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THE HISTORY OF ANTIQUITY.

THE

HISTORY OF ANTIQUITY.

FROM THE GERMAN

OF

PROFESSOR MAX DUNCKER,

BY

EVELYN ABBOTT, M.A.,
FELLOW AND TUTOR OF BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD.

VOL. I.

LONDON:
RICHARD BENTLEY & SON, NEW BURLINGTON STREET,
Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen.
1877.

PREFACE

TO THE ENGLISH EDITION.

Fifty years ago, the opinion was held by some that we could watch, in the tradition of the most ancient realms of the East, the first awkward steps in the childhood of the human race, while others believed that it was possible to discover there the remnants of an original wisdom, received by mankind at the beginning of their course immediately from the hand of heaven. The monuments of the East, subsequently discovered and investigated by the combined labour of English, German, and French scholars, have added an unexpected abundance of fresh information to the Hebrew Scriptures and the narratives of the Greeks, which, till then, were almost our only resource. No one can any longer be ignorant that Hither Asia at a very remote period was in possession of a rich and many-sided civilisation. The earliest stages of that civilisation in the valley of the Nile, of the Euphrates and the Tigris, on the coasts and in the interior of Syria are, it is true, entirely hidden from our knowledge; even the far more recent culture of the Aryan tribes we can only trace with the help of the Veda and the Avesta back to the point at which they were already acquainted with agriculture, and possessed considerable artistic skill.

Our object in regard to the ancient East is not to retrace the beginning of human civilization, but rather to understand and establish the value and extent of those early phases of civilisation to which the entire development of the human race goes back. The way to this aim is clearly sketched out for us. A minute comparison of tradition with the results of the successful advance of Oriental studies, a conscientious examination of the one by the other, opens out to us the prospect of discerning more precisely the nature of those ancient constitutions and modes of life.

To this purpose I have undertaken to contribute by a descriptive treatment of the subject. Such an attempt appeared to me indicated by the consideration that the fragments of our knowledge—and more than fragments we do not at present possess, and never shall possess, even though we assume that the number of monuments be considerably increased—if conscientiously brought together, would produce the most effective impression by exhibiting the connection of all the various sides of those ancient civilisations—and if to this collection were added the conclusions that can be drawn from it and from the monuments about the political life, the religion, the manners and laws, the art and trade of those nations.

How to offer in a general survey the sum total of these fragments of the ancient East is a problem attended with difficulties which I have felt at every step in my work. There are not many corner-stones immovably fixed; the outlines are often to be drawn with a wavering pen; the unavoidable explanations of the gaps to be filled up admit of a variety of opinions. Hence it is often—only too often—necessary to interrupt the narrative by comments, in order to support the view taken by the author, or refute other views, or arrive at the conclusion that there is no sufficient evidence for a final decision. The best mode of remedying these disagreeable interruptions was first to state the tradition, which is generally closely connected with the peculiar nature of the people whose fortunes it narrates, and if not actually true, is nevertheless characteristic of the manners and views of the nation, and then to examine this tradition in and by itself, and in conjunction with the monuments; to state the opposite interpretations; and, finally, to give the results thus obtained. In this way narrative and investigation are combined in such a manner that the reader is enabled to pursue the inquiry. The data and the critical examination of them, and lastly the results obtained, are put before him for his own decision.

The objections, made of late to the results of Assyrian researches, touch certain points only, in which over-hasty conclusions have prematurely declared the enigma to be solved. Whatever doubts may still remain, I have felt the more confidence in following the main results, because wherever Asshur and Israel come into contact the Hebrew Scriptures agree with the records of the kings of Asshur. Who could understand the meaning of the verses of Nahum (iii. 8-10), of the fate of "No-Ammon, to whose aid came Ethiopians, Arabians, and Libyans," till G. Smith discovered the document of Assurbanipal relating to the capture of Thebes? Who could explain the words of Ezekiel about the grave of Elam (xxxii. 27) till the tiles of Babylonia and Assyria told us of the ancient supremacy and power of this kingdom, and of its battles with the Assyrians, and subjugation by their arms? If, in chronology, I have given the preference to the tablets of the Assyrian Archons over the Books of Kings, I have done so, not because I hold the former to be infallible, but because the chronological dates in the Books of Kings prove, by more than one contradiction, that they have not come down to us intact.

My narrative embraces those independent civilisations of the ancient East which came to exercise a mutual influence on each other. First we follow the realm on the Nile and the kingdoms of Hither Asia as far as the point where the nations of Iran began to influence their destinies. Then I attempt to set forth the peculiar development of the Aryan tribes in the valleys of the Indus and the Ganges, down to the times of Tshandragupta and Asoka. Then follows the history of the Bactrians, the Medes, and the Persians, until the period when the nations of the table-land of Iran were united by Cyrus and Darius with the countries of Western Asia, when Aryan life and Aryan civilisation gained the supremacy over the whole region from Ceylon to the Nile and the Hellespont. The forms of life at which the great empires of Asia had arrived are finally brought face to face with the more youthful civilisation attained by the Hellenes in their mountain cantons. This new development we follow down to the first great shock when East and West met in conflict, and the Achæmenids sought to crush the Hellenes under the weight of Asia. With the failure of this attempt my history of the ancient world concludes.

Max Duncker.

Berlin, March, 1877.

CONTENTS.

ERRATA.

BOOK I.

EGYPT.

EGYPT.

CHAPTER I.

THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE.

History knows nothing of her infancy. The beginning of the development of the human race lies beyond the sphere of memory, and so also do the first steps in that development. The early stages of culture—whether in nations or individuals—are unconscious, and unobservant of self; they are therefore without the conditions which make remembrance possible. The original forms of social life in the family and in the tribe, the movement of wandering hunters and shepherds, the earliest steps in agriculture, could leave behind them neither monuments nor records. It is true no gifted or favoured nation, which has raised itself above these beginnings to civic life and independent culture, has neglected to cast a backward glance upon the history of its past. Everywhere the attempt has been made to present the past from the later point of culture. Whether the memory reaches but a little way, or goes back far into the past, it is always enriched by ideas taken from religious conceptions, or national pride, from reflection or theory. Such reconstructions are significant of the nature and character of the people for whom they replace the history of their youth, but they have no claim to represent the actual course of their development. The case is different when the growing culture of a people is observed by nations already at a higher grade of civilisation. The Romans were in a position to leave behind a picture of the youthful German tribes; the Byzantines could inform us of the movements of the Slaves; modern Europe could observe the tribes of America, the nomadic shepherds of Asia, and the islanders of the South Sea from a higher and riper point of development.

The oldest kingdoms of which tradition and monuments preserve any information passed unobserved through the earliest stages of their culture. Tradition and the earliest monuments present them already in the possession of a many-sided and highly-developed civilisation. In what way these nations, the oldest representatives of the culture of mankind, arrived at their possession, we can only deduce from such evidence as is before us anterior to tradition and independent of it—from the nature of the regions where these civilisations sprung up, from the physical character and constitution of the nations which developed them, from their languages and their religious ideas.

The history of antiquity is the description of the forms of culture first attained by the human race. If it is impossible to discover the origin of these forms historically, and the attempt is made to indicate their preliminary stages, so far as the recorded elements allow connected conclusions, it becomes the chief object of such a history to recover from the fragments of monuments and tradition the culture of the ancient East, and of the Hellenes so closely connected with the East: to reconstruct from isolated relics and myths the image of that rich and ample life which filled the East in religion and state, in art and industry, in research and commerce, in political struggles and intense religious devotion, long before the time when Solon gave laws to the Athenians, and the army of Cyrus trod the shore of the Ægean Sea.

The oldest civilisation, the oldest state grew up on that quarter of the globe which seems least favourable to the development of mankind. On either side of the equator, Africa stretches out in huge land-locked masses. A vast table-land occupies the whole south of the continent, and in the north sinks down to a plain more impassable even than the broad seas which wash the coasts of Africa on the west, south, and east. This plain—the bed of a dry sea—lies in the burning sun without vegetation. Only where springs water the thirsty soil do fruitful islands rise out of the moving sand, the lonely waste of ravines, the craggy ridges, and bald platforms of rock.

As the sea nowhere indents the coasts of Africa with deep bays, the rivers cannot excavate broad and fruitful valleys, and provide means of access to the interior. The high table-land is surrounded by a steep rampart of mountains, which descend in terraces to the coast, and here, almost without exception, leave narrow strips of low and marshy land. Through the barrier drawn around them by this rampart the rivers must force their path in a violent course, in waterfalls and rapids, in order to fall into the sea after a short, and proportionately more sluggish course through the narrow strip on the shore.

The table-land, its rampart of mountains, and the long lines of coast, are, with the exception of the southern apex and the Alpine territory of Abyssinia in the east, the dwelling-places of the black race—the negro. However great the number of negro nations and tribes, however much they differ in physical form and in dialect—living as they do beneath a vertical sun, in regions difficult of access—they have never risen beyond the infancy of human civilisation—a rude worship of gods. Wherever they have not been powerfully affected by the introduction of foreign elements, generation has followed generation without remembrance or essential alteration.

The north coast of Africa is of a different character to the rest of the continent. While the western coast looks to the broad Atlantic Ocean, and the waves which break on the southern apex lead to the ice of the pole, the north coast is separated from the neighbouring shores by a basin of moderate extent. It is a mountainous district which fills up the space between the Sahara and the Mediterranean. Towards the west the peaks of Atlas reach, even in this climate, to the region of eternal snow; on the east, towards the mouths of the Nile, the hills gradually sink down, and the plain of Barca rises little more than 1,000 feet above the sea level. Numerous chains of hills, at one time pressing close upon the sea, at another leaving more extensive plains upon the coast, cover the northern edge, which along the deep valleys of the mountain streams exhibits that vigorous and luxuriant vegetation so characteristic of Africa when not checked by want of water, although even these fruitful valleys are again in their turn broken by droughty, and therefore bare, table-lands and depressions.

On this northern coast, toward the Mediterranean, opens the valley which, in extent of fruitful territory, is the largest in the whole continent. It occupies the north-east corner of Africa, which is only separated from Arabia by a narrow strip of sea, and carries its gleaming waters through the wide space from the subsidence of the table-land down to the coast, where for almost its whole remaining breadth the continent is filled up with the desert of Sahara.

From the north-east spur of the table-land, out of vast lakes (Ukerewe), fed from the glaciers and snows of huge mountains lying under the equator, and passing through the lower lake Mwutan, flows the western arm of the Nile, the White Nile, Bahr-el-Abiad. After bursting through the terraces of the mountain, it reaches, at the foot, a woody morass, filled with thickets of tamarisks and sycamores, of bamboo and reeds and tall creepers, inhabited by the elephant and rhinoceros, the hippopotamus and the crocodile, the zebra and hyena, by antelopes and snakes. Then the stream passes into broad savannas, covered here and there with tropic forests, and while flowing through a mountainous district of moderate elevation, it unites with the eastern arm, the Blue Nile, Bahr-el-Azrak, which, rising further to the east out of the Abyssinian plateau, brings down a far smaller bulk of water from the Alpine glades of the snowy mountain Samen. Combined into one stream, these waters flow through a broad expanse of rock and desert, covered with conical stones of volcanic origin. The lines of hills running parallel to the terraces of the mountain rampart lie athwart the river; and through this barrier it breaks in numerous cataracts. Only in the depressions between them can the soil, refreshed with water, support vegetation. Finally, at Syene the Nile passes through the last cataract. Henceforward the structure of the mountains is changed. A fissure in the rock about 750 miles long opens on the Mediterranean; and through this the mighty river—at the last cataract it is 3,000 feet in breadth—can flow onward in undisturbed peace to the ocean.

Out of this fissure the Nile has created a narrow strip of fruitful soil—the valley is not more than three or four hours in breadth on an average—which is secured by the heights on the west from the moving sand and the storms of the great desert, and is separated by the mountain on the east from the rocky crags, the desolate flats, and sandy dunes which fill up the space between the valley of the river and the Red Sea. To this valley the mighty river not only gives a refreshing coolness and moisture by the mass of its waters, it fertilises and manures it from year to year by its overflow. At the summer solstice, when the snow on the peaks of the lofty mountains, in which the two arms of the Nile take their rise, is melting, and the tropical rains fall upon its upper course, the waters of the river slowly and gradually rise. Towards the end of July it passes over the banks and overflows the whole valley as far as the enclosing lines of hills, so that towards the end of September it stands more than twenty feet above the lowest water level. Falling as gradually as it rose after more than four months it sinks back to the ordinary level. Wherever the overflowing waters have covered the land, there is left behind a fertilising mud or slime. This is the soil which the two rivers before uniting have washed from the upper hills. Carried down by the stream, it is deposited by the gentle flow of the waters on the surface of the valley. The refreshment of the earth by the inundation, the fertilisation by this slime, and the cooling of the air by the immense body of water, are the essential advantages which Egypt owes to her river, and hence, even as early as Herodotus, Egypt seemed to be the gift of the Nile. The watering of the soil and the cooling of the air just in the very hottest months of the year, are the more invaluable because the blue and gleaming sky of the upper valley is never darkened by rain clouds, while the heat is severe, and the storms from the south-west occasionally carry the sand and the dust over the Libyan hills into the Nile. In the Delta, the region along the lowest course of the Nile, showers occasionally rise from the neighbouring sea; and through eight months of the year the whole valley opening on the Mediterranean is fanned by refreshing winds from the north, which also facilitate navigation against the stream.

This river-valley, the like of which in nature and formation is not to be found in the whole globe, offered in its seclusion a peculiarly favoured spot. It was a small green oasis of luxuriant fertility and grateful coolness in the midst of boundless deserts. The dwellers in a land whose soil was every year newly manured by nature, which brought forth abundantly almost without labour, must very soon have abandoned a pastoral life for agriculture, and in consequence have acquired fixed abodes and settled possessions. But the yearly inundation compelled them also at an early period to protect their flocks from the water, to secure their habitations, to observe the periods of the rising and falling of the stream. The long duration of the overflow made it necessary to provide for the support of man and beast. They had to learn how to carry on their dealings with each other upon the water, when the whole valley was still filled with the river, and to mark out firmly the limits of their plots, so that they might again take possession of them after the inundation. In Nubia the cataracts stopped the navigation of the river, and the lines of rock and strips of desert made intercourse difficult, and confined the life of the tribes within the limits of the native valley to their separate possessions. In Egypt, within the two lines of hills, land and river created no hindrance. A region so concentrated could not but carry the tribes beyond the limits of separate existence; the very land forced them to live a life more in common. There was only a slight natural distinction between the more secluded upper valley and the lower opening in the Delta about the mouths of the Nile; and this could merely have a stimulating effect upon the development of culture, without interfering in any way with its unity. Nevertheless the community of life in the valley of the Nile was not caused solely by the nature of the land. The tribes of the deserts around this long and narrow oasis must have had all the more lively a sense of the charm of the favoured valley owing to the difficulty with which they procured their own subsistence. Against these plundering neighbours, and their attempts to force themselves into the valley of blessing and abundance, the inhabitants of Egypt had to combine their forces. They needed a strong centralized command, a warlike monarchy, to which here, earlier than elsewhere, the patriarchal government of the tribes would therefore give way.

Egypt kept her inhabitants secluded within hard and fast limits; beyond the hills began the desert. With the increasing number of inhabitants the attempt must have been made to set low-lying marshy districts free from the excess of water, and to make fruitful the higher parts of the valley beyond the reach of the inundations by bringing the water upon them. Experience quickly taught that the plot produced the most abundant fruits on which the inundation had continued longest, and consequently had time to deposit the thickest layer of mud. Hence the attempt was made to keep the water longer on the soil by means of dykes. These objects, in regard to which the interests of the several districts differed, and which required the combination of large masses of operatives to carry them out, must have made the need of a supreme decisive and executive power felt earlier in Egypt than in other lands.

The inhabitants of Egypt found themselves surrounded by a solemn landscape, before fixed and unchanging forms and outlines, in the midst of natural phenomena, recurring with invariable regularity and always in the same succession. Such surroundings and impressions must have stamped on the young life of a ripening nation a settled, stern, and unvarying character. When the original unity and society of life, which comprises all members of the family and in the tribe, has been broken through—when at the beginning of their settled life some have turned their attention to agriculture and cattle, others to hunting and war, others again to the fulfilment of religious duties—the sons are wont to carry on the vocation of the fathers. This is the rule often in far more advanced periods; and simpler conditions of life compel the son to carry on the life of the father, in whose occupation he has grown up. In such times there is no mode of teaching and instruction but through the family. In this way the tribes and the nation part into separate circles, which carry on as an inheritance the mode of life derived from their forefathers. These divisions of occupation, of vocation, and mode of life could be carried out earlier and with greater sharpness in Egypt than in other lands.

As life becomes more settled and developed, there are always found families with an especial liking for war. They are enriched by the spoil which is the fruit of their bravery, and protect the agricultural and pastoral part of their tribe from the attacks of plunderers. Every nation gives willing honour to the brave warriors among them, and gladly recognises the superiority of a mode of life which puts life to the risk over other occupations. And when, from the early simple stage, in which every head of a family approaches the gods with his offerings in trust and confidence, religion has developed into a body of usages and customs which must be performed and followed out if any share is to be obtained in the grace of the gods, the exact knowledge of these can only be handed down from father to son. And if the mass of the population gives honour to the warriors, how much more readily will it bow down before those who, by their prayers, libations, and offerings, can bring them the fruits of the field and the blessing of the gods—protection in this world and salvation in the next! Moreover, if the families of warriors and priests, filled with the conviction of their own higher worth, disdain the occupations of the rest of the people; if they are convinced that they are of a better kind than the rest, that only from the noble and good can the noble and good arise—that better blood gives better feelings, and better birth better men—then in this feeling, so natural to a primitive era, they allow their occupation to be shared only by those who belong to their race; they take wives from their own class only, not from others; they give their daughters in marriage to their own people only. Thus the various modes of life and orders which naturally come into existence end in castes.

The more fruitful the land of Egypt, the richer the products of the soil, and the more frequent the necessity of repelling the plundering inroads of the desert tribes, the more rapidly did the distinction between the agricultural and military orders spring up. And the greater the pride with which the inhabitants of this favoured land might and did look down upon the miserable tribes of the desert, the more grateful were the looks turned towards the gods, who had given them so beautiful and productive a land in the midst of the desert, who supplied them with water, fertilised their soil, cooled the heat of the atmosphere and gave them life and plenty, while all around them reigned desolation and death. To these beneficent powers the inhabitants of the valley of the Nile could not refuse an earnest service of thanksgiving for blessings so rich and so ceaselessly renewed; by their piety they had also to provide that the gods would graciously preserve these blessings to them. It is obvious that a tone and feeling like this, arising in the population from the very nature of the land, must have been in a high degree conducive to the rise of a priestly order in Egypt.

Egypt had excellent natural boundaries. If the forces of the land were once united in a single hand, there could be no difficulty in repelling the tribes of the desert. Thenceforward there would be little reason to fear an enemy on this side of the boundary hills. No rival power could arise in the neighbouring deserts, and should any victorious state arise at a distance, the deserts checked the advance of their armies. It was much more probable that the united forces of the river-valley should subjugate the tribes of the surrounding desert. Hence the position of their land allowed the inhabitants of the valley to develop undisturbed. The culture once obtained could be quietly transmitted to others, and constantly extended. This circumstance, in connection with the domestic peace of the country under a monarchy, allowed the priesthood to extend their lore in unbroken tradition from generation to generation, while quietly amassing stores of knowledge; and with the increase of the population all the hands not required for agriculture—and in Egypt this claims but a small amount of labour—had to devote themselves to trade and manufacture. And even these arts were likely to attain the greater excellence in so far as the artisans and tillers of the ground were less disturbed by war and military service. The more distinct the boundaries of the land, the less to conquer and occupy outside them, the more industrious, amid the growing population, must have been the culture of the ground and the irrigation of it, the more actively must the artisans have pursued their trade, and industry must have developed with a greater vigour as the number of mouths requiring food increased.

So far as our knowledge reaches, the northern edge of Africa, like the valley of the Nile as far as the marshes at the foot of the Abyssinian hills, was inhabited by nations who in colour, language, and customs were sharply distinguished from the negro. These nations belong to the whites: their languages were most closely allied to the Semitic.[1] From this, and from their physical peculiarities, the conclusion has been drawn that these nations at some time migrated from Asia to the soil of Africa. They formed a vast family, whose dialects still continue in the language of the Berbers. Assisted by the favourable conditions of their land, the tribe which settled on the Lower Nile quickly left their kinsmen far behind. Indeed the latter hardly rose above a pastoral life. The descendants of these old inhabitants of the valley of the Nile, in spite of the numerous layers which the course of centuries has subsequently laid upon the soil of the land, still form the larger part of the population of Egypt, and the ancient language is preserved in the dialect of the Copts.[2]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Bunsen, "Ægypten," 5, 1, 75 ff.; Ebers, "Ægypten and die Bücher Moses," p. 43; Renan ("Histoire générale et système comparé des langues Sémitiques") will not admit this close connection.

[2] Brugsch ("Histoire d'Egypte," pp. 5, 6) explains the name Egypt by ha-ka-ptah, i. e. "the precinct of Ptah." As Ptah was more especially the god of Memphis, this name would have come from Memphis. The attempt has been repeatedly made to derive the civilisation of Egypt from Ethiopia and Meroe. But the problem of the origin of a given civilisation is not solved by removing it from the locality where it exists in full bloom to another, and as a rule more unknown, district. In the case before us this assumption is met by the peculiar difficulty, that the culture of Egypt is influenced essentially by the nature of the land, and therefore can hardly have had an external origin. It cannot be removed from a highly favoured locality into a district extremely hot, and fruitful only in detached oases, without making the explanation of its origin much more difficult. Moreover, the lower valley of the Nile has always ruled over the upper: even in mediæval and modern times. The inscriptions of Sargon, king of Assyria (722-705 B.C.), mention the king of Meroe (Miluhhi); those of Sennacherib (705-681 B.C.) tell us, "The kings of Egypt have summoned the archers, the chariots, the horses of the king of Miluhhi." The inscriptions of Esarhaddon (681-668 B.C.) speak of the "King of Egypt and Miluhhi," whom they also name "King of Egypt and Cush;" and the successor of Esarhaddon directed his first campaign against "Tarku" (Thirhaka) "of Egypt and Miluhhi." The word Meroe, therefore, as the name of a kingdom lying above Egypt on the Nile, must have been in use in Syria, even in the eighth century B.C. Hence the Greeks denote by this name an island, and also a city of the Upper Nile. According to Herodotus (2, 29) the great city Meroe, "which ought to be the chief city of the rest of the Ethiopians" (i. e. of those of whom the Egyptians were not the immediate neighbours), was forty days' journey and twelve days' sail (i. e. over 15,000 stadia) above Syene. Later authorities, Eratosthenes, Artemidorus, Strabo, Pliny, Ptolemy reduce the distance by nearly one-half; they regard the distance between Meroe and Syene as nearly equal to the distance from Syene to Alexandria, and fix the whole distance from Alexandria to Meroe at 10,000 to 12,000 stadia. As the town and island of Meroe must be south of the junction of the Astaboras (Atbara), (Strabo, p. 786), we must look for the island between the Atbara and the Blue Nile, and for the city in the ruins at the modern Begerauieh. Yet the chief town of the kingdom of Meroe, when it takes an active part in history, is not Begerauieh. King Thirhaka's residence lay near the modern Meraui under Mount Barkal. The name in inscriptions is Neb, and, consequently, in Greek and Latin Napata. Even under the Sesurtesen and Amenemha, Egypt ruled over Nubia as far as Semne and Kumna, under Amenophis III. as far as Soleb, and under Ramses II. as far as Mt. Barkal. The oldest ruins at this spot belong to a temple dedicated by this king to Ammon (Lepsius, "Reisebriefe," s. 238); next come the ruins of the buildings of Thirhaka, which differ as little from Egyptian buildings as those which he and his two Ethiopian predecessors erected in Egypt. Moreover, the later ruins found at Napata, especially some twenty small pyramids, are feeble imitations of Egyptian art. The same character of imitation is stamped upon the monuments of Begerauieh, though here it is mingled with foreign elements. This place, further removed from Egypt, and therefore more secure, was beyond doubt the residence of the kings of Meroe, at least from the time of Cambyses, and it was named after the country. Herodotus points out that Zeus and Dionysus, i. e. Osiris, were worshipped here, and that the oracle of Zeus, i. e. of Ammon, extended its authority over the Ethiopians: the further accounts which Diodorus preserves of this priesthood give a poor idea of their cultivation (3, 3 ff. Strabo, pp. 827, 828). At the time of the second Ptolemy, this priesthood was destroyed by the King, Ergamenes, whose name (Arkamen) Lepsius has discovered on ruins at Mt. Barkal, as well as Begerauieh, and an independent monarchy was established. Hence we must entirely give up the idea of deriving the supposed supremacy of the priesthood in Egypt, a supremacy which never existed here, from the priesthood formed at Begerauieh after the time of Thirhaka and Psammetichus (in the days of Psammetichus, Herodotus tells us that a king of the Ethiopians received strangers without an oracle, and gave them land, 2, 30); that is, in the sixth century B.C., which continued to exist till 250 B.C. Still less reason is there to suppose that the so-called Indian supremacy of the priesthood came through Meroe into Egypt. Rather we may feel ourselves justified in assuming that the elements of civilisation which took root on the middle Nile passed from Egypt to that district. In the inscriptions of Begerauieh the name Meroe occurs as Meru, and Merua, i. e. "White rock"; Lepsius, l. c. 205-232. As the banks of the Nile, here and also at Mt. Barkal, consist of whitish-yellow chalk rocks, the name of the land and its southern metropolis, of which the existence since the sixth century B.C. is demonstrated, may have been named from this peculiarity of the land.

CHAPTER II.

THE ANTIQUITY OF THE CIVILISATION IN THE VALLEY
OF THE NILE.

In the eighteenth century B.C., according to their reckoning, the tradition of the Hebrews presents us with a complete picture of court and civic life in the valley of the Nile, and it tells us of the building of cities in the east of the Delta, which, according to the same computation, must have been founded about the year 1550 B.C. The Homeric poems contain accounts of the land of Ægyptus, of the fair-flowing Zeus-born river of the same name, of the very beautiful fields and cities of Egypt, of princes who fought from their chariots, and finally of "Egyptian Thebes, where in the palaces lie the greatest treasures; a city with a hundred gates, from each of which go forth two hundred men with horses and chariots." They also add "that the fruitful earth bears abundance of drugs in Egypt, some mingled for good, others for evil, and there every one is a physician and has acquaintance with men; they are all sprung from the god of healing."[3]

According to the account given by the Greeks the Egyptians boasted to be the oldest of mankind, and to possess the most ancient traditions.[4] Their priests believed that they could compute the history of Egypt by thousands of years. When Herodotus was in Egypt about the middle of the fifth century B.C., the priests at Thebes read to him from a book the names of 331 kings who had reigned from Menes, the first ruler of Egypt, and the founder of Memphis, down to Moeris inclusive; among these were eighteen Ethiopians, and one queen; the rest were Egyptians. After Moeris came Sesostris, Pheron, Proteus, Rhampsinitus, Cheops and Chephren, Mycerinus, Asychis, Anysis, Sabakon, and Sethos, so that from Menes to Sethos 341 kings had reigned over Egypt in as many generations. Herodotus remarks that the priests assured him that they had an accurate knowledge of what they said, for the years were always enumerated and put down. To convince him they carried him into the great temple at Thebes and showed him there 345 wooden colossi of the chief priests who had presided over the temple through as many generations, in regular succession from father to son; for every chief priest placed his statue here during his own life-time. Before these kings and chief priests the gods had ruled over Egypt; first the Eight Gods, then the Twelve, then Osiris the Greek Dionysus, after him Typhon, and, last of all, Horus. From the time of King Amasis (570-526 B.C.) to the time of Osiris 15,000 years had passed, but from the time of the Twelve Gods to Amasis 17,000 years.[5]

Herodotus does not conceal the doubts raised in his mind by the high antiquity claimed in these accounts by the priests. He found an especial difficulty in the fact that Dionysus Osiris, who, according to his computation, was born 1,600 years at the most before his own time (i. e. about 2050 B.C.), must have lived more than 15,000 years earlier, according to the assertion of the Egyptians. By their account 341 kings reigned from Menes to Sethos; and on this basis Herodotus reckoned the duration and commencement of the Egyptian kingdom. He took 33⅓ years as the length of a generation, and thus Menes must have begun to reign 340 generations, or 11,340 years before the accession of Sethos. Further, Herodotus placed over 150 years between the accession of Sethos and the death of Amasis, and thus according to his data we get the enormous total of 11,500 years for the duration of the Egyptian kingdom from Menes till its overthrow by the Persians. Menes therefore must have ascended the throne before the year 12000 B.C.; the rule of Osiris commenced 15500 B.C.; and that of the Twelve Gods 17500 B.C.

If we leave the gods out of the question, and reduce the length of a generation, which Herodotus has put too high, to its real average of twenty-five years, the 340 generations with those of Sethos, Psammetichus, Necho, Psammetichus II., Apries, and Amasis, make up 8,650 years, and since the Persians took Egypt in 525 B.C., the beginning of the reign of Menes still falls in the year 9175 B.C. This incredible fact is not made more credible because Plato represents an Egyptian priest asserting to Solon that the annals of Sais reached back 8,000 years; or speaks in the "Laws" of works of Egyptian art, ten thousand years old.[6]

Four hundred years after Herodotus, Diodorus travelled to Egypt.[7] He tells that, according to some fabulous accounts, gods and heroes first ruled over Egypt for something less than 18,000 years. The last of these was Horus, the son of Isis. After these came 470 native kings, of whom the first was Menes, before the time of the Macedonian and Persian rule, and also four Ethiopian kings and five queens. The Ethiopians did not immediately succeed each other, but at intervals, and their united reigns amounted to a little less than thirty-six years. "Of all these kings the priests have sketches in their holy books, handed down through successive generations from extreme antiquity, showing how tall each king was, what he was like, and what he accomplished in his reign." If we place the reign of Menes 479 generations before Cambyses, this computation, on the reckoning of Herodotus, would place the accession of Menes in the year 16492 B.C.; taking a shorter average length for the generations, we may bring it to the year 12500 B.C. But Diodorus shows from other accounts that this mode of computation is inadmissible. He tells us that the priests of Egypt numbered about 23,000[8] years from the reign of Helius or Hephæstus, who, according to other priests, was the first of the gods to reign,[9] till the entrance of Alexander into Asia (334 B.C.). If of this total we allow about 18,000 years to the gods, the accession of Menes would have to be placed about the year 5300 B.C.[10] But as Diodorus also says that something less than 5,000 years had elapsed since the first human king to his arrival in Egypt, Menes' reign would fall about the year 5000 B.C. Diodorus fixes the accession of this king even more closely when he remarks, in a third passage, that the Egyptians assured him that, "for more than 4,700 years, kings, mostly natives, had ruled, and the land had prospered greatly under them."[11] With this agrees the further account given by Diodorus, that according to some the largest pyramid was built 3,400 years before his time. According to this Menes cannot be carried back further than 4,800 years B.C.

If Menes founded the kingdom of Egypt 4,800 years B.C., it continued for 4,275 years under native kings; and if in this period 346 kings ascended the throne, as Herodotus says, or 479, as Diodorus, the average duration of each reign would be in the first case more than twelve years, in the second less than nine, which contradicts all credible history. The lowest average of oriental reigns is fifteen years.

Still, from these accounts of Herodotus and Diodorus it is clear that the priests of Egypt possessed lists of the kings in long series, and that, according to their view, gods and demigods had ruled over Egypt for thousands of years before the earliest of these kings. After Greek princes had ascended the throne of the Pharaohs, and Egypt with its monuments and writings was opened to the research of the Greeks, Eratosthenes, who was the head of the library at Alexandria in the second half of the third century B.C., studied the history of these old kings—at "the royal request," as Georgius Syncellus tells us—in the old annals and lists of the Egyptians, and transcribed these lists in the Hellenic language.[12] This compilation of Eratosthenes contained the names and reigns of thirty-eight kings of Thebes. Syncellus repeats the list, and adds: "Here ended the rule of the thirty-eight kings who were called Theban in Egypt, whose names Eratosthenes collected out of the sacred books of Thebes and translated into the Hellenic language. The names of the fifty-three Theban kings who followed these have been also preserved by Apollodorus; but we consider it superfluous to add them, for even the list of the first is of no use."[13] Thus the researches of the Alexandrine Greeks had brought together a list of ninety-one kings, ninety successors of Menes, out of the writings of the priests of Thebes. As early as the time of Eratosthenes the Egyptians assisted the researches of the Greeks. About the middle of the third century B.C., that is, in the time of the second and third Ptolemy, an Egyptian named Manetho (Ma-n-thoth = "loved by Thoth"), of Sebennytus, and apparently scribe to the temple at Thebes,[14] composed in Greek a work on the history of Egypt in three books. "Obviously possessed of Hellenic culture"—so we find it in Josephus—"Manetho wrote the history of his country in Greek, translating it, as he tells us, from the sacred writings; he undertook to interpret Egyptian history from the sacred writings."[15] This work of Manetho was lost at an early period; all that remains is the list of the dynasties, a third part of the names of the kings, and a few fragments; and even these remnants we possess only in excerpts by a second or third hand. Manetho begins his history of Egypt with the rule of the gods. First came Ptah, the creative god of light, and the great gods, then the demigods, and Manes. After these had ruled over Egypt for 24,857 Egyptian years, according to the excerpt of Africanus, that is for 24,820 Julian years, the rule of human kings begins with Menes, and these continued through thirty dynasties for 5,366 years. As Manetho closes his list of the kings of Egypt with the last year of Nectanebos, who rebelled against Artaxerxes Ochus—i. e. with the year 340 B.C.—Menes must have founded the kingdom in the year 5706 B.C., or rather, if we reduce the Egyptian years of Manetho's reckoning to Julian years, in the year 5702 B.C.[16] This statement carries us back to a far less remote antiquity than the computation of the date of Menes by 346 generations previous to Cambyses; on the other hand, it goes 900 years higher than the date which we deduced from Diodorus.

What amount of authority should be ascribed to the lists of Manetho? Did the priests really possess sketches of kings and accounts of their reigns reaching back more than 5,000 years? In order to believe this, must we not allow that at such a remote time as the reign of Menes, or soon after it, writing was known and in use in Egypt? And granting this, must not the first beginning of culture in Egypt be carried back at least 500 years before Menes? Moreover, the lists do not correspond with the number of the kings given by Herodotus, or by Diodorus. Herodotus, as we said, put 346 generations before the time of Cambyses, Diodorus gave 479 kings before the same date. The excerpt of Africanus from Manetho, even if we substitute the smaller numbers given in the excerpt of Eusebius in all the dynasties, of which only the total sum of the rulers is stated, still gives us 388 kings from Menes to Cambyses.[17] If these discrepancies awaken the suspicion that the number and the succession of the kings was not agreed upon even by the priests themselves, the suspicion is increased by the fact that the lists do not tally in the various excerpts in which they have come down to us. What weight can be given to a list which, in the excerpt from Africanus, allows 953 years (or 802 at the least) to the rule of the Hyksos, and in the excerpt of Eusebius allows 103 years, and again 511 years in the excerpt of Josephus? Still greater discrepancies appear if we compare the list of Eratosthenes with the names and numbers handed down to us from Manetho's work. Both lists begin with Menes; both allow him a reign of sixty-two years; but Eratosthenes describes his thirty-eight kings as of Theban origin or race, while in Manetho the first Theban dynasty began to reign 2,240 years after Menes.[18] Nevertheless the names of the first three or four rulers in Eratosthenes agree with those in Manetho. Then the coincidence breaks off till the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth names in Eratosthenes, to which corresponding names are found in Manetho's list, but in the twenty-eighth, twenty-ninth, and thirtieth places; and from this point to the end of the list of Eratosthenes there are only two or three names to which corresponding names are found in Manetho, and these occur at far greater intervals in the series. The last name in Eratosthenes nearly corresponds to the name of the king, in Manetho, under whom the invasion of the Hyksos took place. If, therefore, we assume that the list of Eratosthenes was intended to enumerate the kings who ruled over Egypt to this date, we find thirty-eight kings who must have reigned through 1076 years; and, as parallel to these, we find in Manetho fourteen dynasties with at least 241 kings, occupying a period of 3,084 years.

Scarcely less striking are the contradictions in the monuments themselves. In the temple of Ammon at Karnak, which was extended on a magnificent scale by Tuthmosis III. (1591-1565 B.C.),[19] the king is delineated twice in a colossal form on the back wall of a chamber. Between the two pictures sit sixty-four kings in four rows one over the other. The inscription, "A royal offering for the kings of both Egypts," as well as the position of Tuthmosis, shows that he is offering prayer and sacrifice to his predecessors in the kingdom. Of these sixty-four kings, three are the immediate predecessors of Tuthmosis, Tuthmosis I., II., and Amosis. Before Amosis this table puts fifty-seven kings; the name of Menes is wanting; but in Manetho's list there are nevertheless no fewer than 284 kings,[20] from Menes to Amosis, with whom, in the excerpt of Africanus, the eighteenth dynasty begins. In the great temple built by Sethos I. (1439-1388, B.C.) at Abydus in honour of Osiris, this prince, with his son Ramses, may be seen on the wall of a passage offering prayer and incense to his predecessors in the kingdom. There are seventy-six shields with names, beginning with the shield of Menes. The last is the shield of Sethos, who in this way is represented as offering prayer to himself, among the rest. Down to Amenemha IV., the close of the twelfth dynasty (2179-2171 B.C.), there reigned, according to Manetho's list 104 kings, but the table of Sethos gives sixty-five shields for the interval from Menes to Amenemha IV. From this king to Sethos, the first prince of the nineteenth dynasty, Manetho's list gives 193 kings, excluding the shepherd kings, whereas the table of Sethos shows only ten shields for this interval.[21] Nothing in the way of explanation is to be obtained from the monuments of this kind belonging to the time of Ramses II. (1388-1322 B.C.) On the wall of the portico between the first and second court of the Ramesseum, the great temple built by Ramses II. at Thebes, on the left bank of the Nile, there is a picture in which the statues of thirteen predecessors in the kingdom are carried in procession before the king. There are eleven kings up to Amosis; before him is the figure of Mentuophis; then Menes. In the little temple built by Ramses II. at Abydus in honour of Osiris, there is a tablet, on which Ramses is represented offering adoration to the manes of his predecessors. On this we can make out fifty shields, but only about thirty are sufficiently uninjured to be legible; so far as we can tell this table is only a repetition of the table of Sethos in the great temple of Abydus. A third series of the kings of this period has been discovered in the tombs at Sakkarah. In the tomb of Tunari, the kings' scribe and architect, there is a representation of the sacrifice of Ramses II. for the deceased kings of Upper and Lower Egypt. Here we find fifty-seven shields; immediately before Ramses II. is Sethos, Ramses I., and Horus, then six illegible names; and before these Amosis. Before Amosis are forty-six shields, of which the first can perhaps be compared with the king mentioned in the sixth place after Menes in Manetho's list.[22]

The variations of these tables from the lists may be explained by assuming that it depended on the particular view and peculiar object of the kings who erected these monuments, which of their predecessors they wished to honour, and which they wished to exclude. But even a manuscript list of kings, which has come down to us, exhibits numerous and very considerable variations from Manetho's lists. This list is a papyrus, now in Turin, supposed to belong to the period 1500-1000 B.C. It begins with the rule of the gods; then follow the names of the kings, with the length of their reigns in years, months, and days, down to the time of the Tuthmosis; and thus it includes the first seventeen dynasties of Manetho's list. It has been much damaged, and therefore we can only discover that about 240 names were given, of which, however, about 100 are entirely gone; and of the others the lesser half at least is hardly legible. As has been remarked, Manetho numbers at least 284 kings to the eighteenth dynasty. Moreover, the papyrus does not agree with Manetho in the division of the dynasties; at certain places, which do not coincide with the sections of Manetho, totals are given of the preceding reigns. The first king after the gods is Mena (Menes), but of the names which follow only a few agree with those in Manetho, and a few more with those of the tables of Karnak, Abydus, and Sakkarah.[23] But here also the same names occupy different places in the series.

If in addition to all these variations and discrepancies we add the fact that even in the contemporary monuments and inscriptions which have come down to us there is no lack of contradictions to Manetho's statements—if too these monuments have not been erected or preserved in sufficient continuity, nor are of a sufficiently ample kind, to form an adequate check upon the papyrus of Turin, or the tables of kings or the list of Manetho—we must give up the hope of ascertaining the antiquity and course of Egyptian history on such data. One thing only comes out clear and irrefragable from the tables of Karnak, Abydus, and Sakkarah, no less than the Turin papyrus. Long before Herodotus was in Egypt, long before Manetho wrote his Egyptian history, in the fifteenth century B.C. Menes was considered the first king of Egypt. Even then lists of the kings were in existence, and the priests had made a sketch of the history of their land, in which the rule of the gods preceded the rule of human kings.

Modern research has attempted in various ways to find the key to the puzzle of these long and confused series of kings made by the Egyptian priests. Assuming that the names of the kings and the length of their reigns, and the number of reigns belonging to each dynasty, has been handed down correctly by Manetho, but that some of these dynasties were contemporaneous, the attempt has been made to give such a selection from the dynasties of Manetho as would supply a continuous thread for Egyptian history. Thus from the dynasties expressly marked as Memphitic, or Theban, a series may be formed which shortens the calculation of Manetho by at least 1,000 years. We might proceed further in this direction, and reduce Manetho's list by 2,000 or 3,000 years. According to the separate items in the excerpts preserved, Manetho's thirty dynasties include a series of 5,366 Egyptian years (from the year 5702 to the year 340 B.C.); nevertheless, Syncellus, in a passage of his Chronology, has observed that the whole period of history treated by Manetho in his three books covered 3,555 years.[24] This observation has been used to prove that Manetho himself arranged several dynasties contemporaneously; and thus, by taking the whole total of years given by Syncellus as a basis, the year 3892 B.C. has been fixed as the first year of the reign of Menes. No doubt a selection may be made from the dynasties of Manetho in such a way that the sum total of the reigns included in it will carry us no farther back than this year.[25] But it is clear from the accounts of Herodotus and Diodorus that the series of kings made by the Egyptian priests were strictly successive; and this fact is abundantly confirmed by the Turin papyrus and the excerpts preserved from Manetho himself. The 3,555 years which Syncellus brings forward cannot, in the face of his own excerpt, be taken as a number really derived from Manetho, and with this number all the calculations founded upon it fall to the ground.[26]

A second path, which has lately been struck out for the reduction of Manetho's dynasties, is based upon the list of Eratosthenes. The thirty-eight kings enumerated in this list are placed beside the first fourteen dynasties of Manetho. It is assumed that only the names quoted in Eratosthenes are the names of real monarchs, and that we must look for similar names in the list of Manetho. By this assumption, it is true, we are compelled to set aside several of Manetho's dynasties, and even to throw away the greater part of the kings of the dynasties which are allowed to count in the series.[27] But even when we have overcome all the difficulties in the way of this system, we are still without the means to define accurately the duration of the rule of the alien kings, which, as has been already remarked, according to the various excerpts from the list of Manetho, continued 953, or 511, or 103 years; nor is there any fixed point immediately before the alien monarchy to enable us to succeed in establishing the antiquity and commencement of the Egyptian series of kings.

All attempts to arrive at the antiquity of the civilisation and history of Egypt by these means are the more doubtful, because in Egypt there is no fixed era to form a basis for calculation. The time is reckoned by the reigns of the kings. In such a case even the most cautious inquiry of the priests could hardly have arrived at a satisfactory chronology for the oldest period. Though they had before them far more numerous monuments than we have, and though the lists of the various dominant families began to be kept at a very early period, it was no longer possible at the time when the lists of the Turin papyrus were made out, to discover in what order the families came, or which ruled contemporaneously before the time of the alien kings. The mere arrangement of our materials in the order of succession cannot fail to give an entirely false picture of the history of Egypt, while on the other hand the national pride of the Egyptians, and the vanity of the priests, found a great satisfaction in exaggerating the antiquity of their history by such enumerations, even where it was known that any families of kings were contemporaneous. With what pride and complacency would they exhibit this endless list of kings to the travelling strangers from Greece!

Besides the want of a fixed era, and the insufficient knowledge of the ancient period, and of the alien monarchy—besides the motives of national vanity, there was another remarkable circumstance connected with the priests of Egypt which was calculated to lead them far away from historical truth. The Egyptians measured time by a solar year of 360 days, divided into twelve months of thirty days. It was early observed that this year did not correspond to the sun's orbit; and therefore five additional days were added. The decisive event of the Egyptian year was the inundation. The Nile began to rise at the time of the summer solstice, and was coincident with the rising of the Dog-star (Sothis), the brightest star in the Egyptian sky. The Dog-star proclaimed the approach of the inundation and the new fertilization of the soil, and by proclaiming caused it. Thus to the Egyptians this star Sothis was "the Lady of the Beginning." The rising of the star denoted the new year; which therefore must have begun on the 20th July, the first of Thoth in the Egyptian calendar. But since, in the Egyptian year, a quarter of a day was wanting, in spite of the additional five years, to make up the true astronomical year, the beginning of every fourth year must have been a day in advance of the true year, and the seasons, of which the Egyptians made three of four months each, the months, and the festivals anticipated more and more the true time of the year. This advance could not have escaped the priests; they must soon have observed that a period of 1,461 Egyptian years must elapse in order to allow the Egyptian year to coincide with astronomical time. For in 1,460 Egyptian years the additional quarter of a day in the astronomical year would amount to 365 whole days—i. e. to an Egyptian year; and at the end of this year the beginning of the next was again coincident with the rising of the Dog-star, as seen from Lower Egypt, and the commencement of the inundation. Thus in a period of 1,461 years the year was again brought to its true beginning.[28] Since the fruitfulness and life of the Egyptian land depended on the inundation, and the inundation began with the rising of the Dog-star, the history of Egypt must also have begun with a similar rising. If after 1,461 Egyptian years the rising of the Dog-star again coincided with the beginning of the civic year, the priests would regard this restoration of the natural order as the completion of a great cycle of events. The Dog-star brought the inundation, and with it the fruits and life of Egypt. It was the awakener of life. It must therefore have brought life to the world also; time must have begun with the rising of Sirius. Porphyrius tells us that to the Egyptians the rising of the Dog-star was the beginning of the world.[29] Hence the periods of the world must proceed according to a number of periods fixed by the Dog-star. It seems that the priests comprised the whole duration of the world in twenty-five Sothis periods, i. e. in 36,525 Egyptian years. Regarded in this light, the Sothis periods of the priests of Egypt must lead to a cyclic treatment of their history, to which also the want of any definite era was forcing them, while the antiquity and number of the lists of kings offered abundant material for it. The history of Egypt must comprise a definite number of Sothis periods. It was known that in the fourteenth century B.C. such a period ended, and a new one commenced; the difficulty was to fill up two or three periods anterior to this. Before the Sothis period of the kings, the gods had ruled over Egypt, to whom, therefore, a number of Sothis cycles, naturally more extensive than those given to the rule of men, was allotted. Thus the priests of Thebes were able to tell Herodotus that, from the time when the Twelve Gods ruled over Egypt, down to the days of King Amosis, 17,000 years had passed; that from Menes, down to Sethos, 341 kings ruled in succession over Egypt, and that in this space of time the sun had four times risen in an unusual way—it had twice risen where it then set, and had twice set where it then rose; and nothing in Egypt had been changed by this, either in the gifts of the earth or the river, in sickness or in mortality.[30] This change of the rising and setting of the sun is nothing more than the symbolical astrology of the priests, who must have expressed the completion of the movable solar year by the opposite quarters of the sky; and it means no more than that two Sothis periods had elapsed between Menes and Sethos; but to Herodotus the statement as given naturally appeared quite incredible.[31] What the priests told Herodotus, Manetho, following far older authorities, had already fixed in a systematic form before Diodorus found that the gods ruled 18,000 years, and the human kings had begun to reign 4,700 years before his arrival in Egypt. To the gods and demigods Manetho allows twelve Sothis periods, i. e. 17,520 Julian years. Then follows the history of the men, the beginning of which Manetho places in the commencement of that period of the Dog-star which begins with the year 5702 B.C. From this point the series of kings runs through three complete Sothis periods down to Menephta; in the fourth period Manetho closed the lists of his thirty dynasties with the last native ruler in 340 B.C., the 984th year of the fourth Sothis period of the human kings. Thus it would be possible to make the scheme clear on which the priests of Egypt dealt with the history of their land, and the lists of Manetho would then lay claim to complete historical credibility for the ancient periods in isolated items, though certainly not in their combination as a whole.

With this result before us the only course open is to seek for external evidence, and attempt to ascertain the antiquity of the civilisation of Egypt independently of the priests and their traditions. The first fixed point in Egyptian chronology is given by the campaign of Pharaoh Sisak against Judah and Jerusalem. Sisak caused a sketch of his enterprise to be delineated on the wall of a structure erected by him in the temple at Karnak. According to Manetho's list, Sisak (Sesonchis), the first ruler of his twenty-second dynasty, begins his reign in the year 934 B.C.[32] But the chronology of the Hebrews, which from the establishment of the monarchy downwards coincides within a few insignificant variations with the Assyrian records, proves that Sisak must have been king in the first half of the tenth century B.C. The campaign against Judah falls in the middle of this century. From Sisak to the expulsion of the Hyksos there was an interval of at least 500 years, as we may maintain approximately from the names of kings and their reigns recorded on monuments. If therefore we accept the excerpt from Manetho's history given in Josephus (and that excerpt was made precisely for this period, and has come down to us in the best shape), and allow 511 years for the reign of the Hyksos, we arrive at the year 2000 B.C. as the end of the old monarchy. From this monarchy numerous monuments have come down to us belonging to the Amenemha, and Sesurtesen, the twelfth dynasty of Manetho; and again to the time preceding these princes belong the greatest monuments in Egypt, the pyramids of Memphis, which, according to Manetho's list, are the work of the fourth dynasty. These pyramids therefore may have been built about the year 2500 B.C. The plan and execution of these monuments presuppose a very long practice in the treatment and preparation of materials; the size, permanence, and solidity of the construction were impossible without great experience in the use of stone; and their massive form requires an acquaintance with the principles of architecture which can only be obtained in the course of centuries. And independently of the advanced state of architecture exhibited by these monuments at the first sight, their erection is a proof of a condition of social and civic life far removed from primitive tribal communities. So long as tribes few in number and isolated from each other possessed the valley of the Nile, under the rule of their tribal chiefs, such structures were impossible. They presuppose a settled population, accustomed to work, and skilled in it. And more than this. The whole population could not any longer be occupied in agricultural work; there must have been a considerable amount of superfluous labour, living upon the productions obtained from the earth by others. Such structures required the united force of many thousands, the continued efforts of long years. And as the use of complex machinery for moving and raising the heavy materials was unknown to the Egyptians, and remained unknown, as we see from the monuments, a still greater force of men and beasts of draught were necessary to move such huge squares and blocks by means of a simple lever and rollers. Finally, the combination and continued employment of such forces presupposes that society has been subordinated to a superior direction and power, which could apply those forces as it chose; in a word, it presupposes an economical, political, and technical civilisation, removed by at least 500 years from pastoral life and patriarchal rule. If therefore we may assume that the great pyramids were erected about the year 2500 B.C., the beginning of higher civilisation in the valley of the Nile must not be placed later than the year 3000 B.C.

This assumption is confirmed by the fact that the oldest monuments of Egypt—and they are also the oldest in the world—exhibit the Egyptians in possession of the art of writing. All writing proceeds from pictures. The writing of the Egyptians and Babylonians, like that of the Chinese, Mexicans, and the tribes of North America, was in the first instance no more than speaking pictures. The Egyptians engraved on the stone of their rocks pictures of the objects and events of which they wished to preserve the remembrance. As this use of pictures to assist the memory became more common and more regular, from external no less than internal reasons, it quickly acquired certain abbreviations and combinations. The frequent repetition of a picture led to its abbreviation. The picture of a house dwindled into a square; water is not so much sketched as indicated by waved lines; instead of a forest we have the outline of a tree—in Egypt we find the sycamore, the most common tree in the country. Thus from actual imitative pictures we arrive at indicatory pictures. But how could the various kinds of fluid, for instance, be represented in these indicatory pictures? The three waved lines indicating water were retained, but beside them was sketched a wine-jar or water-pot, and thus the desired end was attained. By adding the picture of a god to the square, a temple was distinguished from a house. By such means the objects of the visible world could be reproduced in pictures more or less abbreviated. Even the actions and conditions of men which do not come immediately under the eye could be represented in this abbreviated metaphorical manner. Giving could be represented by an outstretched arm with a loaf; opening, by a door; going, by a road planted with trees; travelling, by a walking bird; battle, by an arm equipped with shield and lance; binding and fastening, by a coiled rope; destruction, by a prostrate man. It was more difficult to represent conditions which do not show themselves to the eye, as, for instance, hunger and thirst. To express thirst the Egyptians chose the symbol of water and a calf running to it; hunger they represented by a hand conveyed to the mouth, and this was also the symbol of eating. But the most difficult task for this picture-writing was the description of objects transcending sense, and abstract ideas. For the gods, it is true, popular notions and the fancy of the priests had supplied fixed forms which only required to be abbreviated for the picture-writing. The picture of the sky-goddess served as a symbol for the sky. The Egyptians regarded the sky as arched over the earth; the feet of the goddess rested on one extremity, and her hands on the other. Instead of the complete figure of the goddess in this arched attitude, they drew a line of a similar kind, and this was the abbreviated picture of the sky. If the sun or a star was combined with this line, the picture represented the day and the night. But the abstract ideas of law and justice, truth, protection, good, evil, life, &c., could only be represented in this picture-writing by sensuous images. In Egypt power was represented by a brandished whip, or poleaxe; justice, by the cubit, or symbol of equal measurement; good, by the symbol of sound, in order perhaps to indicate harmony; evil, by the picture of an unclean fish; truth, by an ostrich feather—the feathers of this bird are said to remain unchanged; protection, by a soaring vulture, &c., &c.

Though the possession of such indicatory or symbolic pictures enabled men to describe a series of objects and conditions, and even certain classes of conceptions—this picture-writing was nevertheless far removed from the expression of a definite and intelligible speech. It was a great step in the Egyptian writing when to their simple metaphorical and symbolical pictures phonetic pictures were added. From the actual picture by means of abbreviation, by indicatory signs and symbols, they had arrived at picture-signs, and had succeeded in expressing a certain feeling by means of figures; but now the indication of the sound was added to the representation of the sense. The picture-writing could only go to these picture-signs in order to borrow the symbols for sound. Hence the sound A was denoted by a symbol which signified an object of which the name began with A; for this in Egypt the symbol of an eagle (achem), or of a reed (ak), might be, and was selected. Thus in order to express words which could not be made plain by picture-signs and images of sense, the plan was adopted of adding to the picture-signs already in use for such words, one or more phonetic symbols, a complete or incomplete phonetic supplement. Hence arose a class of mixed pictures, made up of the picture of the object, with the addition of the sounds of the words of which the picture was intended to express the meaning. To make the meaning yet more clear, it was found necessary to add key-signs, indicating the class and nature of the word in question. Thus with the pictorial and phonetic signs for day and hour was combined the sign of the sun, and to the names of countries and rivers the sign for land and water. Moreover these key-signs showed whether the word symbolised by a sound or a picture denoted an animal, a plant, a kind of stone, or belonged to a particular class of conditions and actions. Yet in this combination of real and phonetic pictures, it always remained uncertain whether a picture or symbol was to be taken for its real meaning, or was to be regarded as a phonetic symbol.

This, then, is the difficult writing of the Egyptians; these are the hieroglyphics as presented even on those great monuments. Even here we find this method of writing applied in the same forms, and with the same mixture of pictorial and phonetic signs, which it retained in Egypt, with slight modifications (see below). Without doubt, the development of this complicated system was the work of centuries. In the infancy of history, special insight and capability is obtained and handed down only within the limits of certain circles. There could be no regular application and development of this system of writing before the formation of a priestly order. And again, the separation of such an order from the rest of the people could only take place gradually; it must go through a number of stages to raise it above the primitive conditions of life. When this point of culture was reached, a considerable space of time was still needed in order to bring the picture-writing, even within the priestly class, to the form in which we see it on the pyramids. In those nations whose progress we can follow with greater accuracy, centuries must pass before the indefinite and floating notions entertained of the gods are fixed in rigid forms. Yet in Egypt this change had already taken place before the date of the oldest hieroglyphics: for even in these we find typical forms in use for the gods, with sharply drawn and abbreviated outlines. In the picture-writing itself there is a wide interval between the delineation of an incident, or object, and the representation of a definite feeling; and a yet wider interval before the expression of ideas, of definite speech, is attained. An advanced stage of reflection and abstraction is required in order to step from the picture of an occurrence to picture-signs and images of sense, and again from these to phonetic symbols. The symbols for an incident, and for an idea and a sound, are separated by a wide gulf. Independently of these internal requirements for the advance of picture-writing, the external form in which the oldest hieroglyphics are represented, their even, harmonious, clearly-cut and unalterable forms, are evidence not only of an industrious and careful application of these signs, but also of a tolerably long use. The oldest hieroglyphics of the date of the great pyramids are for the most part embossed; but even the engraved work of a date very little more recent is not surpassed by later times in artistic excellence, in sharpness and neatness of execution.

The study of the calendar of Egypt, no less than the use of writing upon the great monuments, carries us back to an early date for the beginning of Egyptian civilization. We saw that the priests, by adding five days to the old year of 360 days, had come tolerably near to the natural year, and had fixed the beginning of their year by the rising of Sirius. Monuments of the age of the Amenemha and Sesurtesen show that even then the rising of Sirius had been observed and noted. Nevertheless, the beginning of their short civic year tended to anticipate the natural year; and thus the Egyptian year was always in advance of the solar. But if it was observed and noted down by the Egyptians, that in the year of their reckoning, corresponding to the Julian year 1322 B.C., the beginning of the year had again fallen on the right day, that is, on the rising of Sirius, so that the first day of Thoth in the movable year coincided with the first day of Thoth in the solar year, which was the 20th of July, it follows that the fixing of the beginning of the year on July 20, and of the length of the year at 365 days, had taken place 1,460 years ([p. 30]) before the date 1322 B.C., i. e. in the year 2782 B.C. This conclusion is supported by another consideration. Our astronomers have calculated that it was only in the two or three centuries preceding and following the year 3285 B.C. that the rising of Sirius so exactly coincided with the summer solstice and the rise of the Nile; and therefore in this epoch only could the observation have been made that Sirius brought the inundation. Hence in this period only could the beginning of the year have been fixed at the rising of Sirius. But if the Egyptians could set aside an old calendar and introduce a new arrangement requiring attention and long-continued observations, somewhere about the year 2800 B.C., it is clear that the beginnings of higher culture in Egypt cannot be later than 3000 B.C.[33]

Valuable as this result is, we are nevertheless carried back to hypotheses and combinations in order to fix the various epochs, and more especially before the reign of the Hyksos. And as an arrangement of history is impossible without chronology, divisions must be assumed here and there where it is impossible to establish them satisfactorily. The arrangement of Egyptian chronology proposed by Lepsius has for the first time introduced a well-considered system into the whole. Hence, in spite of the objections already brought forward against the basis of this arrangement, and the proved uncertainties and contradictions of tradition and the monuments, which the progress of inquiry into the older periods may indeed lessen but cannot remove, I follow the data given by Lepsius for the epochs of Egyptian history, and the duration of the reigns which come under our notice.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] "Il." 9, 381; "Od." 4, 230 ff. 477, 581. 14, 257, 264 ff. 17, 426.

[4] Herod. 2, 2; Diod. 1, 10, 50; Plat. Tim. p. 23.

[5] Herod. 2, 100, 142, 143.

[6] Plato, "Tim." p. 23; "De Leg." p. 657.

[7] Diodorus, 1, 44, 45, Olympiad 180, i. e. between 60 and 56 B.C.

[8] Or, according to another version, more than 10,000 years from Osiris to Alexander. More than 10,000 years had passed, according to the Egyptians, since the creation of the first man.—Diod. 1, 23, 24.

[9] Diod. 1, 13, 14.

[10] Ibid. 1, 69.

[11] Diod. 1, 63.

[12] Syncell. p. 91, ed. Goar.

[13] Syncell. p. 12.

[14] Bœckh, "Manetho," p. 395.

[15] "C. Apion." c. 14, 26.

[16] Bœckh, "Manetho," p. 769 ff.

[17] Reinisch reckons 389 kings from Menes to Cambyses, "Zeitschrift d. d. M. Ges." 15,251; Brugsch's table gives 334 royal shields from Menes to Cambyses.

[18] According to Bœckh's "Kanon des Africanus."

[19] This, like the following dates, is from Lepsius, see below.

[20] Not including the thirty-eight shepherd kings; if these are added the number reaches 322.

[21] Dümichen and Lepsius, "Zeitschrift für Aegyptische Sprache," 1864, p. 81 ff. Deveria and Mariette, "Revue Archéolog." 1865, p. 50 ff; 1866 (13), p. 73 ff.

[22] Mariette in "Revue Archéolog.," 1864 (10), p. 170.

[23] Brugsch, "Hist. d'Egypte," pp. 20, 44, 72; Devéria, loc. cit. p. 58 ff.

[24] P. 98.

[25] Gutschmid in the "Philologus," 10, 672.

[26] The number of 113 generations, which Syncellus gives as contemporaneous, does not in the least agree with the accounts of Manetho; moreover, Gutschmid has shown from what items the number 3,555 in Syncellus has arisen in "Beiträge zur Geschichte des alten Orients," s. 9.

[27] On this rests the difference of the systems of Lepsius and Bunsen. Taking the total given by Syncellus from Manetho of 3,555 years before Nektanebös, Lepsius arrives at the years 3,892 B.C. Bunsen also considers the number 3,555 to be from Manetho, but without historical value. He insists on this number because he allows Manetho to reckon 1,286 years for the new monarchy, 922 years for the Hyksos, and 1,347 years for the old monarchy; but for these 1,347 years he substitutes the 1,076 years of Eratosthenes, in order to fix the historical accession of Menes. According to this, Menes began to reign in the year 3284 B.C. From this, Reinisch ("Zeitschrift der Deutschen morgenl. Gesell." 15, 251 ff.) has attempted to reconcile the systems of Bunsen and Lepsius. He retains the total of 3,555 years, and the year 3,892 B.C. for Menes; to the 1,076 years given by Eratosthenes for the old monarchy he adds four years for Skemiophris, thus making 1,080 years, fixes the middle monarchy—the Hyksos—at 1,088 years, or down to the era ἀπὸ Μενοφρέως at 1,490, and the new monarchy down to Nektanebos at 985 years.

[28] Bœckh, "Manetho," s. 411; Lepsius, "Chronologie," s. 148 ff. Th. Martin "Mém de l'Acad. d'Inscr," 1869 (8), 265 ff.

[29] Bœckh, "Manetho," s. 404. In the decree of Kanopus, belonging to the ninth year of the reign of Ptolemy Euergetes, i. e. to the year 238 B.C., we find as follows (Lepsius, "Das Bilingue Decret von Kanopus"): "In order that the seasons of the year may continue to observe their time according to the present arrangement of the world, and that feasts which ought to be celebrated in winter may not be celebrated in summer, because the star advances one day in every four years, while others which are celebrated in summer will in later times be celebrated in winter, as has already happened, and will happen again, if the year is to be composed of 360 days, and the five days usually added, from henceforth a day shall be kept as the festival of the Divi Euergetes, every fourth year after the intercalary days, before the new year." That the discovery of the want of a quarter of a day was made before the time of Ptolemæus Euergetes I., and that for a long time computations were made by the fixed year with an intercalary cycle every fourth year, as well as by the movable year, is beyond doubt. The decree did not become of universal application till 26 B.C.

[30] Herod. 2, 142.

[31] Bœckh, "Manetho," s. 36; Lepsius, "Chronologie," s. 193.

[32] According to Bœckh's "Kanon des Africanus."

[33] Lepsius, "Königsbuch," s. 118. Biot, "L'Année vague," p. 57; cf. however H. Martin, "Mém. de l'Acad. des Inscript." 1869, pp. 1, 8, 265.

CHAPTER III.

THE RELIGION OF THE EGYPTIANS.

Next to its language the oldest possession of a nation is its religion. Living in a country of very distinct outlines and characteristic forms, where the regularity of external life is brought more prominently before the view than in other countries, the Egyptians at an early period arrived at a fixed expression of their religious feelings and of the forms of their gods. Their original conceptions are unknown to us. The oldest monuments, our earliest sources of information, present us with a numerous assemblage of gods, and the conclusions drawn from these carry us back to views far removed from primitive forms of worship. They indicate a system already developed in the circle of the priests. We can only attempt from the fragments of that system preserved in inscriptions and manuscripts, and the very late accounts of the Greeks, to deduce conclusions concerning the religious notions which originally predominated.

The distinction in the nature of the upper and lower valley, already referred to, cannot have been without influence upon the direction of civic life among the Egyptians, and the formation of their religious ideas. So far as we can tell, these developed independently at the same time in the upper and lower country. In both districts peculiar forms were retained at the most prominent centres of religious worship, until after the union of the country they became amalgamated in all essential points.

Memphis worshipped the god Ptah. The great sanctuary of the god at that city was held to be as ancient as the city itself. So far back as our knowledge extends, the Pharaohs were occupied with the extension and adornment of this temple. Among the Greeks the god of Memphis was known as Hephæstus: they tell us he was represented in the temple by a dwarf-like image; and that similar images of the children of Ptah stood in a part of the temple only entered by the priests.[34] The name Hephæstus, and the further statement of the Greeks, that this god was the father of the Sun-god, prove that in Ptah the Egyptians worshipped not only fire, but the spirit of warmth and light generally; and that they must have regarded him as the origin and source of light.

Manetho puts Ptah at the head of the dynasties of the gods. He ruled for 9,000 years before the other gods. Inscriptions name Ptah "the lord of truth," the "father of truth," the "ruler of the sky," "the king of both worlds." As the god of the light which shows everything in its true form, he is the spirit of truth; as the spirit of the light in the sky, he is the lord of heaven. The inscriptions also say that Ptah "moves the egg of the sun and the moon;" he is called "the weaver of the beginnings," the "god who rolls his egg in the sky." Consequently, to the Egyptians Ptah was the mover of the luminaries, a formative, creative spirit, and as he is called in the inscriptions "the father of the father of the gods," he must have been to them the first and oldest god, the beginning of the gods and of all things.

The Egyptians believed that a kind of beetle peculiar to their country (scarabæus sacer) was propagated without the female sex; they saw the mode of its reproduction in the balls of dung which the beetles occasionally pushed before them. Hence they consecrated this insect to their god of beginning and creation, and on monuments and records we find the god Ptah with a beetle on his shoulders, in the place of a human head. As the god of the beginning he appears on monuments in the shape of a child or dwarf; and again, as the unchangeable god, he is wrapped in the casings of a mummy, with the symbols of dominion, the whip and sceptre, or the so-called Nile-gauge, a ring with parallel cross bars, in his hand, in order to denote him as the god who gives to all things measure, order, and law. He is also coloured green, to signify, as it would seem, that lie is a god favourable to vegetation, and possessed of a fertilising power.

Thus Ptah was one of the forms under which the Egyptians invoked the creator, the highest god. On a pillar of Memphis, now in the Berlin Museum, belonging to the time of the nineteenth dynasty, he is called "the only unbegotten begetter in the heaven and on the earth," "the god who made himself to be god, who exists by himself, the double being, the begetter of the first beginning." Other inscriptions and records denote him as "the creator in heaven and on earth, who has made all things, the lord of all that is, and is not."[35]

Below Memphis lay On, the city of the sun (Heliopolis). Here the spirit of the sun, Ra, was the pre-eminent god. In Manetho's list Ra succeeds Ptah in the kingdom. "The Egyptians," says Plutarch, "regard the sun as the body of the beneficent power, the visible form of a being only comprehensible to thought. The morning sun they represented as a new-born child seated on a lotus leaf, and thrice each day—at sunrise, noon, and sunset—they offered incense to Helius."[36] We also find that the Egyptians represented the sun of the winter months as a little child, the sun of the vernal equinox as a youth, that of the summer solstice as a bearded man, and again, the sun of the autumnal equinox as an old man.[37] Hence they looked at the yearly course of the sun under the allegory of human life. Plutarch's remark about the morning sun shows that they regarded the daily course of the sun from the same point of view, and when he tells us that according to Egyptian story, Apopis made war against the god of the sky,[38] his statements are confirmed by the monuments. According to the inscriptions Ra is "revealed in the abyss of the sky," he is throned "in the orb of the sun," "he moves his egg." "A Supplication to Ra"—such are the words of a prayer—"who each day by himself brings himself to a new birth. Ra has created all that is in the abysses of the sky."[39] In the tombs of the Ramesids, at Thebes, the course of the sun is represented by the hour of the day and night. On the form of the blue outstretched goddess of the sky appears the boat of the sun, for the Egyptians conceived the sun as navigating the air in a skiff, as they navigated the Nile; and in the boat is Ra, a child with finger in mouth at the first hour of the morning. As the day goes on the child increases in size, and at every hour the spirits who lead the boat are changed. In the hours of the afternoon the evil serpent, Apep, the darkness, the Apopis of Plutarch, attempts to swallow the sun, but twelve spirits draw the serpent by ropes to the side. In the hours of the night the sun-god is inclosed in his shrine on the boat, which is carried along by spirits changing every hour over the waters of the under world to the east—just as the boats on the Nile are drawn against the stream—so that he may again shine out in the east on the next morning. The hieroglyphics accompanying the navigation of the night hours contain seventy-four invocations of Ra in Amenti, i. e. in his concealment. In a similar way the monuments of Edfu exhibit the growth of the sun-god through the twelve hours of the day from a child to a youth and a man, and an old man bowed with age, leaning upon a staff. This last is called in the inscriptions, "The old man who becomes again a child."[40]

The monuments exhibit Ra in red, with the sun's orb on his head, a sceptre in one hand, and the symbol of life in the other. The cat, the tawny bull, and the hawk are the chosen creatures of Ra; often he is found on the monuments with the head of a hawk in the place of the human head, or as a hawk carrying the sun's orb. All the entrances of the temple and the pylons display the symbolical form of the deity, the sun's orb, supported by two wings. From the sun-god the kings of Egypt derived their might and power. They generally call themselves "the sons of Ra," and they rule over Egypt as Ra rules over the world.

Hence we can assume that to the minds of the priests Ptah was essentially the deity of beginning, the first originator of creation. Ra again was the propagating and sustaining power of the divinity embodied in the sun.

At Hermopolis (Ashmunein), besides Thoth, whom the Greeks compared to their Hermes, and the inscriptions name the "Lord of divine truth," the "scribe of truth," to whom the white Ibis with black neck and beak is sacred, the "children of Ptah" were worshipped. These were eight gods in four pairs. Owing to this worship Hermopolis was known to the Egyptians as Pe-sesennu, i. e. "the city of reverence." These children of Ptah seem to have been spirits of the elements. In an inscription at Edfu we find, "The eight gods, the very great, who are from the beginning, created before the gods, the children of Ptah, arising through him, begotten of him, to take possession of the south and the north, to create in the Thebaid, and fashion in the land of Memphis. When they arose the stream flowed out from the young waters, the child of the lotus flower rose up in the boat, the beautiful one, making this earth bright by his beams."[41]

At Sais, at Buto, on the Sebennytic mouth, and at Bubastis (Tel Basta), on the Pelusiac arm of the Nile, female goddesses were worshipped. To the feast of the goddess of Sais, whom the Greeks called Athene, the Egyptians came from the whole country, as Herodotus tells us, to Sais, and lighted lamps on the appointed night, and even those who did not come to Sais lit lamps, so that lamps were burning throughout all Egypt.[42] Jamblichus and Proclus tell us that the goddess of Sais, the Neith of the Egyptians, was the mother of the sun-god; the inscriptions call Neith "the cow which bore the sun," "ancient mother of the sun," "mother of the gods." Hence we may assume that Neith was associated with Ptah, whose green colour she shares on the monuments; and that the creative power of nature was personified in her under a female form. The feast of lamps may have symbolised the birth of light, and its rise from the darkness.[43] The goddess of Buto, who was also worshipped at Letopolis, near Memphis, was compared by the Greeks with their goddess Leto, whose child was Apollo, the spirit of light, because at Buto the victorious god of light of the Egyptians, of whom we shall speak below, was said to have grown up.[44]

The sanctuary of the goddess at Bubastis was, according to Herodotus' account, the most delightful, though not the largest or most costly, in the whole of Egypt. It was situated in the middle of the city, and could be seen from every side. "Beyond the market-place a paved road, about forty feet in width, leads to the shrine, which is overshadowed by trees on both sides. The precincts, a place of about a stadium square, is surrounded with a trench one hundred feet broad; this is connected with the Nile, and also planted with trees. The portico is ten fathoms high, and adorned with statues six cubits in height, and well worth description. On the external walls pictures are everywhere engraved, and the temple in which the statue of the goddess stands is also surrounded by very lofty trees. At the festival of the goddess the Egyptians from all the land go down in boats to Bubastis: in every boat is a number of men and women; some of the men blow the flute; some of the women have castanets, and strike them; the rest sing and clap their hands. The boat touches at every city on the river bank; and here also the women sing and strike their castanets, while others follow the women of the city with shouts and raillery; others, again, dance; others expose themselves. On arriving at Bubastis, they bring large offerings to the goddess, and drink more wine at this festival than in all the rest of the year. According to the accounts of the Egyptians, about 700,000 men and women are collected at this festival, without counting children.[45]

Herodotus calls the goddess of Bubastis Artemis: her Egyptian name was Bast and Pacht; and the city was called after her Pa-Bast, i. e. "abode of Bast." On monuments this goddess has the sun's disk upon her head, or, in the place of a human head, the head of a cat, which animal was sacred to her. At Heliopolis there was a picture of Ra in the form of a he-cat;[46] and in the inscription Pacht is called the daughter of Ra. Ra was invoked to come to the help of his daughter, the holy she-cat, who was panic-stricken by the snake which approached heaven in order to tread upon the path of the sun-god, and to defile the limbs of the holy she-cat.[47] In the sketches in the "Book of the Dead" we find a she-cat, with the right forefoot upon the head of a serpent, and in the left a broad knife, with which she is cutting off the head of the serpent.[48] The account given by Herodotus of the customs observed at the festival are confirmed from other sources. The monuments exhibit musicians, whose music is accompanied by the audience with clapping of the hands; and Plutarch describes the castanets of the Egyptians adorned with the figure of a human-headed she-cat, the sound of which was intended to scare away the evil spirit.[49]

In the upper country other deities were worshipped. At Thebes, Amun, known to the Greeks as Ammon, took the place occupied by Ptah at Memphis. Hecatæus of Abdera relates that the Egyptians identified their supreme god with the universe, but the god was invisible and concealed.[50] Amun, as a fact, signifies "the concealed" or "veiled." The monuments of Thebes exhibit him as a creative god with the Phallus, as a ruling deity either standing or sitting on a throne; on his royal head-dress are two upright feathers, which to the Egyptians were the symbol of dominion over the upper and under world, and in his hand are the sceptre and the symbol of life. His colour is blue. By his side stands the goddess Mut; the "mother," the "lady of darkness," as the inscriptions[51] style her. She wears on her head the vulture, or the crown of Upper Egypt. She is also found on inscriptions with the head of a vulture, the bird sacred to her, instead of a human head; and in pictures of battles the vulture of Mut hovers over the Pharaoh as the symbol of protection. The son of Ammon and Mut is Shu (Sosis, Sos), the spirit of the atmosphere, "the bearer of heaven," as the inscriptions name him.[52] This (Thinis) and Abydus were the chief seats of his worship. In Manetho's list the reign of Shu follows on those of Ptah and Ra.

In the place of Ammon we often find another divinity, Tum (Atmu.) This was the sun-god in a special form. In Upper Egypt the spirit of the sun was invoked under the names Tum and Mentu. Of these names the first signified the declining sun, the sun of the west, the sun of concealment, the sun in the under world; the second the rising sun, the sun of the east, the sun of the day, the bright sun-god. Tum also wears the double crown, and the two feathers of Ammon, or in the place of them the two royal serpents round his head-dress; he also is lord of both kingdoms. Like Ptah, he is "the father of beginnings, who begot himself," "the father of the gods;" like him also he is formed with the beetle in the place of the human head; as the creative god he is the creator of his name, i. e. of his properties; he is the primæval night, the darkness of the beginning, before light existed. To him also belonged the primæval water. According to Plutarch, the Egyptians believed that the sun arose out of moisture, that it sprang up out of water, and was nourished by it, and therefore water was the beginning and origin of things. This account is confirmed by the monuments. As light in the process of production, Tum is called "Ra in his egg;" and as the spirit of light arising out of darkness and water, the horologe and the sun-dial are his insignia.[53]

At Coptus, in Upper Egypt, a phallic god was worshipped under the name Chem, whom the Greeks compared to their god Pan, and at the falls of Syene a ram-headed god, Chnum (Chnemu, Chnuphis, Kneph), who in inscriptions is named the lord of the "inundations," of the "outpouring of the waters."[54] As a giver of fruits, the colour of his pictures on the monuments is generally green. In the eyes of the inhabitants of Upper Egypt Chnum was, according to the account of Plutarch, an uncreated eternal spirit.[55] We must therefore regard him as a peculiar form of the life-giving god. Chnum was often united with Ammon, inasmuch as the latter assumes the attributes of Chnum, the ram's horns or even head.[56] As the worship of Ammon passed beyond Egypt up the Nile as far as Meroe, so the worship of Ammon-Chnum spread westward in the Libyan desert as far as the oasis of Siwa, where the inhabitants were called by the Greeks Ammonians. Here, even now, in the vicinity of a clear pool surrounded by lofty palms, the remains of a considerable temple are to be seen, with hieroglyphic inscriptions, and the picture of the ram-headed deity.[57]

The worship of the goddess Hathor was widely diffused both in Upper and Lower Egypt. The most renowned seats of the cultus were Aphroditopolis, near Memphis; Edfu and Dendera, in Upper Egypt. She is called in the inscriptions "the lady of the dance and revel," and is represented on the monuments with fetters and a tambourine in her hands. From this and from her Grecian name we may conclude that she was the Egyptian goddess of love, of the enchaining passion; but though we find in her form hints of a more individual and lively fancy, the natural power of maternity in general is by far the most prominent conception. She is represented with the horns of a cow—her sacred animal—on her head, and between them the moon's disk; or entirely as a cow. In the rock-temple at Abusimbel, which the wife of Ramses II. dedicated to Hathor, she is represented as a cow in a boat, over which water-plants meet in arches. To this cow the king and queen offer flowers and fruits.[58] In the temple at Edfu, a structure of the Ptolemies, 360 local forms of Hathor are said to have been enumerated and among these seven were especially prominent.

It was the beneficent, creative, and life-giving powers of nature which the Egyptians worshipped in these divinities—water, light, the clear heaven, the sun, the powers of reproduction and birth. But the phenomena and the powers presented by nature were not in every case beneficent. Night swallowed up day, and death swallowed up life. Beside the waters and the black fruitful soil of Egypt lay the boundless yellow desert, from which storms blew the sand into the green valley. In the hot months, the sun blazed with a devouring and scorching heat, the flowers withered; and the powers of nature failed in the winter. Thus in the life of nature there was a strife between malignant and beneficent powers, a strife in which nevertheless the beneficent powers always gained the upper hand. Out of night arose a new day; out of the death of nature in winter blossomed forth new increase, fruitfulness, and life. Through this conception of a strife raging between the healing and destructive powers of nature, by regarding nature as moving in a circular course from life to death, and death to life, the Egyptians succeeded in making a great advance in their religious ideas. They personified this strife in certain divine forms. The beneficent power, the divinity of life was allowed to succumb, and then to rise from apparent death into a new life. Only for a moment could the evil powers vanquish the good; the eternal victory remained with the gods of beneficence.

After Helius, Hephæstus, Ammon, and Hermes, says Diodorus,[59] Cronos and his sister Rhea ruled. These became the parents of Isis and Osiris, of Typhon, Apollo, and Aphrodite. Plutarch tells us that, according to the legend of the Egyptians, Rhea and Cronos were the parents of Osiris and Isis, of Typhon and Nephthys. Osiris ruled happily over Egypt; but Typhon conspired against him with seventy-two associates; they inclosed Osiris in a chest and threw it into the Nile, and the stream carried it down to the sea. When Isis heard of it, she put on mourning, and sought with lamentation the body of Osiris. At last she found the chest in the neighbourhood of Byblus, where the sea had cast it up; she mourned over the corpse and carried it back to Egypt. And when Horus, the son of Isis and Osiris, who grew up in Buto, came to his full strength, he prepared to avenge the wrong which Typhon had done to his father and mother. Thrice he fought with Typhon; the battle raged for many days, and Horus conquered.[60]

According to the accounts of Herodotus and Diodorus, Osiris (Dionysus) and Horus (the Apollo of the Greeks) were the last rulers of the divine race.[61] In the list of Manetho, Ptah was followed in the kingdom by Ra and Shu (or, according to the Theban account, by Ammon, Tum, and Shu), Cronos, Osiris, Typhon, and Horus. These then are the younger gods; the evidence of the monuments shows that they were connected by race with each other, but not akin to the three gods who ruled before them. And as we also find that the five supplementary days added in the Egyptian year to the original number of 360 ([p. 29]) were dedicated to these gods, the first to Osiris, the second to Horus, the third to Typhon, the fourth to Isis, the fifth to Nephthys—the natural conclusion is that these gods were of later origin.[62] On the other hand it is clear that the belief in Osiris and his power had already arisen at the time when the great pyramids were erected.

The two gods at the head of this circle, whom Diodorus and Plutarch call Cronos and Rhea, were known to the Egyptians under the names Seb and Nut.[63] They are the spirits of the earth and sky. Osiris himself in the inscriptions and records is called "the king of the gods," "the lord of unnumbered days," "the king of life," "the regulator of eternity." The inscription on the lid of a coffin runs thus—"Ra gave thee the richly streaming light which gleams in thy eyes. Shu gave thee the pleasant air which in thy lifetime was inhaled in thy nostrils. Seb gave thee all fruits whereon thou livest. Osiris gave thee the Nile-water whereon thou livest."[64] As a life-giving god, the colour of Osiris is green; his sacred tree is the evergreen tamarisk; and his sacred bird a kind of heron, distinguished by two long feathers at the back of the head. Osiris is always represented in a human form, and with a human head.

The chief seats of the worship of Osiris were Philæ and Abydus, in Upper Egypt. In the temple on the island of Philæ, formed by the Nile above Syene, the history of the god was represented.[65] On a little island close by, where only the priests might tread, lay the grave of Osiris, overshadowed by tamarisks;[66] here were libations offered to him, and Diodorus tells us that in Upper Egypt no more sacred form of oath was known than the oath by Osiris who rests at Philæ.[67] In the temple of Osiris at Abydus (Arabat-el-Medfuneh) the wealthy Egyptians sought to be buried, that they might rest in the vicinity of the god's grave. In Lower Egypt Osiris[68] was worshipped in the cities of Memphis, Sais,[69] and Busiris. At Busiris (the name Pe-osiri meant "abode of Osiris"), on the Sebennytic arm of the Nile, in the middle of the Delta—it was the chief city of the district of Busiris—was situated the largest temple of Isis, as we learn from Herodotus, and here also, according to other evidence, the grave of Osiris was to be found.[70] Here the whole land worshipped this god and goddess.[71] Thousands of men and women assembled, according to Herodotus, made lamentation for Osiris, and brought an offering to the greatest goddess (Isis). Amid prayers the bull was flayed, the thighs and other parts cut out, and a part of the belly filled with bread, honey, and incense; these were drenched plentifully with oil, and set on fire, and so long as the sacrifice burned the people lamented. When the lamentation ended, the remainder of the sacrifice was eaten.[72] Plutarch says that with Osiris the Egyptians lamented the receding of the Nile, the ceasing of the cool north wind, the death of vegetation, and decrease in the length of the day. On the 17th Athyr, the day on which Typhon slew Osiris (on this day the sun passes through the Scorpion), the priests instituted rites of lamentation, and, among other things, as a sign of the sorrow of Isis, they exhibited for four days a gilded cow, covered with a black veil of byssus—for the cow was the Egyptian symbol of this goddess. On the 19th Athyr, in the night, they went down to the sea, and the priests brought out the chest, and the congregation cried, "Osiris is found!"[73] Moreover, according to Plutarch, the holy rites represented the burial of Osiris: in these the wood was cut for the chest, the linen torn for cerements, and libations poured. A serpent was also slain in effigy.[74] About the time of the winter solstice, as Plutarch tells us in another place, the Egyptians carried "the cow," i. e. Isis, seven times round the temple, and this procession was called the search for Osiris.[75] On the monuments the Isis worshipped with Osiris appears generally in a youthful shape, with the horns of a cow on her head, the moon's disk between the horns, with the flower-sceptre and symbol of life in her hands. The inscriptions denote her as the "royal consort," the "great goddess." An image in which she was represented in the form of a cow was seen by Herodotus in the royal palace of the last Pharaohs at Sais. "In a beautifully-adorned chamber lay the wooden image of a cow, resting on her knees, not larger than a full-grown cow. The body was covered with a purple robe; on the neck and head could be seen the thick gilding, and between the horns a golden disk. Every day incense was burned before the image; and at night a lamp was kindled before it. Once a year," continues Herodotus, "this cow was carried out into the open, when the Egyptians lamented the god, whose name I do not think proper to mention now."[76]

Osiris and Isis, the spirits of blessing and life, were attacked by Typhon. Plutarch observes that the Egyptians called Typhon Set,[77] and this statement is confirmed by the inscriptions. The colour of Set was burning red,[78] like the glowing sun in the dust of the desert; the ass was the sacred animal of this god, and a peculiarly-formed animal his symbol on the monuments. In poisonous serpents also the Egyptians saw this destructive deity, and they brought the crocodile and hippopotamus into association with him. The third of the five additional days of the year ([p. 29]), which belonged to Set, was to the Egyptians an unlucky day.[79] On a papyrus he is called "the almighty destroyer and blighter,"[80] and with this agrees the statement of Plutarch, that Typhon, according to the Egyptians, had filled the whole earth and sea—which they call "the foam of Typhon"—with evils; and they considered all animals, trees, and vegetables, all incidents of a harmful and destructive nature to be works, parts and actions of Typhon.[81]

The evil god can limit and overcome the beneficent power of nature, but not for ever. Osiris had left behind a young son, who could hold Typhon in check, though unable to suppress him entirely. Horus, as Plutarch tells us, was born about the time of the winter solstice, and the festival of the delivery of Isis was celebrated at the time of the vernal equinox.[82] On the monuments we find Horus (Har), "the avenger of his father Osiris," as the inscriptions call him, represented as a naked child, with finger on lip, sitting on a lotus-leaf, or on a crook, the symbol of dominion. Hence he is the young Horus, the Harpocrates of the Greeks, the Harpechruti—i. e., "Har, the child"—of the Egyptians. Then, according to the legend, he grows up at Buto; he becomes a handsome youth, the strong Horus (Har-ver, Arveris of the Greeks), the "great helper," the "pillar of the world." In the temple at Philæ we see him pouring libations before the bier of Osiris; on other monuments he guides the sun's bark through the hours of the day.[83] At Hermopolis, as Plutarch tells us, a hippopotamus was to be seen, on which a hawk—the sacred bird of Horus, in which form the god is often represented—fought with a serpent; and, according to the belief of the Egyptians, Typhon escaped from Horus in the shape of a crocodile.[84] The monuments represent Horus on the sun-boat in the act of stabbing a serpent with a human head,[85] i. e., Apopis, the serpent Apep; or standing on crocodiles with serpents in his hands; or as a winged sun's disk contending with a hippopotamus. In an invocation of Horus, belonging to the fourth century B.C., we find the following: "Come to me quickly on this day to guide the holy bark (the sun's-boat), to force back all lions to the land of Egypt, and all crocodiles into the Nile. Shamelessness and sin (?) come and appear upon earth; but when Horus is invoked he destroys them. All mankind rejoice when they see the sun. They praise the son of Osiris, and the serpent turns back."[86] Hence to the Egyptians Horus was the triumphant god of light (Har-phre, Horus-sun), who subdues gloom, and winter, and drought. As a victorious god arousing fresh life, he gives to the kings of Egypt life and victory. The Greeks called the Egyptian Ra Helius, and Horus Apollo; and these names correspond to the Egyptian conception of these deities. The chief seats of the worship of Horus were the two cities which the Greeks called the great and little cities of Apollo (Edfu and Kus) and Ombus. At Edfu Hathor was worshipped beside Horus ([p. 52]).

Plutarch tells us that Isis, in the minds of the Egyptians, was the female receptive part of nature. Osiris was the light, Typhon the darkness, the obscuration of the sun and the moon; Osiris was the fruit-giving Nile-water, Typhon the salt and barren sea; Osiris was moisture, Typhon drought, the parching wind, which overcomes and consumes moisture; Osiris was health, Typhon disease; Osiris was the orderly, unchanging; Typhon the passionate, irrational, and giant-like; disturbances, blight, and tempest.[87] It is incorrect, Plutarch observes, in conclusion, to call water, the sun, or the earth and sky Osiris and Isis; and not less so to call the glowing sun and hot wind Typhon. If we merely ascribe to Typhon all that is immoderate or irregular in these, whether in the way of excess or defect, and hold in reverence and honour all that is orderly and good and useful as the work of Isis, as the image, likeness, and essence of Osiris, we shall hardly go wrong.[88]

Thus there can be little doubt about the meaning of the myth. When the Nile receded and the sirocco from the south drove back the refreshing north wind, when the hot days—for these are the seventy-two fellow-conspirators of Typhon—parched up the soil; then had Typhon struck down Osiris. Then, as Plutarch says, "the Egyptians bewailed the decay of the fruits, and prayed the gods to send new in the place of those that were gone, and allow them to spring forth again." When the seed was cast into the ground, the Egyptians buried Osiris: but the sacred rites were an imitation of the sufferings of Isis, and the incidents which occurred when the body was deposited in the tomb. The progressive decay of productive power towards the north during the hot days, and the winter, which was indicated in the myth by the carrying of the corpse of Osiris to the sea, and the custom of carrying the chest to the coast ([p. 57]), is part of the Egyptian conception; that Isis discovers the body at Byblus on the Phenician coast is probably an invention of the Greeks, who confounded the Phenician horned goddess Astarte, Ashtaroth Karnaim, with Isis. When Egypt was again fertilised by the inundation, when the days began to lengthen after the winter solstice, when the sun shone with fresh brightness, and the new fruit budded forth, then Horus, the child born about the winter solstice, waxed strong at Buto in the north of Egypt—then he overcame Typhon. The renewed power of the sun, the returning life of nature, the fresh blessings of the new year—these are the avenging son of Osiris.

When the creative and receptive powers of nature had thus been comprehended in the forms of Osiris and Isis, the divinities in whom creative power and receptivity had hitherto been perceived naturally coalesced with these forms to a greater or less degree. Thus Ptah of Memphis, Tum of Thebes, the sun-god of Heliopolis, are combined with Osiris (the title Ptah-Osiris is not uncommon in the inscriptions,) though they are also retained as separate deities. Thus also Isis is identified with Neith of Sais, with Mut of Thebes, with Hathor, with Bast,[89] the goddess of Bubastis. Horus, again, is identified with Chem and Ra, though at the same time his personality as the youthful, vigorous spirit of light is strongly marked. Plutarch is certainly right in his remark that the Egyptians regard Osiris as the personification of everything in heaven and the under world.[90] All the other deities were transfigurations and manifestations of Osiris, mere modifications of his nature. When Osiris is called the soul of Ra,[91] this can hardly have any other meaning but this, that the appearance of the sun-god in the visible world is an incarnation of the invisible nature of Osiris.

The Egyptians often represented their deities with the heads, or in the shape of, the animals sacred to them; that is, they recognised the nature of the deities who were primarily conceived under the form of men, in the races of the beasts which they allotted to them. To the Egyptians these animals must have appeared so closely and intimately connected with the deity to which they belonged, that the nature of the deity was better expressed and made more visible in the shape of the beast than in the shape of man. We must assume that the predominance of a distinct mark or characteristic property in the races of animals, that their simple, uniformly instinctive life created this conception in the mind of the Egyptians, to whom a fixed and unalterable course of action, an unchanging and typical nature, was the ideal. The force of nature, the regular recurrence of certain phenomena, coalesced in the Egyptian mind with the blind, unchanging action of animals. Yet animals were also seen to possess freedom and movement, and an individual existence. This combination of the type and the individual must have seemed to the Egyptians to correspond to the nature of their deities. The mystery of life, the natural law, which lay at the base of their worship, must for them have reached its most distinct and lively realisation in these animals.

The bull is the sacred animal of the creative gods: the cow of the goddesses of birth and receptivity; the ram is sacred to Chnum; the hawk and the cat to the deities of light and the sun; the beetle to Ptah; a kind of heron to Osiris; the vulture to Ptah and Isis; a kind of ibis to Thoth; the dog-ape to Anubis, the "ruler in the west;[92]" the crocodile to the god Sebek, who was worshipped at Arsinoe, &c., &c. Herodotus tells us that when a cat died in a house, all the inhabitants shaved their eyebrows; and that at conflagrations the Egyptians directed all their attention to saving the cats, not to quenching the flames, and if, in spite of their efforts, a cat leapt into the flames and was burnt, the Egyptians made a great lamentation.[93] "To each of the races of the sacred animals," says Diodorus, "a certain piece of land is consecrated, the products of which suffice for the food and tending of the race. Those entrusted with the care of each race have to feed them. To feed the hawks they cut up pieces of flesh, and call loudly to the birds till they come and take their food. The cats they coax by giving them bread and milk, or chopped fish from the Nile, and thus provide them with suitable food. These duties they do not scruple to perform before the whole people; on the contrary, they are proud of them as of the highest offices which they can attain to in the service of the gods. With special symbols to distinguish them, they proceed through town and country, and as it is known from the symbols what animal it is whose servants are approaching, all who meet them bow the knee and pay homage. If one of the animals dies, it is wrapped in a costly covering, and, amid loud lamentations and beating of the breast, it is carried away to embalment. Steeped in oil of cedar, or any other kind remarkable for its scent and powers of preservation, the corpse is then buried in the holy sepulchres. Anyone who intentionally kills a sacred animal is punished with death; and everyone who has caused the death of an ibis or a cat, intentionally or unintentionally, must die, and is often killed in the most cruel manner, without any sentence passed upon him, by the collected mob. So deeply rooted is the reverence for sacred animals in the feeling of the people, so persistently does everyone cling to the worship of them, that even at the time when Ptolemy was not yet declared an ally by the Romans, and the nation was most anxious to pay respect to visitors from Italy, and to give no cause for war, when a Roman had unintentionally killed a cat, the mob gathered at his house, and neither the officers sent by the king to quiet them, nor the prevailing awe of the Romans, could protect him from their vengeance. This fact I have not received from hearsay: I was in Egypt and saw the occurrence. But what is done for the animals which are kept in the temples is easy to narrate, but difficult for anyone to believe who has not seen it."[94]

Among the races of animals which, according to Egyptian belief, shared in the nature of the deities to which they were sacred, were certain pre-eminent specimens. These were recognised by certain signs by the priests, and passed for a special incarnation of the deity. They were brought into his temple, and there worshipped and prayed to as his manifestation. The most sacred among these selected animals was Apis, the bull, in the temple of Ptah, at Memphis. According to the account of Herodotus, the Egyptians believed that a ray of light from heaven had impregnated the cow, which brought forth an Apis: by Plutarch, the impregnation is said to take place by a ray of the moon.[95] The priests recognized Apis in a black bull, which had a triangular white spot on the forehead, a fleshy growth under the tongue in the form of the sacred beetle of Ptah, white spots on his back in the shape of an eagle, and bi-coloured hairs in the tail.[96] When an Apis was found, he was, says Diodorus, in the first place brought for forty successive days to the meadow of the "city of the Nile" (Nilopolis), where women were shown to him, who were afterwards excluded from the sight of the Apis. Then he was conveyed on a boat in a golden shrine like a god to the temple of Ptah, at Memphis. There he was bathed in the holy place, and anointed, and the most precious frankincense was constantly burned before him. He received the most beautiful garments, the richest bedding-places, and the most handsome cows as his "bed-fellows"; the most distinguished men provided him with the best food at a very great expense. When the Apis died of old age he was honoured with a splendid funeral. "When, on the death of Alexander, Ptolemy, the son of Lagus, made himself master of Egypt, it happened that the Apis died, and the person entrusted with his care not only spent his own large fortune upon his burial, but borrowed, in addition, fifty talents from Ptolemy. Even in my own times certain feeders of the sacred animals have spent not less than one hundred talents on a single funeral."[97]

"The Egyptians," Diodorus remarks, "are of opinion that the soul of the dead Osiris passed into this bull, and thus continues among them, and will so continue among their descendants." Plutarch says that the Apis at Memphis was an image of the soul of Osiris. According to the usual account of the priests, Osiris and Apis were one; for they taught that the Apis was to be regarded as a fair image of the soul of Osiris. Strabo tells us, "The bull Apis, which is revered as a god, is the same as Osiris. The temple in which the Apis was kept stands beside the temple of Hephæstus (Ptah). There is also a temple of Serapis in that city, before which we saw sphinxes, buried in the sand, some to the middle, some to the neck."[98] Evidence from other sources, no less than the monuments, confirms these accounts of Diodorus and Plutarch. The monuments exhibit the Apis with the sun's disk and the royal serpent between his horns, and Greek papyri tell us that the keeper with whom the Apis was placed was known as the "Herdman of Osorapi," i. e. of Osiris-Apis (Osarhapi).[99] We may assume that this Osorapi was the Serapis or Sarapis of the Greeks, and the temple of Serapis a temple of Osorapi. The sphinxes buried in sand at Memphis have been discovered on the plateau on which the inhabitants buried their dead to the west of the ruins of this city. They are found here in two rows as often before the entrance of temples between Abusir and Sakkarah. It is by following this path of sphinxes that the discoverers were recently enabled to find the ruins of the temple of Serapis, i. e. the temple of the grave of Osiris-Apis, and the sepulchral chambers of the Apis-bulls hewn in the rocks around it. The oldest of the tombs hitherto opened belongs, according to the inscriptions, to an Apis buried in the time of Amenophis III. (1524-1488 B.C.). Above ground rises a massive structure, truncated at the top, and decorated with reliefs. This is the mortuary chapel. A sloping passage, the entrance to which lies before this structure, leads beneath the earth to a sepulchral chamber, where stands a sarcophagus with the mummy of the Apis. The relief on the structure above exhibits the king bringing a drink-offering to the Apis. Beside the picture of the bull we read, "The living Osiris, the lord of the sky: he is Tum ([p. 51]): his feathers are upon him: he gives life for evermore." On the sarcophagus of an Apis buried in a similar tomb in the reign of Horus (1455-1443 B.C.), we read:—"Apis-Osiris, the great deity who dwells in Amenti, the ever-living lord." King Ramses II. (1388-1322 B.C.), in the second half of his reign, caused a broad gallery to be excavated under the rock, on both sides of which chambers of about twenty feet high were subsequently cut out as occasion required; in these were placed the remains of the dead Apis-bulls in sarcophagi of basalt or granite. When the gallery of Ramses was no longer sufficient, Psammetichus I. caused a gallery still larger and more beautiful to be excavated, and provided with handsome cells. After Darius had extended this second gallery, the bodies of the bulls were buried in the chambers of it down to the times of the latest Ptolemies. As yet sixty-four tombs in all have been discovered; but of these only four were uninjured. All the rest had been already opened by the Arabs, plundered, and in part destroyed. The inscriptions on the tombs in the galleries give the same representation of the Apis as the older sepulchres. He is "the Osiris again restored to life," the "revived Apis of Ptah," "the living Apis, which is Osiris abiding in Amenti," the "second Ptah." On a sarcophagus we read:—"Here is Osiris Apis, who dwells in Amenti, the great God, the eternal Lord, the ruler for all time." Another inscription remarks "that he had been sought for three months in the valleys of Upper Egypt, and on the islands of Lower Egypt. When found he had been brought to his throne in the temple, to his father Ptah, in such and such a year, on such and such a day. The happy duration of his life had been six-and-twenty years; then the deity had been carried to burial, as he had established himself in the good Amenti in order to unite himself on his eternal throne with the house of centuries." Or, as it is said in another inscription, "the holiness of Apis has been brought to unite himself with the good Amenti."[100]

By this constantly renewed incarnation in the form of a bull, the emblem of generation, the god of life gave the Egyptians a guarantee for the continuance of his grace, and the perpetuation of their life in this world and the next. Whether other forms of incarnation beside this were ascribed to the god cannot be determined.

At the time when the Nile began to rise, or shortly before it, there appeared in Egypt from year to year a peculiar kind of heron, distinguished by two long feathers on the back of the head.[101] This was known to the Egyptians as Bennu. This bird, which announced or caused the fertilisation or new life of the land, could not but belong to the god of life. The whole race, or a select specimen, appears in special connection with Osiris, and the temple at Heliopolis. In the oldest portions of the Book of the Dead, which belong to the time of the Amenemha and Sesurtesen, we find, "I am that great Bennu of On" (Heliopolis); and the commentary adds, "Bennu is Osiris, viz., the Osiris in On."[102] The inscriptions say of the great Bennu that "it was self-begotten," that "it caused the divisions of time to arise."[103] This production of himself signifies the creative power of Osiris, and the origin of the seasons might well be attributed to the bird which regularly appeared announcing the return of the period of fertilization. With the cultus of the Bennu at Heliopolis is connected the story of the phœnix. Herodotus tells us that he was informed by the inhabitants of Heliopolis that a bird, which, if it resembled the pictures, was gold-coloured and red, and like an eagle in shape and size, came from Arabia to their city once in every 500 years, and buried the corpse of his father in myrrh in the sanctuary of the sun-god.[104] From later accounts we learn that the phœnix, on reaching the age of 500 years, prepared a funeral pile of spices, and burned himself upon it; then he recreated himself, and carried the remains of his old body to Heliopolis.[105] Tacitus says: "In the consulship of Paulus Fabius and Lucius Vitellius (i. e. in the year 34 A.D.) after a lapse of centuries, the phœnix appeared in Egypt. This bird, which was sacred to the sun, returned after an interval of 500 years, according to the most common accounts; according to others after an interval of 1461 years. The first phœnix appeared in the reign of Sesostris; the second under Amasis; the third in the time of the third Ptolemy; and as there was only a lapse of 250 years between this Ptolemy and the reign of Tiberius, some regarded the last phœnix as a spurious one."[106] Ælian remarks: "The Egyptians are not agreed when the 500 years are completed; and the priests were at variance whether the bird would appear then or later, and when he ought to come; but amid their dissensions the bird suddenly appeared at the right time."[107] Pliny informs us that the cycle of the great year was connected with the life of this bird, and with his return the stars came again into their old position.[108] Horapollo maintains that the phœnix was a symbol of the sun, and signified one who returned after a long time from a far country.[109] There is no doubt, therefore, that the alleged appearance of the phœnix signified to the Egyptians the close of an astronomical period. On the monuments the planet Venus is described as the "star of Bennu-Osiris." As the morning star announced the day, the light returning out of darkness, it could easily be appropriated to Osiris, and that period might be connected with the cycles of the planet Venus.[110]

The selected cats of the sun-god and his daughter, the goddess of Bubastis, the hawk of Horus, the ibis of Thoth, the vulture of Mut, were regarded by the Egyptians with no less veneration than the bulls of Osiris. In a hymn to a male cat, which was kept for Ra at Heliopolis—the hymn is to be found on a memorial pillar of the fourth century B.C.—we read: "Thy head is the head of the sun-god; thy nose is the nose of Thoth, the twice mighty lord of Hermopolis. Thy ears are the ears of Osiris, who hears the voice of all who call upon him; thy mouth is the mouth of the god Tum, the lord of life, he has preserved thee from every stain. Thy heart is the heart of Ptah; he has purified thee from every stain of evil in thy members: thy teeth are the teeth of the god Chunsu (the moon-god). Thy thighs are the thighs of the god Horus, the avenger of his father Osiris, who has retaliated upon Set the mischief he purposed against Osiris."[111] Selected crocodiles—and even the crocodile was worshipped, at least in some regions, as in the Thebais and around the lake of Moeris—were to be found at Thebes and Arsinoe. "For both these animals," says Herodotus "(and they are so tame that they allow themselves to be touched), the priests put ornaments of glass and gold in their ears, and bracelets on their fore-feet, and give them the best of food both of meal and from the sacrifices, and attend to them with the utmost care. When they die they are embalmed, and buried in the sacred tombs."[112] Strabo, who travelled through Egypt more than four hundred years later than Herodotus, narrates that a sacred crocodile was kept in the lake of Moeris, which was tame to the priests. He was fed with the bread, wine, and flesh brought to him by visitors. "Our host," Strabo continues, "a man of distinction at Arsinoe, who showed us the sacred things of the city, took cakes, roast meat, and a drink mixed with honey, and went with us to the lake. On the shore lay the crocodile; the priests went up to him, two of them opened his jaws; and the third put in first the cakes, then the meat, and last of all he gave him the drink. Then the crocodile ran into the water and swam to the opposite bank. Another stranger came with similar presents: the priests took them, ran round the lake and offered them to the crocodile, when they had found him, in the same manner as before."[113] Clement of Alexandria describes the glory of the Egyptian temples, and then continues thus: "The innermost shrine is veiled with a curtain of cloth of gold; when the priest removes the veil you see a cat, a crocodile, or a serpent of the land rolling on a purple coverlet."

According to the account of Herodotus, the dead cats were embalmed in sacred tombs at Bubastis, the hawks at Buto, the ibis at Hermopolis.[114] Mummies of cats have been discovered at Thebes and Sheikhassan; mummies of bulls, cows, jackals, dogs, and vultures at Thebes and Sioot; of hawks and ibises at Thebes, Hermopolis, Abydus, and Memphis; of crocodiles at Thebes and Manfalut.[115]

This reverence for beasts, the excessive regard for the nourishment of the sacred kinds and the preservation of their bodies, the offering of prayers to them, the worship of bulls, birds, and crocodiles as living gods, the royal honours with which these selected examples were buried, would of necessity be regarded as a very rude superstition or degraded fetichism, hardly compatible with the general level of civilisation and culture in the country, had not the Egyptians united a deeper feeling with their worship of animals. In the living and yet typical forms of beasts as contrasted with the deadness of nature, they saw not only creations of the deities, but manifestations of the divine life itself. The consecrated race of animals participated in the nature of the god to whom it belonged, and the specimens in the temples were an unbroken series of incarnations of the deity.

In a different sense from the sacred animals, man also was in the eyes of the Egyptians a manifestation of the divine life and nature. If we set aside the position of the kings (see below), we find no indication that man was regarded as the incarnation of particular deities or their attributes. Yet man had a share in the immortality of the gods; and he who studied and desired the divine was thought by his bodily death to arrive at a complete divine existence. The primary result of this feeling was that the body must be preserved as the vehicle of personality even when life and soul have left it; it must be protected from decay and ruin and any external disturbance by nature or man. Beyond the reach of beasts of prey, safe from the enemy and the destroyer, the corpses must rest uncorrupted and uninjured in cool, secure, inaccessible, unpolluted, indestructible graves. No nation has devoted so much care and labour to the preservation of the corpses, whether of men or of sacred animals, as the Egyptians. It was almost the first duty of the living to attend to the dead. And with his body must be preserved all that the deceased person had done or acquired in life: his occupation, his actions must live on in the grave, like his corpse. Pictures in his tomb must represent his life, and inscriptions must give an account of it. "The Egyptians," says Diodorus, "speak of the dwellings of the living as a lodging; but of the tombs of the dead as eternal habitations, because the dead pass an endless time in Hades. Hence they bestow less toil upon their houses; but their tombs they furnish in a most extraordinary manner."[116]

The tombs are always turned towards the west, and are deeply hollowed out in soil, or hewn in the rocks of the Libyan mountains. Those of the wealthier sort generally consist of two chambers, an upper and a lower, or a front and a back one. The upper or front chamber is furnished with a description of the life of the dead person, his possessions, his office, his occupation, and the most important results of his life exhibited in relief and pictures. It served as a chapel in which the offerings to the dead were made. In the lower or hinder chamber lay the corpse. The corpses of the poorer inhabitants found their resting-place in the common sepulchres. The preservation of the corpse was accomplished in various ways. Either the entrails were taken out through an aperture and placed in separate vessels, or the corpse was protected against corruption by the injection of various substances; or finally it was allowed to lie for a considerable time in saltpetre.

Like the embalmment and the tomb, the cerements and the coffin were more or less costly, according to the rank and wealth of the deceased. The dead person was placed in a receptacle adapted to the shape of the corpse, provided with a mask to represent his face, and adorned with inscriptions and pictures. On the breast was generally depicted the beetle of Ptah, or an open eye, the symbol of Osiris. This receptacle was then placed in two or more coffins, each inclosing the other, which were made of more or less costly wood. Rich persons added to their coffins the stone sarcophagus, a hollow block of granite, the heavy lid of which was then made so fast to the lower part that it could not be opened without destroying the whole.

The sarcophagus was carried to the sepulchre in solemn procession, led by the temple-servants, with the necessary implements, and the bull destined for sacrifice to the dead. Next were seen the implements used by the deceased in his lifetime; the insignia of his order, if he had been a priest, or in any office; or, if he had held any military command, his chariot followed. After this came the waiting-women, hired for this purpose according to the custom of the East; and men with palm-branches, the servants of the dead, and the priests; last of all followed the sarcophagus on a boat—for the soul of the dead passed like the sun-god on a boat to the under world. This boat was on rollers, and drawn by oxen. The procession was closed by the mourners of the family and the friends. When the bull had been sacrificed and frankincense burned to the gods, libations were poured in honour of the dead. He was praised, as Diodorus assures us, not because he was born of a noble race, but because he had been carefully educated and well instructed, because he had been pious towards the gods, and had lived a just and sober life. Then the kinsfolk implored the gods to receive the dead into the society of the good. The accompanying multitude joined in the prayer, and extolled the faith of the deceased, who now would for ever pass his life in the company of the good.[117] The coffin was then brought into the upper chamber, and from thence, when the ceremonies were completed, it was carried to its proper resting-place, and placed on the west side of it; the place was then closed and sealed.

According to the Egyptian story, Osiris was not slain by Typhon. He did not die; he was only taken away from men, as Diodorus says;[118] he descended into the under world; he passed away into the invisible region, while in the visible world he continued to live and work in the vigorous strength of his son Horus. In the shape of Horus, or Ra, Osiris wandered through the visible world. He changed only his name and shape when, every evening, he went back to his distant home in order to be alone. Thus, by descending from earth and dying, he had received the sovereignty of the lower world, and left to the youthful Ra, his son Horus, the empire of this world. As the sun goes down every evening, and every morning awakes to new life, as the vegetation dies away in the heat of summer and in autumn, and again in the spring attains to new life, so to the minds of the Egyptians death, in all its shapes, was only death in appearance, in reality it was a transition to a new life. And as Osiris remained alive in death, and was the source of new life, so through him and in him the soul of man was aroused out of death to a new life. The sacred animals and men were of divine nature and origin; they could not, therefore, end with death; death could only carry them back to their divine origin, to that other world, from which they had come; and in that other world they must awake to a new life.

Owing to this power of awakening life out of death, Osiris became to the Egyptians the special god of the human soul. As lord of the under world, Osiris is often found on the monuments in the shape of a mummy. His colour was in this case black, like his bull in Memphis; his clothing was white;[119] his symbol, a wide-open eye, signifying the second beholding of light. In this form of Osiris the Greeks recognised the Dionysus of their Mysteries, whom they could also compare with Osiris as the giver of fruits.[120]

The Egyptians, says Herodotus, were the first to maintain that the soul of man was immortal.[121] Plutarch, as we have already seen, informs us that to the Egyptian Osiris was the embodiment not only of all that is in heaven, but also of all that is in the under world. "His soul," he continues, "was regarded by the Egyptians as eternal and indestructible, and, according to the doctrine of the priests, Osiris ruled over the dead, as Hades and Pluto among the Greeks. In reality, he was free and untouched by everything subject to change and death. When men are delivered from the body, and from pain, and pass into the eternal and invisible world, where pain is unknown, then Osiris becomes their king and leader. They are his retainers, who desire him, and are spectators of a beauty inconceivable and inexpressible to men. This is the explanation of the story most suitable to the deities."[122]

The inscriptions on the sarcophagi, the wraps round the corpses, but above all a papyrus roll placed in the coffin with the dead body, the so-called "Book of the Dead," enable us to ascertain with considerable accuracy the views of the Egyptians on the fate of the soul after death. The greater part of the known manuscripts of this book belong to the seventh or sixth century B.C. The contents show that rubrics and prayers of the same purport, but differently drawn up, proceeding from different times, and with different commentaries, are collected together in order to provide the dead person with everything he can want in the next world. All the prayers and invocations for that world are also given, in order that the most effective may be at hand, just as at the end of these manuscripts all the names under which Osiris can be invoked—and they are more than a hundred—are gathered together. But fragments of this Book of the Dead, or, more strictly, this Book of the Resurrection, which forms the core of the Egyptian doctrine of the world to come, are found hewn in sarcophagi—already with a triple commentary—which belong to a date previous to the year 2000 B.C.

After death the soul of man descends with the setting sun under the earth into the nether world. Here, on the day of the "valuation of words," the day of "justification," the soul is examined, and its actions weighed in the hall of double justice, i. e. the justice which rewards and the justice which punishes. Osiris, with a crown upon his head, and holding in his hand a crosier and a whip, sits upon a throne surrounded by the water of life, out of which spring up lotus-flowers. Beside him sit forty-two spirits; Anubis, the god with a jackal's head, the leader and keeper of the dead, and Horus, with a hawk's head, are busied with a balance; in one scale is the heart of the deceased, in the other an ostrich-feather, the symbol of truth and justice. The god with the head of an ibis, the scribe of truth, takes down the result of the weighing. As Osiris, according to the legend, was once justified by Horus and Thoth, so is every human soul justified by those deities. The deceased assures them that he has committed no sins; he enumerates forty-two errors into which he has not fallen. He has done no wickedness; he has not stolen, nor slain any one intentionally; he has not allowed his devotions to be seen; he has not been guilty of hypocrisy, or lying; he has not stolen the property of the gods, or the sacrificial food; he has not calumniated any one, or fallen into drunkenness or adultery; he has not turned away his ear from the words of truth; he has been no idle talker; he has not slighted the king or his father; he has not contemned the gods, or torn from the dead their linen wraps.

The departed spirit was not allowed to enter the other world in ignorance: he must know what awaits him there; the path which he has to tread, and the prayers which opened for him the gates of the various regions, which gave him power to overcome whatever spirits and monsters might meet him in the way and attempt to hold him back; he must know the charm which will at last unlock for him the fields of Ra. He must know and recognise the gods to whom he returns; the nature from which he has sprung, and which he now again assumes. As in him divinity has been made human, so is he now in turn deified. To secure this knowledge for the dead, the book is placed in his coffin, the important passages were written on the wraps, and engraved on the coffin.

If the heart of the dead man was not found too light and his soul was pure,[123] he was acquitted in the other world, he received back from the gods his heart and members renewed and deified, and the goddesses of life and the sky—Hathor and Nut—poured out upon him the water of life. His prayer opened for him the gates of the dwellings in the world to come; he was enabled to strike with his lance the evil spirits and monsters, the crocodiles, snakes, tortoises, the two vipers, and the serpent Apep, to keep at a distance all impurity, and finally to reach the fields of the sun-god.[124] Here the blessed planted the heavenly wheat—of which the ears were two cubits in length—wandered at will in shady avenues with odours in their hair, and bathed in pools of water.

Arrived among the gods, the soul receives the power of assuming various existences—that is, apparently, of entering into the bodies of men and beasts, and returning finally into the divine substance from which it sprang. Hence to the Egyptians death is the "going up to heaven," the "entrance into heaven," the "entrance into the place of the gods."[125] The first chapter of the Book of the Dead was to be pronounced by the deceased on the day of his burial when going forth from the grave at the western gate of the under-world, in order to find immediate entrance there. "By learning this chapter when on earth," so runs the close of it in the book, "or by setting it forth in writing on his tomb, he will emerge on the day, and on entering into his dwelling he will not be thrust back. Food and drink will be given to him, much flesh also on the table of Ra; he will work in the fields on the plain of Aanro (Paradise), where corn and wheat will be given to him; he will live happily as he lived upon earth." On the day of justification, the dead has to say: "I am one of the initiated; thy name I know; I know the names of thy forty-two gods, who dwell with thee in the hall of twofold justice." Then comes the answer: "Enter! thou knowest us."[126] On a sarcophagus of the time of the Amenemha and Sesurtesen the deceased utters the following words, which are found detailed at greater length and commented upon in the seventeenth chapter of the Book of the Dead. "I am Tum ([p. 51]), a being, which I alone am. I am Ra in his first sovereignty. I am the great self-existing god, the creator of his name, the ruler of all gods, whom none of the gods restrains. I was yesterday; I know the morrow. When I spoke a battle-field was prepared for the gods. I know the name of that great god who is there. Glory of Ra is his name. I am the great Bennu which is worshipped in On. I am Chem in his manifestation; on me have been placed the two feathers on my head; I have arrived at my land, I have arrived at my dwelling-place."[127] "The sun-mountain (horizon) of his father Tum is meant,"—so run the commentaries, both old and late, and at the same time they remark that the great god, existing by his own power, is Osiris; and the great Bennu also is Osiris ([p. 69]). By Chem is meant Chemhor, i. e., the Horus, who by his own power renews his own youth every day. On the cover of the sarcophagus we find the formula, "When this chapter has been pronounced, he (the dead man) enters into the western land at the time of his resurrection: if entirely unacquainted with it, he cannot enter; for him, as for one uninitiated, there is no resurrection."[128]

Thus we must assume that the Egyptians believed in man's return to his divine origin in the sense that a soul which was not found wanting in weight, and was conscious of its own true nature, was not only received, after the completion of the proper cycle, into the bosom of the godhead, and allowed to be absorbed into the divine power, but was so far deified that it could adopt divine attributes and power, and even assume a divine title.

According to the account of Herodotus, the Egyptians believed that the soul of the dead passed into an animal, born at the time; from this it wandered into all the other animals on earth, in the air and the sea, and after 3,000 years it was again born with a human body.[129] That this account is incorrect is proved by the records already quoted; it may perhaps have arisen from the Egyptian conception that the soul of the justified obtained the power to assume every shape. But a purification of the unclean and ignorant soul by passing through the bodies of all kinds of animals could never have been assumed by the Egyptians, since the sacred races were pre-eminent manifestations, and the selected animals continuous incarnations, of the gods. If a pilgrimage through the bodies of beasts was really regarded by the Egyptians as a course of punishment and amelioration, the beasts meant can only be such as were not sacred. But as yet the examination of the monuments and records has by no means completely cleared up the relation of the soul to the body it has left, nor has it attained to any result on the fate in store for the souls which were found wanting when weighed in the balance.

FOOTNOTES:

[34] Herod. 3, 37.

[35] De Rougé, "Revue archéolog." 1860, 1, 357.

[36] "De Isid." c. 51, 52; "De Pyth. Oraculis," p. 400.

[37] Macrob. "Sat." 6, 18.

[38] "De Isid." c. 36.

[39] De Rougé, "Zeitsch. d. d. m. Gesellschaft," after a sepulchral pillar in the Berlin Museum, 4, 375.

[40] Champollion, Monuments, pl. 123 seq. Dümichen, "Tempelinschriften." 1, 24. Lepsius, "Aelteste Texte des Todtenbuchs," s. 13.

[41] Lepsius, "Die Götter der vier Elemente;" Dümichen, in "Zeitsch. für ægyptische Sprache," 1869 s. 7.

[42] Herod. 2, 61.

[43] Plut. "De Isid." c. 38.

[44] The identification of Neith with Athene (Herod. 2, 62; Plat. "Tim." p. 21) rests on the similarity of the name, on the torch-races in honour of Pallas at Athens, and the feast of lamps at Sais. Gutschmid, "Beiträge zur Geschichte des alten Orients," s. 39, 45 ff., has shown that Neith and Athene cannot be brought into agreement in points of language. The inscription on the throne of Neith at Sais, given by Plutarch ("De Isid." c. 9), "I am all that has been, is, will be, and no mortal has lifted my robe," does not in the first part of it contradict certain applications of the oldest text of the "Book of the Dead" (see below). On the other hand, the second part is doubtful. In any case, the fact that the peplos has not been raised does not refer to the inconceivable nature of the goddess, but to seclusion from sexual intercourse. It can only mean that Neith was born from her own creative force.

[45] Herod. 2, 60, 137, 138.

[46] Horapoll. 1, 10.

[47] Brugsch, "Zeitschr. d. d. morgenland. Gesellschaft," 10, 683.

[48] De Rougé, "Revue archéolog." 1860, 1, 339.

[49] Plutarch, "De Isid." c. 63; cf. Eber's "Gosen," s. 484.

[50] Plut. "De Isid." c. 9.

[51] Bunsen, "Ægypten," I, 446.

[52] Lepsius in "Zeitschrift für æg. Sprache," 1868, s. 127.

[53] Lepsius, "Aelteste Texte," s. 42, 48, 52; "Götterkreis," s. 31-43.

[54] Plut. "De Isid." c. 11.

[55] Ibid. c. 21.

[56] Wilkinson, 4, 237, 242, 246.

[57] Parthey, "Abh. der Berl. Akademie," 1863; Minutoli, "Reise zum Tempel des Ammon;" cf. Herod. 4. 181.

[58] Bunsen, "Ægypten," 1, 470; Lepsius, "Briefe," s. 105.

[59] Diod. 1, 13.

[60] Plut. "De Isid." c. 12-20.

[61] Herod. 2, 144; Diod. 1, 25, 44.

[62] Compare the beautiful explanation given by Lepsius of the game at dice between Hermes and Selene, narrated in Plutarch, loc. cit.

[63] Lepsius, "Chronol." 1, 91. As to the meaning of Seb, I should be inclined to give the preference to the view of Brugsch.

[64] Brugsch and Lepsius in "Zeitschrift für æg. Sprache," 1868, s. 122 ff.

[65] Wilkinson, "Ancient Egypt," 4, 189.

[66] Lepsius, "Götterkreis," s. 35; "Briefe," 106-111.

[67] Diod. 1, 22.

[68] Plut. "De Isid." c. 20

[69] Plut. ib. 12-20; Strab. p. 803.

[70] Herod. 2, 59; Plut. loc. cit. 21; Diod. 1, 88.

[71] Busiris was the name of several towns in Lower Egypt; we must assume that the chief town of the district of this name was the scene of the festival. How the Greeks turned the name of this town into a king Busiris who used to slay strangers, I cannot explain. Eratosthenes in Strabo, p. 802, says: "There never was a king Busiris; the story may have been invented owing to the inhospitality of the inhabitants of Busiris;" and Diodorus observes: "It was not a king who was called Busiris, but the grave of Osiris was so named in the native language" (1, 88), which is near the truth.

[72] Herod. 2, 40, 42, 144.

[73] Plut. "De Isid." c. 35, 39.

[74] Plut. loc. cit. 12, 21, 42.

[75] Plut. loc. cit. c. 52. The inscriptions on the temple at Dendera prescribe a seven days' lamentation for Osiris, beginning on the 24th Choiak, and give full directions for the burial. Lauth, in the "Zeitschr. f. æg. Sprache," 1866, s. 64 ff.

[76] Herod. 2, 41, 132.

[77] "De Isid." c. 42.

[78] Diod. 1, 88.

[79] Plutarch, loc. cit. c. 12.

[80] Lepsius, "Götterkreis," s. 53.

[81] Plut. loc. cit. c. 32, 40, 50.

[82] Plut. loc. cit. c. 65.

[83] Parthey, on Plut. "De Isid." c. 12.

[84] Plut. loc. cit. 50.

[85] Wilkinson, loc. cit. 4, 436.

[86] Brugsch in the "Zeitschr. d. d. m. Gesellschaft," 9, 10, 68 c. ff.

[87] Plut. "De Isid." c. 33, 39, 40, 49, 53, 65, 71.

[88] Plut. "De Isid." c. 64.

[89] Diod. 1, 27; Plut. "De Isid." c. 9, 56, 63.

[90] Plut. loc. cit. c. 61.

[91] Lepsius, "Aelteste Texte," s. 46.

[92] Birch. "Gall." 1, 24, 44.

[93] Herod. 2, 66.

[94] Diod. 1, 83, 84.

[95] Plut. "De Isid." c. 43.

[96] Herod. 3, 28; Ælian ("De Nat. Anim." 1, 10) speaks of twenty-nine marks of Apis; cf Plin. "Hist. Nat." 8, 184.

[97] Diod. 1, 84, 85.

[98] Diod. 1, 85; Plut. "De Iside." c. 29; Strabo, p. 807.

[99] "Mém. pres. à l'Acad. des Inscript." sér. 1, 2, p. 15.

[100] Mariette, "Bulletin de l'Athén-Français," Oct. 1856, p. 75; Juill. Nov. 1855, pp. 67, 96, 98.

[101] "Ardea purpurea;" Lepsius, "Aelteste Texte," s. 50.

[102] Lepsius, "Aelteste Texte," s. 43, 46, 51.

[103] Brugsch in "Zeitschr. d. d. m. G." 10, 651 ff.

[104] Herod. 2, 73.

[105] Plin. "Hist. Nat." 10, 2; cf. 13, 9; Pompon. Mela. 3, 8.

[106] "Annal." 6, 28.

[107] "De Nat. Anim." 6, 58.

[108] "Hist. Nat." 10, 5.

[109] Ibid. 1, 34, 35.

[110] Brugsch, "Zeitschr. d. d. m. G." 10, 651 ff.; Lepsius, "Aelteste Texte," s. 51; De Rougé, "Bulletin de l'Athén. Français," 1856, p. 25 seqq.

[111] Brugsch, "Zeitschr. d. d. m. G." 10, 683.

[112] Herod. 2, 69.

[113] Strabo, p. 811.

[114] Herod. 2, 65-67.

[115] Wilkinson, "Egypt," 5. 117, 123, 230 ff.

[116] Diod. 1, 51, cf. 92.

[117] Diod. 1, 92; Wilkinson, "Egypt," sec. ser. 2, 411.

[118] Diod. 1, 25.

[119] Plut. "De Iside," c. 33, 78.

[120] Herod. 2, 42; Diod. 1, 11, 13, 25.

[121] Ibid. 2, 123.

[122] "De Iside," c. 54, 61, 79, 80.

[123] Pierret, "Traduct. du Chap. I. du Livre des Morts;" "Zeitsch. für æg. Sprache," 1869, s. 135; 1870, s. 18 ff.

[124] De Rougé, "Revue archéolog." 1860, p. 79 ff.

[125] Lepsius, "Aelteste Texte," s. 4.

[126] Lepsius, "Aelteste Texte," s. 6, 9.

[127] Lepsius, loc. cit. s. 30 ff.

[128] Lepsius, "Aelteste Texte," s. 25.

[129] Herod. 2, 123.

CHAPTER IV.

THE KINGDOM OF MEMPHIS.

The lists of the Egyptians place Menes (Mena) at the head of their series of kings. They describe him as a native of This, a place in the neighbourhood of Abydus, below Thebes, a district which Diodorus considers the oldest part of Egypt. Menes passes for the founder of the kingdom and the builder of Memphis (Mennefer); he is said to have taught the Egyptians the worship of the gods and the offering of sacrifice.[130] Herodotus informs us that he learnt from the Egyptian priests that Menes had thrown a dam across the Nile about 100 stades above Memphis, and thus forced the stream which previously flowed at the foot of the Libyan chain of hills to leave its ancient channel, and flow at an equal distance between the two ranges. When the land thus gained by the dam had become firm, he built upon it the city, now called Memphis, and still situated in the narrow part of Egypt. Towards the north and west sides of the city, Menes had excavated a lake, and filled it with water from the river—which was itself a protection to the city on the east,—and in the city he built the greatest and most remarkable temple of Hephæstus (Ptah).[131] Diodorus observes:—The founder of Memphis, the most splendid city in Egypt, selected the most suitable site by founding the city in the place where the Nile separates into several arms, so that the city, lying on the pass, commanded the navigation up the Nile. He also obtained for the place a wonderful advantage and security by throwing a huge dam in front of it towards the south, as the Nile at the time of inundation overflows the district. This dam was a protection against the rising water, and at the same time served as an acropolis and defence from the attack of enemies. On all the other sides of the city he caused a large and deep lake to be excavated, which received the overflow of the water and afforded the strongest protection for the city. The circuit of the city he placed at 150 stades, and owing to the excellence of the situation, Memphis was generally chosen by the kings as their place of residence.[132] The situation, just a little above the place where the river-valley, hitherto enclosed between the two ranges of hills, opens out into the Delta, was certainly the best adapted to form the centre of an empire extending over the narrow valley of the upper river and the broader district of the Delta, with its wealth of corn-land and meadows, and to check the entrance of enemies who came from the north-west or the north-east into the upper valley, even when it was no longer possible to maintain the Delta against them. About fifteen miles above Memphis, at Kafr-el-Yat, the Nile makes a considerable bend to the east, and modern investigations claim to have discovered traces showing that this curve is due to the hand of man.

Menes, whose accession, according to the arrangement of Lepsius, would fall in the year 3892 B.C., was followed on the throne by King Athotis (Ateta), who was said to have built the citadel at Memphis. Next came Kenkenes, whose successor was Uenephes, to whom is ascribed the erection of the pyramids. We have seen what care and labour the Egyptians devoted to their tombs, their "everlasting houses." The west, where the sun sets, and the desert spreads out in boundless expanse beyond the Libyan range, belonged in their minds to the gods of night, of the under-world, and of death. About ten miles to the west of Memphis there rises a desolate and barren plateau of rock, which for many miles runs parallel to the river, about 100 feet above the blooming and animated valley through which the Nile takes its course. In that rocky soil, which separates the fruitful land from the desert, the bodies of the dead were placed in chambers, either hewn in the solid stone, or, where the soil was less firm, built of masonry, and thus secured even from the overflow of the river. Even the kings sought their resting-places on this plateau of rock. They, above all, gave attention to the solidity and durability of their tombs; and in death, as in life, they wished to be kings. The place where a king rested must be marked as royal, and visible from a distance; the grave of a king must tower over the rest; his chamber must be of all most difficult to open. Thus at first blocks of stone were rolled upon the closed burial-place of a king, or a mound of earth was raised over it, if sand and soil were to be obtained in the neighbourhood. The strong winds which blew from the desert made it, however, necessary to secure these mounds, and cover them with stone. Hence by degrees the sepulchral heaps acquired a definite shape: they were rectangular structures, lessening toward the apex; then, by extending the base and sharpening the gradient, they were brought into the form of pyramids, and thus obtained the greatest possible firmness and solidity. For a similar reason the core, or central part, was no longer made of earth, but of brick; where blocks of stone could be obtained they were fitted into the core with more and more regularity, until at last these structures were completed within and without of rectangular hewn blocks of stone in regular layers, and artificial mountains of stone towered over the sepulchral chambers of the kings.

"At a distance of forty stades from Memphis," Strabo tells us, "is a range of hills, on which stand the pyramids, or sepulchres of the kings. Among these, three are especially deserving of notice. Rectangular in shape, they are about one stadium high; and the height is slightly less than the length of either side. The sides are not equal, one is a little longer than the other, and near the middle of the longer side is a stone, which can be taken out. Behind this a winding, hollow passage leads to the tomb. Two of these pyramids stand close to each other on the same level; at a distance, on a higher level, rises the third, which, though much smaller, has been erected at much greater cost." "Like mountains," says Tacitus, "the pyramids have been raised amid impassable quicksands by the emulation and power of the kings."[133]

About seventy of these structures, which rise in a long line on the plateau of Memphis, from Abu Roash to Dahshur,[134] remain as witnesses of the rulers of the old kingdom of Memphis and their dependants, of the artistic skill and laborious industry of their nation. Of some only the bases and a few fragments are in existence; of the largest, the points, and at least a part of the casing, are either decayed, fallen down, or broken off; for at a later time the Arabs used these monuments as quarries. Three pyramids which stand in the neighbourhood of the modern Abusir are formed of rough blocks of stone, both in the cores and in the passages to the sepulchral chambers; and these blocks are fastened together by mud from the Nile poured in between them; their casings, now decayed, were of lime-stone blocks, and in height they extended from 150 to 200 feet. Others, originally at least, of an equal height, of which the core was regularly built of brick, are found farther to the south near Dahshur. The architecture of these remains shows that the kings of Memphis commenced building their tombs soon after their accession. They began, it would seem, with a core of moderate size, and in this they probably constructed a sort of temporary chamber. If time sufficed, the first plan was overlaid with new strata, and thus it gradually increased in size. Should the builder die before the whole was completed, the casing of the structure thus raised in the form of steps was left to the successor.[135] Between seven smaller pyramids, built regularly of stone blocks, which are about 150 feet in height, and of similar plan and structure, rise the three largest at Gizeh; the highest was originally 480 feet in height, though now it measures only 450 feet; the next greatest, standing south-west of the highest, is now 447 feet, and was originally 457 feet in height; the third measures but 218 feet. The second largest, originally twenty-three feet lower than the largest, is on a slightly higher level, the masonry is inferior to the largest, and the chamber lies immediately under the area of the structure. The largest measures 716 feet, or 500 Egyptian cubits,[136] on each side of the area; the height along the slope is 574 feet, and the structure contains about ninety million cubic feet of masonry. Fifty feet above the original area, now covered with the sand of the desert, in the middle of the north side, there commences a gradually descending passage, about three feet broad and four feet high, leading to a chamber hewn deep in the foundation rock. This chamber lies more than one hundred feet below the level of the pyramid, exactly 600 feet under the apex, and in a perpendicular line with it; it is thirty-six feet above the level of the Nile. From this passage to the chamber there branches off, just behind the entrance, a horizontal shaft, and from this rises an ascending passage leading to two chambers, one over the other, which, like the sepulchral chamber below, lie in the axis of the pyramid. The third and smaller pyramid—its sides measure 333 feet, and the height of the slope is 262 feet—being built upon looser soil, required a greater substructure, on which it rose in five or six perpendicular and gradually diminishing stories, the spaces between being filled up with bevelled masonry. Up to a considerable height the casing consists of polished slabs of granite. Under this structure in the native rock lies a larger chamber, and behind this the sepulchral chamber.

When Herodotus visited Egypt about the middle of the fifth century B.C., and questioned his interpreter and guide about the builders of these three pyramids, he was told in answer that they were built by Cheops, Chephren, and Mycerinus. He was told that Cheops first caused a road to be made from the stone quarries in the Arabian chain of hills—the range east of the Nile—down to the river, and again from the west side of the river to the high ground above Memphis. The road was built of smoothed stones five stades in length, ten fathoms broad, and at the highest places thirty-two fathoms high; and it was intended to convey the materials from the Arabian side of the river. In making this road and building the subterranean chamber for the grave of Cheops ten years were consumed, although 100,000 men were constantly employed upon it by spaces of three months, when they were relieved by an equal number of fresh workmen. Twenty years were then spent upon the pyramid, of which each side and the height measured 800 feet; it was built in such a manner that the structure was carried out by landings and steps, like a staircase. When the proper height was reached, the landings were covered from top to bottom with smoothed and carefully-fitted stones, and no stone is less than thirty feet. Under the surface was a canal carried in masonry from the Nile round the subterranean chamber. "It is also inscribed on the pyramid," Herodotus continues, "what the workmen consumed in radishes, onions, and garlic, and on these, as I well remember, the interpreter who read the letters told me, 1,600 talents of silver were spent. If this is true, what must have been expended upon iron for the tools, and on food and clothing for the workmen?" When Cheops had reigned fifty years he was succeeded by his brother Chephren, who also built a pyramid, though not equal in size to the other, and without any chamber or subterranean canal. "Both pyramids stand on the same elevation, of about one hundred feet; but the second is forty feet lower than the first; the lower stratum is built of vari-coloured Ethiopian stone." When Chephren had reigned fifty-six years, he was followed by Mycerinus, the son of Cheops. This king also left a pyramid behind him, "but his pyramid was much smaller than that built by his father: the sides are only 280 feet in length; the lower half is built of Ethiopian stone."[137]

The account of Diodorus is as follows:—King Chemmis of Memphis reigned fifty years, and built the largest of the three pyramids, which in height measures more than six plethra, and along the sides more than seven plethra. It is entirely constructed of solid stone, very difficult to work, and therefore of endless durability. Even now, although not less than a thousand, or as some say even more than 3,400, years have passed, the structure is uninjured, and the joints of the stones unloosened. Besides, we are told that these stones were brought from a considerable distance out of Arabia, and the structure was carried to its present height by means of mounds of earth. Most wonderful of all, no traces of these mounds, no fragments from the hewing and smoothing of the stones remain; so that it would seem that this work was not accomplished gradually by the hand of man, but was planted complete by a god in the midst of the surrounding sand. Though it is said that 360,000 men bestowed their labour on the structure, the work can hardly have been finished in twenty years, and the number of men who erected it must also have removed the mounds of earth and excavated material, and put everything in its original condition. Chemmis was followed by his brother Kephren, who reigned fifty-six years. Other accounts tell us that the kingdom descended on his son, Chabryes, and not on his brother. But all agree that he built the second pyramid, which resembles the first in the art of the execution, though much inferior in size, since on the sides it measures only one stadium (or, according to recent measurement, exactly 700½ Greek feet). And while the money spent in radishes and garden herbs for the builders is inscribed on the larger one, the smaller remains without any inscription. Though both these kings had destined these tombs for their place of burial, neither is buried there. Roused by the burden of their labours, the cruelty and violence of these kings—and in Herodotus also Cheops and Chephren appear as wicked and godless kings—the people threatened to take their bodies out of their graves and insult them. Terrified by this threat, each of the kings in his last moments bade his relations bury him privately in a secret place. After Kephren reigned Mycerinus, whom others call Mencherinus, the son of Chemmis. He built the smallest pyramid. Though less in size, it surpasses the others in the excellence of the work and the beauty of the stone; up to the fifteenth layer it consists of black stone resembling the stone of Thebes; from thence to the top the stone is the same as in the other pyramids. On the north side is written the name of the builder, Mycerinus. Abhorring the cruelty of his predecessors, Mycerinus, as we learn, sought to make his rule moderate and beneficent to his subjects, and did everything to gain the affections of the nation. He paid great attention to the administration of justice; and to the common people who had not received from the tribunals such a sentence as seemed just to him, he made presents. "But as to the building of the pyramids, there is no agreement either among the Egyptians or their historians; some ascribe them to the kings I have mentioned; some to other kings."[138]

The accounts given by Herodotus and Diodorus of the structure of the largest pyramid are completely confirmed by modern researches. Even now it is thought that traces can be recognised of the causeway which served for the transport of the materials from the left bank of the Nile to the plateau.[139] The pyramid itself is built in large regular steps constructed of squares of granite. The yellow lime-stone of the casing must also have been really brought from the Arabian side of the Nile, because better stone of that kind was found there.[140] On the other hand, the account of a subterranean canal round the grave chamber is merely a legend of the people, who desired to adorn with new marvels the structure already so marvellous; it is impossible, simply because the lower chamber, and not only the area of the pyramid, is above the lower level of the Nile. The 100,000 workmen of Herodotus, changed every three months, and the 360,000 of Diodorus—a number formed from the days in the old Egyptian year—have arisen out of the free invention of later times, although the building must certainly have occupied more than a decade of years. Inscriptions are not found now on the external side of the pyramid. If such were in existence at the time of Herodotus, they certainly contained other things than those which the interpreter pretended to read there. The interpreters who served as guides to the travellers of that day in Egypt, as the dragoman does now, could hardly have read the hieroglyphics; they contented themselves with narrating the traditions and stories popularly connected with the great monuments of past time, not without certain exaggerations and additions.[141]

But the names of the builders of the three largest pyramids, which these interpreters mentioned to the Greeks, are confirmed by the monuments. In the deep chamber of the largest pyramid there is no sarcophagus; in the upper of the two chambers which lie in the axis of the pyramid there has been found, it is true, a simple sarcophagus of red granite, but it bears no inscription. Above these chambers, however, there are certain small spaces left open, with a view no doubt of diminishing the pressure of the stone-work upon them, and on the walls of these spaces is written the name, Chufu, Chnemu Chufu, in hieratic characters.[142] The same name frequently recurs in the tombs surrounding this pyramid, in which, according to the inscriptions, the wives, sons, officers, and priests of Chufu were buried; and among them the scribe of the buildings of the kings and the priest of Apis, who was at the same time keeper of the gates and of the palace. In this inscription the pyramid of Chufu is called "Chut." On a monumental stone found in the Apis tombs—now in Cairo—we read, "The living Horus, the King of Egypt, Chufu, has built a temple to Isis near the temple of the Sphinx, north of the temple of Osiris, and has erected his pyramid beside the temple of Isis."[143] Chufu himself is not found in Egypt, but in the peninsula of Sinai he is pictured in relief on the rocks in the Wadi Maghara. He is represented as lifting his war-club against an enemy whom he has forced upon his knee and seized by the head-dress with the left hand.[144] In an inscription in the same valley, the oldest which we possess, his predecessor Snefru claims to have subjugated these regions.

In the second pyramid, in the chamber under the surface, a sarcophagus of granite has been discovered on the floor without any inscription. But in the inscriptions on the graves, especially on the grave of the architect of King Chafra, his pyramid is mentioned as "the great pyramid." Between the paws of the Sphinx which stands to the north of the second pyramid, hewn out of the living rock, is a monumental stone, on which is read the name Chafra,[145] and in the ruins of a temple lying near the Sphinx—the same without doubt which is mentioned in the stone at Cairo—seven statues have been exhumed, the inscriptions on which prove that they represent "the Master and Gold Horus, Chafra, the good god, the lord of the crown," i. e., King Chafra himself.[146] And lastly, the inscriptions on the tomb of a woman whose name is read as Mertitef, prove that she was the chief favourite of Snefru and of Chufu, and had been united to Chafra.[147] Hence Chafra must have succeeded Chufu, and the "great" pyramid built by him can hardly have been any other than that which now holds the second place.

In the sepulchral chamber of the third pyramid, it is known in the inscriptions as "Har," i. e., "the supreme," the sarcophagus of King Menkera with his mummy has been discovered. It is made of blue basalt, and bears the following inscription:—"O Osiris, King Menkera, ever living one; begotten of the sky, carried in the bosom of Nut, scion of Seb ([p. 55]). Thy mother Nut is outstretched over thee, in her name of the mystery of the sky may she deify thee and destroy thy enemies, King Menkera, ever living one."[148]

It is therefore an ascertained fact that Chufu, Chafra, and Menkera were the builders of the three great pyramids. In the mouth of the Greeks the name Chufu passed into Cheops, and by a farther change into Suphis. The name Chemmis in Diodorus has arisen out of the name Chnemu in the form Chnemu Chufu; from Chafra naturally arose Chephren, Kephren, and Chabryes. In the list of kings in Eratosthenes, the fourteenth successor of Menes is Saophis; Eratosthenes allows him a reign of twenty-nine years. His successor, who has a reign of twenty-seven years, bears the same name. The second Saophis is followed by Moscheres with a reign of thirty-one years. Manetho's list gives the name Suphis to the twenty-seventh king after Menes, and he is said to have reigned sixty-three years. Then follows a second Suphis, with a reign of sixty-six years, and this king is succeeded by Menchres, who reigned sixty-three years. On the first Suphis in Manetho's list the excerpt of Africanus remarks: "This king built the largest pyramid, which Herodotus assigns to the time of Cheops;" in the excerpt of Eusebius, both in the Greek text and the Armenian translation, this remark is made on the second Suphis. Hence we can have no hesitation in identifying the Cheops and Chephren of Herodotus, the Chemmis and Kephren of Diodorus, with the first and second Saophis and Sufis of the lists, the Chufu and Chafra of the inscriptions; and the Mycerinus of Herodotus and Diodorus is beyond doubt the same as the Moscheres of Eratosthenes, the Mencheres of Manetho, and the Menkera of the sarcophagus in the third pyramid. In the national tradition of the Egyptians, as received by the Greeks, Cheops and Chephren were called brothers, and this is no doubt mainly due to the fact that the monuments of these two kings surpassed all the other pyramids, and were of nearly the same height and size. It is impossible that Cheops should have reigned fifty years, and his brother Chephren who succeeded him, fifty-six years, as Herodotus and Diodorus tell us—the inscription quoted above makes the same woman the favourite of the predecessor of Chufu, of Chufu, and Chafra also; even more impossible is it that the first Suphis should have reigned sixty-three years, and the second sixty-six, as given in the list of Manetho, if they were brothers; or that Mycerinus, whom Herodotus as well as Diodorus calls the son of Cheops, should have succeeded Chephren with a reign of sixty-three years, as Manetho tells us. Like their brotherhood, the wickedness of Cheops and Chephren is due to the popular legends of later times. The sight of the enormous structures forced on later generations the reflection what labour, what stupendous efforts must have been necessary for their erection. This reflection united with certain dim memories, and gathered round the rule of the strangers, the shepherd-tribes, which for a long time afflicted Egypt, as is clear enough from a trait in the narrative of Herodotus. He assures us that the Egyptians could scarcely be induced to mention the names of the kings who built the great pyramids: they spoke of them as the works of the shepherd Philitis.[149] In the eyes of the Egyptians of the olden time, tombs would never have appeared to be works of impiety and wickedness, realising as they did in such an extraordinary degree the object most eagerly desired, a secure and indestructible resting-place for the dead: with them they would rather pass as works of singular piety. Without doubt it is the older tradition, that of the priests, which meets us in the observation appended in the list of Manetho and the excerpt of Africanus to the first Suphis, and in the excerpt of Eusebius, both in the Greek text and Armenian translation, to the second Suphis, in which we are told that this king had composed a sacred book, and the Egyptians regarded it as a very great treasure.

According to the inscription, Chufu had erected a temple to Isis by the side of the temple of the Sphinx, and therefore the latter temple must have been already in existence. And as a fact the ruins still found beside the great Sphinx give evidence of very ancient workmanship. There was a court, the ante-court of the temple, which surrounded a portico supported on twelve square pillars; next came a hall supported on monoliths, the temple itself, and finally the Holy of Holies, surrounded by small chambers. The material used in building was limestone and granite. The symbolic form of the deity, to whom the temple belonged, was the enormous Sphinx, 190 feet in length, hewn out of the rock, with the body of a lion and the head of a man. From the memorial stone before it we learn that it symbolized the god Harmachu (Armachis of the Greeks), i. e. Horus in Splendour (har-em-chu).[150] From the inscription on this stone, which dates from the time of Tuthmosis IV., it seems to follow that it was Chafra, who caused this shape to be hewn out of the rock and consecrated it to the god. Other inscriptions inform us that the pyramids were regarded as sepulchral temples, and that there were priests for the service of the princes who were buried there, and had attained to a divine nature, and these services were still in existence at the time of the Ptolemies. One of the tombs at Gizeh belongs to a priest, a relation of Chafra, whose duty it was to "honour the pyramid Uer (the Great) of king Chafra;" another is found at Sakkarah belonging to "a priest of Chufu, and Chafra."[151] On a monumental stone of the time of the Ptolemies (found in the Serapeum, and now in the Louvre) mention is made of the temple of Harmachu on the south of the house of Isis, and of a certain Psamtik, the prophet of Isis, of Osarhapi ([p. 67]), of Harmachu, of Chufu and Chafra.[152]

The temples of Osiris and Isis, near the three great pyramids, and the inscription on the sarcophagus of king Menkera are evidence that the cultus of Osiris, the belief in his rule in the next world, in the return of the soul to her divine origin, and her deification after death, was already in existence at the time when these monuments were erected. The use not of hieroglyphics only, but also of the hieratic alphabet, in red and black colours, in the pyramid of Chufu, and the graves around it, in the sculptures of which writing materials and rolls of papyrus are frequently engraved, the forms of domestic and household life, of agriculture and the cultivation of the vine, of hunting and fishing, preserved on the tombs of Gizeh, are evidence of the long existence and manifold development of civilisation, no less than those great monuments, or even the graves themselves with their artistic mode of construction, their severe and simple style of execution, and the pleasing forms of their ornaments. Of the seven statues of Chafra, discovered in the temple of the Sphinx, one, chiselled out of hard green and yellow basalt, has been preserved uninjured. The king is represented sitting, and naked, with the exception of a covering on the head and a girdle round the loins. The lower arms rest on the thighs, the left hand is outstretched, the right holds a fillet. The sides of the cube, on which Chafra is seated, are formed by lions, between the feet of which are stems of papyrus. On the high back of the chair, behind the head of the king, sits the hawk of Horus, whose wings are spread forwards in an attitude of protection. The execution of the statue of the king is a proof of long practice in sculpture. The natural form is truly and accurately rendered, and though even here Egyptian art displays its characteristic inclination to severity, and correctness in the proportions of the body, to repose and dignity, yet in the head there is an unmistakable attempt to individualize an outline already fixed—an attempt not without success. Still more distinctly individual are two statues found near the pyramids of Meidum, from the reign of the predecessor of Chufu, a wooden statue, and certain pictures in relief from the tombs near the great pyramids. The architecture, no less than the sculpture, of these most ancient monuments, displays a high degree of experience and a knowledge of the principles of art, a conscious purpose and effort existing together with a fixed obedience to rule.

We learnt from Diodorus that the great pyramids were erected 1,000, or, according to some, 3,400 years before his time. According to the list of Manetho, Cheops, Chephren, and Mycerinus belonged to the fourth dynasty. If we accept the incredible reigns of sixty-three, sixty-six, and again, sixty-three years, which Manetho allows to those three kings, they reigned over Egypt, according to Lepsius' dates, from the year 3095 B.C., to 2903 B.C.

At a period subsequent to these kings the list of Manetho speaks in the sixth dynasty of a king Phiops, who came to the throne as a child in his sixth year, and lived to be 100 years old. The list of Erastosthenes mentions a king Apappus, who reigned for 100 years. The monuments show us a king Pepi, in whom we recognise Phiops and Apappus, and in consequence a reign of ninety-five years is assigned to him (2654-2559 B.C.). Yet hitherto the sixteenth year is the highest found on the monuments for the reign of Pepi; and in the inscription on a tomb at Abydus, now in the museum at Cairo, a man of the name of Una declares that he had filled the highest offices in the kingdom under Teta, the predecessor of Pepi, under Pepi, and again under his successor, Merenra. If one person could be the minister of three successive rulers, it is clear that the second of these reigns could not have lasted 95 or 100 years. Under the reign of Pepi, as well as his immediate predecessors and successors, i. e., in the sixth dynasty of Manetho, the development of Egypt must have undergone a certain change. The kings, previous to this family, are represented on the monuments with a cap falling to one side, or with a tall head-dress; Pepi is represented on one relief with this head-dress, but on another with one of a lower shape. The tall white cap is the crown of Upper Egypt, the lower red one is the crown of Lower Egypt. It is no longer on the plateau of Memphis, and among the tombs there, but in Middle Egypt, near El Kab, and in the valley of Hamamat, which leads from Coptus to the Red Sea, that we find the monuments of Pepi and his race, and the tombs of their priests and magistrates are at Abydus. Under this dynasty, therefore, the central point of the kingdom appears to have been moved from Memphis in the direction of Middle Egypt. On the west coast of the peninsula of Sinai, in the Wadi Maghara, Pepi is seen striking down an enemy; and from the inscription on the tomb of Una, it is clear that Pepi's kingdom extended up the Nile as far as the negroes, that his successor caused dockyards to be built in Nubia, and that Una had to procure blocks of fine stone for the sarcophagus of Pepi and his successor, and also for the pyramid of the latter.[153]

The removal of the centre of the kingdom from Memphis, which is noticeable under the family of Pepi, was completely carried out under a later house, which is stated in the lists to belong to Thebes—the eleventh and twelfth dynasty of Manetho. Upper Egypt became the seat of the royal power; Thebes (the No-Amon, i. e. possession of Ammon, of the Hebrews) took her place beside Memphis. The princes of this new dynasty are no longer called in the monuments the lords of Upper and Lower Egypt, but the "lords of both lands;" they always wear both crowns. Hence it is possible that this royal house in the first instance ruled over Upper Egypt only from Thebes, and that for a long time Upper and Lower Egypt existed side by side independently, till the kings of Thebes succeeded in reducing Lower Egypt under their dominion.

Of Amenemha, the first king of this house, who ruled over Upper and Lower Egypt (2380-2371 B.C.), a colossal figure of red granite is still in existence, which was discovered in Lower Egypt at Tanis (San), not far from Lake Menzaleh.[154] His power must have extended up the Nile over the adjacent part of Nubia, for a pillar discovered there informs us that he intrusted an officer with the superintendence of the gold mines in Nubia.[155] His successor, Sesurtesen I. (2371-2325 B.C.), erected a temple to Ammon at Thebes, and set up obelisks, i. e. pointed monolithic pillars, dedicated to the sun-god, in Lower Egypt, in Fayum, and at Heliopolis. The obelisk at Fayum, not far from the ancient Arsinoe, was about forty feet in height; it has been broken by the fall into two pieces. The obelisk of Heliopolis is sixty feet in height; it still towers over the ruins of this city, near the village of Matarieh. It is not the first obelisk erected in Egypt, for the inscriptions of Chufu mention an obelisk erected by that king, but it is the oldest which has come down to our time. The inscription, repeated on all four sides, runs thus:—"Horus, the life of that which is born, the child of the sun, Sesurtesen, who is beloved by the spirits of Heliopolis, who will live for ever, the golden hawk, the life of that which is born, this gracious god has erected this obelisk at the beginning of the great festival. He has erected it who assures us of life for ever."[156] That this king also ruled in Nubia, and forced his way far up the Nile above Egypt, is proved by a monument in Nubia on the cataracts of the Wadi Halfa; a pillar, on which is depicted Sesurtesen, representing Nubians and negroes, the prisoners of eight nations or tribes, to the god Horus.[157] In the rock tombs of Beni Hassan is buried an officer of this king, Amenj, overseer of the canton of Hermopolis (Ashmunein). The inscription tells us that Amenj had served the king when on a campaign to destroy his enemies; that he had approached the land of Cush, and reached the limits of the earth. The king had returned in peace after the overthrow of his enemies. Afterwards Amenj with 600 warriors had conveyed the produce of the goldmines from the canton of Hermopolis to the stronghold of Coptus. He had loved his canton; and all the works required for the house of the king he had carried out in his canton by his own arm, and had paid in the tribute. He had laboured, and the canton had been in full activity. He had not afflicted the children, or ill-treated the widows; he had not disturbed the fishermen, or hindered the herdsmen. Famine had never prevailed, because every plot had been planted. He had caused the inhabitants to live, had given gifts without regarding the great before the small.[158] The fragment of a seated colossus of Sesurtesen I., of black granite, is to be seen in the museum at Berlin; his colossus of red granite is at Tanis. A third statue of this king has been found at Abydus.[159]

Amenemha II. and Sesurtesen II. carried on the campaigns of the first Sesurtesen in the south of Egypt. A monument in the valley of Hamamat exhibits battles with the Punt, i. e. with the tribes of the Arabians and the negroes.[160] Sesurtesen III., who succeeded Sesurtesen II., completed the subjugation of Lower Nubia. To protect the new border of the kingdom, he caused fortresses to be erected a little above the falls of the Wadi Halfa, at Semne and Kumne, about 250 miles south of Syene. A pillar discovered in this district has the following inscription:—"Southern border; erected in the eighth year, under the rule of his holiness King Sesurtesen III., who gives life for all eternity. No negro shall pass over it on his way, except the boats laden with the oxen, goats, and asses of the negroes."[161]

The third Sesurtesen was followed by the third Amenemha (2221 to 2179 B.C.). Inscriptions in the Wadi Maghara, in the peninsula of Sinai, tell us that Amenemha III. caused the copper to be conveyed from the mines there by 734 soldiers, in the second year of his reign; and inscriptions in the valley of Hamamat show that the quarries there were frequently used by this king.[162] Near the fortifications of his predecessor, on the rocks of Semne and Kumne, are found numerous records of the height reached by the Nile in the reign of Amenemha III. Here we read—"Level of Hapi (the Nile) in the fourteenth, sixteenth, thirtieth years, &c., under his holiness King Amenemha III., who lives for ever." From these observations we find that the average height of the inundations at that time was more than twenty-four feet higher than at present; and the greatest height reached under Amenemha III. was twenty-seven feet above the greatest height of modern times.[163]

Herodotus tells us the following story;—Among the successors of Menes, Moeris carried out some remarkable works; he built the north gateway in the temple of Hephaestus, excavated a great lake, and erected pyramids in it. "The priests told me that under the rule of Moeris, the Nile overflowed the land below Memphis, although it had only risen to the height of eight cubits, but now the water does not cover the land unless it reaches a height of sixteen or at least fifteen cubits; and it seems to me that if the land were raised again in the same proportion, the Egyptians who live in the Delta below the lake of Moeris would be in distress. The circuit of the lake of Moeris is about 3,600 stades, or sixty schoenes, and the depth in the deepest place about fifty fathoms. The lake extends from north to south. That it was the work of human hands, is clear from the nature of it. About the middle are two pyramids, each of which rises about fifty fathoms out of the water, and on each is a stone colossus seated on a throne. The water of the lake does not arise from springs, for the whole district there is entirely without water, it is introduced by a canal from the Nile. For six months the water flows from the Nile into the lake, and again for six months from the lake into the Nile. While it runs out the fishery brings in a talent of silver a day for the King's treasury; but when the water flows into the lake the product is a third of a talent only.[164]"

Diodorus tells us that king Moeris erected the north gateway at Memphis, the splendour of which excelled all others; and above the city at about ten schoenes distance he excavated a lake of marvellous utility and incredible size. The circuit was 3,600 stades, and the depth in most places was fifty fathoms. "Who would not ask, when contemplating the vast extent of this work, how many myriads of men were required to complete it, and for how many years? But no one could ever speak in worthy terms of the utility of the lake and the advantage it is to the inhabitants of Egypt and the wise prudence of the king in making it. As the Nile does not rise evenly, and the fruitfulness of the land depends on the evenness of the overflow, Moeris excavated this lake to receive the superfluous water, in order that an excessive inundation might not create marshes and morasses, or a deficiency of water imperil the fruitfulness of the soil. He carried a canal 300 feet in breadth from the river for eighty stades (about ten miles) to the lake, through which he first admitted the superfluous water and then drew it off. In this way he procured for the tillers of the soil the desired medium in the water, since the mouth of the canal was sometimes closed, sometimes opened, which was both a difficult and costly thing to do. The lake has remained to our time, and is still called by the name of the constructor, the lake of Moeris. In the middle, the king who excavated it left a place on which he built his own tomb, and two pyramids. One was erected for himself, the other for his wife. On these he placed stone statues of himself and his wife, sitting on thrones, in the impression that by means of this work he would be for ever held in grateful remembrance."[165]

Of the lake above Memphis, Strabo gives the following account:—"The canton of the city Arsinoe, which was formerly known as the City of Crocodiles, surpasses all others in the beauty of its appearance, in fruitfulness, and also in the wonders to be seen there. It alone is covered with green and large olive trees, whereas there are no olives in the rest of Egypt; it produces a considerable amount of wine, and corn, and pulse, and many other cereals. In it also lies the wonderful lake of Moeris, which in size and colour is like a sea, and has shores like the shores of the sea. Owing to its size and depth this lake is able to receive the superfluous water at the time of the inundation, so that it does not overflow the inhabited and planted districts. On the other hand, when the river begins to subside, after it has poured the overflow into one of the two mouths of the canal, the lake and the canal together retain the water required for irrigation. This takes place in the natural course of things, but there are also artificial sluices at both mouths of the canal, by which the persons in charge regulate the rise and fall of the water." Tacitus also mentions "the excavated lake which receives the overflow of the Nile."[166]

From these accounts the object of the work is clear. It was intended to regulate the inundation by a large reservoir, and so to increase its beneficent effects upon the soil of Egypt. The inundation was to be reduced for the Delta by drawing off a part of the water, which had risen into this basin in the neighbourhood of Memphis, in order that the land in this district might not be rendered swampy, and the marshes might have time to dry. This basin could also retain a portion of water in the superabundant years of excessive inundation, in order to supply the deficiencies of other years when the water did not reach the highest plots. Further, the reservoir might be used to irrigate the arable land in the neighbourhood during the waterless months, when there was no inundation.

A few miles above Memphis the Libyan range is divided by a depression. This cleft leads from the Nile into a spacious urn-shaped valley, now called Fayum, of which the western part is filled by a large lake. On the ruins near this lake, the name of King Amenemha III. is frequently read. If we remember that the careful observations of the rise of the Nile from the reign of this king tend to show that he was busily engaged with the irrigation of the land, that the Egyptians call this lake the lake of inundation (meri), and that the king Mœris of the Greeks owes his name to this title (suten en meri), we may regard Amenemha III. as the author of the wonderful hydraulic structures at Fayum. The great reservoir, which he constructed, is no longer in existence, but the remains of it can be traced in dams and in the modern lake of Fayum, the Birket-el-Kerun. The urn-shaped valley of Fayum offered a situation for a basin near the Nile, which might receive and preserve part of the inundation, and the depression in the Libyan range secured a natural path for the canal, required to feed the basin from the Nile, and the Nile from the basin. For the site of the basin the nearest part of the valley was selected; it was enough that the bed of the reservoir was not lower than the lowest level of the Nile. No deep excavations were needed; all that was required was to enclose a large part of the valley with strong dams; and the earth necessary for erecting these could be taken out of the enclosed space. These dams must have been massive enough to retain a large body of water, and prevent it from breaking out into the western, and far lower part of the valley, and at the same time of sufficient height to prevent any overflow even in the times of the highest inundations. At the eastern entrance into Fayum we find running from the valley of the Nile the remains of long, rectilinear, and very massive banks, in which modern research has recognised the original enclosure of the lake of Moeris. The breadth of the dams appears to have been carried to 150 feet; whereas the height can hardly have exceeded thirty feet.[167] When Herodotus tells us that the depth of the basin in the deepest part was fifty fathoms, it is obvious that the statement rests on the computation that the two pyramids in the middle of the lake were of the same height under as above the surface. The same authority allows a circuit of about 450 miles for the lake, but from the remains we cannot allow a greater circuit than 150 miles.[168] The Egyptians were sufficiently skilled in the erection of strong dams, and structures of such an extent could not be in excess of the resources of a country which had erected the great pyramids. Finally, when Herodotus asks what had become of the earth dug out of this great lake, the answer is that there was no complete excavation, but merely the enclosure of a certain space of land, and what was taken out of this was at once applied to the construction of the dams.

The statement of the priests about the height of the inundation in the reign of Moeris, which Herodotus has preserved for us, and from which he has drawn the conclusion that the soil of Lower Egypt must have risen since that reign from seven to eight cubits in height, is much exaggerated. The deposit of mud in consequence of the inundation raises the soil only about four inches in 100 years, that is, about three-and-a-quarter feet in 1,000 years. Supposing the basin of Amenemha to have been completed 1,500 years before Herodotus travelled in Egypt, the difference in the required height of the inundation might reach three or four cubits, but not seven or eight. Yet the raising of the soil, and more especially of the bed of the great basin, which rose far more rapidly than the surface of the land, brought about the decay, and at last the ruin, of this reservoir. The bed of the basin in which the water remained the whole year through, and not for three or four months only, must have been raised by the deposit at a peculiarly rapid rate; at the present time it shows a height of eleven feet as compared with the land outside the remains of the dams.[169] With this rise in the bed, the value of the basin diminished in proportion as the amount of water which the reservoir was capable of receiving was lessened. It was useless to raise the height of the dams, for the influx of the water from the Nile depended on the level of the bed of the connecting canal, and of the basin. These causes along with the disaffection of later times must have brought about the decay of the reservoir, the value of which Diodorus places so high, and which was in existence in the time of Tacitus. At a later period the dams must have been neglected, so that at the time of some extraordinary inundation, a breach was made towards the west, which filled the western and lowest part of Fayum with water. This is the origin of the Birket-el-Kerun, the water of which is still sufficient to convert the largest part of Fayum into one of the most fertile and blooming districts of Egypt. The level of the Birket-el-Kerun is seventy feet lower than the canal which once connected the reservoir with the Nile.[170]

"A little above Lake Moeris," Herodotus tells us, "at the so-called City of the Crocodiles, is the labyrinth. I have seen it, and it outdoes its reputation. If any one were to put together the walls and buildings of the Hellenes, he would find that they were surpassed in labour and cost by this labyrinth alone, although the temples at Ephesus and Samos are certainly well worth speaking of. The pyramids are indeed beyond all description, and each of them is equivalent to many of the greatest works of Hellas, but the labyrinth surpasses even the pyramids. It contains twelve roofed courts, abutting on each other, the entrances to which are opposite, six to the north and six to the south. Externally they are all included in one wall. The chambers are of two kinds, some are under the ground, others visible above it; of each kind there are 1,500. Those above ground I have passed through, and can speak of them from eyesight; those under the ground the Egyptian overseers could not be induced to show me, because, as they said, they contained the sepulchres of the kings who built the labyrinth, and of the sacred crocodiles. Of these, therefore, I can only speak from hearsay: but the chambers above ground, which I saw, are a superhuman work. The entrances through the covered spaces, and the windings through the courts are very complicated, and excite infinite wonder, as you pass from the courts into the chambers, and from the chambers into colonnades, and from these into other covered spaces, and from the chambers into other courts. On all these spaces lies a roof of stone, similar to the walls; the walls are covered with carved pictures, and each court is surrounded on the inside with pillars of white stones, excellently fitted together. In the angle where the labyrinth ends there is a pyramid forty fathoms high, with large figures cut into it. The entrance to this is under the surface."[171]

Diodorus says:—"One of the old kings, named Menas, built on the lake of Moeris, the City of Crocodiles, a tomb for himself, a square pyramid, and the marvellous labyrinth." In another passage he says: "King Mendes, whom some call Marrhus, was not distinguished by any military achievements, but he built for his tomb the so-called labyrinth, which is marvellous not so much for its size as for the inimitable art of the structure. Without a thoroughly competent guide, it would not be easy for any one to find his way out." And in a third passage we are told: "The labyrinth at the entrance into Lake Moeris is a square structure—each side measuring a stadium—built of the most beautiful stone, unsurpassed in the sculptures and the art bestowed upon it." "Passing through the enclosure, you see a house surrounded with pillars, forty on each side, and with a roof of a single stone, adorned with mullions in relief, and various paintings. It also contains the monuments of the twelve provinces of Egypt of their sacred relics and sacrifices, all represented in the most excellent pictures."[172]

Strabo's account is as follows:—"At the sluices (of the canal connecting the basin and the lake) is the labyrinth, a work as great as the pyramids, and moreover the grave of the king who built it. About thirty or forty stades above the mouth of the canal is a table-land, on which lies a hamlet and a palace made up of as many palaces as there are districts in Egypt. For so many in number are the colonnaded courts, adjoining each other in a row, and abutting on a partition against which they are built as against a long wall.[173] The entrances which lead to them are over against the wall. Before these entrances lie dark chambers, long in shape, and numerous, which are connected with each other by winding passages, so that without a guide it is impossible for the stranger to find the entrance or exit belonging to each court. The most marvellous thing is that the roof of each chamber consists of a single stone. Even the dark passages (before the entrances into the courts) are covered with slabs of a single stone, from side to side, without use of wood or other support, and these slabs are of extraordinary size. If you go out on the roof, and as there is but one story, it is not high, you find before you a plateau of stones of this kind. If from this point you look again into the courts, you see them twenty-seven in number in a row, supported by pillars of a single stone. The walls also are of stones not less in size. This number of courts are said to have been erected because it was the custom for all the districts to assemble here by their representatives, with their priests and animals for sacrifice, in order to offer sacrifice and decide matters of the greatest importance. Each district thus met in its own court. At the end of the structure, which extends over more than a stadium (in the square), lies the tomb, a square pyramid, of which each side is about a plethron in length and the same in height. The king buried there is called Ismandes."[174]

"The labyrinth," remarks Pliny, "is still existing in Egypt, though it is said to have been erected more than 3,600 years. Lykeas calls it the tomb of Moeris; some authorities assert that it is a shrine of the Sun-god, and this is the general belief. The entrance was built of Parian marble, which is astonishing to me, the remainder of joined blocks of granite, which centuries have not been able to destroy, albeit assisted by the inhabitants of Heracleopolis, who regard this structure with the greatest detestation, and treat it accordingly. The plan of the whole and the various parts it is impossible to describe. It is divided according to the districts and prefectures, which they call nomes; these are twenty-five in number, and their names are given to an equal number of large buildings. Besides this it contains a temple of all the gods of Egypt, and includes above 1,500 small buildings. The chambers are lofty, and each colonnade is ascended by a flight of ninety steps. Within are pillars of porphyry, images of the gods, statues of the kings, and monstrous shapes. Through the greater part you pass in darkness. From the wing attached to the labyrinth, passages lead through the rock to underground chambers, and there is also a pyramid belonging to it."[175]

As we have seen, Diodorus in one passage ascribes the building of the labyrinth to the ancient king Menas, and in another to king Mendes, whom other authorities call Marrhus, and at last he says that the twelve kings, who reigned in Egypt after the dominion of the Ethiopians, built the labyrinth for their common sepulchre. Four hundred years before his time Herodotus had stated that the twelve kings built it as a common memorial of their reign. Lykeas mentioned king Moeris as the builder, and Strabo told us that the king buried in it was Ismandes, a name which would agree with the Mendes of Diodorus. According to the lists of Manetho, it was the fourth ruler of the twelfth dynasty—Lacharis in the excerpt of Africanus, and Lamaris in that of Eusebius—who built the labyrinth in the province of Arsinoe for his own sepulchre.

The Menas of Diodorus may be an abbreviation of Amenemha, and this supposition becomes the more probable because the king called Moeris by the Greeks is mentioned as a builder of the labyrinth. The remains of the building, on the north side of which the pyramid is still standing, raise this supposition into a certainty. At the entrance to this pyramid, on the pillars and architraves in the ruins, the name of Amenemha III. is repeatedly found.[176]

We must assume, therefore, that in the district which he had recovered from the desert by means of his large reservoir, king Amenemha built a large national temple close to the basin, and in this temple it was intended that all the provinces of Upper and Lower Egypt should see the deities of their land reproduced in separate courts and temples. Then the Egyptians may have ascribed a restoration of this imperial temple, this pantheon, to the supposed twelve kings who were thought to have reigned after the Ethiopian dominion. This tradition is obviously at the bottom of the accounts of Herodotus and Diodorus, who carry the building back to the seventh century B.C. The ruins of the labyrinth lie near the modern village of Hauara, among orchards and palm groves, beside rose gardens and sugar plantations, surrounded by fruitful fields, in a district which is still flourishing and covered with villages, bounded to the west by naked ridges of rock and the sand of the desert. They consist of blocks of granite and dazzling white limestone, which explains the supposed Parian marble in Pliny, the remains of walls and the capitals of pillars. The extent of the structure reaches 600 feet in length and 500 in width; the traces of numerous chambers, some large and some very small, but all rectangular, are still visible both above and under the ground. In the centre is a clear space, once perhaps filled by the courts, of which Herodotus enumerates twelve and Strabo twenty-seven. The pyramid consists of a core built of bricks, and was cased with sculptures, of which, however, there are very slight remains; each side measured 300 feet in length. It was the sepulchre of Amenemha; here, among his great creations, he lay at rest.

In addition to the monuments in Nubia, and this great building, the lake which ripples against the labyrinth is a most eloquent witness of the prosperity to which this dynasty of the Amenemha and Sesurtesen raised Egypt. The population must have been already very numerous when it came to recovering fresh land from the desert, and attention was turned towards increasing and improving the rich fertilization which nature every year secured for Egypt. The picture of the richly developed cultivation, of which these structures exhibit the highest point, is supplemented by the insight into the details of the circumstances of the country permitted by the rock tombs of Beni Hassan, Bersheh, and Sioot (in Central Egypt), which belong to this period of Egyptian history. At Beni Hassan, where the tombs go back to the reign of the first Sesurtesen, we see the entire process of agriculture. Oxen or slaves are drawing the ploughs, of which five different kinds are in use. Sheep and goats tread the seed into the ground. The corn when cut is gathered into sheaves, trodden out by oxen, measured, and carried in sacks to the granary. The flax is packed upon the backs of asses, the lotus, the vintage, and the figs are gathered in. The vintage is partly trodden out, partly squeezed in a press moved by a lever; the wine is poured into jars, and carried into a cellar. We see the irrigation of the fields, the planting of the gardens, the cultivation of onions, the overseer and his clerks. The overseer passes sentence on the lazy and negligent slaves: when he has heard the complaint and the answer, he orders the bastinado to be applied to the culprits, and hands to his master the written account of the matter. With equal minuteness we can follow the breeding of cattle. We see fine herds of oxen, cows, and calves, asses, sheep, and goats in the stalls or at pasture with their keepers; we see the cows milked, the butter and cheese prepared. The fowl-yards are filled with a multitude of different ducks and geese. In the same way by following the pictures on the graves at Beni Hassan we can obtain an accurate view of the process of the various manufactures. We see the spinners and weavers at work; we can follow the potter through all the stages of his work, from the first kneading of the clay to the burning of the finished jar. The carpenter and joiner, the currier, the shoemaker, the smith and goldsmith, the mason and painter, pursue their occupations before our eyes. We see rudders, lances, javelins, bows and arrows, clubs and war-axes preparing: and lastly we have the manufacture of glass, even the blowing, in all the various operations before us. With similar minuteness we can see the interior of the Egyptian house, simply or splendidly furnished, with all the movable goods, the dogs, cats, and apes belonging to the inhabitants; there are the servants at their work, and the operations of the kitchen in great detail. Further we find soldiers of every rank, and with all kinds of weapons; we see them exercising military drill; the battle, the siege, the ram, which is brought up against the walls of the enemy, the roof of shields under which the besieging army advanced to storm the wall—all these are before us. Birding is carried on by means of traps and nets, angling by hooks and spears of two or three tines; there is hunting in its various modes. Long rows of wrestlers exhibit all the various positions of their sport, which seems to have been much in vogue; along with this various games exhibiting strength or endurance were carried on; among others, games of ball and mora. We see dancers, male and female, in various and sometimes very intricate positions; harps and flutes of very different shapes are played upon. A singer is accompanied by a musician on a harp, and the concert is completed by two choruses, one of men, the other of women, who clap their hands. The better class are depicted in gaily-coloured skiffs and palanquins, surrounded by numerous servants, among whom may be observed a considerable number of negroes. Dwarfs and deformed persons are also found in their train.