XVII. Shephe rds. Sphiux and Pyramid*. CHAPTER III. THE OLD MEMPIIIAN MONArvCIlY. i 1. Memphis the tirst sent of tlie Egyptian monarchy. What is meant by the origin of Meiies from This? § '2. The First and Second {TJnnitc) Dj/nciMics of Manetho. Introduction of animal-worship. Succession of women to the crown. § 3. The Third Dynastij {Menqjhian). The Libyans snbdued. § 4. Contemporary History begins with the Fourth DynaHtij {Memphian), and the Pyramidfi. Names of Knc- FU and his brother in t)ie Great Pyramid: the CuEori-; of Herodotus. § 5. The Second Pyramid of Ckimiken or Siiafre. His temple and statue. § G. The Third Pyramid of Myckrinik or Mknkare. His coffin and mummy. Soris and the Pyr- amid of Abou-Seir. § 7. The Pyramids in general. Motives for their construc- tion. § S. Their testimony to the power and art of the Memphian kings. Ab- Beuce of all figured decorations and inscriptions. They are the temple-tombs of deilied kings. §9. The colossal Sphinx: probably of the time of Shafre. Sym- bolical 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. Vv riting. High state of art. Moral philosophy of the age. § 11. It was a period of peace and prosperity. Sudden n-ppcarance of this high civilization. ? 12. Ti-aditions of earlier works. Mencs turned the course of the Nile. §13. Thecity of Mf-mpuis. Its precedence over Thebes and Ileliopolis, 5 14. Necropolis of Memjjhis. Architecture of the tombs. § 15. The Memphian Dynasties: 3d, 4th, 6th, 7th, Sth. Connection of the Fifth (Elephantine) Dynaatij with Memphis. Relations between Upper and Lower Egypt. § IG. Religious con- flicts under the Fourth Dynasty. Imjiiety and oppression of Cheops and Cephren. Piety and deiticaticm of Mycerinus. Confirmations from the monuments. § 17. Bnnsen's view of the religious and political union of Upper and Lower Egypt. § IS. The Sixth Dynai^ij: difficulties about its origin. Pepi-Maire and Pepi Nefer- MEMPHIS. 61 Kei'a. NiTOOEis. Her cor.nection with the Third Pyramid. 5 19. Seventh and L'if'hth Dinia.sties. Fall of the Memphiar. monarchy. Xinth and Tenth Djnasties at Heracleopolis. §20. Absence of a chronology thus far. Various hypotheses. § 1. Memphis was tlie earliest seat of tlie Egyptian king- tlom. There are the oldest monuments, and its foundation is ascribed to Menes. If the origin of Menes from This^ indi- cates a still older local kingdom in Upper Egypt, that king- dom has disappeared, leaving no contemporary records, but only the traditions recorded in the List of Manetho. The re- moval of Menes from This to Memphis implies the subjection of the former to the lattei- ; and tlie N'ew Table of Abydos and the Table of Sakkara appear to make the two contempo- raneous. 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, Neclierophes, the head of the Third (the first Mem- phite) Dynasty was regarded as liis contemporary ; and to Athotliis, the son of Menes, and Tosorthus, the son of Neche- rophes (who seem indeed to be identical) are ascribed in com- mon tlie possession of great medical knowledge, the patron- ao-e of letters, and the first use of hewn stones in buildino- a temple at Memphis. § 2. Manetho assigns to his I^irst {Titiidte) Dynasty seven kings during a jieriod of 250 years. The fifth king, Hesep-ti (Usapliaidos, ^I."), is often mentioned in the funereal Ritual (an extant papyrus) as the author of some sacred books. The Second I) y nasty ^ also of T/iinites, consisting of nine kings in 302 years, is signalized as the period of the intro- duction of animal-worship, which is thus marked as an inno- vation. In the reign of Caiechos {Kekeou)^ the second king of this dynasty, the bulls Apis and Mnevis were worshipped at Mempliis and Heliopolis respectively, and the goat at Mendes ; all, be it observed, in Lower Egypt. His succes- sor, Binotliris {Raneter-e7i),is said to have legalized the suc- cession 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 Jlem^^hian kings, ior a space of 214 years. The first king, Necherophes, the contemporary of Menes, subdued a re- volt of the Libyans, the rebels being panic-stricken at a sud- de]i 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 tlie tradi- 1 This was a city of Upper Eu'vpt, about 100 miles below Thebes, and near Abydoe (Arabat-el-Mad foil nail), which supplanted it. 2 This abbreviation indicates the name given by Manetho. G2 THE OLD MONAKCHY. tions of the priests ; but now we approach the confines of that real history which is attested by contemporary records. The ovals^ 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 Fourtli and Fifth Dynasties. The most important of these is on a bas-relief carved on the rocks of the Sinai group, representing Kinf»: Snofru (commonly identified with Se])huris of Manetho's Third Dynasty) as subduing the Arabs of the peninsula. It is with the Fourth Dynasty of Memphian kiugs that we first find monumental records coinciding with historical tra- dition ; and lolth thetn the real history of Egypt begins. Their names are recorded alike in the pages of the father of histo- ry and on the stones of the oldest and most majestic mou- nmeuts of the world, the Pyramids of Jizeh, north-west of Meu4)his. If the mound of the Dirs-A^imroudhe indeed the remains of the Tower of Babel," it has been for ages a shape- less 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 muti- lation, and so placed as to be beyond all suspicion of their o-enuineness,^ General Howard Vyse discovered, as lately as the year 1837, the hieroglyphic characters which the work- men painted, for their own mechanical uses, on the hwge stones before they left the quarry ; and those characters have been decipliered as KnuFU or Shofo, and Num-Khufu or Nu-Shofo (the brother of Khufu or Shofo, and doubtless co- reo-ent with him)." In these kings we at once recognize the Su'i:)his I. and TI. of Manetho' and the royal tablets, and in 3 lu hiei-otead to labor, one and all, in his service. A hundred thou- sand men labored constantl}^, and Avere relieA'ed 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 yeai-s in building." The ffiirest conclusion from the absence of those decora- n Ilerod. ii. 109. G6 THE OLD MONARCHY. tions which were lavished on private tombs, is that the Pyr- amids were regarded as temples^ as 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 woi-ship was new. Tombs, in general, were sacred to the deities of Amenti^ the Egyptian Hades; but the pyramid- kind's seem themselves to have aspired to divine honors after dea^h, 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 ab- sence of decoration is equally remarkable in the great tem- ple of Shafre, near the Pyramids. The temple-towers of Baby- lonia, though in many respects of a different type,'^ have a sufficient resemblance to the Pyramids to suggest a common derivation of the idea from the Tower of Babel, a sugges- tion cpiite consistent with the Cushite origin of the Egyp- tians, and the position of the Pyramids in time as the ear- liest 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 Aveather- ino' of its rock.'"' " The head and face are reddish, the neck and line of the back white, on the yellow sand.'"' "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 Avhen we observe the scale on which it^is wrought." " The temporary clearance of the sand effected by Captain Caviglia, in 1818, showed that the length of the body is 140 feet f the foie-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.'^ The rock is not, however, levelled to this depth, but the platform is approached from the side of the Nile by a slop- ing 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 belfiAV, chap. x. 13 Pinzzi Stnvth, " Life nirl Work at the Great Pyrnmid," vol. i. p. n22. 14 ri,;(i., vol. i. p. 5S. 1* Ibid., vol. i. p. 323. 50 Howard 7yse, " Pyramids of Gizeh," vol. iii. Appendix, pp. 109-lia. THE COLOSSAL SPHINX. 67 Pyramids, it is free from hieroglyphics; but, on the side of a little temple between its paws, Caviglia discovered tablets representing Thothmes lY., of the 18th dynasty, and Rameses the Great, oi' the 19th, worshipping the figure of" the Sphinx, Har-Hat^ the giver of life, etc., tbe ruler of the upper and low^er world, etc., like the sun forever and ever." These tab- lets only prove it to be older than the kings wdio set them up; its real age is probably, from many indications, tliat of the Pyramids themselves. Its meaning has no connection with the classic fable of GEdipus. The Greek Sphinx was female f the Egyptian was jiiale — the symbolical statue of a god or king, uniting the at- tributes of power and intelligence in the lion's body and the man's head, crowned with the royal fillet.'' From the prox- imity 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 wdiich he con- secrated. 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 tlie negro type. In the later ages of Egypt, we find sphinxes used in the dec- oration of temples ; and the human head is often replaced by those of animals symbolical of divine attributes, such as the ram and hawk. g 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 Avails are covered with hieroglyphics and with the more universally intelligible lan- guage of pictures, which show us the subjects of the Old Memphian kingdom in the midst of their daily business, ban- quets, and recreations. "Here Ave see the regular physical type of the Egyptians : a reddish-broAvn 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 ?r?V/.'" Other cloth- ing 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 Avomen is a yellowish pale olive; they Avear a single, close-fitting, elas- tic dress of a brilliant scaVlet, supported under the breasts by shoulder-straps, and coming doAvn, Avithout a fold or wrinkle, to the ankles, Avhere it is wide enough to alloAV of I'' If the Greeks borrowed the idea from the Egyptians, they may have been misled as tn 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. 18 Clemens "Alex. Strom." 5, p. GTl (Potter). 'AAk-^v \i(.-rU Ti/i't'o-ecor av\i.{io\ov h ff^'^f. i» An Egyptian wig may be seen in the British Museum. 68 THE OLD MONARCHY. the separation of tlie feet in walking or dancing. The wig is larger than that of the men ; and princesses are only dis- tinguished from servants by their necklaces, bracelets, and anklets of blue and white glass beads." The social state is tliat of an aristocracy of land-owners, using wdth harsh oppression the labor of a servile peasantry and of domestic slaves. " Throughout the ^vhole of the pic- tured -scenes, there is not a single instance of a peasant en joying, 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 of- ficial training to serve the prince of the time being; and ad- inhiistration is the order of the day.'"" According to a con- stant convention in Egyptian pictures, the owner of the tomb is represented by a colossal figure, armed with a baton, and standing the Avhole heiglit ot^the wall, which is divided, in front ot^him, into horizontal compartments, in which his serv- ants are at their various occupations. The task-master is al- ways present, and the bastinado at work: not even the crip- ples are exempt from labor ; and over tliem 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 belong- ing to one owner, w'ho receives from his overseers accounts of^the produce, which a scribe records, each with its distinct- ive name. Every thing seems done on a scale of vastness and profusion : the droves of oxen arc numbered by thou- sands; 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 ta- ble is piled up with slices of bread, pyramids of fruit, joints of meat, and the favorite dishes of roast geese. Pastoral op- erations are on a larger scale than agricultural. The seed is sow^n broadcast, and^beaten in by driving sheep^' and goats over the newly-inundated land; reaping is performed wnth a fiickle ; threshing by driving herds of donkeys about a floor ; and winnowing with spades. The amusements of the field are eagerly pursued : hunting, fishing, and fowding. 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.," voi. iii. p. ?.S0. 21 M. Reiiaii (in his valuable article in the " Revue des Deux Monde?,''' April, 1865) denies that there are any sheep; hut 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 ueither are numerous, compared with the oxen, "of mao;nificent quality, and of a portliness which shows them rather intended for the butcher than the farmer." LIFE DEPICTED IN THE TOMBS. 69 Nik', to strike the birds wiiicli fly into the clap-nets spread by his servants. Tiie chief in-door anuisenients are 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 va- riety 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, and horses. The absence of the liorse is peculiarly interesting, as showing that we have not reached the period of that Pharaoh who made Joseph to vide in the second chariot that he had.^^ 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 luechanical arts dejjicted are cabinet-making, and what has been interpreted as glass-blovnng ; but the handleless hammers of the carpenters show an age in which human labor was unrelieved by even the simplest machinery. Writing Avith a reed on papyrus is in constant use ; and the cursive characters of the quari-y-marks in the Great Pyramid prove that it had passed out of its earliest stage. In short, the civilization rei)resented is in every respect as iiigh 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 ai't^ and the absence of any idealiz- ing power, must not lead us to undervalue the perfect truth to nature with which the animals and other objects are de- picted, or the freedom of form and motion in the human fig- ure, not yet trammelled by the sacred conventionalism of later ages. This free style of art is thought to show a period when the sacerdotal poVer was not dominant ; and the in- scriptions, which tell us of the social position and offices of "hese long-buried dead, confirm the view that the country iiad reached 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 pajn^rus written by Phtha-Jiotep^ an old man of the royal bloodjin the reign of Assa-Tatkera (probably theTancheres of Manetho's 5th dynasty), and containing thirty-five moral pre- cepts addressed to his son ; in which filial obedience is made the basis of morality, and its principle is extended to the duties of a suV)ject to his king — the sign of an age of patri- archal despotism. It contains such prece]its as the follow- ing : "The son who receives the words of his father shall 22 Gc'uesis xli. 43. Comp. chap. v. § 10, 70 lllE OLD MONAHIMIY. grow old thereby. The obedience of a son to his fatlier is happiness. He is dear to liis father, and his renown is on the tongues of the living who walk upon the earth. The rebel- lions sees knowledgH3 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."^^ The conclusion is interesting as an example of longevity, and breathes the spirit of seU-satisfaction which character- ized 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 tlie 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. No 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, Avhere the Memphian kings, as we have seen, worked copper mines.''' The country is at a high pitch ol 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 civili- zation," 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 ^^r,/.9 de vertlgeP Of the ruder labors which prejjare the country for this high condition, Ave have no other indication than the traditions preserved by Herodotus about Menes. § 12. Before the time of Menes, he says, the Nile flowed close under the sandy range of hills Avliich .skirts Egypt on the side of Libya. By raising a dike at the bend which the river forms about a hundred furlongs soutli 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 IVIemphis. He also built the temple of Hepha?stus (Phtha) within the city." Herodotus testifies'" to the care with which the dike was preserved by the Persians ^3 Lenorniant, " Histoire Aucienne," vol. i. p. 208. ^* See chap. i. § 14. 25 The Tem;)lc was enlari^^cd by successive kings at distant periods. See Herod, ii. 99, 101, 108-110, 121, 1.00, 15iV, 17G ; Diud. i. 45, 51, 62, 07. Its grand aveuwe {dromon) was used for bnll-fights, which are represented on the tombs ; though the bull Apis was the sacred animal of Memphis. "'"■ Herod, ii. 99. ENGINEKllJNG WOliK^i OF .MENES. 71 in his time, lest the inuiKlation should burst upon ^Meuiphis. There seems no reason to reject this tradition of some gi'eat engineering works connected with the tirst establishment of Memphis; but their nature may have been misunderstood. It is not improbable that the true object Avas to confine the Nile to its clayey bed, and to prevent the percolation of its waters through the sanddiills of ilie 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 uninliabitable, so that the population was confined to the narrow valley. The bifurcation of the river aj)pears to have been at one time some 14 miles above Memphis, at Kasr-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) nniy have stopped up this western branch, and diverted the rest of its Avater into the lake which, Herodotus says, Menes construct- ed on the west of Memphis." § 13. This securing of the site of Mempliis 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'"^ — ^just below the expansion of the valley towards the FyCnii^ and above the opening to the Delta — commanded the pas- sage between L^pper and Lower Egypt, and fitted it to be the capital of the whole country.*^ 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 ;'"" and one of its hi- eroglyphic names is " the white building." It is also callecl "the knd of the pyramid "and "the abode of Phtha,"" its 2T It was across this lake the dead were terried to their sepulchres. See Piazzi Smyth, vol. iii. p. 386 neq. ; and Keurick, "Ancient Enypt," vol. i. pp. 112, li:i. 2« Herod, ii. 99 ; corap. ii. 8. 29 Diod. i. 50. ao Thucyd. i. 108; Herod, iii. 1.3, 91. 31 Memphis is the Greek form of the Egyptian name, which is compounded of tbe hieroglyphics, " Men " = foundation, or station, and " Xofrc " := good, va- riously interpreted as " the place or haven of good men," or "the gate of JT^ ^ the blessed," and " the tomb of the good man," i. e. Osiris. Plutarch (" De H r f Isid. etOsir." 20) explains it by opjuo^u-zci^tZi' or T(i^ov'ow^ Boash, a little to the north-west of Cairo, to Meycloom^ about 40 miles to the south, and thence in a south-westerly direc tion about 25 miles farther, to the pyramids of Howard and UlaiunUy' containing about 60 pyramids great and small. I3at the ^\'0\)QY ^lemjj/dte Necrop(jliii is comprised within a length of about 15 miles from Jizeli to Sal'l-ara^ and contains, prob- ably, 30 tombs of the sovereigns of Memphis. ^^ There are no tombs on the eastern side of the Xile: the West was regard- ed as the land of darkness and of death. Tlie internal architecture of these tombs is instructive. The sepulchral abodes of tlie dead, who only slept, would naturally be modelled after the homes of the living. Par- taking of that simplicity wliich 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 {troglodytoi)^ as some have supposed, but that their habitations were wood- en houses, in which the natural trunks served for pillars and mouldings. § 15. Mem})his was unquestionably the seat of the Third, Fourth^ Sixt/t, Severtth^ and EhfJith Dynssties of JNIanetho. He styles his FiftJi Dynasty Elephantine ; and assigns to it 31 kings^* and nearly 600 years. Their names are associated in Memphian t()mi)s with those of the P^ourth Dynasty; and some are identical in both lists. No facts are recorded of '2 Kenrick, " Ancient Egj'pt," vol. i. p. 111. 33 Buusen, "Egypt's Pl;ice," etc., vol. ii. p. SS. »* According to the better rending in the Armenian Chronicle of Ensebins : ths Greek text has only nine in 21S year;^. The hypothesis thnt they reigned at some nn- known 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 two governments being some- times united under the sovereign reigning at Memphis. But, in truth, the relation of the 3Iemphian 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 Mem- phis, Hitherto no trace of the dominion of the Memphian kings has been found at Thebes or elsewhere in Upper Egypt, except some alabaster vases fi-om Abydos, bearing the stand- ard of Chufu ; and portable antiquities afford no decisive evi- dence. But this is no proof of Theban independence, since the fixed monuments of this age are entirely sepulcliral ; and the Memphian kings and their great officers would be buried near their own capital. Ix Thebes has no monuments of Memphian dominion, neither lias it any of its own, and it ap- pears probable that, till the Twelfth Dynasty of Manetho, it continued to be a place of little account."^" § 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 tera- pleG and forbade the Egyptians to offer sacrifice ; a statement contradicted by the evidence of contemporary tombs.^^ Man- etho only says tliat Suphis I. (Cheops) was arrogant towards the gods, but, repenting, wrote the sacred book ; but Diodo- rus declares that Cliembes {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." The period of oppression, Herodotus adds, lasted for 106 years, the united reigns of Clieops and Cephren, whose names the Egyptians so detested that they chose rather to call the Pyr- amids after Philition, a shepherd who at that time fed his flocks about the place. ^® Mycerinus at length opened the temples, and allowed the S9 Keurick, "Aucient Egypt," vol. ii. pp. 142, 143. Tho removal of the dead to their family sepulchie?, however distant, was a sacred custom of the Egyptians. 3« Herod, ii. \%i: comp. the absnrd tale in c. 1'2G. Observe the historian's own cau- tion (c. 123), already quoted. See chap. ii. § 2. s^ 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 (f the common people ; and of their happiness, as wc have seen, the monuments give no proof. 38 Herod, ii. 12S. In this curious and obscure tiadition there may possibly be an allusion to the inroad of the Shepherd Kings from the side of Palestine; and their oppression may have been confounded witli that of the Pyramid Kings. 4 74 THE OLD MONARCHY. people to return to tlieir occupations and to resume the rites of sacrifice. He surpassed all Ibrnier kings in justice ; and, if ^ny man was dissatisfied with his decision, he ])aid the pen- alty he had awarded out of his own purse. Yet another story made him die of grief from a passion for his own daugh- ter, 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 peo- ple, because he had not fulfilled the destined term of their oppression for 150 years.^" These traditions of a religious conflict are not unconfirmed by the monuments. In the temple of Shafre is a well, con- taining 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 after- wards exercised over the whole life of the Egyptians. We liave many proofs of his deification. On the coftin-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 de- ceased 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." § 17. According to the view of Bunsen, "The amalgama- tion 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 Avork of Menes converted the Delta from a desert, checkered over with lakes and morasses, into a blooming gar- den." After this, the political union of the two divisions was effected by the builder of Memphis. " Menes founded the Em2nre of Egypt by raising the people who inhabited the valley of the Nile from a little provincial station to that of an historical nation."" 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. 120-133. Two kings of the same name are perhaps mixed up in these fstories. Lepsius suspects that the skeptical Psammetichus, on whose shield Ave find ihe name Monkera as an "augmentation," may have been confounded Avith the pious rvramid-kiug. *° Kenrick, " Ancient Egypt," vol. ii. p. 138. '41 BuuseD, "Egypt's Place," etc., vol. i. p. -141 ; vol. ii. p. 400. UNION OF UPPER AND LOWER EGYPT. 7a Egyptian religion had received their permanent form under the' old Memphian kings. M. ^lariette has found the names of Osiris, Isis, and Xephthys, the great deities common to all Egypt, on monuments at Sakkara, which he regards as con- temporary with Cheops. § 18. The Sioith Dynasty^ of six kings in 203 years, is styled by Manetho Memphian. Some hold that this Sixth Dynasty succeeded the Fourth at Memphis, wliile the Fifth continued to reign at Elephantine, even as late as the domination of the Shepherd-kings in Lower Egypt. ^" In the absence ofMane- tho's Ilistor}', his mere List fails to vshow the ground of dis- tinction between the dynasties, or the causes which handed down, or handed over, the power fi-om each to its successor. But he tells us that the tirst king of the Sixth Dynasty, Othoes, was killed by his guards, after a reign of thirty years." 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 Ele- phantine. But, be the cause what it might, the second king of the Sixth Dynasty, Pepi-Maire or Pepi-B.emcd (Phios, M.)," ruled over the whole country, with a power attested by the nuni- ber and variety of his monuments, from Syene at the cata- racts to Tan is in the Delta. The monument which gives us his titular name indicate* that he constructed or improved the road to the port oi Kos- seii\ 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 Fepi is attested by his monu- ments to the east and south of Egypt. We see him warring ■^2 The evidence for this is an inscription, making Unas, the last king of the Fifib Dynasty (Onuos in Manetho) contemporary with Assa, the Fifth king of the Fifteenth DjTiasty (of Shepherds) at Memphis ; bnt the reading is very doubtful. Lepsius cou' eiders not only the fifth dynasty (whose seat at Elephantine bordered on Ethiopia) bnt the sixth also, as Ethiopian'; their fifteen kings, with the three of the twenty-fifth dynasty, making up the eighteen Ethiopian kings of Herodotus. <3 The monuments show two competitors against this king, whose name appear^ as A ti. 44 Either reading has the same ineaning— " 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 /Vji?, and Mairc or Remai, seal- ed 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 kings prefixed in a separate shield to that containing the phonetic characters of their own names, it seems most probable that thie was another mode of signifying the same thing. If so, Pepi's is the first example of a titular prae- nomen among the Egyptian kings^ The kings of the Fourth and other eai ly dynasties have but one shiekCcontainiug their uanies in phonetic characters. 76 THE OLD MONARCHY. against the Arabs of the peninsula of Sinai (like tlve kings of the Fourth Dynasty) ; against otlier Arab tribes between Upper Egypt and the Red Sea ; and in Ethiopia, above the second cataract, against tlie Wa-Wa, a people of a decidedly negro tyi)e.''^ A second Pepl, surnamed Neferkera (Phiops, 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 ;" but noth- ino' 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, vrhose name was read to Herodotus among the 330 kings, the " rosy-cheeked " Nitoeris'' of M:ine- tho, wlio 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 le- gend which the ])riests related to Herodotus, that she suc- ceeded hev brother, who had been put to death by his sub- jects ; andj having invited the principal murderers to a ban- quet in a subterranean chamber, she let in the river upon them as tiiey were feasting. Then, to escape the veng-eance of their friends, she threw herself into an apartment full of ashes.^^ Manet]]o assigns 12 years to her reign, and says that she built the Tliird'Pyramid, that, namely, of Mycerinus.^ Now it is remarkable that this pyramid has been at some time en- larged, tlie original enti-ance having been built over l)y 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 courte- san Ivhodope, is an undesigned corroboration of its connection with Nitocris, for the Greek word Bhodo^je has the same meaning as the " rosy-cheeked" queen of Manetho. "'■* 45 It is enough to meutiou, without discussing, the iuference, that Nu'oia was at this time occnuied by a uegio population, previous to the entrance of the Cushite Ethiopians from S. Arabia across the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb. (See Lenornv.mt, " Histoire Ancienne," vol. i. p. 209.) ^6 Eratosthenes assigns 100 years to Apappua; and the name Pepi may bo read Apap. The Turin pnjjyrus gives 90 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 Neitakri, i. e. " Neith (Minerva) the Victorious." Her name is in ihe 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. Wilkinson conjectiues) may have been an Egyptiafi princess, demanded in marrias:e by the King of Babylon on his invasion of Egypt. The wife of Psammetichus III. was also named Neitakri. SccRawlinson's " Herodotus," Note to ii. 100. 4» Herod, ii. 100. The last j^art of the story, at all events, seems of foreign origin. Smothering in ashes was a Persian }>nnishnicnt, but unknown to the Egyptians. 49 Herod, ii. 134. The historical Khodopc, v.ho.-e proper name was Dorichu (aa NTTOCRIS. 77 § 19. With Nicotris ends the splendor of the Old Mem- phian Monarchy ; and the result of the preceding troubles is traced in the eclipse that settles over Egyptian his- tory from the Sixth Dynasty to the Eleventh. For this in- terval the monuments are dumb ; or rather, there are no monuments to speak.'" The Seventh Dynasty, of 70 kings in as many days, looks like an interregnum of a senate or a priestly college." To the Eighth Dynasty Manetho assigns 28 kings in 146 years,''' and that is all we know. On the hypothesis that Manetho's dynasties are in part contem- j^orary, these shadowy dynasties seem the remnants left at Memphis of a divided em])ire, on the ruins of which new kingdoms were founded in Middle and Upper Egypt, proba- bly during the troublous times of the Sixth Dynasty." The seat of tiij former was at Heracleopolis ;'* that of the latter was at the new capital of Upper Egypt, whicli 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 years" and the 19 of the Tenth in 185 years, we are only told that the first, Achthoes, was the most atrocious of all who pre- ceded 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 Psamnietichns, under circumctances resembling the tale of Cinderella, and of her bnrial in the Third Pyramid, seems to have arisen from a double confusion with the two Neitakris, the ancient queen and the wife of Psammetichus III. (^liau. " Var. Hist." xiii. 33 ; Strabo, xvii. p. SOO. 50 The hypothesis of a foreign invasion has been suggested, on the ground that the ccmiparisou 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 ccmfessedly very doubtful. See Lenormant, " Histoire Aucienne," vol. i. p. 211. 51 The reading of Eusebius (Armenian Version), five kings in seveuty-live days, seems an arbitrary correction. Mr. Poole regards the seventh and eighth as native dynasties who temporarily rcc(.vered jjovver at Memphis, at the ^nd of the Fifteenth Di/nast;;, the first of the Shepherd Kings. 52 Oi- five kings in one hundred years.— Euseb. " Chron. Arm." 53 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 dy- nasty against the separatists of the Delta, represented in the ninth aud tenth Herac- leopolite dynasties. 54 Heracleopolis the Grer/t is di).ibtless 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 ideiititied with Hercules) stood at the mouth of the opening from the valley of the Nile into the Fyuin, on an island formed by the Nile, the Bahr Yusvf, and a canal, in a position well suited for a capital both of Upper and Lower Eirypt. Its site is marked by the mounds al)out the village of Ancmeh or Anas-cl-Mcdinch, the Coptic Hims. There is, however, a doubt both as to the name and numbers of these two dynasties. See chap. iv. 5 3. ** So in Eusebius, " Chron. Arm." Africanus has 19 kings in 409 years. 78 THE OLD MONARCHY. fato looks like a local tradition, to account far the permanent hostility of the Heracleopolites to the crocodile, which was worshipped by their neiglibors of Arsinoe in the FyUni. Considering the position of Heracleopolis, and the number of years assigned to its two dynasties, it seems not improba- ble that the great engineering works by which the Lake Moiris was made a reservoir for i-egulating the inundation of the I'lilc, were at least commenced during this period. " If the Fyuni 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/® § 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, 710 established Egijptian chronology ; and, if data exist from whicli it miglit 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 essen- tial elements, at least 4000 years ago ! The chief principles on which the constrnction of a chro- nology 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 chil- iad B.C." But, besides that the various numbers in the dif- ferent 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 calcula- tions derived from the various epochs and periods which are known to have been used by the Egyptians, but 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.'' (iii.) Partly in conjunction with the preceding method, and partly ^8 Keurick, "Ancient Egj'pt," vol. ii. p. 156. 5T The priests told Herodotus that there had been Ml generations, both of kings and high-priests, from Menes to Sethos ; and this he calculates at 11,340 years. The " Long Chronology " has been adopted, with varions moditications, by the most dis- tinguished Continental Egyptologers, as Bunsen, Lepsins, and Renan. Lepsins, in his "Letters from Egypt" (1852), makes the Era of Menes u.o. 4800, and that of the Fourth Dynasty u.o. 4000 ; but in his " Konigsbuch " he brings doAvn the same dates about 1)00 years lower, namely, u.o. 3892 and b.o. 3124. Bnusen puts them at b.o. 3623 and ]$.«!. 3'20;) respectively. 58 See Ml-. Poole's " Horte Eeyptiaca;," and art. Egypt in the "Eucyclopsedia Bri- taniiica," ninth edition. EAKLY CIIlIONX)LOGy. 71» by itself, the Great Pyramid has been made, by astronomical calculations, to tell the date of its own erection. This meth- od 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 ob- ject of the Pyramid, which lie quite beyond our province.^® The three chief pyramids are all accurately placed with their four faces to the four points of the compass, a fact itself suo-gestive of the astronomical knowledge of their builders. Then* entrance is always on the northern face, by a long slop- ing passage, the angle of which with the horizon differs but slightly from 30°, which is just the latitude of Jizeh. More- over, this difference is almost uniform in the three pyramids, and its mean gives 26° 16' for the inclination of the p:issage. 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 we 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 alw^ays 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 ar- gued) niust 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 2170 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 in- tended to point to the polar star.^" On the whole, however, 59 The curious in such matters are rcferied to the late Mr. John Taylor's work on " The Great Pyramid " (1S50 and 1864), 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. 1S6T). The leading idea of these authors is that the Great Pyramid is (whether with any other purpose or nol ) rt monument of vietrological stamlards. But the pains-taking measiuements and scientific authority of the Astronomer Royal for Scotland give his work a value, which is quite independent of his theory. 80 Sir Henry James— in his valuable tract ("Notes on the Great Pyramid of Egypt and the Cubits u:-:ed in its Design"), 18G9, giving the results of the measurements of the Great Pyramid by the Ordnance Surveyors in the winter of 1S68-9— points out that the slcMie of the entrance passage (a little over 20°) is just the "angle of rest" for 80 THE OLD MONARCHY. we may venture so fur 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 clironology. The chronology of Scripture, even if thoroughly establish- ed, would only aid ut with a maximum limit of time ; for it is agreed on all hands that we have not yet reached the ej^och of Abraham's visit to Egypt. guch materials as the stoue of the Pyramids, and therefore the proper inclination for enabling the sarcophagus to be easilj' moved, without letting it descend of itself. This is Just as good a " sufficient reason" as the astronomical theory, and equally ac- counts for the near agreement of the slope in both of the passages, and in all the chief pyramids. The exact slope iu the Great Pyramid is 26° 23'. ml^ ^^(;,— . Bull-fight. CHAPTER IV. THE MIDDLE MOXARCHY AND THE SHEPHERD KINGS. 5 1 Siiimnary of the Period. Dynasties XI, to XVII. The Theban, Shepherd, ancl Xolte Kingdoms. § 2. The Eleventh Dijnasti/. Infancy of the Theban Monarchy. § 3. Monuments of the Enentefs and Muntotps. Amenemks I. § 4. Order of the Kings of the Twelfth Dynasty. § 5. Their recovery of Egypt and Sinai. Monu- ments of Sesortaseu I. § 6. Amenemks II., killed by his eunuchs. Arabian con- quests. § 7. Sf.gortasen III. Prototype of SKgosruis. His conquests and for- tresses in Ethiopia. His deification. State of Ethiojiia at this time. His brick pyramid at Dashoor. § S. Amenemes III., builder of the Labyrinth. § 9. The Lake Moeris, as described by Herodotus. The natural lake, Birket-el-Kerun, wot the Lake Moeris. Discovery of the latter by ]M. Linaut. § 10. Use of the Lake Moeris. Change in the Nile by the breaking of the rocky barrier at Silsilis. § 11. The Art of the Twelfth Dynasty. § 12. Sepulchral grottoes of Beui-hassan. Scenes of life under the Middle Monarchy. Great lords: their possessions and functions. § 13. Tomb of Arueni: its pictures and epitaph. § 14. First appear- ance of military exploits and captiA'es. Grouj) of Jebusit^s, formerly taken from the Famil'j of Jacob. § 15. The Thirteenth {Theban), and Fourteenth {Xolte) D:j- vMiiths: their relations to each other and to the Shepherd Kings. § IG. The Hyk- S03, or Shepherd Kinfjf<. Their story as quoted from Manetho by Josephus. Ab- surdity of their identification with the Hebrews. § 17. Real meaning of the nar- rative. Race of the Shepherd Kings. § IS. Progress of the conquest. Their re- lations to the kingdom of Upper Egypt. § 19. Monumental 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 Shep- herd Monuments. § •2(). Adoption of Egyptian customs. Time of Jobeph. § 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, tliough perhaps developed from an old local monarchy or viceroyalty. This kingdom is call- ed by Manetho BiospoUtan (that is, Tlteban) ; but that cnpi- tal was only as yet in the infoncy of its power. Beginning with the obscure Eleventh Dynasty^ this monarchy, m tln^ 82 THE MIDDLE MONARCHY. Tioelfth Dynasty^ extended its power over all Eg'ypt, 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 inter- mingled), who are included under the general name o? Ilyk- SOS, or Shepherd Kings, entered the Delta from the East, whether in mere rapacity for the country's wealth, or press- ed 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 Mem- phis — where they appear at length to have respected the re- ligion and adopted the usages, as well as the name, of the Egyptians — they waged long wars with the kingdom of the Thebaid. The llyksos were ultimately successful; but tlse continuity of the Tlieban Monarchy was never entirely broken. Sometimes, as under a part of the Thirteenth Dynas- ty, its kings took refuge in Ethiopia, and used the military resources of that country against the invaders ; sometimes they seem to have become tributaiy to the Hyksos ; and so intricate were their relations tliat, in the various copies of Manetho's Lists, the 15t}i, 16th, and 17th dynasties figure both as Shepherd and Theban. At the same time another native dynasty, the 1 4th, sur- vived at Xo'is, 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 peo- ple 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.' § 2. A line of deraarkation 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 An)menemes," the immediate ancestor of the Twelfth Dynasty. The monu- ments confirm the view that the r2th dynasty sprang from the 11th; and the line of demarkation is best drawn at the beginning of the Eleventh Dynasty, as the true commence- ment of the dominion of Upper Egypt. Such a line is justi- fied by tlie monuments : — " When," says M. Mariette, " with the Eleventh Dynasty we see Egypt awake from her long isleep, the old traditions are forgotten. The proper names used in the old families, the titles given to the functionaries, 1 Tlie description of Thebes belongs more properly to the next chapter. THE ENENTEFS AND MUNTOTPS. 8-^ tlie writing itself, and every thing, even to the religion, seem., to be new. Thinis, Elephantine, AEenij^liis, are nolonger tlie chosen capitals: it is Thebes which becomes, for the first time, the seat of the sovereign power. Egypt is, besides, dis- possessed of a notable part of her territory, and the authori- ty of the legitimate kings no longer extends beyond a limit- ed district of the Thebaid. The study of the monuments confirms these general views. They are rude, pi-imitive, sometimes clumsy ; and, from their appearance, we might believe that Egypt, under the Eleventh Dynasty, was i-ecom- mencing the period of infancy through Avhich it had passed under the Third." § 3. Very few monuments, however, of the Middle Mon- archy are found at Thebes. Tliose of the Eleventh are chief- ly at Hermonthis, and the most remarkable of the Twelfth are about Lake Moeris (in the Ft/uni) and in the rock-hewu tombs of J?e/ie*-Art6'5. Ameres. 5. Amenemhe III. G. Ammenemes. 6. Amenemlie IV. 7. Skemiophris (his sister). 7. Ka-Sebeknofiii. Tlie 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.^ Tlie monu- ments of Sesortasen I. (son of Amenemes I.)*" 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 ; wliile liis name, inscribed on the rocks of Sinai, proves the re-con- quest of that peninsula and the renewed working of its mines. So far as the monuments are concerned, he may claim to rank as \\\Q founder of Thebes^ for liis name is seen on the oldest portion of the great temple of Karnak, and on a broken statue. Sepulchral tablets bearing his name are found in the necrop- olis of Abydos and in that of Memphis. In Lower Egypt an obelisk of his is still erect at IIelio])olis, and a fallen one in t\\Q Fyihn is the first sign of tJJe great works of his dy- nasty in that district. § 6. Of Amenemes II. Manetho only says tliat he was kill- ed by his own eunuchs;' but a monument of his 28th year records his conquests over the people of Ponnt. while its po- sition at a watering-place on the road to jffb^se^'?* attests com- mercial intercourse with the Arabian Gulf* This monument even indicates Egyj)tian conquests in Arabia; for "the Pount^ with whom the kings of the 18th and 19th dynasties were af- terwards at war, were a northern race, being ])laced, on monu- ments at Soleb and elsewhere, with the Asiatic tribes. They * Lepsiiis, Bnnsen, etc., read the S-i: Sir G. Wilkinson adheres to the 0. '•> This fact seems to contiadict the theory which phices the irruption of the Shep- herds at or before this epoch. « Manetho. "> Kenrick translntes tlvovxoi literally " truards of the bed-chamber," on the